The Name Game

Recently Jake Squid
made a delightfully frivolous post that
was solely a list of potential band names. (I think my favorite is “Winking
Cheese”, though “Always a Brideshead” is also very good) This
is a game that Kip loves to play, sometimes interrupting a conversation with
a sudden inspiration. He will also rate band names, and I guess I would too,
mostly on the disparaging side, pointing out names that proved that people were
running out of ideas.

Many people play this game or variants—for example Johnzo
and Victoria develop car names. Then there is, of course, the internet, the
challenge to come up with the domain name that means something that no one else
has snagged. But even more, I think blog names are the new band names, what
with names like “Skippy
the Bush Kangaroo”, “Hot
Buttered Death”, and “Two
Tears in a Bucket”.

Typically, I have a very boring blog name, or, really no blog name; my journal is rolled either as “Jenn Manley Lee” or “Jennworks,” either of which works fine for me. Not that I’m not constantly amused by what people come up with. In fact, I am very fond of the idea Amy has for a name for her as yet non-existent blog. I don’t feel free to reveal it, but maybe she’ll share it, either in the comments section or, finally, her own blog.

Digital Blotter

Before I begin a long session of drawing, I make a pass at cleaning my office and getting things back into order. Not that it won’t be cluttered up again within a couple of hours, but it’s usually in a different way—so there’s a sense of progress.

As I don‘t try to take care of everything, this week I decided to concentrate on the area right around my computer and scanner. Amongst the various piles was a book on historic posters that I had pulled from my shelves in order to scan one or two for a new desktop background for my computer as I was getting tired of the one I’ve had for the past few months— a detail of a print by Kabutoyana. Though I am particular about my desktop picture, I can’t say it’s a huge priority as this book has been waiting to have its bookmarked pages to be scanned in for the past couple of weeks.

Same goes for my desktop background of my work computer. Whereas some of my co-workers have made an artform out of their frequently changing desktop pictures, I have had the same close up of this bird’s eye view map of Portland from 1890 for the past several months, maybe even a year. I feel so boring.

Actually, I’m kinda glad I hadn‘t changed it yet as someone from upstairs finally noticed what picture was on my desktop only a month ago. After I explained what it was, he sent me this great link to a website that features many pictures of old Portland.

But I definitely decided I needed a change at home, and so started scanning in posters. When I turned to this poster by Jan Troop from 1896:

I noticed that it was created for Het Hoogleland Beekbergen, identified as a psychiatric institute. Which isn‘t troublesome in itself, not even with madmen seeing angels. What disturbed me were all the cutting instruments in the poster. I did notice that there were some gardeners in the background and was willing to take them all as indicating that the inmates were kept occupied by working the land—if it weren’t for those forceps.

I took a little time to do a search on Het Hoogeland and found a few sites—all in Dutch. I‘ve mentioned earlier the trouble I have had with free, online translators that can handle Dutch–suffice to say much of it was garbled. But after running a page on Het Hoogeland through the translator, enough came through for me to determine that it was primarily a work farm for “beggars, vagrants and idiots” governed by Christian scripture. No surgery that I can find reference to.

But this wasn’t the poster I decided to use for my desktop. I chose one done by Kolomon Moser for a religious calendar in 1898 :

which I then cropped and manipulated so that it would fit properly within a monitor’s constraints:

This should hold me for a bit.

Triple Overdrive

A recent post of Barry’s (aka Ampersand, aka Keeper of the Old Church, aka the Wedding Co-coordinator) about sex and its apparent importance as a measure of success and normalcy has got me thinking about certain things, including, yes, sex. But more precisely what I see as the three main drives or appetites that shape and affect most of human existence—and our uneasy relationship with them. As I see it, they are Hunger, Sleep and Sex.

Under Sex I would include the urge to masturbate, which I see as being different than the urge to copulate, and with Sleep I would include the idea of leisure, the need to be lazy or inactive. In exploring these concepts, I am unconcerned with bodily functions (such as breathing or voiding), emotions, or spiritual aspirations. I am simply interested in the physical drives that more or less we base our lives and culture around.

The drive to make money or amass riches? Well, in it’s purest form, it’s a way to secure better, bigger, more sex, food and leisure. I am as interested in the demented impulse to acquire money for its own sake as I am in underwater-scatalogical-kiddie-barnyard-animal porn.

