The Cinema of Place

The Thai director, Apichatpong Weerasethaku, has made a handful of intensely enigmatic films over the last 8 years. And perhaps equally strange is how languorously beautiful and accessible each of them is. They have a dream logic that rides thrillingly close to the cusp of meaning. They've taken the cinema of place to a new level. His characters inhabit landscapes that are erotically teaming, ritualized, romanticized and about as close to cinematic transcendence as I've enjoyed in a long time. The landscape enjoys as much of the narrative thrust as anything said, or any gesture made.

All his films are split in two, with the first and second parts riffing off each other. The fourth and latest of Weerasethaku's films, Syndromes and a Century, viewed in my bathrobe early this morning while Cathy and Abby were at the grocery store, may be the best of the three, though each, I feel comfortable saying without overstating the case, are masterpieces. Seeing his last film, Tropical Malady, with Cathy during one of its showings at the 2005 Chicago Film Festival, was one of those melt into my seat moments. Syndromes and a Century feels like a culmination of what Weerasethaku's films have been so successfully prospecting. Something both captivated with a highly palpable and becalming sense of place and the stories, both urban and rural, real and folklore, quotidian and enraptured, that unfold there.

A.O. Scott wrote:

It is possible to feel, watching his earlier movies “Blissfully Yours” or “Tropical Malady,” that you just don’t get, on a conscious, cerebral level, what Mr. Weerasethakul is trying to do. Yet at the same time you find yourself moved, even enchanted, by the beautiful, oblique stories unfolding before your eyes.

And Micheal Sicinski really nailed it in the Fall 2007 issue of Cineaste when he wrote:

Apichatpong's films, frequently based on Thai folklore and an exploration of spatial relationships between urban areas and the hinterlands, are among the most formally radical narrative films of the last twenty years, partly because the director is able to display landscape and environment as haptic and experimental, serving to shape not only human consciousness but also the body itself--its social, political, and sexual potentials.

Embracing Your Emerging Eddie Munster

I sense increasingly that my hair is coming to resemble Eddie Munster and that I have to simply accept this, perhaps even embrace it.

At my current rate of hair loss and graying, I can reasonably expect to resemble a friar, ringed by an orbital tuft of hair, by age 55. The demographic flight of my hair from the interior of my head toward the exterior has been slow but impressive. Cathy likes to tell a story from several years back when were living on Paulina in Andersonville. She was driving up to our place when she spotted a man on the sidewalk. She wondered, "Who's the bald guy standing in front of the house?"

"Oh!" she realized. "It's my husband!"

Hair loss surprises us all. Sheesh. But there's no reason to not make it work for you. From now on, I swear, I'm embracing my emerging Eddie Munster.
Now that's creepy!

Please Tickle My Ivories

Our newest instrument arrived early Wednesday afternoon. Oh, my! (The picture does it so little justice!)

The piano movers had ramps for the front stoop stairs and everything. Nice guys, too. Cleared the door of the upstairs guest/recording room with a hair's girth to spare. No problems. It's home.

There's still some minor room re-arranging to do. (And I'm suddenly taking up a renewed interest in decorating the space on the walls of this room.) The piano is fresh form a warehouse in Crystal Lake and so slightly out-of-tune as new pianos will be. We're to wait a month, play it is much as we can, and let it acclimate to its new environment before bringing in the tuner.

I'm pretty tickled. There's perhaps nothing I find more relaxing, more meditative, more bullshit cleansing then playing a piano. While an undergraduate at Ohio State, I'd make a daily pit stop at Hughes Hall. On the 5th floor there were a couple dozen or more practice rooms, all harboring pianos. Some old weather-beaten grands, but the majority had sparkling new Yamaha uprights. I'd place my backpack and jacket on a nearby chair, open a window, and play away any blues I had.

This weekend, Abby's Great-Grandma showed me all her piano scores. Drawers full. If I ever wanted to borrow any of them, I should feel free. I told her I couldn't read notes and she offered me a worn brochure of piano cord secrets revealed.

I think of all the people I know, Abby's Great-Gradma may be the person who best understands the gravity and joy of having a piano on hand.

