Dear General Eisenhower...

The old proposition of Pascal (1623-1662) that man is a reed, but a thinking reed, might be taken with a different emphasis by the modern citizen of a democracy. He thinks, but he feels like a reed bending before centrally generated winds. Ike would certainly pay no attention to this. Herzog tried another approach. Tolstoi (1828-1910) said, "Kings are history's slaves." The higher one stands in the scale of power, the more his actions are determined. To Tolstoi, freedom is entirely personal. The man is free whose condition is simple, truthful - real. To be free is to be released from historical limitation. On the other hand, GWF Hegel (1770-1831) understood the essence of human life to be derived from history. History, memory - that is what makes us human, that, and our knowledge of death: "by man came death." For knowledge of death makes us wish to extend our lives at the expense of others. And this is the root of the struggle for power. But that's all wrong! thought Herzog, not without humour in his despair. I'm bugging all these people - Nehru, Churchill, and now, Ike, whom I apparently want to give a Great Books Course. Nevertheless, there was much earnest feeling in this, too.

(Part of ) Herzog's letter to Eisenhower
Saul Bellow's Herzog

Albert Camus - The First Man

It's hard to think of 'The First Man' as a novel. It is the unrevised draft of the first few chapters of what would probably have been as grand an autobiography as there ever was. Camus confuses his fictional characters with their real-life counterparts and occasionally slips in their real names. Footnotes suggest that there were chapters that Camus wanted in another part of the novel or taken out altogether, phrases he wanted to expound on, settings he intended to describe in greater detail. The appendices accompanying the text frame a novel that would have gone on to cover another 2 decades of the author's life, up to the Second World War and his part in the French Resistance. I consider it a great pity that we shall never know.

What we do have, however, is probably as close as we come to knowing Camus as a person, or perhaps more accurately, as a child. Apart from the ideas that Camus as a writer, journalist, thinker has come to be associated with, this work is alive his response to the people and events he held dear. He does this with an honesty that, through 50 years and a changed world, communicates the dull ache of revisiting the images of a past already lost, of reconstructing a world through the eyes of the child still alive somewhere deep within himself. In the Algerian community of poor folk that made up his whole life as a child, he transforms derelict garbade-strewn corners into playgrounds, overflowing sewers are fountains delivering the rains of autumn, a "fritter" made from dough fried in boiling oil is a delicacy to be savoured, a football made from rags becomes a reason for life itself. Poverty is a powerful motif, or more accurately, a powerful determiner in Camus' past and never in The First Man does he shrink away from the details of what that poverty entailed.

Extremely moving are numerous Camus' reflections on his mother, in his eyes always beautiful and always distant. Through the anguished eyes of a child he can only watch as she, half-deaf and illiterate, sits as a model of patience through movie screenings and award ceremonies she cannot hope to understand. It is an affecting mix of sadness, helplessness and tremendous love that characterise his piety, and she, dignity personified, is perhaps the only subject on which the rambunctious, haughty, irreverent child finds himself incapacitated.

"In her life she had been to the cinema two or three times, had understood nothing, and it was only in order not to displease those who invited her that she would say the dresses were pretty or that the one with the moustache looked like a very bad man. Nor could she listen to the radio. And to the newspapers, sometimes she would leaf through those that were illustrated, would get her sons or granddaughters to explain the pictures, would decide that the Queen of England seemed sad, and close the pages to gaze once more out of the same window and watch the activity on the same street that she had been contemplating through half her lifetime."

And the basis for Camus' convictions later in his life.

"As for the wives, and Catherine Cormery, they worked without a break for the good reason that a rest meant poorer meals for all of them. Unemployment, for which there was no insurance at all, was the calamity they most dreaded. That explained why these workers, in Pierre's home as in Jacques's, who in their daily lives were the most tolerant of men, were always xenophobes on labour issues, accusing in turn the Italians, the Spaniards, the Jews, the Arabs and finally the whole world of stealing their work - an attitude that is certainly to those intellectuals who theorize about the proletariat, and yet very human and surely excusable. It was not for mastery of the earth or the privileges of wealth and leisure that these unexpected nationalists were contending against other nationalities; it was for the privilege of servitude."

