The Kitchen Table

Watching movies at the DMV

2009-05-17T09:31:00.003-05:00

I've been spending more and more time (and money) at the movie theater lately. From the Hitchcock series at my local Riverview Theater, to another Jamie Foxx biopic (sort of), to a really enjoyable indie film , the cinema has been good to me. Okay, so The Soloist wasn't my first choice for movies that night, and it was a little bit predictable, but it wasn't bad either. Watching an auteur like Hitchcock week after week, I've begun to remember why it's so remarkable to see a movie in the theater: the things I enjoy are amplified there.

The camera movements in Hitchcock, from the pronounced visual tricks of Vertigo to the subtle mastery of Rope (more on that in a minute), are so crucial to the experience of watching his films. And watching an original print on the big screen of the movie theater, a viewer gets to see all of these touches amplified to a degree that you just can't grasp on a 24 inch television. (I'm speaking for those of us with standard definition, crappy television sets, here). The curator of this festival has astutely included one of Hitchcock's lesser-known gems: Rope. This film, starring Jimmy Stewart, has a great visual trick of its own: the entire movie takes place inside one apartment, and there are very few individual shots. The claustrophobic feeling created by the closed space and long, drawn-out scenes adds weight to the growing paranoia of the film's protagonist. It was fun to re-live this movie (which I've seen several times) in the setting of a movie theater with my brother, who had never seen it. Likewise, last week's showing of To Catch a Thief made me appreciate the breathtaking camerawork on the rooftop cat burglar scenes at the movies beginning and end. I'm coming to appreciate that these movies were made for the theater, and to see them in their original setting is to see them with fresh eyes.

I must confess that my renewed interest in moviegoing coincides with a project I have been involved with since February: two of my very good friends are making a movie right now. Each weekend, they assemble the cast, rent the equipment, and scout locations in which to make their feature-length effort. These guys have poured their lives into this project, and I'm proud to say that I've been involved as both a production assistant and actor. The end result is going to be great, in part because I've watched this thing from its genesis, but also because these young men care very deeply about what they're doing. Both of them are very studied in cinematography and editing, and more than that, they both have a good eye for what potential the medium of narrative film holds.

I'll end with a confession and a realization that sums up the lasting power of film. Yesterday, I was at the DMV getting my license replaced. In the center of the room was a muted TV playing a black and white film. Embarrassingly, I've never seen the movie Casablanca. Regardless, it took me no more than five seconds to realize that this was the movie I was watching (and mind you, Bogart wasn't even on the screen). The long tracking shot of a black piano player in a smoky club, inhabited by people from around the world, past tables of gamblers, through the coatroom and around several conversant socialites--this one shot, so beautifully executed and so instantly evocative--told me that I was watching Casablanca. The aura of that movie is so potent that some kid at the DMV (sixty-seven years after its release) could know that movie without having seen it.

One of those 'life is good' posts

2009-05-08T10:39:00.002-05:00

Throw open the windows! Spring is here and I have the day off!

Things are starting to green up around the neighborhood, and I find that with every passing day I have more energy to do the things I care about: catch up on correspondence with friends, ride my bike and explore the city, and build connections with my surroundings and with God. In addition to having more energy, I also have more time--classes ended last week. After what felt like a marathon of paper-writing and presentation-giving, I have arrived at that after-finals place where I come home from work and say, "Now what?"

Well, the answer is now I can rejoin my fabulous book club. Now I can sit in the hammock on a week night and have a beer. Now I can watch the Twins play the Mariners (just don't talk to me about the games we dropped to the Tigers and the Orioles this week).

I'm not ashamed to say that this is one of those "life is good" posts. Spring makes things feel less complicated, and I am happy to embrace it. Sure, there are still bills to pay and plans for the future to consider. There are still major issues to wrestle with and serious realities to face. Working at a bank right now gives me an unusually close position from which to view our current economic situation. Moreover, my position as a student with loans out and a better-than-average credit score leaves me feeling frustrated.

In any event, this is just one of many issues I think about on a near-daily basis. For every Paul Krugman column I read, I'm also trying to grasp the sacrifices made by Bobby Sands. For every Martin Luther thesis I consider, I'm also trying to stay caught up on the NYT Bestsellers list. For every Op-Ed I see on Iran or Pakistan, I'm also scouring a music blog for details on the new Wilco album. Oftentimes, I'm jumping from issue-to-issue without fully processing anything.

I have trouble sometimes separating what's going on with me and what's happening in the broader world. Things alternately seem too personal or too removed with little rationale. And yet, everything seems more manageable in spring than it did in winter.

Uncovering latent ageism

2008-12-12T14:37:00.001-06:00

I read a review of Clint Eastwood’s new movie, Gran Torino, in the New York Times today, and the critic, Manohla Dargis, praised Eastwood as a director for consistently engaging with “bigger questions of American life.” I generally like the Dargis’ insights, and this review crystallized why: She not only focuses on the stakes of an individual movie, but (and this is especially true where an established person like Eastwood is concerned) she also places the film in the context of the larger culture or a person’s career. I read this review not because I was interested in Gran Torino, but because I was interested to hear what she had to say about Eastwood as a director.

She discusses the director’s grappling with and celebration of American life in a really serious way. When we hear about a celebration of American values or traditions, it’s usually meant in some sort of Jingoistic, standard-bearing sense. This review suggests, on the contrary, that Eastwood’s role has been that of careful observer of our culture. She advocates the kind of American movies that Clint Eastwood makes, and speculated that part of the reason probably lies in the fact that he got his start in the old studio system (I won’t attempt to do justice to her logic on this point).

This reference to Eastwood’s longevity highlighted something for me that I might have otherwise taken for granted: Clint Eastwood is old. I mean, when you see the guy acting in a movie, it’s hard to forget that he’s pretty old and that he’s been doing this seemingly forever. But it’s also true that when I think about the director, the person behind the camera, I never picture someone as old as Clint Eastwood making meaningful, relevant films. This is a big problem of mine.

I seem to attribute the source of passion for something like acting or directing to youthful exuberance—a boundless creativity and energy that must be reserved for the young. But how many great directors make some of their best films later in life? And how much wisdom must accrue in that time? As much as I like Taxi Driver, I have to admit that The Departed is a much better movie. Hell, The Departed is probably better than Goodfellas.

Then again, especially in the world of American cinema, I tend to think that the older and more accomplished a director is, the more entrenched they are in a soul-sucking studio system that doesn’t seem to value creativity or innovation. I can’t shake this feeling, even as I write these words. But what can we say about someone like Clint Eastwood, who continues to create movies at an impressive pace, but also continues to rack up recognitions for these films?

I am left to ponder some latent ageism lurking in my aesthetics. I turn once again to the New York Times art section: Elliott Carter is 100 years old. His output since he turned 90 has been staggering and on par with (if not surpassing) his work as a younger man.

Towards a better understanding of the internet

2008-12-05T14:01:00.000-06:00

While eating pizza with a good friend last night, I was reminded that I have left this blog idling for quite some time. However, during my absence from actually blogging, I’ve been hearing a lot about blogs. In October and November, I heard a lot about blogs as a component of the new ways in which the world receives its information— part rumor mill, part regurgitator of more traditional news sources, and part opinion forum, blogs have come to play a large role in American discussion of public issues (read: elections).

I’ve also heard a lot of theoretical talk about blogs as a component of Web2.0, the exciting concept that the web is becoming more user-generated and democratic. The Internet, it is thought, is springing more naturally from its users. Blogs and wikis and social networking sites allow people not only to generate content, but to organize it as they see fit. The ability to tag Flickr photos or Del.icio.us bookmarks and blog entries has pushed to the fore the idea of “folksonomies.” People are creating natural language system of classification, adding user-generated metadata that helps them create connections between content that they feel is related.

“Metadata” is the information that describes a piece of information. In terms of the internet, this would be things like a unique URL, a line of xml code, or more visibly, a tag on a blog. If I tagged this entry “Web 2.0,” then anybody that’s browsing blogspot.com for posts on Web 2.0 has the ability to find my blog. I’ve made a meaningful connection with other, related posts by people far, far away. Then again, I could tag this anything. Looking at my first sentence, I could tag this blog “pizza,” which might be disingenuous to a person browsing pizza blogs, since other than that first sentence, I haven’t mentioned pizza!

So a user-generated classification system is only as good as its users. You may have noticed that I haven’t tagged any of my blog posts, and thus, I have failed to participate in this semantic web to the full extent—I have yet to make the most of my internet connections. But obviously this stuff is working. Go to the above mentioned sites—Flickr, del.icio.us, etc. People are out there making previously unthinkable links via metadata. They’re not only posting photos and bookmarks, they’re making connections with people who are posting seemingly-related photos and bookmarks! With little interference from the people who create and host these sites!

Its enough to make a person’s head spin! For someone like me, someone who closely guards his privacy, it’s also quite scary. Every social networking site you join, every service you sign up for brings you lets out more of your personal information. You see what other people are reading, thinking, seeing, and doing, but you can also be seen yourself. There are heavy costs and benefits to be weighed in web participation.

Anyway, this post is a lot longer than I thought it would be. Like I said, I’ve been exposed to a lot of thoughts on blogs over the past several months, and it has really opened my eyes to the existence of the Internet as a user-driven web. These thoughts have gestated, and I may be ready to submerge back in the blogosphere.

Sandwiches and local music

2008-08-16T15:55:00.002-05:00

The best sandwiches on Lake St. come from Manny's Tortas, no contest. I just finished eating a chicken sandwich from Manny's, topped with the customary tomatoes, grilled onions, avocado, jalapenos, etc. I sort of have a ritual surrounding their sandwiches: I order my food to go and take the little white lunch bag, almost clear from the stains of the greasy wax-wrapped torta, and eat it in my living room. Every time, I'm by myself, and it's almost always an odd time of day (as in, not exactly meal time). The shades are drawn and no one's home; it's almost as if the torta is some sort of fix for me. I'd call myself a junkie for Manny's but this is actually only my third sandwich.

So here I am, the remnants of a torta in front of me at 4:00 in the afternoon, on a Saturday with almost nothing to do. There's a new CD in the stereo (Brother Ali's The Undisputed Truth) and comfort food in my bellly. And while my sandwich eating is absolutely routine, the CD is a little bit of a departure for me, fulfilling my earlier vow to add some musical diversity. I saw Brother Ali one time, but the Rhymesayers aesthetic has never been my favorite. This CD, however, is really well produced - the beats stand out, for sure. On top of those beats, Ali's rhymes are
well-crafted, and move far enough away from the typical Slug 'heart-on-my-sleeve' message to keep me listening.

Like I said, I have very little to do today (though that's probably obvious by now). Earlier, I read about 65 pages of Sarah Vowell's gripping and hilarious Assassination Vacation, and after I post this, I'll probably try and close in on the ending of Moby Dick. Tonight I have a going away party to attend. And that's it: writing a blog about sandwiches, trying to embrace local hip-hop, and reading two books before going to a friend's Seward digs for wine and barbecue. Did I mention it's 84 degrees out and I'm going to go sit and read in the hammock? I've got to keep enjoying these Saturdays before school starts back up.

I seem to be creating lists latey,

2008-08-14T15:06:00.002-05:00

particularly lists of music, so here goes with one more:

List of CDs lent to two friends going on a road trip to Arkansas, at their request that I lend them music for the drive (in no particular order)

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - Cold Roses (disc 2)
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Wilco - Summerteeth
Chris Koza - Patterns
Townes Van Zandt - Homemade comp.
Golden Smog - Down by the Old Mainstream
Various Motown artists - Homemade comp.
Spoon - Gimme Fiction
Andrew Bird - ...and the Mysterious Production of Eggs

My thoughts behind the CDs chosen:

First of all, it as imperative that the music somehow give off the feel of summer. This meant a lot of upbeat, poppy music, but also - considering that some of the driving will be in the morning and/or evening - that there are songs with a certain contemplative quality.

Furthermore, the CD list was all about reasonable exposure. I wanted to give these travelers some stuff that they wouldn't know, but also make sure that it was - by the average person's standards - accessible.

Finally, there had to be some killer first tracks. Crane Wife, Twin Cinema, and Gimme Fiction have especially catchy first tracks.

A note about the Townes and Motown comps: Townes Van Zandt has an enormous output, and no single album was going to be a good starting place for two unfamiliar listeners. Motown, of course, has a massive output, too, and making my own mixtape seemed to be the best way around sending them with every Hitsville CD I own.

Less than diverse music selection

2008-08-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

Based on songs and styles I've listened to recently, these are the 'randomly' chosen songs my media player came up with for me. I could stand to diversify a bit:

1. Tumbling Dice - Rolling Stones
2. Hungry Heart - Bruce Springsteen
3. Lonesome Suzie - the Band
4. You Got Lucky - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
5. Poor Places - Wilco
6. Walken - Wilco
7. The Late Greats - Wilco
8. California [Part II] - Mason Jennings
9. House by the Sea - Iron & Wine
10. Stick in the Mud - The Jayhawks
11. I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll - Gillian Welch
12. The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine - Spoon
13. I Just Want to See His Face - Rolling Stones

Olympic Awe

2008-08-11T13:05:00.004-05:00

I devoted a lot of my free time this weekend to watching the Olympics. Friday night, while preparing dinner, I managed to watch some of the opening ceremonies. Saturday morning, I watched several events, including volleyball in the morning, men's gymnastics in the afternoon, and from the bar, I watched the swimming events. Of all the events that day, it was probably the gymnastics that impressed me the most. As I watched the U.S. men's team compete on the rings, the high bar, and the pommel horse, I realized the strength and agility that those events require. To see someone suspended upside down - their entire weight held up by their bare hands on the rings - struck me as a truly admirable feat. There was so much balance involved, with these slight corrections forward and backward to keep as steady as possible; and then there's the strength involved in the maneuver: holding your entire weight as with your arms fully extended.

It was only recently that I truly began to appreciate world class athletes. It began, most likely, with my renewed interest in baseball, and my spirited return to exercising on a regular basis. I started to remember, with help from some personal experience, the degree to which athletics can test the very limits of a person's flexibility, coordination, strength, and stamina. A great baseball player is not only strong, he or she is incredibly graceful. Gymnasts and swimmers have to be among the leanest, most agile people on the planet. It's fascinating to watch people work with - more or less - the raw materials of their body.

This conversation tied into another recent discussion I had with some friends about the power of the human voice. We were listening to Otis Redding on a car trip, and one of my friends postulated that Otis had perfected "the plead." So many of his songs- and not just lyrically, but also through the emotive quality of Redding's voice - contain a plead. Usually it involves asking a lover to take him back, or to not walk out the door, but Otis might as well be reading the Nutrition Facts from a box of Fig Newtons; his voice is strong enough (and emotively convincing enough) to get the message across. Like an athlete, a talented singer can do amazing things with the raw materials of his or her body.

Of course, there are a few ways to qualify feats of the huaman body: in music we have the technological mediation of the voice (simple mircrophones, vocoders, Laurie Anderson, T-Pain, etc.) and in sports we have the newest swimwear, astroturf, and steroids. These things, of course, alter (in the case of technology) or counteract (in the case of steroids) the awe that the feats of athletes and singers inspire.

August Mixtape

2008-08-06T14:13:00.001-05:00

Inspired by recent listenings, car rides, conversations, etc. Following the 13-song format of a recent 'baker's dozen' challenge.

1. “Spanish Harlem Incident” by Bob Dylan
2. “If I Am a Stranger” by Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
3. “I Can’t Turn You Loose” Otis Redding (preferably the version from Live at the Whiksey)
4. “Neighborhoods #2 (Laika)” by the Arcade Fire
5. “Cape Canaveral” by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band
6. “Mustang Sally” by Wilson Pickett
7. “Tears of Rage” by The Band
8. “My Adidas” by Run D.M.C.
9. “I’m a Wheel” by Wilco
10. “I’m Amazed” by My Morning Jacket
11. “Take this Hammer” Odetta
12. “Elvis Presley Blues” Gillian Welch
13. “Mystifies Me” by Son Volt

After sleeping on it...

2008-07-22T14:54:00.002-05:00

I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that last post. In fact, some of it seems blown out of proportion; the writing definitely gathered momentum as it went. I mean, I described parts of The Dark Knight as "despicable." That may have gone too far in categorizing what is (at its most basic, anyway) a comic book movie.

The thing that separates the Dark Knight from No Country for Old Men is its setting in an alterate reality. I lost sight of that because, unlike other comic book movies, there are very real world actions and consequences depicted in this film. It's a fascinating film, and it has obviously given me a lot to think about.

To answer my own question, Christopher Nolan does his audience a service in holding back some sort of ultimate retribution in the film. Rereading my original post on No Country, I was reminded that I said one of the best aspects of that film is the way in which people's attempts at explaining themselves and their environment (in a way that is very true to life), fall short. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, offers eloquent speeches on the human condition and the nature of Good and Evil. It can do this because it's a comic book movie, set, like I said, in a different world that operates on different rules. The fact that the explanations fall short and the speeches ring hollow is the uncanny aspect: they make the strange world of Gotham seem familiar. This uncanniness - the movie's subtle ability to be like our reality and yet separate - is whyI struggle to really grasp the film, and why I have trouble embracing it wholeheartedly.

Blog Deja Vu

2008-07-21T13:45:00.005-05:00

I had two experiences this weekend that brought to mind former blog posts. The first deja vu trigger came when I was seeing a movie: The Dark Knight. I bought tickets on Tuesday last week for a screening on Saturday. Since it's pretty rare for me to see something on opening weekend (especially a movie with intense action), I decided to go all-out and get tickets for an IMAX screen. It was totally worth it. Not only was the visual and sonic aspect of the experience amazing, but Heath Ledger's performance managed to live up to the hype. Absoultely astounding.

My experience with the movie brought to mind my last 'movie theater blog,' when I saw No Country For Old Men on its opening weekend. Like the Coen Brothers film, The Dark Night left me feeling conflicted. Both movies were meant for the movie theater experience: the suspense they create and the sort of visceral reaction they rely upon is best achieved in the darkness of a theater (as opposed to your living room). They're both beautifully wrought, masterful displays of technique. They make you jump, they make you hold your breath, and they make you simultaneously want to look away and look closer. I loved them both for putting me in this position of discomfort.

Here's where the conflict arises: these dark movies are beautiful in their ability to sink so low. Heath Ledger's incarnation of the Joker is sublimely creepy. There's one scene where the viewer (through the intermediary of the Gotham news channel) is shown a home video of the Joker holding a Batman impersonator captive in a meat locker. The choppy footage on a handheld camera, coupled with Heath Ledger's Joker voice, is disturbing in its proximity to real life. The more disturbing or dark the movie gets, the more real it feels and the more powerful the viewer's reaction. The villain of this movie offers no real reasons for his spree, just as Anton Chigurh gives little insight into the ruthlessness with which he pursues Llewellyn Moss in No Country For Old Men. I remember leaving No Country and having a friend ask me what the point was-- what's the point of something that dark, that violent, with nothing behind it? Why make a film that's such a virtuosic display of filmic talent but centered around content that's so despicable? But have we come to expect some sort of redemption from films? If so, does a director do us a service or disservice by not delivering that?

Joker is a self-proclaimed agent of chaos; Batman heralded as a hero that suits his dark times. The Dark Knight plays with all sorts of Good-Evil struggles, and does it well, while still managing to come up with very few worthwhile answers. One cop tells Joker that he knows his type, knows that the Joker kills other people out of enjoyment. Batman can't find a single trace of the villain's former life, a single alias. The Joker himself creates a different story every time he talks about the scars on his face. Seemingly rising out of nowhere, he offers no explanations for his actions. The law enforcement of this movie, like the Sheriff in No Country, struggle throughout the film to understand that which ultimately remains unexplained about their villain's actions. Being a superhero movie, the Dark Knight just does it in gestures that are more grand. But unlike other superhero movies, it shows you some of the disasters that are often only threatened or hinted at. I loved this movie, like I said, for the discomfort it caused me. Unfortunately, I worry about cinema that pleases by showing us (in a beautiful way, nonetheless) something so horrifying. Then again, there are aspects of The Dark Knight that fit perfectly into the mold of the Aristotelian tragedy: a serious and 'dignified' story with a character experiencing a reversal of fortune. It goes beyond that, but if I write more, I'll probably spoil the movie.

Unfortunately, I won't get around to writing about my second 'blog deja vu' today, but hopefully I'll have a chance tomorrow. I promise it'll be less conflicted than this entry...and a little more organized.

Or, the Whale

2008-07-12T16:49:00.003-05:00

Last night the Kinks came up in conversation again. To be more accurate, I sang the first verse of "Johnny Thunder" while a storm front moved towards the Cedar-Riverside intersection. Speaking of the Kinks, my brother said from across the booth at the Acadia Cafe, you haven't blogged since that entry that mentioned the Kinks. I was busted. I had long thought about my blog neglect (sound familiar?), but now someone had called me out on it. So, here I am, blogging from the kitchen table on a Saturday.

I guess that explaining the reason we were at the Acadia is a good place to start. For the second time in as many weeks, my band had a weekend show. I'd played with various bands at the Acadia's old location - a cafe/theater on Franklin Ave - but this was my first time at the new Acadia, in what used to be the Riverside Cafe (and before that, the West Bank's Falafel King). As a cafe, it's much better than the old space, but I miss the exposed brick walls and stadium seating of the old theater. This show, unlike our recent gig at the 400 Bar, was sparsely attended. The sound was favorable, though, and we had fun and made the best of it.

I really feel that I've got an ideal lineup playing with me right now. For the first time, I've put myself at the front of the band, taking on the lead vocals and songwriting duties, and also the tasks of scheduling practices and lining up shows. It's a lot of work, and it can be nerve wracking at times, but it's really rewarding to have serious musicians bringing my ideas to light. What's more, each person brings their own tastes to the table, and the songs often take on qualities that I never could've imagined or intended. Honestly, the Older Brothers are an all-star lineup.

Between practices with the band, a book group meeting, and other social commitments, this week was incredibly busy. That's why I left the entire morning and afternoon open today. Waking up at 9:45, I played with the idea of going back to sleep, but an aptly-timed phone call urged me out of bed. I put the coffee on and realized that if I wanted eggs for breakfast (which I did), that I would have to go to the store. After breakfast, I retired to the hammock with my coffee and read a few more chapters of Moby Dick.

That book is blowing my mind. I read it in high school, but never had to revisit it in college, so reading it now is like reading it for the first time. Melville's sense of detail is remarkable, and the way his narrator Ishmael describes the other characters is marvelous. There's a great, pent up anxiety in the early chapters. I mean, at 100 pages, the Pequod is finally setting sail, and the much alluded-to Ahab has yet to make an appearance. Just now, while I was waiting for my chicken to thaw, I returned to the book and read the first emergence of Ahab from his confinement in the cabin. It'll raise the hair on the back of your neck to read it.

