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Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
The anniversary of Borges' death just passed -- got me thinking of a couple of things, principally that I should get back to my translation of Réquiem by Slavko Zupcic (in which Zupcic "accidentally" kills Borges); and also about which Borges fictions would be the best ones to start out with for a new reader. (This thanks to a Facebook post of Matt Dickerson's, in which he suggested "The Library of Babel" as a starting point.)I was thinking there might be a good argument for starting off with any of:
- "Tlön, Ukbar, Orbis Tertius" -- Donald Taylor mentioned in that thread that he had not yet read the story of "The Library of Babel" but he appreciated the puzzle of it -- I think Tlön and Babel and the other stories in Garden of Forking Paths (part I of Ficciones) are a great starting point if you are primarily interested (or even "strongly interested") in the intellectual-puzzles aspect of Borges' work.
- "Funes, His Memory" -- this was the first thing I thought of, because I had read it quite recently and been really taken with the quality of Borges' voice and of his narrative. This is the first story in Artifices, which is part II of Ficciones and postdates part I by three years. Drawing of character is much stronger here than in any of his earlier stories.
- "The Immortal" -- This is the first story in The Aleph, published 5 years after Ficciones. A wonderful, wonderful story and a good introduction to the role of time and of infinity in Borges' fictions.
In the end I would probably go with "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" just because having it be one's first taste of Borges seems like a sort of canonical experience among people I know who like his work. But probably would suggest that my interlocutor skip ahead to some later work next instead of reading straight through The Garden of Forking Paths. Certainly I would recommend either starting with the translations in Collected Fictions or with those in Labyrinths.
 (Of course I am hoping the person I am recommending these stories to will feel moved to read much more of his work -- these three stories seem sort of like good vehicles for figuring out if you are interested in reading more, I don't by any means think that these three stories in isolation would be particularly enlightening.)
posted evening of June 15th, 2010: 4 responses
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Monday, June 14th, 2010
John and I had a great practice session last night, recorded a bunch of practice takes of tunes -- including a new take of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", which I have put into the Hitchcock-heavy mix in place of the messy old take of that song. (And the mix is no longer "random"... oh well...) Big news is, our band has a name now! We are Mountain Station, named after the train station near my house. (As John said, cool -- now all we need is a banjo player and a bass...) Here are some other cuts from the practice last night:
posted morning of June 14th, 2010: 2 responses
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Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Two more pieces from Bocas del tiempo:
One Body
Leaning on their white walking sticks, buoyed up by a slug of booze, they made their way somehow or other through the streets of Tlaquepaque.
It looked like they were on the brink of falling over, but no: when she stumbled, he held her up; when he staggered, she straightened him out. The two walked together; the two sang together. They always stopped in the same place, in the shadow of the gate, and sang in their broken voices, old Mexican airs of love and of war. They were playing some instrument, maybe a guitar, I can't remember, it helped them stay near the key. Between songs, they would shake the dish where they were collecting coins from the respectable public.
Later on they left. Their walking sticks in front of them, they passed through the crowd under the sun and lost themselves in the distance, ragged and torn, arm in arm, supporting each other in the torrent of the world.
The Kiss
 Antonio PujÃa chose at random one of the blocks of Carrara marble which he had collected over the course of the years.
It was a tombstone. It had come from some grave, who knows from where; he had not the slightest idea of how it had come to his workshop.
Antonio lay the stone on a stand, and went to work on it. He had some rough idea of what he would sculpt; or perhaps he had none. He began by wiping clean the inscription: a man's name, his year of birth, the year of his passing.
Next, his chisel bit into the marble. Antonio found a surprise, what he had been hoping to find inside the stone: a vein in the shape of two faces touching one another, like two profiles touching at the foreheads, nose touching nose, lips touching lips.
The sculptor obeyed the stone. He went on excavating, gradually, until he completed the relief contained in that stone.
The next day, his work was done. And then when he raised the sculpture up, he saw what he had not seen previously. On the back of the stone was a second inscription: A woman's name, her year of birth, the year of her passing.
posted evening of June 13th, 2010: Respond
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...Speaking of music everybody should listen to, check out this ridiculous overneck fingering from Ronnie Moipolai in Botswana:
A lot more videos of her on YouTube.
posted afternoon of June 13th, 2010: Respond
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The Apostropher's recent Holler mix tape includes Ray Wylie Hubbard's cover of "Choctaw Bingo" -- this is maybe the most affecting song on the tape, the strongest; it is a violent song, feels like getting punched in the gut. Another of his tapes below the fold.
Something else from Hubbard, here he is talking about "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother":
↻...done
posted afternoon of June 13th, 2010: 4 responses
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Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Nice music for listening to while translating (if that verb is not going too far).
The rare kind of random selection of tunes that makes you think it ought to be saved as a playlist and distributed as a mix tape.
- "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" performed in practice by me and John. I think this would be a really good song to cut a recording of. (edit:) We recorded a better take of Hollis Brown, a medley with "Alabama Bound" -- I have included this in the mix.
- (edit:) I am adding a track here, though it was not in the shuffle, Ray Wylie Hubbard's version of "Choctaw Bingo".
- Weird and entertaining dialog between Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips as part of their Elixirs & Remedies record, about getting Grant a bloody drink.
- A guest appearance by Robyn on Departure Lounge's Win them back (which is almost exactly "Heart of Gold").
- "I'm only you" from Storefront Hitchcock. Ahhh....
- "All around the watertank" by Old and in the Way (song that belongs on the fiddle mix)
- "(A Man's Got to Know His Limitations,) Briggs" from Obliteration Pie
- "Wang Wang Blues" by Fletcher Henderson's orchestra.
