Understanding the Past

This past week I wrote a paper on namburbi rituals, which were these Mesopotamian rituals that they used to undo bad omens (knowing this is rather useless without understanding the extent to which the Mesopotamians pain-stakingly recording and compiled omen compendia.  To them it was a science).

Anyway, thinking about how we lived their lives and how they lived their lives got me to thinking - I always assumed people were people, and you could drop me off in Assyria and once I knew the language and stuff, I would be just like them.

Really though, that is not true, because they must have looked at things in such a completely different way. First, you have all these omens.  Every event could have possible repercussions, so you would pretty much see everything as important, and perhaps terrifying.

Also, as I was walking back to my room the other day I realized another thing.  Mesopotamians, and they were not alone in this, literally thought their Gods were living in the sky.  They thought the sun and moon gave them life and watched them.  They thought they could win their sympathy with offerings.  What would it be like to look into the sky, and see Gods there?  To look at the moon and imagine not a chunk of space rock, but a radiant being that had watched you like a parent, to look at the constellations as something more than mere assemblages of stars (which, by the way, I can hardly identify with the exception of the Big Dipper, Orion, and Cassiopeia.  I will work on it).  I don't know what I'm getting at.  Maybe just how different our lives would be as animists, or something.  Could we look at the sky in the same way ever again?

Sports after Saturday

Sort of good and bad night yesterday for my squads, which I probably didn't mention before.

Anyway, terrible night for the Leafs.  They played well, but at the same time, not well at all.  Boston definitely looked like they had their number, and the Leafs were definitely a little intimidated, not by their physicality (I think I'll call them Blackshirts when they're playing at home from now on to express my distaste for the Bruins), but by their depth, talent, what have you.  When Kreijci, Lucic, Horton, or Seguin were together on the ice, the Leafs had a lot of trouble getting the puck out of the zone, especially in the third, and Leafs draft pick Tuukka Rask was solid as usual (as a Leafs fan, I'm so unexpressably jealous at Boston's goaltending depth, with Thomas and Rask among the best goaltenders in the league and a decent and probably NHL ready Anton Khudobin still in Providence).  Mainly though, it seemed to me that Boston was a million times more aggressive defensively and the Leafs couldn't take advantage.  While the Bruins stood up the Leafs powerplay multiple times in the neutral zone, Toronto collapsed on defense, leaving the Bruins' points open.  Another year older, with one less spot for Steve Kampfer, the Bruins defense is significantly less crappy than it was last year beyond Chara and Seidenberg (and Kaberle eventually; despite the complaining of Bruins fans, he was their highest scoring defender on their Stanley Cup run).  The Leafs usually play an up tempo game, and I'm willing to bet, although sadly I didn't see their 7-1 wins over Washington and Tampa - only their terrible losses to Boston and Florida - in the past week or so, I'm willing to bet that they weren't playing the collapse game then, and were challenging the puck more.  Doing that, however, means a greater chance of making mistakes, and it was clear that Boston was going to make the Leafs pay for any mistakes over their meetings so far this year.  Let's hope they can get the Bruins out of their heads and win some games.

On the other hand, across the Atlantic, my two favorite football squads are doing well.  Manchester City continues their domination (knock on wood) of the Premier League with a 5-1 win.  Here's hoping they can keep it up.  Kind of like the Leafs, they've got a long history but not so much to show for it recently. Udinese, meanwhile, has also continued their surprising solid play - much like the Leafs
 - I wonder if I end up rooting for teams because they all follow the same hallowed but unsuccessful mold.  I mean, when I was a kid the Leafs were a top team, but I think I've become a lot more loyal but sticking with them through tough times.  Danny Markov and of course, Mats Sundin, are still my all time favorite Leafs, but I still have a soft spot for guys like Antropov and Tlusty who were part of some bad Leaf teams, and of course I still love Kulemin, Grabovski, Gunnarsson, et al.  I even feel uncomfortable with the possibility that Kadri gets traded, and he hasn't even played a full season.  The Chiefs are sort of the same story as the Leafs.  They were good when I began rooting for them, with Trent Green, Priest Holmes, and Tony Gonzalez, but they haven't won a Super Bowl since 1970.  Udinese's kind of the same thing, plus I guess I think of FVG as like the Maine of Italy, being over shadowed by Venice (Maine to Boston) and being up in the Northeast, and they were founded in the Ottocento.  Man City is kind of the same I guess, being always overshadowed by Man U yet still having a rich, yet unrecognized, history (non-Leafs fans are too quick to ignore guys like Charlie Conacher and Frank Mahovlich as bonafide superstars, and underrate solid and consistent guys like Mats Sundin).  I guess it's not really a model for choosing teams, but I just assign them some value along it.  I'm kind of leaning toward Kaiserslautern or Arminia Bielefeld for German soccer, so I can probably make them fit.  I'm still a free agent for NBA as well.  My rugby squads - the Sarries, Chiefs, and Biarritz - have more varying histories, so I don't really know. -
Anyway, Udinese beat Inter, which makes me happy, although I hate Inter much less than I do Juventus, so I'm hoping i Friuliani can take out their similarly striped nemeses, and hopefully get revenge on Napoli also.

