The Sidney Awards

Links to some great reading ... here and here

[sic]

Okay, this is a little strange but here goes. Anyone reading academic articles inevitably comes across that little notation "sic", inserted to indicate an error in whatever one is quoting. "Sic", which translates from the Latin as "Thus,so", is meant to indicate that the error is present in the original and not through the fault or oversight of the present writer.

I've always wondered why people bother – might as well just correct the 'error', especially if it's a grammatical or spelling mistake. But "sic" is often used as a dig at whomever one quotes as well. First, it demonstrates fallibility in one's sources, especially useful if you're arguing against them. Second, "sic" can be put to ideological uses as well. If one reads feminist journals, one comes across examples such as

"Speech is no mere verbalization of conflicts and systems of domination. . . it is the very object of man's [sic] conflicts" (Foucault 1972b, 216)

I'm assuming that "sic" was used because the authors of the essay objected to Foucault's (or the translator of Foucault's) universalizing use of "man" to refer to "humankind".

And what really prompted this entry. Check out the multiple "sic"s on the tracklisting of this CD of Rev. Gary Davis, one of the greatest blues/ragtime/gospel fingerstyle guitarists that ever recorded material! I can't for the life of me figure out why "sic" is used here. Ok ... maybe "Baby, What You Going To Do" (track 3) is ungrammatical (but come on, it's a title and these are the blues... ) and perhaps these were titles the Rev. gave to his performances aren't the proper ones.

Anyway – it's just really strange.

Nothing but the Radio on ...

It must be the terrible weather that makes you turn on the radio a lot (internet radio in this case) and hang out with voices coming across the void on waves of sound. A few weeks ago, we attended a "Sweet Honey in the Rock" concert. It was superb acapella singing for over two hours and extremely inspiring as well. I'd learnt about the group when I was in JC (and getting into the whole protest music phase) and it was a real treat to watch them in concert. Anyway, here's a link to the NPR page where they perform and talk about their music. At least listen to the track "I Remember, I Believe", which was written by the founder of the group Bernice Johnson Reagon. It's a tremendously good song and it's sung fantastically by the group.

Another thing I've been listening to is the "Prairie Home Companion". It sounds silly, but there's some great humor and bluegrass, folk, jazz, and gospel on the program. The host, Garrison Keller, is really funny and sings wonderfully too and they've got great special effects guys doing all sorts to sound effects acrobatics. A recent program featured Billy Collins, a former poet laureate whose office was right opposite mine at Lehman College (Never caught a glimpse of him though -- must have had different teaching days). Anyway, his poems are really great -- funny, smart and poignant. Here's a link to the program, and play the clip from about 10.35 to hear Collins read. The third poem, "Schoolsville", came on while I was picking up some groceries. He started reading it just about when I pulled into the carpark so I stayed in the car, because the moment was just perfect. The show also features the wonderful Madeleine Peyroux!

Iron and Wine

By divine providence and sheer good luck (actually I was searching for something for a section title for my chapter), I visited the "Morning Becomes Eclectic" and Lo and Behold, Iron and Wine was slated to play live at the station!
It's worth a listen if you like Iron and Wine. If you aren't already a fan, I sure this set will convert you. He mainly sings material from his new album : The Shepherd's Dog. He does an acoustic version of "Boy with a Coin" which is really great, even though the rich textures of the album version is also mind-blowing. He also sings the extremely moving "Ressurection Fern" and does a very tender version of the epic song "The Trapeze Swinger" (where there's a point when he has to censor himself for radio), and the hauntingly beautiful (if grammatical strange) "He Lays in the Reins".

Listen to it here! (I'm glad I listened to it 'live' cause the link doesn't seem to work properly -- then again, it might just be my connection and you might have better luck)

Other Iron and Wine performances:
NPR World Cafe. (Interview and Studio performance)
In Concert

Sourdough's Song

Sourdough shows why every dog should have her own theme song. For those of you who want to hear it (and those of you who want to turn it off just in time), it comes on in the second half of the video. In the meantime, one could do worse than Gerry Mulligan playing at the Village Vanguard ...

Sourdough in the Snow

Meme (with thanks to and text from AnonymousNoises)

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, iPaq etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

01 - OPENING CREDITS: Penance (OST The Mission) - Ennio Morricone
02 - WAKING UP: Vertigo -Chris Potter
03 - FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL: Easter - Patti Smith Group
04 - FALLING IN LOVE: Free - Ornette Coleman
05 - FIGHT SONG: Old Friends - Simon and Garfunkel
06 - BREAKING UP: Bad Whiskey - Skip James
07 - PROM: My Old Flame - Charlie Parker
08 - LIFE: African Mailman - Nina Simone
09 - MENTAL BREAKDOWN: Love Comes to Me - Bonnie "Prince" Billy
10 - DRIVING: Freedom Time - Lauryn Hill
11 - FLASHBACK: Equinox - John Coltrane
12 - WEDDING: Breathless - The Corrs
13 - BIRTH OF CHILD: Lazy Bones - Skip James
14 - FINAL BATTLE: Blue in Green - Bill Evans Trio
15 - DEATH SCENE: Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues - Bob Dylan
16 - FUNERAL SONG: All or Nothing At All - Diana Krall
17 - END CREDITS: You Got the Pocket Book, I Got the Key - Stefan Grossman

Sourdough plays fetch!

Visiting

The past two and a half weeks have been an enjoyable if physically exhausting time. Edna's brother, cousin and friend visited and we tried our best to show them a good time. That's not that easy to do in Lansing though I think they did have quite a relaxing and hopefully fulfilling time. I got a lot of practice driving since Edna had to be in school and I'm the one with the "flexible" schedule.

The most memorable trip we took was to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It was memorable largely because of the rugged beauty of the dunes and the magnificent views of Lake Michigan. Of course, there was the crazy climb. We were at the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, with all the other old folks and retirees, admiring the views of Lake Michigan. Then Edna decides that it would be fun and challenging to scramble down the 450 foot bluff. There's actually a warning sign that suggests that you not try it but, well, I guess the thrill of being physically challenged augments one's judgment. If Edna was going, I was as well. I'd seen one young man crawl up and sit breathlessly on the boardwalk, so I knew that it would be difficult. Anyway, we made the descent easily enough and the high bluff loomed ominously above us. Going down, we passed another guy, who could only say, "It's very tough ..." as he scrambled up the sand past us.

To give an idea of how physically demanding the thing was: we had to climb on all fours, we kept slipping because of the sand, and we had to stop every twenty steps because our hearts were beating so hard and our limbs were fatigued. And we're not exactly out of shape -- we've been running quite a lot. After a while we realized that we were providing some entertainment / drama for people at the top who were taking pictures of the Asian couple crazy enough to make the climb. We did make it, after about half an hour of climbing, and were congratulated by an old couple who were monitoring our progress up the bluff ("We were wondering if you'd make it before the park closed ....") Apart from the sense of achievement, we came away with sand filled shoes, forearms, quads, and gluts that ached for several days after, and a healthy respect for warning signs (more me than Edna).

