RandomCandor

And don’t worry. I’m not going to spoil a thing.

Having spent the last six months in mortal terror of having someone let loose a sly allusion, a tangential anecdote, that seems innocent, but might, in fact, turn into a seed of a puzzle piece that might ruin Infinite Jest, I’m very sensitive to these things.

And don’t give me that shit about “studies show that so-called ‘spoilers’ don’t diminish people’s enjoyment” – of a book, a movie, whatever.

Those “studies” are based on an average – a jumble of people who don’t give a shit mixed in with a smattering of people who care very much. Leading to an “average” that shows that people, on average, don’t really care all that much.

For those of you who don’t give a shit, or for those of you whose tastes, whose sensibilities, align well with an “average” – do us paranoids a favor and keep your goddamn mouth shut.

You could say I don’t know shit from shit when it comes to literature. I was a goddamned science major, and now I have a masters in business for gods sake.

But in my humble yet reasonably well read opinion, W. Somerset Maugham is the goddamned cat’s meow.

Similarly to Saul Bellow, I consider him one of my closer friends. I think he’s one of the greatest unheralded writers of the 20th century.

I suppose that’s as good a preamble as I could hope for, since I’m trying to share a quote that speaks to how people choose to live their lives. Maybe choose isn’t the right word. Even given freedom, people don’t necessarily “choose” a way to live – it just sort of happens that way. Because of choices that they make. Life is the aggregate of little choices along the way.

Yes I chose to study science. And then business. But in a way, I live my life far, far from those themes.

Anyway, here’s the quote:

“…there are two good things in life, freedom of thought, and freedom of action. In France, you get freedom of action; you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany, you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose.”

I’d better hope to god that I’m more German than French, because I’m sure as shit doing what everybody else does (as in nothing creative, artistic, meaningful…).

At the same time, I feel like I live a fairly rich existence. I have an active and vibrant inner world.

The quote is from Of Human Bondage. Great piece of work, that. Probably his best known. But I can’t say I recommend it. I’d recommend The Moon and Sixpence. Just do it. It’s amazing.

I was just walking home from work listening to Koko and the Sweetmeats, and they’re singing about how there’s no good or evil – just pleasure and pain.

Common refrain. We heard it before from Jane’s Addiction. Who didn’t exactly invent it.

And I have to say that I don’t agree. I do believe there is such thing as good and evil. Even pure good and pure evil.

Not in a George W way though. I don’t believe that there is such thing as a pure manifestation of evil in the material universe. No action, comment, sentiment, man or woman is pure evil. But that doesn’t mean that pure evil doesn’t exist.

Take a concept like spite. Now spite’s pretty bad. Spite can cause pain. But pure evil?

No.

Maybe we could break spite into component parts. You might say that the concept of spite is made up of “a will to do harm to others” and “self-protection”. A will to do harm is pretty obvious, but spite also contains a self-protection mechanism; sort of a sour grapes mentality (social psychologists call this cognitive dissonance). Sure, spite is made up of other things too, but “a will to do harm to others” and “self-protection” are some pretty heavy hitters in there.

Ok. So spite is not purely evil – even though it can lead to pain.

“Self-protection” is mostly good, and it could be argued that “a will to do harm to others” is mostly evil. Maybe it’s not pure evil, but you could do the same thing to “a will to do harm to others” that we did for spite; we could break it into component parts, and weigh them on the evil meter.

The point is, if you keep breaking these concepts down, eventually you get to the concept of pure evil. In theory anyway. If you continue to be able to form the words and distinctions to continue breaking things down.

If pure evil is a component of things, then it exists.

Saying pure evil doesn’t exist is like saying atoms don’t exist. You can’t see them or touch them, but they’re a fundamental part of the things that exist.

Any one emotion, idea, action or person may not be pure evil, but pure evil can be a component of that emotion, idea, action or person.

Yes pleasure and pain exists. Yes good and evil exist.

Tonight my inspiration is my friend Katie, who told me she likes my blog. So this one goes out to Katie.

I say this a lot (maybe just to myself), so I thought I should write it down.

It’s a definition of friendship. Not the only one, probably not the most true. Friendship is like God that way – lots of definitions, most of them true. Here it is:

“Your friends are those with whom you have the greatest efficiency of purpose, when your purpose is amusement.”

Mark Linkous is dead. He killed himself about a year ago.

But I was thinking about him this morning. Because I figured out how to play “Smothered in Hugs” on guitar. Not hard.

Now, of course, Smothered in Hugs was written by Robert Pollard and originally performed by Guided by Voices. But I’ll always associate the song with Linkous and Sparklehorse.

Sparklehorse performed the song at a show at Bimbos 365 Club in San Francisco – must have been about 2002. But the way he did it, he had these two backup singers singing a high two-piece harmony above his vocals. It was really all about those backup singers. They created this ethereal, painfully fragile sonic soundscape that just enveloped, cradled the crowd. I felt like my heart was going to explode for four minutes straight it was so beautiful. Like heaven raining down all around you.

I found a recording of Sparklehorse doing it live, with the backup singers. But you can only really get a glimpse of what it was like from this.

Film is a great way to bring esoteric ideas to a greater audience. So I had high hopes for Margin Call, a movie that is meant to portray dramatically the actions of the financial emperors who cut the world economy off at the knees.

It could have worked. Look at the cast. Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons. What a crew. And the bad guy from Heroes and Paul Bettany to boot. Talk about power brokers. It could have worked. Cast, plot, setting, timing – amidst a popular revolution that is finally emerging to combat the unassailable forces the movie seeks to demonize. There’s just one thing.

It’s boring.

They kill it with unnecessary melodrama and overcomplicate it by layering on vague allusions to how “big” this terrible, unnamed thing is that is going on.

It honestly popped into my head a couple of times that the movie might be a very clever backhanded compliment crafted by Karl Rove republicans. An attempt to swiftboat the popular movement spearheaded by the Occupy Wall Street protests. (I don’t honestly think that)

I kept thinking of what I’d tell people if they asked me what it was about: “Well, it’s full of drama, people saying things, and acting!”.

No shortage of acting in Margin Call. Heaps of it. Layers of it. Meandering roads of it, steaming piles of it.

But sometimes it works! Some scenes really are intense. Some scenes are poignant. Some scenes play perfectly and are great achievements. But some are just downright silly.

Maybe I’m being a little too harsh. I suppose the movie could still help strengthen the movement. It could at least make some people curious about the fraud, the outright criminal activity that lead to millions of people losing their ability to provide for themselves and their families. Criminal activity for which the perpetrators were handsomely rewarded with bailouts by the US government.

(aside – I do think that the bailouts of the banks were necessary and helped keep this country and the greater world from the depravity of a full depression)

While it’s possible that Margin Call may help to bring the perpetrators of the financial crisis into the public spotlight, it does nothing to help Americans understand the nature of the crisis, the political and legal legerdemain* that lead to it.

And in that, I feel like Margin Call does the public, and the movement, a disservice. If a movie comes along now, that really does all that, does help bring understanding of the steps that lead to the Great Recession, the public’s response may well be: “Eh. I already saw a movie about the crisis. I guess it was okay, but I don’t need to see another one”.

I still love Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons though. And this guy Paul Bettany is cool.

No wait, I got it – nothing is fucked here! They could still come out with a roman-a-clef epic about the forces that lead to the great depression. Yeah, that could work. It could be a movie in which the resolution is the crafting of the Glass Steagall act

*(forgive me)