Friday, September 11, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Noble Beast - Andrew Bird
I resolved to really get to know this album on the long train rides I projected for myself travelling around France, and all the time I'd be moving around alone, between hostels and couchsurfers. As it turned out, I didn't really spend all that much time alone. Scheduled or not, somebody always showed up ready for a conversation in bad French. I don't know if that just shows how much the French like to talk about themselves, half the time I almost could tell they could tell they weren't being understood.
Still, one Sunday afternoon in Metz, and a lonely train ride to Paris were all it took for me to know that this would be one of those rare records I would look to for calm on any given sleepless, distracted night. The first song I grew to like on this is called Fitz and Dizzyspells, a really lovely, jaunty little tune complete with echoing vocal accompaniment, 'Soldier on! Oooh..' All that cheeriness went quite well with the rolling French countryside, usually in the fashion of rather modest hill ranges opening up into the valleys of Champagne resplendent with farmland and cottages.
Andrew Bird doesn't tone down much on his habit of lining up obscure, incomprehensible, and seemingly unrelated images and ideas one suspects he conceives of as wordplay. An example, from Tenuousness:
Tenuous at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it,
the world that is
from proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and and Hobis-hots
Who hang around in ports a lot
... I know. Don't ask me.
Regardless, I don't feel like I have to understand the music to like it, especially when it is so obviously, and so exceptionally melodic. One thing about Noble Beast I really like is that Andrew Bird constantly resists the temptation to be lush and simply that. It's as if he's holding back on the wailing strings and horns just so he can take the time to make the most of the quiet and be intricate with his arrangements. And he does that quite with aplomb, never holding on to a phrase or melody past its wear, always introducing something unexpected into the mix. And whether that surprise comes from the the strange fingerpicking on his own violin to fill in a pause, an abrupt change in key or time signature, random whistling, or a reference to 'a wolf with a lung disease', the music as a whole always retains a coherence that makes it unmistakably Andrew Bird.
About the only straightforward track on the album, in terms of song structure, and melody and such is one called The Privateers, which I have grown to quite like anyway. Overall it's not hard to dismiss Noble Beast as boring, and slow, perhaps unadventurous. But it's still quality songwriting, that makes the effort to stand out in between the bars, instead of making grand sonic statements with a view to push pop music in this or that direction. Andrew Bird still defies classification. He is neither folk nor country nor chamber pop nor new-age in any significant way, he is not obviously a torch-bearer of some lost generation of rock music, nor does he have a league of contemporaries to be applied to and judged against. Which is maybe why critics can't make much of him beyond the isolated positive review.
Which doesn't affect me in the least. I remember clearly walking down La Moselle in Metz trying to hum the melody line to Natural Disaster and failing because I couldn't grasp the changes in key. And after I'd sat down on a park bench and listened to the track it seemed to go quite naturally, but once I tried to hum it on my own again the fact that I didn't detect a change in key was once again obvious. It might be little things, but it's those little adjustments and details that go their way to making him sound so damn good. I really can't wait to see him live.
Still, one Sunday afternoon in Metz, and a lonely train ride to Paris were all it took for me to know that this would be one of those rare records I would look to for calm on any given sleepless, distracted night. The first song I grew to like on this is called Fitz and Dizzyspells, a really lovely, jaunty little tune complete with echoing vocal accompaniment, 'Soldier on! Oooh..' All that cheeriness went quite well with the rolling French countryside, usually in the fashion of rather modest hill ranges opening up into the valleys of Champagne resplendent with farmland and cottages.
Andrew Bird doesn't tone down much on his habit of lining up obscure, incomprehensible, and seemingly unrelated images and ideas one suspects he conceives of as wordplay. An example, from Tenuousness:
Tenuous at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it,
the world that is
from proto-Sanskrit Minoans to porto-centric Lisboans
Greek Cypriots and and Hobis-hots
Who hang around in ports a lot
... I know. Don't ask me.
Regardless, I don't feel like I have to understand the music to like it, especially when it is so obviously, and so exceptionally melodic. One thing about Noble Beast I really like is that Andrew Bird constantly resists the temptation to be lush and simply that. It's as if he's holding back on the wailing strings and horns just so he can take the time to make the most of the quiet and be intricate with his arrangements. And he does that quite with aplomb, never holding on to a phrase or melody past its wear, always introducing something unexpected into the mix. And whether that surprise comes from the the strange fingerpicking on his own violin to fill in a pause, an abrupt change in key or time signature, random whistling, or a reference to 'a wolf with a lung disease', the music as a whole always retains a coherence that makes it unmistakably Andrew Bird.
About the only straightforward track on the album, in terms of song structure, and melody and such is one called The Privateers, which I have grown to quite like anyway. Overall it's not hard to dismiss Noble Beast as boring, and slow, perhaps unadventurous. But it's still quality songwriting, that makes the effort to stand out in between the bars, instead of making grand sonic statements with a view to push pop music in this or that direction. Andrew Bird still defies classification. He is neither folk nor country nor chamber pop nor new-age in any significant way, he is not obviously a torch-bearer of some lost generation of rock music, nor does he have a league of contemporaries to be applied to and judged against. Which is maybe why critics can't make much of him beyond the isolated positive review.
Which doesn't affect me in the least. I remember clearly walking down La Moselle in Metz trying to hum the melody line to Natural Disaster and failing because I couldn't grasp the changes in key. And after I'd sat down on a park bench and listened to the track it seemed to go quite naturally, but once I tried to hum it on my own again the fact that I didn't detect a change in key was once again obvious. It might be little things, but it's those little adjustments and details that go their way to making him sound so damn good. I really can't wait to see him live.
2 weeks - Grizzly Bear
One of the better songs on their latest album, Veckatimest.
The video to this song also makes me really comfortable. I think maybe in an ideal world I'd function in slow motion.
