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Civil War
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 186
And saw this trailer - "Civil War" - link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDyQxtg0V2w.
And I can't help but think we're all being groomed - Another election, less than a year away, and Trump is leading the Polls and the Democrats can't see their way to find a more charismatic leader and Biden doesn't seem to recognize or acknowledge that he's imperiling democracy by not stepping down and providing a more suitable, younger and charismatic replacement.
Anyways, that's the tack we're on and - while I find nothing particularly offensive in Biden, I find his hopes for another term devastating - as will the Democrats.
As will the Entire US of A, but a good lot of them will have voted for it, so there's no tears to be shed for them.
Dream Scenario
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 191
Had been looking for this for a while, trailer, reviews looked good, great even. About a mild mannered and boring professor who ends up inadvertently appearing in random people's dreams.
It had a great deal of potential, a curious premise, but it devolved down every predictable pathway into a commentary on Celebrity and Cancel Culture.
So, a "Meh" and give it a miss. There are surely better films coming.
Blaise Cendrars - Moravagine
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 202
This was a discovery. French Modernist, he writes, well, brilliantly, genius even. Rhythm, style, cadence, pacing, the plot, characters, situations, the balance of narrative, philosophizing, an author I'd seen referred to by Henry Miller (and you can see his influence), as well as influencing Modigliani, (Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Blaise_Cendrars), Picasso, Chagall and others. Discovering him is a little like discovering Celine - and - fortunately for me, he has quite a number of other books in translation.
Unfortunately they're pretty rare and often very expensive.
I'll get to them.
The cover art - a Penguin Paperback with Thomas Hafner's "Lucifer" (an AI Hallucination before AI, actually conceived and painted by the artist) - this is the original "Fight Club", "Apocalypse Now", I could go on.
And his writing - trying to discern what is factual - within his experience, vs fiction - what he's making up - is in points night on impossible, he paints perfect, vivid strokes, in the general and then perfectly again in the specific, make it impossible to differentiate...
An absolutely brilliant author but poorly represented in English Translation.
5/5 Stars.
Wikipedia Word Golf
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 201
I'm checking Cendrars, a few words he mentions I'm not precisely sure of.
Start with Teraphim - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teraphim, the sense Cendrars uses is it as if it were an automaton or robot, and the Wiki or Biblical definition seems to vary in the sense used.
Follow with Mazzikim, which leads one to Shedim, Azazel, Naamah, and Asmodeus - the demon personification of lust, as well the King of Gambling in Hell (who knew you could gamble in Hell?), read the Wiki, an interesting figure if ever there was one, a devil in a bottle, and from here the links become unmanageable, I'll be up all night playing this game...
On to the Dybbuk, then Daimon, Daimonic, (because things are never as simple or straightforward as you think...) Tutelary, Keres, Numinous, Harpocrates,...
The gaps in my knowledge are proving painfully apparent.
Coming to the ideas of Spirits of Place, or Genius Loci, Which of course refresh the ideas of Haunting, with of course too many examples to list, and Fairies, Puck, Elves, Ghosts, Japanese Dieties, Cacodemon,...
It is truly never ending. And while some I know - of course, it's interesting to read the references and lore on the Wikipedia Pages, which lead on - and on - and on....
I come across Lévy-Bruhl, who was fascination (Primitive Mentality) - and of course, I'm struck, the Universality of these beliefs, every culture has some corollary or equivalent, curious and curioser...
Coming to, the ideas of Emergence, The Collective Unconscious, (I am familiar, have read Jung, but this is a gold mine...), The idea that the Old Testament Idols refers to foreign Gods - which explains the prohibition against them, but Judaism, as well as Muslim Faith, offer strict injunctions against physical representations of God, and we are starting to go places...
So, a years worth of word golfing in a single evening, checking things I took for granted I understood to find only that I didn't, or my understanding you use some elaboration, and this, just scraping the surface...
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