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Danger is great joy, dark is bright as fire
1. My poem "Godfather Drosselmeyer" is now online at Goblin Fruit. It was written in 2012 for Shaun O'Brien, who danced the role in Balanchine's Nutcracker until his retirement in 1991. I saw him in 1987. I never saw him in another role. I've never seen a better take on it OH JEEZ I JUST REALIZED THAT'S WHO I ASSOCIATE JARETH WITH FROM LABYRINTH THE GOBLIN KING TURNING INTO AN OWL AS THE CLOCK COMES ROUND TO THIRTEEN SHAUN O'BRIEN'S DROSSELMEYER CROUCHED IN PLACE OF THE ORNAMENTAL OWL ATOP THE GRANDFATHER CLOCK BEATING THE TWELVE STROKES OF MIDNIGHT WITH HIS BLACK CLOAK LIKE WINGS I IMPRINTED ON THAT SCENE MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE BALLET AND I JUST NOTICED ALL THE RESONANCES NOW? and I say that with no disrespect to The Slutcracker's dildo-bearing Godmother. (The year I saw the ballet, she was a silver-haired, sashaying hellcat in leopard mesh panties and shitkicker boots, displayed to equal advantage by a high-and-low-cut purple gown that fell open everywhere. That's a valid interpretation as far as I'm concerned, but that early trace of nonhumanness is never going away.) The poem draws more from Hoffmann's "Nussknacker und Mausekönig" than from the ballet itself, but the memory is still there.
2. I've mentioned it before, but I love the treatment of the Seven Deadly Sins in Derek Jarman's video for the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin." The tableaux of the main narrative have Neil Tennant on trial for his life before the Inquisition, beautifully lit and balanced like paintings, deliberately recalling the style of Caravaggio (1986), which Tennant and Lowe had seen the previous year and fallen in love with; Tennant in captivity with Lowe as his ambiguous jailer looks ahead to Edward II (1991), as does the political directness of the song. The sins themselves seriously anticipate Wittgenstein (1993). Each is filmed against a black backdrop, a single figure with an identifying color and attribute. Avarice turns coins between his fingers and his mouth, the same minted gold as his skin; Pride dressed in beauty-mark black preens with a peacock-tailed fan; green-faced Envy is caged behind his own clawing nails. The prevailing palette of the trial is dusty, shadowy, fire-lit—torches, candles, bonfires, stakes—in a sinking twilight frame. The monks in their dun robes are medieval, the band look not too far off the turn of the twentieth century. The sins belong to no particular time at all. Spiky-haired Wrath is wearing a motorcycle jacket, throwing punches at the camera in the smoldering red light. Lust's fair hair is styled short, pearl earrings in the powdered curve of her shoulder; her nails are polished and she slowly peels a single glove. I find this interesting partly because I had believed that the visual style of Wittgenstein was dictated strictly by Jarman's available budget and AIDS-damaged eyesight, rather than being a technique he had previously experimented with; it works brilliantly there, for philosophical reasons. Here it might be indicating universality, but it's also just arresting. The sins must be invoked to appear: it's a, it's a, it's a—it's a sin. Avarice and Pride are seen in the first chorus, Envy and Lust in the second, Gluttony in the third and Wrath and Sloth in the final fadeout, the line repeating over and over again. By then we're cutting among all seven in flashes, never more than one to a shot. And none of them is ugly. Gluttony is the one I find most striking, because eating to excess should be easy to represent grotesquely—she's a fresh-faced young woman biting juicily into fruit, wiping her mouth on her wrist with unashamed relish. We should all look that good with whipped cream in our hair. Sloth (the only one not filmed against the void, because she has a pillow under her head) drowses like a fairy tale beneath the veil of her own finely braided hair. It suits the lyrics: the narrator's had a sense of shame beaten into him for everything he wants (no matter when or where or who), but he still doesn't think he deserved it. It's not like the sins are unique to him, besides. Gluttony's lustful eating is intercut with monks taking communion, the jailer breaking bread to share with his prisoner. Wrath throws a punch that cuts to a pyre, Sloth shifts slightly in her sleep as monks yawn and the tired jailer stretches. (Lowe looks thin and boyish for all the chains and leather gauntlets of his office; his tin hat gives him a saintly halo and I would swear an early shot of him tipping his head back is a three-second homage to the prologue of A Canterbury Tale (1944), the falconer watching his falcon become soldier watching a plane.) I will have to look through my Jarman books to see if he mentions the shoot anywhere; I'd love to know what he thought he was doing versus whatever I've taken away from it. It's one of my favorite music videos, no matter what.
