Jean Michel Basquiat - The radiant child

This weekend I wanted to watch something real.

I wanted to be affected by images on the screen in a way that no Hollywood movie can. I wanted to see real lives, real paths, I wanted a touch of humanity.

I started out with Waiting for Superman, which I reviewed previously. Then I came across this documentary: Jean Michel Basquiat - The Radiant Child.

My knowledge of Basquiat is tenuous at best. A few years ago I knew of him only his name. I didn't know he was dead, I didn't know he was black & I didn't know he'd died so young. Since then I've come across articles, book excerpts, interviews that reference him in some way so I eventually learned all this about him but not much more.

I went into the documentary blind as it were.

Waiting for Superman

Going into a documentary like this, you know from the start it's going to tug on your heartstrings.

There's also no surprise about what the message will be.

Education, in America in this case, but here in France as well, is in an abysmal state. We know this.

Barack Obama and other Americans like to quote French statistics on education spending, in order to show that they could be doing better.

The sentiment is commendable but the stats are wrong. We, in France, are also facing spending cuts, poor education in low-income areas, and what seems like a government unwilling to take the necessary steps.

When you're strange

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

The Doors

How ironic that a few days after claiming I hate poetry, I would happen across "When you're strange", a documentary retracing the life of Jim Morrison and the Doors.

Of course I did say that I quite like some American poetry and in that, is my saving grace, I suppose. Listening for the first time to the Doors' lyrics reminded me of some of the poetry that I've found beautiful in the past. 

Typically I don't listen to song lyrics. Most of it is crap and detracts from the actual beat and rhythm of a song which, in most cases, is the best a song has to offer. If, for instance, I were to actually listen to a 50Cent or Kesha song, I'd be turned off music forever. Well...I don't really listen to either of them but I have the worst memory when it comes to naming people I like. That said, even those I do like (I love electro, rock music and all its variants which I can't for the life of me distinguish), contain either silly lyrics or very straightforward lyrics. The only lyrics I do seem to know are Backstreet Boys, which I listened to when I was 14.

Most of the time I listen and dance to the instrumental and can rarely quote from a song. 

And then come the Doors.

The poetry in the lyrics are like seeing a painting that speaks to you for the first time. There's that moment where you get the sense that someone, somewhere has succeeded in making that swirl of emotions inside you, materialise and even, comprehensible. Psychiatrists exist for a reason and that is that if others remain a mystery to us, the most difficult people to understand are our own selves. You feel less alone and relieved and, in my case at least, motivated anew.

I actually learned something from the documentary. I saw many different things; how hard it must have been to know Jim Morrison (I do not envy his girlfriend or his band), what incendiary times does to and for the creative, how being lonely destroys, how I don't even agree with everything Jim Morrison said or believed.

But I learned one thing which I think I knew but hadn't managed to express yet, which is why the documentary was like that painting:

Beauty of words is one thing. Being a wordsmith is a talent and a precious gift to own. But it all means nothing if nothing is being said with it.

You can craft the most beautiful of sentences but if the words don't act as the vessel they are meant to be, the entire act is forgettable.