Undulating Ungulate

If you have any inclination to do Outward Bound, then definitely go for it. The experience is amazing but you need to be open to it; it’s not so much about what you are doing as how you are doing it, and the people you are with. If you don’t have any inclination to do Outward Bound, then don’t. It’s a self-selecting sample, after all. Also: the fitter you are in advance, the better.

I’m still not reading any news. Which means there is little to blog about, since I’m not that into blogging about my life, such as it is. The domain is coming up for renewal. I’m not sure there’s a lot of point in continuing with the site. Also finding it hard to justify the hosting costs.

I’m not even sure why I would go back to paying attention in the way I have been. The patterns and trends are well in place. A close monitoring of the unfolding catastrophe benefits what exactly? May as well spend the time gaining skills that will be handy when the shit hits the fan.

Today I will start reading the draft of the non-fiction book. Depending on how that goes, and the meeting later today regarding the doco, I can make the next life-decision. Yet more change a-coming.

Hard to believe This Charming Mystery was only a couple of months ago; it feels like another life. This year has turned my world inside out and round and round and it’s not over yet. But winter is the time of letting go, drawing in tight what matters, and dropping the inessential; Spring is just around the corner, despite the gray and rain, and expansion will come again. Everything to its time. The point is to make use of it while we have the chance. Ain’t nothing lasting in this world.

I am back from Outward Bound, and contactable again.

OBwas awesome and exhausting. Still processing it.

Tomorrow I am off on Outward Bound and will be incommunicado for a week or so.

I still haven’t been reading news, though am peripherally aware of a bunch of stuff, since Ed listens to the radio.

Anyway. I just read a bunch of Michael Ventura’s recent columns. I strongly recommend reading these two:

$4 a gallon redux

Issues ‘08: The Situation

This guy is so far ahead of the curve, and his ability to link what is going on worldwide and what it will mean for real people is consistently amazing. Read him now to avoid nasty surprises later.

Wow. The podcasting has got a bit dusty. Despite having literally hundreds of bootlegs lying around. Oh well.

And now for something completely different. But strangely closer to what I originally had in mind for the podcasts.

This audio is investigative journalist Nicky Hager, author of The Hollow Men, Seeds of Distrust, Secrets and Lies, etc, giving a talk at Drinking Liberally last month. He talks about the nature and conduct of politics in NZ at the present time, the election, and so on.

Feel free to spread the link around. Bandwidth exists to be eaten. It’s all pretty relevant stuff.

(There is also the Q&A he did afterwards, which may actually be longer. Is anyone interested in that?)

 Nicky Hager at Drinking Liberally 3-7-08 [17:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If only there had been someone there he could have turned to and said: “Let’s get out of here.” But they all sat there in another world, talking feverishly about nothing, approving and protesting, each one delighted with the sound his own ideas made when they were turned into words.

- Let it come down, Paul Bowles

Those who know me and have paid any attention to my mutterings over the past few years may recall rumours of a non-fiction book I was going to write sometime maybe. Some may recall specific vague mutterings about “consciousness, language, belief and the nature of reality, and how they interact” as a general subject area.

A month ago when I announced a refocus and subsequent absence of blogging it was to focus on that book.

Today I finished a rough rough draft of the non-fiction book.

In the past 31 days I have written approximately 65000 words. (There was also an application for post-production funding which ended up being 5000 words, and a total pain, in the mix.) During that time I have taken one day off due to nervous exhaustion/collapse. I’m getting close to that point again, so it is well that I can take a bit of a break.

When I first sketched out the schedule, it seemed pretty unlikely. Somehow it came off. Aided somewhat by my Outward Bound course being cancelled, which allowed me to relax and stretch out the final few days, rather than panic them into a couple of days; but I’ve only gone three days over.

All in all, I’m a little stunned right now. This book is kind of a major long term thing. Like culmination-of-work-and-thought-as-an-adult-so-far territory. (Although, having said that, I now know what my next non-fiction book needs to be.) There was a lot of self-doubt to get over. I mean, really, who the hell am I to write a non-fiction book, to stand up and say what’s real? Especially in what is in essence a book of philosophy dealing with fundamental questions. So sitting down and just cranking a draft out was probably the ideal way to do it. There was no time for second guessing. It’s also quite heartening that the material was there to come out. I think I cited maybe 5% of what I’ve actually read.

