22 June 2010

the unbearable lightness of being

Posted by admin @ 16:37 pm    categories: art

(Lee este post en español.)

I finished reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being today. It’s a 1984 novel by Milan Kundera, a Czech writer; it’s one of those books you know about before you really know anything about it. I had it in school on Monday, and one of the teachers who I like a lot, Eva, asked me what I was reading. I tried to translate the title. “La insoportable… ligereza… de ser?” I knew ligereza didn’t feel right, but she figured out what I was talking about. The title in Spanish is La insoportable levedad de ser; I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between the two words, to be honest.

Anyway, “Isn’t that really depressing?” she asked me. But it’s not, at all. I knew before I started reading it that it was a “philosophical” book, and it is. But it’s not heavy in the way it could be; it doesn’t feel like I’m working at anything. I finished the last fifty pages in an hour today, reading while waiting at the doctor’s office. Not the sort of thing you can do with every book. But it’s philosophical without being difficult. It’s about love, and sex, and death. It’s graphic and straightforward. That’s why it’s interesting; that’s why it’s fun.

I’m glad I got around to reading it.

Below are some quotes I liked. I blocked off paragraphs all through the book; these are some shorter ones. There are lots of wonderful passages.

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love. (Kundera, 11)

This symmetrical composition–the same motif appears at the beginning and at the end–may seem quite “novelistic” to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on the condition that you refrain from reading such notions as “fictive,” “fabricated,” and “untrue to life” into the word “novelistic.” Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. (Kundera, 52)

Now, perhaps, we are in a better position to understand the abyss separating Sabina and Franz: he listened eagerly to the story of her life and she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing between them. (Kundera, 88, oh god that last line is wonderful)

   He knew that instead of waking her he should lull her back to sleep, so he tried to come up with an answer that would plant the image of a new dream in her mind.
   ”I’m looking at the stars,” he said.
   ”Don’t say you’re looking at the stars. That’s a lie. You’re looking down.”
   ”That’s because we’re in an airplane. The stars are below us.”
   ”Oh, in an airplane,” said Tereza, squeezing his hand even tighter and falling asleep again. And Tomas knew that Tereza was looking out of the round window of an airplane flying high above the stars. (Kundera, 240)

Hoy, acabé de leer La insoportable levedad de ser. Es un libro del año 1984, del escritor checo Milan Kundera. Es uno de los libros que conoces, por lo menos en inglés, aunque probablamente no sabes mucho de él. Lo tenía conmigo en el colegio el lunes, y uno de las profesores con quien me lleva bien, Eva, me preguntó que leía. Intenté a traducir el titulo — “Es la Insoportable … ligereza … de ser?” Supe que ligereza no era la palabra, pero ella me entendió. No entiendo completamente la diferencia entre ligereza y levedad, todavía.

De todos modos, me preguntó, “No es muy pesado?” Pero no, no es, en ninguna manera. Sabía antes de empezarme que era un libro filosófico, y lo es. Pero no es pesado, no es deprimido, no me da el sentimiento que estoy trabajando. Terminé con las ultimas 50 paginas en una hora, hoy, esperando el la oficina del medico. Esto no es el tipo de cosa que puedes hacer con todos los libros. Es filosófico sin ser difícil. Se trata del amor, y el sexo, y el muerto. Es gráfico, y franco. Por eso es interesante; por eso es divertido.

Estoy contento que finalmente lo leí.

Abajo son unas citas que me gustó. Marqué párrafos en todo el libro; estos son los más cortos. Hay muchos pasajes maravillosos. Aquí hago unas traducciones para divertirme — obviamente, ya traduzco de una traducción de checo. Las traducciones en inglés están arriba.

Tomás no se dió cuenta en este momento que las metáforas son peligrosas. No debe jugar con las metáforas. Una metáfora sola puede engendrar el amor. (Kundera, 11)

Esta composición simétrica–la misma tema aparece al principio y al final–puede parecer bastante novelistica a sí, y estoy dispuesto a aceptar, pero solo si Ud. se abstene de presumir las ideas de “ficcional,” “fabricado,” y “inreal en aspecto a la vida” en la palabra “novelistica.” Porque las vidas humanas son compuestos en exactamente esta manera. (Kundera, 52)

Ahora, quizás, estamos en una posición mejor a entender el abismo que separa Sabina y Franz: él escuchó con entusiasmo a la historia de su vida, y ella con entusiasmo igual escuchó a la suya, pero aunque los dos entendieron con claridad los sentidos logicos de las palabras que intercambiaron, ellos fracasaron a escuchar el susurro semántico del río fluyendo entre sus mismos. (Kundera, 88, joder pero la ultima linea es maravillosa)

   Sabía que en vez de despertarla, debe calmarla a dormir otra vez, y así intentó a inventar una respuesta que plantaría la imagen de un sueño nuevo en su mente.
   ”Miro a las estrellas,” dijo.
   ”No digas que mires a las estrellas. Es una mentira. Tú miras abajo.”
   ”Eso es porque estamos en un avión. Las estrellas están abajos.”
   ”O, en un avión,” dijo Tereza, apretando la mano de Tomás aun más, y se dormió otra vez. Y Tomás sabía que Tereza miraba fuera de la ventana redonda de un avión, volando muy arriba de las estrellas. (Kundera, 240)

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6 June 2010

House of Leaves

Posted by admin @ 15:11 pm    categories: art • writing

Back in November, I wrote about a book I was reading, called House of Leaves.

