When thinking about details today, I could not help but think of Michel Gondry and his music videos, most notably for me, at least, Beck's Cell Phone's Dead.
Not only because I am somewhat of a cell-phone ludite, inter alia, but also because I think that many times the director of the millions of videos out there is overlooked. In a day when any one of us can whip up a video with an iPad, the art of directing seems to be faded to black in a sense.
Gondry's work never ceases to intrigue me and I sometimes actually almost forget that there is a song in the background.
Here's a phone movie detail to notice. In an age of cell phone's isn't it funny that everyone still has an old-fashioned answering machine in the movies so that we can still hear the "beep" and the message? Check it out next time you see a movie.
Teaching English and the Theory of Knowledge at the Antwerp International School in Antwerp, Belgium a couple of years ago, the movie Slumdog Millionaire came out and became a heated topic at the school for a variety of reasons.
The student body has a near-majority of wealthy Indian students, mostly hailing from Mumbai, and they come and go to Mumbai several times a year, often along with their parents who are all high-level players and owners in the diamond industry of cutting and trading.
When Slumdog came out, it was met with highly mixed reviews from the students. Some of them loved it as a movie about India had broke into the social consciousness of Belgium and the West, while others were extremely defensive about the movie, saying that "Mumbai and/or India is not like that!" To which others would respond in two ways, in agreement, or astonishment.
Apparently, as I will soon find out, you have to drive past kilometers of slums to get from the airport to the center. In other words, there is no way you could not see this part of Mumbai if you fly into it. I was reminded of living in Italy when President Bush came to visit Rome. Being chums with Berlisconi at the time, there was a massive, and I mean massive protest of over one million angry Italians lining the streets of Rome to protest the motorcade. What happened was rather spectacular. The Italian government finagled it so that Bush's motorcade was redirected and did not pass a single protest manifestation! Bush did not see a thing.
Similar to Forester's A Passage to India, Slumdog was made by a "white" guy. Like the more recent movie, Hangover 2, there has been a backlash of negative imaging by an outsider, India in the former, Bangkok/Thailand in the latter.
I personally thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but I will be interested to see what my reaction will be to it as I will soon be making that journey from the airport to Mumbai center.
I will let you know.
In the meantime, this video gives a good montage of the movie.
One of the greatest things that a culture can produce, at least I believe so, is its own music. The music of a culture can reveal its collective soul at some level. Though this paints a rather broad stroke of a generalization, I maintain that the music is integral to a people.
I have long loved the Classical music of India, highlighted by the Sitar and Tabla, however, I am a huge fan of Dj i Cheb and am now beginning to move into the realm of Bollywood!
So, hurray for Bollywood today!
I bought a collection of Indian songs for our short road trip from Amarillo to Santa Fe yesterday, and this is by far my favorite from the anthology. My daughter asked me to play this at least ten times, so I think it is safe to say that she is pretty keen on it too. I promised her to learn the Hindi lyrics as well, so I better make good on that one.
I love the contrast of this with most contemporary love songs, very sweet.
I like beautiful things, even when they are not beautiful. An absence of beauty has often been the key to finding the beautiful in my life.
Love and Rockets is a perennial favorite for me. An offshoot of Bauhaus when Peter Murphy, who moved to Turkey and pursued another dimension of his own music, leaving David J, Daniel Ash, and Kevin Haskins to create the legacy of the Bubble People. Both Love and Rockets and Peter Murphy have served as personal challenges to me as well, raising pertinent questions in my life, sometimes poetically in song, and sometimes with cacophony and chaos, much like Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead." The Yin and Yang of sound.
Finding Beauty in the Hurricane's eye has helped me to weather the ensuing storm, when I have been most vulnerable.
... if I still were to be on there and you would have looked me up, this is the video that you would have found on my homepage. How about that for a subjunctive conditional of sorts?
This song sort of summed up a great deal for me when I was on Facebook, but don't expect to see me there any time soon.
Once when we lived in Italy, our friend Marco (one of many named as such), took us for a drive through the colline outside of Bologna to eat at a local taverna in the hills.
At one point, he turned off the headlights of the car, and there indeed were 10,000 fireflies. Driving to the pool today, I hear this song again and my daughter for the first time. I could see her just imagine millions and millions of fireflies as she closed her eyes and listened.
When I was teaching in an in situ study-abroad program for American students in a small Tuscan town, Castiglione Fiorentino in Italy, I taught a course called, "A Portrait of the Student in Exile." In this class, we explored stereotypes of both North Americans (there was a Canadian in the group) and Italy and preconceptions of what it would be like to live in Italy as a North American. Throughout the semester, we talked about various preconceptions of other countries and the world in general.