Given my interest in trickster figures, these are aspects that I have been given reason to think about often, as your basic trickster indulges in them to excess, usually to comic effect. And this is what I see reflected in many of the most popular of the American TV sitcoms such as Friends, Scrubs, and so on. The main cast of most of these shows are picked from very specific groups—no matter how hip or modern they have been upgraded to be—and then painted in broad, fantastical strokes: They are New Yorkers (gypsies, bohemians, not mainstream) Hospital Staff (Soap Opera fodder, pantheon of gods [doctors] and nymphs [sigh, yeah, the nurses]) Gangsters, College and High School students and those that stand between us and the End of the World. The border groups, those on a threshold. Not normal. Not us.

So let’s begin. Instead of saving the “best” for last, let me begin with what began it:

Sex

Okay, let me just get this out of the way. Though I sympathize with Barry’s emotional reaction, let me just state I disagree with his general premise. Sorry: in my experience, people in the real world who base their lives around sex after their early twenties are looked on with as much derision as those who have none. Phoebe Buffay on Friends would be classified as a nymphomaniac who endangers herself daily and should be urged to seek help, if not be ostracized. As for Joey Tribbiani, well, no one would take him seriously—hmmm, actually, kinda like on Friends.

The fact is, this is not the real world nor does anybody I know take it as such. The main characters on these shows have insanely easy access to sex, as they do to real nice apartments, up-to-the-minute wardrobes and expensive gadgets. And a more than fair portion of each thirty minute episode is dedicated to sex humor, because sex is an easy hook and easy to make fun of because it is a point of vulnerability. But Hollywood overrates the time and effort that sex, or thoughts of sex, take up in our daily lives.

I actually find that premise easy to dismiss. What burns my cookies is the idea that love equals sex, like, say, on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the second season, when Angel, the vampire-with-a-soul, experienced true happiness, it wasn’t from the realization that he loved Buffy and Buffy loved him. Oh no. It’s when they had sex that his soul pops out. Gah… (Really, that makes Angel a bit of a girl that way—true acceptance through sexual encounter.)

I could go on and on about the unrealistic and unattainable sexual ideal for women on TV and in the movies (often conflicting, Ice Princess vs. Slut), but what about the men? Despite what Hollywood would have us think, they are not always ready to go. They can be, very specifically, not in the mood. Thank God. How annoying would it be, walking down the street with someone who is always this close to an erection?

Then there’s the sexual intolerance, actually, specifically, towards masturbation, which is not respected in its own right. Only those who can’t get any resort to masturbation, right? Well, no, not for me, and quite a few others I know. I like sex with another, I like masturbating, and the urge for both is quite distinct.

I actually find masturbation jokes irritating in an embarrassing kind of way. A sort of swaggering “oh, yeah, I can get It any time I want, so let me prove it in a slam against the losers who can’t” kind of way. Please.

True mundane sexual incompatibility never seems to be addressed; it’s either love of the Gods or the Psychos. Not the well, that didn’t work, or that was kinda icky. And it would be nice if the girl could be turned off by the young stallion (not the balding letch) for indefinable reasons. And vice versa, ’cept that the girl not be a nerd or homicidal bitch.

In real life, with those married couples I have known who have sought marriage counseling, it wasn’t because of sexual incompatibility or infidelity. It was a problem in communication and connection. And those people looking for a mate, male or female, do not emphasize the sex. They are looking for an emotional or intellectual connection with a person they trust enough to have sex with. (Now, “couple logic”, that’s a rant for another day.)

I know and have known friends who would be typified as average, mainstream Americans clubbers, been in Greek Houses, and those who would be considered promiscuous, though they‘d have nothing on Phoebe or Joey. And I have known those who indulged in the lewd talk because that’s what you do, right? Right? As for the scandalous affair that is on everyone‘s lips? Well, if it were common, no one would talk about it, and usually it’s two years old when you hear about it.

Sex is indeed commonly thought to be a measure of success—but not sex alone. There are other qualifiers such as social position, intellectual merit, popularity, etc. I mean, your average hooker outdoes all of us, but no one puts her or him up on a pedestal and toasts their achievements.

We aren’t that straightforward about sex; we can’t frankly talk about it or the possible consequences. Not like adults anyway, we haven‘t moved much beyond a grade school mentality in many respects. Though of all of the three appetites I’m discussing, it is the one that we can literally live without in a way we can’t with Food or Sleep. So why is it the most important, and why am I going to end up spending the most words on it?

Hunger

The human relationship with food is even more perverse than sex and usually treated as pornographically, with similar moral restrictions. Let’s go back to Friends, shall we?

A motto that I grew up with was “Never trust a skinny cook.” What, then, are we to do with Monica Geller?

