negative capability.

Here is my dad.

I love my dad. Last weekend I was riding my bike down 42nd and noticed his truck parked across Butler. There was no second-guessing his location: Hambone’s — his favorite Lawrenceville watering hole. I decided to stop in because I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and we had some business to discuss.

Don’t tell my mom this, but I was largely raised in a bar. She was always working when I was young, so my dad would just take me wherever he went. Very frequently that was Cupka’s on the South Side. At three years old, I was well-acquainted with Yanks the ancient bookie, Sluggo the bartender, Bouncin’ Bobby, the whole crew. I played darts in a thick haze of smoke and pondered the intricacies of poker machines paying out. I wondered what the heck those metal box machines in the bathroom were. I even saw bloody fights outside of the other bar across the street (now Taco Loco).

But before this starts sounding like I was a mistreated orphan, let me set the record straight. There were some ground rules. I never sat at the bar. My father made sure that no one in the place ever said a bad word in front of me — in fact they treated me like a little emperor for the most part. When the fights broke out across the street, my dad tried to cover my eyes…And he certainly never revealed the secret of the metal boxes in the bathroom.

I know that people are quick to deem things “authentically Pittsburgh,” but hear me out. Cupka’s was legitimately about as Pittsburgh as you can get. It was as if Eastern Europe had overflowed into this tiny corner of the South Side, full of Croats, Serbs, Slovaks, and Czechs. Under a thick gray layer of grime on the wall, you could still make out heroic pictures of workers pouring molten steel to make I-beams. I mean, a guy had a heart attack there when Jerome Bettis fumbled.

It’s hard to argue with that.

This was the mid-80’s, the last days of Pittsburgh’s famous, roaring industry. That time is etched into my memory in a bleak, comforting sepia, like a Tarkovsky film. Each day, another piece of the hazy orange South Side Works was gone, a little less fire shot out of the Hazelwood LTV plant across the river. Everyone left. At Cupka’s, we stayed.

===

Inside of Hambone’s, my father introduced me to everyone in the bar. They all had the same response: “You have a son, Al?”

“Yeah, I get the sense he doesn’t tell many people.” Commence back-slapping and dirty jokes.

Unfortunately I’m not at all the golden boy of the bar with the hard Pittsburgh accent that I was at the Cupka’s of yesteryear. I don’t even say “pop” anymore. I try to show my blue collar roots — try to show that I am my father’s son — but it feels false. I imagine that everyone can tell, just like my neighbors who probably think I’m an effete dweeb, and of course everyone on the bus.

I used to hold court in the alleys of Mount Oliver, making trouble and kissing girls who grew up too fast. Now holding a conversation at a bar in Lawrenceville makes me feel like Frasier Crane addressing a union hall. What happened to me?

(TO BE CONTINUED)

I spend about as much time hopping from ListMania! list to So You’d Like to… list on Amazon.com as many people spend actually reading books. A lot of people don’t know what these are, so the long and short of it is: If you look up almost any book whatsoever on Amazon, at the end of all of the reviews, there will be two divided sections, marked “ListMania!” and “So You’d Like to…” And in these sections are themed lists (”Books About Liposuction,” “So You’d Like to…Become a Sperm Donor,” etc) that people have composed which are related to the book listing you’re perusing.

And then, once you look at one of these lists, it links to about a dozen other related lists, and those spider into twelve million other lists…and, yeah, before you know it, you’ve spent several hours just adding things to your own freaking “Wish List.” (I have over 300 books on mine, but no, you can’t see it because there are a lot of embarrassing ones about sex that I added before I was actually familiar with the act about eight years ago.)

Anyway, I generally steer far clear of “self help” books. I guess I already addressed that in my first post. Well, it’s true. Whether or not it’s deserved, books on improving one’s life and mental health have a stigma attached for me. Maybe it’s because they are so frequently insincere and written horribly. Maybe it’s because you most often see them lining the shelves of horribly depressed people.

In any case, I was conned into reading one today. It did not bill itself as a self-help book, and in fact I found it in the Film section of the bookstore. It was not until I got home and read a little deeper that I realized David Lynch’s Catching the Big Fish was little more than a short treatise on maximizing your creative potential (largely via meditation).

Here’s the crazy part: I enjoyed it. I liked the book. I read through 3/4 of it in a single sitting, without taking my eyes off of it once. Its advice and anecdotes are uncannily timely, coming right when I feel perpetually at the end of my creative rope. My greatest struggle recently has been to develop ideas into realities — or to develop ideas at all. But, as if the hand of fate directed me, the first page that I opened to in the bookstore was titled “Ideas.” But how to make that idea into a reality? The page immediately after that: “Desire.”

Circumstances are strangely perfect sometimes.

In any case, after finishing the book, I decided to ListMania! it up to see what people who enjoyed the Lynch book suggested along the same lines. I was stunned and momentarily mortified to find a world of Tony Robbins-style books with names like 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself and You Can Heal Your Life. Uch.

