2010_11_13 The White Ribbon
In a way “The White Ribbon” is a poor man’s version of Robert Musil’s novel THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES. I mean that in the sense Musil’s novel is an aristocratic dark prelude to the First World War, whereas Director Hennke narrative takes place in a remote village in Northern Germany in 1913 and 1914. However, it is also much darker in spirit and more ominous than Musil’s narrative. There are three commanding male figures in ”The White Ribbon,” a doctor, a pastor and a Baron, a feudal Lord in a location that hardly seems in the 20th century. They are a nasty triangle of men who practiced a brutal form on male dominance over the women and the children of the village. It is also a story of a silent war going on between the children and the high-and-might triumvirate of Baron/Pastor/Doctor, three professionals that have usurps all authority over the peasant farmers. This war was largely subterranean and events are not clearly spelled out; there are a lot of suggestions about what was going on but ambiguity overrules clarity. There is much that is unanswered and never resolved. Many of Hennke’s films are like that.
The movie opens with the doctor mounted on his horse riding back home. When he approaches his garden the horse takes a tumble and the doctor breaks his collarbone in the accident. Only it turns out to be not an accident as someone had stretched a thin wire tied to two trees across the path and the horse had tripped over it. The incident put the doctor in the hospital for several weeks. By the time the police get there to investigate someone has removed the wire. We never find out who the guilty party was, although by the end of the movie we have some strong suspicions. There are eventually two other destructive incidents that take place but which are never resolved. Someone set fire to the Pastor’s barn which was burned to the ground, and the retarded son of the midwife was brutally assaulted and nearly blinded. The Baron’s son was also kidnapped and found tied to tree in the woods. There were a couple of attacks against the evil trio when we do know which one of the younger folks did it. The oldest son of one farmers, angry at his mother’s death which he blames on the Baron’s carelessness, destroys a huge cabbage patch belonging to the Baron and the pastor’s oldest daughter, one of the apparent ringleaders of the secretly rebellious youths, kills her father’s pet bird without attempting to cover her tracks. She killed the bird with a scissor and put it on his desk in the shape of a cross. The Pastor regularly canes his kids for minor infractions of his protocol of Christian behavior. In another instant, he had another son tie his 14 year old son to his bed to prevent him from masturbating and lectures the lad about such sinful behavior which could end up corrupting his nerves. As the abuse accumulates and the story unfolds it is no mystery why the kids push back against the tyranny of “the fathers.”
The only sympathetic male adult in the movie is the local schoolteacher. He’s also the voice of the narrator of the story—in old age as he looks back at his time in the village. He figures out what has likely happened but makes the mistake of talking to the pastor who calls him vile for suggesting any of his children would stoop to the behavior the teacher is suggesting. The Pastor is just covering his ass because if the authorities are called in he too could be swept up in the scandal of terrible abuse of the vulnerable children. He is a Christian hypocrite of the worst sort, a zealot who disciplines his kids like he was a Gestapo Captain. He beats them; he verbally abuses them by tearing them down as inadequate; and never shows them any warmth, love, or affection. He maintains a cool image and a stance of frowning down his nose at them. The mother is pathetically neglected, treated as a maid, not much more than that. It’s a breeding ground for revolution.
If the Pastor lives to exercise power, the Doctor lives for vanity’s sake. He is the nasty rooster who likes perverse sex, like fucking his live-in punching board, the Village midwife, a woman about 40, and the mother of the retarded boy Karli. After having sex with the midwife he tells her she’s ugly, has bad breath, and he wishes she’d “just die.” He also likes to finger his eldest daughter while he masturbates. She’s probably 16. He’s grotesquely arrogant, egotistical, and absent of empathy—an unsavory role model At the end of the movie he, his kids, the midwife and her son, all disappear, but not together and mysteriously—without a word to anybody. The last we see of the midwife she is borrowing a bike from the schoolteacher to go into town to tell authorities she knew who strung that trip-wire. But that was little more than a ruse to leave the village.
The Baron is the Lord of the Manor and the ceremonial spokesman for the village, the sponsor of the harvest festivities and the employer of many of the farmers. He looks and acts like an aristocrat. His wife dares to confront him with the fact she is leaving him and this hateful village “so full of brutality, envy, revenge and resentment.” The actress who played the role showed how nervous and fearful she was in opposing the “Lord of the Manor.” But as the film concludes she is still with her husband. The Baron’s steward had come in while they Baron and his wife were arguing to tell him some big news: the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated in the streets of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. At this point the film rather hurriedly come to an ambiguous end, while the narrator tells us he was drafted, went in the army, survived the war, but never went back to the village, so he never found out if any of those strange events were solved and understood. The final image in the movie is all the villagers gathered in the church to discuss the war. As people sit waiting the picture slowly turns dimmer and dimmer till, finally, the screen goes dark.
The film was shot in black and white, which was good I think. For one thing it was in tune with the drab character of the village and its environs. The black clothes the girls and women wear seem fitting, in-sync with the puritanical gloss of the culture and the stern Patriarchy that was still so pervasive and dominant.
When all is said and done “The White Ribbon” is a terrible indictment of the Germanic version of fatherhood and it helps us understand why “The Great War” happened and why someone like Hitler was able to come to power, as he was or represented the ultimate expression of the omnipotent paterfamilias.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Shellacking of the President
2010_11-03 The Shellacking of the President
Dear Pete,
Well, there’s one more idealistic, naïve, and silver-tongued president, if not exactly down the drain, with his back up against the wall. To me Obama is looking like a faux liberal, a politician in way over his head, another flash in the pan who was eaten up by an adoring crowd that was seduced by his stirring rhetoric of his campaign for the Oval Office. The first black president was another incentive to put him there, just as removing him from office was an incentive to the founding of the Tea Party movement, which from the beginning revealed a racist element. I have a hard time imagining him pulling out of the nose dive he is currently in, and he won’t be nestling with progressive in the next two years—far from it! Odds on he’ll do what Bill Clinton did, move to a center-right place in the political spectrum in order “to get along,” to be effective even in a minimal way. I would not look for him to get his hackles up—to be confrontational, like FDR was with the power of the wealthy in American politics. Obama, I regret to say, doesn’t seem to have the inner grit for that, as he is too identified with Establishment America. He wants to “get along,” above all else. He wants to be liked, to “do the right thing,” to compromise with the other side who have made it abundantly clear time and time again they see compromise as a one way street. The onus is on the president, not them, especially not after their victory last night. And yet today at his Press Conference Obama said he was sure he could work with Republicans. The man never learns and it pains me to say that.
It is fair to say this was a historic election and by that I mean it was more than the usual swing in midterm elections. The numbers in the House were the highest in 70 years. The average has been 22.6 seats change parties in off-year elections. This time it was between 60 to 65 seats, depending on a few races not resolved yet. And consider this: when they combine with the conservative Democrats in the House, well, they will be a legislative powerhouse. Won’t it be ironic if the Democrats in the Senate have to use the filibuster to, say, block repeal of the new Health Care Bill, which was on the minds of several Republicans today? Could happen. On the other hand, conservative Democratic Senators could cross over and join the Republicans, just like their brethren in the House—in order to once again “to get along” with the majority party, one that, unlike the Democrats under Obama’s leadership, can be aggressive in their use of the advantageous legislative position. That’s the big fear: That the GOP will carry through with their threat of a rollback of Obamacare and other bills and to do it with a vengeance. Europeans, who have had universal health care for decades, must think we are out of our minds, picturing our foolishness as a diapered male sitting on a jackass backward, looking behind not forward. Actually, I think the most likely scenario for the Senate will be two years of gridlock, with both sides shouting at each other for the responsibility of the do-nothing congress. I would picture that as a donkey and an elephant standing immobile on the bridge to nowhere.
Paul Krugman has been harping on the Republican eagerness to stop all government spending, which is in his view the worst possible thing they could do, for three reasons: If consumers are not spending due to fear and caution, if the private sector isn’t spending or hiring, out of caution and anxiety over the slow recovery from the recession, and, finally, if the government won’t fill the void, like the New Deal did in the Thirties, where will necessary cash flow come from? Money needs to circulate for things to happen. How can they block the flow and expect to get out of the hole we are in? Krugman has argued that the stimulus bill should have been at least double what it was. Can’t the Fed do it? Yes, and I hear they did make some kind of move today. During the next few years Krugman predicts hard times, a period of “political chaos and economic weakness.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.
Be of good cheer (even though I know it’s difficult),
Jerry P
Dear Pete,
Well, there’s one more idealistic, naïve, and silver-tongued president, if not exactly down the drain, with his back up against the wall. To me Obama is looking like a faux liberal, a politician in way over his head, another flash in the pan who was eaten up by an adoring crowd that was seduced by his stirring rhetoric of his campaign for the Oval Office. The first black president was another incentive to put him there, just as removing him from office was an incentive to the founding of the Tea Party movement, which from the beginning revealed a racist element. I have a hard time imagining him pulling out of the nose dive he is currently in, and he won’t be nestling with progressive in the next two years—far from it! Odds on he’ll do what Bill Clinton did, move to a center-right place in the political spectrum in order “to get along,” to be effective even in a minimal way. I would not look for him to get his hackles up—to be confrontational, like FDR was with the power of the wealthy in American politics. Obama, I regret to say, doesn’t seem to have the inner grit for that, as he is too identified with Establishment America. He wants to “get along,” above all else. He wants to be liked, to “do the right thing,” to compromise with the other side who have made it abundantly clear time and time again they see compromise as a one way street. The onus is on the president, not them, especially not after their victory last night. And yet today at his Press Conference Obama said he was sure he could work with Republicans. The man never learns and it pains me to say that.
It is fair to say this was a historic election and by that I mean it was more than the usual swing in midterm elections. The numbers in the House were the highest in 70 years. The average has been 22.6 seats change parties in off-year elections. This time it was between 60 to 65 seats, depending on a few races not resolved yet. And consider this: when they combine with the conservative Democrats in the House, well, they will be a legislative powerhouse. Won’t it be ironic if the Democrats in the Senate have to use the filibuster to, say, block repeal of the new Health Care Bill, which was on the minds of several Republicans today? Could happen. On the other hand, conservative Democratic Senators could cross over and join the Republicans, just like their brethren in the House—in order to once again “to get along” with the majority party, one that, unlike the Democrats under Obama’s leadership, can be aggressive in their use of the advantageous legislative position. That’s the big fear: That the GOP will carry through with their threat of a rollback of Obamacare and other bills and to do it with a vengeance. Europeans, who have had universal health care for decades, must think we are out of our minds, picturing our foolishness as a diapered male sitting on a jackass backward, looking behind not forward. Actually, I think the most likely scenario for the Senate will be two years of gridlock, with both sides shouting at each other for the responsibility of the do-nothing congress. I would picture that as a donkey and an elephant standing immobile on the bridge to nowhere.
Paul Krugman has been harping on the Republican eagerness to stop all government spending, which is in his view the worst possible thing they could do, for three reasons: If consumers are not spending due to fear and caution, if the private sector isn’t spending or hiring, out of caution and anxiety over the slow recovery from the recession, and, finally, if the government won’t fill the void, like the New Deal did in the Thirties, where will necessary cash flow come from? Money needs to circulate for things to happen. How can they block the flow and expect to get out of the hole we are in? Krugman has argued that the stimulus bill should have been at least double what it was. Can’t the Fed do it? Yes, and I hear they did make some kind of move today. During the next few years Krugman predicts hard times, a period of “political chaos and economic weakness.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.
Be of good cheer (even though I know it’s difficult),
Jerry P
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Emma Chooses Life
2010-10_23 Emma Chooses Life
As an actress, Tilda Swindon is money in the bank: She never appears in bad movies. “I Am Love “is her latest success.
It has an opening sequence that is remarkable. It is of Christmastime Birthday party for the elderly Patriarch of the Recchi family, the head of a very successful textile business in Milan, Italy. It is a scene of various members of the family arriving at Trancredi Recchi’s palatial home, the oldest son of the Patriarch who is married the Emma (Tilda Swindon) who is busy seeing to the kitchen staff that the preparations for the dinner come off as planned. From the start we observe that Emma is an adjunct to this Italian family, as her Russian background has been buried under the gloss of her adopted Italian language and culture. She maintains a mask of polite and civil engagement with all members of the family, keeping a discreet, unrevealing distance from intimate connection. Her closet ally in her own home is the Servant Supervisor, Ida. Inside she knows she’s the outsider in this crowd, but at the same time she doesn’t want to make waves. She bites the bullet and makes due with her life as is. But to return to the longish opening scene is the fact it is not only beautifully photographed, it is exquisitely edited, being one of the smoothest flows of images I have ever had the pleasure to experience. And it fits with the picture-perfect harmony that seems to be at the heart of this rich Milanese clan. Form dovetails with content, effortlessly.
Unbeknownst to those at this lavish banquet for the patriarch he has a special announcement to make. When he arrived we get a good preview of his status with the three generations present. He is treated with utmost respect and affection, indeed, you wonder why they don’t genuflect or kiss his ring. You can’t help but notice there is something Old World about the hierarchy to this family, as if they are a throwback to a previous time. One thinks they resemble a 19th century family untouched by the stress and turmoil of modernity. But as we all know looks can be deceiving. This harmonious prelude hides some dissension and unhappiness. The announcement the Elder Recchi is making is he retiring—in fact, he’ll be dead in less than six months—and naming his eldest son, Trancredi, the new CEO and his grandson Edo, a CEO in training. He salutes Trancredi as a loyal son (“all that a father could want”) and solid businessman. Everyone sits unmoved by his choices; there are undercurrents but they remain mute.
As I watched this scene unfold, I couldn’t help but flash on two previous movies of similar character and substance. The first that came to mind is “The Leopard,” the 1963 movie directed by Luchino Visconti. Like “I Am Love” the earlier movie was a multigenerational spectacle, but this time dealing with 19th century Sicilian aristocracy, with Burt Lancaster playing the role of the family patriarch who realizes his class, privileges, and life-purpose are fading as modernity begins to move forward crowding his way of life to the sidelines. “I Am Love” deals with a self-made aristocrat and his progeny, a capitalist success story, but they all have pretentions that parallel the Sicilian’s style and modus vivendi. New York Times movie critic, Manohla Dargis called the polish and pose “postclassical Hollywood Baroque.” There is the same august tone, the self-conscious elegance, the stress on appearances, and the adoration of the patriarch. And to finalize this connection between the two films there is the fact that Alain Delon’s character in “The Leopard” was also named Trancredi, the same name as the oldest son of the Patriarch in ‘‘I Am Love.” The new film is clearly homage to Visconti’s, which obviously deeply influenced Luca Guadagino, the Director of “I Am Love.” The second film I thought of was Luis Bunel’s 1972 “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” That film was a mocking tribute to the Dinner Party that was so loved by the Bourgeoisie, which they treat almost like a secular mass, allowing them to glory in their affluence and self-importance.
The middle section of the film deals with Edo and his girl friend—they get married and at the end of the film she’s pregnant—and his developing relationship with his new friend Antonio the chef (Edodrado Gabbrielillni) who he wants to open a restaurant with as Antonio as co-owner and chief chef—he is a superb gourmet cook. But at the end of the middle section the story takes a dramatic turn. Emma finally emerges from her shell. Two things motivate it. First of all she reevaluates her own situation due to the fact her daughter Elizabetta has declared herself a Lesbian which flies in the face of the family values. Then she eats a shrimp dish prepared by Antonio and she goes off into an ecstatic reverie, something akin to an orgasm. When I saw her reaction I turned to my wife, who was watching the movie with me, and said, “By God, she’s falling for Antonio. The shrimp is acting like an aphrodisiac!”
And sure enough, on the pretense of showing her his garden in the hills he takes her there in his truck and before you can say whoopee three times they become lovers. They enter into what I would call a Laurencian interlude, where she becomes Connie and Antonio becomes Mellors, and they act out their version of LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER. She experiences a passion she never knew or had forgotten about. She discards her fancy clothes and goes back to a tank top and shorts. She starts speaking in Russian again and brings her Russian name out of the closet. And like in the first sequence, Guadagino has the lovers photographed with form following content. The love scenes are gauzy and blurry; you see a breast, then a leg, and then a curve of a back and so on, like that. Meanwhile, the erotic ambience is heightened with flowers, buzzing insects and soft breezes through the fields, another touch that reminds of D.H. Lawrence. She sheds her Italian veneer. Antonio has not only helped her find her sensual center again, but also her integrity as a person.
But when she tells Edo what has happened he gets upset and trips near the swimming pool and hits his head. They take him to the hospital but he dies there. This tragic accident shatters the family harmony. Previously Edo had been upset when his father had sold the family business to a businessman in London. The family unity is broken and Trancredi tells Emma, “You no longer exist for me.” Utterly stricken and beyond the point of no return, she changes clothes and flees the property, pausing only to hug Ida and to see Elizabetta nod her approval to what she is about to do. The fact Antonio is twenty years younger than her is of no moment. The urgent thing is to escape. The fundamental truth in the situation is she has awakened and rejected her false self. She has become the self she knew herself to be.
The film has moved from a picture-perfect family celebrating its continuity and hold on business and success, to family dissension and an unexpected passion, and a death in the family which is the final wedge that drives Emma out the door. Nothing real comes without pain, but the important thing is and should be, “to your own self be true.”
As an actress, Tilda Swindon is money in the bank: She never appears in bad movies. “I Am Love “is her latest success.
It has an opening sequence that is remarkable. It is of Christmastime Birthday party for the elderly Patriarch of the Recchi family, the head of a very successful textile business in Milan, Italy. It is a scene of various members of the family arriving at Trancredi Recchi’s palatial home, the oldest son of the Patriarch who is married the Emma (Tilda Swindon) who is busy seeing to the kitchen staff that the preparations for the dinner come off as planned. From the start we observe that Emma is an adjunct to this Italian family, as her Russian background has been buried under the gloss of her adopted Italian language and culture. She maintains a mask of polite and civil engagement with all members of the family, keeping a discreet, unrevealing distance from intimate connection. Her closet ally in her own home is the Servant Supervisor, Ida. Inside she knows she’s the outsider in this crowd, but at the same time she doesn’t want to make waves. She bites the bullet and makes due with her life as is. But to return to the longish opening scene is the fact it is not only beautifully photographed, it is exquisitely edited, being one of the smoothest flows of images I have ever had the pleasure to experience. And it fits with the picture-perfect harmony that seems to be at the heart of this rich Milanese clan. Form dovetails with content, effortlessly.
Unbeknownst to those at this lavish banquet for the patriarch he has a special announcement to make. When he arrived we get a good preview of his status with the three generations present. He is treated with utmost respect and affection, indeed, you wonder why they don’t genuflect or kiss his ring. You can’t help but notice there is something Old World about the hierarchy to this family, as if they are a throwback to a previous time. One thinks they resemble a 19th century family untouched by the stress and turmoil of modernity. But as we all know looks can be deceiving. This harmonious prelude hides some dissension and unhappiness. The announcement the Elder Recchi is making is he retiring—in fact, he’ll be dead in less than six months—and naming his eldest son, Trancredi, the new CEO and his grandson Edo, a CEO in training. He salutes Trancredi as a loyal son (“all that a father could want”) and solid businessman. Everyone sits unmoved by his choices; there are undercurrents but they remain mute.