Also here's hoping I get to go to their Chicago show 28th Sept!
The video to this song also makes me really comfortable. I think maybe in an ideal world I'd function in slow motion.
Also here's hoping I get to go to their Chicago show 28th Sept!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Secrets de Polichinelle
In English, and in French.
Dans des cuisines situees a des centaines et des milliers de kilometres de la, elle regardera la peau molle se former sur le dos d'une cuillere en bois et sa memoire s'agitera, sans lui reveler tout a fait ce moment ou elle semble considerer un secret, un secret que l'on ne trouve pas effrayant avant de penser a essayer de le raconter.
In kitchens hundreds and thousands of miles away, she'll watch the soft skin form on the back of a wooden spoon and her memory will twitch, but it will not quite reveal to her this moment when she seems to be looking into an open secret, something not startling until you think of trying to tell it.
Dans des cuisines situees a des centaines et des milliers de kilometres de la, elle regardera la peau molle se former sur le dos d'une cuillere en bois et sa memoire s'agitera, sans lui reveler tout a fait ce moment ou elle semble considerer un secret, un secret que l'on ne trouve pas effrayant avant de penser a essayer de le raconter.
In kitchens hundreds and thousands of miles away, she'll watch the soft skin form on the back of a wooden spoon and her memory will twitch, but it will not quite reveal to her this moment when she seems to be looking into an open secret, something not startling until you think of trying to tell it.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Tokyo, 1 Apr 2009 - 9 Apr 2009
I'm home now, sipping on green tea I'd gotten at Narita Airport, in a duty-free shop called Little Akihabara. I'm thinking of Tokyo, inevitably, about the way she shone in light as in darkness, the Silver City.
We took a flight out from Singapore on the 1st of April, transited in Hong Kong and landed in Narita that evening. After a flurry of activity sorting out our train passes, and getting to Asakusa station on the metro, we had to walk to our hostel in the rain. First impressions: a lot of grey, in the buildings, the highways, in the faces of people. Huddled cheer behind rain-dappled screens of drinking places, alcohol in the breath almost visible, and smoke trailing upwards from cigarettes certainly so, around unshaded lightbulbs. We paced across a bridge over Sumida Gawa and the wind hit me, so I pulled my jacket tighter around me and tucked my chin in closer to my chest. The waters of the river were dark and lifeless. At the hostel it was gratifying to find a warm bed, then, and everything working as they're supposed to. Efficiency in the Japanese style, I figured.
Anyhow, that was the start, and I don't want to impose a chronology. For a summary of the events of our trip I refer you to the online journals of my valiant fellow travellers, who are far more orderly and diligent chroniclers than myself. This entry is a collection of my random thoughts.
A complete outsider has no business being in Japan. To interpret the land and its people without thinking it completely absurd, or, in the words of an American tourist I bypassed, "what a bunch of freaks", requires a deliberate inquest into comprehending the world view of the Japanese. I say this not to make sweeping generalisations, but only in the way that one would say, Singaporeans are pragmatic by nature, or Americans value freedom in the utmost. Yet, it would be completely insufficient to go by the same bent and think we understand the Japanese knowing that "they were very bad in World War II", or that "they are innovative and hardworking, as evidenced by the success of Sony and Toyota".
Comprehension of the most daily Japanese habits would still be beyond us. How could one explain why in any restaurant or department stall, every guide or waiter or salesperson greets everybody and nobody with great gaiety and is helpful to a fault, while everywhere else, on the streets, in the metro in particular, people are either sullen in reading or so aloof as to appear unapproachable. Or why a country that upholds strict customs of tea-drinking should think it appropriate for people in rowdy groups to consume large amounts of alcohol in the day while sitting in a park. Or how the country's largest gay festival can be held annually beside one of the major Buddhist temples of the city, like it were a sort of pilgrimage.
I don't think I understand the Japanese people any better after 9 days of being among them. Perhaps I'm just starting to be capable of describing them. There are many things I admire about Tokyo, but there is also a knowing that my admiration does not make them better pleased to any degree; sometimes it seems to me that the opinion of outsiders is to the Japanese completely irrelevant, beyond helping them decide in purely academic terms their own place in the world.
Tokyo can make one feel very small indeed. Walking anywhere in the major shopping districts on the weekends - Shinjuku, Aoyama, Harajuku, Shibuya (I don't even want to think about what Akihabara would have been like) gave me headaches. Entire streets peopled to the edge of the kerbs, and I thought that from a high point the place would have looked like the patterns on the face of a multi-coloured Rorschach - thick lines always in motion, snaking, shifting. There is always something to assault the senses, salespeople shouting into brightly coloured cones, thumping music from a Pachinko joint round the corner, a striking billboard featuring the latest revolutionary Sony contraption. I think it takes time to learn how to shut out all that noise and perhaps some people are excited by never-ending activity like that. I, for one, was swamped.
Most of the time though, walking, which we did plenty of, was easy enough. I remember walking through Nihombashi just before rush hour, from the Bank of Japan past the buildings of the major Japanese banks, to Nihombashi itself, to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Down the roads lining the financial centre of Tokyo, there is an odd mix of architecture, from the outlandishly modern in the fashion of today's silver and glass to Gothic, mixed in with distinctly Japanese garden landscaping, all clean lines and singular trees. It is a little like walking down Boat Quay, except that it is difficult to think of Boat Quay as anything other than an interesting place forcefully appended with influences from a patchwork of cultures , going from an Irish pub to a Chinese seafood restaurant to Coffee Club. In Nihombashi, one gets the feeling that the melange is together something that can be called modern Japan, underlined by a distinct sense of the history of the place and of course, the ramen shops that line the subway malls just beneath the walkways.
