Alan Davie
(1920 ~)
Alan Davie HRSA 'Alter Mann' Printed by Edinburgh Printmakers © the artist
FOUR SCORE AND TEN
Day of the Little Dog
Alan Davie
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Pier Paolo Pasolini
THE WORKER'S COUGH
I hear the worker coughing down below;
his cough comes up through the ground-floor grating
giving onto my garden, so that it avoids resonating among the plants
touched by the sun on this last morning of good weather. He,
the worker, down below, intent at his job, coughs now and then
pretty sure no one's hearing it. It's a seasonal sickness
but his cough's not a good one; it's worse than a flu.
He endures the illness, takes care of it, I imagine, like we
did when we were kids. Life for him remains decidedly uncomfortable;
no rest awaits him at home after work,
exactly like it is with us poor or almost poor guys.
See, life seemed to us to consist entirely of that poverty
in which one doesn't even have the right —naturally —
to the quiet use of a john or the solitude of a bed;
and when illness comes it's received heroically:
a worker's always 18, even if he has kids
bigger than him, ones new to those heroism's.
In short, in those wracking coughs
the tragic meaning of this beautiful October sun is revealed.
1969. Translated by Jack Hirschman
_____________________________
from In Danger
A Pasolini Anthology\edited, with an introduction
by Jack Hirschman
(City Lights Books 2110)
Monday, October 1, 2012
EARTH ~
ORDINARY EARTH
Today I sat on the step stoop at the cabin I built in the woods twelve years ago. A lot has not happened and a lot has happened since then. The helper that worked with me moved away. The twin towers in New York City went down. We lived through a hurricane. A flood. The cabin didn't care, its back to the world. At the dutch door I built and the only door in and where I sit and look to the woods all the woods did was grow, much brush. Right to the door. You sat there and couldn't see much, only the brush. So you thought, often deeply, breathing and feeling the brush at your feet. Years of this. One day I got tired of the brush and no view and took my tools and chain saw for a few days and cleared all the brush. Not only at the cabin site but away from the cabin and up through an old sugar bush. Trees too. Made firewood. The more I cut, the more I cut some more, until I was to the top of the hill, looking back at the cabin through a glade of massive sugar maple trees. The sunlight coated the trees now, so did shadows. It was a splendid work effort. The brush all piled. I went back to sit on the step stoop. The cabin hadn't moved.
[ BA ]
photo © bob arnold
ORDINARY EARTH
Today I sat on the step stoop at the cabin I built in the woods twelve years ago. A lot has not happened and a lot has happened since then. The helper that worked with me moved away. The twin towers in New York City went down. We lived through a hurricane. A flood. The cabin didn't care, its back to the world. At the dutch door I built and the only door in and where I sit and look to the woods all the woods did was grow, much brush. Right to the door. You sat there and couldn't see much, only the brush. So you thought, often deeply, breathing and feeling the brush at your feet. Years of this. One day I got tired of the brush and no view and took my tools and chain saw for a few days and cleared all the brush. Not only at the cabin site but away from the cabin and up through an old sugar bush. Trees too. Made firewood. The more I cut, the more I cut some more, until I was to the top of the hill, looking back at the cabin through a glade of massive sugar maple trees. The sunlight coated the trees now, so did shadows. It was a splendid work effort. The brush all piled. I went back to sit on the step stoop. The cabin hadn't moved.
[ BA ]
photo © bob arnold
Sunday, September 30, 2012
LUCILLE CLIFTON ~
my poem
a love person
from love people
out of the afrikan sun
under the sign of cancer.
whoever see my
midnight smile
seeing star apple and
mango from home.
whoever take me for
a negative thing,
his death be on him
like a skin
and his skin
be his heart's revenge.
.
lucy one-eye
she got her mama's ways.
big round roller
can't cook
can't clean
if that's what you want
you got it world.
lucy one-eye
she sees the world sideways.
word foolish
she say what she don't want
to say, she don't say
what she want to.
lucy one-eye
she won't walk away
from it.
she'll keep on trying
with her crooked look
and her wrinkled ways,
the darling girl.
