Changing Minds

The title of Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind sounds like a self-help book of a type much needed in an age when we are far too apt to make a virtue of being closed-minded toward opinions that differ from our own. In a sense it partly is, but not in the way one might think. The subtitle explains the change the author intends: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us about Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Pollan’s book is an informative compendium of the modern history and current state of psychedelics.

It has been 80 years since Sandoz chemist Albert Hoffmann synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), which he called his “problem child.” It is 50 years since LSD became illegal in the US. It is classified by the Drug Enforcement Administration as a Schedule I drug, which by definition is a drug that has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use, and is unsafe to use even under medical supervision. Possession and sale are federal crimes and penalties can be severe. (Marijuana is still a Schedule I drug, by the way, though the feds at present are choosing to ignore intrastate sales in states that have legalized the substance at the state level.) A thing is not so just because government officials say it is, of course. LSD does have medical uses, though the nonmedical ones are just as intriguing.

Pollan didn’t initially intend his research for this book to become personal, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, it did. His inquiries into the history, chemistry, and applications of psychedelics led to his own supervised (not officially supervised, but supervised) trips on LSD, psilocybin, and 5-MeO-DMT (toad venom). The lengthy chapter on his trips is the least interesting section since such experiences are by their nature personal and difficult to communicate verbally except in banalities. (My own short story on the subject, however, can be found at Brown Acid.) The reaction to these substances is highly context-dependent and is also dependent on the predispositions of the user; religious people are likely to interpret their experiences as religious, for example, while secularists are more likely to speak of a more generic “one with the universe” sensation. The chapter is still useful, however, for understanding the author’s own mindset and biases.

Timothy Leary was the face and voice of LSD in the 1960s, but according to Pollan he did psychedelia no favors. His antics merely scared the straight establishment into outlawing the substances. The more interesting First Wave research, some of it notoriously for the US military, was done not at Harvard by Leary in the 60s but by others in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Civilian researchers included Humphrey Osmond, Abram Hoffer, and Al Hubbard. Osmond supervised Aldous Huxley’s experiments with mescaline in 1953; Huxley wrote the influential The Doors of Perception the following year and later would experiment with LSD and befriend Timothy Leary. Studies conducted up through the early 60s showed real promise in treating alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression, mostly by changing the perspective of the subjects. LSD binds to serotonin receptors in the brain, which is what SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: standard pharmaceutical treatments for depression) do, though the effects are more radical. Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, credited his insights to a 1934 experience with belladonna (which has hallucinogenic properties) and he experimented with LSD in the 50s. Research largely halted, however, with the Schedule I designation.

Leary was certainly antic, but there is no denying his popular influence, much as Pollan would prefer not to dwell on it. So, I will make one point regarding his most famous dictum, even though Pollan doesn’t, since it relates to the change of perspective at the core of the therapeutic and transcendental uses of psychedelics: “The only way out is in. Tune in, turn on, drop out.” He was not urging people to crank up the stereo, drop acid, and give up. As he explained whenever asked, he meant that the way to personal freedom is through inner space: tune into yourself, expand your mind (yes, he advocated psychedelics to help with that), and drop out of the rat race so many of us mindlessly run. Be free instead create your own destiny. That’s not the same as saying “be a lump on a couch,” though I suppose one’s destiny could be that; some people achieve that destiny without psychedelics. Some past users are very hardworking indeed. Steve Jobs attributed his creativity in part to his experience with LSD. He gibed Bill Gates for not having tried it, though Gates said he in fact did.

Since 2000 there has been a renaissance of experimental research into psychedelics (psilocybin and LSD in particular) at legitimate facilities, including at NYU, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins. (Even Schedule I drugs can be grudgingly granted legal exceptions for some experimental studies.) Once again the substances are proving useful in combatting addiction and depression. They also are proving valuable for relieving anxieties in terminal patients. Whether the trips of the dying are felt as spiritual or simply as the loss of ego, they seem to help bring peace of mind.

