Brownsville Girl
I’ve listened to this song about 30 times now, and I must say, it is the American equivalent to Swan’s Way. Wonderful is its portrayal of the South, traveling from town to town, the inevitability of our reminiscences but simultaneously making clear the futility of our desire to “return.” That Gregory Peck in a nameless western is the trigger, the madeleine that allows the embarkation into the past, is elegant and fitting. I always conjure the image of Dylan and Shepard sitting around Shepard’s studio, drinking hard?liquor smoking cigarettes, mumbling in their laconic, utterly esoteric ways, crafting the landscape, the rhyme scheme, the happenings of their epic song. I see this, and of course it makes me pine for older times, the glory days. Of which there never were. So the song succeeds in conveying both the melancholy of nostalgia, but also the hope that springs from it. I’m so fucking predictable.
Antonioni
We’ve lost one of the greatest directors of all time. Why am I stuck more on the loss of Antonioni than on Bergman? I can’t honestly say. Both were stalwarts, but for some reason I feel like Bergman...well, it was Bergman. We know what we lost when he died. But Antonioni I think split the audience much more vividly than Bergman. I mean, Antonioni could incite boos, petitions, his work really pushed. Bergman nailed cinema’s taut strings, the art of precision and necessity. Antonioni created something new. The art of nothing and everything. How far could he take the frame inside a frame inside a frame cliche? What would happen to perception if characters mimed an event while the sound made it real? Antonioni also created some of the strongest women onscreen, which given his nationality was something to behold (maybe Almodovar rivals him when it comes to men dealing with female subjects? I don’t know). This obviously erupts from his incredible relationship with the ethereal Monica Vitti, but their connection sprung from his vision. And we’ve lost that.
The Park Bench
I’m sitting here, with a sandwich. I’m tired. Sixty two years and I can’t get off this bench. Something about it. I can look at my feet, the sidewalk path beneath with the grains of sediment creating a mesmerizing collage of collusion and time. Constructed time. My life. I can look straight ahead and see the pond, seagulls swooping above it, just barely hovering the surface. Mysterious little things. Sometimes ducks appear, leading each other around, or maybe they’re all attached by string, thus their methodic path not one made by choice. I’ve never really looked too close. Even when the wind blows, a long sleeve shirt and my jacket keep me comfortable. The trees behind cut the wind nicely so I don’t get the worst of it, allowing me to stay that much longer.
Who’s that? He looks young, but as he sits down next to me, I can’t tell anymore how old he is. Kids look like they could be any age nowadays. Or maybe they always have, I’ve never thought deeply on that. Why’d he decide to sit next to me? I look to my right and see an endless procession of empty benches. I’m not rude so I don’t say anything. I just hope he doesn’t ask me for something. Or mistake me for a homeless man and offer me money. Though of course I’d accept. Why not? I could laugh about it for a while, and he’d know none the better.
The Young Man
I see him sitting on the bench, alone. I don’t know why, but I’m utterly attracted to the thought of sitting next to him. Not even to talk. In fact, I don’t really know why I want to sit next to him. But before dwelling on justification, I’m seated beside him. He looks so old, his wrinkles so defined. I love him. I don’t want to know anything about him. I’m just sitting next to an old man. And it looks to me like he’s chewing granite. Old and granite chewing, makes me think of death. I’m so close to asking him how he feels about that word, but I refrain. He looks kind enough though. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.
Death and Granite
Dying is dated. Newspaper fact. It is an igneous fear. An old man died today. In the most permanent section of the paper. The only section I read. Maybe when we die we actually transform, metamorphose into deity-like animals, and in this alternate state of being we wait. Wait to be reunited with the most important person in the world to us. If and when that person finds us, we can come back. Fuck. That’s just a film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I’m such a phony. But I remember that old man. The one original thing I’ve done. Sat next to him. Him and his bench. Slowly dissipating in the wind, cut by the trees. He was practicing gradualism. I got up a few minutes after he left and went home. That night I had an interesting dream. But I couldn’t describe it to you now. Even if I wanted to.
