Some Delta Blues

Here are two verses of a delta blues piece called "New Pony Blues" by Stefan Grossman. The hard driving rhythmic style of the delta blues makes it really fun to play. Even though there's no constant thumping bass, the implied beat in the way the syncopation works carries the whole thing forward!

New Pony Blues

Blues to Myself

In the last piece, I posted a recording I did with two guitars going at the same time. With the inferior recording technology that we have (ie none, save my laptop, which is actually, some ...) I think it was decent. That rendition also captures the excitement of playing guitar with someone else -- it's really fun. But I've done another recording of part of the same piece (this time at a slower beat ...to contrast getting caught up in the moment with a more measured interpretation) and then laid down a second track that just has a blues solo part. I think the results are decent -- and I played a little with the effects on Garage Band, to try to differentiate the two guitar parts more clearly. Have a listen! (it's only 35 secs long!)

Blues to Myself

A Duet

Put two boys with guitars together and you've got a potent combination for a lot of noise. My old friend Matt came by over the long Thanksgiving weekend (and brought his cool baby Taylor along) and we began each day just jamming in the kitchen. We've been playing guitar together for a long long time. If I remember correctly, one of the first things I captured on tape was an acoustic version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" with the two of us playing and singing our hearts out (this must have been at least 15 years ago ...) Anyway, here's something that we recorded (in the kitchen) ...

Duet in Blues

A Flood Narrative

I'm working on an Old English paper that examines the Flood Narrative (Noah's Ark ...) in an Old English poem. One of the things that I've been looking at is how the Ark was portrayed by Anglo-Saxon artists. The interesting thing about the Ark's portrayal is how it "uses" the cultural reality of Anglo-Saxon seafaring to imagine the Ark. Take this image, for example, which comes from an illustrated Old English Old testament. What immediately struck me was the way the Ark is shown as having a "beast" / creaturehead prow. It kinda reminds one of Viking ships, I think. The Anglo-Saxons were aware of the more "traditional" ways of portraying the Ark but they chose to do something different with it.

As sort of the main contrasting image of the Ark from Anglo-Saxon England, here is another image. This time it's from the "Junius" manuscript, which is one of the four extant manuscripts of Old English poetry. I've been playing with a superb CD "edition" of this manuscript and it's just wonderful, the kinds of things that can be done when you're "up close" to textual material like this. I think that the encounter with "old manuscripts" is a very powerful experience and if I were to teach a Lit class (at any level), I would definitely try to incorporate some looking at manuscripts.

Although the "beast/dragon" head of this portrayal seems to make it very similar to the first image, some art historians have pointed out that the nature of the lines (sharper and angular in this one) means that this image is less likely to have been influenced by Scandinavian art (ie the Vikings). But I see more similarity than difference and in either case, the Anglo-Saxons were ship builders too. What I'm more interested in is the way the second image portrays the Ark with buildings, without showing you what's inside. One art historian's argued that this second image of the Ark makes the it look like an Anglo-Saxon Church, and that this is in conversation with the common medieval typological association of the Ark as the Church. I think that the image also makes one think about city walls, and that the image may be invoking the Anglo-Saxon "burhs", which were pretty extensive towns and played a role in defending the population from Viking raids.

A final image of the Ark. This time, it's from the Junius manuscript again. However, it figures the Ark very differently as Noah and his family are about the disembark. Instead of a ship-like image, we have something more "abstract":


This portrayal of the Ark has been described as "lemon" shaped (my amusement with the vocabulary of art criticism has never ceased ....) A clever critic posits that it's the artist's experiments with perspective, where there's a simultaneous depiction of the Ark from a overhead aerial view and a side view of the disembarkation. Someone else has pointed out that the "aerial view of the Ark" theory makes sense also because Anglo-Saxon burial mounds have shown graves laid out in the shape of a ship. And this of course, ties in nicely with the idea of the Ark=sarcophagus=dying to be born again. Anyway, it's all pretty intriguing to me!

those proliferating blogs

Of course, I've started yet another blog -- in a vain attempt to try to pretend you can life several existences (not just several selves) at once. Anyway, it's right here:

http://gettingmedieval.wordpress.com/

The blog's meant to keep track of the intellectual process, engagements and dead-ends with the material that I'm working into a dissertation. I guess it's a way to announce and convince myself that ... yeeep ... it's time to get cracking with something specific and (hopefully) consequential.

I've also been reading the wife's dissertation, which has ended up running into 280 plus pages. I've actually read most of it during the past two years, as she worked on portions of it. I'm primarily the "grammar" reader to catch the slips and formatting oddities (like in APA, does one use square brackets for insertions that are used to regularize quotes ... [no], or
does the punctuation mark come before or after you close the quote if there are no citations -- ie when you quote what your 'subjects' say in class [they come before] ...) But it's also a powerful piece, all assembled about what teachers and students can do to make the classroom a more engaging place. And no, it doesn't involve any inspiring teaching: just lots of daily interventions.

The Same Ol' Blues

It's been a terrible day. I've had to deal with irresponsible colleagues and naughty (you wouldn't believe it) students. Plus, we're facing immigration woes on a very "standard" procedure that has become a nightmarish labyrinth of phone-calls to faceless recorded messages and unhelpful information people.

But, beyond all that, there's always music and the blues. So here's a recording of a blues tune that I've been working on. I've been intrigued by the blues for a long time (after I watched, in the late 80s, a film called Crossroads -- with bad acting by Ralph Macchio but a superb and evocative blues soundtrack by Ry Cooder). And I've just got myself a new guitar (though this recording was done on the old one. The story behind the tune? Well, I've been practicing it a lot and the wife has heard it just one too many times. Anyway, she's been saying -- "Again?! Why don't you play something else ... thus ... the Same Ol' Blues ...

Same Ol' Blues

Play it again

Zotero

Ok -- so I'm actually going to recommend that anyone that has to write papers or is involved in academic work that requires you to compile bibliographies and references check out this Firefox plug-in that I was just recently linked to. It's called Zotero and it's one of the best free plug-ins that's available.

So far, I've played with it a little and it already does more than I probably need in terms of bibliographic information. What the plug-in does is that it scans webpages with bibliographic information (pages like a library catalog, a journal database and yes, even Amazon.com) and translates that info from the webpage into bibliographic information. So no more messy figuring out how to format according to MLA or APA (or god forbid, Chicago) styles. It's easier to use than a program like Endnote (though I think Endnote is more comprehensive in terms of the kinds of categories and fullness of biblio information). One drawback that I've encountered is that Zotero doesn't automatically differentiate between books and edited books (and indeed between authors and translators). There's an option, however, to provide this information and, yup, I just figured out how to do it two seconds ago.

Anyway, it's pretty amazing that this is an open source Firefox (yes, only Firefox) plug-in and that it makes the oft irritating elements of research much easier. I remember having to run down to NUS in my first year because I forgot to copy bibliographic info for a paper I was working on (it was on the Great Gatsby). Then, there was primitive dial-up (before web-browsers were popular ... or at least before they could be used properly on my ancient computer ...) where one could access text only bibliographic info in lines of black and green. Of course, I haven't constructed a bibliography "manually" for a long time because of such great software like Endnote. But this Zotero plug-in just makes it that much easier for everyone. I'm going to show my students this!

I'm actually kinda pleased with this piece

so I'm posting a link to it here. I wrote this (and spent too much time on it) after I was informed about the event. I will say that I've actually thought about what I claim in the piece, especially in the way I try to "make use of" the Derridean notion of "the Supplement", and I actually think that I have more to say. Of course, the silly thing is that to say more about something as inconsequential as a little internet brouhaha is silly (and slightly obsessive, though that might indeed be the point of the Derridean Supplement, it overtakes). Anyway, here's the link.

Difference and Repetition III

This is a final post on the book. I'll just put all that emerged from reading about half of the work here. I've put it aside for another day when I feel like another bout of intellectual flagellation:

Difference in itself

About sixteen pages into the chapter (page 52), just before Deleuze discusses Hegel and Leibnitz, he begins to discuss "the Small and the Large". This seems to be an important moment in the discussion because it appears that through these, the "infinite" is discovered "within representation", and this promises to be a way for difference to break the mold of identity, of being just secondary or negative, where "organic representation" gives way to "orgiastic representation". I find what immediately follows, as well as the discussion of Hegel and Leibnitz to be difficult to follow (Which is why I now own a copy of Phenomenology of Spirit and probably have to work through that some time soon...) What happens with the discovery of infinity within representation appears to be a simultaneous experience of extremes: "a short-sighted and a long-sighted eye are required in order for the concept to take upon itself all moments ...." Is Deleuze suggesting that a moment like this forces the breakdown of representation and allows pure difference to emerge? What confuses me most at this moment is the way "the concept" is mapped onto "the Whole" and why this is important to the argument.