.
if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up
that reflect odd
aspects of lucy.
if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining
to obscure gods.
if mama
could talk
she would talk
good girl
good girl
good girl
clean up your room.
.
i was born in a hotel,
a maskmaker,
my bones were knit by
a perilous knife.
my skin turned around
at midnight and
i entered the earth in
a woman jar.
i learned the world all
wormside up
and this is my yes
my strong fingers;
i was born in a bed of
good lessons
and it has made me
wise.
.
light
on my mother's tongue
break through her soft
extravagant hip
into life.
lucille
she calls the light,
which was the name
of the grandmother
who wanted by the crossroads
in virginia
and shot the whiteman off his horse,
killing the killer of sons.
light breaks from her life
to her lives . . .
mine already is
an afrikan name.
my poem
a love person
from love people
out of the afrikan sun
under the sign of cancer.
whoever see my
midnight smile
seeing star apple and
mango from home.
whoever take me for
a negative thing,
his death be on him
like a skin
and his skin
be his heart's revenge.
.
lucy one-eye
she got her mama's ways.
big round roller
can't cook
can't clean
if that's what you want
you got it world.
lucy one-eye
she sees the world sideways.
word foolish
she say what she don't want
to say, she don't say
what she want to.
lucy one-eye
she won't walk away
from it.
she'll keep on trying
with her crooked look
and her wrinkled ways,
the darling girl.
.
if mama
could see
she would see
lucy sprawling
limbs of lucy
decorating the
backs of chairs
lucy hair
holding the mirrors up
that reflect odd
aspects of lucy.
if mama
could hear
she would hear
lucysong rolled in the
corners like lint
exotic webs of lucysighs
long lucy spiders explaining
to obscure gods.
if mama
could talk
she would talk
good girl
good girl
good girl
clean up your room.
.
i was born in a hotel,
a maskmaker,
my bones were knit by
a perilous knife.
my skin turned around
at midnight and
i entered the earth in
a woman jar.
i learned the world all
wormside up
and this is my yes
my strong fingers;
i was born in a bed of
good lessons
and it has made me
wise.
.
light
on my mother's tongue
break through her soft
extravagant hip
into life.
lucille
she calls the light,
which was the name
of the grandmother
who wanted by the crossroads
in virginia
and shot the whiteman off his horse,
killing the killer of sons.
light breaks from her life
to her lives . . .
mine already is
an afrikan name.
The Collected Poems of
Lucille Clifton
1965-2010
Boa Editions
2012
edited by
Kevin Young
and Michael S. Glaser
Saturday, September 29, 2012
LOW FIDELITY AMERICANA ~
bacon rind
photo
harry partch
Partch, who died in 1974, is shown playing an instrument he built partly out of wine bottles and hubcaps.
lenny bruce
w/ his wife honey harlowe & their daughter kitty bruce
jack kerouac
charles bukowski
ira hayes
edward abbey
chief seattle
the only known photograph
tom russell & friend
bacon rind
photo
harry partch
Partch, who died in 1974, is shown playing an instrument he built partly out of wine bottles and hubcaps.
lenny bruce
w/ his wife honey harlowe & their daughter kitty bruce
jack kerouac
charles bukowski
ira hayes
edward abbey
chief seattle
the only known photograph
Friday, September 28, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
VOICE ~
Superman artist/performer Kurt Schwitters (Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters), was dead at age 60 on January 8, 1948. He was born and was later buried in Hanover, Germany.
He composed in an exhilarating galaxy of media and genre — Surrealism, Dada, Constructivism, poetry, painting, sculpture, sound, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art. His collages, called "Merz Pictures", made his name.
Merz ABCD
(1928)
Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate (1922–32; a translation of the title is Original Sonata or Primeval Sonata). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters' heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters performed the piece regularly, developing and extending it, until finally publishing his notations for the recital in his last Merz periodical, 1932.
The musician and painter Billy Childish has a Kurt Schwitters poem tattooed on his left buttock. He made a short film on Schwitters's life, titled The Man with Wheels, (1980, directed by Eugean Doyan).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Childish
wikipedia & bob
Kurt Schwitters
Superman artist/performer Kurt Schwitters (Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters), was dead at age 60 on January 8, 1948. He was born and was later buried in Hanover, Germany.
He composed in an exhilarating galaxy of media and genre — Surrealism, Dada, Constructivism, poetry, painting, sculpture, sound, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as installation art. His collages, called "Merz Pictures", made his name.
Merz ABCD
(1928)
Schwitters composed and performed an early example of sound poetry, Ursonate (1922–32; a translation of the title is Original Sonata or Primeval Sonata). The poem was influenced by Raoul Hausmann's poem "fmsbw" which Schwitters' heard recited by Hausmann in Prague, 1921. Schwitters performed the piece regularly, developing and extending it, until finally publishing his notations for the recital in his last Merz periodical, 1932.
The musician and painter Billy Childish has a Kurt Schwitters poem tattooed on his left buttock. He made a short film on Schwitters's life, titled The Man with Wheels, (1980, directed by Eugean Doyan).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Childish
wikipedia & bob
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
SPOKEN ~
Florence Margaret Smith, known as "Stevie Smith" (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist. Born in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. She was called "Peggy" within her family, but acquired the name "Stevie" as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donaghue.
__________________
__________________
Novels ~
Novel on Yellow Paper (Cape, 1936)
Over the Frontier (Cape 1938)
The Holiday (Chapman and Hall, 1949)
Poetry ~
This Englishwoman (1937)
A Good Time Was Had By All (Cape, 1937)
Tender Only to One (Cape, 1938)
Mother, What Is Man? (Cape, 1942)
Harold's Leap (Cape, 1950)
Not Waving but Drowning (Deutsch, 1957)
Selected Poems (Longmans, 1962) includes 17 previously unpublished poems
The Frog Prince (Longmans, 1966) includes 69 previously unpublished poems
The Best Beast (Longmans, 1969)
Two in One (Longmans, 1971) reprint of Selected Poems and The Frog Prince
Scorpion and Other Poems (Longmans, 1972)
Collected Poems (Allen Lane, 1975)
Selected Poems (Penguin, 1978)
New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions, 1988)
Also ~
Some Are More Human Than Others: A Sketch-Book (Gaberbocchus, 1958)
Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (Virago, 1984)
"The Necessity of Not Believing" (Gemini No. 5, Spring 1958, Vol. 2, No. 1)
Stevie Smith
Florence Margaret Smith, known as "Stevie Smith" (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971) was an English poet and novelist. Born in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. She was called "Peggy" within her family, but acquired the name "Stevie" as a young woman when she was riding in the park with a friend who said that she reminded him of the jockey Steve Donaghue.
__________________
Not Waving but Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
~ Stevie Smith
New Selected Poems
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
~ Stevie Smith
New Selected Poems
(New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)
__________________
Novels ~
Novel on Yellow Paper (Cape, 1936)
Over the Frontier (Cape 1938)
The Holiday (Chapman and Hall, 1949)
Poetry ~
This Englishwoman (1937)
A Good Time Was Had By All (Cape, 1937)
Tender Only to One (Cape, 1938)
Mother, What Is Man? (Cape, 1942)
Harold's Leap (Cape, 1950)
Not Waving but Drowning (Deutsch, 1957)
Selected Poems (Longmans, 1962) includes 17 previously unpublished poems
The Frog Prince (Longmans, 1966) includes 69 previously unpublished poems
The Best Beast (Longmans, 1969)
Two in One (Longmans, 1971) reprint of Selected Poems and The Frog Prince
Scorpion and Other Poems (Longmans, 1972)
Collected Poems (Allen Lane, 1975)
Selected Poems (Penguin, 1978)
New Selected Poems of Stevie Smith (New Directions, 1988)
Also ~
Some Are More Human Than Others: A Sketch-Book (Gaberbocchus, 1958)
Me Again: Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith (Virago, 1984)
"The Necessity of Not Believing" (Gemini No. 5, Spring 1958, Vol. 2, No. 1)
Monday, September 24, 2012
Sunday, September 23, 2012
NORTHERN ~
there's an exhilaration going on here — a combined landscape love and two people love in a new rental car, borrowed for four days, let loose and sweeping a landscape these passengers have returned to after an absence of decades. little has changed, unlike where they have come from and will return to. the territory is too far away from the mainstream and too extreme in its properties to be easily changed — see how the highway, built for and by farmers and woodsmen and large families and isolation, sweeps with the lay of the land, each building needed and cared for or else long gone. this is a no-fooling place, and we are self-guiding through, passing through, having been here before, exactly the same way: of love for one another and for the earth but hurdling at large speed through large landscape. for days and weeks and months and years before this moment we have been on-foot, traveling. now this. tense changes in the text will be unavoidable. someone watching this knows exactly where we are, but I'm calling it earth since we are caught in a matter of time
the film began on the far northern reaches between two states, finally stopping for gas, traveling since the middle of the night, climbing climbing to this spot, where like I say we've been here before. a corner market and not much else, still a pay phone, big old fashioned coca-cola sign white and red lettered, a much older sign rusting and saying even more of what this place once was. a beatup car pulls in next to us, solo driver, a pit-stop with a cd or tape left going, window cracked, the driver grunts getting out and will grunt when he stoops to get back in behind the wheel, pearl jam is playing. he's local — you can tell from his clothes, his walk, his familiarity, and the car has been diminished to short runs. we have pearl jam somewhere with us and so from this driver and stranger we take up his music as we continue our journey, over a landscape that will be slowly but surely disappearing, although it hasn't that much in the four decades since we've been away
no one is about where we are, some of these buildings we pass may be abandoned, though someone has run up that flag, and someone is caring to mow that cemetery, it's saturday and people are home, good size trucks are parked in dooryards and we're still early birds. where's this highway going? it's wilderness and expansive tracts of water, lakes, ponds, bogs, swamps, the famous pointed fir trees of another author's book title. and what will keep it all sustained? the landscape will do quite fine without us, thank you, but what of this highway and where it is all headed to? there is an exhilaration in the love and to the land, the music brought along but inspired by its use from another and taken from his car into this car, the camera is running
there's an exhilaration going on here — a combined landscape love and two people love in a new rental car, borrowed for four days, let loose and sweeping a landscape these passengers have returned to after an absence of decades. little has changed, unlike where they have come from and will return to. the territory is too far away from the mainstream and too extreme in its properties to be easily changed — see how the highway, built for and by farmers and woodsmen and large families and isolation, sweeps with the lay of the land, each building needed and cared for or else long gone. this is a no-fooling place, and we are self-guiding through, passing through, having been here before, exactly the same way: of love for one another and for the earth but hurdling at large speed through large landscape. for days and weeks and months and years before this moment we have been on-foot, traveling. now this. tense changes in the text will be unavoidable. someone watching this knows exactly where we are, but I'm calling it earth since we are caught in a matter of time
the film began on the far northern reaches between two states, finally stopping for gas, traveling since the middle of the night, climbing climbing to this spot, where like I say we've been here before. a corner market and not much else, still a pay phone, big old fashioned coca-cola sign white and red lettered, a much older sign rusting and saying even more of what this place once was. a beatup car pulls in next to us, solo driver, a pit-stop with a cd or tape left going, window cracked, the driver grunts getting out and will grunt when he stoops to get back in behind the wheel, pearl jam is playing. he's local — you can tell from his clothes, his walk, his familiarity, and the car has been diminished to short runs. we have pearl jam somewhere with us and so from this driver and stranger we take up his music as we continue our journey, over a landscape that will be slowly but surely disappearing, although it hasn't that much in the four decades since we've been away
no one is about where we are, some of these buildings we pass may be abandoned, though someone has run up that flag, and someone is caring to mow that cemetery, it's saturday and people are home, good size trucks are parked in dooryards and we're still early birds. where's this highway going? it's wilderness and expansive tracts of water, lakes, ponds, bogs, swamps, the famous pointed fir trees of another author's book title. and what will keep it all sustained? the landscape will do quite fine without us, thank you, but what of this highway and where it is all headed to? there is an exhilaration in the love and to the land, the music brought along but inspired by its use from another and taken from his car into this car, the camera is running
film © bob arnold
once in vermont films
once in vermont films
LOVE IS WHAT STAYS ~
Mark Murphy
photo by Gary Brocks
Mark Murphy (born March 14, 1932)
1956 Meet Mark Murphy (Decca)
1957 Let Yourself Go (Decca)
1959 This Could Be the Start of Something Big (Capitol)
1960 Mark Murphy's Hip Parade (Capitol)
1960 Playing the Field (Capitol)
1961 Rah! (Riverside Records)
1962 That's How I Love the Blues (Riverside)
1965 Swingin' Singin' Affair (Fontana)
1966 Who Can I Turn To (Immediate)
1970 Midnight Mood (Saba)
1973 Bridging a Gap (Muse)
1975 [[Mark 2 (Muse)
1975 Mark Murphy Sings (Muse)
1977 Mark Murphy Sings Mostly Dorothy Fields & Cy Coleman (Audiophile)
1978 Stolen Moments (Muse)
1979 Satisfaction Guaranteed (Muse)
1981 Bop for Kerouac (Muse)
1982 The Artistry of Mark Murphy (Muse)
1983 Brazil Song (Cancões Do Brazil) (Muse)
1983 Mark Murphy Sings the Nat King Cole Songbook (Muse)
1984 Living Room (Muse)
1985 Beauty and the Beast (Muse)
1986 Kerouac Then and Now (Muse)
1987 September Ballads (Milestone)
1990 What a Way to Go (Muse)
1991 I'll Close My Eyes (Muse)
1991 Night Mood (Milestone)
1996 North Sea Jazz Sessions, Vol. 5 (Jazz World)
1997 Song for the Geese (RCA)
2000 Some Time Ago (High Note)
2000 The Latin Porter (Go Jazz)
2001 Links (High Note)
2002 Lucky to Be Me (High Note)
2003 Memories of You (High Note)
2004 Bop for Miles (High Note)
2004 Dim the Lights (Millennium)
2005 Once to Every Heart (Verve)
2007 Love Is What Stays (Verve)
2010 Never Let Me Go (Self produced)
1956 Meet Mark Murphy (Decca)
1957 Let Yourself Go (Decca)
1959 This Could Be the Start of Something Big (Capitol)
1960 Mark Murphy's Hip Parade (Capitol)
1960 Playing the Field (Capitol)
1961 Rah! (Riverside Records)
1962 That's How I Love the Blues (Riverside)
1965 Swingin' Singin' Affair (Fontana)
1966 Who Can I Turn To (Immediate)
1970 Midnight Mood (Saba)
1973 Bridging a Gap (Muse)
1975 [[Mark 2 (Muse)
1975 Mark Murphy Sings (Muse)
1977 Mark Murphy Sings Mostly Dorothy Fields & Cy Coleman (Audiophile)
1978 Stolen Moments (Muse)
1979 Satisfaction Guaranteed (Muse)
1981 Bop for Kerouac (Muse)
1982 The Artistry of Mark Murphy (Muse)
1983 Brazil Song (Cancões Do Brazil) (Muse)
1983 Mark Murphy Sings the Nat King Cole Songbook (Muse)
1984 Living Room (Muse)
1985 Beauty and the Beast (Muse)
1986 Kerouac Then and Now (Muse)
1987 September Ballads (Milestone)
1990 What a Way to Go (Muse)
1991 I'll Close My Eyes (Muse)
1991 Night Mood (Milestone)
1996 North Sea Jazz Sessions, Vol. 5 (Jazz World)
1997 Song for the Geese (RCA)
2000 Some Time Ago (High Note)
2000 The Latin Porter (Go Jazz)
2001 Links (High Note)
2002 Lucky to Be Me (High Note)
2003 Memories of You (High Note)
2004 Bop for Miles (High Note)
2004 Dim the Lights (Millennium)
2005 Once to Every Heart (Verve)
2007 Love Is What Stays (Verve)
2010 Never Let Me Go (Self produced)
Saturday, September 22, 2012
PYNCHON / ORWELL ~
Prophecy and prediction are not quite the same, and it would ill serve writer and reader alike to confuse them in Orwell's case. There is a game some critics like to play, worth maybe a minute and a half of diversion, in which one makes lists of what Orwell did and didn't "get right." Looking around us at the present moment, for example, we note the popularity of helicopters as a resource of "law enforcement," themselves forms of social control — and for that matter at the ubiquity of television itself. The two-way television bears a close enough resemblance to flat plasma screens linked to "interactive" cable systems, circa 2003. News is whatever the government says it is, surveillance of ordinary citizens has entered the mainstream of police activity, reasonable search and seizure is a joke. And so forth. "Wow, the Government has turned into Big Brother, just like Orwell predicted! Something, huh?" "Orwellian, dude!"
Well, yes and no. Specific predictions are only details, after all. What is perhaps more important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own — the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power, were already long in place, all well-known aspects of the third Reich and Stalin's USSR, even the British Labour party — like first drafts of a terrible future. What could prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean living?
What has steadily, insidiously improved since then, of course, making humanist arguments almost irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too distracted by the clunkiness of the means of surveillance current in Winston Smith's era. In "our" 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip was less than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly primitive next to the wonders of computer technology circa 2003, most notably the Internet, a development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old twentieth-century tyrants with their goofy mustaches could only dream about.
Prophecy and prediction are not quite the same, and it would ill serve writer and reader alike to confuse them in Orwell's case. There is a game some critics like to play, worth maybe a minute and a half of diversion, in which one makes lists of what Orwell did and didn't "get right." Looking around us at the present moment, for example, we note the popularity of helicopters as a resource of "law enforcement," themselves forms of social control — and for that matter at the ubiquity of television itself. The two-way television bears a close enough resemblance to flat plasma screens linked to "interactive" cable systems, circa 2003. News is whatever the government says it is, surveillance of ordinary citizens has entered the mainstream of police activity, reasonable search and seizure is a joke. And so forth. "Wow, the Government has turned into Big Brother, just like Orwell predicted! Something, huh?" "Orwellian, dude!"
Well, yes and no. Specific predictions are only details, after all. What is perhaps more important, indeed necessary, to a working prophet, is to be able to see deeper than most of us into the human soul. Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own — the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power, were already long in place, all well-known aspects of the third Reich and Stalin's USSR, even the British Labour party — like first drafts of a terrible future. What could prevent the same thing from happening to Britain and the United States? Moral superiority? Good intentions? Clean living?
What has steadily, insidiously improved since then, of course, making humanist arguments almost irrelevant, is the technology. We must not be too distracted by the clunkiness of the means of surveillance current in Winston Smith's era. In "our" 1984, after all, the integrated circuit chip was less than a decade old, and almost embarrassingly primitive next to the wonders of computer technology circa 2003, most notably the Internet, a development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old twentieth-century tyrants with their goofy mustaches could only dream about.
from Thomas Pynchon's foreword
George Orwell, 1984
SPEECH ~
The Great Dictator
(1940)
The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. As usual, Chaplin wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead ("Adenoid Hynkel": Adolf Hitler). Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first full-fledge talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film. A digitally restored version of the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in May 2011. In this famous scene, and the closing of the film, the dictator has come to his senses and is now playing not as a dictator or even an actor, but as Charlie Chaplin with something to say.
The Great Dictator
(1940)
The Great Dictator is a comedy film by Charlie Chaplin released in October 1940. As usual, Chaplin wrote, produced, and directed, in addition to starring as the lead ("Adenoid Hynkel": Adolf Hitler). Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first full-fledge talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film. A digitally restored version of the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection in May 2011. In this famous scene, and the closing of the film, the dictator has come to his senses and is now playing not as a dictator or even an actor, but as Charlie Chaplin with something to say.
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