"not as inevitable as we think it is"

"This is Minimalism's most powerful and frightening insight. It has nothing to do with the aesthetic cues associated with lowercase-m minimalism, the consumer products, interior decoration, the curated items of clothing. Minimalism doesn't need to look good. It tries to make us understand that the sense of artistic beauty humanity has built up over millennia -- the varieties of colors, stories recounted, and bodies represented -- is also an artificial creation, not as inevitable as we think it is.

Minimalism requires a new definition of beauty, one that centers on the fundamental miracle of our moment-to-moment encounter with reality, our sense of being itself. Any attempt at elegance is extraneous. [Donald] Judd left another note in his diary that winter: 'A definition of art finally occurred to me. Art is everything at once.'"

-- Kyle Chayka, The Longing for Less -- Living with Minimalism

Play 'The Candy Colored Clown!'

David Lynch has died, and the world is less strange and colorful now.

Blue Velvet is a stone cold classic.  Inland Empire may be my favorite film of his, but I can't watch it again because it left me shaken and spooked for about a week after I saw it.  And his Dune is certainly better than how it was critically reviewed on release.

Not a shabby musician either.

The Scream (Cat Version)

Frederick, Maryland

"that's kind of my people"

Jenkem interviews Werner Herzog.  It ain't bad, but certainly not his best interview.

Oh hey just a reminder I spent the first part of coronavirus lockdown watching and reviewing every film by Mr. Herzog here.

A Review of The Beats: A Graphic History

Over the past few years I've tried to open myself up to more graphic novels.  Last year I really enjoyed Ed Piskor's X-Men Grand Design series, but it's definitely for the initiated.  The art is fantastic though, and the writing is solid -- ret-conning the sprawl that is the X-Men franchise into something approaching a cohesive narrative was no small feat.

Unfortunately, The Beats: A Graphic History didn't do it for me.  It really should be called "Kerouac, Ginsburg, Burroughs, and The Less Important Ones."  In less than 200 hundred pages it simply tries to do to much, and it's obvious Piskor isn't too blame here as much as the writers were.

There's some good stuff here though, and as an easy read it certainly wouldn't kill anybody to pick this up.  The definite highlights come in the second half with Joyce Brabner and "Beatnik Chicks."

As our understanding of The Beats continues to grow, warts and all (Kerouac became a staunch conservative later in life who always hated women, Burroughs literally murdered his first wife) this feels like a missed opportunity.  (Although the section on Diane di Prima is also good.)

"There you go, I've softened 'em up for you"

“I was standing side-stage with Pete Thomas. Around the time that the band [Bob Dylan and co.] went from 'The Levee’s Gonna Break' into 'Tangled Up in Blue,' I leaned into Pete and said, “We’re in trouble here. We’ve got to follow this. We’d better open with something they recognize or we’ll be playing to an empty tent.”

The great Dylan songs rolled out one after another: 'High Water (For Charley Patton),' 'A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,' 'Simple Twist of Fate,' 'Highway 61 Revisited,' 'Ballad of a Thin Man' . . .

The tent was stifling in the late antipodean summer, and I stepped out onto the loading ramp as Bob and his band hit the encore of 'L'ke a Rolling Stone' followed by 'Forever Young.”

I could hear just fine from there and a faint breeze was welcome.

I was still sitting on a flight case listening to the baying of the Byron Bay crowd as the DJ put on some music to signal the changeover.

The silhouette of a gunslinger was heading in my direction with a skip and a shuffle under his big, wide-brimmed hat.

'There you go, I’ve softened ’em up for you,' he said, as he passed on.”

-- Elvis Costello, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

I'd say music biographies / autobiographies are my second favorite literary genre after straight-up novels these days.  Unfortunately, E.C.'s memoir really didn't do it for me.  It's long -- good god, it's long -- and flies through the eras (late 70s, 90s revival) that I really wanted to know more about.  Then again, maybe I'm just way too into his Attractions stuff, and haven't ever given the solo and solo-er stuff more attention.

I mean, keeping up the lyrical genius of "you make him sound like frozen food, his love will last forever" over 600 pages is asking too much even of Dylan.  (Speaking of music bios I have yet to read....)

"a large chunk of butter in the sun"

"In the rain, which does not come, our laundry always stays on the line.  A river, already half-dead, had its source in the Black Forest.  The sun, El Comandante told me, spends the nights lying on a stretcher.  Gather, gather, gather.  Gather words, my friend, but no one will ever succeed in describing fire exhaustively.  From the radio all we hear are electrical whoosing sounds.  Our boats are meandering about on the Camisea.

