Lightning Flashes Of Insight

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Luke Ford

Most of the time, I am content to live in my delusions. I see myself as the hero of my story. I think of myself as a great writer. I’m convinced that I am an artist, that I have keen insights into life, and that I should just keep on my path. That I’m going the right way.

Then, on occasion, I get these lightning flashes of insight and they frighten me.

You know how in movies, you’ll get lightning flashes through the darkness and you’ll suddenly see scary things — a dead body or men with guns or Democrats passing Obamacare.

The other day, I woke up with this frightening insight that I was taking the easy way out with my life by settling for slovenly.

Most of the time, I think I have been right in my conflicts, but on occasion, I think that the rabbis were right, that Dennis Prager was right, that my critics were right, and that I have been acting very badly.

The other day, I wrote in my journal:

I woke up thinking, “I need to sell other people’s products.” That’s the easiest way to make money online. OPP. I’ve researched this. I’ve put my foot into the water, but I’ve never gone all out. I fear that I have been childish in not being more aggressive about earning a living. That’s why I’m not married. I prefer to scrape by, living off scraps, and spending my time reading books and blogging and doing yoga rather than taking charge of my financial destiny. I want to restart my entrepreneurial energy and to make something of my life. Working these crap jobs for crap money sucks. I must grow up and work harder and smarter. Perhaps I should return to watching those online marketing videos. They put me in an entrepreneurial state of mind. At the very least, I could blog more about topics that pay well. If I earned more money, I could take regular writing classes and they would inspire me to get better at my craft. I could get all the acupuncture and physical therapy I need.

When I look bad at my work history, I see long periods of struggling in crap jobs for crap money and long periods of working in a sweet spot (work I enjoyed that paid well).

I wonder why I have felt like crap the past two months. Before then, I was busy and energized and getting up at 6 a.m. every day to go to shul.

Therapy is a key part of the solution to my low achievement. It helps me to confront myself. I learn to relate to another person in a deep way, instead of keeping important things bottled up inside where they transmogrify in scary ways.

I don’t know what it is like to be married and to have your own family. I do know what it is like to write well. I love that rush. I love when I write stuff that I enjoy reading. That’s how I judge whether or not I am doing good work — do I want to read or watch what I have produced?

I get enough adrenalin and excitement from writing that it repeatedly inspires me to keep going. I only see shadows of what family life would be like. It’s not real to me. It doesn’t compete with the rush of blogging and instant feedback and feeling like I have thousands of readers and that when I strum my keyboard, they are moved by what I write, that my words create worlds, and that I am the puppeteer and everyone else is a puppet.

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The Bad Jew: Port of Call – LimmudLA Post-Pesach Fun Night

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

I remember from acting class 16 years ago, no matter what role I had, I always played it like a serial killer (according to the rest of the class, this was not my self-image).

From my new favorite movie, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans

The mobster has the ho on his lap. He moves her around. “Dear, like this. You want the schwantz not the prostate. See, that’s it.”

He turns to the Bad Lieutenant Terence McDonagh. “When you engage with another human being, we remind ourselves that we are not alone. Plus, who knows, maybe we even learn a little something.”

At the end of the deal, the mobster gets a look from his two bodyguards. “The boys want to saddler her up just in the spirit of friendliness. Do you mind?”

BL: “Well, let her get cleaned up. She looks like —- right now. Let her put on something hot…”

Mobster: “Beautiful. Beautiful.”

BL: “Now, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but she has a client coming over in 15 minutes. You guys can be done by then, right?”

Guard: “The both of us?”

Mobster: “They would’ve been done in 15 seconds if you hadn’t mentioned it. Boys, you’ll hit her when she comes back.”

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Delusions About Nixon & Watergate

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

Veteran journalist Alex Ben Block writes about his experience as a reborn and unrepentant journalist: “The great engine of investigative reporting, the independence that made Watergate a counter to Nixon’s Nazis, has stalled.”

First of all, the comparison of Richard Nixon to the Nazis is repugnant. Unless you can show me the death camps where Richard Nixon purposefully murdered millions of innocent people solely because of their race or religion, please don’t make these comparisons.

