Earthbound Angels

Two reasons to feel happy: I got an email from a potential reader for my dissertation committee, and I just finished The Divine Comedy, all 100 cantos. Either of these is cause for celebration, so with both, I should be in seventh heaven. Or, as Dante would probably put me, somewhere between the Sphere of Saturn and the Sphere of the Fixed Stars.

The geography in Paradiso is hard to get a grip on, and I've been puzzling over it. Rather than following a path, Dante and Beatrice just seem to float upwards and meet people in the neighborhood, like St. Bonaventure, John the Evangelist, and the angel Gabriel. Some of the passages are beautiful, as when Dante describes the dazzling river of light and the view of the Earth from a great height, but mostly it's hard to visualize, unlike the torrid scenes in Inferno and the less chilling but still vivid episodes in Purgatorio.

Dante recognizes this difficulty, because at the beginning of Paradiso he calls on Apollo, the god of poetry, to help him describe what he acknowledges is beyond the power of words to convey.

If I were to pick the place in Dante's entire landscape where I'd rather be, it would not be Heaven but the Earthly Paradise, at the peak of Mount Purgatory. This is the actual Garden of Eden, and it has flowering trees, scented grass, and clear streams; you can walk around, pick fruit, and feel the breeze on your skin. It seems a more comfortable place, more fleshed out and human, than Paradiso. This is not where Dante wants you to stay, but even he admits that few will be able to follow him when he crosses the border into Heaven.

This whole thing for me goes back to Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo is the heady intellectual god of astronomy, epic poetry, and mathematics; Dionysus is the god of earthbound pleasures, of wine, song, and the loosening of boundaries. Apollo is more severe; I imagine he has a crew-cut and looks like an airline pilot; Dionysus has long flowing locks and looks like Roger Daltrey. You are more likely to encounter Apollo in a space lab and Dionysus in a blues club. In some circles, Dionysus has a bad reputation, but he has his place in the scheme of things.

Since Apollo is a sky god, it's natural that Dante calls on him. Nowhere do I hear him calling on Dionysus. I think that's part of the problem with Dante's vision, that everything is directed toward the spirit and not enough toward the human world, which includes shadows as well as light. For Heaven to seem real, it should have street buskers in addition to popes. In Paradiso, it's a little top-heavy on fathers of the Church and medieval princes.

I'm thinking about a movie I once saw called Wings of Desire, in which an angel falls in love with a mortal woman, a trapeze artist. In this film, the angels are beautiful, compassionate beings, but their bodiless existence is very lonely. This angel, Damiel, longs to experience the world of the senses the way humans do. He slums at rock concerts and watches Marion, the trapeze girl, tenderly. He is moving in the opposite direction from Dante, trying not to reach the Empyrean, but the Earth. He finally gets his wish and falls from the sky with a clunk, his wings suddenly metallic and heavy. As I remember it, he is overwhelmed by the experience of holding a cup of coffee.

Come to think of it, this movie was directed by Wim Wenders, whose film, "The Soul of a Man," made such an impression on me when it was on PBS as part of The Blues series several years ago. It was eerie and mystical and featured a haunting performance of Blind Willie Johnson's "John the Revelator" that I still have stuck in my head. Apparently Willie Johnson got to a part of Heaven that Dante missed but met some of the same people, just singing different songs.

If it wasn't so late, I'd eat another piece of chocolate.

Dante vs. Bad Blake

I'm watching movie stars walk down the red carpet in the rain outside the Kodak Theatre. That's OK, it was raining the day I was there, too. I took a $20 tour when I was in L.A. and got to practice my own red carpet walk, though what I'll need it for is unclear -- unless they start giving out Oscars to librarians. Well, you never know.

In between bouts of reading The Divine Comedy this weekend, I made it out to see Crazy Heart in an attempt to catch up on Oscar-nominated films. That movie is a sneaky one, in my opinion. It's a quiet character study and doesn't seem to have a lot of fireworks, BUT . . . I walked out of the theater thinking, wow, I didn't see that coming. The song, "The Weary Kind," was in my head all day yesterday. Meanwhile, I finished "Inferno" last night and read the first nine cantos of "Purgatorio" this morning. I've don't usually associate Jeff Bridges with Dante, but that's what happens when you mix genres.

