Some re-encountering of the ideas of Peter Lamborn Wilson, and others.
Today, through a quick Wikipedia check on Charles Fourier, I found myself reminded of the poet/thinker PLM, aka Hakim Bey. My introduction to Hakim Bey's writing came in college, where my religions professor Brian Karafin pointed me in his direction. I've read only a bit of Bey's writing - there was a small booklet of his available to read (but not remove) at the NYPL. I don't remember any of it. There's also some Youtube clips of Bey speaking, a couple of which I've viewed.
He comes across as an intelligent guy, a little nutty perhaps, but not the crazy, fringe-y type that his reputation might suggest. Among dabbling in various Occult-style ideas and philosophies, which vary, by my lights, from loopy to historically and perhaps spiritually important, Wilson has also been embroiled in some controversy over his apparent advocacy of pederasty. I don't know much about the controversy, but it certain casts Wilson in a highly dubious light.
All of that being said, there's an interesting interview I came across here, which also includes insights from Christopher Bamford:
http://brooklynrail.org/2007/12/art/green-hermeticism
The stuff about the "theurgic" in art jumped out at me, as well as this:
"Today, art—and perhaps also even science—has become more or less a form
of self-expression, whereas if you go back far enough into the history
of art or science they always had the theurgic function to heal,
nurture, and care for the whole: the divine-cosmic-earthly-human cosmos.
But for the greatest modern artists, like Cezanne and Braque and Beuys
(and also writers like Joyce and poets like Robert Duncan), it still has
that theurgic function."
This strikes me as particularly relevant to my own artistic pursuits. I've always been a bit leery of the cult of self-expression that dominates the talking about and practice of Modern art. Postmodernism can be seen, at least initially, as an attempt to get around this, but it mostly crumbled (in my own view) into hollow, jargon-laden irrelevance. There's some real potential in these ideas, which take the egotism out of Modern art, and harken back to a more universal, transformative, conception of Art. (It's also true that this strain of aesthetic thinking is present throughout the Modern tradition, but it's often hiding just out of sight.)
Also of interest: Bioremediation, and Paul Stamets.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Thoughts on Style
Prompted, in large part, by this:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/08/the-godfather-and-style.html#entry-more
As usual, it's dense and overheated, like old spinach pie fresh out of the microwave, but there's some fascinating and acute nuggets of truth in the piece.
To sum up, with as much brevity and clarity as possible, Brody thinks that Coppola's success with the first two Godfather movies results from their being made in the right place, at the right time, by a director with just the right sensibility. It's unclear whether Brody believes that their financial, popular, and critical success is the same as their artistic success, but the point is more-or-less well taken. The Godfather (and I'm referring here to both, and will be for the duration, for reasons of simplicity and because Godfather II is so effectively and seamlessly a continuation of its predecessor) is probably the most uncontroversial "masterpiece" in the history of American cinema, surpassing even Citizen Kane, and not just because it enjoys much more popular success than Kane. It's lightning-in-a-bottle good. The harmony of mood, story, character, tone, acting, and image-making are both exquisitely sophisticated and widely palatable. It's as close to Shakespeare as American cinema has ever been - the film is both smart and broad, epic and intimate, sly and self-effacing. Coppola never really topped it, even with Apocalypse Now, which ramped up the atmosphere and became more selfconsiously Art-house without sacrificing too much of the rock-solid instinct for story that served Coppola so well (until it didn't.)
But Coppola had always been a relentless experimenter. He still is, to use only a few frames of Tetro by way of example. The neoclassical mode that Brody describes was exceptionally well-suited for the material - it was the magic moment at which Coppola's particular sensibility matched the source material. I can't speak for the collective nostalgia that Brody then evokes - this part of his essay is plainly conjecture, but it makes for an interesting theory. No doubt some of that stuff is accurate, and it makes for an interesting gloss, although it doesn't explain the lasting appeal and reverence that the Godfather inspires even now.
But for Brody, the downfall is that it was too perfect, too schematic, too composed. Thus, it becomes in his eyes contrived.
Although I'm not among those who regard this stance as sacrilegious, I do think that it's mostly wrong. All the same, it has a certain kernel of truth in it. Brody doesn't come right out and claim that the films of Cassavetes are better (in an earlier post, he compared the two filmmakers) but he does strongly imply that Cassavetes was the superior and more seminal artist. While there's nothing wrong with stating a preference, Brody has the habit of making his aesthetic judgements with the presumed authority and peremptoriness of moral, even legal judgements. This can be intermittently appealing, because it's nice to see someone who wears his convictions so proudly on his sleeve, but it can also be exasperating when it spills over into self-rightousness or puffed-up (and often incoherent) writing.
But give his assessment its due - Godfather does harken back to a bygone era, both in its form and its content; it has nostalgia built in, and nostalgia is one of the most powerful of all emotions when expressed (convincingly) aesthetically. And it does very effectively fuse the old stylistic gloss and rigor with a thoroughly modern frankness in showing the ruthlessness and cynicism of the characters, as well as in the depictions of sex and violence.
Brody doesn't begrudge Coppola his style; he merely complains that Coppola uses it for false ends, writing that as a directorial statement it is "self-effacing" and its ruminations on its subject come across as "arms-length editorial commentary."
Again, this is a statement of preference. For Brody, the ultimate aesthetic achievement is personal expression, with a heavy, even fanatical insistence upon the first word. The best directors have a signature that is as clear as it is indelible - story, character, and content are all subservient to the ideas, and most importantly the personality, of the director. Hence his longstanding and near-religious reverence for Godard, the most essayistic and personally revelatory of all directors. Many others, now and before, would disagree. The opposing view holds that the artist ought to be transparent - that it is the story, not the storyteller, that ought to be front-and-center on the screen. The ideas, personality, and quirks of the creator are all well and good if they serve the needs of the story, but once you reverse that order, you wind up with work that's self-indulgent, obscure, pretentious, etc.
