BRIEF CANDLE

“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty the youth of old age.” - Victor Hugo

The New What’s Going On Blog  has as its theme in this week of writing the topic of “Contradictions”.  I thought about it and once again a line from Shakespeare was my inspiration. Death and life, youth and old age, togetherness and loneliness, Winter and Spring… Here is my offering:

Brief Candle

“Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player.”

My life is like a candle stump

Flame sputtering, in a formless lump.

Life’s now in the Winter of its course,

No energy, no strength, no force.

The years have flitted by so quick

Memories rapidly go past, flick.

I see their images as time goes by

Too fast to recognise, be seen by eye.

The coldness grows, the chill advances

No more reprieves, no second chances.

Winter with rain and snow that fall

Death nearing, having me in his thrall.

And yet, I’ve loved back in a distant Spring,

My heart was taught to fly and sing;

My soul with the beloved’s soul had merged

And up to heaven high we’d surged.

Love’s potions are as strong as death

Love’s spells are potent shibboleth.

My life’s a moth circling a flame

Diving into fire that its being will claim.

Life’s lived, and used, and spent

It came, lingered a little, and it went.

The hours, the minutes precious now,

It’s time great truths to utter, avow:

Life’s a brief candle, burning fast

Enjoy its light while it may last.

And yet, I’ve loved back in a distant Spring,

My heart was taught to fly and sing;

My soul with the beloved’s soul had merged

And up to heaven high we’d surged.

Love’s potion will preserve my essence,

Love’s spell is an eternal inflorescence.

And once again, here’s the poem set to music and you can find it in my “Otidorchestre” channel and listen to it on YouTube, Spotify,  Amazon, Deezer, Flo, Pandora, and other music sharing sites.

MY NOVEL: "THE NURSING HOME"

"There is no old age. There is, as there always was, just you." - Carol Matthau

In the densely built up suburbia of Melbourne's outer West, surrounded by a high wall, is the large oasis of "The Golden West" Nursing Home. A beautiful, large garden surrounds sumptuous period buildings of great charm, with excellent amenities, caring staff and a charter to provide the "best possible care for seniors who are used to the lifestyle of the well-to-do".

A cavalcade of memorable residents, carers, administrative staff, relatives and friends, all confront the problems of old age with varying degrees of success. All seems to go well, until a series of deaths amongst the residents puts the Director of the Home and his staff in a difficult situation, and threaten the serenity and restfulness of this microcosm that reflects society outside the walls.

Love, hate, envy, deceit, compassion, selfishness, altruism, guilt, religion, atheism, dreams and harsh realities, all the stuff of life and death, are laid out in a procession of humanity's common concerns.

MY NEW NOVEL

My new novel "The Nursing Home" has been published and is available on Amazon. I've been told by several people that it's a good read :-)

CORONAVIRUS DIARIES VI

“Before you call yourself a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or a believer of any other theology, learn to be human first.” ― Shannon L. Alder

I recently found myself in the emergency department of one of our major public hospitals in Melbourne at 4:30 a.m. I was accompanying someone who had need of assistance (no, not COVID-19!). The place was deserted at that time and we were seen to immediately after a rapid and efficient triage. The set-up was impressive and the care given was exemplary. Six hours later, the person I was accompanying had been seen by nurses, doctors, radiographers, had been given appropriate medication that relieved her acute, severe pain and was ready to be discharged. She had been given a prescription, and the first lot of suitable medication to last her a couple of weeks, but also a referral to see a specialist and have some more imaging done, all within the next two weeks.

At that point in time I thanked my lucky stars that I am living in a country where in the midst of a pandemic that is causing havoc in most countries around the world, I could still rely on our public health care system to deliver timely, efficient and effective emergency intervention. There was adequate, appropriate diagnostic equipment, care by experienced and courteous medical professionals and also immediate access to medication that relieved excruciating algesic symptoms.

Up till now, in Australia, our intensive care facilities have been able to cope with the increased demand that has been placed on them with the COVID-19 cases. At the time I am writing this, Australia still has a relatively low rate of infection and fewer deaths than other countries of a similar development status. Diagnosed Coronavirus cases here presently are: 6,447, while total nymber of deaths is: 63, with recovered cases: 3,686. The death rate per million population in Australia is 2 per million, compared say to Italy, 348 per million population, or USA, 79 per million population. The response to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Australia was drastic, timely and universal. This proved to be a life-saving intervention.

We still have an effective public health system, despite the increased demands placed on it by our ageing population and the decreased funding it receives. One of the reasons it remains effective is because of the dedication, conscientiousness and professionalism of our health care workers. Paramedics, orderlies, nurses, doctors, diagnosticians, laboratory workers, specialists, surgeons, physical therapists, dieticians, cleaners, kitchen staff, etc, etc, all of these people who work within our public health care system, deserve our appreciation and gratitude for a hard job done well.

