Getting Meta on Star Wars for the Love of It, with Professor T

To say that I was excited about Star Wars… well, the word understatement is an understatement. I had a couple dreams about it. As I’m sure most of you also felt, waking up on Star Wars day was like waking up on Christmas morning, except if you had been waiting for Christmas for like… most of your life.

And yet when I try to articulate why, I run into trouble. Am I an uber-Star-Wars nerd?? No, not really. I am a fan, for sure. But I can’t name every single character and planet in the expanded universe, or even most of them. In fact, I had to Google that term. (Expanded universe… is that right?? Extended universe? No, expanded. Cool. Apt, considering the universe is always expanding both literally and metaphorically, amiright?? Anyway…)

But I was SO excited to see the movie. And I am so excited even now that I HAVE seen it, now that it’s out in the world and this franchise is continuing for the next generation. Do I think The Force Awakens is a perfect movie?? NOPE. Not even close. It is a good movie, even a very good movie, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and both the craft behind and our enjoyment of a movie are influenced in every way by the world from which it is born—in this case, America, 2015.

I’ll attempt to articulate further. S and I had ENORMOUS problems with Jurassic World (because we have taste, duh), but mostly because it felt to us like it either a) exhibited a stunning lack of self-awareness, or b) was nowhere near ironic enough. Think about that film and the franchise tradition it comes from. A theme park, designed to harness dangerous creative genetic power goes awry, and a mega-disaster occurs. Meanwhile, in real life, Spielberg invents—or rather, “stands on the shoulders of geniuses”, just like John Hammond in the movie—some incredible new technology, taps into a monster-hungry early 90’s market (there's a whole blog post in here or probably more like a book about why the market was what it was, but I'll skip it for now, sounds boring), and spawns such a mega-blockbuster series even he doesn’t know what to do with it. Literally and metaphorically, the monsters get loose and out of control— and we can see the ripple effects in Jurassic Parks II, III, and, I don’t know, like every other movie since then.

Fast forward a couple decades, and, in the Jurassic world, the park reopens. Now it is 2015, and we supposedly have better control over this genetic power and we have made it commercially viable again. Supposedly. But because the suits that run this park are so hungry for MORE money, MORE commercial potential, the latest and greatest thing, they have engineered a new, hybrid dinosaur. Do you get where I’m going with this?

You brought this on yourself, America. You're like the guy in Jurassic Park that gets eaten off the toilet because you wanted to have a coupon day or something.

I don’t want to say Jurassic World was always going to be a disaster—I don’t really think that. But in a way the movie places the blame for how bad it is on us, the audience. “Hey,” it seems to say. “You saw what happened last time. You know what happens when studio suits get their hands on the awesome creative power of a blockbuster-mega-franchise. They ‘wield it like a kid who’s found his dad’s gun.’ But if you want another Jurassic, okay. That’s on you.”

As B.D. Wong basically screams at all of us in Jurassic World, “You didn’t want reality, you wanted more teeth!” (Does Colin Trevorrow realize any of this about his own movie??? He must, right? I can’t tell if there used to be more obviously meta stuff in it and they made him take it out or if he really doesn’t know. Anyway, you’re here for the Star Wars…)

Which brings me to… How to Make a Movie Chapter in Possibly the Biggest Franchise in Modern Film History, 202, with Professor J.J. Abrams. (It’s 202 because Star Trek was 101, obvs; it’s a pre-rec for this class.)

And the secret is to make your movie with LOVE. SO. MUCH. LOVE. So much love that you risk your entire career on it. So much love that you insist on final cut. (This is a legend, admittedly.) So much love that you cast non-mega-stars in the lead roles. So much love that you PUT A FEMALE PROTAGONIST IN IT (which, according to the suits means box-office death). SO MUCH GODDAMN LOVE THAT YOU END UP BASICALLY MAKING EPISODE IV OVER AGAIN BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE STAR WARS.

Look, if you look real close you can see J.J. in there!!!

In The Force Awakens, Abrams IS Finn and Rey and Poe, all three. He is young. He is reckless. He has made some mistakes. But he is willing to climb into the most daunting cockpit in the world—the cockpit of the crashed “garbage” Millennium Falcon Star Wars machine and try to get it back off the ground. Fly it right out of the graveyard of downed Star Destroyers and Episodes I, II, and III. Don’t think that imagery is in there for no reason. Sure, you’re gonna hit a few bumps along the way, but J.J. understands all too well that this is America, 2015, and what we want now is just something to remind us why we love movies in the first place. Not even Star Wars, just movies in general. Just give us back our first love. And that’s The Force Awakens.

In the movie Ratatouille, the rat, Remy, is trying to figure out what the hell to serve the hateful critic Anton Ego. He could make anything. He could try to be new, impressive, cutting-edge. But what he makes, instead, is the title dish, ratatouille—a humble, peasant’s dish of vegetables and herbs. And he is able to touch even Ego, the most hardened critic, because when Ego bites into the dish, he is transported back to his own mother’s kitchen, to when he fell in love with food in the first place.

