My dad is amazing
People who know me on here won't be surprised that I dedicate this extended posting to my father. He's this year 88 years old and he can still surprise me. I'm working part-time now in order to have more time with him. I take him out every week atleast once for coffee and pancakes, and make him talk... because he's basically one of those typical quiet men from the olden days.
This afternoon my dad told me the story how he managed to get my cousin his own little business going in what he really excels in. My cousin is a builder and used to have a drinking problem. I once voiced my concerns to my aunt about that, but she just denied it and told me off for telling tales. I knew already better because my cousin didn't have the father that I had. My uncle used to beat him almost weekly and favoured all his daughters above him.
One day, already decades ago, my cousin was doing some work on new housing near my parents's home. Although my dad and his sister weren't speaking any more, and that since the death of my grandparents, he went over to walk the dog nevertheless and to speak to my cousin. He asked him what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Next he told my cousin's boss, the main contractor for the work, about my cousin wanting to start off his own little skilled work business. Well, my cousin is now already for some years doing extremely well at those specific building jobs. He probably never would have had the opportunity without my dad speaking up.
Now and then I see on FB what my cousin is working on and what he has done as a skilled labourer lately. I always wondered why he actually posted it all on there. Only today I got it because now I know of my own dad's intervention that made it possible for my cousin to better his own life. Yep, the 'Quiet Man' did it again. Most men in my family are like that, absolute non-talkers who can't even get their thank you's straight
[media=https://youtu.be/1HCqRLTuOBw]
Orson Welles famously praised John Ford by stating, "John Ford, John Ford and John Ford," when asked about his favorite American directors, highlighting Ford's profound influence on him and American cinema. To make this claim firm and to show just how deeply personal the manner of creation could be for Ford, one needs only to refer to Ford's movie 'The Quiet Man'.
As Chance Freytag wrote once: "...Ford would never be so brazen or vulnerable as to make a movie overtly about himself, which is where the subjectivity of the film’s environment becomes a necessity. Given Ford’s reservations, the material world in The Quiet Man is only a representation of the afore mentioned personal feelings, rather than a straightforward autobiographical statement. These feelings manifest in the forms of symbolic characters and occurrences."
Moreover, the fantasy elements within the story have a direct link to the Celtic spirit, and yes, for one it's indeed oh so obviously linked to W.B. Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child":
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand."
Freytag again about this marvel of a movie: "Ford’s poetic subjectivity is not self-indulgent or performative, but quiet enough to go unnoticed. Ideas become physical space, such as Stagecoach’s iconic uses of Monument Valley or the picturesque meanderings of Wagon Master. It is the fantasies and divergences that compose almost the whole of The Quiet Man that occupy the most profound areas of his other work."
This afternoon my dad told me the story how he managed to get my cousin his own little business going in what he really excels in. My cousin is a builder and used to have a drinking problem. I once voiced my concerns to my aunt about that, but she just denied it and told me off for telling tales. I knew already better because my cousin didn't have the father that I had. My uncle used to beat him almost weekly and favoured all his daughters above him.
One day, already decades ago, my cousin was doing some work on new housing near my parents's home. Although my dad and his sister weren't speaking any more, and that since the death of my grandparents, he went over to walk the dog nevertheless and to speak to my cousin. He asked him what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Next he told my cousin's boss, the main contractor for the work, about my cousin wanting to start off his own little skilled work business. Well, my cousin is now already for some years doing extremely well at those specific building jobs. He probably never would have had the opportunity without my dad speaking up.
Now and then I see on FB what my cousin is working on and what he has done as a skilled labourer lately. I always wondered why he actually posted it all on there. Only today I got it because now I know of my own dad's intervention that made it possible for my cousin to better his own life. Yep, the 'Quiet Man' did it again. Most men in my family are like that, absolute non-talkers who can't even get their thank you's straight
[media=https://youtu.be/1HCqRLTuOBw]
Orson Welles famously praised John Ford by stating, "John Ford, John Ford and John Ford," when asked about his favorite American directors, highlighting Ford's profound influence on him and American cinema. To make this claim firm and to show just how deeply personal the manner of creation could be for Ford, one needs only to refer to Ford's movie 'The Quiet Man'.
As Chance Freytag wrote once: "...Ford would never be so brazen or vulnerable as to make a movie overtly about himself, which is where the subjectivity of the film’s environment becomes a necessity. Given Ford’s reservations, the material world in The Quiet Man is only a representation of the afore mentioned personal feelings, rather than a straightforward autobiographical statement. These feelings manifest in the forms of symbolic characters and occurrences."
Moreover, the fantasy elements within the story have a direct link to the Celtic spirit, and yes, for one it's indeed oh so obviously linked to W.B. Yeats's poem "The Stolen Child":
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand."
Freytag again about this marvel of a movie: "Ford’s poetic subjectivity is not self-indulgent or performative, but quiet enough to go unnoticed. Ideas become physical space, such as Stagecoach’s iconic uses of Monument Valley or the picturesque meanderings of Wagon Master. It is the fantasies and divergences that compose almost the whole of The Quiet Man that occupy the most profound areas of his other work."
