Where’s China Now? (Somewhere In Time)

My Top 3

I’ve been getting some hits from old links to my China trip postings. I’m sure that raises the question: What happened to them?

I updated the blog and lost everything.

Still, I’ve been meaning to post what I was able to save. Let’s start here, and I’ll plan on posting another China-trip memoir every Sunday.

Somewhere In Time

Suddenly, I’m left to wonder how Stardates worked in the various Star Trek series. Are their Time Zones in space? Is their an Intergalactic Dateline? Perhaps that’s what Einstein was referring to as he postulated the relativity of time at speeds approaching the speed of light.

I write this while flying coach somewhere above the Pacific. The man in front of me is reclined, so I have the computer screen in my lap and the keyboard pressed flat against my stomach. It feels less like I’m typing and more like I’m playing the accordion.

It is now 7:30 tomorrow morning. Actually, I have no idea what time it is here, wherever this is. But it’s tomorrow where I’m going.

I spent the night in L.A. because we missed our connecting flight to Hong Kong by eight minutes. Some Memphis utility had scheduled the airport for a black out which was supposed to end at 4 AM. When we arrived there around seven, the power was still out. That delayed the flight to L.A., and you know the story from there.

Anyway, my adventures in modern transportation explain the sleep deprivation I wrote about several days ago. I didn’t want to mention it then, because I would have still been out of town. Attention thieves: I am now home. This particular post, published May 22nd, was written, is being written, on May 1st.

Time is a funny thing right now.

I’ll be keeping a series journals on this trip, in hopes of feeding my next novel: one handwritten; one for my computer; and another for this blog. I’ll save the details of the trip for another post, when I’m actually typing and not playing polka with my Compaq.

Being in Los Angeles for the night gave me some time to check in at Better Fiction. One of the members there asked about screenplays, and, in looking up resources to pass along, I came across the screenplay to Pulp Fiction. I read more than half of it before I had to get ready for the flight.

I remember when the movie came out and was so popular with the critics, the Christian community held it up as Hollywood’s obsession with violence—bemoaning the fact that Pulp Fiction got all the attention while the movie the people went to see was The Lion King. I’m not going to defend the violence, drug use, or sexually explicit language of Pulp Fiction. I haven’t seen it in years because I don’t watch that kind of film, anymore, but I did see it at the time. More than once.

We (now that I would count myself among that “we”) never did ourselves any good by comparing Pulp Fiction to Lion King. King may have been the most successful animated film of its time, but artistically, the story structure was a mess. Pulp Fiction, for all its sins, was beautifully constructed. We don’t have to approve of all works of art, nor read or view them, but their moral value does not define their artistic worth, especially in this increasingly post-Christian world.

I’ll tell you what it’s like when we deny the artistic value of a work based on its objectionable moral content. It’s like that health guru who tried to tell me that a diet ice cream bar was every bit as good as the Haagen Dazs. Who did he think he was kidding? Now, in the last few years I’ve discovered an organic bar by Julies’ that is a knock out. It’s organic, not diet, and it is every bit as good if not better. But the diet bar? Please!

It’s not that we, as Christians, cannot make art. We can, but being morally sound does not increase the artistic value. If there is value within the piece, however, its soundness will allow those of moral character to participate in the enjoyment of the work.

(Here, I’m writing from the viewpoint of a shared moral code based in Christianity, but as far as this discussion goes, I believe it holds true for any shared moral basis.)

We need to be honest in judging the merits of art. No, we don’t have to watch or read Pulp Fiction. I wouldn’t recommend doing so. In the works we do read and view, however, we only hurt ourselves to overstate their artistic value.

Besides, as my mother likes to point out, Lion King is a violent film.

I plan to include some reviews in this blog. Some will be by others, and I will have no control over what they say. For me, I intend to be honest in my reviews. A review that can’t be honest isn’t a review; it’s a commercial.

There is no theory of relativity regarding morality and art—at least not here, somewhere over the Pacific, where it may or may not still be today. If we are going to produce godly works of true artistic merit, we’re going to have to work at it, and we’re going to have to be honest about the results.

Wade Ogletree

Original post blogged on b2evolution.