Last night my mum came to Toronto and I took her to a Toronto Summer Music Festival concert to maybe help her relax a little before her upcoming trip. As you know I’m a trog about modern things, so the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte from Shoenberg made me alternately laugh, yawn, think about what a dick Napoleon was, think about what a dick Byron was, think what a pity I could hardly hear a word of the Byron, which made me think that Shoenberg was a dick because dick though Byron may have been, the Ode is a fucking beautiful poem. And very apt at the moment.
Thine only gift hath been the grave,
To those that worshipp'd thee . . .
Chills.
Anyways I hated the music and thought it was all wrong for the poem, and eventually sat there wishing I was listening to Eroica instead.
Then there was Mozart’s piano quarter in E-flat major, and the main thing that struck me about that was wondering why Mozart hasn’t been sainted. He made miracles, his music is a perfect reminder of the beauty of existence and God’s goodwill to man, so, uhm . . . there’s a serious problem, that he’s not a saint. It was just a pretty little piano quartet as far as Mozart goes and I believe I started crying a little. Fuck.
For me the big discovery of the evening was Dimitri Shostakovich, who I’d never even heard of before but whose piano quintet in G minor was just fucking lovely, and this from someone who’s very cheerful about hating modern classical or whatever the fuck you call that atonal rubbish. Mummy said it was neo-classical, which was why it was pretty. Fair enough. It was lovely enough for me to think tomorrow after she catches her plane I’ll find some Shostakovich to bring home. She seemed a little cheered by the concert, and actually broke into a fit of laughter over the following non-sequitur from the programme:
“In March 1941 it (the Shostakovich quintet) received the Stalin prize – the first year that the state’s highest honour for achievements in the arts and sciences was awarded. Three months later, on June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union.” (End programme)
We had a laugh about how obviously one action followed naturally on the other – it wasn’t about Hitler’s insane hate of Communists and Slavs – just a mad desire to nick the Shostakovich quintet. I hope I learn how to be more like my mum, and to laugh at non-sequiturs instead of be really annoyed by them. Anyways, now she’s doing some marking for the course she teaches at the college back home; I’ll take her out for grilled cow hearts later and hope for the best.
sabato, agosto 05, 2006
venerdì, agosto 04, 2006
Complicity
Yesterday I stopped at a housing development fruit stand where everything is priced like it's fallen off a truck. I saw the groundskeeper there; a big bearded bearish perpetually baked dreadlocked man with a flutey Haitian accent who always smiles a lot and calls me sweetheart but doesn't look at my tits (or my ass – I've checked). Generally I can hardly understand a fucking word he says. But this morning as I bought some grapes and we exchanged pleasantries he said something about weed, indicating (I think) that I'd been smoking it. If that’s what he said, it was percipient. Sometimes the only thing that lets one endure chemical rage and sticky electrical heat-induced insomnia is getting so snaked mortality comes into sharp focus and Da Ali G Show becomes the most disturbing social commentary since A Modest Proposal.
When I asked the groundskeeper if it was so obvious he broke into gales of laughter and said – I'm sure this was what he said – one smoker can always recognize another. The red-eyed Persian men who were selling me the grapes laughed and agreed, and I laughed too because it was rather lovely.* As I continued my bike ride to work, I thought about the edges of the earth we'd come from; looking as different as four able-bodied people can, with a healthy lingual and religious spread, all having this habit and a brief complicity because of it.
At lunchtime I went to the Lebanese store for some halva, which is a sort of hard tahini sweet I’ve become addicted to. When I saw it I think I actually did a Homer-Simpson-twiddle – you know, when he holds up his hands, goes “Oo-oo-oo-oooooo!” and wiggles all his fingers at once. Anyways, one of the ladies stocking the shelves came over, and told me the fresh chocolate halva had just come in, and would I care to wait? I believe I giggled. So did she, rhapsodizing about how good it smelt while she was cutting it, and then the girl at the counter was all like “so THAT’S why you were giggling, I never buy this anymore, I eat it all in five minutes,” which I nearly did, but didn’t because like Britney Spears I’m stronger.
