"happiness and hitchcock"
... charloft prompt Saturday: Watch Alfred Hitchcock's definition of happiness. Then tell us ... what is your own?
Allison Allcook Raft is sitting at her desk, reading her version of the assignment -- "In under 500 words, find someone's definition of happiness, somewhere, and then respond to it."
It sounded easy when Mr. Hurt gave the assignment to the class last Friday. But the easiness of Big Hurt's stuff was always inscrutably deceptive. It was so open-ended it tended to pull you in, like going through a door into a room with other doors, that led outside and then across a field, bordered by a river, with a mountain range rising on the other side. So before you realized what had happened, the thought link-link going on inside your head had taken you to a completely different place.
For Allcooked the link-link trail she followed, through her head and across the web, took her to a video of film star Alfred Hitchcock being interviewed by someone in a suit. She liked to call Hitchcock a "film star," partly because she loved his movies, but mostly because she loved his general point-of-view -- which was someone who had all the personal vanity of a dog turd drying in the sun. She thought he was one of the Old World's best gifts to the New World, right up there with a reason to be fundamentally rebellious. And Allcooked was, if nothing else, a natural, born-again apostle of "rebellious."
The video was short, only a minute-twenty-three, so she transcribed the dialogue in her paper.
"So the interview went like this:
- INTERVIEWER: Mr. Hitchcock, what is your definition of happiness?
- HITCHCOCK: A clear horizon, nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive, and [being] left within yourself. Within me, I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy, and it's all nonproductive. I'm very sensitive; a sharp word said by, say, a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions, but when all these are removed, and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something, I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.
"So what did that make me think?" Allcooked added, reading her informal, conversation-text. "Well the thing that grabbed me by the girl balls first, was his using 'only human' to describe, and make allowance for, actions or words that are hateful and nonproductive. Which is just so freaking wrong.
"I mean, it's not wrong in the sense that it 'is' something straight from 'The Good Book of the Common Understanding,' i.e., that we are, you know, not the perfect tulips growing in the garden that we could or should be, because we still carry with us all this 'human' baggage. Which is totally backwards."
As she starts rolling, the words she's reading are like they are written on a wire, without pause or punctuation. "That baggage from the long dark, beastie night -- is not the 'human' part of us at all. It's the 'human' part that is NOT the part that's locked inside some tribal sensibility, of a newly upgraded version of a life that's grounded in the relentless tooth-and-claw of social competition, because, 'Oh, Darling Jasmine, child, that is just the way this sad, woe-without-end world turns.' WELL THAT IS TOTAL, FREAKING CRAP!!!"
She's yelling now and stops to take a breath, as a splatter of laughs and short hand-claps echoes through the room. The students love this, and Big Hurt, sitting on his desk edge at the front, is beaming. It's the only reason in the world he ever wanted to be a teacher -- to see the light come on inside someone else's head, or see and feel the fire of inspiration in their words, all caused not by a stand-in substitute for mindless passion, but by the only real thing that passion for us, is, now -- the voice of reason like an arrow, zinging what is right and just and true.
"It just, simply, is not how things always were and always will be, close the door, amen. The 'human' part, in everything we are and everything we do, is the part that is 'not' a leftover from the beastie night. It is the 'good' part. It was in Hitchcock. It is in me. It is in you.
"And, you know" -- she puts the paper down, now, and is just big-theme, swinging-for-the-fences, talking for the close -- "we will never get our asses past this baggage from our past, until we embrace that good for what it 'human' is, and leave the rest the fuck behind."
She's looking at Big Hurt, then pauses for moment, her eyes flowing past the faces around her in the class. And everyone is looking like they get what she is saying, and agree. But the moment just dissolves into a silence, as the faces turn back to their own desks, and Big Hurt asks "Someone else?"
And the problem that is the elephant sitting in a corner of the room, just doesn't go away. It's like we're waiting for the purge effect of "cataclysm" to finally push us past this evolution stall. Except cataclysm is a push-the-rock, big-deal relic from our past. It won't solve problems for us in this "now." It's what puts an end to now.
