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For me , because I had recently been visualizing language as hands with fingers , reaching out , and either being burned , or allowed to hold , touch , feel, and offer - when I read the movie review about the fingers being cut off , the idea that hands with fingers are the SAME as hands with opposing thumbs - the hands just touch into the material world, but language reaches into the forest of human brain trees -- Understanding that lying is quite normal these days , especially to children , and totally normal to children as their language is developing , made me see this correlation , yet I do not know if that is what the film maker intended , but the correlation between the talking of the talker friend , and the friend who wanted to have silence to play music , who felt that the only way to explain the seriousness to his friend , of the talk abuse , was to abuse his own hands , and sever the digits . I recently dropped a "Friend " because I KNEW that there was NO WAY I was going to explain to her the complexity of my life , and demand the respect from her that would mean our relation - glitch was a relation SHIP , and thus a friend ship . It was impossible for me to fight her mind set . Just as the musician found with the talker , the talker was not going to give up , ever , even to the burning of houses and death of donkeys and loss of his own SISTER , he was just not going to stop . As maybe , now , should do I !! ha ha

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the depth of the meaning of this movie , coming from you , someone who is dedicated to listening to the body - must have been so intense . no wonder you wrote about it . I had wanted to see the movie but am really glad that I listened to your translation of it first . I recently watched "the Whale" and was able to see it through that filter of symbols and deeper meanings , and it affected me at a profound level . Thank you for explaining it , its so genius it always makes my mind wonder if the film maker or script writer can actually be that genius , that they can depict such a deep thought - consciously . I guess that is what art is . In the bible there is the story of the woman at the well , jesus says that she has FIVE husbands , and to go back to her world and sin no more , and in that the message is about the five senses , that to attain the perfected reality one must stop being ruled by the senses - as he calls it " husbands . " But in this case , the two FREINDS , are not married , they have an agreement , and to me the idea is that the violin player is the body , and the talker is the mind , neurotic and wasting time . The body keeps sacrificing very important things , fingers are so precious to us , to get the mind to pay attention , but the mind instead wants to burn the house down but save the DOG , - the dog being subject to the command of man , -- this movie is very profound -- then the DONKEY of the talker chokes on the discarded fingers and DIES - the donkey being like "Oh brother donkey " of one of the saints thanking his body for carrying his mind all the years of his life , but in this case , the donkey / body of the talker actually dies . And his sister leaves . I think this movie is a serious call to attention to the fact that we are asking our bodies to stop feeling and stop being able to make music , by not respecting the silence and seriousness of the relationship that we are experiencing with our body . It is the music maker . The talker is there to expand reality , not to control and maintain it . There is a guy Dispensa who says Ideas are electrical , but emotions are magnetic - The musician wanted to experience that magnetic field , but the talker wanted to just keep zapping the environment with his polite but controlling story . The genius of having the friend cut the fingers off to rid himself of the GRIP of the language game that was strangling him , its like such a serious way to explain this relationship between language and the body . I have been studying the dreaded narcissism , and realized that it develops at the same time that language is formatting . That language is the SAME as hands reaching out , except its sound reaching out into other humans . In the narcissist , the words they use are not heard , don't work , or are silenced . They learn to use a strategy to spin their language in a way that works in the world around them, and to do that they develop an INNER persona , who is the guide , the intermediary between the external voice and the inner workings . So - when the Talker character in the story released and expressed his honest anger , it was his REAL voice , not his fake diplomatic voice that the Musician felt was drowing his life , drowning his time , and not actually representing the spirit of his friend . -- I really enjoyed contemplating the movie through your perception - thank you for bringing it into my sphere .

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