Vanity Cards Are Not in Vain

I watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory, an enjoyable sitcom, when I noticed something odd passing by in a second on the credits. You see it above. A subliminal message, perhaps? I had to investigate.

I learned on the Internet that this is no secret, but it was news to me. The very successful TV writer and producer Chuck Lorre puts in what he calls Vanity Cards at the end of every TV sitcom episode he produces. It started already in 1995.

In these messages he reflects on all kinds of aspects of life, show business, or whatever comes to his mind. It's charming – and it shows his commitment to his creative urge. Surely, the man has plenty to do as it is, and makes enough money to sit back by the pool and drink Madeira from the beginning of the previous century.

But he got this idea, and he can't help himself. It has created a cult of sorts, and sometimes there's noise in the Hollywood corridors. Charlie Sheen called one of these Vanity Cards evidence in his conflict with Lorre about Two and a Half Men. In other instances, Lorre has been accused of blatantly supporting Obama (and that's sure to aggravate the bosses of any business). So, of course his Vanity Cards have been censored more than once.

Here's one example of that, which I picked up from Chuck Lorre's own website. It's both cute and accurate, so of course it makes every social predator crazy:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #375 (CENSORED)
Forgive me a moment of political reflection, but I'd like to take this opportunity to discuss something that's been on my mind for a very long time. I've always understood the Republican Party to have, as its central platform, the idea that human beings should never be dominated by a monolithic government which tells them how to live their lives. I like that. It feels like a fundamental truth, and I can't imagine any right-minded person finding fault with it. I've also noticed that there are many in the Grand Old Party who insist on telling people exactly how they should live. For example: Alcohol, yes. Pot, no. Straight marriage, yes. Gay marriage, no. Jesus, yes. Others prophets, no. The death penalty, yes. Abortion, no. Capitalism, yes (by force if need be). Collectivism, hell no! Added to this is an inclination to find anyone who chooses these other paths to be deeply repugnant. All of which causes me to wonder, is there a middle ground? In fact, are there big political gains awaiting those of a conservative bent if they can figure out a way to celebrate individual freedom while simultaneously tolerating diversity of opinion and lifestyle? With that in mind, I humbly propose the following slogan designed to both embrace this paradox and ignite the general electorate in the coming presidential campaign.

He illustrated it with the image above. I find his reasoning flawless, and what's more important: humorous. I think I'd like the guy, if we ever meet. It's obvious to me that he writes from an inner necessity, what someone called a burning wound on the soul. Every writer should.

And he's got a neat track record, too. Two and a Half Men (which I wrote about here and The Big Bang Theory, just to mention two. They're skilled and innovative examples of sitcom when it shines – for a while. It's an art where durability is neither possible nor desirable.

I would have spent a night catching up on his Vanity Cards, if I didn't already on the fourth episode of the Big Bang Theory fifth season that I examined come across this one:

Enough said, except for a couple of missing lines on the poem:

But when some people anyway talk

decency takes a leap.

Chinese Divination

The last few months I've been busy producing new websites, on the theme of ancient methods of divination. One of the oldest is the Chinese classic I Ching (The Book of Change), with its 64 hexagrams and their accompanying texts giving clues to the future. Try it out – you'll be surprised.

I found a splendid script on the Internet, so I could make an actual online version of the I Ching, where you can try it out without needing any additional equipment than your computer or your smartphone. Here it is:

I Ching Online

There, you also find links to additional information about the I Ching – its background, hexagrams and trigrams, basic principles, and so on. The material is divided into three websites, of which the the core one is:

the-iching.org

I Ching is a Chinese classic (also spelled Yi jing) dating back to at least 1,000 BC. It consists of 64 chapters, each devoted to one of the 64 hexagrams. These are made up of six lines that are either solid or split in two, symbolizing yin and yang, the ancient polarities of Chinese cosmology, well-known worldwide through the circular image enclosed here.

Each hexagram represents a concept that becomes the answer to the question asked in divination. There's an explanatory text to each. Also, additional statements are made when one of the lines is marked. It may sound complicated, but it's quite easy once you try it.

What's particular about the I Ching is that its divination is done by words: the name of the hexagram as well as the words of the accompanying text. We are creatures of words, so they tend to tell us a lot. Already the name of the hexagram usually gives an enlightening clue to the question at hand. And more often than not, the text is so accurate to the situation it's eerie.

I urge you to try it out. You'll not be disappointed. At the very least, it gives you a chance to contemplate your question in a new light. And please come back to this blog if you feel like commenting the experience.

Fame Must Be Raw

I tried to see the 2009 remake of Fame, about New York students of the performing arts. But it didn't grab me, not at all. It was just a bunch of scenes. The film makers might have watched the 1980 original, but they didn't learn from it.

The characters were bland and the dramas they went through were PG at the most. The whole thing had been turned into a polished middle class banality. Nothing to make you care.

The 1980 version was much more daring and extreme. The characters were distinctly chiseled and their interaction wild, as if all the animals in a zoo had been put in one cage. Of course, the stories told through them also had a real bite.

What went wrong in 2009? Well, apart from the director Kevin Tancharoen and script writer Allison Burnett being completely clueless or they just couldn't be bothered, the film chickened out from the most important ingredient: raw. It needed to be raw.

I mean, assemble hundreds of extremely expressive teenagers with spectacular dreams – that's not going to be Sunday school. They're not going to keep neat hairdos and speak softly about personal shortcomings.

Fame of the 1980's was directed by Alan Parker, who knew the above very well and didn't hesitate to indulge in it. He stripped the young actors bare and whipped them. Great drama ensued.

