Writing, and what is it......?

'Take Two' on a preoccupation that won't diminish:

Writing, that language on paper, screen and as 'sky-writing,' has fascinated me all my life. At about age four or five I lay on a couch pretending to read a book. Why? To be grownup. I was visiting a playmate's house. I remember a couple of titles of novels in my parents bookcase when I was about ten. This Gun For Hire, and The Sunken Fleet, yet I never saw either parent read a book. My mother was a letter writer. On the beach she wrote a letter to her brother in the country, 200 miles away. I asked her if I could get there if I walked down the beach. That got put in her letter.

During a lonely period as an adult I joined The Letter Exchange located across the Bay from San Francisco. I wrote hundreds of letters using a tiny Canon typewriter on my lap. The replies filled several large cardboard boxes. That was before email and message boards so I wonder if The Letter Exchange still exists?

In spite of those experiences of voluminous writing I'm still not certain about just what is writing. Here's the opinion of just one Linguist and London University professor of English and Drama, Jacqueline Rose in her book on Sylvia Plath, The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. About ten times I've brought up the subject of this book, on writer's message boards for example, and some of the ideas contained therein, but apparently it reads as double-dutch. Here's the list I made from references to writing and language sprinkled throughout her book.

1. Language is anti-phobic

2. All writing is fantasy

3. All Language is metaphor

4. Writing is violence

5. All writing is unstable as to meaning

6. Writing is aggression

I've pasted this list on a folded piece of bond paper glued to the inside cover of Rose's book. Inside the fold I printed AOL's Webster's Dictionary definition of 'Deconstruction,' because number 5 above seems included in the definition:

Main Entry: de·con·struc·tion
Pronunciation: "dE-k&n-'str&k-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: French déconstruction, from dé- de- + construction
Date: 1973
: a method of literary criticism that assumes language refers only to itself rather than to an extratextual reality, that asserts multiple conflicting interpretations of a text, and that bases such interpretations on the philosophical, political, or social implications of the use of language in the text rather than on the author's intention
- de·con·struc·tion·ist /-sh&-nist/ noun

One of many reasons the English, Linguistics, and Drama professor went into this stringent examination of the properties of language and writing is that of the five major biographies of Sylvia Plath, written since Plath's suicide, no two agree about anything; each biographer views what is known, and a great deal is known because Plath herself told us a lot, in a far different light.

My thesis is that familiarity with some of these ideas about writing and language will be helpful in reading blogs and message boards. However, I have to admit that in spite of my labor in trying over a long period of time to assimilate the comfort of these 'truths' I still scratch my head in confusion over being misunderstood in my writing, and puzzld quite often by the writing of others. Let me give a far-out, extreme example: a message board poster of practiced, insulting, barbaric, pornographic assaults on everything he's ever read of mine, simply made me furious at first, but his continuing in that vein for years has finally convinced me, paradoxically, that what he really wants is for me to take care of him, end his unhappiness, provide a roof and food for him, and testimonials written by me that he can deliver to prospective employers. But then, that's just my "interpretation," and as Rose, and Deconstruction states, all writing is open to multiple interpretations. Ha!

Some hundreds of years ago when writing letters became commonplace, it is very noticeable how the writer strived to be polite, deferential, charming, and even flattering. In those days, perhaps, letter writers instinctively knew that writing was an intrusion, a bother, something that required time, energy, and education. I'm thinking of studying up on the letter writing style of one of those, say 1700's letter writers, and address you as 'My Lords and Ladies.'

Barry

 

 

 

Choosing A Subject

When I began my journal on Dec. 22, '04 I intended ruminating out loud about the writing of my novel in progress. I've talked here about everything but my novel.

What's close to one is often scary. My novel is loosely based on my life, but freely fictionalized, especially in those parts I'm interested in but lack information about, and have no way to acquire the information because time has passed, people have died, and in some instances those still living won't talk to me. Don't cluck, I didn't kill anyone.

Here's one minor problem yet to be written in full. Is it okay, I ask myself, to speculate about Divine retribution? Characters in my novel, I've already plotted, fear that two calamities, the deaths of two young adults, oldest brother and one of the youngest sisters in a family of what ultimately was eleven children, might be God's punishment.  My Catholic, rural cousins deaths might appear in my writing to be celebrated by me, when actually I was first ignorant, then sympathetically shocked, then in the final stage, I discovered evidence that the family thought they were being punished by God for their cruel abandonment, and robbery of me, a thought that had never remotely occurred to me before.  Yet, diabolically, as time passed I noticed I began to enjoy the idea. Plopped into my lap was perfect revenge for which I don't see how I can be punished too severely, as at the time of the deaths I was 12,000 miles away, literally on the other side of the world. Actually this last twist in the emotional plot only just this minute occurred to me. Writing a journal, you see, can have benefits.

Without the benefit of surrounding characters, not yet written, just remembered but not yet made 'real' in fiction, this story idea summary, a piece in a much larger work, probably reads cold and calculated. Well it is; a novel must be calculated. Cold hearted?  I suppose so at the moment. To live, to be believable it will have to be heated up considerably.

When and if our journal sites, Blogs, become spaces for advertising, this space could feature advertising for life insurance. Gasp!

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUDGMENT: American Idol Style

Judging performers, and/or actors, is grand sport. America seems to greatly enjoy professional critiques of singers then waiting to see if their evaluations agree with both the critics, and with voting America. I wondered why this unusual format, quite different from that part of what used to be called 'Talent Contests' shown to an audience, the final performances, which now includes the auditioning, winnowing process. Truth be told we somehow like watching the losers lose. Simon has his fans. If he didn't have them, and in large numbers, he'd have been long gone.  

