And some kinds of love are mistaken for vision

What's more important in our artists: success or happiness?



I mean, yes, obviously, it is possible to be both successful and happy. (And here I'm defining "success" from an artistic/critical standpoint, not commercial, which brings about its own set of issues.) A lot of great music, literature and visual art has come from artists in positive mindsets. So this shouldn't even be a choice worth discussing.

Right?

Maybe. Look, it's not an entirely uncommon idea that artists often produce their best work when they're miserable, depressed, paranoid, jealous, etc, place your favorite descriptor of an unhappy life here. Let's pretend for a second that this has a kernel of truth - those with an axe to grind probably have something more interesting to say than those who are just hanging out, right? If so, it can create a problem for an artist's followers and fans. Do you wish your favorite artist the best in life, or do you want the quality of their work to remain as high as possible, no matter the cost?

Quick example: One of my favorite bands is The National. Lord knows I can't recommend these guys enough. They write some of the most beautifully depressing music I've ever heard. And they're perfectly allowed to write happier songs, too - a lot of their newer, comparatively more positive stuff is good, but I always feel like they're better at illustrating a whiskey-soaked, heartbroken 3am comedown than describing the best way to make their girlfriend laugh. (Maybe it's me.)

Some friends and I went to see their show several weeks ago, and we were blown away by their performance and musicianship as usual. But we also noticed singer Matt Berninger seemed to be having a tougher time of it than usual. Struggling with some of his more personal lyrics. Nervous, abortive physical maneuvers around the stage. Lots of screaming. It was the kind of intensely awesome performance we hadn't seen out of him since maybe '06. And we (arbitrarily) decided that he must have broken up with his girlfriend. Which in turn made us think "cool, now he's going to start writing darker music again."

Which is a pretty fucked up thing to think, leap of logic or not. As an artist, your fans are bound to gravitate toward certain works, and what they might expect from you is not necessarily what you want to provide (our frequent concert shout-outs requesting one of the most depressing songs ever written always go unheeded, sadly). It's a divide that comes with the territory. But it's another thing entirely for fans to desire a quality of life for the artist.

Ideally, yes, we would like our artists to be happy/comfortable/rich and also to continue producing excellent works of art. But if you have to choose one result over the other, what would it be? Is it even a choice where, after having made it, we could still feel comfortable with ourselves? It's a burden I wouldn't want to have to bear, though it's a choice I feel I sometimes unconsciously make about artists I genuinely respect.

And, if someday my writing finds a fanbase and some level of popularity, it's also something that many strangers may be quietly theorizing about me. Which is pretty fucking creepy.

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If it's 100 degrees, it's still summer.

Every season I make a mix tape/mix cd/playlist of the stuff I listened to over those few months. I don't keep a diary or scrapbook or even make very personal entries on web journals like this, so the songs and sequences I choose for these mixes form the closest thing to an autobiographical account of my life as any of us are going to get. Some seasons are more obtuse than others.

I've been doing this since 2003 and haven't missed a season yet (even if I'm late here and there). If you poke around elsewhere on the net (and if you care) you might find previous mixes, but I'm going to start posting them here from now on because why not, I have a blog so why not use the damn thing.

The Summer 2009 mix is called "Chameleonic Tendencies" and it goes like this:

1. Passion Pit - Moth's Wings
2. Department of Eagles - No One Does It Like You
3. Yacht - Psychic City
4. Atlas Sound ft. Noah Lennox - Walkabout
5. Animal Collective - For Reverend Green
6. Volcano Choir - Island, IS
7. Dirty Projectors - Useful Chamber
8. Mew - Vaccine
9. Phoenix - Armistice
10. Miike Snow - Sans Soleil
11. Yeasayer - Tightrope
12. Nine Inch Nails - Discipline
13. Grizzly Bear - About Face
14. White Denim - Regina Holding Hands
15. Los Campesinos! - We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
16. Sufjan Stevens - You Are the Blood

(BONUS QUESTION: I never have more than one song from an artist on a single mix, but I kind of cheated twice - you might even say three times - on this one. Can you find them?)

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Not So Fast.

