Downloaded Quicktime and as a result am now able to listen to the new Wilco album. I dunno, does the first song (which is all I've heard so far) sound a little strange to you?
Monday, May 31, 2004
Words (3)
Finally finished Anne Carson's Eros the Bittersweet over the weekend and if you haven't read it yet you should. Part philosophy, part literary criticism, past classical history, part poetry at its clearest and most beautiful.
Words (2) - A Letter to William Carlos Williams
by Kenneth Rexroth
Dear Bill,
When I search the past for you,
Sometimes I think you are like
St. Francis, whose flesh went out
Like a happy cloud from him,
And merged with every lover -
Donkeys, flowers, lepers, suns -
But I think you are more like
Brother Juniper, who suffered
All indignities and glories
Laughing like a gentle fool.
You’re in the Fioretti
Somewhere, for you’re a fool, Bill,
Like the Fool in Yeats, the term
Of all wisdom and beauty.
It’s you, stands over against
Helen in all her wisdom,
Solomon in all his glory.
Remember years ago, when
I told you you were the first
Great Franciscan poet since
The Middle Ages? I disturbed
The even tenor of dinner.
Your wife thought I was crazy.
It’s true, though. And you’re “pure,” too,
A real classic, though not loud
About it - a whole lot like
The girls of the Anthology.
Not like strident Sappho, who
For all her grandeur, must have
Had endometriosis,
But like Anyte, who says
Just enough, softly, for all
The thousands of years to remember.
It’s a wonderful quiet
You have, a way of keeping
Still about the world, and its
Dirty rivers, and garbage cans,
Red wheelbarrows glazed with rain,
Cold plums stolen from the icebox,
And Queen Anne’s lace, and day’s eyes,
And leaf buds bursting over
Muddy roads, and splotched bellies
With babies in them, and Cortes
And Malinche on the bloody
Causeway, the death of the flower world.
Nowadays, when the press reels
With chatterboxes, you keep still,
Each year a sheaf of stillness,
Poems that have nothing to say,
Like the stillness of George Fox,
Sitting still under the cloud
Of all the world’s temptation,
By the fire, in the kitchen,
In the Vale of Beavor. And
The archetype, the silence
Of Christ, when he paused a long
Time and then said, “Thou sayest it.”
Now in a recent poem you say,
“I who am about to die.”
Maybe this is just a tag
From the classics, but it sends
A shudder over me. Where
Do you get that stuff, Williams?
Look at here. The day will come
When a young woman will walk
By the lucid Williams River,
Where it flows through an idyllic
News from Nowhere sort of landscape,
And she will say to her children,
“Isn’t it beautiful? It
Is named after a man who
Walked here once when it was called
The Passaic, and was filthy
With the poisonous excrements
Of sick men and factories.
He was a great man. He knew
It was beautiful then, although
Nobody else did, back there
In the Dark Ages. And the
Beautiful river he saw
Still flows in his veins, as it
Does in ours, and flows in our eyes,
And flows in time, and makes us
Part of it, and part of him.
That, children, is what is called
A sacramental relationship.
And that is what a poet
Is, children, one who creates
Sacramental relationships
That last always."
With love and admiration,
Kenneth Rexroth.
(This I take from Allen Ginsberg's reading list from heaven.)
Dear Bill,
When I search the past for you,
Sometimes I think you are like
St. Francis, whose flesh went out
Like a happy cloud from him,
And merged with every lover -
Donkeys, flowers, lepers, suns -
But I think you are more like
Brother Juniper, who suffered
All indignities and glories
Laughing like a gentle fool.
You’re in the Fioretti
Somewhere, for you’re a fool, Bill,
Like the Fool in Yeats, the term
Of all wisdom and beauty.
It’s you, stands over against
Helen in all her wisdom,
Solomon in all his glory.
Remember years ago, when
I told you you were the first
Great Franciscan poet since
The Middle Ages? I disturbed
The even tenor of dinner.
Your wife thought I was crazy.
It’s true, though. And you’re “pure,” too,
A real classic, though not loud
About it - a whole lot like
The girls of the Anthology.
Not like strident Sappho, who
For all her grandeur, must have
Had endometriosis,
But like Anyte, who says
Just enough, softly, for all
The thousands of years to remember.
It’s a wonderful quiet
You have, a way of keeping
Still about the world, and its
Dirty rivers, and garbage cans,
Red wheelbarrows glazed with rain,
Cold plums stolen from the icebox,
And Queen Anne’s lace, and day’s eyes,
And leaf buds bursting over
Muddy roads, and splotched bellies
With babies in them, and Cortes
And Malinche on the bloody
Causeway, the death of the flower world.
Nowadays, when the press reels
With chatterboxes, you keep still,
Each year a sheaf of stillness,
Poems that have nothing to say,
Like the stillness of George Fox,
Sitting still under the cloud
Of all the world’s temptation,
By the fire, in the kitchen,
In the Vale of Beavor. And
The archetype, the silence
Of Christ, when he paused a long
Time and then said, “Thou sayest it.”