Yet The First Man is not political. It is certainly not a polemic, for the Algerian cause or any other. If anything, Camus as a child celebrates and revels in the riches that the world reserves only for those who are in acute need. That wondrous exaltation, that most potent of stimulants, so much of which we suspect were already lost to Camus as an adult. And he captures those slivers of precociousness with vivid detailed feeling, when the world had felt so large and it was possible to delight in the simplest things.

"...it fed a hunger in them more basic even to the child than to the man, and that is the hunger for discovery... they felt for the first tie that they had existed and that they were objects of the highest regard: they were judged worthy to discover the world."

It is perhaps fitting that The First Man, raw, untouched, unrealised, inadvertently takes on the very characteristics of its protagonist. Perhaps fate then, is its true genius.

Elliott Smith - New Moon

By no means new, but Elliott Smith just feels oddly fitting music for the weather around here lately. Dark skies that promise rain but sometimes just brood for the length of an afternoon. 'New Moon' is not infused with the sullenness of Either/Or, and neither is it (relatively) upbeat like XO. For a compilation of demos and b-sides, half-realised ideas, it is probably apt that New Moon is often somewhere in between.

Unlike your usual collection of b-sides, however, New Moon is consistently as good as anything Elliott Smith released while he was alive. Most tracks on this 2-cd compilation were written in the early days of his short career, and do not yet carry the burdensome intonations of death, so prevalent in 'From a Basement on the Hill'. Some of the tracks glow with what approximates to warmth, or unbridled gaiety in Elliott Smith terms. 'Thirteen', not originally written by him, is a charming number about young love, has Elliott Smith crooning 'Would you tell me what you're thinking of/Would you be an outlaw for my love'. It had me in disbelief for a while, but once I got beyond that it grew to become one of my favourites. I think he was incapable of writing a song like that himself. The closest he comes is probably on 'See You Later', where he goes 'I got a choke chain/made out of nitrate/to keep your memory down', so you see, not a cheerful man.

There is also an early version of 'Miss Misery', the song he won an unlikely Grammy for. I like this version a lot better, breathy vocals, audible fretboard slides and all. The concluding line goes "cause it's alright/ some enchanted night I'll be with you", as opposed to what appeared on the released version, "do you miss me/ Miss Misery, like you say you do", which was really pretty lame.

Intermittently, Elliott Smith appears at the other end of the spectrum, in Riot Coming he is at once wavering and frustrated. Typically, he goes out with 2 guitar parts produced on a multi-track, whispery on the verse and wailing on the chorus. On this particular track he never sounds comfortable with the transitions, it's as if he isn't ready for his own anger.

Elliott Smith is one guy who sparks a lot of postulating, conspiratorially about the cause of his death (I've heard some pretty bad theories), but it is his body of work, neatly summarised in 'New Moon', which deserves the most comment. The formula to an Elliott Smith song doesn't sound complicated in the least - a couple of guitars, multi-tracked vocals, a minor key, a few lines about pills and stabbing your own heart, and yet, I haven't heard another musician like him. Who do you know can sing lines like "I'm a first timer/wishing I was someone else/when I see you by yourself", and sound perfectly sombre while at it? That's a real talent. 5 years after his death, his songs retain the power to inspire, comfort and unsettle. Sometimes when I'm alone with his voice in my head, it feels like he's beside me.

you toss an empty beer
not really as composed as you appear
eyes circling inside

Alice Munro - Open Secrets

Read this in the period just before I left for Taiwan in Sep 08. My second shot at Munro after 'The Beggar Maid', which to this day is one of my favourite collection of short stories. 'Open Secrets' is a bit different, in that the stories aren't related to one another in any way. Munro is the same though, still understatedly hard-hitting, master of that striking moment of significance born of unflinching precision and a distant type of compassion. She is the type of writer you wouldn't be doing justice to by opening to any page and reading a random paragraph. Her tone is consistently firm and level, and she is never verbose, withholding that crucial, revealing judgement. Yet the way she structures her stories, manipulating chronology, making relatives of disparate anecdotes, awakens in the reader an awareness of a shadow passing in the background, always just out of sight.

