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Monday, October 27th, 2025
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7:29 pm - Join the LiveJournal Revival!
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| Saturday, March 17th, 2012
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1:46 pm - Brave New World
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waitsfortherain
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¨
For posting the famous photograph (taken in 1952!) by the American photographer Art Shay of the French philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir naked,
Brazilian photographer Fernando Rabelo had his page suspended by Facebook for three days. This extremely bizarre attitude made the news all over the Brazilian press. The outstanding journalist Ancelmo Góis wrote about it in his column in O Globo (one of the two most important newspapers in Brazil), and his brilliant comment, accompanied by the celebrated photograph, was reproduced as a post on Facebook. Soon after being published, it was shared by quite a few people, including myself.
Less than an hour after I published it, the post was withdrawn by the site from all the pages where it had been reproduced. There isn't much to say. In cases like this, words become oddly inadequate.
Images become more eloquent.
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(comment on this)
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| Saturday, March 19th, 2011
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1:33 am - The Dogma of Faith
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| Thursday, December 30th, 2010
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12:37 pm - La Vida Es Sueño
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waitsfortherain
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¨
My last post in 2010. Last night I was randomly going over past entries in my own journal through that new tool that enables you to find very easily everything you've written about, or simply mentioning a certain topic. That's how I spent the best part of what should have been a much needed night of healthy sleep. Awful! But then, that's how I found out something really peculiar. While writing in entries with big intervals among them about something that happened to me in the past, I couldn't disagree more about how old I was when it happened. Like my first trip to America. Sometimes I say I was twenty when it happened, sometimes I say I was twenty-one. Sometimes I go as far as shaving two years off my age at the time of a certain episode. Sometimes I say I was older than I really was.
My first impulse was to do edit the stuff correcting all the wrong ages. Then I decided to leave it as is. I will never understand why, but I find inconsistencies in journals and other autobiographical writings absolutely fascinating. In some sort of a crazy way, they seem to confirm that life is inconsistent to the point of making it impossible for anyone to use the written word to entrap time. What you're trying to catch ends up being slippery and much too elusive for your feeble attempt to succeed. Music stands better chances. The written word is forever bound to failure, and that's the beauty of it. Inconsistencies in journals, letters, memoirs, and other reminiscences are as beautiful as the vagueness of dreams. They should be preserved, not edited. Nobody edits his own dreams.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
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11:55 pm - They Do Things Differently There
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waitsfortherain
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¨
Christmas again. So fast! This way I'm going to get up one day just like Tom Hanks in Big, go to the bathroom, watch myself in the mirror just the way he did in the movie, and find out that I have become the Highlander. Centuries have gone by and I'm still around. I don't know that I like the idea. But then, who does?
¨
As my family's celebration approaches, I think of the same occasion in the past. Considering that I'm fast becoming the Highlander, that's one hell of a lot of thinking we're talking about. So many people I loved have now turned into ghosts. Benign, full of warmth and light, but ghosts all the same. I can see them, but I can't touch them. In a way, I envy them. They can read Mário Benedetti's latest poems, listen to Lennon singing a ballad, or go to places like the movie theaters I loved so much, but where I cannot go anymore, because they were demolished along with the old houses in the same block where my childhood friends used to live, perhaps to see Fellini's latest outing, with Giulitta and Marcello once again as the leads. Then I think of the children who will come tomorrow, and about how odd it's going to be to see them with their children. How's that? Surely they must have been to the same amusement park where Tom Hanks said "I want to be big" to that strange fortune telling machine.
In the end I think of myself at nineteen, and about how tremendously impressed I was with the voice in off reading a quote from the novel on which the film was based, right at the beginning of The Go Between. I had waited impatiently for the film's release in Brazil and wanted to see it in all haste because Julie Christie was in it. Some four years earlier I had seen Far from the Madding Crowd and fallen in love with her. I've been in love with her ever since. That explains why I know everything about her. I know for example that the beautiful girl with the irresistible smile will be turning seventy very soon. I think of that voice in off (Michael Redgrave's) and about how much that quote impressed me even then: "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, December 17th, 2010
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2:53 pm - Madame in Pepperland
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waitsfortherain
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¨
I wonder if the year-end has anything to do with it, or if it could be having just moveded out of the apartment where I lived for seven years (which was my mother's house before that, for eight years), being able to occupy the apartment I've bought in another part of town only at the end of the month, and everything I own being piled up in cardboard boxes. Whatever the reason, I seem to have embarked on a trip in time the same way people go spend their holidays in Europe. I'm all the time running into something that makes my mind flow to the distant past. I don't know if it's good or bad or what, but it's funny! Music, for example. The Beatles, for example.
Once again I had an appointment (the last one) with the root canal specialist my dentist had recommended, to see about a tooth that had been misbehaving very badly. He didn't seem to find it funny when he told me that I have very strong teeth and I replied, "Well, maybe that means I won't see you again, or at any rate, not so soon." That's how I learned that making wisecracks under the effects of anaesthesia is not a good idea. ( Read more...Collapse )
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
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11:35 pm - Across the Universe
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waitsfortherain
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¨
I remember that day. I remember how incredibly young I was. How can you ever be that young? We all are, at one point, I know. But once the sensation of being so light inside flies away from you, whenever a glimpse of it crosses your mind you think you've just had a brief episode of hallucination. Better watch what you've been eating. Surely such an exhilarating state doesn't have to do with reality.
