This blog is late. There’s just been a bit too much this week - working, writing, reading. And art. It’s been dense with wonder at the ability of humans to make meaning of our crazy, chaotic lives and world. And, I’m often finding, the older the artist, the deeper and more life-affirming their work can become. I’ll share a film, 2 books and 2 pieces of news that had my heart singing this week.
Have you seen or read something that turns your lights on? Please share.
I’m usually a devoted Sunday-morning-blog-writer, but today got tempted by a friend just entering (and resisting) Q4, to see the latest Wim Wenders film. It’s an almost perfect testament to the potential of Q4 - for those who embrace it. No surprise it’s called ‘Perfect Days,’ and is light of touch and deep with wisdom. It outlines a life obliquely and subtly, mostly through song. And offers a vision of Q4 that is simple, humble and rich with generosity towards the world.
It follows an older Japanese man, Hirayama, about whom we seemingly learn very little. With him, we are living in the now of a life spent in the seemingly lowliest of jobs, as a toilet cleaner. His past is suggested, if you listen very carefully, in the (fantastic) soundtrack he plays as he drives into work - hinting at having been attracted to the wrong things, played some dangerous games, lost a lot - including love, tragically.
Now, his mindfully managed life is carefully circumscribed and repetitive. He cleans toilets with dedication and purpose (the film was actually commissioned by Tokyo Toilets), talks almost not at all, grows and tends to rescued tree seedlings in his home as though they were his children, and dines in a series of dives where he is known and acknowledged as a regular. Round and round we go with him for a week, until we get the repetitive daily routine and his seeming serenity.
Then comes week two, where his world shifts, cracks and expands.
Little by little, the film introduces new notes and harmonies. (Spoiler alert) Each night is marked with a black and white impression of dream images and blowing leaves. Each morning he wakes to an old lady sweeping said leaves from the street.
Each day, a new character adds a layer to the web of relationships the old man tries to control, but that gradually invite him to love bigger and deeper. The world calls him to emerge from his self-imposed silence and carefully delimited exile to elder the young craving his help. The young child he rescues in the toilet, the junior employee he sponsors to help find love, the sad prostitute he introduces to his music (and her own emotions), the long-lost niece who comes to find safe harbour from the (very wealthy) family storm. And then the real foundations of his life are revealed: the love denied and the love not dared. The father he won’t visit on his deathbed, the woman he loves who’s ex-husband is dying and asks him to care for.
If you listen to the soundtrack, you’ll get the arc of his story:
All this sprinkled with the lightest of touches, like glimpses of light amidst the leafy umbrella of trees, the “Komorebi,” a word offered as the final end note of the movie (it was the original title). A profoundly moving reflection on life from a mature master. The last scene, all played out on lead actor Koji Yakusho’s face while listening to Nina Simone, is a perfect summary of a life well lived. Unmissable.
It reminded me of David Nicholls’ You Are Here which I gobbled down this week after my walking holiday in Cornwall. This is a love story between two heart-broken, middle aged characters (Nicholls is 57) who hike a path from sea to sea in the UK’s midlands. The book painfully and minutely describes the retreat from the world by people who have been hurt or harmed, like so many snails retreating into the safety and enclosure of their dark, private shells. And the very, very gradual and tentative emergence of a tentacle of hope that reaches out towards the risky and terrifying possibility of love.
Like Wenders, it’s deceptively simple, and covers more ground than its walkers seem to. Through the valleys of death, inter-generational conflict, the incomprehensible human capacity for violence, infertility and loss, trauma and shame. All while seemingly relating a bucolic, back-to-nature tale.
Do you ever fall into a book so good that all you wish is that all other tasks, humans and sundry interruptions would kindly disappear from your life until you’ve finished? You feel you want to hang a huge ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign around your neck and email bounce-back so that the urgent, driving need to get to the end of the next chapter can be sated. You glance glassy-eyed at your spouse’s hungry eyes, your clients’ unanswered emails and your untouched Sunday blog, and dig slightly deeper into your allotted corner of the couch, hunching your shoulders protectively around the private pleasure you hold in your hands. And when you are done, you pass the book on, like a virus, and snigger to see your partner go down in turn, obsessively reading late into the night as you sleepily ask him which bit he’s got to?
Geraldine Brooks’ HORSE is one of those. Thanks to Michele for recommending (if you have more like this, folks, please put ‘em in the comments).
This totally addictive read (I forewarn you, clear some time before you start) plunges you into several different worlds and times in parallel. Between horse racing and the contemporary art world, the modern forensics of museums and anatomy, the 19th century and the 21st. And the long, relentless tail of racism that weaves through and around the US across centuries.
Pulitzer-Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks, now 68, writes with the same kind of power and mastery as Wenders films. Its quietly effortless, the way you disappear into these various worlds as though you inhabit them. And you let yourself go, gliding hungrily through a historical education full of astonishing discoveries. Each strand of the story revealing the deep inter-connections between seemingly unrelated people and events, drawing the world closer together.
Add an interview with 73-year-old Sir Anthony Gormly on This Cultural Life, describing his life’s work as a sculptor and why he did it all. He sounds a lot like the other artists above. Because they want to help us see ourselves as we are, and invite us to be more aware, more mindful, but above all more compassionate. There is a shared tone to these ageing artists, a soundtrack to their lives that hums of hurt and harm and healing - and love.
And if all this isn’t enough to make you feel a bit better, there was perhaps a bit of good news this week on our global horizons.
The US Congress finally passed the $95m military aid package for Ukraine and other allies, and it’s worth listening to this One Decision podcast about how it happened (How Ukraine got funded). Democratic Defense leader, Congressman Adam Smith of Washington, gives an altogether different perspective on divided America and suggests that there are a number of politicians who’ve been working hard - and across the aisle. And the unexpected spine showed by Speaker Mike Johnson is worth applauding. Spines are a rare thing these days.
The most optimistic read on Israel’s response to Iran’s drone hit is this: The unspoken story of why Israel didn’t clobber Iran. And if you thought, as I did while hiking the Coastal path in Cornwall last week, that we were on the verge of WWIII if Israel upped the ante to Iran’s massive strike, it’s worth understanding why the response was muted, measured and calculated. Also interesting to learn that the Israeli hit that caused the attack was not on the Iranian consulate as Iran claimed - but on a building next door. And why even amongst the dangerous wire act we are currently walking, noone seems to want all-out regional embrasures. Not yet, anyway.
Here’s counting small gratitudes. And all of this makes me, at least momentarily, think of this poem.
Sometimes
by Sheenagh Pugh
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
Dear reader, may it happen for you too.
Another wonderful transformative "walking" book is the moving, funny, inspirational The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It is the true story of a couple who lost everything and walked the South West Coast Path in the UK. I followed and cheered for them every step of the way.
https://www.penguinrandomhouseretail.com/book/?isbn=9780143134114