Basement to Basement

Blogging LIVE! from Middletown, CT - the home of college friend Kate and husband Noah. This time, I'm down in the basement, which is very, very large and pretty cool, I have to say. It's got the rough-hewn quality that basements in old houses do, but the white-painted walls, the room division and tile floor and other touches make it a surprisingly nice living space.

Apparently, one of their cats agrees - a giant Maine coon-type that weighs 17 pounds, named Elvin Jones (after the drummer). As soon as I got into bed, he appeared out of nowhere and joined me. Which would have startled me, considering that the door is closed, but I saw when I first came in there's actually a little cat hole cut in the wall under the bed, presumably so that the cats can come and go as they please. For all I know, the litter box may be in the room beyond here - there are a lot of surprises down here. Like the hot tub, for example. Smack dab between the sewing machine and the jigsaw.

It's that kind of house.

D.

Wednesday, All Day

My, oh my. Apparently, I had a work ethic all this time, and just didn't know it. I've literally been going straight since about 8 AM - which wouldn't be that impressive, until you consider that it's about 11:15 PM as I write this.

But the weird thing about these jam-packed days is that when you look back, even though you know you accomplished a lot, it feels like you did not much with your time. It's that perception of time when we're in it and then when we reflect on it after the fact.

What is this reminding me of? Oh, I know...



Just call me 'Mrs. Tempo.' And how spooky is it that she/he says, 'and it's only Wednesday?'

Man, I want this and Donald in Mathemagicland on DVD, now.

D.

Silicon Footprint

Tried to AIM/iChat video with Yesenia just a few minutes ago - she's staying at her mom's, in the jungle suburbs of San Juan. Unfortunately, couldn't get it to connect - most likely, the firewall on her mom's router is set to 'repel barbarian hordes.' So Yesenia and I both quickly installed Skype, which worked like a charm.

She's so cute, even pixelated at a low frame rate.

D.

There She Goes Again

Took Yesenia to the airport at three AM, for her six AM flight.

Funny how I feel like I never sleep - one night of driving to and from Newark in the darkest hours (what Springsteen sang about the 'New Jersey Turnpike looks like a lunar landscape' is true) really shows what sleepless is. Got back to the house around five, and got about three hours of sleep and spent most of the day in the cloud.

Anyway, she'll be gone from now until next Tuesday, so now comes the part where I see how well I know how to make myself useful in her absence. Note that I said 'useful,' not 'busy.' I won't have a problem finding things to do - the question is if I can get to them all.

D.

Writer's Blockade

Oh, man! A pun for a title. You know what that means. Heck, at least this time, the pun is accurate.

Accuracy in punning is an underrated quality.

D.

I Recommend

The new autobiography from Bill Bruford. It's always impressive to me just how SMART and well-spoken most of the guys from prog were, even if they were lower class (Bruford was comfortably middle-class). It's incredible as an observation on music in general and a meditation on the mechanics of being a musician, and mercifully free of 'Hammer of the Gods'/'No One Here Gets Out Alive' tales of rock excess and debauchery. There's a scary-sharp insight on every page, about the business of making and selling music - and the interactions and compromises that are what making music in a band are all about.

I particularly like this quote: "For me, London and New York City have been reduced to a series of rehearsal rooms associated with one album or another, and all with a greater or lesser degree of torture, interspersed with long stretches of tedium. Quite commonly, the leader, which means the most opinionated of the assembled players, is the least equipped technically, and he depends upon a combination of threats and bribery to extract his preferred musical terrain from his better equipped and more docile colleagues."

Yeah. That would be me. (hangs head)

D.

Link to Amazon.

The Iron Screen

Finally, finally, finally saw the 1970's version of Solaris, the Soviet-era film adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's novel. The film is supposed to have out-Kubrick'd Kubrick, a film of such weight, depth, breadth and any other measure of size that it's supposed to be the thinking-man's be-all and end all of science-fiction cinema.

Annnnd... it was good. Quite good, depending on your patience for lengthy scenes about not much of anything, of which the majority are in the first half of the film, including a five minute wordless montage of a tertiary character and his son taking a speeding taxi through Tokyo. During the day. On a highway. Mostly through tunnels. Certianly, in these long, exhaustingly pointless takes, Solaris goes further than Kubrick ever dared in tedium.

But. It gets much, much better - or at least, more focused, since I confess to actually liking those early scenes of boredom. Boredom is an underrated quality in films, useful for creating a certain tension in the viewer.

I'd say that its reputation of world-beating greatness is founded on its relative obscurity, which is often the factor that makes people build things up to levels where the real thing can't hope to deliver.

The plot is much the same as the Soderbergh/Clooney remake from a few years back - which I have yet to see in its entirety. Both films, however, diverge from the novel, which made Lem cranky. Having read a few works by Lem (curiously, Solaris is not among them, though that will be remedied), I think it's safe to say that mostly everything made Lem cranky. Where Lem's novel focused on the ultimate impossibility of understanding the truly alien, director Andrei Tarkovsky instead focuses on the nature of memory and love.

Basic plot: alien ocean world consciousness Solaris messes with observing human scientists by plucking memories from their sleeping brains and creating versions of people from their past to haunt them. In the case of lead character Kris Kelvin (played by the most Russian-looking man I've ever seen...



...right?), he wakes after his first confusing night on the station to discover his long-deceased wife by his side. Alive, of course - although, back and still dead would be an interesting film of its own.

Moral and philosophical hijinks ensue.

As with all great science-fiction, what Solaris does with its premise is take it seriously, and plays it out in ways that are genuinely, truly haunting. For starters, the 'guests' (as the memory-people are called) have free will and the capacity to learn and change. Kevlin's wife - and this bit is very important - had committed suicide after he'd left her following an argument. Kelvin can only guess at the reasons, and even though the version of his wife (Hari) that Solaris provides him with is only reflective of Kelvin's memories of her, this new Hari brings fresh insight to him as to those events.

"Space is a mirror," another character says in the film (or something similar), opining that man isn't capable of dealing with the unknown and can only really find aspects of himself. The memory-Hari, created as self-destructive as Kelvin recalls, finally sacrifices herself to free Kelvin and/or free herself from her terrible self-knowledge, but Kelvin instead strands himself on Solaris - which has been irradiated with his brain waves (don't ask) and has made Kelvin an island where he can live out his life in the past - curiously, with his father and mother (and dog) at their family estate.

A lot of what Tarkovsky has to say, he says with the form of the film itself. The film stock switches from color to black and white at seemingly random times - so random that I initially wondered whether these were merely symptoms of budgetary issues. But, no: since the film follows dream-logic (in a way so effective that would and no doubt has made David Lynch squeeze his dancing midget in a fit of jealousy), the alternating modes lend their own contemplative air to the proceedings. Think about this, or don't, Tarkovsky seems to say; it just is as it is and will not be affected by your opinion of it. The film manages to walk a surprising line between deeply-felt empathy for the characters - including the fractured Hari - and a clinically precise and detached observance of events. Perhaps a perfect tone for a film about scientists who have become tormented by ghosts from their pasts.

It's topped off by some elegant set design, cinematography and soundtrack. Even the special effects are effective - far from seamless, but moody and of a piece with the film. So let's call this a recommendation, although since no-one that I know who reads this blog shares my taste in films, Lord knows who this is a recommendation to.

D.

One stray observation: apparently, the 1970's existed even in the USSR. Who knew? I wouldn't have been surprised if Kelvin took Hari to the disco, at one point - he was certainly dressed for it.



Note: There is a Criterion edition available with excellent picture & sound quality.