Skinny? She’s a starvation victim. It‘s not just that she doesn’t enjoy food, she’s clearly repulsed by it. Then there’s the Bizarro alternate universe where she is a fat smelly geek, reflecting her adolescent trouble with eating. But, that Monica always seemed more content and comfortable and trustworthy than the starved-crazed “real” Monica.

Most anxiety relates to food—not enough or too much. In a land when a sense of never-ending supply and overwhelming portions is the goal, those that show any honest evidence of indulgence are scorned and ridiculed. Show us famine victims in Africa and we shriek and throw food at them without thinking out how it will actually reach them. Our insanity around food knows no bounds.

Food neuroses and limits are usually brought up at some point. And usually ridiculed. And when the actual food does make an appearance on your average TV show, is it pleasure in the healthy foods, nourishing staples or comfort foods? Oh no. It’s the bad foods, the naughty, the elite foods: dark chocolate, lobster, devil’s food cake. Not a tuna sandwich, not Nutella, not red beans and rice, not even a simple candy bar or a glass of water, things people I know will really crave and feel better by.

But the real screwed up messages about food for me come from the commercials. Talk about conflicting messages and unrealistic measures of success. And the gender politics? Brrr. Yes, women can do it all: a career, motherhood, house-keeping, cook every meal while eating Jenny Craig, keeping herself safe from exposing the fact she‘s “on her period” and following Jenny Craig–all without pores! Whereas the men are generally too stupid to work a microwave and so have to resort to fast food. But that’s okay if they can figure out what beer to party with.

Sleep

Or, as I said, leisure. You can find dozens of articles on how screwed up Americans are about simply relaxing and doing nothing. Most instances I see on the sitcom is the ruined vacation or the prevention of sleep, funny because, well, do they really deserve this rest? Shouldn’t they be working or looking for fulfillment?

I actually would put drugs under this category rather than Sex—and alcohol as well, as opposed to Hunger. It’s all recreation, a change and an escape. All good. We actually need this for our all-over health—physically, emotionally and mentally.

It still cracks me up that in the dot com days, all these fringe alternative web jockeys put in 80 hour weeks for their Company. It was a striving for virtual money at the sacrifice of their health and well-being. And I thought that this was the Slacker generation…

And vacations aren’t vacations unless you are doing something—skiing, hiking, cancer research, whatever. And as for the weekends, when someone asks, “What did you do?” surely you cannot answer “sat on my ass the whole time, and, by God, I liked it!’

Conclusion

Let me just some up by saying there is no real conclusion, no new thoughts, theories or observances. We humans are screwed up into tight little balls over our base—as well as our higher—impulses. We check ourselves against the perceived norm and calculate who are our allies and who are not. As with any other human venture. This, as always, comes out in the most popular tales of the day.

In these stories, human nature and appetites are exaggerated and often lampooned. There is usually moral judgement and retribution appropriate to maintain the status quo. Excessive behavior will be often punished, but sometimes rewarded depending on the offender. And though these stories reflect the standards of the culture of where they are told, they never were a place to derive an accurate picture of everyday experience or beliefs.

A funny thing happened on the way to the locker room…

Okay, so, I’m at the gym, doing my cardio on the elliptical trainer (bad knees). I find doing cardio exercise excruciatingly boring, so I’m reading Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. The gym acknowledges that doing one’s cardio is very boring and so has a TV in front of the bank of exercise machines. This morning, instead of the Golden Girls, the TV is tuned to the Fox morning news.

At some point I look up and realize they are about to broadcast the U.N. Council meeting. The anchors are doing some news banter as everybody finds their seats. At some point, one of them informs the viewing audience that the earliest possible time we could expect U.S. air strikes against Iraq is the beginning or middle of March. The reason the military gave for this is that is when they could “take advantage of the greatest powers of darkness.” Oh, um, due to the lack of a moon in the night sky.

So, what I wanna know if this was another gaffe on part of a news writer, snide commentary on part of the anchor or a pure Freudian slip.

The writer in me

Even though I have just tons of drawing to do on Dicebox
for the next several weeks, I took a break on Monday to do some concentrated
writing. It’s about the middle of Chapter 2, which means it’s time
for me to slap Chapter 3 into shape, finally fix those gaps and weak points,
incorporate various notes and snippets and so on. Not to mention staring to
take the several paragraphs that comprise Chapter 4 in my outline and start
framing them into a usable script. And I had some serious issues (issues pronounced
in the British soft emphasis way) with an upcoming scene in the current chapter.