I had started it back a year ago or so, and I finally finished it yesterday, on the train coming back from San Sebastian. (Which merits its own post. The train, as well, but I’ll post on San Sebastian.) I ended up reasonably well-pleased with the book. I don’t think it was ground-breaking, and I have a few places where I wrote something akin to “fuck you, Danielewski” in the margins, but all-in-all I’d say that I found this to be a fascinating book, and I am unlikely to forget it any time soon.

To re-cap: the book is ostensibly about a film called The Navidson Record, a quasi-horror film in which Will Navidson, his wife, and their two kids move into a house in Virginia that has a basement that is more than a basement — it is a creature, an almost-living malevolent being. The innermost heart of the novel is a book that is essentially a descriptive critique of the film, heavy on external sources except for where these sources are rebutted. This part of the novel is excellent — replete with sections where the design of the page reflects what’s going in the text. This text then, is being compiled by Johnny Truant, a bum/tattoo-parlor-worker/genuine-crazy who intersperses his eclectic experiences with comments on the text. I found myself interested less in him — his story, as Julien pointed out to me, is really fairly unoriginal — and more in how he interacts with the text. There’s a scene, for example, wherein his own dream replaces one Navidson should have; Truant intertwines his own story with Navidson’s.

In some way, the book is very traditional — certainly in the way it resolves it is pleasantly straightforward. Despite its play with traditional modes of criticism and its intended subversion, I think it’s still trying to be enjoyable. It’s work, but it wants to be fun work.

I’d like to re-read it some day. But at the same time, I’m not sure that I ever will.

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30 May 2010

Primavera Sound

Posted by admin @ 17:09 pm    categories: Spain • art • traveling

As I’ve mentioned before, I went to a music festival in Barcelona, called Primavera Sound. It was excellent. I am supremely glad that I went.

I also got to stay with Marta, who’s amazing. Also an excellent hostess. It was fun to get to see her!

The festival was here, which is to say here. Which was an excellent venue for a music festival.

It’s a huge place; there were four main large stages, several smaller ones, and a gigantic auditorium. According to one place I looked, there were over one hundred thousand people. Definitely there were at least 75,000. Which is actually pretty ridiculous, when you think about it. I can’t really understand that number of people.

In any case, if you’re curious, here are the bands I saw. The ones who had enjoyable shows, or something worth noting, have a picture or a comment, or both. I have pictures of all of the shows I saw, except for Owen Pallett’s show and the one show I can’t really count. All in all, I saw 31 shows over the weekend, although of course most of them I didn’t see all of. I’d hazard that very few of the shows were longer than an hour.

Day 1. Show 1.
The Wave Pictures
Went with this kid I met in Bilbao, Fernando, and his friends. Shrug.

Day 1. Show 2.
Monotonix
Tagged along here. Only saw the last song, but their show was ridiculous. Mostly-sans-clothes. Running through the audience with the microphone and drum. Yeah.

Day 1. Show 3.
Titus Andronicus
A bit of a large stage for them, in my opinion. Fun.

Day 1. Show 4.
The xx
The xx play at Primavera Sound
I really like this band’s album. You’ve probably heard “Crystalised” or “VCR” — if not, try ‘em out. They’ve gotten a bad rap for their live shows, but — and I acknowledge that this may come from the fact that I was expecting worse — I rather enjoyed seeing them. They weren’t amazing, and they were mostly just rather calm, but they put on an enjoyable show. It rained slightly during it, which was too bad, but honestly it was barely a sprinkle. I stayed for the whole show.

Day 1. Show 5.
Broken Social Scene
These guys put on a great show. I’d seen them before, at Brandeis I think (with my sister). I really like their new album, besides. I’m fairly sure I stayed for their whole show, although to be honest I don’t really remember.

Day 1. Show 6.
The Books
The Books play at Primavera Sound 2010
I love The Books. They’re one of my favorite bands. They do… I dunno, curious music. And for their live shows, they compile these amazing videos. Here’s a junction between good video and good song: “Smells Like Content“. “Tokyo” is another great song, although this video isn’t as great (and is fan-made). I got to see them do the former; not the latter. At this show, I met two American guys from D.C. while we were all waiting for the show to start. They were quite nice. I stayed for this entire show. I was really impressed by how well they did playing out of doors. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it totally did. And I’m glad; this marks the second time I’ve loved them live.