There are 8 stories in this collection, each one almost startlingly original. 2 I will pass comment on, although I remember that while reading it, I managed to find something different to like about all 8. 'Real Life' tells of a marriage that almost did not happen, and when it did there was no putting it down to affection or romance, but almost an accidental affirmation of the efforts of misguided onlookers. She is not your feminine heroine, but a pudgy, dour-looking woman who has lived with her brother all her life and takes the greatest pleasure from shooting groundhogs and rabbits. And he, "it was the way that Dorrie used her knife and fork that captivated the man". Enough said. A rural, pastoral life described in utterly bland tones, dealing only in common and ordinary observations, yet building up to a dense, finely constructed complex of ambiguities and unsaid truths. Any sense of the ungainly is illusory.

'The Albanian Virgin' by contrast, by contrast, is wild and vivid and fantastical. The story of a civilised, Western-educated woman who is forced to live within the strict cultural confines of an Albanian mountain tribe in tandem with the far more pedestrian life of a Canadian woman, embroiled in a marriage and an affair which she seems to stumble on quite unknowingly. These separate lives, put together loosely and only by chance, swirl fleetingly around one another, never touching, yet hinting almost mystically at an intricate intimacy. It is such fleetingness that fuels Munro's stories and packs them with unexpected punch. The ultimate brevity, the refusal to engage in excessive sentimentality, only adds to the humanity that is at the centre of all her stories because the reader has not been persuaded. He simply finds the loose ends, puts two and two together and comes up with a great deal more.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment

Alright just one more for tonight. Read this sometime ago but really want to write something on it.

In many ways we can see elements in Raskolnikov that mirror Dostoevsky's own life, yet there are key criticisms of his protagonist, and the ideas that he is a vivid representation of, that Dostoevsky raises, none too subtly. The word itself appears a couple of times in the text, but it is the notion of 'nihilism', that Dostoevsky puts the bulk of his literary heft behind, in extrapolating on its effects, and eventually denouncing it. Raskolnikov himself is its sword bearer, reducing Orthodox doctrine to a commodity of comfort for the 'ordinary' folk, as dichotomised in his published article. For those like his mother who cannot come up with any kind of original idea that might contribute to the progress of humanity, as if the incapacity were in their nature.

Yet though Raskolnikov is at the centre of the author's impassioned discourse against nihilism, the reader cannot but witness Raskolnikov's increasingly fevered monomania and experience genuine compassion. That he comes to condemn himself having realised after committing the deed of murder that he had not the strength to be like a Napoleon, or a Ubermensch with deference to the Nietzchean concept, that he comes to view his actions as absurd - "'Would a Napoleon go crawling under an old woman's bed?' they'd ask. 'Go on, don't be so stupid!", evokes a reader's sympathy for a man who finds himself irrevocably entrapped by the error of his intellectual and moral convictions. Also revealing is the love he bears for his mother and sister, his loyalty to them from start (where he prohibits Dunya from marrying Luzhin) to end (where he pacifies his mother in a Godly way, fulfilling his obligations as a son despite his complete complete denial of religion).

And that puts him some distance above the pallid indifference and pure ignorance that Dostoevsky weaves into his fabric of Russian society. Dostoevsky's portrait of St. Petersburg, a city befouled by debauchery in the drinking dens and disrepair in the ungoverned lives of the poor, is a setting almost hopelessly suffocating, constantly aggravating Raskolnikov's frustrations and suspicions. In the same way it drove Marmeladov to drunken incapacitation, Sonya to the depths of prostitution, Katerina Ivanovna to consumption and insanity. There is considerable evidence that all 3 individuals are in possession of a certain nobility of character, and yet in Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg all (with the exception of Sonya) succumb to the conventions of immorality, ignorance and cynical self-preservation. A striking scene significant in this respect is that of Marmeladov's funeral, where Amalia Ivanovna and Luzhin, in conspiring maliciously and criminally against Sonya, each reveal the utter dearth of moral relevance where the structures of society have all but broken down. It is no wonder that Kafka later claimed to have been inspired by Dostoevsky, all in the spirit of claustrophobia.

