READIN

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

🦋 The Practical Uses of Discomfort

Robyn Hitchcock speaks with Paul Byrne of Movies.ie about making Rachel Getting Married (which sounds like a whole lot of fun) and about Sex, Food, Death, and Insects.

Byrne: During [Sex, Food, Death, and Insects] you said at one point, "At heart I'm a frightened, angry person -- that's why my stuff isn't totally insubstantial, I'm constantly deep down inside in a kind of rage..." And it made me think, well, here you've got people like Gillian Welch and... Jonathan Demme's a fan... you've been playing music for a long time, The Soft Boys and everything, and I was thinking does that make it easier? Because for a lot of artists, to have some kind of recognition, some outlet, you know, eases the soul a bit, I don't know whether, is it still true that you have that rage in you? I guess you only said it last year so maybe it is still true...

Hitchcock: I haven't had enough therapy to get rid of it completely, you know, just enough to find it... Yeah, everybody is at some level of discomfort. Even the people you mention. And some people are in more pain than others, some people know what to do with their discomfort. You know, I mean I could be playing with my hair, I could be, you know, picking on an E♭ or something like that, I could be smoking except it's illegal to smoke now; there's all these manifestations of what to do with your own dis-ease... For me, I turn it into music, and a lot of other people I know; that's how we metabolize. We breathe in life and we breathe out music; it keeps us sane and it seems to be somehow good for the environment, you know, like plants take in CO₂ and produce oxygen, we take in the anxiety of life and give out music. And I'm very happy to be able to do that.

posted evening of March 19th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Rachel Getting Married

🦋 American Character

USA Network has published a lovely book and accompanying web site: Character Project is a journey around the country by 11 photographers (11 journeys actually) documenting the land and the people. Some really striking images. h/t The Wooster Collective.

posted evening of March 19th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures

🦋 Otros libros de Castellanos Moya

By way of Scott Esposito, I see that two more novels of Horacio Castellanos Moya will be published in translation this year: She Devil in the Mirror and Dances With Snakes. Exciting! and searching around for more information about the novels, I notice Dr. Albrecht Buschmann of the Universität Potsdam maintains a fairly extensive site devoted to Castellanos Moya's work: Horacio Castellanos Moya: Hechos, Libros, Temas (bilingual in German and Spanish, with the occasional page translated into English). The site appears to be dedicated to reading his work as a literature of the survivor: "Reading the more important novels of Horacio Castellanos Moya may leave the impression that all of his protagonists are damaged goods... Figures with mutilated identities, deteriorated memories, who interact frequently with a choice between themselves exerting violence or being made into victims of violence, when they try to survive. For this is certainly what they intend to do: survive."

posted evening of March 19th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

At Orbis Quintus today, I found Maureen Freely's new Washington Post piece on translating Pamuk, on trying "to recreate the narrative trance that makes the novel so hypnotic in Turkish." It's a lovely essay, a look into the translator's creative experience -- at the "shadow novelist [who is] present in every translator. Though she must serve the text, she can recreate the author's voice only if she gets so close to the heart of the novel that she can convince herself it briefly answers to hers." (Now I'm just dying to hear from Gün and from Göknar...)

At the same page is an audio clip of a conversation between Freely and the Post's writer-at-large Marie Arana.

posted evening of March 18th, 2009: Respond
➳ More posts about Orhan Pamuk

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

🦋 Playlist

Thanks Jer for sending me this link! Robyn Hitchcock posted a playlist on Rhapsody a couple of years ago (October '06), which I didn't know about until today. It's got a nice mix of old and new, stuff I know and stuff I've heard of and stuff I have not.

