photo by Boris Mikhailov
Saturday, October 29, 2005
A Farewell Thing While Breathing
a farewell thing while breathing
was walking down the hall
in underwear
with painted face like clown
a bomb from Cologne in right pocket
a SEASON IN HELL
in the left,
stripes of sunset
like
bass
running
down
his
arms,
and they found him in the morning
dangling in the fire escape
window,
face frosted and gone as an electric bulb,
and the sparrows
were in the brush downstairs,
and
friend,
sparrows do not sing
they emit sound,
and
they emitted sound,
and they
(the people, not the sparrows)
carried him down the steps
like a wasted owl.
Charles Bukowski
was walking down the hall
in underwear
with painted face like clown
a bomb from Cologne in right pocket
a SEASON IN HELL
in the left,
stripes of sunset
like
bass
running
down
his
arms,
and they found him in the morning
dangling in the fire escape
window,
face frosted and gone as an electric bulb,
and the sparrows
were in the brush downstairs,
and
friend,
sparrows do not sing
they emit sound,
and
they emitted sound,
and they
(the people, not the sparrows)
carried him down the steps
like a wasted owl.
Charles Bukowski
Thursday, October 27, 2005
from Beloved
"You could stay the night, Paul D."
"You don't sound too steady in the offer."
Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Oh it's truly meant. I just hope you'll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something."
Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.
"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.
"Of and on," said Sethe.
"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?"
"It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."
...
She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it - dry-eyed and lucky.
"You said she died soft. Soft as cream," he reminded her.
"That's not Baby Suggs," she said.
"Who then?"
"My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys."
"She didn't live?"
"No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left. Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died."
Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been.
Toni Morrison
"You don't sound too steady in the offer."
Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Oh it's truly meant. I just hope you'll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something."
Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.
"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.
"Of and on," said Sethe.
"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?"
"It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."
...
She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it - dry-eyed and lucky.
"You said she died soft. Soft as cream," he reminded her.
"That's not Baby Suggs," she said.
"Who then?"
"My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys."
"She didn't live?"
"No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left. Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died."
Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been.
Toni Morrison
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
My father
he carried a piece of
carbon, a blade and a whip
and at night he
feared his head
and covered it with blankets
until one morning in Los Angeles
it snowed
and I saw the snow
and I knew that my father
could control nothing,
and when
I got somewhat larger
and took my first boxcar
out, I sat there in
the lime
the burning lime
of having nothing
moving into the desert
for the first time
I sang.
from Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
he carried a piece of
carbon, a blade and a whip
and at night he
feared his head
and covered it with blankets
until one morning in Los Angeles
it snowed
and I saw the snow
and I knew that my father
could control nothing,
and when
I got somewhat larger
and took my first boxcar
out, I sat there in
the lime
the burning lime
of having nothing
moving into the desert
for the first time
I sang.
from Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame
The Loss, The Loss, The Loss
the violets are waving like whores on a train out of
Norfolk,
Virginia was a nice lady who had nice
legs
but had to wear these
elastic plastic stockings because
of
bad veins due to a
Dutch greatgrandfather who
drank 12 quarts of beer a
day
and she died
when she
set herself on fire in the men's room of a
Pennsylvania eastbound
while smoking a Dutch Master in her (lower) lips
for $20
for 3 sweet boys from Harvard, really nice boys really
who wanted to photograph this
thing
where after the cigar the
3/4 jacked-off bulldog
in the wire suitcase (got on board through devious
means) was taught to leap in like
Normandy
like the waves off the coast of an
expensive resort
like
Joan of Arc
like your fingers holding mine
as the right-wing politician who wanted the presidency
and thinks atomic power is the chariot of Christ
cackles in his bloody sleep
of new life of man born in unfortunate places
and denied the final grace:
the social security of a
pisspot in a pisspot
day and
time.
from Penguin Modern Poets 13
the violets are waving like whores on a train out of
Norfolk,
Virginia was a nice lady who had nice
legs
but had to wear these
elastic plastic stockings because
of
bad veins due to a
Dutch greatgrandfather who
drank 12 quarts of beer a
day
and she died
when she
set herself on fire in the men's room of a
Pennsylvania eastbound
while smoking a Dutch Master in her (lower) lips
for $20
for 3 sweet boys from Harvard, really nice boys really
who wanted to photograph this
thing
where after the cigar the
3/4 jacked-off bulldog
in the wire suitcase (got on board through devious
means) was taught to leap in like
Normandy
like the waves off the coast of an
expensive resort
like
Joan of Arc
like your fingers holding mine
as the right-wing politician who wanted the presidency
and thinks atomic power is the chariot of Christ
cackles in his bloody sleep
of new life of man born in unfortunate places
and denied the final grace:
the social security of a
pisspot in a pisspot
day and
time.
from Penguin Modern Poets 13
Our investigating reporter
Joe d'Amato films have a reputation for sleaziness; they have a beady little eye for the right stone to lift up for bugs. I am a little suspicious of horror films which use suggestion, which prefer shadows and light-tricks to blunt presentation. As somebody's sensible grandmother said, "If it's there in the dark, it'll be just as much there when the light's on". Restraint can be a way of smugly avoiding the question, under the guise of artistic tact. D'Amato lets everything show, and if there is more banality on display than horror, so much the better. Or if there is horror, there it is, warm by your side; or it walks in and stands before you, matter-of-fact and indifferent. And the outrage and the pain come from you, they're not faked by the film; the films work, most often, very simply by switching all the lights on, and following things through to their logical conclusion. In Orgasmo Nero 2, d'Amato marks out a stretch of sand for a childish play, a horror-porn-environmental fable with the production values of a piece of street-theatre. A film completely without dignity. But a film made as if it were the last that were ever made, with no eye on posterity; regressing to childhood honesty, and doing merely what it wants to do, saying merely what it feels like saying, in the short time left to it.
from The Sugar-Cane
On festal days; or when their work is done;
Permit thy slaves to lead the choral dance,
To the wild banshaws melancholy sound.
Responsive to the sound, head, feet and frame
Move aukwardly harmonious; hand in hand
Now lock'd, the gay troop circularly wheels,
And frisks and capers with intemperate joy.
Halts the vast circle, all clap hands and sing;
While those distinguish'd for their heels and air,
Bound in the center, and fantastic twine.
Meanwhile some stripling, from the choral ring,
Trips forth; and, not ungallantly, bestows
On her who nimblest hath the greensward beat,
And whose flush'd beauties have inthrall'd his soul,
A silver token of his fond applause.
Anon they form in ranks; nor inexpert
A thousand tuneful intricacies weave,
Shaking their sable limbs; and oft a kiss
Steal from their partners; who, with neck reclin'd,
And semblant scorn, resent the ravish'd bliss.
