Judge (surname),
i wanna reach a plateau; i wanna reach a grotto; i wanna reach a clearing
my problem is that i love to sleep... actually that's not a problem, but the current money-culture thinks it's a problem: the money-culture whips out with its big whip and demands that we "WORK!" ...but i prefer sleep, because that is when a poet is hardest at labor
so i wanna reach an oasis... i'm willing to labor long, i'll even build the whole desert, just for the sake of that oasis... becuz having a place to rest is important to me
whitman does not start out "song of myself" by saying "now let us RISE UP & GET TO WORK"; no, he begins by leaning & loafing: "i loafe & invite my soul"; and then in the 2nd section he says "i will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked"; and toward the end of that section he does not say "go! keep moving: rush to get the product out!" no, on the contrary he says "stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems"
so i enjoy doing work and laboring to build things like deserts and forests, and even log cabins inside the forests of the night, but it's all for the sake of security: to have a sturdy place to rest – cuz if you try to lie down at the twig-end of a rickety branch, or if you fall asleep in quicksand, your poems will have a harder time reaching the outside world
but there's always the thot that, maybe, after you die, you can continue existing non-physically, as a ghost, and haunt the area where you expired; so if some lost traveler wanders by, you can infuse their brain with the poem that you dreamt while drowning
that'd be unpleasant, to drown in sand... i'd rather drown on freshwater; or, if i ever get gills, then i'll drown on the air of an icebox, because jesus will catch me
*
yestereven was a very good even, because my sweetheart and i spent our time with the best of art... i finally got a chance to see THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND... it's a movie that Orson Welles began working on in the 1970s and continued shooting and editing and adding to and changing for many years after; then Welles died in 1985 and more years passed until ultimately the film was somehow finalized (i haven't had time to research all the details: i only know the surface-rumors and the material of the "finished" film itself) and the project was "released in 2018 after more than forty years in development". All those details about its conception and gestation are interesting but not of supreme importance... i admire Welles so much that i often say, when talking with friends at cocktail parties, that he's the best director, or my favorite director, or at least the most poetic director from the u.s.a. – but then someone always counters with "but what about so-&-so" and i always answer "oh, yes, so-&-so is my favorite director also: the very best in the u.s.a., hands down, alongside Welles"
anyway, i wasn't expecting much from this last, posthumously completed picture... since Welles' entire career has been riddled with botched projects (i mean movies that were mangled by unsympathetic financiers or re-edited to ruin by expletives deleted), i figured i'd have to sorta squint and imagine what the film might have been if its genius wouldn't have been crucified for our sins (i'm thinking of films like "the magnificent ambersons" and also "mr. arkadin", which still shine bright despite doom's fierce attempts to dull them), but this last post-death release is shockingly strong from start to end... i was in awe, watching it... it's bursting with vitality... it contains scenes that are among the best cinema-poems i've ever bliss·wept at...
even when Welles is parodying Antonioni or indulging in farcical jabs at Hollywood (it's like Welles is boasting "i'm far bigger than Europe AND the States) his style is both earnest and dignified plus dangerous risky wild fun with a childlike deviance... i just love it: love love love... it's been a while since a film actually made ME wanna make a film...
i didn't mean to write a whole lot about THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND... i simply wanted to mention that we beheld the masterwork; but i get so excited about genuine creativity, it's so rare nowaways in our cramped money-world... NOW the only films that ever get made are the ones that repeat previous successses, since money-folk are very timid and only go for the sure bet
a "sure bet" is always something that echoes a previous success: something that's been done before: something with precedent (cursed be it)... that's why our bad moment (i write in 2019) is adrift in lukewarm sequels and remakes
so i said above that we spent our evening with two wonderful works of art: the first was Welles' movie; and the second was actually a poem that we enjoyed before screening the film: we read aloud "the hunting of the snark" by lewis carroll... its subtitle or description is "an agony in 8 fits"... it's one of my favotie texts in the whole wide world, and it's like the best books of the bible: it gets better with every new reading...
He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.
The Captain's map is perfect, the absolute best and wholly understandable, because it is ALL sea, no land: a pure blank. That's an image of the only satisfying poem. And it sorta leads back to the film-within-the-film, in Welles' THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND... it also reminds me of my oasis, my grotto, my clearing, among the hubbub my plateau, where i can rest in peace
i feel like i should end by saying something about black holes in outer space
vacuums are framed cuz the ghost abhors its opposite
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