What with having given the summer a miss, I'd forgotten all about it, but this is the premier cranky time of year. The Young American stormed out of work yesterday, Madame Pariyorker is in a state, I feel the world is cruelly indifferent to my potentialities and I make everyone around me pay for it, people keep going on stress leave and it's just so fucking dark.
Sigh. Time to join the gym. That'll cheer me up some - and I have to remember it's only going to keep on getting worse for less then a month and a half before it starts getting better.
The good news is the Young American's husband who works in catering keeps getting spare food, so the other day I brought home about 30 oranges that I've been juicing. I consider juicing an abomination because of all the associated wastage but when someone gives you 30 free oranges and you have a hand reamer, you'll make orange juice, even if it means feeling slightly decadent when there are starving people in the world, and even though you're trembling with laughter a bit because you're reaming something. Heh heh heh.
giovedì, novembre 08, 2007
mercoledì, novembre 07, 2007
Roberto Esperanza
Saw a fucking hilarious film the other night with Adriano Celentano and Anthony Quinn, called Bluff: storia di truffe e di imbroglioni. I don't know Adriano Celentano from Santa - he's a very famous Italian singer but I avoid Italian music like the plague - apparently he's like the Italian Bob Hope, by which I mean he grabs women's tits on camera. Anyways, funny.
And that's about all I have to write this morning. There are other things to go on about but they mostly have to do with how suffocated I feel at the moment in terms of a lack of personal space and time because of work and also because I haven't quite figured out cohabitation yet, and with some guilt issues over how bad I've been at keeping in touch with people back home, and such issues deserve no more than the present sentence in this forum.
And that's about all I have to write this morning. There are other things to go on about but they mostly have to do with how suffocated I feel at the moment in terms of a lack of personal space and time because of work and also because I haven't quite figured out cohabitation yet, and with some guilt issues over how bad I've been at keeping in touch with people back home, and such issues deserve no more than the present sentence in this forum.
martedì, novembre 06, 2007
18 hours of travelling = 18 hours of reading
Whilst travelling I read some books to pass the time, and I continue to be amazed at how slowly The Waves goes - not in a bad way, though. Beautiful words, beautiful sounds, that you want to take your time with - like how you always have to slow down during a hurried morning commute when part of it takes you through a lovely park.
In between picking up and putting down The Waves, I read the rest of The Old Patagonian Express, and happily Paul Theroux found a bunch of things he liked. And wrote about it so engagingly that now I want to go to Patagonia, even though the bit about Patagonia was a tiny part of the book. The friend of the F-word that we stayed with in Berlin is Chilean so I could pick his brains a little about it. Maybe one day I'll move there. It just seems so beautifully quiet and I could go for weeks and weeks without seeing people. Of course I'd go utterly barking mad, but having seen what it's like growing old without madness that doesn't seem so bad. Anyways, yesterday by chance in the bookstore close to work I found The Great Railway Bazaar, a Theroux book about crossing Asia by train, so in a few days I might want to grow old and mad in Vietnam - we'll see what he has to say.
Also read The Conformist from Alberto Moravia, as I'd liked the Bertolucci film with Jean Louis Tritignant or however you spell his bloody name so much. The book was different; there was some surrealism to its unremitting narrative realism, to its dictation of Marcello's scared and ignoble thoughts, but not the same as in the film, not as colourful, not as sexy, not as violent - god, that murder scene in the film for example. Wasn't in the book, or rather was in the book, but third-hand, and altogether nobler, less like a messy, horrifying murder. The book read like a cautionary tale being told to you by a literary, well-meaning uncle, and while the narrative was 100% warning you about Marcello by taking his point of view, you learnt far more about the side characters, like his poor wife Giulia, than in the film, where the tangential characters are side more than fleshy effects. But then the film had some marvellous images. Both recommended.
In between picking up and putting down The Waves, I read the rest of The Old Patagonian Express, and happily Paul Theroux found a bunch of things he liked. And wrote about it so engagingly that now I want to go to Patagonia, even though the bit about Patagonia was a tiny part of the book. The friend of the F-word that we stayed with in Berlin is Chilean so I could pick his brains a little about it. Maybe one day I'll move there. It just seems so beautifully quiet and I could go for weeks and weeks without seeing people. Of course I'd go utterly barking mad, but having seen what it's like growing old without madness that doesn't seem so bad. Anyways, yesterday by chance in the bookstore close to work I found The Great Railway Bazaar, a Theroux book about crossing Asia by train, so in a few days I might want to grow old and mad in Vietnam - we'll see what he has to say.
