Saying a temporary goodbye to a very unkind abode -
I am ready to go. I have been ready since all these winter days have made me feel stuck in time and space in an ever, ever present, without the complexities and the possibilities of the future. The everyday business of managing the cold, gray skies, whiteout everywhere, had become too much for me. I hated it unapologetically.
I wished then that I could be a wandering monk (Tibetan style) under never ending fair skies, working the mandala of the mind, and walking everywhere just to keep connected to the earth.
Many times this winter I recollected Truffaut's movie, Stolen Kisses, in the opening scene. The shutters are thrown open, Jean-Paul Leaud stretches in the window, while a Brandenberg concerto vibrantly resonates in the background. This is a greeting to a new day, when you feel at the convergence of all kinds of possibilities, and the course of one's life could change completely - a bright new world. This energy inhabits now my past. Here during the winter it's a constant struggle to keep one's energy up. What is another day about? Instead of the urgency of living, there is only the anxiety of filling up the day, and at the end it all adds up to zero. It's like being stuck on the shore with no boat to get across. But what's across? Maybe the same.
I hope Burma will warm up my bones, and will be a restorative trip even if it's only a flickering illusion.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
What it Means to be French
I was reminded a few days ago of certain aspects of French culture when I received an email from the music publisher Harmonia Mundi. This letter concerned a new recording of music by Erik Satie, played by the brilliant French pianist Alexandre Tharaud. Ordinarily, this would be not be of great note since there have been dozens of recordings of the music of Satie. However, Harmonia Mundi made a special little "mini site" on the Web to present different ideas and views about Satie, with quotes from some of his letters and clips from the music.
In a letter to a correspondent written in 1915, he wrote of himself in the third person:
"He has also written works of a rare stupidity... Mr. Erik Satie is taken for, justly so, a pretentious cretin... His music has no sense, and provokes laughter and a shrug of the shoulders."
Satie was born in Honfleur, a very picturesque town in the department of Calvados, Normandy. The painter Eugene Boudin was also born there. Marcel Duchamp was born in Normandy, as was Maupassant.
There is a real joie de vivre in Satie, but also an absurdist attitude closely related to Dada and Surrealism. He gave absurd titles to many of his pieces, such as Trois Morceaux en forme de poire, (three pieces in the shape of a pear), and others in a similar vein.
The French have a zest for life. When Francois Mitterand died, his mistress was permitted to attend the funeral. When the world is being torn apart by nationalism and sectarian violence, there is still culture to consider.
In a letter to a correspondent written in 1915, he wrote of himself in the third person:
"He has also written works of a rare stupidity... Mr. Erik Satie is taken for, justly so, a pretentious cretin... His music has no sense, and provokes laughter and a shrug of the shoulders."
Satie was born in Honfleur, a very picturesque town in the department of Calvados, Normandy. The painter Eugene Boudin was also born there. Marcel Duchamp was born in Normandy, as was Maupassant.
There is a real joie de vivre in Satie, but also an absurdist attitude closely related to Dada and Surrealism. He gave absurd titles to many of his pieces, such as Trois Morceaux en forme de poire, (three pieces in the shape of a pear), and others in a similar vein.
The French have a zest for life. When Francois Mitterand died, his mistress was permitted to attend the funeral. When the world is being torn apart by nationalism and sectarian violence, there is still culture to consider.
Homage to H.H. the Dalai Lama
"May all sentient beings live in peace and happiness."
This is the traditional Buddhist greeting that every Tibetan, as well as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, would pass onto the world at large.
This week I have been thinking of the 73 year old spiritual leader of the Tibetans because March 10th marked the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Last year on this same date, more protest erupted. In the violent repression that followed 200 Tibetans were killed, nearly 1,300 were injured, and nearly 7,000 were detained or imprisoned. More than 1,000 Tibetans are still missing.
For the first time, the Dalai Lama harshly condemned China, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of having transformed Tibet into a "hell on earth."
I have tremendous respect and admiration for the courage and fortitude the Tibetan people show in adversity, and have felt deeply enriched through my exposure to their culture and spirituality. I feel that so much of Tibetan Buddhism is a way of life, not just a philosophy or a system of beliefs. "Dalai Lama" literaly means, "Ocean of Wisdom."
The Dalai Lama has become one of the most beloved and revered spiritual leaders in the world. His devotion to nonviolent methods to achieve political autonomy earned him the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
I was very fortunate to attend two of his teachings in New York, in separate years.
