Notizie

is a prequel to ki duk kim’s 3-IRON where you play the mute protagonist who breaks into houses in a huge open world, and if you look hard & patiently you can find the homes of characters from all of kim’s other films.

SO the homey @pyschologyrever put up a link to this review of UPSTREAM COLOR which really helped grease my cogs regarding that beast. Half my crew walked halfway through & I didn’t stick around to see that the sinister pigman is named “The Sampler” but holy shit.

(I haven’t read Slate or Salon pieces on this yet. Gonna put that off as long as possible. SO sorry if I’m psyched about stuff here that has already been put forth, or put forth more thoughtfully, but)

My most basic take is that the movie is about what would happen if people were to somehow become aware of the true interconnectedness of life on our planet. I think also that an awareness of time as relative & not linear is occurring, too. Of course, nobody can totally grasp this because it doesn’t relate at all to our daily lives & our ingrained frame of reference, the language we organize our thoughts in, etc.

BUT anyway Now the scenes with the Quinoa Valley CDs make sense to me. The Sampler is not omniscient, but he seems to have the most scientific approach to dealing with what is being revealed.  Also, the most Zen. His awareness & appreciation of different sounds & environmental ambience is genuine… but what he does with them is not. Not because he is evil, but because he is an American circa 2013. The only thing you can do with this grand revelation is turn it into a research project.. which needs  to be funded— I mean, look at all that gear! 

The identity theft (never explicitly called that, but what an apt name in this case!!!) is of course a big part of it, but I’m guessing the field recording record label is helping, too— or maybe it’s a just a hobby that he enjoys. Either way, it’s a naked commercialization of his heightened sensitivity. Again: he’s not an evil  capitalist mastermind out to exploit the perks of his new consciousness, he’s just a guy living in the system we all live in. He’s not a god, either— he’s just figured out how to focus his awareness on the particular people he’s empiggened. 

I don’t know that much about WALDEN but I’m thinking, “The TAO OF PHYSICS would probably be an even more appropriate book.” But WALDEN comes from a more alone-in-the-wilderness place, right? A guy without the benefit of post-Quantum physics who intuits that the lives we perceive as distinct, atomized consciousnesses are in fact one organism, & who tries to make sense of this as best he can. 

I think The Sampler’s look of sadness & surprise when he realizes Kris can see him towards the end is his quantumtastic realization that he’s not just an objective observer studying this phenomenon. And he feels stupid & guilty because of COURSE he isn’t, the idea goes contrary to the entire revelation. He accepts his execution because he has failed, he has brought immeasurable pain & suffering to the people he’s studied. And maybe even, in that moment, he recognizes that it might be hopeless for anyone to try & intentionally utilize this revelation to some mundane, pre-revelation end. (Also, dude included the WALDEN imprinting as part of the process to try & pass on some key to what has occurred, right? So he had illusions of being beneficent. Which make him feel so foolish at the end.)

The ending depicts Kris & Jeff & the others starting a COLLECTIVE effort towards understanding the truth, as opposed to the fundamentally flawed individual effort. A big deal is made of the solitary aspect of the Sampler’s work. The use of kids to collect the worms & a younger guy to do the bank-emptying are deliberate efforts to stay solitary. These kids aren’t going to inquire about the root of all this strange activity the same way that his peers might. Carruth maybe believes that Thoreau was on to something really big, and even that his solitude was necessary at first to sort things out, but that ultimately you have to come out of the woods or else you can’t do any good.

I heart GAG, follow GAG

A huge, heavy, old snake, draped in the branches of a tree. Yes, an ancient serpent that’s loathe to move. You can get right in his face & this cold-blooded hulk will show no concern whatsoever. He knows & you know & he knows you know that there is no question that any fight between you would be over before you could even finish noticing that it had begun. 

Because the way that the snake “hears” vibrations, most music means nothing to him. He regards it as you might regard the noise of cars in the background of a television show. The sound of bells, however, are unmistakably musical to the snake, who will pause to contemplate their beauty somewhat similarly to how he might sun himself on a rock— except coldly, if that makes sense.

hoaxtheory:

flower exposed to radiation from #fukishima nuclear facility Japan

station north mews on Flickr.

tumblinerb:

I wrote about rap sonics and cleanliness and such in my latest Pitchfork column.

Artist: Rjyan Kidwell
Album Title: Prosperity
Catalogue Number: meow197/nibbana003
Label: Nibbana/Tigerbeat6
Release date: April 8th, 2013

01 Toronto blessing
02 Increased starvation
03 Sun burst
04 Body life
05 Anionic midsts
06 The pit
07 Smoke organ
08 Sanction midis
09 Necromonks

poseidon on Flickr.