It has to do with my own decision as to how to explain the fact that aliens always seem to be humanoid. I remember when in Star Trek it got kind of ridiculous, how every "alien" race was just another set of (usually white) people with some weird wrinkle on their faces. Well, I have people too closely linked genetically even for that, with a crisis bringing them together on a planet not at all prepared for it. I know that doesn't sound like much, but there ain't no reason for me to give shit away.
What am I doing now, then? I had a conversation that needed telling but it just wasn't coming. I did not have any other activity to record, because I hadn't done any planning. So, eh.
I'm at a table in the dining room where dining almost never happens but card-playing does, surrounded by bookshelves, and across from me a young lady is drawing off the cuff and remarkably so. I can't say exactly what she's drawing, because she hates to be watched while she works, so my laptop is obscuring my view and I'm not going to interfere by moving so I can see. But at a glance it's pretty impressive even though she complains about not being able to find her pens and inks and is making do with something else. Immediately I ask myself, why can I not just write a story or snippet or word picture the same way? Do I have an image, an idea, a concept? Can I just paint it with words? Why the hell not?
Throughout my life I've told myself I was an intense artist just trying to create a space in which to create. But the truth, as demonstrated once opportunity was created, is that I am more comfortable in supporting roles. I spent a lot of time this past weekend dealing with a clogged kitchen drain and ultimately to no avail. With a more truly artistic temperament I would not have done this. I would have written more, or practiced piano, or applied some of my unique calligraphy to some substrate or other as part of an experiment in art-making, or cleared out the garage so I could finally make those flickering LED-candle chandeliers ... or done the brakes on the Jeep, I dunno, point is for whatever deeply-seated psychological reason I am often driven more to support and enable than I am to build and create. There's nothing wrong with this, obviously, especially when one lives with people who can benefit. But it raises a question of just what sort of person I am, and if I feel frustrated, or someone nearby is frustrated by the mixed messages, it behooves me to figure that out. I mean, I'm in my friggin' fifties. The attraction with guys this age is they know what they're about. But I'm still working on it.
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Just before going to sleep last night I jotted this down where others could see it and comment if they chose to. Because the medium was designed to avoid challenging anyone's attention span, it's a pretty short movie review:
Interstellar was pretty dang amazing. I hadn't heard of it -- I'm not up on the movies -- but B____ had seen it sort of by accident and raved about it, and the next night a passel of teenagers wanted to see it, so I took 'em. It had the elements I really appreciate: believable people in a heart-rending story, and believably good hard science. I've never seen cosmology dramatized any better.When the credits were rolling I wanted to sit and ponder awhile, but the teenagers got up right away and went to the exit and so I got up too. The film doesn't really raise great puzzling questions, but it has characters and feelings and scenes and interactions worth savoring. The ending was less of an ending and more of a transition to a next chapter and I wanted to follow it. Still do.
I'm probably not the first person to notice it was sort of an upgrade to 2001, but while less groundbreaking it was also less confusing. The science was stretched into magic here and there, and humanity was saved by the thinnest of hairs, but what do you want, it was a movie. And when it ended after two hours and fifty minutes, I wanted more.
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Now and then I write stuff that's fun to read. Not so today. Kind of very matter-of-fact, aren't I.
5 comments:
For the writing -- I have a problem in that I can be blessed with a beautiful vignette, but rarely an entire plot. Plotting is difficult for me. Envisioning an entire story and the complex threads within seems beyond my grasp.
I realize I do NOT have the bit of brain power that artists possess. I wish I did. But I am blessed with smarts and the ability to see things, patterns that often resolve issues. I guess I can't have it all. Maybe my troubleshooting skills take up the same kinds of brain connections that artistic talents do, or some such, and you can't have both.
MOVIE SPOILER ALERT!!
there are some questions, of course. The underlying message that global climate change is going to make the earth turn against us forcing us to flee, or that humanity has the drive to survive and the question of what form will humanity take in the distant future, etc. Or you can pick apart the representation of time in a physical space, etc.
There is that. There is a lot to chew on, actually. I'm just lazy enough to enjoy what I'm fed without making more out of it.
Which also expresses what I'm angsty about. I'm not as good at troubleshooting as I used to be. I don't feel as good -- or perhaps motivated -- at story crafting as I used to be. I wonder if that's just plain old getting old. I'm content to fix and build that others might enjoy - for ex I'm very happy to see the electric trike get taken back and forth in the street by a young person, without ever needing to pick up Burnerchix with it. I'm wondering if maybe contentment is enough after all, if I look at my actions rather than my supposed ambitions.
Re the film (for which anyone who wants to avoid spoilers should just hit the Back button at this point), I liked that Earth's apparent demise seemed to be a climate change thing -- I guess it had to be, given the dust storms -- but the "blight" affecting crops one species at a time smacked of genetic engineering gone wrong, which I see as one of the other Really Big Things humanity could do to kill the home planet.
Yes, the Monsanto Effect. Heh.
I've taken to watching a series I found on Netflix caked "The 100", which is a post-apoc setting, some 97 years after nukes asked wiped out life on the planet. Humans in space stations survived, banded together, and resumed life. They need to see if earth can sort life, so they send down 100 prisoners who happen to be minors.
And everything that humanity has been and is simply picks up where it left off, effectively.
I like seeing the same issues being viewed through new scenarios and settings, but sometimes I really wish somebody would come up with a new problem to explore.
I like seeing your swypos and automatically knowing what words you meant because I get the same swypos.
I've always dug post-apoc stories but there are so damn many these days I can't keep up. One of my favorites was written by a Cal professor. It was published in 1949, but there have been a few more written since.
The 100 sounds Lord-of-the-Flies-ish? Or sort of like The Maze Runner. All these twists of the same theme.
The attraction with guys this age is they know what they're about. But I'm still working on it.
You're buying into the universe the advertisers created, where a pint of bottled water is sufficient to cool off an overheated Camaro in the desert.
No.
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