Pituitary Exuberance

Osborne's new Ruling 12", as joyous a slice of House as I've heard in a long, long time, ruled my treadmill yesterday. (See head-band wearing evidence soon.) It's pure cotton-candy house. Downtown, the second track, feels like a throwback to Midwest Raves '91-92. Dancing weekends at the Lift or Metropolis in the Flats of downtown Cleveland, or at after-hour parties above auto-body repair shops in Columbus. Something about the tracks thick, emotive chords and chunky rhythm are lovingly cut from Rave's template.

Have I mentioned this before? At roughly the 16 to 18 minute mark of what I feel safe calling a modestly rigorous 40-minute daily workout on the treadmill, there's a definite endorphin kick. I don't know much about even the most basic physiology, but I know it feels really good. Something of a biochemical nature has no doubt taken place, a pituitary exuberance. This is also when whatever happens to be playing on my iPod shuffle will strike me as being the most perfect thing I've ever heard.

Lately I've been making use of iTunes' Playlists feature to create on-the-fly "Work-out" mixes. I'll literally jump into some sweats, put my shoes on and throw together a mix. I pay particular attention to what track will fall at that golden 16 to 18 minute mark. This is also where any prior reservations I had to working out, any desires to cut the work-out a little short, give way to something bordering ecstatic. I must keep going. Maybe even a little faster.

I read recently that a man of 40 should be able to do 27 push-ups. That's consecutively and in "proper form." And given that I'm going to be 37 in May, I suddenly find myself determined to be able to do just this by my birthday. 27 push-ups. I can huff out about 10 now. I figure, with a little diligence, I'll be up it to 15 in a couple weeks, 20 in 2 to 3 weeks. 27 by my birthday. The whole thing reminds me of Jack LaLanne and Jack Palance.

I practice my push-ups at random. Sometimes Abby enthusiastically climbs up on my back , as though my push-ups were invitations to an amusement-park ride. And, of course, I'm always happy to oblige. With her on board, a 31 or 32 lbs. sack of potatoes, I can barely eek out more than a couple push-ups before collapsing.

Ballads and Blues 1972

I'm having one of those moments where I really want to listen to a specific mood-enhancing album (you know, one reflecting the mellow, cloud-infused mid-March Sunday morning thing we've got going on, though it looks like the sun might break out yet), but I have no idea what it might be. Too many options.

So I settled on George Winston's Ballads and Blues 1972, some of his earliest recordings and released on the late John Fahey's Takoma label. Maybe not entirely as consonant with my mood as I'd like, but I'm malleable.

I still have a huge soft spot for Winston's 70's and early 80's recordings. His season themed albums (Autumn, Winter Into Spring, December and Summer...the last of which came out in the early 90's but is just as good, if not better then the other 3) are all, in my mind, masterpieces of warm, folksy piano. Besides Harold Budd, nobody has better rapport with the sustain pedal. But where Budd wrings out drifting ghost chords, Winston's are full of wide-eyed Rockwellian charm and lightly worn, rustic melancholy. Maybe too benevolent, too mawkish (or, as I fear, too frequently discarded with a knee jerk into the New Age dustbin) for some, but it's been doing me right for over 20 years.

Now where did I put down that Laura Ashley catalog?

Stuffed Hound of Hades--Now At Macy's!

Abby and I met Cathy for lunch at Macy's last week. They have a surprisingly upscale food court on the 7th floor. After lunch we road the escalators, as Abby likes to do, stopping to hug mannequins between floors.

Eventually we found ourselves at FAO Schwartz on the 5th floor where we ran across the above Cerberus. What 2-year old isn't coveting a stuffed hound of Hades? I liked the idea of buying it and putting it in Abby's room, if only to gage the startled reaction of her grandmothers. "Oh, you know, until we get her a real dog, we thought she'd like a hellhound," we'd tell them with a shrug.

Cathy thought this was a very bad idea.

I Am The Third Revelation (And I'll Drink Your Milkshake!)

I've seen all of Paul Thomas Anderson's films, including his latest, There Will Be Blood, which I just saw tonight at the River East downtown with Joe and Cathy. And why not? Anderson's films are always technically amazing. The sound and set designs, the cinematography, the acting and the editing are all guaranteed to be superior to just about anything else playing at a cineplex, and often inspiring. They're more than just competent, they're polished with a commercial sheen that borders on the pornographic.

