A Calling

     This week I watched an interview with the cast and crew of "Before Midnight," which, by the way, is available to rent or buy now—something you should do as soon as possible. It is one of the best films released this year.

            During the interview an audience member asked the amazing writer/director Richard Linklater how a college dropout went from working on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to being such a successful filmmaker. He answered that it's like anything else. You dedicate your life to it.

            He's right. Whatever you want to do just dedicate your life to it.

            I've dedicated my life to a few select things. Writing chief among them.

            In the same way Linklater went from working on an off-shore oil rig to making movies by dedicating his life to it, I went from a young theology student to a novelist by doing the same thing.

            Twenty years ago I dedicated myself to writing in general and writing novels in particular and writing mystery/suspense/thriller novels even more particularly.

            That's why when asked while speaking at a book club recently what I read for fun I had to answer nothing.

            From the moment I dedicated my life to being a novelist in general and a mostly crime novelist in particular I would never, could never read anything the same way again—any more than I could experience life the same way again.

            I have a lot of fun reading. I don't ever read just for fun.

            When I'm reading I'm also studying, also evaluating, also writing.

            When I'm living I'm also observing, also researching, also writing.

            Experts say that the difference between those who dedicate their lives to something and those who don't is just that—those pursuing a calling can no longer do what they do just for fun.        Which is why I recently read "The Cuckoo's Calling," the first crime novel by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

            Though the Harry Potter books were not for me, I appreciated them greatly and admired their creator, so when she turned to crime I had to investigate.

            After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.

            Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.           "The Cuckoo's Calling" is a well-written, well-told tale by someone who has obviously dedicated her life to writing novels—though not to writing crime novels.

            I can promise you J.K. Rowling had fun writing "The Cuckoo's Calling" and that Richard Linklater had fun making "Before Midnight." But I will also bet you that they both found the endeavors to be difficult, exhausting work as well.
            Doing something for fun has its reward but there is nothing more fulfilling than dedicating your life to something, than expending and exhausting yourself in the pursuit of something more. Rumi, the great mystic poet who understood a thing or three about life and dedication, said it this way, "Let the beauty we love be what we do."
            That is not just creativity. That is a calling.

Love Helps Those

      I grew up around a mentally-challenged great aunt named Dutchie. We both “worked” at my family’s hardware store. I was a child. She was childlike––and would always be. I saw her daily for nearly two decades and had a great fondness for her.

            At her funeral I said that she and those like her were angels sent to us, that we think we take care of them, but the truth is they take care of us––to teach us, to test us, to inspire us, to give us opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have.

            Her funeral was nearly twenty years ago and I hadn’t thought of that again until this past week while watching Ricky Gervais’s sweet, funny, inspiring new show “Derek,” available now on Netflix.  

            “Derek” is a bittersweet comedy-drama about a group of outsiders living on society’s margins. Derek Noakes, a tender, innocent man whose love for his job at a retirement home shines through. Derek cares deeply for the home’s residents, because they are kind and funny and tell him stories of what life used to be like. Working alongside Derek is Dougie, his landlord who is one of life’s unlucky individuals; Kev, a lovable train wreck; and Hannah, a care worker in the home and Derek’s best friend. She is smart, witty and hard-working, but unlucky in love, and, like Derek, always puts other people first.

            Derek and the Dalai Lama have the same religion.

            The Dalai Lama puts it this way, “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

            Derek puts it this way, “Kindness is magic. It’s more important to be kind than clever or good looking.”

            Kindness is the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. It involves care and compassion, and as far as religions go, I’d say it’s about as good as it gets.

            Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

            Henry James said, “Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” 

            Derek fits firmly in the ancient tradition of holy fool. He’s an innocent, childlike in his honesty, purity, and love.

            Derek and his misfit, marginalized friends are among the most inspiring and entertaining I’ve ever encountered on television, their interactions and reflections make me laugh out loud and move me to tears––usually several times within the same short episode.

            “Derek” is the sweetest, kindest TV show I’ve ever seen. It achieves realism and real goodness while avoiding ever being shallow, overly sentimental, or maudlin.

