Impressions

The first Andrei Tarkovsky movie I saw was the bastardised cut of SOLARIS in 1976. I was completely,totally baffled.The print was poor,the subtitles were clumsy. Later, I saw the improved version on a two tape VCR,then, on the beautiful Criterion Collection print now available on DVD. Tarkovsky has been called the poet of cinema,though perhaps simply a poet will suffice[the medium is not always the message}.When I first saw Andrei Rublev, especially the Bell casting scene, I was deeply ,almost profoundly moved.The final images, when Tarkovsky switches to Color film, delicately, deliberately scanning the Trinity Icon is shockingly gorgeous. Of his films, I love Nostalghia and Solaris,with their attendent sublime poetry perhaps most,though each of his 7 films[just seven, taken so young at 54] builds on the previous. There are few films I can return to now ,Tarkovsky's are always welcome fare
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Words
Often sound of late ice cracking
The spill of laughter
Echoing through a childs
Genes
Taut lives wound round
Hopeless hollers filled with
Dreams
Muffled groans ecstatic ecstasy?
Are lightly covered
In something like snow
down
it

Seems
Smoke laced dawn shrugs
The cold clean darkness
Leaves Prayers forced through squinted eyes
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Another day of war dead. Another day of lies emanating from the government.Auden once wrote the epitaph for this most foul of governments"...The truth is not whatever lie you choose to believe"
Where are the people of vision,the statesmen and women?Are they running for political cover?Hillary?Obama?.Wanting to be president is not a good enough reason . Where,O Lord, where is the person of courage? enough
Listen to Messiaen, to ali Akbar Khan, to Emmylou Harris, to the Grateful Dead, to Bach,to Wilco, to the amazing Woven Hand,to Slim Cessna,to Ruth Naomi Floyd,to Duke Ellington at Fargo, to the second sacred concert. That is hope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!