Also read The Conformist from Alberto Moravia, as I'd liked the Bertolucci film with Jean Louis Tritignant or however you spell his bloody name so much. The book was different; there was some surrealism to its unremitting narrative realism, to its dictation of Marcello's scared and ignoble thoughts, but not the same as in the film, not as colourful, not as sexy, not as violent - god, that murder scene in the film for example. Wasn't in the book, or rather was in the book, but third-hand, and altogether nobler, less like a messy, horrifying murder. The book read like a cautionary tale being told to you by a literary, well-meaning uncle, and while the narrative was 100% warning you about Marcello by taking his point of view, you learnt far more about the side characters, like his poor wife Giulia, than in the film, where the tangential characters are side more than fleshy effects. But then the film had some marvellous images. Both recommended.
lunedì, novembre 05, 2007
I was made for loving you
So, Berlin. That city is like a dream. Not a huge Wim Winders fan but it's easier to take angels seriously in a place like that. Not pretty - not even the Museum Island is pretty - but very, very lovable. What made it more like a dream, besides the fine reefer and the early darkness, was the German language, which is like a dream language. When they look at me and natter on, the rhythms are so English that I can't understand why I don't understand. And then sometimes I do understand - the harder I listen the more I understand - and that was dreamlike too. The surreal is ante-ed up by the way that city makes so much goddamn sense and whenever I got confused, everything was sorted out before I got twitchy. It's like I've lived there before, but really it's just phenomenal urban planning.
Regret is futile because there wasn't anything more I could have done about it, but fuck, am I ever sad now Tr@nsparency Intern@tional didn't hire me after shortlisting me last year. Oh well. C'est la vie.
We did lots of fun stuff, of which the most recommendable in a public forum was the Pergamon museum, a staggering cultural rape show well worth the half-hour line and the 9 euros - they brought over the fucking Pergamon altar and Ishtar Gates bit by bit, for god's sake. Also the State Opera, where I saw Carmen - sold out except for the sight-obscured nosebleeders that were going for 8 euros, but great sound.
I'd seen Carmen in Toronto back when they were still using the Hummingbird Centre and frankly comparing the two productions was embarrassing - like comparing the Stratford Festival to a highschool production. Though Paolo Szot in Toronto made a better Escamillo, by which I mean sexier. I think the Berlin production meant to make Escamillo emblematic of death, and I'm sorry, Escamillo isn't emblematic of death, he's emblematic of a fucking sexy bullfighter. But there was just no comparison between Larissa Kostiuk as Carmen and Elisabeth Culman - not putting down Kostiuk but Culman had a lovely rich honey voice that made me think of Maria Callas doing it. A lower and more beautiful register for the part. Heavenly.
Regret is futile because there wasn't anything more I could have done about it, but fuck, am I ever sad now Tr@nsparency Intern@tional didn't hire me after shortlisting me last year. Oh well. C'est la vie.
We did lots of fun stuff, of which the most recommendable in a public forum was the Pergamon museum, a staggering cultural rape show well worth the half-hour line and the 9 euros - they brought over the fucking Pergamon altar and Ishtar Gates bit by bit, for god's sake. Also the State Opera, where I saw Carmen - sold out except for the sight-obscured nosebleeders that were going for 8 euros, but great sound.
I'd seen Carmen in Toronto back when they were still using the Hummingbird Centre and frankly comparing the two productions was embarrassing - like comparing the Stratford Festival to a highschool production. Though Paolo Szot in Toronto made a better Escamillo, by which I mean sexier. I think the Berlin production meant to make Escamillo emblematic of death, and I'm sorry, Escamillo isn't emblematic of death, he's emblematic of a fucking sexy bullfighter. But there was just no comparison between Larissa Kostiuk as Carmen and Elisabeth Culman - not putting down Kostiuk but Culman had a lovely rich honey voice that made me think of Maria Callas doing it. A lower and more beautiful register for the part. Heavenly.
domenica, novembre 04, 2007
Listing dangerously
Berlin was awesome. Awesome awesome awesome. I feel like a new woman and my SAD is fought right back. Nonetheless I have no time this morning to tell you about how great everything is, so let's go on with the list of most weepable songs ever:
6. 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', Jeff Buckley. I think Jeff Buckley woke up one morning and decided to write a song that would make girls emotional, sort of like a cat that wakes up and decides it’s the day it waits by a mousehole until it catches a mouse. Well, consider me caught. There’s a demanding urgency in the high wailing and the ‘say it’s not too late’ that Jeff Buckley makes sound universal, as well as like a particularly artful orgasm.
