Mystic Chords of Memory

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." ~ US President Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861. Full text here.

Memory, like dreaming, is often highly emotionally charged. There's the Proustian memory trigger -- a deep memory surfaces due to a scent, a sound, a person who resembles someone from the past (or future, if it's a premonition); or the memory reminder, like a photograph, journal entry, memory-laden discussion, written communication or voice mail. Often just a person's name or thinking about a certain time or place will conjure up a memory, or a slew of them. 

Memories often conflict or prove paradoxical. I recently finished Ian Gibson's Federico García Lorca: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989) and what was made very clear in it is that different people remembered Lorca differently, even from the same event, based partly on how well they knew him, how they felt about him, how much time had elapsed, and what they wanted to remember about him. 

So I thought I'd post a sampling of remembered people, times and places. If the context of a situation is not viscerally recalled, the details seem vaguer. Let's give it a try, shall we?

When I was a teenager, I met Ariana Bracalente at an amusement park in Virginia -- not randomly but through Marc Pinotti, a mutual friend. She was a little older than I was, an exciting development at the time. She was smart, astute and interesting; her mother was a nurse and they were Catholic. We were close for some time, and wrote lots of letters. The last time I saw her was at a football game, also in Virginia, and she was taking pictures with, if I remember correctly, a Nikon with zoom lens. Ah, youth!

In my early twenties, I met a handful of much older German fellows at Normandy, in France. They were celebrating their "alive day." On June 6-7, 1944, then draftees in the Wehrmacht, they rather wisely surrendered to Canadian assault forces as fast as they could and, obviously, survived the war. With some college friends from Chapel Hill, we shared bottles of wine and were all singing by the end of the night. Though we only saw them over a period of two days, they made a lasting impression. Three names stick with me: Willi Wiederstein from near Düsseldorf, Karl and Helmut. Luckily, I'm still excellent friends with one of the American college students who also experienced this exchange firsthand.

When I was living in Philadelphia, while a graduate student at Temple University, I came to know a number of intelligent and fun people from Vietnam, China, India, Germany, Russia, Canada, England, France, Spain, Italy and Thailand, among other places. One of the many, Nga Mai, an edgy (and rather striking in appearance) entrepreneur and restaurateur, hired me occasionally to cover her Diva Café, right across the way from my apartment at 1225 Spruce Street; sometimes we'd play chess and talk about Hannah Arendt or Camille Paglia, who was teaching nearby at the University of the Arts. Nga and her two sisters had come to the USA with their Catholic mother, starting in Omaha, Nebraska; their father remained in Vietnam after the Americans departed. We stayed in touch for a while after I left the city, after she closed Diva and opened up a couple of new places over by Rittenhouse Square. At Diva, she would explain to people how to remember conceptualizing and spelling her first name: "like National Golf Association." (Which in turn reminds me of Stuart Basefsky, a librarian mentor from Duke University, now at Cornell University's School of Industry and Labor Relations, who would say his last name to newcomers and explain, "like Base and Sky with an F in the middle." Like I sometimes say, when people ask, "Erik with a k.")

Also in Philadelphia, I unexpectedly came to know Lu Ping from the People's Republic of China in a history class. She was an English teacher when back in China. Her stories about her father, who was very old by then, and his experiences during the Long March were remarkable. Only later did I realize that her name could be better understood in reverse, as Ping Lu.

When I moved to Detroit, there were additional new waves of people to meet. Like mustard seeds, some took hold and some didn't. I remember early on, upon the first occasion of meeting David J. Thompson, an English instructor then and a wandering poet and photographer now. This is primarily because of the specific context: I was seated at his flimsy card table, slowly sinking into wet clay, enclosed within a Japanese-style courtyard designed in the 1950s by Minoru Yamasaki. Thompson had on the table a 1995 book, which I asked about: Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain, a fascinating memoir about snake-handlers and old time religion in the American South. (Side memory: for some reason Thompson hated Abraham Lincoln). The last time I saw him was at Steve's Back Room, a Middle Eastern Restaurant in Saint Clair Shores. By this time, several years after the first introductions, we both were working on laptops at separate tables, and I was moving to Texas; outside, there was snow on the ground.  

