failure
Here's something kind of gratifying and invigorating, even while it's frustrating. I've spent the whole evening trying to put together a piece on Derek Jarman. I had no clear idea what form it would take - it might be visual, visual poetry, poetry, an essay, or some kind of hybrid. In a sense it was a little half-arsed - more of a mini research project into some of Jarman's interests and obsessions without going to the effort of reading any books - instead trawling the internet for snippets.
I wanted to do something associative, drawing together, even merging different words and ideas. I tried all sorts of ways of assembling this material, but nothing came together. All that was left was a list of words, including names:
Derek Jarman, John Dee, blue, Blue, Chroma, Edward II, Gemistus Pletho, Plato, Queer, Dee, Du, black, risk, RISK, War Requiem, 440-490nm, Duu, Deer, QuDu, QuDee, QDu, Quur, AT YOUR OWN RISK, reckless art, PRIDE, QUEER ARTS, DUEB, Dubh, 79, glyph.
Although there are thematic strands (Dee, Du, black, Dubh, for instance) the whole page refuses to resolve into anything coherent. Even dropping in the other people, names and subjects superficially researched but not written down doesn't help matters:
Ur, Enochian, Angelic, Kynea number, Marsilio Ficino, mercer (the occupation), Monas Hyroglyphia, Matthew Barney, Dalby, nanometre, perpetual motion, proto-world language, Manchester.
If anyone out there can make something out of all this mess I'd be really happy to hear about it. For myself, I'm kind of glad that I haven't managed to produce something finished, or even half-started. I'm really very bad at taking time over anything I do, even though I admire people who are able to devote a lot of time and patience to any project, or who will be absolutely painstaking even when it's not necessary. This kind of uncompleted project is as close as I come to that. Although that said, I may return to this tomorrow and devote more energy to trying to make sense of the material so far accumulated.
Is there a word for this kind of abortive project? Where you know broadly what you want to concentrate on, but are unable to make any sense of the material, whether interconnected or not? It can be frustrating, I have been known to cry, shout, self-harm (a few years ago), but increasingly I enjoy the sense of having to work to accomplish something.
.
I wanted to do something associative, drawing together, even merging different words and ideas. I tried all sorts of ways of assembling this material, but nothing came together. All that was left was a list of words, including names:
Derek Jarman, John Dee, blue, Blue, Chroma, Edward II, Gemistus Pletho, Plato, Queer, Dee, Du, black, risk, RISK, War Requiem, 440-490nm, Duu, Deer, QuDu, QuDee, QDu, Quur, AT YOUR OWN RISK, reckless art, PRIDE, QUEER ARTS, DUEB, Dubh, 79, glyph.
Although there are thematic strands (Dee, Du, black, Dubh, for instance) the whole page refuses to resolve into anything coherent. Even dropping in the other people, names and subjects superficially researched but not written down doesn't help matters:
Ur, Enochian, Angelic, Kynea number, Marsilio Ficino, mercer (the occupation), Monas Hyroglyphia, Matthew Barney, Dalby, nanometre, perpetual motion, proto-world language, Manchester.
If anyone out there can make something out of all this mess I'd be really happy to hear about it. For myself, I'm kind of glad that I haven't managed to produce something finished, or even half-started. I'm really very bad at taking time over anything I do, even though I admire people who are able to devote a lot of time and patience to any project, or who will be absolutely painstaking even when it's not necessary. This kind of uncompleted project is as close as I come to that. Although that said, I may return to this tomorrow and devote more energy to trying to make sense of the material so far accumulated.
Is there a word for this kind of abortive project? Where you know broadly what you want to concentrate on, but are unable to make any sense of the material, whether interconnected or not? It can be frustrating, I have been known to cry, shout, self-harm (a few years ago), but increasingly I enjoy the sense of having to work to accomplish something.