Unfortunately, though, we still have a problem in that many health care workers are being subjected to abuse, verbal and physical, by the people they are desperately trying to help. Seeing someone doing their best to save someone’s life and at the same trying trying to defend themselves from abusive behaviour is more than disheartening. One questions the norms of the society we live in, the kind of behaviours that people are raised to believe are “normal”, the types of persons out there that find it “OK” to shout obscenities at paramedics, physically abuse nurses, refuse to co-operate with doctors.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine who is a medical specialist. He said that many of the violent patients that are encountered in a health care setting are on drugs or have psychological or behavioural problems. In their minds, whatever they do is excusable because of their “problem” and later, when they sober up or realise what they have done, they cite their “problem” as an excuse and expect instant and absolute forgiveness. Fortunately, legislation is changing nowadays and that type of excuse is becoming untenable. If you commit a crime and you are high on drugs, you will be punished to the full extent of the law, while “being on drugs” is no longer a valid defence.

We live in a strange world. Times have changed rapidly and people behave in quite disturbing and extremely selfish and antisocial ways. The values of typical, large, post-industrial Western societies have deteriorated, and unchecked capitalism seems to have created a mindset where all is possible, all is allowable all is excusable if one has money. The pursuit of wealth has become the be-all and end-all of existence and our humanity has suffered as a result. Rampant development, widespread exploitation of resources, unthinking consumerism and pullulating globalisation have created massive social, economic, moral and ethical problems.

Perhaps we did need a wake-up call of the order of a pandemic. Perhaps COVID was a necessary evil that we desperately needed in order to stop, rethink our existence, and if we survive through it, change our lives for the better. Perhaps we needed this worldwide emergency to highlight everything that is wrong with our modern civilisation. Perhaps we needed to be afraid, very afraid, of our individual future, and contemplate our own untimely and rapid death in order to consider the survival of our species, the good of our society, the repercussions of our actions on others – people, animals, plants, society, ecosystems, the planet…

CORONAVIRUS DIARIES IV

“A nation loses the place which it once held in the world’s history when money becomes more precious to the souls of its people than honesty and labour. A universal, widespread greed of gain is the forewarning of some upheaval and disaster. Civilisations have been born and completed, and then forgotten again and again.” – Colonel James Churchward 

Millions of Americans expect to receive $1,200 cheques as part of a $2 trillion stimulus deal that was signed off by President Trump on Friday. This was cited to be a measure to combat a sluggish economy by getting the beneficiaries of this handout to spend it, and thus stimulate the nation’s industries by the direct injection of funds. Other governments of first world countries are commencing similar such releases of funds into their economies, hoping thus to stave off a worldwide depression.

An interesting site to view in light of the President’s announcement is the US National Debt clock. I looked at it mesmerised for a few minutes as the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt increased with each fleeting second. You may have heard of the immense economic strife that Greece found itself in through reckless borrowing of funds and unchecked spending. Currently, every Greek citizen owns about $40,000 USD of their country’s national debt. Terrible, isn’t it? Well, you may think, the US is a more powerful country, with a stronger economy, much more resilient finances and home of the richest people of the world. Think again, each US citizen owns about $73,000 USD of the national debt. Furthermore, each taxpayer in the US owns about $191,000 USD of the national debt.

Play around with the US National Debt site. There is an interesting feature called “Time Machine”. Go back to 1980 and see the National Debt per citizen: About $4,000! A lot of money has been printed and injected into the economy since then to “stimulate” it! By stimulation I understand that means the stock market does well, the few filthy rich get richer, the middle classes do less and less well, while the poor get poorer and poorer, each citizen paying a higher and higher price for a “flourishing economy”.

Coronavirus had infected at least 92,932 people in the U.S. as of Friday 27th March and killed at least 1,380 people, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering. Of course, simply tracking confirmed cases underestimates the actual scale of the problem. Many more cases of infection will lurk in the community undetected. This is particularly the case for a virus like COVID-19 where symptoms can be mistaken for a cold or flu. Without massive investment in testing, cases will always be missed.

New cases of infection and casualties continue multiplying in the USA. New York and Louisiana hospitals are grappling with a flood of patients that threatens to overwhelm their health-care systems, and their resources are dwindling. Meanwhile, the president and political conservatives are increasingly agitating to end drastic restrictions meant to buy time and save lives. The rhetoric is: “Give people a stimulus handout, get them to spend it, and thus end this nonsense over a stupid ‘flu’ which is keeping them from being happy workers and model consumers.”

Politics has always been a dirty game, but especially so in the Trump era. In recent days, a sizeable and growing number of Trump supporters have claimed that health experts are part of a deep-state plot to hurt Trump’s re-election efforts by damaging the economy and keeping the United States shut down as long as possible. Trump himself pushed this idea in the early days of the outbreak, calling warnings on Coronavirus a kind of “hoax” meant to undermine him. The distrust of Science and Scientists runs deep in the psyche of the uneducated, the simple, the ‘average’ person, but also in the twisted mind of the sly opportunists who wish to further their own fortunes no matter what the cost, human lives included. 

Epidemiologists are medical specialists who have been educated for decades in order to be able to give advice on how diseases appear, how they occur in communities and in the case of infectious diseases, how the diseases spread and how we can limit that spread. They act based on their knowledge, their experience and the scientific modelling that they carry out in order to protect communities and increase the health of a population. Their role in these days of COVID-19 is to avert massive numbers of deaths and devise strategies in order to stem spread of disease and make the disease disappear. One of the frustrations of  epidemiologists trying to prevent disease (rather than curing it, as doctors do and with appreciation of the cured patients), is that it’s often difficult for the public to understand the disasters epidemiologists help them avoid.

