Catchy gypsy tune, featured in "the Battery" $6k zombie film.
Have listened to other songs, but none of them come even close. Got the impression it's Christian-inspired, in a sadly-boring way.
This song rocks, though.
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
Lucy Clifford - "The New Mother" (1882?)
Wonderful folk-ish fairy tale, inspiration to Neil Gaiman for his "Coraline" though very different, about two children who desperately want to be naughty to see a small man and woman dance.
What this, like other good fairy tales, does so well is take a concept "be good, or else", and use that, or rather its inverse, as an important trope throughout the story.
What this, like other good fairy tales, does so well is take a concept "be good, or else", and use that, or rather its inverse, as an important trope throughout the story.
A.C. Wise - "Where Dead Men Go To Dream"
magic story (a girl with a skin of mirrors, a woman selling dreams, loss) with an interesting enough premise, yet it never really grabbed me. Can't say what was lacking.
Helen Marshall - "The Mouth, Open"
Interesting short about an (oversized) American boy visiting an East European culture. Magic realism.
Nice character description.
Nice character description.
Friday, 19 April 2013
Hemingway: all bad writers are in love with the epic
This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.
Thursday, 11 April 2013
Sneha Kahnwalker - "Kaala Rey"
"gangs of wasseypur" soundtrack. (part 2)
One song struck me, yet proved in-shazamable. Now, without lyrics, is it still as good. Is this actually even the one?
One song struck me, yet proved in-shazamable. Now, without lyrics, is it still as good. Is this actually even the one?
Sunday, 7 April 2013
China Miéville on the weird, the strange
I’ve been thinking about the traditional notion of the “sublime,” which was always (by Kant, Schopenhauer, et al) distinguished from the “Beautiful,” as containing a kind of horror at the immeasurable scale of it. I think what the Weird can do is question the arbitrary distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime, and operate as a kind of Sublime Backwash, so that the numinous incomparable awesome slips back from “mountains” and “forests,” into the everyday. So…the Weird as radicalised quotidian Sublime.
There’s a big default notion that “spare,” or “precise” prose is somehow better. I keep insisting to them that while such prose is completely legitimate, it’s in no way intrinsically more accurate, more relevant, or better than lush prose. That adjective “precise,” for example, needs unpicking. If a “minimalist” writer describes a table, and a metaphor-ridden adjective-heavy weird fictioneer describes a table, they are very different, but the former is in absolutely no way closer to the material reality than the latter. Both of them are radically different from that reality. They’re just words. A table is a big wooden thing with my tea on it. I think they also are surprised by how much they enjoy making up monsters.
I spend a lot of time arguing for literalism of fantastic, rather than its reduction to allegory. Metaphor is inevitable but it escapes our intent, so we should relax about it. Our monsters are about themselves, and they can get on with being about all sorts of other stuff too, but if we want them to be primarily that, and don’t enjoy their monstrousness, they’re dead and nothing.
it’s what Toby Litt brilliantly called the “Scooby Doo Impasse” – that people always-already know that they’ll pull the mask off the monster and see what it “really” is/means. The notion that that is what makes it legitimate is a very drab kind of heavy-handedness.
I’m tempted to say that part of the job a monster can do best is refuse to satisfy me, completely — which is good, because what I want for satisfaction is a kind of satiation, which usually translates into too much information, into overkill, into shining a light where a light has no business shining. In other words, the frustration that I feel at not understanding everything about a monster (indeed the weird, indeed anything fantastic) is both a sign that I am not fully satisfied and the only way of doing this with anything approaching success, I imagine. I want to know everything, but I don’t want that desire to be fulfilled.
Given the somatic impossibility of monsters — without which they are nothing – their simple there-ness and specificity is indeed part of what makes them what they are, a self-contained, if highly and, one hopes, effectively hermetic, narrative, an implied “There was a thing that was, impossibly, like this.”