Now in a recent poem you say,
“I who am about to die.”
Maybe this is just a tag
From the classics, but it sends
A shudder over me. Where
Do you get that stuff, Williams?
Look at here. The day will come
When a young woman will walk
By the lucid Williams River,
Where it flows through an idyllic
News from Nowhere sort of landscape,
And she will say to her children,
“Isn’t it beautiful? It
Is named after a man who
Walked here once when it was called
The Passaic, and was filthy
With the poisonous excrements
Of sick men and factories.
He was a great man. He knew
It was beautiful then, although
Nobody else did, back there
In the Dark Ages. And the
Beautiful river he saw
Still flows in his veins, as it
Does in ours, and flows in our eyes,
And flows in time, and makes us
Part of it, and part of him.
That, children, is what is called
A sacramental relationship.
And that is what a poet
Is, children, one who creates
Sacramental relationships
That last always."
With love and admiration,
Kenneth Rexroth.
(This I take from Allen Ginsberg's reading list from heaven.)
Words (1 and a half)
Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand, which shouldn't come under words exactly, but still it does make you happy.
Words (1)
Sexy scrabble at Yisheng's place that night (only sexy or dirty or, if you're out of inspiration, plain vulgar, words allowed) and I'll never look at "jaw" in the same way again.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
On reading
Me: I was just reading a couple of Iris Murdoch's essays (from a book I bought two years ago and never read till now) and now I want to go back to school and study philosophy and literature.
WN: Funny, I was just reading Eric Schlosser's "Reefer Madness" and now I want to be a drug lord. You must be reading the wrong books.
WN: Funny, I was just reading Eric Schlosser's "Reefer Madness" and now I want to be a drug lord. You must be reading the wrong books.
Sorry for the inconvenient
At the Cheers shop outside Tampines MRT is a sign that says (among other things):
Sorry for the inconvenient.
I rather like that. Perhaps I'll make a sign and put it up on my desk.
Sorry for the inconvenient.
I rather like that. Perhaps I'll make a sign and put it up on my desk.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Why do I never learn
that the ability to stay up all night without falling over the next day belongs with other relics of my youth, like tight jeans (ah Miranda) and Smash Hits?
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Still haven't written my notes
but I have caught up with everyone's blogs for the last three years or so.
(finally writing my notes of meeting)
Can I be really bitchy for a bit? Well of course I'm going to be anyway; this is fair warning.
One of the delegation members really annoyed me, so much so I found myself arguing the opposite of whatever he was saying. It wasn't that he was wrong, exactly; more that he had that insufferable smugness which attends (a) civil servants and (b) middle-aged men. You know? When they just know everything there is to know about a particular topic, and have no need of other viewpoints on the matter, even though their knowledge tends to consist of a string of banalities? When they're not willing to discuss issues, but they're more than happy to tell you how to think on any given topic? And he was a researcher by designation; shouldn't they have a little more intellectual curiosity?
One of the delegation members really annoyed me, so much so I found myself arguing the opposite of whatever he was saying. It wasn't that he was wrong, exactly; more that he had that insufferable smugness which attends (a) civil servants and (b) middle-aged men. You know? When they just know everything there is to know about a particular topic, and have no need of other viewpoints on the matter, even though their knowledge tends to consist of a string of banalities? When they're not willing to discuss issues, but they're more than happy to tell you how to think on any given topic? And he was a researcher by designation; shouldn't they have a little more intellectual curiosity?
Coming soon: Shibuya
We were walking through the empty space at MGM Grand at night, where the theme park used to be, and there were these huge boards announcing the shops to come. One said, "Coming soon: Shibuya."
There's an essay somewhere where Nietzsche says rather acerbically that Wagner's pathos topples taste. I think the sheer effrontery of Vegas topples taste. It's in the middle of a desert but there're fountains and lakes and canals and old-world European conservatories and soon there will be a Japanese garden the likes of which can only be found in Kyoto. First they have to build a mountain and then pipe in water for the streams and ponds and lakes and then bring in the trees and then they can sculpt the garden. In Singapore we just whinge about the weather being too hot and leave it at that; in Vegas they paint the ceiling has feathery white clouds and the blue fades quietly the dusk at the edges and the lighting is controlled to always simulate evening light (because they did studies which showed that that's when people shop the most, when they're all mellow and relaxed) and it's always 72 degrees F. As my colleague pointed out, Vegas works because Americans like to see things, but they don't like to leave their country. So they have the Eiffel Tower and Doge's Palace and the Colosseum and the Village and Shibuya brought to them, but all prettied up and air-conditioned. What complete lack of irony does it take to do such a thing, to say, well I'lll just create a scale model of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of my casino?
