Evanston: flaming
Evanston: flaming
If you go the other way and subtract the number of years I have lived from the year I was born, you get a startling 1875. The American West was still being settled. The Battle of the Little Big Horn was a year in the future. Certainly when I was young I was influenced by the legends and myths of the opening of the west.
I haven’t memorized much poetry, but I still recall from a book by Irving Stone,
Bring me men to match my mountains
Bring me men to match my plains.
Men with empires in their purpose
And new eras in their brains.
Ultimately I’m sure those words played their part in my matching myself not against mountains and plains but the ocean.
As those of you who have ever visited the poetry page of the main site will know, before I sailed from San Diego in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE, I wrote:
judge a man, then, by that
against which he must strive
against what
if not this soft night
and the wind and sea
against the myth
he must become
and his own will
the ocean waits
to measure or to slay me
the ocean waits
and I will sail
(Publishers changed three of the titles of my books, not always to my liking. But I’m pleased that W.W. Norton decided on THE OCEAN WAITS.)
Watching the recent remake of 3:10 TO YUMA caused me to consider the influence of the American West.
The classic western movie is a morality play, good versus evil, as for that matter are the Star War movies and all those about super heros from Superman on.
I don’t know that the Greek tragedies or Homer’s epics were so simple. They were more about tragic flaws and man’s helplessness against his fate.
3:10 TO YUMA is certainly good versus evil, and is interesting because the bad guy, Russell Crowe in the remake and Glenn Ford in the original, is not all bad.
I watched the 1957 original earlier this year on the boat. I enjoyed the remake, which remains true to the essence of the story, but seems to have changed several details. I’ll have to check when I return to THE HAWKE OF TUONELA
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Friends and fellow sailors from Rio de Janeiro sent us a DVD, brasileirinho, a documentary about the revival of choro music in that city. As I have learned, the word “choro” means “to cry” in Portuguese, which seems odd when the music is so joyful until you learn that the ‘crying’ refers not to human tears, but wailing--in jazz terms--on a solo instrument.
While watching BRASILEIRINHO I thought of THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB. One of the charms of both is the evident happiness of the musicians in making their music.
The movie focuses on the musicians and the music, but much of it was filmed in and around their homes, and the city is there in the background. Trolleys we rode, hills we climbed, views we saw. Rio de Janeiro is incomparable. It doesn’t even look as though it belongs on this planet. If you have a list of places to see before you die, put Rio on it.
Thank you, Eileen an Roberto.
(I just checked, in the U.S. BRASILEIRINHO is available from Netlix and Amazon.)
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Fall colors here are generally not as vivid as in New England. This tree in a small park a half block away is an exception.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008