A.O. Scott writes at the beginning of his review of the Thai movie “Syndromes and a Century“:
It is possible to feel, watching his earlier movies “Blissfully Yours” or “Tropical Malady,” that you just don’t get, on a conscious, cerebral level, what Mr. Weerasethakul is trying to do. Yet at the same time you find yourself moved, even enchanted, by the beautiful, oblique stories unfolding before your eyes.
My response, without having seen the movies, is still “exactly.”
What Mr. Scott describes is the aesthetic experience, something vague enough that many question our ability to treat it analytically, objectively, or scientifically. He also does what many do when trying to wrap their heads around something aesthetic — resort to explicit metaphors and models (rather than the “dead metaphors,” as Ricoeur might say, or fossilized, internalized ones we barely recognize as such), and here we have nebulous “feelings,” such as the feeling of being moved or enchanted. He later refers to the narrative’s “logic” as “dream logic,” which distinguishes it from “regular” logic (which doesn’t apply to the aesthetic), and so is, in a way, a negative definition, but it also attempt to grasp something positive in the phenomenon. Dreams embrace a freer form of “association” than do regular experiences, but calling it “dream logic” implies a level of rules, and I suspect a level of rules more rigorous than the experiences of many dreams, which is just to say that not all dreams or all parts of dreams are subject to what we call “dream logic.” When I see movies that are supposed to be based on “dream logic” (or dream) or when I hear of people talking about dream and dream logic, I often hear a great deal about symbols and the symbolic.
But I’m getting rather far away from Mr. Scott’s review at this point. And as it is, it’s about a movie I know nothing about and which won’t be playing any time soon in Madison.
This afternoon I took a trip to Woodman’s and got some groceries as well as some wine. I won’t open the wine until Friday evening, and as for the groceries, I’ve had some cheese and cranberries, but other than that I’m using the food I already had in the pantry and fridge to make some turkey loaf … substitute ground turkey for ground beef …
I put in two pounds of ground turkey, an onion, some ketchup, some salt (a teaspoon or so), a cup of oats, two eggs, worcestershire sauce, and quite a bit of hot pepper sauce. Mixed it together and put it i a bread pan. An hour or so at 375F. It’s out now and cooling. There was less grease to drain than with beef meat loaf, though it doesn’t quite have the same color or texture.
When mixing it I noticed that the ground turkey was far less granular than ground beef and had almost no texture. It was like thick turkey paste … this might have been due to the brand of turkey I used, though it could just be due to differences between turkey and beef flesh.
When it comes to music I made it through Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine — in fact, it’s time for “Renegades of Funk” as I write this — and while after listening to Radiohead I can recognize the skill and production values involved, very little of it jumps out at me and says “LISTEN!”
“Renegades of Funk” is, as one can imagine, quite different, so loud, political, and self-assured that while I love it and still love it after all these years it’s not something I could listen to every day. There is something un-ironically silly about it, I can imagine the band jumping around the stage and having fun, and while I’m listening to it I enjoy that silly earnestness as much as the next guy, but when it’s over I’m and if I were “critiquing” it, I’d have to point out over-the-top and … well … silly it is. Vanilla Ice meets Beastie Boys meets a light metal group, perhaps.
Radiohead was good but seemed to have a certain ironic distance to their craft. But there are some great tunes in there. I recognized “Creep” (from Pablo Honey), which got a lot of radio play and other attention. And it has to be played with Pulp’s song “Underwear” … of which it seem to be a pastiche/parody/gloss; whereas Modern Music (a blog) has commented that: “Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ recalls Hollies’ The Air That I Breathe entirely.” I haven’t (yet!) listened to the latter. For now I’ll settle for the word “recall” to describe the relationship between “Creep” and “Underwear,” and likewise Radiohead’s “Black Star” (from The Bends) “recalls” Boston’s “More than a Feeling,” though I suspect they’re directly “quoting” it at points. Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out that Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — at least the guitar riff — is based heavily upon “More Than A Feeling” as well.
It’s now time for Ratatat … and then the Red Hot Chili Peppers (to go with all the hot chili pepper sauce in my turkey loaf!).
