Twilights

The future's uncertain
and the end is always near.
The Doors

Last Sunday, rainy and cold, was one of those perfect days when it felt just right to be trapped inside with a turkey roasting in the oven, an apple pie cooling on the counter, and an old black and white movie on the television. At my father’s recommendation, I watched “Devotion,” a biography of the Brontës, although somehow, I doubt Charlotte Brontë was as gorgeous as Olivia de Havilland.

Although fictionalized, the movie did capture the individual personalities of the four siblings and what struck me the most is how practical Emily was compared to the somewhat passionate, tortured Charlotte. I had always assumed the opposite.

The film prompted me to investigate its accuracy and so I picked up Juliet Barker’s The Brontës: A Life in Letters, which is a chronological compilation of the Brontës letters and journal entries. Fascinating. And shows, except for fabricating a romance for Emily, that “Devotion” wasn’t too far off in describing the personalities and events of this brilliant quartet whose lives were tragic only because they ended far too soon.

The whole book was a delight, but the parallel between Charlotte and Branwell caught my interest. Both struggled with the desire to write. Charlotte, at one point, laments that she is thirty and has done nothing with her life. Her imagination is crippling, and she sinks into a deep depression. Likewise, Branwell is depressed and knows that writing would save him but “the almost hopelessness of bursting through the barriers of literary circles, and getting a hearing among publishers, make me disheartened and indifferent: for I cannot write what be thrown, unread, into a library fire.”

And what writer hasn’t felt like that? I know I do. But I also know it’s an excuse to be lazy. So Branwell drinks and causes trouble for his family. Charlotte, on the other hand, spies Emily’s poetry and rallies to work to get her writing published, despite rejection after rejection, and Emily and Anne did the unthinkable in literary circles – they paid to get published.

The saddest part for me was that Emily never knew that her “strange” work, panned by most critics, finally appreciated for its sheer genius two years after her death, is now once again on the bestseller list, beloved by “Twilight” fans everywhere. And yet another version of the movie is being made, although I am sure this one, too, will fail to capture the novel. So far, the best one, in my opinion is the 1998 Orla Brady version, although I love the mood of the Laurence Olivier film and the cruelty of the recent Tom Brady movie, despite the actor’s resemblance to Marilyn Manson.

One of my college professors claimed that Wuthering Heights is the most perfectly constructed book ever written. There are no mistakes. Stevie Davies Heretic corroborates this in that she shows the cyclical structure of the work: Wuthering Heights is the womb, Peniston Crag is the father – Heathcliff and Cathy are two halves of the being that is born to this union of man-made structure and nature. Free will separates them and as a result Heathcliff loses his center and Cathy loses her self.

Nature finally takes over at by the end and corrects free will by uniting Catherine Linton, Cathy’s daughter, and Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff’s foster son, establishing Catherine Earnshaw as she was meant to be. At least, that’s the essence of Davies’s criticism, if my memory is accurate, which is doubtful these days.

Whether or not my assessment of Davie’s theory is accurate, I maintain that Wuthering Heights celebrates true love, although not the romantic love of Jane Eyre or other romances celebrating Byronic heroes. Despite the happy coupling at the end, which is the natural course of the theme, Wuthering Heights is far from a romance novel. (Nor is Heathcliff, for that matter, a Byronic hero. If you read Alice Hoffman’s Here on Earth, you’ll see Heathcliff through modern eyes. He’s an asshole, pure and simple. )

The Emily Bronte that Charlotte describes, resolute and unflinching, was far beyond romantic love, or any human reflection of love, always transitory. Rather, Emily Bronte was on to the designs of the very universe, far above the surface concerns of humans. As Cathy herself puts it, her "love is as elemental as the rocks beneath the earth," or however that line reads. Humans are only subjects in her book, there because Nature put them there. Wuthering Heights is about the kind of love that fuels the universe and perhaps even made it.

Love, The-Power-That-Is, the natural order of the world, always wins out despite Hindley’s cruel subjugation of Heathcliff, Cathy’s self betrayal, Heathcliff’s violent and twisted machinations, society’s preenings. Ultimately, heather will bloom, the sun will peek out over the moors, humans will perish, leaving no ghosts to mar the present, and gentleness sand respect will destroy hate in the end.

On the iPod: "Theme from Wuthering Heights" by Alfred Newman’s followed by Kate Bush's ethereal "Wuthering Heights."

On the Nightstand: No, not Wuthering Heights. Not Twilight either.

Crush of the Week: Surprise. Not Healthcliff, but certainly not Edgar Linton, either. My husband caught my fancy for a while, but I’m on to a creation of my own this week. He’s not fully formed yet: a slow smile, a hint of trouble, a dash of vengeance, a scarred heart, and a pinch of music by Kings of Leon. Let's hope he springs fully formed from my forehead.

On Charity: Along with Smile Train, this is a link to my chosen cause, Feeding America. Thank you, Pearl Jam.

Bittersweet Symphony

So it’s been a bittersweet month in my personal world of arts and entertainment. I’m not complaining because I feel pretty lucky that artistic and literary pangs are my biggest concern in this day and age. What’s the line from Pearl Jam’s “Wishlist?" -- something like: “I wish I were as fortunate, as fortunate as me.”

My insights, then, or lack thereof:

The big show. Pearl Jam. I haven’t seen them since the early nineties when Lollapalooza and Great Woods were both cool and I was able to traipse from lawn to mosh pit just in time to help pass Eddie Vedder over the crowd. I didn’t wash my hands for two days.

Same place fifteen years later. Great Woods is now the Comcast Center and there is barely a lawn to speak of and certainly no mosh pit. My tickets were smack in the middle – too far away to see anything and as the Comcast Center probably has the worst sound stage in history, the music was blurred. Generally, it was an unpleasant experience, surrounded by very drunk ex-frat boys (and one sixty year old, brown leather skinned vodka pickled Vineyard fashion clad woman). And my husband, who wore an I-told-you-so-smirk the entire time.

And he’s right. We are spoiled here in Boston. So many clubs, so many really talented bands who go on to fame and fortune. And we just walk in and fully experience the music. Sure there are drunk guys ambling around making general nuisances of themselves somehow believing that you are there to see them and not the band, but these are mere gnats, easy to tune out. Instead, you can see and feel the passion of the music, the synergy of bands, the intricacies of fingers dancing along guitar strings.

So stadium shows just don’t cut it at all unless you are of the mentality that you are one with the crowd, one with your idol up there on stage, voices mimicking, arms waving. Blech. This is mob mentality, not creativity, not community. It feels dangerous and creepy.

Community is sitting in a circle at my son’s toddler playgroup singing songs and dancing. It is humbling and bonding and promises burgeoning creativity. A beginning. I can’t explain it. The Pearl Jam crowd felt like mass failure – armchair athletes. An end. We left early.

That said, here’s the sweet. Pearl Jam was incredible. The performance, the music, the energy – they give the audience back what they paid in tickets and gas and then some. And no-one can create a feeling of community like Eddie Vedder. In fact, in those fleeting moments between songs, when he spoke to the crowd, I felt truly part of a community of hope, as if we were sitting around the fire taking turns telling stories.

Now, the members of Pearl Jam are heavy on the activism and support many charities. This is easy to do when you have power and money, right? Many fans won’t argue what their rock gods utter, never bothering to reason to discover their own opinions. And charity? The rest of us can barely afford tickets to their shows so how are we supposed to give money or time to charity, right?

Wrong.

You don’t need money to be kind, to train yourself to think outside of yourself, to find ways to improve the lot of those around you, even if it’s just bestowing a smile. And hurray! Pearl Jam exemplifies this, which was evident by its frontman’s converstion. He wished us well – not the “Hey, how y’all doing in [fill in city of choice]?” banter that most bands spout in an attempt to show that they care about their fans, and if you ask me how Mr. Vedder was any different, I can’t pinpoint it. He just was.

Part of it was his choice of topics such as the one about the little local boy who, learning to play guitar, had just figured out his first chords to a Pearl Jam tune. The band dedicated a song to him, even bothered to remember his name. They took the time to give hope to one kid. An average kid, not a gifted one, not one dying of cancer. Just a plain ole kid. Doesn’t take money or time to do that. Just kindness.

The Big Screen. Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Left the theater with a smile on my face, mainly because I wanted to like the movie so I did, even though it boasted some lazy writing: a clichéd plot that seemed to steal from a plethora of other movies, including its own ancestors. But Harrison Ford slips into Indiana as if no time has passed, the glimpses of old characters and quarry pleased the palate, and Marion is front and center in Indy’s life, as she should be. Best is Mutt, Indy’s son in every way, but not yet quite ready to fill the old man’s shoes. Don’t expect the high quality of writing that distinguished Raiders and you’ll leave with more sweets on your brain than bitters.

The book. Alice Hoffman’s Third Angel. I borrowed this from the library on a speed-read loan so I caught the gist but really didn’t take the time to delve into symbolism and themes as the book deserves. So I might be wrong in my interpretation.

As usual, Hoffman doesn’t disappoint, although this novel drags the reader into hopelessness most of the way through, leaving one melancholy at the close of each chapter. There are no villians or heroes – just humans.

The characters, despite their privileged social standing, suffer so much sadness, especially Lucy, who, at the start of the novel, is the mother of two daughters. Lucy’s cancer left them motherless for a time and the repercussions of her disease infect their adult lives.

Later in the book, we read about Lucy’s childhood. Life really should not have thrown her cancer in her adult life. It’s really not fair at all. But isn’t that the nature of earthly living?

Yet Hoffman, at the last, saves her reader from despair. She gives us hope via a character that has no hope (although, he too, later finds it), Lucy’s third angel. Hoffman, as the author, is ours.

THE book. Finally finished the Harry Potter series and I’m bummed that it’s over, but what a perfect little symphony JK Rowling has created. I cheered (Mrs. Weasley, Luna, Neville, and, what ho, Kreacher!), was bummed by all the losses, and was surprised by the lasting sadness for Severus Snape. He was cheated. He did not get his due.

The last book completed the first, and proves that character is fate. Upon further reflection of Snape, he probably did get the justice he deserved. His character certainly wasn’t stellar, despite his bravery and loyalty.

I do agree, however, with some critics who believe the epilogue was not necessary. The last sentence of the last chapter was as good as it gets. Still, the epilogue offered the romance novel ending that’s packed with peanuts and more shows that Harry paid public homage to one of the truest heroes of the tales.

On the horizon: The entertainment gods have heard my woes. Eddie Vedder, solo, small stage (so the Opera House isn’t exactly Toad, but it far beats the Comcast Center), providing an intimate evening with banjos, mandolin, and his lovely baritone. I'm selling my husband for tickets. He's pretty hot and he cooks. Anyone, anyone?

On the iPod: Do you really need a hint?