My Birthday at the Tower of Song! (Leonard Cohen live @ TerraVibe 30/7/2008)

Now, I heard, there was a secret chord

that David played and it pleased the Lord
But... you don't really care for music, do ya?

I cannot seem to remember ever having done something special on my birthday. In the heart of summer, my friends and I have always been scattered to the four corners of Greece (and now that wanderlust is upon us, the four corners of the world - getting birthday wish phonecalls from New York, Limassol, Melbourne, Vienna, London - and this year - Varna, well... it is undeniably funny but gets really annoying when almost nobody's around for the fun of it).









As always, this year I had nothing to look forward to and was particularly miffed (I like this word, I will be using it more often!) that I would in all probability miss the Leonard Cohen show since I heard of it too late... BUT ! the Lycabettus theater was closed because of security concerns and the concert was moved to the huge TerraVibe venue. Although such an expanse would not be suited to Leonard Cohen's music style, it would ensure ticket availability!

Why do I love Leonard Cohen so much when I do not even listen to similar style music?

The great Leonard Cohen


It goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift
The baffled King composing
Hallelujah

It must be the effortless way he tackles the pitfalls of strong emotion, the way that irony finds its way into the lyrics, the way that drama of mythical proportions is reduced to the level of our fundamental weaknesses.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
and from your lips she drew the
Hallelujah

To be able to say "I've gotten over you", "We'll never see each other" or to say "I've found God" is one thing. Through his lyrics, Cohen is able to not only say all this, but shrug it off and walk away alone into the sunset with a deadly parthian shot...

Well, really, what's it to ya?

The Webb sisters, Charlie and Hattie, bowing

So,on that Wednesday, on my birthday, I stood before the Tower of Song, to listen about the conquest of Manhattan and a little viennese waltz on closing time...

There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
the Holy or the broken
Hallelujah

Dino Soldo (winds) and Javier Mas (mandolin, uti, lute)

I found not only this but so much more: the nobility of a truly great artist shown in the courtesy with which he treated his supporting musicians (all of them significant artists in their own right) and the respect and humility he showed towards his audience, beginning with an impressive address in greek at the beginning of the show, a reminder of the time he spent in the island of Ydra.


For more than three hours, with about all requests fulfilled, the great Leonard Cohen delivered a mighty lesson of emotion and dignity, with lyrics and attitude laced with the acidity of experience, pain and the firmness of a man who knows what he wants, it's just that... he has always found the others lacking in the qualities that one would need to rise to the occasions.

I do not know if at the time I could survey the events of my life from such a point of view, but... when one is true to his emotions, well that is all one needs, no matter how the others respond to them.


And then the answer became quite clear: We found it with you, Leonard. We whispered it at first, murmured it as it went on and then we sang along: dee dum dum dum, da dee dum dum...

That simple.

Duet with Hattie Webb

I did my best but it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth...
I didn't come to fool ya

Your songs stand up for us even in our defeat. You stood up for me even on my defeat. And it was on my birthday.
Unforgettable.


Thank you Leonard.

"Thank you friends"

And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but
Hallelujah

PS: Ah, remember me, I used to live for music (baby)
Remember me, I brought your groceries in (ooh, baby yeah...)







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Μάθετε μπαλίτσα! Ποιό "Κρασάκι του Τσου" ;

Πολύς λόγος γενικώς γινόταν για το "κρασάκι του Τσου", ενα βίντεο της κακιάς ώρας που δημιουργήθηκε στα πλαίσια διαγωνισμού για πρωτότυπα διαφημιστικά videos για ιδιωτική τράπεζα και που τελικά διαδόθηκε σχεδόν σε κάθε mail inbox και σε κάθε FunWall του facebook.

Τώρα που έχει περάσει το πρώτο κύμα της πανδημίας του viral, η φυσική επιλογή έκανε τη δουλειά της και οι ευπαθέστερες ομάδες του πληθυσμού βρίσκονται πλέον σε ομαδικούς τάφους ήρθε η ώρα να μάθετε λίγη μπαλίτσα, όπως έλεγε και ο μέγας Αλέφαντος, γιατί ξεφύτρωσαν και μανιτάρια που το υπερασπίστηκαν ως cult και ως εμπνευσμένη παρωδία.

Μάθετε λοιπόν, ότι cult δεν είναι οποιοδήποτε ερασιτεχνικό βίντεο μηδενικού budget, ανύπαρκτης αισθητικής και ασθματικής (πιθανώς και κλεμμένης) έμπνευσης με afro-ninja Ναΐτες. Αυτά μπορεί να τα κάνει ο οποιοσδήποτε.

