Trump vs. Clinton, October 19 [2016)

As I write this, the United States is undergoing a soft (so far) coup d’état and, thank God, a countercoup (also soft…so far).

There are no tanks in the streets.  No physical bridges closed.  But the competing coups are very real and in progress at this time.

This might be hard for my international readers to wrap their heads around.

Likewise, my domestic readers (if there are any) are perhaps equally perplexed by the statements I’ve just made.

For different reasons, these two audiences (my dear readers) have probably not heard ANYTHING about this coup.

And yet I am not exercising hyperbole.

You WON’T hear anything about these competing coups in the media of the “new world order” (or, more accurately, the “old world order”).

Nothing on the BBC.  Nothing from AFP.  Maybe (maybe) something from Russian or Chinese or Iranian sources.  Maybe something from North Korea.

As for the US, there is a complete blackout on all the major channels of media communication concerning this digital coup taking place.

WikiLeaks is very much a part of it.  But even more so, it is the globalist Clinton cabal against a very brave movement seemingly spearheaded by US military intelligence.

I cannot claim to understand exactly what is going on.

But Hillary Clinton is being warned by the US intelligence community and US military to stand down.

Meaning, she has been warned publicly that the game is up.

The main spokesman of the countercoup has been the extremely brave and wise Dr. Steve Pieczenik.

And so, dear readers, you might be able (from this) to fathom just why I have decided to write once again on this Presidential election.

There are no more debates.

The third and final one.

In what is turning out to be an American revolution.

While moderator Chris Wallace was not perfect (he grilled Trump just as the transparently partisan previous moderators had), he did a generally passable job here.

Hillary got the first question.

Clinton:  “You know, I think when we talk about the Supreme Court, it really raises the central issue in this election.”

Translation:  “I know you don’t like me (and that includes my ‘voters’), but just remember that without me you won’t get to have abortions any more.  AND…you won’t have someone to take the guns away from the rednecks.  So vote for me, even though you hate me.  Thank you.”

Clinton:  “And I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people. Not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy.”

Hahahahaha….ahhhhhhh…this lady cracks me up!  The hubris!!!

Hillary then speaks of “dark, unaccountable money”:  something on which she’s an expert.

And that, my friends, is at the heart of the countercoup.

As I write, Hillary Clinton is under so much investigation by the FBI (including the Clinton Foundation) it’s not even funny.

Hillary punctuates her sermon with “That’s how I see the court.,” but there might be another court she’ll be seeing very soon (one which is trying HER).

Hillary’s self-righteous proclamation of “standing up to the powerful” is absolute bollocks.

She continues, “I would hope that the Senate would do its job…”.

This lady is one to talk!  Look at the “job” SHE did as Secretary of State!!!

Unbelievable that her Janus routine is so seemingly effortless.

Hillary says that the Senate’s job is to, “…confirm the nominee that President Obama has sent to them.”  Actually, that’s one of two options…of “doing their job”.  And by not even getting to that fork in the decision tree, the Senate is saying (regarding Obama’s nominee), “Hell no!”.

But in Hillary’s world, peons like the Senate just “confirm”.  They don’t question.  They just take orders.

Well, not for long…Hillary.

Trump:  “Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people.”

Yes, we all hope Ruth Bader quits.  It would only be fair, seeing as how Scalia was most likely whacked down on the Texas border.

Hillary almost breaks into fake Southern drawl when she feigns respect for the Second Amendment:  “I lived in Arkansas for 18 wonderful years.”

And I’m sure she hated every minute of it.  Such a boring task being a social climber in a backwoods like Arkansas!

But, you see, Hillary has been waiting for this her whole life.  And that’s why she is refusing to stand down (so far) as the US intelligence community has requested (John Brennan notwithstanding).

Hillary:  “But there is no doubt that I respect the second amendment.”

No, in fact there are VERY BIG doubts that you do.

But how do we know that Hillary is fake?

Because she can’t even come up with her own words.

As she apes Obama (“common sense regulation”), we know which side of the fence she sits on.

She is all about confiscating firearms BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY (like the fake Sandy Hook “shooting”).

Hillary:  “And you know, look. I understand that Donald has been strongly supported by the NRA, the gun lobby is on his side. They’re running millions of dollars of ads against me…”

Nice try…complaining that your overwhelming advantage in corporate donations (and the related, overwhelming ratio of Clinton to Trump ads) has not been enough.

Hillary:  “…and I regret that”.

The only thing she regrets is that Robby “Take The Money” Mook couldn’t convince the NRA that Hillary was pro-gun.  And not even a shyster like David Plouffe could have convinced them of that!

Trump:  “And I don’t know if Hillary was saying it in a sarcastic manner but I’m very proud to have the endorsement of the NRA and it was the earliest endorsement they’ve ever given to anybody who ran for president.”

