I didn’t know movies could be this good.
Where have they been keeping this all of our lives?
Us.
When I was young I stumbled into The Gold Rush. 25/52.
And I lived at the end of a flower in City Lights.
So I knew.
But I forgot.
That Charlie Chaplin was the most vivid outcast—the great romantic on rollerskates.
And the miracle?
Claire Bloom lives.
No Sylvia Plath ending.
And Charles Chaplin lives.
As much as Baudelaire’s vieux saltimbanque.
It was her first film. Bloom.
Age 21.
And now she is 84 years young.
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No one told me films could be miracles.
It’s kinda like Thora Birch.
Buster Keaton.
People thought she stopped working.
But it wasn’t true.
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No greater love have I seen for an art.
Like Pierre-Auguste kissing the canvas…and then painting.
You can’t simply say Renoir in film and let it linger…
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Tell Tchaikovsky the news.
The first chord. In Moscow perhaps. And all 122 pages fall onto the keyboard.
A thunderous vibration like Chaliapin.
Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин
Boris Godunov.
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A drinking problem.
Stage fright.
Torn and frayed.
At the edges.
In the wings.
Wings.
Ah yes…I haven’t heard that name in a long time.
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The piano was unprepared.
A cage of equal temperament.
And so we removed the great nest
of cosmic dissonance.
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Don’t get me wrong.
I love a good cluster chord.
An honest, flawed note.
Take your dissonance like a man…someone said…maybe Henry Cowell.
On second thought, ’twas Ives.
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I’ve spent my life in a drum.
Like Keith Moon.
A human projectile.
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88 ways to look at a blackbird.
I’ve never seen one person leave it all on the stage quite like that.
A lifetime’s work. Painted.
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The film was in black and white?
I didn’t happen to notice.
Because behind my eyes the colours were bursting.
U.
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And so like those little speckles in the concrete which the moon caught.
As I dreamt of being a composer.
And I too dove headfirst into the void like Yves Klein.
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And for us it was no sleight of hand.
There was no airbrushed net.
And I landed hard.
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Gandhi is smiling and that’s all that matters.
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between yell and Yale
bell strut feet dill old pod loot. Look!
88 ways to be a composer and an itch ain’t one (bite me!)
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Film is completely unimportant when writing about film.
Take Hubert’s Flea Circus on 42nd St.
I would never have known were it not for Nick Tosches.
And my favorite book:
Where Dead Voices Gather.
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Yeah, but it’s like Picasso’s musicians.
You think I’ve really cracked up. Craquelure.
“Any fish bite if you got good bait.”
They tell us in economics there’s only one Mona Lisa.
Because the painter is dead.
Only one…
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Because he’s not alive to paint another.
Another Mona Lisa.
Unlimited supply. EMI.
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You’re driving at something.
I just know it.
Because the film was too long. And too good.
Not possible, Likert.
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Many aw-kward moments of perfection.
Where Chaplin hit too close to home.
Was it Dave Davies?
“Death of a Clown”
Yes, precisely.
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It can’t be described conventionally.
You can’t just go to the Grand Canyon and say, “Vast.”
Was ist das?
Ja!
That is what I’m trying to say.
-PD
paulydeathwish 