Herb Caen's Posthumous Ode to San Francisco

"Herb Caen, Pulitzer-winning lead columnist of the San Francisco Chronicle, was one of the most beloved personalities in San Francisco for almost sixty years.

At his funeral (2/7/97), 2,500 mourners packed Grace Cathedral. The service was carried live on channels 4, 5 and 7, and shown on several giant screens around the city. Eulogies were delivered by Robin Williams, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and a Mystery Gentleman wearing a pillowcase over his head."

Caen also willed to his beloved city of San Francisco a fireworks display.

It happened above Aquatic Park near Fort Mason a few days after his funeral.

I lived on Russian Hill at the time and was lucky to attended.

There was no fog ;-)

Short Cut To Nirvana

Great new documentary: "Short Cut To Nirvana"...two film makers travelled with DV Cams to the 2001 Maha Kumbh Mela (Great Nectar Fair) at the convergence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers near Allahabad (map) in Northern India...

"The Kumbh Mela is the biggest gathering of people in the history of humanity – although few in the West have ever heard of it. More than 70 million pilgrims attend this extraordinary spiritual festival, which has been held every 12 years near Allahabad, India, for over two millennia.

See the trailer (http://www.melafilms.com/pages/trailer_qt7.html).

A vast tent city is established to accommodate the masses, and many of India’s greatest gurus and spiritual leaders set up camp to give discourses to their devotees. On certain auspicious days everyone takes a holy dip at the confluence of two actual rivers - the Ganges and Yamuna - and a mythical river, the Saraswati. On the main bathing day, more than 25 million people bathe in the sacred waters. This single act of faith is believed to cleanse the sins of a thousand lifetimes and secure release from the endless cycle of rebirth – literally a short cut to the state of purest bliss… nirvana.

The 2001 event was considered to be particularly auspicious because it coincides with certain planetary alignments that only occur every 144 years, or once every 12 Maha Kumbh Melas."

Best thing I've seen (including several coffee table books bought over the years) on the Kumbh...heartfelt, hands-on film, pleasant, intelligent spiritual sensibility, a suprising human touch...an eye-opener for curious Westerners...a glimpse of a culture that is, literally, on a different planet in terms of its approach to spiritual evolution.

Entire movie made in DV CAM format...blown up for projection. A perfectly good looking theatrical feature (albiet a bit shakey b/c the filmmakers opted not to use tripods or monopods or anything to stabilize the image...which is critical for viewability on a large screen) made with a highly portable, inexpensive (<$3,500) camera for which the media (tapes) cost $10 for 60 minutes. These cameras are to cinema what Henri Carteir Bresson's Leica was to photography... artists are totally liberated from cumbersome, heavy, expensive formats tools...they can go anywhere and capture anything (even completely alone)...focusing on the "meaning & beauty" as opposed to money, logistics, and technicalities...result: high impact movies made with a "decisive moment" modus.

Nice footage of the Dalai Lama speaking to seekers amidst the throngs... expressing childish delight over learning how to use a handheld ceremonial drum...

The filmmakers website, watch trailers, see photography, learn more about the Mela...

Pentagram For Conjuring The Narrative

Hollis Frampton...a filmmaker/artist/writer who lived outside of Hamilton, NY...

A Conference on him and his work at Princeton University earlier this month...

Died in 1985.

Most memorable "thought piece": "A Pentagram For Conjuring The Narrative" from his book called "Circles of Confusion." Out of print, one copy available in an SF bookstore for $66 (should have saved that copy from class) and in French translation from the Pompidou in Paris -- it figures, per Clotaire Rapaille's recent comments on NPR, that the "sophisticated, nuanced, intellectual" French would have this in print...

An interesting (though dense) essay on "A Pentagram" by Matt Teichman at the Film Philosophy website.

Great quote:

"I was born during the Age of Machines.

A machine was a thing made up of distinguishable ‘parts,’ organized in imitation of some function of the human body. Machines were said to ‘work.’ How a machine ‘worked’ was readily apparent to an adept, from inspection of the shape of its ‘parts.’ The physical principles by which machines ‘worked’ were intuitively verifiable.

The cinema was the typical survival-form of the Age of Machines. Together with its subset of still photographs, it performed prizeworthy functions: it taught and reminded us (after what then seemed a bearable delay) how things looked, how things worked, how to do things...and of course (by example), how to feel and think.

We believed it would go on forever, but when I was a little boy, the Age of Machines ended. We should not be misled by the electric can opener: small machines proliferate now as though they were going out of style because they are doing precisely that.

Cinema is the Last Machine. It is probably the last art that will reach the mind through the senses.

It is customary to mark the end of the Age of Machines as the advent of video. The point in time is imprecise: I prefer radar, which replaced the mechanical reconnaissance aircraft with a static anonymous black box. Its introduction coincides quite closely with the making of Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon and Willard Maas’s Geography of the Body.

The notion that there was some exact constant at which the tables turned, and cinema passed into obsolescence and thereby into art, is an appealing fiction that implies a special task for the metahistorian of cinema.–Hollis Frampton, 1971

Leonardo's Modus

Leonardo Da Vinci's Modus Operandi:

• Questionare/Curiosita: An insatiably curious approach to life.
• Dimonstratzione: A commitment to test knowledge through experience.
• Sensazione: The continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to clarify experience.
• Sfumato: A willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.
• Arte/Scienza: The development of the balance between science and art, logic and imagination ("whole-brain thinking").
• Corporalita: The cultivation of ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.
• Connessione: A recognition and appreciation for the connectedness of all things and phenomena; "systems thinking."
  

How To Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci: Seven Steps to Everyday Genius.
Michael J. Gelb