Sharing With the Future
By Michael Erlewine
“The University of Illinois Library has acquired the extensive collection of astrology journals and books belonging to Michael Erlewine, an American musician, astrologer, photographer, TV host, and Internet entrepreneur. The collection includes many videos, calendars, kits, and tarot card decks, and more than 16,000 books and periodicals — 4,000 of which no other library appears to hold.”
I donated to that library some years ago. I thought I might like to say a few words here about some of the enterprise level web sites I founded. I have mentioned previously that I founded AMG, and in particular the All-Music Guide (AllMusic.com), the largest music database in the world. Yet I have not said much about the All-Movie Guide (AllMovie.com), one of the two largest movie databases on the Internet.
My own interest in film and music is quite different than many, in particular I have never been that interested in the history of film, acting and actors, as those are who go on to get a degree or PHD in film and video. Never occurred to me as desirable.
What I was interested and grew up doing was watching films and video, enjoying them, and seeing what they did to popular culture and in particular to myself.
I’m sure I am a little too vulgar or common to the college crowd and I don’t credit schooling and degrees as indicative of anything I feel I need. I never got out of high school and lived to talk about it. LOL. I don’t have much faith in modern education and have home schooled some of my kids. I take learning very seriously.
I grew up like many American kids did in the 1940s and 1950s, went to the movies, and loved all the original Disney films, cartoons, and comic books.
And, as mentioned, while I don’t detail and study acting and actors, I do relish and remark on how films and video affect me and society in general, and EC comics in particular.
The first director and directing I took to heart, aside from cowboy movies and the Wild West, was the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and ALL of his movies, in particular those that featured Tosiro Mifuni and samurai times.
I know most of the history of actors and actors by watching what they have done and noting their effect on me. As a young man I was engulphed by European movies like “The Seventh Seal” (1957), “Wild strawberries”, “La Dolce Vita (1960), “La Strada” (1954), and many others.
Ann Arbor, the town I grew up in had several theaters that featured foreign films, “The Campus Theater,” “The Fifth Forum,” and especially “Cinema Guild,” which was a student-run film society at the University of Michigan.
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And I have done my best to sample and take in movies all these years. And when movies segued in streaming series, it took me a moment, but I grew to love them even more than single flicks.
I am not so interested in art films as I am in what we might call good old American films. I like action films but have also kind of majored in Grade B lower-budget action heroes like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Steven Seagal, Rutger Hauer, and especially Charles Bronson.
Today, my favorite director has become Taylor Sheridan, who has, at least to my taste, produced the best films I know of, in particular “Sicario,” “Yellowstone,” “1883,” “1923,” “Landman,” and recently the just launched “Marshals.” Also, many others.
Perhaps it’s Sheridan’s master recipe, just enough action, sex, authenticity, and whatever to deserve my attention.
I also like Sheridan because, like me, he came up on his own, out of nowhere, going for the gut, authenticity, and pure entertainment, and pretty much full immersion.
As a dharma student of over 50 years, I like full immersion more than anything else and Taylor Sheridan provides that as few others.
In most of my many interests, I like them so much that I become some kind of expert in that field, but not with film and video. It never occurred to me to study it, only enjoy it, which I thoroughly do. I only realized this recently, that I treasure movies and film as entertainment and, as mentioned, have no wish to become an expert in it other than as one who watches.
I have had a love affair with whatever flicks on the silver screen my entire life. My collection of CDs and videos are now at Michigan State University in Lansing, MI, and I am told they number some 800,000 CDs.
[Photo of the Heart Center Astrological Library I donated to the University of Illinois permanent collection, where they are all indexed and entered. This is how I had it when here.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net Note: If you would like to have access to other free books, articles, and videos on these topics, here are the links: SpiritGrooves.net.
As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.