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Comments
One of the barely relevant roads I initially went gambolling down was a disquisition on taking time. I wanted to expand on how I admire those who are able to be painstaking in their work, with especial attention to the physical aspects. Meaning for example, taking a slightly longer route when there is a shortcut available, and no reason to not use that shortcut. Or making certain that discrete movements or stages of a job remain discrete, and are not merged. There was also going to be an example cited from Kim Ki-Duk's film Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring, which was abandoned due to not having a copy of the film to hand and not being able to clearly remember the aspect I had in mind. This inability to pin down my example, combined with an inability to express clearly what I meant about being painstaking, meant that the digression was both baffling and badly expressed.
There was in this case a link to the rest of the post, if only to highlight my admiration for precision, clarity and the painstaking, as contrasted with my own lazy, dilettante, imprecise and illogical processes. Suitably those very tendencies helped to undermine my ability to make the point. I believe to the advantage of the post, which reads quite breathlessly and manages to imply a narrative with relative economy.
This was not the only thread that I abandoned. I also intended to write something on the relative value of work that is easily produced against that which takes more time and effort. I was going to write about the meditative aspects of physical tasks, especially those which have no particular function, and which are not intended to be observed by anyone. Utterly unconnected to any of this was a rant on how much I dislike Bob Dylan's Just Like A Woman, most of the stuff on The Basement Tapes, anything involving only The Band, and the whole concept of Americana, which I often see as a musculinist project.
This associative process can be very useful while writing poetry, but where a more coherent, consistent line of argument might be required it gets in the way.
But as I was saying the point wasn't so much to write anything factual, but to produce an impressionistic tribute. I guess almost to treat him as an historical figure, almost in the way that figures like John Dee and Gemistus Pletho emerge in his own books, particularly Chroma. And that's without getting into those vertiginous accidents that almost look planned - such as his references in Chroma and Modern Nature to the crow Jet that used to visit Prospect Cottage (and was owned by H's Grandmother), which sends us back at least tenuously to John Dee, who came from a Welsh family, and whose surname derives from the Welsh Du, black. It's like anything, once you start looking for links and coincidences they're everywhere. The problem is arranging them into a form that makes some kind of sense. Which was the failure of the title.
i agree about Dylan, nearly unbearable period that -- my favorite Bobby track is "don't worry ma (i'm only ...)
oh.
& the Americana?
what do you mean?
the false folksiness?
To be fair it's not just rock/folk/country/blues influenced musicians to blame, and don't get me wrong, I'm a great fan of these musics, as well as the more experimental. I also like UK garage/grime/dubstep, but find the insistence of a lot of artists on pretending to be gangsters or to come from tough inner-cities to be equally tedious and off-putting.
I think with both it's the element of false folksiness or fake gangsterism combined with an absolute sincerity that puts me off initially, followed by whiff of jockstrap - the idea of all guys together - which frequently topples over into flat-out misogyny.
The other thing I have a problem with, again with both types of music, is that the writing starts to deal in stereotypes. I guess some songwriters would claim they're referring to archetypes, but mostly they ain't. What's noticeable, especially with good writers like Dylan, how you lose the personal insight and emotional impact.
it's sad that these misogynic tendencies even bleed over into the supposed "liberated subculture" or what have you.
funny that a prevalent motif in Americana is loss.
how it's often that "been done wrong & now i'm fighting back" mentality -- the cultural conditioning aspect of music has tremendous impact on the sociological formation of peoples identities, it's unavoidable, but sad that the slick studios have usurped the rightful heirs to influence : artists, poets & philosophers..at least in usa it's like that -- the lifelong peer-pressure is a whole other aspect...
(one of my favorite songs, a song which lumps my throat & tears my eyes is " nothings going to happen" by the Tall Dwarfs from New Zealand, they're music has given me a strength of resolve)
the tall dwarfs on youtube:
tall dwarfs !
Of course if you wanted a link that's a real stretch, the lights shining into the camera at the end of the video seem to echo Jarman's great love of similar effects using lights and mirrors, or flares. See parts of The Angelic Conversation, Glitterbug (on the Artificial Eye DVD of Blue), Art of Mirrors and Garden of Luxor (on my DVD of The Tempest from Second Sight), and The Last of England for starters.
