“Elvis” (2022)
lux aeterna
for one
lightning strike
for one
brief hallowed hour
fortune
and
fate
Heaven’s gate
hands
over
— J.S.
“lux aeterna”
Tag: movies
“seize the day!”
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.
— A. E. Housman
“Light Of The World”
A Christmas Carol (1984)
deepening,
deepening,
deepening,
deepening —
the soul aspires
to pure flame
— J.S.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away…
photograph by Yoann Boyer via Unsplash
Scene: Int. Luke’s X-Wing – Cockpit
[Luke looks to the targeting device, then away as he hears Ben’s voice.]
BEN’S VOICE: “Luke, trust me.”
[Luke’s hand reaches for the control panel and presses the button. The targeting device moves away.]
“Comin’ through the rye”
Brief Encounter (1945)
GIN a body meet a body
Comin’ through the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
Every lassie has her laddie,—
Ne’er a ane hae I;
Yet a’ the lads they smile at me
When comin’ through the rye.
Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo’e mysel’;
But whaur his hame, or what his name,
I dinna care to tell.Gin a body meet a body
Comin’ frae the town,
Gin a body greet a body,
Need a body frown?
Every lassie has her laddie,—
Ne’er a ane hae I;
Yet a’ the lads they smile at me
When comin’ through the rye.
Amang the train there is a swain
I dearly lo’e mysel’;
But whaur his hame, or what his name,
I dinna care to tell.
— Robert Burns
Why Does It Have To Be Wrong Or Right?
“Savez-vous quelque bien qui console du regret d’un monde?”
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west;
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
— Coleridge
Here in the bar the piano man’s found another nail for my heart
An important discovery
Pick Up The Pieces
“You and Your Friends”, Blake (B.K.) Inc.
Right Place, Wrong Time
Bob’s Love Affair (1915)
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June —
I’m in love with the other woman
Two Women (ca. 1915)
‘For further I could say “This man’s untrue,”
And knew the patterns of his foul beguiling;
Heard where his plants in others’ orchards grew…
— A Lover’s Complaint
“He’s a very sweet guy…and he’s deeply unhappy.”
The Birth of Bacchus
La Dolce Vita (1960)
But if he be indeed the thund’ring Jove,
Bid him, when next he courts the rites of love,
Descend triumphant from th’ etherial sky,
In all the pomp of his divinity,
Encompass’d round by those celestial charms,
With which he fills th’ immortal Juno’s arms…
— Ovid, Metamorphoses (Tr. Garth, Dryden, et al.)
elegy
The Mirror (1975)
Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood…
— Joyce, Ulysses
Gatsby? What Gatsby?
a fever, longing still
Hot Rod Girl (1956)
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav’nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult…?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
— Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard
“I was in love once — would you believe that?”
Northeastern University Course Catalog, 1978-79
“I, uh, I was in love once — would you believe that? But I possessed neither the courage nor the optimism — perhaps the depth of feeling — that you two have.”
— A Christmas Carol (1984)
“Posts on…”
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Seaward, white gleaming thro’ the busy scud
With arching Wings the sea-mew o’er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed; now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.
— Coleridge
Too Close For Comfort
What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
Rod Stewart in the “Rear Window”
tempus fugit, sed amor reliquias
The Saint and the Singer (1914)
“What are you going to do?” Hans Castorp asked, flabbergasted.
“I am leaving,” she repeated, smiling in apparent amazement at the frozen look on his face.
“It’s not possible,” he said. “You’re joking.”
“Most certainly not. I am perfectly serious. I am leaving…”
A whole world was collapsing inside him.
— The Magic Mountain
If Ever You’re In My Arms Again
I can be myself, how ’bout you?
Just Mother (1914)
How say you? Let us, O my dove,
Let us be unashamed of soul,
As earth lies bare to heaven above!
How is it under our control
To love or not to love?
— Robert Browning, Two in the Campagna (excerpt)
Transfigured Night
Wild Strawberries (1957)
“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It wasn’t a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table — Samsa was a travelling salesman — and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.
— Kafka, Metamorphosis
Forty years is a long time to be misunderstood
I remember happier days…
My joking friends well they all moved away.
Bruce Woolley and The Camera Club — “English Garden”
Cuts Both Ways
“Now Close the Windows”
Le feu follet (1963)
Now close the windows and hush all the fields;
If the trees must, let them silently toss;
No bird is singing now, and if there is,
Be it my loss.It will be long ere the marshes resume,
It will be long ere the earliest bird:
So close the windows and not hear the wind,
But see all wind-stirred.
— Robert Frost
We gotta get right back to where we started from
He’s A Mover
cf. American Mutoscope and Biograph Co., “Foxy Grandpa and Polly in a little hilarity” (1902)
“He’s A Mover” by Nikki & The Corvettes
The Way You Look Tonight
cf. Nina Leen, “Teen-Age Girls” (LIFE, 1944)
“Design For Dreaming”
cf. MPO Productions, “Design for Dreaming” (1956) (Digital Edit)
One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl.
Higher Ground
A Christmas Carol (1984)
Burnt Norton
Sweet Hitch-Hiker
Detour (1945)
Pick Up The Pieces
Your memory seems like a living thing — I never know if I’m imagining
cf. Thomas Eakins, The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton (1900) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Your memory seems like a living thing
I never know if I’m imagining
I look at your face and I know that it’s impossible
Forgetting it’s just a dream
Now I’m hearing your voice saying anything is possible
Forgetting it’s just a dream…
Time passes much too quickly when we’re together laughing
Claude Monet, Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899) and That Junior Miss Spirit : GM Photographic
“Now you recall this memory as if it were someone else’s story.”
cf. The Fire Within (Le feu follet) (1963) and Home Movie: 98927: St. Croix River and 1956 Honeymoon
“Now, you recall this memory, as if
it were someone else’s story…”
—from Margo Button, “With No Explanation”
Been breaking down
Do you want me now?
Who goes with Fergus?
8 1/2 (1963)
Who will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
—W. B. Yeats, Who goes with Fergus?
His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof:
Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.
His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead:
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love’s bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
“For me the past is forever.”
“With tears, and pray’rs, and late-repenting love…” (Solaris and the Aeneid)
Left: Solaris (1972)
Right: Bartolomeo Pinelli, Aeneas and the shade of Dido (detail)
“She probably sensed that I didn’t really love her. But now I do…”
—Solaris (1972)
With tears, and pray’rs, and late-repenting love…
–Virgil, The Sixth Book of the Aeneis
Fièvre du Samedi soir au Moulin de la Galette
cf. Auguste Renoir, Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)
And that sweet city woman,
She moves through the light…
Do The Hustle
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., Charity ball (1897)
“…making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy.”
Somehow, the summer seemed to slip by faster this time. Maybe it wasn’t this summer, but all the summers that, in this my fortieth summer, slipped by so fast. There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy.
–A. Bartlett Giamatti, “The Green Fields of the Mind” (excerpt)
“She tiptoed very early the next morning into Lytton’s bedroom…”
“Planning to pay him out she tiptoed very early the next morning into Lytton’s bedroom, taking a pair of scissors with which she intended to snip away his beard while he slept. It was to be one of those devastating practical jokes of which she was so fond – a perfect revenge for his audacity. But the plan misfired. As she leant over him, Lytton opened his eyes and looked at her. It was a moment of curious intimacy, and she, who hypnotized so many others, was suddenly hypnotized herself.”
—Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: The New Biography
She’s a wizard with her sheers
She’s been turning heads for years…
Van Stephenson – “Modern Day Delilah”
Who Loves You?
In The Darkest Place
“The Fire Within” (Le feu follet)
Since you put me down
It seems I’ve been very gloomy
You may laugh, but pretty girls look right through me
They don’t sense the faintest glimmering
That is the torch I bear…
“If she is well and happy, put a mark thus +; if—…”
Bright Star – Official Trailer [HD] – YouTube
The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die — I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, God! God! God! Every thing I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her — I see her — I hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her a moment. This was the case when I was in England; I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time that I was a prisoner at Hunt’s, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again — Now! — O that I could be buried near where she lives! I am afraid to write to her — to receive a letter from her — to see her handwriting would break my heart — even to hear of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be more than I can bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do? Where can I look for consolation or ease? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out. When you write to me, which you will do immediately, write to Rome (poste restante)— if she is well and happy, put a mark thus +; if ——…
—Letter from John Keats to Charles Brown (November 1, 1820)
Elton John – “Love Lies Bleeding”
I still think about you every time I’m ridin’ in my car
cf. Photograph by why kei via Unsplash and Like Crazy – Official Trailer [HD] – YouTube
Tell Stella I’m sorry
Swimming In The Flood (“The Swimmer” and “Mr. Flood’s Party”)
“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,The last word wavered; and the song being done,He raised again the jug regretfullyAnd shook his head, and was again alone.There was not much that was ahead of him,And there was nothing in the town below—Where strangers would have shut the many doorsThat many friends had opened long ago.
—Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Mr. Flood’s Party”
The place was dark. Was it so late that they had all gone to bed? Had Lucinda stayed at the Westerhazys’ for supper? Had the girls joined her there or gone someplace else? Hadn’t they agreed, as they usually did on Sunday, to regret all their invitations and stay at home? He tried the garage doors to see what cars were in but the doors were locked and rust came off the handles onto his hands. Going toward the house, he saw that the force of the thunderstorm had knocked one of the rain gutters loose. It hung down over the front door like an umbrella rib, but it could be fixed in the morning. The house was locked, and he thought that the stupid cook or the stupid maid must have locked the place up until he remembered that it had been some time since they had employed a maid or a cook. He shouted, pounded on the door, tried to force it with his shoulder, and then, looking in at the windows, saw that the place was empty.
—John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
I don’t know you anymore
Name and face have been obscured
Change them if you want but
I don’t know you anymore…
Blackout
If I can’t have you I don’t want nobody baby
cf. Coronet, “Marriage Is a Partnership” (1951)
“To dreams that never will come true…”
Sad eyes, you knew there’d come a day when we would have to say goodbye
At the late night, double feature, picture show…
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Ahab is demoniac and Brandy does her best to understand
I Was Made For Lovin’ You
Space Truckin’
Love lift us up where we belong
I’ve had the time of my life
Happenin’ All Over Again
John Sapiro 