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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'm reading The White Castle as a parable about loneliness. The narrator's and Hoja's striving after personal union reminds me of the presocratic philosopher* who postulated that every man's soul is half of a primordial unity, forever seeking its opposite. Their relationship is sadistic and masochistic and I am anxious to find out what will come of its "fulfillment" -- i.e. the eventual transference of identity which the narrator is hinting at -- from the narrator's tone I cannot believe it is going to bring him happiness.
The writing exercises that Hoja insists on starting in Chapter 5 remind me in a funny way of blogging and of online relationships generally. The two are seeking to approach each other through a textual exchange; each has his own agenda. (Hoja is clearly the motive force, but this gives the narrator freedom to play his own games without worrying about the end point of the interaction.) I identify very strongly with both characters in this passage (and can't help thinking of the table they are sitting at as the Internet):
...just as a person could view his external self in a mirror, he should be able to observe the interior of his mind in his thoughts. He said I knew how to do this but was withholding the secret from him. While Hoja sat across from me, waiting for me to write down this secret, I filled the sheets in front of me with stories exaggerating my own faults: I wrote with delight about the petty thefts of my childhood, the jealous lies, the way I schemed in order to make myself more loved than my brothers and sisters, the sexual indiscretions of my youth, stretching the truth more and more as I went along. The greedy curiosity with which Hoja read these tales, and the queer pleasure he derived from them, shocked me; afterwards he would become even more angry...
*Heraclitus maybe? Empedocles? help me out here -- I may also just be totally confused and there is not a presocratic philosopher answering to this description.
Update: Aha! John knows what I was thinking of -- this is not presocratic, but rather from Aristophanes' speech in the Symposium. Transcript here.
After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one, they began to die from hunger and self-neglect, because they did not like to do anything apart; and when one of the halves died and the other survived, the survivor sought another mate, man or woman as we call them,--being the sections of entire men or women,--and clung to that.
See also, Hedwig and the Angry Inch's adaptation of Aristophanes' speech.
Here is how to play the key of E on the lower strings of a viola or, mutatis mutandis, the key of B on the lower strings of a violin:
Note
Finger
String
E
3rd
C
F♯
4th
C
G♯
1st
G
A
2nd
G
B
3rd
G
C♯
4th
G
D♯
1st
D
E
2nd
D
Notice no open strings, which oh well.* The first and second fingers are only a half step apart and the first finger is only a half step above the open string, meaning your second finger lands where your first usually does.
Other keys this works for: B or F♯ on the upper strings of a viola, F♯ or C♯ on the upper strings of a violin. Ooh! and I just figured out you can start the scale on the fourth finger held in this position (i.e. where the high 3 would usually fall) and that opens up a bunch more keys.
*(Actually the open G string is the minor third, and open D is the minor 7th, so there is some room for using both of them -- last night we were playing "Cocaine Habit", which is in B, and I was getting a lot of use out of slurring D-D♯.)
posted evening of January 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
Here are three very fine songs which employ the weeping willow tree as a central metaphor: "Bury me under the weeping willow", "After Midnight", "Big River". There must be many more. I have been listening to all three recently and I wonder what it is about "weeping willow" that makes it so easy to use -- obviously the "weeping", and also I just think it rolls off the tongue very smoothly. Possibly related, "So lonesome I could cry" starts out with a reference to a whippoorwill, and today when I sat down to make a list of "weeping willow" songs, "So lonesome I could cry" was at the top of the list until I backtracked and checked the lyric.
posted evening of January 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
The White Castle is, like The New Life, not seeming a page-turner to me in the way that Snow and My Name is Red both did. As I read it I am encountering some very interesting bits -- like this evening I was feeling some kinship with Hoja over the question of how narrating one's experiences can communicate one's inner self -- but I do not feel invested in the characters in a way that would make me need to know what is going to happen next.
Cool! I found and fixed a bug today using gdb's watchpoint feature, which I have never tried before. (Not cool: the bug was a careless typo that I should never have introduced.)
posted evening of January 23rd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Programming
We started taking a yoga class this evening, the whole family together. It was a good first class -- I think I like this teacher better than any yoga teacher I have previously met with; everything she said to the class seemed to be pretty well in tune with whatever I was experiencing at the moment. Class meets every Tuesday for the next couple of months.
posted evening of January 22nd, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Fitness
Hmm: Turns out once you start worrying about what the music is actually going to sound like, this recording stuff gets exponentially more tricky. I am not going to put any recordings up for a little while yet, until I've (a) really gotten the hang of the software and (b) reacquainted myself a bit more with my guitar. My idea is, guitar and possibly vocals on one take, viola and/or violin dubbed on top of that. The guitar will be better for keeping a beat than a click track. But my fingers are still getting used to the idea.
Note to anyone thinking about putting a small recording studio together: the "Creative Professional E-MU 0202" is not actually that much cheaper than the "Edirol UA-25" when you consider that you will need to buy a phantom power source and extra cords; and its two inputs are not identical like the Edirol's are.
Neat -- the day off! I will get my hair cut and stop by the Radio Shack for some cables. If all goes according to plan, my recording setup will be complete this afternoon, maybe I will try laying down a track.
Listening now to Unfunkked 3 and I gotta say, the instrumental part in Sugar Pie DeSanto's "Soulful Dress" is absolutely genius. Now watch out there, boys.
...Also: Maxayn's version of "Can't Always Get What You Want" is beautiful. Ellen says of the tape in general, "Listening to it just makes you feel better!"
posted afternoon of January 20th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Mix tapes
Jerry raises in comments the legitimate point that "Polk-Salad Annie" by Tony Joe White is a fantastic song. Here is a video of White singing it in 1969.
Trotters fans, take heart: "an impressive and intimidating temple to the very strange idea that trotters are the missing ingredient in just about everything."
