Why isn't Frank O'Hara a painter?

Why I Am Not a Painter -- Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

....Like a Salted Peanut

I’ve been keeping a list of favorite movies since the mid-1990s and I only add a movie when for some reason, it really strikes me. Sometimes it was the plot. Other times it was the acting, the cinematography or the directing. There are now 101 movies on the list of the hundreds I’ve seen so I thought it was time to share it.

The most recent addition was The Phantom Carriage, a silent movie from 1922.

I haven’t included anything recent (i.e., not much from the 90s and none from the 2000s), but will in time.

A few themes have been revealed:

I’m a major fan of the following directors: Akira Kurosawa and John Ford each appears 4x. David Lean, F.W. Murnau, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Yasujiro Ozu, Billy Wilder and Elia Kazan each appear 3x on the list; Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, Henri-Georges Clouzot and Charlie Chaplin (yes, he directed…) each appear twice. Shockingly, I have never really considered myself a Stanley Kubrick fan and when I looked at the list, he appears 4x – more than any other director other than Kurosawa and Ford (and I don’t even have 2001: A Space Odyssey on my list). And only one Spielberg film. Over time, my long held belief that selecting movies based on the director (rather than actors/actresses) has grown stronger – the above directors account for 41 of my top 100 movies.

My all time favorite movie personalities – Orson Welles and Charlie Chaplin. Pretty much anything they do, I love.

As far as actors, favorites in addition to Welles and Chaplin include: Joseph Cotton, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, Boris Karloff, Michael Redgrave, Marlon Brando, Alec Guiness, Klaus Kinski, Chishu Ryu, James Garfield, Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Gene Hackman, Jack Lemmon, Daniel Day Lewis, John Wayne, Peter Sellers, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Cagney and Robinson are often unfairly stereo typed (check out Cagney in One, Two, Three and Yankee Doodle Dandy and Robinson in Double Indemnity and your impression of them will change).

Favorite actresses include Myrna Loy, Maureen O’Hara, Greer Garson, Gene Tierney, Ingrid Bergman, Eva Marie Saint, Claudette Colbert, Patricia Neal, Bette Davis, Ella Rains, Giulietta Masina, Norma Shearer and Veronica Lake.

As for my favorite movie decade, again I was a bit surprised. I love the ‘30s and ‘40s, but by far, the ‘50s dominate my list. The list includes the following:

7 from the 1920s, including some of my serious favorites like The Crowd.
11 movies from the 1930s (including Duck Soup, Goodbye Mr. Chips and 5 classic horror and thriller movies including The Mummy and Frankenstein)
19 movies from the 1940’s
27 from the 1950s, undoubtedly my favorite movie decade
14 from the 1960s
14 from the 1970s
7 from the 1980s
2 from the 1990s

And, before I go into the list, I’ll share a few favorite movie moments, without of course, revealing too much…

Bette Davis in All About Eve…"I'll admit I've seen better days but I'm still not to be had for the price of a cocktail--like a salted peanut."

The Vienna tunnel scene in the Third Man.

……Kinuyo Tanaka as Oharu…..

The HAUNTING mask in Eyes Without a Face.

…..Gene Tierney in the Ghost and Mrs Muir

Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain.

Frankenstein’s look of distress when the little girl doesn’t float like the little daisy.

Harpo harassing the lemonade vendor in Duck Soup.

Marlon Brando towards the end of Apocalypse now… “horror…the horror”.
The little girl at the beginning of Night of the Hunter dancing up the street with her brother singing the haunting “hing, hang hung…see what the hangman done…” and the underwater scene in the river…I’m being intentionally cryptic here…but these scenes haunt me more than any others!

Singing over Elvis’ grave in Spinal Tap. The chariot scene in Spartacus.
The opening scene of Faust where the plague descends on the town…
The little balloon in M…
ALL of the cinematography in Lawrence of Arabia (and pretty much every other David Lean movie). I’ve always thought the best way to pick movies was based on director and cinematographer rather than actors… and the Lean/Freddie Young collaboration made Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and Ryan’s Daughter.

Louise Brooks’ eyes and facial expressions in Pandora’s Box.

The flying saucer landing in The Day the Earth stood Still…and the hatch opening…maybe the ultimate movie scene!
Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon.

I could go on and on. I’ll keep adding to the list and undoubtedly will add to the ‘80s and ‘90s as times passes.

