In 1975, Robert Altman released his classic film, Nashville. I have always loved his filmmaking, and Nashville remains one of my favorites. This scene made a lot of women weak-kneed back then...including me. ;) Not too long after I saw the film, Keith Carradine came to S.F. to play what was a great venue back then, the Boarding House. I was there to see that show...sitting in the front row. I've had a soft spot for Keith Carradine ever since.
I could explain why I didn't get a poem posted yesterday...but you know the drill. My sleeping habits are bizarre to say the least, and if I miss a day, you can pretty much figure that somehow they were involved. So two for the price of one today--August poem #21 is here, and August poem #22 (about coffee) is here. Which leads me to this...if you don't already know about delocator (I didn't), please check it out. Support your local, non-corporate coffee houses, bookstores and indie movie theatres! I found a coffee house listed I've never even seen before, yet have driven right by it dozens dozens of times.
By the way, are any other TypePad users experiencing this? I've noticed for the last month or so that I'm not getting all of my comment emails. I don't remember how I first discovered it--because I typically don't read comments on my blog, I read them via the emails--but discover it I did. Just now I went back through the last week or so of posts and found it's still happening. Bummer! What's up with that, TypePad?!
Okay, on to today's music... If you love music, I urge you to DOWNLOAD/BUY/WATCH this movie! It's a documentary called Before the Music Dies and it's excellent. You can download it for as little as $2.99 (viewable on any portable device...come on, that's less than a latte!) For $7.99 you can download a version you can burn to a DVD. For $16.99 you can own the DVD which includes all of the special features. And best of all, the purchase price of any of those goes toward the purchase of the others--can't beat that! Details are here.
I have no vested interest in this film other than that of a long-time fan of real American music. The kind made by musicians, not studio wizardry. And, yes, it's personal to me--but music was very personal to me long before I met Jeffrey. The film was directed by Andrew Shapter (who seems like a genuinely nice guy). If you're on MySpace, go friend him. Friend the film here. Find a screening of the film near you here. Even better, maybe you'll be so inspired after watching the film that you'll want to partner with the filmmakers to host a screening yourself. Yep, that's how it's being released--in the best sort of grassroots way. Details are here.
Wow, you must be thinking, she's really pushing this thing. And if you think that, it's only because you're hearing the passion I feel about honoring and preserving American music.
Andrew's next film is called The Greener Side, about the pursuit of happiness.
I was rushing this morning (caught a ride to work with someone else), so I didn't have time to write a poem before I left. Just threw up a quick one using one of the prompts Leah gave me: "hidden." August poem #8 is here.
There's a campaign to save the Sweetwater! (See this post.) If, like me, you cherish landmark music venues and want to try to save them, you can sign an online petition to save the Sweetwater here. Some other ways to help are listed at www.savethesweetwater.com.
Anyone using Jaman? (Indie film + social networking)
Sorry, guys, haven't like posting much lately. I think my vacation mode (I return to work on Wednesday) has spilled over to blogging. You're not getting poetry on Thursdays (for Poetry Thursday) or Sundays (for Sunday Scribblings)--I feel like I've barely been here (on the blog). I have been Twittering. Not a lot, but you can always click that blue box in the right sidebar to read my Twitters (but, believe me, they're not very interesting).
BUT...I do have something (I think) wonderful to share with you today. Last week Hacktone Records sent me a few MP3's to check out from a soundtrack that's being released tomorrow (July 31). It's for an independent film, Naming Number Two, starring the magnificent Ruby Dee as a Fijian matriarch of a family that's been quickly called together so that she can name her successor. It won the 2006 World Cinema Audience Choice Award at Sundance. You can read a review on the Pacific Islander blog. The film opened in selected cities last Friday. Check here to see if it will be released in your area this summer.
Anyone who has been reading here for any length of time will tell you that I fail horribly at any sort of critique--whether it's film, books, music, whatever. I know what I like and I know what moves me, but I suddenly become completely inarticulate when trying to state why. (That's why, unlike some other TypePad blogs, you don't see book reviews in the sidebar here, even though I'm a pretty regular reader.)
