blog identity crisis

I started Laura on the Left Coast in 2008 as I was planning to move across the country, from New York and the East Coast where I'd lived my whole life, to Los Angeles, a city I didn't even visit before being accepted to grad school there.  (Good thing too, or I might have gotten cold feet.)

If you'd asked me two and a half years ago, I would never have predicted the turns my life would take: life changes, renewed political involvement, travel to amazing places, and along the way an attempt at increasing self-definition as an artist.  As I've evolved, so has this blog.  It's been extremely helpful for working some of those things out, even if I didn't necessarily recognize the revelations in the moment.  It is valuable to me if only as a record of the evolution of my artistic and political thought over the past two and a half years.

The problem now is that I'm not entirely sure where to go.  My life is sort of undefined at the moment--and not in a carefree hippie way, or a filled-with-terrifying-but-exhilarating-possibilities way.  More in a morass-of-gnawing-uncertainty-and-economic-peril way.  As my work on the two projects I was lucky to be involved in right after graduation is coming to a close--at least for the moment--and I'm facing the prospect of looking for a real-person job in the worst economy since the Great Depression, with a hundred thousand dollars more debt that I had two years ago, I am most likely to be filled at any given moment with a vague sense of exhaustion and dread.  This makes it hard to focus on anything creative, even blog posts.

I have a list of posts I still want to write, but lately I haven't had much energy to write them.  And, as this blog has become increasingly politically focused, I've also felt some pressure to make every post "count" by writing about something deep or urgent or particularly relevant to the moment; to make every post have a point and a well-articulated argument.  This pressure is, of course, entirely self-imposed, but this is me acknowledging its presence.

This isn't meant to say that Laura on the Left (Coast) is heading for blog retirement or even hiatus.  For all I know I'll become completely unblocked over the holidays...or once I move to my new apartment...or once I get a job...and start writing up a storm again.  It is simply to admit confusion, and a bit of fatigue.  The past two and a half years have encompassed five moves (with a sixth on the horizon), four international trips, five feature scripts, a pilot and a TV spec.  Oh, and two Harry Potter movies.  And while I've had incredible, life-changing experiences that I wouldn't trade for anything in the world, it can get a bit draining as well.  So don't be surprised if this blog wanders or goes relatively quiet for a while, while I figure out the next part of my life.

oh yeah. i live in new york city now.

I moved back to New York last week, after two years and two months away.  It's fucking sweet.  I haven't even been doing anything all that spectacular: hanging out with friends I haven't seen in a while, eating yummy food (although in moderation, as I am rather poor at the moment), knowing I can get anywhere on my own at any time of day/night.  But sometimes I'll catch myself walking down the street with a little smile on my face, just basking in the awesomeness: the city's energy, its pace, its diversity, the way it can seem tough and welcoming at the same time.  What more can I say?  New York is my home.

I'm going to write more about my new temporary neighborhood, Washington Heights.  But for now, in celebration of my return, I give you a pitch-perfect New Yorker post from the Village Voice, 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City.

UPDATE!  The 50 reasons have a follow-up post, which is almost as awesome.

writing is a job

If I haven't been writing here so much in the past month, it is only because I am busy writing other things.  I'm working on two feature scripts in collaboration with other people, plus some of my own stuff, plus organizing a move back to NYC for next month (yay!).

I do have several unfinished posts from my trip to Palestine that I want to get up in the next few weeks, and as November 19 approaches you know you can expect some posts of the wizard inclination.  But if I am not writing here so regularly, fear not.  I'll be back soon.

germany to america

I returned to the US on Friday, although I'll only be here for a few days before leaving on another three-week international trip (more on that later.)

Bavaria puts on a sublime show for my departure: a golden-red sunrise over Tolkien-worthy Alps; meringue tufts of fog thick enough to sculpt wafting off the ground. It's amazing and makes me not want to leave. It was worth getting up at 4:30 in the morning for this.

The Munich airport is nearly empty due to the early hour, and so clean you could eat off the floor. How do Germans keep everything so clean? I guess in part by hiring sufficient cleaning staff for public places.

In contrast Newark airport seems like the Third World: jarringly loud, crowded, dirty and hot. I know people all over the world talk about inane things while waiting in airports, but suddenly being able to understand all the conversations again is overwhelming. It's now Friday afternoon and the security lines are epic. The bathroom near my gate is gross and entirely soap-less, the waiting area is overcrowded and the seats are grubby, and the last tiny leg of my flight, from Newark to Baltimore, is delayed. Welcome back to America, indeed.

I realize I feel homeless in the US, and not in a carefree, smiling-hobo way. I've pulled up whatever meager roots I managed to plant in Los Angeles. Baltimore hasn't been my home for ten years and doesn't really feel like it now. My childhood bedroom is full of stuff that isn't mine. New York feels like home but I don't actually live there yet, and every time I think about the city I feel an unpleasant mix of acute longing and despair at my profound and total lack of money. I find myself looking forward to leaving the US again in a few days. Then at least I can be a traveler and not some kind of weird self-imposed internally-displaced person.

what's going on

1. I graduated. I now officially have an MFA. Well...sort of. Turns out the "diplomas" we were handed for the graduation photo op were friggin' props, with a little IOU inside saying something like "You will receive your actual diploma in 4-6 weeks." Which seems somehow oddly appropriate.

The commencement speaker for the film school ceremony was Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of DreamWorks, which certainly sounds impressive. But let's just say when it comes to graduation speeches, he is no JK Rowling.