One of my students, the Canadian in fact, told me about the Koyanisqaatsi series of movies that were visual documentaries of the worlds around us, for better or for worse.
After I watched those, I was reminded of Baraka, a movie I had seen many years before and which was a similar format. Whereas the former were completely scored by Phillip Glass, Baraka had a multi-artist soundtrack.
Watching the movie again recently, this segment sticks out most vividly for me. It is also a part of India that I know I will see. It is part of our world as well.
I was lead to this video for a couple of reasons, one of which was the image of "Carmageddon" in Los Angeles. I saw the aerial view of the 405 empty, devoid of traffic, and thought, "that reminds me of something..." Then, later, driving in Amarillo, I was listening to the radio, and this song came on, so maybe someone else had that nagging thought in his or her head and decided to play this song.
I dislike driving short distances. Everyone, especially in Belgium, is cranky when driving. Lots of anger comes out through the horns. Or, like sitting in the tram in Brussels, it is like one big funeral. We are all slowly driving to our deaths, living in a dirge. Eliot in "The Waste Land" commented on people crossing the bridge, on the way to work,
Touching down in Newark's Liberty airport is always an interesting feeling for me. I am back, here I am, in America. Sometimes this feeling is relief, sometimes with misgivings.
This time was reflective, but nice. Hot, but nice.
I Heart Newark, the airport at least. I have flown into Dallas, Houston, JFK, Dulles (now Reagan), Atlanta, Chicago, and Newark for my port of entry to the US, and by far I enjoy coming into Newark the most, much to the chagrin of my sister who lives in Chicago, though it is not personal, I just like Newark the best. Something about the atmosphere in the Customs/Passport control that I just love. It is edgy with a smile.
I have never had to wait more than about 10 minutes to get through. It is efficient, with talkative and friendly agents, but with that edge that you can only get in the East Coast. There were many of us coming from various flights, being shuffled quite smoothly into about forty lanes with only a few people in line. Some of us jockeyed for a better position in a line other than the one assigned, sheepishly admitting, myself included as my daughter really had to go to the bathroom... One of the boisterous, large African American officers said to another woman next to me who had done the same jostling, and with a sardonic smile, laugh, half-mocking, half-welcome to the US, said, "oh, that line is a couple inches shorter, feels good doesn't it? Better you feel much better now." I had to smile at myself for being so impatient after having to be so patient already.
Standing there in line, I remembered M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" for some reason. It became popular from "Slumdog Millionaire" and many of my students had it on their iPods at the International school I taught at in Antwerp, in addition to Harry Potter Puppet videos to torture me with. M.I.A. is a Tamil native who made it big. Would love to catch her live sometime in India.
This video, though, is not from the movie, but clips of New York, with a cameo from Fulton Street if you look closely around 55 seconds in.
In my first teaching position at The University of Texas at Austin with the Plan II program, I was fortunate enough to work under Professor Tom Palaima, a man of many letters and who wears many hats. The course was the Myths of War and Violence, and focused on the "dark side" of what we can be as humans, specifically in the context of war. Brando's soliloquy is a haunting reminder of the fact that this too, is part of our lives. To turn a blind eye is to not fully be part of the human condition and that as humans, we are complicated, multifaceted, capable of great good and great evil at the same time.
Went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. II in 3-D last evening and enjoyed it immensely.
It is phenomenal that this began from someone living out of a van. There was a preview for a movie with Jim Carrey, who also lived out of a van for a while. Sppoookkyy.
Now, for all of you purists out there, I have this to say. Nothing, really.
I went about Harry Potter the complete opposite way of nearly everyone else on the planet. In fact, after the movie, I may have had coffee with the last remaining soul in the universe who has not read at least one Harry Potter book. I saw the first one before reading the book, and well, then the snowball effect. I heard how different the movies were, etc., and I just didn't feel like getting into that whole spider's nest (yes, the giant spiders make an odd cameo), so I "opted out" and just watched the movies.
Now, the real purists probably just started a anti-Robert campaign...but, I will get to the books. I am usually the other way around, and in fact, I can only name a couple book-movie pairings that I did see the movie first, or if I did, I had no intention of reading the book and/or vice versa.
Perhaps the strongest example of seeing the movie first was Zorba the Greek. How can I not think about Anthony Quinn while reading Kazantzakis' book? Quinn channeled Zorba.
Ok, this is not about Zorba, well, kind of, everything in Indra' Net is related, but I digress.
So, saw the movie, talked to another Harry Potter lost soul (he had a good excuse, at least...), and since my friend is a former colleague of the Antwerp International School, where I taught for a while, why not have full circle?
