Month: August 2010

that writing thing

So in the race of novel vs. baby, I’d say baby has a slight lead at present. I’m 30,000 words in but have had to slow down and go carefully so I don’t miss a corner and run completely off the road. Upside is, I know where I’m going (as much as I’ve ever known where I’m going in this writing thing) and the situation keeps giving me more to write about.

There are speed bumps too – where I start thinking too much about what’s going on subtextually or philosophically. I have a bad habit of just dragging that stuff up into text. (I don’t know that it really is a bad habit, exactly; it feels like a reaction against bad/overinflated “literary” style. But it isn’t always an appropriate for what I’m trying to do, this being a case in point.)

Ultimately I’m just trying to write some characters I care about facing difficult situations. If I get that right, then i have to trust that everything else will fall into place around it.

It’s good stuff, this writing thing.

Brian Drain

John Key was on the telly defending his tax cuts etc and I perked up when John Campbell cited back Key’s argument that we have to sort out our economy or more bright young Kiwis will go overseas.

This is the fabled Brain Drain that has been bubbling along in NZ political discourse for, I dunno, fifteen years? It has a long and contentious history in other parts of the world too. The basic idea is that valuable people take off for other places because their prospects are better there.

It is often used to justify tax cuts. Because desire for a lesser tax burden is a major driver of emigration. (No it isn’t.) Job opportunities, however, definitely drive emigration, always have, and it’s no secret that NZ doesn’t offer the wide range of high-skill, high-paying jobs that you can find in major global cities like London and New York. Heck, even Melbourne takes us to the cleaners in terms of high-end job opportunities.

I’ve finally put my finger on why I don’t care about the brain drain.

It’s because I live in a semi-diaspora. I’m a Kiwi, and I have a strong identification with this island nation, and I know people who identify in the same way and who live all over the planet. This is the underlying theme of Saatchi’s NZ Edge initiative – we’re everywhere.

So what is lost when our best and brightest go overseas? Well, their economic productivity is no longer contributing to NZ’s national balance sheet. And… that’s it, right? That’s not an insignificant concern, but you know, I value our transnational identity far more than that. And not in a purely symbolic way, either; it’s obvious that the Kiwi semi-diaspora delivers significant economic benefits to NZ, and I think those benefits are likely to cover a bunch of what we’ve “lost”.

As long as NZ continues to be a functional economic unit in this increasingly globalised world, then let our best and brightest go out into the world. This nation will never be able to provide equivalent opportunities here; it’s madness to think we could. We’re a small nation and we should focus on doing what we do best, and let the rest of the world work its charms.

Because if we’re doing it right then we’ll get high-value smart people working in this country anyway (e.g. in our film industry).

And if we’re making NZ a great place to live then those diaspora Kiwis will often find their way home.

Because there’s more to life than tax rates and income. I’d guess that every Kiwi I know could earn more money in some other country.

I guess we like it here.

Inception (USA, 2010)

Inception is a big budget sci-fi film by Christopher Nolan who did The Dark Knight recently. It’s getting quite some acclaim. I saw it on Saturday with the other moose, the knifeman, and the enigmatic B. We spanned the whole range of opinions: one liked it, one didn’t like it, one thought it was okay, and one was unable to decide.

Here are some bullet points.

  • I was the one who liked it. I did. About halfway through I realized I was having a good time.
  • I’ve had several conversations about Neuromancer in the last week. Inception felt like that – dense, global, informed by Noir, a heist story that turns on the specific nature and limitations of a distinctive technology.
  • But not really that dense. It felt very straightforward to me – if you keep up with the technology explanations, then the whole thing runs with no real deviations or surprises.
  • (If you keep up with the technology – and here let’s pause and acknowledge the most extreme case of infodumping I’ve seen in any medium for quite a long time. Characters keep stopping and explaining at length this or that aspect of the tech. Not even remotely elegant.)
  • Some viewers have constructed elaborate theories about what was really going on, analysing looks between characters and specific cuts halfway through the film to argue this or that theory. That’s cool if you like that stuff, but I don’t think there was anything in the film that demands it. The straightforward explanation is never undermined or challenged. There’s no reason to think that it’s anything but exactly what it seems to be.
  • It’s a heist movie with nearly the entire focus on the procedural aspects of the job. It was a bit like CSI crossed with the A-Team. I enjoyed it for that reason, I think.
  • The zero-g stuff was wonderful.
  • The psychology stuff – not so wonderful. Inception, the process of putting an idea into someone’s head so they think it’s their own? Far from being an ultimate, feared challenge requiring future!tech and extreme risk-taking by our band of outlaws, inception is performed on all of us every day by advertisers. Dude.

