tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63306386788875302262024-03-05T22:14:55.944-08:00The Daily TotemTotemPoemhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18350568596700639954noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-66924943862530980432011-12-03T13:29:00.000-08:002011-12-03T13:36:57.487-08:00Road Warriors<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrsjGqc4u5ojazSL3tSZOwYK8JP53yl6hmzFD-PeT8fM99MmyVEnHFXkWOgcMQz6zY5QE438emwZHY3WEdrFNAfbr-0k4DoND5ZM2itlbZbgiq4LcJsbkOSt6qcqZrms1cLAPafvhpeQ/s1600/image_preview-3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxrsjGqc4u5ojazSL3tSZOwYK8JP53yl6hmzFD-PeT8fM99MmyVEnHFXkWOgcMQz6zY5QE438emwZHY3WEdrFNAfbr-0k4DoND5ZM2itlbZbgiq4LcJsbkOSt6qcqZrms1cLAPafvhpeQ/s400/image_preview-3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682018207826165250" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSxAuCkD5Vgr2a7Yi5yqoacKCQOFIJhyphenhyphenohQ4fjbjV15hAah08ixTAo3n5OWQXmQRHccPcViYVn0ETpEaNNVi6NGFfombW9WszCHFSCtZaVSqUCpmdHOAiElFMMHJlcuwT1LNURc4whP0/s1600/image_preview.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirSxAuCkD5Vgr2a7Yi5yqoacKCQOFIJhyphenhyphenohQ4fjbjV15hAah08ixTAo3n5OWQXmQRHccPcViYVn0ETpEaNNVi6NGFfombW9WszCHFSCtZaVSqUCpmdHOAiElFMMHJlcuwT1LNURc4whP0/s400/image_preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682018096200751794" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwhXeC41VKE-l4stP6dD3O9IKf0nqNZUkra2B_oT5Z6kt12MYN23cJnc4ECIk0OEnCV7W2l7KO5X_nlddCqo-fECPulR7W4RdKgxe-e-gdwRw6SDvCearLPtp1yWg904UK3VzFy0LyDVU/s1600/image_preview-1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwhXeC41VKE-l4stP6dD3O9IKf0nqNZUkra2B_oT5Z6kt12MYN23cJnc4ECIk0OEnCV7W2l7KO5X_nlddCqo-fECPulR7W4RdKgxe-e-gdwRw6SDvCearLPtp1yWg904UK3VzFy0LyDVU/s400/image_preview-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682017956882517554" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieFLrl6QryEw5CUtD394zB959E-wGOB-JKnl6groPTytubu8J3ir3Pib2R-FCUeGwn0mlLnrdzcuqvHjuKX24lsA9IGl_L7jho_Nar8wlECFcuitGUKk6xRWEeroKeUz2VVRS-TUE4aNk/s1600/image_preview-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieFLrl6QryEw5CUtD394zB959E-wGOB-JKnl6groPTytubu8J3ir3Pib2R-FCUeGwn0mlLnrdzcuqvHjuKX24lsA9IGl_L7jho_Nar8wlECFcuitGUKk6xRWEeroKeUz2VVRS-TUE4aNk/s400/image_preview-2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5682017772224277346" /></a><br /><br />Madcap story, beautifully put together by Bob Carlson of KCRW's "Unfictional", about a catastrophic day me and my friends Andrew (Gilbert) and Justin (Doughty) experienced when we were seventeen. Three different perspectives of the same event - just like <span style="font-style:italic;">Rashamon</span>!<br /><br />http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/uf/uf111202the_road_warriors#idc-container<br /><br />In the old photo of us at school swimming carnival, that's (highlighted) left to right Justin, Andrew and me. And in the contemporary photos, Justin on the Ducati, Andrew in hat, me in green shirt.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-27494698341859700972011-12-03T11:34:00.001-08:002011-12-03T12:28:11.903-08:00Me and Hergé<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjXtpYclEKh8WaMs4OK2rXGgUvLChscgH0qT9O-DcqXTBdzJen0gb7u4hPa6ssvIkjcKqeanKQPwlLE1j6ieB7XCJiQDFoI2tipt9zJuEnepI0NWjohon2aaAu4LqiyYroWC3Tms2TDg/s1600/20111017152529_00001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMjXtpYclEKh8WaMs4OK2rXGgUvLChscgH0qT9O-DcqXTBdzJen0gb7u4hPa6ssvIkjcKqeanKQPwlLE1j6ieB7XCJiQDFoI2tipt9zJuEnepI0NWjohon2aaAu4LqiyYroWC3Tms2TDg/s400/20111017152529_00001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5681994648497940594" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJW2G0rjtszk3y6yopZAokEuljLjBkqahQksDEq3lW1p-QK91aqYdlgXH8eHVuC1ssUE2pJrGXJvpL95Wkq84wMvpJV0RBaskXE4EzQrkGHXZxnWTuXqs54U3dOIcZh0VmaU4tMF7oOkU/s1600/20111017151941_00001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJW2G0rjtszk3y6yopZAokEuljLjBkqahQksDEq3lW1p-QK91aqYdlgXH8eHVuC1ssUE2pJrGXJvpL95Wkq84wMvpJV0RBaskXE4EzQrkGHXZxnWTuXqs54U3dOIcZh0VmaU4tMF7oOkU/s400/20111017151941_00001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5681992940052066706" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_VV6h0678Z-S3ejy0H6qNQrpZbnuU4fpFzgH3_e4Nu3cDgCGjxUZ9IIuN0F6_r5RsC3XlD0BYYKuRHyraTD5n-gD7WSStNK71C1GKv3T0VsefSqe1z9N8QRdrw0RVwdsVQkd85G6Qzs/s1600/20111017153135_00001.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij_VV6h0678Z-S3ejy0H6qNQrpZbnuU4fpFzgH3_e4Nu3cDgCGjxUZ9IIuN0F6_r5RsC3XlD0BYYKuRHyraTD5n-gD7WSStNK71C1GKv3T0VsefSqe1z9N8QRdrw0RVwdsVQkd85G6Qzs/s400/20111017153135_00001.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5681991338989556290" /></a><br /><br />This is the story of my childhood correspondence with Hergé, the author of the Tintin books. It appeared (print only) in the London Financial Times Weekend Magazine October 22-23, 2011; and yesterday (December 3) print and online in both The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald:<br /><br />http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/herg-and-me-20111201-1o7jw.html <br /><br />Note a caption error (as of this writing) pops up in the online version: the caption seems to say the image is a panel from <span style="font-style:italic;">King Ottakre's Sceptre</span> but it is in fact a section of one of the Christmas cards Hergé sent me. Also, near the end, a sub-edition error has cartoonist David Messer giving the letters to the daughter of the woman I stayed with. This doesn't make sense: it was in fact the unnamed later Honi Soit editor who held onto them and gave them to her years later.<br /><br />I've been deeply moved by the outpouring of love I've received in Facebook comments etc about this article, and am happy it struck such a chord. Hence my linking to it here - for those of you who missed it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-18253788303030885692011-08-16T20:00:00.000-07:002011-08-16T21:10:54.675-07:00The Cisco Kid<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbtFt78yIBgN-tedbQ5NNu2o8mz1TPfd1taqjhH6DjxDO-mBspBH40T_I3jm4ingFB5nBEyWlWPiRpbivjmkanibKdJRXGnJfXPFQaDQXZaybIpD8inPumSW3ro4eTaVqEi3GZ42A11Vs/s1600/Cisco3.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbtFt78yIBgN-tedbQ5NNu2o8mz1TPfd1taqjhH6DjxDO-mBspBH40T_I3jm4ingFB5nBEyWlWPiRpbivjmkanibKdJRXGnJfXPFQaDQXZaybIpD8inPumSW3ro4eTaVqEi3GZ42A11Vs/s400/Cisco3.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641656799413980370" /></a>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnqPRudGl5AtDkBSUzRB-XHoogdv_XJyLgVFmucD-PGAxRlCSSVI-rNR5wgdGcyPUio_L7JOOMu9ONPLPTUgde1SNcMNNBxzaMlrCYvPjtoyBKH_w1uuhBD_F98fLW59iH7_okEZ8uNA/s1600/Kristofferson+%253A+Karen+Black.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYnqPRudGl5AtDkBSUzRB-XHoogdv_XJyLgVFmucD-PGAxRlCSSVI-rNR5wgdGcyPUio_L7JOOMu9ONPLPTUgde1SNcMNNBxzaMlrCYvPjtoyBKH_w1uuhBD_F98fLW59iH7_okEZ8uNA/s400/Kristofferson+%253A+Karen+Black.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641656781093421122" /></a>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2lVbWF-5B4onl30dJE5Q-CbDxeew6sXsn0ZdDyLQ9RbEv8aIDAKmhLXc-zZ13a9I4X6m9qCoJTv4JBesBFw1rWXXJv3xyR0felRvl0E_x4sNnA2P1muagwxpXi669PEt2rQBZRaE1nRs/s1600/Cisco+Pike+poster.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 281px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2lVbWF-5B4onl30dJE5Q-CbDxeew6sXsn0ZdDyLQ9RbEv8aIDAKmhLXc-zZ13a9I4X6m9qCoJTv4JBesBFw1rWXXJv3xyR0felRvl0E_x4sNnA2P1muagwxpXi669PEt2rQBZRaE1nRs/s400/Cisco+Pike+poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641656802870929170" /></a>
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<br />[This essay was first published in <span style="font-style:italic;">Slake</span>, Issue No.1 ("Still Life"), 2010 .... http://shop.slake.la/products/single-issue ]
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<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE CISCO KID</span> by Luke Davies
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<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“How’s the ol’ universe?”</span>
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<br />I am eight years old. I’m given a book of children’s poetry. I hurry past the poems. It’s the photos that I study, that I want to enter. There’s a girl stamping in a puddle, and I feel a terrific yearning for her, so terrific as to be painful. It’s that preadolescent anticipation of falling in love, and it’s the foreknowledge of the mysteries of sex. In that single image, in that barefooted girl stomping so joyfully in a puddle, there lies the possibility of eternal contentment, possession, surrender, sublimation.
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<br />But what else about that photo? It’s not the girl; it’s not the foreground that matters so much. It’s the house behind her that draws my attention, a house distinctly and completely American, the likes of which I’ve never seen in my own quiet neighborhood. It’s a two-storey gabled house with a deep front porch. The vernacular of American suburban architecture works as a great entrancing, hypnotic force in my life. I obsess for hours about all the perfection of form in my mother’s <span style="font-style:italic;">House and Garden</span>s.
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<br />An inconceivable mystery: from where I stood as a youngster, the people all around me appeared to be more or less satisfied with the notion that they were living in Australia. They seemed, in fact, to embrace the idea! For me, Australia was a pale simulacrum of what reality should surely have been offering. The thought never crossed my mind that a physical continent — a country, flesh and stone, citizens and states, events taking place with, or more extraordinarily, <span style="font-style:italic;">without</span> me present — could in any way be disentangled from the imagination. It was all one world. It was all one country, and it was called America: this place I was living in, in every way except the physical. The way to this land, this America, was television.
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<br />I wasn’t insane, not at all. I didn’t think I <span style="font-style:italic;">lived</span> inside television shows. But television stood for that which was even more real than that which was. Television <span style="font-style:italic;">showed the way</span>. It was a <span style="font-style:italic;">design for living</span>. It was an <span style="font-style:italic;">aid to the imagination</span>. It was the bridge of metaphor, or the metaphor of the bridge. It led me to the promised land.
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<br />I could understand, at thirteen, understand in some abstract intellectual fashion, that something altogether BBC-ish like <span style="font-style:italic;">Doctor Who</span> was a show worth following; these episodes were smart. They contained <span style="font-style:italic;">story</span>, in a way that <span style="font-style:italic;">Gilligan’s Island</span> didn’t, not really: <span style="font-style:italic;">Gilligan’s Island</span> was <span style="font-style:italic;">situation</span>. Yet I couldn’t stomach <span style="font-style:italic;">Doctor Who</span>, whereas <span style="font-style:italic;">Gilligan’s Island</span> was like a nightly religious ritual. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Doctor Who</span> sets were so cheap; sometimes you saw them shake. My imagination was no help here. I never wanted to be reminded of the stage machinery. Americans had budget! There was no stage machinery in America. It was the reality beyond artifice. <span style="font-style:italic;">The Brady Bunch</span>, or better still <span style="font-style:italic;">The Partridge Family</span>: now those interiors looked real, and solid. You could live somewhere like that and be happy.
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<br />“Real” life in Australia was messier. I felt I was on the wrong planet. Ceilings got moldy, and cupboard doors came loose. Something essential and perfect was missing from life. But the puddle girl: surely back in that house behind her, there would be a kitchen filled with all the wonders of the world: all the products in the advertisements in the American magazines. What on earth was a Hershey Bar?
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<br />Its unattainability was like a heavy weight on my soul.
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<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“I’m a simple cat. I like that simple stuff, man.”</span>
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<br />I’m twelve, thirteen. I’ve lost interest now in <span style="font-style:italic;">Gilligan’s Island</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Lost in Space</span>. I’ve come to recognize their locales as sets. I’ve become more spatially aware. Now, I need shows shot largely on location. Thus, re-runs of <span style="font-style:italic;">Room 222</span> or a new show called <span style="font-style:italic;">Chico and the Man</span> are mostly only good for the opening credits. I watch <span style="font-style:italic;">The Streets of San Francisco</span>. It’s a bipolar viewing experience: whenever the action is inside, on a set, my attention wanders; outside, when the show is on location, I’m all eyes, devouring backgrounds, cars, shopfronts, extras. Where might I live? How will my life turn out? America becomes a slant of light.
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<br />I’m allowed to take the train to the cinema on Saturdays. With film, everything is different. With film, you can spend ninety minutes sinking into the “real” America as you might sink into a warm bath. I see <span style="font-style:italic;">Jaws</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Macon County Line</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry</span>. Now everything coalesces at once. I discover masturbation. I leapfrog from Steinbeck to <span style="font-style:italic;">On the Road</span>. I seem to literally make a decision to become obsessed with drugs; and then I do. And a certain kind of drifting, American B-movie becomes my bible. For a while <span style="font-style:italic;">Billy Jack</span> seems like the most important film ever made. <span style="font-style:italic;">Little Fauss and Big Halsy</span> makes a kind of existential poetry of the motocross circuit in the Southwestern states. I decide I want to live in a trailer in Arizona after seeing <span style="font-style:italic;">Electraglide in Blue</span>.
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<br />One summer holiday, I’m with my mother at a mall in Surfers Paradise on Queensland’s Gold Coast, and I scan the movies and I know from the poster alone that <span style="font-style:italic;">Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More</span> is the one we need to see. I’m intrigued by Kris Kristofferson for the first time. More and more I am coming to like rootlessness, Arizona, New Mexico.
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<br />On the one hand there’s this child still in me: I spend hours buried in the final volume, <span style="font-style:italic;">W-X-Y-Z-and-Atlas</span>, of the old set of encyclopedias my father has picked up from a school fete. It’s a very American set, an American atlas: there are fifty beautiful, detailed double-page spreads for the fifty states, then about ten pages for the rest of the world. I continually invent the places where I will live. I invent entire networks of high schools, the team colors, team names. I work out obsessive methodologies of gathering quarterback statistics and game scores via a complex system of darts thrown at a target from three feet away. Every time I “move,” every time I create a new life (a different double page, a different state), the fantasy begins again. New notebooks get filled with statistics. It’s the OCD phase of my life: decisions within my imaginary world are made with obscure, rule-based alphabetical and numbering systems, and a 1970 pro football yearbook I find becomes, for many years, as talismanic as the I Ching.
