in the context of the movie, maybe the point is that he doesn't know what he likes, much less wants, he just talks everything to death. So the listing is a bit ironic, innit?
― kenan, Sunday, 23 September 2007 20:40 (sixteen years ago) link
"Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Uh, like what? Okay. Um, for me... oh, I would say... what, James Joyce, to name one thing... and William Morris, and..."Love Will Tear Us Apart", and... Ella Fitzgerads recording of "Mack the Knive"... Woody Allen movies up to Crimes and Misdemeanors, naturally... "The Rings of Saturn" by W G Sebald...Peter Lorre, Caribou...the last minute or so of The Blacksmith by Planxty...my homemade coconut macaroons..."
― Ned Trifle II, Sunday, 23 September 2007 22:31 (sixteen years ago) link
None of the above. Artists overrate art as a reason to live.
― Aimless, Monday, 24 September 2007 04:15 (sixteen years ago) link
Please explain this.
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 12:45 (sixteen years ago) link
aimless otm
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 12:48 (sixteen years ago) link
You explain it then.
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:04 (sixteen years ago) link
would have thought people > art?
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:06 (sixteen years ago) link
I'd rather live for sex and touch and tears and love and camaraderie than for any artist I can think of.
― Tuomas, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:07 (sixteen years ago) link
co-sign with aimless even though I feel bitter about it
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:07 (sixteen years ago) link
(x-post)
Haha, me and Enrique agreeing for once!
yeah isaac kinda comes to the same conclusion at the end of this little monologue which leads him to take action for the first time. and it's too late because he is a blinkered douche. kinda the point guys!
― ghost rider, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:08 (sixteen years ago) link
maybe -- but not the point of the thread, which is emo+++
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:09 (sixteen years ago) link
I haven't seen the movie in years, I was answering to Ned rather than criticizing it.
― Tuomas, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:09 (sixteen years ago) link
haha emo in finding itself the point of any given subject non-shockah
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:15 (sixteen years ago) link
-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, September 24, 2007 1:06 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
-- Tuomas, Monday, September 24, 2007 1:07 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
Oh well sure, all those things are otm but I cannot personally underestimate the real joy I feel when art and music moves me in ways I don't really understand.
And sometimes, people don't say or do the right things, or at least the things you want them to say and do and sometimes art does. I don't think there's anything wrong in recognising that.
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:23 (sixteen years ago) link
i know that when i'm over-relying on these things something's a bit wrong. when i was a teenager music was pretty much *everything*. it wasn't all bad but i was making up for other things that weren't there.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:25 (sixteen years ago) link
yeah i am just defending this monologue's use in the movie, not in this weird thread
― ghost rider, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:32 (sixteen years ago) link
Never understood the placement of Sentimental Education in this. I think Woody is fronting like he's highbrow, and prefers Madame Bovary like everyone else in the universe. "Shopping and adultery" >>> "shopping and minor archaic French politics."
― nabisco, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:41 (sixteen years ago) link
xp
When I was a teenager girls were everything. And I would certainly have tried to impress them with shit about Joyce and, iirc, Kafka.
This reminds me of Jimmy Boyle's books. Now, obviously, doing sculpture wasn't the one thing that stopped him being a number one thug and as he found out, the realities of live can't be overcome by art alone but it certainly helped him see beyond his personal experiences and I think art has done that for me on many occasions.
I don't think I over-rely on them or I would kill myself if I never saw Picasso's ceramics again but it certainly makes for a nice afternoon.
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:41 (sixteen years ago) link
quitney and j0hn d be on a nick hornby tip here
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:47 (sixteen years ago) link
Sentimental Education is a rather more mature piece of work than Bovary though
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:47 (sixteen years ago) link
low blow
xpost
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:49 (sixteen years ago) link
If I knew anything about nick hornby I might be insulted but as it stands acrobat might as well have said "you dudes sound like Zwoilatz the Unfortunate"
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:51 (sixteen years ago) link
Nick Hornby's main moral "... then I realized that listening to music and stuff was lame and we got married and were properly happy. THE END" He was the Judd Aptow of the '90s.
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:53 (sixteen years ago) link
Maturity is counter-revolutionary!
Err ... well, yes, more mature and more finely wrought, and I actually sometimes wish it were still the standard for older men now to write grand S.E./Dance-to-the-Music-of-Time books about the milieus of their younger days (if only so we'd have more interesting cultural continuity), but ... well, basically Bovary has slightly more shopping
― nabisco, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:54 (sixteen years ago) link
Hornby is disdainful of pop culture, though – or, rather, pop culture's ok as long as it affirms the Importance of Art.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 24 September 2007 13:54 (sixteen years ago) link
well, basically Bovary has slightly more shopping
Somebody give this man tenure!!