What intensifies the depth of feeling, the dislocation and the overall sense of a whirlpool in a storm, is the ease with which all the characters are provoked into hate, agony, fury or some other extreme of emotion, introducing a disturbing sense of desperation which permeates throughout. That coupled with the enduring image of death, introduced in the very first chapter, and perpetuated throughout the rest of the text, a motif that serves as an appropriate foil for the author's central concern, nihilism.

Yet emerging from this giant, headache inducing mess of negativity are some clear beams of insight, communicated through conversations between Raskolnikov and Dunya, and the intense psychological struggles between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich. A stroke of genius is a dream had by Raskolnikov in Chapter 2 of the Epilogue, in which he dreams of a world where an intelligent virus spreads the world over, and "never had people considered themselves so intelligent, and in possession of the truth as did those who became infected. Never had they believed so unswervingly in the correctness of their judgements, their scientific deductions, their moral convictions and beliefs."

I think increasingly I'm becoming suspicious of grand theories that posit any kind of ultimate truth. With regards to the book itself, it is easily one of my favourite ever, a work that encompasses so much of the 19th century, predicting and warning against the ideological struggles (and for what) of the 20th century. Emotionally, complex and involving. Intellectually, a showpiece.

a fashion of vertigo

And with that I'm back.

I have thought for a while about slowly feeling my way into writing again. It is something I enjoy immensely, one thing I learnt in the army about myself was my affinity with words, at least relatively speaking. There's so much I can think of writing, right now, but I don't feel ready to go into any heavy topics yet. So for now I will persist with writing my thoughts on the books, the music, films, and adding to the list live performances. I'd like to put in more effort than I have done so far, in view of the excess time that I'll be having.

My thoughts on life outside so far. It definitely feels like there is an obligation to get our lives back where they were heading before all this. I read a few days ago some of my exam scripts from Prelims in 2006, and some of my old writing, it's going to take some effort even to get back to that rigour of thinking. But army has left me with some lingering habits of thought and language, for one, and crucially, has also had some effect on how i approach and appreciate my place in the world. Not about to go into any kind of detail on that, but I will say, I do feel smaller now, but surer. I'm not really sure what this means yet with regards to the way I respond to ideas, but let's find out.

Ian McEwan - The Child in Time

Read this on Charmaine's recommendation and what a recommendation it turned out to be. My favourite McEwan that I've read so far. The type of book that will raise in you the question if writers plan each scene, with foreknowledge of the full implications that they will weave into their works a hundred pages on, from those foundational circumstances.

McEwan deals sensitively with his his themes of childhood and perception of time with great clarity, and in many surprising ways, invoking quantum physics and Einstein's relativity, the idiosyncracies and absurdities of the British government (along with the intelligence service), the moral and functional difficulties of legalised begging, to give some idea of McEwan's scope and vision. He ties this all in with the core of his novel, the proliferation of despair and chaos from monumental loss.

Yet even in the bleakest moments of Stephen's mourning, where at times he borders on insanity, and in portraying the utter absurdity of Charles' realisation of his 'inner life', McEwan's voice is compassionate, yet precise and unsentimental. The most melodramatic scenes in the book, of Stephen's desperation in clinging on to the vestigial phantoms of Kate's presence, are approached with a significant sense of detachment by the narrator, allowing pathos to reverberate as in a soundless vacuum.

I take from this book valuable perspective on how our impression of time is just that - an impression. Its passage can heal and give us space (obviously not meant to be a physicist) to find truth or acceptance, but it can also accelerate our sense of deficiency, promoting anxiety in its unstoppability (a word McEwan uses early on, he is my authority on this). Being entirely unsure as to the mechanics of time - whether it is an entity for entirely separate consideration from matter/space, whether it moves only forwards like we perceive or sometimes also backwards or completely at random - I can only admit to the unending possibilities of truth being more than can stand to present reason. Also I find that fascinating.

