I Left Word Flowers for You There; or Memoir, Dimension, and Guilt
Posted: July 20, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1984, betrayal, christopher hitchens, dimension, flatland, grammar, guilt, hitch-22, love, memoir, memory, michael thomsen, n, orwell 1 Comment »In his recently published memoir, Christopher Hitchens wrote something that encapsulated all of the guilt I feel about my confessional writing. “For those I have loved, or who have been so lenient and gracious as to have loved me, I have not words enough here, and I remember with gratitude how they have made me speechless in return.” When I write, I have a recurring fear of betraying the loyalties of the people I write about. This is bearably nerve-wracking when profiling people or characterizing someone’s work or public opinions—a kind of writing I find painfully boring.
The Age of the Electronic Whale; or Politics and Hyperbole
Posted: May 20, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: arlen specter, george packer, hyperbole, michael thomsen, milton, narrative, new yorker, paradise lost, politics, rand paul, sarah palin 1 Comment »There’s one criticism of my writing that I’m especially sensitive to, the accusation of hyperbole. I’m happy to tangle with disagreement and often amused by personal insults and mockery, but when someone suggests hyperbole, I feel like I’ve failed in something essential. For the accusation to stick, it has to be demonstrated that the subject doesn’t actually believe what they’ve written. It’s an accusation of being disingenuous, having exaggerated a point beyond the limits of what the author really believes. It’s a devastating criticism. How can any writer expect someone else to believe a point that they themselves know is a whimsical untruth?
Cannibalism, Crisisses, and My Disappearing Sex Columns
Posted: May 5, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: ambanayandro, cannibalism, ego, journalism, madagascar, media, merina, michael thomsen, new york times, objectivity, server farm, sex museum, times square bombing 2 Comments »Last week something unexpectedly terrible happened. I was rifling though some links of things I’d written and discovered that every Nerve column had disappeared. The links, when sent out to the humming computer boxes housed in a high-rise office building somewhere in midtown Manhattan, found empty spaces where once had been mementos from my emotion-swollen brain. When I first started writing I was in the habit of reading my own work over and over again. There was no one who enjoyed it more than me. No one better appreciated the words whose etymologic thread had an especially lovely meaning, or which connected to some anecdote that hovered silently in between the lines. No one reveled more than I did in the circuitous conclusions I’d arrive at after wandering in the rhetorical murk for a thousand words. And no one, certainly, laughed louder at my jokes.
The Case Against History, or Same-Sex Marriage and Human Digestion
Posted: April 15, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: barbarianism, bible, digestion, facebook, gay marriage, hammurabi, history, incest, love, mano a mondo, marriage, michael thomsen, religion, the case against history Leave a comment »It’s sometimes unflattering to look back at the record of history one leaves behind. When I was twelve, I remember the mortification I felt when my dad brought home a video camera with which he intended to record one of his classes. He let me and a friend record ourselves yammering into the lens, and when we took the video tape out and replayed it on the television I felt like I was looking a poorly formed worm in a baggy t-shirt. My voice sounded somehow pig-like. The thrill I’d felt in seeing the glinting new piece of technology suddenly turned to resentment. “Get that stupid thing out of here,” I thought.
Marriage, Poetry, and Fucking That Ass That I Own
Posted: April 10, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: adultery, ass, breath, cheating, fuck, gold, marriage, michael thomsen, pga, phil levine, poetry, porn, sex, sodomite, tiger woods 5 Comments »Poetry is a lost art that no one rightfully cares about anymore. Modern media offers many more powerful and direct methods for expressing the abstractions in our lives. The dusty old practitioners of word bending couldn’t keep pace with the rest of the world. It’s not that poetry is bad, nor that John Milton doesn’t matter anymore. It’s that there’s nothing left to build on in what remains of those old creations. You could listen to a song on your iPod, discovering the same colliding ideas held together across the semantic handholding of a linebreak, but now with the added embellishment of sound and performance. You could watch a montage of abstractly connected ideas held together on YouTube video streamed to your phone while waiting for the bus. The abstract surrounds us in new forms so much more than it did centuries ago, in an age of deliberate functionality and ceremonial human engagement.
