To thine own self be true

1941–Citizen Kane–long considered the No. 1 movie of all time, deservedly so.

1944–Gaslight–quirky psychological drama with great performances by Boyer (villain), Bergman (wife), and Lansbury starting out (cynical maid); the cruelty of husbands personified

1945–Spellbound–Hitchcock snubbed again, Peck and Bergman; synth score, Dali sequence; first major psychiatry drama

1951–A Streetcar Named Desire– 1st big Brando role, excellent Leigh; Tennessee Williams’ best script; Kazan directing

1952–High Noon, a ‘little western’ beautifully and suspensefully constructed; Gary Cooper at his best; great cinematography and use of clocks and psychological time; one of the most isolated hero pictures ever made

1964–Dr. Strangelove, mostly restrained satirical anti-war picture and cynical statement about humans and their future; Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, and Kubrick at their funniest

1966–Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Taylor’s best; Burton very strong, Dennis and Segal both effective; super b & w look cinematography; harrowing script by Albee, directed by Nichols

1968–Romeo and Juliet; a truly romantic film; Zefferelli captured the Renaissance on film; Rota’s score; first convincing film of this classic, all the poetry and passion intact

1971–The Last Picture Show, gritty B & w classic–great look; Bogdanovich’s best; numerous strong performances, especially by Ben as Sam the Lion; one of the best films made of male coming-of-age

1975–Nashville–a throwback to the big cast films with multiple storylines successfully and wonderfully done; as quirky as America–numerous types; splendid original spoof songs; Altman’s best until Short Cuts; the end of the American Dream as rendered through country and western music industry

1976–All the President’s Men and Network, truly a banner year for truly great films; Prez–suspenseful–who dreamed research and undercover could be this undull and exciting; Redford and Robards very strong; great script and handling of Watergate; Holbrook perfect as Deep Throat; Network–the first and best-ever satire of mass media’s/TV’s madness; Dunaway crazy and beautiful, Holden very strong as the only ‘sane’ character’, Peter Finch’s wonderful crazy; over the top, witty, realistic script

1979Apocalypse Now, Coppola’s biggest and most difficult challenge to adapt Viet Nam as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; wild, crazy but beautifully done; fabulous Brando and Hopper cameos; fantastic music and cinematography; visually splendid; extremely risky and powerful, ultimately

1981On Golden Pond, well-done play adaptation of a family drama about aging; all performances strong especially the Fondas and Hepburn; captures the generation gap, fears, and family conflict; nice score by Grusin

1982The Verdict, moving sympathetic and empathetic Newman performance–alcoholic lawyer taking on his biggest case against the system of the Catholic church–should have won Best Actor; study of betrayal, search for truth and justice; great scenes and supporting performances by Rampling, Mason, and O’Shea

1984 Passage to India–David Lean’s strong adaptation of Forster novel, lovingly filmed; strong on romance, class structure and justice as well

1988Mississippi Burning–maybe the best unvarnished tale of racial hatred with serious Dafoe and funny Hackman as FBI agents investigating murders of the ‘Mississippi 3’; captures how tense and bigoted it once was ‘down South’ even in the ’60s

1989Field of Dreams, a gem about the American Dream as seen through baseball story; Costner at his best, Lancaster and Jones even stronger; fanciful scenes, remarkable moments; maybe the best-ever film about dreams and possibilities coming true

1991JFK, Oliver Stone’s biggest, best, and most controversial; an absolutely fearless maverick take on perhaps the biggest event in U.S. history

1995Sense and Sensibility, the best-ever Austen put on film; Thompson’s adaptation and strong role with an equally strong cast; look and feel of the time well-captured

1996Shine, moving little Aus film with great story, scenes, performances, and humor; underdog achieves greatness despite harsh, poor upbringing; music well-handled

1998The Thin Red Line, the most poetic war movie ever done; based on Jones’ novel and filmed by Malick–like Badlands, he got this one right; genuinely beautiful and more convincingly transcendent

2011 Midnight in Paris, the Woodman’s most organized and magical romance; neat  homage to art, writing, Paris, the ’20s and before; charmingly done; even the ‘Butterscotch Stallion’ is good in the lead role; as good as Annie Hall and more satisfying

“I believe I could never exhaust the supply of material lying within me. The deeper I plunge, the more I discover. There is no bottom to my heart and no limit to the acrobatic feats of my imagination.”
–Anais Nin, Oct. 1921, The Early Diaries of Anais Nin

“No. you don’t write for yourself or for others. You write out of a deep inner necessity. If you are a writer, you have to write, just as you have to breathe, or if you’re a singer you have to sing. But you’re not aware of doing it for someone. This need to write was for me as strong as the need to live. I needed to live, but I also needed to record what I lived. It was a second life, it was my way of living in a more heightened way.”
–Anais Nin, interview 1973, “The Artist as Magician”

“This is certain: I never have written a line except to please myself….Good or bad, popular or unpopular, lasting or ephemeral, the words I have put down on paper were the best words I could summon at the time to express the thing I wanted more than anything to say.”
–Edna Ferber, A Peculiar Treasure, 1939

“Why one writes I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live….I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living.