As I watched this scene unfold, I couldn’t help but flash on two previous movies of similar character and substance. The first that came to mind is “The Leopard,” the 1963 movie directed by Luchino Visconti. Like “I Am Love” the earlier movie was a multigenerational spectacle, but this time dealing with 19th century Sicilian aristocracy, with Burt Lancaster playing the role of the family patriarch who realizes his class, privileges, and life-purpose are fading as modernity begins to move forward crowding his way of life to the sidelines. “I Am Love” deals with a self-made aristocrat and his progeny, a capitalist success story, but they all have pretentions that parallel the Sicilian’s style and modus vivendi. New York Times movie critic, Manohla Dargis called the polish and pose “postclassical Hollywood Baroque.” There is the same august tone, the self-conscious elegance, the stress on appearances, and the adoration of the patriarch. And to finalize this connection between the two films there is the fact that Alain Delon’s character in “The Leopard” was also named Trancredi, the same name as the oldest son of the Patriarch in ‘‘I Am Love.” The new film is clearly homage to Visconti’s, which obviously deeply influenced Luca Guadagino, the Director of “I Am Love.” The second film I thought of was Luis Bunel’s 1972 “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” That film was a mocking tribute to the Dinner Party that was so loved by the Bourgeoisie, which they treat almost like a secular mass, allowing them to glory in their affluence and self-importance.
The middle section of the film deals with Edo and his girl friend—they get married and at the end of the film she’s pregnant—and his developing relationship with his new friend Antonio the chef (Edodrado Gabbrielillni) who he wants to open a restaurant with as Antonio as co-owner and chief chef—he is a superb gourmet cook. But at the end of the middle section the story takes a dramatic turn. Emma finally emerges from her shell. Two things motivate it. First of all she reevaluates her own situation due to the fact her daughter Elizabetta has declared herself a Lesbian which flies in the face of the family values. Then she eats a shrimp dish prepared by Antonio and she goes off into an ecstatic reverie, something akin to an orgasm. When I saw her reaction I turned to my wife, who was watching the movie with me, and said, “By God, she’s falling for Antonio. The shrimp is acting like an aphrodisiac!”
And sure enough, on the pretense of showing her his garden in the hills he takes her there in his truck and before you can say whoopee three times they become lovers. They enter into what I would call a Laurencian interlude, where she becomes Connie and Antonio becomes Mellors, and they act out their version of LADY CHATTERLY’S LOVER. She experiences a passion she never knew or had forgotten about. She discards her fancy clothes and goes back to a tank top and shorts. She starts speaking in Russian again and brings her Russian name out of the closet. And like in the first sequence, Guadagino has the lovers photographed with form following content. The love scenes are gauzy and blurry; you see a breast, then a leg, and then a curve of a back and so on, like that. Meanwhile, the erotic ambience is heightened with flowers, buzzing insects and soft breezes through the fields, another touch that reminds of D.H. Lawrence. She sheds her Italian veneer. Antonio has not only helped her find her sensual center again, but also her integrity as a person.
But when she tells Edo what has happened he gets upset and trips near the swimming pool and hits his head. They take him to the hospital but he dies there. This tragic accident shatters the family harmony. Previously Edo had been upset when his father had sold the family business to a businessman in London. The family unity is broken and Trancredi tells Emma, “You no longer exist for me.” Utterly stricken and beyond the point of no return, she changes clothes and flees the property, pausing only to hug Ida and to see Elizabetta nod her approval to what she is about to do. The fact Antonio is twenty years younger than her is of no moment. The urgent thing is to escape. The fundamental truth in the situation is she has awakened and rejected her false self. She has become the self she knew herself to be.
The film has moved from a picture-perfect family celebrating its continuity and hold on business and success, to family dissension and an unexpected passion, and a death in the family which is the final wedge that drives Emma out the door. Nothing real comes without pain, but the important thing is and should be, “to your own self be true.”
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Dawn of the Guiding Light
2010_10-12 The Dawn of a Guiding Light
One night in May of 1972 I was depressed over the fact my drawings seemed so impenetrable, both to me and others. I asked myself, is it possible I am barking up the wrong tree? When I looked at what I have done since 1969, when I left my ‘Horror Period’ behind, one minute I see the promise of things to come and maybe even some great talent preparing to break loose; but 5 minutes later when I looked again the stuff looked ridiculous and empty, a shot in the dark, hardly worth the effort. Things just weren’t coming together as I had hoped they would when we arrived in Tucson the year before. I had been flailing about for a few years trying to find new footing. The new work looked experimental, tentative, the result of a search that wasn’t paying off yet. I was still without a clear road to take. I was still juggling possibilities, toying with bits and pieces of ideas that could tease my imagination but couldn’t stand alone yet.
On that night in question I was reading THE BANQUET YEARS by Roger Shattuck. I felt an intense identification with Eric Satie who was one of the artists discussed in the book. I loved Satie’s comic sense and how he could make nonsense have a metaphysical aura. That sort of thing had a lot of appeal to me. Satie was also, like me, very idiosyncratic. Here is what Shattuck said about him. “Irony, spite, and fantasy combine into a fairy tale about a nonsense world not less but MORE ordered than ours. Satie’s entire career represents an effort to confound, to provoke laughter, to give pause, and then to disappear—and least of all to entertain or edify.” I had long ago embraced the refusal to be ordinary, or simply an entertainer, bandwagon artist, or a decorator. Others could happily go that route but not me. Shattuck went on to say that Satie’s talents were best revealed in “sudden visitations,” or epiphanies-- eruptive moments of visionary experience. I knew something about those kinds of experiences. Indeed, when I was drawing I would try to get locked into the memory of those experiences, using them as, so to speak, a platform to perform on—they were the GROUND of my creativity. If I failed to get really centered that’s when the results looked ridiculous and empty, like a jumble of lines and shapes that didn’t add up to anything. But if I am locked in and intensely focused I can deliver an authentic “hieroglyphic” image that reflects a numinous experience-- about being in a context of radiant and expansive harmony. So I look on creating as a, if you will, yoga, a way to meditate and achieve unity of purpose and being. There is also something of prayer in my approach, communing with a higher power that comes down and flows through me. Drawing provides the elevation I crave. Exalted vision is where it’s at for me. The material image represents the marriage between that which is visible and that which is invisible, what is accurately described as a SYMBOL—something unknown made manifest.
These thoughts got me thinking about the spatial character of Munch’s work and how space, and the way he uses it, reveals psychological and metaphysical depths. For example, let’s take a look at “The Dance of Life.” It is one of his most famous works as well as one that best represents his style of expressionist painting. All the figures in the foreground are specters profiled against a vast enigmatic (and horizontal) background composed of earth, air, water, and sky and secondary dancers. The whole scene seems cursed by an odd but striking full moon whose reflection touches the shoreline behind all the dancers. Aside from the four main figures up front the other dancers reflect and express a ghoulish anonymity—mere specters awash in a sea of crackling nerves and uncertainty. One man whose face is visible leers at his dancing partner with lust on his mind. But it is three women and the one man in the frontal plane that carry the main thrust of the narrative and the effect is achieved by formal means. The three females are in dresses of different colors, white, red and black; this is no accident either. The colors were carefully chosen to represent different stages of life for women. White indicates virginity, naiveté, purity, inexperience: innocence. The woman dancing with the somnolent man with his eyes closed is dressed in red, and oddly but significantly, one loop of red paint outlines his body, like a lasso holding him in place and giving him definition. The male dancer had his eyes closed, moving in robotic fashion, as if mesmerized by the opposite sex, not a good outcome for someone like Munch who had great anxiety about the opposite sex and deeply feared what he thought of as the devouring tendencies of the female. In short, the male of the species is her captive and the red dress represents her sex and passion, aspects of life that rule after innocence is gone, especially when man and wife have entered the middle stage of life. (By the way, Munch never married—he was afraid to.) Finally, there is the woman in black, she of sorrowful mien, her hands held clenched in front of her. She of course is a representation of the late stage of life, old age accompanied by unhappiness and despair. The symbolic flavor of the entire scenario is clear and unmistakable. Munch cannily conjured his three stages of a woman’s life, innocence, lust, and old age, in simple but concrete form, with color as a dramatic accent on meaning.
I learned an awful lot by scrutinizing Munch’s methods of expression, especially when it came to the depiction of the relationship between men and women. My book EROS AND PSYCHE is quite indebted to him.
A few days later I was playing around with another Munch painting and some other paintings. They were pictures that I had cut out of magazines and were rearranging on my desk, as if I was looking for something. Suddenly I flashed on a relationship between Munch’s “The Scream” and two other pictures on my desk, Ingres’s painting “’M. Louis-Francois Bertin,” painted in 1832, and a painting by Morris Graves of a snake coupled with a moon image painted in the late 1930s. I saw the three images as a perfect illustration of my tripartite ideograph on the nature of Being, that is, Persona/ Psyche/Pneuma, concepts I borrowed from Gnosticism. The Ingres was a painting of the archetypal bourgeois gentleman, a perfect example of “Hylic” man, man the gross materialist devoted to the senses, money and success. HYLE represents the lowest level of consciousness, a human being whose spirituality is nil or undiscovered. Hylic man has no interior life; it is closed off to him, like a large boulder covering a cave entrance. On the other hand “The Scream” describes a man whose outer shell has been broken and broken is the first step in being open—the boulder has been removed and the inside of the cave is now visible. Emotionally it is at the opposite pole from “M. Bertin,” who is pictured as an arrogant, overconfident man who thinks he is better than the “small people.” The man in “The Scream “is experiencing the beginning of a deeper awareness, one of the interior life, of the need for soul-making. The image was and is an excellent reflection of the Psyche, humanity in distress, quite appropriate for the modern age. It is an image that brings into focus the daemonic intermediate level of Being, with the bridge to the depths being the linkage between the unconscious and consciousness.
The Morris Graves painting is called “Snake and Moon” and it was done when Graves was under the sway of Oriental Philosophy and deliberately sought to instill echoes of mysticism in his evocative and poetic paintings of animals. “Snake and Moon” represents the nonhuman element in nature and the Pneuma, the breath of Spirit. We are in new space now, where Light and Dark commingle, where Kundalini abides like silent thunder and lightning; we are now at the GROUND OF BEING, where an infinite power sometimes crosses over to ignite spiritual energy in the Psyche. The presence of the full moon links us with where we started, with “The Dance of Life,” human beings swaying under the magic of the full moon, something of special importance to me ever since my “lunacy” episode during THE INFERNO.
So where did this playing around with images and ideas take me, especially the idea of tripartite division of PERSONA/PSYCHE/PNUEMA, the so-called “Threefold Cord of Alchemy.” I was just following my intuition. In the winter of 1971, when I was living in Eugene I had done a drawing while I was stumbling around in the dark looking for a new direction after my ‘Horror Period’ in Las Vegas; that was the first I ever tried with the idea of three levels. It was called “The Eternal Return.” The lower level was occupied by water and a large tapir—I was thinking about their presence in “2001: A Space Odyssey”—while the middle section—and there was a clear demarcation between levels—was a self-portrait, and the uppermost level had an angel fertilizing an egg on the borderline between the second and third levels. This was my first and rather rough interpretation of the Threefold Cord of Alchemy. The eventual name I gave to these images based on three vertical registers and accompanying symbols was “The Hieroglyphic Theater.”
Now, how did I come by these ideas? Around the same time, while I was teaching part-time at Oregon State up in Corvallis, I had read HIDDEN SYMBOLISM OF ALCHEMY AND THE OCCULT ARTS by an early Freudian named Herbert Sillberer. It had been published in 1917 and was something of a breakthrough book and much praised by the likes of Carl Jung who went on to investigate Alchemy at greater length. Sillberer wrote that his purpose was to “give consideration to the chemical viewpoint of alchemy and also of hermetic philosophy and its hieroglyphic educational methods.” In other words, he saw their potential for raising consciousness, as we would say today. Alchemy wasn’t the “black mud of the Occult” as Freud had told Jung in 1909. He went on to pose this important question: Do you follow the lead of Psychoanalysis or do you opt for “the hermetic, hieroglyphic solution?” In Post-Inferno times I had to opt for the latter. It was clear to me what had to be my preference. I had become someone anchored in esoteric, obscure, dream-like, and super-personal imagery, a treasure trove of empirical experience that I had garnered between the years 1968 and 1973. Communication wasn’t a high priority for me. Doing it was an end in itself. Squeezing the juice out of the sponge was the important thing. That was the Hermetic side to the activity. The hieroglyphic side had to do with the “psychology of symbol-making,” the externalizing of difficult material from one’s inner life.
This is where a second book came in. And it is funny how you find the right book at the right time to direct you in the right direction. It was Frances Yates book, BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION, the Vintage edition which had been published in 1969. Yates was a Renaissance scholar who specialized in the period’s esoterica. In the BRUNO book she discussed the influence of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the development of “emblem poetry,” which was in vogue at the time among the Humanists. Hieroglyphics were understood to have “a hidden moral and religious meaning.” It could be understood to be a kind of disguise that only the cognoscenti would be hip to. It was also a gesture of respect towards Hermes Trismegistus, the “Thrice-Greatest Hermes” who was thought to be a combination of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth, the God of wisdom. He was the legendary inventor of hieroglyphs. Marsllio Ficino said hieroglyphs were”a way of stating hidden truths” and for me subjectivity is the truth.
In 1972 I sat in on a Egyptian Art History class at the University of Arizona taught by a Professor Stein. One day while talking about Old Kingdom Temples he showed a slide of a stela found on many Temples of the period. They were like, if you will, ‘Holy Cards,’ visual encapsulations or abbreviations of spiritual truth for a Pharaoh whose name was often associated with the Temple. The stela was a vertical format divided into two main sections, with the lower section having two parts. Inside a rectangle that took up basically the lower half of the format was a rendering of a Pillared Hall and above the hall was a snake, said to be a cobra. On top of the ‘box’ was a huge falcon, a reference to the God Horus who it is said had the sun and moon for eyes. I say ‘huge’ not only in the sense of physical size but also in symbolic importance. That was about all Stein had to say about it. I forgot all about the Serehk Motif, which is the common name for the cartouche, until about two years later when I ran across it again in another book on Egyptian Culture, THE DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT EGYPT by Margaret Bunson. It then dawned on me I was looking at the prime historical model for my three-decker universe which by then I was already referring to as THE HIREOGLYPHIC THEATER. How dense I had been in Professor Stein’s course. I had been blind to the connection. The pillared Hall which you can see into was, symbolically speaking, the world of space and time, the physical realm, and the Kingdom of Masks not souls. The middle realm was ruled by a snake, by Kundalinli’s bite which can open the psyche—the soul-- to its depths and destiny. Then surmounting the body and soul was the spirit, Horus the Falcon whose wings could help it soar to the heights of self-knowledge. I had found the archetype of the three-fold cord, The Serekh Motif.
One night in May of 1972 I was depressed over the fact my drawings seemed so impenetrable, both to me and others. I asked myself, is it possible I am barking up the wrong tree? When I looked at what I have done since 1969, when I left my ‘Horror Period’ behind, one minute I see the promise of things to come and maybe even some great talent preparing to break loose; but 5 minutes later when I looked again the stuff looked ridiculous and empty, a shot in the dark, hardly worth the effort. Things just weren’t coming together as I had hoped they would when we arrived in Tucson the year before. I had been flailing about for a few years trying to find new footing. The new work looked experimental, tentative, the result of a search that wasn’t paying off yet. I was still without a clear road to take. I was still juggling possibilities, toying with bits and pieces of ideas that could tease my imagination but couldn’t stand alone yet.
On that night in question I was reading THE BANQUET YEARS by Roger Shattuck. I felt an intense identification with Eric Satie who was one of the artists discussed in the book. I loved Satie’s comic sense and how he could make nonsense have a metaphysical aura. That sort of thing had a lot of appeal to me. Satie was also, like me, very idiosyncratic. Here is what Shattuck said about him. “Irony, spite, and fantasy combine into a fairy tale about a nonsense world not less but MORE ordered than ours. Satie’s entire career represents an effort to confound, to provoke laughter, to give pause, and then to disappear—and least of all to entertain or edify.” I had long ago embraced the refusal to be ordinary, or simply an entertainer, bandwagon artist, or a decorator. Others could happily go that route but not me. Shattuck went on to say that Satie’s talents were best revealed in “sudden visitations,” or epiphanies-- eruptive moments of visionary experience. I knew something about those kinds of experiences. Indeed, when I was drawing I would try to get locked into the memory of those experiences, using them as, so to speak, a platform to perform on—they were the GROUND of my creativity. If I failed to get really centered that’s when the results looked ridiculous and empty, like a jumble of lines and shapes that didn’t add up to anything. But if I am locked in and intensely focused I can deliver an authentic “hieroglyphic” image that reflects a numinous experience-- about being in a context of radiant and expansive harmony. So I look on creating as a, if you will, yoga, a way to meditate and achieve unity of purpose and being. There is also something of prayer in my approach, communing with a higher power that comes down and flows through me. Drawing provides the elevation I crave. Exalted vision is where it’s at for me. The material image represents the marriage between that which is visible and that which is invisible, what is accurately described as a SYMBOL—something unknown made manifest.
These thoughts got me thinking about the spatial character of Munch’s work and how space, and the way he uses it, reveals psychological and metaphysical depths. For example, let’s take a look at “The Dance of Life.” It is one of his most famous works as well as one that best represents his style of expressionist painting. All the figures in the foreground are specters profiled against a vast enigmatic (and horizontal) background composed of earth, air, water, and sky and secondary dancers. The whole scene seems cursed by an odd but striking full moon whose reflection touches the shoreline behind all the dancers. Aside from the four main figures up front the other dancers reflect and express a ghoulish anonymity—mere specters awash in a sea of crackling nerves and uncertainty. One man whose face is visible leers at his dancing partner with lust on his mind. But it is three women and the one man in the frontal plane that carry the main thrust of the narrative and the effect is achieved by formal means. The three females are in dresses of different colors, white, red and black; this is no accident either. The colors were carefully chosen to represent different stages of life for women. White indicates virginity, naiveté, purity, inexperience: innocence. The woman dancing with the somnolent man with his eyes closed is dressed in red, and oddly but significantly, one loop of red paint outlines his body, like a lasso holding him in place and giving him definition. The male dancer had his eyes closed, moving in robotic fashion, as if mesmerized by the opposite sex, not a good outcome for someone like Munch who had great anxiety about the opposite sex and deeply feared what he thought of as the devouring tendencies of the female. In short, the male of the species is her captive and the red dress represents her sex and passion, aspects of life that rule after innocence is gone, especially when man and wife have entered the middle stage of life. (By the way, Munch never married—he was afraid to.) Finally, there is the woman in black, she of sorrowful mien, her hands held clenched in front of her. She of course is a representation of the late stage of life, old age accompanied by unhappiness and despair. The symbolic flavor of the entire scenario is clear and unmistakable. Munch cannily conjured his three stages of a woman’s life, innocence, lust, and old age, in simple but concrete form, with color as a dramatic accent on meaning.
I learned an awful lot by scrutinizing Munch’s methods of expression, especially when it came to the depiction of the relationship between men and women. My book EROS AND PSYCHE is quite indebted to him.
