Posted by The Happy Tutor
Before the days of anesthetic how similar would have been the scenes of surgery and torment. The satirist will say he bears no malice to the man he wounds cutting away the corruption to leave the patient healed, yet the patient behind the duct tape gag screams and struggles, and the satirist whistles as he works. Ever it has been so. Malice, lust, will to power, sadism from these too art is made.
This is only softly-related, so bear with me. A day or two after after 911 I was watching the televised coverage. At one point, the cameraman had framed the wreckage from medium distance, the rubble, the ragged ghostly columns, holy smoke...the smoke was drifting slowly, ever so slowly in and around the walls of the doomed canyon, dark/light/grey/blue deathly cityscape...and soft shafts of light, very subtle, advancing and receding in the gloom. That is so beautiful, I said, half unconscious. Friends and family looked at me agape -- no one protested, nor disagreed -- just agape. This footage is better than any other for me, fuck your flight 93, fuck your oliver stone, but where is it? Lost, except to the cameraman, perhaps, a director, a producer, a technogeek. And I am left with what? Memories of death, disconnected. Cnn.
Who remains to understand the mourning?
Posted by: a.mole | August 23, 2006 at 07:24 PM
Sublimity is awfull. Full of awe and overwhelming and often very sad. Tragedy.
Posted by: Tutor | August 23, 2006 at 07:50 PM