Substances as powerful as these can be dangerous (as is alcohol), of course, and the risks must be acknowledged. They expand most minds but have been known to shatter a few. That is reason enough in the minds of many to continue to outlaw them. So, it is anyone’s guess whether they ever will regain a legal status even if just for (non-experimental) therapeutic uses. It seems unlikely, but back around 1900 the notion that it could be any business of government to restrict at all what people chose to put in their bodies also seemed unlikely: cocaine and laudanum (opium and alcohol) could be bought over the counter at the time. Times change. Perhaps Hoffman’s problem child may again be allowed to come out and play.

Original Broadway Cast: Walking in Space

Vicious Mythic Parties: Three Reviews

Halestorm: Vicious (2018)

Vicious (2018) is the fourth studio album by Halestorm, not counting cds of cover songs. Their last album Into the Wild Life got mixed reviews, largely because it wasn’t what fans expected. Lzzy Hale’s raw vocals backed by guitar, bass, and brother Arejay Hale on drums have been delivering basic hardcore power rock’n’roll since 2009. A few tracks on Into the Wild Life fit that description, but the band also experimented with various other sounds including country and pop. It wasn’t bad, but much of the fan base wasn’t happy. Fans have no reason to complain about Vicious. “What doesn’t kill me makes me vicious,” sings Hale on the title track. The rock is back. From the opening song Black Vultures to the speed rock “Uncomfortable” to the melodic “Killing Ourselves to Live” to the final sentimental (acoustic but un-silent) “The Silence” and everything in between, the album keeps the edge in sound and lyrics that rock should have “just to make you uncomfortable.” Thumbs Up.

**** ****

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality by Mark Field

I didn’t watch Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer during its initial run of 1997-2003. Those years were tumultuous for me personally, and not in a good way. Even had I the time back then, I would not have been inclined to seek out a campy horror show that appeared to be aimed at teenagers. Only several years later did I idly give some reruns a view and find myself impressed. Yes, it is a campy horror show aimed primarily at teenagers, but it is intelligently scripted and funny. (The shoestring budget first season is admittedly shaky, but it was a 1997 midseason replacement, so there are only 12 episodes in Season One to get through.) It is a show adults can enjoy, and one soon notices that the monsters, demons, and vampires are metaphors for the challenges we all face growing up.

Lest one think that is reading too much into it, the reading is shared by cultural critics and by the creators of the show. There have been more academic studies (called Buffy Studies – really) on Buffy than any other TV show. Said James Marsters (who played the vampire Spike on the show), “I’m not at all surprised that the show in any form continues to live on. I don’t want to oversell this but it’s the same theme as Catcher in the Rye. It’s the same theme as Hamlet. How do you get through adolescence? ... I’m really glad Joss was able to find a metaphor to talk about something that is a serious subject with so much humor.” Whedon’s taste for existentialist philosophy informs the show (the vampire Angel, played by David Boreanaz, can be seen reading Sartre’s La nausée in one scene) along with the theories of Freud and Jung. Not always, of course. In the last episode of Season Four several main characters have meaningful metaphorical dreams; in each of them a fellow with slices of cheese makes a brief appearance. He doesn’t mean anything. Joss is just playing with the audience. Sometimes cheese is just cheese.

One of the more informative and accessible books on the subject is Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor, and Morality by Mark Field. In 682 pages he gives episode by episode analysis of the philosophical, psychological, and cultural references. I picked up the book mostly to see whether there was that much to say about a TV show. There is, because it is not just about a TV show but about philosophy, psychology, and culture. I sometimes find myself disagreeing with him, but always find his commentary thoughtful and perceptive. Whether you’re revisiting the show or seeing it for the first time, if you want, in effect, an annotated Buffy, this will do as well as any.

