Alone With All That Can Happen

The morning after watching “Solitary Man,” I woke up feeling utterly and completely alone. I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with the movie—I often experience an intense sense of isolation—but the timing was interesting and thought-provoking.

Being alone isn’t the same as being lonely. Many times I feel the most connected when I am most alone—something Lord Byron captured so beautifully in his phrase, “In solitude, where we are least alone.”

Being with others isn’t the same as not being lonely. Certain people, certain settings and situations, make me feel more lonely, not less. A social gathering involving small talk, cocktail chatter, mundane, surfaces inanities—and what social gathering doesn’t include such things—usually makes me feel far more isolated and alone than when I’m actually by myself.

Whether we’re alone or with others, in one sense we’re always ultimately alone. As Thomas Wolfe said, “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every human.”

Even as we appear to be sharing the same experiences—including intensely intimate experiences like making love or sharing a meal or talking about God—we’re always having our own unique experience. Oscar Wilde’s observation that there are as many publics as there are people is true of everything. It’s why I say there are some six and half billion gods. No two of us have identical notions of what the word ‘god’ means. So whatever God is and is not, we’re left with our beliefs and perceptions, and though heavily influenced by culture and family, indoctrination and education, they’re still utterly and uniquely only our own.

Beneath all our labels, beyond all our associations and group identities, it’s just us. Ultimately alone. Solitary us. Yet there is an us. We are part of a planet, a species, an interdependent system. We are able to connect, to touch each others’ souls, be inside one another in profound and meaningful ways. At this very moment, you and I are having a personal, intimate (hopefully) meaningful exchange. I am offering you the water of my words and you are drinking them in.

And yet. And yet.

Even as we have truly deep and intensely intimate connections, we remain, in a very real and certain sense, alone. And it’s out of that aloneness, that sometimes painful experience of isolation, we reach out—out of our solitude—to an other.

Solitary means “being, living, or going alone or without companions; saddened by isolation; keeping a prisoner apart from others; being at once single and isolated; occurring singly and not as part of a group or cluster.”

Occurring singly and not being part of a group is a good thing. Emerson said, “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

In one sense, the more evolved and self-actualized, the more true to our quidity, the more we refuse to conform, the more alone we will be—less able to fit, less a part of group think and speak. We will not benefit from the safety found in numbers. But this evolution of our beings will also simultaneously, counter intuitively, lead us to a greater awareness of our connectedness with all people, with all things. Connected at very deep levels; completely unconnected at shallower levels.

These are thoughts I’m having as I think of solitude and my experience in proximity to the film. They are not necessarily in the film except in very implicit ways. Ben Kalmen’s solitude originates from the deepest most profound place—his mortality—but his outward isolation isn’t from self-actualization, but its opposite, not out of love, but fear.

“Solitary Man” tells the story of Ben Kalmen, a fifty-something New Yorker and former successful car dealer, who through his own bad choices lost his entire business.

When the film opens, Ben’s on the verge of a comeback, but some of the same motivations that led to his demise are threatening to take him down again. He’s divorced from Nancy, his college sweetheart and the one person who knows him better than anyone. Although he still finds the time to hang out with his daughter Susan and his adoring grandson, she breaks off contact when she discovers he's seeing one of her friends. His girlfriend Jordan is the daughter of a very influential businessman who's on the board of a major auto manufacturer.

If Ben can just keep his hubris in check for a little while longer, he will be back as big as ever. But circumstances place him in very close proximity with the one girl he shouldn’t touch, throwing everything into jeopardy.

“Solitary Man” is solid story elevated by great performances. Michael Douglas is brilliant as Ben, and the other players hovering around the edges of his solitariness hang right there with him.

Ben’s isolation is more an acting out, a childish, defensive way of actually isolating others that leads him to himself be isolated. He’s a solitary man because of bad behavior, because he’s incapable of intimacy.

The sense of isolation—even the experience itself—is part of the human condition. It is not the same as never connecting, as being unable or unwilling to—which seems the case for Ben.

