My use of this French construction as an identity is due to the numerous ways it can be arranged to make a sentence. There is a French song of the same title too.
See this example from Toog'sblog.
jeudi, septembre 08, 2005
j'étais là et là et là et là
posted by toog at 13:31
http://toog.blogspot.com/2005/09/jtais-l-et-l-et-l-et-l.html
There is a photograph that goes with this on Toog's website. Toog is a musican, photographer with an interesting background who lives in Paris. The grammatical exercise below is the sort of thing used by students in the Paris uprisings of 1968.
Conjuguer amélipouliniser au présent de l'indicatif
J'amélipoulinise Edith Piaf
Tu amélipoulinises Edith Piaf
Il amélipoulinise Edith Piaf
Nous amélipoulinisons Edith Piaf
Vous amélipoulinisez Edith Piaf
Ils amélipoulinisent Edith Piaf
sábado, 5 de abril de 2008
Join the Club: Julian Gallo
13th March 2008.
I found this blog when checking on my artist friend Cesar Cornejo (www.cesarcornejo.com) .
He seems to be an Iberian friendly New York fiction writer who blogs to shift writer's block, like me.
http://www.juliangallo.net/blog.cfm?showmonth=8&showyear=2006&showall=1
Welcome To The Club
Have you ever felt that obtaining just a little peace of mind was a Sisyphian effort? Just when you think you're getting there, the boulder just rolls right over you again and you have to start over? Have you ever been accused of being "selfish" by those who always want it their way? Have you ever been accused of being "angry" just because you have an opinion? Have you ever had anyone get angry with you and then not tell you what their angry about? They just stop talking to you and expect you to coddle them and ask them "what's wrong" when it is obvious that it is they who have the problem? Have you ever been criticized for not living up to the expectations others have of you? Expectations that they have defined and not yourself? Have you ever been accused of being "rebellious" and "anti-social" just because you live your life not doing everything that you're told? Is blind obedience to other's standards preferable to thinking and living for yourself? Have you ever been the source of other people's amusement merely because you aren't just like them? In other words, if you don't think, act and/or behave like them, then there's something wrong with you? If you have, welcome to the club. As a grown man, I am tired of all this but yet this is the sort of thing I seem to meet on a daily basis. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know. All I know is there are a hell of a lot of people out there who seem to think if you don't conform to their personal view of the world, then you are either "angry", "anti-social", "rebellious", etc etc. Well...sorry folks. Sorry to disappoint you. Sorry that I am not you. I guess that's a good enough reason to hold it against me. Just think of all the energy you are expending to let me know this. Meanwhile, in the grand scheme of things, I really could care less what you think. So go ahead and expend all that energy. What harm are you really doing to me?
I found this blog when checking on my artist friend Cesar Cornejo (www.cesarcornejo.com) .
He seems to be an Iberian friendly New York fiction writer who blogs to shift writer's block, like me.
http://www.juliangallo.net/blog.cfm?showmonth=8&showyear=2006&showall=1
Welcome To The Club
Have you ever felt that obtaining just a little peace of mind was a Sisyphian effort? Just when you think you're getting there, the boulder just rolls right over you again and you have to start over? Have you ever been accused of being "selfish" by those who always want it their way? Have you ever been accused of being "angry" just because you have an opinion? Have you ever had anyone get angry with you and then not tell you what their angry about? They just stop talking to you and expect you to coddle them and ask them "what's wrong" when it is obvious that it is they who have the problem? Have you ever been criticized for not living up to the expectations others have of you? Expectations that they have defined and not yourself? Have you ever been accused of being "rebellious" and "anti-social" just because you live your life not doing everything that you're told? Is blind obedience to other's standards preferable to thinking and living for yourself? Have you ever been the source of other people's amusement merely because you aren't just like them? In other words, if you don't think, act and/or behave like them, then there's something wrong with you? If you have, welcome to the club. As a grown man, I am tired of all this but yet this is the sort of thing I seem to meet on a daily basis. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know. All I know is there are a hell of a lot of people out there who seem to think if you don't conform to their personal view of the world, then you are either "angry", "anti-social", "rebellious", etc etc. Well...sorry folks. Sorry to disappoint you. Sorry that I am not you. I guess that's a good enough reason to hold it against me. Just think of all the energy you are expending to let me know this. Meanwhile, in the grand scheme of things, I really could care less what you think. So go ahead and expend all that energy. What harm are you really doing to me?
sábado, 8 de março de 2008
Wedding Anniversary
Today I have been married for 28 years. And today I cannot see how I can carry on with it. I am tired of the ties that bind, especially the economic ones.