And within Nihombashi itself, a different look at Tokyo. In Takashimaya Nihombashi, the first and the original. A small departmental store by today's standards, but what the tourist guides would describe as having "old-fashioned charm". As we approached the building in the fading light of late afternoon its facade of red bricks made it look almost quaint, a cottage in a forest of pointed silver spires. Inside Takashimaya the shopping is laid out almost generously. No winding shopways, lined on both sides with retailers. Rather, marble in maroon and cream contained within a space a single glance can take in. In the basement, food galore, and Japanese people examining slabs of raw fish and other assorted seafood. In other spaces, cakes and desserts, and some fruits. Once again, it was a little strange to a person used to Singapore's supermarkets, if only for the fact that the whole place carried a near- exclusively Japanese flavour, the only foreign influence I recall is a stall selling 'Szechuan style delights'.
Next, a Tokyo almost unreal. We walked uphill a fair distance before arriving at Yanaka, a district, or chome, where we walked through a dense concentration of Japanese shrines and temples from the Edo period, and certainly some from long before that. I read somewhere that in contrast with elaborate Chinese or Korean designs, the Japanese aesthetic is often grounded in nature - woods and stones that blend into, or are representative of, natural landscapes. The author related it to the relatively long time the Japanese people spent in feudal backwardness, when there was no need for displays of richesse intended to impress. To these sensibilities of old Yanaka in itself was something of a shrine. Somehow this particularly Japanese aesthetic appeals quite naturally to modern tastes, and it was rather in admiration and awe that I walked down those old streets, leaving our modern time further behind with each step. We walked through a cemetery dedicated to a shogun whose name I don't remember. I wondered if the Japanese actively make it a point to grow sakura trees in every cemetery, as something for the dead to look forward to, year on year.
I wandered off myself during our last night in Tokyo, ending up in a suburb on the inner rim of Greater Tokyo. The reality is, the suburbs make up by far the largest part of Tokyo, and my guess is that they are largely homogeneous. So before we entertain notions of Tokyo as a city ready any given moment to burst at the seams with activity, it is only fair to describe accurately those large swaths of residential drudgery ignored by tourists, expats and travel guides, but around which the lives of most of Tokyo's residents revolve. On tired legs I trudged to the district's all-purpose departmental store, where I acquired a bento set at half price and a packet of milk. I walked along a canal, man-made and overgrown with water plants, and wondered what sort of odour would emit from it in the hot summer months. On a cool spring night, however, it seemed to me to reflect the blank, imperturbable exteriors of those occasional white-collar workers (sararimen, OLs, career women) who unseeing cycled past, like ghosts on a straight road home.
I made for a playground settled in grey sand, and picked a bench to sit down on. I don't think the Japanese have anti-homeless benches. A young family had chosen the same playground for an evening picnic. I watched the girl, of about 5 years, clamber with effort up the ascending platforms, where on the highest her father waited. The two came together noisily, the girl making loud approving sounds and her father clapping his hands. She proceeded on to the slide, and came to a complete stop halfway. She looked uncertain for just a second before she stood up and ran the rest of the way down, squealing with delight as she entered into the waiting arms of her mother. All around the streets were quiet, and not many windows were lit along the rows of low, grey houses.
I don't think my account of Tokyo would be complete without a tribute to the exquisite food. The city is dotted with Western fast food chains, but one has to wonder how they survive in competition with the OISHI-inducing goodness of ramen, soba, udon, sushi, curry, gyudon, tempura don, unagi don, sukiyaki etc that completely and thoroughly destroyed our tolerance for inferior fare after 9 days of unfailingly satisfying gastronomical perfection.
A city of many aspects, then, the biggest and most populous of its kind, and perhaps the strangest to our common sensibilities. The centre of a civilisation on the Eastern edge of the world, ignored and self-enclosed for so long in its history, drawn out of its shell by international winds of change. It might well have preferred to have been left to itself.
We took a flight out from Singapore on the 1st of April, transited in Hong Kong and landed in Narita that evening. After a flurry of activity sorting out our train passes, and getting to Asakusa station on the metro, we had to walk to our hostel in the rain. First impressions: a lot of grey, in the buildings, the highways, in the faces of people. Huddled cheer behind rain-dappled screens of drinking places, alcohol in the breath almost visible, and smoke trailing upwards from cigarettes certainly so, around unshaded lightbulbs. We paced across a bridge over Sumida Gawa and the wind hit me, so I pulled my jacket tighter around me and tucked my chin in closer to my chest. The waters of the river were dark and lifeless. At the hostel it was gratifying to find a warm bed, then, and everything working as they're supposed to. Efficiency in the Japanese style, I figured.
Anyhow, that was the start, and I don't want to impose a chronology. For a summary of the events of our trip I refer you to the online journals of my valiant fellow travellers, who are far more orderly and diligent chroniclers than myself. This entry is a collection of my random thoughts.
A complete outsider has no business being in Japan. To interpret the land and its people without thinking it completely absurd, or, in the words of an American tourist I bypassed, "what a bunch of freaks", requires a deliberate inquest into comprehending the world view of the Japanese. I say this not to make sweeping generalisations, but only in the way that one would say, Singaporeans are pragmatic by nature, or Americans value freedom in the utmost. Yet, it would be completely insufficient to go by the same bent and think we understand the Japanese knowing that "they were very bad in World War II", or that "they are innovative and hardworking, as evidenced by the success of Sony and Toyota".
Comprehension of the most daily Japanese habits would still be beyond us. How could one explain why in any restaurant or department stall, every guide or waiter or salesperson greets everybody and nobody with great gaiety and is helpful to a fault, while everywhere else, on the streets, in the metro in particular, people are either sullen in reading or so aloof as to appear unapproachable. Or why a country that upholds strict customs of tea-drinking should think it appropriate for people in rowdy groups to consume large amounts of alcohol in the day while sitting in a park. Or how the country's largest gay festival can be held annually beside one of the major Buddhist temples of the city, like it were a sort of pilgrimage.
