Sure Thing David Ives Quotes

Pale winter sun Is beatin' the ground Why'm I throwin' away The best thing that I've found My young heart's in tatters and I'm sure That it will be a long time healing It's so hard to see what I'm doing this for When loneliness is all that I'm feeling

But the truth is it’s hard for me to know what I really think about any of the stuff I’ve written. It’s always tempting to sit back and make finger-steeples and invent impressive sounding theoretical justifications for what one does, but in my case most of it’d be horseshit. As time passes I get less and less nuts about anything I’ve published, and it gets harder to know for sure when its antagonistic elements are in there because they serve a useful purpose and when their just covert manifestations of this "look-at-me-please-love-me-I-hate you" syndrome I still sometimes catch myself falling into. Anyway, but what I think I meant by "antagonize" or "aggravate" has to do with the stuff in the TV essay about the younger writer trying to struggle against the cultural hegemony of TV. One thing TV does is help us deny that we’re lonely. With televised images, we can have the facsimile of a relationship without the work of a real relationship. It’s an anesthesia of "form." The interesting thing is why we’re so desperate for this anesthetic against loneliness. You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny.

Who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or any of those things can’t have their positive aspects in the long run? … You have to be careful of taking a knee-jerk attitude. Having a knee-jerk attitude to anything is a mistake, especially in the case of women, where it adds up to this very limited and condescending thing of saying they’re fragile, breakable things that can be destroyed easily. Everybody gets hurt and violated and broken sometimes. Why are women so special? Not that anybody ought to be raped or abused, nobody’s saying that, but that’s what is going on. What about afterwards? All I’m saying is there are certain cases where it can enlarge you or make you more of a complete human being, like Viktor Frankl. Think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good that it happened? No, of course not. But did you read Viktor Frankl? Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book, but it comes out of his experience. It’s about his experience in the human dark side. Now think about it, if there was no Holocaust, there’d be no Man’s Search for Meaning… . Think about it. Think about being degraded and brought within an inch of your life, for example. No one’s gonna say the sick bastards who did it shouldn’t be put in jail, but let’s put two things into perspective here. One is, afterwards she knows something about herself that she never knew before. What she knows is that the most totally terrible terrifying thing that she could ever have imagined happening to her has now happened, and she survived. She’s still here, and now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows. Look, totally terrible things happen… . Existence in life breaks people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time, trust me I know. I’ve been there. And this is the big difference, you and me here, cause this isn’t about politics or feminism or whatever, for you this is just ideas, you’ve never been there. I’m not saying nothing bad has ever happened to you, you’re not bad looking, I’m sure there’s been some sort of degradation or whatever come your way in life, but I’m talking Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning type violation and terror and suffering here. The real dark side. I can tell from just looking at you, you never. You wouldn’t even wear what you’re wearing, trust me. What if I told you it was my own sister that was raped? What if I told you a little story about a sixteen-year-old girl who went to the wrong party with the wrong guy and four of his buddies that ended up doing to her just about everything four guys could do to you in terms of violation? But if you could ask her if she could go into her head and forget it or like erase the tape of it happening in her memory, what do you think she’d say? Are you so sure what she’d say? What if she said that even after that totally negative as what happened was, at least now she understood it was possible. People can. Can see you as a thing. That people can see you as a thing, do you know what that means? Because if you really can see someone as a thing you can do anything to him. What would it be like to be able to be like that? You see, you think you can imagine it but you can’t. But she can. And now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows. This is what you wanted to hear, you wanted to hear about four drunk guys who knee-jerk you in the balls and make you bend over that you didn’t even know, that you never saw before, that you never did anything to, that don’t even know your name, they don’t even know your name to find out you have to choose to have a fucking name, you have no fucking idea, and what if I said that happened to ME? Would that make a difference?

