https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pby7F181pxc
Good trance / psytrance.
Friday, 21 December 2018
Thursday, 20 December 2018
Monday, 17 December 2018
Henry S.F. Cooper - "The Evening Star"
Only just started, but already a great read about the Magellan mission to Venus in the early 90s.
Killing Eve (series, season 1 & soundtrack)
Quite a fast-paced and fun series about Eve (Sandra Oh) in the British Intelligence Service, who matches seemingly random killings to the same assassin ("Villanelle"), a smart polylinguistic Russian assassin.
Dialogues are almost too snappy at points, but a great thriller forget-everything watcher.
Also, amazing soundtrack
Dialogues are almost too snappy at points, but a great thriller forget-everything watcher.
Also, amazing soundtrack
- Pshycotic Beats - "Killer Shangri-Lah"
crazy female vocals with a 60's vibe including a parlando part right in the middle, against an orchestral backdrop - Unloved - *misc*
Very David Lynch-y, soft female vocals, slow intense beat. Not bad, and moody, but nothing to rave about.
Sunday, 9 December 2018
Ottessa Moshfegh - "Homesick for another world"
Sad and beautiful short stories. Amazing character descriptions.
Oh, my mother. A week later she drove me to the bus stop. It was barely five in the morning and she still wore her burgundy satin negligee and curlers in her hair, a denim jacket thrown over her sunburned shoulders. She drove slowly on the empty roads, coasted through the blinking red lights and though they didn't exist, stayed silent as the moon. Finally she pulled over and lit a cigarette. I watched a tear coast down her cheek. She didn't look at me. I opened the car door. "Call me" is all she said. I said I would. I watched as she pulled a U-turn and drove away.
Oh, my mother. A week later she drove me to the bus stop. It was barely five in the morning and she still wore her burgundy satin negligee and curlers in her hair, a denim jacket thrown over her sunburned shoulders. She drove slowly on the empty roads, coasted through the blinking red lights and though they didn't exist, stayed silent as the moon. Finally she pulled over and lit a cigarette. I watched a tear coast down her cheek. She didn't look at me. I opened the car door. "Call me" is all she said. I said I would. I watched as she pulled a U-turn and drove away.
Jon Ronson - "The Butterfly effect"
Intriguing podcast about the growth of free porn. Stamp collection destruction, custom videos, young people registered as offenders because they don't understand context.
Annihilation
Film roughly based on the first book of Jeff Vandermeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy. If you've read the books, it's a weird collection of random parts. Not that great.
Monday, 3 December 2018
How to make decisions
(From a random hackernews page)
incredibly fortunate to have a chairman on our board who brings so much clarity of thought to the business.
incredibly fortunate to have a chairman on our board who brings so much clarity of thought to the business.
He's unemotional yet thoughtful. If he doesn't have an immediate answer for something, he instinctively understands how to search for the answer. He has a natural sense of the real priority of work and discussions.
So I asked him for some of his favourite brain hacks...simple tricks he uses when he has a mental challenge to overcome. A couple of his insights were very useful to me, so I thought I'd share them here and ask HN for their personal brain hacks in response.
Artificial deadlines
He has a clever technique for bringing tough choices to a conclusion and avoiding procrastination. This is especially useful for life changing decisions such as moving country or taking that new job.
To put an end to the decision making process he sets a deadline for the decision to be made. Say 6pm on Monday. At five minutes to 6 he usually doesn't know the answer but in those 5 minutes something clicks, and by 6pm the answer is always there.
10/10/10 rule
This is something I've read before but he applies this. The 10/10/10 is the framing of the outcome of a decision across three timeframes:
How will he feel about the outcome 10 minutes from now? How about 10 months from now? How about 10 years from now?
The answers to these questions provide a different perspective and usually help him to find the correct answer without being misguided by circumstances at the time of making the decision.
This will all be over by 6pm
If there's an important meeting with stakeholders, a scary appointment with the doctor or a tough chat with an employee - he simply keeps in mind the fact that by "X time", the thing will have passed and won't matter anymore.
If it doesn't matter after X time, chances are it probably doesn't matter now.
1) Suspension of judgement (from Sextus Empiricus, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): avoid forming an opinion at all about things that are not evident. The way I do this is by thinking through an opposing argument or two, and using language like "it seems" or "it appears" rather than "I know", "I think", etc. This technique saves time and energy by helping me avoid getting wrapped up in opinion-based thinking and helps me develop equanimity.
2) Suspension of value-judgements (from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Zhuang Zi, Ecclesiastes): being aware and in control of the value-judgement loop (this thing is good or bad). I do this by shifting the language in my mind from "that is bad" to "I feel this way because..." Again, like #1, this is about inverting the locus of control in my cognitive discourse such that my mind can easily go its own way from there, only on a more productive path.
3) Awareness of the mode of thinking I'm in, and the kind of learning that's appropriate to the task or objective at hand (from Plato). There are several modes of thinking or learning (eikasia, pistis, dianoia, episteme, techne, phronesis, and noesis, for example). Simply being aware of which mode you should be in for a task is much more valuable than it might appear at first glance. I see these less as bins to put various kinds of thought in and more as tools to apply to a problem.
Understanding your current state of mind, and what state of mind would work better for the current task is important, so you can match those up, or at least understand more deeply. These are things like the appearance of things or imaginative situations (eikasia), good faith and trust or persuasiveness (pistis), discursive thought (dianoia), theoretical thought (techne), practical knowledge (phronesis), or intuition (noesis). [Note: my comments on the meanings of the Greek terms are probably wrong, but...] You could combine multiple of these to reach your goal; and you will often have a sequence of thoughts that are in different ones.
Initial reading
* eikasia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikasia
* pistis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistis
* dianoia -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianoia
* episteme -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episteme
* techne -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne
* phronesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence (latin: prudence)
* noesis -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nous
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy_of_the_divided_line
The "smallest possible thing" hack is a great one. It also works great for exercise. If your goal for example is to work out every morning before work, instead of setting ambitious goals for what's going to happen tomorrow morning when the alarm rings at 6am, promise yourself the following: "I will physically get out of bed. I will put on my workout clothes. I will do five pushups. If I don't feel like doing anything else after that, I will go back to bed."
When you've gotten up, gotten changed and begun to move, the prospect of going on to do an actual workout becomes like 90% less unpleasant of an idea, compared to how you perceived it from the comfort of your warm soft bed.
Tuesday, 27 November 2018
Lorrie Moore - "Birds of America"
Only just started, but already amazing sentences.
The story "Community life".
She looked at him darkly. "What the hell were you thinking of, recommending that stock?" she asked. "How could you be such an irresponsible idiot?" She saw it now, how their life would be together. She would yell; then he would yell. He would have an affair; then she would have an affair. And then they would be gone and gone, and they would live in that gone.
They stopped briefly at an English manor house, to see the natural world cut up into moldings and rugs, wool and wood captive and squared, the earth stolen and embalmed and shellacked.
No one had toasted Abby and Bob at their little wedding, and that's what had been wrong, she believed now. No toast. There had been only thirty guests and they had simply eaten the ham canapes and gone home. How could a marriage go right? It wasn't that such ceremonies were important in and of themselves. They were nothing. They were zeros. But they were zeros as placeholders; they held numbers and equations intact. And once you underwent them, you could move on, know the empty power of their blessing, and not spend time missing them.
"Gee, I thought you guys would never break up!" he says in a genuinely flabbergasted tone.
"Really?" I find this reassuring somehow, that my relationship at least looked good from the outside, at least to someone.
"Well, not really," admits Cal. "Actually, I thought you guys would break up long ago."
"Oh," I say.
"So you could marry her?" says the amazing Eugene to this father, and we all laugh loudly, pour more wine into glasses, and hide our faces in them.