But There Will Be Blood is different. Maybe it's the leap back to a early 20th century setting or the venerated history of the Hollywood Western lurking about. It stretches out in its oil rich wasteland and Jonny Greenwoods score drops dollops of devilish bombast across the horizon. Daniel Day-Lewis drools, snarls and bludgeons and almost all of the time it works beautifully. But Anderson always gets in over his head. His scripts are overcome with grandeur and operatic histrionics. Something grandly sweeping, like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, gets in there and gums up the works. The only time this really worked for me was with Punch Drunk Love, where he almost lost the thread before giving in to a swooning, open-hearted ending. It worked. But in There Will Be Blood a sudden leap in time seems to lose the beat, its rhythm is way off. A late scene between Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) and his son HW (Stockton Taylor) is drenched in in the same kind of dressing Anderson slathered so much of Magnolia with. I'm not feeling it.

And yet...the ending is somehow so ripe, so goofily over the top, that I'm proud to be joining others with a shout of "I drink your milkshake!"

Audiovisual Librarianship: A Video Essay

Last summer I created a somewhat freewheeling curriculum for an independent study exploring audiovisual librarianship in public libraries. Like a lot of schools, Dominican's GSLIS program simply isn't able to fully cover the many diverse areas of librarianship worthy of study. (I wonder how distance learning, once it moves past its fumbling introductory stage-, might be able to alter this?) Sadly, for me at least, one of the areas chronically absent in course offerings is the giddy untapped potential that is audiovisual librarianship. Sure, there's a paragraph here and there, maybe even a chapter devoted in the introductory text for collection management, but for the most part the bibliocentric focus of LIS programs holds tight to the reigns. I like to think that's changing, with more schools beginning to offer courses, or seminars (or testing the waters with occasional special guest lectures) on gaming, virtual worlds and digital content creation and how they hold all sorts of promise for public libraries.

In any case, I did a cursory literature review, spending some really glorious sumer days in late May and early June, cicadas vibrating merrily away, reading and thinking about audiovisual librarianship in public libraries past, current and future.

Then I headed out to interview audiovisual librarians in person. I was incredibly lucky to find 6 amazing audiovisual librarians (in Northbrook, Skokie, Naperville, Chicago and Cleveland respectively), each dedicated and fully engaged in their profession, to meet with me and answer my questions. While on video. And I learned valuable lessons about room sound. I'll tell you about them later.

Here's what they had to say:

Riverwalk Radio

Cathy was on Smart City this morning, a nationally syndicated public radio program exploring various aspects of urban life. You can hear her talking about the very exciting Chicago Riverwalk project she's been helping to coordinate here. (If you want to get right to it, her segment begins a little past the halfway mark.)

Damn, my girl has got it going on!

Warm, Scary Air

Recently Abby has recently been affected with a deep and abiding fear of our air vents. There's one in our upstairs hallway, on the far right, and Abby will hug the left wall as she walks by it. Another air vent is suspiciously close to her bookshelf. She no longer feels safe venturing over to browse. I've taken to sitting on the vent and assuring her that the area in front of her books has now been secured. "See," I tell her, "Daddy's sitting on the air vent and it's not hurting him."

"The air vent is our friend," Abby will say, beating me to the punch.

"That's right, the air vent is our friend! It's giving us some warm, cozy air on this very cold day!"

She nods appreciatively and drags a few books over to the middle of the floor.

Feel Free To Delete These

My Mom seemed newly determined to make some room for the Web when Cathy, Abby and I visited her and my Dad a couple weeks ago at their winter getaway in Tarpon Springs. That old clamshell iBook is most definitely ailing, so Cathy and I encouraged her to look into buying a new computer. But first we took her through some Web basics and Cathy ditched Safari and replaced it with Firefox. We did some searches, pausing briefly on Joe's blog, Through The Wire. My Mom's known Joe since high school, so I thought showing his blog to her was a nice way to demonstrate some of the intimacy the Web allows.

Later, after we returned, my Mom forwarded along an email, itself forwarded along to her by one of her friends. It contained a poem "written by a terminally ill young girl
in a New York Hospital," with the plea that all receivers "pass this mail on to everyone you know - even to those you don't know!" so as to generate small donations to the American Cancer Society's efforts to assist in "her treatment and recovery plan."

