Blog Magog

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22.2.05

"At Land" - Maya Deren 



There is film, there is experimental film; there is surrealist film, avant-garde film. And then there is Maya Deren. I first saw "Meshes of the Afternoon" in the mid-1980s, as I was discovering Cocteau and Dali and Bunuel. These films opened me to everyone from Derek Jarman to David Lynch. More recently I saw the film again, along with "At Land", and "Ritual in Transfigured Time". There is no stuff like this, to my knowledge, anywhere else. Although much has been written in praise of "Meshes of the Afternoon" (although little of it's true motivation and sociological importance), it was "At Land" that really brought me into submission to Deren's ideology. Firstly, it is the most erotic film I have ever seen; yet in no way is it sexual, nor even primal. It is deeply sophisticated and intellectual, and therein lies its rampant, surging appeal; it's ideas are naturalistic and beautiful; it is the beauty of the sea, the sky, the land, not that of a tepid set-piece. It is a female film, and by that I do not mean feminist, nor do I mean that it was made by a woman, but more that this film itself has a gender, that of a female. Deren herself, like all great artists, is genderless, but her art has gender. "At Land" burns with desire, not a specific notion of physicality, but an elemental beauty. It makes love to the eyes. One doesn't so much view it as participate in it; without audience it is incomplete, and that is the essence of pure art, pure film, pure inspiration. Maya Deren is marginal now, almost lost to the world, an oversight that must be rectified. It is not enough to detect her influence in the work of others. We must experience and applaud the original work. Like Van Gogh's Sunflowers, no reproduction can do justice to the virtuosity of the original piece. It is my intention to climb inside this vehicle, to discover for the sake of the art how it sounds. Let us peel away the silence that surrounds Maya Deren, bring volume to her quiet visions. It takes just fifteen minutes to see "At Land". With such a small investment, how can you lose?


Posted by Jude @ 11:42 am


14.2.05

Valentine's Day 

In the ocean. In the motion of our love.
She was with me there - inside my armour
when the storm hit,
where the sea was vast like guilt,
where the wind spilt blood in buckets
and I tried so hard to suck it white.

I held so tight to love that it was not
love, and it fell away in pieces in my hand,
and my wings were filled with sand and water,
taut against the horrid air.
I flared and flailed and failed and lost my grip
and tripped and fell
beneath the waves, beneath the swell,
and I woke up frail and frayed and craving shelter
and was brought abreast the gale away from you
screaming, kicking, chewing on my lips and
spitting bits back down towards you.

The world is ending now -
the spell is broken.
The woken Jesus walks and weeps and sleeps no more
For man has murdered sleep for all mankind.
Do you understand this?
Do you find it bland, this blind conviction?
I remember so clearly these things that never happened.
I happen upon them again.


- Anno Birkin, aged 20, Spring 2001




Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing Madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle,
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The Shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.


- Christopher Marlowe, aged 20, Spring 1584




Posted by Jude @ 12:22 am


13.2.05

Riding on a Smile and a Shoeshine... 



Arthur Miller, one of the greatest dissident American voices of all time, is dead.

At the height of his powers in the 1940s and '50s, Arthur Miller's masterworks - "Death of a Salesman", "All My Sons", "The Crucible" and "A View from the Bridge" - fused psychological realism and a probing seriousness in a way that found a wide response and made him a voice of conscience in post-war America. His gifts amply suited the times and tapped into the prevailing mood of malaise that lay beneath the surface of the booming prosperity after World War II.

During the McCarthy period, Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and was indicted for contempt of Congress for refusing to co-operate. It transpired he had been named as a communist by director Elia Kazan (who had directed "Death of a Salesman"), a move which would forever blight Kazan's career. Miller was unfazed by his experience, and wrote his own thinly-veiled indictment of McCarthy, "The Crucible", in which he drew damning parallels between McCarthy's anti-Communist hysteria and the Salem Witch Trials; indeed it was this that has prompted many over the years to refer to the Un-American Activities episode as the "McCarthy Witch Hunts".

Arthur Miller married Marilyn Monroe in 1956, and wrote the screenplay for John Huston's film "The Misfits" as a vehicle for Monroe. Although arguably her greatest screen performance, the project was tinged with tragedy; Monroe died shortly after the film's completion, as did her co-stars Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Indeed to many, Arthur Miller is probably still best known as Monroe's husband; understandable, but unfair given his own massive contribution to theatre and film.