We met Steve Wynn, who is the American dream personnifed. He came to the Strip some 40 years ago, at 24, as a blackjack dealer. In 1989 he built the first of the mega hotel/casino/entertainment complexes, the Mirage, which was at the time about $400 million more expensive than any other casino built so far. He designed the damn thing and put a volcanic island at the front and fish at the reception and white tigers along the corridor (the sign above says: Phones. Restrooms. White Tigers. Shops.) and it's actually all quite nice. He built Treasure Island and then the Bellagio, which is still the pinnacle of achievement for these mega-whatsits, and then sold the lot to MGM because now that he has completely transformed the Strip, he wants to do something different there. He came to the Strip at 24 as a blackjack dealer! I'm 24, and I'm never going to build a $600m casino, not even in 20 years' time. No formal training, but he designs his own buildings. All the other meetings with the operators were very corporate affairs, we met the Board, they presented themselves as a body corporate, but Steve Wynn just flung himself into the room with his dogs. Oh and his Chief Operating Officer, whose job apparently was to open the door for his dogs.
In MGM Grand there was a sign that said, "Video arcade: virtual reality". As opposed, I suppose, to the actual reality of the rest of the casino/hotel/complex? It's impossible not to admire the scale of what was done in Vegas, and impossible to accept it entirely; we're schooled in British irony, after all. I almost said, impossible to accept it without any saving grace of irony. I'm not yet willing to put away a strong sense of the ridiculous, but perhaps this is an inhibiting quality? Perhaps what it takes is a complete abandonment of - not taste, exactly - but any self-consciousness whatsoever?
There's an essay somewhere where Nietzsche says rather acerbically that Wagner's pathos topples taste. I think the sheer effrontery of Vegas topples taste. It's in the middle of a desert but there're fountains and lakes and canals and old-world European conservatories and soon there will be a Japanese garden the likes of which can only be found in Kyoto. First they have to build a mountain and then pipe in water for the streams and ponds and lakes and then bring in the trees and then they can sculpt the garden. In Singapore we just whinge about the weather being too hot and leave it at that; in Vegas they paint the ceiling has feathery white clouds and the blue fades quietly the dusk at the edges and the lighting is controlled to always simulate evening light (because they did studies which showed that that's when people shop the most, when they're all mellow and relaxed) and it's always 72 degrees F. As my colleague pointed out, Vegas works because Americans like to see things, but they don't like to leave their country. So they have the Eiffel Tower and Doge's Palace and the Colosseum and the Village and Shibuya brought to them, but all prettied up and air-conditioned. What complete lack of irony does it take to do such a thing, to say, well I'lll just create a scale model of the Eiffel Tower in the middle of my casino?
We met Steve Wynn, who is the American dream personnifed. He came to the Strip some 40 years ago, at 24, as a blackjack dealer. In 1989 he built the first of the mega hotel/casino/entertainment complexes, the Mirage, which was at the time about $400 million more expensive than any other casino built so far. He designed the damn thing and put a volcanic island at the front and fish at the reception and white tigers along the corridor (the sign above says: Phones. Restrooms. White Tigers. Shops.) and it's actually all quite nice. He built Treasure Island and then the Bellagio, which is still the pinnacle of achievement for these mega-whatsits, and then sold the lot to MGM because now that he has completely transformed the Strip, he wants to do something different there. He came to the Strip at 24 as a blackjack dealer! I'm 24, and I'm never going to build a $600m casino, not even in 20 years' time. No formal training, but he designs his own buildings. All the other meetings with the operators were very corporate affairs, we met the Board, they presented themselves as a body corporate, but Steve Wynn just flung himself into the room with his dogs. Oh and his Chief Operating Officer, whose job apparently was to open the door for his dogs.
In MGM Grand there was a sign that said, "Video arcade: virtual reality". As opposed, I suppose, to the actual reality of the rest of the casino/hotel/complex? It's impossible not to admire the scale of what was done in Vegas, and impossible to accept it entirely; we're schooled in British irony, after all. I almost said, impossible to accept it without any saving grace of irony. I'm not yet willing to put away a strong sense of the ridiculous, but perhaps this is an inhibiting quality? Perhaps what it takes is a complete abandonment of - not taste, exactly - but any self-consciousness whatsoever?
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Move away from the icing
Spent the night hanging out in Su-Lin's room watching Sex in the City and eating cookies and playing bridge (though not all three at once because men are incapable of multi-tasking) and it was one of the best nights I've had in a while. It's been a while since we spent time just lazing and playing bridge, hasn't it?
home
and laden with duty-free alcohol. I've wine and Hoegaarden and Bombay Sapphire (just for you, Choon). Shall we make martinis?
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
We are made of such stuff
16 May: Water slides! A 68 degree water slide called the Leap of Faith at the Mayan Temple in the Lost City of Atlantis - this is Disney meets Underwater World, now in salmon pink.
