Thursday, November 17, 2005

a s byatt, kate bush, madonna, derek jarman

a s byatt: 'still life'

beautifully detailed about the difficulty and joys of language, of words, of forms of speech and writing; the urge to capture the details of the everyday and the struggle to be able to express it. metaphors, poetry, art.

kate bush: ‘aerial’

on one half she revels in the erotic and the beauty of the everyday. a love song about a washing machine where her skirt swirls around his trousers and she walks into the lather. in the other half she exults in the shifting light in the sky through an entire day. lazy, loving, soft.

would i be sexist in calling both of them gloriously and unabashedly ‘female’? - Sonal help!

madonna: 'confessions on a dance floor'

the key words here are ‘confessions’ and ‘dance’. as she gives us her now usual platitudes about ‘finding herself’ she manages to tie it all together with some killer hooks and choruses. her sensibility as a pop diva- shameless borrower, eclectic sampler and tune queen does not seem to have diminished by her current domestic bliss- thankfully.

derek jarman : 'blue'

as he was dying of aids british director derek jarman made this experimental film that constitutes a soundtrack played to a completely blue screen documenting his illness and his coming death with painful detail- the difficulties, the fears and the ironies. sometimes it feels like he is right here talking directly to you describing every emotion, every image seen and imagined, every single ordinary act with exacting clarity. very pretentious it may sound - but it is also very moving.

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