Introducing the Exulting Octopus

The title of this blog is taken from a haiku (or 'hokku') by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho. It reads: Settled in trap-pots/Octopuses may be exulting/In their ecstasy of a single night/Under the moon of summer (Bahso, "The Narrow Road to the Far North and Other Travel Sketches", Penguin Classics 1966, p.89) Not only is it beautiful but it appeals to my sense of fatality and how in a way we are all trying to exult in the ecstasy of a single night under the moon of summer, before our time's up.

I take cinema and literature seriously and I've never been able to give up the idea that it holds the secrets of how to live in the world, face adversity and treat others. I've written a lot about film on Facebook, including a couple of groups I set up on Film Noir and Indie films of the 1990s (not that I think this was a peak decade, you understand) and friends whom I respect suggested I start a blog about it. So this will be about film, about personal and instinctive interpretation of films (for academic style analysis, look elsewhere), with some reference also to literature. The Octopus is also perhaps symbolic of my wide and tenebrous interests in these art forms. I'm not sure who is going to be interested in this but I'm doing it on the basis that it might help me to develop some of those half-formed ideas running around in my noggin. I'll keep the Japanese theme here by speaking about the Ozu film "Tokyo Story" (1953).