Robyn's Picks

1. "Wang Dang Doodle," by Howlin' Wolf
2. "Say Man," by Bo Diddley
3. "Champagne Supernova," by Oasis
4. "Lucifer Sam," by Pink Floyd
5. "Finest Worksong," by R.E.M.
6. "In Liverpool," by Suzanne Vega
7. "Look At Miss Ohio," by Gillian Welch
8. "Happiness," by Grant Lee Buffalo
9. "Slow Dog," by Belly
10. "God," by John Lennon
11. "The Red Telephone," by Love
12. "Kicks," by Lou Reed
13. "The Lark in the Morning," by Steeleye Span
14. "Station To Station," by David Bowie
15. "To Turn You On," by Roxy Music
16. "Lately I've Let Things Slide," by Nick Lowe

posted evening of March 17th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, March 15th, 2009

🦋 Sad News

Richie Shulberg (aka Citizen Kafka) passed away at home last night. I'm really sorry to hear about this, meeting him always lifted my spirits. Richie is the guy who got me interested in old-time music and bluegrass -- I first met him in the late 90's when he was leading a weekly jam at a bar in Chinatown, and I associate the months I attended this jam session with the beginning of my developing a musical ear and a musical style. Every time I have run into him since then he's asked after my music and my life, and spent some time talking with me -- my memory of him is of somebody who always took an interest. He will be missed.

Here are Richie (in the yellow shirt) and the Wretched Refuse String Band, playing Jalopy in Brooklyn last spring:

posted afternoon of March 15th, 2009: Respond

🦋 The judgement to tell the false from the true

I've been meaning to post this passage from The Amber Spyglass, which I found deeply moving and which I think sums up the entire trilogy in a couple of paragraphs. I don't have much to say about it beyond that, so will just quote. (Note: if you are reading or planning to read the series and do not like spoilers, don't read this entry.) The setting is the world of the dead; Lyra and Will are planning to create an opening which will allow the ghosts of the dead to escape into the world of the living, that they might be annihilated, allowed truly to die.

Long quote below the fold.

posted morning of March 15th, 2009: 5 responses
➳ More posts about His Dark Materials

🦋 Tolkien's voice

How I come to be reading The Hobbit now: Sylvia and I are pretty close to finishing up The Amber Spyglass now; I was casting about for what book to read next and realized that His Dark Materials is reminding me in some key ways of Tolkien's trilogy. That made me think about how much I had loved The Hobbit as a kid -- if memory serves I loved it much more deeply than the trilogy, it seems like I read The Lord of the Rings less whole-heartedly, with an eye mostly toward keeping up with my D&D-enthusiast friends... Anways -- so I asked Sylvia if she would like to read this next, she said she would (unsurprising -- she's really getting into fantasy novels nowadays), and I thought I would look through it beforehand.

And I'm falling in love all over again. I had forgotten how attractively witty and cultured Tolkien's narrative voice is -- it reminds me a lot of Grahame's voice in The Wind in the Willows. I wonder if this is true of the trilogy as well -- I expect it is, and suddenly I'm looking forward to rereading those books, and thinking I might get a lot more out of them than I did back in my childhood.

posted morning of March 15th, 2009: 4 responses
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Friday, March 13th, 2009

🦋 The Hobbit

My memory of reading The Hobbit (which happened about 30 years ago) has always been a very positive one, of being into the book in a pre-analytical way and just loving it, and I was always scared to pick it up to reread for fear that quality of the experience would be gone. I am happy to report (a few chapters in) that the quality is not only present but is augmented by seeing the page with a little more experienced (hopefully wiser but certainly more familiar with the world) eye.

Don't miss Tove Jansson's illustrations for a Swedish edition of The Hobbit. (And it just occurs to me, oh yeah! Hobbits and Moomins have certain distinct similarities! Also Hobbits and Hemulens.)

posted evening of March 13th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, March 12th, 2009

🦋 Hark! A Vagrant

I'm still on vacation from blogging; but this is too good of news to pass up: Kate Beaton's new web site is open for business! And lovely to look upon.

Speaking of comix: Elan Rodger Trinidad has a hilarious Watchmen spoof at io9; be sure to follow the link there to Seanbaby's Hostess™ nostalgia.

posted evening of March 12th, 2009: Respond

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