Ryan H. Walsh's 'Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968' (2018)

Ryan H. Walsh, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

A kaleidoscopic time portal into trippy Boston centering around 1968, but opening out into the 1960s and 1970s. The possibilities for further study of its phenomena are wide and deep. 

The biggest revelation for me was musical, with Boston bands like Ultimate Spinach (a sort of psychedelic Doorsy head band); and interesting historical context for powerful music with which I was already quite familiar (James Brown, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison).  

And you get all sorts of crazy details about the local music scene, clubs, musicians, cultish and political activism (particularly "the Lyman family"), underground newspapers, Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), the freaky What's Happening, Mr. Silver? show, Howard Zinn, Timothy Leary, Steve McQueen, the Boston Strangler, Tony Curtis, Aerosmith, Maria Muldaur, astral projection, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Barney Frank -- and more! 

Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 probably syncs well with an altered state, too, or so one can imagine. Can you dig? 

Today's Rune: The Self. 
   

Pier Paolo Pasolini: 'Medea' (1969)

Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea (1969), filmed in stunning locations and starring the great opera singer Maria Callas (1923-1977) in the title role. 

Jason and the Argonauts will be on a collision course with fate: the Golden Fleece and Medea. Chiron, Jason's adoptive father, a centaur, tries to prepare him for life when growing up. "Wherever your eyes roam, a god is hidden. And if by chance he be not there, the signs of his sacred presence are."

Medea with her family in Colchis (modern day Georgia), before the disruptive arrival of Jason and the Argonauts.

Medea and culture shock: beware the coming of the Greeks and their rival gods!

Pasolini's approach is distinctive and unforgettable! Maria Callas shines as Medea! 

At points, I was reminded of The Wicker Man (1973) and Twin Peaks: The Return (2017).  On the one hand, human sacrifice as part of ancient tradition, and on the other, double-exposure technique, superimposing a face (Medea, Agent Cooper) over a key scene, and presenting two versions of an event (the final fate of Creusa / Glauca). I was also reminded of Werner Herzog in the way Pasolini intertwines other-worldly music and free-floating camera work. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Gaius Petronius Arbiter: 'The Satyricon' (circa 65 A.D.) / 'Fellini Satyricon' (1969 A.D.)

With The Satyricon, what we have available to read as of early 2017 A.D. is a fragment of a longer work completed about 65 A.D. by Gaius Petronius Arbiter (circa 25-65 A.D.) who lived and died in the time of the deranged Roman emperor Nero (37-68 A.D.), a moment not unlike our own. Federico Fellini, one of the word's great filmmakers, adapted the Roman text into a movie, with new scenes added and some of the original scenes kept off screen, calling his adaptation Fellini Satyricon (1969 A.D.). Both versions are in turn colorful, grotesque, philosophical, poetic, garish, freakish, lurid, ghastly and a little on the demented side, as befits those -- and our -- times. Stunning visuals, but overall not for the squeamish.

In both versions, the aging poet Eumolpus is a major character. He tends to break into recitations of poetry, much to the annoyance of most of the people who can hear him. A running joke has his audiences throwing food or rocks at him, such is their fear and loathing of poetry! When not pining after teenaged boys, he's either mocking the ultra-rich and powerful or philosophizing about the human condition.  

Foil to Eumolpus is Trimalchio, a man far too rich for anyone's good. Even worse, he fancies himself a great poet, plagiarizing freely. When Eumolpus calls him out on this, Trimalchio orders the old man to be hounded and thrown into the street (and in the Fellini version, threatens to throw him into the flames of a large furnace). Eumolpus has a Trumpian personality, abusive yet always seeking unfettered adoration. He builds great monuments to himself and stages a mock funeral for himself, so that he can witness his servants and sycophants weeping and mourning for him, even though everyone involved knows it's a great theatrical sham.

Fellini brings a lot of energy and dazzling visuals to his film version but even so, Fellini Satyricon is certainly not for many besides the adventurous.

