Rocket Man

Making connections in modern American culture is increasingly difficult. There’s plenty of noise—cocktail chatter, small talk, so much sound and fury that ultimately signifies nothing, but there’s very little deep soul to soul connecting. In our frenetic activity, we bump into each other, but don’t really stop, don’t really listen, don’t really have meaningful exchanges—we commit social hit-and-runs and call them relationships.

It’s not that we don’t want to connect. I honestly think we’re dying to. Craigslist’s personals have an entire category devoted to Missed Connections, and though most of them appear to be written by horny people trying to find someone based purely on how they look, I think it underscores a deep longing for far, far more than just hookin’ up.

We are lonely. We are longing.

Has it always been this way? There’s no way for me to know, but I suspect that, though earlier times were more communal, caring, connected, true naked-and-safe connection has always been rare. The good old days get idealized and romanticized, but perhaps in this way, in rootedness and belonging, they actually were gooder.

There are many reasons for our separation and isolation, and far smarter people than me have written books about them (two I’ve mentioned here before are: “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam and “Loneliness as a Way of Life” by Thomas Dumm), but as complicated as the condition is (and I truly believe it is extremely complicated), I tend to think the single biggest contributing factor is parenting. We live in a time of absurd over and under parenting—two extremes that might actually produce similar results. Could it be that neglect, insignificant-to-the universe parenting on one end of the spectrum and over-indulgence, center-of-the-universe parenting on the other creates kids who become adults who can’t connect. The net result of feeling unworthy or too worthy of bonding is the same, is it not? How many times have we attempted to make a real connection with someone only to find out that they’re too self-absorbed and narcissistic or too absent a sense of self and wounded for it to be even remotely possible?

Ryan Bingham, the central character of Jason Reitman’s timely, insightful new film, “Up in the Air,” finds it nearly impossible to make connections. His job is to fire people from theirs, and he flies all over the country to do it. He has no trouble with connecting flights—he never misses them, but making connections with other human beings is a different story.

In the film, Bingham’s life in the air is threatened just before he is about to reach ten million frequent flyer miles and just after he’s met his female frequent flyer soulmate. The anguish, hostility, and despair of his “clients” has left him falsely compassionate, living out of a suitcase, and loving his above-it-all position. When his boss hires arrogant young Natalie, she develops a method of video conferencing that will allow termination without ever leaving the office—threatening Bingham’s very existence. Determined to show the naive girl the error of her logic, Ryan takes her on one of his cross country firing expeditions, but as she starts to realize the disheartening realities of her profession, he gets a glimpse of the emptiness of his way of life.

Ray Bingham is a rocket man. Elton John’s song could’ve been written for him.

It’s lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone

Here’s Rocket Man Ray’s philosophy:

“How much does your life weigh? Imagine for a second that you're carrying a backpack. I want you to pack it with all the stuff that you have in your life... you start with the little things. The shelves, the drawers, the knickknacks, then you start adding larger stuff. Clothes, tabletop appliances, lamps, your TV... the backpack should be getting pretty heavy now. You go bigger. Your couch, your car, your home... I want you to stuff it all into that backpack. Now I want you to fill it with people. Start with casual acquaintances, friends of friends, folks around the office... and then you move into the people you trust with your most intimate secrets. Your brothers, your sisters, your children, your parents and finally your husband, your wife, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. You get them into that backpack, feel the weight of that bag. Make no mistake your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other to live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks.”

Ray is detached—and “not in no kinda good way.”

Many religions teach detachment as way to achieve peace. Life is suffering. Suffering comes from attachment. End attachment, end suffering. But this practice isn’t a defensive, closed position of self-preservation so much as an end to idolatry and a freedom from the prison of possessiveness. I try to practice it less as detachment from than as attachment to—to everything and everyone. Who is my neighbor? Everyone—particularly those in need.

Jason Reitman has made a quiet, affecting, adult film—sophisticated and thoughtful—so timely as to make one believe in stars aligning and synchronicity. And he cast his film to perfection.

All of the actors in “Up in the Air” deliver brilliant performances, particularly Vera Farmiga and Anna Kindrick, but even amidst a stellar cast, George Clooney’s star shines so bright as to nearly eclipse the others.

Like a lot of movie stars, George Clooney, perhaps the closest thing to an old fashioned, Cary Grantesque movie star we have, is never not himself on screen. We’re not watching Ryan Bingham so much as George Clooney using the name Ryan Bingham. But of all the roles we’ve watched George Clooney play, this one seems to best suit his suave, charming coolness. In fact, characters don’t come much cooler than Ryan Bingham—cool all the way down to his detached, cold core.

During this season when so many fine films are being released, I hope you won’t forgo “Up in the Air.” With open heart and mind, I hope you’ll take it in and be challenged by it, for whether we are over-attached or overly-detached, we can learn much from Ray Bingham—even if mostly it’s how not to be.

Saving Jesus From Christmas

Like complex chemical compounds, our lives are a collective of a myriad of multiplicities. We are influenced by so many people—known and not—and are connected in ways we can’t even fathom.

I couldn’t begin to list those who’ve had the most dramatic impact on me, but if I tried, the names would include, family and friends, thinkers and writers, artists and philosophers, theologians, and psychologists, but no single figure has been more influential than Jesus—not the Christ of Christianity nearly so much as the radical, marginal rabbi executed by Rome as a political prisoner. And though Christmas has far too little to do with this man, I’m using the mass’s belief that it does to share with you some great books about history’s most magnificent, magical, and misunderstood man.

Most people seem to associate Jesus with Christmas and Easter—and why wouldn’t they? These holidays are those the religion that rose around him emphasize most—a baby and a deity. But these are ways, tragically, of silencing or at least minimizing this beautiful poet of the poor, this embodiment of God’s love, this subtle subversive storyteller who challenges everyone and scares the hell out of the powerful—the moneyed, comfortable establishment of religion, politics, and culture.

What’s lost in the cuddley little baby Jesus in the manger and the resurrected all-powerful God-Jesus that insecure and power-hungry people build kingdoms and go to war for is the poor, peasant who taught that the we are most like God when we are compassionate, that the poor are our responsibility, that compassion in public is justice, that sexism and racism and religious intolerance is truly evil, that no one should ever, ever judge.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. . . . Do not judge and you will not be judged. . . . The least among you is the greatest. . . . To find your life, you must lose it. . . . To live you must die. . . . Pray in secret. . . . Give to the poor without anyone ever knowing. . . . Do not store up for yourselves treasures. . . . If you see someone in need, give them what you have.”

The religion of Jesus’ day often repeated the saying, “Be holy as God is holy.” Jesus taught and lived and said, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.”

Jesus’ gospel or “good news” is that we are loved so thoroughly and completely we can rest into it and be free and loving, our security, our trust in it putting an end to our fear, anxiety, despair, and pettiness.

Through masterful, insightful, profoundly true stories, Jesus railed against the oppression of the poor by the rich and powerful, the racism, fear, selfishness, and lack of love that divides us from one another and keeps us from being the people God created us to be. The messages and meanings of his stories have been largely lost through domestication and the religious agendas of those who teach them, but they are radical and powerful and persuasive.

Jesus taught that God is like a loving mother and father—who loves us no matter what (the parable of the prodigal son). God’s love is perfect and unconditional. God couldn’t love us any more than she does already, and there’s nothing we can do to make him love us any less. God so unconditionally loves and accepts us we should love one another the same way. Love trumps all. The hero of the parable of the Good Samaritan doesn’t believe the “right” things, doesn’t worship the “right” way, is racially mixed and religiously and morally compromised, yet acts compassionately and, is therefore, far more like God than those who believe the “right” things and appear to be pious.

It was through Jesus that I first gained enlightenment as a teenage boy, and it is through him I continue to see the way. Many people worship Jesus, but I attempt to follow him. He is not so much the light I gaze upon adoringly, but the light by which I see and perceive the world, the way to live—justly, creatively, compassionately.