I really liked The Hurt Locker, but I'm not sure how I can explain the damn thing to you. The film has been called a lot of things: Epic War Journal, Suspenseful Thriller, Action Extravaganza, Insular Character Study; the list goes on. It's a little bit of each of these, but not really all of any of it, which makes the thing so hard to categorize -- but is also more than a little responsible for its success.




"War Movie" is probably the most obvious and misleading of its descriptors. Sure, almost all of it takes place during a war, and most of what we learn about the characters comes to light because of (and is heavily informed toward) a life of neverending battle on Whatever Constitutes The Front Lines These Days. But it's not at all your typical Hollywood peacenik "My God, War is Hell" diatribe, which might have made for some quality post-Vietnam stories but can't seem to find an audience with this century's ever-jaded audiences.

A lot of critics have been calling this the first great film about the Iraq War, and I think that's exactly because the film isn't trying to be. At least, not exactly.


The Hurt Locker does something very simple: it seeks nothing more than to tell a story in the best way it can. Nothing gets in the way: not ideology, not inflated egos, not mass-market paranoia.

Wait, in Hollywood? (This is probably why it started as an arthouse film, only growing to wide release thanks to overwhelmingly positive word of mouth. Look, I don't need to tell anyone that arthouse fare is generally better-written and more insightful than the average megaplex feature. I guess the reason this film throws these differences into such sharp relief is that, on first glance, it looks like it belongs at the megaplex, what with the explosions and expansive sets and even Guy Pearce. We all have such strong expectations of how a film like this typically behaves, and Locker so deftly subverts them within its first ten minutes that you can't help but sit up and wonder, now more than ever, why more films can't not just look but also feel so real.)




Locker explores a small number of characters in a wartime situation that happens to be Iraq. The rationale for the war is never explored; the soldiers' place in an infamously contentious situation never outright questioned. There are no grandstanding judgments or righteous crusades, no Ultimate Antagonists without or within. Even the protagonist, who suffers from a kind of cowboy-action-hero syndrome, is shown as neither Perfect American Hero nor out-of-touch goofball. The film explores these characters and how they live with a situation that exists beyond their control or understanding. And it's that deceptively simple framework that produces results far more interesting and surprising than anything you're going to see in those other war movies that decided they were going to be "important" from day one.

It speaks to a larger idea of what's supposed to be important versus what is important; the divide between intent and execution. If you're creating something, there should never be such a divide - unless you're creating some experimental wankery about artist vs. audience and all that, and if so, best of luck to you - but how do you ensure that intent is execution? It's the same deceptively simple answer as before: make sure your intent is to tell your story the best you possibly can.

That may be unfairly reductive, especially when many have to deal with the whims of financiers, editors, deadlines, feeding one's family, etc. But I see it more as an umbrella term with a lot of possible manifestations, like Keep Revising, Do Your Research, Let the Story Tell Itself. Don't Discount Someone's Feedback Because They Don't Understand Your Big Ideas. Do Not Expect to Win an Oscar. And however many other rules you can think of.

And this extends to other walks of life too. If all you can think about at the office is getting that promotion, you're not going to be able to put in the work necessary to earn it. If you're killing yourself always trying to look flawless for the opposite sex, you won't be able to loosen up and actually engage with anyone. (This last one, I am still working on.)




So the moral of the story is... well, I guess you could boil it down to one of many familiar idioms, in one way or another. Look Before You Leap. Don't Count Your Eggs Before They're Hatched. It's All in the Follow-Through. You get the idea. But just spouting the idiom kind of takes away from all the work you put in to get to that point, and the understanding you reach from having achieved that knowledge on your own. Which, I guess, is an inverted way of saying what I already said. Maybe this wasn't so hard to explain after all.

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But how does it make you feel...?

So far, one of the most critically-praised albums released this year has been Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca. I like the album a lot, though I'm kind of surprised to see just how wide a range of accolades it's received; for all its arhythmic constructions and obtuse lyrics, the thing seems well on its way to the kind of success enjoyed by more mainstream-friendly bands like Spoon and TV on the Radio. (2009 has also, of course, been The Year of Animal Collective, but that's another story.)

I read a recent interview with Dirty Projectors frontman Dave Longstreth, hoping he would illuminate an album which I enjoy but have a hard time understanding. But maybe understanding isn't really the point. When asked about the meaning behind the album's title, Longstreth said:

"There's not really a literal meaning to draw out of the phrase. But I like the way the words sound together. I feel like there's some kind of sense just in the relation between the two. Sort of like, "please please me" or something. There's a part that's sort of gentle, and supple, and then there's a part that's barbed, and demanding. "Bitte" is a polite word, but it's sharp."