(And there were meetings and stuff, more of that later. The water slides were the important bit. And the sea water pools with star fish and sting rays and baby sharks!)
17 May: woke up at 6 and went down to beach. Gorgeous blue-green waters and white sand, just like the postcards. No living creature in sight but a couple of gulls and a dog at what looked like a cairn of stones. Walked along the shoreline listening to the waves.
17 May, later: There was a bride posing in the lobby of the Venetian. The Venetian looks...well, Venetian. There's a copy of St Mark's Square (and oh, darlings, a MASSIVE Sephora. SMS me if you want anything) and a canal and gondola rides and of course a massive casino with cars atop some of the jackpot machines (so they can just jump up and give you the car if you win, I guess?) and trompe l'oeil on the walls and frescoes on the ceiling - not exactly the Sistine Chapel, but overwhelming nonetheless. Went for a walk on the strip - could see the strip from the airplane, and the beam of light from the pyramid that is the Luxor - the Duke's Palace (is that what it is? the one on the real St Mark's Square) next to a volcanic island (apparently complete with erupting volcano) and ahead there was Caesar's Palace with the Colosseum and Roman Forum and the Pantheon, all brought together for your convenience. And there are the smaller seedier slot machine parlours and all-you-can-eat buffets and Latino men standing on the street handing out soft porn (the Police guy with us collected them solemnly. Appendix A of my report, he said).
Truly fantastic, in the old sense of the word. It transcends kitsch. And terribly addictive - music on the streets the whole time through and everyone in party clothes (though the people are mostly pretty tacky - old retirees with permed hair (men and women) sitting rather grimly at the slot machines and lots of cute young couples holding beer bottles and more fat Americans in strangely Hawaiian gear) and all the lights from the casino and of course the single beam from the Luxor. This is the American candy-floss version of the world.
All the same, I think I'd rather create my own fantasy.
(And there were meetings and stuff, more of that later. The water slides were the important bit. And the sea water pools with star fish and sting rays and baby sharks!)
17 May: woke up at 6 and went down to beach. Gorgeous blue-green waters and white sand, just like the postcards. No living creature in sight but a couple of gulls and a dog at what looked like a cairn of stones. Walked along the shoreline listening to the waves.
17 May, later: There was a bride posing in the lobby of the Venetian. The Venetian looks...well, Venetian. There's a copy of St Mark's Square (and oh, darlings, a MASSIVE Sephora. SMS me if you want anything) and a canal and gondola rides and of course a massive casino with cars atop some of the jackpot machines (so they can just jump up and give you the car if you win, I guess?) and trompe l'oeil on the walls and frescoes on the ceiling - not exactly the Sistine Chapel, but overwhelming nonetheless. Went for a walk on the strip - could see the strip from the airplane, and the beam of light from the pyramid that is the Luxor - the Duke's Palace (is that what it is? the one on the real St Mark's Square) next to a volcanic island (apparently complete with erupting volcano) and ahead there was Caesar's Palace with the Colosseum and Roman Forum and the Pantheon, all brought together for your convenience. And there are the smaller seedier slot machine parlours and all-you-can-eat buffets and Latino men standing on the street handing out soft porn (the Police guy with us collected them solemnly. Appendix A of my report, he said).
Truly fantastic, in the old sense of the word. It transcends kitsch. And terribly addictive - music on the streets the whole time through and everyone in party clothes (though the people are mostly pretty tacky - old retirees with permed hair (men and women) sitting rather grimly at the slot machines and lots of cute young couples holding beer bottles and more fat Americans in strangely Hawaiian gear) and all the lights from the casino and of course the single beam from the Luxor. This is the American candy-floss version of the world.
All the same, I think I'd rather create my own fantasy.
What time is it now?
15 May, 4 pm: flight from Singapore to LAX (16 hours)
Transit at LAX (5ish hours)
Flight from LAX to Miami (4 - 5 hours)
Transit at Miami (3 - 4 hours)
Wait in Miami because have missed flight (1/2 hour)
Flight from Miami to Nassau, the Bahamas (1ish hour)
Wait in Nassau for luggage (2 hours)
Drive from Nassau to Atlantis Resort, Paradise Island (1/2 hour)
Reach Atlantis at on 16 May, 12 pm, local time.
Leave Atlantis on 17 May, 3 pm.
Drive from Atlantis to Nassau (1/2 hour)
Flight from Nassau to Miami, fortunately taking right flight (1ish hour)
Transit in Miami (2 - 3 hours)
Flight from Miami to Las Vegas (5ish hours)
Time spent talking to random Argentinian man on flight (1/6 hour (You live in Las Vegas? - No, Singapore. - Oh you are here on vacation? - Er sort of. - You come from Miami? - No, the Bahamas. - I am in Miami two days, on vacation. It is very nice. - I wasn't actually there but, er, yes?)
