Poe[try] in Motion

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I’m a big Poe fan (Who isn’t, am I right? I mean, does anyone even know anyone who isn’t a Poe fan? or anyone who knows someone who was told once a long time ago about someone who isn’t a Poe fan? Exactly.), so when I got the latest book recommendation from Amazon for yet another collection of Poe’s greatest works, this one illustrated by Edward Gorey no less, I was all over it.

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But then I saw it was a Kindle in Motion book and my heart sank.

Yeah, I’ve been seeing these types of newfangled in-motion titles pop up every now and then and my initial reaction to them was pretty much the same as was my initial reaction to the dawn of Kindle books.

Not in my library, no way. They would have to pry the r-book (real book) out of my cold dead hands before I would ever take hold of an e-book.

But then of course, with way leading on to way, I came to love e-books and they have become indispensable to my well-being and I no longer feel guilty when walking past my long-ignored bookshelves only annoyance because they are so damn dusty..

I mean, back to Kindle in Motion books, if I had the desire to watch pictures that move, then I would watch either a motion picture or get up early on a Saturday and watch animation/cartoons (are there still such a thing as Saturday morning cartoons?).

Anyway, long story short, since I’m no Luddite (stay tuned for my upcoming AI confessional post, btw) and since it has Gorey as the illustrator I checked out the Poe in motion book post-haste – figuratively and literally since as part of the Prime Reading offerings it has to be checked out, and found it to be pretty frikkin’ awesome.

Okay, of course it isn’t illustrated by Edward Gorey, how could it be since he’s been residing in weird genius illustrator heaven for nearly 2.5 decades. It was only wishful thinking on my part and my eyes saw what they wanted to see.

The actual illustrator’s name is Corley, M. S. Corely to be precise, and by the looks of his resume he’s had a pretty good career cranking out book covers.

And I must admit, Mr. Corely did a bang-up job on the Poe book. The pictures in motion are very cool with the likes of swinging pendulums and ravens flying ominously across the page.

So yeah, check it out. The good news is if you have an Amazon Prime account (and who doesn’t, right?) it’s free.

Best Horror Film of 2024

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I’m always looking to be spooked in an intellectually plausible and unsettling cinematic way. Unfortunately, most modern horror flicks consistently fail me.

However, I just watched a production that hits the mark spot on and it has chilled me right down to the marrow of my bones.

Just never imagined such a horrific accomplishment could be achieved through an Apple advertisement…

Bravo, Apple… bravo.

No More

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I finished a new book last summer and, in an inexplicable fit of delusion, I decided to try to have it published traditionally and submitted it to several independent publishers.

Yeah, guess how that’s gone so far…

Anyway, in the interim since finishing that presently wayward and unwelcomed novel, I have been unable to home in on a new story to which I would be willing to commit a year or so of intellectual effort/struggle.

I don’t know how it goes for you, but for yours truly, writing does not come easy and it is one long angst-ridden struggle. Hence my saying, which occasionally serves here as a tag line but at present is on the bench:

Writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime.

Lately, to nourish the parched creative side of my brain, I have taken to music – no, I still cannot play any instrument beyond my ability to torture three unfortunate chords or so on an acoustic guitar.

By music, I mean the garageband app on my iPad.

I decided to would try to reimagine my novels, their themes, or perhaps even scenes within them, as songs. The first novel I choose to contemplate rhythmically was Rainy Season.

Love hurts, as they* say, and Rainy Season makes every effort to live up to the truth of this wellworn saying.

So I wrote a sad, desperate song to express how the sad, desperate novel strikes me.

To help further express this sad, depressing Expressionistic Rainy Season vision of mine, I decided to include a visual element to it.

So I turned to French director Jean Epstein’s haunting 1928 silent film “La chute de la maison Usher,” which itself is a filmic expression of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic masterpiece “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and which, conveniently for me, recently entered the public domain – the film, I mean, because surely all of Poe’s work has been in the public domain for many, many o’ moons.

For you nerds who like to know, to edit and adapt the film to the song, I used DaVinci Resolve, also for the iPad (the free version of course).

So, are there more music/videos to come?

Maybe, at least until I come up with an idea for a new novel (redundancy intended).

Apologies in advance…

*non-gender specific

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Spirit of the Dance

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Lately, ever since the earthquake succeeding, apocalyptic-inducing solar eclipse in fact, it has been nothing but blustery low-pressure days of rain and wind and dark gloomy clouds in my secluded hilly hood down in Southern Pennsyltucky.

Well, we all know how those old saws go – In like a lion and out like a lamb, and April showers bring May mosquitos, or something to that effect, so it is all to be expected, climate change notwithstanding.

But today is beautiful and warm and full of promise and Vitamin D.

Just imagine, after traveling 93,000,000 miles (149,668,992 km for those of you not of the Imperial mindset) or so, those sun’s rays are still so warm and toasty and lovely to the touch.

Time to go out and touch a few of ’em all while shaking our money makers to Mr. Johnny Nash’s greatest hit…

It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day…

As a tribute to celebrate our worship of the sun, free books.

Get ’em while they’re hot!

