Wednesday, June 05, 2013

The Many Cardigans of Bill Holden

Hey I used that "streaming video" to watch a movie that Clint Eastwood directed in 1973: BREEZY, a hippie-meets-bitter-craggy-old-square-and-teaches-him-a-little-something-about-life love story. BREEZY is remarkable for its series of striking cardigan/shirt color combos sported by craggy old William Holden. Here we see part of William Holden's back as he confesses his love to Breezy, in her trademark floppy brown hat. As you can see, Holden's muted pearl cardigan is offset by the splash of fire-engine red provided by his gargantuan collar. At one point William Holden stands in front of a tree, observing free-spirited Breezy from a distance, and this particular cardigan so exactly matches the bark of the tree that the cardigan-wearing portion of William Holden's body vanishes as if by magic. The magic of... BREEZY. I spent all day yesterday tweeting about this, yeah, the universe has no meaning. Speaking of which, remember when Philip K. Dick had an ecstatic vision that revealed unto him the meaning and structure of the universe? Well, something I misread on the "internet" yesterday, as I spent many hours of my dwindling lifetime contemplating the existence of BREEZY, made me think that BREEZY had something to do with the ecstatic vision that revealed unto Philip K. Dick the meaning and structure of the universe. Yet I could find no reference to BREEZY in the index of his EXEGESIS. I did, however, find this in VALIS, Dick's fictionalized account of his experience, which I have read before, and yet somehow this allusion slipped right by me: "One time I had gotten loaded and tried to get hold of Kay Lenz, who I had a crush on from having seen BREEZY. Her agent cut me off at the pass." BREEZY!