We were just watching Werner Herzog’s documentary My Best Friend about his relationship with the quite demented Klaus Kinski. A chronicle of films they made together, traced and noted mainly by Kinski’s completely unreasonable behaviour and fits and outbursts of madness and delusion. Herzog remarks on the first time he saw Kinski playing a solider at age 15 in a film and a moment where Kinski is woken up, lifts his head from a table and comes to. It was this scene that Herzog was mesmorised by. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about the scene (Herzog admits the scene that follows it seems much more vital to him now). I found it affecting his observance of this. How we chronicle things as remarkable in a moment, that on re-examination prove far from what they were in that moment or you can never find again what within them was so remarkable.
Herzog is insightful about tracking Kinski’s most unreasonable, crazed outbursts and he describes how Kinski could not stand it when something happened, that moved him from the centre of attention and this would inevitably trigger an outburst from him. There’s a section of the film that shows Kinski insulting the production manager on the film. He’s relentless with his insults. He flails his arms and body about, he walks up the hill and comes back and still he raves at the more reasonable man, who replies with much more effective insults. And still Kinski continues on, escalating and pushing as far as he can, to the extent the top of his head should fly open and whatever group of birds trapped inside should fly away.
Instead on Kinski goads, on he bullies, on he issues his tirades, until Herzog reflects the Peruvian Indian extras working on the film generously offer to kill him. Herzog declines, but admits later how he had planned to firebomb his house.
The film attempted to chronicle or record how Kinski’s intensity could translate in other ways, but it was rather lost on me. He has an intense, interesting face, but after all that godforsaken stamping and abuse, who the hell could be much bothered looking at it?! If there’s a trail of destruction and abuse of others in your wake as you veer towards manifesting your genius — I’d have to wonder if the world could be happily spared it.
There were several times where Herzog asked the question why he put up with it? He didn’t entirely answer it. Rather he leaves the reminder that there are some deeply unpleasant people in the world. A striking thing about Kinski in this portrait was how devoid of a sense of humour he was.
Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation.
A better world’s in birth.
No more tradition’s chains shall bind us.
Arise, you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new foundations.
We have been naught, we shall be all.
‘Tis the final conflict;
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race.
I was just making a current reading list of material I have been ploughing through (or more accurately thinking about ploughing through or having cracked some of it then flittered away off) when it occurred to me that one of the curious things about working on two very contrasting projects simultaneously (reading for them on the one channel that is the one brain I possess) is how blurred the boundaries become.
Thus I plucked Mr Benjamin’s Arcades Project from the carpet associating it with one area of work I am doing before alighting on the truth. Not at all. It may seem appropriate research to the one project, but it was actually sought in relation to writing of a piece of fiction. I had a moment of “spritz” in realizing that. A kind of fizz on the fact I’d forgotten for what purpose I’d sought it and it had crossed over and been filed in an irrelevant part of my brain
Then I remembered how I came to seek it, again an entirely contrasting topic that would be unlikely to bring you toward fiction. In the considering and revising of this index I have written only two titles on the reading list and fatigued on compiling anymore. It’s too administrative a task with the temptation of digesting paragraphs instead and I’d need an inbetween reading list and what purpose would there be in recording such a thing. Better to live it than record it.
My favourite line so far in this magnificent piece: An Attempt At Exhausting A Place (Georges Perec) is the description of a man wearing a coat as long as he is. I cannot this second locate the exact line, which is as it should be. I should have to hunt, I should have to attempt to exhaust this book to rediscover it.
I also treasured the mention of a few people walking and reading, not many but a few (not a direct quote, rather a rustling, vague hustle from memory.
Where has this book been? Why haven’t we met before? Words must be exchanged on this. Georges vraiment!
I was reading it while waiting in a long queue at the supermarket. Behind me a couple exchanged in Spanish, finally he scooped up Family Circle and asked her if she wanted a copy. Non, non, she replied. The cashier’s nail polish was an unusual grey, the colour closely matched the shade of the cover of Perec’s novel. (Wakefield Press. Translated by Marc Lowenthal).
An intense day of reading and discovery!
Firstly we had our arses frozen off at the Farmer’s Market (where’d that fierce icy wind blow in from?), we, being the delightful Mme Beespeaker (Lori W) and meself, as we ate eggs and pulled pork, followed by catch up, discussion and exchange on my impending project Rereading the Riot Act. Helpful and inspiring as ever is Lori and add tales of tea on top of all that.
I spent the latter part of the day and evening in the basements of UBC libraries rummaging through rarities and old newspaper reports, which it took me most of the time to figure out how to turn that blessed machine on. It reminded me of a cotton mill trying to fathom how to thread the yoke into the other yoke to discover the newspaper was back to front?!
The young fella beside me had a dreadful cold, but I shared my front page discoveries with him. He told me he had taken a BC History course but had never heard of the 1935 incident I was waving my hands over. There was a lovely moment where when I stood up to leave, a young woman approached me, firm and frantic, initially demanding my services. “I need a Reference Librarian,” she said. I was rather chuffed to be mistaken for a Reference Librarian given my problems turning the machine on. (This having used identical machines in four other cities on numerous occasions … but some technicals never quite make an impression on me).
I am still confused about how biting that wind was this morning. There wasn’t much of a hint of it on leaving the house, and then…Lord I felt it in the old fingers and bones.
To G Perec et Jean Michel Basquiat maintenant.
“Placing Muslim women at the heart of my own work was in a way a refusal of our invisibility.”
Go and read the excellent Rahat Kurd’s piece on the power of Egyptian feminists and their roles in the recent uprising and revolution, as well as their roles within Islam.
A perplexing evening at City Hall. More surreal than any Buñuel film. The bovine standing on your foot who insists he’s a goat, then duckling, then merely a raisin. Then no infact he’s rain and this a drought if you hadn’t noticed. A drought in a rain forest.
Tee-shirts insisting on the saving of jobs not yet created, anticipatory job cuts because this government has such a reliable record on slashing employment and contracting out to American multinationals clearly. One tee shirt wearer whom I talked to admitted he didn’t even work at the casino currently!
God this tiresome term job growth, “we need employment” tooting. It’s as informative as letting us know there is a day of the week called Sunday. We needs jobs as a response to legitimizing whatever kind of enterprise well it’s like suggesting we need blood and so must go out and bash up the neighbour to obtain it.
Words overheard from a casino exec/ BC gaming dudes (who are easily distinguished by their bad suits, no aesthetic even with cash) being interviewed way, way, way down the end of a corridor where no one stood…. “due diligence, good for the city, we can show, the reaction is not unexpected…”
enchanter encounter
P12 The Arcades Project, quelle surprise, I’ve already read you. Walter, we met before, nach bhfuil?