-4

THE CEILING

I don't know what's happening, but I'm writing on my off days. I say that now and I'll probably fall far behind. I've tried various blogaday style endurance tests here in the past and that's kinda what writing THE ROOF has been. There have certainly been days where I had the thought, "Oh, I have to do this today?" But not as often. I'm wondering if writing every two days makes it that much better. If I knew what it felt like to write every other day, maybe those everyday writing marathons would be more productive and more enjoyable. It gives the mind time to think. That said, I think I'm also scratching two different sides of my brain. If I was writing THE ROOF for every post, I'm not sure I could keep up every two days--if I wasn't writing THE ROOF there wouldn't be THE CEILING and I'd be stuck talking about what? Coronavirus and Black Lives Matter? I've dabbled in discussing both but I certainly feel like I'm not the one who should writing extensively about either. I feel like I don't really know what I'm talking about even when the subject is one I've studied, researched, or taught, much less the insanity that has been 2020.

Something has rejuvenated me! Or -juvenated me... I feel like I haven't really fallen off yet so I don't think the re- is necessary. Lately I've been thinking, crazily!, about movies. Supposedly theaters will be open in a few weeks and if I go during the day on weekdays there will be less contact with people. I say how going to the theater is crazy when I'm going to the mall just to play Pokemon Go... Which is crazier, right? So we'll see. I certainly have plenty of  masks if I'm going out more often. I'm listening to Janelle Monáe on WTF with Maron and it blows my mind a little bit that this interview exists; perhaps the cool part of 2020 is just how everything blends together in the culture (the pessimist inside me says: "Let's see how this feels in November"). Monáe is the star of Antebellum which may come out in August. Besides Tenet, this is probably the movie I'm the most hyped to see, but I'll admit to being a bit worried I won't like it. If the movie comes out and I see it, it'll probably benefit because I'll be so happy to be in a theater again, but it'll also be complicated if these corona numbers in Florida keep rising or even staying where they are... This is not a normal time we are living in, but it could be a new normal. Part of that scares me but another part thinks this is an important time for us to wake up, to get woke, to use the colloquial. I feel like this is all I'm saying lately, but we'll see.

I brought up movies because 4 turned out to reflect how I felt about a movie I saw the other day. I flicked through the HBO channels and found In the Valley of Violence which I've wanted to see for quite some time. It's a Ti West film that's genre fits his name; it's a western if the title didn't give that away. This was the first Ti West film I've seen, but I think I heard him on a podcast (maybe Bret Easton Ellis's?) way back when. He has been a horror director which I don't think is an unfair label for a filmmaker whose first four films are horror, and In the Valley of Violence occasionally reflects that sentiment, but it's something completely different. It's a hundred minutes long but it's very clean narratively; I think it moves very well in what is essentially a two act play structure. What really surprised me in the movie is the humor. I'm not sure it ever really works fully... A lot of the humor is, well, dumb, but it's still transformative. It isn't self-serious in a way that modern day westerns tend to be, but then again it's not really what Wikipedia calls "neo-westerns." You've probably seen No Country for Old Men or Hell or High Water which are listed as examples of the neo- variety--the big difference to me is that they aren't set in the past. The time period of the western is even further behind us now than it was when the Dollars Trilogy came out of course, but spaghetti westerns probably say more about the 1960s and '70s than they do the nineteenth century. Where neo-westerns tend to find some way to capture the spirit of a western in today's world, West's film does the opposite. I think it's set after the Civil War but it could be before; one character is a soldier who deserted the army after having killed Native Americans and being traumatized by the experience, but there's no real discussion of North and South that I remember.

What West does in the film is something that I think Neil Gaiman talked about in his introduction to Sandman Midnight Theatre. I know, I know, I keep talking about this comic! Have I really explained what it is? Maybe I did. If I didn't, though, British Neil Gaiman wrote a DC comic called Sandman with some characters in England, American Matt Wagner wrote a comic called Sandman Mystery Theatre with some characters in America, and eventually the two men came together and conceived of a crossover where Wagner's American Sandman goes to England which was Sandman Midnight Theatre. From their plot, Danish Teddy   drew the comic, and Gaiman wrote the script to Kristiansen's breakdowns (do you remember the character in 3 who describes the process of writing comics? I was thinking about this comic when I wrote that). While writing Midnight, Gaiman thought he was riffing on something he felt Wagner was doing in Mystery, as he writes:

"What fascinated me was the way Matt would take 1930s pulp motifs and retell them with contemporary sensibilities. It seemed like a really interesting way of writing. ... what attracted me to [writing Sandman Midnight Theatre] was the realization that I could take the British pulp tradition, all the Leslie Charteris and Dennis Wheatley tales I'd loved as a kid, and do the same thing Matt had done with the American tales."

