Various Orchestras

Wow. I'm sitting here right now, willing my brain to pump out some witty and awe-inspiring post because this is one of my only spare moments this summer, and I would like to spend it by putting some uninterrupted effort into blogging. Obviously, that's not happening, and that's why you're reading this bullshit excuse for a post. It's interesting how inspiration evades you at the moments when you will it the most.

I suppose I might as well just do a boring little log of my day so far, and hope that the magic Pulitzer ink starts flowing on its own.

6:35am Wake up the sound of construction guys sawing two-by-fours right below my bedroom window. Thanks, construction guys. And please, don't stop yelling obscene sex stories to your coworkers. I really wanted to know what happened next.

It was either endure this, or close my window and boil like a lobster in my own sweat.

Great start to the day, nonetheless.

8:15am Head off to take my biochem midterm. Embarrassingly, this required the use of public transportation. I say that it is embarrassing because 96% of the time that I take the train, I either take the one going in the wrong direction and/or get off at the wrong stop. Luckily it was only full of respectable business people who pretended not to be laughing internally at my incompetence. 

9:00am Write the midterm. It was aiight.

11:40am Hand in my midterm to the midterm-handler guy, who tries to make some joke that I didn't get and just ended up staring at me awkwardly while I stared at him awkwardly, trying to make sense of said joke. After standing there for about four minutes, I asked him if I could go. He said that I could.

12:15pm Arrive at the mall, because what else is there to do on a Friday after writing a test? Certainly not more studying. Eat a cup of frozen yogurt three times the size of the suggested serving. I gotta celebrate somehow, and I'll be damned if it's by working out or eating a salad or whatever healthy people do. Frozen yogurt's healthy anyway. I think.

12:30pm Go cray at the grocery store because all I had for lunch was that frozen yogurt and it is definitely not filling me up. I may or may not have bought Lunchables. I'm an independent adult who can make her own decisions. That also involves Top Dogs, because my body isn't allowed to eat real food. 

GET IN MY DIGESTIVE TRACT, YOU DELICIOUS FAKE HAMBURGERS.

I hate the word "tract." It just sounds so icky. Like tract infection. Bleh. I think I'll start calling it Digestive Avenue. That's much less disturbing. 

1:15pm Curse as my grocery bags simultaneously break and stuff goes flying everywhere.   I would have brought reusable bags, but I'm a cheap ass and need those plastic bags for garbage bags. Like I'm actually gonna buy garbage bags. Last time I checked, I wasn't Martha Stewart. That'll also be the day that I stop using laundry detergent as face wash. It's all the same shit. Plus, a bottle of Tide lasts forever if you get the 3x concentrated kind.

In retrospect, I realize that plastic bags with gigantic Disney-princess-pasta-can-shaped holes in them are not really that great for future use. But that still doesn't mean I'm going to buy garbage bags.

1:40pm Pass the HMV in the mall, briefly ponder how HMV is still in business, and then remember that THEY HAVE THE GREAT GATSBY SOUNDTRACK IN THERE. Proceed into the store trying not to look too ecstatic, casually pick up the CD, have the sales girl come up to you and ask you if you need any help, watch as she gets just as animated as you once she sees that you're holding the Great Gatsby soundtrack, and have a fifteen-minute long conversation with her about the casting of the movie. Stop talking to her once she tells you that she doesn't really like Leonardo Dicaprio. Buy CD.

(I should probably acknowledge the fact that I'm buying a physical CD, which is just as unusual to me as it likely sounds to you. I believe the last CD I bought was in early 2008, at which time I got an iPod and never looked back. There used to be this notion that if you really valued the artist and their work, you'd buy the physical CD, because it's more substantial and you get the little booklet with pictures and stuff. I know that 70% of the reason I would buy albums was for those little booklets. I exclusively bought Taylor Swift's albums to decipher the little messages she wrote with capital letters in the song lyrics. Obviously it was not because I liked her music. Obviously I couldn't just look up those passive-aggressive messages on the internet. 