2. I First-Pitched. It went okay. I got a couple of script requests for my thesis script, which haven't led to anything so far, but I'm kind of okay with that, mostly because...

3. I have a writing assignment. It pays money. Okay, not very much, but I think anything more than zero is a step in the right direction at this point. I can't really say much about the project (Hollywood is all secret like that) but it's with a great female director who just made her first feature, and it's a story I'm really excited about.

There is also a chance I may be working on a second project that pays no money (at the moment) but is based on an amazing true story that's perfect for me and would involve some subsidized travel for research to somewhere I've never been that would be very, very cool. Nothing is confirmed with that project yet but if it happens I'll be stoked. Which leads me to...

4. Travel and/or the rest of my life. This much I know for sure: I'll be in LA until the end of June, since that's when my lease is up. I'm also thrilled to report that I'll be back in PALESTINE (inshallah) July 24-August 6, traveling to the West Bank and '48 [Israel] with Interfaith Peace-Builders (and blogging up a storm per usual, of course). I'll also be spending a few days in Jordan on my own at the end of the trip, returning to the US on August 12.

Baltimore is a strong possibility for the 3 weeks between the end of June and my departure for the Middle East. After August 12...who knows????? I still really want to move back to NYC, but that sort of requires employment, which, you may be aware, is not such an easy thing to come by these days.

But in the meantime, some other things I'm excited about:

1. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo. I'm going to a play! In Los Angeles! They do exist!! Of course the day I'm going, I have learned, is also the day of some giant bike race that's going to cause street closings, oh, pretty much all the way from my house to the theater. Of course.

2. Winter's Bone at LACMA with Q&A with Debra Granik. The more I hear about this film, the awesomer it sounds. Can't. Wait.

i'm alive

Just really busy. And fairly creatively exhausted at the moment, as I struggle to drag all my projects simultaneously across the graduation/First Pitch finish line. Between trying to finish three scripts, prepare my pitch, read a criminally long book for Entertainment Industry class, and go to a reasonable amount of the valuable-but-unhelpfully-tightly-scheduled end-of-year events, I just don't have the brain space for a blog at the moment. You'll hear from me on the flip side, which, dear god, I sure hope is coming some time around May 8.

ways in which usc is a microcosm of los angeles

1. It's huge, sprawling, and mostly flat.

2. It's full of diversity, but everyone is ghettoized in their separate schools, classes, programs, and buildings, so the chances of meeting someone from outside your academic neighborhood/ghetto are rare. If your department is at the north end of campus, you probably never go to the south end. You might not even know what the south end looks like, and if you venture there it will seem confusing and alien.

3. There's no central gathering place, and in the normal place where you might meet someone new--campus walkways and plazas--everyone's too busy zipping to where they're going on their (a) skateboards or (b) beach cruiser bikes (probably while balancing a coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other while wearing an outfit you'd think would be highly inappropriate for biking) that they're too preoccupied to notice anyone else.

4. In some areas, extremely rich people have paid to build huge, expensive and obscenely ugly buildings that combine the spiffiest state-of-the-art technology with dozens of pointless, minor stupidities like switching which side the men's and women's bathrooms are on on different floors.

5. A large percentage of the public gathering/hanging out space is outside, a fact you don't think about until that one day when it rains.

6. The palm trees are imported. The only difference is at USC, you can pay to have your name put on them.

in which i hate on los angeles some more

I love planning. It's a great way to think about the future without having to actually do anything to get there. You know what else I love? School supplies. So you can imagine that the purchase of a new monthly planner is one of the highlights of back-to-school time, which is already one of my favorite times of year because, if you couldn't tell, I am a nerd.

After a slightly ludicrous amount of time spent perusing the offerings at the USC bookstore, I settled on a planner that started in August 2009 and ran all the way to December 2010--partially because it was thin and would fit easily in my bag, and partially because I just respected its slightly odd format, which seemed to say, "Yeah, I'm a seventeen-month calendar. What? That's how I roll."

And partially, I'll admit, because those pages at the end called to me--and not JUST because I could write "DEATHLY HALLOWS, PART I!" on November 19, 2010. (Although I did, post haste.)

As I lingered on the page marked September 2010, I couldn't help thinking: Surely, I'll be back in New York by then. And, imagining that, those last pages seemed to flutter with extra crispness, fresh with the promise of brisk fall breezes, October skies, black wool coats, the comforting embrace of skyscrapers, hot coffee sipped while walking at a proper pace down sidewalks properly filled with people, and excuses to wear my remarkably soft Gryffindor...er, USC scarf.

The one task I gave myself for the mostly-empty months of July and August in Los Angeles, other than writing, was to re-learn to drive. I haven't done it, and now that the semester has started, who knows when I will. But I finally realized what was behind my willingness to tolerate the limitations and inconveniences of being a non-driver in a city so car-oriented that even stores turn their backs on the sidewalk. If I learned to drive, that would be admitting to myself that there was at least a chance I would actually be living in this godforsaken city, as, like, a real, non-student adult. And clearly that is not a possibility I am inclined to face at the moment.

If you've been reading this blog you'll know it's no secret that, although I think film school is awesome, I hate Los Angeles with a fiery passion. As time goes by, you'd think I would get used to it and start hating it less. Instead I seem to hate it more. And I've become increasingly convinced that having a car, while it would certainly make my life easier, would not make me like Los Angeles one bit more.

