And now for something completely different... I think

I started watching Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi on hulu.com but I had to stop because the irony of the situation got to be too much. The film is subtitled, "Life out of Balance" and is a series of long takes of nature juxtaposed contrasting long takes of modernity (space shuttles, the commotion of the city, etc.). The film is augmented by minimalist music composed by Phillip Glass (if you haven't heard it, check out Einstein on the Beach) and I think the experience of watching it is supposed to be a sort of guided meditation. I imagine seeing it on the big screen would be an incredible film going experience.

This isn't by any means easy viewing, after a short while I was getting accustomed to the excruciatingly long curve of continuity that the film employs when in a very postmodern moment, 11 minutes and some odd seconds in, the film was interrupted to show a 30 second commercial for Vonage. This was when I decided to wait and borrow it from the library. I don't mind watching TV on hulu, or most movies for that matter. My viewing of film is probably most characterized by interruption (time to go to class, the kids need their dad to come back to earth, or I should be doing something else but this movie is awesome!). However, it's difficult at best to try and experience a film like Koyaanisqatsi the way it was intended while watching it on laptop via a web site that stops the film every so often to show a commercial.

This incident probably just foregrounds the irony of watching Koyaanisqatsi at all. A film whose thesis is that modernity creates a way of living that is unnatural and out of balance can never really deliver the message it wants to via DVD or even VHS for that matter. The material that DVD's and tapes are made of already subvert the message of the film, the process deconstructs itself. Think also of Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Though Koyaanisqatsi would probably be best viewed in a theater to escape any possibility of interruption, the cinema experience, like the home video medium, will always prevent the film from truly saying what it wants to say. I could go on about images, phantasms, celluloid and projection but I think you get the point. Still, if you haven't seen it, Reggio's film is worth checking out.

me against the STATE

I wrote this after having what can only be termed "a run-in with the man". I was disheartened by what I perceived as the disregard the system had for me and my situation. Bureaucrat after bureaucrat could only recite rules to me like an automaton and seemed incapable of understanding that the rules are intended to serve and not be a hindrance to citizens. It was as if they perceived me as an enemy that was to be punished to the line of the law, some of them openly driven by cold hard cash. I took a day long hiatus from school to fix the invented problem and it turns out it was a gift. I think, dear reader, that you will be able to tell when my perception changed and I understood exactly what had been given me.

one cannot fight the STATE and win...the STATE will always crush the individual, any shimmer of creativity or hope dies within the monotone grays and browns of STATE architecture, somehow always resembling prisons...it's no secret that the STATE exists to perpetuate itself...the shroud of public service is very thin and serves more as a burial shroud...i think we all know this but for some reason that escapes me we want to believe in the system...as children we fell asleep during a game of make believe and never quite woke up so we continue the game, half-awake, pretending that the machinations of the STATE serve a purpose, imagining that it is worth something, popping Valium pills when nobody is looking, lying to ourselves...the metaphor of a new day has worn its cogs and can no longer churn out any semblance of meaning...we are ghosts, specters of the spectrum...who will mourn us when we are gone, who will sing our songs, who will conjure our spirits and write our fictions, dream our lives from the ashes of the archive?

No quiero, triste espíritu, volver

por los lugares que cruzó mi llanto,

latir secreto entre los cuerpos vivos

como yo también fui.

No quiero recordar

un instante feliz entre tormentos;

goce o pena es igual,

todo es triste al volver.

Aún va conmigo como una luz ajena

 aquel destino niño,

aquellos dulces ojos juveniles,

aquella antigua herida.

No, no quisiera volver,

sino morir aún más,

arrancar una sombra,

olvidar un olvido.

-Luís Cernuda

I remember that the people who work for the STATE are not evil, though robotic, some without hearts of their own, they too are victims of bureaucracy. Though there are few who will write my life when I am dead, there are some. When the STATE dies, I will turn away, refuse to look, deny remembrance...I will remember the Other. We will once again become humans, individuals...We will ignore the clarion call as their monuments crumble under the weight of Our deliberate amnesia.

...

This day has been a revelation, a series of gifts and remembrances. These are some of the things I received and will not soon forget:

-a three hour drive and lunch with my mothers mother

-seeing my grandfather, suffering from dementia, smile as he recognizes my face and squeezes my hand between his

-seeing two lovers, separated by the failure of a body, hold hands and enjoy their daily visit at the rest home

-talking to my two uncles about ghosts and ghosts stories

-brief visits to the homes of my grandmothers, where memory and nostalgia run deep

-remembering why I wanted to come here in the first place

-talking to my mothers brother on the phone

-watching the sunset with my fathers mother

-returning home, kissing my wife and peeking in on two beautiful children lost in the wonderland of their dreams

Though the system dealt me a financial blow, interpolated me as a bad citizen and a rule breaker (though they are not synonyms), my journey was a long a beautiful remembrance. I don't want to be a citizen, I don't care about the system. Perhaps the last paragraph of section one is true, perhaps I will look away. Or maybe next time something similar happens I will stare the robots straight in the eye with deafening silence, I will stare until they look back and see me and until I can see them; the face of the Other.

