What Does Art Mean?

Many of the things people say and write about art do not make sense, because they talk about meaning. They explain the meaning of a poem by Emily Dickenson; or they reveal the theme of "Macbeth." Theme is a kind of meaning. Whether you're talking about theme, meaning or subtext, you're talking about something other than the poem itself. The poem isn't its meaning. If it was, then why would we need two words, "poem" and "meaning"? The meaning is something you derive FROM the poem.

Do poems (stories, plays, paintings, etc.) really have meanings? That depends. It depends on what you mean by "meanings." Which is exactly the problem. When you tell me that a poem has a meaning, you may mean something very different by that statement than what I think you mean. We both may mean different things by meaning, but we may think we mean the same thing. So we might be like two guys talking about "M*A*S*H". We might think we're talking about the same thing. In fact, you are talking about the Robert Altman movie and I am talking about the TV Show.

Art itself is fiendishly difficult to talk about (what IS art?). So to figure out the meaning of meaning, let's start with something much simpler. Let's start with this symbol: 7. What does it mean?

Most people will say that it means the number seven. Suppose a weirdo says it means a horse. Is he wrong? My gut tells me that he is wrong. EVERYONE knows that 7 means seven. But why? Why should it mean seven and not horse? How can I prove to the weirdo that he is wrong? Where's the secret book where I can look up 7 and see what it means? The dictionary? Okay, I look it up, discover that -- yup -- 7 means seven and, triumphantly, I thrust the dictionary in front of the weirdo's eyes.

"So what?" he says. "Just because it's in the dictionary; that doesn't make it right."

"Of course it does," I say. "That's the whole point of dictionaries. They tell us what words and symbols mean."

"No," he says, "they tell you what the writers of the dictionary think they mean. I disagree with them."

"Oh, come on," I say, "We ALL trust dictionaries." But I realize that I've said something foolish. Saying "We all trust dictionaries" is just like saying, "EVERYONE knows that 7 means seven." I'm still saying that 7 means whatever MOST people say it means. Or I'm arguing my point by saying that 7 means what important people say it means -- like the scholars who write dictionaries. But if someone asks, "Why should I care what most people -- or what important people -- mean?" I have no answer. Other than to stammer, "You just SHOULD!"

After all, the symbol 7 wasn't handed down to us by God. At some point, some person made it up. He decided that it meant something to him, and maybe he explained that meaning to other people. "When I write 7, I mean…" or "Hey, let's all use the symbol 7 to mean…" In other words, he was setting up a rule and asking other people to play by it. But he couldn't force people to play by it. And he couldn't claim that his rule proved that 7 meant anything in particular.

Mathematicians do this all the time. They set up rules for variables. They say x equals three. They are not saying that x MEANS three in any permanent sense. They can't prove to you that x means three. Rather, they are saying, let's all agree to a rule that (in this math problem), the symbol x stands for the number three. If you refuse to follow this rule, that's fine. But you won't get the same results in that particular problem as the people who DO follow the rule. So it's USEFUL to play by the rule. But a rule is just a rule. It may be useful, but it's nothing more than useful.

In chess, there's a rule that states the king can only move one square each turn. Does this mean that it’s physically impossible to pick up the king and move him three squares? Of course not. It's just a rule of the game. And it's useful to follow that rule if you want to play that game that most people call chess.

We tend to agree on rules for symbol meanings because it's useful to do so. If we all agree that 7 means seven, we can get all sorts of work done. (I know what I'm going to get when I ask you for 7 dollars.) By agreeing to follow certain rules, we can communicate more effectively.

All this is fine, but many people feel uncomfortable leaving it at that. Surely when we're saying 7 means seven, we're not just agreeing to follow some rule. Surely 7 MEANS seven in some cosmic sense. Surely when someone says it means horse, I can tell them that they are WRONG -- not merely eccentric. Surely I can PROVE to them that they are wrong.

No. I can't. I can appeal to dictionaries, but dictionaries are just catalogues of they way symbols are commonly used. Dictionary definitions claim, "This is how most people use this word."

We know that words and symbols don't have set meanings, because we've seen meanings change. "Awful" used to mean "full of awe." So at one time, "Your cake made me feel aweful," was not necessarily an insult. The common meaning changed when the majority of speakers decided to change it. They changed the rule. So we're back to the majority again. And if someone chooses not to follow the majority's rule, he isn't wrong. He's just eccentric. (Unless we define "wrong" as "not following the rule of the majority." We'd better think really carefully about the consequences of such a decision. Were the Germans who resisted Hitler wrong to do so?)

I am not arguing in favor of eccentricity. I highly recommend that we all use 7 to mean seven. I am simply saying that when someone challenges us by asking why, we can only answer, "Because it's useful to do so." We can't claim "because that's what 7 MEANS" unless "what it means" and "the most useful way to use it" mean the same thing. In which case, why have both phrases? I don't think we want use and meaning to mean the same thing. We want to be able to say, "I know what x means, but I'm using it to stand for three."

Let's say we all agree to play by the rules: 7 means seven; 3 means three. How do we know the rules? When someone writes 7, do we have to flip through a book to work out what they mean? No. We've internalized the rules. We instantly know what they mean, because we learned and memorized the rules years ago. In this same sense, a chess master doesn't have to think about the fact that the king can only move one square per turn. He KNOWS that the king can only more one square per turn. That rule seems natural to him -- almost like the law of gravity -- because he internalized it so long ago.

I think this is why we get upset when someone claims that 7 means horse. It SEEMS like 7 means seven because we don't have to look up its meaning, we instantly KNOW its meaning. At one point, when we were very small, we did need to look it up (or be told it over and over). But we've long since internalized this rule. So it just seems right. It seems like the meaning just comes to us. In fact, we don't even have a sense of meaning. For us, 7 just IS seven. Except it isn't. We're just responding to our training.

Still, it might be useful to say define meaning as "common associations." 7 means seven because most people will instantly (and without effort or even awareness) associate it with seven. We haven't made meaning any more profound. It's still not cosmic. It's still based on majority rules. But it's based on rules of a game that most people play without thinking about it.

Furthermore, most people can't stop playing by these rules. I've been thinking of 7 as seven for so many years that I can't help making this association. It's not under my control. If you write a 7, I AM going to think of seven.

Meaning in art works along similar lines. A poem, play or painting can't MEAN anything in some provable, cosmic sense. All it can do is suggest associations. If a poem makes 99% of the people who read it think of "racism," we can say it's ABOUT racism -- or that its THEME is racism -- but we just mean that most people who read it (or maybe most people who read it carefully) will probably think of racism. They will probably all think of the same theme, because (a) they are all reading the same words and (b) they all (being human) have similar brains.

Let's examine those two points more closely: yes, we all read the same words when we read the same poem. But note that words and sentences are much more complex than numerical symbols. 7 is relatively simple. It's a small figure and, for most of us, it maps onto a single concept: seven.

Or does it? Seven is the lucky number. There are seven days of the week. There are Seven Wonders of the World. Do you think of these things when you see the symbol 7? Maybe. But you probably don't think about the fact that my grandmother had seven sisters. But I DO think about that. So even the simple symbol 7 doesn't conjure up quite the same associations in my mind as it does in yours.

Let's take a more complex thought: "Ed went to the store." What do those words mean? On a literal level, they mean that some person named Ed started out somewhere other than at-the-store and eventually arrived at-the-store. But when we talk about meaning or theme in art, we generally don't mean this literal level. So what does that sentence MEAN?

When I was a child, I was friends with an Ed. When we were 19, he died in a car accident. I can't really see the word "Ed" without thinking about that, so when I read "Ed went to the store," that IS an association that gets conjured up for me. On a less dramatic level, when I think of "store," I think of the little family grocery down the street from my apartment in Brooklyn. What do you think of? Sears? Macy's? Barnes and Noble? Is one of us right? Is one of us wrong?

The point here is that though 7 may conjure up different associations for different people, all of these associations (except for those of the most eccentric among us) will connect somehow to the number seven. But as our symbols get more complex, the possible associations quickly become more and more varied and complicated.

Here's a poem by the 17th Century poet, Matsuo Basho:

The first cold shower;
Even the monkey seems to want
A little coat of straw.

What does it MEAN? What is it ABOUT? What is its THEME? If you asked me these questions, I might say something like, "it's about being cold" or "the need for security." I can't prove that these are the themes of this poem. All I can say is that these ideas appear in my head when I read it. And I can assume that they -- or similar thoughts -- appear in your head. Because you are human too, and we are similar.

Which leads me to my second point, above. How similar are we? Yes, as humans we have many things in common. If you prick us, do we not bleed? But we're also a highly malleable species. We differ from each other genetically. We differ from each other via our backgrounds and upbringing. So while I connect Falstaff's drinking with a general theme of loving-life-and-living-it-to-the-fullest, you (having been beaten by your drunkard father when you were six) may connect it to a theme of immoral living. Is one of us right? Is one of us wrong? On what basis other than an appeal to the majority?

Many critics try to break the stalemate by invoking intent: what did Shakespeare intend us to think of when he wrote about Falstaff? If he intended a lesson on temperance, then you are right and I am wrong. If he intended a Bacchanalian revel, than I am right and you are wrong. So which is it, William? Come on: tell us the CORRECT theme!

In "The Intentional Fallacy," M. K. Wimsatt, Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley debunked the idea that the author's intentions matter when examining that author's work. I agree with them, but I won't take the time to duplicate their whole argument here. But I will say that if you'd like to judge meaning by intent, you have a tough road ahead of you.

