by Jung Chang. Three generations of women in revolutionary China. The grandmother with bound feet is concubine to a warword. The mother is a communist revolutionary cadre caught up in the purges of the cultural revolution. The daughter is a child of the cultural revolution itself. Covers the sweep of history through the remarkable stories of these three women.
Memo/randam 2004
Celebrate Life With Louise Bourgeois
Happy Birthday!
Louise Boourgeois was born on Dec. 25, 1911 in Paris. (Capricorn
with Moon in Aquarius – other famous people with this combo are – Muhammed Ali, Cary Grant, Nixon, Diane Keaton) One word to describe these people – Louise herself said it – Irrepressible, ambitious, eccentric and successful. If Muhammed Ali was reborn as French woman, she would sound like this. Click on Otte to listen. (Melody, text and voice: Louise Bourgeois)
“Her hand-colored artbook the puritan, was conceived and written in 1947,
but she did not begin making it until 1989.” from
“What Is Art?”
Louise’ French Childhood was explored here with other creative geniuses.
Louise Bourgeois archive since 2004 here
Collaboration of the Century in Paris – Trisha Brown – Czeslow Milosz – Laurie Anderson
“Last Friday, in the first of 11 performances through Dec. 31, “O zlozony/O composite” was given an enthusiastic reception. One Paris critic described it as “a major work.” Brigitte Lefèvre, director of the opera ballet said the audience responded with “a wave of love”.
she developed an alphabet – literally A to Z – of “simple and pure gestures, reminiscent of the ballet lexicon.” These were then organized into sequences by using two poems, St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence” and Milosz’s “Ode to a Bird”, which serve as kinds of librettos for movement, although not as narratives.
The title of the piece is taken from Milosz’s poem, which begins in its English translation with “O composite,/O unconscious.” The poem, recited in a sensual voice in Polish, is also integrated into Ms. Anderson’s haunting score. And a bird is even suggested in the choreography.”
( Nytimes /Arts- Dec.23/2004)
Trisha Brown recieved the highest cultural award from France. (Dec17, 2004)
Trish and Laurie having collaobrated before, the two have been making history for the quarter of century.
Kanji Of The Year 2004 – Disaster
Sai,” the kanji meaning “disaster,” was voted as the character that best symbolized the year 2004, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation announced last week. Poll taken from
91,630 votes this year, with “sai” attracting 20,936 votes.
Twilight Samurai/End This Cruel Year With More Samurai Films
Hiroyuki Sanada who appeared in the “The Last Samurai” is the star of this acclaimed film.
Samurai 101 from Midnight Eye
Alain Silver serves you “The Samurai Film”
Samurai Fiction came after Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill came after
Samurai Fiction, a serious film student must understand
the implication of this sequence.
David Markson
David Markson was born on Dec 20, 1927 (Sagittarius with Scorpio Moon ) Bruce Lee who died young share this combo. Unlike ill fated Bruce, David Markson is alive and still writing.
David Markson 
From Elegant variation, do not miss Dalkey’s inteview on David Markson.
What is the point? Stephen Michelmore finds the novel alive and well.
Vanishing Point That Markson achieves this depth of character through a bone-dry catalogue of commentary largely centered on art and death is nothing short of remarkable.
” We were drinking with David Markson, and he had made me sad. ” From hypertext novel The Unknown
“David Markson’s Reader’s Block is written in very short paragraphs.
This is a style whose look is gentle to the eye and visually does not promise a great deal of continuity. ” From Spineless Books
“A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel?” from MadInkbeard
Jean Genet
Un Chant D’amour by Mark Adnum talks about the only film Genet directed.
See the whole movie here -25.22min.
Here is a Genet site which is sunny and light, unusual for Genet followers who tend to emphasize his dark and deviant side.
By stretching language we’ll distort it sufficiently to wrap ourselves in it and hide. (More quotes)
Jean Genet <> <> 
The Miracle of Jean Genet
Jean Genet was born on Dec 19, 1910, a Sagittarius with Moon in Leo, a firely combination shared by Jane Fonda. They were also friends when they both aided the Black Panther Party. Here is a description of a person with (Sagittarius/Leo combo), ” you have a love of mankind and a code that combines good judgment with a very tolerant attitude. This combination is very dedicated; dedicated to honor, prestige, and achieving stature in the world. You are intellectual philosophic, broad-minded, and highly creative. Your creativity is in the ability to form an image in your mind and then bring to reality that clear picture you envisioned. You take life seriously, with a keen sense of the importance of making the most of it. ”
Genet met Jane Fonda, who gave him her phone number; as Roger Vadim’s ex-wife and the star of several French films (including Barbarella), she was fluent in French. She was then married to New Left activist Tom Hayden, a member of the “Chicago Seven” who had named the Panthers “America’s Viet Cong.” She wished to work on a film with Genet on behalf of the Panthers, a project that was discussed but never materialized. She remembers that she and Genet got along marvellously well.