Yesterday in the speedboat one of the boatmen had left a large chunk of butter in the sun on a flat glass saucer (late-Woolworth style), and had covered it with a page torn from a porno magazine.  Repulsive-looking men copulated with blowsy blondes, who strangely enough had kept their bikinis on.  I saw that the butter was melting and would soon turn to liquid, so I pushed the saucer into the shade up front in the bow, but on two stops I made later the boatman had pulled the saucer back into he blazing sun.  The butter is salted, and comes out of cans imported from Australia.  I did not ask why the boatman was putting the covered butter in the heat that way, but with silent determination we continued the duel all day and into the early evening to get the butter into the sun, then into the shade.  In the last rays of the sun an enormous tree suddenly burst into bloom with blossoms of glowing yellow, as dense and yellow as a hail of gold.  It happened so fast that from one second to the next the blossoms were there, as if a light had been switched on, and just as quickly they were extinguished again.

Huerequeque found a large piece of petrified wood and gave it to me.  We talked about tortoise dances, about fish dances.  The notion that fish dance preoccupies me."

-- Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless

"replaced with a bullet casing, much too large"

"The enormous remaining boa constrictor will die in its cage.  I think it leans its ugly head against the wire and has a heartrending air such as you see only in the dying.  I thought it must be thirsty and carefully poured water on its mouth and head, but it merely stared at me from the depths of a loneliness that had little connection left with earthly things.  So we decided to release the boa.  Walter and I shook it out of the cage, because it did not want to budge.  The women watched from a safe distance, not looking happy.  The snake crawled right back into its enclosure, yet when I check later, it was gone, and there was a clear trail in the sand leading toward the jungle.  At night the place where the snake had disappeared was thronged with twinkling fireflies, and overhead a clear, starry night sky.  Andres, our mathematician, was playing chess with his girlfriend, losing most of the games, but he accepted that with mathematical decorum.  A white pawn is missing, and has been replaced with a bullet casing, much too large, which usually becomes the object of attacks early in the game.  For the first time in my life mosquitoes are leaving me completely indifferent, not that I have accepted the superior power of nature.  It is more of a dispassionate scorn with which I am leaving my skin and blood undefended.  God grant us one good day, a single one, amen."

-- Werner Herzog, The Conquest of the Useless

"so this is where she comes from, it lies right by the bridge"

"Harvest machinery was standing for sale by the roadside, but there were no more farmers.  A flock of jackdaws was flying south, much higher in fact than jackdaws normally fly.  At a basilica, a bucolic one, right nearby, an unknown Merovingian king is buried.  Out of the old great woodland came a voice from within.

In Coussey I crossed the Meuse, following the small road to the left, then up to the basilica.  I was strangely moved.  Such a solemn valley and such a view as would be found in the background of the most solemn Dutch paintings.  On both sides are hills, the Meuse wanders through he flat valley, the view east is beyond compare, all in December haze.  The trees along the riverside stand in misty rain.  This spot touched me, and I summoned forth some courage once again.  Directly adjacent to the basilica stood a house I tried to break into, but I quit because it was too securely barred, and I'd have caused such a racket that the neighbour would have heard something.  At Domremy I went inside Joan's house; so this is where she comes from, it lies right by the bridge.  There is her signature, before which I stand a long time.  She signed it Jehanne, but most likely her hand was guided."

-- Werner Herzog, Of Walking In Ice

#ProjectHerzoghttps://t.co/JgschjzFdi

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 7, 2020

Project Herzog Is Complete!

Part I: Overview ("Dignified, Heroic, and Stupid Stupidities")

Part II: Themes ("Do You Dream A Lot Like That?")

Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Now I'm off to watch nothing but Adam Sandler comedies for the rest of my life.  Ciao!

Project Herzog Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Project Herzog Part III, his best films (14 of them) here.

Project Herzog Part IV, his worst films (five of them) here.

And the rest, in chronological order:


Herakles (1962)

A student film basically, by a film-maker who never went to film school.  Mixing footage of body-builders with stock footage, the joke is that these modern-day He-Men can't possibly be as manly as the classical hero of the title.  Among the stock footage we see a pile of corpses from the 1955 Le Mans car racing disaster.  Get it?  Funny!


The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)

His first narrative film, a group of young men randomly find some military uniforms and weapons.  As a joke they put on the gear and instantly turn from carefree hipsters to bloodthirsty soldiers.  Obvious anti-war themes, with a deranged officer telling us "even defeat is better than no war."  Surprisingly mature, very much worth your time.