Anyway, some pics:

The long descent. If one looks carefully, you can actually see a person at the beach already. This was the other guy that tried the climb while we were there.










This pic was taken at about the half-way mark, it was about a 45 to 60 degree (?) incline. Anyway, after a while you lost sight of the boardwalk at the top of the bluff and really began to feel alone.

















Of course we finally make it down and have all the way up ahead of us.












One of our many rest stops. I think the number of stops we made dissuaded anyone else from attempting the climb...












"Let me be your manifestation in the granite streets of the cities, leaving you free for all unencumbered missions. I will be your mark. You will be my meaning. I will be your sign. You will be my signification. You will be the freer, relieved of the mark I carry, to move more fully, further, faster." (S.R. Delany, Flight From Neveryon)

HOooooooowwwwwwwl

Here's a recording of Ginsburg reading Howl commemorating a 50th Anniversary:

Howl

True Confessions

As always, here are some thoughts very after an event.

Quite a while back, Otto Fong, science teacher at RI outed himself as gay on a blog-post. Some of the subsequent commentary on the event takes up the questions of homo-sexuality as identity in interesting ways. As I understand it (from the little that I've read), queer theorists tend to now eschew thinking about fundamental identities to think about a range of practices -- a way of thinking about things that debunks the "homo-hetero" dualism, as well as the "normal-deviant" axis. The strength of this kind of thinking and research enables the situation of particular practices rather than pre-ordained identities as the locus of discussion. It also spreads out the sense of 'queerness' because practices within "hetero" sexual relationships that were formerly considered 'safe' from critical inquiry (ie protected because hetero identities are always already assumed to escape the critical eye) can now be connected with practices that are more usually associated with "homosexuality". Work that takes this approach often reveals how intensely culturally bound the prejudices that we take for granted are. For instance, we barely blink an eye when we think about the use of contraception (even though a very large and powerful religion still frowns on it), but in a certain time of human history it was a really really bad thing: what was probably the most common form of contraception in the Middle Ages, coitus interuptus, was considered an unnatural act, and within the mystifying equivalences of the Church's spiritual economy, would have been a worse sin than committing incest with one's own daughter. But that's enough titillation for one blog post (and far too penetrating a glimpse into my research ...)

Yet part of the practice of sexuality in this particular case is the act of "coming out". In an interesting way, "coming out" is a practice that is strangely connected to that older spiritual and moral institution, the Confessional. There are obvious differences. In "coming out", the individual isn't confessing a sin; indeed, one of the reasons for "coming out" is to re-establish for the individual, what is out there in the open, what doesn't need to be hidden, and of course, what therefore shouldn't be regarded as sinful. At the same time, there is a cathartic element to "coming out" that may match or even trump the ritual cleansing associated with the Confessional. More interesting, I think, is the way "coming out" potentially disrupts the way the Confessional works as a form of internalized surveillance camera on the conscience. Confessionals, as a mode of social spiritual control, are turned on their head in a move like Fong's, and are enabled by the paradoxical (public yet intimate) technology of confession that is the Blog.

If the mainstream media is any gauge of popular opinion on the subject, I figure the general position of the "liberal but concerned" individual would be this: "Coming out of the closet is fine but only with family, close friends and peers". There are clear limits to the audience for a Confession. However, like the ritual of Confession, "coming out" must necessarily straddle the institution and the interior, for an effect to be properly wrought. If indeed the Confessional was also a potent tool for the moral instruction of the believer -- you confess your sins, you get instructed in the right way by doing penances assigned by the Confessor -- one interesting question is how "coming out" is itself a potent pedagogical tactic. I know this sounds trivializing, but for individuals for whom educating means more than a paycheck at the end of the month, it may make some sense.

"Coming out" makes the teacher human. I think that too many teachers are far too distant and always on their guard about who they are to be effective in communicating their intellectual passions and interests. Of course, not every teacher is going to have something news-worthy to "come out" (now, obviously, loosely used) about, but surely there are elements in every teachers life, that while not directly related to the subject matter at hand, may strike a chord with his or her students. And while some may accuse this kind of stripping away at oneself as purely self-indulgent attention seeking behavior, I think there's something to be said about the way being vulnerably human establishes an indissoluble tie between persons.

Perhaps one of the greatest privileges I had was to study the poetry of Robert Lowell in JC. The following poem, Waking in the Blue, in the stark naked voice of one of the greatest poets of the confession, illustrates the power of the confessional:

The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,
rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head
propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day
makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense
as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.")

What use is my sense of humour?
I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,
once a Harvard all-American fullback,
(if such were possible!)
still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,
as he soaks, a ramrod
with a muscle of a seal
in his long tub,
vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,
worn all day, all night,
he thinks only of his figure,
of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--
more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's;
the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie,"
Porcellian '29,
a replica of Louis XVI
without the wig--
redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,
as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit
and horses at chairs.

These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.

In between the limits of day,
hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts
and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle
of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower
screwballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast,
I weigh two hundred pounds
this morning. Cock of the walk,
I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey
before the metal shaving mirrors,
and see the shaky future grow familiar
in the pinched, indigenous faces
of these thoroughbred mental cases,
twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers,
each of us holds a locked razor.

NoteBooks

I was straightening out my things today and realized that I've accumulated quite a pile of notebooks. You'd think that in this techno-driven age the notebook would be an outdated thing of the past. But I've grown to love my notebooks. I think I've filled up quite a number since 2004: I've got the two tiny ones that I use to record the details of mundane happenings. The first was even featured on this blog as a strange romp in the weird imaginative universe of Limitlim. The second is now mostly filled with driving directions, calorie counts and places to bring people when they visit little ol' Lansing. (It's also an overpriced "I-don't-believe-you-paid-that-much-money-for-a-few pieces-of-paper-sewn-together" Moleskine ...)

As for bigger work related notebooks, I think I filled in about five or six hundred pages worth of notebooks while I was doing coursework. I've noticed that a lot of people take classes without needing to jot things down but note-taking has always been a security blanket for me. I've got small handwriting too so the wall of words looks pretty cool when the blanks are all filled in. The first notebook that I used here in the U.S. is quite funny because I was trying to save space. I managed to write really densely -- doubling the lines of text for each ruled line in some instances. (I later found cheap notebooks -- from India, thus further internationalizing my academic endeavors -- in the dollar stores along 125th street ...)










While studying for the Orals I took another two hundred pages of notes (in addition to typing out about two hundred more pages of more coherent reading reports for the consumption of my Committee). I reckon that these pages will come in useful when I begin to teach this material and so my students to be will be treated to dusty spiral bound pages flipped to and fro as I search out that elusive insight that I'm sure I recorded. And no I do not love MSU -- it just was the notebook on sale at the bookstore here when I ran out and needed a new one. Essentially, I've used spiral bound notebooks during my time here: they're are quite convenient except that they leave an imprint on one's writing hand and sometimes turn inconsistently if they're poorly made. I had one where the metal spiraling kept come loose and I always had to struggle with it to pull it out of my bag as the wiring would get caught in fabric.