I didn’t get as much done as I wanted, partly because my writer self
is a bit rusty. I mean, I do keep this journal, and touch up and massage the
dialogue as I go along, as well as augment the Dicebox outline. But after I had re-acquainted myself with what I had for a script for
Chapter 3, reviewed the outlines, incorporated notes and trolled by sources
books, I didn’t get much done past fixing what bothered me about Chapter
2. I finally went to bed aggravated I didn’t hit my über storyteller
zone.

Naturally, when I woke up the next day and got ready for work writer-Jenn kicked into overdrive and that was all I could think about. Also at work—instead of obsessively doodling in meetings, I kept making story notes, figure out elegant bridges between the action points of Chapter 3 and so on. Kinda drove me crazy—wanted to take a week and do nothing but writing and research.

Part of my research while writing is to scan many types of story in all sorts of media—comics, video, TV, books, magazines. I actually caught myself doing this last night, pulling books from the shelf, flipping through the comics we got at APE yet again and even flipping through the TV channels as I worked on drawing the next page of Dicebox. Now, none of this will directly influence or inspire anything in my writing, it’s meant mostly to observe and digest methods of staging and problem solving.

In this sort of mood, it was only a matter of time until I pulled down my copy
of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Yasunari
Kawabata. They never fail to astound me with how quickly they sketch a situation
and complete a story and yet give me phrases and ideas that get stuck in my
brain.

Below is one of my favorite stories, Sleeping Habit. I was going to
just quote a section, but then realized I wouldn’t have to type much more
to share all of it.

Sleeping Habit (Nemuriguse)

Startled by a sharp pain, as if her hair were being pulled out, she woke up
three or four times. But when she realized that a skein of her black hair was
wound around the neck of her lover, she smiled to herself. In the morning, she
would say, “My hair is this long now. When we sleep together, it truly
grows longer.”

Quietly, she closed her eyes.

“I don’t want to sleep. Why do we have to sleep? Even though we
are lovers, to have to go to sleep, of all things!” On nights when it
was all right for her to stay with him, she would say this, as if it were a
mystery to her.

“You‘d have to say that people make love precisely because they
have to sleep. A love that never sleeps—the very idea is frightening.
It’s something thought up by a demon.”

“That’s not true. At first, we neither slept either, did we? There’s
nothing so selfish as sleep.”

That was the truth. As soon as he fell asleep, he would pull his arm out from
under her neck, frowning unconsciously as he did so. She, too, no matter where
she embraced him, would find when she awakened that the strength had gone out
of her arm.

“Well, then, I’ll wind my hair around and around your arm and
hold you tight.”

Winding the sleeve of his kimono around her arm, she’d held him hard.
Just the same, sleep stole away the strength from her fingers.

“All right, then, just as the old proverb says, I’ll tie you up
with the rope of a woman’s hair.” So saying, she’d drawn a
long skein of her raven-black hair around his neck.

That morning, however, he smiled at what she said.

“What do you mean, your hair has grown longer? It’s so tangled
up you can’t pass a comb through it.’

As time went by, they forgot about that sort of thing. These nights, she slept
as if she’d forgotten he was there. But, if she happened to wake up, her
arm was always touching him—and his arm was touching her. By now, when
they no longer thought about it, it had become their sleeping habit.

© Hite Kawabata. English translation: ©1988 Lane Dunlop from
the paperback edition put out by North Point Press, 1996, (second printing)

The above isn’t my ultimate favorite, I also adore God’s Bones
and The White Flower. But it does stay with me.

While searching for a good link reviewing or explaining Kawabata’s philosophy
of doing the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, I came across people recommending
them for busy or lazy people and others who claimed they couldn’t get
them because they didn’t know enough about Japanese culture. The second
claim really flummoxed me, I mean, okay, not knowing about certain festivals might
be a hinderance and certain Japanese words like tabi might be puzzling,
but with most of the stories, including the one above, I see nothing so inherently
Japanese as to prevent one from appreciating the situation or story. In fact,
Kawabata was strongly recommended to me by friends who know less about Japanese
culture than I and yet love Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.

As to the argument that one can‘t appreciate his full intentions or meaning, that’s true for any story, no matter what country the author is from. In fact, I have no patience for authors who dictate the meaning of the story, the one, true, ultimate meaning and constantly beat you about the head and shoulders with the Theme (this holds especially true for comics). The story is different with every reader and their own experience, I doubt that every Japanese reader of Kawabata walks away with the same meaning or impressions from his work or even like his work. The emotion a story inspires in you is the right one, no matter what the author says. Usually where ever one meaning is lost another, unintended, is found. The very good authors accept that and leave it alone.