sovay | These days have got so much explaining to do

Current Music: Burning Airlines, "Sweet Deals on Surgery"

These days have got so much explaining to do

David Pendleton, archivist and programmer at the Harvard Film Archive, has died. I didn't know him well. He was responsible for the annual all-night marathons and for a number of retrospectives and series I enjoyed. I asked him once if he would ever consider doing a retrospective of Powell and Pressburger and he said he'd think about it. He was fun to talk with. He was not a reasonable age to die.

I keep coming back to H.D.'s "R.A.F." (1941):

for I am stricken
as never before,

by the thought
of ineptitude, sloth, evil

that prosper,
while such as he fall.

Every time I hear that some kind of artist, writer, musician, activist has died, someone who made the world better. Enough.