Los Angeles is the anti-city: a vast, flat, centerless expanse of never-ending suburb that sprawls like a fungus over desert plains and clambers up into mountain canyons where no city is supposed to be, a place where people describe neighborhoods by their proximity to various freeways, a place where the urban grid is stretched to its least-walkable dimensions. (Short blocks favor pedestrians: they have more corners, which are prime real estate for both sidewalk-oriented shops and personal interaction. Long blocks favor cars because there are fewer stop lights.)

Los Angeles has no sense of urgency. LA, for all its ungainly size and various cityesque attributes, still feels sleepy and provincial to me. It has the natural energy of the beach: nice for a vacation, but rather like quicksand when you're trying to get stuff done. Even the weather begins to get old. "Oh, jeez, month after month of sunshine and low humidity, must be rough!" I can hear you East Coasters muttering sarcastically. But seriously. With a lack of seasons, time stretches out into one long, unmarked blur. There is no sense of things moving and changing, of time passing by. You're just trapped in this hot, flat, timeless pancake filled with mile after mile of strip malls of varying bougieness or grubbiness, depending on the zip code. Also, bars close absurdly early, hardly anything is open twenty-four hours, and both the density and pace of service of Los Angeles's Starbucks is criminally low.

There was a time when I was convinced I just needed to get to know Los Angeles better. The USC neighborhood is somewhat unappealing; surely there must be other neighborhoods out there in the vast sea of Los Angeles's expanse that I could call home. Every visit to a new friend's house was like a blind date: maybe this will be the neighborhood I'll fall in love with. It was only recently that I reminded myself that between September 2000 and August 2008, I was never out of New York for more than a month at a time, and realized there was probably a good reason for that.

Perhaps this is why, after nearly two months in a new apartment, I have not bothered to unpack more than the bare minimum needed for survival (which, in case you're wondering, is my computer and other media tools, my books, three plates, one cereal bowl, one all-purpose mug, a couple of utensils, some toiletries, and about one laundry load worth of clothes). I like the feeling that this must be only temporary, because the idea that it could be permanent, or even semi-permanent, is too horrible to contemplate.

Although I fully reserve the right to change my mind, if you asked me today, I would say I plan to get the hell out of Los Angeles as soon as humanly possible. Will this reduce my chances of meeting some agent's or studio exec's second assistant in some bar in West Hollywood some night? Yeah, probably. And you know what? I think I can live with that risk. The possibility of success in any creative industry is so ridiculously low to begin with that, in my opinion, there's no point in being miserable while you're trying to make it.

fear

For the first time yesterday, I got scared about the Gaza trip. This was a new thing for me; I hadn't really felt any fear up until now. But perhaps, with less than two weeks to go before I leave for Egypt, the reality of the enterprise is starting to sink in, and my ability to imagine the worst case scenario is coming to the fore.

Right before I left the house to go meet a friend for dinner, I read that Amira Hass, the intrepid Ha'aretz reporter whose book about Gaza I absolutely loved, was arrested while crossing the border and banned from returning to Gaza for 30 days. (Gee, perhaps it's things like this that led the non-profit watchdog group Freedom House to recently downgrade Israel's press status to "partly free.") This seemed like a bad omen to me. And then, on the subway, I had a little too much time to think about things like being turned back at the border, being detained by IOF [Israeli occupation forces], being detained by the Egyptians (not sure which of those two would be worse, but both would probably suck) and all the other things that could go wrong on our way into Gaza.

I realized that none of these fears involved actually being in Gaza. They were all about that wretched border. Gaza is already surrounded by a wall, and that wall is made a little taller every day by the fear that crossing it instills. If you're Palestinian, those fears include the fear of getting detained (possibly for years for some bullshit reason), being unable to re-enter once you leave, or leave once you enter, being trapped on opposite sides of the border from friends, family and loved ones, having to choose what to do if some of your party are permitted to cross and others are not, having to face interrogation by Shabak, the Israeli secret police, and just plain getting turned away--even if, say, you need medical treatment that's not available in Gaza.

In any case, after a 45-minute subway ride of worst-case scenarios, I had to take a deep breath and remind myself that (1) our delegation, which is large, led by experienced activists who have made this trip before, and has the official invitation of UNRWA, has an excellent chance of getting through the border without incident; (2) it's okay be scared about going to a scary place; and (3) that doesn't mean I don't still want to go.

One of the goals of any occupying force is to induce fear, to paralyze people in order to keep them from resisting, even if that resistance consists merely of trying to go about their everyday lives. It just so happened that this morning I read Eva Bartlett's post about how F-16s and drones continue to fly over Gaza, deliberately breaking the sound barrier in populated areas in what she perceptively calls "simulated bombing." What is the point of something like this, other than to terrorize? In a place in which everyone, every single resident, has fresh in their mind the sights and sounds of war, of flattened buildings, dead and wounded loved ones--in a place in which, Gazan mental health professionals will tell you, pretty much everyone is walking around with some level of post-traumatic stress, what is the point of F-16 flyovers other than to give a population of 1.5 million people recurring combat flashbacks?

Does the idea that in a little more than two weeks, I'll be under those same drones and fighter planes scare me? Yup. Does that mean I'm having second thoughts about going? Not for an instant.

