Ceci n'est pas un blog

I wish I were a compulsive completist; someone who sees all the films of a director or reads all the books by an author. I haven't seen every Scorsese movie nor every Coen film nor even every Soderberg, whom I like more than either. I have intentionally skipped movies by directors I normally like. But I feel guilty, like a set should be complete and the flaw is in me for breaking it up or leaving a piece out. Until last year, I had even seen every Woody Allen movie but then gave myself permission to start skipping them when Melinda and Melinda came out. And it's harder to keep pace with a living author who is constantly producing even as you try to fill in his back catalogue.

All this to say that I am about to make some generalizations about an author having only read a portion of his canon.

This morning I finished Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, one of the most popular books by Haruki Murakami. He may be my favorite author. He writes novels, short stories, non-fiction and all in a way that is at once artificial and distancing while being inventive, insightful, real and honest. This book not my favorite of his but still it drew me in, kept me interested, surprised me, and was filled with wonderful details. Perhaps too many moments where I could relate even though it was entirely surreal story.

Before talking about this specific book, I should say that his work varies from the extremely surreal to the very real. One of his best collections, in my opinion, is After the Quake. Short stories that all take the Kobe earthquake as their starting point. In one, a busy doctor vacations in Thailand and finds wisdom and truths about herself through her driver. In another a man is visited by a giant mystical frog who needs his help to wrestle the great subterranean worm whose movements threaten to destroy Tokyo. So you get a sense of the range of his surrealism. Often there are just hints around the edges and at other times all of reality seems to have been completely torn apart and reconstructed in a new way.

I first encountered him in a collection of modern Japanese fiction called Monkey Brain Sushi. How could you not love anything with a title like that? and so I have slowly been catching up on his books and short stories. I have a friend who even photocopies stories in magazines and mails them to me.

And so this book. How do I feel about this book? There are two stories here running in parallel and eventually into each other. One is a clearly unreal and metaphysical world where shadows can be cut from their owners and a herd of unicorns are the only creatures allowed to leave the walled town. The other story takes place in a near future where data secrets are encoded using uncrackable algorithms embedded in the Calcutec's brains. Each agent's work unique based on their own subconscious.

In both Kafka on the Shore and Sputnik Sweetheart, the action mostly takes place in our clearly reognizable world and only slowly does that world start to merge with another, different set of rules. Hard-Boiled mostly follows this mode and I think it's one weakness is when the near future world of the Calcutec becomes too otherworldly, too unlike our own. One of the things that so interesting about Kafka on the Shore is how, as the wall between the other world and our own breaks down we begin to learn the rules of this interaction and to see how the novel's meta-reality is organized. And here there is a similar progression but the near future becomes, in the middle of the book, too unlike our own.

However, it ends brilliantly and the characters are real and natural and understandable albeit in circumstances unlike any you will ever have imagined. I greatly enjoy being in his unique universe and the wealth of detail and interesting invention. Another recurring theme of his work is a character with an affinity for the trio of jazz/food/literature. Characters quote Turgenev while making a delicate and complicated cream sauce, Dave Brubeck or Benny Goodman playing in the background. This character is also likely to be the one who doesn't express his emotions well or whose emotional inertia causes him to barely raise an eyebrow when something truly bizarre happens. They might sit at the table, drinking a beer, alone and unfazed by the rips in reality around them. His accumulated life has no meaning, so when it's turned upside down, all you can do is light a cigarette and have a whisky and learn the new system.

So Hard-Boiled has a fascinating first act as you are begin to piece together the rules in these two unique and radically different worlds, gets a bit muddy (for me) in the middle as both plots become so far removed from anything remotely familiar, and then ends beautifully, tantalizing the reader with the resolution you want but giving you exactly the right one, the one that the story demands.

Always fascinating, I can't recommend him enough. If you haven't read any, start with the short stories of The Elephant Vanishes or After the Quake, then move to Sputnik Sweetheart and Norwegian Wood. If you're a dedicated surrealist with a taste for something entirely unlike any other author, start with Kafka on the Shore and then follow it with Hard-Boiled Wonderland. That said, I haven't read perhaps his most famous book, which is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. I'm looking forward to my next visit to a Haruki Murakami universe: they are sometimes flawed, always strange, a bit melancholy, and also like coming home.

Today the washer/dryer that the owner's of our flat bought was to be delivered. Oh happy day.

However, the store called to say "it didn't make it on the truck". What? It sounds like they asked all the appliances to please board the truck but mine was in the bathroom and missed the last call at the gate. This was even more silly because the store called the owner who had to call the leasing agent to get my number so she could tell me to call the store and arrange a new delivery time. Got it.

Well it get's better. After talking to various people from the store off and on all day and being given a one choice of delivery days after another (each won't work for the store) it finally dawns on someone to check inventory first. And lo, it turns out that no store has it in stock and the central warehouse won't have it for another 75 days or so. Two and half months from now and they bought it weeks ago.