A few days later I was playing around with another Munch painting and some other paintings. They were pictures that I had cut out of magazines and were rearranging on my desk, as if I was looking for something. Suddenly I flashed on a relationship between Munch’s “The Scream” and two other pictures on my desk, Ingres’s painting “’M. Louis-Francois Bertin,” painted in 1832, and a painting by Morris Graves of a snake coupled with a moon image painted in the late 1930s. I saw the three images as a perfect illustration of my tripartite ideograph on the nature of Being, that is, Persona/ Psyche/Pneuma, concepts I borrowed from Gnosticism. The Ingres was a painting of the archetypal bourgeois gentleman, a perfect example of “Hylic” man, man the gross materialist devoted to the senses, money and success. HYLE represents the lowest level of consciousness, a human being whose spirituality is nil or undiscovered. Hylic man has no interior life; it is closed off to him, like a large boulder covering a cave entrance. On the other hand “The Scream” describes a man whose outer shell has been broken and broken is the first step in being open—the boulder has been removed and the inside of the cave is now visible. Emotionally it is at the opposite pole from “M. Bertin,” who is pictured as an arrogant, overconfident man who thinks he is better than the “small people.” The man in “The Scream “is experiencing the beginning of a deeper awareness, one of the interior life, of the need for soul-making. The image was and is an excellent reflection of the Psyche, humanity in distress, quite appropriate for the modern age. It is an image that brings into focus the daemonic intermediate level of Being, with the bridge to the depths being the linkage between the unconscious and consciousness.
The Morris Graves painting is called “Snake and Moon” and it was done when Graves was under the sway of Oriental Philosophy and deliberately sought to instill echoes of mysticism in his evocative and poetic paintings of animals. “Snake and Moon” represents the nonhuman element in nature and the Pneuma, the breath of Spirit. We are in new space now, where Light and Dark commingle, where Kundalini abides like silent thunder and lightning; we are now at the GROUND OF BEING, where an infinite power sometimes crosses over to ignite spiritual energy in the Psyche. The presence of the full moon links us with where we started, with “The Dance of Life,” human beings swaying under the magic of the full moon, something of special importance to me ever since my “lunacy” episode during THE INFERNO.
So where did this playing around with images and ideas take me, especially the idea of tripartite division of PERSONA/PSYCHE/PNUEMA, the so-called “Threefold Cord of Alchemy.” I was just following my intuition. In the winter of 1971, when I was living in Eugene I had done a drawing while I was stumbling around in the dark looking for a new direction after my ‘Horror Period’ in Las Vegas; that was the first I ever tried with the idea of three levels. It was called “The Eternal Return.” The lower level was occupied by water and a large tapir—I was thinking about their presence in “2001: A Space Odyssey”—while the middle section—and there was a clear demarcation between levels—was a self-portrait, and the uppermost level had an angel fertilizing an egg on the borderline between the second and third levels. This was my first and rather rough interpretation of the Threefold Cord of Alchemy. The eventual name I gave to these images based on three vertical registers and accompanying symbols was “The Hieroglyphic Theater.”
Now, how did I come by these ideas? Around the same time, while I was teaching part-time at Oregon State up in Corvallis, I had read HIDDEN SYMBOLISM OF ALCHEMY AND THE OCCULT ARTS by an early Freudian named Herbert Sillberer. It had been published in 1917 and was something of a breakthrough book and much praised by the likes of Carl Jung who went on to investigate Alchemy at greater length. Sillberer wrote that his purpose was to “give consideration to the chemical viewpoint of alchemy and also of hermetic philosophy and its hieroglyphic educational methods.” In other words, he saw their potential for raising consciousness, as we would say today. Alchemy wasn’t the “black mud of the Occult” as Freud had told Jung in 1909. He went on to pose this important question: Do you follow the lead of Psychoanalysis or do you opt for “the hermetic, hieroglyphic solution?” In Post-Inferno times I had to opt for the latter. It was clear to me what had to be my preference. I had become someone anchored in esoteric, obscure, dream-like, and super-personal imagery, a treasure trove of empirical experience that I had garnered between the years 1968 and 1973. Communication wasn’t a high priority for me. Doing it was an end in itself. Squeezing the juice out of the sponge was the important thing. That was the Hermetic side to the activity. The hieroglyphic side had to do with the “psychology of symbol-making,” the externalizing of difficult material from one’s inner life.
This is where a second book came in. And it is funny how you find the right book at the right time to direct you in the right direction. It was Frances Yates book, BRUNO AND THE HERMETIC TRADITION, the Vintage edition which had been published in 1969. Yates was a Renaissance scholar who specialized in the period’s esoterica. In the BRUNO book she discussed the influence of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the development of “emblem poetry,” which was in vogue at the time among the Humanists. Hieroglyphics were understood to have “a hidden moral and religious meaning.” It could be understood to be a kind of disguise that only the cognoscenti would be hip to. It was also a gesture of respect towards Hermes Trismegistus, the “Thrice-Greatest Hermes” who was thought to be a combination of the Greek God Hermes and the Egyptian God Thoth, the God of wisdom. He was the legendary inventor of hieroglyphs. Marsllio Ficino said hieroglyphs were”a way of stating hidden truths” and for me subjectivity is the truth.
In 1972 I sat in on a Egyptian Art History class at the University of Arizona taught by a Professor Stein. One day while talking about Old Kingdom Temples he showed a slide of a stela found on many Temples of the period. They were like, if you will, ‘Holy Cards,’ visual encapsulations or abbreviations of spiritual truth for a Pharaoh whose name was often associated with the Temple. The stela was a vertical format divided into two main sections, with the lower section having two parts. Inside a rectangle that took up basically the lower half of the format was a rendering of a Pillared Hall and above the hall was a snake, said to be a cobra. On top of the ‘box’ was a huge falcon, a reference to the God Horus who it is said had the sun and moon for eyes. I say ‘huge’ not only in the sense of physical size but also in symbolic importance. That was about all Stein had to say about it. I forgot all about the Serehk Motif, which is the common name for the cartouche, until about two years later when I ran across it again in another book on Egyptian Culture, THE DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT EGYPT by Margaret Bunson. It then dawned on me I was looking at the prime historical model for my three-decker universe which by then I was already referring to as THE HIREOGLYPHIC THEATER. How dense I had been in Professor Stein’s course. I had been blind to the connection. The pillared Hall which you can see into was, symbolically speaking, the world of space and time, the physical realm, and the Kingdom of Masks not souls. The middle realm was ruled by a snake, by Kundalinli’s bite which can open the psyche—the soul-- to its depths and destiny. Then surmounting the body and soul was the spirit, Horus the Falcon whose wings could help it soar to the heights of self-knowledge. I had found the archetype of the three-fold cord, The Serekh Motif.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Chilian Miners
2010_10_17 The Chilean Miners
The Chilean Miners, all 33 of them, are above ground again and trying to adjust to their new-found fame. They were liberated from their temporary tomb in less than 24 hours and certainly must have felt reborn or at least that they had been given a second chance at life. They all wore dark glasses as they emerged from the depths to protect their eyes from the sun. The world marveled at their courage and survival and everyone doffed their hats at the ingenuity of the folks who saved them by knowing what had to done to get them out from the bowels of the earth.
The next chapter for them may prove more difficult than their incarceration in the mine. There are numerous pressures on them already, individually and as a group, as many journalists are clamoring for pictures and an interview. TV people want a piece of the action. There are movie and books deals to consider. Some Chilean millionaire has deposited $10,000 in every man’s bank account to help them through the first several weeks of freedom. The government has pledge to take of their health concerns for at least the next six months. They are wanted around the world, literally, as their story has become the story of the 21st century, certainly the best feel-good story that one can imagine. (In contrast, there was an underground explosion in a Chinese mine yesterday, with 16 miners killed, and the event wasn’t even reported on the news in China. Who cares about the loss of 16 individuals when your population is 1.4 billion people? ) But some other miners are beginning to feel the trauma of the ordeal and are beginning to experience nightmares. My guess would be that the end result of this post-rescue hoopla will be a situation that will eventually resemble the bad outcome experienced by so many Lottery winners. The miners won’t have the tools or the experience to handle the onslaught of their sudden fame. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that they did a remarkable thing, surviving like moles underground for 70 days, and the engineers that got them out were equally fantastic on their end of the deal. It will long be a heroic moment to remember.
I have been slowly working my way though Rifkin’s book THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION which I am convinced has to be regarded as an important book. It has a Grand Design and its intention are noble—to suggest there is still time to save humankind by embracing the notion of empathy as basic to the human condition. I have been reading the book in an on-again off-again fashion, knocking off 25 pages here and as few as 10 pages there. Currently I am up to page 365 and the section called “The Psychological Consciousness in a Postmodern Existential World.” What he had to say about the Romantic Era was interesting, specifically, it gave great impetus to the virtue of caring for others, as if they were the first Liberals on the scene in the West. Rifkin calls the era “a true revolution in the history of consciousness.”
I call the book a Grand Design because of the large amount of ground he covers, from the Ancient world to the present, all of it looked at from the dual perspective of empathy and entropy, the twins of human progress, like the positive and negative polarities of human reality, the generative contraries. As history has progressed empathy has played an increasingly important role in the development of civilization, and Rifkin now sees and affirms it as the answer to Global Consciousness in a world in crisis. That does make sense to me as I am the type who easily identifies with the pain and suffering of others, and it seems to me, that if that capacity was more wide spread, of reasonable depth, and totally authentic, we’d be a lot better off. But the crisis we are in, at least in this country, is the growing power of our corporate overlords…hell, I remember Saul Bellow before he died warning us that the individual was no longer the focus of our culture; the Corporation now was…and Norman Mailer used to refer to the U.S. as “Corporation Land,” as far back as the late sixties. Now things are even worse, with the recent CITIZENS UNITED Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to spend all they want on the candidates of their choice and they don’t have to declare the amounts or who they are. When you combine that decision with the anger and prejudice on the far right, and the likelihood that the Republicans are going to make significant gains in November, we are in deep shit. Now that they can buy politicians by the handful they are nearing the pinnacle of their power. It is difficult to image what could stop them. They can do pretty much what they want. They could have a lock on Congress by 2016, perhaps even earlier.
The next several years with be decisive in this consolidation of power. We have reached the point of wealth triumphant; a cabal of Multinational Corporations is ready to actually contemplate taking over, while maintaining a look of normality, a Congress full of empty suits that do their bidding while spouting patriotic gore in speeches written for them by clusters of bought specialists. With the masses in a state of perpetual ignorance, being continually fed the Big Lie and soothed by legalized pot and other illusory or pacifying chemicals. NFL football would be even more popular than it is today, even more of gladiator sport than it is today, and the entertainment industry would do its part to keep the masses tranquilize and cooperative. The rich and their minions would live in gated communities that are highly fortified within these ‘zones of exception,’ having all the pleasures and distractions the rich need to be content. Some form of Oligarchy would be in force, composed of CEOs of various corporations. They would represent the ruling class. Their job would be to establish a servile society, clusters of workers who would be kept docile and in line. The Military Establishment would of course be their right arm of the Ruling Class, the necessary enforcers and the institution that would have to recruit the fresh blood for the Armed Forces, which have the aura of an elite force. They would go along with the ruling Oligarchy because it would be to their benefit; it would bestow high social status. The media will be their spokesman too, and progressives will be the first group weeded out, perhaps jailed or otherwise suppressed.
I don’t see any way to stop this from happening.
The Chilean Miners, all 33 of them, are above ground again and trying to adjust to their new-found fame. They were liberated from their temporary tomb in less than 24 hours and certainly must have felt reborn or at least that they had been given a second chance at life. They all wore dark glasses as they emerged from the depths to protect their eyes from the sun. The world marveled at their courage and survival and everyone doffed their hats at the ingenuity of the folks who saved them by knowing what had to done to get them out from the bowels of the earth.
The next chapter for them may prove more difficult than their incarceration in the mine. There are numerous pressures on them already, individually and as a group, as many journalists are clamoring for pictures and an interview. TV people want a piece of the action. There are movie and books deals to consider. Some Chilean millionaire has deposited $10,000 in every man’s bank account to help them through the first several weeks of freedom. The government has pledge to take of their health concerns for at least the next six months. They are wanted around the world, literally, as their story has become the story of the 21st century, certainly the best feel-good story that one can imagine. (In contrast, there was an underground explosion in a Chinese mine yesterday, with 16 miners killed, and the event wasn’t even reported on the news in China. Who cares about the loss of 16 individuals when your population is 1.4 billion people? ) But some other miners are beginning to feel the trauma of the ordeal and are beginning to experience nightmares. My guess would be that the end result of this post-rescue hoopla will be a situation that will eventually resemble the bad outcome experienced by so many Lottery winners. The miners won’t have the tools or the experience to handle the onslaught of their sudden fame. Nonetheless, there’s no denying that they did a remarkable thing, surviving like moles underground for 70 days, and the engineers that got them out were equally fantastic on their end of the deal. It will long be a heroic moment to remember.
I have been slowly working my way though Rifkin’s book THE EMPATHIC CIVILIZATION which I am convinced has to be regarded as an important book. It has a Grand Design and its intention are noble—to suggest there is still time to save humankind by embracing the notion of empathy as basic to the human condition. I have been reading the book in an on-again off-again fashion, knocking off 25 pages here and as few as 10 pages there. Currently I am up to page 365 and the section called “The Psychological Consciousness in a Postmodern Existential World.” What he had to say about the Romantic Era was interesting, specifically, it gave great impetus to the virtue of caring for others, as if they were the first Liberals on the scene in the West. Rifkin calls the era “a true revolution in the history of consciousness.”
I call the book a Grand Design because of the large amount of ground he covers, from the Ancient world to the present, all of it looked at from the dual perspective of empathy and entropy, the twins of human progress, like the positive and negative polarities of human reality, the generative contraries. As history has progressed empathy has played an increasingly important role in the development of civilization, and Rifkin now sees and affirms it as the answer to Global Consciousness in a world in crisis. That does make sense to me as I am the type who easily identifies with the pain and suffering of others, and it seems to me, that if that capacity was more wide spread, of reasonable depth, and totally authentic, we’d be a lot better off. But the crisis we are in, at least in this country, is the growing power of our corporate overlords…hell, I remember Saul Bellow before he died warning us that the individual was no longer the focus of our culture; the Corporation now was…and Norman Mailer used to refer to the U.S. as “Corporation Land,” as far back as the late sixties. Now things are even worse, with the recent CITIZENS UNITED Supreme Court decision which allows corporations to spend all they want on the candidates of their choice and they don’t have to declare the amounts or who they are. When you combine that decision with the anger and prejudice on the far right, and the likelihood that the Republicans are going to make significant gains in November, we are in deep shit. Now that they can buy politicians by the handful they are nearing the pinnacle of their power. It is difficult to image what could stop them. They can do pretty much what they want. They could have a lock on Congress by 2016, perhaps even earlier.
The next several years with be decisive in this consolidation of power. We have reached the point of wealth triumphant; a cabal of Multinational Corporations is ready to actually contemplate taking over, while maintaining a look of normality, a Congress full of empty suits that do their bidding while spouting patriotic gore in speeches written for them by clusters of bought specialists. With the masses in a state of perpetual ignorance, being continually fed the Big Lie and soothed by legalized pot and other illusory or pacifying chemicals. NFL football would be even more popular than it is today, even more of gladiator sport than it is today, and the entertainment industry would do its part to keep the masses tranquilize and cooperative. The rich and their minions would live in gated communities that are highly fortified within these ‘zones of exception,’ having all the pleasures and distractions the rich need to be content. Some form of Oligarchy would be in force, composed of CEOs of various corporations. They would represent the ruling class. Their job would be to establish a servile society, clusters of workers who would be kept docile and in line. The Military Establishment would of course be their right arm of the Ruling Class, the necessary enforcers and the institution that would have to recruit the fresh blood for the Armed Forces, which have the aura of an elite force. They would go along with the ruling Oligarchy because it would be to their benefit; it would bestow high social status. The media will be their spokesman too, and progressives will be the first group weeded out, perhaps jailed or otherwise suppressed.
I don’t see any way to stop this from happening.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Clash of Polarities
2010_10_10 The Clash of Polarities
Because I just finished reading OBAMA’S WAR, the latest reportorial opus by the savant Bob Woodward, I feel compelled to make a few comments. The text focuses on the intense discussions held a year ago in regard the war in Afghanistan. It was a kind of seminar called for by Professor Obama that resulted in an executive White Paper. I found the book a tough read; maybe it is exciting for wonks and political junkies, but it was a grind for me. It was an old story told anew, about the bickering that always seems to occur in the midst of wartime, as the military brain trust pit themselves against Team Obama composed of a civilian cadre dug in and determined to fend off the pushy Team Generals. The Generals seek to get the civilians out of the way before they hurt themselves—or make peace on their own or too quickly. Since they feel better trained and equipped to handle war in all its aspects, they are best qualified to make THE BIG DECISSIONS ABOUT THE CONDUCT OF OBAMA’S WAR. So went their thinking. They were, after all, the professionals in this scenario. Especially in this case, as the president, as most people would agree, is a raw rookie in this circumstance. In the final analysis, the long series of discussions were bound to not be successful because they never had a real chance to be. It was all a formal exercise, like war games, or a game of bureaucratic one-upmanship, the military pressing hard against Team Obama with Team Obama pushing back as hard as they could, and with equal passion, with Obama and people like Gen. James Jones hanging in a middle zone between the clashing perspectives.
Jim Jones was in the news yesterday. He resigned his post as NSA Director, effective in two weeks. He got out four months before he had originally planned to which was at 24 month’s service. Personally, I think the post was a grind for him too, but in a different way: it was an impossible balancing act over an abyss called “failure,” a fear that existed on every level for every faction in this THE GREAT DEBATE. Poor Jones, he had a boot in two worlds. He was, on one hand, the well-intentioned advocate for POTUS (that’s military-speak for President Obama of the United States) while on the other hand, he was a retired General mindful of the concerns and goals of his old pals in the Pentagon and Defense Dept. In a futile attempt to please both sides he ended up paralyzed by the polarization in his own head so he decided to run for the hills. He had had enough of the big squeeze. But last night I read a section in OBAMA’S WAR where Jones had said that it would be a “disaster” if his Chief Deputy, Tom Donilon, was his replacement, which was exactly what happened yesterday. Donilon is one of those long-lived loyal Democrats who have found various posts since Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office. It is true he is far removed from the space the General came from. Calling him a “disaster” could simply mean he is more a team player than Jones was.
The book describes the uneven dialogue among the civilian leaders who make the Big Decisions, meaning Team Obama going head to head with Team Generals who were actually doing most of the talking because the president had asked them to set the agenda. Team Obama was in the position of counter-puncher, a role they seemed to be adjusting to. The clique of Generals saw themselves as more knowledgeable and savvy in the world of war. Most of the book deals with this tug of war between the thinkers vs. the doers, the president vs. the hawks, the Democrats vs. the Republicans, McCain vs. Biden, and blue eyes vs. brown eyes. By the way, Biden worked hard to keep Obama above water—not overwhelmed by the clique of Generals. They ended up respecting his intellectual acuity.
While the military always goes for the gold, victory, it is an unrealistic goal in Afghanistan, which is notorious as the “graveyard of Empires.” The American people are not going to accept what it would take to wrap up a win in Afghanistan. It would take a decade at least and might take 20 years. It would also be very expensive. The Generals estimated $113 billion a year. That’s a lot of money going down a rat hole when millions of people are unemployed and our infrastructures keeps decaying. Things cry out for attention but the war goes on and on, like a bad habit. Yesterday marked the first day of the 10th year of the war. The public is already dubious about staying in this fight, at least how it is currently framed and mounted. And it’s obvious we are nowhere near a foothold there, much less close to a satisfactory ending to the conflict. President Karzai is another big problem: he is incapable of good governance. He has, for the Americans who have to deal with him, the stature of small town mayor. He is a serious roadblock to the progress called for. Another big problem is Pakistan which was and still is double-dealing with us: they take our money and funnel part of it to the Taliban who are supposed to be the enemy.
