I am going to move this (t)here:
http://pierremenard.posterous.com/
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Hope
I consider myself a man of hope. Hope is powerful. Hope is crushing. Hope gives meaning even as life takes it away. I always hope for the best. For people. For myself. For my life. For love. For the lives and fortunes of others, no matter what the fates may weave.
Why do I say this?
I hear many times about how difficult life is. That it is too depressing. That we never get what we want. We fail and that there is nowhere to go now. The bitter void must sallow us up.
I read philosophy. I consider myself a philosopher. I read literature. I must say, there are few stories that survive history that do not deal with love, sex, deceit, failure, death and all the little nasty facts about life that in everyday living we try to forget. I read philosophy that centers on the impossibility of knowing being, that centers on nothingness itself. I have been hit by a bus minding my own business, walking across the street, and no one was there to stop that bus. No one saved me.
But what is all this to say? I still got up and ate breakfast. The man too depressed to live, the weight of the world upon his shoulders and some kind of real or imagined existential angst heavy in his mind, bent down to tie his shoes.
Sometimes you just have to let it go. Just live for a moment. Watch the sunrise. Notice how it changes each morning, how Monet for all his mastery could never capture this light. How it changes each morning each afternoon. Each moment precious and timeless. Take the time to notice someone. Just notice things. Life is filled with the wonderful the fantastic, but when embroiled in life and what it denies, you fail to see what is there.
I am not trying to give some stoic sense of the world here. I am not saying some kind of life philosophy. I am simply pointing out that someone we just have to ask what is happiness and should we listen to people whine about issues, issues that I agree are real and can be deadening (trust me I have been there), or do we have to let go for a moment and consider where we are. As one of my good friends said about some abstract political theory I was spouting, “Now explain that to the people in McClellanville.” I think on this line many times. Tell that to the people without a job, without a means to the next meals, without a family, or worse a family and loved ones who have abandoned them, to those without education or even the opportunity for one, or even the one who works their ass off only to fail and be turned away from the one thing that gives their life meaning. Stop and think then.
That being said—I will continue to read and think about Heidegger, because I believe it is important. I will continue to read literature. I will continue to love my family and friends, I will continue to harbor hope for my dreams both in my goals in life, in my love unrequited or not, and in the next day—but I will always hope. I will hope even if each moment I fail, and I will fail no doubt.
While I breathe, I hope.
Dum spiro spero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8mr7Ex0cQ&feature=related
Why do I say this?
I hear many times about how difficult life is. That it is too depressing. That we never get what we want. We fail and that there is nowhere to go now. The bitter void must sallow us up.
I read philosophy. I consider myself a philosopher. I read literature. I must say, there are few stories that survive history that do not deal with love, sex, deceit, failure, death and all the little nasty facts about life that in everyday living we try to forget. I read philosophy that centers on the impossibility of knowing being, that centers on nothingness itself. I have been hit by a bus minding my own business, walking across the street, and no one was there to stop that bus. No one saved me.
But what is all this to say? I still got up and ate breakfast. The man too depressed to live, the weight of the world upon his shoulders and some kind of real or imagined existential angst heavy in his mind, bent down to tie his shoes.
Sometimes you just have to let it go. Just live for a moment. Watch the sunrise. Notice how it changes each morning, how Monet for all his mastery could never capture this light. How it changes each morning each afternoon. Each moment precious and timeless. Take the time to notice someone. Just notice things. Life is filled with the wonderful the fantastic, but when embroiled in life and what it denies, you fail to see what is there.
I am not trying to give some stoic sense of the world here. I am not saying some kind of life philosophy. I am simply pointing out that someone we just have to ask what is happiness and should we listen to people whine about issues, issues that I agree are real and can be deadening (trust me I have been there), or do we have to let go for a moment and consider where we are. As one of my good friends said about some abstract political theory I was spouting, “Now explain that to the people in McClellanville.” I think on this line many times. Tell that to the people without a job, without a means to the next meals, without a family, or worse a family and loved ones who have abandoned them, to those without education or even the opportunity for one, or even the one who works their ass off only to fail and be turned away from the one thing that gives their life meaning. Stop and think then.
That being said—I will continue to read and think about Heidegger, because I believe it is important. I will continue to read literature. I will continue to love my family and friends, I will continue to harbor hope for my dreams both in my goals in life, in my love unrequited or not, and in the next day—but I will always hope. I will hope even if each moment I fail, and I will fail no doubt.
While I breathe, I hope.
