Tell No One/Ne le dis a' personne

This past summer, after reading many enthusiastic reviews of the French movie 'Ne le dis a' personne', and being the kind of person who can’t resist a critic-pleasing foreign/independent movie, I went to see it. I was thoroughly happy with my decision, as I found the movie to be engaging and moving. The twists and turns of a well-wrought mystery told a stunning tale of a man’s deep grief and loss, and awesomely redeeming hope.

So when I discovered this weekend (I know, shame on me for not doing my research earlier) that the movie was in fact based on the American novel ‘Tell No One’ by Harlan Coben, and being a fan of mystery novels, I thought I would try giving it a read. I opened it Sunday late in the morning, and read the final sentence on page 370 that night around 9pm. I guess I must have liked it, or at least enjoyed reading it. For the most part the plot was exactly the same as that in the movie – in fact the movie kept a surprisingly high percentage of the original plot’s complexities. Yet the book told a very different story, and I don't mean the slightly different ending.

The book was about secrets and lies, and self-sacrifice, and the consequences of seemingly simple actions as they layer into increasing levels of complexity. The movie, while certainly portraying some of this, was a tale of what it means for hope to return when it has been long abandoned – the terrified melting of a heart that had long ago given up. And in my opinion, it was much more powerful.

While I did prefer (shockingly!) the movie to the book, that in itself is not what I find most striking. What is most fascinating to me is the use of (almost) the exact same plot to tell two very different stories. To me, it speaks to what it means to be an artist. My analogies, of course come mostly from music, and here I think of the plot as being the song, and the story is the artist’s rendering. A song can sound completely different – and have a completely different impact – depending on who is performing it, and how. I think of Jeff Buckley singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. Cohen’s original is certainly one that I love, but more as a compelling “plot” than a complete piece of art. Buckley’s cover is powerful and moving in a way that pushes the song into a different league. I feel the same way listening to Billie Holiday sing “The End of a Love Affair.” And hopefully what I will take forward from this is the lesson that art is what we put into it, and just as choosing beautiful songs to sing can’t make up for a lackluster performance, a passionate and honest one can always overcome the most humble of sources. (Wish me luck with conservatory auditions!)

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Ah, the treacherous work of blog maintenance - always seems like a good idea to start, but then to *keep* writing? But I've been very engaged in the book I've been reading lately, so here are some thoughts:

The most shocking thing about reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is realizing how very little we actually think about what we eat. Even I, a vegetarian who spends a relatively large amount of time reflecting on what I eat and why, had never even scratched the surface of the thoughtful investigation and reflection imparted by this book. Pollan emphasizes the fact that we are, quite literally, what we eat, and in an attempt to further discern what that really is, traces foods back through several chains of production to the ground that it comes from. Corn will never be the same after the first section on industrial agriculture. And, quite surprisingly for me, his chapter on "The Ethics of Eating Animals" made me rethink my reasons for my continued vegetarian diet. Not, of course, that I plan to start eating meat, but rather that my strongest reasons are tied more to the production of meat in America than to the actual act of eating an animal.
But the most delightful parts of this book for me were the descriptions of the divine working of farms - not big industrial ones, of course, but the actual incredible mechanisms interacting with each other in the best places, like Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm, that allow each entity to thoroughly embody their deepest desires in a way that helps each other entity to more fully express theirs.
Oh how I'll mourn the closing of the farmer's markets this winter...

Feeling good about the classics

Since the exit of required reading from my life, I've been trying to spend more time reading for pleasure. Slowly, I'm chipping away at the long, long list of books I've been meaning to read. Some of them are, of course, Philip Pullman and Agatha Christie, but there are others, the "classics" that every once in a while make their way to the top of the list. And right now, at the advice of a friend who said it was "actually really good", I'm finally reading Tolstoy. Anna Karenina, to be specific.

Now, I just started it yesterday, so I've only read the first two chapters, but I was immediately enthralled. Of course I was already familiar with that famous first line:
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
And being so familiar with it certainly dulls its impact, but in the first few pages I've discovered more wonderful lines, unfamiliar and profound, yet not dragging down the straightforward prose into meandering contemplativeness.

One I was particularly drawn to is quietly thrown in towards the beginning of the second chapter:
"There was no solution but that usual solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day - that is, forget oneself."
Who knew Tolstoy was a Buddhist? Now of course, having read only a few pages of his work and knowing next to nothing about the man himself, I'm not really qualified to evaluate this Russian's spirituality, or the overall themes and messages of Anna Karenina, but that particular line sends my mind right to the Genjo Koan, written by Dogen in the 1200s. It is a koan of everyday life, and the section which I'm reminded of goes something like this:
"To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to abandon body and mind. To abandon body and mind is to be enlightened by all things."
For me, this speaks to the same thing. All we can do in the face of any great joy or great sadness is continue to live our lives, day to day, moment to moment. There is of course self, but there is also not. Stepan Arkadyevich already knows this, and I'm excited to see how he continues to cope with his troubles unfolding as the book continues.

-avocado