It might be that this is one of those "either-or" statements of preference - Beatles vs. Stones, Picasso vs. Matisse, etc. In this case, we have Coppola vs. Cassavetes. But I like to think that such choices are always false; they don't have much value beyond their function as idle chatter, and are even detrimental if too earnestly embraced. I've come to increasingly value the "expressive/personal" over the "impersonal/craftsmanlike" in all forms, especially cinema, but the truth is that I love them both. What I'm searching for is a unified theory; a way in which I can do, and appreciate, both equally. I don't quite have it down yet, but I'm getting there.
Here's an important example: David Milch. Milch has always claimed that his definition of the successful artist is someone who disappears into his work. Taking the example of Deadwood, we can see that on one level Milch has realized his ambition. The characters are alive and wonderfully differentiated, and the story follows their struggles with the utmost loving care and meticulous attention. And yet at the same time, there is not a frame, or a line, when the presence of Milch isn't felt. He speaks through every single character in the show - one only needs to hear the man speak for a few minutes and that voice will become impossible to miss. Although Milch makes much of the idea that the story speaks for itself and on its own terms, that it has no ulterior message, that it corresponds only to an internally coherent truth, the fact is that his work is highly moral and even didactic; it is the work of someone who is searching for a "way to live." This isn't to say that it's moralizing or pedantic, but it does have a conception of an inner and underlying order and harmony, and it makes no bones about it. This can be starkly contrasted with the deeply anxious and ambivalent stance taken by David Chase, who laughs darkly at the troubling void he sees in the shadows of everyday life. What unites them both is a willingness to investigate, to seek out those shadows and dive into them. They are both relentlessly curious and driven.
So back to Coppola - what is he saying? What is his grand idea, what is the indelible mark of his personality - what can it be said he is working out with The Godfather? Here's the second part of my critique of Brody's approach. Not only does his preference (which, recall, is masked by a too-rigid aesthetic absolutism) blind him to the more subtle aspects of grace in Coppola's opus, his conception of expressiveness is overly concrete. He's looking for a commentary, a self-reflexivity, a layer of irony that doesn't exist in the film. The political subtext of The Godfather is simple and obvious and entirely beside the point. Yes, it makes for a neat allegory of capitalism and its degradation of the family, traditional values, etc. But that's not the real subtext of the film. What Coppola was really after was a family tragedy of a truly classical type - but told as a modern, personal tale. It's the story of a son trying desperately to escape the looming stature of his father, and who realizes that the only way to escape him is to destroy him, not literally, but metaphorically. He becomes the ruthless, thoroughly modern man that his father could not and would not become. He ends up destroying the values in order to preserve their (now empty) vessel/edifice. For all of it's classical, even Oedipal resonance, this is an unmistakably personal tale about the devastating impact of history and time on the family, told from a specific historical moment. The Godfather has been frequently been called a "home movie" by Coppola and by others. Coppola's presence is in the small details, the myriad tiny gestures that make up the film. It's in the recipe for marinara sauce, the little girl dancing on the feet of the tall guy, the micro-moments of which the movie is composed, finally. The truth is that The Godfather is not nearly as tightly constructed as some would make it out to be - it has longueurs and sudden, unexpected moments of explosive fury. It has that famously abrupt, even sudden, ending. It lingers and chugs along. The personal touch, the authorial closeness that Brody seeks, is there, but not in the form he's looking for; he wants ideas, but what exists is emotion, even angst.
My own take is that he's partly right. While I don't agree that G is as classical and fussily stylized as he says, there is some truth to the idea that the film does rely quite heavily on a transparent psychological realism that can sometimes seem overly straightforward.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2013/08/the-godfather-and-style.html#entry-more
As usual, it's dense and overheated, like old spinach pie fresh out of the microwave, but there's some fascinating and acute nuggets of truth in the piece.
To sum up, with as much brevity and clarity as possible, Brody thinks that Coppola's success with the first two Godfather movies results from their being made in the right place, at the right time, by a director with just the right sensibility. It's unclear whether Brody believes that their financial, popular, and critical success is the same as their artistic success, but the point is more-or-less well taken. The Godfather (and I'm referring here to both, and will be for the duration, for reasons of simplicity and because Godfather II is so effectively and seamlessly a continuation of its predecessor) is probably the most uncontroversial "masterpiece" in the history of American cinema, surpassing even Citizen Kane, and not just because it enjoys much more popular success than Kane. It's lightning-in-a-bottle good. The harmony of mood, story, character, tone, acting, and image-making are both exquisitely sophisticated and widely palatable. It's as close to Shakespeare as American cinema has ever been - the film is both smart and broad, epic and intimate, sly and self-effacing. Coppola never really topped it, even with Apocalypse Now, which ramped up the atmosphere and became more selfconsiously Art-house without sacrificing too much of the rock-solid instinct for story that served Coppola so well (until it didn't.)
But Coppola had always been a relentless experimenter. He still is, to use only a few frames of Tetro by way of example. The neoclassical mode that Brody describes was exceptionally well-suited for the material - it was the magic moment at which Coppola's particular sensibility matched the source material. I can't speak for the collective nostalgia that Brody then evokes - this part of his essay is plainly conjecture, but it makes for an interesting theory. No doubt some of that stuff is accurate, and it makes for an interesting gloss, although it doesn't explain the lasting appeal and reverence that the Godfather inspires even now.
But for Brody, the downfall is that it was too perfect, too schematic, too composed. Thus, it becomes in his eyes contrived.
