and we may

When I think how little
I've seen the sun rise
I feel ashamed.

and we may remember

A gift is given every morning
when colors remember the
possibilities of color.

and we may remember

There is something ghostly
in watching a blue dawn melt
into spring flush into tomorrow.

and we may remember
why morning doves mourn

Wouldn't it ease your day
To start one day
watching the sun rise
Today?

A Night Out

What thoughts does she have
as she's carried off by
her clan, her head
drooping and and tears falling
silently onto the shattered pavement?

What thoughts does she have
as her hair falls out of fashion
And clots chaotically like a broken halo
Around her fallen forehead?

Does she fear the wolves
that gather on the hillside?
That gather round her bedroom door?

Slobbering, pawing the light beneath the door,
The wolves that wait for the moon to give up
And die in shame at the way the world is.

Whoever

I tell you what:
You take the words
you wanted to give to me
And give them to him. Or her.
Or whoever.

And I'll take my words
and put them right here
For me. Or you. Or
Him or her.
Whoever.

Funny how you turn

At night, sometimes,
I feel the world spinning.
A soft whir, a
slurred vertigo.

Funny how you turn
towards me softly
And whisper,
"The world is spinning!"

Songwriting COLLAB by Agner and Agner

Let the shades down a little longer
I just can't take the sun today.
No matter what she does,
I'm too afraid to put my guitar away.
I stuff last night's clothes into the closet
To forget about the hours gone past.
Too many worn out sails
On a broken down mast.

And to think it would be so easy
To let go.
To think it would be so easy,
If only you weren't smiling so.

There's no more room for love songs.
Not much room for love these days.
No more room inside my room
To give my blues away.

So I may scribble some words for you,
and put them over a sad sad tune
Old words sung by the cowboys and dreamers
All singing under a sad sad moon.

But what's the point in it, really?
Where here we are at the end.
My songs to you have yet to pull through
So I'll write this one to the trash bin.

And to think it would be so easy
To say goodbye and walk away
To think it would be so easy
If only I could say

That there's no more room for love songs
Not much room for love these days.
There's no more room inside my room
To let my blues just slide away.

Oh and now I'm starting to see
That writing to you is only an excuse
For myself to write to me.

I always looked for answers
Inside the creases of your skin
And now I'm left with the question:
Will this song come to an end
Where my life can begin again?

So here's another love song
One more love song to save the day
Here's another love song
To keep my blues at bay.

Failing miserably at updating movies/books/life

My time off has caused 2 things: Plenty of time watching movies, reading books, listening to music, staring idly at computer screens. But plenty of time has been wasted not writing things down that I'm really enjoying. As of right now I finished Seasons 4 and 5 of the Office in a record time. Season 4 continues to disappoint, but the payoffs come in season 5. I do have to keep reminding myself that Season 4 was sidetracked by the writer's strike. The end of season 5 is right on par with the cathartic ending of season 2. When the Office is good, it is hard to beat.

I have seen every Coen Brothers movie except their most recent. In the next few days, I hope to watch The Big Lebowski again. The humor in the movie is hilarious, but I still think the movie possibly fails as a whole. I saw it as a freshman and was bored by its incomprehensible plot and length, but that was before I had seen The Big Sleep, which the brothers based their movie off of. I was one of the main and only detractors of The Big Snooze in my class last year because the plot was so convoluted that it caused me not to care about any of the characters at all. I want to watch Lebowski again and focus on the absurd humor and possibly try and grasp some of the story. Unbelievably funny lines, however, are as follows:

Walter: Donnie, you're out of your element!

Donnie: Are these men Nazis, Walter?
Walter: No, Donnie, these men are nihilists, nothing to be afraid of.


Have also been watching movies on Best of Decade lists. Extremely impressed with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, a 2.5 hour dreamscape. The bizarreness of Lynch's L.A. does not overwhelm the film's emotional center. The key to understanding the movie for me was the dedication to a woman who had died. I'm not even sure if she was related to the story, but that dedication made me think of Diane Selwyn's story as a sad dream of one who has gotten addicted to drugs in Hollywood and lost her chance at the good life. Sometimes you get the feeling that surrealists put in whatever they feel like just because they can get away with it. In Mulholland Drive, every bizarre choice feels right; we almost feel that we have seen some of these images in our own dreams and nightmares. One particular flourish is the Hollywood mafioso that exists in the dark room. Lynch used a dwarf actor's head and sat him in a regular sized body suit. The result is unsettling as we see the underbelly of Hollywood making choice decisions in seedy back rooms. One interesting and amateur observation about Lynch's work is his interest/fascination/detestation of the human body. Dwarves, amputees, bodily fluid, decrepit junkies, voodoo witch ladies, elephant men, absurd sexual situations frequent his movies. The very oddness of human flesh and bodily composition frequents Lynch's work.