There are so many truly brilliant books about Jesus, but I only have room here to tell you about one, published recently, and list a few others. I’ve chosen these because they are easy to read, accessible, and not overly academic.
“Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus” is by Robin R. Meyers, pastor of Mayflower Congregational, a professor, a columnist, and a commentator. Here’s a bit about his book from the dust jacket:

Countless thoughtful people are now so disgusted with the marriage of bad theology and hypocritical behavior by the church that a new Reformation is required in which the purpose of religion itself is reimagined.
Meyers takes the best of biblical scholarship and recasts these core Christian concepts to exhort the church to pursue an alternative vision of the Christian life:

• Jesus as Teacher, not Savior
• Christianity as Compassion, not Condemnation
• Prosperity as Dangerous, not Divine
• Discipleship as Obedience, not Control
• Religion as Relationship, not Righteousness

This is not a call to the church to move to the far left or to try something brand new. Rather, it is the recovery of something very old. “Saving Jesus from the Church” shows us what it means to be a Christian and how to follow Jesus’ teachings today.

If you respond to Meyers book, here are a few others you should read: “Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time” by Marcus J. Borg, “The Essential Jesus” by John Dominic Crossan, “The Gospel of Jesus” by James M. Robinson, “The Jesus I Never Knew” by Phillip Yancey, “Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography” by John Dominic Crossan.

These books are based on sound scholarship, are thoughtful, and well written. If you come to them with an open heart and mind you will find much to inform and inspire.

This Christmas, give yourself and those on your list some great books about Jesus. I can think of no better gift than the gift of knowledge, enlightenment, light, and love.

Merry Christmas everyone and to all a good night of reading!

Love Actually Is All Around

Christmas is magic.

So is love.

“Love Actually,” captures both the magic of Christmas and the magic of love in ways that show just how alike they really are.

That Christmas is magic in spite of the fact that most expressions of it are silly, shallow, juvenile, and crassly commercial shows its real and enduring power. That love is magic in spite of how trite and sentimental most expressions of it are, how contaminated it is by selfishness, desire, need, infatuation, reveals its real and abiding power.

The story of Christmas is a story of love. Love being born. Love coming near.

Love is fun and funny—particularly intimate, sexual, romantic love, where two lovers share whispers and laughs kept secret from the rest of the world, which is why, when done well, romantic comedies capture so effectively the experience.

“Love Actually” is a romantic comedy from Richard Curtis (“Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Notting Hill”), about people—from the Prime Minister to a has-been rock star, actor stand-ins to a housemaid—finding love at Christmastime. It follows the lives of eight very different couples in various loosely interrelated tales all set during the frantic month before Christmas in London, England.

The movie begins with these warming words in voice over as actual arrivals at Heathrow Airport are shown on the screen: “Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge—they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion . . . love actually is all around.”

Richard Curtis is the single greatest practitioner of the romantic comedy film on the planet, and I continually go back and forth about which is his masterpiece—“Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” or “Love Actually,” the winner, usually the one I’m watching at the time, but in each case they are nearly flawless films, truly magical movies befitting the magic of love that is their subject.

“Love Actually,” is more episodic than most films, and it’s almost like watching a television series on the big screen. Not surprisingly, Curtis began his career writing for television and continues to pen scripts for the small screen. The intertwined and sometimes interconnected episodes work well together, weaving a quilt in which love is the thread—romantic, sexual love, motherly and fatherly love, sibling love, and the love of friendship. Of course, there is only one love (Bob Marley is right), one source, the rest is expression and things added to love like attraction or adoration or ego or libido or any other of a million, billion things.

Richard Curtis has a way of creating the heady, sent feeling of “falling” in love with wit and charm and sweetness while still grounding his work in reality and the humor of human frailty.

The magic of “Love Actually” is in what it makes us feel. This is what falling in love feels like. This is what Christmas feels like. We finish a film like “Love Actually” feeling warmed, hopeful, and leave the theater radiating positive energy and good will.

Mixed in among the wildly romantic relationships and their serendipitous meet-cute situations is the heartbreak and pain of loss, betrayal, unrequited, and impossible love.

Everything in “Love Actually” works—from the music to the settings—it really is a perfect (complete) film, and though all the performances are strong, Emma Thompson and Bill Nighly shine so brightly as to nearly eclipse all the other stars— Bill for sheer comic brilliance and Emma for her dramatic performance as a mother and wife dealing with love’s illusions.

Emma trying to pull herself together following the hurt and heartbreak of deception and disappointment so she can rejoin her family and fulfill her motherly duties as Joni Mitchell sings “Both sides” is excruciating.

“Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I’ve looked at love that way.
But now it’s just another show, you leave ’em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away.
I’ve looked at love from both sides now,
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love's illusions I recall.
I really don't know love at all.

In the same way the Tao that can be named is not the Tao, love that is illusion is not love.

I understand passion—it’s the most powerful intoxicant I’ve ever taken, and Mitchell’s description of it as “the dizzy dancing way you feel” captures it so well, but love is a lifestyle, a philosophy, a religion, a choice, a verb. I’m all about moons and Junes and fairy tales coming real, and routinely experiences passion and ecstasy, but real love is present when these things are and when they’re not, so we’re well advised not to confuse strong feelings or ecstatic experiences for love.

Though “Love Actually” is a comedy, is both funny and highly entertaining, it’s also profound, showing the genuine but flawed ways love can be born in us, and how that parallels what can happen at Christmas.

The story of Christmas is a story of God being born into the world, of incarnation—God becoming flesh. In this way, every story of love is a story of Christmas, is a story of incarnation. God who is love, is born into the world every time we love, every time love is born in and expressed through us.

Love has come into the world. Unconditional, unreserved, unimaginable love, and whether we feel it in our fingers or feel it in our toes, whether the feeling grows or we have no feeling at all—in our fingers, toes, or anywhere else—love actually is all around.

The Wonder of Boys

“The artist, perhaps more than any other person, inhabits failure.”

I kept thinking about this hauntingly true statement by Joyce Carol Oates as I read “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon again recently.

A modern classic, “Wonder Boys” firmly established Michael Chabon as a force in contemporary American fiction. At once a deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, this novel introduces two unforgettable characters: Grady Tripp, a former publishing prodigy now lost in a fog of pot and passion and stalled in the midst of his endless second book, and Grady’s student, James Leer, a budding writer obsessed with Hollywood self-destruction and struggling with his own searching heart. In their odyssey through the streets of Pittsburgh, Grady and James are joined by Grady’s pregnant mistress, his hilariously bizarre editor, and an achingly beautiful student lodger. The result is a wildly comic, poignantly moving, and ultimately profound search for past promise, future fame, and a purpose to Grady’s life.

A rare talent, Chabon is a literary novelist who plots like a genre writer, making his books profound page-turners, exciting character-driven adventures.

I’m sure, as a novelist, I over-identify with Grady Tripp—admittedly, novels featuring novelists are among my favorites (with “The End of the Affair” sitting securely on top)—but you needn’t be a novelist to enjoy this funny, insightful, wild ride.

“Wonder Boys” has my highest recommendation. It’s as funny as it is insightful, a serious novel that’s more entertaining than most of the novels that aim merely to entertain.

Though an absolute train wreck, Grady Tripp is as likable and sympathetic a character as you’re likely to meet. He presents as a big unmade bed, a man-child wreaking havoc in Neverland, but lurking beneath the boy is a shadow self, dark and dangerous.

As John Gardner said, “True artists, whatever smiling face they may show you, are obsessive, driven people.” This is certainly true of Grady.

Writing a novel is such a long, lonely journey, requires so much isolation and concentration, it can drive a man a little mad (as in the case of Grady, who’s been working on his for seven years) or a lot mad (as in the case of Jack Torrance). After all, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Grady, like most novelists, has a disease. The midnight disease—that cureless condition, with which I am well acquainted, and all novelists suffer from—is poignantly and accurately described by Grady as an affliction “which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to ‘fit in’ by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happens with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave the feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief objective of your own hostile gaze.”

This is just one aspect of the midnight disease, but it is scarily dead-on. A novelist, no matter what she is experiencing, is also observing, taking notes—mental or otherwise—raw meat for the monster in the basement.

I go back to Joyce Carol Oates—surely a sufferer of this same affliction—“The novel is the disease for which only the novel is the cure.”

Having a midnight mind or being stricken with the midnight disease is akin to the notion that the writer has his own doppelganger living inside him—and on the page he’s bleeding onto.

In “Wonder Boys” an author delivering a lecture posits that over the course of his writing life, he had become his own doppelganger, “a malignant shadow who lived in the mirrors and under the floorboards and behind the drapes of his own existence, haunting all his personal relationships and all of his commerce with the world; a being unmoved by tragedy, unconcerned with the feelings of others, disinclined to any human business but surveillance and recollection.”