There’s a big default notion that “spare,” or “precise” prose is somehow better. I keep insisting to them that while such prose is completely legitimate, it’s in no way intrinsically more accurate, more relevant, or better than lush prose. That adjective “precise,” for example, needs unpicking. If a “minimalist” writer describes a table, and a metaphor-ridden adjective-heavy weird fictioneer describes a table, they are very different, but the former is in absolutely no way closer to the material reality than the latter. Both of them are radically different from that reality. They’re just words. A table is a big wooden thing with my tea on it. I think they also are surprised by how much they enjoy making up monsters.
I spend a lot of time arguing for literalism of fantastic, rather than its reduction to allegory. Metaphor is inevitable but it escapes our intent, so we should relax about it. Our monsters are about themselves, and they can get on with being about all sorts of other stuff too, but if we want them to be primarily that, and don’t enjoy their monstrousness, they’re dead and nothing.
it’s what Toby Litt brilliantly called the “Scooby Doo Impasse” – that people always-already know that they’ll pull the mask off the monster and see what it “really” is/means. The notion that that is what makes it legitimate is a very drab kind of heavy-handedness.
I’m tempted to say that part of the job a monster can do best is refuse to satisfy me, completely — which is good, because what I want for satisfaction is a kind of satiation, which usually translates into too much information, into overkill, into shining a light where a light has no business shining. In other words, the frustration that I feel at not understanding everything about a monster (indeed the weird, indeed anything fantastic) is both a sign that I am not fully satisfied and the only way of doing this with anything approaching success, I imagine. I want to know everything, but I don’t want that desire to be fulfilled.
Given the somatic impossibility of monsters — without which they are nothing – their simple there-ness and specificity is indeed part of what makes them what they are, a self-contained, if highly and, one hopes, effectively hermetic, narrative, an implied “There was a thing that was, impossibly, like this.”
Saturday, 6 April 2013
Denis Johnson - "A Car Crash While Hitchhiking"
Intense short about a raving high hitch hiker describing the car crash he was into. The intro analyzed and read more into the story than I could. Should read again, without the intro.
Jeffrey Eugenides on writing
about short stories: "..., writing short fiction is mainly a question of knowing what to leave out. What you leave in must imply everything that's missing."
Friday, 5 April 2013
Ohio Players - "Funky Worm"
really strange breakbeat-ish, vocoder-voiced song. "you gone too farm"
Should look into for the weirdness of it.
Should look into for the weirdness of it.
Wednesday, 3 April 2013
Monday, 1 April 2013
Bing Cosby on speed reading
(not something in years past I thought I would've enjoy reading)
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/16/how-to-read-faster-bill-cosby/
Bill Cosby may be best-known as the beloved personality behind his eponymous TV show, but he earned his doctorate in education and has been involved in several projects teaching the essential techniques of effective reading, including a PBS series on reading skills. In an essay unambiguously titled “How to Read Faster,” published in the same wonderful 1985 anthology How to Use the Power of the Printed Word (UK; public library) that gave us Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 timeless rules of writing, Cosby offers his three proven strategies for reading faster. Apart from their evergreen application to the printed word, it’s particularly interesting to consider how these rules might translate to the digital screen, where structural factors like scrolling, pagination, hyperlinks, and adjustable font sizes make the text and the reading experience at once more fluid and more rigid.
1. Preview — If It’s Long and Hard
Previewing is especially useful for getting a general idea of heavy reading like long magazine or newspaper articles, business reports, and nonfiction books.
It can give you as much as half the comprehension in as little as one tenth the time. For example, you should be able to preview eight or ten 100-page reports in an hour. After previewing, you’ll be able to decide which reports (or which parts of which reports) are worth a closer look.
Here’s how to preview: Read the entire first two paragraphs of whatever you’ve chosen. Next read only the first sentence of each successive paragraph. Then read the entire last two paragraphs.
Previewing doesn’t give you all the details. But it does keep you from spending time on things you don’t really want — or need — to read.
Notice that previewing gives you a quick, overall view of long, unfamiliar material. For short, light reading, there’s a better technique.
2. Skim — If It’s Short and Simple
Skimming is a good way to get a general idea of light reading such as popular magazines or the sports and entertainment sections of the paper.
You should be able to skim a weekly popular magazine or the second section of your daily paper in less than half the time it takes you to read it now.
