A short animation film called "Father and Daughter"

" Father and Daughter is a film about longing, the kind of longing which quietly, yet totally, affects our lives." - Michael Dudok de Wit

Running Time: 8 minutes 30 seconds

Year of Release: 2000

Michael Mitsakis and the most beautiful thing in the world

Michael Mitsakis was born in 1868 and became a noted journalist in Athens contributing to many magazines and newspapers of the time. What characterizes the writing of Mitsakis is his style. He adopted a phrasing which followed the meanderings of his thought at the expense sometimes of a plot or a story. His long parenthetical and highly descriptive constructions could leave the reader perplexed and his use of language that combined “demotic” and “Kathareuousa” set him apart. Unfortunately in 1894 he suffered a mental breakdown and in two years he was completely incapacitated for the rest of his life. He died in 1916. He left behind many beautiful and interesting texts and among them I consider one called “Αυτόχειρ” as his real masterpiece. Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to convey in translation the lyrical flow of Mitsakis’s prose in this small novella.

Looking through the texts of Greek literature collected by Nikos Sarantakos (http://www.sarantakos.com/), I came across the following short piece by Mitsakis which is characterized by its simplicity, humor and wit. I decided to give it a try and translate it…

The most beautiful thing in the world by Michael Mitsakis

Let the sea splash and let it froth under the keel of the ship! The delirious ship bounces from wave to wave. The captain careful in the preparations for the voyage, commands the silent and willing sailors. The youngest of them takes a wine jar full of old good wine, lifts it up and places it on the bench. And one by one, each traveler on board drinks a glass after answering, with a verse swept by the wind, the question asked by the voices of the other passengers all around him.

“By God, tell us, what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“Where does the ship come from and where is it going?”

Who cares? The wine from the jar is strong.

“By God, tell us, what is the most beautiful thing in the world?”

- The most beautiful thing in the world is my love, says a student almost 20 years old. Love is the only happiness.

- Happiness is in war, pops up a soldier. The most beautiful thing in the world is a rider dashing forward with sword in hand.

- As long as I have a safe full and well protected… says the miser.

And the farmer replies: - Is there anything more beautiful than a field, gilded form side to side with wheat?

But the poet stands up: - With laurel beauty is crowned. What can be more beautiful than laurel? By Apollo! How can happiness be found elsewhere than in thought?

But the musician at the same time: - What do you need thought? Have you ever felt what the nightingale has to say? Just listen to it and that’s enough.

And the painter stubbornly: - Beauty cannot be found in sounds and words. Beauty is an image.

And the philosopher, angrily: - What are you talking about, he tells them. Beauty is the Truth.

- It is success! Cries a politician gesticulating, who was on his way to his country to install a ballot box.

- You are right! Says the adventurer. Beauty is this gorgeous woman with her breasts hanging out, holding the cards of the lucky gambler.

- Oh! Whispers quietly a merchant, how awful it is to play. Accounting, yes, that is the thing!

And even a priest, making the sign of the cross: - Oh my brothers, what better than faith, what more beautiful than prayer?

But suddenly: - Damn, groans the captain, and the amateur singers hold their tongues in fright. Damn! Shut up, may the devil take you… Tighten up the sail!....

For the sea had become wild, and then for the sailor, Beauty laughs on his ship’s stern when the ship proudly enters the port after the storm.

And then, at the same time, a shiver of happy sharks was following the water course engraved by the ship on the waves and they were talking and saying between themselves:

The most beautiful thing in the world is a ship ready to sink to the bottom, full of travelers…

Listen to :

"Your beauty is a knife I turn on my throat" by Eagle Seagull

The world of Yoshihiro Tatsumi and the gekiga comic style

Yoshihiro Tatsumi penned the word "gekiga" around 1957 to describe the comics that he created which did not fall under the all encompassing word of manga. To start with, Manga was created initially for children whereas Tatsumi's comics dealt with serious dramatic themes and were for adults. Tatsumi moved away from the fantasy element of the manga and can be considered one of the first artists to create graphic novels as we know them today. He even adopted the difficult format of the short story as a way to tell gritty, hidden and dramatic everyday tales of the dark face of a real Japan which came out of the second world war deeply wounded in all levels of its society.