#sunscreenwedontneednostinkingsunscreen
#unlessyourepastywhitelikeyourstruly

As the Speare Shakes…

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Wikipedia

We all know William Shakespeare, right, perhaps the biggest ball within the entire round of the Western Canon…

Now, I’m far from being a Shakespeare aficionado, and even farther away from being one who has read and/or watched all the great Bard has, apparently, plumed for us, but I’m no Shakespearean slouch either.

And as much as I enjoy and appreciate that little of his which I have read and/or watched, I enjoy almost equally the intrigue that surrounds him. Is he really the one history has assigned to being the greatest English voice of all time, or is he just a front for another who for some reason or another has preferred to stay anonymous?

My opinion on the topic sways with the wind and is mostly dependent upon which documentary and/or article about it I’ve recently watched and/or read.

Now, I knew that there has long been intrigue surrounding his sexual orientation, but I didn’t know, or I don’t remember that I knew, that there was intrigue surrounding his religious practices, the whole Protestant/Catholic thing that was/is all the rage, literally.

That is, I didn’t know that I knew, until now…

In the tucked-away document, which heavily cites an obscure 17th century Italian religious tract called The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, the writer pledges to die a good Catholic death. If the writer was indeed John Shakespeare, who remained a devout Protestant until his death in 1601, it would have indicated a major shift in his beliefs and suggested a clandestine life during an era when secret allegiance to the Catholic Church in Elizabethan England could have been dangerous. For this reason, many experts have suspected the document to be forged.

But in the new study, Steggle used internet archives to track down early editions of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul in Italian and six other languages and concluded the document could have only been written after John Shakespeare’s death. That left Steggle with just one other “J. Shakespeare”: Joan.

A Remarkable Discovery of a Document Shatters One of Shakespeare’s Biggest Mysteries, Popular Mechanics, March 26, 2024

If you don’t have a Popular Mechanics subscription, which I’m guessing you don’t, you can read the article with an Apple News subscription, which is where I found it.

And if you don’t have either, the article, referencing a recent study in the Shakespeare Quarterly (which of course you need a subscription to view the study beyond the extract), goes on to surmise that since new information now appears to prove that his sister Joan was a closeted Catholic, perhaps ol’ Willy himself was as well, which may be why we know so little about his personal life, particularly that part of it spent in his hometown, homevillage?, Strafford-on-the-Avon. He feared, perhaps, of being outted for being a papist, which of course was a big and bloody no no back in his day.

I know, I know, all this historical intrigue and speculation is high level nerd alert stuff that, considering all the strife inflicting our pretty yet petulant planet right now, is very inconsequential.

But so is my mind, which is why I enjoy it all so much. Enquiring minds want to know, you know (if you’re familiar with that quote/slogan, then it not only dates you/me, it also tells us so much about your/my intellectual taste, or lack there of).

Anyway, I guess if I had to guess who I think the real Shakespeare is if it truly isn’t Shakespeare himself, then I guess my guess would have to be Sir Francis Bacon, mostly because that was who Mark Twain guessed it to be, and I guess we all know that Mr. Twain was a lot smarter than I pretend to be…

Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the other side.  Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case.  That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn’t.

Is Shakespeare Dead? From my Autobiography – Mark Twain

Yeah…

Stephen King has words…

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Metsästäjiä nuotiolla, 1813, by Alexander
Wikipedia

A lot of them.

Usually that’s okay because he is such a great storyteller, one, I believe, who (whom?) deserves to be appreciated literarily well beyond the horror genre. Few can convey the human condition, its perils, its pleasures, as well as he.

But, to me, his overzealous output of words is always a fine line issue because, even though I usually finish any novel of his that I attempt to read/listen to, the ones that I don’t finish are always because I become overwhelmed by what to me seems an abusive overwriting of character and plot asides, a la…

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Even four years after the sudden death of his wife, best selling novelist Mike Noonan can’t stop grieving, nor can he return to his writing. Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, he decides to return to Sara Laughs, the Noonans’ isolated summer home. In his beloved Yankee town, he finds himself falling in love with a widowed young mother, who struggles to keep custody of her 3-year-old daughter. He is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here – and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

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Bag of Bones is a perfect example of this. Weighing in at a hefty 752 pages it is immensely overwritten in my blurry view. However, the story is limber and sinewy enough that I was able to make it through to the final round.

I know, I know, enough of the boxing metaphor. I get it.

Another example of an overwrought novel of his, you ask?

Well, funny you should ask because I just finished fighting my way through one…

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A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:

“Edgar, does anything make you happy?”
“I used to sketch.”
“Take it up again. You need hedges…hedges against the night.”

Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.

The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural: Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.

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Duma Key maintains the unbelievable fighting weight (sorry, I can’t seem to shake the blasted metaphor) of 783 pages! Strangely enough though, it doesn’t seem quite as flabby as BoB.

Now, as one would assume, these books are for all intents and purposes horror novels; ergo, I listened to them instead of reading them, for, to me, horror is served best via the ear versus the eyes. You know, ghost stories around the campfire vibe and all that.

