Comment on Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

This was put onto Wikipedia, and some idiot deleted my lovely contribution, so I figured that if I don’t blog about it, it will stay swimming in a state of deletedness L

 

 

Cinematography

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is visually powerful. It makes the viewers eyes ’smell’ the film. The contrast between the wealthy and the poor is another indication of color, which is the medium with which the theme of scent is used. One can see that the colour ‘builds’ starting off small and rising to a crescendo in the orgy scene a few minutes before the Grenouille’s final performance (i.e. sacrificing himself to the peasants).

The rich colors are associated with wealth, while the more bland ones are associated with peasants and Genouille’s genesis. This society is one bound by class. The hierarchy is clearly seen and a further division (i.e. perfume) makes the line between rich and poor even more distinct. The initial sensuous image and scent that Grenouille experiences would be that of the young woman slicing plums. This is also happens to be his first murder victim. This kind of color in a murky street startles the viewer.

The film Girl with a Pearl Earring directed by Peter Webber, is an competitor in terms of excellent cinematography. Although the latter does not include and use the lower class in such a graphic sense. The themes are very different, but the in terms of powerful images they are evenly matched. Webber’s film uses colour that is slightly more ‘washed out’ and neutral, whereas Perfume: The Story of a Murderer uses wealthy, rich colors.

Overall the effect is a lasting one. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer follows the atmosphere of the book by Patrick Süskind, and this is also due to a skilled cast.

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

Compilation of Quotes

Here’s a whole bunch of quotes. I think its important to quote the masters, because it reminds it not to go up our own asses as artists. I also believe that the more we can ’swim’ in other good literature the more we spew out some goodness.

PhilosopherPoet

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890 – 1937)

U.S. writer.

The Call of Cthulhu

I have written a great many stories and I still do not know how to go about it except to take my chances. – John Steinbeck

A sentence is a sound in itself on which other words may be strung. – Robert Frost

Out beyond the fields of right doing and wrong doing there’s a field I’ll meet you there. – Rumi

Mankind cannot bear too much reality – T.S. Eliot

Tread softly for you tread on my dreams – W.B. Yeats

Hell is other people, true. The only problem is heaven is other people, too. – Hanif Kureshi

Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover it up. – T.S. Eliot

Permit nothing to cleave to you that is not your own, nothing to grow to you that will cause pain when it is torn away. – Marcus Aurelius

A farts a fart. Its good for your heart it sets your belly at ease. Warms your bed on a cold winters night and suffocates the fleas. – IRC message. (Internet Relay Chat)

Writing a novel is like tending a garden, but writing a short story is like watering a rose given to you by a lover. – Haruki Murakami

The lion might lie by the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep. – Woody Allen

I don’t write easily. My work only flows after I’ve been hammering at it for ages and ages. It’s like pushing a rusty machine up a hill. – Mary Stewart

If you write for an hour and a half for ten years, you’re gonna turn into a good writer. – Stephen King

Insects sting, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with critics—they desire our blood, not our pain.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

German philosopher and poet.

Miscellaneous Maxims and Reflections

Morality in Europe today is herd-morality.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

German philosopher and poet.

Beyond Good and Evil

God created Woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment—but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God’s second blunder.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)

German philosopher and poet.

The Antichrist

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967)

U.S. writer and wit.

“News Item”

You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967)

U.S. writer and wit.

By the time you say you’re his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Dorothy Parker (1893 – 1967)

U.S. writer and wit.

Unfortunate Coincidence

Hysteria is a natural phenomenon, the common denominator of the female nature. It’s the big female weapon, and the test of a man is his ability to cope with it.

Tennessee Williams (1911 – 1983)

U.S. playwright.

The Night of the Iguana

If you fight against all your sensations, you will have no standard to which to refer, and thus no means of judging even those judgments which you pronounce false.

Epicurus (341 – 270 BC)

Greek philosopher.

The Principal Doctrines

I’m a nymphomaniac of the heart.

Gabriel García Márquez (1928 – )

Colombian novelist.

Playboy Magazine, Interview

The most original poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be spared; for they have no substitutes elsewhere.

William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830)

British essayist and critic.Referring to William Wordsworth.