The other thing I was able to accomplish today was a trip to the gym. It had probably been three weeks since I had gone, and it felt great. After doing my usual weight regimen, I decided to try the rowing machine for the first time. (Perhaps my nautical reading has crept into my everyday life...) The rowing machine was a great workout, and I'd highly recommend it. At first, I couldn't feel the tension in the bar that I was pulling, and I wondered if I was using the machine properly. After about twenty strokes, though, you feel it. If you can get into the groove of the machine, it's an exercise with a great rhythm, and one which seems to work a diverse group of muscles. On my bike ride home, I felt tingly, and my muscles were still trying to make the movements that they were doing on the rowing machine.

Okay, now that I've advocated rowing machine exercise, I think it's time to stop blogging. This day is too nice to sit at a computer, anyway.

The Kinks sound really good this morning

2008-06-20T10:15:00.002-05:00

As I begin this post, it's 10:15 on a Friday morning and I'm writing from the kitchen table. My first cup of coffee sits next to me, and the lush sounds of Lola versus Powerman and the MoneyGoRound, Part One serenade me from the stereo. I haven't listened to this disc in a while, and it's absolutely perfect right now. I can't remember the last time I had a Friday off. I've had a few Mondays off this year, but this is my first free Friday. And it is good.

I had yesterday off, too, and I kicked off my long weekend in the perfect way: biking to a diner to meet up with an old friend for sunny side up eggs and whole wheat toast. After that, another friend of ours came by with his car (complete with bike in backseat), and we went for a long ride near Fort Snelling. We covered all of our favorite topics of late including baseball statistics, moving away from the Twin Cities, and Daniel Plainview. Then, since it was nearly the end of the workday, I met up with a friend who was interested in doing an outdoor happy hour. I had earned it, right?

Today's agenda includes meeting up with a fantastic musician and his National guitar, and later seeing a baseball game with the bike-riding, Plainview-discussing chap I spent yesterday with. Before those things take place, however, I'm going to try to write something. Anything. See, I've started posting to this blog on a near daily basis as a way to keep my skills sharp -- to keep my syntax interesting. Sadly, and to no great surprise, the content is pretty forgettable. Posts about what I'm going to post about later and the like. When I sit down and try to write fiction, my mind is equally blank. I've got a near-complete first draft of my 'baseball essay,' which has come pretty easily. Perhaps I'm not cut out for fiction writing. Perhaps I should think of working on some essays. Perhaps at my age (I'll be twenty two tomorrow) there's just not much to say.

Stay Tuned

2008-06-18T08:34:00.000-05:00

Stay tuned, folks: I'm writing an essay about baseball. It's around 1,000 words right now, and my guess is that it'll be longer than that by at least a couple hundred words. Given its length, I don't know if it will appear in this blog or in another form. Right now it's broken into a few sections, so it would be possible to do a serial version, I guess. We'll see.

In other news, today is my Friday. I'm very excited to have the rest of the week off. A one-night camping trip is in the works as well as a Twins game, a few breakfasts, plenty of down time, naps in the hammock, bike rides, and with a little luck, some work on the baseball essay. I guess I could work on my resume, too, if I feel like it. I want to scour the Central Library and possibly buy a camera.

Hopefully this new long form piece will be a move back into more conventional writing.

A few things that came to mind on the train today

2008-06-16T23:20:00.002-05:00

Best song for a work-out mix: 'Spiders (Kidsmoke)'

Best album to fall asleep to (without totally tuning out the music): The Creek Drank the Cradle

Best way to get a party going/please a crowd: Motown

Best album to recommend to someone who wants something completely different: The Flying Club Cup

Best way to get my attention these days: Neko Case

Best jazz record to put on for people who aren't really comfortable with jazz: Miles Ahead

Bloomsday

2008-06-16T12:00:00.002-05:00

Happy Bloomsday, everyone. It about a year and a half ago - winter break of 06-07, to be exact - that I read Joyce's Ulysses. It remains the biggest challenge I've ever faced in book form, and while I didn't read it with a guide, I did have a dictionary at my side constantly. Luckily, the Odyssey was fresh in my mind (I had read it the previous semester), but for every literary/cultural reference that I picked up, I'm sure there are countless that I missed.

I wish I were celebrating Bloomsday right now: either retracing the steps of Leopold Bloom or just wandering aimlessly through Minneapolis. Alas, it's Monday and I am at work all day. I do have some time off planned for Thursday and Friday of this week, so maybe my reenactment will just be a few days delayed.

2008-06-14T22:14:00.004-05:00

The weather turned decidedly nasty about half an our ago. I heard something that sounded like running water, and as I walked to the kitchen to investigate, I passed the window and realized it was the wind in the trees. The trees, in turn, had the look of genuflecting worshipers, their branches striving for the ground. I had opened a few windows in the house, and when I went to close them, the rain had already begun to spray through the screens. Things are calm again now. Today was absolutely gorgeous, and it wasn't until the sun had set that this weather moved in--under cover of darkness, as it were.

Iron & Wine setlist (approximately) and thoughts

2008-06-12T08:00:00.007-05:00

I don't know how to begin writing about this show without giving a full-fledged account/review. Let me start by saying that any doubts I may have had about Iron & Wine ability to bring the new material to life in a concert setting have completely dissipated. By the time the whole band was on stage, it was obvious that the eight of them (eight!) were excited about the newer material. Before starting Boy with the Coin, Sam even said, "I bet you some people could dance to this." Sure enough, as soon as the drummer came in, people were moving; dancing to earlier Iron & Wine records would have a different look entirely.

That being said, the show's most poignant moments (and the most emotional/personal moments for me) came during the quieter, earlier material. Specifically, the Trapeze Swinger was a stunning first track to hear Beam play live. It was just him for the first few verses, and then he was joined by his sister Sarah Beam on vocals. Sarah stayed on stage for He Lays in the Rains, and the pedal steel player (my favorite musician of the bunch) came out for Resurrection Fern. The entire band was on stage by Boy with a Coin. House by the Sea was an obvious favorite from the new material, and it was the one track that I worried about falling flat in a live setting.

Among the weirder moments of the show were Upward Over the Mountain and Sodom, South Georgia. Both were played in a full band setting, and Upward Over the Mountain, in particular, had a tempo that was almost too fast for the song. Love and Some Verses and Cinder and Smoke were handled with a similar, groovy arrangement, but by that point in the show it wasn't nearly as decentering. In a way it was good to have these songs shed in a new light; it reminded me that the records I listen to are static, but the songs themselves are not.

As far as I remember these were the songs played last night (hopefully in approximately the order they were played). I may be missing a few...I know I'm missing at least one.

1. The Trapeze Swinger
2. He Lays in the Reins
3. Resurrection Fern
4. The Sea and the Rhythm
5. Peace Beneath the City
6. The Boy with a Coin
7. House By the Sea
8. The Devil Never Sleeps
9. Sodom, South Georgia
10. White Tooth Man
11. Upward Over the Mountain
12. Woman King
13. Carousel
14. Cinder and Smoke
15. Love and Some Verses
16. Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)

E. History of Lovers

2008-06-11T09:33:00.002-05:00

I made a great pot of coffee this morning.

Upon waking up today and realizing that rain was almost a certainty, I decided to take the train. This was sort of a bummer, since it meant that I couldn't ride my bike, but it was also a blessing since I could now bring a thermos of coffee to work. It's a daily trade-off: if I'm biking, I get the fresh air and exercise, and if I'm commuting, I get the four-cup travel mug of coffee. Today's coffee made it worth the while.

South of us, between southern Minnesota and Iowa, there are flood worries. Here in the Cities, it's dark enough downtown that the street lights are on. I'm laughing right now, thinking about the fact that my sister starts her job at the community pool today--not exactly great weather for swimming. It's all good, though, since tonight the two of us are seeing Iron & Wine at First Avenue. Sam Beam is one of few performers that I can honestly say I need to see live. I really connect with his records, and from what my friends have told me, it's a captivating live show, too. I'm hoping to hear a mix of Sam by himself and in a full band setting.

Beyond that, I'm looking forward to a low key weekend. I've got a new book to begin reading and not much else on the agenda. I'm ready to settle in and take a few naps...just got to get through the rest of this week.

Return to the Kitchen Table

2008-06-10T21:55:00.003-05:00

I'm blogging from the desk in our dining room. Shortly after getting my laptop up and running, Chris and I learned that the neighbor who had so generously (unbeknownst to them) left their wireless connection unprotected must have wised up and made their network 'security enabled.' While I didn't want to resort to actually paying for internet, I also didn't feel like sitting around and trying to guess the password to the wireless network of a complete stranger. That seemed a little extreme. So we broke down and signed up for the city-sponsored wireless service.

While I sit here writing in the template provided by the blogger website, my computer is hard at work updating its security settings, and Jeff Tweedy is singing 'Radio Cure' to me. My next task will be to sign on and figure out my registration for the fall. It's looking like I'll sign up for two classes, both of which might be on the weekend. I'm not sure yet, though--I might opt for a weekday course. Really, though, I feel like after a day at work (whatever my job may be come this fall), I probably won't have a ton of energy for a three hour class. The fact that I can do this all from home -- from the kitchen table, as it were -- is really, really satisfying. Paying one more bill each month won't be so great. Oh well, we're still stealing cable.

A Retraction; or, How my outlook changes in the span of a single post

2008-06-09T12:06:00.005-05:00

Ah, nice weather, how I've missed thee. Today is the first bona fide clear sky day in over a week. I feel like I should be at the palace of Nestor racing chariots with Telemachus, or picnicing on a beach, or something else worthy of epic verse. That's how pristine it is outside. I must say, I'm proud of my decision to ride my bike to work today, especially when you consider that by Wednesday we're supposed to be back to more severe weather.

While this weekend could've been a rain-out disaster, all three of the outdoor events I attended were unaffected by rain. Friday night saw the sky clear up just in time for the first pitch at Midway Stadium; Saturday's outdoor Built To Spill show, while overcast, was not rained out; and lil sis' graduation party also dodged the rain bullet. The humidity caught up with us last week, and it's starting to feel like summer.

Speaking of summer, tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my first day of work here. The time has flown by, and while there were some definite discouraging moments, I'm satisfied with my first year out of college on the whole. And still, as my friends begin to put away the books for the summer, I'm reminded of how nice it is to have a summer vacation. I want to be back working part time at the library and sleeping in and staying out late on Tuesdays. I want to drink an iced coffee at one o'clock with a Robert Fitzgerald translation and then fall asleep on the bus on the way home.

I can't complain, really. As much as I've been bummed out by the rain, it's not like I live in Seattle. And while I can gripe about having a regular nine to five job, I can't really say that I don't get out. Hell, look at my weekend: a baseball game and Built to Spill! That's awesome! And what's more, I got both tickets for free!

I guess what I'm trying to say, in a very roundabout way, is that while I could find plenty of negative things to list here, my situation is very good on the whole. Sitting with two friends in Midway Stadium on Friday, with a beer in my hand and the sun breaking the clouds on the left field line, I was about as far from my cares as could be. The same goes for listening to Built To Spill's Doug Marsch - eyes closed and head shaking from side to side - sing the song 'Carry the Zero.' On a good day, the same thing can also be said for my lunch break in downtown. Every day can't be like that, but when the weather's this nice, it's be hard to stay in a glum mood.

A Light Post for a Friday

2008-06-06T12:35:00.002-05:00

I'm getting a beer with a co-worker this evening after work. One beer usually turns into a few, and regardless of where the conversation takes us, we usually end up having a pretty good laugh. Following that, I'll be watching some minor league ball in St. Paul (Saints vs. the Witchita Wingnuts) with a good friend and possibly a couple of righteous skateboarding girls. The Lumberjack will be on site to give us a shout out and a "timber;" and rain or shine , it should be a good time.

That's as far ahead as I need to be thinking right now: a 7:05 start time. While the beginning of this week was marked by the number of things I was waiting for, the end of the week is noticeably more calm. A fairly normal trajectory, I guess. Work is still busy, but it's manageable considering in a few hours I can put it behind me for the weekend. Next week holds dinner plans, band practice, and an Iron & Wine show. In other words, you shouldn't be hearing any complaints out of me in the near future.

Other things on my mind:
*Cold Roses by Ryan Adams & the Cardinals and a potential narrative contained within that album
*Megabus tickets to Milwaukee
*A forseeable end to this Minnesota rainy season

Finished

2008-06-05T12:28:00.003-05:00

I wrapped up the Border Trilogy today during my lunch break. After a somewhat forseeable ending, McCarthy included a wonderful Epilogue that made use of a frame narrative. I disliked the story that framed the Epilogue, but the story within the frame story was absolutely gorgeous - the best 'parable' in the whole series of books. At times I was visibly shaking my head from side to side in disbelief. Such powerful ideas being displayed with unbelievable clarity. Here's an excerpt, where a man is talking about dreams:

'You call forth the world which God has formed and that world only. Nor is this life yours by which you set such store your doing, however you may choose to tell it. Its shape was forced in the void at the onset and all talk of what might otherwise have been is senselss for there is no otherwise. Of what could it be made? Where be hid? Or how make its appearance? The probability of the actual is absolute. That we have no power to guess it out beforehand makes it no less certain. That we may imagine alternate histories means nothing at all' (McCarthy 285).

At my book club meeting on Monday night (have I brought up book group in the blog yet?), we discussed how difficult it can be to finish a really good book, especially if that book is long. A novelist who can develop their characters and help you connect with their story engages a reader to the point that the reader wishes the characters had a life outside of the book. How could it end? The group came to a consensus about East of Eden: it was difficult to leave the story, not matter how long it was or how completely it wrapped up.

There have been other books like that, too. On a few occasions I've found myself in the closing chapter of a book, pacing along the floor - literally with too much energy to sit still and read. I'll throw the book down when I'm done, throw it against a wall, or just let it drop out of my hands. It isn't only the intense, suspenseful endings that elicit this response. One of the greatest closing chapters I've ever read was the tranquil final pages of George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Anyway, I'm off topic. The Border Trilogy's ending received a different response from me. More of a subdued 'yes' than anything else. It was an excellent series of books, and I now find myself with a loss as to how to occupy myself in my free time....oh wait, two more of McCarthy's books just arrived in the mail yesterday! Maybe it's time to take a break from Cormac, though. Besides, I need to get a start on our next book club choice: The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

That's all for now. Here's to hoping we're not swept away in the severe weather that's expected tonight.

Linus' Laptop

2008-06-04T09:06:00.007-05:00

Okay, we can now release that collective sigh we've been holding. Ready? *Sigh* Ah, that felt good. My laptop is back, and it is fully operational. This post is being composed on my work computer, but I've got the laptop sitting next to me. Its beautiful. I've really, really missed having it around these last several weeks. As the first big purchase I made after graduating, my laptop is more than just a computer to me. I take a lot of pride in it, I guess.

My laptop, like many of my possessions, is also a security blanket of sorts. Think about it: you can take it with you, and given a good wi-fi network, you can stay connected where ever you are. Sometimes, the thought of being that 'plugged in' is repulsive to me, but on other days,I cherish the ability to check my email from just about anywhere. I hate the feeling of 'missing out' on something, and my laptop can alleviate that.

Speaking of being plugged in and needing to know what's happening this very second, yesterday was an interesting day for watching news headlines. Would Hillary Clinton concede? Was she open to a vice president slot? What were the latest numbers on the delegate math, and who's projections were more accurate? Checking various internet news sources - NY Times, CNN, AP - one could develop a bad case of schizophrenia. My brother and I compared notes over the dinner table, and between the different speculations we had read throughout the day, we realized we knew nothing. We knew nothing for the precise reason that nothing had yet to be finalized (except for the announcements of pledged superdelegates).

News is now reported before it happens, and often revised later. The stories on Obama in yesterday's online New York Times were updated at least every five minutes. Where was the new information coming from, and what, if any, assurance were we given of its accuracy? The same goes for other stories and other news sources. Online publication tolerates gossip in a way that print publications never could. Sure, it allows us to have a more immediate grasp of the news as it unfolds, but like I said, there's an incessant amount of retraction and revision. As much as I love to know about things as soon as they happen, I hate reading a story online, going to lunch, and coming back to find that the information previously posted (and often given on the condition of anonymity) was completely untrue.

In truth, I am both a critc of online news and a part of the reason it thrives. I can't talk about loving my laptop without thinking about how often I refresh the screen to see if I have a new email; to see if there's a new lolcat posted; to see if the exit numbers at the polling places have been revised. Like Walt Whitman before me, I contradict myself. So be it; that's company I can live with.

The Waiting

2008-06-03T08:45:00.002-05:00

I'm waiting for several things right now. I'm waiting for DHL to deliver my computer, which had to be shipped back to the factory, and they've indicated that they'll drop it off today. I'm very concerned about the quick turnaround time in getting my computer back to me; it's almost as though they picked up my computer, drove it around in the truck for a few days, and sent it straight back to my house without sending it to the repair shop. I've had bad luck with my laptop lately, and I'm sure that things can't be going this smoothly.

I'm also waiting for registration material to arrive so I can plan my fall semester. I've recieved no indication that I should be expecting these materials in the mail, but for some reason, I'm drumming my fingers on my desk and in anticipation. In reality, my choices for classes will be pretty limited that first semester, but I still want those materials in my hand. I need their attention.

I'm waiting for some checks to be cashed as usual. In luddite fashion, I still pay most of my bills with paper checks, and one of the first things I do every day is verify my bank balance online to see if they've cleared. Fortunately, I also keep a balance in a ledger, so I never forget about an outstanding check - never fool myself into thinking there's more money in my account than there actually is.

There are people that I'm waiting on - waiting for them to answer questions that have long been hanging. There are things I'm waiting on that don't defer to my waiting- like waiting for the clock to say 4:30, when I know it's not even 10:00.

During the wait, you just wish it was over. Tom Petty claims that, "The waiting is the hardest part," and while this is true, the wait is also formative. Delayed gratification can be a wonderful thing, and most people will tell you that the wait teaches you something, or that the destination isn't as important as the journey, etc. It's all been said before. I enjoy the wait. I enjoy the stress that comes with it, and the payoff that usually follows.

If there was some screw-up and my computer comes back to me without being fixed, I will be changing my tune. I will not be happy to wait any longer for it.

2008-06-02T12:21:00.003-05:00

There's a coffee stain on the right side of my shirt that is roughly the same shape and size as the pocket on the left side. My right pant leg has some grease from my bike chain on it, and I cut myself shaving today. I'm probably more comfortable today than I am on the average day when my shirt is starched, my pants pressed, and my face neatly trimmed. We're extremely busy again today, too, and inexplicably, the heavy volume is giving me more energy as the day goes along. Here's to hoping this trend continues!

Long Day. Time For a Free Call

2008-05-30T13:18:00.002-05:00

At work, we occasionally recieve "free calls." A free call occurs when your phone rings, and as soon as you go to answer it, the person hangs up. Not only do you spare yourself from that phone call, but in a situation like mine, you also get placed at the back of the queue. You see, I answer an 800 number along with 10 other people. The calls come in a somewhat random order, but if your phone picks up, you'll be the last in line for the next call - even if that call is a hangup, a free call. It's lovely. We've been super busy this week. I could use a free call right about now.

Well, folks...

2008-05-29T14:32:00.000-05:00

I did it. I spent the gift certificate....on Cormac McCarthy books! Sigh. I promise this won't become the sole subject of this blog, but in case you're wondering, I picked up the Orchard Keeper and Blood Meridian.

I should have been a caballero

2008-05-28T08:26:00.005-05:00

I guess it would be fair to say that I've been very particular in my reading habits of late. With the exception of the bi-weekly book group pick (including this book and this one) and an amazing collection of essays by Alberto Manguel, I have focused my reading on a single author: Cormac McCarthy. Before this blog went on hiatus, I wrote about the amazing experience I had reading The Road. Then, on the strength of the Coen Brothers' movie, I read No Country For Old Men. For the past six weeks or so, I've been in an all-out fight for my free time that I call 'grappling with the Border Trilogy.'

Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy is a triptych of books concerning the lives of young wanderers who, unable to fully find a place in American or Mexican society (more so in the first two books), opt for an unsettled and dangerous quasi-outlaw lifestyle. That's an oversimplification, and one which makes the books sounds more romantic than they actually are, but it gives you a general idea for the overarching story of the trilogy. The first volume, All the Pretty Horses, is a National Book Award winner and the best known of the three. We read it for book group in April, and it received mixed reviews from people whose opinions I truly respect. While I may think they're great books, I can understand that they're not for everybody - both stylistically and in terms of content. Needless to say, they definitely suit my taste.

Okay, let's get down to the unspoken matter of my adoration: I want to be the protagonists in these books. I want to be John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. As a writer, I want to be Cormac McCarthy, and in my day-to-day life I want to be the people he writes about. There, I said it. I live in a different time, though, and closer to the border of America's other neighbor. I ride a bike, not a horse, and I navigate the streets of a city and not the open, desert plains of the Mexican border. I couldn't fire a gun, and I'm much too tied to my day job to do any serious wandering. For me to sally forth in a manner emulating the heroes of his books would look more Quixotic than anything else.

Believe me when I say that I 'grapple' with the works in question. There's a density to McCarthy's prose that causes me to weigh each word carefully. The Crossing in particular contains not only one of the most detailed and thought-out narratives, but parables and dialogue that, far from tangential, get to the heart of the matter. It's not a coincidence that Billy Parham is referred to as the Good Samaritan in the final installment; there's a Biblical gravity to this storytelling.

And now I'm gushing, which means that this post should come to an end. Here's the dilemma that prompted me to write in the first place: I just received a gift card to Barnes and Noble and I'm about to finish the border trilogy. Cormac McCarthy has ten books to his name, and by the end of this week, I'll have read five of them. The question is, do I use the gift certificate to keep buying his books, and keep reading til I've read all ten? Or do I take a break, and dive into something else? Any and all advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to those of you who read and comment - it means a lot!

The Day After a Holiday

2008-05-27T13:46:00.003-05:00

It's Tuesday, but it's the first day of the work-week. I greeted several people in the office today by telling them, "Happy not Monday." It's so lame, I know, but its also crucial. A four day work week - think of it! We got to skip Monday! Well, we skipped the day itself, but maybe not the weekly hardships that come with the first day of the grind. In some ways, we're dealing with more than a Monday in the wake of a holiday.

Last night, as I drifted off to sleep after a long Memorial Day of brat-eating and PBR-drinking, I was reminded of the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I'm not terminally ill, and its a little bit blasphemous to appropriate those terms, but I really did experience something similar to these stages last night. (note: the denial and anger were probably the most pronounced stages, and acceptance the most fruitful.) No matter the length of the long weekend - be it three days this week or four days the weekend before - it's always difficult to get back into the swing of things. It's particularly difficult on a Tuesday following a day where no money moved, no stocks were traded, and nothing settled. Holidays in the financial world are like a child holding its breath longer than usual: it's usually followed by redness in the face and some forceful exhaling. The phone calls are more bizarre today, more frantic. We're handling practically double our usual volume, between calls that would've been made yesterday and the usual load for Tuesday.