But let not thou the drum their mirth inspire;
Nor vinous spirits: else, to madness fir'd,
(What will not bacchanalian frenzy dare?)
Fell acts of blood, and vengeance they pursue.
James Grainger (1724 - 67), a Scottish doctor and poet who moved in 1759 to St Kitts, where he wrote The Sugar-Cane, "a West India georgic", describing the soil, the climate and the management of slaves.
from The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse in English, edited by Paula Burnett
A POSTER OF OUR DAZZLING VICTORY AT SAARBRUCKEN
In the centre of the poster, Napoleon
rides in apotheosis, sallow, medalled, a ramrod
perched on a merrygoround horse. He sees life
through rosy glasses, terrible as God,
and sentimental as a bourgeois papa.
Four little conscripts take their nap below
on scarlet guns and drums. One, unbuckling, cheers
Napoleon - he's stunned by the big name!
Another lounges on the butt of his Chassepot,
another feels his hair rise on his neck.
A bearskin shako bounds like a black sun.
VIVE L'EMPEREUR! They're holding back their breath.
And last, some moron, struggling to his knees,
presents a blue and scarlet ass - to what?
Rimbaud, translated by Robert Lowell
Monday, October 24, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first borne spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first borne spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
Wilfred Owen (1893 - 1918)
Saturday, October 22, 2005
A film by Peter Watkins
Punishment Park was, still is, criticised, held in contempt and derided for being 'hysterical', 'unrealistic' - "So, did any of that actually happen?" My God, I usually use 'righteous' as an insult, for those smugly confirmed in their own cause and enjoying the feeling it gives them, but this film is righteous like a prophet, its compassionate scream too piercing to be heard. Let's face it, most people identify with the 'tribunal'. Or no, but... To call this film 'hysterical' replicates exactly the charges made by members of the 'tribunal' against the young people before them. By polarising audiences so completely, Punishment Park draws out the same tensions among the viewing public that it portrays - when criticism of it is so vehement, how laughable to accuse this film of naive exageration and political crudity. The American flag flies at the beginning of the film reversed, as in a mirror. Why should righteous truth be sugar-coated every damn time for the idle consumer? The truth remains the truth, especially if it is the artistic truth, and it is not up some elitist mountain, but right there before us. Here's a stupid title for a book: Everything you know is wrong. And here's another one: You are being lied to. Goddamned commodified rebellion! The answer - as Punishment Park shouts over and over again while finding itself (to its visible distress and anger) almost completely inaudible - is, if you want to cut through the crap, look around you! - it's here, not somewhere hypothetical! And if anyone's telling lies around here, it's us telling lies to ourselves.
Punishment Park lasted four days on its release in the United States, before the distributors withdrew it. "Lack of customer interest". Too right! What self-respecting customer would want to sit through that for 88 minutes, and get harried, and mauled, and upset? Well, in Brighton, England, at any rate, it played for one 6 o'clock showing on one screen on one day; it raised its pitiful, sincere head, to the indifference which is the lot of every prophet. Who could blame Peter Watkins, the director, with all his immense technical fluency and facility, from giving up at this point, and starting to sweet-talk his audience? He never has. Because the audience never deserve to be sweet-talked, ever, by anything that aspires to be Art, not because the audience are unworthy of Art, but because real Art tries to convey the truth more than it thirsts for the next round of applause. "If Christ was on the earth today, people wouldn't even crucify him. They'd invite him to dinner-parties and laugh at him". I can't remember who wrote that.
But it's not apt. How sweet, how secure our lives are, if Punishment Park can be accused of 'hysteria', when young men are deported to Guantanamo Bay with less cause than brought the young people in this film before a fictional tribunal, and when the forces of liberation in Iraq have shown even less regard for the lives of their charges than that shown by some 'caricature' goons in a film.
Punishment Park is a bright flame of creative truth. I just wanted to say that.
Punishment Park lasted four days on its release in the United States, before the distributors withdrew it. "Lack of customer interest". Too right! What self-respecting customer would want to sit through that for 88 minutes, and get harried, and mauled, and upset? Well, in Brighton, England, at any rate, it played for one 6 o'clock showing on one screen on one day; it raised its pitiful, sincere head, to the indifference which is the lot of every prophet. Who could blame Peter Watkins, the director, with all his immense technical fluency and facility, from giving up at this point, and starting to sweet-talk his audience? He never has. Because the audience never deserve to be sweet-talked, ever, by anything that aspires to be Art, not because the audience are unworthy of Art, but because real Art tries to convey the truth more than it thirsts for the next round of applause. "If Christ was on the earth today, people wouldn't even crucify him. They'd invite him to dinner-parties and laugh at him". I can't remember who wrote that.
But it's not apt. How sweet, how secure our lives are, if Punishment Park can be accused of 'hysteria', when young men are deported to Guantanamo Bay with less cause than brought the young people in this film before a fictional tribunal, and when the forces of liberation in Iraq have shown even less regard for the lives of their charges than that shown by some 'caricature' goons in a film.
Punishment Park is a bright flame of creative truth. I just wanted to say that.
Koré
As I was walking
I came upon
chance walking
the same road upon.
As I sat down
by chance to move
later
if and as I might
light the wood was,
light and green,
and what I saw
before I had not seen.
It was a lady
accompanied
by goat men
leading her.
Her hair held earth.
Her eyes were dark.
A double flute
made her move.
'Oh love,
where are you
leading
me now?'
Robert Creeley
I came upon
chance walking
the same road upon.
As I sat down
by chance to move
later
if and as I might
light the wood was,
light and green,
and what I saw
before I had not seen.
It was a lady
accompanied
by goat men
leading her.
Her hair held earth.
Her eyes were dark.
A double flute
made her move.
'Oh love,
where are you
leading
me now?'
Robert Creeley
A Bad Morning
The silver poplar, a beauty of local fame
An old hag today. The lake
A puddle of dirty suds - do not touch:
The fuschia among the snap dragons cheap and vain.
But why?
Last night in a dream I saw fingers pointing at me
As at a leper. They were callous, stained with work and
They were broken.
You don't know! I cried,
Conscious of guilt.
Bertoldt Brecht
An old hag today. The lake
A puddle of dirty suds - do not touch:
The fuschia among the snap dragons cheap and vain.
But why?
Last night in a dream I saw fingers pointing at me
As at a leper. They were callous, stained with work and
They were broken.
You don't know! I cried,
Conscious of guilt.
Bertoldt Brecht
Friday, October 21, 2005
I remember
It was my bridal night I remember,
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
It was wartime, and overhead
The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead.
What rendered the confusion worse, perversely
Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany.
Harry, do they ever collide?
I do not think it has ever happened,
Oh my bride, my bride.
Stevie Smith
An old man of seventy-three
I lay with my young bride in my arms,
A girl with t.b.