With one huge difference the spectacle of the various stages unfolding is similar to what happened in profession acting workshops such as those conducted by Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen, Herbert Berghof, and Stella Adler. I must sadly add that all four of those giants of New York Theater are now dead. (Old age.) I was mesmerized by those classes even though no two were alike. I took copious notes. In each case I waited with great curiosity to hear what the instructor/moderator/teacher/guru would say. Each had a very distinct style. By far the most interesting and the most famous and beloved was Lee Strasberg.

The main, huge difference between the critiques of the three panelists on American Idol, and the theater people I have listed, is that the panelists judge not the performance, but the outside appearance of the performer and the performance, the exterior appeal, the energy, and the suitability of the song for the singer.  'You come over as...' as said by Simon for example, would never be said by any of the four acting teachers, even though they were quite different one from another. You can imagine what all three panelists would say to Marilyn Monroe, if they had never heard of Marilyn Monroe, if she went on American Idol and sang. "Happy birthday Mr President..."  They would try to hold their smirk and say thanks but no thanks.

However, that said, those four teachers had a profound impact on theater, movies, television and Pop singing. So, it's intriguing that I have heard from the panelists a few times mention of a singer's private way of delivery. They don't seem to have any faith in that way of performing, but they are not unaware that such a thing exists. To that extent they are somewhat ahead of the rest of America.

One of my favorite Pop songs has been Drive, by The Cars. What I have always loved about the original version is the lonely-sounding, very young male singer in love with the reckless woman who needs someone to drive her home tonight, but who, in her apparent extremity cannot return the young man's love.  Lately I've heard the song sung by a woman, a woman sounding totally indifferent to the woman needing a ride. I believe, have a hunch, that were a young woman to present that song so sung to the panelists on American Idol, she'd be told to take a hike.

We, all of us, love a song that is well acted. No?

Barry

 

 

 

  

BLOG ADVERTISING ???&^%$!!!yUCK

Mr John M Scalzi, our "Editor," seems to have been sent on an errand by his employer, AOL (I think that is what he said), to soften up AOL Members to the idea of having advertising deface their blog. John, get a life! By the way, post a photo of your wife. Doesn't that little girl have a mother?

Barry

I'll post a treatise here on the subject of the evils of advertising contaminating the arts after I get over my extreme distemper.

Bobby Goes to Iceland?

The two BBC (one former) writers David Edmonds and John Eidenow, authors of Bobby Fischer Goes To War, 2004, an excellent history of the highly unusual World Chess Championship held in Iceland in 1972 between the World Champion Soviet player Boris Spassky, and America's Robert Fischer, won by the American, today report in the LA Times that Iceland has offered political asylum, citizenship, to Fischer in Iceland.

I've now read their book four times. The tone of the book, while accurate, is unusually warm and even cuddly toward Fischer in spite of his infamous antics during the beginning of the match when he repeatedly threatened to derail the match if his demands were not met to the letter.

So, I am startled and furious to read these same authors, who according to the photo on the inside, back jacket cover of the hardcover book seem posed gazing at each other as lovers, now declaring Fischer an out-of-control "boor" the generous Icelanders will seriously regret having harbored.

What happened? Did their book bomb? Did the New Yorker do them in with their tepid review? Or, is it merely one more example of fickleness in the arts? In any case, as expertly as their book seems to have been researched they left out a few things which I am about to tell you.

A bit more background first. Many Europeans, not just Russians, believe that the Russian chess player, Spassky, was robbed, and lost only because of Fischer's disruptive machinations during the match. After all, Spassky had repeatedly defeated Fischer earlier, and actually began the match in Iceland two points ahead, the first on a forfeit when Fischer didn't show up, and the second when Fischer blundered like a patzer (Bxh2) in the second game.

So, still smarting from 'Europe's' loss in 1972 a second match was arranged twenty years later, 1992, in the former Yugoslavia with a purse of over 5 million dollars. Again Fischer won, pocketing $3,500,000.  There was a wrinkle. In order to get to the site of the match Fischer had to travel to a country forbidden Americans by the US Department of State. So, his passport became invalid while he was living in Japan, married to Japan's woman chess champion. (Sure would like to get a peek at her!) And so, Iceland, ultracivilized and tolerant Iceland, offered Bobby sanctuary, and God bless them for doing so!

Why did Fischer become so angry with America? I can't offer an excuse, but I sure can offer an explanation. When it was convenient, when it was politically expedient, President Nixon, and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, were at great pains to let Fischer know he had their support and very best wishes. Fischer, in his naivete, took this seriously, and therefore went into shock when America so soon forgot their enthusiasm for defeating the Russians and forgot all about him. There wasn't even an invitation to visit the White House!

The book authors, who wrote today's scurrilous L.A. Times op-ed page slander of Fischer's character made at least one big mistake in their book, a detail prejudice might have blinded them to. They do mention in their book Fischer's friend Lina Grumette's visit to Fischer in Iceland immediately before the beginning of the match when it looked as if the match was doomed never to even begin. They omit an important fact I happen to be privy to. Lina Grummette told me in person, tete-a-tete, what they talked about in Iceland: "God" she said. I believe her. At that time dear Lina was about seventy (70) and still 'hot.' Her husband was long dead. She is now dead, or I couldn't gossip like this. Lina had a lifesized, head-and-shoulders oil painting, a portrait of Bobby  on her livingroom wall. Bobby had stayed there for months. Many of his belongings were still there, including some of his chess books. I am positive she was his lover. Small chess tournaments were held in her home, I played in several of those tournaments, which were conducted on the basis of one game per week, usually on a Friday night. I was very fond of her. I remember being startled out of my wits, and my game, when I heard Lina upstairs on the telephone screaming at the top of her lungs at the wife of a man then living with her. I hope you understand, and know that there are many, many older women still expertly hungry for sex long after their permanent arrangements have ended, husbands, long time lovers and others long gone.  Perhaps you are familiar with Benjamin Franklin's praise of such women: "They are so grateful." (Perhaps he should have said, 'Appreciative,' which is less condescending. Let's forgive him, and chalk it up to the language of a former age.)

