My 12th grade English teacher had a sign hanging in her classroom that said “He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.”

11th and 12th grade English classes, which were mostly focused on American and British literature respectively, came very close to putting me off reading entirely. Two solid years of having obsolete, stuffy, dull, usually mean spirited and miserable stories crammed down your throat, and the ideas and feelings you glean from these old pieces of shit are to be turned in for a grade. I got the distinct impression that my teachers were pushing their own personal ideas as objectively correct.

The novel that brought me back was Lincoln Child’s Utopia. It’s a book written in 2002 about some adventure plot set in a slightly futuristic amusement park. The main character had a daughter, a teenage girl, who had an mp3 player and was constantly listening to music. And it was that little detail that snapped me–a teenage boy who had an mp3 player and was constantly listening to music–back into liking books again. It felt so weird, and forbidden, and wonderful that there was someone like me in my time in a goddamn book. Oh yeah, books don’t have to be 150 years old and about miserable people making each other miserable!

I used to work for a company doing advanced screenings of movies. Usually someone who worked on the movie would be there for an interview after it finished screening. The audience questions are usually terrible. I’ll never forget the time Nash Edgerton was there to talk about The Square.

The movie’s plot hinged on one character missing a phone call. Someone in the audience (obvious film student/nerd) asked him if missing the call was “a social commentary on our relationship with technology.”

Nash says, “I don’t know man. Sometimes I just miss phone calls.”

Reminds me of a story about Jackson Pollock, don’t know if it really happened though or is just a joke.

At a Jackson Pollock exhibition, there was a group of art connoisseurs discussing one of his paintings where it was all black and gray except for one little streak of red. They were going back and forth saying what they all thought he meant by it. Was it the futility of man staring into the void, was it that even in darkness there is always hope, etcetera.

But then Jackson Pollock showed up and some one asked him and he told them, “Oh that? That happened when I was painting that one over there”

The fun part is that sometimes it is on purpose and sometimes it isn’t and I like seeing how people interpret both and what they get out of a work intentionally or not.

A review for a story I wrote involved the reader assuming I was making references to popular media that I didn’t intend at all and some were inspired by something else entirely.

I think this type of interpretation often indicates the state of mind of the audience member rather than the artist. It’s perfectly fine, but it might be more accurate to say, “when I see the artist’s blue curtains, it makes me think of…”

I’m pretty sure the Hopper story is fake though