v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Effigies in film

From 3AM Magazine, philosopher Nickolas Pappas writes about Hitchcock's Vertigo:

In the case of film the issue is a different kind of practical consideration. I usually don’t think that my admiration for the best films needs to be added to the discussion that philosophers are engaged in. By comparison I don’t know of any philosophers writing about country music.

Anyway, Vertigo was different. From the first time I saw it there was something in its pawing over San Francisco that stayed with me. Why this fallen redwood, the horse in the stable, the fetishized painting? Then too I noticed more than one commentator on this film invoking Orpheus, but I couldn’t see Orpheus in James Stewart’s character Scotty Ferguson. If you’re going to make him your Orpheus, would you have him be insensitive to music? And Orpheus travels to the underworld, but Ferguson sends other people to the underworld in his place. You see that in the preface to the film, with the policeman who falls and dies.

Vertigo’s attention to the physical elements in San Francisco felt like myth-making work, and it’s very likely that the commentators who looked to Orpheus were inspired by that mythopoeic activity in the film; but they weren’t finding the right mythic connection.

Then I saw that Ferguson was like the one character from Greek tragedy who is on record as wishing he were Orpheus. And then the movie started to come together for me. In the Alcestis of Euripides, Admetus makes a strange remark that only Jean-Pierre Vernant helped me understand, about wanting to make a statue of his wife after her death and take it to bed with him. I know, there’s a long tradition of sexual relations between Greeks and sculptures. But Vernant shows how this pathological-sounding wish really reflects on an archaic tradition of using effigies for the purpose of mourning, and to seek connection with the land of the dead by means of such effigies. Then I saw that the objects being handled, sighed over, and lamented to in Vertigo were all effigies or doubles, and ways of communicating with an invisible realm. James Stewart was trying to turn Kim Novak into another such effigy.

Hitchcock brings us to the end of the Alcestis and then continues the story. In Euripides the ending is ambiguous. What is Alcestis likely to say to Admetus after Heracles brings her back from the dead and she regains her voice? Can Admetus really imagine that they will return to married life? If I’m reading Vertigo correctly, it follows out the thought that Euripides leaves dangling, that the putatively happy ending will not itself end happily.

Well, a lot has been written about this beautiful movie, but I didn’t see anything like that being written. So I thought there would be a point to my joining the discussion.

The fact that I went into ancient thought and ritual to talk about Vertigo also bespeaks my broadening involvement in ancient Greek studies. Now that I know more about Greek antiquity, and I’ve found a growing number of teachers who helped me see productive approaches to antiquity, I no longer think of the “ancient philosophy” work I do as a part of my research. It’s more like all philosophy to me now, which is to say it’s like a language in which I can do all the philosophizing I do.

Related articles

Vertigo Review: Alfred Hitchcock's Superlative Tragedy

Hitchmania: Vertigo (1958)

Diego Figueiredo ar An Die Musik

Vallejo Nocturno 2013- Solo

Cruz Factor

David Denby writes in the New Yorker blog:

Cruz speaks crisply. Still, like McCarthy, he evokes a menace that is destroying the nation: Obamacare, which is killing jobs, obliterating businesses, demoralizing everyone. Obamacare is his Communism, a conspiracy that is the main impediment to economic growth. It is a malaise that is particularly hurting “single moms, Hispanics, African-Americans”—a brazen touch on Cruz’s part, since it is exactly those three groups whose interests Republican policies tend to ignore. It takes a certain ingenuity to suggest that an attempt to insure the powerless is rendering them powerless. One of Cruz’s tricks is to turn his enemies’ words back on them so that they stand accused in their own language. Meanwhile, he remains, at least rhetorically, invulnerable behind a mask of sincerity.

Cruz voted no on the bipartisan immigration bill, no on the farm bill, no on the continuing resolution; he voted against the confirmations of John Brennan, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and Jack Lew. He makes extreme demands, then accuses the other side of being unwilling to compromise, then calls his own party members cowards, and so on. The refusal to extend the debt limit endangered the American government and economy. What does Cruz want? What is he up to? The naïve may believe that all of these obstructionist moves are part of a principled opposition to Obama, the President who, in the past, inspired greater and greater outrage in Republicans in proportion to how conciliatory and mild he became. But Cruz seeks more than the humbling of the President. There are plenty of other Republicans around eager to accomplish that.

