Emily Says...

One of the authors I'm studying this year is Emily Dickinson. This is a mixed blessing, for while I fell in love with Emily's poems a couple of years ago—she is now one of my favourite poets—, studying them for the French "aggregation" feels like raping the text.
Below I've posted one of her poems that speaks to me the most, especially because of my current situation. The two last lines are interesting as they seem to encapsulate an idea central to postmodern/Emerging Christianity.

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I'm going, all along.

Sixties Caesar

Thursday night I went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, played by the American Repertory Theater company. I hadn't been to see a play in ages; the last one I'd seen was Othello at the Globe in London, a couple of years ago. I'd forgotten how much I loved the theatre!
I used to go quite often, when I lived in Château-Thierry. They had two small local theatres and they always had something interesting on. And my high school literature teachers often organised trips to Reims to see plays there.

The Comédie de Reims is a really good theatre. A great variety of plays are staged there, sometimes in French, sometimes in the play's original language. Most of those I saw there were really interesting; a few were pretty bad—the kind of plays where the director gets the female lead to show her tits, probably hoping that this will somehow compensate for the play's mediocrity.

I think I can safely say that the ART's Julias Caesar was one of the best plays I've ever seen. Several critics accused it of being too "facetious", or too difficult to understand, because of its style. But I think the director, Arthur Nauzyciel, really brought the characters—and the play itsel—to life, which is quite an achievement in itself: Julias Caesar is far from being one of Shakespeare's greatest plays (the plot is quite basic, the characters are very one-dimensional when compared to Hamlet, or MacBeth, or Lear). He stuck close to the text, but brought to it a depth which is lacking in the original.

It was full of surprises. The play was re-set in America in the 1960s, probably to draw parallels between Caesar and JFK's assassination. It was fun to hear Shakespeare played with an American accent, for a change! The actors were dressed in sixties-style suits, and surrounded by mod couches, lamps and armchairs. They often walked about with a glass of wine in their hands, as if they had walked out of some fancy cocktail-party.
The background was a huge, life-size photograph of an empty theatre (see below), which, as a classic postmodern device, kept reminding the spectators that what they were watching was fiction, not "real life". I'm sure Shakespare would have appreciated that, as he always liked to remind his audience that all the stage did was reflect the world. At the beginning of the play, the actors faced the audience, in front of huge white frames, which made them look like celebrities caught on one of Andy Warhol's prints.
The actors were quite talented, especially Mark Montgomery, in the role of Cassius. A lot of them had film/TV experience: one appeared in The Dead Poet Society, another in The Wire. One of the actors (who played Brutus's servant, Lucius) delivered all of his "lines" in sign language; his character was ever present on stage, most of the time sleeping, or looking at the other characters, as if he were in a dream. At one point of the play he disappeared, and walked back on stage dressed in a pair of Superman pyjamas and a cape. I'm not quite sure what the director was trying to get at there!
But the most surprising thing of all was that a jazz trio was present on the side of the stage during the whole play. From time to time the singer, in her black evening gown and covered in silver jewellery, would start crooning into a ribbon microphone, while two men in suits and bow tie suavely plucked the double bass and picked the guitar. The songs marked the end of scenes, or sometimes even interrupt scenes to ironically comment, in a way, what was happening (a few scenes before Brutus's suicide, she sang... "Suicide is Painless"); it had also had the effect of being a show within a show.

All in all, I had a great time. The only annoying thing is that, since I managed to get a good seat, I was surrounded by the Fur Squad—ie the bourgeoisie of Reims—who always show up at the theatre (or at the jazz festival), just because they hope to be seen, and they always end up sitting there bored to death, since they don't have the foggiest notion about art.

The French Connection #1

C'est décidé. I'm going to initiate myself to French culture—something I've managed to avoid for twenty years despite the fact that I've been living in the country for all that time.

But I don’t mean French high culture. I already enjoy French literature, French painting, French classical music, French kissing and French cancan. I mean French popular culture. It's something I've always snubbed.

