There are many ways in which we imagine that future generations (or visiting aliens) will study modern life. Reruns of I Love Lucy. Tabloid newspapers.
But to those scholars of the future (or of other planets) who might enjoy more painstaking research, I say, follow the spellchecker.
I was an early adoptor of the word processor. This isn’t important to my story, but you won’t begrudge me my moment in the sun: my dad bought me an IBM Displaywriter in 1982. It had 8” floppies and no hard drive, and, with the printer, cost $10,000. That would be about $120,000 today. (Well, no, but it feels like it, if you’re house-hunting, anyway.)
I loved my Displaywriter, and my only regret is that, after letting it sit in the basement for some years, I had it hauled away, rather than donating it to the Tech Museum in San Jose. (I am including a picture from Google Images.) When friends saw it for the first time, they were amazed; five years later those same “friends” scoffed, “where’d you find that, a dumpster in back of Circuit City?”
In 1991, I finally did get something more-up-to date. It was a Toshiba, and I don’t remember if it came with WordPerfect installed, or if I had to pay extra, but that was what I used. I loved WordPerfect. It had its own printed manual written with easy-to-follow instructions. I declined to use a mouse, in favor of memorizing the commands, which I did in two days. Granted, it had many fewer features than what we’ve become accustomed to, but as a woman who learned to “keyboard” on a manual typewriter, I felt like Chuck Yaeger.
When WordPerfect proofed the document for me, it highlighted “internet,” and yes, “Internet” as a misspelled words. I’m sure it would have highlighted “google” and “Google” as misspelled, too, if those words had existed.
I use Microsoft Word now, like the rest of the planet, except for parts of Upper Michigan (just kidding—no letters please) and I regard the spellchecker as a gatekeeper and chronicler of modern culture. Word acknowledges all of the following: convo, personkind, paywall, kerfuffle, clickbait, and pothead. All but the last of these are recent entries in the lexicon. The word “spellcheck,” is obviously there, too. (I’m glad that Word doesn’t put itself in the role of moral arbiter, the way that the iPhone does, when it tries to change the F word to “duck.”)
The Word spellchecker is multicultural. The following Yiddish words are included: nebbish. Chutzpah. Schmoose. Kibitz. Those aren’t so surprising, but, “schnorrer”? “mamzer”? How did they get in there, when “schmendrick” and “gonif” didn’t make the cut?
I do wonder who decides these things. Why isn’t “rager” on the list yet? Is there something my daughter isn’t telling me? Why are Snoop Dogg and Eminem recognized, but not Chris Hemsworth? Would he have made it if Snow White and the Huntsman had done better box office overseas?
And spellcheck isn’t just a gluttonous blob that swallows everything that appears on Facebook more than twice. The word “quoth,” as in “quoth the raven,” is no longer considered legit. Neither is “shoppe.” If I had the energy to read Chaucer, I know could find a lot more.
The other day I typed “coolsculpting.” I was doing research, which is what I will say if and when someone checks my browsing history and sees terms like “untraceable poison” and “highly recommended rehab centers.” When Word underlined coolsculpting in red, I experimented by making the first letter uppercase: Coolsculpting. Et voila! (Apparently, “voila” is, um, kosher.) This tells me that the future of this new technology, which aims to replace liposuction, is secure.
What our descendants, let alone aliens, with think of our Botox, doublethink, and techspeak world, is less clear.
We first became aware of Kevin Schreck from his documentary Persistence of Vision, the story of Richard Williams’ three-decades-long effort to make his animated masterpiece, The Thief and the Cobbler. Schreck’s documentary, which recounted Williams’ loss of control over his work, was such an impressive piece of storytelling, and it was so dramatically unlikely, it could have been a great piece of fiction. (The critics agreed; the film received the sort of sweeping acclaim more seasoned filmmakers could only dream of.) Along with The Recobbled Cut, Garrett Gilchrist’s fan reconstruction, Schreck’s work helped bring attention and acclaim to a lost masterpiece. Since then, Schreck has filmed Tangent Realms: The Worlds of C.M. Kösemen, about the artist and paleontologist (among other things), and is presently trying to fund a new film, a process that has proved more complicated and expensive than expected.
AUDERE: You’re currently raising money for your documentary about Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo, a Philadelphia-based rapper. How did you come across her, and why do you think her story makes a great movie?