When I come to the Lord after I’ve blown it, I’ve only one argument to make. It’s not the argument of the difficulty of the environment that I am in. It’s not the argument of the difficult people that I’m near. It’s not the argument of good intentions that were thwarted in some way. I come to the Lord with only one appeal; his mercy. I’ve no other defense. I’ve no other standing. I’ve no other hope. I can’t escape the reality of my biggest problem; me! So I appeal to the one thing in my life that’s sure and will never fail. I appeal to the one thing that guaranteed not only my acceptance with God, but the hope of new beginnings and fresh starts. I appeal on the basis of the greatest gift I ever have or ever will be given. I leave the courtroom of my own defense, I come out of hiding and I admit who I am. But I’m not afraid, because I’ve been personally and eternally blessed. Because of what Jesus has done, God looks on me with mercy. It’s my only appeal, it’s the source of my hope, it’s my life. Mercy, mercy me!

BOWIE: I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar. (...) I’m not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot. It’s somewhere between the two. I don’t exactly lie, I change my mind all the time. People are always throwing things at me that I’ve said and I say that I didn’t mean anything. You can’t stand still on one point for your entire life.

Closing his eyes again, Beck repositions his head on the back of his seat, and in one sure movement, reaches over and grabs my hand. Even with his eyes closed, he knew where to find me. I want to cry for a thousand reasons, laugh for a thousand others; this is my anomalous balance, the place where Beck and I can let the ridiculousness of our collective sentences marinate, and other things, too. It’s a singular moment of clarity between two people, and rare or not, I’m not about to let go. I’m done roaming hillsides. I’ve scoured the corners of the earth. And I’ve found my people. God, I’m almost jealous of myself. Holding Beck’s hand in my lap, I find a courage I never knew I had and drop my head on his shoulder.

And if someone were to ask, Noah, what’s the most important aspect of story? I would most likely answer, character, but I’m not sure that’s true, because my favorite books contain my favorite places. I do not say, I love Harry Potter, or I love Frodo Baggins; I say, I love Hogwarts, and I love Middle-earth. Thoreau’s Walden is less about the book, more about the pond. The woods. And so setting, I think, is the secret weapon of storytelling. I always want to meet new people until I’ve met them. I think if I spend enough time with a person so we get woven together like an old basket, eventually we’ll think in similar patterns until our various histories are apples and oranges spilling over the edge of the basket, and I think this kind of shared history is dangerous. I think it’s okay to recognize a thing’s faults and still like that thing. Because apples and oranges spilling from a basket can be beautiful too. I think I’m whatever personality hates personality tests. I think nostalgia is just a soul’s way of missing a thing, and like long-distance love, nostalgia grows deeper with time until the reality of what a thing actually was gets blurred to the point you miss the idea of the thing more than the thing itself. I like the idea of hot cocoa more than drinking

A father can tell. Gregor's a good lad. A bright, fresh-air mind. Always helps his mother around the house without being asked, but he's a wee bit ..." The man paused as though he couldn't find the correct word. "Artistic. T'chut. Do ye know what I mean by that?" Mungo gave a small nod. He wasn't sure if what the man meant, and what he understood, were the same thing. "Forgive me if I've read you wrong, David. But would I be right in thinking ye are a wee bit artistic yourself?" Calum didn't wait for an answer. "See, I know lots of men would be bothered by that. But I have no problem with ye if you are. I'm just saying ... Och, well, I dunno. I say the wrong thing sometimes.

One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants.

FURIOUS FAVOR I wonder if David would be allowed in our churches today. In most cases, when a church member has an affair, he is shunned at best or mistreated at worst—even if he repents. But David doesn’t just have an affair. He lusts, covets, fornicates, lies, and gets another man hammered. Then he tries to keep his dirty little secrets by murdering the husband of the woman he “loves.” I doubt I’ve met anyone as sinful as David. Have you? He breaks half of the Ten Commandments in a single episode. And he doesn’t repent until he’s caught. But when Nathan shoves his prophetic finger into David’s chest and rebukes him, David falls to his knees and admits his guilt. And right then, at that moment, God rips open the heavens to reach down and touch David’s soul with stubborn delight. God eagerly forgives David for his sin, and all of it is buried at the bottom of the sea, never to be remembered again. There is no hiccup in God’s furious favor toward David. So why do repentant sinners still bear the stigma of “adulterer,” “divorced,” or “addict” in our churches today? It’s one thing if they don’t repent. But quite often we shun repentant sinners, like Jeffrey Dahmer, whose crimes we just can’t forget. “He’s the former addict.” “That’s the divorced mom.” “Here comes the guy who slept with the church secretary.” For some reason we love to define people by the sin in their lives—even past sin in their lives—rather than by the grace that forgave it. It’s no wonder that David pens the last sentence in Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall [hunt me down] all the days of my life” (Ps. 23:6).