Signs of Life (1968)

His first feature.  A relatively straightforward, albeit quirky, anti-war film focusing on a group of Nazi soldiers in occupied Greece.  One of them comes upon a field filled with (desecrated by?) windmills and goes insane.  Herzog was perfectly capable of making mainstream work and thankfully, he soon decided not to.  Excellent Greek folk music for the soundtrack.


Last Words (1968)

Filmed at the same time and place as Signs of Life, this very short film is based around a man who constantly goes around claiming that he does not want to speak.  The best part of the movie is, again, the Greek folk music played throughout.  Also very strange direction from Herzog, who makes his actors often repeat their own lines of dialogue.


Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

A short film shot at a race course, where Herzog interviews people who train horses.  Of course, they walk around trees for two or three days non-stop.  They eat too much garlic.  Herzog describes this film as a "practical joke" but it's one I'm too stupid to get.  His first use of color film.

"it might interfere with my aim"

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly theme live, Danish National Symphony Orchestra

I always loved his electric guitar lines the most -- so simple, so wickedly effective.

R.I.P. Ennio Morricone, who scored my favorite movie of all time in addition to a ton of other great work.  He was working up until near his death, as far as I can tell.

Project Herzog Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

Even 50 years ago casting an all-dwarf cast must have raised some eyebrows.  And believe me, this is not a film exploring the dignity of the lives of little people.  It's an obscene farce -- something to do with a jail-break from an institution where the former director is now held prisoner himself.  A statement about authoritarianism then?  Well, sure, but one that also involves cannibal chickens, a bloated dead sow, and a monkey crucifixion and procession.  Ends with the grating, satanic laughter of one of the inmates cheering on a shitting camel.  As mentioned, this is Herzog's scapegoat.  It is impossible to believe he made this within a year of his humanist masterpieces Handicapped Future and Land of Silence and Darkness.  Demonic excess.  Casual animal cruelty.  Pure obscenity.  A drunken food fight for good measure.


Queen of the Desert (2015)

A perfect example of just how bad later Herzog feature films can be.  How do we waste the genuine talents of Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, and Damian Lewis?  By making a borderline parody of a Merchant-Ivory film.  Some beautiful shots and nice costumes though.


The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)

Not the only picture where the background story is more interesting than the final product.  Herzog's only foray into sci-fi, he mixes in stock footage of underwater exploration and shots from an actual Space Shuttle mission to tell the story of an alien who comes to Earth with a warning.  And this was actually the original plot to an earlier documentary, Fata Morgana (1971).  It didn't work there.  It doesn't work here.  Any space nerd knows the shuttle isn't capable of getting out of low earth orbit, duh.  Shots of Slab City are always interesting though.


My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

With any other director, Michael Shannon is a pretty good actor.  With Herzog, he seems to have just swallowed a handful of quaaludes.  Another colossal waste of talent (Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny) this isn't even a murder mystery -- we know who did it from the start.  A very bad joke involving flamingos is the climax.  Produced by David Lynch, just because.


Salt and Fire (2016)

More bad Michael Shannon.  Something about a volcano that threatens the entire world, but also environmental degradation that led to his two children being blinded.  Scientists run around doing science things.  Terrorists do the same.  I am not ashamed to say I have no fucking clue what the actual plot of this one was beyond the above.  Painful and soporific at the same time.

Project Herzog Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Grizzly Man (2005)

Is nature the great comforter of humanity, or the inevitable destroyer of it?  The answer is "yes."  Timothy Treadwell is an obviously troubled guy, but Herzog takes him absolutely seriously as both someone to be admired as a hero, and pitied as a lunatic.  Also interesting that Herzog admits that Treadwell himself has great talent as a fellow film-maker.  The late scene where Herzog tells Treadwell's friend to destroy the audio recording of his and his girlfriend's final moments -- iconic.


Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Is haunting the right word?  Certainly not joyous, but not at all morose either.  Herzog simply films some of the first known human paintings in a cave in France.  The music and sound design are absolutely stunning.  Also, his only film shot in 3-D (and apparently his final one).


Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

I'll admit I'm partial to stories about isolated places like Antarctica (thanks, H.P. Lovecraft) but once again Herzog more than delivers.  Simplicity is the key -- he points the camera at a group of misfit scientists and academics, chefs and engineers and divers, and asks them why they've chosen to spend significant amounts of time in such an isolated, even deadly place, away from family and friends.  The answers are varied, but most of them agree life here is in many ways more edifying than anything the modern world has to offer.  The star of the movie though is, of course, a doomed but freedom-loving penguin.