One of the best attributes of BoB as an audiobook is that the King himself reads it. He’s a fantastic narrator, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all having to read all the extraneous words he wrote.

Duma Key is narrated exquisitely by none other than John Slattery. The only problem with him as narrator is I could never get Roger Sterling out of my head while listening.

And if you don’t know who Roger Sterling is, then take a lap!

In fact, take two!

Seeing that it’s Sunday, Palm Sunday no less, and we haven’t had a Sunday Song to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Mood of the Dance in quite a long while, why not have the King himself get us groovin’, eh?

Chekov, as timeless as is endless life’s coil of mortality

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'Uncle Vanya'
‘Uncle Vanya’ by Library of Congress is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

This brings me to Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1897), a singularly psychologically destabilizing piece of theater that’s now being seen anew as a study of post-Covid paralysis, not to mention the existential dread of watching your life slip away by the spoonful. Although first produced in Moscow in 1899, it feels just like our present American age, when nobody hears anybody else because listening hurts too much; when the most comforting activity imaginable is a long, solitary walk followed by an even longer interlude of silence. This is a drama about being driven insane by the sound of other people’s desires, complaints and aspirations when you’re already being tortured by your own. The pandemic and the boorish political and public discourse that followed drove us inward, unable to fight back, going nuts like poor Vanya.

Why ‘Uncle Vanya’ Is the Play for Our Anxious Era, The New York Times Style Magazine, March 21, 2024

This is an interesting take on the play, one hard to dispute since, you know, one’s take or opinion or impression of a work of any art is completely subjective and just as valid as anyone else’s.

Especially with Chekov’s work, which is just about as timeless and universal as anything written, and which is hard for me to see it anew as a post-Covid paralysis, or anew as post anything.

“Uncle Vanya,” to me, just like all of the Chekov I have had the pleasure to read, which, unfortunately, is not yet all that he has gifted us, is simply about our fear of death, the fear of our suddenly being planted into the soil to become nothing more than worm dirt without ever having done anything of lasting value, of becoming, in a sense, immortal.

Both images from “The Scream” Wikipedia page

Again, just my subjective take but, as Chekov was a man of medicine not unfamiliar with the attack of mortality we all are certain to become inflicted with, it’s no wonder it made such easy and often literary fodder for him.

And of course, related to our fear of death, there is the persisten nag of FOMO, the fear of missing out. While we are fretting incessently over leaving behind nothing of lasting value when we die, we fret almost as much during our short time we do actually have alive on this pretty yet petulant planet of ours of missing out on all the fun and excitement that everyone else seems to be enjoying with such ease.

Anyway, “Uncle Vanya” is chock full of such fear, longing, and regret. To wit, Serebrakoff (Uncle Vanya’s nemisis and whose young wife Helena he longs for) to Helena:

I want to live; I long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not even forgive me for being old!

Uncle Vanya, Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts, Act II, Project Gutneberg

Of course Vanya rants and raves about pretty much the same thing, but it’s a bit more ironic showing Serebrakoff’s angst since it is he who Uncle Vanya idolizes and envies and, ultimately, despairs over.

So yeah, Uncle Vanya could easily be read anew as a study of our post-Covid paralysis, I guess, just as it could easily be a study of our post-yesterday or post-tomorrow paralysis, as well.

But, you know, that is just my subjectively humble take on the timeless tale…

The Pretense of Arthouse Movie Pretention

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empty seats of the cinema
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

If you are of the persuasion to roll your eyes and shake your head in dismissive disbelief when hearing the terms arthouse or slow cinema, wondering how anyone could suffer through such pretentious nonsense, perhaps a la El Toro as discussed in a couple of blathering posts ago, then you need to watch something/anything from the Hungarian auteur – and I do not use the auteur designator lightly as many seem to do nowadays (I’m looking at you Mubi) – Béla Tarr.

Now, admittedly, there are some serious stinkers when it comes to arthouse, but that can be said of any genre. When doing my laborious nightly scroll in search of a fresh flick to fetish over, I often find myself in complete and utter disbelief at the quantity of cinematic detritus there is out there. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to scroll through all the waste in all the landfills of the world.

I mean, it seems like for every Tangerine (thank you Sean Baker) or My Own Private Idaho (thank you Gus Van Sandt) produced, there are hundreds of brain mass reducing messes made that never should have gotten past the point of being a bad idea let alone being allowed on even the most obscure and unwatched streaming service.

But alas, art is hard and as we know and as was stated during our recent cult classics post, someone’s cinematic trash is another’s treasure.

Now, if you typically are down on arthouse films and/or this is your first introduction to Béla Tarr, I certainly wouldn’t dive straight into his seven-hour masterpiece Sátántangó, which is why I am recommending one of a little bit lighter fare, of his anyway, in The Turin Horse. It’s one not much in the way of dialogue, but it is everything in the way of art and how great the potential of cinema can be.

You can watch it, Sátántangó, and a couple of others of Tarr’s work on Mubi.

Mubi synopsis: After witnessing a carriage driver whipping his horse, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ran to the scene, threw his arms around the horse and collapsed—never to recover. This is the story of what happened to the carriage driver, his family, and his steed.