Sarcastic.  Facetious.  Disingenuous.

Indeed, every Hillary statement is something other than what it seems.

Every word out of her mouth is a false flag.

Hillary Clinton refers to abortion as “health care”.

I shit you not!

Hillary:  “So many states are putting very stringent regulations on women that block them from exercising that choice…”

Oh boo hoo hoo!

Hillary again resorts to euphemism in calling euthanasia (death, murder…), “healthcare decisions.”

This is a pretty sick, diabolical woman.

Hillary:  “We have come too far to have that turn back now.”

There have, even by CDC statistics, been 52 million (million!) abortions in the United States…since just 1970.

Let me put that in perspective.  If North Korea nuked South Korea tomorrow and killed EVERY SINGLE South Korean, there would by 50 million dead South Koreans.

Are you beginning to get the magnitude of the drive-thru nature of US abortion?

Clinton:  “The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make.”

Or, for Hillary, joyful.

Clinton:  “I do not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”

So Hillary is all for the freedom of mothers to murder babies, but she’s up in arms (no pun intended) when the safety of “toddlers” is endangered by firearms.

Right.  Makes perfect sense.

In other words, the government would be taking firearms to protect “toddlers” (District of Colombia v. Heller), but the government shouldn’t dare interfere with the murder of unborn children.

Got it?

Just wanna make sure we’re clear on Madame Secretary.

Trump scored his first credulity points merely by tone of voice (and amplified by ethical position) when he intoned, “…but it’s not okay with me.”

Exactly.  Hillary Clinton wants to globalize death.  She wants to export it in the form of war.  She wants to import it in the form of mass immigration.  And, not least, she wants the citizenry unarmed so that she and her pals like George Soros can more efficiently exterminate any lowly Americans who disagree with her governance.

Trump:  “And that’s not acceptable.”

Thank you, Mr. Trump.

When Trump describes late-term abortions in some detail, Hilary retorts that his descriptions are “scare rhetoric.”

Right…  Get an abortion.  Everybody’s doing it.  And get a new pair of sunglasses.  Accessorize your abortion.  Make it festive.

Hillary:  “You should meet with some of the women I’ve met with. Women I’ve known over the course of my life.”

You mean like Saudi spy Huma Abedin?  Or do you, more accurately, mean “girls”?  How does Jeffrey Epstein figure into your respect for women?  Because you and Bill know him quite well…and Jeffrey (the sex offender) Epstein likes ’em YOUNG!  [And, as has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt, Hillary prefers females to males (as far as arousal goes).]

But Hillary reframes…like the slimy lawyer she is:  “…choices that any woman and her family has to make.”

Oh.  So it’s not a woman’s right to choose?  It’s a family’s right to choose?  So the decision is equally incumbent upon the man’s consent?  Or is he just supposed to “confirm” like your dream Senate?

Hillary:  “You know, I’ve had the great honor of traveling across the world on behalf of our country.”

She came.  She saw.  He died.

Yes, Hillary Clinton actually said (not in this debate), “I came.  I saw.  He died” in reference to Libya and Gaddafi.  After “died”, she let out a little gleeful laugh.

I wonder if that same laugh greeted the news that Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans died in Libya on account of Hillary?  I wonder if she even cared enough to laugh?

Probably not.  Because killing Gaddafi was an accomplishment (for her).  Something to put on her résumé…always social climbing…always for this moment…as Princess of America…so close…

I will give Hillary credit.  At least she’s conversant with natalist Romania (probably because of the insidious (artful!) propaganda of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).

Hillary:  “…decisions that women make with their families in accordance with their faith.”

Which “faiths” condone abortion?  I know not all are as strict as Catholicism (at least until Pope Francis ruins the religion), but there aren’t any “faiths” coming to mind that would be in “accord” with abortion.  Perhaps my religious scholarship is lacking.

Trump isn’t drooling out the same globalist shit.

Donald:  “We have no country if we have no border.”

Are you seeing why this guy is winning?  NO ONE has EVER said that at the highest levels of US government.  People here have NEVER had a choice to vote for someone so opposed to the globalist grand design.

But Trump isn’t just taking on the suit-and-tie gangsters like David Rockefeller and George Soros. Like a goddamned Eliot Ness, he’s taking on the “bad hombres”:  the drug lords.

This man has huge, brass testicles to go down this path.

And we love him for it!

Clinton:  “…I was thinking about a young girl I met here in Las Vegas…”

I BET YOU WERE!

Hillary only dislikes scare tactics WHEN SHE’S NOT USING THEM!

Listen to her frame deportation of illegal immigrants in Auschwitz terms:

“every undocumented person would be subject to deportation. Here’s what that means. It means you would have to have a massive law enforcement presence where law enforcement officers would be going school to school, home to home, business to business. Rounding up people who are undocumented. And we would then have to put them on trains…”

Maybe Soros recounted his remorseless collusion with the Nazis.  Maybe they shared a laugh.  Maybe the metteur en scène Steven Spielberg “authored” the above paragraph.