I don’t think The Force Awakens is sacred. I think we can dissect if you want, and maybe I will—later. Right now I’m too busy seeing rebirth happening right in front of me, and just too damn busy loving movies.

On killing and The Killing

THIS POST IS FULL OF SPOILERS.
It is also not well-researched. It's like the kind of thing I would say to you at a party.
Ahem.

S is the least political person I know—including myself, and I would say I'm not very political either. If I had to explain it, I'd say we try not to have strong opinions about things until we have all the facts... and where politics are concerned, who could possibly have all the facts??? We don't trust the media, or anyone with a microphone, really, and the country and world are so enormous and full of so much shit that politics seems like a war no one could ever, ever win. We try to make art, instead, and if that seems like a cop-out it's because it definitely is.

So current events don't get discussed much in our house. Sometimes one of us will say to the other, "Hey, have you noticed this thing is happening?" and the other will say something like, "Yes, it's crazy, the world is crazy," and that will be about all. But yesterday, S came home, flopped wearily onto the couch and said of the San Bernardino mass shooting: "Oof. This really just... opens up the existential gulf between you and... everyone. It just reminds you that people can't ever really know each other."

Full disclosure: after that, he also said something about gun control, but that's not what this post is about. This is about The Killing. 

Yes, the TV show. This morning I found myself once again mentally walking around in the too-short-lived AMC/Netflix series, walking with detectives Linden and Holder beside me, opening the cupboards of memory and taking down each episode of this show one by one, as though I was looking for something. (Do you ever do this? Our stories comfort us, and they sit around on our literal or metaphorical bookshelves until we need them.)

As I wandered around in that show again, I realized that it a show firmly placed IN the existential gulf S mentioned, and I appreciated it even more. To be succinct, The Killing did not save us. In the first season, the honest politician was corrupted, the grieving father was drawn back into violence, and even Holder betrayed us. Later, the show did not save Kallie or Bullet or Ray Seward or Kyle's sisters or Linden's relationship with her son, and it did NOT STOP RAINING, not even once. In fact, the only thing it did save was Skinner's reputation, and it turns out he'd murdered 19 teenage girls.

Of course, The Killing is fiction. Because in real life, it does stop raining, at least here and there. But when you really settle into that gap, that universe-wide tear between you and everyone else, then you realize that it isn't outside of you at all, but that it is made by you, and as much as part of your fabric as your blood and bones. When, at the very end of season 4, we realize that it really was Kyle the whole time—that this teenage kid really DID crack and brutally murder his entire family, including his eight-year-old sister—we only realize this as Kyle does, too. He didn't know. He didn't remember. After all, the point of The Killing is that you can't out-clever darkness. You can't logic it. You can look around all you want to in the daylight, but ultimately all is concealed from us. Darkness doesn't have to be clever. It just waits in the corners to envelop you when you can't see it or stop it or even know about it.

According to True Detective season 1, "the light's winning." But according to The Killing, the light is NOT winning. It may some day, but at the moment, it doesn't have a prayer if we live in a world where it's possible for you to have murdered your entire family and not even remember it.

Or where a couple of gunmen can end your life like that —bang—for no reason.

In season 2 of the show, it is revealed that "bad guy" who killed Rosie Larsen, ultimately, was her aunt, who loved her, and who has been grieving for her and helping to put the family back together. In real life, this is often the case: that the bad guy is, in fact, not a bad guy, but a person. And that's something to remember.

None of this probably makes you feel less scared, but it actually does comfort me, did comfort me, this morning. In the final scene of the show, Linden's blue scarf comforts me. No, The Killing doesn't save us, it bravely doesn't save us, but we do survive it, and we pick ourselves up and survive all kinds of things, and we wait out each night until dawn again, and collectively we survived yesterday. And that's also something to remember.

Processing Work (Ten Years Later)

So I'm part of this "vocation group." Yeah, it sounds kinda self-helpy—and it is in some ways—but it's also awesome. We meet every couple weeks and, mainly, we just sit around and talk about what we want to be when we grow up, or why we don't want to be what we are, or etc. We are all grown-ass adults, but we're also hippies, so we we use a lot of language about "processing" and "wondering."

Us, having a wonderment.

I love this group, because there are always snacks, and because it almost always gets emotional. Like it or not, in America, in 2015, we basically think our vocation is everything. We name and identify ourselves by our jobs or our passions, or by the work we think we are meant to do. I'm pretty sure I'm part of this "millennial" generation thing, too, and people seem to think we have a sense of entitlement, but the truth is that we just don't wanna do stuff ONLY for money, and it was the generations before us that told us or modeled for us that we shouldn't.