The plot is a difficult one to complete in a tantalizing way, because the protagonist – the one learning and growing from the experience, realizing something vastly important at the end of it – is the whole class of students. They both enter and exit the adventure simultaneously, changing from naive and insecure adolescents to scarred but confident adults. It's the classical coming of age thing, but as a collective experience. Mahayana, so to speak.

Without very fragile characters struck by very dramatic events in this process, the film is nothing but a collage of song and dance routines.

It's difficult but far from impossible to have a big group as the protagonist of a drama. It's been done, also by the grand master himself.

In Romeo and Juliet, the whole town of Verona is the protagonist. All its inhabitants, including both families of Montague and Capulet, need to realize the error of their way, regret and reform. The young lovers Romeo and Juliet are the heroes showing them the way and dying for it – because the couple can't solve the problem for the whole town.

At the end of the play, the prince is the one to tell the families what they needed blood and death to see:

“Capulet! Montague!
See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
And I for winking at your discords too
Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.”

Fame doesn't contain a comparable bloodbath, so it would have needed to do as much as possible with what it had. Heightening the stake, tightening the garrote, increasing the noise. Alan Parker certainly did. That's why his version will live, while the 2009 one will soon be swept under the carpet and forgotten.

Here's the 1980 film on DVD at Amazon.
Here's the 2009 film on DVD at Amazon.

Actors Interruptus

I've become addicted to Inside the Actors Studio, the TV show where James Lipton interviews famous movie stars at length. Like any addiction, it's a combination of delight and agony.

I have no other acting experience than some childhood moments of bewilderment mixed with horror, leading me instead to the illusion of safety in holding the pen. Still, what impresses me the most with Inside the Actors Studio is how candid and generous the actors are, sharing their experiences without any concern for what it might do to their persona or reputation.

That shows devotion to the art and to the fellow artists – the aspiring actors in the auditorium. It's sweet to witness.

I've seen a bundle of the interviews and all the actors impress me. Some more than others, of course. For example, Angelina Jolie, one of the far too few women invited to the show, was refreshingly uninhibited and smiled with amusement while watching everything as if being in the audience.

Sean Penn said so many wise things – mostly about bigger issues than mere acting – that I gladly ponder for years. Billy Bob Thornton did sort of the same, with an attitude similar to the 18th century idea of the sauvage savant, the wise savage.

Alec Baldwin was quite frank about the business, although still affectionate about the art struggling within it. Tom Cruise worked hard at giving the students as much as he ever could, mentioning Scientology just briefly and humbly.

Dustin Hoffman gave some instant demonstrations of virtuoso acting. Ricky Gervais did the same by improvised comedy that he could go on with forever. Not to mention Robin Williams, but everybody knew that already. And so on. Delightful.

My agony, then, is the editing. Each interview actually goes on for several hours, but is cut down to one, sometimes two. Thereby the answers mostly become as brief as the questions, although it's evident that the actors have so much more to say – and say it to the audience present. I want to hear all of it!

You know how it is with an addiction - there's never enough.

The shortened show is too much of a rhapsody of movies and the awards they brought. At the latter, the actors are usually embarrassed and eager to move on. Rightly so. Awards are rarely to be trusted as indicators of splendid craftsmanship. Instead, the actors prove that by describing their work process and their motivations.

Nor do I care much for how James Lipton always ends his interviews: with the ten questions he got from the French TV host Bernard Pivot, allegedly of Marcel Proust origin. The questions are so trite, I didn't believe for a moment that they were of Proust origin.

They are not. He just happened to write down answers to questions in English confession albums, in his very own way, when he was an adolescent. They were not even the same questions Lipton uses, but sort of along that line. Read more about it here: Proust Questionnaire.

James Lipton's ten questions are rather childish – favorite and least favorite words, ditto sounds and professions, turn-on and turn-off, and favorite curse word. The last question is: “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?”

But Lipton, dean at the Actors Studio, should know mythology better: God's not the one waiting at the pearly gates. Saint Peter is.

Here are some of the shows on DVD at Amazon

Time Flies

Chronos.

One more year ends, a new one starts.
They say that time flies.
It sure does. Fast. High.
I want it to land.
Walk with me.
Step by step, in a slow pace.

As a child, I flew with it, shared its wings, urged it on.
Go fast, go high!
Watch out for what you wish.
I got my will – when I gave it up.

That's of what time is made:
Grief of days locked in the past, hope for days to come, and fear of the day that is.
None more real, none less so.
You must be winged to bear it.

Time is a beast, too.
It chews on you.
Bit by bit, it eats you up.
Spits you out.
Leaves you in the waste, as it takes off to find new prey.
There is prey.

But then, time is joy as well.
That of a tale we love to be told.
From here to there, through a land that's not the same twice.
Not once.
Still, we know it when we see it.
It's called life.
From birth to death, it would not be if there were no time for it.
So, we've got time.
And we want it.
More of it.


This is a syllable poem, by which I mean a poem composed only of one-syllable words. Check my website for more of them: stenudd.com

Happy New Year!

The time is out of joint.

Harry Potter vs. Voldemort – so what?

It might be blasphemy, but I have trouble appreciating the Harry Potter stories. I might not even know what I'm talking about, because I only managed to read something like a hundred pages of the first book – the rest is just what I've seen in the movies. That's fine with me.

I just saw the last set of Harry Potter movies, the Deathly Hallows, and I can't believe they made the books justice.

The first part was consistently dark, with minimal colors – mainly blue and greenish to signal angst. Who would enjoy two and a half hours of that? And for what?