It was wartime, and overhead
The Germans were making a particularly heavy raid on Hampstead.
What rendered the confusion worse, perversely
Our bombers had chosen that moment to set out for Germany.
Harry, do they ever collide?
I do not think it has ever happened,
Oh my bride, my bride.
Stevie Smith
Mischief
'Oh,' he said, 'I have lived with nothingness
so long it has lost its meaning.
I have said "yes" to the universe
so many times its echoes
have returned increasingly as "no".
I have developed my negatives
of the divine and preserved their technicolour
in a make believe album. I realise
the imagination is alive only
in an oxygenated world. The truth
is less breath-taking than the vacuum
into which it withdraws. But against
all this I have seen the lamb
gambolling for a moment, as though
life were a good thing. This, I have said,
is God's roguery, juggling
with the scales, weighting the one
pan down with evil piled
upon evil then sending it suddenly
sky-high with in the other a tear
fallen from the hardest of eyes.
R. S. Thomas (1913 - 2000)
so long it has lost its meaning.
I have said "yes" to the universe
so many times its echoes
have returned increasingly as "no".
I have developed my negatives
of the divine and preserved their technicolour
in a make believe album. I realise
the imagination is alive only
in an oxygenated world. The truth
is less breath-taking than the vacuum
into which it withdraws. But against
all this I have seen the lamb
gambolling for a moment, as though
life were a good thing. This, I have said,
is God's roguery, juggling
with the scales, weighting the one
pan down with evil piled
upon evil then sending it suddenly
sky-high with in the other a tear
fallen from the hardest of eyes.
R. S. Thomas (1913 - 2000)
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
It was like a fine, bloody thread being pulled through their hearts
Who are you?
The spider clamps the bluefly - whose death panic
Becomes sudden soulful absorption.
A stoat throbs at the nape of the lumped rabbit
Who watches the skylines fixedly.
Photographs of people - open-mouthed
In the gust of being shot and falling
And you grab me
So the blood jumps into my teeth
And 'Quick!' you whisper, 'O quick!'
And 'Now! Now! Now!'
Now what?
That I hear the age of the earth?
That I feel
My mother lift me up from between her legs?
Ted Hughes, from 'Gaudete'
The spider clamps the bluefly - whose death panic
Becomes sudden soulful absorption.
A stoat throbs at the nape of the lumped rabbit
Who watches the skylines fixedly.
Photographs of people - open-mouthed
In the gust of being shot and falling
And you grab me
So the blood jumps into my teeth
And 'Quick!' you whisper, 'O quick!'
And 'Now! Now! Now!'
Now what?
That I hear the age of the earth?
That I feel
My mother lift me up from between her legs?
Ted Hughes, from 'Gaudete'
By the smoking remains of the plantation
By the smoking remains of the plantation
we shelter on the dirt-strewn floor of the Rush room.
Blow pipes find a vantage-point through parted grass;
they will each grab an arm, they will slice off your hair.
The peace of our minds is disturbed
by strange echoes of miscegenation.
Under sentence of death we track the stars.
"What", we asked Boo from our cage,
"do they intend to do with us?"
Boo pointed grimly to Clothcat,
tossed to lie torn and unstitched
with the mummified woodlice.
"Students of heart sacrifice", he stated philosophically,
"believe it to have been a comparatively painless death".
We had talked quite pleasantly I thought with the chief of the tribe.
"If you point at a rainbow", he told us, "your arm will fall off".
"I've always wondered", I asked Boo, "about the woodlice".
"They're just distractions", he replied, "discarded bribes".
And as we waited for the sun to dawn I came to know
all about the courtship of spiders.
The courtship of spiders
The male spider has to offer the female spider a gift.
If they find nothing else they even offer a woodchip
cunningly wrapped in silk.
Some inadequate spiders just offer a bundle of web.
The female mostly notices this, and fiercely rejects it.
Sometimes the male persists.
Spiders often demonstrate extreme sexual dimorphism.
The male can be tiny. Seeing them come back again and again
they seem wonderfully brave.
If the female captures the male I don't think he feels much pain.
Their heads are gnawed off at the neck but it's nothing personal.
A matter of instinct.
When spiderlings hatch, they all hastily flee from each other.
If you can confine them to one spot they will eat each other.
None of them know better.
from The Bell Curve
we shelter on the dirt-strewn floor of the Rush room.
Blow pipes find a vantage-point through parted grass;
they will each grab an arm, they will slice off your hair.
The peace of our minds is disturbed
by strange echoes of miscegenation.
Under sentence of death we track the stars.
"What", we asked Boo from our cage,
"do they intend to do with us?"
Boo pointed grimly to Clothcat,
tossed to lie torn and unstitched
with the mummified woodlice.
"Students of heart sacrifice", he stated philosophically,
"believe it to have been a comparatively painless death".
We had talked quite pleasantly I thought with the chief of the tribe.
"If you point at a rainbow", he told us, "your arm will fall off".
"I've always wondered", I asked Boo, "about the woodlice".
"They're just distractions", he replied, "discarded bribes".
And as we waited for the sun to dawn I came to know
all about the courtship of spiders.
The courtship of spiders
The male spider has to offer the female spider a gift.
If they find nothing else they even offer a woodchip
cunningly wrapped in silk.
Some inadequate spiders just offer a bundle of web.
The female mostly notices this, and fiercely rejects it.
Sometimes the male persists.
Spiders often demonstrate extreme sexual dimorphism.
The male can be tiny. Seeing them come back again and again
they seem wonderfully brave.
If the female captures the male I don't think he feels much pain.
Their heads are gnawed off at the neck but it's nothing personal.
A matter of instinct.
When spiderlings hatch, they all hastily flee from each other.
If you can confine them to one spot they will eat each other.
None of them know better.
from The Bell Curve
Monday, October 17, 2005
I've just seen the John Waters film Cecil B. Demented. Well, it was OK. Actually I hate the kids, and it was definitely a film made with the kids in mind. But then, if it was propaganda, it was at least propaganda in a righteous cause. John Waters obviously has a lot of respect for Spike Lee. The kids in Cecil B. were standard issue multicultural, which was a bit of a disappointment. The racial politics of Pink Flamingos was much more intriguing. We see Divine going to the post office and striding along the sidewalk. Strange that it's a black neighbourhood. We see the passersby looking astonished, but in a guarded rather than a hostile way. The post office workers are too shocked to say anything. This is the White Queen, maggoty-beautiful, casting all shame to the winds.
By the way, I think the same actor who plays the Chief on the tropical island in Emanuelle in America is the same man who spoons out the eye from the severed head in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Spike Lee's Bamboozled wasn't the first film to mash its teeth into race prejudice, to inhabit its stereotypes to such an extreme degree that they transgress themselves, bursting into liberating pieces. Joe d'Amato (who else?)'s films are a richly coloured travelogue, a wildly-spiced carnival of racial stereotypes driven to their last absurd limits, a racial delirium. And I think that the actors enjoy themselves, by and large. The three above-mentioned directors all prefer to work with a a team they know well, a travelling community of the otherwise unemployable (and in the case of Spike Lee, who else would give African-Americans such decent parts?), forming a supportive environment for the creation of a liberated community.
The carnival of perversion, dreams of miscegenation. Divine with the giant lobster. The best scene in the oeuvre.
Sombre too, as we watch the black minstrels burning the cork before the mirror, the candle flame shining in the curve of the spoon. And in the shots of the toys and little ornaments at the end of Bamboozled, we see the complexity and strangeness of hatred, the eerie fascination of these defunct, absurd objects. Seeing the sequence of old films, silent-era, talkies and cartoons, all showing negroes in absurd or demeaning roles, one wants somehow to reach out and pay some sort of honour to the players. Why is this? Some sort of yearning, not guilt or self-hatred, not sentimentality either, exactly. A girl with a scarf on her head, looking out to the left and smiling, how well-observed it is, and how tenderly moulded. Are black people better observers of whites than vice versa? Compassion arises from precise observation, from simply deciding to look. In all these objects (many from Spike Lee's own collection), we see something divided aginst itself - complex, hostile, and full of longing.
By the way, I think the same actor who plays the Chief on the tropical island in Emanuelle in America is the same man who spoons out the eye from the severed head in Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals. Spike Lee's Bamboozled wasn't the first film to mash its teeth into race prejudice, to inhabit its stereotypes to such an extreme degree that they transgress themselves, bursting into liberating pieces. Joe d'Amato (who else?)'s films are a richly coloured travelogue, a wildly-spiced carnival of racial stereotypes driven to their last absurd limits, a racial delirium. And I think that the actors enjoy themselves, by and large. The three above-mentioned directors all prefer to work with a a team they know well, a travelling community of the otherwise unemployable (and in the case of Spike Lee, who else would give African-Americans such decent parts?), forming a supportive environment for the creation of a liberated community.
The carnival of perversion, dreams of miscegenation. Divine with the giant lobster. The best scene in the oeuvre.
Sombre too, as we watch the black minstrels burning the cork before the mirror, the candle flame shining in the curve of the spoon. And in the shots of the toys and little ornaments at the end of Bamboozled, we see the complexity and strangeness of hatred, the eerie fascination of these defunct, absurd objects. Seeing the sequence of old films, silent-era, talkies and cartoons, all showing negroes in absurd or demeaning roles, one wants somehow to reach out and pay some sort of honour to the players. Why is this? Some sort of yearning, not guilt or self-hatred, not sentimentality either, exactly. A girl with a scarf on her head, looking out to the left and smiling, how well-observed it is, and how tenderly moulded. Are black people better observers of whites than vice versa? Compassion arises from precise observation, from simply deciding to look. In all these objects (many from Spike Lee's own collection), we see something divided aginst itself - complex, hostile, and full of longing.
The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
George Herbert, from The Temple 1633
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
George Herbert, from The Temple 1633
The poet prays to the Virgin for help
I pray to the Divine Mother of God,
Heavenly Queen of all living things,
that she grant me the pure light of the little animals
that have a single letter in their vocabulary.
Animals without souls. Simple shapes.
Far from the cat's despicable knowledge.
Far from the owl's fictitious profundity.
Far from the horse's sculptural wisdom.
Creatures that love without eyes,
with a single sense of infinity's waves,
that gather in great piles
to be eaten by birds.
Grant me the single dimension
that little flat animals have
so that I can tell of things covered with earth
beneath the hard innocence of the shoe.
No one weeps because he understands
the millions of tiny deaths at the marketplace,
the Chinese multitude of headless onions,
and that great yellow sun of old, flattened fish.
You, Mother, forever to be feared. Whale of all the skies,
You, Mother, forever joking. Neighbour of the borrowed parsley.
You know that to speak of the world
I must understand its slightest flesh.
Federico Garcia Lorca
from Lecture: Poet in New York
(translated by Christopher Maurer)
Heavenly Queen of all living things,
that she grant me the pure light of the little animals
that have a single letter in their vocabulary.
Animals without souls. Simple shapes.
Far from the cat's despicable knowledge.
Far from the owl's fictitious profundity.
Far from the horse's sculptural wisdom.
Creatures that love without eyes,
with a single sense of infinity's waves,
that gather in great piles
to be eaten by birds.
Grant me the single dimension
that little flat animals have
so that I can tell of things covered with earth
beneath the hard innocence of the shoe.
No one weeps because he understands
the millions of tiny deaths at the marketplace,
the Chinese multitude of headless onions,
and that great yellow sun of old, flattened fish.
You, Mother, forever to be feared. Whale of all the skies,
You, Mother, forever joking. Neighbour of the borrowed parsley.
You know that to speak of the world
I must understand its slightest flesh.
Federico Garcia Lorca
from Lecture: Poet in New York
(translated by Christopher Maurer)
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Tomatsu Shomei - a Japanese photographer, famous for his pictures from the atomic ruins of Nagasaki, black and white pictures full of love for the surfaces of things, for their grain and decay. But his pictures convey real human sympathy too. They are never just dreamy still-lives, but even his inanimate objects have a human vulnerability to them, either warmth, or the coldness of departed life. This picture was taken in 1971, and a whole book of Tomatsu's pictures is available cheap! from Phaidon in their 55 Photographers series.
A beautiful ancient American face
A Mayan ceremonial mask, made of jade and found in a royal tomb. I thought only the Japanese made things as beautiful as this...
(AD 250 - 900)
Bàrd Seòirseach Bhàsia Psiaibheala le theaghlach
Georgian poet Vazha Pshavela (1861 - 1915) with his family
Xochi Pilli
Immeasurable pain!
My dreaming soul last night was king again.
As in past days
I wandered through the Palace of Delight,
And in my dream
Down grassy garden ways
Glided my chariot, smoother than a summer stream.
There was moonlight,
The trees were blossoming,
And a faint wind softened the air of night,
For it was spring.
Arthur Waley
Saddest of Scottish songs
Mo chràdhghal bochd
mar a tha mi nochd
's mi gun tamh, gun fhois, gun sunnd.
Gun sùrd ri stàth,
gun dùil ri bhith slàn,
chaidh mo shùgradh gu bràth air chùl.
Mu dheagh mhac Ruairidh nan long,
làmh a libhrigeadh bhonn
's a bha measail air fonn luchd-ciùil.
'S e bhith smuaineachadh ort
a chràidh mi am chorp
is a chnàmh na roisg bho m' shùil.
Mi ri smuaintean bochd truagh
is ri iomradh baoth buan,
's mi gad ionndrainn-sa bhuam, 's tu b'fhiù.
Deagh shealgair am frìth
bha gun cheilg do thaigh rìgh,
agus seirbheiseach dìleas crùin.
Tha do chinneadh fo ghruaim
's gach aon fhine m'an cuairt
o'n la ghrinnicheadh d'uaigh 's a' chrùist.
Mu 'n t-sàr-ghaisgeach dheas threun
ann am batail nan ceud
cha bu lapach 's an leum od thu.
Làmh churanta chruaigh
ann an iomairt 's gach buaidh;
chan urrainn domh d'uaisle, rùin.
Do thaigh-talla fo ghruaim
's e gun aighear gun uaill
far 'm bu mhinig a fhuair sinn cuirm.
My sad, tormented weeping -
I am weeping before you;
I cannot rest, I have no peace, no joy.
I cannot make myself do anything,
I cannot imagine being healthy,
All the pleasure I used to take in life has gone.
For Ruairidh son of the great ships,
a man generous to singers,
who respected our songs, is no more.
It is thinking of you
which has tortured my flesh.
It has chewed the eyelids from my eyes.
My thoughts are sorrowful and wretched.
I think of you, I miss you, it's no use
but you are worthy of such thoughts.
Skilled hunter in the deer-park
and loyal to the royal house,
an honest-hearted servant of the Crown.
Your family are in mourning,
as is everyone around you,
since your coffin was made ready in the vault.
First among heroes
in the battle of hundreds,
you were never one to fumble or to falter.
Your hand stern and brave,
in every battle winning victory -
I will get no more support from your gentlity.
Now your great house is in gloom,
with no pomp and no merriment.
Once we were feasted there.
This song has a piercing tune to accompany it, sung in falsetto before sinking into a mournful tenor. It takes immense control to sing it, which is one of the paradoxes of the song - discipline and abandonment, words of deep personal loss combined with the formal compliments of courtly elegy.
mar a tha mi nochd
's mi gun tamh, gun fhois, gun sunnd.
Gun sùrd ri stàth,
gun dùil ri bhith slàn,
chaidh mo shùgradh gu bràth air chùl.
Mu dheagh mhac Ruairidh nan long,
làmh a libhrigeadh bhonn
's a bha measail air fonn luchd-ciùil.
'S e bhith smuaineachadh ort
a chràidh mi am chorp
is a chnàmh na roisg bho m' shùil.
Mi ri smuaintean bochd truagh
is ri iomradh baoth buan,
's mi gad ionndrainn-sa bhuam, 's tu b'fhiù.
Deagh shealgair am frìth
bha gun cheilg do thaigh rìgh,
agus seirbheiseach dìleas crùin.
Tha do chinneadh fo ghruaim
's gach aon fhine m'an cuairt
o'n la ghrinnicheadh d'uaigh 's a' chrùist.
Mu 'n t-sàr-ghaisgeach dheas threun
ann am batail nan ceud
cha bu lapach 's an leum od thu.
Làmh churanta chruaigh
ann an iomairt 's gach buaidh;
chan urrainn domh d'uaisle, rùin.
Do thaigh-talla fo ghruaim
's e gun aighear gun uaill
far 'm bu mhinig a fhuair sinn cuirm.
My sad, tormented weeping -
I am weeping before you;
I cannot rest, I have no peace, no joy.
I cannot make myself do anything,
I cannot imagine being healthy,
All the pleasure I used to take in life has gone.
For Ruairidh son of the great ships,
a man generous to singers,
who respected our songs, is no more.
It is thinking of you
which has tortured my flesh.
It has chewed the eyelids from my eyes.
My thoughts are sorrowful and wretched.
I think of you, I miss you, it's no use
but you are worthy of such thoughts.
Skilled hunter in the deer-park
and loyal to the royal house,
an honest-hearted servant of the Crown.
Your family are in mourning,
as is everyone around you,
since your coffin was made ready in the vault.
First among heroes
in the battle of hundreds,
you were never one to fumble or to falter.
Your hand stern and brave,
in every battle winning victory -
I will get no more support from your gentlity.
Now your great house is in gloom,
with no pomp and no merriment.
Once we were feasted there.
This song has a piercing tune to accompany it, sung in falsetto before sinking into a mournful tenor. It takes immense control to sing it, which is one of the paradoxes of the song - discipline and abandonment, words of deep personal loss combined with the formal compliments of courtly elegy.
Postcards from Hitler
Let the Thunder Roll
I knew Stalin and knew him well.
Churchill even worse - not a new European.
Destroying you all was everything I craved.
Nobody left except the buttercups and milk of Germany.
In years to come, I imagined volk in pretty houses
installing old-fashioned Bakelite telephones
out of sheer nostalgia.
To me, it's an entirely putrid idea
because they don't match digital technology.
I don't want V2 rockets.
Fetch me nuclear power and fetch me Stalingrad.
31 March 1998
Brown Stamps Forever
We would sit alone in the Eagle's Nest
and spank and lie and speak about the business
of the future of the universe - one long poem unburdened
by myth and more black and white films than you care to name.
We never appreciated homosexuals and we never allowed in Negroes.
There was a repetitious repetition of everything indeed.
Take your Satchmo and your Bessie back to where they came from.
There is a direness in my white sky. There is firmness in my purity.
And only I believe it.
31 March 1998
Barry MacSweeney (1948 - 2000)
These are two poems from his Selected Poems Wolf Tongue, which you can buy here.
I knew Stalin and knew him well.
Churchill even worse - not a new European.
Destroying you all was everything I craved.
Nobody left except the buttercups and milk of Germany.
In years to come, I imagined volk in pretty houses
installing old-fashioned Bakelite telephones
out of sheer nostalgia.
To me, it's an entirely putrid idea
because they don't match digital technology.
I don't want V2 rockets.
Fetch me nuclear power and fetch me Stalingrad.
31 March 1998
Brown Stamps Forever
We would sit alone in the Eagle's Nest
and spank and lie and speak about the business
of the future of the universe - one long poem unburdened
by myth and more black and white films than you care to name.
We never appreciated homosexuals and we never allowed in Negroes.
There was a repetitious repetition of everything indeed.
Take your Satchmo and your Bessie back to where they came from.
There is a direness in my white sky. There is firmness in my purity.
And only I believe it.
31 March 1998
Barry MacSweeney (1948 - 2000)
These are two poems from his Selected Poems Wolf Tongue, which you can buy here.
