LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Monday, April 25, 2011

HBO *Treme* - Season 2 - Ep 1

Fantastic.

Gads that cutting back-and-forth between NO and NYC ... yes!

Pitch perfect, every detail right and correct.

Treme is a costumbrista; some describe this hispanic form as concerned with a romanticization of the culturally ephemeral. Now New Orleans is fantastic, but it is not fantasy -- not a romance. Nor is it ephemeral. New Orleans is in cyclic, wheel time, not arrow time. Once something happens, it keeps on happening. But the attention to every cultural detail of particular time and place, getting it perfect, within the story/stories being told, that is costumbrismo.

This seems even more so, as the founding hispanic element, so long overlaid by the Anglo and the French, has re-emerged since the Failure of the Levees, and Treme is showing its return ... the wheel has turned again.

Shivers, shivers, shivers.
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