The end result of this fear encounter was a sort of "check yourself" moment, which I'm sure internationals working in Palestine have all the time, and which goes something like this: (1) recognize what you're feeling, (2) imagine feeling like that all day, every day, with no possibility of escape, (3) now you're beginning to understand what it's like to live under occupation. I think, once you put your own fears in context like that, it just makes you more determined to do what you're doing.

dammit

After a great and inspiring last TV class and some encouraging words from two profs today, I am back to feeling ok about this whole LA thing.

Can't win!

conflicted

I am missing New York City particularly acutely today. Perhaps it is the fact that it's spring there, or that the Tribeca Film Festival (in which some of my friends are involved) is in full swing, or that I will be returning there in a mere 11 days, if only for a grand total of five weeks when international travel is taken into account.

Things I miss about New York at the moment include subways, walking places, good theater, bagels, seasons, subways, Astoria, yoga places in walking distance of my house, a rational density of coffee shops, weekends in the East Village, Bluestockings book store, the Ziegfeld, the fact that everything doesn't look like one giant strip mall, and subways. In fact, after being away from New York for a little while, even thoughts of sixth-floor walk-ups, $100 Metrocards and the perpetual rat colony on Bond Street seem to evoke a bit of homesickness.

I am frequently conflicted about Los Angeles's place in my future, since I continue to think that Los Angeles is just not meant to be my home. I keep remembering the numerous East Coast transplants who've said that it took them two, even three years to appreciate LA, reminding myself that I can't pass final judgment on LA until I learn to drive and have access to its sprawling expanse by car (although that fact in itself fills me with chagrin), and worrying that I'll be shooting my career in the foot if I don't stay in LA after graduation. But then I think of Washington Square Park or the Organic Grill or the 48 hours in which I went to see Che, Man on Wire, Blasted AND Black Watch over winter break and those arguments go right out the window into the perpetual SoCal sunshine. And even that is starting to get a bit boring, because when the weather is the same every day time seems to pass at a snail's pace and everyone gets exasperatingly unhurried, instead of rushing by in the proper fashion, as they do when you have freezing winters and sweltering summers to keep you on track.

So then I start to think, well, there is some film industry in New York, as well as a literary and theater scene, and hopefully the economy will be a bit better by the time I graduate, and if I have to have a day job (assuming I'm not going to sign a six-figure option deal the day after graduation) it might as well be in a place I love instead of one I kind of hate. And then I think of the avalanche of debt I will be in and wonder if I'm completely crazy to even think of moving to one of the few cities more expensive than the one I live in now. Then I think about how maybe the solution is more school--which is a very dangerous thought indeed.

Then I think about how much I also really love San Francisco. But that is neither here nor there.

between two worlds

Early in Gaza Sunrise, there's a scene in which the main character (an unmarried, independent woman who was raised by her militant father) is sitting in a room full of women in her grandparents' home.  The women are all talking about marriage and babies and she feels totally uncomfortable.  She leaves and walks down the hall to a room full of men, where she feels much more at home, even though the first thing that happens is that someone calls attention to the fact that she's female.

When I brought this scene to class someone asked what the point of it was, from a dramatic standpoint.  My teacher, who can be quite insightful despite the fact that I've had many arguments about the script with him, hit the nail on the head.  "It's to show that she's between two worlds," he said.  "Not really this, but not really that either."

That is, of course, exactly the point of the scene, and I was pleased someone had noticed it, because I've spend large chunks of my life feeling exactly like that.

My home town of Baltimore is, like many post-industrial northern cities, sharply divided into white and Black neighborhoods.  My childhood home is the last house in a fairly wealthy white neighborhood, which is divided from a much poorer Black neighborhood by a wall (politely called a "noise barrier") that abuts our property.  I have often thought that this image is a surprisingly apt metaphor for my life.

I grew up perceiving the Black neighborhood as alien and a bit scary.  The kids there walked home from school or took what seemed to be a completely unintelligible bus system.  My sister and I were not to go to the 7 Eleven directly across the street without adult supervision.  The Black neighborhood was the source (it was always implied) of the thieves who stole my sister's bike off the back porch on Christmas Day and stole our crappy car four or five times over the years (it was always recovered--the parts weren't even worth anything) and of the homeless man who my dad once paid a few dollars to help with yard work, who then harassed us like a stray cat at all hours of the night until threats to call the police were made.

Clearly, I wasn't part of that world.  But the white neighborhood, whose center of gravity was the multi-million-dollar houses around the Sherwood Gardens tulip park, didn't really feel like my world either.  Those people had moveable feast fundraisers for charity in their lavish homes, and their neighborhood association once sent us a nasty letter when our house had gone too long without a new paint job.

My mom was a teacher's assistant at a private school, and my dad was a civil servant with several advanced degrees.  We owned our home (although, like most of America, it's now mortgaged to the hilt.)  My sister and I both attended private schools and fairly expensive private colleges.  We certainly weren't poor.  We just weren't as rich as most of the people around us.  There was a reason we lived in the last house in the white neighborhood.

This sense of estrangement from almost everyone who, on the surface, looked like me reached its apex in high school, when I attended one of a coterie of three very preppy prep schools not far from my home.  Surely some of this alienation came from being queer (a fact of which I was not aware until college) but most of it came from class.  

Don't get me wrong--I received a fantastic education, for which I am extremely grateful.  I took film studies, Russian, a semester-long class on Middle East history, and college-level math, science and English classes.  Our theater department put on productions that rivaled many colleges' in sophistication.  But the upshot was I was surrounded by people whose families were much wealthier than mine (because clearly only wealthy children deserve such an excellent education), and spent a lot of time feeling intensely, deeply, profoundly alienated.  It was not surprising, therefore, that I became friends with a rogue's gallery of five or six class outcasts, and that many of us, whether we were aware of it or not, were united by class.

