I'm Sorry ... this is done!

This blog is closed; had a nice time here...now inviting you to my blogs here and here ... or you can click the pics. Love good Cinema!

The Bride wore Yellow

Hello! I was there, alive and kicking! Only took a break to play other roles in my other two blogs: Love's Ragpicker and Living like a Log ... thought about turning back to my good old blog to post two film-reviews which short-memoried people forgot and the author herself has no wishes to have them archived somewhere from where one can have a total recall. This is written by la femme enfant terrible and my good old buddy Paramita Brahmachari and published in the Friday etc reviews of The Telegraph, India ... (only complain that the review of the second vol. is smaller, hmm ... lousy editor's masculine scissorhands? she was in such a spell of Vol. 1 that she did not like the more classical/Western Vol. 2, I can recall; surely she has other views now). Actually, this blog was being written from such a male POV that I moved to a bit more accommodating pastures, and only one woman who can play a nice foil, a better man to Pierrot Poiccard is Beatrix 'the Bride' Kiddo. But she deserves a separate blog and I can't maintain more! Her place here can be rightly justified, so there they go! Black Mamba and Paramita!

Kill Bill Vol.1
It’s a bloodbath spouted and spattered like watery crimson dye from a toy pistol. An endless chain of ritualized revenges, played out on a Samurai code of honour, and visualized like ballets in ultra-violence. Using b/w, slo-mo, electric reds and blues and chilling Japanese anime. Melding genres in chapters numbered out of sequence, back-and-forthed by Quentin Tarantino like a DJ at a turntable.
The violence that Miramax thought is bound to put off women viewers, does not desensitize like the adolescent video-game-station type peddled in action explosives. Nor is it the art-house aesthetization of increasingly realistic war-epics that hide and naturalize the new pleasures of the information zeitgeist in the name of topicality.
But does it end up using violence perpetrated against women to level out qualifiers like race, class, culture or situation? Or age? Exactly! And that batters home the undeniable fact of its ubiquity. Tarantino refuses to waste time playing the sympathy card to psychologize, but does not purge out the emotional backlash. Thus wryly individuating his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS) in a way that the playboy pin-up Bond Barbies from Charlie’s Angels; will never be.
If anything, it makes you aware of its exaggerated constructs, the dark machismo of noir--- “Do you find me sadistic?” asks Bill of The Bride/Black Mamba (ironic blaxploitation code-name) at her massacred wedding. Her name is bleeped right out of the movie every time it’s uttered. Her methodical dismembering acts with a gleaming phallic sword is pure image too--- but not as a black-leathered dominatrix constructed for a lecherous male viewership; nor as a blonde anorexic distaff Bruce Lee. Tarantino’s teenage Lolita in a school-uniform (remembering Britney anyone?) swings a ball with retractable serrated blades on a chain, and stabs a horny bartender asking “…or is it I who has penetrated you?” ---So, if you’ve ever idolized Lizzie Borden for getting even with the system, this is also your trip.
The school-dress, by the way, owes it to Kenji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale in which the Japanese government stages a Lord of the Flies like survival-game where teenage delinquents can systematically exterminate each other. For other spectacular cinematic references like how the Battle Royale shootout is itself referenced from QT’s own Reservoir Dogs, and a wicked list of visuals, characters, actors, costumes, proper names, mise-en-scenes and soundtracks that constitute Tarantino’s fantasy kung-fu ghetto, look up the ‘Kill Bill Study Guide’ at HKFlix and Tomohiro Machiyama’s interview with QT at Japattack on the web, we are not even near enough qualified to do that.
All given, you’re welcome to think of Tarantino as unable to outgrow his self-mythologizing “dick drive”. A sick video-store cinephiliac rehashing shaolin, yakuza, kung-fu, blaxploitation and spaghetti western flicks to legitimize and immortalize an entire childhood’s indulgences in grindhouse B-movies. But for something cut-out to infiltrate film school and (Cult)ure studies courses, it is as thoroughly entertaining without the references, which though, once excavated, will set you wildly scavenging for all those forgotten, fossilized or merely underground genres and directors. It’s “Funny. Solemn. Beautiful. Gross”(--QT). Pure pulp. Pure kitsch. Pure camp. Pure visual sin.
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Kill Bill Vol. 2
“The magpie deserves your respect”---that’s QT, canonizing himself with the last word. And the quotes and salutary nods keep adding up as the narrative cycles of Bill 2 cover successive back-stories, spreading further away from the wedding massacre that is the epicenter, the bloody Rosebud at the heart of this film.
QT’s choice for the meta-genre for Bill 2 is the Western, and the Bride has turned into a walking icon from the oldest of American mythographies. She staggers through Frontier country in a shimmering heat haze, framed inside multiple lens-flares. Her face is caught in extreme close-ups, rucked up, crusty with dirt—more worn than the rugged valleys themselves, like many colossal totemic males before. The soundtrack is likewise a tribute to Ennio Morricone, the composer for Sergio Leone (himself an Italian fabricating faux Westerns)— using his own music along with howling coyotes, whipping wind, chiming chapel bells and the high and dry notes from Bill’s bamboo pipe. The figures are almost metaphoric in significance, fatally resigned to the self-propelling chain of violence. The genre clichés brushing the Noir and the Horror are further immortalized in the visuals--- velvety black-and-whites, and tacky rear-projections of a speeding highway behind the Bride (sitting at the wheel quoting the trailer to her own film).
The episode-specials include a Shaolin temple throwback where Uma trains under a ‘white eyebrow monk’ that Tarantino had wanted to play himself (and you’ll actually find Five Fingers of Death listed under his Ten Favorite Films). But otherwise all the violence is strategically hidden. The crimson arterial sprays, kinetic rush and ultra violence of Vol.1 have been traded in for a bigger tease, the verbal face-offs characteristic of Pulp Fiction. The confrontations are delayed and designed precisely to confound your expectations, it takes just under 20 seconds to kill Bill. But that’s because his skinny blonde Samurai avenging angel accomplishes the hardest tasks of all, --- killing the Father (and as the result of an earlier lie the Father of the Bride as well). And being born again herself from a shallow grave, just to claim her body back.

