Steven Soderbergh, Schizopolis, Eventualism

One of Steven Soderbergh's lesser known and smaller budget films, Schizopolis is a hilarious indictment of American ideals and expectations. Soderbergh himself stars in his own film in his first acting role as Fletcher Munson, speech writer for an L. Ron Hubbard style religious cult, navigating the banalities of life and marriage in a town filled with white picket fences, general discontent, and everything else you'd expect in a stereotypical American suburb. The film itself is anything but stereotypical, and any description or summation I might attempt to write would inevitably fall short of the film itself. It will suffice to say that Soderbergh was coming out the tail end of a rather difficult divorce, and if this film might be admitted as evidence, he was in the midst of quite the existential crisis. So he bucked up, wrote a script, paid for the production out of his own pocket, and made one of the most unexpected pieces of art I have ever watched. You should watch it too.

Sailing To Byzantium, W.B. Yeats Feeling Old, Body and Spirit

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation Series, Between Psycho History and Psycho Fiction

The buzz now became a dull roar. The Advocate, unheeded, was yelling, "You are openly declaring that–" and stopped because the cries of "Treason" from the audience showed that the point had been made without any hammering.
     Slowly, the Chief Commissioner raised his gavel once and let it drop. The sound was that of a mellow gong. When the reverberations ceased, the gabble of the audience also did. The Advocate took a deep breath.

Q. (theatrically) Do you realize, Dr. Seldon, that you are speaking of an Empire that has stood for twelve thousand years, through all the vicissitudes of the generations, and which has behind it the good wishes and love of a quadrillion human beings?
A. I am aware both of the present status and the past history of the Empire. Without disrespect, I must claim a far better knowledge of it than any in this room.
Q. And you predict its ruin?
A. It is a prediction which is made by mathematics. I pass no moral judgements. Personally, I regret the prospect. Even if the Empire were admitted to be a bad thing (an admission I do not make), the state of anarchy which would follow its fall would be worse. It is that state of anarchy which my project is pledged to fight. The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity – a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.
Q. Is it not obvious to anyone that the Empire is as strong as it ever was?
A. The appearance of strength is all about you. It would seem to last forever. However, Mr. Advocate, the rotten tree-trunk, until the very moment when the storm-blast breaks it in two, has all the appearance of might it ever had. The storm-blast whistles through the branches of the Empire even now. Listen with the ears of psychohistory, and you will hear the creaking.
Q. (uncertainly) We are not here, Dr. Seldon, to lis–
A. (firmly) The Empire will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay and the order it has imposed will vanish. Interstellar wars will be endless; interstellar trade will decay; population will decline; worlds will lose touch with the main body of the Galaxy. –And so matters will remain.
Q. (a small voice in the middle of a vast silence) Forever?
A. Psychohistory, which can predict the fall, can make statements concerning the succeeding dark ages. The Empire, gentlemen, as has just been said, has stood twelve thousand years. The dark ages to come will endure not twelve, but thirty thousand years. A Second Empire will rise, but between it and our civilization will be one thousand generations of suffering humanity. We must fight that.

                                       -Foundation, By Isaac Asimov

      The Foundation Series won the Hugo Award for best all-time science fiction series, as it damn well should have. Isaac Asimov is an author with little to no delusions as to his writing ability. His novels and short stories read like the classic paperback  sci-fi adventures that they certainly are, but what makes them great are the concepts behind them. This man was primarily a scientist who also happened write. The Foundation series is filled with hardcore scientific, historical, religious, and psychological theory that, like all great science fiction, reaches far into the future and has turned out to be not very far off the mark. It's incredible how up to date his core ideas remain over fifty years later. His prose, to me, seems entirely aimed at fun and entertainment, but at the same time his stories satisfy some of my deepest intellectual hungers. What more could you ask for in a book? For sci-fi "nerds" and intellectual snobs alike; read these books.

p.s. If you're not yet sure about committing to a three novel series (or five, including another two Asimov wrote a decade or two later because of popular demand; or seven, if you include the two prequels he wrote after those; or ten, taking into account the three Galactic Empire novels that flesh out some pertinent back story), read his short story Nightfall and you'll probably be convinced.

"Bitter" Ambrose Bierce, Satirest, Total Bad Ass

I. How Trees Are Felled in China

A half-mile north from Jo. Dunfer's, on the road from Hutton's to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine which opens out on either hand in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient season. I never used to ride through it without looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had arrived for the revelation. If I saw nothing -- and I never did see anything -- there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily for some good reason which I had no right to question. That I should one day be taken into full confidence I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo. Dunfer himself, through whose premises the ravine ran. 

     It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some remote part of it, but for some reason had abandoned the enterprise and constructed his present hermaphrodite habitation, half residence and half groggery, at the roadside, upon an extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind. 

     This Jo. Dunfer -- or, as he was familiarly known in the neighbourhood, Whisky Jo. -- was a very important personage in those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something and rend it. 

     Next to the peculiarity to which he owed his local appellation, Mr. Dunfer's most obvious characteristic was a deep-seated antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.'s establishment. I ventured faintly to remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely explained that there was nothing about Chinamen in the New Testament, and strode away to wreak his displeasure upon his dog, which also, I suppose, the inspired scribes had overlooked.

        -Excerpt from "The Haunted Valley" by Ambrose Bierce

Thomas Hardy, Victorian novelist turned Modernist Poet

If but some vengeful god would call to me 

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, 

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, 

That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!” 

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, 

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; 

Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I 

Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. 

But not so.   How arrives it joy lies slain, 

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? 

—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, 

And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . 

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown 

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

                                                     -Hap, by Thomas Hardy

Carcosa, and The King in Yellow

"I crept to the door: the organ broke out overhead with a blare. A dazzling light filled the church, blotting the altar from my eyes. The people faded away, the arches, the vaulted roof vanished. I raised my seared eyes to the fathomless glare, and I saw the black stars hanging in the heavens: and the wet winds from the lake of Hali chilled my face.

"And now, far away, over leagues of tossing cloud-waves, I saw the moon dripping with spray; and beyond, the towers of Carcosa rose behind the moon.

"Death and the awful abode of lost souls, whither my weakness long ago had sent him, had changed him for every other eye but mine. And now I heard his voice, rising, swelling, thundering through the flaring light, and as I fell, the radiance increasing, increasing, poured over me in waves of flame. Then I sank into the depths, and I heard the King in Yellow whispering to my soul: 'It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!'"

                                                                       -Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow

Videodrome, Cronenburg, The New Flesh

"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television."

     -Brian O'Blivion

Cronenburg is a genius, and my new favorite director. This film is yet another brilliant depiction of human-kind's relationship to technology; the fantastic possibilities of transcending our physical and psychic boundaries, and the terrible ways it can be misused. Who says horror/sci-fi can't be a medium for serious philosophical exploration? Not I, and for anyone who does, nearly the entirety of Cronenburg's filmography (except for works such as A History of Violence and Eastern Promises that simply aren't of this genre) would beg to differ.