Even before I recognized the symptoms in myself, I was well into the denial stage. Like I said, I was at a barbecue last night eating brats and drinking beer - pretty typical for a weekend this time of year in this part of the country. To make things more interesting, the party was double-billed as a birthday celebration for a friend of a friend. So even though I knew that I worked at eight this morning, I saddled up my bike with a six-pack of tall boys and rode up the street to the small gathering. Based on the amount I ended up consuming last night, however, you might have guessed it was a Friday or Saturday as opposed to a Monday. What can I say? The music was good and the company was even better. What we should also consider is the fact that I was in sheer denial about my upcoming busy day at work. Fortunately, I got out of there pretty early and got to sleep at a reasonable hour.

The anger and bargaining stages were less pronounced. Some out-loud hemming and hawing on my bike ride home gives insight into my "anger," and I guess that the ten extra minutes I gave myself with snooze this morning was my method of bargaining. I'm at work and really, it's not that bad. It's a busy day just like any other busy day. I managed to eat breakfast and got to my desk in time to settle in before things really picked up. Putting aside the fact that I had a really great, really varied Memorial Day weekend, it's just another busy day at work. And to think: there's only three more days left of this week, right? Right?

2008-05-22T08:39:00.003-05:00

After writing yesterday's post and reading the Times' Magazine preview, I've taken a renewed interest in this blog. Unfortunately, I still struggle to come up with meaningful and interesting content. I want to write about little things, but in an significant way. Not rote retellings of my day, minutiae pertaining to what I'm reading (more on that later), or just plain ranting; but rather some sort of paring down of situations to their most necessary and captivating facts. An economy of words is important, as I've learned from reading Cormac McCarthy. Hell, that guy hardly uses punctuation inside his sentences. So without further ado, I shall blog.

I've decided one of the best ways to see a city is by bike. Being on foot allows one to totally absorb the facets of a city or a neighborhood, but it's hard to cover a lot of ground. Buses are good for getting from place to place, but they involve a pretty extensive knowledge of schedules. Cars are cars, which means they allow you to get from point A to point B with little regard for the details in between. Bicycles, however, should be considered "amphibious"*. They're not quite motorized vehicles and not quite pedestrian. On a bike, you can ride like a car through traffic - insisting that others treat you like traffic - but you can also sneak between cars, ride on the sidewalk if necessary, and occasionally (and I'm not condoning this) you can run red lights.

I had Monday and Tuesday off this week, and spent most of my time on bike. I rode into Uptown on the Greenway, into St. Paul via the River Road and the Ford Parkway, to friends houses and to bars. The weather was marvelous, and I had what I could consider my first 'Eureka' moment of this spring.

Last night provided a great 'first' of the year, too: the first meal on the patio of a restaurant. My brother, one of his friends, and I biked over to a Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood. With five tables indoors and another five on the patio, its a real hole-in-the-wall, the kind of place I love. Chris and I had been there once before, but the opening of the patio really added to the atmosphere. Our server, a middle-aged Mexican woman, was an absolute sweetheart. She referred to us exclusively as "los jovenes," and when she asked for my order, I replied in Spanish without even thinking about it (probably another byproduct of my Cormac McCathy obsession), "Prefiero las enchiladas...y agua, nada mas"

"Solo agua para ti?" she asked.

"Si, solo agua por favor."

"Eres mi favorito," she said with a wink.

On our bike ride home it was darker and much cooler. I went home to find that the Twins had lost to the Rangers and the San Antonio Spurs were giving up the lead to the Lakers in the final minutes of the game. After drinking a beer and ironing my shirts, I was ready for bed.

* thanks to Em for giving me the term "amphibious" a few summers back.

If I could leave a voicemail for my blog:

2008-05-21T10:02:00.002-05:00

Hey blog, it's Mike. Listen, I know we've, um, been sort of out of touch lately, and I, uh--I know that I'm the one to blame for that. I feel awful, and I know that I can't really make up for lost time; and any excuse that I provide would be, well, just that: an exuse.

I guess I could start by explaining that my laptop hasn't been working for a month or so (it's in the shop now), and I'm getting used to a whole new kitchen table, and whatnot, but yeah, it's been too long. Did you hear that I moved in with my brother? Yeah, I think I had mentioned that. Anyway, I don't want to ramble here, but yeah, expect a call from me sometime soon.

I still love you.

Impulse Items

2008-02-18T14:43:00.002-06:00

I went to Target this afternoon in part to buy dishwasher soap and in part to get myself out of the house. I'm moving in two weeks, and I felt like this trip would also allow me the chance to peruse that store's addictive and affordable line of homeware. I'm not quite used to the two-floor layout of the downtown Target, and I suddenly found myself in an interesting section quite by accident: Computer Software and Games. To make a long story short, I walked out of the store with Sim City 4 (the 'Deluxe Edition,' no less) for the price of $19.99. Yes, among the several strange purchases I've made recently, Sim City 4 may be the most odd and the least expected.

Admittedly, I used to love Sim City 2000, and wasted many an hour of my freshman year of high school playing that game. But seriously, that was back when the idea of 2000 was still somehow relevant, if not downright futuristic. Flash forward eight years: haven't I grown out of this sort of gaming? The answer is no. A simulation game of this sort actually plays on all of my personality traits (and neuroses) quite well, and as my skills and strengths have become more pronounced over the years, it seems only fitting that the lure of this game would increase.

Think about it: I'm a mildly creative person with a really strong organizational streak. I'm sort of anxious, and I have just a slight tendency towards compulsive behaviors. What game could be better for me? The layout of the town is totally up to the player; any practical or aesthetic breakthroughs or shortcomings in New Madrid can be traced directly to me, the architect and mayor. A low-stakes city planning operation that requires constant attention and slight tweaks to ensure maximal results is perhaps the best thing that could come my way. I set it up on my laptop this afternoon and played for about 90 minutes straight. I experienced unabashed joy at watching the population of the town pass 500 people, gaining confidencewith each new homebuilder.

Speaking of new homes, I just realized that this is the first post to make note of the fact that I am moving. Yes, on March 1st I will be relocating to the other end of Minneapolis. The Longfellow neighborhood on the east end of the city, situated between the Hiawatha Light Rail and the Mississippi River, iswhere my brother and I will now call home. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to live with my brother, and to explore a new sector of town. Plus, if I'm accepted to the library program at St. Kate's (fingers crossed), I'll be just across the river from their campus. Speaking of the sorts of compulsive behavior I mentioned earlier, even though my move is two weeks away, I've already packed several boxes. You can call me crazy, but you can't deny that I'm the best mayor that the city of New Madrid has ever seen.

p.s. There's a prize for the first person to respond with an explanation of why my city is called New Madrid.

In the Slipstream; Or, and Image Borrowed from Astral Weeks

2008-02-13T10:59:00.001-06:00

A few days ago, it was brought to my attention that I have not been keeping up my blog lately. This negligence was on my mind prior to the gentle reminder, but it was good to know that someone else had noticed it, too. I was hoping that my new hours at work would prove to be the catalyst for a blog renaissance, but that has yet to materialize. If I thought I had something to say, I would’ve been writing it. Instead I’ve been reading a lot and listening to as much music as I can.

I have ventured into the slipstream with my copy of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, and recently explored New York City through the eyes of two contemporary writers, Paul Auster and Jonathan Lethem. I’ve tapped into full-fledged Midwesternism with Golden Smog and Uncle Tupelo, and the foundations of Christianity with the gospel according to John. Recent releases from Vampire Weekend and Beirut have been mainstays of my CD player for the last month, and I follow the New York Times’ election coverage with serious intensity.

This blog, however, should not be a rote retelling of what I like and how I spend my days. There should be substance in the form of analysis or opinion. Why am I reading what I read? Am I enjoying it— and if so, why? Furthermore, what sorts of thoughts and feelings have these books and CDs inspired?

Let me begin by returning to a word I just used: “slipstream.” The first lines of the title track of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks read: “If I ventured in the slipstream / Between the viaducts of your dreams…could you find me?” It’s a beautiful image, and “slipstream” is the perfect word. The term comes from physics, and it describes an area of reduced pressure that is found directly behind an object in motion. If you’re in an object’s slipstream, you have less air resistance, and thereby benefit from the work the object is doing.

I am in a creative slipstream, ‘drafting’ in the low-pressure zone of readership. I am basking in the work of other writers and musicians, enjoying a zone of low pressure and observing closely the hard work and true craft of professionals. I’ll come out of the slip stream soon, but for now, I’m content to be in the viaducts of another’s dreams.

I bet I'd be good at figuring out timetables for a train station

2008-01-24T15:58:00.000-06:00

Do you thrive on a schedule? Do you like to know where you’re going to be and when? Or does an agenda schedule cramp your style? Do you find that it limits your choices— takes away the possibilities for variety in your day? I believe that one of the most divisive issues in personal habits is the idea of the schedule.

Personally, I love to be on a schedule. This should be obvious to just about anyone who has ever met me. I’ve blogged about my obsession with bus schedules and maps, about my career goal of becoming a librarian, and even about my cleaning habits (I clean the floors of my apartment every Saturday morning, do my laundry every Tuesday night). I used to wear a watch, but I would constantly be moving it along my wrist and checking the time. The fidgeting got so serious that I wore out the leather band of the watch.

For the last six or seven months I’ve been on sort of a strange schedule. Working from 11:30-8:00 PM has left me with the freedom to stay out late and sleep in on weekdays, but it also hindered my ability to perform some basic tasks. Going to the grocery store during the week, for example, requires getting up a few hours early and shopping before work. Happy hour is a foreign concept to me. I usually eat dinner around 9:30. You get the idea.

Monday marks a huge shift in my schedule. I’m being moved up to the day shift, and will be working from 8:00-4:30. These hours will be great for me—I’m a morning person. But the adjustment in my schedule, no matter how beneficial, will still take some getting used to. As odd as my sleeping and eating patterns are right now, I’ve become used to them. There’s something comforting about a schedule, and something very disconcerting about having it change abruptly. In response, I’ve been gradually waking up earlier each day and taking any chance that I can to come in early. In spite of my best efforts, though, I’m in for quite an interesting day on Monday, January 28th.

Cross it off the list

2008-01-23T10:11:00.000-06:00

Today I am going to write the post that I've been meaning to write for a few weeks now. In fact, I wrote it earlier this month and deleted it, only to discover that it has haunted (or been the subject of) all subsequent posts.

I realized early on in my perusal of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan that it shared an odd connection with the book I had just finished, Cormac McCarthy's The Road. In terms of writing styles, the books couldn't be more dissimilar. McCarthy writes in terse prose, using simple sentences and omitting as much punctuation as possible. Even dialogue in The Road goes largely unmarked, and there are times where you are left to guess if a particular sentence belongs to the narrator or one of the two main characters. There is little use of figurative language, and with the exception of the occassional omniscient viewpoint, there is little editorializing done by the narrrator.

By contrast, Kurt Vonnegut has a very ambling style of writing, one which slips jokes and puns into its subordinate clauses and makes humurous use of figurative language. The pure fiction of his story (which takes place on Mars, Earth, Mercury, and Titan) is kept in check by a down-to-Earth (literally), skeptical narrator who editorializes at will.

The Road and The Sirens of Titan find an odd amount of common ground thematically. Both deal with apocalypse, and with the idea of a character wondering if they are the last person alive. The books, in their disparate ways, try to imagine what a person would do in this situation, and what changes it would bring about in their personality. The reader does not know for sure what brought about the charred, corpse-strewn world of The Road. McCarthy makes it clear that the child in the book has known no other world -- he was born during this apocalypse. The same could be said of Malachi Constant's son, who was concieved on the journey to Mars, and who had never lived Earth until his return at age 11. In each case, the parents of this child do have knowledge of their lives before the catastrophe, but they have a blurred sense of the past. So while both books negotiate how these situations would change a person, they each feature a character who has no prior recollection, and who knows nothing other than the 'apocalyptic' world into which they were born. These children, in my opinion, are the truly interesting characters of their respective books.

If I don't stop writing now I'm going to be late for work, so I'm going to leave it at that.

Cold and Quiet; or, Two satisfyingly slow days

2008-01-19T16:46:00.001-06:00

In the last twenty four hours, the temperature in Minneapolis, MN has not been above zero. Yes, it's true: Not only are we well below the freezing mark (zero celcius), but even on the farenheit scale we've been experiencing those lovely things called negative numbers since Friday morning. I am writing, once again, from the kitchen table, where radiators are ensuring that I am considerably warmer.

So far, I have only left the house once today, and that was to make good on a New Year's resolution. Having paid my dues at the U of M gym last Saturday, I've taken advantage of my membership four times already: Saturday, Monday, Wednesday, and now today. I hope this turns into a regular trend. I figure if I can make the trek over there on the coldest day in recent memory, than I should be able to keep it up as things get warmer. Going to the gym is one way of making sure that I don't fall into a hermetic lifestyle, but this safeguard is kept in check -- and even compromised by -- another subscription of mine: Netflix. The lovely straight-to-your-mailbox video renting scheme has found its way into my life, and it is good. Everyone else discovered this years ago, but I can finally say with certainty that you don't have to worry about whether or not the video store has a certain title. Name the movie, and Netflix can send it to you - often in a matter of days. It's magic, I tell you, that I just finished watching David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on DVD without having to leave the house and walk to the video store.

In addition to physical activity and moving picture shows, I also continue to enjoy the printed word. I recently finished Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan (which I was supposed to blog about last week) and have moved on to Jonathan Lethem's great, dense novel The Fortress of Solitude. More than any other book I've read recently, I feel the need to re-read sentences and even entire passages of this book to make sure that I've gathered a sufficient amount of meaning. This isn't to say that the book is either a) poorly written, or b) some sort of Joycean exercise in prying open the English language -- rather, its the kind of book that slips in an out of casual voice, dense figurative language, and straight narration with alarming ease. You can be reading the thoughts of a character, like ten year-old Dylan Ebdus, and all of a sudden find that he (Lethem) is weaving the most intricate similes imaginable. It's a great book, and I find myself 100 pages in already. Luckily, there's another four hundred or so to go.

Yesterday and today have been the two coldest days that I can remember in the last year or so. They've also been two of the quietest. I had work off yesterday, and other getting a much-needed haircut, I mostly cleaned the apartment and folded my laundry. Last night instead of going to a bar, I played Scrabble with two friends. (note: I did not win the game, but I did have the highest scoring word of the night: "Equine," which was worth 48 points with a triple word score). Today, as I described above, has been similarly serene. Right now I want nothing more than to read another chapter of my book and put some soup on the stove. As a matter of fact, I'm going to get started on that right now.

Fifteen Minutes

2008-01-17T10:21:00.000-06:00

Fifteen minutes: that's about the amount of time I have to write this morning before I have to brush my teeth and run out the door. Luckily today is my Friday. I arbitrarily took tomorrow (which is actually Friday) off, and am looking forward to a three-day weekend. I'm getting my hair cut, I'm going to clean my bathroom, and with a little luck, I may even have a couple hours to just sit on the couch and read a book.

In December, each employee in my office was given a time where they could request time off in 2008. You were allowed to take five days off with no interference from other people's schedules before the system opened up a free-for-all of requesting days. Your place in this queue was determined by seniority. Instead of booking some far-off vacation in June or July, I chose to take off one Friday in each of the next five months. I chose these Fridays at random, and first up is January 18th.

Having recently signed up for Netflix, I am hoping that my next movie arrives in time for my long weekend. My roommate and I have been voraciously watching the first season of The Tudors, which culminated in last night's viewing of the season finale. Unfortunately, season 2 is not out on DVD yet, so while we await its release we are occupying ourselves with other movies. First up in my queue: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.

This is the sort of blog entry that occupies itself with things from everyday life - the sort of quotidian nuances that are more interesting to the writer than to the reader. For this, and for my genearlly absent-minded writing lately, I apologize. My fifteen minutes are up, and it is too late to change any of this.

Absolute Minimum

2008-01-10T10:23:00.000-06:00

My job has taught me quite a few things about the private banking industry. More importantly, it has taught me invaluable lessons in the field of interpersonal communications. At times I feel like an undercover sociologist, using every phone call I take as raw data for some grand view of American society. Well, maybe not society as a whole, but certainly a view of how Americans conduct business over the phone. Recently I've come to the following conclusion about people and their mail: if you send someone a business letter and include a phone number at the bottom, the majority of people will not read the letter. They will simply call the number they have been given and ask for an explanation.
"How may I help you today?"
"Yeah, I just recieved this letter, and I'm calling to find out what it's all about."
"Okay, who sent the letter?"
"Hold on, let me get it out here......okay, so I don't have it in front of me right now, but it was about my account, I think."
"Well, was it a form to fill out and sign, or a notification of some sort of change in your account?"
"I dunno. I was hoping you can tell me what it's about. Isn't that your job, anyway?"
"Well, let's see here. Do you have your account number? No, okay. Can you tell me the date on the letter? No, well, I guess I'd have to ask you to find the letter so that we can get some more specifics. Oh, you threw it away, but saved this phone number? Alright, let's see what we can do here....." and so it goes.

Or, you get someone who will have the letter in front of them, and who will proceed to read the letter aloud over the phone (oftentimes, they haven't read the letter yet). And of course, just reading the letter is enough--they've just explained it to themselves with me on the phone for no reason.

This post suggests two things: (1) I've been spending too much time at work lately, and (2) I'm really frustrated with the way people in this society try to get through doing the absolute minimum, going so far as to not even read the mail that is addressed to them.

True Story

2008-01-08T10:26:00.001-06:00

My roommate picked me up from a friend’s house last night. Then she bought me a banana split and it was yummy. We went home and watched my favorite TV show, which is about kings and queens and knights and ladies. I was sleepy, so I went to bed. My roommate tucked me in and checked for monsters.

This morning, I did all my chores before going to work. When I got on the bus, I noticed that I was wearing navy blue pants, not the black pants I thought I was wearing. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it weren’t for the fact that I was wearing black shoes. I was embarrassed. I still am.

Premature Post

2008-01-04T16:05:00.001-06:00

If anyone saw the post I put up yesterday about Cormac MacCarthy's The Road and Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan, you may notice that that post is no longer there. Turns out I jumped the gun about the way these books relate to one another. Reading another sixty or so pages of Vonnegut, I'm realizing that the theme of the apocalypse is there, but it's nowhere near as subtle as I predicted it will be. This is the last time I jump to conlcusions about a book before finishing it. Look for a revised version of the post - titled 'From one apocalypse to another' - in the near future.

Garage band fantasies, Solid Gold reruns, and other memories

2007-12-31T15:20:00.000-06:00

I’ve been meaning to blog for days now. Alas, here we are on the last day of 2007, and while everyone waits for the big countdown, the only thing I’m counting right now are the hours of work that I have left. Really, I’m excited for my New Year’s plans this year, excited to be out of the fray. I’ve probably been driving my friends nuts with my incessant babbling about “American Girl,” “In the Garage,” and every other teenage rock fantasy that I’ll be acting out from behind the drum set this evening.

In New Years past, I’ve done the downtown thing, and I’ve done the house party thing, and like I said, I’m ready for something different this year. I haven’t had a chance to write a post in almost a week, and having been on the run so much, I’m just looking forward to something low key. I think after this week, my life will slow down and regain some normalcy.

It’s funny, though, because as busy as I have felt this week, I still managed to read an entire book. My reading habits are becoming borderline ridiculous. For example, on Saturday and Sunday this weekend, I had plans to meet up with members of my family. These meetings were taking place in the suburbs (Richfield and Bloomington respectively), and even when my family offered to pick me up, I opted to take the bus each time. The rides were about forty-five minutes long, and involved some pretty tricky transfers. I took the bus for two reasons: first, I genuinely enjoy a really long bus ride on the weekends. They’re less crowded and the ride is really relaxing. Secondly, it’s a great chance to read (provided you’re going far enough that you don’t have to watch for your stop every block). I can get totally absorbed in a good novel while the bus hums along its predestined route.

One of my friends diagnosed my reading habits rather accurately last night. In fact, it goes beyond reading and into other mediums as well, particularly music. It all ties together, really: I read ‘classic’ literature for the same reason I love the song “American Girl,” which is the same reason that last night I professed my love for the TV show Solid Gold. I am obsessed with understanding that which came before me. I spent my adolescence glued to the TV watching reruns of 70s sitcoms, or spinning my parent’s vinyl with a pair of headphones on. For example, I can tell you the names of all the main characters from the TV show Barney Miller, and I can also give you the release dates for every Cat Stevens album. I want to know where the culture I’ve inherited comes from, for better or worse.

Last night I displayed all of this weird knowledge, showing my friends clips from all of my favorite shows on youtube. We watched Solid Gold (special guests the cast from Fame), Midnight Special (guests Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers), and Old Grey Whistle Test (guests Dire Straits). All the time I spent “studying” trashy pop culture is starting to pay off—there’s something entertaining about pulling out random pieces of trivia or an entertaining quotation. So yeah, I’m obsessive in my consumption of culture, be it a 19th century novel, a groundbreaking James Brown TV appearance, or a Super Bowl commercial. 2008 means little to me right now—it’s just a mile marker in my lifelong journey through the goldmines and trash piles of the past.

Links for y'all:
Solid Gold
Old Grey Whistle Test
Midnight Special

And the best thing you'll ever see:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=j4Zkz2pUt_g

Looking Forward

2007-12-26T13:58:00.000-06:00

Yeah, so in the days after Christmas and before New Year’s, there are a couple of behaviors patterns that occur regularly. The first is a realization that the past month has been spent absorbing calories at an alarming rate. This is coupled with a steadfast resolve to reverse the trend, to get out and exercise. I asked my parents to buy me athletic wear and running shoes; I plan on finding a gym to join sometime in the next week.

Along with these goals come other sorts of ways to discipline oneself. I am going to put a certain percentage of each paycheck into savings. I am going to eat more vegetables.

The other trend is to look ahead towards the New Year and solidify one’s aspirations. What am I going to do this year that’s going to stand out? What didn’t happen in 2007 that I would like to see happen? I want to go to Ireland. I want to start a graduate program. I want to join some sort of rock band.

Some of these things involve lists and deadlines. Others require a constant readjustment as the year progresses. I know people who cut themselves no slack, who plan something and stick to it. I know others who give themselves rewards as they improve upon their goals. I just do my best to keep it all straight in my head.

It’s also the time of year for lists, best-ofs, and general nostalgia. As I discussed a few posts ago, I’m no good at those sorts of lists. Tom Petty is in my stereo at home right now, and I’m excited for the official release of the upcoming Vampire Weekend album. I’m reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and next on the list is Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan. That sums it up.