And, of course it's a hoax, circulating saccharinely since 1997. The American Cancer Society has a press release disavowing any involvement in this terminal whimsy.

Suddenly I imagined my Mom fretting as she read another email informing her of suspicious activity on a credit card. I wrote her back with dutiful warnings of the Web's many identity thieving cretins prowling about. I reminded her that any email telling her to forward it along "to as many people you know (one gentlemen was so inspired, he even forwarded to over 500 of his friends and business associates!)" is almost always a hoax. "Feel free to delete these," I told her.

Repeat the Sounding Joy: Chris's Best Songs of 2007

With any luck, copies of this years mix will eventually make it into the hands and ears of the usual suspects. If you're reading this and would like a copy, feel free to let me know and I'll get you one.

The bulk of it is made up of songs released in 2007, though a healthy number draw from the last 50 years or so. I wasn't able to include everything I would have liked, but at over 9 hours long it's a pretty good representation of what my ears perked up to.

I've tried, too, for those who might want to listen linearly, to create an interesting mix. I kept away, as much as possible, from balkanizing genres in hopes of allowing for surprising merges and occasional collisions.

Here's what made the cut:

A Paw In My Face: The Field
Paris, Tokyo: Lupe Fiasco
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy: Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Orange Skies: Love
Just As You Are: Robert Wyatt
Da Aurora Até O Luar: Dadi
Dive For Your Memory: The Go-Betweens
Rainy Night In Georgia: David Ruffin
Flashing Lights (Ft. Dwele): Kanye West
My Favourite Book: Stars
Comodn Johnson: Los Amigos Invisibles
Doca: Trio Mocotó
Levante A Cabeça: Som Nosso
Ai E Que Ta: Burnier & Cartier
Read My Mind (Instrumental): Metro Area
Do It All Night: Prince
Chromophobia: Gui Boratto
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi: Radiohead
Is There a Ghost: Band Of Horses
Sleeping Lessons: The Shins
Looks Like Rain: The Postmarks
Bach (JS): Piano Concerto #4 In A, BMV 1055 - 1. Allegro: Glenn Gould
Winter: The Rolling Stones
Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It: Buffalo Springfield
Through My Sails: Neil Young
Running to the Ghost: James Blackshaw
Too Much Between Us: Procol Harum
Scythian Empires: Andrew Bird
Indoor Fireworks: Elvis Costello
To Build A Home: The Cinematic Orchestra
Blues Run The Game: Jackson C. Frank
I Must Have Been Blind: Tim Buckley
...3: John Barry
Can I Say: The Rice Twins
Lohn & Brot: Efdemin
Before: Contriva
Af607105: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Mima: Eddie Harris
Elsa: Cannonball Adderley With Bill Evans
Some People Are Crazy: John Martyn
All I Ever Wanted: Meg Baird
A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise: Phosphorescent
Innocent Bones: Iron & Wine
Johnny's Garden: Stephen Stills
Kalumba: Gambuzinos
Gente: Caetano Velosa
Don't Touch That Thing: Sylvia Hall
I Used To Be A King: Graham Nash
Middlenight: The Sea And Cake
(Ain't That) Good News: Sam Cooke
Feel Pm: Lindstrom And Prins Thomas
Über Wiesen: Thomas/Mayer
Steal Away (Version 2): Johnnie Taylor
MRA: Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath
You Can Have Her: Waylon Jennings
Sweet Wanomi: Bill Withers
Elementary Lover (DJ Koze Remix): Matthew Dear
N.I.T.A.: Young Marble Giants
Myriad Harbour: The New Pornographers
4,738 Regrets: Trans Am
Someone Great: LCD Soundsystem
New Jack: Justice
Hussel (feat. Afrikan Boy): M.I.A.
Kingston: Rod Modell
Night to Remember: Cassy
Lay Your Head Down: Keren Ann
So Sorry: Feist
Warm Canto: Mal Waldron
Title Music: Satyajit Ray
Masculino, Feminino: Erasmo Carlos
Goin' Away Party: Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
O Caroline: Matching Mole
Port Authority: Opsvik & Jennings
What Me Worry?: St. Vincent
The Queen Of Seville: The Clientele
Think She Knows Me Now: Mike Cooper
Into Eternity: Jens Lekman
Slap The Back: Cobblestone Jazz
Main Squeeze: Nate Evans
Oh Christine: The Cave Singers
Fake Empire: The National
LDN: Lily Allen
Scenic World: Beirut
Sheria Yatukataza: Maulidi Juma
Silently: Blonde Redhead
Parallel Life: Baby Ford
Water Soul: Melchior Productions Ltd.
Archangel: Burial
Cicely: DJ Koze
Synthacon 9: The Tuss
Garden Parade (Dandy Jacks Senti-Metal Mix): Copacabannark
Walden 2: Pantha Du Prince
Rabbit Tube: Lawrence
Soziale Wärme: Thomas Fehlmann
Intruder: Susanna
Keeping You in Mind: Mary Margaret O'Hara
The Wheel: Jerry Garcia
Hazel St.: Deerhunter
Impossible Germany: Wilco
All La Glory: The Band
Little Girl: Billy Preston
(This Is For The) Better Days: The Bees
Guitar Blues: Chester Atkins
Lovesick Blues Boy: Paul Burch
Breezin': Cornelius
Terremoto: João Donato
Persian Love: Holger Czukay
Wennder Sudwind Weht: Roedelius
Samba pa Negra: Jay Hoggard
Diamond Heart: Marissa Nadler
Dinoa & Hora: Jacob Hoffman and Kendal's Orchestra
All Cats Are Grey: The Cure
Gogol: Gonzales
Waltz for Debby (Take 2): Bill Evans
Reflections: Thelonious Monk
Caught In The Middle: Lusine ICL
The Shade: Eno Moebius Roedelius
Tippy's Demise: Stars of the Lid
Evening Star: Fripp/Eno
for Jim Hall & Kurt Kirkwood: Klimek
Ascent: Arve Henriksen
oto: fennesz + sakamoto
Sun Against My Eyes: Colleen