I don't think I understand the Japanese people any better after 9 days of being among them. Perhaps I'm just starting to be capable of describing them. There are many things I admire about Tokyo, but there is also a knowing that my admiration does not make them better pleased to any degree; sometimes it seems to me that the opinion of outsiders is to the Japanese completely irrelevant, beyond helping them decide in purely academic terms their own place in the world.
Tokyo can make one feel very small indeed. Walking anywhere in the major shopping districts on the weekends - Shinjuku, Aoyama, Harajuku, Shibuya (I don't even want to think about what Akihabara would have been like) gave me headaches. Entire streets peopled to the edge of the kerbs, and I thought that from a high point the place would have looked like the patterns on the face of a multi-coloured Rorschach - thick lines always in motion, snaking, shifting. There is always something to assault the senses, salespeople shouting into brightly coloured cones, thumping music from a Pachinko joint round the corner, a striking billboard featuring the latest revolutionary Sony contraption. I think it takes time to learn how to shut out all that noise and perhaps some people are excited by never-ending activity like that. I, for one, was swamped.
Most of the time though, walking, which we did plenty of, was easy enough. I remember walking through Nihombashi just before rush hour, from the Bank of Japan past the buildings of the major Japanese banks, to Nihombashi itself, to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Down the roads lining the financial centre of Tokyo, there is an odd mix of architecture, from the outlandishly modern in the fashion of today's silver and glass to Gothic, mixed in with distinctly Japanese garden landscaping, all clean lines and singular trees. It is a little like walking down Boat Quay, except that it is difficult to think of Boat Quay as anything other than an interesting place forcefully appended with influences from a patchwork of cultures , going from an Irish pub to a Chinese seafood restaurant to Coffee Club. In Nihombashi, one gets the feeling that the melange is together something that can be called modern Japan, underlined by a distinct sense of the history of the place and of course, the ramen shops that line the subway malls just beneath the walkways.
And within Nihombashi itself, a different look at Tokyo. In Takashimaya Nihombashi, the first and the original. A small departmental store by today's standards, but what the tourist guides would describe as having "old-fashioned charm". As we approached the building in the fading light of late afternoon its facade of red bricks made it look almost quaint, a cottage in a forest of pointed silver spires. Inside Takashimaya the shopping is laid out almost generously. No winding shopways, lined on both sides with retailers. Rather, marble in maroon and cream contained within a space a single glance can take in. In the basement, food galore, and Japanese people examining slabs of raw fish and other assorted seafood. In other spaces, cakes and desserts, and some fruits. Once again, it was a little strange to a person used to Singapore's supermarkets, if only for the fact that the whole place carried a near- exclusively Japanese flavour, the only foreign influence I recall is a stall selling 'Szechuan style delights'.
Next, a Tokyo almost unreal. We walked uphill a fair distance before arriving at Yanaka, a district, or chome, where we walked through a dense concentration of Japanese shrines and temples from the Edo period, and certainly some from long before that. I read somewhere that in contrast with elaborate Chinese or Korean designs, the Japanese aesthetic is often grounded in nature - woods and stones that blend into, or are representative of, natural landscapes. The author related it to the relatively long time the Japanese people spent in feudal backwardness, when there was no need for displays of richesse intended to impress. To these sensibilities of old Yanaka in itself was something of a shrine. Somehow this particularly Japanese aesthetic appeals quite naturally to modern tastes, and it was rather in admiration and awe that I walked down those old streets, leaving our modern time further behind with each step. We walked through a cemetery dedicated to a shogun whose name I don't remember. I wondered if the Japanese actively make it a point to grow sakura trees in every cemetery, as something for the dead to look forward to, year on year.
I wandered off myself during our last night in Tokyo, ending up in a suburb on the inner rim of Greater Tokyo. The reality is, the suburbs make up by far the largest part of Tokyo, and my guess is that they are largely homogeneous. So before we entertain notions of Tokyo as a city ready any given moment to burst at the seams with activity, it is only fair to describe accurately those large swaths of residential drudgery ignored by tourists, expats and travel guides, but around which the lives of most of Tokyo's residents revolve. On tired legs I trudged to the district's all-purpose departmental store, where I acquired a bento set at half price and a packet of milk. I walked along a canal, man-made and overgrown with water plants, and wondered what sort of odour would emit from it in the hot summer months. On a cool spring night, however, it seemed to me to reflect the blank, imperturbable exteriors of those occasional white-collar workers (sararimen, OLs, career women) who unseeing cycled past, like ghosts on a straight road home.
I made for a playground settled in grey sand, and picked a bench to sit down on. I don't think the Japanese have anti-homeless benches. A young family had chosen the same playground for an evening picnic. I watched the girl, of about 5 years, clamber with effort up the ascending platforms, where on the highest her father waited. The two came together noisily, the girl making loud approving sounds and her father clapping his hands. She proceeded on to the slide, and came to a complete stop halfway. She looked uncertain for just a second before she stood up and ran the rest of the way down, squealing with delight as she entered into the waiting arms of her mother. All around the streets were quiet, and not many windows were lit along the rows of low, grey houses.
I don't think my account of Tokyo would be complete without a tribute to the exquisite food. The city is dotted with Western fast food chains, but one has to wonder how they survive in competition with the OISHI-inducing goodness of ramen, soba, udon, sushi, curry, gyudon, tempura don, unagi don, sukiyaki etc that completely and thoroughly destroyed our tolerance for inferior fare after 9 days of unfailingly satisfying gastronomical perfection.
