Summer Interlude

There are five or six films in the history of the cinema which one wants to review simply by saying, 'It is the most beautiful of films.' Because there can be no higher praise ... I love Summer Interlude.

-Jean Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, July 1958.

I was reading this article on Lana Del Rey yesterday (which you should absolutely go and read now). And then it hit me why I love Ingmar Bergman's film, Summer Interlude (1951). I often come to an appreciation of things in a roundabout way, and from strange sources. The author of the article on Del Ray, Lindsay Zoladz, expresses what I essentially dislike about her form of music and 'style': a lack of living, substance, meaning and vulnerability. It is, to borrow from her own album title, totally 'dead'.

I don't know about you, but I've been noticing this oh-so-cool 'ironic' slant being used in various art forms: music, literature, film, and so on. Something which is totally vacuous and vapid has a self-conscious 'ironic' tag attached to it, and suddenly we're supposed to appreciate it because the artist/musician is aware of their own meaninglessness. And when you add the extra descriptive word of 'postmodernist' irony, well then, it must be cool.

I just don't buy it, I need something else, something that tries to say something new or just anything at all, to appreciate a song, a style, a piece of work. I don't particularly like the bodily scrutiny which Del Ray has been subjected to as I think it's obviously sexist in tone. But I do agree with those critics who examine her music and find something missing. That missing element for me is primarily vulnerability.

What does this have to do with the film, Summer Interlude? Well, plenty actually. This is a film that is all about learning to be vulnerable. When I first saw it, I was seduced by its outward beauty. Its style and its clever thematic uses of the black and white aesthetic are things which I blogged about in my analysis of the film for Behind Ballet. But now I'm not so sure this is the most interesting thing about the film. I think Bergman's genius instead lies in his ability to skillfully merge this style with something profoundly human: the need to be raw, unprotected by a beautiful coolness, to be, as I said, vulnerable. Because that's what ultimately brings people together.

In Bergman's film of a cool ballerina whose perfect exterior is shattered by a tale of thwarted love, you'll find an affirmation of life as a precarious, but worthy state. In Del Ray's music, I find an affirmation of death as a cool exterior. And I will always favour a mature idealism over a twee cynicism.

Solveig's Trail

There is an opaqueness here
that is hard to accept.
It is light and thick,
it dances behind your eyes
like cold water
ready to relieve the pressure
of the whole universe.

You are afraid that if you breath out
the symmetry of things will dissolve,
you will make the stars collapse,
the seams come undone.
And you will only be left
with a sideways glimpse of a light
that does not know how to
sit still.

You feel yourself wading in
wordless exaltation.
It teases you with the
promise of expression,
and then lies sprawled at your feet
in defeat.

Is it possible to capture it embodied
while being suspended in an abstract interlude?
It is a second skin of persistent consciousness
that doesn't want to be named.

If the music moves to its own rhythm,
so does life.
And the two briefly meet on your fingers,
touching each note in
physical sympathy.

What is this rhythm for
if not to make you more of yourself?
What is this rhythm for
if not to splinter you in time
and remind you of the delusion
of wholeness?

It is like wholeness within fragmentation,
and you think,
this is what life is for.
You will sit through as much daily boredom
as is required of beings,
if only this wordless splinter
will maintain its hold
for just
one more minute.

I will rise with you,
and fall with you,
so say the notes.
I will build an architecture
of the senses for you,
and I will lead you to a wall
where you will stop, weep, and want.

The world is momentarily cupped in your ear,
and nothing else needs to move,
or speak,
in Solveig's trail.

* * *

I know it's not Wednesday today for Poetry Wednesday, but I really just wanted to post this poem today, which I wrote last night while listening to Grieg's Solveig's Song. If you'd like to listen to it too, here it is:



I feel this intense fear everytime I press the 'publish' button on posts which contain my 'poems'. I'm still reluctant to call whatever these writings are 'poems', because I feel that real poetry is better than this. The thing is, I'm frustrated with myself because as much as these words are honest, they still seem to me to be steeped in cliche that is hard to move beyond as a writer. I wish there was an easier way of finding your own language and style without a somewhat embarrassing process of trial and error, but for me, there isn't.

I feel that so many writers try to find their own voice by imitating other writers they admire, and this often has an alienating tone to it. I'm trying to drown out other voices when I write, I'm trying to just say what I want to say without thinking about form, structure and the dreaded question of whether it's any 'good'. Maybe in ten years I'll be able to call what I write 'poems' without flinching. But for now, I think I will settle for that feeling of relief that comes with the process of emptying your mind for a little while. The process is what gives me the most pleasure, as opposed to the final product. But the final product is 'proof', right?

