Cast & Credits

Directed by Gus Van Sant; written by Jason Lew; music by Danny Elfan; with Henry Hopper, Mia Wasikowska, Ryo Kase, Shuyler Fisk and Jane Adams. Rated PG-13 for thematic and sensual elements. Running time: 91 minutes

This unconventional film from Gus Van Sant (which will not take fans of the filmmaker by surprise) chronicles the friendship and subsequent relationship between terminally ill cancer patient, Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) and Enoch (Henry Hopper), a morbid teenager who talks to a WWII ghost Hiroshi (Ryo Kase).

Well received at Cannes, Wasikowska steals the show as a tender, almost saintly young woman who intends to cherish her last days and maybe fall in love. The chemistry and relationship between the two principal characters drives the story forward and in what is now typical Hollywood, Annabel draws Enoch out from his shell which is motivated by a deep sadness and grief of its own.

The film forces viewers to wonder at the believability of Enoch’s relationship with Kase’s Takahashi, whether the ghost is ‘real’ or an imagined coping mechanism for Enoch who lost his parents in an accident where he survived. While it is Enoch’s journey that is meant to serve as the film’s principal sole anchor, it is Annabel who, much like she does for Enoch, gives the film its much needed lightness despite the darkness her absence represents.

Restless is produced by Bryce Dallas Howard in a role that forced Wasikowska to cut her hair into a short crop believable for a cancer patient.

The film’s end is a foregone conclusion but is heart-breaking nonetheless. Recommended viewing with a box of tissues.

by Maria Amir

Just a simple song of freedom,

He was never fightin’ for,

No one’s listenin’ when you need ‘em,

Ain’t no fun to sing that song no more.

Just a broken song of freedom,

And the closing of a door,

No one’s missin’ till you need ‘em

Ain’t no fun to sing that song no more.

—‘Broken Freedom Song’ by Kris Kristofferson

Some say it’s the word itself that puts people off. Over the years, ‘hippie’ has become synonymous with everything from nymphomaniacs and drug addicts to rabble rousing mobs and a notoriously poor fashion aesthetic.

The ‘hippie movement’ traces its roots as far back as the Mazdakist movement in Persia, whose leader—the Persian reformer Mazdak—was amongst the first known advocates of communal living, the sharing of resources, vegetarianism and ‘free love’ translated to sexual freedom[1].  In truth, most tend to center themselves around an offbeat, avant-garde branch of humanism that goes beyond most established definitions of freedom to encompass a more universal free-for-all. Amidst all the slurs pertaining to their allegedly poor sanitary habits and general inertia, what remains constant and compelling is the music.

While drugs may have been the common denominator uniting the 60s global atmosphere, the other was always the music itself. Wartime seemed to run seamlessly with revolution, resistance and anti-war campaigning. It is perhaps the latter that is acutely missing today.

Some argue that ‘protest songs’ were a product of the Vietnam War and that the pioneers of Woodstock, followed by The Beats in literature and ground activists continued their crusade long after the war against oppression was over, wherever and whenever it was is in the world. “The world cared back then. It doesn’t any more. I don’t know why and I don’t know if it ever will again but I know that right now no one cares to take to the streets singing songs anymore. No one really believes in the power of a song the same way they did when Dylan took the stage or when Seeger sang ‘This Land is Your Land’,” says a musician friend Ethan, who performs in Washington Square Park, New York.

Either way, there is a gaping hole in sentiment in the world today. The outpouring of grief following 9/11, the distinct lack of it for global disasters before the twin towers came tumbling and its subsequent rehashing has somehow failed to provide enough impetus to spark some life back into the arts. This is surprising, and oddly, it is also a historical anomaly. Traditionally, for both better and worse, hard times have always provided a flourishing ground for counterculture and artistic expression. Today, we seem to be waiting for an ear-piercing rallying cry for peace and met instead by an overwhelming silence.

This doesn’t mean of course that no one is singing, or writing, or drawing against oppression. What seems to be missing is the symbiosis of intention and action. “There are just so many causes these days that it has become nearly impossible to unite under one. We are all fighting so many battles, against poverty and ignorance and against terrorism and tribalism on the other. Women are slut walking to prove a point and men are camping out on Capitol Hill to take down Wall Street. Where do we fit in music and poetry?” says history professor Ammar Siddique.

One would assume more causes would mean more art by default. One would also think that this much rage would give birth to a generation of artists giving voice to the cause of their choice in the medium of their choosing. Collectively, as the human race, why are we not yelling for all the killing to stop? Or better put, why are ‘enough’ of us not yelling for it to stop. When did the ones vying for blood and vengeance swell to such sizeable ranks that the remainder decided it was no longer even worth the effort to keep up appearances? Why aren’t there enough pro-peace rallies today? Why aren’t little girls stepping up to army tanks and pushing in freshly plucked daisies to mortar mouths? Why are there no young men sporting Woodie Guthrie ‘this machine kills fascists’ guitar cases? And, why do none of us really believe that any of it could still work? What changed along the way and when?

As far as Pakistan is concerned, our music has never really been political. It has been patriotic, but that is never really the same thing. “Protests and politics were always the domain of poetry. When it came to protest poetry ours was incomparable. We had Faiz and Jalib and they have Lawrence Ferlinghetti beat any day,” says poet and historian AK Khaled. Today’s Pakistan is flanked by battles on every front. One need only step out of their house to pick a cause and each cause we pick will unearth ten more. There is a veritable cesspool of coppers to complain about: beggary, corruption, illiteracy, patriarchy, fundamentalism, terrorism, lawlessness… the road goes on forever and the party never ends. And yet considering the flux of material to work with, art has fallen drastically short of the task. The poetry, prose, films, paintings, music…have all shied away from saying anything really big. Sure, there have been gems here and there and the most recent resuscitation of the National Student’s Federation to promote the voice of the progressive youth, films such as Bol and bands like Beghairat Brigade and Laal have tried to stand against the tide, but their voices are simply not as loud as they need to be.

