Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar - "Offering"
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#448
I died for Beauty - but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For Beauty,” I replied -
“And I - for Truth—Themselves are One
We Brethren, are,” He said
And so, as Kinsmen met a Night,
We talked between the Rooms -
Until the Moss had reached our lips -
And covered up - Our names –— Emily Dickinson, 1862
It doesn't take a trained psychologist to observe that Bush got angrier and angrier as the Engel interview went on. That obviously had nothing to do with the editing; it had to do with Engel's questions.
Bush typically sits down with interviewers from Fox News -- or, more recently, Politico-- where he can count on more than his share of ingratiating softballs. But Engel, a fluent Arabic speaker who has logged more time in Iraq than any other television correspondent, assertively confronted Bush with the ramifications of his actions in the Middle East.
"Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem." - Brian Aldiss
When the kids were little, we went to a parent's meeting at their school and I asked the teacher why all her children were geniuses in the second grade? Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — your grade. Matisses everyone. You've made my child a Matisse. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: "Secret? I don't have a secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them."
Tonight I was asked to talk about writing, not writing as literature, but writing as intimately connected with our lives — I would even say as necessary to our lives... And now I want to tell you, from the very beginning, how this writing happened to become for me so linked with life and how it was a necessary part of living. When I as nine years old a doctor made an erroneous diagnosis and said I would never walk again. My first reaction then was to ask for pencil and paper and to start making portraits of the members of my family. Then this continued in the forms of notes which I gathered into a little notebook and even wrote on it "Member of the French Academy." Quite obviously there was then a turning to writing as a way of life because I thought I was going to be deprived of the normal activities of a child or an adolescent. But I'm trying to use this as an example of the importance of writing as a way of learning to live; for when I was able to walk again and there was no question of the impediment, the writing remained a source of contact with myself and with others.
It's also very symbolic that when I was asked once to go to a masquerade in which we had to dress as our madness I put my head in a bird cage. And coming out of the bird cage was a sort of ticker tape of the unconscious, long strips of paper on which I had copied a great deal of writing. This was, of course, a very clear symbol of how I hoped to escape from my cage.
You might say, however, when you are reading the Diary now: "Oh well, it was easy for you, you could write well." But I want you to know that at twenty I wrote very badly, and I purposely gave my first novel to the library of Northwestern University so that students could see the difference between the writing I did at twenty and the writing I do now. The mistake we make when we choose a model is that we choose the point of arrival. We are unaware of the things that have been overcome, like shyness, or not being able to speak in public (I couldn't speak to the people I knew). The final achievements are what we notice and then say: "Well it's no use modeling ourselves after this or that writer because we don't have those particular gifts." I didn't have any particular gift in my twenties. I didn't have any exceptional qualities. It was the persistence and the great love of my craft which finally became a discipline, which finally made me a craftsman and a writer.
The only reason I finally was able to say exactly what I felt was because, like a pianist practising, I wrote every day. There was no more than that. There was no studying of writing, there was no literary discipline, there was only the reading and receiving of experience. And I had to be open because I had to write it in the diary.
So I would like to remove from everyone the feeling that writing is something that is only done by a few gifted people. I want to eliminate this instantly... You shouldn't think that someone who achieves fulfillment in writing and a certain art in writing is necessarily a person with unusual gifts. I always said that it was an unusual stubbornness. Nothing prevented me from doing it every night, after every day's happenings.
It's not only the people with unusual gifts who will write their life in an interesting way. It has nothing to do really with the literary value of the work. What is important is that in the doing of it you begin to penetrate much deeper into the layers of consciousness and the unconscious. I registered everything. I registered intuitions, prophesies; I would be looking into the future or looking back and re-examining the past.
I don't want to make writers of all of you, but I do want you to become very aware of your orientation. First of all, of how much contact you have with yourself. If you remember, in the early diaries I spoke of my feeling that I was playing all the roles demanded of woman, which I had been programmed to play. But I knew also that there was a part of myself that stood apart from that and wanted some other kind of life, some other kind of authenticity. R. D. Laing describes this authenticity as a process of constant peeling off the false selves. You can do this in many ways, but you can begin by looking at it, for there is so much that we don't want to look at. I didn't want to see exactly where I was in Louveciennes before I made friends, before I entered the literary life, before I wrote my first book. I didn't want to see that I was nowhere, but wanting to see is terribly important to our direction. And to find this direction I used every possible means. Not only friendship and psychology and therapy, but also a tremendous amount of reading, exploration, listening to others — all these things contributed to my discovering who I really was. It wasn't as final or definite as it might sound now, because it doesn't happen in one day and it doesn't happen finally. It's a continuum, it's something that goes on all your life. But once I was at least on the track of what I could do, then the obstacles began to move away. It was not something that anybody could give me, it was something that I had to find inside myself.