Day 1. No show.
Pavement
With Rob and Tom, the guys from above, I walked over to the Pavement show. But we didn’t stay. It was nearing the end, none of us really knew the music, and it was PACKED. Instead, we went to…

Day 1. Show 7.
Sleigh Bells
This was enjoyable, despite this being essentially hard rock with some woman screaming.

Day 1. Show 8.
Apse
I took off after a while at Sleigh Bells, and went to see Apse. I like their music (thanks, Ali), but I couldn’t get into the show.

Day 1. Show 9. Last show of the day (for me) — 02:30 AM.
Fuck Buttons
I don’t know their music very well. They’ve got some songs I like, though. They’re kind of a noise DJ pair? I don’t know. See what wiki has to say.

Well.

I took the night bus to the Plaza de Catalunya, and then walked to Marta’s place.

Day 2. Show 1.
Owen Pallett (used to go by Final Fantasy)
I really like Owen Pallett, and honestly this was one of the best shows of the festival. Unfortunately, I arrived late — the show started at 16:00 — so I only caught the second half and didn’t take any photographs. Pallett is a really good musician; his live show is really cool to watch. He plays the violin — very well — and loops it on itself, live, to create his songs. Also he had accompaniment. I encourage you to give him a try, but honestly I’m not sure what song to recommend. This song (with its ridiculous video) is excellent. So’s this one (the names are the couple who form The Arcade Fire; Pallett toured with them but I don’t know the origins of the song). Anyway, really fun. Also, this show and several others I went to this day were in the auditorium, which was super-nice.

Day 2. Show 2.
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions
Hope Sandoval is apparently rather strange; she and her band played their show in almost-complete darkness, and she (above and beyond the theatre’s prohibition) asked that we not take photographs. I don’t know her music very well. I do like it, though. I stayed for the whole show, although I dazed off for some of it. I had gotten up to the second row, so it’s too bad these two shows weren’t reversed.

As I left, I saw this enormous line to get into the auditorium, for a band called Low. I think maybe Europeans know this band better than Americans, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know them at all. Although apparently they’re American, and worthy of huge queues.

Day 2. Show 3.
The New Pornographers
I’m not the hugest fan of this band, although I do like them. I didn’t stay for much of their show, since a friend from Madrid, Javi, gave me a call. So I joined him for a band he really liked:

Day 2. Show 4.
Nueval Vulcano
Javi and his friends really like this band, and knew all the words. It was pretty good, so I stayed for the whole show. It was my first not-in-English-show. Then I followed Javi and his friends back to the auditorium.

Day 2. Show 5.
Junip
I’d never heard of this band, and no wonder, since they’ve never released an album. It’s a group project featuring José González, the Swedish singer probably best known for his covers. (“Heartbeats“, originally by The Knife. “Teardrop“, originally by Massive Attack.) It was a nice show, although weird since I knew none of the music.

Day 2. Show 6.
CocoRosie
I have mixed feelings about them. Their live show is supposed to be fun, but I decided not to stay for longer than a few songs. They seemed to be having fun.

Day 2. Show 7.
Beach House
I like Beach House better anyway, and I’m glad I got to see a good part of this show. It was completely packed, so I didn’t get as close as I would’ve liked. But they’re excellent musicians, and I was pleased that they were good live. Around this time, I managed to miss two bands I would’ve liked to have seen: Here We Go Magic, and (more importantly) Wilco. I’ll have to see Wilco some other time to make up for it.

Day 2. Show 8.
Standstill
Standstill at Primavera Sound 2010
I saw this band a few weeks ago in Madrid. They weren’t as good in the auditorium, but they’re excellent musicians, and this time they played with this cool video behind them. I liked parts of the video quite a lot.

Day 2. Show 9.
Panda Bear
I left Standstill to go see Panda Bear, which was honestly a waste of time. He played a lot of new stuff, I think. I wandered off and got food after a while. Disappointing. I love Animal Collective, of which he’s a part. And I like his solo work — I just need to listen to it more. Also maybe he’d be more fun in a smaller space.

Day 2. Show 10.
Marc Almond
Do you know who this guy is? I didn’t. He’s apparently a member of Soft Cell, which means he played “Tainted Love.” His wiki article makes him seem like an interesting guy, but other than “Tainted Love” I was kind of bored. I just sat and watched because there wasn’t much else going on right at this point.