A noted epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson published a paper on March 16th, outlining the model of Coronavirus infection and its toll on populations. If nothing were done to prevent  COVID-19 infection in the USA, the number of deaths was predicted to reach 2.2 million people. If all patients were able to be treated, there would still be in the order of 1.1-1.2 million fatalities in the US.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call. We are all aware of it, we are all affected by its consequences on our daily existence, we are suffering its effects on our jobs, our leisure, our interaction with family, friends, even strangers. We are all experiencing varying degrees of fear, ranging from foolhardy insouciance, to mild apprehension, to informed alarm, to justified dread, to mindless panic.

We react to the pandemic in direct proportion to our subjective feelings of fear. Foolhardy politicians inject funds into struggling economies and hope that the deaths amongst their political opponents will be higher than the deaths in the camp of their supporters. The rich and famous are mildly apprehensive and plan courses of actions that decrease their probability of contracting the virus (as advised by their exclusive medical care personnel). The thinking, rational, educated person is alarmed and does what epidemiologists and microbiologists advise, lessening their personal risk of infection, but also doing what is best for the community. People who have come in contact with the virus and its effects first-hand are filled with dread and can act irrationally – perhaps justifiably so. The mindless, panic and act unpredictably with often dire consequences.

Open your eyes, unstop your ears, think! Read critically and follow the advice of experts whose job is to protect the lives of everyone in the community – yes, your life too! If you cannot understand something, ask for clarification. If you have been affected personally by illness or death of a loved one, support is available. If you have financial troubles and you cannot cope, there are many places that provide real support and material help – help that goes beyond one-off handouts of money that you spend on consumer goods to support economies and raise stock prices.

You have been asleep in your comfortable, unthinking existence; blithely unaware in your cushy, mindless routine; you have flooded your existence with cheap thrills, huge numbers of consumer goods you don't really need, you have been in pursuit of trite goals. Wake-up! Re-examine your existence. Find again all that is important, really important, in life. Reach out to your family, your friends, your community. If you’re dead, it doesn’t really matter if your stocks do well in the NYSE or if Trump is re-elected (growing National Debt notwithstanding)…

CORONAVIRUS DIARIES III

“My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: There is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.” - Yann Martel

Memento mori – “Remember you will die”. An apt reminder in these days of COVID-19, with deaths due to infection with this sinister and highly contagious virus climbing to higher and more alarming levels day by day, worldwide. We look at the deserted streets in our cities and we are reminded of our mortality. We look in shock as military trucks in Italy convey scores of corpses to a place where they will be prepared for burial, and memento mori, the Latin phrase resounds through the centuries to remind the survivors that death lies in wait, that they too will die. Madrid in Spain is the new epicentre of COVID-19 in the world and a huge skating rink has been converted to a temporary morgue to hold the hundreds of corpses. News bulletins inform us of increasing infection transmission rates and we are obliged to think: “Am I next? What if I get sick? What if I get very sick? What if I can’t be cured? What if I die?”

Most people in our society push the idea of their death into the darkest and deepest crypts of their mind. Our culture has a become a life culture, a youth and pleasure-seeking culture. Death has been sanitised and has become something that is seen mainly on the TV screen, in movies, in video games, as a fitting end to deserving miscreants. We have been given a diet of ‘cartoonified’ death (especially as it relates to an untimely and violent death), where death is trivialised and treated with a contemptuous disregard. The more we see the ease with which death is meted out to others on screen, the more it has made our own death a more distant and unlikely possibility – after all we live in the real world, don’t we?

Think of the hypothetical situation where you are infected with the deadly Coronavirus and the even more hypothetical eventuality where you will be told: “You have two days to live…” What would you do? Is what you do much different to what you would do if you had been told: “You have two weeks to live.” Or perhaps: “You will die in two months…” Or even “You have two years of life left!” What then determines your course of action? Many around the world have had to deal with this scenario, confronting a horrific and rapid death as something they or a family member will go through  in a matter of days.

The religious amongst us may say: Vanitas vanitatum, omnia est vanitas; which you will find in Ecclesiastes 1:1 onward: 
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. 

In the past when life on earth was seen to be a transient and preparatory phase for life eternal, death was seen as a liberation, a door through which we passed to be greeted by the angels of paradise and its eternal bliss. Death was then a part of life and a promise of liberation from all of our wordly cares and toil. None feared death then, provided one lived a devout and God-fearing life with thoughts and deeds as stipulated by the Gospels.

We have ‘progressed’ and ‘evolved’ socially. Our lay society largely views death as an abrupt end to life, an eternal and dreamless sleep – or even more bluntly perhaps, an infinitude of non-being. Is it a surprise then that we nowadays live our life seeking pleasures, riches, enjoyment, shallow and constant gratifications of every one of our whims and selfish desires? Is it a surprise that we shun even the thought of death and remove from everyday existence even the mention of the word? How many euphemisms we have devised to replace the straightforward ‘she died’? “She passed away; she perished; she went the way of all flesh; she crossed the great divide; she went to meet her Maker; she croaked it; she kicked the bucket…” And so on.

