ph: Allan Grant
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Indeterminacy 75
(collage: Colleen Ringrose)
In Zen they say:
If something is boring after two
minutes,
try it
for four.
If
still boring,
try
it for eight,
sixteen,
thirty-two,
and so on.
Eventually one discovers that it’s not
boring at all
but very interesting.
- John Cage
The Bribe (1949)
A federal agent, in Central America to trace stolen plane engines, falls for the gorgeous wife of the chief suspect.
Lesser known noir thriller with wonderfully moody photography and a remarkable performance by Charles Laughton.
Gentleman Jim (1942)
As bareknuckled boxing enters the modern era, brash extrovert Jim Corbett uses new rules and dazzlingly innovative footwork to rise to the top of the top of the boxing world.
Good-humored biopic with its star clearing enjoying himself.
Boogie Nights (1997)
The story of a young man's adventures in the Californian pornography industry of the 1970s and 1980s.
Another movie depicting John Holmes' career Paul Thomas Anderson wonderfully recreates the permissive 70s exemplified by the porn industry, but also includes its downfall (from film to video) in the early 80s.
Indeterminacy 28
Now and then I come across an article on that rock
garden in Japan where there’s just a space of sand
and a few rocks in it. The author, no
matter who he is, sets out either to suggest
that the position of the rocks in the space follows
some geometrical plan productive of the beauty one
observes, or not satisfied with mere
suggestion, he makes diagrams and detailed
analyses. So when I met Ashihara, the
Japanese music and dance critic (his first name is
Eryo), I told him that I thought those stones
could have been anywhere in that space, that
I doubted whether their relationship was a planned
one, that the emptiness of the sand was such
that it could support stones at any points in it.
Ashihara had already given me a present
(some table mats), but then he asked me to wait
a moment while he went into his hotel.
He came out and gave me the tie I am now wearing.
¶ After he
heard this lecture which I first gave in Brussels
in the French Pavilion, Karlheinz
Stockhausen said, “You should have said,
‘the tie I was wearing yesterday’.”
- John Cage
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