It was frequently obvious that scenes were extended for no other reason than to fill a movie night halfway through the book. J. K. Rowling had announced that this was the last one, which was obvious enough from the book's ending, so everybody was eager to cash in as much as possible.

The seventh and last movie made it clear that these movies were made only for the fans, who knew their Harry Potter stories by heart. The plot was so chaotic and unclear that only the ones already very familiar with it could follow. That's not a movie. It's just a very elaborate way of retelling a story the listeners already know, just because they want to hear it again.

Well, lots of people have read most of the Harry Potter books, so the huge audience received was no surprise.

But the movies are reported to have been quite truthful to the books, and J. K. Rowling seems firm enough to have made sure of it. Then, I must conclude that there is much lacking in her own work.

Baby Magic

The reason I lost interest in the first Harry Potter book after some 100 pages was its predictability and lack of imagination. It's just a regular English boarding school, spiced up with a little magic – of such conventional kind: wands and brooms. Come on! Aleister Crowley yawns in his grave.

When it comes to magic I need the writer to show some insight into it. How does it work and why does it work? The most believable stories about magic show clever intricacy, giving the impression of the author being the foremost of magicians. It has to contain a somehow believable magic cosmology.

In the Harry Potter stories, though, the wands are mostly used like the revolvers of cowboys. Bang! Bang! This spell and that spell in toy Latin, as if magic works with the same mechanically straight cause and effect as every phenomenon of natural science. That's not magic. Fireworks, maybe. Special effects and Hocus Pocus, but not magic.

Black and White Is Gray

What was also trite and boring was the very conventional black and white of the whole Harry Potter setup. Good, innocent people fighting genuinely evil ones. A villain striving for power just to have it, and heroes struggling to stop him from getting it. It's never that easy, never that black and white.

Already the unbalance of evil being so much more powerful – except at the very last scene of each movie, though mostly almost only by chance – is as twisted as it's common in fiction. Evil keeps popping up its ugly head, but is always outnumbered, inferior, doomed. Sometimes it takes a while and proves costly, but there you have it. Evil is a loser.

It's like darkness and light. The former is utterly helpless against the latter. There's no match. Just let there be light and the darkness is blown away, as effortlessly as if by speaking the words only. That's how it is.

Predator and Prey

Even in fairytales and their recent incarnation fantasy, this has to be understood. A story is pointless when its villains do bad things just because they want to be bad. Aristotle stated that in a good drama, the characters should act as they must, because of the situation they are in. No good or bad. Just people trying to do the best of the mess they are in.

So, for example, what drives Voldemort? Why does he act the way he does? Evil is no answer, just another question: why is he evil – or more correctly: why does he persist with evil deeds?

The same should be asked about Harry Potter. Why does he continue to struggle, fight, and suffer tremendously? Not because he's righteous. That's as blank as being evil. In these stories, it seems the only reason he has is that Voldemort keeps hunting him.

Predator and prey. Not interesting enough for seven increasingly thick books and eight increasingly dark movies.

Ten Years Once

No, I find so many things lacking in the Harry Potter suite – as far as I know it. Nothing tempts me to sit down and read all the brick size novels. There are so many other books of which I know that the reward for reading them is immense.

The Harry Potter series has gone on for something like ten years. J. K. Rowling allowed for her characters to grow accordingly. I guess that's why her initial audience kept following. They grew with the stories, or the other way around. But will coming generations care to embark on the same voyage?

Maybe some of the children of that first generation of followers will, inspired by their parents. Maybe. But they are better served with new fantastic stories – hopefully ones that say something profound about life, the world, and everything.

Here are the films on DVD at Amazon

What's With the Beard?

Soon, Santa Claus will sneak down the chimney with presents to all good children, with a jolly “Ho, ho, ho!” That's all fine. But what's with that big white beard?

The myth about that jolly fellow evolved in the 19th century, as did the image of him. According to Wikipedia, it sort of started in 1823 with a poem by Clement Clarke Moore, A Visit from St. Nicholas. It can be found in its original version here. The first few lines read:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there

It contains all the now well-known components – the reindeer, the chimney, the toys to the children, and so on.

Santa Claus, by Thomas Nast 1863.

The image of Santa Claus is said to have been shaped by the cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1863, when he changed the common depiction from a tall and thin man to the obese charmer we know today. Thomas Nast made several pictures over the years to follow, where Santa's characteristics became more and more accentuated, in line with how caricatures evolve.

Santa Claus, by Thomas Nast 1881.

The Santa image got a boost in a 1930's Coca-Cola campaign with pictures of Santa Claus made by Haddon Sundblom. Through Sundblom's brush, Santa's costume received its distinctly red color and his beard got that fuzzy and white, as if it was nothing but the false beard worn by so many impersonators in the shopping malls.

Santa Claus, by Haddon Sundblom.

But the big beard is far from unique on Santa Claus. It's carried by several other mythological figures – and it tends to be bigger, the more prominent they are.

Starting from the top, there's the traditional Christian image of God. When given human features, he always gets an impressive beard, not at all that far from Santa's.

God, by Michelangelo.

Among the gods, he's far from the only one to have a big beard. It seems to be the rule more than the exception. Already Zeus of Ancient Greek mythology was very bearded indeed.

Zeus.

Before him, the Babylonian god Marduk had a beard that was neatly trimmed into a rectangle, but not shorter than with what later divinities paraded.

Marduk chasing Tiamat.

Myth sticks to the beard as a necessary attribute for characters of height and distinction. Gandalf of Tolkien's tale obviously never shaved, and in his transformation from the Grey to the White the color of his beard followed.

Gandalf.