Some might say the problem lies in the nature of ‘protest songs’ themselves. By definition, protest songs are songs associated with a movement for social change…they tend to be topical and it is hard to narrow down a topic today. Wars are no longer fought against nations or along borders. The 21^st century is the age of ideological battles calculated and cultivated on land. War on Terror, Occupy Wall Street, War on Drugs, War on Poverty, each of these cosmic battles encompasses global audiences and theoretical principles but sets them on a chess board manipulated by financial overlords. Previously, movements were time bound and often the spark of one cause ignited elsewhere in the world where it was needed and it spread on its own. This was clearly the case with the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. Today’s world works in reverse; the cause starts globally and slowly begins to splinter into smaller and smaller target zones. This usually means that nations having nothing to do with the origins of the ideological battle get stuck with the baggage of other countries along with their own.

“In Pakistan, pro peace rallies have a hard time finding any support, because if we’re honest peace isn’t really what we’re after. The people want peace but it’s not a pacifist kind of peace…they want justice and retribution. They want someone to pay for what has been done to them and this is a place where ‘an eye for an eye’ will always, always trump ‘turn the cheek’ notions,” says malang and part-time cobbler Habeeb Shah.

If there is a peace narrative to be found in Pakistan, it is perhaps best located in Sufi music. As is the case with most things in the country, religion will always be one corner for most kinds of art. At least, most kinds of art that have any long term, grass root appeal and yet the version of ‘faith’ that does make it into revolutionary thought or art tends to be in a league of its own. Sufi songs inspired by centuries old poetry by Bulleh Shah and Sultan Bahu, serves as a vehicle against both bourgeois detachment and orthodox involvement in battle for the public sphere.

Bulleh Shah has been quoted as saying:

Pee sharaab te kha kebab, heth baal haddan di ag

Bulleha bhan ghar rab da, ais thuggan de thug noo thug

(Drink your wine and eat your kebabs, roasting in the fires of bone

Oh Bullah, break into God’s house and cheat the cheat of Cheats)

Over five centuries later, Canadian born legendary songwriter Leonard Cohen, in his anthem ‘Democracy’ echoes the sentiment:

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,

the holy places where the races meet;

from the homicidal bitchin’ that goes down in every kitchen

to determine who will serve and who will eat

And honestly, who would ever undertake the futile task of trying to pinpoint the effectiveness of one verse over the other. Still, given the dearth of voices reacting to violence today, both the East and the West seem floundering in the discontented waters of their respective pasts. We all seem to be feeding off of this “great art of yore” theory rather than sustaining and regurgitating our current bitterness effectively. “People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around – the music and the ideas,” Dylan once said.

I am unsure of whether this is because we are too scared of creating something new in this bitter, ugly world or because we are simply too apathetic to believe in something new. After all, art is above all else, a process of giving birth and there is too much anger out there for most newborn creations to survive the impending assault of censure, ridicule and bitterness that lurks behind every corner and in every critic.

No matter where we are coming from, we need to push past this ominous, ever present silence.  Silence was once what terrified people most but today it seems to have set in and congealed in the collective human conscience. Nearly the entire human race is engaged in war today, in one form or the other and still most of this race also appears to have separated itself from the affects of its condition. Many of us have retreated behind silicon screens that allow us to post tidbits of ourselves and thereby prevent us from actually working long and hard to give voice to our rage in a cohesive and- more importantly- common voice.

In Pakistan, anti-war sentiment is viewed largely as a flailing Western past-time. It tends to be viewed as that luxury only available to those who have the choice to choose their own battles. For the rest of us, war is here whether or not we like it and ‘peace mongering’ has been dismissed as the cowardice of those unwilling to take a stand. In Pakistan, we tend to think of protest songs or pacifist songs as inherently American and thereby suspect by nature. The whole ‘yes-we-canness’ of classics like ‘Blowin in the wind’ and ‘This Land is My Land’ seems rooted in the seemingly arrogant notion that good things will always come your way. It involves a hope that we in Pakistan lost a long time ago and have since been struggling to recapture.

After all the best protest songs are by definition a perverse mixture of feel-good, feel-guilt and feel-motivated. Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ both emanated from a deep-set belief in universal brotherhood that many in the world today separate themselves from in favour of tribalism, nationalism or multiculturalism.

Is it just that romanticism is dead and that no one is willing to cling to hope over lost pride any longer? Are we apathetic?

Or are we all too willing to lump all our inertia into the ever-widening public discourse of post-modernism that prevents us from needing to give it any voice beyond the white noise that already persists?

Because that is what a protest songs really is.

It is the noise that puts an end to all that white noise.

by Ben Nardolilli

His voice was sore, but he did not know it yet. As far as he could tell, Lowell’s problems were restricted to other familiar symptoms of a rough night. His head and feet both hurt. His stomach felt sick with emptiness. These he knew how to deal with. He was also sure he knew their cause. However, Lowell’s voice was sore as well, a fact he realized when he sat up in bed and moaned. The initial hope was that the moan would help get rid of various somatic pains inside him. Instead, it uncovered a voice that was raw. A serious effort was required to make any sound. He wondered how he had damaged his vocal chords before going to sleep on his futon.

Other pains Lowell could understand. The trinity of hurt in his head, gut, and feet was the usual result of drinking too much. His stomach was angry with him because it had been irritated all night long from the things he had poured into it without worrying about the consequences. His head hurt from various factors, many related to dehydration and various impurities lodged into the alcohol he drank. The pain in Lowell’s feet came not from the metabolic properties of anything he drank, but because he had stood in place or walked for hours across the city. For one night he had been given the superpower of numbness, and it allowed him to go farther in his beat up shoes than other mortals could.

Lowell walked through his kitchen and went into the bathroom. He looked at himself in his mirror while running the water from his faucet until it was hot. There was no damage to his face this time. He had no new bruises or scars. There were no patches of red that he would have to explain to other people. His black hair was still thinning, but it was always thinning. Lowell spoke to his reflection, greeting it and asking it how it was. The voice he made echoed through the bathroom and sounded like it was coming from the aged gramophone recording of an even older vaudeville star.