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Amy J. Berg's 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (2015)

Amy J. Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), a state of the art documentary biography of Janis Joplin (1943-1970), presents her life in a most compelling, sensitive and soulful manner. My first serious foray into this field was Howard Alk's Janis (1974), which I saw at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when I was twenty-two -- and I loved it, not to mention the audience's raucous response. Now I'd consider Alk's documentary as a complement or supplement to Berg's. There have been other films, and there have been excellent books on Janis, too. As anyone who knows her music can testify, Janis Joplin was intense. Amy J. Berg has done her justice here. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: 'Salesman' (1968, 1969): Take Two

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: Salesman (1968, 1969). The Maysles Brothers had previous experience at being door-to-door salesmen. They understood the lifestyle, and the stakes.   

Criterion Collection DVD. Chapter listing, including "Lost in Opa Locka," Florida. 

Much of the film spotlights Paul "The Badger" Brennan, who is in decline as a salesman from better years. "An orchestral version of 'This Land Is Your Land' is heard on Brennan's radio as he drives through the snow to a series of appointments with clients who are not home. The irony could not be clearer . . ."  ~ Joe McElhaney's Albert Maysles. Contemporary Film Directors series. University of Illinois Press, 2009, page 46.  

Today's Rune: Defense. 

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: 'Salesman' (1968, 1969): Take One

Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin: Salesman (1968, 1969). Thanks to The Criterion Collection, it's still circulating among interested parties in DVD format. 

This documentary in black and white, ostensibly about Irish American Catholic Bible salesman, shows us a microcosm of (any kind of) sales work. Although with Salesman we specifically see a grueling door-to-door kind of selling, peddling and hawking in their various forms date back, one suspects, thousands of years. Selling is a truly social, virtually relentless activity with a long history.  

Direct cinema style: prospective Bible buyers let Albert and David Maysles film their interactions with the salesmen, but unlike "Reality TV" today, they don't seem much concerned about appearance or action. (Charlotte Zwerin edited the raw footage into a coherent "story" with a sort of beginning, middle and end, but no intrusive narration).

Two questions for now. One: how much of an "observer effect" distorts what might have otherwise happened had there been no cameras, just salesmen and clients?

Two: How have sales techniques changed along with technology and living patterns, specifically since Salesman was made in the 1960s? Or have they?

Today's Rune: Journey.

Jean-Pierre Melville: L'armée des ombres / Army of Shadows

Jean-Pierre Melville's L'armée des ombres / Army of Shadows. Here's a 1969 film set during wartime (that which we call the Second World War) not released in the USA until 2006. Why? It's excellent, but grim. Gangsters are one thing, but a bleak recounting of the French Resistance is another. Sure, there are cat-and-mouse games, infiltration, betrayals, torture and killings in cops-and-robbers films, but now we have to think about such things among the common citizenry, too? Movies are about escapism, aren't they? Not this one! A harrowing, existentialist film, in which members of the underground are reminded to keep a cyanide tablet on their person at all times. Better suicide than falling into the hands of occupying myrmidons. And don't you know it.

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Michelangelo Antonioni: Zabriskie Point (Take I)

With a little Pink Floyd mixed in, far out is what it is: Michelangelo Antonioni's full color English language film Zabriskie Point (1970). It's fueled by ghosts in the machine, the late 1960s Zeitgeist, Time-Ghost, spirit of the time. Pictured here: Kathleen Cleaver, now a professor at Yale. How cool is that?

The main actors, Daria Halprin (as Daria -- Dennis Hopper was a spouse in "real life") and Mark Frechette (as Mark) are a joke as far as delivering lines (hello, Earth? Is anybody out there?), but Zabriskie Point works anyway.  Antonioni knows exactly how much Americans obssess about guns -- there's a sequence in a gunshop that could have been filmed in 2013, in fact -- and about planes (Mark steals one, for little apparent reason other than that he's a certifiable nut).

Let's not forget explosions -- and Wonder Bread debris flying through the air to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up" (a reworking of "Careful With That Axe, Eugene"). Far out, indeed.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  
  

August Wilson: Two Trains Running

A live performance of any August Wilson play tends to motivate me to "reach back" (as my Dad would say) and go see it, regardless of what else is going on. Recently, I was lucky enough to attend a new production of Wilson's Two Trains Running (1990), which is part of his Pittsburgh series and in this case set in 1969. The plot is simple but compelling. The set consists of the inside of a diner that stands in the way of "urban renewal" and subject to eminent domain.

