Kubrick’s boxes: Tv program not movie

[RonPrice]

I watched with fascination the ABC2 program on 17 May 2009 at 8:30 p.m. “Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes.” Kubrick died in the last month of my 30 year full-time teaching career, in March 1999, and he left behind 1000 boxes in his mansion in England. This one hour program gives viewers a close-up of Kubrick’s creative process by its study of the contents of these boxes. We also get a biographic adventure into the mystery, the obsession and the genius of this cinematic legend.

 

As a poet-writer who has been collecting printed matter rather than photos, in files rather than boxes for most of his life, at least since the late 1950 and early 1960s--and now in my computer directory as well—I could not help but draw parallels with my own work. No genius I, although I have always liked what is probably the most famous line uttered by the inventor Thomas Alva Edison, namely, that “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” If further explanation of the meaning of this quote is required Edison provided it by completing the quotation thus: "I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work."-Ron Price with thanks to the internet site: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/, 26 May 2009.

 

Some, of course, are born with

certain powers and gifts and we

could call this genius......Others,

of course, must strive with infinite

pains and still others who accept

their life with radiant acquiescence—

receive confirmations of the spirit

as He called them.1 And yes, they

come, they do come, part of that

mystical element in life as others

would call it. Thank you, Stanley,

for your example of persistence,

of dedication, of an obsession

which created truly wonderful

experiences for billions around

our globe—and may you now,

perhaps, in some world of light

continue in unearthly mansions

what was found in your earthly

one and which will now inspire

generations, many not yet born.2

 

1 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London, p.126.

2 This prose-poem, originally written for several internet sites associated with cinema, Stanley Kubrick and creativity, had an obvious relevance--as it evolved--to a recent exchange of emails with an old friend Arini Beaumaris, now the secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Australia, Inc., and so I sent it to her for her possible pleasure.

 

Ron Price

26 May 2009