This story too is about a priest at the Ninnaji

A farewell party was being offered for an acolyte about to become a priest, and the guests were all making merry when one of the priests, drunk and carried away by high spirits, picked up a three-legged cauldron nearby, and clamped it over his head. It caught on his nose, but he flattened it down, pulled the pot over his face, and danced out among the others, to the great amusement of everyone.
     After the priest had been dancing for a while he tried to pull the pot off, but it refused to be budged. A pall fell over the gathering, and people wondered blankly what to do. They tried one thing and another, only succeeding in bruising the skin around his neck. The blood streamed down, and the priest's neck became so swollen that he had trouble breathing. The others tried to split the pot, but it was not easily broken and the reverberations inside were unbearable. Finally, when all else had failed, they threw a thin garment over the legs of the pot, which stuck up like horns, and, giving the priest a stick to lean on, led him off by the hand to a doctor in Kyoto. People they met on the way stared at this apparition with constrained astonishment.
     The priest presented a most extraordinary sight as he sat inside the doctor's office facing him. Whatever he said came out as an unintelligible, muffled roar. "I can't find any similar case in my medical books," said the doctor, "and there aren't any oral traditions either." The priest had no choice but to return to the Ninnaji, where his close friends and his aged mother gathered at his bedside, weeping with grief, though the priest himself probably could not hear them.
     At this point somebody suggested, "Wouldn't it be better at least to save his life, even if he loses his nose and ears? Let's try pulling the pot off with all our strength." They stuffed straw around the priest's neck to protect it from the metal, then pulled hard enough to tear off his head. Only holes were left to show where his ears and nose had been, but the pot was removed. They barely managed to save the priest's life, and for a long time afterwards he was gravely ill. 

--from Kenkō's Essays in Idleness

'For I have never seen a sun that did not bury its head in the side of the world when the day is done'

The slightest shift in gesture opens up an entirely new world

Death Wish - more subtle than it seems

I have just finished watching Death Wish (1974) for the first time. Yes, that one, the one with Charles Bronson, the one that is associated so inseparably with propagating vigilantism and brutal violence. Why I selected this movie to watch tonight is something of a mystery to me. I suppose in part I wanted to see if its reputation was warranted, and if so, I wanted to see just how bad a movie it is. But also in part I had a suspicion that there might be something more to this movie. It turns out I was right. While DW has its share of stark violence at the hands of a regular civilian whose family has been victimized, i.e. vigilantism--in response to which the audiences in 70s crime-ridden urban hellscapes like Los Angeles and NYC apparently cheered--it clearly makes the case that vigilantism is a dangerous scenario. In fact, rather than advocating a position of vigilantism, the movie shows how untenable a position it is, without going so far as to be didactic about this point in the least; really it seems to have had quite the opposite effect, with most audiences perceiving the movie as overwhelmingly supporting vigilantism via its violent showdowns in which Bronson's character Paul Kersey repeatedly offs lowlife criminals.

In one of the most interesting scenes of the movie, the chief of police has a meeting with the DA and commissioner in which the latter make clear the nature of the complicated position they, as enforcers of law and order, are in. On the one hand, they can't blatantly arrest and prosecute Kersey, the vigilante, because it would make him a martyr, thereby inspiring backlash against the police and more vigilantism. On the other hand, they can't let Kersey go on his merry way blithely mowing down muggers--even though they are criminals shot in the act of committing a crime--as vigilantism is not the same as enforcing the law. Kersey's goal is not to uphold the law and protect the citizenry. Instead, he is out to bait lowlifes into trying to mug him, at which point he can enact a Western-style showdown and kill them in a shootout. He is clearly descending into dangerous psychopathic behavior and is showcasing the double-edged sword of revenge. So, their compromise is to scare him, to send him a message, so that he will stop. Their solution is nonsensical and makes clear that the police, while invested in returning society to the status quo, are too anemic to do so. At this point I think it becomes clear that neither the status quo, nor vigilantism, is the answer to the modern crime-infested cityscape, and what we have in the film is simply one man's antiquated choice to take it upon himself to do some crime fighting as if 1970s NYC was the same as Tombstone circa 1880.