Day 2. Show 11.
Major Lazer
Major Lazer at Primavera Sound 2010
And then I went to Major Lazer. Which was a-mazing. They’re a collaboration between DJs Diplo (Philadelphia) and Switch (London) and a bunch of singers crossing a bunch of genres… See the wiki page. I actually first heard of them from, of all places, The New Yorker. See here. Actually, I believe I first read this blurb in the print edition when it came out. Anyway, Major Lazer shows are ridiculous affairs, including a type of dance known as Daggering I’ll leave you to look up yourself. Also, errr, watch this video. Before the show started, I met this Swedish guy who was on his own at the show, and these two girls who had been studying in France. I stuck with the Swedish guy for the whole show — his name was Leo, or perhaps Lio. We walked up to the next show, but then he ran off — and we oddly ran into each other again at Diplo’s solo DJ set later that night. He was possibly on something… here’s him with a mask on:
Lio-Leo at the Major Lazer show

Sometime around now I missed seeing the Pixies. Yeah, I know.

Day 2. Show 12.
Yeasayer
I saw Yeasayer and wrote extensively about the show in these pages a short while ago. But I’m glad I went to see them again. Their show wasn’t quite as good, but it was very nearly so. I saw next to me this kid who had also been at the Books show, I’m almost sure. I recognized him because he was one of the only people dancing to The Books. He and I grinned and danced together for the duration of the show, and talked briefly. Nice guy. I always like when people aren’t afraid to dance during shows.

Day 2. Show 13.
The Bloody Beetroots
If you’re counting, you’ve noticed that it’s probably getting late at this point. It is. Yeasayer’s show was at 02:30. I stopped off to watch a bit of the Bloody Beetroots, who are apparently famous, while I waited for 04:30 to come — when Diplo came on. Shrug.

Day 2. Show 14.
Joker feat. Nomad
I don’t think this really counts. I can’t remember it, and I only saw like five minutes, max.

Day 2. Show 15.
Diplo
Dipo is a really good DJ. I sometimes wonder what a DJ does on the stage, but Diplo, regardless of anything else, makes it all work. Excellent show. Lots of dancing.

Got home on one of the early trams. Very easy.

Day 3. Show 1.
Dr. Dog
I like Dr. Dog quite a lot. I wish I had gotten here in time for the whole of their set, but as it was I only really saw the second half.

Day 3. Show 2.
Nana Grizol
Fernando, Leire, and Ignacio
I met up with Fernando and his friends Leire and Ignacio. We sat in the bleachers and watched this show. It was actually pretty good, considering I’d never heard of this band before. They were already kind of drunk.

Day 3. Show 3.
Florence + the Machine
Florence and the Machine at Primavera Sound 2010
Florence Welch has attracted a lot of attention, won a few awards, and so forth — and with good reason, seeing as how she’s excellent. This song is one of the more well-liked, as is “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)“. She reminded me of Kate Bush, sort of, in what she was wearing and how she performed, although her voice is gorgeous and amazing. It was a truly excellent show; I saw the entire thing.

Day 3. Show 4.
Grizzly Bear
I really like Grizzly Bear. I don’t know their music as well as I would have thought, because I was somewhat lost at their concert, but I disagree with what some people have said — I think they played a really excellent show, and really liked the songs of theirs that I knew well. (Including a beautiful rendition of “Knife” and one of “Ready, Able“. They also, of course, played “Two Weeks.”) I stayed for the whole show.

Day 3. Show 5.
Matt and Kim
Matt & Kim at Primavera Sound 2010
This show had the sad honor of being more or less the last one I really wanted to see. On the bright side, it was pretty wonderful. They played a short set — ten minutes less than an hour, at least — but I managed to dance up a sweat, get knocked over by Kim crowd-surfing, get drizzled on by someone’s thrown beer, get to the front lines, and so forth. They did some brief covers (“The Final Countdown”; Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone”), and jumped about, yelled, and never stopped smiling. I saw them at Haverford a while back, and they were amazing then; they were also amazing now. This video (for “Lessons Learned”) has gotten them some attention; their song “Daylight” is pretty well-known for a small song. And those are both more recent. The crowd had a surprising number of Spaniards; I asked one of them how he knew of M&K and he told me he’d found them on youtube. So hurrah.
crowd at Matt and Kim at Primavera Sound 2010

Day 3. Show 6.
Sunny Day Real Estate
Apparently these guys are famous. I kind of knew this. They sing that song “Song About an Angel“. They were fun, although mostly I just know that song.

Day 3. Show 7.
Pet Shop Boys
End of the night for me. I’d never even heard of these guys, a British group. They put on a really good show, apparently, but I didn’t know the music and wasn’t so into it, so I didn’t stay. Sad, I know, but such is the case.

And then I went back to Marta’s, slept, and caught a plane home.

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8 May 2010

a pet-peeve; a good day

Posted by admin @ 9:43 am    categories: Spanish • art

Pet peeve is a weird expression. It’s obviously related to the word “peevish,” but it’s still a bit odd. In any case, on NPR’s “Fresh Air” the other day, they talked about pet peeves in language. I think I mentioned it on here. I’ve been thinking about it recently some (first as “how would I translate this?”, to which I got my answer), and also identifying some pet peeves of mine. The point the guy made on NPR was that it’s only a pet peeve if it’s the sort of thing that doesn’t annoy many others. So disliking something everyone dislikes isn’t a pet peeve.

