Biography

The dog scatters her body in sleep,
paws, finding no ground, whip at air,
the unseen eyeballs reel deep, within.
And waking – crouches,
tacked to humility all day,
children ride her, stretch,
display the black purple lips,
pull hind legs to dance;
unaware that she
tore bulls apart, loosed
heads of partridges,
dreamt blood.

M. Ondaatje

Death of a Salesman.

Death of a Salesman
Never struck me the way it did when I saw Mike Nichols' production this weekend.
You never really understand this play until you've worked in an office, dreaming of outside...

BIFF: And suddenly I stopped, you hear me?  And in the middle of that office building, do you hear this?  I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky.  I saw the things that I love in this world.  The work and the food and time to sit and smoke.  And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for?  Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be?  What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!  Why can’t I say that, Willy?

DV8

From DV8 Physical Theater's Cost of Living:


DV8 - Cost of Living por arthursoares  no Videolog.tv.

Pina Bausch

Wim Wenders' film documentary on the late choreographer Pina Bausch is still staying with me. Powerful stuff.





 

There is Nothing Quite Like a Real Book

(via: notcot)

Death and the Piano

"The piano is a very finicky instrument to record, with an existential problem: attack followed by decay, every note a death. You want to capture the ping, the clarity of the beginning of each note, but you also want to get the ephemeral singing tone that remains. It's a complicated balance: the souls fo the piano and of the pianist hang on it." 

From Jeremy Denk's nice piece "Flight of the Concord" in this week's New Yorker

Jean Dujardin

I'm having a hard time finding a man with more charisma than Jean Dujardin right now. Is that weird?

Jean Dujardin fait le chameau dans un talk show... by puremedias

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked,
grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely, I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,—
Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
W.C.W.

Les Parapluies

As a girl who loves umbrellas, this threw me for a loop - Parapluie table by Rakso Naibaf

(via: notcot) And speaking of umbrellas - the beautiful opening titles for one of my favorite movies of all time: the umbrellas of cherbourg:

Beginners

Have you seen 'Beginners'?
One of my favorite movies that I saw last year - funny, quirky, sweet, and sad all at the same time. I'm still thinking about it...

Beginners trailer from Mark L. Pederson on Vimeo.

Nothing is Stranger, More Delicate...

Years ago, I found this excerpt about the delicate relationship between strangers plastered onto a table in a little coffee shop in Boston. It was such a present to find first thing in the morning! The words have stayed with me ever since.

Nothing is stranger, more delicate, than the relationship between people who know each other only by sight - who encounter and observe each other daily, even hourly, and yet are compelled by the constraint of convention or by their own temperament to keep up the pretense of being indifferent to strangers, neither greeting nor speaking to each other. Between them is uneasiness and overstimulated curiosity, the nervous excitement of an unsatisfied, unnaturally suppressed need to know and to communicate; and above all, too, a kind of strained respect. For man loves and respects his fellow man for as long as he is not yet in a position to evaluate him, and desire is born of defective knowledge.

DEATH IN VENICE, Thomas Mann

Barry Lyndon

Scorcese cites this as his favorite Kubrick films, and it's hard not to agree with him. Kubrick creates this film with such a painterly eye! One of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.

Also, Handel's Sarabande is so well-used here. I so wish I could hear this piece performed in a giant cathedral, or in some other hallowed place.

How to Start a Movement

This very short TED talk made me laugh and think.

The King of Carrot Flowers

When you were young
You were the king of carrot flowers
And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees
In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy's shoulder
And dad would throw the garbage all across the floor
As we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for

And this is the room
One afternoon I knew I could love you
And from above you how I sank into your soul
Into that secret place where no one dares to go

And your mom would drink until she was no longer speaking
And dad would dream of all the different ways to die
Each one a little more than he could dare to try