Fear

I never used to think much of fear: it was always something that I had never really felt.  I've always tried to avoid dangerous situations, for the most part, and by dangerous I mean not physical danger - I've never been anywhere remotely close to death - but social danger, which I suppose is typically related to what is termed anxiety rather than fear (perhaps?).

But fear it is, I think, all the same.  My friend tries to get me to "come out of my shell", as they call it, with awkward situations, which does have some merit.  Trial by fire often works, and the fact that I have friends at all implies that I'm not some incapable oaf, and must to some extent be capable of surviving awkward situations.

Anyway, I think I've found that frightening situations that can be undone are more terrorizing than those that are permanent, because he wouldn't be putting me in frightful situations if the repercussions were all that terrible.  When there's some sense of undoing an action, there's always that fear that it cannot be undone after all.  Only when it is permanent, a fact, as it were, do I actually accept the positives of the situation.

So anyway, now that my frightening situation is undone, perhaps I'd have been better off had it been permanent.  I've always acted more based on my heart than my mind.

In the spirit, check out:
"Actually It's Darkness" - Idlewild - one of my all time fave tracks
"Here Comes the Fear Again" - Doves - forgotten classic following the same theme

Recent Obsessions

I just found out that I could fit an Archaeology major into my last 2.5 years of school.  Since I currently have no idea in what I want to major, it may be a possibility.  I've been enjoying very much my class on Mesopotamian divination, and my current research paper on Namburbi rituals has me very excited.  On the other hand, I also rediscovered symbolist poetry, so here's another plan:
 - Keep studying Italian since I already am.  Focus on 19th Century literature
 - Take Romanian in Grad school, because they don't have it here, it's a Romance language, and, most importantly, contains a gold mine of symbolist poetry unexplored by American scholars
 - Be inspired
So yeah, it could work.

Also, I've gotten back into art, which I forgot about.  It surprises me how good a guy like Edouard Vuillard is, despite being not particularly famous.

He's remarkably good with patterns, and is dazzling when he blends them together, as he sometimes does with clothing and wallpaper.  At other times, however, it seems like he just didn't finish the painting, and it could have been magnificent, which is somewhat disappointing to me, because he seems to have tremendous vision, which is the hardest part.

Track of the day: "Late Century Dream" - Superchunk.  The bits and pieces I've heard from Here's to Shutting Up have a very airy and synthetic quality to them that is miles away from No Pocky for Kitty and even goes beyond the light little motifs in the beginning of songs from Come Pick Me Up.  I'll certainly need to get a copy eventually.  Too often, music with a soft sound like that is not nearly as well written (at least to my tastes) as Superchunk/McCaughan stuff always is.

Possession of ideas

Before I get to the main subject of this post, I'd like to mention something that occurred to me today than anyone who listens to GBV should understand.  I find myself realizing that the song "(I Wanna Be A) Dumbcharger" is tantalizingly incomplete without "Game of Pricks" following it.  I set up a playlist in which, fortunately, the two are in succession, because I think the former is a good intro for the latter, but while listening to it once the playlist had gotten to "Dumbcharger" (Go Chiefs, btw), I had this great fear that some song other than "Game of Pricks" was going to come after it, and it would all be so painful knowing that I had gotten so far through a the preceding song only to get to a song that is dissatisfying in its complementation.  "Dumbcharger" is a somewhat unexciting song, and "Game of Pricks" is an eminently energetic song for some reason, so playing something pensive, like Ride's "Vapour Trail", for instance, would rob both songs of their enjoyability.