Tired of always having to compromise and put others first. The accountant and I are on divergent paths. The supportive railway tracks are cracking up.
I have been away from home for two long periods already in the last 3 years. Now the walls of my house are caving in again and I need to leave once more.
This is more than depression and empty nest syndrome. This is bad.
Two days at home without academic stimulation and I am crawling up the walls. I missed an opportunity to go to London to a seminar on the work of Derek Jarman. See
Tired of always having to compromise and put others first. The accountant and I are on divergent paths. The supportive railway tracks are cracking up.
I have been away from home for two long periods already in the last 3 years. Now the walls of my house are caving in again and I need to leave once more.
This is more than depression and empty nest syndrome. This is bad.
Two days at home without academic stimulation and I am crawling up the walls. I missed an opportunity to go to London to a seminar on the work of Derek Jarman. See
I am interested in his film Blue, but I think it is showing at the exhibition of his work at the Serpentine Gallery. It felt a bit silly to go to the seminar without seeing the exhibition. I was interested in hearing differing critical viewpoints in the area of visual art and film. One of the speakers was Laura Mulvey.
Bad news for a globalised hybridity study really. And for the image of myself in this blog which I realise is very much an English lady, with all the limitations that implies. Is leaving your husband like childbirth - not understoood as dangerous to the mind until too late ?
I return to the subject of the hour. Overall musing about this dissertation. These are the pieces that are not usually revealed by writers of any type. NOT having a clear overall view of the topic for one thing. Mixing the personal with the impersonal for another. More mind mapping I think.
Big Flakes of Snow - and Amarelo Manga and hybridity
Why does a snowy view always make it seem like a holiday ? and why does the expectation of snow always seem like a good thing …. Or am I just a very flaky sort ?
No snow to speak of, and yet I am still pondering and distracting myself with the thought, even though I am supposed to be writing about Recife, a city which I am certain has never seen a snowflake.
Let us banish the doubts and evaluate the results of my mind mapping on Hybridity. I did a strong speaking out loud simplification, but did not record it.
So do I do as I suggested and continue mind mapping work that I have already carried out?
Or do I start doing some editing of work I already did in the past, given that I only have about 500 words to begin with for my descriptive understanding of the process of hybridity anyway.
It would be nice to map out particular places in the whole dissertation where I am likely to refer to hybridity. Maybe ask myself why this particular theoretical descriptive idea can be of use in my dissertation as a whole. A question never particularly asked in this theory – response method before, because the nature of the dissertation is to ‘look to the text’ (or meaning?) of the work under examination in order to elucidate a contribution to academic learning. This is a film which at heart is critical of the influence of culture, and of ‘textual’, and ‘semiotic’ descriptions. So a textual or semiotic approach has not really seemed appropriate. It is not entirely a fictional piece, in the sense that it captures and uses realities of previous cultural history as well as cinematic shots of the real contemporary streets of Recife and its people. It is very difficult to honestly extricate this film from the social and cultural context in which it is both made and which it seeks to expand knowledge of. Paying attention only to the narrative and the characters is to miss half the meaning of the film. I check and find I had the same kind of discussion with myself, and as I recall, with a couple of Brazilian academics in May last year.
I did decide early on to pay considerable attention to the ‘geography’ of the film. In part this was because the city of Recife is familiar to me, and I can spot the particular locations and the significance of how some of them presented. In addition, rather than an associated ‘semiotic’, even a visual reading of some of the locations and events, it became apparent that some of the scenes were essentially recreations of previous literary descriptions of the city from some of it’s most famous writers and their most well known works. But I did not really understand the subversive nature of the yellow metaphor in the film until I read Tempo Amarelo, the book by Renato Carneiro Campos that is quoted in the film. About RCC -
No snow to speak of, and yet I am still pondering and distracting myself with the thought, even though I am supposed to be writing about Recife, a city which I am certain has never seen a snowflake.
