The Map of Time folds along the dotted line
.
Oh man. I don't know where to start. The ST bitches have broken my brain.
So you all know I've returned to an old fandom, right? Right. My contact with Star Trek dates back to when I was six years old, the year it premiered, and occasionally got to watch an episode because my mom felt like it. It was very intense for me in the 70's, when I and my girlfriend Pam were both heavy Trekkies. (Filking and Bjo and 'zines, oh my!) It lessened slowly over the years, as the newer series and the slow downward spiral of the films caused it to fade. It sort of sputtered out, possibly for good (although I did still love the books).
And then this new flick came along, and the thing caught fire again, and fun is once again being had in the Alpha Quadrant, in Starfleet, in our future. (Think about that for a minute: This is the one future mythos that says we're going to have fun in the centuries to come. That space exploration will be wonderful, that knowledge, that experience will be the thing we crave, the one thing that will drive us to the stars. Think about that.) Since I'd had such deep and abiding affection for the original show, I naturally greeted it happily, and because I spend time on the internet, I naturally found my way into one of its many fandoms, here on LJ: ontd_startrek. This merry band of insane bitches has made me laugh more in the past couple of weeks than I have in the three years before it. Perhaps you'll understand what that means to me right now.
Along with that, again naturally, comes the glow. This is a high-budget, energetic, adventure, cast with beautiful people whom you want to look at. And the particular backyard that I've chosen to play in is very occupied with that, Aphrodite bless their randy little hearts. There's a great deal of attention paid to beauty, in a happy silly way. The main stars are young and very pretty and much squeeing is had by all. This can take some interesting turns.
Ever since film came into existence, there's been a debate about the effect of cinema on the real world. What exactly happens when you film something? What place in reality does it then occupy? What does filming do to the thing captured on celluloid? I side with those who say that film heightens and glamorizes its subject, not by any perceived attitude on the part of the filmmaker, but by the simple mechanism of recording a thing to begin with. When a camera points at an object, the person behind it is by definition saying the object is worth looking at. For whatever reason, it's interesting, it's valuable - it's beautiful.
I contend that this is the core of the modern Cult of Aeneas, the worship of the beautiful for its own sake. The camera tells us who to notice, who to grow warm over, who to love. Its very gaze confers allure and royalty, for a time brief or not, and surrounded as we are by it, we take heed. This can lead to interesting insights, if you pay attention to your own gaze and where it is led. I've attained one of those insights over the last couple of days. It's a startling one, and it is this:
Young and pretty doesn't cut it anymore.
How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, I came across some picspams of guys I hadn't really been thinking about, because I was distracted by the Cute Young Hotties. But the camera did its work, aided by the enthusiastic insistence of certain fangirls, and my eye was drawn by the guy I posted about last night, Bruce Greenwood. Of course I liked him an awful lot in his role, and had acknowledged that he was certainly hot - in an "older guy" kinda way. I was still scrambling to find an erotic foothold in the nest of hotness that is Star Trek when I came across this picture and was instantly transfixed. To paraphrase Hilda Doolittle: It was not that he was beautiful, but she stared and stared...
It was the combination of elements that riveted me: the looks, the pose, the expression. Here's not a beautiful boy, but a handsome man, and that's a completely different tone and evokes a different response. It's not something I've gone for in the past, and now, suddenly, it seems the only thing to want. I don't think I can convey just how big a sea change that is for me. My compass has always pointed to the sweet and young, and now I've suddenly peckish for a different flavor. Something headier, deeper, stronger.
Oh yeah, the "older" thing. After some saturation brought my higher functions back, it occurred to me to go look him up. *facepalm* Older. The guy's got five years on me. He's a freaking Boomer. We could have gone to the same school, for gods' sakes. Oy. So there I am, lusting after this distinguished-looking man who's only five years older than me, and I realize I've moved into a different area. This man is a contemporary of mine, more or less, the best age for someone of my years. A man of this age would share many of the same cultural memories, speak the same language, understand the same history. There wouldn't be the awkwardness, the un-fit of two different eras trying to coincide.
