Reflection Pond #5

St. Vincent - Actor (2009)

I am enamored with St. Vincent. Her unconventional beauty both ethereally and spiritually. Music is a spiritual endeavor after all and St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, has a divine spirit. I adore her music, her smokey voice cascading around groovilicious and jazzilicious melodies, occasionally bouncing off the reverb that her current has pulled loose and launched down amongst the bottom of the falls. Then she drops in a viciously crunchy guitar and mashes our brains for a moment or two, just in case we were starting to drift off on the sweet lullaby of beauty. Hers is a sound that really connects with my soul, like a karmic link that gives me great joy to understand. I fell for her first album a couple of years ago and this being her second, Actor doesn't need rehearsals or blocking, it simply knows how to impress the living daylights out of you. No rewards required to recognize the aural mastery of another great chanteuse.


Sin Nombre - Cary Fukunaga (2009)

What a wickedly great movie. Traversing the trail of tears that is the anguish of many immigrants and their families, Sin Nombre chases after the illusion of prosperity in the midst of a world that tears at the eyes of humanity. Through the heart of one young woman we see the tortured road from Honduras to the United States, passing through La Bombilla where they run into a vicious gang. One of the gang members, Casper, descends into exile due to twisted means and our heroine befriends him in order to help complete her journey because she dreamt that the devil would see her through. This film is so incredibly sad and poignant, to see the way people live and survive in order to try to create a better life for themselves and their families while the dregs that have been exhumed by our greedy world prey on everyone. We've been reading so much about the devastation around the developing world and the means of control that those in power initiate and it's so horrifying and unreal that it breaks your heart. I think that's what happened a bit when I watched this movie. Fukanaga used real immigrants and gang members when he made the film in order to create a sense of honesty and it comes across the screen to scratch at your soul. What do we need to do in order to build communities where people appreciate one another before trying to steal another's livelihood? These huddled stories that happen "out there" in the small places of the planet are directly linked to our own well-being...after all, a person's a person, no matter how small.