The Strawberry Blog

December 20, 2005

Because I do not relish the idea of being hit squarely on the head with an anvil, suffice to say that I am not Stephen Spielberg’s biggest fan (though I would love to chat with him at a cocktail party some day). His later films particularly have the subtlety of an unneutered pitbull and, quite frankly, I do not appreciate my intelligence, emotional and otherwise, regularly insulted by heavy handedness. What grates me the most perhaps is that it doesn’t have to be this way because, creatively and financially, he is all powerful. That’s the kicker: that he often ruins his own movies either through the aforemoentioned anvil or the herculean efforts of the string section. “D minor…the saddest of all chords.”

MUNICH is not that kind of film. And though I winced toward the end when the possibility of a Saving Private Ryanesque moment appeared on the emotional horizon, I forgave its near possibility because the previous two hours or so resonated as a portrait of a climactic time and place, untainted by the anvil-wielding auteur.

This is an important film to see this season for a few reasons: 1) There is no fat, unnaturally ebullient man in a red suit, 2) Unless their parents are legally insane, there will be no children in the cinema, and 3) This is all about universal themes played out on an even handed, if awfully violent, stage. Just in time to ponder away for the new year.

Oh, yes, there is one more reason to see it: just when you didn’t think you could stomach any more violence, heartache and talk of spilling the blood of [insert your favorite ethnicity or race here], the mighty reverend Al Green saves us. All of us.

Tonight’s fare, MATCH POINT, was brought to us by another film giant, Woody Allen. I guess that the same gods who governed the way of the hurricane season this year are also perhaps influencing Hollywood. It’s about the only good havoc these gods have wreacked in months.

If you’re after bitingly good portrayals of the English upper class and ways in which the mere mortal under classes can and cannot infiltrate them; the obsessions, means and ways committee of the English landed gentry; and the perfect crime, then this one’s for you. It’s Allen at his best in years—with an unlikely cast and no New York backdrop in sight (if you want a bit of Brooklyn, head to MUNICH).
The direction is deft, the script nearly impeccable; and if you want a perfect representation of the pedigreed young Anglo woman, Emily Mortimer’s posture is its manifestation. Her back and shoulders alone should be nominated. I hesitate to single her out because the performances were flawless, but it reminded me of what an older English friend said to me on the beach in France: “You can always spot the English girls because they walk like they’re embarrassed to be alive.”

December has just trumped April as the cruelest month indeed.

To numb your senses after overload? A 2003 Protocolo red wine from Spain—where extremists run with bulls and the country estates are simply dazzling, darling.

December 12, 2005

Terence Malick has made four films in his life. He allows actors to breathe, requires four editors to manage the nuances of his sound design, and most of all: Malick doesn’t direct the moments in his films; his moments are the whole film. Witness: I can barely get out of my seat at the DGA in West Hollywood after Pocohantas dies on an English estate, yet I am jonesing to stretch. Why the trouble with standing? Well, the spleen is weighted, the torso internally twisted…at one with the the Native American heroine. Her Man. Her Other Man. Her Child. The Mother. Her Death.

And may I suggest Glenn Gould’s “The Goldberg Variations” with your Pinotage? Gould also savors his moments—all thirty two of them. A wine aficionado and former violinist with the New York Philharmonic told me that Gould suffered from terrible hypochondria. Well I can tell you that while I watched Malick’s new film, there was no such thing happening in my spleen, no sir. It was real. I was sick with love, faint with longing, and hungry for the woods. My eyes even hurt.

Pocahantas falls in love with John Smith it is as pure as (17th century) Virginia soil. Making love in tall grasses along the James River, separating, reuniting, losing him to a storied drowning. Freeing her spirit despite her loss. Under lesser directors these circumstances fall into maudlin hysteria. But under Malick & Company they are experienced in their raw state—sound, vision, and internal dialogue conspire to come as close as possible to Being Pocohantas. To Being John Smith.

To knowing when your own spirit needs freeing. Knowing when to blow kisses at the sun and thank it for remembering who you are. And when the music stops suddenly at the end and you are jolted from its sinewy, noted mantra and back to nature’s purest sounds, back into the Green World, well…Shakespeare would’ve been proud.