As for the latest addition to my family of notebooks, I got myself a nice Miquelrius notebook (Mine's a "flexible" leather notebook). It was a bit of a splurge (I'm too embarrassed to confess to how much it cost) and it really looks like a Moleskine imitation -- with elastic band and all. It's a nice thick notebook (300 pages -- and breaking it in I've realized that it's really hard to write on the verso side of the pages because it's still so fat on one end ... ) and should last me the dissertation.

I like notebooks.

Starting up all over again

After a pleasant week of pottering around, enjoying the cold, working out and calorie counting like a teenage girl, testing new recipes, watching many movies and playing around with Facebook, it's time to get going again. Now the immediate objective is to cobble together a dissertation prospectus ("there's a ten page limit but your bibliography isn't a works cited page ... it's meant to be long ..."). Ten pages isn't a lot -- and that's where the challenge lies. I need to lay out where I stand in the scholarship, say something about my original contribution, discuss my theoretical approach and outline my chapters -- all within 10 pages.

Apparently the 10 page proposal is pretty standard for book proposals in the humanities -- so the prospectus is meant to force one to be succinct. I'm planning to work on the Family (of course, this means interrogating and re-thinking what "family" means) in Middle English poetry. My tentative title (I think it's quite a nice one): Familiar Estrangements: The Practice of Family in Middle English Romance. The first task -- to read up on the history of the family in the middle ages -- represented by this stack -- and hopefully obtain some confirmation of my intuitions ...



Here's Sourdough making sure
I have the right books and working
out which ones will be the most tasty ...

Some things I've been watching

I haven't really written about the films I've been watching in a while -- so here's a short list.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
The Paper Chase
The Jacket (this was Edna scouting out less known Keira Knightly films)
Domino (Another Keira Knightly film that was really quite funny and great fun ... she's a bounty hunter in this one)
Several Louis Malle documentaries (The Criterion Collection's got a 'new'ish line which releases less well known works by great film-makers. It's aptly named Eclipse. I've had the good fortune of watching (or 'archiving', ahem) the first two sets: The Early Films of Bergman and the Documentaries of Louis Malle.
Eric Rohmer: Suzanne's Career and The Bakery Girl of Monceau.
Basquiat!

I've also starting viewing Roberto Rossilini's post-war trilogy of films: Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero. Thanks to the excellent public interlibrary loan system that connects different libraries throughout Michigan State, I've been able to get a hold of some pretty interesting materials.

Finally Facebooked

I've succumbed to signing up for a Facebook account after receiving the "n"th email invite. Being the unconnected person that I am, these web-networking things never sustain my interest for very long -- I have Friendster and Multiply accounts but never check them out. I know Facebook is cool -- I've already seen guys with whom I was friends with in ACS on a friend of a friend's profile -- and presumably I could get in touch with them if I were so inclined. Anyway, I've come to think of these connectivity things as distorted reflections of genuine social relations (are we getting into Marx here?), though I'm sure there are proponents of these network things who love Facebook. Anyway, two thoughts:

1. How long would it take for two very separate circles of friends on Facebook to finally come full circle and link up with one another? I'm guessing that for most people, the people that are their friends on Facebook come from a very specific sphere of their lives. For me, it would be all 'em young 'uns that I've had the privilege of teaching. But because Facebook cleverly scans your email account, I also have (one) a friend from an earlier life -- when I was a student at RJ. Now -- the question would be how large would my network have to be before my "peers" link up to my "students". To make this a fair thought experiment, the link cannot replicate the social situation that got me acquainted with either circle. For example, the networking doesn't come full-circle if one of my former students now gets taught by a classmate of mine. (I don't think it can work the other way). Here's the thing. The most probable way that the circles will overlap is through blood relations. Some student somewhere is a nephew, niece, or cousin of one of my friends. But even if this were the case, the fact that Facebook culture governs who ends up being friends with another person, suggests that these 'blood' relationships probably won't get manifested in a Facebook network. (The best way to get your child off Facebook is to become friends with all his / her friends). Of course, the OTHER way that relationships are established would be virtually, through Facebook itself -- the medium is the message. But for the experiment to be 'fair', people can't be allowed to become friends via Facebook.

2. Another experiment. Say you take two people who are pretty close to each other. (For example, Ms. / Dr. Edna Tan ie the wife and I). Each person signs up for a Facebook account but can't add the other person. I'm convinced that it's possible for us to exist as Facebook accounts without our network circles touching.

Anyway, in the spirit of Facebook, here are some pictures that I've put up on my profile:

Album

Get it ?

Done

It's 5.50 in the morning and the sounds of the City that never sleeps but always dreams in fits and starts have kept me awake since I tried to go to bed several hours ago. Another thing that's been keeping me up -- the caffeine from the great diner we discovered (it had great Eggs Florentine with a really interesting sauce -- pretty fancy for a diner, I think ...) and too many cups of Chinese tea from XO in Chinatown. And of course, the last thing that's keeping me awake is all the adrenaline that's still coursing through my body from the Oral Exams that took place yesterday.

For the first time in my life, I was actually overdressed for an occasion. I've actually seen candidates and examiners emerge from the 'thesis' room (so named because every thesis that has been written under the auspices of the English program at the CUNY GC lines its walls, therefore making it a significant but intimidating venue for the exam -- as my Committee Chair put it, "We could have the exam in my office but we'll do it here so that you'll REALLY remember this room ...") decked out in suits and other formal apparel. But all three examiners were rather casually dressed which was a good sign, I suppose.

So we had "intellectual conversation" for about two hours, with my Committee asking me a wide ranging series of questions about the theoretical, thematic, stylistic, and of course, idiosyncratic elements of the books that I've read over the past few months. Anyway -- I thought it was a very fulfilling experience and I was really tired after the whole affair. By the time my third examiner started asking the questions, I was barely cognizant of what I was saying. Anyway, of the several "low-lights" in the exam, I remember three in particular ( since the ordeal is over, I guess I should say "remember three rather fondly"):

1. This was on my Old English / Middle English Romance / Arthurian list, which was second in questioning order. The response started out fine. I mentioned "Genesis B" as a particularly interesting text because it depicts, in ways that are pretty startling for an early work, Satan in a somewhat sympathetic light (and hence the theory that Milton may have encountered this work). After discussing the way the feudal relationship marks out Satan's character and motivations and his longing to return to his former glory, the questions turned to the way the temptation itself worked. And immediately I knew that I would be in trouble in one of two questions because my mind drew a blank as to how the poem embellishes the temptation scenes. All I could recall was that the demonic tempter poses as a messenger of God to Adam, adopting the role of the servant loyal to a liege lord. What escaped my memory was the fact that Adam rejects the offer because there's not 'written' proof of his status as vassal and that Eve succumbs because the demon entices her with a vision of what acceding would bring (medieval writers had a rich imagination when it came to fleshing out the word of God). I was reduced to an apologetic, "I'm sorry, I really can't remember the specifics ..."

