1. Sunday evening, Debbie and I watched about half of The Big Chill and this morning, I watched the rest of the movie by myself. As I watched the movie, I enjoyed it more than ever, largely because I didn't compare it to other movies, like The Return of the Secaucus 7. Unlike when I first saw this movie in 1984, I didn't expect these characters to be other than what they were. I also paid more attention to where I thought things in their life had chilled, not only in their professions and their relationships away from the reunion, but in relation to one another. Some of the chill between the characters warmed up, especially as they talked and faced up to the alienation that had set in between them and that they felt in their day to day lives, whether in their occupations or their failed love lives or married lives.
Later in the afternoon, I watched Amy, the Academy Award winner in 2016 for Best Documentary Feature. The movie chronicles the personal and performing life of Amy Winehouse and ends with her death in 2011. It portrays her superb talent as a singer, guitar player, and songwriter. (I would have enjoyed more of this.) The movie also chronicles her very public suffering as bulimia, alcohol and drug addiction, her troubled love and sexual, as well as business, relationships with men, and her devotion to and difficulties with her father ravaged her. (If only all the men in her life had been as kind to her and understanding of her as Tony Bennett is when they sing and record "Body and Soul" together.)
I experienced this movie as grueling, very difficult to watch. I admired how it was made, and enjoyed the passages featuring Amy Winehouse performing when she was at her best. Bearing witness, however, to Amy Winehouse as such a vulnerable and lost soul, a person longing, in my mind, to be relieved of inward emptiness and misery that plagued her from childhood, was painful to watch, especially as she was hounded by photographers and as her fragile life was publicized in tabloid publications, on television, and became material for comedians to make fun of.
I wish I had Donald Hall's 1978 book, Remembering Poets, nearby. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but as I remember, in his chapter on Dylan Thomas, he chastises audiences, especially in the USA, who romanticized Thomas' alcoholism, found his drunken antics entertaining, and helped further the stereotype of the artist as different, more prone to alcoholism and other abuses. Donald Hall accused, as I remember, those who attended Thomas's very popular poetry readings as cheering him on to his death at only thirty-nine years of age.
I thought of Hall's criticism of romanticizing the suffering artist as I watched Amy Winehouse being barraged by photographers and making tabloid television and newspaper headlines, having her excesses be sensationalized and laughed at, as if the public took some sort of glee in watching her disintegrate -- and then became solemn and mournful in the wake of her death.
2. If you were reading this blog back when Debbie and I were living in Maryland, you might remember that we quite regularly ate eggplant sandwiches and loved them. Zoe had made us homemade hamburger buns on Monday and Debbie had found an eggplant at Barney's. So, this evening, I got out the cast iron frying pan and toasted four bun halves in butter and garlic and put them in the oven at 200 degrees to stay warm. I cut a couple of slices of eggplant, salted them, and fried them, along with a slice of red onion and some chopped mushrooms. The key, in my opinion, to making tasty fried eggplant is plenty of olive oil. When the eggplant slices were soft, I took out the buns and we each fixed a sandwich. Debbie fixed a delicious sauce. I put onion, mushrooms, feta cheese, and sauce on my sandwich. Debbie made a terrific cabbage salad. We loved the return of this meal to our lives and talked about other delicious ways to enhance the sandwich, say, with sliced red peppers, fresh basil, and other possibilities.
3. For the eleventh Tuesday in a row, I tuned in to Bill Davie's weekly Tree House concert and fully enjoyed his hour of songs and poetry. Tonight he featured the poems of Richard Hugo. He performed songs from across the span of his many, many years of songwriting, performing, and recording, including one of my favorites that I thought he might have retired: "Faked Awareness Day". He might never perform it again, but I was really happy that he performed it tonight.
Here's a limerick by Stu in honor of International Fairy Day.
Don’t forget this mythical day.
Be wary of their magical way.
With dust made of Pixie,
They ain’t Whistlin’ Dixie.
Use charms to keep them at bay.
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