I'll be back! (in Terminator Arnie voice) ... with my views ...

Technorati Tags: Kill Bill

Snap Previews!

I didn't vanish. I am just playing a different role now, right now I am Love's Ragpicker. But thought of telling you a new gizmo in this blog. Just place your cursor in the link above, don't click it. Did anything happen? Something is bound to happen. Let me explain you things taking a little bit of help from the people who produced the bubble ... and these bubbles will be produced when you place your cursor (and no need clicking!) on any link in this pages of Pierrotting.

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a nice little tool on this site called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, including condensed excerpts of Wikipedia articles and IMDb profiles, instant playing of videos, display of stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots brings the information needed right to the readers, without them having to leave the site, while other times Snap Shots enables users to "look ahead," before deciding if they want to follow a link or not, saving them time and effort and increasing their ability to focus on the content that matters most to them.

However, should you decide this is not for you, just click "Disable" in the upper right corner of the Snap Shots bubble and opt-out.

If you would like to use it for your blog, look for the Snap logo in my sidebar and click it. And like Arnie in the Terminators: "I'll be back!"

Look Back! Look Up!!

(I will never remind you again; always click the pic for a bigger view if the cursor turns into a index finger, righto?)

One of my favorite scenes from DDLJ is the "palat!" one, when SRK oozes confidence, albeit nervously, that if Simran is in love with him she will look back, turn back, which she eventually does (another fave one follows within a while, when Simran asks Raj if he's gonna coming to her wedding; I love the way SRK says the 'no' without uttering a word; hey! that's typically me! Incidentally, I am a die-hard Aamir Khan fan and I hate my falling into SRK's charms now and then). That moment is typical, magical Indian mainstream cinema. I love that one.

Now look back ... Breathless. Our hero Michel Poiccard swaggers into the frame in inimitable style, something we relish in spite of being reminded that it is not original (he is Humphrey Bogarting throughout the film, like I am Pierrot Poiccarding). So here he is, a star and a parody, an icon and the pastiche, originally unoriginal, our man of fiction will walk down the non-fictional streets of cinematic dream: Champs Elysees and there goes the girl: the American woman in Paris. They meet, one of the most improbable couples in the history of cinema: an American intellectual girl in love with the French hi-culture and a French ruffian enamoured to American mass-culture. He is in love with her, and she is not very sure. So Michel Bogarte's and Patricia traipses and both of them oozes a re-definition of being sexy on the screen; Raoul Coutard's camera follows up and down hidden in a wheelchair. They catwalk up and down as if the Paris streets are ramps of a fresh new fashion movement called the Nouvelle Vague.

He has committed a murder, the police are trailing him, he must leave the city fast. That's logical. But he is in love with Patricia and he will leave the city only if she says a oui to him and they will flee. That's absurd! She is just fond of him, that does not mean wasting a potential literary-academic career in the cultural capital of Europe for a small-time crook who lies right and left (like his junior-ego Antoine Doniel, more about this kid later) and is reflexively undependable! She says she needs to think and Michel knows that she will reach a 'no' the more she thinks. But Michel still waits knowing that death is in the next lane, he does not leave the city, i.e. Patricia Renoir (well, that's not her name).
And when Michel goes away suddenly she turns and runs and plants that peck on his cheek as a ominous melancholic music swells to fill up Champs Elysees. She palats! If she is in love she will look back, look up! DDLJ was kitsch, Simran's turning back assures us; Breathless is, sadly, art in the guise of kitsch, Patricia's turning back is doomed. She is in a love which never reaches the wish-fulfilling closure of narrative emotions. It is a sudden feeling of being in love which is as modern as anything can be, one can never be sure if it will stay as it is or not, that feeling of being in love. And since it is fleeting, one must live it to the hilt, who knows, it might vanish like elephants do when they are sad. The DDLJ moment is the moment of masculine control, as if Raj controls and manipulates Simran's turning back. The Breathless moment is that of the masculine ignorance and sudden feminine assertion and he is quite taken aback, we are sure. He never encashes that moment, reaching that confidence like Raj does, that here the girl is in my grips! In Godard films girls never are, and the boys know that and still they are in love with them. Notice: Simran just turned back and smiled, because their love will be consummated with the due permissions fron the feudal patriarchy, and Patricia runs to kiss him because they are doomed. Why are you in love with her, what's the future with her, is she dependable, is she reliable, will she stay with you? Heck man! Silly early modern rationalisations! I love her because I love her, even if it means my dancing away to doom, 'coz I know when that moment will arrive if she is in love with me she will turn and run back to me!
With due qualifications to all you boys: the difference between life and a film is that films are edited, shots are matched with shots with perfect sense of timing. If she does not look up to you at the very moment that means nothing, just because time is out of joint and life is exactly not logically edited. Therefore that does not mean that she is not in love with you.

Hiroshima My Love: the song of Radioactive Flesh

Hallo Readers (only those who can read Bengali, sorry!) click the pic above to get a poem which I have published in Love's Ragpicker. Then thought that it might feature here as well, since Hiroshima mon Amour is one of the greatest French New Wave films.

Hallo people!

Thought I have gone mute or something? Actually was organising things a bit. So opened two more blogs, one titled Living like a Log which is quite empty :), and another one titled Love's Ragpicker, which is now housing many posts which previously appeared here. Do visit them, regards and thankyous!

Nouvelle Vague

Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) is about (now this is not catalogued by me):

action vs. contemplation, the gray city, the ambivalence of women, the ambivalence towards women, lovelessness, the iconography of words, the power of popular culture, the grotesque distortions of capitalism, transience (no one has a home), cafes, the endless talk, the formal mise-en-scene, the syntax of sound vs. image, American culture, the B-movie, the film noir, the chilling romance with death, the difficulty of understanding, the commonness of death, the situation of the outsider, the political act, the importance of the sign, the "significance" of the sign, print (novel?) vs. film, automania (of self), automania (of cars), auteurism, digressions, the sociological treatise, the pun, Angst, Sartrean nausea.