Here are some things to think about:

1) What if the author is dead and never published a statement of his intentions?
2) What if the author published two contradictory statements about his intentions?
3) What if the author published something nonsensical about his intentions (not all artists understand their own work)?
4) What if we don't know who the author is?
5) What if two clever critics are trying to mine an author's intentions from clues in his writings and biography? What if these critics come to two different and contradictory conclusions?

But all of these fascinating questions are really beside the point. For the sake of argument, say that Shakespeare pops into the present day and tells you that you are wrong about Falstaff. And let's say that we disagree with "The Intentional Fallacy." Okay, then you're wrong. But that doesn't change the fact that your father beat you. And it doesn't change the fact that when you read about Falstaff, you think about your father.

Let's not forget, we're talking about art here, not math problems. Why do we consume art? For many reasons. But surely we chiefly consume art for its sensual and emotional impact on us. You can tell me until next Sunday that my feelings about a work of art are "wrong," but I don't care. My feelings are my feelings. My feelings are why I care about art in the first place.

Another dodge is to say that while meanings are relative to a particular person, some meanings are more beautiful than others. This is true. Thinking back to "Ed went to the store," I will admit that the store is more beautiful if it's Crate and Barrel than if it's Ace Hardware. So I'll run with Crate and Barrel. But, as the saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." So we're back to relativism again.

On a cruder level, we can ask "Was Audrey Hepburn beautiful?" Most people would say yes. But what about the guy who likes "fat chicks"? He says, "No way! She was too skinny." Is he wrong or just odd?

Let's look at that poem one more time:

The first cold shower;
Even the monkey seems to want
A little coat of straw.


The poem is comparing a person to a monkey, saying that it's natural to resent a cold shower. A human doesn't like it. And a human SHOULDN'T like it. Even a monkey -- even something less-than-human yet almost human -- doesn't like to be cold.

Is that really what the poem is saying? Look at the literal words. There's no mention of a human. The phrase "Even the monkey…" implies that the preceding line is about some creature OTHER than a monkey. But why a human? Why not an elephant or panda?

Still, most of us will assume "human." But that assumption is NOT in the poem itself. It's in our brains. No where in the poem is the word "human" mentioned. But most of us think of "human" when we read the poem. The poem has the same effect on most of us. But if one guy out there doesn't think of human, he isn't wrong. He's just unusual. He can't be wrong, because the poem doesn't mention humans.

If we discard the notion of right and wrong meanings, then we are left with an art world that is necessarily relativistic. There ARE no absolute themes. There is no absolute meaning. So what? This may lead to some trouble when grading a paper in Art Appreciation 101, but other than that, what's the big deal?

Robbed of absolute meaning, art becomes like most of the other things we love best in life. Our spouses, our family, our friends and the food we eat. They don't have the same meanings to everybody, but they have deep, personal meaning for us.

The Party In Your Head

"I was talking to Fred the other day, and he said everyone in his family has a cold."

"Who is Fred?"

"Oh, he's a guy I chat with on the web."

Some people seem to have trouble remembering what the person they are talking to knows and what he doesn't. Is there a name for this "syndrome"? Has anyone researched it?

Everyone does this at times, but with some people it's constant. It's as if, in their minds, everyone they know is all at one big party together. They forget that Fred and Mary are from totally different parts of their life and have never met each other. And I've noticed that when you bring this up, they don't seem fazed. I would expect them to say, "Oh, how STUPID of me! Of course you don't know him." But they just casually explain who Fred is and then move on.

I don't know if this is related, but I also know people who send emails like "Can you send it to me?"

I respond with "Send what to you?"

Then they respond with something like, "The red one."

Still confused, I say, "The red what?"

They say, "You know, the red one -- not the green one."

I say, "Red or green WHAT?!?"

And finally they say, "The book with the red cover that I loaned you last year."

Why didn't they say this in the first place? If they loaned it to me last year, how is it reasonable to assume I'd still be holding an image of it in my mind that could easily be attached to a pronoun?

I am NOT saying people like this are stupid. In fact, I know many smart people who do this sort of thing. But since I am the exact opposite, I don't understand it. I'm SO much the opposite, that I tend to go overboard the other way: "Could you please return that Stephen King book to me that I loaned you in April, last year? It's called 'Carrie' and it has a red cover with blue lettering. I think I saw it on the third shelf from the left when I was last over at your house. You know, your house in New Jersey. That's in the United States of America on planet Earth -- the third planet that orbits Sol, a star in the Milky Way Galaxy..."

Okay, I'm not that bad, but you get my point. Why am I that way? Why are other people extremely the other way? I know that when I think of a person, it's like they are connected to tags. I think of Bill, and instantly the tags "California" and "junior high school" come into my mind. I don't have to think about it. The tags enter my mind the same time Bill enters my mind. So if I'm talking to Charles, a guy I met in Ohio when I was in college, I will instantly know that he doesn't know Bill.This conclusion,which seems obvious, is actually quite remarkable.

We hold in our brains not only Person A and Person B (and all sorts of info about their jobs, families, etc.), but also the meta-information that Person A does-not-know Person B. This fact is not immediately connected to either person. When we think of Person B by himself, we don't think, "He doesn't know Person A." We only have this rather complex thought when we think of A and B at the same time. Yet we are able to generate this thought in a fraction of a second.

It seems very unlikely that we store thousands of does-not-know connections for every person we know. My guess is that we store facts about person A (works-with-me, is-from-Denmark, has-a-cat) and other facts about person B (goes-to-my-gym, is-attractive). When we think of both of them at the same time, out minds must run through all of the facts and see if any of them are the same for both A and B.

Clearly, not everyone's mind works this way, which is why I came up with that (wrong? dumb?) idea of some people's minds being like a big party at which everyone they ever met is a guest. That's actually a sort of attractive idea. My mindset stops my thinking from being fluid. It's possible to come up with really interesting ideas if everything in your brain is allowed to jumble together.

Discussing this with people, some of the "Fred" folks said they didn't get why it was so important to me to know who Fred is. Clearly, he's not the main point of whatever they're saying. So why can't I just assume he's someone they know and then pay attention to their main point.

Fred is important (to me) because my mind hates mysteries. And mysteries -- even mundane ones -- get assigned higher priority than other info. So I have trouble following the main point of what you're saying, because I'm trying to figure out who Fred is. I'm not 100% sure he's just some guy you know. Because you referred to him as if I knew who he was, I realize he might be a common friend. So I'm going through my mental rolodex, trying to figure out who his is.

My guess is that everyone does this -- maybe with less mundane stuff. Supposed I told you, "I had a terrible day at work because my boss made me hounoun for three hours. So I came home, drank some flifftex and watched a couple of hours of Gnant. Then I felt better." Clearly, the gist of what I'm saying is that my boss abused me and made me feel bad, so I came home and pampered myself. But can you really pay attention to that? Aren't you wondering what all those weird words mean?

Different people have different thresholds for mystery. Some people (me) need to know the answer to everything (or they have trouble concentrating); others only need some mysteries solved. Some probably don't care about mysteries at all -- as-long-as they aren't immediately important to the topic being discussed.

Getting back to the "Fred" people, what is going on in their minds? Do they realize that they are leaving out details? Do they figure that these details are unimportant and not worth the effort of speech? Or do they forget that I don't know who they are talking about?

Atheist vs. Atheist

It is difficult for me to show any respect whatsoever for the belief that there is some sort of immortal space-alien Superman who hears your thoughts and grants your wishes. It's ridiculous on its face.
-- posted to an online forum.

I'm an atheist, but I take strong issue with your claim that Christian cosmology is patently ridiculous. Have you seriously studied Christianity or are you simply saying, "I know a bunch of people with absurd beliefs"? I certainly know plenty of people with absurd beliefs. I know people who believe that science has proven that ESP exists. This doesn't mean science itself it absurd. It just means that some people are ill-informed about science.

Let's examine your claims more closely:

1) It's absurd that God is immortal. Why? Mortality isn't a physical law, like the speed of light or gravity. We die because things go wrong with our body. It should be possible, at least in principal, to construct an immortal being. So why is the very notion of an immortal being absurd?

2) It's absurd that God is a space alien. I don't know any Christians who claim that God is a space alien. Most Christians that I know -- unless they are very small children -- don't locate God "up in the sky." Perhaps you meant "space alien" as a metaphor for non-human. Well, there are plenty of non-human creatures on Earth, so clearly the idea of non-human isn't absurd. Do you think non-terrestrial intelligence is totally out of the question? If so, you're in a tiny minority. Most scientists believe extra-terrestrial intelligence is at least possible.

3) It's absurd that God is a Superman. A Superman is a being that is similar to a human but who has special powers that normal humans don't have, right? I don't think this is exactly the Christian conception of God, but what is absurd about this possibility? If we one day discover alien life, surely it will be different from human life -- with different abilities. Some of these abilities might be superior (super) to human abilities.

4) It's absurd that God hears your thoughts. Why? Thinking is a physical process. We are starting to develop machines that can tap into the brain and perform a crude kind of mind reading. Why couldn't a more advanced "creature" have refined this process?

5) It's absurd that God grants wishes. DOES God grant wishes? I know very few Christians who believe that if you ask God for a new car, he'll give it to you. Sure, SOME Christians believe this, but they may not be very educated about their own religion. Most Christians do pray to God, but prayer != wishing. Praying is talking to God. The chief point of Christianity is forming a relationship with God.

