Isabel Allende: 'El amante japonés: Una novela' / 'The Japanese Lover: A Novel' (2015)

Isabel Allende: El amante japonés: Una novela / The Japanese Lover: A Novel (2015). A quick, easy read. It's strange to see allusions to very recent events in a novel, connected with the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. 

I particularly enjoyed the various points of view, ranging from the much older Alma to one of her caregivers and mentees, Irina. Both have immigrant backgrounds -- Alma, a refugee sent to California by concerned family during the encroachment of the Nazi menace, Irina rescued from the poverty of Moldova (though out of the frying pan into the fire). There's a Japanese family whose patriarch had moved to California to become a gardener well before the Second World War, breaking the family tradition of militarism, and numerous other characters. Ichimei Fukuda, son of the gardener and a gardener himself, is "the Japanese lover" -- Alma's.

The Japanese angle adds historical flourishes. There's a religious component with Ōmoto, a modern offshoot of Shinto that publishes tracts in the international language Esperanto. There's the holistic aspect of landscape gardening; internment during World War II preceded by the burial of the family war sword; and note of the highly decorated Japanese American combat unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (whose history is worth a book of its own -- including those they fought in Europe, ranging from Germans to various detachments surprisingly fighting alongside them -- the Germans --  originating from Somalia, Poland, India and other unexpected places). 

A pretty cool, undemanding novel that deals with age and life changes, varied circumstances, refugees, immigrants, love and history, all laced together nicely.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

'The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini' (circa 1557-1565): Part II

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by Anne MacDonell. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2010. Written between 1557 and 1565.

Cellini (1500-1571) was fifty-eight when he began composing his autobiography in earnest. He seems to have let go of it as he neared death, but that hardly matters in that it still works as a complete text. A few more examples follow.

Cellini employed a model in France that he called Scorzone, though her actual name was Jeanne. 

The Autobiography notes matter-of-factly, ". . . I got her with child. She bore me a daughter at the thirteenth hour of the 7th of June 1544, when I was just forty-four years old." He called her Costanza and placed her in the care of godparents and an aunt. (page 301).

"This was the first child I ever had, so far as I remember. I assigned to her a dowry of the amount suggested by her aunt . . . After that I never had anything more to do with her." (Ibidem).

Salvador Dalí illustration for Cellini's Autobiography, 1948 (Symonds) edition

Later on, Cellini went to work for Duke Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464) of Florence (Firenze). The Duke promised him studio workspace and living quarters and so on, but this did not go as planned, because: 

"His Excellency then gave the matter into the hands of Pier Francesco Riccio. . . I spoke to the brute, and told him all the things I wanted -- for instance, I mentioned that in the garden I wished to build a workshop. But he gave the business over to a paymaster, a dried-up scarecrow of a man, called Lattanzio Gorini." (I once worked with this very same guy in Michigan, I think).  

"A curious little object he was, with spidery hands, and a tiny voice that hummed like a gnat, and he crept about like a snail. 

As my ill-luck would have it, he sent to my house as much sand and lime and stones as would barely have built a dove-cot." (page 325). And on went the battle.

Salvador Dalí illustration for Cellini's Autobiography, 1948 (Symonds edition)

Even later, Cellini had another protracted fight with rival artist, a sculptor, Bartolommeo "Baccio" Bandinelli (1493-circa 1560), who was also a rival of Michelangelo's (1475-1564). At one point, the first two named had to come before the Duke to explain themselves. Cellini took to his own defense:

"'My lord, your most illustrious Excellency should know that Baccio . . . is evil through and through, and always has been so; thus whatever he looks at, were it a thing of supreme excellence, is at once converted by his ugly eyes into all that is superlatively bad. 

Now I, who am drawn only to the good, see the truth with clearer sight. Therefore what I told your Excellency regarding this beautiful statue is the bare truth, and what Bendinello [i.e. Bandinelli] said was spoken of that evil of which he is made up.' 