(from The New Wave, James Monaco, pp. 108-09)

Heh! I thought I was summarizing my blog ... so each of these demands a focused post.

Michel Poiccard song 1: Shoot the Sun!

"I shook off the sweat and the sun. I realized that I'd destroyed the balance of the day and the perfect silence of this beach where I'd been happy. And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness." The Outsider, Albert Camus

Break the Law
Scream your Thoughts
Pull the Gun
Shoot the Sun

Burn the Bridges
Scald the Beaches
On the Run
Beat the Sun

If you ask me why I wired and stole that car
I would say that just to freak
Didn't know that in the age of machines
It would turn out to be lifetime hellbound trip

Shadows of shifting clouds
Fleeting like shapeless doubts
Neon-signs tell my stories
Newspaper astrologies

If you predict that a bad day lies ahead
I will rub my shoedust-disdain in your face
If you send your kafka-cops to trail my fate
I will boogey-woogie, Bogey to my death

Peep the Butt
Jump the Cut
Scoot to Hell
Cat the Bell

Syncopated
Synch belated
Pull the Gun
Shoot the Sun

If she tells me that I am not meant for her
I will tell her baby love me meaningless
If she nods her pretty crew-cut Renoir-head
I can drop the hat and stop the skirt-chases

The sky above is bleached to white
Someone shrieking like a kite
A kitten litters in the gutter
It is dead, I cross my chest

If you ask me if I church the bloody sundays
I will say that you've got me baby wrong
I know God is that gutter-dead kitten
The chaplain just a booky-moron

Think before taking a step
Step before thinking it late
Screw all bullshits
Raise the Hell

Grab the Girl
Grip the Gun
Sulk or Snarl
Shoot the Sun

I know I am not drifting in another movie
I know I have received no lines for me to speech
I know still I must traipse up-and-down the frame
I can see the sunglassed fool is in the game
I know he will give me away and lay the blame
Over the confused conduced striped-T-shirted dame
I know I will turn immortal and then I'll die
I am trying to jump the cliff and then fly
I know I have waxy cursed daedalus-wings
I know I am throat-cut Orpheusinging
I know I am Mersaulting in the blanded beach
I know I am post-war cold-war Prometheusingggggg!!!

Shit the beat
Beat the heat
Hit the nadir
Don't retreat

Burn the Bridges
Scald the Beaches
On the Run
Beat the Sun

Break your Law
Scream your Thoughts
Pull the Gun
Shoot the Sun

Disgusting ... I'm done ...

Pierrot and Poiccard

Time to talk about Poiccard, Michel Poiccard. You know, Pierrot Poiccard is an oxymoron. Pierrot was what Poiccard wasn't. I will explain why. To start with, Pierrot was a gentleman, Poiccard a conman. Pierrot was contemplative, Poiccard a man of action. Pierrot couldn't lie, Poiccard always made up stories (he himself was a lie). Pierrot went mad in grief, Poiccard decided that love will never make him sad. Pierrot blasted himself, Poiccard would never do that cowardly act (wrong! a madman is incapable of being a coward, someone mad is someone radically courageous). More later, but Pierrot was in fairy-tale color and Poiccard in urban Black and White. In a cityscape, Day: newspaper B/W and Night: neon-color.

A Blank Little Post

Now, this is what I was waiting for: a blank little post, a clean, in other words, overcrowded slate of mind. Too many things about which I cannot write, reaching the fringes of a weblog. This is not a daily diary (planning another blog to suit that purpose). This is a blog with a red header screaming "destroy capitalism!", the silk-and-satin of the body-blue and scrolling down, further down ... a killer-lady called Liberty. The way this blog looks: a hacked, pirated Hollywood movie, and feels like a litany ... I know, I know.

No, the movie didn't end. The movie never ends, the movie takes a break and we break for our daily chores to come back to the movie again and catch it when we get it: the frame which never stays. Thoughts are wavering away, let me catch one fast! Filtered by the mad king, sad prince and wise fool of cinema: Jean-Luc Godard. And here it is, shivering dense like live butterfly-wings between my fingers. I press it harder and the powdery wings give away, the thought limp-flies to fall beyond my lazy reach. Ultimately, life is more precious than a flight. I caught one a moment ago: what communicates better -- the face, or the words? The words, written or keyed in -- in other words, flowing or faceless? (Through cinema's filters) the image of the face? the image of the words? The personal image of the words in longhand? The impersonal image of the fonts? Or the sound of the words? I am, obviously, not interested in communication studies ...

When her words reach me through bytes, I lose the music of a voice. When she speaks through the skies, I lose her face. When I look at her face, she seldom speaks it out. Words are things to be wasted, words are overflows, words are the only means to hide what you mean, words are things which help me to lie. Words connect nothingness with nothingness; or words are not to be blamed, mobile phones keep ourselves connected, from nothingness to nothingness. Lear asked her to enumerate how much she loves, a question which can only be formed in the dawn of modern money: how much do you love. "Nothing, my lord" was the radical utterance of refusal and the ultimate articulation of love. I am talking of Cordelia's 'nothing'ness, something which refuses to communicate but conveys the meaning, the aye's and the no's.

Something which communicates, something which cinema can, theoretically, never use/record: the touch. The way the touch conveys. Ultimately that was the ur-language, the language before language was. And social language, the voice, the written words, the words typed in, the glance and the look, all try to displace, replace, substitute that vehicle to mean: the touch. Not because touch has become impossible, but because touch has lost its magic. Therefore sick chats, sicker phone-sex, nauseating scraps and mails ... all try to convey a kink which the touch is supposed not to be able of triggering; no, if words or ogles are meant to be a means to the end of the touches, one finds that the touch is ultimately as cold as frozen maggoty meat. But once upon a time touch was a language. Can you remember how the shivers in the water-envelop told you that mom is happy with you inside her? Or dad's first nervous trembling grasp? And all those things which we never tried to remember because we never thought that we will lose them. And now, each desperate kiss is to be recorded, the hand grasping the hand is firmer so that one does not forget and one day we cannot recall a touch, differentiate her from her, isn't it as nightmarish as forgetting the face whose name we can recall (the other way round is always more irritating but less disturbing)?. But how many unique touches assigned to unique people do we remember?