In an increasingly agonistic world where we're educated into thousands of small automatic hates and where we’re not trained to look for complicity unless it’s about trying to fuck each other or comparing brand names, I wish we wouldn’t close our eyes to the people who like smoking, eating, or doing the same shit we do and to letting that little flash of fellow feeling pass. I'm not saying it's going to save the planet, but it might. So many places to look for complicity – to uncover common ground, to find an occasional ally in the most unexpected places, to suddenly appreciate the human qualities of a complete stranger.
*If you've got no idea how to recognize someone else who smokes reefer: no matter what their age, colour, or gender, they will look sort of remind you of this.
When I asked the groundskeeper if it was so obvious he broke into gales of laughter and said – I'm sure this was what he said – one smoker can always recognize another. The red-eyed Persian men who were selling me the grapes laughed and agreed, and I laughed too because it was rather lovely.* As I continued my bike ride to work, I thought about the edges of the earth we'd come from; looking as different as four able-bodied people can, with a healthy lingual and religious spread, all having this habit and a brief complicity because of it.
At lunchtime I went to the Lebanese store for some halva, which is a sort of hard tahini sweet I’ve become addicted to. When I saw it I think I actually did a Homer-Simpson-twiddle – you know, when he holds up his hands, goes “Oo-oo-oo-oooooo!” and wiggles all his fingers at once. Anyways, one of the ladies stocking the shelves came over, and told me the fresh chocolate halva had just come in, and would I care to wait? I believe I giggled. So did she, rhapsodizing about how good it smelt while she was cutting it, and then the girl at the counter was all like “so THAT’S why you were giggling, I never buy this anymore, I eat it all in five minutes,” which I nearly did, but didn’t because like Britney Spears I’m stronger.
In an increasingly agonistic world where we're educated into thousands of small automatic hates and where we’re not trained to look for complicity unless it’s about trying to fuck each other or comparing brand names, I wish we wouldn’t close our eyes to the people who like smoking, eating, or doing the same shit we do and to letting that little flash of fellow feeling pass. I'm not saying it's going to save the planet, but it might. So many places to look for complicity – to uncover common ground, to find an occasional ally in the most unexpected places, to suddenly appreciate the human qualities of a complete stranger.
*If you've got no idea how to recognize someone else who smokes reefer: no matter what their age, colour, or gender, they will look sort of remind you of this.
giovedì, agosto 03, 2006
And if I just stopped?
Fuck this Marvellon shit now. I will not have it being part of my life, I won’t sit around getting used to it, fuck it. Fuck it hard. Condoms are better than this shit. Better than not being able to bear listening to anybody or anything for fear of kicking them. Boo!
Anyways. Marvellon moods might be great for North and South and The Remains of the Day type reading but it turns out they’re absolutely contraindicated for Italo Calvino, whose style annoyed me to the degree that 20 pages of If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller made me throw it at the wall with a shrieky grunt of annoyance. The style seemed so fucking smug, slick, overly personal, even presumptuous; I’m willing to believe it was a pure chemical dislike but just thinking about it now pisses me off some more. Also it was one of the books Figaro has shipped over and I was annoyed with him last night, so that probably didn't help it.
I suppose I’ll give it another chance once the spare hormones have cleared from my system; I’m already softening up by promising myself I’ll read it in Italian instead of English. Figaro shipped it in Italian too, but it's one of those pretty editions bound in cellophane still so I'm not opening it on the offchance it was meant to be a present for, say, me.
Sometimes it feels like the biggest fucking luxury on the planet to read in another language. I’ll never forget the first books I read for fun in French and Italian. The French was L’odeur du café from Dany Laferrière. He was famous in those days for How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, which I’ve never read. The first book of his I read was the English translation of Cette grenade dans la main du jeune nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? Literally the title means "Is the pomegranate/grenade in the young negro’s hand a weapon or a peice of fruit?" but the double entendre doesn’t work in English. See, this is why reading another language is such a luxury. That’s a fucking awesome title. The English title is Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? which is a much crappier title, but it’s a really great book from what I remember. I know I should look at it again before I reccommend it, but I do, completely.
Laferrière hasn’t put out a novel for years, I think, but a couple of weeks ago someone sent me an awesome article of his about the Zidane headbutt. That was the day I lost interest in the headbutt because Laferrière explained it well enough to satisfy - here it is in English.