The Duke listened to me with the utmost delight; but all the time I was speaking Bandinello was writhing and making the ugliest faces you ever saw -- as if he weren't ugly enough already." (page 348). And so the battle continued.

Near the end of the autobiography, Cellini's still fighting with rivals and enemies; he just gave up writing the rest of it.

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

'The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini' (circa 1557-1565): Part I

The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, translated by Anne MacDonell. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2010. Written between 1557 and 1565: that is to say, 450-460 years ago.

Cellini (1500-1571) is pronounced, in case you were wondering (and I hope you were unless you already knew), Chelleenee or Chulleenee, because Italian is cool like that.

“Cellini’s Life belongs, with Rosseau’s Confessions and Berlioz’s Memoirs, to the very top of modern autobiographical literature. There had been nothing remotely like it before.” (Introduction by James Fenton, page viii).

If artists sometimes (often!) have a wild reputation, Cellini is a real wild piece of work who in turn created very fine pieces of work. He was a bit of a rogue and definitely his own person, alternately working and fighting with popes, cardinals and royalty, peers, colleagues and so on, killing a few enemies and suffering stints in prison along the way. The miracle is that he lived to be 70.

Some choice quotations may help establish an idea of his disposition and arc.

Though he had indeed committed crimes, at one point a new pope chides one of Cellini’s critics:  “’I know better of such things than you. Learn that men like Benvenuto, unique in their profession, are not subject to the laws. And especially in this case with him, for I know how greatly he has been provoked.’” (page 136).

Cellini is provoked again, this time by a man who refuses to pay him what he's owed. 

"Now I had it in my mind to chop off one of his arms; and assuredly I should have done it; but my friends thought it was not wise for me to do such a thing . . . I gave heed to their advice -- though I should have liked to have treated the business with a freer hand . . ." (pages 188-189).

In France, another Cellini nemesis tries to undercut him, saying to the King of France that he wouldn't complete his work. 

"To this the King replied that he who worried so anxiously about the end of a piece of work would never begin anything." (page 268)  Truer words rarely spoken. 

(To be continued).

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Gerald Horne's 'W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography' (2010)

Gerald Horne, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography (Santa Barbara: Greenwood Press, 2010). Du Bois: in the US, his name is pronounced not as in French, but more like "Doo-Boyz."

"Du Bois [1868-1963] . . . ranks with Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass as, perhaps, the most important African American of all time . . ." (page xii).

The first serious non-academic conversation I had about W.E.B. Du Bois was with a postal worker in Philadelphia, when a new Du Bois stamp came out in the 1990s. I remember this specifically not only because of his clear knowledge about Du Bois but also because this particular post office (30th Street Station) was open on Sundays -- an ideal reflection of the separation of church and state. Not too many people seemed to know about this, so I often went on Sundays to mail things and occasionally chit chat with whichever postal worker was staffing the service desk; picking up such new insights in person was a true bonus. 

Du Bois, an intellectual, historian, general writer and energetic activist, co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and more. His life arc bridges the gap between the time of Frederick Douglass and the public time of Malcolm X and MLK. His contemporaries included Booker T. Washington, Howard Thurman and Marcus Garvey. 

After World War II as an older man, Du Bois was brought to trial for organizing against the use of atomic weapons and for world peace. As Horne points out: "A familiar nostrum . . . is that with age comes conservatism, a dismissal of past radicalism as so much youthful posturing. This did not hold true for W.E.B. Du Bois" (p. 163). In this and in many other ways, Du Bois endures as an excellent role model.  

Eventually he became so disillusioned with the slow pace of social progress in the United States that he permanently resettled in Ghana, which became independent in 1957. (It was formerly known as the British Gold Coast). Ghana, which is almost never mentioned in the US either in news or in conversation, has about 27 million people. 