Enter Coronavirus from stage left. It brings with it a sharp sickle, shining bright, its blade whetted and ready to be used. All are vulnerable, all may become horribly sick, all are at risk of dying. Yes, dying, not undergoing some strange linguistic euphemistic transmogrification. We are suddenly jolted back into the grim reality of death as an end to life. And even more so we are forced to contemplate the possibility of an unfair, premature, agonising death far from those we love and who love us. A rapid, sombre funeral (if we’re lucky!) to follow, no ‘celebration’ of our life and the telling of funny anecdotes in the upbeat ceremony, no playing of our favourite pop song.

To add insult to injury, COVID-19 has hit at the foundation of our comfortable, pleasurable existence. Worldwide, economies teeter, stock prices tumble, politicians flounder and pass bill after bill in parliament trying to rescue nations from recession, the world from a depression. Shops close, companies fold, our jobs are at risk, our lifestyle with its multitudinous delights has suddenly been degraded, all those activities which readily gave us amusing diversions and pointless recreations have suddenly ceased. The restaurants and bars have closed, the spectator sports have stopped, the cinemas, the discos, the clubs, the multitude of crowd-pleasers that filled our vacuous existence are all ‘temporarily suspended’.

Instead, we are now confined at home and forced to be alone with our worrying thoughts about life, death, the universe and everything. A reassessment of our existence to date inevitably follows. If we are lucky, we share our home with family, a partner, a pet, or even compatible company. The unlucky amongst us close our door and remain truly alone, making the isolation and ‘social distancing’ even more absolute, more trying, more gnawingly soul-destroying.

Really, when we consider everything, is it surprising that we have panicked? Is it so astounding that people all over the world are behaving in very strange ways? It is such great revelation when we see the scenes of mass hysteria, when we observe people doing whatever they believe will avert the possibility of their infection and the highly unpleasant dénouement it often entails? After all that, buying and stashing toilet paper seems to be a logical and greatly satisfying activity, which makes us better able to deal with the insanity of the situation we have to live through. I think I’m running low, I need to go and buy a few rolls…

CORONAVIRUS DIARIES II

“I don’t know how one actually would define obscenity. I’m sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.” - Jane Alexander 

What is it about the acquisition of hoards of toilet paper – of all things! – that has defined the COVID-19 pandemic? People madly rush to buy up all the rolls they can find, and a frenzied scramble it often turns out to be, not without casualties in the course of the battle for the desirable rolls of triple-ply, pure white, cloud-soft, disposable bliss. If you’re lucky you’ll even be the proud possessor of the luxurious, embossed, floral print rolls… Worth every bit the skirmish and the casualties thereof you sustained in order to grab these trophies and proudly carry them home!

Since our kindergarten days, “poo”, “bum” and “wee” have caused uproarious laughter every time they were uttered by your fellow 5-year-olds. “Fart” was an added bonus and toilet jokes were sure to bring the house down. Some of us manage to outgrow this phase and such jokes that rely on the scatological become obscene. Obscene in this case meaning “in bad taste”, “not suitable for intelligent discussion”, “not witty enough to be considered humorous”. Yet, there is living proof that the scatological provides a ready source of material for countless stand-up comedians (especially the low-lifes that rely on embarrassing individuals of the audience, whom they pick on and make the butt – sorry, pun unintentional – of their “jokes”). Similarly, any number of sit-coms where the punchline invariably depends on the “poo”, “bum”, “wee”  and “fart” tetralogy. Not to mention the “blue” pub jokes, which if not sexual are, more often than not, scatological.

A bodily function that is performed in private is for the majority of people considered to be obscene – obscene in this case meaning not to be exposed to public scrutiny: “Ob scaena” what is not allowed onto the stage, what is supposed to remain behind the scenes and only hinted at, or implied, as in classical tragedy. Hence our numerous euphemisms for the shithouse: Toilet, bathroom, powder room, water closet, john, dunny, privy, lavatory, latrine, convenience, etc, etc… 

Ancient Romans did not consider going to the toilet obscene as is evidenced by the rows of toilet bowls next to each other in public toilets in Ephesus, Pompeii and Herculaneum, where you could sit and do your business, while chatting pleasantly to the people next to you. Interestingly, Europeans were amazed when confronted with traditional Tahitian cultural norms, which considered that eating in public was an obscene act and hence such a bodily function would have to be performed privately and separately.

The packaging and marketing descriptors of toilet paper provide us with the ultimate euphemistic package for an obscene, yet necessary, normal, and healthful bodily function. Shopping for toilet paper becomes a decent and socially acceptable duty because it is so hygienic, so delightfully presented, so beautifully described: Pure, soft, lily-white, downy, angelic, gentle and sanitary. “Sanitary”: Hygienic and clean, contributing to health! If using that paper doesn’t somehow protect you against the Coronavirus, what else can?

Most people don’t normally have large stashes of toilet paper. This day and age where space is at a premium in our increasingly smaller and smaller abodes, bulky toilet rolls take up lots of space. Hence one buys as one needs, small numbers of rolls, enough to avoid embarrassment in one’s private (obscene, if you like) moments. Good taste also dictates that toilet rolls remain out of sight, hence one cannot have them in public view. Normally the few rolls that we buy are put in the bathroom cupboard, out of sight until needed.

Many amongst us are control freaks. We want to be in charge of things, run our affairs as we see fit and desire, be masters of our own destiny and ensure that people around us conform with our course of action, which is the only right way to go about things, isn’t it? It’s all about power and empowerment, being in control and not at the whim of fate’s vicissitudes: “I am in charge of my life and not some God-damned new virus that threatens my comfortable and pleasant routines!” Of course that means that there should be plenty of toilet paper around, doesn’t it? Control freaks are so full of shit!