Recommend something to me, be it a book or a recipe; a health club or a dancehall single; a travel destination or a restaurant.

Sunday Afteroon

2007-12-23T12:21:00.000-06:00

Greetings from the kitchen table! I am enjoying an odd moment of silence in a rather busy weekend. It's just after noon, and I am sitting with my third and final cup of coffee. The laundry is in the dryer, and as I look outside I see flurries dusting the cars on the street. It is oddly quiet in the apartment.

Friday December 21st was a big day in my life; I was reunited with several people. One friend returned from a six-month stay in southern Italy, and another friend returned from the east coast to take up living here alongside me in her fabulous, fabulous condo. After work Friday, I was immediately whisked away to a friend's house and then the airport, not returning home until well after three in the morning. At ten the following day (seven hours later), I was suddenly awake again, and assisting my roommate with her luggage. After a few cups of coffee and a delcious peanut butter and apricot sandwhich, it was time to run errands. When the errands were finished, it was of course time to bring all of these friends together. As my dear friend and fellow Minneapolis dweller said to me at the end of last night, "These past twenty four hours have been socially exhausting." So it goes.

For all the connections I was able to make in the last few days, there were, regrettably, an equal number of missed connections. Christmas and birthday parties, concerts featuring friends, and low-key get-togethers all had to be sacrificed in an attempt to make the most of my time and energy. I'm sorry to anyone that I missed this weekend.

Sitting here now at the kitchen table with Mahler's Symphony No. 5 on in the background, I'm realizing how close we are to another social endurance test: Christmas. I'm working tomorrow, Christmas Eve, until 5:00, at which point I'll have to change into a suit and run down the street to meet my family for dinner. Mass will follow, and then we'll head back to Bloomington. It will be another joyous, exhausting couple of days. In the meantime, I've scheduled a dinner with a couple of new acquaintances tonight, just to ensure that I don't actually have another chance to really relax until Tuesday afternoon. Don't get me wrong, though- there's nothing I love more than to experience this sort of surge/change in my social routines.

Somehow in the hustle of this past week (see previous entries for details of late-night band practice), I managed to read Jonathan Lethem's acclaimed novel Motherless Brooklyn. I'd never read anything by Lethem, and it was only through a friend's mention of his name that I decided to read this book. I'm so glad I did - it's fascinating. The premise of the book is that Lionel Essrog, a young man with Tourette's Syndrome who grew up in an orphanage, is out to catch a killer. The person who has been killed is his former boss and mentor, Frank Minna. It turns out that Frank was involved with some shady dealings, and Lionel finds himself sitting on a detective's goldmine of twists, backstabbings, mistaken identities, etc. It's a wonderful book - true to the form of a detective novel, except that its narrator is simultaneously explaining the minutae of Tourette's. It really allows for some creative thinking on Lethem's part, while maintaining the suspense of a crime thriller. I was literally up past 4:00 in the morning trying to finish the book.

In conlcusion, December is a busy month, but in no way resembles the "winter of our discontent;" roommates are an incredible blessing after living alone; and Jonathan Lethem was a worthwhile reading suggestion.

2007 in Review

2007-12-21T11:27:00.000-06:00

I thought about making a Top 5 list for CDs, books, movies, etc. this year, but I don’t think my opinions have that sort of authority. Instead, I’ve compiled a list of interesting facts: CDs I bought on their release date, movies I saw in their first week, etc. Without further ado, a smattering of my tastes from oh-seven.

CDs I bought on their release date:
This is a prestigious category. I have to be really excited about a CD to buy in on the Tuesday it comes out. Only two new releases made this list for 2007.

Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. I had a copy of this before it came out (Wilco is great about making their music accessible in electronic forms), and I loved it so much that I bought a hard copy on the release date. I do whatever I can to support this band.

Iron & Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog. Sam Beam’s new album was completely off of my radar until about a week before its release. It’s a beautiful album, and it was really exciting to listen to for the first time—a lot of new stuff happening. I remember sitting with a friend of mine in my living room, talking with the album on in the background. When “House By the Sea” came on, we both shut up instantly and focused our attention on that song’s strangeness. The whole album is wonderfully nuanced.

Movies I saw in their first week:
This is sort of a funny, random list. Technically, the first movie came out in the last week of 2006, but hey, who’s counting?

Dreamgirls (released 12/25/06). Yes, I saw this movie on opening day. Yes, I loved it.

Breach (released 02/16/07). Not sure why I was so excited to see this one, but I think I saw it opening night. It was okay—interesting considering that it’s supposed to be based on real events. Chris Cooper plays the usual surly Chris Cooper character.

No Country For Old Men (released 11/21/07). I already wrote an entire blog about this movie. I loved it even when it scared/repulsed me.

I’m Not There (released 11/21/07). Saw it the day after it opened in Minneapolis. From the opening sounds of “Stuck Inside Mobile” through the end credits, it’s a ride, but I still haven’t made my mind up about this movie. Is it an imaginative take on an incendiary popular figure— or is it pure idolatry? A little bit of both.

Albums I discovered this year that I should’ve known about before:
Stuff you all probably have been listening to for years and years.

Neko Case’s Blacklisted. Why hadn’t I heard this record before July of this year? It’s an amazing CD, at once haunting and lovely.

Arcade Fire’s Funeral. I know, I’m literally the last person to admire the greatness of this album. There’s little to say that hasn’t already been said about this record.

Best novel I read in 2007:
Probably Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

Best poem I discovered:

Right now I’d have to say Wallace Stevens’ 'A Postcard From the Volcano'

The Beat Goes On

2007-12-20T00:22:00.000-06:00

Tonight was the second in a two-night series of practicing with Consolation Champ. What instrument am I playing, you ask? No, it's not guitar. It's not banjo. It's not even bass. Yes, friends, I've been practicing with this band from behind the drum set for the last two nights, and it has been really, really humbling.

I studied drums from the time I was ten until the time I was seventeen, and then I dropped them cold. I couldn't even remember where my drum set was until last week (half of it in Rocky's basement, half underneath Matt's staircase). Now I find myself filling in temporarily for one hell of a drummer, literally a guy I grew up in awe of. I'll be playing at least one show with Consolation Champ on New Year's Eve, and possibly a few more gigs after that. As I prepare for this epic, three-hour show, however, I'm remembering what it's like to really work at music.

I've filled in with this band in the past, playing bass at shows that my brother Matt had to miss. Bass is something I can handle, though. Bass is like guitar, and moreover, something I have a more steady background with. Listening to the rest of the band tonight, I realized I was trying to redevelop my ear--try to figure out where the drums are supposed to fit. It's going pretty to slowly, to be frank, but I'm confident it'll come together in the end. It's time I was knocked down a peg, anyway.

In other news, I'm really tired. Between holiday shopping, holiday parties, insanity at work, and blowing my ear drums out, I feel that I've had very little time to myself at home. I've got a lot of exciting things to look forward to next week, bbut I still need to find time to clean the floors and buy some laundry detergent. It's the little things. Here, for some visual distraction, is a picture snapped a few weeks ago during that great snowstorm.

'Hurry up please it's time'

2007-12-15T14:44:00.000-06:00

I've got the remainder of my day planned with the utmost precision, courtesy of Metro Transit. Not having a car is making me rediscover the thrill of bus-ridership, with its timetables and need for predestined meeting places.

At 3:10, I will board a southbound 6U, which will travel down Hennepin Ave and then France, arriving at Southdale shortly after 3:30. I will not disembark at Southdale, but rather will continue to ride until four blocks later at France and Parklawn. I will then walk to Guitar Center and find the perfect gift for my brother Matt.

Leaving guitar center at either 4:34 or 4:54 (depending on how long it takes to find that ultimate present), I will ride the 6 four blocks north to Southdale, and kill some time at the mall until a Northbound 6U can take me to the intersection of France and Sunnyside in Edina. Getting off the bus at approximately 5:45, I will walk across the street to the Convention Grill, where I have arranged to meet friends for a dinner of burgers, fries, and malts. (note: my original transfer from 3:10 will still be good when I leave Southdale at 5:30. Hence, my transportation expenses are only $1.50 at this point).

After dinner, I will catch another northbound 6U at 7:11, arriving back at Hennepin and Franklin around 8:00. I will then run to the Lowry Hill liquor store for a six pack of Bell's Best Brown Ale, run back to the intersection of Hennepin and Franklin, and board an eastbound 2C. I will get off at the Riverside Davanni's and walk the quarter-mile to my best friend's birthday party on the West River Road. Getting home from there will be the only question mark in my evening, one which I won't have to think about for quite some time. Looking at the clock, it's time for me to take my leave. HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME.

Rubber Soul

2007-12-13T10:20:00.001-06:00

1965's Rubber Soul may be my favorite album of all time. It's been playing this morning while I make breakfast and lunch, and it has totally raised my spirits. It's always been one of my favorite Beatles albums (along with Revolver and Abbey Road), but right now its sounding absolutely perfect. Paul's bass playing is interesting in a way that it wasn't on previous albums. John's songwriting is getting really crazy. I may have to examine this album track by track and write more later.

An encore; or, Yes, he's really blogging about the weather again

2007-12-11T22:03:00.000-06:00

A base coat of snow has fallen in Minnesota. It's been over a week since the first serious snowfall, and in that time we haven't had a day above freezing. Winter has set in. The snow is no longer powdery - it does not give way underneath your foot. The winds have picked up, and even when the sun is out it provides little relief. Minnesotans are situating themselves for a winter which has come earlier than in recent years. With the weather in mind, I plan further out in advance. For example, I now buy groceries to last me for two weeks instead of one. While it is at times isolating, the weather is also a source of solidarity. Everyone at work, all of my friends, and even strangesr at the bus stop can relate to these climate woes.

I remember that being in school was very difficult this time of year. With winter break approaching, there's a tendency to resent the 'busy work' of the weeks before final. Furthermore, the approach of exams and term papers leads one to spend more time cramming in solitude. The cold weather, coupled with these additional responsibilities at school, causes a real sense of lonliness. Just last night I was at a coffee shop with a friend who is in her last year of college. She was working on revising papers, and I was putting final touches on some applications and essays. Even though we sat in silence for most of the evening (broken by the occasional break to discuss friends and politics), there was something refreshing about doing that sort of work in the presence of others. We both live alone at the moment, and we both agreed that this time of year can be difficult. The difficulty, we decided, is often out of our hands, dictated by a harsh winter climate and extra demands on our free time.

Winter changes other habits, too. In the kitchen, I find myself looking towards different sorts of recipes; I want soups, baked dishes. I make larger portions, and I often cook for more than myself, saving vast amounts of leftovers for later in the week. For whatever reason, I'm really drawn to garlic at the moment. I can't explain these things except to say that the weather plays a role.

In ten days, many of my friends will be arriving in Minnesota. Some of them are coming back for visits and others are coming back to live here. They're coming from various climates, none of which has the bite and relentlessness of a Minnesota winter. Most of these people have past experience with the climate, but I imagine it will still be a tough adjustment. Nothing, however, could compare to the time that my brother brought his roommate Andrew here for Christmas. Andrew is from southern Texas. He thought my brother was joking when he described things like "wind-chills" and "below zero temperatures."

How many times have I blogged about the weather? How many such blogs are still to be written?

Life Studies

2007-12-10T22:29:00.000-06:00

I feel as though I've always read around Robert Lowell. I've read a lot of the 'modernists' that preceded him, and I've read a lot of his friends/contemporaries, especially Elizabeth Bishop. His name always comes up in conversations about "confessoionalism," and he's always been someone that I'd "get around to reading." Honestly, there's no excuse for me to have not read him. So when a friend recently recommended that I read Lowell, I wasn't very surprised. What surprised me was the extent to which I connected with his work, and how immediately I began to like what he was doing.

When I was in the bookstore on Saturday, I ambled through the stacks with an open eye, ready to be grabbed by something new. Looking halfheartedly at the few shelves of used poetry, the slender volume of Life Studies and For the Union Dead caught my attention. These two short collections of Lowell's work are often paired together, and it was the words "Union Dead" that really grabbed my attention. I opened to the first page of text and saw the poem "Beyond the Alps." This was the poem that my friend had told me about; in fact, he had been so excited about it the week before that he insisted on reading it aloud to me. I read it to myself right in the bookstore -- this time with the text in front of me -- and decided that I needed to buy this book.

"Beyond the Alps" is the first poem in Life Studies. It's written mostly in blank verse, and doesn't follow any real stanza patterns -- pretty standard middle of the 20th century poetry (except that Lowell's craft is pretty amazing). The next three poems follow suit, displaying the sorts of things I had always associated with Lowell in my mind: broad-ranging literary and historical references, phrases in European languages other than English, and general bookishness (I'm pretty ambivalent about all of these things; I love them, but I understand that they defy all ideas of accessibility).

After these four poems, which are collectively known as Part I, came Part II. Part II is written in prose, and could be called an memoiristic essay. It's textbook confessionalism, with unveiled straight-talk about the poet's life and feelings. It's called 91 Revere Street, which is the address of the Lowell's home in Boston's Beacon Hill. The essay/prose poem (call it what you will) focuses on Lowell's upbringing, mostly the time when he was about 8 or 9 years old. It's immediately fascinating because of its brutal honesty and its captivating, simple style. That's the real reason I'm writing about this book right now: the style of this prose piece stopped me in my tracks.

Before Saturday,I hadn't read any significant amount of work by Robert Lowell, yet here I am on Monday, claiming him as a kindred literary spirit. Robert Lowell's prose reads the way that I want my prose to read. In fact on a good day, I think I could write a few sentences that might resemble his. I don't know what it is -- his subject matter was so close to being banal, and at times it seemed like he was losing his focus and drifting from event to event. What I liked was that there were no literary theatrics. The prose was simple and measured, letting the ideas hit the reader in a sometimes-surprisingly blunt way. Take these two sentences for example, "Fully concious of her uniqueness and normality she basked in the refreshing stimulation of dreams in which she imaged Father as suitably sublimed. She used to describe such a sublime man to me over teas and English muffins." The rest of the piece is written in this incredibly even, measured tone . It was refreshing to read it, refreshing to connect with a writer who I had so long put off. What else is out there waiting for me? To be sure, there's plenty.

What's in a name?

2007-12-09T16:14:00.000-06:00

In the past, this blog has addressed the concept of its title, "The Kitchen Table," several times (note: I am sitting at the kitchen table as I type this entry, eating a peanut butter and apricot preserve sandwich). But what about the pseudonym and correlating web address? Trystero? MNTrystero? These issues have been conspicuously averted. If you're reading this blog, you most likely know what my real name is. You most likely see me or speak to me on a regular basis. I've even put my picture in Trystero's profile. So why the secrecy?

Well, first of all, there's something about blogging that I think invites anonymity. Consider the fact that Blogger has a built in "Next Blog" button, which can whisk the reader away to new adventures in far-off corners of unrelated cyberspace. For that reason, if someone were to stumble upon "The Kitchen Table," I'd like for my identity to be anonymous. That random reader wouldn't know me anyway, so why would they need to know my name. And furthermore, if there was content in the blog that could somehow jeopardize my character (which there isn't, and most likely never will be), it would be beneficial for there to be a shroud of mystery around "the Kitchen Table." This is, of course, overblown paranoic talk that explains the concept of the pseudonym. But what of the pseudonym itself?

Trystero is an idea borrowed from Thomas Pynchon's book The Crying of Lot 49. I read it in the first college-level English class that I ever took, and I was immediately taken in by Pynchon's style and subject matter. The book follows a character, Oedipa Maas, as she sifts through the estate of a recently-deceased friend, Pierce Inverarity. Among his possessions is a stamp collection, and in the stamp collection is a rare stamp featuring a bugel. The bugel is an ancient symbol of the radical group Trystero, which among other things, runs an underground mail service. To explain the details of the plot would take up too much room. Needless to say, Oedipa decides to get to the heart of the Trystero mystery.

When I started this blog (knowing I wanted anonymity), I knew that I'd want a really witty pseudonym. Trystero, as an idea, is the pinnacle of conspiracy and secrecy. It requires anonymity, but it is also ubiquitous. Trystero was everywhere at once, without being pinned down. I guess I considered myself a really smart, well-read sonofabitch when I decided that my blog would be written under the name Trystero. MNTrystero - the blog's web address - comes from the fact that 'Trystero' had been taken by somebody else.

I decided it was finally time to write this entry after hearing Thomas Pynchon come up in conversation three times in the span of about 24 hours. Friday night I was at a friend's house, and I noticed he had everything Pynchon had written. We talked about Lot 49, and then I asked about Gravity's Rainbow, which I'd never read. He told me he had wasted a month reading it in Corsica, and that I'd do well to leave it alone. The following day I was at a used bookstore with a different friend, and someone on the other side of the bookshelf said in a hushed voice, "Someday I'm going to go back and finish Pynchon's V. It's hard, though, because it didn't grab me like Lot 49." Last night, another friend brought up The Crying of Lot 49 completely out of the blue. I swear I didn't initiate it as a topic of conversation. Again, we came to a consensus that it's a worthwhile read, but she immediately said, "Anybody who tells you that they've read Gravity's Rainbow and enjoyed it is a liar." With all these references to that book on the same day (a book that I haven't thought about or revisited in a long, long time), I knew it was time to finally confront my use of this pseudonym. In case you were wondering, that's the background.

Why not?

2007-12-06T23:16:00.001-06:00

After yesterday, I feel that this blog could use a lighter post, so I've decided to follow a trend popular among high school kids and fill out a survey based on the music in my computer. I signed in to my last.fm account today, and situated among the usual charts of my listening habits was this great idea of how to gague your tastes. What you do is turn your computer's media player to "shuffle" and keep track of the first seventeen songs that are randomly played. These songs, according to survey-logic, are the soundtrack of your life - each of which is given a particular import. Here are the unedited results of my survey.

Opening credits: "Flamenco Sketches" by Miles Davis.
Not bad: the mellow, modal, album-ending track from Kind of Blue.

Waking up: "O Death" by Ralph Stanley
Not exactly the song I want to wake up to, but hey, the computer never lies.

First day at school: "Streets of Baltimore" by Gram Parsons
Again, I'm not sure of the significance of this track. I do love Gram and Emmylou, though.

Falling in love: "You Are My Face" by Wilco
An amazing song and an endearing phrase. This one fits well.

Breaking up: "Five Long Years" by Eric Clapton
Is there any better song for a "break-up" than a blues standard in 6/8 time?

Prom: "Rag Mama Rag" by The Band
If the DJ at my prom had played this, I would've been the first one on the dance floor.

Life’s OK: "Weary Memory" by Iron & Wine
A brooding song, so I guess it's fitting. I love this entire album, so really there are no complaints.

Mental Breakdown: "Sealion" by Feist
There is something frantic about this song, though it hardly screams "breakdown."

Driving: "If You Want Blood" by Matt Pond pa
I could see myself driving to this song. Definitely.

Flashback: "Laurel Blues" by Ida
Often when I'm in the mood for Ida, I'm also in the mood for laying flat on my back in the middle of the room, so yes, this is fitting.

Getting Back Together: "Man on the Moon" by R.E.M.
Great song, not sure of its relevance here.

Birth of Child: "Everybody Hurts" by R.E.M.
Really? Two in a row from Automatic for the People? I hope everybody doesn't hurt when a child is born.

Wedding Scene: "Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right" by the Decemberists
While I would love to hear the Decemberists at my wedding, I have a feeling this song would make any bride-to-be cry.

Final Battle: "Across the Great Divide" by the Band
Nice! I didn't think I'd get two songs from the Band, but this one is really fitting. I guess the great divide must be metaphorical in this case.

Death Scene: "Superconnected" by Broken Social Scene
Epic.

Funeral Song: "Upward Over the Mountain" by Iron & Wine
I can only hope this song is actually played at my funeral.

End "Walken" by Wilco
Two songs from Sky Blue Sky, too? Sure, I'll take it. An upbeat way to end the soundtrack of my life, as dictated by the shuffle funcion on windows media player.

"When Lilacs..."

2007-12-05T19:55:00.000-06:00

At 1:45 today, I took my break as usual. At 1:47, I was walking through the Crystal Court—the common area of the IDS Center where I work—when I heard a loud crash. I was on an escalator at the time, going to the Starbuck’s on the skyway-level of the court; the crash was behind me. I was on the phone with my mom, and through the receiver, she heard the crash, too.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Something just came through the glass roofing,” I said. I looked at the mess of glass and snow on the ground below me. I saw two legs sprawled on the ground and looked away quickly. “I think it was a person.”

I couldn’t think. I hung up the phone and walked into Starbuck’s. I ordered my drink mechanically, and looked back at the Court. People were starting to gather. The girl behind the counter handed me my change, and I dropped it. I didn’t bother to pick it up.

To get back to work, I had to go down the escalator, through the court, and up an elevator on the other side of the giant Christmas tree display. There was no way around it—going through the Court was inevitable.

Building security was keeping a crowd back as a woman took off the man’s jacket and put her ear to his chest. I didn’t want to see this. I walked upstairs and numbly told my co-workers what had happened. There were sirens outside already. Another co-worker came in with a similar story.

My boss sent out an email 10 minutes later advising that the man had died. He was clearing snow and ice off of the roof, and his death was completely accidental. We were reaching the busiest part of our afternoon, and I was taking phone calls at a pretty quick pace. “You okay?” my boss asked me and the other co-worker. I hadn’t even processed what I’d seen.

The day went on, and things seemed normal on the surface. I’m still at work — nearly six hours have passed — and I’ve got time to think now. It was awful to witness an accident like that. At the time, I was on the phone with my mom, making plans to stop by my parent’s house later in the evening. My car hasn’t been running this week, and I was in the middle of deciding which bus route was going to be the most convenient to get home. When something like this happens, when you’re suddenly reminded that life can end at a bizarre, unthinkably random moment, the fact that your car is dead ceases to be important. Not half an hour after the man at IDS was reported dead, news broke of a shooting at an Omaha shopping mall. Death felt so senseless this afternoon, and so tragically unpredictable. I find solace, though, in a beautiful poem that I read by chance last night. The poem is Walt Whitman’s serene elegy to President Lincoln: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” I read it out loud from start to finish last night, and I'll probably go home and do the same tonight.

Oatmeal and Plato

2007-12-03T10:14:00.001-06:00

In case you didn't already know this, I grew up without a microwave. Thus, there are basic tenents of microwave cookery which are still foriegn to me. For example, did you know that you can make oatmeal in, like, one minute in a microwave? I did not know this, and since I never feel like I have enough time for oatmeal, I never make it. Then I saw the microwave version in the grocery, got curious, and realized it's totally simple. So for the first time in probably five years, I had oatmeal for breakfast, and it was good.

I also want to take this morning's blog as an opportunity to post two of the greatest quotes ever. They both come from Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates and Euthyphro try and reach an understanding of piety, and try to get to the essence of holiness. Socrates asks some great questions:

"Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy? Or is it holy because it is loved?"

and later:

"It is not because it is in a state of 'being loved' that an object loved by those who love it; rather, it is in that state because it is loved by them. Isn't that right?"

