READIN

Saturday, February 5th, 2011

🦋 Three Thoths

Here are three pictures I took while Sylvia and I were looking at the Egyptian exhibit at the Met this afternoon.

This is from the beginning of a long scroll, it stretched across a full wall. I am in general not careful about reading labels in museums, so cannot tell you much about the scroll.*
Ibis-headed Thoth, facing himself in the center column, is the god credited with the invention of language and writing -- an appropriate frontspiece for the document.

Three small Thoths** are grouped together here:
In addition to an ibis' head the god may be depicted with a baboon's head. The ibis in the middle, watching over his likeness, must be related.

I felt lucky to spot this relief on the way out of the museum:

*(added) Aha! But they have much of the metadata online. I think it was likely a papyrus belonging to the Priest of Horus, Imhotep.

**These are: Striding Thoth, Thoth as Ibis, and Figure of a Cynocæphalus Ape.

posted evening of February 5th, 2011: Respond
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🦋 Scripture

Rereading "La escritura del dios" last week, I was inspired to do some searching for background material, to find out who is Qaholom, the god who has written his sacred scripture in the markings of the jaguar for Tzinacán to read. I found out about the Popol Vuh, a transcription of the K'iche' creation story -- written down in the 1500's by a Jesuit missionary in Quiché, Guatemala based on the reading of a (no longer extant) hieroglyphic document, translated into Spanish and annotated by Adrián Recinos.

According to Recinos, Qaholom is "the paternal god, the god who sires children, from qahol, 'a father's son', qaholoj, 'engender'." Recinos also notes that Gucumatz (one third of the trinity which is called Heart of the Heavens, and I think possibly another name for Qaholom? -- I haven't quite got the pantheon straight yet) is a "serpent covered with green feathers, from from guc, in Maya, kuk, 'green feathers', Quetzal via antonomasia, and cumatz, 'serpent'; he is the K'iche' version of Kukulkán, the Mayan name for Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec king, conqueror, bringer of civilization, god in Yucatán during the epoch of the Post-classical Mayan Empire."

posted morning of February 5th, 2011: Respond
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Wednesday, February second, 2011

🦋 Mmm, blues

I spent a lot of time last night listening to and playing "Mystery Train" -- this was the upshot of cleek's Start Your iPods post for this week. Did not take long for me to find a high degree of assonance between that song and "Meet Me in the Morning" -- well, one thing led to another... Here are some blues tunes for you to listen to.

posted afternoon of February second, 2011: Respond
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🦋 Borrowed Beams of Light

* (Which I am happy and puzzled to discover is a 2-drummer blog)

posted afternoon of February second, 2011: Respond
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Sunday, January 30th, 2011

🦋 Sunday Morning Blues

posted morning of January 30th, 2011: Respond
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Saturday, January 29th, 2011

🦋 January is a good month for mixes.

I am greatly enjoying New Year's mixes from Steve of Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk and from Tim W. of The Great Whatsit. Steve's is a mix of his favorite cover versions of the past few years. Mostly new listening for me, and most of the tunes are ones I'm familiar with. I always find it exciting to hear new takes on songs I love. And Tim's is a list of new songs from this year, almost none of which I've heard before or even heard of.

Here is my contribution to the disk-jockeying fray:

Los once: Jeremy's 2011 Mix

1. "Hanohano Hawai'i" -- Sol Ho'opi'i's Novelty Trio
2. "I Wouldn't Mind Dying" -- The Carter Family
3. "I Love You Because" -- Ernie Tubb
4. "You Met Your Match" -- Stevie Wonder
5. "I Watch the Cars" -- Robyn Hitchcock
6. "Starvation Blues" -- Big Bill Broonzy
7. "Movin Day" -- The Holy Modal Rounders
8. "Little Birdie" -- The Stanley Bros.
9. "Ain't Misbehavin" -- Stéphane Grappelli
10. "Belly Full of Arms and Legs" -- Robyn Hitchcock
11. "Sikiliza" -- The Lafayette Afro Band
12. "Pretty Polly" -- B.F. Shelton
13. "Rock of Ages" -- Christian Kiefer
14. "Sing You Sinners" -- Fletcher Henderson
15. "Burning Up" -- Mutiny
16. "Talking Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues" -- Bob Dylan
17. "I Know You Rider" -- The Grateful Dead
18. "Famous Blue Raincoat" -- Leonard Cohen
19. "Kanes Blues" -- The Kanek Hawai'ians

I haven't quite ironed out all the tagging issues with the mp3s of these songs. I will post a link in comments later on when I get the tape together.

posted afternoon of January 29th, 2011: 1 response
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Friday, January 28th, 2011

🦋 Kate Beaton as a Second Language

A friend of Katie Beaton's is teaching English to Korean students; as an exercise he had them fill in the speech bubbles of some of her comix with their own imagined dialog. The results are quite impressive -- what a marvelous idea for a language class activity! (Also a fun comments thread.)