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<br />When we travel north to the Gold Coast for those yearly family holidays, leaving Sydney behind us, the Pacific Ocean is always to the right. So I invert my world and imagine we are traveling south, from San Francisco, through Los Angeles (Brisbane) to warmer climes in San Diego (Surfers Paradise). The east coast of Australia replicates the west coast of America. The ocean remains on the right and, so long as I ignore the fact that we drive on the left-hand side of the road, a kind of plausibility is achieved.
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<br />On the other hand: there’s the continually frustrating fact that I long to be an adult and yet I have no control over the glacial speed of the passage of time. I’ve leapfrogged again, now from Kerouac to Faulkner, then on to poetry, and everything has changed, and yet nothing at all. I see myself as a poet from now on. I feel like an adult. I’m only thirteen. I want older friends. I desperately want to have sex.
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<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Partridge Family</span> has long receded into the past. I discover Bob Dylan. Then, in <span style="font-style:italic;">Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid</span>, there’s Kris Kristofferson again. I want to be handsome, and soulful, and laconic, like him. When girls take a mysterious liking to me or kiss me, or let me finger them, I don’t feel lucky or blessed for all that long; I don’t know how to take things in stride. Hovering behind my heightened yearning is the sense that this kissing or this fingering must surely only be some temporary malfunction in the workings of the universe, and that regular anguish will shortly resume. But if I were handsome and soulful and laconic like Kristofferson, then I would not be living in a world of malfunction. The future is waiting for me but not arriving fast enough.
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<br />Kristofferson is in <span style="font-style:italic;">Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid</span> because Peckinpah cast him after seeing him in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>, the 1971 B.L. Norton film about a dealer/ex-rock star who gets out of prison and tries to go straight. <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span> is a B-film, sitting square in the middle of the hippy-era outsider-versus-the-system movies that would wind up becoming the psychic sustenance of my adolescence. I don’t know what it is that I’m attracted to – it’s all instinct. Years later I will see the consistency of aesthetic in these B-movies – that pervasive atmosphere of a world waking all disillusioned and bewildered to a mean, sour hangover after the big party-gone-wrong that was, apparently, the sixties. Not that I would know, since in the sixties I was showered and pajama’ed by 6 p.m. every night.
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<br />Something clicks for me with <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>, and it seems to become, however gradually, the ur-film of my imagined America. “I miss everything / I’ll never be,” the Smashing Pumpkins will sing years later. And I fall in love, around 1977, with a Venice Beach that B.L. Norton shot seven years earlier, which no doubt no longer exists even as I fall. Venice is the sun-drenched America of all my nostalgia, all my lost dreams.
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<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“You know where the groove is at.”</span>
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<br />I’m hooked from the opening scenes, as Kristofferson ambles along the dilapidated Venice canals in the late sun, past slightly gone-to-seed houses that look like the kind of shared Sydney houses I often find myself scoring pot. They are the kind of weatherboard houses I’d been wanting to live in: no longer <span style="font-style:italic;">House and Garden</span>, to be sure, no longer that surreal perfection of <span style="font-style:italic;">Leave It To Beaver</span>, but still, even in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>, it’s their Americanness that I want. The incidental background of films remains a dominant condition of my viewing them. But now my dreams are more sophisticated. I decide to be, if not handsome and soulful and laconic, then mysterious and aloof and slightly troubled. Hippy chicks like <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>’s Joy Bang and just-plain-mad but sexy Viva will surely bed me in rollicking threesomes. One day I will be mysterious, and aloof, and slightly troubled.
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<br />I want to live in a world where people speak like the characters in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>.
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<br />“What have you brought me?” asks the man in the guitar shop. “A little coke from Cuzco?”
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<br />“I ain’t dealin’ no more, man,” answers Cisco, the first of a constant refrain.
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<br />“You mean you <span style="font-style:italic;">isn’t</span> dealin’ no more,” the guitar shop man chides. It’s one of those films that takes its languid, minimalist time, and it lets whole songs play out as it rambles. “He’s a poet, he’s a picker, he’s a prophet, he’s a pusher,” sings Kristofferson. “He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned,” I’ve found a model for living.
<br />
<br />Cisco lives with flakey girlfriend Sue (Karen Black) in a small, bright apartment across the road from the beach. When we first see her, she’s meditating on a table, in the lotus position. Cisco enters, comes up from behind. “How’s the ol’ universe?” he says into her ear. She remains immobile. He squeezes her breasts and nuzzles her. “Ommm, ommm,” he teases, before segueing into “Ohmmm, ohmmm on the range, where the deer and the antelope play…..” She giggles. Sue believes in astral projection and levitation and yogis who can “make it for twenty-four hours straight.” When Dragon calls him, Cisco says, “I’m through. I quit dealing. Yeah, why don’t you try Buffalo? I think he’s got something. Dig you later, man.” This is the territory. To this day I still have no clear idea how tongue-in-cheek it is.
<br />
<br />“Are you sorry you quit?” asks Sue.
<br />
<br />“No.”
<br />
<br />“No withdrawal pains?”
<br />
<br />“Not on your nellie,” says Cisco. “I’m gonna do this thing.”
<br />
<br />Then we’re watching a police parade and funeral, and Officer Leo Holland (Gene Hackman) is among the mourners. Soon Holland steals a hundred kilos of marijuana from some Mexicans, and with threats and coercing and a promise of some help with an upcoming court case, forces Cisco back into business. Holland gives Cisco the weekend only in which to offload the hundred keys for $10,000. It seems an impossibly low price - $100 a kilo, wholesale - even for 1971. But what do I know? (Pajamas, six p.m.) Perhaps Holland is simply in a hurry.
<br />
<br />Thus the LA travelogue begins. We’re with Cisco in his rental car, a guitar case filled with bricks of compressed pot in the back, from Venice to Los Feliz, from Hollywood to the Valley. Cisco presses Officer Holland as to why he’s doing this, but Holland is evasive. “You do things and, er … one day you wonder why you’re doing things,” he muses. Hackman is excellent and sharp in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>: all bitterness and paranoia. Later, we learn the real reason for his going feral. His medical is coming up, and he knows the tachycardia he’s suffering from will have him stood down with less than two years to go before he qualifies for a full pension. Fuck the police, indeed.
<br />
<br />There are moments of ludicrous dialogue, but the film’s overall effect is not entirely ludicrous. There are moments that are unintentionally funny; I forgive them utterly at fifteen years old, and still do. Doug Sahm (of the Sir Douglas Quintet) is bizarre but hilarious: “You know me though, man, you know, I’m a simple cat, man, I like that simple stuff, man, I mean, you know, you know where the groove is at, that California thing don’t get it, that far-out-in-space music, man, play the real thing, man. You know, man?”
<br />
<br />Near everything is framed in clichés like this. Sahm’s manager wears a suit, says to Cisco, “I saw you guys at the Forum in, what was it, ’68?” “Shrine, 67,” deadpans Cisco. “Oh yeah,” says the manager. “Big grosser, that show. You haven’t done much since then, huh?” Viva (of Warhol’s Factory fame), playing a spaced-out pregnant groupie, asks, “Will you sell me a pound?” “Of what?” asks Cisco. “Anything you’ve got,” she says. “I’m not choosy.”
<br />
<br />But landscape, this celluloid geography, trumps clichéd dialogue any day. I’ve already lived entire lives in houses glimpsed for a second in the background of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Streets of San Francisco</span>, so not much in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span> fazes me. I imagined I might live in a city like Los Angeles, the utterly exotic and the utterly familiar yoked together, the endless ugly sprawl of strip malls and neon.
<br />
<br />Every now and again I might need to get my head together, so I’d probably go off to New Mexico for a while. (Doug Sahm to Cisco: “I saw Moss. He said he ran into Jesse in Taos.” I’d need to live in a world where phrases like that flowed freely.) I know all about New Mexico from <span style="font-style:italic;">Whole Earth Catalogue</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Domebook</span>. I might build a dome one day. There’s a porn mag called <span style="font-style:italic;">Gallery</span>, and I steal from the newsagent the <span style="font-style:italic;">Gallery Girl Next Door Annual</span>, which is basically the pre-internet version of the “amateur” category, 200 pages of home snapshots sent in by hot, lusty American women (or their biker boyfriends, more likely). I might one day take my flaxen-tressed, hairy-bushed, cut-off-Levi’d girlfriend and head off to New Mexico to raise kids, grow pot and live free. I am clueless, and near-divine.
<br />
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“I’m lucky like that.”</span>
<br />
<br />“You been using?” Cisco asks his old friend and band member Jesse (Harry Dean Stanton), who has turned up unannounced and who doesn’t look so great. “A little speed for the drive down here,” admits Jesse. “Then I took an upper — no, I took a downer for the up. But I’m ready now, buddy, I’m ready now.” They hit the town — Jesse will accompany Cisco in his attempts to offload the bricks. Jesse has a shot of speed before they take off, and Stanton plays to a tee all the slightly-too-loud and slightly-too-fast, loopily extrapolating on the insurance money he has coming to him as a result of a car accident. “$10,000, just like that,” he says. “I’m lucky like that!”
<br />
<br />But Jesse frets about his looks. If they get the band back together, what will the crowd make of his wrinkles? “Aw, Jesse, man,” says Cisco. “It ain’t your goddamned body they’re after, man. It’s your soul.” Jesse has just come from a failure-to-perform in the back seat of a car with groupie Joy Bang after meeting her at a gig at the Troubadour (“Goddamned speed, man,” he says, “that’s why Virginia left”). The ravages of time are weighing heavily on his mind. He will die of a heroin overdose before the movie’s end. Jesse makes me sad at sixteen, perhaps because at some unconscious level I know certain ravages await me, or perhaps because the center of the film, the great art of it, is Kristofferson’s immortality. Like Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, Kristofferson attains — is granted by the gods — a moment of near-incandescent celluloid beauty. That moment is <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>.
<br />
<br />Kristofferson is seventy-three now, and I am forty-eight, though very quickly this information too will be obsolete. For a long while, time stands still. In my twenties, completely beholden to heroin by this time, I watch the American football on TV — you can only see one game once a week at this time in Australia, on a free-to-air station, around eleven or midnight — and I still wonder if my fantasy might ever come true, that I might be the first Australian-born quarterback to lead a team to a Super Bowl victory.
<br />
<br />I imagine a world in which it would be possible to be a quarterback who was also a good poet.
<br />
<br />
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">“I’m ready now, buddy, I’m ready now.”</span>
<br />
<br />When I finally make it to America, of course, at thirty-five, everything is both utterly familiar and utterly foreign. It’s exciting just being in a supermarket, in the corniest way, to get to touch the packaging at last. And there’s that moment of anticlimax too: the realization that all those cereal boxes, all the shiny mass of commerce and consumerism, telling their stories of a perfect America, that these too are just the stage machinery after all. After all that bother! (As when, at the end of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Wizard of Oz</span>, the Wizard is unmasked.) And that you are always only wherever you are. And thus that some of Australia has been lost forever, frozen in those times when your head was in America.
<br />
<br />In Los Angeles, the lostness of America becomes most readily apparent. The signifier is omnipresent but what it signifies is no longer so evident. The visual detritus of pure consumerism overwhelms the senses. The sameness stretches fractally, everything repeating to scale, to boundaries that are never quite clear; eventually, suddenly, you are simply in Las Vegas, pure money with no product, nothing manufactured there but yearning.
<br />
<br />And yet, back west, here is Los Angeles, and here is the ocean. The same ocean that was to my east is now to my west. Not just time, which Einstein told us moves in curves, connects me there to here, but this endless ocean too. It’s been forever since that time when I lived so comprehensively in two-worlds-as-one. Was there a vacuum between me and my life, in which my real life lay unused? Possibly. It was the only life I knew.
<br />
<br />One of the movie's posters announces: “Cisco Pike is a man of the west — west LA!” It seems inadvertently funny now, like the tagline for a remake of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fresh Prince of Bel Air</span>, but perhaps it meant something quite different forty years ago, when Venice was <span style="font-style:italic;">frontier</span> as well as end of the road. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span> there’s nowhere farther west to go for Cisco; at the end he’s heading east, out into the open space of the desert. I know that axis now: last year for two months I finally made it to New Mexico, looking after a cabin 9,000 feet up in the snows of the Sangre de Christo Mountains outside of Taos. There was no sense any more that life was awaiting me elsewhere. All that was long-gone.
<br />
<br />Not everything moves in circles, but all the ellipses and curves are uncanny. And the funny thing? There’s still something dreamy and sun-drenched about Venice, something as trippy and marginal now as what you glimpse as background, as setting, as visual circumstance, in <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span>. “Algiers,” wrote Camus, and he might just as much have been talking about Venice or my beloved Bondi Beach, “opens to the sky like a mouth or a wound. In Algiers one loves the commonplace: the sea at the end of every street, a certain volume of sunlight.”
<br />
<br />I miss everything I’ll never be: that is the purest form of nostalgia, the benediction and burden of the commonplace. <span style="font-style:italic;">Cisco Pike</span> as a dream of light. I haven’t lived in Venice yet. I live in Hollywood for now, possibly because I want to experience shallowness at depth, possibly because I want to live for a while in the last remaining nineteenth-century gold town on the planet. It will do. I can always take day trips to Venice.
