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    Book Selling Locations: Update

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    I swear this is more for my enthusiasm for these lovely booksellers than any desire of my own to actually sell this thing! But a massive thanks too all who continue to keep it a bestseller.

    It's taught as a textbook at Seattle University now, and a highlight at Tacoma's PLU, where I'll be the visiting writer and lecturer next month (details here), and one of the attending writers on the conference faculty at the upcoming Chuckanut Writers Conference this June, as well as a pick for Redmond Library's reading group in September (stay tuned for related events!).

    To all of which I say: EEP EEP! You're making me blush!!

    You can buy my book online here, through these direct links:
    And in person here, where all these friendly booksellers are just waiting to say hello: 
    And, newly added in West Seattle:


    Are you having trouble getting hold of the book? Email my publisher, Chin Music Press at chinmusicpress@gmail.com.

    Thanks for all your support!
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    Nathan's Top Two Films of 2019: #1

    1. A Hidden Life
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    "Better to suffer injustice than to do it."

    Synopsis: The real-life story of Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to fight under Nazi Germany, and his wife Fani. Trailer.
    dir. Terrence Malick. 173m; 2.39:1.
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    [spoilers]

    It's an impossible choice he faces. Or is it? Upon second viewing and further reflection I'm not sure Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector before the term entered common parlance, feels much indecision at all. Malick's latest recounts the true story of an Austrian farmer who refused to support Hitler's genocide, and who was executed as a result. The film's masterstroke is to withhold Franz's explicit reasons for taking such a stand. Because isn't that one of those decisions that's beyond reason?

    You either recoil from the thought, repulsed on a gut level and unable to bring yourself to violate your soul to that degree... Or you don't, you're okay with the moral compromise. We can't pretend to know what we would do, because it'd be a supposition based on idle speculation, and nothing more.
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    Complicating his situation is the love he has for his wife and their idyllic life. Fani, also a real-life figure, was instrumental in guiding Franz toward the very character which would ultimately keep them apart– by all accounts she awakened in him an inclination toward goodness, peace and thoughtful intention. She loved Franz because of who he was, who he had become; exactly what he'd be turning his back on if he signed Hitler's oath on the hope of being returned to her (not that a Fascist government during wartime should be particularly trusted to keep such promises).

    ​Franz can't go back to Fani because of who he is, and the fact that it's you, yourself, who has to live with your decisions. And she can't encourage him to abandon what she loves most about him– though in a moment of weakness she does, before relenting in anguish– because that's not how love sustains. 

    A moment I missed on first viewing is when Fani grabs Franz with intense frustration, saying, "You're going to do it, aren't you." She's enraged by the thought. Only on a second round would I realize she's referring to him capitulating. Fani doesn't want him to join Hitler's crusade, especially not on the level that matters most– even though this means they will be kept apart, likely forever. His refusal to follow Hitler, in light of her wish, becomes an act of love.

    Her frustration is not with him but with a world and a God that don't make sense, who are silent in the face of obvious tragedy.     ​Wisely, Malick doesn't answer the questions he raises, though he does include what feels like a first in his oeuvre: a scathing appraisal of Christian hypocrisy by an icon painter that rings as true now as it did in Nazi Germany. 
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    Malick lets his images speak for themselves. As in The New World, certain characters promote arguments of hate or apathy using words, using reason– you can reason yourself into any outlook– but there are no grandstanding counter-speeches here. Images cut deeper, and intuition runs more potently than intellectual arguments. Franz's decision is positioned as an instinctual one: with historical hindsight we know the full breadth of Hitler's evil and the notion of refusing to embrace it is more straightforward.

    But as an Austrian mountain farmer in 1939, Franz would only have an inkling of the inhumanity being done. As we now know so well, his suspicions were more correct than he ever could have guessed. The shock of Franz's fortitude is that he didn't need mountains of traumatic evidence to sustain it. It was as simple as knowing himself enough to know that there was no way, on this Earth, he'd be able to bring himself to kill people. His is less a decision to abandon life as to retain his soul. ​
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    These two individuals believed they needed to be good, and that staying consistent with the character of their best selves was of greater value than the hatred du jour their contemporaries acquiesed to. They imagined their actions would be unknown and insignificant in the tide of history, and this did not concern them. They cared for other human beings, in a society that had no use for such an outlook, and which actively sought to destroy it.