Anyway, not sure if this counts.

I went to a concert last night, with one of the women I work with (Ade), her boyfriend (Javi), and their friends (David, Álvaro, María, Pedro/Peter). The concert was for this Catalunyan band called Standstill (pronounced, if you’re a Spaniard with the typical problem with s-consonant pairs*, as eh-Stand-eh-Still), which Ade introduced me to months and months ago. She and her friends have seen the band quite a few times — for example, Javi has seen them more than ten times. They sound a bit like the American band Murder by Death, I guess. That’s what I thought the first time I heard them. Wikipedia articles say they’re post-hardcore, but frankly that seems misplaced; they’re pretty much just alt-rock. (Maybe their English albums were harder? I’ve only ever heard their more recent, Spanish-language stuff.)

The concert was pretty awesome. I like this band quite a lot, and I know their music fairly well (although not the lyrics — it’s even harder to make out foreign-language lyrics), so it was fun. But here’s where we get to the possibly-a-pet-peeve thing: in recent years, I’ve found it more and more likely for the light-operators at concerts to flash floodlights at the crowd. It seems completely fucking bizarre and unnecessary, and they did it more than often last night. It seems to me that if you want the band to see the crowd, you turn on the house lights. But blinding the crowd with floodlights to punctuate the music? Bizarre. I know I’ve got sensitive eyes, but I just don’t get it.

In any case, it was a lot of fun.

Earlier yesterday, I went hiking in La Pedriza, also in the Guadarrama, with this German guy named Max and his Czech friend Luci. It was a lot of fun. We drove up to Manzanares el Real, the town to the north of Madrid that has a castle, and into the park. It was a wet day, so there were very few people around — unlike the last time I was up here. (I never actually finished that post — like a month ago, this kid Tim and I tried to go climbing, but ended up mostly just hiking around, which was okay since it’s gorgeous.) It didn’t rain until we’d pretty much reached the peaks, four hours in, so we had four beautiful hours of hiking up to the ridges, and then four hours of hiking back through sparse rain, mist, and (holy shit, what!? it’s May!) some snow. The misty valleys were quite gorgeous as well, and as always in the wilderness, it’s kind of fun to climb without seeing a soul.

We ended up going slightly off-course for a bit, and doing something that was more climbing than hiking. Which I liked a lot, as always, although I’m glad we did it before it started raining. All in all, we ended up without mishap.

It’s always interesting hiking by map versus hiking by guidebook. There are benefits to both, and they’re best used in unison I would say. But Max had a map, and we were just following the guide-lines and trail blazes (and cairns†). The difference in this approach is that you can get off-track and still be fine, but it’s easier to get off-track. I kind of like both — I don’t know that I’m up for going with the newer way of hiking, using GPS.

In any case, yes, a good day.

* I know this is probably super-obvious to many people, but I was confused for a while about how native Spanish speakers often have difficulty pronouncing words like “snake” or “spring” or “Spain,” while they have no trouble with other words that begin with s. Finally I realized that it’s not the beginning-with-an-s, but the beginning-with-an-s-and-then-another consonant. “Solo” is easy. “Stork” is not. That sort of sound doesn’t exist in Spanish without an “eh” first. I’m pleased I figured this out on my own, even if it took forever.

† A cairn is a pile of rocks used to signal a trail, these days. It’s what I’ve called them for a long while. I guess I picked up the word from someone at a camp?, because my father doesn’t use it. It’s an awesome word. Max used the word “stone man,” which I immediately intuited to mean cairn, but now I see was probably his direct translation from German.

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4 May 2010

bilb(a)o

Posted by admin @ 16:37 pm    categories: Spain • art • traveling

I was in Bilbao two weeks ago. It’s in the north of Spain, in the Basque Country. It was pretty wonderful.

the train station in Bilbao
I really liked the train station in Bilbao. Something about it in the off-light of Friday afternoon… I took a few pictures. (See?) This is really what it looked like — a grey, but still bright, day.

That same day, I walked to the Guggenheim. This is one of the main tourism draws of Bilbao, and I really enjoyed it, both inside and out. Photography wasn’t permitted inside, but there was an amazing temporary exhibition of (sculpture) work by Indian-British artist Anish Kapoor. He’s the guy who made The Bean in Chicago.

Jeff Koons' 'Puppy'

The Guggenheim

The glass at the Guggenheim

I also took a photo of myself in the glass.

The next day, I took the metro out to the beach at Sopelana, maybe forty minutes from the center. It was gorgeous.

a cliff at the beach

sea ridge off the coast of Bilbao, Spain

My last day, I went to the Fine Art Museum before I left. Outside, was this:
lamp posts outside the museum of fine art in Bilbao, Spain

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2 May 2010

la sierra de guadarrama

Posted by admin @ 8:07 am    categories: Spain • art • traveling

This is the mountain chain to the north of Madrid, the Guadarrama, where Dan and I went for a hike yesterday.