The author goes on to say that it’s this shadow self that gets him into trouble, that keeps things interesting so he has something to write about.

As true as this is, Grady takes it, kneads it a bit, and comes up with this: “This was the writer's true doppelganger, I thought; not some invisible imp of the perverse who watched you from the shadows, periodically appearing, dressed in your clothes and carrying your house keys, to set fire to your life; but rather the typical protagonist of your work—Roderick Usher, Eric Waldensee, Francis Macomber, Dick Diver—whose narratives at first reflected but in time came to determine your life’s very course.”

This is life imitating art at its very purest, and I can tell you firsthand it’s true—perceptively, scarily, devastatingly true.

The world is full of adults—responsible men and women clocking in and out, showing up, shouldering loads, dependable, reliable, mature.
Then there are those of us who play for a living (even when we can’t make a living at it)—artists, actors, musicians, writers, and many others who spend much of our time pretending.

The wonder of boys is that we never grow up—not really, not completely. Sure, we look like all the other grownups, but that’s just a costume.
This spirit of puer aeternus is captured brilliantly in “Wonder Boys,” and is personified in an insight Grady has about the state of modern marriage and the world:

“It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world.”

Eternal boys like Grady never grow up, and I, for one, wouldn’t want them to. Sure, he’s continually setting fire to his life in ways he’s conscious of and not, and those closest to him suffer the most damage, but what’s a little smoke inhalation and third-degree burns when you’re having so much fun?

Coloring Outside the Lines in Pleasantville

Recently, as someone was criticizing my novels for what they called “inappropriate content,” I suddenly felt like I was living in Pleasantville, and, shortly afterward went back and watched Gary Ross’s profound 1998 film.

Over a decade after I first saw it, “Pleasantville” holds up well, and is just as relevant. If you haven’t seen it, or if it’s been a while, consider taking a trip across the universe to visit Pleasantville.

Pleasantville is a colorless, lifeless, pointless place where repressed people pretend the world is the way they want it to be.

A brother and sister (twins, David and Jennifer) from the 1990s are transported through their television set into the 1950s style black-and-white television show, “Pleasantville.” Here, they have loving, if robotic, parents, values that seem old fashioned, and an overwhelming amount of innocence, even naiveté. Not sure how to get home, they integrate themselves into this bland society as well as they can and slowly begin a revolution.

The revolution they start, like all revolutions, begins with freedom—freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom to be.

Fear imprisons. Love liberates.

We were created to be autonomous, formed to be free (we were created to connect, too, but that’s a different column). We can’t be who we’re really meant to be without being free.

Perhaps the single greatest tragedy of life is how frequently, how readily, how willingly, we give away our freedom.

We do it out of fear. We trade our most precious birthright for a false sense of security and the safety-in-numbers uniformity the prophets of fear peddle.

Of course, like many of us, the people of Pleasantville don’t know they’re not free. So mired in the quicksand of culture are they, they are no longer conscious.

In Pleasantville, everyone is asleep, all dreaming the same boring dream.

But David and Jennifer wake them up.

The awakening of Pleasantville is accomplished by a variety of means—all having to do with freedom.

It begins with questions. Jennifer asks what’s outside of Pleasantville—something no citizen of Pleasantville had ever even thought of. For them, Pleasantville is the world entire, in the same way we often think that our world, our way of seeing the world, is all there is. We can never be completely free until we question everything—every assumption, every belief, everything every authority ever told us. Questioning is key to enlightenment. Questions are far, far more important than answers.

Then, Jennifer introduces Pleasantvillians to sex. You can’t have a revolution without sex. Like questioning, people seem to be particularly fearful of sex—of sex in general of sexual freedom in particular—especially that of young people and women. The residual Puritanism so prevalent in our culture has people afraid of their sexuality. But the awesome power of sex should be respected, revered, not feared. Sex is, or can be, a revelation, a revolution. Rarely does one have a true spiritual or creative awakening that does not include, or was not inspired by, a sexual one.

The revolution in Pleasantville continues when David and Jennifer introduce books and reading. Nothing equals freedom like the writing and publishing and reading of books. The sharing of ideas, the intellectual intercourse that occurs between writer and reader in the bedroom of a book is truly one of the highlights of being human, and this, too, is revolutionary—both personally and politically. No wonder the establishment (those that benefit most from the domination system and the sleeping of the masses) wants to ban and burn books.

Eventually, David introduces art to the pale people of Pleasantville, and the revolution really begins to swell. Vivid colors, unique expressions, the artistic appreciation of the female form, and the powers that be come undone.

Then, there’s choices in music and food and fashion.

Suddenly, people are bursting into full-color, experiencing their lives fully awake for the first time. How does the establishment respond? By closing the library and lovers’ lane, by outlawing all colors but black and white and gray, by having book burnings and destroying any and all acts of art, all expressions of creativity.

Those in power are oppressive—ever trying to cling to the power they have and acquire more. But the real problem in Pleasantville as in Pottersville as in Niceville as in ourville isn’t oppression so much as repression.

Of all the crimes against humanity, repression is one of the most insidious. Unlike oppression, which can be an exclusively external force, repression involves complicity on the part of the repressed.

True repression—like the systemic and institutional sexism, racism, and homophobia that leads to desperation, frustration, and self-loathing—is not only an external condition but must be so internalized that those imprisoned in it become co-conspirators—jailers in their own captivity.

If there’s anything missing from the awakenings in Gary Ross’s “Pleasantville,” it’s religious awakening. Though everything that happened constitutes a spiritual awakening, I wish Ross would have depicted a religious awakening, too—the reformations and counter-reformations that make up the best of religious traditions. Fundamentalists and literalists of every tradition claim theirs is the only way to be right or orthodox, but the very religion they pervert wouldn’t exist had someone not questioned and challenged and reformed the one that came before it.

In the great irony of human history, God created us to be free, insists on our absolute freedom (has God ever made you do anything?), yet it is out of fear of God that so many surrender their freedom. False religion teaches followers to be afraid—afraid to be human, afraid to mess up, afraid to do anything but conform to its fear-based rules.

But God is not to be feared. God is love. Perfect love, in fact—the very antithesis of fear.

The good news is we are loved and accepted unconditionally. We have nothing to fear.
Be free. Be yourself. Relax. Rest. Stop resisting. Love’s not going anywhere. Be creative. It’s okay to use all the crayons in your box, okay to color outside the lines.

Like the people of Pleasantville, intellectual, sexual, religious, artistic repression is killing us. It’s a slow suicide of the soul, a drifting off into a sleepy stupor that only waking up and being free can cure.
Awakening.

You and I hold the key to our own prison cells.

Like the Buddha beneath the bodhi tree, Moses in the wilderness, Jesus in the desert, we must awaken. With openness and freedom, we must explore, experiment, experience, be—knowing that as we do, life isn’t always pleasant and was never intended to be. Awakening, being free, is a sometimes chaotic, wild, messy process, requiring that we take risks, explore, experiment, color outside the lines, and fail, but there’s no other way to be fully human, no other way to achieve enlightenment.

Giving Thanks for Great Spirits

In general, our culture has very limited notions of what a hero is. We celebrate those who fight, who put themselves in harm’s way (and rightly so), but we too often stop there.

Even when we do broaden the scope of our appreciation, it rarely involves artists, but living a life of creativity is heroic in many, many ways—including, sometimes, harm’s way. So, in honor of Thanksgiving, let me say, “Thank you” to those among us who valiantly and consistently make the world a place worth fighting by the art they create.

Thank you, artists and entertainers, who tell the truth—the truth of the story, the moment, the experience, who refuse to look away when others cover their eyes, who express honest emotion and human experience, instead of overly contrived, sentimental, cheap escapism.

Thank you, unsung heroes, unknown artists, for laboring away in obscurity, the burden of your vision your only boss, creating because you have to, persevering against all odds in hopes one day you, too, will have an audience.

Thank you, writers and filmmakers, painters and musicians, actors and producers, who fight not to fall into the lazy shortcuts of clichés, who continually try to approach their work with a fresh perspective, with an integrity that insists on a new way of “seeing,” “hearing,” “touching,” “describing,” “expressing,” human experiences.

Thank you for all that you risk—for baring your heart and mind and soul, for disrobing in such a public manner, for making yourself an easy target for potshots from the defensive and the simple. Thank you for enduring the negativity and nay saying from the overly critical, the closed-hearted, the jealous, the haters.