Anyways. Marvellon moods might be great for North and South and The Remains of the Day type reading but it turns out they’re absolutely contraindicated for Italo Calvino, whose style annoyed me to the degree that 20 pages of If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller made me throw it at the wall with a shrieky grunt of annoyance. The style seemed so fucking smug, slick, overly personal, even presumptuous; I’m willing to believe it was a pure chemical dislike but just thinking about it now pisses me off some more. Also it was one of the books Figaro has shipped over and I was annoyed with him last night, so that probably didn't help it.
I suppose I’ll give it another chance once the spare hormones have cleared from my system; I’m already softening up by promising myself I’ll read it in Italian instead of English. Figaro shipped it in Italian too, but it's one of those pretty editions bound in cellophane still so I'm not opening it on the offchance it was meant to be a present for, say, me.
Sometimes it feels like the biggest fucking luxury on the planet to read in another language. I’ll never forget the first books I read for fun in French and Italian. The French was L’odeur du café from Dany Laferrière. He was famous in those days for How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired, which I’ve never read. The first book of his I read was the English translation of Cette grenade dans la main du jeune nègre est-elle une arme ou un fruit? Literally the title means "Is the pomegranate/grenade in the young negro’s hand a weapon or a peice of fruit?" but the double entendre doesn’t work in English. See, this is why reading another language is such a luxury. That’s a fucking awesome title. The English title is Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? which is a much crappier title, but it’s a really great book from what I remember. I know I should look at it again before I reccommend it, but I do, completely.
Laferrière hasn’t put out a novel for years, I think, but a couple of weeks ago someone sent me an awesome article of his about the Zidane headbutt. That was the day I lost interest in the headbutt because Laferrière explained it well enough to satisfy - here it is in English.
mercoledì, agosto 02, 2006
Dibsies
I've already thought of a title for my memoirs; if I hadn't, I think I'd've called them The Ocean Farts. I'll just use that for the title of my next book instead. Dibs! I wonder if publishing something in an anonymous blog could stand up as copyright anywhere. Probably not. I'll just have to write such a good book called The Ocean Farts that the efforts of rip-off artists will look like mere pond-farts.
I read The Remains of the Day last night. Well, I read most of it last night, I started after I finished North and South yesterday. This heatwave and my excessive-dosage pills make it really easy to read because I can do that flat on my back in front of a fan without hardly moving or hearing the retarded things people say. I'm sure I can't say anything about The Remains of the Day that clever people haven't said already, but I do recommend you read it. It's a fucking jaw-dropping study in emotional and intellectual self-denial - the protagonist, in this self-denial, comes out looking like a monster, even though it's a first person narrative.
And it's the most technically elegant first-person narrative I've read in a long time, by the way, maybe ever - the only thing I can think of to compare it to is What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which shifted decisively and appropriately from narrative tense to present tense halfway through. Or was it vice versa? Anyways, I read that when I was 17 and believed silly things, like that Milan Kundera was the bees knees and Arabs and Muslims were the same thing, so maybe you shouldn't believe a word I say about it. But I do recommend The Remains of the Day.
Mummy is going to Yorkshire on Saturday, getting here Friday - I'm glad. It has been hard to think of her and feel so helpless during this time. I'll take her to Peruvian restaurants and concerts and things, and wish I knew better ways to comfort and reinforce people than corporeal delights like pianos and grilled cow heart, but I don't.
I read The Remains of the Day last night. Well, I read most of it last night, I started after I finished North and South yesterday. This heatwave and my excessive-dosage pills make it really easy to read because I can do that flat on my back in front of a fan without hardly moving or hearing the retarded things people say. I'm sure I can't say anything about The Remains of the Day that clever people haven't said already, but I do recommend you read it. It's a fucking jaw-dropping study in emotional and intellectual self-denial - the protagonist, in this self-denial, comes out looking like a monster, even though it's a first person narrative.
