The Return

Putting.
Some.
Words.
In.
A.
Line.

So simple and so pleasurable.

All of my life can be seen as a word-based reflection/commentary/stream of thoughts; without the words there is no life, there is no consciousness. There is nothing to leave behind. Words and language are everything - and yet we waste them.

Coming up with a phrase or a well-balanced sentence is so pleasurable: there was something at work today, in an email I wrote, about how something was 'homophonically Freudian' - something that I had never expected that I would ever say; and yet it was very appropriate, and pithy and funny. But just a set of words in a line, in a dynamic, unforeseen context, and now vanished forever, except, perhaps, in the minds of the sender and the recipient. A reflection/extension of my consciousness and sensibility, projected out into space and now...lost.

Possible Disservice

I may be making a horrible misjudgement. But...it seems to me that you can tell very quickly whether a work of art is 'true' or not: whether its heart is beating with the beat of a real life, or whether it feels like something cconcocted. Something that has been created within a framework that has constrained its mode of expression and rendered it...what? Bogus? Unbelievable? At the very least, you are aware of this thing straining to be art; you are conscious of its artifice and of what it is trying to make you think or feel. With film, I feel that this is possible almost from the first frame.

Thus "Flags of Our Fathers". A worthy subject. But as soon as the voiceover starts, with its carefully modulated commentary on the images we're seeing, you're aware that a script is being read: there's no sense that this is a real person voicing real thoughts - it's an actor reading a script. Artistically, this is death for me. Bogus and manipulative. Much as I wanted to watch this film, I had to stop, because - from that early moment - I didn't believe it.