Drive from Las Vegas airport to the Venetian (1/2 hour)
Time spent gawking in Venetian lobby (1/2 hour)
Reach the Venetian on 17 May, 11 pm, local time.
Time left to sleep until breakfast/meeting tomorrow (about 2 hours).
Transit at LAX (5ish hours)
Flight from LAX to Miami (4 - 5 hours)
Transit at Miami (3 - 4 hours)
Wait in Miami because have missed flight (1/2 hour)
Flight from Miami to Nassau, the Bahamas (1ish hour)
Wait in Nassau for luggage (2 hours)
Drive from Nassau to Atlantis Resort, Paradise Island (1/2 hour)
Reach Atlantis at on 16 May, 12 pm, local time.
Leave Atlantis on 17 May, 3 pm.
Drive from Atlantis to Nassau (1/2 hour)
Flight from Nassau to Miami, fortunately taking right flight (1ish hour)
Transit in Miami (2 - 3 hours)
Flight from Miami to Las Vegas (5ish hours)
Time spent talking to random Argentinian man on flight (1/6 hour (You live in Las Vegas? - No, Singapore. - Oh you are here on vacation? - Er sort of. - You come from Miami? - No, the Bahamas. - I am in Miami two days, on vacation. It is very nice. - I wasn't actually there but, er, yes?)
Drive from Las Vegas airport to the Venetian (1/2 hour)
Time spent gawking in Venetian lobby (1/2 hour)
Reach the Venetian on 17 May, 11 pm, local time.
Time left to sleep until breakfast/meeting tomorrow (about 2 hours).
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Possessions
I have: a ticket, laptop, credit card, passport, and a suit in my, uh, suitcase. That's it, right? Do I need anything else? Anybody want anything from Vegas?
boo
Alright my loves; I am finally going; whatever I've forgotten will just have to stay forgotten. I'll have my laptop along (of course), so write to me and I'll, um, tell you about all the meetings I had to take notes for. See you in a week.
Still not packed
But oh I got the sweetest email from Tomoko saying, yes Tokyo may legalise gambling soon, so you might come to Tokyo more often?
Heh.
[Though there is a limit to the number of gambling study trips I can possibly take. Yes really.]
Heh.
[Though there is a limit to the number of gambling study trips I can possibly take. Yes really.]
Friday, May 14, 2004
HELP
I just locked myself out of my room! And it's 1.30 a.m. and I HAVEN'T packed for tomorrow's flight (well of course I haven't packed) and I don't even know what to pack. God I'm so intelligent aren't I? Can't find the keys to the room - should I wake my parents up - or just wait till the morning?
Another belated reply
From Julian:
[I don't know if I should link the original blog entry - guess I'll leave it as is? if you know Julian, and you probably do, then you know the link.]
Remember this bit in History of the World?I'm sure Julian Barnes is right, but I always thought it was the other way round, that Auden originally wrote, "We must love one another and die", and then changed it to "We must love one another or die" because that's more conventional. There's a strange comfort in "We must love one another and die" - well yes of course everyone dies (there's a scene in one of the Pratchetts, isn't there, where someone asks the History Monks if they've ever seen a dying man and there's a short pause and then they say, umm yes isn't everyone?) - but the necessity of death is matched by the necessity of love - at least we do have to love one another as well. And because Auden once wrote "We must love one another and die" he can command me.
“’We must love one another or die,’ wrote W.H. Auden, bringing from E.M. Forster the declaration: ‘Because he once wrote “We must love one another or die,” he can command me to follow him’. Auden, however, was dissatisfied with this famous line from ‘September 1, 1939’. That’s a damned lie!” he commented. ‘We must die anyway.’ So when reprinting the poem he altered the line to the more logical ‘We must love one another and die.’ Later he suppressed it altogether.
[I don't know if I should link the original blog entry - guess I'll leave it as is? if you know Julian, and you probably do, then you know the link.]
Geland
Congratulations on your graduation! (Belatedly.)
Er do you read this? Someone tell him. :)
I'd have said it on your blog, but it wasn't the right entry for exclamation marks and smiley faces.
Er do you read this? Someone tell him. :)
I'd have said it on your blog, but it wasn't the right entry for exclamation marks and smiley faces.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
by the light of all my burning bridges
The trip dates are: 15 - 22 May (we leave 20 May, reach Singapore 22 May. Bloody time zones). The official dates and my dates as well, since I will tamely return home with the rest of the delegation and not attempt to remain illegitimately in the States.
Feels like I haven't been out for ages. Can we go out when I come back?
(This is, I'm pretty sure, absolutely the wrong thing to do, but for the right reasons. Shouldn't I be feeling good about it, then?)
Feels like I haven't been out for ages. Can we go out when I come back?
(This is, I'm pretty sure, absolutely the wrong thing to do, but for the right reasons. Shouldn't I be feeling good about it, then?)
