Stump - "Buffalo"

"How much is the fish?! / How much is the chips?! / Is there chips with the fish?!"

How about that. The influence behind Scooter's "How much is the fish". Think The Residents, in weirdness and plonkiness.

Now I only have to find out where the hell he got the line "Transform the juice!"

Morphine - "Cure for Pain"

Have been listening a fair deal to Morphine and Madrugada lately. This album seems a bit too happy (can I? can I say it? oh please?! ...trippety-hop!) but "Miles Davis' Funeral" is a soft slow neigh sanctimonious ending.

Matthew Von Baeyer and David Gossage - "The Jack of Hearts by Lawrence Ferlinghetti"

Beat poetry with a beat. Ahem. Typical English alliteration.

Busy, pouring into your ears without a single gasp for air.

Kenneth Rexroth - "Married Blues"

Did poetry sessions "Poetry in the Cellar" asking young Lawrence Ferlinghetti with him.

This one is jazzy. Don't know if it's from those sessions, but it's... smooth.

Fun enough words. Look him up.

Pet Shop Boys - "Electric"

Well, I just had to mention them, hadn't I?

It's sometimes very Pet Shop Boys, to the point of... errhm, nothing new?

And sometimes it's not. And then it's not interesting.

David Lynch - "The Big Dream"

Same half-step dub'd clown-singing.

Seems they used exactly the same tones for the voice melody.

It's all very much of the same. It doesn't have the weirdness of "Crazy Clown Time" and it's simply not very interesting.

Mark Forsyth - "The Horologicon"

Book about crazy words, ordered by the hour of the day.

Not one you should read from front to back, but a wonderful read, even though his little jokes are a bit too much (or, too little?) sometimes.

The Event

Ok, I think I saw one episode. Something with aliens. Something with can't be bothered.

Homeland

Clare Danes' character becomes more interesting at the end of season one.

I hate how flat the vice-president's character is. The ultimate Republican. It seems too easy.

Somehow my devotion can't be grabbed.

Jewish Mysticism

"Middrash" (?) - Jewish / Rabbinian interpretation of the Bible

Four periods

• First, +/- 1500 BC (or 'BCE') to 200 BC : around polytheism
• Second: 200 BC - 500 AD : Roman and Greek occupation
• 500 AD - French/American revolution : dispersian of the Jews, no homeland, no common lands. They are tolerated in other countries. Most other religious are monotheistic.
• French/American revolution - now : the modern era, during which the Jews are persecuted and murdered in WW II and during which they come in contact with "notheistic" like Buddhism.

The worship and offerings used to be completely silent. To start using words, the Bible, prayers, was a very significant change. Words have meaning. Words bring you closer to God.

Jewish mysticism is "down and inwards", as opposed to Christianity and the Islam who are "up and outwards"

It is "normal" mysticism, God is found everywhere, in every day life, also down here on earth.

He gives some interpretations of scripture, for example the Song of Songs, where breasts are actually Mozes, leading the people out of Egypt, and Aäron, the first priest, as they should "nourish" the people. This makes kinda sense. But his interpretation of "Where many women have been virtuous, you were the most virtuous of them all" refers to Mozes again, being most virtuous as compared to Abel, Jacob, etc. He does not, though, explain the "logic" of referring to those people and Mozes as women.

Between Earth and the divine being of God there are 7 heavens.

Three layers:

• the senses, the memory, storing "real" things
• the creativity, which can combine memories and create new things out of them
• the intellect, which is the highest level, the most according to God

God created the universe starting at the highest level (the "intellect"). Man has to find God starting the other way around.

"Appalaphian" methods, divised by "Appalaphia" (??) around the 12th century, try to disentangle the soul, to free the mind from its associations, so behind the real objects, behind the words and sounds, the divine can be glimpsed.

It's interesting, but often he gives explanations, or tells how certain mystics described the essence of God, or how many heavens there are, without hinting at how *they* came to those conclusions.

More about layers:: the Torah to the stories and the words, is like God to the universe: God needs the universe, like wine needs a jug, in order not to spill, not to (how audacious!) go sour.

Kabbalist consider evil a "necessity": "Without evil, chickens would not lay eggs, houses would not be built". We need to be prompted, otherwise nothing happens.

Madrugada - (misc)

• "Hands Up - I Love You" (The Nightly Disease) contains the sentence "Do you miss me baby, when I fall asleep". Which is awesome.
• "Whatever Happened To You?" (Madrugada. Is this their last album, after the guy died?) Awesome song.

Gongoozle

gongoozle (third-person singular simple present gongoozles, present participle gongoozling, simple past and past participle gongoozled)

To leisurely watch the passage of boats, from the bank of a canal, lock or bridge.
To observe things idly.

Madrugada - "Electric" (Industrial Silence)

Pack your bag, run away

Along a freeway, out of town

Murakami quote on writing

Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect words. 

Naff wine bars.

A spot of lunch.

(I honestly don't know whether I added the last two lines, or whether they belong to the quote. It probably comes from "Norwegian Wood")

Twin Peaks

I've been slow watching this show for more than a year now. Last night I realized that the reason this works so well for me (David Lynch' work in general, and others like him) is because when every day logic is stripped away, everything - including people, places, objects - becomes laden with emotion and relative meaning. It exposes a rawness of what we feel, want and fear by removing the thick layer of 'normality'.

The reason why so many Lynch wannabe's fail is exactly because they don't realize that. They just muck around with the storyline, create weird situations, crazy characters and illogical or impossible plots and think they did the same. But you need to have an idea of what you expose if you want to do it right. Otherwise the abyss is just a plain black square and nobody will care.

Radiohead - "2 + 2 = 5" (Hail to the Thief)

On a dreary Sunday morning I suddenly rediscover this song. Or no, it's no discovery, I am simply by its full force.

Radiohead makes songs about the disintegration of friendship, how even that has a structure, an inevitability that everybody, always, must question.