He seeks the Presidency, of course. And he appears to be doing it by sowing as much confusion and disorder as possible—playing the joker in a seemingly nihilistic charade whose actual intent is a rational grab for power. Does he have a chance? One wonders about his supporters. Are they in on the joke, aware that his concern is a mask? Or do they take him literally, as a truth-teller and a prophet? Are they cynics or true believers? If they are cynics, he will fail; if they are true believers, he could go very far, expanding his support in a messianic crusade, a quest to purify and redeem the nation.

Prior to the next election, Democrats can’t do much to deter him. They may hope that he continues his rampage, turning off big money and more and more of the electorate. His immediate threat, obviously, is to moderate Republicans. If he continues to blaze, they will be consumed. Then again, there is another side to the Joseph McCarthy story. After going too far—attacking the Army, in 1953 and 1954—McCarthy was censured by the Senate, in December, 1954. (He died less than three years later, of liver problems, at the age of forty-eight.) When the mask of sincerity gets smashed, the man wearing it may break apart, too.

A Hand

Vallejo Nocturno 2013 -Wall Art in North Charles

Thwarting popular rule

From Chris Hedges, Let's Get This Class War Started:

“We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of course we are,” Wendell Berry writes. “Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing.”

The rise of an oligarchic state offers a nation two routes, according to Aristotle. The impoverished masses either revolt to rectify the imbalance of wealth and power or the oligarchs establish a brutal tyranny to keep the masses forcibly enslaved. We have chosen the second of Aristotle’s options. The slow advances we made in the early 20th century through unions, government regulation, the New Deal, the courts, an alternative press and mass movements have been reversed. The oligarchs are turning us—as they did in the 19th century steel and textile factories—into disposable human beings. They are building the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history to keep us submissive.

Berryman's Dream Songs

 

Dream Song 224
John Berryman

Eighty

Lonely in his great age, Henry's old friend
leaned on his burning cane while hís old friend
was hymnéd out of living.
The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow
bowed to them with his thoughts—it's hard to know them though
for the old man sang no word.

Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let's guess.
Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses
of the picnics of rising youth.
Gone all slowly. Stately, not as the tongue
worries the loose tooth, wits as strong as young,
only the albino body failing.

Where the smother clusters pinpoint insights clear.
The tennis is over. The last words are here?
What, in the world, will they be?
White is the hue of death & victory,
all the old generosities dismissed,
while the white years insist.

Animus towards the poor

From Understanding Society:

American conservatives for the past several decades have shown a remarkable hostility to poor people in our country. The recent effort to slash the SNAP food stamp program in the House (link); the astounding refusal of 26 Republican governors to expand Medicaid coverage in their states -- depriving millions of poor people from access to Medicaid health coverage (link); and the general legislative indifference to a rising poverty rate in the United States -- all this suggests something beyond ideology or neglect.

The indifference to low-income and uninsured people in their states of conservative governors and legislators in Texas, Florida, and other states is almost incomprehensible. Here is a piece in Bustle that reviews some of the facts about expanding Medicaid coverage:

In total, 26 states have rejected the expansion, including the state of Mississippi, which has the highest rate of uninsured poor people in the country. Sixty-eight percent of uninsured single mothers live in the states that rejected the expansion, as do 60 percent of the nation’s uninsured working poor. (link)

These attitudes and legislative efforts didn't begin yesterday. They extend back at least to the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. Here is Lou Cannon describing the Reagan years and the Reagan administration's attitude towards poverty:

Despite the sea of happy children’s faces that graced the “feel-good” commercials, poverty exploded in the inner cities of America during the Reagan years, claiming children as its principal victims. The reason for this suffering was that programs targeted to low-income families, such as AFDC, were cut back far more than programs such as Social Security. As a result of cuts in such targeted programs-including school lunches and subsidized housing-federal benefit programs for households with incomes of less than $10,000 a year declined nearly 8% during the Reagan first term while federal aid for households with more than $40,000 income was almost unchanged. Source: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon, p. 516-17, Jul 2, 1991

Most shameful, many would feel, is the attempt to reduce food assistance in a time of rising poverty and deprivation. It's hard to see how a government or party could justify taking food assistance away from hungry adults and children, especially in a time of rising poverty. And yet this is precisely the effort we have witnessed in the past several months in revisions to the farm bill in the House of Representatives. In a recent post Dave Johnson debunks the myths and falsehoods underlying conservative attacks on the food stamp program in the House revision of the farm bill (link).