Think of it also another way: Toilet tissue is a cheap commodity that can be put to other uses, for example it can be used as a tissue and if people have a cold and a runny nose, toilet tissue is a ready substitute for the tissues that you run out of. Interestingly, people are more reluctant to use tissues or paper towels or other disposable wipes in lieu of toilet paper in the toilet… Hence the stockpiling of toilet rolls in the case of a pending epidemic respiratory system disease which amongst other symptoms (in the public mind) includes a runny nose (though not necessarily so in actual case!).

Buy toilet paper, be prepared, be hygienic, be in control! Take an active role in your health management and disease prevention! The more you buy, the more your chances of fending off the disease! Toilet paper has become a powerful apotropaic amulet that will stave off infection with COVID-19, and prevent illness, or an even worse fate! You are right, for toilet paper is a worthy trophy for the modern day warriors of the supermarket aisles. All you, soldiers of the grocery store wars fighting tooth and nail for a few rolls of the prized possession, you the modern day knights errant of this, our sick society, you are the ones who are truly and utterly obscene.

POETS UNITED - METEOR SHOWERS

“Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself.” - Matt Haig 

In the Midweek Motif of Poets United this week, the theme is “Meteor Showers”. My contribution below: 

Meteor Showers 

Billions upon billions of suns
Strewn through the endless emptiness
Of cosmic infinitudes –
I look at them and yet remain indifferent
To the immensity that stares at me,
Being able to contain it all
Within the low walls and ceiling
Holding my brain.

I love.
I love you, and that is:
More important than the speed of light
Within a vacuum;
More rare than comets that careen past
And are glimpsed once in a lifetime;
More precious than the meteor showers,
Which fall around us like golden rain…

What should it matter if now a million suns
Should suddenly decide to supernova?
What if I am but a mite on a speck of dust?
It is enough that I have loved,
Nothing can take that from me.

I love, I feel, I understand:
I am small, insignificant, an atom only
In the endlessness of eternity,
And yet I love and I can pinpoint my existence
In unfaltering co-ordinates.

What if the earth should suddenly expire?
What if the universe decides to crunch?
What if Death around each corner lies in wait?
My only fear now is that we two are on a parallel course
And that the threads of our two lives will never cross...

That which I feel
Is infinitely more important
Than all the vastness looming above, below,
Around all sides of me.
Without you by my side,
The boundless space within me
Annuls the space without.

MIDWEEK MOVIES - THE DETAILS

“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” - Immanuel Kant 

We watched an interesting film at the weekend, which got us talking about “amoral” versus “immoral” people. Amoral implies ‘not concerned with or affected by morality’, so that something described as amoral cannot appropriately be criticised for failure to conform to accepted moral standards. It is lacking a moral sense and is unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something (for example, “an amoral attitude to sex”; or “the client pays for the amoral expertise of the lawyer”).

Immoral, on the other hand, means ‘not conforming to accepted standards of morality’, and implies condemnation (e.g. “they felt it was immoral to accept a loan that they could not hope to repay”). Our discussion concerned the anti-hero of this quirky movie, which was about all the shades of gray between the blacks and whites of morality. 

The Details (2011) Black Comedy - Directed by Jacob Estes; starring Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney. - 7/10

In King County, Washington, Dr. Jeff Lang (Maguire) has been married for ten years with Nealy Lang (Banks) and they have a little boy. Their best friends are Rebecca Mazzoni, who studied with Jeff at medical school, and her husband Peter Mazzoni. Jeff decides to lay turf in his backyard, but the lawn rolls come with worms underneath and raccoons destroy his lawn during the night. Jeff wants also build another room in the house for his planned second son, but City Hall blocks the project. Jeff decides to build the room without approval and he gives his mentally unstable next door neighbour Lila (Linney), a beautiful plant, hoping to bribe her into silence. Jeff likes to play basketball with his friend Lincoln, who has kidney failure and needs haemodialysis.

Things begin to go wrong for Jeff, as:

a) His wife refuses to have sex with him;

b) The raccoons are seemingly ineradicable;

c) Rebecca is far too amorous for a good friend;

d) Lila is unpredictably erratic in her dealings with Jeff;

e) Jeff is too irresponsible and prone to amoral and immoral behaviour…

This creates havoc in the lives of Jeff and everyone he associates with, with some bizarre and tragic consequences.

We quite enjoyed the film, but perhaps even more the discussion it generated in its aftermath, which was quite a philosophical one and got us thinking about morality and how people view it and what choices in their lives they make on the basis of their personal concepts of morality. Worth hunting out this film and watching it, not only because it is quite entertaining, but also because it is a film that makes you think.

MOVIE MONDAY - FILM SOLELY AS ENTERTAINMENT?

“Films are meant solely to provide entertainment. There are no lessons to be learnt and and inferences to be drawn. Has anyone become dutiful and law abiding after seeing a film that espouses these very virtues? Films can do no more than influence fashion, decor, and hairstyle trends.” -  Madhur Bhandarkar

Do you agree with this view of the influence of film by Bhandarkar? I don’t. Films are more than simple entertainment and they can have a variety of influences on the viewer. Film surely is entertainment, but that is not its only effect or function.