Thank you for your fidelity to your vision, for being true to your art, to your truth, to your muse, to what you’re hearing and seeing and feeling, regardless of the masses who misunderstand, in spite of the criticism, and no matter the mean and hurtful things said and done by the fearful, the narrow-minded, the repressed.

Thank you for not going along with the crowd, for not giving into the beige, for not melting into the masses, for being strong enough to be different. You have been subjected to ridicule and even violence for being true to who you are and to your art. You have suffered for your art in ways no one but you knows, and the pain you’ve been subjected to gives your work the poignancy and power that we who eat your words and drink your paintings so need to truly sustain us.

Thank you for entertaining us, but more for challenging us—for making us think and feel and question. You instruct us in the ways of empathy and humility—the heights of humanity. You chip away at the fissures of the facade of our culture, you kick at the false foundation of our assumptions—all while making us laugh and cry and hurt and feel and think.

Thank you, brave women and men, who explore the dark side of existence, allowing us to vicariously experience the shadows in the safety of our reading chair or theater seat. You are unafraid to take long day’s journeys into nightmarish nights, expertly guiding us through the underworld. Thank you for shining your piercing light onto the things in our minds and on our streets that we try to pretend aren’t there.

I end with the words of Albert Einstein, one of the most talented artists to ever live, with love and gratitude. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” Thank you, artists and outsiders, original thinkers and visionaries, for daily enduring this most of all.

Jason Hedden Brings “Double Exposure” to the Stage

There comes a time in every parent’s life when he must entrust the care of his child to another. Babysitter, daycare worker, school teacher—eventually, we give up control.

If you’re like me—more maternal than anything else—this is a frightening proposition. No one will care for my baby the way I do.

As with most things, when looking for someone to share my most treasured treasure with, I use intuition. Sure, I observe character revealed in unguarded moments, but how I feel about the person—what I know without knowing anything is how I make my final decision.

Recently, I entrusted my novel, “Double Exposure,” to Jason Hedden, an actor, producer, director, and a professor at Gulf Coast Community College. This fruit of my loins (and other parts of me) that had gestated inside of me for so long, that I had carried and labored over and had given birth to, this truly beloved child of mine, I gave to Jason.

Jason took “Double Exposure,” a novel, and turned it into “Double Exposure,” an extraordinary theatrical experience. I was right to give Jason my book, and I couldn’t be happier with what he’s done with it.

Jason Hedden is a theatrical genius.

With an amazing vision from the very beginning, Jason carefully, thoughtfully, magnificently adapted a book into a play—a play that honors the book as much as another art form can, one that uses the strengths of theater to lift the story off the pages and set the characters and events twirling across the stage.


I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to watch Jason work, to witness firsthand his enormous effort, his respect for the book, his dedication and determination.

Each night I’ve attended rehearsals, I’ve had the experience of encountering people and places and events from my dreams. It’s a singular, surreal phenomenon.

“Double Exposure,” the theatrical experience, presents the book in a way that combines the best of the original text with the best of staged drama. Characters speak narration as well as dialog, bringing a literary quality to the play unlike any I’ve ever seen. The use of minimalist sets encourages, even forces, the audience to use its imagination in a way not unlike the book.

In the book, I mention that a prominent voice inside the main character’s head is that of his dead father’s. Genius Jason took that and used it to dramatize the experience—for the characters and the audience—by having the deceased father on stage talking to his son.

One more example of genius: In the book, the main character, a photographer, thinks about the greatest photographs ever taken, in an attempt to calm himself in a severely stressful situation. It would have been easy to project the iconic images onto a screen on the stage, but Jason staged them with actors—bringing them to life and preserving the poetic descriptions of them from the book.

Jason Hedden’s play, “Double Exposure,” has my highest recommendation. I hope you’ll see it. Of course, I hope you’ll read the book first, but if you decide not to, it wouldn’t bother me nearly as much as usual because of how much like reading a book Jason’s remarkable production really is.

(Play pictures by Jordan Marking)

Paper and Fire

Charlyne Yi doesn’t believe in love. Or so she says. Though she never says it explicitly, it’s probably more accurate to say that she doesn't believe in fairy-tale, romantic “love.”

“Paper Heart” follows Charlyne as she embarks on a quest across America to make a documentary about this subject she doesn’t understand. As she and her good friend (and director) Nick search for answers and advice about love, Charlyne talks with friends and strangers, scientists, bikers, romance novelists, and children. They each offer diverse views on modern romance, as well as various answers to the age-old question: does true love really exist?

Then, shortly after filming begins, Charlyne meets a boy after her own heart: Michael Cera (the actor from “Juno” and “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”). Combining elements of documentary and traditional storytelling, reality and fantasy, “Paper Heart” brings a unique perspective to romantic comedies; however, I suspect there’s far more fiction in this film than there appears to be.

“Paper Heart” so combines reality and fantasy, so blurs the lines between the two, it’s best not to take anything in it too seriously. Still, it is, nonetheless, thought-provoking.

I found watching “Paper Heart” odd and interesting because Charlyne Yi doesn’t believe in love, and there’s nothing I believe in more.

Of course, that’s not exactly what I mean. Belief is cheap. Easy. Shallow. Practice is the thing. As a philosophy, a religion, a way of being in the world, I attempt to practice love. I’m committed to it.

There’s nothing more central to my existence than love, and there I was sitting in the old AMC theater in the Panama City Mall, where back in the day, I went on my first movie date, watching a film about a person who claims not to believe in love.

Throughout the film, on a road trip of sorts, Charlyne asks people what love is, and it’s interesting to see people grapple to define love—and to hear how different their definitions are from one another.

I sympathize. Love is difficult to define. But this is how it should be. Defining something limits it (which is why it’s best not to do it, or when we do, leave an opening). Love can’t be limited. It must be free. Love and freedom are inseparable. How can we define something that is bigger than, and, in many ways, beyond us and must be free?

The longer I watched the movie, the more I realized that Charlyne, the girl who doesn’t believe in love, and me, the boy who believes in it more than anything, are actually much more closely aligned than it would first appear.

When Charlyne claims not to believe in love, she actually means romantic, lightning-bolt, head-over-heels infatuation where the object of our desire and affection becomes the god of our idolatry and that this is true love. But this isn’t love at all. Sure, it’s been known to lead to love, but more often than not it leads to disillusionment. Why? Because it’s an illusion—a projection onto a person of what we want and need. It’s a fantasy. Love is a reality.

Don’t get me wrong, I fall in infatuation all the time. It’s a heady and happy experience, and I even refer to it in the popular parlance as “falling in love,” but I know enough to know it ain’t love. It’s like. It’s desire. It’s attraction. It’s fire. It’s not love.

What is love then? I’ll happily give you one of my definitions if you promise to leave it open so it can be free.

Love is the uncoerced and unconditional commitment to continually accept and extend as a response to Love itself.

God is love. Love is God. Love flows to us, then through us. We are responding to love by loving God back, genuinely and without ego loving ourselves, and loving all others as ourselves.

Is my definition wanting? Of course. Any and all definitions of love are. It’s the same with God (a coincidence? I think not).

Love is universal. It can’t be limited to one person, one family, one tribe, one race, one nationality, or only to those who love us. Sure, people do it, and even call it love, but it’s not. If I “love” only “my” children, it’s not love. If I “love” only “my” parents, it’s not love. Who are my children, my parents, my brothers, my sisters, my wives, my husbands, my neighbors? Everyone. Or no one.

Does Charlyne find love? Does she discover what it really is? You’ll have to pay your dollar to see “Paper Heart” at the mall or wait until it comes out on DVD December 1st to find out. But you don’t have to wait any time at all to be loved and to love. You, like Charlyne and me, are loved. We just are—nothing we can do about it—and what we do with that unconditional acceptance determines the quality of our lives and the good we do in the world more than anything else. By far.

Whether we have a paper heart or an organ of fire, we are loved and meant to love—not in word only, but in deed. After all, love is not a condition, but an action—a verb, not a noun.

If you, like Charlyne, are not sure you believe in love—or even know what it is, just try this. Open yourself up to it, to how accepted, valued, cherished you are, and then commit to love as a way of life, begin to accept others (no longer judging or condemning), extend yourself for them, do, to the best of your ability, what is best for them, and see what happens.