But it’s not working.  The propaganda.  The social engineering.

But Hillary dug her own grave.

Trump could kick back and watch her self-destruct.

Wallace: “Secretary Clinton, I want to clear up your position on this issue because in a speech you gave to a Brazilian bank for which you were paid $225,000, we’ve learned from Wikileaks, that you said this. And I want to quote. ‘My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders.’”

Trump:  “Thank you.”

Clinton: “If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy.”

Of which you have none left.

The game is over.

Your goose is cooked.

No more bald-faced lies about “energy” (the borders would only be open for energy…yeah right), Abraham Lincoln (her “public” and “private” positions doctrine…which she claims to have taken from Honest Abe [you can’t make this shit up]…by way of a Spielberg movie [I knew he had to be involved, somehow…that hack!]), etc.

Hillary Clinton called one of our ostensibly greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln (aka Honest Abe), a liar on national television.

This woman!  Like the pot calling the stovepipe hat black…

The game’s up Hillary.

Time to stand down.

Or, in legal language (which you might be hearing an awful lot of in the coming months), cease and desist.

-PD

Twin Peaks “Coma” [1990)

And here the trail goes cold…

I’m not at liberty to reveal the nature of my work.

Space gibberish. [do͞owäp]

Creamed corn.

The owls are not what they seem.

Cooper Cooper Cooper.

Pentagon.

Deliver the message.

No more notes.

Do not underestimate the importance of doo-wop as a key to understanding David Lynch.

Jimmy Wales vs. Jeff Bezos.

The Pepsi-Coke challenge in Palestine.

Charlie Hebdo…back when it was a newspaper…and not a (false flag).

Indefinite article followed by différance.

brisure

It was Wayne Coyne sung,

“Forcing it off with their hands
The trap door came undone
Above our heads it swung
The privilege had been won”

A spoonful weighs a ton iS tHE nAME oF tHE sONG.

Softly, the bullet went in.

Because it was fictional.

sangre azul

I figured must be freckled.

Veins of copper.

And the Basque mystery.

“The owls are not what they seem”

NYPVTT

It is the ongoing conversation between military rationality.

And the pluri-dimensional eccentrics of Marabar Caves.

Austin Lynch in microcosm.

Anton Yelchin, dead.

Amjad Sabri, dead.

Orphée [1950)

The philosopher has very little advantage.

Because the model and reality do not match up.

One-to-one.

And the oaf stands strictly no chance.

To understand mythology transposed onto plagiarism.

In the ancient world, it was the opposite of a crime.

Get the story right.  Same with medieval scribes.

There was no author.  There was only the story.  And perfect copies.

And perhaps the occasional illumination.

The glass of water that lights the world.

It’s Cary Grant.

Something about sitting in a bowl of milk.

Impossible to tune out the bourse.

Always the radio, but never the gloves.

Mirrors, or course.

Ravel.  Versailles.  Quite proximate.

But the erudition must lead somewhere.

And it does.

Heurtebise must look on.

He must spectate.

A strange sort of unrequited love.

Like the Watchers.  Breeding Nephilim.

It’s not all Elysian fields here.

It’s Nazi death.  and Death.

Stylometry squelches outliers only through aggregative loss of dimensionality.

Whew!

I need a drink after that one 🙂

But I don’t drink.

Death doesn’t drink.

Oh, to work for Death.

Taking orders.

Reporting.

Reprimanded.

The greatest transgression in this profession?  Love.

For love seeks to reverse the natural order.

Not even necessary to go as deep as Hell.

A mere gravedigger can get the picture.

Olfactory.  Not the new one.

Pre-Industrial Revolution.

You remember, right?

The English Revolution 🙂

Oh, wait…no, that never happened.

Not yet.

Happy Birthday Betty, you old hag!

We worship you down at MI6.

That’s not the royal “we” nor even a meaningful “we”.

It’s a disembodied imagination.

Remote viewing, if you must.

From beyond the dead.  Jean Cocteau.  One of the greatest film directors ever.

Because he was a complete creator.

Squiggle graphs like Miró.

Joan was a man.  Of ark.

And Georges is just one guy in France.  In America he is two fellows.  Two chaps in U.K.

George 1 and George 2, making Georges.

Georges Bizet.

And I must mention the composer of Orphée.  Georges Auric.

One of Les Six.  Satie’s bunch.

Not to be confused with The Five (Могучая кучка).  Cui’s quint.

Mere king to Balakirev’s ace.

And so you are condemned to extend metaphors throughout all eternity.

Long, ridiculous connections.

Until at last you are free.

And whether it is a table of Inquisitors or Nazis, you can do good and receive the ultimate punishment.

