Pantar Weblog

Neurodiversity: Discovering the Extraordinary Gifts of Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia and Other Brain Differences by Thomas Armstrong
The Gift of Dyslexia by Ron Davis
Infiltration: How Heinrich Himmler Schemed to Build an SS Industrial Empire by Albert Speer
Isaac Newton by James Gleick
Leonardo by Martin Kemp
The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations by David Warsh
Mapping Human History: Genes, Race and Our Common Origins by Steve Olson
The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson
Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
Travels with My Aunt by Grahame Greene
The Boxer Rebellion by Diana Preston
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Savage Night by Jim Thompson
Diary of a Teenage Girl by Phoebe Gloeckner
Green Porno by Isabella Rossellini
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
How Animals See: Other Visions of Our World by Sandra Sinclair
Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin
The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith
Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni

Ongoing reading
On War by Carl von Clausewitz
The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene

Aborted readings
Our Lady of the Flowers by Jean Genet
Marcel Duchamp: Appearance Stripped Bare by Octavio Paz

Here's an Op-Ed from the Financial Times about how the new UK government should refocus its economic policies.

How can business leaders and entrepreneurs persuade the government to create such an environment, in which manufacturing is revered and nurtured? They should help generate a national debate that promotes a consensus across government, industry, academia, the media and the public.

First, they should press for foreign and defence policies that reflect Britain’s importance in the globalised economy, rather than retrenchment and decline.

Second, we need schools that equip the country with the skills it needs to compete and create wealth globally.

Third, our universities must work more closely with industry to harness the national investment in science, and pull ideas through to the market.

Fourth, we must create an environment that gives companies a reason to invest and stay in Britain.

Fifth, the government should not be afraid to pull all the levers at its disposal to create wealth in the UK.

And sixth, transport, infrastructure, energy and communications policies must support this overall approach.

Self-Portrait: Dennis Hopper is the pilot of a series I developed with Dennis. We met in Los Angeles after an opening of my productions, the Robert Wilson Video Portraits, and he expressed a desire to do portraits in video as well. He had strong ideas about extending his vérité photographic style into motion - the results would have been as groundbreaking as Bob Wilson's. We completed one piece, an autobiography produced in his home studio. In it Dennis recites the Rudyard Kipling poem, If, and it gives deep insight into how Dennis saw himself.

Theresa Smalac wrote an insightful review for of And Everything is Going Fine, a biopic of actor ad monologist Spaulding Gray. It appears in The Fanzine, a surprisingly good cultural website I discovered when asked to contribute a photograph.

The Fanzine's request jarred loose some old memories. I spent a day with Spaulding in 1992, hanging out in the Soho neighborhood of New York City. At the time I was photography editor of IO Magazine, a short-lived literary rag based in Austin, Texas. Oddly for its date, the original article by Kate Miller, Gray Noise, continues to live a ghostly existence on Alt X. It is among the first print publications to make the leap into the online world.

Smalac makes a particularly astute statement about Soderbergh's technique. Rather than interview Spaulding's intimates, he constructs the film in Spaulding's own voice by using existing filmed material. Filmmaker Emile De Antonio pioneered this technique in Point of Order, a work that turns Senator Joe McCarthy's own words into a searing self-indictment. In the case of Gray the technique ensures that there is no closure to the film, no satisfying analytic coda to our loss.

I remember Spaulding as a warm, zany person who was incredibly open. Open-minded and open-hearted, he was one of those people who could share his inner self without self-indulgence, maybe because he was so very vulnerable.

Here's an illuminating short documentary about the Roma, aka Gypsies, from the European Union's broadcast service. It seems like they're being integrated into mainstream European society. I'm sure this is for the best from many perspectives, but I also thought it was amazing that they preserved nomadic folkways and Vedic cosmology up through 21st century Europe. As a species we're losing out adaptability. What seems backward and worthless in the current context could become a means for us all to survive if our current system breaks down.

My video installation, Ouroboros: The History of the Universe, got a nice review in the New York Times. My art partners SWEATSHOPPE have a bunch more about it on their site, and the curator Koan has a blog where he writes about art and science, especially smell which is a big interest of his.

I've also posted a little story called Cosmos in a Box at Reality Sandwich, and I have images and artist statements at my own art site, ArtLab.

Sickly as he was Dashiell Hammett's life absorbed much of the 20th century's adventure. He served in two world wars, lying about his health to be admitted to service, worked as a Pinkerton detective, supported worker's rights with a member of the Vanderbilt family only to be blacklisted by the McCarthy witchhunts. He's well-known as the inventor of the hard-boiled detective novel and a consummate writer of mysteries.