Aside from the clashing of opinions, Obama had hoped for a plan of action that would be of use to him in an ongoing fashion. Ultimately what the generals wanted was, as General McChrystal put it, “a fully resourced counterinsurgency” that would be open-ended with no exit plan and the right to attack the “the safe havens in Pakistan.” Big Mac wanted 100,000 troops there for 10 years. It’s strange how these military geniuses can expect their outrageous demand to be simply agreed to and provided for. Wars or potential wars are always more of a priority than domestic problems at home. They don’t seem to have a good grasp of what it is like for a lot of people. They lack a sense of proportion which makes them look self-indulgent to an extreme degree. But the President’s Final Oder called for “degrading the Taliban,” not defeating them; to encourage the capacity of Afghan forces so we can drawdown our troops by July 2011; the addition of 30,000 troops (rather than 40,000); it was acceptable to hit those safe havens in Pakistan; and the cost of being there would be $113 billion a year. The problem of President Karzai was put on the back burner for another day and he is still a fly in the ointment. The Generals wanted more troops, more money and more power. Obama was their intellectual equal and had the will power to hold firm on some basic principles, keeping them on a short leash, with the civilian component of our government doing, all things considered, pretty well. The Generals huffed and they puffed but could not blow the civilians away.
And of course Gen. Stan McChrystal is long gone committing professional suicide by being flippant with his remarks when being interviewed by a journalist from Rolling Stone about the president and other members of Team Obama. The next logical choice took his place, Gen. David Patraeus. The book about these two leading lights of the military establishment has yet to be written.
Because I just finished reading OBAMA’S WAR, the latest reportorial opus by the savant Bob Woodward, I feel compelled to make a few comments. The text focuses on the intense discussions held a year ago in regard the war in Afghanistan. It was a kind of seminar called for by Professor Obama that resulted in an executive White Paper. I found the book a tough read; maybe it is exciting for wonks and political junkies, but it was a grind for me. It was an old story told anew, about the bickering that always seems to occur in the midst of wartime, as the military brain trust pit themselves against Team Obama composed of a civilian cadre dug in and determined to fend off the pushy Team Generals. The Generals seek to get the civilians out of the way before they hurt themselves—or make peace on their own or too quickly. Since they feel better trained and equipped to handle war in all its aspects, they are best qualified to make THE BIG DECISSIONS ABOUT THE CONDUCT OF OBAMA’S WAR. So went their thinking. They were, after all, the professionals in this scenario. Especially in this case, as the president, as most people would agree, is a raw rookie in this circumstance. In the final analysis, the long series of discussions were bound to not be successful because they never had a real chance to be. It was all a formal exercise, like war games, or a game of bureaucratic one-upmanship, the military pressing hard against Team Obama with Team Obama pushing back as hard as they could, and with equal passion, with Obama and people like Gen. James Jones hanging in a middle zone between the clashing perspectives.
Jim Jones was in the news yesterday. He resigned his post as NSA Director, effective in two weeks. He got out four months before he had originally planned to which was at 24 month’s service. Personally, I think the post was a grind for him too, but in a different way: it was an impossible balancing act over an abyss called “failure,” a fear that existed on every level for every faction in this THE GREAT DEBATE. Poor Jones, he had a boot in two worlds. He was, on one hand, the well-intentioned advocate for POTUS (that’s military-speak for President Obama of the United States) while on the other hand, he was a retired General mindful of the concerns and goals of his old pals in the Pentagon and Defense Dept. In a futile attempt to please both sides he ended up paralyzed by the polarization in his own head so he decided to run for the hills. He had had enough of the big squeeze. But last night I read a section in OBAMA’S WAR where Jones had said that it would be a “disaster” if his Chief Deputy, Tom Donilon, was his replacement, which was exactly what happened yesterday. Donilon is one of those long-lived loyal Democrats who have found various posts since Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office. It is true he is far removed from the space the General came from. Calling him a “disaster” could simply mean he is more a team player than Jones was.
The book describes the uneven dialogue among the civilian leaders who make the Big Decisions, meaning Team Obama going head to head with Team Generals who were actually doing most of the talking because the president had asked them to set the agenda. Team Obama was in the position of counter-puncher, a role they seemed to be adjusting to. The clique of Generals saw themselves as more knowledgeable and savvy in the world of war. Most of the book deals with this tug of war between the thinkers vs. the doers, the president vs. the hawks, the Democrats vs. the Republicans, McCain vs. Biden, and blue eyes vs. brown eyes. By the way, Biden worked hard to keep Obama above water—not overwhelmed by the clique of Generals. They ended up respecting his intellectual acuity.
While the military always goes for the gold, victory, it is an unrealistic goal in Afghanistan, which is notorious as the “graveyard of Empires.” The American people are not going to accept what it would take to wrap up a win in Afghanistan. It would take a decade at least and might take 20 years. It would also be very expensive. The Generals estimated $113 billion a year. That’s a lot of money going down a rat hole when millions of people are unemployed and our infrastructures keeps decaying. Things cry out for attention but the war goes on and on, like a bad habit. Yesterday marked the first day of the 10th year of the war. The public is already dubious about staying in this fight, at least how it is currently framed and mounted. And it’s obvious we are nowhere near a foothold there, much less close to a satisfactory ending to the conflict. President Karzai is another big problem: he is incapable of good governance. He has, for the Americans who have to deal with him, the stature of small town mayor. He is a serious roadblock to the progress called for. Another big problem is Pakistan which was and still is double-dealing with us: they take our money and funnel part of it to the Taliban who are supposed to be the enemy.
Aside from the clashing of opinions, Obama had hoped for a plan of action that would be of use to him in an ongoing fashion. Ultimately what the generals wanted was, as General McChrystal put it, “a fully resourced counterinsurgency” that would be open-ended with no exit plan and the right to attack the “the safe havens in Pakistan.” Big Mac wanted 100,000 troops there for 10 years. It’s strange how these military geniuses can expect their outrageous demand to be simply agreed to and provided for. Wars or potential wars are always more of a priority than domestic problems at home. They don’t seem to have a good grasp of what it is like for a lot of people. They lack a sense of proportion which makes them look self-indulgent to an extreme degree. But the President’s Final Oder called for “degrading the Taliban,” not defeating them; to encourage the capacity of Afghan forces so we can drawdown our troops by July 2011; the addition of 30,000 troops (rather than 40,000); it was acceptable to hit those safe havens in Pakistan; and the cost of being there would be $113 billion a year. The problem of President Karzai was put on the back burner for another day and he is still a fly in the ointment. The Generals wanted more troops, more money and more power. Obama was their intellectual equal and had the will power to hold firm on some basic principles, keeping them on a short leash, with the civilian component of our government doing, all things considered, pretty well. The Generals huffed and they puffed but could not blow the civilians away.
And of course Gen. Stan McChrystal is long gone committing professional suicide by being flippant with his remarks when being interviewed by a journalist from Rolling Stone about the president and other members of Team Obama. The next logical choice took his place, Gen. David Patraeus. The book about these two leading lights of the military establishment has yet to be written.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Trust the Doctor
2010_10_05 Trust the Doctor
Dear Charlie,
Yesterday I talked to several guys who have experienced colonoscopies multiple times. Two of the fellows at the pool hall where I play have racked up several due to the fact their parents died of colon cancer so they and return every three years for another one. My doctor wants me to do the same thing. I don’t think I have ever objected to the procedure as strongly as you seemed to, although I did feel there had to be a damn good reason to do it, like blood in the stool. One persuasive factor for me, besides my age and simple curiosity about a colon that had never been cleaned out in three quarters century of use and abuse, was the doctor I was assigned after entering the hospital through the ER. His name was Dr. Ayaaz Ismail, originally from Zimbabwe, where he went to Med School, plus he went to Yale Med School and put in a few years at a hospital in New Haven. He was Semitic in appearance, short, trim, handsome, and very well spoken. He had a great bedside manner that was easy to respond to. My guess would be he came from the upper classes in his Zimbabwe; he was smooth, elegant and self-assured. After 14 years of experience with doctors and other medical people I have developed a keen instinct on whom I can trust and who will do right by me. I felt good about Dr. Ishmail right away. When he suggested I undergo the procedure I was willing to go with him and in retrospect I am glad I did. The fact we didn’t discover the cause of the severe abdominal pain which brought me to the ER in the first place seems part of the gamble you undertake with any medical procedure. I did come away with the knowledge that my colon was in very good shape, which is something I hadn’t had before.
Of course my experience was different from the other people I talked to because mine took place under emergency conditions; that added more stress and discomfort as I was hooked up to two IVs at the same time, which restricted my movement. I sat on three different commodes while various people were in and out of my room while I defecated uncontrollably. The whole thing was public and there was nothing I could do about it. Doing the purge at home would be a whole other experience. My vascular surgeon, Dr. Scott Berman, dropped in to see me and he stopped in his tracks when he saw me on a commode in the middle of the room. “Oh,” he said,” I didn’t know you were so indisposed.” But he did manage to tell me he had seen the CT-Scans they had taken not long after I entered the hospital and the stent graph and aneurysm looked good and were not involved in the current situation.
Have you had a colonoscopy? The actual procedure is a breeze compared to the prep that for me was a long hellacious experience. When they go up your five feet of your colon they put you in a twilight state so you can be still but yet can come out of it quickly. The procedure took 30 minutes while the prep took 10 hours. I was given a gallon of liquid called “Go-Lightly.” I was supposed to consume the entire gallon in two phases, with a little sleep in between. At one point in the first phase I sat on the john for 3 hours which was tough on my butt and knees, as you might imagine. The second phase was the easier of the two—I also cheated by pouring out about 12 Oz of the Go-Lightly down the drain. I knew I was cleaned out and enough was enough.
At the end of the procedure Dr. Ayaaz leaned over me and told me everything looked good; there was no cancer, only one polyp he removed and in general the colon was in a good state of health, which was gratifying news and certainly justified having the procedure done. However, the colitis he suspected as the cause of the pain was not present so the mystery remained unsolved. He did give me 10 photos of my clean colon, all pink and glowingly clean. I was home by dinner time on Friday night. I took it easy at dinner, eating only scrambled eggs and soup.
Later amigo,
JWP
Dear Charlie,
Yesterday I talked to several guys who have experienced colonoscopies multiple times. Two of the fellows at the pool hall where I play have racked up several due to the fact their parents died of colon cancer so they and return every three years for another one. My doctor wants me to do the same thing. I don’t think I have ever objected to the procedure as strongly as you seemed to, although I did feel there had to be a damn good reason to do it, like blood in the stool. One persuasive factor for me, besides my age and simple curiosity about a colon that had never been cleaned out in three quarters century of use and abuse, was the doctor I was assigned after entering the hospital through the ER. His name was Dr. Ayaaz Ismail, originally from Zimbabwe, where he went to Med School, plus he went to Yale Med School and put in a few years at a hospital in New Haven. He was Semitic in appearance, short, trim, handsome, and very well spoken. He had a great bedside manner that was easy to respond to. My guess would be he came from the upper classes in his Zimbabwe; he was smooth, elegant and self-assured. After 14 years of experience with doctors and other medical people I have developed a keen instinct on whom I can trust and who will do right by me. I felt good about Dr. Ishmail right away. When he suggested I undergo the procedure I was willing to go with him and in retrospect I am glad I did. The fact we didn’t discover the cause of the severe abdominal pain which brought me to the ER in the first place seems part of the gamble you undertake with any medical procedure. I did come away with the knowledge that my colon was in very good shape, which is something I hadn’t had before.
Of course my experience was different from the other people I talked to because mine took place under emergency conditions; that added more stress and discomfort as I was hooked up to two IVs at the same time, which restricted my movement. I sat on three different commodes while various people were in and out of my room while I defecated uncontrollably. The whole thing was public and there was nothing I could do about it. Doing the purge at home would be a whole other experience. My vascular surgeon, Dr. Scott Berman, dropped in to see me and he stopped in his tracks when he saw me on a commode in the middle of the room. “Oh,” he said,” I didn’t know you were so indisposed.” But he did manage to tell me he had seen the CT-Scans they had taken not long after I entered the hospital and the stent graph and aneurysm looked good and were not involved in the current situation.
Have you had a colonoscopy? The actual procedure is a breeze compared to the prep that for me was a long hellacious experience. When they go up your five feet of your colon they put you in a twilight state so you can be still but yet can come out of it quickly. The procedure took 30 minutes while the prep took 10 hours. I was given a gallon of liquid called “Go-Lightly.” I was supposed to consume the entire gallon in two phases, with a little sleep in between. At one point in the first phase I sat on the john for 3 hours which was tough on my butt and knees, as you might imagine. The second phase was the easier of the two—I also cheated by pouring out about 12 Oz of the Go-Lightly down the drain. I knew I was cleaned out and enough was enough.
At the end of the procedure Dr. Ayaaz leaned over me and told me everything looked good; there was no cancer, only one polyp he removed and in general the colon was in a good state of health, which was gratifying news and certainly justified having the procedure done. However, the colitis he suspected as the cause of the pain was not present so the mystery remained unsolved. He did give me 10 photos of my clean colon, all pink and glowingly clean. I was home by dinner time on Friday night. I took it easy at dinner, eating only scrambled eggs and soup.
Later amigo,
JWP
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Snow Cake
2010_9_26 Autism Revisited
Week ago I wrote about the film “Temple Grandin,” the autistic woman whose ideas have had an impact on how cattlemen handle and treat cows; indeed, the media tagged her, “the woman who thinks like a cow.” That was literally true, because she based all her ideas on pure observation of the behavior of cows, how they more in a pack and where they are in terms of moods and, yes, feelings. She became something of a celebrity and appeared on programs as Larry King Live and C-Span, where she was interviewed for three hours. Her tag line was always the same: ANIMMALS ARE NOT THINGS. She wasn’t a vegetarian or anything like that; she just believed we didn’t have to be so cruel and thoughtless while dealing with them. She has three degrees, with the final one a PHD from the University of Illinois. Currently she is a professor at Colorado State. She also has become a spokesperson for autism, always on demand as a speaking. She is unmarried and 63 years old.
As it happened I had found a fictional movie made in Canada called “Snow Cake,” that dealt with the subject of Autism, so I ordered it through NETFLIX. The movie opened without a clue as to where it was headed. Alex Hughes (Allan Rickman) is on his way to seeing an old friend in Winnipeg, Canada, after getting out of prison for killing someone, accidentally it turns out, but he nonetheless had to serve six years in prison. A second tragedy in his life had to do with the death of his son, a teenage boy, who was killed in an auto accident when going to meet his father for the first time. Alex is definitely a man grim around the edges and in desperate need of rejuvenation. Then, when he stops for a bite to eat, a young woman sits down at his table, strikes up a conversation, and eventually asks him for a ride to Wawa, a small town on the way to Winnipeg where her mother lives. Her name is Vivienne Freeman (Emily Hampshire) and her personality is odd, somewhat eccentric, but she’s lively and interesting so he takes her with him. Everything is going along swimmingly until they are near Wawa when all of a sudden their car is plowed into by a truck, a 16 wheeler, killing Vivienne. Alex emerges with barely a scratch but devastated that fate has slapped him with more bad karma that he didn’t need. Feeling guilty even though he wasn’t responsible for Vivienne’s death, he decides to find her mother and explain what happen and say he was sorry. He has no idea what he was going to encounter.
Linda Freeman (Sigourney Weaver) is at first an immediate puzzle and impenetrable; he knows she is odd and full of psychological quirks and physical tics and difficult to deal with. He can’t believe how unmoved she is on hearing her daughter was dead. She reacts as if her death was the same thing as a storm passing to the east of Wawa. But having seen “Temple Grandin” I realize that many Autistic people don’t like to be touched or intimate or even socialize. Temple drives her mother nuts because she can’t allow her mother to embrace her, and at one point she admits having a relationship is out of the question for her. “It is something I’ll never know” she tells her mother. This emotional distance from normal affection and needs is at the center of Linda’s personality. (Her father tells Alex she must have been raped to get pregnant, like she did.) She misses Vivienne in her fashion, but its cool and matter of fact. However, she invites Alex to stay to help her handle the next few days—and to take the garbage out, something she insists she can’t do. Nor can he enter her kitchen, and she freaks out when he does. And when the dog vomits on the floor her response is way out of proportion—but that’s how she is and there is nothing to do but accept it—and pick up the vomit. Slowly, an off-beat friendship eventually develops between them, as he learns how to deal with autism and her peculiar ways and reactions.
When he meets the attractive divorcee next door, Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss) the two are immediately attracted to each other and soon end up in the sack together. After six years in prison, it was both a tonic and a joyful transcendence for Alex, and they carry on a short but happy affair, and laugh at Linda’s comment that Maggie is a prostitute. When Alex does move on it is Maggie who takes over the job of taking the garbage out, something Alex no doubt arranged. He leaves renewed, with the sun in his face, and ready to live again. Linda by being herself and Maggie by reawakening his senses and affections centers did him a great service as he drives on to meet the woman who was the mother of his son. His stop in Wawa was more than he could have anticipated and he thanks the Universe for bringing him to these two ladies.
The chemistry between Weaver and Rickman was very good. It was subtle, solid, and believable. Stephen Holden of the New York Times saw the story as cloying and banal, a calculated use of a mentally challenged person as a kind of Prince Myshkin, a holy innocent who moves and improves others by her “curse of saintliness.” That is a wrongheaded reading of the story, making the movie more calculating and designedly sentimental than it is. Linda is who she is, an autistic woman, and Weaver plays her straight up, with no inner designs on anybody, because she is compulsive about her own reality which seems to keeps her quite self-centered and preoccupied. The effect she has on Alex is a by-product of who she is—period. I never saw her as saintly; as admirable, yes, mostly because she knew who and what she was and how to stay within her own limits, such as they were. Temple Grandin was the same way.
Maggie was there to awaken in him what Linda could not awaken: his sensual self and his capacity for love and affection based on touch. It was as if Linda was the sun and Maggie was the moon, and it was the combination that made him feel complete and able to face whatever might be ahead.
The film had a lovely poetic ending which also explained why the film was called “Snow Cake.” There is a scene in the film where Linda lays in the snow and eats a lot of snow which she enjoys doing. When Alex leaves he tells her he left her a gift which is in the freezer. Later, when she opens the freezer she finds a large cake made of snow with small snowballs on top. She is delighted and immediately cuts a piece and eats it, which is end of story.
Week ago I wrote about the film “Temple Grandin,” the autistic woman whose ideas have had an impact on how cattlemen handle and treat cows; indeed, the media tagged her, “the woman who thinks like a cow.” That was literally true, because she based all her ideas on pure observation of the behavior of cows, how they more in a pack and where they are in terms of moods and, yes, feelings. She became something of a celebrity and appeared on programs as Larry King Live and C-Span, where she was interviewed for three hours. Her tag line was always the same: ANIMMALS ARE NOT THINGS. She wasn’t a vegetarian or anything like that; she just believed we didn’t have to be so cruel and thoughtless while dealing with them. She has three degrees, with the final one a PHD from the University of Illinois. Currently she is a professor at Colorado State. She also has become a spokesperson for autism, always on demand as a speaking. She is unmarried and 63 years old.