Help, I'm Obsolete!

My formally trustworthy PowerBook, just a little over 2 years old, seems to have crashed on the shores of Little People. A well-loved Little People DVD we attempted to play at 30,000 feet en route to Tampa Bay International Airport seems to be the culprit. Struggling to read it (it was, to be blunt, scratched to hell), the PowerBook seems to have given up all together. When we turn it on now it gives us that ominous blinking folder with a question mark. It whispers, "you're screwed." We're hoping the original startup disk will revive it.

So we've had to revert to using my parents weathered clamshell iBook (see accompanying picture), which was once our own. It was new in 2000. It was blueberry shiny and awesome. Cathy wrote her thesis on it in Berkeley looking out at rose bushes and rosemary. We gave it to my parents a couple years ago so they could have a computer in Florida.

And I gotta tell you, it really sucks. It's like using an old elevator--it shudders under the weight, lurches, pauses awkwardly between floors before shuddering and slowly moving on. It's a telling example of how quickly technology becomes antiquidated.

Cool In The Pool

It's currently 75 and sunny in Tarpon Springs, Florida. We're heading out for a picnic lunch in a few minutes. My apologies to any friends and family being bruised and battered by winter.
We'll be rejoining you, the cold and the slush, with some regrets, Tuesday morning.

Light Pillar

A light pillar captured out the window of our car on Lake Shore Drive this morning. A nice, freaky little meteorological phenomena to buoy our bout of chilliness.

Coffee With Balzac

It's probably not the best way to take the measure of French literary tastes, but based purely on the amount of times Balzac is referenced in any number of French films I've seen (most recently in Julian Schnabel's French production, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), it seems clear that he's still very much revered there. (I looked, but nobody has felt compelled to compile a list of all the Balzac references running through French cinema--or at least hasn't seen fit to make it available online.) I suppose a case could be be made that he's one of a handful of 19th century writers of fiction whose works are still widely read and respected. Even cherished. In France at least. Elsewhere, one imagines he can be found on the occasional syllabus, read because he must, any pleasure derived by the student merely a happy coincidence.