Let us banish the doubts and evaluate the results of my mind mapping on Hybridity. I did a strong speaking out loud simplification, but did not record it.
So do I do as I suggested and continue mind mapping work that I have already carried out?
Or do I start doing some editing of work I already did in the past, given that I only have about 500 words to begin with for my descriptive understanding of the process of hybridity anyway.
It would be nice to map out particular places in the whole dissertation where I am likely to refer to hybridity. Maybe ask myself why this particular theoretical descriptive idea can be of use in my dissertation as a whole. A question never particularly asked in this theory – response method before, because the nature of the dissertation is to ‘look to the text’ (or meaning?) of the work under examination in order to elucidate a contribution to academic learning. This is a film which at heart is critical of the influence of culture, and of ‘textual’, and ‘semiotic’ descriptions. So a textual or semiotic approach has not really seemed appropriate. It is not entirely a fictional piece, in the sense that it captures and uses realities of previous cultural history as well as cinematic shots of the real contemporary streets of Recife and its people. It is very difficult to honestly extricate this film from the social and cultural context in which it is both made and which it seeks to expand knowledge of. Paying attention only to the narrative and the characters is to miss half the meaning of the film. I check and find I had the same kind of discussion with myself, and as I recall, with a couple of Brazilian academics in May last year.
I did decide early on to pay considerable attention to the ‘geography’ of the film. In part this was because the city of Recife is familiar to me, and I can spot the particular locations and the significance of how some of them presented. In addition, rather than an associated ‘semiotic’, even a visual reading of some of the locations and events, it became apparent that some of the scenes were essentially recreations of previous literary descriptions of the city from some of it’s most famous writers and their most well known works. But I did not really understand the subversive nature of the yellow metaphor in the film until I read Tempo Amarelo, the book by Renato Carneiro Campos that is quoted in the film. About RCC -
Why I worry about blossom on trees
It is the begining of March. And at the end of my garden are two wild mirabelle plum trees, one that produces tiny yellow fruit and one that has red. We make jam and sometimes I bottle them in the old fashioned way that my parents did. The blossom is white, and early. So early that all week I have worried that the frost and snow and heavy storms of this week will kill the blossom and we will lose the fruit.Where I grew up as a teenager in Central Otago, New Zealand , there was many acres of fruit trees - plums, greengages, and apples, but even more cherries, peaches, nectarines and above all many varieties of apricots which thrived in the hot summers. But the winters were severely cold and frosty, and the orchardists protected the fragile blossom by burning pots of oil under the branches – a messy system that required alarms to awaken the family to refill the frost pots during the long night. Nowadays a system of pumped water sprays are automated to sprinkle the trees and freeze a glassy shell over the blossom and buds at the exact 1 degree Celsius that would prevent any further damage to the fruiting of the tree. Environmentally more friendly to the air, but the water is available due to the flooding of the river valley for a dam and irrigation systems in a very dry region.
The resources of my East Anglian garden can offer no such protection to my potential plum crop this year. So I can only hope that the snow comes before the frost and allows the buds to be protected under a white blanket. What makes me worry about natural things that cannot be altered like this ?
quinta-feira, 28 de fevereiro de 2008
Shallow and inconsequential
Taking the more serious mode
...or road. I am writing this in the morning when I should finish my dissertation. I have done the printing off some useful procrastination kickers from the internet. I have got dressed and had 2 cups of tea, a banana, 2 plums and a hot cross-bun with blackcurrent jam (no wonder the weight stays 0n!). It is early enough to take the bus to Bury and sit in the Library there...
~~~~~~~~~~
But on Tuesday at the Departmental Book Launch I met a fellow post-grad who has finished his PHD and has his viva in 2 weeks time !!!