So here it is:

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972; directed by Werner Herzog; starring Klaus Kinski)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930; directed by Lewis Milestone)
America America (1963; directed by Elia Kazan; Oscar winner for art direction)
The Apartment (1960; directed by Billy Wilder; starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray)
Apocalypse Now (1979; directed by Francis Ford Coppola; starring Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen and Robert Duvall)
Battle of Algiers (1965; Italian; directed by Gillo Pontecorvo)
Being There (1979; directed by Hal Ashby; starring Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine)
The Bicycle Thief (1949; directed by Vittorio De Sica; starring Lamberto Maggiorani and Lianella Carell; Italian)
Bride of Frankenstein (1935; directed by James Whale; starring Boris Karloff and Valerie Hobson)
Bridge on the River Kwai (1957; directed by David Lean; starring William Holden and Alec Guiness; Oscar winner for best picture)
The Brief Encounter (1945; directed by David Lean; starring Celia Johnson and Stanley Holloway)

The Browning Version (1951; directed by Anthony Asquith; starring Michael Redgrave)
Casablanca (1942; directed by Michael Curtiz; starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958; directed by Richard Brooks; starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor)
City Lights (1931; silent; directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin)
A Clockwork Orange (1971; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Malcolm McDowell)

The Cranes Are Flying (1957; Russian; directed by Mikhail Kaltozov)
The Crowd (1928; silent; directed by King Vidor)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951; directed by Robert Wise; starring Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal)
Diabolique (1955; French; directed by Henri-George Clouzot)
Dersu Uzala (1975; Russian; directed by Akira Kurosawa)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975; directed by Sidney Lumet; starring Al Pacino, John Cazale and Charles Durning)
Double Indemnity (1944; directed by Billy Wilder; starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson)
Dr. Strangelove (1964; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott and Slim Pickens)

Duck Soup (1933; directed by Leo McCarey; starring the Marx Brothers)
Duel (1971; Steven Spielberg; starring Dennis Weaver)
The Exorcist (1973; directed by William Friedkin; starring Linda Blair, Max von Sydow and Ellen Burstyn)
Eyes Without a Face (1960; French; directed by George Franju)
Face in the Crowd (1957; directed by Elia Kazan; starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal)
Faust (1926; silent; directed by F.W. Murnau)
Fitzcarraldo (1982; directed by Werner Herzog; starring Klaus Kinski and Claudia Cardinale)

Floating Weeds (1959; directed by Yasujiro Ozu; starring Chishu Ryu and Ganjiro Nakamura)
Forbidden Games (1951; French; directed by René Clement)
Frankenstein (1931; directed by James Whale; starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive and Mae Clarke)
The French Connection (1971; directed by William Friedkin; starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider)
Gandhi 1982; Richard Attenborough; starring Ben Kingsley, with Trevor Howard and Martin Sheen)
Gaslight (1944; directed by George Cukor; starring Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten and Charles Boyer)
The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947; directed by Joseph Mankiewicz; starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison)
Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939; directed by Sam Wood; starring Robert Donat and Greer Garson)
The Great Dictator (1940; directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin)


The Great Escape (1963; directed by John Sturges; starring Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn)
Hud (1963; directed by Martin Ritt; starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939; directed by William Dieterle; starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara)
Ivan the Terrible (1945; Russian; directed by Sergei Eisenstein)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963; directed by Don Chaffey with special effects by Ray Harryhausen)
Kagemusha; “the Shadow Warrior” (1980; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Tatsuya Nakadai)

Last of the Mohicans (1992; directed by Michael Mann; starring Daniel Day-Lewis)
The Lady From Shanghai (1947; directed by Orson Welles; starring Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth)
The Last Picture Show (1971; directed by Peter Bogdanovich; starring Jeff Bridges, Cloris Leachman and Cybill Shepherd)
Late Spring (1949; directed by Yasujiro Ozu; starring Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara)
Lavender Hill Mob (1951; directed by Charles Crichton; starring Alec Guiness)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962; directed by David Lean; starring Alec Guiness, Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif)
Le Samourai (1967; directed by Jean-Pierre Melville; starring Alain Delon)
The Life of Oharu (1952; directed by Kenji Mizoguchi; starring Kinuyo Tanaka and VERY briefly, a young Toshiro Mifune)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997; documentary; directed and written by Werner Herzog)
The Little Foxes (1941; directed by William Wyler; starring Bette Davis)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962; directed by John Ford; starring John Wayne, James Stewart and Lee Marvin)
M (1931; German; directed by Fritz Lang; starring Peter Lorre)
Metropolis (1926; silent; directed by Fritz Lang)
Moby Dick (1956; directed by John Huston; starring Gregory Peck and Orson Welles)
Modern Times (1936; directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin)
The Mummy (1932; directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff)