The Thin Man may be the archetype of its genre. Written in terse sentences that convey a casual brutality, Hammett's diction feels contemporary, far more so than Ernest Hemmingway, who gets far more credit as an originator of muscular modern prose. But for the reader in 2010 Hammett's chronological references are full of anachronism. We can read along, forming contemporary images in our head, then he mentions a year - 1926, 1930, 1933 - and we pop into the black & white world we know from film noir. It's a testament to Hammett's imagination that he also concocted the elements of a major cinematic genre: courageous heroes who skirt the limits of the law, powerful and cunning women, and fiendish criminals who pose as respectable citizens.

It's easy to portray Hammiett's world as cynical and violent but more accurate to call it complex. Its populist features make for gripping drama, but they also allow for layers of revelation - social as well as narrative - that reveal the contradictions and hypocrisy of his society as well as any sociology but without the didacticism. His books are worth reading on at least three levels: as lucid entertainment, as milestones of important literary and cinematic movements, and as documents that penetrate the inner workings of power without judgment.

The streets of New York provide ample stimulation, of literary as well as baser varieties. Lately I've indulged in literature, finding first a collection of Aeschylus in a garbage pile. I've yet to review it because I then picked up an edition of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar from an outdoor discount table, and I devoured it on a long flight back from Dubai yesterday.

It's a truism that Shakespeare's work is enduring, but the relevence of his writing to our age reveals more than a writer's acumen. To me it proves also that human nature changes little over time, something we're apt to forget when we consider our scientific and technological progress. Reading accounts of the past always provides valuable perspective on who, and what, we really are.

Julius Caesar provides ample grist for reflection. The Folger Library edition that I read provided a lot of assistance, too, pointing out that reactions to the preemptive regicide that is play's linchpin have varied over time. Within monarchies it's an outrage, to us killing a would-be tyrant carries a strong moral justfication.

Reading Julius Caesar me think of the Great Seal of Virginia which bears the slogan, 'Sic semper tyrannis' or 'As always to tyrants." I grew up in Virginia, whree the Seal is emblazoned on the state flag, and I reflected on the meaning of the Great Seal quite a bit as a child. It had an enduring effect on my political beliefs - I wonder if it had a similar influence on other children of the Commonweath. Above Sic semper tyrannis is a picture of Caesar, freshly assassinated by Brutus and Cassius. Legend has it that Brutus uttered this phrase after stabbing Julius Caesar, but, if he'd heard that legend, Shakespeare neglects to include it.

I like the play also for the moral and psychological ambiguities that mark its story. Some of the conspirators are driven by jealousy, but Brutus acts according to Republican ideals - something sure to elicit sympathy in Americans. Yet he is conflicted, and even though I'm clearly on the side of the Republicans (Roman, that is), I felt as queasy as Brutus. Not just because of Shakespeare's clever psychology. There's something truly, not just dramatically, tragic about the assassination of Julius Caesar. There's the question of his accomplishments. Then the sad fact that the civil was unleashed by the assassination led to the demise of the Republic by Octavian Caesar. Might Julius Caesar have preseved the Republic in the end? Finally the poignant record of Caesar's last words: Et tu, Bruti? Wherever Caesar was headed, those were the dying words of a man, not a tyrant.

The play is notable for the number of catchphrases that passed into general usage. A serpent's egg. A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man but one. Let loose the dogs of war. Each of these, and a host of lesser sentences, has been recycled into the culture through numerous quotes, lifts and titles. Shakespeare's borrowed words made us all more eloquent.

At first blush, Four Sisters: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe feels like its aimed at teens. Nancy Goldstone summarizes large, complex events with brief statements that get right to the point, as she sees it, with modern allusions that feel anachronistic. But her broad strokes rapidly build a world that's hard to resist, even though her cavalier approach to history is open to criticism. The book offers chivalry, child brides and family strife on an epic scale, and it reads as well (and sometimes as accurately, according to Megan Marshall) as a novel.

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In her New York Times review of the book, which came out in 2007, Marshall points out some fundamental inaccuracies in the Goldstone's portrayal of the Provencal sisters, each a scion of the Berenger family that ruled the County of Provence. Goldstone claims that their machinations influenced the course of history, while Marshall counsels that causal relationships between the queens and the events are them are difficult to establish.

I have to agree with Marshall's points, but for a general reader like me the book served a larger purpose, which is to bring the Middle Ages to life. The Berenger sisters lived for the better part of the thirteenth century, during the period of high feudalism. It was period of astonishing brutality and a profound ignorance that passed as religious faith. Population pressures led Europeans into a state of almost constant war, with political rivalries throughout the Continent that were supplemented by foreign Crusades that went awry more often then not. Even the sanctity of family gave way to the lust for power, and Goldtone describes how mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters attached each other with feral disregard for blood ties.

