READIN

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

🦋 Being Orhan Pamuk

Reading Pamuk's essay "How I Got Rid of Some of my Books", this evening, I was identifying almost completely with its author. The reader's complaint about having too many books and not wanting the ownership attachment to the contents of his library is, well, kind of commonplace* -- I've heard it voiced by many different people, felt it myself too; but Pamuk's voice is so distinctively concise, rings so true, I felt like the essay was me speaking. This is something I get with a lot of the books and stories and essays that I really enjoy, I will identify myself strongly with the author/narrator (or sometimes with a character) and perceive the book as being about me. Egotistical maybe but it can be very pleasant.

So then I was reading his next essay, "On Reading: Words or Images", where he lists three pleasures he takes from reading:

1. The pull of the other world I mentioned earlier. This could be seen as escapism. Even if only in your imagination, it is still good to escape the sadness of everyday life and spend some time in another world.
2. Between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six, reading was central to my efforts to make something of myself, elevate my consciousness, and thereby give shape to my soul...
3. Another thing that makes reading so pleasurable for me is self-awareness. When we read, there is a part of our mind that resists total immersion in the text and congratulates us on having undertaken such a deep and intellectual task...

And I thought (note that I was here not identifying strongly with the text, I was outside it taking notes) Hmm, I would agree with all of those points -- but I would add 4. The opportunity to identify with the author. But well, this is really in opposition with point (3), identifying with is the same as immersing yourself totally in the text -- so they are opposite poles both with some attraction for me. I think immersing myself too quickly and uncritically in a text can lead to lazy reading, and that this journal is in part a way of working to keep myself from reading that way. Real immersion of the kind that comes through understanding the text, is a consummation devoutly to be wished -- I had a lot of this when I was reading Snow. In "How I Got Rid of Some of my Books", Pamuk references Flaubert, whose works I have never read, but this statement makes me want to:

Flaubert was right to say that if a man were to read ten books with sufficient care, he would become a sage. As a rule, most people have not even done that, and that is why they collect books and show off their libraries.

*As is the opposite sentiment, expressing the exhilaration of having books and the love of books as physical objects -- the two sentiments can coexist quite contentedly within one reader -- indeed Pamuk gives voice to the latter one just a few pages later in "The Pleasures of Reading", when he says:

After finishing certain pages of this wondrous book, my eyes would pull back from the old volume in my hand to gaze at its yellowing pages from afar. (In the same way, when I was drinking a favorite soft drink as a child, I would stop from time to time to gaze lovingly at the bottle in my hand.)

-- which image reminds me strongly of Sylvia.

posted evening of November 7th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Hard Rock

Truman Sparks has two shows in NYC this weekend -- one in Bushwick, one in Manhattan! Go check 'em out.

posted afternoon of November 7th, 2007: Respond
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Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

🦋 Woo-hoo!

I hit on a way to defeat comment spam coming in from chin/e/sefr/eewebs, which I'm getting a lot of lately. Not saying what in public, in case they come around and notice; but if you are getting hit with similar traffic, drop me a line and I'll give you the recipe. It's pretty simple.

posted afternoon of November 6th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, November 4th, 2007

An excellent line from the commentary track of Even Dwarfs Started Small, Herzog saying that the strictures of bourgeois propriety are "almost as monstrous and oppressive as the objects we surround ourselves with."

posted evening of November 4th, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Daylight Savings

Ooh nice, it's the early morning and the sun is out. Looks like beautiful weather today. I am going to take Sylvia to her swimming class and then this afternoon, the Dragonflies (an FCC spinoff children's group that Ellen and some friends have organized) are coming over to do craft projects.

posted morning of November 4th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, November third, 2007

🦋 The Apostrophunk

I've been listening to various tracks from the Apostropher's latest mix tape here and there for the past week or so; this morning I gave it my first deep listen, listening to all the tracks in order, and really paying attention. Verdict: good stuff, a productive use of your time. This is fantastic music for walking around, it would be great for working to (like house cleaning, woodworking, gardening kind of thing I'm talking about, not office work -- it would be difficult to keep your mind on your spreadsheet.) I have never heard a lot of this music -- highlights for me were "Little Walter Rides Again" by Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood, the Memphis Horns, the Bill Frisell tracks, and Bettye LaVette who to my ear sounds uncannily like Janis Joplin. (And what d'ya know, her latest album is called Take Another Little Piece of my Heart.)

posted evening of November third, 2007: Respond
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Friday, November second, 2007

🦋 Friday random ten

Belle inspires me to figure out where my iPod is and listen to some random songs so I can post them here. I'm getting lots of blues and lots of Robyn tonight.

