The Sweet Science

Boxing is a fascinating sport because it lives in a tension between being a primal contest of force and a highly elevated contest of technique and strategy. You can win by mastering either side of this tension but those who can master both have much in common with great artists.

I happened to tune into HBO Boxing this weekend. I didn't know anything about the scheduled bouts and started watching about a minute into the first round of the James Kirkland / Glen Tapia match. It was obviously a vicious fight, all about force and will. Both men absorbed as much punishment in the first few rounds as any boxer could expect in several fights. It brought the competition as close as possible to a fight to the death. One couldn't help but be affected by the fight, whether in disgust or admiration. 

The chatter in Kirkland's corner was especially revealing as his trainer Anne Wolf growled to him "you done took his nuts now you gotta take his heart", insisting that his opponent wanted to kill or humiliate him and that only destroying his opponent would win the day. That nearly became a self-fulfilling scenario because it seemed that both fighters were determined not to go down no matter how much punishment was to be absorbed. In situations like these boxers can and have died in the ring. It became clear that, unless outside forces intervened, these men would fight until one of them was unconscious or dead.

In a contest like this it ceases to be about boxing skills. Eventually it even ceases to be about strength and physical force. It becomes a contest of wills. After some back and forth Kirkland started getting the upper hand and was mercilessly beating Tapia against the ropes. The ring-side doctor had a look twice between rounds and declared that he was very close to calling the fight. They were allowed to continue. Eventually, and probably much later than was prudent, the referee intervened and stopped the fight. Just as he jumped in between the two fighters Kirkland continued with two final punches that actually seemed to knock Tapia out on his feet. He was held up by the referee to save him the embarrassment of being thrown unconscious to the canvas.

One couldn't help but be drawn in by the visceral drama of the fight even as it was accompanied by a tragic sadness and fear that someone might actually die unless the fight was stopped. In moments like this you get a glimpse of our indefatigable primitive selves. It's draining and exciting to watch such spectacles. At its heart boxing is a vicious competition to the death but it's contested within the bounds of a set of rules designed to leave in everything but the killing.

And just as I was coming to grips with what I had just experienced, the next bout swung everything back all the way to the other sweep of the pendulum. Guillermo Rigondeaux is a very experienced fighter out of Cuba. He is one of the most technically gifted boxers in the world but only turned professional recently after leaving Cuba for Miami. He has developed a style that makes it almost impossible for his opponents to hit him. His speed, strategy and anticipation allow him to cut in quickly, tag his opponents with a flurry of punches and then retreat before they know how to respond. His opponent Joseph Agbeko is known to be a very skilled fighter who throws a lot of punches in any given match. In this bout he was reduced to a confused mess of a fighter, unable to mount any offence. In some rounds he was unable to connect on any punches at all while many of the punches credited to him by the scorekeepers were charitable since they only barely touched Rigondeaux while lacking any force or harm.

It was a technical tour de force but what's really interesting is that many of the fans in the stands started filing out of the venue, considering the fight to be very boring. Most fans don't like this fighter nor his fights. There is little appreciation for his style and he cannot understand why that is, believing that it is a conspiracy and prejudice against Cuban fighters. The point of boxing is to hit your opponent while avoiding being hit and he does this as well as anyone has ever done. He's simply not appreciated for it by anyone other than a few hardcore boxing wonks.

Rigondeaux is unlikely to get very rich from professional boxing. The lesser technically talented Tapia, unless he's killed or maimed in the ring, is loved and may well go on to make a fortune by giving and receiving punishment. It's much easier to understand a beating than the chess match offered to fans by Rigondeaux.

There is a familiar diametrical opposition to the way viewers respond to various expressions of style in the arts. In the realms of music, painting, writing or film one finds similar disagreements about what is considered exciting and impressive; pop music vs jazz, Rockwell vs Rothko, Rowling vs Pynchon, Spielberg vs Kubrick. The opposition often tends to be between the emotional vs the intellectual. Pop/emotional styles are criticised for being too simple and primitive, while styles demonstrating advanced technique are criticised for being alienating and heartless.