You might feel compelled to do good.

In that tiny particle is the answer which we seek.

Invisible, but tactile.

Almost a splinter.

A proof of a beyond.

 

-PD

Dahmer [2002)

I almost didn’t make it through this one.

Several times.

Not exactly light viewing for me.

Some people…obsessed with gore.

I’ve never been that way.

But there is something fascinating about serial killers.

Not in an adolescent worship rebellion way.

Stories about serial killers are like car crashes.

Sometimes we can’t look away.

Perhaps we feel compelled to go into that deep place within ourselves.

We want to know the horror of truth.

We want to be able to handle the truth.

The truth is sometimes disgusting.

Panic-inducing.

If you live in a war zone, you are used to blood.

If you are a soldier who’s fought in a war, you’ve seen the worst kind of dying.

Dahmer is a different sort of death.

It is a feast for psychologists.

We want to learn how these things happen so that we can prevent them.

I’m no psychologist.

Far from it.

I’m just a student of life.

And so in order to really appreciate wild sunflowers growing by the railroad tracks, we must face Dahmer.

Let me just say that this film puts Ted Bundy to shame.

First because of director David Jacobson.

It is a masterful film.  An artful film.  Everything that Schindler’s List is not.

In stories like this…there is nothing more important to remember (as an auteur) than the banality of evil.

But Dahmer introduces a star:  Jeremy Renner.

But you know who really deserves some credit?

Those people that auteur theorists often forget about.

Production designer (Eric Larson).

Art director (Kelley Wright).

Costume designer (Dana Hart).

These functional elements are essential here.

You think The Nice Guys has a cool look to it?

It ain’t shit compared to Dahmer.

And Ryan Gosling (that fucking guy annoys me…Ryan Reynolds with a mustache)…

Funny thing is, The Nice Guys looks like a good film.

But it’s vanilla…beige…compared to the cinema under discussion.

I’m not going to be wanting to see Dahmer again anytime soon, but it’s an essential film.

If you want to understand his crimes.

Bruce Davison is excellent as Dahmer’s father.

Artel Kayaru is really good!

Don’t discount the horror medium.

The “greatest creator of forms of the 20th century” (to quote Godard) kicked it off in earnest with Psycho.

Darkness is inextricably wound up in the light of cinema.

 

-PD

Les Portes de la nuit [1946)

I don’t know who I’m writing for.

Or why.

Maybe myself.

Because I think God grants us little bits of happiness.

So I am celebrating humanity.

Through cinema.

Poor words.

Can’t handle.

Sick of my face.

And my voice.

In cinema, we must remember the past.

We must speak every language.

So that Destiny is always equally “tired Death”.

Which is to say, Death.

Tired of doing His job.

I am death.

So I sometimes moonlight as destiny.

Jack Fate.

Jean Vilar.

Avignon.

Fate.

Jews being deported 2600 years ago.

Film influences.

Lesser films (like Schindler’s List) which receive state support often tell us how to think.

Cinema is dead in the United States.

But like Machiavelli, I believe our virtù can live again.

We may have killed the French film industry with jazz, but we birthed so much as well.

By this time he was simply known as Carette.

[it does not follow]

No one appreciates your Joycean take on the Arcades Project.

Same stream of thought which would make knowledge so ostensibly important at the start of the 21st century.

Julien Carette…of whom I’ve written before.

It is a very impressive verbal camouflage to say that code isn’t dead.

Cipher is too easy.  Too practical.

Is why art speaks in code.

But cinema is “neither an art nor a technique” (to quote Godard).

It is “a mystery”.

So to understand À bout de soufflé or Vivre sa vie, we must know Les Portes de la nuit.

It’s disgusting.

To be shot in the back.

Not necessarily in that order…

Marcel Carné.  Encore.

Another classic.

The great code.

The biggest mystery of all.

An unimportant list in an inconsequential book by Céline Scemama-Heard.

You will have to learn another language to continue down this path.

Now that the NSA has stopped jamming my computer.  Momentarily.

Nothing could be more absurd!

Yves Montand looks like Richard Hell here.

And we begin to understand Alan Vega even more.

You must remember this…les feuilles mortes sont “the dead leaves”.

Not autumn.

Lost in translation.

Nathalie Nattier would have to go to the end of the earth to make this a masterpiece.

Which is exactly what she did.

île de Pâques.

 

-PD

 

Невиност без заштите [1968)

[INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968)]

I’m taking a wild guess here.

Because life is the greatest complexity.

Only yesterday I was tempting death.

But my name is Deathwish.

Death, for short.

A hard name to live up to.

I’m taking a guess that I have been forgotten…by most of those who meant so much to me.

Such a maudlin (Magdalen) sentiment, but fitting after such a lackluster evening.

