News: Creative Boredom

Never let it be said that boredom prevents creativity. It's quite the opposite, as Saul Steinberg describes:

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.

For one of my co-workers today, avoiding boredom involved "reviewing" me. Apprently my exploits in the fine-art of film criticism have spread beyond the electronic borders of this blog and into my workplace; I'm not sure exactly how I feel about this collision of worlds. With a penchant for naming me BLACKMAN (my surname, if you're wondering) and the relentless questions of "are you going to review it?" regarding everything from the latest blockbuster to the pencil I'm holding, he took it upon himself to write this awfully well-wrtten gem:

JOSHUA BLACKMAN – A HARRY LAM REVIEW

5 stars

As Tom Jones once sang, it’s not unusual to feel inadequate, inferior and insignificant in the presence of film reviewing greatness. However, due to record company pressure the Welsh crooner was forced to alter these lyrics in an attempt to appease the mainstream listener. But for anyone who has ever been involved in film or its study, dabbled in art or writing, or indeed ever picked up a pen or held an opinion, one cannot help but feel the icy, unforgiving chill under the looming shadow of one master critic. Newton once famously played down his own achievements indicating that his work was only possible by “standing on the shoulder of giants.” Undoubtedly, one such giant was Joshua BLACKMAN.

An enigma, an unsolvable riddle, Joshua BLACKMAN is a man shrouded in mystery and contradictions. His surname – changed to capitals via deed poll in 1986 – is as confronting as it is misleading. Indeed the name BLACKMAN reflects the duality in his ageless writing: ferocious yet subtle. All sightings of this genius recluse suggest that he is actually white, but is definitely a man: a thinking man’s man. He is noted for his slow leisurely gait, yet those closest to him confirm that it is the sheer weight of his movie reviewing mind baring heavily upon his frame that affects his carefree, noble stride. Constantly reviewing, everything from the quality of his coffee, the colour of his desk and even the weather is given a rating out of five. His literary force has been likened to “ten Robert Christgaus strapped to cannons, and fired relentlessly and indiscriminately into the art world”. Such is his influence, that with as little as a simple turn of phrase, BLACKMAN can reduce a multimillion dollar film into a multimillion dollar flop. A master of punctuation, Joshua BLACKMAN once submitted a critique of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet consisting only of punctuation marks. Time Magazine hailed it as the “mark of a fearless mind”. He was only three years old.

Whilst his writing has grown to the same stature as that of Wordsworth and Hemingway, it is his common touch that marks him as a peerless reviewer of films and art. When asked to describe an overcast day in three words, his now immortal response was: “cold, wet and rainy”. Such was the genius and depth of these three seemingly simple words that it has become a staple in the Australian secondary school curriculum in no less than four subjects: English, History, Religious Studies and Physics.

His confronting writing style is at once innovative, challenging and complex. BLACKMAN’s now legendary critique of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor appeared at first to be a wordless indecipherable doodle. Fearing the backlash from a BLACKMAN obsessed public if a review not be made available that week, the editor published this seemingly crude black and white drawing under the title PEARL HARBOR: A JOSHUA BLACKMAN REVIEW. Understandably, the public was confounded by such a brash display of movie reviewing arrogance, yet this startling image was analysed and scrutinised by millions for months on end. Finally, seven months after its publication, Allan Thomas, an English major from Princeton University stumbled upon its meaning, revealing completely the true genius of its creator. Thomas found that by turning the image upside down, what was once an impenetrable jumble of lines and shapes was actually a Michelangelo-esque drawing of a chimpanzee eating its own excrement.

Perhaps it is only fitting that the final word should go to the great man himself. In a 1997 interview, a Village Voice journalist made the mistake of referring to BLACKMAN as the “Descartes of modern film critique” in an attempt to flatter his uncompromisingly temperamental interviewee. Offended at what he felt was a slight which did not truly encapsulate the breadth of his genius, Joshua BLACKMAN concluded the interview with this remark: “I think, therefore I review.”
Harry Lam


Epic, my friend. Epic.

And now, for my response:


JOSHUA BLACKMAN – A HARRY LAM REVIEW
A JOSHUA BLACKMAN REVIEW

5 stars

It was by pure chance of fate that today I stumbled across a great man. A man with so refined a writing style I feel inadequacy brewing in my very being; a life's work thrown into chaos in a second of startling revelation; a vocation so ingrained in one's existence that one feels their soul, ragged and heavy, being torn asunder.

The piece responsible is a stunning work of penmanship published in the Facebook Journal of Literary Criticism. His review of this humble reviewer is the purest expression of the reviewing art yet created by the mortal hand of man.

In it he claims that I, Joshua BLACKMAN, am "an enigma, an unsolvable riddle." And yet it is he who is this enigma. Hidden behind his undying love for the mythical Rabbitos and hatred for L.A. hip hop is a remarkable writing talent. Who knew what was hidden behind that peculiar smile and those uniquely forceful eyes.

When I muttered my description of the weather that cold, wet and rainy day, I felt I had reached the pinnacle of literary expression on a level unmatched even by Hemingway, Dickens or J.K. Rowling, And yet I have been upstaged. The phrases flow easily from his delicate keyboard: "the icy, unforgiving chill," "wordless indecipherable doodle," "a chimpanzee eating its own excrement." It is as impossible to comprehend the complex mind conjuring such sublime turns of phrase.

Goethe said that perhaps "only a genius is able to understand a genius." Accordingly I cannot be a genius, for the complexity of this master's pen is equally breathtaking and baffling, the raging fire of inspiration burning beneath untouchable and unknowable.

I once said "I think, therefore I review." I now realize such a description is inadequate. In this case of this great man, who's name is Harry Lam, it should have read: "I AM, therefore I review."


Like I say: never let it be said that boredom prevents creativity.