The most recent example is a sort of Gandalf wanna-be, the headmaster of Harry Potter's school of magic, Dumbledore, who was vain enough to arrange his beard in a decorative way, as if wanting still to distance himself in some way from his predecessors.

Dumbledore.

Jesus, too, is depicted with long hair and a beard. But in his case, the beard might be blond but never white, and it's significantly shorter than that of his father and the other characters mentioned above.

Jesus.

Could this shortcoming of his depend on him being the son and not the father? The length of his beard, and the neatness of it, implies youth. The beard of a divine adolescent, not a fully grown god.

Since ancient times, the beard is a sign of maturity and authority, maybe also of power. Jesus, son of a carpenter, walked among common men like one of them, and was no older than 33 when he was executed – an unthinkable fate for a man of senior power. Had his beard been longer, he might have been spared...

A legendary example of the link between hair and power is that of Samson, who loses his phenomenal strength when his hair is cut, by trickery of the beautiful Delilah. Although the bible text doesn't seem to say so, I'd like to think that his beard was also cut in the process. His beard must have been the hair holding his power.

Samson and Delilah, by Rubens.

Something similar is implied by the fact that it's on Santa's beard we swear, when we really mean it. That's where his power lies.

Santa Claus sure needs a lot of power for the fantastic feat he performs every Christmas, bringing presents to all the children of the world who have not been too naughty. He needs that beard. Without it, he would not accomplish much and we would sit by the chimneys, waiting and waiting for nothing.

So, praise the beard guaranteeing a very merry Christmas!

Believers Don't Believe

”I'm a believer,” The Monkees sang in 1966. They meant a believer in love, but mostly the term is used for and by religious people, sticking to convictions that common sense dismisses. But the term is a paradox. The use of it reveals a lack of belief.

The Monkees sang that they thought love was only true in fairytales, until:
Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I'm in love, I'm a believer

But wait a minute. If you believe in love, there's still room for doubt. Otherwise you would regard it as a fact, not a belief. So, the boy of the song is not sure enough to do more than believe in the love by which his heart is overcome. What he's really saying is that he hopes he can trust love. He's taking the chance.

The same is true for religious people claiming to believe in this or that. They don't claim it to be a fact, they don't say they know it. They believe it, which is really confessing that they shouldn't, if they listened to reason. They reveal that they insist on something, although they can't even convince themselves of it.

So, every statement of belief is a confession to the contrary.

Those who say that they believe God created the world a few thousand years ago thereby admit to its absurdity. They confirm this by saying that they don't believe in evolution, which is a way of admitting that they know better. Those who believe in Heaven and Hell as the next destination after death admit that they really don't expect anything but bodily decay after their last breath.

Mostly, people say they believe in this or that god. Again, that's admitting such an entity to be highly unlikely, to say the least. What else could they say about someone (or something) so elusive?

It would be different if they said that they know this god exists, but that would be preposterous. They could say that the god is possible, which is as hard to deny as the opposite. Or they could be perfectly honest and say that they hope the god exists.

It's all about hope.

Atheists in heated debates with religious fundamentalists insist that they are stupid for believing, but that actually proves they are not. If they claimed knowledge, certainty, they would be. But by using the word belief, they hang on to their own reason and common sense. And they know it.

The true driving force of religious extremists is the fear of admitting to themselves that they have doubts, serious doubts. So, they try to silence what their minds are whispering to them, by taking a fanatic position and committing to it as blatantly as they are able. They hope that by this commitment they will finally convince themselves.

That's nothing but fear, of course. The fear of losing hope. It's the cause of much anguish in the world – and far from only to the ones stuck in this conflict of emotions.

No Hit Song Without Words

A British research team presents a formula they claim predicts what songs will be hits. They use a bunch of parameters, but ignore one of the top components of a song: the lyrics.

It's a University of Bristol team doing this research, which they present at this website: The Hit Equation (BBC News writes about it here). Here's the formula they use to decide if a song will be a hit (#5 or higher on the British chart):

They claim to get a 60% accuracy with this formula. They write on their webpage: “How good is this equation? It turns out we can predict with an accuracy of 60% if a song will make it to top 5, or if it will never reach above position 30 on the UK Top 40 Singles Chart.”

This may seem impressive – better than 50/50. But they've done no comparison with other methods, not even that of pure chance, like the flipping of a coin.

Actually, one would get a much better result by just guessing that every song would fail, since a vast majority of songs never make it on the charts. Their formula would be impressive only if 60% of the songs they predicted to be hits actually became hits. That's the tricky part.

Below is their own image of the many aspects of the songs they consider important for making a hit:

Nothing about the lyrics, as if they were completely irrelevant to a song becoming popular and making it on the charts. Ridiculous!

The lyrics are instrumental to the listening experience. Already the fact that extremely few purely instrumental tunes through the past decades have become hits should tell the researchers that they are missing something fundamental.

The obvious examples of hits depending on their lyrics are countless. What would Chris Medina's song What Are Words be without words? And what about the songs of Adele? All of rap music? Lady Gaga? Beyoncé's Single Ladies, If I Were a Boy and Halo, Christina Aguilera's Beautiful, Bruno Mars' Grenade and Lazy Song, and on and on and on.

It's even more obvious when digging deeper into the modern history of popular music: Bob Dylan, almost every song by the Beatles, David Bowie, Stairway to Heaven, Sympathy for the Devil, REM, Simon & Garfunkel, Respect, The Doors, U2, punk rock, Prince's Kiss, Bruce Springsteen, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Kinks, Nirvana, My Generation, Hotel California, The Wall...