Film can be art, it can be propaganda, it can be a powerful means of communication and education (especially so in the social arena). Film can be subtle in its effects and it can have good or bad outcome in terms of changing attitudes, modifying prejudices and arousing expectations in people.

What do you think?

MOVIE MONDAY - WAGNER AND ME

“How did such sublime music come from such a warped man? Maybe art really does have the power to ferret out the best in us.” – Anthony Tommasini 

Richard Wagner was born in Germany on May 22, 1813, went on to become one of the world’s most influential (and controversial!) composers. He is famous for both his epic operas, including the four-part, 18-hour Ring Cycle, as well as for his anti-semitic writings, which, posthumously, made him a favourite of Adolf Hitler. There is evidence that Wagner’s music was played at the Dachau concentration camp to “re-educate” the prisoners. Wagner had a tumultuous love life, which involved several scandalous affairs. He died of a heart attack in Venice on February 13, 1883.

Wagner is not one of favourite composers, although some of his music can be rousing and emotionally charged, occasionally sublime and in some instances abhorrently noisy. You can either love or hate Richard Wagner, but in any case he is not one to ignore. It is perhaps unfortunate that Wagner was the favourite composer of Adolf Hitler, who claimed to have seen Wagner’s opera “Rienzi” at least 40 times. This coupled with the use of Wagner’s music for Nazi ceremonial occasions and “rehabilitation” purposes of concentration camp inmates have stained Wagner’s reputation in terms of anti-Semitic sentiments.

We watched the 2010 Patrick McGrady documentary “Wagner and Me” starring Stephen Fry in which Wagner’s life, oeuvre and life perspective are explored in terms of Fry’s reaction to the man and his music. As such, the documentary examines more Stephen Fry’s life and psychology rather than Wagner’s. It is very much Wagner viewed through Fry’s eyes, or more importantly, listened to via Fry’s ears.

Stephen Fry first fell in love with the music of Wagner when he was 14 and thus began a lifetime’s intense enjoyment and involvement for the music.  The complicating factor is that Stephen Fry is Jewish and has lost family members in the Holocaust at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Therein lies the conflict in Fry’s enjoyment of the music of a man who clearly had hateful views about the Jews and whose music was tainted by its association with the Nazis later on.

The documentary is beautifully shot and offers amazing views of Bayreuth in preparation for the annual Festival in which performances of operas by Wagner are held. There is also footage of Nuremberg, which is famous for Hitler’s massive Nazi rallies. While many historians, musicians, Holocaust survivors and performers are interviewed, the documentary is primarily Stephen Fry’s. It is an almost apologetic and embarrassing admission by Fry that despite everything he still loves Wagner’s music…

While there are glimpses of Wagner’s life and some performances of small parts of his work, Wagner music lovers may well be disappointed by this documentary because it more about Fry than about Wagner. Nevertheless, we found it an excellent introduction to the composer and his music, with the ambivalence of Fry’s views acting as a means of resolving the thorny of issue of balance: On the one hand there is artistic and creative genius, and on the other political views and prejudices that may influence the listener’s perception of the music…

POETS UNITED - INVISIBILITY

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Poets United mid-week motif is “invisibility”. We are gifted with sight to see what is readily visible to all, however, relatively few people have vision and see what is invisible to most. We are surrounded by optical illusions, distorting mirrors and smoke screens in a world that has become more and more shrouded in deception and falseness. What is true, fundamental and crucial to us lies hidden and invisible. To see the essential we have to use more than our eyes…
Here is my poem:

The Invisible

The eyes are blind to the essential

And that is why we must have an open heart,

With which to see the invisible.

A beautiful face can hide an evil mind,

And that is why we must have a pure soul

With which to sense the invisible.

Hypocrisy, flattery, cant are rife

And that is why we must have wisdom,

With which to reason the invisible.

Sweet words and lulling music dull our ears,

And that is why we must have clean hands

With which to feel the invisible.

The world around us is corrupt and filled with devils,

And that is why we need faith and love and hope

With which to make the invisible, visible;

To make the hidden manifest;

To uncover the truth obscured by lies;

To find the innocent amongst the damned.

MOVIE MONDAY - SLOW WEST

“Ah, clear they see and true they say, That one shall weep, and one shall stray”― Dorothy Parker

You’ve heard of spaghetti westerns, right? Sergio Leone's 1964 “A Fistful of Dollars” starring Clint Eastwood is a classic example. They certainly put a new twist to the USA genre. But what about a “Fish-and-Chip” western? What is that you may ask? Well, it’s a western produced in UK… We watched it last weekend.

It is the 2015 John Maclean movie “Slow West” starring Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Caren Pistorius and Ben Mendelsohn. John Maclean is a Scott who studied BA drawing and painting at Edinburgh college of Art and MA at The Royal College of art in London. After graduating, he formed The Beta Band with friends, 1997 to 2004 and The Aliens 2005 to 2008. John made many of the band’s music videos. In 2009 John made “Man on a Motorcycle”, a short film starring Michael Fassbender, filmed on a mobile phone, then “Pitch Black Heist” in 2011, which won the best short film BAFTA. “Slow West: is Maclean’s first feature film.

