• this video is awesome. Bizarre Chinese Old-folks Choir Covers Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” http://t.co/4JvAPMDa #
• good article in Frontaal Naakt on Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, egyptian activist who posed nude on her blog against censorship http://t.co/eXnuBNsH #
• “But the birth of Khaled, my first son, how can I miss it?” @Alaa Abdel Fattah’s latest blog post from Tora Prison http://t.co/vhJZxjTd #

• read steve yegge’s post on how ridiculously amazing Google is to employees - ask for guitar, get music studio http://t.co/zUBwNCtj #
• Google’s pampering symptom of rent-seeking, poor RoI, vs Amazon customer focus. sure enough, 28% vs 453% share growth: http://t.co/e9qX2NnH #
• Egyptian group calls on men to try the veil http://t.co/KMan5PDD #

• brilliant. “Fitness inequality is acceptable. Cultural inequality is unacceptable.” The Inequality Map - David Brooks http://t.co/uW5zRkuu #

• oh my! first king of the Land of the Thunder Dragon to kiss his wife on lips in public! #bhutan http://t.co/tIwNrOxa #

• Taleb suggests aligning incentives with risks: End Bonuses for Bankers via @nytimes http://t.co/dXw858Wc #
• why couldn’t they just continue making super lenses?!? Olympus admits it hid losses for decades http://t.co/vQbAD50G #
• i recognize my female friends… Intelligent Life on Handbags “women don’t just carry one—they inhabit it!” http://t.co/dsgTfkQv #
• huh. women can be fully veiled on board, but not at airport. Air France: le casse tête de la burqa à bord des avions http://t.co/rY8kn47y #
• wow. <3 the secret trains under NYC. Visiting The Secret Train Platform Beneath The Waldorf-Astoria: Gothamist http://t.co/2NQh4Jwo #

• Tests Show Most US Store Honey Isn’t Honey http://t.co/iGm2751h #
• Trending Top100 on Topsy - Die Antwoord’s new video after they quit their music label: FOK JULLE NAAIERS http://t.co/jwstbUVI #

• RT @alyankovic: Oakland, CA! Come for the riots, stay for the Weird Al show! http://t.co/sn8PI6PU #
• insanely garish interiors vs dull exterior of Den Haag apt has twitter in frenzy: Appartement te koop: Arnicalaan http://t.co/p4b7xa2m #
• Meanwhile, 6th And Mission - The http://t.co/dHr9LcDY http://t.co/9MtY9t44 #

a small boat
one with the river
needs no boatman

i am walking, made of sand
wind blows and sand shifts
sand enters from all directions
and leaves
no grain stays for long
my shape shifts

walking in the wind
made of sand, yet
i am.

Growing up, I would listen to recordings of Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Swan Lake several times a week for years. One of my favourite books was an obscure tattered second-hand edition I’d picked up of “The Dancing Star“, a biography of Anna Pavlova, the ballerina who created the role of The Dying Swan. So I had to see this film. I had pretty high expectations, and Black Swan - with a stunning performance by Natalie Portman and brilliant, macabre direction by Darren Aronofsky - exceeded them.

The film starts with an efficiently executed survey of the cliches of ballet: Nina (Portman), the young New York ballerina, lives with her mother, and lives out her mother’s dreams as she gets selected in an audition for the lead role in a new staging of Swan Lake. Her mother was once a ballerina too, but then she had Nina instead. In penance, Nina must live as her “sweet girl” in a pink room full of stuffed toys and breakfast on grapefruit. Ballerina toes bleed in gruesome close-up; the artistic director, suitably arrogant and French (Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy), gropes and kisses Nina. Beth (Winona Ryder), the previous star, now apparently too old, has been retired and is jealous.

Swan Lake, the ballet, has a plot as superficial or deep as you want it to be, like many works of classical ballet and opera. Princess Odette is cursed by an evil sorcerer and turned into the White Swan; she can be freed from this curse by true love, on cue arrives Prince Siegfried. Several distractions later, as the prince is about to declare his love and free Odette from the curse, he is seduced by an impostor, the sorcerer’s daughter, Odile: the Black Swan. The White Swan appears, but it’s now too late; cursed forever to remain a swan, she drowns herself. The prince, deceived and despairing, joins her.

The film eschews the ballet’s character names, preferring the colours that fill its visual palette (along with blood-red). This makes sense, as the new production requires Nina to play the role of both White and Black Swans. This frigid, pure, virginal, “sweet girl” does the White Swan justice. Thomas thinks she is technically perfect (a concept illustrated in this clip by the Bolshoi); but Nina needs more sensuality and seduction to play the Black Swan. “Homework assignment: touch yourself” Thomas advises, and the groping, in this light, could be seen as pedagogical.

The Black Swan is not merely passionate, she is Evil; less seductress than succubus. As we realize this, the plot of the film seems to merge with Swan Lake itself, turning brilliantly insane. In what one might call involuntary method acting on steroids, Nina sees the spirit of the Black Swan all around her, in the form of Beth, her own mother, and Lily. Played by Mila Kunis, Lily is Nina’s alternate, a sensual, seductive (and to Nina’s eyes, Evil) ballerina visiting from San Francisco. Nina’s visions, which we are invited to share and find bewitching, irresistible, seep through the film in drops of blood and black feather barbs, as she tries or is compelled by some unknown force (”the only person standing in your way is you”, says Thomas) to live out her dream role. By the third act of the ballet’s opening night, Nina emerges as the Black Swan in a thrilling performance to a roaring audience: her transformation is complete.

She has become a true dancer; she is able to morph into the White Swan for the final act without much difficulty. But the ballet and the film come to a close in a shattering climax that the viewer knows, by now, is inevitable. It is the only ending that can render this performance of life and art, in Nina’s words, “perfect”.