Still on that train, but now in the other direction.
Last night, in a small movie theater on the Dartington College of the Arts campus, I saw Pan’s Labyrinth. Well, I practically had to see it – arriving one late and rainy evening, in a countryside school of the arts, with nothing else to do; and after an e-mail from S. that said, and I quote: “M. and I went to see Pan's Labyrinth yesterday, and you MUST see this as soon as you can. It's got your name written all over it.”
I kind of see what she means: fantasy, tension, the freedom of dreams versus death – although I wasn’t entirely prepared for how violent the film is. But then today, when I was explaining it to someone else, I slightly surprised myself by saying: it isn’t indulgent about the violence, just merciless – awful things happen in wartime, and the camera doesn’t flinch, it stays steady. So I suppose that kind of violence does make particular sense for me: the steady gaze, no matter how difficult.
Loved the movie, by the way. Very quiet and withdrawn afterward – fortunately for me I was alone in a town where nobody knows me, so I could just sit and think about it over dinner. Various thoughts – how could we not go in and stop the Spanish fascists after the war? How do we connect fantasy and brutal reality, or disconnect them? And: I’m so glad the film doesn’t reach a decision about all the fantasy; it leaves you to dream and wonder.
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Another, different, impact today: the doctoral thesis I came down to examine, although in need of reworking, had wonderful stuff in it. And the charming, friendly guy who wrote it accepted our rather stringent demands for a rewrite; and afterward took me for a drink – he needed one, of course – while looking at me with such fascination, such charming admiration.
It’s always such a pleasure to have one’s work appreciated. But, even more, to have one’s work treated with – well – reverence….
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Listening to various contemporary musics, including Paul Dresher’s monodrama Slow Fire (making notes for an article I need to write about it this year), some Kancheli that proved a little too overwhelming, and finally some Stefan Wolpe.
Last spring – March 2006 according to my CV – I was a panelist at a Cambridge series of discussions/concerts that included Wolpe’s daughter performing his lesser-known piano pieces. They were all impressive – Wolpe, in fact, was nothing if not impressive: the most powerful and intense of high modern serialists, but at the same time apparently uninterested in the outside world of success. He just wanted to achieve a precise, well-judged management of the notes, of the motives, of the musical material: and he did it so well…. Sometimes his works require a certain endurance, like a huge Pollack canvas or like a Beckett play; but the work is so fine, and it shows you what immense skill, thought, and hard, hard work can combine to create.
On that concert, it was kind of unexpected to hear an early piece (literally called ‘Early Piece’, from 1925; sometimes it appears as the second movement of his first sonata, but it was written on its own). It is a delicate but sinewy, evanescent but sturdy, exploration of hesitancy, by someone not known for hesitancy: the notation is odd (I have a note to myself to find the score) because it is precise where you don’t expect precision: the careless, fragmentary beginning is spelled out in exact note values with varying meters – almost like the mysterious, wonderfully Webernian beginning of Mahler’s Ninth, except written out exactly.
As though Bach were to write out, with utter and meticulous respect, the most fragile moment of Chopin, rubato and all….
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My bring-along-to-read book was Sontag’s Where the Stress Falls, a late collection of shorter essays. Some good bits on egotism, that are almost too perceptive – all written in other contexts. It must have been on her mind over the years:
“Homage to others is the complement to accounts of oneself: the poet is saved from vulgar egoism by the strength and purity of his or her admirations.”
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Well, here’s a fourth impact, a lot less metaphorical: the melted cheese from my railway sandwich hits my sweater on its way to my jeans. Yuck. And then the crowds leaving the train crash into each other, and me, on their way out….
Frankly, I prefer metaphors.
Time to de-train….
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