Anyway, in this group, we are all very into love and peace and naming and breathing and listening and being thoughtful about stuff, but I'm also the only person in this group that would identify as an artist, probably, and I especially love having non-creatives to bounce some of these stickier questions off of. In fact, some of my fellow processors are straight-up normies, so I get to ask them what normal careers are like. I find myself saying things like, "What if I can't be a good person and a writer?" and "How do people compartmentalize what they do for money (we call this labor) and what they perceive their true work to be (some call this vocation)?" and "Is vocation permanent?"

For me, I've been a storyteller since I could speak and a writer since I could lift a crayon, so if my identity as such isn't permanent, then I sure as hell don't know what is.

But I also asked this question aloud, and it terrified me: "I have this stack of scripts at home." [Right now it's a dozen and counting.] "And they each took me months or years to write. What if no one ever sees them? What does that work MEAN?"

*silence* *some thoughtful murmurs* *someone passes me gluten-free pretzels*

No one had anything to say. And I guess I didn't expect them to. I KNOW what the work means... at least, I know what it means to me. Sort of. But I don't know what it means in the larger context of the world, or if it does mean anything. The crazy part is, even if it doesn't—and I don't even know what I mean by that—but anyway, even if it DOESN'T, I still don't think I could be doing anything else.

And even though I have no money, and no plans to get a "real" job, I still don't know what else I could be doing. Everyone else is drawing Venn diagrams about where the parts of their life intersect and come together to form this magical thing called vocation, but my life feels like one enormous circle and it all just says WRITE WORDS ON PAPER UNTIL YOU DIE, TRISH.

Right, okay. Okay. Here's a poem on sort of the same theme I wrote, almost to the week, four years back. Hope you like it. Let's hold hands next time we see each other.

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Ten Years Later (October 2011)

I am not better

than I was in high school. I know more

about the things that do not matter. That is all.

I am looser, I guess, my prismed pieces

shaken and tenuous now, like teeth

in a broken jaw. But I suspect that isn’t better.

And I try not to eat meat

anymore, but sometimes

I do, I eat chicken, and I think about all

the deaths we choose so we can keep going –

the mountains sacrificed to glaciers, the photographs

that must be burned, and even

moments we deliver stillborn.

Silent.

Their tiny eyes shut.

At least in high school I screamed when I should –

The Deep

Recently, I've been writing down my dreams. This is partially because S. hates to listen to dreams, and partially because I find all dreams to be completely fascinating. Who are we, when we dream? Where do we go? What do we hope to find there? Why is this movie so messed up?

Brb, gotta go rescue King Morpheus. (I also suffer from chronic nightmares, which Little Nemo and I have in common, I guess. More on that later.)
Anyway, poems, as a form, lend themselves well to this type of thing: the fractured, vivid images; vague impressions; elements that morph into other elements; the stark narrative of disparate ideas stood side by side.
I love all of these odd little poems, but if dreams aren't your thing, you might not respond to them. This one is still fresh, very fresh, but I hope you find it as evocative as I did when I was in it.

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The Deep (September 2015)

“Is it lonely underwater?” I asked my dad, fear moving my lips.
He said, “Only when you see a shark coming out of the darkness.”

There were spiny rock fish as big as dragons, lashing their tails through
tree-sized anemones, floating crab claws like human arms.

I saw the lights of the bus tours ahead, people bustling, checking tickets, climbing aboard, drawing a

breath safely inside. They want to see nature, but not drown.
I heard my brother and sister talking, our tires deep in ancient grooves as we rumbled through midnight, descending.

Waves (I AM DOING THE SOCIAL MEDIA THIS IS IT)

Since my last blog post (nearly two years to the day!), I have had some thoughts I would like to share with you.

1) Nearly my entire life, I have been resistant to progress/the interweb/social media, and while that is fun and all—and being a hater IS fun—it has gotten me NOWHERE.
2) I have some writing. Lots of writing. Mountains of writing. You know the scene in the Sword in the Stone where Arthur has like a whole dungeon full of dishes to do? It's like that, but with words.

Pictured: my literal kitchen, my metaphorical bookshelf.

That being said, I'm pretty sure there is something in this pile that is useful. So The Plan (tm) is to tidy up the writing junk heap and begin selecting and presenting some of these words to you, in case you want to read them. I am optimistically choosing to do this on my blog, which means some of the writings on Facebook will be coming down soon, because neatness.

Oh! And this may take a while. I have a technological skills deficit the size of the national debt, so The Plan will have to be executed in phases. I hope ya'll stay with me. Here's a poem to tide you over.

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Waves (July 2012)

The crazy thing is:

your waves endure.

Today, your rushing by, your length, striding.

I thought: wind.

I remember what I loved,

how I floated on the surface you unsettled.

What is so real, now? Limbs lying in pools of sunlight?

What is so lit in memory, the drops of water on your face?

Your leaving and entering the world through the portal of a book?

There was nothing so mutable and yet so solid,

nothing so fast,

nothing that doesn’t blaze across my mind like bands of fire,

streaking across the sea toward the past, to where we’re still us

somewhere.