I have never seen a film that captures dramatic tragedy better than Chan-wook Park’s Boksuneun naui geot or, to us non-Hangul speakers, Sympathy for Mr. Vengance. This film has all the epic tragedy of something by Sophocles or Shakespeare; and it has all the concomitant blood and tears. I grit my teeth throughout, except for the moments where I was taking sharp in-breaths in the “a-ha” moments as threads collapsed together in a symphonic story-path.
Simply put, a poor factory worker arranges to sell a kidney and give 5million won to shady organ harvesters so as to acquire a kidney suitable for his ailing sister. The harvesters double-cross him, a miracle organ arrives for his sister and he is now short a kidney and broke. This leads him to kidnapping and from there it goes horribly wrong. The father seeks his vengeance, the “hero” seeks vengeance against the harvesters who instigated the long causal chain that lead to greater tragedy than could be limned in a short review.
In a fascinating direction, the one who loses truly has to take on the life of his transgressor. In so doing he resolves the mystery, grows to understand he who did him wrong, grows to understand himself, but despite this he cannot forgive the transgression and its resultant loss. The plot threads are rich and every character, no matter how small or non-relevant plays a part in facilitating a horrific and tragic resolution.
The screenwriting is painfully tight. Everything works with everything else so flawlessly you’d think it was surgically broken down from something that would have been organically grown.
Park explores the familial blood obligation in a way that is unrelenting and probing with a relentlessness that I’ve not felt since I read Antigone. Everywhere there is desperation, everywhere there is loss, everywhere there is remorse, and everywhere is the thrumming blood-law whose thirst is never satiated. It is a very, very hard movie to watch but very rewarding for people who love the craft of film.
On top of it all the acting is top-notch all the way through. While the story setup might be a bit far-fetched, seeming contrived and designed to falsely ratchet-up the intensity, the movie delivers the experience of tragedy, really Greco-Roman tragedy in a way I’ve never seen before.
I am stunned.
“If you want to live, just leave”
Yes, but what if you’ve been so wronged, you don’t?
At work we’re using a wiki engine whose power user syntax has been disabled. While it’s been disabled for good reasons, it still bothers me much.
What one is left with is the rich text box which works great for dumping in cut-from-Word documents or which people who don’t want to type quickly and don’t mind mousing to turn on bold etc. As a person who wants to type fast and format as he thinks it, not being able to write markup as I write in wiki data is sad, sad sad.
A guru on the topic suggested that I take some sort of editor, generate the HTML, and then paste that into the rich box because modern OS’s carry HTML formatting data into pastes.
Ugh.
But it’s better than the alternative. Ergo, I downloaded the Markdown extension for VIM. This was a step forward because it provided me the syntax highlighting that makes the process a bit faster. What I really needed was a way to generate the HTML and put it in a browser for ease of cut-and-pasting.
This forced me to dive into the world of vim scripting. Agg. I give it to Emacs every time on this, Vim’s scripting language sucks. I avoid it at all costs, when I can. Tonight I couldn’t. I wrote this pair of functions such that you:
Write markdown in Vim (yay)
See the syntax highlighting thanks to the plugin (yay)
open() on MacOS is called to process that HTML artifact so that it launches your browser, in my case, Chrome
To make the :mm work you need this snippet of code added to your .vimrc.
" Written by steven for quick loadup of Markdown text into HTML
function Mkdp()
write
let file = expand("%")
let mkd_file = file . ".html"
let result = system("markdown " . file . " > " . mkd_file)
let result = system("open " . mkd_file)
endfunction
:map :mm :call Mkdp()<CR>
A few caveats.
I think I must be doing it wrong, I suspect putting this code in the .vimrc is not the “blessed” way to do it.
I use the vim system() call which is complete butchery in most programming languages. I’m pretty sure there’s a more blessed way to make requests to the OS, if anyone knows it, please leave a comment.
As someone who recently liquidated about 9 boxes of books, the majority of which I read only once but lugged around for 10 years, let me recommend that you RENT your books through a service that’s kinda like Netflix, but for books: the public library!
Since I moved, every time I have the urge to buy a book (physical or Kindle) that I think I will read only once, I instead go to sfpl.org and see if the book can be rented.