And you know I am not talking of that over-touch you are thinking of. As Godard said: "The tragedy of sexual relationships is the virginity of the souls". Talking of something beyond where skins meet. Talking about sad souls dying virgin, ravished but never consummated. Just like the breeze, when you feel it, it is gone. Just like the cut between two shots, which you never see, but notice it after it is gone (grab the remote and try to pause in a cut, its always a momentary lapse of vision ...).

Pet Shop Boys ...

Pet Shop Boys, one of my favorite Brit bands. In a happy coincidence, they have an entire album named Battleship Potemkin where each number is named after the episodes of Sergei Eisenstein's landmark film. Words are not coming easily today, so thought about posting a couple or more of their lyrics ...

Young Offender

You may be broke now, and you may be bored
Call you delinquent or leave you ignored
You'll get what you want

Drive to distraction, crash on the way
Watch your reaction, wait till you say
You'll get what you want
It hurts if you cant

Young offender, what's your defense?
You're younger than me, obviously
Young offender, why the pretense?
You don't agree, I know, I know

I'll do what you want if you want me enough
I'll put down my book and start falling in love
Or isn't that done?

How graceful your movements, how bitter your scorn
I've been a teenager since before you were born
And I'm younger than some
I've only begun

Young offender, what's your defense?
You're younger than me, obviously

When I get in your way, or open your eyes?
Who will give whom the bigger surprise?

Is there fire in your eyes, or the glow of machines?
Watch how your fingers thumb over the keys
So sure what you do
I haven't a clue

Young offender, what's your defense?
You're younger than me, obviously
Young offender, how you resent
The lovers you need, it hurts when they bleed
Young offender, why the pretense?
You don't agree, I know, I know

Jealousy

At dead of night, when strangers roam
The streets in search of anyone who'll take them home
I lie alone, the clock strikes three
And anyone who wanted to could contact me
At dead of night, till break of day
Endless thoughts and questions keep me awake
Its much too late

Where have you been?
Who have you seen?
You didn't phone when you said you would!
Do you lie?
Do you try
To keep in touch? you know you could
I've tried to see your point of view
But could not hear or see
For jealousy

I never knew time passed so slow
I wish Id never met you, or that I could bear to let you go
At dead of night, till break of day
Endless thoughts and questions keep me awake
Its much too late

I never knew till I met you

Nervously

A nervous boy in several ways
I never knew the world could operate this way
I was nervous when we stopped to speak
And the world came crashing around my feet

We dont talk of love
We're much too shy
But nervously we wonder when and why

A nervous boy, in spite of which
I never thought I could tremble as much as this
Your flashing eyes and sudden smiles
Are never quite at ease, and neither am i

Oh, we'll talk about it all some night
But nervously we never get it
Right
From the start I approved of you
Right from the moment you turned to face me

A nervous boy from another town
With a nervous laugh and a concentrated frown
I spoke too fast with watchful eyes
Of a recent past and some nostalgic surprise

We dont talk of love
We're much too shy
But nervously we wonder when and
Smile
Knowing why I approved of you
Right from the moment you turned to face me, a nervous boy

About Pierrotting 4

Look right: I have changed my mask and my name [Marianne: oninthough? Me: (angrily) I told you my name is Pierrot!]. Look above, where there was a rather studious looking boy, he is being blasted to the hell. The author is dead, long live the author! So this blog traces the history of authorship in certain ways: started with an author too visible like a "poster boy" (double-quotes; therefore not my words), then the characters took over (no one, heck, understood that!), now the author is simply being blasted off.

But seriously, I don't understand why people are still relegated to the archaic tendency of linking a persona with a flesh-and-blood person. I know of readers who considered me as a lovelorn, sick bechara boy for the last few weeks (more about me and my love later). Someone called me pessimistic. A tyger, with much well-felt concern, then told me not to reveal myself too much in these posts. Neither of them are wrong, but nor are they exactly right. Question 1: if one can easily read a novel written in first-person, why cannot one be convinced of a blog written in first person? i.e. should the 'I' of a blog be always conflated to the 'I' of the author? Are the man who suffer and the man who blogs about those sufferings or the suffering 'I' of these words you are reading the same persons? Why can't a blog be a vehicle of pieces of fiction? And fiction does not always mean the fictitious, the not-real, fiction is a step away from the real with one foot firmly on the real. Why can't a blog be such a piece of fiction? To sum up this paragraph, reading this blog as reading me, is slowly becoming a sort of irritation to me, a kind of reading-turned-intrusion into my person. Read my writings, not me.

Now I will quote. Here is something from a person who loves to be enigmatic, she changes not only her Orkut pic-and-profile (many of us do so), but also deletes all her scraps after playing something; she says (in public, in my orkut scrapbook): "yeahhh doppelganger...now i know...evil twin thingie....well i guess ppl we actually interact on orkut r all doppelgangers if the person in reality...jerokom amartaoo kichutaaa...there4 da anonymity...well i dunno but i thnk this is like a warm shelter for introverts [i can be wrong]....maintaining the existence or doing things that is usually impossible to do in reality...[i for example have this habit of frequently chngng my profile pics names abt me so much so that people actually forget who i really am]....this mite be cuz in reality i know i mite crave to be a changeling but thats not possible its da same me every day...atleast i can get rid of the mundaneness or inspidity over here....well positives of an orkut life..." Sister of my soul, she is then. To clarify the context, I told her that Pierrot is my doppelganger.