------

Today I was reading an interview with Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg about her life, to put it most generally, because the interview bounced around quite a bit.  It contained her interesting musings on other writers, on politics, on her heritage, and on other things.  Most interesting to me was a mention of her having translated Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove in her younger years because, as could be inferred, I am a great fanatic of Proust's work.  Recently, I've also been in correspondence with a woman who has been reading In Search of Lost Time with great interest in the author's Judaism, which I find laudable because it is generally not the subject of Proust's story, especially after the first couple books.

Unfortunately, however, it has begun to make me feel somewhat insignificant for some reason.  Actually, I should not say "some reason", because I know very well what it is, and I shall now make some convoluted psychological explanation for it.  The reason is that I am very possessive of my cultural loves.  Just like Marcel for Albertine, I have, if not a constant obsession (or, rather, not a constant obsession, because I rarely have time to think of such things all the time), a great fear that my lovers should, in their spare time, find new friends and partners even if it is by no means close to our mutual love.  Like Albertine, I have kept my volumes of Proust sitting on the bookshelf in my room so that I may have them to myself as soon as I return.  Yes, I am a jealous lover.  And so when people talk about Proust to me, it is most uncomfortable.  I feel the same pangs as that nameless narrator.  He has captured my heart just as Albertine claimed his in some revenge that has come after so much time.  So when Natalia Ginzburg talks about having had such great affection for Proust, she is like Andree, for I do like her as well - I have nothing against Natalia Ginzburg, and find her sensitivity befitting someone like Proust.  I appreciate her companionship for Proust, at the very least, just as I would see him as being defaced in Ginzburg were replaced with J.K. Rowling or Nicholas Sparks.  It would be unbearable.  And when the curious bourgeois lady takes interest in Proust, it is just like when Albertine and Saint-Loup met - there could be no connection, because Proust's writing is indissolubly divided from his Judaism, at least as far as our relationship is concerned, and so, to me, the lady and Proust can never have a true love for him.  It is much the same with my Maine origins.  Being here at school, I never met anyone from Maine for a year, and now I have secondhand knowledge of so many.  I have consoled myself that they are all from Southern Maine (although there are a few from the rival of my high school), and certainly have have a deeper connection than most - I have met few that are so determined to return to their home after graduating as I am, because there is nothing to be had there as far as a life is concerned.  And yet, I feel that I am divested of all that makes me whole and of that which I could call my own.  I have never been loved by another person, and therefore have never possessed another person, so I make due with concepts, ideas, elements of my character that prove so fleeting and sometimes reproduce themselves.

A friend of mine has a friend that is just like me in every way, from the typing in too florid a way in comparison to her everyday speech to the favorite quote about the value of art in life.  I count myself fortunate that our interests are separate although still lined up in some way - she has recently read Williams' Spring and All, whence I procured my quote about art ("Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality". I think hers is from Virginia Woolf), and she also likes Lermontov (although I don't think she has read A Hero of Our Time), but her preferences otherwise vary slightly: Woolf instead of Proust, Eliot instead of Williams, new Indie instead of the antiquated Superchunk and Idlewild I listen to.  If we had more superficial similarities, I think I should have no purpose in living.

I fear the cult of individuality, but it is the only thing I can believe in.

Updated Queue - 11/20/11

1. Diary - Sunny Day Real Estate
2. A Catholic Education - Teenage Fanclub 
3. The Remote Part  - Idlewild
4. Under the Bushes and Under the Stars - Guided by Voices
5. There's Nothing Wrong with Love  - Built to Spill
6. Verdena - Verdena
7. A Storm in Heaven - The Verve
8. Forever Again - Eric's Trip
9. Pygmalion - Slowdive
10. Be Here Now - Oasis
11. Four Great Points - June of 44
12. Bright Ideas - Portastatic
13. Calling Zero - Go Back Snowball
14. Grand Prix - Teenage Fanclub
15. Dog Man Star - Suede
16. Guitar Romantic - Exploding Hearts
17. Warnings/Promises - Idlewild
18. The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle - The Sex Pistols
19. God Fodder - Ned's Atomic Dustbin
20. Indoor Living - Superchunk

