The Once and Future Past
Down in caves another time, down a musée-like cavern
walls of blank rock behind panes of glass
this is supposed to be the tour of our loss
but we've forgotten, now, what animals looked like
can't see our loss. -- Alice Notley
Around the holidays and the New Year, the already constant human temptation to reflect on life and manufacture patterns and meanings tends to kick into high gear. This past weekend, I watched what seemed to me a cinematic meditation on the human attachment to the cyclical, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, the 2003 film by Korean director Kim Ki Duk. With few words but a large, lush visual vocabulary, Spring, Summer seems to invite the detached meditation that its main character, a monk whose life we see in four stages (or seasons), strives to attain. For this alone it's worth viewing, particularly at this time of year -- the winter scenes are both the most stark and the most serene, and the monk's transformation in this 'chapter' is far more subtle. In taking the (very) long view towards self-improvement, it might also provide a welcome respite to those with a certain exasperation for New Year's resolutions. There is a temptation for my inner critic to focus on the film's narrative weaknesses (particularly the overblown, almost cartoonish aggression that frames the 'Fall sequence'), but instead I think I should treat Spring, Summer like a painting, a work of art that poses a question: How do we manufacture our own loss? And how do we address it?
I also made my second trip to the PMA since returning to Philadelphia this weekend. Making my way through the Asian art galleries, I found myself drawn to two stone panels that once decorated a tomb from about 200 AD. The carvings on these panels were simple, a few white lines on gray background -- horses chasing the wind, dragons chasing horses. As I stepped carefully on the stone paths of the Sunkaraku Tea House, I remembered many Sunday afternoons as a child when the modest architecture of the house appealed to me more than the intricate brushstrokes of the Impressionist art downstairs. How many people had visited this teahouse, how many moments had faded into the cedar, pine, and bamboo? I still experience this reverence when I come upon the unexpected sanctuary of a teahouse in a busy museum, but it's bittersweet. Perhaps, in such a place, we occasionally experience the fullness of time, how its cycles are not in fact human cycles, how places and objects endure outside of us. And if we share that experience with someone we love, it may be the most eloquent way to express our own desires for longevity, for that elusive lasting moment that doesn't fade.
walls of blank rock behind panes of glass
this is supposed to be the tour of our loss
but we've forgotten, now, what animals looked like
can't see our loss. -- Alice Notley
Around the holidays and the New Year, the already constant human temptation to reflect on life and manufacture patterns and meanings tends to kick into high gear. This past weekend, I watched what seemed to me a cinematic meditation on the human attachment to the cyclical, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, the 2003 film by Korean director Kim Ki Duk. With few words but a large, lush visual vocabulary, Spring, Summer seems to invite the detached meditation that its main character, a monk whose life we see in four stages (or seasons), strives to attain. For this alone it's worth viewing, particularly at this time of year -- the winter scenes are both the most stark and the most serene, and the monk's transformation in this 'chapter' is far more subtle. In taking the (very) long view towards self-improvement, it might also provide a welcome respite to those with a certain exasperation for New Year's resolutions. There is a temptation for my inner critic to focus on the film's narrative weaknesses (particularly the overblown, almost cartoonish aggression that frames the 'Fall sequence'), but instead I think I should treat Spring, Summer like a painting, a work of art that poses a question: How do we manufacture our own loss? And how do we address it?
I also made my second trip to the PMA since returning to Philadelphia this weekend. Making my way through the Asian art galleries, I found myself drawn to two stone panels that once decorated a tomb from about 200 AD. The carvings on these panels were simple, a few white lines on gray background -- horses chasing the wind, dragons chasing horses. As I stepped carefully on the stone paths of the Sunkaraku Tea House, I remembered many Sunday afternoons as a child when the modest architecture of the house appealed to me more than the intricate brushstrokes of the Impressionist art downstairs. How many people had visited this teahouse, how many moments had faded into the cedar, pine, and bamboo? I still experience this reverence when I come upon the unexpected sanctuary of a teahouse in a busy museum, but it's bittersweet. Perhaps, in such a place, we occasionally experience the fullness of time, how its cycles are not in fact human cycles, how places and objects endure outside of us. And if we share that experience with someone we love, it may be the most eloquent way to express our own desires for longevity, for that elusive lasting moment that doesn't fade.
posted by HB at 2:20 PM
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