For now being come to the altar, where as priest
Death ministering should meet her, and his hand
Seal her sweet eyes asleep, the maiden stood,
With light in all her face as of a bride
Smiling, or shine of festal flame by night
Far flung from towers of triumph; and her lips
Trembled with pride in pleasure, that no fear
Blanched them nor death before his time drank dry
The blood whose bloom fulfilled them; for her cheeks
Lightened, and brighter than a bridal veil
Her hair enrobed her bosom and enrolled
From face to feet the body's whole soft length
As with a cloud sun-saturate; then she spake
With maiden tongue words manlike, but her eyes
Lit mildly like a maiden's: Countrymen,
With more goodwill and height of happier heart
I give me to you than my mother bare,
And go more gladly this great way to death
Than young men bound to battle. Then with face
Turned to the shadowiest part of all the shrine
And eyes fast set upon the further shade,
Take me, dear Gods; and as some form had shone
From the deep hollow shadow, some God's tongue
Answered, I bless you that your guardian grace
Gives me to guard this country, takes my blood,
Your child's name, to heal it. Then the priest
Set to the flower-sweet snow of her soft throat
The sheer knife's edge that severed it, and loosed
From the fair bondage of so spotless flesh
So strong a spirit; and all that girt them round
Gazing, with souls that hung on that sad stroke,
Groaned, and kept silence after while a man
Might count how far the fresh blood crept, and bathed
How deep the dark robe and the bright shrine's base
Red-rounded with a running ring that grew
More large and duskier as the wells that fed
Were drained of that pure effluence: but the queen
Groaned not nor spake nor wept, but as a dream
Floats out of eyes awakening so past forth
Ghost-like, a shadow of sorrow, from all sight
To the inner court and chamber where she sits
Dumb, till word reach her of this whole day's end.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 - 1909), from Erectheus - a tragedy
Abkhaz girl
This picture is from a beautiful series of photos from the Caucasus, displayed on the website of the Kunstkammer museum in St. Petersburg. It can be seen in context at www.kunstkamera.ru/exhibition/kavkaz/eng/frame.html. The Kunstkammer is the oldest museum in Russia, founded in 1704 by Peter the Great, who collected interesting objects on his travels through Europe, and eventually made them into a permanent exhibition of curious or beautiful things.
Oh, oh.
There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
And she had so many children she didn't know what to do.
So she gave them some broth without any bread
And whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.
And she had so many children she didn't know what to do.
So she gave them some broth without any bread
And whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.
Henry House
The jolly old man is a silly old dumb,
with a mean face, humped, who kills dead.
There is a tall girl who loves only him.
She has sworn - Blue to you forever.
Grey to the little rat, go to bed.
- I fink it's bads all over.
Goguel says nobody knew where the christ they buried him
anyway but the Jewish brass.
No use asking the rich man.
A story. Stories??
One of these bombs costs a fortune.
So sweet dawn wàs he gone?
A bloody fortune!
Married her donkey? That can hardly be.
Magics sweat up & down.
Henry & Mabel ought to be but can't.
Childness let have us, honey,
so adult the hell don't.
John Berryman
with a mean face, humped, who kills dead.
There is a tall girl who loves only him.
She has sworn - Blue to you forever.
Grey to the little rat, go to bed.
- I fink it's bads all over.
Goguel says nobody knew where the christ they buried him
anyway but the Jewish brass.
No use asking the rich man.
A story. Stories??
One of these bombs costs a fortune.
So sweet dawn wàs he gone?
A bloody fortune!
Married her donkey? That can hardly be.
Magics sweat up & down.
Henry & Mabel ought to be but can't.
Childness let have us, honey,
so adult the hell don't.
John Berryman
The Prayer of Erzsebet
Help me, O Clouds,
O Clouds, stay by me.
Let no harm come to me.
Let me remain healthy and invincible.
Send, O send, you powerful Clouds, ninety cats
I command you, O king of the Cats, I pray you.
May you gather them together,
even if you are in the mountains,
or on the waters,
or on the roofs,
or on the other side of the ocean.
May these ninety cats appear to tear and destroy
the hearts
of kings and princes,
and in the same way
the hearts
of teachers and judges
so that they shall harm me not.
Holy Trinity, protect me.
O Clouds, stay by me.
Let no harm come to me.
Let me remain healthy and invincible.
Send, O send, you powerful Clouds, ninety cats
I command you, O king of the Cats, I pray you.
May you gather them together,
even if you are in the mountains,
or on the waters,
or on the roofs,
or on the other side of the ocean.
May these ninety cats appear to tear and destroy
the hearts
of kings and princes,
and in the same way
the hearts
of teachers and judges
so that they shall harm me not.
Holy Trinity, protect me.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Bàrdachd mu ròsan
A mosque is a rose.
We look up at the sky, describe the pictures in the clouds.
What is paradise? It is a scorching fire.
Ashes of roses.
He wept at the door, it was a shabby-looking place,
an end of terrace.
The Earth is a mosque, but its petals are shattered.
from Alcoholic Rose Gardener
We look up at the sky, describe the pictures in the clouds.
What is paradise? It is a scorching fire.
Ashes of roses.
He wept at the door, it was a shabby-looking place,
an end of terrace.
The Earth is a mosque, but its petals are shattered.
from Alcoholic Rose Gardener
Theatre State
from Martial's De Spectaculis Liber
Quae tam seposita est, quae gens tam barbara, Caesar,
ex qua spectator non sit in urbe tua?
venit ab Orpheo cultor Rhodopeius Haemo,
venit et epoto Sarmata pastus equo,
et qui prima bibit deprensi flumina Nili,
et quem supremae Tethyos unda ferit;
festinavit Arabs, festinavere Sabaei,
et Cilices nimbis hic maduere suis.
crinibus in nodum tortis venere Sygambri,
atque aliter tortis crinibus Aethiopes.
vox diversa sonat populorum, tum tamen una est,
cum verus patriae diceris esse pater.
What nation is so remote and primitive, Caesar, that there isn't at least one of them here in Rome? A Balkan farmer from the sacred peaks, a Romanian-Iranian brought up on horse blood, or a man who drinks water at the source of the Nile, or a man lashed by waves at the edge of the world.* The Arabs make their way here, even from Yemen. Armenians come as well, splashing themselves with cologne. The Germans are here with their hair knotted-up, Ethiopians too with that strange curly hair. One hears a multitude of different languages but we speak with one voice, when you, Caesar, are hailed true father of the nation.
* the British
Turba gravis paci placidaeque inimica quieti,
quae semper miseras sollicitabat opes,
traducta est getulis nec cepit harena nocentis:
et delator habet quod dabat exilium.
A group of people who endanger the peace, and cannot live in a calm or contented way, who merely make heavier the burden of our wealth - these were led in the arena, and the vast arena had insufficient room for the guilty! Now they take the punishment they used to deal out, and the blackmailer flies into exile.
Prostratum vasta Nemees in valle leonem
nobilis Herculeum Fama canebat opus.
prisca fides taceat: nam post tua munera, Caesar,
haec iam feminea vidimus acta manu.