Music as Literature II - Idea Post

There was a post I did awhile ago in which I mentioned a quote in which Roddy Woomble from Idlewild said, basically, that he was just writing catchy songs, and that the only really poetry to be found in music was in the very greatest artists (I must disagree with his current taste, personally.  To me, Roddy and people like Blake Schwarzenbach, Neil Halstead, Mac McCaughan, and whoever wrote the lyrics for Slint are miles ahead of anything Bob Dylan wrote).  This isn't something he just now decided.  Hell, one of Idlewild's earliest songs, "Self Healer" says, "a song is a beautiful lie" again and again (speaking of which, I was reading Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being and it had a line that went "the song was a beautiful lie", and now I wonder where "Self Healer" came from).  Then there's "American English", which is all about this, says, "And if you believe that now I understand why words mean so much to you.  They'll never be about you" and "I sing a song about myself".  You could even make "Idea Track" ("Pretend it works awhile, it's transmitted live") or "I am what I am not" ("Calling places, collecting careless sentences, I write them down so I ignore them, and you should too. You should ignore every word") mean the same thing.

Of course, Idlewild was never known for the same self-aggrandizing that bands like Oasis and Guided by Voices have participated in (and nor do I blame Liam and Noel for making things interesting outside of the studio), and I think I've already talked about how powerful music, and Idlewild's is no exception, can be.  All I'm saying is that for all his philosophical rejection of the idea that a song could be something more than a piece of saccharine troubadourship, his lyrics, even if not poetry, say a whole lot, and so I have to wonder if he really believes that "a song is a beautiful lie" always?

What I want (in life)

1. I want to live back home in Maine, or maybe not Maine specifically, but somewhere rural, snowy, and on the coast.

2. I want a house with a fancy garden, like that one ->

3. I want a lot of free time

4. I want to learn how to paint

This is what I want in life

Updated Queue

1. Diary - Sunny Day Real Estate
2. A Catholic Education - Teenage Fanclub
3. The Remote Part  - Idlewild
4. Under the Bushes and Under the Stars - Guided by Voices
5. There's Nothing Wrong with Love  - Built to Spill
6. Northern Soul - The Verve
7. Forever Again - Eric's Trip
8. Pygmalion - Slowdive
9. Be Here Now - Oasis
10. Four Great Points - June of 44

Music as Literature I - "Captain" and "Good Morning, Captain"

Time for me to read too much into music as art.  Those of you not familiar, here are some links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoH5MPIgM7c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfxFSYBq6ho - I couldn't find the mini-album version, so here's a pretty true to form live one

First, an eery guitar motif is present in both.  Obviously, the punkier Idlewild version is more aggressive than the passive and creepy Slint edition. 

Slint's song is about how images haunt a sea captain who has survived a shipwreck, and similar human images appear in Idlewild's, with the line "This is my idea for captain - a girl in a flower dress".  The paranoia of Slint's captain is also repeated in "Captain", with lines such as "You scramble my words!" and "I'd rather that these are not my words".

What I'm noting here is that Idlewild's song seems to be based at least subconsciously on the Slint predecessor.  It focuses on the same sense of lonely derangedness that "Good Morning, Captain" does.

As a student of the humanities, it is my job to take things too far, and here I have taken Roddy Woomble's statement that he used to listen to Slint and used it to create a connection from his song to a song of the latter.

My queue for albums

So slowly but surely I've been buying CDs off of the internet and at record stores, and I'm kind of closish to having what, to my taste, would be a comprehensive collection.  Here's what I hope to get next, in chronological order by importance:

1.  Spiderland - Slint
2. Diary - Sunny Day Real Estate
3. A Catholic Education - Teenage Fanclub
3.14159 Bee Thousand - Guided by Voices
4. The Remote Part  - Idlewild
5. There's Nothing Wrong with Love  - Built to Spill
6. Northern Soul - The Verve
7.  New Day Rising - Husker Du
8. Be Here Now - Oasis
9. Forever Again - Eric's Trip
10. Pygmalion - Slowdive

Things might shift around, and I might have forgotten stuff, but off the top of my head, here's what I don't have yet

Themes from cinema

First, I should add that I was incorrect, after thinking about it, re the end of Closely Watched Trains; there was really no possibility for a happy ending as soon as the Nazi Party guy arrived, since even if Miloš would have been arrested and killed later even if he hadn't been shot.  All in all, everything would have been equal, unfortunately, which makes me wonder if I'm happier that at least he died while executing an act of heroism and in front of Maša or if I'd rather he'd been successful and then died alone in a gas chamber or prison cell off screen.