**** ****

How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017)

When writing about young people, authors often are tempted to set their stories in the places and eras of their own youth. It’s just easier to get the nuances right in everything from speech patterns to pop culture references. (A notable exception was Tom Wolfe whose ear for campus dialogue in the 2000s in I Am Charlotte Simmons was as on target as it was for 1960s hippiedom in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.) It’s a bonus for the storytelling if that era happens to be a particularly vibrant one. This is the case for author Neil Gaiman (b.1960) whose How to Talk to Girls at Parties, originally a scifi short story and later a graphic novella, is set in punk-era London. The 2017 film version stars Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, and Alex Sharp.

In 1977 Enn (Sharp) and his friends leave a Croydon punk rock club at closing time to find an after hours house party. Despite some wrong turns they find a house party, but it’s not the one they were seeking. These partiers are different. The boys assume they are some kind of cult from California, but they actually come from much farther away than that. They are manifesting in human form to accumulate certain types of data prior to “the eating”; the aliens have solved the population problem by consuming their own (adult) offspring. Gaiman’s original tale ends when the boys leave the party (“flee” might be a better verb), but this scene happens only 20 minutes into the 102 minute movie. The film’s plot continues as Zan (Elle Fanning), one of the aliens, asks Enn’s help to “further access the punk.” He is happy to comply with a little help from punk scene queen Boadicea (Nicole Kidman).

Gaiman’s short story is a tightly plotted and themed one: Enn fears the alien siren song even as he is drawn to it. (The metaphor of clueless young men fumblingly attempting to interact with women is an obvious one.) The movie by contrast goes off in multiple directions at once: part romcom, part 70s retrospective, part youth rebellion, part scifi parody, and more. The result is messy, but not really a bad messy. This is not a great film, but it is agreeably weird. That’s enough to earn it a mild Thumbs Up.

Trailer: How to Talk to Girls at Parties

Finding Philo

It is currently raining in this part of NJ, which means my satellite TV signal is glitchy. So, this is a good moment to write about TV instead – something I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of days.

Saturday night I watched the 1941 The Wolf Man on Me TV, a nostalgia cable/satellite channel. The Wolf Man wasn’t the first werewolf movie, but it set the standard for all the ones that followed. I’m not sure why I watched it since I own a DVD of it, but somehow it drew me in. It and other Universal monster movies appeared frequently on non-network TV channels when I was a child; there was still a shortage of original content in those years, so old movies got a lot of air time. I don’t remember the first time I saw it but it likely was prior to 1960 and certainly wasn’t much later. I know I had seen it multiple times before assembling an Aurora plastic model of the Wolf Man sometime in the early 60s. All of my elementary school friends had seen it, too, and that is the point I pondered (during commercials) on Saturday.

TV’s hundredth birthday is less than a decade away. In the past few decades we have seen Wunderkinder dropouts design cutting edge personal computers, programs, videogames, social media platforms, smart phones, apps, and other tech, but youth is nothing new in technology. In 1920 14-year-old Philo T. Farnsworth in Rigby Utah showed his high school science teacher his designs and accompanying formulae for a scanning cathode ray television system. It was way over his teacher’s head, but the fellow was supportive and referred him to Brigham Young University. Philo soon moved to California. Despite working with limited funds out of his own workshop, by 1927 he had a fully functional television system from camera to screen. (Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce at the time, appeared on TV on April 7, 1927.) As so often happens when available components and theory make a new technology ripe, several inventors simultaneously were developing similar systems: notably Vladimir Zworkyin who had the resources of RCA at his disposal. In the patent dispute that followed, however, Farnsworth prevailed because his high school science teacher still had his sketches thereby proving his work was prior.

Television broadcasting began in the UK and Germany in the 1930s and in the US in 1939, in which year Franklin Roosevelt became the first sitting president to be televised. Nonetheless, the eye-watering cost of early TV sets, the Depression, and then World War 2 prevented the technology from taking off commercially. Prior to the end of the war, home TV sets in the US numbered in the mere hundreds. After the war, pent up civilian consumer demand quickly changed all that. US TV sets numbered in the millions by 1949. My parents bought their first set in 1948.

