Naipaul on Gandhi…
‘He sees the Indian callousness, the Indian refusal to see. No Indian attitude escapes him, no Indian problem; he looks down to the roots of the static, decayed society. And the picture of India which comes out of his writings and exhortations over more than thirty years still holds: this is the measure of his failure.’
~VS Naipaul, Area of Darkness
Eternal Return…
What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you in your loneliest loneliness and say to you:
“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?
Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!
~Gay Science, FW Nietzsche
Translated Suntory Times:
Translated dialogue from the hilarious Suntory Time whiskey commercial scene from the film Lost in Translation.
Bob, who is in town to make a whiskey commercial, doesn’t speak Japanese. His director (Yutaka Tadokoro), a histrionic Japanese hipster, doesn’t speak English. In one scene, Bob goes on the set and tries to understand the director through a demure interpreter (Akiko Takeshita), who is either unable or (more likely) unwilling to translate everything the director is rattling on about.
Needless to say, Bob is lost. And without subtitles, so is the audience. Here, translated into English, is what the fulmination is really about.
DIRECTOR (in Japanese to the interpreter): The translation is very
important, O.K.? The translation.
INTERPRETER: Yes, of course. I understand.
DIRECTOR: Mr. Bob-san. You are sitting quietly in your study. And then
there is a bottle of Suntory whiskey on top of the table. You
understand, right? With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the
camera, tenderly, and as if you are meeting old friends, say the
words. As if you are Bogie in “Casablanca,” saying, “Cheers to you
guys,” Suntory time!
INTERPRETER: He wants you to turn, look in camera. O.K.?
BOB: That’s all he said?
INTERPRETER: Yes, turn to camera.
BOB: Does he want me to, to turn from the right or turn from the left?
INTERPRETER (in very formal Japanese to the director): He has prepared
and is ready. And he wants to know, when the camera rolls, would you
prefer that he turn to the left, or would you prefer that he turn to
the right? And that is the kind of thing he would like to know, if you
don’t mind.
DIRECTOR (very brusquely, and in much more colloquial Japanese):
Either way is fine. That kind of thing doesn’t matter. We don’t have
time, Bob-san, O.K.? You need to hurry. Raise the tension. Look at the
camera. Slowly, with passion. It’s passion that we want. Do you
understand?
INTERPRETER (In English, to Bob): Right side. And, uh, with intensity.
BOB: Is that everything? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than
that.
DIRECTOR: What you are talking about is not just whiskey, you know. Do
you understand? It’s like you are meeting old friends. Softly,
tenderly. Gently. Let your feelings boil up. Tension is important!
Don’t forget.
INTERPRETER (in English, to Bob): Like an old friend, and into the camera.
BOB: O.K.
DIRECTOR: You understand? You love whiskey. It’s Suntory time! O.K.?
BOB: O.K.
DIRECTOR: O.K.? O.K., let’s roll. Start.
BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.
DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! (Then in a very male form of
Japanese, like a father speaking to a wayward child) Don’t try to fool
me. Don’t pretend you don’t understand. Do you even understand what we
are trying to do? Suntory is very exclusive. The sound of the words is
important. It’s an expensive drink. This is No. 1. Now do it again,
and you have to feel that this is exclusive. O.K.? This is not an
everyday whiskey you know.
INTERPRETER: Could you do it slower and ?
DIRECTOR: With more ecstatic emotion.
INTERPRETER: More intensity.
DIRECTOR (in English): Suntory time! Roll.
BOB: For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.
DIRECTOR: Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut! God, I’m begging you.
~ Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola
Belongingness
But where you are from feels sort of irrelevant these days, since everyone has the same stalls in their mini-malls.~ Generation X , Douglas Coupland.
Help Yourself
I know you’ll help us when you’re feeling better and we realize that it might not be for a long, long time
But we’re willing to wait on you
We believe in everything that you can do if you could only lay down your mind
I want you to try to help yourself
Take the time to take apart, each brick that sits outside your heart
And look around you
There’s people everywhere
And though they don’t always show it they’re just as scared
And we’d be more prepared if you just pulled on through
I want you to try to help yourself
Oceans of water underneath our feet
Terrible design
Dusty rooms you cannot sweep
Clouding up your mind
I know you’ll help us when your feeling better and we realize that it might not be for a long, long time
But we’re willing to wait on you
We believe in everything that you can do if you could only lay down your mind
I want you to try to help yourself
~Sad Brad Smith, Help yourself
Brothers Karamazov
Rosewater said an interesting thing one time about a book that wasnt ascience fiction. He said that everything there was to know about life was in the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Doestoevsky. ‘But, that isn’t enough any more’said Rosewater.~Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Zadie on Clooney
What is Clooney saying? A sentence he began sparklingly with Ocean’s 11 (2001) , which stumbled at intolerable cruelty (2003), and grew lamentable at oceanstwelve (2004 ), having seemed almost to make sense with confessions of adangerous mind (2002,) now reaches its conclusion with the impressive goodnight and good luck and the rigorous Syriana . I judged too quickly, thinking him one of those actors who prideshimself on making the big bad boys in order to fund the small good ones — a kind of vanity tax uponthe audience, whereby the pointless shoot –em- up is the prize we supposedlypay for the chilly little chamber piece about divorce. Clooney is not that actor. He doesn’t make sterile,unlovable vanity projects . In an cultural climate that ridicules and is repulsed by intellectual and moral commitment, in his way he pursues what with this lawless executive producer and the front-of-the- shop ‘face’ of syriana , he has now created an unprecedented scenario: the most popular actor in Hollywood is also the man whowants us to agitate the most . Something like this has happened only oncebefore , with Marlon Brando, an actor whose personal feelings and self regard overran all his most serious ambitions . Clooney appears to have no such tragic flaw. He is making real American films instead of american products; he ishelping real American films to get made. Zadie Smith on George Clooney
Sharks
nce, off the hump of Brazil I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black and the sun fainting away over the lip of the sky.We’d put in at Fortaleza, and a few of us had lines out for a bit of idle fishing. It was me had the first strike. A shark it was. Then there was another, and another shark again, ’till all about, the sea was made of sharks and more sharks still, and no water at all. My shark had torn himself from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleeding his life away drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts took to eating each other. In their frenzy, they ate at themselves.You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stinging your eyes, and you could smell the death, reeking up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse… until this little picnic tonight. And you know, there wasn’t one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.
~Lady from Shanghai.
Gossip - Standing in the way of control
Your back’s against the wall
There’s no-one home to call
You’re forgetting who you are
You can’t stop crying
It’s part not giving in
And part trusting your friends
You do it all again
And I’m not lying
Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Oh ohh Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Standing in the way of control
You live your life
Survive the only way that you know
I’m doing this for you
Because it’s easier to lose
And it’s hard to face the truth
When you think you’re dying
It’s part not giving in
And part trusting your friends
You do it all again
But you don’t stop trying
Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Oh ohh Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Standing in the way of control
You live your life
Survive the only way that you know
Oh ohh Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Oh ohh Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Standing in the way of control
We live our lives
Because we’re standing in the way of control
We will live our lives
Because we’re standing in the way of control
We live our lives
Because we’re standing in the way of control
We will live our lives
Your back’s against the wall
There’s no-one home to call
You’re forgetting who you are
You can’t stop crying
It’s part not giving in
And part trusting your friends
You do it all again
You don’t stop trying
Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Oh ohh Oh oh oh oh ohh Oh ohh
Standing in the way of control
You live your life
Survive the only way that you know
~ Gossip Standing in the way of control
Aimlessness….
“There is a tendency in the middle of the writing of a novel for the writer to feel adrift, lost floating aimlessly in a rough uncharted ocean of words. You are too far from the beginning to feel the enthusiasm that set you on your way all those words ago and too far from the end to see the land of your completed tale where you may rest finally.
There are so many obstacles between you and your completed manuscript. Do not let this sense of aimlessness stop you from finishing. From my own limited experience, and of the many writers to whom I have spoken, I am convinced that this feeling is normal. While feeling it is no guarantee that your novel will be artistically, critically or commercially successful, neither is it a sure sign of failure.
When this feeling is engulfing you, remember the novels that have had the biggest effect on you as a reader. Look at those novels. Take them from your shelves. Flick through their pages. Remember the characters, settings, plots. Remember how they have made you feel. Perhaps the manuscript on which you drift aimlessly now will come to be such a book for people you have never met. Dwell on this, that this could happen. Take a deep breath and go back to your page. Perhaps there is someone who needs you to tell this story.”
Elliot Perlman
Habitation
Marriage is not
a house, or even a tent
It is before that, and colder:
the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back, where we squat
outdoors, eating popcorn
where painfully and with wonder
at having survived
this far
we are learning to make fire.
~Margaret Atwood
A Radically Condensed History of Post Industrial Life
When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.
The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one now did one now did one.
~David Foster Wallace, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
A poem of Friendship
We are not lovers
because of the love
we make
but the love
we have
We are not friends
because of the laughs
we spend
but the tears
we save
I don’t want to be near you
for the thoughts we share
but the words we never have
to speak
I will never miss you
because of what we do
but what we are
together
~Nikki Giovanni