Life in the Middle Ages sounds awful. The values are topsy-turvy to our world, as mediaeval Europeans believed might makes right, and you think they must have been contantly tense, as disasters fell regularly around them. Yet there's always something compelling about their lives. They lived with an intensity that's impossible to imagine in our world, unless you're someone like Saddam Hussein or Robert Mugabe. But in the case of latter day monarchs, the pagentry is only in their head - the world doesn't bow to their power.

The sisters may not have had the consequence that Goldstone implies in her title, but they were central players in a their world. They spent their lives in the raw pursuit of power, and it's enlightening to vicariously experience values so removed from our humanist societies. Goldstone make it an entertaining read, and she also conveys an accurate picture of the tissues connecting England, France and the rest of Western Europe. While the Provencal queens inspired the book, their kings also provide much of the story. For anyone who's read Shakespeare, it offers a portrait of Henry III from the other side, that is, his wife's perspective. And the several chapters of Louis IX, aka St. Louis, offers a nuanced picture of spectacular failure and religious fetish that probably would have been at home in San Francisco during the 1970s.

My artist friend Victoria Webb has opened a new online shop at 1000 Markets to exhibit her paintings.

Her imagination never ceases to amaze me. There's a lot of her new work, so I highly recommend a visit.

The conception of logos as a universal life force is a development specific to the Stoics, not the rest of Greek culture, where it had the general meaning of discourse, logic or argument. Stoic philiosophers asserted logos as a "universal reason" that provided structure and purpose to matter, which was taken as an substrate that was, in itself, inert.

Stoics didn't seek to reduce emotion per se. Instead they sought happiness by harmonizing with the cosmic order, which itself was represented by logos. Hence the use of reason - discourse, argument and science - to acheive serene contentment.

For the Stoics science was ultimately in the service of ethics, which in turn sought the best possible good for the individual who practiced it.

Last week at the Real Screen Summit, I did a master class with Sabrina Toledo of Cableready called "Perfecting Your Pitch." In it we gave film and TV producers a set of best practices for getting the attention of production executives. Here's the text of my handout, which I've also posted as a PDF.

FOCUS ON DESIGN
Presentation is important in creative industries. Good design is part of good television, and, if you pay attention to the details of your presentation, then you’re already showing the qualities of a good producer.

TAKE THE COMMISSIONER’S PERSPECTIVE
Successful television shows support a network’s brand agenda. Too often producers talk about their vision, but they neglect to find out whether it’s what the commissioner needs to excel at their job. Find out what the network has been producing—and where they might be going—prior to your meeting.

DEVELOP UNIQUE SELLING POINTS
New concepts are rare. What makes your show unique? Is it a new phenomenon? Or do you have access, whether it’s to a cave or to a reclusive celebrity, that no one else has? Ideas are cheap, and people often overvalue their “killer show concept.” Be able to explain why are you the best person to produce your show.

THINK ABOUT THE MARKET
We work on the creative side of the profession, but every facet of a production needs to support the business goals of the network. At the pitching stage it’s critical to think of the market. Who’s going to watch your show? How big is the audience? How do you know? Consider the marketing after effects of your project, and integrate them into your pitch. Will you be shooting in regions where the network may want to connect with the audience? Is there a large online community that will generate buzz about your show. Be sure to mention it!

SUPPORT THE ‘AFTER-PITCH’
Commissioning editors sponsor projects with their colleagues in sales. marketing, PR, and other departments. Their colleagues will opine on the popularity of your show with advertisers, the press and their target demographics. Much of this information may seem secondary to your creative ideas, but it’s not. Provide your commissioner with a 360 degree pitch that helps them pitch their colleagues.

LISTEN FIRST, TALK LATER
If you have a chance, ask your commissioner questions about what they’re doing before you pitch. Listen intently, then try to touch on their key points, without forcing the issue.

BRING THREE IDEAS
Your first pitch may not succeed, so have two more ideas prepared in case they shoot you down. You may even want to do a quick swap, if you realize that one of your other two ideas has a better chance of being accepted.

I was looking for High Rise, a dystopic novel by J. G. Ballard, but, since it was out of print, I ended up with a copy of Super-Cannes. Aside from a few awkward names - the title refers to Eden-Olympia, a technology park set above the town of Cannes - the book has a deft, fast-paced style that makes for smooth reading.



Ballard follows the machinations of a delicensed pilot Paul whose wife has been hired to work in the part as a physician. He takes her growing addiction to heroin and sexual affair with the neighboring couple in stride, then proceeds to uncover the causes of a murder spree that occurred in the park a few months before his arrival. The book isn't remarkable, but the mystery pulls things along as Ballard explores the cruel depths of psychology in a way that avoids superficial judgments about human behavior.

I managed to get through the book without cracking its spine, so I'm going to engage in a little reverse-shoplifting. Bookstores are having a hard time, so I drop pristine books back on their shelves once I'm done. Hopefully that puts them ahead of the game, but I wonder if it screws up their accounting?