This collection of Vidal's 1950s
TV screenplays still holds up well

Television broadcasting in the 1950s was better than one might expect of a fledgling medium. (I was a little young to judge it at the time, but I did like to watch reruns of The Little Rascals before school and acquired my taste for scifi after school.) Top notch writers were hired for weekly dramas, vaudeville performers still on their game got their own shows, innovative series such as The Twilight Zone got a footing, and (bringing us back to The Wolf Man) older movies were introduced to a new generation. Because the channels were few, the effect was to homogenize popular culture in a way that radio hadn’t. People from all regions and walks of life watched the same shows and televised movies. So much was this the case that everything from water usage to restaurant attendance varied predictably depending on what was on. You could talk about the latest Ed Sullivan Show at a party and be pretty sure most people there had seen it. As late as the 1970s shows like All in the Family and The Jeffersons had diverse audiences of 30 or 40 million per episode.

No longer. The proliferation of channels and the blurring of television and internet have split us into niche audiences. We can pick and choose as we please among near endless options. Viewership divides along ideological, ethnic, and generational lines (among others) even where one wouldn’t expect. That is not entirely a bad thing. Greater choice is something I’m certainly happy to have. It is not the job of video entertainment (in whatever format on whatever screen) to homogenize popular culture. It is worth noting, though, that it once did and now doesn’t.

On the other hand, some of the niches span the divides in curious ways. Look at the membership, for example, of classic movie or science fiction or detective fiction discussion groups on Facebook. The members bear little in common but enjoyment of the genre. (By the way, the term "idiot box" is unjustified. Academic and IQ scores actually are higher in countries that watch more TV. Within countries there is a bell curve: in the US, academic scores are positively correlated with TV viewership up to 3 hours per day but fall off above that.) So, while we no longer can assume the people we meet  have seen the same television and movies as we, it’s easy enough to find some folks who have: so much so that if I had kept that Wolf Man model in the box it would be worth something. That’s not a common culture, but it will do.

Blondie’s ode to TV: Fade Away and Radiate

One If by Band Two If by Seat

Two reviews from a chair in the den and one from a standing-room-only club:

**** ****

Tully (2018)

To call Tully a chickflick is to understate the case, which I mention both as a warning and an inducement depending on the taste of the viewer. I don’t mean the term in the old-fashioned sense of a particular brand of romcom or in the more recent sense of some athletic heroine singlehandedly thrashing a platoon of burly men twice her size, but rather something much less formulaic. A few words about the screenwriter Diablo Cody are a good place to start to tweak the definition.

Diablo Cody had an unusual path to becoming one of Hollywood’s star screenwriters. Back in 2005 she published a book called Candy Girl about her life as a Minneapolis stripper. It caught the eye of film producer Mason Novick who thought it had potential for a movie. He contacted Cody and asked her to send him a sample script on any subject in order to see if she could write as well for the screen as she did in her memoir. Over the next few weeks, mostly at a local Starbucks, she wrote a script titled Juno. The Candy Girl movie was never made, but Juno was. Her scripts since then include Jennifer’s Body (2009), the TV series United States of Tara (2009-2011), Young Adult (2011), Paradise (2013), and Ricki and the Flash (2015). All of them are female-centric and are off-beat, down-to-earth, and literary in an idiosyncratic mix. My favorite, BTW, is Young Adult with Charlize Theron as an author of young adult novels. It’s hard not to notice that Cody’s protagonists are aging along with her, generally tracking behind by a few years; the one out of sequence film (she got ahead of herself on this one) is Ricki and the Flash about an aging rocker. All of her characters are humanly flawed (or inhumanly, in the case of Jennifer’s Body) and their heroism, when it emerges, is of a (typically underappreciated) everyday kind. Cody wrote Tully after the birth of her third child.