Second, the belief that journalists brought down Richard Nixon is a delusion. Richard Nixon was brought down by law enforcement. Journalists such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein got to freeride on the work of law enforcement and make a name for themselves because of their ability to get law enforcement to give them scoops.

Journalists don’t have the power to subpoena people. They don’t have the tools of law enforcement and prosecutors. Journalists didn’t bring down Richard Nixon. The American legal system did.

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Hatred Of Americans

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

I’ve never suffered from Jew-hatred in the United States, but I constantly meet online Europeans who loathe Jews and Americans.

It would never occur to me upon meeting somebody obnoxious or shallow to attribute their bad traits to their race or region or religion, but this practice is disturbingly common among Europeans.

I made a few blog posts about Patrick French’s biography of V.S. Naipaul.

I was blessed today with these thoughtful emails from Lennart Frimodig in Uppsala, Sweden:

You have not read his books, right?

I can sympathize with much of what you say, but not about prostitutes. Using a prostitute tells you are swine. Swine in the muslim sense.

I was shocked reading this French biography.

I very much like Popper, Naipaul and Coetzee, all three pretty bad persons, as individuals.

It is ok, you don

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Is Yoga Idolatry?

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

From The Los Angeles Times:

For many religious Jews, Christians and Muslims, viewing yoga as a physical rather than spiritual practice solves the dilemma.

But Rabbi Avivah Winocur Erlick, a chaplain at Providence Tarzana Medical Center, says it is impossible to separate yoga from her Jewish spiritualism. About six years ago, Erlick began having intense spiritual experiences while doing yoga. She sought advice from a rabbi.

“He said, ‘God has been trying to reach you all these years and he is reaching you through yoga,” Erlick recalled. The rabbi challenged her to reconcile yoga with Judaism, which led to five years of study to become a rabbi. “For me, yoga is prayer,” Erlick said.

Erlick, who is writing a book on the subject, says Jews have vigorously debated the issue for two decades. She counts 83 active teachers, mainly in the U.S. and Israel, who combine yoga and Judaism.

One is Californian Ida Unger, who draws on Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, to interpret yoga postures as Hebrew letters. Unger recently demonstrated her aleph bet yoga to seniors at Los Angeles’ Milken Community High School.

“I was in a triangle pose and I had an epiphany. I was an aleph,” Unger told the class, posing in the shape of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

“In Kabbalah, letters are the building blocks with which the holy creator is channeled to Earth.”

Unger chants shalom (peace) instead of om, and recites the daily Jewish prayer for awakening when she does the sun salutation.

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Serious Relationships

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

I was watching season three of the TV show “24” and I was struck by how often Kim Bauer and her boyfriend kept saying they were in a “serious” relationship.

Something goes off in my head when I hear people emphasizing things that should be taken for granted in a healthy situation.

People who trust each other don’t say to each other, “You have to trust me.”

People with credibility don’t say to you, “I’m not lying to you.”

I’m struck by how often people who are lying to me say, “I am not lying to you.”

When people try too hard, I get suspicious.

In a healthy situation, if you’re dating someone, it is serious. Healthy people don’t treat others trivially.

If a couple have to keep saying to themselves and to the world that they are in a serious relationship, it’s probably a sign of trying too hard. They are trying to reassure themselves that they are in a serious relationship, or they are trying to make a pronouncement about how this time round, this relationship is different from their previous ones.

In all likelihood, it is not.

I’ve noticed that Orthodox Jews who are seeing someone for marriage never say they are in a serious relationship. It is taken for granted.

The central prayer of Judaism, the Amidah, repeatedly states that God will resurrect the dead. Why? Why does it have to keep repeating that? I suspect because the writers of that prayer were either highly insecure about this belief, or they assumed that most Jews who would say this prayer who be highly skeptical of its truth.

The Torah command us to love God. Why? Because it knows that loving God does not come naturally.

When I am interviewing people, I try to listen closely. I am struck by how often people repeat themselves and emphasize matters on which they are highly insecure.

Why did blacks and Africans become so excited about Barack Obama becoming president of the United States? It would not change their lot in life. Their lives would not be materially changed by this. So why the euphoria?

I think Africans and black got so excited about Obama’s electoral victory because deep inside they doubted that a black man could succeed so dramatically. Their euphoria was the result of a calming of insecurity.

