Alejandro Jodorowsky: El Topo, Part 1

Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970) is the strangest movie I've ever seen. Take the archetypal Sergio Leone Western, blend with Fellini, Buñuel, and Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers (1963), ingest some kind of metaphorical hallucinogen, pore over Surrealist art, and presto, that is El Topo in a single mushroom cartridge.

El Topo builds a garish shimmering bridge between Sergio Leone's Wild West and the Road Warrior world of Mad Max that would begin, in the olive of time, in 1979. It is primal myth, dueling it out with the 20th century on the astral plane. Leone's world looks positively comforting by comparison.

Today's Rune: Signals.

Remembrance Day 2011

The last of the Great War veterans are passing from direct to historical memory. Little children who survived and can still remember the catastrophe are a hundred years old or more. This post is for all of them, and for us now.

The poet Guillaume Apollinaire fought in the 1914-1918 war, was wounded and survived his wounds -- only to die in the Great Influenza Pandemic, two days before Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, a date now memorialized as Remembrance Day, and as Veteran's Day.    

"Ombre" by Guillaume Apollinaire (1916)

Vous voilà de nouveau près de moi
Souvenirs de mes compagnons morts à la guerre
L'olive du temps
Souvenirs qui n'en faites plus qu'un
Comme cent fourrures ne font qu'un manteau
Comme ces milliers de blessures ne font qu'un article de journal
Apparence impalpable et sombre qui avez pris
La forme changeante de mon ombre
Un Indien à l'affût pendant l'éternité
Ombre vous rampez près de moi
Mais vous ne m'entendez plus
Vous ne connaîtrez plus les poèmes divins que je chante
Tandis que moi je vous entends je vous vois encore
Destinées
Ombre multiple que le soleil vous garde
Vous qui m'aimez assez pour ne jamais me quitter
Et qui dansez au soleil sans faire de poussière
Ombre encre du soleil
Ecriture de ma lumière
Caisson de regrets
Un dieu qui s'humilie

Here's a rough and dirty transliteration:

You're here again about my memories
Of my companions, war dead 
Olive of time
Memories that make one more
As one hundred furs make a great coat
As thousands of injuries make one story in a newspaper
Intangible and dark apparitions who have
Taken the changing form of my shadow
An Indian lookout from eternity's shadow
You feel me but you do you hear me anymore?
You know more divine poems that I sing
While I hear you, I still see you
For multiple shadows that the Sun keeps
You that may love enough to never leave me
And dance in the Sun
Without dust, shadow
Shaded ink of the Sun 
Writing of my light
Caisson of regrets
A god that humiliates

Today's Rune: Strength.

Fellow Travelers: The Photographers

Kellie Jones, Lorna Simpson (Phaidon Contemporary Artists, 2002).

Patricia Bosworth, Diane Arbus: A Biography (2005).

Susan Goldman Rubin, Margaret Bourke White: Her Pictures Were Her Life (1999).

Anthony Penrose, The Lives of Lee Miller (1988).

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works, 1975-1977. Catalogue Raisonné (2012). Das Frühwerk.

Five über-cool photographers. I dig them all! 

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Emotion, Leashed and Unleashed

In Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003; originally published as Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, 2001), the author posits that, because they apparently have no emotions, Mr. Spock and the Vulcans would not have been able to survive for very long. There's a backstory, though, and the Vulcans of Star Trek do have emotions -- they just suppress them like those on-duty guards in full dress uniform marching around Buckingham Palace in London, rarely cracking a smile. Culturally, Vulcans tend to keep their emotions under wrap, even to themselves when possible, as if they're always on self guard duty. But sometimes it's not possible, such as during the seven-year "Pan-farr" mating cycle, going "deep in the Plak-tau." The Vulcans present a good, albeit fictional, case study of ritualized cultural response in keeping instinctive emotions from running amok most of the time.

"Amok Time" (1967) is the main episode of Star Trek referenced here. Thanks to Charles Gramlich for inspiring today's post header, derived from a comment he made on yesterday's: "Emotion is a hard dog to control once it gets hold of the leash."         










As for the evolution of the character of Mr. Spock, in the original pilot (The Cage, 1965), he is an excitable Martian, not an emotionally restrained Vulcan!

Interesting twist, considering how things turned out. 

Before Spock's reconception as a Vulcan, the character on Star Trek who displayed no emotional affect was Number One (shown here). A lot of science fiction stories play around with this idea, with characters ranging from gynoids to Invaders to Stepford Wives. 

