"...the righteous resemble their Creator."
And so it is | Just like you said it would be | Life goes easy on me | Most of the time | And so it is | The shorter story | No love, no glory | No hero in her sky…
I didn't enjoy the uncomfortably excellent Closer. A typically good Mike Nichols movie, its glossy production and the pointless nature of its protagonists' pursuits frequently detract from its relentless sordidity, reducing unpalatable truths to a miasma of something unbearably middle-class and almost acceptable.
Surprisingly, Nichols's use of Damien Rice's song, The Blowers Daughter, goes a long way to saving the film. The song's blunt, grieving honesty and Rice's rendition of it expose, more effectively than do the cast, the fundamental lie underpinning the tacky truisms of the movie and those fucking their way through it.
Never mind. How did we get here? Oh, yes...eyes. Dean Landsman pointed me to this picture, circulated shortly after Yom Kippur. It forms the centerpiece of a chain-mail letter in which the Helix Nebula is likened to the "Eye of God". Contrary to my post below, there's a gentle, subtle humor at work in this small coincidence of fundamentalist Christian apocrypha of the garden-gnome variety coinciding with millennia of Jewish culture, and it touches on aspects of us that are at once higher and deeper than most would care—or dare—to admit.
I know virtually nothing of Judaism, but I like this passage I've been reading:
For this reason, although at the outset, the Midrash compares the Jews to the hosts of heaven as a whole, the prooftext mentions the stars. For the stars possess an advantage over the sun and moon, about which it is written: "The moon will be humiliated and the sun ashamed." The stars — and the Jewish people for whom they serve as an analogy — will shine forever.
[...]
The Divine light which descends to bring the world into being can be considered as G-d's name. To clarify the analogy: A name is merely a glimmer of the entity which it identifies. For example, there is the saying, "The name of the king is called upon them," i.e., it is only the name, and not the essence of the king, by which his country is known.
A name does not relate to a person's essence. It merely serves as a medium through which one person can establish a relationship with another. Similarly, with regard to G-d, His name relates to the creation — a realm apart from Himself. For Himself, He has no need of a name; He is holy and separate. At this level, created beings have no commonality with Him.
Now, this piece, which goes further—into potentially divisive territory for overly religious types—speaks to all of us. And it gives those who read the above chain mail cause to smile in its light.
I guess that's why Nichols's movie is so damned good, if not enjoyable. Focusing on the politics of words, sex, lies, and videotape, he names names, omitting any hint of the essence, leaving his characters closer to nothing at all.
But, hey, ain't it good to know God's eyes are blue?
I can't take my eyes off of you | I can't take my eyes off you | I can't take my eyes off of you | I can't take my eyes off you | I can't take my eyes off you | I can't take my eyes...
Damien Rice | The Blower's Daughter
