Ranting Details

Quote of the Day: 11/26/08

After finishing Twilight last week--which filled my monthly quota for mind-numbing/entertaining schlock--I decided it was time to sink my teeth into something a bit meatier (damn those vampires rubbing off on me). (Actually they didn't "rub off" (ew..gross phrase) on anything...that book is about 498 pages of foreplay.)

I was pondering several unread books on my shelf when I received a package from my mother containing two new books.  Decision made.   I chose to start with Proust Was A Neuroscientist, a series of essays that demonstrate, by using specific artists as examples, how art is often a precursor to scientific fact.  I'd be joking if I didn't say much of the text is above my head (talk about poetry all you want, but once you start to mix genomes in, my brain becomes as tangled as a double helix), but I'm still finding a lot to enjoy in Jonah Lehrer's debut book.  Any doubts about my interest in the subject matter were laid to rest when I read the introduction, which includes the following quote:

"Unfortunately, our current culture subscribes to a very narrow definition of truth.  If something can't be quantified or calculated, then it can't be true.  Because this strict scientific approach has explained so much, we assume that it can explain everything.  But every method, even the experimental method, has limits.  Take the human mind.  Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces.  What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world.  (We feel like the ghost, not the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know.  This is why we need art.  By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness. 

The moral of this book is that we are made of art and science.  We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff.  We now know enough about the brain to realize that its mystery will always remain.  Like a work of art, we exceed our materials.  Science needs art to frame the mystery, but art needs science so that not everything is a mystery.  Neither truth alone is our solution, for our reality exists in plural."

In the second chapter, I found the following quote by George Eliot:

"Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience."

How's that for concise? 

I'm excited to see what else the book has to offer.  I have a feeling it will be much less of a tease than Stephanie Myer's juggernaut. 

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade...Literally

Food has taken control of me.

After two weeks of an elimination diet, where I scraped anything cheesy, fatty, and delicious, I’ve entered the final stage of the elimination where I cut out EVERYTHING.  Instead of eating for sustenance, I’ve relied on a green water bottle full of a lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper, to provide my daily energy and flush out my system.  I ride the wave of food withdraw to varying to degrees of success through at least eight refills a day, taking solace in my computer and books while salivating at any Burger King commercial to grace the TV screen. 

Anyone who knows my eating habits is aware that I’m more likely to pick a cheeseburger over salmon, french fries over broccoli, and coke over herbal tea.  Needless to say, the past few weeks have been trying.  All vices have been thrown out the window as I attempt to rid my body of this devil virus, and so far the results are mixed at best. 

With only lemonade going in, I experience cravings that rival that of a pregnant woman.  Dog food suddenly reminds me of delicious Cocoa Puffs (which I haven’t had since I was about ten).  My mind begins creating new food products like the Burritza (a burrito with a slice of pizza in it, that was lovingly named by David) and I’ve become sensitive to any smell. 

As foolish as it sounds, I never realized how dependent we are on food.  Of course we look to it for energy, but cutting out snacking and flavorful enjoyment from your life is surprisingly difficult.  There is an oral fixation that cannot be satisfied by lemonade. 

In an effort to rid myself of food obsession, I’ve picked up a few books that are both fast (pun intended) reads.  First came the classic “Siddhartha,” which was absent from my upbringing.  As was the case with several other classics I picked up later in life, I wasn’t as moved by the story of a young man in search of Nirvana as I hoped to be. 

Looking at it from a writing standpoint (as seems to be the case with everything I read these days) I was impressed with how effortlessly Hesse spanned time and place.  To be able to condense a period of four years to a paragraph, and still develop a character is an astonishing feat to someone as inexperienced with fiction writing as I am. 

The idea of a book revolving around a spiritual quest sounded enticing to me but as I put the novel down, I didn’t feel any particular enlightenment. 

Between putting down “Siddhartha,” and picking up my next book “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” I imagined running through a cupcake mountain with milk rain and wafer trees.  Needless to say, the second book couldn’t be opened quickly enough. 

No matter how much I may lament the current state of my health, I’m not foolish enough to think that other people don’t have it much worse.  “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” is a perfect, and heartbreaking example of this fact. 

The memoir, which was recently turned into a movie, chronicles the life of a man who experienced a massive stroke at 45, that left him with “locked-in” syndrome.  Essentially, he is a “prisoner to [his] own body,” where any movement except the turning of his head and blinking of his right eye is all but impossible. 

If there was ever a person who is able to explain the heartache, frustration, and determination at overcoming life’s obstacles, it’s Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French editor of Elle, who dictated the memoir through a series of blinks on his hospital bed.  He allows us to not only see the pain involved in his plight, but most importantly the power of the human spirit. 

The prose is poetic, and full of some of the most beautiful word usage I have ever seen.  He is concise, perhaps because of the difficulty of dictating it, but never too brief.  It is a masterful work that gives us a hint of the freedom he experienced (and took for granted) as a fully functioning man, and the freedom he still allows his mind to have even when confined to a hospital bed. 

Unlike Siddhartha, I found this book to be a spiritual experience.  While it puts my situation into perspective, he also expresses the way I feel that I’ve been pulled away from the things I know, the things that defined me, and found a way to persevere.  That’s not to say it’s a book only for the sick or confused, it is inspirational in a universal way. 