Even in our ultimate aloneness we can connect with others. In fact, we can connect because of it, through it. Sharing our feelings of isolation with another human who is open about his or her own feelings of separation frees us from our solitary confinement prison cell.

Solitude is a good and necessary part of existence. We are our best selves when we have the time and space to be ourselves, to just be—in the beauty and stillness of silence and solitude. Einstein said, “I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”

It comes down to balance. Too much or too little or the wrong kind of solitude negatively impacts our souls. Finding trusted friends who are themselves seeking this same balance and committing to each other to aid in the process is invaluable. As Rilke so wisely put it, “I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”

Learn from Ben’s mistakes. Identify those in your life who protect your good solitude and make sure you’re protecting theirs. And in those times when you feel all alone, be fully present, and don’t just be alone. Be alone with the promise and possibility of all that can happen.

A Prescription for Society’s Sick Soul

Recently, I ended a column with these words:

Story can be sacred.
Movies can be magic.
Sharing the meaningful ones with our children is nothing short of shamanistic.

I’ve long considered what I do as a novelist, as a storyteller, as a teacher, to be shamanistic. If story is sacred, then to be a storyteller is a sacred calling. It’s how I view what I do, why I take it so seriously.

When I closed my column titled “Film School” with the word “shamanistic,” I knew I’d eventually revisit the concept here, but when, this past weekend at the 11th Annual Gulf Coast Writers Conference, Connie May Fowler referred to writers as shamans, I knew it would be sooner rather than later.

It was out of my conviction that story is sacred and storytelling is a sacred calling that I started the Gulf Coast Writers Conference over a decade ago, and as I listened to Connie’s keynote address this year, heard her talk about how important story is, how writers hallucinate as they write and readers hallucinate as they read and how spiritual and magic that is, I knew I was in the presence of a kindred spirit, a sister, a fellow shaman.

Interestingly, we initially called the conference the Gulf Coast Writers and Storytellers Conference, and only shortened it over the years out of necessity. Our conference is a celebration and exploration of story, and is, therefore, a gathering of shamans.

Shaman is an anthropological term referring to the spiritual leader of indigenous or native peoples. Shamans are healers and priests and counselors and storytellers.

Shamans are intermediaries or messengers between the human world and the spirit world. They treat ailments and illnesses by mending the soul. By alleviating issues affecting the soul, they restore individuals’ entire being to balance and wholeness. They also enter supernatural realms or dimensions to obtain solutions to problems afflicting the community. Shamans visit other worlds to bring guidance to misguided souls, to alleviate suffering caused by soul sickness, removing elements that were never intended to be there. As priests or intermediaries, shamans stand between two worlds—one seen, the other not—serving as a bridge between the two.

A priest or priestess is a go-between, a person straddling two worlds, having a foot planted in each. He or she is a messenger, a representative, an emissary. The same is true of storytellers. We plumb the depths of the underworld and being back messages. We dig deep beneath the surface and excavate the stories buried there.

I became aware that I was a shaman very early in life, and became active in adolescence—studying story, using story, telling stories, writing stories. My pursuit of my calling has led me to study religion, philosophy, psychology, and story itself. Like Connie, and so many other shamans I know, I’m not a hobbyist, not doing this just for fun. I’m driven to tell stories, obsessed with story itself and continually improving my storytelling techniques.

It’s an odd and interesting time to be a shaman. I’m a shaman in a culture and at a time when serious story and careful, sacred storytelling is devalued, where the novel is increasingly marginalized, yet where, ironically, our need for narrative has never been greater. As a people, as a nation, as a culture, we are soul sick and need the mending, balance, and wholeness only sacred, true story can bring.

There’s so much noise in our world, so much inanity, so much that assaults our senses, hearts, and minds. So much. Just so so much.

If we’re not very careful to filter input, to guard our quite time, to thoughtfully and mindfully select our shamans and stories, then the vast majority of what we’re assaulted with is shallow, silly, empty, and corrosive. Like junk food, much of what’s on offer is wasted calories that neither nourishes or satisfies.