7. 'Laisse aboyer les chiens', Benjamin Biolay This song showcases all the weaknesses of his weak voice, but in context. Theatrical lyrics about female opacity in the face of a man’s despairing love (“You’ve cut me by the roots, I’m pale like a bag of heroin, my angel, etc.”) that make you understand, perhaps by virtue of the cracking, unbeautiful voice that sings them or of the melancholy, beautiful backing instrumentation, that his heart really is irretrievably broken, and now he’s going to fucking kill you. Somehow that's sad instead of infuriating.
8. 'Little Darlin’', Benjamin Biolay. Gone on about it before. More cracking, unbeautiful Biolay-voice, complimented by samples of what’s lovely and melancholy about the Carter Family – he’s a genius for having found it. He found what’s melancholy and beautiful about Marylin Monroe’s voice for a track on Rose Kennedy, 'Les Cerfs-Volants', but I prefer this.
9. 'Crown of Love', Arcade Fire. Maybe our romantic lives get higher stakes as we age, but I know for a fact I shed more tears over one boy when I was 14 than I’ve shed over all the boys put together since. One would rather like to bookend and forget such a shitty, stupid, honest time, but this moaning, soaring, violining protest against one’s own obsession, taciturnity and incoherence is an effectively shmaltzy reminder emotional waltzes aren’t just for teenagers.
10. 'Homesick', the Cure. Speaking of, I owe it to my 14 year old self to have at least one Cure song on the list. I’ve never found the Cure depressing and in fact now I find it almost provokingly, vacuously cheerful. But there’s always this song and most of the Disintegration album to remind me why I spent those years in black. This pretty-little-wrist-slitting-ditty moans out everything about wanting to go home but knowing home’s not really there anymore, not how you’re wanting it anyways. I wonder what I thought it meant when I was 14.
6. 'Lover, You Should’ve Come Over', Jeff Buckley. I think Jeff Buckley woke up one morning and decided to write a song that would make girls emotional, sort of like a cat that wakes up and decides it’s the day it waits by a mousehole until it catches a mouse. Well, consider me caught. There’s a demanding urgency in the high wailing and the ‘say it’s not too late’ that Jeff Buckley makes sound universal, as well as like a particularly artful orgasm.
7. 'Laisse aboyer les chiens', Benjamin Biolay This song showcases all the weaknesses of his weak voice, but in context. Theatrical lyrics about female opacity in the face of a man’s despairing love (“You’ve cut me by the roots, I’m pale like a bag of heroin, my angel, etc.”) that make you understand, perhaps by virtue of the cracking, unbeautiful voice that sings them or of the melancholy, beautiful backing instrumentation, that his heart really is irretrievably broken, and now he’s going to fucking kill you. Somehow that's sad instead of infuriating.
8. 'Little Darlin’', Benjamin Biolay. Gone on about it before. More cracking, unbeautiful Biolay-voice, complimented by samples of what’s lovely and melancholy about the Carter Family – he’s a genius for having found it. He found what’s melancholy and beautiful about Marylin Monroe’s voice for a track on Rose Kennedy, 'Les Cerfs-Volants', but I prefer this.
9. 'Crown of Love', Arcade Fire. Maybe our romantic lives get higher stakes as we age, but I know for a fact I shed more tears over one boy when I was 14 than I’ve shed over all the boys put together since. One would rather like to bookend and forget such a shitty, stupid, honest time, but this moaning, soaring, violining protest against one’s own obsession, taciturnity and incoherence is an effectively shmaltzy reminder emotional waltzes aren’t just for teenagers.
10. 'Homesick', the Cure. Speaking of, I owe it to my 14 year old self to have at least one Cure song on the list. I’ve never found the Cure depressing and in fact now I find it almost provokingly, vacuously cheerful. But there’s always this song and most of the Disintegration album to remind me why I spent those years in black. This pretty-little-wrist-slitting-ditty moans out everything about wanting to go home but knowing home’s not really there anymore, not how you’re wanting it anyways. I wonder what I thought it meant when I was 14.
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