When you read one of Tatsumi's literary short stories you are immersed in the private world of the underground. A dark world of late night bars, of pimps and prostitutes, of hidden aspirations and passions, of people working in the sewers of Tokyo or having a 9h.00 to 22h.00 blue collar job, of poor everyday people that you might bump into in the street. People with their secret fantasies, their hopes and dreams and the situations that they find themselves in. But this is not only the underground of Japan in the 60s and 70s. It is an underground that we can all relate to. Our personal underground. A private place that we want to keep hidden and when we see it out in the open we are uncomfortable with what we see. Originally these works were circulated as underground art but eventually found their way to more mainstream publication in the 1970s. Now thanks to the serious work of Canadian editing house "Drawn & Quarterly", these important works are being published for the first time in English. In 2005 "The Push-man and other stories", in 2006 "Abandon the old in Tokyo" and in 2008 "Good-Bye" were published by D&Q.


To accompany the reading why don't you listen and buy some interesting experimental music freshly created by Kobe based Hirohito Ihara alias "Radicalfashion" from his album "Odori" available from HeftyRecords. This specific piece of music starts rather mechanically but be patient and you will be rewarded.


Listen to :

"Shousetsu" by Radicalfashion

War in Peace from Alexander "Skip" Spence

Julian Cope in his Head Heritage site has posted a review of Alexander Spence's "Oar" album. He actually gives a small description of how he perceives each song from the record. This is what he has to say for "War in Peace", my favorite song from this strange and beautiful testament of the 60s:

" The weightless “War In Peace” is an emanation from eternity’s echo chamber. Spence’s electric lead guitar bursts in midway -- chipped, fragmentary and falling like glittering silt as echoed whispering and whistling crisscross the patch of snapped tight hit-hats and bass lines like posts demarcating an unswerving boundary into the distance. By the time the electric guitar solo arrives, the infamously shattered “Sunshine Of Your Love” riff is already stumbling down a ravine in slow motion hitting branches, bouncing off rocks and causing landslides while atomic particles just collect and disperse in its wake until finally breaking down into a cosmic freefall beyond their once dimensional limitations."

Can you beat that? I think I''ll give it a try... 

A whispering stream of acid consciousness carrying the seeds of ghostly reminiscences of a future embedded in the past transforms itself into a lyrical wail that is pulled by the gravity swirl of a mind drain of dormant fuzz strumming of electric guitar and laborious bass guided by hissing drums that pours itself into a river train of drone. The drone stumbles along slowly mutating into an electric avalanche of blind confinement that reaches the edge of the precipice and dissolves into a broken puzzle of a pure exhilaration assembled guitar solo...  

Take that Julian...

Listen to :

"War in Peace" by Alexander "Skip" Spence

Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio"

Sherwood Anderson's book "Winesburg Ohio" is 153 pages long. First published in 1919, it is considered to be the first "modern" American novel. Throughout the years this little book has been the main reason why people decided to choose a writing career. Let's just say that Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe and Steinbeck, to name but a few, are all heavily indebted to "Winesburg, Ohio". And yet this book is not widely known. Maybe the critics of 1941, the year of Anderson's death, are to blame who declared that his work lacked the "mark of high distinction that is needed to set off his undoubted originality." What were these people thinking of when they wrote this utter nonsence...

"Winesburg, Ohio" is a collection of short stories woven into a powerful portrayal of life in a small American town at the beginning of the 20th century. A masterful psychological portrait gallery of the inhabitants of this microcosm of community life that serves as the canvas for a study of humanity itself. The isolation, the hopes, the passions and dreams of these lives are a part of us and their fundamental questions on society, the transition of child to adult, the meaning of choosing a certain way of life that is changing and the questioning of life itself, are as valid today as they were at the time. Captivating this rare essence of humanity is what this book is all about. One can say that it is one of the first american existentialist novels. Here is an extract from the book:

" ... There is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just passed, have come the people pouring in from the town and the country around. Farmers with their wives and children and all the people from the hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life has all gone away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes..."