She had, without realizing it at the time, learned to follow Nick's gaze, learned to learn his lust, and when she did go out, to work at least, his desires remained memorized within her. She looked at the attractive women he would look at. She turned to inspect the face of every pageboy haircut she saw from behind and passed in her car. She looked at them furtively or squarely - it didn't matter. She appraised their eyes and mouths and wondered about their bodies. She had become hi: she longed for those women. But she was also herself, and so she despised them. She lusted after them, but she also wanted to beat them up.
A rapist.
She had become a rapist, driving to work in a car.
But for a while, it was the only way she could be.
She began to wear his clothes - a shirt, a pair of socks - to keep him next to her, to try to understand why had done what he'd done. And in this new empathy, in this pants role, like an opera, she thought she understood what it was to make love to a woman, to open the hidden underside of her, like secret food, to thrust yourself up in her, her arch and thrash, like a puppet, to watch her later when she got up and walked around without you, oblivious to the injury you'd surely done her. How could you not love her, gratefully, marveling? She was so mysterious, so recovered, an unshared thought enlivening her eyes; you wanted to follow her forever.
A man in love. That was a man in love. So different from a woman.
She went home, poured herself a drink, stood by the mantel. She picked up the pink-posied tin and shook it, afraid she might hear the muffled banging of bones, but she heard nothing. "Are you sure it's even him?" Jack asked. "With animals, they probably do mass incinerations. One scoop for cats, two for dogs."
The story "Community life".
She looked at him darkly. "What the hell were you thinking of, recommending that stock?" she asked. "How could you be such an irresponsible idiot?" She saw it now, how their life would be together. She would yell; then he would yell. He would have an affair; then she would have an affair. And then they would be gone and gone, and they would live in that gone.
They stopped briefly at an English manor house, to see the natural world cut up into moldings and rugs, wool and wood captive and squared, the earth stolen and embalmed and shellacked.
No one had toasted Abby and Bob at their little wedding, and that's what had been wrong, she believed now. No toast. There had been only thirty guests and they had simply eaten the ham canapes and gone home. How could a marriage go right? It wasn't that such ceremonies were important in and of themselves. They were nothing. They were zeros. But they were zeros as placeholders; they held numbers and equations intact. And once you underwent them, you could move on, know the empty power of their blessing, and not spend time missing them.
"Gee, I thought you guys would never break up!" he says in a genuinely flabbergasted tone.
"Really?" I find this reassuring somehow, that my relationship at least looked good from the outside, at least to someone.
"Well, not really," admits Cal. "Actually, I thought you guys would break up long ago."
"Oh," I say.
"So you could marry her?" says the amazing Eugene to this father, and we all laugh loudly, pour more wine into glasses, and hide our faces in them.
She had, without realizing it at the time, learned to follow Nick's gaze, learned to learn his lust, and when she did go out, to work at least, his desires remained memorized within her. She looked at the attractive women he would look at. She turned to inspect the face of every pageboy haircut she saw from behind and passed in her car. She looked at them furtively or squarely - it didn't matter. She appraised their eyes and mouths and wondered about their bodies. She had become hi: she longed for those women. But she was also herself, and so she despised them. She lusted after them, but she also wanted to beat them up.
A rapist.
She had become a rapist, driving to work in a car.
But for a while, it was the only way she could be.
She began to wear his clothes - a shirt, a pair of socks - to keep him next to her, to try to understand why had done what he'd done. And in this new empathy, in this pants role, like an opera, she thought she understood what it was to make love to a woman, to open the hidden underside of her, like secret food, to thrust yourself up in her, her arch and thrash, like a puppet, to watch her later when she got up and walked around without you, oblivious to the injury you'd surely done her. How could you not love her, gratefully, marveling? She was so mysterious, so recovered, an unshared thought enlivening her eyes; you wanted to follow her forever.
A man in love. That was a man in love. So different from a woman.
She went home, poured herself a drink, stood by the mantel. She picked up the pink-posied tin and shook it, afraid she might hear the muffled banging of bones, but she heard nothing. "Are you sure it's even him?" Jack asked. "With animals, they probably do mass incinerations. One scoop for cats, two for dogs."
Deru - "Torn In Two"
When life is fucked up, and Deru turns out to have a new album, life is slightly less fucked up.
Tuesday, 20 November 2018
Louis MacNeice & W. H. Auden - "Letters from Iceland"
Finally started reading it. Some parts are fun, recognizable. Others long and dreary. I'm not too much fan of the poetry in here.
Hanna
Cool film about a young "assassin trained" girl (who at the end turned out to be some biological experiment... bit sad that, the original Scandinavian detachment from those plot details was a lot better). Quite enjoyable.
Julian Barnes - "Pulse"
Amazing short stories. Some of the chapters are dinner party discussions and are simply amazing.
TA few minutes later, the Twin Otter took off straight out across Orosay and the open sea. There was no farewell view of the island before that world below was shut out. In the enveloping cloud, he thought about marriage lines and buttons; about razor clams and island sex; about missing bullocks and fulmars being turned into oil; and then, finally, the tears came. Calum had known he would not be coming back. But the tears were not for that, or for himself, or even for her, for their memories. They were tears for his own stupidigty. His presumption too.
He had thought he could recapture, and begin to say farewell. He had thought that grief might be assuaged, or if not assuaged, at least speeded up, hurried on its way a little, by going back to a place where they had been happy. But he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him. And in the months and years ahead, he expected grief to teach him many other things as well. This was just the first of them.
The city of Carcassonne looks solid and enduring, but what we admire is mostly nineteenth-cenutry reconstruction. Forget the hazard of 'whetehr it will last', and whether longevity is in any case a virtue, a reward, an accommodation or another piece of luck.
TA few minutes later, the Twin Otter took off straight out across Orosay and the open sea. There was no farewell view of the island before that world below was shut out. In the enveloping cloud, he thought about marriage lines and buttons; about razor clams and island sex; about missing bullocks and fulmars being turned into oil; and then, finally, the tears came. Calum had known he would not be coming back. But the tears were not for that, or for himself, or even for her, for their memories. They were tears for his own stupidigty. His presumption too.
He had thought he could recapture, and begin to say farewell. He had thought that grief might be assuaged, or if not assuaged, at least speeded up, hurried on its way a little, by going back to a place where they had been happy. But he was not in charge of grief. Grief was in charge of him. And in the months and years ahead, he expected grief to teach him many other things as well. This was just the first of them.
The city of Carcassonne looks solid and enduring, but what we admire is mostly nineteenth-cenutry reconstruction. Forget the hazard of 'whetehr it will last', and whether longevity is in any case a virtue, a reward, an accommodation or another piece of luck.
Monday, 19 November 2018
Jeff Vandermeer - "Southern Reach Trilogy"
Three books, "Annihilation", "Authority" and "Acceptance"
Strange books about "Area X" where modern equipment doesn't work and the air is pristine. Different search parties are sent in, covered by Annihilation. Authority describes the Southern Reach, the research station and its political and power games, and finally Acceptance is an amalgamation of these, of past and current, of the Area growing. Never is everything completely explained, but enough so, but you'll have to read up to and including book 3 to figure things sorta out.
Strange books about "Area X" where modern equipment doesn't work and the air is pristine. Different search parties are sent in, covered by Annihilation. Authority describes the Southern Reach, the research station and its political and power games, and finally Acceptance is an amalgamation of these, of past and current, of the Area growing. Never is everything completely explained, but enough so, but you'll have to read up to and including book 3 to figure things sorta out.
Sjón - "Moonstone - the boy who never was"
A story spanning a few days in Reykjavík during the eruption of the Katla volcano and the end of the Great War. Main character, "moonstone", a slurring of his real name, is a teenage male prostitute obsessed by a local girl onto whom he has projected a film star. Interestingly written, fast read. The dreamlike parts a bit confusing.
The streets yawn, empty of people, except for glimpses here and there of the odd shadowy figure out and about. These are the old women, bundled up in black clothes, wearing shawl upon shawl to keep out the chll. They have given room to so many ailments in their day that the scourge now making a meal of their descendants can find no morsel worth having on their worn-out old bones.
He is a shadow that passes from man to man, and no one is complete until he has cast him.