The plot centres on young Scotsman, Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who leaves the lochs and glens of his country to find Rose (Caren Pistorius), his long-lost love who is now in the Wild West of America. A desperado, Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), decides to accompany Cavendish on his journey for a price… Cavendish hands over “protection money” for the journey, but the naïve youngster is unaware that Silas may also be wanting to cash in on a bounty that hangs over Rose’s head (something that Jay is unaware of).

The American West serves as an allegory of love and death and the journey that the two main characters undertake has a soul-searching depth that may be found in some road movies (only here they are on horseback!). The film was shot in New Zealand and Maclean certainly convinces us that we are looking at the American West (and Scotland as well, in a few flashback scenes). The cinematography is wonderful and the colours alternating between muted and hazy to crisp and vivid, as if the film switches between nightmare and beautiful dream.

The film is romantic and violent, hellish and paradisiacal, idealistic and cruelly realistic all at once. But there is also humour and light-heartedness in this film as well as tragedy. The intensity and purity of young, first love is contrasted with the wicked ways of the world, while the young and innocent Jay is quickly corrupted by circumstances and his interactions with tough man Silas. Yet, while Jay hardens on the outside and maintains his idealistic love internally, Silas sheds his toughness and softens by the end of the movie. I was reminded a little of “True Grit” where there is teaming up of a naïve youngster with a cynical older man, but “Slow West” has a charm and hardness that is not seen in the older movies.

The acting was wonderful, both from the first-billed actors to the supporting roles and the direction managed to maintain interest in what was essentially a slow movie, with lots of action and lots of character development, all stuffed into the extremely concise 84-minute run time. The musical score was appropriate and non-obtrusive while the costumes and sets great. This is a great little film if you can lay your hands on it and a wonderful directorial/script-writing debut from Maclean.

MOVIE MONDAY - THE LAST SUPPER

“Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to get out.” - John McCarthy

We watched a quirky little movie last weekend, Stacy Title’s 1995 movie, “The Last Supper”. It starred Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman and the screenplay by Dan Rosen.

Jude (Diaz), Luke (Vance), Marc (Penner), Paulie (Gish) and Pete (Eldard) are liberal-minded grad students at a Iowa post-secondary institution who all share a house. Every Sunday for a year, they have hosted a dinner party, inviting a friend over to have an open-minded discussion about whatever topics are of interest to everyone. On a dark and stormy night when Pete was supposed to bring a friend to one of those dinners, he comes home with Zachary Cody (Bill Paxton), who rescued the stranded Pete when his car broke down. They invite Zach to stay to dinner instead of Pete’s missing friend.

They soon find out that Zach is among other things a racist neo-Nazi, which brings up a potentially dangerous situation for Jewish Marc and black Luke. After some physical altercations and verbal threats, Marc ends up stabbing Zach dead out of what he considers self-defence. As the friends discuss what to do about Zach, they finally come to the conclusion that in killing Zach, they have done society a service. So they ponder “why not invite other people who are society’s scum and get rid of them once and for all?” Things get our of hand…

The film is a black comedy but it does raise the important issue of political extremism – far left or far right, it doesn’t matter as the two extremes meet on common ground! The basic premise of the film, “would people be justified in murdering someone if they knew he was evil?” is illustrated by the typical time travel scenario, where the five dinner hosts ponder the question  “If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler before he rose to power, to prevent the extermination of millions?” The question in their mind finally becomes easy to answer as their dinner guests one by one are disposed and buried in the garden giving bumper tomato crops.

As well as being a tolerable comedy, it is on the second, more philosophical level, that the film really succeeds. The liberals become intolerant killers, revealing the dangers of political correctness and the very real possibility of a left-wing police state in which alternative views are crushed in the name liberal values… The liberals become as “evil” as the rednecks they are dispatching into the next world.

The acting is good, although some of the (now famous) actors were just starting their acting career then. It has a poppy sound track and good settings and overall it was a cerebral, subversive, intelligent, and thought-provoking comedy. Well worth watching if ti comes your way.

And by the way, if you could time travel, would you go back and kill baby Hitler?...

MOVIE MONDAY - LOST (B)

“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” - Zhuang Zhou

In mid-August I wrote a review on the TV Series “Lost”, which is a six-season show first seen on TV between 2004 and 2010. It concerns the survivors of a plane crash that are forced to work together in order to survive on a seemingly deserted tropical island. Halfway through watching the show, we were quite impressed and we kept on watching as the plot was good, the acting excellent and the production values high.

Well, we’ve lasted till the end of the show and we have finished watching it. Although, admittedly it was a little bit of an effort to keep on watching towards the end of the series. Plot devices that worked initially became messy as the show progressed. The morass of flash-forwards and flash-backs, alternate realities and simultaneous exposition of multiple plot threads tired the viewer. A lot of action and plot exposition that viewers had invested in and wanted logical resolution of just petered out and no explanation was offered.

From about the third season on, the supernatural aspect became more and more apparent and anything could be explained by pulling appropriate rabbits out of multiple hats and “deus ex machina” plot savers. The philosophical questions posed by the script writers became messy and what may have been started as a rumination of the essence of being and the meaning of life became a cheap clairvoyance session with a fake medium.