Monday, May 10, 2004
Salad days
Oh! It's "Eternal Love" on the radio - by PJ and Duncan!
I'm gonna go look for my old Smash Hits. And the CD (ah well). And their autograph!
I'm gonna go look for my old Smash Hits. And the CD (ah well). And their autograph!
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop
Oh for godssake. Exactly what am I doing this for? Two hours offered grudgingly from a weekend? Bugger this for a game of soldiers. (The irritable self asserts itself (sorry), which in some lights may pass for intelligence.)
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop
Oh for godssake. Exactly what am I doing this for? Two hours offered grudgingly from a weekend? Bugger this for a game of soldiers. (The irritable self asserts itself (sorry), which in some lights may pass for intelligence.)
Gambling
It's been a while since I went back to Jeanette Winterson, but isn't there a line (think it's in The Passion) that says what you risk reveals what you value?
Was just going to say that I'm absolutely the wrong person to do this because I don't gamble, but that's not true is it; I will hazard all for some things, just not horses or cards or little shiny pictures on a machine.
So what do you gamble on?
Was just going to say that I'm absolutely the wrong person to do this because I don't gamble, but that's not true is it; I will hazard all for some things, just not horses or cards or little shiny pictures on a machine.
So what do you gamble on?
When this is all over
I won't be able to run a casino but I will be able to run Gamblers Anonymous. I'm building up my resume, I am. (MTI gets the glam bits; we get to do research on the no. of people who've killed themselves cos they couldn't find enough money to gamble with. Ah, public service.)
National Gambling Impact Study Commission Report: In Louisiana, one man confessed to robbing and murdering six elderly individuals to feed his problem with gambling on electronic gaming devices [think jackpot machines].
Credit card crime, employee theft, that's all fairly easy to understand, but murder - it seems that something else, something crucial, must have broken down in the man to drive him to actual murder, doesn't it? Besides a gambling addiction, I mean. Or possibly we're all closer to murder than we realise.
National Gambling Impact Study Commission Report: In Louisiana, one man confessed to robbing and murdering six elderly individuals to feed his problem with gambling on electronic gaming devices [think jackpot machines].
Credit card crime, employee theft, that's all fairly easy to understand, but murder - it seems that something else, something crucial, must have broken down in the man to drive him to actual murder, doesn't it? Besides a gambling addiction, I mean. Or possibly we're all closer to murder than we realise.
Sunday, May 09, 2004
Stolen
from Minz (april 13) -
Talking to WN on the phone yesterday:
Me: Um. So I'm going to be in LA for a few days, maybe. Should I try to - ?
WN: No.
Me: How did you know what I was going to ask?
WN: Do you know how many dimensions you have?
Me: 2? Half?
WN: Fewer.
Bugger.
in the new mulisch novel there is a guest conductor who tells of having an off day with the orchestra he is rehearsing, the playing lacklustre and uninspired, but all of a sudden a magical change comes over the orchestra and his musicians begin to play like never before he could hardly believe his ears for the marvellous sound. after a while he senses they are responding to something or some presence other than himself. he turns around, and sees that herbert von karajan had come into the auditorium and was standing in the doorway listening.My trouble is that I still look for for your presence in my doorway.
the question that mulisch extends to us is: who stands on your threshold?
my trouble, i suppose, is that no one leans in my doorway any longer, but i haven't learnt to perform for myself, and that is not at all a comfortable thing to have to admit.
Talking to WN on the phone yesterday:
Me: Um. So I'm going to be in LA for a few days, maybe. Should I try to - ?
WN: No.
Me: How did you know what I was going to ask?
WN: Do you know how many dimensions you have?
Me: 2? Half?
WN: Fewer.
Bugger.
Observations
1. People are lumpy and misshapen. When you cut out their photos in Photoshop? And you try to capture each strand of hair and follow the line of their sleeve? It takes a good deal of judicious airbrushing before they look like how I fondly imagine real people to look, i.e. non-lumpy and quite shapen.
2. I know the steering wheel tends towards the straight and narrow, if left to itself, but roads don't; they curve just for me.
3. Can we start a campaign against jaywalkers? And a traffic light awareness campaign?
2. I know the steering wheel tends towards the straight and narrow, if left to itself, but roads don't; they curve just for me.
3. Can we start a campaign against jaywalkers? And a traffic light awareness campaign?
Mother's Day
My brother is on the floor drawing the parts of a heart on a shiny blue heart he cut out himself, because my mom's a biology teacher and my brother...is a boy.
Still. Isn't he sweet?
Still. Isn't he sweet?
13 - Mission statement
Let us honour if we can
The vertical man,
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
- Auden
Incidentally, the James Fenton lecture on Auden from which most of this is taken can be found here.
The vertical man,
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.
- Auden
Incidentally, the James Fenton lecture on Auden from which most of this is taken can be found here.
Saturday, May 08, 2004
11
A Pact
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root -
Let there be commerce between us.
