South Bank

Apologies for the cross-posting

I am still organising a few posts across my blogs according to their subjects.

Atonal Blue – Writings on art, in English
Atonal Azul – More or less the same blog, but in Portuguese
The Garden of the Kamikaze – Ethics, vegetarianism, Buddhism et alli, in English
O Jardim do Kamikaze – More or less the same blog, but in Portuguese

The invisible author

Isaac Asimov was never a good writer, George Lucas is a terrible director and script writer, and the first page of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a pain. Before the reader thinks I am having a bad hair day, please note that I will eventually say good things about them all. I’ll get to that.

Asimov had earned a popularity that broke the 1,000-nerd barrier and became one of the biggest science fiction authors ever. Not without a reason, sci-fi is considered by many to be a form of subliterature, and I wonder if Asimov had contributed significantly on that direction. I must have read more than a hundred of his stories already, which I appreciate indeed – but each one of them has something that, as well-illustrated by a friend of mine, works like a tiny hand that sprouts from the book towards the reader’s face to give him a good ol’ slap. I am talking about dreadful literary fragilities, a poor rhetoric that is predictable and transparent, and not in a good way, and all that is disguised by Asimov’s unrivalled imagination, which is enriched by his knowledge on physics, chemistry, astronomy et cetera that allows him to write fascinating stuff about space and time.

In my humble opinion of a non-writer, what makes a good writer is not only being able to tell a story well (‘story’ having here the widest of meanings); a good writer must be invisible, to use Yoshi Oida’s term when referring to actors who are so skilful in their art that they disappear on stage, leaving only their characters for us to see. Asimov has great insights, ideas that are really astonishing within the universe he created, but he is never invisible in the text. Through physical descriptions of his characters or comments they make, the bad writer reveals himself – Asimov is there, in every paragraph, occupying a space that should be occupied by the story only and explaining the reader through the literary means of the lowest level something that the reader either already knows, or should discover in a more interesting way. An example: A scientist suggests a colleague how they can escape impending death with the help of a robot (Asimov’s robots are by far his best characters, perhaps for requiring less from the author in the creation of a psychological profile). His explanation involves describing certain chemical phenomena in technical terms, creating a blatant contrast with the writing style so far. What does Asimov do to solve this structural problem? The scientist concludes his speech, “College chem, you know.” The ironic reaction from the reader comes next, realising how educational was the explanation. What makes Asimov’s face to be printed in full colour over the text is an implausible dialog that fell like an anvil from the sky to give the reader – not the scientist #2, more familiar with chemistry and physics than the Rabbi is with the Torah – a piece of information that is critical for the conflict they are stuck in. In another passage in the same story (Runaround) one of the characters assumes the reader’s likely reaction by saying ironically, “Look, this is all very educational, but would you mind changing the subject?”

As for George Lucas, he broke the 1,000-nerd barrier and went a long way beyond. “The Phantom Menace” sums up Lucas’ best and worst – a director who is always visible in automated performances (compare Liam Neeson as Lucas’ Qui-Gon Jinn with Spielberg’s Oskar Schindler) and in dialogs that could have been written by a not very brilliant teenager. He himself admitted on TV not being “very good with dialogs,” which is more or less like a formula one driver admitting not being really good with gear shifts.

I have seen the whole series and I still remember the huge hand-painted boards in front of the theatre with Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, in the now extinct Cine Guarani in Porto Alegre (What? Me old?). What took me to the theatre all six times, and what will take me for three times more if there is the controversial sequel for the saga, is le merveilleux that one would look for in the 18th-Century French opera and that can be found today in the Star Wars series, and this merit – offering us not only impossible dialogs, but impossible worlds with creatures from a magic universe – is all Lucas’.

In the first page of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the novel that became Blade Runner) Philip K. Dick shows up blinking like a pink neon light at every line, more than Asimov and Lucas put together. The characters seem to make an effort to contextualise the reader and give away information that, again, we either already have, or do not need now and could find later on in a better context.

I will get back to this when I finish the book. I am on my way.

Washing the dishes

My first serious contact with Buddhism probably took place in a bookshop in Seville in January 2007. I was accompanying a friend in the Humanities section when I bumped onto a sector dedicated to Buddhism. The most popular author was a certain Thich Nhat Hanh. In my ignorance, I didn’t know about the grandiosity surrounding that skinny funny-named Vietnamese. Nhat Hanh is a Zen master hugely recognised by his activism and his practical approach to social issues, having been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. due to his opposition to Vietnam War. I have chosen to buy the Spanish translation of “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” a brilliant book from beginning to end. As early as in the first chapter, he warns about the importance of living in the present, in a simple and poetic style (apologies for the back translation):

If, while we wash the dishes, we are thinking only of the cup of tea that awaits us or of anything that belongs to the future, or rush through getting rid of the dishes as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes for washing them,” and above all we are not alive during the time it takes us to do it. Indeed, we are completely incapable of appreciating the miracle of life while we stand in front of the pile of dishes. If we cannot wash the dishes, chances are that we cannot enjoy our cup of tea either; while we drink it, we will be thinking of something else, aware only to the fact of having a cup of tea in our hands. This way, we will be enraptured by the future, and what that means is that we will be incapable of living a single moment of our lives” (p. 38)

Today, almost three years later, there isn’t a single time when I am washing up that I don’t remember that paragraph.

Lavando os pratos

Observação: dando-me conta de que seria complicado manter um blog bilíngüe, resolvi criar uma contraparte deste em português.
NB: REALISING HOW COMPLICATED IT WOULD BE TO MAINTAIN A BILINGUAL BLOG, I DECIDED TO CREATE A COUNTERPART OF THIS ONE IN PORTUGUESE.

Meu primeiro contato sério com o budismo se deu provavelmente em uma livraria de Sevilha em janeiro de 2007. Estava acompanhando uma amiga na seção de Humanidades quando deparei com uma parte dedicada ao budismo. O autor mais popular da prateleira era um certo Thich Nhat Hanh. Em minha ignorância, não sabia da grandiosidade daquele vietnamita franzino com nome estranho. Nhat Hanh é um mestre Zen extremamente reconhecido por seu ativismo e sua abordagem prática aos problemas sociais, tendo sido indicado ao Nobel da Paz por Martin Luther King, Jr. por sua oposição à guerra do Vietnã. Escolhi Cómo lograr el milagro de vivir despierto, um livro brilhante do início ao fim. Logo no primeiro capítulo, ele avisa sobre a importância de se viver no presente, em estilo simples e poético (a tradução é minha):

Se, enquanto lavamos os pratos, estamos pensando somente na xícara de chá que nos aguarda ou em qualquer coisa que pertença ao futuro, ou nos apressamos a ficar livres dos pratos como se fossem um incômodo, não estamos então “lavando os pratos para os lavar” e, acima disso, não estamos vivos durante o tempo que levamos para fazê-lo. De fato, somos completamente incapazes de apreciar o milagre da vida enquanto permanecemos diante da pilha de pratos. Se não podemos lavar os pratos, é bastante provável que tampouco possamos desfrutar de nossa xícara de chá: enquanto a bebemos, estaremos pensando em outras coisas, despertos apenas ao fato de ter uma xícara de chá entre as mãos. Dessa maneira, estaremos absortos no futuro, e o que isso significa é que seremos incapazes de viver um só momento de nossa vida” (p.38)

Hoje, quase três anos depois, não existe uma só vez em que lavo os pratos sem lembrar desse parágrafo.