I think that's what West does with In the Valley of Violence, taking the motifs of the classic western and retelling them with contemporary sensibilities. It's more than just the humor. It's the characters you root for, it's the theme, and the motivations of the protagonist. That said, I note the humor because that's what relates to THE ROOF.

What'd you think of the humor in 4? When I originally envisioned the idea of THE ROOF I didn't have a reason for this group to be meeting up. As I was writing, I came back to the idea that the internet has been shut down in the wake of whatever the world of THE ROOF is going through. It's a way of amplifying what we are going through now. THE ROOF might be inspired by the present moment but it's not about the present moment. It was weird when someone shared this news story with me after I'd written the first part of THE ROOF and it made me think about the call. Let's hope my play still maintains a level of outlandishness even as 2020 continues. Thinking about it, I realized that if the internet is down for the people of THE ROOF, that would be as good a reason as any for a group of people to be gathering. These people on the roof would be a gathering of message board friends who otherwise couldn't meet. I don't think I've included this yet, but in thinking about it, I realized there had to be a way that this group comes together. Basically a chain of phone numbers--people knew each other in this club and someone has someone's number and that person has someone else's. Did I mention before that I don't know if the internet could be down and cellphones still work? If that's impossible then I'll just say so is time travel so it doesn't really bother me. (If you don't know what that means, keep reading. It will become apparent in at most a few days.) We'll see how I can insert this into THE ROOF, because without it we do have a plot hole. With the message board idea, though, I suddenly realized I wanted to have a level of humor but I was stuck on what to make fun of.

I wanted to pick a TV show for the message board and critique fandom in a way, but I'm not sure I can do that effectively. I also don't think that necessarily fits into THE ROOF. I also couldn't think of any shows to pick other than Ugly Betty and Supernatural and picking either seemed like a cliche. Finally I thought, well, I watch the History channel which maybe never was the way we remember it, but in memory was like the TV version of a history textbook. Now the History channel is a weird selection of reality TV shows that are vaguely educational in their own way, at least the ones I watch, but do border on pseudo-intellectual and some shows that are forthright pseudo-scientific. I don't mean to be purely critical--I watch all these shows now and then, I even edited the History channel programming page on Wikipedia where someone put that they have Family Guy on there which 🤔 I'm pretty sure is wrong--but I wanted to have some fun with it. So the History channel becomes the Listory channel, making reference to the listicles that seem to be how we spend so many wasted hours when we have nothing to do in today's world. On Listory, you don't watch Pawn Stars, you watch Prawn Stars; Ancient Aliens becomes Sentient Chameleons; Counting Cars is replaced by Flaunting Scars; and the last one which is especially ridiculous, American Pickers served to provide a punchline when I changed it to Jerrycan Prickers. I actually like the way it worked out, how I was able to use these fake shows to build a different focus than I would have been able to if I was simply talking about the real shows.

Since I've used them for inspiration and patterning titles in my play, I'll tell you briefly what I think about each show. Pawn Stars: It really is interesting what is shown on the show; the haggling over price or the lack thereof from pawn store owners who haggle for a living is a bit grating. Ancient Aliens: Fun but silly. I'm always inspired by the passion Giorgio A. Tsoukalos has and as someone losing his hair, I envy his bizarre haircut, as Wikipedia puts it. Counting Cars: This is a good way to pass the time, but I don't believe they can actually find all these cars from a quick drive down the streets of Vegas. There's a level of personality here that I don't see in Pawn Stars. American Pickers: It's a little unbelievable the stuff these guys find and the prices junk supposedly gets, but this show is definitely a good hang. Essentially, I think the History channel is a good way to waste some time and I waste some time there for sure, but when people treat it with a level of seriousness I'm not so sure it deserves, I think it can have a negative influence. A show like Ancient Aliens takes such leaps of logic at times that it scares me to imagine people taking it for gospel. Pawn Stars is perhaps what you would expect of a pawn shop show, mean-spirited in a lot of ways that put me off, though I watch it now and then still. For Counting Cars and American Pickers I'll just say what you can say about all reality television: aspects seem rehearsed, staged, or fake and probably are.