But now iTunes gives you an online booklet or those weird EP things and whatnot, so it's irrelevant, and there's the whole illegal download thing. I guess having the physical copy means something to me because the movie means something to me, and I feel that it's nicely consistent with the vintage theme.

So there's that, plus I ran out of money on my iTunes account.)

2:00pm Get on the train to go home, and (expectedly) get off at the wrong station. Hop back onto the train before anyone notices. 

Lots of people noticed.

2:00pm Arrive at home and freak out in private about aforementioned CD. 

IT'S THE MOST GLORIOUS THING I'VE EVER OWNED.

(Besides my signed Miles Teller photograph. But that's a story for another day.)

I DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE BUT YOU'RE WEARING WAY TOO MUCH MAKEUP AND IT LOOKS FABULOUS.

Oh hey Leo, didn't see you there. How's it going?

And don't worry, I won't stop liking you because you've "been in too many movies." I bet that sales girl hates Meryl Streep, too. Lunatic. 

IT'S ALL SO BEAUTIFUL. Of all of the interpretations of the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg sign, I love this one the most. And the cover art. It's just a grand concept. 

Oh, and the music's quite good, too. Complex and beautiful, kind of like the orchestra that is a living creature. If you want to get philosophical about it, that is.

And well, I suppose that leads me to right now. Here's the plan for the rest of the day:

- work out (the word "plan" evidently does not refer to realistic goals)

- study hard (see above parentheses)

- make pasta (this one's attainable, if Kraft Dinner counts)

- party hard (it's Friday, y'all. Maybe I'll even finish watching this season of How I Met Your Mother. It's getting rowdy up in here)

- find a boyfriend (anything can happen on a night in with your amino acid cue cards and processed foodstuffs)

We'll see how all of that goes.

As a closing thought, there have been ads around the city for this mall called Southgate for months now. Only today did I notice that the ads were cleverly 1920s-themed. Whoever passed on not temporarily renaming the mall "Southgatesby," I should have your job. 

Well, at least they got the "great."

Gatsby and the All-Encompassing American Dream

I find it illustriously fitting that the day I start this blog is also the day that I am invited to see The Great Gatsby. Is it a sign? Perhaps an abandoned oculist sign rising from the ashes in gold-framed spectacles?

(Mild spoiler alert, but if you haven't read the book yet, I have no mercy for you. You've only had about 90 years to do so.)

Anyhow, I have been excited for this movie since the figurative beginning of time (which is literally about a year), despite not reading the book until only last week. In fact, before hearing of the movie, I knew very little about Gatsby; I knew it was a classic, but much like my preconceived notions of The Catcher in the Rye, assumed it was some dry old-person book that had a more appropriate place among pretentious bookshelves than in the hands of a true reader. Usually, classics disappoint me. The Catcher in the Rye was atrocious, in my opinion, and I hope never again to meet its "depressing" acquaintance. Gatsby, however, was something that I did not quite expect.

I can't quite remember how I came about its plotline; possibly it was through learning of Leonardo Dicaprio's golden casting and finally admitting to a friend, "What is this book about, because I haven't the faintest clue but it has the most enticing name and I wish to be a fan." It seemed to me a great mystery, and I'll be honest; I was terrified that I wouldn't like it. I so want to be one of those people who mutters, "Oh, yes, Hemingway, quite the drunk but what a minimalist talent," from behind a glass of champagne at some delectably tasteful soiree, and yet every time I read one of these so-called "great American" whatevers, I find myself disappointed. Granted, I haven't read Hemingway, but it's on my list of Books That I Must Read to Appear Cultured to My Well-Read Friends. Which is a physical list, by the way.

