Madison is a one-movie-kinda-town

(don’t bother with this post if you aren’t interested in Eternal Sunshine)

A number of UW Madison bloggers whose blogs I track (here, here, here and again here) saw Eternal Sunshine this week. Obviously this is a small town and everyone sees only one movie each week and it is the same movie, because, indeed, I saw it as well.

It’s easy to get yourself thinking that this is a story about real emotions, as experienced by you and me. It’s a movie that casts shadows of human traits onto the audience, so that you find yourself embracing the reluctant, shy, introvert Joel, and applauding the tenacity and spunk of the wild and zestful Clementine.

You could say, however, that Joel and Clementine are not at all different: they are both Very Needy People. Sure, the film makes Clementine out to be generous and kind, bestowing her affect on a guy who knows not how to “live.” She is the rescuer, the golden light of dawn for him.

But why do we buy into this characterization? Could it be that Clementine is quite the opposite: a brazen woman who needs attention, picking on men who are likely to be attracted to her display of charisma? And Joel, her male friend: mightn’t he be a drifter, refusing to take emotional responsibility for any of the women (what ever happened to his poor left-behind Naomi)? It’s interesting how this quiet, staid guy has a bit of anger within him. Certainly Clementine does as well. They each have a past, only at these early stages of their relationship (and we are always viewing it as it is just beginning) it remains underground. The cynics wont be leaving the theater thinking “whew, they worked out their problems, what a relief.” They’ll say –“I give them at best 4 months until they split up again since both display the emotional maturity of adolescents.”

It’s a good movie, no doubt about it – the directing and editing alone make it a stunning film: there is a scene where Joel is once again young, but really not, but really yes, young, and Clem is in the kitchen with him: the shift from little boy to grown man to Clem to Joel again is nothing short of brilliant.

As for the “message?” Oh, obvious, is it? Given that it was directed by Gondry, one could run with the idea that perhaps love is so primordial that it will resurrect itself, arising from the chemistry between people: it’s nature, not nurture, it’s a match or its not. What brought you together last year will bring you together again ten years from now, not for sentimental reasons at all, but because there is something between the two of you that causes canons to roar.

NPR Notes

Q: On what grounds might German violinists (from the Beethoven Orchestra—this is a hint of sorts; think: many complicated measures) sue for a pay raise?

A: The action can be based on the claim that they play more notes per concert than their musical colleagues.

Rebuttal: Orchestra officials have responded that “the violinists knew this when they began taking violin lessons -- and if they wanted to play fewer notes, they should have chosen a different instrument.”

the brain: no repetition, constant recreation

I read the NYT article (here) on Dr. Edelman’s work on the brain twice, because I wasn’t sure I was picking up the pieces in a coherent way. I can’t begin to summarize it in the usual 2-sentenced oversimplification that I do here—I’m sure to get it wrong.

But if you are just looking for the punch line (in the way that you would summarize the holding in a legal case for an exam outline) then you can go from title of the article: “The Brain? It’s a Jungle in There,” to the last 2 lines: “But this vision [referring here to the idea that human consciousness is born out of accident and diversity] can also spur discomfort, because it implies that there is no supervising soul or self — nobody is standing behind the curtain. This, for Dr. Edelman, is Darwin's final burden.” That pretty much puts you right into the heart of the matter (forgive the organ-hopping here).

Thus we are stuck without a soul, only new and intricate mappings, one after another, millions of them, setting the course of thought and action. No conductor in there, no inside little guy pushing buttons, selecting, or optimizing. It’s a comfort really – no one to blame for excesses (such as blogging or emailing) – somewhere along the line those patterns became entrenched and there is no one inside to reset the brain and start all over again.

Time

Yesterday I had a chance to spend time with a visiting professor – someone whom I hadn’t seen since graduate school in the 70s. This man had single-handedly saved my plummeting confidence in academia. I eventually did leave academia for a while, but it was then a deliberate rather than desperate move.

The prof is now retired and he splits his time between Paris and SF (not a bad lineup of cities I must admit). That is fitting for a person who in my mind is sort of a poetic hero, infused with the worship one reserves for the leaders in one’s life (he doesn’t know that I feel this way about him).

People who save us from the worst aspects of ourselves are indeed heroes. But over time, they disappear and new heroes come to replace them. What a luxury it was to meet again, 28 years later. I never could quite say thank you in the way that I wanted to. Though as I listened to his little impromptu jazz piano playing later in the evening, I thought it didn’t matter. He probably wouldn’t have understood anyway. People of that type are often so personally modest that they do not have a sense of their own force vis-à-vis others.

[a photo of said prof, playing jazz---->]

Poland at the cusp of something, but what?

Almost my entire political self is focused on my homeland today. With news of the resignation of the Prime Minister, Leszek Miller (I was right! You can’t fall below 0% approval ratings! He slipped from 10% to 5% in two days! The man HAD to step down), I now see this tense month of waiting while the entire nation focuses on the opening of the EU gates on May1st. Yet, I wonder, are these gates of heaven or gates of hell? For most Poles, the benefits of being in the EU are far away (read about it in the NYT today here)—possibly to be realized by the next generation of Poles; it’s a theoretical gift to the children, not to anyone currently living on the edge.

And there is the matter of the United States: it pains me to see this – it’s like a relationship where one person has all the love and the other has all the power. Poland is the most “in love with America” country I have ever seen. The support for military action in Iraq is a good example of this: most Poles are currently opposed to Polish military presence in Iraq (or at least have grave doubts about its wisdom; President Kwasniewski has publicly stated that he feels Poland was mislead about WMD and about the urgency of waging war to combat terrorism). Yet there is no protest (contrast Poland with Spain, where a government was toppled, to some degree because of Iraq). Poles just go along with the inevitability of this, because America has placed this demand for loyalty and they feel themselves obliged to deliver.

In return? The blasted object of affection wont even give them a small gift, one that Poles have been meekly requesting for years: the right to travel to the US without a visa. So many of my friends refuse to come here for a visit because of the INDIGNITY of having to wait in huge lines, filling out countless forms, waiting for the magic “yes” or “no” before they can board the plane. For the many who have relatives in the States, the humiliation has to be put aside. For those who would travel just for the sake of travel, it is not worth it.

My wonderful, brutally hardened yet resilient Poland. How much suffering can one country endure in a period of 200 years?