Dean Smith’s opening was Thursday night. Bob and I went together and met up with Nick, whose opening Bob had been to earlier. They both were still glowing, Bob all pink and giggly. Dean’s work is really amazing. His hand is so present but in a way that’s about it seeming not present at all. The work itself contains forms and spaces that are rendered in a way to confound resolution. It’s frustrating and beautiful, harmonious and disjunct.
Emily and I went to see Godard’s Made in USA tonight at the Castro. The film was exhilarating. Exhilaratingly frustrating and beautiful, harmonious and disjunct. At times the narrative seemed almost within reach, but then we’d be assaulted by a blaring soundtrack or recorded message, or an absurd political digression, or an emphatic political digression, or Marianne Faithfull tenderly singing As Tears Go By, or a whimsical Hollywood pastiche. Godard reimagines cinema by utilizing its language, alternately seducing us and punching us in the face with his many manifestos and domination of the medium’s clichés and vocabulary. The truth must not be known. If you finish your novel, everyone will know it, for poetry is truth.