SCHRECK: I was actually going to see a rapper who I had known about since middle school perform in Manhattan, and saw that he had several openers before his set. I figured I’m already paying for the ticket, and might as well see as much as I could with an open mind. Most of the artists were nerdy white guys who looked like me and who embraced that identity and had a comedic angle to their sets, which was great and all. But the very first performer of the evening was this woman who went by the stage name “Sammus.” She was rapping about not seeing enough faces that looked like hers in the cartoons, movies, and video games she consumed as a child in the 1980s and 1990s. The second verse was a cappella, and she had tears streaming down her face, and was yelling at the top of her lungs. She had something to say, and EVERYBODY in the audience listened. But it wasn’t just the subject matter that was evocative; it was her very presence. Her set wasn’t a phony, performative sort of thing; this was raw, visceral, honest, and she was baring herself to all of us. She was completely sincere, and she was a real artist. We were all blown away. I told her that night that she was the best part of the evening. She was extremely humble and grateful, even a little shy, which surprised me, but was also a relief, I think. So the more I read about her, the more it turned out that she had a very compelling backstory, one that was simultaneously specific and complicated, but also had all of these very universal, relatable qualities.
Williams himself, with his obsessions, was a great dramatic character. What is it about Enongo that makes her a great character for a film?
Like most people, once you get to know them, you really can’t distill Enongo down to just a few labels. She’s a Black woman, she’s a first-generation American, a daughter of West African immigrants, she’s a musician who produces her own beats, while also a scholar striving to attain her doctorate at Cornell, and she loves video games and cartoons. She has mental health battles, financial concerns, anxieties about being herself, living as an artist, etc. Every anecdote and story that she shared, whether in a song or in an interview, I knew someone close to me who had experienced something extremely similar, and even multiple experiences that I personally related to, even though we come from different upbringings. So her story instantly connected to me, and had these tangible, universal truths. Like the ideas that eventually become projects of mine, Sammus was someone I couldn’t shake. I just became more and more fascinated the more I learned. The more I got to know Sammus the rapper, the more I began to learn about Enongo the person.
It seems that one of the big barriers to finishing your film is raising money for the animation. Why was it important to include animation in this film?
Enongo herself is a spectacular orator and storyteller. We shot over seven hours of interviews in just a few days during our first month of filming, and this became the backbone of what the story could be. But film is ultimately a visual medium, and while Enongo has all of these important, essential anecdotes about growing up as the only Black girl in school in Upstate New York or grappling with depression and anxiety or her worries about the future, we didn’t really have a visual record that illustrated those vital aspects of her narrative. With documentary filmmaking, you go in, see what pieces you have, see what’s missing, and try to arrange a sort of Frankenstein’s monster out of all of these disparate parts to make one cohesive, visual story. But we were lacking visuals for some of these really pivotal sections of her story. The opposite of the documentary filmmaking puzzle is a process in which you have complete control over the visuals, and that’s animation.
Did you have any hesitation in making your movie part-“cartoon”?
I love animation, but I was initially very hesitant to use it, partly because I knew it would make the film significantly more expensive, and partly because I have rarely seen animation used in live-action documentaries that was very effective. For me, it often feels very hokey and slapped on, like it was an after-thought added in desperation with little care applied to it. But you can do anything in animation, so there’s no reason not to try to make something special. It was very clear that we needed to include these sections about Enongo’s past and internal thoughts in the film to make it work. Even though most of the movie is live-action and follows her on the road and working on her next album and performing, we needed to know who she was and where she came from. So these ten or so minutes of animation constitute a small fraction of the film, but they are absolutely essential, and this animation allows us to get to a cinematic, emotional truth that was completely unattainable in live-action documentary footage because we now had complete control over the medium. As a result, the film is now twice as expensive as before, but ten times better. It does not work without the animation.
Why was it important to you that the animators be Black women?
My first priority when hiring anyone is always to find talent, and the talent I was after was people who could make hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation. I didn’t want to go with any tweening or CG modeling; I wanted that authentic, handmade quality that truly felt like drawings coming to life. The second priority was whether or not those talented at that style of animation were available. I knew there were tons of immensely talented animators who could work freelance on this project, but I also knew that this had to be a passion project for everyone onboard. I didn’t want this to just be a gig to pay bills; I really needed some creative guidance and wisdom from whoever I was going to hire to help bring Enongo’s story to life in a very personal, honest way. I knew right from the start of making the film that it was important to get people who understood Enongo’s journey, and also that here was this artist who makes a big point to uplift and provide opportunities for Black women and people of color in her work and messages, and it would be hypocritical to her values and to my own values not try to walk the walk as best as we could. I had already experienced this while filming with Sammus on tour, too. When we would hire freelance camera operators, the best footage came from the cinematographers who didn’t necessarily have the fanciest gear or the longest resume, but from the cinematographers who understood the subject matter, cared about the subject matter, and did their very best to show that they were capable of making this project as good as it could be. And more often than not, those people were Black or women or people of color. They were literally the best for the job because they did the best on the job, and those were the people that I would rehire.