The first song I listened to is the one that accompanies the music video...and it's a doozy. I had the headphones on the first time I played it. Jeffrey (who was raised in church playing gospel) heard it from across the room (okay, so I had it cranked up) and said, "Sounds good--is it gospel?" YES. Now, I don't know if New Zealand composer/songwriter Don McGlashan intended it to have a gospel feel, but if you define gospel as music that stirs and moves you, then gospel it is. The track is called "Bathe in the River" and it features the very soulful vocals of New Zealand singer Hollie Smith (recently signed to Blue Note) accompanied by the Mt. Raskil Preservation Society. And, yes, it moves me.
You can hear "Bathe in the River" and other tracks from the Naming Number Two soundtrack at the film's MySpace page here. The soundtrack is available at Hacktone Records or iTunes. But, first, put your headphones on or your earphones in and play the music video below. Enjoy.
I fell off the Sunday Scribblings wagon for a couple of months, but I climbed back on this morning for the prompt "wicked." I wrote a little something over on Moojo Cafe. Be sure to check out all of the lovely Scribblers here.
Mira Nair was in town last night to speak at Mondavi Center. I skipped that discussion, but before that, she came to the Varsity Theatre (our newly-renovated vintage theatre in downtown Davis that shows only indie films which is only a few blocks from our house) to introduce her film, Monsoon Wedding. She was, in a word, fabulous. She's a stunningly beautiful woman and she spoke so eloquently about how she came to make that film and her creative process behind it. It was made for only a million dollars, and she shot it over two summer months in 2000 because it was her son's summer vacation and she wanted him to be with her. She said that she and her writing partner wanted to give a "reality check version" of an Indian wedding, since most Bollywood versions are so over the top. She used very few professional actors, casting mostly family members and people in her community in India--many of whom have gone on to become popular actors and comedians. She explained that the Punjabi people she comes from in Northern India "are the party animals of India"--that they're whiskey-drinking, hard-partying people, and that most Indian weddings are exactly like what's portrayed in the film. She also talked about how she wanted to interweave many different love stories, and the hesitation she felt about including one plotline about sexual abuse which is still kept very silent in India. She told of trying set aside that part of the story, and how the film completely fell apart without it. She said she was surprised by how many people were there to see the film last night, since it's an old one. She thanked us for coming, and thanked the Varsity for supporting independent film. (They recently completed a run of her new film, The Namesake.) I'd seen the Monsoon Wedding once before, but it was a treat to see it again with her backstory in mind. Along with the minimal budget, she had in mind to shoot it in 30 days, and as the final credits rolled, there was a mention of it: 40 locations in 30 days. There are scenes from the film woven throughout the final credits and since I was sitting in the front, I didn't realize until I got up to leave that nearly everyone sat through them. And...she announced that Monsoon Wedding is coming to Broadway! The team behind Hairspray is collaborating with her on a stage production, and we can expect it to hit the stage in a year or two. I've been a Mira Nair fan since Mississippi Masala. I love that film (we own it), and I love how in it she tied Amin's banishment of Asians in Uganda to an interracial love story in the American Gulf Coast. Mira Nair is an American filmmaking treasure, and we're very lucky to have her.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
When I opened today's Daily Om email, it was about "Hope in Hardship"...
"As difficult as the obstacle plaguing you seems, it is no match for the love of a supportive universe that has been a part of your life since the day of your birth and will be with you forevermore."
Liz is one of my dearest blog-pals, and I've been lucky to have exchanged a few emails with her wonderful mother. Her Mom has been diagnosed with uterine cancer. She's having surgery today--a hysterectomy that will also remove a large cyst from one of her ovaries. Let's be a living example of that Daily Om message for her Mother today. Let's be a part of her supportive universe. Please send Liz's Mom your thoughts and good wishes and hopes and prayers, so that she may feel great hope in the face of this hardship. Liz, I'm holding a powerfully good thought that your Mom comes through her surgery easily, and that on the other side of that door is nothing but good news. xoxo
I'm tired...tired of all of this extra work at my job. I have about another week of it, and the worst part of it is over. We have late start on Wednesday mornings at school, and I think as soon as I arrive this morning I'm going to grab all of those scattered emails cluttering my desk and fling them on the floor in my work area and sort them to figure out what the hell I'm not getting done while I'm devoting my days to test coordination. I didn't sleep much or well Monday night, and as a result, my ass was dragging yesterday. J had a gig in San Jose and was gone by the time I got home. All I wanted to do was put on my jammies, eat some comfort food and watch a little TV. I did the first two, but fell asleep before 7, missing the latter. Woke up about 10:30 and ended up watching most of A Streetcar Named Desire on cable. I'd never seen it...even though I can recall as a youngster occasionally putting a hand to my forehead and in the worst Southern accent possible saying, "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers." Clearly someone somewhere had told me about Blanche. Although I don't know where I got the forehead move, since Blanche doesn't do that. Maybe I thought it was a move utilized by fragile Southern women.
