THE ARTIFICE WHILE YOU CONSTRUCT YOUR INTELLIGENCE

This essay is a reflection on what we believe and we think are deviations from our normal self. The movies you may see before or after reading this reflection are:

Nosferatu (1922, Germany), Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979, Germany), Mulholland Drive (2001, USA), and A Different Man (2024, USA).

Here are some thoughts of life that linger as I finish a film or a book, as I remember devouring movies back in 1990s, when I was in my twenties. I have watched movies the way I read the person, the character or the persona. And there is also almost always a reminder of a book I have read. I watch life at times like in a school, while being amid other lives being students, and a somewhat-classroom was that old theater with its seats for those to suspend themselves before returning to other realness of the world.

. . .

There are these anniversaries of old writers planned for anniversaries. Recently, 2024, Kafka is remembered. A few years ago, Charles Dickens was planned for the year 2020ish and then postponed, because of the pandemic.

There are writers and singers in the now who are celebrated and then ‘cancelled’ because some remark regarding some social issue or political figure.

I wonder about that time when we can cancel an old writer because of some questionable past. Apparently, Charles Dickens wasn’t so crazy about the Americans, eventually. And there are some stories about some scandal about a marriage.

We are at that stage in social times and literary times when we are not too so forgiving of old writers (whom we don’t like to begin with) that we let current human indiscretions or flaws not get by (from humans we probably never liked to begin with).

We are also at that stage when we cannot easily criticize a female old writer should we find some questionable acts. It still feels too mean and cruel, when we could be more understanding because of the general plight of women under the physical duress of the male. There are still mean women and men, and mean critics to whose likeness I may ascribe as bestial or revised animalistic or literary anarchists.

When I try to appreciate particular works by Sylvia Plath, for example, I cannot help but be reminded what she chose to do to herself. It is difficult to understand. Who is the character then in her writings but herself, and yet I cannot separate the two images of the wonderful writer from the image of her not-so-brave acts.

When a celebrity has a book club, how happy are the authors in their real lives? Some would say that some celebrity would be irrelevant for the most part. A good book is a good book. But most of us turn to the back, or for an insert, to see how the writer looks. They almost always look happy or neutral. And this I hope should be reason to emulate a great character in a movie or the book because of that association with the writer. But there is something about emulating someone from old books, especially from books you have read in long-ago schools. The deformity of book characters is not the same as the monstrosity one views in the movie theaters.

But, unfortunately, enough time has elapsed for more research on older writers that their skeletons or scandals are then recorded, affecting my want or desire to emulate them or the characters they wrote.

It is not at times with a heavy heart that I pass on a book because of the nature of the life of a writer; and I pass on a contemporary writer because the nature of the character is associated with someone whose cool-ness I do not know, or whose edge of which I do not have enough.

It is then the reality as well that we act or behave without having to explain who we emulated in life, or who our favorite hero is or icon or idol. We just do, we just act, and no one else knows who we are trying to impress--- whether an acquaintance, a superhero, or a character written by a questionable writer—and whether such a character has been superfluously or wonderfully created by an artifice we also call intelligence.

When early movie-goers or students sit in front, their faces are at times lit by the ‘sunlight’ from the window beyond the screen. And that sunlit face seems different from the face that is not lit. The teacher in us, as we learn in life, may find a sense of newness s-he has not experienced about the student of life.

In a suburb called Skokie, I used to ride my mountain bike, and pass a golf club, unassuming, not too huge- but it’s located within a small suburb which is technically called a village. I think not much of that club, during my drive, when there are clouds; I forget the implications and stereotypes that golf clubs inherit. It is as somber or normal as any green or tree nearby. The sun does come up, when I am nearby and the field looks quite nice; as if nicer than the grass across the street, which is silly considering grass is grass.

The lesson for me is that sometimes deep inside I don’t want that field or club to look better, or good at all; I wanted that gold club area to be as inconspicuous as possible, because I liked it, and because I didn’t want to know about the members inside and how they feel about anything associated with a man like me. Luckily the place is so peaceful that their worries are far more important than mine such as how their daughters may be treated by anyone who visits or by anyone assuming anything.

But it is here also that I recognize the nature of being aware of life and social conditions--- that my awake-ness of a horrible social condition is also similar to my awake-ness of a positive act to do someday. And this means, I am also withholding myself on doing good.

My sensing the bad in life is also in the same vein as my sensing that I can’t do anything else right now until I have a back-up, such as enough money or a place to hide… that money.

