Whiplash

Quite an intense film about a drummer and his mentor. He is driven, but his mentor is beyond driven, treating his students like shit because, Charlie Parker only became bird after his mentor threw a cymbal at his head. Semi-happy ending. But who won.

Kazuo Ishiguro - "The Buried Giant"

There is a lot about this story that I might actually miss, but as far as I get it, it is absolutely beautiful. The post-Arthur landscape, the language of the people, archaic and careful, particularly careful, sketch an impression of a forgetful world that captures you from the beginning. The ending is, overwhelming in its subdued tones. I wish I knew how to describe it better. I fear I need to read up on ancient Britain lore and customs.



    "Do you remember the strange woman in dark rags you watched me talking to up by the old thorn that day? She may have looked a mad wanderer, but the story she told had much in common with the old woman's just now. Her husband too had been taken by a hoatman and she left behind on the shore. And when she was coming back from teh cove, weeping for loneliness, she found herself crossing the edge of a high valley, and she could see the path a long way before and a long way behind, and all along it people weeping just like her. When I heard this I was only partly afraid, saying to myself it was nothing to do with us, Axl. But she went on speaking, about how this land had become cursed with a mist of forgetfulness, a thing we've remarked on often enough ourselves. And then she asked me: 'How will you and your husband prove your love for each other when you can't remember the past you've shared?' And I've been thinking about it ever since. Sometimes I think of it and it makes me so afraid."
    "But what's to fear, princess? We've no plans to go to any such island or any desire to do so."
    "Even so, Axl. What if our love withers before we've a chance even to think of going to such a place?"
    What are you saying, princess? How can our love wither? Isn't it stronger now than we we were foolish young lovers?"
    "But Axl, we can't even remember those days. Or any of the years between. We don't remember our fierce quarrels or the small moments we enjoyed and treasured. We don't remember our son or why he's away from us."
    "We can make all those memories come back, princess. Besides, the feeling in my heart for you will be there just the same, no matter what I remember or forget. Don't you feel the same, princess?"
    "I do, Axl. But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die."
    "God wouldn't allow such a thing, princess." Axl said this quietly, almost under his breath, for he had himself felt an unnamed fear welling up within him.



    "... Ladies, let us remember them as ladies, Horace, now we are finally beyond them, for are they not to be pitied? We will not call them hags, even if their manners tempt us to. Let us remember that once, some among them at least possessed grace and beauty."

Youn Sun Nah - "Jockey full of bourbon" (Voyage)

Nice slow-evening-swinging (Calypso-ish?) version.

Not all songs from this album are as enjoyable. "The Linden" is ok.

Quotations in an article on the "discovery" of the Pacific by the Spaniard Balboa

"How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge," said Victor Frankenstein, "nad how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
[Mary Shelly]

"Here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
[Herman Melville on the Pacific Ocean]