The best movie, however, that I've seen in this span has been Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Only 87 minutes long, this is a depressing and harrowing tale of war and moral decay. Perhaps one of the first modernist interpretations of war on the screen. Early on, we sweep through these barren trenches, and the men line the walls like skeletal figures in a Bosch painting. These paths possess no glory, no fame, no honor. THey are hiding from the horrors of modern warfare upon no man's land. In one of the best war scenes I have ever seen (and I have an annual Saving Private Ryan screening every year)Kirk Douglas leads his men to battle across the wasteland as bombs drop from the sky. The sequence is a dazzling virtuoso of what Ebert refers to as shadows and shapes. Men hunched over spread out across the field. Many men die, and few men crawl over the bodies desperately trying to make headway. Their failure sends the movie into an unconventional path, a litiginous war between the soldiers and the beaurocrats. This leads to a conclusion that startled me with its unflinching cruelty. As three men walk to their execution, soldiers line up to form a pathway. This path reminds us of the trenches; these men can never get out. Their glory is used against them to their death. THe film's last scene involves the humanistic power of music. Listening to the German woman sing brings tears to the forlorn eyes of these weary men. There are no enemies anymore. Their war is against the shrapnel and the clouds of smoke and dust. These men have become bored with death and are more afraid of pain and suffering. Early on, there is a scene between two bards of the absurd talkign about pain and death. This movie has reinvigorated an interest in Kubrick that I thought I would never get.

Chasing Amy (1997)

When a romantic comedy is done right, it has the capability of knocking you out of the park. Two people falling in love provides a sweetness to the low nature of most comedies. Most of Shakespeare’s comedies involve love and marriage. The lovers often don’t know they are in love, change or hide their identities, think they are smarter than they are, love to talk about…love, and find themselves frustrated with their emotional shortcomings. Here is a movie that seems both Shakespearean in content, yet wonderfully ahead of its time in its subject matter and presentation. Chasing Amy is the Annie Hall or When Harry Met Sally for Generation X. The boundaries of content matter are pushed to the extreme, yet the sweetness remains intact. When Amy stands outside and admits of her sexual dealings, we’re surprised to hear her candidness. Yes, she did those things. Yes, she may have even enjoyed it. But why can’t Holden and most men forgive women for their past dealings? Why does a man feel like he’s sharing her? The amazing thing is how Holden doesn’t mind her being with other women, but the second it changes to men, he loses it. For all his thoughts and ideas on things, he hits a wall of inarticulation when it comes to dealing with Alyssa’s previous experiences.
In fact, Kevin Smith finally seems to have a goal in mind with his writing. While his dialogue was freeroaming in Clerks, the conversations in Chasing Amy really work towards defining the characters and giving them some bite to their incessant bark. Banky, in particular, is the evolution of Dante and Randall in the original Clerks. He defends Archie’s heterosexuality and the artistic responsibilities of “tracing” in the comic book industry. He is severely passionate about his tiny beliefs and will defend them like a fundamentalist would his religion. His relationship with Holden is one of the first homosocial “bromances”, where we are just as interested in their fights as we are between Holden and Alyssa. A showdown takes place at the end of the movie that tries to apply logic to the emotional insanity of dating, and the showdown is unique and funny.
It pushes the borders of the genre and explores the nature of love between men and women. Kevin Smith's vulgarity hits really graceful notes in this movie. The sexual escapade scene reenacted with the same setup as “Jaws” is an example of class this movie manages to uphold while talking about the dangers of going down on a girl. The framing of the scene disregards the actual sexual activity; instead, it’s about these character’s abilities to adapt the old pop cultures of the past and reinterpret them into their daily routines. Watch how easily Hooper’s Malcom X caricature deconstructs Star Wars as racist propaganda. He’s not saying that the movie is racist; rather, just that he’s smart enough to take it down a racist diatribe. If he wants to. He’s just talking because he’s really good at it.
Jay and Silent Bob’s arrival on the scene is perhaps the best I’ve seen. Once again, here we have another “bromance” that seems oddly comforting as these two losers feel comfortable exposing the pathetic nature of any situation. Jay is so oddly homosexual that it’s hilarious to hear him cut open Holden for losing his girl. One can’t imagine the heartbreak Jay would feel if Silent Bob up and left. They are the human doppelgangers of Beavis and Butthead. Except Silent Bob’s mesmerizing speech about Chasin’ Amy is right on par. It robs us because of its honesty. Here we have them first talking about going down on girls (but remember, that’s not the actual subject), and then it deftly switches to men constantly trying to transform girls into the built-up images that they hold for them. These men start with vulgarity almost as if that’s how you say hello. Then, only when you recognize the sadness hiding behind the pussy jokes do you weave your way into comfort and understanding.