[Image: Toothpaste for Dinner, June 3, 2007]
From whiskey river:
People write letters
to me from heaven, but I’m not listening.
The hermit said: “Because the world is mad,
the only way through the world is to learn
the arts and double the madness.” Are you listening?
(Robert Bly, “Listening”1)
…and (italicized portion):
We like to think that we are finely evolved creatures, in suit-and-tie or pantyhose-and-chemise, who live many millennia and mental detours away from the cave, but that’s not something our bodies are convinced of. We may have the luxury of being at the top of the food chain, but our adrenaline still rushes when we encounter real or imaginary predators. We even restage that primal fright by going to monster movies. We still stake out or mark our territories, though sometimes now it is with the sound of radios. We still jockey for position and power. We still create works of art to enhance our senses and add even more sensations to the brimming world, so that we can utterly luxuriate in the spectacles of life. We still ache fiercely with love, lust, loyalty, and passion. And we still perceive the world, in all its gushing beauty and terror, right on our pulses. There is no other way. To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses — how they evolved, how they can be extended, what their limits are, to which ones we have attached taboos, and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.
(Diane Ackerman, from A Natural History of the Senses)
Not from whiskey river:
In the Argentinian film Man Facing Southeast, Rantés, an extra-terrestrial playing an organ in the chapel at an insane asylum, says, “It’s only a series of vibrations, but they have a good effect on the men. Where does the magic lie? In the instruments? In the one who wrote it? In me? In those that hear it? I cannot understand what they feel. Yes. I can understand. I just can’t feel it.” Later he explains that sensations upset the people of his planet, who can be destroyed by a catchy saxophone melody or a luscious perfume. He is not the only emissary from his planet sent to ours to investigate our one weapon against which they have no defense: human stupidity. Sometimes the agents lose their way, become traitors, destroy themselves. A young, beautiful woman, Beatriz, who visits him in the asylum, we ultimately learn, is one of those lost agents who have become dangerously infatuated by the beauty of human sensory experience, unhinged by hearing a clarinet solo, “corrupted by sunsets, by certain fragrances…”
(Diane Ackerman, ibid.2)
…and:
Man Listening to Disc
This is not bad —
ambling along 44th Street
with Sonny Rollins for company,
his music flowing through the soft calipers
of these earphones,as if he were right beside me
on this clear day in March,
the pavement sparkling with sunlight,
pigeons fluttering off the curb,
nodding over a profusion of bread crumbs.In fact, I would say
my delight at being suffused
with phrases from his saxophone —
some like honey, some like vinegar —
is surpassed only by my gratitudeto Tommy Potter for taking the time
to join us on this breezy afternoon
with his most unwieldy bass
and to the esteemed Arthur Taylor
who is somehow managing to navigatethis crowd with his cumbersome drums.
And I bow deeply to Thelonious Monk
for figuring out a way
to motorize — or whatever — his huge piano
so he could be with us today.This music is loud yet so confidential.
I cannot help feeling even more
like the center of the universe
than usual as I walk along to a rapid
little version of “The Way You Look Tonight,”and all I can say to my fellow pedestrians,
to the woman in the white sweater,
the man in the tan raincoat and the heavy glasses,
who mistake themselves for the center of the universe —
all I can say is watch your step,because the five of us, instruments and all,
are about to angle over
to the south side of the street
and then, in our own tightly knit way,
turn the corner at Sixth Avenue.And if any of you are curious
about where this aggregation,
this whole battery-powered crew,
is headed, let us just say
that the real center of the universe,the only true point of view,
is full of hope that he,
the hub of the cosmos
with his hair blown sideways,
will eventually make it all the way downtown.
(Billy Collins3 [source])
One of my favorite movie scenes — of all, really, not just those involving listening — is the library scene from Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire. If you’re not familiar with the film, the plot revolves around two angels in the city of Berlin. But these angels resemble the conventional ones not at all. They wear long dark overcoats and move about invisibly (except to children and other angels), not able to change the course of events but able to comfort people who are troubled. (They simply place their hands on the shoulders of the worried, whose thoughts — like the thoughts of all humans — are heard as whispered voices.) In this scene, the two angels visit the Berlin State Library, clearly a favorite haunting ground: full of whispers.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any versions of the clip with subtitles. But you might like a short video review of the film by New York Times critic A.O. Scott, which does include them in the film’s German-language excerpts:
_____________________________
Notes:
1 Nowhere online could I find the complete text of Robert Bly’s “Listening.” But I did find an MP3 of Bly reading the entire poem, accompanied by musicians David Whetstone and Marcus Wise. This is from his collection The Night Abraham Called to the Stars; the portion excerpted on whiskey river is at the very end of this recording.
2 Man Facing Southeast was a new title for me. I read Ackerman’s book when it first came out, twenty-ish years ago, but had forgotten this passage (and hence the film) until working on this post. Here’s its trailer:
3 Here’s the version of “The Way You Look Tonight” to which the anonymous “center of the universe” is listening in Bill Collins’s poem:
jules says
LOVE that Billy Collins poem. Thank you.
I once read that Diane Ackerman book…wow, when it first came out, I guess it was. Had to be more than 15 years ago??
Nance says
I wonder if the movie “City of Angels” was inspired by “Wings of Desire.” In “City,” the angel was willing to give up everything to experience sensations again, especially the ones experienced by a human in love. There is a special chemical soup that enhances all the senses for one who is infatuated; humans have been willing to risk everything to spend a little souped-up time, too. (A General Theory of Love by Lewis, Amini, and Lannon).