Boxing as The Sweet Science reflects emotion in the sweetness and intellect in the science. It's inherently understood that greatness involves mastering both. A Nietzschean approach might be to discuss the interplay of The Dionysian and The Apollonian in the creative process. Creations that move us to strongly feel and simultaneously to think in challenging ways are often considered masterpieces. Muhammad Ali is a legendary hero and a Superman of the sport because of his mastery of both spirits. Artists of any medium who can demonstrate mastery of both sides of this coin can aspire to such heights.

Glass Houses

I live in an unusual house. It was originally one of the first Loblaws stores on a busy street in West Toronto Junction. It is unmistakably a retail storefront building. When I renovated it and turned it into my living space I wondered what to do with the front exposure. I toyed with the idea of leaving it uncovered and simply living my domestic life in full view. I was reminded of the 1921 novel "We" by the Russian Zamyatin. The world in which the protagonist D-503 lives is made mostly out of glass. People literally live in glass houses and everyone's daily activities are visible to anyone passing by.

I decided against such a bold move and constructed a wall inside the storefront to separate my private space from public view. During the past 4 years in which I've lived behind that wall I've been engaged in another kind of exposure. I started blogging, signed up for Facebook and began using Twitter along with over a dozen other social networking platforms that essentially reveal more and more about what I'm doing when, where, and with who. It allows anyone willing to sort through the content to be able to develop a pretty good sense of who I am and what I stand for. People who choose to participate in this Panopticon are tearing down walls and replacing them with windows. We are moving closer to what D-503 must have experienced in his world.

It should be noted that George Orwell didn't really hide the fact that his 1984 owed a great deal to Zamyatin's novel. In Orwell's dystopian world Winston Smith and all of its citizens are constantly monitored with a telescreen. This is a two-way communication device that allows for the mass distribution of information while also monitoring the activities of its viewers. Big Brother's omnipresent omniscience of everyone's activities is stifling and oppressive. Big Brother goes even further by trying through the activities of the Thought Police to monitor what each person is thinking. The irony in our world is that many of us are doing the job of the Thought Police by voluntarily posting everything about ourselves online.

Why are we so untroubled by so much exposure? It probably has to do with the general feeling that our governments are not so nefarious. Most people don't seem to think that our governments are evil or corrupt enough to use this information against us. In short there is a trusting relationship between the parties involved. You have probably noticed that when you share private information with a close friend, a stronger bond and trust will often result. This will work as long as your friend is not a psychopath, in which case they will simply file it away and use it against you in the future to manipulate and control you.

Big Brother is not as evil and psychopathic as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe but perhaps it should be the cause for some concern that all of this information that we cast out into cyberspace is permanently available if, or when, an evil and nefarious government does take control. Even with that realization I'm still not very concerned simply because as we increasingly replace the walls around us with glass we make increasing demands on our governments to do the same. As we develop a taste for transparency and it's transformative powers we insist that anyone or group that we elect to rule us will have to reciprocate the exposure. We are Little Brother and we insist that Big Brother also live in a glass house or we will simply refuse to support or elect them.

If you live your life afraid to express your inner fears and desires to your friends because you worry that you might not be able to trust them not to use it against you, then you might find yourself without any friends. By putting it all out there for everyone to see you'll find that others will feel more comfortable doing the same and eventually a more open and transparent situation will result; in your personal life as well as your politics. But this will only work if you demand the same from your friends and leaders.

Filler Blog Posting

This is the end of my third full year of blogging. During 2006 and 2007 I averaged about 1 blog posting every 3 days. In 2008 I averaged a miserable 1 posting every 13 days. I can't promise I'll post any more frequently next year to this blog but my creative output should increase through some other projects that are underway for the new year.

