An Actor Will Seek Revenge!

(Another title borrowed from a song! "An Actor Will Seek Revenge" by 'Destroyer.' Not because Destroyer is the best band ever, but because Destroyer is the best band of the 21st century.)

I'm going to hate these game presentations for class. Cameras hate me as much as I dislike them; actually, more so, I've never physically mutilated a camera. (Maybe once when I was the Incredible Hulk for Halloween as a child. My mom just didn't know when to stop! RAGE! [My Hulk Hands actually stopped me from destroying the camera, probably. Truth be told, I was never the Incredible Hulk for Halloween. I was always a knight, but everyone thought I was a vampire because I made my knight costume out of a vampire costume and my canine teeth were unnaturally pointy until I took sandpaper to them! That's a lie too, they're still really pointy; pointier perhaps, considering teeth are larger in adulthood.])

Anyway, I forgot what I was typing, something about a camera then Hulk hands then how no one can tell the difference between a knight and a vampire. I think the first thing was the only important one. Yeah, cameras are pretty lame, in my opinion. I'm 1/16th Native American, maybe I can say it's against my tribal religious beliefs to be taped. Hopefully they wouldn't question my severe chalkiness. (Also, I realize my title has very little to do with anything I typed.)

Why Has Time Existed for so Long?

For some time, I've been working on an oil painting I've titled "Whiskey Priest." It depicts a clergyman with a headdress on fire, as well as traditional Vatican robes with a flask in a front pocket. I decided on Spanish-type brush strokes because I felt those weren't used very often or often enough in portraits. (Traditional Spanish brush strokes, by the way. The cake-y, messy paint with a lot of incomplete lines. Actually, I could save the reader some time and describe it as Fauve inspired. [Also, I know Fauve is a French movement! Just sayin', looks a lot like Spanish brush strokes.])

Then what do I find? Maurice De Vlaminck using nearly the exact same blotched brush strokes in his portrait of Apollinaire. (Would link the painting, but the copy-right restrictions inhibit me to do so.) I feel I should know that using inspiration from a particular movement will conclude in a painting similar to another painter's. I also feel I could have invented those brush strokes on my own, bringing me to my point: why has time existed for so long? Without any inspiration I could have been Le Fauve, I could have defined the absurd and I could have made fire or something to that effect. Everything good has been done in the 20th century. (Excluding fire, that's probably a little bit older, 19th century?)

Well, two paragraphs of whining is always fun to get out. Therapeutic, if I may say so! Also, I feel like mentioning something positive; 'Notorious Lightning' has been re-released on vinyl with a faster tempo on three songs! To me, this means it's only a matter of time until 'City of Daughters' will be released again with "School, and the Girls Who Go There" actually on it.

Art Show this Saturday!

Well, I've neglected to do anything in my off topic blog for some time now. I haven't really done much, read much or said much. However, this Saturday I'm participating in an art show hosted by my school.

Nothing very serious, of course. A reworking of a Salvador Dali I completed in charcoal and pencil and a Piet Mondrian-inspired painting I've done with oil and an acrylic contour will be featured. (The Mondrian idea was pretty nifty, honestly. Adding dimension to his Paris, London and New York paintings and implementing opposing geometric shapes for the primary blocks.)

As well as my work being featured in the show, I'll be demonstrating basic oil piling techniques on another individual work during the show, to my understanding. (Starting with contours of a mountain, elaborating it into a lobotomy scene; I think it's a pretty great idea. I've looking forward to working on this for awhile.)

"I made donations to the Plague..."

I've purchased a copy of "The Plague" a few weeks ago when visiting my brother. (He lives in a college town; there were bookstores all about, very good weekend! Usually, I have the option of one bookstore with only one shelf devoted to literature; most everything else consists of memoirs, Stephen King/Dean Koontz dime-a-dozens and Twilight-esque books. As my tone suggests, I find this almost sinful. A Books-a-million was to be built several years ago, but the production was cancelled due to a lack of interest. A restaurant with a motif of eating peanuts and discarding the shells onto the floor was built in its place.)

Anyway, this isn't about my distaste for business decisions! This is one of my usual blogs; comments on a particular book I've enjoyed or disliked. If you've forgotten, "The Plague" by Albert Camus.

I've moved on from the key points of any philosophy supported by Camus, but I cannot refused him the title of a wordsmith. First, literary devices: Never before have I read anything where fluent but exemplary citations of applied literary devices could be found. It speaks volumes that Camus could allude to his own works in this book; I believe he recognized himself as a marvelous author. The second allusion I have found, is to Franz Kafka's relatively short work, "The Trail." Kafka is easily in my list of greats, so this further amused me. The revelation of the narrator was surprising; it was who the reader should have suspected from the beginning, but there was such misdirection in the way of Grand. Falsified foreshadowing is something I can honestly say I've rarely seen used.

