New to Long Pauses?

A hearty welcome to all new visitors here at Long Pauses. My traffic spiked a few days ago thanks to a link from South Knox Bubba, who officially announced my enlistment in the Rocky Top Brigade. More on this tomorrow.

Now to a more pressing concern. To anyone who may have heard me on the radio this afternoon, let me apologize: I can’t believe that, when asked in the final seconds leading up to a commercial break to recommend a single film to listeners, I spat out Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane! I don’t even like Citizen Kane. I mean, it’s an important film — a great film, even — but it’s not a film that I’ve ever particularly enjoyed. Given a few minutes to think about it, I can now confidently say: If you want to experience Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in a single film, get yourself a copy of Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. It’s available on a fantastic DVD from Criterion, and it can also be rented on VHS from the downtown Knox County library. Some other sources for film recommendations:

Also, if you’re at all interested in the topic of my and T.M.’s discussion today, read this article that I wrote for Findings. It fleshes out many of the issues that we rambled through today.

Oh yeah, and a word of warning: this is my blog page, where I rant on a variety of subjects, including politics. Politics is always a sensitive subject, but even more so given recent circumstances. Be prepared to be offended by some/much of what I say. I also like to write about films and books. To learn more about me read the, um, about page, and to get a better sense of the purpose of Long Pauses, read my responses to the two books that most inspired it: Thomas Merton’s life-altering New Seeds of Contemplation and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time. The Denise Levertov poem that I mentioned on-air can be found here.


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