Repetition for itself

The hardest element, for me, is the third notion of time, the passive synthesis of memory. I can't really put a handle on what this third experience of time/memory is. I get the sense that the first synthesis (the passive synthesis) is a kind of instinctual, habitual whirring of impulses, that the second (the active synthesis) involves memory, recording and signification, but the third thing is difficult to get at. Despite what Deleuze says about Hegelian dialectic being a false, abstract movement of thought, he seems to involve in that kind of dialectical thought in unearthing this third synthesis: he seems to suggest that we know of this third synthesis because of a kind of joining of "Habitus" and "Mnemosyne" (page 101 in my edition, about 11 pages into the chapter).

Deleuze seems to be clearest when he uses Proust as an example and says that this is actually "reminiscence ... an involuntary memory which differs in kind from any active synthesis associated with voluntary memory" (page 107 in my edition, about 17 pages into the chapter). I don't think he's differentiating active and passive memory on the grounds of volition, the will or the act of deliberately trying to remember something (or is he?) even though there is the sense that the active synthesis of memory requires self-consciousness to put it into effect. He seems to be saying that there is an unconscious (?) element to memory itself, that escapes the active synthesis of memory but persists (or as he puts it "insists") as a "pure past" that is "beneath representation".

Another thing that came to my mind as I was reading this was the possible links that this has with Anti-Oedipus and the three synthesis that Deleuze and Guattari lay out in the open sections of the book. I think there are some similarities between the first two pairs, because in both cases there is a correlation between the instinctual/connective (the first synthesis) and the recording of the second synthesis. It's the third pair that doesn't quite seem to match up because in Anti-Oedipus the focus seems to be consumption and residual production of a sense of "subjectivity", while in Difference and Repetition, the third synthesis, involves some kind of presence that is never properly remembered.

A Wiki Interlude

Everyone uses Wikipedia. I depend on it for all sorts of things, from the names of obscure anti-popes to figuring out if there really is a Foucault's Pendulum (apparently there are several scattered around the globe). But I've never really thought about contributing to the entries: the world seems full of really knowledgeable people who are most willing to spend hours either churning out information or copying it from existing sources.
But of course, that all changed when I embarked on reading John Gower's Confessio Amantis, a longish Middle English poem that has lived in the shadow of the Canterbury Tales (like how Pound's Cantos have lived in the shadow of Eliot's Wasteland), over the weekend. There's already a decent entry on Wikipedia but I've decided to get in on the fun by listing the various 'tales' that appear in the poem. I'm sure the information is readily available in books or elsewhere on the Internet. But the redeeming illusion that we're contributing to something when the object of study doesn't immediately turn in a profit or change a life, is always comforting.

Difference and Repetition II

A difficult moment from the Introduction:

The introduction actually begins in a rather enchanting fashion. Delueze tries to show how "generality" and "repetition" are extremely incompatible concepts. He demonstrates that the "general" relates to that which can be exchanged, the substitutable, to laws that may be applied; whereas "repetition" involves the return of the singular, that it is "a necessary and justified conduct only in relation to that which cannot be replaced." Some of the writing is extremely moving. For instance: "The repetition of a work of art is like a singularity without concept, and it is not by chance that a poem must be learned by heart. The head of the organ of exchange, but the heart is the amorous organ of repeitition."

After dealing with what repetition opposes, and the distinction between "false" and "true" movement, Deleuze turns to specifying a "third opposition [between repetition and generality] from the point of view of concepts or representation". And then the going gets tough.

His discussion of artificial and natural "blockages" to a concept is baffling. I don't quite see how "the concept" (which enters the discussion at this point) stands in for or is related to "representation". Does "the concept" belong to a category of thought objects that are somehow "false" because they are abstractions and which only exist via representation?

Anyway, he seems to suggest that there is a certain limitation to "the concept" as regards to its ability to completely confer absolutely differentiated identity, which leads to paradoxical phenomena such as "twins" who are individuals but cannot be differentiated in conceptual terms. What I have difficulty getting is how this links up to "repetition". Is he suggesting that in spite of the failure of "the concept", in spite of these blockages that put limits, the actual existence of these things argue for some quality that proves their existence apart from "the concept"? This seemed to be an interesting and important moment for me because apart from "Epicurean atoms", he uses "words" as an example. What seems to be at stake here is the distinctiveness of identity that is based on an "abstract" or categorical definition of "self". Delueze seems bent on upsetting that cornerstone of thought – "the concept" – in order to radicalize what comes out of thought.

He later goes on to describe repetition as "difference without a concept, repetition which escapes indefinitely continued conceptual difference." This seems to be another pithy formula (!?) that appears to tie everything up nicely and relate all the terms but one that I can't quite unpack. Is he suggesting that it is only in getting at "repetition" that we get at something truly new and entirely singular?

"Perhaps the mistake of the philosophy of difference , from Aristotle to Hegel via Leibnitz, lay in confusing the concept of difference with merely conceptual difference, in remaining content to inscribe difference in the concept in general. In reality, so long as we inscribe difference in the concept in general, we have no singular Idea of difference, we remain only with a difference already mediated by representation. We therefore find ourselves confronted by two questions: what is the concept of difference -- one which is not reducible to simple conceptual difference but demands its own Idea, its own singularity at the level of Ideas? On the other hand, what is the essence of repetition -- one which is not reducible to difference without concept, and cannot be confused with the apparent character of objects represented by the same concept, but bears witness to singularity as a power of Ideas?"

Difference and Repetition I

I've been struggling with a text by Gilles Deleuze over the last week or so. It's Difference and Repetition and reading Deleuze is probably the quickest way to demonstrate to one's own lack of intellectual finesse. Anyway, in order to extract what I can from the book, I've decided to do a series of posts that "opens up" the text via quotations, questions and "workings out" of the ideas presented in Difference and Repetition.

I'm glad (or perhaps I should be embarassed) to say that I've hung around Deleuzean thought for quite long while. It's been at least ten years since I first started reading Anti-Oedipus. I know that sounds silly but there are difficulties in his thought that I think forces (or seduces?) the reader back to him. Also, there is that vast referentiality that is involved such that to understand a single concept more precisely, one has to reader three or four OTHER people that Deleuze refers to in a single breath. I don't have a background in academic philosophy (though much may be imbibed because one is literate) so there bound to be philosophical catch-phrases that are thick with meaning that I'll miss. Part of the difficulty as well!

Perhaps the most well-known contribution of Delueze (and his later collaborator, Felix Guatarri) is rhizomic 'structure'. In an attempt to dismantle top-down / bottom-up hierarchies and systems of thought, organization and being, they propose a counter structure, that of the rhizome. They oppose this to the more traditional 'aboreal' (tree-like) structures, which schematize from the root the the crown, and that dominate most spheres of knowledge. Instead, they posit a multiplicity of centers and a dense networks of relation and force that emerge out of these different networks. Obviously, they've been credited as prophets of sorts for the wonderful world of the internet, which seems to be the human endeavor that resembles the rhizomic most closely.

Difference and Repetition is an early work (and one of Deleuze's PhD theses) and Deleuze's project involves thinking how we might think "difference" in-itself. I guess the starting point has to do with the way we usually quickly gloss over the idea of "difference". We normally think of differences as the identifiable features that are manifest between two or more objects. But this isn't good enough for Deleuze who thinks that this makes difference a mere adjunct to "identity", merely a conceptual, representational idea.

In effect, Deleuze's project ends up as a crazy meditation on the dominance of "representation" in Western philosophy. He attempts to dismantle the tyranny of the "original-copy" relationship that is the basis of transcendental thought by demonstrating that difference can be "affirmative". He does this because he thinks that while difference has been invoked by a great many philosophers in the Western tradition, they have merely been, well, dancing with shadows. Taking on "difference" in 1968 would have been significant because of the growing disenchantment with structuralism and emergence of now well-enshrined dogma that semiotic phenomena merely operate through a network of arbitrary difference. Deleuze isn't content with the revolutionary insights and freedoms that "arbitrary" affords: he wants "difference".

From the Preface:

"We tend to subordinate difference to identity in order to think it (from the point of view of the concept or the subject: for example, specific difference presupposes an identical concept in the form of a genus). We also have a tendency to subordinate it to resemblance (from the point of view of perception), to opposition (from the point of view of predicates) and to analogy (from the point of view of judgement). In other words, we do not think difference in itself. With Aristotle, Philosophy was able to provide itself with an organic representation of difference, with Leibnitz and Hegel an orgiastic representation: it has not, for all that, reached difference itself."

Spicing the Grail

My annotations on Jack Spicer's poem, The Holy Grail, are back on-line. I decided to just put everything on a google.page since I was having such bad luck with free hosting services.

