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Wednesday, September third, 2008
One of the best things about the Luminous Groove box set is this track, on disk 1 of "Bad Case of History." It is a previously unreleased demo recording (recorded in Yarmouth in 1992), which means The Asking Tree has never heard of it. This song just seems like a very pure, beautiful melody to me. I'm not sure what else to say about it -- I find the descending run on the fourth and eight lines of the verse rivetting. I lean back and forth between thinking the lyrics are lovely poetry, and thinking they are tritely emotional. The best thing about the lyrics is definitely the ways that the eighth line of each verse leads into the refrain. Possibly what I want to say about this song is, it combines perfectly the style of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians with the style of Robyn Hitchcock's solo work from later in the '90s -- this is what you might get if you crossed "Raymond Chandler Evening" with "Heliotrope."
Lyrics below the fold.
 
Ivy Alone
The fabulous whisper;
Can anyone hear but me?
The ivy surrounds you
Infinitesimally.
Does anyone love you?
Baby just me.
You're caught in the darkness,
The only place you can be alone
Alone
Alone.
A series of strangers,
Shall we say "absent friends,"
Parading before you;
Into your life she bends.
So hollow and lonely,
It's making you see,
You'll only get better
When you've learned how to be alone
Alone
Alone.
(instrumental)
What does it matter?
You're seeking the eyes long shade.
I brought you some onions;
Cry now, don't be afraid.
They're walking towards you,
The angels from everywhere;
The ghost of your body
Is bringing you back to her alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
Alone.
↻...done
posted evening of September third, 2008: 1 response
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The Washington Post reports today on how Sarah Palin decided not to provide funding for helping pregnant teenagers whose mother is not a powerful Republican politician. Palin... earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live. Thanks to Tim in comments at The Great Whatsit for the link.
posted afternoon of September third, 2008: Respond
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 Ayse posts the first sentence of Museum of Innocence in my comments:
It was the happiest moment of my life, I did not know. (See the comment thread for discussion of the translation.) The official website for the book is here -- only in Turkish naturally, but with two lovely photo galleries: Pamuk in his study, and Pamuk around the town. There is also a Wikipædia entry of course, in English and in Turkish, but practically nothing written about it on the English site as yet. ...And, Banu Güven of MSNBC Turkey interviewed Pamuk about his new book yesterday. I am wishing I could understand Turkish...
posted morning of September third, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, September second, 2008
 I've fallen in love with mural-blog The Wooster Collective -- every day tons of clever, striking images of graffiti on streets and buildings around the world. Today they link to an NRK article on Urban kunst midt i ødemarka, which shows many walls by Norwegian artists Dolk and Pøbel.  This is a site you should add to your daily rounds if you're interested in public art.
Flybane/fluesopp by the by, is also Little My's preferred fungus -- I've forgotten which Moomin book it is that has the family sorting mushrooms they've gathered, all of Little My's are poisonous and/or psychoactive.
 Update: I made "Pike med fluesopp" my desktop wallpaper. I love this image! Here are a couple more photos, with higher resolution.
posted afternoon of September second, 2008: 1 response
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 Pamuk's new novel is out! (In Turkish only; the German translation will be published in two weeks, and hopefully the English will be available before too long.) Today's Zaman has a short piece with some information about the novel, a love story which will be Pamuk's longest book excluding his first.
Additionally, Pamuk has written two articles related to his new novel. The first article sheds light on the literary, personal and philosophical sources of "Masumiyet Müzesi," and the second one discusses the themes of famous love stories in general. The publication dates of the articles are not yet known. So exciting! I can't wait to read these.
posted morning of September second, 2008: 22 responses
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Monday, September first, 2008
I guess this must be a common dilemma for historians (or "popular writers of history" -- Wyden is a journalist, not a historian): whether to relate the course of events from an eagle's-eye view, and risk losing the lived experience of the events, or to follow the people who are living the events, and risk losing the larger picture. Wyden errs quite clearly (and I think consciously) on the personal side -- his narration is vivid but the connecting thread between episodes is quite weak. It would help if he could pay a little more attention to giving dates -- each chapter is pretty much continuous so if he gave a date at the head of the chapter it would be much easier to fit the chapter's events into the broader narrative. As it is the reader needs to spend a fair amount of time flipping back and forth to figure out what year it is right now (or I do, anyway). Right now the Fascists are about to launch an attack on Madrid, and I had somehow gotten the idea it was the fall of 1937; as it turns out it is still 1936. I certainly do not want to fault Wyden for this choice however -- the personal narratives are a great thing, they make the book shine. I would much rather read this way with a bit of confusion about the course of events, than a dry narrative of troop movements.