A city of many aspects, then, the biggest and most populous of its kind, and perhaps the strangest to our common sensibilities. The centre of a civilisation on the Eastern edge of the world, ignored and self-enclosed for so long in its history, drawn out of its shell by international winds of change. It might well have preferred to have been left to itself.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
James Joyce - The Dead
Out of the dark I hear an Irish woman, quizzical, sneering slightly, crying Beannacht libh as she slips laughingly into the night. There is warm light emanating from a dining hall, two women, both old, can hardly hold back tears as a man trembling makes a speech. Daylight is only a few hours away, mirth and confusion as two men bundle an old musky woman up a carriage amidst a flurry of goodbyes, the carriage fades into the cold dark beneath a laden sky. A woman haunted by a pair of eyes out of a night from her childhood. An ache, long dormant, unspooled by a hoarse tenor mustering unwillingly a song of old, and the uncanny likeness of two nights decades adrift, common in epilogues that fail spectacularly to reconcile.
Before long, it snowed.
A few light taps on the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen, and farther westward, upon the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
From The Dead, James Joyce
Almost at random I picked this up and read it through dinner, for the second time. Almost without needing context, James Joyce comes from the front and still surprises when he surrounds you completely in his night.
Before long, it snowed.
A few light taps on the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen, and farther westward, upon the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
From The Dead, James Joyce
Almost at random I picked this up and read it through dinner, for the second time. Almost without needing context, James Joyce comes from the front and still surprises when he surrounds you completely in his night.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Feist and Ben Gibbard, Vashti Bunyan cover
Train Song, released on Dark is the Night, features Feist and Ben Gibbard covering one of my favourite tracks by Vashti Bunyan.
Train Song
travelling North, travelling North to find you
train wheels speeding wind in my eyes
don't even know what i'll find when i get to you
call out your name love don't be surprised
it's so many miles and so long since i've left you
dont even know what i'll find when i get to you
but suddenly now i know where i belong
it's many hundred miles and it won't be long
nothing at all in my head to say to you
only the beat of the train i'm on
nothing i've learnt all my life on the way to you
one day our love was over and gone
so many miles and so long since i've left you
dont even know what i'll find when i get to you
but suddenly now i know where i belong
it's many hundred miles and it won't be long.
what will i do if there's someone there with you
maybe someone you've always known
how will i know i can call and give to you
love with no warning and find you alone.
Feist is rather awesome on her own with her reverb in empty rooms and Ben Gibbard is his usual superfluous self.
My favourite version of the song is still the one Vashti Bunyan released originally on Some things just stick in your mind.
17 Pink Sugar Elephants
i saw 17 pink sugar elephants
sitting under a chestnut tree
i said good morning, pink sugar elephants
but they wouldn't speak to me
each had two eyes but they couldn't see me there
each had 4 legs but they couldn't go anywhere
and so we just sat
that early autumn morning
sun not yet ris' and the magic everywhere
i walked up to one pink sugar elephant
asked why wouldn't he speak to me
but he was a factory made pink sugar elephant
given to children for treats after tea
he had two eyes but he couldn't see me there
he had 4 legs but they couldn't go anywhere
and so we just sat
that early autumn morning
sun not yet ris' and the magic everywhere
Here it feels like Vashti is on some sort of sedative, alone in sunshine. It also makes me think of Vashti and her animals. I guess I can understand why Train Song came up eventually because 17 Pink Sugar Elephants isn't really a song for playing in bars.
Train Song
travelling North, travelling North to find you
train wheels speeding wind in my eyes
don't even know what i'll find when i get to you
call out your name love don't be surprised
it's so many miles and so long since i've left you
dont even know what i'll find when i get to you
but suddenly now i know where i belong
it's many hundred miles and it won't be long
nothing at all in my head to say to you
only the beat of the train i'm on
nothing i've learnt all my life on the way to you
one day our love was over and gone
so many miles and so long since i've left you
dont even know what i'll find when i get to you
but suddenly now i know where i belong
it's many hundred miles and it won't be long.
what will i do if there's someone there with you
maybe someone you've always known
how will i know i can call and give to you
love with no warning and find you alone.
Feist is rather awesome on her own with her reverb in empty rooms and Ben Gibbard is his usual superfluous self.
My favourite version of the song is still the one Vashti Bunyan released originally on Some things just stick in your mind.
17 Pink Sugar Elephants
i saw 17 pink sugar elephants
sitting under a chestnut tree
i said good morning, pink sugar elephants
but they wouldn't speak to me
each had two eyes but they couldn't see me there
each had 4 legs but they couldn't go anywhere
and so we just sat
that early autumn morning
sun not yet ris' and the magic everywhere
i walked up to one pink sugar elephant
asked why wouldn't he speak to me
but he was a factory made pink sugar elephant
given to children for treats after tea
he had two eyes but he couldn't see me there
he had 4 legs but they couldn't go anywhere
and so we just sat
that early autumn morning
sun not yet ris' and the magic everywhere
Here it feels like Vashti is on some sort of sedative, alone in sunshine. It also makes me think of Vashti and her animals. I guess I can understand why Train Song came up eventually because 17 Pink Sugar Elephants isn't really a song for playing in bars.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Geithner, please.
Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
-Winston Churchill
-Winston Churchill
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
you can't be serious
This is what a final year NTU Dean's list student had to say about his university:
I'm amazed at the range of research areas that NTU is investing in, even in relatively unexplored areas such as Science and Humanities. This reflects the daring and forward-thinking mindset of the university.
Just, no words.
I'm amazed at the range of research areas that NTU is investing in, even in relatively unexplored areas such as Science and Humanities. This reflects the daring and forward-thinking mindset of the university.
Just, no words.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Joanna Newsom - Only Skin
And there was a booming above you
That night, black airplanes flew over the sea
And they were lowing and shifting like
Beached whales
Shelled snails
As you strained and you squinted to see
The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry
You froze in your sand shoal
Prayed for your poor soul
Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl
And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke
My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke
Then there was a silence you took to mean something:
Mean, run, sing
For alive you will evermore be
And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin'
Has gone east
While you're left to explain them to me
Released from their hairless and blind cavalry
With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running
To where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning
Well, what is this craziness? This crazy talking?