In Tully Charlize Theron is Marlo, a forty-something suburban mother who early in the movie has her third child. Her kindergarten son is challenging and possibly challenged (it’s still an open question), which further frazzles her nerves. Her daughter requires her attention, too, while her husband’s long hours leave her with the domestic load. Sleep-deprived by her new baby, she finds her capacity to cope has been sorely exceeded. Seeing her exhaustion, Marlo’s rich brother suggests that she get a “night nanny” who, as the name indicates, would arrive only at night and do everything with the baby but nurse, for which single task she would wake up Marlo before taking over again until daybreak. A night nanny arrives at the door. She is a 26-year-old named Tully who in energy, outlook, and body tone is everything Marlo once was but no longer is. I can hear the reader saying “I know where this is going.” While writing, Cody obviously could hear potential viewers say the same thing, because Marlo (joking, but not) openly expresses worry that the arrangement is “like a Lifetime movie where the nanny tries to kill the family and the mom survives and she has to walk with a cane at the end.” It isn’t. It is something much stranger, and yet understandable.

Recommended, but definitely not for those who require explosions, car chases, superheroes, and villains scheming to take over Gotham City. (I like those, too, by the way, but not exclusively.) It also may deter some viewers from having kids, though I think that response was unintended.

**** ****

The Humans by Matt Haig

The British author Matt Haig approaches most of his novels – even his children’s literature – at a slightly bent angle such as the family drama The Radleys, who are vampires, and The Last Family in England, which is basically King Henry IV, Part I but with dogs. In The Humans an extraterrestrial comes to earth when a Cambridge mathematician’s proof of the Riemann hypothesis regarding prime numbers threatens to end death and disease on earth while opening up access to the universe to humans without the need of pesky encumbrances such as spaceships. As is typical in stories of this kind, the existing advanced species Out There don’t much like the idea of unruly savage humans joining them in the wider cosmos. They know full well that humans have a history of inventing things they don’t use properly, e.g. “the atomic bomb, the Internet, the semicolon.” (By the way, years ago I blogged about the last of those in Save the Semicolon.)

The alien from Vannador replaces the mathematician Andrew Martin, and is tasked with killing anyone the real Professor Martin told about his breakthrough including his wife and son. Even if they don’t know the details of his proof, the mere knowledge that there is one is dangerous as it would prompt others to seek it. Despite his adaptive gifts, the alien makes social mistakes, the first being to arrive without clothes. He lives as Professor Martin and delays eliminating his family while he tries to find out how many people have learned about the professor’s success; fortunately, due to the cutthroat world of academia and the real Professor Martin’s own secretive personality, the number seems to be few. Much to the displeasure of his taskmasters, the Vannadorian is slowly corrupted by his human form. He is tempted to go off task as he gains empathy with humans generally and affection for his wife, son, and dog in particular.

The basic premise of an alien awkwardly trying to hide in plain sight has been done many times before in books and on screen. The TV show 3^rd Rock from the Sun got six seasons out of it. However, this is true of almost any scifi premise. It’s a little late in scifi’s day for much real originality in premises. What matters is how well the material is handled, and Haig does a good job of it. There are few better ways to display the absurdities of human life than from the perspective of a putative alien. The redeeming human characteristics discovered by the Vannadorian also make an unoriginal list, but are no less persuasive for that.

Thumbs Up for amusement value.  

**** ****

Gone Fishing at the Stanhope House

Smallish music clubs are apt to come and go, but every area has that venue – maybe more than one – that lingers for generations. The Stanhope House is one such place near me. The building started as a stagecoach stop in 1794 and had various lives after that as rooming house, tavern, and restaurant. Some 50 years ago it became a music club specializing in blues. Despite its cozy interior (a choppy floorplan makes it effectively smaller than the exterior suggests) it booked heavy talent in the 70s including Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn. The place was a frequent haunt of mine back in my 80s and 90s club-hopping days. Nowadays it mostly books local or lesser known talent (as one expects of an out-of-the-way NJ club) but there still are surprising exceptions including Samantha Fish a few days ago, who unsurprisingly sold out soon after going on the schedule.