Film:
I'm working with director Andy Keen to produce and write a basketball-related feature length documentary film called DUNK! You might be hearing more about this as the project progresses. It is now in production and slated for completion in early 2010.

Visual Art:
I've teamed up with long-time friend Robert Anthony to produce a regular web comic strip that doesn't yet have a name. You will see the first of them in January 2009 and probably on a weekly basis thereafter.

Literary:
I plan on finishing one and possibly 2 novels during the next year. One novel is a sci-fi-psy-phi love story about a physicist while the other is written as a memoir/bio by a philosopher about his troubled childhood artist friend.

Music:
I've got nothing here besides a few Garage Band mixes that I've created on my iMac, but I would be willing to play drums with anyone who'd be interested in jamming.

Plus there's some talk of a podcast with a broadcaster friend of mine and also that screenplay that's been half finished for over 5 years.

If I blog one more filler posting before the year is over I could get my average up closer to once every 12 days.

Writer's Block

During the last 30 days I've blogged everyday and managed to write a novel while participating in NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo. The novel has already gotten a very emotional response from its first reader.

To be honest I'm actually surprised how easy it all was.

I'll be sure to come back to the previous sentence whenever I think I'm suffering from writer's block.

Don't Make a Big Production Out of It!

I went to see a staged reading tonight. What is that exactly? You ask. It's the performance of a play without any stage design, props, extras, music etc. This particular reading had just three people on stage; two actors reading from a script and the seated director who read out the stage directions.

The play was Espresso by Lucia Frangione at Theatre Best/Before. It was a little confusing at first and one had to pay close attention because each of the two actors had to speak the parts of several characters and sometimes even switched between characters. Once I got the hang of it I was no longer confused and the actors began to win me over.

The story is about a thirty year old Italian/English Canadian girl who rushes back home after her father is seriously hurt in a car accident. The characterizations of Italian Canadian culture were spot on and very funny at times. Domenic Calla who played most of the Male voices through the avatar character of Amante was most charming when he spoke in the exaggerated voices of the various Italian family members. Laura Duralija started slowly but came into her own as the tension increased and more emotion was required of her.

Other than the occasional David Mamet play I haven't been to see much theatre mainly because I really don't like all of the excessive production of most of the popular plays. The focus on the text of a play without the distraction of over production is an interesting approach to theatre and I will probably go to other staged readings in the future.

We'll Fix it in the Edit

This month I've made the dual commitments to blog everyday and to write a full novel from start to finish in thirty days. So far so good as I'm on track to succeed with ten days to go. I had started on another novel last year which began with a quick flourish and then had stalled. After about eleven months of thinking and writing I was stuck at about fifty pages of a novel that was in danger of never being completed.



I was happy with the quality of the writing within that first novel but that's the problem. I only allowed myself to write what I considered to be quality writing. During this month's NaNoWriMo the approach was to write whatever comes to mind, never look back and never second guess. The result is that I have now written over a hundred pages of a novel that may turn out in the end to be even better than the first one. I've found that you need to jump in, let yourself go and allow yourself to make mistakes.


Before this month it was like I was trying to make an epic movie by planning every shot and directing every scene in advance. The approach to writing a novel this month has been more like the process of documentary film making in that you point your camera at something interesting, let the events unfold and then worry about tying it all together in the editing. A good documentary film will in the end take on the drama of a good epic film anyway, without the need for all of that obsessive planning in advance.


As it happens I've also started work on a feature length documentary film tentatively called Dunk: The Art and Science of the Jam. I'm collaborating on this with a friend who is a Juno award winning documentary film maker. I've also started planning a documentary film festival with another friend who teaches at OCAD. When it rains, it pours. But that's OK because I've discovered that I can swim.

Mainlining Sugar

I listened to a podcast that aimed to give some writing advice for NaNoWriMo participants. Some of the advice included the obvious like coffee but went beyond by suggesting cream donuts, Pringles chips and blue ice cream.