As it happened I had found a fictional movie made in Canada called “Snow Cake,” that dealt with the subject of Autism, so I ordered it through NETFLIX. The movie opened without a clue as to where it was headed. Alex Hughes (Allan Rickman) is on his way to seeing an old friend in Winnipeg, Canada, after getting out of prison for killing someone, accidentally it turns out, but he nonetheless had to serve six years in prison. A second tragedy in his life had to do with the death of his son, a teenage boy, who was killed in an auto accident when going to meet his father for the first time. Alex is definitely a man grim around the edges and in desperate need of rejuvenation. Then, when he stops for a bite to eat, a young woman sits down at his table, strikes up a conversation, and eventually asks him for a ride to Wawa, a small town on the way to Winnipeg where her mother lives. Her name is Vivienne Freeman (Emily Hampshire) and her personality is odd, somewhat eccentric, but she’s lively and interesting so he takes her with him. Everything is going along swimmingly until they are near Wawa when all of a sudden their car is plowed into by a truck, a 16 wheeler, killing Vivienne. Alex emerges with barely a scratch but devastated that fate has slapped him with more bad karma that he didn’t need. Feeling guilty even though he wasn’t responsible for Vivienne’s death, he decides to find her mother and explain what happen and say he was sorry. He has no idea what he was going to encounter.
Linda Freeman (Sigourney Weaver) is at first an immediate puzzle and impenetrable; he knows she is odd and full of psychological quirks and physical tics and difficult to deal with. He can’t believe how unmoved she is on hearing her daughter was dead. She reacts as if her death was the same thing as a storm passing to the east of Wawa. But having seen “Temple Grandin” I realize that many Autistic people don’t like to be touched or intimate or even socialize. Temple drives her mother nuts because she can’t allow her mother to embrace her, and at one point she admits having a relationship is out of the question for her. “It is something I’ll never know” she tells her mother. This emotional distance from normal affection and needs is at the center of Linda’s personality. (Her father tells Alex she must have been raped to get pregnant, like she did.) She misses Vivienne in her fashion, but its cool and matter of fact. However, she invites Alex to stay to help her handle the next few days—and to take the garbage out, something she insists she can’t do. Nor can he enter her kitchen, and she freaks out when he does. And when the dog vomits on the floor her response is way out of proportion—but that’s how she is and there is nothing to do but accept it—and pick up the vomit. Slowly, an off-beat friendship eventually develops between them, as he learns how to deal with autism and her peculiar ways and reactions.
When he meets the attractive divorcee next door, Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss) the two are immediately attracted to each other and soon end up in the sack together. After six years in prison, it was both a tonic and a joyful transcendence for Alex, and they carry on a short but happy affair, and laugh at Linda’s comment that Maggie is a prostitute. When Alex does move on it is Maggie who takes over the job of taking the garbage out, something Alex no doubt arranged. He leaves renewed, with the sun in his face, and ready to live again. Linda by being herself and Maggie by reawakening his senses and affections centers did him a great service as he drives on to meet the woman who was the mother of his son. His stop in Wawa was more than he could have anticipated and he thanks the Universe for bringing him to these two ladies.
The chemistry between Weaver and Rickman was very good. It was subtle, solid, and believable. Stephen Holden of the New York Times saw the story as cloying and banal, a calculated use of a mentally challenged person as a kind of Prince Myshkin, a holy innocent who moves and improves others by her “curse of saintliness.” That is a wrongheaded reading of the story, making the movie more calculating and designedly sentimental than it is. Linda is who she is, an autistic woman, and Weaver plays her straight up, with no inner designs on anybody, because she is compulsive about her own reality which seems to keeps her quite self-centered and preoccupied. The effect she has on Alex is a by-product of who she is—period. I never saw her as saintly; as admirable, yes, mostly because she knew who and what she was and how to stay within her own limits, such as they were. Temple Grandin was the same way.
Maggie was there to awaken in him what Linda could not awaken: his sensual self and his capacity for love and affection based on touch. It was as if Linda was the sun and Maggie was the moon, and it was the combination that made him feel complete and able to face whatever might be ahead.
The film had a lovely poetic ending which also explained why the film was called “Snow Cake.” There is a scene in the film where Linda lays in the snow and eats a lot of snow which she enjoys doing. When Alex leaves he tells her he left her a gift which is in the freezer. Later, when she opens the freezer she finds a large cake made of snow with small snowballs on top. She is delighted and immediately cuts a piece and eats it, which is end of story.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Game without a Prize
2010_9_18 A Game Without a Prize
Modern Art has been an umbrella for all kinds of marginal individualists. Some are professional artists, some are artists self-taught, and some, strictly speaking, aren’t artists, more like people who were fellow-travelers with imagination. Arthur Craven comes to mind as the latter. He was a poet-boxer, a self-styled Dadaist, and a nephew of Oscar Wilde which made him feel he had the right stuff to hang out with artist and poets. Craven got hooked up with Mina Loy, a poet, who was big in Bohemian circles. In any event, most of these marginal figures were compulsive about their creativity, but they made art more for personal satisfaction than worldly rewards or even recognition. Making things provided energy for self-transformation. It was art for the artist’s sake; indeed, it was anti-public art, where communication was not an urgent issue. It was doing, the process, which drew them into art, the uplifting energy which was the goal and the benefit. Some of these people were the off-spring of Dada and Surrealism, with Marcel Duchamp the trail blazer and chief role model.
Several years ago I saw a documentary about a prototypical eccentric artist, Ray Johnson (1927-1995), an American artist who was a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, performance art, and a pioneer in using language in his collages. Because he was so often on the cutting edge he was known as “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” His cult status in New York was probably was behind the making of the movie about Johnson. It was made by John Walter and Andrew Moore. They titled the film, “How to Draw a Bunny.” My friend Paul Fako was the first to tell about the film which I then ordered from NETFLIX. Johnson started out an abstract painter after attending the most progressive college of the early post-war era, Black Mountain College. But he didn’t stick with painting very long and eventually devoted most of his attention to collage and to becoming the underground artist extraordinaire. He scorned the gallery scene, calling his involvement with art “a game without a prize.”
There was a small scale, stay-at-home hermetic character to his collages and “mail art.” The latter was another of his innovations. He would send small colleges by mail and ask the recipient to add something to the image and send it on to someone else. He was one of the first to try an interactive art. His work was a species of introverted doodling fed by an eternal fountain of playfulness. He had a unique ability to turn everything into a pun, a joke, a performance, or an image. For example, and this was in the film: a broken bottle of instant coffee became “Coffee Break,” spontaneous throw-away joke, art that exist primarily in the mind. These kind of encounters, like the broken bottle, Marcel Duchamp tagged “ready-mades” which were “a sort of rendezvous,” something the result of “the long arm of coincidence.” Johnson’s signature image was a (sort of) bunny head, hence the title of the film. His friends enjoyed having Ray around because he was an amusing fellow and you never knew what he might say or do next. Like Duchamp he excelled at “breathing.”
Unfortunately, on June 3, 1968 Ray was mugged and attacked in lower Manhattan. It was, oddly and coincidentally, the same day that Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas and just two days before the Robert Kennedy was gunned down. Did he see this event as more evidence of synchronicity? We don’t know but we do know he moved to Glen Cove, Long Island, where he continued to work hard but at the same time he became increasingly more reclusive and cultivated his role as an outsider. He turned down several show opportunities in New York.
His death occurred on June 13, 1995. He was found face-down floating in Sag Harbor. Authorities figured he jumped off a nearby bridge. Some of his friends are convinced it was a “performance suicide.” They noticed a strange numerological coincidence. He was 67 when he died, with the two numbers adding up to 13. His hotel room’s number was 247, again the numbers adding up to 13. And of course June was the month he was assaulted, Warhol was shot, and RFK was killed. As far as I could find out he was in good health. He left no will and to everybody’s surprise his bank account had $400,000 in it, just one more mystery about Mr. Johnson. The money was distributed among 10 cousins.
Arthur Craven had a similar mysterious death or at least disappearance. He rowed off into the Gulf of Mexico by himself and was never seen again, nor was his body found. Like Elvis, maybe he is alive somewhere, dreaming of Mina Loy.
Modern Art has been an umbrella for all kinds of marginal individualists. Some are professional artists, some are artists self-taught, and some, strictly speaking, aren’t artists, more like people who were fellow-travelers with imagination. Arthur Craven comes to mind as the latter. He was a poet-boxer, a self-styled Dadaist, and a nephew of Oscar Wilde which made him feel he had the right stuff to hang out with artist and poets. Craven got hooked up with Mina Loy, a poet, who was big in Bohemian circles. In any event, most of these marginal figures were compulsive about their creativity, but they made art more for personal satisfaction than worldly rewards or even recognition. Making things provided energy for self-transformation. It was art for the artist’s sake; indeed, it was anti-public art, where communication was not an urgent issue. It was doing, the process, which drew them into art, the uplifting energy which was the goal and the benefit. Some of these people were the off-spring of Dada and Surrealism, with Marcel Duchamp the trail blazer and chief role model.
Several years ago I saw a documentary about a prototypical eccentric artist, Ray Johnson (1927-1995), an American artist who was a seminal figure in the Pop Art movement, performance art, and a pioneer in using language in his collages. Because he was so often on the cutting edge he was known as “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” His cult status in New York was probably was behind the making of the movie about Johnson. It was made by John Walter and Andrew Moore. They titled the film, “How to Draw a Bunny.” My friend Paul Fako was the first to tell about the film which I then ordered from NETFLIX. Johnson started out an abstract painter after attending the most progressive college of the early post-war era, Black Mountain College. But he didn’t stick with painting very long and eventually devoted most of his attention to collage and to becoming the underground artist extraordinaire. He scorned the gallery scene, calling his involvement with art “a game without a prize.”
There was a small scale, stay-at-home hermetic character to his collages and “mail art.” The latter was another of his innovations. He would send small colleges by mail and ask the recipient to add something to the image and send it on to someone else. He was one of the first to try an interactive art. His work was a species of introverted doodling fed by an eternal fountain of playfulness. He had a unique ability to turn everything into a pun, a joke, a performance, or an image. For example, and this was in the film: a broken bottle of instant coffee became “Coffee Break,” spontaneous throw-away joke, art that exist primarily in the mind. These kind of encounters, like the broken bottle, Marcel Duchamp tagged “ready-mades” which were “a sort of rendezvous,” something the result of “the long arm of coincidence.” Johnson’s signature image was a (sort of) bunny head, hence the title of the film. His friends enjoyed having Ray around because he was an amusing fellow and you never knew what he might say or do next. Like Duchamp he excelled at “breathing.”
Unfortunately, on June 3, 1968 Ray was mugged and attacked in lower Manhattan. It was, oddly and coincidentally, the same day that Andy Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas and just two days before the Robert Kennedy was gunned down. Did he see this event as more evidence of synchronicity? We don’t know but we do know he moved to Glen Cove, Long Island, where he continued to work hard but at the same time he became increasingly more reclusive and cultivated his role as an outsider. He turned down several show opportunities in New York.
His death occurred on June 13, 1995. He was found face-down floating in Sag Harbor. Authorities figured he jumped off a nearby bridge. Some of his friends are convinced it was a “performance suicide.” They noticed a strange numerological coincidence. He was 67 when he died, with the two numbers adding up to 13. His hotel room’s number was 247, again the numbers adding up to 13. And of course June was the month he was assaulted, Warhol was shot, and RFK was killed. As far as I could find out he was in good health. He left no will and to everybody’s surprise his bank account had $400,000 in it, just one more mystery about Mr. Johnson. The money was distributed among 10 cousins.
Arthur Craven had a similar mysterious death or at least disappearance. He rowed off into the Gulf of Mexico by himself and was never seen again, nor was his body found. Like Elvis, maybe he is alive somewhere, dreaming of Mina Loy.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Desert of Desire
2010_9_ 17 The Desert of Desire
Alain Corneau, a well-respected French Director, died last week. The only movie of his that I have seen was “All the Mornings of the World,” which I enjoyed immensely. I decided I should get online and order one of his films from NETFLIX. I chose “Fort Saganne” with Gerard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and Sophie Merceau, who was very young at the time and looked pretty and breakable, like a 19th century doll. The film was released in 1984. I was surprised how good Depardieu looked. I was used to seeing him with more pounds on his frame. Here he was thin, trim and handsome, like a rugby player. He was about 35 at the time. How he looked made me remember how Brando looked before his fatty inflation. I compared Depardieu to Brando in “The Last Tango in Paris,” the last movie in which he looked like himself. Corivan had the good fortune to work with Depardieu before he grew large, when he looked like an athlete and could handle physical acting.
“Fort Saganne” starts with our hero, Charles Saganne, as a mere boy looking through a lattice date that was entrance to a French Estate in the countryside. He is clearly in a state of envy. Out of nowhere the boy told his dad that someday that house would be his. It was a young prole dreaming about what he didn’t have and probably never would. When of age he joined the French Foreign Legion where he began a career that took him to heights he never would imagine as a boy. He was sent to the Sahara in 1911 and fell in love with the desert, its bigness, its silence and its space—the majesty it had under heaven and the stars. But this movie, in a backhanded way, is a pre-WW I story, a personal tale about one man and how his life meshed with history. Naturally, a girl had to be on the horizon. It was a very young Sophie Merceau as Madeleine of Saint-llette who became his love. But her parents would not hear of it because Saganne was a nobody in 1911. Their daughter had to marry a somebody.
The first thing Charles had to deal with in the French-controlled Sahara was his commanding officer, Debreuilh (Philippe Noiret) who goads him on to several dangerous missions and a few heroic actions, one of which nets him a medal, the highest honor his country could pay to a military man. When he becomes a hero Dubreuilh sends him to Paris to convince the government to press their military advantage and destroy insurgents under the leadership of Muslim fanatic. Saganne is turned down but he soon forgets about that failure with a great success: a passionate affair with Louise Tissot (Deneuve), the journalist who had written a critical article about him. But alas, it came to an end after a disagreement and they went their separate ways. Deneuve, who was 40 at the time, was the ultimate cool blonde, the Ice Queen and the secret slut, which Bunel had shown so brilliantly in “Belle de Jour.” David Thomson got it right when he said she was “perhaps the greatest cool blonde, forever hinting at intimations of depravity.” In “Belle de Jour” she played a bored housewife who took an afternoon job as a prostitute and was quite content with her split life.
Charles eventually finds Madeleine on one of later his trips home. She declares her love for him and her parents no longer object to him as he is now a national hero. The newspaper kept writing about him as a brave soldier. He keeps saying he did no more than what any good Legionnaire would have done in the circumstance. He and Madeleine marry and move into the estate we saw at the beginning of the film, which he can now afford to buy, thus fulfilling a promise he had made to himself as a boy. He impregnates his new wife before he goes to war again, only this time it World War I, the so-called “Great War.”
I knew how “Fort Saganne” was going to end—had to end. I knew the story ended in 1914, the same year that WW I started. Ironically, he ran into Louise just as he was preparing to go to the Western Front. She was now a Red Cross nurse. They kiss and embrace and he tells her he loves his wife but he admits he loves her more. Before he climbs on the truck he pauses to look back at Nurse Louise and said to himself, “Don’t move; just stay like you are forever.” The scene reeks with sadness, beauty and destiny, with a romantic longing that is going to end badly. The next time we see him he is in the trenches about to lead a charge against the German machine guns. His men are slaughter as they make this mad dash to their deaths. He is the last man left, still the surviving hero. He pauses but then stands up, fires his pistol and gets shot in the chest. He had stood there as if he was invincible. Somehow they got him to the field hospital where a nurse manages to tell him his wife had a baby boy; he then expires. A field doctor checks his pulse to make sure he is dead and then tells the nurse, “Throw the body into the water; we don’t have any more room for bodies here.” What an inglorious end for a tragic hero!
The contrast between fighting in the Sahara and the “Fields of Flanders,” could not be more vivid. Corneau was making his point perfectly clear: the fighting in the desert fit better in the 18th or 19th century, whereas the fighting in WW I was simply wholesale slaughter. In the desert you fought one on one, bayonet against bayonet; the numbers were smaller and personal bravery meant something. And bodies were buried in the sand, not cast aside willy-nilly.
Yes, WW I was our first all-out technological war and it was led and sustained by generals of such stupidity that they kept sending men to certain death rather than trying different tactics. Saganne’s honor and bravery in the Sahara was as vast as the desert, but on the battlefield of the Western Front he was cannon fodder and food for the fishes
Alain Corneau, a well-respected French Director, died last week. The only movie of his that I have seen was “All the Mornings of the World,” which I enjoyed immensely. I decided I should get online and order one of his films from NETFLIX. I chose “Fort Saganne” with Gerard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve and Sophie Merceau, who was very young at the time and looked pretty and breakable, like a 19th century doll. The film was released in 1984. I was surprised how good Depardieu looked. I was used to seeing him with more pounds on his frame. Here he was thin, trim and handsome, like a rugby player. He was about 35 at the time. How he looked made me remember how Brando looked before his fatty inflation. I compared Depardieu to Brando in “The Last Tango in Paris,” the last movie in which he looked like himself. Corivan had the good fortune to work with Depardieu before he grew large, when he looked like an athlete and could handle physical acting.
“Fort Saganne” starts with our hero, Charles Saganne, as a mere boy looking through a lattice date that was entrance to a French Estate in the countryside. He is clearly in a state of envy. Out of nowhere the boy told his dad that someday that house would be his. It was a young prole dreaming about what he didn’t have and probably never would. When of age he joined the French Foreign Legion where he began a career that took him to heights he never would imagine as a boy. He was sent to the Sahara in 1911 and fell in love with the desert, its bigness, its silence and its space—the majesty it had under heaven and the stars. But this movie, in a backhanded way, is a pre-WW I story, a personal tale about one man and how his life meshed with history. Naturally, a girl had to be on the horizon. It was a very young Sophie Merceau as Madeleine of Saint-llette who became his love. But her parents would not hear of it because Saganne was a nobody in 1911. Their daughter had to marry a somebody.
The first thing Charles had to deal with in the French-controlled Sahara was his commanding officer, Debreuilh (Philippe Noiret) who goads him on to several dangerous missions and a few heroic actions, one of which nets him a medal, the highest honor his country could pay to a military man. When he becomes a hero Dubreuilh sends him to Paris to convince the government to press their military advantage and destroy insurgents under the leadership of Muslim fanatic. Saganne is turned down but he soon forgets about that failure with a great success: a passionate affair with Louise Tissot (Deneuve), the journalist who had written a critical article about him. But alas, it came to an end after a disagreement and they went their separate ways. Deneuve, who was 40 at the time, was the ultimate cool blonde, the Ice Queen and the secret slut, which Bunel had shown so brilliantly in “Belle de Jour.” David Thomson got it right when he said she was “perhaps the greatest cool blonde, forever hinting at intimations of depravity.” In “Belle de Jour” she played a bored housewife who took an afternoon job as a prostitute and was quite content with her split life.
Charles eventually finds Madeleine on one of later his trips home. She declares her love for him and her parents no longer object to him as he is now a national hero. The newspaper kept writing about him as a brave soldier. He keeps saying he did no more than what any good Legionnaire would have done in the circumstance. He and Madeleine marry and move into the estate we saw at the beginning of the film, which he can now afford to buy, thus fulfilling a promise he had made to himself as a boy. He impregnates his new wife before he goes to war again, only this time it World War I, the so-called “Great War.”
