Running With the Pack – Mark Rowlands

I’m not sure if Mark Rowlands’ very enjoyable book Running With the Pack will serve as an introduction to the world of philosophy or merely act as a brief detour from the types of genre fiction I usually stump up for – I suspect the latter – but it was certainly a thought-provoking and entertaining read.

Welsh-born Rowlands is a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, and I first became aware of him when I read an excerpt from his first book The Philosopher and the Wolf (detailing his relationship with Brenin, a wolf he acquired when working at the University of Alabama) in The Good Weekend magazine. Rowlands is also an amateur runner, not a particularly good one by his own admission, and for him running and philosophy are inextricably linked. Rowlands feels running is a way of ‘understanding what is important or valuable in life’, and finds his thoughts on many topics become clearer and more focused when immersed in the rhythm, what he calls ‘the heartbeat’, of a long run.

Along the way Rowlands tips his hat to Plato, Moritz Schlick, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume and Rene Descartes – among others – and grapples with some of life’s perennial teasers: love, what is freedom?, ageing and decline, work versus play and, perhaps the most daunting of them all, fatherhood.

Part memoir, part dissertation, Rowlands revisits some of the more monumental runs of his life, like spending an entire day running as a child with his dog, to attempting his first marathon at age 48 – an event he turned up for in inadequate shape after injuries ruined his training. Each run triggers some rumination on different questions he is wrestling with at the time. I’ll be honest – he lost me on more than one occasion, but what makes the book so good, and why I’m sure I’ll revisit it somewhere down the road, is Rowlands’ sense of humour and some of the sheer poetry of his writing. Take, for instance, this on what it means to run:-

“Running is a place where I remember. Most importantly, it is a place where I remember not the thoughts of others, but something that I once knew, a lifetime ago, but was forced to forget in the process of growing up and becoming someone.”

Or his thoughts upon seeing his young son smile for the first time:-

“When my first son smiled at me the love I felt was decisively shaped by a certain type of recognition. It was not that I recognised my genes in his smile – genes that had somehow been hidden in his scowls, gas-fuelled grimaces and blank stares. Rather, in his smile I recognised utter helplessness, but also the beginnings – nascent, halting and as yet uncertain – of trust. Life can crush him in a heartbeat; but it can do the same to me too. The differences between us are of degree, not kind. Indeed, in the end life will crush us both. After a promising but ultimately misleading start, life will chew us up and spit us out. We have been thrown into a bad place, abandoned in a strange land built on evil principles. And in his smile I saw this abandonment echoing down through the ages…But the trust, the nascent trust – well, that’s just the most heartbreaking of all. You should not trust me, my sons. I know the world. I’ll do the best I can. But in the end, in my most important duty of protection, I shall always fail you. I’m just not good enough. I cannot save you. No one can.”

Yes, it’s heavy going at times and not always comfortable reading, but it’s certainly not all doom and gloom. Rowlands’ ‘thoughts from the road on meaning and mortality’ may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he is a thoughtful, intelligent and highly skilled writer. Roll on a novel and the movie, I’m off to find my running shoes.

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The Mike Stern Band

Sometimes the best nights just require a little faith. I was feeling the effects of a long day when I jumped on the tram toward the Melbourne Recital Centre on Tuesday to catch The Mike Stern Band, part of the city’s International Jazz Festival. Ten minutes into their first number – a fast, harmonically terse, rhythmically jagged tune that offered precious little in the way of breathing space – I was scoping out the exits. The bass solo in particular was the source of some discomfort. I was sitting on Tom Kennedy’s side of the stage, and his virtuoso display of technique and chops on the five-string was sitting too loud in the mix for my liking.

Alas, the tune ended, I stayed in my seat – and was rewarded with one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve been to in years.

