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Thursday, March 11th, 2010
It contributes something to a reading of Middlesex, to ask how well Cal knows the stories he is telling. Much of the book is told in something similar to a third-person omniscient voice, scenes where Cal simply couldn't know the things he is telling, and the obvious conclusion is that he's making them up, embroidering details into his scant family history. Occasionally he cops to this, saying e.g. "...And now I have to enter Father Mike's head, I'm afraid. I feel myself being sucked in and I can't resist." (What a great idea it is to make Father Mike be the scam artist.) Other times the embellishments are just presented as part of the story. Cal's desire for an integral back-story to his life, a history without holes, makes a really compelling framework for the book.
posted evening of March 11th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, March 8th, 2010
In the long, slow third part of Middlesex, there is a strong sense of building towards a climax. Calliope was born at the beginning of the third part; and the narrative arc is moving deliberately toward her coming of age and becoming Cal -- as she grows the the tension is increasing constantly. There's some tension between the narrated character of young Callie -- who does not know what's going to happen -- and the narrator himself, who has told us well in advance what is happening. I'm waiting with bated breath to find out how it happens. A comparison that's flickered across my mind a couple of times is to the character of Oskar in The Tin Drum -- I don't remember how clearly Oskar-the-narrator laid this out, but it seems to be understood that young Oskar is clairvoyant, that he knows from the beginning about how his life is going to play out.
posted evening of March 8th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, March 7th, 2010
I've recommended Middlesex to a couple of people over the past week -- but every time I have done so I have not been able to come up with the right frame. I've been talking up little bits of the book -- the portrait of mid-20th C. Detroit; the vividness of the historical episodes; the mapping of Cal's family's history -- but what I really dig about this novel is the fulness of it, the way it all fits together. I like all the pieces by themselves, but the whole is much more than its parts. (And Cal him/herself might be a good proxy for the totality of the book; but I've been unsure how much to talk about Cal's situation for fear of spoiling a good yarn.) The chapter about the race riots is an instance of this -- I'm loving the aspect of the chapter which is vivid and informational, this is a lot of new historical details for me, but what really seals the deal for me is the way this data is woven in to the lives of the characters, the way this is part of the story.
 (The chapter about the riots opens with Cal's father sleeping with a gun under the pillow, and a reference to Chekhov's line about a gun in the first scene -- but what is sticking out for me right now is the insurance policies in the first scene. The detail a few chapters back about Lefty having over-insured the diner, and told his son to keep the policies, made me think the place will burn down; and the riots seemed like they would be a good place for that to happen. So I'm scratching my head, wondering what the insurance is for...) Aha! Nevermind -- I wrote that last paragraph before I got to the end of the chapter.
posted afternoon of March 7th, 2010: 1 response
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Saturday, March 6th, 2010
Here are some tapes from today's practice -- I'm trying to really hold my focus in the song and pay attention to what I'm doing, and I think it's coming through a bit. At the end of "Bill Cheetham" I lose it. "The Road to Lisdoonvarna" I think is currently my very favorite song.
posted afternoon of March 6th, 2010: 2 responses
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Mo Menzel snapped a great photo of me while I was playing "The Irish Washerwoman" last night. Thanks, Mo! 
I've been hunching over lately when I'm playing violin -- not sure why but this posture seems to make it easier to keep my focus inside the song. (Also I am going back and forth between holding the bow nearer the frog, and choking up on it like this -- and between holding my pinkie against the wood -- which I tend to think I ought to do -- and out in the air like this, which seems to happen pretty regularly when I don't pay attention to the finger.)
posted afternoon of March 6th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Mixed results at the open mic today -- I played two songs, first one was very successful, the second was a mess. I felt pretty upset and brought down about the second one and as I was mulling it over I came to realize that having a solid bowing pattern is a really important part of knowing a song... The successful song, my "Road to Lisdoonvarna"/"Drowsy Maggie" medley, when I was practicing it this afternoon I hit on a bowing pattern that I could stick with and that really drives the song along -- the rhythmic motion of my arm complements the tapping of my foot. I have always had a pretty clear sense of where I'm going with this song but the bowing just wrapped everything up very nicely. With the other song contrariwise, "Irish Washerwoman"/"The Swallowtail Jig", while I know the song very well, I can never seem to decide just what I should be doing with my bow. And it shows -- sometimes I will practice the song and have it sound great, other times not so much. While I was mulling I got a little distracted from listening to people's performances, and my eyes were wandering among the shop's wares -- I was really taken by the minor variations in shape between every pair of violins on the shelf there -- in length, width, depth of body, proportion of the length given over to the "C" in the middle of the body, how concave the "C" is and how prominently its top and bottom jut out... One violin there has completely smooth sides, an hourglass figure, which I've never seen before. I fantasized about playing some of the more unusual specimens, and my attention slowly came back to the music.
posted evening of March 4th, 2010: Respond
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Wednesday, March third, 2010
I started reading Middlesex last night, with a vague expectation that I was not really going to like it very much. I'm not sure why -- I must have read a dismissive review back when it came out, and internalized that. As it turns out, the book is (so far) excellent. I have been riveted to (Eugenides' imagining of) Cal's imagining of the sack of Smyrna, and his grandparents' flight, and their lives in mid-20th-C. Michigan. Have not quite gotten to the point yet of identifying with the grandparents but they are certainly well-crafted characters; I am identifying very closely with Cal him/herself. The vivid quality of the descriptions of widely disparate times and places is stunning.
posted evening of March third, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, March second, 2010
So as long as I'm thinking about music videos, I've been seeing a lot of links to this one over the last few days; finally checked it out and boy, was it worth my while:
Not sure, frankly, how much the song does for me as a song; but the video is a stroke of genius. (Also kind of nice timing, since OK Go first came to my attention a few weeks ago, and one of the first things I found out about them was what great videos they make.)
Update: from Kulash and MTV News, a look at the making of the Marble Run.
posted evening of March second, 2010: 1 response
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Monday, March first, 2010
The first video from Propellor Time is up at The Museum of Robyn Hitchcock:
The lines "To say you're only human,/ To say you're just a man,/ Well what does that mean?" Are reminding me strongly of something but I cannot figure out just what right now...The video is (like The Day Before Boxing Day) directed by Hannah Bird and released on Groove Egg -- now I want to find out more about this.
posted afternoon of March first, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, February 28th, 2010
Sylvia and I spent some time this weekend reading stories from a college book of mine, Rhoda Hendricks' 1972 edition Classical Gods and Heroes: Myths as told by the ancient authors -- a good resource although I don't love her translations. Looks like we should find some good translations of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days to learn more about the early Greek myths. It will probably be a lot more difficult to learn anything about the early Roman myths, since all the Roman writing about mythology seems to come from well after the Hellenization process was underway. I would like to pick up a good translation of Metamorphoses though, Ovid seems to be a good story-teller. Anyone who is interested in this stuff and has not read the comments to the previous post should do so -- Randolph reposted a great writeup there from Bryon Boyce.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2010: Respond
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