Regular readers of this blog (there are a few) may recall my earlier mentions of the Kansas City blues guitarist. Her band keeps growing and now includes keyboard, horns, and violin. Samantha is not stylistically stuck in a single groove but churns out blues, country, rock and roll, and pop – not a lot of pop, but some including the title song of last year’s Chills and Fever album. The album is worth a listen, by the way, as is Belle of the West, her country-tilted second album of 2017. Her live performances are by far the best, however. She tours constantly and still can be found in relatively modest venues even though she has outgrown them (http://www.samanthafish.com/tour/). I recommend finding one near you before that changes.

Samantha Fish @ Stanhope House, August 2 2018 – Heartbreaker

Tie and Jacket

Last week I watched a rerun of How I Met Your Mother. One of the running gags on the show is Barney’s obsession with suits. In a flashback we learn how it started: during his hippy days Barney lost his girlfriend to a successful man in a suit. The scene prompted me idly to wonder if I even own a suit.

This uncertainty might seem strange, but there are three explanations. The first, which the reader already likely has surmised, is that I haven’t had occasion to wear a suit in years. Second: my semi-formal wear (I have no fully formal wear) is stashed in a walk-in closet with a non-working light fixture. Replacing the fixture is one of those long-needed repairs that “I’ll get to someday.” Access to the recessed fixture’s wiring is in an extremely awkward far dark corner of the attic tight under the rafters, so it’s been easier (for the past 18 years) just to use a flashlight in that closet. I store in it my less commonly worn clothes along with other infrequently accessed sundries including my dad’s old military uniforms. I don’t see anything in the closet unless I shine a flashlight directly at it, so I’m not reminded of the full contents every time I open the door. Third: last year (see The Raiment under the Tree) I finally accepted that most of my clothes would never fit me properly again and so removed permanently from my closets anything that interfered with my breathing when buttoned – if it buttoned at all. Accordingly, while I knew I once owned a blue suit and a grey one, I truly didn’t remember if both were among the excised.

School days, 1969

A subsequent quest into the closet with a flashlight revealed that there still is one grey suit hanging there that I can use in a pinch. The word “pinch” is literal, but not so much as to render it unwearable. It will fit perfectly when I lose those 10 pounds, which will be about the time I fix the closet light. That is not to say it ever will be worn even then. I can’t recall ever having worn it in public outside of the store where I bought it 20 years ago: a real brick-and-mortar store back then. (I wore a blue one that I no longer own twice: once at a wedding and once at a funeral.) This might be surprising to white-collar types who wear suits as a matter of course, but my sartorial progression followed a path opposite of most of my generation: from tie-and-jacket in school to denim at work. (My work blended blue and white collar, so I tended to dress in the middle.) There are always occasions to spiff up just a little, though, so I’ve always kept the basic semi-formal ingredients for that on hand and still do, even though I apparently misjudged the need for a traditional business suit. There are sport jackets and blazers on my hangers that fit and they do get worn from time to time – sometimes even with a tie. The jackets don’t get worn so often as to be in one of the closets with a working light, but they do get worn; the tie rack is on the back wall of the dark closet, too.

Hard at work 1995

While checking for the suit I somewhat playfully (I was wearing a tee shirt) grabbed one of the ties off the rack just to see if my muscle memory was intact, though I had no reason to assume it wouldn’t be. It was, fortunately, for while I tie a half-Windsor (my preferred knot) in seconds without thinking about it, I’d find it difficult to describe to a newbie how to do it.

Tie rack in the dark closet

Ties are rather odd articles of clothing really, but they have a long history. Soldiers on Trajan’s column (finished 113 CE) are wearing them, or something very much like them. (BTW, the general doesn’t look too pleased by their gruesome gifts, does he?) Some of the Chinese terracotta soldiers, crafted some 300 years before Trajan, also are wearing something similar. It wasn’t a persistent fashion though: it came and went over the centuries. The modern necktie is usually traced to the 1600s when it was worn as a bit of flash by Croatian mercenaries in the service of Louis XIII of France. Louis liked the look, named it la cravate, and specified it as proper attire for royal events. It has been with us ever since in one variant or another including cravats, bowties, and bolos. (The bolo is official neckwear in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas; other US states, to my knowledge, do not have state neckties.)