            I absolutely adore Derek and Hannah, two precious souls, the likes of which I would love have looking after me were I ever to be put in a retirement home. 

            The kindness of “Derek” brings to mind a simple song I’ve loved since I first heard it some twenty-five years ago. It’s by Paul Overstreet and I’ll leave with just one verse and the chorus:

            A little helpless baby child was born into this world

            She didn't have a daddy and her mother was just a girl

            But there came a young man willing to give both of them a home

            The girl he married the child he cherished as though she was his own

            'Cause you see

            Love helps those who cannot help themselves

            It cares about those hearts that's been put up on a shelf

            It will introduce a lonely soul to a lonely someone else

            Love helps those who cannot help themselves

Moviocrity

            I spend a lot of time watching movies.

            Something regular readers of this column will no doubt not find surprising.

            What might be surprising is the amount of time I spend searching for movies to watch.

            Finding a good film is far too often a daunting, time-consuming, tiresome task.

            For a short while when I was in college in Atlanta in the late 80s I collected movie memorabilia, and the thing I remember most about it was the sheer volume of time it took trekking around the metro area, traipsing through flea markets and speciality shops and trade shows, sifting through trash in search of treasure. A landfill of rubbish might yield something remarkable. Might. It was just as likely not to.

            Since that first ill-advised foray into collecting, I have spent countless hours in dusty old bookshops amassing the tens of thousands of titles of the library that surrounds me now.

            And I’ve taken the same approach to film––spending untold ticks of the clock scouring trade publications, newspapers, magazines, reading reviews, writing down recommendations, following the fledgling careers of filmmakers.

            All the above has been made a million times easier by the Internets. And yet that has only made finding a good film only slightly more likely.

            Why?

            Because of the dearth of good films being made. 

            Why?

            For a number of reasons. Here are a few.

            First and foremost the film industry devalues good writing. Everything begins with the screenplay. Sure, it’s possible to make a bad movie from a good script but it is impossible to make a good movie from a bad script.

            Film has become a director’s medium. Maybe it always was. But far, far too many directors today know how to make pretty pictures but not how to tell a moving story.

            Because writing is so undervalued in Hollywood so is reading. Too many people in power––with the power of the green light––read coverage of the script rather than the script itself. 

            The script is the foundation. Fix the foundation, fix the film.

            The best screenwriting being done these days is for cable television not for feature films and until that changes good movies will continue to be a challenge to find.    

            Another problem is that of too many cooks in the kitchen. Collaboration is one thing. A multi-headed monster is another. Less committees more auteurs would go a long, long way toward fixing this dysfunctional industry.

            In many ways Hollywood is like congress. Insularly. Incestuous. Corrupt. Self-serving. Juvenile. Facile. Meretricious. Shallow. Egotistical. Full of power- and money-hungry whores. Both bodies are far too influenced by those with money.

            There is way too much spectacle and not enough story. Too many movies try to wow an audience instead of move it. CGI, special effects, and 3-D are too often distractions, attempts to divert our attention away from the lack of credible characters and solid storytelling. They are sound and fury signifying nothing in an effort to keep our attention off of the sad little man hiding behind the curtain.

            Unless a work of art moves the human heart it has very little merit beyond momentary distraction. Unless art imitates life, unless the characters on the screen are deeply, profoundly, recognizably human, unless that same screen reflects life and the paradox and complexity of the human condition back at us there will continue to be more mediocre movies than any other kind.

            And that’s the thing.

            Most of the movies made aren’t terrible. They’re far too safe and cynical to be terrible. What they are is far worse than terrible. They are merely mediocre. Lukewarm leftovers of some vague something that almost but not quite resembles something we once could but no longer can quite recall or remember.

            That something is humanity and the sacred stories we tell to both remain human by remembering and to become more human by inspiration.

            At its best the silver screen is both a mirror and a window.

            Too often today it is neither.

            It is instead a glass darkly, a dimness that no longer sees us and in which we no longer see ourselves.  

Choose Ye This Day

            “World War Z” was released on June 21^st. I didn’t see it until July 22^nd. I hadn’t planned to see it at all, but based on a few things I read and heard, I decided to give it a try. And it was far, far better than I expected it to be.