Dan and I on the peak of Cabeza de la Brana

the pass from the silver mines up to the peaks

Madrid as seen from the peak of La Perdiguera

a crag we rounded on the way down to Miraflores

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21 April 2010

on poetry

Posted by admin @ 12:35 pm    categories: art • writing

I’ve posted a poem from Slate before. I’m doing so again — not because Slate publishes such consistently good poetry (although it’s yards above many publications), but rather because they’re the only publication that has a poetry feed to which I’m subscribed.

Nonetheless, I quite like this poem.

It’s called “Big Box Encounter,” and it’s by a woman named Erika Meitner. I’m assuming you’ll follow that link on your own, but let me sum up the poem by saying that it’s about confusing feelings of desire for a (past?) student of the speaker’s.

I’m partially fascinated by this poem because I feel like there’s this continual move toward poetry that embraces a very specific space between the taboo and the mundane. Poetry that is exciting to read often plays with this, and I think Meitner’s poem does so quite well. For example: “I tried not to look at his beautiful terrible chest, / the V-shaped wings of his chiseled hip-bones.” I like her detail, I like her drawing our focus to where her attention is. And I like the way she reads it, as well. (Slate always posts the author reading his or her poem; I like this.)

The line I quote, and the poem itself, is just the sort of thing that James Wood critiques in last month’s New Yorker, in his sort-of-review “Keeping It Real: Conflict, convention, and Chang-Rae Lee’s ‘The Surrendered.’” I don’t really think Wood’s article reaches any conclusions, and I’m frustrated by his simplification of the Barthes piece (although I acknowledge that I’ve never fully understood Barthes myself). Still, it’s certainly the case that many writers fall for “the cinematic sweep, followed by the selection of small, telling details.” And perhaps Meitner is doing this. And so what?

I have written down, somewhere, a note to myself: “write more poetry that is daring.” I think I mean by this: poems that hint at something, that are exciting and make us think. There’s a good comparison, at least according to google (by which I mean — I’m reporting what other websites say, and not something I feel is decidedly true; all I’m sure of is that he wrote these poems). Allen Ginsberg has two poems, both written about Neal Cassidy. One is called “On Neal’s Ashes,” and is moving but slightly vulgar. The other is called “Please Master” and is primarily just vulgar and explicit. (It’s also probably NSFW.) I imagine you’ll see what I mean? I think the first one has got something there. I think the second is interesting, but not particularly so. And I love Ginsberg — “Footnote to Howl” is one of my favourite poems. That fits this bill, as well.

I’m curious to hear what anyone bothering to read this thinks. Does something vaguely taboo engage your interest in poetry? Where can it go wrong? What do you think of the poems I link to, here?

Meitner’s poem accesses the daring on two levels — it addresses female sexuality, which we so rarely do in normal publications; and it considers the question of a teacher’s (professor’s) lust for her student, which is one of the ultimate taboos of academics. In the poem, at least, her narrator does nothing wrong — she simply agonizes over her desire for this much-younger man. (She does imply something more, since she’s corresponding with this student.) But why does it feel transgressive to me? It’s not the line-breaks, although I like some of them quite a lot (“He is both more / and less striking without a shirt on”). I’m always fascinated by the use of curse-words in poetry or literature, when it’s not wholly warranted. (Here: “I was fucking a guy who…”) Sometimes, as here I think, the words jar the reader to attention. They remind us that the speaker is lusting, not falling for, her student. We never get a description of him except this detailed continuing articulation of how he looks shirtless.

There’s definitely still power in curse words, and power in the unexpected. I don’t think this poem would be as good were it called “A Desire Uncalled For,” or something implying its contents. The subtlety. the side-stepping while being up-front, these are important. (This is also why I have trouble with “Please Master.”) Obviously, this power in the unexpected is the case in all manner of ways — don’t think that I mean to suggest that the only way to write an interesting poem is to be lewd or lean towards the taboo.

I think I’ll be more conscious of this current in poetry in the future. As always, I’m not really reaching a conclusion. But this is a blog, and I’m not a good essayist.

I do think we can draw a parallel between this play in poetry, and its play in visual arts. In both mediums, we have to pick somewhere to draw our lines — but you can show non-sexualized nudity in art more easily than you can in writing. (See, for example, this (NSFW?) art collective. Hat tip to Ben for linking me.) But really there’s lots of not particularly sexualized nudity in art. Maybe we’ve become accustomed to it, but for whatever reason nudity isn’t as titillating as it once was. You have to play with something else.

