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A Self-Reflective Song: “Your Song” by Elton John and Bernie Taupin

Songwriters love to write songs about songs, meditating on the meaning and power of music. You can listen to my playlist Metamusic: Songs about Songs on RDIO as you read about “Your Song,” lyrics by Bernie Taupin and music by Elton John, the first of a series of posts on metamusic.

The song begins “It’s a little bit funny this feeling inside.” The feeling, of course, is love. “I don’t have much money,” John sings, “but boy if I did / I’d buy a big house where we both could live.” The songwriters, longtime collaborators, may not have had much money when they wrote the song, but it became their first pop hit and is now worth a fortune, enough to buy two or three houses.

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The Reader as Screenwriter, Director, Set Designer, Lighting Designer, Casting Director, Costume Designer and Actor (Part III)

(The results of an experiment, described in the first and second parts of this series about the writerly reader. A condensed version of this study will appear in my upcoming book Narrative Madness. I have sometimes altered spelling, punctuation and capitalization in the responses to make them more accessible.)

The Conflict

Twenty respondents (71%) gave their longest answers to the question “What happened?”, sometimes two, three, four and five times longer. Obviously, this is the part of the story that matters.

Regarding motivation, she told him “I love you” because she meant it: “She loved him, I reckon.” “She does.” “She loves him.” “She loved him . . . really loved him.” “Maybe they used to have a relationship, then it ended in friendship, but she wants it to be more than that.”

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The Reader as Screenwriter, Director, Set Designer, Lighting Designer, Casting Director, Costume Designer and Actor (Part II)

(The results of an experiment, described in the first part  of this series about the writerly reader. A condensed version of this study will appear in my upcoming book Narrative Madness. I have sometimes altered spelling, punctuation and capitalization in the responses to make them more accessible.)

The Setting

When we read a story others have read, we assume everyone has had a similar experience. However, the range of responses in this experiment demonstrates how differently readers envision a narrative. The amount and specificity of detail shows how thoroughly readers inhabit a scene, even one that is brief. As you read the rich responses below, feel free to reimagine these reanimations of my story. After all, it is your birthday!

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The Reader as Screenwriter, Producer, Director, Set Designer, Lighting Designer, Casting Director, Costume Designer and Actor (Part I)

(A study for my upcoming book Narrative Madness.)

I know a very talented individual who adapts literary works, produces and directs them, designs staging, lighting and costumes, casts the characters, plays every last one of them and sometimes adds music and special effects. This whirlwind artist accomplishes all this effortlessly, while sitting around the house in underwear and a t-shirt. That genius, my friend, is you!

When a writer walks away from a text, she vanishes. Roland Barthes calls this “The death of the author.” The death of the author, however, is the birth of the reader! So, let me be the first to congratulate you as you step in for the author and rewrite everything, animate the work and perform the text. A piece of writing, like a music score, is a set of mute symbols until it is played. Only then does it come alive.

To demonstrate your astonishing talents, I carried out an informal experiment. My instructions were simple: “As you read the following story, try to hold the image of it in your mind.” Then I offered a very short, emotionally-charged story which lacked specifics, the assumption being that the reader would fill in the details: “A man and woman are eating in a restaurant. They are talking, laughing, even arguing a little. Finally, when the conversation lags, the woman whispers, ‘I love you.’ The man throws his drink in her face and storms out of the restaurant.”

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Photo versus Metaphoto: Ronosaurus and Omarrr on Instagram

Taking a photograph is not a natural act. We were not born with a compulsion to take pictures and an innate sense of composition. Give a camera to a toddler and many photos will be of strips of sky through blurred, pink fingers. Children must learn how to operate a camera, how to select an interesting subject, and how to frame a picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though it is a common convention in photography to erase the photographer, to pretend he or she does not exist, the photographer is always present. The very act of choosing a subject is a manipulation of reality as it emphasizes a particular object or space above others. This paint spill on the sidewalk was just a paint spill until I took a photograph of it. The photo suggests that the paint spill is worth examining as you might an abstract painting, drawing attention (I hope) to shape, color and texture. It changes the spill. A photographer can never capture an unadulterated moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Mural in Lower Haight, San Francisco.)