It's the store's error and they will make it right but soince this involves picking a different machine or machines, the owner has to make that call. And so I contact the leasing agent so he can ask the owner to talk to the store so we can get a washing machine before mid February.

As my wife said, "I am not walking a mile in the snow with a baby to do laundry. That is not on."

Time for adventure number 2 of the day. My nice winter jacket is being held hostage. I went on a mission to set it free and take it to our home where it can relax until it's time for it to go to work keeping me warm. The evil empire holding it against its will is the Norwegian Post Office. Apparently when my family wraps up a gift and sends it themselves, it comes right to me but when they order it online and have it shipped right to me, the postal service can declare that they are uncertain of it's value and threaten to charge duties and taxes and open it up for inspection in case I am shipping unlicensed free range avacadoes into the country. Or something.

In any case, I head down to the main Post Office using the address on their website. Only there's no public door. Trucks are coming and going from the underground warehouse, there are several small locked doors with cameras and keycard readers and security men. I'm pretty sure I could sneak in. I've seen a lot of movies. But how would I find my package and liberate it. I need an accomplice, like maybe a public Post Office where you take a ticket and the person calls your number and then goes to the back to get your package. But there is no public entrance. So much for the main post office, I guess I'll go to a small local branch and hope for the helpful attendant who feels mercy for me and my coat.

Tomorrow is the corporate Jule party. It seems somehow quaint that no one is chatting and discussing whether it should be called a Holiday Party or a Winter Party instead and whether they should put a menorah and a kinara by the Christmas tree. I hope it's fun. Some will drink and some will dance and both to excess. I rather expect that I'll do very little of one, none of the other and nothing to excess. I don't do excess well.

On dancing: When I was young, I would dance at clubs or parties or wherever we were. I once danced with a goth who worked at an ice-cream shop, she dreamed of opening a club "like the one in The Hunger". I was invited to model for my hairstylist at a club. The director instructed us to get to a certain point and then, and he really did say this, "just wig out". It was no problem. But now I find it awkward and stressful and lacking the easy fun of 20+ years ago when I went to 5 proms and was invited by strangers to clubs where you had to enter from the alley and there was no sign. I don't want to relive those years, not for anything. But sometimes it would be nice to reach back to that eccentric skinny kid I once was and borrow his sense of wonder or his more generous nature or simply his comfort in his own skin.

An Afterthought:
Doesn't Eric Schmidt(CEO) advising Republicans violate Google's mission statement of "do no evil"?

Sunday night I went to a colleague's for Thanksgiving at their home in a nearby suburb with his family and a few people from the office.

On the train I ran into another couple going to the party and we wandered the picturesque neighborhood, chatting and getting lost together. A short conversation with a passing motorist cleared up our location and, with luck, we found the unlit and nearly unmarked pedestrian path down aged wooden stairs that put us on the proper road.

The evening was lovely. His (our host's) in-laws have been in the home for quite some time and it was filled with well used furniture, layers of rugs, curios, a much used leather wingback chair sat squarely in front of the fireplace. The dining room, dark red walls hung with etchings of the Bergen harbor, was filled to capacity. There were children and 30 somethings and an older man who had travelled widely, read extensively, and makes his own black currant jam.

We had turkey and lingonberries and sweet potatoes and stuffing and "American Blend" (corn, peas, and diced carrots). There were homemade cookies, pumpkin pie, and ice cream. I made a swedish apple pie that seems to have been a success with the guests.

From what I could tell the variety of first-languages included English, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, and Italian but the number of languages known by various guests far exceeded that. This seemed fitting. My family is entirely entangled and enmeshed with a family from Costa Rica and we always end up talking about language at holiday gatherings.

The family dog, an eight year old short haired pointer, nuzzled each visitor and begged successfully for attention and unsuccessfully for food. Our hosts and the puppy joined us on our walk back to the train, which we very nearly missed. It took a mad dash at the end to reach the last car just before it pulled away. We fell into the seats panting, a bit exhausted from our full-bellied sprint.

The walk home from the train station was lovely. Chistmas lights are starting to appear above the streets; it was clear and crisp. At one point I passed two girls, one with red devil horns, the other with a halo, otherwise dressed quite normally. Once back to my still-smelling-of-apples-and-cinnamon apartment, it was nice to sit by the window, read for a bit, and have a cup (or two or three) of tea.

I'm not sure exactly what my take on this is yet but a coworker said he was going to a play this evening and thought I might enjoy it. Something a little offbeat. Not to worry about the language as it's mostly movement and dance, any spoken words won't be essential to the understanding. And to be fair he sent me a link to the theater: Grusomhetens Teater (Theater of Cruelty). This was the manifesto of Antonin Artaud, surrealist poet/playwright/director/drug addict/electroshock therapy recipient/long time sanitorium resident.

I know a little about Artaud. Not as much as my wife. But I had a feeling I knew what I was in for.

