A Guide To Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody

Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody is like a piece of great literature and needs to be "read" like one. This means that the viewer needs to have an ability to make connections with other literature and with their heart. If the reader is able only to make superficial connections they will come away with the impression that there is no ultimate meaning to life at the end of the movie.

Back in my university days it was very common for the students to forget that "Every great writer is a great deceiver" as well as a "storyteller, teacher, enchanter--but [that] it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer" (Vladimir Nabokov "How to be a Good Reader or Kindness to Authors").

And thus, I had to sit through many a class while my fellow students destroyed literature with their ignorance and cruelty. The youngest and most beautiful girls would swoon at Nabokov and Wallace Stevens and say it was so beautiful and wonderful, drooling sick and sugary syrup from their mouths, but never understanding exactly why the literature was beautiful. I once, heard a beautiful girl, accustomed to being thought intelligent in high school, tell the professor that she loved T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland because it was dreamy and had mermaids.

And then, there is the intellectual student. These are the ones with dour faces and black-rimmed glasses and mouths that know big words. These never understand anything and all great literature is nihilistic and nothing to them. They drone on, explaining why the literature was great -- because it means nothing and has no meaning (actually, they're too blind to know meaning when they run into it). These go on to power positions in politics or universities where they attempt steal the joy and meaning of learning and living from the rest of us.

These two types of "readers," the sugary girls and the educated idiots are bad readers and will not understand Mr. Nobody, but will shape nearly all opinion about it.

"the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense"(Vladimir Nabokov "Kindness to Authors").

Here are a few connections I've noticed upon completing a first viewing. There must be much more:

Literature:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
"Annabelle Lee" by Edgar Allen Poe
Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov
The Odyssey by Homer
Bible

Movies:
Groundhog Day with Bill Murry
It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart
The Matrix with Keanu Reeves
Dead Man with Johnny Depp
The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland

Symbolism:
Water
Muses
Trains
Tunnels
Colors

And ultimately, these connections to the wider universe are only road markers, pointing us to the meaning of Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which is about the most important connection of all.

Samuel James/Sugar Smallhouse and His Muses

I have a personal list of people I intend to meet. Samuel James is on that list.

Some people will travel to see the Pyramids of Egypt or the Grand Canyon, but these are nothing compared to the spirit of a person.

Obviously, Samuel James has happened across a spring and has had his head sprinkled with the water dripping from the fingertips of a muse or two or three (Rosa, Maeve and Noreen?).

We know that Samuel James has been to the spring and has taken a bottle of the spirit away because the top of his head glistens, and he leaves his heel marks dented upon the floors of our spirit and we don't want to sand them out. And we know he's sprinkled some of that spirit upon us because we want to move, rather than sit still.

Samuel James is not a product of "Creativity Class," science, technology, or pharmaceuticals and never could be. Creativity and Spirit cannot be synthesized or replicated. He is the product of that invisible and beautiful Muse at the Fountain.

Get thee a muse!

And notice that the back of a guitar serves as a handy surface for rolling tobacco into a cigarette. A synthetic factory creation, such as Jessica Simpson would have laid out pieces of synthetic coal tar "nicotine" gums and played tic-tac-toe on that guitar, desecrating it.

Get thee a muse and a fountain, music and spirit.

Musical Chairs: How Music Organizes, Evokes, and Intoxicates

Have you ever noticed the tendency to put on the music while cleaning and organizing?

I've been researching habits, addiction, dependency, and neurotransmitters; and it occurred to me as I delved into these things that music is like a substance that we ingest.

When we get a new CD we are excited by it for awhile, playing it over and over, enjoying the discovery and the new sounds, but after a time, we stop listening to it as often or enjoying it as much. We then, move on to new music and begin the experience of pleasure and discovery all over again. This is tolerance in the world of drugs, especially painkillers.

When a person builds up a tolerance to a dose of painkillers, they need a higher dose or new drug in order to achieve the same feeling of freedom from pain.

But why do we listen to music while organizing around the house and elsewhere? Because it's a "drug," like nearly everything else in our life. Drugs and other substances open and close doors in our brain, helping us to function better--or worse, depending on what it is and who we are.

The rhythm of music is a substance that we ingest through our ears. The rhythm causes our brain to go into a straightening up mode, to organize things in the rooms. Rhythm and Melody, that skipping lady of the tingling, tripping toes, unlocks the doors to let that delightful child, Joy run up and down the halls to show us the simple pleasures at her feast table.