Although I'm not among those who regard this stance as sacrilegious, I do think that it's mostly wrong. All the same, it has a certain kernel of truth in it. Brody doesn't come right out and claim that the films of Cassavetes are better (in an earlier post, he compared the two filmmakers) but he does strongly imply that Cassavetes was the superior and more seminal artist. While there's nothing wrong with stating a preference, Brody has the habit of making his aesthetic judgements with the presumed authority and peremptoriness of moral, even legal judgements. This can be intermittently appealing, because it's nice to see someone who wears his convictions so proudly on his sleeve, but it can also be exasperating when it spills over into self-rightousness or puffed-up (and often incoherent) writing.
But give his assessment its due - Godfather does harken back to a bygone era, both in its form and its content; it has nostalgia built in, and nostalgia is one of the most powerful of all emotions when expressed (convincingly) aesthetically. And it does very effectively fuse the old stylistic gloss and rigor with a thoroughly modern frankness in showing the ruthlessness and cynicism of the characters, as well as in the depictions of sex and violence.
Brody doesn't begrudge Coppola his style; he merely complains that Coppola uses it for false ends, writing that as a directorial statement it is "self-effacing" and its ruminations on its subject come across as "arms-length editorial commentary."
Again, this is a statement of preference. For Brody, the ultimate aesthetic achievement is personal expression, with a heavy, even fanatical insistence upon the first word. The best directors have a signature that is as clear as it is indelible - story, character, and content are all subservient to the ideas, and most importantly the personality, of the director. Hence his longstanding and near-religious reverence for Godard, the most essayistic and personally revelatory of all directors. Many others, now and before, would disagree. The opposing view holds that the artist ought to be transparent - that it is the story, not the storyteller, that ought to be front-and-center on the screen. The ideas, personality, and quirks of the creator are all well and good if they serve the needs of the story, but once you reverse that order, you wind up with work that's self-indulgent, obscure, pretentious, etc.
It might be that this is one of those "either-or" statements of preference - Beatles vs. Stones, Picasso vs. Matisse, etc. In this case, we have Coppola vs. Cassavetes. But I like to think that such choices are always false; they don't have much value beyond their function as idle chatter, and are even detrimental if too earnestly embraced. I've come to increasingly value the "expressive/personal" over the "impersonal/craftsmanlike" in all forms, especially cinema, but the truth is that I love them both. What I'm searching for is a unified theory; a way in which I can do, and appreciate, both equally. I don't quite have it down yet, but I'm getting there.
Here's an important example: David Milch. Milch has always claimed that his definition of the successful artist is someone who disappears into his work. Taking the example of Deadwood, we can see that on one level Milch has realized his ambition. The characters are alive and wonderfully differentiated, and the story follows their struggles with the utmost loving care and meticulous attention. And yet at the same time, there is not a frame, or a line, when the presence of Milch isn't felt. He speaks through every single character in the show - one only needs to hear the man speak for a few minutes and that voice will become impossible to miss. Although Milch makes much of the idea that the story speaks for itself and on its own terms, that it has no ulterior message, that it corresponds only to an internally coherent truth, the fact is that his work is highly moral and even didactic; it is the work of someone who is searching for a "way to live." This isn't to say that it's moralizing or pedantic, but it does have a conception of an inner and underlying order and harmony, and it makes no bones about it. This can be starkly contrasted with the deeply anxious and ambivalent stance taken by David Chase, who laughs darkly at the troubling void he sees in the shadows of everyday life. What unites them both is a willingness to investigate, to seek out those shadows and dive into them. They are both relentlessly curious and driven.
So back to Coppola - what is he saying? What is his grand idea, what is the indelible mark of his personality - what can it be said he is working out with The Godfather? Here's the second part of my critique of Brody's approach. Not only does his preference (which, recall, is masked by a too-rigid aesthetic absolutism) blind him to the more subtle aspects of grace in Coppola's opus, his conception of expressiveness is overly concrete. He's looking for a commentary, a self-reflexivity, a layer of irony that doesn't exist in the film. The political subtext of The Godfather is simple and obvious and entirely beside the point. Yes, it makes for a neat allegory of capitalism and its degradation of the family, traditional values, etc. But that's not the real subtext of the film. What Coppola was really after was a family tragedy of a truly classical type - but told as a modern, personal tale. It's the story of a son trying desperately to escape the looming stature of his father, and who realizes that the only way to escape him is to destroy him, not literally, but metaphorically. He becomes the ruthless, thoroughly modern man that his father could not and would not become. He ends up destroying the values in order to preserve their (now empty) vessel/edifice. For all of it's classical, even Oedipal resonance, this is an unmistakably personal tale about the devastating impact of history and time on the family, told from a specific historical moment. The Godfather has been frequently been called a "home movie" by Coppola and by others. Coppola's presence is in the small details, the myriad tiny gestures that make up the film. It's in the recipe for marinara sauce, the little girl dancing on the feet of the tall guy, the micro-moments of which the movie is composed, finally. The truth is that The Godfather is not nearly as tightly constructed as some would make it out to be - it has longueurs and sudden, unexpected moments of explosive fury. It has that famously abrupt, even sudden, ending. It lingers and chugs along. The personal touch, the authorial closeness that Brody seeks, is there, but not in the form he's looking for; he wants ideas, but what exists is emotion, even angst.
My own take is that he's partly right. While I don't agree that G is as classical and fussily stylized as he says, there is some truth to the idea that the film does rely quite heavily on a transparent psychological realism that can sometimes seem overly straightforward.
Thursday, July 18, 2013
Seeing the Desert....!
