"Like the circles that you find
in the windmills of your mind"
See also, in this journal, "An Awfully Big Adventure."
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Saturday August 30, 2008
Poetry and Politics* —
Movie-Teller
"… maybe it was McCain's role as 'movie-teller' that he cherishes most– the man who used to narrate the plots of films to his fellow PoWs in the compound. 'I must have told a hundred movies,' says McCain. 'Of course I don't know a hundred movies– I made them up.'"
— The Guardian, quoted here on McCain's birthday, August 29, 2006. (McCain's birthday nine years earlier was the date of Judgment Day in "Terminator 2.")
A story from McCain's
birthday this year:
"Hail Sarah!"
— Newsweek
"At the still point,
there the dance is."
— Four Quartets
"… the Four Quartets themselves appear, in all their complexity, as the poetry of simple civic virtue– the poetry of a poet trying to read the writing of the law that has become all but illegible. This, you may say, has nothing to do with poetry. On the contrary, it is one of the few truly hopeful signs that this civic virtue could once more be realized poetically."
— Erich Heller, quoted here
on August 25, 2008
(Feast of St. Louis)
|
Related material:
St. Sarah's Day,
See also the remarks of St. Augustine and others on time (August 28 entry) and, from May 24, a song hook thanks to Cyndi Lauper: |
* Also known as smoke and mirrors.
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Saturday, October 23, 2021
Deep Six
From a Thursday morning, Oct. 21, Instagram post —
Related cinematic meditation —
The above scene is from Babylon A.D. (August 2008).
Related question from an early edition of Trivial Pursuit —
"Does Uranus have an aurora?"
Related drama for Brechtians — Branded , The Zero Theorem ,
and, from my own efforts of August 2008 . . .
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Wednesday, June 23, 2021
Garden Party
From the June 22 Architectural Digest video of
Cara Delevingne's home —
"I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends:
A chance to share old memories and play our songs again.
When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name…
No one recognized me, I didn't look the same."
From a June 21 Instagram story —
From Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden —
She slipped out of bed and stood straight with her long brown legs
and her beautiful body tanned evenly from the far beach where they
swam without suits. She held her shoulders back and her chin up
and she shook her head so her heavy tawny hair slapped around
her cheeks and then bowed forward so it all fell forward and covered
her face. She pulled the striped shirt over her head and then shook
her hair back and then sat in the chair in front of the mirror on the
dresser and brushed it back looking at it critically. It fell to the top of
her shoulders. She shook her head at the mirror. Then she pulled on
her slacks and belted them and put on her faded blue rope-soled shoes.
"I have to ride up to Aigues Mortes," she said.
"Good," he said. "I'll come too."
"No. I have to go alone. It's about the surprise."
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Tuesday, April 5, 2011
ART WARS continued
Escape from Kitsch Mountain
"Why you gotta be so mean?" — Taylor Swift (see last night)
This song includes, as part of the hook, the recurring phrase
"Someday I'll be livin' in a big ol' city."
From a big ol' city—
Rituals
A Return to Kitsch Mountain
By AUSTIN CONSIDINE
Published in The New York Times on January 16, 2009
As my girlfriend, Larissa, and I approached Gatlinburg, Tenn., this fall, I did my best to prepare her. She hadn’t been to Gatlinburg before, but I had. I understood the town’s complicated reputation both as a gateway to some of the most beautiful country in the United States— the Great Smoky Mountains National Park— and as a flamboyant capital of kitsch….
… It turned out that by 8 or 9 p.m., it was way too late to find a dinner show. The next morning, we had the opposite problem. By the time we woke up and wandered into Gatlinburg, it was noon. All the pancake houses were closed, and I was desolate. I had been thinking about those pancakes since the night before. So we did a little more sightseeing on foot.
Looking at Gatlinburg’s strip with adult eyes, I wondered how much self-awareness was at work there. It would be easy for a city slicker to assume this place misses its own punch lines. In truth, I decided, it merely embraces that special brand of conscious kitsch that forms its own American kind of authenticity. With all its absurdities, Gatlinburg knows what it is and proclaims it loudly, from one flashing signboard to the next….