When I closed the back cover on my freshly creased copy of the book, I looked to the table to my right and saw my handy green water bottle standing guard.  Just a few more days…

My Rough Attempt at a "Best Of 2007" List

All I heard for months before I turned twenty-one was that it was going to be “the best year of my life.”  I assumed this meant champagne would rain from the sky, the name of the company would be changed to “Matthew Murphy’s ABT” and I would publish somewhere around eight or nine novels (preceded by an award winning series of short stories, of course) in between winning a few Oscars.  Four months into 2007, it became clear that the words predicting the year’s triumphant bragging rights were but a cruel joke. 

2007 goes down as the most difficult year of my life (or as Homer Simpson would say “The most difficult year of your life…so far”).  Emotional and physical tests were fired at me as gruesomely as paint ball guns shot at close range; there’s no denying that my wounds splattered across the surface for all to see.  It was a year where I had no choice but to call out for help from whoever would listen. 

Writing a post to close up such a tumultuous year is all but impossible.  There is no pleasant way to wrap up dynamite that exploded already.  The different challenges I faced throughout 2007 have taught me more about myself, and the world around me, than the twenty years preceding it.  In that sense it has been a spectacular year;  spectacularly frightening in every way.

(Superfluous Pom shot.)

I’ve always had a tendency for vices in the form of arts and entertainment, but never have I been more dependent on the happiness that different art forms create than in the past twelve months.  There were days, months even, where my best friends were the singers who floated out of my speakers.  Characters on TV personified my problems, and opened up emotions in myself that I kept bottled up.  Paintings created fifty years ago peered out from books and whispered that they understood my emotions.  Art found a way of impacting me like never before. 

One of the most disappointing parts about being ill for so long is that it hasn’t allowed me to get out and see as much theater, or museums, as I would have liked in 2007.  The only portion of this list that I feel to be definitive in any way, is the list of best albums.  I immersed myself in music during my illness, and the albums that follow create the soundtrack of my so called “Epstein” life.

(Chocolate Covered (Oddly Leafy) Strawberries: The Cure-All Food.)

(Michael Lowney and Nick McCarvel: The (Slightly  Creepy) Cure-All Friends.)

A difficult repercussion of music playing such an important role in my year, is that many of the albums that I fell in love with are forever associated with my struggle.  Certain songs come on and suck me back into the mindset I existed in when I first discovered them.  Many of these albums made my year, but several of them are ruined for me because of their place in the library of my illness. 

While there may be worse years to come, I can’t help but hope that I’m coming out of a particularly dark spot in my life.  For everyone who has stood by me in the past year, thank you.  I can’t imagine how monotonous this blog must have become at times.  For everyone that toasts health on New Years Eve, say it and mean it.  You never know how quickly health, or life itself, can be taken away.  Cherish it while you have it. 

Here is a look back on what helped make this difficult year great…even in the smallest ways.   I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR EVERYONE ELSE'S ADDITIONS! 

(Voice your opinion.  Raise your (on-line) hand.)

ALBUMS:
1.    M.I.A-Kala
2.    Arcade Fire- Neon Bible
3.    Nicole Atkins- Neptune City
4.    Radiohead-In Rainbows
5.    St Vincent-Marry Me
6.    LCD Soundsystem- Sound of Silver
7.    Rilo Kiley- Under the Blacklight
8.    Sara Bareilles- Little Voice
9.    Alicia Keys-As I Am
10.    Amy Winehouse-Back to Black
11.    Kevin Drew-Spirit If...
12.  Feist- The Reminder
13.    Mark Ronson- Version

THEATER/ DANCE/ CONCERTS:

1.    Company-Broadway Revival
2.    Nederlands Dance Theater
3.    Eurydice
4.    Xanadu (#1) - With Michelle Dorrance.  Nothing beats the first time. 
5.    M.I.A. at Terminal 5
6.    Alessandra Ferri’s  Farewell
7.    Xanadu (#4)- With Marcelo Gomes.   During the strike, which brought the performance to volcanic levels.
8.    Decadance at Cedar lake
9.    Audra McDonald in “110 in the Shade”
10.    Xanadu (#2)- With David Hallberg and Nick McCarvel.  A pleasure to share with my two best friends. 
11.    West Side Story 50th Anniversary at Gypsy of the Year

MOVIES:
1.    The Lives of Others (technically released in US in February 2007)
2.    Ratatouille
3.    No Country for Old Men
4.    Knocked Up
5.    Once
6.    Hairspray
7.    La Vie En Rose
8.    Superbad
9.   Juno
10. Lars and the Real Girl

(Expected to be on the list once they make it to the end of the cinematic earth Montana: Atonement, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, The Savages, I’m Not There)

BOOKS:
1.    The Fountainhead- Ayn Rand
2. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami
3.    The Corrections- Jonathan Franzen
4.    Will in the World- Stephen Greenblatt
5.    Under the Banner of Heaven
Runner Up:  Harry Potter #7

TV:
1.    Friday Night Lights
2.    30 Rock
3.    Pushing Daisies
4.    The Office
5.    Wednesday Night Trifecta- America’s Next Top Model, Gossip Girl, Project Runway.  (The perfect diversion during Eppy-sodes.)

TOP TEN EVENTS IN MY LIFE THIS YEAR:
1.   Spending the summer with Nick McCarvel in New York
2.    Paris
3.    My first published article
4.    Dancing Mercutio w/ Boca Ballet Theatre
5.    The Musee D’Orsey
6.    Performing “The Green Table” In Europe
7.    The release that my first break down, five months into being sick, brought.
8.    Discovering I love photography
9.    Turning 21 At Gay 90’s in Minneapolis
10.   BIP/BONing