I was at my aunt's. She had a garden. It was very beautiful and required a lot of care. There was this girl who, some years before, had been her dresser and played a bit part in it when my aunt produced and played the title role in a revival of Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife (called Constantina in Brazil), which became the biggest hit of her entire career. No other play she ever did ran for so long, first in Rio, then in São Paulo, and finally on tour to several cities. Nothing she ever did brought in so much money, or made theatergoers love her so much. The play succeeded Marcel Archard's Tiro e Queda (A Shot in the Dark) in the same theater. I had made my professional debut as an actor in Tiro e Queda. The icon picture being used here is from the program. Whenever I look at it I feel like talking to this young person who looks so outrageously hopeful to ask him, "What do you see in front of you that makes you look ahead so intently?"
As the show approached the end, my aunt and three other members of the cast, along with a number of other actors, were already rehearsing Constantina, in which there was no part for me because all the male roles in it were middle-aged and I looked like a school boy. So I took the money I had got for Tiro e Queda, plus the unbelievably generous "nice trip" present my aunt gave me, meaning the full amount becoming the double, and left for New York on my first visit to America. ( Read more...Collapse )
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(3 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
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4:43 pm - The Time Machine Is Not for Actors
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waitsfortherain
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¨
I guess most people don't realize something really funny having to do with actors. Please follow me: if someone under, say, thirty-five or thereabouts, watches a film with the young Katharine Kepburn, Spencer Tracy, Greta Garbo, the young Laurence Olivier, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Margaret Sullavan, the young James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Huston, Luise Rainer, or the extraordinary British actor Robert Donat (who beat Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind and got away with the 1939 best actor Oscar for Goodbye Mr. Chips), in most cases their overall reaction, never mind how clever they may be, will probably be the same: "Gosh, what bad actors! Wasn't there anyone around, like the director guy, or the producer, or somebody else to tell these people that they were overacting so terribly? How could they expect audiences to believe in the characters they were playing if what you see on the screen is so far from reality?"
It took me some time to come up with the fifteen names I included in the previous paragraph. I did my best to make it a list of what I think were the most gifted actors in American films from the first decade of talking pictures. Which means one hell of a long time ago. If you watch the incredibly young Kate Hepburn interacting with John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement, you will be watching two actors doing their work seventy-eight years ago! Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth will be two of the most brilliant comedians of all time doing their stuff seventy-three years ago!. And so on and so forth, meaning that an awful lot of water has gone under the bridge, the funny thing being that lots of people would probably say that acting has come a long way. It used to be so bad and now it's good. Now you watch actors on the screen and they look and sound like people you know and can meet anytime. As for those old-timers, holy smoke, they looked and sounded phony as hell. ( Read more...Collapse )
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, November 9th, 2009
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8:28 am - Some adventure in Ufa city (Russian Federation). “under the sky”
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| Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
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3:21 pm - Self-Interview
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waitsfortherain
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Q: Who are you?
A: A guy in his fifties with an incurable neurological disease who entirely depends on a number of drugs, including two psychotropics that must have their adequacy and dosage constantly checked/adjusted by a neurologist or else there may be a sudden upheaval in the whole nervous system leading to dreadful consequences, and who on top of being far from well-off has a really hard time putting up the money for doctors’ bills and the atrociously expensive drugs.
Q: Any chances that you may be overdoing it, like presenting a worse picture of your own reality than what the facts point to?( Read more...Collapse )
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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| Friday, March 20th, 2009
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4:38 pm - The Greatest Pain
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waitsfortherain
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¨
Yesterday I wrote:
At the end of a fantastic collection of letters by François Truffaut, a huge volume put together with the collaboration of his friends and family, the very last letter draws your attention for having been reproduced as a facsimile of the handwritten original. It's a letter to a dear friend whose daughter has died. In his own, unequivocal style, Truffaut says, "What is happening to you is without any doubt the greatest pain there is, the one I have feared the most in a long time. I can only assure you of my love and tell you that I'm very close to you, always."
That's the way I feel. But then, I'm in a really large group. Today the whole world will be thinking of Vanessa Redgrave very lovingly. As I've seldom wished anything, I wish this truly great woman finds whatever her peace.
Today these images from BBC News became available:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7954202.stm
Peace to you, Vanessa. You are a brave and very beautiful human being.
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(comment on this)
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| Thursday, March 19th, 2009
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4:34 pm - Vanessa's Pain
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waitsfortherain
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¨
I've been in love with Vanessa Redgrave since I was 14 and saw her in Camelot. I think she's the world's greatest actress. As simple as that. My friends are always making jokes about it, and even the Trivia section of my own IMDb profile says, "All-time favorite actress is a toss-up between Greta Garbo and Vanessa Redgrave." Indeed, no other living actress takes my breath away the way she does.