It’s a great way to be slightly more careful with your money and conserve living space.
Granted, there are times you want to have an artifact. For this I’m trying to use the Kindle, because I don’t want to move boxes of books again if I can help it.
The only down side with the sfpl.org site was that it didn’t preserve my login data. Regrettably, the site login ID is an un-memorable string of digits and my strong password is equally impossible to remember. You can access your account directly by making a bookmark with the following format.
When I was a young fellow living in The Castilian dorm in the late 90’s, I would occasionally visit the TV lounge on my floor early in the morning and study there. Being a bit of an odd bird in that I would rather “sleep less and get up early” versus “stay up late” this would mean that the lounge was empty ( save the odd beer can and cheetos wrapper before the morning cleaning staff came through ).
The cable provider in Austin at that time carried Classic Arts Showcase which follows a roughly MTV-like format where a clip is introduced by a title-card in the lower left describing the music and the visual, and then the art plays.
It’s a very enjoyable program and far more educational than the sea of infomercials playing in the same time slots. I saw 2 things on Classic Arts showcase in those wee hours that have stuck with me all these years that I wish to possess:
“O Fortūna” from Orff’s Carmina Burana with this amazing Tarot-esque stage setup with plague carts and overdone European motley references
A video of bowler-clad, Edwardian English society types each walking up to a keyboard to play the progressive downbeat note to something of Chopin’s that I surely saw on “Looney Tunes”. I think it must have been a Hungarian Raphsody, but I failed to make a note of the name…
{I didn’t see this at that time, but in a similar vein…} Anna Netrebko singing the same famous opera song ( I think I translated it as “Oh what am I pretty!”, something along the lines of “Wat bin ich schön”) in a variety of settings, but with the video stitched together
Well thanks to the video revolution of the internet, I’ve found the first of these lost treasures.
It’s Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s réalisation of “O, Fortūna” that so struck me lo those years ago.
While the film quality shows its age ( 30+ years ), the scope and subtext of a devil and an angel turning the rotam fortuna as begging kings, dwarves, whores, and clergy beg for the coins of its favors was something that would really sear your gray matter at 3 in the morning as you worked memorizing logic formulae for your test later that morning. It features a certain sensibility in European theatre of the time that recalls the work of Werner Hertzog, the Italian Sci-Fi epics ( “Dune” / “Flash Gordon”), and Carnivale.
Death reigns resplendent as the tool of of the blind, turning, dog-faced bitch, Fortune in the misty vale on the other side of the wheel-structure as the archetypes dance ( Major Arcana, no? ).
This is a video that hits the collective unconscious tuning fork deep inside my skull with a chi-punch.
Often attributed to Kepler is a statement of the nature of the following. I don’t seem to have a copy of the Mysterium Cosmographicum handy, so I’ll parrot what I found at goldennumber.net:
“Geometry has two great treasures: one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel.”
—Johannes Kepler
I’ve always been a fan of Kepler since I was in Holland and studied 16th century science. As Sagan said, he was the last of the mathematical astrologer or the first astronomer. Either way, Kepler and his odd sense of mysticism or keen sense of science managed to produce some stunning insights about the way our cosmos works, about planetary motion, and about geometry. In the quote above he refers to the “Golden Number” or the “Golden Ratio”: phi. Kepler, and his work, for me have always been one of those historical oddities of that era where Western science looked to shake off the shackles of church dogma and mysticism and become, properly, science. More odd trivia for me to know. Until…
After having finished Trig I thought that I would like to take a look at some of the finer points of subtending space by line, so I purchased this very nice “Mathematical Toolkit” for drawing lines, arcs, etc. at the local Office Depot the other night.
I haven’t really touched tools like these since early high school when I took Geometry, so it was a bit strange to reacquaint myself with their use. Figuring out how to create phi ratios, one of Kepler’s “treasures”, seemed like an obvious enough learning task. So I did. I shot pictures of the process and now share that process with you, Internet.
I pulled out some graph paper and made a square…
And made a golden rectangle from it…
And many more from that one…
Maybe try to draw something in the space?
It’s really a pity that our math classes and our science classes don’t always align. It’s very good to have practical hands on experience of that which you seek to model mathematically.