2. The next difficult moment occurred on a question on my more 'theoretical' list, the psychoanalytical material. Essentially, the question was about how theorists apart from Lacan take up the vexed question of how the ego fits into a post-Freudian re-reading of things. Anyway, I launched into a tentative spiel (trying to sound confident but obviously betraying my befuddlement at how to approach the question) about how Luce Irigary's work seems to be taking the Freudian text itself as a problematic ego that ends up suffering different contradictions and resistances when she 'analyzes' it as a feminist, which drew the response, "That's interesting, but I was thinking more about Teresa ...." And then it clicked in my mind, ah yes, Teresa Brennan and her notion of the age of the ego ... Ah well ...

3. When opening his section on the third and final part of the exam, my Comm Chair candidly said that despite his section being the theoretical bit, he would endeavor to end the section by weaving in a question on Langland (the medieval writer of Piers Plowman), "who hasn't yet been mentioned today". And he made good on his promise by closing the exam with a question of how the family is embodied by the text. The difficult thing here is that there aren't that many explicit references to family in the text. I managed to point out how the autobiographical sections added to the C-text as well as a brief allegorical drama involving the Soul in the castle of the Flesh, 'use' the family in literal as well as didactic ways. At the back of my mind I was going to say something about the four daughters of God (Truth, Justice, Mercy, Peace) who make an appearance at the harrowing of Hell but I figured it was 1. too conventional and 2. not quite the Thing that the question was looking for. Of course, my Prof brilliantly elaborated on my answer to point out that one of the most striking moments (unfortunately it didn't strike me) of how the family is embodied by the text is in the description of Piers Plowman, his wife and his oddly (and extravagantly) named children. Unlike the two earlier moments of absolutely drawing a blank and immediate recognition, this moment had my memory gurgling with the faint impression that, yeah, I vaguely recalled that ... he's right.

Anyway, there were several highlights as well, but my overall experience of the thing was that it was really effective as an initiatory rite into the pursuits and conversations that are supposed to consume the rest of my academic and intellectual life. The fact that I'm expected to carry out conversations at the same level of erudition and eloquence as my examiners remains a pretty daunting prospect. I'm still amazed at how exhausted I was after the two hours, not so much intellectually but physically as well: I was ready to zone out for the rest of the evening (but obviously haven't managed to). Anyway, I ended up passing the exam (with distinction, thanks to the generosity of my Committee) and am now formally advanced to candidacy. Or, to use one of the most dreaded acronyms of grad school, I'm now ABD: All But Dissertation.

I'm going to kick back for a few days, watch the U.S. Open (on TV), eat real food in New York, begin reading "Anna Karenina", and of course, meet with my dissertation Sup on Monday to discuss my plans for the dissertation.

Notes on Nerves

With about four days to go before the big day -- the Oral Exams -- I'm getting a little nervous.

I've been reviewing the notes that I've taken over the last 8 months and making notes from those notes...

Sometimes, it all comes together nicely:

Melancholia: Freud: pathological because of 1. the nature of the object cathexis in the first place : not true object libido but took the object into the ego narcissistically. 2. leads to the identification that cannot de-cathect from the object: the loss object is experienced as a loss to own ego. In a sense, if we connect this to neurosis and a failure within Lacan's symbolic structure, the inability to de-cathect is a failure to find the right substitution in language (because the object is related to metonymically and can't be transformed into metaphor). The breakdown of the metaphorical system, where the absent mother of the Fort-Da game, cannot be replaced in language.

Sometimes, I wish I took better notes:

ln1785: Honor's Court -- given very rigid allegorical schema of courtly positions. The ornate allocation - complex heirarchy - again - a thinking 'back' on allegorical convention (PP?) -- but here 'done' so 'perfectly' developed. [what the hell was I thinking ...?]

Braking and Accelerating into the Last Century

As faithful readers of this blog happen to know, I passed the driving test about a week ago. I just got my license in the mail and I'm pretty amazed by the fact that I can now legally operate a highly dangerous machine -- a true symbol of the last century -- without 'adult supervision.'

It's not a big deal, I know, especially in a place where kids can start driving a few months after their 14th birthday, and celebrity car crashes and 'children-of-celebrities' driving incidents are constantly in the news. I suppose being "unlicensed" at 33 is akin to being the 40-year-old virgin. But since getting a driver's license pretty much a 'coming-of-age' thing in our post-industrial societies, I guess I can't really claim to be a luddite hold-out (also sometime concerned environmentalist -- "If I drove, I'd contribute to pollution" -- and pseudo sympathizer of the working classes -- "What about all those people who HAVE to take public transport because they can't afford to drive?").

I'm still pretty uncomfortable behind the wheel but at least I'm a functional driver now. If I'd taken lessons and the exam in the motherland, I'd probably still be clanging gears and desperately trying to swerve through 'S' courses. The good thing about learning how to drive in Automobile land is that it's a practical skill that's much needed and test standards take that into account. I'm pretty fortunate that I've gotten to drive a lot while learning how to drive and after I've passed, as I know so many people back home who after getting a license never got the chance to drive cause it just costs so much to own a car. (Eg. Edna only really got a chance to drive several years after getting a license because she had access to my mom's car -- and of course because I don't drive ...)

Anyway, some scenes from my history as a learner driver. I actually took a couple of lessons in Singapore before deciding that driving was not for me:

Taking the Theory Test:
Police guy administering the test: Ok, no writing until I say so. All of you look up at me when I give the instructions. You [not me, I was one of the meekly compliant] -- why you not looking up -- you trying to cheat? Get out. You fail already.

The first practical lesson takes us back to about 1996 (it must have been ...) when I rather belatedly decided to sign up for lessons at the Bukit Batok Driving School. First lesson:
(Before anything happens and I'm sitting in the car)
Me: Hello.
Instuc: You got a brother who works here, right?
Me: No.
Instruc: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, quite sure.
Instruc: You drive before, right?
Me: Nope.
Instuc: Don't bluff, you drive before right?
Me: Err, no.

After another lesson like this, I decided that learning how to drive wasn't something I wanted to do. Of course there was that CRASH that happened when I tried to head my mom's car into the driveway of our house. Somehow, despite all the intensive theory instruction that's required in Singapore, no one told me about idling speed.

Driving lessons here were much more pleasant. I actually took lessons with an ang moh lady (6 in all) as Edna and I decided that for her to teach me how to drive would be a quick way to end the marriage. But Edna was really patient and indulgent in allowing me lots of time in the car while I was still learning. Leading to scenes like the following:

Me: So I'm going to turn left here once traffic clears. (Car inches uncooperatively forward)
ET: 你在做什么？
Me: I'm going to go left after that car. (Car right in the intersection, possibly endangering lives)
ET: 你在做什么!？
Me: I'm waiting for the red to complete the turn.
ET: 你在做什么!!!
Me: Why are you shouting at me in Chinese! (Car accelerates into the turn then stops and starts lurching forward strangely)
ET: 你在做什么!!!!
Me: There's something wrong with the car! It won't go forward! Ah, wrong pedal...