But I know that it has taken 4 plus years, cost him relationships,some of his hair and sent him to the depths of despair at times. But he is finished, and so should I. Any way he has been researching in Recife like me, and knows my subject Amarelo Manga, so he asked me an intelligent question about it, and I could answer, so I just know it is time to wrap it all up. But yesterday I could not force myself to write, especially as it was very sunny outside, and is again today. Eventually I went out to met my nephew in Cambridge to see Be Kind, Rewind, which I justified as kind of the same rethinking of film cultures that I find in AM, but of course it is gussied up as a feel good movie and a laugh with the leading actors, so the reviews do not really tackle the internal criticism inplicit in the title of rethinking the whole grip of the Hollywood dream machine on our expectations of movie culture. I must see if there are any more considered discussions about this film.But not as a distraction from my own writing, you understand. Just as an added understanding....
Introspective as some of the discussions were on Tuesday (there were lots of anthropologists and people from other universities there), I found myself in serious conversations about New Zealand with a couple of people who had spent some time there. One is doing a PHD on tattos and Polynesia. They both had reservations about the country and the people which were more incisive than the usual gushing about the scenery and the food. That made me feel more emotionally settled about my own mixed feelings about my friends and relatives still there.
My younger sister who completed her Masters with a first last year while holding down a full time job (admittedly below her professional capability, and in the same university) is treating me to a weekend in Birmingham (no laughing, our mother was born there). And she also lives away from New Zealand because she finds Europe more interesting. But she has been looking at writing about women in sport, which is actually something that is much more equal and better done in New Zealand these days. Every experience and location has its influence. But mine is now Brazil and I want to spread the word. So I have a major incentive to be finished and give her something to read from me. And there is more, but I realise that I am in danger of putting all my limited social life online and unmasking all my fr
iends and enemies. So to the serious work...
The picture by the way, is from an old CD of National Geographic pictures, available for use on web-sites it says, but marked by that publication's habit of cute pictures of natives in the Amazon that is quite naive tourist and racially demeaning too. But as his face is hidden and he represents a metaphor for my own instincts at the moment I will risk the anthropologists critique. Sorry to anyone who feels offended by the idea of attributing internal feelings onto other peoples in the photographic representation, but that is part of my dissertation writing too. Just to clarify to myself. Stop digging a hole, girl !!
...or road. I am writing this in the morning when I should finish my dissertation. I have done the printing off some useful procrastination kickers from the internet. I have got dressed and had 2 cups of tea, a banana, 2 plums and a hot cross-bun with blackcurrent jam (no wonder the weight stays 0n!). It is early enough to take the bus to Bury and sit in the Library there...
~~~~~~~~~~
But on Tuesday at the Departmental Book Launch I met a fellow post-grad who has finished his PHD and has his viva in 2 weeks time !!!
But I know that it has taken 4 plus years, cost him relationships,some of his hair and sent him to the depths of despair at times. But he is finished, and so should I. Any way he has been researching in Recife like me, and knows my subject Amarelo Manga, so he asked me an intelligent question about it, and I could answer, so I just know it is time to wrap it all up. But yesterday I could not force myself to write, especially as it was very sunny outside, and is again today. Eventually I went out to met my nephew in Cambridge to see Be Kind, Rewind, which I justified as kind of the same rethinking of film cultures that I find in AM, but of course it is gussied up as a feel good movie and a laugh with the leading actors, so the reviews do not really tackle the internal criticism inplicit in the title of rethinking the whole grip of the Hollywood dream machine on our expectations of movie culture. I must see if there are any more considered discussions about this film.But not as a distraction from my own writing, you understand. Just as an added understanding....
Introspective as some of the discussions were on Tuesday (there were lots of anthropologists and people from other universities there), I found myself in serious conversations about New Zealand with a couple of people who had spent some time there. One is doing a PHD on tattos and Polynesia. They both had reservations about the country and the people which were more incisive than the usual gushing about the scenery and the food. That made me feel more emotionally settled about my own mixed feelings about my friends and relatives still there.
