May 2010
56 posts
Listen
Lee Dorsey
Lee Dorsey - Who’s Gonna Help A Brother Get Further
We were in the south of France when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. There was a bizarre weather system passing through Provence as well, and our days and nights were punctuated by claps of thunder and rain that left streams through the village that came up to our ankles. The irony did not escape us that while we were marvelling over ankle deep rain, there were people up to their necks in water, or worse, in Louisiana.
I spent my time reading Never Let Me Go under an umbrella by the pool during breaks in the storm, eating wine grapes and listening to the Lee Dorsey CD we had blasting on the villa* stereo. Our friend Carl had given J the CD on our way to France, and it was on repeat for our entire vacation, sacrificed only once in a while - and with much protest - to J’s sister’s James Blunt CD. I’m not sure if we knew about Mr. Dorsey’s New Orleans origins or not, but the music, and the rain, and the faces of people waving from rooftops on the covers of French newspapers all go together in my head, a thin thread sewing a timely story.
*I’m very aware of the horrid juxtaposition of words like “hurricane,” “New Orleans,” “Provence,” “grapes,” and “villa.” It’s hard to tell the story without cringing at the circumstances.
“How many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads, walls, pylons? Immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. Why then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?”
—From ‘Summertime’: Notebooks 1972–1975 | The New York Review of Books (via mikereview)
I was cleaning my bedroom, trying to find homes for the books stacked into a tower that is now almost bigger than my nightstand, when I realized that I essentially live inside a bookstore or library, surrounded by tons of books, many of which I haven’t read.
So I decided that I need to have some sort of inventory system to keep track of these books, to decide what to get rid of, and what’s irreplaceable. For friends to peruse, for insurance purposes, etc.
I have an Excel spreadsheet open, waiting to be filled. I’m already trying to think up categories. Gift. Signed. Purchased during fantasy phase. Pressed flower between pages 141 and 142. Hilarious cover. Smells of home.
UPDATE: Got up to 75 and hadn’t even made it past my bedside table. Decided to go read Solv-A-Crime one page mysteries (found shoved somewhere between Hilary Mantel and Shirley Jackson, missing pages 5-24) instead.
Terror, Amazement, Wonder
Somebody woke up somewhere and began to cry for some reason or another. In a hut up the creek they could hear this somebody shaking in the night wind, crickets and things making noise between sobs and just at the right pitch to sound harmonious.
I just came across this lonesome paragraph on my work computer, written in November of 2000, a remnant from the days before I had a blog when I would try to write fiction on my lunch break. Also found: a story about a boy named Kaspars who turns into a hedgehog, and a piece of an attempt at a futuristic fantasy novel called “Aruthredd” (which means “terror, amazement, or wonder” in Welsh).
Thinking of starting a separate Tumblr to serialize all of my bad lunch break fiction.
Because, really, there’s not enough crap on the internet already.
“We are what we repeatedly do.”
—
Aristotle, via Caring For Your Online Introvert. (via inky)
I really like this, but that last paragraph especially hit home for me. My friend Danielle and I discuss this a lot: I love that the internet and social networking have connected us in so many ways, with so many benefits, but the thing I mourn is no longer having acquaintances. I liked having social acquaintances. Hey, we met once, you’re nice! But now, since we emailed or had a beer or attended the same wedding, now the social norm is that we have to follow each other on Twitter and Facebook and hear the mundane details of each others’ lives, and when before we would have thought, “Oh, they were nice, I wonder what they’re up to?” now we think GOD ENOUGH ABOUT YOUR CAT/GARDEN/CHILD/SPOUSE/TV SHOW. I don’t like feeling annoyed with people I should think of rarely and fondly. Perhaps I’m just not cut out for these sort of networks, fair enough, but I’d prefer to take a step back and have more defined circles again. Basically I need to know who I should actually feel guilty about not emailing back right away.
(via sarahb)
I’ve found the secret to still having acquaintances lies in the “hide” button. And I dearly hope that people who would consider me an acquaintance or don’t necessarily care what I have to say are hiding me.
As for the Aristotle quote?