In his later years, although acknowledged as America's greatest living playwright, he found more acceptance with European audiences, particularly in London; director Robert Brustein once wryly observed that "England and America are two countries divided by a common playwright".

Last year the BBC's Alan Yentob, who first interviewed Miller in 1984, made a new documentary about Arthur Miller, that included what would turn out to be his final television interview. Aged 89, Arthur Miller had lost none of his vision, edge, and determination. It has taken death to silence Arthur Miller, but his legacy will be revered for as long as people can hear and see. We salute him.


Posted by Jude @ 9:11 pm


11.2.05

Curve 1990-2005 




Toni Halliday has been a seminal figure in my life. It was she who first talked to me about understanding the craft, from the business to the studio. Curve led by example, making their own music, in their own environment, in their own sweet time. They demonstrated that you don't need to tolerate witless studio engineers and bad smelling studios, all you need is your own set-up and the will to use it; the will to learn. Toni was and is living proof that knowledge is freedom. Her success gave her the authority to expound real principles, and I paid strict attention, and I learned more from Curve than any other band. Toni was the first person I ever met who defined success on her own terms; to Toni, it was enough to get this wild thing out on to a record for people to take or leave, if anyone bought it that was a mere bonus. But buy it they did, proving that Toni and Dean were not only inordinately talented and actually had something to say, but also that they were RIGHT. So we did as they did; we equipped ourselves, taught ourselves how to record ourselves, and never looked back. The result is that, all these years later, I can live with my work, even the bad stuff, because it's mine and I meant it. Without that personal momentum, the understanding that all you ever really need is an idea, I very much doubt I would still be here; certainly I wouldn't be making music, certainly I wouldn't be happy, perhaps I wouldn't have even lived through the worst times. At rock bottom, between Angelhead's split and recording "April May June", things were dangerous, very dangerous. When Angelhead split in 1991, I was pretty lost. I needed a confidence boost. The person I got it from was Toni Halliday, who called me, and offered her total support. Curve were riding high in the charts at the time, and it always moved me deeply that she took time out from all of that to be a friend to me. She believed I was on the right track artistically, and that belief echoed around inside me somewhere. When the shit really hit the fan, I still had a seed of hope, in no small part due to Toni's words. And here I am still, for better or worse.

When I heard this week that Curve had called it a day, my first thought was to pick up the phone and call Toni. She told me about her plans, and her new interests, and I offered her my support and best wishes. I will miss Curve immensely, as a fan, but also for more personal reasons. There may be thousands of bands who try to sound just like them, but there will never be another Curve, you need Toni and Dean for that. But their time to move on has come, as it always must eventually. Now I need to go and play "Pink Girl with the Blues" until my speakers explode...



Posted by Jude @ 5:36 pm


6.2.05

Astrid 



I keep a certain respectful distance from Astrid Williamson. Although whenever our paths cross I find her to be warm, friendly, good-natured and disarmingly self-effacing, such is my respect for her creative path that one doesn't like to ask too much of her. Because Astrid gives it all through her music. Her voice is holy; to me there has always been something uniquely ethereal about Astrid. I wonder if she knows this, that she is an artist of incarnations, as she has indeed called her new label Incarnation Records. I don't believe anything is lost on her. She has astonishing artistic depth, true vision, and she glows with it; since her early incarnation as lead singer and principle songwriter of the amazing Goya Dress, through her sublime and astonishing solo work, to her breathtaking recent collaborations with Oskar, she has followed her own path with unparalleled determination and an explosive inspiration. I don't know of any other singer who can zigzag from breezy but super-intelligent pop to the dark demands of avant-garde rock music with such unflinching ease; she is wild yet controlled, dangerous yet vulnerable. She treads so many fine creative lines that it is hard to keep up with them all, which is probably why she isn't a major star; I've had this conversation with many people, and none of us can think of another reason. I say she isn't a major star, in the traditional definition, but she is a star nonetheless, dazzling and streets ahead. Listening to the only Goya Dress album, "Rooms", almost a decade after its release, it still sounds like the future to me. In the ensuing years Astrid has certainly not had it easy, yet her optimism is as potent as her melancholy, perhaps even moreso. I can identify strongly with her words and music; for my own benefit I think of her as one of my contemporaries, but in truth she is far too unique to have any. Her talent is epic, her music is exquisite, and the rest of us can only look, listen and learn something about ourselves from her. As such she fulfils the criteria of a great and important artist, but then again, somewhat more importantly, she simply is one.


Posted by Jude @ 11:42 am


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