And it's the most technically elegant first-person narrative I've read in a long time, by the way, maybe ever - the only thing I can think of to compare it to is What's Eating Gilbert Grape, which shifted decisively and appropriately from narrative tense to present tense halfway through. Or was it vice versa? Anyways, I read that when I was 17 and believed silly things, like that Milan Kundera was the bees knees and Arabs and Muslims were the same thing, so maybe you shouldn't believe a word I say about it. But I do recommend The Remains of the Day.
Mummy is going to Yorkshire on Saturday, getting here Friday - I'm glad. It has been hard to think of her and feel so helpless during this time. I'll take her to Peruvian restaurants and concerts and things, and wish I knew better ways to comfort and reinforce people than corporeal delights like pianos and grilled cow heart, but I don't.
martedì, agosto 01, 2006
Marvellon makes me read funny
North and South, which Rodelinda lent to me when I went to visit her in Oxford, got shoved by the wayside when I got annoyed by the endless descriptions of the heroine’s cold and proud yet human and lovable beauty that was appreciable to all in moments of clarity but most appreciable to people of innate grace and brave-heartedness who typically had manly builds – that kind of thing. But in my current state of intense chemical rage, it’s been the only thing that my mind wraps around, besides Dorothy Sayers novels and how much I hate things.
I had wondered why Rodelinda would like this honking great sentimental monster so much when I had a feeling she was averse to the honking great sentimental monsters written by the Bronte sisters which are tidier, less conventional and far more subtle. (Yes, subtle. ALL the Bronte sisters could be subtle. You wanna fight about it?) I was able to conclude at the time Rodelinda’d probably have naturally preferred this because she’s a historian. North and South has more meaning as a historical document than Wuthering Heights or any of Charlotte’s, though I think The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is interesting as a historical document about the temperance movement and I've never read Agnes Grey, though I shall. . . Anne’s so earnest, I love her. . . FUCK, MARVELLON IS MAKING ME WRITE MONSTER SENTENCES.
Anyways, North and South is the only thing that has distracted me from kicking things since I finished The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on Sunday. I am not a historian and everything annoys me right now, so even as I read breathlessly through to the conclusion, I had to wonder what the fuck I was doing reading the book instead of throwing it at someone. Some things became clear:
1. It was a newspaper serial. Hence some of the rush towards the end and some of the long, meandering passages in other bits; must have been Gaskell respectively trying to mollify and fleece her publisher. The way it ended - smrack boom! – was a shock after the languidly painted portraits filling up so much of the rest.
2. I engaged when I could imagine her writing it like that, and then got swept up in the book’s journalistic quality, remembering Gaskell was a famous biographer and apreciating the cold, unsubtle way she described her characters. There was just enough style and historical context that I got semi-James-Ellroy-style swept up. Sure, it lacked the subtlety of showing you Jane Eyre’s whole state of adolescent mind from a wander on the roof of Thornfield Hall, but it’s a good style to read when you’re literal-minded because of fake PMT.
3. I started to love it the way I love Gone With the Wind, another book where I have little goodwill towards any of the characters or of the author’s point of view on the historical events described. I loved how it was written, what it was written about, and that it made me think about what it was written about. For a variety of simply fascinating reasons journalism has been close to my heart lately. I love this book right now because it wants to communicate something and it does, and then a bunch of other things as well, which is just what I want journalism to do.
I had wondered why Rodelinda would like this honking great sentimental monster so much when I had a feeling she was averse to the honking great sentimental monsters written by the Bronte sisters which are tidier, less conventional and far more subtle. (Yes, subtle. ALL the Bronte sisters could be subtle. You wanna fight about it?) I was able to conclude at the time Rodelinda’d probably have naturally preferred this because she’s a historian. North and South has more meaning as a historical document than Wuthering Heights or any of Charlotte’s, though I think The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is interesting as a historical document about the temperance movement and I've never read Agnes Grey, though I shall. . . Anne’s so earnest, I love her. . . FUCK, MARVELLON IS MAKING ME WRITE MONSTER SENTENCES.
Anyways, North and South is the only thing that has distracted me from kicking things since I finished The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on Sunday. I am not a historian and everything annoys me right now, so even as I read breathlessly through to the conclusion, I had to wonder what the fuck I was doing reading the book instead of throwing it at someone. Some things became clear:
1. It was a newspaper serial. Hence some of the rush towards the end and some of the long, meandering passages in other bits; must have been Gaskell respectively trying to mollify and fleece her publisher. The way it ended - smrack boom! – was a shock after the languidly painted portraits filling up so much of the rest.
