Jonas David's Blog, page 44

sleep

I haven’t been doing it very well lately. While laying awake all night, though, I do have ideas of what to write next. So there is that.

Spiderman homecoming

I saw this over the weekend, and it’s the most entertaining super hero movie I’ve seen since Deadpool. It’s also the only super hero movie I’ve seen since Deadpool.

This movie is good because it has likable characters with understandable emotions and motivations and a plot that makes sense. The focus seems to have been on more than cool flips and explosions when making it. It does have lots of cool flips and explosions, too, but those aren’t the only thing holding the movie together, as so often seems the case.

Also, it’s not an origin story! We don’t have to spend the first 45 minutes or more of the movie watching Peter get bit by a spider, slowly change and experience weird abilities, go through several suit designs, blah blah blah. This movie correctly skips right to the start of the interesting stuff.

There was one moment, where the movie slowed down a bit and I was thinking ‘oh, do I really have to watch all this high school stuff?’ but then it kicked right back into gear, and my worries came to nothing.

This movie knows how to entertain. If you are worn down by all these super hero movies and about to give up on them, give this one a try. It will be a refreshing fun time.

weekend?

What if instead of working 5 days, then having two days off, we worked five years, then had two years off? Or maybe, five lives then two lives of luxury. I hope this is my friday life, and I’m reborn rich or powerful and can spend all my time reading, thinking, and creating. Though if I were born rich or powerful, I’d probably not appreciate it, and just spend my time trying to get more rich and powerful…

150 years old and still kicking

I’ve been listening to Crime and Punishment, and am amazed how well it holds up. Whenever I open a classic I’m expecting it to be a bit of work, but this one isn’t. Somehow, 150 years later, it is still a tense, tight read. How many more years will people still be reading this book?

It must be the ultimate dream of any writer, to create something so enduring. To be able to reach across time to plant ideas and feelings into people who’s grandparents had not been born when it was written. That, is real life after death.

Too many words

I’m still reading 1Q84. It is very long. About 1200 pages long. And I wonder, how many of these words are really necessary? He likes to describe the preparation of food, and describe jazz and classical music, and describe all kinds of things the characters are doing or seeing at a level of detail that seems disproportionate to their relevance to the story. I don’t get bored or tired reading it, but I do notice it. And when I wonder how the book can be so long, I suspect that is a part of the reason…

I suspect that Murakami quite enjoys writing about these things, and just has a very weak willed editor…

Reaching milestones quicker

I have reached 20k words on my current novel and I’ve been writing it for about three months now. My first novel it took my nearly nine months to reach that point–which I know is a ridiculously slow pace that I should not be that proud of beating, bu–I have beat it! If I can keep this current (still slow) pace, I can hope to have a first draft within a year from starting it. A novel per year… it’s doable!

Of course, at some point I’ll have to spend time editing…

Blegh.

Fargo season 3

I finished this on my long plane rides too and from Singapore these past weeks, and enjoyed it quite a lot. I could not get into season 2, and gave up about halfway through and had no plans to watch this season until a co worker highly recommended it. I’m glad I gave it a chance!

The season is about the rivalry between two brothers, but also about predatory corporations, and about truth, and reality, and about how perception can be reality. It’s also about random life screwing you over, which seems to be a theme in Fargo.

The ending left me a bit disappointed, not because it was ambiguous, but because of what it said about a certain character.

Nikki Swango, who until the very end seemed to be the hero of the show, in her last act, murders an innocent person. This seems a downer note to end on, and put a kind of black mark on her character. True, she was never an up and up citizen, but she seemed to have a good heart, good intentions. This final act also kills her, so maybe that is some kind of symbolism or something, but I didn’t like the way it left me feeling.

Overall a very good season, well written, and very artistic at times. Highly recommended!

Garden writing

I’ve done a moderate amount of writing during this vacation trip. Sitting outside, with trees and plants in the garden nearby is most conducive to my creativity, I’ve found. Something about having life and nature nearby inspires more ideas in my head than bland office walls and florescent lights. Thunder rumbling, rain clattering, wind hissing in leaves, chirping birds and buzzing insects–all of these are better than silence. The smell of flowers or herbs or grass, the sight of living green stretching toward the light somehow inspires growth in my mind.

If you’re having trouble writing, try going outside in the sun and grass, and just breathing and observing for some time. Then the words will come to you.

Solaris (film)

I watched this, partially on the plane and partially after arriving, and my first thoughts were ‘they sure don’t make movies like this anymore’ and ‘music is very overused in modern movies’.

This was a very slow, quiet, and subtle movie. There were lots of long, silent shots of scenery, and of characters looking at things. The first 45 minutes of the movie are mostly the main character looking at a pond and some trees. (not even exaggerating)

But it builds tension, and ambiance, and it sets the tone without forcing you into the mood with music. There is barely any music in the entire movie, and when it is there, it’s used very strategically, which makes it much more impactful.

I wonder what I would have thought of this had I not read the novel first. I probably would have been more impressed. Because despite the positive things I’ve been saying, this movie was very slow and not a lot happened. Looking at it from a story perspective, rather than style, the story doesn’t even really start until nearly 1/3 into the movie. The novel starts right at the action, but the movie decidedly does not.

I’m not sure I’d recommend this to anyone other than film buffs or huge sci fi fans. It probably does not provide what people expect from a movie these days. That being said, I enjoyed it, and I think the absence of music in it will really hold a magnifying glass on music use in movies I watch in the future.

Alternate Worlds: in which empathy is literal

Everyone feels everyone else’s pain, hunger, fear, joy, etc, at a level of strength inversely proportional to the distance between them. If there is a hungry person nearby, you feel their hunger. If there is a happy person nearby, you feel their happiness as your own.

Would this world be better, or worse? People would certainly be more kind to each other–feeding the hungry, and helping the injured as quick as they can to stop the pain and hunger in themselves… or would they just run the other way to escape that feeling?

Fear and anger would spread like fire, leading to mob insanity…

Feeling sexually aroused might lead to an orgy…

Would this world simply end up with every person as far away from every other person as possible?