You'd be surprised there's so much to be done

We pause for FRIDAY RANDOM FOUR!

Yes, I know the meme is officially FRIDAY RANDOM TEN, but I don't have the time for ten and barely have time for four. (Admittedly, I insist on editorializing about my music, which consumes valuable blogging time!)

~*~

Serious movie geeks will recognize the following lines... Mr Daisy and me are currently arguing about who actually wrote them, Orson Welles or Herman Mankiewicz? (Both of us agree that we used to know that stuff.) (((sigh))) I am unable to locate Pauline Kael's invaluable Citizen Kane Book, which every home should own.

Googling, I find that the consensus is Mankiewicz. I think of it as 'the parasol story':

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

And here is mine.

Giving Kenny Loggins all due respect for his wonderfully delightful tune... although I find his various folkie versions somewhat sad and melancholy. The hit version is below, and it's suitably sprightly and sweet, as a childhood melody should be.

I first heard it in 1970; notably, as I was exiting my own childhood... the angst of adolescence was taking over, and I recognized the child-consciousness in the song as something that had passed. I suddenly realized I was no longer a child.

The song is simply a work of art; it has always made me indescribably happy. And you know, I'll bet a month hasn't gone by that I haven't thought of the lines--

You'd be surprised there's so much to be done
Count all the bees in the hive
Chase all the clouds from the sky

House at Pooh Corner - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (song starts at about 18 seconds in)



~*~

When you cross David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Evelyn Waugh and a multitude of psychedelic drugs, you get the following amazing song.

It only tips over into excessive verbiage once, but it's a whopper. I could do without the Waughish line: He's Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature. Okay, enough British alliterations, we know how smart you are! But since this is from a very early Bowie album, Hunky Dory, I will overlook it, since he was still establishing his genius. He probably felt Waugh impersonations were necessary. (The Dylanesque lines are perfect.)

Although Bowie later claimed the song made no sense, I find that it makes a lot of sense when you learn that Bowie's stepbrother was locked up for schizophrenia (also the subject of the song All the Madmen; caution, disturbing old insane-asylum images on YouTube version)... and BROTHERS is the name of the song, after all. Lots of people have also read a gay subtext into the song.

The Bewlay Brothers is chock-full of lovely, lyrical poetry, such as:

I was Stone and he was Wax
So he could scream and still relax
Unbelievable
And we frightened the small children away

If you have ever had a compatriot or comrade who was brilliant and mercurial... if you ever followed a guru... if you ever belonged to a cult or similarly tight-knit group? This is for you.

And the solid book we wrote can not be found today.

The Bewlay Brothers - David Bowie



We were so turned on
By your lack of conclusions.

~*~

Special dedication time! This is for my own Sister Ray! :)

I was dumbfounded when I saw Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson talking to Charlie Rose, whilst Laurie's little dog sat nestled in her lap. HER DOG. She brings the dog to PBS for an interview? With LOU REED?!? Momentarily confused, since I would not leave my dog with the Velvet Underground, not even in a TV studio.

Then I am reminded of the Buddhist lesson of impermanence, and the fact that the Lou who lives with Laurie (and her dog, presumably), is most assuredly NOT the youthful author of SISTER RAY. (Lord have mercy, are we middle aged or what?)

If you can listen to all 8 minutes and 41 seconds, you are hard core! If not, don't feel bad; usually only punk rockers are completely hypnotized by the song... and if you are into punk? BEHOLD YOUR KING. (And try to forget that this man now lives with a woman who gives interviews with her little terrier on her lap.)

Lyrics kindly linked, in the event you'd like to sing along.

Rosie and Miss Rayon
They're busy waiting for her booster
Who just got back from Carolina
She said she didn't like the weather
They're busy waiting for her sailor
Who's big and dressed in pink and leather

Sister Ray - Velvet Underground (NSFW)



WAVES TO MY BEST BUD SISTER RAY! ;)

~*~

And my semi-official FALL FOR GREENVILLE tune... used at this time and in this space last year.

I wondered why the Swedes in this video weren't acting like Texans, enthusiastically tossing beer cans, thongs and whatnot at ZZ Top, when one of my commenters schooled me about the ways of Swedes: these people are too stoned to move.

Of course, that makes total sense; so sorry I underestimated yall! Party on, Swedes!

Party on the Patio - ZZ Top

Party on the Patio

Will you just look at those polite Swedes? They just sit there! Toto, we ain't in the USA anymore! (This song usually brings out the bra-tossers and beer-inspired whooping, but as we see, not in Sweden.)

Recorded in 1984 in Stockholm, it's that lil ole band from Texas.

Have a great weekend! :)

~*~


Party on the Patio - ZZ Top

Ingmar Bergman 1918-2007

At left: Anna comforts the dying Agnes in CRIES AND WHISPERS



Ingmar Bergman loved women, and often made women the center of his movies. Sometimes, he lived with more than one woman at a time, and shocked everybody. He made the first movie I ever saw about a woman who felt stifled and restricted by motherhood and ended up abandoning the baby to dad, aptly named SUMMER WITH MONIKA, after the patron saint of mothers. I still remember the shot of a spider in a web, which I realized meant Monika felt trapped. (I saw that when I was a young girl, the first time I understood cinematic symbolism.) He presented one of the most incredible and intense studies of women's relationships ever, called PERSONA in which the women are parasitic, loving, hating, changing places, back and forth, their personalities merging, looping, swooping and coming to rest in the other's.