Therefore, I wanted to try the same when animation started to become a necessity.
Where did you find all these animation collaborators?
Just to see what I might find, as an experiment, I would casually ask friends if they knew any Black women in animation. Some didn’t, some did. But there were TONS of them. There was hardly any shortage of them to be found. I found our entire crew in about two or three nights of casual Internet searching. They’re out there, and their work is superb. And I wasn’t about to hire just anyone who was a Black woman animator; they had to fit all of our criteria: they had to be skillful at the style we were trying to achieve, they had to be available, and they had to really care about the subject matter. That last part was essential, because they weren’t just going to make drawings move as animators; they would also have to pitch their visualized story to me, draft the storyboards, design characters, props, and environments. They essentially had to make their own short animated film nestled inside of a bigger documentary project, and that kind of work isn’t just a gig, it’s a real commitment.
Do you think matters that you, the director of the movie, is neither Black nor female?
I’m just some dorky white guy from Minnesota, so while I relate to a lot of Enongo’s journey, I don’t know exactly what it was like to have the experiences she had. It’s good to be humble to that reality, but it’s also wise to collaborate with folks who know something about these experiences. These animators truly related to the material, and were kind of cast as such like actors are to a role. Each animator is working on a chapter of Enongo’s life that they personally connect with: the artists who found inspiration and refuge in video games during childhood are working on sequences about that; the artists who have dealt with mental health and trauma are bringing those sections to life; the artists who grapple with balancing academia and art and family in their lives much like Enongo are animating and boarding those scenes. They are putting themselves into the story while telling our protagonist’s story, and I needed that authenticity to make it work. It’s not just in animation on Enongo; women and people of color and especially Black women are our crew’s majority throughout the film, in cinematography, production, music, even outreach and fundraising. They have proven that they are the best for the job, and I am immensely humbled and fortunate to have this opportunity to collaborate with these talented artists and storytellers. They get it and they can do it.
Your films, so far, seem designed to give attention to otherwise obscure artists, or obscure art. While Richard Williams was not himself obscure, you chose the most obscure thing about his life – his unfinished film – rather than his many moments of triumph.
I’ve actually rarely thought of these artists as obscure. I suppose their relative obscurity is an afterthought for me. The creative process and its trials and tribulations certainly appeal to me, but my goal is always to tell a good story, and that all boils down to the human element. So whether an artist is famous or not doesn’t matter to me. Of course, the subjects I typically focus on have been artists, usually because their craft is an entry point into their narratives, and because I’m a fan of their work. But it’s what their art tries to achieve — whether through animation, painting, or music — and what it tries to say about the human condition or just their own personal dreams and desires and anxieties that matters to me.
Look at this another way – Persistence of Vision was really acclaimed, it got a lot of attention. You might have taken those accolades and approached someone already-known, and try to get some money from Amazon or Netflix for a higher profile documentary, rather than C.M. Kösemen. Did you consciously choose not to make a documentary about a more celebrated artist?
Documentaries that are just pure celebrations (basically advertisements) of somebody really bore me, and I find them insulting to the subject onscreen and to the audience watching it. I want to know that person and find out what makes them who they are, which in turn makes their art even more special. That’s where it goes beyond becoming a fawning, myopic, fanboy’s tribute to an artist and instead hopefully becomes the kind of movie that I would much rather see and therefore make: a well-rounded, accurate character portrait of a human being who is certainly remarkable, but also as complicated and complex and human as we all are.
It has seemed to many people that you and Garrett Gilchrist managed to change the way Richard Williams, already a great artist when you made your movie, will forever be viewed by cinema historians. How has that impacted your own choice of subject matter?