Even she does not mean that we kind of bloggers are certain depressed persons in search of a online therapy (I know there are similar bloggers). Please don't miss the notion of playfulness offered by the new media which life seldom offers us. I am not depressed babies, I am enjoying! Read a post which yearns about love, if you notice the pining and suffering, why don't you notice the play (in all senses of the word)? The sheer erotics of language which only a man too hedonist with words can enjoy? Is he suffering or is he relishing the touch and taste and smell and zing and trip and high of words, words and words? When you peek into me whining-and-pining away into sighs, you are missing someone going heady with language. And the masks: this entire blog is a tribute to some greatest artists (and their works) ever; well Jean-Luc Godard and a couple of his films might top the list, but how do you know I won't play Hamlet or Jimmy Porter, Mersault or Raskolnikov, Dr Rieux or Daktar Sashi, Apu or Sergio Correiri (even, depends, I might play a Norman Bates or a Hannibal Lecter)? I am a cannibal who eats up human life and digest it to sieve out the nutrients (you know there is a difference between eating sumptous food and imbibing triglycerides, that is the difference between me and I), and I have started with and might stick to me only (because I am an extremely kind person, can't harm a fly). Come on! Wanted to be a novelist or a filmmaker, ended up into being a commentator of others' finished works; so lemme create emotions, situations, persona(s) even if it means hijacking others' works. Pierrot in Calcutta? Would have been possible and is possibling in present-continuous-tense, but instead of being a movie, the movie is being a blog. And if something like Nandigram happens again, I will react within this fiction, 'cause it is liberal enough to accomodate non-fictions (like Vietnam in Godard's films).

My name is Poiccard, Pierrot Poiccard. More about this surname, a man and a mask later, about Michel and Bogart, and an author who gave away his 'character' to the cops, and laid all the blame on the girl.

And lastly, about this author of the blog: he is kiddishly in love with a wonderful girl ... hihi! And no wonder she is a regular reader of this blog, and she knows she knows ... and each night, quite late, I whisper it to her ... that I am happy loving her.

Keyboard Kabyo

Shift + Parenthesis= }: Just a frown
Pierrot raving here: saddest clown
Look straight at my face: deja vu
When the movie ends: it's just you
Only you ... just remain ... continue

Masculine Feminine, and a sea of blood

Pierrot in, Pierrot out! Pierrotting; Pierrot: ouch!!

Well, really it hurts, when I look down this page and read the previous posts it hurts hard. Being me hurts, therefore let me stop being myself and write a bit about the hero and the heroine of the film which saturates this blog so far, let's talk about Ferdinand Griffon (the crazy Pete) and Marianne Renoir ...

Ferdinand Pierrot: the contemplative male, the poet and the writer (like Patricia in Breathless), the emotional buffoon who thinks that he is cerebral (well that he is), the man who leaves the job as a TV journalist, the man unhappily married to a woman who is from a rich family with powerful connections and who detests her husband talking about the history of art to their daughter and prefers talking, like her socialite friends, in the language of advertisements (perfumes, bras, lingeries). He practices thinking, chews on ideas.

Marianne Renoir: his lover from the past (and that is hardly an apt introduction), loves him but never lives him. The woman of action and feelings (strangely the sister of Michel Poiccard's soul; Michel from Breathless). Has many lovers but fond of Ferdinand whom she affectionately calls 'Pierrot' (and irritates him in calling so, always). Has a brother who is into gun-running or terrorism. Are they arms-smugglers or revolutionaries? No one is sure and Ferdinand never questioned. The woman with the innocence of Auguste Renoir's paintings and who never gives you the appropriate perspective like Picasso's cubists.

They ran away, killing few, looting some, trailed by the policemen whom we never see. The couple dupes people here and there (the french Bunty and Babli, to be precise). Spends idyllic times in the midst of nature with a pet baby fox and a macaw, he reads and writes and she is bored ... They rejected the urban civilisation and thought that one plus one means bliss. But Marianne is so fond of adventures! The cars - alfa-romeo - the sports, the guns, the gaga, the life happening everywhere! They love each other, but its so difficult to sustain a conversation. She only fled away when she had to kill a man again (not a good man of course!) and Ferdinand is left alone again, tortured by those men to reveal the absconding Marianne's whereabouts and then released by these man when they understand that here is a branded lovelorn fou. Finds out a railtrack where he sat when the train was coming, but there is always the chance that Marianne may surface again ...

She did; and now he surrenders totally, even when he saw that Marianne kills (not good men obviously), rash-drives, mingles with fellows with a particular sense of hatred towards normal European citizens. He never questions. Our man was nowhere, neither a declassed revolutionary with a committment to political action nor a man who could return to the consumerist civilisation of Paris, he has burned all the bridges behind. In between, in the no-man's zone between, there is only Marianne, Marianne, Marianne: she is the world to him! But can he rely, won't she vanish again?

And when she shows signs of doing it again she was kissing the man she described as her brother, bewildered and maddened, our le fou left no choice but to shoot her dead, paint his face blue, phone a goodbye back home, wrap up his face with dynamite, light the fuse and fail to put that off just the moment before the thing ends with a bang and some whispers. He is the ridiculous brother of the Prince of Denmark (as if Hamlet was lesser!), who could never decide on the perfect time for the perfect action, and every moment he thoughtlessly acted out he killed somebody!

What was eating our Ferdinand Pierrot? Well he discarded the bourgeois world, but maintained that Marrianne would love him forever, which she did, but Pierrot never understood that he is confusing loving with living, which she never promised. Well, that conflation, love and living is the remnants of that bourgeois world still remaining, the conflation that is the base structure of legal marriage priested over by the state and the church. He decided to flee with her again 'cause she was almost other-worldly, almost instinctive and sensuous in the pre-civilizational way, but he demanded a bourgeois vow from her. Boka Pierrot! And poor Marianne who got killed because of a promise she never made.

And I thought I was not talking about myself ... ...

A Lapse called Bliss

"It is inevitable, since making Pierrot le Fou consisted of living through an event. An event is made up of other events which one eventually discovers. In general, I repeat, making a film is an adventure comparable to that of an army advancing through a country and living [sic] off the inhabitants. So one is led to talk about these inhabitants."
-- Jean-Luc Godard.