In the opening of 4, I wanted to do something a few podcasts will do where they just start in media res in a way, either mid-conversation or even mid-line of dialogue. That's why Cynthia says "Do you ever reach for it and get like halfway to it before you remember it's gone?" "It" is probably "phone" in the first instance but could be "computer" and then is the internet the second and third times it comes up. It's purposely befuddling. When I was thinking of writing this part of THE ROOF I had the thought, "Oh yeah, I have to write about there being no internet." I wanted to capture that realization so if this part of the play causes the reader to remember this aspect of the narrative too, then it's served its purpose.

I'm rereading through the scene now as I write this. I think there's something about the internet generation that Cynthia and Bill touch on where we are obsessed with knowing things with surety. When I'm talking with my dad, I'll find all these weird little beliefs he has because someone told him something or there were rumors. Thirty years ago, you had very little to go on when it came to finding out obscure information. (Marc Maron has a joke about this that he did at the show I went to on the day after Valentine's of all days 🤣. I don't want to give it away even though I'm not sure you really can, but when he told it to us it was the peanut guy joke. Maybe it changes from show to show, I don't know.) So my dad will think he knows things that turn out to just be wrong and it's this weird sort of moment. It happens to all of us where we realize something we've believed isn't true, but for people my age and younger I think our general feeling when we think something is true is to, as Kool A.D. of Das Racist puts it, "Google it later and confirm that, a'ight then." If we couldn't do that, we would suddenly find our way of turning what we think into what we know fall completely flat and as much as I might say things like "I know nothing," feeling like we know things is an important part of establishing our belief systems, I think. I don't know.

James's reflections on waking up from dreams is something that happens to me now and then. It can be good, like when I dream I'm in a car accident only to wake up to, well, no car accident. It can also be annoying, like dreaming old friends you've lost touch with have reached out and waking up to having no real means to talk to them. It shows the sheltered life I've lived that I've never dreamed of someone who has died being alive and with me and woken up to have to experience the grief of losing that person over again, but I'm sure it happens. James dreams of still being with his ex-girlfriend, if you're keeping up with the plot.

I'm not sure how well I'm writing these characters. Wallace Shawn said about the character he played in My Dinner with Andre, "I actually had a purpose as I was writing this: I wanted to destroy that guy that I played, to the extent that there was any of me there. I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film, because that guy is totally motivated by fear." I don't think that's what I'm trying to do, but there is a sense of using authorial distance to perhaps better myself. I often dream of characters that are pitiful in my mind and then I write them and I can't bring myself to make them so. I don't think it's necessarily a bad trait, but it's perhaps a bit boring? Maybe they all just sound like me and I can't bring myself to see myself as pitiful. That's a joke, self-pity is the name and game. It's baked into the URL of the blog!

I'm not sure I've written about AI fears being about as rational as zombie fears before. I've talked about it. Maybe I'm an idiot, I'm certainly not a futurist, but I just don't get it. When we know what consciousness is to the point that we can create it, what is an AI really? I thought about this while watching Bladerunner 2049. That movie is great, but the discussion of the slavery of the replicants, I think they used the word slavery, seemed silly to me. If we create conscious artificial beings, wouldn't it still be easier to use computers, robots, and machines that aren't sentient as the means to get the work done? Minds are for doing mind things, after all. I don't think racism, sexism, and our more, unfortunately, traditional bigotries would go away and be replaced by some abstract, pointless, anti-machine sentiment. AI movies always start with the technology of creating the AI largely already present. Even a film like Ex Machina doesn't really concern itself with consciousness. I think that's part of the reason I like the idea of simulation theory. Once you create the simulation all it does is all but prove that you yourself are a simulation. Movie over, roll the credits.

For some reason lately I've been thinking about a short story I posted here a long time ago and writing this post made me go back and read it. It's from 2009, the year graduated from high school, the first year of the blog, can you believe that? I can't, not really. Anyway, reading the story I ran into characters named Trisha and Bruce and I thought how funny it is that I've always sucked at coming up with character names. Since we've got this coincidence of character names and because I do think it fits in with the spirit of this post, I'll leave you with a link to all the way back then. A different sort of time travel, in a way.