Years ago, I had friends in New Orleans who had many friends who did drag. I was always fascinated by the makeup they did, since my training was in theatre and I concentrated in theatrical makeup. Here is a really good professional makeup artist who shares the tips for doing drag makeup.
The resulting makeup reminds me of the brilliant Moira Shearer in the 1948 film The Red Shoes--one of my favorite childhood films and perhaps the greatest filmed ballet I can think of.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Men in High Heels?
Kylie Minogue gives great concert. Not since Rocky Horror Show are men in high heels sexy.
Time Warp Priscilla
The Drew Carey Show number where Rocky Horror meets Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Dream About Me
Discovered while preparing the last post: Moby, Dream About Me ...a powerful and disturbing narrative.
More Mylène
Mylène Farmer and Moby's duet, Slipping Away
A very thought-provoking retelling of the Snow White story blended with Marxist and Lenin images.
Mylène Farmer, L'ame-stram-gram. The images remind me so much of "Wu ji" [The Promise].
A very thought-provoking retelling of the Snow White story blended with Marxist and Lenin images.
Mylène Farmer, L'ame-stram-gram. The images remind me so much of "Wu ji" [The Promise].
Monday, September 21, 2009
John F. Kennedy on Diversity
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. (American University Speech, 10 June 1963.)
Amen.
(500) Days of Summer
One of the best films of the summer proved to be the (500) Days of Summer.
A story about love, but not totally a love story, told in a non-linear random way, the film had two incredible actors in the leads and a script that brought great freshness to its story. This dance sequence by Joseph Gordon-Levitt has stayed with me since I saw it. I feel good every time I see this.
This second dance number, although not in the film, uses the two leads and shows them to be quite proficient dancers.
If you haven't seen this movie, find it today.
A story about love, but not totally a love story, told in a non-linear random way, the film had two incredible actors in the leads and a script that brought great freshness to its story. This dance sequence by Joseph Gordon-Levitt has stayed with me since I saw it. I feel good every time I see this.
This second dance number, although not in the film, uses the two leads and shows them to be quite proficient dancers.
If you haven't seen this movie, find it today.
Mylene Farmer
I love when I discover a whole new world I didn't know existed. While talking online one day with a friend who lives in France, he introduced me to the work of Mylene Farmer. "I've known her work since I was seven," he wrote--he's 28. Some of the following clips give you an idea of her range. I was delighted with her work.
It's nice to know that surrealism is alive and well in the music industry of France.
It's nice to know that surrealism is alive and well in the music industry of France.
Mad Men with Their Feet in the Door
[Spoiler Alert. Don't read until you've seen the episodes.]
Mad Men finally feels back up to the standards of last year. Episodes 5 and 6 provide Mad Men junkies their fix.
Episode 5: The Fog
Several things stand out as far as I am concerned with “The Fog”:
First, as a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films, there seems some obvious homage going on in this episode.
Take, for example, the simple use of Betty’s name. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the main characters have several names. Jimmy Stewart’s character is called “Scotty” and “John Ferguson.” Kim Novak’s character is "Madeline" and "Judy." In Mad Men, Betty is called Elizabeth by her father, Betty by her neighbor friend, and Bets by Don. For each name she is actually a slightly different person.
Another of Hitchcock’s obsessions is the idea that beneath the world of ordinary things lays a world of menace and threat. In Betty’s first dream, for example, she could be channeling Grace Kelly in Rear Window with hairstyle and clothing, walking artificially through a “perfect” tree-lined neighborhood filmed using rear screen projection with vaguely “French music” in the background. (Hitchcock used rear screen projection because he hated going out and doing location shots. No matter how sophisticated the screen work, these shots are always obvious and theatrical in appearance.) He also liked to juxtapose happy music with threatening situations.
As Betty walks in the dream, a caterpillar drops down on a thread and hangs down in front of her. She takes it in hand and either merely covers or squashes it—the action is unclear. While the caterpillar is a fairly benign image, it is treated as something to vaguely fear. And it is shown in a close-up. Hitchcock loved using close-ups of ordinary things and often set his visual images so the object has more prominence than the person. So, does the caterpillar suggest Betty’s fear of the child she is having? Or is it a more ominous indication of the animosity she feels towards it?