The Spirit of the Age, “Mr. Wordsworth”

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. – William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830)

Peter Piper

Peter piper picked a pair of pristine pens

From the local bookstore.

They were blank

Silver coated Cronin chrome, with two small golden knobs on the end

They had nothing too important on them

Not enough to make up a silly nursery rhyme anyway

 

Jeremy Peter wrote round ringing and wrought words

He crafted the bleak blankness into a sizable hole.

He sat down in the kids corner, where his own private world

Strung up in books and a tethered conscience

Grew

 

He carefully clipped and cropped, cut and trimmed a poem.

It was silly and stupid…probably nonsense…but the feeling absorbed

His heavy Head

The pages spewed out soft tender tentacles that spun a speaking silence

Around him

The arms and legs

Of his words and thought

Kicked back the pent-pulled-up pressure…

It told him to relax

And drink in the murky mold and mixture of

Words

 

It said that soon he’d see something sweet

Something so strained with sensuous syrup

That it won’t be a poem anymore

 

Just a ditty people throw in their heads,

Spinning with out an end…and hopefully

they’ll forget the story.

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

Write what comes to mind?

My art teacher once said to me write what comes to mind it sounded so simple but when I started to look at it, the whole world suddenly started to make a lot of sense. It was one of those light bulb moments, something inside of me just said that I must do it I can’t really explain something that comes from inside of me…cos that would sound weird but it happened I was in a art lecture. Brushes buldged out of immature vases colour clothed the creases of the room and I was writing

Yeah I felt like a dumb shit doing that since everyone else was busy doing their bit for mankind and painting beautiful little pictures of flowers and other kinds of things…but I wanted to write. I wanted to write so badly that I didn’t really let much stop me. If some one did stop me it was most probably someone trying to cause shit with me…like a thug flushing my head down the toilet or squirting shaving cream in my books. Life was hard

Life was hard being in school I’m older now…too fucking old for that matter, but school seriously bored me to tears, and burnt me at that same time. I’ve always heard some loser old person saying that I should enjoy school for it will be the best day of my life…well I think that is a load of crap. You know I call that puppies in the snow mentality…it wishing for something better. Hoping that things will be alright at the end of the day and everyone will kiss and make up and live happily ever after in a glorious paradise.

Sometimes I just want to say to those old dudes…get your head out of the fucking sand and just please be a tiny bit positive. I know I do bitch and moan about every god damn thing out there. Its my calling. I’m A CYNIC and born to be one who gets around, and copes with life despite how fucking useless it all seems to be………………..

So I’m in this art place…my weird teacher telling me to write. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have any bad feelings towards that crazy lady, but I was writing so much back then cause I was so fucking happy. I was so glad not to be looked at in a weird way and called into question. Sometimes I think that people put too much pressure on people as contradictory as it sounds. Put it this way…lets throw in a massive word like society…and say that capital S puts too much pressure on people. Society throws us into a spin we can’t escape.

