Where the Wild Things Have Been; And My Patty Griffin

Have you ever been to a concert, read a poem, a story, or seen a movie and you got, way, way more than you bargained for? I hope so. Last week, sort of on a whim, I joined a friend to watch Where The Wild Things Are. I don’t remember being all that invested in the book when I was a kid. But I love Dave Eggers’s work, and Spike Jonze, too. And the company was good. So we went. Wow, wow, wow. First, and foremost, it was a very good movie in its own right. Spectacular visuals. Good story. Real characters. And by no means, an easy, indulgent, reassuring story to tell. That last sentence is why I had my doubts. I didn’t trust an expensive Hollywood movie about a beloved children’s book to be challenging at all. Sort of like going to see the second Transformers movie. If you want it to be a “good” movie by almost any standard, you’ll be disappointed. But if you want it to be a Transformers movie, it’s great fun. So that’s pretty much the approach I try to take with movies. Sometimes it lets me really enjoy something (like Star Trek, or Sunshine Cleaning). But sometimes I’m blown away. For instance, I don’t think I closed my mouth for hours after first watching The Dark Knight. I was in shock at how good it was. Same thing with District 9, but just a little less, so.

Long story. Sorry. Where the Wild Things Are was much, much more movie than I expected. The only word I could come up with to describe it was “raw.” Emotionally, I mean. Not candy coated. When the kid was hurt, the camera stayed on him. Not voyeuristic. Not exploitative. … Honest, I guess. Which is why his imagination becomes something so big for us as an audience, I think. So many times in that movie, I felt like Eggers, and Jonze, and Sendak were thinking of me as they created one scene after the next. That’s where their honesty got them. That’s where it got me. I won’t be able to watch that movie again for a long time. Nope. That’s okay. It’s still fresh across my chest.

And so, it is with this introduction, that I’m pointing to two of my favorite singer-songwriters. Not only do they participate in that same sort of honesty-move that WTWTA does, but they’re artists I’ve listened to for a long, long time. Right there with Francis Bacon’s paintings, Eliot’s and Rilke’s poems, Kapoor’s sculptures, Charlie Kaufman’s scripts, Sally Mann’s photographs. Tom Waits is the most influential artist-musician in my life. Dylan and Bonnie Prince Billy are right up there, too. And although I don’t really think I have a “top-five” singer-songwriters, Patty Griffin and Jackson Browne have certainly been two of the most formative for my aesthetic sensibilities. And I hoped to get you thinking about WTWTA, because like that movie, these two artists transcend some simple, communicable aesthetic. They they sing, at times, my life. My life becomes the one they sing. My life has been the one they sing. (But only at times, of course.) I guess, for me, this is what I call a certain kind of emotional resonance. Oh, and some of their themes are right there in the same childhood bedroom blanket-fort that WTWTA inhabits for me. I hope you enjoy these two videos. One more note below the embeds.

I would love to hear, watch, read (etc.) your own resonant texts (movies, books, poems, stories, songs, whatever) and your reflection. Please feel free to post comments, links to the works, or ping-backs to your own related blog entries. Looking forward to reading them…