Karaindrou: The Dust of Time - ECM New Series/Ode, 2009

It has been a long time since I watched ‘Ulysses' Gaze,' a 1995 film directed by Theo Angelopoulos, but it still reverberates deep within me. How many films can one recall with similar feelings? How many films are forever grafted on one's soul...and never cease reminding one of its depths. Not surprisingly, ‘Ulysses' Gaze' won the Grand Jury Prize and International Critics' Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1999, Andrew Horton published a study of Angelopoulos' oeuvre, ‘The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation.' The title of his book grasps Angelopoulos' artistic vision in a nutshell, for it is quintessentially contemplative. Unfortunately, such films are rare in this country. Contemplative films gain little traction on the slick soil of American culture: ditto contemplative soundtracks, ditto contemplative artistic vision altogether...we like action and noise: lots of action, lots of noise.

But this is not a film review, nor is it a rant about mass market movies or the cultures that sustain them. Instead, I want to draw your attention to the soundtrack for Angelopoulos' latest film, ‘The Dust of Time,' on the ECM label, featuring music by the Greek composer, Eleni Karaindrou.

Eleni Karaindrou was born in Teichio, an isolated mountain village in the Roumeli region of central Greece, and still retains memories of the sound of her childhood: "the music of the wind, rain on the slate roof, running water...the nightingale's singing. And then the silence of the snow."

Karaindrou says of her collaborations with Angelopoulos: "We begin, in most cases, before there is a screenplay, working outwards from the film's underlying concepts. Angelopoulos is a man who feels much and says little, so it's important for me to understand the ideas at the root of his work, and how I can help convey the things which will not be verbally expressed in the film. Sometimes I've already found the main theme by the time we have a scenario."

From his side, Angelopoulos says that "in all these hundreds of feet of film, Eleni's music represents the blood not shed on the screen. Her constant presence...reveals something deeply spiritual beneath the lyricism."

Karaindrou has received numerous awards including the State Music Award (Greece) for her music for "Eternity and a Day", the Dmitris Mitropoulos Award for her music for theatre (1994-96), and the Fellini Award from Europa Cinema, Italy. In 2002 she received the Golden Cross of the Order of Honor from the Greek president, for her life's work. In 2004 she was nominated for the European Film Award for her music for "The Weeping Meadow", which was also Oscar-nominated.

A brief introduction to Karaindrou's music can be found on the YouTube video, ‘Ulysses´Gaze, A Tribute.' Though her music will not make you giddy, it will remind you how much tenderness there is in this utterly silent but incredibly noisy world.
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Music for the film by Theo Angelopoulos, with Willem Dafoe, Bruno Ganz, Irène Jacob, Michel Piccoli

US Release date: June 30, 2009 - ECM New Series CD: B0012945-02 - More Information HERE.

This article was originally published in the Redstone Review - June 17, 2009 ©Rick Visser

 Clearly, it has been a long time since I posted anything on Artrift; the longest hiatus since I started posting in 2003. Why should it not be so? This is not an assembly line; it is an exploration in reality and imagination…a continual play of metamorphosis. Besides, my readers have much else to do...and so do I. The rain falls gently in the ocean of equanimity.

Blitz Drawing of William Faulkner, Tombo marker, R. Visser, 2009

To reorient oneself, again and again, one might read or reread William Faulkner’s Nobel Banquet Speech, a mere four paragraphs, but…so much more.

Here are two paragraphs...and how contemporary they remain:

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.”

Read full speech HERE. 

 Continuing with Northrop Frye:

"The power over the outline completes the victory of creation over perception....In Blake's opinion painting ought to have precisely the same imaginative integrity, the same freedom from external stimulus, that music has, and this is all he means when he says: "I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation."  If a painter does not develop the ability to see with his mind's eye and evolve that vision into a picture, he has to depend on perception for all his subjects.  And perception can suggest only minor subjects: the greatest themes, the visions of the Sistine ceiling or the Loggia, can no more be modeled from nature than a sonata can be." Fearful Symmetry, p. 97-98

Rick Visser, Still Life with Boxing Ring & Chalkboard, oil on canvas, 24" x 30", 2007

 In his masterful work on William Blake, Fearful Symmetry, Northrop Frye gives us the following Blake quote (p. 97):

"The great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art, and the less keen and sharp, the greater the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling....The want of this determinate and bounding form evidences the want of idea in the artist's mind, and the pretence of the plagiary in all its branches...What is it that builds a house and plants a garden, but the definite and determinate?...Leave out the line, and you leave out life itself; all is chaos again, and the line of the almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist?"

