zarafa

This is a wonderful picture of Juliet Messina and Frederico Fellini -- below --
please rent "The White Sheik," you will love it and I am sure you will laugh as much as I did
it’s a real belly laugh and oh so biter sweet -- it leaves you with very deep and enduring questions
about mankind his environment and the relationship between man and woman -- of course!

Apparently the idea for the script of "The White Sheik,"came from Michelangelo Antonio,
in 1980, I went up to San Francisco, after being in California for the Academy Awards
and went up to visit Tom Steinberg, at Francis Ford Cappola's Zoetrobe Studio,
Tom, an old friend, we worked together in New York, at Saturn Pictures, Michelangelo Antonio, another Libra, was in the office and we chatted for quite a while, I had already seen his great black and white trilogy in London at the Notting Hill Gate Cinema when they were first released, L' Avventura (The Adventure) 1960, starring Monica Vitti, La Notte,(The Night) 1961 starring Jeanne Moreau, l'eclisse (The Eclipse) 1962 starring Alain Delon, these films are stylistically
similar and all concerned with the alienation of humankind in the emerging post modern world and caused a big tremor in my world of art students, architects, designers and pub drinkers. At that time I was reading Jean-Paul Satre "l'age d'raison" and of course Camus, R.D. Laing's "The Divided Self." Laing's process resonated with me, and in the early 70's when I was really searching for "an answer" or “the answer” -- my mother had just died and my world closed in on me, everything in my life was placed under a microscope and it wasn't good –tired of the shallow life of parties, drinking, drugs, rock n’ roll – how was that possible? I found "Mary Barnes Two Accounts of a Journey through Madness" Mary waited with resolve to become a patient at R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall, where she was supported in her spiral further down into the rabbit hole, it including some lengthy sections written by Joseph Berke, and I had already read "I Haven't Had To Go Mad Here" so I felt some sort of confidence that I too could enter into the depths of my mind, be as mad as a hatter and come out the other side okay -- and that's what I did, I went on my own journey -- looking for answers, writing in notebooks, making paintings, a deep excavation, except something in 2001 changed, and apparently not by my choice and I am still on the spiral, and its someone else’s. I thought I was sane one but it appears that the world is plum loco and the loony's are running the madhouse. It’s shades of “King of Hearts” the film with Alan Bates, the big difference is there is no kind king with a good heart – we are living in a madhouse for real as the Hatter in the White House rattles his saber, now at Iran, and my god, who only knows what wickedness they have done in Iraq. Clearly, I will never forgive the American powers that “be” for the destruction of the library and art museum in Baghdad, those treasures belonged to the people of the world, we are the stewards of those things that explain our civilization that leave an account of our great and wonderful accomplishment, Robert Fisk, gave a haunting account of watching the library burn and the books and paper going up in flames. Oh! Shame, shame on us. I enjoyed Hans Blix comment today about the US and Europe 'humiliating neo-colonial' attitude to Iran. 'People have their own pride whether you like them or don't,' he adds, urging use of economic incentives for better diplomacy. Amen.