Don't have much time to end in rhyme the verses I scribble in haste, just thank you girl for being my wall in a day of fear and a night of dread. The wounded's moan, the insane's groan, the rustling feet, the bleak heartbeats: my only sounds, as I count the rounds, from a headless body left in retreat. His rounds or mine? His head or mine? Whose legs are running? Who stepped the mine? I only know, that I owe some humid touches in my lips. 

Someone counts, deaths and rounds, when a command barks the hours of sleep. The faces blurr, the losses marked, as stars turn dark, as numbness heaps. No time to dream, nightmare a whim, to dogs of war, sleep is a bitch. You catch her fast, you heave your last, expected blasts, hit your teeth. You grab your gun, you run for your wall, a bullet hits a helmet's skull. I only slept, in a breast unkempt of a dead man's wife, in a dead child's seat.

You begged me to stop, you called me your lord, I left you there in a no-man's land, where mothers wait, where seniles breath, where children count unmanned tanks. As your cries bleed in whines and a shriek, I was running late, I had killers to meet: brothers of war, our wounds and scars the only bond that should remain to bind our fate in chance and hate; I only smelled a nameless smell, not spent gun-shells, but yesterdays in a widow's bed.

The war begun, the war will end: history sheets, history's fun. In a soldier's day, nothing ends, ceaseless fire, endless run. The sun is a threat, full-moon searchlight, darkness dread, a hole respite. As fear eats pain, rumble and rain, one hurtles past a dying friend. In a field of death, nothing can wait, no last look back, no tears are shed. I only stopped, I only cried, a sigh or a drop, at an angel's gate.

As cranes fly high, as gazelles roar, I steal these minutes to deplore: I'm not a lord, as you decreed, I am just a dog in a life of a war, or war of a life, just a hundred and five, a numbered man, expendable; I know I'll end, dead or insane, honored-medalled-disabled, its all the same, a recorded name in history's sheets, history's fun.

I only spent a life of a day in a face that will melt in a candle's burn, and since the breeze is slowing the wind, it will burn it'll end, it will have its run. Just a touch, just a sleep, just a smell, just a kiss ... the fleeting meaning of a lapse called bliss ...

 

Hmmm ... liked creating the WWII feel, war is not same anymore in this earth, still liked how the nouns and verbs may stand for other things in a routine life ...

About strip-tease, or about Pierroting 3

Soumya (again): I don't like a certain tendency of blogging 'cause I think it is exhibitionist ...

That was not a question, that was a judgemental comment. No answers to that, but thoughts can roll on ...

Depends, on what you are doing. But, I think, when you write, you are actually stripping yourself. Lord Eliot of Wasteland County did that too, inspite of his depersonalising bullshits. But that does not mean going full monty (no one is bothered about your wand, it's the same thing everywhere, so better keep it inside your closet), so confessional blogging is boring. But this strip-tease act is actually an unfair comparison, I think, when one strips to the public, here are the eyes rather passive and bored in more than one ways, and there is the body which sheds the layers of synthetic epidermis, s/he is bored too (routine act, nothing new); I don't think that the act of writing and reading is (yeah, one act, so singular verb) similar. Well, presupposition: this type of blogging is maintaining a personal journal to be displayed in others' browser windows ...

Blogging is radical because of the speed of publishing - can't publish a book so quickly (and also not private like the mails or messages, it is meant to be published) and also because of the apprehension of ephemerality, the easiness of perishing. I cannot withdraw all my books from the bookstores (different point altogether that there are none), but deleting this blog is just a few  clicks away. A fit of rage can do that immediately, irretrievally. The entire cyberspace might crush oneday, anything lesser dramatic might happen and you might find the error page of your browser when you type in this address and go. This sensation of imminent possibility of death is what excites me. And one can tease and test the decreased attention span of a regular surfer in a humbler way, just a click here and just a click there and you are gone; flattens your ego, its assuring that you are a noone, a nobody.

I don't have enough skeletons to show in my cupboard, neither will I try to increase the weight of the lightness of a ordinary day just by keying it in. But the act of reading and writing is an erotic game where consummation is deferred forever, I hide and reveal, you are not bothered about what I reveal but rather on what I conceal. The act of strip-tease is quantitative, there is always the next piece of cloth to be shed, and it decreases in numbers. The act of writing is qualitative instead, it just reveals something to conceal another within the same sentence. Not an act of surrender this is, but creating an entirely different body and placing it for your eyes only. There is something sinful in this kinda writing, something whorish, something carnal ... in these acts of writing to the strangers' eyes. Like lying in the confession box, playing foreplay when you are the impotent one, in other words, playing roles to satisfy and feeling the evil satiety that you did not play yourself. And the shivering nervousness that I am writing all these just because I am doing the reverse: you can see me because I am standing in the balcony unaware ...

To sum up: dunno. I write each evening, and cannot say I can control what I do. Can say that you will never meet the writer in flesh and blood even when you meet me, the writer is the ghost in these traces, the reader are the faceless eyes. I break myself, I make you anew. And this you die out when you click away, you do your work, you pay your bills, you search for lunch. Only the ghost in these traces haunt me for the rest of the day, the other me born within me, these moments of Walter Mitty ...

Pierrotting: the moments of incubus, the dress-rehearsals of another nervous breakdown, the ominous evenings of angels coming back and the regret when one is displayed on a browser window and the apprehension that she will start asking questions: is this the thing that you meant? And you know that she can hear those music which your male ears are deaf to; she knows she knows ...

Another text where one halts: Hamlet

... Good night, sweet prince,
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.


Goodbye cruel world,
I'm leaving you today.
Goodbye,
Goodbye,
Goodbye.

Goodbye, all you people,
There's nothing you can say
To make me change my mind.
Goodbye.

The Wall, Pink Floyd

About Pierrotting 2

Soumya: Are you obsessed with Pierrot le Fou?