The pages are best viewed with Firefox or Netscape. They don't work too well with IE and not at all with Safari. Apparently 27% of Internet users use Firefox, so that ain't too bad!

http://spicingthegrail.googlepages.com/Jack.htm

Give me some Moore

One of the things that I've been reading quite fervently is the comics of Alan Moore. While my attention was first drawn to The Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen several years ago, a chance conversation with a real comics freak (yooo hooo Andrew, how's Nottingham?) keyed me on to explore some of his other stuff.

Thus far, I've managed to read From Hell, which I definitely need to re-visit because I rushed through it while I was in back home. It's extremely learned and well-researched, and because it's filled with an amazingly arcane references to Free Masonry, it's almost like a comic book version of Eco's Foucault's Pendulum.

I also managed to read the Swamp Thing run that was the first major thing that Alan Moore did for DC and which sort of introduced him to America. His meditations on Nature, metaphysics and the fragility of human relations through, a comic about a glorified plant, is pretty amazing. I managed to get my hands on a collected DC Universe stories of Alan Moore, which features some amazing Superman and Batman tales as well. In that, he has short quirky stories, just two to three pages long, which are really original pieces of story telling.

I'vce just finished several issues of his Tom Strong series and Promethea. With these comics, Moore toys with comics conventions and more generally, the boundaries between fiction, the imagination and the Real.

There is a series of six videos from a BBC programme on YouTube which profiles Alan Moore and they're quite interesting. The best moment in the videos happens when he actually shows his extremely detailed (and indulgent) "script" for the illustrators (this is in the 4th video) and when he explains why he wants to dissociate himself from the film adaptations of his work (video 5). And here they are:

Part 1	Part 2
Part 3	Part 4
Part 5	Part 6

Strange Fictions

Apart from watching quite a few of the Star Wars movies (after I caught the "Revenge of the Sith" on TV), I haven't been watching much else owing to the fact that I'm burdened with memorizing the strange inflections of Old English and exploring the even stranger comics of Alan Moore (hmmm I might just write an entry about that ...).

Anyway, one thing that I finally watched (yes, I'm always several years behind), was "O Brother Where Art Thou?" This was promising because of the supposed inspiration from Homer's Odyssey. I didn't find that many parallels, either between the protagonist or the plot (some people who obviously know both works much better than I do have found extensive links) but I was pleased that the soundtrack was so brilliant. It's really one of those films (like Almost Famous) where the music becomes a character in the mix. Of course, in "Brother", music is crucial to the protagonists because they end up making a hit record that (they don't know about as they continue their scoundralling -- which is a nice comment on the way the workings of the media has shifted so tremendously, and I suppose a backward glance on the idea that Homeric performance and transmission may have been aural in nature ...) but the rest of the film is bouyed up by music that I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I enjoy (my common justification for liking "old time gospel and country blues": "it may not sound interesting but it's really fun to play").

Of course, writing this entry reminds me that I have watched something else: a little Spike Lee film on the IFC called "Bamboozled". It's a satirical look at big networks and an attempt to re-work "African-American" steroetypes. It was a pretty strange experience (with so many layers of irony that it became quite difficult to locate some ground beneath your feet -- whatever happend to that U2 song/Rushdie book anyway ...) The film stars Damon Wayans as a VERY middle class (read "white") black television executive who decides to mock his network (and his boss, who's a white guy who thinks he's "into black culture") by scripting an extremely offensive variety show: based on the black-face minstral shows of the 20s and 30s (see DVD cover left). Of course, things get out of hand and the show becomes a hit, with tragic consequences for all involved. Jada Pinkett-Smith is excellent in this, as Wayans' assistant!

When the Deal Goes Down

I'd like to think Bobby Dylan and I go back a long way. After all, I first got to know him in a real low-point of his career. I've still got it some where -- a cassette tape of 1990's "Under the Red Sky"-- probably Dylan's worst outing. Why I didn't just give up on him and put more effort studying for the 'O' levels, had a lot to do with a handsome copy of his complete lyrics that the National Library had in its Reference section. Reading through it, I couldn't imagine how he'd even recorded that horrible 1990 album.

Of course I quickly got acquainted with the rest of his earlier and much earlier work and he's been a constant companion ever since. Anyway, I came across this video from his new album "Modern Times". It's a pretty listenable ballad that manages to turn quite a mundane line: "When the Deal Does Down" into a rather lyrical refrain. One of the central features of Dylan's work, the "choric" nature of that last line to each verse. Anyway, here's the video, drenched in nostalgia (the man's 65!) with references to his roots (born in Minnesota) and influences ("Bound for Glory"). It's all about Scarlet Johansson with Dylan's haunting voice back there somewhere. Some of the video was supposedly shot at Coney Island on the Cyclone(though this footage doesn't make it to the video, she's there at the amusements and the beach) and opens with a shot of the Statue of Liberty!





"We eat and we drink, we feel and we think
Far down the street we stray
I laugh and I cry and I'm haunted by
Things I never meant nor wished to say
The midnight rain follows the train
We all wear the same thorny crown
Soul to soul, our shadows roll
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down"

The Power of Gmail

Ever wondered what your email was really about? In this world of words, we write lots of email but how often do we stop and wonder about what we're really saying in that sea of language. Now you never have to worry about not REALLY knowing what you were writing about. Because GMAIL, tells you, through their wonderful ads.

For instance, thought that you were conversing with a friend about school? Not really, you were really revealing your deep-seated desire for violence. You really want to KUNG-FU someone to death:



Thought that you were seriously concerned about a friend's love life and were really offering a listening ear so that your friend's love-lorn woes could receive some kind of emotional catharsis? How wrong you were. All you were really interested in was helping them find somebody else and making sure that they started producing babies in the process:


Thought you were engaged in a high-falutin' academic discourse about an intellectual topic most obscure in nature? Not a chance. You were really looking for the quickest way to avoid having to write that thesis yourself:

Shamelessly Advertising

Here's a shameless advertisement.

A few of us have started a blog where we write about / analyze Singaporean politics or current affairs. I suppose this is just like the thousands of blogs that do the same. However, I maintain that the project is still important and worth everyone's while. For the following reasons:

1. The production of political discourse is for everyone. So getting into the act, no matter how late in the play, is crucial in any kind of formation of political sensibilty.

2. The typical Singaporean political blog is marked out by its cult appeal. We, on the other hand, intend to keep this blog circulating within an intimate community (ie amongst people that we already know). Yes, so to all three of you who are regular readers of this blog, welcome to that intimate community.

3. We welcome contributions. Just email me if you think you have something to write about. At the moment, there are four of us who are supposed to be regular writers (of course only two of us have posted ... ) but hey! that's the nature of spur of the moment projects, ain't it? There is almost no editorial policy (I probably will only correct very bad grammar ... but of course ...)

Anyway, here it is : http://meetthepeoplesession.blogspot.com/

Mr. Lagat

A few days ago, I came across this rather quirky bit of news in the pages of TODAY. It deals with the various trials of Benjamin Lagat, who is a Kenyan runner. The article dealt with how a "middle echelon" runner such as himself has to strategically choose his races (and therefore run the Sheares' Bridge Run) to give himself a chance of winning. He also sells maize back home in Kenya to supplement his income.

It struck a chord because despite all the attention given to the amazing exploits of Singaporeans staking a claim at being successful in every field of human endeavor (not that there is anything wrong with this, of course), there are even more of us in the middle and lower echelons, just trying to get by.

Of course, the other exciting thing about the article is that it was written by a long-lost friend!

Back Just in Time

On a whim I just went to check out the Lincoln Center list of free events for what remains of the summer ... and ... I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Sonny Rollins is playing (for FREE!) this Sunday!

A (Sort of) Homecoming

So, what has it been like to have left New York for about three weeks -- the longest that I've been away from "home" to go back to the Motherland, for three weeks -- the shortest I've been back home -- (unless you don't consider Pulau Tekong as part of the Motherland ... even then, can go home on weekends ...) ?

1. I actually watched the National Day Parade and listened to the younger Lee make his national day rally address. Once again, I irritated my mother with snide remarks in response to just about everything he said.

1a. I tried to read the Straits Times everyday but realized that my threshold for nationalistic bull-shit has been lowered. Better go and train harder.

2. I had a wonderful time meeting up with people and finding out that while time stands still for a lot of us, the energies of youth more than make up for this for many others.

2a. I learnt that young mothers are difficult to hang out with. One ends up doing things VERY slowly, having no conversation or suffering the embarrassment of having your friends shout across a cafe ... "I count to three ah ... One ... Two ... don't make mummy count to three ah ..."