And I look at the lines, the wonderful lines in his face, and I'm reminded of Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, where the human raised among aliens on another planet defines beauty this way: he had his own face. For Valentine Micheal, who knew nothing of human standards, beauty was something that grew only over time, as days and years and decades made their marks in flesh, turning every human face into a lived-in map of life; the most blindingly beautiful person he knew was his mentor, Jubal Harshaw, who was pushing 80 at the time of the story. And at one point, Mike is contemplating the pictures that young lovestruck girls send him, and he thinks something that has always had a great power and mystery for me: All young human females had the same face. How could it be otherwise?
That I would only change by replacing "human females" with simply "humans". Mike has always been right. Youth has the beauty of crystal, of porcelain - the smooth untouched quality of something not yet used or lived in. That's fine for sculpture, but the passing of time wreaks a beauty that has no comparison. It's turned wood polished by centuries of hands grasping it; canyon walls whispered into fantastic, erotic shapes; a mountain peak, a vineyard, a gnarled oak. It's the crinkle of lines around a knowing smile. Knowing, that's the key, because he does know; you can bet on that. Life does that to you. It gives you things to know.
So I've discovered this: that growing up is about loving the map. We aren't given our faces, our bodies, our souls, at birth. We have to make them. Time carves us, and beauty is achieved when we rejoice in the markings instead of fighting them. Look at that man's face - you can see he laughs far more than he frowns. Who wouldn't want a face that proclaims that to the world? Who wouldn't want to see such a face, day in and day out, as it becomes more and more itself, more and more the one who lives in it? And what is the point of living in a face that denies one's whole life? That's something I can't imagine, and more to the point, I can't imagine wanting it. And now for the first time, I feel touched by the eroticism of time, the actual physical appeal of it, and that's wonderful, and strange.
And then, of course, there's Karl...but I'll continue later. Stay tuned.
Oh man. I don't know where to start. The ST bitches have broken my brain.
So you all know I've returned to an old fandom, right? Right. My contact with Star Trek dates back to when I was six years old, the year it premiered, and occasionally got to watch an episode because my mom felt like it. It was very intense for me in the 70's, when I and my girlfriend Pam were both heavy Trekkies. (Filking and Bjo and 'zines, oh my!) It lessened slowly over the years, as the newer series and the slow downward spiral of the films caused it to fade. It sort of sputtered out, possibly for good (although I did still love the books).
And then this new flick came along, and the thing caught fire again, and fun is once again being had in the Alpha Quadrant, in Starfleet, in our future. (Think about that for a minute: This is the one future mythos that says we're going to have fun in the centuries to come. That space exploration will be wonderful, that knowledge, that experience will be the thing we crave, the one thing that will drive us to the stars. Think about that.) Since I'd had such deep and abiding affection for the original show, I naturally greeted it happily, and because I spend time on the internet, I naturally found my way into one of its many fandoms, here on LJ: ontd_startrek. This merry band of insane bitches has made me laugh more in the past couple of weeks than I have in the three years before it. Perhaps you'll understand what that means to me right now.
Along with that, again naturally, comes the glow. This is a high-budget, energetic, adventure, cast with beautiful people whom you want to look at. And the particular backyard that I've chosen to play in is very occupied with that, Aphrodite bless their randy little hearts. There's a great deal of attention paid to beauty, in a happy silly way. The main stars are young and very pretty and much squeeing is had by all. This can take some interesting turns.
Ever since film came into existence, there's been a debate about the effect of cinema on the real world. What exactly happens when you film something? What place in reality does it then occupy? What does filming do to the thing captured on celluloid? I side with those who say that film heightens and glamorizes its subject, not by any perceived attitude on the part of the filmmaker, but by the simple mechanism of recording a thing to begin with. When a camera points at an object, the person behind it is by definition saying the object is worth looking at. For whatever reason, it's interesting, it's valuable - it's beautiful.
