audio/visual (Paul Westerberg, meet Wong Kar-wai)

audio

this morning i woke up, meditated and started coffee – nothing unusual. i turned on my computer, clicked on a playlist and this song came on:



ever have one of those moments when something sounds so fresh and new that it seems as though you're hearing for the first time? this was one of those: "Pretty girl keep growin' up, playing make-up, wearing guitar... Growing old in bar, you grow old in a bar."

i had never picked up on the inverted meaning in the first half of this line;
i had always been too lost in the melody. how many things like this do we miss every day? how many times do we let familiarity or routine or the fragile veneer of drudgery to obscure our vision? how many times do we only hear what we want to, or only want what we hear?

Paul Westerberg had some things to say about this, too: "And if I don't see you, in a long, long while... I'll try to find you, left of the dial."

visual

a friend and colleague sent me a link to a website yesterday, which had a short blurb about a film he introduced me to. it was a nice gesture, one of those incidents that confirms my suspicion regarding the interconnectedness of all beings. more over, and perhaps coincidentally, it was around this time last year that my friend and colleague screened Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood For Love for the film class i was assisting:

it inspired me to ask these types of questions:

what
is smoke?
what is longing?
what is a shadow?
what is a mirror?
what is a hallway?
what is a reflection?
what is a smoky reflection?
what is a smoky reflection in a mirror?
what is a smoky reflection in a mirror down a hallway?
what is a smoky reflection casting shadows in a mirror down a hallway?
what is a smoky reflection casting long shadows in a mirror down a hallway?

what resulted was this particular piece of recycled poesy, my favorite version of which lives here. given time constrains, i will offer it in its original form:


leitmotifs in celebration of Sino-cinema

dreaming of hallways in rack focus
i gazed through

(the blinds of memory, half-drawn)

a patchwork predicated on

the
present's
projection
of the presence
of past

predilection and perception.

beginning

pulling time into focus

(slippage)

(dilation)

pulling time into focus

end

repetition and mirrors,
hallways and telephones,
the rehearsed departure of
wedding bands and restraint,

(not my own)

curtains and mirrors,
light bulbs and longing,
the textured punctuality of
clocks casting shadows down the hall.