This tenor of our politics indicates an overt hostility and animus towards poor people. How is it possible to explain this part of contemporary politics on the right? What can account for this persistent and unblinking hostility towards poor people?

More

Trolling for Terrorists

Glen Greenwald writes at The Guardian:

The most under-discussed aspect of the NSA story has long been its international scope. That all changed this week as both Germany and France exploded with anger over new revelations about pervasive NSA surveillance on their population and democratically elected leaders.

As was true for Brazil previously, reports about surveillance aimed at leaders are receiving most of the media attention, but what really originally drove the story there were revelations that the NSA is bulk-spying on millions and millions of innocent citizens in all of those nations. The favorite cry of US government apologists -–everyone spies! – falls impotent in the face of this sort of ubiquitous, suspicionless spying that is the sole province of the US and its four English-speaking surveillance allies (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand).

There are three points worth making about these latest developments.

• First, note how leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel reacted with basic indifference when it was revealed months ago that the NSA was bulk-spying on all German citizens, but suddenly found her indignation only when it turned out that she personally was also targeted. That reaction gives potent insight into the true mindset of many western leaders.

• Second, all of these governments keep saying how newsworthy these revelations are, how profound are the violations they expose, how happy they are to learn of all this, how devoted they are to reform. If that's true, why are they allowing the person who enabled all these disclosures – Edward Snowden – to be targeted for persecution by the US government for the "crime" of blowing the whistle on all of this?

If the German and French governments – and the German and French people – are so pleased to learn of how their privacy is being systematically assaulted by a foreign power over which they exert no influence, shouldn't they be offering asylum to the person who exposed it all, rather than ignoring or rejecting his pleas to have his basic political rights protected, and thus leaving him vulnerable to being imprisoned for decades by the US government?

Aside from the treaty obligations these nations have to protect the basic political rights of human beings from persecution, how can they simultaneously express outrage over these exposed invasions while turning their back on the person who risked his liberty and even life to bring them to light?

• Third, is there any doubt at all that the US government repeatedly tried to mislead the world when insisting that this system of suspicionless surveillance was motivated by an attempt to protect Americans from The Terrorists™? Our reporting has revealed spying on conferences designed to negotiate economic agreements, the Organization of American States, oil companies, ministries that oversee mines and energy resources, the democratically elected leaders of allied states, and entire populations in those states.

More

Pachanga Boys Jagwar Ma's "Come Save Me" Remix

Interview from   :

Pachanga Boys – “Time” — You guys were set to headline the Mayan Warrior stage all night Saturday night to close out the festival. Is this your first time playing Burning Man?

Pachanga Boys: Yes, this was our first time at Burning Man and we are so flashed by it… Every description that friends that had been there before gave us was just too short to the reality which is so amazing and surreal. We had three different shows during the week, all of them very special in their own way. On Monday night we had a late night “welcoming” short set at the Mayan Warrior which was very uplifting because everybody was fresh and excited to be there, then we received the sunrise on Friday morning at Robot Heart which was really great. There we actually closed our set with “Time”, since it became a Robot Heart classic. And on Saturday we had this long set at the Mayan Warrior from Burn till Dawn for a total of eleven hours playing… so amazing.

- See more at: http://ignite.me/articles/artist-interviews/artist-interview-pachanga-boys-welcome-new-church-hippie/#sthash.ew0QwBFN.dpuf

What’s your all-time favorite Burning Man story that you can share with us?

Pachanga Boys: So many good ones… from friends falling in love there, to people changing their jobs and life direction after attending it…

We have our personal one which was this eleven hour set which has been one of the most surreal and out of this world experiences we ever had.

