Talking About Beauty

Pink Poppy 2
Originally uploaded by Poundstone.

Pedro Almodovar kept an online journal during the making of his new movie "Volver," and it (the journal - the movie is not available to me yet) is so wonderful. I so admire people who can be so precise and incisive in their writing -- especially about things that are so internal; things it would not immediately occur to me to write down.

"...a [film] shooting is a closed home from which you do not leave until it is finished. My existence in 'Volver' is very poor in anecdotes not related to the shooting. I read at nights but I can’t really grasp a thing, I don’t watch TV. I do listen to music during the long trips to the set. I don’t see anyone (I don’t go out). Sometimes someone comes to visit. There’s not much worth mentioning and that is why the rare things that leave an imprint and manage to captivate me acquire an enormous proportion, for sure an exaggerated one. I’ll mention some of them. Music.For me, finding an album that stuns me (or a book) is as tremendous and important as finding a good friend...I cannot think of better company than the one this music has provided during the daily journeys to the sets were we were shooting."

Another person who has this precision is the photographer I love, Frank Horvat. From this page, which introduces the photographs of a friend (whose photographs are astonishing):

"...But, as Italians say: non tutto il male vien per nuocere - not all bad things come to do harm. Christine hasn't been able to make as many photos as she would have liked - but the ones she took were photographs that she had to take...I don't know many photographers whose work conveys to me this feeling of necessity, both in the sense that the subject had to be photographed, and that the photographer felt the urge to shoot."

I feel the need to point out the amazing fact that each of these men have managed to convey their emotions so clearly in English, which is their second or third language.

I think am getting better at being able to write more precisely what I think and feel ,and am more interested in doing so. It's an extremely freeing and exhilarating sensation, to move toward a fuller expression of core internal truths. I think it's a combination of writing practice and a kind of bravery (the only kind I have)— a willingness to appear vulnerable to myself and others. Hmm. How deep : )