Tired

Some good news for film lovers living in (and around) New York. Three Bela Tarr films, all masterpieces (I've seen all three), including the seven hour long monster Satantango, are getting screened at the BAM Cinemathek in Brooklyn. I have already got the tickets for Saturday show of Satantango. Whew! It is things like these which somehow keep me excited otherwise I feel like dropping dead just out of tedium vitae.

Also more than two years after its world premiere in the Berlin Film Festival, Tsai Ming-Liang's tale of alienation, loneliness, porn and water melon, The Wayward Cloud is getting its first American theatrical run at the super specialised Anthology Film Archives (scroll down). I don't think I will be able to cram both in this coming weekend but will try. Needless to say, if you are around you shouldn't miss either. I have some doubts about Wayward Cloud, specially after I read about it. Taking potshots at porn from a sociological angle seems, well, a little too easy for me. I will anyway watch it and try to post about it too.

In other news, the Musil reading project is going fine. I just finished chapter 99, which is around 500 pages. Only 1200 more pages remain. I think I will read the first volume (200 more pages) and leave the rest for a little later. In the meanwhile I have to learn a few basic things about metaphysics in German philosophy, Nietzsche, specially his ethics, philosophy of science and also philosophy of consciousness ("self", "intentionality", "mind-body problem" etc.) Then read at least a few chapters of the first volume again. This is one book meant mostly for people who have a few degrees in philosophy. But it is philosophy done with a great style and that's what has kept me going even though I am mostly vague about all the aforementioned topics.

Also the more I read Austrians, the more I am getting impressed. They are sharp, bilious, intelligent, misanthropic, unsentimental and they don't suffer fools or nonsense gladly. They are all one uncompromising bunch, interested only in extremes, in every sense of the word, whether it is how they say or what they say, no half-measures for them. Next on the line are Peter Handke (one of whose books is called "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams"), Elias Canetti (about whose novel Auto-da-fe, Salman Rushdie says, "In Auto-da-Fé no one is spared. Professor and furniture salesman, doctor, housekeeper, and thief all get it in the neck. The remorseless quality of the comedy builds one of the most terrifying literary worlds of the century") and also Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, who I recently came across and whose novel Lord Chandos Letter looks enormously interesting. Also I have to read the rest of the oeuvre of Thomas Bernhard and Ingeborg Bachmann. And also I have to look for a copy of "Wittgenstein for Idiots" or some similar book. I am excited even though always feeling very tired and sleepy even at work, or actually, specially at work. I am just a little worried about my mental health right now. I fear I will turn into one of those people inside these books. We'll see. I will keep this blog updated.