Lightning rips through the black midnight sky Revealing the moons mad, chaotic grin. Children awake in their beds Screaming for their mothers to come in. Rain taps upon the window Like some lunatic who begs to be let in. Thundering gods battle over earth As the devil begins to grin.
Melody Time is a 1948 American live-action/animated musical film produced by Walt Disney. The tenth Disney animated feature film, it was released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on May 27, 1948. Made up of seven segments set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the popular music version of Fantasia. Melody Time, while not meeting the artistic accomplishments of Fantasia, was mildly successful. It is the fifth Disney package film following Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and Fun and Fancy Free.
“In the grand tradition of Disney’s greatest musical classics, such as Fantasia, Melody Time features seven classic stories, each enhanced with high-spirited music and unforgettable characters. A feast for the eyes and ears full of wit and charm. A delightful Disney classic with something for everyone”.
Walt Disney
Melody Time is considered to be the last anthology feature made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios. These package features were little-known short-film compilations that Disney produced and released as feature films during World War II. They were financially and artistically lightweight productions meant to bring in profits to allow the studio to return to fairy tale single-narrative feature form, an endeavour which they successfully completed two years later with Cinderella. While the shorts contrast in length, form, and style, a common thread throughout is that each is accompanied by songs from musicians and vocalists of the ’40s. This sets it apart from the similarly structured Fantasia, whose segments were set to classical music instead. As opposed to Fun and Fancy Free, whose story was bound to the tales of Bongo and Jack and the Beanstalk, in this film Walt Disney has let his animators and his color magicians have free rein.
Rose Pelswick, in a 1948 review for The News-Sentinel, described the film as an ‘adventure into the intriguing make-believe world peopled by Walt Disney’s Cartoon characters”. It also explains that “with the off-screen voice of Buddy Clark doing the introductions, the episodes include fantasy, folklore, South American rhythms, poetry, and slapstick”. A 1948 review by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described it as a “mixture of fantasy, abstraction, parable, music, color, and movement”.
This segment features Frances Langford singing the title song about two romantic young lovers on a winter day in December, during the late 19th century. The couple are Jenny and Joe (unlike most Disney cartoons, Jenny and Joe lack spoken dialogue). Joe shows off on the ice for Jenny, and near-tragedy and a timely rescue ensues. This is intertwined with a similar rabbit couple.
This segment presents a surrealistic battle for a solitary bumblebee as he tries to ward off a visual and musical frenzy. The music, courtesy of Freddy Martin and His Orchestra (with Jack Fina playing the piano), is a swing-jazz variation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee, which was one of the many pieces considered for inclusion in Fantasia.
A retelling of the story of John Chapman, who spent most of his life roaming the Midwestern United States (mainly Ohio and Indiana) in the pioneer days, and planting apple trees, thus earning his famous nickname. He also spread Christianity. Dennis Day narrates (as an “old settler who knew Johnny well”) and provides the voices of both Johnny and his guardian angel.
The story of Little Toot by Hardie Gramatky, in which the title protagonist, a small tugboat in New York City, wanted to be just like his father Big Toot, but could not seem to stay out of trouble. The Andrews Sisters provide vocals.
A recitation of the 1913 poem Trees by Joyce Kilmer, featuring music by Oscar Rasbach and performed by Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. The lyrical setting accompanies animation of bucolic scenes seen through the changing of the seasons. To preserve the look of the original story sketches, layout artist Ken O’Connor came up with the idea of using frosted cels and rendering the pastel images right onto the cel. Before being photographed each cel was laminated in clear lacquer to protect the pastel. The result was a look that had never been seen in animation before.
Donald Duck and José Carioca meet the Aracuan Bird, who introduces them to the pleasures of the samba. The accompanying music is the 1914 polka Apanhei-te, Cavaquinho by Ernesto Nazareth, fitted with English lyrics. The Dinning Sisters provide vocals while organist Ethel Smith appears in a live-action role.
The finale follows about Texas’ famous hero Pecos Bill. Raised by coyotes, he became the biggest and best cowboy that ever lived. He out hissed the Rattlesnake. And learned about all of the animals. It also features his horse Widowmaker, who’s been saved by the vultures that try to eat him. He brought the rain from California to save Texas from the drought. But when he woke up from the river, he heard a cow mooing. There was the band of evil rustlers stealing the herd of cattle. But they didn’t know the herd they stole was Bill’s. So he lassoed them and knocked out all of their teeth one by one. The Rustlers were now finally reformed and started to sing, “Yippee-I-Yay!” Then, Bill and Widowmaker traveled through the desert. He got a stick and then he dug the rio grande. And it recounts the ill-fated romance between Bill and a beautiful cowgirl named Slue Foot Sue, with whom he fell in love at first sight until a jealous Widowmaker made Sue to get literally stranded at the Moon at their wedding day. This retelling features Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, the former’s horse Trigger, and the Sons of the Pioneers telling the story to Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten in a live-action frame story.