I don’t think it has impacted my work much at all, to be honest. Maybe it should have for financial reasons! But there are plenty of documentaries out there about the Beatles or Elvis or whatever. I don’t need to contribute to that discourse, however lucrative it might be. I want to tell a good story, and I think I’ve found that even if my subjects work in different art forms than me or grew up during different times or on different continents than me or if they look different from me, I wind up making movies about people that I relate to in some way. With Persistence of Vision, I recognized that Richard Williams was a genius of animation, but also feared becoming that obsessive over a singular project like he did. In the case of Tangent Realms, Memo was almost like my long-lost Turkish brother, who had all of these fascinations with science and nature and history and mythology, but was ultimately finding something about himself in that process, which is something I could connect with. As for Enongo, she’s like this multifaceted, complex microcosm of what it is to be a hardworking, creative millennial at this point in time in early 21st-Century America, so even though we look different and had different upbringings, we do have at least some things in common that struck me on a very tangible, personal level.
Is your life plan to make masterpieces about other geniuses, or is there a next step, in which your own voice and views will take center stage in your work?
My movies are portraits of people, first and foremost, and I guess they’re additionally usually about artists and outsiders and dreamers and people who are maybe a little self-destructive or their own biggest critic but are the person who is doing most of the work to get where they want to be. But those descriptions are not criticisms of them; they’re compliments. Who wants to watch a movie or hear a story about a boring, ordinary person who aspires to being very little, has few ambitions in life, and coasts along smoothly, and then dies? I can’t relate to that. Ultimately, I guess that means I’m sort of making films about myself, in some convoluted way. So I don’t really need to literally put myself in my movies, thank goodness. That can be a really exhausting, arrogant trope, anyway. No need to do that if your subject is already interesting.
I was a little surprised to learn that an acclaimed filmmaker like you needs to go out and get a job, rather than just making films. Why is that?! Do you think there should be more government funding for the kind of thing you do?
The Canadians really seem to have it figured out with the NFB up there, but when I was at festivals in Vancouver and Toronto, the artists would opine that it ain’t like the old days anymore. I don’t really know the politics of it to comment on that. But I can say it’s a curse of sorts that filmmaking is virtually the most expensive art form. Practically all filmmakers need to have a day job or make a bunch of work just to stay afloat, and they still beg for money regardless; they just don’t all beg on social media for money like I and others have to in addition to having a job! They keep that secret because that aspect of filmmaking is not very glamorous, but it’s essential to the process.
Is the issue filmmaking itself, or the kinds of movies you want to make?
This is part of why Martin Scorsese had these grievances about superhero movies dominating our media landscape: there’s less money and space for other, smaller, more unique projects as a result. It wasn’t merely an aesthetic argument; it was a practical argument. You gotta have a franchise, you gotta have merchandising, you gotta have a familiar property that executives will comfortably throw money at, because they don’t want to gamble on anything new or different. It’s not just Scorsese, either. For every Edward Scissorhands or Corpse Bride or Frankenweenie Tim Burton has made, he’s had to make a Batman or a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or an Alice in Wonderland to convince those with the cash to allow him to make those passion projects.
But there are filmmakers with wide audiences, who can make smaller movies on a budget, and who don’t want to make Marvel movies.
Even these “mid-budget” filmmakers like John Waters or John Carpenter — who have massive cult followings and are very economical — have basically said they can’t make the movies they want to make anymore because there’s no room or money for it, so they now pursue lives in their later years as authors or musicians, respectively — art forms that are a lot less expensive than filmmaking. I’m sure those guys could make a killing on Indiegogo with their fan bases if they wanted. Jan Svankmajer used crowdsourcing for his final film. But it’s hard. Making a documentary about an enormously-talented rapper who doesn’t have millions of followers on Instagram or Twitter and also has beautiful, original, hand-drawn animation is not easy to make, and we need people who want to see that kind of content to help make it happen.
How long can you keep working this way?
Werner Herzog once said the average lifespan of a person as a filmmaker is about 10-15 years, and then they burn out and give up and just settle on a life with an ordinary job because the money isn’t there and it’s exhausting. I’m well-past the 10-year mark, getting closer to 15 years now. I don’t think I’m going to burn out anytime soon, but if someone told me I could never make another film again, I guess a sort of unofficial trilogy of feature-length documentaries about artists is a pretty good run. It wouldn’t make me happy, though. I might evolve in another direction as a filmmaker, not out of lack of interest in these themes, but because there are so many stories to tell. Maybe make films about science or nature or more global issues, rather than just character studies or artists. But I’ve also told myself that each film would be less intense and easier to make than the last, and that turned out to be a major miscalculation.
Will you keep making documentaries?
