“I saw what the moorhen sees as it dives: the thousand rings that encircle each little life, the blue of the whispering sky swallowed by the lake, the enraptured moment of surfacing in another place. Know, my friends, what images are: the experience of surfacing in another place.”

{ Ich sah das Bild, das in den Augen des Teichhuhns sich bricht, wenn es untertaucht: die tausend Ringe, die jedes kleine Leben einfassen, das Blau der flüsternden Himmel, das der See trinkt, das verzückte Auftauchen an einem andern Ort, – erkennt, meine Freunde, was Bilder sind: das Auftauchen an einem anderen Ort. }

Franz Marc, Aphorismen 82, 1915.

The images are Vier Füchse, a postcard from 1914, and Liegendes Pferd, a water color from 1911.

Here are some more recent acquisitions from the rueful “Island of Misfit Books” project.

You probably know all about William Wordsworth, the English Romantic poet who was friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he visited Rheinland-Pfalz where they first got the idea to translate Goethe’s Faustus.

This volume is called Poems of Wordsworth Chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. Arnold was an English professor (at Rugby and then Oxford) who was also a poet; “Dover Beach” is often referenced by Ian McEwan and appears in Fahrenheit 451. This book is a printing from 1893. The spine is very bent and there are fingerprints and some faint traces of pencil on almost every page…someone really liked this book.

Crime novelist and short story writer Edgar Wallace was also quite a character and became, in 1927, one of the first authors to secure a deal with a movie studio for stories and scripts. This turned out to be a good thing because Wallace was also, earlier, the creator of King Kong. (In the scene in the basement tavern in Inglourious Basterds during the “Who Am I?” game there are references to both King Kong and Wallace.) As you can see by the cover of White Face, Wallace was also academically ahead of his time, having devoted several hundred pages lo in 1930 to the exploration of the astonishing theory that, indeed, some segment of the population — perhaps even you — is in fact white. A film was made of White Face as well; it premiered in March 1932, just a few weeks after Wallace’s death in February of the same year.

Speaking of trends in scholarship, of course it is no longer necessary to speak French or go to France in order to become a person of letters on French subjects. Nonthetless, my favorite book in this trio is the Brief French Grammar. It was the property of a the New York Public Library in the second decade of the 1900s, and then of the Board of Education of the City of New York where it circulated until 1936. A very enthusiastic student marked a routing slip left inside the book with an emphatic red date: Le Juin 22, 1920. Completely adorable.

One of the things I like so much about Marc is that no matter how much you know about him, there is always something you don’t know, that, when you find out about it, is completely non-disappointing in terms of the fascinating blend of wackiness and gravity expected from Marc.

I especially like this photo because everyone — Maria Marc on the left and Russi Marc on the right — looks happy. Helmuth Macke was staying with the Marcs in 1911 so maybe he was the photographer. One for the road.

It seemed like about 100 people and hipsters showed out which mainly included the filmmakers and casts and their friends. Still it was fun in the way that comic events are more entertaining with a group who is into it.

The films are archived online here. Of course I was one of the animals in Dumbo. Jim Reiman made this film but his voices for the various characters are what blew me away. Adam Kitzerow and Deon Blackwell are especially hilarious in Top Gun and Robb Fladry has incredible fun original music for Weekend at Bernie’s. The Sweded Apocalypto and The Shining were pretty madcap, too.

I think it would be fun to work on a version of There Will Be Blood.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEQNAZGoZrw

 If Cut Copy had 24 albums I would probably listen to Cut Copy all day and all night all the time…as it is hardly a cycle goes by that I don’t hear all or parts of Bright Neon Like Love (2004), In Ghost Colours (2008) or Zonoscope (2011).

Though Melbourne-based Cut Copy is most often washed with the ‘referencing the ’80s’ brush I think it is more apt to say the ‘reference’ is less by way of the [film versions] of Less Than Zero than The Informers – a time and place that never existed removed by memory. And while Cut Copy’s hooks and basslines are superficially poppy, the intentionally stuttering four and eight count measures are demanding of engaged listening.