1. It tells us to go out in the world and become successful
2. It says that we have to keep studying stuff
3. We still have to stay good people and stick to the law
4. We have to clean up everyone else’s shit (or suffer because of it)
5. We have to listen to a million religions telling us the way that everything should be and if it isn’t that way then we’re all going to suffer and burn for ever or become morphed into a sound bite sized mosquito. Btw don’t get me started on hell…that’s one of my huge hobby horses and I think I’ve just about run that one into the ground by now.
6. Society tells us to earn money…yeah well what the problem you might ask? The problem is its hard work. I’m working at the pizza house doing the dirty work and listening to everyone bitch about how awful everything is. Yes this means I’m a shit-scooper who wants to rather create my own instead of sweeping up another capital S.
7. Society says we should pollute the earth. Yeah because I like arguing I thought that I would take this one up. I’ll start it off slow. Firstly we buy groceries that should be bought because they are essential (i.e. milk carton). Now this precious little milk carton gets devoured within a few days. We’ll assume that this an average family that is not environmentally conscious and therefore our little milk carton gets thrown into a small little packet with everything else. I think I’ll take a momentary pause and personify the milk carton by calling him Bill…So bill dies. He gets all of his bodily fluids sucked out of him. Although this is a painfully slow process, since the process is gradual. Despite the insufferable pain he experiences Bill feels content to know that he is used for everything. Bill had a very unfortunate reincarnation but he learnt that if there is one enjoyment in life it is knowing someone is getting pleasure out of your pain and you are useful to them. So Bill is in his final days. Back in his youth (operating on about 80% of his body) he was delighted, and feeling stronger than any culture. But now there was a feeling…it felt even more scary than reincarnation. Maybe people up in death row knew. Whenever he was handled he rang with noise on the inside. Bill was counting down minutes now. The noise became so chilling that even once back on the shelf…Bill took a while to quieten down and try very hard not to wet his pants. Just like the emptiness builds inside from being used…well so did the noise. For the first few minutes after the fucking four year old put him back. He settled, but then people seemed addicted to a hollow person, and wanted to engage more despite his efforts to look as crinkled and abandoned as possible. Bill finally did wet his pants. The last moments became such dragged-out distortion that he thought he’d wet everything except the bin. That was full of old molded rotting souls all clasped collectively. Bills body was never recovered from the scene. Through decades of decay, ravaged by dogs and broken beggars. All that was left was a small strip of red fibre. A piece from his cap they say it was. Lying limp and stiff by a concrete mixer…waiting to be seen again.
8. Pollution seriously sucks
9. People don’t like to acknowledge the dead. Lets face it Death is a taboo word that all the wrinklies avoid like the plague. Well, except when they have to and talk about how honorable someone.
10. Sex is overrated. Well look I’m not saying that I want to stop fucking, but capital S tells men to buy things with a naked virgin on. Don’t get me wrong I like my porn, but not that shit you see in the shop…the way is draws you in, commands your balls, and tells your wallet to do the talking.

Well theres my ten commandments, lol. I fucking love getting angry about everything, but for the simple sanity of those reading I thought that I’d make it succinct and easy to read. The fact of the matter is I’m fascinated with death and love things to get worse and go wrong. But that’s another story for another time and place…

Peter Piper

Peter piper picked a pair of pristine pens

From the local bookstore.

They were blank

Silver coated Cronin chrome, with two small golden knobs on the end

They had nothing too important on them

Not enough to make up a silly nursery rhyme anyway

 

Jeremy Peter wrote round ringing and wrought words

He crafted the bleak blankness into a sizable hole.

He sat down in the kids corner, where his own private world

Strung up in books and a tethered conscience

Grew

 

He carefully clipped and cropped, cut and trimmed a poem.

It was silly and stupid…probably nonsense…but the feeling absorbed

His heavy Head

The pages spewed out soft tender tentacles that spun a speaking silence

Around him

The arms and legs

Of his words and thought

Kicked back the pent-pulled-up pressure…

It told him to relax

And drink in the murky mold and mixture of

Words

 

It said that soon he’d see something sweet

Something so strained with sensuous syrup

That it won’t be a poem anymore

 

Just a ditty people throw in their heads,

Spinning with out an end…and hopefully

they’ll forget the story.

 

 

PhilosopherPoet

Bookshop

I recently got a job at a book shop. Well, it be honest every bone in my body is alive with enthusiasm. It’s called Books and Books. Its one of those lesser known ones, that’s still pretty up market, and is absolutely crammed with stuff. And a general rule of thumb I use you ALWAYS find interesting people in a bookstore (i.e. the friendly guys behind the counter). I can’t remember exactly but apparently there was an internet survey that said a book shop was the 4^th best place to meet someone. The first is a bar, the second is a night club, the third a clothing store…and the fourth is a book shop funny enough. It’s also pretty encouraging since I’ll hopefully meet women who are slightly more on the intellectual end of things.

