Out Stealing Clouds

I steal all my best ideas from Katherine Hill. Not only am I taking her idea of posting about neato word clouds, I'm also going to use Ernest Hemingway as my first example:

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Turns out just right, no?

I am furthermore going to borrow Katherine's idea and add a word cloud of my own writing because it's amusing. This is from my grad school submission which was, for reasons known to my 22 year old self, a crown of sonnets.

Field Poem

An added benefit to this one was my theatrical gasp of horror as I reread the poem (you'll note the preponderance of "like" and "thought," always the hallmarks of good writing). Now, thanks to the word cloud version, I can view Field and Trace as pleasantly colored abstractions and pretend the actual poem doesn't exist.

My first date with Superstar

I was a little hazy on the details but I knew that my mom and stepdad saw Todd Haynes' Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story as it was originally, haphazardly distributed.  So I texted the matriarch herself, who wrote back saying it was their second date, in a church basement, on "Samsonite folding chairs" (Jeff Bridges in The Door in the Floor would be very impressed by those specific details mom!).

I credit my stepdad for selecting the film because he has inexplicable viewing habits (if you only knew, dear readers, how many times I've seen parts of the Goop-Huey Lewis gem Duets in his presence). But I myself neglected to see Superstar until this weekend, which is inexcusable given its autobiographical and Haynesian significance. Not to mention the film commences with Karen Carpenter's death, exactly one month after my momentous birth.  

This was not the campy Carpenter biopic I was expecting (given that all the main roles are performed by modified Barbie dolls, I thought campy was the only possible mood). Instead, I saw a documentary on anorexia and a wider examination of 70's America, with Haynes' sharp eye cutting up cultural, political and social trends frame by frame.

The director's greatest strength here is editing--while only 43 minutes long, Superstar has as many cuts as a feature length film. He matches cuts ironically: a shot framing a pile of fried buffet food turns into to the first appearance of an Ex-Lax box. Even better, a topographical globe spins into a disco ball, spraying light over the band. That vision informs some of the great cuts in Far From Heaven, as when Julianne Moore turns from her kitchen straight into the revolving doors of her husband's office building.

The lighting in Superstar is dim but evocative. I'm think of a particular scene where darkness envelopes Karen as she sings, changing her orange-y face to the head of match, burning out. When presenting biographical tidbits on Karen, Haynes often uses black text over muddy background footage. Thus the information is hard to read against, say, a long shot of lunch meats in a grocery aisle. Only when more garish intertitles appear can we read them clearly, in the faux-hysterical style of Frank O'Hara exclamations in "Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)."

The real heart of darkness is still the music of The Carpenters. "We've Only Just Begun" is what music might sound like if conceived and recorded by Stepford wives. I find that particular song the most uncanny and unsettling, matched perfectly to the frictionless walk of Barbie-Karen.

I know you have that most important question on your mind: can I watch this online for free? Yes (it's unavailable on DVD because Haynes did not get Richard Carpenter's permission to use the songs and, quite possibly, because Richard is portrayed as monstrous ass in the film).

The Art in Barry Hannah

"I go back to the dinette and sit with Rebecca. I smoked about four Luckies in a row and looked into her face without saying anything for a while. Rebecca's face is a charm. She goes heavy on the blue eye makeup. Her neck is a long-ish classic from the old paintings of what's-his-name. Her nose is forward and long. She lights a Lucky and the exhaust is gray through the large sensitive nostrils. She's half-Jew, the rest Greek. Okay, now I've come back from the humiliation of never thinking up a better poem than Mr. Hooch. Then we go through two cups of coffee apiece. Modigliani." --Barry Hannah, Ray

This is one of a dozen or so paragraphs in Ray that made me set down the book and contemplate the day for a moment. Hannah excels at self-contained prose blocks that are poem-like in their completeness. It's a brilliant, plainspoken description but circling back to Modigliani puts it over the top.

I've been a big Hannah admirer since his use of the n-word at a Bennington reading ruined the lives of a lot of middle-aged ladies. While perhaps not on Amy Hempel level of slavish WTT devotion, he's certainly a more palatable Lish acolyte than Raymond Carver.

The real Ray comparison I want to make is to Thomas McGuane's Ninety-two in the Shade, another great favorite of mine from the last few years' reading. The protagonist of the latter, Skelton, would certainly enjoy sharing a few six packs with Ray. I like to imagine the good doctor crashing the plane that Skelton eventually converts into his domicile.

Sure, McGuane is more reliant on a propulsive plot and Hannah more focused on portrait of the man. But both books are sunbaked to a crisp and enough to make me love reading about the South even if I'm not scheduling any visits.