Rest

Every Easter... or maybe it was Palm Sunday... anyway, one weekend near Easter/Passover every year, we always used to watch The Ten Commandments when it was broadcast on a major TV network (I mean, it doesn't get better than Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner snarking at each other).

There's a scene where Moses (Heston) takes mercy on a stone cutter who hit an overseer in order to save an old woman. Moses, being a Good Boss, has a discussion about what the Hebrew slaves need to work better, rather than just taking "Master Butcher" Vincent Price at his word that they are lazy and expendable. The stonecutter mentions extra food and a day of rest. "A day of rest!" echoes the crowd in awe, as though he just suggested they all be given their weight in gold. Moses grants them the food, and the day of rest, and the Egyptians harp on this for while.

This was unprecedented. If you were a worker, you worked. That's what you did. The idea of taking a day off for rest, for contemplation, that just wasn't done.

Not trying to get super religious here, but there is something to the "remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy" commandment. When was the last time you took a day off - really took a day off, where you did nothing, or only did things that relaxed or rejuvenated you?

I've recently been trying to be more aware of giving myself down time - time to relax, time to think, time to do nothing and just let my brain go. It's hard. I am the sort of person that I'm ALWAYS doing something. But I'm trying to take a few minutes in the evening to just sit quietly with my eyes closed. I made it three minutes last night! : D

We as a society need to be better about resting. We've gotten it into our heads that if you're doing nothing, if you're not being "productive," you're "lazy." But your body and your brain need time to rest, to relax, to do nothing.

I commit to doing nothing for at least four minutes today - who's with me?

Volume Revolution

Jason and I recently finished watching the second season of The Mandalorian, which I imagine many of you have watched as well (don't worry if you haven't - no spoilers here!). Around the time we finished, a friend of ours recommended we watch the documentaries about the behind the scenes stuff.

As a theatre major, I always enjoy watching things about how the sets or costumes were made, how effects were created, etc. - and Jason enjoys that, too. Plus, rather than one long making-of documentary, it is conveniently broken up into little 30-minute mini documentaries. (Jason and I often have difficulties finding a long stretch of time to watch longer things together.)

So far, we've only watched one of the four behind the scenes specials; we watched The Volume. The episode was not, as I would have guessed by the title, about the sound mixing or music, but rather about a revolutionary new space that they used for the filming. The space itself is called The Volume. It's a studio, a soundstage - in a way you've never seen one before. If you've ever been to the cyclorama in Atlanta, you may have an inkling of what this space is like.

The Volume is surrounded by screens - screens on the ceiling, and 360 degrees around. Rather than using green screen - actors standing in front of obnoxiously-colored empty space, pointing at an approaching monster that has yet to be built - the film crew uses a video game engine* to project the fully-designed, fully-realized scenery all around the actors. The actors are immersed in the world as fully as though they were on location - with the obvious advantage that, even though this technology is new and was expensive to build, you only have to set it up once, rather than flying actors, crew, and equipment to various distant locales.

*Ask someone who knows abut video games what a "video game engine" is, if you want more info on that - I only have a vague notion of how it works.

Hearing the actors speak in awe of this new way of filming, how it completely changes everything and makes their immersion more complete and their performances better, it made me wonder what this might do for the cinema audience. Watching the documentary, I was immediately struck at how the Volume reminded me of rides as Disney and Universal; a fully-immersive world that the rider travels through. I thought of how you might create a ride, an experience with this technology - and have millions of tourists flock to experience it and charge large sums of money for the privilege. Then I recalled an article I had recently read about a TV show Disney+ was looking to reboot.

In the article, the writer came right out and said that cinema was dead, that the film industry will not recover from the pandemic (citing shorter length streaming content as the new entertainment medium of choice). But seeing this documentary, I don't think that's true.

Oh, yes, it will take a while to come back from this. But what if we change the cinematic experience? What if we take the Volume, what if we take the movie theatres that are closing - and remake them. What if we start making film in the round? What if we take the big blockbuster-type movies - the sort of stuff you're already used to paying a little more to go see in 3D or Imax - and make it a fully immersive experience? The superhero soars over your head as the explosion goes off behind you. This is better than Imax, better than surround sound. You're there. You're in the film.