Also, I watched a few foreign films this summer, so maybe I'll review all of them later.

"Closely Watched Trains" is Incredible

Having heard of it, strangely, through my studying for AP Euro last spring, I have just now gotten around to renting the highly touted Czech film.  Of course, many movies with very good reputations end up being underwhelming.  Apocalypse Now comes to mind as a film whose excesses failed to deliver the messages it was intended to in a realistic manner.

Closely Watched Trains, however, was absolutely brilliant in it's remarkable subtlety.  It carefully treads a line between perversion and innocence, youth and maturity, love and ennui, humanity and soullessness, and hope and foreboding.

The ending especially killed me, as one could see the happiest ending of all happy endings just within reach, just to be stolen away at the last minute.  The reaction of all of the characters present contrasted with Maša's reaction was especially shocking.  In the end, Closely Watched Trains walks so find a line between tragedy and comedy that I am left completely bewildered by it and no not what to think.

In fact, I think I should prefer to imagine Miloš emerging from that final cloud of smoke and rubble after the movie's end.

Quick Commentary I

I often think of random and disjointed things, and have decided to record some of them here:

- Having finished In Search of Lost Time, I went back to Swann's Way and noticed that in the beginning of the book, the Narrator mentions that he has stayed, at one point, with a Mme. de Saint-Loup.  I vaguely remember when I first read it and thinking she was probably some random old woman with nice furniture
- Byron and Keats died at 36 and 26 respectively, as did Pushkin and Lermontov.  I thought this was a strange coincidence.
- Describing Eric's Trip to someone: is Slowdive meets the Stooges accurate? Or simply a Lo-fi Slowdive (for whatever reason I think the dynamics of both bands were very similar)
- If Chris Osgood does end up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, no member will have been so consistently out-played that I can recall.  He's lost his starting job to Mike Vernon, Garth Snow, and Ty Conklin in addition to CuJo/Hasek and finally Jimmy Howard.
- I really should read some Balzac at some point, but I'm not particularly sure which part of La Comédie Humaine I should read (since I likely won't have time for all of it)

On my favorite band and end of youth

  This article by James Hendicott from State Magazine says what has been coming for at least 5 years now: Idlewild, for better or for worse, does not have the same soul it had back in the '90's coming into the new millennium, and may have ceased to exist altogether. That is, per Hendicott, "the anger of the 100 Broken Windows/ Hope Is Important era seemed to be rocking on its last legs".

It shouldn't particularly be any surprise by now that the constituents of the group are going for a softer, more mature sound - Captain to Hope is Important to 100 Broken Windows to The Remote Part to Warnings/Promises all showed a similar progression, and artistically, that's the direction in which the band feels inspired, whether it's due to getting older, losing original bass player and noise rock aficionado Bob Fairfoull, or due to some other cause.

As nothing but a fan and a listener, I can only express my opinion, and I will make no secret of the fact that I wish they could continue producing an endless stream of 100 Broken Windowses forever (although, considering my feelings toward this album, it should seem to me impossible, since even Proust had only one Recherche and Carracci only one Galeria Farnese).  A lot of Idlewild fans feel the same way, and lead singer Roddy Woomble has said that he feels the more mature sound appeals to more people, and will incorporate middle aged people who are often un-catered to in the music industry, and I appreciate that.

I will note, however, that part of what makes Idlewild's early oeuvre so special is the way in which it deals with issues that face only young people entering the world on a grander scale in a way that is so  mature.  Perhaps teenagers are generally rebellious without any particular reason.  For me, however, there was a point at which Never Mind the Bullocks or early Clash records were no longer pertinent because the people around me in my age group, more mature or more drawn into the system of contemporary society, whichever way you see it, knew what they wanted to do with their lives and had no time for soul searching or rejecting any more of the status quo than they saw as permissible.