The last time I saw The Mike Stern Band was 15 years ago at the Hyde Park Hotel in Perth, when he toured with Dennis Chambers (drums), Lincoln Goines (bass) and the late Bob Berg (sax). This year’s line-up consisted of Kennedy (who, from the distance I was sitting from the stage, appeared the spitting image of British actor Tom Wilkinson), Bob Franceschini (sax) and the stunning Dave Weckl on drums. Judging by the cheer that went up every time Weckl’s name was announced, there were many in attendance just to see him.

To call Mike Stern a jazz guitarist is to do him a great disservice. Stern is about as far removed from a Gibson L5 and flatwound strings as you could get. Jazz guitarists don’t bend strings like Stern – and he bends the shit out of them. Time and time again he invoked Hendrix – from funky single-note riffs reminiscent of ‘Who Knows’, to aping ‘Third Stone From the Sun’ in his final number, Stern’s musical DNA owes plenty to our Jimi. If I was to describe Stern’s playing, I’d say he was the love child of an unholy union between Dave Gilmour and Al Di Meola, possessed by the ghost of Hendrix, with the shaggy-haired good humour of Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel.

Like all my favourite players, Stern is most at home in the bluesy, swampy no man’s land between the major and minor third – he just also happens to have virtuosic chops, and is comfortable handling the hardest, fastest bop. Wrangling a Yamaha Tele, Stern occasionally employs a harmoniser and a delay pedal to create different moods, and some of the coolest moments of the show were when he sang in harmony to the lines he, Kennedy and Franceschini were playing. Highlights from Tuesday night’s gig were a great version of ‘KT’ from 2006′s Who Let the Cats Out, a beautifully tender ‘After You’ and the title track from Big Neighborhood (2009).

Stern, Weckl, Kennedy and Franceschini were each in outstanding form. The 60-year-old guitarist looks 20 years younger, and is a tremendous advertisement for the power of doing something you love. Watching him shoot the breeze, signing autographs and posing for pictures with fans after the gig, it is clear Stern is still enjoying the ‘grind’ of the road and shows no sign of slowing down. He hasn’t lost his sense of humour and here’s hoping both it, and his considerable musicianship, will be on display for some time yet.

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The Adams-Selwood malarkey

Much of the discussion in AFL circles over the past few days has centred around one umpiring decision in Friday night’s game between the West Coast Eagles and North Melbourne at Patersons Stadium.

With less than a minute remaining, Eagles player Adam Selwood took possession of the ball near the boundary line. Selwood, sensing he was about to be tackled by North’s Leigh Adams, dropped at the knees in an attempt to draw a free-kick for high contact. At first viewing the contact did not seem to warrant a free-kick, and the umpire refrained from blowing the whistle until Selwood was on the ground and had been swamped by two more Kangaroos players. From another camera angle, Adams’ initial contact was proven to be high – his upper left arm caught Selwood over the shoulder and made contact with his face. Further complicating matters was what the umpire said to the North players in the immediate aftermath of paying the free-kick – words to the effect of ‘the second one caught him high’. Viewers were unsure if the umpire meant the second player into the contest (Andrew Swallow) had caught Selwood high, or if he was referring to Adams’ tackle, where the left (infringing) arm had arrived slightly after the right. The decision to award the kick to Selwood would, of course, be forgotten now, save for the fact that Nic Naitanui marked it and kicked a goal after the siren to give the Eagles an unlikely win.

Whatever your view of the free-kick, the Adams-Selwood incident brings some interesting issues into the spotlight.

Firstly, if a player has a reputation for seeking free-kicks for high contact, isn’t the onus on the tackler to be aware of this and adjust his approach accordingly? Sure it may not be in the best spirit of the game, but until the rule book is adjusted (ie – to say that dropping at the knees when about to be tackled is illegal), surely the issue is not Selwood’s? Just as certain players like to get onto their left or right sides before taking a kick (and the corralling defender usually tries to deny them that privilege), shouldn’t a player about to tackle Adam Selwood be aware of his penchant for dropping at the knees? If I was trying to tackle a Selwood (yes, any of them), I’d be aiming about a foot or two lower than I normally would. Further to this, if I was about to tackle Adam Selwood, I’d be tempted just to let him get the kick away – given the roughly 50 percent chance it’d be going to one of my teammates anyway.