We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangles, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.”
–Anais Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays, 1976

“In the right sense, imagination is a response to what is going on–a sensitiveness to which outside things appeal. It is a composition of sympathy and observation.”
–Willa Cather, interview 1915, Lincoln Daily Star

“Nevertheless, I am resolved to write, write, and write. Nothing can turn me away from a path I have definitely set myself to follow.”
–Anais Nin, 1921 entry, The Early Diaries of Anais Nin

(5th birthday, August 31, 1955, Winnipeg, with Jeanne’s cake–the latter still an annual tradition)

If accessing site from Internet, activate any photos not showing automatically, by clicking on any picture frame. Then click “Continue to this website”–.

***********************************************************************************************

There is much we can not foresee, especially at a young age such as:

-wearing glasses beginning from grade 9 on

-acquiring diabetes 2 at 48

-surviving a near-fatal asthma attack in hospital at 30

-being hit on the jaw by a baseball bat at age 9 and surviving without stitches or professional medical attention

-driving and owning a car some day

-losing control of a car in a snowstorm, spinning around and ending up in a ditch, right side up, uninjured at 25 on a highway in  northern Alberta

-owning a couple of houses

-getting married and having two kids, long grown-up, both happily with partners

-being a grandfather

-being a teacher for 30 years (I was unaware what a teacher was at this age); teaching about 5 thousand students (what’s a student?)

-going to something called university

-writing 60+ plus books (I did not own any books then); the books selling over a million copies (what’s a million anyway?) and being re/used by about 4 million kids; presenting to thousands of teachers (what’s a teacher? what’s a presentation?)

-owning and losing two good, faithful dogs

-falling in love with music and learning to play guitar and singing; knowing that music would become a sustaining, inspiring, pleasurable pastime

-fronting several groups from 1968-2003 that played for tens of thousands of people

-acting in and directing drama (What’s a play?)

-ever owning  a fair number of books and movies (I’d only seen 2-3 movies at a theatre by this point. What’s a VHS, a DVD, a camera, a tape recorder? B & w TV had just come in the previous year in Wpg. I assumed “Howdy Doody” would always be broadcast on tv.)

-having many friends (none at this moment, though, on Thompson Drive), ‘losing’ most of them along the way, being down to a few close ones at age 64

-ever being as old or older than my parents at that point

-ever leaving my grandmother’s Thompson Drive house

-ever going to school (beyond my past part-time kindergarten), let alone spending 57 years in schools

-knowing there were other places in a very big world, including Alberta and Edmonton where I would one day settle; only knowing Winnipeg as the centre of my life till 1970 A.D.

-not knowing about something called hockey–something I would one day play and watch a lot of good hockey (like the 2014 Women’s Gold & Friday’s men semifinal) over the years

-having no clue at that point how life would have been different if I had been born earlier, later, somewhere else, or never born, or born into a different social class

-not knowing there were such things as individuals, that I lived in a society, that my imagination and curiosity would stand me in good stead for another 59 years.

-not knowing that imagination and creativity would be the two principal defining aspects of my life

-not knowing that so much would depend on learning to read and a yet-to-be-developed interest in print books; that these interests would lead to three distinct careers as a teacher of literature and language, a writer and editor, and a poet

-not knowing that there was a discrete thing called words or language that I would go on to explore in depth from age 17 on

-not knowing that my established dreams, dreaming, and romantic sensibility would direct my life and love choices, my uniqueness, and the eventual drift and development of feelings, thoughts, expression, and consciousness

-not knowing that my only-child freedom would continue for years and that I would later have as much freedom from 52-64 as I had at age 5

-not knowing that there were truly a zillion unseen possibilities as there have turned out to be, especially in personal development, people, Nature, and love

-not knowing that the flow of my days would continue, mostly unhampered or unlimited for another 59 years

-and not knowing that–much like this picture–that momentary gifts would continue to be special to me, and that my life would be largely consist of gifts of myself, later culminating in an acceptance of the many kind, generous, reciprocal  gifts of others

………………………….

Blake called this state Innocence. Others have called it Inexperience, Ignorance, or Naivete.