Thankfully, documentaries are cheaper to produce than narrative features, but they’re still a lot of money (especially if you discover you need original animation halfway through production). I used to think after every film I made, even the shorts I made as a teenager, that this would be the last one, because I spent all this time and energy and these resources, and I have zero ideas following it. Now, I have more ideas than ever before. You just need to convince others that these dreams are worth fighting for. We’re all in it together.
^^^
If you wish, you may contribute to the Enongo documentary here.
We won big in Virginia, and we also won in Kentucky, of all places. (By “we,” I mean the Dems, with whom I caucus, but only because there is no Trotskyite party.)
The key to winning elections
It turns out that people don’t love it when the government threatens to take away their health care. This is a central key to beating Trump in 2020. Once this idiotic impeachment distraction is over, let’s promise to preserve and protect, and improve, the health care system in America.
Look, if God existed, and if I were God, and if I were creating the world from out of darkness and light, I guess I would give humans a better health care system. It would be free, and provided by the government. I would also make human beings good (rather than bad), so that the system would run without corruption.
But we cannot start fresh. We have the healthcare system that we have; it is Obamacare, and although there is plenty to improve, Obamacare can work. If we merely promise to improve Obamacare (which we know how to do), the insurance industry, which employs so many Americans, and, through workplaces, insures so many Americans, will remain in place, which avoids economic disruption. Individuals who are self-employed, or who do not receive insurance through their employers, buy through state-run insurance exchanges. If we return to the original mandate, everyone must have insurance, even healthy people who otherwise would take their chances, and prices come back down. Americans who cannot afford insurance on the exchanges get a subsidy. And (in another improvement) those who prefer Medicare may buy in to Medicare. This was an important element in the original plan, which didn’t make it past Joe Lieberman’s treachery.
How Dems can win
Instead of Protect and Improve Obamacare, Dems are saying this: Remember the last time we were in power, a brief three years ago? Remember how we gave you Obamacare? Wow, oops! It was really bad! Sorry about that!
Not a good slogan. And not even true.
People actually like their healthcare; they want it improved, but they don’t want it to go away. And people are afraid of change. Dems could be the party promising to protect and improve everyone’s healthcare. Or they can scream, Medicare for all! which lets Trump, ironically but correctly, claim to be the protector of the current healthcare system.
Don’t do it, Dems!
A better idea
If you want to do something big and disruptive, I direct your attention to the Green New Deal, which will revitalize the U.S. economy by pouring government resources in new green industries, and it will save the world.
You know, I’m all in favor of better healthcare, but if we don’t have a planet to live on, what is healthcare good for?
It’s been years since we went to Al Seabu, the great Malaysian seafood restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn. But while Al Seabu has been out of business since 2017, and its replacements have changed several times since it has been gone, its sign still survives, still lit up, on the side street over its side entrance, which once offered take out. Its Twitter account also survives, inactive — its last tweet was March 9, 2017 — but alive.
Which is to say not much of anything, except that in this changing city, this New Brooklyn, I have daily and nightly evidence that this restaurant, which I loved so much, once did exist.
R. S. Penney: I have a condition called keratoconus, which means that my corneas are warped and my vision is impaired. This began to manifest in my left eye when I was twenty-three. I remember driving home from Toronto and seeing this blur of colored lights on my left side. I told my optometrist about this, but, unfortunately, she just kept saying, “Oh, your vision changes as you get older.” I remind you that I was twenty-three.
So, unfortunately, the condition progressed to the point where the cornea in my left eye had to be replaced. I hit my lowest point in the spring of 2012. I was twenty-nine. At that point, I was coping with lots of headaches and lots of dizzy spells. That, combined with various life difficulties, put me into a deep depression. For a year, I couldn’t write at all. I reached into my head for ideas, and there was just nothing there.
That was terrifying for me because I have always been a storytelling machine. For as long as I can remember, I couldn’t turn off my imagination. But in the summer of 2012, my imagination just … shut down.
Now, it was a long process, clawing my way out of that pit. I went to the doctor and tried to figure out the source of the headaches. It wasn’t until the summer of 2013 that I got a diagnosis. I started taking medication to deal with the depression.
In the fall of 2013, I had a flash of inspiration. The Justice Keepers Saga was something I had wanted to write ever since I was a teenager. I went through so many drafts that ended up in a garbage can. Finally, I had an idea of how I could get back to basics: stop trying to show all the world-building in the first novel. Just do a tight story about a boy and a girl standing together against the forces of evil. That story became Symbiosis.
