Jean Hans Arp

After two lengthy reading of Tristan Tzara's take on Dada and a lengthy discussion on Dada with my best friend and with another friend of mine... I started looking up Jean Hans Arp.

I have to say... most of the artists of those time did not focus on just one art form. They explored and used different mediums which kind of says a lot about this generations artists... not that I'm belittling our generations artists because they are great and wonderful as well, or maybe I just haven't met a lot of artists who are not just writers and are not just painters but are a mesh of these different realms of art. Artists that are both poet and painter, both fictionist and musician. But maybe, it was because those were post-WWI artists and as we all know, tragedy brings inspiration. No matter how morbid it sounds, it inspires. Tragedy inspires one to write, to protest, to assess one's life; it drives people towards either self actualization or to complete utter destruction. Happiness does inspire, but for me, it does not inspire as strongly as tragedy does.

Back to Jean Hans Arp, he is a French sculptor, painter, collagist, printmaker, and poet of German birth. Although he is more known for his paintings and sculptures. He is said to be one of the founders of Dada in Zurich. But since I am more interested in his poetry and I had to read other Dada writers to get what this movement is about, -- plus, I wanted to distract myself from studying and feel like I did something I liked -- I went on to search some of his poems and then came across this particular piece: The Plain.


The title is actually really representative of the work. It was plain, simple that is which I've always liked in poems. I never really thought I'd like Dada because I'm always at my wits end trying to decipher whether they mean more than what the purport to present... but this particular piece gives me hope that maybe I'd find more pieces from Dada literature that will make me more inclined to explore this movement and eventually come to understand it.


The Plain

I was alone with a chair on a plain Which lost itself in an empty horizon. The plain was flawlessly paved. Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I were there. The sky was forever blue, No sun gave life to it. An inscrutable, insensible light illuminated the infinite plain. To me this eternal day seemed to be projected -- artificially-- from a different sphere. I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty, never hot nor cold. Time was only an abstruse ghost since nothing happened or changed. In me Time still lived a little This, mainly, thanks to the chair. Because of my occupation with it I did not completely lose my sense of the past. Now and then I'd hitch myself, as if I were a horse, to the chair and trot around with it, sometimes in circles, and sometimes straight ahead. I assume that I succeeded. Whether I really succeeded I do not know Since there was nothing in space By which I could have checked my movements. As I sat on the chair I pondered sadly, but not desperately, Why the core of the world exuded such black light. Jean Hans Arp Poem source: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-plain/

So far, this makes sense...

Tristan Tzara: In art, Dada reduces everything to an initial simplicity, growing always more relative. It mingles its caprices with the chaotic wind of creation and the barbaric dances of savage tribes. It wants logic reduced to a personal minimum, while literature in its view should be primarily intended for the individual who makes it. Words have a weight of their own and lend themselves to abstract construction. The absurd has no terrors for me, for from a more exalted point of view everything in life seems absurd to me. Only the elasticity of our conventions creates a bond between disparate acts. The Beautiful and the True in art do not exist; what interests me is the intensity of a personality transposed directly, clearly into the work; the man and his vitality; the angle from which he regards the elements and in what manner he knows how to gather sensation, emotion, into a lacework of words and sentiments.

Tristan Tzara: Introduction

I have to thank my seniors - even though we aren't from the same college and they are from a Faculty that is quite far from mine, nonetheless they are my seniors from TWG and really good ones too - for taking time with my request. Although for now the first to answer my request was the one that came from the same high school that I came from.

I had come to know him quite late, from a friend, if my memory serves me right. And he had quite a reputation to his name. Anyway, I find it quite a gift that he is foremost interested in the realm that is far from what I usually like to read, which is, classical and realism. I was sure that if I would ever need a starting point into a place that is out of my comfort zone, it would be best to ask him. SO, finally... I have a good point to start from. He gave me three authors. Tristan Tzara, Andre Breton, and F.T. Marinetti.

I'll be starting with Tristan Tzara and taking it from there. :) Happy exploration to me.

For those who do not know him and his contributions like me, here is a link. :) Hope you enjoy it too. :)

On Bible Readings

I have to say this is the only time I will comment on Bible literature.

There is something so beautiful about them, on how just plainly reading them out of context of the history of the people that lived that day, the culture from which the people lived their lives, the importance and precedence they put on every event, detail, and even meanings they put on simple everyday things, and most especially, the language with which they wrote these passages, can utterly lead someone to either the wrong meaning or a superficial understanding of the idea, the event, the importance, and the beauty of the passage.

Yesterday, as I was listening to the priest explaining in his homily each detail, each meaning of each element in the story, I felt my heart move. Move not only with the message that the passage relayed --"a woman unloved, unwanted, meets Christ on the place where lovers usually met, and he tells her, I love you, even if you are a sinner, even if you are from a race that people considered dirty. I will give you life, for you have searched for it in various places and never found it." -- but also with how all these elements come together to form such a simple tale and yet be so rich.

I guess it is because the people who have written these passages have a vast knowledge and understanding of their culture, other than being inspired by the holy spirit. This is their life, their history, and though it sounds too emotional, it is the emotional attachment that we put in everyday life that makes writing it interesting and that makes these scribbles more than scribbles, but a story, a poem, a part of literature.

