Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: July 19, 2010

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Statue of Charles Chaplin. Waterville, Ireland. Photo by Alan Hall

Just fin­ished watch­ing “The Circus,” Chaplin’s won­der­ful film from 1928. Silence and black and white. Laughter with­out laugh tracks, but with Chaplin’s own score car­ry­ing us from scene to scene. Pathos comes from The Tramp. He makes us laugh and it’s deep, and mean­ing­ful, and sad. The movie made me think of my trip to Ireland in 2003, where I saw the statue above, and it seemed so incon­gru­ous there, near the strand, not in Alaska, or in some dark­ened woods with the hobo’s song in the air.  But then I remem­bered the Irish have always mixed deep sor­row and belly laughs, and every­thing in between. Perhaps every­one does at times. Sadness is too sad alone.

Felino Soriano doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily write humor­ous poems, and the poems below don’t strike me as being par­tic­u­lar sad. But they do hold con­tra­dic­tions within them that work and ele­vate each other.…

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Posted on: July 17, 2010

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Approbations 565

—after Trygve Seim’s Between

Between stare                          stare

blank

opac­ity

resem­bles

much

of the broken

sem­blances

cul­ture con­tains, intan­gi­ble mores

focused

finite and inex­plic­a­bly distant

from con­sis­tent virtues of

ital­i­cized

beau monde.

 

 

Approbations 566

—after Marc Johnson’s Since you Asked

 

 

 

My silence recalls bland-​​​​tongue

archi­tec­ture,

achro­matic

logic con­tain­ing

prayer­ful condi­ments, muti­lated con­nec­tion.  Your asking

con­tains metaphoric trails, my stand­ing still

of an oaks’ neigh­bor­hood of size, style—

 

rean­a­lyzes your truth of com­mit­ted understanding.

The ideal

would be con­ver­sa­tion occurrence

coun­ter­ing the silence

my sound releases

bro­ken

con­fused mean­ing of my mind’s innate sepulture.

 

 

Approbations 567

—after Bobo Stenson’s Olivia…

 

 

 

Wears inter­wo­ven light like shadows

climb­ing con­tex­tual walls of needed

iso­la­tion.  Her

alone

retrieves an image of pale, bleached stone

engrained into sand’s warmed appre­ci­a­tion, resting,

 

the curved lightness

of smoothed exterior

does not wish to wan­der into sea’s lan­guage of

unsolved labyrinth.

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Posted on: July 13, 2010

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The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson.

Just watched the Swedish film adap­ta­tion of the first novel in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy, and it’s quite good, though very dark, and not for the faint of heart. There is a rumor of an American ver­sion com­ing out in 2012, which seems to be a pat­tern these days. Another very good Swedish film, “Let the Right One In,” is soon to be a Hollywood pro­duc­tion as well, and “Brothers” was recently remade from the Swedish orig­i­nal. A rever­sal of cre­ative juices is in the air. Bollywood once had a habit of churn­ing out Hollywood movies in new form, but with the suc­cess of “Slumdog Millionaire,” I’m guess­ing the for­mer British colony might do some col­o­niz­ing on its own. Changes are all around us.

“The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” is a thriller and a mur­der mys­tery, with some social com­men­tary and a bit of kick-​​​​ass fem­i­nism thrown in to boot.…

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Posted on: July 6, 2010

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When You’re Strange, a film by Tom DiCillo. 2010

 

I love the music of The Doors, the times and the leg­end. Watching archival footage in Tom DiCillo’s Rockdoc, I was taken back to a moment in our his­tory filled with so much hope and promise, yet riven with an over­whelm­ing sense of con­fu­sion and loss. Americans were deeply con­fused about a host of things in the 60s, and just like today, sought long and hard for some­one to break on through to the other side.

Morrison was born to be a shaman/​​showman and blaze new trails.

The film reminded me of a few impor­tant details. It’s one of the first biopics to deal at all with the musi­cian­ship of the other Doors  —  Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore. Morrison got all of the atten­tion and noto­ri­ety, but they set his voice to music. They also had an almost uncanny abil­ity to keep things together in con­cert when Mr.…

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