‘Hiroshi Teshigahara was only incidentally a filmmaker. For decades recognized for his work in various classical Japanese art forms, he was a master and a modern trailblazer all at once. Son of the founder and grand master (Iemoto) of the Sogetsu School of Ikebana (more moribundly known as flower-arranging), he turned to film as an extension of his aesthetic explorations in other media. A graduate of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he was a painter and sculptor, designed gardens and tea rooms, directed operas and Noh plays for the stage. And he made 21 films, most of them short documentaries on subjects as varied as Hokusai and Hispanic boxers. But he is widely known only for the eight feature-length films he made over a period of 30 years, films as unique in form and function as anything else in his creative life—except that they use the most immediate and direct medium for the communication of ideas in the same arresting way.

‘Always within close reach of the avant-garde, one of whom he of course counted himself, Teshigahara had shown canny judgement in his choice of collaborators when he turned to feature films in 1962. The writer Kobo Abe (1924–1993) had been sending shivers of recognition down the spines of Japanese literati ever since he had won the famed Akutagawa Prize for his novel The Crime of S. Karuma in 1951. His masterpiece, The Woman in the Dunes, was published in 1960 and won the Yomiuri Prize. Teshigahara longed to film it, but decided, for his first feature effort, to film an original script that Abe had prepared called The Pitfall.

‘Also accompanying Teshigahara in his first production was a close friend named Toru Takemitsu (1930–1996). They had collaborated once before, in 1959, on a short film about the boxer Jose Torres. Takemitsu, who loved film and preferred writing film scores to composing concert works, would quickly become the most sought after and certainly the most brilliant modernist Japanese composer. While writing music for all of Teshigahara’s subsequent films, he would also work closely with virtually every notable Japanese filmmaker of the 1960s, including Masaki Kobayashi, Masahiro Shinoda and Nagisa Oshima. And he would later compose the score for Akira Kurosawa’s formidable Ran (1985).

‘The Pitfall (Otoshiana, 1962) is nominally concerned with a series of unexplained murders in a poor mining community (hence, the title’s double entendre). The murders are perpetrated by a man wearing sunglasses, dressed in an immaculate white suit and hat. His victims reappear throughout the film in intact physical form (no special effects here, so much the better), and observe the action like a mute and ineffectual Greek chorus, asking, “Why was I killed? What was it for? Where was the meaning in my life?”—to which they get no response.

‘Described by Teshigahara as a documentary–fantasy, the film is all the more unsettling for its matter-of-fact illogic. Typical of Abe’s other works, The Pitfall also employs a pulp-fiction framework—a ghost story—but only to throw into relief both our preconceptions of the genre and the underlying truths that it unearths (in this case, literally). Antonioni had already exploited a similar approach in L’avventura (1960), which spends much of its time engaged in a futile search for a missing person. For his efforts with The Pitfall, Teshigahara won the NHK Best New Director award and the film earned the rare honor—for a novice director—of being released abroad. Vernon Young said of it:

‘Teshigahara’s The Case [an alternate release title] may be thought to exhibit the oblique time-sense of Alain Resnais and a form of moral relativism fetched from Kafka and French existentialism, yet what is more Japanese than a palpable ghost? And the landscape depicted is indelibly of the Japanese persuasion, as clean as a pebble garden or a print by Hiroshige.

‘Perhaps the most famous postmodern tale of a person who went missing is Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes, which Teshigahara took on for his next project, once again with Abe writing the script. It is the story of Jumpei Niki, an entomologist and family man who innocently seeks shelter for the night in a remote village situated among ever-encroaching sand dunes. What Niki finds there is so fraught with implications about the human predicament, and written with such obsessive detail, that few people believed anyone could pull it off as a film. That Teshigahara does, with moviegoers worldwide leaving theaters brushing imaginary sand from their clothing, attests to his genius at finding the most vivid equivalents to Abe’s odd universe of words. And Teshigahara’s success with actors (his wife was the film actress Toshiko Kobayashi) was never more obvious, as Eiji Okada and Keiko Kishida become veritable epitomes in their roles, at first resisting and then relenting to the cruel dictates of the village and the pit in which they find themselves together and from which they can never escape. “Both Okada and Kishida got into their roles so deeply,” Teshigahara later wrote, “that the look on their faces changed during the four-month shooting.” Teshigahara’s wonderful abstract compositions of sand dunes constantly shifting bestow on geology an alarming presence.

‘The film was originally 147 minutes, but when Teshigahara was invited to bring his film to the Cannes Festival, he cut it to 124 minutes. Although the cuts do no harm to continuity, and actually make the film seem tighter, it is easy to miss the deleted 23 minutes, since the world that Teshigahara made so palpably real is yet harder to leave at the film’s conclusion.

‘The Woman in the Dunes (Suna no Onna , 1964) won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, and it was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Award by the American Academy. It became Teshigahara’s most highly praised and best-known film, which is just as well. Although he would make two more films with Kobo Abe, The Face of Another (Tanin no Kao , 1966) and The Man Without a Map (Moetsukita Chizu, 1968), both of them based on a published Abe novel, neither was as successful as adaptations or as compelling as films. Abe’s abstractions seemed to expand exponentially with each new book. Their increasingly hermetic ideas, pushing meaning to impenetrable extremes, drew progressively narrower interest from readers. And although Teshigahara, equal to the challenge, would often find splendid cinematic solutions to Abe’s prose (doubtless with the author’s considerable help), one could argue that, because of his obdurate devotion, Teshigahara’s work followed Abe’s into obscurity.

‘The Face of Another is ‘about’ the mysteries of identity and how it is shaped by one’s relation to others. It is also part horror, part science-fiction film, with unavoidable ties to Frankenstein (both the book and the movie), Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1934) and The Beast With Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946), which were ‘about’ the perils of interchangeable body parts and the chaos they can lead to.

‘The big difference in Teshigahara’s film is that he isn’t trying to be campy. The film’s fascination derives from its belief in its own ideas and Teshigahara’s unerring poise in his constructing the bizarre but utterly convincing world where a man named Okuyama tries to reconstruct his life after a lab explosion leaves him without a face. Forced to encase his head with bandages (which are functional and cleverly cut to allow the actor underneath [the splendid Tatsuya Nakadai] to look as if he is frowning and smiling at the same time), he watches with dismay as everyone—even his wife (played by the eternally exquisite Machiko Kyo) behave differently, coldly, toward him. A subplot is introduced involving a young woman who works as a nurse in a military mental hospital. Otherwise pretty, the young woman bears terrible scars on the right side of her face from the war (“No full explanation was given, but the name ‘Hiroshima’ was constantly repeated in the following dialogue.” . But unlike Okuyama, she makes no attempt to hide her face, and deals with people’s predictable reactions with a stoical grace.

‘Whether it was because of slow pacing, the almost psychotic mental state of Okuyama, or its failure to fulfill audience expectations of a horror film, The Face of Another was met with mostly unpleasant surprise. Again, Vernon Young had to comment: “The result is somewhat antiseptic; it has the attraction of a nude you might appreciate without desiring.” Takemitsu composed a beautiful waltz for the credit sequence and a cabaret song introduced in a bar scene (in which Takemitsu himself is seen sitting in the crowd—according to Oshima, he looked like Jean-Louis Barrault with diarrhea). Notwithstanding respectful reservations, The Face of Another is an indelibly powerful film that never found its audience.

‘Teshigahara’s fourth and last adaptation from Abe was The Man Without a Map. For the first time Teshigahara sought the backing of a major Japanese studio, ShinToho. Consequently the film was in color and wide screen. Whether or not these were Teshigahara’s choices, the film sometimes seems unsure what to do with the wider frame. And Shintaro Katsu—infamous for his Zatoichi, Blind Swordsman series (26 installments as of this writing)—is an odd choice for the lead role.