Seven characters appear on stage at one time or another -- six men and one woman.

Much of the story is told through multiple dimensions via concepts of race, gender, socioeconomic class, location (geography) and time period.

But: the story could be retold from the perspective of any time and any place without losing some of the core gravitas of the situation. Change is coming, regardless of what people wish. How best to respond? Indeed, invaders could be approaching, ready to conquer -- thousands of years ago or in the 21st century.

August Wilson doesn't make things too hard on his audience, mixing conflict with humor, provinciality with catholic tastes. So far, I've liked every production of an August Wilson play to date, of the ones I've been fortunate enough to attend, ranging from Detroit to Fort Worth. If you're reading this, you might, too.

Today's Rune: Joy.

The Medium is the Message: Cassette Tapes

". . . an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world. Because we are benumbed by any new technology — which in turn creates a totally new environment — we tend to make the old environment more visible; we do so by turning it into an art form and by attaching ourselves to the objects and atmosphere that characterized it, just as we’ve done with jazz, and as we’re now doing with the garbage of the mechanical environment via pop art. . . -- “The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan,” Playboy (March 1969).

As an influential medium, the cassette tape took off in the 1970s, overcoming reel-to-reel and the 8-Track and challenging vinyl LPs. But behind it emerged the CD, and behind that, digital downloads. What next?

According to Kara Rose in "Cassette Tapes See New Life after MP3s," USA Today (October 3, 2011 - updated), cassette sales peaked in 1990 with over 440 million sold. New "herds" were "killed off" as quickly and brutally as the American Bison after the American Civil War, but like the Buffalo in the 20th century and with care and consideration in the 21st, cassettes have made a modest comeback. It's worth noting that cassettes cost about one tenth of what vinyl did to produce -- though they certainly were not priced that way in the 1980s. Nowadays, cassettes and CDs can be produced in small batches by musicians and their associates -- and priced competitively. The not quite "old environment" has become, as Marshall McLuhan phrases it above,  "more visible" with the passage of time. Now we have so many options that a person can barely know where to turn at any particular moment -- or so it would seem by daily observation. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.       

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) presents us with an anomaly in the 007 series: Bond (George Lazenby) falls in love with and marries someone -- Tracy, Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg). The film pretty closely follows the internal arc of Ian Fleming's 1963 novel of the same title. Overall take on this Peter R. Hunt directed movie? Trippy, man. I always get sucked back into it,
too -- every time.
   

Hard to beat the Sean Connery films, but this one's still up there in the Bond pantheon. On Her Majesty's Secret Service does nice work, too, documenting the socio-economic transition from the earlier 1960s into the later 60s, yet hasn't become so frayed as to become too caricaturish (as it would start to in the 1970s). Sort of like a band with a lot of albums. The first six are really good, then they tend to go up and down and all around -- same with the Bond series over the past fifty plus years.

As an aside, I like Daniel Craig as the latest incarnation of Mr. Bond. He'll be in Skyfall later this year, directed by Sam Mendes and co-starring Javier Bardem. Even in 2012, still On Her Same Majesty's Secret Service. 

Today's Rune: Flow.

The Ray Bradbury Chronicles

The big push in my Ray Bradbury absorption came as "extra reading" during the year of Mrs. Barlow's Ninth Grade English class, with R is for Rocket, S is for Space and The Martian Chronicles, all of them from home. Before that, I devoured Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451 and The Ilustrated Man. With friends, there were repeat showings of the movie versions of the last two named books, and a final flourish in 1979: the TV mini-series broadcast of The Martian Chronicles, featuring Darren McGavin of The Night Stalker. I loved it all!

Having not reread any of the books nor rewatched any of the adaptations since the mini-series, they've all remained floating around in my psyche like phantoms, right back to the very first Bradbury book I picked up, Something Wicked This Way Comes. If all books were burned in the near future, these would all be good tales to pass on orally to the next two or three generations. 