Maybe, for getting to #5 on the chart, some musical recipe gets a better chance than 50/50, which is not bad at all. But to become a tune remembered and repeated through the decades, outstanding lyrics are a must.

The Bristol researchers might have considered including lyrics in their parameters, but in that case they surely surrendered to the difficulty of turning words into numbers. It can't be done in a meaningful way.

Music is another matter. It consists of mathematics, as already Pythagoras told us. There are scales, beats per minute, volume, measurable vibrations, and so on. That allows for a formula, although it can be discussed how useful it is.

Words are symbols of very complex meanings. They can't be removed from their context, which is in itself so vast that it's very difficult to describe at all. Words are more like fuzzy math, lacking precision and thereby embracing more than numbers ever can.

But the Bristol researchers will surely find their allies in the music industry. Record companies have all the time believed that they could calculate how to make a hit. That's what they prefer, since it would mean they wouldn't need to find talents – something they mainly stink at.

The record industry wants cute and replaceable kids to mold into what “the business” regards as hit making machinery. They constantly fail, of course, but that doesn't stop them from going on with the same brain dead modus operandi. And their trade is far from alone in this.

Commercialism prefers robots that buy the products if just the right button is pressed. That's their paradigm: Man is nothing but a consumer, responding only to the simplest signals. And they want us to behave in no other way. Instead, they use all their resources to brainwash us into an ever more simplified pattern of stimuli and response.

That's the bottom line of capitalism – turning mankind into obedient consumers, all of us buying the same things. In communism, the fundamental principle is not very different: They want robots who repeat like tape recorders what their leaders preach.

So, it's all about obedience. The people in power seek to be obeyed, without questioning, without alternatives. It's evil.

And the Bristol researchers comply, trying to serve the music industry another instrument by which they can imagine to succeed in replacing the wonderful and dynamic complexity of the motivations of the human being into Pavlovian reflexes.

It's impossible, but there's a lot of nonsense going on before they ever give it up.

Burlesque Breakfast of Champions

Finally, I got to see the 1999 movie Breakfast of Champions, based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel. I had avoided doing so earlier, afraid of being disappointed. Well, I was. They turned the wonderfully absurd novel into a tiresome burlesque.

The cast was a splendid bunch of actors, so the fault must lie with the director Alan Rudolph. I wonder what Kurt Vonnegut thought about it. He was somewhat involved, even doing a cameo as the role of a commercial director. Did he realize where the movie was heading and if so, did he approve? I doubt it.

I read the novel back in the 1970's, when I had a period of passionately indulging in the books of Vonnegut. That reading experience was instrumental in getting me started on my own writing.

You all know the feeling: When I opened the cover of a Vonnegut book that was new to me, a tickling sensation went through all my body. Already by reading his pensive preface (and he always had one), I was in heaven. He never disappointed me.

Well, not until after Breakfast of Champions, which he wrote as sort of a literary testament, when he was turning fifty, just like Dwayne Hoover, the main character of the book. I read it soon after its release and I had the strong impression that it was to be his last novel, a farewell to the characters he had created as well as to his readers.

As it turned out, it was not. He wrote seven more novels before calling it a day. I read the first few of this post-Breakfast suite, and gradually lost interest. Something of the Vonnegut esprit I loved had evaporated. So, I had to start writing my own novels.

Yes, the decay of Vonnegut's writing triggered me to start writing my own novels. That I commenced in 1976, the year that the first of his post-Breakfast novels, Slapstick, appeared. Before coming to the conclusion that more needed to be said than what Vonnegut had expressed, I would not dream of trying to contribute.

I know, the mind of an author is an odd thing. I've always felt that my writing is nothing but an obligation to all the previous writers and all the coming ones – a link in the chain, nothing more and nothing less.

Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007.

Oh, I actually met Kurt Vonnegut once. In 1980, when I spent some months in New York. In the middle of the night, of course, at a 3rd Avenue take-out sandwich bar, where I was trying to make jolly conversation with the Puerto Rican girl behind the counter, while she was making my BLT.

Somebody behind me sighed, as if from the grave, annoyed that I kept the line behind me waiting. I turned around, finding myself staring into the belly of a very tall man. I raised my eyes to his face, way up there. It was Kurt Vonnegut.

He looked like the Reaper. The thousands of wrinkles in his face formed an expression of absolute boredom, as if nothing in the universe or beyond it had the least chance of giving solace. As if life was nothing but suffering and I was prolonging the time he had to endure it.

I was young and unstoppable, so I still tried to speak with him. He complied minimally and very reluctantly, so the conversation ended quite quickly. I wondered why living would be so painful to one who had inspired so many. But I remembered an earlier discovery of mine: great humor emerges from sad souls.

Well, back to Breakfast of Champions. The book sure is an absurd comedy, mixed up with naive drawings by the author. But it still has a pensive tone, albeit between the lines. Vonnegut reveals the absurdity of everyday life. When the story is turned into burlesque, this is lost. The world presented in the film is grotesque, so it can say nothing about the world we imagine that we live in. Everything turns into nonsense.

Of course, Vonnegut's book is simply black letters (and drawings) on white paper. That alone brings its content down to a low-voiced level. But his writing is also low-keyed, even when seemingly spaced out. It's all about regular folks living their regular lives – kind of.

When I was watching the movie with all those resourceful actors, I saw an alternative movie in my head – toned down, low-key, where the insanity of Dwayne Hoover, as well as the rest of the world, was just slowly emerging. That would be a movie worth watching.

One of the things that attracted me to the writing of Kurt Vonnegut was just that. The absurdity and insanity is not something out of the ordinary, but present in our very normal everyday life. It's right here, among us and inside of us all. Overdoing it just hides that fact.