One of my classes was a study skills class, which was pretty much like Mr. Kotter's class. OOOhh OOOhh Mista Fuull--toon. Sweathogs redux.
Loved these guys so much I could scream. Seriously, they had a knack for being able to simultaneously drive me up the wall and make me laugh really hard.
And, so we come to Severus Snape. This was my kryptonite and I made the mistake of letting them know. This little ditty about a Snape and Diane..., no, no Diane. But, this little ditty will stick in your head like the tar baby on Bre'r Rabbit. The more you try to get it out, the more it sticks. They were merciless with this. Whenever they could tell I was having a bad day at work, they would play it. How could I be upset, those little Sweathogs. Yo, Lloyd, Freddie, Michael, and Felix, hope this sticks in your head:
OK, I am making a confession here. I am secretly (ok, guess not anymore) in love with Sinead O'Connor. I love Sinead. I just want to cuddle that little ragamuffin like a little stuffed teddy bear.
Seriously.
I am pretty confident that I will not have the experience of hearing someone sing live as I have with Ms. O'Connor. I have now seen/heard her perform live three times, and that is not nearly enough. I don't know if I would ever get tired of listening to her. It is sometimes cliched I think to say, "I got goosebumps when I heard that." Well, I got goosebumps the first time I heard Sinead O'Connor sing live a cappella. We went to see her at The University of Texas at Austin in a rather small venue, so were not too far from the stage. She had a phenomenal band, but on a few songs, she came out alone and blew my mind.
Sinead is still, regrettably known for her stint nearly 20 years ago!!! of tearing the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live in 1992. That is not an exaggerated statement. The next day at work, still in complete euphoria from the music the night before, I went around trying to relate the experience. Without fail, everyone I talked to said, "Sinead? the one who tore the picture of the Pope?" Not kidding.
Now, for my part, when she did that stunt, I was "outraged." I wasn't even Catholic, but I remember thinking, "that stupid, uppity bald b***h, who the hell does she think she is." She was supposed to perform soon afterwards at UT in fact, where I was a student at the time, and she did not show. I remember having a wonderful sense of leedvermaak, (a fancy Dutch word I had just learned for schadenfreude), thinking, "ha, where's your hero now, you skin-headed lesbos." Yes, I probably said something that stupid. I was a moron.
Well, I have grown up some since, and hopefully matured a bit. In the meanwhile, I have become one of Sinead's biggest fans and (before today) secret admirers. I have seen many interviews with her and have pretty much every CD she has produced, and beyond everything, I have respect for her. She has suffered from mental illness (a form of bi-polarism) and addiction and had to live down that event on SNL that has literally haunted her now for two decades.
When I saw her come out on stage in Austin, I was speechless. She is tiny, dresses quite frumpily. She has the sweetest demeanor I have ever seen in a performer and a smile that will melt your heart in a second. And, she is morbidly SHY!! "This is Sinead???," I remember thinking. And then, she sang.
And sang. And sang.
And, the audience went nuts. I went nuts. I myself was on-another-planet nuts.
Midway through the show, Sinead referred to her last trip to Austin, which was the time she did not show, and thanked the crowd for forgiving her.
If we had gone nuts before, that is when the house came down and she, if memory serves me well, went into a paroxysm of music and song with "Emperor's New Clothes" which was life-changing for everyone there. I was a fan for life from that evening on.
Since, I have seen Sinead at the outdoor stage at Antwerp's Rivierenhof and at a fantasy-like setting in Brussels' outdoor Abbey venue. Each time, I am just swept away to that other planet.
Cat Stevens has always had a very special place in my heart. Some years ago, under his new name, Yusuf Islam, he began to sing again, which was a blessing to the world. Under his own admission of ignorance to what it really was, Yusuf was banned from entering the US some time ago because of his mistaken association with a fatwa against the Indian writer, Salman Rushdie. Cat/Yusuf has been a promoter of peace all of his life. Because of his recent conversion at the time to Islam, being a public celebrity, his name was used to promote violence, something he immediately condemned, though that fell upon deaf ears. I remember seeing his albums being run over by a steamroller and being burned by radio stations. "Peace Train" was banned from many radio stations...might be subversive lyrics if played backwards.
Placebo's always been on the back burner for me, simmering, smoldering, thinking, "what's that smell, is something burning?"
I like them, yes, appreciate, definitely. Why do I keep forgetting about them?
This is an incredible song, speaks to me on some rather profound levels about the labels we place on each other and others when we are dealing with problems in life. No sure if we are harder on ourselves or on each other.