Sacred story is transformative. It speaks to the deepest part of us and calls forth our best selves. The journey of narrative mirrors the journey we’re on, and reminds us that it’s the epic hero’s journey as ancient as time and myth, as old as soul, originating when consciousness did.

For our souls’ sake we should honor true shamans and the sacred stories they tell. We should open ourselves up to the magic of story and let it work its wondrous work in us, welcoming the expanding and challenging, emptying and refilling.

Don’t settle for substitutes. Seek out true shamans and the magic stories they tell today, and began sharing your own true, sacred stories with others. If we all got in touch with the shaman in our souls, it would change not only us, and our children, but the whole world entire.

Once Again and Again and Again

A man and a woman.

A mother and a father.

Divorced.

Having failed in relationships, trying again.

After dating a while, they’re ready to have sex—or think they are.

Nervous.

Scared.

Risking. Pressing through.

Then, suddenly, they go from awkward and uncomfortable to her crying and him unable to continue.

Is it possible you might be who I need you to be? she asks.

It is. He is—and is not. And that’s life—or at least a reflection of it—art that is a recognizable reflection of human experiences more than a few of us are likely to have.

It’s a tender, true, affecting scene—one of many, not from a feature film, but from a network television show.

There are actually “film” people who disdain television, as if those who work in it—writers, directors, actors, producers—are less somehow, as if the screen size isn’t the only thing that’s smaller. But some of the very best filmed fiction is made for television. Shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Six Feet Under,” “Gilmore Girls,” “House,” “Mad Men,” and others are as good as anything on offer at the local movie theater—and these series are doing the equivalent of several feature-length films season after season.

If it’s true that TV is a writer’s medium and film is a director’s, it stands to reason that the best television has to offer will be richer, deeper, more intellectual and emotionally satisfying than all but the very best movies. Television allows for the time it takes to tell a complex tale while truly exploring the characters propelling it forward. It’s why in general, novels adapt better to TV than film. It’s also why so many accomplished and acclaimed writers, producers, actors, and even directors are drawn to television—particularly cable.

Recently, “Entertainment Weekly” listed what it deems as the five best divorce movies ever: “Kramer vs. Kramer,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “The War of the Roses,” “An Unmarried Woman,” and “The Odd Couple,” and maybe they are, but none of them delves as deeply or does so with such sustained exploration as does a too-early canceled TV show.

Divorce is death. A painful end to something at one point you never wanted to end—and maybe still don’t. Failure. Rejection. Disappointment. Embarrassment.

Divorce is death, yet life continues. Not only your life, but that of your onetime spouse. Like an apparition, your ex haunts your life, a continual reminder of what was, of what might have been, of what is, of what can never be.

Divorce opens a family up and invites new people in. Lawyers. Counselors. Friends. Lovers. Strangers.

In the best of situations, divorce is difficult.

And this difficulty is handled deftly in the divorce drama, “Once and Again”—one of the best adult hour-long dramas network television has ever produced.
Lily Manning (played by the breathtakingly beautiful and perfectly cast, Sela Ward) is a 40ish suburban soccer mom living in Deerfield, Illinois. Recently separated from her philandering husband Jake (Jeffrey Nordling), Lily is raising her two daughters, insecure, anxiety-ridden 14-year-old Grace (Julia Whelan), and wide-eyed, innocent 9-year-old Zoe (Meredith Deane). For support, she turns to her more free-spirited younger sister, Judy (Marin Hinkle), with whom she works at their bookstore called My Sister's Bookstore.

Lily’s life changes when she meets Rick Sammler (Billy Campbell) in the principal’s office of Grace’s school. Rick is a single father and co-head of an architectural firm, Sammler/Cassili Associates, which is located in downtown Chicago. Rick has been divorced from the rigid Karen (Susanna Thompson) for three years and has two children, Eli (Shane West), a 16-year-old basketball player with a learning disability, and sensitive 12-year-old Jessie (Evan Rachel Wood), who longs for the days before her family’s disintegration.