As to the relationship between child and parents, McEwan has this to say,

"perhaps only when you have children yourself, do you fully understand that your own parents had a full and intricate existence before you were born... It is difficult to step outside the moment on any given days and ask the unnecessary, essential question, or to realise that however familiar, parents are also strangers to their children."

I wish I knew my parents as people other than my mother and father, it seems right that as a legacy to their entire lives, their children should be able to remember them as complete human beings, capable of feeling and doing the exact same things that we do. That they had dreams of becoming people other than who they turned out to be, had other convictions than those they now harbour and struggled with all the same problems of a teenager phasing into adulthood, albeit in a different age.

But what moved me most was McEwan's loving take on the bond established between newborns and their parents. I've never been a big fan of the idea of having kids before, but McEwan managed to make me go 'aww' here, so, fair play to him.

"He fastened her woolen shirt, helped her into a thick sweater, and fastened her dungarees. She began a vague, abstracted chant which meandered between improvisation , nursery rhymes , and snatches of Christmas carols. He sat her in her chair, put her socks on, and laced her boots. When he knelt in front of her she striked his hair. Like many little girls she was quaintly protective toward her father. Before they left the flat she would make certain he buttoned his coat to the top."

Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

Really have to catch up on my music updates ugh. It's practically impossible I think given the volume of music I go through. So I think I'll limit this to albums I listen to in full and thoroughly.

Which I did for this album and my word did that pay off. Not consistently impressive like Wolf Parade's Apologies to Queen Mary but this one is seriously brilliant in parts. Obviously Spencer Krug was going for a lot more, I think more than half the songs are 6 minutes long or more. And sometimes it doesn't work when it does, like on For The Pier (And Dead Shimmering) you really get the feeling like this guy could revolutionise rock music if only enough people would open their minds to it.

I mean, half the songs in this album can be broken down into movements. The entire album can be seen as in itself a complete work, more than a sum of its tracks. It's not just about the track to track transitions, its in the content, how Colt Stands Up, Grows Horns tinkles and morphs into the bellowing Stallion.

Really really ambitious stuff, and it feels like so much thought has gone into it, which I love.

Stardust (2007)

Haha another movie I OUGHT to be embarrassed about watching but heyy its Neil Gaiman so at least its not completely without cred.

But I liked it! For the most part. Mostly for Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro.

In love with a star. Haha.

The Piano (1993)

A movie with real shades of Wuthering Heights, in that every sense of peace given to the film by its association with really nice piano music is challenged by the harshness of the environment and all the main characters.

Where the dynamics, even the validity of every human relationship is questioned and kinship is the sole prerogative of the native New Zealanders prowling in the background.

Still cruelty, that has stolidly maintained its presence throughout, does not rear its head past the front door. Violence in this film is never violence without feeling.

Hard Candy (2005)

Heard this was Ellen Page's best performance as an actress and she doesn't disappoint. Edge of the seat is right.

Thing I loved most about this movie is that the whole time I didn't know who to sympathise with.

A psychological thriller in the essential sense.

Michael Clayton (2007)

I think this is the first film I've watched George Clooney in a serious character role. "You're so fucked" said to Tilda Swinton's character was quite brilliant.

A really sharp film with very little excesses of dialogue or contemplation. Yet it still manages to find neat ways to tell a simple story, bringing the development of Clooney and Swinton's characters to the fore on opposite sides of a legal prosecution of a mega corporation. The scene of the initial meeting between the two was memorable for its portrayal of the huge gulf separating them.

In the end, a very neatly packaged production, giving a plot that hardly sounds like it would put many on the edge of their seats a rather unexpected edge. Of course, Clooney pumps in plenty of individual charm, but its a very strong ensemble of actors filling out each of their characters in a cleverly crafted script that puts this film apart.

Definitely Maybe (2008)

Quite liked this film. That in itself is somewhat unexpected. Maybe it's how the film managed to mould something fresh out of a well-flogged genre, in its concept to some extent, and definitely its structure.

