Sunday, December 25, 2011

Kafka on the Shore


Observer by H. Koppdelaney



"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in , and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.


And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.


And once again the storm is over and you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about,"


                                                                        "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami





Saturday, December 17, 2011

Roll The Dice by Charles Bukowski




if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.

you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight 
there is.


The Auteur Theory of Cinema



In 1895, at a fashionable café in Paris, the public screening of the world’s first film took place. This ‘motion picture’, as it was then called, was La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (Exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon). It was made by two brothers, Auguste and Louise Lumiere and consisted of a single scene, 46 seconds long, showing workers exiting a factory after work. Neither the audience nor the Lumiere brothers probably realized the historical importance of the occasion; they were taking part in the birth of the most modern of art forms- the cinema.

The next few decades saw many advances in the technical as well as the aesthetic aspects of cinema. The art of editing made it possible to join images to tell a story. Other processes led to the attachment of sound to the images. Another few years and the ability to color these images was available. With these advancements, the audience’s interest in the medium also steadily increased. The process of film making and viewing became a profitable industry and business.

Hollywood was at the forefront 
of the technical development of 
cinema during the 1920s and 30s
The birth of Hollywood and its subsequent meteoric rise, led to a new way of making films- the ‘Studio System’. In simple terms, studios were companies that hired artists under contracts, put in the money required for the film projects and owned the distribution rights to market these films. Although a necessary outcome of the growing financial demands required to make films, the studio system led to an atmosphere of creative impotency where new ideas and techniques were deemed financially risky and the established norms of ‘what sells’ were adhered to strictly.



Meanwhile, cinema in Europe found it hard to develop a vision of its own and most of the films created were a shadow of their American and British counterparts. In France, the screen writers were considered the main force behind the creative process. Most films were adaptations of famous novels- an art form which was still considered inherently superior to the immediacy of the visual medium. Amidst this atmosphere of the cinema having become an industry in Hollywood and an acquiescent servant to the novel in Europe, a reactionary movement started among the film critics in France. This movement aimed to set forth a new way of looking at films which would lead cinema to be seen as a unique art form that had all the attributes to make it comparable with the other established art genres such as music and literature. This theory would eventually come to be known as The Auteur Theory of Cinema. The central precept of this theory was that the main creative force (or the ‘author’) behind the film should be the director. He should not only have the technical knowledge of the various aspects of film making but more importantly his films should envisage a personal artistic experience.
  Andre Bazin: Founder of Cahiers Du 
Cinema revolutionized film theory and 
criticismin Europe during the 1950s.

One of the earliest essays which led to the initial formalization of this theory was written by the film critic Alexandre Astruc in 1948. In this seminal essay he coined the term camera-stylo or the camera-pen. By this term he meant that the director should use the camera like a writer uses his pen; to develop a language- visual in this case- through which he would be able to express even the most abstract thoughts and feelings. Astruc went as far as to say that the ideas of the time could only be expressed in the language of the cinema and not in the more popular genre of the novel.

In 1951, Astruc’s close friend the film critic Andre Bazin founded the French film magazine Cahiers Du Cinema. Over the next few years the influence of this magazine gradually increased in film circles around the world. The magazine set about to redefine the tenets of film theory and criticism bringing it more in line with Astruc’s ideas of the cinema-pen. Bazin in his influential essay, “The Evolution of the Film Language”, traced the history of cinema to its current state and cited the need to usher in a new era where the film would represent a director's personal vision, rooted in his subjectivity and self-consciousness.

Francois Truffaut: The French film critic 
led the attack on the French cinema’s
 infatuation with ‘writers’
Among the various critics writing for the Cahiers was Francois Truffaut who became the fiercest proponent of the auteur theory in France. Written for Cahiers, Truffaut’s essay “A certain tendency in French cinema”, scathed at the focus of French cinema on the screen writer and the resulting inability of this cinema to rise to the level of other art forms. Truffaut noted that many directors, even those working under the constraining atmosphere of the studio system of Hollywood, were able to leave a personal mark on their films. This could be in the themes or the more formal aspects of film making but their emphasis on certain aspects led to an indelibly personal product. He also observed that most of these directors either completely or partially wrote their own films. For Truffaut this was true cinema and he advocated that all film makers should aspire for this achievement in their work.