Speaking of Jarman, and of things misogynistic, although I don't think I'd call him feminist, he frequently features interesting women in interesting roles, where gender is not the defining characteristic. I guess among male directors currently working Todd Haynes might be the nearest we get.
An interesting resource for finding out how the media's doing in terms of representing women is The Hathor Legacy. Their main focus is on mainstream film and media - because that's what most people consume - but interesting nonetheless. Start with Jennifer Kesler's profile to read about the origins of the site, then check out the Feminism pages.
One of the things I like about Jarman's films is the refusal to use conventional narrative structures. I like films that don't set up an artificial conflict, and then have to resolve it with gunplay at the end. A couple of films I've seen recently that neatly express a lot of what I feel about this are Alex Cox' Searchers 2.0 which is almost an animated essay on the revenge story (and why Hollywood gets it so badly wrong), with forays into feminism, the shortcomings of global capitalism, and the way we delude ourselves. The other film is Sarah Miles' Magnificent Ray, of which I've seen a 9 minute extract (free with the last issue of Vertigo). This also keeps promising climaxes that it has no intention of delivering, and examines the kind of facts that get smoothed out when you turn events into stories. It could almost be a critique of why Badlands is such a dishonest film - although I do like it. In Miles' film it's nice to see sunflare, water and imperfections on the lens, and cheap film media being used as tools to undermine the polish of more conventional film, rather than as aesthetic choices to denote 'authentcity'. Rather in the way that the apparent amateurishness of Jarman is not only a reflection of limited resources, but a result of deliberate decision not to participate in the mainstream. Let's not forget that British film at that time was either heritage pieces or misguided attempts to ape the American studios. This in a country which at that time had Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Ken Russell, Sally Potter, and Terrence Davies among others, at their peak. That is what British film is good at.
While I'm here I'd also like to cram in a shout to Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbour Totoro, which was conceived to be a film without conflict, and succeeds magnificently. My favourite animation of all time. For personal reasons I cry every time I see it.
There's probably all kinds of shit I meant to say here that I forgot about (see my first comment here for ways that can happen), but if I remember it I'll post it.
: )
if you ever getta oppo, it's great, very political about the corruption inherent, but also a sly cultural commentary & also features an very subtle opium scene.
i'm with you on the beginnings aspect, comics & cartoons were so lively until they became standardized -- i'm the same way w/ everything else i suppose, i like knobs on electronics, i like to fiddle & adjust & get effects otherwise unavailable in this new push-button stuff which removes alotta the user interface -- i love typewriters -- i love going to the junkstore & i'm startled someone would toss outta perfectly working Olivetti typewriter.
i love the junkyard scene from Gummo:
queer ass rabbit
that's kinda how it was when i was growin' up, poor southern kids playin' inna junkyard, but the cultural conditioning aspect is scary.
i like Ed Templeton's photos of teenagers smoking cigarettes.
anyways, thanks for alltha tips & links, i have some lookings to do upon yr directionals...
Also kind of enjoying this library of comments building up around this post - I'd like to see some more people participating - maybe Adam will happen back. In a way its building up to a version of the kind of thing I wanted to achieve with the post. Albeit at greater length, and from the mind of more authors. but given the collaborative nature of most of Derek Jarman's work that's appropriate.
And at least it's meant that today hasn't been a write-off. I took flexi-leave because I could do with a break, because I have a lot of hours to clear, because I wanted to spend some time doing creative work, and because I'd arranged to be around for redelivery of a 500GB external hard-drive to move my files to and extend the life of my Mac. But by 7.30pm nothing had arrived, so I rang the despatch company. They initially claimed they'd left a card when they'd failed to deliver. This was bollocks, 'cause although it was a beautiful day, perfect for getting out and taking photos, and although I needed a bunch of groceries, I stayed in all day. They then claimed my item had been sent to Chelmsford by mistake, because someone had added a C to the beginning of my postcode.