Also in metro Detroit, there was another English instructor (among many) on another occasion -- a regular bar night for artists and educators -- that I recall, from a couple years later. In this case, it was the unusual name that stuck: Carroll Louis Goossen, Jr. I wondered why whoever was in charge of given names in the Goossen clan flipped the name from a literary salute to Lewis Carroll, author of Through the Looking Glass, to such an awful appendage? This to me was as strange as the Lu Ping/Ping Lu flip or Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue." Then again, the "real" name of Lewis Carroll was actually Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. 

The last time I saw Cal was probably at Macomb Community College, where for a while I taught Writing, English, Poetry and the (International) Novel as an adjunct -- (I was working full time as a librarian elsewhere). 

For now, I'll end with a relevant snippet about people's names from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Chapter Six:

'"My name is Alice, but — "
"It's a stupid name enough!" Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. "What does it mean?"
"Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully.
"Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: "my name means the shape I am — and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost."' Indeed.

Dear reader, how do you remember people and their names? 

Today's Rune: Strength.

Brian Jay Jones: 'Washington Irving' (2008, 2011), Take I

In the mid-1990s, I had to give a little twenty minute background talk on American author Washington Irving (1783-1859) to a class in Virginia. Their reading assignment for that day was "Rip Van Winkle" (1819). 

I hadn't given a whole lot of additional thought to Washington Irving until last year, when traveling in Granada, Spain, I saw several of his books for sale, some in English and some in Spanish, at the Alhambra. This piqued my interest again, and it was with great pleasure that I found a copy of Brian Jay Jones' Washington Irving: The Definitive Biography of America's First Bestselling Author (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2011; originally published in 2008 as Washington Irving: An American Original). 

It was with even greater pleasure that I read it - just finished it this week, in fact. Based mostly on letters and other primary sources, it's an engaging biography. 

One of the grandest episodes of Irving's life was his time as United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Spain from 1842 to 1846. But more on that another time, I suspect. For now, let me salute Jones' excellent biography. 

Today's Rune: Strength. 

Barrios to Burbs

Jody Agius Vallejo, Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican-American Middle Class (Stanford University Press, 2012). 

Vallejo provides us with a straightforward look at middle class Mexican American life and the process of its formation, through a combination of extensive interviewing and analysis. 

Vallejo's main focus is interesting, but for the purposes of this post, let's also consider American socio-economic class income and status in general.

Barrios to Burbs lays out the basic criteria and markers for defining middle class, or middle income. My variant response is that any three of the following four attributes will do the trick:

~~ College education (at least one member of the household).
~~Household income above national US median:  $50,221 in 2009. 
       (Closer to $55,000 in 2015.) 
~~White collar job or any-size business ownership.
~~Home ownership. 
       (Vallejo, p. 5).

Vallejo's conclusions about the Mexican American middle class include the following statement: "While some achieve rapid intergenerational mobility through business ownership, the majority in this study enter the middle class through the occupational advances that follow higher education." (p. 183).  

It's interesting because 2016 Republican presidential contender Senator Marco Rubio --  in Vallejo's terms, a 2.0 generation Cuban American -- advocates vo-tech, i.e. vocational-technical education, as does Democratic President Barrack Obama, who might be considered a 2.5 generation American. Obama advocates for all types of education, including vo-tech, community college and four year colleges and universities. 

American socio-economics are changing by generation. After the Great Recession of 2008, the importance of home ownership has declined in some spheres (at least culturally), while the idea of white collar jobs may also be morphing into other possibilities. Finally, it seems to me that one must cross-check household income with per capita income to locate a better sense of socio-economic class. For instance, a household of one to three people living within the means of a $55,000 household income threshold must be less challenging in terms of daily tradeoffs than a household of more than four or five people under the same roof, with that same household income.

As far as upper income levels, the top ten percent to the top one percent, one might consider a household income baseline of $500,000 per year. 

