"He thought down to the bottom. At the bottom of water he thought 'famine.' This thought disturbed him and he gave it the name of an obscure Sicilian goddess (Nestis), hoping no one would ask more questions."

 

 

Jenatsch

 

 

 

So I saw Jenatsch the film with a descendant of Jörg Jenatsch (Daniel Jenatsch).  It would have been a better film if Daniel were the one to have gone back in time to kill his relative rather than some nosy alcoholic journalist but the filmmaker apparently didn't know that Daniel existed or didn't care.  Daniel said that, should he have been the one to be sent back in time, he would have killed his ancestor to save the family reputation.  But I wonder, would that have been the end of the family line?  If we take the thesis from Back to the Future seriously (a better film that deals with the same problematic), then, well, yes, maybe.

Nevertheless, I still think Daniel should have murdered his ancestor to save the film, to add another trope, as you might say.  Instead we had a domination of objects, cheesy train scenes (a la Hitchcock) and terrible women characters.  The least they could have done is to hire Danie to make the music since, even though we would have only been 2 at the time (he's not known as a boy genius for nothing), he would have certainly come up with something better than the composer who was paid.  Oh well, you can't win them all.

I just received Lucy Ives' new book in the mail and it's killing me.  I read half of it this morning (I still need to read the rest and then digest it before I say anything that poses as intelligent) and it's pretty heart-breaking stuff.  Not in an obvious sort of way, but more in the way the book unfolds.  If I was wearing a hat, I'd take it off.

pwned

Rejoice! The sun is shining for the first time in almost two weeks! And it's only -11 C! Summer here we come!

"Futures not achieved are only brances of the past: dead branches"

"O Sternenfall, / von einer Brücke einmal eingesehn - / Dich nicht vergessen. Stehn!"

"'The past,' said Carathis, 'cannot be recalled; but it behoves us to think of the future.'"

"Ist die Einsamkeit gut? Ja, sie ist. Nur gibt es dramatische Blicke voraus"

"What he liked was the seabed, that other earth, with its plains that weren't plains and valleys that weren't valleys and cliffs that weren't cliffs"

"He didn't like the sea either, or what ordinary mortals call the sea, which is really only the surface of the sea, waves kicked up by the wind that have gradually become the metaphor for defeat and madness"

"Children Are Spinozists"

The unicorn blows my mind!  Wait for it.

"They are drifting, an infinite throng, and their long shadows quake over valley and brake"

"The Realm of Architecture is a Realm Within Which All Other Things Are"

Please forgive me for getting all "Wizard of Oz" and "Dark Side of the Moon" on you, but please watch this video at the same time as listening to Pierre Henry "Concerto de Ambiguites."

 

You won't regret it!  (I realize this is hard to find, so if you can't I recommend something in a totally different direction, something quiet, like Morton Feldman...)

And the World Continues to Be Cold And I Continue to Retreat

Things to Make the Snow Melt

Wallpaper Themes 3: Walls

 

Slush Pile (Or Things to Help Me Get Through the Slush)