W.E.B. Du Bois was a great consciousness raiser. In fact, one of his ideas is that of "double consciousness" -- but more on this, perhaps, in a future post. 

Horne's book provides a straightforward overview of Du Bois' life, times, writings, actions, and social relationships. 

Today's Rune: Movement.

'Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caesar' (2010)

Aubrey Burl, Catullus: A Poet in the Rome of Julius Caesar (Amberley, 2010; original edition 2004). Given the scanty extant biographical details of the life of Gaius Valerius Catullus (circa years 84-54 Before Christ), Burl gives us not straight biography so much as a good sense of Catallus' life and poetry within the context of his times.

The times were wild. Rome was at the top of the heap in its area of the globe, but still one's life could be cut short by any number of things. Catullus is thought to have died in his early thirties, but how? Was he strangled, bitten, stabbed, poisoned, or sickened, or did he slip, drown or fall off a cliff? As of now, we have no idea. But know this: he was a tight poet, a fierce lover and an equally fierce hater. His poetry gives us insight into the people of his times and of ours. 

Maybe more will be revealed in time. As is, there's a stupendous appendix detailing "The Recovery of the Poems of Catullus from his Death to 1492."

Lesbia's Sparrow by George W Joy, 1896

Let's check out chapter 5 on Catallus' main paramour, Clodia. 

"Catullus called her Lesbia [a nod to the poet Sappho]. Her real name was Clodia Merelli, wife of Quintius Caecilius Celer, a cousin on her mother's side" (p. [97]). 

"Clodia was the eldest of three sisters, all by custom called Clodia. She also had three brothers: Appius, Gaius and the youngest, Publius Clodius Pulcher, whose grand-daughter, Claudia, gained reflected ignominy by marrying the counsul, Publius Quinctilius Varus. His three legions were ambushed in a German forest in AD 9 and slaughtered. 'Quinctilius Varus! Give me back my legions,' grieved Augustus" (page 98). 

Fragments of Catullus, writing about Clodia/Lesbos (Poem 68B, page 111):

. . . my radiant goddess entered,
trod on the worn threshold, sandal tapping
as she paused . . .

in that house fragrant with the scents of Assyria,
during that wondrous night she gave me pleasures
filched from the lap of her token husband.

There's a whole section in the back of translations by Humphrey Clucas. Here are a couple of more snippets related to Clodia/Lesbos:

70
   No one she'd rather marry, my love says --
     Even if Jupiter himself came courting.
   Fine. But what they say in a fond moment
Is written on rushing water, scrawled in the wind.

75
          My mind thins to a point, Lesbia,
     Ruined by your guilt, and its own devotion:
I could not wish you well, though you were perfect,
     And if you were worse yet, I'd want you still. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Of "Tipping Points" and "Black Swan Events"

Started in on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, 2010+) and am thinking how it seems to dovetail in some ways with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). Love this stuff. I'm not the only one by a long shot. In San Francisco, for example, had a fun discussion with a shrewd Filipino taxi driver about his favorite book -- Blink.

Initial response. A couple of recent watershed moments seem like the culmination of long slogging culminating in sudden shifts: LGBT marriage rights (in the USA and globally) and the removal of the Confederate battleflag from government buildings in the USA. These are the result of tipping points -- not complete shocks, but still surprising after seeing only incremental change  over many years.

Black Swan Events seem more "out of the blue." Two examples: one, the sudden plunge in gasoline/petrol prices in late 2014 from which such prices still have yet to "recover;" two, the sudden end to a depressing five year drought in Texas just this past May (2015). 

The drop in gas prices was wild. The follow-up question is, how did various people and groups respond to this change? 

The wild spike in rain in Texas was an even bigger surprise. True, climate change models have long suggested wild fluctuations in historical climate patterns, locally and regionally. However, no one to my knowledge could or did predict with any exactness what happened in the large area in and around Texas. Indeed, it was called a "one in two thousand year event" (when in fact, due to climate change, it may become a one in two year event -- maybe). 