As Betty is wheeled into the birthing ward of the hospital, we find a world of threat, introduced by her seeing her dead father working as a janitor. Her very ample nursing guide to this world is a character worthy of any Hitchcock film. Her use of a syringe suggests another ordinary threat.
In one of Betty’s later dreams, she finds her father once again functioning as a janitor in her own house mopping up blood from the floor. She asks him if she is dead and he tells her to ask her mother. Her mother stands over the bloodied Medgar Evers who has been alluded to earlier in the episode. Ruth, her mother, says “This is what happens when you speak up.”
While Betty has entered her own hell of sorts, Don is sitting in the waiting room. He reminds me of Cary Grant, Hitchcock’s often used everyman. (Is it irony that Grant plays an ad man in North by Northwest?) In a series of well-crafted scenes, Don encounters Dennis, a prison guard who offers him whiskey and who becomes more and more open as they drink. We already know that Don is much more open to people he does not know, and Dennis--as he drinks--gets more and more open with Don. In fact, Dennis leaves Don by telling him he’s a good guy, that he’s a good judge of character. The last encounter, however, could be easily out of Hitchcock. Don walks down the hall and sees Dennis wheeling out his wife in a wheelchair. He smiles ready to acknowledge him, but Dennis acts as if he doesn’t even know him.
In the last scene of the episode, the baby’s cries awaken Betty who goes to take of him. As she crosses the room, we hear the same music we have heard before. She stops, and I felt a moment of concern for this baby she has in her care.
Episode 6: Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency
As at least one blogger has already written, while Mad Men was winning the best drama on the Emmys, the episode that should win it next year’s Emmys was being presented. The episode had all the subtlety and nuance of character for which the show has become famous, plus the fireworks of an American Fourth of July and an obvious punch-line ending to the title.
The party scene will blow away many viewers. It is shocking, perverse, and involves a string of black humor jokes and sight-gags that makes one pause. The setup for the party begins with a story by Roger Sterling of his father dying in an accident with his arm cut off. Later, Ken drives a small John Deere tractor into the agency, high with enthusiasm for the account he has just landed. The London group, in obvious disdain for the customs of their American workers, requires that everyone put in a normal work day on July 4, 1963. They are there to do CUTS, although the only obvious cut is their British manager Lane (who is given a stuffed erect cobra and being sent off to Bombay). With typical British aplomb, they suggest Lane view this as a promotion and make no comment. The other cut is “inadvertently” leaving Roger Sterling, whose father founded the agency, off the new job structure chart.
The new British Turk, Guy (the “guy” in the title) proposes a party to announce the changes and celebrate Joan’s leaving. At the party, people get very drunk, and Lois, a secretary who has fared poorly so far, is egged on into driving the John Deere tractor. When it goes out of control, she not only wrecks one of the offices but slices off part of Guy’s foot. There is a brilliant shot of several of the copywriters standing with blood spattered all over them. Joan single-handedly takes control, applying a tourniquet and saving Guy’s life, but not his foot. From that point on the show utilizes a series of black humor punch lines and sight gags, capped for me by the British decision that no one can run a company with only one foot. “And he’ll never play golf again.”
While the John Deere episode instantly made a place for itself in the television history, there are other brilliant character moments.
Joan, who never registers defeat in front of others, actually cries at the idea that when she most needs the job, she has given it up for someone whom she had misjudged. In theatre we talk about showing what’s under the mask. Joan’s moment is truly heart-breaking to watch. Her obvious handling of the party tragedy reminded me of how much like Don and Peggy she is—and a character I would truly miss if she weren’t there. (Her exterminating the ants in Lane’s ant farm from “The Fog” was another perfect defining moment.) In my fantasy of where the show should go, Joan, Don and Peggy should start their own ad agency. The final hospital scene between Joan and Don and the sense of warmth and understanding shown between the two characters is what this show is all about.
Finally, Don has always shown himself the better parent. Sally, still reacting to her grandfather Gene’s death, has decided that he has somehow morphed into the baby—he sleeps in his bed and has taken his name. She must also have a sense of guilt since she stole money from her grandfather and he caught her at it. When Betty gives her a Barbie (looking surprisingly like Joan) “from the baby,” Sally throws it out. Don finds it in the bushes and returns it to her room. Sally begins screaming believing that her fears are real and Gene’s ghost is there. Don then comforts her, trying to show that the baby is just a baby, not her grandfather. The scene with Sally, Don, and the baby was touching and true. While Betty could tell their son to go beat his head against a wall instead of being bored—yes, I actually knew some mothers who talked to their children like this—Don instead holds his daughter and allows her to talk out her fears in one of the best father/child scenes since his son asked him about his father last season. Whatever Don’s faults as a husband, he shows himself a loving father. If most great works deal with sin and redemption, Don’s redemption is seen here in his treatment of his children.