It DOES make sense to ask Christians, "Why do you believe in all that stuff?" Their beliefs aren't patently absurd, but just because something isn't absurd, that doesn't make it true or even likely. There's nothing absurd about claiming that there's a small island in the Pacific called Farmer's Island, but why should I believe in it?

Many Christians would say that they believe in God because (a) they FEEL that He exists and (b) believing in Him makes their lives better.

Well, I don't think feelings are a good basis for judging facts about the natural world, but if you force me to ground all my factual knowledge in first principals, at some point I have to admit that I base my knowledge on my senses. And sensory data is -- like feelings -- untrustworthy. (Yes, I base my knowledge on scientific findings, but how do I KNOW about those findings? By reading about them and hearing about them. Reading and hearing are things that I do via my unreliable senses.)

And I'm happy for them that believing makes their lives better. Unfortunately for me, I can't force belief on myself. Too bad. I would like to be happier.

My friend John, an observant Christian, read all this and wrote me the following email:

The only one of your responses I'd qualify a bit is #5.

If someone claims Christians believe that every request they might make will be granted, that is obviously untrue. By logic alone, if Christian A asks that P come to pass, and at the same time Christian B prays that not-P comes to pass, it is certain that at least one of them will be disappointed.

What you go on to faintly imply, however, is that no serious Christian really asks God for concrete things, but rather prays only as a means of communion. That would be misleading. Petitionary prayer is an essential part of Christian life. Our Lord specifically instructs us to do this. He does it Himself (and is at one point refused by the Father).

But you are right that, even when we don't (apparently) get what we believe we have asked for, that does not necessarily phase a Christian, for two reasons. One is the reason you said: that prayer is not a shopping expedition. Even when we our petitions go ungranted, the very act of praying brought us close to the Lord which we discover each time was more important than getting what we want. The other reason is faith. If a child and parent are in perfect relationship at a particular moment, the child will have faith in him. Faith = trust. So ideally we trust that God has some reason for this, a reason that is not simply abstract or intellectual or removed, but a reason rooted in infinite and tender solicitude for me in particular.

Fine! Ignore me!

In an online forum, a teacher complained that some of his students were bringing laptops to his classes and surfing the web. He claimed this was distracting other students who were trying to pay attention.

I have been a professional teacher for almost 20 years. I have taught children, college-aged people and older adults. I currently teach computer classes (Photoshop, etc.), but I've taught plenty of loftier subjects (dramatic literature, writing, etc.).

When I teach, I offer a SERVICE. People PAY for that service and they are free to do whatever they want with the service they've paid for. If they want to come to one of my Photoshop classes and then spend the whole time surfing the web, they have the right to do so. I am not paying THEM. THEY are paying ME. If I were paying them, I could demand that they perform the service of hanging-on-my-every-word. But I'm not paying them.

I also don't judge them. I don't think, "Hey, that guy's an asshole because he's more interested in surfing the web than he is in listening to me talk about layer masks." Maybe the web IS more interesting than I am. And maybe he IS listening to me. Maybe his learning style involves multitasking.

Mine does. If I have to sit an listen to a lecture without any distractions, I zone out. I have tried for DECADES not to do this, and if there's a way, I haven't discovered it. But if I can do something else with my hands and eyes -- doodle, surf the web, etc. -- I CAN pay attention. In high school (pre web), I doodled. Some of my teachers didn't care. I did well in those classes. Some of my teachers stopped me from doodling. My grades suffered.

One might suggest that I should have learned to pay attention without doodling. Maybe. But those teachers who stopped me from doodling didn't help me do that. They just made me stop doodling. And I couldn't pay attention. As a teacher, I don't want to do that to my students. I want them to be HAPPY in my classes. I want them to be interested in SOMETHING -- even if it's not me. If their mind is active and interested, there is a better chance they will learn than if they are bored and disgruntled.

I DO agree that one student shouldn't disrupt other students. But one needs to strike a balance of fairness here. Should female students be forbidden to wear miniskirts to class because some of the men might be distracted by them? Should students be forbidden to bring garishly-colored notebooks to class?

I, for one, am REALLY easily distracted, almost to a pathological level. If a person next to me is abscent-mindedly swinging their foot around, I have trouble paying attention. If someone next to me is chewing gum, I have trouble paying attention. Once, I couldn't pay attention because the person next to me was wearing a bright yellow jacket.

This is regrettable, but it's MY problem. If someone is playing a loud videogame in class, that's THEIR problem. If someone is quietly reading something on their screen and it distracts me, that's MY problem.

Most teachers that I've talked to who get offended by this sort of thing don't really care about the students. They care about their own egos. They are offended that someone would rather play tetris than listen to them talk about Milton.

We say "teaching is the noblest profession," and that may be true. I am very proud to be a teacher. I would also be proud if I was a doctor. Doctors also provide a service. But if a doctor tells me that I need a triple-bypass, I am free to decline. The SERVICE he provided (which I paid him for) was to offer an expert opinion. I may be foolish to disregard his opinion, but I am not rude to do so.

Teachers should try to be as noble as their profession.

Dirty Water in the Fountain of Youth

I keep reading about scientists trying to prolong human life. They are recasting old age as a disease and trying to cure it. Assuming they succeed, we'll face some big problems. (And I'm going to ignore political/economic issues, like the fact that probably only rich people would wind up with 3000 year lifespans.)

I don't know what your chances are of dying in a horrible, painful accident (as opposed to dying of natural causes), but obviously you take a small risk every time you cross a street, drive a car, etc. Currently you have a fairly good chance of dying naturally, but that's just because you're "only" going to live 70 - 90 years. With each year you add, your chances of dying from UNnatural causes goes up. My guess is that if we all had a 5000 year life-span, most of us would wind up eventually being hit by a car (or whatever people ride around in thousands of years from now), eaten by a shark, murdered, etc. It's only the decay of our bodies that saves most of us from these fates.

You'd have to get used to your loved ones dying horribly, too. So when you got married or had kids, you'd have to resign yourself to the fact that (if you don't go first), you are probably going to see your family die in a plane crash or earthquake.

Also, there's the problem of "hard drive space." Once you cure cancer, stop body-parts from decaying, etc., what are you going to do about memory? Our storage space is vast, but it's not infinite. When we're 3525 years old, will we remember anything from when we were 15? Or will we remember EVERYTHING from when we were 15 but nothing from five minutes ago?

I must admit, though -- as a childless atheist, who doesn't believe in any sort of afterlife and won't be leaving any of his genes behind -- I would LOVE to stick around for a few more hundred years. Just to see how things turn out.

Commute

I don't remember writing this. I was going through some files, and I found it. It's several years old. Is it a dream?

The lady next to me exploded. I was riding the train to work as usual, reading the sports section (the Canadians were ahead again) when it happened. Kaboom! Blood and organs and hair rained down on us passengers, and you might think I got the worst of the deluge since I was sitting next to the lady, but the force of the explosion was so great that most of her bits and pieces flew to the far end of the car. I do remember brushing a tooth or two off my lapel.

It wasn't until I got to work later that I noticed a toe stuck to the top of my shoe. I thought I had worn a hole in my shoe at first. I thought it was one of my toes poking through. Then I realized my mistake, and I shook my shoe over the trash until the toe fell off and mingled with all the coffee lids and tissues.

After that, I didn't think much about the exploding lady. Mr. Edgers was after me about the Seattle report and Smith and Billington kept nagging me about preparing for this three o'clock meeting with one of our top clients. It was a killer of a day altogether, so I didn't think about the exploding lady until I was riding home.

Being back on the train again put her in my mind. And I wondered why she had exploded. Did she do it on purpose? If you're trying to get attention on the train, it's really difficult. No one ever looks up from their paper or book, or if they do it's just to check the map or stare out the window to see if it's their stop. So you almost have to do something like explode if you want anyone to remember you.

Or had someone done something to her? Maybe someone planted an explosive inside her. Maybe one of her kids had played prank. You know how kids are. Or some kind of bug was going around. First you get a vague feeling of unwellness. Your head hurts or you feel really tired even though it's only six-thirty. You can't even stay up for your favorite program. Then the sniffles start and the coughing and sneezing, and soon you're swimming in Kleenexes and menthol candies, and next thing you know you're exploding on a train.

Or maybe she was just angry. Really really angry. And she couldn't hold the anger inside any longer, so she blew up like an angry person in a cartoon.

As I walked home from the station I realized that I'd never know which one of these possibilities came closest to the truth. Maybe none of them did. In any case, I'd never know. That's the problem with commuting. You get these little hints of things, these little teasers. Then life carries you away before you can investigate. You never learn anything about anybody.

Bullies, Part II: The Bad Girls

My life as a geek reached its pinnacle in Jr. High School. Many times a day, jocks knocked me over in the hall so that I splatted to the floor--and the stacks of books I always carried (sci-fi, comics, and an occasional class text) went flying in every direction; they also enjoyed pushing me into the girls' bathroom; and it amazes me to this day that they only managed to pull my shorts down once in co-ed gym class.

But worse than the jocks were the jockettes. Sometime in sixth grade, the girls invented a game in which they would "flirt" with me. They would wink at me, say my name in their sexiest voices, try to kiss me, touch me, grab me, etc. Of course, they took me for the stereotypical geek: assuming I would believe that their advances were real and then somehow embarrass myself by making a pass at one of them or asking one of them out on a date. I wasn't that stupid. Still, the constant mock-flirting kept me aware that I was the opposite of the kind of guy they would REALLY want to go out with.