The main merit of the practice of Buddhism is in the improvement or the evolution of the mind, and the way of thinking. Ignorance is the root cause of all suffering. Buddhist practice aims at transforming the deluded and ordinary mind into the pure mind of the Buddha, "The Clear Light," therefore gaining insight into the ultimate nature of reality. I have yet a long way to go towards gaining insight into "emptiness!"
On another note, I missed spending the Tibetan (or Sherpa) New Year with my friends in New York. Tibetan New Year, or Losar, is a major event. It starts with Lhapso, which is a purification ceremony with pujas in a monastery, and involves the whole community. One year I found myself being the only Westerner (extreme minority) in the middle of about 500 Tibetans. Then the festivities proper start with many parties lasting for several days. We eat lots of momos (dumplings) and drink lots of chang (home made brew) and sing and dance. Old prayer flags are replaced with new ones, and everybody puts on their best behavior to generate good karma for the year ahead.
This year, however, there was a restraint in the celebration to protest the new Chinese clampdown.
If His Holiness were to disappear, it is not known in which way he would be replaced since the Tibetan leader is traditionally chosen through an unusual search for his reincarnation.
What follows is the prayer usually given for the Dalai Lama at gatherings:
In the land encircled by snow mountains
You are the source of all happiness and good;
Powerful Chenreizig, Tenzin Gyatso,
Please remain until samsara ends.
This is the traditional Buddhist greeting that every Tibetan, as well as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, would pass onto the world at large.
This week I have been thinking of the 73 year old spiritual leader of the Tibetans because March 10th marked the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Last year on this same date, more protest erupted. In the violent repression that followed 200 Tibetans were killed, nearly 1,300 were injured, and nearly 7,000 were detained or imprisoned. More than 1,000 Tibetans are still missing.
For the first time, the Dalai Lama harshly condemned China, accusing the Chinese Communist Party of having transformed Tibet into a "hell on earth."
I have tremendous respect and admiration for the courage and fortitude the Tibetan people show in adversity, and have felt deeply enriched through my exposure to their culture and spirituality. I feel that so much of Tibetan Buddhism is a way of life, not just a philosophy or a system of beliefs. "Dalai Lama" literaly means, "Ocean of Wisdom."
The Dalai Lama has become one of the most beloved and revered spiritual leaders in the world. His devotion to nonviolent methods to achieve political autonomy earned him the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize.
I was very fortunate to attend two of his teachings in New York, in separate years.
The main merit of the practice of Buddhism is in the improvement or the evolution of the mind, and the way of thinking. Ignorance is the root cause of all suffering. Buddhist practice aims at transforming the deluded and ordinary mind into the pure mind of the Buddha, "The Clear Light," therefore gaining insight into the ultimate nature of reality. I have yet a long way to go towards gaining insight into "emptiness!"
On another note, I missed spending the Tibetan (or Sherpa) New Year with my friends in New York. Tibetan New Year, or Losar, is a major event. It starts with Lhapso, which is a purification ceremony with pujas in a monastery, and involves the whole community. One year I found myself being the only Westerner (extreme minority) in the middle of about 500 Tibetans. Then the festivities proper start with many parties lasting for several days. We eat lots of momos (dumplings) and drink lots of chang (home made brew) and sing and dance. Old prayer flags are replaced with new ones, and everybody puts on their best behavior to generate good karma for the year ahead.
This year, however, there was a restraint in the celebration to protest the new Chinese clampdown.
If His Holiness were to disappear, it is not known in which way he would be replaced since the Tibetan leader is traditionally chosen through an unusual search for his reincarnation.
What follows is the prayer usually given for the Dalai Lama at gatherings:
In the land encircled by snow mountains
You are the source of all happiness and good;
Powerful Chenreizig, Tenzin Gyatso,
Please remain until samsara ends.
A collection of ultimate sentences
We are left with a pretty good demonstration of what art, like the individual soul, is still and always up against in America.
Beauty presents a stone wall to the thinking mind. But to the incarnate mind--deferential to the buzzing and gurgling body--beauty is as fluid, clear, and shining as an Indian summer afternoon.
I can think of few other artists so richly deserved by their times. For that very reason, whenever I go to contemplate a contemporary work of art for pleasure, it will not be a ....... .
At a party, it often happens that the person you find most glamorous is not the one you think of when it's time to go home.
Standing somewhere between history and myth, Gaugin persists as an evergreen contemporary: the artist as narcissist and provocateur, whoase genius is inextricable from his posturing.
It is well worth sticking around for his shuddery pleasures, laced with something cold and weird.
