Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Little to Add

Looking back on the past week, I realize that I have very little of value to add. Let's just chalk all of last week up to needing a break, a change of routine, or some unintellectual activity. Two major assignments were "cancelled," thus leaving my end-of-semester calendar looking pretty bare and manageable. I am also more excited than ever to get out of Madison and go home. I spent the last week goofing off with Eric most nights - becoming near regulars at Paul's Club on State Street and coming home to a messy apartment and not doing much. We also had several impromptu dinners that reeked of single, graduate-studenthood - Boca products and pasta. But all good times, thrift store browsing, 6-pack drinking, and Yatzee playing... since I really worked over Thanksgiving Break, I feel I was entitled to this irresponsible behavior. But I think my irresponsibility has lead to a grinding halt after Laura's kicking keg party on Friday, which among other foggy moments, lead to "misplacing" my cell phone. With any luck, it'll turn up and not be sacrificed to the hungry God of missing eye-glasses and dignity. If you need to reach me, email or home phone is best until it resurfaces.

The other "exciting" news is that I am just about Errol Morris'd out. This semester, I've gone on a Morris binge, watching all of his films. This was capped off by his visit to Madison last Thursday where he screened his new film, The Fog of War, a "documentary / interview" with Robert McNamara. This particular moment (Cuban Missile Crisis / Vietnam) has a lot of resonance to the political science part of me, so I think that I particularly enjoyed this film (plus, like his other films, is just purely stunning). Like two other Morris films, Philip Glass orchestrated the score. It also has beautiful sequences of non-documentary footage that really just seal the deal of Morris as a very talented filmmaker. The film is organized into 11 different lessons - and had he taken my question during the Q&A, I would have asked him who the lessons were geared for - they were definitely a crash-course in statesmanship (rationality cannot save us... empathize with your enemy... maximize efficiency). How should the audience incorporate these lessons into our daily practices? What implications does this film create for contemporary statesmanship? But it is a very good film and a must-see for any 1960s buffs - it is a glimpse into the men (and they are all men) that shaped the US / our actions in Asia, and in the Cold War. One criticism might be that Morris gives McNamara too much say, that he's allowed to shape and direct the conversation too much - he gets to set out the terms for what constitutes 'responsibility' and consciously avoids discussing certain topics. Just the same, Morris, who is usually hidden and silent behind the camera, becomes a more active participant in this film (his voice is materially present) and the film really evolves as a conversation between these two. In the discussion, Morris's personality flared. It shouldn't come as a surprise that a documentary filmmaker has a fire-under-his-ass, and someone like Morris would be extremely cynical, but he definitely came across as grumpier, angrier, and almost confrontational. He all but snapped when a fellow film student asked about whether or not Morris considered himself a post-modern filmmaker. He seemed to be the kind of guy who was equally reticent to praise and criticism - I don't know how else to describe him, except that he was a jagged, harsh, character - and naively, it surprised me ~ the norm for most filmmakers is that they should be these fascist, tyrannical, perfectionist types...

Now my weekend is drawing to a close - I've watched a good chunk of Mekas's Walden and hope to read a little more before the night is through. I am slated to go to a double feature at the Orpheum later tonight and continue my streak of avoiding school work and just seeing movies and goofing off... last week of classes this semester, and only one exam (next Sunday). This is the way all of life should be.
posted by lmjasinski at 4:15 PM