The poverty  line is a household income of about $25,000 per year, and a "living wage" is considered to be about $30,000 per year. 

Going into 2016, there is a perfect set-up for the clash between hiking the minimum wage and "trickle-down" economics, in which leftover pocket change falls from the upper income classes like pennies from Heaven. 

p.s. Everything is subject to change. Anyone trying to stop time is doomed to fail. Too, anyone trying to speed up time may be disappointed by the actual pace of things.

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Chimes at Midnight: Kraftwerk Late Show, Austin, Texas

It was weird listening this very morning to outdoor wind chimes dingling and tintinnabuluming as a result of a light air-breeze, sounding alternately like a bit of music echoing off a Jean Michel Jarre theme (Ryan's Daughter) or various phantom samples from a Kraftwerk track ("Computer Love," "Spacelab," etcetera).  

Indeed, life and art are often working together, hand in hand, through each other, in time, beyond space and by way of tingling memory responses triggered by music or comparable stimuli . . . 

I can write quite a lot about Kraftwerk's evening performance at Bass Concert Hall in Austin, Texas, this past Friday (September 25, 2015 A. D.), but it mostly comes down to transcending time -- funneling time and feeling and memory -- regaining two other Kraftwerk performances -- Brixton 1991 and Detroit 1998 -- heightened consciousness of our (via Marshall McLuhan) "electronic envelope," keen awareness of "the extensions of man" or humanness, our evolving nature as man-machine, human-machine -- total immersion, total realization . . . total immersion through pure art. 

I can now refer you to an excellent review of the daytime show by Wes Eichenwald here. He gets at the gist of things, giving me no reason to try to reinvent the electronic wheel for this particular post. 

Kraftwerk's music in Austin, with dazzling "retro future" interaction that included multi-lingual text (German, English, Russian, French, Spanish, Japanese . . .), numbers and Gestaltic iconography, was played more or less in this order:

 "Numbers;" "Computer World;" "Home Computer" and "It's More Fun to Compute;" "Computer Love;" "Pocket Calculator;" "The Man Machine;" "Spacelab;" "The Model;" "Neon Lights;" "Autobahn;" "Airwaves" . . . "Geiger Counter + Radioactivity;" "Ohm Sweet Ohm;" "Electric Café;" "Tour de France;" "Trans Europe Express" . . . (first encore) "The Robots;" (second encore) "Aerodynamik;" "Boom Boom Tschak" + "Techno Pop" + "Musique Non Stop" plus individual bows and a dandy Auf Wiedersehen.  

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Shawn Ryan's 'The Shield' (FX, 2002-2008): Take One

The FX series The Shield (2002-2008) remains fresh, relevant, thoughtful and scary. It works on many levels, focusing on denizens in and around "The Barn," a provisional LAPD outpost with a zone of control in "The Farm."  The tone of the series is gritty and sharp. There's a mix of taut drama, comedic elements and bursts of violence indistinguishable from a contemporary war zone. The Shield fearlessly explores transactions of race, culture, socio-economic class, gender, greed, unexpected kindnesses, and all kinds of weaponry put to mostly dubious use. To boot, the series displays strong primary, secondary and tertiary characters, plot and pacing. 

The characters in The Shield are a mixed but memorable bag. One of my favorites is Van Bro (played by David Raibon), ex-gang member and survivor, albeit with an eye patch and a wheelchair; during the time of the series he's a street artist with an ear to the ground. "I'd appreciate if you kept Van Bro's name out your mouth," he quips to The Strike Team at one point. Van Bro doesn't appear often, but one certainly can remember him once he's introduced, from early on.

Another thread to watch for in The Shield is the Shogun and Game of Thrones style ambition, rivalry and usually thwarted or diverted resolution among a field of characters that range from new cops to old captains, from baby bangers to drug kingpins. Throughout, there's an endless quest in the grand scheme of things, but a quite finite one for most involved.

Today's Rune: Defense.    