Soon this past-time spread throughout the entire school, and virtually every girl joined in. They started calling my house, and it was especially humiliating for me when my mom would answer the phone. "There's a girl who wants to talk to you," she would say. I would try to explain to her that she should hang up, that the girl was just making fun of me. But my mother didn't believe me. "It's rude to hang up on people," she said. "How do you know she doesn't really like you?" I wanted to say, "MOM! Why would the head cheerleader like a 5'5'' skinny guy with pimples all over his face." But I was her "baby," and to her any girl would be lucky to have me.

The whole thing reached a climax at lunch one day. When the weather was nice, we were allowed to have lunch outside, which I loved, because our school grounds were large enough that I could escape to some secluded area with my few geeky friends, and the girls couldn't bother me. But when it rained, the whole school was supposed to hang out in the gym for the entire lunch hour.

One rainy day, when I was trying as best I could to hide in a corner behind the bleachers, a bunch of the girls found me and started the game. "Hi baby," "Wanna go out with me tonight?" "Come here and let me give you a big kiss…" I was cornered and a crowd started gathering to watch. More and more girls joined in, grabbing at my hair, hugging me, pulling me down into their laps, and the jocks started laughing hysterically.

Suddenly, I made a run for it, pushing through the crowd and bounding away to … where? There was nowhere to go, so I started running round and round the gym, and the girls chased after me. I ran and ran, and more and more girls joined the chase. Soon every kid in the school was involved. All the girls were chasing me. All the boys were watching and laughing.

Then something in me snapped. I stopped running and sat down on one of the bleachers. Immediately, I was surrounded by a huge number of girls. I remember my panic and humiliation draining away. Now that the whole school had witnessed my humiliation, there was no lower point I could sink to. I felt free. Then I felt a surge of power.

Calmly, I reached towards the girl nearest to me. I remember she was pretty, with blonde hair and freckles. She wasn't the worst of the girls. She was just a follower, following a trend. But she was doomed, because she was the closest to me, and she had glasses -- the one trapping of geekiness that I didn't have. She must have wondered what I was going to do. Was I going to stroke her cheek? Touch her lips? Try to kiss her?

Instead, I touched the nose-bridge of her glasses ever so gently. The crowd went into hysterics. Then I snatched the glasses off her face, and with all my might, hurled them across the gym. I remember the crowd going completely silent, and I remember the beautiful sight of her glasses flying through the air and landing yards and yards away. I had always been hopeless in sports, but if hockey was glasses-throwing, I'd have scored a goal.

There were a few murmurs of "Those better not be broken" and "You're going to have to pay for those," but the crowd pretty dispersed. And no one bothered me much after that. I'm not sure why they didn't. As it turned out, the glasses weren't even scratched. But I had never reacted before to the taunts -- other than cowering, fleeing or making lame remarks. The glasses-throwing was such a strange act of sudden violence (even though no one was hurt), and I think it frightened some of the kids. It certainly frightened me. I wasn't sure where it came from. But after that day, I found a new sort of confidence.

I learned how to hurt people. Especially girls. I stopped hurling glasses and started hurling words instead. "Boy, you're fat," I told the chubby girl. "Does it bother you that you're the least attractive of all your friends?" I asked the girl who was only popular because her parents were rich. "Of COURSE they didn't pick you for the cheerleading squad," I told the depressed girl, "You're completely uncoordinated!" Some other favorites included, "I'm sure it's your fault your parents got divorced," "Don't you think it's funny how your boyfriend keeps flirting with other girls?" and "You'd be almost pretty if you didn't have such bad skin." I learned exactly where to stick the knife and I stuck it. I was most happy when I made a girl cry. The power felt so good. I wanted more and more of it. I no longer wanted to be bullied. I wanted to be the bully. I WAS the bully.

Thankfully, I grew out of this horrible phase. I realized that the girls had matured. They no longer wanted to pick on me and make fun of me. So there was no need to continually take revenge. I felt bad about the way I had acted and vowed to be friendly to girls. And when I was friendly, I was surprised to find they were friendly to me. I eventually met a girl that I liked so much that I married her. Like many women (and men), she's needs her confidence boosted at times. So I tell her, "You're not fat," and "You're the prettiest girl I know," and "Your skin looks lovely." It feels like I'm undoing all the bullying from my past.

Bullies, Part I: The Bad Boys

The first bullies I ever knew were "the bad boys," and they were also the first gang I ever knew that had a name. Did they call themselves "the bad boys," or is that the name that we, their victims, gave them? I don't recall. We were all four or five at the time. The setting was nursery school. And several times a day, the teachers would gather us into "the octagon," an area on the floor marked with red tape, and we'd sit "Indian style" and discuss business. Sometimes we'd play games. For instance, we played this guessing game in which the child who was "it" would cover his eyes while another child, picked by the teacher, would introduce himself and try to disguise his voice. "It" was supposed to guess the identity of the speaker.

The first time we played this game, the teacher picked me to be "it". She was sitting in a chair. We kids were on the floor. I remember she called me over and told me to kneel in front of her and bury my face in her lap so I wouldn't be able to see the speaker. This was the 60s, and miniskirts were in. And I remember the feel of her pantyhose on my face -- I was surprised by their roughness -- and the slight give of her thighs under the weight of my head. This was my first erotic experience, or at least the first I remember. Did I somehow show my juvenile arousal? After my turn was over, the rest of the kids were told to simply stand with their back to the speaker and cover their eyes with their hands.

But it wasn't unusual for my experience to be different from that of the other children. I was an eccentric child, and as with all eccentrics, some differences were brought on by outside forces (I didn't ASK to bury my head in my teacher's lap) while others were purposeful, evoked from within. Some seemed in-between. For instance, why did I grow my hair long throughout my childhood? All the other boys had short hair, and I was horribly taunted. In third grade, Dawn Wilbur made up a song about me. I forget most of the lyrics, but one couplet rhymed, "his hair, it goes in a curl/which makes him look like a girl." Dawn was my best friend at the time, so I wonder why she made this up. In any case, the worst thing you could say about a boy back then was that he looked like a girl. I guess this was an ur-version of calling someone a faggot. We were more innocent back then.

In addition to my long hair, I wore orthopedic shoes. Do kids still wear orthopedic shoes? If they do, I bet nowadays they're stylish. But back then, they were shiny and black. Girls wore shiny black shoes. Boys wore sneakers. So in addition to "Why do you have such long hair?" I also got a lot of "Why do you wear those girl shoes?"

I guess there wasn't much I could have done about the shoes. But I could have gotten a hair cut. In fact, my mother offered to take me to the barber whenever I came home crying (another girly trait) over the names my schoolmates called me. But I always refused. I don't know why I refused. Some obstinacy deep inside me that I couldn't explain or fathom. Some sort of childish pride. It has stayed with me over the years, getting me into a lot of trouble -- but also saving my self-esteem.

Even when the grownups abused me, I refused to give in. Teachers would suggest, sometimes politely, sometimes not, that I should get a haircut. And I remember one time this old man came to our school to explain taxidermy. It must have been "Career Day," because he wasn't one of our regular teachers. Did someone really think many of us would one day be stuffing birds and squirrels? Probably the guy was one of the teacher's uncles or something. I imagine he was retired and someone had suggested that this might be a fun activity for him. Get him out of the house; let him share his knowledge with budding minds.

So there he was, seriously explaining how he stuffed the carcasses with sawdust and mounted them on little stands. I was fascinated with the glass eyes. He had a box full of hundreds of little glass eyes, all different colors and sizes for all the different kinds of animals. I couldn't imagine where he got these from. Was there actually a factory somewhere that manufactures fake eyes? I had to know, so when question and answer time came, I raised my hand high.

The old man looked at me, pausing for a second before speaking, and then said, "Yes? Boy? Girl? I don't know WHAT you are!" And the entire class burst into uproarious laughter. I don't remember what happened next. I must have blanked it out of my mind. But I hate that old man. To this day, thirty-some years later, I hate him, and I'd like to hunt him down in hell. "Why did you have to SAY that?" I would demand. "It was totally GRATUITOUS! What difference did it make what sex I was? Why couldn't you have just answered my QUESTION?"

By Junior High School, no one said I looked like a girl anymore. By then I had other, much worse problems. But the "girl" thing haunted me for years in elementary school. It started back in nursery school. Back in the days of the teacher's lap and "the bad boys." It started because I always sat on the girls' side of the octagon. Yes, the octagon had a girl's side and a boy's side. This segregation was created solely by the students. The teachers never suggested that we should divide ourselves up by gender; neither did they encourage us to mix. I don't remember them ever mentioning it one way or the other. But it was very important to us kids. On one side sat all the boys, "the bad boys" sitting together, surrounded on either side by regular (good?) boys. On the other side, sat the girls -- and me.

Why did I sit with the girls? It wasn't due to any gender confusion on my part. I've always known I was a boy. Just as years later, in college, when I had so many gay friends -- when my best friend was gay -- and everyone assumed I was gay too, I knew I was straight. Once, this girl asked me to write an article for the college student newspaper. I replied that I was flattered by the suggestion, but I wouldn't know what to write about. She suggested that I write about "being a gay student." I said that this would be an odd article for me to write, since I'm not gay. She flushed and apologized. Then she suggested that I write the article anyway. I almost took her up on the offer. It would have been unique. "Being A Gay Student -- The Straight Perspective."