<br />
<br />
<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEn3YQO03TQ&feature=related"></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-58254618309758786442010-12-08T21:28:00.000-08:002010-12-08T22:31:47.386-08:00Directions for Dreamfishing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqi3swmsN9OaVl1a5gD2z-ekLKAYltXV061I33kWgQu9Gqb3GVar71RJcvUhc40dLzoFAZRQoANPFU2W6RKVDCY_m9ui-_ZQcQoI3q6TulM91gOdgRQQAnt2xLrLbnfZ7deVOrDkmqJoY/s1600/bittinger_sinking_house.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 292px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqi3swmsN9OaVl1a5gD2z-ekLKAYltXV061I33kWgQu9Gqb3GVar71RJcvUhc40dLzoFAZRQoANPFU2W6RKVDCY_m9ui-_ZQcQoI3q6TulM91gOdgRQQAnt2xLrLbnfZ7deVOrDkmqJoY/s400/bittinger_sinking_house.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5548551116378068322" /></a><br />(Directions for Dreamfishing)<br /><br />First you must blow a bottle round your sleep<br />in concave bottle-greens of drifting seas<br />around dreams' hot vermilions, where unease<br />will abrogate its fishing rights to deep<br />seas, where your Dreamfish, bred and interbred<br />to swim upnight with what you most desire,<br />slides through the streaming cellstrands in your head<br />stippled with swirling wet St Elmo's fire<br />and surfacing flutters on the midnight wind,<br />as fish can't, as you know. The night is green<br />with loss. In fading dictionaries you find<br />'the sea-green beryl, or aquamarine.'<br />You wake in billingsgate, haggling for a drab<br />dead slice of Dreamfish on a beryl slab.<br /><br />Martin Johnston (1947 - 1990)<br /><br /><br />In recent times this beautiful poem by Martin Johnston kept coming back into my mind. I first read "Directions for Dreamfishing" in an anthology of Australian poetry edited by John Tranter; for years, I kept a copy of the poem pinned on the wall in front of my desk. But I'd long-since lost that photocopy in my travels. I couldn't find the poem online; the Tranter anthology is in a box back in Sydney. I could <span style="font-style:italic;">almost</span> remember the poem by heart, but there were frustrating gaps. So I went to Google Books and reconstructed it, line by line. Google would only show me a few lines at a time, but by careful phrase-searches I managed to fill in the gaps and piece it together. <br /><br />When I was nineteen I knew Johnston from the Sydney poetry reading scene around Darlinghurst - I'd even read one night in a poetry reading at Exiles Bookshop that he was also in. He lived a street away from me - I was in Forbes St, he in Thomson, from memory. One day I doorknocked him and importuned him (I guess it's a form of blackmail, a doorknock like that) to buy a copy of my first small book of poems, "Four Plots for Magnets". I suppose he was around 34. He seemed both ridiculously polite and painfully shy.<br /><br />Then I met him again in mid-89, in the corridors of the old SBS Television headquarters when it was still in North Sydney near Luna Park and I had, very briefly - this was the final year before I got properly "clean" - a job on a small current affairs program called "Vox Populi". He was a subtitler there - Greek films, I guess, and whatever other languages his vast mind had a handle on. I stopped him one day, reminded him of who I was and where we knew each other from. He had that spooked colt thing going still - an edginess, a slight spaciness - but he was unfailingly polite and welcoming too. He invited me to come across the road to the pub any lunch time - he would be there every day, he implied, every lunch time.<br /><br />I never took up the offer. I was freelance - it wasn't like I took a lunch hour anyhow. He was dead within a year. What I find in this poem - and perhaps I'm deeply wrong - is the sadness of his struggle with alcohol. "Unease" is perhaps the fulcrum word of the poem. I love the fact that there's a "first" - as if we're about to get a set of instructions - but no "second". It's not a how-to, it's a lament for what's lost. The dreamer gets lost in the struggle of the dream. There's a chance the unease might be let go of for something greater, something deeper. Contact with the elemental seems to be made, but it won't be retained - except, perhaps, in the "fading dictionaries" of his poems? There's the brilliant work those "streaming cellstrands" do: that image I get both of rippling seaweed deep underwater and of the neuronal pathways in the brain. There's that brutal sense of waking, of waking bewildered (and hung over?) to the demands of this world above the surface. That abrupt "as fish can't, as you know." It seems perhaps a perfect poem about the actual physiology of nightly withdrawal, and the psychic toll it takes. Passing out, "going under", sleeping restlessly, and waking later to a harsh and brittle world.<br /><br />On the other hand, it's about much more than that, of course. "Dreams are private myths," wrote Joseph Campbell. "Myths are public dreams." In "Directions for Dreamfishing", Johnston created a mythically beautiful poem by making a private anguish public.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-7371632834257760692010-05-31T17:46:00.001-07:002010-05-31T18:08:27.349-07:00Bring Me the Forest Salad: R.I.P. Peter Porter<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE06nB1OJDm9lZZyGDzwi3LJT9PCsarQUt5bnHk9WALQXFVzPR0qM3EAcerQG9iRVtkBygWvz0E5z3_eKfupYebhTFHOf5ptm-YLXKHNY8wCbjrJ6zckopGSiqfeAJV8Boa_6DeaEB7aI/s1600/0144.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 327px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE06nB1OJDm9lZZyGDzwi3LJT9PCsarQUt5bnHk9WALQXFVzPR0qM3EAcerQG9iRVtkBygWvz0E5z3_eKfupYebhTFHOf5ptm-YLXKHNY8wCbjrJ6zckopGSiqfeAJV8Boa_6DeaEB7aI/s400/0144.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5477600417658387042" /></a><br /><br />The poet Peter Porter died a couple of weeks ago. He was a wonderful poet. He was very kind and supportive to me as a younger poet. <br /><br />In the middle of the dark period that I fictionalised in <span style="font-style:italic;">Candy</span>, I once, for some reason, wrote him a long letter - a kind of fan letter, I guess, that did or said I don't know what, I no longer remember. It was like a missive from the dark subterranean heart of addiction to some kind of godlike, distant figure - a functioning poet, in London! What was I doing? Willing myself towards hope? I no doubt mentioned how much I liked his work, and which poems and books in particular. I no doubt mentioned that I was a poet, but I don't think I included any poems in the letter.<br /><br />I never sent it; I threw it way. I remember it felt like a hopeless idea, as most everything did back then.<br /><br />A few years later I emerged from that world; having been in a tunnel for so long, it was a staggering, stuttering year or two, emerging into the brightness of the world. Eventually I gathered my poems together into a manuscript of sorts. I didn't know what to do with it. I just wanted some basic kind of feedback. I sent it to John Tranter, the poet (and now editor of the excellent <span style="font-style:italic;">Jacket</span> too and to Porter, via his publisher in London. Both sent friendly, supportive replies, which I still have somewhere, back in Sydney. Over the years, when he was in Sydney, I had the odd cup of tea with Porter, or I'd pick him up and drop him off somewhere (he always seemed to be needing delivery), and we'd talk, always about poetry and poets. He read <span style="font-style:italic;">Candy</span> at some point too. He was fascinated by addiction, being so far from it.<br /><br />In 1975 Porter did a limited edition (1000 copies, signed and numbered) book with the painter Arthur Boyd, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Lady and the Unicorn</span>. Two lines have always remained burned in my brain:<br /><br /><br />Bring me the forest salad, the topmost leaves which wait upon the sun<br />Then I will eat my own will and be nothing but light for you to preen byUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-15152425740990392782010-05-15T03:13:00.000-07:002010-05-17T16:56:42.430-07:00From Malibu to Marfa to Cannes, from the Sublime to the Ridiculous but in No Particular Order<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5qJ0zOcz31Y_mhEhiWHyh_6XJqcRWE8yjIMDBlKrUNR5W883F8STTMGtJm5Ed3nHknxGD_M5gZgEnGyilBIh6JC7QoN2aA3-4i7hFlviheGb7NQFZ-H4CLbGJdFpIr-bsvEXdyAOKnek/s1600/IMG_0057.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5qJ0zOcz31Y_mhEhiWHyh_6XJqcRWE8yjIMDBlKrUNR5W883F8STTMGtJm5Ed3nHknxGD_M5gZgEnGyilBIh6JC7QoN2aA3-4i7hFlviheGb7NQFZ-H4CLbGJdFpIr-bsvEXdyAOKnek/s400/IMG_0057.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471438828663788706" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyuzh5f69X4MkjWihbDcJCM1TBS-pVR9b1vJ2zgotdsrPV_v19AeitHyCnVmV6YUJkSH6ssZFLdcD7_-dPmnSM-qt4_GTJnQl7ezMhQP7NPnmm6kqewiJXqC2wsUGqeryUzllllesnkM/s1600/P1010078.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUyuzh5f69X4MkjWihbDcJCM1TBS-pVR9b1vJ2zgotdsrPV_v19AeitHyCnVmV6YUJkSH6ssZFLdcD7_-dPmnSM-qt4_GTJnQl7ezMhQP7NPnmm6kqewiJXqC2wsUGqeryUzllllesnkM/s400/P1010078.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471438627503364482" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrQVVO71VN67hrcmnfL-8W-lGM6INPYuWr08Lt0MtqTg8EEPWgsuuhOT_mwM1fbABU8MXzYl5V4B2jreBg3GN6o1cfZWmPBCuep4LC2M9EjlQfdPtzNpEG6wZvjgR6xCK787BvMr-asg4/s1600/IMG_0055.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrQVVO71VN67hrcmnfL-8W-lGM6INPYuWr08Lt0MtqTg8EEPWgsuuhOT_mwM1fbABU8MXzYl5V4B2jreBg3GN6o1cfZWmPBCuep4LC2M9EjlQfdPtzNpEG6wZvjgR6xCK787BvMr-asg4/s400/IMG_0055.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471438510786421810" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtvMZmyz3MpQglVOMJDtezo8hNOMPzhLIdn487Vav_8i0QH68dEsLDxSABYHp8SjffmpilfQ2ST7woM0I68-xZ6FrI12FwSwgcoz30GqhLiWDM66-PYJ6gocMQMS1IL5GFET4r1Sn61Wc/s1600/P1010033.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtvMZmyz3MpQglVOMJDtezo8hNOMPzhLIdn487Vav_8i0QH68dEsLDxSABYHp8SjffmpilfQ2ST7woM0I68-xZ6FrI12FwSwgcoz30GqhLiWDM66-PYJ6gocMQMS1IL5GFET4r1Sn61Wc/s400/P1010033.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471438291807792482" /></a><br />A long and disappointing story, but technical difficulties prevented the screening of <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span> at the Malibu Film Festival, both on the scheduled night (sorry to all those who trekked down there - really sorry) and the day-after when it was supposed to be screened again. Alas and etc. Then I went to New York, briefly. Then to Marfa, Texas, which, due to the Malibu situation, became the world premiere of <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span>. (Yay.) It looks really good on the big screen, so I was very happy to be down there and see it. Marfa is an amazing town, with a very cool film festival, now three years old. I've been to Marfa three times now and realized this time that what makes it really interesting is that pretty much everyone who lives there - who chooses to live there - is like a character out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. It's this tiny art town in the middle of wide-open sweeping Texas. Nice festival website too:<a href="http://www.marfafilmfestival.org/"></a><br />Then I had frequent flyer miles so I flew to Paris to finish the edit of my short film <span style="font-style:italic;">L'Imbecile</span>. Got off plane in Paris at 4pm last Monday and caught taxi straight to editing room. Worked in a kind of extended jetlaggy hallucination for four hours Monday night, then all day Tuesday. Then caught train down to Cannes (because why not?) for three days. Cannes is simply mad. <br /><br />Now I'm at Heathrow and my flight is being called. So this blog entry is just the bare bones of some information.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-81178644688814481702010-04-27T18:15:00.000-07:002010-04-27T18:22:40.387-07:00AIR at Malibu Film Festival<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8kLfEtTSxW2Ksb3bHbK1lukWGf0y-fDnkkvvQyLpw8sV9VDqFii377C8dt6i7xye_Du-26MbA-ukc1q3MvsXAvfJ6Nl6OpePhEJe1BDt5n4xUFIDQ8VcQpSW4EhioMxl32CiTRjWatY/s1600/img100.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT8kLfEtTSxW2Ksb3bHbK1lukWGf0y-fDnkkvvQyLpw8sV9VDqFii377C8dt6i7xye_Du-26MbA-ukc1q3MvsXAvfJ6Nl6OpePhEJe1BDt5n4xUFIDQ8VcQpSW4EhioMxl32CiTRjWatY/s400/img100.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464991530633673282" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOqC_fE0wPVX_i4ToS5F0Z5hn6fpJaV3hgxPVXeXaZodxejiBgTXkuepPaq5DScv6HR2u_P2dcoUPeHeRtQxBkmTQLwLo2w7bCYbuZVLxjMn2Cs-sVcwj0LuJFWtwMYXzMcmHXK6BdoA/s1600/img121_2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 203px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIOqC_fE0wPVX_i4ToS5F0Z5hn6fpJaV3hgxPVXeXaZodxejiBgTXkuepPaq5DScv6HR2u_P2dcoUPeHeRtQxBkmTQLwLo2w7bCYbuZVLxjMn2Cs-sVcwj0LuJFWtwMYXzMcmHXK6BdoA/s400/img121_2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464991362886982306" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieISN8FLV11rpYVhLEhE56OFh2D2Az7Mz3mZ2N8lJZllRxN0l7lV_KJDyqM9-CoYzUE0yzaOjS-Wf2hyphenhyphen4zA77-iStOv1byOukW7Jo9rlWXeg-_aNHH77rl8kmxfBFRZgFIHtBNSOFtGYY/s1600/Air.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieISN8FLV11rpYVhLEhE56OFh2D2Az7Mz3mZ2N8lJZllRxN0l7lV_KJDyqM9-CoYzUE0yzaOjS-Wf2hyphenhyphen4zA77-iStOv1byOukW7Jo9rlWXeg-_aNHH77rl8kmxfBFRZgFIHtBNSOFtGYY/s400/Air.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5464991262582894306" /></a><br />Come see my film <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span> (starring Andrew Garfield) this Friday night April 30 2010 at the Malibu Film Festival! (http://www.malibufilmfestival.com/)<br /><br />Films start from 7pm. <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span> (20 minutes) is in the 10pm slot (final slot for the evening), with two other shorts. I'm going to make sure I'm there by 9, because the film <span style="font-style:italic;">Fiberglass & Megapixels</span>, about surfers and photographers on Oahu's North Shore, looks pretty cool.<br /><br />Tickets for the evening are $10. Address is: Malibu Lumber Yard, 3939 Cross Creek Road, Malibu, CA 90265.<br /><br />If you're coming down Malibu Canyon Rd, it's less than a mile south of where that hits the Pacific Coast Highway at Pepperdine University. Turn left on Cross Creek Road. If you're coming from Santa Monica direction, it's 11 or 12 miles north of Santa Monica on the PCH. Turn right on Cross Creek Road, about a mile after you've passed the Beach Comber Cafe on your left and the Malibu Inn on your right.<br /><br />See you there! Hope some of you make it!<br /><br />Also, if anyone is in Marfa, Texas, the following week, it's screening at the Marfa Film Festival, http://marfafilmfestival.org/ . Cool town, great festival.<a href="http://www.malibufilmfestival.com/"><a href="http://www.marfafilmfestival.org/"></a></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-30512356425550327962010-04-23T00:52:00.000-07:002010-04-23T01:05:21.908-07:00Rogue Film School - some feedbackI've had some really nice responses to my Werner Herzog/Rogue Film School blogs, and just want to share a couple. My friend Delia Falconer, a wonderful novelist (<span style="font-style:italic;">The Service of Clouds</span>, which she's probably better known for, but my favourite is the exquisite, deceptively simple <span style="font-style:italic;">The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers</span>, which I've linked to here), wrote this:<br /><br />"I can't claim serious cinephilia, but, my god, WH has had a huge impact on me as a fiction writer, so I really responded to your piece. I remember walking past the Valhalla one afternoon, stopping in to see <span style="font-style:italic;">The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser</span> (never heard of Herzog, just thought at 20 the title sounded like the sort of serious thing I ought to see): I was bored and confused for the first 20 minutes, then -- what a revelation. I've thought a lot about why I love WH's films so much and I think much of their power for me is in their avoidance of close-ups. I love the distancing, the lack of movement in a lot of his medium and long-shots, as if I'm almost watching a different medium, something pre-Renaissance, from before humanist traditions, let alone film, which I find enormously exciting: it's something that I've tried to capture in my second book.