GABRIEL
Mary, in a dream of love
Playing as all children play,
For unsuspecting children may
Express in comic make—believe
The wish that later they will know
Is tragic and impossible;
Hear, child, what I am sent to tell:
Love wills your dream to happen, so
Love’s will on earth may be, through you,
No longer a pretend but true.

MARY
What dancing joy would whirl
My ignorance away?
Light blazes out of the stone,
The taciturn water
Bursts into music, and warm wings throb within
the motionless rose:
What sudden rush of Power
Commands me to command?

GABRIEL
When Eve, in love with her own will,
Denied the will of Love and fell,
She turned the flesh Love knew so well
To knowledge of her love until
Both love and knowledge were of sin:
What her negation wounded, may
Your affirmation heal to-day;
Love’s will requires your own, that in
The flesh whose love you do not know,
Love’s knowledge into flesh may grow.
Wake.

MARY
My flesh in terror and fire
Rejoices that the Word
Who utters the world out of nothing,
As a pledge of His word to love her
Against her will, and to turn
Her desperate longing to love,
Should ask to wear me,
From now to their wedding day,
For an engagement ring.

GABRIEL
Since Adam, being free to choose,
Chose to imagine he was free
To choose his own necessity,
Lost in his freedom, Man pursues
The shadow of his images:
Today the Unknown seeks the known;
What I am willed to ask, your own
Will has to answer; child, it lies
Within your power of choosing to
Conceive the Child who chooses you.

The Surgeon’s Mate is the seventh book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

Stephen reflects on the reality of coincidence in the world:

This was not a welcome subject, and the light, the fine glow died out of Diana’s face, which had been alive with the happiness of freedom recovered, the excitement of Paris regained and of new clothes. She said, ‘That was a very curious coincidence, the Hotel d’Arpajon, was it not?’

‘Prodigious,’ said Stephen. ‘And yet in a way one might say that the whole of life is a tissue of prodigious coincidences: as for example that at the very moment we attempt to cross the road this particular coach and six should come by; yet though extremely unlikely, it is a fact. And the glabrous face within belongs to Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord.’ Stephen took off his hat: the glabrous face returned his bow. ‘ It is a most improbably coincidence that as we enter La Mothe’s courtyard, and it is just here, on the right – take care of the excrement, Viliers – some merchant should walk into his counting-house in Stockhold, or that Jack Aubrey should mount his horse to pursue the fox. Though now I come to think of it, Jack would scarcely pursue the innocent fox at this time of the year: yet the principle remains. You may object that the overwhelming majority of these coincidences are undetected, which is eminently true; but they are there for all that, and as I raise this knocker, some man in China breathes his last.’

(p. 128, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen, once again demonstrates his (lack of) navigational knowledge:

‘Stephen, a damned thing has happened: the timepiece is broke. Will you lend me your watch?’
‘You are welcome to it, sure,’ said Stephen, producing his severely beautiful Breguet. ‘But what is wrong with the other chronometers?’

‘There ain’t any other chronometers.’

‘Come, brother, I remember to have seen a whole array in our various ships, and distracted young gentlemen trying to find the mean of them all while you bullied them, holding your hack-watch in one hand and peering at the celestial bodies with the other.’

‘Yes, but that was because I have always had my own, ever since I could afford it; and if a captain buys one, the Admiralty lets him have two more. Otherwise he carries just a single timekeeper, and then only if he is going foreign in most cases.’

‘The machine is used for finding out the latitude, I believe.’

‘To tell you the truth Stephen, most people rely on the sextant for their latitude: the timekeeper is more for the other thing – east and west, you know.’

‘East and west of what, for all love?’

‘Why of Greenwich, naturally.’

‘I am no great navigator –‘ said Stepehn.

‘You are far too modest,’ said Jack.

‘—though I have wondered how you mariners find your way about the dank wastes of ocean. But from what you tell me I see that for your countrymen Greenwich rather than Jerusalem is the navel of the universe – lo, Greenwich where many a shrew is in, ha, ha – and secondly that whereas a poor man can fix his position only with regard to north and south, to up and down, his wealthy brother is secure to right and left as well. There is no doubt a logic in this, although it escapes me, just as the use of the timepiece escapes me, with its peevish insistence upon accuracy in the measurement of what is after all a most debatable concept, quite unknown, we are told in Heaven. Tell me, is it really capable of telling you where you are, or is this just another of you naval – I must say superstitions – like saluting the purely hypothetical crucifix on the quarterdeck?’