As I've moved through different social circles, I've experienced various levels of fitting-in-ness, but the feeling of being just a little bit outside has persisted.  The corollary is that I've always been drawn to outcasts, rebels, loners and weirdos, to people who have some experience of being a bit uncomfortable with their identity, be they present-day real people, historical figures or imaginary friends.

Even now, when I have many wonderful friends who are interested in many of the same things I am, the otherness is hard to shake.  When I'm with my film school friends, I won't shut up about Gaza, to the point that some of them are probably quite sick of it--since, after all, being political is not a prerequisite for film school.  But when I'm with the circle of activists I've started to associate with, I often find myself far more preoccupied with the politics of representation and audience identification than with the logistics of planning the next event.

I have another teacher who recently told our class: "Outside can be a good place for an artist."  I suppose that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that outside feels pretty lonely an awful lot of the time.

three words

Writers tend to have a bad habit of always searching for the exact right word for something--especially screenwriters, who have to be rigorously concise.  I've recently come across three right words in three different languages and thought I would share them with you.

1. Foreigners doing support work in the Occupied Territories are universally referred to as "internationals," to distinguish them from Palestinians, who live there, and Israelis, who are directly going against their own government by working in solidarity with the Palestinians.

I like this term a lot.  I would be happy to be called an international instead of an American any day.  I like that, in return for our solidarity with an oppressed group, we citizens of oppressor nations get the option to put aside our nationality a bit and be global citizens, if only in name.

2. I was searching for the correct parting salutation for a note I was leaving for the author of tales to tell (who, sadly, is leaving Gaza shortly to return to the UK) and the Spanish imperative cuidate popped into my head.  Usually translated as "be careful," it more literally means "take care of yourself," which can have all kinds of different interpretations and seems a very apt benediction for situations in which phrases like "be careful" and "be safe" have little meaning.

3. I recently went home to Baltimore to attend the funeral of the father of a close friend.  I kept trying to find the correct term to describe my relationship with this friend, who knows more about me than probably anyone in the world, including most of my own blood relatives.  It wasn't until a few days ago that I thought of the Arabic word habibi (or habibti for a woman), which means "beloved," but doesn't necessarily carry any romantic or sexual connotations, as being appropriate.

basically, i want to be the intellectual love-child of trotsky and george orwell

This is how my brain works.

I was researching Palestinian Christians for the feature I'm writing this semester. I noted that although Christians were no more than 20% of the population of mandatory Palestine (and now make up a far smaller percentage of population of that region), a seemingly high number of prominent Palestinian politicians, intellectuals and artists came from Christian families. Among them: George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (the political organization to which my protagonist's father belonged); Edward Said, probably the most famous Palestinian intellectual as far as the English-speaking world is concerned; and filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, director of Rana's Wedding and Paradise Now.

Then I started thinking about how, maybe, Palestinian Christians were a bit like European Jews, a minority group that also produced a disproportionately high number of writers, intellectuals and fighters for social justice, from Rosa Luxembourg and Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein), to the thousands of Jewish members of Europe's Communist and Socialist parties and trade union organizations (like Amira Hass's parents) most of whom have been forgotten by history. How before WWII, the stereotypical assumed political orientation of European Jews was not "Zionist" but "Communist." How these peoples' awareness of their status as a minority frequently led them to be the first and fiercest fighters for equality and social justice for all people.

Then I started thinking about how tragic it was that this radical European Jewish tradition was basically liquidated during the Holocaust. The Nazis, smart enough to understand where their most powerful enemies lay, first attacked the organized left and the trade union movement, so that when they proceeded to full-scale genocide, there was no movement capable of opposing them.

Then I started thinking about how so much of what we learn in school about the rise of Nazism in Germany is either inaccurate or distorted, and how generations of American high school students have been led to a warped understanding of both history and humanity because of this. Every American high school student learns about the Holocaust, but almost no one learns that Germany was on the brink of Russian-style workers' revolution not once, but THREE TIMES between 1918 and 1923, and it was not until the last revolutionary attempt failed, leaving Germany in economic turmoil and the left lacking credibility, than fascism started to gain popularity. I took an entire semester-long course on the Holocaust in high school and didn't manage to understand that reality. I even remember reading a famous quote from Hitler--"I will never forgive the Jews for what they did on November 9, 1918"--without realizing that November 9, 1918 was the date of the German revolution that overthrew the Kaiser and hastened the end of Germany's participation in WWI.

Without an understanding of fascism as a specifically counterrevolutionary ideology--an understanding that fits with the history of other countries, including Spain, Italy, Russia and Chile--the only explanation for why some countries seem to go off the deep end in terms of crazy right-wing racism and genocide is that there must be some inexplicable moral defect in the fabric of these nations. Which is kind of how the Holocaust is taught in America. Why do you think you think every history lesson on the Holocaust starts with the history of anti-Semitism in Germany--which was certainly bad, but no worse than any other European nation? But of course it is taught this way in America, because no one wants to teach American kids that the true counterweight to fascism is not American bombs and imperialism but international revolutionary socialism.