Hercules is famous for laying out a lion in Nemea, but ancient fortitude is no match for ours. Thanks to your shows, Caesar, we have seen what armed women can do.
Qualiter in Scythica religatus rupe Prometheus
assiduam nimio pectore pavit avem,
nuda Caledonio sic viscera praebuit urso
non falsa pendens in cruce Laureolus.
vivebant laceri membris stillantibus artus
inque omni nusquam corpore corpus erat.
denique supplicium dignus tulit: ille parentis
vel domini iugulum foderat ense nocens,
templa vel arcano demens spoliaverat auro,
subdiderat saevas vel tibi, Roma, faces.
vicerat antiquae sceleratus crimina famae,
in quo, quae fuerat fabula, poena fuit.
As Prometheus on his rock in Scythia fed a bird with his own chest, so Laureolus, on a real cross, fed a wild pig with his own flesh. His dripping limbs were cut to pieces, but he still remained alive till he had no body left. It was what he deserved after all, he'd cut his father's throat, or maybe his owner's, or was it that he'd stolen the gold from a temple or set off explosions? But the end was something better than a story - what was once just a play became a real execution!
Lambere securi dextram consueta magistri
tigris, ab Hyrcano gloria rara iugo,
seava ferum rabido laceravit dente leonem:
res nova, non ullis cognita temporibus.
ausa est tale nihil, silvis dum vixit in altis:
postquam inter nos est, plus feritatis habet.
A female tiger from the mountains of Hyrcania, who used to lick the hand of her trainer, attacked a wild lion and tore it to pieces. It was something really new, unprecedented! She would never have dared to do that when she lived in the forests, but since living among us, she has grown in ferocity.
from Marcus Valerius Martialis, Epigrams Vol. 1 in the Loeb Classical Library.
The translations I changed a bit. I feel the Latin writers of the Silver Age speak very powerfully to us now. Lucan, Seneca - and Martial. They sink their heads in the corruption of the age, and even when they seem to be smiling defiantly, one feels their discontent and pain. These poems were written to comment on shows in the arena. I often wonder what Martial could have meant by them.
A Japanese poem
いつまでも生きてゐる氣の顔ばかり
From their faces, they are going to live forever
from 'Senryu', translated by R.H. Blyth
From their faces, they are going to live forever
from 'Senryu', translated by R.H. Blyth
Hilarious
It's strange what some people find funny. I remember seeing a review of Lolita which said how enormously funny the book was. Was that just a matter of nerve? Was the reviewer too frightened, too much of a moral coward, to be serious? Actually, maybe comedy should move beyond the reflex-response of making people laugh, and go for a high-wire act of not getting a single laugh from anybody. My favourite game as a kid was sausages. Whenever Gegen die Wand/Head On was funny, I felt mixed in with the laughter a kind of excitement, a jealous yearning to be there and belong inside the film. It's quite a dangerous feeling; it almost becomes a fan mentality, a sort of hatred. Wasn't it strange on the Bob Dylan documentary how hateful a lot of the fans were, how snidely mocking? I remember listening to a bootleg recording of a Nirvana gig - Kurt screams. "Louder!!" shouts the audience. He screams again. "Louder!" And then out comes the cello, and they start whistling and jeering. The moral compass of Gegen die Wand is the traditional singer we see right at the beginning of the film. As the film goes on she is too annoyed and frustrated to sing, and she sits down in a resigned refusal to join in with the mixed-up lives on the screen. She is honest and concerned, she is observant like the statue of a presiding goddess, but she is too self-contained to be jealous of the unhappy lives before her. She sings again at the end. There's something eerily philosophical in the way she sings and interacts with the film.
The other films I've been reviewing are funny as well. The funny scenes in The Mirror are mixed with anxiety, either for the child, or the integrity of the film. A Joe d'Amato film like Buio Omega is something that inflicts itself upon the viewer, it ruins one's evening like a piece of raw, drunken honesty. Should I laugh, or will it just get me beaten up? And the strange thing about Punishment Park is that although it is often very funny as well, the distraction of laughter doesn't unbalance the film's moral purpose, our laughter is never complicit and it doesn't blunt our outrage and anger. How does it manage that? There seems something miraculous about it, and the only thing I can think of to explain it is the moral goodness of the director.
Friday, October 14, 2005
A film by Jafar Panahi
The director of 'The White Balloon', Jafar Panahi, also made 'The Mirror' with the same leading actress, Aida Mohammadkhani. Of course, lots of Iranian films have cute children, and at the start of this film Mohammadkhani looks especially cute with a cast on her arm. But in 'The Mirror', the sentimentality is done with, the script is jarred open, and director and leading actress, adult and child, perform an eerie game on the streets of Tehran, a game of dare, of catching and letting fall, of risk and indifference.
In many countries reknowned for their cute children, the children themselves can have extremely hard lives. This sentimentality about childhood does nothing to alleviate the suffering, and at worst provides a pretty aesthetic frame for exploitation. But then, in adult eyes, the poor child can only play the picturesque victim.
But what happens if the child writes the scenario themselves? 'The Mirror' is a fascinating bridge to Panahi's third film 'The Circle', as piercing and unexploitative film as it's possible to imagine. I believe he has spoken himself about 'The White Balloon', 'The Mirror' and 'The Circle' forming a vague trilogy.
It's a pity that 'The Mirror' doesn't get talked about so much; I don't think it's even been released in England. I bought it from amazon in the States.
Buio Omega
A film by Joe d'Amato, who mostly made horror and porn films, but who recklessly spoke the truth. One can either have nothing to do with the commercial world, and attack and reject it, or, like d'Amato, swim so low in the commercial sink, with so little to play for, that one gains a strange sort of freedom. A freedom, like a child, to see his dreams through to their logical conclusions, without diversions or dishonesty.
This film is about a man in love with his dead wife, who like a lot of men prefers her to be dead. The film is seen through the eyes of that woman, and asks what it means to be desired by a man. Buio Omega has been criticised for lacking poetry, for being cheaply shot, for smothering everything with vulgar blood and entrails, and it is a very vulgar film. But that is a function of its peasant honesty and its materialism - no gauze and dry ice in a d'Amato film to mask what lies underneath desires and dreams: we're made of flesh and bone, not poetry.
There is a lovely satirical scene at the engagement lunch - d'Amato is very fond of his grotesques. Is it well-acted or not? Is it well-paced and structured? It doesn't matter. Joe d'Amato is too honest to care much about such things, and besides he has a child-like love of the forbidden - like shooting a scene with the sun in front of the camera, he never tires of that. His films are not well-made or well-furnished; they are better than that. His Buio Omega and Emanuelle in America together say everything Eyes Wide Shut could not, for all Kubrick's formal ingenuity. The only subject that film has left is its own remoteness and the emptiness of its fantasies.
