Mary C.M. Phillips's Blog, page 17
February 23, 2015
Birdman, García Márquez, and González Iñárritu
The best tribute to author, Gabriel García Márquez, at this year’s Academy Awards (other than being mentioned in the In Memoriam segment) was the big win for
García Márquez’s beautiful, mythical, and mystical stories and González Iñárritu’s disturbing and dark film both fall into the genre of magical realism.
From Wikipedia: Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is literature, painting, and film that, while encompassing a range of subtly different concepts, share in common magical or unreal elements that play a natural part in an otherwise realistic or mundane environment. Magical realism is the most commonly used of the three terms and refers to literature in particular.
It’s an acquired taste and I’ve been happily immersed in the genre for several months reading books by both García Márquez and Haruki Murakami. I don’t know why I’m attracted to these stories of dysfunctional families, ghosts, and talking cats…but I am. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always believed in the miraculous and love how it’s conveyed through art.
I’ve only started querying my own novel, The Model Home, a story about love triumphing over greed and materialism. It falls into this lovely genre of magical realism and after last night’s win, I’m encouraged.
Birdman is dark. It plays with our emotions and shows human nature at its very worst. But that’s where the lessons are. In the worst of times. I’m happy it won this year. It’s a great tribute to the author of the greatest Latin American novel ever written, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the entire genre of magical realism.
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February 20, 2015
February 14, 2015
Love is a temporary madness.
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being “in love” which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.”
- Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
January 27, 2015
So true
“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it. You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”
- Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
January 24, 2015
January 7, 2015
December 31, 2014
Ring out, wild bells…
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkenss of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
- Alfred Tennyson