<br /><br />"I also love his juxtaposition of narrative strands, (<span style="font-style:italic;">Bells from the Deep</span> being a personal favourite), and his balancing of those strands with the long shots of that frozen lake; and his use, at the risk of sounding pretentious, of the "filmic-ness" of film itself. There is that extraordinary moment in <span style="font-style:italic;">Grizzly Man</span>, where he just runs Treadwell's set-ups of a sun-struck Alaskan glade, which becomes unspeakably haunting. He says something quite fantastic in his voice-over, which I think is: "Sometimes things have their own magic, their own mysterious stardom." That seems right to me for poetry, and also, at times, for prose-poetry..."<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lost Thoughts of Soldiers</span> link:<br /><br />http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Thoughts-Soldiers-Delia-Falconer/dp/1582435286/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1272007892&sr=8-6<br /><br />Another friend, the artist Emma de Clario, had this startling and beautiful revelation back in January when I first posted about the weekend:<br /><br />"mmmm... he had a relationship with my mum when I was eight or so, he was in melbourne making a film with paul cox and I remember him reading my sister and I stories at bed time.......I remember because he read fairy tales in the old fashioned way, they were terrifying and magical, he was too."<br /><br />In a message this week Emma added, when I asked for permission to recycle her January post:<br /><br />"it was 1980... in melbourne, nth fitzroy...mum met him through paul cox when they made that green ant film in the desert... she saw him for a year or so I think... most of it long distance... I remember her saying that he was too german!"<br /><br />(Emma link: http://www.marsgallery.com.au/view-artist.php?id=67&gid=118&s=2 )Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-78280171239138502892010-04-17T15:29:00.000-07:002010-04-17T18:31:52.198-07:00Rogue Film School - Day Three<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDUOV4Doz-NxOxXQcnSHHxOe1ANlboeDrlIdTVHuru7FodjE-69knY18X76X0DHEkd0zqaoPya0hIMdPU5-EEDKd9th8DfsdYiqAKMSMTCrIxuum6wjtvgcugyu-pZdG8EoNrqht0Xh8/s1600/1374+press1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfDUOV4Doz-NxOxXQcnSHHxOe1ANlboeDrlIdTVHuru7FodjE-69knY18X76X0DHEkd0zqaoPya0hIMdPU5-EEDKd9th8DfsdYiqAKMSMTCrIxuum6wjtvgcugyu-pZdG8EoNrqht0Xh8/s400/1374+press1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461237573905348034" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinyEB_yzOGvjK96iyYVowApOAOBLy9RUXy04x14759qEDiuB_oF9S9_AuoHWdxLvBUD-8uZcFYGRYqrdhzu3NXn30_ux3XvV-a-ObTfJf8i96pxovE8pmSoDo3nKzbOyIi_nRiSA79Cv8/s1600/herzog-bear.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 236px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinyEB_yzOGvjK96iyYVowApOAOBLy9RUXy04x14759qEDiuB_oF9S9_AuoHWdxLvBUD-8uZcFYGRYqrdhzu3NXn30_ux3XvV-a-ObTfJf8i96pxovE8pmSoDo3nKzbOyIi_nRiSA79Cv8/s400/herzog-bear.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461237655457936178" /></a><br />"If you misjudge something, fine: accept the imperfections of the frame."<br /><br />The three-day seminar was intense, and exhausting, but somehow it - or rather, Herzog - always held your interest. On regular occasions it blossomed from the "simply" interesting to the suddenly exhilarating. It was regularly inspiring. By the Monday, Day Three, everybody was tired; it takes physical effort to sit straight-backed in a chair for eight hours a day, but Herzog demanded a mind on High Alert too. God knows some of it must have felt like a hallucination for some of the other attendees, who had flown in for the three days from all over the world, from places like Colombia, Korea, Canada, England, Iran, Greece, and who must have been experiencing some serious jetlag.<br /><br />Herzog spoke of America's propensity for a kind of narrow world-view that can border on a national narcissism. "Three million Americans say they've been abducted by aliens, 300,000 women that they've been gang-raped by them," he pronounced. "In Ethiopia, not <span style="font-style:italic;">one</span> woman has been gang-raped by aliens."<br /><br />He called such beliefs a "manifestation of collective psychosis"; such beliefs, he said, are in a category with, say, conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination.<br /><br />He told us the entire plot of a movie he wants to make, loosely based of twin sisters in England who were not quite right in the head, and spoke in unison. As soon as he finds the right actors to play the twins, he said, he will start shooting the film. <br /><br />I've not as much to report about Day 3, since most of the afternoon was spent looking at our short films and extracts, with Herzog giving specific feedback and criticism at times. Through it all, of course, his quotable quotes kept on coming. "I make you familiar with an image that has been dormant inside of <span style="font-style:italic;">you</span>," he said. "As a film maker, I'm the one that can articulate it."<br /><br />What was lovely about the weekend was how left-of-field everything was. The seminar, I suppose, was ultimately about the mind: about cinema as an artifact, a by-product, of the mind at its most exciting. Elsewhere Herzog has said that the Rogue Film School is not about technical film-making advice; for that, you should go to a traditional film school. No, what it was really about, in a sense, was <span style="font-style:italic;">attitude</span>. What attitude might get films made? What attitude might make good films? At some other level, too, there was always this sense of <span style="font-style:italic;">what attitude, what set of attitudes, might best enable one to live a good life, engaged to its limits</span>?<br /><br />(For what it's worth, here's the only couple of moments of specific technical advice Herzog gave that I can find in my notes. He insists on very little sound on his set; he wants his crews to be quiet and focused. He insists that no one is ever in the sight-lines of his actors. "The climate on the set translates into the climate of what you see in the film.")<br /><br />A couple of random quotes or notes from my notebook: <br /><br />"The axioms of our emotions: that is what you find in opera."<br /><br />On Brigitte Bardot, when he met her 40 years ago: "The only thing that radiated from her was high-decibel stupidity." (She was, he said, like a little grey mouse in real life.)<br /><br />On persistence: "Beyond raving and ranting, there's something like prudent aggression."<br /><br />On his strange film <span style="font-style:italic;">Wild Blue Yonder</span>: "I was fascinated by found materials, and I just forced it into the narrative." (But it shows! The film is weirdly forced, and a kind of one-beat repeat trick. Rarely, for a Herzog film, it gets boring quickly.)<br /><br />He praised <span style="font-style:italic;">The Ascent</span>, a film by the Ukrainian film maker Larisa Shapitko, who died in a car crash in 1979, aged 41. (Criterion have released this film, and I've ordered it and look forward to seeing it.)<br /><br />Of his role playing himself in the odd but funny Zack Penn documentary (mockumentary, really) <span style="font-style:italic;">Incident at Loch Ness</span>: "I think it does good once in a while to exhibit some self-irony."<br /><br />Of his bizarre, hypnotic but beautiful <span style="font-style:italic;">Lessons of Darkness</span>, a film in response to which people's complaints at the Berlin Film Festival included the very visceral complaint of spitting at him, he said that he felt they were probably simply objecting to his particular version of the "aestheticization of horror." It made me think that, yes, there's an accepted aestheticization all around us, but that what Herzog did in <span style="font-style:italic;">Lessons of Darkness</span> was different: people felt that its subject matter, the surreal aftermath of the first Gulf War in the Iraqi oil fields, demanded some kind of verité treatment, so that when Herzog created his deleriously bent mytho-poetic voice-over running over the extraordinary images, he had somehow stepped outside the bounds of polite political discourse.<br /><br />What makes Herzog such a fine rogue and rebel is his willingness to step outside all sorts of boundaries. We were asked to write some kind of brief testimonial for possible inclusion in the Rogue website. This is the full text of what I wrote: <br /><br />"Many things make Herzog great, and anyone applying for this seminar already has their own personal concepts of what some of those things are. But here's what stands out about the seminar itself: the apparent vastness of his mind, his curiosity and hunger, his ability to link together wildly disparate trains of thought, from wildly disparate fields, and make them both exciting and inspiring. His aversion to cookie-cutter simplifications of art reminds us of our own duty, as artists and in our lives, to strive to separate the essential from the inessential, the primary from the inane. He's funny and generous. He gives good guest. There are very few people in the world who can just talk for three days and hold your attention; Herzog is one of them."<br /><br />If it's not already obvious: I'd recommend contact with this big-hearted, courageous, free-thinking man. <br /><br />If you're reading this and don't know much, or anything, about him, here's a brief Herzog primer I'd recommend. (And remember: he has a big body of work, and there are some notable fails in there. Yet he's never done anything that's without interest. Also remember: many people talk about <span style="font-style:italic;">Fitzcarraldo</span>. Sure it's good, but it's not nearly as good as his masterpiece <span style="font-style:italic;">Aguirre</span>.) <br /><br />Anyway, the primer. (And remember: this is only my opinion. Other Herzog enthusiasts would recommend entirely other films.) <br /><br />First, watch the sublime <span style="font-style:italic;">Aguirre, Wrath of God</span>, the great megalomaniacal masterpiece, which may be as good a fable as any about madness, power, imperialism and entropy (i.e., "history"). <br /><br />Secondly, watch the heartbreakingly beautiful <span style="font-style:italic;">Stroszek</span>. Yes, possibly the best Great American Dream film might made by an outsider, a German. Afterwards, read this article about Bruno Schleinstein, who starred in the 1977 Herzog film (as Bruno S):<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/25/arts/design/25abroad.html?scp=1&sq=bruno%20schleinstein&st=cse<br /><br />Watch the video in the article of Bruno singing his song "Mamatschi". When I read this last year, I remember there was a link to a translation of the "Mamatschi" lyrics, but I couldn't find it this time.<br /><br />For dessert, I was tossing up between <span style="font-style:italic;">Grizzly Man</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Encounters at the End of the World</span>, but I'm going to plump with <span style="font-style:italic;">Encounters</span>. One of those lovely, joyful, poetic Herzog experiences about which the less said before you watch it, the better. Watch and enjoy. Here's a still from it:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgez5vOehZScsCSzTm0mOsWgPcYS5djBblLQyWBt30GTikLdd_dWCAfScI6ib5rcOyg32jYHcKm6pjA9kVWhQP341cx4XglQ7mkX0Vu6ivngwSaeQSYPuQpGjR-BPbt5_0giY2rXjAFE2U/s1600/encounters_at_the_end_of_the_world_movie_image_werner_herzog.preview.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgez5vOehZScsCSzTm0mOsWgPcYS5djBblLQyWBt30GTikLdd_dWCAfScI6ib5rcOyg32jYHcKm6pjA9kVWhQP341cx4XglQ7mkX0Vu6ivngwSaeQSYPuQpGjR-BPbt5_0giY2rXjAFE2U/s400/encounters_at_the_end_of_the_world_movie_image_werner_herzog.preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461279257296185170" /></a><br /><br />Happy Herzogging, everybody. For you film makers, budding or otherwise, here's a final Werner quote from the seminar:<br /><br />"You will never be independent, because independent cinema only exists in your home movies. But try to be self-reliant."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-72483294892499602852010-04-14T14:39:00.001-07:002011-04-05T00:26:28.788-07:00Rogue Film School, Day 2<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgalba4p5NCMsEedXgUs3HLfOIjlRSQNPf8eCyHJXBnZNEKr66QqVhwWwfWaSzaXCiNcUe0wnt0Jms-W0_fqGSvhn6oRkGXuP1mbxImK_N8CCchfYsbUEIZIi6pBIALhT42T5OaXJN-OkQ/s1600/KLAUS_KINSKI.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 273px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgalba4p5NCMsEedXgUs3HLfOIjlRSQNPf8eCyHJXBnZNEKr66QqVhwWwfWaSzaXCiNcUe0wnt0Jms-W0_fqGSvhn6oRkGXuP1mbxImK_N8CCchfYsbUEIZIi6pBIALhT42T5OaXJN-OkQ/s400/KLAUS_KINSKI.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460111103467253170" /></a><br />"I've never consciously gone after aesthetics," Herzog said. "Aesthetics creeps in by itself. Aesthetics is like your handwriting - when you write a passionate love letter or a beautiful, compelling letter, the aesthetics is your handwriting, your longhand. But it is not the central issue."<br /><br />Day Two was off and running. We were told to expect visitors. We began the day with the Fred Astaire clip I mentioned in the previous post. "No one has a more insipid face than Astaire," said Herzog. "The dialogues are beyond stupid. But I just love his films. Nothing is simpler: light, shadow, movement."<br /><br />Herzog believes the lifespan of film makers is not often more than fifteen years. (Obviously he considers himself an exception.) He spoke of his own artistic origins: a moment of epiphany at thirteen, seeing a book in a shop window about the cave paintings at Lascaux, working furiously as a ball-boy at a tennis court for six months in order to buy this talismanic book. I related on two levels: firstly, that archaeology had been my passion and obsession from a young age, perhaps around eight or nine. Secondly, that my own first great epiphany - the second was the <span style="font-style:italic;">Aguirre, Wrath of God</span> moment at sixteen - came at thirteen, when I discovered <span style="font-style:italic;">Cannery Row</span> in the school library shelves, and "entered" the universe of real writing, a kind of infinite palace the rooms of which I feel I have been exploring ever since. So the notion of your head suddenly becoming aflame with passion for a world both revealed and hinted at resonated strongly with me. It happened at that instant - the first page of <span style="font-style:italic;">Cannery Row</span> - and it's been with me ever since. Similarly, Herzog spoke of "this deep turmoil in my heart [which is] still reverberating in me. It's like a distant echo still out there." <br /><br />Herzog talked about his dislike for the cinema verité documentary style; it posits that "facts" constitute "truth", he says, but this is simply not the case. "We should depart from the postulates of cinema verité. Cinema verité is the axiom of the 1960s. It is fifty years later."<br /><br />He doesn't feel obligated to explain when he does fabricate things in his documentaries, because then "the charm of fabrication is gone." ("I have absolutely no problem with being a magician who doesn't explain to the kids how he does every one of his tricks.")<br /><br />Nonetheless he was happy to reveal to us a couple of his "tricks". In his beautifully bizarre "documentary" <span style="font-style:italic;">Bells From the Deep</span>, about religion and superstition in Russia and Siberia, there is recounted the legend of the lost city of Kitezh, from which the bells at the bottom of the lake are said to ring out. The footage shows two men, one dragging himself along on the frozen lake, stopping to pray every ten feet or so; the other laid out prostrate, as if in deep prayer. But in fact, the two men are not real religious "pilgrims". Rather, they are two drunk guys Herzog found in the local inn who were willing, for money, to drag themselves around on the ice for a while. <br /><br />During the day Herzog brought in the composer Klaus Badelt, who talked largely about the "trade-off" between creating "emotional space" (whether through minimal music, or sound design, or silence) and deciding when and where to put the grander music in. In the opening scenes of <span style="font-style:italic;">Rescue Dawn</span>, for instance, with the archival footage of the napalm bombing, the beauty of the music obviously plays off against the violence, so that "you create a layer of abstraction."