If you despaired that this season has lost its zing, give the show another try. It is back in rare form and reminds me why I tell everyone they should watch it.
Afterthought:
As I was standing waiting for the elevator at school today, I thought of the image of Joan as the real-life Barbie in her green dress spattered with blood, and I suddenly realized that we have the foreshadowing for what happens in November 1963. Suddenly the humor of the situation took on a whole new meaning for me. I remember how I felt in those days leading up to that Friday and the shock and grief afterwards. Great art should teach us something new about our human condition. This show does.
Mad Men finally feels back up to the standards of last year. Episodes 5 and 6 provide Mad Men junkies their fix.
Episode 5: The Fog
Several things stand out as far as I am concerned with “The Fog”:
First, as a fan of Alfred Hitchcock films, there seems some obvious homage going on in this episode.
Take, for example, the simple use of Betty’s name. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the main characters have several names. Jimmy Stewart’s character is called “Scotty” and “John Ferguson.” Kim Novak’s character is "Madeline" and "Judy." In Mad Men, Betty is called Elizabeth by her father, Betty by her neighbor friend, and Bets by Don. For each name she is actually a slightly different person.
Another of Hitchcock’s obsessions is the idea that beneath the world of ordinary things lays a world of menace and threat. In Betty’s first dream, for example, she could be channeling Grace Kelly in Rear Window with hairstyle and clothing, walking artificially through a “perfect” tree-lined neighborhood filmed using rear screen projection with vaguely “French music” in the background. (Hitchcock used rear screen projection because he hated going out and doing location shots. No matter how sophisticated the screen work, these shots are always obvious and theatrical in appearance.) He also liked to juxtapose happy music with threatening situations.
As Betty walks in the dream, a caterpillar drops down on a thread and hangs down in front of her. She takes it in hand and either merely covers or squashes it—the action is unclear. While the caterpillar is a fairly benign image, it is treated as something to vaguely fear. And it is shown in a close-up. Hitchcock loved using close-ups of ordinary things and often set his visual images so the object has more prominence than the person. So, does the caterpillar suggest Betty’s fear of the child she is having? Or is it a more ominous indication of the animosity she feels towards it?
As Betty is wheeled into the birthing ward of the hospital, we find a world of threat, introduced by her seeing her dead father working as a janitor. Her very ample nursing guide to this world is a character worthy of any Hitchcock film. Her use of a syringe suggests another ordinary threat.
In one of Betty’s later dreams, she finds her father once again functioning as a janitor in her own house mopping up blood from the floor. She asks him if she is dead and he tells her to ask her mother. Her mother stands over the bloodied Medgar Evers who has been alluded to earlier in the episode. Ruth, her mother, says “This is what happens when you speak up.”
While Betty has entered her own hell of sorts, Don is sitting in the waiting room. He reminds me of Cary Grant, Hitchcock’s often used everyman. (Is it irony that Grant plays an ad man in North by Northwest?) In a series of well-crafted scenes, Don encounters Dennis, a prison guard who offers him whiskey and who becomes more and more open as they drink. We already know that Don is much more open to people he does not know, and Dennis--as he drinks--gets more and more open with Don. In fact, Dennis leaves Don by telling him he’s a good guy, that he’s a good judge of character. The last encounter, however, could be easily out of Hitchcock. Don walks down the hall and sees Dennis wheeling out his wife in a wheelchair. He smiles ready to acknowledge him, but Dennis acts as if he doesn’t even know him.
In the last scene of the episode, the baby’s cries awaken Betty who goes to take of him. As she crosses the room, we hear the same music we have heard before. She stops, and I felt a moment of concern for this baby she has in her care.
Episode 6: Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency
As at least one blogger has already written, while Mad Men was winning the best drama on the Emmys, the episode that should win it next year’s Emmys was being presented. The episode had all the subtlety and nuance of character for which the show has become famous, plus the fireworks of an American Fourth of July and an obvious punch-line ending to the title.