One morning Genet awakened bright and early in a strange Hollywood mansion. No one was awake. Genet couldn’t have spoken to them in any event, so he phoned Jane Fonda. She said she’d be right over to rescue him — but where was he staying? He said he had no idea. “Listen,” she said, “Go outside and look at the swimming pool, then come back to me and describe it.” Genet did as he was told and Fonda exclaimed, “Oh, you’re at Donald Sutherland’s, I’ll be right over.” :From Genet A Biography by Edmund Whit.
Jean Genet 
by Giacometti
Many of us are likely to have come to Genet via Sartre. Sartre’s Saint Genet was a giant leap in literature of mixing biography with literary critical analysis. Satre says, “In writing out for his pleasure the incommunicable dreams of his particularity, Genet has transformed them into exigencies of communication… Genet began to write in order to affirm his solitude, to be self-sufficient, and it was the writing itself that, by its problems, gradually led him to seek readers.” (Jean-Paul Sartre in Saint Genet, 1963) “I did not write my books for the liberation of the homosexual. I wrote my books for another reason altogether — out of a taste for words, out of a taste for commas, even punctuation, out of a taste for the sentence. ”
All Grace – Robert Bresson
On December 18, 1999 Robert Bresson passed away at the age of 98.
Alan Pavlin wrote, “Three formative influences in Bresson’s life undoubtedly mark his films: his Catholicism, which took the form of the predestinarian French strain known as Jansenism; his early years as a painter; and his experiences as a prisoner-of-war.”
Robert Bresson: Hidden in Plain Sight An Essay by Gary Indiana
Shmuel Ben-gad says, “Bresson, an artist of the very highest order in my judgment, does not offer meanings, explanations, or answers but rather lucidity, reality, and profound mystery.”
Both Bresson and Agnes Martin lived long lives for people
so austere and monkish. Is it because they knew how to live with clarity, simplicity and a sense of purpose coming from profound vision and understanding?
Agnes Martin 1912 – 2004
Agnes Martin passed away today
A warm and wonderful appreciation piece by Tyler Green.
Another tribute from Kenneth Baker.
Distant Light, Lynn Cooke on Agnes Martin is here.
France, Childhood, and Genius
Pain, Trauma and Finding Oneself
The Photo shows Marguerite Duras at 15 years. Sarraute, Duras, Truffaut, and Louise Bourgeois are four French geniuses whose childhoods are well documented. Exploring the links between childhood experiences and the later emergence of creative genius are some of the following:
Marguerite Duras In Sa Dec, Vietnam is the setting for Duras’s autobiographical novel Lovers.
Natalie Sarraute Childhood (out of print – astonishing writing on memory )
Jane Kramer, The New Yorker wrote – “Childhood is a dialogue with memory, a merciless coaxing of memory into images and then into refractions of images, until memory is stripped of sentiment and becomes something close to sensation itself. ”
Erica Bauermeister observes in reviewing Childhood, “Reading Childhood is like watching a memory at work. Images and moments from Nathalie Sarraute’s early years are presented in chronological order but without any attempt to fill in the gaps that are naturally present when a mind looks back ten, twenty, thirty years. What emerges is still a story: the childhood of a young girl living in the first half of the twentieth century who divides her time between her divorced parents in Russia and France. By dismissing the need for a cohesive narrative, Nathalie Sarraute gives her memories immediacy. Her search for truth brings in a second voice that interrupts, testing, reassuring, prompting, creating a dialogue. Childhood puts the reader in a child’s place as she relives the ritual of cutting open the pages of a book, the love for a favorite doll, the pain of intentional and unintentional slights, the joy of creating a first story, and the confusion of being passed back and forth between two different sets of parents.”
Francois Truffaut The 400 Blows The light and darkness of childhood is explored by John Conomos from Senses of Cinema.14 Jun 04 “A child’s eyes register fast. Later he develops the film” Rivette says “In speaking of himself, he is speaking of us”
Louise Bourgeois – “My childhood never lost its magic, never lost its mystery, and never lost its drama.”
Ed Ruscha
Happy Birthday Ed Ruscha!
Ed Ruscha was born on Dec 16, 1937. (Sagittarius with Moon in Gemini – like John Kerry & James Agee. All three were born Catholic). He will represent America for 2005 Venice Biennale.
Elaine Equi wrote of Ed at Jacket Magazine,
“Like all skillful poets, he makes me see and think about words in a new way. His style is connected not only to visual traditions of minimalism, but also literary ones.”
Same Old, Same Old – Symposium On Ed Ruscha:N+1
<> <> <> 
I’ve always felt a stronger connection to gas stations and telephone poles than trees; Ruscha makes perfect sense to me.(This public address)
Rent “Choose Me” by Alan Rudolph, Ed Ruscha appeared as an
actor in this quirky film.