He said he thought of the movie when he saw the two actors Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman, standing together in a mirror.

When I first saw CRIES AND WHISPERS, I acted exactly like Roger Ebert's review said I would:

It is hypnotic, disturbing, frightening. It envelops us in a red membrane of passion and fear, and in some way that I do not fully understand it employs taboos and ancient superstitions to make its effect. We slip lower in our seats, feeling claustrophobia and sexual disquiet, realizing that we have been surrounded by the vision of a film maker who has absolute mastery of his art. "Cries and Whispers" is about dying, love, sexual passion, hatred and death - in that order.

Somehow, this man had figured out how to speak directly to my id. He was bypassing my conscious mind and going directly to my heart and soul. I DID slip lower in my seat, as I watched two sisters and their family servant, waiting for their third sister to die. Almost as soon as we feel pity for the dying sister, Agnes (obviously, signifying Lamb of God), played by the electrifying Harriet Andersson (also in SUMMER WITH MONIKA), we realize we are mistaken about who deserves our pity. Agnes is indeed the blessed one, as her illness has given her very clear vision. She has no time for grudges and neurotic silliness. She concentrates on savoring every second. She knows the seconds are finite.

Meanwhile, Maria (Liv Ullman) and Karin (Ingrid Thulin) bump up against each other with their old dance, sibling rivalry. They show unbridled disgust with the choices the other sister has made. Certainly, my post on Saturday fits the reality of the women in CRIES AND WHISPERS, who want a release from their hatred of each other, and yet... this very hatred has created their personalities; their self-definitions are largely based on NOT being the other sister:

In a moment of conjured nostalgia, Maria and Karin remember their closeness as children. Now, faced with the fact of their sister's death, they deliberately try to synthesize feeling, and love. Quickly, almost frantically, they touch and caress each other's faces, but their touching is a parody and by the next day they have closed themselves off again.

And then there is the servant, Anna (Kari Sylwan). Dear God! Has any one character ever moved me so much in movies? It was bad enough, when I initially saw it, that I looked like this woman, but I now realize: I had never seen a large ox-like feminine woman in a movie before. At first, I resented the role of the servant as the sensitive, all-giving one, but at the end of the movie, I wept my heart out.

When Agnes cries out in the night, in fear and agony, it is Anna who cradles her to her bosom, whispering soft endearments.

The others cannot stand to be touched.

Bergman dares to say that us working-class folks who clean up puke and poop and listen to people cry, are closer to them, made human by them. We touch and are touched by others.

Finally, Agnes dies. We knew she would, we are told in the first five minutes that she is dying. But did we expect to SEE? He makes us see:

The camera is as uneasy as we are. It stays at rest mostly, but when it moves it doesn't always follow smooth, symmetrical progressions. It darts, it falls back, is stunned. It lingers on close-ups of faces with the impassivity of God. It continues to look when we want to turn away; it is not moved. Agnes lies thrown on her deathbed, her body shuddered by horrible, deep, gasping breaths, as she fights for air for life. The sisters turn away, and we want to, too. We know things are this bad - but we don't want to know. One girl in the audience ran up the aisle and out of the theater. Bergman's camera stays and watches. The movie is drenched in red. Bergman has written in his screenplay that he thinks of the inside of the human soul as a membranous red.

And then, Anna speaks to them, after death. This, for me, is the biggest JOLT of the film, since the dead woman is speaking to us about the meaning of life:

The film descends into a netherworld of the supernatural; the dead woman speaks (or is it only that they think they hear her?). She reaches out and grasps for Karin (or does Karin move the dead arms? - Bergman's camera doesn't let us see). The movie, like all supernatural myths, like all legends and fables (and like all jokes - which are talismans to take the pain from truth) ends in a series of threes. The dead woman asks the living women to stay with her, to comfort her while she pauses within her dead body before moving into the great terrifying void. Karin will not. Maria will not. But Anna will, and makes pillows of her breasts for Agnes. Anna is the only one of them who remembers how to touch, and love. And she is the only one who believes in God.

These two scenes - of Anna, embracing Agnes, and of Karin and Maria touching like frightened kittens - are two of the greatest Bergman has ever created. The feeling in these scenes - I should say, the way they force us to feel - constitutes the meaning of this film. It has no abstract message; it communicates with us on a level of human feeling so deep that we are afraid to invent words for the things found there.

I consider myself Christian, so I found the ending of the movie incredible. And yes, here is where I cried my eyes out. I cry now, just remembering the passage:

Is there a God in Bergman's film, or is there only Anna's faith? The film ends with a scene of astonishing, jarring affirmation: We see the four women some months earlier, drenched with the golden sun, and we hear Anna reading from Agnes' diary, "I feel a great gratitude to my life, which gives me so much."

I would love to have met the artist with such transcendent, creative vision, who forced us to consider what being human meant, and presented WOMEN as his examples of humanity.

Rest in peace.