An online commonplace book
How important were lacrosse sticks with Onondaga traditions? Life and death.
Babies sleep beside their own wooden stick from the day they’re born. And players are buried with theirs when they die.
Alfie Jacques was one of the last traditional stick carvers alive. Alfie passed in June 2023. He was buried with his stick.
What happens when Wes Anderson visits one of the last video stores in Paris?
An extensive list. All titles mentioned below.
This one took ages. Enjoy!
1. Vengeance Is Mine, Shōhei Imamura (1979)
2. Drunken Angel – Akira Kurosawa (1948)
3. Simon of the Desert, Luis Buñuel (1965)
4. City Streets, Rouben Mamoulian (1931)
5. Love me Tonight, Rouben Mamoulian (1932)
6. Applause, Rouben Mamoulian (1929)
7. Queen Christina, Rouben Mamoulian (1933)
8. Silk Stockings, Rouben Mamoulian (1957)
9. We Live Again, Rouben Mamoulian (1934)
10. Becky Sharp, Rouben Mamoulian (1935)
11. The Mark of Zorro, Rouben Mamoulian (1940)
12. Blood and Sand, Rouben Mamoulian (1941)
13. The Pajama Game, George Abbott, Stanley Donen (1957)
14. Le Chant du Missouri, Vincente Minnelli (1944)
15. Sadie McKee, Clarence Brown (1934)
16. The Tall Target, Anthony Mann (1951)
17. T-Men, Anthony Mann (1947)
18. Raw Deal, Anthony Mann (1948)
19. Border Incident, Anthony Mann (1947)
20. Bad Day at Black Rock, John Sturges (1955)
21. Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan (1952)
22. Little Lord Fauntleroy, John Cromwell (1936)
23. Marie-Antoinette, W.S. Van Dyke (1938)
24. The Fire Within, Louis Malle (1964)
25. The Big Risk, Claude Sautet, (1960)
26. Max et les ferrailleurs, Claude Sautet, (1971)
27. Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati (1958)
28. Vagabond, Agnes Varda (1985)
29. The Crime of Monsiuer Lange, Jean Renoir (1936)
30. La Grande Illusion, Jean Renoir (1937)
31. Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir (1939)
32. Toni, Jean Renoir (1935)
33. The Man Who Loved Women, François Truffaut (1977)
34. Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard (1963)
35. Birth, Jonathan Glazer (2004)
36. Fantastic Mr Fox, Wes Anderson (2010)
37. Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg (2015)
First Steven Spielberg, who is, if you make movies, if you direct movies, this is somebody who can help you. You look to his movie for solutions. He usually found a way to do it right. He’s one of my favorites.
– Wes Anderson
38. Drugstore Cowboy, Gus Van Sant (1990)
39. Barfly, Barbet Schroeder (1987)
40. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Mel Stuart (1971)
41. Hollywood: A Celebration of the Silent American Film, Kevin Brownlow & David Gill (1980)
42. Witness, Peter Weir (1985)
43. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Hideaki Anno (1994-2013)
44. Only yesterday, Isao Takahata (1988)
45. Pompoko, Isao Takahata (1994)
Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli in general, that’s one of those great bodies of work that is something, you know, a treasure for cinema.
– Wes Anderson
New Yorker.
Crooner.
Painter.
Maestro.
In memoriam, some favorite quotes:
“I knew very early that somehow I would sing and draw and paint my whole life.“
pp 20
“There’s a push and pull with the creative process. That’s why I learned never to give up, even if it feels as if it’s not happening the first time around. Keep going; keep plowing through it.“
pp 128
“I wasn’t in the Rat Pack. I was in New York; they were out there. I had my singing and painting.”
pp 57
From: Bennett, Tony. Sullivan, Robert. Tony Bennett in the Studio: A Life of Art & Music. New York: Sterling Publishing, 2007.
Joseph Roth is a master of writing images and crafting metaphors. They are true, surprising, and specific.
Consider the following passages:
He observed the immense shadows cast by small objects on the bare blue walls; the gently curved shimmering outline of his sword hanging from its hook by the door, its dark ribbon tucked into the hilt. He listened to the ceaseless rain outside drumming on leaded window frames; and rose at last, having decided to go and see his father the following week,
and
He found the old gentleman in his shirtsleeves sitting in the kitchen of his quarters at a plain deal table covered with a dark-blue cloth edged in scarlet, a large cup of steaming, fragrant coffee in front of him.
