Thursday, April 15, 2010

Bright Star, oh, whatever.

Dear Reader,

I apologize for my extended absence.  Blame it on Keats.  Recently I watched Jane Campion's amazing film Bright Star.  I like Jane Campion because she reminds me of my grandmother.  Years ago, when I saw Shindler's List, I called my grandmother afterward, because her family was from very near Krakow.  She called the following evening to tell me she had been to see Jane's Campion's The Piano.  I asked how she liked it.  "Well, I'll tell you something," she began, "I've seen two naked men in my life.  Your grandfather, and Harvey Keitel."

Bright Star was really good - kind of like a tubercular Twilight.  I don't know if actor Ben Whishaw looks much like Keats, but that's probably a good thing.  See?

Nice curls, John.

Honestly, who cares if you are coughing up jellyfish from your lungs when you look like this?

My problem is, you see, that John Keats died when he was twenty-five.  It got me thinking, if Keats had access to Facebook, and Twitter, and had busied himself trying to write silly recipes, would he ever have written Ode on a Grecian Urn?  And if he hadn't done that, my freshman English professor wouldn't have written a whole book on Keats that he could quote from day after day (after day) in a drunken snarl.  So I thought, as I am trying to work on What Comes Next, that I would put aside these distractions.  After all, I am almost twenty-five myself.  But alas, no odes have I written.  So there you have it.