I'm starting with cinema. I've always found modern French acting to be, well, frankly, terrible. And most of the French films I've seen (apart from a few exceptions) I didn't like, either because it wasn't my type of humour, either because they've been the kind of films with scenes where you see a close up of a man washing his hands in the sink for five minutes straight (as one friend from Norn Iron once put it). But I decided to give it another chance. I thought I'd start with the nouvelle vague, an influential movement in cinema which started in France in the 1960s.

So last week I watched Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville. I thought it would be an easy start, since it's science fiction: I wasn't disappointed. It was brilliant. It wasn't like the American sci-fi B-movies of the time. No airships, no spacesuits, nothing extra-terrestrial; the setting was a French city in a not too distant fascist future. (Everything was shot in real locations in Paris.) There were a lot of themes apparently inspired from 1984 and Brave New World, but with a distinctive French touch. It was exciting, and fun to watch, but there were some very interesting shots, which had an experimental feel to them that hasn't been lost, even when being viewed today. And the acting... well, I was expecting bad, affected acting. But the actors were really talented, especially Anna Karina (pictured left), a sort of French Diana Rigg or Audrey Hepburn. (I actually found out afterwards that she was Danish-born, and that the lead male actor, Eddie Constantine, was born in LA, but I don't know if that has anything to do with the acting style).

Anyway I think I'm a convert, and I'm ready to see my next 1960s French movie... Probably Godard's Breathless. I'll keep you posted!

By the way, here's the most famous scene from Alphaville:

Quill in Hand

While reading a friend's poetry blog, I realised that I've been neglecting my own for a while. I was working at my Masters thesis this year, and now I'm preparing for that oh-so-French ordeal, the agrégation, so I haven't had much time to publish anything lately. The last time I completed a poem was over a year ago. But I haven't been completely unproductive. At the beginning of the year, around February I think, I had an idea for a novel. It partly evolved from a different project which I was working at the year before (see here for a snippet) and which was much too ambitious for me at the time, but most of it is new. I've been thinking it over during the past six months, trying to come up with a few things. I wrote a few scenes here and there. I managed to (mentally) paint the setting. During the summer I concentrated on the characters quite a bit. They are taking shape, coming to life, becoming "fuller", which is a lot of fun. Thanks to that, I've been able to concentrate on the plot more in the past few weeks. Nothing is fixed or definitive yet, of course, but I have an idea of what I want to get at. I don't want to talk about it too much yet, but I suppose you could say that it's a sort of coming-of-age story set around a second-hand bookshop (nope it's not a Black Books rip-off, as fun as that would be!) in a fictitious town in France. I've no idea if I'll ever finish it, or ever dare show it to anyone, but still, it's something which I'm starting to get quite excited about!

PS: this is a small text I'd written with the story in mind, but I've no idea if I'll include it or not.

Neighbourhood Issues

Matreesmo

The picture isn't very clear, but hey.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Me and You and Everyone We Know came out four years ago but I only got round to seeing it now. It was directed by Miranda July, who also plays the lead role. Her quirky character, Christine, provides taxi services for old people. She's also a video artist, and she tries to get her work exhibited in a museum. She falls in love with Richard, a shoes salesman who has just got divorced. He tries to raise his kids and connect with them, but in vain - to try to get their attention, he even sets his hand alight and waves at them.
And that's one of the main themes of the film : connecting in the age of the internet. This is mostly developed in the subplots involving Richard's two boys, two teenage schoolgirls and a curator of a museum of contemporary art. The boys' first experience of sex takes the form of a scatological online chat with a complete stranger. A middle-aged man flirts with two schoolgirls, but when things might actually get physical, he hides from them. The curator views Christine's video artwork, and at the end of the cassette is a kind of pre-recorded interview of Christine : another delayed, indirect and virtual exchange. And although the exhibition the curator is preparing is a reflexion about the alienation caused by virtual communication, she herself has no one in her life. What's interesting is that the film came out just before the boom of networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, et al), but it brings some interesting insights. Even though technology and the Internet make it much easier, cheaper and quicker to communicate, humans are unable to connect in the computer age. The computer screen has become a barrier - an actual screen, if we want to play with semantics - between people. There is a breakdown of intimacy - whether platonic or sexual. Intimacy is replaced by an unhealthy type of fantasy - fantasy has always existed, and there's nothing wrong with it in itself, but the division created by the screen means that it's never acted out, there is never any real contact or sharing or exchange.
The film has some uncomfortable moments in it (the scene where a 8 year old kid sex-chats online with a stranger without even knowing what sex is is quite disturbing) and might be too quirky for the taste of some people, but it's one of the best I've seen in a while. Miranda July and John Hawkes (Richard) are great performers, some of the lines are memorable, the strange music fits the film perfectly, and there's some beautiful camera shots (the film actually won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 2005). But again, I don't think it's a film which will speak to everyone. Some people might think it's too pretentious, or just not get it. But it's probably like a good red wine. If you swallow it too quickly, you'll only taste the vinegary bits. If you let your tongue savour all the flavours it has to offer, you'll most likely love it!

