Advance notice: War Horse

Yes, okay, so I'm going to watch War Horse on Sunday. The kid is the excuse, but I promise to retain an open mind - by which I mean, I anticipate that I will dislike the film immensely (despite its few compensations) and will duly report my experiences.

I realise, with horror, that I haven't written about any films since May or June last year*. Not even just to be nasty.

So in anticipation, and as preliminary preparation, I thought I'd remind you guys what it used to be like here when I talked cinema: Slumdog, Dasvidaniya, about the Asian Awards and so on.

Thank god for people like Banno, I tell you. (Here, for instance, just for your reading pleasure, is Banno on Ghajini. )

I'm in danger of forgetting I ever used to have anything to do with cinema.

So, I promise to bring despatches back from the front. Stay tuned.

__

*Announcements, naturally, don't count.

Alice Walker on travelling to Palestine

I can't even pull a section to quote. Read the whole thing.

Speak, Celebrity

Yes, more than one post - what's happening to me?

Had to - had to -  link to Speak, Celebrity. I landed there when someone linked to Samuel Jackson reading Neruda, and lovely it is too, but it wasn't long before I had three poems on loop from another celebrity whose Voice is...just... *swoons*

*and cannot answer eager, curious questions.*

Carson's interstitial poetry

I adore Anne Carson. I want Nox but I probably want her Antigonik more. I mean, just look at this:

Of course, I'm obssessed with Antigone, so that's another reason to get this whenever I can.

There's a general post brewing about theatre, triggered by Swar's comment here last month; one of these days, I shall actually sit and write it all down.

Screening of Partners in Crime

Paromita Vohra's new feature-length documentary, Partners in Crime will be screened at the Prasad's Preview Theatre and at the Department of Communications, University of Hyderabad. Details:

SCREENING 1
Date: 11th February, Saturday
Time: 3.30pm tea, screening 4pm
Venue: Prasad Preview Theatre, Rd No 2, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad

SCREENING 2
Date: 15th February, Wednesday
Time: 3:45 pm
Venue: Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad-500046

About the film:

Is piracy organized crime or class struggle? Are alternative artists who want to hold rights over their art and go it alone in the market, visionaries or nutcases? Is the fine line between plagiarism and inspiration a cop-out or a whole other way of looking at the fluid nature of authorship? Who owns a song – the person who made it or the person who paid for it? When more than three fourths of those with an internet connection download all sorts of material for free, are they living out a brand new cultural freedom – or are they criminals?
Metal heads who market their own music, folklorists who turn tribal aphorisms into short stories, music archivists who hoard and share everything they can get their hands on, anti-piracy fanatics who think piracy funds terrorism, a smooth talking DVD street salesman who outlines the efficiency of the illegal market, media moguls, lobbyists, “monetizers, downloaders, uploaders, the biggest hit song of 2010 and the small time nautanki singer whose song it was inspired by – these places and people throng the world’s bazaar in which the film is set. Partners in Crime takes you througha story about art, crime, love and money to check if the times, they may be a-changing after all.

For some reason, can't embed the Youtube clip, so here it is.

'What he had to say was poetry'

I love this man.

To Murray Lerner, a middle-aged filmmaker from New York whose camera crews had documented every moment of the festival, the effect was hypnotic. Throughout five days of performances, he’d been too busy shouting out orders to stop and listen to the music. But Cohen’s words made him put down his camera and look up at the man on stage. Two hours earlier, Lerner was packing up his equipment, certain that the fires and the violence would lead to a massive stampede. He was ready to run for shelter. But now everything was still, and Lerner had no idea how Leonard Cohen had pulled it off. Standing beside Lerner, Joan Baez was equally baffled. “People say that a song needs to make sense,” she told the filmmaker. “Leonard proves otherwise. It doesn’t necessarily make sense at all, it just comes from so deep inside of him, it somehow touches deep down inside other people. I’m not sure how it works, but I know that it works.” Lerner nodded in agreement as he listened. It reminded him of something he’d once read T.S. Eliot say of Dante—that the genius of poetry was that it communicated before it was understood.