The streets yawn, empty of people, except for glimpses here and there of the odd shadowy figure out and about. These are the old women, bundled up in black clothes, wearing shawl upon shawl to keep out the chll. They have given room to so many ailments in their day that the scourge now making a meal of their descendants can find no morsel worth having on their worn-out old bones.
He is a shadow that passes from man to man, and no one is complete until he has cast him.
the Death of Stalin
Not as funny as the trailer suggested. Was ok. Big cast, big names, but ultimately nothing crazy, in contrast to what rottentomatoes said.
Haunting of Hill House
Nice series where the old horror of Shirley Jackson's story is nicely interwoven with a struggling family's mental issues.
Thursday, 1 November 2018
yūrei-moji - “ghost characters”
Floating around the murky regions of digitized Unicode values are anywhere between 60 and 100 yūrei-moji — literally, “ghost characters” — haunting the Japanese kanji lexicon.
One such example is 彁 (pronunciation unknown). Unlike 妛, which found its corporeal counterpart in the 国土行政区画総覧 (Kokudo Gyōsei Kukaku Sōran, National Conspectus of Administrative Districts), 彁 was documented as “completely unique among the graphic characters encoded in these standards, with absolutely no means of identification.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/10/29/language/ghost-kanji-lurk-japanese-lexicon/
One such example is 彁 (pronunciation unknown). Unlike 妛, which found its corporeal counterpart in the 国土行政区画総覧 (Kokudo Gyōsei Kukaku Sōran, National Conspectus of Administrative Districts), 彁 was documented as “completely unique among the graphic characters encoded in these standards, with absolutely no means of identification.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2018/10/29/language/ghost-kanji-lurk-japanese-lexicon/
Tuesday, 30 October 2018
Amanda Palmer - "I Want You, but I Don't Need You"
Great example of wonderful song writing. Funny, sad. It made me laugh and cry a little.
Thursday, 25 October 2018
tsundoku
(n.) buying books and not reading them; letting books pile up unread on shelves or floors or nightstands
Emilie Pine - "Notes To Self"
Essays about her personal life, her alcoholic father, her inate tempering of feminism, her struggle with voicing her opinion, her rough teenage years... Amazing personal writing.
Recalling the hurt and confusion in my sister's voice at that moment, I realise that we both needed the same thing: some promise of unconditional love, some security, unavailable to either of us. And I think that maybe, in the end, we got it from each other. Two years later, when I had screwed up again and feared my mum would kick me out, my sister promised she'd keep the screw-up a secret. She told me she'd still love me, no matter what. Tehn she came to me with her bank book and, with great seriousness, offered to sign over all her savings so that I'd be okay. I couldn't take it, so I hugged her, I reassured her, I smiled and joked until the worry left her eyes.
My parents separated when I was five and my sister was a baby. Though I am a long way from the difficulties of my childhood, I still dwell on the stories of those years, hoping that they might explain the troubling residues of so many feelings and thoughts and actions. My parents did not speak. My father suffered from depression. I was a lonesome child. Those facts, and all the accompanying stories, whirl around. I write them down. Perhaps they will be less overbearing that way, pinned in one place.
As I step away from the page, and I look at what I have written about myself and my family, this family, our family, I see that in the end it is always going to be both a complicated and a simple story. In this story, which I may never stop telling, I try to remember what i was like for me as a child, and what I did and what I could have done differently. I try to imageine what it was like for my parents, and what they did and what they could have done differently. I remember us happy, and I remember us sad. I remember us divided and I remember us together. I remember everything, and I remember only fragments of a whole that will always be beyond me.
Recalling the hurt and confusion in my sister's voice at that moment, I realise that we both needed the same thing: some promise of unconditional love, some security, unavailable to either of us. And I think that maybe, in the end, we got it from each other. Two years later, when I had screwed up again and feared my mum would kick me out, my sister promised she'd keep the screw-up a secret. She told me she'd still love me, no matter what. Tehn she came to me with her bank book and, with great seriousness, offered to sign over all her savings so that I'd be okay. I couldn't take it, so I hugged her, I reassured her, I smiled and joked until the worry left her eyes.
My parents separated when I was five and my sister was a baby. Though I am a long way from the difficulties of my childhood, I still dwell on the stories of those years, hoping that they might explain the troubling residues of so many feelings and thoughts and actions. My parents did not speak. My father suffered from depression. I was a lonesome child. Those facts, and all the accompanying stories, whirl around. I write them down. Perhaps they will be less overbearing that way, pinned in one place.
As I step away from the page, and I look at what I have written about myself and my family, this family, our family, I see that in the end it is always going to be both a complicated and a simple story. In this story, which I may never stop telling, I try to remember what i was like for me as a child, and what I did and what I could have done differently. I try to imageine what it was like for my parents, and what they did and what they could have done differently. I remember us happy, and I remember us sad. I remember us divided and I remember us together. I remember everything, and I remember only fragments of a whole that will always be beyond me.
GlerAkur - "Augun Opin"
Great soundscapes. Found via Iceland Airwaves spotify playlist. Much like Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Thursday, 27 September 2018
Khruangbin
Perhaps a bit tiresome after a while, but this instrumental guitar psychedelic music is kinda cool
Sunday, 16 September 2018
3:10 to Yuma
Remake of the original: trying to deliver an outlaw to the 3:10pm train to Yuma prison.
Supposedly different from the original regarding its ending, but impressive.
Supposedly different from the original regarding its ending, but impressive.
The Homesman
Sad western about a woman (Hillary Swank) who decides to take it upon her to deliver three mentally disturbed women to a village several weeks traveling away. She is accompanied by Tommy Lee Jones, and the two have a sad sad connection. Did not see her suicide coming. Sad but deep.
Saturday, 8 September 2018
James Joyce - "Ulysses"
that podcast... amazing.
buck: originally not the gracious male deer, but a buck goat...
"sat down in a pet"... they are being like a pet, you need to "pet" them, to show them affection
"kip": very Dublin slang, originally Danish, "kipper" - low pub where hookers used to hang out.
"what kind of a kip is this"
"when I makes tea, I makes tea! When I makes water, I makes water! but not in the same pot!"
buck: originally not the gracious male deer, but a buck goat...
"sat down in a pet"... they are being like a pet, you need to "pet" them, to show them affection
"kip": very Dublin slang, originally Danish, "kipper" - low pub where hookers used to hang out.
"what kind of a kip is this"
"when I makes tea, I makes tea! When I makes water, I makes water! but not in the same pot!"
The Rover
Amazing Australian dystopic story of a man whose car get stolen after The Collapse. Packs quite a punch near the end. Sad, dreadful, amazing. Him of the Twilight Films, it seems, but an amazing performance as Rey, the not-completely-full-witted brother who is left for dead
I Don't Feel At Home in this World Anymore
Sad nice story about a girl (unknown, but just as good as Elijah Wood) who accepts all the bad things life throws at her... until no more. Elijah Wood plays a silly almost Coen-brother-esque tough-guy-who-isn't. All ends well.
Still, a good movie.
Still, a good movie.
Thursday, 6 September 2018
Elektrokiss - "The Teacher (Slap Me Like A Bitch) (Timofey Remix)"
Amusing song. Something for a gray list?
Barclay James Harvest - "She Said"
She said, "Why don't you come and stay with me
Far away from people we know?
We could live our lives together
Happiness wherever we go"
And I will always love her
And I will always care
And I will always love her
Wasn't long before she grew tired of me
And the life she thought would redeem
All the love she'd thrown away as a child
All the things she thought she had seen
And I will always love her
And I will always care
And I will always love her
Far away from people we know?
We could live our lives together
Happiness wherever we go"
And I will always love her
And I will always care
And I will always love her
Wasn't long before she grew tired of me
And the life she thought would redeem
All the love she'd thrown away as a child
All the things she thought she had seen
And I will always love her
And I will always care
And I will always love her
BlacKkKlansman
Amazing film by Spike Lee about a black agent going undercover in the KKK. The end packs quite the punch, splicing it with Charlotteville footage.
