Two or Three Things I Wish I Knew

I don’t know about you, but I’m totally depressed about the primaries. I feel tricked, trampled, outraged. But, I don’t even know how to fight anymore. I think I’ve lost hope.

This helps maybe: Here are the fifteen finalists for the MoveOn.org Obama ad competition. They’re all good, I think. Although I still like a Jew, a black guy and a priest walk into a bar…

So what about art? What’s it supposed to do? Not talk about the primaries, for sure. Because topical art gets old as fast as Jeremiah Wright.

But art can talk about struggle. It can talk about deception. It can also present other ways of seeing things. A president could do that too, but probably won’t in our lifetime.

On a brighter note, there’s a month-long Godard film festival at Film Forum starting Friday to commemorate the 1968 protests in France. Now there’s someone who knows never to think mainstream politics will be different.

Coming up on Tuesday and Wednesday is Two or Three Things I Know About Her, an overwhelming visual essay on uncontrollable societal change, the role language plays in maintaining the status quo, and of course, film and fiction. It includes the most beautiful cosmic image sequence of espresso foam popping and twirling in a cup. It’s as powerful as metaphor gets.