Anyway, I think I'm pretty safe on the roads now. Apart for Edna's insistence that we reverse into parking lots (esp. after I put the car into "Drive" when I should have reversed out of a lot), I think anyone could entrust their lives to me. The good thing about learning to drive is that I'm a pretty good at navigation (a skill that Edna hasn't really cultivated cause I always work out the directions), so if the PhD doesn't work out, at least I can say that I learned a skill in the US and make a living driving people around.

In the Midst of the Storm

There have been flash thunderstorms that ripped through where we live in the past two days. These lasted only 5-10 minutes but were pretty scary because of the force of the water and the winds. Yesterday's storm was especially bad. Power lines were shut down (no nice underground cabling like in New York or Singapore here) because tree branches thrown onto the lines. I also saw some power line poles that had they're heads broken off. We took a walk (because Sourdough needed a walk) after the storm and there was quite a lot of physical damage to the trees. Two huge pine trees that flank our building -- they reach up to the third story, so I'm guessing they're about 30 feet tall -- were uprooted and lay on their side like felled giants. Over by the pond, a huge willow tree was uprooted as well. This was probably the event of the week for most people staying here and lots of people were out of their apartments -- gawking at the uprooted trees, taking photos with their cell-phones and generally taking in the spectacle of the storm's aftermath.

Anyway, after losing power, our first reaction was to figure out how to make sure all the food we had stashed in the fridge and freezer wouldn't have to be thrown away. We had no idea how long the outage would last, so we decided that we might as well make an event of things (the slightly celebratory mood was probably enhanced by the fact that I've passed my driving test - a kind of final frontier for me - and the recent news that several of Edna's papers from her dissertation have been accepted in top education journals) and go out and get a grill and grill all that food as it thawed.

A quick phone call to a more grill savvy friend narrowed down our options quite quickly. Apparently there are laws about the kind of grill you can use on the balcony of an apartment in Lansing, so we could only get a gas grill -- the kind fueled by a propane tank. True aficionados don't think highly of gas-grills because charcoal and coal grills add aroma to the food but we didn't have much choice in this one. (Also, see this NYTimes video in the middle of the page, which I had chanced upon earlier in the day).

I used to do a lot of BBQing in Singapore (for large crowds -- having to feed the church youth group or my classes of students and where flavor was pretty much secondary to everything else that went on at one of these gatherings) but that was with charcoal grills which you had to take a lot of time to stoke and get up to heat, so I was pretty apprehensive about using a gas grill. The notion of attaching a propane tank to a flimsy nozzle and all the cautionary labels about the hazards and potential explosions were pretty scary. Plus, I was never very good with bunsen burners in secondary school (I shamefully recall the fact that the last time I attempt to turn one on, during my O-level Bio practical exam, I wasted precious minutes fiddling with matches and the gas control). At the same time, a gas grill is much cleaner and takes much less time to get into cooking mode. Anyway, we found a cheap (small, portable and "Made in China") one at Meijer (16 bucks), brought it home and assembled it. I had some trouble getting the grill ignited (because the in-built ignition switch doesn't work I think) and caused a pretty spectacular fire ball that would have singed off my beard if I had one (reminiscent of the silly stunts we tried to pull with 30 cent lighters in sec. school ... the most memorable being the blue flame running up one's jeans) when I finally got the thing going after using a gas lighter (must remember to let the gas clear if one fails to ignite the thing and not put my face right in the grill ...)

At which point, the electricity came back on, making the whole need to grill redundant. However, I just couldn't pass up on an opportunity to grill (after nearly burning off my eyebrows and inhaling lots of gas) so I quickly thawed out some chicken, rubbed it with a quick seasoning and proceeded to cook it. They turned out pretty nicely in the end. In fact, Edna was impressed enough (with the flavor, if not appearance) to declare that we would do a major grill session today!

Just in Time

Just in case readers of this blog were utterly disgusted with my last lengthy post on High School Musical, here are links to recent articles which suggest that we (reviewer of trivialities and irritated readers) are in good company:

Time Articles: Once more with (Chaste) Feeling! and one on Zac Efron.

Highly Guilty and Greasy Pleasures

In my last post I admitted that I didn't really like the slow-moving bulk of Camelot. This is generally true for me and musicals. Perhaps the only two movie musicals that I've enjoyed are The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. Of course I'm not really "into" musicals and haven't watched that many (my guess is that my familiarity with the genre is just about as lay-man as things get) so it might be wrong for me to even have an opinion about these things. In an effort at full disclosure, I'll admit that I fell asleep during Les Miserables, and didn't really enjoy The Phantom of the Opera or Miss Saigon. Also noted is the fact that despite living in New York for 2 1/2 years, I didn't watch a single musical despite walking by Times Square almost every week. The closest I got to a musical in New York was standing in queue at the Mama Mia discount booth in hopes of securing a cheap seat for my mom when she was visiting. (No luck - no student tix during the summer).

Which is why I was a little confused at my setting aside an entire evening to watch (on TV) an avowedly "bad" musical made for 10-14 year olds: Disney's High School Musical. Perhaps it was the desire to watch something truly commercial and mindless or some strange nostalgia for JC (the musical's portrayal of cliques and cool while hopelessly stereotypical had moments of truth). At any rate, while I'm still embarrassed about watching (and enjoying at some level) the in-your-face emotional caricaturing that shamelessly unfolded on the screen, watching this blockbuster hit for Disney did lead to some thoughts about the culture industry that so dominates our tastes and insinuates itself in our fantasies.

Most reviews of High School Musical compare it (unfavorably) to Grease. The superficial resemblances are striking: the leads meet each other on vacation (and vaguely flirt
while singing a Karaoke number), she comes to his school as a new transfer student (and he rules the school cause he's the cool captain of the Bball team), because of their attraction to each other they manage to break out of their cliques (he from the jocks and she from the brainiacs) to do something that they both love but have hidden from the rest of the world: singing. Like Grease, this journey is not without complications as friends try to pull them back into their circumscribed social roles in a tightly straited High School. And finally, the big event that all of us wait in anticipation for is a kind of performance (the final auditions for the parts in a musical in High School Musical and the spot on an American Bandstand-like show in Grease).

Aging Well
Despite these narrative similarities, there is a profound difference in the spirit of the movies. One just needs to look at the pictures of characters from one movie mapped against their counterparts in the other:




The male leads: Troy Bolton (School's Golden Boy) and Danny Zuko (questionably and ridiculously cool)




Their female counterparts and love interests: Gabriella Montez (Genius kid who's new to the school) and Sandy Olsson ("I'm from Sydney, Australia")




Sidekicks: Chad Danforth (basketball team mate) and Kenickie (fellow gang member)








Somewhat nasty female antagonists: Sharpay (!?) Evans (who leads her own clique that consists of her brother and herself as she tyrannically dictates the Drama Club and expects to star in the school's musical) and Rizzo (chief Pink Lady).