A remarkable post today. May you make it “all the way downtown.”
John says
Jules: Billy Collins is in a class by himself. We went to a reading by him a few years ago — the same annual arts series where we saw Margaret Atwood recently — and everything about him in person both reassured and surprised… an emotional combination familiar to anyone who’s read and loved his poetry.
Nance: Yes — “City of Angels” was a nominal remake of “Wings of Desire.” It’s very difficult for anyone who saw the former first, and loved it, to accept the changes in tone, point of view, thematic emphases, and… well, the shift from mystery to familiarity wrought by the American filmmakers. Imagine a film with a title like “To Kill a Mockingbird: The Musical!” and you may have an idea of the wincing (at least) experienced by “Wings of Desire” fans.
(It’s not to deny that a remake might have its own charm and other virtues; rather, it’s to recoil from the reflexive drive by some film remakers to smooth over the deeper but more difficult virtues in original films. It also tends to rob audiences who see the remake first from experiencing the original — when really the only things the two experiences have in common are a scrap of plot points, scenes, and other surface similarities. I urge anyone who’s seen “City of Angels” to try “Wings of Desire,” too — as long as you’re prepared for a very different sort of experience.)
Froog says
I saw a review of ‘City of Angels’ that called it “a Hallmark Cards version of a classic German art film”. That about sums it up. Although I have such a weakness for slush, I didn’t actually hate it. It had been so long since I’d seen the Wim Wenders that I was able to approach it as an unrelated experience.
The worst re-make I’ve seen is the American version of The Vanishing. The original is probably my favourite psychological thriller: brilliant, weird, creepy, unexpected, compelling. The script doctors for the American remake evidently felt that they kind of liked the core premise, but not any of the development, and just threw away everything that made the first movie great – including the ending. In the Dutch film, everything was building towards that ending, but… you didn’t see it until it was too late. The American re-write was a colossal, brainless cop-out.
The Querulous Squirrel says
Mr. Squirrel wants to know how it is that you like all the obscure treasures that he also loves: Jean Shepard, Alan Watts, and, now Wings of Desire. Who is this guy? he asks, every time he looks over my shoulder and I’m reading your blog.
John says
Froog: Oh God — The Vanishing. What the remakers did to that film should have disqualified anyone involved from ever working in the medium again. (It’d be simple enough to check, via IMDB, but I know it would only lead to discouragement.)
When The Missus and I were still in the early stages of our dance of the sexes, I started to introduce her to “foreign” films. The Vanishing (original) bowled her over. She also really liked this little French curiosity called Baxter. Do you know it? Wikipedia’s summary is pretty good:
Squirrel: That’s hilarious. Of course, I have to ask if you are absolutely certain that Mr. Squirrel has no alter egos. Let me pull a name and title out of thin air here, triggered simply by remembering that you’d once referred to him as (I think) a leprechaun: Has he read and enjoyed James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold? If so, this series of coincidences defies belief. (If not, he might like to give it a try!)
The Querulous Squirrel says
Mr. Squirrel has not read it, but will be trading some acorns for this title.
fg says
Sometimes, sometimes often, I feel that ‘gorgeous fever’ but the problem is that most of the time, when I am not, I feel a tiny bit bereft. It makes me a little reckless in my search to get the feeling back. And then now and then it surprises me and returns, seemingly by itself, wowing me again.
What an interesting clip – all about the crescendo of whispers, it unnerves. Thank you. I haven’t seen these films but should. There is so much I have yet to experience. It is exciting to think this and that some of them will surely bring more ‘fever’.
I like “still in the early stages of our dance of the sexes” especially with this ”Trouble Hearing’ and yet you hear so much’ theme as you crane to listen for life. Every whisper to each other with heightened senses.
John says
Squirrel: Any book which introduces me to a phrase like “the leprechauns of Gort na Gloca Mora,” a name like Meehawl MacMurrachu, and a place like the pine wood of Coilla Doraca — without condescending or cloying, without falling into the twee trap — is a book that probably has stuck with me for decades.
fg: Something I find interesting about visual artists (and I guess musicians and composers, etc.) is that they convert sensory experiences into other (often quite different) sensory experiences. (The word “sensory” covers a lot of territory, I know.) Writing, at some level, requires straightforward queuing-up of intellectual impressions (“You there! Yes, you — you stray scrap of meaning — get yourself in line here, no no, not there damn it, I said HERE!”). But what comes out of an artist’s head into the work always seems (to me) a completely mysterious product. I don’t think I could ever trace, with any confidence, how they turn the raw materials into the work.
The paths which site visitors lead me along after reading these “whiskey river Fridays” posts — those paths always delight me. When I put the posts together, there’s always a connection from one quote, citation, clip, etc. to the next, but it’s usually a connection of several steps and very often a connection I myself would have a hard time recreating more than once. Froog once called these posts “avalanches [as opposed to streams] of consciousness,” which tickled the bejeezus out of me. By the time the last comment shows up — posted by someone else or me — the rubble is often pretty deep. (If you listen, you can hear faint whimpering noises coming from underneath it all.)
John says
fg: When I told The Missus that I’d brought up the Baxter movie here, she laughed softly and said something like, “Oh, Baxter… Actually I don’t remember much about it. I think I was just in a dither that whole time.”
So yes, about those opening phases of the dance — the power to cloud the mind, hmm?