I liked it. Don’t think I’ll watch it ever again, though. I’ll give it about a 3.5 out of 5, which is pretty good really, but not at all a classic.

Enthusiasts might want to read the preview comic, written by Chris Nolan.

Friday Already Linky

I did intend to do some of that blogging thing this week. But then this week happened. And now it’s Friday, Google Wave is being put to sleep, Gen Con is starting up, and Proposition 8 has been struck down. All good.

This is a huge deal: after all these years, Sabotage Wars is once again available. It is the Beastie Boys track Sabotage played alongside the opening minutes of Star Wars, and the way it matches up is just uncanny!

NZ dance team wins World Hip Hop Dance contest. Vid shows their performance and then the prizegiving. Watching this gave me a case of the emotions. Nice one, ladies.

Rise of the literature machines

From William Gibson: Knitmare

Turns out lucky underwear actually works. Science says so!

For all those Dawson’s Creek fans: Joshua Jackson holds his own Pacey-con

You hear about Hanny’s Voorwerp yet? You oughta know about it. The Awl brings you the smile-making astronomy.

And finally… Chewbacca riding a giant squirrel fights Nazis.

Impending Fatherhood

Sometimes I actually do think about becoming a father in terms unrelated to undercooked pop-culture gags. (No, really, I do.)

Back in university student days I had some jeans that were covered in graffiti; my “word jeans” I called ’em.

One phrase was: “Strive to die to self”, which I think I lifted from a Christian-oriented poem by NZ writer Joy Cowley. It carried a secular meaning for me, about the need to make ourselves the least important part of our world; to direct our energies outwards, not inwards. I have a more nuanced position now when it comes to “selfishness”, but I still think those are mighty good words to live by.

Also on those word jeans was a quote from Jung: “A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.” (I think I deliberately mangled it so it read “Until you have passed through the inferno of your passions…”) It was intended to be a provocative statement to myself, but I will never forget how my mother pointed at it and said “you won’t understand that fully until you’ve had children”. At the time I expect I rolled my eyes and thought “how silly, that’s not what Jung was talking about” (even though what I meant by it was equally Jung-inappropriate). But it stuck with me, those words of my mother’s, because it suggested that parenthood is a powerful experience in a way that I didn’t understand then. (Foolish callow youth, etc etc.)

In all seriousness, I’m looking forward to being a dad. I surprise myself with how much it feels like a sensible step forward. It’s a new selfhood to encompass, but morgue-as-dad is not an unfamiliar concept to me. In fact for the last fifteen years I’ve regularly thought about an alternative life in which I was a father. That wouldn’t have been a bad sort of life, I came to realize. I could be a dad. I could be a really good dad.

Yeah, the surrender of control and autonomy, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a bit unnerved by that. Being a dad and caregiver is going to mean handing control of my world over to the little one. That’s going to be a huge change and a huge challenge, but y’know, I’m looking forward to it. I think I’m good for the challenge and I’m certain the rewards will be profound.

So I guess I’m hoping to split the difference of those two quotes. There will be a lot of dying to self; there will be some passion inferno. There will be sleepless nights and really early mornings. (Every time I sleep in I wonder if I’m being smart, because I’m doing it while I still can, or foolish, because I’m not getting myself ready for what is coming.) There will be plenty of other challenges besides.

And overall, sitting here, four-and-half months out? It feels like a privilege.