These images (I know to do this properly I need to get the DVDs and make proper screen captures but images off the web will have to do for now) are meant to demonstrate how a 1978 movie depiction of what a High-Schooler looks like has radically shifted in about 30 years. Of course, Rydell High is a very different place from Eastside High but just the age of the actors is telling. John Travolta was 24 when he played Danny Zuko, Olivia Newton John 30 (even though she looks closest to a 16-18 year old) and Stockard Channing (Rizzo) was 34! When one watches Grease now, you're struck by how impossibly old everyone looks. The cast of High School Musical, on the other hand, all range in and about high school age, with the oldest from our list (Ashley Tisdale, who plays the Sharpay character) being an old 22. So the shift demonstrates a fascination with youth that has overtaken our collective sense of what it means to represent being in school. (For more of this, go watch To Sir With Love). Of course, one could argue that Grease, made in 1978 but set in the 50s/60s deliberately cast older looking actors to bank on the nostalgia factor and High School Musical, made about Highschoolers but aimed at Tweenagers, wants everyone to look much younger. Still, I don't think that really detracts from my point that the cultural industry has managed to install a thirst for the Fountain of Youth in the collective consciousness.

A Place to Belong
Of course the other striking thing about the two films is the way they situate the lead characters with respect to the social structures of school culture. In Grease, all the action occurs in the margins of school life with Danny Zuko and his boys comprising the T-birds while Sandy tries to fit in with the Pink Ladies. Even the institutionally sanctioned finale (the first finale of the film's triple endings - the other two being the car race and then the reuniting of Danny and Sandy), the nationally televised dance-off, gets hijacked by these characters who don't really fit into the mainstream. What defines these characters is how far they stand from being integrated into a school community as they mock the athletes, spike the punch, and of course, moon all of America when they get the chance. But in High School Musical, no one is really on the outside. Troy Bolton is right in the middle of school life and even Gabriella quickly gets picked to be part of the school's Science Decathlon team. Even if the theme of this film is how borders are crossed, they're crossed from ostensibly safe positions of well-defined and institutionally accepted identities. Even the bad guys belong, as Sharpay Evans and her very metro-sexual brother rule the Drama club and incestuously engage
in plotting against others while patting each other on the back.

"You're the One that I Want"
Indeed, this question of belonging extends into the way transformation is conceived differently by each movie. At the end of Grease, Sandy decides that she must change in order to win over Danny's heart and his clique's approval, she transforms herself into a vampish fantasy babe along the lines of the Pink Ladies (pictured left). This over-the-top metamorphosis is, of course, an ironic comment on the nature and value of transformation, for all that she needs to do really change is to wear the right clothes, get a big hair-do and don some attitude. Danny's own failed attempts to become a jock (in order to impress Sandy) earlier in the film have pretty much the same effect. In High School Musical, however, transformation is taken more (and much too) seriously. The leading characters, already stars in their chosen arenas of the basketball court and science lab, show their peers that they can do it all by turning out to be stellar singers as well. In sharing this hidden talent with each other and later with the rest of the school, Troy and Gabriella, 'discover' their true selves and true love. The fantasy here - you can be anything you want to be as long as you don't worry about what your friends think - posits the multi-talented individual as the norm, and transformation becomes a stamp of individual agency that has the power to cut across stereotypes and reformulate group relations, instead of being a superficial (yet effective) tactic that is used to mask the fear of not belonging. Even though this seems to communicate 'positive messages' (such as "Just be yourself!"), in the world of High School Musical, only the exceedingly resourceful, intelligent, and good-looking have any chance of being individuals. You can't find love by donning tight-clothes, getting big-hair or dancing in high-heels in Walt Disney's universe.

Music and Lyrics
Grease achieves witty commentary on the strange obsessions of teenagers with its silly and clever lyrics. Some element of the concrete and particular (my strange obsession) is always present whether we want the lovers to tell us more about their summer frolicking on the beach, dream about "Grease Lighting", or get advice about beauty school from Frankie Avalon. In the final sequence, when the entire cast sings "We Go Together", the frivolity of being teenagers is brought out most clearly in lyrics that go

We go together,
Like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong,
Remembered forever
As shoobop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom
Chang chang changitty chang shoobop,
That's the way it should be,
Wha oooh, yeah!

The nonsensical lines that require skillful singing are precisely the point of being a teenager, of being obsessed with extraordinarily complex and esoteric trivialities that don't really matter in the long run. The spaces that these lines open up allow a certain mode of negotiation and creation even as the idiosyncratic (and highly technical) are mastered.

If the trivializing ending of Grease performs this insight into the teenage mind, High School Musical dramatizes the abolishment of that mind. The teenager is turned into a spokesperson for every kind of high-minded abstraction that modern societies idealize. In fact, Singapore's NDP planning committee should seriously consider jettisoning yet another failed attempt to come up with a "national day song" and just turn to High School Musical's fabulously Singaporean (they're even decked out in red and white) ending. With stylishly vague platitudes emoting that "we're all in this together", every tween's fantasy end to a highschool movie dovetails into the ideological template for any state that wants to dilute and eventually flush clean the heterogeneous desires and dreams of its people. Unlike Grease, which leaves us stained with its idiosyncratic observations of teen hood that, like grease, can't really be fully gotten rid of, High School Musical effaces any trace or possibility for difference:

We're all in this together
One sweet note
That we are
We're all stars
And we see that
We're all in this together
And it shows
When we stand
Hand in hand
Make our dreams come true

I am well aware that infinitely more subtle minds have taken the Disney entertainment complex apart for far more profound reasons. Amongst the most illustrious, Theodore Adorno, who found in

Disney hygiene, a funereal reading of Mickey Mouse culture and its sadomasochistic phantasms. At the tail end of Mickey Mouse's orbit around the globe, Adorno concluded that both fascism and the culture industry were "psychoanalysis in reverse". (Laurence Rickels, The Case of California 52)

I should end with this quote which seems to be a fitting conclusion to what I've been trying to get at in this post. I've definitely gone on too long indulging the guilty pleasure of re-visiting a guilty pleasure, perhaps because of High School Musical's effectiveness in dictating what counts as pleasurable. And, after all, I need to go catch the world TV premiere of High School Musical 2.

More on the Movie Front

Some things that I've watched:

Camelot. This is the 60s musical that I thought I had to acquaint myself with in my attempts to be a good medievalist. It seems to be based not so much on "traditional" sources but on T.H. White's Once and Future King (which contains interesting ideas about Arthur's youth, Merlin's mentoring and the political conception of the Round Table). Like most extravagant productions from the period, this was bloated and slow moving (like Lerner and Lowe's other hit, The King and I). I didn't make it to the end.

BTW, look who's playing Arthur in a Camelot revival that's actually going to make it's way to East Lansing. Yup, Lou Diamond Phillips. I really liked him in La Bamba and wasn't he in Young Guns as well? Perhaps he will make subjecting myself to 3 hours of slow-moving singing worthwhile.