From Gatlinburg—
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
Thursday August 28, 2008
Associations
for the writer
known as UD
for the writer
known as UD
|
"Have liberty not as the air within a grave Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh, my native, In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate."
— Wallace Stevens, |
A related visual
association of ideas —
("The association is the idea"
— Ian Lee, The Third Word War)
|
by John Braheny
"Hook" is the term you'll hear most often in the business and craft of commercial songwriting. (Well, maybe not as much as "Sorry, we can't use your song," but it's possible that the more you hear about hooks now, the less you'll hear "we can't use it" later.) |
See also UD's recent
A Must-Read and In My Day*
as well as the five
Log24 entries ending
Sept. 20, 2002.
More seriously:
The date of The New Yorker issue quoted above is also the anniversary of the birth of Wallace Stevens and the date of death of mathematician Paul R. Halmos.
Stevens's "space of horizons" may, if one likes, be interpreted as a reference to projective geometry. Despite the bleak physicist's view of mathematics quoted above, this discipline is– thanks to Blaise Pascal— not totally lacking in literary and spiritual associations.
* Hey Hey
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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Tuesday February 13, 2007
Modern Times
vs. City Lights
vs. City Lights
"Modern Times, his first album since Love and Theft, debuted at No. 1
on the US pop charts last September. At 65, Dylan became the oldest
living person to achieve this feat." –New Zealand Herald, Feb. 12
From an entry of
October 29, 2004:
|
"Each epoch has its singer."
"Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it…."
"You said you'd never compromise |
In today's meditation for
the Church of Peter Gabriel,
Dennis Overbye plays
the role of Jack Horner.
(See Overbye on Sagan in today's
New York Times, Sagan on Pi,
and Pi Day at Harvard.)
For more on Jack Horner, see
The Rise and Fall
of Popular Music,
by Donald Clarke,
Chapter One.
For two contrasting approaches
to popular music, see two artists
whose birthdays are today:
In other Grammy news–
At the end of Sunday's awards,
"Scarlett Johansson and Don Henley
put themselves in the pole position
to star in a remake of 'Adam's Rib'
with the following exchange:
Henley: So you're recording
your first album?
Johansson: Yeah. Do you
have any advice for me?
Henley: No."
"Her wall is filled with pictures,
she gets 'em one by one…."
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Saturday, September 23, 2006
Saturday September 23, 2006
Tequila!
for Kylie
"Time disappears
with tequila.
It goes elastic,
then vanishes."
From today's AP
"Obituaries in the News"–
|
Danny Flores HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (AP) — Danny Flores, who played the saxophone and shouted the word ''tequila!'' in the 1950s hit song ''Tequila!'', died Tuesday [Sept. 19, 2006]. He was 77. Flores, who lived in Westminster, died at Huntington Beach Hospital, said hospital spokeswoman Kathleen Curran. He died of complications from pneumonia, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported. The man sometimes called the ''godfather of Latin rock'' was born in Santa Paula but grew up in Long Beach. By age 5, he was playing guitar in church and at 14 he was a member of a trio that performed Mexican music. In 1957, Flores was in a group that recorded some work with rockabilly singer Dave Burgess. One of the songs was based on a nameless riff Flores had written. He played the ''dirty'' saxophone part and repeatedly growled the single-word lyric: ''Tequila!'' ''Tequila!'' went to No. 1 on the Billboard chart and won a Grammy in 1959 for best rhythm and blues performance. Flores continued to play it for the next 40 years. |
Related material:
"Echoes (Aug. 11)" —
— and
Two-Bar Hook
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Friday, December 27, 2002
Friday December 27, 2002
Another Opening of Another Show
"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
— Peter Pan
|
|
On this date in 1904, "Peter Pan" opened to great applause at the Duke of York's theatre in London. A cinematic sequel, "An Awfully Big Adventure," is illustrated at left and below. I have always felt this film's soundtrack should include the classic Mac Davis song "Girl, you're a hot-blooded woman-child…." |
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