You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking
It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over
The firebreather is beneath the clover
Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever
A toothless hound-dog choking on a feather
But I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever)
Down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb
That blooms but one day a year by the riverside - i'd bring it here:
Apply it gently
To the love you've lent me
While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
And the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze
And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly
Gone treacly
Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat
- frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath
Press on me: we are restless things
Webs of seaweed are swaddling
You call upon the dusk
Of the musk of a squid
Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib
Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking
And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?
Scrape your knee; it is only skin
Makes the sound of violins
When you cut my hair, and leave the birds the trimmings
I am the happiest woman among all women
And the shallow
Water
Stretches as far as I can see
Knee-deep, trudging along
A seagull weeps; "so long"
I'm humming a threshing song
Until the night is over
Hold on!
Hold on!
Hold your horses back from the fickle dawn
I have got some business out at the edge of town
Candy weighing both of my pockets down
'Til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(and knowing how the common-folk condemn
What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm
Being a woman, being a woman)
But always up the mountainside you're clambering
Groping blindly, hungry for anything:
Picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this?
Scrap of sassafras, eh sisyphus?
I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain
Little sister, he will be back again
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain
Spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin'
Silently from all the blooming cherry trees
In tiny nooses, safe from everyone
- nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done
Be a woman, be a woman!
Though we felt the spray of the waves
We decided to stay till the tide rose too far
We weren't afraid, cause we know what you are
And you know that we know what you are
Awful atoll
O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
Bawl, bellow:
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow
Toddle and roll;
Teeth an impalpable bit of leather
While yarrow, heather and hollyhock
Awkwardly molt along the shore
Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?
Stay with me for awhile
That's an awfully real gun
I know life will lay you down
As the lightning has lately done
Failing this, failing this,
Follow me, my sweetest friend
To see what you anointed in pointing your gun there
Lay it down! Nice and slow!
There is nowhere to go, save up
Up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream
At the sight of my baby, out back:
Back on the patio watching the bats bring night in
- while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white
Wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped
Last week our picture window produced a half-word
Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And pant and labour over every intake
I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace
Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
Said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"
Then in my hot hand
She slumped her sick weight
We tramped through the poison oak
Heartbroke and inchoate
The dogs were snapping
So you cuffed their collars
While I climbed the tree-house
Then how I hollered!
Cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two
Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew
(while, back in the world that moves, often
According to the hoarding of these clues
Dogs still run roughly around
Little tufts of finch-down)
The cities we passed were a flickering wasteland
But his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless
While down in the lowlands the crops are all coming;
We have everything
Life is thundering blissful towards death
In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness
You stopped by, I was all alive
In my doorway, we shucked and jived
And when you wept, I was gone:
See, I got gone when I got wise
But I can't with certainty say we survived
Then down, and down
And down, and down
And down, and deeper
Stoke without sound
The blameless flames
You endless sleeper
Through fire below, and fire above, and fire within
Sleeped through the things that couldn't have been if you hadn't have been
And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?
All my bones they are gone, gone, gone
Take my bones, I don't need none
Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on!
Suck all day on a cherry stone
Dig a little hole, not three inches round
Spit your pit in the hole in the ground
Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
Till up grow a fine young cherry tree
Well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me?
A little willow cabin to rest on your knee
What'll I do with a trinket such as this?
Think of your woman, who's gone to the west
But I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed!
Then i'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head
Come across the desert with no shoes on!
I love you truly, or I love no-one
Fire
Moves
Away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?
Clear the room! There's a fire, a fire, a fire
Get going, and I'm going to be right behind you
And if the love of a woman or two, dear,
Couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do
Is do, my darling, right by you
-----------------------------------------
Pure genius, all 16:53 minutes of it.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
From the develishly intriguing essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Self-Reliance'
-----------------
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
-------------------------------------
In the essay Emerson preaches the indefatigable wisdom of approaching all that we encounter in the spirit of an individual. Central to his philosophy - we have inherited the same faculties of our intellectual and spiritual predecessors, equally disposed with the intended attributes of our Maker. By that logic, we should never be bound as slaves to their ideas, marketed as ideologies, but should instead seek after our own avenues to truth and reason, in guidance of our actions.
Equally, as in the actions of Plato and Milton and David and Jeremiah, winds of change are effected in direct opposition to acceptance of conventional wisom. In conformity, there is blindness and incapacitation of free will. Authorities are false authorities, their points of view so readily availed to and shoved onto us should always be subordinate to our individual judgements and never judicial instructors. I find it interesting to apply such a mode of thought to the functioning of societies. Can an army function if its soldiers question continually? Can there be a division between functional (floutable) and ethical (essential) aspects of a legal system? Can customs continue to play a part in our daily lives if we see ourselves as individuals with a responsibility, intrinsically appointed, to fashion our own statutes and lifestyles?
But those questions are hardly rhetorical.
Emerson goes on to discredit society as a progressive force. Art and custom in civilisations of old are but ornamental "costumes" of that period, not something to be hankered after, or built upon. Travelling for amusement, or in idolatry of the conceived beauty of foreign lands, is regarded by Emerson as unproductive, for a lost age is rarely the source of greater wisdom.
"Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again."
It is interesting that in taking his word for it, one goes against the very principle he advocates. So, indeed, maybe Emerson, in taking an intellectual position so extreme (but hardly, hardly insupportable), goads his readers to find the cracks in his own philosophy.
Still I regard the passage quoted at the beginning of this post as a good reminder of why I started writing here in the first place. To regard my world with my own eyes, and appreciate its constituents under the profundity of its changing shades and tints.
-----------------
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.
-------------------------------------
In the essay Emerson preaches the indefatigable wisdom of approaching all that we encounter in the spirit of an individual. Central to his philosophy - we have inherited the same faculties of our intellectual and spiritual predecessors, equally disposed with the intended attributes of our Maker. By that logic, we should never be bound as slaves to their ideas, marketed as ideologies, but should instead seek after our own avenues to truth and reason, in guidance of our actions.
