I’m double dipping in my own comment when I should get back to writing desk (have also been traveling, with less.. well less -though had luck of flying back to NYC on a flight full of French NY marathon runners. Wow!)
Years ago, many- I was sitting in a cafe on Sarah Lawrence campus with 3 poets (established) when one of them made the com…
I’m double dipping in my own comment when I should get back to writing desk (have also been traveling, with less.. well less -though had luck of flying back to NYC on a flight full of French NY marathon runners. Wow!)
Years ago, many- I was sitting in a cafe on Sarah Lawrence campus with 3 poets (established) when one of them made the comment that he wasn’t a basketball game enthusiast “It doesn’t help me live my life.” The other two made the case for how watching basketball and playing a pick up game from time to time did help them.
I didn’t have strong convictions either way re: basketball— but I loved the boldness of discounting something because it didn’t help you live your life. It validated the feeling I had of needing all the help I could get.
So this combination of questions George asks— “Does it speak to the deepest part of you? Does it do anything for you?” boils down in my vernacular to: “does it help me live my life?” I see now after 6 decades of living it, the need for help has had me going to the well of literature and film over and over and over again— something about stories — about experiencing other folks grappling with stuff gives me insight, validation — and courage. (I’m a scaredy-cat). It can also be heart opening, a sure life-help aid.
P
An exhibit I saw last week in Paris featuring works of “still life” (though in France “still life” is “nature morte” (dead nature!! )) begins with a clip from Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker.” (The last scene—- the daughter moving the glass without touching it so that it tumbles off the table). I saw the film for the first time 40 years ago and while I had no vocabulary then for understanding how the movie worked to have its effect on me, the effect was guttural, given the story’s premise— basically it’s this: if you were given the opportunity to go into a room where your deepest heartfelt wish would come true, could you go in? Or put another way, can you trust your heart?
I share this here only to say that I had such a vivid reminder last week of the way a story can “speak to the deepest part of me.” And in so doing, help me live with hard questions, even the ones that go on unanswered.
Nice mention of "Stalker." One of my favorite movies (despite the author, Arkady Strugatsky not being crazy about it) along with Tarkovsky's other sf film, "Solaris." Both films I always highly recommend despite their sometimes-glacial pace in that they are serious, adult movies that ask fundemental questions about existence and life and don't provide easy answers. "Solaris," I think, is actually the better of the two because while "Stalker" sorta fudges the answer, "Solaris" has a wider scope and confronts the question more directly. Briefly, for those of you that haven't heard me write about it before, "Solaris" is the name of a distant, ocean-covered planet that an orbiting station has been studying for years without concrete results. Most of the personel have been withdrawn and the three people left on it have started acting strangely. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to the station to evaluate the situation, only to discover that the planet is studying them, reading their minds and materializing people from their past - in his case, the wife who committed suicide rather than live with her cold, emotionally-unavailable husband - forcing him to confront the greatest guilt and failure of his life. It's also, to me, a powerful demonstration that mainstream fiction, which is constrained by what is possible, has less scope to deal with the problems of our age than sf, where we can play out any scenario we can imagine and see what the results might be, for good or bad.
I’m double dipping in my own comment when I should get back to writing desk (have also been traveling, with less.. well less -though had luck of flying back to NYC on a flight full of French NY marathon runners. Wow!)
Years ago, many- I was sitting in a cafe on Sarah Lawrence campus with 3 poets (established) when one of them made the comment that he wasn’t a basketball game enthusiast “It doesn’t help me live my life.” The other two made the case for how watching basketball and playing a pick up game from time to time did help them.
I didn’t have strong convictions either way re: basketball— but I loved the boldness of discounting something because it didn’t help you live your life. It validated the feeling I had of needing all the help I could get.
So this combination of questions George asks— “Does it speak to the deepest part of you? Does it do anything for you?” boils down in my vernacular to: “does it help me live my life?” I see now after 6 decades of living it, the need for help has had me going to the well of literature and film over and over and over again— something about stories — about experiencing other folks grappling with stuff gives me insight, validation — and courage. (I’m a scaredy-cat). It can also be heart opening, a sure life-help aid.
P
An exhibit I saw last week in Paris featuring works of “still life” (though in France “still life” is “nature morte” (dead nature!! )) begins with a clip from Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker.” (The last scene—- the daughter moving the glass without touching it so that it tumbles off the table). I saw the film for the first time 40 years ago and while I had no vocabulary then for understanding how the movie worked to have its effect on me, the effect was guttural, given the story’s premise— basically it’s this: if you were given the opportunity to go into a room where your deepest heartfelt wish would come true, could you go in? Or put another way, can you trust your heart?
I share this here only to say that I had such a vivid reminder last week of the way a story can “speak to the deepest part of me.” And in so doing, help me live with hard questions, even the ones that go on unanswered.
Nice mention of "Stalker." One of my favorite movies (despite the author, Arkady Strugatsky not being crazy about it) along with Tarkovsky's other sf film, "Solaris." Both films I always highly recommend despite their sometimes-glacial pace in that they are serious, adult movies that ask fundemental questions about existence and life and don't provide easy answers. "Solaris," I think, is actually the better of the two because while "Stalker" sorta fudges the answer, "Solaris" has a wider scope and confronts the question more directly. Briefly, for those of you that haven't heard me write about it before, "Solaris" is the name of a distant, ocean-covered planet that an orbiting station has been studying for years without concrete results. Most of the personel have been withdrawn and the three people left on it have started acting strangely. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to the station to evaluate the situation, only to discover that the planet is studying them, reading their minds and materializing people from their past - in his case, the wife who committed suicide rather than live with her cold, emotionally-unavailable husband - forcing him to confront the greatest guilt and failure of his life. It's also, to me, a powerful demonstration that mainstream fiction, which is constrained by what is possible, has less scope to deal with the problems of our age than sf, where we can play out any scenario we can imagine and see what the results might be, for good or bad.
I also a fan of “Solaris”— though saw it a few years after “Stalker” laid its hand on me!