3. I got extremely "distracted", helping my father work on elements of his new book series. Some of the results of that distraction, included silly songs, are found here: http://dr.friendly.books.googlepages.com/home

3a. I rejoiced with my brother-in-law on learning that he had actually completed his reservist cycle.

3b. I was shocked to learn how skinny my sister is. I guess looking after children takes the meat off the bones. I did my best to put food on her plate while I was home.

4. I realized that while I enjoy Singaporean food a lot, I can live without it. In fact, I should generally live with less food, my weight being a source of constant attention during this trip home.

4a. I think people like to talk about your weight when they don't really have much to say. I was, to various people: a: "Wah Ni Pang Leh! She 14 weeks pregnant also not as fat as you!" b: "Ah, Mr. Lim, I see you're getting fatter ..." c: "Did you lose weight ? " d: "No change lah, no change, you look the same ..." Of course, these responses allowed me to gauge who was being (a) polite, (b) honest or (c) a liar. Then again, it could well be that some people just can't gauge these things properly (myself included!)

5. I managed to get into the "Swamp Thing" episodes that Allan Moore did, as well as rush through "From Hell". Singapore's National Library ws pretty good about this. Having forgotten the efficient mechanization of almost everything in Singapore, I actually "suakuly" asked the counter if they could check my books in so that I could borrow new books immediately. The lady, of course, gave me the "What Kind of Sua Ku are You?" look, and told me to use the book drop.

5a. I watched only ONE film. And was sadly disappointed by "Dead Man's Chest". The entire thing seemed to be merely a set-up for a third part. I was extremely sleepy as well, so I ended up dozing off intermittently ...

5b. Despite being a very ugly building from the outside, the "new" central library was pretty cool. Nice Auditorium and sky-bridges too.

The Name of the Rose

The Name of the Rose is a fabulous book and film about monks, books, murders and the multiplicity of signs and meanings. I just re-read the book over this last week (finally found a nice early hardcover edition that was cheap ...) Of course, purists will argue that the film doesn't manage to get down complex themes involving the language, production, ownership, authority, history, and philosophy of language. But, it still holds a special palce in my heart. Here are a few of my favorite images from the film.

I like this shot because it floods the screen with light and still manages to bisect the lower half of the frame with the gaping blankness of the stairwell. I think it captures that transition into the esoteric world of scholarship very nicely.





Another great shot, blurred around the edges because it's supposed to be seen through a primitive pair of specs that William of Baskerville owns. I suppose it would be a strange world where donkeys preach to bishops, but then again, perhaps the self-contained hyper-rationalism of late-industrial capitalism can only be countered by fantasies such as these.



Another shot of an illuminated manuscript. They actually got monks who restore books to paint these pages for the film. Apparently this page went missing after they started the shoot (one of film's producers liked it and just TOOK it without realizing that its importance to the scene). It then took several months for the page to be re-produced and the rest of the scene had to be re-shot on the eve of wrapping up the production (The producer was very embarrassed when it all came out ...)


"Adso, do you realize that we are in one of the greatest libraries in all of Christendom?"

I identify a lot with this attainment of the secret library because I've spent the last two years sneaking around Columbia's library (yes, I don't go there but they've got lots of great stuff ...).


The obligatory "burn-the-heretic" scene. That's Ron Perlman as Salvatore, the former heretic who speaks all languagees but none. I'll admit that there was a time (quite long ago) when I was so into the film (which I had managed to record off Channel 5 ...) that I could sing the strange chant that Salvatore sings at this moment. Eeeks.



Finally, William gets his hands on the Book! When I first saw the film on TV, I was so entranced by it that I went out to get the book from the NLB. I was supposed to have been studying for a Sec 3 Lit exam (on Macbeth, actually). I ended up doing really badly on that exam. It did steel my resolve, however, to conquer "O" level Lit (even if it meant memorizing the entire play, since that seemed to be the only thing that Lit teachers gave credit for back then). Ah well.

Three Chords and the (Lacanian) Truth

Here's the side B of my fledgling Crit-Rock oevure. Other yet-to-be recorded, sung or even written titles include : "Dare We Da da da ...", "The Loose and What Tarries ..." and "Full Cold in Power". Anyway -- this one is supposed to be funny ... (just so that the foolishness has a name ...)

Encountering the Real
I take comfort the thought that
Language seems to save
Through the simple signifiers:
"I, me and myself"
The objects that relate me to you.

Identify is found
In the sliding oppositions
Floating all around
A universe of signification:
Like "I, me and myself"
The objects that relate me to you.

"But isn't it all rather arbitrary
So what happens to "I think therefore I am"
Do not be dismayed
A sign will show the way...
As long as signifiers have free-plaaaaaaaay!

Structure so profound
We're immune to its consequences
Throwing terms around
As if binaries were natural
Like "I, me and myself"
The objects that relate me to you.

Another What If ...

Inspired by a link, here's another attempt at writing a song. It struck me that the language of critical theory might provide a rich and allusive language for music. What if someone wrote songs that dealt with the matter of crit theory. Anyways -- here's the A-side of my latest efforts. I'll record the B-side tomorrow (having recklessly dashed off two obscure sets of lyrics today). I haven't figured out a name for it -- so suggestions would be nice.

Here

Them Lyrics:

I wept to see your Body
Riddled all throughout
With blinded eyes and broken teeth
your lips that couldn't shout
Muscles all unravelled
Disintegrating time
Desire freely flowing
Decoding the sublime

I leapt in fear to see your heart
Pulse without a beat:
Illusion of the inside
Sacred in defeat
The violence of the symbol
Waiting to be torn
Desire freely flowing
Decoded and forlorn.

I understood you badly
Accusing with the Real:
That absence already always
Draws you onward still
The mirror image you yourself
Will never recognize:
Desire freely flowing
In spite of all the lies.

I laughed to see the prayers
Offered up to form,
Measured in a language
Foreign and still-born
Prison-house of memory
Hoping to restore
Desire freely flowing
Somehow making pure

I thought I wrote you poems
Whose words would demonstrate
The poverty of presence
The hollowness of fate:
But I will never understand
I'm too afraid to know
Desire freely flowing
Where I must never go.

I dreamt I felt your Body
Pressing against mine
With falling hair and shoulders bare
A moment without time
And tracing just beneath your breath
In whispers that would save
Desire freely flowing
Stronger than the grave

Strangely beautiful

Two books that I've read (rather quickly and thus not very deeply) in the past week:

Foucault's Pendulum. Umberto Eco. This is the kind of reader resistant novel I'll admit to liking. Full of strange esoteric references and sparkling with unimaginable linguistic contortions, Eco manages an amazing blend of showy erudition and touching poignancy. Much like Pynchon's stuff, it's books like these that remind me why I do what I do.

The Namesake. Jhumpa Lahiri. This came in the mail yesterday (second-hand book buying is one of the best reasons of living here) and after some late night reading and a final burst this morning, I'm left tingling by the uncanny emotional resonance that tied me to the novel. It's not the immediately spottable New York references that struck a chord (those were fun, but on the level of spotting places from movie sets or on TV that you just wandered past the day before .... ). It was the strange journey that its protagonist takes to a place thousands of miles away, in order to be someone else; a journey which now so many take, that left the sense that our myths no longer map the epic, tragic and comic journeys home of Odysseus, Oedipus and Frodo; neither do they follow the aimless wanderings of Don Quixote or Dean Moriarty. Instead, they trace the unsettling attempts to find the self on distant shores. Amazingly well written, and though it goes flat in the middle (with cliched descriptions of yuppies in New York ... eeks ... ), it ends powerful.

There appears to be a film for the novel in production. But the trailer already seems to miss the point about the vexed nature of "home"!

What d'ya know ...

It occurred to me today as I finished watching yet another film, that the latest string of movies that I've been occupied with all deal with some aspect of prostitution. I guess if you want to be a avant garde in your material you need to pick a subject that lies outside the Establishment. Of course, Hollywood, Julia Richards and Richard Gere changed all that with "Pretty Woman" ...

The Films

1. My Life to Live (Vivre Sa Vie) This Godard was probably the best of the lot with a very pretty Anna Karina forced into prostitution. The film treats prostitution in a matter of fact manner, with Karina always looking immaculate, pretty and ready for the next customer, who are invaribly balding middle-aged men. Of course, the film's really about existential angst and all that. And it ends very tragically, right after she has a conversation about life and love with a philosopher.

2. Mama Roma. A Parsolini film, it's about an aging prostitute who tries for a better life off the streets, selling veggies in a cart in Rome (The Colloseum is always in the background ...) But she's got a teenage son on whom she places all her hopes. These invariably come crashing down because of his irresponsible behavior.

3. Medea. Another Parsolini film but not quite about prostitution per se, though Medea DOES kill her brother and offers the Golden Fleece to Jason in exchange for herself! I can see why the Soviet film-maker Parajanov claims that Parsolini was a huge influence. There are some similarities in the strange 2-D painterly shots in this film and the endless "Color of Pomegranates". To make a comparison to another film -- very much in the spirit of Fellini's "Satyricon", though the shots are never stuffed with so much detail and excess.

4. The Grim Reaper (La Commare Secca). This was a film that Bernardo Bertolucci directed when he was 21! The idea was Parsolini's but Parsolini had moved on to other obsessions (Mama Roma) and suggested that Bertolucci shoot this. It's very much like Rashmon. A prostitute has been murdered and vcarious suspects are called in, each with their own tale to tell about that fateful night. The strange thing with this film, however, is that there is a clear HE did it at the end, which makes the rest of the film, well, irrelevant.

Two other films that are most definitely not about Prostitution:

1. The Little Soldier (Le Petit Soldat). A Godard film about a French deserter (the Algerian war) who ends up getting involved in a right wing terrorist plot. Long meditation about torture, highly relevant for today.

2. Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen). Another Bergman film. With a young Liv Ulman and Max von Sydow. It traces an artist's descent into madness where the desires of the past cannot be forgotten. There are moments where I think Bergman deliberately mimics Dreyer's "Passion of Joan of Arc", where the sound drops off and there are just these portraits composed only with austere light and shadow.

(De)constructive Criticism?

"Instead of a diatribe mr brown should offer constructive criticism and alternatives."

just one sentence from a Letter from K BHAVANI
Press Secretary to the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts

It strikes me as interesting that perhaps the most commonly espoused Establishment retort to any critique or criticism is encapsulated in the single line quoted above. Having listened to numerous civil servants and local politicians justify the status quo with the exact same phrase, as if it were a limit of all rational discourse that cannot be transgressed; having been challenged on more than one occassion by family, friends, and indeed, students with the same phrase, I wonder about the powerful illusion that all we need is a kind of "critique" that will "edify"; some manner of technology, language or gesture that is so extensively domesticates itself in the very act of pointing out the spaces, gaps, fears, terrors and contradictions inherent in a post-industrial capitalistic nation that it immediately erases the possibility that the structure could all come tumbling down: the fantasy of "constructive criticism".

In the first place, isn't there a tremendous paradox in the notion that words can construct even as it takes apart, that they can magically unveil, rip and pull while adding to the edifice? It seems to me, then, that the only criticism that will ever be "constructive" is that which merely re-capitulates what is always already there, what always already has been expected and erected by the collective fantasy and is just waiting for that big climactic moment when "Viola! ..." But what constitutes this desire for criticism to be constructive, that allows this elusive dream that we can take apart and build all in a single rhetorical moment to persist in these MOST rationale and practical technocrats? Why the belief that only commentary that replicates and adds to the positivistic logic of the status quo can be made about civil structures and institutions? What are the fantasies and fears that these criteria distort, normalize and then assert as the most commonsensical and rational of public pronouncements?

The flawed assumptions underlying the notion of "constructive criticism" pull in several directions, which the phrase, whenever it is drawn out of any flabbergasted Establishment Figure's bag of rhetorical tricks, tries to brusquely sweep aside. First, is the telelogical belief that a nation progresses in a type of linear history, where every element, every word, thought or deed must pull together towards that pre-determined goal, that vanishing paradisical point variously called the "first-world" or the "Swiss-standard of living". A point vanishing over every horizon that can only be measured in retrospective graphs and charts of economic development and fiscal growth; the central absence that overcodes all desire in Singapore. Every force that bucks the trend or slips out from this narrative of economic and material progress is thus conveniently labelled "disruptive", or "non-constructive". Second is the paranoia that such "aimless" critique will infect the hardworking, "we-can-solve-every-problem-that-history-throws-at-us" (poetically summed up in "we can achieve, we can achieve") spirit that the powers-that-be pride themselves in possessing. Third, it is a calculated ploy to lure critique into playing the game that the establishment wins each and every time: the game of "my-ideas-are-better-than-yours". Any suggestion that is offered can be met with a "we've thought about that and it won't work because ...", "we'll look into that (but still retain the power to decide )" or "hmmm, that's actually good idea, we'll give you a job, co-opt you and your ideas ..." Of course, who decides what actually constitutes "constructive criticism" and whether there is ever a standard that is rigorously applied in evaluating HOW "constructive" the criticism actually is, is never really dealt with properly.

My response, whenever I am faced with the demand to provide "constructive criticism" or "alternatives" is to immediately question the notion of "constructive" critique and to suspect the demand of trying to colonize and exploit my train of thought. Why should thought be subjugated to the assumptions already mentioned? Why should thought be a tool to that particular political agenda? And it's hard to do consistently because people immediately think that you're just trying to be difficult or playing with words. Yet, how can one otherwise prevent an excursion into the tyrannical belief that my ideas are good enough for everyone else, good enough to dictate a way of being and mode of feeling, if I do not begin here?

In short, why SHOULD criticism be constructive?

The plea for "constructive criticism", begins with the naive hope that a society can shy away from the dark elements of its history, politics and social desire by looking away, towards some hoped for shape or outline of social progress (also summed up in "we've come so far together, our common destineee ...). The notion of "constructive criticism" is an ideological construct meant to bolster the fantasy that "at least we're headed somewhere"; the captivating master signifier meant to appease, not matter how vaguely, no matter how desperately, the Establishment's own fears that it is failing at it's own game of policing, directing and controlling desire that gets caught up and distracted by the infinite pulses of the Real. It is cut from the same glass that consitutes the mirror in which the Establishment deliberately misrecognizes satire, the very mirror that enables the status quo to take itself -- it's perfections and blemishes -- far too seriously.

Saraband

After about 30 years since "Scenes from a Marriage", Ingmar Bergman made "Saraband" , a TV movie then re-edited for the big screen. It loosely follows the "after-lives" of the protagonists, re-casting a very old Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson, who played the original couple, struggling with old age and the emotional hang-ups of their children and grandchildren. The film was stunning. Typically Bergman in its use of close-ups and intense personal exchanges (there are never more than two characters in each scene ...) the film deals with the accumulated effects of experience and the emotional baggage acquired after years of living. I guess Bergman's sense of his own mortality comes across very strongly, as does his sense that the accretions of living never fully prepare one for death or loss. Anyway, one of the most evocative scenes has Erland Josephson alone in his book lined study. It took me a while to figure out a way around my Mac's refusal to allow screen captures but here it is:

White Pride

So I queued for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park the other day.
One queues from about 10 am to when the tickets are issued at 1 pm. They're free tickets and there's no telling whether one will get a ticket -- it all depends on how many tickets the people ahead of you need.
Anyway, there was a massive display of what Edna and I call "White Pride". The white yuppy-tai tai-young mother ahead of us in the queue was really irritating. Apart from talking loudly to her many friends on her cell and endlessly proclaiming how clever and cute her baby was, she tried to get her friends who came later into the queue. There are strict rules about the queue (as these tickets are highly sought after). You have to be there to get a ticket. You can't have a friend get there and camp out alone until 1230, then have five other people join you just as the tickets are issued (the 'rules' are repeated ad nauseum by the staff at the Public Theatre, and they do it every 10 meters down the line!) But this White Young Mother (who was picnicking there with her child and a friend) was scheming throughout on her cell phone (loudly -- so I can't be accused of eavesdropping) on how to beat the system. So when her first friend came later, that friends hovered and hovered then, viola, she merged "seamlessly" into the line.
Of course, this irritated me. Not because I wouldn't get a ticket but because there were people at the end of the line who had come much earlier and might be cheated out of a ticket. So after about an hour, when it was clear that they had broken the 'rules' (there was no sign that the friend was going to leave), I did the right thing and went to rat on them. I was pretty amazed that I did it cause I'm the last person to take action in moments such as these (I usually huddle down into a book and act blur). But when White People try to stamp their sense of entitlement on everything -- yes, even free events that are meant to open out the Arts to the less privileged-- that's sort of the final straw. So when I came back with the security people, Ms. White Pride glibly lied -- "Oh no, she's just here to baby sit ..." Yeah right. So security person didn't want to create a scene and just reminded friend to leave the line when 1 pm came. And later, another friend joined them and they ended up in a huddle deciding whether or not to try to go ahead with their plan of cutting into the queue. They probably figured that they've got a crazy chinese guy right next to them who's most willing to cry foul and so her friends left to go to the back of the queue.
Anyway, Ms. White Pride still got her way. When she got to the top of the line where the tickets were being given out, she acted all cutsey and cloyed and toyed with ticket people with the argument that "O, my baby's a PERSON, yes she is, oh she waited in line, she's a Person ..." and got tickets by using her child. Marx would have a lot to say about the parent-child relation and the way it has been corrupted by the commerical impulse of exchange that has become the very soul of the capitalist psyche (Yes, through her loud talking we -- meaning everyone within 20 meters, learnt that her husbands a lawyer and that she lives on a trendy street on the Upper West Side). Of course, child did not turn up for the play and Ms. White Pride didn't even stay for the entire thing.
By the way -- the play was "Macbeth".