You Make My Heart Sing

I’ve never cared much for kid movies. The ones I’ve endured, I’ve done so for my children, and even at a young age, they picked up on the fact that Dad spent a good deal of time in the lobby during the feature presentation.

Over the years, I’ve been subjected to Power Rangers, Pokemon, a pig named Babe, and dozens of Disney animated fairytales because they’re what my children wanted to watch, but this past weekend, with a little time on my hands following a book signing, I went to the theater right by myself and watched “Where the Wild Things Are.”

I didn’t do it for my children, but the child in me.

“Where the Wild Things Are” is an adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic children's story, where Max, a disobedient little boy sent to bed without his supper, creates his own world—a forest inhabited by ferocious wild creatures that crown Max as their ruler.

I’ve done a bit of adaptation—both of my own work and that of others—and know just how difficult it is to translate a work of art into another medium. There’s a real art to it—an art on brilliant and beautiful display in Spike Jonze’s and Dave Eggars’ work here. They have taken the ten sentences of Sendak’s beloved book and created a psychologically sophisticated and emotionally resonate film.

With an economy of words and some wonderful images, the book allows us to project our own particular wildness into the story (like all good stories do), to use our imaginations to fill in the spaces, to cast ourselves in the role of Max or one of the monsters, but the film largely does this for us, fleshing out characters and relationships and events, leaving few narrative gaps.

Some say music sooths the savage beast, and it’s true, but Max shows that story is far more effective. With child-like abandon, he spins tales that mesmerize the monsters. In fact, the power of story is one of the most significant and profound themes of the film. The entire work is a story, of course, but then there’s the story Max overhears his mom telling on the telephone, the story he tells her later as he’s settling in for bed, and the story he tells himself—the one that is his entire adventure. Story allows us to safely explore our wild sides, it comforts and heals and helps us make sense of the world. Our imaginations really are the most wondrous and wild things of all.

Max discovers much during his wild adventure—experiencing the pain of separation, the grief of loss, the solitude of leadership—but nothing he learns is more important or profound than the fact that even (or especially) Wild Things need mothers. As king, Max realizes just how difficult it is to be a parent—and how lucky he is to have one. In fact, the only thing keeping Max from complete anarchy, from being as lost and as damaged as the Wild Things is his mom. With a loving mother, a little Wild Thing can be a caring leader. Without a positive maternal influence, Wild Things too quickly become monsters that smash and destroy. We, like Max, need a mom—and not just in personal, but in public life. Our country and the world would be better if our sexist, male-dominated culture would make room for Mother (Mother God, Mother Earth, Yin, a celebrated and appreciated public feminine presence) and wouldn’t attempt to force a type of masculinity on women in positions of authority and leadership.

The Wild Things in Max’s mind (actual facets of Max’s personality) continually do damage. There’s a good deal of destruction in the film—particularly by Max and Carol—and it comes from their inability to deal with the strong emotions they experience. In Max and his Wild Things, we finally have a kid in film who is fully formed—wild and unpredictable, resilient and vulnerable, wild, yet ultimately domesticated.

Where are the Wild Things? Inside us as much as Max, and, like Max, we need to let them out occasionally so they can run and roar. Sure, this can be done literally—plenty of people out there howling at the moon every night—but there are endless ways to take a walk on the wild side including and especially art, and you could do far worse than reading or seeing “Where The Wild Things Are.” Figurative destruction is almost always better than actual, but a little wildness and even demolition all along is better than the catastrophic kind that inevitably explodes out of repression. What I’m saying is there’s a beast beneath our breast, and we need to let it out to breathe occasionally. So now, let the wild rumpus start.

My Long Happy Love Affair

I fell in love in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1994.

It started out as a one night stand, but blossomed into a passionate love affair that has been happily going on for fifteen years now.

In honor of National Coming Out Day (and with love and support for all my GLBT brothers and sisters), I’m going to use this column to confess my love for a man.

I first fell in love with Richard Curtis while experiencing his delightful film, “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

I was alone in Tulsa with a free evening, and had been hearing good things about this indie British film sweeping the states. The theater was packed, and though I’ve never liked group dates, the presence of the crowd was powerless to prevent me from finding a soulmate.

Though his films are often laugh-out-loud hilarious, he has a smart, witty way of capturing moments that are both realistic and wildly romantic. His characters are multi-faceted and complex, and easy to identify with, but mostly they are charming. He writes about good, guileless everymen and women trying to connect, trying to matter, wanting to be everything to someone. As one of his characters offers in his toast, “True love. In whatever shape or form it may come. May we all in our dotage be proud to say, ‘I was adored once, too.’”

“Four Weddings and a Funeral” follows the fortunes of Charles (Hugh Grant) and his friends as they wonder if they will ever find true love. Charles thinks he's found his best chance with Carrie, an American he meets at the wedding of a mutual friend, but, as Shakespeare said, “the course of true love never did run straight.”

Romantic comedies, like most genre works, often fail to get the critical recognition they deserve (though “Four Weddings and Funeral” did receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture), and are instead, dismissed out of hand for being unrealistic. And, of course, there’s no dearth of crass, clichéd examples of so-called genre works, but like James Lee Burke or P.D. James in the crime fiction field or Cormac McCarthy in the western field, Curtis represents the very best of the genre—he’s so good, in fact, he transcends genre categorizations.

Speaking about this unfortunate reality, Curtis said, “If you write a story about a soldier going AWOL and kidnapping a pregnant woman and finally shooting her in the head, it's called searingly realistic, even though it's never happened in the history of mankind. Whereas if you write about two people falling in love, which happens about a million times a day all over the world, for some reason or another, you're accused of writing something unrealistic and sentimental.”

Weddings and funerals are seminal moments in life—a time to live and a time to die, a time to rejoice and a time to mourn, and Curtis uses them masterfully for both laughs and tears.

Perhaps the most piercing moment of the film is at its only funeral when the deceased man’s lover quotes a W. H. Auden poem.

Upon leaving the theater, so moved, so in love, so heady with the world-fading-oneness that love (and infatuation) brings, I drove straight to the first bookstore I could find and bought Vintage International’s edition of the Collected Poems of W. H. Auden, and when I pulled that book off my shelf while writing this, I discovered a bookmark from Novel Idea Bookstore, 7104 S. Sheridan, Tulsa OK, fifteen years later still marking the page with this poem:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

My love affair with Richard Curtis has only intensified over the years—through “Notting Hill,” “Love Actually,” and “The Girl in the Café,” but it all began fifteen years ago in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

Richard Curtis has my highest recommendation, and in future columns I will share with you what is just so singular about each work, but for now I’d like to invite you to a wedding—a few weddings, in fact (and a non-weddings and a funeral). If you missed the film or just haven’t seen it in a while, do yourself a favor and find it. I’m about to watch it again for what must be nearly the fifteenth time, and can think of no better way to celebrate my fifteenth “Four Weddings and a Funeral” anniversary.

The Lie that Tells the Truth

House says “Everybody lies.” It’s the central tenant of his medical practice as it relates to patients and staff, and over six seasons and hundreds of patients, the truth of his most fundamentally held conviction has been proven time and again.

But what if “Nobody lies?” That’s the premise behind Ricky Gervais,’ “The Invention of Lying.”

What would the world be like if no one in the history of humanity had ever told a lie?

Well, according to the film, it’d be a dreadfully dull, downright depressing place. Movies would merely be non-dramatic retellings of historical events and an advertisement for Pepsi would go something like: “Pepsi—When Coke’s not available.”

And then what would happen if one person developed the ability to lie?

Gervais, the award-winning creator and star of the original BBC series “The Office” and HBO’s “Extras,” co-writes and directs this romantic comedy, which takes place in an alternate reality where lying—even the concept of a lie—does not exist. Everyone—from politicians to advertisers to the man and woman on the street—speaks the truth and nothing but the truth with no thought of the consequences.

But when a down-on-his-luck loser named Mark suddenly develops the ability to lie, he finds that dishonesty has its rewards. In a world where every word is assumed to be the absolute truth, Mark easily lies his way to fame and fortune. But lies have a way of spreading, and Mark begins to realize that things are getting a little out of control when some of his tallest tales are being taken as, well, gospel. With the entire world now hanging on his every word, there is only one thing Mark has not been able to lie his way into: the heart of the woman he loves.

“The Invention of Lying” is far less funny and far more thought-provoking than I expected.

Gervais is charming and likable, Jennifer Garner is understated, and, as always, vulnerably beautiful, and there’s an essential goodness and sweetness to the film.