I had surgery in the summer of 2014 to replace my cornea. I went into the operating room two days after finishing the first draft of Symbiosis. It was about a month and a half of recovery before I could even look at a screen, and in that time, I was right back down in the pit of despair.
I knew I had to keep writing; if I didn’t, I would sink into depression again. So, I started Friction. The next two Justice Keepers novels — Friction and Entanglement — were quite possibly the most difficult of my career. Your eyes heal very slowly. It took over a year for my vision to stabilize.
Combine headaches, dizzy spells and the specter of depression whispering in your thoughts, and it’s very hard to write indeed. I would lose my train of thought in the middle of a sentence. I would forget why I started a paragraph. And here’s the thing: when you can’t see straight, you make more typos. (Don’t sell those books short; my editor and I corrected those flaws.)
I’ve always been good at plot twists and character development, but in the last four years, I’ve gotten a lot better at the nuts and bolts of novel writing. My sentences are more elegant; my vocabulary is broader. I sometimes wish that I could remake those early books with the skill I have now. Though a lot of fans tell me I’m too hard on my early work.
The thing is, I had to write them. Honestly, writing was the thing that drove the suicidal thoughts away. I had to write those books, and I had to do it with a body and mind that were not in the peak of health.
So if you’re struggling with an illness and art is the thing that keeps you going, my advice to you is this: give yourself permission to screw up. You know, it’s like that Pink song? “I was always in a fight because I can’t do nothing right.” I’ve never been into Top-40 pop, but that one always resonated with me. In fact, Jack Hunter embracing his identity as a screw-up is going to be a major theme in upcoming Justice Keeper books.
Treasure that spark of creativity; work through the pain to turn that inspiration into something tangible, and don’t be afraid to mess up. And if you ever need advice, feel free to reach out on Twitter. I like to help other artists.
R.S. Penney is the author of the Justice Keepers Saga. His latest novel Desa Kincaid: Bounty Hunter, is currently available in paperback and ebook. Follow him on Twitter.
I lived in Europe in the mid-70s, and but didn’t visit Germany on principle. The Holocaust was only 30 years old. That’s like 1989 in our money.
But speaking of money, there aren’t even Deutschemarks, let alone Reichsmarks, anymore: they use euros. Things have changed. And my middle daughter, Elena, had visited Berlin two summers before and loved it.
So, on our trip to Italy last May, we tacked on a few days in Berlin.
I hired a tour guide for a few hours for the first morning. His name was Jan, but it’s pronounced “Yan,” which I learned after greeting him with the name of the middle Brady Bunch sister.
I’ll admit it. I liked Berlin better than I liked Rome, or even Venice. I felt more at home there: most of the city is new, for reasons that are probably obvious. (If not, google “Battle of Berlin.”) Also, it’s a very cosmopolitan city, cosmopolitan in this case being dog whistle for “immigrants.” The barista at Starbucks (of course there’s a Starbucks—on the same street as our hotel!) was Asian, and for entitled American visitors such as we, she has to learn not only German, but English.
And people are friendly. There was a particularly nice lady at the flea market who, although I speak no German and she spoke no English, seemed to be complimenting me on the color of my (dyed) hair. Then again, when I can’t understand someone, I am wont to assume they are giving me a compliment.
But back to Jan: He was a fun and knowledgeable guide, and I guess he didn’t hold it against me that I began our acquaintance by calling him by a girl’s name. He started us off with some historical monuments that survived the war, or have been reconstructed, and then, inevitably, moved onto more recent events: the buildings that housed Gestapo offices, you know, cheerful stuff like that.
Then he escorted us down a nondescript street, where we stopped at a square of unpaved ground. “Look down,” he said. “this is where Hitler’s bunker was.” He told us about Hitler’s last days, stories I was mostly familiar with, but which were all the more powerful coming from a native German.
He also explained that they (“they” in this case being either local authorities, or the German government, or somebody in power, anyway) purposely did not mark the spot, lest it become a shrine for neo-Nazis.
We were moved, and reassured, by this, though later I thought, he could have taken us anywhere and said that Hitler’s bunker was beneath us. Good story, though.
I didn’t tell Jan that we’re Jewish. I didn’t want to make him self-conscious. Granted, with the last name “Levin,” I might as well be wearing giant Star of David earrings, but the reservation was under my husband’s name, and though my husband is Jewish, too, his name is one of those ambiguous ones that can be German, or even Nordic. There’s even an Ibsen play, Pillars of the Community, in which the main character has the same name as my spouse.