3. Following on the previous, how was I unaware until tonight of Jarman's complete video for Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English" (1979)? I'd seen the last third, "Broken English" itself; it didn't click with me. But we open with "Witch's Song" and there's the mysterious and indescribably horrifying masked figure making its reappearance from The Art of Mirrors (1973) along with the angel-summoning flash of the mirror itself; the circling dance around a fire on waste ground, as in Jubilee (1977); a man and an androgyne make love in the smoke. A lot of skull-masks. A lot of gold. I feel like I'm looking at an allegory, but I don't know for what. 1979, maybe.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day! I have to go to sleep.
2. I've mentioned it before, but I love the treatment of the Seven Deadly Sins in Derek Jarman's video for the Pet Shop Boys' "It's a Sin." The tableaux of the main narrative have Neil Tennant on trial for his life before the Inquisition, beautifully lit and balanced like paintings, deliberately recalling the style of Caravaggio (1986), which Tennant and Lowe had seen the previous year and fallen in love with; Tennant in captivity with Lowe as his ambiguous jailer looks ahead to Edward II (1991), as does the political directness of the song. The sins themselves seriously anticipate Wittgenstein (1993). Each is filmed against a black backdrop, a single figure with an identifying color and attribute. Avarice turns coins between his fingers and his mouth, the same minted gold as his skin; Pride dressed in beauty-mark black preens with a peacock-tailed fan; green-faced Envy is caged behind his own clawing nails. The prevailing palette of the trial is dusty, shadowy, fire-lit—torches, candles, bonfires, stakes—in a sinking twilight frame. The monks in their dun robes are medieval, the band look not too far off the turn of the twentieth century. The sins belong to no particular time at all. Spiky-haired Wrath is wearing a motorcycle jacket, throwing punches at the camera in the smoldering red light. Lust's fair hair is styled short, pearl earrings in the powdered curve of her shoulder; her nails are polished and she slowly peels a single glove. I find this interesting partly because I had believed that the visual style of Wittgenstein was dictated strictly by Jarman's available budget and AIDS-damaged eyesight, rather than being a technique he had previously experimented with; it works brilliantly there, for philosophical reasons. Here it might be indicating universality, but it's also just arresting. The sins must be invoked to appear: it's a, it's a, it's a—it's a sin. Avarice and Pride are seen in the first chorus, Envy and Lust in the second, Gluttony in the third and Wrath and Sloth in the final fadeout, the line repeating over and over again. By then we're cutting among all seven in flashes, never more than one to a shot. And none of them is ugly. Gluttony is the one I find most striking, because eating to excess should be easy to represent grotesquely—she's a fresh-faced young woman biting juicily into fruit, wiping her mouth on her wrist with unashamed relish. We should all look that good with whipped cream in our hair. Sloth (the only one not filmed against the void, because she has a pillow under her head) drowses like a fairy tale beneath the veil of her own finely braided hair. It suits the lyrics: the narrator's had a sense of shame beaten into him for everything he wants (no matter when or where or who), but he still doesn't think he deserved it. It's not like the sins are unique to him, besides. Gluttony's lustful eating is intercut with monks taking communion, the jailer breaking bread to share with his prisoner. Wrath throws a punch that cuts to a pyre, Sloth shifts slightly in her sleep as monks yawn and the tired jailer stretches. (Lowe looks thin and boyish for all the chains and leather gauntlets of his office; his tin hat gives him a saintly halo and I would swear an early shot of him tipping his head back is a three-second homage to the prologue of A Canterbury Tale (1944), the falconer watching his falcon become soldier watching a plane.) I will have to look through my Jarman books to see if he mentions the shoot anywhere; I'd love to know what he thought he was doing versus whatever I've taken away from it. It's one of my favorite music videos, no matter what.
3. Following on the previous, how was I unaware until tonight of Jarman's complete video for Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English" (1979)? I'd seen the last third, "Broken English" itself; it didn't click with me. But we open with "Witch's Song" and there's the mysterious and indescribably horrifying masked figure making its reappearance from The Art of Mirrors (1973) along with the angel-summoning flash of the mirror itself; the circling dance around a fire on waste ground, as in Jubilee (1977); a man and an androgyne make love in the smoke. A lot of skull-masks. A lot of gold. I feel like I'm looking at an allegory, but I don't know for what. 1979, maybe.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day! I have to go to sleep.