The party scene will blow away many viewers. It is shocking, perverse, and involves a string of black humor jokes and sight-gags that makes one pause. The setup for the party begins with a story by Roger Sterling of his father dying in an accident with his arm cut off. Later, Ken drives a small John Deere tractor into the agency, high with enthusiasm for the account he has just landed. The London group, in obvious disdain for the customs of their American workers, requires that everyone put in a normal work day on July 4, 1963. They are there to do CUTS, although the only obvious cut is their British manager Lane (who is given a stuffed erect cobra and being sent off to Bombay). With typical British aplomb, they suggest Lane view this as a promotion and make no comment. The other cut is “inadvertently” leaving Roger Sterling, whose father founded the agency, off the new job structure chart.
The new British Turk, Guy (the “guy” in the title) proposes a party to announce the changes and celebrate Joan’s leaving. At the party, people get very drunk, and Lois, a secretary who has fared poorly so far, is egged on into driving the John Deere tractor. When it goes out of control, she not only wrecks one of the offices but slices off part of Guy’s foot. There is a brilliant shot of several of the copywriters standing with blood spattered all over them. Joan single-handedly takes control, applying a tourniquet and saving Guy’s life, but not his foot. From that point on the show utilizes a series of black humor punch lines and sight gags, capped for me by the British decision that no one can run a company with only one foot. “And he’ll never play golf again.”
While the John Deere episode instantly made a place for itself in the television history, there are other brilliant character moments.
Joan, who never registers defeat in front of others, actually cries at the idea that when she most needs the job, she has given it up for someone whom she had misjudged. In theatre we talk about showing what’s under the mask. Joan’s moment is truly heart-breaking to watch. Her obvious handling of the party tragedy reminded me of how much like Don and Peggy she is—and a character I would truly miss if she weren’t there. (Her exterminating the ants in Lane’s ant farm from “The Fog” was another perfect defining moment.) In my fantasy of where the show should go, Joan, Don and Peggy should start their own ad agency. The final hospital scene between Joan and Don and the sense of warmth and understanding shown between the two characters is what this show is all about.
Finally, Don has always shown himself the better parent. Sally, still reacting to her grandfather Gene’s death, has decided that he has somehow morphed into the baby—he sleeps in his bed and has taken his name. She must also have a sense of guilt since she stole money from her grandfather and he caught her at it. When Betty gives her a Barbie (looking surprisingly like Joan) “from the baby,” Sally throws it out. Don finds it in the bushes and returns it to her room. Sally begins screaming believing that her fears are real and Gene’s ghost is there. Don then comforts her, trying to show that the baby is just a baby, not her grandfather. The scene with Sally, Don, and the baby was touching and true. While Betty could tell their son to go beat his head against a wall instead of being bored—yes, I actually knew some mothers who talked to their children like this—Don instead holds his daughter and allows her to talk out her fears in one of the best father/child scenes since his son asked him about his father last season. Whatever Don’s faults as a husband, he shows himself a loving father. If most great works deal with sin and redemption, Don’s redemption is seen here in his treatment of his children.
If you despaired that this season has lost its zing, give the show another try. It is back in rare form and reminds me why I tell everyone they should watch it.
Afterthought:
As I was standing waiting for the elevator at school today, I thought of the image of Joan as the real-life Barbie in her green dress spattered with blood, and I suddenly realized that we have the foreshadowing for what happens in November 1963. Suddenly the humor of the situation took on a whole new meaning for me. I remember how I felt in those days leading up to that Friday and the shock and grief afterwards. Great art should teach us something new about our human condition. This show does.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Monday, June 08, 2009
Free Programs Worth Checking Out
Are you like me, trying to get some writing done this summer? Scott Rhoades in his article "Great Software that won't cost you dime," The Writer (May 2009), gives the following programs that might help in writing:
- FreeMind [Windows, Mac OSX, Linux]--a program to help mind-mapping.
- KeyNote [Windows]--a program that allows you to create one computerized notebook to hold notes, pictures, articles, and Web links.
- yWriter [Windows]--a great little program created by Simon Haynes that acts as a "word processor for authors." But even more it allows you to plot out your chapters and scenes, make character notes, and keep notes that you need. Easy to use. I've already started and found it a great help. If you write novels or short stories, this is something you want to check out.
