Derailed by the movie ‘Seven Pounds’
I was easing into my day, gearing up for a lot of writing I need to get done, when I thought, well, I’ll get that netflix movie out of the way while I’m having brunch, so I can send it back today.
That movie was Seven Pounds, featuring Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. Wow. A surprisingly disturbing film about guilt and redemption, selfless giving and unexpected love. As we discover who the protagonist really is and what drives him, the foreshadowed conclusion begins to make perfect sense. Also intriguing is the insight offered by the screenwriter, Grant Nieporte, on the supplemental dvd material: years ago he met a man who carried a profound sadness, “the saddest person he’d ever met”. He learned afterwards that the man was responsible for a national tragedy that had killed people, and obviously carried the weight of guilt and remorse even a decade later. That notion inspired this movie.
The end result was something thought-provoking in a way that continues to haunt, and by the end it moved me to tears. I highly recommend it it, especially if you want a provocative psychological exploration, or a love story embedded in dark trappings.
I seem to be stumbling into movie media lately that, while entertaining, is also disturbing and provocative on deeper levels. I already posted here about my reaction to Donnie Darko. I also recently saw The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Barry Pepper, who stars opposite Tommy Lee Jones in that movie, also has a role in Seven Pounds. He reminds me of Matthew McConaughey - they could be brothers - but hasn’t been on my radar before. Three Burials is sometimes falsely billed as a “dark comedy”. Don’t watch it for that reason (there’s very little comedic in it), but it is another unexpectedly deep movie about honor, justice, guilt and redemption.
So there is a batch of brain- and emotion-stretching titles worth checking out, if you’re into that kind of thing. Not exactly “uplifting” watching, any of them, but definitely serious story-telling at work.
And now, somehow, I must find my way back into the writing zone…
New blog for my left-brain posts & commentary
I’ve started a new blogcalled Cogitations that focuses on current events, political and social commentary, sociology and left-brain intensive things of that ilk. I’ve decided I’d rather have a forum dedicated to those kinds of excursions, rather than mixing that content in here. I want Notes From the Lizard Lair to be more thematically about art, play, culture, writing as craft, and right-brain things. So I decided to put up a soapbox elsewhere, for, well, soapbox moments, and related effusions. ::grin::
I hope you’ll check out the new site, and subscribe to the feed if you like it. Blog postings are sparse on the ground there as of yet, but there is a sampling of articles, essays and other thinkish bits under the “Articles, etc.” menu item.
Donnie Darko
Call me slow catching up with what’s au courant, but I just (finally) watched Donnie Darko.
I don’t know whether to say “wow” or “hm.” Hm, because I think most of the movie was so-so. The story didn’t totally engage me. I thought I was watching a sort of meandery semi-psychodrama about a troubled teen.
And then the last 10 minutes of the movie happened, and I’m still sitting here saying, “Wow.”
I really didn’t see that coming.
I won’t say more about the plot, lest doing so be a spoiler for you the reader. If you haven’t seen this cult classic, check it out. It also explores the mutability of time, and that (as you may know from my sf writings) is always a subject near and dear to my heart. I read the time-related twists in the plot as a creative exercise - it is not in keeping with my own metaphysical experience of extra-dimensional things - but nevertheless, it gives the necessary punch to the storyline.
Trippy.
Also a must-see for members of the Church of MaryMcDonnell[1] , of which I think I must count myself a member, although she plays a relatively minor role in the scheme of things.
****
[1] She who did such a stellar kick-ass job of portraying President Laura Roslin in the re-envisioned Battlestar Galatica. Another quality world I can’t recommend highly enough, if this has somehow passed you by at this late date.
Emerging from my cave
I hit a wall with my writing, which is why I haven’t posted here for a while. I’m torn between plot dilemmas which need to be resolved so I can conclude my book, and the need to do more freelance work to take care of mundane things like bills. The problem with book writing is that the money pipeline is very long and very slender, until a certain critical mass of books in print is reached. I’m not there yet.
So, I’ve been forced to revamp some of my work practices, i.e., what I do for income, while leaving me time to carry on with the writing that is central to my life as a novelist. I will spare you the angst and the tooth-gnashing that is involved in this process. I blog elsewhere for that purpose (ah, the multiple-me’s in cyberspace). But I did want to mention the reason for the radio silence. I keep seeing things that pique my interest that I want to blog about, but then skip it in order to carry on with my isolated freaking out about my book writing. This year has been one of creative insights and freakouts, alternately. I suppose at the end of this process I’ll be a bigger, stronger, better writer for it, since I refuse to entertain the possibility that I will be a basket case blubbering in the corner of my hermit cave.
Speaking of caves, I can tell spring has sprung, because I am slowly getting restive in this long-term writer’s retreat I’m doing. Am not completely happy with my creative process or methods, or my social resources, or several other things. Am starting to think of ways to make alterations and remedy what ails me. I don’t know if that’s a good sign: when I get serious about change, it’s like falling out of a tree for me. Things get very different, very quickly. It’s like throwing all the cards in the air and seeing what new pattern they land in.
Don’t know where this may lead. I’m still percolating, over here. Also wrestling with my eternal conundrum about balance between book writing and immediate income work. Gah.
Where’s my clone when I need her?
Why I want to learn Welsh
Mary Hopkin was, if I recall correctly, the first independent artist the Beatles fell in love with and offered a contract to shortly after they founded their Apple recording label, in the mid-late ’60s. She was a young fresh-faced Welsh girl, with the voice of an angel. Her English language hit out of the box was “Those Were the Days,” my friend, we thought they’d never end…
But elsewhere, hidden away on her one (and only) hit album, was a song sung all in Welsh. “Y Blodyn Gwyn,” was the title. Total Greek to me. But ambrosia to my ears.
You can hear it here.
After falling in love with this song, I looked at programs to study Gaelic with Irish families (you lived with them for 6 months - part of a “living language” program that existed at the time, early-mid ’70s). But ultimately I joined the Army and took my admittedly large language aptitude off to the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, CA, where I became fluent in German…
But.
A large part of me remains gaelic-ly inclined. Y Blodyn Gwyn, indeed. (Also musically inclined. I still aspire to learn lap-harp, to the tune of the anent song. Have already taught myself jigs on a violin, or should I call it fiddle, idionsyncratically tuned, but that’s a post for later…)
I still have no idea what the lyrics mean, lo these many years later. If any reader would care to share a translation of those beautiful lyrics, I’d be most grateful. And maybe, when I have a long summer free, I will still find my way to do a language-in-residence program in Wales or Ireland (of course I know they’re different flavors of Gaelic - but it’s the Gaelic that matters to me, and I have affinity for both areas, so I’d be happy where-ever…)
So many languages, so little time…
And here’s to Mary Hopkin, long may she wave.