Another positive thing. Firstly I am a pirate. Not the traditional “har harrr me matey…” but rather the kind that likes to leech lots of cool stuff from people and believes in torrents, etc. This is a grey area for a lot of people. But more to the point…I met Hergasan (cool Indian guy, part time store manager) who has tons of anime, and music apparently…so means there a possibility of leeching lots of stuff from him. I’ll trade of course. Every pirate is an honest fella who shares his gold equally and honestly among his fellow lackeys. (You must excuse the pirate theme getting the better of me…)

So bottom line is that cool people work at a bookshop. There is a really awesome TV series called Black Books also about people who work in a book shop. Its Irish comedy…one of the best series I’ve seen for ages in my opinion. I won’t give too much of it away…but this is just to say that I really recommend it. Its amazing…it’s also deliciously sacrilegious at times (e.g. the very first episode), but don’t let that become the factor that puts you off either. Whatever religious background you’re from give it a watch anyway…

PhilosopherPoet

>May The Books Be With You

All that’s left

You made a hollow place I could not touch. Your echoes lie in the empty shells of Easter. My memories of your splayed words cling to the bricks. You genuflected and mouse muttered ideas of a better place. Your insulting interior numbed the soft of your brain.

 

Gone like the wind. A tattered breeze that leaves behind your voices on wedding cans. The Big Adventure wrapped its urgent arms around your ideas (springing and sprinkling baby-possibility.) A whisper that takes you leaves behind ripples and rings that slide off the bricks.

An empty, unfurled playground is like a peach. The skin is porous and breaks up the sky, you used to lie in. You left me a cloud. It changes like the memories, shifting in a fragile world.

Your voice is empty in the still. There are no eyes, or hair that skips, or fingers that forget the applauding chip packet. Only a prickling haze is left. The droplets land and cool the heat of the debate. My foot looks for the languid lines of your steps.

My mind chases a dog’s tail. Conclusion flicks past like a road sign. I cannot find you. I keep on the watch for time, shredded seconds and feeble framed moments laughing away in breath fog.

The cattle masses look up to watch the glass tears scraping my face in a still-life motion. They giggle and knit up their eyebrows in frantic-fisted-frustration. The angry toffee coats the apple.

The stage is set, the actors have left. Curtain folds still look the same in a shrouded silence. The soundless voice of her escapes my head, ready to dance. Her performance is half certain. A puzzle (built up on bricks) performs.

Her body wraps and wrings my head in a calm dance. She looks too ordinary to say something, or mean the majority. She sways and skips. After a wheeze and four short puffs, she sits down like silent cigarette smoke.

The ends are burning, the lines are breaking, and her image leaves like a drunk ghost. Just letters lie in the dark, in the damp where the black light spreads the folds. I lift up the pages as mystic as scrolls throwing electric-energy into my hands.

I rub the creases. They smell like the folds of her skirt. The paper is veined and certain as skin. I can feel her pen as liquid as her fingers were. They curl around cartoons and scent the flowers. My own pen talks back, clumsy enough to be energetic. Hers is light like electricity.

My eyes are tired. My lamp that is lit, fills me with thick light, and draws the dust of dawn. I am tired. My ebullience is empty, with unconscious echoes sliding down into the dark, into night of nothing. The pages are there, waiting for me. Through the rails of lines, her pen photographs her hand for me. It hovers and twitches, strokes the page under the spotted, speckled-freckles. They lie on the skin like pure confetti, an aching constellation engraved in your eyes.

She said she wanted to be a paramedic, but she hated hospitals. It was the sterile smell that anaesthetized your nostrils, and where death floated like a fog. It was about the people. She loved the children. She could fill the minute, sponge-like eyes with blood-youth bonding.

It is still frightening, she stated. Out in the carpet-thick streets, she could help. Some days she could have palpable crimson strands of life flowing out. The webs of her fingers won’t catch everything – she would say – but it’s still one more hoist to lift the dead. She was right. Her passionate, lightning face would pull the future through the needle. No prick of regret left in her tender smile, just guts. And a warm raw hand.

Your scent lies in the empty shells of Easter. Your lithe foot dribbles into the puddle of my parting. That stretched smile still walks with me down the steps. You’ve left washed wishes with me to mull over. The space is taken out of my hollow place. It runs and folds back into the bricks. I watch the memories go just as I see your eyes and ceramic smile, looking back…at all that’s left.

 

PhilosopherPoet

 

Therapy

 

His damp hands claw-clamped

for an explanation.

Some curled up fingers in

the nervous patch of his stomach

i want to get to know him…

His unsprung mind threw up

connected halves of another

side.