Wrapped Up in Books

I've no time to update my blog these days. I'm really busy — and not in a trendy, livin' the vida loca, out-every-night way. In a monastic, nose between the pages, dreaming about words kind of way. I'm wrapped up in books.
And that's cool with me.

Duct Tape Christ

Yesterday we went to Paris to meet up with friends we hadn't seen for a while, and we decided to go to the National Museum of Modern Art in the Centre Georges Pompidou. I didn't really know what to expect because I know very little about 20th century art. I was afraid of it being very arrogant, filled with paintings that any three-year old could make and which are only considered art because their creators are famous. There was some of that, but not too much, and I actually really enjoyed our visit.

There was an exhibition of works by Jacques Villeglé, a French artist I'd never heard of, who has been making pictures out of lacerated and ripped posters he found on walls in French cities since the 1950s : political posters, adverstisement posters and band posters. To quote the museum's website, "Villeglé's work is a tremendous seismograph of our "collective realities" such as they are distilled by urban space and whose stories are recreated for us via the unusual reality of its walls. It reveals to what extent what we see is conditioned by this everyday visual environment and reactivates our memory in a critical, but also enjoyable, way."
Villeglé is also famous for his "alphabet socio-politique" in which he uses political and religious symbols. The exhibition was fascinating, and would definitely be very interesting for semioticians.

There was also an exhibition about futurism. I didn't know much about the movement, but one of our friends has studied it during the year so she was able to explain quite a bit. The futurists focussed on machines, speed and the industrial world, and believed that technology would change the world for good. Unsuprisingly, a lot of them were fascists. I didn't really like the paintings, but they revealed the way in which the futurists perceived the world at that time, which was very interesting. With today's environmental crisis it's hard to understand how naïve they could be about technology.

Finally we visited the main gallery. Some of the more contemporary works were very pretentious (a white canvas with a line or two brushed across : it might have been original 30 years ago but it's a bit cliché now. Time to move on?). But they were some really thought-provoking works. One was a video : an artist went to Yemen to film kids carrying placards he had made and on which were written in arabic the names of famous Western "heroes" (Minnie Mouse, Picasso, Zorro, Santa Claus, James Bond...) to show how capitalism finds a way into poor societies and undermines centuries of local tradition and culture.

Another interesting work was a red and white duct-taped crucifix. Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the artist, but she or he was South African, and wanted to represent the way religion is used to justify the most terrible things. I think it's a very powerful work, and it could be applied to the situation in Northern Ireland or the way God was used to justify the war in Iraq.


I'll finish by posting a picture of the Parisian skyline. The view at the top of the Pompidou centre is breath-taking. When you see Paris from the top, you understand why so many people think it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Books

I was just browsing Youtube videos and found this short stop-motion, which I thought was very sweet and cleverly-done. Bravo to Molly Green for making it.