- Stickies [Windows]--several computers back I had this little free program and used it often.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
The Hangover
I knew I was going to enjoy The Hangover when I walked into the theatre hearing the guy parking the cars telling a buddy, "You're going to love that film. I fell out of my seat laughing." Now, I haven't had that experience since I saw Something About Mary for the first time. Although I stayed in my seat, I really enjoyed the film.
Logo's Beautiful People
For me, one of the laugh-out-loud series I'm enjoying this summer is Beautiful People on the Logo channel.
The half-hour show alternates between the present-day life of fey 24 year old Barney's window dresser, Simon Doonen, and his fey childhood as a 13 year old schoolboy growing up in Reading, England, 1997.
Simon introduces his family in an essay for school.
Simon has ambitions to get out of Reading and into the glamorous life he knows should be his. When told he can't leave school to go to drama school, he whines to his parents, "Just because you can't go out and decent jobs, I have to be denied my destiny... I hate my life." He's sure drama is his way to escape. In fact, he can't open his refrigerator at night without belting out "Another Opening, Another Show." He has a truly quirky family who accept him for who he is. "You're not weird; you're different," comforts his mother.
Here are Simon, two friends, and his blind aunt singing and dancing in the street as the kids get ready to try out for Joseph and His Amazing Dream Coat.
Here the director Mr. Bell casts the show while the stage mothers show their colors.
Be prepared to laugh and check out the following:
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Looking for the Sims
I have to admit one of my guilty pleasures when I first retired was playing Sims 2. I enjoyed the creation process of creating settings and actors and then playing out stories with them. It was fun creating my own wallpaper and pictures to use in the houses. I found inspiration from various periods. At left is an example of one my walls with a mural based on the work of Henri Rousseau. At right is a Victorian wall uses a running border of cranes based on the work of Arts and Crafts British artist Walter Crane.
I was surprised at how exhilerating it was to modify a game into a world that I helped create.
Being able to design the house and interiors offers a great opportunity for individual expression. There are a huge amount of furnishings, accessories, wallpaper, and flooring available to the Sims 2 player. Being involved in not just planning of the setting but also the actors--the best kind, ones who don't talk back and do basically what you want them to do--allows for creation of relationships and drama.
Characters and costumes can be fairly standard or highly outlandish. Fantasy characters, such as the mermaid, pirates, knights, satyrs, are available. Sims 2 also is nonjudgmental in terms of the scenarios one can create. Most characters can be gay if desired.
The game revolves around individual households which can consist of one or numerous characters with relationships such as roommates, lovers or family. I've played the basic Sims 2 and Seasons, which I've enjoyed.
So now, just when I get ready to check out Sims 2: Apartment Life this summer, comes the announcement of a new Sims 3.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
GLEE is for all of us who want something more.
I love teaching. And as an extension of that, I love films about teaching and kids discovering who they are. So one of the delights of a couple of weeks ago was watching the debut of Glee. You can watch the entire episode here on Hulu.com.
The show has wit, great musical numbers, edgy humor, and characters I can learn to care about.
Here's the finale of the show. The set-up is that the new glee club coach has decided to quit teaching so he can make more money to support his growing family, leaving the one thing he feels passionately about. As he leaves, he sees a number the club prepared on their own ...
I enjoyed every aspect of this show.
The show has wit, great musical numbers, edgy humor, and characters I can learn to care about.
Here's the finale of the show. The set-up is that the new glee club coach has decided to quit teaching so he can make more money to support his growing family, leaving the one thing he feels passionately about. As he leaves, he sees a number the club prepared on their own ...
I enjoyed every aspect of this show.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
I Just Wanna Dance Re-Edit
One of the musical numbers from Jerry Springer: the Opera, performed by Alison Jiear, says it all.
I was raised on 1950s MGM musicals--glorious technicolor and energy. No matter how many times I see these clips, I just wanna dance along.
I was raised on 1950s MGM musicals--glorious technicolor and energy. No matter how many times I see these clips, I just wanna dance along.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Opposing Gay Marriage
In Los Angeles, Brenda Lee [not the singer but a journalist who claims to write for the Georgia Informer, lives in California, and identifies herself as a "Roman Catholic priestess"] wanted to personally give a letter to President Obama urging him to support traditional marriage. She had to forceably be removed from the Air Force One press area.