Nights with David the Physicist are upsetting,” she said. “And unconnected.” She sighed, took a drag, exhaled. “There is talking, about a thousand things. Laughter. Even some kissing. And then nothing. Nothing inspires him, if you see what I mean.” “I’m not sure I do.” She shrugged. “Nothing impacts him, I don’t think. His head, maybe his heart, these things are involved in the moment. I believe they are. But then the moment is over and he never thinks of it again. Or chooses not to care.” I slumped back in my seat. “He cares,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen him. When he looks at you, it’s like no one else exists.” “And when he looks away,” Cristina said quietly, “it is as if I don’t exist.” She toyed with her cigarette. “I don’t think he means to be cruel. I think he might think he is being kind instead.” She smiled. “After all, he cannot control what I feel. What the things he does make me feel. Or the things he does not do.” “I greatly dislike him,” I said. “I wish I did.” Cristina sighed. “But what would be the point? He is like a storm. You don’t like or dislike something of nature, you just try to survive it and hope for the best. Right?” “I don’t think he’s a force of nature,” I countered. “I think he’s just a coward. There’s no way he likes anyone more than he likes you.” “Maybe not,” Cristina agreed. “But that doesn’t mean that everything automatically leads to a happy ending. I don’t think there will be any happy ending with David the Physicist, Alex. I think there will maybe be one or two other nights I will have to survive, and then he will disappear because he’s a coward or because he just will, and I will cry some more and smoke some more and never know why.

I open the door to see him on my doorstep and he doesn’t even say hello. He says, “Let’s cut the crap, Daisy. You need to record this album or Runner’s taking you to court.” I said, “I don’t care about any of that. They can take their money back, get me kicked out of here if they want. I’ll live in a cardboard box.” I was very annoying. I had no idea what it meant to truly suffer. Teddy said, “Just get in the studio, love. How hard is that?” I told him, “I want to write my own stuff.” I think I even crossed my arms in front of my chest like a child. He said, “I’ve read your stuff. Some of it’s really good. But you don’t have a single song that’s finished. You don’t have anything ready to be recorded.” He said I should fulfill my contract with Runner and he would help me get my songs to a point where I could release an album of my own stuff. He called it “a goal for us all to work toward.” I said, “I want to release my own stuff now.” And that’s when he got testy with me. He said, “Do you want to be a professional groupie? Is that what you want? Because the way it looks from here is that you have a chance to do something of your own. And you’d rather just end up pregnant by Bowie.” Let me take this opportunity to be clear about one thing: I never slept with David Bowie. At least, I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I said, “I am an artist. So you either let me record the album I want or I’m not showing up. Ever.” Teddy said, “Daisy, someone who insists on the perfect conditions to make art isn’t an artist. They’re an asshole.” I shut the door in his face. And sometime later that day, I opened up my songbook and I started reading. I hated to admit it but I could see what he was saying. I had good lines but I didn’t have anything polished from beginning to end. The way I was working then, I’d have a loose melody in my head and I’d come up with lyrics to it and then I’d move on. I didn’t work on my songs after one or two rounds. I was sitting in the living room of my cottage, looking out the window, my songbook in my lap, realizing that if I didn’t start trying—I mean being willing to squeeze out my own blood, sweat, and tears for what I wanted—I’d never be anything, never matter much to anybody. I called Teddy a few days later, I said, “I’ll record your album. I’ll do it.” And he said, “It’s your album.” And I realized he was right. The album didn’t have to be exactly my way for it to still be mine.