‘If you have exact Greenwich time aboard – if you carry it with you – you can fix your longitude exactly by accurate observations of local noon, to say nothing of occultations and the finer points. I have a pair of Arnolds at home – how I wish I had brought ‘em – that only gained twenty seconds from Plymouth to Bermuda. In these waters that would tell you were where you were, east or west, to witin three mles or so. Oh, the lunarians may say what they please, but a well tempered chronometer is the sweetest thing! Suppose you were riding along, with your watch set to Greenwich time in your pocket, and suppose you happened to take a noon observation and found that the sun southed at five minutes after twelve, you would know that you were almost exactly on the meridian of Winchester, without having to search for a finger-post. And the same applies to the sea, where finger-posts are tolerable uncommon.’

‘Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. And I dare say this would answer for let us say Dublin and Galway?’

‘I should not care to affirm anything about Ireland, where people have the strangest notion of time; but at sea, I do assure you, it answers very well. That is why I should like your watch.’

(p. 259, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

The Fortune of War is the sixth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series:

Director Peter Weir used this joke in the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World:

Two weevils crept from the crumbs. ‘You see those weevils, Stephen?’ said Jack solemnly.

‘I do.’

‘Which would you choose?’

‘There is not a scrap of difference. Arcades ambo. They are the same species of curculio, and there is nothing to choose between them.’

‘But suppose you had to choose?’

‘Then I should choose the right-hand weevil; it has a perceptible advantage in both length and breadth.’

‘There I have you,’ cried Jack. ‘You are bit – you are completely dished. Don’t you know that in the Navy you must always choose the lesser of two weevils? Oh ha, ha, ha, ha!’

(p. 42, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen discusses the illogical nature of human beings:

[Mr. Evans:]‘When you look about the world, and view monarchs in it – I do not refer to your own, of course – can you really maintain that the hereditary king cuts a very shining figure?’

[Stephen:] ‘I cannot. Nor is that the point: the person, unless he be extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, is of no importance. It is the living, moving, procreating, sometimes speaking symbol that counts.’

‘But surely mere birth without any necessary merit is illogical?’

‘Certainly, and that is its great merit. Man is a deeply illogical being, and must be ruled illogically. Whatever that frigid prig Bentham may say, there are innumerable motives that have nothing to do with utility. In good utilitarian logic a man does not sell all his goods to go crusading, nor does he build cathedrals; still less does he write verse. There are countless pieties without a name that find their focus in a crown. It is as well, I grant you, that the family should have worn it beyond the memory of man; for your recent creations do not answer – they are nothing in comparison of your priest-king, whose merit is irrelevant, whose place cannot be disputed, nor made the subject of a recurring vote.’

(p. 124, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Desolation Island is the fifth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series:

Is there a better description of Stephen and Jack’s friendship through music?

‘Killick! Killick, there! Bear a hand.’

Kilick’s voice could be heard coming nearer: “No peace, no bleeding peace in this barky,’ and as the door opened, ‘Sir?’

‘Toasted cheese for the Doctor, half a dozen muttonchops for me, and a couple of bottles of Hermitage. D’ye hear me there? Now, Stephen, give me an A.’

They tuned their strings, that pleasant tentative wailing, and as they tuned he said, ‘What do you say to our old Corelli in C major?’

‘With all my heart,; said Stephen, poising his bow. He pause, and fixed Jack’s eye with his own: they both nodded: he brought the bow down and his ‘cello broke into its deep noble song, followed instantly by the piercing violin, dead true to the note. The music filed the great cabin, the one speaking to the other, both twining into one, the fiddle soaring alone: they were in the very heart of the intricate sound, the close lovely reasoning, and the ship and her burdens faded far, far their minds.

(p. 114, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Jack is not gifted at expressing his emotions with words and wit. Instead, he allows his violin to speak for him. In this case, he’s frustrated at being usurped by Stephen’s secretive ways:

‘The least said the better,’ said Jack. ‘Just so. It shall be as direct.’ He paced to and fro, his hands behind his back. He had boundless confidence in Stephen, but deep in his mind there was a sense of having been – no tricked, not quite manoeuvred: perhaps managed was the word. He did not care for it al all. It wounded him. He took up his fiddle, and standing there facing the open stern window and looking out on to the wake, he stroked a deep note from the G string and so played on, an improvisation that expressed what he felt as no words could hav done.