Skimming is also a great way to review material you’ve read before.
Here’s how to skim: Think of your eyes as magnets. Force them to move fast. Sweep them across each and every line of type. Pick up only a few key words in each line.
Everybody skims differently.
You and I may not pick up exactly the same words when we skim the same piece, but we’ll both get a pretty similar idea of what it’s all about.
To show you how it works, I circled the words I picked out when I skimmed the following story. Try it. It shouldn’t take you more than ten seconds.
Skimming can give you a very good idea of this story in about half the words, and in less than half the time it’d take to read every word.
So far, you’ve seen that previewing and skimming can give you a general idea about content — fast. But neither technique can promise more than 50 percent comprehension, because you aren’t reading all the words. (Nobody gets something for nothing in the reading game.)
To read faster and understand most, if not all, of what you read, you need to know a third technique.
3. Cluster — to Increase Speed AND Comprehension
Most of us learn to read by looking at each word in a sentence — one at a time.
Like this:
My — brother — Russell — thinks — monsters…
You probably still read this way sometimes, especially when the words are difficult. Or when the words have an extraspecial meaning, as in a poem, a Shakespeare play or a contract. And that’s okay.
But word-by-word reading is a rotten way to read faster. It actually cuts down on your speed.
Clustering trains you to look at groups of words instead of one at a time, and it increases your speed enormously. For most of us, clustering is a totally different way of seeing what we read.
Here’s how to cluster: Train your eyes to see all the words in clusters of up to three or four words at a glance.
Here’s how I’d cluster the story we just skimmed:
Learning to read clusters is not something your eyes do naturally. It takes constant practice.
Here’s how to go about it: Pick something light to read. Read it as fast as you can. Concentrate on seeing three to four words at once rather than one word at a time. Then reread the piece at your normal speed to see what you missed the first time.
Try a second piece. First cluster, then reread to see what you missed in this one.
When you can read in clusters without missing much the first time, your speed has increased. Practice fifteen minutes every day and you might pick up the technique in a week or so. (But don’t be disappointed if it takes longer. Clustering everything takes time and practice.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/01/16/how-to-read-faster-bill-cosby/
Bill Cosby may be best-known as the beloved personality behind his eponymous TV show, but he earned his doctorate in education and has been involved in several projects teaching the essential techniques of effective reading, including a PBS series on reading skills. In an essay unambiguously titled “How to Read Faster,” published in the same wonderful 1985 anthology How to Use the Power of the Printed Word (UK; public library) that gave us Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 timeless rules of writing, Cosby offers his three proven strategies for reading faster. Apart from their evergreen application to the printed word, it’s particularly interesting to consider how these rules might translate to the digital screen, where structural factors like scrolling, pagination, hyperlinks, and adjustable font sizes make the text and the reading experience at once more fluid and more rigid.
1. Preview — If It’s Long and Hard
Previewing is especially useful for getting a general idea of heavy reading like long magazine or newspaper articles, business reports, and nonfiction books.
It can give you as much as half the comprehension in as little as one tenth the time. For example, you should be able to preview eight or ten 100-page reports in an hour. After previewing, you’ll be able to decide which reports (or which parts of which reports) are worth a closer look.
Here’s how to preview: Read the entire first two paragraphs of whatever you’ve chosen. Next read only the first sentence of each successive paragraph. Then read the entire last two paragraphs.
Previewing doesn’t give you all the details. But it does keep you from spending time on things you don’t really want — or need — to read.
Notice that previewing gives you a quick, overall view of long, unfamiliar material. For short, light reading, there’s a better technique.
2. Skim — If It’s Short and Simple
Skimming is a good way to get a general idea of light reading such as popular magazines or the sports and entertainment sections of the paper.
You should be able to skim a weekly popular magazine or the second section of your daily paper in less than half the time it takes you to read it now.
Skimming is also a great way to review material you’ve read before.
Here’s how to skim: Think of your eyes as magnets. Force them to move fast. Sweep them across each and every line of type. Pick up only a few key words in each line.
Everybody skims differently.
You and I may not pick up exactly the same words when we skim the same piece, but we’ll both get a pretty similar idea of what it’s all about.
