iveseenthings

the recent weeks - maybe life, propelled by an encounter with a boy trying to be a man who only had the emotional abilities of a four year old which reminded me of many of the men who had been the only men I'd known as a four year old; maybe the encounter of my life of words with words of life; maybe this voice, reemerging from th depths again - has made me want to speak...



these are sparks that have caught...



What can I write about

to set my heart afire

as the wood cut and burning

in the stone place on my left.

Here are no demons, only friends.

Does the poem proceed out of pain

does the heart have to beat at a super

and unnatural speed for the word

to be produced, like the gold

of alchemy,

transmuted.



(john wieners 27)



And we contain the souls of our ancestors.

That the soul is transmitted to us at birth. And that it is

this chart that we follow for life, is our life, what deter­

mines what we will be and are. And I am interested only in

unraveling this, showing the snags and syndromes, so that

other men may have some ease in doing theirs.

Or at least

Work out thy salvation with diligence.





Tonight they're dancing

the dance of death

all over America

ballerinas in their

little spike shoes

and boys with painted eyes

Hold that tiger

have blackjacks for hands.

How can we pass there.



(john wieners from a biog article)



INTERVIEWER



Do you have other requirements for writing?



HOUELLEBECQ



Flaubert said you had to have a permanent erection. I haven’t found that to be the case. I need to take a walk now and then. Otherwise, in terms of dietary requirements, coffee works, it’s true. It takes you through all the different stages of consciousness. You start out semicomatose. You write. You drink more coffee and your lucidity increases, and it’s in that in-between period, which can last for hours, that something interesting happens.



(an interview with Houellebecq in The Paris Review)



I have poetry, two musicals, articles for work, and my self to write...

outside, the first of the summer storms is rattling

finally i've caught this doco and i'm perplexed (why would anyone wear tie dye on their day of prison - even if it was the 80s) and intrigued. not so much by the innocence or otherwise of jesse or his father (and perhaps it should be the innocence or otherwise of the cops), but rather by the 'revelation' of the father's brother's sexuality in the epilogue...

i'm obviously not the first to comment on this - the director cops it first off in an online interview... his answer is what his answer is...

that sexuality 'revealed' continues to be related to act and being, not to mention doing, is no surprise... we shouldn't be ignorant that it continues to have immense legal implications...

i suspect there's been a lot of work written on the friedman's movie in terms of capturing, the documentations... i wonder how much of it remains relevant or applicable in a world where we voluntarily document ourselves... and participate in... well, can it be voyeurism if the whole world knows you're watching?

most of this movie does not take place in a bus stop

ms monroe has anaemia... she is whiter than the woman in la strada

the sexism was bearable, the "my you have big hands" innuendo was tolerable, ms monroe's accent was otherwise

beautiful to see the leading man getting the crap bashed out of him

best line:

monroe: "I almost married a cousin of mine when I was 14, but Pappy wouldn't have it!"
supporting actress: why, I never heard of anyone getting married that young

director joshua logan gets fantastic close ups of eyes and face on wide screen towards the end of the film, pre-empting sergio leone by almost ten years

perhaps the closest thing to a superb contemporary french horror movie with none of the genre conventions of horror

rather it is to be found in the talk of the boyfriend who calls unlubed buttsex a declaration of love; in the way the older sister hand feeds the younger sister; in the phallic symbolism of the food the younger sister chows down on constantly and the detached pathetic parents full of their own egos...

the ending, when it comes, is apt... one feels... at least someone has been honest

DANEY: Let's say that, perhaps, someone like Truffaut was more into it -- I'm talking about a whole generation, I'm talking about the "Cahiers du cinéma" group at that time. Of course you took it up later than the others, you theorized it more than the others and later, perhaps, it made you take longer to reach maturity -- and perhaps you're the nearest thing to a historian out of "the lot," -- but that's another matter. -- It hadn't happened before, for reasons of war, of lack of opportunity to see films, or of the state of criticism, and then again it never really happened afterwards, for the utterly stupid reason that all of a sudden there were too many films to see or take in. From this sort of heritage-grown-monstrous that was the history of the cinema. Because ever since the Sixties, we have not just seen films from the big producing countries, but films from all over the world. Today, clearly, for someone 20 or 25 years old, it isn't possible, short of spending 10 or 15 years in cinematheques, not just to take in what he hasn't seen, but also to acquire an axis around which to assemble his own history, to know that he comes "after," after you among others and that he ought to define himself in relation TO that. -- And, therefore, something that used to appear simply, a brilliant anecdote in the history of French cinema, with lots of polemic and lots of panache, now appears, with hindsight, thirty years later, as the only opportunity to make history. It was given to you, and perhaps to people from the half-generation just after. I would say it holds good up to Wenders.

best moment - bruce la bruce as bruce sucking cock, nose deep in weightlifters pubes, whilst soundtrack is late 70s jazz muzak version of jimmy webb's wichita linesman