That there's no clear delineation, no border, is one of the first things to understand. Our reliance on maps, our system of political boundaries, predisposes us to look for the marker that divides one space from another. Even when we rationally understand that Nature doesn't draw lines, that she knows only the continuity of everything, on some level we still expect those lines to exist. So when you're heading out to the desert, understand that it will creep up on you. The landscape becomes gradually flat, the flora becomes gradually squat and scrubby. And then you realize that you've arrived. You're in the desert.
Miles beforehand the windmills had appeared. Enormous, majestic, each three-bladed giant in perpetual motion, driven by the eternal Westerly wind. Conservatively estimating that hundreds were visible, I later found out that there are in fact 5,000 windmills in this stretch of desert territory. Don Quixote would either die of joy or go mad on the spot. This is the Kahatchapi Wind Farm, and in ranges from the flat Mojave lowlands into the distant mountains, harvesting power from the prevailing zephyrs. Seeing the windmills from the car, where they seemed to recede even as we approached them, felt like chasing a mirage.
The light was fading from the sky. We tacked towards the windmills, turning off the main highway onto a narrow stretch of asphalt. We drove past a few quiet homes built on plots carved squarely from the creosote. Soon the pavement dead-ended and we pulled aside onto a spit of sand. We got out of the car and stepped into the wind, which was both warm and surprisingly strong, the sky behind us blossoming into a pastel frieze of orange, yellow, crimson, purple, and powder blue. I was mute with awe. The wind kept me silent; even if I'd spoken, Nina wouldn't have heard me. The wind was everywhere. It inflated my tee shirt like a sail, but for all of its implacable force, it had a gentle touch. A perpetual sigh that flows from beyond the mountains, warm and fresh and indistinctly fragrant. When I looked in the other direction, where the hues of blue and purple were slipping into darkness, I could see a strange haze in the atmosphere. I don't know whether this was moisture or dust, kicked up by the moving air and kept aloft.
Windmills belie the idea that technological progress is always brutish and ugly - an idea that I've long cherished, if mostly unconsciously. Something about the scale, the fact that the energy they provide is carbon-free, their silence; they are like benevolent sentinels.
Later, we dined at the Primo Burger.
Miles beforehand the windmills had appeared. Enormous, majestic, each three-bladed giant in perpetual motion, driven by the eternal Westerly wind. Conservatively estimating that hundreds were visible, I later found out that there are in fact 5,000 windmills in this stretch of desert territory. Don Quixote would either die of joy or go mad on the spot. This is the Kahatchapi Wind Farm, and in ranges from the flat Mojave lowlands into the distant mountains, harvesting power from the prevailing zephyrs. Seeing the windmills from the car, where they seemed to recede even as we approached them, felt like chasing a mirage.
The light was fading from the sky. We tacked towards the windmills, turning off the main highway onto a narrow stretch of asphalt. We drove past a few quiet homes built on plots carved squarely from the creosote. Soon the pavement dead-ended and we pulled aside onto a spit of sand. We got out of the car and stepped into the wind, which was both warm and surprisingly strong, the sky behind us blossoming into a pastel frieze of orange, yellow, crimson, purple, and powder blue. I was mute with awe. The wind kept me silent; even if I'd spoken, Nina wouldn't have heard me. The wind was everywhere. It inflated my tee shirt like a sail, but for all of its implacable force, it had a gentle touch. A perpetual sigh that flows from beyond the mountains, warm and fresh and indistinctly fragrant. When I looked in the other direction, where the hues of blue and purple were slipping into darkness, I could see a strange haze in the atmosphere. I don't know whether this was moisture or dust, kicked up by the moving air and kept aloft.
Windmills belie the idea that technological progress is always brutish and ugly - an idea that I've long cherished, if mostly unconsciously. Something about the scale, the fact that the energy they provide is carbon-free, their silence; they are like benevolent sentinels.
Later, we dined at the Primo Burger.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Radio Hill Gardens
Tightly wedged between Downtown and Echo Park, the Radio Hill Gardens are situated on a spit of wild land, gone to seed and mostly inhabited (semi-clandestinely) by a contingent of LA's vast and diverse homeless population. The land itself lies just beyond Chinatown, readily visible if one looks Northeast down Broadway or Hill Street. I had never heard of Radio Hill, and assumed I was looking at the Southernmost reaches of Elysian Park, which in a way I was. Elysian, the second-largest park in Los Angeles, is a 600 acre inverted-crescent of outdoor space. It's the home to both Dodger's Stadium and the Los Angeles Police Academy. The stadium and its sprawling parking lots take up a considerable amount of the acreage, situated in the natural bowl shape formed by the curve of the ridge. It's southernmost tip actually stretches around Radio Hill. So it's easy to view Radio Hill as a kind of extension of Elysian Park, even though the two areas, as I was to find out shortly, are radically different from each other.
Parks are one of the great saving virtues of Los Angeles. That's probably true of most cities, but in hypertrophied LA, with its teeming grid of highways, endless subdivisions, and implacable expanse of hot-blue sky, it's especially true. LA's parks, in relation to the urban and suburban sprawl, often appear overmatched, even the rangy Griffith Park, which is cut through with wide trails and roads. But the green spaces still provide a deeply needed break from the oppressive monotony of concrete, glass, stucco, and asphalt. For the outdoor-minded, the appearance of these quasi-wild places is itself an enticement. They draw you in. For many others, less inclined to partake in nature themselves, it at least makes for pleasant scenery. Upon seeing what turned out to be Radio Hill, I was intrigued. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to explore it. These little oases of wilderness, meager though they are, comprise an integral part of LA's weird appeal. Taking in the haphazard construction of the city, with its innumerable cantons, barrios, enclaves, and subdivisions, can be overwhelming, even to the point of visceral discomfort. It has a sort of third-world feel (although my third-word - developing world, to use the current parlance - is strictly limited, I can't help but conjecture a certain affinity), implying a fevered opportunism, a frantic expansion in all directions, a city built on the wing. More than once, the neighborhood "planning" of LA has been called a "crazy quilt." This is a description that fits, both for its suggestion of colorful patchwork and its invocation of insanity. It's hard to view the human-made texture of Los Angeles as the product of anything other than madness. Glittering and endless, it resembles the vision of someone in the grips of a manic episode: limitless, opulent, jagged, impossible. And yet it exists.