My younger sister who completed her Masters with a first last year while holding down a full time job (admittedly below her professional capability, and in the same university) is treating me to a weekend in Birmingham (no laughing, our mother was born there). And she also lives away from New Zealand because she finds Europe more interesting. But she has been looking at writing about women in sport, which is actually something that is much more equal and better done in New Zealand these days. Every experience and location has its influence. But mine is now Brazil and I want to spread the word. So I have a major incentive to be finished and give her something to read from me. And there is more, but I realise that I am in danger of putting all my limited social life online and unmasking all my fr
iends and enemies. So to the serious work...The picture by the way, is from an old CD of National Geographic pictures, available for use on web-sites it says, but marked by that publication's habit of cute pictures of natives in the Amazon that is quite naive tourist and racially demeaning too. But as his face is hidden and he represents a metaphor for my own instincts at the moment I will risk the anthropologists critique. Sorry to anyone who feels offended by the idea of attributing internal feelings onto other peoples in the photographic representation, but that is part of my dissertation writing too. Just to clarify to myself. Stop digging a hole, girl !!
domingo, 24 de fevereiro de 2008
Red Shoes, Black Shoes.
Red Shoes
I don't actually want this particular picture of red shoes, although they are similar to a pair I actually own. I was trying to find on the website http://www.spaininfo.co.uk/ a picture I had on their printed brochure of a girl in a red dress trying to choose from a dozen boxes of red shoes - a tribute to shopping in Spain that did not seem to be on the website. Not that I doubt the Spanish shops, just that a trip to Lisbon via Madrid on a tight budget en famille 5 years ago did not allow me to find out, and that is the only time I have been in Spain.
Although as my current escape dreams are full of solitary travelling lately, I have been toying with the idea of flying to the Algarve (cheap) and using a rental car or the local buses to travel around Southern Spain. I have a vain hope that in mid-winter the reputation of Alhambra as tourist ridden may prove unjustified.
However I digress from shoes. I already own 2 pairs of fancy red shoes and acquired 2 more pairs of be-jewelled party shoes in the sales. 1. a wonderful beige velvet with open toe and jewels and 2. a more strident purple silk with diamante stars, both now squirreled away in my fancy clothes suitcase and away from the accountant's gaze (aka known as my husband). The cost was low, about £40 for the two. The pleasure and the guilt strange (due in part to my huge credit card hangover - even at 0%). So what was the attraction of choosing red shoes? After all I rarely wear them. It was the idea of family, fantasy, generations and shoes.
Black shoes
My oldest daughter was home last weekend for the large Catholic funeral of the father of a school friend who had been in Australia for exactly four days when the call came to say he had died of a heart attack on a French golf course. His wife, owner of a recently acquired post-graduate certificate as a theatre nurse was in pieces in grief. As was my daughter's friend. Fine art graduate and lover of fashion as my daughter is, she set out for the funeral from the bus-stop outside our house in London fashion black layered coat,leggings, scarf and dress, and had a lift down to Newmarket within a minute, probably on account of her wooden style high heeled black shoes. She had the sense to take the other woman at the bus stop with her, although the male driver was almost certainly a neighbour - we all know the vagaries of our local buses, so seldom seen on time, not to gallantly give those waiting at the bus stop a lift whenever we can. She returned some hours later in a black patent pair with high heels and jaunty brass gold buckles, as 1980s a pair of shoes as I have seen in a while. She claimed that the discomfort of the other shoes had led her into New Look to find them for only £15. As she left early the next morning with her father and one of our larger suitcases for her flight to Whistler later that night, I discovered she had left the new shoes for me to find. Clearly unsuitable for her ski holiday ! And a generous gift from a girl, taller, thinner, blonder and half a shoe size larger than me. But they fit !!! I feel like a queen. Why was it such a lovely gift, shoes only worn to one funeral ? And why was I, sober matron that I should be, so cheered by a pair of jaunty buckles and a high heel ? If I desire the shoes, will some one desire me? I know a nice footman who might! Is shallow female desire so materialistic and body personalised?? She who would normally read a book instead? Madame Bovary was never more satisfied with fashion over thought. Does my daughter know how I think myself young these days.
I return today revitalised and anxious to go back to my academic writing and thinking. And ignoring the very sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of disappointing the accountant who wants me to stop. Incompatibility after 30 years stalks our household. I am very afraid. But too afraid to talk. Because he cannot argue in terms of Virginia Woolf.
This Mrs Dalloway is metamorphosing. I am very afraid of becoming Madalena.
