Forrest > Recent Status Updates

For the first time in a very long time, I have ordered a DVD. Of course, it's the 2001 BBC version of Gormenghast. Can't be faulted for that, can I?

"The Student's Tale" is, in the end, the story of the callousness of "the other half" or, in today's parlance, "the 1%" - or its equivalent. I expected, at the beginning, to find playfulness, lust, debauchery, and fun. What I ended up with was a cored-out, hollow heart. Four stars.

I almost feel like I'm cheating, reading a copy of the book that I picked up in Wales while specifically looking for Machen's work, this being a Library of Wales edition. It's almost too perfect, as was that one magical day in Hay-on-Wye.

There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.

I will definitely need to give this a reread after having listened to a series of podcasts which are basically "Deleuze for Dummies". I'm definitely able to follow the threads here in a much more informed manner.

Lorrain's "An Unsolved Crime" lies, as might be imagined by the title, somewhere on a line between decadence and noir. There's a sort of de-sexualized "Eyes Wide Shut" conspiracy vibe here, replete with masked, robed figures, but this one featuring ether, rather than sex, as the lure. But then, it's not quite so straightforward as all that. Much of the mystery remains obscured. The way I like it! Five stars.

Understanding less and less as I approach the finish! And this after listening to several podcasts about Deleuze.

Geffroy's "The Statue" is a cautionary tale about getting exactly, precisely what you want when self-centeredness and vanity are at the root of your desires. It is an intriguing bit of fiction, so rooted in realism that it's denouement must, of course, be rooted in poetic fantasy. Five stars for this very clever, but never "cutesy" story.

. . . when a person dies, the event is the result of physical causes, but the meanings of a death are multiple and thus both precede and exceed the physics of the event itself. Teh mental or ideal time in which the meanings of a death are played and replayed is not linear and sequential, but aberrant and discontinuou . . .

Cue: differentiation between Aion and Chronos.

I very much liked the story "Night," but I can already hear the naysayers questioning the validity of the narrator. Some works don't need justification as their cold beauty over-rides the jaded modern desire for pure logic. Screw your logic. Five stars, impossible narrator and all!

An Aickman book is in the mail to me and it is a gray, dreary day. How incredibly appropriate!

For Deleuze, all genuine artistic experimentation must be understood as a local activation of otherwise imperceptible cosmic forces that move through natures, cultures, and psyches. When it is successful, the work of art suggest new modes of sensible and affective engagement within the world . . .

I thought that "On the March" had a familiar feel to it, despite the strange place names. Then, when I read that it was about eastern Wales, it suddenly made sense: Cavaliero had invoked Hay-on-Wye from within me, drawn Wales out from my memory and impressions. It's summoning magic, raising ghosts in my mind. Necromancy of psychogeography.

"The Tresses" is woven through with themes of obsession, longing, unattainable desires, and . . .necrophilia sans corpus? This is a truly decadent tale: hedonistic, possessive, and without shame. Five stars.

. . . the flesh is pulled or pushed out from the outside by the planes that frame it (in musical terms melody and rhythm push sound towards its pulsing vitality . . . harmony represents the planes that intersect and frame sound in a cosmos, a universe of vectors and dimensions.

This cryptic passage is actually helping me to understand Deleuze's approach/view on art more clearly.

Well, "A Walk" is horribly depressing in its inevitable outcome. Three stars.

About two years and three rereads, that's what I'm going to need to crack the code on that last chapter. Phew!

Deleuze's concept of "difference" escapes me at the moment. It is not as simple as one might think. Honestly, I don't even think I have a mental direction to face in order to begin to understand it. Guess I'll just intellectually wallow until I find some piece of driftwood to hang on to.

"Pfft! Pft!" is the most gruesome of the tales thus far (which is saying something). The predictability of this tale is its weakness, it's utter decadence (necrophilia, anyone?) It's "strength". Three stars.

Just ordered two books: _Dark Entries_ by Aickman and _Ghosts of My Life_ by Fisher. Go ahead, hate me. I don't care. I'm currently packing up most of my books for a move, so I feel bereft and lonely. I need something to fill my empty heart. I'm such a book slut.

"Hellingley" is a reverse-hauntology, the ghost of what might have used to be, but were only a distorted reflection of the present, until now. It is a yearning, an anachronistic aching. I feel it when I dream of England. I do. I do.

"Deshoulières" is simultaneously an outright mockery and perfect summation of dandyism. Five stars.

Aha! The notion of "intensity" in Deleuze provides me a nice window to peer into his philosophy. Now, I just need a glass house made of those windows.

If you ever enjoyed "Spy vs Spy" in mad magazine, you will love "Constant Guignard". Five stars.

So, in sum, as I understand it, Deleuze is more concerned with "becoming" as an action than with the platonic "idea," which is a static state of being? I guess? It seems that Deleuze delights in multiplicities, rather than The One. I would love someone to confirm or repudiate my understanding, please!

The seemingly innocuous title of "The Little Summer-House" is disarming. This is decadence in all its horror and brutality. Not a dainty story, but the narrator proves so, in a most cowardly and practical way. Though it's a story about "rich people problems," it is highly unsettling. An emotionally complex tale, once one gives a little thought to it. Five stars.

"The First Emotion" is a story of desire, desire so intense it kills. A morbid, but wonderfully quaint story about the awakening of an inner life that leads to . . . Five stars.