This is my second, no third, visit to the subject of chess in my journal. I want my journal to be read, by you, so I hope I am not trying your patience. Chess might be the only sport which resists performance enhancing drugs so maybe it will never become wildly popular in America? (<g>) I'm ever-hopeful.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

Human Migration

Early Human migration, I read in the paper, has been traced from archeologists discovering the bones of pigs killed for eating. First the bones were those of a wild boar, then as the migration continued, and the pigs bred for the most useable meat, left a trail of evolved pig bones.  

For no rational reason I've been embarrassed by the migrations of my family. And even at that I know the migrations of only one side of my family. Everyone knows that America is a nation of immigrants, yet, in my case, that fact is somehow awkward, as if there was shame in my family that came from it's comparative rootlessness. My grandmother for example was Australian born and bred, became unusually prosperous and died alone, fairly early, from diabetes. She left no trace of her family history. It's quite possible that her family had been 'Transported,' and originally came to Australia as convicts. Generations of Australians gloried in their convict past and made a point of boasting of their convict 'Aristocracy,' in a typically humorous, Aussie, upside down manner. But not my Grandmother who hungered for propriety. After all, water going down the bathtub drain spins in the opposite direction in Australia from how it spins in Merrie England.

I'm my dear grandmother's grandson. I'd liked to have been 'Proper,' but it just didn't turn out that way.  I was virtually an urchin migrant, alone, born almost by accident in Fresno, California partly as a result of migration caused by the Great Depression.

Oh the war stories we all could tell! Ha!

Barry

   

'Previous Lives'

In what feels as if happened in a previous life, but wasn't, I had the very good fortune to serve as an 'Ordinary Seaman' on the US merchant ship the freighter USS Ulysses S. Grant, one of the ships belonging the The US Presidents Line.  I boarded the ship in Brooklyn, NY, sailed westward around the world, and disembarked in Brooklyn about three and a half months later. I managed to get permission to re-enter college ten days or so late.

I got the job through The Sailors Union of the Pacific, the SUP. I knew someone who knew someone; isn't it ever so? I knew Clarence Morse, a lawyer for the Pacific Maritime Association, who knew Morris Weissberger, head of the SUP, a labor union. Later, Clarence Morse worked for the US Government Maritime department. I don't know anymore how important the US regards maintaining a large merchant fleet for defense. Troops were sent to Korea, for example, and returned to USA by ship. Now, probably, such transport is all done by huge planes or Navy ships.

Altogether I had thirteen and a half months actual sea time through the SUP, time spent first on oil tankers, out of San Francisco, then an ore ship, then freighters. I wasn't a full union member, I had a 'Permit.' Good unions police their own ranks. I never saw anyone misbehave, show up drunk, or miss the ship. 

I did perpetrate a prank on the 'Grant.' Using my boots I outlined foot prints onto the pages of Life Magazine, painted them black, cut the 'prints' out, then, while at sea in the middle of the night, using paint the color of the mast as glue, placed the foot prints up the mast directly in front of the wheelhouse. I was not seen. Officially, nobody was named the culprit, but the Boatswain did wink at me.

Barry

  

 

Terry Schiavo

Terry Schiavo in the photo of her posted on our Editor John M Scalzi's Journal (I tried three times to post this in response, but couldn't) looks more human, more fully alive, than in any of the other snapshots of her taken earlier in her life and shown repeatedly on television. She is responding in the photo somewhat in the same way as shown in video of her reacting to the subtleties of affection and tenderness. To kill her now, I believe, would be murder. With the movie-villain husband with that blonded skunk hair false mustache, an accessory.

Barry                        

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/

What It Took: GAWP

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0503/freeflyer_nasa_big.jpg

Sometimes my rig might not be able to view, and then move the image given in the link above. I 'borrowed' it from SpearsJD a science lover who posted it this morning on a writer's board. (It's a photo of a lone astronaut against total blackness and beneath his feet is a magnificent panorama of Earth's blue and white beauty. "freeflyer" I read as mild bravado.

What made it possible for the astronaut to ascend so high? Well, how about group effort, loving one another, sense of mission, wanting to contribute, and because by nature we are migratory?

I thought I'd end my little series about How To Get Along With People with the thought that we have no choice, that it's our destiny, to get along, even if quite often we'd really rather go it alone.

Barry 

 

Part Four: Getting Along with People

When Elizabeth II meets someone her demeanor does not say, "I'm the Queen and I get a lot of deference, so if you're smart you'll give the right bow, and talk softly from a suitable distance." No, she doesn't even think that. (You do know people, however, who have presented themselves to you in that key I bet.) On two occasions I received a letter, in response to mine, from the Queen via her 'Lady in Waiting.' It was an actual letter, signed, and related to what I had written to her. I'm not kidding myself that the Queen gives a fig for my opinions, but I am inspired by the amount of time and energy she arranges to have expended on her behalf, energy all devoted to creating good will.

How much time and energy and money do we spend on creating good will in our lives? Outside of family, let's say. Family is safe. But do we stick our neck out, outside of family? I've confessed here, and offered proof, that there are times when I deliberately create ill-will, that I enjoy stirring things up. Maybe it's time I stopped doing that? found another way!

So, allow me to make the leap to declaring that getting along with people depends on our intention to get along well with people. Without that intention it's going to be the same old same old, 'I'll be nice to them if they are nice to me.'  That's not going to cut it; it requires that we take the initiative and make the first move. If two people simultaneously make the first move there's the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Tell me true, is this too 'Goody two shoes,' too Bugs Bunny? The genius of "What's up Doc?" is that it's a friendly opener, a humorous taking of the initiative. Another variation, probably via W.C. Fields, master comedian, goes "You live around here? I've seen you in the neighborhood," delivered in a slow drawl as an obvious lie, but made up for by the good intention to get acquainted.