But when Stephen behind him, speaking over the sound, said, ‘Forgive me Jack: sometimes I am compelled to be devious. I do not do it from choice,’ the music changed ended in an abrupt, cheerful pizzicato, and he sat down again.

(p. 142, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen’s encounter with a whale that literally takes his breath away:

…as the wind was biting through his fourth waistcoat and comforter – he was rewarded by what appeared to be the sea-bed rising to the surface right by the ship, a vast dark area grew clearer and clearer until it assumed the form of a whale. But a whale of unspeakable dimensions: still it rose, unhurried, and as he stared, holding his breath, the sea rounded in a smooth boil – the surface parted – the creature’s streaming back appeared, dark blue-grey just flecked with white, stretching from the fore to the mizzen-chains. The rose higher still and expired a rushing jet of air that instantly condensed in a plume as tall as the foretop and floated over the Leopard’s bowsprit: and at the same moment Stephen himself breathed out.

(p. 266, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

Stephen reflects on the effects of national pride between Jack and an American whaler:

‘I have never firked a fee out of any man,’ said Stephen, frowning. ‘Recollect yourself, Mr. Herapath. All we want is the use of his forge. And Captain Aubrey will no more ask for it than Mr Putnam will ask for the Leopard’s surgeon. A foolish, foolish situation. Each, as an individual, would pull the other out of the water; each would succour the other, even at considerable danger to himself. But each, as the representative of his tribe, will batter the other with great guns and small; sink, burn and destroy at the drop of a hat. A foolish, foolish situation, that must be dealt with by men of sense, not gamecocks stalking about on stilts and high horses….’

(p. 308, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003)

]]> http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/patrick-obrian-desolation-island-1978-quotes/feed/ 0 jason.r.goode http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/patrick-obrian-the-mauritius-comand-1977-quotes/ http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/patrick-obrian-the-mauritius-comand-1977-quotes/#comments Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:21:59 +0000 jasongoode http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/?p=438 ]]>

The Mauritius Command is the fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

Jack reflects on his disappointment with marriage:

…[Stephen] said, ‘Were we to speak generally, we might say that upon the whole sailors, after many years of their unnatural, cloistered life, tend to regard the land as Fiddlers Green, a perpetual holiday; and that their expectations cannot be attempted to be fulfilled. What the ordinary landsman accepts as the common lot, the daily round of domestic ills, children, responsibilities, the ordinary seaman is apt to look upon as a disappointment of his hopes, an altogether exceptional trial, and an invasion of his liberty.’

‘I catch your drift, old Stephen,’ said Jack with a smile, ‘ and there is a great deal in what you said. But not every ordinary seaman has Mrs. Williams to live with him. I am not complaining, mark you. She is not a bad sort of a woman at all; she does her best according to her own lights, and she is truly devoted to the children. The trouble is that I had somehow got the wrong notion of marriage. I had thought there was more friendship and confidence and unreserve in it than the case allows. I am not criticizing Sophie in the least degree, you understand – ‘

‘Certainly not.’

‘- but in the nature of things… The fault is entirely on my side, I am sure. When you are in command, you get so sick of the loneliness, of playing the great man and so on, that you long to break out of it; but in the nature of things it don’t seem possible.’ He relapsed into silence.

After a while Stephen said, ‘So if you were ordered to sea, brother, I collect you would not rage and curse, as being snatched away from domestic felicity – the felicity, I mean, of a parent guiding his daughters’ first interesting steps?’

‘I should kiss the messenger,’ said Jack.

(p. 32, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1972)

On bad-tasting coffee:

‘…the coffee has a damned off taste.’

‘This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack.’

‘I thought it had a familiar tang,’ said Jack.

(p. 179, William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1972)

]]> http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/patrick-obrian-the-mauritius-comand-1977-quotes/feed/ 3 jason.r.goode http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/camera-bumps-in-film/ http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/camera-bumps-in-film/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:24:16 +0000 jasongoode http://jasongoode.wordpress.com/?p=418 ]]>

Two films that I adore have very obvious camera bumps in them: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and Punch Drunk Love. In both films there is a moment when the camera suddenly jilts and (in my case) you become aware for a moment that you’re watching a movie.

