A Summer List

Things I Am Fond Of (In No Particular Order)

• People who say "mobile" instead of cellphone
• Pure laughter
• The London Eye
• An honest acting performance (not an oxymoron)
• Listening to a beautiful piece of music for the first time
• Reading a wonderful book for the first time
• Reading a wonderful book for the second time
• Reading a wonderful book for the third time
• etc.
• Beautiful cinematography
• Trees
• Pasta
• Reading poetry aloud
• Long discussions with good friends
• Good friends
• Dressing up to go to the movie theater
• Going to live theater in general
• The beautiful homeland, Texas
• Family
• Praying for friends
• Exploring
• Long movies
• Doctor Who
• People who wave when you let their car in front of yours
• People who are respectful of others in any kind of theater or museum
• Animals
• Things that take a long time
• Education (when done properly)
• Irish accents
• Mountains
• The ocean
• Sharing a favorite movie or book with others
• Going to art museums
• Writing letters
• Learning new things
• The smell of old books
• People who love things that others wont
• Holding warm clothes just out of the dryer

Things I Am Not So Fond Of

• Heights
• 300 meter hurdles
• Airplanes
• Nesquick Chocolate Milk...long story

Perusing Through Post-Modern Poetry

On the advice of Aaron Belz (a professor and poet in California), I have been reading Graham Foust’s A Mouth in California. I must admit, it’s been slow going…

Foust relies heavily on taking the expected and turning it on its head – whether that is a common saying or a song lyric etc. He also plays quite a bit with what the “voice” of the poem is. This is shown through most of his titles - “Poem with Fear, As Half Awakened” gives the obvious rise of the question: “Wait…is the poet with fear or the poem?” And this is just the sort of question Foust wants you to ask. 

After reading many of his poems over and over again (some with more success than others) I finally came upon one that jumped out at me from the start (or at least on the second read).

POEM WITH TELEVISION

But first another picture of the world

                          <> 

I thought I saw you in

the mirror through the window.

You do

remember don't you.

Absence of evidence isn't an answer.

                          <>

I thought you saw me through

the window in the mirror.

You don't

remember do you.

Evidence of absence isn't an answer.

                          <>

What part of

"What part of no

don't you understand?"

don't you understand

on one more American-

money ugly morning,

busy-intersection

skittish in a bed?

                          <>

Greased, it would seem, what I call

what I used to call

belief slides through me.

Is it just me, or am I alone?

While reading this poem you can feel the infinite reflections of the television screen. It's like standing in a hall of mirrors, and forgetting which image is you and which the reflection. But at the end, just with the final line, all the mirrors are stripped away, all the noise of the television, and you stand there, naked, alone.

I'm not quite sure if this connection is a break through or a failing in the poet's form for just this poem, but I might just be beginning to enjoy Foust's style.

Berry, Malick, and the Power of Love

Yesterday I went to see The Tree of Life for the second time. This viewing was a bit less overwhelming (last time I had watched two of Malick's films that day in preparation), but I was still a bit shaken after it. I also saw the film through a bit of a different lens this time, as I had just read Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter and one of his books of poetry, Leavings. 


Both Coulter and Life are stories told through vignettes, which, together, sketch the life of a family. They tell the story of a family that is held together by love, but eventually, when the kids grow old, dissolves into the city of "a better place" as Berry puts it. Both also tell the story of the awesome power of nature - its beauty and power to heal. 


Malick takes the idea of nature in a bit of a different direction than Berry. He juxtaposes the destructive power of nature, its "war with itself, and need to be pleased," with the ever domineering father figure, played to perfection by Brad Pitt. Even with this picture of nature, magnified by countless images of nature combatting itself, there still is a feeling of immense awe at the beauty and harmony of nature. This also comes from one of Malick's trademarks of filmmaking, which is that he rarely if ever shoots any of his films inside, and he likes to use the natural sounds of the environment as much as possible in his scenes. This graceful side of nature is found in the mother's character, played by the wonderful "newcomer"Jessica Chastain. In the words of her character, "Grace doesn't try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries." And later she says in a voice over, as beautiful images of nature are being shown, "Love. Wonder. Unless you love, your life will flash by." So Malick's answer to brutality is found also in nature.


For Berry, in Hannah Coulter, this brutality is found in the trenches of war. He sees war as a thing alien to nature, in which finds only peace and solace. In the words of Hannah, the novel's narrator, "The stream and the woods don't care if you love them. The place doesn't care if you love it. But for your own sake you had better love it. For the sake of all else you love, you had better love it."