Equally, as in the actions of Plato and Milton and David and Jeremiah, winds of change are effected in direct opposition to acceptance of conventional wisom. In conformity, there is blindness and incapacitation of free will. Authorities are false authorities, their points of view so readily availed to and shoved onto us should always be subordinate to our individual judgements and never judicial instructors. I find it interesting to apply such a mode of thought to the functioning of societies. Can an army function if its soldiers question continually? Can there be a division between functional (floutable) and ethical (essential) aspects of a legal system? Can customs continue to play a part in our daily lives if we see ourselves as individuals with a responsibility, intrinsically appointed, to fashion our own statutes and lifestyles?
But those questions are hardly rhetorical.
Emerson goes on to discredit society as a progressive force. Art and custom in civilisations of old are but ornamental "costumes" of that period, not something to be hankered after, or built upon. Travelling for amusement, or in idolatry of the conceived beauty of foreign lands, is regarded by Emerson as unproductive, for a lost age is rarely the source of greater wisdom.
"Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again."
It is interesting that in taking his word for it, one goes against the very principle he advocates. So, indeed, maybe Emerson, in taking an intellectual position so extreme (but hardly, hardly insupportable), goads his readers to find the cracks in his own philosophy.
Still I regard the passage quoted at the beginning of this post as a good reminder of why I started writing here in the first place. To regard my world with my own eyes, and appreciate its constituents under the profundity of its changing shades and tints.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Andrew Bird - Masterfade
Well you sure didn't look like you were having any fun
with that heavy-metal gaze they'll have to measure in tons
And when you look up at the sky
all you see are zeros
all you see are zeros and ones
You took my hand and led me down to watch a kewpie doll parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
it's not that I just didn't care I must admit I was afraid
and I'm awfully glad my finger's resting gently on the masterfade
The masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and I just can't remember which way the east wind blows
does it matter?
if we're all matter
what's it matter does it matter if we're all matter when we're done?
when the sky is full of zeros and ones
I saw you standing all alone in the electrostatic rain
I thought at last I'd found a situation you can't explain
with GPS you know it's all just a matter of degrees
your happiness won't find you underneath that canopy of trees
If the green grass is 6 the soybeans are 7
the junebugs are 8 the weeds and thistles are 11
and if the 1s just hold their place the 0s make a smiley face
when they come floating down from the heavens
You took my hand and led me down to watch a papillon parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
you squeezed my hand and told me softly that I shouldn't be afraid
'cause all the while your finger's resting gently on the masterfade
the masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and who the hell can remember which way the east wind blows
when you're lying on the ground staring up at that inverted compass
I mean Christ who knows?
awesome awesome lyrics.
with that heavy-metal gaze they'll have to measure in tons
And when you look up at the sky
all you see are zeros
all you see are zeros and ones
You took my hand and led me down to watch a kewpie doll parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
it's not that I just didn't care I must admit I was afraid
and I'm awfully glad my finger's resting gently on the masterfade
The masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and I just can't remember which way the east wind blows
does it matter?
if we're all matter
what's it matter does it matter if we're all matter when we're done?
when the sky is full of zeros and ones
I saw you standing all alone in the electrostatic rain
I thought at last I'd found a situation you can't explain
with GPS you know it's all just a matter of degrees
your happiness won't find you underneath that canopy of trees
If the green grass is 6 the soybeans are 7
the junebugs are 8 the weeds and thistles are 11
and if the 1s just hold their place the 0s make a smiley face
when they come floating down from the heavens
You took my hand and led me down to watch a papillon parade
we let the kittens lick our hair and drank our chalky lemonade
you squeezed my hand and told me softly that I shouldn't be afraid
'cause all the while your finger's resting gently on the masterfade
the masterfade
I coulda played along
the masterfade
I coulda played Mah Jong
but it just takes too long
and who the hell can remember which way the east wind blows
when you're lying on the ground staring up at that inverted compass
I mean Christ who knows?
awesome awesome lyrics.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
"To others, however, the members of “Generation Y”—those born in the 1980s and 1990s, otherwise known as Millennials or the Net Generation—are spoiled, narcissistic layabouts who cannot spell and waste too much time on instant messaging and Facebook. Ah, reply the Net Geners, but all that messing around online proves that we are computer-literate multitaskers who are adept users of online collaborative tools, and natural team players. And, while you are on the subject of me, I need a month’s sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals."
- Managing the Facebookers, From The Economist Jan 3rd 2009 edition
I love that last line, "I need a month's sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals". I hadn't perhaps viewed the need to quantify self-worth as being a distinct characteristic of my generation. The Economist discusses this new individualism with some candour, relating a tendency to question and reflect upon big ideas to difficulties in integration with organisational structures that often require individuals to simply shut up and work. The article brings up "touchy-feely management fads", apparently a byproduct of the new-age tendencies of these so-called Facebookers, and sets such notions against "brutal command-and-control methods". Integration aside, the article (all of half an Economist-magazine sized page in length) hits at the soft narcissism of the new generation and their collective unsuitability to contribute to productive economies. The bottomline, is that in times when livelihoods of hundreds and thousands stand on the brink, there are more important things than individual development to consider. Even if it means foregoing that trip to Nepal to reinvigorate the spiritual essence of your being, long drained after days on end of staring at figures on a computer screen.
I don't think it's such a simple matter of putting 2 weights on opposing scales and deciding in favour of the more substantial though. To be fair, the article is entitled "Managing the Facebookers", and it opines as to the type of person that's most valuable to a firm in leaner economic times. It deals with the specific subject of management.