Can we make it happen? Is this a revolution for cinema?

Words, Words, Wa-wa

Over the past few weeks, Elianna - who just turned 15 months old - had been wanting to know what everything is called.  She points at things nearby and across the room, pokes body parts and facial features, and prods every piece of food on her plate until she's told what it is.

While poking at every little carrot nibble on her plate does make for longer meal time, sometimes she also makes a sound.  I'm not 100% sure how much she's trying to duplicate the sounds, given that her linguistic ability is still somewhat limited (to date, she regularly makes m, b, d, sounds and occasionally v, w, l, y, as well as ah, eh, and a sounds).  The other day I gave her some blueberries and she repeated "bah!"  Similarly, she repeated a "m" sound when offered mangoes... but the, she does that when given banana, too.  (I personally think she's trying to say "nana" but hasn't quite mastered the "n" yet.)

One of the few words that she says regularly, and consistently the same way, is "Ah-ah," which is what she calls Athena. 

She HAS started gesturing to herself - smacking her hand proudly against her chest and then grinning from ear to ear when I cover her chest and hand with my own and announce "Elianna!"  She loves hearing her name, and I'm pretty sure she knows it means her.

Sometimes I get annoyed at all the pointing, at how much it derails mealtime - sometimes I think she's trying to distract me*, like I'll forget to give her more chicken (or whatever food she has decided she doesn't want to eat that day).

*Is this karma coming back at me for all the times I tried to get my Russian professor off-topic to get out of a quiz?

But then I remember that she's learning.  Even though she's been told everything on her plate two or three times, been told what the window and the ipod are so many times, keeps gesturing to Athena (also crunching and munching) in the kitchen.  She knows that all these things have names and she likes to hear them.

And I also remember that she can hear me say these things, that she can see things to point to and ask what they are.  I remember that at 19 months old, Helen Keller lost her sight and hearing to an illness.  Only barely able to say a few words, the only one that she remembered years later when Anne Sullivan came to teach her, to break through into her dark world, was "wa-wa" - water.  (And as anyone who saw the movie remembers because depending on when and where you saw it, it was either an inspirational climax or, if you were like me and watched it in middle school with a bunch of hooting boys who thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever seen...)

Elianna is very close to saying "wa-wa."  She has a sippy cup for water, and pokes at it all the time while I patiently tell her for the 14th time "water," (or "milk," or "juice").  And some nights when I sit in the recliner in the dark, rocking her at bedtime while she points to the stuffed animals on the shelves, the shadows thrown by her clock, I think about how lucky I am that I don't have to worry that a fever at 19 months will take away my ability to teach my baby words.

Books Behind Bars

Or, rather, books not behind bars. Yesterday, I stumbled across a list of books that have been banned in prison systems:

https://pen.org/literature-locked-up-banned-books-2019/?fbclid=IwAR2YMECl5qNRFBQgWzCSAYR57hXf0ZJ4z6udbvN2BLgJASS684JR7fKnsIQ

Some of them have reasons that seem to make sense (the concern the book might cause racial tension among inmates), some of them are silly (really, we’re not letting inmates read sexual content?), and some have no reason given, which makes the banning of The Diary of a Young Girl seem like an odd choice.

I was also intrigued to find that the list did not include books about escaping from prison, or about building bombs, which you would expect to be pretty high on the list of books that wardens don’t want inmates to read.

I was reminded of a scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Andy and a handful of other inmates are sorting through donated books, separating them out by category - fiction or hobby, trade, and educational. One of the inmates picks up a book and reads the cover:

“The Count of Montee Crisco by Alexandree Dumass. Heh. Dumb-ass.”

“What?” Andy asks.

“Well, that’s what it says!” the first inmate protests as others start to snicker. Andy takes the book and looks at it.

“That’s Dumas,” he says, pronouncing it “doo-mah.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, then hands it back to the first inmate. “It’s about a prison break - you’ll like it.”

“We oughta file that under ‘educational,’ oughtn’t we?” Red asks.