Late spring flooding in Texas was a disaster for many, but overall, such heavy rains suddenly providing a dramatic reprieve to drought conditions is worth noting and remembering in the future. Here, it's generally better to have too much "fresh" water than not enough. There is some general prediction that California might also be rained out because of the formation of El Niño, which if it materializes would provide a tipping point against the current drought, if not (because of fairly detailed models) exactly a Black Swan Event. 

Cool to ponder. What other kinds of tipping points and Black Swan Events have people noticed lately?

Today's Rune: The Self. 

The Eyes of Texas: T Bone Burnett at the Lone Star Film Festival (2010)

In remembering that T Bone Burnett had brought up Marshall McLuhan during the 2010 Lone Star Film Festival in November, 2010, I dug up my notes from his talks. Saw him at three different venues on or around November 13, 2010. These scribbles were made during T Bone's interview with Bobbie Wygant. 

T Bone has worked on many projects, ranging from his own albums to the music for Coen Brothers' films (The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Inside Llewyn Davis) to Walk the Line and Crazy Heart.

Bobbie Wygant asked T-Bone about his inspirations while living in Fort Worth, Texas.

There was a place called the Capri Theatre and they showed [Luis] Buñuel films and [Jean-Luc] Godard films and [Federico] Fellini films and [Sergei] Eisenstein and [Akiro] Kurosawa . . . these incredible foreign films in Fort Worth, Texas, & it was like a portal into another universe . . . I appreciated it so much. I learned. I would say it was through these two places, the Capri Theatre and Record Town, that I sort of learned everything I've lived my whole life on.

[My 2015 update]: The Capri (which also went by other names) was torn down I think in the 1980s. Nothing has replaced it. Fort Worth needs independent "art house" theatres -- at least one, for God's sake. Fort Worth's three major art museums are wonderful resources, and "Magnolia at the Modern" screens independent and international movies on weekends. However, new art does better in less controlled, contained or restricted environments; that is, via more free-wheeling & Bohemian focal points.

At another venue in 2010, T Bone Burnett spoke of his agreement with Marshall McLuhan, that a new medium envelopes an old medium and lifts elements of the old medium into higher art forms.

Examples: TV becomes more engaging when eclipsed by the internet (The Sopranos, etc.); analog music (vinyl record technology) becomes more absorbing when made obsolescent by digital music. 

Let's be mindful that we are surrounded by an electronic envelope of many layers. 

There's more, but that's a taste of it.

Today's Rune: The Self. 

McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed

And now it's time to step out of one alternate universe (whatever we were last discussing) and into another: that as perceived by Marshall McLuhan. 

First off, keep in mind that he was both Catholic and Canadian. 

Secondly, that his books are fascinating, but so are his media appearances. His spirit moves within a universe parallel to yet also distinct from that inhabited by the spirit of William S. Burroughs. 

Regarding Language & Communication. 

McLuhan: "The media is the message" and "The media is the massage." 

Burroughs: "The word is now a virus," the cut-up, and "towers open fire."

W. Terrence Gordon's McLuhan: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Continuum, 2010) delves into the background and context of McLuhan's ideas; swats away criticisms that Gordon believes are due to misunderstanding of McLuhan's train of thought; and follows McLuhan's evolution and extension of ideas and his revision of older ones. He particularly shows the continuity in McLuhan's work, beyond seeming oddities, randomness and diversions.

Gordon's book "rekindled" my interest in McLuhan. I just happened to pick up a physical 3D copy of the book -- rather than read it on a Kindle -- but either way, it's slow going at first, picks up speed, then finishes off with play.

McLuhan was very much into art and artists as well as science and communication. 

Start anywhere. How about page 121?

". . . art is the sharpening of clichés into probes, into new forms that stimulate new awareness." 

I agree completely here: take something "ordinary" or "routine" and show it, or see it, in a new way, employing a fresh perspective, looking at it from a different angle. 