Friday, 31 August 2018
Monday, 27 August 2018
Mariana Enriquez - "Things we lost in the fire"
Collection of short stories. First of hers to be translated into English?
Dark. Borders on magic realism, but not explicitly so. The underbelly of Buenos Aires. Not always captivating, but I kept reading. Difficult stuff when you're in a bad spot, mentally.
Dark. Borders on magic realism, but not explicitly so. The underbelly of Buenos Aires. Not always captivating, but I kept reading. Difficult stuff when you're in a bad spot, mentally.
Monday, 13 August 2018
Denis Johnson - "Already Dead"
Amazing writing. Not go to through quickly. Savour it.
"She was victorious," he said, "in trying to destroy me with lingerie."
One day he was driving on the coast, on those cliffs north of Jenner. Have you seen that place? Five or six hundred feet straight down, no shoulder-you'd have time to shit your pants and change into clean ones before you hit. He was driving along behind this black Corvette. Corvette downshifts, Corvette accelerates, Corvette sails half a thousand feet down to the Pacific Ocean. Right over the edge. Turned out the guy had just bought the car that morning, brand-new Corvette. Some jilted kid. The brake lights," he said, "never winked."
His partner asked, "What year Corvette?"
"A year that don't concern us," the first man said impatiently. "A year you probably never heard of."
The chemistry between them was suddenly familiar to Van Ness. Their connection gave off a sour smoke, like bad wiring. He sensed they'd served time in prison together, or belowdecks.
Let me tell you about this girl. Her eyes are brown and wet. Her mouth twists from the effort of hiding her bad teeth when she smiles. But when she's drunk she laughs widely and her gold bridgework flashes. Bartenders like to lean forward to light her cigarettes and in the match-glow examine her as closely as a lover would. It's all exactly there. The punished child in the stolen makeup. Eyes that are never going to look at anyone again. And then she leans back, receding into that wonderful posture, her left hand in her lap. Sometimes she wilts, and sits hunched over a drunk drumming her fingers on the bar, and then she looks like a whore. She's capable of sneering. Awoman this vulnerable and perverse is usually taking time out from being tortured to death slowly by a mon who looks exactly like her father. Things come to me in images. I see the image of a man strangling an orchid. Oh, flowers!
"Good night, I'm going to sleep in my clothes," she said, "and I hope I dream I'm not drunk," and didn't even kiss me.
When she'd gone into the trailer, one of the rounded, aluminum ones, a Silver Stream, I laid my head, which was suddenly full of sorrows, against the steering wheel. The night wind stirred through the treetops on the ridges. The distant commotion got the sheep bleating - a word that just doesn't invoke the aged, human grief, in their voices. Across the drive the owner of this property - the Sheep Queen, a Mediterranean-looking woman in her fifties, a nice enough person but perfectly crazy - sat eating dinner in the kitchen of her ranch-style home, feeding bites from her plate to a big dog that loomed over her, standing up, as it were, with its forepaws on the table.
It's sad to love a woman who won't love back - it tears at a man - to love a woman who gives herself to others and uses his good intentions and sets his meaning aside. But I have a feeling that this stupid torment is the nearest thing going, for me, to what life is all about. I don't just sense it dimly. The feeling is overpowering that this is the closest I can get to the truth behind the cloud.
Kim Addonizio - "Bukowski in a sundress"
Amazing words (from her of "Red Dress") that made me sad and happy, laughing and crying. She writes with a verocity and rawness that I want to dive into and never surface.
All that year my friend wanted to kill herself. She would call me late at night, drunk and sobbing, talking about her gun. Finally I convinced her to throw it into the river. Eventually she got much better, but I still worried about her. I thought of her as the little bullet-size ballerina on my jewelry box, spinning and slowing, then spinning again. That she gave me the box was a complete fabrication. She did not give me the box. What she gave me was a picture book called Six-Dinner Sid, about a cat that goes from door to door getting fed by everyone on the block, and another one about a farting dog at a garage sale, and once, to celebrate the publication of my first novel, she gave me a plastic baby bottle with a blue ribbon on it. The truth is that she's much better now. The truth is also that I still worry.
Still, you may lay down sentence after lovely sentence and follow them for months only to find yourself, in the middle of your journey, in a dark wood. Structure can still elude you. I don't necessarily mean the structure of a sonnet or Freytag's Pyramid of the story, though they are useful to know. I mean figuring out the structure to hold what you have to say, the best structure for the material at hand. The way in, through, and finally out the other end. You must, in other words, learn how to shit flowers. A peom or story or memoir, however gorgeously written, has to be able to stand up, and it will not stand up unless you structure it, unless you give it a skeleton. If there is no patter, there is no art. Think hard about what holds your piece together, how the pieces connect, why and how each contributes. Remember that you are creating a world. Do not let it descent into anarchy. To hold anything together in life - especially oneself - is nearly impossible, but in art it is essential.
My mother dropped her spoon in her lap, mashed-potato-side down, and I picked it up and wiped it on a napkin and started to hand it back to her, but she had closed her eyes. She was shifting her shoulders a little, raising the right one and then the left, in barely perceptible movements. She lifted her hands just above the table, so they hovered over her meal like two little spaceships above a tiny city-maybe one they were planning to destory, or maybe one they had come to in peace, to teach us how to cope with the pain and loss of life on earth.
Then i saw that my mother was trying to snap her fingers and couldn't quite. But for the couple of minutes until the song ended, looking as though she were in a kind of beautiful trance, she danced.
It was a little like bear baiting. Then again, [Charles Bukowksi] seemed like someone who practiced self-acceptance rather than the guilt and self-loathing that drive so many lesse alcoholics into AA. He never quit. He went on drinking and wrote book after book.
So even though I suspect that critic was being a dick about my work, I've decided I'm going to be proud of my new nickname. If I am truly honest with myself, I have to admit that I have always wanted someone to touch my soul with his cock. Since childhood, I have wondered where my soul was, and I'm glad to discover it's up there somewhere in my lady parts.
And who knows. Maybe one day, when Bukowksi's up for a posthumous literary award, some critic will say, "Oh, him? Kim Addonizio in pee-stained paints," and then I Hope whoever said it pukes on his shoes.
All that year my friend wanted to kill herself. She would call me late at night, drunk and sobbing, talking about her gun. Finally I convinced her to throw it into the river. Eventually she got much better, but I still worried about her. I thought of her as the little bullet-size ballerina on my jewelry box, spinning and slowing, then spinning again. That she gave me the box was a complete fabrication. She did not give me the box. What she gave me was a picture book called Six-Dinner Sid, about a cat that goes from door to door getting fed by everyone on the block, and another one about a farting dog at a garage sale, and once, to celebrate the publication of my first novel, she gave me a plastic baby bottle with a blue ribbon on it. The truth is that she's much better now. The truth is also that I still worry.
Still, you may lay down sentence after lovely sentence and follow them for months only to find yourself, in the middle of your journey, in a dark wood. Structure can still elude you. I don't necessarily mean the structure of a sonnet or Freytag's Pyramid of the story, though they are useful to know. I mean figuring out the structure to hold what you have to say, the best structure for the material at hand. The way in, through, and finally out the other end. You must, in other words, learn how to shit flowers. A peom or story or memoir, however gorgeously written, has to be able to stand up, and it will not stand up unless you structure it, unless you give it a skeleton. If there is no patter, there is no art. Think hard about what holds your piece together, how the pieces connect, why and how each contributes. Remember that you are creating a world. Do not let it descent into anarchy. To hold anything together in life - especially oneself - is nearly impossible, but in art it is essential.
My mother dropped her spoon in her lap, mashed-potato-side down, and I picked it up and wiped it on a napkin and started to hand it back to her, but she had closed her eyes. She was shifting her shoulders a little, raising the right one and then the left, in barely perceptible movements. She lifted her hands just above the table, so they hovered over her meal like two little spaceships above a tiny city-maybe one they were planning to destory, or maybe one they had come to in peace, to teach us how to cope with the pain and loss of life on earth.