That which is loved is dependent on the thing/person that loves it. But the question remains as to whether what is holy is holy because it is loved by the gods, or if it is loved because it is holy. The second quote seems to suggest that the holy is loved because the gods love it. Of course, the dialogue takes several more twists and turns before reaching any sort of resolution. I just wanted to offer this teaser, maybe I'll copy more of it into a later post. Happy Monday.

A winter storm, a fitting playlist, and a digression about The Band

2007-12-01T13:15:00.000-06:00

1 December 2007 1:15 PM

I've been up for four hours now, and in that time, snow has been falling at a steady rate. In fact, I'd say that it's snowing so steadily that visibility is well below half a mile. How fitting that our first winter storm come on December first, right?

Luckily, I had set aside this afternoon for cleaning, coffee, and general R and R. In other words, I don't have to go anywhere. I just finished doing the dishes and reorganizing the pots and pans below the sink. I didn't realize the cookware was in such dire straits until my friend (and future roommate) opened the cupboard last weekend and nearly shrieked at the sight of the mess. The pots and pans, she'll be happy to learn, are now stacked neatly according to size and function. My meticulous librarian-like tendencies have now been applied to the kitchen.

As I was doing the dishes, I put on a playlist that I'm quite proud of. I made it a few nights ago, but this was my first chance to listen to it all the way through. As I walked out of the kitchen drying my hands, I watched the snow fall to the sounds of Chris Koza's "Family Gun," and I realized that the mix I had made was a Winter Mix. (note: some of you may have recieved mixes from me featuring the aforementioned song. I confess, it is a staple of most mixes I make). The mix is still playing, as a matter of fact. We're on the last song right now: "On and On and On" by Wilco. I know that I cheated by ending the mix with a track that has already been established as the ending track on Sky Blue Sky, and I apologize for my lack of originality. But seriously, watcing the snow fall confusedly to the sounds of that ostinato piano part is pretty amazing. Like I said, I'm proud of this mix, and its serendipitous attachments to the arrival of our first winter storm.

Speaking of music, tonight is a marks a very important, long-anticipated event on my social calendar: the annual viewing of The Last Waltz. Almost two years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a person who shares my love of the pioneer, Canadian-American group The Band. The two of us, along with her younger sister (another devout Band fan) have since engaged in semi-regular listening parties and discussions devoted to this amazing group. Nothing, however, can compare to the experience of watching Martin Scorcese's documentary about their final concert, The Last Waltz. This show at San Fransisco's Winterland is among the best live performances ever captured, as far as I'm concerned. On this occassion, the Band are joined by a litany of guests including Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Muddy Waters.

The Band: (R to L Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Levon Helm, Robbie Roberston, Rick Dank0)

My two friends and I each have our favorite member of the group. Mine is Richard Manuel, the piano player and singer, whose voice gives me the chills. He has a few distinct "voices" that he uses on The Band's records: the shrill, fragile falcetto on tracks like "I Shall Be Released" and a deep, soulful full voice of "The Shape I'm In." He puts it all out there on every track, and you can hear the strain in his voice. Richard, unfortunately, was plagued by depression and drug problems, and took his own life in 1986.

My friend's have their respective favorite members, too. The elder sister's favorite is bass player and singer Rick Danko. Rick is one of the craziest bass players I've ever heard, and on top of it, he has a strangely beautiful voice. I can't describe it, but if you know the song "The Weight," you'll recognize Rick's voice on the "Crazy chester" verse. I think Rick is at his best when he's singing along with another member of The Band, but there are a few stand-out tracks of his, like "It Makes No Difference," which is one of the most heartfelt songs I've ever heard.

The younger sister's favorite is the only non-Canadian member of the band, Levon Helm. Levon has an amazing, southern voice, and he's one of the best drummers I've ever heard. He sings a lot of the Band's signature songs ("The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" to name a few), and he does so with conviction. Levon embodies the characters of the songs, giving their folky style a certain sense of 'authenticity.' Nothing will top his vocal performance of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" at the Last Waltz.

Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson on tour in England in 1966.

Anyway, I've been going on about these guys for a while, but that's what happens when I get started on a subject that I'm passionate about. The Band is probably my favorite band. From their early days backing Bob Dylan (yes, that's them on his famed 1966 tour of England) to their amazing first two albums, to their stunning farewell in The Last Waltz, this was a band that made music that was sincere, heartfelt, and uncompromising. When I write and record music, I always hear what I want the final product to sound like, but I never quite get there. When I discovered The Band, I discovered a group of musicians that had found and captured the sound that I continue to look for. The only band in their league, if you ask me, is Wilco. If I were to write about Wilco, however, this post would only grow exponentially.

End of the Road

2007-11-30T18:45:00.000-06:00

Well, folks, today is November 30 - a fateful day for yours truly. It has been sixty days since I purchased my computer, which means that my free trial of Microsoft Office has expired. The 'limited access' that I have to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. is a joke. I basically have read-only versions of existing documents, and I do not have the ability to save them under different names or highlight/cut any of the text. I'm debating the hefty fee that they charge for the full program. I may have to bite that bullet and purchase it.

This change comes at a hard time for me, too. I've got near-final drafts of all of my grad school documents. I spent last night backing up all my files onto CDs, which I can edit at work, at the library, or at my parents' house. I took a Sharpie and gave that CD a dramatic name: The End of the Road. But where is the thrill of writing on my laptop at the kitchen table? Where has it gone-- and what will become of it? I used to write these blogs in Word, and then paste them into this god-forsaken blogger post-building piece of crap.

What's more, I started a short story this week, and it was going really well. Unfortunately, it's the one thing I didn't back up. When I get home tonight, I'll probably read those three thousand words, and look longingly at them, wishing I could edit right there and then. I'll write the next scene on a legal pad, and some time next week, I'll have to translate my chicken scratch back into Word. I want so badly to finish this story, to show my readers the worlds that I've created. Alas, it'll remain locked inside my laptop til that day that I pay Microsoft too much money for their product.

In the meantime, I have my blog; and blog I shall.

Radical Breakfast

2007-11-27T10:23:00.001-06:00

Today, while eating my sesame bagel with cream cheese, I grabbed a slender volume off of the book shelf. It caught my eye as it leaned somewhere between Shelley and Steinbeck. The book was Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. Some people call it abstraction, some people call it poetry, and some people call it garbage. I'm not here to label it, though; I just found a passage that seemed to speak to my blog, and I want edto share it. It comes from 'Objects' section of the book, under the heading "A Substance in a Cushion."

"Is there not much more joy in a table and more chairs and very likely roundess and a place to put them."

I'd like to think she means the kitchen table specifically.

The Kitchen Table; or, How the unvierse finds its way back to equillibrium

2007-11-24T14:40:00.000-06:00

Back at the kitchen table, looking across at a spotless apartment, though it wasn't so spotless when I got up this morning: there were enough beer bottles to fill three grocery bags, the blinds had fallen off the walls, and the dishes were piling up. I was fortunate enough to have a like-minded person assist with the dishes, and a handyman like myself to help fix the blinds. Things are calm again, and it looks and feels like any other quiet afternoon.

Before last night, I don't think that I could say I had ever hosted a party. It was a lot of fun, but it took a lot of endurance. The friends that I had invited weren't necessarily familiar with one another, much less with the guests of my co-host. That was the best part though - looking to see where people stationed themselves over the course of the evening. I had a few regrets as people were filing out and I realized I hadn't had much of a chance to talk to them. I also regret that someone was able to snap a video of me dancing the steps to Crank Dat Soulja Boy. I can do the Superman like nobody's business.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm cut out to be the host of such a party. Dinner parties I can do, but this was a different breed. It was fun to watch people come and go, often bringing with them fresh faces, but at the end of the day I think I'm too anxious of a person. I worry about accommodating each guest, and I end up running around like a chicken with its head cut off - never staying long enough to enjoy a full conversation. To further complicate matters, I was always sipping nervously at whatever I had in my hands, and by the end of the evening I was quite drunk (see the earlier reference to me dancing Crank Dat Soulja Boy). My lovely, lovely landlord made an appearance, and in spite of my drunken antics, she seemed to feel that the apartment - like the party itself - was under control.

Thanks to those who came and helped make the first annual day after Thanksgiving bash a success. Special thanks to the Bostonian who read the Euthyphro with me, the Chicagoan who helped me lead a sing-along to "Road to Nowhere," the resident of the District who gave me much-needed hugs, and the Minneapolitan who re-hashed the Coen brothers with me late at night. Also thanks to my amazing siblings, "Honest Abe" Hernandez, the girl who drives the Cadillac, my other brother Jeremy, the Jennys with the baked goods, the matchmaker in the sweater dress, and my dear old friend Indiana Jones, who received a fifty-dollar check for being awesome. Couldn't have done it without y'all.

Get up and start what needs to be done

2007-11-23T19:17:00.001-06:00

Just over an hour to go at work, and I’m running out of things to do. I finished the first part of On the Road, and I don’t know if I’m ready to start part two. Sal just crashed onto his bed in Paterson, New Jersey — that seems to be a good place to leave it right now. There’s a line towards the end of part one that really stuck with me: “I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.”

This seems to be a true statement. I wrote a post earlier (late September or early October) called the Semiotics of the Seasons. I believe that one of the things that comes with fall is nostalgia. This turning inward, and ultimately looking backward, has something to do with going home. The day after Thanksgiving, this feeling is only too acute. I love Thanksgiving, and I love spending time at home with my family. I get sentimental about people this time of year, not about the holidays themselves.

Speaking of people and holidays, it’s past seven o’clock on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I’m still at work. Hmmmm. I’m co-hosting a party that starts in about two hours, and I’ve got to toil here at the office, waiting for calls which aren’t going to come. I just stood on top of my desk, and I cannot see another person on this floor. What’s more is that on bMonday I was told that I’ll have to work these hours on Christmas Eve, too. As a person who loves to see his family, this news did not go over well.

I feel like going home and cranking the Uncle Tupelo song “Graveyard Shift.” With any luck, my brothers and I will have enough to drink tonight to ensure that this song gets at least one impromptu performance.

“Well, time won't wait, better open the gate
Get up and start what needs to be done
It's running down, there's much you missed
Working on that graveyard shift”

Everything I Try to Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right

2007-11-21T12:39:00.000-06:00

I try to be a good son, and I’m also a little vain about my cooking skills, so this year I offered to bring something for Thanksgiving. I was hoping my mom would assign me a side dish, or perhaps even a pie. I had high hopes, visions of showing up with some exquisite dish. Alas my parents, who are also fabulous cooks (and circumspect of my claims to culinary greatness), assigned me the most boring of all things. Why don’t you pick up some croissants for breakfast?

Why don’t I pick up some croissants? I’ll tell you why—because I want to cook dammit! No argument ensued, and I quietly agreed to bring the f-ing pastries. So this morning, I woke up early and walked the six blocks down Hennepin Ave to Wuollet Bakery. If I’m gonna bring the croissants, I’m gonna bring ‘em in style. When I got there, the bakery case looked picked-over.

“I’ll have half a dozen plain croissants, please,” I said, smiling and waiting for my face to unfreeze after a wind-chilled walk.

“We only have two plain ones left,” said the equally chipper bakery attendant.

I should mention at this point that I was very tired this morning, and feeling dejected about the croissants in general. Before I knew what was happening, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Fine, give me those two, and give me two of the apple croissants as well.” I’ll pause here again to mention that I needed to get six croissants. I left the bakery with four, and only two of which were plain.

I called my mom to deliver the news. “Mom, I got the last four croissants at Wuollet this morning.”

She laughed on the other end of the phone. “I guess I’ll tell your dad to pick up two croissants on his way home from work tonight.”

My dad is making a special trip to the grocery store for two croissants (though it turns out he has other things to get, too). My plans to wow my family this Thanksgiving with cooking skills have gone horribly awry. Vanity truly is a deadly sin.

(note: the title of today’s blog is taken from a Decemberists song)

No Country for Old Men; or, thoughts on a film after a 24-hour digestion period.

2007-11-19T22:43:00.000-06:00

When I got home last night, the first thing that I did was to make sure that the door had closed behind me. Then I peered around the wall that divides the kitchen from the living room to double-check that there was no one waiting for me in the darkness on the couch. I turned back to the front door, half-expecting to see the lock burst to pieces; or worse yet, to hear the slow leak of an oxygen tank. I closed my eyes and I could hear the deep, hardly-audible voice of Anton Chigurh. I could see the eyes with red rims, the ones that always look to be on the verge of tears.

The Coen brothers made a thoroughly chilling movie with No Country for Old Men. The film rattled me with its mixture of violence, suspenseful situaions, and lack of clear explanations as to the characters' motives. The audience was at times squeamish, and almost always on the edge of its seat, and I loved the film, even if its violence was indulgent. It gave me the sort of thrill that will keep me coming back for more.

Given only a few glimpses of the interiority of the main characters, the viewer is left to decide why the action unfolds the way itdoes. The protagonist, Llewelyn Moss, shows a reckless stoicism in his efforts to save his own life (he hopes not only to live, but also to keep the $2 million dollar loot that he found by chance). And Anton Chirgurh, the man who relentlessly tracks Moss through the entire movie, does not seem driven by money like his cohorts. His principles, as Woody Harrelson's character suggests at one point, have nothing to do with the drugs or money that everyone else is chasing. At times, the murders he commits are driven by some weird sense of honor - he is keeping his word to someone, somewhere. Of course at other times, the violence is senseless, unthinkable, and definitely avoidable. For directors like the Coen brothers, it is equally important to show these two sides of Chigurh: the dedicated, highly methodical hitman; and the deranged, limitless psychopath. In an effort to display these two sides, one ends up with a very violent movie.

The character to whom the audience has the most 'access' is the Sherriff played by Tommy Lee Jones. His voices narrates sections of the movie, and in the film's final scenes, he describes dreams he has and scenes from his childhood. We see him interact with his family, his co-workers, and occassionally, a victim or two. If there's one character whom you feel you 'understand' by the end of No Country, it is probably this sherriff. And yet the things you end up learning are hardly revealing: he, like everyone else, can't make any sense of Chigurh's warpath. His life spent as a sherriff has not given him any insight into the nature of men. He feels disconnected from God, and does not know the extent to which men are ruled by fate.

Perhaps this is the most realistic aspect of the Coen brothers' grisly, suspenseful film: the conversations that we hope will reveal the most about another person are oftentimes clouded, inarticulate, and partially indecipherable. Every character is given the chance to explain him or herself in the movie, and the vast majority of these attempts fail.

Stuck

2007-11-18T13:25:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now, but if I had a choice, I'd be out running errands. Unfortunately, I can't leave the apartment at the moment. In an act of pure brilliance, I put all of my socks in the washing machine at once. I literally have no footwear for going outside, and on a crisp, 37 degree day, leaving the house without socks isn't really going to work. Damn. I've had about three and a half cups of coffee while waiting for my whites to dry, and that is only fueling my impatience. I read another chapter of On the Road. I read another canto of Purgatorio. I made a grocery list. All I really want to do is drop off my film and get this grocery shopping taken care of. That, and finish my grad school applications. I'm on the cusp of getting those in the mail, but each morning provides me with a fresh excuse of putting it off for just one more day. My goal is to have everything in the mail before Thanksgiving. To use a GRE word, this deadline will hopefully counteract my recent dilatory tendencies.

Alternative Geographies; or, the unpredictable experience of reading a Devendra Banhart interview

2007-11-17T14:04:00.000-06:00

I read an interview with ‘freak folk’ artist Devendra Banhart yesterday in which he described his aversion to the east coast and his love of California. In his usual way, Banhart moved from talking about his new record to his weird scheme of American settlement/geography in a seamless, near-unintelligible stream of consciousness. In Banhart’s mind, the east coast is figured as a new European colony, while the Midwest is predominately French (typified, in his mind, by Creole culture in New Orleans, though I immediately thought of the fur trade and Voyageurs, too), and the West is an idyllic, Native American pastoral scene. In his alternate United States, the different sections of the country have different languages and “all these beautiful exotic, strange little rituals.”

Banhart successfully sensationalized ‘other’ cultures and also flattened ‘the Melting Pot’ of this country into these weird sections in the space of about 500 words. The weirdest part (from my selfish point of view) is how easily he passes over the middle of the country. With the exception of his claim that it’s predominately governed by French culture, he has little to say about the Midwest in his geographical rant. And while it sounds like I’m being pretty critical of Devendra, I don’t take his comments in this interview too seriously—I’m guessing they were pretty spontaneous.

This rant caught my attention, however, because I’ve noticed similar sentiments in other writings lately. There’s something about the Midwest, and about the central part of this country more generally, that seems to be misunderstood and possibly overlooked by those outside of it. As I mentioned in a previous post, I just started reading On the Road again, and it’s fascinating what sort of ideals Kerouac finds in The West. The first chapters show a grey New York/Jersey contrasted by the excitement of the unknown, uncharted world west of Denver, Colorado. But in the book’s beginning, the middle of the country is almost entirely missing. Chicago is a footnote in the initial journey west; and if my memory serves me, Kerouac later passes through Texas in 24 straight hours, stopping only because it was absolutely necessary. Granted, Kerouac’s idealism in the earlier chapters of the book is offset by his omens about what he would discover beneath the spontaneous surfaces of his friends. Just reading the first three chapters, though, one would get the impression that Kerouac pins all his hopes on the West. I think there’s an underlying frustration in the book that doesn’t get much critical attention. But I digress…

The combination of these two reading excursions — Banhart and Kerouac — made me feel slightly misunderstood as a person who has lived in the Midwest his entire life. There is great literature about the middle of this country, and it’s got a history and culture all its own, but I have trouble stepping outside of it. Just as I admittedly have prejudices about the South, I know there are people who have made up their minds about the heartland. Unlike the stigmas associated with a region like the South, however, I think that the tendency is to just overlook the Midwest – the stereotypes it conjures up are emptiness and boredom (cornfields, the great plains, etc). There’s a lot of pride associated with geographical regions in America. The country may be too big to inspire a broad sense of nationalism (though this has been changing since 9/11), but regional ties are strong enough to inspire intra-national rivalries. Thus, Devendra Banhart makes comments that define the east coast as derivative (it’s nothing but a European colony) while his beloved California retains a certain wildness and idealism. I’d really like to step out of my region and see what it’s like to live in a new place, and to see what sort of things people have to say about the Midwest.

Leaf-blower Revisited

2007-11-14T13:48:00.000-06:00

Well, it happened again today: I awoke to the sound of the leaf-blower. What was once an infuriating interruption from my sleeping habits is now a mere joke. Once again, it was not even eight o’clock in the morning when it began, but like the last time this happened (only nine days ago), I was happy to be startled awake at that hour. I was meeting a friend for breakfast at nine, and this was the perfect way to make sure I got out of bed on time.

What’s more, the leaf-blowing was entirely futile today. The wind must have been blowing at least thirty miles an hour, and every piece of foliage that the groundskeeper managed to get to the curb was immediately making its way back to the pristine lawn. Nature was quite literally flying in the face of his best efforts. He revved the engine, blowing harder, only to find that it did no good. I was reminded of the fable in which the Sun and Wind compete to take the man’s cloak off. The wind of the leaf-blower, no matter how aggressive, was no match for the resistance put up by the leaves. Interesting that man and nature have switched roles in the re-telling of the fable.

...when I run outta shirts to fold

2007-11-12T16:22:00.000-06:00

I’m writing from work again because my time at home seems to be spent mostly doing laundry or sweeping the floors. If anyone knows the Wilco song “Hate It Here,” which the band affectionately calls “the domestic song,” you may notice several parallels between myself and that song’s protagonist. The song raises some great questions, such as, “What am I gonna do when I run outta shirts to fold?” I find myself grappling with this quandary at least once a week. (Note: Jeff Tweedy’s wife calls it “the liar song.”) The above link is to bemydemon.org—a great resource for all things Wilco.

It’s been nearly a week since I’ve posted, and since that last post was actually just pictures, I feel out of touch with my own blog. It was a busy weekend, with both a wedding and another school visit, and I’m more exhausted than usual for a Monday. Luckily, the fine details are coming together on my school search, and all that really remains is to order my transcripts and fill out the applications. If I wasn’t preoccupied with reading for pleasure, these things may have been finished already.

Speaking of reading for fun, I had a great conversation about nonfiction with a friend of mine last night. She, too, has degrees in English, and explained that now that she’s out of school, she’s finally reading whatever she wants to. I laughed out loud when she told me about two recent phases she’s gone through: 1) books on coal mining; and 2) books on mountain climbing. No joke, she said she almost bought a book on tying knots. Even when we read for pleasure, we take it seriously, and I think it’s great to move beyond your comfort zone when it comes to subject matter. If you read a lot of fiction, a foray into nonfiction can be quite exciting. It’s disheartening, though, that so much nonfiction these days is devoted to creating deeper and deeper schisms in politics and public discourse. These things, unfortunately, are the bestsellers.

My book group has settled on a new title. Well actually, it’s an old title, but one which I hope to reread in a new light: On the Road. I know I had an earlier post about my relationship with Kerouac. Basically, I read him until the excitement was gone, and I was unable to find something that spurred me to keep reading him. Hopefully revisiting this book will show me something new. Considering how much I’ve read between now and then, I’d be surprised if I don’t find new facets in the writing. I haven’t started reading yet, but you can certainly expect some sort of mild revelation from me in the days to come.

2007-11-06T21:25:00.000-06:00

I found this picture to be appropriate, considering the name of the blog. I'm checking on the status of my brown rice.

And a rare glimpse of the prep-work for my signature recipe: chicken fajitas! The picture is really small for some reason....oh well!

Below is a pciture of me and my sister seeing her favorite band, Stars. By the look on her face you wouldn't guess that they are her favorite band, but believe me, it's true.

sheer escapism

2007-11-06T13:19:00.000-06:00

Reading the first canto of Purgatorio to myself, I could hear the sound of lapping water accompanying the words. It was an enjoyable way to spend my time between phone calls, and it really put me in a more relaxed mood that will hopefully carry me through the rest of the day.

Speaking of this word ‘canto,’ I’ve always wanted to read Ezra Pound’s collection of the same name. I’ve only read a few of them, but I always see this copy of Pound in a particular used bookstore, and I’ve always wanted to pick it up. My reading list is starting to grow exponentially, and I’m thrilled about that.

the leafblower: a blessing and a curse

2007-11-05T08:43:00.000-06:00

05 November, 2007 8:43 AM

I woke up much earlier than usual today, and while it wasn't by choice, maybe it wasn't a bad thing either. When I say I didn't wake up by choice, I mean to say that I was startled awake by a series of loud sounds, beginning with a leafblower at 7:00 this morning. Is there a noise ordinance that says you can't run a piece of lawn equipment that early? If there's not, I think there should be. I was a little disappointed to see the groundskeeper at the condo across the street operating the leaf blower so early, and to top it off, blowing all the leaves directly into the gutter. Is there some sort of ordinance against that? I think I need to write my city council member or something.