Rites of Anniversary, Commemorabilia, or the Wallpaper of Time
Posted: April 8, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anniversary, commemorabilia, michael thomsen, new york, right, rite, wallpaper of time 3 Comments »One of the roots of the word “right” comes from the French “droite,” which is derived from “du rois.” In this way a right was neither inalienable nor innately granted but referred to a slip of paper that exempted someone from a royal tax or restriction by order of the King. It’s an exception from an arbitrary demand, not a defining quality that can be used to ennoble humanity. On the other hand, the word “rite” is a demarcation of something passed through, experienced, or survived.
I moved to New York one year ago today. I can’t say that means anything, but it has been an experience that I’ve never really had before. It’s something I’m grateful for and so I’ll commemorate that strange and lucky passage with this collage of all the sights, experiences, and surprising places that have been a part of my meandering arrow of time here. Whatever I’ve done over the last year, this has been the world that I’ve done it in. And done it for.
In chronological order, from April 7, 2009 to April 7, 2010:
Entropy, Ice Skating, and You Lost Me At Hello
Posted: April 2, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: arranged marriage, ballet dancer, bryant park, dating, entropy, fear, goals, gravity, hockey, ice skating, love, michael thomsen, nu shooz, relationships, rink 4 Comments »I used to be fixated on the idea of arranged marriages when I was in high school. Relying on other people’s judgment to get around the difficulties of discovering what I really wanted seemed both sensible and adventurous. What better way to enter into a lifelong relationship with someone than in the spirit of discovery and making the best of an unavoidable situation? I’d revel in the lower divorce rates for countries with traditional arranged marriages and munch on mystic stories about the capacity of someone else to play matchmaker on my behalf.
Precious, Torture Porn, and Permission to Stare
Posted: March 2, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: hiv, hostel, hostel part 2, m'nique, making out in public, michael thomsen, mike thomsen, monique, permission, porn, pornography, precious, rape, saw, stare, suffering, torture porn 4 Comments »Torture porn has lately formalized itself into a full-fledged, and mostly unwelcome, new genre in the same way as reality television. Precious fits neatly into this new pocket of sensorial expression at the more extreme ends of the human emotional spectrum. The association of Precious and something as tawdry as Hostel of Saw 5 is heresy to a lot of people I’ve spoken with. There is sanctity in the womanly suffering endured by the protagonist cum victim, and it cannot survive the notion that it exists more for effect than as a document of real life.
The High School Variations, Making Movies, and Getting a Paper Weight Thrown At Your Head
Posted: February 25, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: adam and eve, eve's diary, high school variations, hollywood, jennifer love hewitt, mark twain, michael thomsen, mike fights a bully, n, paper weight, peter yates, poison 9 Comments »When I was twelve my friend J got a guitar for Christmas because he was amazed by a Poison album called “Flesh and Blood.” I’d never thought about playing guitar but after listening to him talk for a few minutes I decided I would need to convince my parents I needed a guitar too. I liked Poison well enough and, really, what twelve year-old boy shouldn’t be in a band?
i am error, or the Price of a City
Posted: February 10, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: airport, goodbye, michael thomsen, moving, n, new york 3 Comments »Nina is my friend L’s dog. She’s black and furry, a mix between a Rottweiler and a Chow. Her tongue is dark purple and it hangs out of her mouth when she pants. One weekend when L went away Nina came and stayed with me and my roommates in our apartment. She was a quiet dog but when we’d come back from a walk she’d be so excited that she’d run back and forth from the front door to the kitchen. When she’d reach the far end of the apartment she’d lose her grip and flop onto the floor and go sliding into the wall. She’d jump up again, her tail flipping back and forth. Then she’d gallop back towards the other end of the room and go careening into the wall on the other side.
Maybe you’ve heard this story already but I’m going to tell it again, because I love it.
I met N almost two years ago, on a cold and sunny San Francisco morning. It was Easter and my friend had invited some people over to his apartment for a boozy brunch. His place was a long, gray shotgun apartment, and when I arrived he led me down the long dark hall to the kitchen. N was standing there at the stove, her back to me, the a white apron tied across her back over a purple and orange sundress. As soon as I saw her, before she turned around, I felt like I knew her, and had for as long as I could remember.
Then she turned around and looked at me. I remember thinking it was ridiculous that we were shaking hands and trading names. It should have been a long hug and “How have you been?” I thought.