Then i saw that my mother was trying to snap her fingers and couldn't quite. But for the couple of minutes until the song ended, looking as though she were in a kind of beautiful trance, she danced.
It was a little like bear baiting. Then again, [Charles Bukowksi] seemed like someone who practiced self-acceptance rather than the guilt and self-loathing that drive so many lesse alcoholics into AA. He never quit. He went on drinking and wrote book after book.
So even though I suspect that critic was being a dick about my work, I've decided I'm going to be proud of my new nickname. If I am truly honest with myself, I have to admit that I have always wanted someone to touch my soul with his cock. Since childhood, I have wondered where my soul was, and I'm glad to discover it's up there somewhere in my lady parts.
And who knows. Maybe one day, when Bukowksi's up for a posthumous literary award, some critic will say, "Oh, him? Kim Addonizio in pee-stained paints," and then I Hope whoever said it pukes on his shoes.
Ken Liu - "The paper menagerie and other stories"
Not all of them are great, but some breathtaking stories, such as the "The paper menagerie" itself of course, as well as "State Change" of a girl with an icecube as her soul.
"Everything passes, Hiroto," Dad said. "That feeling in your heart: it's called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transcience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephmeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon."
"Everything passes, Hiroto," Dad said. "That feeling in your heart: it's called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transcience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephmeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon."
Sunday, 12 August 2018
Lauren Groff - "Under the wave"
Short story in the New Yorker about a woman who has lost her family but finds her lost son in a lost child. Short, distant, and quite nice.
Friday, 10 August 2018
Friday, 20 July 2018
Parov Stelar - "Baska Brother"
Electrojazz and instrumental. Nice!
Quite different, but from an album ("The Princess") I had tagged before: "The Fog". Piano and trumpet. Reminds me of Kyteman Orchestra's "Sorry"
Quite different, but from an album ("The Princess") I had tagged before: "The Fog". Piano and trumpet. Reminds me of Kyteman Orchestra's "Sorry"
Ukandanz - "Endè iyèrusalem"
"ethno-fusion-jazz"?? Who knows. A bit busy and chaotic. But intriguing.
Monday, 16 July 2018
N.K. Jemisin - The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
book 1 of the Inheritance Trilogy
book 2 - "The Broken Kingdoms"
book 3 - "The Kingdom Of Gods"
Not as good as her Broken Earth trilogy but still a nice read. Lots of little inconsistencies though. Seems she had a cheaper editor??
"A mortal man's strength had limits. he spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth."
Amazing double negation: "Like the good Itempan girl I had never quite been, I nevertheless flinched."
The little sun "En" from Sieh's orrery, who became his companion (and killed for him) and suddenly got referenced in a child's song that had been going around in the books, was a wonderful writing trick. '"Trickster, trickster," he whispered. "Stole the sun for a prank." En pulsed on my breast, pleased to be mentioned.'
book 2 - "The Broken Kingdoms"
book 3 - "The Kingdom Of Gods"
Not as good as her Broken Earth trilogy but still a nice read. Lots of little inconsistencies though. Seems she had a cheaper editor??
"A mortal man's strength had limits. he spent himself and slept. He could be a good lover, but even his best skills were only guesswork - for every caress that sent a woman's head into the clouds, he might try ten that brought her back to earth."
Amazing double negation: "Like the good Itempan girl I had never quite been, I nevertheless flinched."
The little sun "En" from Sieh's orrery, who became his companion (and killed for him) and suddenly got referenced in a child's song that had been going around in the books, was a wonderful writing trick. '"Trickster, trickster," he whispered. "Stole the sun for a prank." En pulsed on my breast, pleased to be mentioned.'
Wednesday, 11 July 2018
Ólafur Arnalds - "Eulogy for Evolution 2017 (Remastered 10th Anniversary Edition)
Soft and sad. "0048 / 0729" sounds like a sad Yann Tiersen, almost.
Piano, violins, accordeon sometimes. Quite beautiful.
Piano, violins, accordeon sometimes. Quite beautiful.
Tuesday, 10 July 2018
Goldfrapp & Dave Gahan - "Ocean"
Great song, more Depeche Mode-ish than Goldfrapp, I feel. Probably because of his voice.
Friday, 6 July 2018
Tuesday, 3 July 2018
Henry Miller quote and the five
(not sure where I read this... an essay, for sure, but what/where?)
Henry Miller
"It may indeed be the highest wisdom," he wrote, "to elect to be a nobody in a relative paradise such as this rather than a celebrity in a world which has lost all sense of values."
This is the way I always go. Not only because it's faastest, but because despite the conventional wisdom, I find it the most beautiful of all. California natives always call it just "the Five": not Highway Five or Interstate Five or I-5. The whole road is some 1,380 miles long, and is the only US interstate touching the borders of both Mexico and Canada. If, like me, you prefer to drive rather than to fly between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the 400 or so miles along this route are the most distinctively Californian, the most revealing of the strange diversity of this landscape and its people, its terrible moral conflicts, and the weird vitality of its countless subcultures. The Five is unendingly rich and full of interest, despite all caricatures to the contrary; despite, or rather because of its glowing, gorgeous emptiness.
Henry Miller
"It may indeed be the highest wisdom," he wrote, "to elect to be a nobody in a relative paradise such as this rather than a celebrity in a world which has lost all sense of values."
This is the way I always go. Not only because it's faastest, but because despite the conventional wisdom, I find it the most beautiful of all. California natives always call it just "the Five": not Highway Five or Interstate Five or I-5. The whole road is some 1,380 miles long, and is the only US interstate touching the borders of both Mexico and Canada. If, like me, you prefer to drive rather than to fly between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, the 400 or so miles along this route are the most distinctively Californian, the most revealing of the strange diversity of this landscape and its people, its terrible moral conflicts, and the weird vitality of its countless subcultures. The Five is unendingly rich and full of interest, despite all caricatures to the contrary; despite, or rather because of its glowing, gorgeous emptiness.
Steampunk Anthology
Elisabeth Knox - "Gethsemane"
Cool story! Amazing little backdrops, an interesting premise.
MT Anderson - "Oracle Engine"
Fantastic
Cool story! Amazing little backdrops, an interesting premise.
MT Anderson - "Oracle Engine"
Fantastic
Peter Godfrey-Smith - "Other Minds"
An amazing book at octopusses and celaphopods in general; how their brains and nervous systems developed while they are on a very different biological branch, and as such might be the truest alien minds we will ever meet.
At times the biological background became a bit much. I must admit skipreading through these sections.
"[Inner speech] is a way of walking through the consequences of actions, a way to bring reasons to bear against temptations. [...] The sounds we cook up in our heads, including the sounds of words, are broadcast in our minds in something like the way that many ordinary perceptual experiences are broadcast. Once a sentence of inner speech is compaosed, it is expose to the same sort of processing that would apply to a sentence we hear. A novel combination of ideas, or an exhortation to act, its htus made available for consideration; it can have the same sort of effect that an ordinary spoken sentence can have."
At times the biological background became a bit much. I must admit skipreading through these sections.
"[Inner speech] is a way of walking through the consequences of actions, a way to bring reasons to bear against temptations. [...] The sounds we cook up in our heads, including the sounds of words, are broadcast in our minds in something like the way that many ordinary perceptual experiences are broadcast. Once a sentence of inner speech is compaosed, it is expose to the same sort of processing that would apply to a sentence we hear. A novel combination of ideas, or an exhortation to act, its htus made available for consideration; it can have the same sort of effect that an ordinary spoken sentence can have."
George Saunders - "Lincoln in the bardo"
An amazing book. Its setup of multiple voices (of people in the bardo, the in between between life and death, between this life and the next) takes a moment to get used to, but stays interesting. Perhaps at the very end, when he uses it like the very beginning, many voices telling us how Lincoln felt or what he looked like, it could have been shortened a bit. But the end ties things up wonderfully.
As I moved around the room I would encounter that silved wedge of a moon at this window or that, like some old beggar who wished to be invited in.