posted afternoon of September first, 2008: Respond
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In comments to NickS's covers post, Matthew links to a fantastic version of "Strawberry Fields Forever", by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Lovely! And it gives me a chance to remember Ellen's brief memoir "1996", published in In My Life: Encounters with The Beatles,  about playing Anthology 2 for her fourth-grade class in East Harlem. "Draw me what you hear in the music," I say. They show me giant strawberries growing next to an apartment building, the sun's rays as streams of musical notes, the word music in big colorful letters, a strawberry tree identified with phonetic spelling swter breey fealds.
It was Ellen's first full-time teaching job (after many years of adjuncting), and she had a good time with the class, and her students had a good time learning to read and write. "So were you a Beatlemaniac?" Yazmine asks. "Oh, sure, of course," I answer in all seriousness. "I always will be."
Los Fabulosos Beatlemaniacs, below the fold.
posted morning of September first, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, August 31st, 2008
The story of Spain's gold reserves being transported to Moscow in 1937 seems like it would make really excellent raw material for a thriller. I wonder if such a thing has been written or filmed.
posted evening of August 31st, 2008: 2 responses
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I found a radio interview with Orhan Pamuk -- the January 22nd episode of Robert Harrison's show "Entitled Opinions" on KZSU. The blogger at Coisas do Gomes alerted me to this interview when he posted this quote: There were unfortunate institutional attempts in Turkey to purify Turkish in mid-thirties and forties but I don't believe in it. My standard for using the language is the language I hear from my grandmother, from my mother, from my father. I am a conservative, in the sense that I want to keep Turkish as it is. In my novels I use the language of my mother, of my grandmother, which is actually the language I also hear on the streets. This is nice; and I also like, later in the interview:
When I published my Istanbul book, some four years ago in Turkey, my readers from the younger generation object to the fact that this is not the colorful, happy, sunny Istanbul -- and I agreed with them. I wrote my Istanbul, and that's the Istanbul I like. The Istanbul of long winter nights; black and white, a poor black and white place, where the ruins of Ottoman empire, the ruins of all extravagant, wooden Ottoman buildings, they're in ruins -- that's how I spent my childhood, playing football among the Ottoman ruins, among the wooden houses, which were in the next two decades burned down one by one. My Istanbul, in the fifties, sixties, seventies, was an extraordinarily provincial place, where the sense of community was out, the sense of being outside of Europe, but so close to Europe, and still being poor; the sense of "nothing will change here, there is no future here," was still hovering around; perhaps a place where the presence of the loss of Ottoman empire, that this city had once upon a time, was once the capital of a great, magnamious (?) and very rich empire, now is in ruins and leading a poor, provincial life, hoping to develop a relationship with Europe...
I believe I have read similar sentiments to this in a published article of Pamuk's -- it sheds new light on them, to hear them straight from the horse's mouth.
posted evening of August 31st, 2008: Respond
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Over at Before You Listen, NickS is asking, "What makes a good cover?" Well -- I've been thinking about it some and the more I reflect, the more it seems like I'm a really easy target for cover versions in general. This came to me today when I was listening to WFUV's Sunday Breakfast, and Alison Kraus came on the radio singing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" -- this is just fantastic! and what is it about cover versions that gets me so reliably interested? I think it's pretty simple really: When I listen to a cover of a song I like, I've got the version I know playing in my head and the version I'm listening to playing harmony. Lots of opportunities for interplay between the variations, a psychic duet between the two singers. Fun! Even better, when I get to know multiple versions and have them all playing together. (Take a look at this list of covers of "Summertime Blues" -- some great stuff in there. I guess The Who's version and Eddie Cochran's are the two most familiar to me; Blue Cheer's, which I heard for the first time yesterday, is totally worth while. Plus T. Rex! Richie Valens! Bruce! James Taylor! and many more. A couple of versions below the fold.) (Note: Doing a clumsy post like this makes me grateful for the existence of bloggers like NickS who can write meaningful, articulate takes on what is happening in the music they're listening to.)
posted morning of August 31st, 2008: 3 responses
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