- Ezra Pound
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman -
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
Who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving.
We have one sap and one root -
Let there be commerce between us.
- Ezra Pound
10
I think of some philosopher asking Wittgenstein how he managed to live according to his own philosophy and Wittgenstein saying, the bloody hard way.
But even that's adolescent.
It's not that hard, not for us, is it?
My dad tells me I can't start from the attitude that everything has a solution. Which is an odd thing for anyone to say to me, except that I'm a completely different person with my dad. I'm all jumpy and bitey and impatient. I don't know why. Well - all kinds of reasons - sometimes I don't want to be complicit with my dad because he's awfully nice to me but not really, not ever, to my mom, he jumps on her all the time - and I do understand his jokes, I just don't want to say, don't want to have to say, well I'm on your side - but then my mom laughs at him too, and then looks at me. I don't want to be on anyone's side! And I'm all of 6 years old again.
My dad started talking about his friend, a lawyer struggling to maintain his one-man firm, tried to build a career and so married late and now he's old but his kids are quite young and he still hasn't paid off his mortgage - talking about failure, how hard it was to start again - and oh I didn't want to hear, so started chatting very blithely about oh how his friend hadn't failed, he could still do all kinds of stuff. I hate myself when I'm with my dad. I don't want to talk about failure and the possibility of failure. I don't want to feel - compassion? because pity wouldn't be quite right, but compassion sounds too grand, far grander than anything I might feel - for my dad. I don't want, isn't that terrible?
But even that's adolescent.
It's not that hard, not for us, is it?
My dad tells me I can't start from the attitude that everything has a solution. Which is an odd thing for anyone to say to me, except that I'm a completely different person with my dad. I'm all jumpy and bitey and impatient. I don't know why. Well - all kinds of reasons - sometimes I don't want to be complicit with my dad because he's awfully nice to me but not really, not ever, to my mom, he jumps on her all the time - and I do understand his jokes, I just don't want to say, don't want to have to say, well I'm on your side - but then my mom laughs at him too, and then looks at me. I don't want to be on anyone's side! And I'm all of 6 years old again.
My dad started talking about his friend, a lawyer struggling to maintain his one-man firm, tried to build a career and so married late and now he's old but his kids are quite young and he still hasn't paid off his mortgage - talking about failure, how hard it was to start again - and oh I didn't want to hear, so started chatting very blithely about oh how his friend hadn't failed, he could still do all kinds of stuff. I hate myself when I'm with my dad. I don't want to talk about failure and the possibility of failure. I don't want to feel - compassion? because pity wouldn't be quite right, but compassion sounds too grand, far grander than anything I might feel - for my dad. I don't want, isn't that terrible?
9 - Jellyfish
Watched Bright Future on...some weekend. Think it was last weekend.
I'm getting increasingly impatient with movies about disaffected, disconnected youth. I can see the temptation of course - which is also, of course, why I'm impatient with these shows - wandering around as though catatonic is not the hard bit. Getting lost, whether or not in translation, isn't the hard bit. It's practically a compulsory stage of adolescence. But one should stop being a teenager at some point, should one not?
Not that I'm there yet.
There's a bit in one of James Fenton's lectures, where he's talking about Dylan Thomas's attitude towards the war. Thomas says he's tempted to participate sometimes, "but the temptation's not too strong, and the sanity of the imagination is."
Drifting around isn't particularly imaginative, is it?
I'm getting increasingly impatient with movies about disaffected, disconnected youth. I can see the temptation of course - which is also, of course, why I'm impatient with these shows - wandering around as though catatonic is not the hard bit. Getting lost, whether or not in translation, isn't the hard bit. It's practically a compulsory stage of adolescence. But one should stop being a teenager at some point, should one not?
Not that I'm there yet.
There's a bit in one of James Fenton's lectures, where he's talking about Dylan Thomas's attitude towards the war. Thomas says he's tempted to participate sometimes, "but the temptation's not too strong, and the sanity of the imagination is."
Drifting around isn't particularly imaginative, is it?
8
I also have
The Shins, Oh, Inverted World
Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
The New Pornographers, Electric Version
no money left.
The Shins, Oh, Inverted World
Modest Mouse, The Moon & Antarctica
The New Pornographers, Electric Version
no money left.
7
[These are in no discernible order whatsoever, of course.]
Von writes, out of the blue, to ask if I've heard Mermaid Avenue.
Yes!
It's nice to have one's taste vindicated, isn't it?
And Wilco's new album's coming out in June sometime (obviously not big enough a fan to know the exact date)!
Von writes, out of the blue, to ask if I've heard Mermaid Avenue.
Yes!
It's nice to have one's taste vindicated, isn't it?
And Wilco's new album's coming out in June sometime (obviously not big enough a fan to know the exact date)!