I wrote an Op-Ed piece for the February issue of Real Screen Magazine. It's called Survive and Thrive, and it contains advice on how independent producers can weather the depression.

In case you're wondering, yes, I do think we're in the first phase of a depression. Might sound bad, but it's a chance to do what you really want, if only because there's nothing else to do. There'll be a premium on creativity because the dominant models have tanked, and a DIY ethic will prevail because capital has evaporated.

It's not like I want to be poor, but I've been uncomfortable for many years with the blatant materialism displayed by my friends and collleagues. It hit me several years ago at a dinner in San Francisco. I was with a great crowd of people, all progressive in every were at a nice restaurant, and courses of food kept coming, along with copious wine. It was way more than I could comfortably consume, and the whole thing started rubbing me the wrong way. It felt wasteful and over the top, like we were missing something fundamental about life.

I'm by no means ascetic. In fact, if asked I consder myself a hedonist. But I take an Epicurean approach to these matters. Epicurus' name and philosophy is often taken in vain these days because people misunderstand the point of his license. He advocated taking every form of pleasure, but always under the principle of "Everything in moderation." That point has been lost on the hedonists of today.

I recently finished Caravaggio, a biography of the painter by Francine Prose. The author's terse, factual sentences are ideal for short-form biography, but Prose still manages to evoke strong images of the sorrow and violence that marked Caravaggio's life. Caravaggio's work hangs in the most solemn places - churches, cathedrals and private chapels - but when he wasn't working, the painter was diving into gangland politics, hookers and drunken brawls. He got himself into a lot of trouble.

The description of one painting, The Taking of Christ, intrigued me in particular, but it wasn't illustrated in the book. I despaired of seeing it in person, because Prose didn't mention its location. I thought it must be somewhere in Italy, buried in a village I would never bother to visit. By chance I read that chapter the night before a trip to Dublin. When I arrived the next morning, the garrulous owner of my hotel told me of a famous painting that had been discovered across the Jesuit lodge across the street from us. Turns out he was talking about The Taking of Christ, and I was happy to find out that it was hanging on a wall just a few blocks away, in the National Gallery of Ireland.


The Taking of Christ, painted c. 1602

That's Caravaggio holding the lantern on the right. What motivated Caravaggio to portray himself in such a callous manner? He looks on Judas' betrayal with eager curiousity. There's a self-indictment, too, as he's providing the light that guides the Roman soldiers, led by Judas, to their mark. Everyone in the scene lives in their own moral and emotional world. Christ reacts with painful resignation, Judas with determination, and the final participant screams in fear. Moral ambiguity frames the painting, and it hems its characters, each in their own world, with unbearable, unresolvable tension.

I've had the pleasure of seeing several Caravaggio's in situ, and in my opinion the greatest one is The Beheading of John the Baptist. It resides in the Co-Cathedral of St. John in Valletta, Malta, just opposite of Caravaggio's other commission by the Knights of Malta, St. Jerome Writing.

It's a truism to remark that Caravaggio's paintings convey powerful drama, but in Dublin it occured to me that it's worth asking how he does it. Filmmakers could gain a lot from reflecting on Caravaggio. Think about it: we spend long minutes developing characters in a films and television shows, putting them in action and working through plots. Caravaggio does it in an instant. His paintings confront you with a riot of emotions that your mind assembles within seconds. You know his characters, their inner working, motivations and reactions. He has an advantage that he's mostly working wtih well-known stories from the Bible, but he develops even familiar characters in surprising and often radical ways. We've seen these dramas many times, but Caravaggio surprises us with his interpretation.

Here's one of way of understanding how Caravaggio developed such in his visual language. We often think of his work as violent, yet on inspection his paintings show little gore or other extremes. Rather than show violence in its physical truth, Caravaggio showed people's reactions to violence. Fear, horror, shock, shame, glee or callous bystanding. Each of these reactions presents more emotional truth, and a deeper story, than the depiction of violence. As Temple Grandin points out in her book, Animals in Translation, emotions are contagious, and we are probably more affected by the relatively realistic depiction of human faces than the unthreatening appearance of violence on a flat surface.

Some of Caravaggio's techniques could well apply to films. I can think of one, the use of inky black spaces to frame a scene, that already has. Directors in early film noir used nighttime, shadows and stark contrast to create an atmosphere where danger lurks.

Caravaggio always compressed his action into a tight space - instants awy from a a past or future explosion. That technique is clear in the claustrophobic frame of The Taking of Christ, but it's also the case in his larger settings. Even when set in an open arena, Caravaggio's characters are in violent intimacy. Opposing forces are meshed in bonds of anger, betrayal, seduction or surprise.