the american

The George Clooney movie. Just finished watching it.

In short, his character is sharp, very sure of himself. He builds rifles-utterly precise, completely confident in his work, silent yet seasoned from years of craftsmanship. This sense of accomplishment, this ease of accuracy is something I've been thinking about recently. The time spent, the months, years racked to reach the point where your craft becomes second nature yet you still sacrifice moments of minute details. It's fascinating.

I wonder about the mental process, specifically what someone thinks about when they're going through the motions of a craft, a job, for the umpteenth time. Do they think about the previous times they've done the same thing? The opportunities for error? For perfection?

I'd like to think it's some cohesion of routine and fascination. Something between sifting through the motions and relishing the moment, static and dynamic. The potential (Guess what?) and the resolution (I know.).

Then again, this conclusion is a moment, a singular moment only attainable after an eternity of preparation. I'd like to call this preparation the process. And the process is really what's fascination about it all.

this is how i spend my time

So, I just finished watching the last season of Lost. I never wanted to be the kind of person who devotes themselves to a tv show, jonesing to watch the entire series (Scrubs and House don't count...they're educational), but that sort of happened with Lost.

I didn't care about the relationships, how Kate jumped between Jack and Sawyer back and forth and back and...I wasn't really drawn in by the mythology either; once you have a black smoke monster killing people, seeing polar bears on a tropical island doesn't seem like a big deal. Honestly, if I had to watch the show on tv, waiting week after week for what happens next, in all likelihood, I would have dropped the show long ago.

I've (obviously) been watching the show on DVD, so I make my way through each season as I'd like. The narrative stays fresher, connections are easier to make, and the ability to rewind helps dissect scenes to see what the creators really intended for the storyline (bonus: no commercials).

I think that's what got me: the storyline. The arc. Even when the show became a bit self-indulgent, the pool for the "making it up as they go along" crowd, there was a direction. In retrospect, it's a difficult series to get through: making the connections, finding significance in the little bits here and there and how they reflect/add up to the end of the story.

It takes an attention span to wade your way through it. I feel like a lot of social media reflects the opposite of this. Everything is so instant, simultaneous, direct and un-apologetically in-your-face. There were moments when Lost was as loud and as obvious as fireworks, and there were moments when it was slow and took time to accept. Nevertheless, there always was a continuing narrative, a story that required an attention span long enough to remember names and emotions, faces and events. Sure, it's pop culture, ripe for parody and criticism, but in a time of Jersey Shore and that John and Kate bullshit, it was one of the best we had going.

Barcelona

This still fascinates me.

the social network

The entire time I was watching this movie I was thinking about the monster Facebook has become.

True, Zuckerberg may have stolen ideas to put it all together, but the fact is this thing, this website that literally has changed the way society sees socializing, was put together on a few laptops in a dorm room. This worldwide revolution and all the controversies, lawsuits and mania that followed all stems from a few kids screwing around in their college dorm. Everything stemmed from an simple idea that came from a few college kids.

Kind of makes you think.

unlike the indiana jones type

I saw this play about a month or so ago called "Six Guitars". It was a one man show, and the actor played six different characters, each of whom played a different style of guitar (jazz, metal, country, etc.) One of his characters was a classical guitarist (Spanish, at that), and this character tended to talk in grand metaphors, throwing out something abstract and humorous to the audience, then justifying it in a long-winded explanation. Entertaining, but valid at the same time.

At one point, he used a metaphor that playing guitar is "like being a snake"...cue dramatic pause, wait until the laughter dies down. His justification was that, as a guitarist, you continually make discoveries and have epiphanies about your playing and your view on music. Each new discovery, no matter how small or seemingly minor, if applied properly, can get you thinking about what you know and how it applies to your musicianship. Essentially, you shed your skin and take on a new coat. Maybe it's a whisper of a different hue, maybe its a noticeably different shade, or maybe now you're covered in tattoos. No matter what, things are different.

I just think that's kind of neat.

it's oh so...

Lately I’ve found myself becoming more and more interested in silence. I’m just starting grad school so a sizable amount of my time lingering in the that very same silence has been sitting in new rooms with new people, everyone staring awkwardly at anything and everything except their peers, themselves desperately awaiting the professor to stop by and break up the tension a bit. It’s a bit juvenile, avoiding eye contact the first day, but it’s helped me realize that silence can very well become it’s own entity and swallow up a room. That silence is a beautiful moment, capable of highs and lows and the exact middle where no one’s saying anything because no one knows what to say.

At the same time I think there’s something vital to be said for mastering silence. For about three weeks I sat in on a conducting class, and the one thing that really hit me was the concept of silence in the preparation of music. The college’s new orchestra conductor, an animated yet cool spirit, taught the class. One day, he drove deep the fact that for a musician, a good part of your working and artistic life is spent in silence. You practice so you understand the music, and you perform the music once you’re ready, but that in between is when that silence flexes it’s grip. You contemplate your choices, determine what happens where, how to shape the phrases and how to say something original with words perhaps thousands have spoken before. Of course, you play things a multitude of times, work out the trial and error of every phrase in the expectation, and that is what makes it all come together, but before you can make noise you need to understand exactly what noises you’re making. And for that, you need quiet.

Right now, I feel good with silence. I used to feel like I needed to hear a constant stream of action, that it was the only way to feel I’m doing things worthwhile. Now, I’m actually ok with silence. Silence can be it’s own noise, stir up enough on it’s own. Besides, it gives me time to think.

saturday night/sunday morning

Last night I cooked my first legitimate meal in my new apartment. Nothing special-just a stir fry. I've been having a strange time adjusting to this place; not out of regret or uncertainty, just...it didn't feel exactly like I thought it would. It didn't feel like "that place" I'd slowly make my own.

My kitchen is a bit cramped so, naturally, cooking in these new dimensions will require some new maneuvers and counter top space rationing skills. Balancing spices on the coffee maker, knives balanced just right on the rim of the sink for easy access, ingredients tightly assembled like an infantry awaiting orders—nothing new, I suppose, for anyone in a new kitchen who thinks they know what they're doing.

Somewhere between taking notes on how to manage this new space and tossing cuts of chicken and pepper in a pan, something marvelous happened. I cut into an onion. A big onion. Typically, cutting into a small onion in a big kitchen, unless one is prepared, would result in fumes stinging one's eyes and the general facial spasms associated with crying and yawning at the same time. Therefore, cutting a big onion in a small kitchen fucking hurts.

Right after the regret of the fumes came the revelation of the smell. The smell brought me back to my apartment in Milan, helping my Italian roommate cut up vegetables for dinner, the opening bottles of wine, the billiard-crack bubbling of salted water. That time before dinner when everything was just smells and promises made me feel distant and comfortable, that once I got through dinner I would be fully prepared to handle anything (or too full and euphoric to really care). The diced onions, the searing chicken, the oils sweating out their flavors, none of this provides any armor to the next day or the next term paper, the hassle of things breaking or expectations to meet. They provide acceptance and encourage wisdom, the blissful realization that it's all one thing after another, each random and logical consequence following as it may.

I like my kitchen.