20 April 2009

You're gonna find me; out in the contrary...

I like the idea that there are words that have no opposite in the language.

Why does nobody pleased ever describe themselves as gruntled? Can we ever have an outbreak of social rest? Why isn't a tidy person said to be shevelled? Is a moment of clarity achieved when one is combobulated?

“Without Contraries is no progression”. William Blake said that. Contrary bastard.

Hegel thought so too, and Marx agreed with him, but also completely disagreed.

Blake also painted pictures of dragons.

Hegel didn't.

Opposed them, I suppose.

Sylvia Plath was fascinated not by opposites, but by doubles; as was Dostoevsky who also had a thing, as we have discovered, for non-existant, peculiarly-coloured Polar Bears....

Goddamit!!!! He did it again!

Anyway, David Lynch has a thing about both doubles and opposites. 'Lost Highway' seems to be about a single character separated from himself in a momentary life event and completely different from himself, while in 'Twin Peaks' Maddie is Laura Palmer's exact double, which is why she has to die at the hands of Bob - a demon rapist from a room that apparently exists in the woods in the minds of each of us. 'Mulholland Drive' is shaped like a mobius strip, only in narrative form, rather than the kind of paper people used to use for Christmas decorations. 'Wild at Heart' is about a couple lost in a violent unreality, controlled by a man with a thin moustache. 'Eraserhead' is about the male fear of rejection and birth, and 'The Straight Story' is about a man on a tractor.

You read that right. A man on a tractor.

On a tractor.

Driving across America.

On a John Deere tractor.


David Lynch is bloody weird sometimes.

No comments: