God Bless Tuesdays: Why We Should All Be Like Woody Allen

Today has been an altogether lovely day. I woke up, turned my music theory homework in on time, my worst class was cancelled, attended documentary class, rehearsed with choir, had CODA, and then sat down at the Steinway in the performance hall and had a little mini performance. At the beginning of the year, I loved Tuesdays. I am very very busy on Tuesdays. I loved this. Recently, I've had a spurt of ridiculous, random laziness and so Tuesdays have been less enjoyable. Due to a wonderful, relaxing, refreshing (Gracious, I feel like Jane Austen here with this surplus of adjectives) Thanksgiving-Much-Needed-Break, KB (Katharine) is back. I believe Thanksgiving Break to be nearly as valuable as books. Books are the other reason why I am back. I went to the library, and for the first time at Rhodes, I checked out a book. I got so caught up reading books for classes that I rarely had time for pleasure reading. I went to the library in search of The Golden Compass and Atonement (I need to read the books before I see the films AND there's been all this hullabaloo/controversy over the Golden Compass and I desire to express my opinion on the matter which I cannot do if I have not read the book.) However, they were both lost. It's a sad sad thing. One copy of each. Thus, I left with Woody Allen's Mere Anarchy and Wendy Wasserstein's posthumously published Elements of Style. Within two hours, I returned both. I had read half of Mere Anarchy and a couple of pages of Elements of Style and I was through. Mere Anarchy was brilliant and hysterically funny (describing a housemaid as Wagnerian...who would think of these things besides Woody Allen? Oh, and a conversation between Nutmeg and an Umlaut.) I read the bits I wanted to, wrote down the plethora of vocabulary with which I was unfamiliar, looked them up in the dictionary, pondered over Allen's wackiness, and then returned them both. (The Wasserstein book was too fluffy--even for fluffy reading.)

I was entirely unsatisfied.

When I start reading, I get on a kick. It's truly bizarre--for some reason, reading other people's plots or thoughts (ha! that rhymed) gets me on the weirdest trajectory. I cannot stop reading, and their thoughts and stylistic mannerisms make me desire to write, and before I know it I'm thinking in narrative. Seriously. I'll be walking outside and think of the most random things and then turn it into a monologue as if someone could narrate my life over me as though I were in a movie. That was a really long, really poorly written run on sentence. But I've recently learned certain mistakes are okay. That is because, wonder of wonders, just when I desperately was craving a book, John Weeden stopped his discussion of "various and sundry" (isn't everything always various and sundry? You know what, I don't even know what sundry means. Hold on. Sundry: miscellaneous, various. Thank you Merriam Webster.) Anyway, he stopped this discussion of various miscellany (isn't that a brilliant word? It's so much better than the singular!) and held up a beautiful beautiful box from Amazon.com. Do you know what was inside? I know you do!

A BOOK!

There is a God! At the perfectly divine moment, I got a book. And you know what? It is a damn good one. I feel like half of my posts are begging you to veer away from this site so you can go experience something wonderful that I'm promoting and I really shouldn't do that considering the pea-sized audience I've possibly acquired, but please stop reading this. Seriously. I'm just going to keep rambling. It will not get any more interesting.

Go to the bookstore. Buy It's Not How Good you Are, It's How Good You Want to Be. It's brilliant. Paul Arden is a genius. I read it from the second CODA was over and had devoured it in under half an hour. I have now cut up the entire thing and it is displayed all over the walls of my dorm room. It is so ingenius that it makes me feel like an idiot. Although, according to Mr. Arden, that's okay. Most creative people apparently feel like idiots on a regular basis.

If anyone reading this thinks they're insane for thinking the odd, possibly imaginative but more likely simply bizarre thoughts and ideas like I do, this book will make you feel infinitely better about how you differ from your seemingly more sane peers.

Here are some of my favorite bits (It's essentially a series of bumper sticker quotes that you're familiar with but have never disected or digested):
"Nearly all rich and powerful people are not notably talented, educated, charming, or good-looking. They become rich and powerful by wanting to be rich and powerful."

"Talent helps, but it won't take you as far as ambition." (I am so grateful for this. I like to think I have a fair amount of ambition, but I am by no means a specialist in anything.)

"Everybody wants to be good, but not many are prepared to make the sacrifices it takes to be great."

"You will become whoever you want to be."

"Most people are looking for a solution, a way to become good." (Nichomachean Ethics, anyone?)

"You must develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end."

"Have you noticed how the cleverest people at school are not those who make it in life?" This is the story of my life. Okay, here's a fun tidbit. In middle school, everybody took art from Mr. D. The "popular" girl (let's call her Toby) usually made 100's for her cutesy drawings and paintings. The more insecure, less popular girl and I always made the worst grades in art (94--it's middle school, so B's basically don't exist.) As this girl (let's call her Beth) and I bemoaned our low grades, Toby would gleefully giggle with her posse of acne free, braces free pocket sized individuals. She went to an arts magnet high school and is now at RISD, and (to the best of my knowledge and facebook stalking) is extremely happy. Toby is an unsuccessful swimsuit model.

"Give Away Everything you know, and more will come back to you."

"Accentuate the Positive. A radio commercial for suntan lotion. An Englishman's voice tells of the product's benefits. As he talks his voice gradually changes to that of a West Indian man. Brilliant. You konw that suntan lotion won't make you black, but you accept that it might make you brown." AKA don't be afraid of hyperboles. Maximize.

"Do it his way. Then do it your way. Give him what he wants and he may well give you what you want. There is also the possibility that he may be right."

"When it can't be done, do it. If you don't do it, it doesn't exist." My brilliant third grade teacher always made us say, "If they didn't say you couldn't, you can."

And can I interject here for a moment and say (not that any of them will read this) but I am wholeheartedly grateful and appreciative of my elementary/middle school/high school teachers. I've only recently realized just how much I learned at each of them. Though I understand my elementary/middle school has changed considerably since I was there, at the time it was a wonderfully whimsical, creative place to grow up. Nothing was more encouraged than creativity. Destination Imagination was the coolest thing to do. In fact, I feel like the program I'm in now, CODA, is simply a grown up version of Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind. So thanks to Ms. Lewis, Ms. Butler, Mrs. French, Mrs. Fromme, Ms. Westfall, Ms. Rose, Mrs. Schuler, and Mr. Maloney. And I can't imagine how I'll ever repay Hockaday. Hockaday was literally the worst and best parts of life I've thus far experienced. It was absolute hell for three of six years, and absolute bliss for the other three. I am so grateful to the people who put up with me in the worst and helped me in the best. So, again (not like you'll read this) but, thank you Ms. Wortley, MBJ, Hub, Mr. Long, Ms. Broussard, Ms. Farrell, Mrs. Snow, Mrs. Cunningham, Ms. Brooks, Mr. Ladwig, Sarah Brown (so she's not a teacher, but she's always for some reason had incredible faith in what I do and has taught me so much about compassion) and Mr. Dumaine. I'm also unimaginably grateful for all arts teachers I've had, particularly my first and only piano teacher Mrs. Dill. I probably learned more from her than I'll ever learn from anyone else.

I'm not sure how this book spawned this longwinded list of thank yous, but it sort of has reminded me of how incredibly lucky and blessed I've been to have had such incredible mentors. Anything I've ever produced that I have been proud of or thought was good was 100% influenced by these people. I know that list is going to keep growing as I get older. Since this summer, I've already met at least three people who go on this (all things considered) short list of people who have really affected me.

I could continue on another tangent about how life is relational and the whole point of life is experiencing with and because of others. That is what gives you happiness. So even though there's not true altruism, being nice to others isn't entirely selfish. Well, it may have selfish intentions but the outcome is that they have a new friend and you know one more person. Sorry, babbling again. I can't continue this babbling, however, because we have even MORE quotes!

"If you can't solve a problem, it's because you're playing by the rules."

"The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything."

"Benjamin Franklin said, 'I haven't failed, I've had 10,000 ideas that didn't work.'"

"Fail, fail again, fail better." Samuel Beckett

"Knowledge...is the opposite of originality."

"Being right is also being boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant. Arrogance is valuable tool, but only if used very sparingly."

"Start being wrong and suddenly anything is possible. You're no longer trying to be infallible."

"How you perceive yourself is how others will see you." (This is a scary thought. Therefore, I choose to believe it's only partially true.)

"Don't give a speech. Put on a show."

Stravinsky, "I don't write music, I invent it!"

Charles Ives: "Awards are merely badges of mediocrity."

"You don't have to be creative to be creative."

Slogans win business.

Everyone is selling. "The way you dress when going for an interview or a party, or merely putting lipstick on. Aren't you selling yourself? Your priest is selling. He is selling what he believes in. God. The point is we are all selling. We are in advertising. It is a part of life."

Herman Melville: "It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation."

Dr Scholl: 'Early to bed. Early to rise. Work like hell and advertise."

"we don't see things as they are. We see them as we are." Anais Nin

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than going to a garage makes you a mechanic." Laurence J Peter

"Happiness is a singular incentive to mediocrity." Michel Montaigne.




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(^well, you've got to draw the line somewhere.)