Barry

 

 

 

Stretching

We'll segue this sunny Sunday morning from getting along with people (which will resume tomorrow) to getting along with one's self. Late in life I've stumbled upon the benefits of stretching before swimming exercize. Before swimming a mile and a quarter in various distances of kicking, freestyle, breaststroke, and backstroke I've acquired the habit of stretching. I do it slow, bored, vacant, diffident, dispassionate. I found, horrors, that you can touch the ground with your fingertips, easy, by cheating: push your shoulders forward as you bend down. Easy! After a few months of cheating I could, and you can, touch the ground in front of your toes with a couple of knuckles. Over time, provided you stay bored enough, I found you could balance on one bare foot beside the pool while pulling the other foot up to the buttock. Dealing with being, possibly, observed, is part of the relaxation routine. Fighting with the unwanted desire to 'look good' can be difficult.

I notice in men around 35 - 55 a need to go at swimming like Mike Tyson eating an ear. Possessed, nuts, so aggressive I can't help feeling they want to punish everyone for making them get in the pool. I swim lazy, and often win in my age division (old) because nobody else my age showed up. At one meet an opposing coach chided me for swimming too lackadaisical and insisted that swimming was a "power sport." But I don't enjoy it that way, Coach. I like the way the Dolphin or the Porpoise does it, for fun, with a smile.

This swimming stuff, if truth be told, is a private way, often, to commune with memories of my mother who died in an iron lung, Polio, when I was 14. To an uncommon degree she encouraged, and paid for, my swimming coaching and competing. She even sat in the empty stands on even a rainy day outdoors, and timed a training swim with her tiny, ladies wrist watch. When I was about age ten she timed my 800 meters training swim at thirteen and a half minutes. Have no idea if that was accurate. Probably not. Don't care. But, that she was there, well that's, well, everything.  

Where were we? I think I've lost the thread. Later, we'll get back to 'How to Get Along With People,' okay?

Barry

  

Part Three: Getting Along With People

Well, you see, getting along with kids (one's own especially) includes allowing them to watch their drivel on television. Nevertheless, when I hear atrocious grammar, and appalling cliches, I DO point them out to the older boy. I started to do this with more relish when a screenwriter on the writer's message boards boasted about his cartoon dialog writing. Nasty, nasty man.

Being an energetic, focussed listener is a great way to get along with people. Have you too found that to be true? Some minds might feel drained by having to listen to the speaking of others.  Some? Most? Anyway, there's something called 'Being gotten.' Damned if I know a colloquial equivalent, which right there tells you it's not a popular concept. "Dig it?" That's as close as I can think of. But it's not any part of 'Being gotten.' "Dig it?" is really only an invitation to share my prejudice. There's an arrogant flavor to the phrase.

Being gotten is a very great gift. It means that the listener has grasped every nuance of the verbal communication and is able to separate the content of the communication from all their judgments and opinions. We tend to talk by exchanging attitudes and preferences, rather than by ideas and narration. Heaps of conversation is carried on by the speakers finishing the sentences of others, like birds in huge numbers anticipating every swirling motion of the others: group think. There's a place for group think -- in time of desperate war for example -- but it's a far cry from being gotten.

So rare is the phenomenon of 'being gotten' that the norm is just about no one is ever being gotten. So what's true is massive non-communication. Someone I know Online, and only Online, seems in her life to have been so battered from never, ever having been gotten, that it has become an unconscious habit to instantly, and always to contradict what you have just said. It will come as no surprise when I tell you that this person's journal allows no replies. Imagine! Self-imposed exile from having been so abused by her loved ones all her life by their never listening to what she had to say, she has surgically closed her ears. It is as if she has institutionally established permanent not getting along with people. Self-punishment, of course, is always the most severe.

The subject of getting along with people is so tough I simply must talk about it in installments. I hope you will give me this leeway.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Leave the House

There will be a delay in posting Part III of "How To Get Along With People." I must wait to see if there is a response, or not, to my letter to the theater.

Fed up with having to walk all the way from the garage, upstairs to get something I've forgotten, I now follow the 'Rule of Nine.' and check before going out the door to be positive I have all nine essential things.

1. Wallet  2. Keys  3.Car alarm remote 4. Reading glasses  5. Sun glasses for driving  6. Folded 'List' paper in my shirt pocket  7. New Uni Ball gel Impact 1.0 mm black ink pen 8. Cell phone (How I've loathed and despised them and now I'm having a lascivious affair with one; it has more lights than the Rockefeller Center Xmas tree) 9. coin purse.

If, perchance you know a better method of getting out of the house please drop me a line. Thanks. Yesterday did all the court verdicts satisfy your need for revenge? Rather churlish of Scott to deny us all satisfaction re his impending execution. Damn him, he wants to die.

Barry

 

Part Two: GETTING ALONG WITH PEOPLE

Can a negative example be instructive? I'll throw myself on the sword, by showing you a letter I mailed today that very likely will have the opposite effect from the one I want. There is something that has been called 'The Will To Fail.' That was the title of one of the first of the modern 'self-help' books, published in the 1940s.  Choosing to not get along with people is probably, most of the time, a manifestation of the will to fail.

Earlier on this journal I wrote an entry about seeing a revival of a twenty year old music comedy stageplay  COLORED MUSEUM which I greatly enjoyed on Opening Night at a little theater in Los Angeles called Company of Angels. Before and since I've indulged fantasies of returning to little theater partly in conjunction with writing a play.

It seemed to my perhaps jaundiced view up close, that Company of Angels was adrift, as if in love with mediocrity and feeling close to the theater without actually producing anything themselves. The play I saw was written and rehearsed far, far away from that theater. Now, through bad management, that play is in performance to near empty houses and the theater's telephone announcement tells lies about it being held over to satisfy demand from excellent reviews. I doubt that theater is in fact reviewed anymore.  