I have a copy of Balzac's Cousin Bette on my shelf. I'm looking forward to reading it, hoping to catch a glimpse of what makes him so revered and hoping, as I suppose most of us hope when picking up a work of fiction, to be delighted and transported. He was, according to the books introduction, a bit of a coffee fiend, drinking cup after hot, black cup as he wrote through the wee small hours of the night. 4 to 5 novels a year! Prolifically caffeinated.

Great-Grandma

Abby's Great-Grandma had a birthday party today. Her sons, of whom she had 4, threw it for her. She was born 85 years ago today in Chicago. There was a snowstorm that day. On the way to the hospitable her mom's car got stuck and she had to walk the rest of the way. Needless to say, she told us, she's never been all that fond of cold and snow.

She's a classy lady, Abby's Great-Grandma. We're so happy to have helped her celebrate today.

Oh, No, Frankie Valli!

Since finishing up school just before the holidays, I've had great luck choosing just the right book to fit my mood. Reader and books have been in perfect accord.

Over the last few weeks I read a gaggle of small books about big albums, a couple slices of fiction, back issues of Cineaste and Film Comment (which I finally organized) and one fat old biography of Abe Lincoln. I can't tell you how guiltily luxurious it's been to put some good reading music on, recline in the big brown chair, and read stuff entirely of my own choosing. In succession. No syllabus in need of attending, no paper to research, no group project coming up--just me and a book about honest Abe. Sometimes I've gone so far as to indulge my reading with a glass of wine.

And I learned something about Lincoln I didn't know. He was born in Kentucky. Really? Do most people know this? I assumed Illinois was the Land of Lincoln. I mean, surely such a claim naturally includes his place of birth. But it turns out those bragging rights belong to a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky.

So I'm learning.

And when I'm done with Lincoln, I'm looking forward to moving on to LBJ--those three books by Robert A. Caro , the first of which has been flirting with me from the bookshelves, have been begging to be read for a few years now. The blurb on the back cover of Book One offers tantalizing hints of one man's "superhuman drive," of Hill Country Texas dustbowls, Congressional debuts, Senate races and pugnacious political genius. And that's just Book One. Eventually Vietnam brings him low, that much I know. Caro's still working on that one.

Who is going to write Robert A. Caro's biography? A biography of a biographer is the stuff of academic tenure. What does it mean to devote a significant portion to your life to diligantly chronicaling the life of another? Chapter 7: The Lydon Johnson Years. Such a chapter would include a moving account of Caro's exhaustive research methods, a lengthy summary of the books' rapturous critical reception along with the author's corresponding gratification, grants that made it all possible (including innumerable lonely lunches sorting through documents at the Johnson Library in Austin) and why Book One of The Years of Lyndon Johnson is dedicated to Ina.

Abby and I went puddle jumping yesterday. She helped me get her into her frog inspired rain gear (the matching green boots are a little big, so an extra pair of socks helps) and we headed outside. Cooler then the day before, but still freakishly warm. Abby pulled me toward the pothole puddles in the ally, tiny pools of snow melt, gravel and urban sludge. I wondered if maybe she shouldn't be jumping in them. Little flecks of mud clung to the bottom of her raincoat I imagined rare water born diseases.

We moved to less impressive sidewalk puddles. A cabbie rolled up to a stop sign, looked over at Abby attacking a puddle and hollered, "That's cool!" We walked to what we call the Old Park and ran in its circles of various sizes. "Little circle!" Abby yells. "Bigger circle....Biggest Circle!" Then we do it again.

Abby's favorite song right now is Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons' Big Girls Don't Cry. We've watched this YouTube video of it at least once a day for the last month. We both love Valli's giddy falsetto. Whenever he swoops up on "Cry" we look at each other in mock surprise and say, "Oh, no, Frankie Valli!"

Rain-Doh

All our Play-Doh is blended by little hands. No need to keep it white-gloved.

We love the smell, too.

Filagree and Snow

The snow that fell on New Years Eve and into the new year was wonderfully filigreed. All those wan, leafless trees were made stately, upholstered in a delicate cloth of snow. Even the cars took on an absurd opulence, their imperfections flattered by a few inches of fallen snow.

Later on, past 2 a.m, I read in our living room, pausing every now and again to listen as people walked past, their voices rounded off at the edges and muffled, swallowed up by the snow.