La Soufriere -- Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster (1977)

An early film and a short one that neatly encapsulates all of Herzog's concerns -- the violence of nature, the fleetingness of human creations (such as entire cities), the embrace of danger in the form of an active volcano that could blow at any moment.  The streets are empty, but no small number of TVs and radios are still on, making for a very strange sort of apocalyptic music.  At a brisk 30 minutes, a perfect gateway drug.

Project Herzog Part II: Themes ("Do You Dream A Lot Like That?")

1.  Nature

One of the funniest things ever recorded is comedian Paul F. Thompkins' impersonation of Herzog.  ("Trader Joe's on Hyperion.")  There is, thankfully, much more.

And it's funny because it's half true.

No doubt Herzog is no typical Romantic.  He sees no easy, seamless connection between humans and our environment.  He sees no ultimate redemption in our willingness to commune with forest or jungle or wildlife habitat.  Shamanism is for suckers.

Famously, in a documentary about Fitzcarraldo, he comments that the jungle birds aren't singing, they're screaming in pain.

But once in a while he gives up the game.  While nature isn't exactly our friend, it's worthy of our respect.  In The White Diamond (2004) he has the opportunity, via the talents of a professional mountain climber, to record footage from a sacred cave behind a waterfall.  It's been untouched by humans for centuries.  He refuses to do so.  Why not?  Out of respect for the locals and their beliefs in part, but tonally it's clear Herzog is more concerned with breaching some unspoken pact with yet another unknowable, physical place.

Nature is not some demi-monde for Christian or Romantic faith, but it is a space like any other that must be respected and analyzed.  There is dirt and trees and plants and life.  And birds, of course.

If only to push back on the stereotype of the cold nihilist yet again, Herzog is by his own admission a lifelong walker and hiker whose only friend growing up was the Bavarian landscape (Portrait of Werner Herzog 1968).

There is a necessarily symbiotic but impossibly absurd relationship between nature and humanity, but a relationship nonetheless.

2.  Dreams

In the recent documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Herzog deal with Artificial Intelligence.  Interviewing various experts in the field he has two simple questions for the realization of true A.I. -- Can a machine fall in love?  Can the internet dream of itself?

Again, the portrait of the German nihilist with no concern for human sympathy was partly an invention of the young, angry-ish artist himself and the rise of the German New Wave.  Herzog is no naive Romantic, but he's not at all above asking essential questions as to what we share, even when communication is difficult.

In an early (and quite beautiful, completely essential) documentary Handicapped Future (1971) it's made clear that Herzog's humanism isn't of a sentimental or brotherly love sort, but it is humanism.  It's a humanism of our individual struggles as thinking, imagination-filled creatures.  Very early in the film he interviews a girl in a wheel-chair and asks her about her dreams  -- "Do you dream a lot like that?"  He's audibly taken aback when she tells him she dreams plenty at night, but during the day at school she shouldn't, even while her friends are playing outside without her.

Dreams are what make us fully human, even more than love itself.  To deny dreams, to make it harder for another person to dream their dreams, is the definition of cruelty.  And the modern world can be very cruel.

As a corollary, difficult dreams are more sacred than the easy ones.  Impossible dreams are what make us fully human.

Project Herzog Part I: Overview ("Dignified, Heroic, and Stupid Stupidities")

For about the past two and a half months, almost exactly in conjunction with the coronavirus outbreak here in South Korea and throughout the world, I've watched 63 of Werner Herzog's 66 feature and documentary films.

My first encounter with Werner Herzog came as a college student, when a religious studies professor offhandedly mentioned Aguirre, the Wrath of God as an interesting take on divine inspiration gone wrong.  In any event, I really enjoyed it but I'd be lying if I said I'd fallen in love.  Any Klaus Kinski performance is worth your attention, at least for a few minutes, but I more vividly remember watching it in conjunction with Roland Joffe's The Mission (1986, R.I.P. Ennio Morricone) which deals with similar history and themes.  (Also, a roommate swore the soundtrack to the latter was really good for having sex to.  Memory is always over-determined, just like history.)

Along the way through graduate school I remember seeing Fitzcarraldo (1982) in the context of colonial / post-colonial studies /excesses, and not really thinking too much about it other than the obvious insanity of pulling a ship over a mountain.  (And succeeding.)  And somewhere I watched Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).  It's Herzog's only pure horror film, and I really loved its slow, ponderous tension, making no compromise to the growing phenomenon of slasher / gore films.  And of course knowing nothing about their on-set relationship, Kinski was riveting.