This one he repeats:
His consonants rumbled like thunderbolts, the final syllables laden with small weights.
and
“shaking him as a hurricane shakes a feeble shrub”
From:
Roth, Joseph. “The Hero of Solferino.” Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers (Norton Anthology), edited by Elizabeth D. Samet, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 69-82.
To perfect the art of becoming such a reliable person, Franklin wrote out a “Plan for Future Conduct” during his eleven-week voyage back to Philadelphia. It would be the first of many personal credos that laid out pragmatic rules for success and made him the patron saint of self-improvement guides. He lamented that because he had never outlined a design for how he should conduct himself, his life so far had been somewhat confused. “Let me, therefore, make some resolutions, and some form of action, that, henceforth, I may live in all respects like a rational creature,” There were four rules:
- It is necessary for me to be extremely frugal for some time, till I have paid what I owe.
- To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action–the most amiable excellence in a rational being.
- To apply myself industriously to whatever business I take in hand, and not divert my mind from my business by any foolish project of suddenly growing rich; for industry and patience are the surest means of plenty.
- I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever.
Happy Fourth of July!
If you were to write your own Plan for Future Conduct what would it be?
Four rules only!
Go.
From: Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. (see pgs. 229-230)
But the steam car is now again on its way. The engine will probably be hermetically sealed, requiring no lubrication, no makeup water. Its condenser will operate with a vacuum. It will use diesel oil as fuel, and will cause very little pollution. It will be quiet, flexible, powerful. It will get off from a cold start in 30 seconds. It will contain so little water that the danger of explosion will be made negligible. It will have a fire, in a furnace instead of inside cylinders, but this will be so shielded, in the manner of a miner’s lamp, that it will not present a fire hazard in the garage. The engine itself will be so light that one mechanic can pick it up in his arms. It will last for years without attention. When in full production, it will be cheaper to build, and to operate, than present cars. The steam car will not be built by the present automobile industry unless some unit of that industry suddenly sees a great light, or public pressure or foreign imports force the decision, or government orders subsidize a new unit in the industry. It will have competition, as I will discuss later. But in fact, if I were disinterested, and had to bet, I might bet on steam.
– Vannevar Bush
I’m surprised Vannevar didn’t bring the steam car to market himself. He speaks of its components with such clarity. It’s like he’s reading off the cad files.
I wonder why the steam car idea never persisted? Why were battery powered cars realized instead? Will the steam car idea revive if the demand for batteries increases?
Bush, Vannevar. Pieces of the Action. San Francisco: Stripe Press, 2022. (see pgs. 229-230)
The asceticism of intellectual life is related to what we might call the asceticism of life in general: the cancer may or may not respond to treatment; a woodworker or an engineer must accept the limitations of the materials, regardless of the grand vision he or she began with; there are some stains that just will not come out, no matter how important the garment is; the office can hire and fire as much as it likes, but in the end only the people who work there can accomplish its tasks. The encounter with a given reality, and the resultant crushing of our desires and hopes, is an essential part of being a human being. Every mode of learning is a school of hard knocks.
– Zena Hitz
Hitz, Zena. Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. Princeton. Princeton University Press, 2020. (see pgs 86-87)
Zissou:
Zissou has an almost magical connection to the life of the sea. He speaks its language fluently. I’ve never met a boy like that in all my life.
– Lord Mandrake
Zizou:
Zidane is the soccer player who, in my life, produced the greatest array of chills, thrills, and sheer enjoyment—a living spectacle who put on an amazing show every single day. The best description of him that I ever heard came from Jose Altafini: “The way he used his foot, it was as if he were spreading butter on a slice of bread.”
– Carlo Ancelotti
And every time I attempted it I failed — There was no correspondence. So my failure as an artist, what you can’t do, I think further propelled me into the art of writing. But now, drawing interests me because having accomplished — but because writing has become easy, to a great extent, the taking up drawing is an entry into what I can’t do. Is an entry into the art of the amateur. And therefore it is discovery — it doesn’t matter if I fail. It doesn’t matter if I am a you know a — type artist. What matters really is that I’m doing it everyday and I’m trying to do it as honestly as I can. And that’s creatively, you know? Not to be complacent about it, but to challenge one’s self.
– Amitava Kumar. From minute 37:07 – 39:27
From Amit Varma’s interview on the Seen and Unseen Podcast. Listen in full below:
Be sure to listen to the Seen and Unseen podcast. I have a feeling soon, it will explode with western audiences.
It must.
And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
Neither brave man nor coward, I tell you —
It’s born with us the day that we are born.
– Hector
From the Iliad, by Homer. Hector Returns to Troy.
Translated by Robert Fagles
Floodlights and Goalposts 