After my brain had wandered through all this and came to the conclusion that I wanted to write a series of short "forgotten history" textbooks aimed at high school students, I went back to the Palestinian Christians and it occurred to me that maybe this whole line of thinking was a tinge Islamophobic. After all, for every accomplished Palestinian Christian, there are tons of equally accomplished Palestinian Muslims, since the vast majority of Palestinians are, of course, Muslim. Then it occured to me that there were some specific material factors which would account for the over-representation of notable Palestinian Christians in the preception of the west. Palestinians of Christian descent are, statistically speaking, more likely to both be allowed to and choose to emigrate to the predominantly Christian nations of Europe and the Americas. And because of Islamophobia in these nations, they are probably more likely to be accepted into the social, political and intellectual circles of the west than Muslims of any nationality are.

At this point, you may be asking what the point of this blog post is. The point is that I'm becoming increasingly aware that I can't separate art, history, and struggle from each other in my life. I've often thought that when researching a creative project, I end up with enough material to write a quite interesting non-fiction book on whatever place/time/movement I've been learning about. But I don't just want to write non-fiction--I want to use this knowledge to make political art as well, not just for the sake of being political, but because I like making art. And of course, all this is tied up with my conception of myself as an activist and a revolutionary and a political storyteller, even if I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I think that means.

I am becoming increasingly clear on what it doesn't mean. I want to make movies, but I don't want to pursue a Hollywood career simply for the sake of being "in the business." I don't want a purely academic or documentary career, either--although I would not be averse to more school (say, a PhD) as long as I don't have to pay for it. And I don't particularly want to be an artist/activist with a day job. I tried that for nearly four years and I don't think it works for me--I lack the capacity to split my mental and emotional faculties like that.

I want to find some way of intergrating all the things I love into a career. Well, duh, of course, everybody wants that! And of course, this realization does absolutely nothing to address the massive debt I will find myself in after finishing film school. Much as I'd like it to be so, it seems unlikely the social revolution will arrive before my loans come out of deferment. But it is a helpful guideline as I make my way through film school and life, as I make choices about what classes I want to take, how I want to spend my summer, where I want to live and what I want to do after I graduate, etc. Deciding that I want carve out my own career path as an independent left intellectual and artist is not a guideline that particularly makes my life any easier. In fact, it will probably make it a lot harder and ensure that I'll either have to be wildly successful or be debt-ridden until I'm 50. But hey, when did I ever want to do something just because it was easy?

on a lighter, healthier note...

Things I did to procrastinate today:

1. Read news.

2. Wrote dire blog post about the possibility of Prop 8 passing.

3. Got fired up; emailed non-California friends requesting donations for No on Prop 8 campaign.

4. Researched easiest bus route to my election day volunteer training at the ACLU office downtown tomorrow.

5. Read some of my classmate B's excellent blog.

6. Accepted my 4 pending L'il Green Patch requests on Facebook.

7. With permission of my roommates, invited my class to watch the election returns at my house (1 affirmative response so far.)

8. Went to the grocery store, because we needed milk and I needed an excuse to buy Pringles.

9. Read some more of B's blog.

10. Made the rounds of various LOL-based websites (Pundit Kitchen has been my favorite of late).

11. Visited the Cal Student Housing website, made a list of all the buildings that have studios for under $1,000 (none of which have air conditioning, it seems), fantasized about living closer to campus next year.

12. Talked to Kitzie on Gmail chat.

13. Wrote another blog post, about how I am procrastinating (ooh, meta!).

The result is that now, after being awake for around 12 hours, I have written exactly two paragraphs of my homework.

At the beginning of the semester, someone said that this program is about teaching you to write professionally, which they described as being able to write on command.  The implication, of course, is that this means sometimes having to write when you're just not that interested in whatever you're working on.

I don't disagree that this is a useful skill to develop, and one I could definitely use some improvement on.  That does not, however, make me any more motivated to construct a ten-page short about Johnson Wilkins, age 16, entitled "The Trouble with Vegans."

this just in: it is raining!

This is notable since it's the first time it's happened since I moved here, over two months ago. And the nice thing is that since my neighborhood is really quiet during the day, you can actually hear the sound of the rain.

Update, 10:40 am: It's over and the sun is out again.

cars: not just a heartwarming pixar movie

No doubt, Los Angeles is a car city.  "Traffic in Los Angeles is what weather is to the rest of the country," one of my profs said on the first day of class.  It's a crafty one--they tease you with just enough public transportation to make you think that maybe, just maybe, not having a car is a feasible option--but it's a car city nonetheless.

Several random events lately have made me think about my attitude toward cars.  The first was when I was planning my schedule for next semester and realized that I had automatically ruled out a class that met at night because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of figuring out how to get home after 7 pm.  Why?  Because taking the bus at any time other than rush hour (7:30 to 9 in the morning; 4:30-7 at night) pretty much blows.  At any other time of day, waiting 40 minutes for a bus to mosey on by on my route is not unusual.  In 40 minutes I can walk to campus.  I've done this a few times and it's not a terrible option--except of course if it's the middle of the day and hot, or it's late at night--which are the exact times when bus service sucks the most.

The second was at the first meeting for First Pitch, where a guy told a story that involved agents asking him what kind of car he wanted to drive, which was supposed to be some indication of his career ambitions.  I found myself asking myself the question.  "Um, a hybrid...I guess?"  I couldn't really come up with a good answer, because, frankly, I didn't care.

Then today at work, I was scanning lots and lots of pictures of cars and car racing for someone's Powerpoint presentation on historical somethingorother, and I came to a realization: I would be perfectly happy living the rest of my life never owning a car.