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15 April 2010

“if we stopped to think or laugh, we’d never get nothing done”

Posted by admin @ 19:22 pm    categories: art • mental states

(Note: The quote in the title is from “The Magic Tollbooth.”)

les 7 doigts de la main poster madrid

I’ve been in an odd place for the past couple of weeks. On the one hand, my life’s going quite well; I’ve been really enjoying myself here in Madrid and I’ve done some really exciting things (we’ll get to one of them in a moment). On the other hand, my life has become more unsure than I was hoping it would be, in the sense that my plans for next year fell through and I don’t know where I’ll be three months from now, nor what I’ll be doing.

This is by no means the worst that could be, but it’s harder when this sort of feeling follows a state of expectation. In any event, I’ve been having some very mixed feelings — really happy a lot of the time, but kind of disenchanted with the things that aren’t as pleasant. (I’ve become somewhat more frustrated with teaching when my students aren’t trying; I’m less into the work I’m doing at the university.) It’s frustrating to feel disconnected, yes? It’s not pleasant to transition between highs and lows. In many ways I’m much less stressed than I have been in past years, what with the whole not-being-in-school, so it’s a lot easier to deal with this. And yet.

Be that as it may.

Tonight, after talking about it for a while, I went and saw a circus group perform at the Price Theatre (well, El Teatro Circo Price), called Les 7 Doigts de la Main. You may’ve noticed something — that’s not Spanish. It’s French, which makes sense, seeing as how they’re a French Canadian group, affiliated with other French Canadian circus groups like Cirque du Soleil only in the sense that they were founded by people who had worked in that circus and in similar companies before. (You can read about them on French wikipedia, or at their very outdated website.) The act was called “Psy,” and was loosely themed about mental problems, in the sense that each actor (performer, I guess, is better) espoused a certain mental problem that was portrayed to a greater or lesser degree during the show. Here’s the website advertising the show, although it’ll probably disappear shortly. I encourage you to watch the video. The song is called “Frontier Psychiatrist.” I like it a lot. (And here’s a good review. It also has pictures.)

The show was really fun — somehow I keep end up seeing great French Canadian stuff here in Madrid. (Ref: the last time I talked about such a thing.) I went with Mateo and Ashley, who both seemed to enjoy it, and ran into Pier, Alexis, and Alexis’ friend Raquel. All of them liked it, too — Pier gave it five stars. It’s sort of a cross between the more traditional circus — juggling, tumbling, trapeze, handstands; the more ridiculous things of Cirque du Soleil (disclaimer: I saw a CdS show once, but I must’ve been like 11) — crazy leaps, a wheel-thing, a climb-able house set-piece, a set of stairs that flipped over, a see-saw catapult (apparently called a teeterboard); and a more acting, clowning sort of atmosphere. The show had been translated into Spanish, primarily, but there was also some in English, and some in French. (The only bad translation I could see was the fact that for whatever reason they had translated “sleep disorder” or “narcolepsy” as “insomnia.” Which it just wasn’t.) It also helped that almost all of the performers were young (really young), it just made it feel like, “Oh man, I could be doing this!” And boy would I love to give some of it a try — that’s part of the enjoyment for me with circuses and gymnastics. Not to say that I would want to try all of these things (I’ll pass on the swinging trapeze, I think), but some of them I’ve always wanted to try.

For example, I think corde lisse is really cool — it’s essentially a hanging rope from which you do acrobatics. (Here’s a video of someone doing something similar, but with silk.) Similarly, the [German] wheel (google tells me it’s sometimes known as Rhoenrad — it seems like the sort of thing Germans would invent) is amazing. Here’s a video from this production, although it was slightly different when I saw it. (I guess it’s always slightly different.) Some of the stuff I like is primarily based in strength and agility, but there’s an acrobatic grace to it also, when it’s done well, as it was here.

I guess my overall feeling about this circus was that the performers were good, but not mind-blowing in and of themselves. They weren’t doing anything shocking. But the show itself was really well-choreographed, and the scenes were fit together to tell a sort of story about mental illness, even if it never had any plot.

A description of the performers (in Spanish) is here. Some of them have websites, although it only seems to be the men, that I could find — the trapezist, the tumbler, the guy who did hand-stands on chinese poles, and the juggler. (I recommend checking out the first and the last of those websites, if you’re curious — they’re better websites, and have more to offer. Actually, all of them but the tumbler guy’s are good; his needs a bit of work. The trapeze one has his video from this show, which is really great. (Although Mateo didn’t like it.)

But yes, I think this makes me want to do something exciting, and new. Or just meet some acrobats.

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25 February 2010

art and awesome

Posted by admin @ 9:45 am    categories: art • the internet

Sophie Blackall's missed connection blog: throat tattoo

Okay so I may have mentioned before this artist I really like these days, Sophie Blackall, an Australian who’s now based in New York City. Her blog first caught my eye; it’s been covered by the New York Times, and is really just pretty awesome — this is the link you should click on in this post, if you click anywhere. In it, she takes Missed Connections ads from the NY craigslist and NY locals, and illustrates them. They’re almost always amazing, although to be honest her most most recent one wasn’t my favourite. (The above image is hers.) She also sells prints of her work.

