This fucking guy.
Two scenes from Haneke’s Time of the Wolf.
The whole burial scene (from about 2.49) is shot from the waist down, so that viewing it we can’t see the faces of the actors. We see no weeping, no contorted mouths. Conventional ideas of grief are occluded, held outside of the frame. We don’t see the emotional repercussional effects of death that have become cliche, expected, in film.
Instead of that trite violence we see the rituals of the limbs. The tying of the cross and the moving of soil with hands; legs standing above the grave, bearing witness. I think that these learned movements, these simple but elaborate physical actions, might be a more honest way of dealing with grief.
"But the secret of intellectual excellence is the spirit of criticism ; it is intellectual independence. And this leads to difficulties which must prove insurmountable for any kind of authoritarianism. The authoritarian will in general select those who obey, who believe, who respond to his influence. But in doing so, he is bound to select mediocrities. For he excludes those who revolt, who doubt, who dare to resist his influence. Never can an authority admit that the intellectually courageous, i.e. those who dare to defy his authority, may be the most valuable type. Of course, the authorities will always remain convinced of their ability to detect initiative. But what they mean by this is only a quick grasp of their intentions, and they will remain for ever incapable of seeing the difference."
Karl Popper
selfies with crafties (cheers internet)
Get posi!
gfcb:
I don’t really understand why people glorify past decades so much. I perhaps was guilty of this in my early teens. But, really, there is a lot of cool stuff going on in our own time - intellectually, musically, artistically, it’s actually not “crap” and pointless and past referencial. The apathetic attitude of some of my peers seems to be more a disinterest and lack of investigation into things that are both modern and good. For reals.
People are unhappy with where they find themselves (chch, durrhhh). I think it’s tempting to re-imagine or try to relive previous countercultures as a way of coping, as a consolation, instead of actually confronting that unhappiness and trying to transform it into something else (if not happiness then at least some sort of contentment). It’s hard because NZ is so isolated that it’s difficult to keep up with contemporary subcultural/countercultural currents in the states and europe.
It’s worth it, though, because they offer reference points, maybe ways to respond to or work through our own unhappinesses here. What’s going on overseas now really is more relevant and useful than the image of the 60s or the 80s or getting a mohawk or whatever. They offer me ways of not just coping with the world as it is but of re-framing it and understanding it along a different set of lines.
I’ve been thinking heaps about how independent pop punk music at the moment for example is potentially quite dangerous, subversive even, in this way. My generation grew up listening to blink 182 etc, songs about dumb girls and wanking jokes, but now we’ve moved on. Maybe we’re getting through higher education and we’ve realised that the world isn’t what we were promised. We work hard, we keep busy, we make sacrifices, we’re ambitious, and yet we’re not rewarded. We’re let down, unhappy. A lot of us are afraid of having lives like those of our parents, but how to go about something different? On the brink of adulthood, we’re nostalgic for our childhood.
The songs that i listen to now, that give me hope and make me happy at this juncture, use the musical conventions i grew accustomed to while i was still a child really, growing up, to articulate a sense of identity, desires, and shared values that are markedly different from those of the ‘grown up’ mainstream. First among those to me are the values of real friendship and love (not the image of it, that of romantic love/sex, so habitually provided by pop music) and the value of slowing down and thinking about things, the value of idleness. When i say that i don’t want to grow up i think i mean something quite profound. I mean that i don’t want to take part in the world as it is. Fuck that, i resist that.
I’m not gonna be happy with a coping mechanism. I don’t want to go to work all day then console myself by listening to punk music or watching a new wave film when i get home in the evening and the sun’s gone down. I want to stay keyed in to what’s happening. I want to learn a language to articulate our unhappinesses, and then i want to do something about it.
(Source: kropotkidd)
This is a poem about arrival, the end of a voyage, rest. It was pinned to my wall for the last 6 months.
“Ashamed / So dirty / Withered and stiffened / Poor”
(Source: gulpedsnow)
This is the first part of a really nice talk about love as a political concept. Unfortunately i don’t think Michael Hardt has written about love in any of his well known books, but i really enjoy his way of talking here. You really get the sense that he’s puzzling things over for himself, and that he feels all of these things quite keenly in his own personal life.
“…i find myself continually stick in a divide or sort of no man’s land between spontaneity and dictatorship, and it seems to me that love can function in that gap”
Ursula Le Guin’s blogs about her new cat are the best.
Live in the earth again / Road maps as eyes i am alive and leaving
From Pasolini’s Medea.
This is almost perfect for me. I’m sure there’s something quite profound about a show that consists mainly of impressions and impersonations of lines from other famous shows and movies. It’s a wandering, conversational rumination on life done via their bitterly whimsical karaoke.
My favourite part is near the start of each episode when Coogan explains his intended route to Bryden, listing all of the highways that they’ll travel, and then there is a montage showing their range rover traversing the moors. i want to edit all of those sequences together.
"
Your ambivalence and torment are a part of it. Don’t you see? The savage wounding of history and the bright summer night full of fireworks, these two at war in your skull: That’s American too. That’s as American as Mitt Romney eating a corn dog.
And you know what else is American? The right of a writer like me to say such things and not even know exactly what I’m saying. Progress not perfection, my friend. We walk around with longing in our hearts and we express the longing before we work it all out. That’s the American way, too.
"http://www.salon.com/2011/10/19/my_dream_job_is_corporate_lawyer_am_i_nuts/