I realize that the possibility of me getting through a minimum of two years in Los Angeles without ever driving is somewhere between "low" and "nil."  I must admit, the idea of re-learning how to drive terrifies me, which is of course why I've worked so hard to avoid it.  I only like learning new things when they only involve the brain.  Motor skills, not so much--as the few witnesses to a disastrous early-semester roller skating event can attest.  This is the same fear that has kept me from learning to ride a bike, which would doubtless solve some of my problems here.

But aside from the actual act of driving (and parking!  don't get me started on parking!) there just seem to be so many arduous and unpleasant things that come along with owning a car.

First is buying a car.  I hate the feeling that someone may be taking advantage of me because of my own ignorance, which seems to be hard to avoid when buying a car--particularly in the world of buying a cheap car, which is certainly the world I would be in.  I've thought of the idea of taking my dad on a car-buying expedition with me, but then I'd be a girl buying a car with her dad.  (Of course, I could just go the route my parents went when the faithful white minivan we called the Millennium Falcon refused to go above 40 miles an hour: a cash-only, no-questions-asked transaction with the dude who runs the body shop that backs up to our house.  We now have a lovely Malibu, thank you.)

Once you purchase the car, there is the matter of insuring the car (expensive), putting gas in the car (even more expensive), parking the car, worrying the car will get stolen or broken into, worrying that something will break on the car and will cost you thousands of dollars, worrying you'll get in an accident, worrying about parking tickets, speeding tickets, drunk driving, and on and on.  All this seems like altogether too much worrying to me.

I realize that I'm probably in the minority here with my opinion on cars.  I know that to many people, cars represent freedom, independence from parents, even fun.  Well, I guess you can find someone who thinks just about anything's fun.

/end rant

P.S. I probably will try to learn to drive again over winter break, if the weather in Baltimore, where cars are available for said practice, isn't too shitty.  My hope is to learn enough to use Zipcar when I absolutely have to drive somewhere.  But I'm not saying I'll be happy about it.

this is just a test. EARTHQUAAAAAKE!!!

Forget boring old fire drills. In California we have something even better: earthquake drills!

I have to say I was perhaps a little too excited to discover that next month my school will be participating in the Big One of earthquake drills--something called The Great Southern California Shakeout, which will simulate a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the southern end of the San Andreas fault. For those uninitiated in the Richter (or trendier moment magnitude) scale, that is approximately 5,000 times stronger than the Chino Hills earthquake that rattled California this summer, about a month before I moved there.

A pretty cool video of how the hypothetical earthquake would travel is available here. (White and yellow represent the worst shaking.) Watch for the little pocket of lingering trapped vibrations near the "Los Angeles" dot--East LA, you get fucked pretty hard in this scenario.



Here is a fun earthquake fact I learned while investigating this matter: standing in a doorway is not the safest thing to do in an earthquake! Turns out that piece of popular wisdom started about 100 years ago, when many houses in the area were built from unreinforced adobe bricks, and the doorframe was often the only part of the building that did not collapse in an earthquake. In moden-day buildings, which in this part of the country are built to withstand a hefty seismic shake, the doorway is no safer than any other part of the building. These days, you are far more likely to be injured by falling objects or broken window glass than to be in a building collapse, which is why modern earthquake experts recommend getting under a desk or table instead of heading for the nearest doorway. In a pinch, crouching against an interior wall will also do.

Just exactly how this simulation is going to play out remains somewhat of a mystery to me, but I'm quite intrigued by the official USC email that mentioned "simulated damage to university buildings" and "actors in makeup playing 'victims' who will wait for emergency response." Sweet!

Of course, at 10am on November 13, I will be in Nina Foch's class, and for some reason I doubt she will be participating in said drill. I will, however, try to look for some earthquake victims during the break.

things i miss about new york

My roommate, who has lived in LA for many years, can't understand what I miss about New York. She points out that it's noisy, crowded, outrageously expensive, smelly, unbearably hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and breeds pedestrian speeds and levels of aggressiveness that many would consider unnatural. In fact, the New York Times recently ran an article addressing how newcomers adjust to New York by becoming rude and walking faster.

Of course, all the complaints about New York are true. I'll be the first to admit that New York is an unforgiving place. So why then, does New York continue to have such a deep hold on my psyche that the stock footage on Project Runway makes me tear up a bit?

Of course, New York is the home of my girlfriend, my cats, and most of my friends, so naturally I miss being there. But it is also, undeniably, my home. Having to defend my city from its detractors (my other roommate is batting for Chicago) has forced me to think about what I really like, and miss, about New York, the city, itself.

I miss its compactness. In my opinion this is what makes a city a city and not a suburb. The roommate who has lived in LA for many years described how when she lived in Santa Monica everything she needed was in a five-mile radius. This seemed small to her. Five miles is a hundred New York City blocks. From NYU to Columbia. From the East Village to East Harlem. If you put a five-mile radius into Fandango in New York, you get theaters in Jersey.

I miss being able to buy groceries, shampoo, beer, five different kinds of takeout food, go to a movie and deposit a check without having to get on a bus.

I miss New York's diversity. Of course, LA is one of the most diverse cities in the world, but it's so spread out that you can still live in a bubble. The same roommate described how, for many years, certain of her friends wouldn't come to her house because it was in a predominantly black neighborhood. They lived on the west side, and they never left the west side. The city of LA was like a different world to them. In New York, even if you're racist, you can't help running into people different from you because everyone's smushed together all the time.