Then it struck me again, as I’ve discussed before, that perhaps the greatest stumbling block in my own path to inner success and happiness is my flippant aversion to virtually anything that bills itself as positive or helpful. I help my breath and trudged on through the depths. Finally I found one that seemed vaguely promising, even if the cover was horrible and the author’s other books seem incredibly lame: I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. The title seemed like the recurring motto of my life to this point: a lot of “potential,” tons of talk…relatively little action…even lesser results.

So I’ve decided to give it a try, and scooted on over to the Carnegie Library website to see if they had any copies. Yes, they do. They have like 50 copies. “I wonder if they have similar books — books about acting on your dreams rather than just thinking about it until you feel impotent all the time…” But what would you call that? How do you type that concept into the “Subject” box?

Self-actualization (Psychology). 805 books found.

Huh. How can there be so many unhappy and unfulfilled people when there are so many books just for them?

P.S. As I was searching for snappy quotes that I could make into puns for the title of this entry, the first quote I came upon was this, attributed to Carl Rogers: “The mainspring of creativity appears to be the same tendency which we discover so deeply as the curative force in psychotherapy, man’s tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities. By this I mean the organic and human life, the urge to expand, extend, develop, mature - the tendency to express and active all the capacities of the organism, or the self.”

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am perpetually jumping from project to project. This has the negative side effect of meaning that I very seldom finish anything. Stereotypical Gemini extraordinaire.

I’m stopping short of listing just the last year alone of short-lived obsessions and plans I’ll carry out tomorrow…mostly because it’s just embarrassing in scope. I get into something, I read everything about it, I talk about it constantly, I buy every trinket associated with it, and then a month later I’m inevitably selling it all on Ebay and vehemently researching something else. This has always been the way it is. Even in elementary school: I would set up shop on my corner weekly, shilling Creepy Crawlers or Tony! Toni! Tone! cassette singles or whatever the trend du jour was on top of a few milk crates.

I’m hoping to reverse that trend on — somewhat ironically — numerous fronts simultaneously. My current obsessions are threefold:

• Biking: This is a relatively long-standing one, though I’ve taken long breaks (e.g. I don’t recall using a bike more than a dozen times over the course of high school). Very few things make me feel as great physically as riding a bike. I’ve always loved walking long distances due to the great observational opportunities it affords, but biking allows you to be just as close and attentive to your surroundings while being much quicker and more of an athletic challenge. As it stands, I probably ride at least 50 miles a week, with my longest continuous ride clocking in at about 65 miles. Within a year, my goal is to be biking 100 miles a week with a Century (nonstop 100-mile ride) under my belt, as well as a few decent Alley Cat finishes. These are realistic goals. (My very unrealistic goal is just to just finish a Dirty Dozen — a race between and up 13 of the city’s steepest streets.)
• Writing: This is the longest-running and most consistent of all of my obsessions. I’ve been writing since I could pick up a pencil. I literally wrote before I even knew the alphabet — I would write my impression of how the words should look, and my kindergarten teacher would translate it into Standard English! There are few things that I enjoy more, yet I have spent almost no time doing it in the last few years. I’ve fallen completely out of the practice to the point that it’s hard to pick up again. This blog, however seemingly inconsequential, is a very big step in that direction. My goal is to consistently write in this blog for an entire year, and produce at least one major piece of work — ideally a full-length screenplay. In the context of an entire year, I think that this is eminently doable.
• Business/Campaign: I spend a lot of time looking at the work of published writers, established directors, successful performance artists, and people who are making a living doing exclusively what they want to be doing…and again and again I find myself saying the same thing: “It’s good, but I could do that if I wanted to.” Oh yeah? Well then why, Matt, are you working at the least satisfying, challenging, and interesting office job on the planet? Because you haven’t yet tried to do that. This is the sole separating factor between those who live on passion and skill, and those who dwindle in the background, repeating their vain mantra: “Coulda, shoulda, woulda…” They key is belief and, most importantly, action. My goal, then: Form an LLC specializing in the production of commercial film, and then get very serious about the documentary idea brewing in my head. Put it on film.

Those are my many missions. I’ve gotten farther with each in recent days than I have with anything for literally months or possibly even years. I’ve been biking at least 10 miles a day, practicing riding up Negley, Sycamore, and even Rialto Street. I’ve been developing a screenplay about a subject that has compelled me since birth, tentatively titled Here We Are, In Pittsburgh. And in addition to working on a secret political campaign (I can’t divulge the details, but I’ve got a domain, mailing list, and messageboard set up), I am about to start shooting and editing something for a nonprofit and have a friend who is interested in combining interests into a pseudo-company.

Now, the hardest part: Following through.

This morning I got onto an extremely packed 77D. I’ve been really voraciously reading Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing, so I was bummed that I wouldn’t be able to take a seat and dig in like usual. There was the man standing in front of me, having much more trouble staying afloat in the crowd because he was (I know it sounds unbelievable) significantly shorter than me. Suddenly he started speaking into one of those handless cell phone things (the ones that make it look like a person is crazy initially): “I’m just chillin’ on my way to work,” he said. 

