If I start reading something on the internet, I have to either read it through in one go, or take a break midway through and finish it after checking email or whatever else. If I don’t want to do either, then that suggests I don’t want to read it, or I should save it and not even start it now.
The amusing thing, of course, is that I’m currently breaking this rule to write this. But that’s the reason it should be a rule.
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.
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
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
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
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
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:
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
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 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
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.
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.
Place I’ve been recently:
* Mallorca (Spanish island, near Barcelona)
* London
* Barcelona (music festival)
Anyway, I’ve been busy. And generally enjoying myself, so hurrah.
I have to put some pictures up here. So I shall.
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.
† 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.
I was in Bilbao two weeks ago. It’s in the north of Spain, in the Basque Country. It was pretty wonderful.
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.
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.
My last day, I went to the Fine Art Museum before I left. Outside, was this:
This is the mountain chain to the north of Madrid, the Guadarrama, where Dan and I went for a hike yesterday.
So I have this recipe I make for a spicy peanut sauce, which is one of my favourite things in the world. I usually make it to put on top of pasta (well, better with Asian noodles) with some fresh vegetables.
The recipe is pretty simple; I’ve approximated it a few times when I didn’t have the recipe on hand. (One version I wrote down.) The real recipe calls for scallions instead of onions, a bit more peanut butter (total 1/4 cup), and quite a bit more sugar (1/3 cup). It also calls for ginger.
Anyway, I made this recipe on Sunday night, with pasta, steamed broccoli, and fresh cucumber slices. It’s a four-person recipe. Monday night I ate leftovers. Tuesday night, I bought two chicken breasts, chopped and saut&eeacute;ed them, and added the chicken pieces in as well. (I also bought some peanuts, which I hadn’t had.) And then tonight, there was only a small bowlful left. So I bought a zucchini, and saut&eeacute;ed it with salt and pepper. I made a bit more pasta. And then I heated the leftovers and the new pasta together with a bit of coconut milk (I had some leftover in the fridge) and an egg, until it was cooked, and then added in the zucchini. It’s just, wow. I’m not sure I could replicate it easily, but I’ll definitely try sometime: follow the normal peanut sauce recipe, but add an egg and replace some of the water with coconut milk. Also add salty-pepper-y zucchini.
Yumm.
Back to watching Mary Poppins. (Why? Because they played the babysitter song on This American Life. Sometimes I’m suggestible. Also I talked about it with either Emily or Ashley the other day. Or both? Dammit, I must be middle-aged already.)
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.
So this kid I know from college*, Alex W., is a linguistics-person, and he linked a while back to the esoteric and quite academic blog Language Log. Anyway, on an old episode of Fresh Air (from February 23rd? I think?) that I just listened to, they talked about this guy, Arnold Zwicky, who I’m pretty sure has worked on that blog. Zwicky’s a linguist, and they talked about what he calls “Zombie Rules” (Zombie Rules) — rules that we continue to impose on the English language, even though frankly they’re outdated. Somewhere in there, they mentioned Jan Freeman’s column in the Globe, which I rather enjoy; she writes about grammar and usage with a particularly liberal hand, I think.
I have long been into this sort of layman’s linguistics, wherein I don’t really need to understand the IPA or scholarly study, but can still enjoy etymology or grammar or learning new terms. I have mixed feelings about the debate between prescription (“this is how you do language”) and description (“this is how other people are doing language”), which seems pretty reasonable — I lean towards “if it works, then go for it” but generally am strongly opposed to misspellings or all number of weird grammar constructions. Which of course is ridiculous because I love fucking with my own grammar. I guess my point is just that even when something is wrong, it’s generally understood. When my older students were in London a few weeks ago, apparently two of them bargained for a sweatshirt by asking the vendor, *”More cheap?” That’s shitty grammar, and it’s wrong. (Obviously, it should be “cheaper,” or I suppose an actual sentence might be nice.) But it worked, didn’t it? They somehow came out of it with a sweatshirt for like 7 GBP. I think my conclusion is just that in this, as so often occurs, there is no clear solution.
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