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elliptical_eyed_illusionist
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Interests: words, playing and listening to music, conversation, coffee, moleskine notebooks, traveling, movies, late night television, photography, cooking, politics, transcendence, etc.
Expertise: making coffee, procrastinating, sardonically raising my eyebrow
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  fakeplasticmatt
Member Since:
2/28/2005
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| Home for 2 weeks.
This, Literature from the "Axis of Evil" and Other Enemy Nations, is one of the best ideas I've heard of in a while. I discovered it for myself in the Post Book World, which lists an event in DC tonight of guest readers reading excerpts from the book tonight at Busboys and Poets, which also sounds pretty cool.
I also found an interview with Azar Nafisi (whose Reading Lolita in Tehran I have a signed copy of but have never read) on the NPR website where she talks about the book. She talks about literary subtlety as being politically subversive, about this book presenting a different Iraq, Iran, and North Korea than we see on the news.
Auden wrote, "For poetry makes nothing happen...it survives, / a way of happening, a mouth." I think these pieces could be a method of survival we hear very little about on CNN, mouths we should listen to with CNN on mute. Voices Mr. Bush has not dreamt of in his philosophy.
Suffice it to say I'll have me a copy when I'm in Baltimore this week. | | |
| And did you see, did you see how
all our friends were there,
and were drinking roses from a can
And how I wish, how I wish I,
I had talked to them,
and I wish they fit into my plan.
I don't know how, but that song ("Tables and Chairs" by Andrew Bird) is somehow my study abroad anthem.
I'm going to miss it here. | | |
| Good god, it's been awhile. I know I have other perhaps more important things to blog about, but this is what I feel like blogging about so fneh. I spent the last little while putting my Christmas songs back together, pulling them out of the nether regions of my iTunes playlist. And also downloading a couple from iTunes, since there ain't no Limewire in these parts. iTunes preys on these weak moments, when you're behind a firewall and you need Christmas music, dammit. So here's my favorite Christmas songs, I think I actually got most of them. They're not terribly unique or interesting for the most part, but it's not Christmas without them:
1) Happy Xmas (War is Over) - John Lennon (I learn this song every year at Christmas and then forget it in the following year. I've done that about 6 times now, so that's as close to a Christmas ritual as I have. I love the way that this song sounds, the story behind it, all of it.)
2) Baby, It's Cold Outside - Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney (Great melody, and seductive as only kitsch can be. Bing Crosby balances smoothness to the point of unctuousness and goofy charm, and Rosemary Clooney is very sexy to me for some reason.)
3) Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) - Darlene Love (Dave Letterman has her on to do this song every year on the last show before Christmas, and it's always such a show-stopper. Another Christmas ritual - I don't feel right unless I see it. I have her version and Death Cab's on my playlist, both good, hers is unbeatable, though)
4) White Christmas - Frank Sinatra (Makes me think of my grandparents. Those hilarious Rat Pack horns, too)
5) Jingle Bell Rock - ? (These next two songs are on here because I think I was the perfect age to have many of my ideas about Christmas be constructed by Home Alone. Kevin dancing with the manequins around the tree? C'mon)
6) I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas - Bing Crosby (I only recently got over my fear of aftershave)
7) In the Bleak Midwinter - Bert Jansch (A classic, and Jansch has a great traditional, reedy delivery)
8) Christmas Party - The Walkmen (A kind of strange, half-spoken-word half-song that I didn't remember having, but I dig the way it sounds, really)
9) I'll Be Home for Christmas - Bing Crosby (One of two songs on this list that make me cry. A World War II veteran once told me that he watched a troop plane, crowded with soldiers going home for Christmas, crash into the Pacific. He said he never hears this song without tearing up, and I don't either anymore.)
10) Carol of the Bells - St. Olaf Choir (or any choir you like. A nicely melodramatic, Carmina Burana style kind of affair. And I know it offends Schroeder, but it has to be voices, not brass.)
11) Christmas Time is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio (Actually the whole Charlie Brown Christmas album's on my playlist. Definitely my favorite, the most earnest and artful of any Christmas special. And I listen to this song year round cos it's on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack, too.)
12) Winter Wonderland - Radiohead (I dunno how easy it would be to find this, but it's pretty funny. Thom Yorke, a synth, and a drum machine. And he gets a bit loopy at the end.)
13) Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Judy Garland (This song absolutely breaks my heart.)
The rest of my family certainly doesn't feel this way, but Judy Garland's voice sounds so heartbroken to me, and yet unbeaten. It really is, like so many Christmas songs, very sad, very nostalgic, and very hopeful. Christmas has been shamefully secularized in many ways, yet it is still a moment of connection and hope. And Linus beats the priest's homily almost every year.
If nothing else, it's an opportunity for me to get sappy. It's dangerous to listen to Christmas music far away from home. | | |
| There's no bloody hot water on my floor.
Fortunately they finally got the heat working again, so I'm not freezing and unshowered at 7:20PM anymore. Just unshowered. So I've been sitting around all day, reading and napping, cos the weather's fairly ugly and the reasons to leave the flat just keep dwindling. Although I am pretty bored...but have very little money...so we'll just call this Stuck Between a Rock and a (Mossy) Hard Place in Ireland '06. But on the upside, my family is coming on Monday, so I'll be able to show them around town and, ahem, get a couple free meals. I'm really, really looking forward to them coming, in all seriousness.
I saw Casino Royale last night, and it's so damn good. I really think Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Connery. That's not to say I dislike Pierce Brosnan - GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies were really good Bond movies, but the last two were pretty weak. I've never been a big Roger Moore fan, I do actually like Timothy Dalton, and we won't even talk about George Lazenby. Craig is much more physical than Brosnan, or any of the other Bonds really. It's good, frankly, to see Bond sweat and bleed. He brings a seriousness to the part (but not too serious, since it is James Bond after all) that really revitalizes the series. Eva Green is, of course, breathtaking. She's probably my favorite young actress, and not just because she's indecently beautiful. As Manohla Dargis pointed out, her "talent is actually bigger than her breasts." Those big grey eyes have a violence to them (her own word), and we see them broken and smouldering in Casino Royale. She is able to really embody a part, to bring gravity even to a character named Vesper Lynd. She's very different than she was in The Dreamers, but her complete immersion in the character remains the same. Ahem. The rest of the movie's pretty good, too. I, for one, didn't miss the gadgets, and would probably give an arm for that vintage Aston Martin. It's not perfect - it is overly long and at times the rhythm of the story and editing are a bit jerky, but overall it's a great movie that also happens to be a Bond movie. I'm resisting the temptation to go see it again tonight. Shower be damned.
Well, I might not be that desperate. | | |
| Ahhhh....round one of papers is done. I have a week's reprieve ahead of me before I have to start the next round. Before the third and final round. But I'm not going to think about that at the moment.
I thought I'd spend a minute of winding down by making additions to the running Study Abroad Playlist (even though I lost my iPod in Scotland, so there won't be a lot of listening to it beyond my room for the foreseeable future):
33) Against the Sky - Vashti Bunyan (this and the next one were both inspired by some really peculiar late fall Irish weather a few weeks ago, quick bursts of wind and a wall of black clouds rolling over the mountains. This song especially sprang instantly to mind)
34) A Lyke Wake Dirge - Alasdair Roberts (See above, but also appropriate for when I read JM Synge's The Shadows of the Glen 2 weeks ago, which deals with the customs surrounding a wake in rural Ireland. They used to sing this song to keep departing souls company)
35) Sweet William - Alasdair Roberts (Kept getting stuck in my head in Scotland. Appropriate, since Roberts is very, very Scottish)
36) If You're Feeling Sinister - Belle & Sebastian (Another Scottish band. I hadn't listened to them in awhile, and had almost forgotten how absolutely incredible Stuart Murdoch's lyrics are)
37) I Do - Brad Mehldau Trio (Since I can really only listen to instrumental piano music when I'm writing a paper, I've been listening to lots of Mehldau, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, and Bach lately. This song has been getting stuck in my head a lot just walking around the last couple days, though, and finally in finishing my paper today I found out the track name)
38) Smile - Lily Allen (A good ol' fashioned British pop guilty pleasure. She seems a bit smarter than your average pop tart, though, which is good when you wake up with this song in your head. Complete guilt first thing is hard to take)
Alright. I'm done staring at the computer screen for the day.
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