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.

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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