Ken vs. the City

I just finished editing and uploading episode #4 of Haven Nation. This time I got to interview actor Amanda Hunt about her art and her life. She had a lot of insights into what it means to be an actor and a Christian from her own experience.

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I really like doing these interviews. Everyone I talk to gives me more and more insight not only into different aspects of artistic expression, but also into God. Every Christian is unique, and thus every Christian follows God in their own way. He develops each person differently, and even though he’s the same person to everyone, and doesn’t play favorites, he reveals different aspects of himself to each of us. I take it as a sign that there’s plenty of Him to go around.

Yestarday I was riding the subway uptown to a friend’s house, listening to some random stuff on my iPod, when a whole bunch of kids got on the train with me. They were laughing, talking, and having a good time when they asked another guy, who was also listening to an iPod, what he was listening to.

“Snoop Dog,” said the guy, and all the kids said, “Yeah,” and gave him a high five. They seemed very sociable, and to have no problem breaching the personal non-interaction force field generated by all iPods.

I shrank away into a corner. I knew that if I made eye contact, they would ask me next what I was listening to. 8-year-old punk rock and obscure indy folk, rock, and electronic tunes are not something I wanted to take the time to explain.

Still, they were talkative and friendly. I couldn’t help but look up and smile. Eventually the question came: “Hey, man. What you listenin to?”

“Uh, punk rock,” I said, hoping that would be a satisfactory answer.

The kid who asked me just wrinkled his nose. “Punk rock? Yo, you got any rap on there?”

I shook my head, “No.”

“Let me listen,” said another. At this point I gave up trying to be antisocial, gave them my earbuds and let them listen. “What else you got on there.”

I keep my iPod clipped to my pocket under my jacket. I took it out and the kid who was listening began to flip through it. “Yo, you gotta hear this.”

I chuckled a little while they passed the earbuds around. Eventually the train came to my stop and I had to leave them, but it was a fun experience. It also showed me that I really tend to isolate myself from other people. If I can’t be friendly and open with strangers, how can I ever hope to make new friends. I felt like I had been growing hard towards others.

I suppose I’ve always had a tendency to isolate myself. It might be because I get caught up in an idea, or a project. Maybe I’m just sulking a little bit for some reason. Whatever the cause, it’s not a good thing. It makes me irritable and snippy towards anyone who wants to talk to me when I’m trying to be alone. It’s a very selfish way of thinking, and gets in the way of “love your neighbor as yourself.”

I left my iPod at home when I went out jogging this morning. I said hello to a businessman, gave a young girl directions to the M15 bus, and helped a hispanic man find the immigration office. No more forcefields for me. At least for a little while.

This weekend I went out with some guys from my Bible study to a tiny burger joint tucked into the lobby corner of a fancy hotel. Afterwards we went to the Ziegfeld theater, a beautiful historical theater that normally shows first-run movies. This winter they’ve been showing old movies. We went and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The character HAL 9000 is as cool as ever. It’s one of the only science fiction movies that does space right… weightlessness and all. It’s also one of the most incomprehensible movies ever made. I read the book, which Arthur C. Clarke wrote at the same time he was working on the screenplay for the movie with Kubrick, so I know a little more about what’s going on.

If you consider that movies are a series of images instead of your standard plot/story arc, you’ll be alright. The end of the movie is a trippy kaleidoscope of psychadellic nonsense if you just walk into the movie. The book is a little more descriptive about what happens to astronaut David Bowman. He falls into a star gate, and is transported across the galaxy where he sees wild otherworldly vistas and strange starscapes. Kubrick’s film version is a lot more poetic, but since I realized what he was trying to capture, I can say he got the sense of it down.

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick were both non-theists, and it’s apparent that they were trying to create a story and a work of visual poetry that fulfilled the sense of divine longing that all people have without the need to bring in a personal God. They definately succeeded in capturing that feeling, but they failed in trying to keep the longing for God out of it.

The whole movie seems very lonely and distant. None of the characters ever seems to connect with any other character. Dialogue is stiff. Indeed, the only really animated character is HAL 9000, a computer. In the end of the movie, we see David Bowman living out the rest of his days in solitude. Kubrick uses some nifty visual tricks where Bowman gradually sees himself growing older and older, until he’s a frail man lying in bed, reaching out to touch the rectangular black monolith, a mysterious alien artifact that definately represents a divine force in the movie.

The monolith was present at the beginning of Man’s evolution, and it’s here now at the end, where Bowman falls into it and evolves into the Star-Child who, in the very end, looks down at the Earth that was his cradle.

It’s not a philosophy that I agree with, but I do think it points out that even those who don’t believe in God long for transcendence. The world is a lonely place. People are cut off from each other. We need something beyond ourselves to come to us and cause us to be re-born. I don’t think Kubrick or Clarke actually believed it’s an alien artifact. I think they have no idea what it is, and so have to tell their story and capture that feeling in a very vague way.

I believe that thing is a personal God who is deeply worried about the world and concerned for our lonely ramblings. Same longing. Truer solution.

For as long as I can remember, nearly all the long-hand writing I’ve done has been on a computer. But as much as “word processing” has made writing on-the-fly easier, it’s also one of the things that has kept my writing disorganized and inconsistent. As a result, my novel languishes in the limbo of my imagination, without ever being put down on paper.