So I'm speaking now of the diary not as a work of literature but as something necessary to living, as a way of orienting ourselves to our inner lives. It doesn't matter in what form you do it, whether it's meditation, whether it's writing or whether it's just a moment of thoughtfulness about the trend, the current, of your life. It's a moment of stopping life in order to become aware of it. And it's this kind of awareness which is threatened in our world today, with its acceleration and with its mechanization.
"You deserve and you need a partner in the White House and a president who understands our prosperity doesn't come from Wall Street or Washington," Obama told the group, with whom he also had dinner the night before. "We should be investing in the skills, the human capital, the education and well-being of your constituents."
The group complained widely about President Bush's stewardship of the economy and treatment of their states. Granholm [of Michigan] said 400,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in her state since he took office. Strickland [of Ohio] said that, last week alone, he took calls from companies in his state informing him that up to 12,000 jobs are about to be lost. And Freudenthal [of Wyoming] said that, on environmental issues important to his state, he was looking forward to having a "partner for a change, as opposed to a dictator."
Asked to explain the new seal, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, "It's a mix of presidential politics and a call for hope and change."
Snarked John McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, "I think we can all agree that we need presidential candidates that are serious enough not to play make-believe on the campaign trail."
"It's laughable, ridiculous, preposterous and revealing all at the same time," Bounds said.
Politico’s Ben Smith says it’s for “events meant to feel presidential.”
ABC’s Jake Tapper is waiting for “a remix of ‘Hail to the Chief.’ ”
National Review’s Greg Pollowitz: “Audacity defined: Changing the seal of the United States of America and inserting the ‘O’ logo for the American flag.”
Rich Lowry, channeling Jonathan Martin: “Obama's own presidential seal. With its own Latin slogan. You can't make this stuff up.”
Plus [the seal's] got Obama's website right up there too. Lord knows, he needs more donations because the poor White Sox fan from Chicago's impoverished South Side has only raised a little under $290 million so far.
Sen. Barack Obama's campaign raised a good deal of curiosity yesterday when it used a campaign seal that looked an awful lot like the presidential seal. Spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign wanted to give an event with Democratic governors a more formal flavor. "It seemed appropriate today," Burton said. "We'll see if it does in the future."
Well, it took me about 15 minutes on Google Images to discover that John McCain's (R) own caucus -- the National Republican Senatorial Committee -- uses three different likenesses of the official seal...for fundraising purposes:
Of course, the right-wing never lets their own hypocrisy get in the way of another shameless political attack. But will the media even take notice, or are they too excited about the latest game of 'gotcha' to even pay attention?
Many wondered whether a seal – with Latin phrasing no less - was the best idea for a candidate fighting for the working class vote and trying to fend off allegations of elitism.
We've all had some fun at Sen. Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hype" ersatz presidential seal from last week.
And apparently the folks at Obama HQ got the message.
I've had my fun with the Obama campaign's seal, and now that fun ends. I'm told that Obama recognizes that it was a silly mistake, that the universal reaction at Wacker and Michigan was, "Boy, was that dumb," and that they don't think the seal staging will matter to actual voters.
Does the press think Obama is arrogant? Yes. Does the seal represent arrogance? Only tangentially, actually. The worry for Obama's image managers is that it gives the press a pretext to call Obama arrogant, an example for them to add to a list of arrogant moments, and a way to distract them from what Obama is saying.
The national press corps is not used to covering a “confident” Democratic presidential candidate, at least in this decade. So much confidence, in fact, that the candidate won’t always bend over backwards to talk to the press, or to leak internal drama to the press! Ergo, the press has decided that Obama is arrogant. And when they saw Obama speak behind this new “great seal” of his on Friday — definitely the lamest stunt we can remember from Hopey — this confirmed to the press that Obama is too arrogant. Obama arrogantly got the message and arrogantly ditched the great seal and did some other arrogant stuff, like believe he might actually win this thing.
After days of media mockery, Barack Obama has decided to stop using a presidential-looking seal that his campaign designed and affixed to his podium on Friday.
