Ο Εμμανουήλ Ροίδης και τα νεκρά γράμματα

Ο αδελφός του συγγραφέα Εμμανουήλ Ροίδη είχε την αρρώστια του τζόγου. Ξόδευε συχνά πολλά χρήματα αλλά και διαδοχικές μέρες και νύχτες στα καζίνα αδυνατώντας να απομακρυνθεί από το τραπέζι της ρουλέτας. Θα πρέπει να ήταν στη Βιέννη, τις πρώτες πρωινές ώρες ενός χειμώνα όταν, κατεβαίνοντας τα σκαλιά του καζίνου και έχοντας πλέον χάσει όλα του τα λεφτά, απελπίστηκε και αυτοκτόνησε. Ο Εμμανουήλ Ροίδης τότε πλαστογράφησε το γραφικό χαρακτήρα του αδελφού του και συνέχισε να στέλνει υποτιθέμενα γράμματα από αυτόν προς τη μητέρα του για να μην καταλάβει αυτή και στενοχωρηθεί. Τα γράμματα συνέχισαν να έρχονται τακτικά μέχρι το θάνατο της.

Lost in Space (The real Major Toms to ground control)

Surfing through the internet I came across an interesting site which is dedicated to the work of the Judica-Cordiglia brothers. In the late 50s beginning of the 60s, two young Italian students near Turin with a passion for astronomy, decide to build a space listening station to try to track down and record satellites and space exploration probes launched by the then Soviet Union or the United States.

In their own Ground Control tower called "Torre Bert" they soon achieved the technical capability to monitor and record the radio frequencies used by these orbes and therefore succeeded in predicting and following their orbits into space. One day, in 1961, quite some time before Gagarin ventured succesfully into space, instead of the blip blips that they would normally receive, they heard and recorded the beating of a human heart. It was not long after that, that they started capturing on tape the desperate communication attempts of unknown space pionneers secretely launched into space by the Soviet Union. Things went terribly wrong for most of these secret missions. Not surprisingly these lost Cosmonauts were never mentioned officially by the Soviet Union. In the middle of the space race the pride of a whole nation was at stake.

This extraordinary site contains chilling sound files of these recordings and transcripts of the dialogues or sometimes monologues of these lost Major Toms as they drifted helplessly into space.

Visit the site right here

"...Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows

Ground control to major tom
Your circuits dead, theres something wrong
Can you hear me, major tom? Can you hear me, major tom?
Can you hear me, major tom? Can you....

Here am I floating round my tin can
Far above the moon
Planet earth is blue
And theres nothing I can do."

Space Oddity by David Bowie

Famous Last Words

(...

[Fight, Deckard hits Roy with pipe.]

Roy: Good, that's the spirit.

Roy: That hurt. That was irrational. Not to mention, unsportsman-like. Ha ha ha. Where are you going?

[Deckard does some amazing climbing, then jumps to next building. Roy follows, holding a white pigeon.]

Roy: Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

[Deckard spits at Roy as he falls; Roy catches him with one hand.]

Roy: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

[Bird flies off...]

Deckard : I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.

Gaff: You've done a man's job, sir. I guess you're through, huh?

Deckard: Finished.

Gaff: It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?

...) (From the script of the film Blade Runner - 1982)

Herman Melville's "Bartleby the scrivener"

I prefer not to write a long analysis of this remarkable short story by Herman Melville. The net is full of different interpretations of this deceptively simple tale. Suffice to say that Bartleby's gradual passive detachment from his expected professional and social obligations is in itself a powerful statement on the human condition. We are born into a life of constraints. We take our choices and our prefabricated lives for granted. Like puppets on a string we give great performances, we bow to routine and turn the giant clock's hands on the hour, every hour. As integrated parts of a system we cannot afford to stop. The show must go on and then... Bartleby prefers not to. He finds it more interesting to just stare at the wall. Many an analyst in the internet, especially after reading Melville's "explanation" at the end of the story, talk about how dead Bartleby is. But I wonder. Maybe Bartleby while staring at the wall actually found the door. But that is another story by H.G Wells.

The last recital of the "invisible" Dinu Lipatti

In classical music, some records stand out as testaments of not only genius and divine inspiration but incredibly moving feats of courage and transcendence in artistic achievement. Dinu Lipatti fits in this restricted category of exceptional artists. Born in 1917, this Romanian pianist of unequalled brilliance studied under Alfred Cortot, Charles Munch, Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger.

What distinguished Lipatti from other pianists was that, in a very short time and while being still very young, he reached such a height of technical perfection and intellectual musical maturity that whenever he played he became "invisible". Great pianists have the tendency to "be there", genius talent and all. Therefore the music that you listen to, is "interpreted". In the case of Lipatti the only one present was Music.

Unfortunately early on in his life he was diagnosed with leukemia. In 1950, with diminished strength and against the advice of his doctors, he decided on one last concert in Besançon. And what a fairwell to music that was! Despite being under a lot of physical pain, this modest Artist gave unmatched performances of Bach’s B flat major Partita, Mozart's A minor Sonata, Schubert's G flat major and E flat major Impromptus, and thirteen of Chopin's 14 Waltzes. He only excluded No. 2, which he was too exhausted to play. He died less than 3 months later at the age of just 33 but his legacy will live on for ever. Listen and marvel.