We valiantly kept watching but by mid sixth season it was becoming apparent that the series would end with a whimper, not a bang. So we watched the final episode and it was unfortunately such an anti-climax that we just looked at one another and managed to say: “Wait on, is that it? Surely not!” But there it all was, it had finished in a puff of smoke. Quite disappointing…

Yet, I guess, we were glad to have watched it and the moral of the story is, be very wary of the behemoth that the entertainment industry has become – especially so, TV and TV series. It’s all about ratings and profits and if a show becomes a money spinner it will be dragged out to extremes and the plot will end up as nonsense. In a way, that is why I tend to enjoy British series quite a lot. They tend to be shorter and meatier and punchier.

Should you watch “Lost”? I guess the answer is yes if you moderate your expectations and view it as escapist entertainment pure and simple. You may watch it with someone and tease out the philosophy that it is attempting to expose people to, but this is going to be hard work on your part. Otherwise it watch it and enjoy the good production, excellent acting some good humour and don’t expect fireworks in the end!

POETS UNITED - CONQUEST

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” - Edmund Hillary

This week, the Mid-Week Motif in Poets United is “Conquest”. My contribution below:

My memory of the climb is dominated by the bitter cold – more intense and harsh than the inhospitable terrain and the ache in each of my muscle fibres. The tracks narrow, the ice and snow treacherous, each step calculated and deliberate. My breath laboured and each time I raised my eyes to look at the peak beckoning through breaks in the clouds, I wondered whether I would be able to reach that shimmering, bright mountain top high above me or whether I would collapse in a lifeless heap.

Each new mountain that we climb is a new challenge, each new peak that rises up in front of us is a new invitation to conquer its heights. The path to the summit is difficult, the climb is dangerous, the reward seemingly unattainable. And yet we accept the challenge and we choose to climb; why? Because it is there? Because of the hope of fame and glory? Because of the expectations of our peers and friends? No, the need is deeper and more personal. We climb because we must, we climb to conquer our own limitations and to vanquish our own internal demons.

Once at the top, there is the heady feeling of success as one views the earth below as if it were a prize offered on a tray. The mountain has been conquered, the fires within have been extinguished and the yearning quelled.

The road to your heart
Is steep, icy, dangerous;
But bliss its conquest…

MOVIE MONDAY - SCI-FI FILMS

“Change is the principal feature of our age and literature should explore how people deal with it. The best science fiction does that, head-on.” - David Brin

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a “literature of ideas.” It usually avoids dealing with the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, science fiction stories historically were intended to have at least a faint grounding in science-based fact or theory at the time the story was created, but this connection has become tenuous or non-existent in much of science fiction nowadays.

Science fiction is not new. “True Stories” (Ancient Greek: Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata; Latin: Vera Historia) is a parody of travel tales, by the Greek-speaking Assyrian author Lucian of Samosata, the earliest known fiction about travelling to outer space, alien life-forms and interplanetary warfare. Written in the 2nd century, the novel has been referred to as the first known text that could be called science fiction. The work was intended by Lucian as a satire against contemporary and ancient sources, which quote fantastic and mythical events as truth.

Since that time, authors have been writing science fiction, with examples in the “Arabian Nights”, Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels”, Shelley’s “Frankestein” and many others. The genre fired the public imagination with the novels of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne who created a body of work that became popular across broad cross-sections of society. Since then, it has become broader and even more popular, with several sub-genres now included under the umbrella of “science fiction”.

It is not surprising that this genre of fiction was very quickly translated to the silver screen almost as soon as movies were invented. It seems the medium lent itself to the genre, even in the early days of pioneer film-making. Georges Melies’ 1902 “A Trip to the Moon” employed trick photography effects and looked at a typical space travel scenario. The next major example in the genre was Fritz Lang’s 1927 “Metropolis”, being the first feature length science fiction movie. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the genre consisted mainly of low-budget B movies. After Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 landmark “2001: A Space Odyssey”, the science fiction film genre was taken more seriously. In the late 1970s, big-budget science fiction films filled with special effects became popular with audiences after the success of George Lucas’s 1977 “Star Wars” and paved the way for the blockbuster hits of subsequent decades.

Similar to the literary genre, science fiction film (aka Sci-Fi movie) is a film genre that uses speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life-forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception and time travel, along with futuristic elements such as spacecraft, robots, cyborgs, interstellar travel or other technologies. Science fiction films have often been used to focus on political or social issues, and to explore philosophical issues like the human condition. In many cases, tropes derived from written science fiction may be used by film-makers ignorant of or at best indifferent to the standards of scientific plausibility and plot logic to which written science fiction is traditionally held.

I like a good science fiction movie, especially one where the viewer is immersed in a plot where the genre is free to examine philosophical or social issues that have a relevance to our society today. Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1971 movie “A Clockwork Orange” is a good example of this type. It is dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian near-future Britain.

But having said that, I am also partial to well-made escapist science fiction that is simply a rollicking good tale. A typical example of this is the 2012 Andrew Stanton film “John Carter” based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “A Princess of Mars” (the first in a series of 11 novels by this author).

We humans thrive on tall tales. Since ancient times people have crowded together and have amused one another by relating stories that are speculative, imaginative, invented. Whether they are myths and fables, fairy tales or horror stories, tales of distant imagined places on earth or other planets, these tales amuse and satisfy our sense of wonder and answer that magical question, “what if…?” Science fiction novels and films will keep on being written and we shall keep on reading and watching them. But please, authors and film-makers, make them good ones!