Red Sails in the Sunset
(photo by Marcelo Montecino)
Fidel Castro (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) Like his father, Angel Castro (who was certainly not angelic), Fidel was never particularly faithful. A communist from his student days at Havana University, he and his followers were generally wealthy scions, the kind of folks that formed the vanguard of the French Revolution. They were not Communists; they were ‘Marxist-Leninists’. So on taking power in 1959, Castro and his cohort set about doing to Cuba what Marxist-Leninists do best: economic liquidation by the trashing of large scale private enterprise, ‘agrarian reform’ through the forced appropriation and division of land into meagre allotments, monopoly control…
Continue Reading →Lament
One of Giotto's angels laments
Songs in Our Heart # 54 Lament (Ultravox) (written by Warren Cann, Chris Cross, Billy Currie and Midge Ure; released June 1984) [This ululation to lost love is wonderfully evocative and atmospheric: it recalls the line from Pierre-Jean de Béranger: “His heart is a hanging lute; As soon as touched, it reverberates.”] “And just as my eyes start seeing After all the pain The twist in my life starts healing Just to twist again In stillness, in sorrow Returns that softly sighing lament…”
Continue Reading →Life on Mars?
Songs in Our Heart # 53 Life on Mars? (David Bowie) (written by David Bowie; released June 1973) [Lush, sweeping and sad, watching them beating up the wrong guy…]
Continue Reading →Mourning in America
As the dust settles from the US election, the clearing horizon fills, not with limousines heading towards the Canadian border, but with enemies of democracy, carrying torches (on a sunny day). Democracy isn’t easy and supporters of the losing side will generally feel there’s been a mistake. But short of a kind of existentialist dictatorship – each of us having plenary power for a short burst, akin to Swiss round-robin rule – it is the only way. Churchill recognised this, although he suggested that brief time spent with the average voter would put anyone off democracy, and to paraphrase Tom Paine, even…
Continue Reading →Nocturnal Animals
Tom Ford - style.
(director Tom Ford) Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is unhappy. We are not surprised. Her husband and assistant can barely conceal their contempt for her. Her butler gazes at her pityingly. She has a very uncomfortable house – acres of glass and marble about which she maunders, peering mournfully from under her fall of smooth red hair. She runs a notably empty and cavernous art gallery made of marble and glass. One day the butler hands her a parcel with a great look of concern. It’s the manuscript of a book written by Susan’s ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal). Nocturnal Animals is billed as a “revenge” film – Edward’s book of…
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