I miss its public transportation. Okay, you may have guessed this one already. But seriously, folks! It's not just that public transit in LA is shitty. It's that the traffic is equally shitty, so you can't win either way. You can take the bus, but it might take forty-five minutes to show up, or you might spend twenty minutes going three blocks, because traffic is abominable. Not to mention the added benefits of never needing a designated driver, not having to worry about getting a ride late at night, not having to worry about calling a cab (as in, dialing a phone number, not just standing on a street corner.)

I miss Kate's Joint, The Organic Grill, Cafe Bar, Tony Grocery, the New York Neo-Futurists, St. Mark's Books, Bluestockings, the awesome short haircut guy, Atlas, hearing friends play at the Living Room, shows at The PIT, Shakespeare in the Park, off-off-off-Broadway, the Perfect Pint, Vynl, even having a Starbucks or three on every corner.

I miss the diversity of things to do. Theater of every imaginable kind, music, dance, comedy, movies, yoga, a museum for everything, or just a nice place to eat, drink and hang out, a $2 subway ride away. I'm sure many of these things exist in LA, but it's different when you walk past them on your way to work every day.

I miss the artists. Here people don't say they're in the arts; they say they're in THE INDUSTRY. I think of all the many friends and friends of friends I know who are amazing musicians, great actors, writers and directors. Most of them don't make any money doing what they're doing--often the reverse. There seems to be a different psychology here. When there's billions of dollars involved, people expect to be paid for their art. Whaaat, you say? Well, it's both good and bad. Of course, people should be able to make a living doing what they're good at and what they love. That's what every artist wants. The problem, however, is that when money's involved, everyone ends up doing something just for the money sooner or later.

Yeah, yeah. This may seem like an obvious point. But it's been on my mind a lot, since the LA style of art-making gets hammered home pretty hard at USC. And not without good reason--this is the reality of THE INDUSTRY and they are preparing us for it. You get work by working. You're professionals and this is a business. Everyone does jobs for money sometimes. Network!!!!!! Make connections. Get people's business cards. Get your own business cards. Get your foot in the door. Be strategic. How will this help your career?

I'm not trying to romanticize one way of working and villify the other (although it may sound that way). It sucks to have a day job you don't care that much about that saps time and energy from your creative work. But when you're working for free, at least most people stop and think about whether they really love each and every project.

I have gotten a bit off track here. In struggling to describe New York to aforementioned roommate one night, I blurted out "New York is like a mean parent." I think I like that description. It has a lot to offer, but it makes you learn all the lessons the hard way. You might grumble and resent it when you're around it, but it's not until you leave that you realize, deep down, you really did love it after all.

make it work!

I realize it has been almost two weeks since I last posted an update. I'm sure you're all eagerly waiting to here what adventures I have been getting up to. Oh, and adventures there have been! Since my last post I've rollerskated (disaster), learned to play blackjack on a haunted cruise ship (surprisingly fun), been to the beach (where a small child on a bodyboard nearly took me down), and visited what must be the world's cleanest mall. But more on all that later. I want to talk about my actual classes first.

Having now successfully completed almost two weeks of school now, I can safely say that this is gonna be hella fun. I think the program can best be described as "writing boot camp." Their strategy is to break screenwriting down into its most basic elements and really teach you to strengthen each one of those elements before doing so much as writing a line of dialogue.

Everyone has two writing classes with different teachers, and I really like both of mine.  In both these classes we spend most of our time doing writing and storytelling excercises. While games like "Two Truths and a Lie" might seem a bit elementary for an MFA program, it's actually been incredibly helpful. I have taken a lot of writing classes, but it's been a really long time since any teacher forced me to break down screenwriting into its most basic elements. It's kind of like the Project Runway of screenwriting: each week there is a new challenge, usually with many restrictions placed upon it. The exercises might seem easy, but after class usually everyone has found things they can improve in what they wrote, even if it's just a two-page non-dialog scene.

I must pause to share a really funny story from Braun's class. In the first class, we each had to tell a story about where we grew up. This woman Alice, who has a very strong Southern accent, was talking about growing up in Columbus, GA, which sounded very familiar to me for some reason. Then she said "Oh, and there's also a huge military base there, Ft. Benning." And I was like "I TOTALLY GOT ARRESTED THERE!!!" And she started laughing because she knew it was for the School of the Americas protest and when she was little her family used to be a host family for foreign nationals (mostly Saudis) studying at the School of the Americas. I hadn't been aware there was a host program. I guess I'd assumed that these people stayed on the base. In any case, the idea of Saudi generals and princes sitting down to eat fried chicken and grits with Alice's family in between lessons on counterinsurgency was somehow the most weird and hilarious thing I could think of.

In addition to our two writing classes and one critical studies class, everyone in our year has one four-hour marathon uberclass together with the singular Nina Foch. Nina is 84, swears like a sailor, and will shame you to tears if you are so much as a minute late for her class--to the point that almost everyone now shows up 10 minutes early. Her class is called "Directing the Actor," and so far has involved equal parts directing, acting, and skin-thickening. Nina's criticisms (which are frequent) are always blunt and sometimes unclear. Luckily her random stories about working on some-or-another famous movie are also frequent and often hilarious. It seems the best strategy for this class is to keep your head down, not get defensive, and hope to come out of it with a tiny percentage of the vast knowledge about acting and directing she has amassed over the years.

More to come shortly!