 
Image Reference: Londonist

On the same page, Frye comments: "To draw a line is the primary step in incorporating energy in form....Striking out a line is a denial of all inertia and paralysis, all doubt and hesitation and reflection; it expresses the triumph of imaginative energy over a fallen world.  Drawing a line asserts the reality of the particular thing against the liquid generalizations which expand indefinitely over the surface of thought.  A line, therefore, is both movement and purpose: whatever the medium of the art, the line exists neither in time nor space, but in the eternal and infinite union..."

More on this later...

Rick Visser, Study for "If I Go Away," water color on paper, 15.5" x 20", 2008.

This Article in the New Yorker was illuminating to read...the experimental mind, the experimental artist, stands in oppostion to Picasso, who said, "I do not search, I find."  That is, if we understand what Picasso meant by this.

The experimental artist searches continuously...but he or she is not overly concerned about finding...every brush stroke is a question.

If such an artist could simply relax in this space, oblivious to what has happened in the past, oblivious to what is happening now, oblivious to what may happen in the future in every corner of the art world, he or she would move along in the best possible way.  Without regard for anything at all, he or she would move forward into the unknown..where no painting, drawing, or anything at all, would ever be definitive.  Each step would be a question; each step would pose a question, or group of questions, for the next step.  There would be no 'this is it.' Ever.

Study for 'This Spray Which I Have Gathered,' pencil & ink on paper, 9.5" x 8.5", 11/28/08.

This is an example of the work I am now doing...drawings, water colors, and large oil canvases.  The pencil/ink studies are small...water colors larger...and the canvases fairly large at 4' x 5'.  

The titles I attach to them, rather than pointing to the specific visual imagery, are meant to evoke a fundamental state of mind.  To associate the title with the objective visual content of the work would be to misunderstand my intention.

To consider the 'Adagio sostenuto' from Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 29, op. 106, might also be a way to find an entrance here.  The link I give here offers about 5 min. of a 17 min. movement...it is not enough, but it is something.

This morning's air is cold and sharp, biting me awake...

Only One Hour to Live

If you had only one hour to live, what would you do? Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, your will, and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask their forgiveness for the harm that you might have done to them, and forgive them for whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour, then it can also be done for the days and years that may remain...Try it and you will find out.

The Book of Life - November 9 

Live in This World Anonymously

Is it not possible to live in this world without ambition, just being what you are? If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation. I think one can live in this world anonymously, completely unknown, without being famous, ambitious, cruel. One can live very happily when no importance is given to the self; and this also is part of right education.

The whole world is worshipping success. You hear stories of how the poor boy studied at night and eventually became a judge, or how he began by selling newspapers and ended up a multi-millionaire. You are fed on the glorification of success. With achievement of great success there is also great sorrow; but most of us are caught up in the desire to achieve, and success is much more important to us than the understanding and dissolution of sorrow.

The Book of Life - November 8

"You cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique, and that is why we are miserable all our lives. We have technique: how to put up a house, how to build a bridge, how to assemble a motor, how to educate our children through a system.  We have learned all these techniques, but our hearts and minds are empty. We are first class machines, we know how to operate most beautifully, but we do not love a living thing. You may be a good engineer, you may be a pianist, you may write in a good style in English or Marathi or whatever your language is, but creativeness is not found through technique. If you have something to say, you create your own style; but when you have nothing to say, even if you have a beautiful style, what you write is only the traditional routine, a repetition in new words of the same old thing.
 
"So, having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won't have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art."
 
The Book of Life - November 4

Have you ever thought about it? We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Because we really don't love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems, if you really loved it, you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. To want to be famous is tawdry, trivial, stupid, it has no meaning; but, because we don't love what we are doing, we want to enrich ourselves with fame. Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action.

You know, it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty.

The Book of Life - November 3