The original order of publication hardly mattered to me at the time, but for what it's worth and out of sheer curiosity, I looked them up and found that it goes like this:

The  Martian Chronicles, 1950 (including stories first published in the 1940s).
The Illustrated Man (1951).
Fahrenheit 451 (1953).
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).
R is for Rocket (1962).
S is for Space (1966).
Fahrenheit 451 movie directed by François Truffaut, with Oskar Werner and Julie Christie (1966).   
The Illustrated Man movie directed by Jack Smight and starring Rod Steiger (1969).
Michael Anderson's The Martian Chronicles mini-series (1979) -- same director as for Logan's Run (1976 -- a good deal of it, by the way, filmed in Fort Worth, Texas).

Has Ray Bradbury (RIP) done anything similar for you over the years?

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Gillo Pontecorvo: Burn!

Don't mind the absurdly terrible overdubbing at points: Gillo Pontecorvo's Queimada / Burn! (1969) is a rare masterpiece of socio-economic analysis in movies. It also sports one of Marlon Brando's great performances (eccentric mock British accent and all).  Though set in the Caribbean in the 1800s, Burn! as filmed was equally concerned with what was going on in the world of the late 1960s, and remains just as relevant in the 21st century. Theme music by Ennio Morricone.

Today's Rune: Journey.

Withnail and I: It's 1969, Okay? All Across the UK . . .

Bruce Robinson's Withnail & I (1986), set toward the end of 1969 in England, delivers punchy banter and sly humor, a sort of virtuoso verbal blending of Don Quixote, Sergio Leone, Oscar Wilde, Zorba the Greek and Spinal Tap with Richard E. Grant in the title role. Mad props!

Robinson's latest film is The Rum Diary, based on the Hunter S. Thompson novel. 

Today's Rune: Gateway.  

The Velvet Underground: Under Review

This popcorn and cotton candy documentary doesn't do much, but it's still a fun little romp through the Velvet Underground's discography. Key players John Cale and Lou Reed do not appear for interviews; these are left to others like drummer Mo Tucker and later addition Doug Yule.

Like time spent with an old friend, it's worth watching The Velvet Underground: Under Review (2006) if you dig the Velvets. Hard to determine who directed this, part of a British series.

Some of the great Velvet Underground tracks:

I'm Waiting for the Man
Femme Fatale
Venus in Furs
All Tomorrow's Parties
Heroin
There She Goes Again
I'll Be Your Mirror
White Light/White Heat
Sister Ray
What Goes On
Some Kinda Love
Beginning to See the Light
That's the Story of My Life
Sweet Jane
Rock & Roll

What am I missing here? John Cale gave the band its initially dark, super-cool sound, and Lou Reed's lyrics tend to stick in the memory. I often think of Reed phrasing. Two lines in particular:

I could sleep for a thousand years (Venus in Furs)

and

Aren't you glad you're married?  (Kill Your Sons)



Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

Speak, Memory: A Kid's Halloween

In one five year period of a Halloween kid's memories (my own), we -- the family up to that point -- lived in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Justice, Illinois, and St. Paul, Minnesota. Hence, Halloweens were quite varied, while retaining a common thread.

I remember being real little, parading in Halloween costume with a bunch of other kids, parents and maybe teachers guiding us along. A Halloween parade.  I vaguely remember trick or treating this way in the neighborood where we lived. It was fun. I remember some of the costumes from that year and maybe the year or two afterwards, maybe three: for the boys, Batman, Green Hornet and Kato, Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, Secret Agent/Danger Man, soldiers, cops and firemen. For the girls, I remember witches, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and among older girls, cheerleaders with pom poms. There were devils, too, and pirates. I don't really remember vampires until Dark Shadows came along, when we lived outside of Chicago. Nor zombies. But let's not forget Snoopy & the Red Baron! We had the Royal Guardsmen record pictured above -- I still have it.

All the way back to my first Halloween memories, then blended forward to about eight years old: decorations like Jack O'Lanterns and orange streamers. Pennies for UNICEF. Candies -- Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Twizzlers, Pixy Stix and SweeTarts (aka Sweet Tarts). Warnings about razorblades-in-apples were there from the beginning -- take care poking through your sack! When we heard about the Boston Strangler, we were spooked. And tales of Mary Worth. But now I remember astronaut costumes, too. . . We were going to the Moon . . .

