Saturday, November 21, 2009
A Flock of Seagulls
Although AFOS never were my kind of band, you do have to admit that their brand of pop songs still have an appeal; even today you can instantly recognize the melodies.
A Flock of Seagulls - Wishing (If I had a Photograph of You)
It's not the way you look
It's not the way that you smile
Although there's something to them
It's not the way you have your hair
It's not that certain style
Though it could be that with you
If I had a photograph of you
Just something to remind me
I wouldn't spend my life just wishing
It's not the make-up
And it's not the way that you dance
It's not the evening sky
It's more the way your eyes are laughing
As they glance
Across the great divide
If I had a photograph of you
Just something to remind me
I wouldn't spend my life just wishing
It's not the things you say
It's not the things you do
There must be something more
If I feel this way for so long
Tell me is it all for nothing
You still walk out the door
If I had a photograph of you
Just something to remind me
I wouldn't spend my life just wishing
R.I.P. Daul Kim
Just found the very sad news that the Korean super model and artist Daul Kim has commited suicide:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6615524/Supermodel-Daul-Kim-found-hanged-after-posting-web-messages.html
New York
Lower Manhattan's 120 Wall Street Building from Brooklyn Bridge. September 1943
ph: Andreas Feininger
Lydia Davis: Therapists
THERAPISTS
A friend of mine goes with her three-year-old girl to a family therapist. This therapist has guided her in her troubles with the child's bed-wetting, fear of the dark, and dependence on the bottle. One by one these problems are solved. The mother, acting on the advice of the therapist, is careful to avoid attempting to solve more than one problem at a time. The child is unhappy and nervous and holds her body in a cramped position, as though protecting herself. Her mother is also nervous, and is never still: her hands flutter and her eyebrows fly up into her forehead. There is a dark brown mole on her cheek, and this dark point is the only color in her face.
Another friend calls her husband's therapist and tells him she is going to ask her husband to move out. Naturally, the therapist has to report this to his patient. The husband is hurt and indignant. My friend is adamant. Her own therapist thinks she must now be under great pressure from her husband, and this is true. Encouraged by her therapist, however, she persists in asking her husband to leave. At last he does. He now sees his children in his own apartment several times a week, including all day Sunday. Insulted by his wife's behavior, he tries to complain only to his therapist, as his therapist has advised, but he cannot help complaining to everyone -- his therapist, his friends, his lawyer, his wife, and even his children, The older boy comes home angry at his mother because he does not know what is the truth anymore. He breaks two of the dining-room chairs. His mother, a frail and small woman, sits on him for several hours before he is calm enough to tell her what he is feeling.
Friday, November 20, 2009
A Certain Ratio
A Certain Ratio were formed 1977 and one of the first bands to sign with the famous Manchester label Factory records. Their style was branded as post punk funk, and their sound is indeed an ingenious combination of punk and Northern Soul, and it's very funky.
A Certain Ratio - Shack Up
Robert Frank's Elevator Girl
(found this at npr)
(ph: Ian Padgham)
One of photographer Robert Frank's most famous images aroused a particular interest from his friend, beat writer Jack Kerouac.
In his introduction to Frank's book of photos The Americans, Kerouac writes, "That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name & address?"
Now we know.
Today, Sharon Collins lives in San Francisco. About 10 years ago she visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and found herself drawn to a particular photo — the same photo Jack Kerouac wrote about.
"I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it," she says. "And then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me."
The iconic shot shows a young girl, pressing an elevator button, looking up with an unreadable expression.
At the time, her name was Sharon Goldstein, growing up in Miami Beach. At fifteen, she got a summer job as an elevator girl at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel. She says the hotel was always full of tourists, and many of them had cameras. Although she wishes she remembers this particular tourist, she doesn't. But she pieced together what happened by looking at Frank's contact sheet.
"Robert Frank took about four photos of me without a flash in the elevator. I didn't know he was taking them. And then when the elevator emptied of its 'blurred demons,'" she says, "he asked me to turn around and smile at the camera. And I flashed a smile, put my hands on my hips. I hammed it up for about eight or ten frames."
But from the single image that was chosen for The Americans, Kerouac guessed she was lonely. Collins thinks he was pretty close.