            United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.

            Here are a few thoughts I had as I watched the movie and reflected on it later.

            When your world is ending, that which truly matters is thrown into sharp relief. This is true of our individual worlds coming to an end, or seeming to, no less than apocalyptic events. And since the former happens every single day and the latter seldom, I take the latter to be a metaphor for the former.

            What really matters? What is superfluous? Silly? Wasteful of the little bit of life we’re given to live? Don’t wait for zombies or a diagnosis. We’re all terminal. Dying at this very moment. Now is the time to live, to love. Take good care of those in your care. Embrace life and those you love every moment. Your life is now.

            We live in a world of walking dead. Where once were humans.

            The world is a wasteland where too much whiskey and too many pills and too much food and too many things and too much consuming and too much mindlessness and too much busyness and too much distraction and too much certainty and too much conformity and too much idealism and patriotism and blind ambition and greed and a certain type of spiritless, soulless, rigid religion has numbed us to death.  

            Every moment we choose. We either join the ranks of the walking dead or dwell among the living. We shake ourselves and wake up or we continue to slumber. We are mindful or mindless in the moment—fully engaged, fully aware, fully alive or we're distracted, worried, dull, dead, letting the past and the future rob us of all this moment has to offer.    

            Hordes of lifeless things threaten to rob us of our humanity. Every single day. Our souls are at stake. Hold onto your humanity. Don’t sell it. Don’t give it. Don’t let it be taken forcibly from you. We are surrounded by those who’ve rubbed out their humanity, who only have a rough and calloused place where once a human person resided.

            How do we win World War Z? How do we beat back incivility and inhumanity and the very death of the soul? With humanity itself. With weakness and vulnerability. With nothing less than mortality. We fight. We fight not the monsters without so much as the abyss within, the dead thing we can become if we are not vigilant, if we don't practice faith, hope, and love—but mostly love. The practice of compassion, even for dead things, even for the lifelessness within ourselves, is the key to end all apocalypse—both of the individual and the global varieties.  

Midnight in the Garden of Love and Loathing

            I’ve waited nine long years for “Before Midnight”—ever since the moment I saw “Before Sunset” and it became one of my all-time favorite films. It was worth the wait. This sublime work of art was worth every single second this less than completely patient person had to endure.

            There’s meeting. There’s attraction. There’s falling.

Then there is relating.

The first three cost relatively little.

The last costs plenty. And eventually, inevitably, everything.

            In “Before Sunrise” two young people did the first three exquisitely.

In “Before Sunset” the same two people redid the same things nearly a decade later even more exquisitely. And at a much greater cost.

Now, in “Before Midnight,” some nine years later, the same two people are doing the last—actually relating—and they have been for the nine long years since we saw them last.

Director Richard Linklater reteams with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for “Before Midnight,” which finds their characters together raising twin daughters, while attempting to maintain a relationship with Hank, Jesse’s teenage son from his first marriage, who lives in America. As they drive and walk through the austerely beautiful rocky hillsides of Messinia, Jesse and Celine talk about their lives and relationship as ancient and modern Greece swirls around them.

Is this the end? Does their relationship die among the ruins? Or will this be the place of rebirth and resurrection?

Eventually, they wind up alone in a hotel room.

And what does a long-term couple do alone in a hotel room besides throw off their worries, responsibilities, and clothes and make love? Exactly. Except as they begin to, intruders arrive—the weight of children, work, ambitions, disappointments, the ebb and flow of romantic love, the strains of an evolving, deepening relationship.

So instead of making love they make war. They do and say things that can’t be undone or unsaid. They do damage that is irreparable to all save love.

            Like everything worth anything in this life, good relationships require work. Lots of it. They are an investment of our whole selves, requiring no less than our very essence outwards. We can give less, of course, and often do, but the more we give, the finer a thing we have.

            A sustained, intense, intimate, evolving, genuine connection requires work, yes, but there is far more to it. I’m sure you, like me, have been in relationships that were mostly work and not much else. Masochism is not matrimony. And some relationships just can’t work no matter how much we work at them—something some of us are far too slow to admit.