Journalists said the seal, which features an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch, smacks of arrogance. John McCain's camp had a field day, calling the seal “laughable, ridiculous, preposterous and revealing - all at the same time.”
The seal was conspicuously missing from Obama's lectern when he spoke to a group of women in Albuquerque on Monday. Not surprising, given how much grief Obama took from a normally laudatory press corps after unveiling the seal at an appearance in Chicago on Friday.
“What a bizarre and dumb idea,” railed NBC political director Chuck Todd. “It really feeds the arrogance narrative.”
The oversized blue seal was emblazoned with the Latin phrase “Vero Possumus,” which roughly translates into “yes, we can.” It also featured a plug for the candidate's website.
“The Audacity of Hype,” cracked ABC's Jake Tapper. “No word on whether they played a remix of 'Hail to the Chief' as Obama walked in.”
Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times observed that Obama “has decided not to wait for any of the formalities like a presidential election, an inauguration or even a nomination, which he still hasn't actually officially won yet.”
Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic magazine was the first to note that Obama would deep-six the seal.
“I'm told that Obama recognizes that it was a silly mistake,” Ambinder said. “Does the press think Obama is arrogant? Yes.”
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, said the episode reinforces this media perception of Obama.
“The press corps adopts a subtext for each candidate,” Sabato told The Examiner. “Daddy Bush was 'a nice guy but out of touch.' Bill Clinton was 'smart but randy.' Bob Dole was 'heroic but too old.' Gore was 'brilliant but a fibber and a bore.' Dubya was 'pleasant but dumb.'”
He added: “Obama's subtext is rapidly becoming 'charismatic but arrogant.'”
The Obama campaign declined to comment.
His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign.
as you are most certainly aware, john mccain's own caucus, the national republican senatorial committee, uses at least three different permutations of the presidential seal for their campaigns (granted they are senatorial campaigns and not presidential campaigns)…
my question to you, sir, is two-fold:
why would you characterize sen. obama as "arrogant" (or "hype") and yet not say anything about the republicans' similar use of the presidential seal, and any implied arrogance on their part?
and, do you not feel it is your duty as a journalist to report to the public this same usage of the seal by the republicans, thus providing context to events, as opposed to letting a narrative get fed into, when there is, at least in this case, no basis for that narrative to exist?
your apology is accepted. we are a political blog that writes around-the-clock about all aspects of the campaigns with attitude and hopefully some insights. apparently millions of readers are getting something from the ticket as our global ranking has surged to #133 in one year out of 100+ million. what’s yours, skippy? since there was almost universal derision over the premature presidential seal of sen. obama and his staff has been quoted as saying it was a mistake, it’s curious you defensively only ask us about it. we’re delighted to receive such attention. but if the seal was such a good idea, why isn’t he still using it?
people laughing and snickering at the seal detracts from the messages he wants to deliver, which is the professional measure of such tools.
haven’t come across sen. mccain’s pretend presidential seal yet. in fact, from our inquiries, we understand he doesn’t really like podiums, which might explain his poor deliveries at them. but if we do, you’ll see it roundly humorized on the ticket with a huge photo, especially if he attaches some faux latin motto. for now, we’re stuck with criticizing his crummy fundraising and policy inconsistencies. thanks for reading, though hope you do also get around to scanning our items not on your candidate.
what i asked was, why did you so quickly fit obama's use of the presidential seal as a prototype for a campaign logo into a narrative about obama's arrogance when mccain's own caucus uses the same seal as a prototype for a campaign logo, and yet you don't mention that.
if it is because you don't know about mccain's caucus logos, i respectfully suggest that you read the link i sent you, do some research and then publish a follow up pointing out that the republicans are doing the exact same thing the democrats are doing (though, as i said in my original letter, for senatorial campaigns and not presidential campaigns).
again, when you say "people, [are laughing]" what you really mean is "the press corps." it is my contention that the press corps should not be the final arbiter of what a candidate offers to the public, especially when the opposing candidate is offering the same sort of thing, but the press corps ignores it.
please follow the link i provided, though, again, it's for senatorial campaigns, and not presidential campaigns. but the link does provide republican faux seals based on the presidential seal.
obama is not my candidate, thank you very much. as i have said on my blog post concerning your coverage of the seal, i'm not after a fair shake for obama, i'm after a fair press corps.
The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.