Just a List

So the film watchin' rolls on with the following:

1. Dazed and Confused. I actually didn't spot Ben Affleck playing the High School Jerk until very late in the film.
2. A Woman is a Woman. A Godard film filled with much homage to American musicals.
3. The Riflemen. A strange Godard film that is supposed to comment on the folly of war. An extended sequence where soldiers returning from war take out postcards of things, places and people, slamming them down on the table, one after another, which just kept going on and on, really forces one to try to work in an interpretation.
4. The Virgin Spring. An early (and pretty conventionally plot driven) Bergman film. His 'other' medieval film, dwarfed by "The Seventh Seal".
5. The Color of Pomegranates. This was the strangest film that I've watched in a long while (and this includes some weird Peter Greenaway stuff). It was made by an Armenian Soviet film maker in the late 60s. It's amazingly slow and many of the shots are meant to replicate the interior life of an Armenian poet / troubadour. The shots are composed like still frames in a photo, with gestures and symbolic objects carrying the weight of the action. It's thus devoid of almost any traceable narrative or dialogue. Dreamlike in its juxtiposition of images and use of recurring images, it also mimics the iconography of Byzantine Church art. (I think ... like Byzantine Mosaics?)
6. The Thin Blue Line. This was a documentary by the same person that did "The Fog of War", Errol Morris. It's about the wrong conviction and sentencing to death row of Randall Adams, for a cop killing in 1977. After the film was made (and shown, in 1989), the case was actually re-opened and Adams got out. Talk about the power of the movies. In probably the best moment of the film, the actual killer just about confesses that he was the one that did it (we see him interviewed earlier but only hear his voice on tape during this confession, the final sequence of the film, making it even more powerful, because he has already been executed on another murder charge), but being 16 and scared, he quickly formulated a story that the cops eventually went for, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
7. And let's not forget the Zadie Smith novel that I ploughed through over the weekend. After about 200 pages of "On Beauty" and being really irritated by the flaccid, sensationalistic story-telling and unimaginative, cliched writing, I forced myself through this one, just so that I didn't feel as if I cheated in forming an opinion. There are smart ways of referencing literary traditions and great books and while "On Beauty" tries to do this, it just rips off without really doing anything clever or profound in the referencing. Just acknowledging that one is stealing (and thus turning it into an 'the-inspiration-for-this-book-was' note) doesn't absolve from the sin of doing it poorly. And I usually don't have anything bad to say about anything.

Still ...

Despite beginning intensive French classes, I've managed to keep up with educating and occupying myself with more movies. It's a funny thing, these brief comments about film are really just a counter to remind myself what I've been viewing. It must also harken back to the advice that my English tutor in JC gave about film watching -- always write about whatever you watch -- that way your parents won't get on your case for 'wasting' your time at the movies. Of course, that was before DVD ...

Anyway -- the list, as far as I can remember:

1. More Felini: I went and looked up some of his earlier work. "La Strada" (The Road) is supposed to be the last film that Fellini did before breaking out of very conventional story telling. Apparently its succcess at the box-office allowed him more control and freedom over the kinds of experiments that he wanted to do in his films. It's shot in austere black and white with post WW2 Italy, its dusty country roads and scattered villages providing the backdrop of the film. It follows the fortunes of a travelling 'strongman' (ie he's a gypsy entertaining small village crowds to make ends meet) and his companion, a young girl who is 'sold' to him by her poor mother. It's tragic and pretty conventional though there's a tinge of sadness in every scene, even in the comic burlesque and Chaplin-like clowning that the young girl brings to the film. Another Fellini film: La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) is apparently the film that made popular the term "paparazzi". As this suggests, the film deals with the glamorous and decadent life of actors and celebraties and their numerous escapes into hedonistic abondonment. Most of the film tracks the late night activities of these individuals, all tied together by a writer, Marcello. Definitely highly stylized, with great control of light and dark spaces. It's almost a more coherent (and semiotically familiar) version of Fellini's later work, "Satyricon".

2. We just can't shake out the Merchant Ivory. Three films that deal with British / post-British India. "Heat and Dust", which was supposed to be the film that launched Greta Scacchi's career. White women falling in love with Indian men and screwing everything up. Pretty much in tune with the next film "A Passage to India", which paid more attention to inner struggles and the clash between cultures (though it isn't a Merchant-Ivory film but one by David Lean). Of course, I'm pretty biased about what a good film version of this book should look like cause I studied it pretty intensely for the A levels. It placed a lot of emphasis on the first portion of the book and really squeezes the working out of important implications to a rushed last half-hour. Still, this probably explains why I'd make a terrible script writer. Last on this part of the list, "Shakespeare Wallah", an old Merchant-Ivory production (60s?) that traces the fortunes of a company of Shakespearean actors that tour India after 1947, their dwindling audiences (over taken by Bollywood, of course) and a return, to England. Of course, the daughter (young English girl who has lived all her life in India) of the company's director, falls for a rich, young Indian ... Profoundly moving though, and some excellent snippet stagings of several Shakespeare plays (in a very 18th/19th C 'affected' manner).

3. I've also started watching the Black Adder comedies. The first series, which re-writes the history of pre-Tudor England has been the most enjoyable so far. The second series, which deals with Elizabethan England has its moments (and mad queen!) but there seems to have been an attempt to make adjustments to the series so that it caters for a different audience. The dialogue is just silly at points, instead of a clever and allusive re-working of historical (and dramatic via Shakespeare) givens.

4. And let's not forget the book. I also managed to sneak in "Arthur and George" by Julian Barnes. I fall into these moods where I realize that I haven't read any contemporary fiction in a while so I got this (a nice brand new hardback for seven bucks including postage ...) because I really like Julian Barnes. I must so it was very engaging and had some interesting tense shifts. But it definitely pales in comparison to "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" and "Metroland", because it tries to hard to depend on a mystery plot, when the materials at hand can't sustain a dramatic revelation. Anyway, that's probably a reaction to feeling a little let down by how it winds to a close. The earlier bits that track class and racial tensions in early 20th C England, were very nice. And the strange use of the SIMPLE present tense, and how that often shifted unnoticeably into a more conventional past tense of recounted events and reported speech, immensely disorientating and disturbing: it was as it the 'facts' were slipping out of one's hands, all the time.

The Shows Must Go On

In spite of the on-going World Cup matches, I've still managed to watch a few films. I just watch snippets of the matches, so perhaps it doesn' t really count but these American commentators are really irritating. They tend to give a lot of advice about what's going on on field (and on the poor quality of refeereeing) and always end up commenting on the chances of the US team (They're painfully optimistic -- "Italy is definitely beatable ..."). I guess it's the nature of football -- low-scoring and not a lot of goal mouth action -- that causes them to talk about it in this manner. Also, the terminology is sometimes irritating. There was a player down in the box and the commentator was screaming, "That's a Pee-Kay! Pee-Kay!" It took me a while to work out that he meant "penalty". They also try to keep track of all sorts of statistics like win-loss-draw records, percentage of time on the ball and number of 'assists' (a la American football and basketball) and by doing so, they're sometimes late about commenting on the action.

Anyway. In spite of all that -- some films:

1. Lady Jane. Before Mary and Elizabeth became queen, one of their cousins reigned shortly. for nine days, actually. Helena Bonham-Carter as a very young and precocious monarch. Quite an interesting one.

2. Bride and Prejudice. This is part of the Jane Austen track that was started earlier on. The songs and dance sequences are a strange (and often painful) blend of Bollywood and ... I don't know what ... but it was nice to see all sorts of accents coming into the film and clashing with each other. And of course, there's Aishwarya Rai.

3. Cambridge Spies. This was a BBC mini-series which is supposed to be more historically accurate than 'Another Country', which was just inspired by the "Cambridge Four". It doesn't just dwell on the time they spent at school but actually traces their careers as spies for the Soviet Union. Some super acting by Tom Hollander in this and it was very atmospheric and beautifully shot. I guess it captures the tricky and tortured motives of anyone whose trying to break out of a sterile and complacent society very nicely. Jumping off bridges at the University buck naked , that sort of thing.

4. Happy Together. This Wong Kar Wai I'll place as better than "Fallen Angels" but still not as good as "Chungking Express". The masochism of desire, heart wrenchingly portrayed.