I contend that this is the core of the modern Cult of Aeneas, the worship of the beautiful for its own sake. The camera tells us who to notice, who to grow warm over, who to love. Its very gaze confers allure and royalty, for a time brief or not, and surrounded as we are by it, we take heed. This can lead to interesting insights, if you pay attention to your own gaze and where it is led. I've attained one of those insights over the last couple of days. It's a startling one, and it is this:
Young and pretty doesn't cut it anymore.
How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, I came across some picspams of guys I hadn't really been thinking about, because I was distracted by the Cute Young Hotties. But the camera did its work, aided by the enthusiastic insistence of certain fangirls, and my eye was drawn by the guy I posted about last night, Bruce Greenwood. Of course I liked him an awful lot in his role, and had acknowledged that he was certainly hot - in an "older guy" kinda way. I was still scrambling to find an erotic foothold in the nest of hotness that is Star Trek when I came across this picture and was instantly transfixed. To paraphrase Hilda Doolittle: It was not that he was beautiful, but she stared and stared...
It was the combination of elements that riveted me: the looks, the pose, the expression. Here's not a beautiful boy, but a handsome man, and that's a completely different tone and evokes a different response. It's not something I've gone for in the past, and now, suddenly, it seems the only thing to want. I don't think I can convey just how big a sea change that is for me. My compass has always pointed to the sweet and young, and now I've suddenly peckish for a different flavor. Something headier, deeper, stronger.
Oh yeah, the "older" thing. After some saturation brought my higher functions back, it occurred to me to go look him up. *facepalm* Older. The guy's got five years on me. He's a freaking Boomer. We could have gone to the same school, for gods' sakes. Oy. So there I am, lusting after this distinguished-looking man who's only five years older than me, and I realize I've moved into a different area. This man is a contemporary of mine, more or less, the best age for someone of my years. A man of this age would share many of the same cultural memories, speak the same language, understand the same history. There wouldn't be the awkwardness, the un-fit of two different eras trying to coincide.
And I look at the lines, the wonderful lines in his face, and I'm reminded of Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, where the human raised among aliens on another planet defines beauty this way: he had his own face. For Valentine Micheal, who knew nothing of human standards, beauty was something that grew only over time, as days and years and decades made their marks in flesh, turning every human face into a lived-in map of life; the most blindingly beautiful person he knew was his mentor, Jubal Harshaw, who was pushing 80 at the time of the story. And at one point, Mike is contemplating the pictures that young lovestruck girls send him, and he thinks something that has always had a great power and mystery for me: All young human females had the same face. How could it be otherwise?
That I would only change by replacing "human females" with simply "humans". Mike has always been right. Youth has the beauty of crystal, of porcelain - the smooth untouched quality of something not yet used or lived in. That's fine for sculpture, but the passing of time wreaks a beauty that has no comparison. It's turned wood polished by centuries of hands grasping it; canyon walls whispered into fantastic, erotic shapes; a mountain peak, a vineyard, a gnarled oak. It's the crinkle of lines around a knowing smile. Knowing, that's the key, because he does know; you can bet on that. Life does that to you. It gives you things to know.
So I've discovered this: that growing up is about loving the map. We aren't given our faces, our bodies, our souls, at birth. We have to make them. Time carves us, and beauty is achieved when we rejoice in the markings instead of fighting them. Look at that man's face - you can see he laughs far more than he frowns. Who wouldn't want a face that proclaims that to the world? Who wouldn't want to see such a face, day in and day out, as it becomes more and more itself, more and more the one who lives in it? And what is the point of living in a face that denies one's whole life? That's something I can't imagine, and more to the point, I can't imagine wanting it. And now for the first time, I feel touched by the eroticism of time, the actual physical appeal of it, and that's wonderful, and strange.
And then, of course, there's Karl...but I'll continue later. Stay tuned.