So, I set out to make some whopping great weeping enemies via a sort of tough love. I know in advance it won't work, but an evil genie made me mad so I first tried to send an email, and when the email address I had was declared by AOL to be too long, I added to what I'd written and mailed it as a letter today. Can't wait to see what happens when I go to that theater again to buy a ticket. (They don't sell tickets, they write down your name and then lose their list of names.)

There are hundreds of little theaters in Los Angeles. That one however is only 4 miles away without my having to get on the freeway. So, I might forgive its sins if in return I can have an impact re efficiency, and resolve to produce something of their own. The guys I saw at thetheater need to toughen up, spend some time in the Army or serve in the Peace Corps or build a highway or SOMETHING.

In other words, yes, one can learn to get along with people, but, one can also, and simultaneously, deliberately risk alienating people to bring about a desired result.

Anyway, here's how NOT to get along with people:

March 15, 2005

Company of Angels;

The guy painting your wall today looks to me
subcontracted. Once again I'm disillusioned.
My fantasy was that all those dedicated thespians
painted and set-built as well as wrote their own
plays, and cast from your "Company," as well as
painted your menu on your two modest walls.
I've photographed your theater; it's cute. It seduced
me, setting off thoughts of what I'd still like to do.

Years ago I was at American Theater Arts, east of Vine,
on Hollywood Blvd. The theater building had been a mortuary.
Two stages were built. The theater had a 'Angel.' It is now
long gone. Well, they DID send two plays to Broadway
after shaping them. One was a vehicle for Jessica and Hume, and the other was a drama about Donner Pass. I had nothing to do with either. I taught there and I acted there (to good reviews). I directed two one-acts, Before Breakfast by E. O'Neill, and An adapted version of part of Vieux Carre, by Tennessee Williams. The double bill  was sold out every night for months, and every night the waiting list was longer than the capacitry of the house. When you get it right, and rehearse for real, lightning can strike. I acted and directed in college. I had phenomenal success with Ibsen's The Masterbuilder, with Richard Jordan in the lead. (Real name Robert Jordan.) His last movie, his last acting performance, was in Ted Turner's Gettysburg.  That production of Masterbuilder was held over into exam period and got the drama club out of debt for the first time in its history. (Now there's an actual theater, from money given by a Mister Loeb.)

I've been rereading LA little theater reviews after a very long
absence from doing that. I see going concerns get
$35 per ticket. Your tickets, says thatwriting on the
wall, are $10. What gives? So I was shocked that 'Museum'
cost $15 per ticket. Maybe I misunderstood you and the
tickets, which I never did receive (no tickets!?) cost $30
each, and I misunderstood. The sulky gorilla who admitted me, and my wife, on opening night, had no record of my having paid, three days earlier. Very, very upsetting, actually humiliating. since he was so dubious and sly with his insinuations.

Last time I looked your mail slot had still not been fixed.
The theater is in breakdown? or is it just content to be a
way station of the pony express? Temporary, a stage-for-rent?

How much do you charge to rent your theater? I might have a play.

Who's the main Honcho? You have a top 'Angel'?
Is there a consortium, or one eccentric, go-it-aloner who acts
as if organization is only for the petty minded?

I'm getting pissed. Maybe picketing is called for? <g>. Or pamphleteering?

Barry

This is a test.

A good rule of thumb might be to always sleep on a letter, or a post, before sending. Compelled to live dangerously, I mailed it already.

Barry

 

 

Getting Along With People

Getting along with people begins, obviously, in the family. Orphanages, or foster families being special cases. Another special case for the young person is being farmed out to relatives. The latter case is the subject of two of the greatest novels ever written, David Copperfield and Great Expectations both by Charles Dickens written 35 years apart in the 1800s. In the first, David must learn circumspection, to not be too quick to believe everyone.  In the second, Pip must get over being a little snob, and learn to embrace whatever harsh facts life brings to him. He fantasizes that his unknown benefactor is the rich guardian of the young woman he loves, but in fact it is an illegally returned convict whom Pip had helped escape capture many years before. Pip reaches happy maturity when he accepts the actual facts just as they are, and builds a life from the strength this achievement of acceptance brings.

In childhood we learn to get along with people by following how our parents get along with people. From when I was four I can remember my mother entertaining a woman friend during the afternoon while my father was at work. I interrupted by bringing a bunch of flowers for the guest from the garden, immitating my mother, and when sent outside again, from the neighbor's yard. So, giving gifts we learn from parents. (Stealing flowers we learn all by ourselves).  My mother was fond of saying, "Honey catches more flies than vinegar." Sometimes 'being nice' is unfairly tagged as 'Sucking up' a characterization that worries me as it is on the rise, coupled with a general increase in cynicism and division.

So, the ability to get along with people is likely to become more and more important in future days. In team sports it's easy as there is an obvious common goal, but in private life not so easy. Koby Bryant handles getting along with his teammates just fine on the court, but when Karl Malone mildly flirted with his wife off the court, "getting along" broke down. (Koby's wife showed appalling bad judgment in relaying to her husband Karl's cliche remark.)

One can have a fine life not getting along with people: it is after all an option. Some people handle being alone just fine, while for others it is torture. People skills really can be learned. Someone I admire didn't like 'Sales.' He preferred the concept of offering people free choice.

Pretty exhausting subject: I think I'll quit, for now.

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

Winning Chess by Self-control

Computers have damaged, and helped, popular chess tournaments. Contradiction? Sure. The last word's not in. Postal chess still flourisdes and consulting a computer is no longer banned. LA Times Chess Columnist IM Jack Peters justifies this inevitability by pointing out that the human can make intuitive judgments that can beat the computer's judgment. He's a dear man, and I've always been fond of him, especially when I took chess lessons from him, but Jack, I can almost promise you, wishes the computer had never been applied to chess analysis. Some years ago, in  the same chess column he admitted that the computer had stunted attendance at weekend, popular tournaments. Maybe all chess players have swallowed the inevitable, and have collectively decided to play on.