Usually, this final paragraph is devoted to some sort of critique, but the only negative I've found in "The Plague" is how utterly depressing it is. Like any Camus book, this ends abruptly and pointlessly, as his absurdest title should have suggested. (Also, in my Vintage International print of the book, there is a misspelling on the seventh page, a minor flaw.)

(I didn't have a chance to revise this post yesterday, so there were a few misspellings, sorry. Also, I forgot to cite the title when I typed this up. It's a section of the fourth line in the first and third stanza of a Destroyer song called "Your Blood." [Destroyer, despite its name suggesting otherwise, is not a metal band. I just felt it necessary to mention this.])

Comments on "The Importance of Being Earnest"

My mother inexplicably bought a copy of "The Importance of Being Earnest" for me, perhaps, two days ago? I've never before enjoyed a play so thoroughly!

First, the humor, it's perfectly executed. Such well contrived wit shrouded with an ingenious subtlety. I particularly enjoy a comment of Cecily's on the subject of three volume novels, as I've coupled this play with "The Marble Faun," the fourth book which broke Hawthorne's three volume novel. Also, the sheer candor exhibited by Algernon in the first two acts is, in itself, humorous.

There are a select few things in the play I did not enjoy, however. Jack (or Ernest) seems terribly dull throughout the play. The play ends with a silly pun, only increasing my distaste for Ernest. (I understand the pun is commonly used by Wilde, as it is expressive of his wit. And I understand the entire play is based on this pun, but I can't say I care for puns. Puns, especially such obvious puns, are probably my most despised literary device.)

Sort of Terrible

Well, I haven't worked on a personal blog in some time. No excuse for not posting one, other than getting a new metronome for my birthday to practice 5-4s.

So, I haven't read much lately. I believe I have re-read 'In the Penal Colony' once or twice, but, out of respect, I could not type anything about my favorite story. [No Exit] is the last book (or play, I suppose) I've read with which I feel no prefatory connection.

Honestly, I found it rather bland. The dialogue is unnatural, even by 1946's formality standards. Also, the idea of hell being other people is a bit generalized and contradictory to Sartre's philosophies, expected of Sartre. The semantic simplicity may be a product of translation or, maybe, relatively modern plays were simply written in this fashion; I'm not sure.

The character Inez was quite enjoyable, though. Through what I see as the modern male perspective, I feel it is easier to identify with her rather than the male character, Garcin, as Garcin is a despicable male stereotype. Inez can, however, seem as insensitive and physically overbearing as Garcin at some moments; scenes of her furiously trying to proposition Estelle particularly have this effect. One must consider Inez is being faced with an eternity in the same room as this woman; this is no true excuse, granted, but viewing Inez as the more positive character offers some structure to this otherwise lacking play.

Existentialism and Sartre

Philosophy has been the subject occupying much of my time lately. It seems to directly coincide with literature, which shall always remain my primary interest.

I began peering into the seemingly infinite world of philosophy through Sartre; I found the existentialism that he coined to be rather overrated. Absurdities, dissolving the objective and object (not social) nausea are all I've adopted, but I'm glad I've discovered his work. Without Sartre's philosphies, I wouldn't have explored my own, less counterintuitive, thoughts, nor would I know why Kafka and Dostoyevsky's works are classified as vaguely existential.

My own ideas are a bit nihilistic, but much less depressing. Existence seems to have no true definition, and, from what is generally considered the (male) psycological perspective, our yearning for our own destruction or morose emotion seem obvious. However, there is one force or aspect that is rarely denoted as positive in nihlism, that, for my philosphy, is imperative to an explanation to our existence on earth consuming as much time as it does, other people. (Another idea I've played with is man's amusement from pain. Think Caligula, it could be possible man sees the parallel of his most prominent feature, life, in "things" he kills slowly. Man may enjoy seeing himself dying slowly as a wounded animal as opposed to ceasing life efficiently. [This is completely irrelevant to the idea I'm attempting to express.])

With my philosophy, superiority and inferiority cannot exist, for every existence is equally unimportant to the universe. This creates a psycology which makes interaction much easier, as we all partake in this experimental process. However, this also relies on my ideas not being universal; society needs an opposing philosophy for a classless system to exist, for people practicing my belief would look for a rational system within it. Otherwise, this is simply an aspect of Marxism which will meet the same, socially inequal, fate.