The impact of watching all these people around the man waiting to burn is so massive. The mix between LEDs, lasers and fire makes the whole scene both Sci Fi and primitive at the same time. That night, there were constant really strong sandstorms, so playing in those conditions made the whole experience like a mission… it was so physical and emotional to deliver the sequence on music at the same time we were being hit in the face by tons of sand. In the morning when we were driving back to the camp playing uplifting tunes, it felt like a victory — people on the ground waving, bicycles following, people on board dancing, everybody with a big satisfaction smile on their face. What a night, what a ride.

- See more at: http://ignite.me/articles/artist-interviews/artist-interview-pachanga-boys-welcome-new-church-hippie/#sthash.ew0QwBFN.dpuf

 

Pachanga Boys – “Time” — You guys were set to headline the Mayan Warrior stage all night Saturday night to close out the festival. Is this your first time playing Burning Man?

Pachanga Boys: Yes, this was our first time at Burning Man and we are so flashed by it… Every description that friends that had been there before gave us was just too short to the reality which is so amazing and surreal. We had three different shows during the week, all of them very special in their own way. On Monday night we had a late night “welcoming” short set at the Mayan Warrior which was very uplifting because everybody was fresh and excited to be there, then we received the sunrise on Friday morning at Robot Heart which was really great. There we actually closed our set with “Time”, since it became a Robot Heart classic. And on Saturday we had this long set at the Mayan Warrior from Burn till Dawn for a total of eleven hours playing… so amazing.

- See more at: http://ignite.me/articles/artist-interviews/artist-interview-pachanga-boys-welcome-new-church-hippie/#sthash.ew0QwBFN.dpuf

Martirio y Chavela

 

From ABC.ES:

El tañido de la guitarra besa suavemente las desgarradoras letras de Chavela Vargas  en un disco homenaje que Martirio y su hijo Raúl Rodríguez hacen con el «más profundo respeto» hacia La Llorona: «En un mundo raro». «Ella me caló a nivel personal y profesional, tenía una gran empatía con su forma de decir y transmitir sentimientos. Tenía una habilidad especial para estremecer al público y sus conciertos eran una ceremonia sagrada de donde la gente salía habiendo experimentado una catarsis», explica Martirio asegurando que lo más importante de sus canciones era el efecto de felicidad que estas producen en quien sabe escucharlas.

Este disco tenía que producirse, la profunda admiración de Martirio hacia Chavela y el recuerdo que ésta ha dejado en su corazón tenía que tener una salida. Sin embargo, no se trata de comparaciones. En principio, a Martirio no le importó el efecto que este disco tendría en los seguidores de esta artista, fallecida en su México de adopción el 5 de agosto del 2012.

«Lo que nos preocupaba era quedarnos tranquilos y hacer las canciones con el corazón y dedicadas completamente a ella. Este disco es su regalo y queríamos que sonara a verdad por todas las cosas que nos enseñó», dice Martirio. «Queríamos huir de las canciones con demasiada carga dramática, pero sin olvidar la melancolía. Es decir, sin incidir en cortarse las venas, sino en la dulzura y la sabiduría del perdón», comenta la cantante María Isabel, Martirio en su faceta musical. Ella y su hijo han querido trabajar para encontrar un «sustrato común» entre la relación que hay entre la canción mexicana más profunda y el flamenco. «Ha tenido su dificultad, pero no violencia. La letra y el cante tienen una relación muy directa con el flamenco. Ambas son libres», explica Raúl.

«La Llorona» se ha convertido en el himno de la Chamana, por eso Martirio ha querido cantarla con la dificultad que ello supone. Por esa misma razón, por ser tan emblemática, es la que más trabajo le ha costado versionar. Aún están aposentándose las enseñanzas y experiencias que Martirio vivió junto a Chavela, pero Martirio lo tiene muy claro y destaca lo que todavía tiene que aprender de ella: «La libertad envidiable que ella tenía, su inconfundible dignidad, esa vocación y su fuerte personalidad».

Porque ella era «una persona única con un áurea increíble», comenta asegurando que delante de ella era imposible hacer trampas y que nunca se iba con alguien que no le gustase. Jamás disimulaba y nunca hizo peloteo a nadie... era auténtica».

Mas