Eagle vs Shark

I enjoyed watching Eagle vs Shark a few days ago. It's a kiwi rom com featuring Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords), with a quirky, offbeat feel to it, in many ways comparable to Napoleon Dynamite : it has nunchucks, weird animal drawings, and strange dialogue.
The soundtrack is great, most of the tracks are by New Zealand indie band the Phoenix Foundation.

If you want to check it out, you'll find the link at the bottom of this post, but hurry! Movies uploaded to Youtube usually don't last long these days.

Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton

Last week I finished a book I had started to read months ago, but never had time to finish because of coursework : Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton. Published in 1848, the novel had a lot of influence in its day, as it highlighted the plight of ordinary working people in Manchester in the 1840s. Being both a literature lover, a history enthusiast and a socialist, I had high expectations. And I wasn't disappointed.

I'm not going to say much about the plotline because I don't want to spoil the story for anyone. But the novel centres on two working class families and the struggles they go through everyday : hunger, disease, death of loved ones, appalling living and working conditions...

Elizabeth Gaskell was by no means a socialist so I wasn't expecting to find any socialist critique of capitalism in her novel. But she was a social reformer. Although she didn't want to see the end of the capitalist system, she was genuinely concerned about the plight of the less fortunate, and she set out to let England know about the terrible living conditions of the working people in Manchester. In fact, she exposed herself to a lot of criticism from the people who frequented her milieu, who were often mill owners and "masters", of the class which she berated in her novel for not being attentive to the workers' needs.

But the most important theme in the novel is arguably the theme of reconciliation. Gaskell was a Unitarian Universalist, in fact married to a Unitarian preacher, and she strongly believed in human goodness. Many have criticised her for this, but I don't think she meant it in a naïve way. She does seem to have believed in evil. But in an age when most people believed the working class to be a horde of brutish, degenerate and evil animals (remember that this was the age of phrenology and misapplied Darwinism), Gaskell was really eager to show that these people were in fact human beings, just like their masters, and she actually tried to explain why they sometimes resorted to violence. If the characters she created (both working people and "masters") are almost always redeemed from their propensity for evil, and ultimately become reconciled to their fellow human beings and to God, I don't think it's because of any naïveté on her part, but rather because she believed that it was really possible for people to change, and hoped to see it come true.

The Forester

Here's one of my latest poems. I've posted it here 'cause it's not too long, but it's also on my poetry blog, A Postmodern Bard.

The Forester
I met you in the woods on a dark autumn day
When a fair young fawn, fleeting, Ied me astray
Through the deep green clouds, into the clearing
Where you held court with the oak and yew trees.
A red flannel shirt and denim slacks were your robes;
An empty packet of cigarettes, your sceptre.
Your beard was an ancient thicket, sage and regal,
And your long sylvan hair was your silver circlet.
Your eyes were black and deep, bottomless wells
Wisened by the water of life you always
Carried in the pocket of your duffle coat.
I was a lost child, under a moonless canopy,
Seeking a star that might, perchance, light my way.
You never said a word, but slowly raised your eyes,
And with your arms outstretched, you parted the emerald sea.
We never said a word, but I went, and you wept,
Your smile stinging my back with my own shame.
When I turned around for a last glimpse of you,
I saw you swinging your axe, bringing it down,
Felling timber for your own funeral pyre.

Tim, 17 June 2008

The Great Beyond

Sometimes, just sometimes, pictures speak more eloquently than words. This is certainly the case with these photographs of the Marseilles skyline, taken by D, my bro-in-law.
Nature is so beautiful that on rare occasions, it leaves you wordless, breathless and reaching for the ineffable. I'm not trying to get all metaphysical on your arse, but it does make you think.

When I lived in the country, I used to spend more time in nature, in the woods, in the fields, or watching the starry sky; and it's true that it would make me slow down, enjoy what was around me, and wonder where such beauty could come from. It's something I miss in the urban bustle of Rheims, but such pictures show that even when you live in the city, you can catch glimpses of the Great Beyond.

Check out the pics here.