 

Incidentally, the Lionel White novel on which the film was based was named Obsession. But that hardly matters, I have a hunch that Prenom: Carmen (1983) is a reworking of the same story, though it was based on the famous Bizet opera. Nevertheless, questions to be followed by thoughts, if not answers ...

Hmmm, apparently so, 'coz I have an Orkut ID named after the film, and it was the first Godard film which hit me hard in the heart, and after years of certain engagement with Cinema/Godard I think it was the pinnacle film of early Godard phase. Therefore, you can have traces of the earlier romantic/existentialist auteur and an hint towards the later political phase. The May Revolution in 1968 is just few years away ("It was the first, it was the only dream", Pierrot's soliloquy after shooting Marianne), the next film - Masculine Feminine - would be a dispassionate political love story with younger and very real Pierrots and Mariannes (the boy commits suicide, the girl aborts and smiles, compare final fade out with that of Breathless). Pierrot is the final dream to be followed by Weekend (1967), the ultimate nightmare (final fade out: wife eating husband's flesh, served not raw but cooked, and wanting for more). Inspite of the betrayal and the murder, Pierrot is the greatest dream. It is one of those rare texts which open up possibilities of other texts, other stories, other dreams; it is Jean-luc's only myth ...

Obsessed, yup. Because it helps. Certain texts, certain myths help to organise the comprehension of your life (if not its meaning). Like this blog, starting with art and love and women (those words, and sorry for being unabashedly hetero, will try my best not to be a MCP) intends to end up in politics. That does not necessarily mean adding a political post, but am in a search of a certain logistics, how to logically end up in politics (Revolution, the greatest love-adventure of all). Recalling Pyaasa, that great film, how it managed its slow-travel from a soured love to a political denunciation of the world (Burn this world! Yeh duniya agar mit bhi jaye to kya hai) and to another redeeming love (heh! everyone keeps an impression that Pyaasa is a tragic film. That man, Guru Dutt, great one ... ), something which the 'Devdas' myth could have easily achieved, but couldn't . So need to find out a logistics of emotions. These films provide me that structure of feelings, if I can say so.

Pierrot was mad, couldn't cope up simultaneously with the absurdity of urban life and ambiguity of the woman. Madness is a pre-requisite to build yourself into a beautiful soul in flames (the junoon, the final fanaa), replacing the rational madness of this urban metropolitan capitalist muck-world with the irrational madness of art. Cannot afford to be mad in real life, can approach that sublime madness through art. And since I am an artist who is not sure of his medium (Bangali sangskritir ki apuroniyo khotitai na holo, bhableo byathay byathay mon bhorey jay), am trying to achieve it through writing. Pierrot exploded to warn that the urban absurdity cannot be redeemed through the feminine ambiguity. Boka Pierrot! Hmmm ... still can't comprehend why he went berserk, but will work it out, will feel it out (but won't live it out, this is to all those angels who love me: I love you angel but will never live with you, never touch you, feel you etc.; there you are, forever freezed in my memories, and I have freezed you there means I have killed Marianne; she cannot be corrupt anymore, can't betray, can't leave, will remain there, not in a space, but in a zone of time, forever nurturing. Try to convince me out, I will run like hell)

... at least, I told a bit about pierrotting (that 'rotting' is interesting).

About Pierrotting 1

Does one explain why he is blogging? Even if he does, should be a silly thing to do. I hardly expect strangers coming across these pages. I have linked this blog to another silly page, and I can only expect that people would stroll down to this page from that one, might be they already know me, therefore they don"t need any explanations. If they don"t, I welcome strangers with a silent speechless smile.
I will hardly be personal, confessional or spontaneously "situational" in these pages. Too public a domain this is, personal things are boring to write about, privacy is still desired ... Yeah, I am a flaneur in the Times, love walking down the arcades, but like all those people who like to walk down the streets without names, get lost, visit the unexpected and avoid the obvious known bends of streets, I do have certain alleys where I love to halt a bit, and Jean-Luc Godard"s Pierrot le Fou is one of them.
I travel the hours each day, each hour visited a bit by yesterdays, each hour haunted by the ghosts of tomorrows, and I fantasize Pierrot as a figure of the future which is already told. It"s like walking into a text each day, taking a break, staying until the air seeps in your bloodstream and walking away when a ring-tone chimes, or somebody has something to say, or another dreary work summons. And when I am sitting there, in a momentary lapse of living, I like to chanellise a bit of everyday"s log of emotions through those images I love, the sounds that drip in my mind, the ideas which were streaming 24 frames per second in a film made in 1965.
I gather meanings, I collect words. Sitting by the water when I am trying to light a cigarrette in the breeze, this madman visits me in this place. I pay him a coin, he offers me a word. These days he offers me one even if I lack changes. I know it is a word which I have dropped few hours ago in another street and never knew that I have lost it. Tossing the word, I discover that a new meaning is there on the flip-side of it. Or, it is not exactly a new meaning always; I never knew it had a meaning afterall, or I have actually lost my dictionary, or I have forgot that words have meanings at all. I know words have their use-values, or their exchange-values. I use them each day to squeeze out their utilities or to buy things in exchange, but only when this madman gives them back to me I understand that they also have "meanings".
That "love" or "dreams" return back to me most of the days is not accidental. Using "love" each day to get something, exchanging "love" to buy something ... hmmm ... but a meaning? I just remembered I dropped that word somewhere else. Or "woman", which I wrongly misplace with "love" and "dream" so many times, paying someone more than he deserves, forgetting to collect the change in a transaction, and this madman returns the word many a days, and I find strange new meanings on the flipside. Bewildered, I finish my smoking (remembering that the cig deserved few more puffs when the butt is burnt) and I walk off. Out of the text, inside existence, still flipping the word untill unmindfully dropping it somewhere I confuse the "meaning" in my hand with just another useful word and use it or exchange it for something, forgetting that words are intransitive verbs, they just go but they go nowhere ... and meanings should be wrapped in a handkerchief and kept in the pocket. But problem is, meanings and words are so similar in shape and touch actually ...

