Archive for love
April 10, 2008 at 8:23 am · tag/s : amerika, australia, death, life, loss, love, people
a story is doing the rounds of the internets about an 80 year old man in new york who has been calling his late wife’s answering service every day since she died in 2005 just to hear her voice. unfortunately the phone company deleted the message and the old man was heartbroken. tough shit said verizon when he rang them asking if they could restore the message. then the story hit the internets and hey presto, the phone company found a backup of the message and restored it. where there is a will (or a potential public relations disaster) there is a way. there are a number of variants of the story, some of which claim the voice said : “the whitings aren’t home…” and in others “this is catherine whiting…” but no matter it is a great story. how long before there is service where you can record a message before you die so people can ring a number and hear your voice after you have passed away?
November 13, 2007 at 6:50 am · tag/s : amerika, australia, love
here is one for your fuck off pocket :
They had made fleeting eye contact and then she disappeared. It was visceral, inexplicable, something beyond words. Little wonder the romantics were quivering.
what a load of bollix. she didn’t even notice him. but it certainly seems that it was beyond words if the quality of the writing is anything to go by.
but what is it about the ‘quality press’ in late capitalism that a story like this gets picked up? or more specifically : what is it about the desperado hacks at the age? was it the fact that “the pair” appeared on good morning amerika? maybe this is what made it newsworthy?
February 28, 2007 at 5:55 am · tag/s : blog, death, image, love, pain, people, research, strange
people like to post images of their deceased pets on flickr. in their comments the posters often address their late pet directly, such as this one from suzukichick : “You nearly made it to 2007, boy. RIP”
there are also a number of ‘pools’, such as “in memoriam of our cats” and “loving memories” where members share pictures and console each other over the loss of their pets. like : “He gave you ten years of unconditional love.”
people also post interesting bits of information : in ancient egypt … when a cat died, the whole family and probably their closest friends, went into mourning, the measure of their personal loss signalled by their shaving off their eyebrows. (feline fancier)
February 16, 2007 at 4:49 am · tag/s : australia, love, people
in a great week for news, if you follow the australian media, pauline hanson has fallen in love with a country crooner, germaine greer’s portrait has been replaced by one of steve irwin in the national capital’s portrait gallery, and something about what’s her name … goodrem … i’ve already forgotten what
in another coup for the former leader of the one nation party, she also had her genes tested - the herald reports :
she was “amazed” and “mystified” (that) she had Middle Eastern heritage after a recent DNA swab revealed her ancestry was nine per cent of Middle Eastern origin, 32 per cent from Italy, Greece or Turkey and 59 per cent from northern Europe.
ah sweet irony
October 23, 2006 at 6:52 am · tag/s : blog, computers, doubt, film, love, pain
someone somewhere once said : everyone has one book in them - maybe we should add “or film” to that…
yes, somewhat belatedly, ephemera has finally caught up with that powerful, haunting document called tarnation
note : i am almost reluctant to call it a film because, although it was shown to great acclaim at cannes and was seen in cinemas and is a more or less conventional film length, it is not a film in any conventional sense of the word - rather it is a complex collage of sound, text and image, which tells the story of the troubled life of jonathan caouette, and was shot and recorded using a variety of cameras and media over 20 years, and edited by him using imovie
so now i finally have an answer to those people that ask : what is multimedia? only i would like to be able to hand them the original three hour cut - the fact that it is 88 minutes long is due to the executive producers, namely gus van sant and that hedwig and the angry inch guy, who persuaded caouette to reduce its length to something more palatable to cinema audiences, which seems a pity (i also wonder which copy writer should be sacked over the tacky tag “your greatest creation is the life you lead…” and all the other gushy stuff on the wellspring media website)
i guess, if pushed, we could call it an an autobiographical documentary, but conventional genres really do this work an injustice - thanks to mobile phone video cameras and web cams there will soon enough be a flood of autobiographical documents, and more than likely they will appear on youtube or my.space and feature product placement - but it is most unlikely that any of them will leave such a strong impression on the retina and the mind as tarnation
it is the harrowing story of one person’s life and growing up and living with insanity and abuse, and the most powerful and confronting scene, for me is at the end : we are in the present, and caouette at the age of 31 turns the camera on himself, and with his schizophrenic, brain damaged mother alseep downstairs, talks about his doubt, and fear, of becoming insane like her…
this is a disturbing multimedia document and a significant achievement - it demonstrates a naive, almost narcissistic, disregard for convention and genre, and why shouldn’t it? i would like to see the original three hour cut… and true to the multimedia form, i imagine myself the executive producer … what kind of film would it be if it was simply a humble documentary about his mother…? which it already is to some extent … and what is next ? tarnation the game…?