    Who looks the fool now? Franz and Fani's actions ended up impacting nearly everyone around them after all, and inspiring generations afterwards, but even if that had never been the case, I don't imagine they would've much cared. Neither lived to see their actions recognized in appreciation; their three daughters would be ostracized by the community for decades afterwards. Those externalities weren't part of their concerns, which had more to do with the interior question of what they'd be able to live with. Conscience is who you are when no one but hindsight is looking. Conscience is what reason cowers before, what reason lacks the tools to truly master. Look at the faces of the other conscientious objectors Franz is imprisoned with. Or at the way Bruno Ganz looks at his hands. At the reflected sun beaming down onto the prison hallway floor, the camera always searching for the light. 

    In the struggle between intuition and reason, intuition never needs to justify itself. 

    [end spoilers]
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    Like its protagonists, A Hidden Life faded from view quickly. It came and went without Oscar nominations, though it did draw sold-out crowds(!) here in Seattle. Fox Searchlight may have enthusiastically bought it last Cannes for $12 million, but it didn’t get booked into as many theatres as Searchlight may have liked because Disney, which owns Fox, overcharged theatres at the same premium tentpole rate it was charging them for their latest Star Wars, an absurd business move for an arthouse feature; of course the chains balked, and everyone lost out. 

    Though it’s a three-hour period piece made with heavy improvisation (Ms. Pachner says below they stopped using the script after about a week), sources say it was made for “high single digits,” which implies the Cannes buy more than recoups investors, though Fox won’t see a return after Disney’s mishandling. The picture itself was funded primarily by four private equity investors who don’t have their names listed in the credits, and who were aware this was unlikely to be financially lucrative, but who rather supported the director as private citizens and fans.

    Jörg Widmer takes over lensing duties from the trilogy's Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki with no meaningful difference in aesthetic, which shouldn’t be a major surprise given that Widmer was Chivo’s lead steadi operator on all their Malick collaborations. The difference here is this is Malick’s first entirely digital production. We’ve finally gotten to the point where digital can generate film-competitive results if treated properly in post; it used to be easy to tell the difference between a digital movie and celluloid, especially when looking at skies and skin tones.

    That remains the case, except when filmmakers take care to impose tone curves, color spaces, and grain overlays from specific film stocks, as has clearly been done here. It’s a rich, filmlike image with deep blacks and exceptionally competent light-dark latitude. With the attention Malick pays to his visuals, I’m not surprised; and I suspect going digital worked wonders for his process, which involves searching for extemporaneous moments and shooting enormous amounts of footage doing so. Tree of Life and Thin Red Line both resulted from a million feet of film shot– enough for 91 two-hour films each! Much has been made in press materials of the average length of a take during shooting Hidden Life: 28 minutes, impossible with film. 

    ​Explore the links below for stories of the actors doing farm labor for 40-minute takes. If it looks they know what they’re doing on screen, it’s because that is what they’re doing. The actors also got texts every morning from Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, psalms from the bible, and more; but they weren’t discussed. As Malick told Sight & Sound in 1975, you can't film philosophy. In keeping with the above advocacy for intuition, they were offered less for intellectual analysis than reflection, a search for a “grounded feeling” with the landscape. 
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    Chivo and Malick’s camera rules from The New World carry over mostly intact: all natural light, handheld or steadi only, deep focus, subjective view, and leaning into happy accidents. The 12mm lens, used for the entire film except for a few “long-lens shots” using a still laughably wide 16mm, take “wide angle” to a new level. No other film looks like this one, simply because no other films have been shot with only a 12mm lens, let alone solely natural light. The focus range is massive, and the lens distortion emphasizes depth in the frame; we are there, as we never have been. Lines and composition get emphasized as well, and the camera can read closer to a surface than normal. Note how vast the distance between Franz and the priest seems; or the uncanny uniqueness of the standing soldiers and children, with the unusually close camera; and the diagonal lines in the courtroom.
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    ​It's the silences in Malick that speak the loudest, the room he allows us to divine meaning from image and soliloquy. The ever-fluid camera tells us all we need to know. He achieved an apex of this abstraction of form with his excellent last three films, with the final third of this so-called 'Modern Life' trilogy* (Song to Song) fine-tuning the possibilities of his brand of pure cinema to their fullest potential. No other contemporary filmmaker has gotten closer to communicating directly with the viewer, freed from the bounds of narrative, plot, structure and even language. 

