Futile Horn

01.29.2004 - 1:47 am (adaptation)

I saw Adaptation today. I’m not sure how I felt about it. I’m sure if I had seen it about three years ago I would have loved it. It was certainly clever, but clever doesn’t always mean entertaining. So when Charlie Kaufman works himself into the screenplay, you think to yourself, how pathetic and self-absorbed can you get? And when Charlie Kaufman admits that it is pathetic and self-absorbed, you have to think to yourself, that something, but admitting something is wrong than doing it anyway, isn’t that a worse crime than rationalizing it away? I’d say it is, and now I am stuck watching a movie about a pathetic and self-absorbed Charlie Kaufman written by a [presumably pathetic and self-absorbed?] Charlie Kaufman. And when the screen-writing instructor yells at Charlie Kaufman, saying a story with a protagonist that desires nothing will put an audience to sleep, I realized I was bored to tears. But shortly after we are told that with a big ending, the audience will forgive all as long as for god sake’s we don’t get a deus ex machina. I knew right away to expect a suspenseful, dramatic ending and, let’s say, an alligator out of left field to save the day.

Like I said, three or four years ago I would have loved this non-illusionist stuff, probably because of the framing of Goethe’s Faust by an opening scene staged on the stage on which the action of Faust was to appear. All right, maybe I do like the non-illusionist stuff, but maybe I prefer it as a framing. Or maybe I just can’t stand the self-absorption, even if it is fictional absorption, even if it is there to mark out how disgusting self-absorption is (even if it asks the fairly good questions, if writers need to understand the outside world to write, why do they tend to be so fucking blind and self-absorbed?).

For reasons I don’t rightly understand, the paper I work for insists on running mistakes after I mark the mistakes in big red marks. I am required to do this, but I am not compensated for the time I spend doing this, nor do they pay me any mind. What I am there for?

Maybe I am taking this job too seriously. Or maybe I’m right in being dissatisfied for working for a rag where quality issues are not… well, an issue.

I’ve an idea for an article. I want to interview someone who works over at one of the local radio stations. But dealing with people makes me crabby, even one’s I think might be interesting to talk to. I suppose I could run the idea by my boss on Friday, but I suppose if he likes it I have to actually do it. How troublesome.

I do wish I were writing again. I mean, I’m writing the song lyrics, which is both challenging and a lot of fun, but I sort of miss whole sentences and not having to worry about meter or rhyme.

Fact is, I don’t think I know what the hell it is I want. I probably just want to be a student, but I don’t want to be focused on one subject forever and ever, which is what becoming a graduate student would entail. The world, despite the daily drudgery, is full of a wondrous variety of things to experience and learn. Closing myself off to any of that would feel like… suicide.

So I guess I should inquire about doing the interview article. I haven’t really done anything like that before, and I’m kinda nervous about how much and what kind of preparation it would require. I just wish he would have just let me do the literature reviews. I am comfortable with books. Research is safe.

I want a piece of lemon pie and cup of some exotic tea. In a café downtown with a cute waitress who isn’t waiting impatiently for me to put my book away and leave.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn