more on the diving bell

i had thought yesterday that what is missing from the diving bell… is any tactile feeling-any sense of body, but then he couldn’t feel his body. so not that. hilton als wrote a little blog about the film and about the elaine scarry book the body in pain. i keep meaning to read this. really. 

the diving bell and the butterfly

before i run off (punny), i should notes that i just saw this film and that it could be added into the prior blogalogue. but i want to think about it  a little more. 

chaplain and his grandson in the electronic age

james thierree performed at bam earlier this month and i went, from curiosity. his ability to communicate through movement and his choreography were both amazing (as were the other performers and the set) so i went to see charlie chaplin’s city lights at film forum (the missing connection between these two events is that james thierree is charlie chaplin’s grandson.) and also amazing. i love performance and especially the kinds that have one foot on theater or dance and one foot dangling in open air. i see one origin for the other kinds of performance i have admired–beckett by bill irwin, for example. so i have been mulling over the ideas of movement and performance and what place they have in the world right now. certainly may of us seem to need to move personally–running, biking, yoga are all kinds of movement in which the layperson as well as the expert can participate–and on the other hand, many of us are also fairly static in our daily lives, relative to, say an agrigarian culture or past, spending much time in front of computers, or at desks or, if we are commuters in a car or a train or a subway. how does this affect our understanding of or appreciation of movement? do we want to see more of it and appreciate it more, or do we have less a sense of how it happens? and another aspect of this mulling, because we are, arguably, a more self-centered or self-absorbed culture than we were in the past, with a different sensitivity to individual pains, discomforts or pleasures, are we more aware of the ability to move? i don’t think it would be easy, maybe even possible, to make a general response. i was seeing how charlie chaplin moves and then remembering how james thierree moved and noting that james thierree’s movements are more complex and subtle. an advancement of a kind of art? personal style? a different sense of the body and the possibilities of movement? thinking about the films of gymnastics or of dance from the 20th century, and comparing them to how people perform gymnastics or dance now, i see similar advances in subtlety, complexity and athleticism. genetically stronger bodies or a mental change?more on this one, but i am off to run.

i travel faster than the speed of art

the temporary exhibition at the baltimore museum is matisse as sculptor, which i saw in dallas while visiting my dad. it was interesting but not that interesting.  the other time i have travelled faster than the speed of art was when i was in barcelona and the diane arbus exhibition followed me there form the met. i did go see that again.

godard on greyhound

it read better than it actually was–cramped next to a woman whose wing-span reached an elbow into my arm while i watched masculin feminin. i was pleasantly started by the ending (i have seen godard films before, i should know to expect a sudden end) and pleasantly not started by jean-pierre leaud. lovely to watch.