While Berry is an outspoken Christian, Malick is not much of an outspoken anything. However, I do think it is somewhat safe to view him as such (it would at least seem so from all of his films). Berry often times (in the two books I have read) takes the side of nature, and points to man as a fallen creature. Malick, on the other hand, is willing to point to nature as having been effected by the fall just as man has (and in seemingly similar ways). Both do also find their answer in nature, though. For both artists it is the grace and love of and from nature that heals all wounds.

A Word Fitly Spoken

Sabbaths, 2007

V.

Those who use the world assuming
their knowledge is sufficient
destroy the world. The forest
is mangled for the sale
of a few sticks, or is bulldozed
into a stream and covered over
with the earth it once stood
upon. The stream turns foul,
killing the creatures that once
lived from it. Industrial humanity,
an alien species, lives by death.
In the clutter of facts, the destroyers
leave behind them one big story,
of the world and the world's end,
that they don't know. They know
names and little stories. But the names
of everything are not everything.
The story of everything, told,
is only a little story. They don't know
the languages of the birds
who pass northward, feeding
through the treetops early
in May, kept alive by knowledge
never to be said in words.
Hang down your head. This
is our hope: Words emerge
from silence, the silence remains.

~ Wendell Berry, Leavings

The Joys of the English Language: A Poem

One cannot drown
the word
"love"
- the sea of its
uses rising over the
overboard term -
and with that same
breath
exalt it as the
very star by which
you sailed.

A Poem

These words are not beautiful,

Like the ones you would expect in a poem.

They do not give new perspective on an old problem,

Or make you see and hear another’s dreams.

These words will not flip off your tongue,

Like that coin at the start of the Super Bowl.

No, these words will do none of these things,

Because this is not a poem.

In the Audience

The day was June 10th, 2011. I had been highly anticipating this moment for months now, and the day had finally come. Today I was going to see The Tree of Life. I was dressed in my nicest dress shirt and pants, the tie my sister bought for me in London, and a new cardigan my brother gave me...I may have over done it, but it was clear I was excited and had prepared for this moment. My brother drove as my sister and I passed the time talking about the movie and other things. We met my cousin and a friend at a restaurant, but as we ate my mind was still in the hour to come. I had wanted to show up at least an hour early to get a seat, but as always happens in life we were a bit late and had to sit a bit off to the side. But nothing could deter me from fully enjoying the film I had waited for so long (or so I thought). Refrigerated Junior Mints in hand (they sell them that way at the River Oaks theater!) I was ready. But nothing could have prepared me to what was to come.

Unfortunately this last sentence is not referring to the mind blowing nature of The Tree of Life (I will post on that later, once I have seen it one or two more times). No, this blog post is an indictment of the incorrigible couple sitting behind me on that fateful evening. From this point on I will refer to them as Mr. and Mrs. Rude.


Mr. and Mrs. Rude promptly took their seats at the beginning of the previews. They talked a bit, but that seems excusable - people are still arriving, and many people like to talk before the film. The Rudes thus far were merely a part of the crowd.

But then, seemingly out of nowhere, the Rudes began to stand out. It all started with the beginning of the film. The opening credits began to come up, and Mrs. Rude, in a normal speaking voice, turned to Mr. Rude to say, "Well I don't know anything about this film, but somebody mentioned it the other day, so I thought we might as well check it out." This was not a good sign. Mr. Rude then responded, in an equally normal speaking voice, "Well I want to see that Woody Allen film [Midnight in Paris was the only other film showing in the theater], but I guess we can see that another time." Things just went from bad to worse. It became more and more clear that Mr. Rude, in an attempt to impress Mrs. Rude, had taken her to an art film that neither of them truly wanted to see, and they decided to share their running commentary with the ten or twelve people within hearing distance of them. In all likelihood these two were not really married, but I will continue to refer to them as such for the sake of clarity. The first image of the film is a quote from Job, in which God asks Job, "Where were you when the heavens and earth were made?" Mrs. Rude's adept opinion on this opening frame was, "Well that's a little heavy." It only got worse from there. At one point in the film there is a shot of jellyfish swimming in an ocean, and Mr. Rude decided to say (with total confidence and completely out of the context of the film), "The boy was reincarnated as a jellyfish!" I was told afterwards that he was very excited about this insight (which, no doubt, greatly impressed his date). Just a moment later, after a shot of prehistoric dinosaurs, there was a shot of a meteor headed toward the earth. About two seconds before it hit, Mr. Rude felt the need to announce, "That's probably the meteor that killed the dinosaurs!" Perhaps this was news to Mrs. Rude, but it was pretty clear that no explanation was needed. Several other insightful comments and commentary followed as the film progressed, but these were the most memorable ones.