One of the healthiest things about the left-wing blogosphere is its confrontational dislike of the mainstream media. There's a distinction here with the media's critics on the right. At some level, the right doesn't much like that the press exists. They don't want to fix it, they want to drive a stake through its heart. The left, on the other hand, just wishes the establishment press would do a better job. The Kos-type critique of the media is intertwined with its passion about politics. When the press gets it wrong, left-wing bloggers believe, the people are ill-informed and democracy suffers. There's respect in that anger, though you wouldn't always know it if you're the target of one of their flaming arrows. (Sometimes they apologize.)
Hersh: "Oh, you know, how the hell do I know? . . . What I can tell you is we're loaded for bear. And we've been looking at it for three years... If Israel goes -- I'll tell you what Cheney says privately. . . . What he says privately is, 'We can't let Israel go because, first of all, they don't have the firepower, we do. We have much more firepower. And secondly, if they go, we'll be blamed anyway.'"
Terry Gross: I can't help but wonder, if Cheney or whoever else is considering a military strike against Iran, what they make of how things have turned out in Iraq, because some of the justifications and some of the tactics we've used so far in Iran seem to parallel Iraq, and I can't think of a lot of people who are happy with the outcome so far in Iraq. Plus, we've spent so much money, and have deployed so much of our military resources, including lots of the National Guard in Iraq, could we even afford to tie up more in Iran? But anyways, I can't help but wonder how Iraq is influencing people like Vice President Cheney now?
Seymour Hersh: You just have to listen to what they say. Because what they say is fascinating. We're actually winning. We're turning the corner. And we got rid of Saddam Hussein, and by any chance, that's a plus. Just listen to what they say. Because in their world, Iraq is okay. They've done something useful. And it's gonna be great. We're turning the corner, we're gonna solve the problems. The surge, quote unquote, worked. Never mind that the country is completely destroyed physically, and that ethnic cleansing… If you just read and listen to what they say, it's upbeat. So they don't see this mess they've created as a mess.
So the argument that why would they expand the war, we're not doing so well, into yet another country, they're not sure we're not doing so well.
…It's clear to me, as we approach July 4th, that there's no better patriot in this country than Seymour Hersh, taking on the job of 236 Democrats in the House and 50 in the Senate, trying to hold off this insanity for a few more months before transitioning into a new Adminstration which will hopefully recognize the broad consensus for negotiation and diplomacy with the Islamic Republic as opposed to the folly of war.
Lost scenes from the sci-fi classic "Metropolis," recently discovered in the archives of a Buenos Aires museum, were shown to journalists for the first time in decades on Thursday.
A long-lost original cut of the 1927 silent film sat for 80 years in a private collection and then in the Museum of Cinema in Buenos Aires, where it was discovered in April with scratched images that hadn't been seen before.
Museum director Paula Felix-Didier said theirs is the only copy of German director Fritz Lang's complete film.
"This is the version Fritz Lang intended," said Martin Koerber, a curator at the Deutsche Kinemathek film museum in Berlin, Germany.
"Metropolis," written by Lang and his actress wife Thea von Harbou, depicts a 21st century world divided between a class of underworld workers and the "thinkers" above who control them.
Soon after its initial release at the height of Germany's Weimar Republic, distributors cut Lang's three-and-a-half-hour masterpiece into the shorter version since viewed by millions worldwide.
But a private collector carried an original version to Argentina in 1928, where it has stayed, Felix-Didier said.
In the 1980s, Argentine film fanatic Fernando Pena heard about a man who had propped up a broken projector for "hours" to screen "Metropolis" in the 1960s. But the version of the film he knew was only one-and-a-half hours long. For years, he begged Buenos Aires' museum to check their archives for the man's longer version.
This year, museum researchers finally agreed and in April uncovered the reels in the museum's archive.
In June, Felix-Didier flew with a DVD to the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Wiesbaden, Germany, which owns the rights to "Metropolis." Researchers there confirmed that the scenes were original.
News of the find excited film enthusiasts worldwide.
"This is a movie that millions and millions of people have seen since its release and yet, in many ways, we've never seen the true film," said Mike Mashon, head of the Moving Image section of the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington.
"Metropolis" was reissued in the U.S. in 2002 by Kino International Corp., which owns the rights to distribute the film domestically, Kino's general manager Gary Palmucci said.
Kino may rerelease the new, complete version of the film, although Palmucci said it is too soon for details.
Meanwhile, Buenos Aires' Museum of Cinema is holding its treasure tight.
"The film hasn't left the museum and it won't leave until the city government and the Murnau Foundation decide what to do," Felix-Didier said.