    This is purity of expression not as a headless avant-garde, but as primal emotional discourse with the viewer. Malick reaches us not with heady intellect but with the vernacular of the soul, and is thus available for engagement with any sensitive viewer, whether or not they are educated or otherwise elite. Malick transcends and even appears to actively resist such statuses, choosing not worldly or learned protagonists but thoughtful ones, reflective people who speak in a voice we reach for, who put to words the ephemera we don't know defines us.
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    ---

    ​*My thoughts on each of the films:     2013's To The Wonder (scroll down); 2016's Knight of Cups (scroll down), and 2017's Song to Song.

    Behind the scenes
    Essays
    These two longform reviews offer far more than anything I could come up with on my own:
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    Nathan's Films of 2019 Index here.
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    Nathan at MOHAI: Wed 2/19, Evening

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    My lectures sound like this.​

    You may not think you like lectures, or maybe the word gives you college flashbacks too boring to recall, but I promise you that's not what this is going to be. MOHAI's a lovely outfit, and they're letting me be, well, myself, and I've got some surprises for you. This is going to be a lil' different from my other talks, in keeping with my tradition of having each of my events being unique in focus (so they continue to be interesting to show up to!), only more so.

    No one's ever asked me to give an hour-long lecture before, and believe you me, I'm going to take full advantage. In the same way that my cat speech is really a thirty-minute talk crammed into ten minutes, I've got a ton to share with you. We're gonna dive deep. History is about more than the past, and buses are about more than transport. As in the image above, the talk is officially called "What Bus Lines Tell Us About Seattle," but as it has evolved it might now more accurately be termed "What Bus Lines in Seattle Tell Us About Ourselves." That's right. Divin' deep.

    I'll be exploring what we so often find ourselves thinking about when we're moving about in the big city–  communication, loneliness, cultural divides, generational shifts in perspective, how transit brings us together... What we do and don't do and all the details and habits of daily life that history will fail to record, but which we knew were real. Let us celebrate the rich denseness of present existence as it passes before our eyes, unbeknownst to us because of how quickly we're zipping through life. 

    Basically: let's stop and smell the buses. Or something.

    I'll see you there. (Click here for a less poetic breakdown of the evening's event here; also, books will be available for sale!)

    MOHAI
    860 Terry Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109
    Wednesday, February 19, 2020
    6:30 – 8 pm
    Free

    ​Location, bus, & parking details here.
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    Nathan on Pie

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    "Do you like pie?"

    Here's the thing. I love pie. How could I possibly answer his question? What am I supposed to do? Say I don't like pie? It's hard for me to lie, and especially about pie. Look at that crust. 

    There's a 2013 interview with me where I say, "on rare occasions I allow myself to eat sugar." Rare is a stretch, but I do attempt to avoid it. To pull off the this-isn't-possible anachronistic oxymoron that is a skinny bus driver, you've got to make some sacrifices.

    But the thing is: pie. And more than that– the gesture. Let me explain.

    It's my last trip in from the U District, a 49 to Broadway only. These trips are odd; they deviate from the regular 49 route in Capitol Hill, and rather than going downtown they essentially duplicate the streetcar routing from the Hill down to Vietnamtown and Chinatown on their way to the base. There's no regular bus service along this stretch, and if you choose to pick up people out here, you could be helping in a big way, and not just because the streetcar is laughably slow; it stops running at 8 P.M. on Sundays (despite serving Seattle's premier nightlife neighborhood), and is easily delayed when carshare vehicles or others block the tracks. Like tonight. Look at those beached whales– er, I mean two streetcars, across the street, helplessly stuck behind cars parked just so. Ah, what a trolley bus can do that a streetcar can only dream of...

    These lost souls had been waiting a while. A fellow with one working leg and a lot of groceries on wheels, and a scruffy gent with a walker saddled with clothing and secrets; a silent woman, her mood perhaps frozen cold by the wind; a bespectacled young lady desperate to get home and thrilled at my unexpected appearance; a sleeper who got turned away from the U District shelter, having arrived too late. A hipster who thought I was the official 'streetcar replacement,' a planned event, though I was merely an accidental savior. Not a bad crew.

    "So what route is this?" asked the gent with the walker.
    "Well, I was a 49, but now I'm just going back to base, and thought I'd pick up some of the folks."
    "Get some of the stragglers?"
    "Exactly! We got plenty of room in here!"
    "Man, good on you, man. You gotta one of the best bus drivers out here, hands down. Sheesh. Pickin' up people when you don't even have to!"