Fellini!

Federico Fellini's work is another theme that I've started in my film viewing. This takes the "genius director" thing in another direction, I guess, cause I think that becoming acquainted with directorial styles outside the Hollywood studio system is an interesting endeavor.

Anyway, I've started with the following. They weren't watched in close proximity -- I doubt this would be useful because they're all very lush films with so much going on!

1. 8 1/2 -- I've known about this film's reputation for several years but never got down to watching it. if I were forced to say something about it that encapsulates my current theoretical interests, I would definitely say that the film is a great text for demonstrating numerous aspects of psychoanalytic theory. Of course, this gets away from the film somewhat but ... It's about a director trying to make a film (!!) And the various social and sexual memories that the process condenses emerges through Fellini's distracted fragmented story-telling. It's highly entertaining with lots of humorous moments.

2. Satyricon -- This was a more stressful film to watch, not only because it was shot in a riot of color against drab stone settings, but because the episodic nature of the film really stretches one's ability to follow the arcs of desire (which is probably the point). The two main characters are Roman students who end up in a range of adventures (like fighting over a slave boy, becoming slaves on a boat and kidnapping a hermaphrodite demi-god ...) The body is on parade in all its splendor and wretchedness in this film. With so many bodies on display, in all shapes and sizes, it's hard to think of "surface" in the same way after this film.



3. Juliet of the Spirits -- A middle aged lady living in comfort gets her life disrupted by her husband's adultery and strange dream-like visions. The juxtaposing of the most ordinary indoor life of a housewife against the fantastically quirky moments where the repressed past haunts her, makes for interesting and disorientating film watching. As part of these three Fellini films, this would place in the middle of the other two in the way it disrupts linearity, with 8 1/2 being somewhat more conventional (though it gets away with that because the premise, a director struggling to make a movie, already alters one's expectations of a conventional story line) and Satyricon being the strangest of the lot. In an inversion of 8 1/2, here the female lead is confronted with her childhood.

More on Movies

1. Carl Dreyer. Danish director before and during WW2. I decided to check out his stuff as an extension of my Bergman obsession. "Day of Wrath" is a slow moving but emotionally sensitive chamber drama about a young wife falling in love with her step-son. A Bergman reference? Bergman seems to redo this theme, without the heavily religious overtones in "Smiles on a Summer's Night" where the whole affair ends up with a neat comic ending. The film of Dreyer's to watch is "The Passion of Joan of Arc". This was brilliant even if it is a silent movie. It has Antonin Artaud in the credits, though it's hard to work out which character he is (as none are really named in the film ...) though it may be that he is one of the priests that objects to the inquisition. The camera movement and ways that faces are framed are really original and almost obsessively twisted in a manner that forces you to wonder how he did the shot. I now know where Peter Brook got his opening seqence (largely remembered because I wrote an entire essay on these 30 secs of film ...) for his film version of "King Lear": an almost exact copy of Dreyer's opening!

2. Merchant-Ivory! Ah, being the good and faithful but always slightly troubled Anglophile that I am, I started a Merchant Ivory series. Watched "Howards End" (not so good) and "A Room with a View" (better). Esssentially -- how many times can Helena Bonham Carter and Emma Thompson appear in films playing approximately the same roles and get away with it. But truth be told, these films contain great dialogue and nuanced acting -- so -- no apologies!

3. Luc Besson's "The Messenger". So this also elaborates a "medievalism goes to the movies" theme. This was a badly made film. Dustin Hoffman as conscience / god / Satan in the last third of the film just sealed its fate. The strange Americanisms that enter into it are also very distracting. Booo!

Some Films

Yes, it's that time of year when I do nothing but watch all the videos I can get my hands on from the public library. So far, I've watched a few:

1. Another Country. This was pretty moving and beautifully shot. In it you'll see a very young Rupert Everett and an equally young Colin Firth (they were 25 and 24 at the time), playing 17 year olds. Yes, I'm a sucker for films about elite schools; it must represent some repressed desire to be colonized ....

2. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Maggie Smith and another film about British public schools as breeding grounds for Fascism (and assorted responses to that ...)

3. Fallen Angels. I didn't like this as much as Chungking Express.

4. A Girl from Hunan. The blurb on the cover said that it was made in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and the photo of the director looked like it was from the Bureau of the Arts of Moving Picture Making. Slow-moving tale about the terrible consequences of child marriages (and thus squarely propagandistic).

5. Scenes from a Marriage. Exceedingly rewarding film watching (if emotionally exhausting). I watched the 5 hour "tv" version. It's quintessential Ingmar Bergman with two actors, one room and long long close-ups. Great acting from Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson. I spent the entire 5 hours trying to figure out how an actress can look so gorgeous one moment then absolutely dowdy the next. That and whether they bought the furniture for the sets from Ikea.

6. A Man for All Seasons. Otherwise known as "How Intellectuals Will Always Be Screwed By Bureaucrats". This was about Sir Thomas Moore and his refusal to have a stand on Henry the VIII's marriage to Anne Bolyn.

Now for the stuff that I'm only slightly embarrassed about watching:

1. Hero. Eh -- I like those kung-fu scenes in slow motion. I also thought that this release might have a little Quentin Tarantino 'talk-about-the-film' at the end because it was one of those brought to you by Quentin Tarantino things. Sadly, it did not.

2. Pride and Prejudice. Long BBC version with Colin Firth.

3. Pride and Prejudice. Short Hollywood version with Kiera Knightly (where EVERYONE looks good ...)

4. Love Actually. Yes and it ain't even near Christmas.

Thirteen Thoughts on Plagiarism

(with apologies, pleadingly offered, to Wallace Stevens)

I
In eight pages of writing,
The only original thing
Was the name of the student.

II
I was really disappointed:
Like the students
Will be when they get their grades.

III
Rushing to meet deadlines, students copy:
A small sacrifice when playing the academic game.

IV
An assignment and effort
Are one.
The assignment and effort and a student
Should be one.

V
I do not know which more to hate:
The desperation of silly excuses
Or intellectual deceit,
The student despairing
Or its result.

VI
Red filled the long margins
With frustrated scrawls.
The student's unacknowledged
Borrowings shadowed the page.
My mood,
Darkened by these shadows,
Tracked unsolvable riddles.

VII
O Gate-keeping White Men
Why do you insist on straight 'A's
Before allowing students the
Careers of a careered society,
Tempting them to cheat?

VIII
I respect decent attempts and
When I see them, I richly reward;
But I know, too,
That students get others
To write papers for them.

IX
When a student sniffles in my sight,
Then screams "Unfair!"
The irony is palpable.

X
What is it called when students
Try to turn in work previously turned in?
My attempts at generosity
Are confounded by stupidity.

XI
"I sent it over the internet!
Last Saturday - you haven't received it?"
Once, e-mail actually worked.
Now, magic filters surely do
Detect and erase assignments
Sent by students!

XII
The semester has ended.
Some students must have failed.

XIII
With citations, it's called "Research".
With poetry it's called "Parody".
And it's all entirely inconsequential
For the student who
Just wants that damn degree.

Spicing the Grail

Here's a project that I've been working on. It's supposed to be the beginnings of a hypertext edition of a poem. The poem is by Jack Spicer. Jack Spicer was a real person. Jack Spicer was a poet. He wrote many influential poems. He was associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. He believed that poetry is dictated. He took dictation from Martians.

The poem is called "The Holy Grail". Spicer wrote it from 1961 to 1962. It was published in 1964. First editions are rare. There is a "pirate" edition in the Columbia Rare Manuscript Library. How does a "pirated" edition find its way into the Rare Book collection of a venerable academic institution? The word "venerable" reminds me of The Name of the Rose. It reminds me of "Venerable Jorge". Another pirated edition, another work.

I am only slightly embarrassed that my interest in this coincides with Tom Hanks and bad hair. But there are many grails. It is a poem in seven "books". Each book has seven parts. Spicer called this a "serial" poem.

The point of this edition are the annotations. There are many references in the poem to Arthurian legend. I tried to track down these references. I annotate non-traditionally. I used a code that enables "one-to-many" links. It is quite novel. Suat, a frequent tagger on right, helped with making the code work properly. Many thanks, Suat.

At this point, only the first two "books" are annotated. There is much to be done. But you can read through the whole poem if you like. The best browser to use to view these pages is Firefox. They work fine with Netscape as well. You will run into problems if you use Internet Explorer.

Spicing the Grail

Man Gave Names to All the Animals

As the school term winds down here and a flurry of final papers that need to be graded descends upon me, I've noticed that the most creative bit of writing that I'll ever see from my students doesn't really occur in the essay proper. Instead, it's tucked away, in the top left-hand corner of every paper, right after the heading "Instructor: ..."