Lily and Rick share an immediate mutual attraction and begin dating. Their budding relationship causes problems in both of their respective families. Grace strongly objects to Lily and Rick’s relationship as she still hopes to see her parents get back together. Karen, a public interest attorney at the downtown law firm of Harris, Riegert, and Sammler, is worried about the toll Rick’s new relationship would take on their children, particularly Jessie, who is shy and emotionally fragile. She is also working through her own feelings of jealousy that Rick is in a new serious relationship.

“Once and Again” was created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the same team behind “Thirtysomething,” and both shows demonstrate their brilliance for dramas that capture the nuance of entire epochs of modern American life.

Though the show begins with and centers around the romance and relationship between Lily and Rick, it also deals extensively with their children and to a lesser degree with their exes, Jake and Karen, and their ongoing struggles to find peace, joy, and love in the post-divorce environment.

Like “Thirtysomething,” “Once and Again” is smart, literate, well-written, affecting, timely, timeless, and dramatic without too often being melodramatic.

It’s also at times dizzily, intoxicatingly, wildly romantic. Rick and Lily have an earned and unexpected intensity and intimacy that combines the best of heady, youthful infatuation with the scars and wisdom age and experience and rejection and failure and the disappointment that divorce brings.

Few things are as therapeutic as talking. Few things need the healing therapy talk can bring as much as divorce. Each episode of “Once and Again,” as they’re dealing with divorce and death and life and love and betrayal and fear and loss and hope, has the characters, shot in black and white, sit and talk—to us, the audience, making us their therapist, making us privy to their most hidden thoughts and feelings, making us more complicit in their lies and lives—and more compassionate. This makes TV more like a book—we know what characters are thinking, get to be in their heads, know what the other characters they interacting with cannot.

In “Once and Again,” as in life, the past is prologue. Everything that comes around, comes around, not just once, but again. And again. Every seeming new issue in every seeming new relationship bares an amazing similarity to the issues and relationships that came before. We are products. We are patterns. We have dynamics, issues, wounds, experiences. We carry who we are into each new relationship, including what we’ve learned and lost, gained and changed, which makes the biggest part of our new relationships not new at all.

Divorce is difficult and dramatic and traumatic, and there’s no one who hasn’t been touched by its ripples. Fortunately, through story, we can learn and heal and grow and become more and better, and be our best selves even in brokenness, and, as far as divorce dramas go, “Once and Again” is a good place to start. Give it a try. You might watch it once. Or, like me, you might watch it again and again.

Continental Divide

Shakespeare rightly noted: “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

This is particularly true of the love found in romance fiction where the genre convention is to introduce two potential lovers with enormous chemistry and desire then place as many obstacles between them as possible.

Obstacles to love are too numerous to name, but they’re dwindling. No longer are class, race, sex credible impediments. Part of the reason “Notting Hill” works so well is that fame as a hindrance in our celebrity-obsessed culture is so believable. And with “Going the Distance” we have another. The world is shrinking to be sure, but not enough to solve the enormous issues of a bicoastal relationship.

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long star in this romantic comedy about a long-distance romance that may be worth fighting for. Garrett (Long) is still nursing the wounds from a recent breakup when he meets Erin (Barrymore), an unflinchingly honest girl with a big talent for bar trivia. Hitting it off immediately, the pair spend a romantic summer together in New York City. It was supposed to be a summer fling, but as fall approaches and Erin returns to San Francisco, the spark is still there. Subsequently dividing his days between working and hitting the bars with best friends Box (Jason Sudeikis) and Dan (Charlie Day), Garrett drops everything whenever Erin calls. The more Garrett's phone rings, the more his pals begin to suspect that their drinking buddy is taking the relationship a little too seriously. And they're not the only ones; Erin's sister, Corrine (Christina Applegate), is keen to ensure that her smitten sibling doesn't repeat the mistakes of her past, and she makes no attempts to sugarcoat the fact that she disapproves of the coast-to-coast romance. But the heart wants what the heart wants, and as the texting becomes more intense, both Garrett and Erin start to suspect that their summer fling may just be the real thing.