The auteur theory initially developed in France but gained its final form across the continent in the works of the American film critic Andrew Sarris. In his 1962 essay, “Notes on the Auteur Theory”, Sarris clearly defined and furthered the theory. He stated that over a group of films a director must exhibit recurrent characteristics of style which serve as a personal signature and the way a film “looks” should have a relationship with how a director “feels”. In his subsequent works Sarris used the theory to form a canon of great film directors and classified them from mere technicians to true auteurs who are able to express their inner lives on the canvas of the screen using a personalized visual language.
     Alfred Hitchcock: The Hollywood film maker
 was considered a true auteur for his 
inimitable cinema

The auteur theory generated great debate over the coming years. Its opponents cited film as a collaborative effort which needed the input of many trained professionals to attain its final shape. They deemed the theory’s elevation of the director above everybody else as disrespectful to the artistic abilities of all the other persons involved in the project. However, most would not deny the central role of the director in coordinating the various aspects of film making and hence possibly having the most bearing on what a film ultimately looks and feels like. The proponents of the auteur theory would describe this role of the director as similar to that of the conductor of an orchestra. He may not be able to play all the instruments but he needs to combine the individual parts to create a harmonious arrangement that is able to express a coherent meaning.

With the gradual decline of the studio system, a new breed of independent film makers, with unique personal takes on various themes and genres, came to the forefront in Hollywood. In Europe various movements such as Italian Neorealism and the French New wave led to an unprecedented evolution of cinema in terms of its artistic possibilities. The auteur theory gradually assimilated in the mainstream discourse on films and became one of the many valid ways in analyzing a film and discussing its merits and demerits. Even today when people refer to Midnight in Paris as the ‘new Woody Allen film’ or wonder when the next ‘Quentin Tarantino film’ will be released, they are actually using the auteur lexicon.

The auteur theory served an important role in the evolution of cinema by releasing it from a period of creative sterility and continues to provide film aficionados with another facet to appreciate and enjoy cinema as an art form.

-ZAIDAN IDREES

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Crunch by Charles Bukowski






too much too little 

too fat
too thin
or nobody. 

laughter or
tears 

haters
lovers 

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks 

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins. 

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe. 

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock 

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love. 

people just are not good to each other
one on one. 

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor. 

we are afraid. 

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners 

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides. 

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone 

untouched
unspoken to 

watering a plant. 

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other. 

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be. 

but sometimes I think about
it. 

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone. 

too much
too little 

too fat
too thin
or nobody 

more haters than lovers. 

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad. 

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance. 

there must be a way. 

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of. 

who put this brain inside of me? 

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance. 

it will not say
"no." 

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Everybody speaks for God. Nobody Speaks for man.



Jacob Jordaens, Prometheus(1640)





In Greek mythology , Prometheus was a Titan who was punished by Zeus for stealing fire from heavens for humans. He stood for human values against the values of God. As a punishment, Zeus tied him to a rock and has his liver eaten by an eagle everyday, only to have it grow back to be eaten again the next day.


Job on the other hand is a biblical figure  who was tested by God in his bet with the Devil. The test was how good he is in the face of an ordeal. He sacrificed his human values in submission which is the hallmark of all monotheistic religions.


In the audio above (it takes few seconds for audio to start), Joseph campbell compares humanistic values of Greeks vs sacrificing human values for God as shown in the Jobs story. 


Now the big question is , if the values one attribute to his God collide with the fundamental human values which values should  he/she honor? God or Human? The answer to this question will be an answer to what kind of human being the person is.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

Fabian Perez



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.



I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference


Sunday, July 10, 2011

What I believe in - by Neil Gaiman



Levi van Veluw, Landscape, 2008


"I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. 