But when you have a good foundation with someone who is a good fit—who is generous and kind, interesting, challenging, and fun, faithful and committed—investing is rewarding and rewarded. It’s like the work I put into being an ever better writer. There’s nothing I work harder at (save being an ever better me) and there’s nothing that feels less like work.

The very best relationships cost us everything and that, dear reader, is a bargain. They are worth far more.

In the nine years since we’ve last seen them, Celine and Jesse could’ve spent some more time working on their relationship. A lot more.   

Relationships are like delicate yet resilient gardens that must be tended, nourished, and nurtured. They can survive for a while with little or no attention, but to truly thrive they must be cared for.

Will Celine and Jesse give their relationship the care it so needs and deserves? We’ll have to wait another nine years to find out. But for our own, we can find out today. Will we give our whole selves unselfishly for lasting love? Will we till and toil, care and cultivate? Will we root out the weeds of ego, insecurity, selfishness, bitterness, woundedness? Will we let go and trust the process? Will we sow ourselves? Will we scatter the seeds of kindness and reap the harvest of love? It’s up to us—just as the condition of Jesse and Celine’s garden is up to them.

Love that Loves Us

            What is this love that loves us?

            That’s the question of Terrance Malick’s extraordinary and extraordinarily ethereal new film, “To the Wonder.”

            Marina, the main character and narrator, asks, “What is this love that loves us . . . that comes from nowhere, from all around?” But it’s really Malick’s film that is asking this question—and more than asking. Answering.

            “To the Wonder” is an exploration, a celebration, a tribute to the wonder of love.

            And love is a wonder. A mystery. A grace. A gift.

            The lost and lonely priest of the film says, “Love is not just a feeling. Love is a duty.”

            “To the Wonder” boldly and lyrically explores the complexities of love in all its forms. Parisian single mother Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and Midwestern tourist Neil (Ben Affleck) fall madly in love in France and relocate to Oklahoma with Marina’s young daughter to start a life together. As their relationship wanes and her visa nears expiration, Marina makes the acquaintance of a priest and fellow exile (Javier Bardem) who is struggling with his faith, while Neil renews a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Jane (Rachel McAdams).

            “To the Wonder” is more a meditation than a movie. It has next to no narrative. Very little dialog. Precious few scenes. Unlike traditional story, but very much like life and love, it has no discernible beginning, middle, and end. Except, of course, the beginning of being born and born again in loving and being loved. “Newborn,” Marina says. “I open my eyes. I melt . . . into the eternal light. A spark . . . I fall into the flame.”

             “To the Wonder” captures the dreamlike state of love, of faith, of spirituality, of life itself when lived ecstatically.     “In love two are one,” Marina says. This is the belonging we all long for, the connection we crave, the unity some part of us remembers and knows we’re meant for.

            Malick’s dream is told mostly in images with very few words. Here love is a look, a gesture, a touch, and we (through Malick’s camera) are right beside the lovers, at their side, not so much voyeurs as witnesses, nearly participants.

            But why does Marina keep looking over her shoulder? What’s she looking at? For?

            Think about how our all too unreliable memories work. We think in pictures. We remember mostly in images and a smattering of words spoken in ecstasy or anger.

            “To the Wonder” is nearly a silent film and the silence shows the wordlessness of love and joining, the union that transcends verbalization, but it also shows the other kind of silence, the kind which allows for projection and misunderstanding and that which is ultimately isolating.

            In Mass the priest exhorts his parishioners to “Awaken the love, the divine presence that is in every man and woman.” Malick’s deeply, profoundly spiritual film does the same.

            In one of his many (or is it just one) profound homilies, the priest says, “To commit yourself is to run the risk of failure, the risk of betrayal, but the man who makes a mistake can repent.” And Malick’s lovers do just that—fail and betray in big and small ways like all lovers do. The priest no less than Marina and Neil.

            But love survives. And transforms.

            “You fear your love has died,” the priest says. “It is perhaps waiting to be transformed into something higher.”

            We fail love. Love doesn’t fail us.

            And so for his final words on the subject, his benediction if you will, Malick has Marina utter this simple sacred prayer, “Love that loves us. Thank you.”  

How to be Happy