Today's Rune: Strength.   

This Melody Haunts My Reverie

A little bit more from Dylan Evans' Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003; originally published as Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, 2001). Evans' work argues that feelings, emotions, moods and moral sentiment are necessary and desirable in social settings more often than not.

As far as moral sentiments go, Evans' approach seems exactly the opposite of someone like Herman Cain, one of several wealthy and outspoken Republican candidates spinning out of control in the US presidential election cycle of 2011-2012. Last month, Cain was widely quoted as saying this in response to Occupy Wall Street, the gathering protest movement that questions, among other things, growing economic disparities in the USA: “Don’t be jealous, don’t be envious . . . I don’t have much patience for someone who does not want to achieve their American dream the old-fashioned way.”

Evans has a response apparently ready-made for Cain's recent quips, even though Evans' words were first published a decade ago:

"A classic example of . . . perverse reasoning was provided by a Conservative politican a few years ago in England. In an attempt to discredit the Opposition, which aimed at redistributing wealth more equitably maong all levels of society, he accused his opponents of preaching the 'politics of envy.'" But "[i]n fact, it [envy] may prove to be crucial for our sense of justice and for motivating us to build a fairer society . . ." Furthermore, "envy is a part of human nature" and we had better "decide how we express it; either through policies of wealth distribution, or through violence and theft. Did the Conservative politican think the latter was preferable?" (Evans, page 45).  

On the one hand, murderous mobs and fascist groups are fueled by nasty "regressive" emotion; on the other, reform impulses for civil rights and social justice are fueled by "progressive" moral sentiment. What changes historically (usually through conflict) all depends on which emotions and which sentiments prevail, occasionally refined by rational thinking. Let's remember from Jean-Luc Godard's Made in USA (1966): "There's no changing them! The Right because it's so cruel and brainless, the Left because it's sentimental."  And there we have perhaps the key difference between today's avatars of "Right" and "Left."

Today's Rune: Warrior.

Mood, Emotion and Choice

The strong link between memory and emotion evoked in earlier posts led me to Dylan Evans' Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), a mad dash through evolution and culture, observing various clues and passing furry fellow creatures, computers and robots along the way. 

If emotion "colors" memory, actual colors radiate influence on emotions, moods and choices. As does food intake -- the full range, from coffee and alcohol to spices, chocolate, sugar, hallucinogens and everything in between.

Among humans, moods and emotions transcend specific cultures, groups and societies, though culture may inform how we respond to them, or display/hide them.

Basic emotions include joy, distress, anger, fear, surprise and disgust (Evans, page 5) and later evolutionary additions: love, guilt, shame, pride, embarrassment, envy and jealousy (Ditto, page 21). Evans contends with each, considering why they may have developed. 

From the strength of his examples and from my own observations, I concur with nearly all of Evans' take on things. Some things remain open-ended, though, persisting as mysteries.

One conclusion is this: In our existential decision-making, our choosing what to do next, it's clear that emotional calibration is as key a component as logical calculation. The main thing is to be aware of emotional state, mood, and context -- if there's time to be aware. In some situations, snap decisions must be made: fight or flight in the blink of an eye, or by "instinct."

A typical writing prompt: Write about a time when you found yourself in a profoundly altered mood or emotional state. How did it feel?

Today's Rune: Partnership.         

The Velvet Underground: Under Review

This popcorn and cotton candy documentary doesn't do much, but it's still a fun little romp through the Velvet Underground's discography. Key players John Cale and Lou Reed do not appear for interviews; these are left to others like drummer Mo Tucker and later addition Doug Yule.

Like time spent with an old friend, it's worth watching The Velvet Underground: Under Review (2006) if you dig the Velvets. Hard to determine who directed this, part of a British series.

Some of the great Velvet Underground tracks:

I'm Waiting for the Man
Femme Fatale
Venus in Furs
All Tomorrow's Parties
Heroin
There She Goes Again
I'll Be Your Mirror
White Light/White Heat
Sister Ray
What Goes On
Some Kinda Love
Beginning to See the Light
That's the Story of My Life
Sweet Jane
Rock & Roll

What am I missing here? John Cale gave the band its initially dark, super-cool sound, and Lou Reed's lyrics tend to stick in the memory. I often think of Reed phrasing. Two lines in particular:

I could sleep for a thousand years (Venus in Furs)

and

Aren't you glad you're married?  (Kill Your Sons)



Today's Rune: Wholeness.