When that was over, Guys and Dolls came on. I thought about watching it--haven't seen that one either--but opted instead to return to my novel, The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis. (Grabbed on a whim at the thrift store over the weekend.) I'm loving it, and I'd love nothing more than to stay in bed this morning and finish it. But, alas...
Had hoped to maybe write a poem this morning using PT's random prompt generator. I got "ripple." Time is short and my energy is low...maybe a quick haiku...
the ripple's circles connect us yes, but more so draw me back to self
I watched this movie today. It's called Waking Life and it was
written and directed by Richard Linklater. It's pretty darn
brilliant. Stunning visually. Innovative in its animation
techniques. And packing a powerful message. In another scene, a guy
in overalls playing a ukelele tells the protagonist, Wiley, that: "The
trick is to combine your waking, rational abilities with the infinite
possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do
anything." I can't tell you how many times in my life (since I dream
like crazy and always remember them upon waking) that I've thought
something I dreamed was really clever or creative or intense or
riotously funny or amazing. And then it'll hit me: whatever was
knocking my socks off was a product of my own mind in its most relaxed
state. It always make me wonder how I can tap into that place in my
waking life. I started to say my "awake life," but how awake can I be
if my conscious self is blocking the entrance to that super-creative
place?
In the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke exchange in that YouTube video, he says
that line I used as the title of this post: "We're all telepathically
sharing our experiences." Sometimes I wonder if this is what
synchronicity really is--moments of us breaking through the mental and
emotional membranes we surround ourselves with to tap into a collective
consciousness.
On Tuesday, I got a friend request from a guy named Brad Listi at MySpace. I'd never heard of him and have no idea how he found me, but as I always do, I checked out his profile
before deciding whether or not to approve his request. Turns out he's
a writer in L.A. Wrote a novel called Attention. Deficit. Disorder. And it's not just any novel either--it's a great fucking book. But I'll get to that in a minute. The book has its own MySpace page.
And after reading several of the blog entries at the book's page, I
'friended' both the author's and the book's pages. This guy's not
only written a kick-ass first novel, he also writes a great fucking blog. (Sorry for all the cursing, but that's how I talk in 'real life.') Read his blog. You'll see. You know how many blogs I read, right? (Way too many.) It's a great blog.
Now, I'm broke as broke can be right now, so I'm afraid ol' Brad's not gonna make any money off me this week, but I did want to read his book. I went to my library's online catalog and found there was a copy of his book available. I'd gotten an email from the library that a book I'd requested, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist (which I've been meaning to read for years) was in. So Thursday after work, I swung by the library on my way home to pick up both books. I'd already gone through the checkout line when I remembered that we were in between Netflix movies, so I went back in to the DVD racks and in about 90 seconds of quick flipping (it's not a huge selection, obviously) I grabbed three DVD's. One of those was Waking Life. I recognized it as a Linklater film, but in that moment, the only Linklater film I could recall was Dazed and Confused (and I think I've only seen a few minutes of that film).
When I got home I checked my email and found a message that Rosa had left a comment on a blog post I'd written over on my Ning network about found art--something Rosa does beautifully. I'd written that visual art (outside of photography) isn't something that comes easily to me--I don't experience any sort of creative flow in those mediums. But I'm intrigued by and drawn to the concept of found art and was trying to think how I could reshape that concept into something that would work for me. Rosa's comment was to suggest that I try found poems. (An idea I love, by the way.)