- Kim Rew, "The Radio Played 'Good Vibrations'"
- "I Miss You More" by local band 13 Scotland Rd., who are totally deserving of wider attention -- check out their web site.
- Venus 3!!! playing "Red Locust Frenzy".
Files beneath the fold.
 Here are the files: Hitchcock-heavy random 10. Artists represented:
- Me and John (who still need a band name) (Update: We have a name! We are Mountain Station.)
- Robyn Hitchcock in various configurations
- Old and In The Way
- Fletcher Henderson and his orchestra
- Kimberley Rew (who is almost a various configuration of Robyn Hitchcock in my limited understanding)
- 13 Scotland Rd.
- (added) Ray Wiley Hubbard.
Nice! (Realizing that the greatness of this mix tape depends on the listener not minding that almost all of the songs are by Robyn Hitchcock -- to me this seems more like a selling point than a hit against it.) Most of the Hitchcock music represented here can be had by purchasing Olé Tarantula and Storefront Hitchcock (either of which purchases is easily justifiable on the merits). I think a better take of "Hollis Brown" should happen this afternoon -- God willing, it will replace the one that's currently in the mix. (Done!) Another change that needs to be made to the pure random-10-ness of this mix is, "Choctaw Bingo" should be inserted between the first and second tracks. The combination of this mix and the fiddle mix is making me think shuffling recordings of songs I am playing in with songs I am listening to, could be a really productive way to go about making music...
↻...done
posted evening of June 12th, 2010: Respond
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If they were single threads, if they did not yet form parts of a common weft: some of the stories here collected were printed in newspapers, magazines. Wading into this pool, those primary forms have changed in shape and in color.(from the front page of Bocas de tiempo)
Bocas de tiempo I see characterized as a memoir in snatches of poetry, something like Summertime; sort of a poetic essay. Maybe more like Breytenbach than like Coetzee. (Funny that it seems wrong to characterize it as a collection of short stories, it needs to be some other genre presented as short stories.) But "memoir" doesn't quite describe it, since it's about a lot more than the narrator's/author's life. It is in translation as Voices of Time: a life in stories (which I have not read) and I'm wondering about trying it as Mouths of Time. (The artwork in the book, which Galeano describes in his foreword as "[tiendas] miles de años de edad, pero [pareciendas] hechas la semana pasada, " is alas not available that I know of online.*)
Time which speaks
We are part of time.
We are its feet and its mouths.
Time's feet walk, they are our feet.
Soon, you know what I'm talking about, sooner or later time's wind will erase our footsteps.
A journey across nothing, nobody's footsteps? Time's mouths recount its voyage.
And more journeying:
The Voyage
Oriol Vall, whose business is the recently born in a hospital in Barcelona, he says that the first human gesture is the embrace. Coming out into the world, at the beginning of their days, they reach out as if searching for someone.
Other doctors, those who busy themselves with the already born, have told me that the aged, at the end of their days, they die seeking to lift up their arms.
That's how it is, for all the approaches we might try to the subject, all the words we may pile on it. This is what everything comes down to, shorn of all explication: between your two wings is where the journey occurs.**
  And more traces:
Footprints
This pair came walking down the beach, in the east of Africa, the rainy season bathing them. This woman and this man still look enough like monkeys; truth be told they are already walking upright and have no tail. A nearby volcano -- today it is called Sadiman -- has been spewing gusts of ash from its mouth. The dust has preserved the traces of the pair, until this time, across all time. Beneath the gray mantle have remained, intact, the footsteps. These feet tell us -- today -- they tell us this Eve and this Adam came walking together, when at a certain point she stopped, looked away, walked a few paces from him. Then she came back to his side. Human footprints -- the oldest ones -- have left the mark of doubt.*** Some few years have passed. The doubt is still with us.
* Not that I've necessarily spent any time looking for it.
**I wonder about this reading: This is what I initially thought was meant by "Entre dos aleteos, sin más explicación, transcurre el viaje." The authorized translation has, "Between two flutterings, with no more explanation, the voyage occurs." -- the 'flutterings' being the raising of arms at birth and at death. I imagine that is the correct reading...
***cf. Mary Leaky, writing in National Geographic about the footprints at Laetoli:
You need not be an expert tracker to discern this motion -- the pause, the glance to the left, seems so intensely human. Three million, six hundred thousand years ago, a remote ancestor -- just as you or I -- experienced a moment of doubt.
posted evening of June 12th, 2010: Respond
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My and Mariana's exchange of Spanish books continues -- yesterday I gave her El informe de Brodie (she says she and every other Argentinian student read Borges' stories in her High School classes but has not gone back to them since then) and she gave me Galeano's Bocas del tiempo and El palacio japonés by José Mauro de Vasconcelos (translated from the Portuguese, and with a foreword, by Haydée M. Jofro Barroso).
posted morning of June 12th, 2010: Respond
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 At a street fair yesterday, I happened on Patrick Woodruff selling his wares, including Las aventuras de ¡QUIXOTE! -- bought a copy, it's a lot of fun. Take a look at his deviantart gallery, the pages of this comic are all there.
posted morning of June 12th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, June 10th, 2010
At Shorpy today, Dave publishes an absolutely stunning view of the (as yet incomplete) Williamsburg bridge, shot circa 1902; the photographer is at the base of the bridge on the Brooklyn side looking west:
The bridge would open December of the following year. (And I got a nice shot of it in February of this year, not of course on anything like such a grand scale.)
posted evening of June 10th, 2010: Respond
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