Letters to the Editor
Monty Johnston
Published Letters: 118 Editor's Choice: 9
-
Her art, your home
[Read the article: My walls are covered with my mother's paintings]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You don't say how the paintings came to be hung around your place. Before your mother died? After? Some of each?, probably. How much was she in on them being there? and how much did you put them up after she died so you could have her around? so to speak. Just trying to get the flavor of things.
Our unhappiness has such weird ways of stating things to us. You say, "Aesthetics matter so much to me ('more than your own mother'...) You might have said that aesthetics matter so much to you, more than your mother's aesthetics do.
Maybe it's too oblique, but I remember a woman I knew (not intimately) years ago who was a potter and sculptor. Her place was filled with her work in a way that over-whelmed the environment. Fair enough for a working artist wanting to be in the midst of their work, but the place had the air of her museum to her; and as well that she put it all there because there wasn't much of her. Surrounding and engulfing; visually very loud, just by the amount of it, not by what was portrayed. The work itself wasn't to my taste but was certainly competent.
With your mother's work, you can fairly quickly take it all down and tuck it away somewere and wander around in your space for a while and see what it's like. Or take down one room's-worth. You can always put it back up.
It's your turf. Parents have a place, but it's your life. That's as it should be. My mother painted. She's gone now. We weren't that close; or, there were strong feelings but we weren't that close. All I have up of hers is a little watercolor, from before she hit her stride, of some houses on a Roman hillside, close up. Roof lines, walls. Nice little thing. The glass broke a few years back when it dropped, and I haven't fixed it. A bit of mat is torn.
Best,
Monty
(more, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston"
-
Ambivalence
[Read the article: Deadly prose]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Up until last year and high school graduation my daughter did public speaking (called Forensics here.) I was surprised at the number of students who performed shock/violence readings from recognized authors. Sometimes much better non-shock presenters lost to the shockers. The judges were high school and college teachers. (I'm fine with examining the underbelly when it's not provocative.) Shock is one of today's fads. Perhaps it's encouraged by role models.
That said, ambivalence: We see the clues left behind after the mass shooting. The shooter thought they were a billboard, a Superbowl ad, screaming, "STOP ME!" But we'd barely noticed; except for a few people. The trick is to pick up on the clues, and we're getting better at it. Unfortunately, mass murderers may be bad writers, and solipsistic, and proudly, self-protectively, indirect. In general, a mess. But note that they are ambivalent. Part of them wants to kill us all and part of them knows they're nuts and need to be stopped; and maybe even that life doesn't have to always be so miserable; even, that there's some love, and meaning.
So they scatter the clues around - the stalking, the inappropriate photos, the rude silence, the suicide threat, the non-compliance with treatment, the speeding ticket, the staring into space, always eating alone in the dining room, zero friends, the fire in the wastebasket, the gun purchase, and, yes, the creative writing. That's where I came to understand Cho's rage, from Nikki Giovonni saying, "I've seen crazy and I've seen mean, and he was MEAN!" For most, creative writing is creative writing. For some, it's a red flag, and he's waving it in front of us, screaming for us to do something or die.
Best,
Monty Johnston
(more, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston")
-
When supply and demand is crap
[Read the article: Eliot Spitzer takes a swing at Dick Cheney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reminds me of San Francisco's two-year drought in the '70s when the water company urged efficiency, and, as you might well imagine, boy, were San Franciscans efficient. MUCH less water used. So the water company raised rates.
(During the second year, walking along a Noe Valley street one evening, the fog rolling down off Twin Peaks with unusual aggression, I put up my umbrella. A guy across the street shouted at me, "Hey, you! Put that thing away! We're having a drought!")
Best,
Monty
(more, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston"
-
Joan Walsh -
[Read the article: How little we know about Cho]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't necessarily expect great journalism, or any kind of great representation or interpretation, from a remarkable event. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. I have to say, though, that the media certainly did its job in supplying accumulating details to a fascinating human story. And that, after all, is also a mark of great journalism. No, one person didn't paint the definitive portrait, but the accumulated effort, a stroke here, a stroke there, amounted to a magnificent tale - lurid, gripping, meaningful.
There were 200 counselors on the Tech campus yesterday, Monday. On Friday there'd been 300 journalists. That is - and maybe this is your complaint - it's easier to tell a story than to do something about it.
It should be said, too, that sometimes the journalists were rude and intrusive.
-
Though Cho's video repulsed many, it really opened my eyes to his vicious intractability - the rage coupled with the inability to widen out his bitter little view, a denial which gained exponential intensity through its laser focus. Usually these sickos get ashamed of what they're doing, enough to kill themselves, after a couple pulls of the trigger. But it took Cho 32 murders for it to get through to him.
My book, "Rabid Fanatic: The Underpinnings of Livid Attachment," though you may not agree with it all, makes this event comprehensible.
Both sides of the gun debate are beside the point. We need to learn a great deal more about mental illness - others' and our own.
Best,
Monty
(more, for free: google "Rabid Fanatic" +"Monty Johnston"