As I moved around the room I would encounter that silved wedge of a moon at this window or that, like some old beggar who wished to be invited in.
Monday, 2 July 2018
Fargo - series
Particularly like the second season: still has the cliche characters, but they are all a bit more world wise, a bit more realistic, and thus sad and human.
Hereditary
Supposed to be so scary, but considered it a bit cliche. Not badly done, but slow (for no reason) and a cliche explanation (praying to one of the eight Gods of hell, yada yada)
Friday, 29 June 2018
Cupids Inspiration - "Yesterday Has Gone"
WOW! 60's galore!!! Yell, scream, dance, drink. And play this over and over again.
Tuesday, 26 June 2018
Helen Oyeyemi - "What is Not Yours Is Not Yours"
Amazing book of interlocking characters in short stories. Her descriptions are beautiful, her stories are often magical. High paced and cleanly written. I can learn a lot from this.
Tyche's beauty is interestingly kinetic; it comes and goes and comes back again. Or maybe it's more that you observe it in the first second of seeing her and then she makes you shelve that exquisite first impression for a while so she can get on with things. Then in some moment when she's not talking or when she suddenly turns her head, it hits you all over again.
... a text you couldn't read because my great-grandfather had put a permanent ban on any of his works being translated into English, Russian or French. He was adamanet that these three are languages that break all the bones of any work translated into them.
A clean-shaven man with the vocal tones of post-coitus whispers, that was Matyas Furst.
Tyche's beauty is interestingly kinetic; it comes and goes and comes back again. Or maybe it's more that you observe it in the first second of seeing her and then she makes you shelve that exquisite first impression for a while so she can get on with things. Then in some moment when she's not talking or when she suddenly turns her head, it hits you all over again.
... a text you couldn't read because my great-grandfather had put a permanent ban on any of his works being translated into English, Russian or French. He was adamanet that these three are languages that break all the bones of any work translated into them.
A clean-shaven man with the vocal tones of post-coitus whispers, that was Matyas Furst.
Tuesday, 19 June 2018
Monday, 18 June 2018
Carys Davies - "West"
A strange telling of a man leaving his young daughter behind to find the great beasts he knows for sure have been roaming the world once.
Dragging Elsie halfway across the world so she could die in an unfamiliar place? Should he have stayed in England, in the narrow lanes and what now seemed like the miniature hills of his youth, everything small and dark and cramped and a feeling inside himself that he would burst if he did not escape? Even then, a little of that prickling feeling, the vertigo; a longing for what he'd never seen and didn't know.
Dragging Elsie halfway across the world so she could die in an unfamiliar place? Should he have stayed in England, in the narrow lanes and what now seemed like the miniature hills of his youth, everything small and dark and cramped and a feeling inside himself that he would burst if he did not escape? Even then, a little of that prickling feeling, the vertigo; a longing for what he'd never seen and didn't know.
Katherine Mansfield - "A Dill Pickle"
Short story, found through berfrois.
Not sure how I feel about it. But well written. Irritatingly well, almost.
http://www.berfrois.com/2018/05/a-dill-pickle-katherine-mansfield/
Not sure how I feel about it. But well written. Irritatingly well, almost.
http://www.berfrois.com/2018/05/a-dill-pickle-katherine-mansfield/
Suede - "The Invisibles"
Almost 80's in its orchestral setup. Quite like it. Maybe look into some of their recent albums.
Wednesday, 13 June 2018
Varlam Shalamov - "Forty-Five Things I Learned in the Gulag"
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/12/forty-five-things-i-learned-in-the-gulag/
For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was published in a journal called Literary Contemporary. He was released in 1951, and from 1954 to 1973 he worked on Kolyma Stories, a masterpiece of Soviet dissident writing that has been newly translated into English and published by New York Review Books Classics this week. Shalamov claimed not to have learned anything in Kolyma, except how to wheel a loaded barrow. But one of his fragmentary writings, dated 1961, tells us more.
1. The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger, and beatings.
2. The main means for depraving the soul is the cold. Presumably in Central Asian camps people held out longer, for it was warmer there.
3. I realized that friendship, comradeship, would never arise in really difficult, life-threatening conditions. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not at the pit face).
4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.
5. I realized that Stalin’s “victories” were due to his killing the innocent—an organization a tenth the size would have swept Stalin away in two days.
6. I realized that humans were human because they were physically stronger and clung to life more than any other animal: no horse can survive work in the Far North.
7. I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.
8. Party workers and the military are the first to fall apart and do so most easily.
9. I saw what a weighty argument for the intellectual is the most ordinary slap in the face.
10. Ordinary people distinguish their bosses by how hard their bosses hit them, how enthusiastically their bosses beat them.
11. Beatings are almost totally effective as an argument (method number three).
12. I discovered from experts the truth about how mysterious show trials are set up.
13. I understood why prisoners hear political news (arrests, et cetera) before the outside world does.
14. I found out that the prison (and camp) “grapevine” is never just a “grapevine.”
15. I realized that one can live on anger.
16. I realized that one can live on indifference.
17. I understood why people do not live on hope—there isn’t any hope. Nor can they survive by means of free will—what free will is there? They live by instinct, a feeling of self-preservation, on the same basis as a tree, a stone, an animal.
18. I am proud to have decided right at the beginning, in 1937, that I would never be a foreman if my freedom could lead to another man’s death, if my freedom had to serve the bosses by oppressing other people, prisoners like myself.
19. Both my physical and my spiritual strength turned out to be stronger than I thought in this great test, and I am proud that I never sold anyone, never sent anyone to their death or to another sentence, and never denounced anyone.
20. I am proud that I never wrote an official request until 1955.
21. I saw the so-called Beria amnesty where it took place, and it was a sight worth seeing.
22. I saw that women are more decent and self-sacrificing than men: in Kolyma there were no cases of a husband following his wife. But wives would come, many of them (Faina Rabinovich, Krivoshei’s wife).
23. I saw amazing northern families (free-contract workers and former prisoners) with letters “to legitimate husbands and wives,” et cetera.
24. I saw “the first Rockefellers,” the underworld millionaires. I heard their confessions.
25. I saw men doing penal servitude, as well as numerous people of “contingents” D, B, et cetera, “Berlag.”
26. I realized that you can achieve a great deal—time in the hospital, a transfer—but only by risking your life, taking beatings, enduring solitary confinement in ice.
27. I saw solitary confinement in ice, hacked out of a rock, and spent a night in it myself.
28. The passion for power, to be able to kill at will, is great—from top bosses to the rank-and-file guards (Seroshapka and similar men).
29. Russians’ uncontrollable urge to denounce and complain.
30. I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.
31. I am convinced that the camps—all of them—are a negative school; you can’t even spend an hour in one without being depraved. The camps never gave, and never could give, anyone anything positive. The camps act by depraving everyone, prisoners and free-contract workers alike.
32. Every province had its own camps, at every construction site. Millions, tens of millions of prisoners.
33. Repressions affected not just the top layer but every layer of society—in any village, at any factory, in any family there were either relatives or friends who were repressed.
34. I consider the best period of my life the months I spent in a cell in Butyrki prison, where I managed to strengthen the spirit of the weak, and where everyone spoke freely.
35. I learned to “plan” my life one day ahead, no more.
36. I realized that the thieves were not human.
37. I realized that there were no criminals in the camps, that the people next to you (and who would be next to you tomorrow) were within the boundaries of the law and had not trespassed them.
38. I realized what a terrible thing is the self-esteem of a boy or a youth: it’s better to steal than to ask. That self-esteem and boastfulness are what make boys sink to the bottom.
39. In my life women have not played a major part: the camp is the reason.
40. Knowing people is useless, for I am unable to change my attitude toward any scoundrel.
41. The people whom everyone—guards, fellow prisoners—hates are the last in the ranks, those who lag behind, those who are sick, weak, those who can’t run when the temperature is below zero.
42. I understood what power is and what a man with a rifle is.
43. I understood that the scales had been displaced and that this displacement was what was most typical of the camps.
44. I understood that moving from the condition of a prisoner to the condition of a free man is very difficult, almost impossible without a long period of amortization.