5
I've spent the early part of this week cutting up people's photos in Photoshop and pasting them onto a roller-coaster. To make a present for my director, who's just left.
Plenty of variety in this job.
(I realise it's ungracious to complain right after the Vegas trip entry. Sorry.)
Plenty of variety in this job.
(I realise it's ungracious to complain right after the Vegas trip entry. Sorry.)
4
Um. There's a study trip to Las Vegas. That's why I'm trying to finish my papers. From the 15th to the 22nd, though the dates may shift.
3 - Cretinism
More from Barbarian Invasions -
The (old, sick, dying) professor and his friends are all sitting around talking about their youth and sex and then they make a list of all the isms they went through - marxism, structuralism, deconstructionism...(there were more, but I can't remember them).
One: Was there any ism we didn't try out?
Another: Cretinism!
And later there's a dinner party (omelette with truffle oil, was it?) where they talk about intelligence. How there were periods in history - Socrates' Athens, the Renaissance, the beginning of the American Revolution - when people were intelligent. What has happened to all that intelligence?
Ahh.
The (old, sick, dying) professor and his friends are all sitting around talking about their youth and sex and then they make a list of all the isms they went through - marxism, structuralism, deconstructionism...(there were more, but I can't remember them).
One: Was there any ism we didn't try out?
Another: Cretinism!
And later there's a dinner party (omelette with truffle oil, was it?) where they talk about intelligence. How there were periods in history - Socrates' Athens, the Renaissance, the beginning of the American Revolution - when people were intelligent. What has happened to all that intelligence?
Ahh.
2 - Illiterates
[The numbered bits are suppressed blogs. Do you write blogs in your head all the time? And then somehow not commit them to screen? Am I just weird? Oh shut up.]
In Barbarian Invasions, which was the high point of the film fest for me -
The professor's ex-students come to visit him [they've been bribed by his son to do so, but we don't know this - or I don't know this - at this point]. They hang around awkwardly, say they miss him, and then leave.
One of the friends, also an ageing academic type: For illiterates, they're really quite sweet.
In Barbarian Invasions, which was the high point of the film fest for me -
The professor's ex-students come to visit him [they've been bribed by his son to do so, but we don't know this - or I don't know this - at this point]. They hang around awkwardly, say they miss him, and then leave.
One of the friends, also an ageing academic type: For illiterates, they're really quite sweet.
Happy birthday [insert name here*]!
I'm sorry I'm not there. Really do have to finish a paper. My own damn fault of course.
[* deleted for modesty]
[* deleted for modesty]
Sunday, May 02, 2004
1
James Fenton on Auden:
"Ursula Niebuhr, the theologican wife of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was critical of pacifism, gives an account of Auden's commencement address at Smith College in 1940... Auden called his address a sermon, but he put the text at the end. It is from Rilke's Words to a Young Poet:
- James Fenton, "Auden in the End", from The Strength of Poetry.
"Ursula Niebuhr, the theologican wife of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was critical of pacifism, gives an account of Auden's commencement address at Smith College in 1940... Auden called his address a sermon, but he put the text at the end. It is from Rilke's Words to a Young Poet:
The only courage that is demanded of us: [is] to have courage for the most extraordinary, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter....Only he or she who is ready for everything...will live the relation to another as something alive....We must always hold to what is difficult, then that which still seems to us the most hostile will become what we most trust and find most faithful...Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.And Ursula Niebuhr goes on to recall how Auden
wrote sympathetically about Rilke's negative reaction to the First World War. 'Not to understand: yes, that was my entire occupation in those years'; and commented on these words of Rilke, 'To be conscious but to refuse to understand, is a positive act that calls for courage of the highest order.' But he admitted that, 'It may be difficult for the outsider...to distinguish it from selfish or cowardly indifference.' For him, Rilke was the writer to whom to turn, 'for strength to resist the treacherous temptations that approach us disguised as righteous duties.'I think of Blake's question:
Thou has a lap full of seedTo which the answer must be: if only it were as easy as that. If only what the question supposes were true. Auden had the greatest gifts of any of our poets in the twentieth century, the greatest lap full of seed. And it was given to him to know that, and to doubt it, to know and to doubt it. The sense of being primus inter pares, the sense of always being the youngest person in the room, the spirit that could say to posterity, 'You did not live in our time - be sorry' - all this was given him. And then, to be conscious but to refuse to understand, to live not in a fine but in a lean country, to hold to what was most difficult, to face that which was most hostile - this too was given him. To make mistakes, to know humiliation - this too was given him. To find himself wronged or in the wrong, to find his courage taken for cowardice, to find himself human in short - all this was given him. 'Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us,' and perhaps that forward impulse of renunciation implied a gesture towards the terrible. This was where his Gift had brought him, to this lean country and to these caves of accusation.' "
And this is a fine country.
Why dost thou not cast thy seed
And live in it merrily.
- James Fenton, "Auden in the End", from The Strength of Poetry.