However, about three-quarters of the way through our tour I let the expression “oy vey,” and therefore the kippah-wearing cat, slip out of the bag. Jan didn’t react: maybe he thought “oy vey” was a quaint California thing, like surfer-slang for “these waves be high, Dude,” but more likely, it was obvious we were Jewish from the beginning.
After this first guided tour, my daughters and I took ourselves around on Berlin’s enviable public transit system. I paid for day passes for us, to the tune of 60 euros, but you don’t punch the ticket, or hand it to anyone. It’s crazy: for the whole time we were there, no one ever asked to see proof that we’d paid. It’s done entirely on the honor system. Can you imagine how that might work in the U.S.?
Only when I was back home did it occur to me that this is a cultural phenomenon. Germans play by the rule. In other words, they follow orders. I guess when it comes to public transit, it’s a good thing.
On our second day, we spent a couple of hours at the Berlin Wall museum, which is central to the tourist’s experience. It was sad to see the stories of the people who died trying to get to West Berlin only months before the wall came down; also sad to see how families were divided for decades. I watched the wall come down, on television, at least, in 1989. Hey—weren’t we just talking about 1989? What a coincidence!
The funny thing is that I started this piece intending to write about how Jan asked me to post a review of his guideship on TripAdvisor. I did, and now I’m being bombarded with emails from TripAdvisor encouraging me to write more, so I can claim my reviewer badge. What is this compulsion to write reviews of everything, from paper towels (I like the “select-a-size”) to traffic lights (“Too long on the Spruce Street side!”)? My conclusion: many of us are way too high up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
By the way, there’s no hotel tax in Berlin. All is forgiven.
Photo by Levin [no relation]/Unsplash.
Donna Levin is the author of four novels, all of which are available from Chickadee Prince Books. Her latest novel, He Could Be Another Bill Gates, was published this month; it’s available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at the bookstore right across the street from your home. Please take a look.
“July 4 is a religious holiday,” he argues. After quoting a bunch of religious gobble from our founding fathers, with John F. Kennedy tossed in for good measure, he concludes,
So amid all the fireworks and barbecue smoke this July 4, consider pausing for a moment to reflect on the one our founding fathers called the Creator. As Kennedy realized, the American Revolution — and thus the country we live in today — started with God, and with the Founders’ belief in rights that are his gift to us.
Where does that leave the agnostics and the atheists today?
If July 4 is a religious holiday, what does it mean, as America increasingly turns away from religion. And what about the unabashedly religious holidays. How should they be celebrated. I am not talking about an atheist who might enjoy a good Christmas tree, or who let their kids dress up Halloween without a thought to the ancient Celts who truly believed that the Dead walked the Earth.
What is religion for?
I mean, is there any point to serious ritual without sincere belief?
I’ve been mulling this over for a while.
When the High Holidays ended last year, it occurred to me that there were lot of agnostics on the pews, because a lot of Jews are agnostic, and this is something that Jews do on Rosh Hashanah, either because the family expects it, or because they enjoy it, or because they have a lingering superstition, because agnostics think (hope?) that maybe there is some hope, or at least something to be afraid of.
I couldn’t find any statistics on how many Jews attend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but the answer is without doubt, More than usual. But what percentage truly believe that God is deciding their fate for the next year, that those who attend will survive the year if they atone properly, and that those who do not atone properly will die, that anyone who dies before his allotted 120 years is, by definition, a bad fellow. (Old people are worse than young people, apparently.) If you do not believe, should you be in shul that day. Should you fast? Many people do.
I wondered: is this kosher?
Can you be Jewish, or Christian, without God?
The internet has a lot to say about whether one can be Jewish without God.
Moment Magazine examined this in great detail seven long years ago (a very notable number of years in the Jewish cycle). But they didn’t really hit on the issue that I am thinking about.
A number of thinkers concluded either that it was impossible to be a Jewish atheist or that it was possible, because Judaism is also a culture, in addition to a religion. Tablet Magazine explored this online as well, and concluded that atheist Jews still feel like Jews. The Guardian offered a summation of humanist Jews, who “reject prayer, worship and most traditional religious ritual” in favor of “a secular interpretation of Jewish texts, religious holidays and practices to make them fit in with a more naturalistic perspective.”
Post-God Ritual?
But what they didn’t get at was this: once we have gone post-God, as it were, may we still celebrate the holidays? May we still appreciate what is good in them? On the web, only the Huffington Post got at this issue, and the answer was yes: one synagogue-going atheist said, “Atheism and Judaism are not contradictory, so to have an atheist in a Jewish congregation isn’t an issue or a challenge or a problem. It is par for the course. That is what Judaism is.”