The really bad white flour donuts have immense amounts of sugar and fried fat so they're packed with energy. They suggested crushing the Pringles chips in the container so you could just "drink" it without wasting the time required to pick up and place the chips in your mouth. These are also loaded with sugar to complement the pressed starch that is the main ingredient and when you're done you could use the can as a hacking aid. The blue ice cream apparently has the most sugar of any flavour probably since it's aimed at children's taste.

It's long been a cliche that writers abuse themselves especially with coffee, cigarettes, alcohol and drugs but I've been good at avoiding these. I drink decaf and I don't smoke. I did have a cuba libre last night but only after I finished writing and I haven't tried the bug powder yet.

If anyone were to follow the advice given by this broadcast I'm sure they'd go into some kind of hyperglycemic fits. But I am feeling a little sluggish tonight and it's too late to get myself to the gym so I've gone out and got myself a six pack of chocolate cream donuts. I'll let you know how it goes.

Blogification

I've recently started watching a TV show called Californication. It's ostensibly about a writer going through a protracted period of writer's block accompanied by a similar obstruction in his personal growth. How apropos. David Duchovny of X-Files fame stars as Hank, a loveable self-destructive writer who has so fallen on hard times that he has been forced to take a job writing a regular blog, all this while trying to win his wife and daughter back.

The show is only so-so. Better than most things on TV but not as good as the best from HBO. What continues to grate on my nerves is that Hank constantly ridicules and derides blog writing as somehow meaningless and something of which any self-respecting writer would be embarrassed. It's true that blog writing is the only writing I've been able to finish on a semi-regular basis lately but this is not a self-defense response.

It should be admitted that most blogs are not written at the level or sophistication of most published novels, but some are. For every dozen mommy-bloggers who fill their pages with fastidiously chronicled minutia of every baby step and diaper change there's a Cognitive Daily For every hundred cat-bloggers who furnish us with their daily furry photos there's a Cosmic Variance. The point is that the choice of medium in which the writing is presented cannot determine the quality of the content. There are some horrifically bad books that sit on the shelves of your local bookstore just as there are some excellent poetry blogs online.

It's true that anyone can write a blog while you must be chosen to be published, so the odds are better that you'll find quality in one medium compared to another but the art is ultimately in the content. There is also a natural process of selection that begins to work when you link from blogs you like to other blogs that they like. Eventually you discover dozens of blogs that you might want to read on a regular basis.

Art can be found just about anywhere a producer chooses to put it. Film snobs like to brag that they don't own a TV as if shielding one's self from any medium could somehow be considered noble. Art can be found in any medium you choose to look at. It can be found in the content that is produced specifically for your TV, cellphone, flash player, sidewalk, milk carton, bus shelter or toilet stall. Snobbery directed prejudicially and wholesale against various media like TV, blogs or even comic books (the most artful of which are now called graphic novels) belies a misunderstanding of what and where art is.

Passages From An Unfinished Novel II

Back by popular demand (OK, two readers have asked for more).

From a work in progress described as your typical quantum physics, boxing, time-travel, psychological, mind-fuck love-story so common to the genre that I call Sci-Psy-Phi-Fi.

...
The jab makes contact and Vito is about to unleash his combination when Ziggy senses this and moves even closer so that Vito cannot swing. The victim clutches the abuser in a clinch. Given another context this could be interpreted as an act of affection. As sweat channels down the centres of their bare chests these men seem to be friends in intimate embrace, their eyes closed, deeply inhaling and exhaling in a momentary respite from their heretofore pangs of loneliness.

The mouse which has been bashed around by a cat will eventually decide to run into the belly of its tormentor in order to win a fleeting moment of peace. The cat, happy to oblige, will sit staring ahead as the mouse pants in relief - confused by a comfort not unlike that of its mother's suckling belly - thinking that it is safe from harm. Seeing this in snapshot one might think that it's just a manipulated mis-en-scene for a cute poster found in the jarringly cluttered locker of a schoolgirl or for the pastel images of Heaven on Earth peddled by those clean but unstylishly dressed people who ask general questions and hand out pamphlets at your door on early weekend mornings.
...

