The Octopus and the Whale

As a martial artist and a filmmaker, I realize that I express myself in the following ways...

• entertaining
• engaging 
• enigmatic

The videos I've directed and the scripts I've written are testament to that.  The people I've trained, sparred and fought can also attest that in the ring, street or training floor my fighting style is any or all of the above.  And so, I want to make it a point in my blog to point out the entertaining, engaging and enigmatic through symbology. 

Why?

Why not? I think it would be fun to filter things I do or find embodying the 3 E's above using symbols.  It would make things less literal at times, leave room for the strange and mysterious and allow me to focus my attention on the 3 E's without having to include everything under the sun that falls under the 3 E's.

The symbology I want to use would narrow my focus.  Not to say that I couldn't stray out of a particular symbolic realm I've committed myself to because I don't believe in restricting yourself to the point of ideology but I think it's good to narrow your focus and own a particular thing or way of being. And the symbology I want to use is based on an environment rich with personal, literary, artistic and historical meaning. That's why the symbology I want to use is based off of the environment of the ocean, the sea; sublime bodies of water that overwhelm the planet with a surface thrilling to skim and a depth waiting to be plunged.  (Cosmic space, although magnificent and varied is too abstract; the jungle, rainforest and swamps, as vibrant and seductive as they may be, are too cliche as dark continent adventure fodder for me; the mountains, truly peaks of wonder, are too rare and dry for my tastes... I can't even breathe up there; the deserts, despite being dangerous and alluring mirages are also mind-numbingly monotonous; the plains, the plains.... I'm sorry, I don't even think about the plains that much except when I think of the Sioux and Cheyenne and maybe the Mongols; and the forests, in all their heavenly angelic morning mist glory were cliche before the jungle.) 

So the ocean it is for me... I have had a long attraction to the ocean that goes beyond the fact that I am 90%+ water.  But the ocean is vast and I have to narrow my focus further to two animals that dwell in the seas and oceans.  Being a filmmaker and martial artist instead of an oceanographer, sailor or diver, I want to restrict my use of the ocean and the sea to two animals that I feel totemic connections with; the #octopus and the #whale.

So in the future, expect me to use imagery and videos of the octopus and whale, at times, to express myself in ways...

• entertaining
• engaging 
• enigmatic

Stuff I Dig: Rat King and Bonnie Prince Billy's GIF-like videos

I'm digging this video and its gif-like ways. Which reminds me of this Harmony Korine video for Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham...

Stuff I Dig: Universe (1960)

Before beginning work on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick allegedly watched virtually every space movie ever made. One of these was a half-hour documentary produced by the National Film Board of Canada in 1960. Universe, directed by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, was a highly-respected film, having received an Academy Award nomination in 1961 for Best Documentary Short Subject. Perhaps of all the films Kubrick screened, no other had so much influence on his science fiction epic.

Universe by Roman Kroitor & by Colin Low, National Film Board of Canada

Just Saw This: Elevator to The Gallows

Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'échafaud) | Louis Malle | 1958 | France | Format: 35mm  | 88 min


I wanted to see it and I finally did.  
A film more conventional than what you would expect from the New Wave but with political undertones and a woman who suffers terribly for love.  I can't imagine this film would be as memorable without the unforgettable improvised score by Miles Davis.