Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: October 31, 2008

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I didn’t make it to all the way to the Falls. Was within half a mile or so before time ran out. Some­one turned out the lights on the great paint­ing in the sky.

I still found some green and blue peace and more. I found a vision and learned how cer­tain cam­eras can not han­dle what comes out of that great paint­ing in the sky. One has to pre­pare for such things and I didn’t. Next time.

How strange that Nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!  —  Emily Dick­in­son, let­ter to Mrs. J.S. Cooper, 1880

I only went out for a walk and finally con­cluded to stay out till sun­down, for going out, I found, was really going in.  —  John Muir, 1913.

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Posted on: October 28, 2008

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The Flight of the Red Balloon

Just watched Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s won­der­ful film, The Flight of the Red Bal­loon. Set in a glow­ing, shad­owy, geo­met­ric and abstract Paris, it stars Juli­ette Binoche as Suzanne, and Simon Iteanu as her son Simon. Simon’s nanny, a young film stu­dent from China, is played by Song Fang. I’m not sure who plays the red flota­tion device.

The film is a homage to Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 clas­sic, The Red Bal­loon, but dou­bles and echoes and adds new lay­ers. The nanny shoots film footage in Paris, incor­po­rat­ing her new charge, Simon, and his hov­er­ing red friend and we see both the inter­nal and the exter­nal. We watch the film within the film and think about what that hov­er­ing bal­loon may be point­ing to. The free­dom, the joy, the…

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Posted on: October 27, 2008

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Vienna Teng. Photo from her Myspace col­lec­tion.

One of my favorite recent dis­cov­er­ies is the music of Vienna Teng. I love the name. She chose it. It fits. A Taiwanese-​​​​American singer/​​songwriter from Cal­i­for­nia, Vienna has a gor­geous, angelic voice that exudes intel­li­gent sweet­ness, but is never saccharine.

She has called her music “Cham­ber Folk”, which rings true. Influ­enced by Clas­si­cal, Jazz, Folk and Pop, Vienna Teng sings on the edge of dis­cov­ery. She flies higher, but doesn’t over­reach. When she is not singing, just talk­ing, she sounds more than down to earth. She seems relaxed about her place on the sur­face of this planet. But music lifts her off that sur­face again and again and again.

From her myspace page:

Influ­ences: My par­ents’ record col­lec­tion: Simon

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