Strongest part of the film is definitely the writing, script was on the whole very smart, backed in some instances by competent acting. The kid (Abigail xxx) was good, and Isla Fisher as April was very charming. I really love the character, as a whole.

Very heartwarming, very satisfying. Got me thinking a bit, although I probably have issues that run pretty deep when I start taking perspective from a Hollywood offering. But this one, is honestly not bad. It kinda reminded my of When Harry Met Sally. Feels like eons ago now.

Apocalypse Now Redux (2001)

The first version of this film was released in 1979, but the Redux version released in 2001 adds in 49 minutes of footage cut from the original.

The first Francis Ford Coppola film I've watched, and slated a masterpiece work. Certainly deserves a lot of credit for boldness on stylistic matters all over, from the cinematography to the screenplay. Very theme driven type of film, and at its center is the buildup of Marlon Brando's character, COL Hertz, who only actually appears on screen toward the end. And the film is so successful in building up a larger than life image of the character, that Brando has a lot to live up to when he finally comes on.

Darkly disturbing in so many ways, every single motif used pushing the essence of the film ever deeper in its exploration of issues as universally human as they are historical.

Very very heavy stuff, not always my kind of film. But I recognise its brilliance.

fyi

if we can call them friends then we can call them on their telephones
and they won't pretend that they're too busy or that they're not alone
and if we can call them friends then we can call
holler at them down these hallowed halls
just don't let the human factor fail to be a factor at all

don't, don't you worry,
about the atmosphere
or any sudden pressure change
cause i know
that it's starting to get warm in here
and things are starting to get strange

Across The Universe (2007)

Really not my favourite poster, 'All you need is love' plastered at the top with the couple pictured in the foreground really doesnt hit at the core of the film, which is so much more than a Beatles-inspired love story. It's quite obvious that Julie Taymor was trying to hit at something that, while socially conscious, did not try to forcefeed a message or a stand, or even to surface underlying societal problems. It seems to me that at its heart, 'Across the Universe' simply attempts to live and breathe the sixties, and without engagement with the issues of the day the film simply wouldn't get off the ground.

I appreciate very much all the creative work that went into the film, that really credits it as a film musical, which is a difficult type of film to make work, I think. This is one of the best I've seen so far. More human than Phantom of the Opera, more genuine than Rent, and more ambitious than Once (which I still like a lot). I especially liked the Across The Universe/Helter Skelter scene, and the Strawberry Fields Forever scene is simply one of the best. Mindblowing.

And the film is more than arty interpretations of Beatles songs. The Let It Be scene, which was framed by two separate funeral scenes, one emerging from the Detroit riots and the other from the Vietnam war, seamlessly united by the common themes of loss and specifically death, and on an audio-sensory level by the classic Beatles song. I know it kinda sucks to technicalise this, but it's difficult to say in any other words how this scene moved me. It's super genuine. I think that would do.

!!! - Myth Takes

Another one I picked up in Taipei, and I bought this on the strength of just 1 track I'd heard previously. At the centre of !!! is Nic Offer, previously of Out Hud fame (yeah right, what am I saying). And the guy is GOOD, some of the best dance music I've heard, and it's not even that often I like dance. But some of his hooks, in Myth Takes, as it transits to All My Heroes are Weirdoes, are pretty mindblowing. Pretty amazing music to get any party started, I think. The title of 'Bend Over Beethoven' is absolutely brilliant haha, I think I loved the track before I heard it. The Beatles would be pretty happy I think.

Tracks to note: Myth Takes, All My Heroes are Weirdoes, A New Name, Yadnus, Bend Over Beethoven, Infinifold

Windsor For The Derby - Giving Up The Ghost

Picked this up in Taipei's eslite bookstore, which is a real awesome place. They have dedicated reviewers coming up with short descriptions of the records they like, I thought that was quite quaint. And very helpful in this case, because I've hardly heard Windsor for the Derby before this. I think the Chinese description likened them to LCD Soundsystem without guitars, which i found to be ratherr... inaccurate. Haha, so much for helpful descriptions. In reality, Windsor for the Derby, based on this album, which is supposed to be a focusing of the band's ambient, lush sound, is a lot more like Kings of Convenience. The track 'Empathy for People Unknown' is really representative of this, there's that slightly twee sound with hushed, hollow beats in the background. I quite like them, really, I'm going to be looking for 'We Fight Till Death' by them next.