45. I understood that a writer has to be a foreigner in the questions he is dealing with, and if he knows his material well, he will write in such a way that nobody will understand him.
For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was published in a journal called Literary Contemporary. He was released in 1951, and from 1954 to 1973 he worked on Kolyma Stories, a masterpiece of Soviet dissident writing that has been newly translated into English and published by New York Review Books Classics this week. Shalamov claimed not to have learned anything in Kolyma, except how to wheel a loaded barrow. But one of his fragmentary writings, dated 1961, tells us more.
1. The extreme fragility of human culture, civilization. A man becomes a beast in three weeks, given heavy labor, cold, hunger, and beatings.
2. The main means for depraving the soul is the cold. Presumably in Central Asian camps people held out longer, for it was warmer there.
3. I realized that friendship, comradeship, would never arise in really difficult, life-threatening conditions. Friendship arises in difficult but bearable conditions (in the hospital, but not at the pit face).
4. I realized that the feeling a man preserves longest is anger. There is only enough flesh on a hungry man for anger: everything else leaves him indifferent.
5. I realized that Stalin’s “victories” were due to his killing the innocent—an organization a tenth the size would have swept Stalin away in two days.
6. I realized that humans were human because they were physically stronger and clung to life more than any other animal: no horse can survive work in the Far North.
7. I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests.
8. Party workers and the military are the first to fall apart and do so most easily.
9. I saw what a weighty argument for the intellectual is the most ordinary slap in the face.
10. Ordinary people distinguish their bosses by how hard their bosses hit them, how enthusiastically their bosses beat them.
11. Beatings are almost totally effective as an argument (method number three).
12. I discovered from experts the truth about how mysterious show trials are set up.
13. I understood why prisoners hear political news (arrests, et cetera) before the outside world does.
14. I found out that the prison (and camp) “grapevine” is never just a “grapevine.”
15. I realized that one can live on anger.
16. I realized that one can live on indifference.
17. I understood why people do not live on hope—there isn’t any hope. Nor can they survive by means of free will—what free will is there? They live by instinct, a feeling of self-preservation, on the same basis as a tree, a stone, an animal.
18. I am proud to have decided right at the beginning, in 1937, that I would never be a foreman if my freedom could lead to another man’s death, if my freedom had to serve the bosses by oppressing other people, prisoners like myself.
19. Both my physical and my spiritual strength turned out to be stronger than I thought in this great test, and I am proud that I never sold anyone, never sent anyone to their death or to another sentence, and never denounced anyone.
20. I am proud that I never wrote an official request until 1955.
21. I saw the so-called Beria amnesty where it took place, and it was a sight worth seeing.
22. I saw that women are more decent and self-sacrificing than men: in Kolyma there were no cases of a husband following his wife. But wives would come, many of them (Faina Rabinovich, Krivoshei’s wife).
23. I saw amazing northern families (free-contract workers and former prisoners) with letters “to legitimate husbands and wives,” et cetera.
24. I saw “the first Rockefellers,” the underworld millionaires. I heard their confessions.
25. I saw men doing penal servitude, as well as numerous people of “contingents” D, B, et cetera, “Berlag.”
26. I realized that you can achieve a great deal—time in the hospital, a transfer—but only by risking your life, taking beatings, enduring solitary confinement in ice.
27. I saw solitary confinement in ice, hacked out of a rock, and spent a night in it myself.
28. The passion for power, to be able to kill at will, is great—from top bosses to the rank-and-file guards (Seroshapka and similar men).
29. Russians’ uncontrollable urge to denounce and complain.
30. I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.
31. I am convinced that the camps—all of them—are a negative school; you can’t even spend an hour in one without being depraved. The camps never gave, and never could give, anyone anything positive. The camps act by depraving everyone, prisoners and free-contract workers alike.
32. Every province had its own camps, at every construction site. Millions, tens of millions of prisoners.
33. Repressions affected not just the top layer but every layer of society—in any village, at any factory, in any family there were either relatives or friends who were repressed.
34. I consider the best period of my life the months I spent in a cell in Butyrki prison, where I managed to strengthen the spirit of the weak, and where everyone spoke freely.
35. I learned to “plan” my life one day ahead, no more.
36. I realized that the thieves were not human.
37. I realized that there were no criminals in the camps, that the people next to you (and who would be next to you tomorrow) were within the boundaries of the law and had not trespassed them.
38. I realized what a terrible thing is the self-esteem of a boy or a youth: it’s better to steal than to ask. That self-esteem and boastfulness are what make boys sink to the bottom.
39. In my life women have not played a major part: the camp is the reason.
40. Knowing people is useless, for I am unable to change my attitude toward any scoundrel.
41. The people whom everyone—guards, fellow prisoners—hates are the last in the ranks, those who lag behind, those who are sick, weak, those who can’t run when the temperature is below zero.
42. I understood what power is and what a man with a rifle is.
43. I understood that the scales had been displaced and that this displacement was what was most typical of the camps.
44. I understood that moving from the condition of a prisoner to the condition of a free man is very difficult, almost impossible without a long period of amortization.
45. I understood that a writer has to be a foreigner in the questions he is dealing with, and if he knows his material well, he will write in such a way that nobody will understand him.
Tuesday, 12 June 2018
Arcade Fire - "Creature Comfort" (Everything Now)
Born in a diamond mine
It's all around you
But you cannot touch it.
Nice lyrics, but I'm not convinced by the album so far.
It's all around you
But you cannot touch it.
Nice lyrics, but I'm not convinced by the album so far.
Monday, 4 June 2018
Thursday, 24 May 2018
Monday, 21 May 2018
Monday, 14 May 2018
Mary Hopkin - "Those Were the Days"
Sad and melancholy. If you are in the mood for chansons, thise might be a good second.
Friday, 11 May 2018
Monday, 23 April 2018
Rival Consoles - "Untravel" [Persona]
By far the best and spacy-ist track on the album.
Also, "Odyssey" on its eponymous album is quite nice.
Also, "Odyssey" on its eponymous album is quite nice.
Thursday, 19 April 2018
Monday, 16 April 2018
Paul Bowles - “their heads are green and their hands are blue”
Interesting read but his observations, though often interesting because of their characters and culture, lack any contemplation. And it’s a bit hard to read about “those Negroes” and the “uneducated Indians”. Yes, 1958 was a different year. Still.
During these voyages, the wives of the absent men remained faithful to their hsubands, the strict Targui moral code recommending death as a punishment for infidelity. However, a married woman whose husband was away was free to go at night to the graveyeard dressed in her finest apparel, lie on the tombstone of one of her ancestors, and invoke a certain spirit called Idebni, who always appeared in the guise of one of the young men of the community. If she could win Idebni's favor, he gave her news of her husband; if not, he strangled her. The Touareg women, being very clever, always managed to bring back news of their husbands from the cemetary.
Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast, luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surrounds can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatevr the cost in comfort and money, for the absolute has no price.
Sunday, 15 April 2018
Laila Lalami - “the Moor’s Account“
Amazing retelling from the moor’s perspective (a slave) of the Narvaéz expedition to the Americas in 1528 where all but four men died. Poetic language without getting overly lyrical and a beautiful mix of Moroccan past with New World explorations during which they are enslaved by various indigenous peoples and finally learn to adapt to the local customs before the inevitable clash with their old cultures.
Keep her in mind!
How strange, I remember thinking, how utterly strange were the ways of the Castilians - just by saying that something was so, they believed that it was. I know now that these conquerors, like many others before them and no doubt like others after, gave speeches not to voice the truth, but to create it.
Ali Marzouki - "Fighting Shadows"
a fictional account of a young man trying to fight the DSG (secret police) after he has been beaten when participating in the 20th of Feb 2011, Morocco’s Arab Spring. Interesting to read as a modern snapshot of Morocco, its people and habits, though story-wise so-so; not much tension and characters were not fleshed out well.