The Dardenne Brothers: 'Le silence de Lorna' / 'Lorna's Silence' (2008)

With Le silence de Lorna / Lorna's Silence (2008), the Dardenne Brothers do it again - deliver an indie film with modest production budget that is stronger than any of the 21st century blockbusters that I've seen so far.

This is a tight existential film focused on a daisy chain of interconnected people and decisions made in a short time frame. These international characters are gaming the system, but their plans and actions quickly become fraught with moral choices. 

Albanians Lorna (played by Arta Dobroshi, from Kosovo) and Sokol, her paramour, hope to open a little "snack bar" in Belgium. Already in geographic place, Lorna works at a small dry cleaning joint. Sokol is always on the road, doing long hauling and God knows what else. Lorna, meanwhile, is in a marriage of convenience with Claudy, a seemingly hopeless drug addict, arranged and paid for by Fabio, a dangerous if petty criminal type who would like to "help" Claudy overdose so that Lorna can next marry a wealthier (and shadier) Russian client who is seeking Belgian citizenship. There is a time element that heightens the tension down the line, and there are ever-shifting financial variables.    

The film is mostly, but not completely, told from Lorna's point of view. At first, we see Claudy the drug addict as she sees him -- pitiably. But then, along with Lorna, we come to have more compassion for him. Lorna goes one step beyond this even, but that's the basic set-up. A couple of things happen that I wasn't expecting -- interesting twists in a fine microcosmic drama.   

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Carlos Cuarón: 'Rudo y Cursi' (2008)

In Carlos Cuarón's Rudo y Cursi (2008), two dingbat brothers yearn for a more exciting life. One is married and both are stuck working on a banana plantation on the Pacific side of Mexico. Lucky for them, they're both good football (soccer) players, and both are recruited and wooed (one at a time, divide and conquer) to the big city -- Mexico City. Highs and lows follow. 

It's a primal storyline that goes back thousands of years, no doubt. In this case, there are touches of fraternal comedy and, girding the whole shebang, social satire. Want to know who (and what) really runs nearly everyone and everything? Follow the money trail.  

Fun performances by: Diego Luna as Beto el Rudo (who has a gambling addiction); Gael García Berna as Tato el Cursi (who desires above all to be a pop musician, even though he's terrible at it); Guillermo Francella as Batuta (their free-wheeling agent and all-around ladies' man); Adriana Paz as Toña (who hopes to hit the big time selling "homeopathic" health products); Jessica Mass as Maya (who wants always to be with the top dog of the day); and additional ensemble players as other family members, friends and enemies. 

In Rudo y Cursi, everybody wants more money, either through the sports racket, the loan racket, the gambling racket or the drug-selling racket -- take your pick. 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Sam Mendes: Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road is, off the bat, two things: a novel written by Richard Yates (1961) and a movie directed by Sam Mendes (2008). 

Mendes' film adaptation of the novel presents a bleak microcosm of isolation, alienation and peer pressure set mostly in the mid-1950s, in New York City and suburban Connecticut, five years prior to the beginning, in chronological setting, of the AMC series Mad Men. Think Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955), John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), and anticipating Sue Kaufman's Diary of a Mad Housewife (1967). 

This brightly lit (almost washed out in its brightness) film is both grim and meticulously done in Sam Mendes style -- if you've seen American Beauty, Jarhead, or the latest James Bond film, they all bear his stamp. 

Here, a marriage is pressure-cooked. Kids, nice house and stability are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Follow your dreams or die a little inside, day after day. Think big, not small -- and God go with you. Once you've got food, shelter and clothing, you are free to choose your arc -- don't let yourself feel trapped, isolated and hopeless. Got it? In 2014, there should be more room to maneuver than there was in 1955. Do you think there is?   

Today's Rune: Harvest.  

Wong Kar-wai: My Blueberry Nights

Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights (2007) takes us on a zen-fueled journey across the USA with Elizabeth-Lizzie-Beth (Norah Jones), from intersections with characters played by Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Frankie Faison, David Strathaim and Natalie Portman. 

