Ergo Sum's "Leitmotif" Rational Egoism in India

Jerry J., who goes by the web name Ergo Sum, is one of India's bright young urban professionals with a positive sense of life and a pro-reason, pro-Western, pro-happiness attitude. A Mumbai (Bombay) resident, it is his chosen lifestyle that certain subhumans chose to attack recently. It is sad and ironic when terrorist barbarians know better than "civilized" Westerners what India has to be proud of.

He has invited me to reprint one of his posts from his blog and website, Leitmotif (http://ergosum.wordpress.com/) . Leitmotif is a humanist website, not just an Indian one. Jerry's interests are wide ranging, and his clarity and writing style are exemplary. There are many things of interest, and I recommend you stop by and check him out. Here is a favorite post of mine "Flamenco Passion":

Flamenco Passion

The flamenco dance is like an Ayn Rand novel in rhythmic action: hard-hitting, sharp, precise, thunderous, passionate, Flamenco Dancergripping, poised, and proud. Since the day I first witnessed a flamenco dance performance in concert, I have never forgotten the visceral experience of exaltation I had nor have I come to regard any other dance form as rivaling this one. The flamenco portrays man at his best, proudest, and most passionate stature. It depicts a committment to clarity and precision in movement. Its expressions are fierce and its colors, vivid.

The flamenco can be a fiery celebration of life, or love, or lust, or power, or some intense emotion. Its artistic selectivity is focused on the stark elements of human actions and emotions: the expressions are not vapid or one of ambivalence. The dancer’s expressions are focused, sharp, intense, often proudly disdainful, also exuberant, and radiant. The dancer moves with a loud, deliberate THUD, as if readying for battle. The subtleties of its movements are expertly weaved into the stark contrasts in its execution.

For me, after having watched a flamenco concert, I feel a new, revitalized, surge of energy–a nourishment of my soul, a renewed committment to the pursuit of my happiness in this life. I begin to walk upright with my neck slightly raised; my poise exudes more confidence; my stance implies purposeful action; my gaze reveals some worthy goal.

This is what Romantic art does. In The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand aptly describes this important function of art:

Since a rational man’s ambition is unlimited, since his pursuit and achievement of values is a lifelong process… he needs a moment, an hour or some period of time in which he can experience the sense of his completed task, the sense of living in a universe where his values have been successfully achieved. It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world. The fuel is not a theoretical principle but the fact of experiencing a moment of metaphysical joy – a moment of love for existence.

[The image of the dancer is copyrighted to Tim Kahane and was obtained by me from this Flickr link.]

Stop by Leitmotif today.

Paganini "Caprice 24" by Li Jie

Researching the guitarist Francisco Tárrega, [considered the father of modern classical guitar] I ran across the amazing Chinese guitar vituosa Li Jie (here at Wikipedia) playing Niccolò Paganini's Caprice #24. I'm was so amazed I had to post it on Radicals for Happiness. There are lots of very, very good classical guitar performances by various people on YouTube. Who knew?

José Manuel Capuletti (Part 1)

You won't find him listed at Wikipedia in either English or his native Spanish. You won't find him hanging in the Met. You won't find much of anything about him nowadays. But his work was collected by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He painted the portrait of the future King Juan Carlos of Spain. Ayn Rand praised his clarity and sense of the essential, describing him as a favorite. During his time he was compared with Picasso and Dalí. Today he is all but forgotten. He is José Manuel Capuletti, 1925-1976, painter, photographer and designer.

Capuletti's style resmbles Salvador Dalí in execution, but his sense of life is more positive, lacking Dalí's frequent fascination with the morbid. He painted flamenco dancers, bull-fighters, sports figures and performers. Most of his work is privately held. Books on him are out of print. Some of his art was recently sold by Quent Cordair Fine Art. Very little is available on the web. Above is a portrait of his wife, Pilar. To the right is his "Mujer de los Caracoles" (Women of the Snails) which is the only painting that has ever made me laugh out loud. Read about him at Peter Cresswell's Not PC Blog or the article on him at Aristos by Louis Torres.