<br /><br />Herzog spoke about music as following or leading, depending on circumstances. "Sometimes a person with their gaze pulls the music in. Sometimes the music pulls the image in." Nonetheless, a guiding rule is that you can't let music "emotionalize" something whose emotion is not rendered in the actual scene in the first place. <br /><br />Herzog commented that sometimes a scene is better as naked as it can be, if the drama is strong enough. He played a Tim Roth scene from his film <span style="font-style:italic;">Invincible</span>, first a version with music, then the music-less version he went with once he realized how much better it was. The musical version was all a bit busy. The naked scene was powerful. The two were markedly different.<br /><br />Badelt said that as a composer, one must "always think in big arcs." He spoke of how simple and repetitive melodies "create a big arc and create unity and coherence within the big arc. Study for example Wagner's <span style="font-style:italic;">Tristan and Isolde</span>, and how very early on, Wagner establishes the Tristan motif, which has a strange kind of dissonance."<br /><br />Herzog said that, just as he would never talk to an actor about "motivation", so he would never talk to a composer about "music"; rather, he tries always to talk in terms of space and emotion. Nor, he says, would he talk to the cinematographer about very specific styles and angles - though he might answer a cinematographer's questions about "styles" and "stylistic aims" by giving him a piece of music and saying, "It should look like this." <br /><br />Badelt said, "What I don't like is massaging the audience about how they're meant to feel. Or telegraphing everything." He's right about how telegraphing is basically the Hollywood disease - I just saw <span style="font-style:italic;">Clash of the Titans</span> the other day, an extraordinarily bad film in pretty much every conceivable way - but I must say, I thought Badelt himself was guilty of this very thing in the closing scenes of <span style="font-style:italic;">Rescue Dawn</span>, which felt in all its rah-rah-with-a-hint-of-bombast as if the film had suddenly been hi-jacked by <span style="font-style:italic;">Top Gun</span>.<br /><br />One comment gave me pause for thought, since in my first short film <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span> I had done exactly what he suggested not to do: "If you know you're not going to record with a real orchestra, don't try and imitate a real sound, such as the violin in an orchestra."<br /><br />An interesting fact from Bardelt: there is twice as much music, on average, in an American film as in a European film (60-90 minutes on average in an American film versus 30-40 minutes on average in a European film). "There's way too much music in American films. It lessens the impact. It waters it down. Believe in the scene."<br /><br />It was heartening to learn, since I have my own bad-TV guilty pleasures, that Herzog watches shows like <span style="font-style:italic;">Forensic Files</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Wrestlemania</span> (with its "strange barbaric drama") to wind down sometimes.<br /><br />In the afternoon we were visited by the theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, who wrote the book <span style="font-style:italic;">Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternate Realities, from Plato to String Theory (by way of Alice in Wonderland, Einstein and the Twilight Zone)</span>. An affable-looking little guy who seemed filled with joy and wonder, all channeled through this permanent big grin, he reminded me of my friend the Israeli writer and film maker Etgar Keret, who I've always thought is the only real genius I actually know as a friend, or perhaps have ever met. Maybe that big smile, a kind of curiosity mixed with joy, is the smile of genius.<br /><br />Krauss couldn't stay long, but watching the chat that unfolded between him and Herzog, one couldn't help but be struck by the deep affection the two shared for each other. They spoke of all sorts of matters, including but not limited to Klein bottles (see image below; look carefully), four dimensional space, and the elasticization of time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSkYuDZOFOPTltF3euINErxrM_b5WkRkeAHOLoji40x8tTbXcU-47VoShda5GuQOuYLsHOsKyzxo-5nECpyGvQQG9RAG1Foj5XtAv4LtCTIXMOweWKbCZRc14xpao1QGN2-jHoHNoRNy8/s1600/kbc1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSkYuDZOFOPTltF3euINErxrM_b5WkRkeAHOLoji40x8tTbXcU-47VoShda5GuQOuYLsHOsKyzxo-5nECpyGvQQG9RAG1Foj5XtAv4LtCTIXMOweWKbCZRc14xpao1QGN2-jHoHNoRNy8/s400/kbc1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5460137893270167826" /></a><br /><br />"I suspect every one of you has had a moment where an instant seemed like forever," said Krauss. I had indeed, and so had Yeats:<br /><br /><br />My fiftieth year had come and gone,<br />I sat, a solitary man,<br />In a crowded London shop,<br />An open book and empty cup<br />On the marble table top.<br /><br />While on the shop and street I gazed<br />My body of a sudden blazed;<br />And twenty minutes more or less<br />It seemed, so great my happiness,<br />That I was blessèd and could bless.<br /><br /><br />Herzog, meanwhile, would throw out with great regularity those beautiful, lilting sentences that after a day and a half we were all now beginning to soak up like a sponge. Most of the time I was just listening, rapt, but every so often I'd remember to write one down. "I've always been fascinated," he said to Krauss, "by the algebraization of unthinkable curves and spaces." Krauss had a good stab at trying to explain how to imagine four-dimensional space: each face of a four-dimensional cube is a three-dimensional cube, for example. Admittedly, this was a little easier to imagine conceptually than visually.<br /><br />Herzog talked about his idea to create a three-dimensional chess set. "You would need more players," he said, "because with only sixteen, you could evade <span style="font-style:italic;">ad infinitum</span> in three dimensions."<br /><br />In a digression that moved into yet another dimension, Herzog spoke about how he had once hypnotized an audience and screened for them <span style="font-style:italic;">Aguirre, Wrath of God</span>. People claimed afterwards that they had travelled around - as in a mini-helicopter - the back of Klaus Kinski's head, and seen the characters he was talking to off-screen.<br /><br />Another Krauss/Herzog moment:<br /><br />Herzog: How many ropes would you need in order to fix yourself in an absolute fixed space in the universe?<br />Krauss: [pause; grin] But there is no fixed space.<br /><br />Then Krauss left, and the Herzogologue turned to other matters. He spoke of the circumstances - the psychic circumstances, really - behind his walking from Munich to Paris in 1974 to visit the ailing film critic (and archivist at the French Cinémathèque) Lotte Eisner, a walk which he recorded in his "diary/narration" <span style="font-style:italic;">Walking On Ice</span>. Eisner had had a stroke; it was said she had not long to live. Herzog set off, ill-prepared, riding that fine line between whim and compulsion. "I'm not a superstitious person," he said, "but walking to Paris was - I put out a force. I thought I would <span style="font-style:italic;">push</span> her out of hospital if I walked to Paris. She <span style="font-style:italic;">was</span> out of hospital, in fact, by the time I arrived, and she lived another eight or nine years. Eventually she said, 'Take the spell off me now; I want to die.' I said, 'Okay, the spell is lifted.' She died two weeks later." That mixture of maniacal glint and mischievous twinkle in his eye again, behind a poker face.<br /><br />Someone asked a question about persistence, about the creative compromises one might make in order to get things done. "My advice is contradictory," said Herzog: "Follow your dreams no matter what; abandon you dreams if you are smart enough in some situations to see that it is not do-able."<br /><br />He has always been used to making good films leanly. He was dismayed at the layers of middlemen that became involved as his films started becaming bigger. During the <span style="font-style:italic;">Rescue Dawn</span> negotiations and deliberations, he'd suddenly had enough, he claims. He asked all the attorneys and all the agents to step out of the room. He wanted to speak only to the producers, "man to man." <br /><br />The agents and attorneys left. He said to the producers: "I will ask you a very high price now, but I guarantee you I will be worth it. I guarantee you I will deliver on budget as I have fifty-eight times before. Only five times have I not delivered on budget - and those five times, I came in <span style="font-style:italic;">under</span> budget. Never have I gone over budget."<br /><br />To do this, though, he asked for <span style="font-style:italic;">daily</span> access to the finances, to keep an eye on everything.<br /><br />During the shoot, one day the completion bond guarantor came to set, as they do, for their friendly check-in. To the completion guarantor, he announced, "Hello and welcome, but you are a parasitical presence here. You charge half a million to guarantee this film will be completed, and it is completely unnecessary." He tapped his chest proudly as he recounted the story. "<span style="font-style:italic;">I</span> am the guarantee."<br /><br />"This overabundance of contracts you are facing," said Herzog, of film-making in general these days, "is an abomination and an outrage."<br /><br />The subject of final cut approval came up. Herzog said that very few people in Hollywood have it, and that he was a director with neither the power nor the desire to demand final cut. And it doesn't bother him in the slightest; he's happy to listen to what the opinion of the masses. (Not that I can imagine him having anything other than de facto final cut on his earlier films; I assumed he was talking of his recent, "Hollywood" efforts such as <span style="font-style:italic;">Rescue Dawn</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">The Bad Lieutenant</span>, and I assumed that meant he has been willing to undergo test screenings.)<br /><br />"Final cut belongs not to the director, not to the producers, not to the attorneys, but to the audience," he said.<br /><br />Nonetheless: "I try to be a good soldier of cinema. I hold the ground. I try to hold the terrain that has largely been abandoned."<br /><br />That was it for Day 2; I'll get back to Day 3 as soon as I can.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-7524992836148370512010-04-14T03:23:00.000-07:002010-04-14T14:53:17.474-07:00Rogue Film School<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzUXbBeh5qTeAcjzWgnYnIznZmAC9e_UaxsVC7FgVrYJy6VXEuunDYEnPwMZv7gYPr-z9bChcvUa16mVdWOhAdqo0xzLwakD8PliMwAs9DouMrZoV4E5pppVkSk0m_FBoOQaV5H7ivJY/s1600/aguirre.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinzUXbBeh5qTeAcjzWgnYnIznZmAC9e_UaxsVC7FgVrYJy6VXEuunDYEnPwMZv7gYPr-z9bChcvUa16mVdWOhAdqo0xzLwakD8PliMwAs9DouMrZoV4E5pppVkSk0m_FBoOQaV5H7ivJY/s400/aguirre.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459714030268231746" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy6eFNDZD1zokYx3ylE4V-fsV0U5INyxgBiIPjVcXxfTtB9s4jh6FGxFw1IvVoXZ4YHNXVE-9k564LQXGBicbhXXueSbjvBKP3XVaI2Zr_UsU4I5ea8Fw8Hrz-FqtlbhvtZo79dN5Gcs/s1600/werner-herzog-and-klaus-kinski.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 390px; height: 328px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy6eFNDZD1zokYx3ylE4V-fsV0U5INyxgBiIPjVcXxfTtB9s4jh6FGxFw1IvVoXZ4YHNXVE-9k564LQXGBicbhXXueSbjvBKP3XVaI2Zr_UsU4I5ea8Fw8Hrz-FqtlbhvtZo79dN5Gcs/s400/werner-herzog-and-klaus-kinski.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459713881306644098" /></a><br />I've been meaning to get around to writing about the excellent three-day Werner Herzog "Rogue Film School" seminar which I took back in January. Herzog has been a hero for me ever since the day I saw <span style="font-style:italic;">Aguirre, Wrath of God</span> at sixteen, and my life changed entirely. It changed, I think, in the fundamental sense that I became a fully-fledged cinemaphile at that instant. I saw how completely exciting great film could be, and I understood, as a burgeoning poet, that great poetry need not only be verbal.<br /><br />What follows is a little of my experience of the seminar, which took place in a nondescript hotel conference room near Koreatown in LA, with forty participants. The first thrill was the meet-and-greet on the Friday night. I had not particularly thought about what to expect, or what the other attendees might be like. But suddenly, my laminated Rogue Film School ID badge around my neck, chatting to clusters of fellow-attendees, I realized the glorious truth: we were dweeby, nerdy Herzog enthusiasts at the ultimate Herzog-nerd convention! Suddenly I could say, "you know the scene in <span style="font-style:italic;">La Soufrière</span> where....?" and my new friends would know what I was talking about. Or someone would talk about the correspondence between the driverless truck turning circles in <span style="font-style:italic;">Even Dwarves Started Small</span> and the driverless truck turning circles in <span style="font-style:italic;">Stroszek</span> and....well, it was just nice to be among people who not only <span style="font-style:italic;">thought</span> about these correspondences, but who could somewhat navigate the minutiae of Herzog's extensive body of work.<br /><br />Day 1 began with Herzog, presumably somewhat tongue-in-cheek, talking not just about how lock-picking is a good skill for a budding film-maker - since you never know what you might need to break into - and not just telling us anecdotes about when such a skill was necessary in his own past, but passing around, for all of us to inspect, his own lock-picking kit. You have to assume it's not part of his carry-on luggage.<br /><br />He spoke of length too of the benefits of forging shooting permits and other documents, when circumstances dictate. He told us an anecdote about Phillip Petit, the subject of the wonderful documentary <span style="font-style:italic;">Man on Wire</span>: at a certain moment in his attempts to get his trapeze wire up to the top of the Twin Towers, Petit was about to be busted by security guards. Instead of freezing or fleeing, Petit started shouting at his offsider, like an angry employer: <span style="font-style:italic;">You're doing a lousy job! What's the matter with you!</span> and so on. He marched towards the guards, livid with anger at the man, screaming near-incoherently at him. The security guards pressed up against the wall, to let the fighting men pass. "No one wants to interfere with people in the middle of a fight," explained Herzog.<br /><br />What followed was largely three days of anecdote: of a man standing in front of forty people, pretty much just <span style="font-style:italic;">talking</span>. There are probably few people in the world who can pull this off; Herzog is passionate enough, erudite enough, charming enough, captivating enough, to do it. He may at times seem a little crackpot in his driven-ness, but he's never not interesting, and beautiful turns of phrase pop up at the oddest moments: "...they found half the interior minister hanging in the cool room," is a quote in my notebook, from a long and florid tale about the Emperor of Cameroon.<br /><br />Herzog spoke of being in prison (possibly in Cameroon?) and how the seemingly "completely insignificant" moments in a filthy prison cell crowded with forty other men were also the worst. There was a single bucket, and whenever anyone shitted, all the others crammed into the cell would shout and sing obscene songs. But when Herzog needed to shit, when he sat on the bucket, the whole place went silent. He thinks it's because he was the only white man in the cell. "I would fervently pray for them to shout or sing," said Herzog.<br /><br />When he wasn't regaling us with anecdotes, he showed clips: sometimes our own clips that we had sent as part of the application process, at other times delightfully random clips whose sole reason for being included in the seminar, I suppose, was their weird beauty: Fred Astaire dancing, scratchy 35-mm anthropological film shot in Indonesia in the 1920s.<br /><br />He told the oft-repeated tale about stealing a camera from the Munich Film School, an apparently staid place whose conservative trustees didn't much like the idea of the school's equipment being out on loan too often. "I simply enjoyed the camera in the work for which it was meant," said Herzog, explaining the "loan". "When you have a story to tell, by dint of destiny or God knows what divine providence, you gain the right to do such things."<br /><br />He spoke of his discovery of the Petaluma chicken farm in California, the largest in the world. It also has Ralph, the world's largest chicken. (I don't have a fact checker; I'm just relaying the facts as Herzog spoke them.) Herzog's idea was was to film a midget, riding the world's smallest horse, being chased around the world's largest tree (in northern California), by Ralph, the world's largest chicken.