In My Blueberry Nights, Norah Jones takes the pensive role while Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman enjoy the fun parts.

A lovely indie-style adventure about identity and social awareness through "the mythical American landscape" -- I liked it.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

København: Fristaden Christiania Redux

Thank you, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Season Two), for bringing this and other global touchstones into greater consciousness. 

There is quite an alternative community, very interesting to check out, in Copenhagen, Denmark, called Freetown Christiania. Situated on a former military site, nearly 1,000 people live there (last I double-checked). If you're into pot, it's there. If you're into art and music, it's there. If you're into food and drink, it's there. It's everywhere. 

In fact, all of Copenhagen, all of Denmark is nifty-fifty. Indeed, all the Nordic/Scandinavian countries are culturally sophisticated, ecologically minded and highly educated. 

You might say that "modern" Existentialism started in Copenhagen with Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), whose spirit roams the city.

Above: Peter Fallesen & Sulaima Hind,  Fristaden Christiania / Freetown Christiania (2008).

More from CNN's Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (Season Two) here.

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

Breaking Bad

AMC's Breaking Bad. A superb, often harrowing series that ran five seasons between January 2008 and tonight in 2013. Bonus: a satisfying ending. 

If you've seen the entire series, what's your take?  If not: "Better call Saul!"

Today's Rune: Gateway. 

Woody Allen: Blue Jasmine (Take II)

The thoughts keep bubbling, heated up lately by Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013). For today, another aspect or way of seeing Cate Blanchett's title character. 

Note: I'll place quotation marks around phrases that float around in common cultural consciousness, "if you know what I mean." 

"At one level," you could say, Jasmine presents us with an allegory of the Great Recession, 2008 before and after. She and her Ponzi-scheming husband Hal (Alec Baldwin). "Living the high life," they were, until it abruptly collapsed. Yet, as the movie begins, Jasmine's "sense of entitlement" let's her feel disconnected from her changed (crumpled) situation -- actually she is "split," in shock, suspended or going back and forth between the self that "treats herself because she deserves it" and the bedraggled self that must "reinvent" or "pivot" -- "going forward" while also looking backward. The split is represented by a "geographic" -- New York City (up to the crash), San Francisco (after the crash). And the contrast is depicted in the changes time has wrought, contrasted against her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and their different socio-economic realities.  The allegory part is this: there are millions of people in Jasmine's predicament, pre-collapse and post-collapse.  

That's enough for one post!

Today's Rune: Possessions.   

Snoop (Take II)

Another post inspired by Sam Gosling's Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (2008, 2009). Let's take the Big Five personality test. These help one focus on personality, with refining features. What is not clear to me initially is the variability of cultural impact on personality. Are there universal traits, across time and space? Yes and no. But we'll leave that for another time, in another space.

The Big Five:
Open to experiences.
Conscientiousness.
Extraversion-introversion.
Agreeableness-disagreeability.
Neurotic factor.

Two that jump out from personal observations: open to experience (vs. not). I'm off the charts with that one, but I also know or have known people who were absolutely opposed to new experiences. One (now deceased) was a historian-writer always to be seen at the same eatery at the same time, six to seven days per week, for most of his adult life.

The second one is a neurotic element that Gosling nicknames "The Woody Allen Factor." I know people saturated with this personality aspect. "What they might do: Think again and again and again what his friend really meant by that remark." The other ones are pretty easy to figure out, too, at least in a general way.

In any case, here's a link to a Big Five inventory at the Personality Test Center for anyone interested. How can you resist?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

 

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (Take I)

Fun book: Sam Gosling's Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (2008, 2009). It's about a lot of things -- social psychology, persona, projection, paying attention, snooping and more.

Wherever you go, there you are -- but really? How well do we know ourselves? How do we maintain a persona? How much do we (or can we) change over time? What do we put on display for the world? What stories do we tell ourselves about our lives? 

If there's a work office or equivalent space, what's put up? What's to keep our own moods "regulated" or us inspired?  

If there's a house or apartment, which spaces are dolled up, which kept in reserve?