On stage, Cohen was done with the ephemera. He was smiling. He turned to his band mates frequently now, nodding his head encouragingly or saying a kind word or two. In his confidence, he decided it was time to speak honestly. He played a few basic chords and delivered a short speech-song.
“They gave me some money, for my sad and famous song,” he sang. “They said the crowd is waiting, hurry up or they’ll be gone. But I could not change my style, and I guess I never will. So I sing this for the poison snakes on Devastation Hill.” And then came a noisy, joyous rendition of “Diamonds in the Mine,” with Charlie Daniels singeing the strings and Bob Johnston, playing piano, pounding happily on the keys.

“He’s taking them on,” said Kristofferson, standing a few feet away with Lerner and Baez. “He’s taking the fuckers right on.”

Via

Wislawa Szymborska, RIP

All over my news stream today, that Wislawa Szymborska has died.

Image from: http://podaestrada.blogspot.in/search?q=wislawa+szymborska

In memoriam, then, because what else is there to say:

Evaluation of an Unwritten Poem 

by Wislawa Szymborska

In the poem's opening words
the authoress asserts that while the Earth is small,
the sky is excessively large and
in it there are, I quote, "too many stars for our own good."
In her depiction of the sky, one detects a certain helplessness,
the authoress is lost in a terrifying expanse,
she is startled by the planets' lifelessness,
and within her mind (which can only be called imprecise)
a question soon arises:
whether we are, in the end, alone
under the sun, all suns that ever shone.

 In spite of all the laws of probability! And today's universally accepted assumptions! In the face of the irrefutable evidence that may fall into human hands any day now! That's poetry for you.  Meanwhile, our Lady Bard returns to Earth,
a planet, so she claims, which "makes its rounds without eyewitnesses,"
the only "science fiction that our cosmos can afford."
The despair of a Pascal (1623-1662, note mine)
is, the authoress implies, unrivalled
on any, say, Andromeda or Cassiopeia.
Our solitary existence exacerbates our sense of obligation,
and raises the inevitable question, How are we to live et cetera,
since "we can't avoid the void."
"'My God,' man calls out to Himself,
'have mercy on me, I beseech thee, show me the way

 The authoress is distressed by the thought of life squandered so freely,
as if our supplies were boundless.
She is likewise worried by wars, which are, in her perverse opinion,
always lost on both sides,
and by the "authoritorture" (sic!) of some people by others. 
Her moralistic intentions glimmer throughout the poem.  
They might shine brighter beneath a less naive pen.  Not under this one, alas.  Her fundamentally unpersuasive thesis

(that we may well be, in the end, alone
under the sun, all suns that ever shone)
combined with her lackadaisical style (a mixture
of lofty rhetoric and ordinary speech)
forces the question: Whom might this piece convince?
The answer can only be: No one.  Q. E. D.
           

sliding (in several minds)

Sliding Rock, November 2011

 Recite to me please all the letters you are not able to read.
Spell "fling yourself skyward."

Spell "fever."
                   from 'Speech', Kazim Ali, The Far Mosque, Alice James Books, 2005.

*

There are preoccupations, some of them pleasant, others not. I won't apologise for my continued half-presence here; instead I will hope that it signals good things elsewhere.

'Ideas are what you want to get rid of'

Leonard Cohen, when asked if he learns something from writing songs, if he works out ideas that way:

"I think you work out something. I wouldn't call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don't really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are and as wholesome as the ideas they promote are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It's just my experience. All I've got to put in a song is my own experience."

Also this.

post HLF 2012

HLF 2012 is over. I wasn't there for the closing, but it was a packed three days for me (mainly because of the recordings I had to do).

Gulzar/Sukrita Paul Kumar, Adil Jussawalla and Suniti Namjoshi were outstanding. Kiran Nagarkar's was a hurried session, unfortunately, being on the first day when schedules went out of whack. I enjoyed listening to all the poets I heard, but the star of the younger poets was Kazim Ali. Wish I'd had at least one conversation with him.

I'm going to take a couple of days off to process and mull over conversations. After that there will be work and domestic things to catch up on, so it's unlikely that there will be posts. I don't have any photos, unfortunately, because I was saving space and battery time for audio recordings.


Do look out for a Call for Submissions soon, though.

Also promise to respond to comments soon!