I feel like I owe this blog my apologies. It seems that I've been mistreating it; using it as some vain exercise in finding increasingly fancy ways of saying I feel like shit. There's very little to be gained in doing such a thing, so I should try to reign in those sentiments. My apologies.
A few weeks ago, I read Ryszard Kapuscinski's Shah of Shahs and was deeply enthralled. The book is a journalistic account of the fall of the last Shah of Iran, but it's the humanity and insight in Kapuscinski's writing that gives it its colours. The writer was in Tehran during the events depicted, making for highly personal and focused storytelling. It touches on themes of fear, power relationships, revolution, the disillusionment that often follows revolutions and, most importantly, it examines human nature at a macroscopic level. There's a passage where Kapuscinski examines the precise moment when a revolution is sparked, detailing the intimate changes in composition that occur between the oppressive and the oppressed. I got chills while reading that bit, so I'm going to reproduce a part of it here.
"Now the most important moment, the moment that will determine the fate of the country, the Shah, and the revolution, is the moment when one policeman walks from his post toward one man on the edge of the crowd, raises his voice, and orders the man to go home. The policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd are ordinary, anonymous people, but their meeting has historic significance. They are both adults, they have both lived through certain events, they have both had their individual experiences. The policeman's experience: If I shout at someone and raise my truncheon, he will first go numb with terror and then take to his heels. The experience of the man at the edge of the crowd: At the sight of an approaching policeman I am seized by fear and start running. On the basis of these experiences we can elaborate a scenario: The policeman shouts, the man runs, others take flight, the square empties. But this time everything turns out differently. The policeman shouts, but the man doesn't run. He just stands there, looking at the policeman. It's a cautious look, still tinged with fear, but at the same time tough and insolent. So that's the way it is! The man on the edge of the crowd is looking insolently at uniformed authority. He doesn't budge. He glances around and sees the same look on other faces. Like his, their faces are watchful, still a bit fearful, but already firm and unrelenting. Nobody runs though the policeman has gone on shouting; at last he stops. There is a moment of silence. We don't know whether the policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd already realize what has happened. The man has stopped being afraid- and this is precisely the beginning of the revolution. Here it starts. Until now, whenever these two men approached each other, a third figure instantly intervened between them. That third figure was fear. Fear was the policeman's ally and the man in the crowd's foe. Fear interposed its rules and decided everything. Now the two men find themselves alone, facing each other, and fear has disappeared into thin air. Until now their relationship was charged with emotion, a mixture of aggression, scorn, rage, terror. But now that fear has retreated, this perverse, hateful union has suddenly broken up; something has been extinguished. The two men have now grown mutually indifferent, useless to each other; they can go their own ways. Accordingly, the policeman turns around and begins to walk heavily back toward his post, while the man on the edge of the crowd stands there looking at his vanishing enemy."
(from KAPUSCINSKI, Shah of Shahs)
Writing like this is precisely why I found myself interested in good journalism in the first place and it's also something I very much aspire to.
I believe it's somewhat fitting that I'm posting and talking about someone else's art today, as my own creative output has been seemingly cut down in its tracks. My band City of a Hundred Spires has been one of, if not the, most important thing in my life for the past five years and now I can't help but be a bit disillusioned about it. Things aren't quite going marvelously in the COAHS camp for a variety of reasons, both internal and external, and I find it all rather discouraging. Maybe things will mend themselves but it is indeed crushing to realize that I now feel as though we're back to square one in a few senses. There's ultimately no point in writing about this here as I obviously don't feel up to discussing the minute details of the problems, so I'll just drop it.
I managed to swoop by the cinemas on Friday night to catch Be Kind Rewind. I really can't understand why it's been receiving such negative press. Sure, thematically and in terms of emotional depth, it has nothing in common with Gondry's previous films, but in terms of the director's wide-eyed wonder with the medium of filmmaking, not to mention his truly unique and endearing sense of imagination, Be Kind Rewind is a success. Simply, it's a kids story for adults. You'd have to be truly cold-hearted not to smile or feel warmed up by the movie's end. But then again, who am I to make judgment calls on you. Go see it for yourself.
Also, here are a fews points regarding last week's Oscars ceremony:
- Generally, boring as all hell (how did this expression come into being? Hell should be anything but boring.)
- Daniel Day-Lewis' win was well deserved. This made me happy.
- Those Once kids winning for Best Song was kinda cute.
- Paul Thomas Anderson got robbed. He should've won both Best Picture (There Will Be Blood) and Best Director (for said movie.)
- Jon Stewart was generally funny. Of particular note was his shout out to Dennis Hopper. "Just letting him know where he is." Hilarious.
- Roger Deakins should have won the Best Cinematography Oscar for The Assassination of Jessie James by the Coward Robert Ford. That is the most strikingly beautiful photography I've seen in movies in a long time.
- In a similar vein, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score for the above-mentioned movie should have been nominated for Best Score. Shame.
Wonderful, it's only 10am and I have a beautiful day ahead of me. Let's make the best of it. Cheers.
Music:
- J. Tillman - Cancer & Delirium
- Frodus - ...And We Washed Our Weapons in the Sea
- Blonde Redhead - 23
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