And later on, with reagrds to the same phrase used in the song "Useful Chamber":

"Lyrically, it's just the sense of the words become aural rather than literal. I guess I don't think of it as dodging and weaving in terms of coherence, or you know, like as you were saying, emotional forthrightness.

"But yeah, one of the beautiful things about music is how simple and direct a line of communication it is. And I guess what I want to do, and what we want to do, is try to make music that feels good, and feels expressive-- even as it does so in a new vocabulary."

In other words, it's not really about the words in the context of linguistics or grammar; it's about the meaning behind those words, an almost subconscious association we make between sound and expression.

An emphasis on lyricism over syntax is nothing new in the world of art, of course; you could look at James Joyce's Ulysses or Finnegans Wake or even half the nursery rhymes your mother sang to you at bedtime. Even in indie rock: reading an interview with The National frontman Matt Berninger, I was kind of disappointed to hear that they'd actively avoided specific interpretation while putting together one of my favorite albums, Alligator. (At the time I guess I wanted a back-pat for "cracking the code" or whatever. I'd like to think my listening habits have since changed.)

Even Edgar Allan Poe, a poet obsessed with details and structural minutae, has also long championed the meaning behind the words above all else. But Poe also admitted that discovering meaning was no easy task. Near the beginning of "Eleonora", he writes:

"the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious - whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret."

Now, I've always been pretty awful at poetry. Legendarily awful. And maybe it's because, as Poe speculates, I'm not all that mad. (Though I do daydream a lot.) Though now I'm thinking it's because I may just be too literal. And really, the media I'm writing for at the moment are too consumer-oriented to dip into the pool of subconscious; can you imagine if an episode of Lost was a stream-of-consciousness Paean To Summer, where all the actors shirked their lines and instead gesticulated, hummed and bellowed nonsense to each other for forty minutes?

Actually, I would totally watch that.

But I can't be totally jaded about this, right? Surely there's some example of modern filmmaking or television that expertly splits the difference between syntax and feeling; something less stilted than broad comedies but more accessible than The Tim & Eric Awesome Show. I mean, right? Maybe?

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Watching out for myself

I haven't posted in a while because - I swear! - I've been doing a lot of work towards getting my projects together, researching, rewriting, all that. I've also been trying to watch more films lately. I've seen very few movies over the last few years, because planning to spend 2 hours watching a movie often strikes me as a colossal waste of my free time, because think of how much other stuff I could be getting done in that time, right (even if not much actually ends up getting done, but it's the thought that counts, I guess?). But I find it's easier to commit to that time if I know I'm going to think critically about the film I'm about to watch, in terms of its script and story structure, and how I can use that information to better my own process.

In other words, I've been on the front end of the screenwriting process for so long that I need to regain a clearer view of the back end; it does no good to sit around and assume I know what studios are looking for if I don't get out there and see the kinds of stories they do pick up, and which ones are successful.

(Granted, many scripts purchased or optioned never see the light of day, and those that do are often rewritten and mucked about with by studio, director, actor, test audience, etc. So it's an imperfect science. But, like everything else, if you can't predict the future you should at least try to make an educated guess.)

So I engaged a few recent films with my Critical Writerly Eye, hard-forged from constant peer review and structural study, to see what I could see. Results and SPOILERS! after the jump.



Slumdog Millionaire: Oscar®-Winner for Best Picture 2008! Wow! This movie must be amazing, right? I had high expectations, which were mostly filled out by Danny Boyle's typically expert and unique direction, strong performances from many age groups of actors, and some really beautiful locations. It's impossible not to feel for Jamal and his eternal quest for Latika, and there are some incredibly emotional moments in the film. But the resolution left me feeling a little flat, and it took me a while to figure out why.