How about you? 

Happy Halloween everybody! 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.              

Street Fighting Man

Before The Rolling Stones completed the song we know as "Street Fighting Man" (1968), it was a work-in-progress referred to as "Did Everybody Pay Their Dues?," or some close variation of that. Listening to the audio track now, part of the lyrics go more or less like this, a sort of gnarly hybrid of "Who's Been Sleeping Here?" (which came before it) and "Brown Sugar (which came after):

Now did everybody pay their dues?
Now did everyone with tribal blues
All the braves and the squaws and the maids and the whores
Did everybody pay their dues?

He's a tribal chief his name is called disorder
He's flesh and blood he tears it up when acting right is normal
Now did everybody pay their dues?
Now did any of them try to refuse?

With this track, the music remained more or less intact, but the lyrics were radically changed. Why? The Tet Offensive, US-Vietnam War. Really?  Yes, really. Mick Jagger participated in an anti-war rally in London (outside the American embassy) in March '68, and was on top of the situation in France (mai '68 and its lead-up). Cataclysm was in the air. In the US on March 31st, President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced:  "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President." Given all the excitement, Jagger revamped almost everything, changing

He's a tribal chief his name is called disorder . . .

to

Hey, said my name is called Disturbance . . .

 

I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the King, I'll rail at all his servants . . .

And so "Street Fighting Man" was refined that summer and sent out over the airwaves in August 1968. The US was in complete chaos, and the song perfectly captured the spirit of the times. However, the song scared a lot of people -- therefore, it was (haphazardly, voluntarily) suppressed on radio in the US; in the UK, it wasn't even released as a single until 1970.

Mick Jagger has continued to weigh in on current events over the years, but never with such intensity as during Revolutionary Year One, 1968/1969. He is also a wry observer, as with the lyrics to "You Can't Always Get What You Want" (recorded in November, 1968, and released in 1969):

Now I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing "we're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse . . ."

Other examples, all still relevant: "Gimme Shelter" (1969), "Fingerprint File" (1974), "Undercover of the Night" (1983), "Highwire" (1991) and "Sweet Neo Con" (2005).

Today's Rune: Flow.

Jean-Luc Godard: Sympathy for the Devil, Part 2

I. In Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil (1968), the Rolling Stones bring the title song to fruition in the studio, intercut with various scenarios that capture the violence and chaos of Revolutionary Year One, 1968.  In one of the more chilling connections between recording the title song and outside events, Mick Jagger changes the lyric from (in one version):

I shouted out
Who killed Kennedy? 
It was always
You and me . . .

to:

I shouted out
Who killed the Kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me . . .

Why the sudden change?  Because Bobby Kennedy was assassinated on June 6, 1968 -- exactly while the Stones were wrapping up "Sympathy for the Devil," which they had begun recording on

June 4. Eerie. Oh, and, by the way: Andy Warhol, who would design the cover for the Stones' Sticky Fingers (1971), was shot in New York City by Valerie Solanas -- author of The SCUM Manifesto* -- on June 3, 1968. Double eerie. 

In the recording sessions, Mick Jagger is clearly the main driver (the lyrics are his, inspired by French literature and the tumultuous history of humanity), with Keith Richards as the primary musical guru. Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and others provide backup, while, sadly, Brian Jones -- who'd earlier inspired the Stones to expand their sound by including more "exotic" global instrumentation, among other things -- seems to be lost in his own mind, strumming away at an unplugged guitar in his own music box, occasionally gesturing for another cigarette. Like Amy Winehouse in 2011, Jones would be dead at 27 years old, thirteen months after the "Sympathy for the  Devil" recording sessions filmed by Godard and his crew.

Other things to note: the church organ experimentation and slower versions of the song, Keith Richards on bass guitar as well as on, by way of overdub, electric guitar, and Mick, having soaked up Americanisms as well as French literature, singing:

Pleased to meet y'all --
Hope you guess my name!

