Sleepwriting

Supposedly Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Edison are among the many creative minds to claim substantial inspiration from their dreams.  Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (winner of the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement) chronicled his own sleeping hours in the lyrical film Dreams, a pilgrim’s journey through Van Gough paintings, war zones, peaceful villages, and hell itself.  What are dreams?  Do we glimpse in them a world of pure imagination unfettered by the limitations of our own?  It would seem so.  I can zoom through space and time, survive death and have sex with beautiful strangers.

The Bard asks, “…in that sleep of death what dreams may come?”  Might we meet imagination itself, the writer of our narrative existence?  The real Willy Wonka?

I’m a little worried about that, because Wonka can be creepy.  The original depiction by Roald Dahl is no less cynical than those by Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp.  He lets the little dreamers literally destroy themselves in Candyland.  But it’s his house, his rules.  There is always a shadow to be found in dreams; always a nightmare to shake us up.  We are uncomfortable even in the cradle of imagination.  “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” and we aren’t meant to forget it.

Last night I dreamed several good stories, scenes and off-color jokes.  Where’s my Lifetime Achievement Award?

Want vs. Need: Ethan Coen’s Fart Poem

What a very Coen poem!

The title line is by far the best (most would agree that this poem is stronger in concept than beauty):  “The drunken driver has the right of way.”  I wonder what MADD would say.

Philosophically speaking, I think a problem arises quickly with his use of “right.”  Even in the world of the poem, we know that “right of way” is given to those who follow the rules.  He uses the term with tongue-in-cheek, putting himself in the shoes of a sober driver who is scared for his life.  And we laugh with the speaker.  But after a short chuckle the joke is over and we are stuck with the philosophy.  It’s much like a fart: funny at first, then it just stinks.

Does the poem vindicate the irresponsible inebriate?  Does it say (with a cynical smile), “Drive on, drunkard!  Might makes right!”?  Not quite.  That wouldn’t be palatable.  Coen avoids the hassle of actually making a judgment.  He merely observes: bad people tend to get what (they think) they want.  But there’s a problem here.  Is getting what (we think) we want all there is to life?  Raskolnikov was eaten alive by that question in Crime and Punishment.  And his revelation, summed up in a dream, draws the answer out clearly: might-makes-right is anarchy.  That’s Kubla Khan, Hitler and Madoff.

I once heard it said that a story is a tragedy if a character gets what he wants, and a comedy if he gets what he needs.  This will be a fun distinction to play with in narrative: what we want vs. what we need.

After all, is it the drunken drivers that we look up to?  Of course not.

Somebody open a window.

Ethan Coen’s poetry book

Even though I’m living in a small Spanish city, I try to keep up with NPR’s latest stories on my daily bicycle commute with my iPod.  Ethan Coen, of the Coen brothers, was interviewed on All Things Considered yesterday about his new book of poetry.  It’s an understandably cynical take on how the world works, but it makes me smile in the same way that some of the Coens’ movies make me smile.  It’s an interesting take on the Napoleons and Kubla Khans of this world.  However, “Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea / But sad mortality o’ersways their power,” I have a feeling that the work of Ethan Coen will prove not only the might, but the longevity, of the pen over the sword.  While I don’t think film will outlast literature, it is certainly the most powerful artistic medium we have today.  Interesting though, that one of the most celebrated directors has turned to writing plays and poetry.

‘The Drunken Driver Has the Right Of Way’

by Ethan Coen

The loudest have the final say,
The wanton win, the rash hold sway,
The realist’s rules of order say
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The Kubla Khan can butt in line;
The biggest brute can take what’s mine;
When heavyweights break wind, that’s fine;
No matter what a judge might say,
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The guiltiest feel free of guilt;
Who care not, bloom; who worry, wilt;
Plans better laid are rarely built
For forethought seldom wins the day;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

The most attentive and unfailing
Carefulness is unavailing
Wheresoever fools are flailing;
Wisdom there is held at bay; The drunken driver has the right of way.

De jure is de facto’s slave;
The most foolhardy beat the brave;
Brass routs restraint; low lies high’s grave;
When conscience leads you, it’s astray;
The drunken driver has the right of way.

It’s only the naivest who’ll
Deny this, that the reckless rule;
When facing an oncoming fool
The practiced and sagacious say
Watch out — one side — look sharp — gang way.

However much you plan and pray,
Alas, alack, tant pis, oy vey,
Now — heretofore — til Judgment Day,
The drunken driver has the right of way.