I think of Shakespeare's advice to actors, given by Hamlet:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it,
as many of your players do, I had as lief the
town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air
too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently;
for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,
the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget
a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it
offends me to the soul to hear a robustious
periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to
very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who
for the most part are capable of nothing but
inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such
a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

And let those that play
your clowns speak no more than is set down for them;
for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to
set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh
too; though, in the mean time, some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered:
that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
in the fool that uses it.


Here's the film on DVD at Amazon

Big Bang and God Are the Same

Creationists sneer at the Big Bang theory. Astrophysicists exclude God from their equation. But it's all the same, meeting the same paradox. They differ only in names. None answers the question.

So, what's the question? Simply: how did it all start?

In case of a divine creation out of nothingness, creatio ex nihilo, that's not a real nothingness to begin with, since God is there. If God's not nothing, there's something – even though that something is very different from the something of our universe.

In case of the Big Bang, already the Greeks told us that something cannot come out of nothing. At least there had to be a something making something possible to appear out of nowhere.

The astrophysicists are starting to seriously question the Big Bang idea, regarding the notion that it would have happened out of nothing. A bunch of theories are being presented and tested, as much as can be done in this field.

Also the idea of an ever-present universe, although dynamic, is revived by some scientists.

No Time

Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 CE.

Time is at the core of the problem, whether we imagine an eternal universe or not. Christianity and Big Bang theory are much the same regarding time, as well. Already in the 4th century, Augustine said that there's no point in asking what existed before God said “Let there be light!” since that was when God created time as well. There was no before.
Which is exactly what the Big Bang theory claims.

Even in a theory of an eternal universe, time is at the core – or it could not be eternal.

I wonder if time exists at all as a separate entity. There is movement, there is change. If there is neither movement nor change, where is time?

Maybe we should stop regarding time as a dimension, but just the movement within the dimensions of space. Then we would say – sort of like the Buddhist – that everything changes, always. Seeing the start here or there is of little relevance. It's just a lot of movement between things in relations to one another. Now it's here, now it's there.

The Effect Is the Cause

Aristotle, 384-322 BC.

The natural sciences are founded on Aristotle's principle of cause and effect. Something happens because of something else. That's also timeline thinking. Before and after.

Even if we imagine a universe where cause is preceded by effect – as if the latter is longing for the former – it's still on a timeline, although reversed. It's an interesting line of thought, though. Kind of religious. The divine plan, the goal deciding how the voyage will be.

Actually, it's often very difficult to decide where in time to place the cause – before or after the effect. That's because it's not always clear which is which. The chicken or the egg.

Maybe that's the true difference between a divine reality and a physical one: In the former, the effect is the cause, because it's what God intended, so the result was actually what caused the cause, so to speak.

In a strictly physical universe, though, there has to be a cause initiating the process to lead to the effect, and that effect is nothing but a result of the cause, since there is no intention towards it. Things happen because that's how things work.

But in a universe where there is no will or intention between cause and effect, there is no way of assuring their order of power. Something moved from here to there, because of this or that. Well, since it is now there, the cause was bound to get it there and could not get it elsewhere. So, what is cause and what is effect?

Intention

The human being has struggled long with the concept of free will: I want to go there, so I can. Otherwise I would remain here forever. The Greeks thought a lot about it, and so did people in many other cultures and eras. They wondered, how are we at all able to move?

Intention makes it happen. Without intention, no movement.

So, everyone thought that this must somehow be true for everything in the universe. Some kind of intention, or there would be no movement, no change, and the whole universe would be like dead. In every meaningful way of looking at it, the universe would cease to exist if nothing happened to it or inside of it.

Like an Idea

I've always found the Big Bang theory amusing, because it's so close to the concept of God's creation. In a vast nothingness (actually, in the Bible this nothing is a primordial sea), God says: “Let there be light!” Suddenly, bang! Everything appears.

God creates light. Bible illustration by Gustave Doré.

It's like an idea. I get an idea, which grows like an explosion in my mind, adding details that quickly become more and more defined. Shapes and objects appear in a chaotic cloud of thoughts. Big Bang is like a sudden idea in the head of God.

Who Can Know?

But, as mentioned above, God is no final cosmogony. He just leads to new questions: What is God? Where did He come from? Et cetera.

Whether there's some kind of God or not, we shouldn't use Him to stop ourselves from continued inquiry.

Modern science is so complex, most of us feel completely incapable of following its thoughts. But the Greeks have shown us that still today, even the most advanced scientists wrestle with the same questions the Greeks asked themselves. Can there have been a beginning? Can something come out of nothing?

So, I suspect that the solution to the problem of the origin of the universe is either unfathomable or accessible to us all.

That's precisely why I allow myself cosmological speculations like this one, although minutely introduced to astronomy. That, and the kick it gives my imagination.

I also suspect that the key to the origin of the universe is not to be found in the distant past or the distant future, but in the here and now.

Something or Nothing

We're still just starting to understand what the universe is, how it works, and of what it consists. So, I doubt that we know enough to ask the right question.

Let's go back to nothing and something. The Greeks said (well, some of them) that something cannot come out of nothing. Nor can something turn into nothing, but that's not questioned by astrophysics.

So, if we imagine a something that seems to be enclosed in nothing, it must be all there is. Such a universe, then, must in some way always have been and always will be. No starting or ending dates. The dynamics of it, the movement and changes, can be whatever – but it has to be there always.