After the film ended there was applause and some cheering, but mostly everyone was quiet. I think I can speak for most of the audience when I say that I was exhausted after the experience of watching the film, and couldn't formulate the words to say in response for some time (I am still trying to do that). However, it was very easy for Mr. and Mrs. Rude to respond, as it seems that they were completely unaffected by the film. The second the film was over, Mrs. Rude said, in a normal speaking voice as always, "Well, it was no Woody Allen film, but it was OK I guess." Mr. Rude concurred right away. These were also the people who had laughed at one of the most awe inspiring twenty minutes of a film that I have ever seen.

Fast forward now to June 12th. I am yet again dressed in my nicest clothes, and on my way to the Houston Ballet to see The Taming of the Shrew with my sister. We took our seats, and were excited because we had heard nothing but good things about this ballet. Directly behind us were seated an older couple (probably in their early 60s) and their grandchild. Just as the ballet began, the boy began to talk. Instead of asking him to sit still, or to enjoy the show silently, the grandparents began to respond to him, encouraging him to talk more. This proceeded throughout the entire show, with the boy even singing to the music several times. Now while this may have been cute for the first few minutes, about an hour in the good will began to wear thin. Perhaps I should have said something, but I truly thought that a couple of well placed glares would do the job, and yet, nothing changed.

Now perhaps I am nostalgic for a time that never really existed (I know I sure never lived in it), but I like to thing there was a time on this earth in which audiences respected others, and even respected their own role in the production that they are viewing - a time when the Mr. and Mrs. Rude's of the world could sit still and quiet for 2 hours and 18 minutes, and save their comments for the ride home.

I truly think that today's audience member has lost any idea of what it means to be sharing an experience with strangers that has a dress code higher than the sweat pants they wore when they got up in the morning. We live in a world where people are used to having things their way when they want it. When you combine that with the way in which people consume most of their entertainment (in the privacy of their own home and with the intimacy of family) you come out with an audience member who doesn't know, or want to know what it means to have entertainment be an event rather than the action he performs every day, all day. Entertainment has lost all manor of specialty, and has become commonplace. I believe this to be a symptom of an increasingly self-centered culture, but a damning one all the same. Many people no longer even dress up when they attend a Broadway show, but instead attend in jeans and a polo shirt as if it were an event just a step up from bowling.

I don't write this to feel sorry for myself because my evenings could have been ruined by these audience members. I know that I am beyond blessed to even have the opportunity to attend these shows. I write this because I think that it reveals an ever-growing problem that is too often overlooked. I hope someday to attend a play or a film showing in which the audience is courteous to all, and even reaches the level of responding well to the event. Perhaps this is merely wishing for something that never has been or will be, but a guy can hope, can't he?

On Reading Poetry At Work

As I imbibe the words, the poet's become my own.
I speak with new-found eloquence, yet it feels smooth
As if these words were always mine, not borrowed
Like an old coat on an especially windy day.

I view the world anew. New colors appear,
And sweet sounds nestle under my head.
But then a loud clash begins to sound -
Reminiscent of a symbol at the climax of a symphony.

I am awakened from my daydream by the ringing phone.
"Ah yes, I am at work." I remember in time to answer.
My own words now seem foreign pouring out of my mouth.
"If only you could hear me a moment ago!" I want to scream.

Where is the poetry in a conversation about insurance?
Where are the words that fit, one after the other,
Into the perfect sentence for my sentiments?
They come back to me - moments too late.
Eliot whispers them into my ear, and they grow into a tree.

Seven Days of Malick Part Two

My project is really coming down to the wire now. I have two more Malick films, and less than twenty-four hours to complete them. Earlier today I checked The Thin Red Line off of my list, and I must say, Malick is really impressing me.


In order to fully understand his films, I think you need to know some of the background on Malick himself. In his early years, Malick worked on a farm until he was accepted into Harvard University to study Philosophy. After graduating from Harvard, he received a Rhodes scholarship to attend Oxford University, but eventually dropped out just shy of receiving his degree because of disputes with his Don over his thesis. He also studied film at the American Film Institute (the alma mater of fellow filmmakers Darren Aronofsky and David Lynch). Malick then went on to teach Philosophy to the students at MIT before taking on his first film, Badlands (1973). Five years later, he released Days of Heaven to critical acclaim, an Oscar for best cinematography (a staple of Malick's films), and an award for best director at Cannes. After he had reached heights that most filmmakers only dream of, Malick inextricably disappeared from filmmaking for a full twenty years. This was the first move towards anonymity for the filmmaker in a career marked with next to no interviews, no public appearances (even to his own premiers at festivals such as Cannes), and only one available publicity photo. It was later reported that he had moved to France in order to rediscover his first love: teaching philosophy. After avoiding the spotlight and teaching for two decades, Malick returned in full force with what is widely viewed as his best film: The Thin Red Line (1998).