For all its skill and flavor, the Slumdog story is missing one of the cardinal components of what constitutes a "structurally sound" script: its protagonist, Jamal, has no real flaw. Sure, the guy is a little nerdy and does have to resort to crime at a young age to survive, but none of this causes an internal struggle that must be overcome in order for Jamal to succeed in his quest (to win Latika and, to a lesser extent, to be able to support her financially). Even Jamal's status as a Slumdog in caste-obsessed Mumbai takes the form of an external impediment to his success; we get no hint of internal turmoil when he strives and searches in settings and lifestyles far beyond his own. Jamal simply continues on his single-minded quest to win Latika and succeeds at the end, his personality remaining the same as it was at the story's beginning (even, arguably, as it was a decade earlier in the character's life).

Is this a bad thing? It may depend on your point of view. If I had brought this script to a peer review, I almost certainly would have been lambasted for such an omission (and would have been referred to several memorable protagonists who do have to overcome an inner obstacle over the course of their journey, like Lethal Weapon's near-suicidal Sgt. Riggs or As Good as it Gets's misanthropic Melvin Udall). But I've spoken with several writers about this and most seem strangely OK with it. Most of their reasoning has to do with it either being adapted from a book, or purposefully trying to feel like a modern fairy tale. I understand both of these points, but I'm not sure I agree with either one. Would Slumdog have been better and more interesting if Jamal had a deep flaw to overcome? Maybe. I personally find it hard to root for idealized characters, but your mileage may vary.

District B13: Watched this for research on Parkour and freewalking. A French film that went by with not a lot of fanfare in 05/06, it was a really enjoyable action flick with a fairly solid script and enough humor to keep the whole experience really enjoyable.

As noted, Parkour was a huge component, thanks in no small part to the presence of co-star David Belle, who actually helped create the Parkour movement in the late '90s. His Parkour sequences are breathtaking to watch; you're not likely to find this stuff anywhere else (though Casino Royale has a pretty good sequence in its own right). In fitting with the Parkour aesthetic, his movements aren't flashy or aggressive (he's typically running and escaping, not fighting or showing off), but they're no less impressive for their ingenuity, proficiency and audacity. (The hour-long making-of doc on the DVD does reference Parkour, though I was hoping for more than a brief mention of one of the film's most unique dimensions.)

Story-wise, there are a few ridiculous and inexplicable moments, sure, but for the most part it's solid and even fits a few cool spins on old ideas here and there; the typical action tropes of "tacked-on love interest" and "bad guy gets his just desserts" do surface, but here too, a little innovation goes a long way. Even the clichéd "some problems can't be solved with violence" message really fits - again, in no small part thanks to the philosophy behind Parkour. At any rate, I enjoyed the film a lot.

Terminator: Salvation: Woof. The less said about this, the better.

The Hangover: Absolutely hysterical. And as a broad, high-concept comedy, this is exactly the kind of film I stand to learn the most from. If there's one thing the script does best, it's the sheer volume of real jokes, packed into almost every line; and here I've been using entire scenes to build up to one punchline! Everyone in Hollywood has been amazed that a film with no bankable stars has made so much money. I'm not, really, and anyone who's seen the film probably shouldn't be: with such a funny script (finely acted by all involved), easily explained to Joe Public and more than able to be cut into a hilarious trailer, why wouldn't droves of people want to see it? Some even twice, because they were too drunk to remember much of it the first time, appropriately enough?

As with most broad comedies, the bellylaughs do disguise some plot holes and character development, though it's far more infrequent (and the quibbles more minor) than you'd expect. The gang's visit to the Tyson residence doesn't move the plot or their quest forward (especially glaring since the rest of the scenes do such a good job of this) - it only shows them, via security camera feed, that their missing buddy Doug was with them at that point in the night, which doesn't really propel the story anywhere. And this is further complicated by a later discovery of photos of the night, which show the guys going off to Tyson's after they put Doug to bed? I also would have loved for Heather Graham's character to have evolved past the typical sweet-smiling, ever-understanding love interest typical in broad comedies like this. At least she's a hooker. (Which is probably the first time I've ever used that phrase.)