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Before me sits a young woman. I cut off her hair, thick and beautiful, and she grasps my hand and begs me to remember that I too am a Jew. She knows that she is lost. 'But remember,' she says, 'you see what is being done to us. That's why my wish for you is that you will survive and take revenge for our innocent blood, which will never rest.' She has not had time to get up when a murderer who is walking between the benches lashes her on the head with his whip. Blood shows on her now shorn head. That evening, the blood of tens of thousands of victims, unable to rest, thrust itself upwards to the surface.

—From The Last Jew of Treblinka by Chil Rajchman.

Yesterday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the moments right before sleep last night, I thought of a particular interview I had with a Holocaust survivor, who is also a family friend. I still have the tape with his interview. He told me a few weeks after this interview that he had confided in me things he had never even shared with his wife. I was so very young. I still am quite young, but then, I was really just a baby barely out of high school. I wasn't prepared for the full emotional responsibility of being confided in such a manner. But I accepted it, I wanted to prove to him that I was worthy of his confidence, worthy to tell his story because he could not.

I'm scared by what will happen when people like him are no longer around to confide. I'm scared too by what will happen when people like me who have heard and transcribed survivors' stories are no longer around to share them. But most of all, I'm scared by how the Holocaust is brandished as an ideological weapon, by strong waves of neo-Nazism and the belittling of Holocaust survivors in political debates around the world. Yet, I still remain optimistic because I'm heartened by people who care.

There are more eloquent words than mine being written on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I'll leave you with a few of them:

: : Light a Candle

: : Mehdi Hasan's Article

: : The Courage to Speak Up

: : A Stand Against Neo-Nazism

: : A Holocaust Survivor Shares his Story

Image credit: Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

Literary Love & Publishing Woes

I did a guest post for Jen from Honey Kennedy while she's away frolicking in New York (I'm not jealous at all, nope, not me). She asked her guest bloggers to compile posts on the theme of 'love', and of course, my mind immediately drifted to literary love. I picked out some of my favourite love quotes from poetry and novels, have a read of my picks here.

These beautiful words have a poignancy to them that is not simply related to their subject-matter, but also to the fact that in today's publishing climate, they would probably not get published. The trend now is to assume that such works are not 'marketable'. What are we offered instead? A book by Snooki or the Kardashians, or other pointless and inflated celebrities.

I don't think it's coincidence that my guest post for Jen materialised on her blog in the same week in which I stumbled upon Sarah Lacy's great article on the state of modern publishing, 'Confessions of a Publisher'. Lacy highlights some key points which I'd like to annotate with my own thoughts.

When you see Snooki’s book on the New York Times Best Seller List, you know publishing is in trouble. You can blame readers and say publishing is just giving the public what they want. But that’s only half the problem. The rest is a lazy publishing industry that does far too little of the work that got them here: Discovering new authors and giving them a shot. Instead, they go for the lazy lay-up: Overpaying on celebrity memoirs and pop culture phenomenons with a built in audience.

I walked into a bookstore the other day. The front of the shop was dominated with celebrity books. At the very back, squeezed into two small shelves, were some books under the heading of 'Classics'. You can guess from the layout of the shop what books the store was pushing to the public at the front, and what books it was relegating to the 'unmarketable' corner at the back. I almost didn't find the 'Classics' shelf at all, I really had to look for it. This is a metaphor for how the whole publishing industry treats books and authors these days.

You could say in the publishing industry's defence: 'well, publishing companies are a business, they have to make money. So they're simply giving the public what it wants'. The thing is, I'm not convinced that books about Snooki and the Kardashians are what we, the public, really want. It's been decided for us, it's been assumed. It's been relentlessly pushed and marketed toward us. It's sort of like what women's and gossip magazines do: they are saturated with celebrity gossip and the argument is that gossip is what sells. But if gossip is all that is provided, how do magazine editors actually know what we want? Do we really have much of a choice? It's like a self-perpetuating myth: 'this is what we're selling, because this is what you want. But what you want is what we decide you want, so this is what we'll sell'.

If publishing houses and magazine editors actually opened their eyes to peer beyond the glaring dominance of 'marketing', they would realise that part of the enormous popularity of blogs and self-published, independent books and magazines lies in the fact that people are generally tired of being sold the same old crap, and are forging their own voices. They are telling these companies, in large numbers, what they really want. Isn't it about time editors and publishers started listening?

While the familiar complaint of a diminishing publishing industry in the face of digital culture is valid, it also doesn't take into account that people are migrating to the digital world because the printed world of magazines and books is no longer providing the innovative sense of creativity they used to. You can't blame people for seeking out other avenues when the old ones are treating them like brainless fools.