I had high expectations for Gatsby, and I'll admit, they weren't all met. In my opinion the book was much too short and was lacking in description. I say this reluctantly because I didn't want it to end, and also because Fitzgerald's writing is so stunningly eloquent that I do not at all want to chastise him for not delving into lengthy descriptions of the Jazz Age (the Valley of Ashes was one of the best descriptive passages I've ever read, and I wish there was more of its style throughout the novel). In truth, I wish the book had more description to it primarily because I wanted it to continue on and be even more fleshed out, but I can be an adult about this and accept something for what it is and learn to love it for all of its shortcomings, especially when they are so miniscule.

To me, The Great Gatsby is an incredible work. Gatsby, as an idea and not as an actual character, represents so much about the brightness of ambition. Indeed, it serves as its own wick and wax, proving that greatness can rise from a dream borne amongst nothing. However, as is obvious to anyone with semi-adequate critical analysis skills, the material greatness that Gatsby earns and is a symbol of proves to be an elaborate emptiness. Gatsby spends his entire life chasing a superficial fantasy, and though it is primarily powered by love, he finds himself both with everything and nothing at all.

Critics may play the refreshing antagonist and deny it, but Gatsby is the Great American Novel. Now, this is not because it is the best American novel, or even because it is the best representation of the American spirit (I will have to link this to some future review of Gone with the Wind). It is because it so accurately represents a dream, a dream that embodies the greatness within all of us that is struggling to break free and become real. Gatsby is the fatal flaw in the mentality of greatness; it is our goals and imaginations launching us into the demise of rightness. And that is why it is great.

The American Dream is a concept that has been on my mind for a while now, especially as I explore my own dreams and aspirations for the future and try to discern what is realistic. One part of me wants a stable, comfortable life with a solid job and family. Another part, a part fueled by creativity or Western greed or my own view of my potential, wants glamour, extravagance and a brilliant, reckless fastness in life that seems to only be successfully attained by the young, beautiful and wealthy. I know it's unrealistic and I know it's ridiculous in the context of average life, but I can't help but dream about it from the movies and music and TV shows, and of course, from Gatsby. Although, Gatsby slaps me in the face with the vapidity of it all, which I suppose I should be quite thankful for.

Seeing the film has made me quite philosophical on the whole matter, and this post will probably turn out much crappier than I had intended, but life isn't perfect. I suppose it's an inner conflict that I think a lot of us First World spoiled brats deal with, which is that the Gatsby life is so beautiful, and yet so sad. It is simultaneously the grandest thing attainable, and the loneliest, the emptiest. It is remarkably beautiful objects and sounds and people, all of which are somehow hollow. It is material splendour that amounts to nothing and to no one, and there is something wonderfully toxic in that.

Gatsby the film was the single most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I mean it. The imagery is spectacular. Leo is spectacular. Carey Mulligan, who I was sceptical about at first, was undeniably enchanting as Daisy, and Elizabeth Debicki was a show-stopper as Jordan Baker. Tobey Maguire was also perfectly meh, as expected. Everything was wonderful and brought to the silver screen all of the visual elements that I was hoping for, seeing as the novel left me with a sense of emptiness about the whole thing. I couldn't, for the life of me, visualize the grandness of Gatsby's lifestyle under the shadow of depression and desperation that clung to the book during my reading of it. Allowing myself to escape into the sonic and visual wonderland of the Roaring Twenties was definitely the most pleasurable experience of the entire film. I could almost forget about the shell of Gatsby.

I was going to discuss Lana Del Rey in this post, since I could rant for eternity on her and the American Dream ideal and on her role in Gatsby, but perhaps I will save that for another day.

My main point in this hideously long post that no one will likely ever read is that perhaps Gatsby has changed my views forever. Perhaps it has finally brought me out of this haze of the American Dream, which I desire so badly yet know is ultimately harmful and shallow. If love is not enough, money certainly isn't. Mansions and pearls and fine shirts may be lovely, but real beauty exists in truth: in the truth around you and the truth within you. One day, I hope to honestly believe it.

And, if you're not sick of the word "Gatsby" yet, I suggest you reread the novel immediately.