If you have read this far, then you are likely qualified to view the ikonoclastic (!) film Innocence Unprotected.

It’s a film about a film.  Wikipedia really likes Croatian.  I suppose because of the Roman letters.

So the original film is question was ostensibly called Nevinost bez zaštite.

It was made during the war.  1941.

Under Nazi occupation (just like Les Visiteurs du soir).

But our 1968 film (the film about a film…sort of) is by my favorite Serbian director:  Душан Макавејев.  Which is to say (with pity) Dušan Makavejev.

And about that title…well, it sounds the same.  That enigma “Serbo-Croatian”…but I can only guess (“taking a wild guess here”) that it was Невиност без заштите.

It flashes before my eyes so quickly.

The H that sounds like N.

The B that sounds like V.

The upside-down N that sounds like I.

The C that sounds like S.

The b with its tail in the crosswind…blowing west to east…which, mercifully, sounds like a B (or b).

The 3 that sounds like a Z.

The Roman numeral III with a floor beneath it…like a Greek temple without a roof…sounds like “Shhh…(peaceful)”.

Those are the tough ones at issue.

Cyrillic letters.

Yes?

Now that I have bent linguistic steel like Dragoljub Aleksić, we shall move on to more pressing matters.

Bending spoons.  Like Uri Geller.

An Israeli.  You know how much I love Israelis 🙂

It is true, in a sense.

Once upon a time…that the French and the Jews were my favorite people.

Completely true.

What happened?  How did I get bent from my Henry Miller humanism?

How did I move to a Jean-Luc Godard humanism?

Shouldn’t humanism value all humans equally?

Yes.

In my wrath…in my protective love for the Palestinians I have said some very unkind things about the Israelis.  Nothing I’m sure they haven’t heard before.

I am not really at the vanguard of anti-Semitism.

But I said it to be hurtful.

Strong words.

Because I was mad.

I’m sure Norman Finkelstein is a fine person.

Anyone who would argue with Alan Dershowitz must basically be alright.

As for Dersh, any lawyer who would deign write a book called The Case for Israel (in 2003, no less…year of the Iraq invasion) must have a loose screw.

As for me, all my screws are loose.

I don’t give (nor do I receive) a fuck.  Err…

That is Innocence Unprotected…a rather Dodoist film which wonders whether the dots of my most recent ellipsis were italicized.  The dots.

It would be like writing a poem about Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (in full-on ekphrasis mode) and calling it “Howl”.

To say there is a considerable amount of film quotation in Невиност без заштите would be an understatement.

It is truly (Poetically) a film within a film.

I dreamt.

And as I did,

I hawked plywood espadrilles

in Belgrade.

Proudly,

to fund my feature film.

Writing is an attempt to live again.

Which is to say, if I begin to live again, then

I shall have to stop writing.

Not like this.

In misery.

Like Baudelaire.

Who only ever laid a hooker.

Because Jeffrey Immelt has neither the time nor mental capacity to read Walter Benjamin.

And that’s why General Electric will fail.

Because the futures of most things are the opposites of their current states.

The future of marketing?  Anti-marketing.

Because people are tired of being tricked.

They want a refreshingly frank admission of inferiority.

And the endearment begins.

Capitalism hasn’t yet cashed in on socialism.

Because to do so would mean its death.

Both.

Trump and Sanders frozen for all time.

Which would mean the humorous death of politics.

And MegYn Kelly would pull her hair out as she stumbled down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

A lifetime wasted.

But not over yet.

There’s still night school.

She could learn a useful trade.

Now that journalism is dead.

But maybe in some Ethiopian rainforest the last shrub of curiosity/courage/integrity sits waiting for some Amazon former Fox News reporter to scale its unwieldy 39 feet…to take a clipping from the top.

Journalisa arabica.

Caught in the middle like 5 Broken Cameras.

Nothing could curse a presidential candidate more now than positive coverage by Fox News.

Fox News:  a more toxic endorsement than David Duke.

So now they change their tune.

Which begs the question:  does that mean you think that Republicans were rational (God forbid) to oppose Trump so long?

Or was it merely their house organ which disapproved of the ginger waker?

“Wake up kids!  I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania for nothing!!”

I would…as a paean to Mr. Georgia Guidestones himself, like to “expand upon” Gone With the Wind.  You know…add some rap music to certain scenes, show Clark Gable brushing his teeth, and such.  And then call it (wait for it…):  Gone With the Wind.

Yes?

Because that last period is almost certainly italicized.

It was not good enough to be amateur.

But Makavejev fixed that.

 

-PD

 

La Bête Humaine [1938)

This might be the most depressing film of all time.

And that’s not nothing.

I seem to remember.  Thurston Moore.

A Rolling Stone review of Lou Reed’s album Berlin.

The fucked-up kids will always search out these masterpieces.

Because they are forbidden.

Like the strange death of James Forrestal.

The first U.S. Secretary of Defense.

But let’s back to cinema.  [sic]

Let’s active.

Trains.

I often dream of trains.

Such an important part of my lineage.

Whether there were drunkards or not, I have no idea.

But train men there were many in my family.

Enough.

We think it’s gonna be like La Roue of Abel Gance.

That 273-minute behemoth.

But it’s only the trappings which match.

Perhaps, dear reader, you are more perceptive than I.

But I couldn’t have seen this ending coming in a million years.

Like the Maginot Line being overrun.

This was 1938.  Jean Renoir.

Madness.  Madness.

On the precipice of World War II.

Not history.

But present.

It must be ever present.

We must be terrified of history.

And to each of us is given a special area to study.

I long labored in the musical mines.  Studying birdsongs.

But one day I escaped my cage.

And I lived to see the blowout.

Jericho, Kentucky.

But now I am given over to film.

Because I am too old to be a rock star.

“My face is finished/My body’s gone”

It would be a miracle of spectacle for me to be relevant again in the most venal of concert halls.

And so we move on to opera.  Silent film.  Quail eggs.

Madness vs. madness.

When magazine was a store.

And journal was a newspaper.

When was that?

The false-friends attack of language.  Cognates.  Faux.

Gripping his steam engine.  A night without sleep.

La Bête Humaine.  The human beast.  Monster.

Fighting it.  Fighting it.

The banality of evil had already suffused Europe by 1938.

And so we live with a corpse throughout most of this film.

Pocket watch.  Wallet full of dough.

But Simone Simon is already flirting her way to destiny.

Der müde Tod.

Femme fatale.  Serial.  Concatenation of sickly sweet roles.

Roles.

Jean Gabin.

Here’s to you, my friend!

And Julien Carette.  Always sucking on that cigarette.

We begin to covet the boring comfort of his life.

Living from one cigarette to the next.

Vive le tabac!

Piss-poor English Wikipedia will not tell you that Monsieur Carette was an integral part of Renoir’s masterpiece La Règle du jeu.  Not, that is, if you are looking at his page.

And so, dear reader, I am here to make those connections for you.

Perhaps they will mean nothing.

Perhaps they will mean everything.

Let me just say this…

La Bête Humaine was an extremely brave film to make in 1938.

More Hitchcock than anything Hitch had made up till that point.

Ahead of its time, yes.

But most particularly…symptomatic of that age of anxiety.

 

-PD

 

Viskningar och rop [1972)

Cris et Chuchotements.

…et Chuchotements.

This horribly powerful film.

No light reading.

From the lips.

Fumbling big-hand thoughts.

Like Brice Parain said, inseparable from language.

We can see this fount at which Godard drank.

We can see the borrowing of von Trier.

We can see the fealty of Wes Anderson.

It is Cries and Whispers of Ingmar Bergman.

Tired, aging Bergman.

Clear as a bell.

Static shots which must be achieved through moving pictures.

Just stop moving for a moment.

And be quiet.

That microphone.

Just out of sight.

No B-movie swoop-downs.

But absolute perfection throughout.

And yet the message is dark.

No hope.

Cathartic, maybe.

Always fade to red.

And reemerge through the color spectrum.

Yellow to white light.

Four women.

Three sisters and a zaftig maid.

Someone’s crying Lord…

Come by here.  In a dream.  See their lips move.

We should love the coquette.  The redhead.  Liv Ullmann.

She should dominate us like a Renoir painting.

A madder rose cinema has known not.

But is she not a fake, Maria?

Is she not just a color palette towards which we gravitate?

What worth in the façade when the heart is empty?

It had been a long time since Summer with Monika, but Harriet Andersson was here.

And yet, it is Liv Ullmann who gets the plastic surgeon insults of the doctor (Erland Josephson).

But Harriet Andersson has enough grief with which to deal.

No no, I have gotten mixed up with all these actresses of Bergman.  And don’t even mention Ingrid!

We will come back to poor, sweet Harriet.

But we must first deal with the witch:  Ingrid Thulin.

What kind of misery makes such a witch?

A tissue of lies (reads the subtitles).

I believe Thierry Meyssan had to deal with such proclamations (though I read them in translation).

What kind of lies here, though…specifically?

Loveless marriage.

Probably even more empty than simply.

Loveless.

No creative punctuation.  No flirtatious commas or semicolons.

But simply poetry written like a telegraph dispatch.

Full stop.

Desperate.

Depression unto madness.  That is Ingrid Thulin here as Karin.

But then we must come back to our sickness.

A true physical ailment.

A patient.

Bedridden.

Patience.

It is Agnes.  Painful.  Wheezing.  Horrible.  Ghastly.

A high-water mark of art films.

Top that, motherfucker.

Jerry Lee to Chuck Berry.  Worse than an expletive.