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. 

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. 

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. 

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. 

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. 

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. 

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. 

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. 

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. 

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it." 


                                                                                                                        Neil Gaiman - " American Gods"
                                                                                                     

Friday, July 8, 2011

Art I like - Random


“ I have heard the voice of the universe. And it is gentle. And it is kind. And it is like a mother speaking. Or it is like the fall of snow. Or it is like children laughing and playing. And what it says is, do not be afraid of the universe” 
Knud Rassmussin’s (Danish Explorer) conversation with a medicine man

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Art I like - Alex Cherry

"Aenema"

"When Girls telephone Boys"

"Let Down"

"Remorse is for the Dead"

http://www.ofsoundandvision.com/#false







Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Joseph Campbell - On Following Your Bliss





“ There is two kinds of mythology.There is what is called the right hand path- The mythology of the village compound. It keeps you fixed in the context of your world. You grow up here. You live as expected. You live a dignified respectful ,and in a rich society ,a richly developed life.

On the other hand you may flip out. You may have feelings of incongruity. “This doesn’t go with me” and then you move out. You move out in to the realm of danger. This is known as the left hand path. You follow the way of your own bliss. And you are in a realm for which there are no rules and since your bliss is not mine, you don’t know where are you going. Here you will live a life of danger, creativity ; perhaps not a respected life but certainly an interesting one. And these are two choices. And there is mythology for both.

There is the right hand mythology which is local to each culture. And then there is what I would  called the general mythology of the hero journey; the knight sea journey; the hero quest,where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before. Then there is fulfillment in time and space of his own potentialities which are peculiar to himself”





Saturday, May 21, 2011

Fabian Perez - A culture that is gone!


"Nocturnal surprise"







Welcome to Fabian Perez’s world - The Argentinian artist’s work is  is full of shadows, booze, bars, smoke, Tango , bullfighting and women - not bad at all !
 In our sad world  of grown up kids playing playstation 3 in their 50’s and whining and bitching about everything, his paintings represents a generation of men that no longer exists. The unapologetic generation. Men with swagger. The ones who used to say “Do what you want and die like a man!” The ones who used to have duels for honor. The ones who were strong but not rude, kind but not weak, bold but not bully, humble but not timid, and proud but not arrogant. Unfortunately, that generation is dead and along with it the true masculinity is gone. It is replaced by macho bravado. Getting drunk, acting stupid, picking fights, being obnoxious and making a lot of noise - that is what masculinity is reduced to ! 

May be I am just dreaming and that culture never existed in the first place. But I still  think that masculinity is suffering from a crisis of confidence. Men in this day and age are lost and if humanity is to be renewed, masculinity needs a makeover and healing.


"Noches de buenos aires II"



"Noches de buenos aires II"



"Selling Pleasures"



"Enjoying the pleasures of the night"






"Moraito"



"Buenos Aires II"


"La Veronica"


"Man Lighting a Cigarette"


"Fabian and Monica II"

"Proud to be a Man II"



"Dream in a Dream"


"Tango"



http://fabianperez.com/



Thanks to Zaidan for introducing me to this wonderful artist.


Art I like - Paige Bradley

"Art is not entertainment. Art is not luxury goods. Art is culture. It is you and I."  Paige Bradley




"Expansion" 
"
From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a
container already built for us to fit inside: A social security number, a gender,
 a race, a profession or an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the
container we are in, rather than what we are inside. Would we
recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies?
Would we still be able to exist if we were authentically 'un-contained'?
Paige Bradley







"Evolution" 
As we contemplate the timeline of our life, we have to ask if
we are we truly evolving into a more spiritual and free
human being, or are we even more encumbered by
attachments to our desires. Aging does not necessarily give
me the wisdom to evolve into a better human being. All I
know is that I must stretch this portal open and see the
truth for myself. 
Paige Bradley 


"Freedom Bound"








   http://paigebradley.com/index.html