When Dante goes off the path at the start of the poem, he's hopelessly lost until Beatrice sends him a guide. He winds through nine circles of hell and climbs the steep mountain of Purgatory on his way to Paradise with her image always before him.

If not for Beatrice, Dante's downhill slide would have ended badly. Virgil tells Cato, in the first canto of "Purgatorio," "This man had yet to see his final evening; but, through his folly, little time was left before he did--he was so close to it." The nature of Dante's difficulty isn't stated, but it's clear he has lost his compass. He is middle-aged and worn down by personal turmoil -- a lot like country music outlaw Bad Blake in Crazy Heart (this is where Jeff Bridges comes in).

Bad Blake is something like the character in Chris Smither's song, "Don't Call Me Stranger," who says, "I'm not evil, I'm just bad." He's a sympathetic character in many ways, with a wry sense of humor and an affable nature. His main problem is whiskey. Nevertheless, despite being too drunk to stand in one scene, he remembers to dedicate a song to the stranger who befriended him earlier that day; he remembers the man's name, and his wife's name. I knew that whether he remembered or forgot to do this would say a lot about him, and it did.

Bad is wandering in his own dark wood. This really becomes an issue when he meets Jean, a smart and pretty music writer. Suddenly, he's caught. "I wanna talk about how bad you make this room look. I never knew what a dump it was until you came in here" is Bad's version of Dante's "Her eyes surpassed the splendor of the star's," etc. Bad and Jean begin a love affair, and Bad shows a softer side. His songs start to sound different, too.

Unfortunately, Bad's addiction to alcohol is at least as strong as his growing love for Jean. When he loses sight of her little boy one day while drinking, she puts an end to things. Despite the sympathy Bad engenders, it's obvious she can't do anything else. This event shocks Bad into confronting his alcoholism and inaugurates a new phase in his life. Eventually, even his musical fortunes improve as one of his new songs becomes a hit and a moneymaker.

Jean is behind all this, even though she has refused to see Bad again. Months pass before they meet, at the end of the movie (spoiler alert!). To Bad's surprise (and mine) she is now married to someone else. However, Bad has grown up; he accepts the news gracefully and grants Jean the interview she asks for. They walk off together as the camera pans to take in the wider landscape. It's all very noble -- and heartbreaking!

In a way, Crazy Heart is not a tragedy; Bad has a lot more going for him at the end than he did at the beginning. Like Dante, he's back on the path. But it's a bittersweet victory because it comes too late to save his romance with Jean, the thing that started it all. I sometimes complain about movies being too "Hollywood," but I wanted the Hollywood ending on this one.

Actually, Dante has nothing on Bad in the romance department. He didn't get a Hollywood ending either, because Beatrice was already dead by the time he got lost in the wood. It's her spirit that guides him. Although, like Bad, he has a reunion with his lost love, it's only temporary, and he must eventually continue without her. Like Bad, Dante derives artistic inspiration from his beloved, who acts as a kind of Muse. But I wonder if Dante would have traded The Divine Comedy for another crack at Beatrice. Maybe, and maybe not, since his poetic stature obviously meant a lot to him (he modestly mentions his own greatness in the poem). And, after all, he did get a Masterpiece of World Literature out of it.

This is where I think Bad Blake, an earthier kind of guy, differs from Dante. His only tour of hell, heaven, and points in between is the one he has in the here and now, and it's enough for him. I'm pretty sure he would have traded the song and the success to have Jean back. I'm with him.

Sorry, Dante, I love you, and you're in my dissertation, but Bad trumps you on that one.

Getting the Box

I have television again for the first time since last February. A friend who knows how much I love the Olympics offered to pick up a converter box at Radio Shack and set it up for me so I'd be ready for the Vancouver Games. Wonderful! I've been dithering for months, not able to decide if I should get cable or go with the box. I had heard that some people got bad reception with a converter box, but I didn't like the idea of paying for cable.