But what brings this whole film together?  Who holds this house against her bosom?

It is none other than Kari Sylwan.

Yes, there are no important male characters within.

Georg Årlin chews his fish like someone in the diplomatic service should.

And expects “a little consensual rape in the evening” (to quote the Nick Cave of Grinderman).

But such petty existence boils the madness.

The glass.

Shards of light.

Smeared with lunacy.

Against all this is Kari Sylwan as Anna.

The maid.

The help.

Priceless.

Humanist.

A believer.  As the sick believed more than the priest.

No real important male characters here.

But Anders Ek is the voice of reason.  The voice of poetry.  For a moment.  Touching.

Don’t touch me.

Don’t touch me.

Such damage in the world.

And Anna bears it all.

The only true hero.

Meek.

Equally tormented.

But strong.

Annas make the world go round.  Deliver the medicine.  Keep the world from splitting open.  Make sure the trains are on time.  Hugs.

The history of cinema is littered with sad brilliance.

Strewn with fictional corpses.

Troubled directors trying to come to terms with their own fears of death.

And in the end, such creations loom large because they closest resemble the art of the ancient world and the itch of the Renaissance.

Storm on!  And write all night long!!

Someone has stolen my beard, but my mustache is plenty weird.

We shall live to see Nietzsche bitch-slap Hitler.

And Tarantino will again work at a video store.  Where he belongs.  A very able clerk.  Like me.

 

-PD

Ordet [1955)

I’m so scared of life.

So scared of death.

And everything in between.

And so I thank the God of all religions.

My God.  Whom I do not own.  Not mine alone.

Once, an old lady in a corner taught me how to pronounce Søren Kierkegaard.  [Kierka Gourd]

And I delivered a speech of mere seconds…in Denmark…extolling Ordet.

And now we have come full circle.

What was living has died.

And in the spark of a moment is alive again.

That is the miracle of cinema which the auteur theorists captured.

It’s not just the story.  It’s how you tell it.

That spark of manipulating the mystery…the seventh art…cinema…that is authorship.

The breath of life.

Magic.

Yes.

Anything can happen in the movies.

Everything is possible.

The mutants receive new life from David Byrne and Luaka Bop captures a situation à la Yves Klein.

Johannes will often spout out nonsense.  Seemingly.  The insanity of religion.

But few times has the essence of faith been so lovingly portrayed as here.

Certainly Francesco, giullare di Dio.  Rossellini.  Five years previous.

Yes, the jester of God.

I am here for you.  For that very purpose.  My sermon.  Amen.

Now that we finally have a Pope who espouses omnism.

And there are those who would call him antichrist.

Rubbish!

Be like Peter.  Peter Peterson.  Reread the words of Jesus.

It’s all a bunch of unimportant bollocks over which we are arguing.

And meanwhile propaganda puts truth at the service of falsehood.

But I’m just a messed up kid.

I’ve studied too much.

Like Johannes.

I’m delusional.

Especially insofar as thinking I can change anything whatsoever.

What faith!  What insanity!!

No.

I merely have the heart of Mikkel.  The doubter.

And I grow into the form of Morten.  The pessimist.

But what about that magic?

That electric guitar with a lightening flash?  Perfectly synchronized.

Those behind-the-scenes meanderings of God.  A humble god.  Not drawing too much attention.

Yes, that is the sentiment of Inger (Birgitte Federspiel).

Everything we have ever loved.

Taken from us.

Goodbye.

And all the while Preben Lerdorff Rye wanders around as if in a trance.

Exactly like Nicolas de Gunzberg in Vampyr.

Exactly like Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

And exactly like the mad saints who penned the great maniacal books.

The Gospel of John (Johannes).  The Word.  Ordet.

And the Book of Revelation.  Dangerous plaything of the lonely.

Harmless psychedelia taken literally.

So obviously a bad trip.  And what a perfect exclamation of fear to finalize the canon.

And how ironic that the futurists have never heard of Giacomo Balla or Carlo Carrà or even Marinetti himself.

Yes.  Not at all ironic.

Dialectic.  Socratic method.  Devil’s advocate.

Unity of opposites.  Heraclitus.  Logos.

I say, my good man…  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Harrumph!

Is the auto-antonym flammable or inflammable?  Make up your mind!

And cleave TO or diverge like cleavage (literally)?

Which is to say, “defined by its opposite”.

Leadership><Followership.

You’ll end up hating algebra (wink wink).

iff!

(~)

ñot!  Borat.

Bathetic (!)

