0923

September 23, 2022

 In bed at 9, awake at 2:30, and out of bed at 2:55. 3 pss, no vino.   Left hip 'gave out' on me once during the day, again tonight.  Sharp pain, then 'giving out', then went away.  Lilly sleeping on the TV room floor at 3, moved to the living room when I came in.  41 degrees outside.  Could almost put a log on in the fireplace, but the cool temp won't last long enough to ensure a good draft. A high of 64 is expected.

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Started watching another Godard film last night - Vivre sa vie - 1962, starring his then muse, future wife, and heartbreaker Anna Karina.  The story and film are reminiscent of Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box, with Brooks' bobbed haircut, life as a prostitute, and violent death.  At 4 this morning, tuned back into Vivre, though tempted to kiss it off, wondering if I had seen it years ago but in any event finding Godard's unrelenting attention on nasty (wrong word, sordid?) characters depressing.  Maybe that was his point.  The film has Godard's trademark philosophical discussion between the heroine/protagonist and a real philosopher, just encountered in a cafe: Nana: Why must one always talk? I think one should often just keep quiet, and live in silence. The more one talks, the less the words mean.  Philosophe: It's always struck me, the fact we can't live without speaking.  Nana: Words should express just what one wants to say.  Do they betray us?  Philosophe: Yes, but we betray them too. . . . I believe, one learns to speak well only when one has renounced life for a while. . . there's a kind of ascetic rule that stops one from speaking well until one sees life with detachment  And so on, very philosophical, very French, very focused on language and meaning and communication between humans, hints of deconstructionism and Jacques Derrida.  Direct references to Kant, Hegel, and Leibnitz.  Just what we would expect from a streetwalking prostitute schmoozing with a stranger in a coffee shop.😎  The story has a grisly ending for Nana, just as for Lulu in Pandora's Box.  Godard's naming of the protagonist "Nana"seems a pretty clear reference to Emile Zola's novel Nana, in which the protagonist, also a prostitute, also dies a grisly death.

    How much Godard can I take?  Why am I so repulsed by his films, at least the ones I have seen?  His view of human nature is bleak, for sure, but so are those of Thomas Hobbes, H. L. Mencken, Reinhold Niebuhr, and so many, many others.  Is my view all that different?  Is it 'just' that he seems to offer no 'redeeming social/human value's our lives, to our species, no goodness, no love, no altruism, no heroes and no saints?  As I watch these films I keep in mind that he had lived and grown up in Europe through World War II and its grim aftermath.  He was born in non-combatant Switzerland in 1930 and lived there throughout the war but considered himself 'Franco-Swiss', with a foot in each country.  Neither the French government at Vichy nor les francais covered themselves with a lot of honor during the war, witness Ophuls' "The Sorrow and the Pity." Plus, it wasn't only the Axis powers who behaved with abundant cruelty during the war, but also the Allies, witness the terror bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, and other cities.  And of course the Grand Finale: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  How could one have a benign opinion of the human race in the face of such evidence of profound cruelty, stupidity, etc.   How can it be any different now?  But who wants to be fed a steady diet of this and think of it as what - entertainment?  

    All these films call to mind the question of what the function of art is, first in terms of the artist, secondly, in terms of the - what is the right word?- consumer, enjoyer, viewer, reader, listener?  I think of 'artists' simply as people who make something that requires thinking and some kind of design choice, a 5 year old building a sand castle is an artist, as is an 80-year-old amateur painter crudely painting knockoffs of favorite paintings done by more gifted artists, or a meal preparer designing a salad with many ingredients.  The artist's purpose in doing her art may be necessity, or pecuniary, or pleasure, or some need for self-expression, or, perhaps, propaganda to control or manipulate the thoughts of others, or whatever.  It seems more complicated to consider the purpose of art in terms of the consumer.  To learn, to be entertained, to be soothed, to be excited, even to be told how to think about something, how to feel about something as with religious art and some social art - Nazi and Soviet art for example.  So what doeone  expect to get from watching Godard's 1960s New Wave films?  I don't know.  What was he 'getting off his chest' in making them?  What are we 'getting on our chest' by watching them?

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    Early morning TV features dramatic scenes out of Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow) of men being drafted and loaded onto buses, and men fleeing to avoid service.  What if they gave a war and nobody came?  What if we had all fled to Canada during the Vietnam catastrophe?  The Good Old Days: campus demonstrations, Pentagon and Dow Chemical, Monsanto protests over napalm & Agent Orange, SDS and The Weathermen, America Love It or Leave It, . . . So it went with me as a perplexed, confused, embarrassed, conflicted, ashamed, and guilty observer.  Not that I was 'best' at anything, but inevitably mindful of Yeats' The Second Coming: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold . . .The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

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    Did some work on Woman at the Balustrade.  Pretty iffy.

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    Drove Peter to football practice at 3 this afternoon.  It's only a 10-minute drive from his home to Nicolet but I enjoy the opportunity to spend time and chat with him.