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Making Light

Jean Cocteau said, “Film will only become art when it’s materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”

Well, at least we know what direction we’re going.

As I’ve been recently reading about taste, and thinking about plays… here’s part of Andrey Tarkovsky’s journal from 1970:

Playwrights often overdo the clever line or turn as the curtain’s about to fall. It shows lack of taste, You don’t find it in good plays.

The strange thing is that when people come together in a community for the purpose, simply, of production, or for reasons of geography, they start to hate each other and do one another down. Because each one only loves himself. Community is an illusion, as a result of which sooner or later there will rise over the contoinents evil, deadly, mushroom clouds.

An agglomeration of people aiming at one thing – filling their stomachs – is doomed to destruction, decay, hostility.

‘Not by bread alone.’

Man is made up of opposing characteristics. History demonstrates vividly the fact that it always moves in the worst possible direction. Either man is not capable directing history, or else he does direct it, but by pushing it down the most terrible, wrong path there is.

There is not a single example to prove the opposite. People are not capable of governing others. They are only capable of destroying. And materialism – naked and cynical – is going to complete the destruction.

Despite the fact that god lives in every soul, that every soul has the capacity to accumulate what is eternal and good, as a mass people can do nothing but destroy. For they have come together not in the name of an ideal, but simply for the sake of a material notion.

Mankind has hurried to protect the body (perhaps on the strength of that natural and unconscious gesture which served as the beginning what is called progress) and has given no thought to protecting the soul.

And here, from January 12, 1972:

Yesterday Sizov dictated comments and criticisms of Solaris collected from various bodies – the cultural department of the Central Committee and the governing board.

I have mad a note of some thirty-three observations. Here they are. There are a great many of them, and if I were to comply with them (which is not actually possible) the whole basis of the film would be destroyed. In other words, it’s even more absurd than it was with Rublyov.

The comments go like this:

1. There ought to be a clearer image of the earth of the future. The film doesn’t make it clear what it’s going to be like (the future, that is).

2. There ought to be some landscapes of the planet of the future.

3. What form of society was the starting-point for Kelvin’s flight – Socialism, Communism or Capitalism?

4. Snaut ought not to speak of the inexpediency (?!) of studying space. It leads to a dead-end situation.

5. Cut out the concept of God. (?!)

6. The encephalograph ought to be run to the end.

7. Cut out the concept of Christianity. (?!)

8. The Conference: cut out the foreign executives.

9. The Finale.

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Green Movement Transforming Islam?

The Green Revolution, in Iran.

To varying degrees, thinkers and theologians identified with the democratic movement have been offering a new reading of Shiism that makes the faith more amenable to democracy and secularism. The most significant innovation—found in essays, sermons, books, and even fatwas—is the acceptance of the separation of mosque and state, the idea that religion must be limited to the private domain. Some of these thinkers refuse to afford any privileged position to the clergy’s reading and rendition of Shiism–a radical democratization of the faith. And others, like Akbar Ganji and Mostafa Malekian, have gone so far as to deny the divine origins of Koran, arguing that it is nothing but a historically specific and socially marked interpretation of a divine message by the prophet. The most daring are even opting for a historicized Muhammad, searching for the first time in Shia history for a real, not hagiographic, narrative of his life.

That would be a revolt. As the article points, out, this is largely an attack on Ayatollah Khamanei and the way he was appointed by Khomeini. An elected spiritual leader changes the game and many of its names. It would be amazing if the courageous perseverance of Iranians in the street attempting to change their government resulted in changes to Islam. Changes to the one may not be possible without changing the other, but the passion and brutality on display over the last 7 months show how, I think, everyone involved understands the stakes.

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Money Can Buy

Fairness and justice can inform politics, invigorate its supporters and infiltrate the ranks of decision-makers to influence the use of government and guide the course international cooperation.

So can business.

And now the Gates Foundation has finally named a new director of agricultural development—a position left vacant since April, when Rajiv Shah left to take a post at USDA. (Shah is now director of USAID within the State Department—the top development position in the U.S. government). The foundation named long-time biotech exec and investor Sam Dryden to the post.

