Went to see The Two Towers last night. Getting out to see a movie is a real treat for us now that we have a 9 month old daughter to look after. To tell the truth, I don't really miss going to the movies that much. If there were more truly good movies, perhaps I would feel different.

The two segments have so far been beautifully filmed. The special effects were well controlled, for the most part. And, in particular, I realized last night just how closely they recreated Alan Lee’s vision of Middle Earth. If I remember correctly he was actually involved in the production of the movies. For those unfamiliar with Alan Lee, he is a talented mixed media artist who created most beautiful illustrations for a special edition of The Lord of the Rings. Very few artists can touch Tolkien’s work without making it seem a bit silly.

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Dear X— (and J— and R—, whom I’m cc’ing),

Your quick comment on my poetry has kind of sparked me. Yes, I suppose it IS what I have chosen. And yet, I am very fearful of never writing anything really worthwhile.

I have this impression of the great writers as intellectual giants which cannot be met. And I have an impression of the current practitioners being an in-crowd full of allusions and inner-knowledge. And me, a college drop-out, who burns all candles at every end, burning quickly, smoky, short-lived. I picked up a writer’s magazine today. Nothing too high-brow, I think, and yet it is full of assumption and jargon. Names bandied, laced, and strewn.( Read more... )

On Wednesday I mentioned Andrei Tarkovsky and his book Sculpting In Time. Following is a quote:

Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitably, losing all sense of our human calling....

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I was writing yesterday about the relationship between the iconographer and the Church. I think that the nature of the role of artists and audience is much like this. Some hold that art is beyond all moral or ethical consideration--Yeats, Blake, and Pushkin come to mind. Oscar Wilde once wrote, "There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." I cannot agree, however.

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