Πίσω απο το πραγματικό cult βρίσκεται μια ιδαίτερα στρεβλή αισθητική που ακυρώνει τις ορθόδοξες καλλιτεχνικές συμβάσεις όπως τις αντιλαμβανόμαστε (σκόπιμα - βλέπε διαφημίσεις 80s Ζουγανέλη-Μπουλά, Τζίμη Πανούση και "Ντίσκο Τσουτσούνι", ή μή - βλέπε δισκογραφία και φωτογραφήσεις Φιλιώς Πυργάκη). Αυτό όμως δεν σημαίνει οτι το cult παραβλέπει την τεχνική αρτιότητα της εκτέλεσης στο βαθμό που ο δημιουργός μπορεί να την επιτύχει.

Και όσο για το σκέτο χιούμορ (που μπορεί να το βαφτίζετε παρωδία ή σάτιρα), αν γελάσατε με το Safe Sex, ε ναι, το "κρασάκι του Τσου" είναι ό,τι πρέπει για σας. Καλά να πάθετε.

Και για να μάθετε μπαλίτσα (και να δείτε απo που κρατάει η σκούφια της "πρωτότυπης ιδέας των παιδιών" ) δείτε Bollywood με αγγλικούς υποτίτλους όπως τους κατέγραψε το αυτί και όχι η γνώση Hindustani του χρήστη buffalax (εξ'ού και τα σχετικά videos πλέον θεωρούνται buffalaxed)

My loony bun is fine Benny Lava!!





Girly man, man ,man....

2 videos, 12 εκατομύρια views μεταξύ τους. Αυτά...

Καλό είναι να ξεχωρίζουμε την σάτιρα (και να μην τη γράφουμε με ύψιλον επίσης...) και την παρωδία απο τον φτηνό χαβαλέ. Και να μην υποοτιμούμε έτσι απλά την αξία του kitsch και του cult.

"L.H.O.O.Q" του Marcel Duchamp
(L-H-O-O-Q: "Elle a chaud au cul", "Έχει καύλες")

Σβήστε το krasaki απο τα funwalls και σταματήστε να το διαδίδετε.
Μάθετε μπαλίτσα και...

Καλά κρασά!

ΥΓ: Πολλές ευχαριστίες στον κοσμοπολίτη Αντουάν με τις Ταμίλ διασυνδέσεις που μου είχε επισημάνει το Benny Lava ήδη απο τις 19/1/2008.

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Søren Kierkegaard

Today is the birthday of the great Danish philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard. (5 May 1813 - 11 November 1855).

Kierkegaard is one of my favourites as in his writings I see the foundation of the austere (some would call it bleak) "scandinavian" existentialism that I came to love and admire initially through Ingmar Bergman's films.

In the first place, however, I came to reflect upon Kierkegaard's writings not because of Bergman's existentialism but because of a comment by Umberto Eco, about the Vatican's excessive reaction against Roger Peyrefitte's ridiculous accusations. I had in mind at the time the Corsaren (corsair) affair as an exemplary handling of bad and injust critics by the writer. When I looked deeper into it, one of Kierkegaard's article responses, The Activity of a Traveling Esthetician and How He Still Happened to Pay for Dinner ( En omreisende Æsthetikers Virksomhed, og hvorledes han dog kom til at betale Gjæstebudet ), locked me irrevocably into the thinking process of an intelligent writer/critic.

Indeed, it is my firm belief that in Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco), Jacopo Belbo's views about intelligent reading and editing instead of attempting to write are deeply Kierkegaardian in nature. Besides that, there are other unveiled references to Kierkegaard in that book: Belbo, in an imaginary anachronism, suggests - as a potential editor to a young William Shakespeare - to move Hamlet's plot from Italy to Denmark, because of the spectre of kierkegaardian austerity that looms above that land.

Another matter that makes Kierkegaard unique in his point of view regarding the human nature is his love for Regine Olsen. The words he addressed to her (quoted from Wikipedia's selection from his Journals) are indicative:

"Thou sovereign of my heart treasured in the deepest fastness of my chest, in the fullness of my thought, there ... unknown divinity! Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here."

However, in self-destructive drama he broke their engagement and tried to alienate Regine because he believed that his calling and their relationship were incompatible things. He tried to appear cool and measured saying that he would marry: "in ten years, when I have begun to simmer down and I need a lusty young miss to rejuvenate me."

He never did.



The scribbling modern philosophy holds passion in contempt; and yet passion is the culmination of existence for an existing individual—and we are all of us existing individuals.

Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler
(Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments)

ΥΓ: Εαν δοθεί ξανά η ευκαιρία για μακρά συζήτηση, Τάσο, θα σου αναλύσω την κιρκεγκάρντια, κατά βάση, άποψη περί συγγραφής που έχω. Απλώς χθές διακόπηκε η συζήτηση λόγω χαρμόσυνων οικογενειακών νέων. Till next time.