So, imagine a brilliant professor of philosophy leading a discussion on mortality and eternity. Now, imagine a flawless filmmaker with a flair for beautiful, meticulously well composed images. Then put the two together and you will have a fairly good picture of the experience of watching a Terrence Malick film.


Before I watched The Thin Red Line, I had been told by several people that it (and other of his films) was intolerably slow and "boring." After seeing that the film runs almost three hours I have to say I was a bit nervous. However, even with the first shot I was enthralled with the film, and didn't look back until after the credits rolled. In addition to the excellent writing and directing, the cast is outstanding - and what an impressive cast list! The list of actors includes Nick Nolte, Jim Caviezel, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Adrien Brody, John C. Reilly, Woody Harrelson, Miranda Otto, John Travolta and George Clooney. Now before you start adding up the usual acting fee for even one of those names (even in 1998), I should point out that this film really has no central character, and for most of the characters it might even be a stretch to call it a supporting role (with the exception of Nolte, Caviezel and Penn who carry the film with brilliant performances). Some would argue that this lack of a true central character, and lack of true story line, are a failing on the filmmaker's part, but I would like to argue that yet again Malick has made a tactical choice that is intended to (and I believe does) put the audience into the shoes of the characters of the piece. The film revolves around one conflict in World War II in which US troops battle Japanese troops for land at Guadalcanal. The reason for the ever changing cast of characters is revealed in a line from Sean Penn's character near the end of the film when he remarks, "They just keep coming, over and over. You're in a box. They want you dead, or on the line." In this line Penn's character sums up the monotony of war. He is referring not only to the never ending cycle of opposition, but the never ending line of troops on his own side. When one brother dies by you, another comes along to replace him, and the cycle begins again. This is exactly the feeling that Malick conveys through his clever story telling, and I think clever casting as well by casting actors who are very commanding on screen (and well known actors at that) to play these roles of the never ending line of soldiers on the front line.


As for the argument that the pace of the film is too slow, I will concede that there were certainly times while watching it when Malick (in true philosophical form) would ask a deep searching question through his story, and I would find myself thinking about the question more than the immediate story. However, he intentionally gives you time to ponder these questions (while giving you a beautiful image to look at). Also, they are never fully divorced from, but rather greatly informed by the story being told. Another loosely connected style choice I love that Malick employs is that he always has his poetic, soul searching lines delivered by ordinary people. In Days of Heaven, he gave his greatest lines to a 14 year old girl with a southern accent. In this film, all of the characters are clearly soldiers who have been trained with guns rather than books, and yet this gives their thoughts an honesty that wouldn't come across if spoken by a bespectacled man of letters.


At his heart, Malick is a man who is searching for meaning in his existence, and this passionate search shines through in each of his films. I have two more to watch before going downtown to see Tree of Life tomorrow night, but I am already sad that I soon will not have any more of his films to look forward to. Malick (68), it would seem, is beginning to feel the weight of his mortality. A filmmaker known for taking his time between releasing films is already in post production for his next film, and appears to be lining up a new project soon. While this sounds like good news in that we have more films to look forward to, I only hope he can stay true to his meticulous, patient style, and not rush anything. Though if his history tells us anything about him, we shouldn't have anything to worry about.


Films to go:


Badlands (1973)
The New World (2005)

Seven Days of Malick

In preparation for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, I am following my standard ritual for a new film I am excited about: watch director's filmography in the week before I see it. Tonight, I started with Days of Heaven (1978) - his second film.

The film's cinematography is strikingly beautiful. Set in rural Texas(!), the landscape is almost a palpable character in the piece. What I found most striking about the film is the almost complete lack of exposition. Everything is shown, and very little is talked about (other than the voice over by the wonderful child actor playing Linda). Because of this, the characters emotions and thoughts are at a bit of a distance, but this seems to be the intention of Malick rather than a failing. The film is told through the eyes of a child, and we are made to feel the way that she would have: a bit confused at times, but the emotions are raw and real.

Overall, I think this was a wonderful introduction to Malick's films, and if the others are as good as this one, I will greatly enjoy these next 6 days of Malick films.

Up next: The Thin Red Line (1998 and his follow up to Days of Heaven)

In other news, today was a day filled with Doctor Who and puzzles! My sister bought a fairly daunting puzzle the other day, and my mother and I have been working on it for the past couple of days. Today: success! I may post a picture later. It may not look like a great achievement, but I would like to see you (faceless reader) attempt it! Also, re-reading Lewis's space trilogy. Always a fun set of books. About to re-read Orthodoxy for my book club ('tis our first book).

It is an odd thing having free time after such an eventful semester. I am trying to spend it wisely, but that is not always an easily discernible thing. Thankfully I should start my job on Monday, and I can feel like a contributing member of society again!

That's all for now!