The Prestidigitator

Having watched quite a few Kiarostami films, I ended up going for  Correspondences. It’s one of those exhibitions wherein audio-visual elements take center stage as museum installations; an experience that sometimes turns out to be grating and very very confusing (case in point being ‘replay christian marclay‘ a couple of months back).

However, Correspondences was a brilliantly rewarding and moving experience. Viktor Erice and Abbas Kiarostami apparently never met in person till the exhibition but they maintained a very unique rapport with each other through a sort of creative dialogue that gave birth to this particular installation. Despite being from vastly different backgrounds, these two auteurs found common ground in their visions of childhood, memory and cinema. There are some very powerful images (photographs by Kiarostami especially) and an excellent black and white short film by Erice titled, Lifeline (video link). Two very interesting pieces by Kiarostami included projections of a sleeping couple (Sleepers) onto the floor and another ten minute projection of a sleeping child.

Occasionally, you do feel like a voyeur but then again, isn’t that what cinema is essentially about?

(Cross-posted on Couch-Critics)

Links:

• Letters to the World
• Erice-Kiarostami: Correspondences (Paperback)

You spend enough time with people and you realize that it’s always tempting to reduce them to cultural stereotypes; the proverbial clown car so to speak.  It would have been depressing if it weren’t so much fun.

So yes, I spend happy hours after work with this rather colorful group – a group I’ve grown particularly fond of over the past few months; the Indian couple who after 3 years of marriage still seem to be all over each other, the proselytizing right wing American who cannot stop blathering about the USPs of being ‘born again’, the pretty Chinese girl who for some strange reason finds it imperative that she photograph every waking moment of her life, the computer whiz who downs more energy drinks than anyone else I know and the jolly chain smoking (militant) atheist who would have made a brilliant Santa Claus if he weren’t, well, such an avowed atheist. (Note how I consider myself above all generalizations.)

A couple of nights back, during one of our inebriated sessions, religion comes up. Pretty Chinese girl starts raving about how Buddhism is the one religion/philosophy that in the last 2500 years hasn’t instigated a single conflict. Not to be outdone, Santa Claus reiterates how secularists have done more good for humanity than followers of all religions combined. Mr Yankee, piss drunk and understandably offended starts mouthing verses from the bible much to the consternation of Young Married Couple.

Things take a turn for the worse when insults are exchanged between Santa Claus and Mr Yankee (“Let’s see you turn the other cheek when I…”). Emotions flare and I try my best to break the tension with lame attempts at humor. For a moment they seem to work and Yankee calms down visibly.

“You bastards can say whatever you want but Jesus saves.”

An awkward pause follows and then Computer Whiz, “Well then he should bloody well invest in real estate, shouldn’t he?”

Awkward glances and smiles did little to alleviate the screaming silence. She just stared at the outside world through the grimy window pane. I noticed her break into a smile now and then; memories I had no place in. I breathed in every single detail – the braided hair, the mole on her chin, the back of her neck and the rather odd looking pair of glasses she held on to.

I asked her how far along she was with her graduate school applications. She went on about about how difficult her day job made it to devote enough time to anything else; about how adulthood made childhood dreams seem naive. Time, we both agreed, was a commodity in short supply. She, like me was going through a crisis of sorts. But then again, my life had been one crisis after another ever since I turned twelve. She sullenly mused on how our parents had it easier; competition was less fierce and expectations weren’t so unreasonable.

Nothing brings two people together like shared angst. From there, conversation became easier. We flitted across politics, inflation and the recession. We shared a cigarette as we delved into the macabre.

As smoke gracefully escaped her lips, I was engulfed by sudden sadness. This would soon be over too. Another connection would be lost thanks to the inherent randomness of life. I knew then that this would be an encounter that I would later romanticize; I would invariably project my idealism onto this mediocre moment. Infatuation does that. Nonetheless, we bonded. Conversation was never sparse. She was well read and we debated on the nuances of Eco’s Semiotics and Kafka’s predicament. The subtleties of cinema were not lost on her either. She seemed to eagerly await her turn as I delivered a rather pedantic rant on the French New Wave. I can be a pretentious prick but she seemed to lap up the bourgeois pseudo intellectual display.

I could not let this slip away. Carpe mundum. As I worked through lines in my head wondering what the appropriate way to ask her out would be, she gently touched my hand and smiled.

‘You shouldn’t think so much.’

‘Well, what do you propose I do?’

‘You look like the kind of person who’d know by now.’

‘You have me figured out, don’t you?’

‘Of course, you’re a Libra right?’

And it was over before it had even begun.

Configuring Hardy Heron has been a bitch; finally got around to fixing two nagging issues.

1. Sound: Ubuntu 8.04 has been infamous for having serious issues with sound. The fairly easy thing to do would be to build the ALSA modules all over again using the module-assistant package.

sudo apt-get install module-assistant
sudo m-a update
sudo m-a prepare
sudo m-a a-i alsa

Reboot.

This seemed to have resolved most of my sound problems.

2. Login Screen resolution: I’ve had this problem with all distributions thus far; the text size on the login screen is so large that it’s, well, invisible. Go figure. The fix:

sudo gedit /etc/gdm/gdm.conf

(Find)

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0

(Change to)

[server-Standard]
name=Standard server
command=/usr/bin/X -br -audit 0 -dpi 96

Reboot.

In related news, beating Nina Williams on the Sergie Dragunov story arc is turning out to be much harder than anticipated.

(It’s 3 am. Obvious?)