Screen captures in order: The Chimes at Midnight, Welles; The Trial, Welles.

Great Moments in Television

This is perhaps the best moment in the history of television.




And this one is right up there with it. One of the greatest TV programs ever with one of the greatest bands ever...I feel so shiny and happy. I love the Muppet version of Kate Pierson.




Another great moment in television...if I don't stop this could get real long.

 

This is my facebook tag internet album cover. Pretty cool.

I love Conan O'Brien because I'm very juvenile, and so is he.

Mac, this is for you.

An uncanny return

Among the many articles and books that could be considered part of the beginnings of spectral criticism (if it is a form of criticism at all) there is much written about the haunting effects of technology. I experienced such a haunting today as I happened upon something I wrote last July. At the time I was very busy with school and would often come home after my girls had gone to bed. I began to worry about the effect this would have on my daughters and I drew inspiration from one of my favorite photos of my oldest. This post was taken from my now defunct blog, Musings of a Mad Man. Take it for what it is, unedited and imperfect, like the author it pretends to represent.

This picture staring not back at me, but just beyond me, will be gone tomorrow; wiped from the memory of the remembering machine that holds my fragile keepsakes, my remembrances. They, like me, exist only virtually, nothing concrete here. Will she remember this moment when she’s grown…this precious time, while she is young, when she desires nothing more than the love of her mother and father? Yet in the photo she looks off, afar, away from the eye of the lens, away from me. Somehow, at this delicate age, she understands, intuits that she will have to leave, defect from her home where her parents did their best but fell short so often. How will she remember me? How will she remember us? Will she remember or will she depend, like us, on a remembering machine, which violently rips away the moments of pure perception replacing them with ghostly simulacra? A compendium which pathetically announces, “This is your life”, and we believe? As my memory fades, replaced by images, specters, I smile at my new recollections. They perform adequately in many ways but miss the embraces, the gentle whispers in the ear, the warmth of bodies. Will the photos reveal that I was often absent or distant, like her gaze? Will the photos replace the memory of my non-presence or will they reinforce my ghostly presence? Will I be erased by lying phantasmagoria resulting in fissures of psychosis and disconnect from reality? “He was never there.” This haunts me, yet I am now absent, distant, returning only after she has been overcome by the fog of sleep, watching her rest. We must forget if we are to sleep and it seems at once natural that we must forget if we are to die, to rest, finally.

The Ghost of Philadelphia

Houston we have a problem...

I'm Accepted!

This is the school seal for Washington University in St. Louis.

The Ghost of Chicago

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

Contrary to what you may think this is the Vandy Commodore looking for my transcript that the Graduate Studies department has "misplaced". The nice folks at the Spanish Dept. told me that they aren't making their admissions decisions until March 1st and that they would contact me if they wanted me to send another transcript. Read: We're just not that interested sonny.

Oh well, they called my friend Matt and I hope he gets in because he would be happy there. I have to admit, the prospect of pulling a Krause/Wade and going to Vandy together with Matt tickled my imagination but as the fake Howard Hughes said in the Rocketeer, "The dream is over".

In other news, I'm flying out to the city of brotherly love tomorrow and I'm hoping to get some admissions love from the university where Benjamin Franklin was once the provost. Here's to hoping I don't drip cheese-steak all over my comfy new shoes.

Success!!! BIG PICTURES!!!

I love black and whites

When I find my resting place, the place where I will live the rest of my life, I want to buy a super nifty camera and shoot it in black and white. I love color too, I love photography and the way framing something in a way it is not normally seen makes it new again. I love color photos of most places north of 45th parallel north.

I dream of visiting Maine, Reykjavik, returning to Ireland, Scotland and England. I want to explore the architecture of St. Petersburg and Moscow with my camera. The big sky country of Canada, Montana and Alaska call to me. I think if I traveled to New Zealand I wouldn't go home. I would get lost in the southern Andes and forever straddle the dividing line between Argentina and Chile. I love being in cold places where I can wear a warm sweater or coat. I love the smell of winter air and forests after rain.

I will  most likely never visit the majority of these places. I've chosen to become a professor of Latin American literature, I've been accepted into PhD programs, and I will most likely go. If I do make it to any of these places, or return to those where I've already been, I promise to spend aimless hours with the land, camera in hand. For now, you'll have to settle for pictures of Eltopia WA, Culver City CA, and Wymount Terrace at BYU. Here's to our dreams...