Idiots. But as I said, at least I got to write some comments, to have a bath, and to start reading through Jarman's Smiling In Slow Motion, the last volume of his diaries, edited after his death. I've saved it for a year after racing through Chroma again, Modern Nature (my first copy of which I gave to a friend, for whom I think it means more), and Kicking The Pricks, because I didn't want to get to the end. Although I already know how the book ends. A fortnight before his death, blind and writing purely by touch, his careful calligraphy and brilliant prose become scratchy and almost illegible:
"Birthday Fireworks.
___
HB true love"
I think everyone should read this book. I still have a number of his books to read through, fortunately.
Beginnings for me, whenever I launch on a new way of making things, are all about finding a way in. I have to have a handle, something that helps me understand the mechanisms, and gives me permission to go play. I bought both my camera, and my LoopStation (in fact the whole audio setup) before I had any idea that I might do anything with them. They were just things I could use if I could figure out how. With each it took me about a year, and the more comfortable I get with them the more I find I can do.
My growing up doesn't seem to be much covered in film. After the age of nine I isolated myself and spent a lot of my time walking about on the mountains in various states of delusion. Even now I'd think nothing of walking six miles to buy or pick up something pretty hefty, and then carry it back. You probably get to know yourself pretty well that way, but it doesn't teach you to be at ease. I'm getting better at that, but it took a long time. Anyway, the point being I missed out on both a lot of cultural conditioning, and on a lot of social conditioning.
I was going to say that a lot of what I learned that didn't come fro my parents or the radio came from books - including illustrated books of art history, of books on mythology, religion and culture, and from a set of paperback anthologies published by Penguin in the late sixties/early seventies called Voices. I wanted to provide a link for that, because the mix of photos, reproductions of art and poetry was mesmerising for a child. But Google, Wikipedia, Amazon, Ebay and Penguin's own site drew a blank. They must be out there somewhere. And the art wasn't well-behaved designed for kids. It included Messerschmidt's busts of psychological states, Archimboldo's painted portraits composed from vegetables and objects (an influence on Jan Svankmajer and the earlier surrealists), African clay masks, and photos of people with tribal scars among others. Just like the books on mythology featured the hides of horses draped over poles in Finnish forests, and bog-bodies.
Heady and terrifying stuff for a pre-teen who's never experienced war or human death for themselves.
Which is appropriate, because I use my Mac, and more specifically my blog, as a kind of notebook in itself. Which I realise is not a financial model you'd recommend to any aspiring artist wanting to make a living from their work. But then I never went big on economics. Incidentally, did George Dubya really say 'There's no word in French for entrepreneur', or is that one of those urban myth attributions designed to make him look dumb?
Anyway, the weather being better today than forecast, and having missed yesterday because a delivery company can't tell the difference between Manchester and Cheltenham, I'm going to get out of the house just as soon as I can - the landlord's round doing work on a door, and I haven't showered yet.
i will never lose my idealism, it's the one virtue that's kept this shitty ship 'o mine watertight & i'm a fuckin' hippyhead like Feb 14 1970 aquarius thru water thru waves & i'm glad the "minority" population will be the majority here, they have better taste anyway, if the Mexicans would stop shopping at Wal-Mart it'd be even better, the Asians & Muslims at least generate their own independent businesses -- the Hindu not so much, many of the Indian folk are corrupt'd by moving to America -- often when i've spoke w/ immigrants they say America is only work work work & it's true, getta shitty-ass job & eat cheez-puffs afronta some crappy television shitcom & celeb gossip junkin' up any potential for actual thought.
i am a true patriot godammit, in the Ben Franklin sense, these morons don't know what the fuck patriotism is & i hope the Russians go back to being Russians b/c it's sad how their mafia has taken over & how the collapse has thrown Russia into complete moral decay -- i mean Mayakovsky was 50 years ahead & he is still fire from which words will break rock.