Oh! I told you nothing about Pierrotting ...

Marianne's Song

I never told you I would love you all my life
You never promised me to love me all your life
We never exchanged such promises, knowing me, knowing you
We never thought we will stay lovers, we were so unfaithful

And yet, and yet very gently, without a spoken word
Slowly and slowly, an emotion crept into us
inside our bodies which were so banally blissful
in being together ...

Then words, then words of love came to our lips undressed
Gently, oh so gently, they mingled in our kisses
(how many words?)

I never believed you would always please me, oh my love
We never thought we will live without exhausting each other
Waking up each morning we are surprisingly happy together
Wanting nothing more than each day just gladly being togetherAnd yet, and yet very gently, without a word
inspite of ourselves (we weren't thinking about it)
Slowly and slowly, love was so skillful that love
bound us together ...

But more than words, the words known or unknown
A feeling engulfed us, which was violent and strong
A feeling that we never would believed possible

You never promised me to love me all your life
We never exchanged such promises, knowing me, knowing you
Just let us know that our love is a love, just a little love without
Tomorrow ...



From Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1964) a translation of "Jamais je ne t'ai dit que je t'aimerai toujours" composed by Antoine Duhamel and Bassiak, sung by Anna Karina, translated by Peter Whitehead (with my humble touches here and there). Watch the song-sequence here.

Pierrot's Song 3: Pierrotting in the Third World

You taught me language I learned to curse You turned me tragic And I picked up farce You still Cast your kindly gaze Bait in dollar dreams Bomb me with your love Mon cher You moved my earth beneath and Picked me up You leased my land and promised stars above Your stars And your azure stripes Suck my rivers dry Fill me with your love Maitre

Ah ha ah ha Love me tender & love me long I’ll sing you in a Third World Love Song Mon frere, mon ressembler Ah ha ah ha I’ll know you better than you can know Imprison you in a Third World Love Song Vainquer, mon liberateur

You wrote my memories With alphabets While I knew my past in sounds and tales You gave me a picture book My painted face for me to look Teach me with your love Mon cher I die under my sky I pay you the rent You turn my heat on And offer me peppermint You are Beautiful & blond I’m what you’re not Bleach me with your love Maitre

Ah ha ah ha Love me tender & love me long I’ll sing you in a Third World Love Song Mon frere, mon ressembler Ah ha ah ha I’ll know you better than you can know Imprison you in a Third World Love Song Vainquer, mon liberateur

You kiss me deadly with your sting Infest my guts with your vermin And wash yourself After you fill me in You are Oh so neat & clean I feel like your garbage bin Bleed me with your love Mon cher You burn me in desire And I need to turn The wheels of fire and all the Codes I learn Your rules Always inverted I’m standing on my head Trip me with your love Maitre

Ah ha ah ha Love me tender & love me long I’ll sing you in a Third World Love Song Mon frere, mon ressembler Ah ha ah ha I’ll know you better than you can know Imprison you in a Third World Love Song Vainquer, mon liberateur

Love you, virtually

Seikhaney hobey dekha, cyberspace-ey eka

or

Bhalo achhi, bhalo theko

Akasher thikanay e-mail koro

Marianne

So there she is, the girl with the gun, maintaining that even homosapiens with soft breasts can kill,
and please don't compare her with your comicstrip-superheroines, muscled and doped with constipated vengeance in their countenances, she had no vengeances to chew on, but she could kill ... I couldn't gulp that, that's my gullibility. Wish she blew them all ...

Pierrot's Song 1: The Angels are 'turning home

Tipsy walk - endless talk - walking alone down home
Somebody called me "lover!", somebody hurled me stones
The town's asleep, I'm traipsing home

A limb steps out, I'm guessing which one
The right one or the left
Blasphemous, to walk your countdown
And reflect on your gait
Whoever, my shadow or soul
However you match
The steps I take, impossibly undone
The moments those I snatch, each one
Breaks my nights, makes my day

I've killed the angel within
Unleashed the haggard beast
I'm choosing the ways of sinners
The only box to tick
The only language, stale but selling
Cliches and the kitsch
I'm kissing you goodbye angel
I know that's our first kiss
The stars drop tears, the moon is bleached

Mother, Fuehrer, Reader, Brother
Sisters of my Soul
Keep the open door
The Angels are 'turning home

Shoemarks leave traces on the road
Fingerprints mark the wall
Bookmarkers tag the memories
Hiccups check the fall
Death just marked a grisly old cat
Beggars groan in heat
Unmanned gloweyed lorries and trucks
Rumble down the street
The stars are dry, the moon discreet

She screamed she has got nothing
She said she needs no one
She sighed that she is sorry
She begged mercies and pardoned
She pleaded she didn't mean it
She cursed I'll never understand
She nagged be happy, don't worry
She refused to gift the sun
The moon still smiles, the stars are dumb

Mother, Fuehrer, Reader, Brother
Sisters of my Soul
Keep the open door
The Angels are 'turning home

The angel is silhouetting
The cloud hairs and moonface
I plead please angel forgive me
My nerves need some rest
The angel still sing in a siren's voice
A deaf girl's song of love
Please angel leave me just the choice
To fleet like the clouds above
The stars are dews, the moon is cold

Who's gonna blast my headaches
Who's gonna soothe my bones
Who's gonna torch the scarface
Who's gonna mute ringtones
Who's gonna kill the conqueror
Who's gonna crack the joke
Who's gonna light my cigarette
Who's gonna grovel and grope
The stars are going, the moon is gone

Mother, Fuehrer, Reader, Brother
Sisters of my Soul
Keep the open door
The Angels are 'turning home

The home still recedes in depth of field
The watch is fast asleep
I can feel my sleep seeping in
Managed to catch a glimpse
The doctor with his kit
Running down the field
Is someone dying or
Is someone being born
When we are gone, life goes on

Mother, Fuehrer, Reader, Brother
Sisters of my Soul
Keep the open door
The Angels are 'turning home

Tipsy walk, endless talk ... ... knocking home