Well, if the movement and changes stop completely, utterly completely, it sort of ceases to exist – except for the fact that it has a history, it has moved towards non-movement. Then the question is: can it move again? If so, that's not the complete stop. Can something stop so completely that it can never move again?

That would be the very end of what astrophysicists call the Big Freeze. Even though it's so extremely far off, I would say it's the prospect we prefer the least. It's so sad.

Now, if we imagine instead that our universe is something contained in another something creating it somehow – then the answer to the question of the origin of the universe is none other than the origin of that bigger something in which our universe was created. So, we're back to square one.

Prime Mover Tao

If we look again at the idea of movement and change, making time just a way of mapping these things, then there's no point in searching a beginning or an end, but the process by which things move and change. That's mostly in line with Einstein and his quest for a unified field theory – or Aristotle's Prime Mover.

Lao Tzu.

It also happens to be very near what Lao Tzu thought about Tao, the Way, in his Tao Te Ching, the Taoist classic. He described Tao as a primordial natural law from which the universe took form. That law was present before the universe, and would be there even if no universe emerged, still ruling exactly how a universe would be, if bursting out.

To Lao Tzu, though, the nature of that Tao primordial law was such that a universe was bound to come. The birth of the world was part of the nature of Tao. So will the future death of the universe be, although just vaguely implied by Lao Tzu.

Things emerge out of Tao and return to it, eventually. Therefore, so will a universe born out of it. That compares well to the astronomical theory of the Big Crunch – or the Big Bounce, where an oscillatory universe goes on forever.

Ever-Present Law

The Big Bang theory mentions the moment of the Bang, before which no natural law can be specified. It's called the Planck time, 10-43 seconds after the Big Bang. That may be true for gravity and such, but not for the law that makes it possible for a universe to come banging.

There has to be a Tao for that, if it can happen at all. A Prime Mover making the universe appear in whatever shape. The truly unifying field theory should encompass that force.

That's why I think we can focus on the present. If there is one law, one force, by which our universe was possible to emerge – then that law is ever-present. Finding it, we have the key to everything.

I think it's possible to find, if we just get the idea. And I think that it has much of the characteristics of an idea.

We Find What We Seek

Frankly, I have my doubts about reality. It might be more like the computer age expression “what you see is what you get” than we are comfortable with. Or the much older expression: “Seek and ye shall find.” To find anything we must be looking for it, and we must be able to see it as it is.

We can't say anything for certain about the world we live in, until we are sure about how to extract objective reality from our impression of it.

For example, the Big Bang theory would have been impossible for us to accept without the previous notion that the world had a starting date. So, we searched for a start and we thought we found it.

Maybe we did and maybe we didn't find the worlds starting point, but the real lesson is that we find what we seek and rarely something else. Discoveries tend to come when we are prepared to accept them, or even wish for them.

What reality is really like is certainly something very different from what our senses perceive. Instruments of our science have shown that to be true, even with something as basic as what we see with our eyes, which is just one part of the spectrum. Other parts give very different views. So, what does the world look like when everything can be seen?

Imagination Is Real

There are patterns. The more we see and learn about the universe, the more intricate the patterns of its working are. But still, when we are able to take it all in, the patterns will stand out and show a design and point to a solution.

My bet is on that solution being just as metaphysical as it is physical. To understand the universe we must accept all the ways by which we perceive it. One of the major ingredients, then, is our imagination, our fantasy.

I think that fantasy is no less real than the rest. It just works in different ways, expresses the fundamental law of nature differently. But it's part of what the universe is made: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

I don't mean it in a symbolic way, like the poet searching a metaphor to express his sentiment. I mean it. In the world of atoms, gravitation, electricity, et al. Imagination is a major force in the universe, maybe the only one. Otherwise it wouldn't be able to encompass the universe. And we can't perceive any other universe than the one we imagine.

Economy Is Not a Science

On Saturday, December 10, this year's Nobel Prize laureates will receive their prizes from the Swedish king. Among those are two winners of the Economy Prize, which is not a real Nobel Prize – fittingly, since it's not a real science.

In the testament of Alfred Nobel, a number of prizes were specified. None in economics, although Nobel himself sure knew how to make money. That prize was introduced by the Bank of Sweden in 1969. I doubt that any other institution could get away with inventing its own Nobel Prize, and have it accepted among the others. Money sure is power.

The Bank of Sweden calls it a prize in economic sciences, but that can definitely be discussed. Through the years it has mainly been propaganda for stern capitalist perspectives and convictions. For example, Milton Friedman got the prize in 1976.

What has the economic “science” at all accomplished? Has it found laws for how the economy works, so that they can predict future economic events? No. Have they been able to perform repeated experiments with foreseeable results? No. Do they agree on fundamentals of how the economy works in society or parts thereof? No.

What they do is to present pure theories, one after the other, and fight for them to be applied to society and its economy, although they can't prove what will be the outcome. It's like treating a disease with a medicine never before tested.

Actually, I am sure that the so called science of economy is partly responsible for the financial world behaving like a sinus curve run amok. When this or that theory is applied to society, that's when it starts to go downhill. And the countermeasures are equally unsure.

I think they should skip that prize, at least until economy is able to prove that it has achieved scientific solidity. By the way, my opinion on psychology is similar, but it has no Nobel Prize.

Thomas J. Sargent answering an awkward question.

Here's a Swedish TV interview with one of this years Economy Prize laureates, Thomas J. Sargent (the other is Christopher A. Sims), when he tries to answer the question if economy is science or not:
Thomas J. Sargent on economy as science.
Rather amusing.

Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher A. Sims got their prize "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy." Good luck with that. Would Aristotle buy it?