2012-10-20 12:22:54 (1053 words)
Allison Allcook Raft is sitting at her desk, reading her version of the assignment -- "In under 500 words, find someone's definition of happiness, somewhere, and then respond to it."
It sounded easy when Mr. Hurt gave the assignment to the class last Friday. But the easiness of Big Hurt's stuff was always inscrutably deceptive. It was so open-ended it tended to pull you in, like going through a door into a room with other doors, that led outside and then across a field, bordered by a river, with a mountain range rising on the other side. So before you realized what had happened, the thought link-link going on inside your head had taken you to a completely different place.
For Allcooked the link-link trail she followed, through her head and across the web, took her to a video of film star Alfred Hitchcock being interviewed by someone in a suit. She liked to call Hitchcock a "film star," partly because she loved his movies, but mostly because she loved his general point-of-view -- which was someone who had all the personal vanity of a dog turd drying in the sun. She thought he was one of the Old World's best gifts to the New World, right up there with a reason to be fundamentally rebellious. And Allcooked was, if nothing else, a natural, born-again apostle of "rebellious."
The video was short, only a minute-twenty-three, so she transcribed the dialogue in her paper.
"So the interview went like this:
- INTERVIEWER: Mr. Hitchcock, what is your definition of happiness?
- HITCHCOCK: A clear horizon, nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive, and [being] left within yourself. Within me, I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy, and it's all nonproductive. I'm very sensitive; a sharp word said by, say, a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions, but when all these are removed, and you can look forward and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something, I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.
"So what did that make me think?" Allcooked added, reading her informal, conversation-text. "Well the thing that grabbed me by the girl balls first, was his using 'only human' to describe, and make allowance for, actions or words that are hateful and nonproductive. Which is just so freaking wrong.
"I mean, it's not wrong in the sense that it 'is' something straight from 'The Good Book of the Common Understanding,' i.e., that we are, you know, not the perfect tulips growing in the garden that we could or should be, because we still carry with us all this 'human' baggage. Which is totally backwards."
As she starts rolling, the words she's reading are like they are written on a wire, without pause or punctuation. "That baggage from the long dark, beastie night -- is not the 'human' part of us at all. It's the 'human' part that is NOT the part that's locked inside some tribal sensibility, of a newly upgraded version of a life that's grounded in the relentless tooth-and-claw of social competition, because, 'Oh, Darling Jasmine, child, that is just the way this sad, woe-without-end world turns.' WELL THAT IS TOTAL, FREAKING CRAP!!!"
She's yelling now and stops to take a breath, as a splatter of laughs and short hand-claps echoes through the room. The students love this, and Big Hurt, sitting on his desk edge at the front, is beaming. It's the only reason in the world he ever wanted to be a teacher -- to see the light come on inside someone else's head, or see and feel the fire of inspiration in their words, all caused not by a stand-in substitute for mindless passion, but by the only real thing that passion for us, is, now -- the voice of reason like an arrow, zinging what is right and just and true.
"It just, simply, is not how things always were and always will be, close the door, amen. The 'human' part, in everything we are and everything we do, is the part that is 'not' a leftover from the beastie night. It is the 'good' part. It was in Hitchcock. It is in me. It is in you.
"And, you know" -- she puts the paper down, now, and is just big-theme, swinging-for-the-fences, talking for the close -- "we will never get our asses past this baggage from our past, until we embrace that good for what it 'human' is, and leave the rest the fuck behind."
She's looking at Big Hurt, then pauses for moment, her eyes flowing past the faces around her in the class. And everyone is looking like they get what she is saying, and agree. But the moment just dissolves into a silence, as the faces turn back to their own desks, and Big Hurt asks "Someone else?"
And the problem that is the elephant sitting in a corner of the room, just doesn't go away. It's like we're waiting for the purge effect of "cataclysm" to finally push us past this evolution stall. Except cataclysm is a push-the-rock, big-deal relic from our past. It won't solve problems for us in this "now." It's what puts an end to now.
2012-10-20 12:22:54 (1053 words)