Dum spiro spero.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xr8mr7Ex0cQ&feature=related
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Black Swan
I have been waiting for a while to write about Aronovsky’s latest film, the Black Swan, for several reasons. The first of which is that I wanted a lot of other people to see it so that my reading audience, no matter how small in reality it is, at least saw the previews for the film. With that being out of the way and the movie performing exceptionally well in the market for a rather high brow art film, as the critics have come to call it, my next reservation was with writing a post. I have yet to learn how to type on this bloody computer. Honestly I am a hunt and peck typist. On a conventional keyboard, I type a bit quicker and not using my pointer fingers the entire time, but on the netbook, it is much more difficult for me. By the way, I am very rapid hunt and peck and I don’t have to look at the keyboard so don’t judge me!
The final and most important reason why I have neglected in writing about the film was that I needed time to process it. Why?
My first reaction to the film was that it was either brilliant or the kitschiest piece of film I had seen in a long time. Then my Heraclitus/ Derridian/ Hegelian background said, no, no, there must a unity of opposites or there is a play between the differences or there is some synthesis of the two that surpasses them both. Maybe. First, we must analyze the ground upon which either claim stands and the consider this third leg of the equation.
Kitsch. This movie is simply a film that explores the tired cliché of art as destruction and self-deception. I think Tony Scott of the New York Times put it best when he started to write about how the dichotomy of the white and black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the ballet which gives the film its name and its plot , leads itself to the Apollonian and Dionysian duality that have come to represent art and creative powers. The apollonian with its order and form represents the White, virginal and innocent swan, as well as Natalie Portman’s character. The Dionysian with its out of control power, lust and sexuality is embodied by Mila Kunis’ character. One ballerina(and the prima ballerina at that) must embody both characters. There must be one who makes the change, the metamorphosis from white to black. Let us mediate her before we go forward into the second nuance of the kitsch. This idea of art is ancient and well worn. Art destroys you, you must free yourself, creativity is wild power, a power that no one can handle. Tried and true. A very Romantic notion of the artist, a Romanticism that seems to follow us still.
To the white swan. Here again with have the deeply Freudian notion of the overbearing and jealous mother. The mother of Portman’s character is a failed ballerina, is the typical overbearing mother that attempts to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. This includes removing all the locks from the doors and even sleeping in the room with her daughter (which leads to a rather funny scene later in the movie). Portman is a little girl in her home, surrounded by dolls and pink and the prescence of her mother.
Kunis shatters this notion. She is the perfect Black swan. Technically not very strong; nowhere near Portman—but she has passion and oozes sex. She and Portman go out one night, Portman lets loose and indulges in her, well self. Her we go with a good girl goes bad and grows up. Tried and true plot line.
So we have the plot of Swan Lake which drives the movie, Apollonian and Dionysian view of creative power as ultimate self destruction, Good girl goes bad and indulges in her passion, then of course the idea of the ballet company and the intrigue caused by aging ballerinas, obsession with beauty, the lecherous appeitie of the director, backstabbing up and comers…and the boring story lines continue.
But here is where the brilliance comes in. We have a ballerina, aging, too, we forget that Portman is 29 and ballet doesn’t leave young women with a long shelf life. Her body is flawless yet a skeleton. The art itself is killing her. Muscles begin to fail her (a cramped diaphragm!!) her toes begin to go together. She finally becomes her art quite literally. She believes herself so. Paranoia and lost passion become her. Portman, and I mean Portman becomes the art just as the character becomes the art. I agree with Tony on this point, we look at Portman, the lines on her face, we hear the last lines of her character and realize that she became her character. The movie with all its flaws and cliché showed that the life and art of characters and artists, whenever shown on screen seem to fall into the metafiction moment. Without breaking the fourth wall, and subtly, the movie reveals what we give ourselves. Outside of all the clichés, the movie is a movie that shows our own obsessions with art and our ideas of art. Here is where the power of the movie lies. It made me think long and hard because it was a reflection on a reflection, or maybe a reflection of a reflection. It is this view that makes criticism difficult. We are trapped in a web of our own fictions about art as we try to pull the strings of the knot of our own creation.
So where are we? I don’t know what I think. I would watch it. Good and Evil, sex, scandal, ballet, art, Nietzschean overtones and all. I don’t know upon which mind I stand in this movie. Maybe I will tarry in the middle.
The final and most important reason why I have neglected in writing about the film was that I needed time to process it. Why?
My first reaction to the film was that it was either brilliant or the kitschiest piece of film I had seen in a long time. Then my Heraclitus/ Derridian/ Hegelian background said, no, no, there must a unity of opposites or there is a play between the differences or there is some synthesis of the two that surpasses them both. Maybe. First, we must analyze the ground upon which either claim stands and the consider this third leg of the equation.