Gerry. I learnt about this film while reading an NYT article that assessed Matt Damon's career thus far. It's a strange plotless adventure of two pals (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) who decide to trek the desert wilderness in Utah, and end up getting lost. The film showcases the rugged and unforgiving landscape but really tests one's patience with long shots (five minutes and more) of just the two of them walking the barren landscape. Thank God for the tracking function on DVD players.

Capote. I enjoyed this much more than the other two!

Driving in Our Car

Having never been able to drive, I've never taken an interest in cars. But since I'm planning to take the driving test soon, I just wanted to make sure that our car is in an OK condition for the test. The car, a 1999 Toyota Camry, has, since the first day we got it, always shown on the instrument panel that something's wrong with the rear lights. We've checked it and all the rear lights work, so we put it down to a quirk of an old car.
But it dawned on me about two days ago that we've never really checked the "high mounted stop light", the superfluous thing that lights up on the rear board, that sits between the speakers in our car. In fact when I got Edna to go out and look again yesterday, she missed the light completely and it was only after I pointed it out physically that we learnt that the light doesn't work. So we've been driving without a "high mounted stop light". And so have many drivers given that I can't help but notice whether that light lights up whenever we hit a red light now. (Another Bono Moment whole thing is interesting but 4.25 for song itself).
So, my penchant for taking things apart kicked in. After all, how hard could it be to check a light bulb after years of taken electrical and electronic things apart and (almost) perfectly putting them back together again. So, with the handy 1999 Toyota Camry manual in hand, I peered into the fuse box (fuse was ok) and dismantled the rear light (bulb and contact points seem ok). I was really tempted to dig into the wiring to see if I could do anything but decided that this was no Tamiya / Airfix model kit.
Better to bring in for the pros to figure it out.

Becoming A Movie

We caught Becoming Jane watch with their girl friends (probably leaving their husbands free to go laugh at Jackie Chan in "Rush Hour 3" with their buddies). It was quite nicely done and like every Jane Austen inspired period piece, had one ball too many, an impossible number of empire line dresses for the protagonist's wardrobe (strangely enough, Jane's sister appears in scenes timed several months apart in the same pink dress), and an improbable reserve of witty repartee (which is the point, I suppose). Still, it's a pretty interesting addition to a slowly growing list of films that try to suggest how an authorial existence might have been crucial (in direct or unexpected ways) to the works by which we at the cinema yesterday. I think there were only about 4 men in the largely middle aged female audience. It certainly was a film that a lot of women went out to remember them. Becoming Jane isn't bad though it's a pretty unsophisticated statement about how an author's life translates into her writing. That growing list of films about authors? I'm thinking of Shakespeare in Love, far and away the most effective and amusing because it doesn't pretend at any veracity, Capote, The Hours and Sylvia. I guess Naked Lunch and Henry and June would be on the list too, though they were made somewhat earlier. What else is there?

Anyway, authors about whom films should be made (perhaps films have already been made and I just don't know about them):
Herman Melville. And there's a ready-made title in "Call me Ishmael".
Ken Kesey / Jack Kerouac
Hemmingway. (who was a popular source of film adaptations in the 40s and 50s, right?)
Chaucer.
James Joyce.
Proust.
S.R. Delany.
The Bronte Sisters. (Hah -- I half-suspected that there was already a film on them, and checking IMDb, this turned up.)
Lord Byron.
E.M. Forster (who is the single novelist whose books have been turned into film adaptations at a rate that compares to Austen but who seems to have fallen out of favor. Henry James is the other guy who was a pretty popular source for adaptations.



I guess there are only so many ways to show writers at work ...

L'eclisse Babel Bleu (or One for Shawn)

Three films that I've watched since the last post. Michelangelo Antonioni's (who just recently passed away) L'eclisse. It was heavy going, with all those long lingering shots that silently capture the turmoil of indecision and frustrated desire. It tracks the transitional space between the afterlife of one relationship and the birth of a new one, with the film spanning precisely the time from a break-up to a consummation. One of the controlling motifs and settings is the stock exchange where the male protagonist (Alain Delon) works and how its esoteric yet eminently precise practices obliquely represent the emotional vicissitudes that the lovers experience. It was the first time that I've seen a film with Alain Delon in it and I must say that he's really good looking. Click on the image for a really nice synopsis-analysis of the film.

Of the three films I'm writing about, Babel was the most disappointing. It's a great film if you're into bashing the white man and his thoughtless cultural colonization but there was a lot of inflated fluff. I think the feeling of dissatisfaction I have with the film lies in the way too many moments that are shot like standard made for Hollywood sequences, which establish event, place and character with too much certainty. At some moments you're thinking, "Ok, I get it already ... either assemble more interesting shots or move on ..." I thought, however, that the way the stories were interlinked without being chronologically synchronous (the film itself becoming a fourth dimensional Tower of Babel that holds together the illusion of a unified sense of time) was pretty interesting.

Bleu. This film is part of the Three Colors series of films that Krzysztof Kieslowski made in the early 1990s. I actually watched this when it showed in the cinemas. The interesting thing (for me) is the way I remember (or misremember in this case) my watching of the film. For the longest time now, I've always thought that I watched the film in 1989 with a classmate. This made sense to me for on artistic grounds as I've always thought that the trilogy was made to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution as well. (See, displaced memories always depend on elegantly dreamt up causes.) As it turns out, Bleu was only released in 1993. It's a significant shift for me because it demonstrates a certain repression taking place. I've always thought that we watched Bleu because my friend was a cool 15 year old who was extremely cultured and a committed Francophile (which he may have been). So 1989 was an appropriate date. But 1993 was a very different (and difficult) year for me and it turns out that my friend was probably being really nice in deciding that companionship, a movie in a foreign language, and the lovely Julie Binoch might lift my spirits. For that gesture of kindness, I am belatedly most grateful. I guess it may have worked its magic then, but sadly, I'm only placing it (the double "it" of the movie and the act of kindness, I intend to separate yet combine them - can I? - and don't want to use the plural demonstrative pronoun) back in its proper place amongst remembered things about 14 years too late. The film follows Julie Binoche's character as she tries to erase her past after the traumatic loss of her husband and daughter in a car crash that opens the film. Because her efforts at "running to stand still" only have the effect of the past haunting her constantly, and finally returning with a vengeance, watching the film caused me to experience an uncanny return of the repressed. Anyway, as this link suggests, that friend has gone on to great things, and as much as a dedicated blog post and a great U2 song can, I wish him well.

As you from crimes would pardoned be, / Let your indulgence set me free ...

I watched this little documentary / film about staging a play yesterday called Shakespeare Behind Bars. It chronicles an actual prison program in Kentucky that has inmates put on a Shakespeare production every year after about 36 weeks of preparation. The film is very very tenderly put together, with obvious biases against the prison system. We comes close up to the inmates (many of them killers ... of wives and lovers) as they reveal themselves and their pasts even as they are interrogated by the roles that they play.

The play, one of my faves, is The Tempest, and it was nice to see a documentary (and production) that did not focus on the "play within a play" motif that dominates most interpretations. Instead, the forgiveness theme of the play was what the the inmates connected with, and this showed as they dealt with their character and personal struggles.