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Il Gattopardo pt. III - The film

"One of the films I live by"

Martin Scorsese

I end the Leopard posts introductory trilogy with a few words about the 1963 incomparable cinema masterpiece "Il Gattopardo" by Luchino Visconti.





One must first note that it would be really difficult to find a director better suited to direct such a film. Luchino Visconti (b. 1906) was a descendant of the Visconti family of Milano, the family that alternately with the Sforzas ruled Milan as Dukes for much of its independent medieval and Rennaisance history. As a young man he saw the two wars rendering any notion of nobility obsolete, a fate that was sealed by the rise of the nouveau-riche bourgeoisie.

Indeed, he shot several other films dealing in a similar way with the same concept of the decadence of nobility: "The Damned" (La caduta degli Dei/Götterdämmerung - 1969 ), "Death in Venice" - 1971 and "Ludwig" - 1973.

The film itself is exemplary in every way.

The photography manages to capture the essence of burnt flint that seems to insinuate itself in every colour of the sunblasted sicilian landscape.

The music was written by no other than Nino Rota.

The casting was superbly fortunate. Burt Lancaster as the patriarch of the Corbera family is a convincingly true Leopard, suave, noble and imposing. Alain Delon cuts the correct bella figura that Tancredi was supposed to be, a man of the new order of things, adapted to the manners, morality and compromises of the new less-than-noble era of italian history.

And then... Claudia Cardinale. No words for that woman. Absolutely no words for the creature that could easily give the legendary beauties that have supposedly walked this earth a run for their money.


The point of this post of course is not to laud an acclaimed masterpiece but to draw attention to some details that give the film the depth that an adaptation of such a novel truly deserves and I will illustrate these points with stills captured from the remastered bfi DVD release.

I choose to begin with this wonderful shot of the sicilian countryside. The picture alone makes one’s thought hazy, like a summer midday of merciless sunlight in the mediterranean. I can almost smell the hay and the horses… like the lazing summers of my childhood at Crete:



The Corbera family arrive at Donnafugata, where they are - in the customary (and surrealistically silly) way - greeted by the village band playing “Noi siamo zingarelle” ( “We are gypsy girls” by Verdi’s La Traviatta). Rota has followed the cadence and rhythm of this piece throughout his career. Extra note: “VIVA GARIBALDO” (sic) in the background...:



Probably the best moment of the film’s cinematography: The Corbera family attending the Te Deum liturgy, as another custom of their visits to Donnafugata, before even going to their estate to freshen up, the dust from their long journey by carriage from Palermo still on their clothes and faces, making their pose truly statuesque. Superb :



A shot so fundamentally “Risorgimento” that it has become a staple of its imagery: The plebiscite in Donnafugata:



And now the most striking detail that has left me completely flabbergasted… Sicilian Garibaldini singing “La Bella Gigogin”. This in itself is noted in the book and nothing too original, since La Bella Gigogin (Beautiful Teresa, Gigogin being a piemontese diminutive of Teresa: Teresa -> Teresina -> Gigogin ) was a very popular allegorical garibaldine song. However the greatness of the film was that its lively rhythm was adapted to sound like a Sicilian serenata, slow and almost wailing…!!! I do not know who had the brilliant inspiration to do this but whether it was Rota or Visconti, he managed to set the tone – for those who know - for the whole affair in the sicilian politics. The SI on their hats means YES in the plebiscite for the unification of Sicily and the rest of Italy and the dissolution of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Splendid:

A quindici anni facevo all'amore / Daghel'avanti un passo, delizia del mio cuore
(At the age of fifteen I made love/ come forth a pace, delight of my heart)

The reception at Donnafugata: The wealthy but ill-educated and crude Don Calogero Sedàra, and his daughter Angelica:

Don Calogero's comical entrance and his ill-fated attempt to shake hands with the Prince.

Note the expressions: Tancredi (Alain Delon) in rapture and Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi) poisoned by envy and despair

Uncertain and nervous but still, the very image of loveliness

And the dance near the finale. I have absolutely no words. The old surrenders to the hands of the new, and a chapter of Italian history passes away in a swirl of grace, beauty and bravura. No words at all…



In the end:
"Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore continueremo a crederci il sale della terra."

(We were the Leopards, the Lions; those that will come in our place will be the petty jackals, the hyenas; and the whole lot, Leopards, jackals and sheep, will continue to believe that we are the salt of the earth - trnsl. by me).

The Leopard: Don Fabrizio Corbera, Principe di Salina, in his study, packed with telescopes and mathematical and astronomical papers...

PS: “But we shouldn’t waste sorrow over the aristocracy of misfortune” Count Hasimir Fenring, Dune by Frank Herbert

PS II: Click on images to enlarge...