Just to suggest another overheated metaphor - Los Angeles's physical structure can seem like the scattered debris of a great explosion. As though a bomb has detonated and flung the superdense initial matter in all directions, which has since settled and calcified into glittering hillside developments, run-down stretches tract of housing, and occasional flashes of avant-garde fancy.
In either case, LA's sprawl creates all kinds of unexpected juxtapositions. As in the case of Radio Hill, it means that certain areas of the city just winds up being forgotten. As Nina and I walked up the winding road, which had, inexplicably, been recently paved, we gradually found ourselves slipping into the Interzone of LA. If you've lived here and done some exploring, you know what I'm talking about: that liminal place, situated between the settled and the wild, between the grossly overrun and the eerily abandoned. On the south side of the hill (the park is one big hill) the background noise of the city gradually slipped away, even as the majestic view of downtown rose behind us. Cresting the hillside, there was a tiny parking area (again, recently paved, although the main road has long been closed to any vehicle traffic) with two freshly painted handicapped parking spaces. Off to one side was the eponymous radio tower, one of those crude, unintentional monuments of the digital communications era, bristling with drumlike transmitter/receivers and pointy antennae. At its base was a small houselike structure, surrounded by fences. We didn't even bother to approach it. It had that standoffish vibe that I imagine the dwellings of trolls would have. Off to one side was a spectacularly foul-smelling and overflowing dumpster, one of a few that had apparently been deposited here, for reasons unknown.
The flora of Radio Hill is dense and foreboding, especially by Los Angeles park standards. There's been no obvious effort to clean it any time in the recent past, so it's littered with all kinds of trash - wrappers, tattered clothes, cruelly twisted bicycle wheels, empty cigarette packs. It's not an out-and-out dump. Most of the trash exists around the margins, several feet off the main path. But there is a lot of it. The refuse takes a while to notice; you sort of have to let your eyes adjust to it. But once you do, you see how much of it there is, and it settles on you in that bleak, sad way; a heaviness. But it's more than that - for me, at least, there's also that frisson, I suspect borne of danger and a certain lurid fascination with decay, that creeps up your spine. This is a forlorn place. Secret things happen here; mostly sad, some scary, some merely banal. But they happen in secret, off the grid, even though they occur mere fractions of a mile from one of the Grid's great epicenters - the LAPD headquarters.
The signs have all been painted over, in successive layers of graffiti, and are not almost totally illegible. At one time, the top area was meant to be a protected habitat for butterflies and hummingbirds. Now it's an unkempt patch of scrubby trees, wilderness left to its own devices. I don't know if the hummingbirds ever stayed; on this quiet afternoon, there were none. On the other side of the Hill, the 110 Freeway incessantly roars. It's unbearable. All of the park's residents seem to agree with my assessment, and live on the opposite side. As we ventured further into the remains of the garden, past scrub oak trees and poured-concrete benches, my anxiety began to bloom. This is one of those places where very bad things can happen. Upon passing that initial dumpster, I felt a wave of revulsion that felt positively reptilian. I could imagine a dead body decaying in there. I was carrying a plastic cup in one hand, the remains of an iced-tea-to-go. I didn't dare approach any of the dumpsters; besides the foreboding smells emanating from them, it seemed inappropriate to add to their already prodigious loads of refuse.
At the end of the sandy path is a fence. Across the way, Southernmost reach of Elysian Park was bathed in amber light. Compared to where we stood, it looked as lushly green and manicured as a golf course. The fence - black chain-link - which divided the downward slope from the part of the park intended, in bygone days, for "recreation" - had a gaping hole cut into it. Very deliberately, somebody had sliced the fence and curled up the jagged edges. It had the look of a well-worn path.
After seeing that, it was time to go. We had gradually been seeing signs of the indigent inhabitants of Radio Hill. (tbd)
Parks are one of the great saving virtues of Los Angeles. That's probably true of most cities, but in hypertrophied LA, with its teeming grid of highways, endless subdivisions, and implacable expanse of hot-blue sky, it's especially true. LA's parks, in relation to the urban and suburban sprawl, often appear overmatched, even the rangy Griffith Park, which is cut through with wide trails and roads. But the green spaces still provide a deeply needed break from the oppressive monotony of concrete, glass, stucco, and asphalt. For the outdoor-minded, the appearance of these quasi-wild places is itself an enticement. They draw you in. For many others, less inclined to partake in nature themselves, it at least makes for pleasant scenery. Upon seeing what turned out to be Radio Hill, I was intrigued. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to explore it. These little oases of wilderness, meager though they are, comprise an integral part of LA's weird appeal. Taking in the haphazard construction of the city, with its innumerable cantons, barrios, enclaves, and subdivisions, can be overwhelming, even to the point of visceral discomfort. It has a sort of third-world feel (although my third-word - developing world, to use the current parlance - is strictly limited, I can't help but conjecture a certain affinity), implying a fevered opportunism, a frantic expansion in all directions, a city built on the wing. More than once, the neighborhood "planning" of LA has been called a "crazy quilt." This is a description that fits, both for its suggestion of colorful patchwork and its invocation of insanity. It's hard to view the human-made texture of Los Angeles as the product of anything other than madness. Glittering and endless, it resembles the vision of someone in the grips of a manic episode: limitless, opulent, jagged, impossible. And yet it exists.