So I have come to realize that probably one of the reasons I cannot take my pen to write, is because I have lost that, the emotional connection with everyday, the understanding of my own culture, the meaning put in every object to make a metaphor, a metonymy. And so is born a new fire for literary enrichment.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I was definitely looking forward to watching this movie since the actors involved were of such high caliber and the trailer left something to be expected and craved for in the film. Not that I am "wall street/stock literate" nor am I a fan of stock market and how the money in the world goes round. I was particularly interested in the plot of George Gekko (Michael Douglas) stepping back into the life of his daughter and making a whole mess of things. Sounds a bit morbid but hey, it catches your interest.

In any case, the movie was moderately enjoyable for me. I have a thing for movies with a lot of dialogues. I like to see how actors add life to these dialogues, meshing up the actions they think would define their character and the way they'd deliver the lines. Things that when put together somehow gives life and interest to a an otherwise tasteless thread of words. Not that I am commenting that the dialogues were not interesting, they were, it's just that they were too jargon-ish for me. But then again that is the setting of the movie. I guess they tried hard to make the terms, the situations, the conversations as simple as they can without making the characters seem like some other person just walking by. After all would you even believe that they are people form Wall Street if they did not talk a certain way?

The plot was somewhat underplayed and had little coherent direction, could not flesh out a continuity in them, and probably, some of the parts were very predictable. I did feel like at the end of the day, I had little understanding of what happened. I felt very minimal of a build up towards a climax, not much of a clincher. I thought the film left too much to be craved for and in between, dropped quite a lot hints at something else that were not really used. I don't know. It was a fairly decent try, but not up to expectation with the story it had promised. 

For the most part, I guess it's because the cast was absolutely amazing that I kept watching until the end. Never expected Shia LaBeouf to be that good. I mean, I grew up watching "Even Stevens" and I commend him for doing such a great job of getting out of the "child star" pit that holds most child actors back from becoming recognized as adults. Although I did feel like something was wrong with how their characters were built up. I don't know, maybe motivation, maybe a sense of coherence of what they want to achieve especially with the main character.

Check out comments on IMDb - Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Foxfire (film)

Yesterday was not a good day for me. It started with my Neuroanatomy exam. You see next to my want to revive my "lost" passion for the arts, my interest and love for Neuroanatomy is about the nearest to that level of passion I used to have for literature. Long story short, my test did not go well despite all my best efforts and I got let down... anyway, this is how this film comes into the picture, it was on HBO. Simply put, I watched it because it was on and it had Angelina Jolie in it. As you would already guess, I am a big fan of hers probably more because of her looks than her talent though her talent is something to be admired as well.

Anyway, on to more pressing matters and one that would actually mean something to my blog. Briefly, I would like to say that this blog is supposed to encompass different arts and well, film and script writing are on top of my "need to learn" list in order to make a good one of my own. So, finally, the film.

I have to admit that I was pretty distracted with how young Jolie looked and how it was nice to see an old movie of hers. The movie was great, I wasn't quite sure if it was a teen movie but ok... it was. The dealt a lot about teenage rebellion, finding strength for yourself, leaving your comfort zone and maturing. For me the whole flow and experience of the movie was in itself much like teenage life. I felt like nothing was falling into place and everything seemed to have just been thrown in. The film felt like it was just giving you bits and pieces of plots, not sure whether they will be elaborated on and they make you feel like they're about to give you something big about it, and it just falls. I felt like the characters were a bit poorly used and maybe the plot itself was poorly used. It just felt like it could go that extra something to make it absolutely brilliant.

The film was near to what teen rebellion would have been like during the year it went out. Reminded me a lot of how the movies and "teleseryes" of the 90's influenced me to think that maybe I was caged up and cooped up and I wasn't thinking for myself. I did not particularly liked the movie that much. At the end of the day I was left with the impression that the movie seemed to aim at nothing. It did little to provoke me to think.It did do more for my ever growing fan mania over Angelina... but anyway... that's all I have to say about this film.

I did not like the lines that much nor the way the screen adaptation went. I am not so sure however if that would have been the fault of the screen writers or the director. Maybe I should start understanding the processes and nitty grittys of film making to make a solid comment on them. After all, I am here to learn about the techniques behind these arts. :) Here's a comment on the film which describes it in a more detailed and analytical manner, I guess... http://www.proyouthpages.com/foxfire.html. The blogger said it was based on a book... might as well find it during the summer... and start reading.

The Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire

I started reading the story about almost a month ago and found it interesting. It was told in a "split type" manner, started with a writer writing something. The story of the writer was written in plain text and the the other was bold faced. At first I thought the story in bold faced was actually the story the writer was writing up until the last few paragraphs with the butler and a maid named Ethel talking about something and swearing secrecy. Then I started asking whether the story in bold was actually something like in the movie The Others. Or whether their reality was an alternate universe where our fantasy was their reality. It got me into too much thinking, almost made me think was I slow or did I not ingest the story right?

I looked it up at Neil Gaiman's Journal... and well I got a history of the tale... but not much of the story's meaning. Suffice to say, a writer never reveals his secrets much like magicians. I looked up at some other reviews and got just about the same interpretation as what I had in mind.

I'd like to get some opinions on this as well. If you're ever able to read it, do comment here. :)