I knew how “Fort Saganne” was going to end—had to end. I knew the story ended in 1914, the same year that WW I started. Ironically, he ran into Louise just as he was preparing to go to the Western Front. She was now a Red Cross nurse. They kiss and embrace and he tells her he loves his wife but he admits he loves her more. Before he climbs on the truck he pauses to look back at Nurse Louise and said to himself, “Don’t move; just stay like you are forever.” The scene reeks with sadness, beauty and destiny, with a romantic longing that is going to end badly. The next time we see him he is in the trenches about to lead a charge against the German machine guns. His men are slaughter as they make this mad dash to their deaths. He is the last man left, still the surviving hero. He pauses but then stands up, fires his pistol and gets shot in the chest. He had stood there as if he was invincible. Somehow they got him to the field hospital where a nurse manages to tell him his wife had a baby boy; he then expires. A field doctor checks his pulse to make sure he is dead and then tells the nurse, “Throw the body into the water; we don’t have any more room for bodies here.” What an inglorious end for a tragic hero!
The contrast between fighting in the Sahara and the “Fields of Flanders,” could not be more vivid. Corneau was making his point perfectly clear: the fighting in the desert fit better in the 18th or 19th century, whereas the fighting in WW I was simply wholesale slaughter. In the desert you fought one on one, bayonet against bayonet; the numbers were smaller and personal bravery meant something. And bodies were buried in the sand, not cast aside willy-nilly.
Yes, WW I was our first all-out technological war and it was led and sustained by generals of such stupidity that they kept sending men to certain death rather than trying different tactics. Saganne’s honor and bravery in the Sahara was as vast as the desert, but on the battlefield of the Western Front he was cannon fodder and food for the fishes
Friday, September 17, 2010
Two Movies on DVD.
2010-9_16 Two new movies on DVD
“Temple Grandin” was a feature film on HBO now available on DVD. Temple is an autistic woman who made her mark despite being mentally challenged and odd. She is played masterfully by Claire Danes and Julie Ormond plays her long-suffering mother. Now, before I go any farther, I should state this notion: I believe ‘stunt acting’ is easier to do than portraying a normal person. Temple was extraordinary but you’d never call her normal. It is quite different to slip into the character of a normal person; it takes nuance, subtlety, and empathy; it’s the little things that have to carry so much. You have to stay within certain parameters that will validate and express your common humanity. Portraying the Rain Man or Ratzo Rizzo or Quasimodo was by definition doing an extreme characterization. They were outside the lines that mark and contain normality.
Temple was a load for most of her teachers; they dreaded having to deal with her because she was so intense, her eyes wide open, almost bulging, and usually talking a blue streak with little regard for communication. But she lucked out in High School due to the fact her Science teacher (David Strathairn) recognized her unique gifts and made her realize their value and potential. She had a photographic memory, an unusual ability to think visually, and skills at constructing things or at least designing things for others to build. “The Squeeze Box” was her first invention. She had noticed how cows calmed down inside a contraption that gently squeezed them. She built a gadget following that same principle and used it herself in her dorm. And she was agitated quite a bit of the time. For her the Squeeze Box was a substitute for a mother’s hug, as she didn’t like anybody touching her.
Then when she was a grad student at ASU in Tempe, Arizona, she noticed the cattle liked to move in circles, and when they went through the delousing pen they would always lose three or four cows by drowning. Out of those observations came first, curving pens which the cows accepted as the natural order of things, staying calm in the process; and secondly, she introduced a step-down platform into the water rather than a sudden step off into deep water and it stop the drowning. She designed a slaughter procedure that was more respectful of the animal and kept them calm rather than traumatized. Some cowboys refused to accept these new approaches but by now her ideas have had quite an impact. Progressive ranchers have gone to her designs.
So where is Temple today? She is a professor in the Agriculture Department at Colorado State University, proving once again that one person’s handicap is another’s person’s special gift.
Rarely do I choose a movie for its title, but I must say “The City of Your Final Destination” was one time I did. Of course the fact that Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney were in it as well, was more incentive to see the film. Also helpful was the fact it was a Merchant Ivory film. That cinched the deal.
An Academic named Omar Razaghi, in an effort to save his position in a Literature Department decides to go to Uruguay to interview the family members of a famous author whose name is Jules Gund whose biography has never been written; he had been goaded on by his girl friend Deirdre despite the fact the family had said they would not agree to authorize a biography. Gund, the scion of a rich German family that had moved to South America in the thirties hit it big with his only novel and not long afterward killed himself because he could not finish a second book. When Omar arrives in Ocho Rios, the name of the Gund estate, he is gratified to hear that Adam (Hopkins), the older brother, an aging homosexual living with a Japanese man (Hiroyuki Sanada) who refinishes furniture, a relationship of twenty five years duration, he is gratified to hear Adam is on his side, quite in favor of a biography; which he thinks it would be a good thing. Caroline (Laura Linney), the widow of Jules Gund, a blond beauty I immediately called the “Ice Queen,” feels just the reverse; she gives Omar an absolute no deal. Nothing will change her mind. Gund’s mistress, Arden Langdon (Charlotte Gainsbourg), isn’t sure how she feels about the proposed biography. She has a daughter named Portia fathered by Jules. It is noticeable to all that Arden and Omar are attracted to each other, but they are busy denying it. Pete, the Japanese lover of Adam, wants to turn Ocho Rios into a business, but Caroline won’t buy that idea either.
She is a dilettante who dabbles in copying medieval images, although there is nothing at all about her that suggests spirituality of any sort. Unbeknownst to the others she has squirreled away Jules’ unfinished manuscript. In similar fashion Adam grabbed his mother’s entire diamond jewelry collection when she died. Caroline seems utterly discontent with her situation at Ocho Rios. She seems bored, hanging on with no purpose to her life. She gives other people a bad time because she has nothing else to entertain her.
Omar has an accident which brings his girl friend to Ocho Rios. He has an allergic reaction to some bee stings and fell off a ladder which put him in the hospital for several days. It is her arrival that pushes the moment to its crisis. Omar realizes he hates the pushy Deirdre and loves Arden, who is not as attractive, ambitious, or bright. But it doesn’t matter. She fits better than Deirdre did. Adam comes up with an alluring idea: he will offer Caroline the jewels or the money Pete can get for them, which should be considerable. There is short dialogue between Caroline and Adam. She asks him whether he’d prefer to stay at Ocho Rios or live in London or New York. His answer is classic for an outsider content with what he has: “Because you have to care about—or at least pretend to care about everything: politics, fashion, culture. It’s just too exhausting.” She in contrast would give anything to go to an opera. When Adam hears that he is certain they have a deal and they do. Her last act before leaving is burning her dead husband’s manuscript.
The story ends several years later at an opera in Europe with Deirdre running into Caroline. Deirdre is with a new man and so is Caroline. They chat for a few minutes. Caroline tells Deirdre that Arden has had another child; that means Omar is the father and is living in Ocho Rios, taking her place at the Gund table. He gave up not only on the book about Jules, but his whole academic career. He had found out that love was more important than a teaching career. Adam and Pete did go into business and were doing well. As for Deirdre she did not bat an eye hearing about Arden and Omar. She was teaching at Columbia and was dressed to the nines. She was much more interested in becoming friends with Caroline back in New York where they both lived.
One characteristic of the film, despite conflict situations, difficult choices to be made, and passions aroused, was its cool tone, its level-headedness, and even philosophical temper. No one got too excited and in the end everything got sorted out to the betterment of all concerned. I rather like that quality in the film—no muss, no fuss, things will work out for the best and everyone will go on with lives.
“Temple Grandin” was a feature film on HBO now available on DVD. Temple is an autistic woman who made her mark despite being mentally challenged and odd. She is played masterfully by Claire Danes and Julie Ormond plays her long-suffering mother. Now, before I go any farther, I should state this notion: I believe ‘stunt acting’ is easier to do than portraying a normal person. Temple was extraordinary but you’d never call her normal. It is quite different to slip into the character of a normal person; it takes nuance, subtlety, and empathy; it’s the little things that have to carry so much. You have to stay within certain parameters that will validate and express your common humanity. Portraying the Rain Man or Ratzo Rizzo or Quasimodo was by definition doing an extreme characterization. They were outside the lines that mark and contain normality.
Temple was a load for most of her teachers; they dreaded having to deal with her because she was so intense, her eyes wide open, almost bulging, and usually talking a blue streak with little regard for communication. But she lucked out in High School due to the fact her Science teacher (David Strathairn) recognized her unique gifts and made her realize their value and potential. She had a photographic memory, an unusual ability to think visually, and skills at constructing things or at least designing things for others to build. “The Squeeze Box” was her first invention. She had noticed how cows calmed down inside a contraption that gently squeezed them. She built a gadget following that same principle and used it herself in her dorm. And she was agitated quite a bit of the time. For her the Squeeze Box was a substitute for a mother’s hug, as she didn’t like anybody touching her.
Then when she was a grad student at ASU in Tempe, Arizona, she noticed the cattle liked to move in circles, and when they went through the delousing pen they would always lose three or four cows by drowning. Out of those observations came first, curving pens which the cows accepted as the natural order of things, staying calm in the process; and secondly, she introduced a step-down platform into the water rather than a sudden step off into deep water and it stop the drowning. She designed a slaughter procedure that was more respectful of the animal and kept them calm rather than traumatized. Some cowboys refused to accept these new approaches but by now her ideas have had quite an impact. Progressive ranchers have gone to her designs.
So where is Temple today? She is a professor in the Agriculture Department at Colorado State University, proving once again that one person’s handicap is another’s person’s special gift.
Rarely do I choose a movie for its title, but I must say “The City of Your Final Destination” was one time I did. Of course the fact that Anthony Hopkins and Laura Linney were in it as well, was more incentive to see the film. Also helpful was the fact it was a Merchant Ivory film. That cinched the deal.
An Academic named Omar Razaghi, in an effort to save his position in a Literature Department decides to go to Uruguay to interview the family members of a famous author whose name is Jules Gund whose biography has never been written; he had been goaded on by his girl friend Deirdre despite the fact the family had said they would not agree to authorize a biography. Gund, the scion of a rich German family that had moved to South America in the thirties hit it big with his only novel and not long afterward killed himself because he could not finish a second book. When Omar arrives in Ocho Rios, the name of the Gund estate, he is gratified to hear that Adam (Hopkins), the older brother, an aging homosexual living with a Japanese man (Hiroyuki Sanada) who refinishes furniture, a relationship of twenty five years duration, he is gratified to hear Adam is on his side, quite in favor of a biography; which he thinks it would be a good thing. Caroline (Laura Linney), the widow of Jules Gund, a blond beauty I immediately called the “Ice Queen,” feels just the reverse; she gives Omar an absolute no deal. Nothing will change her mind. Gund’s mistress, Arden Langdon (Charlotte Gainsbourg), isn’t sure how she feels about the proposed biography. She has a daughter named Portia fathered by Jules. It is noticeable to all that Arden and Omar are attracted to each other, but they are busy denying it. Pete, the Japanese lover of Adam, wants to turn Ocho Rios into a business, but Caroline won’t buy that idea either.
She is a dilettante who dabbles in copying medieval images, although there is nothing at all about her that suggests spirituality of any sort. Unbeknownst to the others she has squirreled away Jules’ unfinished manuscript. In similar fashion Adam grabbed his mother’s entire diamond jewelry collection when she died. Caroline seems utterly discontent with her situation at Ocho Rios. She seems bored, hanging on with no purpose to her life. She gives other people a bad time because she has nothing else to entertain her.
Omar has an accident which brings his girl friend to Ocho Rios. He has an allergic reaction to some bee stings and fell off a ladder which put him in the hospital for several days. It is her arrival that pushes the moment to its crisis. Omar realizes he hates the pushy Deirdre and loves Arden, who is not as attractive, ambitious, or bright. But it doesn’t matter. She fits better than Deirdre did. Adam comes up with an alluring idea: he will offer Caroline the jewels or the money Pete can get for them, which should be considerable. There is short dialogue between Caroline and Adam. She asks him whether he’d prefer to stay at Ocho Rios or live in London or New York. His answer is classic for an outsider content with what he has: “Because you have to care about—or at least pretend to care about everything: politics, fashion, culture. It’s just too exhausting.” She in contrast would give anything to go to an opera. When Adam hears that he is certain they have a deal and they do. Her last act before leaving is burning her dead husband’s manuscript.
The story ends several years later at an opera in Europe with Deirdre running into Caroline. Deirdre is with a new man and so is Caroline. They chat for a few minutes. Caroline tells Deirdre that Arden has had another child; that means Omar is the father and is living in Ocho Rios, taking her place at the Gund table. He gave up not only on the book about Jules, but his whole academic career. He had found out that love was more important than a teaching career. Adam and Pete did go into business and were doing well. As for Deirdre she did not bat an eye hearing about Arden and Omar. She was teaching at Columbia and was dressed to the nines. She was much more interested in becoming friends with Caroline back in New York where they both lived.
One characteristic of the film, despite conflict situations, difficult choices to be made, and passions aroused, was its cool tone, its level-headedness, and even philosophical temper. No one got too excited and in the end everything got sorted out to the betterment of all concerned. I rather like that quality in the film—no muss, no fuss, things will work out for the best and everyone will go on with lives.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Redon and Symbolism
2010_9_ 11 Redon and Symbolism
On Oct. 12, 1972 I wrote in my journal about the drawing I now regard as my signature image. I refer to “God’s Athlete in the Abyss,” which appears in PRIMUS ROTA. At the time I was sitting back and enjoying my handiwork after a few previous attempts of the idea. I had found an image of a guy hanging in that position in one of my wife’s Dance magazines; interestingly, from a dance called “Pain.” The final effort was good, in focus, and clean, simple, complete and immaculate. It expressed what I meant it to: In a single image it revealed the essence of my INFERNO experience. Now when I contemplate the image the INFERNO experience flares before my mind’s eye, bringing it all back home to me again. It allows me to relive my visionary death and rebirth.
At the time the image reminded me of a Tarot card; it still does. It has a vertical format, a similar proportion, and a single figure like so many of the traditional cards. The darkness included in the image brings in an occult element, and a feeling of dread evoked by the serpent, the fact the figure has no head, and the raging waters below. The figure struggles to hold his legs up, to keep them dry and out of the water. (I believe it was Heraclitus who said, “The dry soul is the wisest.”) The image also has an atmosphere of mystery about it. Enigma rules.
Actually I was trying to encapsulate the Kundalini experience which was what the INFERNO was all about. It was inadvertent, accidental, if you will, but it happened to me nonetheless. But I didn’t want it to be schematic, and I think I succeeded. Experiencing Kundalini is not what you would call a rational experience. It is calling forth out of the depths of the subtle body within all of us what the yogis of India call Shakti or divine creative energy, a force that can awaken at any time or one can learn to coax out into the open by spiritual discipline and practice. It happened to me the first time after a particularly trying year in Las Vegas. I experienced what others have termed a “Dark Night of the Soul,” and my hanging man is meant to suggest the fright that was part of the trip. In a sense I did not have adequate preparation for what was happening to me, no guide, no guru to tell me not to worry. According to the Kabbalah the Abyss can be found on the Tree of Life, in the upper branches; it is where Divine contact is possible. Only ‘‘God’s Athlete” can psychologically survive the Abyss and turn it to the SELF’s benefit.
I deliberately made my athlete less muscle-bound and a softer looking male because that was more fitting for my physique; and then I added bloodied bandages on his legs and arms to connote wounds and struggle, which are also the attributes of a warrior. The head of a lone fish was visible out of the ‘chaos of waters’ down below. The fish can dive into the unconscious; it can also be understood as the nascent Self. I also put the fish in close proximity to a whirlwind on the border of the image and as well close to what I then called “the black ball,” my premier symbol through hundreds of drawings over 30 years.
When I first showed the image to friends and acquaintances they, rather predictably, found the image too sinister and too scary. No doubt in 1972 the influence of the malignant drawings I did in the late sixties was still in me and it would take some time to be transcended. But given what I was dealing with in creating the drawing aspects of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ had to be part and parcel of the final image. I wasn’t describing a picnic on the grass with the sun shining. After all, I did hang in Cosmic Night while “Serpent Power” climbed up my spinal tree to overwhelm my rational self, which was a scary experience—but only because it was the unknown. The second time it happened, in Eugene in 1969, I was ready for it and the rush, although powerful, became a very positive thing. To make a comparison: having a second baby by home birth was a lot easier for Sue and me after the first one at home. The second was a walk in the park compared to the first.
Following on the INFERNO and a few years later the invention of THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER, I became interested in some artists I hadn’t gotten into before, for example, Odilon Redon. He once said,” We must remember that we have other things than the eyes to satisfy, that we carry in ourselves (such_ troubles, joys, or pains which the great artist know how to address.” In his book PURPOSES OF ART the author, Albert Elsen compares Redon’s lithograph, “Light of Day,” with a conventional painting of the same subject matter, a scene of looking out the window, by a contemporary academic painter by the name of Caillbotte. It was a revealing comparison. Although similar in theme, they were worlds apart; one is the result of vision or “second sight,” the other is nothing but the facts. “Light of Day” depicted a dark interior room, a window and a tree outside the window. Simple enough. Caillbotte’s painting was a descriptive scene of a man looking out the window—period, no more, no less. What you see is all there was. Elsen wrote the following about “Light of Day.”
“As we focus on our side of the window we see this is no ordinary room, and that vague, softly luminous shapes hover in the darkness. It is as if Redon were metaphorically showing us the mysterious dark world that exists behind the human eye. What we see through the window we can describe but what lies in front has been only suggested, not defined, and this is the goal of poetic thought…Like music, they transport us into the ambiguous world of the undetermined. Redon’s modernity thus lies in his cultivation of his own experience, the creation of a private, undecipherable, but lonely world; he was an artist stimulated by the creative process whose intent was not to criticize or reform his public. His interest was to involve the spectator ‘By means of a sudden attraction, in all the allure of the uncertain.’”
Redon was both a psychic adventurer and an “introspective voyager” (Wallace Stevens), an explorer into the dark realms of the mind; he would then returned to articulated what he discovered there with wispy chimeras and vague shadows that populate the hinterlands of our deeper mind, like echoes from an unknown world. In “Light of Day” he gives us a darken room, with bubble-lie floating shapes, an ordinary window, and outside a tree. The image thus presents an interface between ordinary and non-ordinary reality, between time and eternity, between light and dark, and between Self and Archetypal Psyche. The darken room is our subjectivity, the obscurities with our interior world, the personal unconscious. The window is what Jesus called a “true door,” a threshold, a looking glass into the Other Side, where a glimpse of eternity can be had. As for the tree I see it as THE TREE OF LIFE, the “axis Mundi,” that which connects us to an Unknown God. When I meditate “Light of Day” as a species of poetic reality I see myself during THE INFERNO, looking through thick walls and seeing a inner landscape of wondrous beauty and I see myself climbing the TREE OF LIFE. These are the journeys that Art like Redon can provide.