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Welcome to Eatster! (A Meta-Holiday, Proposed by Chika Michelle)

Let’s eat! And let us celebrate that! No birth, no death, no battles fought or wars won–I propose a new holiday!  One for which no one had to suffer or struggle or push another human being out of their body and then get no credit for doing so, one we’ve all earned just by virtue of being alive and managing to get out of bed most mornings (go you!).

Eatster!: a celebration of celebration, a holiday just for the hell of it, there when you need it–a reason to party when you have no reason to party.  The only rule is you make up the rules!  My first rule of Eatster!: EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT EATSTER! My second rule: hotpants appreciated.

(Eatster! A Meta-Holiday.)

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Alejo Sauras on Being Himself

Do directors sometimes tell you just to be yourself? I asked Alejo Sauras, Spanish film and TV actor. I was writing about actors portraying themselves onscreen and off and thinking about the burdens of stardom when it occurred to me that I could interview my friend Alejo. Without hesitation, he answered, “No, never! Be yourself, no! Don’t be yourself.” He pointed to the table. “Be this one on the paper!”

Oh! I thought. There goes my central idea. All my interview questions had been built around the ironic notion of actors playing themselves, the meta idea of self-reflective acting. Well, I told myself, carry on with the interview, and later I will find a way to fit the pieces together. Watch me now as I try.

(Alejo at Wiggy-Okie at the House of Fish.)

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Alejo Sauras On Being Famous in Spain

You want to be famous, don’t you? I can read it in your eyes, the hunger for attention.

Well, we all want people to adore and admire us, to fuss and fawn over us, to call us good-looking and talented. But if the genie of celluloid granted your wish, would you enjoy the fame? Or would shout “Leave me alone!” and punch the paparazzi?

I have a friend who is famous in Spain: Alejo Sauras. He has been in fourteen movies, ten shorts, six TV series, a guest role in nine other TV series, and five plays. You may not know who he is, but people recognize him wherever he goes in España. He is fairly well-known in Latin America and even Central Europe (where they have started showing his TV series Los Serrano). Even here in San Francisco, fans come up to him on the street. Nevertheless, he told me, “I can walk a little more freely in every country but mine.”

(Alejo kicking back in Dolores Park on Easter Sunday.)

I know from talking to him that being a celebrity is not not all glamour and glitter–sometimes it is a kick in the groin–but would he trade celebrity for an ordinary life? I was working on a post about actors playing themselves, mulling over the benefits and drawbacks of stardom, so I decided to ask him.

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Actors Playing Themselves

What does it mean when stars portray themselves? Are we getting a glimpse of  ”the real person”? Far from it! We learn instead that the actor and the image are not the same person. Few performances are as artificial as those in which actors play themselves.

In an interview with the acclaimed actor Michael Cain, Michael Parkinson said, ”Yours is the most impersonated voice in the business.” Cain responds, “Oh yeah, everyone– I– I can do it.”

“Can you do it?”

“Yeah, yeah . . . ‘Ello, My name is Michael Cain.” (When he says his name, it sounds like “my cocaine.”) The interviewer and the studio audience laugh. Michael Cain does not. He says, rather seriously, “I sound like a bloody moron.” What does it mean when an actor criticizes his own image?

Doesn’t it drive a wedge between the man and the star? If he can step outside of his own persona in order to criticize that persona, then he is not that person. As audience members, we often forget that distinction. We forget because we want to believe in stardom and we want to believe in stardom, so that we put ourselves in that star’s head for a while and imagine what it would be like to be famous.

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Metamucil: Making Meta-Shit Happen

If metafiction is fiction about fiction and metapainting is painting about painting, “Metamucil” must be mucil about mucil, right? But what is mucil?

(Photo borrowed from the hysterical website de-motivational.com.)

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