The water was now steaming and Lowell grabbed a plastic cup to fill it up. The cup was generic, red, and had come from a party he went to months ago. He had walked home with it and since it was durable enough, he decided to keep it. Lowell drank the hot stream of tap water and let it soothe the scratched up portions of his throat. He was still too young to sound so old. Lowell gargled and he swallowed a bit, then he gargled and he spat. His face felt dry so he dabbed a washcloth with the water and scrubbed his forehead, temples, and the sides of his mouth a bit. Now his face had red patches on it, but he knew these would fade in a few minutes. The soreness in his throat had dissipated. However, when he tried to speak his voice still sounded hoarse.

He went back to his futon and smacked the brown cloth that covered it. In the Sunday morning light he released a fleet of dust particles that sprung into the air and circulated in currents too faint for Lowell to feel. He sat down and watched the dust for a few minutes, trying to see if there was a poem to write in the patterns he saw. Maybe he could write remarks about chaos and beauty. Or he could craft a few passages about how everything turning to dust was not so bad. When disturbed by a certain force and illuminated by a certain slant of sunlight, it was beautiful too.  Lowell grabbed the pad he kept close by his futon for such creative emergencies and wrote down his thoughts.

As he was about to begin writing poems drawn from these thoughts, his phone rang. Lowell let it ring, unsure of who would be calling him and afraid they might have revelation about the previous night. Before his voicemail kicked in, Lowell picked up the cellphone and spoke. He was unsure if his voice was now unrecognizable to whoever was on the other side. As soon as the voice spoke to him, Lowell recognized it was Brendon.

“Hey man, how’s it going?”

Lowell tried to hide his wounds. “Fine.”

“You were pretty crazy last night.”

“Oh yeah?” Lowell answered with a slight swagger of confidence. He had to make it seem like any insanity and chaos he was responsible for the previous night was a completely planned out affair, or at least was less ad hoc than it seemed to him at the time. Lowell did not mind being known as a mad poet, so long as it was understood he never lost control while performing in an escapade.

“We were all wondering about you. We weren’t sure if you made it home safely.”

“Of course I made it home safely. I know how to handle myself.”

“Dude, how much did you have to drink last night?”

Lowell was sure a serious talk was developing. His friend was trying to sit him down for a discussion and they would discuss his health and his effect on other people like Brendon. Lowell did not want to be told he had that kind of problem. Other issues he would accept but addiction was not one of them. He only deranged his senses once in a while, every weekend at the most, but that was only when there was money and somebody was giving a reading.

He answered half true, “I’m not sure. I keep trying to cut down but somebody pulls me back in. You know how bartenders are. I think I must have complained about a weak drink, so he gave me something stronger.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I mean, you were crazy.”

Lowell hated hearing that word applied to him so early on a Sunday morning. Pacing through the kitchen, he wondered what he had done. If he had gotten into a fight he must have won because there were no marks on his body. He was ready to apologize, but only after Brendon listed the damage that he had done in full. Lowell had too much pride to say he was sorry before he had the facts of what went wrong.

“You were really on fire.”

Lowell stopped pacing and leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter. “Oh really?”

“Didn’t you see how the crowd was going wild afterwards?”

“It was dark.”

“Remember everybody kept coming up to your afterwards?”

“There were so many of them. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

“Dude, it was great. You totally killed that open mike”

“I did, didn’t I?” Lowell was relieved. The reading. It was coming back to him in bits and pieces now. He could recall a bar lit in red and bricks all around him. There was a stage and he was on it. A bright light was on him and made him feel feverish. That was about it.

“I wish there was a video of the night. Maybe somebody recorded something. It would suck to lose it.”

Now he was curious. “I hope somebody did too.”

“You were just going on and on. And when you went over the five minute limit there was nearly a riot.”

“Yeah,” Lowell laughed as if remembering. “There really was, wasn’t there?”

“It was the crowd and you versus the emcee and the other poets and they got shouted down. It was real people power man. Real people power.”

“I know.”

“It was amazing, it made me want to go and write an epic of our own like you did. All those images and random pieces you strung together. It was amazing. It was like, like, you pulled a Christmas tree out of your mouth.”

“Maybe that’s why my voice hurts so much.”

“That would hurt, wouldn’t it?”

“Definitely. Anything coming out of your mouth would.”

“Speaking of which, did you get sick afterwards?”

Lowell pushed his upper lip to his nose. He smelled nothing foul. “Nope.”

“Good. We were worried. You just sorta took off after everyone was on top of you.”

“I guess I was nervous. All the attention.”

“Yeah, I can understand that.” Brendon laughed. “You took up my slot you bastard!”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It was for a good cause.”

“Good. It won’t happen again. You have permission to bump me off next time with your own epic.”

“Let it happen. Your stuff was good. You were great. I’m not complaining. People are wondering about you. They’re asking questions. They want you to speak again.”

“Wow. Well, be my agent and book me something.”

“I’ll let you know if anything serious comes up.”

“Thanks.” Lowell still wanted to know more about his heroic stand at the open mike. What had he written that was so inspiring? “Hey you want to get something later, a cup of tea, some pizza?”

“You want to meet at Moonstruck? We can get pretty much anything there.”

“Sure.”

Lowell came to the diner after Brendon. When he walked through the front door he saw Brendon’s shaggy brown hair. His face was blocked by the copious menu. Lowell slid in the booth across from his friend and ordered a Western omelet and some coffee. Brendon, who had been up longer than Lowell and felt the time was past for breakfast, ordered a club sandwich. When the waitress left them, Lowell began prying his friend for more information, careful not to reveal his own ignorance of the night’s events.

“So, which poem was your favorite?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which one did you like the best?”

“You said you were just reading one.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I combined a bunch together into one. I forgot.”

“I liked the poem you read. Everybody really did. It just hit all the right spots. I mean I’ve liked your stuff, but this was the first thing I absolutely loved.”

“Thanks. What lines did you like? I’m just trying to figure out what I’m doing right.”

“Let’s see, let me try to remember.”

Lowell pulled out a pen and grabbed a napkin from the dispenser.

“There were lines. Plenty of lines I liked. It’s hard to recall them now. You have a better memory for these things than me.”

“I can fill in the blanks obviously, I was just wondering.”