A spider's--or a painter's--fleeting stab at perfection is a negligible stitch in an unbounded fabric. Its only significance lies in our own momentary, mortal gaze as we reckon with eternity.
A creature that can think and sing like that will elude the explanatory grasp of science for the foreseeable future.
Desire was no longer an issue--only conviction mattered. ... They revel in Surrealism's labyrinth of intellectualized sex.
A cultivated appreciation of the pretty good sets us up to register the surprise of the great, which baffles our understanding and teaches us little except how to praise.
Beauty can be a kind of murder, snatching life out of time.
Standing close to them, I sometimes have the odd sense of passing through a looking glass--or is it a time machine?--from the art world that I know into one marked bu lusher, dirtier satisfactions. For a moment, it strikes me that this, precisely, is what I like. Then the mood evaporates.
We needn't live with Picasso, thank goodness, but only brain surgery could stop him from living in us.
Life goes on, if only because it has nowhere else to go.
Without cohering, the fragments begin to sketch a state of abounding joy.
Looking at his pictures, we approach the farthest frontiers of a necessary happiness.
We have yet to come to terms with these paintings, which refuse to settle down as examples of a period's style. They are as raw, irritating, and urgent as ever.
Present-day reality is a lot more like one of his pictures than I wish it were.
There would never again be anyone like Raphael--as his more alert contempories must have sensed--because never again would a fully developed, energetic, urbane culture coast on a tide of such complacent aplomb.
Minimalism ends where it begins, at the edge of a cliff. Any reaction against it can only be a turning-back.
Dada was and remains a drug, of the hallucenogenic type. ... Today, it can be 1916 again anytime, at the flash of a credit card.
What determines authenticity for me is a hardly scientific, no doubt fallible intuition of a raging need that found respite only in art.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The Fashion Thief
A few notes about Slumdog Millionaire
The script comes from the novel Q & A, by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat. It stems from India's biggest quiz show, "Who Will Win a Billion."
B. mentions the documentary film, "Born Into Brothels." It was made Zana Briski, and she spent two years in Calcutta following the lives of seven children growing up in the red-light district. At one point she hands out cameras to each one, and trains them. The children in the end have a show of their work in the States, proving that given a chance they all revel in their capacity to love the world.
However, my subject is about reading an article, "The Fashion Thief," in New York Magazine. Kevahn Thorpe is a young African-American, a fashion fanatic and a serial shoplifter for whom jail was not too steep a price to pay for the labels he loves.
My interest in the article actually stems from an opposite direction: the disgust against those bailed-out bankers who got billions while ordinary Americans lost their jobs and their homes, and still gorged themselves on fat bonuses. This is big time thievery. This brings me to Kevahn. Being a thief is not cute. Even though he is supposed to be smart, it is rather dumb to go to jail because you are obsessed with pathetic designer logo-wear. He is a kleptomaniac - no moral compass there. But too bad. He will always get more time than the Madoffs and Stanfords of the world. This is the difference between the haves and the have nots.
Also, this is how the penal system fails to keep young kids with treatable problems out of jail. Kevahn has a serious psychological issue; he inhabits a tragic dreamworld of high-end boutiques like Prada and Barney's, created by the fashion industry. I must have what I need, only I steal to have it and end up in jail every time.
I guess people need to realize there is more to life than the acquisition of high-end labels. Our present economy is a mess, so some people shoplift meat at the grocery store. In that case, maybe I should say long live the shoplifters who get what they want. Madoff, who wiped out many people's savings, won't go anywhere maximum security. That kid wanted nice clothes and he is in Sing Sing.
So, thieves of the world, Unite! Maybe after several years in jail, somebody will remember the black kid and get him a job in the fashion industry.
Did you ever steal or see somebody stealing?
Last weekend while B. went to see "Milk," I opted for the movie, "Confessions of a Shopaholic." Although it is a very silly comedy, it is a worthy finger pointed at rabid designer-label consumption, and how the young white girl in the movie burns plastic all the time (although she does not steal), and has to face a massive, mounting credit card debt. Does anyone in New York live within their means? Self-control in this society is almost extinct.
Gandhi would probably burst out in hysterics to see his simple belongings (spectacles, sandals, plate, and pocket-watch) sold at auction for 1.8 million dollars. Maybe hedgefund creeps could get inspired by an ascetic lifestyle?
The script comes from the novel Q & A, by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat. It stems from India's biggest quiz show, "Who Will Win a Billion."
B. mentions the documentary film, "Born Into Brothels." It was made Zana Briski, and she spent two years in Calcutta following the lives of seven children growing up in the red-light district. At one point she hands out cameras to each one, and trains them. The children in the end have a show of their work in the States, proving that given a chance they all revel in their capacity to love the world.
