Old movie actresses have something that modern actresses do not. It is not a more ambitious skill level, though a case could be made for that, or a greater beauty. I honestly believe it is a sense of anticipation that marks the difference. There is a sense that they are to do wonderful and terrible things as soon as the camera has been put away, that there is a secret wisdom lurking behind their every action. It is almost like being in the presence of a religious leader, though not quite as potent, and with different intentions and knowledge. They hold a variety of cards - sexuality, adventure, glamor, riches that allow situational possibilities. When Bette Davis is sprawled before a newspaper, you get the sense that she is withdrawing from it a sort of panacea different from your get-rich-quick and weight loss schemes. And you get the sense that she is just about to put it down, to walk out onto a lanai and stretch luxuriously while hatching marvelous plans. These plans aren’t sinister, but indicative of vivacity. I think this difference comes from a shift in standards of beauty. The awkward, doe-eyed girls of modern fashion, with wan & freckled faces like lost little Gretel, are beautiful, but they are not dolls (except Lily Cole, of course, the doll-est). They are not women wearing knee-high boots and carrying a gun. There is no sense that they will slay a lion, defend their family from starvation, or sob into elbow or wine glass. They can do these things relatively convincingly, but not without revealing to the audience that they have never done these things before. There is a certain hyperbole in the performances of classic actresses, whose techniques are still mired in the days of the stage, when a wail was a chance to test the lungs. Now it seems we suffer quietly. It is not necessarily a problem, but a progression. There is a feeling of repression in modern movies, a repression not accompanied by mystery. Nicole Kidman is a brilliant purveyor of the mysterious - partially, I think, because her features lend so coherently to the acceptance of her secrets. I read somewhere that folk musicians have to sing with conviction, that the emotional stirring of the audience is derived from the belief that the musician is telling the truth, without any real logical support for this faith. Acting is about the same - as we become more logical, we expect performances to follow similarly the monotony of life, while at the same time seeking escape from this cruise control method through gratuity like Transformers and Twilight. The latter two only succeed because the audience does not expect accurate representation - there is, in watching these movies, almost a specific demand for illusion, for excessive fabrication, and for the explicit gratification of human desires.

I don’t know what channel I’m watching, but it is interesting. Some kind of Spanish channel? It involves this gray-haired, black-mustached guy in a sombrero singing tragic songs in Spanish. The best part is that each of these songs takes place in a stereotypical locale - by a stable, by a campfire with Mexican blankets, with a fetching Mexican girl upon his arm smiling with her fake eyelashes and bedazzled lips and flower-pinned-in-her-hair, etc. My favorite so far has been one where he leaned on a column and looked longingly into the distance. At the end, they freeze-framed his face as he finished the song, and topped it off with a photoshopped tear. NOT JUST ANY TEAR, however - one that sparkled! Someone might have hit upon a deadly combination of sincerity and cheese here.

Restraint adds something to later gratification, like the satisfaction of desire after a long drought.

I am afraid that I will never be able to do anything as well as John Lee Hooker plays guitar.

Sometimes the ambiguity of a photo is its greatest asset. The same goes for all things, of course. It invigorates the natural inventiveness that is generally stifled in a society still based upon an industrial precedent - not that I have any condescension toward the nine-to-five career. When we are asked to unconsciously fill in the gaps, we play a game with our own experience and uncover hidden factoids about ourselves. The human mind has an extraordinary ability to link past and present actions in ways that are unique to the individual - past dictates interpretation. So does culture, which manufactures our past. When a person reduces themselves to a minimalist presentation of personality, then he or she is more efficient in his or her communication of ideas. There is an important balance between silence and speech that I am forever struggling with - when is talk too much, when does it hamper meaning, and when does too little talk alienate those around me and make myself impossible to understand? It is like Hemingway versus Dickens. Dickens writes an intricate story with every piece linked in perfect precision - he gains absolute control over the art form in this way, so that there is little room for interpretation, especially where intention of fact is involved. When reading Hemingway, however, the reader is allowed to color in the blank spaces with personality and the story may be stretched to make it more natural to relate to. Nick Adams is a man scarred by war, something that I am most definitely not, but I can recognize the feeling of wistfulness accompanying a return to a home that has so rebelliously altered its composition in my absence.