assemble your own version of tarnation on your imac - the ten dvd set includes all the original 160 hours of super-8, betamax, vhs, hi-8 and mini-dv, and the still photographs, answering machine messages and audiocassette diaries… and a free copy of ilife06…
(* with thanks to poo-tee-weet? for alerting me to tarnation and lending it to me)
October 13, 2006 at 6:59 am · tag/s : blog, love, people, thinking
one of the most interesting thinkers In Amsterdam is tjebbe van tijen - i spent some time with him in the late seventies and i think i may have been in love with his wife for a day and a half - i wrote about him somewhere in my phd ( … rummage … )
he is having an exhibition and giving a lecture about his work in amsterdam soon - Mediamatic has the guff, and an interview with him by geert lovink from 1994
in amsterdam the archives of whoever ventures into the field of politics and culture will sooner or later end up with Tjebbe van Tijen. For many people he is the embodiment of ’storage mania’. How the movements of the sixties stored their data and the consequences thereof for the current image generation are the central questions of this interview.
Mediamatic
September 23, 2006 at 5:42 pm · tag/s : blog, film, love
Samantha Lang is a film maker who is not afraid of a challenge : her debut was an ambitious adaptation of elizabeth jolley’s wonderful australian gothic novel the well, in which everything was blue.
then, after making a film of Dorothy Porter’s lesbian noir poem The Monkey’s Mask, she went to france to make a film in French, in the French studio system. the result, L’Idole (2003) was secretly shown by sbs australia late on friday night. it seems odd to say the least that our national broadcaster did not see fit to promote this extraordinary film made by one of australia’s most courageous film makers, which has hardly been seen in australia. beautifully shot, it is a flawed masterpiece which addresses the gaze, the private vs the public and challenges our ideas about race, age and gender.
l’idole shows the masculine at its most repulsive and pathetic, as well as at its most beautiful and gentle. ultimately strangely surreal, this is an austere and profound film which manages to be compassionate, generous, and even occasionally comic : french actors are world leaders when it comes to playing sleazy men (see claude berri’s wonderful jean de florette/manon des sources for one example) and Jean Paul Roussillon is brilliant in this.
see it. more than once.
four stars.
September 22, 2006 at 12:17 pm · tag/s : blog, love, music
There’s someone standing in the rain like they have no place to go
Maybe that someone is you, maybe someone you don’t aim to know
Maybe lost possessions
Maybe stolen property
You just lie around waiting on a signal from heaven
Never had to heal any deep incisIon
Darling you are not moving any mountains
You are not seeing any visions
You are not freeing any people from prison
Just an aphorism for every occasion
As if the only thing that ever matters
Is your place at the table
You never read the writing on the label
When you drank from the bottle
It said Keep Away From Children
This is stolen property, this is stolen property
Let her run away
Let her run, let her run away
She can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now
She don’t belong any more, learn the hard way
She don’t belong here anymore
Finders keepers, losers weepers
Finders keepers, losers weepers
This is stolen property, this is stolen property
Reach out in the darkness now she’s not there
Reach out it’s getting darker now she’s not there
Reach out it’s getting darker now
She don’t belong anymore, learn this the hard way
She don’t belong here any more
You stumble, sometimes fall
Pick yourself up! Hold yourself up to the light!
Duck your head ! Watch for the blade!
Can’t hurt you now, can’t hurt you now
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
This is stolen property
(David McComb)
the triffids - born sandy devotional