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St. Patrick's Day!

Today is St. Patrick's Day!

O Paddy dear, an' did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is forbid by law to grow on Irish ground;
St. Patrick's Day no more we'll keep, his colour can't be seen,
For there's a cruel law agin the wearin' o' the Green.

Not a cruel law exactly, but Church authorities moved the day of the Feast of St. Patrick so that it would not coincide this year with a day of the Roman Catholic observance of the Holy Week. However, secular celebrations and parades will in most cases be held today, as normal!

I met wid Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor ould Ireland, and tell me how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever you have seen,
For they're hangin' men an' women here for the wearin' o' the Green.

I will not write about rebellion, sacrifice, famine and suffering, though the Sean-Bhean bhocht (meaning Poor old woman, pronounced shan van vocht, a personification of Ireland) has seen blood and suffering aplenty.

Then since the colour we must wear is England's cruel red,
Sure Ireland's sons shall ne'er forget the blood that they have shed,
You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,
It will take root and flourish there though underfoot it's trod.

Instead, I will write about music.

What is this thing in the Irish soul that draws forth such music? Sure enough, any southern Italian will move from operatic mourning to spirited tarantella and the Asturians and their gaitas make the Atlantic seem to come alive, but... I cannot put it in words, this way that reels and ballads and dirges blend in Irish music like mischievous leprechauns taunting sad banshees in a mad dance around Gaelic ruins in distant fields of brightest green...

It is not a Paddy Day reel. It is not even a traditional song. And it is not even written or sung by an Irishman! (Although it is based on an irish traditional tune) Which serves only to show how great an inspiration Ireland has become to folk music. (Well that, and maybe how great girls from Galway are... :-) ) Recently made popular by the film "P.S, I love you". Do not make faces. DO see the movie. It is not the average chick-flick. Hillary Swank is an absolute goddess (so hot I did not even recognise her at the beginning) and the story illustrates the truth that painful losses are not forgotten simply by the mercy of time and people around us saying "get over it" and "snap out of it" and "move on".

Anyway, "Galway Girl" by Steve Earle




Well, I took a stroll on the old long walk
Of a day -I-ay-I-ay
I met a little girl and we stopped to talk
Of a fine soft day -I-ay-I-ay
And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do
'Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue
And I knew right then I'd be takin' a whirl
'Round the Salthill Prom with a Galway girl

We were halfway there when the rain came down
Of a day -I-ay-I-ay
And she asked me up to her flat downtown
Of a fine soft day -I-ay-I-ay
And I ask you, friend, what's a fella to do
'Cause her hair was black and her eyes were blue
So I took her hand and I gave her a twirl
And I lost my heart to a Galway girl

When I woke up I was all alone
With a broken heart and a ticket home
And I ask you now, tell me what would you do
If her hair was black and her eyes were blue
I've traveled around I've been all over this world
Boys I ain't never seen nothin' like a Galway girl

So put on something green... and HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!



(And who knows, maybe one day we will be able to catch the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow and get his cauldron of gold...)

Now the Scotsman can boast of the Thistle
And the English may boast of the Rose
But Paddy alone can claim the Emerald Isle
Where the green three-leaved Shamrock grows

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The Nightmare before Christmas: An observation and a dedication

Recurrent themes are the staple of poetics. They are usually motifs that we have come to recognise as universal truths or the natural outcome of things. Loved ones separated by the magic of villains, evil people having their vices turned against them and so on.

As it is, one of the most ironic things is to see otherwise powerful and clever people fall into such traps because arrogance or dire need or passion or a combination of all of these elements made them behave like cartoon villains.

I am saying all these things because several days ago I watched the digital 3D remaster of Tim Burton's "The Nightmare before Christmas". Among other poetic leitmotifs, it shows the time-honoured universal truth that a free-spirited woman cannot be trapped in a tower as a piece of property, like Rapunzel (as Dr. Finklestein, in the movie, tries to keep Sally the Rag Doll locked in his tower).

Indeed this notion appears in poetic creation about as frequently as the belief that no real gain can come from bartering with evil spirits.

This prompted me to write about Hedy Lamarr and how that idiot austrofascist husband of hers tried to keep her trapped in a meaningless existence as a simple showpiece. It is in times like these that one realises how blind to some simple facts people can be.

How can a wild spirit be trapped? How can lock and bars and pig-headed obstinacy match the wiles of a determined mind?

For some people, freedom is simply non negotiable.
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My dearest friend if you don't mind

I'd like to join you by your side

where we can gaze into the stars

and sit together, now and forever

for it is plain as anyone can see

we're simply meant to be...

(Finale (reprise) by Danny Elfman, The Nightmare before Christmas, 1993, Touchstone Pictures)