<br /><br />He didn't speak too highly of "this slavish adherence to some sort of demented school of screenwriting," to Robert McKee-style screenwriting courses or books, which ask, "'What is your motivation,' or some such insipid thing. <span style="font-style:italic;">Why do you do that?</span> Because I love to do it, that's my answer; and it looks great!" (When Nicholas Cage asked for "motivations" - why exactly is his character so bad? - during the recent shooting of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans</span>, Herzog replied, "Nicholas, let's not discuss that. Let's just experience the bliss of evil.")<br /><br />He likes the word "insipid". "By page 19, the hero must understand his mission," he said, again speaking of screenwriting courses. "What kind of insipid nonsense is that?" He described the entire plot of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Verdict</span>, which starred Paul Newman, ending with a dramatic pause and a disdainful, "What kind of shit is that?"<br /><br />"You should always feel free to do the wild stuff," he went on. "But prepare it, embed it. You must allow the audience to follow the safe ground of narrative progression. Then they follow you to the wild places." Of stylistic tricks he said: "You cannot do them on a whim and you cannot do them as circus gimmicks - the soil must first be planted in dialogue."<br /><br />(Side track: I did the McKee seminar about eight years ago. There's good basic clear-headed information, and he is charismatic and captivating and wonderfully opinionated, albeit in a bit of a senior-white-male-bully kind of way; but there are two hilarious things, and I wonder if they are still part of his course, or if he's moved with the times. The first was, many of the films he held up as paragons of film virtue, that illustrated his theses, cluster around the mid-to-late seventies, as if he brought them up when he was first devising his seminar. Some are good, but many have simply not weathered the storms of time all that well. And that Japanese film he loved so much, <span style="font-style:italic;">In the Realm of the Senses</span>, is just goddamned tedious, dumb and dated. <br /><br />The other thing was, McKee was very belligerently "my way or the highway" - he had no time for narrative structures other than the classic three-acter. He was basically telling us that all other forms were bullshit. From memory <span style="font-style:italic;">Being John Malkovich</span> was out around this time, and you could see it made him a little uneasy. God knows how he copes with the flood of multiple-strand narratives and so on that have arrived, and succeeded, since then. I'd love to know if he pays them heed, or if <span style="font-style:italic;">Kramer V Kramer</span> is still the kind of film we should all be making.) (Oh, I'm not specifically picking on <span style="font-style:italic;">Kramer V Kramer</span>. From memory it's a good film. I'm just specifically remembering how much McKee loved it.) <br /><br />"Blind motifs," Herzog went on, "you can always put them in the film as long as you prepare the ground. And the ground is always the audience. How do you suck the audience in, and never release them?"<br /><br />One of the most heartening and validating points Herzog made - and he made it again and again, over the course of three days - was about reading. "That's why I always say read, read, read, read if you want to be a film maker." More than that, he kept coming around to the point that reading poetry, in particular, was vital. (I remember the quote, though no longer the source of it, "Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divine in man," and it seems to me that great film does that too: connects us to the transcendent, which is really just time stripped of its flesh.)<br /><br />So we read books, we read obsessively and urgently (as urgently as a man whose head is on fire would seek a body of water in which to dive, to paraphrase Campbell), and we learn, through that, what might make good films. Herzog also said he learns from bad films: that is to say, he learns what <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> to do. But "from good films I've never really learned much, because I'm mystified, for example, by how Kurosawa made such a perfectly balanced film as <span style="font-style:italic;">Rashomon</span>.<br /><br />He told us was reading poetry, Virgil's <span style="font-style:italic;">Georgics</span> in the translation by David Ferry, on the way to Antarctica to shoot his absolutely beautiful, absolutely batty documentary <span style="font-style:italic;">Encounters at the End of the World</span>. He had no idea what he was there to shoot, or how the film would turn out. "Virgil talks about the glory of the beehive and the glory of this and that and the world. 'Let's just do that with Antarctica,' I said to myself. 'Name the glory. Don't just desperately try make sense of what I see there.'"<br /><br />But while, according to Herzog, addiction to books and poetry can never be problematic for a film maker, he thought addiction to films can be counterproductive, as in the case of Scorcese. His films, said Herzog, can become "overburdened with film knowledge." I love Scorcese, but I have to admit it's a good while since he has made a truly great film. The excellent Dylan documentary aside, you have to go back now to <span style="font-style:italic;">Goodfellas</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Casino</span> for good ones, and though I've not seen it yet, it sounds like <span style="font-style:italic;">Shutter Island</span> is more than anything a compendium of film referencing from the film universe that is Scorcese's brain.<br /><br />For Herzog, Tarantino's Asperger's-like addiction to films, too, has resulted in movie stylizations. The dialogue in <span style="font-style:italic;">Kill Bill</span>, for instance, or the set-ups at the beginning, "could only come from someone who reads only comic books or who works in a video store for five or seven years." <br /><br />In any case, I'm sure there's one thing all three could agree upon: "You are a storyteller. You are not a historian. You are not an accountant of events that took place."<br /><br />"The storyboard is the instrument of true cowards," he said, "is the instrument of those who have no confidence on set in their own fantasies." I don't know that I would entirely agree with that point; personally I would consider a storyboard a pretty handy tool in certain situations. But Herzog insisted that with storyboarding, "every member of the crew becomes the marionette of an architectural design."<br /><br />"Don't zoom; move close."<br /><br />"The quickest pan is a cut." (Actually, Herzog didn't say this; it's what his early editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus told him once.)<br /><br />The flow of the narrative: you must establish it in the shooting, not the editing. You can't create it in the edit room if it's not there in the first place. We all sense patch-up jobs. On the other hand, a good editor knows to "follow the surprises that come at you." <br /><br />"Shoot each scene as if this scene will be edited and screened in public in half an hour. Take control in the shoot - post-production won't fix things. The emphasis today - on shooting so much coverage, for example, as a kind of safety net, means that film makers are delegating everything towards post-production."<br /><br />"America is culturally claustrophobic," he said. It's very hard for example to get Americans to see, say, an Iranian film. (<span style="font-style:italic;">Close-up</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Where Is the House of My Friend</span> were mentioned as two must-see Iranian films. Oh, that reminds me, the wonderful Korean fellow rogue Ju-Young Yoon recommended two Korean documentaries as being excellent: <span style="font-style:italic;">Repatriation</span> by Kim Dong-Won and <span style="font-style:italic;">Lineage of the Voice</span> by Back Yuna. Must get hold.)<br /><br />Herzog told about being at a documentary conference once. Someone in a panel was going on and on about "honesty" in documentary making. "We should be the fly on the wall," this person was saying. "No," screamed Herzog, grabbing the microphone. We should be the hornet! We should move in and sting!" <br /><br />"Happy New Year, losers," he shouted, storming out of the auditorium.<br /><br />He certainly likes to portray himself as "me against the world". How much of this is gilding the lily is hard to tell. There's an intensity and a seriousness, at times a kind of messianic passion, behind all he does. And on the other hand, one senses a great amount of mischief and humour, a twinkle in the eye, behind his public persona. <br /><br />"The nature of the market is that it does not want you," he said.<br /><br />"The financing of films has always been difficult," he said. "However, I'm not in the culture of complaint." (Coppola, whom Herzog seems to have great affection for, is always up there complaining from the vineyard.)<br /><br />"If you have a story that is urgent and powerful to tell," he went on, "money will folow you in the street like the common cur with its tail between its legs. I start with a little bit of money, but other money always gathers towards it. The Bavarians have a saying, 'The Devil always shits on the pile already there.'"<br /><br />"If the system doesn't accept what you are doing, create your own system," he said.<br /><br />"Form rogue cells around you," he said. "If you don't, then it's really tough."<br /><br />And yet, one of the fundamental truths about being an artist: "There will be quite a lot of solitude in it. But it doesn't really matter. You have to have the nerve to be alone."<br /><br />Well. It's late, and I've realized that's all just my notes so far from Day 1. I'll continue with Day 2 and 3 as soon as I can.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-7439043564539546682010-03-04T09:37:00.000-08:002010-03-04T09:48:44.493-08:00The Terror and the Dream<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4raMXbfoj5JYOLA2FovCfCtq7Rco8DjUlozRWPaat04BJ8VQQ_Zx-QP9IMMN2AhmvbNpt-ltewtdSkF7rN_E2slnKqjzMA7qXF_KkLkTioNMhU1MYIORt00ohVsbYxE4AULJuH-FgFIY/s1600-h/9:11+dust.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4raMXbfoj5JYOLA2FovCfCtq7Rco8DjUlozRWPaat04BJ8VQQ_Zx-QP9IMMN2AhmvbNpt-ltewtdSkF7rN_E2slnKqjzMA7qXF_KkLkTioNMhU1MYIORt00ohVsbYxE4AULJuH-FgFIY/s400/9:11+dust.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5444836423675607250" /></a><br />Here's the link to a book review I wrote for this month's <span style="font-style:italic;">Australian Literary Review</span>:<br /><br />http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/the-terror-and-the-dream/story-e6frg8nf-1225835683047Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-5548544230594688322010-01-27T15:48:00.000-08:002010-02-02T09:11:05.846-08:00Attention<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahi2hHysFTD4WMoCIb7erXvEycQdFz35Emrg29iS6TyOnswyHlmCSicKlRH2Oi70rnnxriK34miXWR1omothC5dqf5BEKB5Q7SYsnyHpyJvCokHq5Us2UJ_d0mxSgBiR1yY9V-1YMZRE/s1600-h/empty-terminal.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgahi2hHysFTD4WMoCIb7erXvEycQdFz35Emrg29iS6TyOnswyHlmCSicKlRH2Oi70rnnxriK34miXWR1omothC5dqf5BEKB5Q7SYsnyHpyJvCokHq5Us2UJ_d0mxSgBiR1yY9V-1YMZRE/s400/empty-terminal.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431578763347847122" /></a><br />I mentioned Simone Weil in an earlier post. I continue to read her on and off, in wide loops that come and go. I'm at LAX, heading to Paris. (Airports some kind of do-nothing space, or spatial abeyance, where sometimes, taking a breath, I think: what next? I like writing this blog, and do it so rarely. So that's a good "what next".) Loops: so, for some reason, and difficult though I find her, I like reading Weil when I travel. Not even sure why. Now the more I think about it these days, the more I'm pretty sure that I'm an atheist. But I don't always feel like an atheist. This is <span style="font-style:italic;">not</span> the same as being an agnostic; when I'm certain there is no God, I'm very certain. At times, though, I experience the world as being utterly, utterly <span style="font-style:italic;">godsoaked</span>, for want of a better word to describe it. (One day I should describe more about what the hell I actually think I mean by this.) But mostly, when I investigate it rationally, it's just: of course this is all there is. Perhaps at those times all I'm really believing is that there is simply no continuance of a "self" in an "afterwards". (Continuance of self: sometimes the belief seems so narcissistic, at its core.) But when I'm deeply in that place, believing this is truly all there is: it makes the world so infinite,in its finitude; and so beautiful, even as that beauty so strenuously jostles, at every single instant, to slip through the fingers. <br /><br />So I'm not sure why this regular returning to Weil, the Christian mystic. Since I don't consider myself a Christian. (I like the Christ story as a fundamental metaphor of inner divinity, but I tend to agree with Joseph Campbell that believing in the <span style="font-style:italic;">literal</span> intended meanings of religion is the equivalent of going into a restaurant and eating the menu, not the food). Perhaps the fact of her being such a beautiful writer is enough. It's a bit like my relationship with the book <span style="font-style:italic;">Abandonment to Divine Providence</span> by the 18th century Jesuit priest Pierre de Caussade: I mentally "subtract" the Jesus stuff, and it becomes this marvellous book about meditation and surrender. <br /><br />So where was I? (Airports: kind of like white noise as three-dimensional space. It's easy to become moderately distracted.) Where was I? - Simone Weil. I guess I read her because she wrestles with things that seem to matter: how to <span style="font-style:italic;">be</span>; how to <span style="font-style:italic;">be here</span>, inside this extraordinary, and extraordinarily improbable, existence, inside space and time. In <span style="font-style:italic;">Gravity and Grace</span> she writes: "We have to try and cure our faults by attention and not by will."<br /><br />"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love." Also: "Extreme attention is what constitutes the creative faculty in man."<br /><br />In one version of the story, "Act without inattention" were the final words the Buddha ever said (to his manservant) before he attained nirvana, and ceased to seek. A strange double negative - does he just mean "Pay attention - to everything" or is there more to it?<br /><br />I love also how Weil's links often move sideways, and slightly skewiff, from what you might logically expect. In film, David Lynch does this with our expectations of narrative. You wind up in a weird place, and yet thinking, "It makes perfect sense that I am here. There could have been no other way." Here's one of those Lynchian Weil moments that seems to hover just tantalizingly out of the reach of my capacity to understand it, to really get just what it is she is trying to say:<br /><br />"We liberate energy in ourselves, but it constantly reattaches itself. How are we to liberate it entirely? We have to desire that it should be done in us - to desire it truly - simply to desire it, not to try to accomplish it. For every attempt in that direction is vain and has to be dearly paid for. In such a work all that I call 'I' has to be passive. Attention alone - that attention that is so full that the 'I' disappears - is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call 'I' of the light of my attention and turn it onto that which cannot be conceived."<br /><br />Elsewhere (in the chapter "Atheism as Purification"):<br /><br />"A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist.Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that nothing real can be anything like that which I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion."<br /><br />Finally, as the boarding announcement sounds: here are two old poems, from my book <span style="font-style:italic;">Totem</span>, that touch in different ways on this universal experience of travel, and time, and tenderness. (Though not Weil. Though perhaps God.) (P.S., the next post I do will be about the Werner Herzog seminar I attended two weeks ago in LA, the Rogue Film School, about which I've been bursting to write.)