    They told me of other stories of people helping each other out. The best was an anecdote during last year's snowbound Christmas, whereupon the speaker had been allowed by a driver to warm up on her bus, and who then helped navigate the driver through neighborhood side streets to get around blockages. 

    I felt a twin joy inside me, made partly from the joy that surfaces when one has helped others and feels the resulting appreciation, and also the burgeoning peace that comes from slowing down. We were taking our time. No need to rush through this traffic. We'd cycled the ramp and kneeled the bus a few times, missed some lights... And everything was fine. Route 49 deadheads may be essential service and are actively sought out by those in the know, but they aren't listed on the stops; these folks were on a bus they never knew would come. 

    I helped Walker Guy on his way out. "Lemme come out here," I said as I stepped in front of him and out onto the sidewalk. "I'm always scared people are gonna pitch forward."
    "Thanks man. It's heavy."
    "I got it. There we go."

    Which is when he asked the pivotal question. The pie question. From the top of his walker, stacked on some clothes, he magically withdrew a half a pumpkin pie in its plastic casing.

    "Do you like pie?"
    "Well. I mean, yeah, I love pie. But are you sure?"
    "Dude, I don't need this. Here." He didn't just hand me pie. He handed me unopened pie and a can of whip cream that was still cold, with a plastic spoon sealed in a wrapper. There was an endearing quality to the gift. The pie accoutrements of spoon and whip, so instantly proffered, and the unglamorous nature of the pie, probably a QFC pie. 

    For me, the simpler and plainer a meal is, the more fully it is recognizable as a gift of kindness. Fanciness has a way of diminishing meaning sometimes. This wasn't pie that you eat. It was pie that you appreciate as the gesture of gratitude it is. 

    Later, inside, I tried to pass on the gift of gratitude, but failed miserably. I accosted Mr Groceries as he wheeled out on the ramp. He'd been telling me his holiday pie recipes after seeing me walk back onto the bus newly gifted. 

    "Hey, do you need pie? I don't need to eat pie at one o'clock in the morning. Seriously."
    "No, man. You enjoy it."

    His expression conveyed that he knew the gift of this simple pie was a gesture intended specifically for me, and that I should bask in that because it wasn't meant for anyone else. 

    So I sit here now, at 01:56 in the morning, trying not to eat this pie but loving it all the same. That man was so excited about people being good to other people that it was worth it to him to give away an entire pie, plus accoutrements. And he didn't exactly look like he was made of money. More like the opposite. But it was the importance of the gesture. He wanted to return the act, keep the flame of goodness exchanged alive.

    I may get a lot of holiday gifts this season, but I don't think any of them will quite match the humble vastness of his offering. The things that hide in plastic silverware, store-bought dessert you only nibble at, and whip cream you don't use. I may never finish this pie, but that doesn't mean I don't love it.

    –Thanksgiving weekend, 2019
  • Published on

    Monster Gift Bag / Happy Holidays / See You in Late January!

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    Forgive me.

    I've been busy. And I'm going to continue to be busy. The only time to rest is right now, so I'm taking a one-month break from the blog before returning in late January with new excitement– a lot more stories (including one about pie! Yay!), and an Exciting Lecture (yes, there are such things) I'll be giving at MOHAI on February 19th. 

    Until then, please enjoy these four videos of different lengths of me talking and answering questions about buses, life, joy, grief, youth, ageing, publishing and everything else. I'll never be able to explain how much went into making these possible, or how much some of them didn't happen. I hope you enjoy them. Massive thanks to everyone listed in the videos and descriptions for any of this being possible.
    ​

    1. Nathan and Tom Eykemans at Elliott Bay

    This is the now-legendary (for me, anyway!) show that apparently is one of Elliott Bay's highest-ever attended. I was told we beat out Bruce Springsteen! Not that it matters. What matters is not how many came, but who came. What a friendly crowd. A lot of people special to me were there that night. Can you feel it, especially toward the end as we get into Q&A? I still think about the question the girl asks at 1:34:34. I'd have a better answer now. Her tentative, raw vulnerability and the size of her query honestly contains more wisdom than anything I could've come up with in response. Reflections of my own on the event here.

    2. Nathan and Susanna Ryan at Third Place

    How can I explain how fun this was? I can't. Just watch the video. Plus, reflections on this lovefest here. How can I resist writing lovefest recaps after all my events? It never gets old. I'm always cowed into silence (or lovefest recapping) with unending gratitude.