The concept that we, packed like exhausted sardines on public transportation, were actually “just chillin’” requires an almost monk-like level of serenity to imagine. If only everyone could strive for a similar ideal.   

In other news, I saw Sicko last night. As with any Michael Moore movie, a thousand criticisms spring instantly to mind. But for me, they are all very much overshadowed by the overriding theme and pervasive emotion of the film. It’s unfortunate that I have to watch his films with a constant eye toward exaggeration and possible exclusion of fact, but this film reminded me very much of why I (and the American Left generally) were initially infatuated with Moore: It’s not so much the facts as the way in which they are presented – the story. Michael Moore is an impressive storyteller and player of heart strings, and has very much the same eye for editing as I strive for. Ironic cuts galore. “Juxtaposition,” if you want to get all fancy. 

In any case, it was a pretty inspiring film…also due to the fact that it didn’t totally suck in terms of production and editing like most political documentaries. The list of totally punchless and drainingly boring social and political films is endless. I am very scared of the childlike attention span of the average American at this point, but as conscious filmmakers I feel that our only chance at affecting genuine change is to take advantage of this nature. It has to be funny, it has to be quick, it has to have a very strong hook – 95% of modern political documentaries miss all of these marks miserably, and in the process lose vast proportions of potential audience…virtually all but the choir, in fact.  Speaking of which, I’ve put the wheels in motion regarding a documentary idea I’ve had for quite a while. Last night, I sent out some emails to key people in the field I’ve chosen to document and have already received a flood of replies. A very exciting prospect.

I am going to make a movie.

That’s what all of my filmmaking books and magazines and websites tell me to say first…The idea is that, when faced with such a daunting goal, it’s important to vocalize it in order to make it seem more realistic and genuinely achievable. Yeah, it’s kind of a flaky concept.

In fact, a lot of the stuff in these film books ends up coming off like self-help advice, and that has tended to drive me far away from them in the past. I have no patience for needless hand-holding. But recently I’ve realized that this persistently critical attitude has driven me away from doing just about anything creatively worthwhile for a very long time.

I’ve tended to conflate enthusiasm with insincerity, motivation with businesslike ruthlessness. These words immediately make me think of camp counselors and hired corporate speakers, people bathed in cloying falseness. Unfortunately I have also discovered that these are incredibly essential qualities to have if you would like to complete a project of any significant size, and it has been a constant struggle to break myself of these negative associations.

Frankly, sometimes my social life can remind me of a middle school dance. We are the ones standing around the outside, arms crossed, looking in. Always a steady running commentary: Look at this ridiculous dance; Who does she think she is?; What a bizarre social ritual. We like to call it pointed social or cultural criticism now, but the same basic theme is evident: we are forever apart from the mainstream, and this distance gives us a perspective that makes it very hard not to judge.

For example. As I write, I’m surrounded by corporate salespeople. These are probably the most hum-drum, normal, and depraved people you could possibly imagine. (No, I don’t think “depraved” and “normal” are contradictions at all when we’re talking about humanity.) These people are the reason that the Strip District becomes a sickening zoo of drunk drivers and skirts indistinguishable from thongs on the weekend. They are responsible for 90% of the pollution and 75% of the fear-driven McDonaldization in the world. If these salespeople ruled the world, we would all live in separate Starbucks, each at least a mile apart, and then convene in the charred core of the city we exploit each day in order to have vast orgies on the weekend.

I think my original intention was to find some inherent good in salespeople, but I’m so pissed just thinking about them that I’m just going to let it stand as a clearer example of my rampant elitism.

The point I was trying to get at is: We have spent so much time as wallflower sociologists that few of us have had the experience of actually dancing…of doing rather than simply viewing. Whether out of fear or comfort, it has been a very long time since I’ve knowingly thrown myself into the Petri dish. The experience can radically alter your perception.

The arguably sad fact that I am discovering time and time again in my research on film and creative endeavors generally: Talent is rarely enough. Unless you are Woody Allen, the sideline banter will never be enough to create serious exposure. In fact, some of the people who have the greatest influence and success culturally are not very talented at all. Here’s what they do have: unending motivation, persistence, and adaptability. Not all gung-ho leadership training talk is total bullshit: the fact is that if you want people to trust your vision and help it become a reality, you had better be pretty damn confident of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it…and even if you’re not, you’d better exude the sense that you do.

So yeah, I’m going to make a movie. I have ideas that would be an improvement on most crap coming out of Hollywood; I can write things that will make you cry; I am technically proficient with a camera, microphone, and editing system; I can recruit an equally proficient crew, and the best actors in this city; I can communicate my vision clearly and effectively to everyone involved and move them to do their best work. I’m going to make a fucking movie, if it takes the next five years.

P.S. I don’t want anyone to confuse my acceptance of these qualities with a turn toward practicality, or “selling out.” Common sense is that you cannot produce a film of any scale with such limited resources. Common sense says that there is no chance of making back the money put into something like this. Common sense is still very much against me, and I relish that because common sense has no place in creative endeavors.