 So perhaps there is a reason why I've connected so much to an album like Hope is Important or, even more-so as it remains my favorite record, 100 Broken Windows - because we both are on the verge of entering a world where it is no longer acceptable to rebel. For example, I remember trying one time to convince my college friends that collectivist anarchism was a feasible form of government, and they weren't really able to give it a second thought.  This is the important connection that so many have to music - it provides hope in it's very existence, and hope is important (eh?).

100 Broken Windows is really the perfect album in a way.  On the outside it conforms to every expectation (although nobody uses Times New Roman on an album cover).  It's sound is very standard modern rock, it would seem to many (although the first time my mother and sister heard any of it, they found it very hard and grating.  The first song they heard was "Idea Track", so that was probably a misrepresentation.  They also haven't listened to McLusky to hear what it sounds like when actually psychopaths write music, making their attitudes toward style less desensitized).  Underneath, however, 100 Broken Windows is unlike any other album.  "Little Discourage" is all about success and failure, invention and iconoclasm; "I Don't Have the Map" is, interestingly now that I think about it, about learning to live without boundaries, and, it seems, the option to live according to an uncertain sense of authenticity or based on social expectations; "These Wooden Ideas" is probably the only song commenting on metaphysics that I can think of, and probably the cleverest lyrically that I know, a sort of rejection of tunnel vision in modern thought; "Roseability" seems like a song about attaching too much importance to things that are obsolete just because common wisdom says to do so; "Idea Track", the song that, when I first played the CD, showed me the true power of this album that I had bought on a whim, is about living in a world that no longer caters to one's mode of thought or existence; "Let Me Sleep (Next to the Mirror)" is a song about understanding and misunderstanding other people and working through difficult times; "Listen to What You've Got" is a song about people misunderstanding what seems obvious to other people and the awful pressure of needing to understand; "Actually It's Darkness", starting with it's cliché sounding introduction that I'm sure I played on a keyboard one time when I was 10, is a commentary on modern thought and paranoia and, while one of the lighter songs on the album, a strangely sarcastic and hypocritical look at our culture of skepticism and its effects; "Rusty" is a cynical look at society as a whole; "Mistake Pageant" is about social pressures and situations; "Quiet Crown" is about the human need to go home sometimes and escape the world of expectations; and "Bronze Medal" is a condemnation of the numbness imbued in all of us by modern conveniences coupled with a sad recognition of all of us who are doomed never to fulfill our dreams (by the way, they released a fantastically chilling demo version that is worth a listen): at least that is how I see it, since of course any writing is up to interpretation.

At any rate, I'm sad that for the foreseeable future 100 Broken Windows will remain one of its kind - a truly literary album that is both brutally honest and approachable.  It made it possible for me to finish my freshman year of college without lining my room with cork tiles, and I wish there were different iterations so that I could know I would never get bored of this piece of art that truly changed my life.

In the article to which I linked above, Roddy says, "There are very few lyricists you can read as poetry. Maybe Dylan, Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits. The greats, but not too many other people. But that’s okay.”  I had two thoughts when I read this.
- First I thought, "what happened to Slint and Fugazi? Are we all destined to move on?"
- Next I thought "You're lying.  I've heard 100 Broken Windows, and those words mean as much as anything by William Carlos Williams, or John Milton, or Byron."

They probably actually mean more than anything by Pound or Marvell.


Just kidding.

First Post!

This is my first post, so I'll just mention a couple things as starters:
 - As a pedant, I chose to name this blog after the not particularly noteworthy but nonetheless remarkable character from In Search of Lost Time because I really do love Proust; the name itself reflects my own sense of anachronism; and almost as a hope that I should have the same mysterious and unpredictable talent, bordering on genius, that "I'm a wash-out" (whose real name is Octave - one of three people whom I can recall in the book whose names are in the dictionary, the others being Basin and that guy whom everyone calls Gri-gri but never shows up in La richerche) eventually displays in the art of theatre set design
 - I may, assuming I post here, post on a number of different topics, and I don't predict that I shall end up specializing too much
- That was two, and that's all I have to say, but that is too small a number of subjects for bullets to be used, so yeah.  Hopefully I post with relative frequency