All Just a Dream

Yesterday Jason finished playing a video game that had two possible endings. He chose one and was disappointed to find that his character woke up in an insane asylum, the whole experience having been a dream or hallucination. We got to discussing how this sort of ending often feels like a cop-out or lazy writing.

We also talked about it can sometimes be done well. In the case of The Wizard of Oz, for example, I don't know if it's because it's usually the first example of this kind of ending any given person is familiar with (given its classic family film status), or the fact that this was a new ending that audiences hadn't seen before - it doesn't feel trite. Discussing it, Jason also pointed out that Dorothy protests that it "wasn't a dream - it was a place," also kind of negating that "just a dream" idea by placing a question in the audience's mind.

I do like the stories that end with the character thinking or wondering if what just happened to them might be a dream or some other situation that didn't really happen - only to find that there is some object in the room, or something is different or changed in a way that can only be explained if the "dream" was real. I actually wrote a story like that once.

We had a competition when I was in 6th grade, and I won an honorable mention for my story. In it, my main character and her sister and parents were in a boat on the Amazon River. A tidal wave came racing up the river, capsizing the boat and separating the children from their parents. They proceeded through the rain forest having adventures and close calls, at one point, so narrowly escaping a snapping crocodile that the main character lost a piece of her shoelace. In the end, she wakes up in the boat, her sister and parents with her. She thinks it's all just a dream, until she looks down at her shoe and sees part of her shoelace is missing.

Jo, Laurie, Charles, J. K., and Neil

While I was driving home one beautiful afternoon last week, listening to the Little Women soundtrack, I remembered a scene from the movie. Jo is helping Laurie pack for college (Harvard, if I remember correctly) and laments that she can't fit his favorite Dickens volumes into the trunk he'll be taking with him.

"I won't be taking all of Dickens with me," he chides.

"Oh, of course not, you'll have much more important things to read," Jo snarks.

Until recently, it didn't occur to me that she wasn't just being sarcastic. I mean, she WAS being sarcastic, but not for the reason I had originally thought. Jo and Laurie share a love of Charles Dickens and Jo is worried that now that Laurie's going off to college without her that he'll move on. But what I hadn't realized was that I was looking at this scene without taking the time period into account.

Watching this scene without being grounded in the historical context, you kind of think, "well, Dickens is one of those 'important' authors you would be expected to read in college." But Little Women begins during the Civil War in the 1860's. Charles Dickens started publishing in 1836. He was still alive at the beginning of Little Women. While he was recognized as a great author in his lifetime, this isn't a case of a couple of nerds bonding over their shared love of the classics - this is two friends who enjoy the same popular author.

Imagine your friend is going off to college and you can't. Will he come back still a fan of J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman (just for purpose of popular, acclaimed authors who have been writing for 20-30 years)? Or will he come back having found new favorites among the classics, leaving you out of the loop?

Better Than Just Nostalgia

A couple weeks ago, Jason and I went to see The Lion King at the Fox.

The Lion King is one of the pieces of entertainment from my childhood where I can look back and say, "this is when I started appreciating things on a more adult level."  The movie came out when I was 12.  I remember, very specifically, watching the scene where the wildebeest stampede begins, flowing over the cliff like water, and being just blown away at how real it looked.  I remember thinking about it on a level beyond simple entertainment, thinking about the work that must have gone into it to make it look so good.  

I remember also feeling that way about the soundtrack.  Not the songs (which, don't get me wrong, are great), but the instrumental score.  The Lion King soundtrack was one of the first CDs I owned.  The other was classical music (and that right there should tell you A LOT about my personality in middle school and high school).  Now, I had other Disney soundtracks before - I know I had a cassette of the Aladdin soundtrack, and I'm pretty sure I would have had Beauty and the Beast, too.  But I had those for the fun songs.  I had Lion King for the reflective, relaxing, and sometimes goose-bump-inducing* instrumental pieces.