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I am glad to be a source for art in your life. Even when it's other people's art I'm linking because I think it's awesome. (It's awesome.)
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That's a compliment!
(I remember yours, though. I liked it.)
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I think that except maybe envy, the seven can be thought of as normal human behaviours that become harmful in extreme form; and that can also exist as their opposites (i.e. the dieting industry is a form of gluttony).
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Heh. I also like the subway posters. "Twirque du Soleil."
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Envy is the other really interesting one—he looks so unhappy, unable to bear himself. He'll do his own face more harm with those claws than anyone else's. The same gesture on Lust, of hands pushing though hair, is a confident stretch and showing off, luxuriating in her body. I don't see the sins as interacting with each other—I don't think he's envying her directly—but I also don't assume it's an accident that one shot immediately follows the other.
the seven can be thought of as normal human behaviours that become harmful in extreme form
Fair enough. I do not think anger is without purpose, I enjoy cooking, and I happen to be really fond of desire. Sloth is harder to be positive about, but some days you really need just not to do anything.
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Thank you! Same to you! I hope you found sleep.
I'm not gigging today, for the first time in a few years. It's probably just as well, as I've a cold and I'd rather save my strength and be able to play at a couple of schools later in the week.
I hope today's a good day for you and yours. I'll try watching those videos when I'm better able to concentrate.
Congratulations on the poem's going online. I remember liking that one, and it's good to read it again.
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Thank you!
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I only found out recently Jarman had directed the PSB video; it's a beautiful thing. I shall check out the Faithfull in a bit.
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Why settle for just one?
I love The Art of Mirrors so much. I find it genuinely unsettling to watch: it's magic. I mean that in the flattest, most taxonomic sense—it's a ritual and the audience's gaze is part of it. I found it on the Kino DVD of Jarman's Tempest, which I feel is the correct setting for it. The original title was A Summoning of Angels.
I think that mask is a painted paper bag, but that really doesn't help.
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I am glad you like it!
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I remember seeing this video when you mentioned it before and thinking it was quite lovely (and I do love the Pet Shop Boys!) Thinking about what you wrote just now (…well, a day or two ago now), I'm struck by what's probably always been perfectly obvious to everyone else, but which I'm just "getting" now--that the sins are supposed to be perversions of things that are natural/good. At least, that's what seems to be the case with something like gluttony, and seems to be what's shown in the images in the video. Well, the video's problematizing the whole notion of sin, at least as set up by society, I suppose, so…
Anyway, thanks for getting me to look at it again!
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It attacks the immune system; Jarman got toxoplasmosis. I believe he was the first documented human being to start going blind from it rather than suffering the more common brain infection, which made him a medical landmark, but was not much comfort at the time. He did not lose all his sight thanks to AZT, but he was still nearly blind by the time he made Blue (1993), his final film, in which all the narration is spoken against a blank blue background. I have not seen it. I know I will find it devastating, so I keep holding off. I've read his book about color, Chroma (1993), which somehow does not feel quite as final.
Well, the video's problematizing the whole notion of sin, at least as set up by society, I suppose, so…
I think this post was my discovery that the problematization is working on multiple levels: it's easy to see in the main narrative that Tennant's character is being tried (and burned) unjustly, but it eluded me until now that even the representation of the sins is making an argument.
Anyway, thanks for getting me to look at it again!
You're very welcome! I hadn't thought, honestly, very much about whether the mortal sins were supposed to be offenses of excess (in either direction) or inherently destructive, but then I kept watching this video and philosophy happened. I don't agree with the concept of sin as a thing that exists in the world, but I am in accord with the idea that almost any healthy behavior can be taken to unhealthy extremes and conversely that there are applications and reasons for almost everything human beings do.
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I liked the links it drew between sins, too: avarice tonguing those coins, making avarice a sort of gluttony--which it is, in the sense that it involves consumption (though insofar as it's just the longing for material things, it's better paired with lust…) And anger and envy were visually linked by the violence of their hands, anger punching and envy clawing at his own face.
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(And how beautiful to see your poem live at Goblin Fruit. It is wonderful.)
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I really feel like I have to do something with that now! I'm not yet sure what.
(And how beautiful to see your poem live at Goblin Fruit. It is wonderful.)
Thank you.
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