Joy is the child that runs up and down relaxing the tension in the springs. She peeks out when we see beautiful art, music, when we smell the lilacs, or coffee. She is springtime. Joy is that one who makes us cry when we're happy, when our emotions have been evoked. And because of her special light touch, yet powerful emotional powers she causes us to remember. Joy increases our short term and long term memories, embedding them within those rooms of our mind.

When Joy is locked up, kept prisoner in a dark room, there is a gloomy mood in the house, the pleasure of eating is disrupted causing one to eat too much or too little, there is nothing worth remembering or learning. If Joy is not let loose the owner of the house may sink into a dark place, overcome by depression, low self esteem, and may strike out against their joyless life with aggression.

Even plants grow better when music is played to them. Perhaps, that saying about plants growing better if we talk to them is true.

And if Music is an ingested substance that causes the release of different neurotransmitters, is it any different than a prescription pill, or street drug? Is this why we have music "wars," because unconsciously we know this?

Is this why different groups of people imbibe in different strains of music? There's gospel, classical, soul, bluegrass, rock, hip hop, the blues, and countless other strains of the plant. Certain strains are considered "hardcore" corruptions of music, dangerous hybrids laced with toxic substances, which cause the user to behave destructively.

Then, there is the patented laboratory musical formula produced en masse for the majority of users. This is the polished, "clean" stuff that we rave about, but only releases Joy in small doses. Then, there is the patented formula of rap, a strange concoction that has been altered from its roots, and sold to the mass produced white kids of suburbia.

We all have our favorite strains of the substance. And it may be ignorance of its purpose and wreckless use that harms its purpose of releasing that joyful tingle. All drugs can be abused. Are we binge drinking music, or enjoying it and getting some pleasure or release of tension from it?

Albigence Waldo, in his Rustick way, sums up perfectly how music unlocks Joy and lets her do her job:

Valley Forge, 23 December 1777 - "This evening an excellent Player on the Violin in that soft kind of Musick, which is so finely adapted to stirr up the tender Passions, while he was playing in the next Tent to mine, these kind of soft Airs it immediately called up in remembrance all the endearing expressions, the Tender Sentiments.... and filled me these tender emotions, and Agreeable Reflections, which cannot be described, and which in spite of my Philosophy forced out the sympathetic tear. I wish'd to have the Musick Cease, and yet dreaded its ceasing, least I should loose sight of these dear Ideas, which gave me pain and pleasure at the same instant" (emphasis mine).

What Albigence describes is the ingesting of music and the freeing of Joy to do her job. This is what C.S. Lewis calls Sehnsucht.

image: Lena Horne and Duke Ellington

Motive For Metaphor

"You like it under the trees in autumn,
Because everything is half dead.
The wind moves like a cripple among the leaves
And repeats words without meaning...."(The Motive For Metaphor, Wallace Stevens)

In my opinion, there are two motives for metaphor. One reason is to imbue a taste of the aesthetic sublime into one's art in order to elevate another's awareness of sense, of how something felt (be it horrid or wonderful), and to enrich meaning beyond the ordinary of realism.

But the other motive for metaphor is as highly important, for it serves its purpose during times of repression and regression. When dictators, despots, and social movements control even the air one breathes; it is metaphor that serves as a kind of secret code or underground for the few who are able to understand. This is why certain types of art and creativity are feared by repressive governments. They are always afraid of the hidden message within the art and of how it may encourage and inspire its audience.

Most choose not to see the metaphor, but those who do, live in an even more real world. A world more harsh, more beautiful, more intricate and unexplainable to those who only see the surface.

Metaphor shows one that there is more than the rote "A B C of being" (Stevens). When we can see beyond those symbols we see that often words repeated by our society are like cripples "among the leaves," and "without meaning."

"....The ruddy temper, the hammer
Of red and blue, the hard sound -
Steel against intimation - the sharp flash,
The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X" (Motive For Metaphor)

image: David and Goliath, Caravaggio

The Holy Fair

A robe of seeming truth and trust
Hid crafty observation;
And secret hung, with poison'd crust,
The dirk of Defamation:
A mask that like the gorget show'd,
Dye-varying, on the pigeon;
And for a mantle large and broad,
He wrapt him in Religion.
(from the "The Holy Fair," by Robert Burns)

My learned foes

A random choosing...you know, that little game we humans play with books where we open them and hope to find something interesting.

But it does make me smile a bit because it seems a bit appropriate. Following are some lines from Epistle to J. Lapraik, An Old Scotch Bard (1785), by the Bard, of course:

I am nae Poet, in a sense,
But just a Rhymer like by chance,
An hae to Learning nae pretence,
Yet, what the matter?
When'er my Muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.