But don’t let the mild comedy and sweet nature of the film fool you. It’s asking some very challenging questions about truth and lies and story and meaning.
“The Invention of Lying” seems to say that lies—at least the imaginative, non-malicious kind—are absolutely essential for humor, story, creativity, and civil social interaction.

It’s true, you can’t have most forms of humor and jokes without lies, and you certainly couldn’t have stories.

The best of our stories—whether in religion, philosophy, history, and most especially literature—are lies (made-up stories) that tell the truth. In fact, nothing gets at truth quite the way lies (or stories) do. The power of story to speak to us on our most human level, to convey truth to us about ourselves and others and the universe is transformative. We are our stories.

We are the stories we believe—about ourselves and the world.

There’s a seminal moment in the film when Mark delivers a message from God. Like Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai, except with pizza boxes instead of stone tablets, Mark tells the naïve, highly gullible, but essentially guileless people what the “Man in the Sky” who controls everything expects of them and what they can expect from him after they die, if they live the right way. It pokes fun at a kind of simple, superstitious, thoughtless religion that far too many people follow.

Many people wrongly make distinctions between what is true and what is fiction, but fiction is true—or can be very, very true. True, not in a shallow, literal sense, but in a deeper more profound way.

We have elevated reason and logic and the scientific method of what is observable actual/factual above all else, and in doing so have forgotten how unreliable observation and “facts” are, how inadequate they are at speaking to the human heart and experience, and how much we miss out on. The truth, as the film demonstrates, is not just surface and literal, but subtle, nuanced, complex, often sublime.

Based on this hyper materialist view, metaphors and fictitious stories are untrue. This means everything we can’t observe, touch, test, prove is untrue, that every made up story is false.

This is at the core of the fallacy of Fundamentalism. Shallow adherence to beliefs that can only be taken one way—literally—miss what is far, far more important than if the stories actually happened. And, of course, this makes their religion true and everyone else’s false. Instead of myth being true, non-literal stories, myth begins to mean false and is how other people’s religion is referred to.

Are the parables of Jesus false because they are made-up stories? I don’t think so. In fact, if lifted out of the ways they have been forced to fit certain theological constructs and instead, heard and understood in as close to their original context and meaning as possible, I don’t think we can find anything more profoundly true.

It’s why I write fiction. To tell the truth—or at least to explore it, search for it.

If fiction is the lie that tells the truth, I’m a professional liar.

The truth is, I try not to lie in my personal life or in my imaginative one. Just don’t ask me if those jeans make you look fat or if the gift you gave me was really what I wanted.

The lies I tell on the page are actually an attempt at getting at the truth—to explore, expound on, experience—a non-literal, truer than true truth. In other words, I try to tell stories that are, like “The Invention of Lying,” true though they never happened.

Ultimately, most all Mark’s lies are of the non-malicious variety. He tells tall tales meant mostly to comfort and entertain. In the end, he can’t bring himself to lie about what’s most important to him—even to get his way, even when to do so would get him what he most wants in all the wide world. May we all be as honorable with the lies we will and won’t tell.

I think if you go see “The Invention of Lying,” you’ll be mildly amused, but made to think, and I think that’s a good thing. Would I lie to you?

Of Conversation and Culture

This weekend, I sat at a bar next to a lovely lady from Pittsburgh. I know she was from Pittsburgh because when I ordered my steak Pittsburgh style she said, “What’s that? I ask because I’m from Pittsburgh.”

We talked for a while about the differences between the North and the South in general and Pittsburgh and Panama City in particular, which was nice—spontaneous conversation is one of the reasons I sit at the bar when I eat alone.

We talked about how nice and friendly most folk around here are, and, given that, how shocking the racism is, and then she said, “We don’t have culture here, but we have the beaches.”

And I was like whoa, now. Wait just a minute, Pittsburgh. We have culture.

I had just returned from a book signing at Seaside. My new novel, “Double Exposure,” like all my books, is about this area. That’s culture. Jason Heddon and the college’s wonderful theater department are performing a play of it in November. That’s culture. Seaside has the REP and Sundog Books and art galleries. That’s culture.

Wewahitchka has The Tupelo; Apalach, The Dixie. That’s culture.

Last weekend, we had the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference with #1 New York Times Bestselling author, Michael Connelly—and many other talented authors, agents, and editors besides. That’s culture.

Panama City has the VAC—the wonderful and only-getting-better VAC thanks to Linda MacBeth and the invested staff and volunteers who are working so hard. That’s culture.

We have Heather Parker’s Art Coop and Bay Arts Aliance and the Marina Civic Center (and the highly diverse and entertaining shows of this summer’s Backstage Pass series) and The Martin and Shakes By the Bay. And that’s culture.

We have local writers and photographers and painters and filmmakers and poets and musicians. And all of that is culture.

We have “The News Herald” and “The Entertainer” to cover all this culture, writers and editors like Jan Waddy and Tony Simmons, who work hard to keep the community informed about all the cultural haps and local artists’ works. Speaking of which, have you noticed how amazing “The Entertainer” looks? And how it keeps getting better and better. Well done, Jan!

We have a lot of good radio stations, but my favorite, WKGC, 90.7, is a great place for culture—music, arts, literature, news, and jazz and blues as good as any being broadcast anywhere.

This past weekend, I was out and about for Thunder Beach, and saw many displays of culture—including very cool performances by Twice Daily at Pineapple Willy’s and Steve Wiggins and friends at Edge Water.

Beauty and art and culture, like love, are actually all around. Easy to miss, but there nonetheless.

And if all this weren’t enough, we have the enduring excellence of the Kaleidoscope Theatre. On Sunday afternoon, I sat in a nearly full house, and saw a powerful performance of “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” directed by Jason Blanks and featuring a talented cast of local actors, including Martin Hendrickson, Frankie Hudson, Tanya Ericson, and the warm, charming, funny Ray H. Stanley.

We have all this culture—and a whole lot more (I’m just recounting what I’ve seen recently, not attempting to be exhaustive).

We have all this, plus we have the world’s friendliest people and most beautiful beaches, the majestic Apalachicola River, the acres and acres of pine and oak and cypress of Florida’s Great Green Northwest and the splendid species—endangered and not—who call it home.

We have all, ALL this, AND we don’t ever have to shovel snow!

You might say we have it all.

But you’d be wrong. We could use more culture—more art, more literature, more concerts and plays and exhibits. And we could stand less thoughtless, tacky, greedy development, less racism (and sexism and homophobia and all other forms of xenophobia and ignorance so often on display), less pollution and more protection of the very land and animals and people that make this a place, for me, worth writing about and fighting for.

We may not have it all. But we do have a terrible, awful lot to be grateful for—culture and natural beauty.

Take a moment and thank those you see making art, beauty, and love. Thank them for the sacrifices, for their steadfastness to their vision, for working day jobs so they can, for creating and producing when they’re exhausted, for enriching our community, for doing all this—and constantly hearing there’s no culture in our area. And for this last, you may want to give them a big ol’ bear hug, too.

Lost and Found Light: An Appreciation of Michael Connelly

Michael Connelly writes about things lost—lost innocence, lost life, lost love, lost and missing persons, lost souls, Lost Angeles, and, most of all, lost light.

He can do this because nothing is lost on him.

He is a quiet, deliberate man—as much Pinkerton as reporter—continually taking everything in.

Harry Bosch, Connelly’s cop is a man intimately acquainted with loss. He lost his mother when he was only eleven years old. He’s lost partners and fellow foot soldiers, lost victims and predators, and, little by little, he’s losing his city and maybe even his own soul.

Harry Bosch inhabits a world so dark even the light is lost.

It’s a world he’s familiar with and at home in. In Vietnam, he was a tunnel rat with the 25th Infantry Division who specialized in making his way through the Vietcong’s underground maze of absolute blackness.

In honor of my friend and in homage to his complex character and concepts, I wrote the following passage in my new novel, “Double Exposure:”

“Glancing down at his camera, he pulls up the information for the last image. According to the time and date stamp encoded in the picture, it was taken less than two hours ago.

“The murderer had been finishing up about the time Remington was unloading the ATV and talking to Heather. And hearing what he thought were screams. He wonders if, like lost light, the horrific screams had been trapped in the swamp until someone had arrived to hear them.”

