Good and bad, art and people
At one of our recent Thursdays QUILT sessions, we discussed the German film, “The Lives of Others”, which contained a line about whether it’s possible to be a bad person* if you spend time appreciating good art*. I’m paraphrasing slightly. By the same token, the question might be asked, what sort of person do you become, having been made to watch “Three lives and only one death”, a somewhat alternative French film that we discussed the previous week.
The critics loved it, certain audiences didn’t, namely the majority of our SameSky community. Something positive from it however: a healthy chunk of inspiration for our resident poet, Ian McKenzie.
Please take a moment to read and to appreciate what I think is his most profound, elegant and meaningful poem to date (below).
*If ever we feel like a philosophical QUILT discussion, we might address the question of whether there really is such a thing as a bad person, a good person, or indeed good or bad art; or whether these things are so subjective as to render words like good and bad meaningless.
Strange Days, Indeed! {Impressions from a French film: ‘Three lives and only one death’}
Glass shatters; splintered shards
Of perception fly off in all directions.
A cracked mirror grins back in your face
With eyes splayed wide in disconcerting,
Misshapen reflections of a wounded psyche.
But never mind, we are all multi-taskers
At heart, not confined to one single
Universe; with a subtle knife
We can casually step into other
Alternative worlds in our imaginations;
Exploring new
Tabs in parallel planes,
Simultaneously surfing the web,
Returning safely to
Home again at
The click of a mouse.
But, if the
Circuit breaks, malfunctions?
What then?
Time may pass in fits and starts, now speeding
Up! Now slowing down, twisting back
Around on itself, until you
Can see the back of your own head…
There is a room at the top of
My staircase, dull and dingy, full
Of contorted shadows; cobwebs clinging
To the door frame, while strange voices
Trapped in muffled whispers seep through
The dusty floorboards. Some days I
Don’t make it to the top of the stairs;
I retreat in panic, to come back down again…
I am becoming terribly absent
Minded these days…
Strange days, indeed!
More and more, these days, I find myself
Stepping out of one skin to slip into
Another…and sometimes, like dreams,
They merge in swirling images;
Appearing sometimes searing bright,
Other times seeming tenebrous, like cloud-
Filtered sunlight, mildewed and musty,
With the patina of old, 1940’s décor.
Whirling paisley curlicues spin,
Confounding visions in dizzying
Psychedelic patterns; or, with
Shapeshifting psychopathic shadows
Casting sickly runes on flickering
Lamp-lit walls of the attics in my mind…
Where was I, now? Ah, yes! A name…
What name? It escapes me; but it keeps
Ringing in my ears like the loud clicks
Of castanets, appallingly addictive;
I am drawn to it like a drunk moth,
But repelled all at the same time.
There are days I wish some stranger
Would come along to sort out this messy
Entanglement of loose jig-saw pieces
Lying scattered on the ground. I try
So hard to find the edges, to
Discover where my world ends, or
Where everything else begins?
And just to make matters more difficult,
The lid of the jig-saw box is missing…
And the small voices keep buzzing
Inside my head; their shrill, bitter tongues
Ignore my pleas for quietude.
The coward dies many times over,
Only the brave are one time dead…
I go in one door, come out another;
The one constant in all this clutter?
There is only one ending. But,
Which one is it? Ah! There’s the rub!
How did we get from here to there?
Where were you when I was most in need?
There are so many questions I have
To ask you, but the answers only
Spark more futile inquiries, instead
Of closure…Oh! Strange days indeed!
An empty picture frame stares stonily
At the space where your memories
Used to be…singing songs that have
No meaning… (La dee da, La de dee!)
The Jokers are missing from the pack
Of cards the fortune teller used
To show you what it was they could
Not see; it felt as though they’d smashed
A mirror, to then carefully put
The pieces back together again
Reforming your broken features in
A cruelly twisted reflection
Of what they used to be, before
The shadows entered to deform
The person that once lived within.
And nobody told you what to expect,
And no one explained how it would be;
Left to put all the broken parts
Together again. And you were lost,
Disfigured, completely re-wired…
Strange days, indeed!
IM-19thOctober 2020