A Challenge to Impersonalism of Philosophic Space: From Red Mars

"The only part of an argument that really matters is what we think of the people arguing. X claims a, Y claims b. They make arguments to support their claims, with any number of points. But when their listeners remember the discussion, what matters is simply that X believes a, and Y believes b. People then form their judgment on what they think of X and Y."

Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (Bantam Spectra, 1993), p 77.

In The Shade

You come out here on some old hunt

limping

from formative wounds

dents to the fender

Friendless, new, shy

your eyes spin and squint

from culture shock and sun

Everyone who passes by

you think-ask: 

Won't you come kiss me
hold me
share this warmth

by the air-conditioner?

Stare into my eyes

under the ceiling fan?

In the shade
with your daemon

squirt gun in hand

a pack of sandwiches
upon your lap
you'll wait
heavy

heavy with knots
not drawn here 
tired from the bad chemicals
that follow

Movies I Like: L'Illusionniste

For some reason I want to say a few things about a handful of movies that I like. I don't know...

Ok (no order):

1. L'Illusionniste (The Illusionist - 2010). This is a hand drawn (romanticized-realist?) animation about a traveling magician and a protege he picks up along the way - a pretty young girl. There are no words; well, actually, there are Englishy mumbles, but that's as far as it goes. I had this movie saved to my parents DVR and would watch it before going to bed when I lived there. A kind of salve. I'm wondering if this has to do with the quality of whimsy present. A graying, middle aged whimsy. One doesn't leave this movie feeling bad.

There are parts of L'Illusionniste that I always want to watch (this is a preoccupation of mine, which will make other appearances in "Movies I like" to come) - like the magician taking boat rides out to Scotland, with all this wonderful green overcastness. God... And the music hits the spot - soulful soft classical piano, often in breathtaking waltz timing, occasionally accompanied by xylophones, jazz drums, and another thing or two. Clean and well-wishing, in an elderly way (as though you are spending the day with a sophisticated grandparent, and, incidentally, you two go to a doughnut shop and sip strangely good coffee and eat two frosting donuts, one with coconut and the other with chocolate chips). Reminds me of parts of Michael Giacchino's Up's score, but less heavyhanded with the melancholy/nostalgia. Here is an example.

As far as what the movie is about, to be honest I'm not really sure. I'll have to watch it again with that project in mind. I wasn't watching it for plot, though, and so it's hard to say what the meaning of the thing is. I've been taking it in episodically - to borrow Galen Strawson's term (see this paper for a run down on what episodism means, if you are interested). Nevertheless, I've seen the movie enough to know that the plot is like this: An understated, underdog-like magician performs in some big city, then travels to Scotland to perform, then travels back to the continent to perform, where he strikes the fancy of a girl (I'm thinking 15-18 years old) who follows him as a kind of stowaway. They eventually come to share an apartment, and the girl seems to want to learn magic - she thinks it's real, and the magician is having difficulties telling her to the contrary. Anyway, the magician is having a hard time getting any more gigs - as are all the other entertainment persons that surround them (clowns, gymnasts, etc.) - and he takes up other means of employment. The girl is presented with gifts (a coat, shoes, a dress) throughout the movie by the magician, and comes to affect some poise. This gains her the interest of a young man in town. When the magician sees them together, he decides to leave her some money and a note ("Magicians do no exist."), before taking a train out of town. We see the magician look at a handheld photograph longingly as he rides away (in fact, he eyeballs the photo a few time during the movie).

Maybe it has something to do with the destructive ramifications of consumerism. Maybe not. I tend to think everything I encounter now has this theme. I should probably look into that. The movie also seems to be about loss or something like that. I wouldn't have emphasized this connection, though, without reading the wikipedia page.

I will say, though, that fortunately, L'Illusionniste is not about a romance between the young woman (maybe girl?) and the middle aged magician. Every time I show L'Illusionniste to a friend, they always think it will go in that direction. But it doesn't. There is a purity about the movie. Maybe that's not quite right.

In any case the full movie is here.

I wonder what you think.

Initiation Song from the Finder's Lodge

Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things.
Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms.
Let there be deep snow in your inbreathing
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses.
Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

From Always Coming Home (Harper & Row, 1985)

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."

Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1993), p. 271

What You Want For Yourself

Let's say you've packed up a vehicle

enough supplies, clothes

and the special personal things you need

and you're driving somewhere

Let's say you're driving and thinking

Where should I go?

Let's say you are driving

and that you resolve to get to the bottom of it

Finally

after all these years

the body like a wet towel twisted dry

your body

always digging yourself out

Let's say you pull over and pee and get some coffee

Then put on music you can think to

perhaps its Glass's 1000 Airplanes on the Roof
or Arvo Pärt's Fur Alina

Let's say you have found yourself into some money

It's origin is nothing extreme

not the lottery

not inheritance

not a sudden rise to success or fame

Let's say you are driving away

taking a break

if that's what you are doing

from the build up of the everyday

from whatever you need to take a break from

Let's say you're free

not the freedom of political theorists or metaphysicians

but the freedom of ease

a consciousness of no commitments

no identity

Let's say you pull off the road and park

That you jump the fence

the stringy low metal and wood kind

ubiquitous to country lanes

Let's say you walk

quiet roaming hillsides

you walk them until you can be with yourself

and then you sit Indian style

near the shade of a tree

a tree you couldn't name

Let's say you are no one anymore

you have no relationships

aside from the one's you will into effect

Let's say you needn't make any moves

you can sit here on this hillside

there are no rules

the world is an open game

the blank page of the painter

Let's say you ask

What do you want for yourself?

You Say:
What do I want for myself

on this quiet roaming hillside

the pleasure of having no one to please

having no one to be

like a ginger vitality

an inner beaming

at my back

"Most talk of 'artistic detachment' is disingenuous. No writer can depict the whole world - even if, like Balzac, he makes a credible attempt. All he can do is offer 'typical samples,' like a grocer allowing you to taste a piece of cheese. But as he holds out the cheese to you on the end of his knife, he is clearly implying that this sample tastes exactly the same as the rest of the cheese on the counter. The same goes for the novelist; as he hands you his 'slice of life', there is a tacit understanding that, as far as he knows, this tastes very much like any other slice he could offer you."

Colin Wilson, The Craft of the Novel (Ashgrove Press, 1990), pp. 57.