The venue was great. It was the sort of place that when you see in movies (mostly from the '80s) you aren't sure really exist. Imagine an old building that appears to have been completely abandoned and is absolutely covered in layers upon layers of spray paint. Inside, down heavily tagged corridors and through two imrovised plywood doors is a rather pleasant vegan cafe. If you hadn't been shown by someone, you'd never find it. Around the building in tha back where construction workers are driling into concrete and look like they might be setting up some sort of bigger job, there is the theater entrance. Only it's not. It's just the room where you buy tickets and hang out until show time.

And so we hung out and gossiped about a local celeb whose nude pictures of himself were on his cell phone when it was stolen and the images made it to all the papers. And we talked about the company director's commitment to the Theater of Cruelty manifesto; he'd been known to be relunctant to rent the space to other companies because it might subvert their brand, fool an audience into thinking he might do something traditional, narrative, easy. When it came time for the show, they led us back out into the drizzle and around even further to the back and then inside and down the steepest darkest stairs in Oslo to the theater.

The show was performed by 9 actors who essentailly laid out a series of intercut fairy tale references. But that's not the point of the show. The point of this kind of theater is to jar the audience, confront their desensitization and bring them to a state of awareness and engagement -- kicking and screaming if necessary. There were two women with violins, an accompaniest whose piano and vocal style semed more Weimar era than anything else, and lots of interludes that evoked classic Bedlam style mental asylums. But it wasn't all madness ... in one segment the cast is all running amok searching for something or someone and over time it becomes clear that each person has a clearly choreographed pattern and after an interruption, several of them have swapped choreographies. In another segment a woman wears a Marie Antoinette style outfit, complete with a meter tall wig and moves in a mannered and sad way. There is nudity without sexuality, there is staring directly at audience members and addressing them right to their face, there is a lot of somewhat dangerous ladder climbing.

At various times I was bored, intrigued, confused, genuinely interested, and convinced I had latched onto an underlying narrative thread only to lose it again. And although the philosophy of such a production is about the audience, I couldn't help wondering if the "cruelty" was to the actors who had to crawl, climb, push themselves around on their back, strip, meet the gaze of their audience, and remember complicated blocking not necessarily tied to any interaction between characters and without dialogue to anchor it to.

One of the actors is a bit famous. He's been in at least 16 movies or TV shows. I recognised him from the previews to Junk Mail, a Norwegian film that got some play on the art house circuit in the States. And I can see why an actor would be drawn to this sort of company. It is difficult and challenging and may not bring the audience with you - you are alone with your craft and your colleagues participating in a genuine art backed by the poetic theories of a cruel, mad, genius.

But it's the sort of theater you can only recommend to a very very few.

So much to talk about but I'll keep it to three topics:

1. I moved into our new apartment today. There is a new album (under the photos tab) that takes you on a little journey from the street where I work, to the stairs leading up the hill, to our building, and inside. The apartment is less than 6 blocks from the office but there are 105 stairs up to our street and another 66 in the building. It's a nice little neighborhood, very kid friendly, and the park is full of kindergartens, ducks, and dog walkers. From the top of the park you can see the fjord. The area is called St. Hanshaugen: turns out this means St. James Hill and any search through the list of saints for a Hans Haugen or Hanshaugen will yield very little indeed. The apartment is significantly smaller than anywhere we have lived since college and certainly smaler than anywhere we have lived with dogs and a child but we think that proximity to all the city's resources will make this a better option than some of the larger apartments we saw and certainly a better way to get to know our new home than the suburbs. Maybe after we've been here a while and are comfortable getting around and have seen all the major sites, then we might look further afield. It will be especially nice being able to get home so quickly to see my wee one and get in some good play time before her bed time.
   
2. Given the name of this blog, I would be remiss in not mentioning the positive coverage of the new Magritte exhibit in Los Angeles. In the NY Times there is a little video interview with the artist who helped curate the show and some images of the installation where they have tried to make a playful space, bringing concepts and images from the art into the room such as clouds on the floor and objects out of scale with their surrounding. An interesting coincidence: local TV just showed the Thomas Crown Affair remake last night and the original the night before. The remake features Magritte references quite heavily.
   
3. Well we don't know yet about whether these images are treacherous but there's another article out about Wong Kar Wai's first English language film. I'm a little more encouraged than I was in my earier post on this film. Still a pity that Doyle isn't doing the cinematography. It will be interesting to discover how dependent Wong Kar Wai was on him or whether the new cinematographer, most famous for having shot Se7en for David fincher (a horrible little script that I blame for the current rash of torture films like the Saw series), can deliver for him. But as much as I love the lush perfection and tone of his last two films (2046 is as emotionally brutal as it is gorgeous to look at), that this is a return to the fast improvisational style of Chungking Express can only be a good thing. And if there is anyway to get a DVD of the short film mentioned in the article thathe made when In The Mood for Love was still intended to be Three Stories About Food, please please let me know.