For more of the story, check here.
Frank Lloyd Wright is quoted as saying, "Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."
For more of the story, check here.
Frank Lloyd Wright is quoted as saying, "Tip the world on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles."
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Lt. Dan Choi and the Three Words That Changed His Life
As a former sponsor of my school's GSA, I have to say-- in the vernacular of my kids-- "This sucks."
Little Ashes
For many Twilight afficiandos, the R-rated bioflick Little Ashes will be remembered as the film in which Robert Pattinson plays Salvador Dali, soulfully kisses another man, and shows his pubes. In fact, the film has much more to offer as it tells the complicated romantic relationship between Spanish dramatist and poet Federico Garcia Lorca and excentric artist, prompter, and self-styled genius Salvador Dali.
According to the bioflick Little Ashes, Luis Buñuel, Dali and Lorca were all college students living together in 1929 pre-civil war Spain. These bougeoise young men’s lives together consisted of producing art, discussing art, drinking, and dancing.
Lorca and Dali discuss art in Little Ashes
Little Ashes - Clip - Dali (Pattinson) and Lorca Talk
Above all, the goal of Lorca and Dali’s group was to thumb their noses at the establishment--rebel and revolt by using shock. Going to a dinner party in the film, for example, the brash and egomanical Dali announces to the hostess that he has just come from serving a prison sentence and then he continues to play off that fiction for the rest of the meal.
During their “romantic period,” the real Lorca writes an ode to his lover:A rose in the high garden you desire.
A wheel in the pure syntax of steel.
The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog,
The grays watching over the last balustrades.
The modern painters in their white ateliers
clip the square root's sterilized flower.
In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg
chills the windows and scatters the ivy.
Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets.
Crystals hide from the magic of reflections.
The Government has closed the perfume stores.
The machine perpetuates its binary beat.
An absence of forests and screens and brows
roams across the roofs of the old houses.
The air polishes its prism on the sea
and the horizon rises like a great aqueduct.
Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra
behead the sirens on the seas of lead.
Night, black statue of prudence, holds
the moon's round mirror in her hand.
A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us.
Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler.
Venus is a white still life
and the butterfly collectors run away.
*
Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water and hill,
lifts flights of stairs and hides seashells.
Wooden flutes pacify the air.
An ancient woodland god gives the children fruit.
Her fishermen sleep dreamless on the sand.
On the high sea a rose is their compass.
The horizon, virgin of wounded handkerchiefs,
links the great crystals of fish and moon.
A hard diadem of white brigantines
encircles bitter foreheads and hair of sand.
The sirens convince, but they don't beguile,
and they come if we show a glass of fresh water.
*
Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I do not praise your halting adolescent brush
or your pigments that flirt with the pigment of your times,
but I laud your longing for eternity with limits.
Sanitary soul, you live upon new marble.
You run from the dark jungle of improbable forms.
Your fancy reaches only as far as your hands,
and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea in your window.
The world is dull penumbra and disorder
in the foreground where man is found.
But now the stars, concealing landscapes,
reveal the perfect schema of their courses.
The current of time pools and gains order
in the numbered forms of century after century.
And conquered Death takes refuge trembling
in the tight circle of the present instant.
When you take up your palette, a bullet hole in its wing,
you call on the light that brings the olive tree to life.
The broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolds,
where there is no room for dream or its hazy flower.
You call on the old light that stays on the brow,
not descending to the mouth or the heart of man.
A light feared by the loving vines of Bacchus
and the chaotic force of curving water.
You do well when you post warning flags
along the dark limit that shines in the night.
As a painter, you refuse to have your forms softened
by the shifting cotton of an unexpected cloud.
The fish in the fishbowl and the bird in the cage.
You refuse to invent them in the sea or the air.
You stylize or copy once you have seen
their small, agile bodies with your honest eyes.
You love a matter definite and exact,
where the toadstool cannot pitch its camp.
You love the architecture that builds on the absent
and admit the flag simply as a joke.
The steel compass tells its short, elastic verse.
Unknown clouds rise to deny the sphere exists.
The straight line tells of its upward struggle
and the learned crystals sing their geometries.
*
But also the rose of the garden where you live.
Always the rose, always, our north and south!
Calm and ingathered like an eyeless statue,
not knowing the buried struggle it provokes.