Kitsch. This movie is simply a film that explores the tired cliché of art as destruction and self-deception. I think Tony Scott of the New York Times put it best when he started to write about how the dichotomy of the white and black swan in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the ballet which gives the film its name and its plot , leads itself to the Apollonian and Dionysian duality that have come to represent art and creative powers. The apollonian with its order and form represents the White, virginal and innocent swan, as well as Natalie Portman’s character. The Dionysian with its out of control power, lust and sexuality is embodied by Mila Kunis’ character. One ballerina(and the prima ballerina at that) must embody both characters. There must be one who makes the change, the metamorphosis from white to black. Let us mediate her before we go forward into the second nuance of the kitsch. This idea of art is ancient and well worn. Art destroys you, you must free yourself, creativity is wild power, a power that no one can handle. Tried and true. A very Romantic notion of the artist, a Romanticism that seems to follow us still.
To the white swan. Here again with have the deeply Freudian notion of the overbearing and jealous mother. The mother of Portman’s character is a failed ballerina, is the typical overbearing mother that attempts to control every aspect of her daughter’s life. This includes removing all the locks from the doors and even sleeping in the room with her daughter (which leads to a rather funny scene later in the movie). Portman is a little girl in her home, surrounded by dolls and pink and the prescence of her mother.
Kunis shatters this notion. She is the perfect Black swan. Technically not very strong; nowhere near Portman—but she has passion and oozes sex. She and Portman go out one night, Portman lets loose and indulges in her, well self. Her we go with a good girl goes bad and grows up. Tried and true plot line.
So we have the plot of Swan Lake which drives the movie, Apollonian and Dionysian view of creative power as ultimate self destruction, Good girl goes bad and indulges in her passion, then of course the idea of the ballet company and the intrigue caused by aging ballerinas, obsession with beauty, the lecherous appeitie of the director, backstabbing up and comers…and the boring story lines continue.
But here is where the brilliance comes in. We have a ballerina, aging, too, we forget that Portman is 29 and ballet doesn’t leave young women with a long shelf life. Her body is flawless yet a skeleton. The art itself is killing her. Muscles begin to fail her (a cramped diaphragm!!) her toes begin to go together. She finally becomes her art quite literally. She believes herself so. Paranoia and lost passion become her. Portman, and I mean Portman becomes the art just as the character becomes the art. I agree with Tony on this point, we look at Portman, the lines on her face, we hear the last lines of her character and realize that she became her character. The movie with all its flaws and cliché showed that the life and art of characters and artists, whenever shown on screen seem to fall into the metafiction moment. Without breaking the fourth wall, and subtly, the movie reveals what we give ourselves. Outside of all the clichés, the movie is a movie that shows our own obsessions with art and our ideas of art. Here is where the power of the movie lies. It made me think long and hard because it was a reflection on a reflection, or maybe a reflection of a reflection. It is this view that makes criticism difficult. We are trapped in a web of our own fictions about art as we try to pull the strings of the knot of our own creation.
So where are we? I don’t know what I think. I would watch it. Good and Evil, sex, scandal, ballet, art, Nietzschean overtones and all. I don’t know upon which mind I stand in this movie. Maybe I will tarry in the middle.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
2011
2011. A new year. 2011 should be a good year. Most of the time, during this time of the year we turn to the past and do reviews of the previous year. In this case, that review would be a reflection on the first decade of the second millennium. I prefer to look forward rather than be blown into the New Year by my history. Wither this is a good philosophy, time will tell, but it is a glance forward that I must take.
Starting this year I will continue to work on Italian. Both speaking it and reading its cannon. I will also embark on a structured reading list starting with the ancient Greeks, both the philosopher and the literature, and moving into the German idealists with Beckett, Borges and of course Heidegger in the mix. I will write short stories and continue writing in my journals. I already have new writing tools coming. I will write letters. I will restore my typewriter. I will laugh more and not get bogged down with work. I’ll take a trip. I’ll keep in touch with old friends. I’ll make new acquaintances. I’ll be moving in some direction.
Starting this year I will continue to work on Italian. Both speaking it and reading its cannon. I will also embark on a structured reading list starting with the ancient Greeks, both the philosopher and the literature, and moving into the German idealists with Beckett, Borges and of course Heidegger in the mix. I will write short stories and continue writing in my journals. I already have new writing tools coming. I will write letters. I will restore my typewriter. I will laugh more and not get bogged down with work. I’ll take a trip. I’ll keep in touch with old friends. I’ll make new acquaintances. I’ll be moving in some direction.
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