“Going the Distance” is a stellar romantic comedy—genuine and genuinely funny. Its honest, real, credible look at the issues of long distance dating never feel false or forced. The film never over reaches in the way so many do, never gives us unearned emotion or over-the-top melodramatic plot twists. It’s a comedy about adults for adults with mature, often sexual, humor that rises organically out of who the characters are, their relationship, and the situation they find themselves in.

Barrymore is, as usual, adorable, and she and Long make a sweet, convincing couple in a relationship worth working out. Speaking of working . . . the chosen professions of the couple (print journalist and music promoter) not only provide authentic challenges and obstacles, but reflect the upheaval both industries are experiencing right now.

“Going the Distance” works so well, is so good, that it is easily the most fun, enjoyable experience I’ve had in a movie theater in a very long time, and I can already hear the film knocking on the door of my top ten romcom list. It’s the kind of romantic comedy you can give yourself over to and not regret the morning after.

The Quiet American

“The American” is a quiet, little film, visually arresting, slowly affecting—a well crafted work of art, but on the artisan more than artist end of the artistic spectrum.

At one point, an insightful and observant priest notes that the main character, who presents himself as a photographer, has the hands of a craftsman more than an artist. It’s hard to think of a better way to describe the film itself. Well built. Beautiful. Work of craftsmanship. Not an artistic masterpiece.

Academy Award winner George Clooney stars in the title role of this suspense thriller. As an assassin, Jack (Clooney) is constantly on the move and always alone. After a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, Jack retreats to the Italian countryside. He relishes being away from death for a spell as he holes up in a small medieval town. While there, Jack takes an assignment to construct a weapon for a mysterious contact, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). Savoring the peaceful quietude he finds in the mountains of Abruzzo, Jack accepts the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) and pursues a relationship with a beautiful prostitute named Clara (Violante Placido). Jack and Clara’s time together seems hopeful and free of danger, but is such a thing possible for a man like Jack?

“The American” was written by Rowan Joffe, based on the novel “A Very Private Gentleman,” by Martin Booth, and directed by Anton Corbijn, a Dutch photographer who has worked extensively in the music industry. His feature film debut was “Control,” a film about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis.

Cinematography is often referred to as painting with light or writing with light, which is exactly what Corbijin does so brilliantly. Every frame of the film is picturesque—carefully composed, exquisitely captured. In this age of digital video, in the era when film is supposedly “dead,” it’s good to imagine holding up a strip of film to the light and considering how each frame is a still photograph. Corbijin’s work is a good reminder, and it makes me think that a photographer making a movie is like a poet writing a novel—any sacrifice in narrative drive is often made up for by beauty, artistry, and craftsmanship.

Like the film itself, Clooney’s performance is stripped down. Quiet. Sparse. Spartan. There’s none of the usual Clooney charm, and the movie is the better for it. Also like the film, Violante Placido is breathtakingly beautiful, her body carefully crafted by a true artist, every shot of her a photograph worth framing and hanging. Equally as beautiful, though in a very different way is the conscience of this well crafted film—Father Benedetto, played brilliantly by Paolo Bonacelli. He provides humble, helpful insight, wisdom, and service, an ego-less spiritual caretaker worthy of confessing to.

If over-the-top, cartoonish Hollywood action-adventure movies have left you unsatisfied, try this art house thriller. The quiet ride it provides is far more effective, far more enthralling, far more resonate than big-budget bombs and one-dimensional good and bad guys could ever be.

Film School

Movies are magic.

Or can be.

The good ones, like all good art, don’t merely entertain. They enlighten. They inspire. They educate—an education of heart far more than head.

They transform us.

They challenge us.

They change us.

Of course, there are plenty of people who find film frivolous. Pragmatists, who, unlike me, fail to find meaning in fiction, in made-up stories, in myth and metaphor. It’s sad. Stories are sacred. Or can be. They speak to our souls. They have the ability to convey and communicate more truth, more wisdom, more of what matters most, than any other form of communication.

“The Film Club,” a memoir about movies and other things that really matter, by novelist, David Gilmour, demonstrates these truths quietly, but effectively, subtly, but with plenty of profundity.