That is, change how we see or express something from an "automatic everyday way" into another way, so that we no longer "take things for granted" but are "granted" expanded consciousness.  

For anything, anywhere, anytime: stop being "used to it" and start getting "new to it."

"Escape into understanding" (page 95).

Some nitty gritty:

'Media are powerful agents of change in how we experience the world, how we interact with each other, how we use our physical space, how we use our physical senses -- the same senses that media extend. They must be studied for their effects, because their interaction obscures those effects and deprives us of the control required to use media effectively' (page 107).

Attention must be paid to what we're doing and how we're doing it. 

All one need do is consider, if one is old enough, some of the daily behavioral changes engendered by the deployment of mobile digital devices and wireless communication, even within a single decade, especially in the early 21st century. 

If young enough (i.e. too young to have lived through the analog to digital morp), consider horse and foot culture vs. rail and steamship culture vs. automobile and atomic bomb "drive-thru" culture.

Armed with imagination, just about anyone young, old or in between can "escape [bleary everyday myopia] into [sharper, more farsighted] understanding."       

There's much much more, but I'll stop here for the purposes of inspiration beyond "pattern recognition." 

One can only absorb so much at one time without chucking all of it out the window, becoming a litter bug, and who wants that? Not I, said the Fly. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Freedom Riders

Stanley Nelson, Jr.'s Freedom Riders (2010) does excellent work bringing the Freedom Rides of 1961 -- and the harsh resistance to them -- into perspective and full, open view. Drawing from the work of Raymond Arsnenault and others, Freedom Riders weaves throughout the tales of several key players -- Freedom Riders, other civil rights leaders, politicians and officials with different perspectives, witnesses and Good Samaritans. Like the Freedom Rides themselves, Nelson's documentary starts out smoothly and then picks up momentum, driving right into the brutal resistance of white segregationists in Alabama and Mississippi. 

At about two hours, Freedom Riders (PBS, American Experience) takes us on a mesmerizing and sometimes horrific journey through fresh, still resonant American history.

The music is gripping, too. I was delighted to hear in the background (near the end of the film) Detroit-born Barbara Dane's version of "I'm On My Way," which is a very cool one, indeed, as are various other interpretations of this great traditional gospel song, usually referred to in full as "I'm On My Way (and I Won't Turn Back)." Check out, for instance, recorded performances by Odetta, The Carter Family,* Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone and Mavis Staples.

Full disclosure: I'll be co-discussing Freedom Riders at a local college next week. Glad I watched the film ahead of time, certainly. 

Today's Rune: Fertility.

*"I'm On My Way To Canaan's Land," by Alvin "A. P." Carter.

Deux de la Vague / Two in the Wave (2010)

The individual artist never -- or rarely -- works in a vacuum. Looking deeper behind every artist that can be documented, one discovers connections, people, ideas and milieux that shed light on individual artistic development and achievement. 

Emmanuel Laurent's documentary Deux de la Vague / Two in the Wave (2010) focuses on the rise and fall of the friendship and collaboration between two of the most heralded French New Wave / Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. I am enamored of the kinds of connections made in this film.

We see not only the Truffaut-Godard connection and its changes through time, but also catch a real glimpse of the entire history of cinema, which after all has only been around in earnest for about one hundred years -- much like electronically recorded music. With a leap of faith and a little imagination, one can conceive of the entire sweep of it all by "thin slicing" into this microcosm.  

Truffaut (1932-1984) and Godard (b. December 3, 1930 and still making movies at 83) both show an acute awareness of the history and language of cinema, while Godard also maintains a keen interest in -- and probing of -- history (especially everything that merges into the present).  

Between Truffaut and Godard, we see interaction with others of their nature, visionary filmmakers ranging from Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, from Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman and Nicholas Ray to Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. The evident network of creative connections is quite an eye-opener, and very pleasing to consider. In the words of David Bowie, "you are not alone."