This cacophony lasted approximately seventeen minutes, and by 7:20, I was fully awake. Grumbling about the noise, I made my way out into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. (I put the coffee on before I get in the shower . That way, when I step out of the shower, I'm greeted by the rich aroma of a finely-brewed dark roast and a fresh cup at my disposal. It's amazing.) When the coffee was brewing, I heard another noise from Bryant Ave, this one more annoying than the last. It was 7:30 -- could there really be a jackhammer on my block? Sure enough, I was correct. Directly outside my bedroom window, a bobcat with an enormous jackhammer attachment sat chiseling the street below. At this point, there was only one redeeming thought in my head: at least I didn't try to go back to sleep after the leafblower ceased. And still, there's something almost cruel about going from bad to worse in this fashion.

I immediately rushed into the bathroom, determined to make the noise of the shower drown out any new, terrifying sounds that had yet to be unleashed. By the time I got out of the shower, everything had ceased: pure silence. The only thing attracting my senses was the now-potent smell of coffee in the kitchen. My morning has been uphill from there. Right now I'm eating a toasted bagel with cream cheese and finishing the last of my coffee. Better yet, I had a chance to post a blog this morning, and I'll also have time to read for a good hour or so. Praise be to the leafblower, whose obnoxious noise first ruined and then brightened my morning.

Writing assigments; or, self-imposed deadlines to get me motivated

2007-11-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

3 November, 2007 1:45 PM

This blog will be written in exactly thirty-eight minutes or less. I am writing it as I wait for my laundry to finish its wash cycle. I am writing, as usual, from the kitchen table. I tried to change locations today, and even got as far as bringing my laptop to the Loring Park Dunn Brothers, but it was in vain. As it turns out, going to Dunn Brothers was an idea that everyone had today, and there was not a spare seat in the coffee shop, let alone an outlet in which to plug my low-battery machine.

Why is it that fall makes me want to write fiction? What is it about this time of year that causes my mind to turn to dreams of being a writer? With the days getting shorter and the temperatures dropping, there’s something naturally insular about winter’s approach—it’s a survival instinct to bundle up, to make oneself as warm as possible. Does this translate into a more introspective outlook? In my personal experience, the answer is yes. This doesn’t mean that I’ll naturally produce better creative writing in the fall, but just that it’s something I become increasingly conscious of.

To be honest, the creative work I’m the most proud of was written not in the fall or winter, but in the late spring and early summer of this past year. My creative writing education at the U culminated in a portfolio that I produced last spring. It was probably 15 pages of poetry or so, and for the first time, I felt like I had produced a cohesive batch of creative pieces. The poems were all about travel (a big, unconscious debt to Elizabeth Bishop there), and some of the individual poems are among the best things I’ve ever written.

This coincided with another big writing project: my senior thesis. Since my academic focus was literature and not creative writing, this was requirement for my degree. So in the same semester that I produced all of this poetry, I also produced a lengthy paper on the topic of “fame and poetry.” My subject within this broad heading was the work of John Donne, and the history of these poems in print. Even though this project was due the same day as my poetry portfolio last spring, I don’t feel that either piece of work suffered from a lack of my attention. I am proud of both projects.

As if it wasn’t enough for me to be simultaneously finishing these capstone courses, I was also engaged in some extracurricular writing last spring. In late April, with only two weeks left of school, I took up a “writing assignment” given to me by one of my good friends. The deal was that we would give each other an assignment and spend the summer working on it. My assignment was to write a short story from the perspective of the opposite sex. Even though I was in the midst of preparing for finals, I began the assignment immediately, turning out a forty-page story in a matter of weeks. I’ve never worked as ardently or as quickly as I did on that story. I haven’t gone back to read it since June.

What’s my point here? Why am I telling you all about my writing projects from last spring? In truth, I haven’t felt motivated to produce anything since. I’ve been reading like crazy—fiction, non-fiction, new stuff, old stuff, secular books, sacred books—anything I can get my hands on is fair game. I’ve been hoping that those efforts, combined with this blog, would help me produce new creative work. So here I am, in a time of year which inherently makes me think of writing, feeling like I have nothing to write. I’m suddenly realizing that this has been a theme of my blog throughout. To quote my first entry on this blog, “Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell…something. Anything.” You can’t force yourself to be inspired. The story that I’m supposed to write is out there, and someday soon, it will find me. In the mean time, I hope you can stand my angsty blog.

Because I'm trying to add visual stimulation to this blog, here's a picture of my copy of Richard III, which accompanied me to a beach on Labor Day. Yep, Shakespeare on the beach. Oh, and good news: I finished this blog with exactly two minutes to spare on the washing machine timer.

New books, old books, long nights at the office

2007-10-31T19:28:00.000-05:00

31 October, 2007 7:09 PM

Happy Halloween, everybody! I’m still at work, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but tonight I’m enjoying the sweet relief of being the only one here. It seems I’m the only person that works this shift that didn’t have the foresight to request a half-day off. Oh well, the comparative silence is giving me the chance to be very productive in non-work-related areas. You see, it’s Wednesday, and Wednesday is always a slow day for us.

So, while I sit here waiting for that next call, I’m able to casually type out a nice little entry. I’ve also been doing a bit of reading tonight—from old books, from new books, on the internet, and in print. After reading the first chapter of Eric Clapton’s autobiography on the New York Times website today, I promptly decided to go and buy it on my lunch break. Non-fiction is a necessity sometimes; and for a recovering British Invasion junkie like myself, Mr. Clapton’s book should be quite the fix. His writing’s not bad. Since I just started the book today, I haven’t even gotten to any of the great lore of 70s rock yet: the drugs, the wives, etc.

I’ve become sort of compulsive about my reading and book-buying habits. This has been fueled by a really smart strategy by Borders. Borders has a free membership service that, after signing up, entitles you to some pretty great price cuts and things like that. So every couple of weeks, I get an email with an outrageous offer like 30 or 40 percent off any single item. Here’s the catch: the coupon often expires within a day or two. My mind goes into wish-list mode, thinking of that one book that I don’t have yet. It just so happens that reading the first chapter of the autobiography (an amazing and gracious feature from the people at the Times) coincided with such a coupon offer. This is how my voracious appetite for books of all shapes and sizes is coupled with my crippling inability to not pass up what I perceive to be “a great deal.”

Yeah, these long nights at the office can be tough, folks. In all sincerity, I really do feel challenged at this job some days. Other days (like today, for instance), I feel like I work in a Kafka-esque office of switchboards and waiting rooms.

For fun, here’s a couple of pictures that might explain a few things about me. The first is Eric Clapton with his band, Derek and the Dominos. The second is the late Duane Allman, who Clapton met during his days with the Dominos (FYI: Duane plays the killer guitar part on 'Layla'). I'd say these two musicians did more to shape my early teen years than anybody else. It might also explain my facial hair.

The joys of time off from work

2007-10-30T14:13:00.000-05:00

30 October, 2007 2:15 PM (I'm posting from work!)

I’ve done it, dear reader. I’ve finished the GRE. You won’t have to listen to me toss around vocab words like “perfidy” and “desiccate” any longer. Well, actually, you may have to read these words, but now I’ll stop drawing attention to the fact that I’m throwing them in as GRE words. From now on, they’ll just be annoying displays of dictionary perusing.

While preparing to take the standardized test yesterday, I actually had to copy out and sign an agreement that I would not discuss specific test questions. And while I’d like to ignore their threats and strong wording, I’m afraid of the people at ETS. They’ll find me – I just now it. I wish I could relay to you the essay questions I was privileged to answer. Let’s put it this way: the example that I used to support my argument in the second paragraph involved Galileo and Louis Pasteur.

Anyway, my test was done before noon, and having taken the whole day off, I was able to really enjoy my afternoon yesterday. The relief of having taken the test gave way to some fresh creativity in the form of Moog Thief. I spent a few hours yesterday expanding the latest beats from Studio in the Basement Studios. The composition, tentatively titled ‘Moog Helicopter’ starts with some crisp, digital drum and bass grooves, but slowly gives way to the haunting, analog sounds of the Moog Prodigy. The marriage of digital and analog is both exciting and terrifying. ‘Moog Helicopter’ should be ready by Thanksgiving.

Afterwards, I did something I never have the chance to do anymore: I met up with some people for happy hour. “Happy hour” for most people is roughly equivalent to the time that I get a lunch break. Working til eight has its benefits, but yesterday I realized how nice it would be to get out of work at the same time as everyone else. A few days off can be dangerous to one’s sense of job satisfaction.

Luckily, the combination of a school-visit last week and the GRE this week means that I am a few steps closer to going back to school next year. This is very exciting to me, and yes, I am aware that I’ve been dwelling on this for a couple of weeks. The following destinations are on the table at this point: St. Paul, MN; Omaha, NE; Boston, MA; Portland, OR. Okay, so Portland was inspired by a postcard I recently received. I’m not even sure if there’s a library program there. If you, dear reader, have any advice or experience with these fair destinations, feel free to let me know. I’m all ears.

An accidental post about Lowell House

2007-10-27T23:14:00.000-05:00

27 October, 2007 11:15 PM

Three arrows in a single fist mark the Lowell House on the Harvard campus. Wandering through Cambridge one day with two of my friends, I found myself drawn towards the building. Its gilded weathervane is no different than the others that punctuate the Cambridge institution, but there was something immediately appealing about Lowell House. As we made our way into the campus, Mick, my only friend in Boston, pointed ahead to the tower of Lowell House and said, “There’s a cool courtyard in there.” I nodded, trying not to show my excitement at seeing the inside of the building that had already beckoned me. We walked through a low archway, past a security guard and into one of the House’s courtyards. Identical blue doors lined each of the four walls facing us, and a tree in the center had turned golden as November approached. We walked through another archway into a near-identical courtyard. “It’s almost too typical of a New England private school in the fall,” I mumbled as I looked from window to window of the brick building, trying simultaneously to express my disbelief and hide my awe. This was Harvard, and it was exactly what I had imagined.

The three arrows are held in the right hand. One faces straight down, and the other two cross each other in the midst of the fist. In one version of the crest, there was a Latin phrase underneath. Unfortunately, it was illegible in the picture, and I have been unable to find another example with the still-evasive words. The House, according to official sources, is known for its 18th century bells, a gift from a Russian philanthropist. I didn’t notice the bells the day I saw Lowell House, but I did take note of the weathervane that’s perched above them.

I had seen Harvard two days prior, but that was at dusk, and we had walked through the campus briskly, only stopping to read the occasional words of Emerson at one of the campus’ gates. Other things had been on my mind that night; it was my first day in Boston, and I had yet to plant my feet. In truth, that entire trip was an attempt to plant my feet in a city that evaded expectations. Whether or not I end up in Boston has yet to be determined. The company truly made that trip, and I’d like to thank my host and my always-fun friends (and their family members). This glimpse of Harvard, which literally took up ten minutes of my Tuesday, hardly describes my feelings towards this trip. This entry happened by accident, really. It started with me seeing if I could remember the name of the residence we visted. After finding the Houses’ website, I felt compelled to describe if for myself—from the perspective of a guy who stumbled in there one day in a flannel shirt and a disposable camera that had stopped working.

the joy of the shuffle feature

2007-10-27T11:14:00.000-05:00

I'm slowly but surely loading my CD collection onto my new laptop. I say "slowly" because what I'm really waiting to do is get an external hard drive so I don't overload my machine. Anyway, with the random smattering of CDs now on the computer, I've been unable to decide which one fits my mood at a given moment, and thus, I have given control over to the shuffle function. I don't even choose a song to start with--it does it all.

Anyway, the really exciting thing about shuffle isn't guessing what's next, it's enjoying the odd transitions that the computer comes up with. Most people, for example, wouldn't choose to put Dan Tyminksi's "Man of Constant Sorrow" next to Fog's "we will have vanished" in a playlist. The computer, however, has no sense of taste or propriety. It's glorious. My experience with the shuffle function over the last week has been much like the experience I described in the blog post about remix culture and the uncanny.

If you're interested in seeing the cool playlists my computer comes up with, along with an overview of what is currently on my computer, you can check out my last.fm profile here. This is a cool program that generates "charts" and lists for its users. Very cool, very non-invasive. Yet another internet community to consume my time....great.

The playlist while composing this blog went as follows:
Dan Tyminksi "Man of Constant Sorrow"
Fog "we will have vanished"
Jerry Garcia and David Grisman "Whiskey in the Jar"

Reading Dante (and napping) in the Airport

2007-10-25T19:47:00.000-05:00

There are few novels that I can reread, and upon rereading recapture the pleasure of my initial encounter. It doesn’t matter if it’s my favorite book; it usually loses something after that first read. There are, of course, exceptions — especially if it’s a book that I didn’t entirely understand the first time through (see my eighth-grade perusals of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Moby Dick), or if it’s a book that I’m reading in a new light (see my second time reading The Hour of the Star).

With poems it’s very different. I can reread the same poem ten times in one day, and if it’s good poem, my joy in reading will continue to increase. In any form of writing, I think that rereads will always reveal new facets of the writing and a greater appreciation of the form. With poetry, this is a very illuminating process, and one which causes us to memorize or revisit the same works over and over again.

So what happens with a poem in a long form? If I reread poetry for the joy of discovering its hidden merits, but don’t reread novels because the events of the narration lose their initial thrill, what happens to a form that encompasses both? Poems written in verse are rereadable to me, and so are epics for the most part, but really, it’s much more inconsistent.

One long poem that’s consistently readable for me is the Divine Comedy (technically, it's a long poem divided into several smaller poems, but I'm considering it as a whole for the time being). I’m currently rereading the Inferno, and it’s been one of the best reading experiences I’ve had in a while. The problem with an author like Dante is that there are so many translations, and everyone has a different opinion on whose is best. Since I knew I'd be spending a lot of time in the airport and aboard various flights, I brought along a recent translation that Mark Musa did for Penguin Classics.

The way in which I divided my reading with short naps contributed to my enjoyment this time around. I started Canto I yesterday, waiting in the airport. I had about an hour and a half before my flight, and I was able to read three cantos in a row (including the glosses and endnotes that Musa includes for each individual canto). After number three, I fell asleep for about twenty minutes, woke up, and read another canto.

I did the same thing for the entire flight, alternating between really intense readings (which involve a blue ball-point pen and a dictionary) and short naps. Each time I woke up, I would think of the last passage I had read and the details of that particular circle of Hell. Then I’d reread the last tercet of the previous canto and start a new one. I read I-XV in this manner. It added a great, dreamlike quality to Dante’s journey, helping me to appreciate the imagination involved on the part of the author. Really, it requires a modern reader’s patience and suspension of disbelief at times to get through his descriptions of Hell. We have our own idea in mind, and rarely does it involve Virgil and the entire pantheon of Greco-Roman mythogy.

Speaking of mythical creatures (how often does one get to use that segueway?), it reminds me of an amazing moment in the Inferno, a moment which for me typifies the position of Dante the Pilgrim. Whenever Virgil and Dante enter a new circle of Hell, they’re greeted by some horrific monster. Each time, it’s up to Virgil to speak on behalf of himself and his companion. Often, he explains (in a really beautiful, recurring formula) the extenuating circumstances of Dante’s visit (i.e. why he’s in Hell, but not dead). Anyway, at one point while Dante and Virgil are being ferried across a river by Nessus the centaur, Nessus starts to point out the deeds of the people held in this circle of Hell and the reason for their gruesome punishment of swimming in boiling blood. Dante, perhaps overwhelmed by these descriptions, turns to Virgil:

“With that I looked to Virgil, but he said
‘Let him instruct you now, don’t look to me.’”
(Inferno, XII.113-4)

This is tough love from Virgil. While he may be Dante’s hand-holding guide through the Underworld, the Roman poet draws a line here. Dante the Pilgrim (following the example of Musa, I’m drawing a distinction between Dante the Poet and Dante the Pilgrim/protagonist) often describes the pity he feels for the dammed. His look at Virgil at this moment seems to be a search for an excuse. Too scared to confront Nessus, the rash centaur guarding a violent circle of Hell, our Pilgrim seeks answers from his guide, Virgil. I love that response: “Let him instruct you now.” Virgil knows his role, and he’s going to stick to it. He is the guide from level to level, but within each of the sub-dominions of Hell, Dante has to confront these terrors face to face. Some of the poem's best moments are when Virgil steps aside and let's Dante discover things for himself. It happened before when Dante spoke to the lovers, hypocrites, and heretics; and it will happen again when Dante tears a branch off of a tree in the woods of the suicides. (note: if you haven't read the poem, perhaps you're starting to see what I mean about imaginiation and disbelief...).

Here's a cool illustration of the scene that Iwas able to find on the internet, made available by Oxford University:

Oddly enough, there was a different line in Canto XII that I wanted to write about. And while it's still relevant, I think it'll have to wait for a separate post. I would also like to add that I just consulted another translation (one too fragile for travel that is generoulsy being loaned to me), and those same lines about Virgil read as follows:

"Then I turned me to the Poet, and he said: 'Let him now be first for thee, and I second.'"

That translation comes from the Charles Eliot Norton version of 1902.

A few photos to tide you over until I have a chance to post something else

2007-10-25T10:14:00.000-05:00

That's me in front of the Boston Public Library, which was literally the first place we stopped.

Two of my friends next to the aptly named "reflection pond." They seem to be doing some serious reflecting.

Some thoughts on Boston, followed by a look at Elizabeth Bishop's use of personification

2007-10-18T23:40:00.001-05:00

18 October 2007 11:39 PM

If you didn’t already know, I’m leaving for Boston on Saturday morning. Seeing as tomorrow morning will be spent packing, and Saturday morning I’ll be leaving at 4:45 (no joke), this’ll be my last chance to blog before the trip. It’s possible that there will be some Bean Town blog action, but there can be no promises.

I’ve never been to Boston, but I’m eagerly anticipating this trip. One of my very best friends lives out there, another my very best friends will be traveling with me, and yet another of my very best friends will be meeting us there. I know that it sounds like hyperbole to call ALL of these people some of my “very best friends,” but I assure you it’s true. In addition to excellent company, this trip also holds the promise of some excellent visits. I’ll be having an informational interview with the admissions staff at Simmons College, and I’ve arranged to meet with the uncle of one of my friends, a professor at Northeastern University. Additionally, there’s some killer music in town while I’m there. Possibilities!

Travel is something that I think about quite a bit. Last spring, I devoted all of my creative output to works about real and imagined travel—about the simultaneous excitement and alienation of being in a new and unknown place. Last fall, I did a really in depth reading of one of the greatest American poets, a woman who also writes extensively about travel: Elizabeth Bishop. I love Bishop’s poems, and it’s hard to ignore the travel implications of her titles: North and South, Geography III, and Questions of Travel.

Bishop captures attitudes and feelings in a way that’s really convincing. She can project these attitudes on to the surroundings or the objects of a poem without displacing them completely. Here’s a great stanza from “The End of March,” a poem set on a cold beach on the Atlantic:

'On our way back our faces froze on the other side
The sun came out for just a minute.
For just a minute, set in their bezels of sand,
the drab, damp, scattered stones
were muli-colored,
and all those high enough threw out long shadows,
individual shadows, then pulled them in again.
They could have been teasing the lion sun,
Except that now he was behind them
—a sun who’d walked the beach the last low tide,
Making those big, majestic paw-prints,
who perhaps had batted a kite out of the sky to play with.'

I love the intention she attributes to the different factors at play on the beach. There’s the sun, that chooses to come out “for just a minute,” and which later takes on the “majestic “qualities of a lion. The sun is tricky, appearing behind “them” when they least expected. And who is the “them” that the lion sun teases? It’s not the people on the beach, but rather, the shadows that are thrown by the stones. It is the shadows that sought to “[tease] the lion sun.” Bishop quickly undercut her own metaphor, pointing out that there is no way for the sun to be anywhere except “behind” a shadow. All of this happens while the people who inhabit the beach, those whose “faces froze” do nothing. And yet, through all the incidental descriptions of the stones, their shadows, and the sun, a definite mood has been set.

Because I'm trying to add some visual appeal to this blog, I did a Google image search of Elizabeth and Boston. This is one of the top hits for large images. Bishop is apparently buried in Worcester, Mass. This image, I should note, is from poetsgraves.co.uk ... kind of creepy. Also, according to this website, John Berryman's grave is in Mendota Heights.

My media player is on shuffle right now. I'd like to note that as I finished this post, "Brooklyn Stars" by Matt Pond PA began to play. As many of you know, I think that the bridge to this song is one of the most beautiful things ever written.

Look out, Richfield!

2007-10-17T10:35:00.000-05:00

17 October 2007 10:34 AM
Ladies and gentleman, we are in the midst of yet another gloomy fall. The chance of rain is at least sixty percent every day, and the high temperatures are in the mid-fifties at best. While some aspects of creativity suffer under these conditions, others thrive. One part of my creativity that is boosted by the fall weather is composition, particularly instrumental composition.

That’s right, it’s time for another Moog Thief creation. Last fall saw the release of the fours-song “Fall Back” cycle, composed by yours truly under the moniker Moog Thief. The project was a foray into digital and analog synthesizer technology (think keyboards with floppy disk drives), and led to several other projects, mostly for the New Strategies Inc. marketing team. The soundtracks to those New Strategies videos, inspired by the company’s CEO Brennan Wilder Vance, are some of my most noble achievements. However, like last year’s “Fall Back” cycle, this project is more abstract, and not bound by any thematic concepts at this time.

Returning to the ongoing Moog Thief project has been a goal of mine for a while, but I’ve lacked the necessary inspirations. That changed last night, when I found myself in my old fall stomping ground: Richfield. My brother has an amateur recording studio in the basement of his suburban home, and after work, I was overcome with the need to visit said studio and begin another Moog Thief project. The end result will be forthcoming. There is currently a collaboration in the works, another New Strategies Inc / Moog Thief Multimedia joint venture that may surface later this year. Imagine a Moog Thief music video.

For those who are curious, you can hear last year’s creation, “Fall Back,” in its full glory at Moog Thief’s website. A New Strategies website is in the works, too, so look for future postings on these joint ventures.

Idee Fixe

2007-10-16T12:39:00.001-05:00

I’m trying to write a personal statement right now, one that explains why I want to get a master’s degree in library and information sciences. I’ve mentioned this personal statement in each of my last two posts, which tells you two things: First, it has been on my mind for the last several days; and secondly, it is a source of great anxiety for me.