It was in the mid-naughts, staying with my sister for about a year, that I came across Grizzly Man (2005) just about the time it came out, or maybe a year or so after.  I remember watching it with my sister and her husband and, at the end, not really knowing what to make of it.  Or even to be honest, how to feel about it.  I could sense the deep empathy and curiosity -- who wouldn't throw away the bullshit of modern life to go live with gorgeous, powerful, innocent bears?  But there was also a sense of judgement -- Herzog's constant theme of nature's indifference to humankind -- that never let you forget that Timothy Treadwell was fucking crazy, despite the purity of his intentions.  (John Krakauer's film version of Into the Wild came out in 2007, and I remember that and the sound-track were also big at the time.  Five years after 9/11 and into the forever wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, moving back to nature was a comforting, if pitifully naive thought, for many of us Americans.)

So Grizzly Man was definitely the experience where I had to find out more about this dark, obscurantist German nihilist, who happened to also be capable of deeply human, humane works of both sympathy and critique.

I moved to South Korea to teach English in 2008.  From there I managed to stay up to date with what followed -- Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010).  It's entirely possible that these initial contacts with Herzog have made me remember them more fondly than they deserve, but upon watching (and re-watching where necessary) every film ever made by him I'm still willing to bet that he was at the height of his cinematic powers between 2003 (Wheel of Time) and 2010.  (This includes 2004's The White Diamond.  This is where the title of this first post comes from, as Werner warns a man hell-bent on self-destruction that "heroic stupid" and "stupid stupid" are never the same thing.)

"gangsters have never caused any racket or trouble in the hospital"

Tattoos are fairly verboten in South Korea, as they connote criminal activity.  Times are changing however, and Western influences are always on the rise.  Enter Dr. Cho, a plastic surgeon who know offers tattoo services (including tattoo removal):

"It has been changing for the better. But it’s still too early to say that tattoos are being positively accepted by this society. The mainstream still feels negative toward tattoos — a lot of people don’t understand why people get tattoos. But there is no right or wrong here. Tattoos definitely don’t inflict harm on others. It’s different than smoking. What’s on my body may disgust others, but that’s their problem.

It was interesting when I first started business in tattoo. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a pretty picture when a man who looked like he belonged in a gangster mob and a woman getting double-eyelid surgery were sitting next to each other in the waiting room. And the nurses were intimidated [by such clients] too. But such gangsters have never caused any racket or trouble in the hospital.

After about a decade in this business, a lot of other doctors were beginning to understand what I do. I don’t only draw dragons. I also do medical tattoos, such as evening out the skin tone of patients with vitiligo."

I've defnitely seen a surge in the popularity of ink over the past ten years among my students.  A lot of them go with small, hard-to-notice ones, but no small number (especially men) are going for full sleeves and such.

"my butt is getting numb"

Werner Herzog lets us know how he's handling quarantine in his current hometown of LA in this recent interview:

"His original surname was Stipetić (reflecting his Austrian mother’s Croatian heritage) but he reinvented himself, taking his father’s surname long after his father had left the scene. He still has Stipetić siblings; they look at him askance. He chuckles. 'How should I say this? My younger brother is critical of my work. He finds some of my films awful. And my older brother, he thinks every single film I’ve made is lousy and boring. "Argh, you’ve done another one. My butt is getting numb." But this is fine. I’m transparent. I do not hide behind the films or hunker down in the trench. I stick my head up. And I can live with that because I know who I am. I’m at ease with who I am.'”

Herzog interviews are always great, but this one is excellent.

Little James Needs To Write

When I began Project Herzog, my deep-dive into every film ever made by Werner Herzog, I was naively hopeful that maybe my attempt would outlast the coronavirus.  Alas, it's pretty clear to me now that "going back to normal this fall" isn't going to happen.  It might in Korea, with its robust tracing program, but I don't see it happening in the US or UK, not by a long shot.

Anyhow, I'm running into a bit of problem as I reach the "hidden gem / thankfully forgotten" phase of things.  YouTube is pretty generous with material, especially some of the early, short experiments that I figured I might never find.  Strangely though, even some of Herzog's relatively recent feature films have been really difficult to find.  (Thankfully, some might say.)

There have also been a few films where I couldn't find a set of English close captions.  This is actually not as big of a deal as I once thought, because one of my theories is that Herzog's main theme is the excruciating difficulty, if not impossibility, of genuine human communication.  (I speak no German, obviously.)

My students will be taking their final exams in two weeks (very late, I know) but I do have some spare time this weekend to push though on my final assault to the peak of Mount Werner.  It's been worthwhile, but I'm also confident in saying that there are more than a handful of his projects that you can avoid and still live the happiest of lives.  I am eager to point them out!

And there are definitely a few obscurities that you should deal with, warzen and all.  I think that's the main goal here, but I will have a little something to say about each and every work I was able to watch.