Three Reasons
to stay indoors no matter how sunny it is:
Las Hurdes or Land Without Bread is a 27 minute long surrealist documentary film by Luis Bunuel focusing on the mountainous region of Las Hurdes in Spain, the extreme poverty its inhabitants faced on a daily basis and their struggle to find meaning, humanity and identity against such conditions. During the filming, Bunuel ordered an injured mountain goat to be shot so he could cover it in honey and film it being stung to death by bees.
Dark Was The Night, the charity compilation put together by Red Hot and members of The National and featuring contributions from artists such as Bon Iver, Anthony and the Johnsons and Beirut, has been doing the rounds and doing very well for a good minute now. The one track that really endures for me is “So Far Around The Bend” by The National. Exquisitely arranged and restrained, the song courts a beautiful and mysterious lady lost in an all-swallowing city and has an incredible resigned romance to it that is impossible to shake off.
The Dying Fall – JG Ballard’s last completed work before his recent death:
Three years have passed since the collapse of the Tower of Pisa, but only now can I accept the crucial role that I played in the destruction of this unique landmark. Over twenty tourists died as the thousands of tons of marble lost their grasp on the air and collapsed to the ground. Among them was my wife Elaine, who had climbed to the topmost tier and was looking down at me when the first visible crack appeared in the tower’s base. Never were tragedy and triumph so intimately joined, as if Elaine’s pride in braving the worn and slippery stairs had been punished by the unseen forces that had sustained this unbalanced mass of masonry for so many centuries.
I realise now that another element – farce – was present on that day. By chance a passing tourist on the steps of the cathedral had taken a photograph of the tower as the crack reached the third floor and a tell-tale section of cornice began its fall to earth. The photograph, endlessly published throughout the world, clearly shows the four startled tourists on the uppermost deck. Three of them are leaning back on their heels, hands raised to grip the sky, aware that the ancient campanile has moved under their feet.
Elaine, alone, has already seized the rail, and is staring at the grass waiting for her nearly two hundred feet below. Using a magnifying glass, one can see that, true to her quirky and mocking character, she shows almost no alarm. Her eyes have noticed the falling cornice, and I like to think that she is already planning to sue the municipality of Pisa for neglecting the safety of its tourists, and is collecting evidence that in due course she will present to her lawyers. Read more at the Guardian.
