State of Morelos
“Heaven is a state, a sort of metaphysical state.”
— John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938
In memory of soldier-priest José Morelos, producer Darryl Zanuck (“Viva Zapata!”), and actress Helene Stanley (“Holiday in Mexico” and action model for “Cinderella“), each of whom died on a December 22, tonight’s midnight midi is “A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes.”
See also
Heaven, Hell, and Hollywood and
Trifecta.
For the Green Lady
of Perelandra,
from the City of Angels
“The oral history of Los Angeles
is written in piano bars.”
— Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Tonight’s midnight music in the garden of good and evil is a shamelessly romantic classic from a site titled simply Piano Bar.
De Rêve En Rêverie
(Lyrics by Eddy Marnay)
Tu es le pianiste
Et moi je suis ton encore.
Un feu de joie pour deux
Tombe sur nous d’un ciel amoureux.
Toi, toi qui m’as tout appris
Moi, dans l’ombre de ta vie
Je vis,
Je vis de rêve
En rêverie.
Washington Square Press paperback, 1981, page 222
To Ophelia
at the Winter Solstice
Introduction
“There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling…
… is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,
How many the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?”
— Robert Graves, “To Juan at the Winter Solstice”
Illustrations
The Virgin’s Beauty
On the Beach
A Maiden’s Prayer
Answered Prayer
Act III Scene ii:
Hamlet Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia No, my lord.
Hamlet I mean, my head upon your lap?
Ophelia Ay, my lord.
Hamlet Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet That’s a fair thought to lie between maid’s legs.
Ophelia What is, my lord?
Hamlet Nothing.
Ophelia You are merry, my lord.
Hamlet Who, I?
Ophelia Ay, my lord.
Quotations
“Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?”
— T. S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”
“At the still point, there the dance is.”
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
“I know what ‘nothing’ means….”
— Maria Wyeth in Play It As It Lays
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”
— Oscar Hammerstein II
“…problems can be solved by manipulating just two symbols, 1 and 0….”
— George Johnson, obituary of Claude Shannon
“The female and the male continue this charming dance, populating the world with all living beings.”
— Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess,
Penguin Arkana paperback, 1999, Chapter 17,
“Lingam/Yoni”
“According to Showalter’s essay*, ‘In Elizabethan slang, ‘nothing’ was a term for the female genitalia . . . what lies between maids’ legs, for, in the male visual system of representation and desire…. Ophelia’s story becomes the Story of O — the zero, the empty circle or mystery of feminine difference, the cipher of female sexuality to be deciphered by feminist interpretation.’ (222)* Ophelia is a highly sexual being…”
— Leigh DiAngelo,
“Ophelia as a Sexual Being“
S. H. Cullinane: “No shit, Sherlock.”
*Showalter, Elaine. “Representing Ophelia: Women, Madness, and the Responsibilities of Feminist Criticism.” Hamlet. Ed. Susanne L. Wofford. Boston: Bedford Books of St.Martin’s Press, 1994. 220-238.
Dénouement
 | Is that nothing between your legs |
Nightmare Alley
Tonight’s site music in the garden of good and evil is “Hooray for Hollywood,” with lyrics by Johnny Mercer:
Hooray for Hollywood.
You may be homely in your neighborhood,
But if you think you can be an actor,
see Mr. Factor,
he’d make a monkey look good.
Within a half an hour,
you look like Tyrone Power!
Hooray for Hollywood!
From Pif magazine:
Nightmare Alley (1947)
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Reviewed by Nick Burton
“Edmund Goulding’s film of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel Nightmare Alley may just be the great forgotten American film; it is certainly the darkest film that came from the Hollywood studio system in the ’40s….
A never better Tyrone Power stars as Stan Carlisle, a small-time carny shill…. Stan shills for mind reader Zeena…. The… pretty ‘electric girl’… tells Stan that Zeena… had a ‘code’ for the mind-reading act… Stan… decides to seduce… Zeena in hopes of luring the code from her.”