In doing so, the foundation could hardly have sent a stronger signal: In its vision, at least, Africa’s future as a prosperous continent hinges on the benevolence of patent-wielding Western biotech behemoths like Monsanto and its very few peers in the GMO-seed space. Here is how The Seattle Times describesDryden’s background:

At Wolfensohn and Company, which was founded by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, Dryden focused on investments in alternative energies. He formerly headed Emergent Genetics, which develops and markets seeds. Emergent Genetics, the third largest cotton seed company in the U.S., was acquired by Monsanto in 2005 in a $300 million deal. [Emphasis added.]

The tools are malleable, not permanently bent. The reasons for optimism are also the reasons to be skeptical. On neither count  should we underestimate the power of vital green interests.

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Anyone’s Mercy

Better late than never. From Giovanni’s Room, by James Baldwin.

David is alone in Paris while his beloved Hella is off in Spain trying to figure out the depth and nature of her love for him. He meets a gay bartender, Giovanni, in a known gay bar and soon begins living with him in, as the title suggests, Giovanni’s room.

Thus begins David’s journey into the openness of his homosexuality and his eventual break with Hella. The novel is a fascinating story of self-deception coming to light on the part of David, and the brilliance of Baldwin’s explicit writing on homosexuality far in advance of the novel’s time.

Baldwin’s choice of how to present his story is fascinating. Virtually all the men in the story are homosexual, it is as though we are living in a Paris in which there isn’t a single straight male. Hella sort of looms in the background as a female presence, but the males are all within the circle.

At the same time this unanimity of community is belied by the way they have to live, with a sort of hanging gloom of unacceptability and hiddenness which dominates the life style. Virtually no one has a real relationship of any lastingness and that seems to be what Giovanni himself is seeking, with David the chosen partner. David is completely unaware of this and is a troubling character in that he appears to be astonishingly unaware of any of this oddness. Perhaps Baldwin was striving to have David so blown away by his situation that he couldn’t think clearly about it. That explanation would work logically, but if so, Baldwin didn’t write it very well for me, since I was often interrupted in my reading by this uncertainty as what to make of David’s mindset.

The dominant form of relationship we find are purchased and promiscuous sexual relations between aging and wealthy homosexuals and young good looking men like Giovanni and David, though David himself, while completely aware of this behavior has only Giovanni as a partner. Unlike the other young me, including Giovanni, David is to some vague extent, financially independent. He just has trouble getting his father in the U.S. to release David’s own money to him.

Perhaps Baldwin simply reflects the internalization of this form of life in the homosexual community of the time. That would make sense. There weren’t better realistic options, so they had to live as the did; a survival tactic. But reading it in 2004, when gay marriage itself is such a dominant social issue, one sees other forms of homosexual union, unions of intimacy, faithfulness and monogamy and everyday family structures, that I couldn’t help but be struck by the artificiality of the form of homosexual community which Baldwin reveals to us. He is convincing. I sure he got it right and that’s the way it was. Perhaps it is the seeming “naturalness” of it in Baldwin’s treatment that brought me up short.

A minor theme of significance is Hella’s struggles with her budding feminist consciousness, again, a theme and treatment of Baldwin that is far in advance of his time.

There isn’t a huge treatment there, but Hella is a woman, in love with David, and willing to lose him rather than be with him if she’s isn’t fully in love with him. She knows her life must be her own, and that she lives in a world which understands her best as an adjunct to a man.

`You mean, I can’t be at your mercy? But you can be at mine?’ I laughed. `I’d like to see you at anyone’s mercy, Hella.’

`You may laugh,’ she said, humorously, `but there s something in what I say. I began to realize it in Spain — that I wasn’t free, that I couldn’t be free until was attached — no, committed — to someone.’

`To someone? Not something?’

She was silent. `I don’t know,’ she said at last, `but I’m beginning to think that women get attached to something really by default. They’d give it up, if they could, anytime, for a man. Of course they can’t admit this, and neither can most of them let go of what they have. But I think it kills them – perhaps I only mean,’ she added, after a moment, `that it would have killed me.’

`What do you want, Hella? What have you got now that makes such a difference?’

She laughed. `It isn’t what I’ve got. It isn’t even what I want. It’s that you’ve got me. So now I can be — your obedient and most loving servant.’