I'm probably unusual in the fact that never in my adult life have I had cable TV, except for a brief period years ago when my apartment building was being renovated after a fire. My room at Extended Stay America had cable, and I watched TV all summer. I was surprised at how fast I got hooked on certain things. I could watch The Weather Channel by the hour, and Animal Planet had the power to nearly hypnotize me, especially if the program featured puppies or kittens. I decided it wasn't something I needed long-term.

I grew up watching television, which didn't prevent me from also reading a lot. I've never liked being without a TV; it's always nice to be able to switch it on, even if you don't do it often. The longest summer of my life was my first summer away from home, after my junior year of college, in my first apartment -- with no TV. This last year, I hardly missed it, since I didn't have the spare time to watch it anyway. But after Steve got the box set up yesterday and the picture suddenly came on, crystal-clear and sharp, I was pleasantly surprised. It's nice to have this eye on the world open once again.

So what am I doing with my first night of TV in almost a year, my dissertation clock ticking in the background? OK, I admit it. I'm not watching the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour, I'm watching movie stars accepting Golden Globes, with the sound turned down (I did turn it up to listen to Meryl Streep accept an award for Julie and Julia and to hear Martin Scorsese speak). I don't think I've ever watched this show before, but it's actually livelier than the Oscars. On a rainy winter night, after a sad week in the world, it's fun to see some sparkle and color.

If movies are the modern version of fairy tales, this awards ceremony is a little like seeing a raft of characters from Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen show up all together at Cinderella's ball: it may be a little awkward, but it's magical (and the ball gowns are half the fun). As a testament to the primacy of films in the public imagination, I can say that despite three years of having my nose in the books for graduate school, I recognize nearly all of the faces, old and new.

The only ones I don't recognize are from television, and even some of them look familiar.

Popcorn and Apocalypse

I started reading Borges' Labyrinths this week, in the midst of a spell of bitter cold weather and gray days. Borges is no Jimmy Buffett. He's not the guy to cajole you out of the January blues, but his book has been staring at me accusingly for some time from the top of a stack of dissertation reading. The silent reproach only got worse after January 1, so on Monday, I dutifully picked the book up and began reading on my lunch hour. The stories are clever and intriguing but usually quite dark. Yikes, just the thing for a vitamin D deficiency.

Last night I did a smart thing and watched Kenneth Branaugh's version of As You Like It, which had the Forest of Arden set in Japan, for some reason. It didn't matter, since the cast was charming and all the lovers ended up with the right people at the finale. A great antidote to the winter blahs.

This morning, I decided to get my reading and chores done early so I could go out to a movie and maybe take a walk. It worked out fine, except that the movie I chose to see was The Road. I had a feeling it was going to be rough going, and it was. It's well-made and well-acted but very, very harrowing. I realized toward the end that I was sitting a little twisted in my seat, as if unable to face it head-on. Popcorn and a cherry coke seemed totally beside the point; it was an underworld journey from beginning to end, and I escaped into daylight feeling extremely somber.

Some people have compared this story to a Homeric odyssey, but I think it's closer in tone to Dante's Inferno, crossed perhaps with Childe Roland. The end reminded me of the last scene in Inferno, where Dante has gone as low as he can go, only to find himself -- without changing direction -- climbing out and up, and seeing the stars.

The same thing happened to me when I walked out of the theater into bright sunlight. I decided that a walk was more important than ever since I needed the illumination in more ways than one. I was muffled up in warm attire, and 19 degrees didn't seem so bad under patches of blue sky (and without cannibals chasing me). I thought about the film's post-apocalyptic vision and was just happy to see the familiar neighborhood quiet under the snow, to smell woodsmoke, and to see my own path down a westward running street glowing with reflected light as I walked straight toward the sun.

I appreciate the working of myth in art and life and the mirroring that takes place, but enough is enough with the minotaurs and dark descents for one week. I came home, fixed pot roast with vegetables, danced to the Blasters in my living room, and ate some dark chocolate with ginger. When I turned the radio on, the song playing was "California Dreamin.' " Right now, I'm listening to Italian pop music on the Putumayo World Music Hour and thinking about how this morning was the last eight o'clock sunrise for this winter. Tomorrow, sunrise comes at 7:59, and since the sunsets have already started coming later, it won't be long before the days are noticeably longer.

It's always darkest before the light, but next week, I'm going to see a comedy.