It Works, in a whisper of

more force then shout

The calm mind slumped into

the caring kind of

posture,

throwing a shout,

like a paper bag.

 

He wins with a glassed up jar,

a soiled cigarette imprinting

his finger, breaking

his breath.

i like the way the thread follows…

A flick of the face, buries

His hand into something, pumping,

something, choking, faking it too

late, he thinks and yawns jaws

for thought.

A thread.

 

The stage is cramped, his narrator

is folding the words back into paper.

The Crowds Loud Shout is whispering

too little. The spaces are built up with

an air of emotion, holding the room.

The chairs circled,

The pen penciled

next to its pad.

The room is the crutch, floating

the heart

i think he carries the voice almost…

Stories he watched retract, snap,

tape-measure in the cleared up room.

the Silence he holds chisels out bits of

brain.

They fall out the flat hand, into

the jar,

naked.

 

PhilosopherPoet

I heard you

It is five o’clock, and I can hear your feet. They are crawling through nonsense, hiding behind the flecks of the morning’s eyelash. The coffee crumbles into the cup. The sugar stings my ears. I still feel your breath on the bed; it lies there massaged into my veins. I watch you, through my eyes’ crescent moons.

 

Your hand falls like a flower. The other stirs the table and skates through its memory. The milk-thin steam finds room in your face, your smile vigilant through the film. I watch you float on the nothing, I watch your hair. I want to fondle the piece on your nose (curled like a finger). You want nothing as the membrane light folds and unfolds. It breathes with your breath and flickers in your eyes.

 

You told me a story once of how you lost you loam brain in the shelves and bodies of books. Now I watch you do the same. You’re lost between blank blocks of light and supple time. There’s something about the emotional silence that holds your head up like a lovers fluid hand. You stroke it, slowly, fingering it in grains. Your hanger shoulders tilt and stir up in the chair, making you stand. You swim like a cat on your feet. Your presence pours through the room.

 

In the shower, you left me your shapes and your shades. The breath of a heavy cloud-kiss holds me. Your hands have smudged the tiles, blurring my windscreen thoughts. You voice gallops giddy in a delicate breath, leaving behind a crisp crinkle.

 

The voice touches, tumbles into towel. It rubs your skin, shading in your eyes and floating figure, between the silver-silk smoke. The towel swims over your breasts, around and into the ceramic curve of your back. It stops. You reach for the door, your hands around the cold clean handle then, you sneeze. A dandelion sneeze makes the clean air now clammy with a creative spray.

 

The door opens, and you walk to my bed where I am still lying. The mottled light tickles my face, hugging me like a child. You pull up next to me. Your figure is fresh, the smell sails through me.

 

You look at me. Your gaze pours into me like wine, followed by a recumbent smile and tender fingers. A soft smile ripples through me. I trace my hand to your lap. My fingers fold your legs into me. We lie there rooted in our thick smell and thrumming tenderness.

 

Your leg draped over me, leaves me to linger. All I hear is your threaded whisper and an ebbing breath.

“I could do this again,” you said.

 

PhilosopherPoet

Into the Bricks

(This piece was published in the South African poetry journal, Fidelities)

She was a grey blur. She hung around floating on feeling, the feeling of falling. She undid her top button with a pumping finger. She held on to that button, simple as a nipple. Simple as life.

I looked from my slow, hooked part of existence. My eyes bent into her heavy head. It sunk her face into the bricks, into the place where she lived.

She was alive for those moments, breathing in a massive world too small for her finger. I made a gesture (a snorted puff thrown away). The existence of my own hands clung on too few things.

I fell through the hole in her head. Her eyes made a gap, peering through the cloud that clung. It was then,

She sniffed

She blinked.

And every part of me moved. I sang in a gathered silence too strong for me. I felt my way through the folds in the shroud. The crowded corner picked me up with her, into the cloud with bricks and things. It worked like…a…clock…worked, too little. Too little split up time.

I thought I saw a smile. No. A slipped grimace falling through the arch she held in her hands. It was something humane, something nostalgic as the earth. It bred and rose in half.

I walked past and cried, because moans mean more to me than the feet of sleep. I felt like a dream that wakes up in a whiplash of emotion. I slept as solid as my bones, and the folded smell of sleeves.