‘Also for the first time, Teshigahara’s film suffers in comparison with Abe’s novel. The private detective hired by a woman whose husband has gone missing is a rather unprepossessing intellectual narrator in the novel. Perhaps out of deference to Shintaro Katsu, the narration is dispensed with in the film, with the detective portrayed as a more conventional, hard-as-nails type, which diminishes sympathy for him and emphasizes the absence of any real ‘action’.

‘Not knowing if Teshigahara sensed this, or noticed Abe’s own descent into expressionist meaninglessness, The Man Without a Map represents the end of their collaboration as artists. His next feature-length project, four years later, was written by the American translator and biographer of Yukio Mishima, John Nathan. With the Vietnam War close by, Summer Soldiers (1972) tells the stories of two AWOL American GIs, adrift in the inhospitable refuge of a Japan committed to supporting the U.S. “war effort”. Shunted to and fro among host families of anti-war sympathizers, both men seek some natural haven and an end to being fugitives. At first encouraged by what they see as acceptance and understanding from the people they meet, they soon realize that they are political pawns being used to gratify anti-war sentiments of radical groups, as well as, paradoxically, their anti-Americanism. The GIs discover that there is no real place for them in Japan, except as fringe dwellers.

‘For the first time, Teshigahara photographed the film himself, and resorted to a much more raw spontaneity in his choice and direction of the actors. There is an almost documentary feel to the film. It is also redolent of its times, which dates the film somewhat. But after the increasingly claustrophobic, and ultimately suffocating world of his Abe films, Summer Soldiers is a refreshing change of air.

‘After Summer Soldiers was completed, Teshigahara turned to his duties with the Sogetsu Foundation, of which his father had been master. On his father’s death, he became the third generation iemoto of the school in 1980, which was so involving it prevented him from pursuing other projects. Finally, 12 years after Summer Soldiers, he had the opportunity to realize his long cherished ambition to devote a film entirely to the work of the architect Antonio Gaudi. The resulting 72-minute documentary is yet so limpid and lovely that it easily rivals his fiction films in artfulness.

‘For his next feature film, Rikyu (1989), Teshigahara turned to history, to the conflict between the Zen monk Sen no Rikyu and the warlord Hideyoshi. Though eventually resulting in a violent end for Rikyu, the conflict was over nothing more—and nothing less—than cultural taste. As Donald Richie observed, the whole fracas could be summed up by one event, and it is beautifully and simply re-created in the film: “A paradigm for the new attitude was Hideyoshi’s visit to see Rikyu’s celebrated garden of morning glories. When he arrived he discovered that they had all been uprooted. The disgruntled warrior repaired to the tearoom. There, in the alcove, in a common clay container, was one perfect morning glory.”

‘Rikyu was Teshigahara’s first international success since Woman in the Dunes 25 years earlier. It re-established him as a world-class filmmaker, even if he would have only one more film in him. After the splendors of Rikyu, Princess Gohime (Gohime, 1992), is, in interesting contrast, somewhat of a commercial vehicle for the reigning Japanese beauty of the day, Rie Miyazawa—who, though ravishing, cannot act. Though ostensibly a sequel to Rikyu, concerned with the period immediately following the death of Rikyu and the power struggle amongst lords loyal to him and others aligned with Hideyoshi, the film is actually more interested in the illicit love between the Princess and a hulking retainer who loses an ear in her service (in recompense, perhaps, halfway through the film, he takes the Princess’ virginity). The scene wherein he has his ear shot off while overcoming vastly superior numbers in defense of the Princess is—I presume—supposed to be erotic rather than comical. The Princess licks the man’s wound clean and bandages it with scraps that she tears from her undergarments.

‘Though dramatically shaky, the film looks extraordinary, with costumes and sets that are among the most gorgeous color compositions in a Japanese film since Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell. And Teshigahara constructed another of his bamboo creations for the final scene in which the Princess finally (!) seduces her hairy protector. As the shot of the horizontal lovers dissolves to a gibbous moon while the reticent strains of Takemitsu’s music take us through the end credits, there is some slight satisfaction in the certainty that, though lovely in its way, Teshigahara won’t be remembered for only this.

‘For the last decade of his life Teshigahara made no more films. Perhaps mobilizing a small army of cast and crew at such an expense of time and money took much of the pleasure out of filmmaking for him. His work in other media, however, continued unabated. He produced and designed operas in Europe and mounted numerous exhibitions of his own and other artists’ work. In 1996 he was awarded the title of National Chevalier by the Legion of France, and the following year was given the National Order of the Sacred Treasure in Japan—a quite unique title which declares certain cherished artists (Kurosawa among them) a National Living Treasure. He created bamboo “installations” in halls and galleries (one can be seen in the closing minutes of Princess Gohime), and he honored his old friend Takemitsu by directing a tribute to him at the shrine where his funeral service was held.’ — Dan Harper

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Hiroshi Teshigahara @ IMDb
Hiroshi Teshigahara @ MUBI
Obituary: Hiroshi Teshigahara
hiroshiteshigaharafilm @ instagram
Arata Isozaki on Hiroshi Teshigahara
Teshigahara, Abe and Takemitsu: A Unique Collaboration in 1960s Japanese Cinema
The Word and The Image: Collaborations between Abe Kôbô and Teshigahara Hiroshi
Hiroshi Teshigahara @ Letterboxd
DVD: The Supplements to Three Films by Hiroshi Teshigahara
Transposition of the Scientific Elements in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Adaptation of Kobo Abe’s the Face of Another
Ikebana As an Installation in the Art of Sôfû Teshigahara and Hiroshi Teshigahara
Eastern Premise #83 — The Woman In The Dunes
How Tōru Takemitsu and Hiroshi Teshigahara Explored Japan’s Postwar Psyche
Zola Jesus on… the Transportive Wormholes of Hiroshi Teshigahara
Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Multimedia Tradition
A Sisyphus in the Sand
Hiroshi Teshigahara as Renaissance Man

 

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Extras

An Interview With Hiroshi Teshigahara

HIROSHI TESHIGAHARA FILMS in the Criterion Collection

Jose Torres (1959)

Teshigahara and Abe

 

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Ichibana

 

Hiroshi Teshigahara（The 3rd Iemoto 1927 – 2001）

‘Hiroshi Teshigahara, the first son of Sofu Teshigahara who was the founder of Sogetsu School, was born in Tokyo in 1927. He is well-known world wide as the director of such films as Suna no Onna (Woman in the Dunes) written by Kobo Abe and Rikyu. In 1980, he became the third Iemoto of Sogetsu School. Since then, he demonstrated his originality using bamboo at his large-scale solo exhibitions at such famous museums as National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea (1989), Palazzo Reale in Milan, Italy (1995) and the Kennedy Center in New York (1996).

‘Domestically, he held solo exhibitions and displayed installations nationwide, including GEN-ICHIRO INOKUMA Museum of Contemporary Art in Marugame and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. His works were acclaimed as an unprecedented extension of art beyond the boundary of Ikebana.

‘Both domestically and abroad, he undertook stage and art direction of such performances as the opera Turandot (Lyon, France, 1992; Geneva, Switzerland, 1996), an original Noh play Susanoh (the Avignon Theatre Festival, 1994), Sloka by Chandralekha Dance Company (1999), an original outdoor dance play Susano Iden (1991). His stage art of which the main component was bamboo and his stage direction itself were enthusiastically received.

‘Moreover, he demonstrated his unique talent for ceramic art and calligraphy, and continued to develop his creativity in various fields of art throughout his later years. In the 1990’s, he expanded the range of Ikebana by advocating Renka which is a series of impromptu Ikebana arranged by multiple artists.’

Works

 

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12 of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 21 films

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Hokusai (1953)
‘This look at the work and life of block-print artist Katsushika Hokusai (1740-1849) begins with the political context of the Edo shogunate at the time of his birth: peasants driven off their land come to the city; a merchant class is emerging; samurais’ power wanes. Hokusai lives in poverty, apprenticed as a printmaker, studying under the best artists of the day, especially Korin. Hokusai’s unique style strives for realism. The camera slowly pans Hokusai’s art: we see prints popular with merchants and commoners, particularly his caricatures; his subjects are often people at work. Late in life, political turmoil becomes his subject.’ — Letterboxd

the entirety

 

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Ikebana (1956)
‘A much different work than the previous documentary short on Hokusai, the first huge distinction is something that none of any of the films I’ve seen by Teshigahara have: color! Yes, no more black and white, but vibrant color for the Japanese auteur. Yet a major similarity is the choice to stick to art as what is profiled, this time in a little over a half hour.

‘Ikebana is a centuries-old style and technique of flower arrangement, growing, and decor of Japan, also known as “Kadō.” In this film, we learn about the artists and commoners who learn or revere the floral practice, in particular those from the Sogetsu School. It’s no coincidence that Teshigahara’s father, Sofu, was the school’s grand master. Like the stone gardens and other architectural styles of Japan, ikebana uses strict rules and order which still also allow a freedom of interpretation and artform.

‘Teshigahara briefly traces the major elements of the style, and segues to how it’s adapted to the modern industrialized world of Japan. There’s a clear focus on how women have taken charge in recent times of the art, whether amateurs or students, or revered professionals. We watch dozens of them carefully making beautiful arrangements. There’s a sharp turn to the surreal in the second half of the short, certainly the most memorable and elusive part.’ — Andrew Chrzanowski

the entirety

 

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Tokyo 1958 (1958)
‘Eight filmmakers collaborate with Teshigahara to bring a newsreel-style snapshot of Tokyo in 1957-58, when it had eight and a half million people and was the largest city in the world. The industry of the people is evident, with Katsushika Hokusai’s woodcuts interspersed with shots of contemporary workers. We watch women give a makeup demonstration, we visit bridal stores, and we see a young woman win a rock and roll singing contest and follow her home with her prizes; we go to the Ginza on Christmas Eve, with bars and nightclubs full tilt, and we join the throng at the Meiji shrine on New Year’s Day. Some surreal touches add comedy to underscore Tokyo’s energy and life.’ — David Surman

the entirety

 

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The Pitfall (1962)
‘Teshigahara’s debut feature, The Pitfall [Otoshiana], was the first of his collaborations with novelist/playwright Kôbô Abe and composer Toru Takemitsu. Beautifully filmed in an abandoned, postwar coal-mining town in Western Japan, it is part social-realist critique, part unsettling ghost fable. Examining themes of alienation, workers’ rights, and identity, Teshigahara and Abe’s exotically strange film evokes the cinema of Antonioni, Resnais, the writing of Kafka, Beckett, Carroll, and the French existentialists. A wandering miner, looking for work with his young son, is pursued by a mysterious, silent assassin in a white suit and hat. As mistrust and killings spread through the barely populated, rundown mining community, ghosts of the dead appear, unheard by the living, yet imploring them for answers. Who is the man in white and why does he sow confusion? Teshigahara coined the term “documentary fantasy” for this study of the powerless, impoverished worker in postwar Japan.’ — Art Theatre Guild

Trailer

the entirety

Video Essay by James Quandt

 

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Woman in the Dunes (1964)
‘Hiroshi Teshigahara may have never quite become a household name, but this uniquely talented Japanese filmmaker, who specialized in existential dramas peppered with surreal avant-garde touches, received a large dose of international acclaim for his 1964 Woman in the Dunes. A strikingly photographed, Kafkaesque tale about a traveling amateur entomologist, Junpei (Hiroshima mon amour’s Eiji Okada), trapped like a bug by a widow (Kyoko Kishida) who lives at the bottom of a sand dune, Woman in the Dunes was such an art-house hit in the United States that Teshigahara earned a best director Oscar nomination—competing with such English-language cinema legends as David Lean, Robert Wise, John Schlesinger, and William Wyler. It combines a challenging use of impressionistic visuals and confined spaces with surprisingly accessible storytelling, and it brought Teshigahara’s visionary craftsmanship to a wider audience.

‘Woman in the Dunes is a film of ominousness and sensuous beauty, playing as both psychological thriller and askew romantic drama. Teshigahara shot the film with all the grace, tactility, and geometric precision one would expect of a director who was as devoted to the delicate art of ikebana (flower arrangement) as he was to cinema. Watch the following clip, in which Junpei realizes that escape from this mysterious woman’s home may not easy, to get a sense of Teshigahara’s striking gift for composition.’ — The Criterion Collection

Trailer

Excerpt

Woman in the Dunes – Hiroshi Teshigahara, Texture and Sensation

 

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Ako (1965)
‘This short film from 1965 paints a portrait of Ako, a 16-year-old girl who is trying to live in freedom while escaping the traditions of her country. Ako works at a bakery where others like her manipulate masses of dough while engaging in conversation and laughing. Filmed in a disjointed style, the images and dialogue are reminiscent of a dream.’ — onf.tv

Watch the film here

 

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The Face of Another (1966)
‘While a success in Japan, The Face of Another was largely dismissed by Western critics at the time of its release, perhaps for its modernist style, which was becoming increasingly unfashionable, its “extravagantly chic . . . abstruse exploration of psychological symbolism” (Noël Burch)—a backlash that would also make Bergman and Antonioni figures of derision. The film remains little known today, even as the recent face transplant of a woman in France and international debate over the wearing of the niqab make its philosophical deliberations so timely. (The film presciently incorporates, from Abe’s novel, a remark about Arab women’s protective veils in the wife’s consideration of the power of concealing the face.)

‘The catalog of doubles and echoes extends much further, but suffice it to say that the most important twinning in the film is that of the main and secondary narratives, of Okuyama and his new face and the Nagasaki victim and her forever scarred one. Relegated to a short coda in the novel, the second story is so boldly and insistently interpolated into the Okuyama narrative in the film that it becomes more than mere counterpoint. One could contrast the two stories, their settings (which extends to the meteorological, one summery, the other winterish) and protagonists (one innocent and altruistic, the other cynical and solipsistic), but the importance the film assigns the second narrative suggests that Teshigahara is searching for a way to intensify his critique of Okuyama, whose fetid stream of consciousness in the novel suffices as damning commentary. It should also be noted, given the previous discussion of aspect ratio in the film, that Teshigahara first introduces the image of the girl (in ways reminiscent of an Imamura heroine) in letterboxed widescreen, before reverting to full frame, perhaps to signal that her story is the film that Okuyama tells his wife about. (Its status is less ambiguous in the novel, where it is clear that the second narrative is a film called One Kind of Love.)’ — James Quandt

Trailer

the entirety

 

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The Man Without a Map (1968)
‘The film begins with a surreal sequence in bright, popping psychedelic colors, an amoebic kaleidoscope of sorts with various strains of music—rock, classical, radio static—fading in and out over the credits. These visuals dissolve into aerial cityscape views of Tokyo, with a woman’s voice describing “the little activities of a thousand souls.” Many shots are framed in a low-slung way that cuts off the heads and sides of the subjects speaking, or from odd angles though windows or doorways that give the impression that our detective is constantly being watched by someone unseen. As the detective’s search becomes increasingly fruitless the framing wanders farther and farther away from the action, at times no longer focusing on who’s speaking, as if even the film itself has become bored with the story.

‘Strange hallucinations begin to crowd in on our detective, daydreams that take him out of his pursuit and become inseparable with his reality. After he’s fired from the agency (impersonally, over the phone), and the nature of his relationship with the missing man’s wife becomes more intimate, the reality of the movie dissolves and the detective’s altered mindset becomes the dominant landscape of the film. In deciding whether to engage in a new narrative and begin a new life or withdraw from the scene entirely, he muses, “I will disappear too.”

‘The film’s aloof and deadpan attitude would make one want to associate it with other grim detective films of the subsequent decade like Hickey & Boggs (1972) and The Long Goodbye (1973). But Man Without a Map rejects any efforts to play upon the curdled nostalgia of Chandler-era gumshoes and instead achieves a wholly contemporary ennui that’s surreal and sincere. While the story may be purposefully dull its effect is compelling and revelatory. In playing upon our familiarity with the detective genre Abe and Teshigahara are prodding at our notions of existence, ambition, and legacy in a way that provides no answers but leaves a big, colorful mess in its wake.’ — Sleeping All Day

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Sculpture Mouvante – Jean Tinguely (1981)
Documentary about Jean Tinguely and his work.

the entirety

 

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Antonio Gaudí (1984)
‘Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) designed some of the world’s most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films ever made. In Antonio Gaudí, their artistry melds in a unique, enthralling cinematic experience. Less a documentary than a visual poem, Teshigahara’s film takes viewers on a tour of Gaudí’s truly spectacular architecture, including his massive, still-unfinished master­piece, the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona. With camera work as bold and sensual as the curves of his subject’s organic structures, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.’ — The Criterion Collection

the entirety

 

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Rikyu (1989)
‘The great Hiroshi Teshigahara’s second last film, released in 1989, is an insular, ponderous affair, albeit one with flashes of subtle beauty and brilliance. A relatively direct historical drama concerned with the relationship between a warlord and a tea-master, Rikyu lacks the oblique visual metaphors and universal themes of human desire and fear that made earlier works, like Woman in the Dunes, so impactful. That’s not to say that this meditation on the contentious relationship between politics and art isn’t an effective piece in its own right; it most certainly is. But, for outsiders more drawn in by emotional storytelling than history lessons, it’s a bit of a tough slog.’ — Scott A. Gray

Trailer

 

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Gô-hime (1992)
‘Hiroshi Teshigahara’s films from the 60s are frenetic, high energy, fast paced, creative, photographed in b & w (with one exception), and focus so greatly on the loss of identity (a huge trademark of the Japanese New Wave). The final two films of his career, Rikyu & Gô-hime, are slowly paced, deliberate, calculated, disciplined, refined, filmed in color, and have characters who thoroughly understand who they are. The evolution of going from these 60s pieces to the 80s ones, is not a conventional one (although there are probably plenty of examples of artists becoming more disciplined and refined as they get older). For HT, the journey came from his father’s calling and eventually his own to the art form of Ikebana (flower arrangement). This pursuit of Ikebana fortunately honed his skills and turned him into a master. In other words, our own version of the character of Rikyu; a man of his time, of his art; dedicating his life in full. Fortunately for HT it just so happens his mastery and understanding of Ikebana carries over so well to film–in particular the arrangement of what lies in frame. The man had an eye like no other.

‘The most impressive thing to me is the calculated layout and geometry of his camera work and photography; a man’s head clearly reflecting off a gloss table (what he had utilized to massive effect in The Man Without A Map), a gardener in silhouette between two columns, hooves of horses trotting in tow, a man yelling in frustration in a cave, a winter forest, a summer meadow, a grove of cherry blossoms, how a particular prop is placed, the preciseness of having us focus on someone’s hand or foot… I really could go on. Everything in frame are his brushstrokes, the entire film his painting. Not too much color, not too little. Not lingering too long on someone’s face, and allowing a character to stand up (while talking) to suddenly not see his face. The fluidity and rigidity of the character’s movements. Knowing, caring and understanding the Way of Tea. It sounds like a ton (well cause it is) but you could very well miss it all if you just took this film at face value and strictly paid attention to the two plots that carry on throughout. In fact, much of what we see is so subtle you’d have to know what you’re looking for but that doesn’t, in the very least, not allow one to feel the meditative and reflective states one can draw from Rikyu or Gô-hime, or see the ever-present geometry in every frame. To even not notice the innate beauty of Japan’s geography and culture, would be very shortsighted to anyone who watches these films.’ — Ziglet_mir

Trailer

the entirety

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** prince of darkness?, Ha ha, hi. You can delete the question mark. Thank you, or, rather, thank the ghost who may or may not still be vomiting. Enjoy the seaside. Boy, that sounds nice, although almost anything that’s not in Paris sounds nice to me these days. Hope you get the exact amount of sun you wish for. And I’ll try to make my weekend count somehow. xo ** Misanthrope, I do like the mental image of a sporty Rigby even if the image is elusive. I’m excited too! ** Bill, Hey. Wow, that old. Yeah, I think there are maybe two or possibly three d.l.s from DC’s dawn who are still hanging in here. I remember us meeting at SPEW first too, but … Wow, was that LACE show called Skid Row Slashers? How the hell did that terrible title happen? Yeah, I curated and hosted that event. It was fun but calamity-filled. One of the performers who crucified himself while covered with red ants had to be rushed to the hospital after he came offstage, and the band that closed the show, Imperial Butt Wizards, assaulted the audience in some way or another that I don’t remember that was sufficiently ugly that it almost got me kicked off the curatorial committee. Weirder times. ** Jamie, Hi, pal. Fuck that indeed. Who needs that shit. Oh, man, so sorry you were/are under the weather to that degree, but happy it wasn’t a trendy Covid thing at least. I’m alright. Been better, been worse, you know how it is. Yes, everything is about next Wednesday at the moment. Meeting anyone for a drink that doesn’t involve take out coffee and sitting in a park or on a bus bench sounds way wild to me. Go nuts. I hope your day puts the love in lovely. xoxo, me. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, it seemed sad to leave that post dead and erased from existence. I’m not normal, but the dizzy thing is less full-time, which I’ll take. My love got a little carried away by my dark ride facade fondness yesterday, but … c’est la vie. You’d be amazed, or probably not, by how many diaper slaves I have to weed through every month, and their profile texts are almost always so goo-goo-gaa-gaa icky. However, your love sounds very discrete about his diaper, which I greatly appreciate. To give you a very early preview of June’s slave post-in-progress, love that “want[s] to be Ur and ur dog’s daily full service toilet. Can that be my only sustenance? maybe some vitamens. like seriously can U turn off the water to all the toilets in the house?”, G.** Steve Erickson, I can imagine the benefit from taking LSD if I was on my deathbed. I mean, what do you have to lose at that point. I’m glad your awful day was eclipsed by a productive and okay one. Hope that trajectory is the trend. Everyone, Here’s Steve:’My review of the lame thriller PROFILE, now getting a theatrical release in the US because of pandemic cinema scarcity, was published today.’ I highly recommend ‘Sisters with Transistors’, if you haven’t seen it. I’m not sure when the Wake Island episode will air. I guess he’ll tell me on Sunday. ** David Ehrenstein, Those quotes are so, so you. ** Gus Cali Girls, Hey, Gus! Yes, I went into a California Girls wormhole recently and very happily, need I add. Oh, wow, you saw that Jess Johnson and Simon Ward piece. Very cool. Maybe it’ll get up here, or that’s a hope. I’m okay, and, yes, will be more than okay next Wednesday when Paris becomes more than a pretty, impenetrable facade again. And you can bet my eyes are on the French amusement park restart updates. Mid-June, it seems. You know me so well. I hope your world is all open-armed and inviting and of that good stuff. How are you? Are you working on anything? Take care, and thank you so much for that much appreciated wormhole! ** Jack Skelley, They should make me a state. Lord knows I’m in a state. Nice Roky quote, man. I can tell from way over here that Friday has your name on it, so luxuriate accordingly. Love, me. ** Okay. My feast for your senses today involves the films of Hiroshi Teshigahara, best known out west for his classic ‘Woman in the Dunes’ but with much more great stuff up his art’s sleeve, as I hope you will discover. See you tomorrow.

* (restored)
—-
For the past five years I’ve kept a journal on the computer and inside the journal (among other things) I write down passages from books, movies, television, conversations—basically any piece of language I think is beautiful and worth remembering. I don’t categorize the quotations as I’ve done below but I thought it might make for more manageable and pleasurable browsing, which I suggest you do. Also, if you’d like to add any quotations or passages about anything, please do. I would love it. My eyes are always peeled and they are never satisfied. Enjoy.

 

Music

(“Study for Big Hummingbird, 2004” by Fred Tomaselli)

“Birds don’t sing, they explain. Only people sing.” – Kenneth Koch

“The kind of music I want to continue hearing after I’m dead is the kind that makes me think I’ll be capable of hearing it then.” – Sarah Manguso, “Hell”

According to the physician and writer, Oliver Sacks, even the most amnesiac people remember music.

“Whatever is too stupid to say can be sung.” – Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

“I believe your spine responds to music in a way that it might not respond to visuals. That sound can reach inside you in a very primal way. I like to create these sonic resorts that people can walk into and never leave their chair.” – Tori Amos

“You just pick a chord, go twang, and you’ve got music.” – Sid Vicious

 

Cats

“There is a sheet of paper in Windsor covered with pen-and-ink sketches of cats in various degrees of detail, obviously done from life…evidence of remarkable powers of observation and rapidity of execution. But in the middle of all these cats appears a little dragon (one does not notice it at first, because of its feline pose). Leonardo could not resist the urge, at some point, to let the pen run away with him for a few minutes.” – From Leonardo: The Artist and the Man by Serge Bramly

“Cats are filled with music; when they die the fiddle-makers take out the music and make fiddles.” – Mark Twain

“Cats live in loneliness then die like falling rain.” – From Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space

“Pet a cat history ceases.” – Old saying

“I’ve witnessed a cat orgy. On my way home from work one night, I saw five or six cats mounting each other, stacked like those ancient Indian paintings where the horse is formed of copulating lovers, while four or five other cats sat around in a circle and watched, mewing.” – Anonymous

“One cat just leads to another.” – Ernest Hemingway

 

Poetry

“[Poetry] should burn the blood like a poultice of broken glass.” – Federico Garcia Lorca

“Poetry is the green grass that grows up through the cracks of the cold paving stones of thought.” – Roberto Calasso

“A person needs to precision of a poet and the passion of a scientist.” – Vladimir Nabokov

“I like poems that keep some secrets, that walk the line between explicit utterance and whispers. Not only do I prefer that sense of mystery in the poems I read, I like it when my own poems do that for me: reveal enough to make me wonder, but also let me twist a little in the wind.” – Laura Kasischeke

From the Thursday, February 1, 2007 episode of The Colbert Report:

“People are often surprised to find I have a sensitive side. And I’m not just talking about my back covered in bedsores. I loves me sleep. And as a sensitive man, it was time I told you about the most poetic fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

[Cue strings, harps, sprinkly-sparkly sounds; image of a couple silhouetted against a sunset on a beach, an alpine mountaintop, a sunflower and sunflower buds, reeds shifting in the breeze on a coast before an ocean sunset; text in hyper-curly cursive font: “The Most Poetic F@#king Thing I’ve Ever Heard”]

It’s hamisaratoides heiroglyphica, a newly discovered moth that, quote, ‘alights on the neck of a sleeping magpie and drinks the bird’s tears.’

I’ve never heard of anything more deserving of rhyme. It’s right up there with the greatest works of Byron, Shelley, and that extraordinary young man from Nantucket.

Sorry, Raven, now you’re only second on my list of all-time most poetic birds.

[Cut to chart]

All-Time Most Poetic Birds
1. Magpie
2. Raven
3. Mourning Dove
4. Nightingale
5. Turquoise-Browed Motmot

[Cut back to Colbert]

Turquoise-browed motmot, ball’s in your court.

Because I’ve heard of unicorns galloping to the moon on rainbow-covered bridges paved with baby’s dreams.

But moths that drink the tears of sleeping magpies? That’s the most poetic fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

[Repeat segment-title montage]

And that’s our show, ladies and gentlemen. Good night.”

“Suppose you want to get an experience into words so that it is permanently there, as it would be in a painting—so that every time you read what you wrote, you reexperienced it. Suppose you want to say something so that it is right and beautiful—even though you may not understand exactly why. Or suppose words excite you—the way stone excites a sculptor—and inspire you to use them in a new way. And that for these or other reasons you like writing because of the way it makes you think or because of what it helps you to understand. These are some of the reasons poets write poetry.” – Kenneth Koch, “On Reading Poetry”

 

God

(“Eye-Balloon, 1887” by Odilon Redon)

“I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.” – Jules Renard

“Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.” – Mark Twain

“I realized that the aliens had taken me to Heaven, or someplace like it. I spoke to God, and it was a gigantic shining eyeball butterfly with a synthesized voice. There I learnt that I was an agent fighting for the forces of good against the forces of evil, and that there was a war of sorts going on between Heaven and Hell. What exactly my role in this war was, I do not know, as they were vague and abstract. I also found out that God is a huge fan of Tron.” – James Champagne, Confusion

“What will you do, God, when I die?” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“God hides things by putting them near us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When Moses conversed with God, he asked, “Lord, where shall I seek You?”
God answered, “Among the brokenhearted.”
Moses continued, “But, Lord, no heart could be more despairing than mine.”
And God replied, “Then I am where you are.”
– Abu’l Fayd Al-Misri

 

Sex

(“Untitled, 1946, plate 1 for Histoire de L’oeil” by Hans Bellmer)

“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” – Oscar Wilde

“What good are intestines if you can’t have sex with them?” – Jeffery Dahmer, from the “Hell on Earth 2006” episode of South Park

“The sexual intercourse of angels is a conflagration of the whole being.” – W.B. Yeats

“There’s something about opium that goes very well with lesbianism.” – from Lost Girls written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Melinda Gebbie

“Oh God, I’m sorry! The doctors didn’t understand how it happened! How you had been poisoned by radioactivity! How your body slowly became riddled with cancer! I did. I was… I am filled with radioactive blood. And not just blood. Every fluid. Touching me… loving me… Loving me killed you! Like a spider, crawling up inside your body and laying a thousand eggs of cancer… I killed you.” – Spiderman, from Spiderman: Reign #3 apologizing to the corpse of Mary Jane for killing her with his radioactive cum

Their Sex Life
by A.R. Ammons

One failure on
Top of another.

“Sex should be like having a glass of water.” – Lenin

 

Outer Space

“Not stars, but suns, great globes of light…and not these alone, but the breaking apart of the nearest globes, and the protoplasmic flesh that flamed blackly outward to join together and for that eldritch, hideous horror from outer space, that spawn of the blackness of primal time, that tentacled amorphous monster which was the lurker at the threshold, whose mask was as a congeries of iridescent globes, the noxious Yog-Sothoth who froths as primal slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nether-most outposts of space and time!” – H.P. Lovecraft, The Lurker at the Threshold

“SASKIA: My nightmare. I had it again last night.
REX: That you’re inside a golden egg and you can’t get out, and you float all alone through space forever.
SASKIA: Yes, the loneliness is unbearable. No. This time there was another golden egg flying through space. And if we were to collide, it’d all be over.”
– from The Vanishing (1988)

Here is a fascinating interview with the poet Albert Goldbarth about his extensive collection of “1950s outer space stuff” as well as manual typewriters:

He says, “I suppose one of the nice things about the toy spaceships—and in some sense the toy robots, too—is that no matter how imaginative or surreal they are, they’re made, by definition, out of the real material they would exist in if they existed in our actual world. You’re looking at a tin spaceship, opposed to a plastic spaceship or a carved wooden spaceship. You’re looking at a tin robot, and they have the look of working models, something someone might actually stumble over if they walked outside and saw this spaceship parked at the curb. So at one and the same time you have this fantasy object that never could exist, made of a material that we choose to believe has an actual existence in some other nearby universe.”

“I’d wish for a faster than light traveling spaceship, at any moment a mechanism can make the ship invisible, in essence leaving me floating in space, also the space ship is full of faery princesses who bloom out of flowers, mature to teenage hood in a few hours, crave sex, then die or turn in butterflies, also the spaceship has botanical garden full of powerful hallucinogenic plants. Oh, and also I can live forever, or at least until I don’t want to.” – Jose’s third wish from his genie in a lamp

In Stephen King’s introduction to Michel Houellebecq’s H.P. Lovecraft, Against the World, Against Life, King suggests Cthulhu represents “a gigantic, tentacle-equipped, killer vagina from beyond space and time.”

“Perhaps, on your way home, someone will pass you in the dark, and you will never know it… for they will be from outer space.” – Criswell, from Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

 

Loneliness

“People claim that love is the deepest feeling but don’t believe it. Loneliness is the most affecting of human emotions. Nothing makes life more vivid. If you wish to live in the moment, I recommend intense loneliness.” – George Sprott (1894-1975)

“I want to earn someone’s loyalty. I want to love someone so selflessly that he would never even think about going away. I suppose that’s what most people want. In fact, that’s probably why we don’t kill one another all the time. Everyone’s just a little too lonely to risk it.” – Dennis Cooper, from Guide

“Is escape…too difficult? Evidently, for (1) the walls are strong and I am weak, and (2) I love my walls…yet some have escaped…With an effort we lift our gaze from the walls upward and ask God to take the walls away. We look back down and they have disappeared…We turn back upward at once with love to the Person who has made us so happy, and desire to serve Him. Our state of mind is that of a bridegroom, that of a bride. We are married, we who have been so lonely heretofore.” – John Berryman

“I’m so lonely in this ghost town.” – Kathy Acker

“[Paul Eluard] was worn out. I had convinced him, had dragged him, a Frenchman to the core, to that distant land, and there, the same day we buried Jose Clemente Orozco, I came down with a dangerous case of phlebitis that tied me to my bed for four months. Paul Eluard felt lonely, lonely and in darkness, as helpless as a blind explorer. He didn’t know anyone, no doors were thrown open to him. The loss of his wife weighed heavily on him; he felt all alone here, without love. He would say to me: ‘We have to see life together with someone, to share every fragment of life with someone. My solitude is unreal, my solitude is killing me.’” – Pablo Neruda

“The port from which I set out was the port of my loneliness.” – Henry James

 

Ghosts

(“Henri Robin and a Specter, 1863” by Eugène Thiébault)

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.” – Guillermo del Toro

“Ghosts only come to those who look for them.” – Holeti

“Ectoplasm, or teleplasm, as it is sometimes called, is a mysterious protoplasmic substance that streams out of the bodies of mediums,” wrote séance investigator Julien J. Proskauer in The Dead Do Not Talk. “This is manipulated by the spirits in order that they may materialize; hence, in a sense, they use it to shape themselves into a corporeal form.”

“You can only listen to so much spectral knocking before you want to look under the table.” – Harry Houdini

“It was the day of ghosts. Still is.” – Kathy Acker

“Happy ghosts live pleasant lives full of good food and beautiful clothes.” – from A Discussion of Ghosts

 

Fruit

(“Fruit Delight, 2002” by Debbie Norman)

“The skin broke quick, and the flesh, meaty and wet, slid inside my mouth, the nearly embarrassing free-for-all lusciousness of ripe fruit.” – Aimee Bender, Willful Creatures

“Water the root, enjoy the fruit.” – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“When they ask for apples, give them pears.” – Nicanor Parra’s advice to Charles Simic

A comic strip by Chris Ware: Rocket Sam has crash landed on an unknown planet, which is enshrouded in darkness. For ten years Sam tries to grow berries but because it is night out no tree bears fruit. Sam’s only friend is the planet’s moon, which smiles down on him affectionately. Sam is the moon’s only friend, too. But after ten years the sun comes out and the moon disappears. The moon is very sad to leave Sam but looks forward to when they are reunited. When the sun comes, Sam’s fruit suddenly ripens. But it turns out that on the planet the fruit is murderous. A berry opens its jaws and fatally bites Sam on the neck. All the while the moon is crying, missing Sam, not knowing that Sam is already dead and he will never see him again.

“These apricots and these peaches make me and to come water in mouth.” – Jose Da Fonseca & Pedro Carolino, English as She is Spoke

 

Love

(“The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Me, and Senor Xolotl, 1949” by Frida Kahlo)

“True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.” – François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

“Let us share eternity in order to make it transitory.” – Maurice Blanchot

“Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have.” – Truman Capote

“Those who hate most fervently must have once loved deeply; those who want to deny the world must have once embraced what they now set on fire.” – Kurt Tucholsky

“You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.” – Unknown

“That desert of loneliness and recrimination that men call love.” – Samuel Beckett

 

Proverbs

(“Forest Detail, 2003” by Chris MacWhinnie)

“The forest is the poor man’s overcoat.” – New England Proverb

“If you want comfort you should give up learning; if you desire to acquire learning you should abandon comfort. How can a person who wants comfort acquire learning? And how can a person enjoy comfort who wants to learn?” – Sanskrit proverb

“If rich people could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.” – Yiddish proverb

“If you believe everything you read, better not read.” – Japanese proverb

“The nagging of a wife is like the endless dripping of water.” – Hebrew Bible, proverb 19.13

“The worst things: to be in bed and sleep not, to want for one who comes not, to try to please and please not.” – Egyptian proverb

“If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.” – German proverb

“If it’s drowning you’re after, don’t torment yourself in shallow water.” – Irish proverb

“If you want to love without hurting somebody, learn to walk through the snow without leaving tracks.” – Turkish proverb

“When the ax comes into the forest, the trees think: ‘at least the handle is one of ours.’” – Turkish proverb

 

Writing

“The brain is the ultimate storytelling machine, and consciousness is the ultimate story.” – Richard Powers

“All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself— though, thank god I had never committed them to paper—I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don’t believe in that at all anymore.” – Jamaica Kincaid

“Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted.” – E.M. Forster

“Within restraint lies great intensity.” – William Butler Yeats

“A chemist can say how atoms bond. A molecular biologist can say how a mutagen disrupts a chemical bond and causes a mutation. A geneticist can identify a mutation and develop a working screen for it. Clergy and ethicists can debate the social consequences of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. A journalist can interview two parents in a Chicago suburb who are wrestling with their faith while seeking to bear a child free of inheritable disease. But only a novelist can put all these actors and dozens more into the shared story they all tell, and make that story rearrange some readers’ viscera.” – Richard Powers

“A novel is a basket that carries inside it a dreamworld we wish to keep forever alive…” – Orhan Pamuk

“Fiction, as a vehicle, has often been used by occultists… Ideas not acceptable to the everyday mind, limited by prejudice and spoiled by a ‘bread-winning’ education, can be made to slip past the censor, and by means of the novel, the poem, the short story be effectually planted in soil which would otherwise reject or destroy them.” – Kenneth Grant

 

Life

“Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.” – Georges Bataille

“Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer demoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.” – Arthur Jermyn

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell

“By now she knew that this life, despite all its pain, could be lived, that one must travel through it slowly; passing from the sunset to the penetrating odor of the stalks; from the infinite calm of the plain to the singing of a bird lost in the sky; yes, going from the sky to that deep reflection of it that she felt within her own breast, as an alert and living presence.” – Andrei Makine, from Dreams of My Russian Summers

“Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.” – Oscar Wilde

 

Art

(“Sucks to be Her, 2004” by Zack Hennessy)

“Art sucks but something else is great.” – Antonio

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.” – Rainer Maria Rilke.

“Art takes us inside other minds, like a space capsule swooping down across Jupiter while the passengers can see strangeness and newness through the portholes, meanwhile enjoying all the comforts of Standard Temperature and Pressure. Of all the arts, although photography presents best, painting and music convey best, and sculpture looms best, I believe that literature articulates best.” – William T. Vollmann, from the section “The Rhapsody of Desserts” from the essay “American Writing Today: A Diagnosis of the Disease”

“The greatest art form is a plane ticket. With it you go there and have as much as your senses can carry. All you have to do is train those senses to carry as much as they can.” – Andrei Codrescu, “Mardi Gras in New Orleans”

“Nature is a haunted house—but Art—is a house that tries to be haunted.” – Emily Dickinson

“We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion. Our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” – Henry James

“The painter is condemned to please. By no means can he transform a painting into an object of aversion. The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds from the field where it is planted, but the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors. Actual torture can also be interesting, but in general that can’t be considered its purpose. Torture takes place for a variety of reasons. In principle its purpose differs little from that of the scarecrow: unlike art, it is offered to sight in order to repel us from the horror it puts on display. The painted torture, conversely, does not attempt to reform us. Art never takes on itself the work of the judge. It does not interest us in some horror for its own sake: that is not even imaginable. […] When horror is subject to the transfiguration of an authentic art, it becomes a pleasure, an intense pleasure, but a pleasure all the same.” – Georges Bataille, from “The Cruel Practice of Art”

 

Death

“Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.” – Unknown

“I had always expected death would have no spatial qualities, but it turns out that death is a little room. I had similarly anticipated that death would involve the eradication of every last trace of the self. But it seems that death will bring the multiplication of the self. In death there will be more self to deal with, and thus death will be even more difficult than life.” – Alistair McCartney, from a dream

“This is the most uncomfortable coffin I’ve ever been in.” – Bela Lugosi, from Tim Burton’s Ed Wood (1994)

“All deaths, in the end, are drownings in the body.” – James Richardson

“I’d rather take the air in a graveyard.” – Samuel Beckett

“Nobody owns life, but anybody who can pick up a frying pan owns death.” – William Burroughs

“My speech is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it has suddenly appeared between me, as I speak, and the being I address: it is there between us as the distance that separates us, but this distance is also what prevents us from being separated, because it contains the condition for all understanding. Death alone allows me to grasp what I want to attain; it exists in words as the only way they can have meaning. Without death, everything would sink into absurdity and nothingness.” – Maurice Blanchot, from The Work of Fire

“While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.”
– Edgar Allan Poe, from “The City in the Sea”

 

Cinema

“A duck is one of the most beautiful animals. If you study a duck, you’ll see certain things: the bill is a certain texture and a certain length; the head is a certain shape; the texture of the bill is very smooth and it has quite precise detail and reminds you somewhat of the legs (the legs are a little more rubbery). The body is big, softer, and the texture isn’t so detailed. The key to the whole duck is the eye and where it is placed. It’s like a little jewel. It’s so perfectly placed to show off a jewel – right in the middle of the head, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very well secluded and set out. When you’re working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it’s there, it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s just fantastic.” – David Lynch

“I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.” – Werner Herzog

“Interviewer: What do you think of [Errol Morris’s] approach to the documentary film?

Werner Herzog: Thank God he does it that way, because I’ve always postulated a new position in documentary filmmaking—but let’s say filmmaking generally, because I’m sick and tired of what I see on television. And I’m also sick and tired of cinema vérité, because it confounds fact and truth. And they claim to have the truth and I keep saying, “This is only the accountant’s truth.” And of course you always influence your subject. There’s no such thing as cinema vérité per se. You’ve got to be very careful… And you must seek out and search for deeper strata of truth that are possible, for example, in great poetry. When reading a great poem… you sense there’s a deep, deep truth inherent in it, and you can never name it. It’s the same thing as what I call the “Ecstatic Truth.” An Ecstatic Truth is possible in documentaries and of course in my feature films—I’ve always striven for that. It is something deeply inherent, where you recognize yourself as a human being again, where you find images that have been dormant inside of you for so many years and all of a sudden it becomes visible and understandable for you—you read the world differently, your perceptions change.”

“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life, but a piece of cake.” – Alfred Hitchcock

“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.” – Robert Bresson

 

Psychedelic Drugs

(“Kiss Kiss, 2006” by Robbie)

“I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.” – Alexandro Jodorowsky, 1971

“As far as your question about the possible emptiness of ideas/knowledge gained through drugs, absolutely not for me. Drugs are just collaborators with you. I think my body gets plenty of credit for what I learned from drugs, albeit not total credit. I also think, as I’ve said before, that my body can do it without drugs now, maybe partly because the drugs taught my body how to reveal things that were hidden before, true. Actually, I seem to be failing myself completely at the moment, but I don’t think drugs would give me the answers. They’ve already given the answers. The answers are: create them yourself.” – Dennis Cooper

“All the vegetable sedatives and narcotics, all the euphoric that grow on trees, the hallucinogens that ripen in berries or can be squeezed from roots—all, without exception, have been known and systematically used by human beings from time immemorial.” – Aldous Huxley, 1954

“Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. When you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope; he goes away and works on what he has seen.” – Alan Watts, 1962

—-“Indeed, the psychedelic can pull the old switcheroo, turning on you after starting out on a soft and beatific note. Such an about-face may seem like a trick or something more sinister, a function of some hellish private twilight zone. (Aptly enough, Rod Serling himself, in a circa 1970 public-service spot, warned youngsters that the LSD capsule he held between thumb and forefinger could be an express ticket to the sort of turmoil and alienation he immortalized in his classic television show.
—-Just as you might feel baptized and cleansed by a beatific archetype, so too can you feel charred and singed by a negative one, as if the mark of Cain has been branded into you. In the film version of Paddy Chavefsky’s Altered States [1980], the sensory-deprived protagonist Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) has a horrifying hallucination of himself nailed to a cross with a satanic goat’s head over his own—flailing vainly to break out of the damnation and the suffocation, as he drifts off through the infinity of the cosmos. Although the vision was not drug-induced, it echoed one of my own that had been, and thus had my heart pounding when I first saw it on the big screen.
—-The sublime side of the psychedelic experience is amply extolled in stories that relay the soaring joys of kissing the creatures of the sun, copulating with the galaxy, cleansing one’s callused heart in the clear blue stream of the Redeemer’s gaze, and other elations. For sure, the psychedelic can offer glimpses of heavenly radiance, but also of its shadows: awful plummets through flaming caves of pain, the moral vertigo that rips through your soul like some heinous phallic-vein out of Alien [1979] and tries to snuff you out. ‘…I cam loose from the sky,’ writes Ken Kesey in a story from Demon Box [1986], describing a steep fall he took from a chemical high, vexed by ‘the chilly hiss of decaying energy.’ The psychedelic can fray the tissues that hold your ego and self-esteem together, allowing you to sink into the loneliest, most inhospitable hole in your being, where you may find yourself cascading helplessly into the unholy depths of the human mind.” – From the chapter entitled “Basic Features of the Psychedelic Experience” from Tripping: An Anthology of True-Life Psychedelic Adventures edited by Charles Hayes

 

The Devil

“The Devil always shits on the biggest heap.” – German proverb

“It simply goes without saying that the falling of a human hair must matter more to the devil than to God, since the devil really loses that hair and God does not.” – Franz Kafka from his diary on July 9, 1912

“Interviewer: Is there a moment in one of your plays that you really didn’t know was there?

David Mamet: Yes. I wrote this play called Bobby Gould in Hell. Greg Mosher did it on a double bill with a play by Shel Silverstein over at Lincoln Center. Bobby Gould is consigned to hell, and he has to be interviewed to find out how long he’s going to spend there. The Devil is called back from a fishing trip to interview Bobby Gould. And so the Devil is there, the Assistant Devil is there, and Bobby Gould. And the Devil finally says to Bobby Gould, ‘You’re a very bad man.’ And Bobby Gould says, ‘Nothing’s black and white.’ And the Devil says, ‘Nothing’s black and white, nothing’s black and white—what about a panda? What about a panda, you dumb fuck! What about a fucking panda!’ And when Greg directed it, he had the assistant hold up a picture of a panda, kind of pan it 180 degrees to the audience at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. That was the best moment I’ve ever seen in any of my plays.” – from a 1997 interview in The Paris Review

The devil “licks everything before killing it.” – Tomaz Salamun, “To Have a Friend”

“In time of war the devil makes more room in hell.” – A German saying

“The devil knows more from being old than from being the devil.” – Spanish proverb

 

Dreams

(The March 11, 1906 page of Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay)

“We are turning electric dreams into reality.” – Hawkwind

“We are like the spider. We weave our life then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.” – from The Upsanishads translated by Alistair Shearer and Peter Russell

“But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?” – H.P. Lovecraft

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” – Anais Nin

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.” – Werner Herzog on Incident at Loch Ness

 

Dogs

(“A painting of an alien with a dog licking its face” by Antonio)

A dog’s philosophy: If you can’t fuck it, piss on it.

“Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other!—we to the rapture of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch!” – William James, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”

“There’s your dog; your dog’s dead. But where’s the thing that made it move? It had to be something, didn’t it?” – A mourning pet owner in the film Gates of Heaven (1978)

“The dog barking at the moon is the only poet.” – Charles Simic, “Folk Songs”

Joke: Where do you find a dog with no legs? Right where you left him.

 

Grief

“Beauty does not lose its allure under the spell of grief.” – Andrew Holleran

“Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it.” – Denise Levertov

“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.” – William Faulkner, the last sentence of The Wild Palms

“I had anticipated the shadows of the towers might fade while I was slowly sorting through my grief and putting into boxes.” – Art Spiegelman from In the Shadow of No Towers

“Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of ‘waves.’ Eric Lindemann, who was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1940s and interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a famous 1944 study: ‘sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from twenty minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing, and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power, and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain.’” – Joan Didion, from The Year of Magical Thinking

“Do not be daunted by the world’s grief. Walk humbly, now. Love mercy, now. Do justly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” – from The Talmud

“Grief is nature’s most powerful aphrodisiac.” – Chazz Reinhold, from Wedding Crashers
—-

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Ian, Hi. Yes, I’m always having to tell people here ‘two n’s’. You sound pretty good indeed between weather-related pleasantness, fine reading and novel advancing. Cool, looking forward to the interview’s drop. I hope your first vax is as uneventful as mine. I should really try to make an effort to keep up with baseball this season, but that’s not exactly a cakewalk being over here. Hm. Go you! Take it easy. ** Misanthrope, Oh, okay, about Rigby. The last time I saw him was with you in Paris, and him hiking is almost the last thing I would have imagined him doing with any realism. Good for him. Enjoy the heat of the excitement of the book collaboration. process. I can ‘hear’ it in your typing. ** The Black Prince, Hail, prince of darkness! I’m happy you liked it, and, of course, steal away. A favorite? Hm. I really like the LSD fountain, and I love Ron Nagle’s ceramics. Yep, two day countdown to the escorts. I suspect that the relative scarcity of the boy posts is a key to their success. They’re also a lot more work to make than they probably appear to be, so … I’m all right. You sound good. Things seem to be easing here, and we’re just under a week away from our long, long awaited semi-reopening. Have fun. ** Dominik, Hi!!!!! I think the dizziness is slightly better, and thank you. Yeah, I mean the old Louvre, …  it’s had its time in the sun. I think that Puppy Orgy Acid Party would take care of my dizziness problem or make it a million times worse maybe. Ha ha. Love making the facade of every store and shop in Budapest and Paris look like this, G. ** Bill, Very pleased to have de-grumped you. I love Ron Nagle’s ceramics. I want one bad. Also, back when he was a cult psychedelic-ish rock ‘n’ roll star back in the late 60s, he made one of the best faux-anti-marijuana songs, ‘Marijuana Hell’ ** Jeff J, Thanks, Jeff! Balm! Oh, man, so sorry to hear about the family health stuff. Sending toughness-infused vibes. The Skelley book is great. No, I know nothing about that Ashbery book. Whoa! That is extremely exciting news! I’ll see what I can find out. Working on? I’m a bit in-between. I’m dying to finish the little novella I co-wrote with Zac, but he’s away, and I can’t do anything until he returns. Gisele wants to do a version of her new Walser piece in English, and the translation is just awful, and she’s asked me to refine and improve it, and I guess I’ll do that. I have to write a text for the catalog of an exhibition that includes a couple of my GIF novels. Puce Mary just got to Paris for a residency, and we’re going to work with her on early ideas for the sound score of our new film, which she’s composing. That, and doing early ‘I Wished’ promo is kind of the story. I’m recording Wake the Island podcast on Sunday, and I’m looking forward to that. What constitutes your current work, and how’s it going? ** David Ehrenstein, RIP Norman Lloyd. ** Jamie, Hi, Jamie! I’m fairly okay, I guess, and you? Thanks about the psych post. Me too. I dream of doing psychedelics again, but I think they would make me obsess about my age and mortality and stuff, and that’s too dangerous a prospect. Yes, we start our reopening next Wednesday. I hope it’s not too soon. I think everyone here would literally lose their minds if the lockdown went on any longer. I’m kind of waiting for Wednesday like a kid pre-Xmas morning. Lots of love to you too, buddy! ** Jack Skelley, Jay-Ssssssss! Thank you ever so much again for making that rockin’ smash hit of a post, man! Through the roof! Love, me. ** Right. Today you get a lovely and very old — like 14 years old! — guest-post made for an earlier incarnation of this blog by Vomitingghosts, better known then and now as the writer Matthew Suss. Lotsa wisdom up there. Take advantage, yeah? See you tomorrow.