Finally - and this might say more about me than it does the movie, but - in keeping with my focus on plot, structure, character, etc, I felt there was a lost opportunity in the character development of Phil (Bradley Cooper), so deftly introduced to us as he swindles his students out of money for his Vegas trip. Here's another kind of misanthrope, who will nevertheless pull out all the stops for his best friend; I wanted to know more about this guy, especially when he says early on, and with very little irony in his voice, "I hate my life". I saw this as the starting point for his character's journey over the next debaucherous days; but, as he marshaled the search for Doug, kept his motley crew of groomsmen alive and motivated, and finally reached the wedding only to lovingly embrace his wife and son, I realized that journey never came. Maybe that "telling" line was poorly delivered or poorly interpreted by me; maybe his character scenes got cut (we'll see when the DVD comes out). And maybe it's just in my head: I brought this up to my friends as we left the theater, and they didn't seem bothered. They actually liked that it wasn't a Thing; that if his character did evolve, it happened beneath the surface. Maybe because not everything needs to be fully explained, or it would have detracted from the laughs, or it just wasn't necessary. It bothered me, but again, there's varying mileage.

***

So what did I learn? I think after all of this I came out with more questions than answers. When it comes to writing and story structure, do "rules" really count for anything? Am I already interpreting movies in a far different light from most other people? Am I paying too much attention to the plot to be able to forgive or enjoy the rest of the film? Is there an incorrect way to watch films, or a correct way to watch anything? Or should I, you know, sit back, shut up, and enjoy the ride?

I wish I knew.

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Adventures in Short Fiction #03: Inverse

(haven't posted much lately since I spent a few weeks in Japan and I'm now working heavily on a new series... so here's another short story from back in the day.)

Melinda's parents wanted their child to be smart. A noble idea, certainly; but, as if secretly ashamed of the idea of education, or just doubtful that their little girl could operate without a sugar coating, they decided it would be best to educate her through a cornucopia of "edutainment" products. Most of these were cheap videos starring googly-eyed anthropomorphic puppets who, over the course of 22 minutes, learned various life lessons about sharing or the Dewey Decimal System while singing catchy songs about shapes or the letter B. As an only child with working parents, this was Melinda's primary method of learning and communication for a good while; where some parents used flash cards or read the newspaper to their children, Melinda got The Mayor of Math and Geography Gina 2: Greece's Pieces. At first she was a little insulted by these egregiously obvious attempts to pass off learning as recreation. Not because she disliked learning; the tyke loved it, and that was the problem. The parts she found interesting, such as lists of prime numbers and the average rainfall of the Amazon basin, were regularly obscured by pedestrian story arcs featuring skittish wallabies or jive-talking rodents. But Melinda's folks mistook her sieve-like thirst for knowledge for a serious interest in edutainment products, so the videos, activity books, snack packs and Sing-a-Song cassettes kept coming.

Before long, Melinda had grown accustomed to digesting information in bite-size, song-accompanied chunks. She memorized the entire soundtrack to Timothy's Tiddlywinks and couldn't count to ten without seeing Ensley Elephant carefully climbing up that infamous flight of stairs. In grade school, Melinda would make up songs to help her learn state capitols, and constructed a menagerie of puppets to ease memorization of the Declaration of Independence. Though these endeavors were generally successful, they didn't improve her grades - her methods of learning were just too complex and time-consuming to keep up with her ever-increasing workload. While the rest of her sixth grade class was memorizing lines of Shakespeare word-by-word, Melinda was designing 16th-century garb for a dozen glassy-eyed Montague monkeys and Capulet squirrels, pondering each puppet's motivation. In middle school she found that the good grades expected of a "weird dork" like her were getting harder to attain; she redoubled her efforts, inventing bookfuls of rhyming couplets which formed an impenetrable map of the foundations of her knowledge. Lunchtime was mostly spent alone, furiously scribbling through sketchbook after sketchbook. To the other kids, she began to seem less "eccentric" and more "nuts".

High school found Melinda suffering two nervous breakdowns (the first fueled by heavy amounts of Mr. Pibb and Mountain Dew freshman year; the second, much later, from LSD and battery acid), developing three different eating disorders, and single-handedly derailing a 10th grade production of "Guys and Dolls". During English tests she would mutter convoluted rhymes under her breath at breakneck speeds, grunting when she tripped over her own tongue. Her graveyard shift at Wal-Mart funded her ceaseless search for rare Etiquette Goats merchandise (only $75 for the rainbow shirt - original pressing!) and whatever other edutainment-related nostalgia she could revisit from the days when everything was simpler. She even flirted with a brief puppet-crafting career, until one of her more twisted creations caused a boy to wet his bed for a month straight. One day at lunch, a popular girl decided to steal Melinda's sketch book to prove some kind of point; neither her parents nor the principal could understand why Melinda retaliated by trying to bite the girl's nose off. Stanford was pretty much out of the question by this point.