Instead of writing, I could clean out my temporary files folder. I could work on a new web design. I could check my email, read the latest blogs, listen to music, watch video, or I could try out some new piece of software. Not to mention the ever-present time-waster known as Spider Solitaire. Everything other than writing screams for my attention. There’s just too much distraction on my computer to get any real writing done. That’s why, about a month ago, I decided to start working on my fiction projects in a real life notebook.

I selected an overpriced notebook from Barnes and Noble, but any old book will do. The one I selected is smaller dimensionally than notebook paper-sized, so it’s more compact, and it has a plastic cover, so it’s a little more durable. But the real reason I decided to go with this particular notebook was because it’s divided up into colored sections.

I have a tendency to work on way too many writing projects at once. At one time I was working on my novel, two short stories, a screenplay, and a stage script simultaneously. Needless to say, I didn’t finish a single one. Because the notebook has a fixed number of sections, I can only work on a limited number of projects at any one time. If I want to work on any more, I have to finish the ones that are already in-progress or buy another overpriced notebook from Barnes and Noble. I’m a cheapskate, and I’m not going to buy another notebook from them unless I have to. Did I mention they are overpriced?

Portability is another benefit of the notebook. It’s lighter and smaller than a laptop, so I can take it with me wherever. It’s also more durable, so I’m not afraid to knock it around. And even though it’s overpriced, I’m not above buying another if this one gets destroyed somehow.

I have one section for each project, with the last section reserved for random thoughts, ideas, and poems. I don’t normally keep a diary or a prayer journal, but it’s always helpful to have a large space that I can take with me reserved for that sort of stuff. It’s also a good source of ideas for any stories I happen to be working on.

So far it’s worked out well. I have one section for each story. It’s helped me separate writing time from everything-else time. I haven’t finished a story yet, but at least all my fiction is in one place. My handwriting is still atrocious, and writing for long spells hurts my hands from lack of practice. Discipline and writing endurance is still something I have to work on, but I’m seeing some improvements in my writing schedule. Plus it makes me feel more organized.

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time at the nearest branch of the New York Public Library. It’s not exactly the coolest hangout in town, but they do have a free wifi connection. And other than the subway after midnight, it’s one of the best places to find unusual characters.

Yesterday, for example, I walked into the library behind an old old Chinese man. I say “old” twice because he was beyond ancient and walked with a sort of shuffling stride. He was wearing a beat-up trench coat and some sort of hat. On his left foot he wore one of those Nike sport sandals, the kind that some people like to wear with socks, and on the other foot he wore a dirty sneaker. In one hand he was carrying a faded plastic Duane Read bag, and in the other he was loosely carrying a wooden crutch.

I held the door open for him, and thought nothing of it. I sat down, got out my computer, and started to check my email when the old man sat down across from me. He had gotten the newspaper, and some papers, and started leafing through them. What hit me immediately was the stench. This man positively reeked of urine.

I worked fast, and keept my breathing as shallow as I could. I wanted out of there as soon as I could, so I tried to do all my online stuff as quickly as possible. The stench was almost unbearable, but I couldn’t just get up and leave. Here was this old man, who looked like somebody’s kooky old grandfather, sitting directly across from me. If I got up right when he sat down, it would be impolite.

My eyes were starting to tear from the stench before he finally got up to do something else. I felt sorry for him, some old guy who reeeealy needed a shower, but I have no system set-up do deal with random people I meet in the street. I don’t even know if it’s possible to have one. There are just too many freaking people in New York for one individual to deal with.

This past Sunday the Haven had an Oscar night event. We had a discussion panel of three writers and a spaghetti dinner. I’d say there was a little over 100 people there, so it was a pretty big turnout.

I’ve never payed much attention to the Oscars unless there was a movie I liked up for something big. This year, in fact I hadn’t seen any of the nominees for best picture. Most of them I never even knew existed until a few days before the awards ceremony. I still don’t want to see Crash, or Brokeback Mountain, but after seeing clips from Capote and Good Night and Good Luck, I might just have to go out and rent them on DVD.

We made a Haven Nation podcast episode out of the panel discussion. Unfortunately all we had to record with was a single Logitech tabletop microphone, so there’s a lot of background noise. It’s interesting to see what a small panel of “experts” have to say about the nominated movies. Keep in mind that the panel took place before the actual event.

Download Haven Nation #3

For a while now my home church, Woodlands Church in Plover, Wisconsin, has been putting their Sunday sermons online as mp3 downloads. My friend Dave has pointed out to me thet their sermons are now available online as a podcast.

Right now they’re going through a series on Romans. Content is a little rough. You can tell it wasn’t originally designed as a podcast, but the meat of the message is there. They only have an iTunes subscription link on the Woodlands web page, but for anyone who doesn’t use iTunes, here’s a link to the RSS feed.

Subscribe:
RSS feed
iTunes

One of my most favorite bands ever, a jazzy-rock-ish-folk-ish quartet from California called Havalina, is no more. However, before departing, they have left their fans (all ten of them) a compilation album available as a free download on their website.

We Remember Anarchy is a 90MB, 26-song retrospective covering all the albums Havalina has ever produced; from 1992 to 2006. It’s a hefty download, but I definately recommend you get it. Songs are in Apple’s ACC format, which is no problem for people w/ iTunes. For non-iTunes users, I recommend the cross-platform VLC Media Player. That sucker plays everything.

An older album, Russian Lullabies (one of my favs) is also available. It’s in mp3 format, so any player should work.

Download:
We Remember Anarchy
VLC Media Player