(Sources: batch of comics #8, Nancy Drew #2, Shetland Pony Adventures, Return of the Saucy Mermaids, Aquaman: Defender of the Seas.)

posted evening of January 28th, 2011: Respond
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🦋 A bellyfull of arms and legs

One title, two very different songs.

1. Robyn Hitchcock's Phantom 45.
2. Mr Fist's brand new tune from their third, as yet* unwritten album.

* ("As yet" as of 2008 or so.)

posted evening of January 28th, 2011: 2 responses

🦋 Rivera Letelier chronology

I am working on understanding the trajectory Hernán Rivera Letelier followed from being unknown to being, as Dorfman says, "one of the very few writers in Chile who can make a living writing books." His first novel was wildly successful, La reina Isabel cantaba rancheras, and made of him an overnight literary sensation. That was in 1996, only 8 years before Dorfman is talking with him, but you get a very firm sense of Rivera Letelier as an established literary presence. A lot can happen in eight years -- he has by this time published several novels.

posted evening of January 28th, 2011: Respond
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🦋 en la tarde calurosa y transparente

Time for a story. In the fifth chapter of Desert Memories, Dorfman takes a detour from his tour of northern Chile, to relate a yarn; and he does so in a very clever way. Rivera Letelier is talking to him about the town of Pampa Unión -- this is remembered from a frame in which Dorfman is standing in the ruins of Pampa Unión on the following day, after he has left Antofagasta -- last night Rivera Letelier was telling him a story about this town of bordellos, this town which features in his novels Fatamorgana and The Art of Resurrection. The year is 1929 and the president of Chile, General Carlos Ibáñez de Campo, will be passing through the Pampa Unión station, where his train will stop for water.

The band of musicians is ready, they've been practicing for weeks. The children are waiting to sing. The train is coming, the train can be seen chugging on the horizon. And people begin to cheer and they are hushed by one of the organizers. Things have to look orderly and nice. They want to use the occasion to ask the president if he could bestow upon this town some sort of legal status, recognize them as a municipality, put them on the map.

Accept them into the fold of the great Chilean family.

"And the locomotive," Hernán had said, taking his time, savoring our interest, "pulls into the station at exactly 3:08 in the hot, transparent afternoon."

And here Rivera Letelier's wife interrupts the story (and Dorfman's retelling of the story) to tell them supper is served, and Dorfman interrupts himself to talk about the meal -- so the meal serves as a frame internal to the story we have been hearing retold. From the mention of Mari he moves further back to talk about Hernán meeting Mari in the restaurant her mother ran out of her kitchen (and here we get an elaboration on the bit that Laura Cardona referred to in her review of The Art of Resurrection), and about his working in Pedro de Valdivia and listening to the stories of the viejos -- although "miners tend to die young," the men who have been working with explosives in the fields of caliche for years are called "old men" because they look old. And much, much more about his childhood and his path to becoming one of the most successful authors in Chile...

And after all this, Dorfman brings us back to last night in Antofagasta, after they have eaten supper, and he is asking his friend,

"So what happened?"

"What happened where?"

"At Pampa Unión. When the train with the president pulled in? We're going to pass through there tomorrow, you know."

"Oh, yes. At exactly 3:08 in the afternoon the train pulls in. Everybody waits and waits, the Boy Scouts from the nearby towns, the Red Cross, the fire brigade, from every little hamlet, the basketball team, the soccer team. And the man who was going to make the speech clears his throat and gets ready to hand the president their petition to make them into a real and recognized locality and they keep on waiting while the locomotive is serviced. And then..."

"And then...?" Angélica asked.

"And then at 3:14 in the afternoon, the train pulls out of the station."

"No president."

"He did not even poke his head out the window...."

"As if they did not exist," I had said to him last night, I say to myself again as I contemplate the desolation in which the whorehouses of Pampa Unión now lie, that whole town built for no other purpose than for men to make love in the desert. "As if those people never existed."

My mind is still resonating with Hernán's answer.

"Except for me," Hernán had said to us last night, whispers to Pampa Unión today. "I'm here to tell their story."

↻...done

posted evening of January 28th, 2011: Respond
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