Thirty years on, life is still interesting. Melinda now lives in a treehouse in Sarasota filled with hundreds of stuffed animals and notepads full of scribblings, strange loops and formulae that would baffle cryptographers. She speaks in fragments and symbols, cooing quiet, garbled melodies as she sews new clothing for her puppets. She has created a rickety, steam-powered machine which paints perfectly careening mobius strips of any size or color; her mind houses a 10-year oral history of her synthetic housemates which dwarfs Ulysses in scope and grandeur. Her life might have turned out far differently if she could remember how to connect with people; but that's far behind her now, the possibility an old uninteresting relic. Maybe someday her sidewinding genius will be recognized and appreciated. It just has to be communicated first.

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The Geometry of Identity

I have this batshit theory that character traits may actually work across a multi-dimensional spectrum, and that formalizing such a spectrum may help us more easily understand and identify character type and... well, honestly I think it would help with a lot of things. It's probably too complex for someone like me to be able to define, but I could at least get the ball rolling.

Imagine something like a color wheel, but with gradients of personality instead of hue. There's basically an infinite amount of sets of axes that could be plotted around the center point (which I guess would symbolize the most balanced/boring person in existence), with each axis symbolizing one extreme versus its opposite (selfish vs. selfless, fearless vs. paranoid, etc). This is kind of headed in the right direction, but it seems too focused on defining traits as inherently "positive" or "negative" to feel very accurate or useful to me.

But anyway, just like the code E62802 defines a specific point on a color wheel, so could the name "Jack Sparrow" define a specific point on the personality wheel. If you can see the point at which their personality resides, you immediately discover a lot about them. Their opinions, ideals, how they would react to certain things. Or - more importantly, if you're a creator - you could use the chart to get a sense of what needs to be shown to the audience, and what can remain a mystery.


So here's a way-oversimplified mock-up:



It's pretty arbitrary and comes nowhere close to describing the full spectrum of our personalities, but still, for example.

Let's say we start watching a film. In the first scene, the protagonist gives some bum five bucks. Okay, the guy's not too selfish. So if we're following along on the wheel, we could black out some areas where we're pretty sure his personality won't fall:



(We don't go all the way up to the midpoint, since a trait in the center can swing either way depending on the situation.)

In the next scene, a biker narrowly misses hitting him on a busy street. Our protagonist yells "Watch it, buddy". Fairly normal behavior, sure, but not exactly lenient. So we can further amend our wheel:



The next scene is on the bus, where our protagonist strikes up a conversation with a stranger. "I just lost my job and can't afford medication for my wife," says the stranger. "With the economy this bad, I don't know how I can hope to keep her healthy."

"Don't worry, sir," says our protagonist, "something will turn up, you'll see. No problem is insurmountable."

Pretty damn optimistic, right? OK, we're getting a good bead on this character now:



Finally our protagonist arrives at a nondescript old building. As he enters and prepares for something, we realize he's at his job. He cleans himself up and heads into a dark room... where a bloody, broken man sits tied to a chair. Our protagonist sharpens a knife. Only shit, this guy is a TORTURER. And, we find out, he works for a shadowy right-wing group that has taken domestic terrorist watch into its own hands. As he approaches his quarry, we make the final big change to our chart:



Didn't see that one coming, huh?

But it's pretty much in line with what we've seen so far, and that's the power of the whole thing. Once you have a good idea of the spot your character occupies on the chart, it becomes much easier to decide what to tell your audience, and when to tell it for maximum dramatic effect.

If limited stories (i.e. feature films) are about the protagonist overcoming a major character flaw, then open-ended ones (i.e. television series) are about slower character evolution. Your movie hero will (ideally) jump from one spot on the chart to another by the end of the film, while serial characters will move slowly along different axes as they encounter new situations. And all of this can be easily charted and predicted in similar ways to what we've just done.

The question is, I guess, how far do we take this methodology? How much can, or should, we reduce our personalities to geometric formulas and loci? And, someone who's not me, please weigh in: does this idea even work in the first place?

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