The rest of this review is well worth reading, though less relevant to my present theme — that of my
“Imagine this: A spectator is invited to take a readable and 100% examinable, 400 page, 160,000 word novel, open it to any page and think of any word on that page. Without touching the book or approaching the spectator, you reveal the word in the simplest, most startlingly direct manner ever! It truly must be seen to be believed.
The ultimate any-word-on-any-page method that makes all other book tests obsolete….
All pages are different.
Nothing is written down.
There are no stooges of any kind. Everything may be examined….
’Throw away your Key. This is direct mindreading at its best.’”
From Finnegans Wake, page 265:
“…the winnerful wonnerful wanders off, with hedges of ivy and |
Hooray.
Mercer’s lyrics are from the 1937 film
Last-Minute Shopping
In celebration of today’s nationwide opening of Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” —
Ed Harris in |
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See also my Sermon for St. Patrick’s Day.
This contains the following metaphysical observation from Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale:
“Nothing is random.”
For those who, like the protagonist of Joan Didion’s
feel that they “know what nothing means,” I recommend the following readings:
The gift made to me by God as he holds me in his gaze and in his hand while remaining inaccessible to me, the terribly dissymmetrical gift of the mysterium tremendum only allows me to respond and only rouses me to the responsibility it gives me by making a gift of death, giving the secret of death, a new experience of death. (33)”
The above-mentioned sermon is a meditation on randomness and page numbers, focusing on page 265 in particular.
On page 265 of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, we find the following remark:
“Googlaa pluplu.”
Following Joyce’s instructions, and entering “pluplu” in the Google search engine, we find the following:
“Datura is a delusional drug rather than a hallucinatory one. You don’t see patterns, trails, or any cool visual effects; you just actually believe in things that aren’t there…. I remember holding a glass for a while–but when I raised it to my mouth to take a drink, my fingers closed around nothingness because there was no glass there….
Using datura is the closest I’ve ever come to death…. Of all the drugs I’ve taken, this is the one that I’d be too scared to ever take again.”
For those who don’t need AA, perhaps the offer of Ed Harris in the classic study of gangs of New York, “State of Grace,” is an offer of somewhat safer holiday cheer that should not be refused.
Irish Lament
In keeping with Irish themes in the Mark Helprin novel Winter’s Tale (see yesterday’s entry with that title) and in the new Martin Scorsese film “Gangs of New York,” as well as in observance of Maud Gonne’s birthday today, our site music returns to the theme of October 17, “Lament for Kilcash.”
Winter’s Tale
The title is that of a novel by Mark Helprin.
On this date in 1903, the Williamsburg Bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan was opened to traffic.
From the opening of Helprin’s 1983 novel:
“The horse…. trotted alone over the carriage road of the Williamsburg Bridge, before the light, while the toll keeper was sleeping by his stove and many stars were still blazing above the city.”
Seven is |
|
See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.
“The Forms are abstract but real.”
ART WARS:
Bach at Heaven’s Gate
From a weblog entry of Friday, December 13, 2002:
Divine Comedy Joan Didion and her husband If the incomparable Max Bialystock |
From The Hollywood Reporter:
Producer Sidney Glazier dies In addition to “The Producers,” His nephew is “Scrooged” screenwriter
(Josh Spector) |
Recommended reading —
Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of
“Heaven’s Gate,”
the Film that Sank United Artists,
Second Edition,
by Steven Bach
From Newmarket Press:
“Steven Bach was the senior vice-president and head of worldwide production for United Artists at the time of the filming of Heaven’s Gate…. Apart from the director and the producer, Bach was the only person to witness the evolution of Heaven’s Gate from beginning to end.”
Plain Hunt Maximus
This midnight’s site music is in honor of Sinatra’s first recording session for Reprise on December 19, 1960 (which included “Ring-a-Ding-Ding”).
See also The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers, and this applet for devising your own peal of changes.
Those who prefer Disney may go to this web page and click on the title “The Bells of Notre Dame” for a different midi. For Mary Gaitskill‘s more mature approach to Victor Hugo’s classic, click here.