To show you how it works, I circled the words I picked out when I skimmed the following story. Try it. It shouldn’t take you more than ten seconds.
Skimming can give you a very good idea of this story in about half the words, and in less than half the time it’d take to read every word.
So far, you’ve seen that previewing and skimming can give you a general idea about content — fast. But neither technique can promise more than 50 percent comprehension, because you aren’t reading all the words. (Nobody gets something for nothing in the reading game.)
To read faster and understand most, if not all, of what you read, you need to know a third technique.
3. Cluster — to Increase Speed AND Comprehension
Most of us learn to read by looking at each word in a sentence — one at a time.
Like this:
My — brother — Russell — thinks — monsters…
You probably still read this way sometimes, especially when the words are difficult. Or when the words have an extraspecial meaning, as in a poem, a Shakespeare play or a contract. And that’s okay.
But word-by-word reading is a rotten way to read faster. It actually cuts down on your speed.
Clustering trains you to look at groups of words instead of one at a time, and it increases your speed enormously. For most of us, clustering is a totally different way of seeing what we read.
Here’s how to cluster: Train your eyes to see all the words in clusters of up to three or four words at a glance.
Here’s how I’d cluster the story we just skimmed:
Learning to read clusters is not something your eyes do naturally. It takes constant practice.
Here’s how to go about it: Pick something light to read. Read it as fast as you can. Concentrate on seeing three to four words at once rather than one word at a time. Then reread the piece at your normal speed to see what you missed the first time.
Try a second piece. First cluster, then reread to see what you missed in this one.
When you can read in clusters without missing much the first time, your speed has increased. Practice fifteen minutes every day and you might pick up the technique in a week or so. (But don’t be disappointed if it takes longer. Clustering everything takes time and practice.
James Salter - "Bangkok"
One dialogue between ex-lovers. Rancune.
As Dave Eggers points out; the amazing thing to create tension: he does not want to be there. Good read.
As Dave Eggers points out; the amazing thing to create tension: he does not want to be there. Good read.
Jane Bowles - "Emmy Moore's Journal"
Paris Review collection.
Never heard of her. The story is intense, not happy, though a few 'humoristic' notes (as the introduction called them. They might just as well be labelled "sad") about a woman writing letters to her husband to explain, to clarify, her stay in Hotel Henry. Why exactly, where her fascination with Turkish women comes from, what the war is about, nothing is explained. Not much even happens. But it is an intense picture nonetheless.
The author died around the age of 57, and was an alcoholic, which made the story chave.
Never heard of her. The story is intense, not happy, though a few 'humoristic' notes (as the introduction called them. They might just as well be labelled "sad") about a woman writing letters to her husband to explain, to clarify, her stay in Hotel Henry. Why exactly, where her fascination with Turkish women comes from, what the war is about, nothing is explained. Not much even happens. But it is an intense picture nonetheless.
The author died around the age of 57, and was an alcoholic, which made the story chave.
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Leonard Michaels - "City Boy"
Another one from the Paris review. Not amazing, but interesting to read the introduction and see it happen: from real to absurd, then back to reality again. It creates tension. Good lesson. Also, it'll be a tightrope not to get too absurd.
Saturday, 30 March 2013
Joy Williams - "Dimmer"
About the boy Mal, whose father dies in the first sentence, and his mother in the second. How he moves around, no friends, though sometimes people leave him food. How he saves an old lady, and they don't know what to do with him, so they thank him and send him to America. From LAX he is rescued by a girl who drives cars back and forth.
Finished reading "Dimmer" by Joy Williams, the first in the Paris Review short story collection bought not too long ago. Strange story. Sometimes I literally didn't understand sentence after sentence. The words, yes, most of the time. But the sentences were strange. I cannot say I liked it much, but it put my mind in a weird place, which is a compliment.
Thomas Truax - "Everything's Gone Halloween"
https://soundcloud.com/thomas-truax
Strangest musical clic-n-plop music. From England. Nice stuff. Spoken word at times.
Strangest musical clic-n-plop music. From England. Nice stuff. Spoken word at times.
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