“The thing about catastrophic agents of predetermined chance, I liked that line. I also liked your observation about Virginia and North Carolina mirroring one another, the plot of long dead English kings, or a joke, I can’t remember which.”

“Yeah.” Lowell wished he could remember as well.

“The audience was into your comparison of the gates of Babylon and the bridges of New York City, the Iraqi veteran unable to determine if he is living or dead on the streets of Manhattan. The young liked it when you went after the old. The old liked it when you scolded the young for being inactive.”

“I see.”

“That’s all I can remember. I’m sure more will come to me.”

“It’s okay. Any feedback I can get.”

The food arrived and the two of them ate. Lowell waited for Brendon to bring up another favorite part of the work, not only because he liked the compliments, but he needed to know what he had recited to the crowd. But Brendon began to speak about his own work and what he had planned to read before Lowell went off on his epic tangent that hijacked the evening. Brendon even pulled out the printed papers he had brought to the open mike. He asked Lowell to read them for him and offer his feedback. While he went over the poems with his pen, he asked Brendon what parts of his poem did not work. He still needed more details.

“Well, I thought it was pretty strong and together.”

“There must have been something.”

“The bit about tentacle rape I thought was too much but other people laughed out loud at it, so it’s your decision if it’s good or not.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“I hope you’re not offended.”

“It’s okay. I’m not.” Lowell was far from offended. He still did not know which piece Brendon was referring to and so had no memory of pouring his heart out over it.

“There were some sentimental bits.”

“And what were those?”

“You used thee and thou in this one part. Then you spoke about the endless embers of the cruel unforgiving sky. Maybe sentimental is the wrong word. Maybe it was overwrought?”

Lowell wrote all these lines down on his napkin. The waitress came and took their dishes, silverware, and dirty napkins. Once she left the bill came and the two friends pulled out coins and crumpled bits of paper in order to pay for it. They left a tip that was generous so long as the waitress was willing to count out the nickels and dimes they left behind.

He went back to his apartment and opened up his laptop. Lowell read the lines on the napkin as best he could and searched his files for a poem that contained all of them. He was unable to see anything like the work that Brendon described. A few words were under one poem and some were under another. Many of the scenes he claimed to have heard were not in anything on his laptop. He went online to see if he had posted the lines in a forum. There was a chance the poem had been a creation purely for the internet before he read it out loud. But when he typed in terms for the search engines to find, nothing came up. Thankfully, the work of other people was not found either. Lowell then went to his clothes and the jacket he wore the night before.  He felt around for a set of poems that he must have printed out to read for the open mike. In his nervous confusion he had probably combined them by accident and added lines he had written in with his pen as part of his last-minute edits.

There was nothing tucked away in his pockets. Lowell looked at the trashcan. There were no poems shoved in it either. He checked his emails in hopes that maybe he had sent it to himself from some other computer. But there was nothing relevant in his inbox, archives, or the virtual trashcan that held the ghost of past messages. However, there were plenty of emails from new fans and admirers. He could not find the work that had inspired them, but they had managed to find him. Most of the messages were short and told Lowell that he had reached them with their words. His words touched off raw nerves and at the same time brought people together it seemed. Some of the messages were longer. There were fans who wanted help on making their own poetry better. Others came from people who wanted him to speak at their bar or club. These interested Lowell the most and he responded to them first. He did not want to wait for them to lose interest. Apparently the honorariums were now ready to start rolling in.

He asked the proprietors if he could read new work. Lowell claimed that his concern was becoming a “one-trick pony,” rather than a loss of the text that had made the night’s reading so memorable. Most of them said yes and it was only those that agreed that Lowell responded to further. One establishment, Bar 107, was willing to pay more than anyone else. He agreed to give a reading for them in a week and then told all the others his decision. He casually mentioned what they were willing to pay him, unsure if it was fair to do so, or it was just in bad taste to announce it.  Lowell was hoping to bring that rarest of factors into his life: competition. No one was able to match Bar 107 so far, but he was sure that once word spread and his readings were attended by motivated listeners who were also hard drinking, his newly established fee would be met.

Lowell arrived at Bar 107 ten minutes before going on. A makeshift sign had been assembled out of paperboard and colored paper to announce the reading. There were already fans inside, eager to listen to him read. Lowell talked with a few of them. He was nervous but the conversations gave him hope for another successful reading. People offered to buy him drinks, including the bartender, but Lowell declined. Seeing so many eager faces ready to lend him their ears made him happy and relaxed. Instead, he asked for a glass of ice water with lime, which was promptly refilled whenever he finished it.

Brendon came in with his friends. The group all smelled of tobacco. Lowell met them and they talked while Lowell pulled out his poems. Since he had the evening to himself, he had brought more work to read. Folded up and stuck inside his pockets, the poems had pressed into him as he made his way over to Bar 107. There was a feeling of relief once he pulled them out. Lowell apologized to the group and told them he was just reviewing his work for the reading but he swore that he was listening to everything they said. He had over twenty poems to read. He was not sure if this was the right amount. Many of them he had meant to read during his epic stand at the open mike. Lowell shuffled the papers and placed the poems he wanted to read the most in the front so that he would get to them at least. It left open the possibility of finishing on a weak note, but he believed it was more important to get the crowd’s attention at the start.

The bar’s manager/art director/emcee came up to him and shook his hand. He asked him if he was ready to go on. Lowell nodded casually and everyone moved into the performance space through a pair of black velvet curtains. Lowell looked around and tried to count how many people had showed up, since each one of them had come specifically to see him. There were a few familiar faces, people who had sat and stood next to him at other readings. They had all just been loyal listeners then. How many of them, Lowell wondered, thought they would be eager to hear him read one day? The manager went into emcee mode and took to the mike. He gave Lowell a small introduction and when it was done, Lowell took to the stage sober.

The stage was painted black but the bright lights turned it bone white. Lowell walked up to the microphone and adjusted it for his height. People applauded him in anticipation and Brendon called out Lowell’s name. Someone from the dark masses told him that he wanted to have his babies. Unsure of what to say, Lowell muttered a lukewarm, “okay,” that made the assemblage of hidden faces laugh. He held the poems in his hands and began introducing his work. Those faces that he did see seemed surprised that he was reading his work from a page. He knew that singers often told little stories between their songs and the impromptu lines often diffused tension and kept the voice warm.

“So…I…uh…I wrote this first poem after drinking some cough medicine…and wine…” there were cheers from the audience. “I had this vision under the Empire State Building…how I ended up there from Brooklyn…I have no idea. Anyway…it’s a little crazy…but I was told you like crazy. Hell, I’m going to dedicate this to my friend Brendon. Brendon are you out there?”

“Read the poem!” He shouted back. There were more laughs and Lowell smiled before beginning.

The response was not what he had expected. No one cheered or laughed as he read. When he finished, there was applause, but no spontaneous cheering. Lowell had the feeling they were all doing him a favor to get him warmed up, convinced the best work was yet to come. He let the poem drop to the ground like a heavy snowflake and went onto the next. “Okay. This next poem…is about fall…in the city…but the change of season also…when I’m talking about John…that’s a pseudonym…John isn’t real…what I mean by that is…uh…John is really somebody else…see there was this dream…” Lowell decided to cut short his meditations on John’s identity and began reading.

The crowd was with him but halfway through the reading they began to show signs of distraction. They sipped on their drinks loudly. They shuffled and swirled their ice around and then chewed on the cubes. They made conversation and they laughed softly but loud enough for Lowell to hear them. Meanwhile, he continued to read. After his tenth poem, he asked the crowd to hold their applause until the end. He could tell it was a dwindling resource. Somebody in the middle of one work asked him to speak up. The request was repeated three poems later. Lowell asked for a glass of water and secretly hoped the bartender or someone along the way would spike it for him with something stronger, but when he put it to his lips it was decidedly non-alcoholic.

The audience was now inebriated and brave. People began hurling strange bits of words at him. “Fantastic spaceship of the inner shared heart!” “Jasmine infused mediocrity!” “The sun rolls off its stage in sighs over us!” “We are trapped under the oedipal complex of military gears!” Lowell could not tell if they were mocking or insulting him. It was an odd form of heckling. Gradually he realized that they were uttering phrases from his epic poem, which they wanted him to recite. Lowell had to interrupt the poem he was reading and tell the crowd to behave. He felt like a kindergarten teacher. The lights were already off so he did not have the power of flashing them in order to silence his disappointed audience. His commands were not enough and Brendon eventually had to stand up and tell everyone to be quiet in a booming whiskey scented voice.

Lowell thanked his friend and then read quickly through the last of the poems. He finished with five minutes to spare. The emcee came up and took the mike from Lowell and asked everyone to give him a hand. Most of the people applauded, but Lowell were certain he heard a solitary booing coming out at him as he left the stage. He left the performance space and got the bartender, who was still sympathetic to him as the guest of honor, to give him a White Russian. He needed something that was strong but sweet as well. Brendon and his gang came out from the curtains and surrounded Lowell. They fed him compliments and shielded him from the audience as they shuffled past. Lowell could see disappointment on all their faces. The group bought him a few more drinks and soon he was drunk.

Lowell collapsed on a couch in the corner and Brendon’s group sat around him. His friend began feeding him compliments until Lowell stopped him and admitted that he knew the reading was a failure.

“I don’t understand what happened.”

“Well, your work was different tonight. Too cerebral for the stage maybe.”

“All my work is like this. How is any of this work different from my usual?”

“I think you were missing the energy from last time. You got all your inhibitions back.”

“The audience was not with me.”

“No they most definitely were not.”

“I don’t ever want to give a reading like that again. It was miserable.”

“The work was good. It just wasn’t good for a live reading.”

“It was dull.”

“Dull to listen to, but knowing you I could see how it would look on a page and I put it together in my mind and I understood it. A lot of good line breaks. But that doesn’t come out on stage.”

“Yeah. I figured.”

“Cheer up. They’ll be other readings.”

“I just don’t remember what I did right last time.”

“Well, you were drunk.”

“I don’t want that to be the only reason. What a crutch!”

“Okay. Okay. I think it was a big part of it though.”

“What else? Go on.”

“Do you even recall that night?”

Lowell had to admit the truth. “No.”

“Well, you berated the people who read before you.”

“Oh that’s cruel.”

“But it was funny, and you were just saying what we were all thinking.”

“So I was an asshole. Is that it?”

“Maybe. You also didn’t read from any paper.”

“I didn’t?”

“No, you looked like you had memorized something, but now that I think about it, I think you improvised. Where you got the words from, I don’t know. They just kept coming out all smooth though.”

“Too bad nobody recorded what I said.”

“Too bad. But I don’t think anybody recorded tonight either, so you’re better off.”

“I just wish I could do another reading like that. I’m going to get paid for tonight, but nobody will probably ever pay me again. I’m lucky if I get into an open mike.”

Lowell still had enough fans left. Not everyone who witnessed his success was at Bar 107 the night of his failed reading. Bar 107 could not have held them all and half of the crowd that came for the second reading was new, drawn in from the strength of Lowell’s reputation. They were disappointed, but a large group of true believers in Lowell’s abilities still remained. They continued to ask Lowell for advice on their poetry and he did his best with what they sent to him in the bodies of their emails. Occasionally they would come up to him in the bookstore that he worked at and gave him their poems asking his opinions in the flesh. Some were good and some were bad. There was no pattern of quality among his fans.

A month passed and Lowell was content to never read again. It was better to allow his legend to circulate. However, one day a man came into his store specifically asking to see him. It was rare for his fans to do this; most of them simply looked for Lowell and then recognized him from the reading. But this man had not been to the reading or the one that followed after. Instead, he had heard Lowell’s name mentioned highly and that was all he had to go on. The man went over to the travel section, where Lowell was stocking books. He introduced himself as Zack and asked Lowell if he had a minute to talk.

“Sure.”

“Great. I work over at the Cordelia Street Café. Have you ever been there?”

“A few times. You got that nice fireplace.”

“And an open mike. We would be honored if you read.”