I don't actually want this particular picture of red shoes, although they are similar to a pair I actually own. I was trying to find on the website http://www.spaininfo.co.uk/ a picture I had on their printed brochure of a girl in a red dress trying to choose from a dozen boxes of red shoes - a tribute to shopping in Spain that did not seem to be on the website. Not that I doubt the Spanish shops, just that a trip to Lisbon via Madrid on a tight budget en famille 5 years ago did not allow me to find out, and that is the only time I have been in Spain.Although as my current escape dreams are full of solitary travelling lately, I have been toying with the idea of flying to the Algarve (cheap) and using a rental car or the local buses to travel around Southern Spain. I have a vain hope that in mid-winter the reputation of Alhambra as tourist ridden may prove unjustified.
However I digress from shoes. I already own 2 pairs of fancy red shoes and acquired 2 more pairs of be-jewelled party shoes in the sales. 1. a wonderful beige velvet with open toe and jewels and 2. a more strident purple silk with diamante stars, both now squirreled away in my fancy clothes suitcase and away from the accountant's gaze (aka known as my husband). The cost was low, about £40 for the two. The pleasure and the guilt strange (due in part to my huge credit card hangover - even at 0%). So what was the attraction of choosing red shoes? After all I rarely wear them. It was the idea of family, fantasy, generations and shoes.
Black shoes
My oldest daughter was home last weekend for the large Catholic funeral of the father of a school friend who had been in Australia for exactly four days when the call came to say he had died of a heart attack on a French golf course. His wife, owner of a recently acquired post-graduate certificate as a theatre nurse was in pieces in grief. As was my daughter's friend. Fine art graduate and lover of fashion as my daughter is, she set out for the funeral from the bus-stop outside our house in London fashion black layered coat,leggings, scarf and dress, and had a lift down to Newmarket within a minute, probably on account of her wooden style high heeled black shoes. She had the sense to take the other woman at the bus stop with her, although the male driver was almost certainly a neighbour - we all know the vagaries of our local buses, so seldom seen on time, not to gallantly give those waiting at the bus stop a lift whenever we can. She returned some hours later in a black patent pair with high heels and jaunty brass gold buckles, as 1980s a pair of shoes as I have seen in a while. She claimed that the discomfort of the other shoes had led her into New Look to find them for only £15. As she left early the next morning with her father and one of our larger suitcases for her flight to Whistler later that night, I discovered she had left the new shoes for me to find. Clearly unsuitable for her ski holiday ! And a generous gift from a girl, taller, thinner, blonder and half a shoe size larger than me. But they fit !!! I feel like a queen. Why was it such a lovely gift, shoes only worn to one funeral ? And why was I, sober matron that I should be, so cheered by a pair of jaunty buckles and a high heel ? If I desire the shoes, will some one desire me? I know a nice footman who might! Is shallow female desire so materialistic and body personalised?? She who would normally read a book instead? Madame Bovary was never more satisfied with fashion over thought. Does my daughter know how I think myself young these days.
I return today revitalised and anxious to go back to my academic writing and thinking. And ignoring the very sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of disappointing the accountant who wants me to stop. Incompatibility after 30 years stalks our household. I am very afraid. But too afraid to talk. Because he cannot argue in terms of Virginia Woolf.
This Mrs Dalloway is metamorphosing. I am very afraid of becoming Madalena.
BROKEN DREAMS
Just after my last blog I discovered that my lovely Sony Vaio laptop had accidently been crushed. I have now had five weeks getting my data off the damaged hard drive and lost all my bibliographic listings (in Endnote) and some of my Mindmaps. I am back online with a second hand Dell, and mananged to reload most of my software and original word and pdf docs. I also lost my personal photographs which was a huge blow. I feel a bit jinxed, especially as the culprit won't own up. But the insurance claim is in, so I may get a few pennies. Not enough to buy a lovely new Vaio with mobile internet access though.
Anyway, here I am with a few things to catch up. Firstly to say that I went to a very good seminar at the Latin American Department at Cambridge University where I met a husband and wife team of economists from Recife, with some very exciting work on inequality in Brazil, and especially on education, which made me think very hard about my original feelings about Brazil and why I am studying it. I need to put something together about this next time.