Irony in postwar art and culture started out the same way youthful rebellion did. It was difficult and painful, and productive—a grim diagnosis of a long-denied disease. The assumptions behind early postmodern irony, on the other hand, were still frankly idealistic: it was assumed that etiology and diagnosis pointed toward cure, that a revelation of imprisonment led to freedom. So then how have irony, irreverence, and rebellion come to be not liberating but enfeebling in the culture today’s avant-garde tries to write about? One clue’s to be found in the fact that irony is still around, bigger than ever after 30 long years as the dominant mode of hip expression. It’s not a rhetorical mode that wears well. As Hyde (whom I pretty obviously like) puts it, “Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.” 32 This is because irony, entertaining as it is, serves an almost exclusively negative function. It’s critical and destructive, a ground-clearing. Surely this is the way our postmodern fathers saw it. But irony’s singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. This is why Hyde seems right about persistent irony being tiresome. It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites. I find gifted ironists sort of wickedly fun to listen to at parties, but I always walk away feeling like I’ve had several radical surgical procedures. And as for actually driving cross-country with a gifted ironist, or sitting through a 300 page novel full of nothing but trendy sardonic exhaustion, one ends up feeling not only empty but somehow… oppressed. Think, for a moment, of Third World rebels and coups. Third World rebels are great at exposing and overthrowing corrupt hypocritical regimes, but they seem noticeably less great at the mundane, non-negative task of then establishing a superior governing alternative. Victorious rebels, in fact, seem best at using their tough, cynical rebel-skills to avoid being rebelled against themselves—in other words, they just become better tyrants. And make no mistake: irony tyrannizes us. The reason why our pervasive cultural irony is at once so powerful and so unsatisfying is that an ironist is impossible to pin down. All U.S. irony is based on an implicit “I don’t really mean what I’m saying.” So what does irony as a cultural norm mean to say? That it’s impossible to mean what you say? That maybe it’s too bad it’s impossible, but wake up and smell the coffee already? Most likely, I think, today’s irony ends up saying: “How totally banal of you to ask what I really mean.” Anyone with the heretical gall to ask an ironist what he actually stands for ends up looking like an hysteric or a prig. And herein lies the oppressiveness of institutionalized irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its subject is, when exercised, tyranny. It is the new junta, using the very tool that exposed its enemy to insulate itself.

One insurance executive I worked with described the major benefit he derived from implementation of this system: “Previously I would just tell everyone, ‘Sure, I’ll do it,’ because I didn’t know how much I really had to do. Now that I’ve got the inventory clear and complete, just to maintain my integrity, I have had to say, ‘No, I can’t do that, I’m sorry.’ The amazing thing is that instead of being upset with my refusal, everyone was impressed with my discipline!

My fever is gone. In its place, now come severe bouts of shivering. I try, as best I can, to control myself. I slow down the chattering of my teeth as I call out, “Of one thing I’m sure: Reading what I’ve been working on—which, for lack of a better term I would call a memoir—you would think me a madman.