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:58 (sixteen years ago) link
(acrobat: if that's Hornby's point, then it's hardly what I'm saying - only that, y'know, the adolescent urge toward seeing art as the thing which can be elevated in importance above all matters human & social [not only adolescent though lol, I think Flaubert believed exactly that] is hardly the last stop on the line)
― J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 13:59 (sixteen years ago) link
what he said
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:01 (sixteen years ago) link
Flaubert's also tracing how adolescent virtues decay, and how adolescent virtues reveal themselves as rather ordinary longings when maturing.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:01 (sixteen years ago) link
"slightly more shopping" = high-level Marxist/materialist analysis
― nabisco, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:09 (sixteen years ago) link
I jus read
-- Aimless, Monday, 24 September 2007 05:15 (9 hours ago) Bookmark Link
through
-- J0hn D., Monday, 24 September 2007 14:07 (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
and my kneejerked.
there was this mad as a box review of that simon reynolds post punk book. it's main arguement was that the post punk period was only of any importance because of the Rock Against Racism movement and the damage this wrought to the National Front. it probably wasn't mad as a box. that's unfair. very unfair. i have not read Flaubert but i have read some nick hornby. this is proably bad, right? anyway, surely "art" can be solidarity as well as the other stuff? it can be communication and community cos "art" is made by people and consumed by people and er stuff. is that... adorno? i don't know. maybe this is just about Prefab Sprout. "somethings hurt more than cars and girls"... right?
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:12 (sixteen years ago) link
i think that was that crazy trot ben watson, reviewing grimey simey.
'madame bovary' is part (start?) of (basically) art for art's sake, or that's how he went down in the UK. perfection in art -- formal perfection -- is all. and that mindset is adolescent or at least cosseted.
but there are other types of art, that maybe connect with life and lived experience more. but even still the idea that those things -- things 'about' life -- make life worth living seems to me almost a paradox?
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:20 (sixteen years ago) link
Like The Beautiful South?
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:25 (sixteen years ago) link
why not.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:26 (sixteen years ago) link
hmm i think i am misinterpreting a little. i think maybe "art" could be thought of like a tool, it's far better for doing somethings with than others. and if it makes you happy isn't that a reason to live? this kind of makes everything a hierachy, which seems wrong. like the smiths lp = 12 points of happy but getting amrried = 100 points or something. i am now thinking of that scene in children of men where clive owen meets his cousin with all the art and then um...
is adolescent pleasure really so bad? hmm i think i am still misinterpreting.
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:38 (sixteen years ago) link
i think of needing reasons to live as a bad thing. like, if you're at the point where you need to count or name things that make life worth living -- not a good sign! and if all you can come up with is not so much art, as specific art-works, then YAAAOOOW. and i think woody is playing us in the film, or owning up that he's played himself and that what *really* matters is the teenage piece of ass he's somehow acquired.
but this thread doesn't carry that narrative function, as it were.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:43 (sixteen years ago) link
I dunno. It feels like there is a hidden suggestion that you dig and discover some more elemental truth about yourself as you get older. Which seems kind of scary and reductive from where I am sitting. Like I'd rather transformation rather than discovery, maybe. And just the possibility that art or whatever can actually be transformative rather than merely a placebo for your hormonal agonies is kind of cool. Maybe that's all it is, kinda cool.
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:44 (sixteen years ago) link
woops that isn't a reply to quits last post
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:45 (sixteen years ago) link
i agree with that, which is why i think making a list of art like woody does is lame. because famously art is not transformative for woody -- it was only transformative when he was young. there are a couple of exceptions, like the stupid 'swedish movies, naturally', like wtf, all of them? consecrating the ephemeral as capital-a Art, that's the thing i'm talking about.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:48 (sixteen years ago) link
consecrating the ephemeral as capital-a Art, that's the thing i'm talking about.
could you explain this a little more. the only woody fiolm i've seen all the way through is Radio Days oddly.
― acrobat, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:52 (sixteen years ago) link
BUNCH OF CULTURAL REFERENCES... ANNOYING NEW YORK REFERENCE... 17-YEAR-OLD CHICK I'M SCHEMING
-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 23 September 2007 20:35 (Yesterday) Link
loool
― and what, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:53 (sixteen years ago) link
I think art vs. people life is a false distinction, because obviously in real life you don't usually have to choose, but I do think it's sadder if it's only art that gives you the reason to live than if it's only people. It's like the classic scenario where your house is burning, and you have to choose whether you save a priceless painting or your cat.
Also, lets not forget that in many cases art is a collective experience: movies, gigs, dancing, etc. Often it's hard and pointless to make the distinction between "art experience" and "human connection".
― Tuomas, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:56 (sixteen years ago) link
The Only Thing Worth Living For ... http://youtube.com/watch?v=qWyBxrZLwtE
― sexyDancer, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:59 (sixteen years ago) link
cats arent people, tuomas
― and what, Monday, 24 September 2007 14:59 (sixteen years ago) link
Basically, I love art and when I feel low and people can't reach me - and obviously as quit it says if you're at the point where you need to count or name things that make life worth living -- not a good sign! - but when I am at that point then I do find that art (by which I mean music and film and architecture) does offer me a way back to feeling human again. Having recently watched my father pass away I have to say I found the ability of some art to do this for me extremely helpful.
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 20:35 (sixteen years ago) link
He hated Woody Allen films incidentally. But loved trad jazz. So you see they could have found something in common through art!
― Ned Trifle II, Monday, 24 September 2007 20:37 (sixteen years ago) link
you guys upthread are being ridiculous, the speech clearly lists a bunch of social/personal things along with art and whatnot
― J.D., Tuesday, 25 September 2007 05:08 (sixteen years ago) link
but hey obv life would be better if art and movies and music didn't exist and we all just sat around a big table enjoying each other's company
― J.D., Tuesday, 25 September 2007 05:09 (sixteen years ago) link
tuomas is totally otm; u guys are all weird for trying to separate out "art" from "people" or whatever
― max, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 05:16 (sixteen years ago) link