I still receive email updates for Bay Area acts. It helps me find out if said acts might be heading to Austin soon. There was this winner in the latest update.
On March 13th my world became a little bit weirder and a little bit richer as I watched Scott Walker: 30 Century Man. It tells the story of an American boy named Noel BrelEngel, who heads to Los Angeles and joins a trio called The Walker Brothers. The Walkers have minor success in the early Sunset strip scene, but then head to Jolly Old England where their success is of a much larger and much more lucrative variety.
There they seem to tap into a post-war ennui psychology that ties the bourgeois-making-tea-staring-
out-the-tenement-development that defined Britain. Listening to the music you hear the heavy reverb, the Phil Spector influence overwhelming the headphones. Unmissable is the driving bassline and Scott’s present, urging baritone.
Now, to this point in the film, I was intrigued that I had never heard of this band.
The Break Up
Eventually the Walker Brothers ( neither Walker, nor brothers, discuss ) break up and Scott starts releasing edgy matrial. English translations of the chansons of Jacques Brel about the seedy side ( a decade ahead of Lou Reed ) of life and, somehow, his core audience sticks with him.
Yet it was clear that is not thinking of this being the limit, Wikipedia notes Walker studying Gregorian chant, dissonances, and other elements that made his work completely indescribable.
Scott proceeds to do a “Doors on Ed Sullivan” and continues to be booked as a pop singer, but performs his exploratory and, occasionally shocking material. His emotional state and distaste for fame push him into being a near recluse, separating his albums by intervals of whole decades.
The film chronicles Scott’s unworldly use of vibrato and analyzes his harmony content as being a counterpoint between dissonance and implied resolution. It’s eerie, it’s creepy, it’s disconcerting and the lyrical content, swimming in vibrato hints of tortured nightmares of a hellish landscape.
In short, music to play Silent Hill to.
Lyrics like:
And I used to be a citizen
I never felt the pressure
I knew nothing of the horses
nothing of the thresher.
Or
Do you swear that the breastbone was bare?
I saw it, and made my escape.
Do you remember what happened to most of the children?
You were in charge of the rolling stock.
Or
“I’m the only one left alive…aaahhh….live. I’m the only one left alive.”
Make you know that this person is doing something dramatically different to the thing that you call “song”. He’s somewhere beyond “song”.
The film footage shows vivid scenes of a percussionist beating pork loin in a syncopated beat with his bear hands. This providing core background to Scott’s vocals.
The impressionistic feel of horror and modernity and convenience and horror really work together in the track “30 Century Man”.
See the dwarves and see the giants
Which one would you choose to be?
And if you can’t get that together
Here’s the answer, here’s the key
You can freeze like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man
I’ll save my bread and take it with me
‘Til a hundred years or so
Shame you won’t be there to see me
Shakin’ hands with Charles De Gaulle
Play it cool and Saranwrap all you can
Be a 30 Century Man
You can freeze like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man
Like a 30 Century Man
Through all of this Lauren and I have started to laugh a bit about the Walker dramatics. It’s a good laugh to drum arhythmically and recite the grocery list with Walkerian vibrato:
Tiiiiilllll a slap moooook
slap Cereal Cerealcereallllll
Salad Dressing!
But as I think about the miages and scapes I know that this man is doing Art and it disturbs and jars me, and that is rather rare.
Scott and Popular Music
I think under Walker’s presence I can understand the baritone over-vibrato’d stylings of Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy or Ian Curtis of Joy Division. Their idol was this man, this man out of phase with the pop music which bore him into a fame he didn’t really seem to care for.
Video Game
I definitely hear Walker’s influence in Japanese video games of the late 90’s and even today. Silent Hill has got to be the most Walkerian soundtrack ever. Walker used rusty wheels as an instrument, their metal grinding metal. I hear it in the palette of Silent Hill. I hear it in the ambient mood shifts as the Silent Hill characters emerge from the other world, where neutral, but not hospitable], long tones re-calibrate but do not release.
It was an accident that we walked into that movie, it happened to be on when we left SXSWi, but I believe that Lauren and I both feel that our sonic palette is now ever so much more wide.