Interestingly, Redon was drawing the “intimate echoes” of his soul when Courbet and naturalism were at their height in France and the Impressionists were about to burst on the scene in Paris. He was born the same year as Monet but he seems of another generation, not the type of artist who would join a movement, and always preferring to go his own way, dreaming his own dream. From the start he was more interested in imagination and viewed Nature, as William Blake did, as experience that had to be transformed. (Blake was more the Gnostic than Redon. He once said external reality was “dust on my heels.”) Redon felt that true artists recognized the reality that could be felt. Fantasy was the “messenger of the unconscious.” The title of his first album of Lithographs was “In a Dream.” With the emergence of Symbolism in Literature in the 1880s, his work gained more recognition and appreciation. I feel we both belong to the same Brotherhood of the Spirit and that we share, as Max Beckmann said of his patrons and admirers, the same metaphysical code.
This brings me to another term for that code. I had run across it in the mid-seventies when I stumbled on J.E. Cirlot’s DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS, a book I have referred to often over the years. Cirlot was a Spanish poet, art critic, mythologist, musician and good Jungian. He was an avant guardist but maintained a hermetic perspective as a creative person. His DICTIONARY, which he published in 1963, was quickly translated into English but so far none of poetry has. Lots of bells rang for me when I read the entry in the DICTIONARY called “Imago Ignota,” which of course means” Unknown Images.” This is what he had to say about them.
“From about the middle of the last century, the tendency of poetry and the visual arts has been toward a mode of expression whose antecedents go back through the ages—but which received a particular impetus, around the year 1800, from the works of William Blake—and which might, with justification, be termed hermetic. This movement was characterized by the quest for the obscure as a self-sufficient goal, and representations of ‘harmonious wholes’ whose function lies in their remoteness….It is this type of unfamiliar pattern that constitutes the ‘unknown image’—a pattern of words, shapes or colors that has no correspondence with the normal, human feelings….These ’unknown images’ create their own kind of reality and expressed the spiritual need of particular individuals to live within this created reality.”
Besides Blake and Redon I think of Max Beckmann’s seven triptychs and many other works of his as examples of IMAGO IGNOTA. Peter Fischer, a German Scholar who wrote a book on Beckmann, used the word ‘Hieroglyphic,’ virtually in the same sense as Unknown Images to describe Beckmann’s work.
“His hieroglyphic compositions…represent an endeavor to reduce an intricate complex of delicate relationships to a formula whose basic content remains a mystery.”
This is a circle of initiates that I, too, belong with, what I might call those who have found the Hieroglyphic, hermetic solution to their Art.
On Oct. 12, 1972 I wrote in my journal about the drawing I now regard as my signature image. I refer to “God’s Athlete in the Abyss,” which appears in PRIMUS ROTA. At the time I was sitting back and enjoying my handiwork after a few previous attempts of the idea. I had found an image of a guy hanging in that position in one of my wife’s Dance magazines; interestingly, from a dance called “Pain.” The final effort was good, in focus, and clean, simple, complete and immaculate. It expressed what I meant it to: In a single image it revealed the essence of my INFERNO experience. Now when I contemplate the image the INFERNO experience flares before my mind’s eye, bringing it all back home to me again. It allows me to relive my visionary death and rebirth.
At the time the image reminded me of a Tarot card; it still does. It has a vertical format, a similar proportion, and a single figure like so many of the traditional cards. The darkness included in the image brings in an occult element, and a feeling of dread evoked by the serpent, the fact the figure has no head, and the raging waters below. The figure struggles to hold his legs up, to keep them dry and out of the water. (I believe it was Heraclitus who said, “The dry soul is the wisest.”) The image also has an atmosphere of mystery about it. Enigma rules.
Actually I was trying to encapsulate the Kundalini experience which was what the INFERNO was all about. It was inadvertent, accidental, if you will, but it happened to me nonetheless. But I didn’t want it to be schematic, and I think I succeeded. Experiencing Kundalini is not what you would call a rational experience. It is calling forth out of the depths of the subtle body within all of us what the yogis of India call Shakti or divine creative energy, a force that can awaken at any time or one can learn to coax out into the open by spiritual discipline and practice. It happened to me the first time after a particularly trying year in Las Vegas. I experienced what others have termed a “Dark Night of the Soul,” and my hanging man is meant to suggest the fright that was part of the trip. In a sense I did not have adequate preparation for what was happening to me, no guide, no guru to tell me not to worry. According to the Kabbalah the Abyss can be found on the Tree of Life, in the upper branches; it is where Divine contact is possible. Only ‘‘God’s Athlete” can psychologically survive the Abyss and turn it to the SELF’s benefit.
I deliberately made my athlete less muscle-bound and a softer looking male because that was more fitting for my physique; and then I added bloodied bandages on his legs and arms to connote wounds and struggle, which are also the attributes of a warrior. The head of a lone fish was visible out of the ‘chaos of waters’ down below. The fish can dive into the unconscious; it can also be understood as the nascent Self. I also put the fish in close proximity to a whirlwind on the border of the image and as well close to what I then called “the black ball,” my premier symbol through hundreds of drawings over 30 years.
When I first showed the image to friends and acquaintances they, rather predictably, found the image too sinister and too scary. No doubt in 1972 the influence of the malignant drawings I did in the late sixties was still in me and it would take some time to be transcended. But given what I was dealing with in creating the drawing aspects of the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ had to be part and parcel of the final image. I wasn’t describing a picnic on the grass with the sun shining. After all, I did hang in Cosmic Night while “Serpent Power” climbed up my spinal tree to overwhelm my rational self, which was a scary experience—but only because it was the unknown. The second time it happened, in Eugene in 1969, I was ready for it and the rush, although powerful, became a very positive thing. To make a comparison: having a second baby by home birth was a lot easier for Sue and me after the first one at home. The second was a walk in the park compared to the first.
Following on the INFERNO and a few years later the invention of THE HIEROGLYPHIC THEATER, I became interested in some artists I hadn’t gotten into before, for example, Odilon Redon. He once said,” We must remember that we have other things than the eyes to satisfy, that we carry in ourselves (such_ troubles, joys, or pains which the great artist know how to address.” In his book PURPOSES OF ART the author, Albert Elsen compares Redon’s lithograph, “Light of Day,” with a conventional painting of the same subject matter, a scene of looking out the window, by a contemporary academic painter by the name of Caillbotte. It was a revealing comparison. Although similar in theme, they were worlds apart; one is the result of vision or “second sight,” the other is nothing but the facts. “Light of Day” depicted a dark interior room, a window and a tree outside the window. Simple enough. Caillbotte’s painting was a descriptive scene of a man looking out the window—period, no more, no less. What you see is all there was. Elsen wrote the following about “Light of Day.”
“As we focus on our side of the window we see this is no ordinary room, and that vague, softly luminous shapes hover in the darkness. It is as if Redon were metaphorically showing us the mysterious dark world that exists behind the human eye. What we see through the window we can describe but what lies in front has been only suggested, not defined, and this is the goal of poetic thought…Like music, they transport us into the ambiguous world of the undetermined. Redon’s modernity thus lies in his cultivation of his own experience, the creation of a private, undecipherable, but lonely world; he was an artist stimulated by the creative process whose intent was not to criticize or reform his public. His interest was to involve the spectator ‘By means of a sudden attraction, in all the allure of the uncertain.’”
Redon was both a psychic adventurer and an “introspective voyager” (Wallace Stevens), an explorer into the dark realms of the mind; he would then returned to articulated what he discovered there with wispy chimeras and vague shadows that populate the hinterlands of our deeper mind, like echoes from an unknown world. In “Light of Day” he gives us a darken room, with bubble-lie floating shapes, an ordinary window, and outside a tree. The image thus presents an interface between ordinary and non-ordinary reality, between time and eternity, between light and dark, and between Self and Archetypal Psyche. The darken room is our subjectivity, the obscurities with our interior world, the personal unconscious. The window is what Jesus called a “true door,” a threshold, a looking glass into the Other Side, where a glimpse of eternity can be had. As for the tree I see it as THE TREE OF LIFE, the “axis Mundi,” that which connects us to an Unknown God. When I meditate “Light of Day” as a species of poetic reality I see myself during THE INFERNO, looking through thick walls and seeing a inner landscape of wondrous beauty and I see myself climbing the TREE OF LIFE. These are the journeys that Art like Redon can provide.
Interestingly, Redon was drawing the “intimate echoes” of his soul when Courbet and naturalism were at their height in France and the Impressionists were about to burst on the scene in Paris. He was born the same year as Monet but he seems of another generation, not the type of artist who would join a movement, and always preferring to go his own way, dreaming his own dream. From the start he was more interested in imagination and viewed Nature, as William Blake did, as experience that had to be transformed. (Blake was more the Gnostic than Redon. He once said external reality was “dust on my heels.”) Redon felt that true artists recognized the reality that could be felt. Fantasy was the “messenger of the unconscious.” The title of his first album of Lithographs was “In a Dream.” With the emergence of Symbolism in Literature in the 1880s, his work gained more recognition and appreciation. I feel we both belong to the same Brotherhood of the Spirit and that we share, as Max Beckmann said of his patrons and admirers, the same metaphysical code.
This brings me to another term for that code. I had run across it in the mid-seventies when I stumbled on J.E. Cirlot’s DICTIONARY OF SYMBOLS, a book I have referred to often over the years. Cirlot was a Spanish poet, art critic, mythologist, musician and good Jungian. He was an avant guardist but maintained a hermetic perspective as a creative person. His DICTIONARY, which he published in 1963, was quickly translated into English but so far none of poetry has. Lots of bells rang for me when I read the entry in the DICTIONARY called “Imago Ignota,” which of course means” Unknown Images.” This is what he had to say about them.
“From about the middle of the last century, the tendency of poetry and the visual arts has been toward a mode of expression whose antecedents go back through the ages—but which received a particular impetus, around the year 1800, from the works of William Blake—and which might, with justification, be termed hermetic. This movement was characterized by the quest for the obscure as a self-sufficient goal, and representations of ‘harmonious wholes’ whose function lies in their remoteness….It is this type of unfamiliar pattern that constitutes the ‘unknown image’—a pattern of words, shapes or colors that has no correspondence with the normal, human feelings….These ’unknown images’ create their own kind of reality and expressed the spiritual need of particular individuals to live within this created reality.”
Besides Blake and Redon I think of Max Beckmann’s seven triptychs and many other works of his as examples of IMAGO IGNOTA. Peter Fischer, a German Scholar who wrote a book on Beckmann, used the word ‘Hieroglyphic,’ virtually in the same sense as Unknown Images to describe Beckmann’s work.
“His hieroglyphic compositions…represent an endeavor to reduce an intricate complex of delicate relationships to a formula whose basic content remains a mystery.”
This is a circle of initiates that I, too, belong with, what I might call those who have found the Hieroglyphic, hermetic solution to their Art.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Killer Inside Me
2010_9_09 The Killer Inside Me
Lou Ford, the killer in THE KILLER INSIDE ME, was ironically, a deputy sheriff in his home town of Central City, Texas, a small town somewhere in western Texas. He was 29 years old, lived in the home of his dead parents, and was about to get engaged to a nice girl named Amy Stanton (Kate Hawn.) His father was a doctor with unsavory habits that no one knew about: he liked to beat his wife and she liked it too. The housekeeper used to beat on Lou, which he didn’t like. Then after his father died his mother taught him how to beat her with his belt just like his daddy had done while she lay bare-ass naked on her bed. Incest was suggested both in the book and the recent movie made from the book, but it was not explicit in either. In any case, Lou grew up liking the sadistic lust he felt with his mother. But he had learned to repress those experiences and tendencies in his nature and adapted to his tedious and humdrum existence as a deputy sheriff.
Two things sparked the violence and madness inside him; they were like traps lying in wait for him, One day the Sheriff asked Lou (Casey Affleck) to run out to the house that the prostitute was using as her home base and to tell her she had to leave town. Word had come down from Chester Conway (Ned Beatty), the rich oil man who dominated Central City that she had to go because his son was spending too much time and money with the woman. He was willing to give her some money to get established elsewhere. Lou was reluctant to do it but his boss insisted so off he went, with his Stenson on and his white shirt gleamingly clean. But when he got there the woman, Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), put up a lively resistance to leaving. Finally, she slapped him hard twice in the face. That did it; she unleashed a fury in him that was deep and fierce; it came welling out of his depths and took him out of himself, as if he was in a trance or having an out-of-the-body experience. He pounded on the woman sitting on top of her on her bed. When he came back to himself, he started apologizing for losing his temper. Her reaction was, “Don’t be sorry, kiss me.” Fact was she enjoyed being roughed up; for her it was just a prelude to intercourse. They made furious love that day and several days in a row. Sometimes he beat her with his belt, other times he slipped it around her throat and tighten it as he pumped her. They seemed made for each other. Just like his father and mother.
So in brief, the cat was out of the bag, and it eventually turned into a raving beast. He eventually kills Joyce, or thinks he has, and shoots Chester’s son in the forehead, so the sheriff will thinks the two had an argument and both ended up dead. This begins a killing spree for Lou that doesn’t end to the very end of the book and movie, which has one hell of a finale.
The second thing that I saw as essential to the character of Lou Ford and what drove him to go on a killing spree was a discovery he made one night at home by himself. He had reason to take down his father’s old bible high on a book shelf, as if he was going to look for some passage. But he was distracted by some photographs inside the bible. They are of his mother when she was young and pretty. She was naked and tied up for his father’s pleasure. The good book was full of surprises, just like Lou’s inside world was. In one photo she was on the bed her ass up in the air waiting for penetration. Porn in the Bible; that hit home for Lou; there was his family history in a nutshell. Those images are memories that were demons in his psyche, writ large, dark, perverse and outrageous, like skeletons in his closet, forever dancing before his mind’s eye. Finding those pictures was like the “return of the repressed,” to use a Freudian term and Jim Thompson I would say was well-schooled in psychoanalysis. He had written the book at his sister’s house in Virginia. She was horrified by the book and asked where it came from. All he would tell her was “a lot of research.”
Thompson wrote pulp fiction but sometimes he transcended the genre, which was certainly true with THE KILLER INSIDE ME. His grasp of Freudian theory was impressive, especially how childhood was the father of the man. Lou’s career as a killer gets more and more complicated; he even kills his fiancée to cover up the fact he was being blackmailed. The local D.A. figure out Lou was the killer but it was intuitive. Lou always remained cool and in control and defiant. But finally the noose began to close and he prepared a finale scenario he bets his adversaries won’t expect. He filled the house with flammable fluid and with material that will explode and waits for the termination point to arrive. So when the D.A., Chester Conway, 3 deputies and a surprise guest show up and come in the house, he is ready to go out in a blaze of glory, taking his adversaries with him.
Casey Affleck is the right guy to play Lou Ford. He can play the cold fish well and has that faraway look in his eyes. The two women are playing against type, as they are in mostly fluff movies. Both do a credible job in this chilling movie..
Lou Ford, the killer in THE KILLER INSIDE ME, was ironically, a deputy sheriff in his home town of Central City, Texas, a small town somewhere in western Texas. He was 29 years old, lived in the home of his dead parents, and was about to get engaged to a nice girl named Amy Stanton (Kate Hawn.) His father was a doctor with unsavory habits that no one knew about: he liked to beat his wife and she liked it too. The housekeeper used to beat on Lou, which he didn’t like. Then after his father died his mother taught him how to beat her with his belt just like his daddy had done while she lay bare-ass naked on her bed. Incest was suggested both in the book and the recent movie made from the book, but it was not explicit in either. In any case, Lou grew up liking the sadistic lust he felt with his mother. But he had learned to repress those experiences and tendencies in his nature and adapted to his tedious and humdrum existence as a deputy sheriff.
Two things sparked the violence and madness inside him; they were like traps lying in wait for him, One day the Sheriff asked Lou (Casey Affleck) to run out to the house that the prostitute was using as her home base and to tell her she had to leave town. Word had come down from Chester Conway (Ned Beatty), the rich oil man who dominated Central City that she had to go because his son was spending too much time and money with the woman. He was willing to give her some money to get established elsewhere. Lou was reluctant to do it but his boss insisted so off he went, with his Stenson on and his white shirt gleamingly clean. But when he got there the woman, Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba), put up a lively resistance to leaving. Finally, she slapped him hard twice in the face. That did it; she unleashed a fury in him that was deep and fierce; it came welling out of his depths and took him out of himself, as if he was in a trance or having an out-of-the-body experience. He pounded on the woman sitting on top of her on her bed. When he came back to himself, he started apologizing for losing his temper. Her reaction was, “Don’t be sorry, kiss me.” Fact was she enjoyed being roughed up; for her it was just a prelude to intercourse. They made furious love that day and several days in a row. Sometimes he beat her with his belt, other times he slipped it around her throat and tighten it as he pumped her. They seemed made for each other. Just like his father and mother.
So in brief, the cat was out of the bag, and it eventually turned into a raving beast. He eventually kills Joyce, or thinks he has, and shoots Chester’s son in the forehead, so the sheriff will thinks the two had an argument and both ended up dead. This begins a killing spree for Lou that doesn’t end to the very end of the book and movie, which has one hell of a finale.
The second thing that I saw as essential to the character of Lou Ford and what drove him to go on a killing spree was a discovery he made one night at home by himself. He had reason to take down his father’s old bible high on a book shelf, as if he was going to look for some passage. But he was distracted by some photographs inside the bible. They are of his mother when she was young and pretty. She was naked and tied up for his father’s pleasure. The good book was full of surprises, just like Lou’s inside world was. In one photo she was on the bed her ass up in the air waiting for penetration. Porn in the Bible; that hit home for Lou; there was his family history in a nutshell. Those images are memories that were demons in his psyche, writ large, dark, perverse and outrageous, like skeletons in his closet, forever dancing before his mind’s eye. Finding those pictures was like the “return of the repressed,” to use a Freudian term and Jim Thompson I would say was well-schooled in psychoanalysis. He had written the book at his sister’s house in Virginia. She was horrified by the book and asked where it came from. All he would tell her was “a lot of research.”
Thompson wrote pulp fiction but sometimes he transcended the genre, which was certainly true with THE KILLER INSIDE ME. His grasp of Freudian theory was impressive, especially how childhood was the father of the man. Lou’s career as a killer gets more and more complicated; he even kills his fiancée to cover up the fact he was being blackmailed. The local D.A. figure out Lou was the killer but it was intuitive. Lou always remained cool and in control and defiant. But finally the noose began to close and he prepared a finale scenario he bets his adversaries won’t expect. He filled the house with flammable fluid and with material that will explode and waits for the termination point to arrive. So when the D.A., Chester Conway, 3 deputies and a surprise guest show up and come in the house, he is ready to go out in a blaze of glory, taking his adversaries with him.
Casey Affleck is the right guy to play Lou Ford. He can play the cold fish well and has that faraway look in his eyes. The two women are playing against type, as they are in mostly fluff movies. Both do a credible job in this chilling movie..
Orson Welles and Me
2010_9_07 Me and Orson Welles
Sue and I love sleepers, which are strictly my department, that is, to find them. I have a talent to sniff them out. I go by three things: who are the actors in any particular movie; who was the director; and subject matter.
Three days ago I picked up 5 movies at Blockbusters, on their 5 day plan. Last night we watched “Orson Welles and Me,” so the subject matter was the strong suit of that choice. I am an Orson Welles fan from way back; plus he was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is eight miles south of Racine, my home town. I have read three biographies about him (Brady, Callow, Thomson) and I have four other books about his life and work. With a couple of pictures of him as Charles Foster Kane, they constitute a little shrine to his memory and genius.