But I am not sure that one is better than the other. There have certainly been a long range of opinions regarding the issue. And, of course, I originally began with photography, which is a different story entirely. While the backstory for a photograph sometimes enhances its meaning, it is also an agent that may stifle its flexibility. When I know that a photograph is one of a recent political upheaval with a specific and unalterable history, it is impossible for me to regard it as much other than a journalistic account. However, simply seeing a woman or child struck by a gun without context can similarly strike anguish into the heart of any human with basic sympathies. Taken without identity, a woman may be beautiful or a man handsome - with personality, their guise may corrode to insensitivity or immorality.

It is an interesting idea, whatever the case.

It’s the thought that counts, but I hope when people think of me, they think immediately of a Batman t-shirt.

It is not quite an act of communal sympathy, or else
every girl foolish with moon would celebrate washing dishes
with a kindred fervor. Nor is it the singularity of a moment,
though that is closer, like an inauguration watched by all
with different feelings. Perhaps we lost sheep
miss the ceremonial. There is a sense in a hot bath
that no one can deny. And so it is that honoring your body
allows you to wake yourself from the dust covering
it all. Jean Cocteau said, The skin of all of us is responsive
to gypsy songs and military marches. In America
we fright from this collectivism like skittish horses do
from the idea of lightning that is larger than themselves.
And we mock the foolish. So maybe it is time to howl,
or growl even, a guttural revolution. There is a pleasure in
the accidental laugh, the Freudian slip that we will not atone for.
So that we neglect to dirty our knees and confess, and instead trace
the edge of the wine glass that she left on the sill and regret nothing.
The way she, in forgetting herself, is at the mercy of the tiny
imperceptible noises that her tongue refuses to swallow.

We grow up around significant objects all our lives without recognition because there is nothing to compare them to. It is only when we start to visit the houses of others during our first tentative sleepovers that we begin to realize our family’s own peculiarities. We begin to pass judgments. Perhaps our father’s collection of coffee mugs is not as typical as we once thought. Some houses are bigger than others. Some have more expansive yards, or ones that are better managed. Some are tenanted by mysterious relatives that cough in back rooms with wood paneling and strum a guitar that is never seen. Some friends never fully relinquish the lace, the frills, the stenciled baby lambs lovingly decorated by young mothers. Evidence of childhood is seen in odd places. A costume box tucked into the corner of a closet whispers youth. And we accept or reject these hypotheses as we stomp through the sacred places of others, looking for evidence of tangible difference. And intangible difference. Some families can barely move under the invisible weight of their untold stories, though some air their grievances almost in secret, like when the photograph is placed parallel to the sky for all to see if they may notice. But we wish to mark the state of our lives by the shoddy, drawn-together cathedrals of others. We count the holes in the quilt we see thrown casually over the bed. A child observes an African mask in the home of another and recalls how she has never yet seen the ocean.

The first seen upon waking
was him cracking his knuckles in sunlight
like some uncertain prayer. How an action taken
out of context becomes a novel whose author
is usurped by circumstance. The way the Parthenon
is as much the possession of virgin onlookers as it was
that of the Ancients. There are levels of property
between pinky fingers on a dining room table that a lawyer
will never study. So it is true that in musical chairs and relationships
there is a transfer of power without the loss of the original
sentiment, that she cannot possibly forget the curve
of mandible, the hidden birthmarks, the inked mustache
he wore with a grin as they walked through a busy street
and welcomed stares. The challenge of youth still stands.
The Parthenon is hardly diminished by the crumbling of a few
repetitious columns. The table is not cheapened by the notch marks
of parted lovers or the tallies of inmates now free, or buried.

The most exciting part of my day, hands down.