December 12, 2005

Post-Katrina, I find myself in Hollywood half the time, kicking myself every day of the week (in a different spot, of course) for ever thinking it was a good idea to give up the Manhattan apartment in the late 1990s. And while I do my best to seek out the evasive soul of Los Angeles, my spirit is always happier in the dirty, sleepy south, or in D.C.’s library of the gods, or in New Yorks’s chestnut and whiskey winter air. Still, one must make the best of it and what better way than to feed one’s nasty little habit; to live precariously close to the self-proclaimed world’s best and largest independent music store: Amoeba Records.
I took a mid-afternoon walk around Hollywood today, striding past the architectural platters of the Capitol Records building where I always start humming Ray Charles. And though I intended to walk up to Highland Avenue, to steep myself in the Sephora fragrance section and discover a fabulous new bra at Victoria’s Secret, it didn’t happen. The junkie’s excuse precluded me from walking west on Hollywood, propelling me south to Ivar and Sunset instead. South to my Dealer. On the corner. Oh yes!
Back to jazz and classical I went, sauntering through the cavernous main room’s Obvious Best Hits of Tom Petty. I was on to other, better things: Sarah Vaughn. John Coltrane. Heroine. Hero. After freebasing at the Listening Booth, I braved the rock room, stumbling toward soul and R&B. As soon as I hit Stevie’s formidable section, an L.A. junkie next to me made the overture to connect.
“That’s a good one. That’s the best one,” he said of the essential number ones compilation.
“Mmmmmm…” I rejoined, high.
“What’s that?” he asked of my Sarah Vaughn. “Oh, oh, that’s jazz, yeah.”
“Yeah…that’s jazz,” I said, my eyes rolling back into my head.
“You from here?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” I protested.
“Where you from?”
“New Orleans, ” I said. And before I could get a word in, he said…
“Oooh…you here ‘cause of that little disaster?”
Little disaster?
“Yeah…that little disaster.”
“Are you married?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Hence the ring. But it’s a good thing you asked because I don’t always wear it.”
“Where’s your husband?”
“Jesus, man! What is this? 20 Questions? I said I’m married, not attached at the goddamned hip. You are officially killing my buzz.”
“You gonna stay here?”
At this point I decided to steer the conversation toward a Holland-Dozier-Holland box set. The Angeleno addict asked me about the Stax set. “You can’t go wrong,” I decreed. From then on he kept his focus on the dope, not my dope. We theorized about the Soul Train box set but dismissed it as too discursive.
There we split, I toward Prince who looked ridiculously sexy for a very effeminate man; he toward the O’Jays. We reacquainted ourselves near Al Green and Roberta Flack and I thought of my mother in her suede sleekness—of how much she dug Roberta Flack. Then, as if he had never played the Inquiring Mind to my unsuspecting person, one friendly addict said to another, “I don’t know, man…all of mine was on vinyl. It was better that way.”
Yeah. Much better.

December 5, 2005

We will hasten the flow of elegy; we shall render it history; we shall yield to a wider ocean.

It will happen: one day we’ll realize that we’ve slowed the pace of our frenetic obsession; that most of our thoughts and reactions are not a direct result of an enormous disaster. That the aftermath is no longer our constant companion but, instead,
part of our collective story—a reference point so vast that every one of her affected citizens can hang their tale on its wash line. A chain of oral histories tattered and torn, some intact, some fractured. Stories related, no matter their relation, despite their kin and color. The question is, when? How much time will suffice? When will we be free of its effects?

To be free from its effects is to erase it from the collective—to lose our relations. What I am suggesting is that one day—who knows how long—we will notice that the minutiae of the aftermath (Hurricaniana?) will cease to be the overarching conversation. One day we will get back to business with only minor references to Pre- or Post K. However, this will only happen when our city is restored to something resembling normalcy. That’s tricky, of course, saying normalcy, considering many people find that New Orleans is the only city that loves them back—and that she was never quite normal to begin with. But whatever normalcy she possesses will have to be restored for her citizenry to break through. And how can we do that with so few returned, so many in limbo, and still others disavowing her?

If she were not a city but instead, say, your mother, your grandmother—would that be different? If we didn’t have the funds for her best care, wouldn’t we patch together a family hospice? Wouldn’t we take, borrow, and steal the best medicine to salve her pain and stave off inevitable depression?

A body of neighborhoods, a row of houses, a string of porches. They are bodies nonetheless; interconnected, breathing entities. Of blood and brick, skin and mortar, spirit and cypress. More complex, multifarious in nature.

But a body still.