The second point, and one that has always perplexed me, is this notion that in a close, hard game, the umpires should ‘put the whistle away’. This idea, which I’ve been hearing about ever since I started following the great game some 23 years ago, is ridiculous. I’ve never read the laws of Australian rules football in their entirety, but if there’s a section that says ‘umpires shall refrain from paying free-kicks when a game is close and in the final quarter’, I’d like to see it. The free-kick to Luke Shuey, moments before the Selwood one, was in the back every day of the week. The Selwood one, upon reflection, was there too. This idea of putting the whistle away in close games is akin to the myth some boxing fans cling to whereby the champion should be awarded the close rounds in a title fight by virtue of the fact he is champion. It’s nonsense.

People up in arms about those two decisions would be better off rewinding the tape a few minutes and wondering why Aaron Black was denied a certain mark, within scoring range, when the umpire deemed a ball touched that clearly wasn’t. Or why Shannon Hurn failed to be penalised for a blatant hold on his opponent as the game neared its conclusion – both far worse decisions than Selwood or Shuey.

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Lush Life – Richard Price

Lush Life is the fourth Richard Price book I’ve read, and while I’m still debating whether it’s the equal of Clockers, the fact I’m even considering it is lofty praise indeed.

The first Price book I read was Samaritan, in 2009 while I was on holiday, and I loved it – but it took me another year to pick up Clockers. From there I read his first novel, The Wanderers, before finally sinking my teeth into Lush Life, a book that for one reason or another I’d had several false starts with before making it through.

Like Samaritan and Clockers, Lush Life details the ripple effects of a crime and the workings of those trying to solve it. In the case of Lush Life, it’s the shooting death of a hipster bartender in New York’s Lower East Side, and we are taken into the lives of those connected with him in some way – from his colleague Eric Cash, who was with him at the time of the shooting, his grieving father Billy, and the detectives assigned to investigate the case.

There’s something about the way Price writes police that makes the characters unforgettable. From Rocco Klein trying to impress the big-name Hollywood star who was doing research in his squad in Clockers, to Samaritan‘s Nerese Ammons exorcising childhood demons on the job – Price’s cops stay with you long after you’ve finished reading about them. Lush Life‘s Matty Clarke and his partner Yolanda are cut from the same cloth, and some of their exchanges are brilliant.

As you would expect from an award-winning screenwriter (whose credits include The Color of Money, Sea of Love and The Wire), the dialogue is exceptional. Dennis Lehane once described Price as the ‘greatest writer of dialogue, living or dead, this country has ever produced’. Some of the best sequences are between Clarke and the tortured Billy, who is floundering as he comes to grips with the shooting of his son:-

Matty had picked this spot because Chinaman’s Chance was closed until midnight except for special friends, i.e. cops and preferred dealers, and he knew they’d have it to themselves. But Billy had gone from inarticulately distraught to talking his head off from the moment they sat down, and now Matty wasn’t sure how to play it.

“One, accept the fact that the murder can’t be undone. Just accept it.”

“Ok.” Matty knew what was coming , had heard variations of this spiel dozens of times before, from dozens of newly branded Billys.

“Two, find the higher meaning in it. See the tragedy as part of the human condition, you know, like how every event has a purpose, or, or, something worse has been averted according to God’s plan. Ok? And, by the way, nothing says you can’t keep the bond with the loved one.”

“No.”

“I mean they’re still with you if you want them to be. In fact, maybe even more so now that they’ve been purified into spirit. And there’s no reason to stop talking to each other just because…”

“True.”

“And of course they live on in your memories, your undying memories…”

Every time, this hapless eagerness that most viscerally suggested to him the essence not of the grieving adult, but the lost child, as if the parents were unconsciously performing an impersonation of child innocence, and at least fleetingly, no matter how distant Matty tried to be, it always knocked him back.