    3. Nathan as Life Goes On

    This is a short one. Here I am reading a story that's meaningful to me at a festive bookselling event on Greenwood. I miscalculated the crowd; I made the error of baring my heart and soul with a story about death and grief at a delightful, high-spirited event that was more about cookies and meet'n'greeting. But I couldn't help myself. I include it here because this happens too. Every presenter knows that least-favorite sensation of asking for questions when there aren't any... But don't you love how Life takes charge as the video wears on, pulling us gently back into the sway of things? I think I had as much fun announcing Kim as I did reading my material!

    4. Nathan and Tom Eykemans at the Greenwood Senior Center

    This one was discreetly posted earlier, but I wanted to make sure everyone got a chance with it. Those seniors ask the best questions. I worked on a memory loss video for the GSC recently and had a great experience. Plus you get to listen to Tom again as well. Isn't he just the best? I think so.

    Well, there you have it! Pardon me for giving you almost five hours of videos of me talking. I really like to blab away... but not as much as I like to listen, reflect, read, and write. Which is what I'm off to do now. Have a lovely holiday, enjoy these videos and/or the book, share them around and stop by again in late January!
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    The Little (Big) Things

    How can I possibly thank you? With what phrase can I articulate what it meant to me that you were there, hauling yourself up to those northern hinterlands, where traffic finally peters out and parking, for once, is excellent? Do you know what it means to me that you went out of your way to attend?

    This particular Third Place Books is the venue where I once saw Michael Crichton, a favorite author of mine and whom, especially at a younger age, I couldn't get enough of. He was seated at a table signing books. I distinctly remember that of everyone in that long line waiting to speak with him, I was the only person he stood up for and shook hands with. I'll never know why, but in 2003 it meant the world to me, and today it still resonates. I wonder what it was about our brief exchange that compelled him to make it ever more special. Perhaps it was my age; as with so many events and films I've enthusiastically attended throughout my life, I was at least two decades younger than everyone else present.

    It wasn't until after the high of my event was plateauing that the thought hit me: there were more people here tonight than there were for Michael Crichton. 

    What does that mean? Probably nothing. But things don't have to mean anything in order to be significant. They can simply be felt, and cherished for the small good things that they are. With respect to solely that night, let alone everything else, I'll count myself forever lucky for a multitude of reasons: the chance to share the stage with someone as vivacious, talented, inspiring and downright charming as the great Seattle Walk Report; that she was so easy to work with and chat (in front of a crowd!) with; that questions were asked, and thought-provoking ones at that; that Kalani dreamed up the idea of pairing us; that you came, you all (!!!); that my photo professors were there in the audience, whom I have not seen in ten plus years and who have been major, formative influences on me; that I managed to remember everything I wanted to say; that it was successfully filmed (stay tuned for a full-length video!).

    Most of all, I'm thankful that people tolerate me for who I am. That the folks who are struggling through life, who are in a rush, who are unhappy– that they put up with me and let me be. I know the happiness of others can grate during periods of strife, and I try to be mindful of that. It's the only reason I don't burst into full, unexpurgatedly enthusiastic flower every second of the night. Don't rub it in, I tell myself. But also– don't pretend to be depressed just to make others comfortable. If I tried to fit in and placate them by matching their mood, I'd never know what is so easily and regularly true: 

    That people usually come around to reflecting your positive energy. Most people respond to genuine respect. I've angered more people in my life by belittling them than by being positive. I try for a positive energy that's respectful, that has a conscious awareness. That's present. This is my way of avoiding the offense of oblivious happiness.

    But I can never reach everyone. I hope those others, the ones for whom compassion and goodwill appear to do nothing, take a moment to reflect amidst the clutter of modern life, and come to their own conclusions in time.

    I wonder if they recognize that happiness is a choice, and that, perhaps like them, I've undergone hardships too awful to imagine. But what can you do but continue dancing? Choosing something healthy? One of the most valuable takeaways of reading Susanna's book, for me, was the question of worldviews. If our outlook is determined by what we focus on and how, and we have control over that, then it follows by simple logic that we can choose our outlook. One is hardly going to be less than truthful than another, and during the short time I'm alive I'm going to try for what I'm good at: highlighting the little things, the beautiful everyday proofs of goodness within ourselves and out in the world, for the sake of my soul and anyone else who's got a moment. 

    What moved me most about that night at Third Place was the dreamlike truth of sharing that stage and space with people who all respond to something similar.

    Thank you for keeping that candle burning.

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    Above photos by ​Kalani Kapahua.