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).        

Jaimy Gordon: Lord of Misrule

Lord of Misrule (2010), a novel by Jaimy Gordon, won the National Book Award in 2010. That was the same year Patti Smith won the same award in non-fiction for Just Kids. If I understand the formula correctly, National Book Award finalists are awarded $1,000 and winners another $10,000 -- in case you were pondering.

I'm about halfway into Lord of Misrule and taking my time. Not a book to blithely rush through without missing a lot of fine craft and nuance. It's absorbing; you have to work at sorting out characters via their thoughts and dialogue without quotation marks or other traffic markers.

Lord of Misrule is centered around a racetrack and its attendant milieu in West Virginia in the early 1970s. Ever been to West Virginia?

Jaimy Gordon's writing is intense in the way Marcel Proust's and Patti Smith's writing is intense. Here's just a sample snippet regarding Little Spinoza, an easily spooked race horse, from the point of view of Medicine Ed, one of the people characters:

He always was a baby. He scoping around at the cats, the raindrops pimpling in the puddles, the sparrows hopping up and down and cussing each other in the eaves. He stopped and had him a long sniff of Grizzly's goat. Now that Deucey had the two horses, she bought Grizzly a ten-dollar goat to keep him company. When the goat wasn't in the stall he was tied up like now on a chain in the grass patch between the shedrows, but he always pulled it out tight as a fiddle string if folks was around, for he was nosy. . . (page 101).

Yeah, Lord of Misrule is quite risible in parts! Can you dig?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

World Karma Comic-Comedian Russell Peters

When performing, stand-up comics have to be sharp and on their toes, prepared yet flexible. This line of work is not easy, and even less easy is financial success, wide recognition and influence.

I love a good comic-comedian as much as anyone, to laugh and be amazed at quick-thinking jabs and responses, to empathize. And to be enlightened into thinking about things from different angles.

Lately I checked out a fair sampling of comedy feauturing Indo-Canadian wordsmith-mimic-joker-observer Russell Peters.

This dude is a true world comic.

He can (and does) make references to the cultural peculiarities and foibles of all sorts of social groups. He can mimic formal language, local inflections and slang from Iraq to India to Indiana and beyond.

Funny guy. It seems as if his immediate audiences love him. Most do not take particular offense because he is coming at people and social groups from a global perspective, and with a seasoned Indo-Canadian understanding of how things work.

He enjoys close consideration of sounds, wording, names and the quirks of language, attitudes and stereotyping, all of it leading to a greater appreciation of the way things are.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.         

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes

I'm far enough into Karl Marlantes' Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (Grove Press, 2010) to form an initial response. It's an absorbing read, riveting, filled with meticulous detail. Visceral. Leeches and jungle rot. Soldiers sizing each other up, trying to figure out what's going on around them.  Well worth checking out. A lot of telling details about the US-Vietnam War at the micro level, many of them new to me, for sure.

Today's Rune: Signals.

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.    

One Year Later: Lightnin' Hopkins Redux

I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Govenar's Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues (Chicago Review Press, 2010). Govenar scoured city and country to find every bit of information he could; he dug through company records, conducted numerous interviews and sifted through a mountain of liner notes and articles.

Combined with an extended engagement with Hopkins' recorded output -- even a reasonable sampling -- this biographical study will give anyone interested a good feel for the iconic bluesman. 

One also glimpses how the music show business worked from the 1940s into the 1980s, in the studio and on the road. Some keen observations by Ed Pearl, owner of Ash Grove, a West Coast oasis for live performances at 8162 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles that ran from 1958 to 1973: "He [Hopkins] knew his limitations . . . and he was happy to be part of his community, but he knew there was a bigger world out there. He thought people should be equal and he thought . . . poor people should have more. And everyone is a child of God. He was against the Vietnam war" (page 194, from 2008 Govenar interview). 