+ or

with black pieces, mind you:

“1.e4 e5 2.f4 Bc5 3.Nf3 d6 4.c3 Bg4 5.Bc4 Nd7 6.h3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 Qe7 8.a4 a6 9.b4 Ba7 10.Na3 Ngf6 11.f5 c6 12.d3 h6 13.Nc2 Rd8 14.Be3 Bb8 15.O-O Nh7 16.Qg4 Qf8 17.h4 Ndf6 18.Qf3 Qe7 19.g4 d5 20.Bc5 Bd6 21.Bxd6 Qxd6 22.Bb3 O-O 23.Rad1 g5 24.Ne3 Kg7 25.h5 Rfe8 26.Rf2 Nf8 27.Rb2 b5 28.Ra2 d4 29.axb5 axb5 30.Nc2 Ra8 31.Rxa8 Rxa8 32.cxd4 exd4 33.Kg2 N8d7 34.Qf2 Nxg4 35.Qxd4+ Qxd4 36.Nxd4 Ne3+ 37.Kf3 Nxd1 38.Bxd1 Ne5+ 39.Ke3 Ra1 40.Be2 Rb1 41.Nf3 Nxf3 42.Bxf3 Rxb4 43.e5 c5 44.Bc6 Rb1 45.Ke4 b4 46.Kd5 b3 47.Kd6 b2 48.Ke7 Re1 49.f6+ Kg8 50.Be4 Rxe4 51.dxe4 b1=Q 52.Kd6 Qxe4 0–1”

Will easily lead you to a rather insignificant Rousseau.

A social contract for the turnstiles.

“the things that you’re liable/to read in the Bible”

And yet the tearstains remain on my glasses…

Like a day at the beach.

Long ago.

Salty.

I pray this that and the uttering.

The word.

If it be possible.

 

-PD

Vampyr [1932)

I come to you from the darkest place.

Where all hope has been extinguished.

A maze of study and revelation.

Barely a word here spoken.

Do not give me your attention.

I am not the first person.

You wander in this dream.

He comes to know the horror.

Her and her alone.

Climb climb climb from the mist of history.

Give up your secrets to the light.

Vampyr, Kryptos, Tutankhamun.

IQLUSION.  1Q84.

gravity’s rainbow.  CERN.

In a Glass Darkly.  Published in Ireland.  1872.

Sheridan Le Fanu.  Dublin.

Does Langley know about this?

Always candles.  Always lighting candles.

NYPVTT.  Berlin.

Nicolas de Gunzberg as Julian West as Allan Gray.  Got it?

MZFPK.  We’re losing time quickly.

At an even pace.

Speeding towards the hour.

As slowly as we’ve ever been.

William H. Webster.  The only person to have ever headed both the CIA and the FBI.

Courtempierre.  Loiret.

Ah!  The review…

As if waking from a dream.

Or falling back into a nightmare.

Placing one foot in front of the other.

Rena Mandel could have come straight from Nosferatu.

Like Greta Schröder.  1922.  1932.

Not flapper like Frances Dade.  Blonde on blonde.  Helen Chandler.

UFA wanted Dracula to come out first.

A strange tactic.

And then utter failure.

But Sybille Schmitz has that Nazi jawline.  Like Leni Riefenstahl.

Spoonsful of tea for a dying man.

Candles peer in through the glass.

And the camera stares upwards…at the swaying trees.

It is like Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.

To be opened after my death.

Sealed in wax thrice.

Submission is the only slow number.

Mid-tempo.  A revelation.  Talisman.

A crooked doctor.  And you’re giving blood.

They’re putting you on statins.

The drug companies will pay.  And general practitioners will have impunity whoring for big pharma.

A view to a kill.

Berlin.  Surrounded by East Germany.

Mengenlehreuhr.  Yale.

Ooga booga.

Buried alive in the blues.

Come spend a life in Texas.

With no one.

Come be abandoned in Texas.

Not even on the island.

Information warfare.

He is getting his message out desperately.

Franz Liszt as Marguerite Chopin.

No comment from Gounod.

Walpurgisnacht.

Nerval translated 1828.

Gretchen.  Margaret.  Marguerite.

Ettersberg.  Buchenwald.

We see why Godard became suspicious.

Because all but the Dutch declined Resnais’ solicitation for holocaust footage.

Inside the camps.

During the war.

By the most technologically-advanced civilization in terms of film production.

Obsessive-compulsive documenters of expenditures.

The problem with the gas chambers.

Sybille Schmitz looks like a raving lunatic.

The ecstasy of Stockholm syndrome.  A bank.  Those doe eyes and bearded hippie among the safe-deposit boxes.

The Goethe Oak at Buchenwald.  THE Goethe Oak?  George Washington slept here.

The Goethe Oak bombed by the Allies.

Now a concrete stump thanks to the DDR.

Goethe Eiche.

Janus-faced Germany.  Januskopfes Deutschland.  Sounds like a load of rubbish to me.

Schiller’s beech tree didn’t bite the dust till 2007.

Death by flour.

I’ll say it again:  Wikipedia’s masterpiece.  “List of unusual deaths”.

 

-PD