Tracks to note: Empathy for People Unknown, Give Up, Every Word You Said

Away from her (2008)

A heart-wrenchingly beautiful film about a couple coming to terms with Alzheimer's. Julie christie superb. But almost everything about this film was handled with sensitivity and raw humanity, and yet it found a way to transcend that to reach something more ethereal. What with the Auden and the canadian winter. Fiona is my new favourite name for a girl. And this is definitely one of the top films ever. As a sidenote, I'm typing this on my new iPod touch haha it is brilliant.

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

one of the most fun records ive heard this year, a very invigorating sound that one can't really put a finger on. straight off they come through on mansford roof and oxford comma with the clean tones of african pop and the seemind everpresence of a snare drum in the background, and it is precisely this combination that really puts them apart from bands like maximo park or the long blondes. in terms of tunes and pickups, even song structure in some cases, vampire weekend manage to sound oddly like clap your hands say yeah, except (rather uncannily in the words) with the acerbity of the strokes and with less random droning.

happy lyrics all around with some of the most delightful imagery. and, so witty! haha.

no excuse to be so callous

dress yourself in bleeding madras

charm your way across the khyber pass

tracks of note: oxford comma, m79, walcott, the kids dont stand a chance

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

a quiet film set in a small canadian town that examines the fallout from grief and loss with astounding clarity. a schoolbus accident that results in the deaths of most of the children in the small town is tied in with the personal vendetta of a lawyer carrying the baggage of a broken family. how to resolve a tragedy? the characters of the film - the bus-driver who survives only to be tormented by guilt, parents, siblings who have lost their young ones and also their futures, all struggle with varying ways of dealing with their loss only to despair at its pervadence.

low-level pain, man.

There Will Be Blood (2008)

another epic kinda film. won daniel-day lewis an oscar, which he was pretty obviously gunning for, and also deserved. the film felt quite old and slow in general but i guess the surprising thing is how many memorable scenes there were. the eli character was quite genius, as was his son. great acting, great cinematography. but the best thing about the film was still the final 15 minutes, with the scene in the study with hw and in the bowling alley with eli. a strangely brilliant film in so many ways.

one disconcerting thing though is how daniel conned the town into buying his dig-oil-for-better-economy line. its like all of us are little abels and all the little elis are in church or in prison.

I Feel It All - Feist

i have a strange thing for this video.

The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting - Milan Kundera

there are so many gems of narratives in this that about 10 times while reading the book i came upon a passage i was determined to write it down and document it somewhere, but i never did. and now i can't remember where those passages are.

in essence, the book is really all about laughter, and forgetting. through 7 loosely connected narratives kundera gives new meaning to the phrase variations on a theme. at times while reading it i felt like i was listening to a beethoven sonata that wasn't actually there. kundera finds exuberance in the most unlikely places, the big nose of some long ago lover, a mother remembering a poem she recited on a school stage once, and inescapable pathos in more hopeful moments, a father unable to speak to a son trying to make up for lost time, a widow finally able to forget her husband. rapidly the author and his protagonists seem to be weighed down by their own comedy, and attempts at satire seem only able to reveal irreversible disappointment.

only in the book's later chapters does the author reveal the fundamental parameters of that feeling at the very centre of each one of his stories - that word litost. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery. "

"Facing her are six long necks topped by tiny heads with straight bills opening and closing soundlessly. She does not understand them. She does not know whether the ostriches are threatening her, warning her exhorting her, or imploring her. And because she does not know, she feels immense anguish. She fears for the golden ring (the tuning fork of silence) and keeps it convulsively in her mouth.