I have not mentioned this to anyone—including Michael—until this moment, and didn’t know that I ever would, but I felt it an apt example of the ubiquitous influence and impact of Michael Connelly and Harry Bosch on contemporary crime fiction.

It may well be that Harry Bosch is in the dark searching for light—the light at the end of the tunnel or some lost light trapped in the claustrophobic tube with him—but I think it more likely that Harry Bosch is that lost light. As if some of the lost light from his time in the tunnels in Vietnam clung to him, Harry is a faint, lost light in a city of oppressive, overwhelming darkness—a darkness more than night.

Down the dark, mean streets of LA, people grope around, night-blind, bumping into one another, doing damage, and the best that they can hope for is help from a tunnel rat from Vietnam, a lost light bearer.

Interviewing Michael this past weekend as part of the 10th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, I was reminded just how gifted he really is.

Back when I was in college, we’d sit around in my lit class and discuss what we thought poems and stories meant. More often than not, when we’d concluded our analysis, I’d think there’s no way the author ever intended half of what we got out of his or her work, but occasionally, you could tell no matter what you took from a work, the author had intended it—and much beside that you didn’t get.

Years later, listening to filmmaker commentaries on DVD, I was struck by writer/directors who fully intended everything I got out of their films and far more that I completely missed.

The thing is, regardless of the art form—book or film or whatever—the author or artist who consistently produces emotionally resonant and thought-provoking work, isn’t doing so by accident.

Michael Connelly’s books are meaningful—mean so much to so many—because he takes every opportunity, uses every name or location or event or description to communicate something. Harry Bosch’s name is significant (he’s named after the 15th Century Dutch artist, Hierynomus Bosch)—more so as the series continues. His house, propped precariously on the side of a mountain, is a metaphor—as is the jazz he listens to, the relationships he’s involved in, the lone, lost coyote way he operates as an outsider within his own department, and every single space of what used to be Raymond Chandler’s, but is now Michael Connelly’s Los Angeles.

The Bosch books are about being in a dark tunnel journeying into light—an arduous, treacherous journey that is slow and painful and costly. Connelly knows what Milton knew, and what Harry and his many fans are learning—that “Long is the way, And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.” And this deep, this dark, lost light is all there is—all we can hope for—as we stumble around with Harry during his long day’s journey through the night.

A Very Fine Feast

One of the first and most important decisions a writer makes is point of view. We ask ourselves—Whose story is it? Who will make the best narrator? Does this story work best in the first person or third? Or as something else entirely? Determining who narrates a story determines the outcome of the story.

The choice Charles Baxter made for his novel, “The Feast of Love” is an ingenious one. There are nearly as many narrators as there are characters in the book—each one given the opportunity to tell his or her story like only he or she can. Instead of scenes utilizing multiple third person points of view, each character recounts his or her feasts and famines.

Late one night, a man wakes from a bad dream and decides to take a walk through his neighborhood. After catching sight of two lovers entangled on the football field, he comes upon Bradley Smith, friend and fellow insomniac, and Bradley begins to tell a series of tales--a luminous narrative of love in all its complexity.

We meet Kathryn, Bradleys’ first wife, who leaves him for another woman, and Diana, Bradley’s second wife, more suitable as a mistress than a spouse. We meet Chloe and Oscar, who dream of a life together far different from the sadness they have known. We meet Esther and Harry, whose love for their lost son persists despite his contempt for them. And we follow Bradley on his nearly magical journey to conjugal happiness.

Charles Baxter is both the author of the novel and a character in it. Once Bradley suggest that Baxter write a book titled, “The Feast of Love,” he begins to interview the various people Bradley suggests, allowing them each to tell him (and us) their stories—stories that intersect and intertwine and reveal the complexities of life and relationships. Baxter being the author of the book and a character in it is only one of many doublets. “The Fest of Love” is not only the title of the book Baxter is working on, but a painting Bradley created. Bradley is not only a man and a main character, but a dog—his dog, named after him by his wife. Sound complicated? It is a bit, but only a bit.

Charles Baxter is a wonderful writer. “The Feast of Love” is a well written, insightful, generous book. The characters who people it are interesting and real and engaging and complex. I highly recommend this book. Get it. Read it. Enjoy. But . . .

“The Feast of Love” should be called “The Feast of Relationships.” Sure, I know why it wasn’t. It doesn’t have the same ring. I get it.

If you’re a regular reader of this column, then you know how much I believe in love, how there is nothing higher humanity can aspire to, how it is what God is. Love is absolute and unconditional. It’s a choice, a lifestyle, a philosophy, a way of being in the world.

“The Feast of Love” is a feast of passion, of romance, of sex, of entanglement, of friendship, of need, of divorce and remarriage, of like (and of falling in and out of it)—something not possible with love. Sure, love can be present in passion, with feelings, with like, with infatuation, with sex, but we shouldn’t confuse these things for love. Often the most loving, most altruistic acts we take involve the least in the way of warm fuzzy feelings. Love is action, not feeling.

Is love present in “The Feast of Love?” Sure. But as is always the case, it is contaminated by desire and passion and selfishness and like and sex and infatuation and the rest. Nothing for it. It’s the human condition—which is what this book is about, the fascinating, fragile, phenomenal feast of the human condition, and our absolute need for connection.

Baxter’s book has also been adapted into a warm, charming film by director Robert Benton (“Kramer vs. Kramer” and “The Human Stain”) starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

Here’s how the movie is billed by the studio:

Bradley (Greg Kinnear) believes in the power and beauty of true love. He’s good at falling in love—just with the wrong women. He’s hoping that his relationship with sophisticated Diana (Radha Mitchell) will have a happier ending than his first marriage to Kathryn (Selma Blair). Bradley’s friend Harry (Morgan Freeman) is happily married to Esther (Jane Alexander), but they are dealing with the loss of a different kind of love. At the same time, Oscar (Toby Hemingway) and Chloe (Alexa Davalos) are busy falling in love at first sight and starting their life together even though the odds are against them.

Good stuff. Enjoyable. Fairly faithful adaptation. But again, love isn’t something you fall into or out of. It’s not something you lose. And though it may seem so, it’s not a simple matter of semantics.
Feast on this fine book. It makes for a truly great meal. Then, if you still want more, have the film for dessert.

A Maddening Silence

Increasingly, we’re living in a world where nobody listens.

There’s so much noise, such a continuous assault on our senses, that we have to create filters just to survive, but sometimes we filter out too much. Sometimes, we’re not really listening to the important things being said and not being said to us.

It’s as if we have an inverse form of ADHD—instead of letting everything in equally, we’ve stopped letting in much of anything at all. Of course, this is due in part to the rampant narcissism and self-involvement of our time, but I really do believe the deafening levels of noise, the sheer volume of stimuli have overwhelmed us to the point of living defensively—like little monkeys with our hands over our eyes and ears and minds.

Not so in the era of AMC’s “Mad Men,” when television was still novel (on only for a few hours a day), people read, and the assault known as advertising and entertainment wasn’t nearly so ubiquitous.

There is much to recommend about “Mad Men”—the characters, the sets, the sleek sexiness, but perhaps what is best about it is not what’s in it, but what’s left out.

The makers of “Mad Men” have mastered the art of silences.

Like the white space on a page of text, and the way it shapes the reading experience, the well-placed silences in “Mad Men” are exquisite and excruciating.

And it’s not just the silences, but the overall quietness of the sophisticated drama. There’s very little music, very little noise, just people talking—and not—so much so that commercial breaks are even more jarring in their intrusion than usual.

Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized drama follows the lives of the men and women of Madison Avenue advertising. The series revolves around the conflicted Don Draper, the biggest ad man (and ladies’ man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. The series also depicts authentically the roles of men and women in this era while exploring the true human nature beneath the guise of 1960s traditional family values.

“Mad Men” is one of the most existential dramas to ever air on TV. All the characters are vaguely aware something is missing, something isn’t right, but for Don the feeling is anxiety-causing acute. We are given a front row seat to the lives of men and women trudging around the abyss, the quietness of their lives, the many silences around them, an outward manifestation of the noiseless void inside of them.

Relish the quiet and silence of “Mad Men,” get caught up in the spectacular set pieces and the turbulent times, and, most of all, the complex characters. As you do, remember, if it appears nothing is happening, look again. It’s all there—only it’s in the subtext. If you only hear the text you’ll miss it. If you only see what’s on the surface, you won’t perceive most of what’s happening—the bulk of the berg moving these people is below the surface. Way below—where the current actually runs in a different direction.