Lacy suggests a call to arms for the publishing industry to better itself:

My hope is disgruntled publishing executives like the one above will quit their comfortable jobs at dysfunctional prehistoric companies and start innovating on the model. I don’t believe the public only wants books written by over-tanned drunks who go clubbing anymore than blog readers only want slideshows and posts on Apple. Someone will build the next great publishing imprint out of these ashes. And as a reader and an author, I can’t wait.

I agree with her. Someone does need to resurrect publishing houses from the ashes of celebrity culture and easily exploited genres and remind them that they used to be a source for beautiful words to be shared with the world, for new talent to be discovered. But I think the responsibility for this also lies with us, the readers and the buyers. We need to start demanding more, and demanding loudly.

I'd love to suggest you go re-read some of the quotes I've transcribed in my guest post. And then think about a world where such authors and such words don't stand a chance of getting published. Books and poetry for me aren't just printed matter on a page with a monetary value, they are priceless. They have literally pulled me out of despair and grief, they have comforted me and been my companions, they have lightened my mood after a bad day at work, and they have given me insight into our state as human beings. These endeavours should not be lost in the haze of marketing and celebrity culture. Celebrity culture is so very contaminating and I wonder when it will all stop. How much further can we exploit this dead horse? Enough should be enough, and we need to start saying this, loud and clear.

So my call to arms to anyone reading this post is to start talking about the value of the written word and the immense pleasure of drowning in a good book or discovering a new author. If it matters to you, start discussing it on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Be heard, don't be told what you're supposed to like. And maybe if enough of us do this, someone will start to listen. Creativity and art would be nothing without innovation, and I can't think of a better time to start demanding such innovation.

Image credit: still from the French short film Faiblesses (2009).

Orient Express

One of my dreams, which I hope someday soon will become a reality, is to take a trip on the Orient Express. There has always been something appealing about long train trips for me, but the Orient Express combines my love of many other things: the unsettling process of travel, the promise of solitude, time for contemplation, historical enquiry and an abiding appreciation of quality.



The Orient Express has been the silent participant and witness of history. It has seen the signing of Germany's surrender in World War One, and in turn, France's signing of defeat by Hitler in World War Two. It has heard Josephine Baker sing a tune in the aftermath of its bombing and read Agatha Christie's literary homage in Murder on the Orient Express. It experienced famous Art Deco artists lovingly decorate its interiors with a quality, attention to detail and love for the arts which is lacking today in our bland and cost-effective trains. Its routes were halted during a divided Cold War Era, and yet it became a symbol of transcendence of borders and unity as Communist Europe came crumbling down.



The Orient Express is also a symbol of other forms of transcendence. Historically, it has put all manner of people from different social classes, nationalities and backgrounds together within its confined space, compelling a movement beyond social and personal borders. In its cosy rooms and sparkling dinning areas, I picture conversations that would otherwise have never occurred, secret romances between strangers who were never to meet again and intrigue facilitated by the throwing together of people.



The Orient Express is like a time capsule of history, but a changing and malleable one. Its history is not preserved behind inaccessible glass in a museum, but is constantly moving. It's a symbol of productive nostalgia: a nostalgia that doesn't seek to freeze the past as a single image or data, but rather one that highlights that history is constantly changing.

The sensation of the train rocking the many bodies it carried as it lulled them to sleep reminds us that their bodies too carried traces of history which they left behind in each compartment. History is embodied, not abstract fact. I imagine myself sitting within the train's interior and reenacting the same feelings experienced by all the lovers, people and travellers of the past. We will share something across the expanse of a moving history, and they will impart me with fragments and traces of the past via our common sensations.



But the most alluring aspect of the Orient Express is its introspective space. Within its interiors, you can imagine a process of closing-in on yourself, removing the mundane borders of everyday life, and being given the gift of doing nothing. It's like a movement within, into yourself; an elaborate process of contemplation that is inaccessible in the busy hum of work, grocery shopping and to-do lists. The Orient Express is like a small encapsulation of the process of travel itself: the freedom to interact with the world and with yourself without reminders of productivity. There's only pleasure.



Image credits: all images are from here and here, by Hotze Eisma photography.

Black and White

When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and White, you photograph their souls.

-Ted Grant

I've been trying to organise my image folders today in order to finalise the images in my book. I discovered one folder named 'black and white' that I completely forgot about. It's filled with unsorted black and white photos, I'm not sure if I've ever shared any of them before. But I felt like posting some now. There is something so appealing about the black and white aesthetic, it seems almost abstract to me. There is also something therapeutic about lining-up black and white images together.

Image credits: all images are my own.