Lowell wanted to decline the invitation. He wanted to ask Zack for money and then when no offer was made, to refuse to read until he was paid. But Lowell had a soft spot for the Cordelia Street Café. When he was an undergraduate, it was one of the few bars that had let him drink without asking for his identification. It had treated him like an equal. He felt compelled to return the favor.

“Sure.”

“Great. We don’t offer, um, payment. But just talk to the bartender and they will help you with what you need.”

“Okay. When is it?”

“This Saturday. Bring your friends.”

“How long do I have?”

“Five minutes? Is that enough?”

“That’s fine. I work better under deadlines.”

Lowell went through his poems that week and printed off a batch he thought would do better. They were filled with the surreal imagery that the crowds seemed to enjoy. He hoped that these words would inspire them to heckle the management once more to let him go over the time allotted to each reader. If nothing more, he wanted howls and cheering to accompany him as he read, a form of excited punctuation to his lines.

Brendon greeted Lowell in front of the red and white awning of the Cordelia Street Café. His friend had brought along some of the same people from last time to hear him read, but most of those people were missing. Lowell and Brendon exchanged small talk and he bummed a cigarette off Brendon, trying to keep warm. Brendon asked what he was reading. Lowell pulled the poems out of his coat like they were a bribe and cautiously handed them over to Brendon.

“It’s for tonight. It’s what I’m going to read. What do you think? I don’t want to bomb again.”

“Okay.” Brendon read through the works quickly and gave his assessment. “They’re good, I mean, on the page. When you read them, I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine people who are expecting a show to go crazy over them.”

“They’re that bad?”

“They’re bad for reading out loud, if you want to bring down the house. I’m sorry Lowell. It’s only five minutes.”

“I thought this is what the people wanted.”

“I know. It’s hard to predict these things.”

People began to enter the café for the reading. Several of them stopped to shake hands with Lowell. They had high hopes for his reading. They expected to have their minds blow and their worlds turned upside down. Lowell said he would try his best to do either, though he admitted it would be a miracle if he could do both. He saw that they were excited, not just about him, but poetry in general. The thought of letting them down troubled him. Once he had a moment to speak to Brendon, he expressed his doubts about reading what he had brought.

“Maybe I should just wing it.”

“You can do it. But it’s risky.”

“I don’t want to let them down.”

“Well, you can’t just do things to please people.”

“True. But Brendon, you see how they are. They are excited. About poetry! How often does that happen? If I bomb I’ll ruin not only my chances of reading again, but the audiences of other poets, including you. By the way, are you reading tonight?”

“Before you. I already signed up.”

“Good.”

“So you’re really going to try and make it up as you go along?”

It sounded like a challenge. Lowell took his cigarette out of his mouth and grabbed his poems from Brendon. He brought the end of the butt against the papers and they went up into flames. Lowell dropped them into an empty trashcan where they quickly turned to ashes. Lowell and Brendon both watched them disappear without saying anything until the fire died down.

“Well, if you’re going to improvise, I believe you have to get ready.”

“I guess I haven’t had anything to drink in a week.”

“A heroic achievement, believe me.”

“And my audience expects it.”

“It appears they do.”

“It’s part of what it means to have an audience. Certain obligations, right?”

“True.” Lowell dutifully walked inside the café. He sat in front of the bar and adjusted himself to the cushion of the stool. A bartender with red pigtails asked him what he wanted. He was honest with her.

“The strongest thing that Zack will let you give me for free.”

She nodded. “You’re Lowell, aren’t you?” She poured him a scotch. “Is that okay?”

“Yes to both questions.”

“I’ve heard about you. Apparently, you’re a crazy guy up there when you read.”

“Apparently.” Lowell began to quickly drink the scotch until he finished the glass and set it down on bar.

“You want another one?”

He nodded. The bartender put a small plate of olives for him to munch on while he drank. Lowell wished she would linger and talk to him some more, but there were other customers to attend to. After he was done drinking and reading, things would change. As soon as he had cheers following him out of the cellar downstairs, then she would give him her full attention. Maybe she would even let down her pigtails for him. Once he fell off the wagon and was celebrated for it, she, like everyone else, would love him.

“Another?”

He checked his bearings. They were not off yet. “I guess so. There’s enough time, right?”

She shrugged and gave Lowell his third scotch.

Ben Nardolilli’s work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, Pear Noir, and Yes Poetry. His chapbook Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained, has been published by Folded Word Press. He maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish his first novel.

Cast & Credits

Directed by Drake Doremus; written by Doremus and Ben York Jones; with Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Oliver Muirhead and Alex Kington. Rated PG-13 for content and strong language. Running time: 90 minutes.

Anton Yelchin who first hit screens as Anthony Hopkins’ mentee in the cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis, breaks through in this story of young love. Though some may argue Felicity Jones is the film’s true heart. What helps Like Crazy stand out from the crowd is its true-to-life portrayal of what happens when the honeymoon’s over and real life settles in.

Guy meets girl, gets over social awkwardness and spend a blissful summer of love. Now what? She’s British, he’s American and her visa’s run out so she does what any young person in love would do given the chance: she overstays. Damn the repercussions, but the action has a more than equal reaction when she can’t re-enter the US. The couple try for a long-distance relationship but inevitably things fall apart (the time lag, traveling from one country to another, mostly falling on Yelchin’s shoulders). They take up with other people although each is never quite far from one another’s minds and do find their way back to one another, though not without its own share of problems.

This is a no-nonsense, quaint, poignant film about first love and heartbreak and though not as lighthearted as indies like (500) Days of Summer have been, has its feet grounded firmly in reality which brings its own charm. The film has been lauded both for its performances and direction although Doremus may have had little to do with a mostly improvised script by its two young stars. Viewers will find themselves taking a trip down memory lane to their own first loves which, given the subject matter and nuanced performances, isn’t hard to do.