“And three, most importantly-”

“That all sounds very solid there, Billy,” Matty, hunching forward, cut him off. “But I hope you know this stuff takes a long time to truly set up house in you.”

“Yeah,” he said drily, “that was in the literature too.”

Matty Clarke, Billy and Eric Cash are all brilliantly drawn, with the broken hopes and dreams of each man teased out over the course of the book. But the character I found the most interesting was Clarke’s partner Yolanda, who he freely acknowledges as the better hunter. Yolanda’s ‘spoonful of honey’ techniques, her empathy with offenders and the psychological webs she weaves to seduce young men into offloading their sins were a highlight.

You can’t really go wrong with any of the four Price novels I’ve mentioned, but I think Lush Life, Clockers and Samaritan are ahead of The Wanderers, which was written when he was 24. If I had to give them Brownlow votes, it’d be Clockers 3, Lush Life 2 and Samaritan 1.

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Being Flynn

Being Flynn is a welcome return to form for Robert De Niro, who’s made so many average films in recent years a whole generation of movie goers probably aren’t aware of just how good he was in his prime.

As a teen, one of my great pleasures as a fledgling film fan was my retrospective discovery of De Niro – from watching The Deer Hunter (painstakingly) in a booth in the university library on my breaks, to marvelling at The Godfather Part II, or tracking down copies of Raging Bull, Mean Streets or Taxi Driver. The body of work that De Niro produced throughout the 1970s and 80s was astounding.

If possible, the first half of the 1990s saw him making even better films – Awakenings, Goodfellas, Casino, A Bronx Tale and Heat were all terrific.

But I think 1997′s Jackie Brown was the last time I was truly captivated by De Niro, although Ronin was a good film. The watchable Analyse This (1999), opposite Billy Crystal, marked the beginning of a decline. Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers – in the eyes of a lot of critics – seemed to reinvent De Niro as some sort of comic genius. But while those films certainly provide a few chuckles, they aren’t super funny and wore thin pretty quickly.

There have been a few good moments in later years – Limitless was pretty decent viewing, and although I’m yet to see Silver Linings Playbook, it has garnered excellent reviews. Generally though, these days if I see the name Robert De Niro on a film I’m more likely to look away and try something else lest I further dilute the memory of the man who (along with Al Pacino, Sean Penn and Daniel Day Lewis) is among the finest actors to work during my lifetime.

All of which served to make Becoming Flynn such a pleasant surprise.  I didn’t choose it, that honour went to my better half who ordered it on the Foxtel while I was out procuring Thai food, but I’m thankful she did.

Telling the story of ‘eccentric’ New York writer Jonathan Flynn and his son Nick (Paul Dano), from whom he is estranged, Becoming Flynn is a great film, and De Niro is excellent in it. There’s something about seeing Jimmy Conway or Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein sleeping rough that is particularly poignant, and what resonated most about this film was how we are all just a few poor choices away from the street. Based on the book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir by the real Nick Flynn, a New York playwright and poet, there is a real weight to the writing in Being Flynn. It’s better than anything De Niro has done in years. One of the more beautiful scenes shows Jonathan seeking heat from the vents outside the public library.

“He’s seen this before. Bums sprawled out from drinking. But he’s never actually stood over the blowers – let the hot air seep into his clothes. The air is sucked out of the library. Even on the coldest nights there is too much heat inside. It’s another prison, these blowers, because once you’ve landed you can’t leave. Because one step off the blower is cold, hypothermia cold, now that you’re sodden with steam. The blower is a room of heat with no walls. My father is an invisible man, in an invisible room, in the invisible city.”

Dano (Looper, Little Miss Sunshine) does a stoic job alongside De Niro and the always-magnificent Julianne Moore, but it’s Bob’s film. Here’s hoping Being Flynn marks the beginning of a late-career resurgence.

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