World Champion, former Soviet player, Kasparov it has been announced in today's paper has retired from competition. He was a splendid popularizer of chess. He came on the David Letterman Show and later played a match with Letterman via telephone. Many jokes were cracked. I would like to think that Kasparov offered him a draw, Letterman refused (LOL!) and so Kasparov mated him. That could have happened. Former World Champion (1961) Mikhail Tal offered me a draw and I gobbled it before he could change his mind. Grandmasters sometimes offer wood pushers like me a draw in simultaneous exhibitions. I will perhaps post the score of that game. (I have to go to Word's stored files to find it.)

Kasparov lost to an IBM computer called Deep Blue. That was a huge shock to every chess player on the planet. Now, even that program has been much strengthened.

I have a chess program called Chessmaster 7000. It regularly eats me. To have an even contest I must confine it to one or two seconds per move, and give myself unlimited time. There are other ways to limit the computer's strength. It is sobering to be beaten over and over.

The other day however I won twice against the computer set at two seconds per move, but rated at 2206, just at 'Master' level. I didn't employ 'Mentor" once, not once. These wins are totally insignificant except for the fact that I could link up good humor, rest,optimism, patience, and willingness to work, as having been responsible for the change in playing success. Chess strength belongs to youth. Kasparov is only in his early 40s, yet he is retiring. I suspect that older players can play just as well given unlimited time (postal chess results might substantiate this guess) but canot keep themselves physically relaxed, and their emotions under control, to the same degree that young players have accomplished.

Playing chess is essentially a waste of time so I have to justify it by telling myself I'm learning self-control and physical relaxation, both very difficult to master under pressure, even in swimming races.

Barry

SIMULTANEOUS

LABATES INTERNATIONAL 03/13/88

White: Mikhail Tal (World Champion 1961)

Black: Barry Bartle

1. e4 g6

2. d4 Bg7

3. Nc3 c3

4. Bc4 d5

5. ed5 b5

6. Bb3 b4

7. Ne4 cxd5

8. Nc5 Nf6

9. Nf3 O-O

10. O-O Nbd7

11. Nd3 a5

12. a4 (a) Ba6

13. Re1 Rc8

14. Ne5 e6

15. Bg5 Qc7

16. Bf4 Qa7

17. Be3 Ne4

18. f3 Bd3

19. Qd3 Nec5

20. dxc5 Ne5

21. Qd2 Nc6

22. c3 Rb8

23. Bd1 Rfd8

24. Rac1 bxc3

25. bxc3 Bf8

26. Kh1 Bxc5 (b)

27. Bh6 Ba3

28. Rc2 Rb1 (c)

29. DRAW

Offered by White

(a) First non-book move. Correct, or 'Book,' is 12.a3

(b) Winning a pawn with no compensation for White.

(c) Threatening to double Rooks

 

 

 

Pictorial Art / Painting

In my twenties a young woman I was interested in told me that a male friend had taken her to the Metropolitan Art Museum on Fifth ave., NYC. I like to remember this fact to remind me what a rube from the Outback I was even in my twenties, en route to college, late. Take a girl to a museum? remember, way back in the 60s (?) the first new wave strident Feminist was an Australian woman, later a Professor of Philosophy at Oxford or Cambridge. In her history making book, she wrote (for drama IMO) "In Australia women go barefoot and walk three paces behind." She was ambitious. (<g>).

From then on, for life, I visited Museums, Which are an excellent, excellent place to meet women, and not just the Met, but literally all over the world; Most excitingly when I was crew on an American merchant ship berthed in Genoa, Italy, when I made a beeline for the train station and a ride to the Uffizi in Florence (Firenzi) a distance of 150 miles. I was about 24, and still in college, returned from two years in the US Army in Korea. I'd taken two art history courses in college, one on 17th century Dutch painting, and one on the Rennaisance. I enjoyed the former the most, by far.

What I find most moving in art (painting) is humanity depicted with humility and love: Rembrandt, Vemeer, Hals, Van Gogh (thought of as French, but he paid homage to Rembrandt, even in his use of the brush, finger nail and brush wrong end!)

None of this would be permanently important to me if I couldn't find merit in present day painting using precepts I learned from studying painting from medieval times to the present. On my wall is a large reproduction of a present day painting signed by David Poole. (I'd Google him but my computer might lose what I've already written here, and when that happens it's utterly sickening, as I hope you have never experienced.) I'm sure my ignorance is showing but I've never heard of David Poole. He's a great artist. I had to live with his painting, which I bought for less than $10 at Goodwill, in reproduction, and very nicely framed, for quite a while before I grasped all its virtues.  

I lack the hardware at the moment to post it here. I ask you to 'see' the painting through my description. It is a beach scene at the height of summer: a deep blue sky, brilliant light, several (3) bicycles on the sand leaning against a high wall. Over the wall, mostly hidden from us are about ten beach umbrellas. In two places in the line of umbrellas we can see the deep blue ocean. There is not a cloud. We are peeking at a scene we can not see very much of. It is as if we are backstage.

How, one might think, can theatricality be sneaked into this ordinary scene? Easy! Add a female figure, lithe, nearly nude, carrying another, red umbrella higher than all the other multicolored umbrellas as she runs, or dances, standing tall on one foot, along the very high wall, the one that cuts off our vision. She is utterly self-assured, balancing perfectly. This is about the power one feels from joy, pure unalloyed innocent joy. David Poole I love you whoever, and wherever you are.

Barry

   

Freud

Could it be true that young people today know next to nothing about Freud? You could truthfully say I know next to nothing about him, but still alive is my wish to know everything about him, warts an' all. I've read more about him, than read his actual works. At one time Freud was an American cultural icon. Movies, the Hitchcock thriller with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck was consciously, and with relish, shot psychoanalytically, as a series of self-discoveries about the past, leading to freedom of the will.

