August and Everything After...

I was going to comment on how easy we forget the terrific things we do (eg. Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Downing Memo, hiding the dead bodies that occupy coffins as they parade into our country for mass burial) but didn't want to go on some harangue, being pompous and disconnected.

Instead an observation: It is amazing the irony in the word and it's qualitative implications, life. It would appear to the common man, the better "life" you have, the less you actually live. If one has a great life, it probably implies that s/he has a large vehicle that hinders her/him from walking with nature; more than likely a nice home in which s/he'll reside watching her/his t.v. screen, privy to the outdoors, the living organisms, even to her/his very own breath amid the redolent flora and fauna. It would seem that the more we seek out this "grandeur of life", the more we seek to evade the quintessential simplicity of the word...strange isn't it?

I'm off to see Kings of Leon tonight with Helios Sequence and I can only be grateful that I'm finally getting to see some more of the live music scene for which I wanted to spend the summer in Atlanta. Work has been demanding, and of late frustrating, but all in all I'm learning that the service industry is exactly that; slavery (I've never been precocious). It's prompting me to move on quicker than I had intended which only leaves me with a bit less "guita" than I had hoped for after my splurge to my beloved land, Argentina.

To the Arts: I finished reading "Winter of Our Discontent" shortly after the last post and found it to be characteristically, brilliant Steinbeck. Although I find his short stories entertaining with a nice thoughtful message, his longer novels involve such a simple depth of character, reminding me of Kerouac, and his concluding chapter/pages are always of a manner that slow you into another dimension of time that divulges the myriad ideas that you may have missed along the way and tie them together with the confounding simplicity a child conveys when he's shown how to lace his shoes for the first time.

I quickly picked up a Portuguese author I've wanted to read since my buddy Josh from Chicago recommended him, Jose Saramago. Although I've yet to get ahold of his most renown novel "Blindness", I had access to "All the Names" about a clerk who works in the Central Registry for the living and the dead. It is amazing the clarity that rips through the pages, especially when you realize that not once is there a quotation mark in one paragraph that might contain several conversations. Brilliantly clever in his ability to demonstrate to the reader the disparate nature of a conversation with another and the inner thoughts that we all have thrown into our soul for some response. It shows how when a man sets off to discover an unknown woman who ostensibly seems to be disconnected from his being, he actually discovers more about himself than he ever knew; and although she might not be related to him in a genetical sense, it reveals the confluence of humanity that is indexed in life and death. A great starter for me that has aroused me to explore for more, particularly "Blindness". The current read, one that I'm ashamed to admit not having read, "Brave New World" is so addictive and has me turning the pages sharing the triumph that Huxley has celebrated in articulating something so imaginative in his era, yet so relevant to current affairs. It is striking me with the same mallet that "Atlas Shrugged" did. A note of inner-petulance that we, as a species, have somehow been so ignorant to disregard the antecedent creators of an absurd world, a scary reality that we have somehow come to accept in action, but defied in literature some 50 years ago. I also checked out--yes, an actual library with actual books that I can read for absolutely nothing...no excuses--some other works of his to witness his development which is interesting in so many artists.

In music, I've been dabbling with the likes of the band I'll see tonight; I recommend "Taper Jean Girl", "Slow Night, So Long", and "Bucket" to get a taste. I've also returned a little to the Tangotronic/Electrotango of Argentina Contemporario if you will; listen to Tanghetto and Gotan Project both of which are compilations. But the new band that I'm promoting this post (especially to you Kyle)is The Shins whose "Young Pilgrim" has me singing to our govt. and "Saint Simon" just has me "la la la-ing" to the rhythmical lyrics that seem to make so much sense, and finally "Pink Bullets" is melodically anecdotal...but really the entire album is just the freshness that I needed; go buy it, "Chutes Too Narrow".

I finally got some more Kitano under my skin Mauro (certainly not the last)..."Kikujiro", the tale of a boy who just wants to find his mother, finds instead an old irritable man turn into an entertaining compassionate father-figure with some roaming thespians whose ad-hoc provokes the much needed laughter of a sweet child. I didn't find as much camera manipulation in this as in "Zaitoichi", which I have to say is why I'm continually drawn to Japanese cinema; their use with the dimension of time is certainly astral. I will say that his element of double exposure showed up with the banging of the gong and the chiming of the clock. 'Brilliant', I thought...I recalled an observation that I mentioned to you that the orient is much more in tune with nature's beat, both in music and in time; and "Beat" Takeshi fused the two, as our cultures were to be, later. Although it's several decades old, I found him so clever in his ingenuity of masking nudity. Waiting in the wing is Kurosawa's "Rashomon". I'm so happy you turned me onto this very interesting and surprisingly invigorating variant of cinematic intake.