Does anything remain of the five-year-old above? Yes, of course. All the essential qualities, characteristics, personality, and sensibility. All there. Still.

ESO conductor. Best they’ve ever had. He challenges them and makes them play beautifully and more sensitively, as in the case of Beethoven’s Pastorale last evening.
A-mazing. Conducting without a score or baton. An incredible choreographed performance using all parts of his body. Twice in the second movement, he had the put his left hand on his back; later the same hand on his hip! Between movements, he would lean back against the rail with a ‘cool’ calm, relaxing himself, the orchestra, and audience, letting the silences resound, giving time for others to take in the music just played and about to be.

Possessing a great passion and deep love of music per se, he communicates his love with every gesture, flourish, coaxing, and emphasis. He is a total conductor, and a genius for making ESO give one of the best renditions of Beethoven’s No. 6 in F major, opus 68 you’ll ever be privileged to hear and, especially, see.
Last show Sat. Feb. 22, Winspear. Edmonton is so fortunate to have such a beautiful acoustically-rich venue and masterful conductor.

Pure, simple fun. Ingredients: one empty box, an adult to push, and a child’s willingness to risk.

Starting each day, providing breakfast for my aery brethren, regardless of weather….

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”–William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

usually emerge while being totally immersed and engaged in the moment.
Or from having someone or something to really look forward to in the near future.

The dumb luck of my life–so much of it, continuing…

For what am I most grateful beyond love, family, nature, the arts? 12 years retired from teaching now, I’d have to say the incredible freedom, including that when a preschooler, when a latch key kid (9 to 5, five days a week) when going to school–holidays built in, when 5 years at u; also including the holidays over the 30 years of teaching, plus 12 years mostly off since 2002. Freedom has proven the most valuable, cherished thing allowing me to slake my curiosity, follow my bliss, get to know myself, and develop my consciousness more than the average person.

Yes, consciousness, as this blog attests to, has been the main bliss, especially the past three years.

Today I am writing about another key Greek philosopher Parmenides of Elea (510-440 BC?). He is the first guy to suggest that if you can conceive of something, it must exist, whether or not it is found in the material world, outside of you. Unicorns, for instance. So subjective reality is every bit as ‘real’, especially to the viewer, as externally-agreed-upon-by-others’ reality.

He also connected thoughts, words, and things/others/external reality. Ideas do become expressed and get connected to others as well as to things we can experience. As I have commented on above–consciousness is (about) ideas and these get expressed in places like this blog to others, as well as to myself. (My blog is mainly me thinking ‘aloud’, after all.)

I do like the subjective reality part of Parmenides’ ideas. We all have memories (the past gets subsumed by our minds) and can imagine the future as a reality that will often mostly happen (again, because of the autonomy and power of individual consciousness, as well as individual will). Personally, I believe both subjective and external/objective reality (though the latter depends on subjective/personal perception anyway) exist, and that subjective reality may be as or more important than the other. It is after all, our own lives and own consciousnesses that we live with 24/7.

Earlier in other blog entries, I talked of how we search for information daily. For me, that often translates into ideas and knowledge as well as the personal consciousness changes that ensue. None of this is communicable without language, though you also have to admit the power of the representative arts like painting, photography, and dance which may be wordless, technically speaking, can communicate thought and feeling effectively, too.

Thinking, language, and consciousness are central, basic and–for me as a writer and sometime-performer–very essential. And the balance on the attractions and distractions of the external world reality depends heavily on key people, nature, and the arts. Those are all aspects which can thoroughly focus or engross my interests, pleasure, engagement, feelings, and thoughts. Nothing like a stimulating external environment to spur your own personal creative expression and response as well as consciousness, eh?

………………….

That all said, there is much pleasure and delight to be found in ordinary, common, or basic sense experiences. The empirical/physical world is meant to be experienced in many ways, on many levels. It is there one will find, experience, and confirm many proofs of life and philosophy. By itself, a mostly abstract, philosophical or platonic life is an incomplete, thin, relatively bloodless life. There are many times when E.E. Cummings’ “since feeling is first” is the better ticket to freedom, happiness, or love. 

Steal $750,000 = 4 yr. jail term
Crash into and kill 3 people= 30 mos. jail time (taking out human life = 10 mos. jail time)
Accident fled that kills a person= 90 days (taking out human life = 90 days jail time)

So much for balance, fairness, and justice in Canada.
Moral: Human life is worth far less than $$$/next-to-nothing in Canada.

‘”If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble…”the law is a ass–a idiot.”‘–Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

No. of original words first coined by Shakespeare. Easily the greatest English writer of all time, he represents the highest point ever of both language and literature in English culture. No one else even comes close.