2. I engaged when I could imagine her writing it like that, and then got swept up in the book’s journalistic quality, remembering Gaskell was a famous biographer and apreciating the cold, unsubtle way she described her characters. There was just enough style and historical context that I got semi-James-Ellroy-style swept up. Sure, it lacked the subtlety of showing you Jane Eyre’s whole state of adolescent mind from a wander on the roof of Thornfield Hall, but it’s a good style to read when you’re literal-minded because of fake PMT.
3. I started to love it the way I love Gone With the Wind, another book where I have little goodwill towards any of the characters or of the author’s point of view on the historical events described. I loved how it was written, what it was written about, and that it made me think about what it was written about. For a variety of simply fascinating reasons journalism has been close to my heart lately. I love this book right now because it wants to communicate something and it does, and then a bunch of other things as well, which is just what I want journalism to do.
lunedì, luglio 31, 2006
Mistress La Spliffe is a modern troglodyte
Dear readers, when it comes to modern artsical things, I am not a fartsical woman. I can get my money's worth contemplating the warm visual soak of a room full of Rothkos, but aside from that most modern art makes me bitch aloud about "BOTTICELLI, BOTTICELLI, WHY AM I LOOKING AT A SQUIGGLY CHAIR WHEN I COULD BE LOOKING AT BOTTICELLIS? RESPECT MY EYES, BITCHES!" Orchestral music written after 1930 makes me want to stick knitting needles in my ears, new perfumes smell like dirty whore armpit to me, and as for fusion cuisine . . . outside of a nice cold lychee martini, fuck it in the ear.
But at no time am I more reminded of my complete lack of fartsicality when it comes to modern artsicality than when it comes to modern architecture, which has a tendency to make me fall off my chair laughing or else just make me cringe. However, I'm not blaming mw own troggishness in this case - I'm essentially certain most modern architects' fingers have slipped off the pounding pulse of the artistic life-force and instead are wandering up their own elitist, self-referential assholes.
Case in point - what the fuck is wrong with the French? Shall I hold their hand until they feel better? I'll do it . . .all their hands, from the cutest infant to the most tobacco stained, aged Collaborator . . . and all for just a fraction of the price this monstrosity has probably already cost them. Check out the slideshow, it just gets worse.
In other news, Big Pharma was the boss of me this weekend. That could have just been me being exhausted, though. Anyways it was nice to have a little idleness. I have so little these days - savoured it like Hybla honey.
But at no time am I more reminded of my complete lack of fartsicality when it comes to modern artsicality than when it comes to modern architecture, which has a tendency to make me fall off my chair laughing or else just make me cringe. However, I'm not blaming mw own troggishness in this case - I'm essentially certain most modern architects' fingers have slipped off the pounding pulse of the artistic life-force and instead are wandering up their own elitist, self-referential assholes.
Case in point - what the fuck is wrong with the French? Shall I hold their hand until they feel better? I'll do it . . .all their hands, from the cutest infant to the most tobacco stained, aged Collaborator . . . and all for just a fraction of the price this monstrosity has probably already cost them. Check out the slideshow, it just gets worse.
In other news, Big Pharma was the boss of me this weekend. That could have just been me being exhausted, though. Anyways it was nice to have a little idleness. I have so little these days - savoured it like Hybla honey.
domenica, luglio 30, 2006
Ballooned comment
Yesterday, Sugarplum wrote an interesting account of what happened when her man's friends found their lead-up-to-wedding blog. Read it yourself. I found it extra interesting as I had a conversation recently about how the things that were once the mark of a gentleman had become gay (good dancing, good manners, good grooming, good conversationalism, et al). The guy I was talking to blamed feminism because of the independence and sexual liberation it entailed, by which I suppose he meant men didn't have to try so hard to make us naked anymore. I don't buy that, of course. In part because of the formerly greater economic prominence of prostitution and in another part because it suggests men are naturally lousy dancers, boorish and shitty conversationalists, and I love them too much to believe that.