I felt cold. I shook my head in mock confusion. `I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Why,’ she said, `I’m talking about my life. I’ve got you to take care of and feed and torment and trick and love — I’ve got you to put up with. From now on, I can have a wonderful time complaining about being a woman. But I won’t be terrified that I’m not one.’ She looked at my face, and laughed. `Oh, I’ll be doing other things,’ she cried. `I won’t stop being intelligent. I’ll read and argue and think and all that — and I’ll make a great point of not thinking your thoughts –and you’ll be pleased because I’m sure the resulting confusion will cause you to see that I’ve only got a finite woman’s mind, after all. And, if God is good, you’ll love me more and more and we’ll be quite happy.’ She laughed again. `Don’t bother your head about it, sweetheart. Leave it to me.

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Sending a Message

ParkingLot

I don’t know which image has the worse better portents – an empty parking lot or a full one.

The question will arise, is the lot half full? But worse cases aside, this isn’t about that. The price of diesel fuel continues to hover right at the point of viability for bio-diesel producers, such that they can’t really plan for anything permanent. Except they can. They don’t, and that’s another story. We thought five-dollar-gas would be here by now and that might be in part one of the reasons why it’s not. The shock that a fear of future economic shocks has itself put into the economy. It verges on the vertiginous, which itself makes all this sound like alliterative playtime. Which it isn’t.

There was a report on Marketplace yesterday about the fate of different kinds of malls in the present economy. In between the stats, something stands out a little more:

Hessam Nadji is managing director at Marcus and Millichap Real Estate Investment Services. He says one reason for the difference is an oversupply of strip malls. They’re cheaper and easier to build than great, big gallerias.

HESSAM NADJI: Because of the housing boom, there was a lot more construction of strip malls in reaction to the overheated housing market than there was construction of new malls.

Plus, he says, big shopping malls are more immune to the recession because — thanks to their food courts and movie theaters — they have an entertainment value that strip malls don’t have.

NADJI: You also have to take a look at the tenant mix that makes up a lot of demand for strip centers. And, unfortunately, a lot of them are local, smaller retailers that are under a lot of pressure right now.

Unlike chain stores that you see in a shopping mall, which don’t have to rely on just one location for business.

Sitting in an idling car in a half-empty parking lot as I was, the bigger message is the most obvious – when does the scale of what we do and what we can do slip, maybe accidentally, back into focus? Economies of scale seemed sexy, but they were nearly the opposite – though not just because objects in the mirror appeared to be closer than they actually were. We mistook the distance for something that didn’t matter, when any self-help book will tell you that the journey is the thing that counts. I think Henry Miller wrote it – happiness is not a destination. It’s a kind of dumb truth, a message we’re trying to send ourselves through the most obtuse signals. It’s why TV is so unintentionally funny.

And sometimes, radio.

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Gloating over the Latest Cold Spell

And I don’t mean your runny nose. Joe Romm has a good piece up about the recent terribly friggin’ cold snap hanging over much of the country and what is actually going on over most of the rest of the planet.

It’s hard to tell why some people lie; others, it’s not so difficult.

And meanwhile, Andean farmers bear the brunt of the same scourge but in a different way than we might imagine:

In a world growing ever hotter, Huancavelica is an anomaly. These communities, living at the edge of what is possible, face extinction because of increasingly cold conditions in their own microclimate, which may have been altered by the rapid melting of the glaciers.

A consequence is that Quechua-speaking farmers and their families, who have managed to subsist for centuries at high altitude, believe they may not make it through the next southern winter.

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The N-D Conundrum

What turns GREED to GREEN? What turns GREEN to GREED? We all assume a symbiotic relationship – it’s what this whole semantic notion is about. The hope for a magic, transcendental spell check that does the trick for us, changes one to the other (for a fee, of course) might be a nice idea for a conceptual art installation – The Syntax of the Hyper Real or some such – but little else.

In terms of planetary peril, it appears to be a irreconcilable symbol inversion in the alphabet. The Gaia Theory would appear to be promising, except for its implication for ‘we the people’. But we even have to accept this, if we’re willing to be so heedless about using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground. This interview with its originator is compelling in a gallows sort of way. He hates carbon trading and says its a scam, but is there another way to get the D to go N without taxing ourselves, without charging for the free dumping ground? While many understand the reasons why it will be better to transition away from this economic model and move radically toward renewable energy, the fossil fuel endgame remains viable because it is… cheaper. This is a compelling moral argument, though not one we should make or defend intentionally.