Music's Immune to Parody

The brilliant Tim Minchin is armed with a grand piano in his stand-up comedy. His monologue consists of a series of songs, filled with satire. So, his music is parody, but it doesn't matter. It's still sweet, sweet music.

Here's one example of Tim Minchin playing with different genres of music, when joking on a subject – in this case ironically about having depth and a dark side, too:



Although his use of music is aimed at parody, it's still quite enjoyable as music. I think this is true only for music: It's immune to parody.

No matter how much you try to make fun of it, the music takes over and what we hear at the end is a song we like or not, regardless of its aim. Not even exaggeration works – it's just more of what we do or don't like. The parody is lost.

In this aspect, Tim Minchin reminds me a lot of Frank Zappa. His concerts were filled with parodical songs, making fun of several musical genres. It all turned into music, mostly very pleasant, inspiring, and intriguing, independently of the satirical ingredient.

Here's an example of Frank Zappa's musical ironies, making obvious fun of several genres in a single song:



Whatever his intention might have been with Florentine Pogen, and in spite of the singer's contortions, sweet music ensues.

Well, Frank Zappa was quite aware of it, so he allowed his songs to evolve into a festive meal of music, shown in the above song by his own guitar solo. This was more the rule than the exception with Frank Zappa. Even songs that started as the most poisonous satire grew into celebrations of the power and joy of music. He was probably completely aware of the golden rule: music's immunity to parody.

Another example from past years is the band Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show, having several hits with songs that were ironic to say the least. Still, a vast audience took them to their hearts. It must have surprised the band.

A flagrant example of parody failing is Sylvia's Mother, which was drenched in honey but still became a hit and inspired numerous sincere tears all over the world. In this version the band has sort of given in to that fact:



Oddly, the parody intended is much closer to work in a version taking the song totally seriously. See Jon Bon Jovi's cover version, completely devoid of humor. Because he preforms it without any irony in the subtext, he comes as close to parody as ever possible with music:



Like so much in life, the best parody is unintentional.

With One Person I Never Got Bored

We come to this world, don't ask me where from, and we leave it after dancing on it for a while, don't ask me where to. But some of us are otherworldly all through. I had the fortune to get to know one of them: Charlotte Zutrauen, who passed away this spring after more than a century on the planet.

Charlotte was born in 1908 and already at a young age she became an institution, an icon, in the emerging Hollywood. She was connected to an Indian guru, who was a spiritual advisor behind the scenes to movie moguls and other leading figures of the silver screen industry. Soon, so was Charlotte.

I met her in 2001, when I spent a couple of weeks in Los Angeles, several times in her inspiring company. Already at our first meeting she did, as they say, blow my mind.

Having written books on astrology and what-not, I've had my share of encounters with self-proclaimed New Age gurus, few of them making any kind of impression. Charlotte was nothing of the kind. She was the real deal.

Me and my friend Philippe Morotti picked her up at her rather modest house high up on the Hollywood Hills, for a ride downtown and a lunch. Before we were even halfway down the Hills, she had described my personal life dilemma in a nutshell. My curse. I get bored so quickly – with people, activities, anything.

She told me not to feel guilty about it, but to accept it and come to peace with it. That might not sound very profound, but think again: What could me more of a blasphemy than boredom? A splendid universe opens up to us when we leave the womb. Billions of people surround us, ready to interact and share. How ungrateful it is to quickly grow bored of this formidable gift!

So I tend to get bored, and then to be ashamed of it. Much of my life I spend struggling to hide my boredom, like a perversion even Dante could not have imagined. My dark secret.

When she revealed this, just a few minutes after meeting me for the first time – and showed complete acceptance of it – I felt deep relief. Instant therapy. Those words of hers still have the power to console me.

Later, when I got home to Sweden, I told my mother about this encounter and what Charlotte had stated about me. Although we had never ever even touched the subject before, my mother immediately nodded and mumbled a spontaneous confirmation. She knew in a second that Charlotte was right.

But Charlotte wasn't ready with me just yet. She made me start working on a movie script – giving me the glimpse of a theme and urging me on. Not that a movie script changes the world in any way, or even me, but because I just had to do it. And she understood that writing is what makes me tick.

When it comes to my writing, I never allow anyone else to guide me. I never listen to suggestions. There's no point. What I need to write is so particular to me, others are extremely unlikely to contribute. It's just a waste of time.

Again, Charlotte was different. She found the seed of the story deep within me – or she planted it there, what do I know? Anyway, I felt it rising from inside, like any other story I ever wrote, and I threw myself at the laptop, starting to write.

It was finished in a few months, which is sort of record time for me, at least the last couple of decades – my first full-length movie script. It's called Chastity and is set in Medieval times. A drama about impossible love. It's still floating around somewhere in Hollywood.

I wouldn't mind seeing it turned into an actual movie, of course, but that's not as important as the experience of writing it. The plot, the dialogue, everything came to me automatically, and the result was a story of which I felt immensely proud. It was what I wanted to write, without previously being aware of it. Many thanks, Charlotte!

A couple of more screenplays quickly followed. Now, I'm back to books again, but the scripts took me on a voyage I had not imagined beforehand. I'm sure I will get back to it, one of these days.

I left Los Angeles. Charlotte and I exchanged a few letters and an occasional phone call, but I never saw her again. On May 1, 2011, she passed away, 102 years old. I don't care. In my mind she is still very present and active. I never get bored of her.

The portrait photo of Charlotte above was taken by my old friend Philippe Morotti, who was also the one to introduce me to her.

PS: Charlotte's last name Zutrauen is German for confidence. Indeed.