Fleeting Gems

On By Michael TolbertIn WritingLeave a comment

One should feel no urge or compulsion to write about anything in particular. One should just move, that is, rearrange words, craft and shape sentences, paragraphs, punctuation, follow the flow of grammar. Life isn’t about anything. It is about experience. So experience the movement of writing. What is this about? The very act of writing solves the puzzle. The gems may be there, but you have to put in the work, dig through the soil. Some priceless, some worthless, but always worthwhile. No act is in vain because there is no teleology at the end of writing. What is life about? The living and doing. Reflection is also doing. Either write or don’t write, that is the only choice we have.

The Law of Averages

On By Michael TolbertIn Culture, Philosophy, ScienceLeave a comment

If we want to be right, or more accurately, if we want our predictions to conform to expected results, out judgements should cluster around the largest data sets. That’s the safest bet one should make. When meeting a stranger for the first time, you should expect them to be approximately of average looks, average intellect, average tastes, average opinions, etc. I am always struck when someone meets a friend of mine, then later confesses in private that they were expecting someone different. What pieces of data were used to cobble together the image of the person they thought they were meeting? I’m not even sure they would know beyond a rudimentary sense of how they came to form their initial assessment.

I suspect, though, many of us do not apply the law of averages in many circumstances. Hearing the mention of another is already enough to elevate that imagined person above and beyond our standard estimation, but above and beyond what? The average, something we are loathe to identify in ourselves. But this betrays our low opinion of averages and the attended connotations (e.g., ordinary, commonplace, trite, uninteresting, boring, dull, unremarkable, unintelligent, etc.) We live in the average and despise the average, whether from vanity or a need to think the story of our individual lives important enough to be told. To tell a story implies a remarkable, extraordinary event.

No wonder we are unhappy beasts. It would be far better to embrace the average, emphasize the remarkable found within the ordinary, and discard the negative connotations. Think of it in this way. An average dog smells at a capacity that far exceeds the most exceptional human. By contrast, the average human intellect greatly exceeds the smartest dog. The point is not to compare ourselves to others but to appreciate the extent of the spectrum. Within averages, truly remarkable things are happening.

Immortality, oh you Immortals!

On By Michael TolbertIn Culture, ScienceLeave a comment

A cottage industry has been built up around the prospect of achieving human immortality. Far be it from me to point out the folly of this endeavor, or to point out any number of intractable problems that will surely arise as a result of this fabled achievement (e.g., compounding of stress effects on resource scarcity); rather, I must point out that the problem of immortality has already been solved, the puzzle cracked, many eons ago by the power of Natural Selection. Indeed, none of this hand-wringing, civilization-building, awe-inspiring economic, scientific, technological prowess could be brought to bear on this singular question without immortality via Natural Selection.* We just don’t like the solution. We, more specifically, the I of the ego, find our future immortality quite disturbing precisely because 1) the I/Ego has been left entirely out of the solution and 2) current fitness can not guarantee future success. Thus, my objection is more of a quibble, perhaps semantic, but nevertheless important if we are to grasp what it is we are trying to achieve. An altogether different kind of immortality, grafted on to the current one, one aimed as preservation, stasis, and dare we say, a living death? But what kind of future is this? A mausoleum or hall of animatronics? One imagines future AI robots powering us up to play the old hits, pre-recorded scenes from earlier times. Death comes because we have served our function. Our purpose is this: the immortal world we leave behind.

* A qualified immortality, of course. We can always aim a Death Star at our planet, or simply die by accidental causes. But this qualified immortality would exist even if science extends the lives of individuals indefinitely.

Psychic Health

On By Michael TolbertIn WritingLeave a comment

The first rule of psychic health: Never feel sorry for yourself.

The second rule of psychic health: Laugh at yourself and by extension, share in the laughter of others directed at us.

The third rule of psychic health: Forgive yourself (we are not supposed to be perfect).

The Primacy of the Voice

On By Michael TolbertIn Art, Cinema, WritingLeave a comment

Dreyer’s first love is the voice. For silent film, the voice is heard through the lyricism of movement, the dance that forms from the interplay of staging, the shifting of light and perspective, the tempo of quick editing, the choice of when or whether to include the narrative as written text, etc. When sound broke through the 2D barrier, these earlier techniques were quickly discarded by the mature Dreyer and fell out of favor. He had mastered a whole set of silent film techniques only to abandon them on principle. After all, it would only add an unnecessary complication, interfere with the true voice carried by the lyrical performance of the actors. Why protrude or impose your own artistic stamp as a Director when a single shot allows the actors to express so much unimpeded by the conventions of film?

It was a move many critics condemned in his later works, the experience equated to watching paint dry or furniture rearranged. Gertrud, his last film, was panned for that reason. “I mean, they’re not even making eye contact half the time!” In Venice, half the audience walked out. Those that stayed gave him a standing ovation. Godard proclaimed it the best film of 1964. Had it been around at the time, it is conceivable that a Razzie nomination would have been forthcoming. True, films can polarize us, but the contrasting views don’t reside in the same filmic universe. It’s a small sample size of “genius or revolting, contrived self-indulgence” which I include the films India Song and Last Year at Marienbad.*

Already in the 1960s we see the clear emergence of a “modern film audience” well-versed and raised on the conventions and techniques of film, only to have those expectations dashed at every turn. A steady shot = boredom. Nothing is happening because something must happen within a film. It’s the Action Rule, something described by a tentative mathematical formula (A=MT), Action = Motion x Temperament. “Don’t show me the inner lives of ordinary people. Film must be about something extraordinary. Otherwise, it’s just people talking, not doing.” But this is only a matter of positioning and artistic choice. The Action Rule is often evoked when the voice stands in for the collective id of the audience and, for that reason, often becomes formulaic in its expression. A good guy beating a bad guy is an immensely satisfying experience, and better still when it is sped up in unnatural time (e.g., a John Wick fight scene). The Action Rule can often be used as a substitute for the voice or to disguise a film’s hidden ideology or secret wish-fulfillment.

Regardless, the voice is never a single unitary object, but a qualitative multiplicity. Where does the voice come from? Or better still, who is entitled to wrestle it in their vanity and pride? Much like a hot potato, perhaps, a playful dance back and forth exists between performers, the director as auteur, and the audience projecting themselves and their desires into the luminous space.

* To clear up any misconception, I rate all three films as exceptional.