Brent P. Newhall's Blog

Been reading some W.H. Auden lately. Breathtaking. I don’t read enough poetry.

September 1, 1939

by W.H.Auden

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism’s face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

‘I will be true to the wife,

I’ll concentrate more on my work,’

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the dead,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

I just watched the anime film Tekkon Kinkreet. I’m not going to review it.

Instead, I’m going to talk about its history. It was originally a somewhat sketchy manga, picked up by an expatriate American freshly dropped in Japan ten years ago. It hit him. Hard. Right between the eyes.

He’d just closed down his own company and moved to Japan. The manga told the story of an outsider, a kid, in a world that he no longer knew. It described this kid’s dark side, and his power, and his tenacity.

This American ached to make a movie out of this. So, he worked his way up through the anime industry, getting to know folks, until he convinced the right people that he should direct an adaptation of this manga. And he got four million dollars with which to do it.

Anime films are rare in Japan. You’ll get a yearly Pokemon or Naruto movie, and every so often something from Studio Ghibli, but outside of that there are precious few movie-length anime. So this was remarkable.

Then, halfway through production, the crew reviewed the movie so far. The film was confusing and muddled. Most of the animation was still incomplete. They suffered a major blow. I saw the video; they all looked like they’d just been told their mother died.

So they talked about it, and thought about it, and rallied, and moved forward.

And they made it. They released a film of beauty, depth, and emotional power. Oh, I could point out flaws; so what? He achieved his dream. And his dream is beautiful.