Just to suggest another overheated metaphor - Los Angeles's physical structure can seem like the scattered debris of a great explosion. As though a bomb has detonated and flung the superdense initial matter in all directions, which has since settled and calcified into glittering hillside developments, run-down stretches tract of housing, and occasional flashes of avant-garde fancy.
In either case, LA's sprawl creates all kinds of unexpected juxtapositions. As in the case of Radio Hill, it means that certain areas of the city just winds up being forgotten. As Nina and I walked up the winding road, which had, inexplicably, been recently paved, we gradually found ourselves slipping into the Interzone of LA. If you've lived here and done some exploring, you know what I'm talking about: that liminal place, situated between the settled and the wild, between the grossly overrun and the eerily abandoned. On the south side of the hill (the park is one big hill) the background noise of the city gradually slipped away, even as the majestic view of downtown rose behind us. Cresting the hillside, there was a tiny parking area (again, recently paved, although the main road has long been closed to any vehicle traffic) with two freshly painted handicapped parking spaces. Off to one side was the eponymous radio tower, one of those crude, unintentional monuments of the digital communications era, bristling with drumlike transmitter/receivers and pointy antennae. At its base was a small houselike structure, surrounded by fences. We didn't even bother to approach it. It had that standoffish vibe that I imagine the dwellings of trolls would have. Off to one side was a spectacularly foul-smelling and overflowing dumpster, one of a few that had apparently been deposited here, for reasons unknown.
The flora of Radio Hill is dense and foreboding, especially by Los Angeles park standards. There's been no obvious effort to clean it any time in the recent past, so it's littered with all kinds of trash - wrappers, tattered clothes, cruelly twisted bicycle wheels, empty cigarette packs. It's not an out-and-out dump. Most of the trash exists around the margins, several feet off the main path. But there is a lot of it. The refuse takes a while to notice; you sort of have to let your eyes adjust to it. But once you do, you see how much of it there is, and it settles on you in that bleak, sad way; a heaviness. But it's more than that - for me, at least, there's also that frisson, I suspect borne of danger and a certain lurid fascination with decay, that creeps up your spine. This is a forlorn place. Secret things happen here; mostly sad, some scary, some merely banal. But they happen in secret, off the grid, even though they occur mere fractions of a mile from one of the Grid's great epicenters - the LAPD headquarters.
The signs have all been painted over, in successive layers of graffiti, and are not almost totally illegible. At one time, the top area was meant to be a protected habitat for butterflies and hummingbirds. Now it's an unkempt patch of scrubby trees, wilderness left to its own devices. I don't know if the hummingbirds ever stayed; on this quiet afternoon, there were none. On the other side of the Hill, the 110 Freeway incessantly roars. It's unbearable. All of the park's residents seem to agree with my assessment, and live on the opposite side. As we ventured further into the remains of the garden, past scrub oak trees and poured-concrete benches, my anxiety began to bloom. This is one of those places where very bad things can happen. Upon passing that initial dumpster, I felt a wave of revulsion that felt positively reptilian. I could imagine a dead body decaying in there. I was carrying a plastic cup in one hand, the remains of an iced-tea-to-go. I didn't dare approach any of the dumpsters; besides the foreboding smells emanating from them, it seemed inappropriate to add to their already prodigious loads of refuse.
At the end of the sandy path is a fence. Across the way, Southernmost reach of Elysian Park was bathed in amber light. Compared to where we stood, it looked as lushly green and manicured as a golf course. The fence - black chain-link - which divided the downward slope from the part of the park intended, in bygone days, for "recreation" - had a gaping hole cut into it. Very deliberately, somebody had sliced the fence and curled up the jagged edges. It had the look of a well-worn path.
After seeing that, it was time to go. We had gradually been seeing signs of the indigent inhabitants of Radio Hill. (tbd)
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Thoughts on Wendell Berry
I've found my way back. After reading his book of essays entitled "Imagination in Place" and his collection stories A Place in Time, and being moved, provoked, inspired, even at times overwhelmed, by both, I meandered back into his neck of the woods, taking out his book of essays Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community and his novel Hannah Coulter.
It seems to me that Berry is scarily right on almost everything he says. Of course, this overstates things. I've read the title essay of his book, and it shook me, re-opened some wounds of mine, and even left me feeling slightly giddy with hope for a better world.
It's important to note that Berry's conception of sexuality is as profound as it is unsexy. Unsexy, that is, in light of how we've come to regard all things erotic. Berry is not a Bible-thumper, but he is a practicing Christian, and he believes deeply in the centrality of sex to the life not only of the family but of the community. For Berry, sex is the kernel from which all life - familial, communal, artistic, you-name-it - springs. In an industrial, modern culture that devalues persons and communities, sex must also be devalued, must lose its sense of propriety, of awe, of dignity, and even of pleasure.
The knee-jerk reaction of the would-be liberal cosmopolitan is that, at the very least, this overstates things. Berry isn't given anything close to his due in liberal circles for many of the same reasons that Chomsky isn't; he is a true prophet, and much of what he says, while true, goes radically against the grain of the cultural elite. He trucks in truths that are elusive, inconvenient, upsetting.