Ann Leckie - "ancillary justice"
Meh. Space opera. Ship with ancillaries (human bodies, all one mind, borg like). Interesting idea but unconvincing characters and not written well. Repetition.
One of three. Won’t read the rest.
One of three. Won’t read the rest.
Anthony Marra - "Tsar of love and techno"
Great. Grows on you. Russia, from Stalin to now. Corrector. Paintings. Family. Not exactly mise en abyme but closely connected stories. Wonderful language and quotes.
The dancer's left hand still dangles in the air. My decision isn't decided so much as felt. I set down the airbrush as one might set down a fork when nauseous. I will leave the disgraced dancer's ahdn where it is, where it should be, right there, a single hand waving for help, waving good-bye, applauding no one, a single hand that may have once held my neck while a voice in my ear asked for help.
Who could have imagined a beast as strange and melancholy as a giraffe?
"The work of socialism doesn't pause for secretaries of any eye color," I say. Poor Maxim. His misery is among the few indulgences I allow myself.
We traded old ryobra - rib records, bone music, skeleton songs - banned fifties and sixties rock and roll inscribed by phonograph onto exposes X-rays that could be played on gramophones at hushed volumes.
She still looked at Kolya as if back through time, which of course is the only way to look at a photograph, and we've done so with photographs of our teenage boyfriends killed in Chechnya or at home. [...] Their deaths have aged us, as if their unlived years have been added to our lived years and we bear the disapointments of both the lives we have and haven't lived, so that even when we are alone, brushing our teeth in our quiet bathrooms, lying awake in our empty beds, even when our little ones are tucked in, when our friends are brushing their teeth in their quiet bathrooms, lying awake in their empty beds, even when the door is shut and no one can see or hear us, we are not alone, we still think in the plural voice.
The dance floor awash in steel-tipped heels, leather boots gripping sweat-slick calves, skirts small enough to seal inside an envelope. Fake lashes, nails, and breasts that collectively enlarged reality to normalize their obscene dimensions. Coin-thick cosmetics. Flesh coruscating in strobe light when the depilated iridescence of deep-sea invertebrates. Our flat-faced Virgil led us through the swelling sea of bodies, but I wanted to drown, die, live forever, there is no difference, within the sequined sound.
They pressed together with a need that is never satisfied because we can't trade atoms no matter how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed.
The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.
The dancer's left hand still dangles in the air. My decision isn't decided so much as felt. I set down the airbrush as one might set down a fork when nauseous. I will leave the disgraced dancer's ahdn where it is, where it should be, right there, a single hand waving for help, waving good-bye, applauding no one, a single hand that may have once held my neck while a voice in my ear asked for help.
Who could have imagined a beast as strange and melancholy as a giraffe?
"The work of socialism doesn't pause for secretaries of any eye color," I say. Poor Maxim. His misery is among the few indulgences I allow myself.
We traded old ryobra - rib records, bone music, skeleton songs - banned fifties and sixties rock and roll inscribed by phonograph onto exposes X-rays that could be played on gramophones at hushed volumes.
She still looked at Kolya as if back through time, which of course is the only way to look at a photograph, and we've done so with photographs of our teenage boyfriends killed in Chechnya or at home. [...] Their deaths have aged us, as if their unlived years have been added to our lived years and we bear the disapointments of both the lives we have and haven't lived, so that even when we are alone, brushing our teeth in our quiet bathrooms, lying awake in our empty beds, even when our little ones are tucked in, when our friends are brushing their teeth in their quiet bathrooms, lying awake in their empty beds, even when the door is shut and no one can see or hear us, we are not alone, we still think in the plural voice.
The dance floor awash in steel-tipped heels, leather boots gripping sweat-slick calves, skirts small enough to seal inside an envelope. Fake lashes, nails, and breasts that collectively enlarged reality to normalize their obscene dimensions. Coin-thick cosmetics. Flesh coruscating in strobe light when the depilated iridescence of deep-sea invertebrates. Our flat-faced Virgil led us through the swelling sea of bodies, but I wanted to drown, die, live forever, there is no difference, within the sequined sound.
They pressed together with a need that is never satisfied because we can't trade atoms no matter how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed.
The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - "We Should All Be Feminists"
Great book about feminism, how we should all - men most of all - change our thinking and internalization.
Tuesday, 13 February 2018
Margaret Atwood - "Oryx and Crake", "Year of the Flood", "MaddAddam"
Intriguing dystopian trilogy about gene-splicing, world-killing, Complex-living, CorpSecOps controlled world where a few survivors of the Crake-induced mass killing survive. Particularly the first book is amazing, the other two took some time to get into, but were definitely enjoyable. Amazingly creative.
Monday, 5 February 2018
Altered Carbon (2018, )
Very Blade Runner-ish series about a world where personalities (on "stacks") can just be loaded into "sleeves", bodies. And of course there's a murder mystery. Based on Philip K. Dick?
Enjoyable, though the sister, killing everybody just for him, became irritating at the end, and not quite believable.
Enjoyable, though the sister, killing everybody just for him, became irritating at the end, and not quite believable.
Thursday, 1 February 2018
psytrance playlist (for coding)
spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/byteshot/playlist/539E7E5SoQP7ByRdK818Sx?si=d_QK3hC9RgS8w5N3zD1rzQ
- Krama - "Exhale the past" (Exhale the past)
Wednesday, 24 January 2018
Tony Harrison - "Long Distance II" (1937)
Long Distance II
Tony Harrison, 1937
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
Tony Harrison, 1937
Though my mother was already two years dead
Dad kept her slippers warming by the gas,
put hot water bottles her side of the bed
and still went to renew her transport pass.
You couldn’t just drop in. You had to phone.
He’d put you off an hour to give him time
to clear away her things and look alone
as though his still raw love were such a crime.
He couldn’t risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he’d hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she’d just popped out to get the tea.
I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven’t both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there’s your name
and the disconnected number I still call.
love poetry
may i feel said he
by e.e. cummings
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
by e.e. cummings
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
Monday, 22 January 2018
Monday, 15 January 2018
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
"To Anacreon in Heav'n" or "The Anacreontic Song" (tune of Star Spangled Banner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l-n64NWHS4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAIdVKv84g
The song was written for the Anacreontic Society, probably around 1771. The tune (...) is now thought to have been written "collectively" by members of the society, led by John Stafford Smith (...). The society met every two weeks to get drunk, sing songs and to indulge in some debauchery. Anacreon himself was a Greek poet from about 570BC who was noted for his erotic poetry (...) and his drinking songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydAIdVKv84g
The song was written for the Anacreontic Society, probably around 1771. The tune (...) is now thought to have been written "collectively" by members of the society, led by John Stafford Smith (...). The society met every two weeks to get drunk, sing songs and to indulge in some debauchery. Anacreon himself was a Greek poet from about 570BC who was noted for his erotic poetry (...) and his drinking songs.
Monday, 8 January 2018
The Be Good Tanyas - "Waiting Around to Die"
via Iggy Pop at BBC6... sad multi guitar subdued song, female vocals. A whole album... doable. Depends on mood and circumstance.
Sunday, 7 January 2018
poetry
Reading Stephen Fry's "An Ode Less Travelled" again to prepare choosing and explaining the poems I will be told to learn by heart.
Random things that came up: wrenched rhyming, as perfectly shown by Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song"
And amazing poetry by Kim Addonizio and e e cummings:
What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
may i feel said he
by e.e. cummings
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
Random things that came up: wrenched rhyming, as perfectly shown by Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song"
And amazing poetry by Kim Addonizio and e e cummings:
What Do Women Want?
by Kim Addonizio
I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
may i feel said he
by e.e. cummings
may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she
but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)
Thursday, 4 January 2018
random bbc6 inspired music
- Laura Marling - "Don't Pass Me By" (Semper Femina)
slow 3am, female vocals, sad - Hollie Cook - "staying alive" (??)
nice reggae / slow dub - Avicii - "Addicted to you"
dancy, 2014, totally missed it, good beat
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