Imported Facebook Note

Yeatsian Revival

It was oscar night. I wouldn't have known it... except that I got a phone call early in the morning inviting me to an "oscar party"... the conversation went something like this:

-Hey, what are you doing tonight?
-Uh. Nothing?
-It's oscar night tonight.
-What's that? (thinking, for some reason, that it has something to do with food)
-Tonight's the oscars.
-What? (still thinking about food)
-The academy awards. You know, oscars. Movies.
-OH!
-I guess you don't really follow that.
-Uh... no...

And then I was told that in this town... many people make a big deal of the oscars... they put together stacks of televisions, dress up, serve oscar themed food (so I was right about the food, afterall), and generally party it up.

I did not partake of the festivities... mainly because I've been living in a movie-less cave for the last little while. I haven't even seen a trailer or a movie poster for any of the nominees. I can't even name one actor/actress/director who has been nominated. Actually, the last time I saw any part of the oscars, it was that year with Roberto Benigni winning best foreign film for La vita e bella (a wiki search tells me that that was 10 years ago!)... and the next oscar moment was in 2004, in the kitchen at work at Dorval during an evening shift, where everyone in the room was ecstatic that Les invasion barbare had won... unfortunately, among all the proud and ecstatic French Canadians, none had seen the movie...

I do know that a movie called "No Country for Old Men" has been nominated for best picture this year... reason why I know is that there's been a lot of mention of this movie lately... and it happens to be one of my favourite lines. I haven't any idea what the movie is about... all I know is that it is not, as was my first guess, a bio-pic of William Butler Yeats... whatever it is, though, it's probably quite good... I googled "oscars" and discovered that it had won several awards. I guess I'll have to wait until it comes out on video... and then rent it from The Groovy Movie Store.

In celebration of the win... here is Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium":

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Okay... that's it. I'm going to bed... going to go for an early surf in the morning before work. The surf forecast said it was going to be smaller today... so I went to Cox Bay instead of North Chesterman. I still have salt water coming out of my nose... and I've been out of the water since 11AM. I need to surf better... and soon, too... and I need to stop freaking myself out by paddling to the lip of some gigantic wave pretending that there's even a chance I could make any sort of a drop. Why do I do that? It doesn't give me anything but a sinus rinse.