Dennis Prager writes:

My hypothesis is that this goes far deeper than ethnic or national pride. It goes to the depths of the psyche of the great majority of Africans/blacks in the world. Centuries of African slavery and the white racism that enabled it have taken their toll on the psyche of most black people both inside and outside of Africa.

The election of a man of black African heritage as president of a predominantly white nation, and one that also happens to be the most powerful nation in the world, is taken by blacks the world over to mean that their centuries of suffering under the racist yoke of implied inferiority are coming to an end.

This is especially felt in Africa itself because Africa is largely benighted. Though many African countries have now been independent for nearly half a century, Africa remains particularly poor, particularly corrupt, and particularly violent. Africans, of course, know this, and while Barack Obama

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Actress/Journalist Andrea Thompson

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

I was watching the third season of the TV show “24” when I came across actress Andrea Thompson.

I remembered her many nude scenes. I remembered her going to work as an anchor for CNN Headline News in June 2001. I remember the controversy at the time when all these nude photos and video clips then showed up from the 1980s. She was gone from CNN in March 2002 after causing great embarrassment to the network.

I remember finding great hilarity in her shame. I remember writing things that were cruel. I was stirred by the hubbub in the journalism community about the hiring of an actress who used to do nude scenes to read the news. There was an emotional undercurrent of — who’s this uppity whore?

I remember when I was a struggling actor in Hollywood and hearing the advice against working as hookers because directors and producers don’t want to hire for acting those they’ve paid for sex.

I remember the contempt that many in Hollywood felt towards porners who tried to join their club.

So as I’m watching Andrea Thompson on “24”, I’m thinking, it is true that you’re going to be treated with less respect if you ever pose nude. And journalism functions for many of us as an alternate religion. We view the pursuit of the truth as a holy calling and we think of ourselves as a kind of priesthood and we don’t want anyone sullying our ranks who’s ever posed nude.

I’m thinking of insecurity, sex and shame. I’m thinking about how the feeling of insecurity drives me to want to lash out. I’m thinking about my huge need to feel superior to others. I’m thinking about how hard it is in therapy to talk about doing things that unethical. I’ll confess to all my sexual sins in a heartbeat, but any time I’ve done something demonstrably and needlessly cruel to somebody, some kind of theft or carelessness, I can’t face it. I can’t face myself doing anything unethical. I have this image of myself as a good person and it is really hard to confront those times when I am not.

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Anger

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

I shouldn’t listen to Dennis Prager’s radio show late at night because he makes me so angry. I just feel so fired up by his generally conservative values that I’m dying to fight for them.

Dennis Prager has a calm happy demeanor, yet his radio show, writings and talks make me very angry — and I agree with him!

I get filled with righteous indignation on behalf of the causes he espouses.

I wonder how common my response is.

Dennis Prager seems to be filled with contempt.

I just want to use one example, a column from October 7, 2008, entitled, “Gotcha Questions for Katie Couric (and Her Colleagues)”.

I just want to quote one paragraph: “Members of the news media believe, correctly, that individuals running for political office, because of their potentially great impact on American life, should subject themselves to interview after interview about their views, values, personal life and knowledge base by often hostile members of the news media. But, the most powerful members of the news media, people who have more impact on American life than almost any politician in America, do not allow themselves to be interviewed about their views, values, personal life and knowledge of the issues. Why not?”

Doesn’t that make you angry? Or is it just me?

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Addicted To Causes

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

On his radio show Friday, April 2nd, Dennis Prager said: “One of the phenomena of the progressive…parts of society is that they are so addicted to causes. There’s always a cause. If you could list normal left-wing causes and normal right-wing causes… On the right, you have abortion. On the left, it is never-ending. One cause after the next. The latest one was to change health care in America and have the government take over more of the economy than ever before in American history. If one is not on the left, one spends one’s life trying to stop the left.

“Why is the left so addicted to causes? Because they are not religious. The religious have more peace about what exists. How to be at peace with life even in economic difficulties.”

“I bet the overwhelming majority of people who go tea party rallies have jobs.”

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I Check In From Miami

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Luke Ford

Gentle Readers, I do apologize that my blogging has been rather spotty lately. I am in Miami practicing my Alexander Technique on my first celebrity client, Ricky Martin. All his friends say he so much straighter since our week together.

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