However, my subject is about reading an article, "The Fashion Thief," in New York Magazine. Kevahn Thorpe is a young African-American, a fashion fanatic and a serial shoplifter for whom jail was not too steep a price to pay for the labels he loves.
My interest in the article actually stems from an opposite direction: the disgust against those bailed-out bankers who got billions while ordinary Americans lost their jobs and their homes, and still gorged themselves on fat bonuses. This is big time thievery. This brings me to Kevahn. Being a thief is not cute. Even though he is supposed to be smart, it is rather dumb to go to jail because you are obsessed with pathetic designer logo-wear. He is a kleptomaniac - no moral compass there. But too bad. He will always get more time than the Madoffs and Stanfords of the world. This is the difference between the haves and the have nots.
Also, this is how the penal system fails to keep young kids with treatable problems out of jail. Kevahn has a serious psychological issue; he inhabits a tragic dreamworld of high-end boutiques like Prada and Barney's, created by the fashion industry. I must have what I need, only I steal to have it and end up in jail every time.
I guess people need to realize there is more to life than the acquisition of high-end labels. Our present economy is a mess, so some people shoplift meat at the grocery store. In that case, maybe I should say long live the shoplifters who get what they want. Madoff, who wiped out many people's savings, won't go anywhere maximum security. That kid wanted nice clothes and he is in Sing Sing.
So, thieves of the world, Unite! Maybe after several years in jail, somebody will remember the black kid and get him a job in the fashion industry.
Did you ever steal or see somebody stealing?
Last weekend while B. went to see "Milk," I opted for the movie, "Confessions of a Shopaholic." Although it is a very silly comedy, it is a worthy finger pointed at rabid designer-label consumption, and how the young white girl in the movie burns plastic all the time (although she does not steal), and has to face a massive, mounting credit card debt. Does anyone in New York live within their means? Self-control in this society is almost extinct.
Gandhi would probably burst out in hysterics to see his simple belongings (spectacles, sandals, plate, and pocket-watch) sold at auction for 1.8 million dollars. Maybe hedgefund creeps could get inspired by an ascetic lifestyle?
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Slumdog bites back
Just this morning it was announced by the Indian Congress Party that they have bought the rights to play, at their political rallies, the title song from Slumdog Millionaire, "Jai Ho,", roughly translated as "victory." This follows some severe criticism in the Indian press and amongst some politicians of the film. I suppose there is nothing like an Oscar prize to sway even the most cynical politician.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire
The amazing thing about the Oscars this year is that a film made on a modest budget, partially in Hindi, directed by an Englishman, and starring complete unknowns, won the prizes for Best Picture and Best Director. This film almost did not make it to theaters, having been dropped by Warner Brothers for financial reasons, but then picked up for distribution by Fox/Searchlight. Taken from a novel by Vikas Swarup, the screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy, who also won the Oscar for best screenplay.
Despite the fact that the cast is unknown in the West, several of the Indian actors have been featured in very prominent roles in Bollywood films, notably Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan. Just the suggestion of the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, even though he does not appear, is very powerful, considering that he is the most famous actor in India, and probably seen by more moviegoers than any other actor in the world.
There is a considerable amount of controversy surrounding this film, some critics saying that it is "poverty porn" while others claim that it demeans poor people living in the slums of India's largest cities. It is interesting to note that no such controversy exists concerning a documentary film, which won an Oscar, called "Born Into Brothels." This film was made by an American, and concerns the children of prostitutes and what becomes of them.
I can only feel very positive that a film like this was able to attract such incredible support from the Academy, which is not usually known for sticking its neck out. Perhaps globalisation is having a salutary effect on the film industry.
Despite the fact that the cast is unknown in the West, several of the Indian actors have been featured in very prominent roles in Bollywood films, notably Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan. Just the suggestion of the presence of Amitabh Bachchan, even though he does not appear, is very powerful, considering that he is the most famous actor in India, and probably seen by more moviegoers than any other actor in the world.
There is a considerable amount of controversy surrounding this film, some critics saying that it is "poverty porn" while others claim that it demeans poor people living in the slums of India's largest cities. It is interesting to note that no such controversy exists concerning a documentary film, which won an Oscar, called "Born Into Brothels." This film was made by an American, and concerns the children of prostitutes and what becomes of them.
I can only feel very positive that a film like this was able to attract such incredible support from the Academy, which is not usually known for sticking its neck out. Perhaps globalisation is having a salutary effect on the film industry.
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