The artist Leon Spilliaert

Leon Spilliaert (1881-1946) was a Belgian painter from the sea coast town of Ostend. For a large part of his life he lived alone, painting himself and his surroundings. He rarely used oil, prefering pastel, aquarelle or gouache to depict powerfull inner and outer landscapes. His famous autoportraits have a metaphysical quality in them penetrating and exposing the anguish of the human soul, the melancholy of solitude. These qualities are also evident in his alienating landscapes of Ostend in which dark colors, light, reflection and shadow are combined to produce an effect of mysterious vast emptiness.

It is very interesting to examine what happens to his painting when, later on in his life, he moves away from Ostend to Brussels, marries and settles down. The inner turmoil and dark beauty of his earlier work give way to a period of "normality" exemplified in his later paintings in the somehow bland and frankly considerably less interesting depiction of trees from parks in Brussels. He has turned the page, switched on the light and moved away from the dangerous tightrope balancing act over the abysss to the tree trunk stability of a family life routine.

Art can only be fuelled by what is real. For Spilliaert, the choice of a normal family life brought calm, satisfaction and fullfillment as a person but as an artist the price to be paid was indeed very high.

Little Johnny Jewel by Television

This particular song can be found in the "Blow up". A live double CD of punk/post punk group Television. Recorded with primitive equipment in the late 70's, the album manages to capture the raw live sound of Television when they were kings. But one song in the second CD really shines through. Who cares if the sound is not perfect. It is good enough. Prepare for a stunning 8 minute solo (from a total of 14.56 for the whole song). This is the song that made the reputation of Television. Impossible to find until this CD came out, it has been a song of legend for Television fans everywhere. Verlaine and Lloyd play as if there was no tomorrow. And then he loses his senses...

Get a taste of the studio version of "Little Johnny Jewel" by Television from a YouTube video. 

The Revolutionary Road of Richard Yates

First published in 1961, Richard Yates's "The Revolutionary Road" is a true masterpiece. The american dream that never was. The mundane, the lost opportunities of our lives, what we are in contrast to what we imagine we are, oh so wrong. And deep inside, in the heart of the book lies the loneliness of the lives we find ourselves living. Beware! Hollywood has decided to make a Titanic film (DiCaprio/Winslet) out of this book coming to movie theaters near you in 2008. I can be mistaken...but then again I think I just saw a huge iceberg...               

Macbeth's soliloquy got me carried away...

"...

MACBETH

Wherefore was that cry?

SEYTON
The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

..."

"... and then he suddenly turned and said...

We are immune to our own existence. We are convinced that we know and we are wrong. And we continue to spend. We spend ourselves to oblivion. No more change in our pockets.

Every moment we break into a thousand pieces and we try to redo the puzzle. We flicker like an exhausted neon light and then we vanish.

Every day and every minute of our act we struggle to remember our lines. Such an interesting plot... our lives, our constructions, our passions. But the audience has long gone and the theatre is empty. Only the cleaning ladies can be heard. We are just performing to the cleaning ladies of our own conscience. Sometimes the cleaning ladies, they stop their moping, look at the stage and clap. Other times they laugh. But mostly they ignore the coming and going on stage.

Everything has been somehow said before. We forget and we repeat ourselves constantly creating endless variations of the same theme. We are breathing plagiarism.

Empty words and objects survive us. Entropy like the first virgin snowfall of the winter of our discontent covers all in silence. The water in the kettle is boiling..."

Urgh! A music war

I remember going to the cinema sometime in the eighties to see this film. It was comprised of  a series of gigs from music groups of the time. One after the other. Punk, post punk, new wave, electronic,... Of course many of these bands either became famous and somehow entered the mainstream of pop music or just disbanded and kept their reputation in tact. Some of these performances caught on film are absolutely stunning. The energy, the surprise, the raw beauty just held me petrified. An extra terrestrial Klaus Nomi on a small stage with two beautiful barefoot black girl dancers, Gary Newman coming on a smoke filled stage in a small electric vehicle between two illuminated synthesizer rectangle towers, a lunatic performance by Lux Interior of the Cramps with plenty of microphone munching and the list just goes on an on... Unfortunately this film never came out officially on VHS or DVD despite popular demand. Copyright issues are, one suspects, at the bottom of this. The double record soon also vanished from the shelves of the record shops never to be issued again and has been a collectible item ever since. 

See Klaus Nomi performing "Total eclipse"



See Gary Numan performing "Down in the Park"



    

The three-cornered world of Natsume Soseki

" Walking up a mountain track, I fell to thinking. Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh. Pole along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away by the current.
Give free reign to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined. It is not a very agreeable place to live, this world of ours."

Natsume Soseki

from the "The Three-Cornered World" (1906)

Written in 1906 by the greatest japanese writer of the Meiji Restoration period Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the "Three-Cornered World" is an important book about art. And it's a book about philosophy as well combining both Eastern and Western ideas in an effort to decypher the human predicament. The beauty of the book lies in its simplicity and clarity.