Your Critic-folk may cock their nose,
And say, 'How can you e'er propose,
You wha ken hardly verse frae prose,
To mak a song?'
But by your leaves, my learned foes,
Ye're maybe wrang.

What's a your jargon o your Schools,
Your Latin names for horns an stools;
If honest Nature made you fools,
What sairs your Grammers?
Ye'd better taen up spades and shools,
Or knappin-hammers.

A set o dull, conceited Hashes,
Confuse their brains in Colledge-classes!
They gang in Stirks, and come out Asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o Greek!

Gie me ae spark o Nature's fire,
That's a the learning I desire;
Then tho I drudge thro dub an mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, tho hameley in attire,
May touch the heart....

But MAUCHLINE Race or MAUCHLINE Fair,
I should be proud to meet you there;
We'se gie ae night's discharge to care,
If we forgather,
An hae a swap o rhymin-ware,
Wi ane anither....

Of course, those of us that have the Muse and Nature's fire, but not enough money to pay for time to confuse our brains in colledge classes must content ourselves with Rabbie's sentiments, but we will always wonder where we could've gotten if we had been able to come out Asses.

After all, one needs a degree to climb Mount Parnassus. It matters not if honest Nature made you a fool, as long as your Grammar is good enough to hide behind.

(side note: the spellcheck on Blogger doesn't believe the contraction "could've" exists! How very interesting.)

image: Shakespeare (Chandos), full of Nature's fire, hamely in attire, mystifies mountain climbers.

Jean, Jean, Dressed In Green

This Bard doesn't much feel up to writing the history of the American Lawgiver, Tekanawita, at the moment. Great Laws of Peace only work for a time, disappearing under the heaps of laws piled upon them stinking up the air, causing false religious practices and legalism to spring up like noxious weeds.

Look at the most famous man of the Law, Moses. He brought down 10 very basic laws to live by (plus a few more), but as is the way with people, this was not enough. Over the years there were many more laws and rituals added on until it became a competition to see who could complete the most rituals, tithe the most, and know the law the best.

Now, we are living in the most religious time of all. We are quite medieval in our superstitious fear of the earth, in our belief that we can save it with tithes/indulgences/carbon credits/whatever. We are quite Hitlerian in our obsession with eradicating cancer, smoking, meat, and undesirables. And we are much like East Berlin before the fall of the wall, in our self-censoring. We are very Roman Catholic in our favoring the community over the individual. We are very Roman Catholic in our belief that those who do not want to worship the earth religion, pay indulgences, or participate in its sacred rites are called heretics.

Who are the priests making the tons of money off our ignorance? Who are the ones pushing those toxic fluorescent time bombs called light bulbs on us? If they really cared, if they really wanted what was best for the serfs, the High Priests of Mother Earth and Global Consciousness would not allow mercury-filled toxins in our homes and into the landfills. The Green People don't care about this wonderful land, and they hate all of the pernicious people who continue the multiply in spite of their laws. They only care about Green Money and "sustainability."

And so, the Bard would like to conclude with a sweet song of Jean. Here, the Bard has it all figured out. Our relationship with the earth is one of images which are to remind us of something better. No river, no flower, no bird compares with Bonny Jean. If the Bard had written of how Jean did not compare with the hills, the flowers, the birds or the air, he would not have been a poet, but an unmentionable dupe. Jean wins. The beautiful earth and its creatures remind us of her, and should also remind us of their Creator.

"I Love My Jean"

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there the bony Lassie lives,
The Lassie I lo'e the best:
There's wild-woods grow, and rivers row,
And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight
Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bony flower, that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There's not a bony bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean

Image: Praire by Ken Furrow

The Bard In the Forest Primeval, Across the Plains, In the Swamps.....

"This is the forest primeval," and "Still stands the forest primeval." What an old, dark, mossy green sound these lines of Longfellow's "Evangeline" have.

Evangeline is separated from her Gabriel on what was to be her wedding day. Forced out of their homes by British troops and placed upon boats, they like so many of the Accadian diaspora are split apart from family and loved ones. Many of those that survived the journey and were allowed entry into the United States settled in the deep south, becoming what we call Cajuns.

But Evangeline devotes her life, traversing this country in search of Gabriel, always missing him, never finding him, until returning to the place she began; Philadelphia. And there, old and gray, ministering to those dying of a plague, she finally finds him.