It’s unpleasant to think that we will be wont to change our behavior until we are compelled to do so, that we are in some sense the rich who won’t say they hate the poor but are nonetheless able to simply turn their backs on the suffering the poor endure. After all, for people whose primary motivation is green greed grrr, what makes us do anything?

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Taking Sides

The New Year is as good a divide to consider this question as any. After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Albert Camus gave an interview, which is included in his collection, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death. This question and his answer are included under the sub-head, The Intellectual Must Take Sides:

3) If the contrary is true, what can the intellectual do today? Does he have a duty, in each and every circumstance, to express his feeling and opinion publicly and to anyone at all? Or else, because of the seriousness of events and the lack of valid political forces, do you feel that one can do no better than to carry on one’s own work as well as one can?

It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not sidestep the problems of his time. But in certain exceptional circumstances (Spanish civil war, Hilterian prosecutions and concentration camps, Hungarian war) he must leave no room for doubt as to the side he takes; he must be very careful not to let his choice be clouded by wily distinctions or discreet balancing tricks, and to leave no question as to his personal determination to defend liberty. Groupings of intellectuals can, in certain cases, and particularly when the liberty of the masses and of the spirit is mortally threatened, constitute a strength and exert an influence; Hungarian intellectuals have just proved this. However, it should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.

Subject to these reservations, we must hope for a common rallying. But first our Leftist intellectuals, who have swallowed so many insults and may well have to begin doing so again, would have to undertake a critique of the reasonings and ideologies to which they have wreaked the havoc they have seen in our most recent history. That will be the hardest thing. We must admit today conformity is on the Left. To be sure, the Right is not brilliant. But the left is in complete decadence, a prisoner of words, caught in its own vocabulary, capable merely of stereotyped replies, constantly at a loss when faced with the truth, from which it nevertheless claimed to derive its laws. The Left is schizophrenic and needs doctoring through pitiless self-criticism, exercise of the heart, close reasoning, and a little modesty. Until such an effort at re-examination is well under way, any rallying will be useless and even harmful. Meanwhile, the intellectual’s role will be to say that the king is naked when he is, and not to go into raptures at his imaginary trappings.

In order to strike a constructive tone, however, I shall propose as one of the preliminaries to any future gathering the unqualified acceptance of the following principle: none of the evils that totalitarianism (defined by the single party and the suppression of all opposition) claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.

In conclusion, I believe (as people say: I believe in God, creator of heaven and earth) that the indispensable conditions for intellectual creation and historical justice are liberty and the free confronting of differences. Without freedom, not art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. But without freedom, no socialism either, except the socialism of the gallows.

DEMAIN, 21-27 February 1957

Translation by Justin O’Brien.

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2010

May all your greens come true.

collards_large

And don’t forget to give peas a chance.

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Top 10 Things I Started in 2009 But Didn’t Finish (and my excuses)

10. A bottle of moonshine that shouldn’t have been in the house anyway. (I don’t like moonshine)

9. Building a garage/bike-tool-wood shed, for which we have an awesome plan. (too expensive)

8. A painting of a rainy early evening in France where we once lived. (I almost screwed up the light, which was the whole reason to do it, but salvaged it – kinda. Because it’s in oil, I paint on the front porch; it got too cold.)

7. A book proposal for the Eco Hustle columns. (Mmm… since “I got too busy with a new job” is a Phlegmish excuse, I don’t have a good one.)

6. A treatment for a screenplay out of one my novels. (see above)

5. Homer’s The Iliad (I was at my in-laws and left it – on purpose, I think)

4. A magazine article about a Swedish director who shot someone. (This is one I feel both good and bad about, which is somewhat rare. I agreed to do the piece and put in a non-trivial amount of research/interviewing – enough, in fact, to realize that I would need to do more and probably go to Sweden in order to do him any kind of justice. The magazine wasn’t going to send me there, so I ultimately dropped it – but I didn’t tell them. I’m sure they figured it out. It was the right call.)

3. The other blog (It wasn’t meant to be finished.)

2. A new job (see above).

1. A new story that might be a novel if it holds up. (It might be a novel if it holds up. There are several sub-entries here, but this one gets the hope-y attention.)

S0… some (most) of these weren’t abandoned, just not finished. It’s a hazard of writing. Can’t judge the year on just these, but it’s part of the truth of the 365 about to turn.

And you?