In celebration of Allen Ginsberg’s birthday, born on this day in 1926, I present to you Howl, the best-known poem produced by the literary movement called the Beat Generation—not to mention one of the most controversial and influential poems of the 20th century. Dedicated to Ginsberg’s friend Carl Solomon, who had been confined to a psychiatric institution, the poem is a lament for “the best minds of [Ginsberg’s] generation,” whom it portrays as having been “destroyed by madness.” But it’s also a tribute to rebellious artists, thinkers, and hipsters and an attack on the oppressiveness of western society, something it depicts as crushingly conformist, greedy, and violent. With affectionate sympathy, the poem ultimately suggests that the “mad” rebels are really the only sane exceptions to the insane culture of 20th-century America. Written in 1954-’55 and published in Howl and Other Poems (1956), “Howl” became an instant literary sensation and the target of censorship for its graphic language and sexual themes. Its victory in a 1957 obscenity trial paved the way for the publication of other controversial literature in the 1950s and ’60s.
The film is written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman and stars James Franco as Ginsberg.
Imagine a world in which industry controls the way in which you live, forcing you to sacrifice originality in the name of a commercial society. Unfortunately, this is a sad reality for those of us born into industrialized civilizations. Oppressed, controlled by the media, and led astray, Americans lose touch with themselves and their dreams as they cling desperately to an industrialized society that is not concerned for the plight of the individual, but rather for the growth and wealth accumulation of such a society. The American government is ignorant to the desires of individual thinkers and feel that people should work together to achieve this industrialized mad house we call home. Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Howl,” explores this ignorance and addresses the issues concerning the role of the individual American. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the Beatnik era in America brought forth poets who wrote poetry in response to the rise of bigotry, crimes against the innocent, and the loss of faith in the national government. They wrote about homosexual sex, drug abuse, and other topics concerning the individual. Of this Beat Generation, Allen Ginsberg’s poem caused an incredible amount of controversy, but changed the world of poetry forever. While Allen Ginsberg plunges into his own downward spiral toward madness, he exposes a world responsible for oppressive conformity, the evils of industrialized civilization, and the state of the individual as an effect of industrialization.
We are instantly introduced to the greatest minds of the Beat generation torn apart by the madness caused by oppressive conformity and materialism. Ginsberg was a firsthand witness, and casualty to this madness, to which he says, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, / angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” (1-3). Ginsberg uses a rhythmic style in his poetry to paint a vivid picture of his friends and their adventures across America. He is communicating scenes, characters, and situations drawn from his own personal experience, describing his fellow travelers, the crazy, lonely members of his community of misunderstood poets, artists, novelists, jazz musicians, psychotics, political radicals, pranksters, sexual deviants, and junkies. He had written this in response to the loss of his friends, who had either been mentally broken or killed by the system, to which he mentions, “who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, / who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons” (32-33). This is a description of the people Ginsberg knew and the events of their lives. We get an indication that their spirits have been broken or destroyed by a force, which remains unnamed in the first section of the poem. They could not help but to be destroyed by their discovery of a manipulative governmental system that would not allow anyone to live outside of the rules and regulations that it set. This caused many of these Beatniks to be driven to insanity or suicide by their inability to live in the modern world and their inability to escape from it.
It is relatively apparent that the rhythm of Ginsberg’s poem was influenced by the jazz musicians of his generation. Jazz represented an unaccepted form of music. It was an African-American style of music not listened to by the majority of middle-class whites, to which Ginsberg says, “and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio” (77). Jazz music represented filth and bad behavior. The beaten down had inhabited jazz music because of their isolation and status as outcasts from respectable society, much like the African-Americans who performed it. The first section of the poem is structured as a single run-on sentence divided into breaths. Each line represents a single breath. This is what gives the poem a jazzy feel and a bop refrain, which Ginsberg uses to symbolize the separation of his beaten down friends from the evils of modern society.
The first section of the poem gives way to the second part, which is an expression of anger and frustration directed to the governmental powers that feel it necessary to oppress the masses of American society. It addresses the state of industrial civilization by the use of Moloch, the Canaanite fire god who accepted children as sacrifice, to which Ginsberg writes, “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? / Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!” (79-80). We can see right away that the “best minds” of his generation have been sacrificed to Moloch. Moloch represents modern society and the sacrifice of our individual freedom and expression. Moloch is the modern industrial state of the country to which Ginsberg mentions, “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!” (83), and again when he says, “Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius!” (85). We can see through the use of Moloch that Ginsberg feels that the American government places low wages on industrial workers so that those who dictate the lives of the beaten down Americans can live in greater luxury. However, Moloch does not take these things by force. Moloch represents the model American family, which sacrifices pleasure and personal freedom in order to feel a sense of normalcy, to which Ginsberg states, “Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! / They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!” (88-89). We get a sense that these families have either willingly or unknowingly sacrificed their freedoms for the purpose of elevating the power of the American government. This power leads to a corrupt management of civilization, which creates boundaries between classes and individuals. We also get a sense that the corrupt powers that Moloch represents is indeed inescapable because Moloch surrounds us throughout society. Unfortunately, it is this inability to escape from the corrupt clutches of Moloch that causes individual thinkers to plunge into a world of insanity.