But an explanation there must be, and where feminism falters Marxism hollers. The reason what used to be gentlemanly is now gay to the degree that Sugar's fiancé is getting shit for appearing in a wedding blog (and yes, Sugarplum is an actual woman) is because of one of the elements of Western capitalistss reaction to the spectre of revolution.
This is the ubiquitous pop culture celebration of the Working Class Hero; filling up our media with images of hard, strong, manly troglodytes of stereotypes of the blue collar man. This celebration goes hand-in-hand with the presentation of the middle and upper classes as a bunch of fags that you shouldn't emulate or envy or, uhm, have a revolution over. The beginning of this trend happily co-incided with the post-Enlightenment stage where educabourgeoiseous had stopped believing in Hell and started coming out of the closet if that's where they happened to be, but uneducated working-class people still more or less believed what the preachermen told them. A couple of high-profile buggery lawsuits, and bingo! It worked so well that now even the richest young men in America cultivate the most apely possible behaviour in public.
It also reminds me of how bullshit like Naomi Klein and culture-jamming gets mixed up with socialism now. Gosh, I can't stand Naomi Klein.
Of course there were many other important elements to this Western capitalist response; humans might be dumb motherfuckers but they're not THAT stupid. And of course the most important one was the non-forced introduction of artificial controls over class and income disparities, like minimum wages, pensions, notice periods, paid vacations, and other physically unnescessary laws touching on working conditions.
Some societies went further in one direction than another. In France and Italy, where there were lots more practical concessions to the real needs of the working class than there were here, having good manners, grooming, and conversation skills won't make you look gay (although they're still lousy dancers), which was so confusing for me I had to sleep with tonnes of them before I could wrap my head around it. And while one can complain about the charmlessness of the Canadian male, our slightly superior social protections let our men, generally speaking, make American men, generally speaking, look like cavemen who couldn't charm their name out of the snow with a stick.
No other news fit to print today. I feel inhuman and bound to my apartment by the disaster Marvellon has wrought of my innards, but I'm going to a concert and an Indian veggie buffet later, just to show Big Pharma it's not the boss of me.
But an explanation there must be, and where feminism falters Marxism hollers. The reason what used to be gentlemanly is now gay to the degree that Sugar's fiancé is getting shit for appearing in a wedding blog (and yes, Sugarplum is an actual woman) is because of one of the elements of Western capitalistss reaction to the spectre of revolution.
This is the ubiquitous pop culture celebration of the Working Class Hero; filling up our media with images of hard, strong, manly troglodytes of stereotypes of the blue collar man. This celebration goes hand-in-hand with the presentation of the middle and upper classes as a bunch of fags that you shouldn't emulate or envy or, uhm, have a revolution over. The beginning of this trend happily co-incided with the post-Enlightenment stage where educabourgeoiseous had stopped believing in Hell and started coming out of the closet if that's where they happened to be, but uneducated working-class people still more or less believed what the preachermen told them. A couple of high-profile buggery lawsuits, and bingo! It worked so well that now even the richest young men in America cultivate the most apely possible behaviour in public.
It also reminds me of how bullshit like Naomi Klein and culture-jamming gets mixed up with socialism now. Gosh, I can't stand Naomi Klein.
Of course there were many other important elements to this Western capitalist response; humans might be dumb motherfuckers but they're not THAT stupid. And of course the most important one was the non-forced introduction of artificial controls over class and income disparities, like minimum wages, pensions, notice periods, paid vacations, and other physically unnescessary laws touching on working conditions.
Some societies went further in one direction than another. In France and Italy, where there were lots more practical concessions to the real needs of the working class than there were here, having good manners, grooming, and conversation skills won't make you look gay (although they're still lousy dancers), which was so confusing for me I had to sleep with tonnes of them before I could wrap my head around it. And while one can complain about the charmlessness of the Canadian male, our slightly superior social protections let our men, generally speaking, make American men, generally speaking, look like cavemen who couldn't charm their name out of the snow with a stick.
No other news fit to print today. I feel inhuman and bound to my apartment by the disaster Marvellon has wrought of my innards, but I'm going to a concert and an Indian veggie buffet later, just to show Big Pharma it's not the boss of me.
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