I will admit to being deeply, even profoundly receptive to Berry's ideas, which is not at all to say that I agree with them entirely, or that my receptiveness isn't colored, even deepened, but a healthy amount of discomfort and skepticism. At times, Berry can seem every bit the fusty, musty ol' coot that he seems to imagine himself as appearing to many of his more, shall we say, urbane readers. He seems to have too high standards for the world, to be atavistic, to harken back to some imagined, irrevocable utopia, a veritable American Eden of community and fellowship. He can seem naive, a bit quaint, even perhaps a little daft (although he is always lucid.) At worst, he can seem irrationally prejudiced: that his longing for his lost, paved-over paradise has curdled into bitterness, and his punctilious good manners and wry stoicism are covering for a dangerous, acid resentment that threatens to boil over.
But I don't really think that's the case. Berry can be cranky, but he always seems to be so with appropriate reserve and self-awareness, and always to temper his crankiness, even his palpable anguish, with hope, humor, and affection for what he cherishes and seeks to preserve in the world. His voice, as lonely as it can seem at times among the literary firmament, is not a voice of despair.
I don't know if I go all the way with him on his rejection of all sex that exists outside the sacrament of marriage. (He isn't a demagogue - he is patently and emphatically not one, since he speaks of real causes and effects, not conjured abstractions of Sin and Purity.) He is right to mark the ways in which sex is degraded and degradation has been made to seem sexy, and how that degradation always extends to people and to the culture at large. But I wonder if it's possible to have a middle ground. Can we allow ourselves to be sexual with those who are other than our spouses? What of sexual play and experimentation - practiced since the dawn of humanity, even in some of the local, communal cultures that Berry is fond of citing as examples of belonging and cohesiveness?
It's liberating to read Berry, because he makes me feel sane. But there is part of me that wonders - how do I live? What do I do now?
It seems to me that Berry is scarily right on almost everything he says. Of course, this overstates things. I've read the title essay of his book, and it shook me, re-opened some wounds of mine, and even left me feeling slightly giddy with hope for a better world.
It's important to note that Berry's conception of sexuality is as profound as it is unsexy. Unsexy, that is, in light of how we've come to regard all things erotic. Berry is not a Bible-thumper, but he is a practicing Christian, and he believes deeply in the centrality of sex to the life not only of the family but of the community. For Berry, sex is the kernel from which all life - familial, communal, artistic, you-name-it - springs. In an industrial, modern culture that devalues persons and communities, sex must also be devalued, must lose its sense of propriety, of awe, of dignity, and even of pleasure.
The knee-jerk reaction of the would-be liberal cosmopolitan is that, at the very least, this overstates things. Berry isn't given anything close to his due in liberal circles for many of the same reasons that Chomsky isn't; he is a true prophet, and much of what he says, while true, goes radically against the grain of the cultural elite. He trucks in truths that are elusive, inconvenient, upsetting.
I will admit to being deeply, even profoundly receptive to Berry's ideas, which is not at all to say that I agree with them entirely, or that my receptiveness isn't colored, even deepened, but a healthy amount of discomfort and skepticism. At times, Berry can seem every bit the fusty, musty ol' coot that he seems to imagine himself as appearing to many of his more, shall we say, urbane readers. He seems to have too high standards for the world, to be atavistic, to harken back to some imagined, irrevocable utopia, a veritable American Eden of community and fellowship. He can seem naive, a bit quaint, even perhaps a little daft (although he is always lucid.) At worst, he can seem irrationally prejudiced: that his longing for his lost, paved-over paradise has curdled into bitterness, and his punctilious good manners and wry stoicism are covering for a dangerous, acid resentment that threatens to boil over.
But I don't really think that's the case. Berry can be cranky, but he always seems to be so with appropriate reserve and self-awareness, and always to temper his crankiness, even his palpable anguish, with hope, humor, and affection for what he cherishes and seeks to preserve in the world. His voice, as lonely as it can seem at times among the literary firmament, is not a voice of despair.
I don't know if I go all the way with him on his rejection of all sex that exists outside the sacrament of marriage. (He isn't a demagogue - he is patently and emphatically not one, since he speaks of real causes and effects, not conjured abstractions of Sin and Purity.) He is right to mark the ways in which sex is degraded and degradation has been made to seem sexy, and how that degradation always extends to people and to the culture at large. But I wonder if it's possible to have a middle ground. Can we allow ourselves to be sexual with those who are other than our spouses? What of sexual play and experimentation - practiced since the dawn of humanity, even in some of the local, communal cultures that Berry is fond of citing as examples of belonging and cohesiveness?
It's liberating to read Berry, because he makes me feel sane. But there is part of me that wonders - how do I live? What do I do now?
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
4-23-13: Film Thoughts
Earlier tonight I finished watching Antonioni's L'Eclisse, which I had started a few nights previous. It wasn't as thrilling an experience as I recall it being the first time around, but there is still a familiar charge to the images, and to Antonioni's way with movement and space. Such beautiful, haunting images. And he stages his scenes like dances, the cuts and the movements of the actors & camera.
And yet there is still something a bit staid and stuffy about Antonioni, even despite his occasionally puckish radicalism. There is a bit of the lofty scold in him, at times, looking down a bit too neatly in disapproval of the empty, soulless modern condition. At other times, he just seems lost.
And yet, overall he is an inspiration and a touchstone. But what came later was even more revelatory, and has reignited and re-focussed my own aesthetic sensibility, vis-a-vis cinema. I began to watch Maurice Pialat's A Nos Amours. While I'm not as swayed by his self-conscious effort to avoid sentimentality, his fluid, lapidary naturalism (aided in great part by his subtle yet precise framing and smart, elliptical cuts) is, like I said, revelatory. A very perceptive and deeply sensitive filmmaker that has offered me a way back to my own key interests and concerns.
And yet there is still something a bit staid and stuffy about Antonioni, even despite his occasionally puckish radicalism. There is a bit of the lofty scold in him, at times, looking down a bit too neatly in disapproval of the empty, soulless modern condition. At other times, he just seems lost.