Ginsberg writes of insanity in his poem and uses Carl Solomon to express this madness. Solomon, whom Ginsberg met while he was institutionalized, is driven mad because society builds structures and institutions that keep him from expressing himself through art, to which he mentions, “Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland where you’re madder than I am” (95). We get an indication that Rockland is a Psychiatric ward by way of mentioning that Carl is madder than he is. Though the third section is a turning point away from Moloch, it is also symbolizes the destructive properties which Moloch represents. Although this section of the poem shows the effect of what Moloch has caused, it also ends on a hopeful note, which we see when Ginsberg mentions, “we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we’re free” (129). This suggests that though the industrialized institutions of America may expect us to sacrifice ourselves for their own personal benefit, we control our own fate. We do not have to be a prisoner to this system of industry. We can tear down the walls that keep us bound within ourselves, and live our own lives free from the expectations of a cold, inhuman industrialized government.
In the end, Ginsberg realizes that the madness of his friends and other beaten down citizens is the cause of industrial America. As he plunges into the mouth of madness, he exposes a side of America that is responsible for oppressive conformity, the evils of an industrial civilization, and the madness directly related to this industrialization. His fear of being condemned to a life of insanity turns into a hopeful prayer to those of us who live among the bottom rungs of society. He shows us that it is possible to live among a society, which seems artificial and unnatural, and still be free to be ourselves. Unfortunately, this poem does not share the same ending of self-discovery for all Americans. Though many of us have discovered our own personal happiness, there remains a larger portion of the population that sacrifices themselves for the benefit of the system. They do not know how to tear down their own walls, which keep them bound within themselves. Perhaps this poem should be a message to Americans to speak out against the system when we do not agree with the unnatural restrictions set against humans. Once each individual discovers themselves within themselves, only then will each of us be truly free.
Written by Hobo Moon
Are you tired of living your life like the other brain dead Americans that consume the country? Are you sick of even waking up in the morning to face the day, your monotonous job, and your fellow employees? Do you live your life in fear of the others that surround you? What’s the point of even getting out of your warm, cozy bed to face a cold, uncaring world? The Zombie Association of America has a solution for you. We will send one of our finest zombies to your home to infect you with their disease within the next twenty-four hours. Do not be afraid. You will be drained of your ambitions, dreams, goals, and any other cares you may have the instant our zombie begins feeding upon your brains. Once our zombie has finished their meal, you will be able to infect others that made life difficult for you. Don’t be the last person on your block to think for themselves. Eat brains today. Call within the next ten minutes and we will send two zombies for the price of one to infect you and your family. Act now. Sorry no COD’s.
Lightning rips through the black midnight sky Revealing the moons mad, chaotic grin. Children awake in their beds Screaming for their mothers to come in. Rain taps upon the window Like some lunatic who begs to be let in. Thundering gods battle over earth As the devil begins to grin.
Oh, tell me what you see oh wanderer of wanderers As you happily stroll into town with nothing but an eagerness for adventure And a coin in your pocket. Oh, how the wondrous pastel shops line the cracked and broken streets of the village Full of precious objects patiently crafted by the townspeople, The pleasant scents of fresh baked bread wafting from a nearby bakery, And pies cooling in windowsills, the warm smiles of strangers as I saunter pass, The curiousness of children and the queer games they play, The hot coffee and home-cooked meals, The beautiful women planting their gardens, The books in the library, The sun casting shadows in the street, The community of strangers working for a common goal, A friendly conversation, And a ride on a horse and buggy Are the things that I see that have brought me to this village. I have had a great adventure across this land, And I have seen the vast wilderness from here to there, For I have been everywhere, But now I long for the touch of another, To reach out to someone, And to be heard, For a life on the road is much too lonely, And I wish to make my home here. Oh, I see oh great wanderer, That a life on the road is much to painful and hard, But I too hope to find my own road of misery to the happiness I seek.
Those hands that once pointed
in every direction
Have failed to move since she gave it away,
And though the band is much too tight,
He still wears it every day.
It helps him to remember
that moonless night.
That night he tried to make her stay.
Losing himself in his own reflection,
He remembers the words that she used to say,
The sweet reverberation,
Trembling from her lips in exasperation.
Eyes lost in a distant fading memory,
Like fog dissipating
with the arrival of the day,
He stares at his watch,
Waiting,
For those hands,
Hoping,
To continue,
Stuck in the past,
Their ritualistic dance.