etc
etc
Right with you on the economy, half of me likes it when things go belly-up because it proves again that in economics, as William Goldman said of Hollywood, nobody knows anything. You can show economists over and over again that some of the models they use are mathematically or logically nonsensical, or that someone flipping a coin can outperform the market, and yet they still rake in huge bonuses. And, yeah, I've been poor pretty much most of my life. I'm living from month to month now, but this is luxury against the time I spent six months with no money coming in living off rice and tomatoes. If I hadn't had a partner whose place I could go to from time to time to get a meal, or an indulgent landlord who was happy to let me stay rent-free, or tiny savings that meant I could spend around £5 a week that could have been a lot worse.
Actually that period was really bad, it was difficult to create work a lot of the time. The poems were few and far between, and pretty sentimental. I was angry a lot of the time then, very tense. This was in Cardiff, which is a great place, I keep toying with the idea of going back.
For me the whole work thing only had one purpose, keep a roof overhead and enough food to live on, and allow me to make poetry. That's it. Doesn't need to be anything else. It would be good to have work recognised or published more widely, it would be good to be able to make a living from it. But it doesn't matter too much if that don't happen.
when i think of Cardiff, i always add "by-the-sea", i think of Joyce's laughing gulls, the salt of thought clears my breathways, the ocean air.
oh, and Yves Klein blue is beautiful, when i went on holiday to Buffalo NY we checked out the Albright-Knox gallery & saw a Klein blue painting as well as an outdoor YKB sculpture & that blue is like super blue -- sadly i didn't get to go to the university & check out the Joyce papers, they have the largest collection of his papers in the world -- but i was aware of the distinction of literary awareness up north as opposed to down south, the northeast usa has been the seat of intellectuals whereas downsouth was like Oz, a penal colony.
i recently saw a documentary film called Musician, about Ken Vandermark, i must get the dvd, itsa superb film about the working process & illuminates the fact that freejazz ain't all improv & requires alotta dedication -- the other docu i saw was Helvetica & i enjoy'd it as well. i often find myself in preference of documentaries, like the Derrida one is pretty good, just to see him talking & Zizek docu as well.
i had high hopes for A Scanner Darkly as it was to be animated & that particular book holds sentimental value for me as it was the first Philip K. Dick book that i read & later discovered by reading his Exegesis that book was the first inna list of the books he considered to be "transcribed" by VALIS & containing "hidden messages", the film version didn't take advantage of the animation very well & the story was told fairly flatly -- crucial elemnts were left out.
but, that Tristam Shandy flick was awesome, even tho it's difficult for me to get past my dislike for that Coupling actor guy (who made some ground in my book w/ 24hr. PP) & he played a fairly good role in Shandy,.
i wonder when Finnegans will get the animated 4.5 hour long epic treatment, it'd be of interest altho perhaps totally un-doable.
i like to go to the movie-house to see flicks when i have the extra bread, something about the experience, the sound, the smell of popcorn -- we used to have a really good arthouse here but it's since closed -- i like it when a movie-house is a real movie-house -- when on visit to Seattle 10 years back, across the Puget Sound we were in Port Townsend & they have the Redbud Theatre, as well as showing old cartoons before the show proper, they had a filmbuff come out & briefly discuss the film we were about to see.
i love the Pacific Northwest.
trickster-hero Raven & Haida totem poles, their culture was highly creatively advanced.
salmon eggs are a good breakfast.
There's been quite a lot of birdsong today. I took a three and a half hour walk to voluntary work this afternoon/evening, a large section of it along the river Mersey. Not a huge variety of birds, and some fairly harsh calls, but a lot of songs nonetheless. I got plenty of film of the river and the riverbank, which I plan to edit together with some other bits and pieces, including some stuff I haven't shot yet, and match with a voiceover and soundtrack as a tribute to Derek Jarman.