We didn't know about such things in nursery school. But there I sat on the girls' side. This was partly due to the obstinate streak I mentioned. But mostly, it was because I wanted to sit next to Kate Justin, my best friend at the time. I liked her so much that I was willing to put up with all manner of taunts just so I could sit by her. Which has pretty much been my pattern in relationships. Even now, I take the subway to meet my wife after work every day. Even though this means going out of my way. It would be much easier to simply go home and meet her there, but then we wouldn't be able to ride the subway together. Back when I met her in college, before we were dating but when I was already smitten by her, I used to meet her after most of her classes. I knew I was a laughing stock -- "that guy who's always mooning around" -- but it was where I wanted to be, so it was where I was.

One day in nursery school, after an octagon session in which I'd been teased even more harshly than usual, I hid in the bathroom. And being in the bathroom made me have to pee for real, so I lifted the toilet seat and stood there, watching my urine create an arc. All of the sudden the door opened and "the bad boys" crowded into the bathroom with me, shutting the door behind them. One of them pushed me, and I remember being terrified that I would fall into the toilet bowl. I was always scared of this happening, even when no one was pushing me, and now it was really going to happen! Then they stopped pushing, and the sort of leader of "the bad boys," this pug-faced kid named Adam, said "watch this." Then he kneeled down behind me, grabbed my ass and tried to pry my ass-cheeks apart. God knows what he planned to do next, but he stopped because I screamed in pain and a teacher burst in. She shouted at them to get out and then picked me up in her arms and comforted me. This is the only time I ever remember a grownup being really helpful about the bully problem. My father tried to help a few years later when I was in elementary school and John Hollingsworth and Blake Simmons terrorized me every day. He tried, but it was too late. My childhood world had become too political by this time, and as with adult politics, there were no easy solutions.

But I'd like to pause now and remember that teacher carrying me in her arms. I think it was the same teacher who gave me an erotic thrill in the octagon. She was the answer to my every Oedipal prayer. She was lover; she was mother. And I wept as she carried me, as she held me. I wept there before the entire class, and I didn't care. I wasn't embarrassed to cry and be held by a teacher. I was five.

When I was eight, we moved to a new house just a few blocks from my school, so I could walk there by myself, lunchbox in hand, which made me feel like a grownup. But when I reached the halfway point, I would revert back to my true childish nature and balance on a high and narrow stretch of concrete that ran for a whole block, like a tiny wall. To one side lay the gutter, to the other the grass of several front yards – there was no sidewalk -- and it was easy to pretend that one was perched above an abyss; the slightest misstep meaning a plummet to instant death. I would pretend to be a tightrope walker or a pirate walking the plank. This ledge was a small, simple joy. It was a bridge from the comforting world of home, oatmeal or scrambled eggs in my mother's kitchen, to the more rigid world of school, arithmetic, desks, and cafeterias. Most important, it was mine. It was my bridge. It was my secret.

Until the day John Hollingsworth crept up behind me and pushed me off my wall. I had no idea he was there. One moment I was deep in reverie, my arms out at my sides like airplane wings, my eyes glassy, and the next moment I was toppled over on someone's lawn -- at least he didn't push me into the street! -- the corner of my lunchbox painfully jabbing into my leg. Then I saw John Hollingsworth run past me, laughing, and I realized he had pushed me. If the reader wishes, he may think of this action -- my plummet after John's push -- as a symbol of the fall from a childhood heaven into the hell of adult life, or it might be a shift from the soft glow of imagination to the harsh glare of reality.

At the time, I was puzzled. "The bad boys" were buried in my past, and the idea of "bully" was foreign to me. I stood up, brushed the grass of my pants, shrugged and went home. I probably wouldn't have given it another thought if John Hollingsworth hadn't spent the rest of the year terrorizing me. First John by himself; then he was joined by his larger, older, scarier friend, Blake Simmons. John and Blake used to wait for me every day after school. They rarely touched me -- they rarely actually "beat me up" -- but they threatened me with beatings, and I believed them capable of delivering on their threats. They taunted me; they teased me. Every once in a while, they would get physical. Once Blake punched me in the stomach. John picked me up and stuffed me in a garbage can. When I encountered them at the public pool, they dunked me and held my head under water just long enough to make me panic.

But the taunting was worse that the occasional push and shove. "We're going to beat the shit out of you," they would promise. And if case it's unclear why no grownup ever rescued me, I should explain that they always added "And if you tell your dad, if you tell ANYONE, we'll REALLY beat the shit out of you." I didn't know the difference between having the shit beaten out of me and REALLY having the shit beaten out of me, but both sounded bad, and the latter sounded worse. I wanted to keep the shit inside me. So I never told a soul.

I knew that every school day was bound to end in this torment. John and Blake never grew tired of it. Eventually it seemed like my fate. And as many fools have done in the past, I tried to cheat fate. I learned all my school's exits, and I tried to vary the one I took each day. I also learned several routes home, and I would take a different one, at random, each day, hoping to elude my tormentors. Sometimes I succeeded, arriving home with a final glance backward and a nervous slam of the screen door, but there were only so many exits and so many routes. Just as bacteria evolve adaptations to antibiotics, so John and Blake -- the viruses that had attached themselves to my life -- adapted to my tricks and the torment continued.

Then it got worse. They started violating our property. On Halloween, they kicked in the face of my Jack-o-lantern. They smashed a small window at the side of our house. They defaced my father's car with puerile, misspelled graffiti. I knew John and Blake committed these crimes, because they told me so themselves. They told me as boasts, not confessions. "And if you tell on us, we'll beat the shit out of you!"

But I did tell on them at last. I don't remember what final deed prompted this, but they did something that crossed a threshold, that toppled something over in my brain. Perhaps it wasn't a specific act. Perhaps it was merely that the accumulated suffering had reached a point where I could no longer control it, where I had to speak out, tell someone, damn the consequences. So I told my dad, and in a fury he called Mr. and Mrs. Hollinsworth and Mr. and Mrs. Simmons and demanded that their sons appear at our front door in twenty minutes or less. I think the Hollingsworths and the Simmons were used to these phone calls. In any case, they didn't object, and a few minutes later John and Blake were standing sheepishly in our living room, being lectured by my father.

Or at least that's how I imaged it. I didn't actually see it, because I was so scared of getting the shit beaten out me that I hid in the downstairs bathroom, where any dislodged shit would feel at home. Back in nursery school, the bathroom had left me vulnerable to "the bad boy's" attack. Now it saved me from these older bad boys. It was a home bathroom, not a school bathroom, and I was able to lock the door from within. To this day, when I visit my parents (who still live in that same house), that little cramped bathroom is a place of comfort for me.

Perched on the toilet, I was able to hear my father grilling the boys. "Marcus says you hit him, Blake," my father would say. And Blake would deny it. So my father would leave them in the living room and walk towards me. Then, standing outside the bathroom door, he would tell me to repeat my accusation. "He DID hit me," I would say. Then he would walk back to the bullies and confront them with, "He also says you stuffed him into garbage cans," and when they denied this charge, he would have to leave them again to check the facts with me. This back-and-forth got tiring eventually, so he just started yelling to me from the living room, and I started yelling back. Only I wasn't only yelling, I was sobbing. "Did they REALLY kick in our pumpkin, Marcus?" my dad would ask. "Y-y-y-yes!" I would stutter, "They DID! They D-d-d-DID! They TOLD me so themSELVES!" And then John and Blake got into the act, yelling back at me, "NO WE DIDN'T. YOU'RE LYING!"

What worried me the most was not being able to stop crying. All the time they had been tormenting me, I hadn't shed a single tear. Now I couldn't stop. I bawled and howled and choked for twenty minutes, while my father's interview with the boys continued. And I knew it would be all over the school tomorrow. I was at the age when boys were no longer supposed to be crybabies, and I was proving myself the biggest, blubberiest crybaby of them all.

John and Blake stopped bothering me after school. Of course, they did tell all the other kids how I had cried and refused to come out of the bathroom, and I was laughed at and called a crybaby for the next few years. So I learned to control my crying. And I didn't cry for years. And by the time I got to college, I found that I was unable to cry, not even when my grandmother died.

Bear Necessities

Once, someone accused me of stealing. I was directing a production of "The Winter's Tale," which isn't performed as often as many Shakespeare plays. But for some reason, around that time, four other companies were doing the play. One company was actually doing it in the same theatre where my production was going to open. They were finishing up their run and then, once they had packed up and left, we were slated to move in and begin our run. This upset many of the people involved in both productions, because they all wanted to feel unique. But I was thrilled. How exciting to see multiple productions of this hard-to-see play! Surely, they would all be very different, each one enlightening different aspects of Shakespearean complex work.

So I went to see the production that was closing just before ours was opening. During the intermission, I introduced myself to the director and told her that I was directing the production that was moving in after hers. I wanted to talk to her, because her production was so wildly different from mine that our two productions were like oil and water. Yet I felt they were both successful on their own terms. Her show was great for Shakespeare newbies who wanted to be eased into the Elizabethan world. It was a sort of three-ring circus production. There was always something interesting to watch. She would allow about five minutes of Shakespearean dialogue to go on, and then she'd reward the audience with a pageant of some sort -- a dance or a song or a comic bit. Then five more minutes of Shakespeare.

My production had no embellishments. It was completely austere. Bare stage, uncut script, etc.

After a few days, her show closed and mine opened. She came to see my production on opening night. I was really looking forward to hearing what she thought about it, so when it ended, I sought her out. To my complete surprise, she started screaming at me, accusing me of stealing her ideas. I was dumbfounded, because (a) I hadn't stolen her ideas and (b) our productions were so different that I couldn't imagine how this could even be a misunderstanding. Eventually, she calmed down and explained herself.

It was all about the bear. The damn bear.

The one thing that everyone knows about "The Winter's Tale" is that it contains the famous stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear." And when I had first announced my plans to direct the play, everyone wanted to know, "How are you going to do the bear?" The question irritated me (at the time, I had no idea how I was going to "do the bear," but figured I'd work it out in rehearsal), because it's probably the aspect of the play that least interests me. I swore that I'd "do the bear" the simplest possible way I could find to do it and move on.

Given my budget and production style, I new we were going to have to create the bear impressionistically, out of actors's bodies and voices. I often do that -- use actors as doors or tables or dragons. And there are two ways to do stuff like that. One is to go for the "cool effect." This technique leaves the audience thinking, "wasn't that cool how they created a train using just actors!?!" I hate that. I want my productions to be about the story -- its plot and characters -- not about cool, showy effects (that are more about how smart I am and less about Shakespeare's tale). So I always look for the simplest, most unremarkable, least cool effect. I just want the audience to think "door" or "train" or "dragon" or whatever else they're supposed to think of at that point in the story -- and then to move on. So this was my goal with the bear.

(I think it's best, in the theatre, to have such a big budget that you can actually bring a bear on stage -- or create a hyper-real bear costume. It also works to do it the way I do it, where you're clearly faking the bear and effectively saying to the audience, "We're not trying to fool you into thinking there's a bear on stage. But lets all pretend that there IS a bear on stage." Either of these methods work, because they let the audience get on with the story. The realistic version is more cinematic; my way is more novelistic -- or perhaps more like pure storytelling or make-believe. What DOESN'T work is a half-assed bear costume. It sends a message of "We're trying to fool you," and the audience thinks, "But I'm not fooled! I can SEE that's fake." At this point, they start thinking about how the DIRECTOR or COSTUME DESIGNER did a bad job. This means they are thinking about the storytellers, not the story. And I always want them thinking about the story. Unfortunately, so much theatre nowadays takes this road. As an audience member, I am continually treated to sub-par cinematic effects.)

Now I had another problem: there are two old-men characters in the play, and I had one actor playing both of them. His first character was the one pursued by the bear; his second character had to find his first character's body (his first character gets killed by the bear). True to austere form, I was using no costumes, makeup or lighting changes. So I had to find a way to have this actor get killed by a bear and then -- without a costume or lighting change -- have him change to another character and find the dead body of his first character.

I tried out various things in rehearsal and found -- I think -- the only possible answer. All the other actors played the bear by becoming a huge, amorphous blob of aggression. They chased the old guy and pounced on him -- completely obscuring him while he screamed. Then they scattered and revealed the old guy, who was "transformed" into his new character (the transformation was pure acting -- no costume change). He then mimed discovering a body (the body of his first character). This solution didn't seem particularly smart or creative or cool to me. It just seemed "the shortest distance between two points." It told that part of the story. It got the job done. I moved on.

Meanwhile, the other director embraced the bear as furiously as I scorned it. She was thrilled with the possibility of showing off her creative talents on this production problem. I imagine that when people asked her, "How are you going to do the bear," she winked and said, "just wait and see!"

And she came up with exactly the same solution as I did.

We were working on the same play in the same theatre, which was "in the round," so there was no way to hide any machinery or to secretly whisk an actor off stage. And we had both made the same casting decision: to cast one actor in those two parts. (This isn't such a strange coincidence: it's hard to find older actors who are skilled Shakespeareans, so we tend to double cast them.) Like me, she had hit on the only viable solution. But unlike me, she thought it was brilliant. And, I'm sure, she had been talking about her brilliant idea to everyone. So naturally she was livid that I had "stolen" it. What if people thought it was MY idea and not hers?

True, I had seen her show before mine had opened, so I guess I saw her bear while my rehearsals were still going on. I honestly don't remember that part of her production -- which shows how little the bear interested me. My guess is that when I saw it I thought, "Yup, she's doing the bear the only way you can do it given these production constraints." As it happened, I had already worked out and rehearsed my bear before I had ever seen hers. I told her this, but she didn't believe me. (How could two different minds have come up with the same brilliant idea?) She told me that even if I was telling the truth, I should have changed my bear after seeing how similar it was to hers.

During our argument, I made things worse by saying, "If I was going to steal from you, I would have stolen something good -- not that stupid bear thing." I didn't understand how proud she was of it. And she didn't understand that I didn't care a fig about the bear. How could I not care about the most famous part of the play? In her view, backed up by the number of people who had talked to her and questioned her about the bear, saying that you don't care about the bear is like saying you're doing "Hamlet" and you don't care about "To be or not to be..." (The analogy seems correct, because the bear and "To be" are the most famous aspects of their respective plays, but whereas "To be" is integral to the story and themes of "Hamlet," the bear is a relatively unimportant subplot of "The Winter's Tale.") She actually got so angry that she threatened to sue me. I told her if it was that important to her, I would be happy to put her name in the program as "Bear Consultant." After a few days she calmed down and let it drop.

(I would have stolen from her if I thought she had come up with something that would have helped my show. Had I thought so, it would have been my duty to steal from her, because my responsibility is to my show. So if there's any way of making my show better, that's what I should do. If I don't steal because I want to "be original," then I'm thinking more of me and my reputation than about the show. If I don't steal because I don't want to be accused of theft, then I'm thinking of me, not the show. And my job, as a director, is to think of the show.)

It still fascinates me that we could have thought of the bear in two such different ways. We came up with the same solution. She was elated by it; I was bored.

What Makes a Good Comic Book?

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman wrote an essay about comics ("New Yorker," June 22, 2002) in which he praised Bernard Krigstein's Master Race as "an accomplishment of the highest order—a masterpiece." Thrilled by this possibility, I sought out a reproduction (online version). After reading it, I felt compelled to write Mr. Spriegelman the following letter. Alas, he never responded. Note: the link to his essay (above) doesn't include the illustrations which originally accompanied it in the "New Yorker." If anyone has a scan of the Kriegstein/Bradbury frame I mention in my letter, I would be grateful for a copy. Thanks!

Dear Mr. Spiegelman,

As a child I devoured comics, but in my late teens I felt I had outgrown them. I wasn't trying to cast off childhood by escaping from something childish. In fact, I'm sure I would have continued to read comics if the stories had continued to interest me. But I got tired of the repetition and cliches. Style became important to me, and I could now see that much of the writing was trite -- and even more of it was terrible.

But I've always retained an interest in the comic form. I'm aware that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it. In fact, I'm convinced that comics have great potential, that the form could include masterpieces, and that a comic masterpiece would be totally distinct from a written masterpiece or a filmed masterpiece. But I haven't started reading comics again, because I need a guide to help me sort through all the drek and locate the pearls.

So I was excited to read your rave about Krigstein's Master Race in the July 22nd New Yorker. After reading your article, I searched for -- and eventually found -- a reprint of the comic and read it, hoping for the best. Alas, I can't agree with you that it's a masterpiece. I do understand why you love the illustrations and the layout, and I'm sure that the comic is historically important and influential. Certainly Krigstein had a deep understanding of the form's visual potential, and I think his observation about the import of "what happens between the frames" is key. But the work fails as a masterpiece, because the relationship between illustrations and text is uncomfortable and unilluminating.

In your article, you don't spend much time discussing the relationship of words to pictures, but surely this a key relationship in the comic form (exceptions are those rare stories by artists who "speak" only in pictures). For a comic to be a masterpiece, both text and images must contribute something unique to each frame. Remove the text, and you should be left with only half the story; remove the images, and you should be left with the other half. And there are all sorts of ways that image and text can play off of each other: one can hold back while the other explodes, one can take in the-big-picture while the other zooms in on a detail, one can act as an ironic commentary on the other, etc.

But the text should never simply describe the illustration. And the illustration should never simply depict the text. Which is what happens throughout Master Race (at least until the final sequence). As an example, take the panel reproduced in on the first page of your article. The text reads, "Look, Carl! Look at the face of this man sitting across from you in this now deserted subway car." And we see a picture of this very man's face. The text continues, "Remember the guards that gleefully carried out the sadistic orders of the master race... whipping... kicking... beating!... The guards that eagerly dragged the women and children to the waiting, smoking ovens!" And we see these very guards pushing these same women and children towards these same ovens." The pictures add nothing to the words.

Compare this to the two panels you include from Krigstein's Bradbury story. In the second panel, the text reads, "the executioner whirled his silver ax..." but we don't see the ax. Instead, we see frightened birds (not mentioned in the text) fleeing from the tree branches they had been perched on. Our minds are left to associate the sound of the ax with the terror of the birds. And we're also left to imagine the severed head rolling on the ground. To me, these two panels are much more of a masterpiece than then entire Master Race story.

Of course, I realize that Krigstein labored under a huge number of restraints, mostly economic and editorial, and that he didn't create the text. And I fear that many people would respond to this letter by suggesting that I have to understand the context or, even more likely, by throwing up their hands and shouting, "it's just a comic book for Christ's sake!" But we owe it to this unique form to judge it as an equal to literature, film, painting and music, and we should hold it to the same standards. Only then will excellence emerge.