So, with all of the above, I went to see the stage production, knowing it would be drastically different, but still hoping it would hold up, not to the fond childhood memories, but to the pedestal I had set it on at 12 as an incredible production, different than all the kids' movies that had come before.  And you know what?  It did.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the stage version, the live musical incorporates masks, puppetry, and kind of abstract costumes.  There is no way to perfectly replicate animated animals on stage, so they don't really try.  The scenery, costumes, masks, etc. are stylized and abstract.  You find yourself forgetting that Zazu's actor is wearing a blue suit and bowler hat, and his face is painted to match - you focus on the puppet.  You find yourself forgetting that there is a dude underneath Scar's mask - you watch the mask move around like you would focus on the face of a lion about to pounce at you.

And then we came to the stampede.  Here it was, the moment of truth, the scene that stands out as a stark red line of Before and After in mind.  I won't try to explain how they made the scene work.  (I've tried typing it and it really loses something in nailing it down with words.)  I watched that scene.  I listened to the music build.  I knew what was coming.  And my hair still stood on end.

If you can tell a story, if you can replicate that orignal awe across years and multiple media, you have done what many of us only dream of.

*"Mufassa!"  "Oooh...  Do it again!"
 

Ladies & Gentlemen

Back about a month ago, my supervisor called me into her office to discuss an email with me.  She started off by saying it wasn't anything I had done wrong, or anything unprofessional, but it was a pet peeve of hers to use the term "ladies" to address a group.  It ended up turning into a very interesting discussion.

I explained that I had intended it as a respectful, professional opening to a group of all women, pointing out that I have often done the same - using "Hello, gentlemen," or "good morning, gentlemen" - for the opening of emails to a group of men.  I explained that for me "ladies" and "gentlemen" is a term of respect, as opposed to something more informal like "guys" or "y'all."  I said something to the effect of "I guess I'm kind of old-fashioned."  My supervisor kind of laughed at that.  She said that having grown up and gone to college and started work in the 60's and 70's, during a period of time when women's roles were beginning to change drastically, that she had always seen "ladies" as less the older, respectful connotation and more that "lady" implies too delicate to work, while "woman" implies more equality and capability.  She thought it was funny that while I was the younger of the two of us, I was thinking of myself as "old fashioned."

I also talked about how, as both a history buff and a reader of fantasy and historical fiction, in my mind, a lady can still be a powerful figure, just as likely to strap on a sword and lead a battle as to do anything else.

I don't know how important it is to mention that in addition to being of my parents' generation, that my supervisor also spent a good portion of her life living further north, specifically in Minnesota.  It took her a long time to get used to both students and colleagues addressing her as "ma'am;" apparently in other areas of the country "ma'am" means "old," whereas in the South it is used as a terms of respect for a woman who is your senior either by age or position.

As a writer, I find the generational and regional differences in words, even within the same language to be very fascinating.  I have a couple friends who address me as "lady" as a term of endearment.  While they are not from the same place, they are from a similar region of the country.  I had never been addressed by a friend as "lady" until I met the first of these friends in college, but I do wonder if this is more prominent in other areas of the country, just as some women in other areas will address their female friends as "girl" or "girlfriend."

As many of you reading this know, I'm currently in the process of writing 3 novels; two of these involve young women in positions of power where the term "lady" is used as a part of their title.  Given that both of them have a strong historical feel, I'm hoping that using "lady" to indicate nobility and power will not turn off the readers who might be used to using or seeing the term as one to indicate delicacy or weakness.

In closing, I'll leave you with this little tidbit about ladies and gentlemen.  

In the 90's film, Blast from the Past, a man born in a bomb shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis and raised there in isolation by his stereotypically 1950's parents emerges in "present day" California.  It's a funny film about his faux pas and culture shock, but it also does have an interesting perspective about how values, society, and language are so malleable, even in a period of 30-some-odd years.  The two characters who sort of take him under his wing have the following exchange:

Troy: He thinks I'm a gentleman and you're a lady.

Eve: [disgusted] Well, consider the source! I don't even know what a lady is.

Troy: I know, I mean I thought a "gentleman" was somebody that owned horses. But it turns out, his short and simple definition of a lady or a gentleman is, someone who always tries to make sure the people around him or her are as comfortable as possible.

Eve: Where do you think he got all that information?

Troy: From the oddest place - his parents. I mean, I don't think I got that memo from mine.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, I bid you good evening.