Pure rose, clean of artifice and rough sketches,
opening for us the slender wings of the smile.
(Pinned butterfly that ponders its flight.)
Rose of balance, with no self-inflicted pains.
Always the rose!
*
Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice!
I speak of what your person and your paintings tell me.
I do not praise your halting adolescent brush,
but I sing the steady aim of your arrows.
I sing your fair struggle of Catalan lights,
your love of what might be made clear.
I sing your astronomical and tender heart,
a never-wounded deck of French cards.
I sing your restless longing for the statue,
your fear of the feelings that await you in the street.
I sing the small sea siren who sings to you,
riding her bicycle of corals and conches.
But above all I sing a common thought
that joins us in the dark and golden hours.
The light that blinds our eyes is not art.
Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords.
Not the picture you patiently trace,
but the breast of Theresa, she of sleepless skin,
the tight-wound curls of Mathilde the ungrateful,
our friendship, painted bright as a game board.
May fingerprints of blood on gold
streak the heart of eternal Catalunya.
May stars like falconless fists shine on you,
while your painting and your life break into flower.
Don't watch the water clock with its membraned wings
or the hard scythe of the allegory.
Always in the air, dress and undress your brush
before the sea peopled with sailors and ships.
Buñuel watches with growing intensity the flirting of Lorca and Dali. Buñuel’s homophobia and yet obvious attraction to his homosexual friend Lorca seems to prompt him to try to steal the sexually ambivalent Dali away from him and take him off to Paris, where the two later collaborate in making films and joining the Surrealist Movement.
Luis Buñuel once wrote that one of the difficult things for a surrealist in today’s world is that it was too difficult to shock the viewer. Certainly the surrealists tried. Buñuel and Dali in their film un chien andalou have a man slice open the eyeball of a woman who stares directly at the camera. Buñuel in his autobiography describes how Dali was once thrown out of his house by his father when he scrawled on a painting, “I spit on the portrait of my mother.” Carrying on the outlandish childish performance art of the Dadaists, the surrealists attempted to bring together totally incongruent images intended to both confuse and shock the viewer.
Watch un chien andalou here Buñuel says the film began by his recounting to Dali a dream where a cloud, like a knife, slides across the moon. Dali in turn describes a dream where ants crawl out of a wound in his hand. The two then begin throwing out ideas, shocking images, incomprehensible phrases and situations. From that the film is born. While not part of the Surrealist movement when they made the film, they soon are asked to join.
Sexual repression in Spanish society appalled the Surrealists. Among the things they did was publish a sexual questionaire in their journal, asking such provocative [and scandalous] questions as "Where do you make love?", "With whom?", "Where do you masturbate?" Buñuel in his autobiography describes how liberating and how dangerous the questionaire felt (Buñuel, Vanity Fair 110).
The film Lorca, who history shows was comfortable with his sexuality in spite of strong anti-gay sentiments, shows the torment of an ultimately unrequited physical relationship with Dali. One of Dali's biographers says he reviled all personal contact from anyone. In contrast, in a period when it is dangerous to be homosexual in provencial Spain, Lorca continues openly with others. [His openness about his sexuality and his importance as a Spanish poet and dramatist ultimately lead to his death.]
In the film, Lorca’s disappointment with Dali’s rejection of him spurs Lorca on to succumb to a female friend's advances. As the two make love, Dali voyeuristically watches in the corner. Lorca says later that this incident was used by Dali in un chien andalau to mock him.
After several years, the married Dali meets again with Lorca. After his wife Gala makes a play for Lorca, Dali proposes that they all move in together—including a lover if Lorca has one—and work on more projects.
The bizarre artist whose behavior far outshone his art can be see in the following clip.
Dali – The Spanish Painter and Self Styled Genius
Little Ashes presents this story of thwarted love intelligently and often tenderly. While Pattinson gives a surprisingly nuanced performance, Javier Beltrán playing Lorca has true cinematic charisma. For me, he dominated all of his scenes. I highly recommend the film for an adult audience.
A clip about Luis Buñuel
To read more about Buñuel and Dali with the Surrealists, read Luis Buñuel's When Art Was Revolution, a fascinating article based on his autobiography, My Last Sigh, in Vanity Fair (September 1983, 108+). For a later view of Dali, check out Diedrich Diederichsen's Say Butterfly.
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