the melancholy of resistance

here's an obit from NPR of William Gaddis from Dec. 17, 1998, where one can have the rare pleasure of hearing him speak, http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1032293

just got back from Philippe Grandrieux's "La Vie Nouvelle", at Lincoln Ctr. (40 minutes from the west side to my place? hot damn!) boy, was that disappointing. i've about a million and a half criticisms of that movie. i think i can sum it up though, by saying that this was like "The Crow: Part 4". It's weird....you wouldn't expect a 40 something man to be so caught up in gimmicky technique, and cliched "atmosphereics". I would have gone nuts for this movie when I was 13, but now, it just feels shallow. Even when I saw "The Crow: Part 2" (I think I was 14) I even realized that all that interested me was the texture of the scenery, and that yellow color that you get by using daylight film with tungsten light. and probably the strippers behind glass . I feel like Grandrieux was trying to do something Fassbinder-esque, but with only vague traces of the imagery, and none of the depth, passion, or historical reference (the genius of Fassbinder is that those 3 are inseperable from him). There were a few things I liked about the movie....there were these nice, static, cool toned close-up shots of old people, and the scene of the man being mauled by the dogs was pretty good (I guess I kinda gave away the ending, but it doesn't matter, as most anyone who reads this won't get a chance to see the movie anyways.) Plus, Grandrieux was structuring his story around the Orphic myth, which is one that is near and dear to my heart, and to treat it so cavalierly is stupid. The film seemed vaguely Cocteau-esque (circa "Blood of a Poet") in it's technical fetishism, but nowhere near the Cocteau in quality. Alltogether too gothy. But, while watching it, i think I've figured out what i'm going to do with my photo work: just shoot slides with this Kodak Pony camera, and when I get to it, scan them and make digital prints. Maybe I'll pick up a Seagull, and use that too.

Oh, and oddly enough, Etant Donnes (the french band, not the Duchamp sculpture) did the soundtrack for "La Vie Nouvelle." It was strange, because I was thinking about them a few days ago, and wondering where they'd gone off too. At one point, I had "Aurore", which I wasn't into much then, but I'd like to hear it again now. Oh, the soundtrack is pretty interesting, often moreso than the picture.

Now, when people ask me what I'm going to do after NYU, I'm saying "I'm going to law school." The more I think about it, the more right it seems.

Saw Catherine Breillat's "Brief Crossing" last night, which I liked. I'm very curious about her other work, I'll try to rent "Fat Girl" soon.

Work tomorrow, and then Markopolous films at 6 and 9. Chris, if you see this, you can't miss these. I'll call you tomorrow anyways to tell you about them.....totally crucial.

still questions....

i wonder whether i should be guarded when i write this thing, whether people will form a bad impression of me, based on this continuing, rambling record of my neuroses. ah, the devil take them! no one reads this dammed thing anyways, right?

jon tells me that i should enjoy life more, that it all goes downhill after this. but, i get the feeling that if i don't work hard here, i'm doubly fucked over after school.

i'm still thinking, more and more about dropping the art as a vocation. i ask myself the question rilke poses in _letters to a young poet_. "could you live without doing it?" i have to answer yes, that it's not so ingrained a part of my being. the question i ask now isn't, "what makes a good image?" but "what makes an image good?" not "good" in an aesthetic sense, but "good" in a moral sense. the questions i find myself asking nowadays have more to do with morality, with the constitution of a right and a wrong. not whether there really is either of those, but instead, how people arrive at a conclusion about them.

maybe i should go to law school. gilles deleuze said (in an interview found here: http://www.langlab.wayne.edu/Romance/FreD_G/ABC1.html) that if he hadn't studied philosophy, he would have studied jurispudence. and, i wonder if that isn't the way to go. what better way to understand how the answers to questions of right and wrong are answered? isn't law a moral force in our culture?

on the bright side, however: i finished my reading exam, doing all of the readings while i was subbing for Tomoko in the darkroom. yes! i even had 20 minutes to spare after printing it out. i was going to try to read augustine's "confessions" tonight, but i think i'm just going to finish kafka's "the trial."

going to see Breillat's "Brief Crossing" tomorrow with Chris. It'll be my intro to her work, i'm pretty excited.

rebecca told me yesterday that she thinks of me as "a professional audience." ouch.

wasted all of last night, and consequently slept for 12 hours. oh well, i'll get everything i need to done. gotta head to school earlier than i thought, because i need to pick up some readings from elliot for the class i skipped last wednesday. i was going to go to the peter sellars retro at film forum with becky (not the rebecca referred to above), but i've got this stupid reading exam to do, which I haven't done any of the readings for.

chris just emailed me the scheduele for experimental intermedia. hot damn! http://experimentalintermedia.org/concerts/03/march.shtml
seeing jason lescalleet twice in the span of a month?! yes!

been spending more time in the library as of late, it's kinda taken the place in my life of the darkroom.

i am about *this close* *(holds fingers up) to dumping this whole art-making thing. this close. i'd be a much better philosophy student.

"Let me know Thee, O Lord, who knowest me; let me know thee as I am known. Power of my soul, enter into it, and fit it for Thee, that Thou mayest have and hold it without spot or wrinkle....For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he doth it, cometh to the light." -Augustine, "Confessions"