Books I'm Reading (for quite sometime now)

I don't read or write enough. I have been reading the Globe and Mail six days a week in addition to the Sunday NY Times. Since I am not bound to any schedule but am mainly steered by the swerves of my random desires I found myself reading the papers for about two hours each day before anything else was tackled. Hours more are spent on the internets linking from blogs to links to wikipedia entries to videos to still more news sites. I don't watch much TV, about an hour per day while I'm eating at which time I may watch the Daily Show or yet more news, a documentary or the rare basketball game or boxing.

For someone who claims to want to be a writer I have read very little of other authors. When I was younger I had the stupid and naive notion that reading too many novels would unduly influence me and I would be unable to develop my own unique voice. That was a mistake. I now realize the importance of immersion. I hope it's not too late.

I have started several books but I haven't finished many lately. I resolve to read more good writers. I really have no excuse since I canceled my newspaper subscriptions this week and there are two small independent bookstores immediately beside my house. Here is a list of readings in progress:

Milan Kundera - The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
A book about writing novels by a great writer of novels.

Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I saw the film nearly twenty years ago but had never read the book.

Orhan Pamuk - Istanbul: Memories and the City
He is the most recent recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature and here he writes about the history of streets and neighbourhoods of which I am distantly familiar having lived there for 5 years.

Lawrence Lessig - Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
An engaging book by a lawyer about intellectual property and the internets.

Lee Smolin - The Trouble With Physics
Director of the nearby Perimeter Institute in Waterloo writing about his misgivings about String Theory.

Jurgen Habermas - The Philosphical Discourse of Modernity
I read this stuff during my PhD research but am now reading it more charitably having found new respect for such left of center thinking.

Richard Healey - The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics
Another re-reading now that I have more patience.

Elliot et al - Relations, Transformations, and Statistics
A grade 13 textbook it is hoped will help me with the book above.

Primo Levi - The Monkey's Wrench
When I described by own novel writing (in progress) to someone they suggested I read Primo Levi. I just bought the book today from my neighbour the bookseller and do not yet see the connection.

Chris Mathers - Crime School: Money Laundering
A friend wrote this. He spent twenty years undercover working with drug lords and organized crime. He is also the father of two members of Hostage Life (see below).

Shalom Robot

It was sometime in January of 1921 that a Czech playwright named Karel Capek presented R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots). His brother helped him coin the word Robot from the Czech word for drudgery or servitude. The story is about a woman who goes to Rossum's Robot factory on a mission to liberate Robots who are manufactured to have all of the features of a human except (they believe) a soul. It ends badly for humanity as the Robots revolt and exterminate every human except one. Many of these usual themes would come to be explored within thousands of subsequent works of fiction.

About a hundred years before the premiere of Capek's play Mary Shelley (age 19) was vacationing with friends when she was challenged in a contest to write the scariest story amongst those staying at Lord Byron's villa in Switzerland. Rising to the challenge she wrote a book about Dr. Frankenstein who creates a living being out of non-living parts. This story also ends badly as the creature kills several people before killing himself.

Go back even further but remain in the same general area of Central Europe and you will come across the story of Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, a 16th century Rabbi who it was said created a Golem to protect the Prague Ghetto from anti-semitic attacks. That word comes from the Hebrew gelem which means raw material. A Golem is a living being created from entirely non-living material. They are said to have all the features of a human except for the gift of language which if they had it would be evidence of a soul. The good Rabbi's Golem also gets out of control and goes on a killing spree. It is said that this very Golem still rests in the store room of a Synagogue in Prague and even killed a Nazi officer during WWII.

