#29 Thoughts on German cinema

Okay, this one is actually really easy: I pretty much don't have any thoughts on German cinema. Sorry!

The reason for this is that I find watching film of any description very intense, in terms of concentration and ability to perform audio-visual processing go. It's less bad for things where I'm familiar with the format and actors, which is how I manage to remain current with TV shows once I've got into them; it's less bad if I'm sat down to watch with someone who actively enjoys the material in question and is willing to sit down with me and be enthusiastic at me and tell me why they like it so much and be patient when I pause and go "wait, is this brown-haired white dude #72 or number #56?"

Which is to say: my knowledge of German cinema is only slightly worse than my (nearly non-existent) knowledge of Anglophone cinema. So, for context, I am pretty sure the last general-release Anglophone film I saw was Kill Your Darlings, okay, because queer poets + Daniel Radcliffe = Relevant To My Interests, and even that I only went to because I had company. (On which point, I would like to note again how impressed I am by the shot in KYD in which DR is on the opposite side of a stairwell from the camera, his torso's cut off the top of the image, his lower body's partially obscured by the railings, and he's fully clothed - and he manages, by means of wiggling one knee, to unambiguously communicate overwhelming mind-consuming lust. It is pretty impressive, okay.)

In this context: the last general-release German film I saw was Das Leben Der Anderen, and I adore it. I adore it sufficient that I have it on DVD; the only reason I don't show it to more friends is that my mum observed that it was cheaper from amazon.de including shipping than it would've been from amazon.co.uk, and failed to realise that this was because the .de version didn't have English subs. (Why haven't I seen more? Because it's harder, in this country, for me to find people who are willing to enthusiastically rec me German-language media and then watch it with me.) (The other difficulty is of course that the majority of spoken German is nothing like my home dialect or any of the varieties of German I get most exposure to, which means I'm also always contending with an unfamiliar accent, which means the audio-visual processing budget goes overdrawn more easily.)

Much more recently than that I have seen some indie shorts, a mix of English-origin and German-origin focussing on queer subcultures; I was less-than-impressed, but that was content- rather than language-specific.

Because of all of the above (processing issues leading to very low consumption rates) I don't actually have much by way of opinions on the technical aspects; I will notice if someone is acting particularly well (Orphan Black!) or particularly lovely things being done with camera and lighting work; but in general this is an area in which I know really very little.

#30 Favourite poem forms

Probably no surprises here: I like forms that encourage being Clever, particularly with punctuation, hence my fondness for the poem in one of the collections of my childhood on the importance of punctuation that featured the lines:

PRIVATE?
NO. SWIMMING
ALLOWED.

Hence: my fondness for sonnets, and for villanelles, and for whatever that form is that's palindromic, I'll quote you one.

( Read more... )

-- and finally, as for favourite non-English poets, I am afraid I am not terribly widely read! However, I am very fond of Meg Bateman, who writes in Gaelic and does her own translations into English (especially Lightness/[NAME], which is how I first came across her, and is referenced in several of my own poems more or less explicitly); Rilke, in German; Neruda; Anna Akhmatova.

#31 Things ending, things beginning

Things ending, things beginning

(In our beginnings are our endings; in endings, new beginnings; we love, and we anticipate our loss.)

I have been wearing Liminal all the way through these new years, these quiet spaces and held breaths and interstitial time. If I am that way inclined I can construct this particular round of painful period as a blood libation to the new year. I am writing this on the evening of the 29th, in the living room with the curtains open looking out to sea over my game of Scrabble (not that I can, in fact, look very far: tonight is clouded and the sky is dark). At some (or several, health permitting) point(s) in the next few days I will take myself down to the beach and my face will be crusted with salt and I will gaze out westward and the wind will bite me and the waves will throw themselves down at my feet, full of threat and promise (both the same; think two things on their own, and both at once).

In the ending of relationships I began to trust myself. In their beginnings I let go a little more fear. I gave people food and love and space to think. We made fire together. (From destruction, we brought forth warmth and light.) I took the peelings and the ends of my cooking, and from them for the first time I made compost; come the new year I'll plant seeds out in it.

I've been living with my housemate for very nearly a year now; we moved in together on the third of January. Cambridge is relinquishing her grasp on me, temporarily, to the Thames. I am still writing, still breathing, still weaving a family. I have laughed and I have kissed people who think I'm wonderful, and I've kissed people I think are wonderful, and I've read some good books and listened to some excellent music and I have loved fiercely and I have made art as only I can. I have helped show other people what they might look like to themselves whole, which is perhaps the greatest of beginnings in my power.

This is enough. Not in the sense of adequacy, but in that of richness: this is enough, and having survived the endings of my past I will survive those yet to come, and it's still the case that I don't know whether it's beginnings or endings that are harder.

(a note to say--)

(-- not really here: scabbing half an hour of internet while a tumble dryer runs, to post the things I'd already written and get caught up on urgent e-mail. I went down to the beach with my cousins and my face still tastes a little of salt. Sea foam was being blown up the beach, and crepuscular rays abounded. Happy new year, to those of you who celebrate that now.)