By afternoon Jack found her down on her hands and knees scouring the bathroom floor around the toilet and tub. “For the love of God,” he said. “What?” “What the hell are you doing? If you want the bathroom cleaned, why don’t you just tell me? I know how to clean a goddamn bathroom.” “It wasn’t all that dirty, but since I’m in the cleaning mood, I thought I’d whip it into shape.” “David is ready for his nap. Why don’t you join him.” “I don’t feel like a nap. I’m going to vacuum the area rugs.” “No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ll do that if it has to be done right now.” “Okay,” Mel said, smiling. “I’ve been tricked.” “Only by yourself, darling,” she said, whirling away to get the Pledge and Windex. After that was done—and there was a lot of wood and glass and stainless steel to occupy her—she was sweeping off the porch and back steps. Not long after that, she was caught dragging the cradle into the master bedroom. “Melinda!” he shouted, startling her and making her jump. “Jack! Don’t do that!” “Let go of that thing!” He brushed her out of the way and grabbed the cradle. “Where do you want it?” “Right there,” she said. He put it beside the bed. “No,” she said. “Over there, kind of out of the way.” He put it there. “No,” she said. “Against that wall—we’ll put it where we need it when she comes.” He moved it again. “Thank you,” she said. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said. He picked up a pencil and put it in her face. “If you lift anything heavier than this, I’m going to beat you.” Then he turned and left the room. He has cabin fever, she thought. Spending too much time at home with me, making sure I don’t pick up anything heavier than a pencil. He should get out more, and out of my hair. When Jack was done with the phone, she was on her knees in front of the hearth, brushing out the barely used fireplace. “Aw, Jesus Christ,” he said in frustration. “Can that not wait until at least frickin’ winter?” She sat back on her heels. “You are really getting on my last nerve. Don’t you have somewhere you can go?” “No, but we do. Go shower and get beautiful. Paul and Vanessa are back and after they view the prom couple, they’re going to the bar for dinner. We’ll all meet there, look at some pictures.” “Great,” she said. “I’m in the mood for a beer.” “Whatever you want, Melinda,” he said tiredly. “Just stop this frickin’ cleaning.” “You know I’m not going to be able to do much of this after the baby comes, so it’s good to have it all done. And the way I like it.” “You’ve always been good at cleaning. Why couldn’t you just cook?” he asked. “You don’t cook anything.” “You cook.” She smiled. “How many cooks does one house need?” “Just go shower. You have fireplace ash on your nose.” “Pain in the ass,” she said to him, getting clumsily to her feet. “Ditto,” he said. An

the trouble is that I don’t tire readily enough of the dishes I already like to incentivise a search for new flavours. I would get bored if I had steak and chips for every meal. But I’m pretty sure that if I had it for one in four meals, I’d be fine. If it were one in ten, I’d be thrilled every time. Which means I only really need ten things I like in order not to be bored – and I’ve long since overshot that. So why would I go to restaurants with weird cutlery where they don’t serve any of them?

The following example is adapted from a conversation a friend of mine had with his wife. She came to him frustrated with her sister and looking for support. Amy: “Ugh. Emily is driving me crazy!” David: “What happened?” Amy: “You know this sisters’ trip we’ve been planning? She keeps changing the plans and doesn’t seem to listen to—or care at all about—what the rest of us want to do.” David: “Well, have you just told her what you want to do?” Amy: “Of course I have. We all have! She always seems to have some reason for doing things her way. Ugh. I’m so sick of this.” David: “You should just tell her that—that you don’t feel like she’s listening.” Amy: “I’ve tried that. She always does this. I feel like I’m crazy because everyone else just backs down and lets her take over. I’m not about to spend all this money and take a week off work only to have to follow her strict schedule all day!” David: “Well, if you don’t want to go, don’t go.” Amy: “Of course I want to go! I just want to go and actually have fun!” David: “Then just talk to your other sisters. I’m sure you guys can figure it out. Or I’ll talk to her!” Amy: “No, I can take care of it. I’m just frustrated.” David: “What if you each planned one day?” Amy: “It’s not that easy. The sites we want to see are too far apart from each other.” David: “What if you just booked a tour group instead?” Amy: “No, we want to do it ourselves.” David (not quite sure what Amy is expecting from him at this point): “Well, you’d better figure it out soon. Isn’t the trip in a few weeks?” Amy (now frustrated and ready to end the conversation): “Yeah. It’s okay. I’ll figure it out.” Why did David’s multiple attempts to help his wife go so poorly? In short, he didn’t recognize that she was looking for validation rather than advice. Amy remained frustrated because David tried to fix the problem right out of the gates instead of first validating her frustration. David also walked away feeling confused and unappreciated because Amy became more upset—and even a little defensive—as he tried to help.

I’ve been to council estates where there are demonstrations against paedophiles. You stand there, making sure things don’t get too out of hand, thinking, ‘You’re the same parents who sentence your kids to a life of crap jobs, no personal stability, no family life, no support in their learning, no boundaries and no rules.