It wasn't all triumphal. One of the players, a great interpreter of that sly intellectual Antonio (and in prison for sexually abusing 7 girls ... I'm sure he was a lit teacher ...) is placed in solitary confinement and later transferred to a maximum security prison. Interestingly, the film doesn't try to explain what he did wrong but captures the sense of unease and uncertainty as the other members of the cast try to get a handle on the rumors that surround his disappearance. Sadly, his replacement, an initially enthusiastic youngster who is in for two life sentences without parole, later drops out of the production (because he wanted to get his tattoos finished and tries to get them done illegally in prison), and ends up committing suicide by hanging himself by his shoe-laces.

It's a powerful documentary and Shakespeare as therapy works wonders of revelation if not always redemption. You feel bad for the convicts after their enthralling adventure with the Bard, when in the "Updates" section of the "Bonus Features", you learn that almost none of them make parole. But as one of them puts it, at least there's Shakespeare next year.

Trailer

Back to the Movies

I finally got myself a library card from the Capital Area District Library, which is public library that serves the greater Lansing area. Their holdings aren't bad and what really prompted me to go and get a card made was the desire to do a Bergman retrospective (although I'll probably do that in bout a month's time, after the Orals) and the fact that I'm learning how to drive (another story for another time), thus making the libraries accessible. So, I've requested a whole list of movies from the libraries (they too have a nice delivery service like the NYPL), and I collected my first batch of movies yesterday.

The first thing I watched was "Eros", a series of three short films by Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and the recently deceased Michelangelo Antonioni. There's a nice review of the three films here, (which essentially says only Wong Kar Wai's piece is worth watching) although I think that the second film by Steven Soderbergh was pretty interesting for me as it involves the dreaming up of a clinical situation that parodies a psychoanalytic session. Anyway, the DVD had a really nice cover too.

Intellectual TortOIse (Or why U2 gets me ...)

I don't get to listen to music much these days as I can't really concentrate if there's anything playing in the background when I'm reading Middle English or Theory. But, since I've begun running (ok ... slogging as in slow jogging) more consistently, I've been able to pay quite close attention to the music piped through my earphones. I've got a U2 playlist (of course) on my ipod and something about the nature of Bono's lyricism struck me as I was listening to Stay (Faraway, So Close). These are the lines:

Faraway, so close up with the static and the radio
With satellite television you can go anywhere
Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin
from "Stay (Faraway So Close)"

How does Bono manage to string together proper names and achieve that sense of space and history that he does? Part of this relates to the way the line is timed. "Miami" and "New Orleans", are stretched out over two measures, creating an anticipation for more. And then, we get, in the next two measures, the expansive "London, Belfast and Berlin" - cities with tumultuous histories, and possibly located in dramatically different political-spatial realities - and the line is suddenly flung into the wide open spaces of satellite TV.* Of course, despite being able to achieve the epic and universal scope that they do, the lyrics of many a U2 song achieve that expansiveness precisely because there is always a concrete specificity of reference and image. I've always associated the lines quoted above with the bridge-like section of a much later song, "Beautiful Day":

See the world in green and blue
See China right in front of you
See the canyons broken by clouds
See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out
See the Bedouin fires at night
See the oil fields at first light and
See the bird with a leaf in her mouth
After the flood all the colors came out
from "Beautiful Day"

The phrase that really gets me in what essentially is a list is "Bedouin fires at night" largely because it contrasts the vast movement of flight over land and sea against really specific kinds of activity. I think way the lyrics zoom in and across (I'm thinking Google Earth here) are pretty spectacular because they don't compromise on the splendor of being able to observe detail from "such great heights" (as another great songwriter would put it). The fact is, the bridge ends with a stunning movement back in time with the dove of Noah's flood now making an appearance. Movement takes on mythical proportions, and like the spirit of God hovering over the uncreated expanse of the earth to be, the lyric manages to compress space and time and transform it into promise.

Just two more examples of the lyricism of the concrete. The first is from "Pride (In the Name of Love)", a song which enshrines the legacy of MLK.

Early morning, April four
A shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride
from "Pride (In the Name of Love)"

This final verse shifts out of the repetitive line pattern of the first two verses (which deal with universal situations of persecution and resistance -- "One man ..." could be Everyman) and focuses on the shooting of MLK itself. Even though it's factually wrong -- MLK was shot in the evening -- the date and location of the event, as well as the fact that the verse is addresses the dead King (and thus his legacy), creates another kind of precision: one that reminds the listener that the actual sacrifices of great men must never be in vain.

Finally, from one of the greatest U2 songs that hardly anyone likes: "Angel of Harlem". I know there's something pretentious about some Irish guys going on about jazz history and one of its tragic leading ladies, Billie Holiday. But I'm sure I haven't been the only person whose ears were opened by lyrics ("We got John Coltrane and a love supreme") to explore (and fall in love with) the music that inspired them. So, even if the identifications are somewhat superficial, at least they've generated a new generation of poseurs. (And as Bono's shown, all it takes is poseurs to change the world). Anyway, the song opens with that evocative detail that I've been going on about.

It was a cold and wet December day
When we touched the ground at JFK
Snow was melting on the ground
On BLS I heard the sound of an angel
New York, like a Christmas tree
Tonight this city belongs to me, angel
from "Angel of Harlem"

What's interesting is the way the acronyms work powerfully to create that sense of U2's cool "insider" status with this very foreign world. (Come on, people fly into New York's most congested and inefficient airport just so they can say "I came through JFK") "JFK" obviously works especially well because it resonates with an idealized image of the man as well. Now here's the somewhat embarrassing thing. All these years (and it's been many many years that I've listened to this song and regarded it as one of my faves), I've always assumed that the fourth line went "On the BLS ..." and pictured Bono being driven down some highway to Midtown Manhattan. Only when I picked out the lyric to write this piece did I realize that 1) there is no BLS that runs around New York and that 2) it makes more sense that "BLS" refers to a radio station. So, I was going to conclude that Bono just made the "BLS" thing up until I ran a quick google search. It turns out that there is a WBLS 107.5 (or 'BLS) playing out of New York. The fact that it plays R&B (it was a quick and short search ...) makes it possible that it was playing in the car and Billie Holiday was on at the time. (I'm sure all this can be confirmed by looking up an interview with the group about how the song originated but ...) Anyway, we have, nicely captured in a song, U2's own sense of how a precise moment of reception, not necessarily characterized by listening to the music alone, but also hearing in it the history and geography of an age, can lead to that wonderful feeling of being indomitably caught up in the present: "Tonight this city belongs to me".

That precision of affect also explains why U2 continues to get to me and probably will continue to do so for a long time more to come.

*The line also reminds of lines from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land":

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem** Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal (366-376)

** Which reminds me that U2 actually has a song called "Jerusalem". It's ok but it's before they became subtle and clever in their use of Biblical references. But for a nice video of U2 25 years ago, here's a YouTube link to a high energy performance of that song.