Listen to:

"Dying Crapshooters Blues" by Blind Willie McTell

The World Is On Fire

"... Let's take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there - they're all on fire. They' re burning up. Decay you see is always going on. It don't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire too. The world is on fire..."

Extract taken from the book "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919), by Sherwood Anderson.

Listen to:

"Kingdom of Rust" by Doves

When Django Reinhardt turned electric

When Django Reinhardt turned electric in 1947, a new era had begun. The war was over, be bop had taken over from swing and Django had just returned from the USA having played with Duke Ellington and other jazz greats.

After the break-up of the famous "Quintet of the Hot Club of France" with its time of dazzling glory of 1935-39, Django found the time to explore this new electric evolution in the playing of the guitar.

He certainly took a certain risk laying aside his treasured acoustic guitar for the heavier cabled one. But his greatness as an artist can be witnessed in the fact that he did not just play electric as he would acoustic but adapted his playing style to electric amplification. Streched notes and lightning swifts in tempo and volume as well as an exploration of the pause and the contrasts of soft and low on the one hand and the growl and harshness of the loud electric sound on the other. 

But by the time of the 1953 electric sessions, Django was largely forgotten or more or less ignored as a musician. When he had a booking or two, three weeks at the Ringside, the future Blue note, he didn’t draw much of a crowd. Some fellow musicians had even the audacity to say that Django was past it, if not finished. It was Eddie Barclay who convinced him to return to Paris to record. In a bust of pride, Django accepted and plugged in the electric guitar with some top notch friend musicians accompanying him. He turned into an unparalleled soloist playing definitive versions of “Nuages”, “Manoir de mes rêves” and “Brazil” among many others.

Nevertheless, from the sleeve notes of the “Peche à la Mouche” album, Pierre Michelot writes of the reception of this album: “Django intended to give his own answer to everyone who thought he was over the hill. He was bringing everyone up to date, but nobody could be bothered to look at the calender.”

When Django turned electric and was ignored by the audience, somebody should have had the guts to say one word to the music loving crowds and fans: Judas! 

Listen to:

"Brazil" by Django Reinhardt

All my time is lying on the factory floor…

Bill Fay was an English singer, pianist and song writer who made a single "Some Good Advice"/"Screams in the Ears" and two albums “Bill Fay” and “Time of the Last Persecution” for the Deram label between 1967 and 1971. Unfortunately these albums were never properly promoted and distributed and they didn’t sell. He was consequently dropped by the label. Following the likes of Nick Drake and so many artists who for some strange reason never make it in the music industry, Bill Fay faded out of sight. But the music on these two records is well worth seeking out.

On the first album “Bill Fay”, the songs have been embellished with orchestral arrangements giving them a rather lush and haunted feel. The lyrics are quite unusual and poetic and are not conceived with the intention of producing a commercial hit. As for Bill Fay’s voice, it is beautiful throughout the record sometimes sounding like a strange crooner of the common people.

On the second album, “Time of the Last Persecution”, Bill Fay opted for a more stripped down, organic but, at the same time, experimental approach recruiting guitarist Ray Russell. Russell went on to be a major session player, but at the time of this album he was better known as a noted musician on the jazz improvisation scene. His playing on Bill Fay’s album covers almost all the palette of guitar techniques and phrases ranging from 70’s traditional scale licks to complete atonal interventions or even noise. The contrast of having this avant-garde element opposed to the affirmative singing of Bill Fay makes this record very special indeed.

According to Julian Cope’s Headheritage site, Bill Fay eventually relinquished his career in music for a normal 9 to 5 job. From then on, it seems “all his time was lying on the factory floor…”

Record companies should be prosecuted for musical crimes against humanity.

Λίγο πριν φτάσει ο Καρυωτάκης στην Πρέβεζα

από το αρχείο Γ. Θ. Καρυωτάκη, στο βιβλίο Χρονογραφία Καρυωτάκη

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd

From the film" Brazil" by Terry Gilliam, 1985

The Unknown Citizen
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

W. H. Auden