With the understanding that DW is not advocating any kind of meaningful solution to the problem, it's possible to see a sort of Swiftian satirical structure at work. The "solution" of vigilantism is shown as one man's ill-thought out attempt at combating both a dangerous urban environment and what he perceives as an increasingly weak, cowardly populace. He baits criminals into muggings and then shoots them, nearly getting himself killed in the process. He also follows an antiquated code from a long-forgotten era with wildly different rules and norms. What is amazing to me is that this social satire seemed to have gone unnoticed, in spite of such scenes as the one in which Kersey approvingly watches a local news broadcast that is reporting stories of citizens fighting back. The stories include that of an elderly woman who has gained confidence by using a hat pin to fight off a mugger, and that of a crew of construction workers who chase and rough up an apparent mugger spotted from the building site. The man is reported to have a broken jaw, 2 broken arms, and cracked ribs, to which the foreman says, "Gee, I guess he must have fallen down." This scene offers a satire of the idea that vigilantism is a viable solution to a crime-infested metropolis, illustrating that both rampant crime and rampant vigilantism are not so far removed. To further the illustration, the news broadcast reenacts the events during the interviews; particularly striking is the mob of construction workers chasing the mugger, catching him, and beating the hell out of him.

In an interview, Brian Garfield, the author of the novel Death Wish, on which the film was based, explains that his novel makes quite clear the message that vigilantism is a false solution:

The point of the novel Death Wish is that vigilantism is an attractive fantasy but it only makes things worse in reality. By the end of the novel, the character (Paul) is gunning down unarmed teenagers because he doesn’t like their looks. The story is about an ordinary guy who descends into madness. Oddly enough Mayes’ script honored that thought, and the only significant change in it during shooting was the wordless ending, but that ending changed the story entirely. (Bronson cocking his empty hand like a gun and grinning wickedly at young hoodlums in the Chicago airport.)

I'm glad the film opted not to take Paul Kersey further down the path of madness, as it's quite obvious that this would have been going too far to make the point. Kersey's cocking his empty hand like a gun is a very powerful final image, one that is entirely consistent with the satirical message of the film. Screenwriter Mayes appears to have improved on his source material, at least in making it more subtle. Instead of offering a lecture or sermon, the film offers a well-balanced social satire that was unfortunately too subtle to be clearly recognized, obscured at the time by its stark violence and marketing schemes that pandered to people seeking a voyeuristic experience of bloodlust and revenge. All of that just further supports the strength of the satire--like people convinced by a yes men presentation or by a modest proposal, the audience exploded rapturously at each of Kersey's revenge slayings.

Taisen Deshimaru

In Japanese, to be a monk means to harmonize.

Wealthy people are always afraid that someone is going to ask them for something. It's a psychological phenomenon. On the other hand, it will certainly be a pleasant surprise for them if somebody gives them something.

...Then there was a Zen master who did the accounts for a house of geishas. The geishas became nuns (there may have been a few nuns who became geishas, too, but the story doesn't say).

...It's not worth thinking about, analyzing. Only here and now is important. When you have to die you have to die, and in that moment life ends.

           The more egotistical people are, the more they are attached to life and the more they think about death.

gone a great distance

From the wikipedia entry of 'trebuchet':

'The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century. It could fling projectiles of up to three hundred and fifty pounds (140 kg) at high speeds into enemy fortifications. Occasionally, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect or terrorize the people under siege—a medieval form of biological warfare....'

The Fire Cycle

There are trees and they are on fire. There are hummingbirds and they are on fire. There are graves and they are on fire and the things coming out of the graves are on fire. The house you grew up in is on fire. There is a gigantic trebuchet on fire on the edge of a crater and the crater is on fire. There is a complex system of tunnels deep underneath the surface with only one entrance and one exit and the entire system is filled with fire. There is a wooden cage we're trapped in, too large to see, and it is on fire. There are jaguars on fire. Wolves. Spiders. Wolf-spiders on fire. If there were people. If our fathers were alive. If we had a daughter. Fire to the edges. Fire in the river beds. Fire between the mattresses of the bed you were born in. Fire in your mother's belly. There is a little boy wearing a fire shirt holding a baby lamb. There is a little girl in a fire skirt asking if she can ride the baby lamb like a horse. There is you on top of me with thighs of fire while a hot red fog hovers in your hair. There is me on top of you wearing a fire shirt and then pulling the fire shirt over my head and tossing it like a fireball through the fog at a new kind of dinosaur. There are meteorites disintegrating in the atmosphere just a few thousand feet above us and tiny fireballs are falling down around us, pooling around us, forming a kind of fire lake which then forms a kind of fire cloud. There is this feeling I get when I am with you. There is our future house burning like a star on the hill. There is our dark flickering shadow. There is my hand on fire in your hand on fire, my body on fire above your body on fire, our tongues made of ash. We are rocks on a distant and uninhabitable planet. We have our whole life ahead of us.

-Zachary Schomburg

4th o' July

Amateur rock

Just got a Vivitar Vivicam 5050.  It is a toy camera and has some great features such as high color saturation and multiple removable lenses.  Right now I'm in love with the micro lens...

A few selections:

A friend of mine showed me this trick to transform long shots into miniatures.  This street is close to a friend's house in Pittsburgh. 

Beware: premises monitored by security

Relax. Life is a struggle. Never give in.

An impressive move from Dan McCarthy

...And this was how dub was born

COUNTRYMAN

I stumbled upon this film while hunting around on you tube for more amazing dub/reggae clips. It seems there is an almost unending selection of lo-fi you tubes of classic dub/dancehall/reggae scenes, either in the dance, the studio, or the streets.  Countryman is in the vein of Rockers or the more famous The Harder They Come, in that it uses untrained actors for almost every role, and excels most when it isn't trying to conform to conventions like plot or characterization. The real treasure of Countryman is that much of the film offers a documentary-like glimpse of Jamaican life from the early 80s; also, the eponymous main character embodies the ital lifestyle and is so in tune with the natural world that, as he says, he has given his body up to the island and lives the life of a fisherman wearing only swimming trunks. He is able to run barefoot through the remarkably desert-like landscape of the rural Jamaican countryside (saguaros!), and with serious kung-fu skills take on a crew of about ten roughnecks in a great showdown scene towards the end of the movie. The movie has many other beautiful exploitation flick touches, so if you're looking for a good action flick with requisite nonsensical boob shots, Countryman can accommodate. But the Jahsploitation aside, this guy is for real. I mean, Countryman exists and lives his life exactly as portrayed in the film. In the DVD extras there is an interview with the older (but still incredibly fit) Countryman--who has used "Countryman" as his name all these years--and though in his 50s, he is ready to film the sequel.

This film has more payoff than most documentaries, without being a documentary. Countryman fits as a 70s exploitation flick yet simultaneously portrays a truly singular (real life) character.

"Chillwave": watered down sway music for hipsters

There were a handful of remarkable spectacles I witnessed at SXSW 2010. Most of them were embarrassing, like showing up on time to see the immortal Man or Astroman? and having to wait through the heinous YACHT and a mediocre local Doors cover band because hey, things get delayed. Some were shocking, like the sound guy at the Mohawk falling off a 10-foot wall and cracking his head on Thursday afternoon (and proceeding to finish the show holding a bar towel against his head to stanch the blood). At best, some were magnificent, like the stripped-down version of Joan of Arc playing ten-year-old classics to 25 people at The Parlor Wednesday night, or randomly catching Danish psychobillys Powersolo. And some were just depressing, which brings me to the point of this post: to investigate my experience one fine afternoon with the atrocity known as "chillwave," "glo-fi," "bedroom synthpop" or whatever new term has just been coined by the hipster dorks at Pitchfork to describe it.

I had the misfortune to arrive early yet again to another free day show, this time at the above-mentioned Mohawk on Thursday afternoon--but this time it was intentional. The Besnard Lakes were scheduled to play at 4:20 PM if memory serves (...), with Washed Out coming on before them. I'm an unabashed fan of the last BL album and so far the new one sounds good too--plus, the lead singer looks like a Canadian Joe Elliott, so I figured I had to see the live show. Heck, maybe they'd even play "For Agent 13," but I knew it was unlikely. As a reader of hipster music journalism I had heard of Washed Out and knew they got a good review or two, so I thought I'd check 'em out and see what all the hype is about. I should've known from the characters in line with me that I was in for a cringeworthy afternoon: accident-with-scissors haircuts, tight Tight TIGHT clothing, 80s leotards (on guys), and casting rejects from Duran Duran's "Rio" abounded, all contributing to a general feeling of having been transported to some alternate dimension still working through the fashions of 25 years ago. I overheard a trio of Christian Rockers directly behind me saying something like "we're too secular for the Christians, and too Christian for the secular." They were definitely too something to be in that crowd.

This something became obvious as we entered the Mohawk patio, which was packed with unisex college-age cigarette-smoking hipster fashionistas sipping Lone Stars and slowly baking in the Austin sun, to the accompaniment of the blissful background grooves of Washed Out. 

Let me interrupt for a moment to say that the hipster quotient rose a good 500% between last year's and this year's SXSW. Hell, in '09 I even braved the Pitchfork day show at Emo's--a powerful combination of complete pretension--which wasn't nearly as thick with fu**ing hipsters as the scene at the Mohawk on Thursday. What is the cause of this highly noticeable increase in hipsterism? Are Dirty Projecters and Wavves just significantly less hip than this year's indie darlings, many of whom fly the chillwave flag? This genre that seemingly didn't exist only one year ago seems to be the only relevant difference. Did chillwave usher in even more fu**king hipsterism, or did fu**ing hipsters usher in chillwave? Or both? Is there a correlation between increased use of Ray Ban sunglasses and the rise of chillwave? Is it the fault of M.I.A.'s baby? Can I just blame this whole mess on Vampire Weekend?

Fortunately, I was able to find a perch above the stage, away from the mob, for the duration of my stay. Unfortunately, having a clear line of sight to the one dude onstage lightly swaying left and right while triggering samples from a MPC and a set of Boss guitar effects didn't do much to improve the experience. But the visual aspect isn't what really matters to me at a show. It's purely secondary to the sound (I'm looking at you, YACHT). And here is where I'm most mystified by chillwave. "Innocuous" doesn't begin to describe the aesthetic. "Washed out" is too artistic an idea for their sound: "watered down" is more apt. Mindbendingly, when Juan from Juan's Basement and his band came onstage to accompany our lone performer, the dynamics didn't rise in the least. How can so many people make so uninteresting a sound?

Perhaps I'm being too harsh--but really, the music was mostly a backdrop to the spectacle of the crowd, which says a lot about both the music and the crowd. On record, chillwave may be something else entirely; but at heart it seems like it's meant to be party music, and therefore social. It's dance music, or at least groove music--the best of which is always enjoyable in private, but nonetheless is primarily meant for the club, or the stage (err, I guess), or the house party. The mark of a good party jam is how hard it destroys on a full-scale sound system. Strangely, at this show at least, the chillwave jams sounded lost over the PA, and it wasn't for lack of speaker stacks. But it still gave the hipsters something to sway to, which I guess is enough for these cats.


I should say that the Besnard Lakes did a fine job cleaning up the mess left for them. No "For Agent 13," but they did rock "Disaster," and the new songs sounded great. It was tough getting that taste out of my mouth but once my palette was cleansed, it was very easy to forget about the previous hour for the time being and enjoy Canada's best Brian Wilson qua Def Lep harmonies. Oh, and the shirt rocks, man.