But her not-in-that-project illustrations are great, too; I like her style quite a lot, and just find myself pleased with her work in general. There’s a pretty short list of current artists who I (a) know about and (b) really like, and she’s definitely on it. I’m not sure who else is on there, these days. Anthony Goicolea, for sure. Hmmm. There are more, if I could only think of names. Still, I wish I knew more about the current art world. Rachel, oh my sister, educate me.

Anyway, what this may make you think of, if you ever saw it, is Patrick Moberg’s missed connection sensation, NY Girl of My Dreams.com, where he very carefully described some girl he met, and wanted to see again. Which worked. The story as I understand it is that they did meet, and actually dated for a time, but things didn’t work out. (Google corroborates this.) I also really like Moberg’s work. A lot of the artists I like fall between art and cartoon (see, for example, my friend Blake Suárez‘s work), which is perhaps an unnecessary distinction.

For example, I think of the following as comics — and maybe they are. But I’d say the art’s great, too:

There’s a list at the left of comics that I read. These are all on it.

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21 February 2010

movies

Posted by admin @ 10:48 am    categories: art • writing

I went and saw Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch, 2006) last night, with three friends, who ended up hating me for making them see it. I’m kidding, but also not; they were really unimpressed with the film. I knew what I was getting myself into perhaps slightly more than them, so although I too felt that the film was too long (it’s three hours), I nonetheless was intrigued.

Here’s a quote to give you a feeling of how weird Lynch can be, taken from the wiki page to give it context:

In an NPR “Weekend Edition” interview, Laura Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie’s new producers. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. “Yeah, you’re on a David Lynch movie, dude,” Dern replied. “Sit back and enjoy the ride.” Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

Now here’s the thing about this film: it doesn’t have a plot, but that doesn’t mean it’s not about anything. In some sense, it’s about this woman’s inner life; I definitely see connections between this and Mulholland Drive, although I liked that film a lot more. But I doubt even Lynch would say that the film makes complete sense. It is an art film, as much as it is a film about Hollywood, or a film about violation and the hole to oneself. I don’t know. I guess I’m curious about it because of the mystery, because I want to make sense of it. And that’s not so easy to do.

The part I liked best at first thought is the part from roughly 15 minutes in ’till maybe the end of the first hour, where the lead actress (Laura Dern, playing an actress named Nikki) is cast in a film called On High in Blue Tomorrows and we see her life beginning to blur with her character’s life. I thought this part was really cool.

When Joe was visiting (Joe visited!), we tried watching Synecdoche, NY (dir. Charlie Kaufman, 2008), which we didn’t get all the way through. It just seemed too weird, too unrelated. I wonder if I would’ve sat through Inland Empire in the same circumstances — probably not. But I nonetheless sort of feel like I liked it more than Synecdoche; I felt like Kaufman was just pushing a bit too hard, and Lynch somehow has his crazy ideas linked in a way I prefer. Synecdoche is also about the links between theater and real life, but more heavy-handed about it somehow. And maybe I disliked it because unlike Inland Empire, the characters did feel real and then they disappeared, while Dern’s character always felt like a caricature, a stick figure.

I also have in recent days watched:
Matilda (dir. Danny DeVito, 1996)
Joe had never seen this, so we watched it. On youtube. Still good every time.

On the plane, coming back and forth from the US, I had some shitty-as-hell movie options. As such, I watched:
* Dragonball Evolution (dir. James Wong, 2009). Honestly wasn’t that bad. It was silly and ridiculous, but it was kind of fun.
* Eragon (dir. Stefen Fangmeier, 2006). I read the book and thought it kind of fun but also hilariously bad. The movie more or less had me feeling the same way.
* Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore, 2009). I kind of liked this film. They played it on my flight from LA to Chicago, I think, for everyone to watch. It was embarrassing but also kind of cute, and I do like Ellen Page. I know. Still. It was fun, and kind of silly. I like Drew Barrymore. Shrug.

Here in Madrid, with some friends, I went and saw Up in the Air (dir. Jason Reitman, 2009), which was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. Amusingly, two of my friends thought we were going to see Up, which was amazing but was not by any means the same film. This one stars George Clooney as a business man who is constantly traveling, firing people for companies. It’s surprisingly touching, and quite interesting; I really rather liked it. I don’t think it should win a Best Picture award, but I did enjoy it.

Anyway, quite a few movies in the past while, considering how rarely I’d watched films in the months before. Good fun.

Joe’s visit was really nice, too; we hung out around here, made awesome Alfajores, and I got to show him around Madrid, and take him to El Escorial. Overall, a good time.

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