When reading this beautiful piece of North American history it must be wondered who or what Evangeline is. She is more than a person. She, as her name indicates, is an evangelist. But even more than that, she is this country. She is the land, she is the people. I wonder if she is a prophet or only a forgotten memory.

"Thus did the long sad years glide on, and in seasons and places
Divers and distant far was seen the wandering maiden;-
Now in the Tents of Grace of the meek Moravian Missions,
Now in the noisy camps and the battle-fields of the army,
Now in the secluded hamlets, in towns and populous cities.
Like a phantom she came, and passed away unremembered.
Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.
Each succeeding year stole something from her beauty,
Leaving behind it, broader and deeper, the gloom and the shadow.
Then there appeared and spread faint streaks of gray o'er her
forehead,
Dawn of another life, that broke o'er her earthly horizon,
As in the eastern sky the first faint streaks of the morning." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline," Part 2, IV)

"Suddenly, as if arrested by fear or a feeling of wonder,
Still she stood, with her colorless lips apart, while a shudder
Ran through her frame, and, forgotten, the flowerets dropped from
her fingers,
And from her eyes and cheeks the light and bloom of the morning.
Then there escaped from her lips a cry of such terrible anguish,
That the dying heard it, and started up from their pillows.
On the pallet before her was stretched the form of an old man.
Long, and thin, and gray were the locks that shaded his temples;
But, as he lay in the morning light, his face for a moment
Seemed to assume once more the forms of its earlier manhood;
So are wont to be changed the faces of those who are dying,
Hot and red on is lips still burned the flush of the fever,
As if life, like the Hebrew, with blood had besprinkled its portals,
That the Angel of Death might see the sign, and pass over.
Motionless, senseless, dying, he lay, and his spirit exhausted
Seemed to be sinking down through infinite depths in the dark-
ness,
Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking.
Then through those realms of shade, in multiplied reverberations,
Heard he the cry of pain, and through the hush that succeeded
Whispered a gentle voice, in accents tender and saint-like,
"Gabriel! O my beloved!"........" ("Evangeline," Part 2, V)

Epitaph of the Amused

"A Bard's Epitaph" by Robert Burns

Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,

Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,

Let him draw near;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who noteless, steals the crowds among,

That weekly this area throng,
O, pass not by!
But, with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,
Wild as the wave,
Here pause-and, thro' the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn the wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;
But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name!

Reader, attend! whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit:
Know, prudent, cautious, self-control
Is wisdom's root.

Prudent, cautious, self-control, wisdom's root. But Rabbie never had any of this and none of this makes the Bard what he is, and it is those enrapt in my thoughtless follies, those laid low by them that stop to drap a tear.

While I toast the haggis, and drink the wine, make the fellows laugh; across the countryside bonnie lasses cry in the dark. Were it not for them, the secret and not-so-secret muses, thinking they are getting while I am taking there would not even be a Bard.

Were it not for the Nellies, Peggies, Alisons and all the rest there would not be a Bard at all. There would be only a sad, overworked, and poor man named Robert Burness. For the love of a woman, the chase of the muse that amused me, there would be no verse and no epitaph. And so, I must ask, is it I that am the Bard, or only the voice of the bonnie lasses once young, once loved, always loved and always forever in my song? I have an epitaph, they live on--even if I broke their hearts.

And as I wax on I must advise, find a muse and she will educate you more than all the universities in the world, for she can inspire even a lowly farm laborer to sing the song of a country and of time. "O, Once I Lov'd a Bonnie Lass...."

Robert Bard Burns will tak a cup o kindness yet, before paidlin i the burn

"Auld Lang Syne"

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o lang syne?

We twa hae rin about the braes,
And puid the gowans fine;
But we've wanderd monie a weary fit,
Sin auld lang syne.

We twae hae paidlt i the burn,
Frae mornin sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roard
Sin auld lang syne.

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o thine;
And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I'll be mine;
And we'll tak a cup o kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne. (Robert Burns, 1788)

Ah, what is there to say, that the Bard doesn't? It's even more beautiful than the old movies make it. How do you suppose "fiere" (friend) is pronounced? I hope that you and your fier(i)es had a "guid-willie waught for auld lang syne," and didn't fall from the brae into the burn afterwards!

P.S. It's all quite clear now. The reason American English has no accent, no brogue, no slant, is because once the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth and found clear water, they no longer had to drink the beer to make the water safe. Once beer was eliminated from the daily diet the language lost its character.

Honestly, English speakers all sound like Scots or Irish poets when they've lifted their "pint-stowp" a few too many times. Why has no one noticed this before?