I am at once very good and at once complacent, to survive—having somewhat two faces or one face far more self-conscious to have you witness.

I have writings, from decades ago, now wrapped in some plastic. I place one philosophy paper in a plastic bag, because I can’t easily re-write them, and because academic thoughts are expensive to revise; they can cost up to 2000% more than pocketbooks on my old shelves.

I can read this about myself as someone who has extended some academic insight in college and pursued it because he had the time. I can consider this as a kind of traditional literary criticism, if that portion of my life was up for interpretation.

You can also look back in your life and encapsulate in one word or few words. You can use, of yourself, the words latent or driven. But an artifice out there, whether chatty or without gumption, can do so in a matter or quantum seconds.

I have an idea for a book club: that not just a club to read new books, but also a club that intends to read a book in a particular way such as traditional literary criticism or by reading it thru structuralism or feministically. These technical ways I don’t think will not be popular with the general public. But the point is that if or when the public tries it, a new sense of movement or even new style might emerge.

From any style, a reader would be able to call a book with just one word, mainly because s-he can and that it is natural to NOT be able to regurgitate the rest of the book when asked what it is about. Not all titles are just right; and some titles of movies feel stoic, without feeling, or offer the surgery of feelings for you by yourself.

But considering the vastness that is ahead of us, in mind, or in the future, there remains pretty much an infinite way to express one (thick) book or one long movie.

Most of us watchers are experts in one thing. Imagine being an expert in music and literature and architecture and global linguistics. There would be a whole world of exciting interoperations and insights with one field of interest alone from which to brick-lay an intelligence and brick-lay further intelligence.

By watching, there is also the element that a celebrity wishes to be associated with the character if the character is noble or strong. I suppose this should not be a flaw in her or him or a fault. And there are other characters, likely, which the celebrity is risking to be attached with, considering her or his or its reputation.

What I ask of future writers is that the title is not only your chance to immortality, so to speak, but it is also your chance to be reminded over and over again in your own time that your life means that: that title in your book of life—which, for now, no artifice can encapsulate as you and I live.

You can build a beautiful field, as a writer, but there’s still a multiplicity of meanings when you add a hole in that field or when you find bones.

I should say that a short film or a very thick book might offer you an association with the title different from what a small pocketbook can offer you. With a brief work, you can write again. With a large work of heavy weight, you may be stuck being associated with a title from which many will not get past, as if by interpreting or understanding, one experiences an amnesia after a sudden enlightening then to another amnesia and onto another enlightenment.

But there is always consolation with the thought that there might be at least one person between now and that time you die, who will be so enamored of the world you created in a story that it would feel like s-he is reminding you of how colourful the rooms are as s-he turns them on one by one, with some renovated, and some rooms more lived-in than others.

And s-he has named some of the rooms in your story with personal names like her persona-bookmarks.

There is a reason why we persist on writing and reading and watching. And maybe this is a reason for a celebrity is to take somebody along a chapter or a review which s-he would like a fan to see with her.

And I find it possible that, as I have read other books and watched other films, there are moments that I don’t wish to talk about-- but with at least one more person, I would like to share that there is an experience in a story that I would like to keep for myself because there is that beauty in itself, to simplify what I have to speak about a story.

I can store the thought of a thick story in my mind the way I can store a textbook with all its terminologies in my mind. I guess there is something very human about not minding to take someone along with me in mind, like a celebrity or a character. There is something about being able to see a new meaning in a story and finding the ‘surreal’ aspect of explaining a duality to some beautiful celebrity who is the size of a wall in a theatre.

There are times in life when I would have to confront someone who needs confronting if only to rid of that dark feeling inside, if only to construct him or light her up as someone for onlookers to remember.

A writer named Rabelais wrote of giants in his book Gargantuan and Pantagruel. When I am transfixed by a good book, I do loom large over the book, as the book is safe for me to loom over, and I can feel that I can be the character in his tiny little acts or her tiny little behaviors. It is still unpopular for me to loom with appreciation what an AI has ‘created’.

What one (totally made-up) word for yourself would you like associated to you, perhaps uncontrollably for a very long time? I would elaborate this, as if that one word will be title of your life.

If only my name now or someday can just reverberate like another main synonym that causes the other to shiver, walk away or understand that a confrontation is not necessary. I definitely can be like such characters, and I definitely can confront someone in real-life if someone in a tiny story can go through life without the watcher squashing him or her, squaring her, on a quest, or by query.

L.A.

Peliplat.com

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