When I first started the Ning network, I'd linked in a post there to Evelyn Rodriguez's blog, Crossroads Dispatches. I've been reading her blog for years and think it's one of the best out there. She'd just started a series she was calling "forty days of everyday inspiration" and I thought the Ning'ers would enjoy it. And she was about embark on a trip to one of my favorite places in the world, New Orleans. N'Awlins (as my bayou friend calls it) is one of the few places I've been that felt like home to me, even though I've never lived there. In an ironic twist, I'm from a town called Crescent City, which is New Orleans' nickname. Although Crescent City is my hometown, it's never felt like home--it just feels familiar. And I hope you know what I mean by that distinction.
Right after reading Rosa's comment about found poetry, I read this post at Evelyn's where she talked about encountering a street poet in New Orleans. He'd written a poem for her on the spot. It reminded me of that scene in Before Sunrise or maybe Before Sunset (I couldn't remember which) where Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke encounter a poet along a river bank while they're out walking at night, and I included that in the comment I left on Evelyn's post.
Thursday night I began reading Attention. Deficit. Disorder. On page 188 he writes, "I remember we went to see a post-run showing of Before Sunrise, the Richard Linklater film..." As I read that, I remember thinking, "Hey, I just left a comment on Evelyn's blog mentioning that film..." In response to her encounter with the New Orleans street poet...which had triggered something in me having read about it right after reading Rosa's comment that I might want to try leaving found poems. But the Linklater reference in the book escaped me in that moment.
After work on Friday, I checked in at a few places online and saw that Leah had a new post up at Ning--talking about how she'd seen in her Bloglines that Evelyn had a new post...and that it featured her art. Leah said in her post that things were starting to feel like dominoes. I knew the feeling.
I continued reading Listi's book for two hours between the time I got home from work Friday night until I had to head back to school to chaperone the dance, and continued reading late that night after I got home. My sleep patterns being what they are (irregular), I woke up about halfway through the night, grabbed the novel and took to the couch where I alternately read and dozed until I finished it early Saturday morning. At one point I dreamed that I worked at a Catholic school (with a staff of nuns), but I slipped away at lunchtime one day to hear Curtis perform at a funky club across the street from the school. I smoked a joint in the club's bathroom first and was higher than a kite. I stayed for one set in the bar and then got paranoid that I probably reeked of pot and started spraying myself with perfume before heading back to work at the school. And then I realized that SHIT!...I wasn't supposed to be smoking pot! I'd just thrown away 17 years worth of sobriety! I was relating that to a friend--how I'd fucked up and how bad I felt about it. And how I shouldn't have left at lunchtime without telling anyone I was leaving to take a lunch break, but that my friend had recently recovered from liver cancer and I'd wanted to hear him sing. After I woke I thought it was interesting that I was able to weave some truth into such a weird dream. Because as most of you know, Curtis did recover from terminal liver cancer by getting a liver transplant last Fall. But I was greatly relieved to realize that the pot had only happened in my dream life. And last time I checked, that doesn't count at A.A. But the part about telling the friend seemed so real--it didn't seem like I was still inside a dream layer.
Around mid-day on Saturday, I popped in the Waking Life DVD. But because I'd had a super-busy week and had been up half the night reading, I kept nodding off. It seemed kind of ironic that I kept dreaming in the middle of watching a film about the nature of our realities in our waking versus dream lives. Wiley has a hard time waking in the film. It wasn't until I saw the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke scene above that I remembered that Richard Linklater had done both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (even though Listi had mentioned one of them in his book).
What does any of this have to do with inspiration, the prompt at Sunday Scribblings today? Hell if I know. All I know is that when things start seeming interconnected like this, I start paying closer attention. And my dreams lately have been off the hook.
I just looked up inspiration and in my dictionary it says:
1. inspiring 2. an inspiring influence 3. a sudden brilliant idea
The word below it is inspire:
1. to stimulate (a person) to creative or other activity or to express certain ideas 2. to fill with or instill a certain feeling 3. to communicate ideas, etc. by a divine agency
And the word after that is inspirit. I'd completely forgotten about this, but I think I have a (unused) blog with that word in the title that I set up years ago. It means:
1. to put life into; animate (emphasis mine) 2. to encourage
Now go read Brad Listi's book. You won't be disappointed. There's one scene that didn't quite work for me, but otherwise it's pitch perfect.