Roman soldiers' neckwear: irony unintended

The standard necktie to which we are most accustomed became standard about 100 years ago. Fashionistas have played with tie widths, patterns, and colors over the years since then, but a conventional tie from the 1920s always has been wearable and still is. This also is the case with sport jackets and business suits. Men who enjoy being edgy in fashion will find that their choices inevitably age badly; 1970s garish colors, extra wide lapels, floral shirts, and bell bottoms come to mind. There always are conservative clothing options however that don’t go all-in for current trends; a conservative business suit or semi-formal tie-and-jacket from any of the past 10 decades remains wearable today. Some older styles might seem affectations today, but not outrageous ones.

All this persistence of standard style is fortunate since, like most men, I don’t get rid of clothes for any reason other than 1) they don’t fit anymore or 2) they truly are worn out. The grey suit in the dark closet isn’t at risk of wearing out anytime soon. Perhaps I’ll give it away before its style begins to look like an affectation.

Barney suits up in How I Met Your Mother

Leaving a Trace

The father/daughter dynamic is a tricky one in real life and almost as tricky to portray on film. Disclosure: I’m not a parent. Whether that makes it easier for me to observe such interactions dispassionately or impossible to grasp them emotionally, I cannot judge – maybe both are true.

There are, of course, many kinds of relationships; fathers are variously portrayed on the screen as over-protective, bewildered, tyrannical, aloof, doting, creepy, or absent. Daughters, among other possibilities, are rebellious, fawning, or manipulative. (Louis C.K.’s movie I Love You, Daddy [2017] about the last sort may never see general release, consigned as he is to the woodshed for reasons other than fatherhood.) Real relationships are combinations of all those characteristics and more. Few films are good at capturing them. Strangely, the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of all productions, did a pretty good job portraying the complexities in the relationship of Buffy and Giles (a father figure rather than biological dad) and, stranger yet, of Faith and the villain Mayor Wilkins. A rather more credible setting than vampire-infested Sunnydale, however, can be found in Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, currently in theaters. The movie is based on the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock, who was inspired by an actual news story from 2004 of a man found living in the woods with his daughter for years. Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini wrote the screenplay adaptation.

Some *spoilers*:

There are more than a few people who are unwilling or unable to live in “normal” society with its endless rules and requirements. To the extent possible they live on the fringe, actually preferring to fall through the cracks. One such man is Will (Ben Foster), a veteran with PTSD and a thousand-yard stare who feels at ease only in the forest away from all people except his 13-year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie). They camp in Forest Park, a 5,200-acre tract in Portland, Oregon, and live almost entirely off the land. Their rare excursions into town are only so he can pick up his meds, sell them for cash to other (albeit less isolated) fringe-dwellers, and buy a few basic supplies. Will’s affection for Tom is deep and genuine as is hers for her father. A small mistake causes them to be spotted in the woods by authorities, which leads to their apprehension and separation; once authorities are convinced Tom isn’t abused, they are reunited in arranged housing, but the heavy bureaucratic hand of social services, however well meaning, is precisely the kind of control and human contact that he can’t stand. They pack up and head for the state of Washington where they again go into the deep woods, but Tom, who has had a taste of civilization, is not enthusiastic. She goes only out of love for her father. Will accidentally injures himself so Tom seeks help from residents of an RV park at the edge of the forest. By average standards, they, too, are fringe-dwellers, but by her standards their encampment is civilization. When Will is ready to head into the woods again, Tom no longer wants to join him; she chooses to remain with the RVs. “The same thing that is wrong with you isn’t wrong with me,” she correctly tells him. He doesn’t argue.

Will is portrayed sympathetically even when he makes plainly awful decisions. Will’s love for his daughter is real, and at no point does Tom even think to regard him as a villain, but of course he is. He may not be at fault for his problems, but he is at fault for making his 13-year-old daughter share them. We all make choices. We don’t always have good choices, but we always have some and they have consequences. He should have chosen something better for his daughter while choosing for her was still his responsibility. Love doesn’t make up for it. It counts, but it doesn’t override. Tom makes her own choice finally, which mirrors the choice all offspring make when they are ready to strike out on their own paths. 

