The Conversation [1974)

By 1974, TITANPOINTE was complete.

Which brings us to Francis Ford Coppola for the first time.

spoo SPOOK!

Where AT&T is LITHIUM.

Briefly dominating Drudge Report.

And then gone.

“Up on the twenty-ninth floor
Up on the twenty-ninth floor”

Four locks.  And an alarm.  A bottle of wine.

No phone.  Happy 44th birthday.

Not happy about this.

Gene Hackman in this masterpiece.

From Antonioni we got Blowup eight years previous.

But this time it is all about getting a fat sound.

SIGINT.

Is it?

It is a love for one’s work.

Like Gregg Popovich.

Hoosiers.

Gene Hackman.

But scarier.  Like 33 Thomas Street.

SMPTE for the devil…seems.

Grasshopper.

Must have a mix.  Phasing.

Louder.  In phase.

Knock.  Out of phase.

Urgently.  For young Teri Garr.

It doesn’t work.

This work.

It bleeds you of life electricity.

Spooking yourself.

On the trolley.

Snapping synapse line.  Electrical cable overhead.

And power down.  Stuck.  To think.  In silhouette.

Producing hit intelligence.

But not really thinking too much about the consumers.

Until the cris de coeur.

Or crise cardiaque.

When you are the only one between groundbreaking intel and the world at large.

And you are hearing it (“getting” it) for the first time.

When your job becomes an obsession.

Because of a dedication to excellence.

His famous gray plastic raincoat.

We think Manfred Eicher.  And François Musy.

Long nights going through the takes.

Full take.

All tape.

Whispering “conscience”…in that Swiss French we know so well.

Gently coated with cigars.

Shirley Feeney is here.

Cindy Williams.

But no Laverne.

The opening take so slow.

New Orleans jazz in many reverbed permutations.

Slightly shifting like Debussy’s clouds.

Or the light on Monet’s haystacks.

Operationally triangulated.

In a sonic crosshairs.

Most satisfying is the breaking up.

The broken telegraph gibberish of the rhythmic signal skating on intelligibility.

As if he’s heading to 26 Federal Plaza.

But it’s more corporate espionage.

Risk management.

Counterintelligence.

A masterpiece of sound film.

Which emphasizes that which is usually an afterthought.

Sonic activity.

Signaling intelligence.

We wait to decode the universe on our doorstep.

 

-PD

 

 

Sympathy for the Devil [1968)

To reach a moment of genius.  The genius must rethink.  Through many blind alleys and breezy revolutions.  Rehabilitated.

To speak of clever things.  No.  It does not explain this moment in time.  Police vs. blacks.  Continuation crime.

To quote Juvenal or Sallust.  You have no recourse in the moment.  You will have your name dragged through the mud.

And so we apologize.  We are sorry that we weren’t more harsh.  A final gob of spit before being shot once and for all.

A film by Jean-Luc Godard which achieves genius just as it is diverted.

Punched the producer in the face.

The revolution of everyday life.  Vaneigem.

To speak of the actors would do injustice.

Anne Wiazemsky.  Red flag.  Black flag.  And the wind of god.  On the beach.  The paving stones.

We have got it backwards because we don’t speak English.

Keith Richard.  Sans s.

And my favorite drummer Charlie Watts.

And now we have let routine take over.  Just as we asserted a revolutionary principle.

Through our fingers like sand.  Run, run, run…little kitty.  Machine guns for all.

Makes sense to whom?  Makes no difference.  Sense.

A review.  A summary.  A dissection.

An affront.  An attack.  An absolute about-face.

And so in 2015 we can only speak of Snowden.

We can only speak of extraordinary rendition.

We can comb the news like Matt Drudge.

He knows where his Red Sea is parted.  Which side his bread is buttered.  On.

We can rattle the cages like Alex Jones.  Rattle rattle.  Police gone wild.

We can blame everything on the Jews like Wayne Madsen.  What a poor aspect of great criticism.

Mostly we can find the remnants of SMPTE for the devil at globalresearch.ca

Hot link.  A sausage of…something.  Upton Sinclair Lewis.

We can thank Michel Chossudovsky because we first knew him in print.

Like Webster Tarpley.

When books have disappeared, we will know that the technological age is upon us.

And so as something of an expert I admit that I know nothing.

It leaves me mystified.  No more bands.  No more groove.

Prisoners to click tracks.

The metronomic underground must assert like Radiohead hippies.

Godard would have preferred Beatles.

It’s ok.  History proves him not wrong.

And I would be doing you a disservice if I condescended.

I must regard you as one mind with myself.  Even if false, it leads to the path of truth.

We’re a humble website ready to lay down our arms…rather, our lives.

We are not revolutionary.  Merely students.  Research on globalization.

-PD