It seems that the Golem story is featured in many classic tales told in Czech culture and Mary Shelley would likely have absorbed these. It seems that Frankenstein was the former name of a city in Silesia and it has also been argued that on their way to their Switzerland vacation with Lord Byron the Shelley's stayed briefly at Castle Frankenstein where a notorious alchemist is said to have experimented with human bodies.

Gustav Meyrink wrote a novel called Der Golem in 1915 which inspired several movies including The Golem: How He Came Into the World in 1920, the same year in which Capek wrote his play. It seems clear that the story of Frankenstein owes a great deal to the Golem story. It seems equally clear that one cannot have a full understanding of Capek's Robot story without acknowledging the influence of the Golem myth which had been prevalent within the cultures of Central Europe, particularly in Czech culture.

---
Side note: Another participant in Lord Byron's scary tale challenge was his doctor John Polidori who wrote that week The Vampyre which spawned a whole other genre.

Passages From An Unfinished Novel

After some squirming she rolls over and sits spread atop, knees bent, facing Ziggy's shuttered visage.

Coursing in circles around the accelerator the streams of billions rush past each other. Occasionally and rarely an electron slams directly into a positron. The resulting explosion while invisible to the naked eye is nevertheless a display of spectacular pyrotechnics. The aim of this collision is to create new particles hitherto unseen. The art is only incidental.

Loudly - "Ohh Ziggy"

Whispered - "Ohh God"

Exultations, visceral and archetypal. Exaltations, one and universal. The silence that follows will soon be punctured when Susan looks over to the clock on the night table and registers in order the digits 8, 1, and 4.

"Oh shit, I'm gonna be late again. I can't be late again. Fuck."

PKD

Another Stillborn Project

I was set to begin my new project: to write a screenplay based on the life of Philip K. Dick, layering ideas from his paranoid schizoid visions with his fictional writings.

My second day of research revealed the following:

http://www.philipkdick.com/media_pr-060808.html

Fuck!

Next...

Bigfoot Revisited

I met a man in BC who claimed to know Bigfoot. The discussions I had with him were astonishing and will become, when I reveal their contents, the final word on Sasquatch.

I recorded my conversations with this man who claims that Bigfoot is actually his great-great uncle from Seattle. I will be reviewing the recordings over the next few weeks to try to come to grips with them. I may post some clips. Stay tuned.

Blood, Fire, Water

Jake to Universe

Blood, fire, water. You have 15 minutes. Begin.

Steve skillfully slides the contents of the frying pan to one end and tosses it into the air. The diced onions and zucchini slide with ease as a single wave and rise up to a crest as they flow out of the pan and into the air. The wave curves back onto itself and crashes back into the pan where it is brought to meet the airborne flow. The onions are starting to caramelize nicely. Sizzling, some of them are richly brown or burnt. The zucchini was just added, releasing their invested moisture into the mix and making the sea harder to launch into the air. Then small plum tomatoes - blood red, short cylinders - not possessing much flesh. The larger tomatoes are meatier. They are added to the mix to give the sauce more substance while the smaller tomatoes are there for colour and taste.

He begins the motion that gives birth to another tsunami. This time red, brown and green, like a fresh grave which has been churned by torrents and hurricane winds. Briefly thrown up high then crashing down again. From this jumble the parts are now reformed where they began their journey. Flesh and grass uprooted, it's too heavy and comes crashing unto itself with additional force.

A splinter splash from this wave lands on the web of skin between Steve's thumb and forefinger and he jerks his hand back before even feeling the stinging of his skin. He had been admiring his skills to this point but now finds himself cursing his bravado. The kitchen is where he can relax and reflect but this is proving to be a most unrelaxing evening. The afflicted skin is firey red as blood rushes to heal the scorched thin membrane. The faucet nearby is turned on and he puts his hand underneath to ease the pain. He stares ahead and thinks of Susan.

It would take a thousand Niagaras to wash away the pain.