"He saw in me something that most people didn't see. I have a big smile and a big laugh, and I'm usually pretty funny. So people see one thing in me. And I suspect Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper. That only people who were really close to me can see. It's not necessarily loneliness, it's ... dreaminess."
(ph: Ian Padgham)
One of photographer Robert Frank's most famous images aroused a particular interest from his friend, beat writer Jack Kerouac.
In his introduction to Frank's book of photos The Americans, Kerouac writes, "That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name & address?"
Now we know.
Today, Sharon Collins lives in San Francisco. About 10 years ago she visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and found herself drawn to a particular photo — the same photo Jack Kerouac wrote about.
"I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it," she says. "And then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me."
The iconic shot shows a young girl, pressing an elevator button, looking up with an unreadable expression.
At the time, her name was Sharon Goldstein, growing up in Miami Beach. At fifteen, she got a summer job as an elevator girl at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel. She says the hotel was always full of tourists, and many of them had cameras. Although she wishes she remembers this particular tourist, she doesn't. But she pieced together what happened by looking at Frank's contact sheet.
"Robert Frank took about four photos of me without a flash in the elevator. I didn't know he was taking them. And then when the elevator emptied of its 'blurred demons,'" she says, "he asked me to turn around and smile at the camera. And I flashed a smile, put my hands on my hips. I hammed it up for about eight or ten frames."
But from the single image that was chosen for The Americans, Kerouac guessed she was lonely. Collins thinks he was pretty close.
"He saw in me something that most people didn't see. I have a big smile and a big laugh, and I'm usually pretty funny. So people see one thing in me. And I suspect Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper. That only people who were really close to me can see. It's not necessarily loneliness, it's ... dreaminess."
Lydia Davis: Trying to Learn
TRYING TO LEARN
I am trying to learn that this playful man who teases me is the same as that serious man talking money to me so seriously he does not even see me anymore and that patient man offering me advice in times of trouble and that angry man slamming the door as he leaves the house. I have often wanted the playful man to be more serious, and the serious man to be less serious, and the patient man to be more playful. As for the angry man, he is a stranger to me and I do not feel it is wrong to hate him. Now I am learning that if I say bitter words to the angry man as he leaves the house, I am at the same time wounding the others, the ones I do not want to wound, the playful man teasing, the serious man talking money, and the patient man offering advice. Yet I look at the patient man, for instance, whom I would want above all to protect from such bitter words as mine, and though I tell myself he is the same man as the others, I can only believe I said those words, not to him, but to another, my enemy, who deserved all my anger.
The Green Mile (1999)
The story about the lives of guards on death row leading up to the execution of black man accused of child murder & rape, who has the power of faith healing.
Heart-warming and magical death row drama ingeniously incorporating a multitude of stories.
Lydia Davis: The Actors
THE ACTORS
IN OUR TOWN there is an actor, H. -- a tall, bold, feverish sort of man -- who easily fills the theater when he plays Othello, and about whom the women here become very excited. He is handsome enough compared to the other men, though his nose is somewhat thick and his torso rather short for his height. His acting is stiff and inflexible, his gestures obviously memorized and mechanical, and yet his voice is strong enough to make one forget all that. On the nights when he is unable to leave his bed because of illness or intoxication -- and this happens more often than one would imagine -- the part is taken by J., his understudy. Now J. is pale and small, completely unsuitable for the part of the Moor; his legs tremble as he comes on stage and faces the many empty seats. His voice hardly carries beyond the first few rows, and his small hands flap uselessly in the smoky air. We feel only pity and irritation as we watch him, and yet by the end of the play we find ourselves unaccountably moved, as though he had managed to convey something timid or sad in Othello's nature. But the mannerisms and skill of H. and J. -- which we analyze minutely when we visit together in the afternoons and continue to contemplate even once we are alone after dinner -- seem suddenly insignificant when the great Sparr comes down from the city and gives us a real performance of Othello. Then we are so carried away, so exhausted with emotion, that it is impossible to speak of what we feel. We are almost grateful when he is gone and we are left with H. and J., imperfect as they are, for they are familiar to us and comfortable, like our own people.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
I'm Reed Fish (2006)
Reed Fish's life turns into chaos when a high school crush returns to Mud Meadows on the eve of his marriage to the small town's sweetheart.
Light-weighted, but agreeable film in film melodrama set in an almost idyllic small town American community.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