Carol Ann Duffy, The Bees

Picador, 2011, 84 pages (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-330-44244-2

Carol Ann Duffy has made an admirable start to her term as Poet Laureate, embracing her role as public poet with far more enthusiasm than most of her predecessors were able to muster (Wordsworth wrote no official poetry at all during his seven years as Laureate, while Andrew Motion could have been forgiven for being similarly reticent following the truly dreadful rap poem he composed for Prince William’s 21^st). Duffy, on the other hand, came up with an extremely credible piece to mark William’s marriage, while ‘The Last Post’, written to commemorate the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, must be one of the best Laureate poems since ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’

Unfortunately, The Bees can’t be described as a continuation of her good work. Duffy’s first collection of new poems since accepting the Laureateship is crying out for a ruthless editor: it feels rushed, perfunctory, superficial. This is the kind of collection which convinces casual poetry readers that the emperor must be stark naked – that ‘modern poetry’ has nothing interesting left to say.

Several poems seem to have been composed by a teenager who has just discovered the existence of alliteration. ‘Cockermouth and Workington’ is, appropriately enough, swept away in a flood of fricatives:

Fouled fortune followed,

but families filed into the fold

for a fire flared.

The more you read, the less it means, which holds true for far too many of the poems in this collection. Here’s the very first piece, ‘Bees’:

Been deep, my poet bees,

in the parts of flowers,

in daffodil, thistle, rose, even

the golden lotus; so glide,

gilded, glad, golden, thus –

 

wise –and know of us: …’

A free copy of the collection to anyone who figures out what that means. The analogy between poets and bees (‘honey is art’) becomes increasingly laboured as the collection goes on, while the alliterative firework display inevitably fizzles out into insignificance. Why the ‘gilded/golden’ tautology? Why the mangled syntax (‘as the crow flies so flew he’/ ‘And who here present upon whom I call’) and strained rhymes (‘Barack/black’ and ‘sack/pack/Blackjack’, swiftly followed by ‘neck/Iraq’)? You begin to suspect that Duffy no longer has the answers.

Bees appear to be in fashion – Jo Shapcott’s bee poems were published in a recent issue of Poetry Review, while Simon Armitage picked Sean Borodale’s Pages from Bee Journal as his book of the year in The Guardian. Their appeal is obvious – as symbols for a world about to be lost to the effects of climate change, as symbols for the assiduous and selfless labour which goes into producing ‘art’, and as a link to literary history (bees in poetry go back at least as far as Virgil) – but genuinely great collections must do more than reflect current trends. Duffy’s bee poems consistently fall short: when she threatens the reader with ‘Corn buttercup brought to its knee./ No honey for tea’ we hear the echo of Rupert Brooke (‘Is there honey still for tea?’) but it’s hard to care. ‘No honey for tea’ seems very much like a First World Problem.

The Bees contains some pieces which rank alongside Duffy’s best (‘Water’, an elegy for her mother, is especially moving). Sadly, it’s difficult to read the full collection without concluding that a significant number of these poems should have been left unpublished.

Your work in five words.
Colorful, blunt, thought provoking, conceptual, unique.

You’ve dabbled in many different things over the years. When did you decide you were going to be a painter and what made you stick to it? 
More than any external deciding factor, let’s just say art is pretty much the only thing that came naturally to me. Once I got to NCA, I discovered that were so much else out there so I took my time ‘dabbling’ as you put it, in TV, modeling and mime. After a year, I realized it wasn’t as satisfying as painting and art in general. That said, I think sticking to one form of creativity is detrimental to aesthetic and conceptual growth. I still love to collaborate with individuals from other creative fields – it can only enhance my perspective.

Your work is very direct. How much of your own processes actually end up on canvas?
I don’t think any artist can say that they get exactly what they visualized onto the canvas; the image or concept always evolves based on the technical processes involved. Some paintings work more than others. If I started feeling too content with my work, I’d probably change careers!

Is there a recurrent theme in your creations?
Spirituality and the quest for emotional truth are usually my most recurrent themes.

Over the years, you’ve ended up seeing both sides to many coins. Do you think it’s important for an artist to walk the tightrope between all opposites for life?
Johnny Cash called it ‘walking the line’, and yes I believe that artists do need to walk the line between darkness and the light to gain a real perspective. That said, I do not believe that artists are above judgment or reproach. I disagree with using artistic licence to justify bad behavior. Every human being is a shade of gray. No one is all black or white. Artists just happen to be more honest about it.

If you could legalize one drug of choice in the country what would it be?
Love. It’s the only ‘drug’ we really need as a nation. We’ve turned into nation of haters and it’s time to medicate.

Which of the currently prevailing social problems in our country do you feel the most strongly about?
I feel that the social problem most ignored (and the most important globally) is that there is absolutely no regard or protection for the soul. As far as I’m concerned, humanity has spent enough time on matter. It’s time to focus on the spirit.

What do you think of the other artists your age out there in the country?
I think my generation of artists is producing some interesting work. Every one of them has something to say and they all deserve to be heard.

If you could exhibit anywhere in the world where would it be and why?
It would probably be the Great Wall of China. A painting or a piece by me after every mile. Imagine that, taking a journey to see all of my work.

Guilty pleasures and pet peeves?
Don’t believe in feeling guilty about pleasures. As far as pet peeves go I can’t stand bad manners and unclean people, places and intentions.

You’re reclusive, why is that?
Being reclusive gives me the opportunity to review my life and experiences, and draw knowledge from them. I need thinking time and being around people doesn’t help the meditative process.

Any advice for young artists just starting out?
You are either born into art or not. Those who havea are born into it my advice would to never sell out. You don’t need to be commercial to succeed. Be yourself because no one else can be you.

Just once, in shame, he refuses;

his turning snags her words on air.

Rock-blue, her pupils bloom.

From his dust she eases him; the scream

unspools like hurried leaves.

Her practised hand unlocks the pine,

the inner tree exhales,

its hidden trunk exposed.

The bole weakens to take him.

His whimper cuts off short

gagged by the clutch of sap;

his lungs strain at the heartwood

as she births him in the tree.

At a touch the bark rolls back

with all the ease of loosened skin.

Ben Parker completed a Creative Writing MA at University of East Anglia, UK in 2008. He now lives and works in Oxford. His poems have been published in a number of places, including Staple, Iota, Neon, Ink Sweat & Tears, Eyewear, and The Cadaverine.