Thumbs Up, but not for those who like only action movies.

Trailer – Leave No Trace

Shore Enough

It is beach weather, so I’m told, and I have no reason to disbelieve it. I probably won’t be testing it though. I am not much more than an hour’s drive (during off-peak traffic) from the Jersey Shore, but I don’t visit it much. The last time was last October, and, as the reader may have guessed from the month, my destination wasn’t the beach; it was a block away from the beach at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park to see the Russian surf band (yes, really) Messer Chups. That was close enough.

Earliest photo I can find of myself
on a beach: Islamorada Florida
1954 with my father and sister

I don’t actually hate the beach. It’s not entirely out of the question that my feet will walk on beach sand in NJ or elsewhere before 2018 expires, but I’d give modest odds against it. This indifference comes not from a lack of past exposure. My family went to the beach with some regularity when I was a child, and back then I enjoyed the sand, sun, and waves in the way that kids usually do. Crowds didn’t bother me. Not even the painful sting of a Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis) at age 10 at Miami Beach deterred me from splashing in the ocean. I’ve swum in the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, by the time I was arranging my own vacations, beaches were well down my list of preferred destinations – not off the list altogether, but well down it. Oh, I’d be happy to give beaches in Tahiti or Thailand a try if someone handed me a free plane ticket, but anyplace less exotic offers little attraction. I get that beach sports (surfing, salt water fishing, beach volleyball, etc.) can be fun. I also get that tacky boardwalks next to beaches can be enjoyable. However, simply sitting in the sun on a towel is something I’d rather do (if at all) in my own backyard rather than on a public beach. De gustibus.

My lack of enthusiasm is more in keeping with the bulk of human history than is the modern popularity of sand and surf. Ancient peoples exploited littoral resources far into prehistory, of course, but that was for a livelihood. With the exception of the Polynesians, who invented surfing (and one might note that beaches are rather hard to avoid in Polynesia), few ancients seem to have enjoyed beaches recreationally. There are no Sumerian or Greek accounts of pleasant daytrips to the beach. On the contrary, ancient writers tended to look at the sea with fear and disquiet. In Roman times, it is true, the upper 1%, built villas overlooking the seashore, but “overlooking” is not quite the same as “on”; the sites were chosen for vistas and docks rather than frolicking on sand. Seaside villas were beyond the economic reach of ordinary folk anyway, as are seaside houses in most places today.

Jersey Shore 1925: photo taken by my
grandfather of his friends and my
great aunt (center back)

The British were the first really to popularize visits to the beach as recreation for average people. In the 1700s the mineral waters at Scarborough turned the city into the first modern seaside resort; visitors took to bathing in the sea as well as enjoying the spa waters. In the 19^th century the number of seaside resorts multiplied as the idea took root that sea air and salt water bathing were healthful, as indeed they were compared to the cities choked with coal smoke and overflowing sewers. At the same time, rising wages and better transportation made resorts accessible to the middle classes. The fad spread from Britain to the Continent from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. The Americas weren’t far behind. By the 1860s Monet was painting scenes of people at the beach (scenes notably absent from earlier art). At the same time in the U.S. beaches had their first wave of popularity. Moralists complained about the (relatively) scanty attire and mixed company at beaches, but those complaints only made the beach more popular.

Whatever the health benefits of seaside spas, the shore has special hazards of its own. There are risks of rip currents, sun overexposure, and accidental drownings. The Jersey Shore did President Garfield no good in 1881 when he traveled there to recover from a gunshot wound. He died 12 days after his arrival. In fairness, the location probably didn’t do him in. His doctors deserve the credit for that. All the same, the seaside didn’t help. However, most daytrips and vacations at the shore are survivable. So, perhaps I’ll go at least once before the summer is out, if only to take a look around. Chances are that I’ll fare better than Garfield.

Messer Chups – Cemetery Beach