“Orson Welles and Me” was an indie film directed by Richard Linklater whose film record is impressive and solid. He made “Dazed and Confused,” “Slackers,” “Waking Life,” and “Before Sunset.” This particular movie is about one of Welles’ early successes on the stage, “Julius Caesar,” which was performed in New York by the newly formed Mercury Theater. 75% of the movie was taken up with rehearsal time and in-group bickering among Orson and the cast, and John Houseman, who ran the business side of things. There was meticulous attention to the styles of the thirties and how everything looked. Orson adapted the play to a 90 minute performance with no intermission. His politics were liberal so he decided to do the play in modern dress with political implications. He got a deal on a batch of black uniforms with boots, perfect attire for fascist police. His wardrobe people added shiny silver buttons. The man who played Caesar was stocky and bald; the allusion to Mussolini was unmistakable. He had studied Edward Gordon Craig’s innovations on set design. The play took place on tiers of platforms and with the back wall being the brick of the building, enhanced only by lighting. He wanted a look that was neutral and non-representational. No thrones, no fancy togas, no allusions to ancient Rome. The narrative was contemporary more than historical or both at once. The lighting was minimal and dramatic; clouds of smoke wafted up from the platforms Opening night was November 11, 1937. Welles told one cast member this play would either make him or break him.
It was a huge success; both the audience and the critics loved it. The play went on the road to six more cities after they closed in New York. It closed for good on November 11, 1938.The only actors the movie-goer might recognize were Claire Danes and Ben Chaplin. The actor who played Welles, Christian McKay, who I had never heard of, was excellent in the part; he was a Brit born in 1973 who bore a remarkable physical resemblance to the man from Kenosha, including the deep, booming voice. When I checked on him online I discovered he had done a touring one man show as Orson Welles, so he was not only a natural to play him he was experienced at doing so. His imitation of Welles was right on, showing him as brilliant, formidable, intuitive, visionary, but also full of himself, dominating, sometimes incredibly insensitive and screwing every woman within range. He also wanted credit for everything and was always right, if not exactly without fault. And he wasn’t below stealing an idea or two. But clearly, it was the force of his magnetic personality that kept the cast together and heading toward a common goal and success.
On the other hand, his egocentric approach to projects and lack of patience with the money people crippled many of his aims and goals, and many things never came to fruition or if they did, they did so by half-measure. He made a lot of mediocre movies as an actor trying to support his personal vision as a filmmaker, but he needed more than he could make. Still, he had quite an impact on theater and “Citizen Kane” was many people’s choice as the greatest film of the 20th century. In addition, his “Othello” and “Macbeth” are solid efforts and will be around for a long time. They are the best of the black and white versions of the plays.
Sue and I love sleepers, which are strictly my department, that is, to find them. I have a talent to sniff them out. I go by three things: who are the actors in any particular movie; who was the director; and subject matter.
Three days ago I picked up 5 movies at Blockbusters, on their 5 day plan. Last night we watched “Orson Welles and Me,” so the subject matter was the strong suit of that choice. I am an Orson Welles fan from way back; plus he was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is eight miles south of Racine, my home town. I have read three biographies about him (Brady, Callow, Thomson) and I have four other books about his life and work. With a couple of pictures of him as Charles Foster Kane, they constitute a little shrine to his memory and genius.
“Orson Welles and Me” was an indie film directed by Richard Linklater whose film record is impressive and solid. He made “Dazed and Confused,” “Slackers,” “Waking Life,” and “Before Sunset.” This particular movie is about one of Welles’ early successes on the stage, “Julius Caesar,” which was performed in New York by the newly formed Mercury Theater. 75% of the movie was taken up with rehearsal time and in-group bickering among Orson and the cast, and John Houseman, who ran the business side of things. There was meticulous attention to the styles of the thirties and how everything looked. Orson adapted the play to a 90 minute performance with no intermission. His politics were liberal so he decided to do the play in modern dress with political implications. He got a deal on a batch of black uniforms with boots, perfect attire for fascist police. His wardrobe people added shiny silver buttons. The man who played Caesar was stocky and bald; the allusion to Mussolini was unmistakable. He had studied Edward Gordon Craig’s innovations on set design. The play took place on tiers of platforms and with the back wall being the brick of the building, enhanced only by lighting. He wanted a look that was neutral and non-representational. No thrones, no fancy togas, no allusions to ancient Rome. The narrative was contemporary more than historical or both at once. The lighting was minimal and dramatic; clouds of smoke wafted up from the platforms Opening night was November 11, 1937. Welles told one cast member this play would either make him or break him.
It was a huge success; both the audience and the critics loved it. The play went on the road to six more cities after they closed in New York. It closed for good on November 11, 1938.The only actors the movie-goer might recognize were Claire Danes and Ben Chaplin. The actor who played Welles, Christian McKay, who I had never heard of, was excellent in the part; he was a Brit born in 1973 who bore a remarkable physical resemblance to the man from Kenosha, including the deep, booming voice. When I checked on him online I discovered he had done a touring one man show as Orson Welles, so he was not only a natural to play him he was experienced at doing so. His imitation of Welles was right on, showing him as brilliant, formidable, intuitive, visionary, but also full of himself, dominating, sometimes incredibly insensitive and screwing every woman within range. He also wanted credit for everything and was always right, if not exactly without fault. And he wasn’t below stealing an idea or two. But clearly, it was the force of his magnetic personality that kept the cast together and heading toward a common goal and success.
On the other hand, his egocentric approach to projects and lack of patience with the money people crippled many of his aims and goals, and many things never came to fruition or if they did, they did so by half-measure. He made a lot of mediocre movies as an actor trying to support his personal vision as a filmmaker, but he needed more than he could make. Still, he had quite an impact on theater and “Citizen Kane” was many people’s choice as the greatest film of the 20th century. In addition, his “Othello” and “Macbeth” are solid efforts and will be around for a long time. They are the best of the black and white versions of the plays.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Art as Soul-making
2010-8_14 Art as Soul-making
“Religion (for Confucius) was a matter of doing rather than thinking. The traditional ritual of China enabled an individual to burnish and refine his humanity so that he became a junzi, a ‘mature person.’ A junzi was not born but crafted; he had to work on himself as a sculptor a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty.”
Karen Armstrong in THE CASE FOR GOD
You remember me mentioning Wolfgang Stoerchle in an email a few days ago. The arc of his creativity is relevant to our question, what is art?
Wolf came to Canada from Germany and then went from Toronto to California where he enrolled at Cal-Santa Barbara. He got there by unusual means, at least for the 20th century: by horseback. He and his older brother Peter went the 4200 miles on horseback. He was 18 at the time. It was 1964. They got written up too, by LIFE magazine, his first nod of recognition for his exploits. He started out an easel painter at Santa Barbara, but by the time he was in graduate school he was into Conceptual Art. I have a trick photograph of him arm wrestling with Ronald Reagan, who is smiling broadly as Wolf grunts. I have a photograph of him leaping feet first through a dry wall mounted on a wooden frame; his feet sticking out the other side. From there he went to New York to find out if he had the right stuff to, as we used to say, make it. He became a performance artist and gained a patron, the Philosopher of Aesthetics and Perception, and fellow German, Rudolph Arnheim. He did all his performances in galleries in both New York and L.A. Many of them dealt with sexuality, and he had a penchant to take his clothes off, too. It was a way of dealing with his own psyche and demons therein. Why or how he got chosen to be in that Dance Workshop in June 1973 is unclear to me, but that is where he teamed up with Sue to make a video together. The video they did was in that Video round-up at the Getty Museum three years ago. It was really all about her and his perception of her as woman and lover. He pictured her and dressed her as a seductress, or as he put it, a “black mother succubus,” black because she was clad in sheer black negligee and he had her doing some sexual acrobatics. She writhed and moaned in sexual agitation, her facial beauty looking rather hard and severe, as she stood on a round pedestal that rotated, at first very slowly, but eventually rapidly, spinning and simulating coitus, ending in an orgasm. The first time I saw the video I thought, wow, he really nailed it. Her dark side was in full bloom. She looked the epitome of the predatory female. Actually all three of us learned a good deal about ourselves through Wolf’s psychological stripping of a lot of artificial covering that was only skin deep. (When Sue saw it again in the Getty Show, some thirty years later, it seemed more than a little odd, as she had long ago shed that dark persona. Now she was a mother with two grown daughters who had kids and our marriage was nearly of 45 years duration. That flirtatious “bad girl” was a thing of the deep past. She now was a crone and liked it.)
My favorite piece that Wolf did in New York was called “Breath.” But it was quite unlike Manzoni’s piece called “Breath,” the red balloon mounted on a piece of wood. Wolf’s was an exercise in deconstruction. You see him bent over a brick of dirt sitting on a table. It is packed hard into a firm block of earth. Then Wolf starts to blow on it, nice and easy at first, but gradually he picks up the tempo and the intensity of his blowing. Pretty soon there some crumbling on the edges, and then more and more of the brick begins to break up, until finally we see a pile of dirt flattened out on the table top. And there is Wolf, panting, trying to recover from his exertion.
But when he and I were close he was disenchanted with the whole New York scene. He had gone there to test his mettle, but he found out it was just another “small pond,” not all that it was cracked up to be. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote me.
“The western notion of the ‘Great Artist’ is linked to virtuoso performance, to EGO, GLORY, and GRATIFICATION, to social status, and, finally, to fame. Fame implies a desire to identify with the dominant social forces, the moneyed class, the people who are in charge and ruining the planet. Artists today are too secular, too eager to be part of the ruling elite, and, I know this is true because that was a space I was in when I left California for New York. It took me a couple of years to find out New York was just another pond, and not the place for me to pursue a spiritual goal. There is one big obstacle: EGOTISM. It is something we need to overcome before it overshadows us. The operative word is service, and that I must surrender to the will of God.”
I have a little trouble with that business about“surrender to the will of God. “I know what he is trying to say but I’d say it differently, using another kind of metaphor, like the Tao or “the force be with you.” But otherwise I am in complete agreement with what he said.
The next time I saw Wolf was in Feb. 1974, just prior to his big move south of the border. He had made up his mind to launch his spiritual quest. He had sold all his equipment to gather some cash and pared his duffle bag down to the bare essentials. I told him I wanted to drive him to the border and bid him vaya con dios. He had burned out all the mediums of expression he was interested in trying. It was time to put his feet down and see where they would take hm. He said he felt a little like Buddha, leaving his soft life behind. I thought of the relationship between Narziss and Goldmund in the novel of that name by Herman Hesse, with me being the stay-at-home contemplative monk, and Wolf being the romantic road warrior who followed his heart and senses, not his head. A spiritual journey often starts on the road, like the Tarot cards suggest. He became THE FOOL, who takes off flush with belief and hope. He had come full round, only now his medium of self-discovery was solely his imagination. And he hit the road with little money, few possessions, and an open heart. It was up to him now to bring all his fire and focus to work on himself as a sculptor would shape a rough stone into a thing of beauty.
On Feb. 12 Wolf handed me his “Hermit’s Rod,” a sturdy walking stick he had been using the past few months, and crossed into Mexico. I had given him a hug and told him “vaya con dios.” As for the gift of the walking stick I was happy to accept it, thinking of another Tarot card, in fact I was touched by the gesture, as I knew it was a gesture of love and fraternity and I took it in that spirit. I waved my final goodbye and turned to leave, thinking I miss him already, for I haven’t enjoyed such good conversation and rapport with another male in some time.
Ten months later he was back. He got as far as small town outside Mexico City when he developed a physical problem, an abscess in his rectum and he had to have an operation which drained him of most of his money, plus the doctor didn’t do a very good job and he needed more treatment when he got back to the states. It was an ignominious end to his spiritual intentions. He hung out with us for about a week and then headed to Santa Fe to see an old girl friend. To make a long and complicated story short, he married the old girl friend and endured a rocky road with her over several months. He had a tendency to want a male dominant relationship with women; he wanted to set the agenda and the female should trust him to do the right thing for both of them. Well, his wife didn’t buy that and they went back and forth for months, not able to resolve their differences. But he was working; he had found a job at a bronze foundry that produced cowboy sculpture for tourists and collectors of that sort of thing. Then, on a Saturday night in March 1976, he and his wife had gone out to eat and on the way home a drunken Mexican American broadsided Wolf’s car after running a red light, killing Wolf. Sue told me that when he got high he always worried about his heart; he experienced palpitations and that scared him. The impact smashed his ribs and a bone splinter went right through his heart, killing him instantly. His wife was badly bruised but did survive.
For weeks afterwards I kept having these visions of Wolf trying to communicate with me behind some thick frosted glass. I could see his face as a distorted blur but could not hear a voice. Eventually the visions stopped,
“Religion (for Confucius) was a matter of doing rather than thinking. The traditional ritual of China enabled an individual to burnish and refine his humanity so that he became a junzi, a ‘mature person.’ A junzi was not born but crafted; he had to work on himself as a sculptor a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty.”
Karen Armstrong in THE CASE FOR GOD
You remember me mentioning Wolfgang Stoerchle in an email a few days ago. The arc of his creativity is relevant to our question, what is art?
Wolf came to Canada from Germany and then went from Toronto to California where he enrolled at Cal-Santa Barbara. He got there by unusual means, at least for the 20th century: by horseback. He and his older brother Peter went the 4200 miles on horseback. He was 18 at the time. It was 1964. They got written up too, by LIFE magazine, his first nod of recognition for his exploits. He started out an easel painter at Santa Barbara, but by the time he was in graduate school he was into Conceptual Art. I have a trick photograph of him arm wrestling with Ronald Reagan, who is smiling broadly as Wolf grunts. I have a photograph of him leaping feet first through a dry wall mounted on a wooden frame; his feet sticking out the other side. From there he went to New York to find out if he had the right stuff to, as we used to say, make it. He became a performance artist and gained a patron, the Philosopher of Aesthetics and Perception, and fellow German, Rudolph Arnheim. He did all his performances in galleries in both New York and L.A. Many of them dealt with sexuality, and he had a penchant to take his clothes off, too. It was a way of dealing with his own psyche and demons therein. Why or how he got chosen to be in that Dance Workshop in June 1973 is unclear to me, but that is where he teamed up with Sue to make a video together. The video they did was in that Video round-up at the Getty Museum three years ago. It was really all about her and his perception of her as woman and lover. He pictured her and dressed her as a seductress, or as he put it, a “black mother succubus,” black because she was clad in sheer black negligee and he had her doing some sexual acrobatics. She writhed and moaned in sexual agitation, her facial beauty looking rather hard and severe, as she stood on a round pedestal that rotated, at first very slowly, but eventually rapidly, spinning and simulating coitus, ending in an orgasm. The first time I saw the video I thought, wow, he really nailed it. Her dark side was in full bloom. She looked the epitome of the predatory female. Actually all three of us learned a good deal about ourselves through Wolf’s psychological stripping of a lot of artificial covering that was only skin deep. (When Sue saw it again in the Getty Show, some thirty years later, it seemed more than a little odd, as she had long ago shed that dark persona. Now she was a mother with two grown daughters who had kids and our marriage was nearly of 45 years duration. That flirtatious “bad girl” was a thing of the deep past. She now was a crone and liked it.)
My favorite piece that Wolf did in New York was called “Breath.” But it was quite unlike Manzoni’s piece called “Breath,” the red balloon mounted on a piece of wood. Wolf’s was an exercise in deconstruction. You see him bent over a brick of dirt sitting on a table. It is packed hard into a firm block of earth. Then Wolf starts to blow on it, nice and easy at first, but gradually he picks up the tempo and the intensity of his blowing. Pretty soon there some crumbling on the edges, and then more and more of the brick begins to break up, until finally we see a pile of dirt flattened out on the table top. And there is Wolf, panting, trying to recover from his exertion.
But when he and I were close he was disenchanted with the whole New York scene. He had gone there to test his mettle, but he found out it was just another “small pond,” not all that it was cracked up to be. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote me.
“The western notion of the ‘Great Artist’ is linked to virtuoso performance, to EGO, GLORY, and GRATIFICATION, to social status, and, finally, to fame. Fame implies a desire to identify with the dominant social forces, the moneyed class, the people who are in charge and ruining the planet. Artists today are too secular, too eager to be part of the ruling elite, and, I know this is true because that was a space I was in when I left California for New York. It took me a couple of years to find out New York was just another pond, and not the place for me to pursue a spiritual goal. There is one big obstacle: EGOTISM. It is something we need to overcome before it overshadows us. The operative word is service, and that I must surrender to the will of God.”
I have a little trouble with that business about“surrender to the will of God. “I know what he is trying to say but I’d say it differently, using another kind of metaphor, like the Tao or “the force be with you.” But otherwise I am in complete agreement with what he said.
The next time I saw Wolf was in Feb. 1974, just prior to his big move south of the border. He had made up his mind to launch his spiritual quest. He had sold all his equipment to gather some cash and pared his duffle bag down to the bare essentials. I told him I wanted to drive him to the border and bid him vaya con dios. He had burned out all the mediums of expression he was interested in trying. It was time to put his feet down and see where they would take hm. He said he felt a little like Buddha, leaving his soft life behind. I thought of the relationship between Narziss and Goldmund in the novel of that name by Herman Hesse, with me being the stay-at-home contemplative monk, and Wolf being the romantic road warrior who followed his heart and senses, not his head. A spiritual journey often starts on the road, like the Tarot cards suggest. He became THE FOOL, who takes off flush with belief and hope. He had come full round, only now his medium of self-discovery was solely his imagination. And he hit the road with little money, few possessions, and an open heart. It was up to him now to bring all his fire and focus to work on himself as a sculptor would shape a rough stone into a thing of beauty.
On Feb. 12 Wolf handed me his “Hermit’s Rod,” a sturdy walking stick he had been using the past few months, and crossed into Mexico. I had given him a hug and told him “vaya con dios.” As for the gift of the walking stick I was happy to accept it, thinking of another Tarot card, in fact I was touched by the gesture, as I knew it was a gesture of love and fraternity and I took it in that spirit. I waved my final goodbye and turned to leave, thinking I miss him already, for I haven’t enjoyed such good conversation and rapport with another male in some time.
Ten months later he was back. He got as far as small town outside Mexico City when he developed a physical problem, an abscess in his rectum and he had to have an operation which drained him of most of his money, plus the doctor didn’t do a very good job and he needed more treatment when he got back to the states. It was an ignominious end to his spiritual intentions. He hung out with us for about a week and then headed to Santa Fe to see an old girl friend. To make a long and complicated story short, he married the old girl friend and endured a rocky road with her over several months. He had a tendency to want a male dominant relationship with women; he wanted to set the agenda and the female should trust him to do the right thing for both of them. Well, his wife didn’t buy that and they went back and forth for months, not able to resolve their differences. But he was working; he had found a job at a bronze foundry that produced cowboy sculpture for tourists and collectors of that sort of thing. Then, on a Saturday night in March 1976, he and his wife had gone out to eat and on the way home a drunken Mexican American broadsided Wolf’s car after running a red light, killing Wolf. Sue told me that when he got high he always worried about his heart; he experienced palpitations and that scared him. The impact smashed his ribs and a bone splinter went right through his heart, killing him instantly. His wife was badly bruised but did survive.
For weeks afterwards I kept having these visions of Wolf trying to communicate with me behind some thick frosted glass. I could see his face as a distorted blur but could not hear a voice. Eventually the visions stopped,
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