Something liberating I realised before writing was that even if everything I wrote could be proved false, that is useful to the process I am engaged in.

Of course, I haven’t read it yet, so maybe it’s gibberish. But the process is the thing. The past few days, writing the concluding chapter, stuff came together in a new way. I developed new insight; no, I expressed insight that I recognised from the words of others in my own language, on my own terms, and understood the truth of what I was saying. The understanding is part of me now.

The word is not the thing. Knowledge is not understanding. You have to do it yourself.

So yeah. At this point it feels like the fundamental argument I am making is sound. The basic structure is right. The book can be made a lot prettier and more coherent, but that is rewriting’s job. I’ve got a fair idea what I need to read up on, and what bits need fleshing out. All in all, it has been a hell of a ride. Intense and ridiculously hardcore, but lots of fun, too. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to do this.

Apologies to anyone I’ve interacted with (or was supposed to interact with) in the last month. I suspect my head has been… elsewhere.

Now I go to bed with cookies and mindless entertainments. I may be some time. Bring me women, wine, grapes, and chocolate.

What I respond to particularly about Bela Tarr’s films, aside from the visual style, which is very close to my own sensibilities (walking around the waterfront after watching it was pretty special), is that I generally find film to be an extremely compromised artform, and his work almost completely artistically uncompromised. Now, that is something I value, which is a result of my conditioning and psychological make-up, so there is no reason anyone else should agree.

The Man From London is Tarr’s take on a straight, taut thriller. Given his penchant for incredibly long, technically astounding camera shots, and epicly slow pacing, this is a pretty strange move. The hazy and bizarre narrative, and the general unreality of the world, in Werckmeister Harmonies suited his expressive visionary style much more.

The Man From London is a less successful movie. The dubbing and foley is weirdly off. The normality of the world and events makes the pacing glacial. However, there is a lot I liked. The extraordinary array of actors - with amazing faces - he populates his worlds with. The way he brings time and space back into the experience of film. They have been removed by conventions and cutting techniques. Tarr brings them back. Long sequences of characters walking from place to place remind us that important stuff happens in their experience - they have time to think about what is happening, and so on.

The first half hour are superb, almost silent, and represent prodigal direction. After that, the narrative ensues, and is slow. Once the pieces are in place, the set up is in fact extremely taut - but the pacing does not allow for the tension to be sustained, and the eventual resolution is so somehow lacking, occurring offscreen, that we are faced with the prospect of a thriller that isn’t really about tension. It becomes a question of the psychological motivations of characters, and their interactions with the people and space around them. In this sense it reminds me of his earlier film Damnation.

The sparse, bleak, black and white worlds Tarr creates give us a sense of timelessness and emotional devastation. We are left with the actions of people, and to wonder why. There are no easy answers. The Man From London also ends somewhat abruptly, without the final scene which would resolve many of the questions we are left with about the main character.We end on a close-up of a woman’s face. She has not uttered more than three lines of dialogue in the movie, yet has been deeply affected by events, in almost incidental fashion her life has been destroyed; and this is the shot Tarr leaves us with before whiting out.

Not an easy film - a bunch of people left during it - but one I am very glad to have seen on the big screen.

No Right Turn has a brief but hilarious in a totally alarming way post about the right wing smear machine in america, and a particular example of its targeting of Obama, which is so clearly insane that you just need to read it.

Possibly the scariest thing is presumably the authors believe their intended audience is so stupid and ill-informed they might believe it.

Mongol: Review.

Big budget epic biopic of the life of Genghis Khan. Very pretty steppes. Actually, cinematographically and locationally it is gratuitously wonderful throughout. Pretty enjoyable in a historical fantasy kind of way. However, I suspect that it bears little resemblance to anything like the life of Genghis Khan; it is the movie-fied into contemporary narrative form version. (Who knows. Maybe his tale is actually primarily a love story, and he a misunderstood family man forced by circumstance to take over the known world.) In any case I would much prefer a big budget recreation of his actual life and examination of his psyche, whatever they were like, rather than the peculiar mythologising it seemed to be. Of course, this probably isn’t possible for any number of reasons.

Worth seeing at the Embassy, in any case. (Also, I think that’s the only damn near sold out daytime session I’ve ever been to at the festival.)