I read the sadest journal entry I've ever read this morning. A writer who attributes their agony and creative blocks to not being inspired enough by the writing of writers who came before her. The truth, according to the tenets of the education culture in which I grew up, is that creative blocks are a result of an unexamined life. Freud argued most persuasively that creative freedom is a result of being fully cognisant of the minutia of our entire life.

So, I have a new reading goal: the actual works of Freud. Even his most merciless critics agree that Freud wrote extremely well. On that ground alone I look forward to the task. 

Barry

 

Children

When you have small children you get a lot of silent or not so silent supervision, surveillance, by neighbors and other strangers. The other day while driving with my nine year old son alongside me in the passenger seat, I gave the finger to an errant, bullying driver. Stopped at a light he got out of his SUV (SUV drivers are convinced they rule the highway so I pray daily for their demise, especially the drivers of black SUVs that look like a hearse) and started to walk toward me. Not anxious to engage in fisticuffs, abandoning my vehicle at a red light, I rolled up my window. He retreated. Not done yet the driver caught up with me and yelled at me from the passenger side that he was going to follow me and break off my finger in front of my son. I told my son to yell at him that his gas tank was open, which it was, flapping in the breeze and me with no lit cigarette to flip into the aperture. That seemed to sober him up and there was no further confrontation.

You do not, I trust, need me to explicate the Freudian overtones in this everyday highway incident? If you would, perchance, be amused by my take on it I'd be happy to oblige. More than happy.

Barry

 

Writing About Writing

Writing without pictures, that is, with an alphabet, is very young. Not sure how young. I'd like to know what China's plans are for making a keyboard unattached to picture writing.

Writing, my writing here, is gonna stay without pictures. Every once in a while I think of posting a photo to prove I'm not "Pontifical" ha ha as the Journal HOST ValGal states. But I won't give in. To communicate she'll just have to learn to write in the 'new' manner.

I've decided also to stop reading posts, journal entries  festooned with pictures. This is not an Egytian tomb. I reserve the right to change my mind at the drop of a hat.

Barry

 

The Wet Blanket

A Journals (Blogs) HOST (ValGal) calls my journal entries "Pontificating." I replied, mildly, and my post was taken down. So I want to know who gave her, who at AOL, gave her the title of "HOST"? Her folder is on a message board called Writer's Pad Discussion, folder named "Journals." Presumably her function is to encourage people to start a journal. Yet, she seems to know nothing about journals, and in effect turns people off, and away from even thnking about starting a journal. For months she gave "prompts" as journal practice on a message board I suppose. Over many months we never got into what a journal is, can be, or has been practiced as.

If I'm "pontificating," should I stop?

Main Entry: [2]pon·tif·i·cate
Pronunciation: pän-'ti-f&-"kAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cat·ed; -cat·ing
Etymology: Medieval Latin pontificatus, past participle of pontificare, from Latin pontific-, pontifex
Date: 1818
1 a : to officiate as a pontiff b : to celebrate pontifical mass
2 : to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way
- pon·tif·i·ca·tion /(")pän-"ti-f&-'kA-sh&n/ noun
- pon·tif·i·ca·tor /-"kA-t&r/ noun

Wow, I sure didn't realize I was doing THAT!  Help! Help!!

Barry

And listen, when I'm in full dogmatic mode I'm 'Barrington,' my birth certificate name.

 

"Baby's" Assisted Suicide

Whatever I end up writing in this journal entry remember, please, I started off by saying that the 2004 Best Picture Oscar winner  Million Dollar Baby is well worth seeing.

I saw the movie last night on a date. In the same mall in Glendale, CA we ate first at a Chinese restaurant which has as a name a huge pictograph (?) of what in English, so the waiter told us, the equivalent of 'Prosperity/Blessings/Tips.' He added the last with a broad smile. I copied the Chinese writing as best I could onto a scrap of paper and will send it to my 'date's' Chinese Mother in the Philippines for true translation. It was fun being on a date with my wife.

Still not having killed enough time after eating, and tipping, we decided to see the very end of Million Dollar Baby of the previous screening, first, then wait for the movie to begin  again. Serious stuff, sober, so dark it looked as if shot in black and white. Directly behind us a middle aged, grossly overweight woman was sobbing. To my right, also behind us, a man was snoring. 

I'd received about a week ago a movie-review clipping from my New York buddy, Dick,  written for the New York Post by Maggie Gallagher. She titles her review, "At The Movies Killing is Love."  Her timing was made especially effective by coupling to her review the illness of the Pope, and William F. Buckley's opining in his column that the Pope would be better off dead.

Amazing that the plot of Million Dollar Baby didn't become debate fodder when the movie first opened. It's chances of winning an Oscar might have been dimmed.

The subject is so huge I won't go into it today. Trying to make a hero out Howard Hughes was more reprehensible than showing via dramatic narrative that young people, especially young people, would rather be dead than incapacitated, in spite of what Maggie Gallagher claims as fact that incapacitated people very often are just as happy after a period of mourning, as they were when whole. Humans, in other words, can triumph over catastrophies.

- Barry  

Stories True Stories False

Remembering childhood reading makes today's reading seem kinda tame. Rabble In Arms by Kenneth Roberts, now there was a good one. How about Ironheart about an Iroquoi Chief that was pretty good too. Or, Down the Colorado in a Canoe, that'd keep me inside on a sunny day, long enough to get my mother worried about me and want to shoo me off to the beach or the swimming pool. A bit later, a few years older, reading over in a corner at boarding school, me and, believe it or not, For Whom The Bell Tolls at about age 13. Yep, at thirteen I conjured the earth moving.

What's to read today? Reread the old stuff probably best. Sampling the latest published feels like eating stale doughnuts. I want to read again The Snows of Kilamanjara and spell it right. Most of all The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Now that I'm nearly grown up maybe I could tackle once more the novel about the guy whose equipment was a bit off. I'll remember the title when I walk into the used book store. I could have the patience to again plough through Crime and Punishment. In today's Red and Blue America I wonder if a novel about offing your landlord with an ax could get published? Well, it's been done. Maybe you'd have to try something really, really awful to compete with Reality Shows.

