Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

Posted on: December 31, 2011

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Nothing to learn

 

Sitting still and awe­some like a moun­tain
No-​​​​I thought of noth­ing
    Half-​​​​way home

Master Hsueng asked No-​​​​I        
    “Why do you think of noth­ing
    With great intent?”

And No-​​​​I said
“Through con­cen­tra­tion on noth­ing
I am liberated.”

Thwack came the bam­boo stick
    Gong gong gong rang the bell
            Birds cawed as they fled into the blue sky
Their sky their home

“Master, why did you strike me!“
No-​​​​I asked in great pain
No longer still or awe­some like a mountain

And Master Hsueng answered:
    “When you grasp after noth­ing
    You make it an object
    Outside Mind-​​​​Body

    You break the flow between void
    And form
    Form and void
    You cat­e­go­rize nothing!”

Thwack came the bam­boo stick
    Back down on No-I’s shoulders

No-​​​​I did not Awaken
        For two more years

 

 

by Douglas Pinson

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Posted on: December 13, 2011

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This 21-​​year-​​​​old singer has “it.”

Plain Gold Ring

Explosively con­trolled jazz. Volcanic scat and soul. She bobs and weaves and falls vic­tim to the depths of her emo­tional pos­ses­sion, as all great artists do. But she rises from those depths and expresses the jour­ney upward and out­ward, with­out los­ing her courage or her conviction.

Aside from her won­der­ful voice, run­ning par­al­lel with it, she moves in inter­est­ing, idio­syn­cratic ways to her own song. A refresh­ing change from all too many pop singers who dance in cookie cut­ter ways, pushed into nar­row cor­po­rate forms to look like every other pop singer.  Joy Williams of The Civil Wars is sim­i­lar in her phys­i­cal originality.

*     *     *     *     *

Kimbra Johnson was born in New Zealand, grew up there, but now makes her home in Australia.…

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Posted on: November 16, 2011

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 Melancholia is Lars Von Trier’s con­flicted ode to German Romanticism, Wagner, Depression and life itself. It starts off with one of the most beau­ti­ful open­ings of any movie I’ve seen in recent times, with Wagner’s pre­lude to Tristan and Isolde merg­ing with stun­ning, slow motion images. They look like paint­ings come to life, mov­ing incred­i­bly slowly, awak­en­ing to new shocks, new horrors.

The begin­ning pre­fig­ures the end beyond the usual tra­jec­tory of Hollywood films. It in fact gives away that end­ing in the first few min­utes. But we don’t care. Because the jour­ney is every­thing, and we don’t even mind that this is a cliché. Coming full cir­cle seems poetic and right, and cir­cles dom­i­nate the night and day skies.…

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