looking out through the eyes of a t.v. programme of a monk sealed into a coffin
Rest in Peace, Tom Verlaine
Deleted monologue on how youtubes of Verlaine songs I posted last night that twitter didn't disappear altogether now don't work and fine metaphors abounding
Deleted monologue on how by page 100 of Cormac McCarthy's *Suttree* I surrendered to overwhelming truth that I *don't* need to read a violent novel about crackers in 1951 Knoxville Tennessee
"But the liberal idolatry of process is more than simply a short-sighted political tactic in a populist age; it’s also an all-purpose rationale (and an excuse) for a state of abiding powerlessness. The process by which things get compromised, not that by which they are realized, is idealized as the real work, and clichés about hashing things out and working them out honorably become euphemisms for really not giving a shit. It’s a bloodless outlook that has made an art form of giving no one what they really want or need."
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat
speaking of a violent novel about crackers - last night i watched guillermo del toro's film of william lindsay greshman's nightmare alley - missus charley and i watched the first half hour or so, then we decided to switch to a kdrama from netflix - little women but not a dramatization of the american novel - after she went to bed i finished up the first film - wikipedia notes that
Kevin Maher of The Times [of London] also gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, praising its set design, but added: "there's little else in this drastically overstretched narrative (150 minutes!) to hold any attention beyond a cursory awareness that, yes, we’re watching an oddly literal melodrama about bad people doing very bad things, very slowly."
based on that, i watched the remainder at 1.5 speed - i'm glad i did
wanting to know more about the author of the novel, i read about his colorful life - among the surprising aspects was that a novel that i read several times in the 1950s - a horse and his boy - was dedicated to his sons, who were the stepsons of that book's author
their mother Joy Davidson wrote the following:
Prayer before Daybreak
I have loved some ghost or other all my years. Dead men, their kisses and their fading eyes dim in the house of memory; glimmers in twilight air, no more. They were not there to say no to me when I wanted them, so it was safe to love them. And dead gods, blind eyes in plaster in the safe museum, the broken hands without the thunderbolt and the lost mouths that could not laugh at prayers I did not make to them. And a worse ghost, the thin unearthly shadow of tomorrow scudding ahead of my realities, that since it never could be overtaken could never disappoint me. Dear shadows, images of bare branches on the snow already melting; images of dwindled sun in the shadows of eclipse running like ghosts of snakes along the ground while the moon’s shadow passes. Ghosts of ghosts, the twittering echoes of the strengthless dead who do no harm.
Only the terrible Now I dared not love. Not the word made flesh, not the Incarnation bearing a sword to strike me to the heart; not that which is, but is not I. Not God, or sun, or blood, or anything real that when I spoke it could not say no to me.
For I have loved my own ghost all these years till there is nothing to say yes to me; till there is only vast and lightless nothing and in the heart of it not even I.
O Love, let shadows flee; O live sun, living God, incarnate sword of edged reality, let me be hurt, but let me be alive enough to die.
I am reminded that Television always sounded like what Talking Heads wanted to be when it grew up, much as I liked TH they also seemed a bit polished, not as step-out willing to experiment in the moment.
speaking of a violent novel about crackers - last night i watched guillermo del toro's film of william lindsay greshman's nightmare alley - missus charley and i watched the first half hour or so, then we decided to switch to a kdrama from netflix - little women but not a dramatization of the american novel - after she went to bed i finished up the first film - wikipedia notes that
ReplyDeleteKevin Maher of The Times [of London] also gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, praising its set design, but added: "there's little else in this drastically overstretched narrative (150 minutes!) to hold any attention beyond a cursory awareness that, yes, we’re watching an oddly literal melodrama about bad people doing very bad things, very slowly."
based on that, i watched the remainder at 1.5 speed - i'm glad i did
wanting to know more about the author of the novel, i read about his colorful life - among the surprising aspects was that a novel that i read several times in the 1950s - a horse and his boy - was dedicated to his sons, who were the stepsons of that book's author
their mother Joy Davidson wrote the following:
Prayer before Daybreak
I have loved some ghost or other all my years.
Dead men, their kisses and their fading eyes
dim in the house of memory; glimmers
in twilight air, no more. They were not there
to say no to me when I wanted them,
so it was safe to love them.
And dead gods,
blind eyes in plaster in the safe museum,
the broken hands without the thunderbolt
and the lost mouths that could not laugh at prayers
I did not make to them.
And a worse ghost,
the thin unearthly shadow of tomorrow
scudding ahead of my realities,
that since it never could be overtaken
could never disappoint me.
Dear shadows,
images of bare branches on the snow
already melting; images
of dwindled sun in the shadows of eclipse
running like ghosts of snakes along the ground
while the moon’s shadow passes. Ghosts of ghosts,
the twittering echoes of the strengthless dead
who do no harm.
Only the terrible Now
I dared not love. Not the word made flesh,
not the Incarnation bearing a sword
to strike me to the heart; not that which is,
but is not I. Not God,
or sun, or blood, or anything real
that when I spoke it could not say no to me.
For I have loved my own ghost all these years
till there is nothing to say yes to me;
till there is only vast and lightless nothing
and in the heart of it not even I.
O Love, let shadows flee;
O live sun, living God, incarnate sword
of edged reality, let me be hurt,
but let me be alive enough to die.
I am reminded that Television always sounded like what Talking Heads wanted to be when it grew up, much as I liked TH they also seemed a bit polished, not as step-out willing to experiment in the moment.
ReplyDelete