It's Oscars weekend! I realize it might seem frivolous to still be enamored with the Oscars with everything that's going on around us, but maybe that's one of the reasons so many of us still are. I think it's okay and sometimes even healthy to indulge our cravings for escape and fantasy. With all of its flaws, American cinema (true cinema) is still one of our great art forms.
Although it would seem that Helen Mirren is a shoo-in as Best Actress, Kate Winslet's name has appeared on many critics' lists this year. And often in the manner of: "Who WILL win? Helen Mirren. Who SHOULD win? Kate Winslet." We still haven't seen "Little Children"--it still hasn't come to Davis--but it's in our Netflix queue. Kudos to Kate Winslet for being the youngest actress to have four Academy Award nominations. Here's a clip of her in a scene from "Little Children" that's been much talked about:
We'll be rooting for J's buddy Todd Field and his co-screenwriter Tom Perrotta to win Best Adapted Screenplay for "Little Children," adapted from Tom's wonderful book.
In a previous life, when I worked at a television syndication and production company in Marin County, we used to syndicate a show called "Joel Siegel's Road to the Oscars." I remember that one year, designing the brochure fell to me. I worked with our graphic artist to come up with a large glossy brochure to send to television stations in our syndication efforts. And because we were syndicating the show nationally long before nominations were announced and the show was produced, I had to guess what films, actors and actresses might be nominated. I was dead on in some of my picks and quite off in others, but it was a lovely brochure and I loved working on it. (I used to still have a copy of that brochure, but it may have been lost in the shuffle in one of my many moves.)
Among my blogging buddies, I don't know anyone who has more Oscar fever than Michelle. :) Will you be watching Sunday evening? If so, do you have any Oscar-watching rituals? For many years, I'd watch the telecast with my mother, and we'd have a grand old time dishing on the fashion. Sometimes J watches with me, sometimes not. Not sure what I'll do this year--maybe we'll watch it together, or maybe I'll watch solo in the bedroom, tucked away in our sleigh bed. Either way I know I'll be watching with a gratitude that cinema exists. It's a medium that's given me countless hours of fantastical escape...and given birth to dreams and touchstones that still hold a special place in my heart.
OhmyGOOOOOD! I just watched the Oscar nominations being announced LIVE on CNN's "Pipeline" video service. It started off fine, but then suddenly the camera moved so that Salma Hayek and Sid Ganis (the announcers...and he lives in West Marin, so there was a big story on him in yesterday's S.F. Chronicle) were out of the shot--the camera was focused on an empty stage. And Salma's and Sid's voices suddenly got very dim...and all you could hear was some chick (at least it sounded like a woman) furiously flipping a notepad and SNIFFLING. Constantly! Someone hand that woman a Kleenex! There was a bit of whispering, "Thank you." Did someone else finally reach a breaking point with the snot-sucking and hand her one?! And then a male voice suddenly whispered, "Oh...shit!"...and then the camera was righted and there were Salma and Sid again...and the audio returned to normal volume. Oh, the joys of live television. And in this day and age of super-packaged, inauthentic news, I took great delight in it. :)
J's pal Todd Field's film, "Little Children," scored three nominations--Best Adapted Screenplay for Todd and the book's author, Tom Perrotta, Best Actress for Kate Winslet and Best Supporting Actor for Jackie Earle Haley. We haven't seen it yet (it hasn't shown here yet), but I'm so happy for Jackie Earle Haley! What an amazing story his life is...from "Bad News Bears" and stardom in his youth...to falling on such hard times that at one point he was delivering pizzas. Sean Penn gave him the first break, casting him in "All the King's Men" (also with Kate Winslet). "Little Children" is his follow-up film. Yet one more affirmation from the universe: Don't give up on your dreams!!
And while I was typing this, I was listening to ambient noise in the room where they announced the nominations...paparazzi: "Salma! Over here! Salma! This way, honey!" Then just the sounds of talking and people bustling and moving about. And then "Pipeline" went dark. It'll be interesting to see what kind of slick little video package CNN puts together from that embarrassing gaffe this morning. ;)
The OSCAR NOMINATIONS announced by SALMA HAYEK. Michelle must be in pig heaven... :P
There's a fun video at the Oscars site, with 'regular' folks saying famous movie lines. You can watch it here. Got a favorite movie line? Leave it in the comments.
(My brother's best movie line? "The name's Bond. Bail Bond.")
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