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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Sex, as an apt pretext for breaking the monotony; motor-sex; anxiety-sex; the habit of sex, as any glut that can well become a burden; colossal, headlong, frenzied, ambiguous sex, as a game that baffles then enlightens then baffles again; pretense-sex, see-through sex.
I found the last fifty or so pages of Almost Never -- and especially the last couple of pages! -- gorgeous, brilliant writing; and at the same time a bit disappointing. All this beautiful prose, you think as you're reading it, and all just in the service of how horny Demetrio is. The final scene -- and it feels very much like what the whole book has been building towards -- is the deflowering of his blushing bride. Which, great -- Sada's descriptions of sex and of horniness are excellent descriptions, his language moving; but where is it moving you to? It just didn't seem to go anywhere in particular, for me. There was plenty that I would have liked to know more about, plot-wise; but the loss of Renata's virginity just doesn't strike me as a plausible destination for the book. Nice writing though.
Hm, looks like me and John should start coming up with a set list... On my 42nd birthday, Friday the 18th, we'll be featured artists at Michael's Songwriter's Circle, at Tapastry in Montclair. Today's practice session had a couple of great new and old tunes in it...
Get up high, and come down easy
The Sailor's Hornpipe
Suicide is painless ("Here's the tune M*A*S*H stole from Johnny Mandel, we're stealing it back!" shouts the guitarist)
The Swallowtail Jig
The Galway Girl
Danko/Manuel
Coulter Hue
Long Black Veil
Commuter Rail
Bonaparte's Retreat
(an abortive) See Emily Play
East Tennessee Blues
The L&N don't stop here anymore
Carrie Brown
Let's listen to the Drive-By Truckers singing "Danko/Manuel".
Tapes of some of our rehearsal tunes will be forthcoming... Some of these came out really nicely!
Everybody needs to go look at Martha's splendid images -- they're on display over at Artists Wanted -- you can click a button to collect the Appalachian murder ballads and lakes of fire she paints, and help the images win a trip to Times Square, to the big screens!
There is a huge body of fiddle tunes that I think of as "standards". Diverse sources, Appalachia, Ireland, Manitoba, Cape Breton, Scandinavia, the Old West... I've historically felt pretty diffident about my performances of the standards, like I don't play them fast enough or sincerely enough. But that is changing! In the past couple of weeks -- really starting in February when I recorded my take on The Sailor's Hornpipe -- I feel like I'm really enjoying playing these old tunes, and coming up with some pretty decent, enjoyable tunes for listening to. They're pretty off-beat, new and different -- my own sound at last! Here is the list so far of the recordings that I have liked well enough to upload for you to listen to:
East Tennessee Blues -- credited to Charlie Bowman. This song is younger than the others, probably written in the early 1960's. Written in 1926.
Old Joe Clark -- a mountain ballad from eastern Kentucky, first printed in 1918.
The Red-Haired Boy -- I think this is an Irish tune, although I associate it with Boston.
Camptown Races -- composed by Stephen Foster in the mid-19th Century.
Whiskey Before Breakfast -- credited to Canadian fiddler Andy de Jarlis. (Or possibly it is "a traditional tune made popular by de Jarlis")
Bill Cheetham -- I can't find much more information about this than that it is "traditional" .
The Devil's Dream -- a popular English dance tune from the 1800's. I have never heard it played any other way than very fast, but I think this slower arrangement is pretty catchy.
Listening to these in sequence, I think I'm improving, and also I am getting better at putting the videos together. Naturally still much room for improvement in both regards, but...
posted morning of April 15th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Fiddling
He'd made a strategic gain, small but accompanied by the happy thought that an appointment is an appointment. Even so, Demetrio still had to invent a decent pretext for departing from the orchard long before five in the afternoon.
to
Then Demetrio's preamble: he stammered; he simply couldn't find the words for his request, considering his dedication to his work, only to drift, let us say gently, to the great responsibilities the management of...No, not that, no! More stammering.
to
No! Such vulgarity...Indolence. Inanity... Nonetheless, try, try, try again...
in the space of a few pages.
posted evening of April 13th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about Readings
I'm finding that Sada's book (which takes a pretty sleazy guy as its protagonist!) is giving me an unnerving sense of identification with Demetrio, for all the amoral douchebag that he is. This book is bringing to mind some of my very favorite novels.
I'm finding the beauty of Saba's syntax -- the rush of phrases and colons and chanting authorial voice -- intoxicating and exciting, finding it is rubbing off on my own stream of consciousness. In certain ways the book reminds me of Bolaño, of his situations and characters. The flow of Sada's cant pulls me into the action like the opening of Snow. Absolutely want to seek this out in Spanish as well; I think Katherine Silver's translation is brilliant and that I could learn something from it if I could figure out how she brought this insane rhythm across.
I started reading two books on Monday, both translations from Spanish -- The Planets by Sergio Chejfec/tr. Heather Cleary, and Almost Never by Daniel Sada/tr. Katherine Silver. Two extremely different novels. Both authors have very strong voices -- Sada's voice is grabbing me, pulling me in; Chejfec's voice is pushing me away.
posted morning of April 13th, 2012: Respond ➳ More posts about The Planets
The final 20% of The art of resurrection is captivating and engaging and I have not been writing about it very much, not finding much I have to say that would add to the reading experience... I cannot resist quoting a few maxims which Domingo Zárate Vega gives to the proprietor of the print shop in Pampa Unión (the shop he passed by in Chapter 3, when he made a note to stop there later to make more copies of his pamphlets), to print in his newspaper. The whole of Chapter 23 is an interview with Zárate Vega, más conocido por todos como el famoso Cristo de Elqui, running on Saturday December 27* in La Voz de la Pampa.
Some new sayings or proverbs, Teacher?
‘Honesty is the key to good friendship.’
‘Honor is a golden palace.’
‘The birds in the sky are more content than the wealthiest millionaires, although they sleep out in the open, with only their feathers for cover.’
And another that our Eternal Father revealed to me only a few days ago, as I was emptying my bowels in the open pampa: ‘A good remedy for pride, is that a man should turn his head back now and then, to observe his own shit.’
It is Eastertime here where I am reading, and it is Christmastime in the story.
*Which weirdly, December 27 1942 appears to have been a Sunday. That seems like a really weird mistake to make and I'm thinking there must be some explanation for it, like the newspaper being a weekend edition and taking the Sunday date or something... I'm kind of baffled by this.
There is a huge body of fiddle tunes that I think of as "standards". Diverse sources, Appalachia, Ireland, Manitoba, Cape Breton, Scandinavia, the Old West... I've historically felt pretty diffident about my performances of the standards, like I don't play them fast enough or sincerely enough. But that is changing! In the past couple of weeks -- really starting in February when I recorded my take on 