I’ve written and rewritten the statement four times now, each with the same result: dissatisfaction. Writing this thing is like suffering from stage fright. Whenever I think of the intended audience, I clam up, and I can’t write something meaningful. There are certain ideas that have sifted through each of the drafts, but as a whole, the statement lacks any evidence of passion or sincerity on my part. I’d like to think that this is due to the fact that libraries—the public service that I care the most about—is simply ineffable from my point of view. The reality, though, is that I’m having serious writer’s block getting started on this thing. (note: ineffable is on my list of GRE vocab words)

I would post a draft of the personal statement here on the blog, but I’m worried that if any part of the draft I have at this time makes the final draft, it would be unwise to have an identical passage listed somewhere on the internet. We all know how big of a mess it would create to have my personal statement come up in a Google search (can you say ‘suspected plagiarism?’).

I’ve sent two panicky drafts of my personal statement to one person (she reads this blog!), and I hope that she doesn’t judge me too harshly by the quality of those drafts. If anyone has a strategy for ridding myself of this anxiety/writer’s block, I am open to suggestions.

Blame it on the Tryptophan; or, Why was I ironing last night?

2007-10-15T10:36:00.001-05:00

15 October, 2007 10:16 AM

Last night I had trouble sleeping again, though if you had told me at 9:00 that I would still be up at midnight, I would’ve laughed in your face. I went tomy parent’s house for dinner last night, and after ingesting a lovely turkey dinner (thanks, Mom), I went to meet up a friend of mine for a semi-regular Sunday night study session. Great, I thought, this will give me a chance to take another look at that personal statement I’m working on, analyze my weaknesses on the GRE math section, etc. As I unpacked my books and papers in this friend’s basement at 8:15, I was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. She was busy working on her Drug Delivery homework (I will never understand the chemistry behind pharmaceuticals), and she hardly noticed that instead of taking out a book or proofreading my essay, that I curled up on the couch and promptly fell asleep.

Tryptophan is an amino acid that is found in Turkey; it is also rumored to be a source of drowsiness. Wikipedia calls this an urban legend, advising that the levels of tryptophan are not that much higher in turkey than in other proteins, and that “postprandial Thanksgiving sedation may have more to do with what is consumed along with the turkey, and in particular carbohydrates, rather than the turkey itself.” I’m quoting here, folks. What’s consumed along with Turkey? Well, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and in my case last night, white wine. Regardless, I don’t think I stuffed myself with carbs last night, nor do I think that my meal in general had all that much to do with me falling asleep. More than anything, I just wanted to incorporate that amazing wikipedia article on “Turkey meat and drowsiness.”

So where was I? Oh, yes, I fell asleep. I woke up a few minutes later, and realized that my day was ending in the same way it had begun: I had slept on a couch the night before, too. I always seem to turn inward when sleeping on a couch, waking up face to face with a cushion. I’m always startled momentarily, because I can never recognize the pattern on the couch. I decided right then that I did not want to spend two nights in a row on people’s couches, and I started rubbing my eyes to wake myself up. (note: this was the first time my studious friend noticed that I had been sleeping all along). As I drove home, I was glad at the prospect of getting a decent night’s sleep. I could get at least nine hours at this rate and even get up early enough to do some grocery shopping in the morning.

Well, lo and behold, I got home, crawled into bed, and found myself wide awake. I did everything I could to make myself fall asleep. I read two chapters of Conspicuous Consumption. I counted backwards from 100. I got out of bed and ironed seven pairs of pants. Everything. Nothing was going to deter my now-awakened mind from staying alert. So, I read a few more chapters of Mr. Veblen’s book and finally went to sleep around 12:30. Luckily, I was still able to do my grocery shopping this morning, though in my tired confusion, I left the store without a loaf of bread.

One more thing: I'm listening to "Crown of Love" by Arcade Fire. It's lovely.

What a weekend means to a one who is no longer in school

2007-10-13T11:56:00.000-05:00

13 October, 2007 11:55 AM

For college students, the weekend is a double-edged sword. It is both the opportunity to see friends (and in the case of most college students, get wasted), and it is also the opportunity to catch up on homework. As an English major, there was always that book that needed to be read, or that paper that needed to be written, and come Saturday morning, there were no excuses for further delay, right? Well, what if there was a football game on Saturday morning— or what if you had sat in a friend’s apartment until 3:00 the previous evening? Weren’t these excuses for the dilatory behavior exhibited by most college students? In the mind of a college studnent, yes.

Now that I’m not in school, I still can’t shake the feeling that the weekend comes with certain responsibilities and obligations. While there is no longer any homework to be done, I often come up with a To-Do list of some sort. (Note: I just wrote my to-do list, and instead of getting started on those tasks , I am writing a weblog. This blog is not part of my to-do list.) Often times, the items on my list include things like cleaning the bathroom and ironing my dress pants. Lately, however, there’s been a great deal of excitement in the air: the things on my list are resembling the sorts of tasks I had to do as a student.

There is an essay to be written. There are professors to be consulted. There is even a class to attend and a test to take. My goals of going back to school are slowly taking shape. Next week I will be visiting one of the schools that I hope to attend. I’m currently doing research on other programs and acquiring applications. I’ll take the GRE at the end of this month, and on top of that, I’m still reading for fun. Luckily, I have several friends who are still in school, and their presence has been a great boon for my productivity. I know that they have more rigid deadlines than I do, and so I often find myself with them on Saturday mornings, buried away in a library trying to think of a way to breach the topic of the personal statement.

My weekends, too, are a double-edged sword. There is no longer a teacher asking after my progress or assigning a ‘due date’ for the things I’m doing. Still, I have to bring myself to always be acting as if these due dates are in place. I’m not ready to give up the lifestyle and the mentality of a college student. I want to continue to spend my weekends reading books and writing papers – balancing these things, of course, with late nights and time spent with good friends. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think that load of whites needs to be moved from the washer to the dryer, and those vocabulary words won't memorize themselves.

Thicker Than Water

2007-10-12T10:40:00.001-05:00

There's nothing quite like spending time with your family.

A Gift Given Accidentally

2007-10-11T10:33:00.001-05:00

11 October, 2007 10:06 AM
Many of you who read this blog are aware that last night I saw my absolute favorite band, Wilco. While this wasn’t the first time I had seen Wilco, these were the best seats I’ve ever had (second row), and it would be my first time hearing material off of Sky Blue Sky. And while I don’t want to write a complete rundown of the show, I woke up this morning and felt the need to say something about this band and this particular show.

I believe that the last time that Wilco played Minneapolis was in late 2004, but I could be wrong. They played Duluth both this summer and last summer, but the only recent performance in the Twin Cities was a guest spot on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion . When I saw the band in 2004, they were supporting the record A Ghost is Born, and the songs from that record were the thrust of that show. This time around, they didn’t choose to play extensively from the new record, but the songs they did play off of SBS were my favorites (esp. ‘You Are My Face’…there’s a reader out there who will particularly understand this song title.)

My brother got me a ticket to the 2004 show at the last minute. A friend of his had backed out, and I was miraculously invited to one of two sold out shows at the State Theater. It was a pleasant surprise to see a band I loved on such short notice. In some ways, last night’s show was on short notice, too. Wilco didn’t announce they were playing Minneapolis until early September, and tickets went on sale 4 weeks before the show. To be honest, those four weeks were some of the longest in my life. One of my friends, it turns out, had a pre-sale password, and was able to secure two tickets in the second row for this concert. When she offered me the second ticket, I was stunned –floored by her generosity. I spent the month of September eagerly counting the days until Wilco would arrive in Minneapolis

Since I always seem to happen on tickets serendipitously (due to the generosity of friends and family), Wilco is a band that I associate with community and friendship. It should also be pointed out that the band is active in supporting its listeners, most famously when it made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot available for download before a record company even agreed to release it. The new record, too, was offered in a streaming format before it came out. When asked if it would deter initial record sales, Jeff Tweedy apparently replied that if his fans didn’t like the record, they shouldn’t have to buy it to find out – they should have a chance to hear it first.

The presence of people in their forties and people still in college at last night’s show testifies to not only the longevity of this band, but also its ability to retain its audience. Granted, 1995’s AM and 2007’s Sky Blue Sky are completely different records, but Wilco has refused to stay in a comfort zone, and refused to make the same record twice. Ina live setting, they expect their audience to shift gears instantaneously, an expectation that would make most bands seem schizophrenic. Consider, for example, that they played everything from the country tune “Forget the Flowers” to the noisy “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” in their encore last night, but they did so without alienating a single fan. The disparate group of people surrounding me seemed into every single song, regardless of what ‘phase’ of Wilco that song came from. To summarize the experience with a few lines from Tweedy himself, “Our voices lift so easily / A gift given accidentally / When we’re not sure / We’re not alone.”

I'm a sucker for prophecy

2007-10-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

8 October, 2007 10:10 AM
“Believe me, it is quite possible that your son will turn his back on all your parklands and retire again behind the grave walls and among the tall lime trees of his grandfather.”

These words appear in the second half of Goethe’s Elective Affinities, right before the birth of Charlotte’s child. I must say, I’m a sucker for prophecy, and I probably read this page a dozen times before continuing on. This prophecy is especially fun to read, because it’s delivered by a character that isn’t quite sure of himself. It begins with the strong, imperative statement, “Believe me,” but then quickly doubles back with the qualifying phrase “quite possible.” This character, the school master, is doing his best to maintain a modest position, while delivering a statement that reflects the life choices of a yet-unborn child.

And while at first glance, the prophecy itself may seem kind of innocuous – that the child will prefer the meticulous gardens planted by his grandfather to the roaming parklands of his parents’ generation – I think that it’s pretty powerful stuff. First of all, there’s a sort of reactionary element to it, suggesting that the child will turn to the more insular world of his grandparents’ generation. This world is literally associated with the verb “retire” and the adjective “grave.” It requires no stretch of the imagination to see this lifestyle as being associated with repose, the final years of life, and even death.

Furthermore, I think that the wording “turn his back” is worth noting. The son’s choice to “retire again behind the grave walls” will be a choice that defies his parents, who have spent the first half of the book cultivating the parklands. The son’s choice is a conscious turning away from the world of the parents, one which deliberately ignores the things they find beautiful; it is a choice which will lead him away from them and into retirement.

It is also worth noting that this prophecy is only delivered in the presence of the boy’s mother. The unborn child is of dubious parentage, but we won’t find that out until his birth. His father is either Eduard (Charlotte’s husband) or the Captain (Eduard’s best friend). Unfortunately, both figures are absent at this point in the book. The “grandfather” referred to is Eduard’s father, and the reference to the grandfather is a supposition that the child is his. But at the baptism of the child, another character – the neutral Mittler – is shocked to see how much the child resembled the Captain. As these new details come to light, it is possible that what the child is turning his back on is not merely the vast parklands of his parents, but their lax notions of marital responsibilities and their susceptibility to passion.

This raises the question of where Goethe’s judgment lies: Does the prophecy in the book (that the son will turn his back on the world views of his parents) reflect Goethe’s own feelings— or does he wish us to empathize with his love-torn protagonists? To be honest, I haven’t finished the book yet, so I’m not sure if the author will make any sort of judgment, and if so, where that judgment will lie. Like I said, I’m a sucker for prophecy. That quote will probably be the highlight of the book for me, just as “Beware the Ides of March” are, in my opinion, the three greatest iambs ever written.

Saturday Morning Breakfast (2007 remix)

2007-10-06T13:39:00.000-05:00

6 October, 2007 1:09 PM

When something you experience everyday and take for granted is suddenly made new and strange, we consider that experience to be ‘uncanny.’ With that in mind, I had an uncanny breakfast this morning, and while I ate that breakfast at the kitchen table, I heard an uncanny CD. I then thought about my Friday night, and realized that I had to write a blog on my increasingly uncanny life.

Looking in my fridge today, I realized that I didn’t have any eggs, and that I wouldn’t be able to make my usual Saturday morning scramble. I did, however, have some new potatoes, a green pepper, an onion, some mushrooms, and some diced ham (thanks, Mom and Dad, for the leftover ham!). Perfect, I thought, I can make my favorite Irish breakfast potatoes. The recipe is simple: fry all the ingredients in butter on the stovetop; add salt to taste.

As I was getting ready to take this delicious hash off of the range, I realized that I had some flour tortillas that I was trying to get rid of before they went stale. I also had some tomatillo sauce that had been calling my name for days. So naturally, it became an Irish-Mexican potato breakfast burrito. The recipe I used for my breakfast potatoes probably hasn’t changed much since my great grandparents arrived in this country, but I don’t think it would’ve occurred to them to borrow a few ingredients from their beloved Hispanic neighbors in Alameda County. To me, these sorts of mixtures are nothing new. My best friends are vegans and vegetarians, and oftentimes, we just take whatever ingredients are available and come up with such concoctions. My surroundings this morning, however, made me realize how widespread these mash-ups are – how our culture is increasingly permeable.

While I was cooking my breakfast and cleaning my apartment, I was listening to one of my favorite recently-released CDs: The Beatles’ Love compilation. For those of you who haven’t heard it, this is not a greatest hits record. It’s a full-blow Beatles mash-up, a remix of the songs you know backwards and forwards. Here’s how it works: George Martin and his son Giles have gone back and combined Beatles songs with one another, for example laying the guitar solo from ‘Taxman’ and the vocals to ‘The Word’ over the drums and piano from ‘Drive My Car.’ The experience is totally uncanny, and if you know the Beatles catalog well enough, the first few listens to this record will cause you a great deal of excitement. My favorite thing about this experiment is the fact that no outside sounds were used: every single horn hit, every single drum beat, was taken from a pre-existing Beatles recording. Still, it’s definitively uncanny: the familiar is made strange. To borrow some words from Lennon and McCartney, “My independence seems to have vanished in the haze.”

My day yesterday was also punctuated by experiments in the uncanny side of culture. I was recently introduced to the work of DJ Mark Ronson. To quote a friend of mine, “I tried to hate Mark Ronson, but it turns out I love him.” Ronson uses cross-genre combinations of sounds to recreate songs as disparate as Britney Spears’ ‘Toxic’ and Radiohead’s ‘Just.’ It’s pretty remarkable, and again, it’s totally de-centering. You’ll be humming along to a horn part, and it’ll take you five minutes to realize that you were singing Thom Yorke’s words: “You do it to yourself.” Late last evening, I found myself at a sold out (oversold, in fact) show at First Avenue . The ‘artist’ goes by the name Girl Talk. Girl Talk consists of a laptop, a drum machine, and a webcam. His entire set is remixes and mash-ups of top 40 hits, Elton John songs, Motown standards – you name it. The audience was eating this stuff up, and showed no signs of slowing down when Girl Talk left the stage at 2:45 AM. We’ve come to love the remix. We almost expect disparate aspects of our culture to meet in unexpected places (Bruce Hornsby samples in a Tupac song, for instance). Anyone who grew up watching cartoons surely remembers the thrill - the sheer novelty and uncanny experience – of watching the Jetsons and the Flinstones interact. Cultures collided – our future and our past came together in a mash-up of confused signifiers. I’ll continue to embrace fusion cuisine and masters of the remix, even as the thrill of an uncanny experience is lessened with each passing day.

An addendum to this morning's post: beginnings are difficult

2007-10-03T23:48:00.001-05:00

03 October, 2007 11:35 PM

13 hours after my initial post, I still don’t have much inspiration to write, but I’m feeling much better about that situation. I woke up this morning with a really stubborn resolve write something strong and thought provoking. It’s funny, because I ended my last post with a quote from ‘Lycidas,’ and I just realized I was quoting the wrong part of the poem. I quoted the very last lines, which are probably the cleanest lines in the entire work. I should’ve been looking to the beginning of that poem for my inspiration. As one of my favorite professors put it: “Beginnings are difficult. Genesis is difficult.”

John Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ is one of the best poems in English, and even it shows the difficulties of getting started. (I should point out here that I used to hate ‘Lycidas,’ and it took three years for me to understand the poem, and to appreciate its greatness. I stand by my assertion that it’s probably the best poem of its length). The lengthy invocations at the beginning talk about the struggle of the writer: his friend has died too young, and he’s not ready to write this elegy. It takes several lines of repetitious invocations to get to started. “Yet once more, O ye Laurels, and once more / Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere…” The “once mores” in the first line and later the repetition of “for Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime / Young Lycidas and has not left his peer” act out the difficulties of beginning. We return “once more” to these difficulties, and they haunt us – we don’t even know where to begin.

It’s funny, because this poem proved to be the right inspiration for me earlier, I was just looking in the wrong place. I spoke of trying to ‘force inspiration’ from Wallace Stevens this morning , and I need to go back and re-work that term: it was a case of displaced inspiration. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go back and time and tell my former self that I've become really attached to a piece of poetry that I used to detest.

Forced Inspiration

2007-10-03T10:43:00.000-05:00

3 October, 2007 10:15 AM

I wrote the time ‘10:15’ at the top of this entry, and it is now 10:22. I’ve spent seven minutes staring alternately at a blank computer screen and a book that sits open in front of me. I got up and made another cup of tea (no coffee this morning, I used up the rest of my grounds yesterday), but still there seems to be nothing to write. I think I’m trying too hard.

The book that sits in front of me is the same Wallace Stevens collection that I wrote about last week. Unfortunately, you can’t force someone to inspire you, and I’m impatient with Mr. Stevens this morning. He’s being cryptic, and not at all giving me the sort of catalyst that I received from “The Poems of Our Climate.” Like I said, I’m trying too hard.

It’s now 10:31, and I’ve been staring at the first 144 words of this post for five minutes. Outside, there is a man with a chainsaw hacking down a tree or a shrub or something. Earlier this morning, an ambulance roared by my window, and I’m convinced that it ruined my REM cycle or something, because I have been having the weirdest morning. Obviously, the gods have decreed that I shall not be successful in my writing ventures today. Let me leave you with some lines that bring hope for better posts in days to come:

‘And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’
-John Milton. Lycidas, 190-3

Seeking conversational rhythm over French press coffee

2007-10-01T23:28:00.000-05:00

1 October, 2007 11:25 PM

This morning I had one of those conversations that I’d love to hear on tape or read in a transcript. It was so lacking in coherence and proper sequence that to outside ears, it probably sounded like nonsense. In fact, it sounded like nonsense to me at times, and I was one of the people speaking. When you assemble a group of friends that know each other well enough, their conversation often turns into a sort of paraphrase; bits of well-known jokes and previous conversations make their way into the mix. Combine this with the fact that we were meeting early in the morning to have breakfast, and you get a pretty complete picture of the scene I found myself in today: one lacking in lucidity, full of so much self-referentiality, that at times it was hard to believe, much less understand.

Two of us sat this morning at the counter of Tao Natural Foods, waiting for our breakfasts and for our third friend’s arrival. I don’t remember what the two of us were talking about, but I remember it being really incoherent. I recall asking this friend about her job, but I don’t remember any of the details we discussed…there are people working on the website…..and events of some sort. The conversation felt full of ellipses, or to use a favorite word of mine, it was as though we were speaking in parataxis – not connecting our sentences with any sort of conjunctions or ‘filler.’ Chatter spilled slowly between us, often lost somewhere between our yogurt parfaits (the fruit juices, smoothies, and parfaits at Tao are to die for).

By the time our third companion arrived, I was well into my first cup of coffee, and feeling much more alert. Nevertheless, the three of us sat at a counter in single file, and I found it hard for the three of us to engage in long-lasting conversations. Oftentimes, someone would lean into far, excluding a third party from the dialogue. Fortunately, the three of us are so used to one another that it’s hardly disruptive when the topic of conversation makes a sudden and irrevocable turn. I feel there are countless half-finished conversations and debates hanging out there, never to be thought of again, let alone finished.

I noticed another pattern in the dialogue of my friends today: the ‘inside joke/reference’ pattern. It happened so naturally that I almost didn’t catch myself doing it at first. While we were finishing our breakfasts, one of the cooks set a freshly baked pie on the counter in front of us, and advised us not to eat it. Immediately, I thought of a scene from the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? in which the character Delmer steals a pie cooling on a windowsill, using his handkerchief to grab the hot pie plate. I made some comment to the effect of,” Well, let me run and grab my bandana so I can make off with this pie.” It was totally a lame joke, and unless you knew exactly what I was talking about, you’d probably think I was crazy. Well, to my luck, one of my friends DID know what I was referring to. In fact, he and I have talked about the brilliance of that movie on several occasions. All of a sudden, it wasn’t enough to have merely mentioned the film, but now we were both spouting quotes off the top of our heads - quotes that had nothing to do with the original scene that I had referenced. One incident that happened by chance in our surroundings was able to manipulate our conversational rhythm, grabbing my thought process and pulling it in a new direction. Luckily, I had friends who were along for the ride.

I’m convinced that you have to spend a lot of time with a person to be able to see their thought process in that way. And to me, no matter how unintelligible or even aimless these sorts of conversations may seem to the outside world, they serve an important role in the building and maintaining of a friendship. These moments of nonsensical chatter are a glimpse at the way in which friends communicate nonverbally. It explains why, in more serious conversations with close friends, words aren’t always necessary. It explains why one of the best conversations I've had in a while was one which lacked nearly all the traits of precise and formal dialogue.

Rush tickets

2007-09-30T12:11:00.000-05:00

30 September, 2007

This is the day on which you should expect an epic post from me. It’s Sunday, it’s rainy, and outside of some dinner plans this evening, I’ve got absolutely nothing to do today. The weather outside is cool, and the sound of cars passing beneath my window on the wet pavement is washing the otherwise-silent apartment with its white noise. How many cups of coffee have I had today? Zero. It’s nearly noon, and I haven’t even made breakfast, let alone brewed a pot of joe. So while this may be the perfect day to sit here and craft the ultimate blog post, I’m afraid I won’t live up to those expectations.

Last night, I was able to cross something off of my list of things to do before I die: I saw a full orchestra and choir perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. The Minnesota Orchestra, joined by four soloists and the 140-member Minnesota Chorale, performed the67-minute Ode to Joy wonderfully. I’ve never heard applause like this at an orchestra performance – it was overwhelming.

Under the direction of Osmo Vanska, the Minnesota Orchestra has undertaken the task of performing and recording all nine symphonies. Besides the 5th Symphony, I don’t think there’s been a performance that has generated as much enthusiasm as No. 9. Ode to Joy marked the first use of a choir in a symphony, and it’s also the last long piece that Beethoven completed. The well known choir part appears in the fourth (and final) movement of the piece, but the symphony as a whole is really remarkable.

The second movement is probably my favorite, with its intricate staccato patterns passing gracefully from instrument to instrument. There was such a rich blend and balance between the different sections that it was almost hard to believe you were listening to a live performance. And while the second movement did this much to impress me, it was nothing compared to the power of the fourth movement. For the first three sections of the symphony, the choir had sat patiently behind the orchestra, on seven rows of risers. As Vanska prepared to conduct the fourth movement, the singers took their places, standing upright and holding their music in front of them. I had almost forgotten they were there.