How do we individually handle social media?

Are we fancy, are we plain? And so forth. Fascinating. For artists, these are the details that can make or break characters, subjects, imagery. All groovy. There are levels of detail, too -- ranging from attributes to personality. 

And what is personality? "An individual's unique pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaving that is consistent over time . . . For a behavior to be part of your personality, it should be something that you do repeatedly" (page 28).

Oh yes: All aboard for funtime.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

To Think Outside the Box, First You Need the Box

I happily read some more pages out of Twyla Tharp's inspiring marvelous wonderful beautiful nifty-fifty lovely helpful tome, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life: A Practical Guide (with Mark Reitner;* New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003). Taking it closely, nice.

Who is Twyla Tharp? 

Twyla Tharp is a famous artist -- choreographer, dancer and so on. She will be 72 next Monday.

Once you've heard the name Twyla Tharp -- unless it goes in one ear and out the other, or you literally cannot hear -- you remember.

Once you've seen the name Twyla Tharp -- unless it goes in one eye and out the other, or you literally cannot see or have no working memory -- you remember.

Twyla Tharp first flew across my radar screen via The Catherine Wheel (1981), but she did a gazillion projects before that and has since done a gazillion more.

Now you know a little something about Twyla Tharp if you didn't already; if it's still not clicking, check her out on Wikipedia or something. Live a little!

This is all leading up to the title of Chapter 5 in the book: Before You Can Think out of the Box, You Have to Start with a Box.

In this chapter, Twyla Tharp gives examples of her project boxes, from ideas and conception to completion and archiving. Real simple approach to production. Real good one, too. More on the practical use of boxes (or other containers) in the next "post."

Above: From Jon Ronson's pithy 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes. Containers come in many colors, shapes and sizes nowadays. All aboard for funtime!    

Today's Rune: Protection. *Mark Reiter is Owner, The Reiter Agency and has co-written, edited, represented and/or written many a book.

 

Guest of Cindy Sherman

It took a while for Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008), a documentary by Tom Donahue and Paul "H-O" Hasegawa-Overacker, to emerge from the shadows and become available in digital format. Not sure if this was because of the Great Recession or because certain people wanted it delayed.

In this mosaic of a film, we follow Paul H-O on his arc from goofy arts show host in NYC to "Guest of Cindy Sherman" and beyond. Essentially, he is in the right place at the right time but, becoming his own worst enemy, he crumples existentially. Why does he "win?" Why does he "lose?"  There's more to it than the fickle finger of fate -- he actively goes for it, gets it, falls in over his head, becomes ungrateful and ungracious, and loses it. What is "it?" Friendship, intimacy, significant moments with Cindy Sherman, who is seen becoming more and more sought out by "everybody," more famous, wealthier (as in millionaire -- pretty nice change for any artist). All interesting. The footage of Cindy Sherman is particularly absorbing. Not sure what H-O's original intention was here, but he comes off as "out of his league" while Sherman comes off as a very cool person and artist. Groovy beans.  

Today's Rune: Harvest.  

Michelangelo Antonioni: L'eclisse / Eclipse (Part III)

Full circle to Part I: "Michelangelo Antonioni's  L'eclisse / Eclipse (1962) is an excellent antidote to the speed of life. Everything, even the Italian stock market, is slowed down and looked at with observant eyes. Antonioni seems to particularly enjoy contemplating rustling leaves, the way the wind moves things around, the way a fan blows air onto a woman's hair, a person's clothes. Fantastic black and white shot compositions, deliberately slow pace, intense interactions among people and architecture and space, both interior and exterior. You soon come to realize this is reminiscent of a horror film, only without horror, unless by horror you mean human existence itself. This is David Lynch country without any physical violence."

L'eclisse can be seen as a sort of Zen meditation on modern life. And it can be seen as an existentialist film. More subtly, it can be see as a surrealistic film. In addition, it's a mystical and poetic work. In all of these ways, Antonioni expresses something rarely delivered on the silver screen. 