Yet, it dichotomises attitudes to work in an unfair way. A caricature of the "Net Gener" who "treat(s) work as a route to personal fulfillment" and "laboured under the illusion that the world owes them a living" is presented, and ridiculed. And even if it's true that such an attitude is more prevalent in the younger generation (the article does not show this), the author pretends to a moral immediacy which is unjustified. It is this specific set of presumptions that I take issue with.
How does an individual decide that his head-down, gritting of teeth exertions for the good of the firm, or the national economy will be worthwhile? By celebrating quarterly growth figures? Or taking comfort in the growing profit margins of the firm? The baby boomers of post-war Japan resurrected an economy with astonishing success, to what end? So that the world can applaud in admiration and study the factors of their success? Perhaps that the next generation can be rid of questions of survival to engage themselves in less sapping affairs? A little removed from the personal considerations of the average worker, I would think.
There is good reason to be dissatisfied with simply being a productive unit of labour, functioning within a capitalist economy. Certainly basic needs as putting the food on the table, as the article summarily expresses it, have to be adequately satisfied first. Yet from there human wants become considerably more complex; putting more and more food on the table can give some people all the meaning their lives require, but there are innumerable other ways, all drastically different, to lead full lives. Simply saying that an entire generation of people need to "temper some of their expectations and take the world as it is", seems over-simplified to the point of severe redundancy.
With economic ills afflicting entire communities, there is perhaps a case to be made that personal fulfillment should take a backseat to betterment as a firm, or society, or nation, whichever the relevant grouping. I'm interested in how an individual relates his own well-being to the well-being of people he does not know and identifies with in an abstract way. Nation, race, global corporation. How these can justifiably be central pillars of an individual identity. When common interests of economic well-being, security become so diffused from efforts of labour, in reality work that years and decades can be lost in. The notion that one's survival can be inextricably linked to that of a multitude seems simplifed to Marvel or DC extents, where we either unite to effect change and save the world in doing so, or perish. It is perhaps easier to feel these common interests in hard times, like when an alien species is upon our planet intent on destroying all humanity, starting from Washington DC. Yet, it is too easy to paint such portraits of hard times, of American influences defiling the world, of WMDs proliferate in every protrusive sand dune, of Antichrists and Depressions.
Which is why when people tell us we are "narcissistic layabouts" for wanting to take that trip to Nepal, it's probably constructive to question that a little, too.
- Managing the Facebookers, From The Economist Jan 3rd 2009 edition
I love that last line, "I need a month's sabbatical to recalibrate my personal goals". I hadn't perhaps viewed the need to quantify self-worth as being a distinct characteristic of my generation. The Economist discusses this new individualism with some candour, relating a tendency to question and reflect upon big ideas to difficulties in integration with organisational structures that often require individuals to simply shut up and work. The article brings up "touchy-feely management fads", apparently a byproduct of the new-age tendencies of these so-called Facebookers, and sets such notions against "brutal command-and-control methods". Integration aside, the article (all of half an Economist-magazine sized page in length) hits at the soft narcissism of the new generation and their collective unsuitability to contribute to productive economies. The bottomline, is that in times when livelihoods of hundreds and thousands stand on the brink, there are more important things than individual development to consider. Even if it means foregoing that trip to Nepal to reinvigorate the spiritual essence of your being, long drained after days on end of staring at figures on a computer screen.
I don't think it's such a simple matter of putting 2 weights on opposing scales and deciding in favour of the more substantial though. To be fair, the article is entitled "Managing the Facebookers", and it opines as to the type of person that's most valuable to a firm in leaner economic times. It deals with the specific subject of management.
Yet, it dichotomises attitudes to work in an unfair way. A caricature of the "Net Gener" who "treat(s) work as a route to personal fulfillment" and "laboured under the illusion that the world owes them a living" is presented, and ridiculed. And even if it's true that such an attitude is more prevalent in the younger generation (the article does not show this), the author pretends to a moral immediacy which is unjustified. It is this specific set of presumptions that I take issue with.
How does an individual decide that his head-down, gritting of teeth exertions for the good of the firm, or the national economy will be worthwhile? By celebrating quarterly growth figures? Or taking comfort in the growing profit margins of the firm? The baby boomers of post-war Japan resurrected an economy with astonishing success, to what end? So that the world can applaud in admiration and study the factors of their success? Perhaps that the next generation can be rid of questions of survival to engage themselves in less sapping affairs? A little removed from the personal considerations of the average worker, I would think.
There is good reason to be dissatisfied with simply being a productive unit of labour, functioning within a capitalist economy. Certainly basic needs as putting the food on the table, as the article summarily expresses it, have to be adequately satisfied first. Yet from there human wants become considerably more complex; putting more and more food on the table can give some people all the meaning their lives require, but there are innumerable other ways, all drastically different, to lead full lives. Simply saying that an entire generation of people need to "temper some of their expectations and take the world as it is", seems over-simplified to the point of severe redundancy.
With economic ills afflicting entire communities, there is perhaps a case to be made that personal fulfillment should take a backseat to betterment as a firm, or society, or nation, whichever the relevant grouping. I'm interested in how an individual relates his own well-being to the well-being of people he does not know and identifies with in an abstract way. Nation, race, global corporation. How these can justifiably be central pillars of an individual identity. When common interests of economic well-being, security become so diffused from efforts of labour, in reality work that years and decades can be lost in. The notion that one's survival can be inextricably linked to that of a multitude seems simplifed to Marvel or DC extents, where we either unite to effect change and save the world in doing so, or perish. It is perhaps easier to feel these common interests in hard times, like when an alien species is upon our planet intent on destroying all humanity, starting from Washington DC. Yet, it is too easy to paint such portraits of hard times, of American influences defiling the world, of WMDs proliferate in every protrusive sand dune, of Antichrists and Depressions.
Which is why when people tell us we are "narcissistic layabouts" for wanting to take that trip to Nepal, it's probably constructive to question that a little, too.
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