The choral parts of Symphony No. 9 alternate between the operatic quartet and the full choir, and all of the text is in German. The first words to be sung were written by Beethoven, and they come from a show-stopping solo from the baritone-bass singer: “O Friends, not these tones! Rather, let us tune our voices in more pleasant and joyful song.” The rest of the choral part is adapted from the words of Freidrich Schiller, and is among the most affirmative, utopian texts imaginable. The most famous line, given in the original German reads, “Alle Menschen warden Brüder, / Wo dein santfer Fl gel weilt.” Or, “All men are made brothers/ Where your gentle wings abide.” To hear the entire choir accompanied by the full orchestra sing these words was a powerful experience. The piece doesn’t end on this well-known theme, though. It moves into a strange, meditative section before finally finishing in a now-typical climatic finale. On a whole, the experience was one-of-a-kind. The elements were all familiar: I’ve seen beautiful symphonies performed by professionals, I’ve heard choirs sing both sacred and secular music with that sort of zeal. Seeing these elements combined to express an unequivocal message of universal brotherhood , however, was a new experience – one which is fully realized in the 9th Symphony, and it was truly emotional. And while society has not yet lived up to Beethoven’s image of the Enlightenment, we can only hope that the music may inspire us help each other move in that direction.

How Walter Benjamin and Woodie Guthrie helped me to interpret the Word of God

2007-09-29T12:36:00.000-05:00

29 Sept, 2007 1:25 PM

I've been working through some very enigmatic words from the Gospel according to Mark this morning: "Whoever has ears ought to hear" (Mk 4.9). I'm particularly vexed by this word 'ought.' 'Ought' is related to the word 'owe,' and to say that something 'ought' to be is to say one of several things. First, there is the idea of obligation. To say that you 'ought' to have done something is to say that you were obligated to do it, but that you did not. Secondly, 'ought' can have a meaning of 'advisability.' For example, "You ought to take care of yourself." Thirdly, there is the idea of natural expectation; "He ought to be here by now."

Which of these connotations is implied in the Christ's words? Is it obligation? Whoever has ears ‘owes’ Christ their attention? If you have ears, are you obligated to listen to the teachings of the Messiah? Or, could it be advisability? If you have ears to hear, then it would be wise of you to listen to what He has to say. This seems more probable than our first option. Or, is it natural expectation? One who has ears to hear should be listening to Christ. I like the second option, personally.

Consider the context of the phrase. Mark’s use of this phrase follows the ‘Parable of the Sower,’ in which Jesus offers several possibilities for the acceptance/rejection of His teachings. There are a) those who reject the Word, b) those who embrace it, but ‘only for a time’ (Mk 4.17), c) those who hear the Word, but weigh it against material goods and reject it, and d) those ‘hear the word and accept it’ (Mk 4.20). Obviously, there is one choice which Mark considers more ‘advisable’ than the others, and Jesus’ follow-up to this parable that his audience ‘ought to hear’ seems to me to be more of a suggestion than anything else- it is something advisable.

But how are we to know? The word ‘ought’ is almost impossible to pin down. What does the original text say? Well, unfortunately, I’m working with a translation, and I don’t know. Here I was reminded of a more colloquial phrasing of this saying, one that comes from Woodie Guthrie: “Them’s got ears, let them hear / Them’s got eyes, let them see.” This use of the word ‘let’ appears to be a plea to a higher power: “Please allow them to hear.” For Guthrie, the ability to open ears and eyes lies in a higher power – God has the ability to ‘let’ us hear. According to Mark, there is a choice to be made, one which Christ can recommend, but not enforce. There is a certain amount of free will in the phrase, “Those who have ears ought to hear.” This free will, this choice on the part of the individual, negates both the idea of ‘obligation’ and of ‘natural expectation’ which could be implied by the word ‘ought.’ This argument is by no means flawless, but I think it’s a decent start.

Still, I’m troubled by the fact that this word ‘ought’ is unique to an English language translation. I was thinking of how I could approach the issue of translation when I was reminded of Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Task of the Translator.” What are we dealing with when we read a translation? (By the way, I’m reading Benjamin in translation, so there is even one more degree of separation from original text involved here.) Benjamin argues , “a translation issues from the original – not so much from its life as from its afterlife” (Illuminations, 71). This is sort of an opaque statement, but it will become more clear on the pages that follow. “No translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness with the original. For in its afterlife…the original undergoes a change. Even words with fixed meaning can undergo a maturing process” (73). So, while the word ‘ought’ may be an insufficient, unclear, or even inaccurate reflection of the original text, it is nonetheless a valid one. To try and find an exact wording would be to deny the existence of ‘a maturing process’ 2,000 years in the making. This brings us into a dangerous realm, one where the Word of God is mutable. Benjamin ends his essay with a proposition about this unique situation, one which argues that the essence of sacred writings is not contained in the words: “For to some degree, all great texts contain their translations between the lines; this is true to the highest degree of sacred writings. The interlinear version of the Scriptures is the prototype or ideal of all translations.” (82).

Egg Atrophy

2007-09-28T09:53:00.001-05:00

28 Sept, 2007 9:29 AM
I love eggs. I find them to be one of the most delicious, versatile foods known to man. And for the most part, I’m a pretty good egg chef; I can scramble, fry, poach, or boil an egg with no difficulty whatsoever. Well, today was a different story. I am currently brining water to a boil for the second time today. Yes, good reader, I screwed up a soft-boiled egg this morning.

My problems began when I not-so-gracefully dropped the egg into the boiling water. First, it was immediately apparent that the shell had cracked, as semi-cooked egg white began to spill from the side of the shell. It was like watching a plane lose fuel – simply a devastating scene of irreversible atrophy. The whites were spilling out slowly, and I knew this egg was in for some difficulties. The problems of my egg adventure continued as I realized that there was not enough water to keep the egg submerged. The furiously boiling water, coupled with the eggs natural buoyancy assured that only 2/3 of my egg were underwater at any given time. So not only was this egg quickly losing itself to the water, but it wasn’t even going to cook evenly!

Upon removing the egg from the water, I had that heavy feeling of surveying the damage. It was like being in a car accident, and getting out of your car, only to realize that the dents, scratches, and broken glass were going to be more costly than you anticipated. I carefully moved the egg to a dish (where a perfect piece of toast was already waiting) and took a deep breath before cracking it open. To use a nautical term, the egg had ‘taken on some water,’ which is to say that I opened the egg to find almost all of the egg white missing. Basically, I was left with an uncooked yoke (still intact, actually) swimming in steaming, whiteish water. Not exactly what I had planned to eat this morning.

I am living proof that even the most simple tasks, the ones we perform day in and day out, are capable of going terribly, terribly awry. Now if you’ll excuse me for one moment, my second pot of water is coming to a boil. (Mike goes over to the stove and drops the egg into the water as if he were laying a baby in a crib). The funny thing is that I like my eggs really runny, so I was almost hoping that something like this would happen. Well, not something exactly like this, but a egg that was undercooked at best. On the bright side, both my toast and my coffee have been excellent this morning. Hopefully my second try at this egg thing will prove a success as well.

The Semiotics of the Seasons; or, What we talk about when we talk about weather

2007-09-27T21:40:00.000-05:00

27 September 2007 9:17 PM
I am writing tonight because I missed my chance to write an entry this morning. Unfortunately, not writing a blog was the least of my worries. I woke up late, only to realize that there was something wrong with the hot water in my apartment. That meant that my shower, my laundry, and an unusually big stack of dishes in my kitchen would all have to wait until at least later that evening. Afterwards, in a morning already devoid of order, I stumbled through my routine of making lunch and breakfast, leaving the house without having enjoyed even a single cup of coffee. Pity me, poor reader; it’s been a long day.

Now that that’s out of my system, it’s onwards with an entry of (slightly more) substance. I’m drinking a special kind of tea tonight, one made by the Yogi tea company that’s supposed to be a ‘nasal and bronchial aid.’ This is only one of many signs of seasonal change. Living in Minnesota, one develops an acute sense of the changing weather. You don’t have to have an abnormally affective personality to feel the transition into fall move through your body in such a climate. This entry will be devoted to the signs of the changing weather; a semiotics of the seasons, if you will.

I knew fall was upon us when, last week, after a string of days in the fifties and sixties, we reached a tropical eighty-five degrees. You see, a Minnesota season doesn’t officially begin until the previous season has made one last appearance. We’ll have a ninety-degree day in September. We’ll have a snowstorm in mid-April. Before one season can really begin, the former has to rear its ugly head one last time. Of course, with these roller coaster temperatures came some hasty wardrobe choices, and I found myself alternatively sweating underneath a corduroy jacket, and shivering in a long-sleeved shirt. Such clothing-related mishaps lead to a slight cold- the second sign that fall has arrived.

With several of my friends back in school and moving to other parts of the country (or the world, in a few cases), I’ve found that September can come with a profound sense of isolation. This was especially acute this year as my roommate left a few weeks ago, and this kitchen table – once the spot of so many joyous discussions – is now a place that is almost always set for one. (note: a friend of mine who studies pharmacy is over right now. She and I have a semi-regular homework date, where she reads her textbooks and I study GRE vocab or other semi-productive activities). As this is my first year not in school, the fact that so many of my friends are still studying has been sort of a sore spot this month, but one that has urged me to actively pursue graduate education. And while I may recognize this sign more readily this year, it is truly an annual thing-something that happens every fall.

Finally, there are the smaller details that come with fall: the steam rising out of the sewer at night, the return of jackets, sweaters, caps, and scarves to people’s wardrobes. A general consensus that it’s more difficult to wake up in the morning and that coffee is becoming more necessary. And, as I have demonstrated here tonight, an OBSESSION with thinking and talking about the change of the season. Like I said, you must forgive a Minnesotan like me for rambling (500+words already) about the change in weather. It’s a big part of our lives. So dig out those soup recipes, and pour yourself a nice cup of red tea, because fall is upon us, folks – for better or worse.

(note: thank you to my companion Jenny, who left some red tea in the pantry when she moved out)

The Poems of Our Climate

2007-09-26T10:40:00.000-05:00

26, Sept 2007 10:16 AM

There are many books on my nightstand right now, and when determining which one to read on a given night, I usually have to consider how tired I am. If I climb into bed and find that I’m not as tired as I thought, I turn to Wallace Stevens’ ‘Collected Poems.’ That sounds bad. I’m not trying to say that Stevens’ work puts me to sleep, but rather, I need a certain amount of energy to read it. To use a GRE vocab word, I cannot be too desiccated when approaching the work of Mr. Stevens.

Last night was such a night. Upon opening the book, I found myself in the midst of a collection called ‘Parts of a World.’ The first two poems were good, but it was the third that really caught my attention. It seemed the perfect poem for this time of year: ‘The Poems of our Climate.’ (Why is it that all the best titles are taken?)

In the poem, Stevens does a great job of comparing – interiors that match exteriors, ideas that reflect on other images, and words that get recycled in reference to different objects fill the poem. Here’s a favorite line: “The day itself / is simplified: a bowl of white, / cold, a cold porcelain…” The entire poem carries that steady, almost detached voice of his that I love so much.

What really struck me was the third stanza: “There would still remain the never-resting mind, / So that one would want to escape, come back / To what had been so long composed. / The imperfect is our paradise.” That’s only the first half of the stanza, but to me, those four lines could stand alone. Here’s Wallace Stevens, talking about the way our minds, which are ‘never-resting,’ are still seeking the familiar. We want something that has already been ‘composed.’ There’s a certain comfort in that, but, as the fourth line tells us, there’s something ‘imperfect’ in resting on these precedents. ‘Imperfect’ is a great word here, because ‘imperfect’ also refers to a specific use of the past tense. With this single word, Stevens not only looks back to the past as a sort of ‘paradise,’ but also qualifies that paradise as something less than perfect. All of a sudden this poem, with its beautiful similes, it’s rich imagery of color and light, shows itself to be somehow associated with things that “had been so long composed” : other poems of a similar nature. Stevens wrote a beautiful poem, and in the end, he bears the device (familiarity) that allows us to enjoy the poem so much. Many of his poems do this, and it’s no surprise that many of his titles (including this one) expose the fact that poetry is often about writing poetry.

Today's goal: write one million words

2007-09-25T10:08:00.001-05:00

25, Sept. 2007 10:08 AM

I'll admit that I'm not as ardent a Jack Kerouac fan as I used to be, but writing that post yesterday about late-50s jazz definitely brought him to mind. To be sure, the Beats' love of jazz (and more specifically, of Charlie Parker) was sort of a gateway for me into music. That's not, however, what I'm going to write about this morning, but I did feel the need to preface this post in some way.

It's been at least a few years since I've read any of Kerouac's books. At one point, I was reading them voraciously, working on a term paper that had to include at least a thousand pages of reading from a single author. It was intense, and honestly, after that experience, I've had trouble going back to his work with the same zeal.

This past spring I was in Brooklyn, spending spring break with my brother. I would wake up around eight o'clock each morning - half an hour after he had left for work, but still a full three hours before my travel companions were out of bed. Each morning, I would pull a different book from the shelf and just sort of browse his library in that manner. Every day I would see this book Windblown World, but it wasn't until the fifth or sixth day that I decided to open it. I was rather impressed. The book is a collection of Kerouac's journals, and I happened to open at random to a 'writing journal' that documented his progress for the book The Town and The City.

While everyone thinks of this writer, and the Beats more generally, as the pinnacle of spontaneity, these journals seemed to prove otherwise. Kerouac was obsessed with word counts, and while he could produce a staggering amount of material in a short time, he was always giving himself deadlines and goals. He didn't simply write until he couldn't write anymore - he was working with limits, which in some ways, refutes the myth of 'spontaneous bop prosody.' In other words, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." A caveat is needed: even though I am claiming that Kerouac was working within 'limits,' it should still be noted that those limits were astronomically high. The sheer volume of words he would assign himself was almost unhuman. I expected to turn the page and see: 'Today's goal: write one million words.'

So where was I going with this? Well, it's recently been brought to my attention that I'm not the erratic, spontaneous person I once dreamed I'd become. I mean, just the other day I got really excited about buying a new file cabinet. I prefer things to have a certain order to them. Maybe that's why I haven't read much Kerouac lately, or why I'd prefer to sit on the couch with a volume of Andrew Marvell's work instead of Ginsberg's Howl. But Windblown World sort of changed that by reminding me that Jack's prose was just as crafted as Joyce's or Hemingway's - there's just a different veneer encasing each author's words.

Three Feet of Snow; or, Thank You, Paul Desmond

2007-09-24T20:41:00.001-05:00

24, Sept 2007 9:00 PM

Well, I missed my usual opportunity to post this morning, but that's okay, because I think it'll turn out better this way. I was crabby while I was drinking my coffee, and my post would've been a lot less focused if had I written it then. In fact, I just promised someone that tonight's post would be in regards to six notes by the saxophonist Paul Desmond - you can't get much more focused than that.

Paul Desmond played with the Dave Brubeck quartet. I hadn't listened to Brubeck for a while, but just recently an acquaintance threw on the record 'Time Out,' and reminded me of Dave's greatness. You should hear this record; it's pretty much indispensible for anyone interested in cool/west coast jazz.

My acquaintance put the record on with the express purpose of hearing one track: 'Strange Meadow Lark.' When he told me which song he wanted to hear, I was a little taken aback. 'No Blue Rondo?' I thought. 'No Take Five?' When I think of 'Time Out,' these are the two songs that come to mind. Why did he want to hear the ballad so bad? Then he put it on, and I realized why he wanted to listen to this song: Paul Desmond's first six notes.

The pick-up into Desmond's solo (2:10 into the song) is astonishing and beautiful. After a full two minutes of rubato piano, Paul's saxophone will pick you off your fee, and if you happen to already be in motion while listening to it, it'll probably add some spring to your step. I should pause here and note that my acquaintance (I don't use names, so pardon the vague term) is the last person that I expected to love a song like 'Strange Meadow Lark' (let's call the rest of his musical tastes more 'hardcore'). This made it all the more enjoyable to watch him sing along with the solo, his lip piercing catching the light at he shook his head from side to side. 'This is my happy music,' he grinned. ‘If I stepped outside and there were suddenly three feet of snow on the ground, I could put this song on, and everything would be alright.’

In my opinion, the strength of this reaction is not due to the entire song, nor even the entire solo, but rather it is casued by the first six notes - to the way that the solo brings about such a change in the song. My sister often describes her favorite songs in terms of their tremendous 'moments.' Oftentimes, her favorite moments are a point of vocal climax, or some sort of sonic shift. In fact, this brings to mind one of my favorite moments, one which lasts only half a second in the Decemberists' song 'The Bagman's Gambit.' During one chorus, right before Colin Meloy sings the refrain 'No they'll never catch me,' there is a brief moment of guitar feedback. For me, this feedback - this slight anticipation of the distortion that follows - is ten times as exciting as the distortion itself. I think the same is true of Desmond's solo. No matter how beautifully he plays, his notes will never be as meaningful as the pick-up measure which kicks it off.

Further, I think that this ‘moment’ must carry more weight for my acquaintance than it does for me or anyone else. Granted, I enjoyed hearing ‘Strange Meadow Lark’ that night, but what he was experiencing was incommunicable- entirely subjective. Similarly, we all have ‘moments’ that mean more to us than they do to other people; they bring about certain recollections, memories, etc. And this certainly doesn’t stop at music. I’d go on here to talk about other, non-musical examples, but I think my point has been made. Thank you, Paul Desmond. Thank you for making the snow seem so insignificant.

Note: to hear the 'moment' in question, follow this link and scroll down to tracks. 'Strange Meadow Lark' is track two, and if you click the speaker icon, you get a thirty second clip. Fortunately, they've cued it up to the exact location in the song that I was writing about. Enjoy!

Defying augury, one post at a time

2007-09-23T10:35:00.000-05:00

23 Sept, 2007
The kitchen table is a place of comfort and familiarity. I sit here every morning, and the surroundings bring about certain ways of thinking. When I was in school, the kitchen table was where I would sit and do my homework. Now it seems that whenever I have something important to read, or whenever I’m paying bills and figuring out a budget, there is no place but the kitchen table to do these things.

It’s odd, though, that I use a place that is known for its communal function—bringing people together at meal times—as a place for reflection and repose. It’s also odd that this is where I choose to write my blog. The blog, I have always thought, is removed from the sort of reflection that I mentioned earlier. Blogs seem hasty, and indeed, my entry yesterday is proof of that. How can I address the separation of the body and the spirit and John Donne’s poetry in 500 words? Just last spring, I wrote twenty-five pages on the same subject, and barely scratched the surface. Blogs are polemical, encouraging extremity.

I should confess that my blog is an entirely inward-facing endeavor. Not 'inward-facing' in the sense that it contains deep, dark secrets or something. I’m not using it to ‘work through’ problems, but rather, to work on my writing. With nothing to write, I’ll write about blogs….or John Donne…or the fact that there’s not much to write about. As someone who once took pride in his ability to write, I am trying desperately to retain those skills. Being out of school is a great way to lose your command of language. Look at yesterday’s entry: there’s all sorts of word-choice and grammar issues, and sentence variety is almost non-existent. I could blame this on a hangover, but there’s more to it than that. Writing is a skill that, like reading, must be continually worked on. Otherwise, we all start to sound the same. Things become repetitive, predictable.

Shakespeare gave Hamlet the following words: “We defy augury.” Augury is a sort of prediction of the future; it involves interpreting events-to-come from signs and omens. Shakespeare (or at least his character Hamlet) believed that we could defy these signs and write our own futures. Shakespeare’s useof 'augury' is the only example that I can readily find. In other words, even his use of 'augury' seems to defy predictability, choosing it over a more commonplace expression of 'fate.' Let us be more like Shakespeare; let us defy augury in our actions and in our choice of words.

John Donne visits the Uptown Diner; or, Coping with 'contraries'

2007-09-22T14:31:00.000-05:00

22 Sept, 2007 2:31 PM

Again, I find myself at the computer with a cup of coffee and a desire to write. I opened Word not knowing what would happen next. Alas, there is little to write. 'Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one,' wrote John Donne, and that may be why I love him. He knew he was equivocal, sometimes saying one thing out one side of his mouth, and another thing from the opposite side. But really, what were his opposing sides? A passionate devotion to/fear of God on one hand, and a sensual, pleasure-seeking , earthly existence on the other. Can any of us say that these ‘contraries’ don’t meet in us? Is this metaphysical fight something we can honestly triumph over, or will it always be there?

I must pause here and read the poem in question (which I believe is Holy Sonnet XIX), because I want to make sure he doesn’t have other ‘contraries’ in mind. (Mike goes over to the book shelf and pulls down the Complete John Donne. He is correct about the poem’s title.) Okay, I’m satisfied. The poem is about his inconstancies in general—his vacillation between meditating on God, and not. That poem has a great first line, and an equally good closer: “Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.”

Well, what are my best days—and what are my contraries? What am I struggling between? Honestly, at this point in my life, I’d say I struggle between a desire to be productive and a complacency with where I am. I constantly talk about not being in school: how depressing it is, how I wish things were different, how unsatisfying my job is, etc. And then I make these resolutions, like today, Saturday, I was supposed to be taking a GRE practice test. Well, guess who got drunk on cheap brandy and stayed out until 5:00 this morning? Me! Now I can barely write, let alone think about taking a three-hour practice test. I’m currently reading Goethe’s Elective Affinities, too, but the thought of opening that book makes my head hurt right now—it’s too dense, I think it’d kill me one word at a time. So, it’s two thirty in the afternoon, and I’ve got my laundry going while I finish my third and final cup of coffee.

As far as Donne’s religious proclivities are concerned: I feel with him, man. I’m in the same boat. I’ve been systematically reading/dissecting the Bible lately, and it’s been an excellent adventure. But guess what? Eating a Veggie Tex Mex platter at 5:00 in the morning with the taste of Phillips Brandy on your breath is an excellent adventure, too. The thought of working hard to get into grad school is really rewarding, but so is the act of writing an ambling, 500-word blog. Just don’t ask me which are my “best days,” because I haven't gotten that far yet.

...something. Anything.

2007-09-22T14:28:00.000-05:00

21 Sept, 2007 10:36 AM

I have been waiting for this moment for some time—the moment when I find myself alone one morning in my apartment, sitting with a cup of coffee and a laptop. I’ve been in this living situation for months now, and I’ve spent many mornings reading a book with my cup of coffee, all the while thinking of how great it would be to write something. Thinking to myself, “If only I had a laptop, that would solve everything.”

You see, I had a desktop, but I have since given it to my parents. When I moved here, I brought many journals, many notepads, and many pieces of scratch paper, but I find that my hand cannot keep up with my mind the way a keyboard can. I am a child of this age; my mind dictates at the speed I can type. So, after a few months of hard work at the bank, and after countless ideas have flitted in and out of my head, supposedly vanquished to the abyss of unwritten works because I lacked the proper equipage, I am ready to start writing. Sing in me, O Muse, and through me tell….something. Anything.

I’m waiting. You can start any time.