One can see imprints of L'eclisse in other works -- David Lynch's Blue Velvet comes to mind. The way Antonioni uses space and signs in L'eclisse -- consider his use of crosswalks, for instance, and what people make of them -- can be seen in HBO's Enlightened, the series written by Mike White and starring Laura Dern (of David Lynch fame). L'eclisse is a movie that can be studied carefully and enjoyed repeatedly -- and obviously has been by certain other artists.

Even the stock market crash depicted in L'eclisse reverberates from 1962 through 2008 to 2013. "Where did the money go?" Vittoria (Monica Vitti) asks stockbroker Piero (Alain Delon). "Nowhere," he says. Chew over that a while. For those who lost 40% of their retirement investments in 2008, you know exactly what he means. The money vaporized. And, years later, it began to reappear, like a conjuring trick.

Today's Rune: Fertility.   

Paint Your Cave, or: Petroglyphs Are Us

Well, given it's Mary Leakey's centennial (1913-1996), now's as good a time as any to dive back into petroglyphs and cave art.  

There's a great scene in Beasts of the Southern Wild. Hushpuppy is hiding in a box, drawing pictograms, little pictures that look for all the world like cave and rock art. At one point, she notes this:  "I see that I'm a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things right. When I die, the scientists of the future, they're gonna find it . . . They gonna know, once there was a Hushpuppy."

And, judging from the above cover for Keith Harvey's poetry book Petroglyphs (2008), we're gonna know that once there were creatures that look a lot like bison, buffalo. That once there were herds of bison that covered whole areas of North America, from as far east as North Carolina (we once lived by Buffalo Creek) to as far west and north as Alaska.

That people can see petroglyphs, cave art and other evidence; that there were people living before us, way before us; that here we are now, looking at the traces they left behind. Mind-blowing, really. 

Today's Rune: Signals.

  

Genova

Jeesh, this is already the seventh Michael Winterbottom movie I've posted about. What I like about his approach is how he engages with the world, with people, and with people in the world, all relating to each other. Usually up close and personal. With Genova (2008; rebranded in the US as A Summer in Genoa), this all very much holds true.

Setup: a father and two daughters move from Chicago to Genoa for a year after the mother dies in a car wreck. They all three are soon trying to get their bearings. The older daughter quickly comes to hang out with somewhat risky local peers, while the younger begins to see their mother's ghost (and/or is having post-traumatic stress intrusions upon everyday life). The father is sort of in a daze, caught between anxiously caring for his daughters and being vaguely wooed by an old colleague and a new student.  

Primary setting: Genova (Genoa), Italy -- at something like 2,500 years old, it's worth its weight in history and gold and, even aside from the intertwining story, a major character in its own right. Including cuisine -- pasta with pesto, and so on.  

Ensemble acting is very effective. They made me care, hoping they'd make it through a difficult time in their lives without further damage, anxious for their well-being. Key actors: Colin Firth, Hope Davis, Catherine Keener, Margherita Romeo, Perla Haney-Jardine and Willa Holland. Also: narrow medieval alleyways (caruggi), the Mediterranean Sea, Catholic inconography, music, everything. 

Today's Rune: Joy.    

Lauren Greenfield's 'The Queen of Versailles'

Conspicuous consumption, vacuous gumption. Meet timeshare billionaire David A. Siegel, his loopy wife Jackie, multiple shell-shocked kids, trapped Filipino servants and a heap of hubris. Insight into this crazy milieu comes thick and plenty with Lauren Greenfield's masterful 2012 documentary, The Queen of Versailles. By the end, many will feel sorry for everyone but the Florida-based central patriarch, a man who boasts on film that he was personally responsible for the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 election, and perhaps in 2004, too. This is one of those "stupid Tea Party assholes" that, in the 2012 election cycle just ended, "strongly suggested" to all of their employees that they vote for Mitt Romney or "risk losing their jobs." When his own economic overextension begins to bite him in the ass in 2008, Siegel blames everyone but himself -- especially "the bankers." What a jape. Excellent film.

Today's Rune: Signals.