Me_on_IM: I am a toothbrusher!
Me_on_IM: A shoulderscratcher!
Me_on_IM: I am… A BLINKER!
J_on_IM: I am an underwear de-hooker
J_on_IM: (What would you call that when you pick out yer bills from yer crev’?)
Me_on_IM: a de-wedgier
J_on_IM: That’s it
(Joanne McNeil’s essays are awesome.)
Play
Midi Karaoke →
midmninfo.com
This is the best thing I’ve ever found on the internet. EVER. (I’m currently knee-deep in the hoop-la.)
bluishorange: Purgatory/limbo, dudes. →
bluishorange.tumblr.com
…
Agreed. So the sideways universe was some kind of purgatory, so Sun and Jin and Sayid died for basically nothing, so we have no idea where the four-toed statue came from or why babies conceived on the island couldn’t be born or why Walt was special or what the numbers mean….
I so did not intend to get on the internet today and talk about Lost. I thought I’d talk about it with co-workers, but they don’t feel like talking about it. So: you get my thoughts.
After the episode ended, I made a “wahn-wahn” sound and rolled my eyes. I felt ripped off. But before I started passing too much judgment, I wanted to sleep on it, think it through. I woke up with a bit more clarity on it, but still a bone to pick.
The thing that bothers me most? (Apart from the writers/producers abandoning the most interesting, intellectual, literary, and philosophical aspects of the show?*) The finale was not an explanation for the events over the past six seasons, it was an explanation for the events of season 6. Also? I’m angry at the show for being just one more thing in my life saying “we all die someday.” Stop making me think about my own damned mortality.
The good part? We had family over and ate Skyline and all cried a little bit. (No matter how I think the show may have dropped the ball a little, I still love some of those characters.) The communal aspect/discussion-provoking nature of the show was worth six seasons to me and should be completely applauded, no matter how it ended.
*Sure, you could argue that the fact that they’re trying to come to terms with their own mortality could be part of the greater philosophical picture, but I’m not so sure the producers remained entirely loyal to that aspect. Instead, they became distracted by the Jack/Kate romance. Hume, Locke, Rousseau were philosophers who philosophized on morality, not mortality. Why name your characters these things, set up the island to be a puzzle of morality and existence, and then turn it into a soap opera?**
**Oh my god, Zan. Go back to the forums. Your blinking Sawyer avatar awaits.
Play
Here is a list of 20 albums that next year will celebrate their legal drinking age. →
theawl.com
I might recommend not reading it near any open windows or balconies, if you are sensitive about being a certain age.
(Speaking of The La’s and my braces wearing 14-year-old self.)
Hoo boy, I thought, this’ll be a fun list! It won’t really make me feel that old. And then I read the list.
Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahaha… When do they take away my driver’s license?
Age Difference
Last night in the mail we giddily received our very own copy of The La’s Callin’ All box set. (Warning: autoplay music on the other end of that link. But it’s The La’s so it’s okay, right?)
We were flipping through the booklet that came with it, looking at all the scans of ticket stubs from various gigs they’d played over their relatively brief existence. I asked J which of the shows he’d been to.
“The one at the Uni, and some others. They were one of those bands who used to turn up on every bill. There was one at the Trade Union… I forget what it was called.”
“Upstairs at The Picket?” I said, finding a stub marked 1988.
“That’s it!”
Today I realized that around the same time J was sporting a pompadour and bouncing at the knees to “Way Out” in a smoke-filled room, I would have been in my pastel-colored bedroom doing The Monkey to “Got My Mind Set On You.”
I’m jealous he got to be there at the beginning of everything I ended up loving. Especially The La’s. This is an amazing box set to squeeze out of a band who commercially produced so little. When I was 14 and falling achingly in love with “There She Goes,” I never thought they’d disappear after one album, or that several entirely different versions of that album would resurface years later once I started to get wrinkles around my eyes. I never thought I’d get to hear it again for the first time. (Then again, when I was 14 I also thought it was cool to get royal blue rubber bands on my braces and write 5-page fan letters to Keanu Reeves, so what did I know?)
And yet here we are.