Gilmour, an unemployed movie critic trying to convince his 15-year-old son Jesse to do his homework, realizes Jesse is beginning to view learning as a loathsome chore, and offers him an unconventional deal: Jesse could drop out of school, not work, not pay rent—but he must watch three movies a week of his father’s choosing.

Week by week, side by side, father and son watched everything from “True Romance” to “Rosemary’s Baby” to “Showgirls,” films by Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, Brian Depalma, Billy Wilder, and others. The movies got them talking about Jesse’s life and his own romantic dramas, with mercurial girlfriends, heart-wrenching breakups, and the kind of obsessive yearning usually seen only in movies.

Through their film club, father and son discussed girls, music, work, drugs, money, love, and friendship—and their own lives changed in surprising ways.

Can watching movies with a novelist/film critic dad really be better than going to school? Is this ingenious parenting or grounds for being declared unfit? You can decide for yourself. My answer? Well, I happen to have a fifteen year-old son, who truly excels in school—far and away better than I ever did—and, I happen to be a novelist and (something like) a film critic, and I truly believe I could provide him a better education than he could receive virtually anywhere. I’ll only add two caveats: 1) Unlike Gilmour, literature would be a big part of my curriculum, and 2) I’d hire a math and science tutor.

Gilmour gambled. He risked a lot in attempt not just to educate, but to save his son. As he puts it, “The films simply served as an occasion to spend time together, hundreds of hours, as well as a door-opener for all manner of conversational topics — Rebecca [Jesse’s girlfriend], Zoloft, dental floss, Vietnam, impotence, cigarettes.”

The book is filled with insight and wisdom like:

“The second time you see something is really the first time. You need to know how it ends before you can appreciate how beautifully it’s put together from the beginning.”

“It is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.”

“The beautiful girl in the Thunder Bird in “American Graffiti” who keeps disappearing is an example of Proustian contemplation that possession and desire are mutually exclusive, that for the girl to be the girl, she must always be pulling away.”

“You can’t be with a woman you can’t go to the movies with.”
All of which leads Jesse, his son, to certain insights of his own: “It’s like when you’re watching a film you really love. You don’t want somebody trying to be interesting. You want them just to love it.”

Gilmour offers much to contemplate about the movies he chooses to reach his son with, too. Within just a few introductory paragraphs he reveals interesting information about the movies as well as helping his son (and the reader) have a more meaningful experience with it.

He reveals how Stephen King hated Stanley Kubrick’s handling of “The Shining,” said Kubrick made movies to hurt people; how Brando improvised the scene in “On the Waterfront” when he takes the girl’s glove and puts it on his hand; how Steven Spielberg made his directing debut with a truck-chase thriller called “Duel,” which he still watches periodically to remind himself of “how he did it,” how Spielberg said, “You have to be young to be so unapologetically sure-footed;” how Howard Hawks said that a good film must have at least “three good scenes and no bad ones.” And so much more!

Reading “The Film Club” and reflecting on it, reminds me of the way in which I used movies to connect with and educate my daughter over the years—particularly when she was entering early adolescence. We watched all sorts of films—including the horror movies that are such a rite of passage for teenagers—but most of all I designed a cinematic curriculum in feminism, attempting to empower her by showing her just how kickass teenage girls like Buffy Summers and Veronica Mars and Rory Gilmore could be.

This past weekend, my now twenty-year old kickass daughter came home from college with the textbook from her film class, and we connected over and celebrated cinema all over again as I devoured the tome in our kitchen, in the car (as she drove), and at the table of the Chinese restaurant where we went to lunch. The experience was all the dad of an amazing, kickass co-ed could ask for, and it made me so very grateful that we, like the Gilmours, had started our very own version of the film club so many years ago and that it continues to this day (we even watched “The Killer Inside Me” while she was here.)

Gilmour picks some truly great films to share with his son, and the book includes the complete list. I recommend reading the book and watching the movies—and if you can share the experience with someone, form a “film club” of your own, all the better.
Story can be sacred.


Movies can be magic.

Sharing the meaningful ones with our children is nothing short of shamanistic.