If the camera bumps during a take, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the filmmaking team will:

a) do another take, and

b) not use the take with the bump in it.

So why do these films have the camera bump in the final movie? Or, more accurately, why did the filmmakers put the camera bump into the final cut?

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

The first one is from Peter Weir’s masterpiece based on Patrick O’Brian’s
Aubrey-Maturin series. Russel Boyd deservedly received the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on the film. Check out this still from the first battle sequence:

This camera bump is especially strange for two reasons:
1) With $150 Million dollars to play with, I’m sure they could have done another take (and did!).
2) It doesn’t match the overall aesthetic of this elegantly shot film.

However, the camera bump remains in the film (at the 5 seconds remaining mark):

Punch Drunk Love

The next on is from P.T. Anderson’s 2002 movie staring Adam Sandler. Roger Elswit lensed the film, along with Anderson’s next movie, There Will Be Blood (for which he won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography).

Elswit was actually asked about this bump in an interview with American Cinematographer when the film was released. The interview is no longer archived on the site, but here’s what he said:

At one point Sandler’s character is being followed by the Steadicam as he talks on the phone. During a take, the front of the camera bumped into a table and knocked the camera briefly, causing the shot to jump from Sandler to an image of an out-of-focus piece of the set and then quickly re-adjust. “Most directors would probably not even print that take,” says Elswit, “but Paul loved the effect and wanted to do it again. So we did more takes and right at the same point in the dialog, I’d sort of smack the front of the matte box to re-create the look.”

The film is very loose visually, with regular camera flares. And this particular intimate moment sends the film spirally into an unfortunate direction, so I can see why Anderson was drawn to the idea of the camera suddenly swaying away from the subject.

******

I would love to expand this post with more camera bumps. If you remember one, please leave a comment and I’ll try and add it to the post.

My wife, Christie, preached at White Rock Baptist on Sunday July 12th on Matthew 7:13-23, from the Sermon on the Mount.

I’ve broken it into four sections. Each around 8 to 10 minutes long.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Part Four:

Maclean’s interview with “Tall Expert” Arianne Cohen on why tall people are smarter, healthier, richer, and more attractive. Being 6′7″ myself, here is finally something to off set the pain of car seats, door frames, and low-hanging chandeliers.

H.M.S. Surprise is the third book in the Aubrey-Maturin series.

Stephen reflects on his introverted nature, his inclination toward not truly knowing those around him:

How remote it seemed, that quarterdeck, crowded with blue coats, red coats and half a dozen black, with the busy check-shirted seamen moving among them: no great distance vertically – fifty feet or so – but still now remote. He knew all the men there, liked several o them, loved young Babbington and Pullings; and yet he had the impression of living in a vacuum. It came to him strongly now, though some of the upturned faces were winking and nodding at him… ‘So full a ship, close close-packed a world, moving urgently along, surrounded by its own vacuum; each man bombinating in his own, no doubt. My journal, re-read but yesterday, gives me this same impression: an egocentric man living amidst pale shades. It reflects none of the complex, vivid life of the crowded vessel. In its pages, my host (whom I esteem) and his people hardly exist, nor yet the gun-room,’ he reflected during intervals of conversation as he sat at the envoy’s left…”
(p. 172-173, HarperCollins Paperback)

Jack shows Stephen the initials he carved into the Suprise years earlier when he was only a midshipman:

‘You will have to stand up. Steady, now – clap onto the cheek-bolt. There!’ He pointed to the cap, a dark, worn, rope-scored, massive block that embraced the two masts. ‘We cut it out of greenheart in a creek on the Spanish main; it is good for another twenty years. And here, do you see, is my relic.’ On the broad rim of the square hole that sat on the topmast head there were the initials JA cut deep and clear…
‘Does that not raise your heart?’ he asked.
‘Why,’ said Stephen, ‘I am obliged to you for the sight of it, sure.’
‘But it does raise your heart, you know, whatever you say,’ said Jack. ‘It raises it a hundred feet above the deck. Ha, ha – I can get out a good thing now and then, given time – oh, ha, ha! You never smoked it – you was not aware of my motions.’
(p.239, HarperCollins Paperback)