Write Like a Cave Man

Do you know how to write Cave-speak? Ever heard of it? For Cave-speak, the only rule is that no word can be longer than three letters. Got it?

"Hit" is allowed. "It" is allowed. "Just" isn't allowed, but "jut" is. Kind of fun, don't you think?

Look, here's an example:

“My dog is a big red dog, and he ran to me on the day my dad die.”

Note that the end of that sentence was grammatically incorrect. That's no problem, because good grammar isn't required in Cave-speak. Just make your text understandable. Don't worry about it being good English.

Here's a Shakespeare Sonnet (in the original English first, then in my attempt at a translation into Cave-speak):

Sonnet 138
by Shakespeare

When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

Ode 1
by Me

The day my gal do say she tell no lie,
I do say yes, but in my ME say no,
To get her to see me as no old guy,
Who can not see a lie and then say OH!
Yay! She say to me I no so old am,
But in her HER she say he no is new,
She say the lie to get out of a jam.
We both do it, so why get mad and sue.
But why she say she no tell me no lie?
And why I tell her I am so so new?
So I can be for her and she for I,
For her to say my age is so bad too.
So I lie for her and she lies for me,
Yes we two lie, but to us it's the key.

Cave-speak versions of “Why did the chicken cross the road…?”

Q: Why do the hen X?
A: To get far off the at of me; to go to the at of you.

Q: Why wee hen go to yon of way?
A: To get to yon.

What's So Great About Jackson Pollack?

"I hate abstract art."

I love abstract art. People often ask me "What's the point of a canvas completely covered in blue paint?" or "What's the point of splatter paintings?" To me, the problem with such questions is "what's the point...?" My appreciation of art has nothing to do with it having a point, if by "having a point" we mean that it makes some sort of intellectual statement.

Though I'm not alone (and may even be pretty normal in relation to the "Average Joe's" understanding of art), my views on art don't mesh well with common intellectual or scholarly viewpoints, which see Art History as a dialogue about ideas. According to this view, an artistic movement makes a statement and then a later artistic movement responds to that statement. To me, this is a totally boring way of viewing art.

Art affects me emotionally and sensually much more than it affects me intellectually. So just like I'd never ask, "What's the point of cheese?" or "What's the point of a flower?", I would never ask "What's the point of a painting."

I'm always surprised when people don't like abstract art when it's on the wall of a museum, because those same people seem to enjoy it when it's on their clothing (in the form of a pattern) or on their wall (in the form of wallpaper) or on their bedsheets, plates, etc.

The joy of an abstract painting in a museum is that it is pure -- it's JUST the design. So I can focus on the colors and lines and shapes and not be distracted by plates, sheets and t-shirts. I can let the colors affect me and make me sad or happy or giddy or whatever.

I love representational painting, too, but in such paintings color and shape and line generally take a supporting role. So you can't, say, focus purely on the color blue and how it makes you feel, because you're distracted by the fact that the blue is part of a blue military uniform.

People don't get abstract painting because they overcomplicate it. They assume it's a secret code of some sort and try to discover the hidden meaning. But the real joy is the surface. The immediate way the painting slaps you in the face.


"I don't like abtract paintings because they don't require any skill to produce..."

This tells us a lot about you and your aesthetics. To you, the amount of work it LOOKS LIKE the artist has done affects the value of the work. I am not criticizing you for this. It's totally reasonable. But note that not everyone cares (as much or at all) about artistic effort.

I, for one, do not. If I discovered, tomorrow, that the Mona Lisa was painted by a machine, I would still admire it just as much. I don't care about the human effort, I care about the EFFECT the painting has on me -- the effect its colors, shapes and representational elements (i.e. the story it is telling) have on me. I am at one end of an extreme in this regard. Many people care about effort AND effect.

People tend to misunderstand others who are different from them in this way. Perhaps it never occurred to you that someone might not care about effort when judging art. When I was younger, I never guessed that some people DO care deeply about effort. When I figured this out, it explained several things to me.

I always wondered why people seemed to admire movie special effects which you could tell were unreal (I see this all the time with computer animation). People tend not to like effects that look totally fake. But they do tend to admire effects that look just a little unreal -- so that you can tell that they're effects. (I'm not talking about stylized effects; I'm talking about effects that are meant to look realistic and almost do -- but not quite.) I suspect people like them because they can detect the effort behind them. Totally naturalistic effects seem effortless (even though the are probably the result of GREAT effort). Similarly, people seem to admire acting that is skilled but not completely realistic. They like to be able to tell that the actor is acting. Actors who seem totally natural -- like real people filmed in a documentary -- get less attention than good but bombastic actors.

"People who don't like a particular abstract painting probably have never saw the an original in a gallery. They probably just saw a repruction in a book and they're judging the piece based on that."

True. But why is the original better? For some mystical reason? No. The original is better for several stateable reasons. For instance, you can actually see the brush strokes in 3D on the original and the colors will be more vibrant (you can create many more colors with paint than you can with standard printing techniques).

But the main reason the original is better is because it is bigger. Much much bigger. (Of course, I am generalizing -- some paintings are small.) And scale is a trick artists use to make their works fly like a bullet directly to our senses.

We are naturally affected by vastness: think of the ocean, the grand canyon, outer space, etc. And these things never show up well in snapshots, because snapshots can't capture the scale well.

This is why it's an extraordinary experience to stand in front of a vast Pollack canvas. In a book, it looks sort of like a scribble on a small piece of paper. In a gallery, it looks like a whole chaotic universe that you could easily fall into.

"No, the original is better because it's the original—the actual art, as opposed to a sort-of-similar rendering of the art."

If I invent a new kind of sandwich and you make a copy of it with the same ingredients, does mine taste better than yours because I made it first?

The original isn't better because it's the original. It's better because it has certain qualities that the copies lack (or lacks certain bad qualities that the copies have). I have suggested that one of those qualities is (or tends to be) scale.

What if you could make an EXACT copy of the original -- with all of the qualities of the original (scale, color, 3D)? Would it be as-good-as the original? I say DEFINITELY. If it's an exact copy of the original then the only way in which it's different from the original is the fact that it's not the original. In which case, if you still think that the original is better, then you have a sentimental attachment to the original.

I'm not saying this is bad. But I don't share this attachment. I don't care a fig whether I'm looking at the original Mona Lisa or a copy. But if it's a copy, it better be just as well-crafted as the original. Otherwise it won't affect me the same way. And all I care about is how it affects me.

"You're comparing art to a sandwich???"

We are clearly having some sort of confusion in which each of us isn't understanding the other in some fundamental way. If we're to make progress, we'll have to delve into basic assumptions. One tool we can use is analogy. So I may, at times, refer to mundane objects (i.e. sandwiches) in order to make a point. Rest assured, I am not saying art is like a sandwich. What I am saying is that art, being a part of our universe, must share some properties with other objects in our universe -- including objects that are simpler to understand and discuss. We have to be careful with "art" because it's such a loaded word. Art discussions can very quickly become so emotional that all possibility of rational discourse goes out the window. In general, this is a good thing. If art didn't affect our feelings, it wouldn't be of much use. But art's emotive power does sometimes make discussion ABOUT art difficult. For instance, if you think there's a way that Beethoven's 9th Symphony could be improved, it's very difficult to say so without angering people. Your suggestion will likely strike them as similar to one which suggests their child could be improved.

Now, if you feel that art exists in some special, magical realm -- one that literally shares nothing in common with sandwiches, dirt, nuts, bolts, atoms, molecules, etc. -- then we probably have no grounds for discussion. We'll just have to respect each other's points-of-view (or be baffled by them) and move on. To me, the "magic" of art is that it is built out of ordinary substances and ordinary human urges and yet it yields objects that affect us powerfully. These powerful effects are also ordinary -- in the sense that it's normal for people to laugh, cry, fall-in-love, etc. When I am wrapped up in one of these emotional states, it doesn't feel normal or ordinary. It feels remarkable, profound, etc. But if I remove myself from my feelings, I have to admit that I'm experiencing feelings that everyone else feels too. And that art is one of the many catalysts for these feelings. Art is special because it can generate these feelings quickly. So while it may take me months (or years) to fall in love with a real person, I can fall in love with a character in a novel in a matter of hours.

Okay, so lets say we have art object A (which could be a novel, poem, movie, sculpture, etc.) which is composed of ordinary atoms and molecules. It's not the atoms and molecules which are special -- it's the pattern they're in that is special. Now lets say that this pattern makes me cry. This sad feeling is also special. Lets say A was created by artist X.

Now lets say that artist Y creates object B, which is an exact copy of the object A. When I say "exact copy," I don't mean that it's made of the same atoms and molecules as A. That would be impossible. If it were, it would BE object A. But I've admitted that the molecules and atoms themselves are mundane. It's the ARRANGEMENT of them that is special. We can build "identical" chairs made from different nails and pieces of wood, because each different nail and piece of wood is the same as each other nail and piece of wood -- in every way that we care about. As-long-as the arrangement is the same, the chairs are the same (as-far-as we're concerned). Same with art. If B has the exact arrangement of atoms and molecules as A, it will affect me the same way as A. It will also make me cry.

(Actually, B's arrangement can differ somewhat from A and I won't notice the difference. Taking chairs as an example, the type of nails used in two "identical" chairs can be somewhat different and I will probably still experience the chairs as being identical.)

Moving away from abstraction, let's talk about novels: you and I can both read "The Great Gatsby" and love it (substitute a different novel if you happen to dislike "Gatsby".) But we're both reading copies. The original, if it exists, is a typed (or longhand) manuscript created by Fitzgerald's hand. Is Fitzgerald's manuscript somehow better or more important or more Gatsby than your hardback or my paperback? If so, how? In other words, HOW WILL READING THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT MAKE US LAUGH, CRY OR THINK DIFFERENTLY FROM READING A COPY OF IT?

A fair objection might be "art isn't just about the emotional/intellectual way it affects you." Fair, but you need to go farther. Okay, so what else IS art? Or rather, what else is the point of art. As-far-as I'm concerned, art's only worth (and it's GREAT worth) is its power to affect. If you feel that it has some other value, that's fine. In fact, that might be the locus of our disagreement. So I'll be quite clear and honest about my prejudice. I care about art because it makes me sad (happy, etc.). If a copy makes me just as sad (happy, etc.) as an original, then (as-far-as I'm concerned) there's no qualitative difference between the copy and the original.

Another fair objection might be, "Yes, but the copy won't ever affect you the way the original will." If this is your claim, I would like you to explain it and back it up. Now, you might say...

a) It's impossible to make an accurate copy. I would definitely agree that it's DIFFICULT to create an accurate copy of some skillfully made works of art unless the copier has skill equal to that of the original artist (or can utilize the original artist's skill -- see below). For instance, I can't carve an exact copy of Michelangelo's "David" without having Michelangelo's skill. And it's UNLIKELY that I have that skill, because M was a rare genius. But it's certainly POSSIBLE that I might have his skill. It's possible, because M was human and I am human.

It's also quite possible (here's the "see below") for me to use a machine to help augment my less-than-Michaelangeloish skill-set. In other words, I could take a cast of "David" and produce an exact copy. Or use some device to laser-scan "David" and make an exact copy.

In either case, if the copy is exact (or exact-enough) it will affect my nervous system the same way the original did, in which case it will evoke the same emotional/intellectual response. Ergo, by my affect-based aesthetic, it is qualitatively the same as the original.

b) The original was created BY the original artist, so it's historically important. I agree totally. But I think people continually confuse Art History with Art Appreciation. When I read, "The Great Gatsby," I don't care a fig about F. Scott Fitzgerald. I can about Gatsby, Daisy, Nick and the other characters in the book. When I read a biography of Fitzgerald, I care about Fitzgerald.

My way is not the only way. Some people care more about the artist than his work. For them, the work is a way of learning more about its creator. Some people care equally about the work AND the person who created it. All of these interests are valid. But we should be able to see that the work and its creator ARE two different things. And they CAN be appreciated separately. This becomes clear when we note works like "The Iliad" of which we know nothing about its creator. We can still love such works.

If you separate Art History from the art object -- and if you have the skill or technology to make an accurate copy of the object -- how is the copy qualitatively different from the original? At this point, I think you have to fall back on religious language. "The original is better because it has an aura or force or the artist's soul in it." I am an atheist, so such language is meaningless to me. But I grant it may have power for many people.

By the way, I should note that I'm an artist myself. I may not like to admit this, but I DO think it's true that if someone makes an exact copy of my work, in all useful senses, that copy IS my work -- or it's just-as-good-as my work. My creative role was coming up with the original PATTERN. An exact copy will contain that pattern.

Evil Without Hope

Critic Roger Ebert wrote a fascinating essay in August 19th "Chicago Sun Times" in which he suggests that stories containing "evil without hope" are morally and aesthetically wrong. He writes

I believe evil can win in fiction, as it often does in real life. But I prefer that the artist express an attitude toward that evil. It is not enough to record it; what do you think and feel about it?

"Chaos," the movie that Ebert uses to make his point,

...is like a movie of a man falling to his death, which can have no developments except that he continues to fall, and no ending except that he dies. Pre-destination may be useful in theology, but as a narrative strategy, it is self-defeating.

... What I object to most of all in "Chaos" is not the sadism, the brutality, the torture, the nihilism, but the absence of any alternative to them. If the world has indeed become as evil as [the filmmakers] think, then we need the redemptive power of artists, poets, philosophers and theologians more than ever.

I admire Ebert's essay, but I disagree with it. Of course, I don't disagree that he disliked the film. That would be stupid. Of course he disliked it. And my guess is that I would dislike it too.

But Ebert goes further. He suggests it is aesthetically and morally wrong to depict evil without hope. The moral issue is thorny. To prove his point, Ebert would have to show how such depictions of evil harm people. I doubt he can do that. Or, if he's writing from within a Christian framework, he'd have to show how films like this violate God's law. I'm not a theologian than I am, so maybe someone will show me where I'm wrong, but I can't see how depicting evil without hope violates God's law.

Christianity states that Evil exists. And that there IS hope. And that the hope is God. So I suppose that if I went around saying, "evil exists and there's no hope," I might convince someone that there's no point in them turning to God. And in doing so, I'd be doing evil. But films are FICTION. Surely -- even to a Christian -- it's okay to create a fictional world that is godless.

It's pretty pointless to argue aesthetics, except to say that Ebert and I have different systems. In my system, any story that is PSYCHOLOGICALLY truthful is valid. People often misunderstand this. They say that a story must be true and they define truth to mean some sort of reflection of the real world -- "a mirror held up to nature." But I doubt anyone really has this aesthetic. If they did, they would have to instantly dismiss fantasy, fairy tales, etc. (Unless they actually believe that fairies exist!)

Such people would probably tell me that though a story might be set in a fairy kingdom, it can still contain HUMAN truths -- truths about love, sadness, passion, etc. Which is exactly my point. Those are psychological truths: truths about the way we think and feel.

I suspect this is why an open-minded Christian can enjoy fiction set in a godless world. It's because even the most devout Christian must have moments of doubt. And such fiction would tell the truth of these moments. Similarly, an open-minded atheist might enjoy a story, like "2001," that is set in a universe with gods. Because we all feel the presence of gods at some point in our life. The reality of gods might be a lie, but the FEELING is true.

We all -- sometimes -- feel like evil exists and there's no hope. That is psychological truth. Even if we know it isn't really true in the real world. Or even if we want it not to be true. We sometimes feel that it IS true. And that feeling is real. So a story may portray this truth. In fact, a story that suggest that we ALWAYS feel hope in the sight of evil is telling a lie.

One of the things stories do best -- perhaps the THING they do best -- is to give body to a feeling. Stories can create whole worlds that reflect feelings, rather than our physical reality. This is the way stories are most like dreams. Dream worlds need not be true to nature, but they must (and always are) true to the psychology of the dreamer. Stories are the same. Stories can take our abstract fears and embody them as monsters; they can take our internal loneliness and cast it in the form of a barren, lifeless planet; they can take our anger and restlessness and embody them as explosions and laser battles.

Now there are some feelings that we may hate to feel. We may structure our lives, as best we can, so that we avoid these feelings. If "evil without hope" is one of those feelings for Ebert, then he would do well to avoid this film. And a more honest review would say, "This movie makes me feel hopeless, I don't like the feeling of hopelessness. If, like me, you don't want to feel hopeless, avoid this movie. Because it's pretty effective at conveying hopelessness."

And clearly the movie IS effective (or at least it was for Ebert). Ebert doesn't claim it was boring -- or that it tried to convey hopelessness but failed. He claims it succeeded and that made it a bad film.

Some of us enjoy movies about those feelings we try to avoid in life. (Though "enjoy" is the wrong word. Maybe "need" is better.) I am one such person. There are many feelings that I try hard to avoid in real life. Loneliness is one; fear is another. Perhaps it's because I can't entirely avoid them that I seek out films about these feelings. I KNOW I can't avoid them. I KNOW I must confront them. It's so much safer to confront them in a story than it is in real life. I need that safety net.

Ebert writes

The message of futility and despair in "Chaos" is unrelieved, and while I do not require a "happy ending," I do appreciate some kind of catharsis. As the Greeks understood tragedy, it exists not to bury us in death and dismay, but to help us to deal with it, to accept it as a part of life, to learn about our own humanity from it. That is why the Greek tragedies were poems: The language ennobled the material.

Ebert's mistake is to think that the catharsis must be intrinsic to the story itself. But it needn't be. The story can set up a situation for which the viewer provides his own catharsis. As-long-as catharsis takes place, the story has done its job. I suspect that Ebert's catharsis might have been writing his essay. Sometimes a catharsis can be total rejection of the story. "I damn you and will have nothing to do with you!"

Such movies can -- for me at least -- provide a catharsis while I view them. When I watch a movie of "evil with no hope," I may cry or clutch the hand of the person I'm with. But I will give in to the truth of my feelings -- those truths I've been working so hard to avoid. And that "giving in" IS cathartic.

I so need to give in once in a while, because fighting the feelings is such hard hard exhausting work. Once in a while I need to say to the devil, "Yes! I know you will win! I'm yours! Take me!" Even if I know that the devil will not (necessarily) win.

And then I need to wake up from this dream. I need to know that the dream was just a dream -- that the movie was just a movie. I need to know that (in a dream only) I hit bottom. And that I'm still alive; that I still can love, drink wine, relax with a book, and -- for a while -- avoid bad feelings.