MELISSALAND

French filmmaker Cyprian Gaillard collaborated with composer and former opera singer Koudlam to make Desniansky Raion (currently showing at the New Museum in their exhibit, Younger than Jesus)

The video above shows one of three parts of the film:

“The first section of the video shows a pitched battle between two hooligan gangs on the parking lot of a housing project in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg, filmed from a neighbouring building. Blues against reds, some wearing white gloves, the two compact groups move forward in an organized manner, then dismantle under shock before regrouping for a new assault. Calling to mind a battle scene in a medieval fresco or a classical painting, the outburst of violence, both savage and codified, is as repulsive as fascinating” (source)

I’ve never been in the middle of any sort of battle or fight but I can imagine, in some way, a sort of strange intoxication surrounding the scene - the rushing of bodies, of blood, thoughts…..

It reminds me of a quote by Elias Cannetti from the book Crowds and Power:

“There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown…It is only in a crowd that man can become free of this fear of being touched. That is the only situation in which the fear changes into its opposite….Suddenly it is as though everything were happening in one and the same body…..the feeling of relief is most striking where the density of the crowd is greatest.”

Right now I want to walk through a crowded New York City street. Stand one in fifty aboard some packed subway car, catch a strangers eye. Brush up against others. Be pushed gently.

We all want to feel alive.

“See You All” by Koudlam (right click -> ’save as’ to download)

The photographs above are by Sergey Larenkov. He’s reshot WW2-era photos (these are from the siege at Leningrad) from their original perspectives, and then faded the original image back in. A haunting and arresting mashup of images. Just trying to even imagine what life would have been like in Leningrad back then is difficult. According to Wikipedia, the blockade was ‘one of the longest and most destructive sieges of major cities in modern history’. Terrifying.

The siege at Leningrad is not included in the book I am currently reading, The Dark Valley - A Panorama of the 1930’s, but the author, Piers Brendon, does a great job covering the period leading up to the Second World War. Although it is massive, (just shy of 900 pages) it is very accessible and completely engrossing.

Tonight I plan on a few good cups of tea and digging into the next chapter, maybe some quiet music in the background - like this song, which was recorded by The Ink Spots in 1941, the year the siege at Leningrad first began……

Listen to The Ink Spots - I don’t want to set the world on fire mp3

(off the Fallout 3 soundtrack - thanks Jason)

I am not interested in writing that isn’t obsessive. Who is? We’re all drama queens in the end. We all come to stories with two basic questions: Who do I care about? And What do they care about? As long as our hero, or heroine, cares deeply about something (i.e. is obsessed), and as long as they’re willing to tell us their own twisted version of the truth, we’ll come along for the ride.

But look: our best art implicates us. It induces us to experience the intensity of feeling that is absent from the rest of our lives. It unleashes the closet obsessive in all of us.

I used to spend hours trying to explain this to my students at Boston College, who were forever confusing emotional evasion with literary restraint. To the stubborn ones, I often issued an order that I received years ago, from an elderly writer who had suffered my own wretched early burps of prose. The only thing that matters is the thing you can’t stop thinking about, he told me: Dress it up how ever you like, son, but tell me the goddamn truth.

- Steve Almond (via: Jonathan Carroll’s blog)

“While dressing and preparing to go out, she thought of Ben’s story about the time he ate the best cassoulet on earth in a small village in southern France. The name of the town was Castelnaudary. He pronounced the name so beautifully when telling the story that German made him repeat it twice just so she could hear the catch and roll of the word in his voice. She didn’t want to think about him now but that was almost impossible. Joy, real joy, comes so rarely in life that we mourn the death of it a long time. In the beginning of their relationship she had said to him, ‘Where have you been? It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for years, but now I can finally let it out.’

“They were lying naked on the couch when she said this. To her great surprise and consternation, Ben got right up, walked into the kitchen, and started making her cassoulet for the first time. When she entered the room a few minutes later, bewildered by his having disappeared from her arms just like that, he started describing Castelnaudary and the time he had eaten this dish there. His back was to her while he spoke. When he turned, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears but he was smiling. “This is the greatest meal in the world, German. I have to make it for you right now. It’s the best way I know how to show how I feel about you.”

from THE GHOST IN LOVE by Jonathan Carroll