post wabi sabi

It is always so much harder to write about something that has passed, with the temptation to be onto the next thing. I want to write a little about the wabi sabi retreat while it is still fresh in my mind. There were 19 of us and the programme was very simple. In the mornings i would talk about wabi sabi, the laksanas and the vimokshas and lead some meditation. In the afternoons there was space to explore wabi sabi for ourselves or to join in with an informal discission group on, well everything from reality to the meaning of life, which seemed to develop a life of it's own! In the evenings we had movies, music and puja.

some thoughts intersperced with some 'things'!

nothing to loose


the edge of nihilism


everything has a body of light


breaking the bonds


and next time...



themes from the evenings

Tarkovsky's 'Nostalghia'.

"There isn't "realism" on the one hand, and on the other hand (in contrast, in contradiction) "dreams." We spend a third of our life asleep (and thus dreaming): what is there that is more real than dreams?"
Then how would you explain the style which you have in mind for Nostalghia?



"I refer once again to Stalker. There is a place there, the Zone, which is and is not, it is reality and, at the same time, it is a place of the soul, of memory. In the film, when you see it, it is a forest, a river. That's all. But the air that circulates, the light, the rythms, the perspectives, without distorting anything, make you feel it as an "other" place, with various dimensions, always real and, at the same time, different.... The sky, a sky is always just that, but all it takes is a different hour of the day, the wind, a change in climate, for it to speak to you in a different way, with love, with violence, with longing, with fear. Cinema can give these "ways" back to you, it must. With courage, and honesty, always starting from the real."


Bjork interviews and Live at the Royal Opera House.
Björk: Live at the Royal Opera House contains a live performance in London, Convent Garden, on Sunday, December 16, 2001.

One of the first contemporary pop artists to perform on the historic stage of the Royal Opera House, Björk is joined by harpist Zeena Parkins and the electronic duo Matmos. An all-female Inuit choir from Greenland and a 56-piece orchestra appears under the direction of conductor Simon Lee.

Bill Viola's 'Hatsu-Yume' (First Dream).
Hatsu -Yume progresses from darkness to light, stillness to motion, silence to sound, simplicity to complexity, nature to civilization. There are two interwoven themes: the dark water world of fish, and Buddhist rituals invoking the souls of dead ancestors. As in a dream, we frequently can’t tell if these wordless streams of image and sound are unfolding in realtime, slow-motion or time-lapse. A work of extravagant pictorial beauty. Hatsu-Yume represents the most painterly use of light in the history of video. Form is content: the light that lures fish to their death protects human life. At once ominous, majes tic, mystical, and deeply spiritual, Hatsu-Yume is the work of a visionary poet of image and sound.

Bent Hamer's 'Kitchen Stories'.
Part surreal satire on human domesticity, part gentle study of male loneliness, Bent Hamer's engaging little movie occupies a strange no man's land between little-known history and pure Pythonesque looniness. In the 1950s, the Swedish government sponsored a mass observation project in which the kitchen habits of Swedish housewives were minutely examined to see if more rational designs and layouts for these food preparation areas could be devised - and to see in general, in a very nanny-state-ish way, if individuals could not be induced to live their lives more logically.
Hamer pushes this conceit further, but not that much further, and imagines the Swedes persuading their neighbours Norway to participate in a study of single men's kitchen lives, on account of their statistical surplus of such males. They send a convoy of researchers driving out over the border, each towing their own little caravan, which they will park outside the house of each subject, and then spend the day in their kitchen: an impartial observer, tracking, noting, recording, but never, ever getting involved.
So the mild bureaucrat Folke (Tomas Norstrom) sets up his observation post in the kitchen of the elderly, taciturn Isak (Joachim Calmeyer), sitting on a high seat, as if about to umpire a game of tennis. Inevitably, Folke finds himself involved in Isak's life and Isak finds himself observing Folke - intimately curious about another human being for the first time in his life. They develop a tender friendship, and director Hamer does not badger us with any quirky odd-couple comedy, and neither does he invite us to congratulate him, as Kaurismaki sometimes does, on how deadpan and cool the performances are.