James Joyce, you just can't ignore the bastard

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/james-joyce-you-cant-ignore-the-bastard

Joyce entered your life very differently in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. Back then, he still existed outside the official system. Too difficult, too scandalous for school. It was still possible for teenagers to read Joyce as an act of rebellion against teachers, government, church. You read Joyce the way you listened to late punk, or early rap.

Our generation formed bands, wrote songs and albums, not stories and novels. The Irish heirs to the verbal exuberance of James Joyce are, by and large, not the writers of literary fiction. They are the great, exiled Irish lyricists; Morrissey; early, good Elvis Costello; Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols and PiL; Shane MacGowan of the Pogues (who spent his pre-London childhood on a farm outside Puckane, only a few miles from our house). MacGowan’s “The Old Main Drag” and “Fairytale of New York” are postmodern pop-stories worthy of Joyce; brutal, clear-eyed portraits of hemales and shemales, destroying themselves with drink in London and New York. “How Soon Is Now” and “This Charming Man” by The Smiths ache with youth’s agonies as exquisitely as Joyce’s story “Araby.” I’d say Joyce, as a man who wanted to be a professional tenor himself, would be happy enough with that legacy.

And language was the hero. That, I got from Joyce.

Lakker - "Tundra"

From Ireland, electro and hints of techno? Good stuff to listen to while coding. Even when coding sucks.

When bad behaviour does a good turn

The value of dark traits is a little more nuanced when it comes to humans. While we certainly won’t thrive as a society with rampant rule-breaking, we might have to embrace our dark side from time to time. Perhaps we need not recoil from our own grandiosity or aggression.

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/when-bad-behaviour-does-a-good-turn/

Reindier - "Porcelain" (2015)

Electropop, the 3voor12 says. Quite right. Curious songs. Nice ones. Some weird.

• "My Man" - it has a Marc Almond feel to it

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Slow vampire film in Jim Jarmusch style with an amazing soundtrack by Jozef Van Wissem and SQÜRL. Don't be in a hurry to watch it, but if you're in the mood for slow gothic clips and estranged music, this is the film

Gomorra (2008)

The much-hyper well-deserved film about the maffia (Camorra?) and how it works. No soundtrack. No emotional attachments. This film looks, and it, I guess, a documentary. Slightly chilling. The drawback... when you've read enough press releases, you expect the stark cold killing and it would probably be best watched before being exposed to anything..

Inherent Vice (2014)

Amazing drug-fueled hard psychadelic 70's semi-hippie-noir film starring Joaquin Phoenix. By Paul Thomas Anderson. Definitely something to watch again.

CUT_ - "Chapter One"

First chapter of their upcoming album. Bit MIA-ish, on the edge of cute-girl-pop-beat.

On another "album", named Papaoutai, they covered Stromae's song. Nothing special.

Birdman

Film with Michael Keaton as a Hollywood superhero who is trying to make it on Broadway while battling his own demons.

Very long shots. Music almost solely a drum solo. Intriguing film, not an easy one.

Alabama Shakes

Raw songs, quite the Janis Joplin sound in her voice. Must look into.

Broadchurch

Good police drama solving the murder of 12 yo Danny. With David Tennant, wrestling with ghosts from the past.

Yentl & de Boer - "Toen we nog lang en gelukkig leefden"

Mooi leuk liedje. Wonnen ze niet de Annie M.G. Schmidt prijs mee (dat deden ze met "Ik heb een man gekend")

Zion Train - "Ella's Melody" (Original Sounds of the Zion"

Think DAAU but reggae and slower. Multi instrumentalists and a very relaxed rhythm.

Jorodowsky's Dune

amazing documentary about Alejandro Jorodowsky and all the work he did with an amazing group of people, trying to turn "Dune" into a film. Inspiring. And an amazing man.

Paul Oakenfold - "Zoo York"

Amazing mix of Mansell's "Requiem for a dream"

Chromatics - "Just Like You" (After Dark, 2007)

(and most of the other songs and albums as well)

Heard in "Lost River", sounds a lot like the "Drive" soundtrack. Nice, though after a while it might become a bit too repetitive.

Hi-Finesse

Found via the 'Maggie' trailer, the usual trailer music creation company. Fun stuff for an early Thursday morning.

essay "Navigating the absurd: Camus, Hemingway and the sea"

"Cold hard science, Camus suggests, must ultimately concede to poetry, art, and descriptions. We cannot attain all knowledge, and thus we live in a world full of paradoxes and irrationals."

"While logic suggests suicide as escape from a painful existence, the very fact that our existence is painful gives meaning to our lives. To those aware of the absurd, there “is no finer sight than that of the intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it” (480). Camus esteems this struggle, holding it to be the noblest aspect of being, and suggests that it is the unassailable passion of the heart to defy that helps man achieve greatness feeding on “the wine of the absurd and the bread of indifference”(480)."

"a larger motivation keeps Santiago’s old and pulverized hands on the line – the need to prove “what a man can do and what a man endures”. He recognizes that “the thousand times that he had proved it meant nothing. Now he was proving it again. Each time was a new time and he never thought about the past when he was doing it”

This is a great article (not finished yet) but I do have a problem with the following statement:

Eddins points out that skin cancer is a manifestation of the dual nature of challenges that Santiago must face. The cancerous spot appears “malevolent in their assault upon the well-being of the organism, but are in another sense ‘benevolent’ in what they force the organism to become through overcoming them” (71).

First of all, malevolent/benevolent suggest a *will* to do harm or good. I have not read much of Camus yet – am on page 10 – but I have not seen any indication that he assigns the absurd, the universe, its irrationality and/or our inability to grasp it, as having a will to do harm or good. Secondly: does this mean that every life-threatening situation or phenomon is “in another sense ‘benevolent'” because of what it forces humanity to become through overcoming it? That somehow feels like an easy generalization to me…

J.S. Bach - "Matthäus Passion< BWV 244"

Not every part is as easy to appreciate, but 

• "Erkenne mich, mein Hüte" will always ring a deep sentimental note. Just the catholic upbringing I guess.

Föllakzoid - "III"

Chilees kraut-expedition? Very long soundscapes. Pretty awesome.