• "Alma Waltz", Mississippi Mud-Steppers
• "Singin the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home)", Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
• "Broken Bed Blues", Kansas City Blues Strummers
• "Flavor of Night", Robyn Hitchcock -- this shares the quality of many of the songs on I Often Dream of Trains, where the song totally sounds like it's going to be amazing, fantastic, you can't miss its potential greatness, but somehow it doesn't quite make it.
• "Hard Way", Taj Mahal -- Janis gave me this CD in an effort to make me see how great Taj Mahal is; but I'm afraid his greatness eludes me. The instrumentals are occasionally awesome.
• "Sometimes a Blonde", Robyn Hitchcock. A solo acoustic performance at Maxwell's, in the catastrophic month of November 2004. I like this a whole lot. After the song, patter about waitress Desirée.
• "Terrapin", Robyn Hitchcock. From the second set of the April 2007 Games for May concert. With cellos!
• "I Miss You More", 13 Scotland Rd. I don't think this is my favorite song of theirs but after the long instrumental at the beginning finishes, it might be their best vehicle for Bill's voice.
• Medley of "Good Morning" and "In the Midnight Hour", by Robyn Hitchcock, who so much should not try to cover the Beatles. Oh man, this is a train wreck. What the fuck's going on Robyn? You have a really amazingly good singing voice when you're not trying to sing like John Lennon. (Though the cellos are a nice touch.)
• "Sittin' on Top of the World", Taj Mahal. Nope, still not getting it.

posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Four Movies about Outcasts

I want to be able to see the following four movies in a combined viewing, or at least close in time to one another:

• Freaks
• Viridiana
• Vagabond
• Even Dwarfs Started Small

I think the middle two movies are better movies than the first and last; but they seem to sort of go together well. The movement from the final scene of Vagabond into Even Dwarfs would be pretty cool. Thinking about it, I am really liking this line-up as a quadruple feature.

(Also, this video goes very nicely with the Herzog, though it does not really bring any of the others to mind.)

posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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🦋 Movie choices

Ellen and Sylvia are in town watching Bee Story; I am at home with Even Dwarfs Started Small.

... Minimalistic dialogue is great -- watching the movie with a fairly rudimentary grasp of German you can get a good deal of it without having to rely too much on the subtitles.

(Here is the post that first alerted me to the existence of this movie -- looks from A White Bear's comment like I need to go back and watch with the commentary track turned on, that sounds pretty great.)

posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

🦋 Speech is its Delight and Essence

We do not understand speech, because speech does not understand itself, nor wish to; the true Sanskrit* would speak in order to speak, because speech is its delight and essence.

This line is from Novalis' The Novices of Sais, newly reprinted in a translation by Ralph Manheim. (Thanks to Conrad and Forrest, for pointing it out to me.) It strikes me as so similar to Fritz' speech to Karoline about Language, that I think Fitzgerald must have used it as source material. (It is also, I think, quintessentially stoner.)

Another great line from The Novices of Sais, from the chapter titled "Nature":

It must have been a long time before men thought of giving a common name to the manifold objects of their senses, and of placing themselves in opposition to them.

It suddenly occurs to me that "manifold" might be a good translation of vielgestaltete in the first paragraph of Hymns to Night.

*This word is kind of bugging me, because when I read it I see the name of a language, not a type of philosophy. My suspicion is that Novalis intends it to mean "mystic", so I am making that substitution when I read.

posted evening of October 31st, 2007: 4 responses
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