But as d'Amato knew, sex scenes smell, and there are always suffering, material people beneath the surface sheen. But as a maker of Z-grade films, he speaks from a truly abject artistic position - even the horror fans are a cut above watching a d'Amato pic. His films should have died in the year they were made, but they still persist, and in spite of themselves people still find a reckless, humiliating truth in them which no other films quite provide.
A couple of words to poets to come
We had no time to write of love
Though we were impetuous lovers,
The country needed songs of freedom,
The country needed songs of grain ripening in the fields.
The country demanded of us poor poets
That we teach courses to fight illiteracy,
That we build dams on the rivers,
That we light the flame of socialism in the mountains.
Do not wonder, oh poets yet to be born,
And do not judge us for what we have not accomplished.
Compared to you, we will look like simple monks
Laden with grain and heavy iron chains.
We, who spent many a sleepless night,
We, who accomplished many a great deed,
Could we not at least have written a couple of love poems,
Could we not have stammered, 'Oh, my beloved?'
Do not believe we were heartless! If only you could have seen
The passions we felt for the girls we loved and heard
What sweet nothings we whispered in their ears on those radiant
Evenings! But we lacked the time to publish those sweet nothings.
Our printers were busy with more important things.
Dritero Agolli (1931 - )
translated by Robert Elsie from "An Elusive Eagle Soars" UNESCO/Forest Books
The Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha refused to recognise the "de-Stalinization" of the Soviet Union, for many reasons - out of fear for his own position, resentment of Russian interference, perhaps too out of stubborness and twisted principle.
Dritero Agolli was president of the Union of Writers and Artists, and a sincere communist. I think this poem is a fascinating marriage of "socialist realism" and emotional ambiguity.
Though we were impetuous lovers,
The country needed songs of freedom,
The country needed songs of grain ripening in the fields.
The country demanded of us poor poets
That we teach courses to fight illiteracy,
That we build dams on the rivers,
That we light the flame of socialism in the mountains.
Do not wonder, oh poets yet to be born,
And do not judge us for what we have not accomplished.
Compared to you, we will look like simple monks
Laden with grain and heavy iron chains.
We, who spent many a sleepless night,
We, who accomplished many a great deed,
Could we not at least have written a couple of love poems,
Could we not have stammered, 'Oh, my beloved?'
Do not believe we were heartless! If only you could have seen
The passions we felt for the girls we loved and heard
What sweet nothings we whispered in their ears on those radiant
Evenings! But we lacked the time to publish those sweet nothings.
Our printers were busy with more important things.
Dritero Agolli (1931 - )
translated by Robert Elsie from "An Elusive Eagle Soars" UNESCO/Forest Books
The Albanian communist leader Enver Hoxha refused to recognise the "de-Stalinization" of the Soviet Union, for many reasons - out of fear for his own position, resentment of Russian interference, perhaps too out of stubborness and twisted principle.
Dritero Agolli was president of the Union of Writers and Artists, and a sincere communist. I think this poem is a fascinating marriage of "socialist realism" and emotional ambiguity.
Gegen die Wand
Sibel is admitted to a psychiatric ward after trying to kill herself. She has no feeling of freedom or direction in life and her family cloys on her. So she arranges to marry another Turkish in-patient, Cahit, who drove his car into a wall. Dolled-up and put in a suit, he makes a passable son-in-law, and Sibel tries to live a free life away from the eyes of her father and brother. The film tracks the mutual collision of Sibel and Cahit.
Every scene, every line in this film is a cliché - or rather, it flowers out of cliché. It's directed in a hard-driving MTV style, (although the music kind of predates that - a Birthday Party track from Prayers on Fire, for example - ) and so the whole film should have this sheen of fake. Except it doesn't. Gegen die Wand speaks the truth - bitterly, fiercely, exultantly. It so refuses to lie that the ending is disappointing and unsettling; our lust for tragedy is neither sated nor archly refused. In a highly mediated environment, in a media hall of mirrors, we don't become any less human, our skin doesn't turn into plastic. Most films take refuge in a fantasy of vacuum-sealed, affectless horror. Head On doesn't kick through the glass screen exactly, but it's a warm-blooded creature, scampering about under the floorboards and fighting to survive.
Picture of Sibel Kekilli
Punishment Park
Punishment Park (1971)
Directed by Peter Watkins (The War Game, Culloden et al.)
Perhaps there was a brief period when this film might have seemed paranoid or to have lost whatever relevance it had. Most of us have been politically asleep at some point in our lives. In 2005 this film is like a mirror held up to our fear and tormented self-justifications.
Punishment Park draws a sharp line between moral squalor masquerading as righteousness, and the generosity of righteous anger. Perhaps that is why it has not dated, perhaps that is why it is so draining, so exhausting, but so empowering - because it is fierce with compassion, and hence its anger burns clean.
You can buy it! from http://www.eurekavideo.co.uk/moc
...from Tangled Hair
悔いますなおさへし袖に折れし
つるぎつひの理想の花に刺あらじ
Regret not
the sword you broke
when I checked it with my sleeve -
Beauty's utmost strength
A flower without thorns.
Yosano Akiko
つるぎつひの理想の花に刺あらじ
Regret not
the sword you broke
when I checked it with my sleeve -
Beauty's utmost strength
A flower without thorns.
Yosano Akiko
みだれ髮
庫裏の藤に春ゆく宵のものぐるひ
御經のいのちうつつをかしき
Evening of departing spring -
How alive!
- the sutra
chanted by that insane girl
under the temple wisteria.
Yosano Akiko (trans. Sanford Goldstein & Seishi Shinoda)
御經のいのちうつつをかしき
Evening of departing spring -
How alive!
- the sutra
chanted by that insane girl
under the temple wisteria.
Yosano Akiko (trans. Sanford Goldstein & Seishi Shinoda)
The Watergaw
Ae weet forenicht i' the yow-trummle
I saw yon antrin thing,
A watergaw wi' its chitterin' licht
Ayont the on-ding;
An' I thocht o' the last wild look ye gied
Afore ye deed!
There was nae reek i' the laverock's hoose
That nicht - an' nane i' mine;
But I hae thocht o' that foolish licht
Ever sin' syne;
An' I think that mebbe at last I ken
What your look meant then.
Hugh MacDiarmid
Ae weet forenicht i' the yow-trummle
I saw yon antrin thing,
A watergaw wi' its chitterin' licht
Ayont the on-ding;
An' I thocht o' the last wild look ye gied
Afore ye deed!
There was nae reek i' the laverock's hoose
That nicht - an' nane i' mine;
But I hae thocht o' that foolish licht
Ever sin' syne;
An' I think that mebbe at last I ken
What your look meant then.
Hugh MacDiarmid
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)