Friday, February 12, 2016

Orange You Glad







Suddenly this week I have found myself bizarrely affected by a film that has been in my life for decades. Its like falling in love with an old friend, a sudden awareness that "THERE you are, how could I have missed this?" This happens so often with things that we have taken for granted, with things that have been a part of our landscape for so long as to be nearly forgotten, in some fundamental way...that even if we mention it, see it, talk about it, some other roof of awareness might still remain to be passed in our understanding and appreciation of it.

Bowie brought me back there. Hearing "Ode to Joy" opening the Ziggy concert in the live film, it was suddenly impressed upon me how perfect it occupied that space, how much it told me of a subtext I had not given enough shrift.

Frankly it is as if you discover a new galaxy, and suddenly you are creating things to fit into that universe.
To me the main manifestation of this is pure color. Large swaths of color, as in the credits- deep primary tones, the blue houndstooth chairs in the living room, the melon walls, the orange and yellow 3-D blooms of the bedspread. All of it brings all things together- an esthetic point of reference that shines a light on hidden subtexts.
     Its aesthetic wholeness and perfection, its total-worldness, inspires even beyond the pure esthetic enjoyment of the space. It contains inside of it all things that I love the most. It is a trope that contains within it, all other tropes, and all the ones I love the best.