Writing letters to my friends may have to suffice. Not that they answer very often, and never at length. Oh, and be sure to include a photo. Of the kids is safer.

Barry  

 

 

 

Self-observation

Accurate self-observation might sometimes be equated with self-absorption. (Already I've had to go to the dictionary thrice. No spell-check feels like deprivation when you spell as badly as I do.) However, it can be argued, and I will argue, that self-observation is necessary for survival, let alone a happy life. Driving drunk and getting killed might in millions of instances have been averted if the driver had noticed, and taken in, that they were drunk. 

Where I most value accurate self-observation is in the following activities:

1. Swimming competitively, and training for same

2. Speaking in public.

3. Acting in any medium.

4. Making love.

5. Posting in  my journal

5. Disciplining my children ("Am I fully under control?")

6. Noticing my evasion of responsibilities.

7. Lapsing into blame, rather than taking responsibility.

8. Noticing my peculiar euphoria when I have even a tiny bit of extra cash.

9. Being alert to the possibility of illness in myself, and family.

10. Not losing my temper when I'm stopped by a cop.  Ha!

11. If my hands shake, taking time to check for the source.

12. To check if I can achieve greater overall physical and mental relaxation.

Well, there's a dozen eggs to crack. Hope I make a palatable omlette. Got any tips? Observations?

- Barry

 

   

BOBBY FISCHER GOES TO WAR

In 1972 When Fischer "went to war" and did his bit in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union, and won by beating the World Champion Boris Spassky, the whole world was rivetted. The match was broadcast from Iceland. Nixon, and U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, cheered Fischer on, and congratulated him when he won.

Now Fischer is in disgrace. He disobeyed a State Department order to US Citizens to avoid all the former Yugoslav states and in 1992, twenty years later, played Spassky for a purse of 5 million dollars in the forbidden land. Fischer won. He pocketted 3 million dollars. He always claimed he'd get rich from chess. Now he's married to a Japanese chess champion (Yes! a woman!) and living in Japan, his status indeterminate. 

Two BBC Brits, excellent professional writers, David Edmonds and John Eidinow, published a comprehensive book in 2004 on the 1972 match with Spassky in Iceland. The book was hideously dismissed in the New Yorker by a Harvard faculty member. I've written the New Yorker threatening to cancel my subscription (ha!) if they fail to reopen the subject. I told them, the truth, that there's a Harvard grad, a sidewalk fixture, just outside the Yard on Massachusetts Avenue who plays speed chess against all comers for small change and who could tell them all about the significance of the Fischer/Spassky matches. I'm waiting for their reply. I have not paid them. Yet, my recent copy has on the name label subscription good through 2006. It's War!

It is not true that chess is of no interest to Americans. I received a postcard, richly colored, inviting me to play in a Midwest tourney that has a prize fund of half a million dollars. Beats Ice Hockey and the NHL.

Detente existed between the USSR and the USA in 1972 so the match apparently had less political impact, propaganda value, than expected. Many Russians liked, and respected Fischer, including Boris Spassky! The account of the match in 'Bobby Fischer Goes to War' makes splendid reading and, I pray, could even go a long way toward bringing Russians and Americans closer together. Russia at the present time is in a dreadful state, and I pray for her recovery. Go ahead! Call me Red and watch me spit. Oh, by the way, I too like Bobby Fischer. So, he's excitable. So?

 

Barry  

 

 

 

Loving

"Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove: / Oh no! it is an ever-fixed mark, / That looks on tempests and is never shaken:"  Oh sure, and rots of ruck.

Later, much later, older, and apparently chastened, Shakespeare wrote, "That time of year thou mayest in me behold / When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, / Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."  

The author is counting on mutual aging to cause the lovers to cling together.  I hope it worked out for him. We'll never know. Will In The World a new book about the actual world of Shakespeare may throw more light on Shakespeare's marriage. She was Catholic at a time when that was dangerous, and Shakespeare was chummy with Elizabeth I the Protestant Queen heavy into survival.

Can loving exist in a time of social upheaval? I mean what must the life of lovers be like when one is an Arab, and the couple move into a Red State? while she declines to stop wearing Mid-Eastern garb? Ha! Makes me laugh, but it's also tragic, our separations, and violent prejudices. 

Marriages of conveniences. Is that all marriage can be? Convenient?  My marriage is excoriated on AOL message boards and AOL does zip about it. A poster uses my son's name as a Screen Name, then puts words into the mouth of my 'son' about my sex life, and AOL does nothing about it.

This is not free speech, it is freedom to murder reputation. AOL, you're sliding, sliding down a slope toward wrecking yourself.

Barry

Sidney Lumet's Oscar

Ordinarily gossip is best avoided, right? For one thing The Gossip usually knows only a little, not the full story.  I know only a little bit.

The poignancy of his getting an Oscar is that he made his movies in NY not Hollywood. His whole life he badmouthed Hollywood: the place, and the mindset. He did weird thigs. He made a movie, in color yet, suggesting he had a budget, of Chekhov's The Seagull.  When it opened, in NY, even acting teacher Lee Strasberg couldn't resist pointing out the impossibility of the task. Lumet hit his stride with Pawnbroker,  and even more so with Dog Day Afternoon.   He flopped with The Group because that was a bad novel to begin with. It's almost as if he couldn't read.  A New York Jew, he married Lena Horne's daughter Gail Jones. The scoop there was she saved his life from suicide. They divorced.

I think Hollywood gave him an Oscar 'cause they felt sorry for him.

Still angry with Hollywood, on Sunday night he managed only to thank "The Movies." I believe the man was crude, violent, selfish, and semi-literate. A typical product of "the movies."

Barry