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">(Fluorescent)</span><br /><br />In the white tedium of airports<br />The door to the soul of the world is ajar.<br />I glide along walkways and ramparts<br />For days in transit and transfer<br /><br />Like a shade, through an atmosphere<br />Fluorescent with dislocation.<br />The air hums with inanity.<br />In all my loveless circumnavigation<br /><br />There I am behind me. And yet it is<br />Exquisite to hallucinate in sleep deprivation.<br />We punch through the clouds into absence; thus<br />It was not an airport but a space station.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">(Arc)</span><br /><br />Down again through slanting sun<br />Into holding patterns and Dublin rain.<br />The plane banks languidly. The Wicklow<br />Mountains shine. There is the moon again.<br /><br />The clouds wait shyly at the coast.<br />We make small circles on the great arc;<br />It occurs to me that God is love.<br />The long dusk darkens into dark.<br /><br />Last rays: the fields of horse studs flash<br />Like lakes. This morning was Athens.<br />Three hundred of us descend and the curve<br />Of our loneliness lessens.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-80577364889664860032009-11-16T13:09:00.000-08:002009-11-16T13:29:41.549-08:00Brothers Save Seven People Caught By Rip .... (and other exciting blog updates) ....As usual, it's been a while. I learned that I can't yet put a link to my film <span style="font-style:italic;">Air</span> up, since first we have to see if we get into festivals, then it has to go onto the QOOB website (the Italian co-producers). <br /><br />Meanwhile: me and my brothers. Three decades ago. Double-click to read. Then click again to zoom.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR_R1zaxtRdjljCPF4DT_WuGpWmaQvRTn8Fkn2fGWQ-78gSqphGS_qJ0VOw9OSr2UtzWdpbI1LNBMQ0RhKfshE32_wGuyf8NHP5r4dlJLuAX_Tpad1phhs3i84OzqiC0uw3OVmpGJJxSo/s1600/Brothers.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR_R1zaxtRdjljCPF4DT_WuGpWmaQvRTn8Fkn2fGWQ-78gSqphGS_qJ0VOw9OSr2UtzWdpbI1LNBMQ0RhKfshE32_wGuyf8NHP5r4dlJLuAX_Tpad1phhs3i84OzqiC0uw3OVmpGJJxSo/s400/Brothers.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404814359927687794" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-53051662099738223092009-02-15T13:31:00.000-08:002009-02-15T14:37:22.184-08:00Sangre de Cristo<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVKDCx70tUauyAKFDzmMHmGyzp5FcoORWHQhlcyurwexAXzClE6uiZsdG0Tc3PS0C49sE-pn4Jks_bv4AZfvnlLnYVxT4m81pa0x_TOOm63_DspCSV_Fko2YGxDf79OzKPwWXDbyDOs0o/s1600-h/P1010051.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVKDCx70tUauyAKFDzmMHmGyzp5FcoORWHQhlcyurwexAXzClE6uiZsdG0Tc3PS0C49sE-pn4Jks_bv4AZfvnlLnYVxT4m81pa0x_TOOm63_DspCSV_Fko2YGxDf79OzKPwWXDbyDOs0o/s400/P1010051.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303154445700207986" /></a><br /><br />That's the mountain above me as I write. But first things first. I shot a short film in Texas. Called "Air." When it's ready, I'll link it to a site from here. Should be March or April. My first film as writer-director. Something came together and suddenly there were seventeen of us on an old Greyhound bus heading a thousand miles through the night, with a white-rapper driver whose name was "Cornfed", to west Texas. It all worked out, even though I made a lot of stupid first-time mistakes - later paying the price in frustration in the edit room. A few images from the shoot. Me in the Charlie Brown pullover. And on another day, much colder, in the light-coloured beanie talking to Andrew Garfield, our extraordinary lead actor, who very deservedly won a BAFTA for "Boy A".<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFscYp1SWa4Hz-pmd1kaHDhLYxAO6J0KvL4vKosdgIRNHQvsBHQdQuo_QVldPYjatDOoICPFhqbOV9I1VE187EuUmm0q8CcnVH_yYiM2QqB-z5eWk__V1EO_rLw0re_bx2m3fX8346xMQ/s1600-h/img069.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFscYp1SWa4Hz-pmd1kaHDhLYxAO6J0KvL4vKosdgIRNHQvsBHQdQuo_QVldPYjatDOoICPFhqbOV9I1VE187EuUmm0q8CcnVH_yYiM2QqB-z5eWk__V1EO_rLw0re_bx2m3fX8346xMQ/s400/img069.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303144281369774546" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVt1qXcyIYzf59Pa3uL2XfMPfnuLWkzATVtL42B1vyx4eNz1tC2mooOmQEX4Aa3l_dzZ5cLJmFi2NbybWNPib7DpX7qzF4_C2wGOXHNuE_up_-qM7Q1Bjn7O8c09nmPZe7oyNfVp7IeR8/s1600-h/img126.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVt1qXcyIYzf59Pa3uL2XfMPfnuLWkzATVtL42B1vyx4eNz1tC2mooOmQEX4Aa3l_dzZ5cLJmFi2NbybWNPib7DpX7qzF4_C2wGOXHNuE_up_-qM7Q1Bjn7O8c09nmPZe7oyNfVp7IeR8/s400/img126.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303144278742865058" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVCwdhg7Mvg-xYczPVeiCsr2STUbbWV5tu980kAFQCkaA7iSv8VLV0gJ7_LuzV2svGNwrrGRrwawkkOpdRAoU_eQ3mT93jZmEXzeVmqZfusboTQKR2V19Zpr6GFpJM4kqK4pLhMTy2DU/s1600-h/img121.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVCwdhg7Mvg-xYczPVeiCsr2STUbbWV5tu980kAFQCkaA7iSv8VLV0gJ7_LuzV2svGNwrrGRrwawkkOpdRAoU_eQ3mT93jZmEXzeVmqZfusboTQKR2V19Zpr6GFpJM4kqK4pLhMTy2DU/s400/img121.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303143723798551090" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEl7m0hUkmeDExp0AJjOhqblMGtzK9V-M2P8aZLpNfAZxQwPjngCz5DRaK0Fn_ii5X4FKOf45IrIGswYg4irChhBtBoynMqn0lrlNdBLU9Owdc5ImUqY83eYG-Kd48gOSF5eK7LhiI8Is/s1600-h/img095.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEl7m0hUkmeDExp0AJjOhqblMGtzK9V-M2P8aZLpNfAZxQwPjngCz5DRaK0Fn_ii5X4FKOf45IrIGswYg4irChhBtBoynMqn0lrlNdBLU9Owdc5ImUqY83eYG-Kd48gOSF5eK7LhiI8Is/s400/img095.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303143243527105858" /></a><br /><br /><br />So now I am in New Mexico. My friends Dennis and Sylvia have a house here, 8000 feet up in the snow (snow right now, that is) above a small town called Arroyo Seco, and they tend to stay here in summer, so I've come up from LA on a self-imposed writer's retreat. Trying to navigate the fine line between creative solitude and stir-crazy isolation. A very fine line, some days. It is beautiful here. A few pictures. Plus the car I bought last week in Albuquerque for $1500 - a 1973 Buick Le Sabre Centurion, which I love, and which cruises like a big old ship, while still managing to look a little pimped out.<br /><br />Sometimes (it is rare) there is poetry in the Craigslist auto & truck ads. I saw this:<br /><br />Engine does not smoke or knock. <br />Tranny does not slip or shudder.<br />Rear end does not howl or whine.<br /><br />(It was written in prose, but there's poetry in it.)<br /><br />I am up here to edit/wrestle with/reorganize my new book of poetry ("Interferon Psalms"), which my publishers are waiting for back in Australia. The manuscript is essentially finished, but there are structural decisions etc to make. I figured a maximum-non-distraction environment would be good. Here also to begin the new novel: a blank page situation for the first time in quite a while - nothing but a dense two-page outline, the story in its essence, and a sense of the novel's overall texture.<br /><br />I'm nestled under the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains, or mountain, I'm not sure which. There's a zen temple right next door, which I haven't visited yet. The former abbott of the temple (former because he died in a swimming accident in Switzerland in 2002, apparently) named it "Daisho-Zan" or "Great Holy Mountain" twenty years ago. (I guess there's a name before the Spanish name too.) <br /><br />On the wall beside my bed, there's a lithograph, or possibly an etching, by someone whose name I can't make out (perhaps it's "Wilsey '99"??), a crazy blue image of a star with an eye in it, and a wild sea and night sky, and beneath it this quote, attributed to Michael Hannon, from "Fables":<br /><br />We are crossing the lake of violent time<br />singing a little a little void song for courage....<br /><br />(And I wonder if the "a little a little" is a Wilsey mistake in the transcribing, or a correct transcription of the Hannon original. I like both possibilities.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_KixeIQ_HY95N24oq327pJcb9azOvBb-06MJ4H5CYNSe9r9o9yp1luKFHbyrHrXMc_4v1u0gdlucLMr7Wqhl4DW1W8emeKcTqliPQ2q8PK8g0hzAPp13dmcYUJp1OCT7VMCy_Apnv-s/s1600-h/P1010036.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH_KixeIQ_HY95N24oq327pJcb9azOvBb-06MJ4H5CYNSe9r9o9yp1luKFHbyrHrXMc_4v1u0gdlucLMr7Wqhl4DW1W8emeKcTqliPQ2q8PK8g0hzAPp13dmcYUJp1OCT7VMCy_Apnv-s/s400/P1010036.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303148496350858898" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1pNZUdrpCKKYzjVxfYXDJ-y-5UrqgunTImyxxN9oN0fyBRBvdJzFxMf4krYmjE-NfXt0Ew6bOXnBrW74GqysDus4mpXTMAYbjI9hxR3UnV_fY7C9PIAzP4ozXbGRn8r8GzlGcqRiMlU/s1600-h/P1010050.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1pNZUdrpCKKYzjVxfYXDJ-y-5UrqgunTImyxxN9oN0fyBRBvdJzFxMf4krYmjE-NfXt0Ew6bOXnBrW74GqysDus4mpXTMAYbjI9hxR3UnV_fY7C9PIAzP4ozXbGRn8r8GzlGcqRiMlU/s400/P1010050.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303148485237971442" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlbjTPzwP8HC_EVGITemYyO-hJuLKAulnj8OcCBU1ScIiKUSimDzb76t_VEzbXqMZUe5nE4nq12huiLS6J-4w6SSSBsUPwm14F0dXRLWepDfSgtzW23zPD7SITMhgSSfk0MwxXzs2h1c0/s1600-h/P1010045.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlbjTPzwP8HC_EVGITemYyO-hJuLKAulnj8OcCBU1ScIiKUSimDzb76t_VEzbXqMZUe5nE4nq12huiLS6J-4w6SSSBsUPwm14F0dXRLWepDfSgtzW23zPD7SITMhgSSfk0MwxXzs2h1c0/s400/P1010045.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303148483246281922" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdd0AfZz5c8-dfhlGmflpcW6CvU7IDTfp7V5x5uBLpAo9u4b1FFkxlCG-C6IHK-MboUnjrQoOpUl1G4r6jP3_UtRaQLKMHsO-ZSufw3c15PbCV0pDkdLrM0qZsrzW2wbRU8YlSvZeCdM/s1600-h/P1010041.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzdd0AfZz5c8-dfhlGmflpcW6CvU7IDTfp7V5x5uBLpAo9u4b1FFkxlCG-C6IHK-MboUnjrQoOpUl1G4r6jP3_UtRaQLKMHsO-ZSufw3c15PbCV0pDkdLrM0qZsrzW2wbRU8YlSvZeCdM/s400/P1010041.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303148478314812514" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqRl1XsvlXxKm73bRYHO3wTRmokb-LGm3N-9CZHlELC09d5kyTYZwYHYWkBgEdhIHux1HbUnegPP1qhrF7u4K4EDHz_bZk2cA91fBKOl18yzd7LoV2rBuS-hAG3C884cPDf2JRtrihmY/s1600-h/P1010037.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqRl1XsvlXxKm73bRYHO3wTRmokb-LGm3N-9CZHlELC09d5kyTYZwYHYWkBgEdhIHux1HbUnegPP1qhrF7u4K4EDHz_bZk2cA91fBKOl18yzd7LoV2rBuS-hAG3C884cPDf2JRtrihmY/s400/P1010037.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303148491432398178" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-49627706238770044862008-07-06T02:33:00.000-07:002008-07-06T03:03:58.778-07:005. The Writing on the Wall<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkvcTk64jd5EObAp3l_X0dTMdkZW8pUDZa9FYA0K0z0mnZV2HTs8BypNu0mKyB2kEuauXJIx4fLTVNOOO4aJ2D6995GoIybQyTJ2XnOwI0EB29zdppNMV1Mjkm1Oyxws476MJ_O5Fvy4/s1600-h/P1010041.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXkvcTk64jd5EObAp3l_X0dTMdkZW8pUDZa9FYA0K0z0mnZV2HTs8BypNu0mKyB2kEuauXJIx4fLTVNOOO4aJ2D6995GoIybQyTJ2XnOwI0EB29zdppNMV1Mjkm1Oyxws476MJ_O5Fvy4/s400/P1010041.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219836763297909138" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwKsDHWtopNmZr8sql1WRnVDvldTr1qcltJjqa5bi6E4OIXumHCBF0yi8aS1LqWrp3BEXGK1bmVOTPouYPlLQS3Yg2ijdBHJeyvL2TXEoF5hWlOH5VyjQW4CFYahvXbUeWFfDG8XX7iM/s1600-h/P1010040.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjwKsDHWtopNmZr8sql1WRnVDvldTr1qcltJjqa5bi6E4OIXumHCBF0yi8aS1LqWrp3BEXGK1bmVOTPouYPlLQS3Yg2ijdBHJeyvL2TXEoF5hWlOH5VyjQW4CFYahvXbUeWFfDG8XX7iM/s400/P1010040.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5219836768518687730" /></a><br />Writing, in the previous blog, about those memories of significant graffiti reminded me of one other: this, high on a wall in Copenhagen in, I think, 2005.<br /><br />I like the grand scale: it's quite high up, and clearly it's been done with a roller brush. Hard to tell exactly where it was done from, too. Above, beside, or below. All would present difficulties. Such a grand stage for such a trivial announcement. Then again, that's what the majority of billboards are: declamatory, monumental and irrelevant. At least this is a little subversive, and wears its loopy heart on its sleeve.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-33237745186393738432008-06-26T21:24:00.000-07:002008-06-27T09:24:48.549-07:004. Aldo & AngelIn December and January I put finishing touches to my novel <span style="font-style:italic;">God of Speed</span>. During this time I liked the fact that Los Angeles at last got crisp, especially at night. I had been there eight months and thought it was all just endless Truman Show, climate-controlled. But LA winter reminded me a little of winter in Sydney, the blue-sky days, the tang in the air, a pale and dreamy sun, and the drop at night. Then in February I went to the 4th Festival Internacional de Poesia de Granada, in Nicaragua, a beautiful experience I might get around to writing about. On March 1 I left LA, mostly to promote the novel's release in Australia, and do the Auckland and Sydney Writers' Festivals. I'll return to LA on July 1, so it feels I've been living out of a suitcase for four months. Lots of adventures, tempered by a destabilising sense of transience. Probably I wouldn't swap it though. My French publishers will publish <span style="font-style:italic;">God of Speed</span> but no sale yet to an American or British publisher. I turned up in Paris a couple of weeks ago, off the plane and straight to my publishers' apartment, and checked my email to see one from Festival & Co, the small but excellent literary festival run out of the Shakespeare & Co bookshop. Antonia Fraser had had to pull out, due to her husband Harold Pinter's sudden hospitalization, and could I possibly do a replacement panel that day at 4pm? (It was 9am when I read the email; I had just flown for 24 hours.) Defenses clearly down from early-onset jetlag, I said Yes, why not? and dutifully trotted myself out, seven strange hours later. It was one of those memorably hallucinated jetlagged events, in that now, two weeks later, I remember only fragments, as if from a particularly fractured dream. I met the English philosopher AC Grayling in the green room, and liked him very much. He did a session the next day on Descartes. He was an elegant speaker without notes, and it was absolutely fascinating, but he was clearly one of those people who could speak on any topic and deeply hold one's interest and attention, jetlagged and all. Bill Maidment, a lecturer at Sydney University, was like that. I was one of many who understood, by second year, that the smart thing to do, regarding Maidment, was to take whatever course(s) he was offering, no matter how odd the subject matter. It increased one's chances of getting good marks in the exams, because the learning had been rather effortless, but more than that, it increased one's pleasure at being young, alive, and a vessel capable of taking on more knowledge. Or rather: more wonder.<br /><br />The following week, the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie, which takes place every summer in the Marché de Poésie (where else but France?) in the Place St Sulpice, contacted me to say that the Australian poet Phillip Hammial had taken ill (I hope he is better), and could I take his place in the Saturday reading? Well yes, why not? So I definitely felt like the replacement guy in Paris, and tried to work out what that might mean. Nothing, really, I suppose. But I liked the coincidence.<br /><br />Now I am in New York for a few days. Balmy late June nights. Strolling along on the lower west side tonight, I saw a small, discrete graffiti: I FEEL SEX. Barely noticeable, on a door in a recessed doorway I passed. "I feel sex." Yes, indeed. As one does. I liked how, with the addition of a simple "Y", it would have been banal, unworthy of reporting; but that the missing "Y" suddenly meant a proliferation of meanings, some of them interesting. I felt instinctively -- perhaps it was something to do with the handwriting -- that there was some pathological blend of yearning and pain in the person who actually wrote it, but that the statement itself, away from the context of its composition, was grandly humourous, erotic in its bluntness, and mischievous in a balmy June way.<br /><br />This brought to mind the three memorable (that word again) instances of graffiti that have somehow stayed with me through my life.<br /><br />The first from childhood. I visited someone recently on the leafy north shore of Sydney, near where I had grown up, and I suddenly remembered a graffiti that had deeply intrigued me between about the ages of about eight and eleven, decades ago. I think it was on a railway bridge somewhere near Gordon Station. It said simply:<br /><br />ANGEL YOU HAVE DIED IN VAIN<br /><br />What I'd give, still now, as I would have, then, to know, even vaguely, what it might have been about.A Google search is no help at all.