Those hands.
Your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous. the gods wait to delight in you. Roll the Dice If you’re going to try, go all the way. otherwise, don’t even start. if you’re going to try, go all the way. this could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe your mind. go all the way. it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days. it could mean freezing on a park bench. it could mean jail, it could mean derision, mockery, isolation. isolation is the gift, all the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. and you’ll do it despite rejection and the worst odds and it will be better than anything else you can imagine. if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. do it, Do It, DO It. DO IT! all the way. ALL THE WAY! You will ride life straight to perfect laughter, it’s the only good fight there is.
What is a hobo? Well, it's funny that you ask. A Hobo isn’t some crazed loon Screaming at the night. He isn’t a funny character in some comic strip cartoon, though that would be all right. Nor is he a strong man or goon with great feats of might. A hobo finds comfort and reassurance in the moon when his inspiration seems out of sight. He’ll never arrive too late or too soon. He’ll join his friends and family when the time is just right. It doesn’t matter if he sleeps passed noon Cause he follows the moon by the starry twilight. He rides the rails from sea to sea Collecting each and every memory He is not woeful and does not worry For his life makes him happy And I think you will find without difficulty That there is a hobo living free inside the mind of both you and me.
Treehouse of Horror is a series of Halloween-themed episodes of the Adult animated series The Simpsons, each consisting of three separate, self-contained segments. These segments usually involve the Simpson family in some horror, science fiction, or supernatural setting. They take place outside the show’s normal continuity and completely abandon any pretense of being realistic, being known for their far more violent and much darker nature than an average Simpsons episode. The first, entitled Treehouse of Horror, aired on October 25, 1990, as part of the second season and was inspired by EC Comics horror tales. Since then, there have been 30 other Treehouse of Horror episodes, with one airing every year. Episodes contain parodies of horror, science fiction, and fantasy films, as well as the alien characters Kang and Kodos, a special version of the opening sequence, and scary names in the credits.
Take a look, if you dare, at the episode that started it all: the original showcase of Hallowe’en goodies that have come to be know as The Treehouse of Horror, found in the Simpsons archives, season 2 episode 3. Following, I have included Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven for reference to The Simpsons unique take on the classic poem.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
Animated by Murder Slim Press
Narrated by WhoIsJeremyWard
Love Is a Dog from Hell is a raw, lyrical, exploration of the exigencies, heartbreaks, and limits of love. Bukowski embodies the strange, symbiotic relationship between vulnerability and cynicism; he feels too deeply to not have had the ravages of disappointment and betrayal take their toll.
Charles Bukowski is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother, and brought to the United States at the age of two. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for over fifty years. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp.
A gang of kids find a strange house with an overgrown garden where they play. Only once do they meet the man who lives there, a dead-beat alcoholic with a free and easy spirit who welcomes them. The children see him as a romantic character in stark contrast to their neurotically house proud parents.
A collaboration between Animator Jonathan Hodgson and Illustrator Jonny Hannah.
KEY CREDITS:
Director: Jonathan Hodgson
Producer: Jonathan Bairstow
Designer: Jonny Hannah
Poem: Charles Bukowski
Sound: Jonathan Hodgson
Voices: Peter Blegvad, Louis Schendler
Production Company: Sherbet
She walks with me in my dreams,
and loves me true, so it seems,
but upon awake she is not there,
she is with someone else without a care.
I have loved her for many years,
and cried far too many tears.
The time has come that I told
of the feelings for her that I hold.
Always running in a different direction.
Never very good at showing affection.
This time I’ll do it right.
I’ll tell her under the starry moonlight.
Stay with me girl, just for a while.
You know you always make me smile.
Walk with me along the sand,
and don’t let go of my hand.
This love for you is very real.
Please tell me how you feel.
If you just want a friend
I’ll stick with you until the end.
The hands that once pointed in every direction Have failed to move since she gave it away, And though the band is much to tight, He still wears it every day. It helps him to remember that moonless night. That night he tried to make her stay. Losing himself in his own reflection, He remembers the words that she used to say, The sweet reverberation, Trembling from her lips in exasperation. Eyes lost in a distant fading memory, Like fog dissipating with the arrival of the day, He stares at his watch, Waiting, For those hands Hoping, To continue Stuck in the past, Their ritualistic dance. Those hands.
Writing these poems is rather difficult you see. Like climbing a mountain or wrestling a shark. Searching in the dark for the right words to say just what you are thinking. Searching for the words to say exactly how you feel without losing any rhythm or zeal. What do you do when you cannot think of a rhyme? What happens when you have not got the time? Do you sit down and pout? Do you ask a boy scout? I prefer to take the more scenic route. Howling at the moon, I know I will find myself soon written into a poem, and from this world, I shall be forgotten.