My Darling Clementine (1946; directed by John Ford; starring Henry Fonda, Victor Mature and Walter Brennan)
My Left Foot (1989; directed by Jim Sheridan; starring Daniel Day Lewis)
Night of the Hunter (1955; directed by Charles Laughton; starring Shelley Winters, Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish)
Nights of Cabiria (1957; directed by Federico Fellini)
Nosferatu (1922; silent; directed by F.W. Murnau)
Notorious (1946; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains)
On the Waterfront (1954; directed by Elia Kazan; starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and Eva Marie Saint)
One, Two, Three (1961; directed by Billy Wilder; starring James Cagney)
Out of the Past (1947; directed by Jacques Tourneur; starring Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglass)
The Party (1968; directed by Blake Edwards; starring Peter Sellers)
Pandora’s Box (1929; directed by Georg Wilhem Pabst; starring Louise Brooks)
Paths of Glory (1957; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Kirk Douglass)
The Phantom Carriage (1922; directed by Victor Sjöström)
The Quiet Man (1952; directed by John Ford; starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara)
Ran (1985; directed by Akira Kurosawa)
The Red Shoes (1948; directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; starring Moira Shearer)
The Searchers (1956; directed by John Ford; starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood)

The Seventh Seal (1956; Japanese; directed by Ingmar Bergman; starring Max von Sydow)

The Seven Samurai (1954; directed by Akira Kurosawa)
Shane (1953; directed by George Stevens; starring Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur and Jack Palance)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952; directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen; starring Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds)
Sleeper (1973; directed by and starring Woody Allen)
Spartacus (1960; directed by Stanley Kubrick; starring Kirk Douglass, Jean Simmons and Laurence Olivier)
The Stranger (1947; directed by and starring Orson Welles; also starring Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young)
Sullivan’s Travels (1941; directed by Preston Sturges; starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake)
Sunrise (1927; silent; directed by F.W. Murnau)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957; directed by Alexander Mackendrick; starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis)
Taxi Driver (1976; directed by Martin Scorsese; starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster and Cybill Shepherd)
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974; directed by Tobe Hooper)
The Thing (1982; directed by John Carpenter; starring Kurt Russell and Wilford Brimley)
The Thing From Another World (1951; directed by Christian Nyby; starring Margaret Sheridan) The Third Man (1949; directed by Carol Reed; starring Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles)
This is Spinal Tap (1984; directed by Rob Reiner; starring Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer)*
Tokyo Story (1953; directed by Yasujiro Ozu; starring Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara)
Tomorrow (1972; directed by Joseph Anthony; starring Robert Duvall)
Touch of Evil (1958; directed by and starring Orson Welles; also starring Charlton Heston and Marlene Dietrich)
Vampyr (1931; silent; directed by Carl Dreyer)
The Wages of Fear (1953; French; directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot)

White Heat (1949; directed by Raoul Walsh; starring James Cagney)

I hope you enjoy the list!

Stone Age Superstitions and Eating Contests

The BBC US Correspondent, Justin Webb, is returning home to the UK after 8 years. His parting thoughts are an insightful, and I think very fair, description of the US. And I must say, after 3 years away from DC, NYC and New England (all of which I consider home), being able to see your home from a bit of a distance is a learning experience which can’t be replicated. I have felt this keenly during the final Bush years; during the election of Obama; during the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates; and during each of my visits home where the lights, the noise, the marketing, the size of the cars (and the children) become more and more noticeable. I have always said that I love the United States. And during difficult times, it would be very easy to pile on and criticize. More challenging is what Webb has done (and what I will continue trying to do) – recognize the contrasts; love the opportunity, the potential and the good things while being honest enough to hate the flaws.

By way of example, Webb describes the nearly unfathomable contrasts that exist in the US (i.e., the fact that, in the US someone like Judge Sotomayer can rise from rough circumstances in NYC to reach the Supreme Court AND a couple can pray over their daughter and watch her die in Wisconsin when an insulin shot likely would have saved her):

“….there must be something creating the drive, and part of that something is the poverty of the alternative, the discomfort of the ordinary lives that most Americans endure and the freedom that Americans have to go to hell if that is the decision they take. This is the atmosphere in which Nobel Prize winners are nurtured. A nation which will one day mass produce a cure for type one diabetes, could not, would not, save little Kara Neumann from the bovine idiocy of her religious parents.”