I've been named a good many things in these past two years. The obvious mispellings still occur even after I've been with a class for the entire semester. The most common are the relatively basic additions or changes that remind the teacher that he's got his own name spelt wrongly and that there is a better way to spell it. To these students, I'm either "Gari Lim" or "Garry Lim", depending on their dislike for "y"s or penchant for "r"s. Then, there are the students who refuse to believe that my name is indeed a two-syllable word and insist on transforming it into a comment on my personality or outlook on life. To them, I'm "Gray Lim". Others decide that I'm really quite a jolly chap. Either that or they insist taking our class discussions about sexual identity one step further by calling my declared heterosexuality into question and labelling me "Gay Lim". Just last week, one student insisted that "Gary" was much too common for her tastes and opted for a version that put me right in the middle of the 18th century, parasols and a Jane Austen novel: "Garrick Lim".

My last name has come under assault as well. Some students, probably after a nasty case of food poisoning in Chinatown or an unpleasant run-in with Canal street touts, rather not have a Chinese teacher teach them English. To them, I'm Korean and "Gary Kim". The most subtle substitution so far has been a powerful indictment of the meaningless and arbitrary conventions with which we phoneticize Mandarin names with the latin alphabet: "Gary Lym".

And today, I received a paper that just took the cake. I haven't really worked out what this student was thinking, but hey, I'm open to suggestions:

On Power

If power lacke on any syde on that syde is no power, but no power is wretchydnesse. For al be it so the power of emperours or kynges or els of their realmes (whiche is the power of the prince) stretchen wyde and brode, yet besydes is ther mokel folke of whiche he hath no commaundement ne lordshyppe; and there as lacketh his power his nonpower entreth, whereunder springeth that maketh hem wretches. No power is wretchydnesse and nothing els. But in this maner hath kynges more porcion of wretchydnesse than of power. Trewly, suche powers ben unmighty, for ever they ben in drede howe thilke power from lesyng may be keped of sorow; so drede sorily prickes ever in their hertes: litel is the power whiche careth and ferdeth it selfe to mayntayne. Unmighty is that wretchydnesse whiche is entred by the ferdful wenynge of the wretche himselfe, and knot ymaked by wretchydnesse is betwene wretches; and wretches al thyng bewaylen. Wherfore the knot shulde be bewayled, and there is no suche parfyte blysse that we supposed at the gynnyng. Ergo, power in nothyng shulde cause suche knottes. Wretchydnesse is a kyndely propertie in suche power as by way of drede whiche they mowe not eschewe ne by no way lyve in sykernesse. For thou woste wel," quod she, "he is nought mighty that wolde done that he may not done ne perfourme."

-- Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love Book 2 Chapter VII

Promptly ...

Promptly at nine, start the section

He tried to steal my pen
Lehman? My High school
Was up in the Bronx
"Walton High?"

Thick stubby nails chewed through
I went to Bronx Science
"Bronx Science?!"
Yeah ... Bronx Science

With woolly beard overflowing face
There's a story about that
I was good at
Math still am

"NYC. 2005 Samuel R. Delany"
Took the special exams
And got in -- Math
I'm good at not Science

"And the name's ... Gary?"
After four years
I was still a
Sophomore

"And Carnivals ... I'll read some"
Wasn't structured enough
Skipped out too
Many classes

"Is Atlantis ... that and Of Plagues ..."
So I dropped out took
The GED
And had a baby

"My only experimental work ..."
I'm going to major in
Accounting -- I'm
Good at Math

Promoting Explicit Political Views

Read this most strange report on Channel News Asia:

???

about the prohibition of PROMOTING political views: "Dr Balaji added that individual bloggers can discuss politics, but have to register with the Media Development Agency if they persistently promote political views."

The complete failure (refusal or inability?) to recognize the multiple ironies inherent in presenting an overtly ideological position as non-political "policy", once again has me in wondering about who lives in an alternate reality.

For my part -- here's a link to an implicitly impolitic media clip that isn't being promoted on this non-political blog about food production -- here's the Chee Soon Juan "when you hear this, I will be in prison" clip (which of course, is also worth listening to now because he was in and is now out ...) -- must listen -- how often does one get references to Winston Churchill, a strange political-analogical reading of "The Three Little Pigs" (featuring the "Wolf of Despotism"), the "national lie", biblical overtones ("As I sit in prison, I ask for your prayers, but more importantly ...) and of course, much alliteration ("taunts and torments" / "feeble facade"). For stuff like that from the PAP, need to wait for crisis like SARS (check out Ng Eng Hen's strange extended metaphor on the "war" against SARS near the bottom of the page ....) I hope this doesn't sound like I'm mocking a politician here -- afterwards Opposition sue me .... Check it out -- the Man is worth listening to ...

It doesn't often get better than this ...

So now got 6 links to the clip on one page ... does that mean I'm promoting explicitly political views?

Chilli!

It's just a bowl of chilli. With Ms. Tan away, I decided to experiment with making chili. I've always liked the thing -- my first encounters with this strangely named American dish were in the now defunct Wendy's fastfood joint at Far East Plaza. It's yummy food and I order it often enough when I eat out. I know it's really easy to make (otherwise I wouldn't bother) but I must say that doing it yourself gives one a certain kind of pleasure (yes, the knowledge that I can cook to please myself is an added bonus). Anyway -- this was the last bowl from the first batch. I've been eating this stuff since Ms. Tan went for her conference, so I've been at it for three days. Of course, there's always been a slightly obsessive streak with me and trying out stuff; so, I decided to make another batch!

Many options were considered. "Another Pot of Chilli for Three Days?" (the problem with obsessions is that one lives with the consequences ...) "Why not use Short Ribs instead?" "Should I do it with Beer?" (I briefly fondled a bottle of Guiness at the supermarket ...), "Should I do a Vegetarian version?" (I decided against that in the end as Ms. Tan's presence will provide many opporunities for experimentation with vegetables ...) I finally ended up deciding to stick to basically the same combination of ingredients, to see if I could replicate the pleasant effects of the first batch.

But -- the supermarket didn't seem to have nice looking ground beef. The cheap ground beef looked strange (actually this other guy picked it up and his girlfriend scolded him ... so I took my cue from there ...) So I ended up having to do a combo thing -- some chicken and some minced sirloin (more expensive than just regular ground beef). This I seasoned with a liberal sprinkling of just about every spice and seasoning we have in the kitchen ... which we own through the culmulative courtesies of people who have visited ...



More key ingredients: the Beans! I like Black Beans so I decided to stick with them. And just so that I could say that this batch was slightly different from the first one, I got Pinto Beans. They taste like baked beans without Ketchup ... And GOYA is my brand, man. They make a whole range of Latino food staples.

Next, the mandatory onion. Watching lots of FoodNetwork has convinced me that Rachel Ray's Onion Chopping method is the best. She slices it in half, makes vertical incisions, then works her way across the body. I always get the direction wrong ("wah leow, how come the Onion is coming part" ... adjust ... adjust ... "wah leow, now the juice is making me cry ...") BUT this time I was deliberate! (NOT obsessive compulsive obviously -- can't remember the direction to turn the Onion ...) And of course, you need those Jalepeno peppers. I got three good sized ones. They're actually quite hot but don't have the bite of chinese green chillies. I took out the seeds, though -- ripped them out with my thumb -- which probably explains why I'm typing with fingers on slight fire ...


And the whole lot went into the skillet for a good stir fry. This is our power skillet from Singapore -- that we were made to lug all the way here. But it's served us well for two years and even I can't ruin it with my lousy cooking technique. (These pictures were taken after a minor incident of the oil getting too hot and popping out of the pan ... got that under control ... I was aiming for the "smoking" oil stage but I guess there was some water in the skillet ... and the oil decided it would pop instead of smoke ... )
and while that's cooking, in go the beans. Into the crockpot (which we own courtesy of Singaporean earning lots of money living in New York who has no time to cook ...) I have grown MOST attached to this crockpot. It's endured my Beef Stew ("too much tumeric !!! You think this is curry, ah?"), my Orr Bee Bey (stripped down to no longer include Pandan leaves or Gula Melaka ... when I do it now, it JUST has the black glutinous rice ...) And now, it's being put through its paces with chilli making.

Ok -- all proper Chilli chefs got secret ingredient. They have whole competitions and it's a big time thing. For me, I just randomly ran into this little can at the Supermarket and thought that I would give it a try. They worked really well, these Chipotle peppers -- so now I can call them my secret ingredient. They give a nice smokey feel to the Chilli. I cut them up and throw them in, seeds and all. Three are quite enough, very power.




So final combination of everything in the pot, final stir. (Of course I will check this REPEATEDLY, as if it really matters ...) and food for the next three days!