Take this: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are good times to make amends, and the fasting helps. Do we need to imagine that we are doing this because God commanded it, or might we do it even if we believe it’s just a good idea?
Passover, an ideal holiday to celebrate our gratitude for freedom, is a bit like Thanksgiving, which began as a wildly religious holiday (just read the original presidential proclamations declaring a day of Thanksgiving, if you doubt me).
Thanksgiving is now as secular as Macy’s, and no one even pauses to wonder whom we are thanking.
Isn’t Purim a great time to put on costumes and drink too much, whether one believes that God wants us to drink till we don’t know the difference between Cursed be Haman and Blessed be Mordechai?; isn’t Simchat Torah a wonderful time to dance through the streets with friends whether one believes that God wrote the Torah that we are holding aloft?
Just as Christmas will roll along without Jesus, just as Halloween will survive without paganism, couldn’t we study all night long on Shavuot without God promising that we will live another year if we do so?
Couldn’t we at least eat cheesecake and enjoy the good tunes? Rabbi Carlebach, after all, wrote some good ditties, before he was exposed in the Me-Too era.
Look, this is not something that a rabbi will proclaim, but could one be religiously Jewish without a belief in God? Or, perhaps, without a belief that God has commanded our particular holidays?
Post-Jesus Christianity?
While I naturally think mostly about Jewish ritual, this question applies to any religion. What does Communion say, for example, to a cultural Christian who may not believe that Jesus is the messiah. Is there a value to it? “Cultural Christian” Alana Massey argued a few years ago in the Washington Post in favor of taking “Christ out of Christianity,” and Trevor Wax, in a rebuttal, argued that she was wrong, but that she should be welcomed into the Church nevertheless.
Massey’s “cultural Christianity” is not Christianity at all. Only in a world where the individual is the sole determiner of one’s identity does it make sense to say, “I want Christianity without Christ.” Imagine a teetotaler who wants to join a wine-tasting club (”I just love the fellowship!”) or a vegetarian who frequents a barbecue restaurant (”Vegans can’t compete with the smell of pork!”).
Well, shouldn’t an alcoholic be allowed to join the wine tasting club, just to hang out with old friends, while swigging grape juice. Shouldn’t a vegetarian join friends at a barbecue restaurant and order the salad? Must these two give up their lives and their friends?
Is religion the same way? May the atheist pray with her true believer friends and family? Or, by honoring the holidays that she believes are myths, does she help to perpetuate a culture in which we must “respect” people’s belief in nonsense?
Although it is not a religious holiday like Christmas or Easter, for many Americans July 4th is a time to reflect on God’s goodness to us as a nation. Molded into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia (which proclaimed our independence) are these words from the Bible: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10, KJV). Our legal system reflects our Judeo-Christian roots.
While we look with gratitude to the past on this July 4th, may we also look in faith to the future, and commit it and our lives to God and His will. The ancient words of the Psalmist are still true: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).
It’s not about politics in the partisan sense — it’s about democracy, it’s about freedom, it’s about individual liberties, it’s about pursuit of happiness. Not about politics, not about polarization, not about focusing on differences. It’s about one nation under God indivisible.”
I loved my Displaywriter, and my only regret is that, after letting it sit in the basement for some years, I had it hauled away, rather than donating it to the Tech Museum in San Jose. (I am including a picture from Google Images.) When friends saw it for the first time, they were amazed; five years later those same “friends” scoffed, “where’d you find that, a dumpster in back of Circuit City?”
Williams himself, with his obsessions, was a great dramatic character. What is it about Enongo that makes her a great character for a film?
Did you have any hesitation in making your movie part-“cartoon”?
R. S. Penney: I have a condition called keratoconus, which means that my corneas are warped and my vision is impaired. This began to manifest in my left eye when I was twenty-three. I remember driving home from Toronto and seeing this blur of colored lights on my left side. I told my optometrist about this, but, unfortunately, she just kept saying, “Oh, your vision changes as you get older.” I remind you that I was twenty-three.
I’ve always been good at plot twists and character development, but in the last four years, I’ve gotten a lot better at the nuts and bolts of novel writing. My sentences are more elegant; my vocabulary is broader. I sometimes wish that I could remake those early books with the skill I have now. Though a lot of fans tell me I’m too hard on my early work.
Where does that leave the agnostics and the atheists today?