Another noteworthy aspect of Lightnin' Hopkins' life: his thirty-five year relationship, until his death, with Antoinette Charles. She was a love of his life, and strong, if not the only one; given that she was married to someone else for the same duration, with kids, it was the same for her.

 














As Govenar points out emphatically, not all of the bluesman's recorded output is of equal quality. Delving into his discography (and there's a comprehensive one included), it's a good idea to choose carefully. The most recent collection I've been listening to features him on electric guitar (Hopkins' preferred style): Lightnin' Hopkins, Rainy Day In Houston (2000), recordings from 1955, 1961 and 1968. This one has three of my favorite of his topical tracks: "War Is Starting Again," "The World's In A Tangle" and "Vietnam War."

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Women Without Men: Behind the Scenes

I keep musing about Shiran Neshat's Women Without Men (2009), made in collaboration with Shoja Azari, based on the 1990 novella by Shahrnush Parsipur and set in Iran in 1953. All the stranger because 1953 is the exact same time frame for the movie discussed in yesterday's post, Next Stop, Greenwich Village. In both films, things are happening against the global backdrop of the Cold War. This is manifested by the Rosenberg executions on June 19, 1953 in the one and in the other, the 28 Mordad coup d'état  (aka "Operation Boot") of August 19, 1953.

The DVD version of Women Without Men (at least the one I saw) includes extras, all interesting. There are samples of other work by Shiran Neshat and Azari, there's a "Behind the Scenes" mini-documentary, and also a Q & A at the Walker Art Center (in Minneapolis) taped on April 16, 2010, featuring Neshat and Azari, both of whom are sharply articulate.  

Here's my jumble of additional notes -- many phrases are direct quotations or paraphrases from Shiran Neshat and Shoja Azari that I jotted down while watching the DVD "extras."

Magic-realism (magical realism)

Parallels, cinematographer Martin Gschlacht

Naturalistic, power of the image

Tableaus -- while keeping the thread of the story

Tracking shots, blocking shots, resurrection shot, from the earth into a pool –

She is a ghost going into the water

Archival footage to recreate the iconic look of the time -- 1953

She could see everyone but they couldn’t see her

Highly stylized film

Party convergence at end

Displacement and exile

Two realistic characters and two unworldly characters

Jesus-Mary Magdalene evocation

Three classes of society

Lower, middle (traditional) and upper

Encompasses worldly and unworldly, political and spiritual

Struggle for survival

Universal connections

A study of the anatomy of a patriarchy

Burden, “patriarchy is at the core of despotism in Iranian society”

The dilemma of freedom

Changes to novella

Munis conceptual -- novella more as stories

A world – inner and outer worlds

Space

Timeless

Tehran 1953 / timeless garden/orchard  Eden / sanctuary, could be life after death

Orchard/garden exile/refuge, uncanny/otherworldly

1953 coup and installation of the Shah by UK and US --- Pivotal moment laying groundwork for Islamic Revolution of 1979

A remembrance of pre-coup Iran

Politicians live by discontinuity

“if you don’t have any location in history you wouldn’t know” the context – the present situation anywhere seems eternal but it is not, it's based in history and subject to change, differing perceptions

Iran was more cosmopolitan, connected to the world culture -- this has been decimated by the '79 Revolution and its aftermath

Film shot in Morocco

Nomadic artists (Shiran Neshat, Shoja Azari, Shahrnush Parsipur, and many others) because denied basic human rights in Iran

Command and clarity, closer to truth – artists still living in country

Hybrid artists – memory, removed from source

Exodus 

Iran in 1953, a nation struggling for egalitarian democracy

Balanced approach

Radio as symbol

Farsi language

Imagery rooted in Persian Islamic literature, art -- and Western (such as Ophelia)

Divided between two worlds

Nomads – a state of in between

An otherworldly place is the orchard garden

Next project may include The Palace of Dreams (Albanian setting)

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.