Graphic art is a medium I most frequently use to express myself. I have a feeling as if I have been doing that for my whole life. I have always found graphics as something very close to me, since my early beginnings. An unpremeditated choice of mine but quite a compelling one for me. Destiny, I presume…anyhow, I have actively started exploring it as a discipline some 20 years ago.

 Can you recall the first drawing you ever made, what was it?

To me, a drawing is a predecessor of all things happening further in the process. A beginning of my existence as a person and further on as an author/artist; I like the clarity of drawings, the way they expose all the tiny blemishes, accidental or on purpose they are all inevitably visible. It is a component of my reality, a composite part of my stories. Perhaps I can’t vividly remember my first drawing as I cannot recall my first steps or first words uttered.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Mostly, from all the things that surround me. From the people around me, my close friends, my own dreams, from both the beautiful and ugly life experiences, but above all – from the nature.

Are there any artists in particular that you admire?

Yes, there are artists who, during my aging as an artist, have been close to me in their sensibility and have been inspirational, and there still are such people but they really are numerous and I do believe they have all had their influences during different periods in my creative opus.

Tell us a little about your hometown of Skopje?

Well, this is a tough one – let’s say it is a capital city always at the verge of its ‘metropolis-to be’ quest, a cozy and peculiar place on the Balkans, where I was born and grew up, once completely destroyed by a terrible earthquake and rebuilt by the world solidarity hands; a place where, nowadays,‘Disneyland and antiquity’ meet together and where past tries to combat the inspiring future. I believe you might have to come and visit it in order to understand it…and love it.

What was the inspiration for your collections called ‘Insectarium Intro I and II’ and ‘Colored Insectarium’?

Perceptibly, the insects themselves – that micro world literally takes the whole of me. It all began when I was trying to see what most of people do not even notice. I wanted to explore these brand new forms for me and at the same time beat my inner irrational fear from insects. In the process, the compositions started building upon themselves spontaneously, even more because, as I previously mentioned, I had nature itself as a source of my inspiration.

 Your creations resound as deeply personal, how much of your own self do you put in to your work?

I presume each artist puts a great part of him/herself into his/her works. My case is not that different at all. Perhaps one of the major characteristics of my works is particularly this one. My works are a reflection of my inner life that I decide to share with the spectators. At times they are even too personal, yet it is my way of communicating with the outside world. Everything I cannot express in words, or I find it unnecessary to explain, is expressed through my imagery.

Have you ever thought of chosing a different career?

I have never seriously thought that there is another reality for me than the one I have created for myself. I have always known, deep inside me, what I have been predestined for. To me, this is the only way in which I can truly express myself and the only way for me to communicate to the world.

What’s a normal day in your life like?

It something rather too normal, I believe. Daily routines do not avoid me at all. I try to avoid the huge trap of the so called daily routine and realize the original nature of myself right in it without destroying it and without attaching to it too much…

How would you collectively describe your work in your own words?

One can perceive my works in two different ways; the observer may experience them at a purely emotional level or, as well, find the essence of the existence of a completely different universe, so close but yet so far away from us. My part of the communication with the audience ended up with the very first imprint of the graphic sheet, everything else that remains is the life of my works that depends on the purity of thought which I tried to convey. I hope I succeeded in that.

Julia Copus, In Defence of Adultery (Bloodaxe, 2003)

ISBN: 1-85224-607-3

The American poet Jennifer Grotz once said that ‘Poetry is philosophy’s twin sister. The one that wears make-up.’ More generously, it’s possible to imagine poetry as a trendier older sister to science –leaning and loafing at her ease with a cigarette and a glass of Merlot while etiolated science stays inside and pores over the physics homework. And yet, as poets from Miroslav Holub to Ruth Padel would be quick to point out[1], poetry is a science too: precise, patterned, always questing, sometimes beautiful.

Julia Copus’ interest in the scientific side of poetry is apparent from both content[2] and form: In Defence of Adultery is written with a precision that suggests multiple drafts, although there’s nothing to match the intricacy of Raymond, at 60, the ‘specular poem’[3] included in Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade. Precision is not necessarily an enviable quality in a poetry collection: the precise poem risks becoming the controlled poem, evoking unwanted images of an anxious ‘helicopter poet’ hovering over each line, afraid to lose her hold on the language.

Fortunately, Copus is good enough to relinquish control when necessary. The best writers[4] are able to vary formal, classically-eloquent lines with snatches of the colloquial, as Copus does in these lines from ‘Loch’:

‘a loch had approached us, overlapped

with noctilucent cloud and stopped

just short, at the edge of us. What’s all that

white stuff? I asked –and it was swans

drifting out from under a mountain.’

The endearing clumsiness of ‘What’s all the white stuff?’, with its suggestion of the inarticulacy all of us are prone to suffering while trying to describe the spectacular, prevents the ‘noctilucent cloud’ and the ‘swans drifting out’ from seeming overly grandiloquent.

At the heart of the collection lies, naturally enough, the title poem, in which Copus describes how

‘We don’t fall in love: it rises through us

the way that certain music does. . .’

 

Or do we? Keats noted that ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design on us’, and Copus’ ‘defence’ never risks sounding didactic. After a strident declaration in the eighth line (‘Yes, love’s like that’) the poem sinks back into ‘uncertainties, mysteries, doubts’[5], ending on a meeker note:

‘And whatever

damage might result we’re not

to blame for it: love is an autocrat

and won’t be disobeyed.

Sometimes we manage

to convince ourselves of that.’

Poetry can sometimes seem like a balancing act on the fine line between pomposity and reticence, but Copus’ sense of balance is close to perfect. ‘An Easy Passage’, published last year, won her the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Expect that award to be the first of many.

Jacob Silkstone serves as both Poetry Editor and Book Critic for TMS. He blogs about books and the publishing industry at Alone in Babel.

A dove into a mirror;

A crow into a tree.

II.

There is a word missing.

—A.R. Chase

Archer Rose Chase is the unanticipated amalgamation of a Marine Biologist, a conservative Christian, and the sudden collision of science, religion, and art. She finds it ironic that her bio is longer than her poem.