And then I had a very interesting telephone conversation with my Brazilian film academic about the poem that I mentioned last time. We were discussing the translation of the poem which can alter the 'feel' of it, and why I felt it was rather cinematic. Now I need to edit my writing about it and put it up on this web.
And next Tuesday, 26th February 2008, the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Department at King's College, London is having a collective Book Launch and Film screening, especially the book from their recent research on the Cultures of the Lusophone Black Atlantic / edited by Nancy Naro, Roger Sansi-Roca and David Treece, and several other recent publications. Film Screening is Jongos, Calangos and Folias. Black Music, Memory and Poetry. Starts with the film at 5pm. See www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/pobrst for details.
quarta-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2008
And start all over again....
Pick myself up, etc.. (popular song). Well, even though I have not managed to finish the dissertation for which I gave up my blog in order to concentrate on writing, I am still hanging around in academia and even, somehow, my marraige. Several friends have revealed their own blogs which is fascinating when you know them well, but I feel too mindful of my daughters and my own privacy to inhabit Facebook. So I have decided to recommence this anonymous 'publicity' journal, because I want to carry on publicising the wonderful creative and academic achievements of friends, and accounts of films, seminars and conferences that I go to, which are too often unpublished and lost. It will still be a place for me to work out a few ideas and thoughts of my own.
I am just writing some thoughts for a Brazilian friend who is embarking on an academic career in film studies, and found myself returning to a poem by Manuel Bandiera (He is a 20th century Brazilian poet whose picture is on the right side of this blog). I first looked at this poem in relation to thinking about urban imagery and spaces in relation to Recife for my Amarelo Manga work. But my friend is considering ideas about 'realism', and did a paper about the film Children of Men and realism in Science Fiction film. Anyway this is the poem in English translation by Richard Slavitt - I don't agree entirely with his version, but that is the business of my paper !
Reality and Image
The skyscraper soars into the clear air washed clean by the rain
and descends to its reflection in a mud puddle in the courtyard.
Between reality and image, on the dry ground between the two,
four pigeons go for a walk.
It does seem almost universal, but I should contextualise it and say it was written in 1947, when the poet was living in an apartment block in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was then a fairly new experience, and so I suppose a specific time and place to comment on urban living. And it is so popular in it's apparant simplicity that it has been recently used (2006) in Brazil's final school examination for university entrance - the Vestibular. And for those of you who relate intellectual and artistic activity to European trends, it does have a wiff of French contemporary 'existentialism' philosophically speaking, or religious 'spirit' for those whose leanings in semiotic interpretations are so inclined.
My analysis is picking at the 'visual' - textual to 'mind's eye' puzzle. So I will try and let you know if I succeed next time. And hope I get this loaded up !!!
I am just writing some thoughts for a Brazilian friend who is embarking on an academic career in film studies, and found myself returning to a poem by Manuel Bandiera (He is a 20th century Brazilian poet whose picture is on the right side of this blog). I first looked at this poem in relation to thinking about urban imagery and spaces in relation to Recife for my Amarelo Manga work. But my friend is considering ideas about 'realism', and did a paper about the film Children of Men and realism in Science Fiction film. Anyway this is the poem in English translation by Richard Slavitt - I don't agree entirely with his version, but that is the business of my paper !
Reality and Image
The skyscraper soars into the clear air washed clean by the rain
and descends to its reflection in a mud puddle in the courtyard.
Between reality and image, on the dry ground between the two,
four pigeons go for a walk.
It does seem almost universal, but I should contextualise it and say it was written in 1947, when the poet was living in an apartment block in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which was then a fairly new experience, and so I suppose a specific time and place to comment on urban living. And it is so popular in it's apparant simplicity that it has been recently used (2006) in Brazil's final school examination for university entrance - the Vestibular. And for those of you who relate intellectual and artistic activity to European trends, it does have a wiff of French contemporary 'existentialism' philosophically speaking, or religious 'spirit' for those whose leanings in semiotic interpretations are so inclined.
My analysis is picking at the 'visual' - textual to 'mind's eye' puzzle. So I will try and let you know if I succeed next time. And hope I get this loaded up !!!
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