II. Finally, Godard spotlights the divergent arcs of two movements: Black Power and feminism. Early in the film, we see Black Power militants -- all men -- in an auto junkyard, symbolically executing white women dressed all in white (it's a movie, folks). Later, we see "Eve" interviewed, after having tried to reach Black Power men by phone -- they had not picked up. Later still, we see two black women conducting an interview in the junkyard, perhaps an attempt to bridge the two movements, or to show they remain mutually separated. Hard to tell. As we now know, Black Power was violently confronted by the powers that be, and the women's movement, and feminism, would inspire some changes to the status quo in the 1970s; the whole idea of gender issues would quickly expand to include pushes to reform public policy and cultural attitudes regarding sexual orientation, gay rights and related matters, right through the time of this posting.

*Opening lines:  Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

Today's Rune: Signals.              

Buñuel: The Milky Way, Part 2

The status quo, orthodoxy, cannot exist without heterodoxy, or heresy, nor can heresy, or heterodoxy, exist without orthodoxy, the status quo. So it is with anything mindfully human: science, politics, poetry, visual art, religion, economics, education, music, anything at all. Kicking against the pricks, as the Bible puts it (Acts 9:5 and 26:14). Or in China, say the Cultural Revolution. Or in today's US presidential race, all sorts of dogmas and heresies, nowhere more obvious than in the Republican Party. That, too, is the beauty and enduring power of Luis Buñuel's (and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière's) La Voie lactée / The Milky Way (1969) -- always relevant. Land of milk and honey, silver and gold, indeed.

American Republican Party dogmas, spearheaded by members of the self-proclaimed Tea Party, have become extremely rigid and dogmatic, so much so that deviations from their quasi-mystical texts and pledges are labelled heresies: "He is anathema!" Anyone deviating too far becomes first a "RINO" (Republican in name only"); next, barring complete resubmission to dogma, she or he is exiled, scapegoated, expelled, ejected, ridiculed.

According to today's dogma, one cannot raise taxes on the rich, who must be brightly decorated (metaphorically) with halos and honored as mystical "jobs creators."

Somehow, in society's helping the rich to become richer, to hoard their monies, some small bits of coinage will spill out, trickle down to the impoverished masses, their natural servants. 

And all will be as it should be, as is preordained, the best of all possible worlds. The Elect will rise to the top, or stay there, always!

The Environmental Protection Agency is also, to them, anathema! And so on. But the funny thing is, the Tea Party itself began as a heresy of the Republican Party; now that it's taking over, it has already become the new status quo, ripe for challenge from new heresies in the future -- hopefully the near future.

Today's Rune: Movement.

Buñuel: The Milky Way, Part 1

Watching Luis Buñuel's The Milky Way / La Voie lactée (1969), one might be unsure, at times, whether to laugh or cry. The crux of the film -- showing the varieties of religious belief as represented by the official Catholic Church and various alternative, unsanctioned doctrines (aka heresies) in action -- is perfectly suited for Buñuel's (and co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière's) Surrealist style. I can't think of a better fit.

Premise: two 1960s guys are making a pilgrimage from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain, along the Way of Saint James (also called the Milky Way, and in Spanish, El Camino de Santiago; or in French, Les chemins de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle) mostly by walking. They seem to weave in and out of time and space, threading their way unexpectedly through various bizarre encounters, ranging from secret "heretical" meetings in the woods to Jesus and Mary to a demon (or is it the Devil?) and the Whore of Babylon. The viewer is left to decide what the hell is going on and what to do (or not do) about it. 

Perspective. It's clear, from Buñuel's perspective, that people believe some mighty strange things, and often go to great lengths to squash or suppress alternative beliefs.  

Action. For me, I feel inspired, watching The Milky Way, to go on some sort of mini-pilgrimage as soon as possible. It's an exciting prospect. While on the one hand, as a priest observes in the film, "there is no mystery deeper, and sweeter, than that of the Virgin Mary," on the other hand, the very act of going on any pilgrimage can be exhilarating and enlightening. There is absolutely no down side, unless you happen to be caught by lethal enemies and burned at the stake as a heretic.  

Today's Rune: Defense.