I have a much clearer idea of what I want to accomplish now than when I started the original jottings. Although to anyone else my ideas are going to seem very nebulous. That's the odd thing about creativity, certainly for me - the more concrete an idea, the more worked out it is, the less interested I am. When it's not clear what the end result will be, when it's even ambiguous what form a piece will take is when it's interesting to me. This is a difficult judgement to make - it's not always easy to differentiate between a powerful desire to want to do something but no ideas, and having a range of disparate and vague concepts that you think can be pulled together into a piece of work.
To give you some idea of how vague this is, let me lay out my ideas for this short film in full. I've got several shots of nature scenes that last for quite a long time. some of them are a bit shaky. I want to pull together these fragments, and possibly slow them down. I want to combine them with new footage of bright lights shining in the camera, and some interiors, perhaps also some of my notebooks. All of which is drawn from or influenced by Derek Jarman. To help draw the images together I want a fairly sparse soundtrack, possibly vocal drones appearing from time to time, but mainly a voiceover at four or five discrete points in the film. This has yet to be written, but I do not want it to be polite, well-behaved or respectful. I do not want it to be directly about Jarman. There will probably be political content, maybe a discussion about protest and violence. And that's all it needs, the piece will solidify around this plan over the next week or two. Watch this space.
Yeah, Yves Klein Blue is beautiful. I like the monochromatic works. There is a blue in one of the sections of film I'm planning to use, but it's a whole lot darker and greener. That bit of film keeps darkening and lightening, and coming in and out of focus, as a very pale flower is blown in and out of shot. I love it.
I think the trouble with most literary adaptations is that people have too much respect for the material. What you end up with are beautifully dressed films where all the major incidents are present, all the best dialogue is used, the period trappings are precisely correct, but whatever spirit animated the original book is totally lost. At the same time important incidents will be changed or left out to suit the demands of film as a medium (read: conventional studio movie-making). They can't even get graphic novels right for Pete's sake. For me it comes down to a question of favouring plot over character.
Case in point, fairly good film of a book that's not that complex, The English Patient. Entirely absent from the film is any sense of how truly, deeply damaged these characters are. For me that was one of the most important parts of the book. They form a febrile, unstable, and intense community of the broken and lost. In the film it becomes luscious and superficial visuals, and sentimentality.
I've always looked on narrative as an interpretative schema - a way of making sense of events retrospectively. Which is obviously helpful in making some kind of sense of the world, but gets a little boring over time when applied to fiction. So my theory on narrative such as it is has primitive humans saying "What happened?" about events they experienced, and creating a narrative, that then get extended into creating new stories. Whereas the 'mythology' theory has primitive humans seeing what is (the world around them), but not the processes by which it came about, and asking the same question, "What happened?". Only this time they hypothesise. I'm not sure which is the more convincing explanation. After all, each of them requires an explanation dependent on a sequence of events in time leading to the current state.
I'm sure someone smarter and less idle than me has already carried out research into this and published their findings - in fact I'm sure many someones have.
More Studio Ghibli, and more links back to Jarman now. It was reading, in very short order, his Kicking the Pricks and Modern Nature that set me writing a journal again around this time last year - although that fell apart when I started the MA. Lately though, reading Smiling in Slow Motion, and having 45-80 minutes on the train in the evening, I've started again. Though for how long I can't be sure. That's one Jarman link, the other is his gardening. Although admittedly it's a little tenuous. As for Studio Ghibli, well read the latest journal extract and see:
On the light railway heading out to Bootle, I think between Moorfields station and Sandhills there's a section where clearly another line diverged from the remaining line. The elevated sections of track are missing, but the stone piers still stand between the roads, with wild elevated gardens on top. They are substantial - their footprint and height must be similar to a house. On my way in I speculated about what a cool idea it would be to, if not cultivate them, then at least ensure they stay standing - and perhaps build more. With a fence around the edge and a stairway running either up through the middle or up the outside they'd be perfectly workable. Probably I had in mind the gardens from Laputa: Castle in the Sky when I was thinking this.