See Part 2 here.

Johnny Guitar & Women on the Verge

In Pedro Almodovar's Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown the protagonist Pepa Marcos (Carmen Maura) has just been unceremoniously dumped by her lover and co-worker Ivan (Fernando Guillén) with whom she does voiceover work. Exhausted and about to discover she is pregnant, Pepa takes too many sleeping pills and arrives after her lover has finished a session of dubbing Johnny Guitar, the 1954 classsic western with Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden.

"Lie to me. Tell me you've always loved me. Tell me you would have died without me."

Both movies featue drama and struggle between women slinging guns as they ride. Johnny Guitar portrays murder, while in Women on the Verge at worst a bed is burnt to death. With music, color and melodrama the two make an interesting pair. Women on the Verge is Almodovar's best, and Crawford was never better than in Johnny Guitar. Here a few clips from each. My apolgies for the lack of subtitles for the Spanish.

"Lie to Me" Johnny Guitar



Pepa's Dub Session (Pepa oversleeps, and misses Ivan's break-up call. The Doctor tells her she's pregnant. Pepa does her dubs. She calls Ivan from work, but gets his wife, who having just left the insane asylum, thinks she's still young.)



"The Piano Scene" Johnny Guitar



Pepa, packing Ivan's things, and "sick of being good" forgets she shouldn't be smoking, and burns the bed, to Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade

"Solea" from Almodóvar's "Flower of my Secret"

Unrequited love, a style of dance that combines the grace of ballet and the energy of tap...is it Rand's lost novel To Lorne Dieterling? No, it's The Flower of My Secret, the story of a passionate writer looking for just a little bit more out of life. One night, at a dance recital where Miles Davis and Pedro Almodovar intersect, she finds it.

As with many of his films, distinctive for their melodramatic plots and vibrant color, Pedro Almodóvar's 1995 Flower of My Secret (La flor de mi secreto) also features a dramatic musical performance however loosely tied to the plot structure. This movie tells the story of Leocadia, (Marisa Paredes) picured here with her elderly mother and her "crab-faced" sister, a writer of popular romance novels, who looses one love, and, in trying to switch to a more profound style of writing, finds a better. This is one of Almodóvar's best films, if one of his least outlandish. One of the highlights is Joaquín Cortés and Manuela Vargas's interprative/flamenco dance performance to Miles Davis' "Solea" (Sketches of Spain) which can be seen here:



Here is the trailer:

Ravel's "Bolero" from Allegro Non Troppo

Bruno Bozzetto's Allegro Non Troppo ("Not so Fast") of 1977 is a parody/homage to Disney's Fantasia. It suffers from the second-handedness of a parody, both in spirit and execution. The music is downbeat, the animation obscure, the depiction of life pessimistic, and the interspersed live action scenes, shot in black and white, a poor mockery of the Three Stooges. This film is thoroughly European, cynical and self-mocking in a way totally opposed to the American exuberance and earnestness of Fantasia. But it is art. The music can be grand. One can fast forward through the live action bits. It is certainly worth renting from Netfilx, but is not suitable for viewing with children. Here is, perhaps, the best part, the animation of Ravel's Bolero, meant as the counterpart to Disney's animation of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Bolero, Part 1



Bolero, Part 2

Almodóvar "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down"

Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (Spanish Átame) was one of Pedro Almodóvar's most successful films, even given its original X rating upon its release, which sparked a lawsuit and the development of the NC17 rating as an alternative. The film depicts the story of Ricky (Antonio Banderas) a recently released mental patient and Marina (Victoria Abril) his ex-porn star love, whom he kidnaps and keeps tied up until she comes to realize his love for her. Considered risqué and by some feminists highly objectionable (one wonders if they saw the film) the film is a love story and features very little explicit nudity. The films joyous sense of life is excellently expressed by the cast and Almodóvar's vibrant signature direction. Enjoy this brief scene where Marina's sister Lola (Loles León) sings and dances at the cast party for Marina's latest film.