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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
I am finding it clumsy writing about the characters in Blindness without having names for them. I understand, sort of, why Saramago does not want to give them names; but if he had, it would make it easier to think about the book. I had this same reaction recently to another book, I am forgetting which one.*
I found the rape scene utterly devastating -- so even without names, I am apprehending the characters enough as individuals, to feel for them. This book is generally getting under my skin -- the descriptions of walking through the sewage on the hallway floors are viscerally revolting, as strongly as anything from any other book I can think of. (Specifically, the comparison that came to mind when I was reading the first such description, was to the coprophagy scene in Gravity's Rainbow.)
posted evening of January first, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Blindness
Be quiet the doctor's wife said gently, let's all keep quiet, there are times when words serve no purpose, if only I, too, could weep, say everything with tears, not have to speak in order to be understood.
I'm not sure quite why, but this line (from Blindness, after the doctor's wife has approached her husband and the woman with dark glasses, who have just had sex together) touches me very deeply.
At the matinée today we watched The Water Horse and greatly enjoyed it. But it had this problem: nothing about it was original. The characters were all stock characters, the plot was such that you knew very well at every moment what would be happening in the next minute. The shots all had a very familiar feeling to them.
What made it fun and enjoyable to watch (besides the skill and talent with which it was assembled, which were considerable), was sitting next to Sylvia and watching her take it all in. That same thing has saved worse movies for me. Like some of the corny, manipulative film tricks have worn off for me, but I can still experience the reaction to them at second hand.
We saw previews for a couple of films that looked just hilarious, one about an adventure writer who is an agoraphobe until she is called on by a young fan whose island paradise is invaded by pirates, and her main character comes to life and helps her save the day -- so many confused bits of cheese pasted together -- and one about an American Girl (tm) doll who comes to life and seeks employment in the misogynistic world of mid-20th-Century journalism, if I've got that straight.
posted evening of January first, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
Gee, I hope I have more than a single melody in my head. The one I wrote out this evening is very similar in structure to "Sally's Sleeping" and "Sally Woke Up"; I am calling this one "Sally's Dreaming" (ABC format, PDF). Here are the three of them together:
posted evening of January first, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Songs
So I was working on a short air for viola this morning and I went to write it down; and I realized it was almost exactly the same song as Sally's Sleeping, except in 4/4 time instead of 12/8. That one difference makes it sound like quite a distinct song! (Well also I'm playing it in a different key and faster.) Here they are together:
Update: added a new melody to the Sally cycle. See new post for the recording.
Looking at the two side by side a little more, I realize there is another distinction: "Sally's Sleeping" starts on the tonic, and "Sally Woke Up" is a similar pattern of notes but starting on the third. This distinction must be something like an inversion but I'm not sure what words I would use in talking about it.
(Sylvia says, "So you mean, it's like Junie B. Jones and then Junie B., First Grader?" Exactly.)
posted afternoon of January first, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
Hm, a couple of things seem not quite right with continuity in Blindness. Like for instance, my tracking of the time the inmates have been quarantined suggests it's been not so long, maybe a week at most, at the point the old man with the eye patch joins them. But the events he narrates from the outside world sound like they take place over a month or more. (More specifically, he is talking about many quarantine centers already being full of blind people; but before the arrival of the group he was in, this center was not full, and it was the very first one to be opened.) Also the wife of the first blind man says she went blind at home, weeping into a handkerchief; but she was already in the quarantine when she went blind, and this is not something I would expect her to lie about. Not a huge thing though. The narration is growing perceptibly more reserved since those remarks about formal language -- like the narrator is using formal language and technical detail to distance himself from the events he's describing.
I want to find out who is the owner of the "unfamiliar voice" being referenced in the scene where they all describe what was the last thing they saw before going blind. (And come to think of it, why is the opthalmologist's wife not reacting and identifying the newcomer?)
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2007: 3 responses ➳ More posts about Readings
Thanks for reading, everybody! See you next year. (Expect the recent accelerated rate of posting to slow back a bit, there will be stuff to do at work.) Here ya go:
posted afternoon of December 31st, 2007: 2 responses ➳ More posts about Music
From this point onward, apart from a few inevitable comments, the story of the old man with the black eyepatch will no longer be followed to the letter, being replaced by a reorganised version of his discourse, re-evaluated in the light of a correct and more appropriate vocabulary. The reason for this previously unforeseen change is the rather formal controlled language, used by the narrator, which almost disqualifies him as a complementary reporter, however important he may be, because without him we would have no way of knowing what happened in the outside world, as a complementary reporter, as we were saying, of these extraordinary events, when as we know the description of any facts can only gain with the rigour and suitability of the terms used.
--José Saramago, Blindness
I'm struggling with this passage a little. It seems to me like it must be pretty important to the story, coming as it does near the center of the book and immediately after the scene in which the old man with the eyepatch, "the one person who was missing here", joins the inmates of the opthalmologist's ward. Some significant shift in the narration is occurring here -- this is the first time the narrator has referred to himself and to the job he is doing in this way. But it seems very strange for him to say "from this point onward", when throughout the story so far all dialog has been paraphrased to the point of dismissal -- nothing has been "followed to the letter".
Wow, look! This is my nine-hundred and ninety-ninth post to this blog. The counter's about to roll over. Fun! Just in time for the new year.
So I came up with a little air for viola; I am inaugurating my new policy of giving my songs titles, by calling this one "Sally's Sleeping"; as Mr. Fritz observed in comments a few days ago, fiddlers name their tunes "after any damn thing". This is my first song (a) in 12/8 meter and (b) for which I was able to correctly work out notating the rhythm without help from ABCEdit's playback feature.
I found a streaming music player which is not dependent on Windows MediaPlayer, so I am going to try using it. Please let me know if either you were not able to play my music files before, and now you are, or you were able to play them before and now you are not. Thanks!
Here is the music for it, ABC format and PDF. Note that I didn't play exactly the same fourth bar that is written down; the whole point is to play a different variation every time.
posted morning of December 30th, 2007: Respond ➳ More posts about The site
So I'm watching Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and thinking "Hm, all this shooting sure is getting confusing" and wander off. I bet there's a soundtrack record, now that'd be something to listen to.
Worked out one of the songs (possibly the theme?) on fiddle, it sounds pretty good as a short melody and some nice variations as well.
The Luddite Robot has a video of some very fine jazz violin playing by Joe Venuti. In comments, twindowlicker posts a link to some recordings of Stuff Smith.