Tamina will never know what those great birds came to tell her. But i know. They did not come to warn her, scold her or threaten her. They are not at all interested in her. Each one of them cane to tell her about itself. Each one to tell her how it had eaten, how it ahd slept, how it had run up to the fence and seen her behind it. That it had spent its important childhood in the important village of Rourou. That its important orgasm had lasted 6 hours. That it had seen a woman strolling behind the fence and she was wearing a shawl. Then it had gone swimming, that it had fallen ill and then recovered. That when it was young it rode a bike and that today it had gobbled up a sack of grass. They are standing in front of Tamina and talking to her all at once, vehemently, insistently, aggressively, because there is nothing more important than what they want to tell her."

Persepolis (2008)

my favourite animated film in years. i went in thinking it would be making political statements about iranian misgovernance, but that turned out only partially true, and there were points while watching the film when i thought, boy are those ayatollahs going to be pissed. but iran isn't really the main thing. the film actually takes an entirely humanistic view on cultural identity, civilisational dislocation. the everpresent jutting edges that come with forcefitting oneself. going somewhere and finding out that there are significant things about the place that you can never be comfortable with. yet at the same time accumulating such habits that would render you out-of-place at home. that hit a spot with me i think, but for now i have somewhere i can confidently call home. i hope i always will.

No Country For Old Men (2008)

one of the most gripping films i've watched, ever. something the destitution of the film's texan setting only serves to exacerbate. this coupled with the too conspicuous absence of the thriller tension music intended to build atmosphere but inadvertently tells everyone that something dramatic is going to happen, creates a film that seems to roll on unflinching while leaving audiences to reel in the wake of its inevitable, yet almost fickle brutality. i watched this film in my room on my laptop, and still had to hit the pause button a few times so i could remember to breathe. intense stuff.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch

this is technically a 2007 phenomenon, but who cares no one's going to draw the line. panda bear is like spaced-out beach boys plus brian eno haha. with better rhythm. this guy is from the nyc band animal collective, although he is based in portugal. and he claims to not listen to much music at all. maybe thankfully, cuz what we have here is some of the best and most original stuff to come out of, well, anywhere, in 2007.

tracks deserving mention:
comfy in nautca
take pills
bros
goodgirl/carrots

Radiohead - In Rainbows

only 2 months into the year and i already know that this is going to be one of my favourite records. a straighter record than theyve done for some time, probably since amnesiac. its easy to draw comparisons between radiohead albums, to say that one is more accessible than another, more experimental, whatever. but im trying to avoid doing that, since theyre such different records that make me feel so different anyway. but i have to say this will definitely be a firm favourite, in time to come.

tracks deserving mention: all

in the past 2 months i have, at some point or another, been in love with every track.

The Lives of Others (or some german name)

watched this today when i woke up. one of the best movies, again. i really am on a roll this year, ive watched SO MUCH good stuff in the space of a couple of months.

well on to this one, german made, won an oscar for best foreign film. the main man Weisler with a gem of a performance. the only thing about it that was kinda lame was the writer, Georg Dreyman, idealist with supreme moral fibre and all. whats more, his crying scenes aren't the best.

still, a movie that really depicted well an individual very much a part of the creaking communist plot of East Berlin in the 80's. and how waking up from that dream can be painful, even ruinous for someone who believed in its underlying ideals only to realise it had all gone so wrong long before.

this blog was setup on a whim. originally i intended to use something to catalogue everything i listen to, read and watch. you see, i dont want to forget things, and i know this smacks of obsessive compulsion to document and compartmentalise my life, and i hate the thought of that.

which is why i haven't actually done anything about it and this page is still the way it was when i selected this sorry-looking template from a list of even sorrier-looking ones on show.

so lets see how this pans out okay. im not expecting this to last longer than a few weeks. there's a good chance that when i wake up tomorrow morning ill think this is just a stupid idea and this blog, like the 5 others that are still on my list-of-created-blogs but have been dormant for a year or more, will die. (4 of the 5 have 2 posts or less, and 1 of them has zero, so i know what im talking about).

but now there's this popup thing saying 'Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!' which kinda annoys me so im going to just post this. we got lift off!