And yet, overall he is an inspiration and a touchstone. But what came later was even more revelatory, and has reignited and re-focussed my own aesthetic sensibility, vis-a-vis cinema. I began to watch Maurice Pialat's A Nos Amours. While I'm not as swayed by his self-conscious effort to avoid sentimentality, his fluid, lapidary naturalism (aided in great part by his subtle yet precise framing and smart, elliptical cuts) is, like I said, revelatory. A very perceptive and deeply sensitive filmmaker that has offered me a way back to my own key interests and concerns.
Monday, March 4, 2013
3.4.13
Here in Los Angeles. A roller-coaster of an adventure that continues to unfold, or more accurately carom, around hairpin banked turns and sudden drops and risings. Am I making to much of the mania? The mania is in me, is the thing to be clear about. Outside, the world spins utterly quiet. There are perfect moments every moment. People going about their lives, oblivious to all that is afire around them. Everything is oxidizing, and if you just take a moment and look at it, you will see this too.
How to make a film about this sensation?
And yes, it's very scary. I don't doubt that I'll find work, sooner or later. But I am considerably worried that I will find more work that I don't enjoy, that doesn't speak to me as a person or as a being, or an intelligence, or a body, or anything. That I will fall into another compromise with myself, with my desires, my dreams, my sense of right and wrong. I am doing something brave by coming out here. Or cowardly. Who knows? I can't, I won't know, until much later, if ever. We just aren't given to understand these things. If we're very lucky, they say, we get to live long enough to see some kind of pattern emerge, some meaning begin to coalesce, the impression of a leaf on a piece of paper smeared with graphite. An image appears, gradually. What a miracle!
But the world is so big, and I'm so small. There are a million people in the few square miles that surround me, mostly paved, pocked with florets of palm trees. A million lives I'll never know, who will never know me, and why should any of us? Can we feel the awful suffering that exists just down the hall? On the other side of me, someone might be dying. How can God keep track of it all? I know, I know, he's God - right - but does he expand as the world does? Or is being infinite enough?
Early in the night, Nina and I stood on the overlook on Mulholland Drive. The massive expanse of Los Angeles below us, a great and terrifying (and beautiful) electric blanket stretched out forever, its wires and bulbs all frayed and aglow. The sky was murky; even in the dark, you could see that the smog was heavy. There is that end-of-the-earth feeling in LA that just doesn't go away. This, I feel, is an irrefutable claim on urban, even existential grandiosity that trumps even New York. New York, for all of its history, its a tireless booster of itself. It brooks no negativity. It is exhaustingly upbeat. It cannot countenance failure, rejection, or death. It cannot consider endings. But Los Angeles, for all of the shit it gets for being shallow and dumb and ugly, is a place that must face, day after day, its own obsolescense. The way it has just metastasized, spreading its foul wind across paradise, corrupting this hallowed, peaceful, placid land. LA is morbidly obese. It's a bit like Falstaff, jovially laughing at excess and death.
And yet, there is the side of LA that is responsible, that is cleaning up it's act, that is expanding the Metro and putting ever-more-stringent requirements on gas vehicle emissions. Is this quiant, part of the city's own hopeless, quixotic appeal? Or a corrective to the insanity of limitless growth, of blind, irrational expansionism? We'll see I guess, if we live long enough.
How to make a film about this sensation?
And yes, it's very scary. I don't doubt that I'll find work, sooner or later. But I am considerably worried that I will find more work that I don't enjoy, that doesn't speak to me as a person or as a being, or an intelligence, or a body, or anything. That I will fall into another compromise with myself, with my desires, my dreams, my sense of right and wrong. I am doing something brave by coming out here. Or cowardly. Who knows? I can't, I won't know, until much later, if ever. We just aren't given to understand these things. If we're very lucky, they say, we get to live long enough to see some kind of pattern emerge, some meaning begin to coalesce, the impression of a leaf on a piece of paper smeared with graphite. An image appears, gradually. What a miracle!
But the world is so big, and I'm so small. There are a million people in the few square miles that surround me, mostly paved, pocked with florets of palm trees. A million lives I'll never know, who will never know me, and why should any of us? Can we feel the awful suffering that exists just down the hall? On the other side of me, someone might be dying. How can God keep track of it all? I know, I know, he's God - right - but does he expand as the world does? Or is being infinite enough?
Early in the night, Nina and I stood on the overlook on Mulholland Drive. The massive expanse of Los Angeles below us, a great and terrifying (and beautiful) electric blanket stretched out forever, its wires and bulbs all frayed and aglow. The sky was murky; even in the dark, you could see that the smog was heavy. There is that end-of-the-earth feeling in LA that just doesn't go away. This, I feel, is an irrefutable claim on urban, even existential grandiosity that trumps even New York. New York, for all of its history, its a tireless booster of itself. It brooks no negativity. It is exhaustingly upbeat. It cannot countenance failure, rejection, or death. It cannot consider endings. But Los Angeles, for all of the shit it gets for being shallow and dumb and ugly, is a place that must face, day after day, its own obsolescense. The way it has just metastasized, spreading its foul wind across paradise, corrupting this hallowed, peaceful, placid land. LA is morbidly obese. It's a bit like Falstaff, jovially laughing at excess and death.
And yet, there is the side of LA that is responsible, that is cleaning up it's act, that is expanding the Metro and putting ever-more-stringent requirements on gas vehicle emissions. Is this quiant, part of the city's own hopeless, quixotic appeal? Or a corrective to the insanity of limitless growth, of blind, irrational expansionism? We'll see I guess, if we live long enough.
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