<br /><br />The second: for many years, through the early nineties, along the stormwall at the southern end of Bondi Beach, was, in enormous white hand-painted (not spray-painted) lettering, the word "ALDO". This in itself was non-eventful. The stroke of genius was the day I saw it had been added to, in an equally large, but now spray-painted hand, and in a noticeably different script. It now read:<br /><br />ALDOUS HUXLEY WOULD HAVE LOVED BONDI<br /><br />I was excited by this, and I saw it every day for years. I somehow thought it was a Doors of Perception reference, because there's that wildness in the air at Bondi, where the ocean meets the land, and the sky is charged with a kind of salt-sparkling electricity. That graffiti was there for a good long time, but eventually the council did a graffiti cleanup of the stormwall. They should have hewed that phrase in granite.<br /><br />The third one, I saw in Dublin around 1998, on a clean white wall. The first huge line, with its initial capitals seeming to set forth its declamatory intent:<br /><br />KATHLEEN -- Dog-biter blondie hoor<br /><br />and then the second line, a little meeker, preceded by that beautiful innocuous ellipsis:<br /><br />.... and I don't like her any moor.... <br /><br />If there's anger here -- and I imagine there may well have been, in the beginning in any case -- it's offset, it's defused somehow, by the almost linguistic lilt of its humour. And who could not love that hoor/moor rhyme?<br /><br />Then on the plane from Paris to New York, I wrote three poems. I love those bursts on planes. Such a nice bubble, in which poems arrive that seemingly don't carry with them the usual DNA, or rather, the usual trusses and supporting beams. Not sure this is a habit I would want to get into regularly, but for no particular reason, here is one of them.<br /><br /><br />MYTHIC SACRIFICES IN THE FRIENDLY SUMMER<br /><br /><br />Another airport, another bull to be slaughtered.<br /><br />I had changed greatly in a personal decade<br /><br />but little in eleven thousand years.<br /><br />When I saw bulls I saw red and felt a kinship<br /><br />with necessity. I felt very relaxed knowing<br /><br />the world was overflowing with procedure, even in<br /><br />its younger phase. One gave one thing to get<br /><br />in turn another. Seeing red was like seeing<br /><br />the future, the sliding of the blade, and I felt<br /><br />much closer to God. Sunny times, old Memory.<br /><br /><br /><br />Mithra didn't know shit from clay.<br /><br />I liked my own communion in the desert:<br /><br />felt I was onto something, and that if I just<br /><br />concentrated hard enough, I could invent a tradition<br /><br />of stillness. The hummingbird makes the hum.<br /><br />But every time I travelled I would see, many and fierce,<br /><br />bulls no one else could see, unnerving in their defiant<br /><br />love of fate. One cornered me in the Men's Room.<br /><br />Again that moment: you must change your life.<br /><br />I buried him later high in a tree.<br /><br />~~~~~~~<br /><br />A final point. I find myself these days so utterly entranced by Borges, and I loved reading, in Alberto Manguel's short memoir <span style="font-style:italic;">With Borges</span>, the anecdote about Borges, that austere, well mannered, perfectly dressed old gentleman, blind or nearly blind by now, saying, gently, to an unruly child, "If you behave, I'll give you permission to think of a bear."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-76504746973477925382007-11-30T15:58:00.000-08:002007-12-01T04:45:53.294-08:003. "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." (Philo of Alexandria)I drove for weeks, it seemed, and the rain never let up. British Columbia, Oregon, Northern California, driving rain, the soothing swish of windscreen wipers. Rental cars are good, insofar as they are new. Which is to say they are waterproof, and don't steam up. Driving through the downpour, through spruce or pine or redwood, the sense is of being in a bubble of oxygen on a benign but exotic planet, or of drifting through vast underwater forests.<br /><br />During the trip I was wading, sometimes rapt, sometimes merely determined, through Berryman's <span style="font-style:italic;">Collected Poems 1937-1971</span>, which is pretty much everything except for the sublime <span style="font-style:italic;">Dream Songs</span>. A difficult pleasure, like Weil. He fought great battles, but left great gifts. When I read too fast, they pass me by; it is easy to do, for the density and difficulty invite skimming. The impenetrability can be daunting. It is like a rippled stream: but you have to traverse the rippled section to be there when the water suddenly opens out, when deep transparency becomes available.<br /><br />"Forsake me not when my wild hours come;<br />grant me sleep nightly, grace soften my dreams;<br />achieve in me patience till the thing be done ..."<br /> (from "Eleven Addresses to the Lord")<br /><br />"You must perhaps both pray for & abandon<br />your peculiar strength of patience,<br />daring daily more or all."<br /> (from "To a Woman")<br /><br />The desire to achieve patience, the desire to abandon it. Haunting contradictions, given the way his battles came to an end. Though there is something enticing in that notion of a daily escalation - from "more" to "all" - of daring. As if it can be developed by practice. I suppose it can.<br /><br />That reminds me, obliquely, of something I read in <span style="font-style:italic;">Harper's Magazine</span> recently: "Einstein's gravity is not so much a force as a circumstance: the very material of the cosmos has crumpled steeply around you until, almost conspiratorially, all of your possible paths have been narrowed to one." (John Mooallem, "A Curious Attraction - On the Quest for Antigravity")<br /><br />But I was speaking of rain. I had begun to think that it never rains in Southern California, where I have been lately, on and off. That, as far as weather goes, this place might as well be "The Truman Show". So it has been good to wake up to a steady downpour today. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4lvLQqDVBkl_X5B3HWnsHcnYYTYAFW_h0FBnYZE80NaJmV0FFkIXB_ZounQQt3nsAe4eKwDMKlcNwXcK1ked3nt6arHHjw-kOtsubr1dE7Z4EAS7eM7tADMCenR5EEuvbtkCSSvj4F_A/s1600-r/<br />P1010041.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ftzFoRpvRrlJI8pJtNFmgM66Og8SnlOGaehUjR-brsFZ79tfx1TtTbpa3Z0s1hOvdKRVB1sVelzoTVwhE22X9Y228QHD6QPKCRavvjzJXpdiXLn_V-JPm8LS_9Rrj3BQtpwzlXNayxo/s400/P1010041.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138804713792368450" /></a><br />The hills outside where I have been living were ravaged by fire in April. It's been a kind of moonscape - pretty, but in an apocalyptic way - since I moved here. Then a month or so ago (before I went north, to the rain) there was a period where Griffith Park was closed to the public, and all day, every day, helicopters came in low and dropped a kind of green mulch over the barren ground. It looked like a strange art installation developing, Christo at work perhaps. The photo shows a fresh strip; within days of the drops the greens would become less lurid. It's "organic", or so they say. In Southern California one would expect so. It's a mulch that both reseeds the soil (with what?) and binds it, to prevent mudslides in the upcoming rainy season. I read this in the local paper and was pleased to learn there is, indeed, a rainy season.<br /><br />Of which perhaps today is the first day?<br /><br />I would have liked to have seen a mudslide, though. <br /><br />In the meantime, in terms of visceral entertainment in the local neighbourhood, I will content myself with the frenzied yelping and bloodcurdling screeching of the packs of coyotes that come in from the hills to the edge of the suburb some evenings. (It is always in the first hour or two after dusk.) They are dispatching suburban cats, I've been told. Something's getting hurt, that's for sure, and the hairs raise on the back of the neck, a primal response. <br /><br />One day I watched from my desk a coyote, immobile in the shade of a spindly tree in a gulch, not three hundred metres away, the occasional languid flicker of its ears the only hint it was not a statue. And yet if I turn my head 90 degrees, there are eleven million people spread out there. At night sometimes it is the distant baritone honking of the freight trains running through Glendale, and not the coyote attack, that reaches you.<br /><br />When I got back from the rain trip it was Thanksgiving, my first ever first-hand experience of the ritual. It's been fertile ground in films about dysfunctional families coming together to collectively sprinkle salt in wounds, but I was fortunate to be invited to a mellow lovefest, complete with Louisiana cooking. Berryman seems to have a quote for every event:<br /><br />"For that free Grace bringing us past great risks<br />& thro' great griefs surviving to this feast<br />sober and still, with the children unborn and born,<br />among brave friends, Lord, we stand again in debt<br />and find ourselves in the glad position: Gratitude."<br /> (from "Minnesota Thanksgiving")<br /><br />It got me to thinking how if one can live with relatively high levels of gratitude, then one is relatively lucky. Through whatever thick and thin. Through the worst disaster. For the simple surprising fact of having been here at all, and the knowledge that one day that will not be the case, that all things, without exception, will pass. But there is another level. When, through conscious contemplation, one becomes aware that one is experiencing a high level of gratitude: the gratitude increases yet again. A positively reinforcing loop. This is an accessible state. But it must be developed by practice too. Because complacency can act as a grand counterweight; what's more, there's a lot of white noise out there.<br /><br />Perpetual alertness, mindfulness: life lives in you, it moves in you, it speaks itself.<br /><br />If I could do this more often (blog, I mean, not be perpetually alert), it might not ramble so much. Though maybe that goes for the alertness too.<br /><br />Final Berryman:<br /><br />"... a fair wind and the honey lights of home<br />being all I beg this wind-torn foreign evening ..."<br /> (from "Overseas Prayer")Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-56119788158349315862007-07-21T08:04:00.000-07:002007-07-22T10:18:22.876-07:002. "There exists a 'deifugal' force. Otherwise all would be God." (Simone Weil)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25p_K8vfRlADZgaRBeGJyBs-myS4Bo1Hpny470aZxLtmR1iMi_WKIw2jqX9-gUNxTV9ZL6YCE7fuDwGku6ib5NJvRpVbvH2scHXLPag8y2Lf2_8fOI_nVGrczGx5EPwFyFIBp0QiIKd4/s1600-h/P1010009.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj25p_K8vfRlADZgaRBeGJyBs-myS4Bo1Hpny470aZxLtmR1iMi_WKIw2jqX9-gUNxTV9ZL6YCE7fuDwGku6ib5NJvRpVbvH2scHXLPag8y2Lf2_8fOI_nVGrczGx5EPwFyFIBp0QiIKd4/s400/P1010009.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5089720770781575426" /></a><br />I saw this image about a year ago, driving somewhere out beyond Mudgee and Orange in central western New South Wales, looking for locations for a short film I plan to make called "Air". I can't remember any more exactly where this place was; it was on a day of random driving through back-roads, and while I noted down locations of relevance to the film, this was just a "stop-the-car, did-I-just-see-that?" moment. And how lovely, and odd, it is. I'd love to know more about it, but figure I may never. <br /><br />It's all pretty flat out there, but this was an area where I was winding up and down hills. This image was a long way from anywhere, on a rock face, close to the road, on a bend. What is it doing here? It's the kind of image you'd find stencilled around the inner city - close to an art school, perhaps, an obsessive little motif scattered in back alleys. But not all alone, a hundred kilometres outside of Mudgee. And what is the flying man doing exactly? Or thinking, on his lonely central western vigil? And are those wings? And is he wearing a suit? The shoes make me think so. And is that a signature? A "D"? And a kiss?<br /><br />Right now I'm in Paris, and that road trip seems a long time ago. I've been reading "Gravity and Grace" by Simone Weil; this appears to have been just the right July, just the right hemisphere (Freudian pun), just the right Paris in which to read something really challenging - I have to concentrate, hard - that opens out, now and again, into these flashes of recognition. But it comes to you quite calmly. Reading Weil, it's like you are picnicking with astonishment. I mean, you spread the blanket, you open the picnic basket, and look - astonishing bread, astonishing knives that glint as you cut.<br /><br />"To strip ourselves," she says, "of the imaginary royalty of the world. Absolute solitude. Then we possess the truth of the world."<br /><br />Later: "We have to go down to the root of our desires in order to tear the energy from its object. That is where the desires are true in so far as they are energy. It is the object which is unreal. But there is an unspeakable wrench in the soul at the separation of a desire from its object."<br /><br />This morning I had breakfast with my friend Maria and her fiancé J-F the fireman, at his apartment above the fire station at St Sulpice. Then Maria and I rode bicycles across Paris to her apartment in the 18th, and then down to her dress shop, elegantly minimalist, in the 3rd. which she had to open around midday. <br /><br />Eleven years ago I had ridden pillion on the back of Laurent E's moped, as we careened through this city that was everything he knew and loved. This was a bright time for him. But he never quite made it through, and died last year, far too young, and troubled. The last I saw him, eighteen months ago, he had run out of the café, crying with shame at where his life had gotten to. Perhaps my unexpected arrival had brought back for him memories of what once was. This week I will visit his grave, at the cemetery out near the Porte de Pantin. The first time, perhaps, I've understood the concrete necessity to say goodbye.<br /><br />And yet today, whirling through Paris, trailing Maria the navigator, just as eleven years ago, watching the city unfold over Laurent's shoulder, what I experienced was a kind of flow. Which is nice, because for various reasons, these are stop-start times, and flow is not a given.<br /><br />Weil: "In general we must not wish for the disappearance of any of our troubles, but grace to transform them."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6330638678887530226.post-27085358859594233962007-06-24T16:11:00.000-07:002007-07-21T21:22:04.686-07:001. Thou art thatHardly daily. Barely weekly. Possibly not monthly. But could be handy.<br /><br />My friend Lee called from New York the other day. She was at the zoo - I forgot to ask why - and couldn't find the exit; the call was interrupted at one point by her asking a staff member for directions.<br /><br />A couple of minutes later she said to me: "I keep circling the baboon reserve and saying where the hell are the peacocks."<br /><br />Later again: "I passed the lions they were roaring like crazy."<br /><br />I wrote the lines down because they tickled me pink. They will most likely make it into my next book, "The Interferon Psalms". I don't often write that way but how could I resist this? Is that what's called "found poetry"? Not any more.<br /><br />Lee said if she could just find the peacocks she could find the subway entrance. She had worked at the zoo briefly once but had been in Madagascar more recently and perhaps memory played tricks.<br /><br />Then I heard a commotion on the line. "That's a lovely sound," I said.<br /><br />"That's a bunch of peacocks squawking," she said. (I had thought it was a group of schoolchildren running past her, screeching with joy. It was an odd experience, transferring the visual image when she said "peacocks".)<br /><br />In the interests of brevity, I will finish with something from Eduardo Galeano, "Walking Words":<br /><br />"The Church says: <span style="font-style:italic;">The body is a sin</span>. Science says: <span style="font-style:italic;">The body is a machine</span>. Advertising says: <span style="font-style:italic;">The body is a business</span>. The body says: <span style="font-style:italic;">I am a fiesta</span>."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0