On my last trip to America, in 1998, I was walking past Barnes & Noble when I saw her absolutely majestic figure on the cover of her newly released autobiography. Needless to say, I rushed inside and bought the book. As I read it, I fell in love with the author in a different way. Among a great number of incredible qualities (a ferocious intelligence, unyielding coherence, a true love for her profession, generosity to her colleagues, a boundless sense of justice, the most disconcerting power of observation ...) she revealed to be a really warm human being. A delicate woman. The way she talks about her three children is very moving. How she loves them, cares for them, is always so proud of them! How wonderful, I thought, it must be to be close to this great woman, to be her friend, or workmate. But then I should have known. Look at her when she's smiling. You don't smile like that if you're not an enlightened, wonderfully warm human being. Nobody does. The essence of smiles can't be faked.
When she came to Brazil, some fifteen years ago, to do Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in São Paulo (only there), I was myself doing a play in Rio and couldn't travel to see her. As I later learned, my aunt, who was also doing a play in São Paulo, went out with other actors to have dinner with Vanessa and talk about acting. They all fell in love with her. Very few times in my entire life I regretted so much not being able to go to a certain place at a certain time.
While in São Paulo, she went to Brazil's most famous talk show to be interviewed by Jô Soares, who couldn't be more in awe of her. At the beginning of the next year, when as usual he spent the month of January showing again the best interviews of the previous year, he introduced hers by saying that in all the years the show had been on the air (since 1988) no other guest succeeded more completely in winning the hearts of the entire crew, the band, the producers, and everyone involved with the show. The interview itself remains one of that show's most amazing ever. Vanessa Redgrave is the world's greatest actress because she's one of the world's bravest, most admirable and lovable human beings.
Today she must be in great pain. At 45, her eldest daughter Natasha Richardson, herself an excellent actress with the unmistakable personality of a great movie star, has died from the consequences of injuries sustained in a skiing accident in Canada.
At the end of a fantastic collection of letters by François Truffaut, a huge volume put together with the collaboration of his friends and family, the very last letter draws your attention for having been reproduced as a facsimile of the handwritten original. It's a letter to a dear friend whose daughter has died. In his own, unequivocal style, Truffaut says, "What is happening to you is without any doubt the greatest pain there is, the one I have feared the most in a long time. I can only assure you of my love and tell you that I'm very close to you, always."
That's the way I feel. But then, I'm in a really large group. Today the whole world will be thinking of Vanessa Redgrave very lovingly. As I've seldom wished anything, I wish this truly great woman finds her peace.
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, January 11th, 2008
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9:28 pm
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10:47 pm
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1claimserr
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Каков конечный результат негативного определения измерений собственной индивидуальности? В лучшем случае все заканчивается заниженной самооценкой; в худшем — ненавистью к самому себе. Человек не может избавиться от своей “плохой” части и тратит огромное количество физической и духовной энергии, пытаясь “взять ее под контроль”. Часто все это происходит на неосознанном уровне. Человек может стоматология , клиника , лимфа , глюкоза биохимия , ишемия , аорта , инфаркт даже не отдавать себе отчета и том, что он репрессирует непринимаемую им часть самого себя и замечает лишь реальные последствия такого поведения, т.е. симптомы, вытекающие из существования негативного аспекта индивидуальности.
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| Saturday, January 27th, 2007
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7:23 pm - Blues4Kali- ExperiMental Existentialism for the End Times
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indiriverflow
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What will Winter Solstice bring in 2012?
...an instant of Karma? ...an ethereal spiral dance of the collective soul? ... cosmic judgment leveled against civilization's expanse? ...destruction of the world as we know it? ...a chance for a new start? ...the rise and the revenge of the Goddess? or simply another day in the life of paranoia?
These are the false prophesies that your pastor warned you about!
( Read moreCollapse )
current mood:  indescribable
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(comment on this)
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| Friday, September 22nd, 2006
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10:57 am
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| Tuesday, August 29th, 2006
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11:58 am - intellectual instigator signing in
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jennygenesis
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Hey, so I just joined this community.....noticed a lot of people in it (you can't ALL be intellectuals) but anyway......
I'm totally open to new friends and topics, feel free to check out my journal as I will yours.....
Nothing really to instigate right now.....anyone bored?
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Friday, June 30th, 2006
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6:09 pm
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| Sunday, June 4th, 2006
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5:21 pm
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| Saturday, March 18th, 2006
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8:33 pm - A Cretian Pantgreece
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snailrind
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A sduty was dnoe smoe yares ago taht semeed to inticade taht pepole can ealisy raed txet in wihch the mlidde ltteres are jubmeld up; the thoery is taht the lerttes in the mdidle dno't mrttaer as lnog as the strat and end ltteres are in the rghit palces. Wlel, waht a laod of banoley! Let me domenstarte.
Annoye getfid eugonh mhgit eelnvaulty uglntane tihs parpaargh, but waht pantgreece wlil fnid it itemleamidy chimpenbelrose? Cretian stincteiss wolud issint eerynove can. Anuncone yuor repetsvice sceesceuss on a pcroastd palsee. ;-)
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busy
