07.23.09
Poetic Symbolism
When it comes to symbolism (whether it’s in art, music, movies, religion… whatever) I tend to not be a fan. Perhaps it’s because I don’t understand it completely. Perhaps it’s because I do understand it and just don’t like it.
I just watched the second half of Black Hawk Down on FX. I enjoy this movie and similar wartime stories like Band of Brothers. It’s a single scene at the end that put me onto this train of thought. If you’re not familiar with the story, the U.S. military is trying to take down a warlord in Somalia. Everything goes awry when a helicopter (a black hawk) is shot down. The movie then encompasses the attempts and eventual extraction of the survivors and bodies of the dead.
At the end of the movie, the general in charge of the operation walks into a medical tent. Without the expertise to help save the soldiers in the tent, he grabs one of those medical covers and leans over to clean up some blood on the floor. Instead of cleaning the blood, he ends up just smearing it more and more all over.
The symbolism being that despite this man’s efforts in the prior events, he only caused more deaths and injuries. The more he tried to get his men out, the more harm occurred. I get it. But it’s a stupid point to make and an even more stupid way to make the point.
It’s as if the filmmakers wanted to say that the U.S. military had no business being in Somalia in the first place. Never mind the genocidal cleansing going on that the general populace was in no position to prevent. Never mind that supplies delivered to the people were taken by this warlord and horded for himself and his men. What I’m taking from this moment of the movie is that the whole thing just shouldn’t have been.
My other problem with the scene is the way it is portrayed. The general grabs a surgical cover and tries to clean the blood. That’s not how you clean up blood. Those things aren’t supposed to absorb liquids. Grab a towel or something. An item meant to clean fluids, especially blood.
Maybe that’s really the real symbolism going on in the scene: there are better tools we can use to stop the spreading blood. If that’s the case, it’s still not satisfactory for me. The U.N. was trying all it could to peacefully resolve the problems in the country and they weren’t getting anywhere. In fact, their attempts to aid the population by airdropping supplies could be seen as directly providing power to the warlord since he would take those supplies and only give them to people who joined his little army.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
However, despite my distaste for it generally, there are some instances of symbolism that I absolutely adore. Single lines in songs or scenes in movies that make me sigh and grin while I think about how beautiful they really are to me. I don’t want to go too in depth into them, but I will list a few.
Brick, by Ben Folds Five. Interesting note, when this song came out it coincided with a running joke I had made about a brick. I like the symbolism of the song and certain poetic snippets. It’s easy to imagine the image of Ben Folds in the water with a brick tied to his leg as he struggles to reach the surface for one more breath. Also, “The smell of cold…” That’s genius. “For the moment we’re alone. She’s alone. And I’m alone.” Oh Ben.
Fistful of Sand, by The Bravery. This is a song you need to listen to if you haven’t. You can listen to it on their website here. It’s track 8. The lyrics are:
Every morning I wake up and you are home
But in your eyes I see that I’m alone
You’ve left me with your body in my arms
But I can’t feel you anymore – You are gone
I can touch your skin but you aren’t there
Frustration burns in me, it’s more than I can bear
I wanna take you in my fists and squeeze the life back into you
But there is nothing I can do – You are gone
And I can hold you in my hands
But you are gone, you are gone, you are gone
You’ve slipped away like a fistful of sand
You are gone, you are gone, you are gone
I am staring straight into your eyes
You never turn away or tell me lies
But you are with some other man while I am lying next to you
And there is nothing I can do, you are gone
It could just be the child inside of me, but I love the imagery of squeezing a fistful of sand. The tighter you squeeze, the easier the sand escapes your fingers. Just like star systems escaping the evil empire!
Stars in relation to traditional religious application. Back when my sister got married, a couple of my brothers spent the time we were in the temple walking around. They happened to notice the stars depicted all over the temple in various forms, including several upside down stars.
What’s the deal with this? It’s true that today an upside down star is a symbol used for satanism, but that has only been a relatively recent adoption of the symbol. Traditionally when used in religious terms a star represents many things, most importantly that of communication between man and God. A star pointed upwards indicates man’s desire to reach the Lord. A star pointed downwards indicates God’s reach to man. You might note in the concept drawing of the star on the right, the point downwards is elongated, meaning that God is reaching further to us than we are reaching to him.
Those are just a few examples of symbolism I like. That aren’t indicative of all types of symbolism I enjoy, they just happened to be the three that I thought of first.
07.05.09
Summer of Fun
The time has come for a mass update. Let’s dive right in.
I solved the headphones problem from my prior posting. I picked up a cheapo $10 pair of headphones at Wal Mart. They are the kind that cradle the ear. The advantage of these? The cradle keeps them in place even when the actual piece is not inside the ear, allowing me to listen to quiet music without blocking ambient sounds. It’s an interesting situation since it feels like I just have a soundtrack to my life. A soundtrack that never syncs up. That’s probably a good thing, though.
I’ve recently begun listening to the Harry Potter books on my Ipod. Yes, it’s finally happened. After years and years of being bugged about not reading them, I’m now listening to them. I finished The Philosopher’s Stone (I got the U.K. audio books) and am onto Chamber of Secrets. It makes for some rather funny moments when I fall asleep while listening.
I spent this past Wednesday night at Wong’s. I only had a few chapters left of the first book and started listening, but zonked out. I woke up in the middle of Harry’s confrontation with Voldemort (should I not even be typing the name?). The reader really goes all out with some character’s voices and for Voldemort, he uses a high pitched sort of nasal voice. In a groggy, confused state my eyes slowly open and I hear “Kill him!” scream loudly in my ears. I started looking around in the dark room thinking “What? Kill Who? What’s going on here?” It took about five seconds for me to catch onto what was going on. It wasn’t fun during those seconds, but after it was. Oh Voldemort, don’t tell me my business.
This past weekend was my ward’s annual river rafting trip. We go up to Alpine Junction and ride down the Snake River multiple times in two days. There were six total runs with three rafts in each run. I was able to work my way into four of the trips. We usually go later in the year, late July or early August, so this year was a totally different river with the Spring runoff still pouring in. The water level had to have been at least seven feet higher than usual since some familiar areas were completely submerged. The current was also running about twice as fast it seemed.
Aside from a couple precarious moments, including one of the rafts hitting a class five whirlpool dead on which knocked two people out of the raft (one week earlier a scout leader died in that very spot link ) the trip was a blast. I thought the river was far more exhilarating because of the speed and danger, but for those very reasons the ward won’t be going this early in the season in coming years.
And finally, the end of the world is approaching. I made a Facebook account. There are a couple reasons I made the leap. I still think the concept of Facebook is silly, but I’ve also come to accept it’s little quirks for what they are. After all, what’s the difference between someone posting small thoughts very frequently and that same person posting larger thoughts less frequently on a blog? I’ll tell you the difference, generally less passion appears in the blogs. Oh, it happens. I’m guilty of it. But when someone writes out a couple of paragraphs they tend to calm down and think about what’s going on.That happens a lot less when someone writes out a single sentence and posts it.
