Practicalmadness

Certain individuals who have been written about on this site have found a need to not only respond, but to spam this site with comments. Then, days later, to comment again. This is entirely cool, and I will now take a few moments to address this gentleman's concerns.

Before I begin, in the interests of full disclosure I should tell you that I have a 'Valley Girl' text filter installed which is designed to make the writing of anyone who comments on my blog look really, really stupid. I have decided, because I am lazy, to use this version of the comments rather than dig the original, untainted text out of my database. So please do not let my amusingly destructive tendencies detract from the power of the words.

This individual, who we will call "D.H.", writes:

dude, i'm a bitchin' fan of david. i mean, he's a person i totally look up to and stuff. anywayz, and i'd just like to say that i totally totally agree with everythin' he wrote about dan. cuz david's so smart, yo. that's why we're friends and shit. like soulmates. but, to be fair, i asked dan what he thought too. anywayz, lemme break it down for ya.

Aww, that's so nice of you to say that.

(dan's response: i've always wondered why those who have undergone traumatic experiences must shoulder thuh burden of providin' others with a grander appreciation for their lives. seems a touch unfair, no?)

Yes, but why else would you shoulder the burden of watching a movie about your traumatic experience upon your classmates and dear viewers if not to provide some grander appreciation of something? We (that is, the class) are watching in order to troubleshoot any editing problems you're having, to give you some feedback as to where it's working and where it's not, and to provide you with emotional support during this difficult time of creation and expression.

Me, I generally drop the last bit; I've never gotten much support from anyone in the making of my work, and see my role as that of curmudgeonly troubleshooter. This may be a commercial (or even 'Hollywood') sentiment, but I think that to put your audience through your experience without some kind of payoff at the end is to cheat them. The payoff doesn't have to be all warm and fuzzy -- it can be ironic, it can be funny, it can be really, really mean, but it has to be something.

indeed [the audience principle] may be true, but perhaps not in thuh vindictive manner with which david paints it. i had no intentions for my video to edify thuh masses, or break new philosophical ground in humanity's unfailin' attempts to better understand ourselves. i only intended to create a subjective document of an individual experience--which, last i checked, still remains a valid form of artistic expression.

Yes, it is very subjective. Yes, that is valid. But I don't think it's working, and I think that the piece (NOT the artist, NOT the experience) will be misconstrued. You say you intend for it to be taken as reportage, but it operates as more of a confessional, with all the emotional and stylistic baggage that accompanies that. It'll be taken as the filmic equivalent of emo, and I don't think you want that.

Furthermore, I don't want to watch that. It comes off like the whining of a guy who has too much going on in the here and now to be worried about something like that if it didn't mean something. I was in a major car accident four months ago, which I survived only to come home to bill collectors and problems at work. I'm well aware that life doesn't provide meaning or satisfaction. I am further aware that it is not your job to provide entertainment or even catharsis. But if you don't think it's supposed to mean anything, why have you made a piece about it?

i find it difficult for me to sit back and allow david's readers to believe that his sudden espousal of thuh 'hiv-is-not-a-death-sentence' position to be entirely genuine. i have worked with survivors of hiv. i'm fully aware that one can live a moderately healthy, happy, and long life with thuh disease. perhaps my video does take a fairly existentialist view in that all sufferin' remains, in thuh grand scheme of thin's, somewhat futile, and that a grand overarchin' moral that one can glean from it does not exist--yet this in just no way means that my video propagates a myth about hiv that i myself don't even believe to be true. and besides, everyone thinks irrationally when thuh threat of a life-changin' illness, specifically aids, presents itself in one's life, no? it is like wow! only this momentary irrationality that i wanted to convey in my video.

D.H., you explain yourself very rationally. And I believe you. But the piece is not about momentary irrationality. It is about death. I call it how I see it.

More than anything, Dan, I'm frustrated by the sheer number of things the piece touches on, is about, raises. Last Wednesday's critique was a typical art-school rhetoric-fest, where some learned, intelligent people tried to pass off observations as insight, and you accommodated them with rhetoric.

You say it's just a document, but your piece is very irresponsible even if you are not, and just because you can explain that away in the classroom or here on the web doesn't mean that your film is any better.

Oh, and I know you called it a trope. That part I embellished because I thought it would be funnier. Remember funny? Remember fiction? I think this is my problem with your piece -- on the screen, it all becomes fiction. You have created something. It is not simply reportage. And I think that the fact that it is true has blinded you to the fact that it is a movie.

I will now also confess that there are moments that I loved. I think that your sequence with the prescription bottle and the chess board is masterful -- simply one of the best cinematic moments I've seen in a while. It exemplified another thing you mentioned in the critique, which was an economy of images -- your pictures speak much more eloquently than your words. I didn't much care for your self-interview scene, but that's just my own personal taste.

I agree totally with what Caroline was saying -- cut back on the narration and allow the images to do your work for you. You're smothering us with your voice.

As for your decision on Sunday to abandon your blog while you sort out the personal issues you've been neglecting by writing it...trust me, you'll be back.

You have a definite confessional streak, it comes out in your blog, and the immediacy of that outlet will lure you back. There is nothing wrong with using a blog to get over stuff. Such writing is cathartic, and whatever is motivating you, it can't make that any less useful.

If you think you need some distance, fine. But your blog will be back. And if Blogger ever gets too limiting for you, e-mail me, because it's a good blog and I'd be happy to set you up here at Practical.