Zonoscope in particular seems symphonic in the way it is presented as an arc, even without some of the ambient noise segues so prevalent on In Ghost Colours. If IGC was lyrically about the limitations of primary relationships to conquer doubt and isolation, Zonoscope is immersed diametrically in stealthy hope and crushing disappointment that is more internally oriented/externally directed.

Although these three albums are very distinct — mostly owing to the decreasing emphasis on guitars to propel melodies — Cut Copy’s mainstay continues to be danceable, or at least move-able, complicated synth pop of incredible harmonics and density. Dan Whitford is able to pack an epic amount of yearning and escalation into both arrangements and vocals; the devastating release of Hanging on to Every Heartbeat begins at the 2:00 mark of the 4:30 song. The descant, and the change in meaning of the chorus, almost makes me sick it’s so upsetting, and that’s a pretty good shake-up from what begins so cheerfully.

Zonoscope re-presents Cut Copy in a sort of Symbolist ethic, with an interest in the macabre and in hermetic, already-nostalgic technology. Here is a link to listen to  Hanging onto Every Heartbeat. Also Cut Copy will play out at the Firestone in Orlando on October 1!

Though Keane is mostly known in the U.S. for the single “Bend and Break” from 2004′s Hopes and Fears, the 2006 more electronics-driven follow-up, Under the Iron Sea, is also a pretty good album. I had only heard UtIS on iTunes and dataheaven.us and so had not until recently (when I saw it in the library) become aware of the fantastic cover design(s) by Sanna Annukka.

Franz Marc holding a cell phone, 1915.

Here is a mysterious photograph from Franz Marc – Paul Klee: ein Dialog in Bildern, a volume beautifully illustrated with the artists’ postcards to each other and some interesting photographs. Klee seems more vulnerable and less arch than you might expect in these letters and drawings. Marc, maybe predictably, sort of absorbs and reflects Klee; yet the images and texts on the cards seem both entwined and quotidian. One of the photos is this fascinating unsourced image, captioned “Franz Marc im Unterstand, 1915/1916.” It’s hard to tell what kind of shelter this is…it appears shell-shocked and comfortable at the same time. There are some binoculars and map cases hanging, and an eerie prophetic broken mirror. FM is smoking, of course, but the captivating question is what is he holding?

It looks like a cell phone, the kind you would expect FM to have, not a Blackberry or an iPhone, just a functional Nokia with Alpenlaendische Volksmusik ringtones. Photography professors, librarians, and two photo archivists who specialize in early 20th Century images looked at this photo and everyone was perplexed about the photo shows. That’s just how FM rolls.

What do you think this object is?

This book (which is confusingly cataloged with lots of commas instead of the conjunctions and articles that appear actually in print) forms the combined catalog from three retrospectives from 2010 at
the Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See;  the Stiftung Moritzburg (“Kunstmuseum des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt” in Halle, the craziest city in Flemish Brabant and the planet); and  Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

Come on, deliver from inside.

The item you requested:  Von der Möglichkeit : das Phanomen der selbstschonferischen Möglichkeit in seinen kosmogonischen, mythisch-personifizierten und denkerisch-kunstlerischen Realisierungen als divergenztheologisches Problem

Dachfenster im Pinakothek der Moderne, München

is ready for you to checkout at the Tampa library’s Circulation Desk.”

Königsplatz, München

Glyptothek

It would be impossible ever to say what the most exciting thing about visiting Munich was since it was all the most exciting thing, but one of the most most exciting things was visiting the Propyläen and Glyptothek “temples” of the Königsplatz featured in Dario Argento’s Suspiria. (The scaffolding behind the Propyläen is at the Lenbachhaus.)

Suspiria just celebrated its 35th anniversary. Here is the spectacular scene in which Daniel (Silvio Bucci) crosses the square with his German Shepherd dog:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s31J26AEQN0

David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express) is doing a remake of Suspiria, and of course Argento purists hate this — on its face this film is desperately not in need of a do-over — but Green has said his version will be shot in Munich, and, I mean, George Washington and Pineapple Express are great, so, I’m for it…