Read for yourself……..

Public Art and Gormley’s "Another Place"

Its difficult to know what captures different people….or even what captures me. But you know when it does.

"Quantum Cloud I"

"Insider VIII"

Those do.

I try to be observant. But I could definitely do it better. And a lot of the time, I’m really just buzzing around….until something freezes me. Like a little metal man. Antony Gormley has done this for me a few times….near where I work, there’s a Gormley figure on a corner on Euston Road in a really out of the way place…very easy to miss. And he’s just staring in a window. Looking somewhat surprised. And confused. Leaning slightly back as if a bit startled.

"Reflection"

And, as you can see, he does it elsewhere:

On rooftops:

In a wheatfield........

"Standing Ground"

Staring in a window............

"Total Strangers"

......standing by the road....and slightly in it.

"Total Strangers"

Perhaps, most famously, in the flooded crypt of Winchester cathedral:

"Sound II"

….or, many figures just staring out at the water at Crosby beach near Liverpool…..

….100 of them…2.5 kilometers along the beach, 500 meters apart…one kilometer into the estuary so the tide at various times fully engulfs some of them.

Anyway, it makes me laugh. And it disturbs me a little….and I sometimes feel like the Gormley figure. All of which I love.

So what is it then about these little lead and metal men that move me? They seem quite peaceful and serene. But troubled at the same time…or at least confused. Little frozen passive watchers of the world as it changes. Wondering what’s happening…who are all these people running around? And what are they doing? Or on the beach, watching the container ships and the urban decay of Liverpool’s port district. We checked out Gormley's Another Place exhibit in 2008 on a typically grey and drizzly English day and spent about an hour just wandering the beach and staring out at the water with the figures....relating to them. And wondering with them about all sorts of stuff.

Gormley himself described it like this:

"The idea was to test time and tide, stillness and movement, and somehow engage with the daily life of the beach. This was no exercise in romantic escapism. The estuary of the Elbe can take up to 500 ships a day and the horizon was often busy with large container ships."

So much of it has to do with the relationship between the sculpture and the environment…whether it’s urban or more natural. The way in which a piece is placed within the surroundings and the effect of the weather, the light, people, cars, ships, noise, etc. And the interplay with the environment. It can create (or maybe capture) a mood or a thought perfectly. Gormley always makes me want to stop and think about what has happened and how the place became the way it is…it reminds me a little bit of the R Crumb cartoon Short History of America:



So Tolstoy said in what I think is a good attempt to define the undefinable – “art”:

"Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them."

"Baby"
Gormley sure does that for me.


………….And so does Andy Goldsworthy, but more on that some other time!








Dead hazel sticksbent overstuck into bottom of shallow pondwaited for froth and mud to clearhad to go back into water several times to bend a stick that had sprung upthen had to wait all over again for water to clearvery calmtook a long time for froth to float awayovercast and humid
Bentham, Yorkshire
September 1980

The Cool Ruler, the King of Vibes and more

Some of my favorites....from Jamaica, Chicago and Mali

Gregory Isaacs, "Tune In"

Lionel Hampton, "Flying Home"

Ali Farka Toure, Niafoϊdié

This is Just to Say.....

Welcome to my blog.

Nature, music, food, art, architecture, travel, friends and experiencing life to its fullest is where its at for me……happiness means being able to take the time to appreciate the world and how crazy, fun and amazing it can be…and how baffling it sometimes is…not always easy though as we deal with people and the world. The people that I hold closest are endlessly curious and energetic about the world while at the same time, not being merely self indulgent or escapist…they engage and act, striving to live an excellent life, with integrity, energy and passion aimed at leaving a positive mark, big or small.

In keeping this blog, I will share those things that have made me smile (or groan) or that have struck me in a way that I thought others would find interesting……and I hope you enjoy these little observations…And, in the words of the Art Blakey, may it “wash away the dust of everyday life…”

Also, having bounced around quite a bit in my life, so many of my closest friends are spread all over the world and it is often very difficult to keep in close contact…this is a way to connect people and to share and exchange thoughts will all of those that are elsewhere, and enjoying life in their own way.

...And I thought William Carlos Williams poem, "This is Just to Say" captures it all perfectly.....