If you haven’t tried “Mad Men” or tried it and weren’t immediately smitten, try it again. Still yourself from the frenzy of Twenty-first Century America’s frantic pace, shut out the din and noise and sound and fury that is modern, manic, shallow culture, and embrace the essential silence at the heart of “Mad Men.” Listen. It is the center of Job’s whirlwind, and out of its utter emptiness, truly transformational truths can be heard—but only if we are still and quiet and linger to listen.

A “Summer” Kind of Love

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl doesn't.

Happens all the time—to me more times than I care to recall.

Nothing to be done for it. Nearly all of us have fancied someone who doesn’t fancy us.

But . . .

What if . . .

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl acts like she’s fallen in love, too.

Aye, there’s the rub.

Rejection I can take, but deception? Games?

In words best heard in the quavering voice of Aaron Neville—

If you want something to play with
Go and find yourself a toy
Baby my time is too expensive
And I'm not a little boy

Tell it like it is.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel star in director Mark Weber's wry, non-linear romantic comedy about a man who falls hard for a woman who doesn't believe in love and says she doesn’t want a boyfriend.

Tom Hansen (Gordon-Levitt) is an aspiring architect who currently earns his living as a greeting card writer (“You make me proud every day. Today, you get a card.”). Upon encountering his boss' fetching new secretary, Summer Finn (Deschanel), Tom discovers that the pair have much in common, (and not just that they both love The Smiths and the surrealist artist Magritte). From the very first moment, Tom is smitten. All he can think about is Summer.

Tom believes in the concepts of soul mates and one true love, and he thinks he’s finally found his.

Unfortunately, Summer doesn’t feel the same way—or so she says. Her actions seem to indicate she’s changing her tune. She says she sees true love as the stuff of fairy tales, and isn't looking for romance, that she wants to keep things casual. Undeterred, Tom pursues Summer, and for a while she seems to respond in kind, but ultimately, it is short lived.

The smart, interesting, funny film is told out of sequence in scenes that serve as kind of forensic flashbacks in Tom and Summer’s love autopsy.

It brings to mind the lyrics Drew Barrymore’s character batted around in “Music and Lyrics.” “Figuring out you and me is like a love autopsy. They can search all day long and never find out what went wrong.”

After it looks as if she's left his life for good, Tom reflects back on his yearlong relationship with Summer—and the audience gets to comb through the wreckage along with him.

It’s clear that although Summer said she didn’t believe in relationships or boyfriends or true love or anything serious, it’s obvious to everyone except Summer, she and Tom became far more than just friends.

Through his heartbroken investigation of his relationship catastrophe, Tom gets advice from his two best friends, McKenzie and Paul. However, the best, wisest counsel comes from Tom's adolescent sister, Rachel.

“(500) Days of Summer” is a well made film, worthy of your movie going time. The script is clever, the directing good, and the performances of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are outstanding. Still, it’s hard not to leave the theater frustrated. The writers and director so perfectly capture the pain and emotional devastation that occurs when someone in a relationship is dishonest or whose actions don’t match his or her words, that it’s difficult not to be angry at Summer (even as charming as Zooey Deschanel is).

Mixed signals.

Poor communication.

How much heartache could be spared if we would all just tell the truth—and make sure our actions match the truth we’re telling.

Actions. Not words.

No matter how much someone says she doesn’t believe in love or doesn’t want a boyfriend, if she acts like she does, if she exhibits all the signs of being “in love,” guess what the guy in love with her is going to believe?

And who can blame him?

Sure, there were little signs, clues to indicate her ambivalence that can be seen when looking back, but they were mostly hidden by the many other actions that contradicted them. And that they could have been spotted by a trained detective or relationship guru doesn’t mean an infatuated young man had even the remotest chance of perceiving them.

The entire film, I sat there thinking, Summer’s character is not so much aloof or ambivalent or free-spirited as wounded. Like so many walking wounded among us, her actions are defensive. She’s in self-preservation mode, guarding her heart from additional hurt, which only insures that’s what she’ll both inflict and receive.
Tom is open and kind and gentle and loving and honest. Summer is closed and defensive and dishonest.

Summer lied to Tom—with her actions if not with her words. Of course, Tom lied to himself, too—but I don’t think he could or would have if not for Summer’s deception.

In addition to a fresh, unique way of telling an age-old story, the writers do a sexual role reversal with the characters. Unlike, “He’s Just Not that Into You” and what is far more common in life, it’s not the guy saying one thing with his mouth and something different with his actions. It’s the girl. And who knows? Maybe male audience members will identify with Tom and not treat the women in their lives so casually and inconsiderately in future seasons of their lives.

With all that “(500) Days of Summer” has going for it, I can forgive its unearned ending and appreciate the writers and director’s mercy in giving both Tom and the audience a glimmer of hope as summer turns to autumn, and we prepare for the cold, cruel days of winter ahead.

If You Have a Good Appetite for Great Food and Film . . .

On the drive to the theater to see “Julie and Julia,” I was thinking about a report I’d read earlier in the day about the rise of obesity in America—how two-thirds of us are either overweight or obese, and how on average we’re 23 pounds overweight.

That was on the drive over. During and following the film, all I wanted to do was eat.

Of course, what I longed for was not what is making us fat—not poorly produced, corn-fed, high fructose corn syrup calorie and fat-injected food, but a fine meal—the kind that feeds the soul while nourishing the body.

What I settled on was three-quarters of an exquisite piece of key lime pie at Gracie Rae’s, which did feed my soul, but not as much as the late evening ambience, the sun-streaked bay, and the gentle kiss of evening on the soft, brine-tinged breeze.

The article I had read about how we’re eating ourselves to death, argued that obesity, like tobacco and alcohol abuse, isn’t just dangerous, but expensive. New research shows medical spending averages $1,400 more a year for an obese person and the overall obesity-related health spending is around $147 billion, double what it was nearly a decade ago (according to the journal Health Affairs).

We’ve got a problem. Our approach to food. Our approach to life. The hole in the secret depths of who we are can’t be filled with food alone.

Our great national sins, the ones so deeply a part of who we are they don’t get very many sermons, don’t get marches or signs or bumper stickers, and don’t decide elections, are greed and gluttony. But the film is the antithesis of our self-destructive behavior—a celebration of good food and of women and marriage and life.

The film is about the appreciation, not the aberration and exploitation of food. The way alcohol is not an issue for people who drink moderately, food is not an issue for non gluttons.

Food, like sex or work or religion or family or alcohol, can be both cause for an used in celebration—something that leads us into transcendence—or it can be merely something we do, mundane, thoughtless, animalistic.

For both Julia and Julie, food is far, far more than just fuel.

Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) are featured in writer-director Nora Ephron’s adaptation of two bestselling memoirs: Powell's “Julie & Julia” and “My Life in France,” by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme. Based on two true stories, “Julie & Julia” intertwines the lives of two women who, though separated by time and space, are both at loose ends . . . until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.

We live in a time and a place of plenty, which won’t last—it can’t—but what do we do while it does? Can we have the discipline to deny ourselves, the compassion to share our undeserved abundance, the wisdom and humility to be grateful, the spiritual insight to perceive what is beyond nutritional necessity? The answers are all too obvious, but we’re a young species. Maybe we’ll survive our adolescence to become who we’re meant to be.

We all have a relationship with food, and we all have to figure it out.
But food isn’t the only relationship that is explored in the film. There’s also Julie and Julia’s relationships with friends and family and society, and especially, their relationships with their husbands.

Both Julie and Julia became who they did thanks in part to the encouraging, supportive spouses in their lives. Rarely has marriage been so positively portrayed on screen. Not only does Ms. Ephron love good food, but, after a very public unhappy marriage and acrimonious divorce, she now loves being married. Both her relationship to food and her husband shine through her script and her camera and onto the screen.

“Julie and Julia” teaches ever so gently that the keys to a good life and relationship are genuine love, respect, and support given to and received from our significant others, authenticity, real purpose, fidelity to self and calling, hard work, good food, good sex—and a good appetite for all of these.

Like a consummate chef preparing a special meal for treasured friends and family, Ms. Ephron has taken the recipes found in both Julie and Julia’s books, added her own ingredients, and cooked up a near flawless film. All that’s left to say is bon appétit. Come with a good appetite to this good film about good people and good times and the good food that makes everything even better.