waste

Tennis players

I've figured out why it takes me so long to get any work done: I expend the lion's share of my mental energies getting into arguments about metaphor, flirtation, the phrase "as it were", and related matters (starting around comment 49). This is supposed to be what I do when not doing things philosophical.  (Or at least one of the many what-I-dos-when-etc.)

The ellipsis is a form of punctuation

Thus it falls within my purview.  The Modesto Kid writes in to ask:

I don't totally understand the convention, when transcribing dialogue, of having a pause between two things one character says indicated by showing the other character as saying "ellipsis". Does it mean he sighs? What is the difference between

Me: Yeah… But it's a cavity. How can you remove it?
Boss: …
Me:I guess they could fill it in. But with what?

and

Me: Yeah… But it's a cavity. How can you remove it?...I guess they could fill it in. But with what?

or even,

Me: Yeah… But it's a cavity. How can you remove it? [awkward pause] I guess they could fill it in. But with what?

I am pleased to provide an answer! It accords rather nicely with the one given already, actually (it's like a camera cutting to the other person who's expressionless, then cutting back to the speaker who continues.), so perhaps I don't really have any cause to give my own answer, except that I was promised hoarded jewels.

Each of the three options, plainly enough, means something different.  Let's start with the middle one: Here, the speaker, one Stanley, is the one hesitating; he's thinking to himself, perhaps, what they might do.  We have no notion what his boss is doing.  Waiting expectantly? Rolling his eyes? Doesn't come up. In the third case the awkward pause is shared between both participants (awkward pauses by their nature are shared, or at least experienced as shared), and what comes after must be understood in the context of that preceding awkwardness.  Here an [awkward pause] makes no sense; what was awkward about the exchange?  In the first case, as already noted, the attention is turned to Boss, whose nonreaction in the face of some sort of expected reaction, or lack of understanding, or nonplussedness, is emphasized.  We can imagine Stanley posing the question and looking towards Boss for some acknowledgement, receiving none, and soldiering on.

A ticket cost a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch

Is it an iron law, I ask, that all pieces of music in which a text is read, not sung, not even speak-sung, to a jazzy accompaniment must sound vaguely similar? Must the texts have if not similar themes then at least similar moods? This questions is prompted by Blue Cranes' "Dear Howard", text by Nico Alvarado-Greenwood, which recalls Allen Ginsberg reading "America" while Tom Waits gets acquainted with a piano (here's some bad audio quality), "Blue" Gene Tyranny's "A Letter From Home Concerning Time and Consciousness", and Harry Partch's "Letter" (which isn't even particularly jazzy)—three of these four also have epistolary lyrics.  And the ability to have that question prompted in that way is prompted by my receipt, today, of eight CDs ordered from Wayside Music, about the existence of many of which, including the Blue Cranes CD, I had completely forgotten. I opened the package and: what are these? Did I order this? I've never heard of these people! But all is in fact in order.  I can look forward to a similar delivery soon from (yech) Amazon, of The Jargon of Authenticity, Sincerity and Authenticity, and The Ethics of Authenticity.  Had I remembered I would also have gotten The Ethics of Ambiguity.  Those who can detect a theme in my hopeful reading material are hereby offered a cookie or some such in reward.

Bent at the waist

There is interesting material on pages 480 and 506 of Sources of the Self.

Oooh, it just burns me up to have missed citrusy gins and herbal liqueurs, despite that I imagine the usual crowd at those events would be equally upburning.  But!  Rye!  And Islay scotch on the 8/02!

Also, this album is fantastic.

Thinking is a physical act

It's like reading in that respect.  Today I valiantly set out for a park to Do some Work pertaining to an eventual dissertation proposal (nutshell).  I even fortified myself with some black sesame seed ice cream.  But it was windy—hella windy—in the park.  So I had to decamp (I pause in my writing to reflect that this word always brings to mind a particular passage from Caesar's Civil War reproduced in Finis Rei Publicae, or rather, since I can't find it again, though in looking for it I discovered that in early 2001 I knew what an "oppositional relative clause" was, and can't remember really what it said, except that the armies were leaving somewhere for somewhere, I should perhaps say that it brings to mind the fact of that passage's existence) to a cafe where I had, a first for this particular place, a really execrable cup of coffee, and finally put into practice my plan of, not typing some thoughts up, but writing some thoughts down—for you see, these thoughts were written on paper, using a pen (not, unfortunately, a fountain or dip pen, though I have those, don't think I don't).

An instructive experience! Being able to divide the page into different regions as I had different thoughts, related to each other but not, generally, coming in the proper order to be written out straight down the page, was extremely helpful.  Frees one to pursue tangents by drawing lines, etc, between what comments on what, write in the margins, write in little boxes, write in big boxes, write somewhere and then draw a box around it, all that jazz.  Maybe one can accomplish such tasks with Word or something like that; as far as I know, you can't really do that with emacs, folding notwithstanding—there's just the text you type above or below some other text.

Because it's worthwhile:

It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon. And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn't a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do. But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.  But I get it without asking for it - at least, so it appears to me - and this worries me. 

You will find me if you want me in the garden

Apparently they have popular culture now, too. What'll they think of next? Maybe they'll think of writing an article (in which I read that this song has been everywhere for the past, like, two months; I just heard it today) that obviously can't think of a good way to approach its subject, which is, really, just the song in question, and so employs a ridiculous conceit that at least allows the author to pad out the article with some half-hearted historical bloviating (summer hits are an old-fashioned idea, like, I guess, primogeniture and the aristotelian unities).

More bloviation would perhaps serve the article well, since when the author does turn to talking about the song itself, s/he says some ridiculous things, like that Rihanna has a "girlish voice" (never mind the depths she reaches in the repetitive parts at the end of each chorus) or that she's singing a "breezy love song", "a lightweight pop confection" in which the fuzzy (so-called "goth") keys (&, IMO, though this may just bespeak ignorance of the idiom, the flat, somewhat sinister (sounds broken) cymbal crashes) serve as conceptual counterpoint to the main thrust of the song, rather than being of a piece it.

But really, nothing could be further from the truth.  "Umbrella" is an expression of an extremely weak hope in an extremely bleak world, and a knowing one at that—it's not just an expression of a hope that happens to be weak but also an acknowledgement of just how weak that hope is.  In this, of course, Rihanna is not without antecedents.  The really vital part of the lyrics comes in the chorus, where one would expect the core thematic material to be sounded, but even in the verses we find support for this reading.  The very first two lines (ignoring Jay-Z's introductory bit, which serves, as far as I can tell, no purpose whatsoever, except perhaps to establish rain as a bad thing ("when the clouds come we go") as opposed to, say, a symbol of rejuvenation) serve to vastly deflate our expectations: "You have my heart / And we'll never be worlds apart".  Not being worlds apart is, one would like to point out, quite compatible with still being quite far apart indeed.  In the second verse the worldliness of the world is explicitly recognized as being corrupting ("these fancy things") if not outright harmful (the war; references to bad hands being dealt); at the end she expresses once again the quietism already emphasized in the chorus ("So go on and let the rain pour").

The relevant portion of the chorus perhaps ought to be quoted at length:

Now that it's raining more than ever
Know that we'll still have each other
You can stand under my umbrella

(That's not much length, but it's enough.)  What is this except a reiteration of the Arnoldian plea, "let us be true to one another", a cry for a separate peace even while acknowledging the flimsiness and temporariness of such a solution?  We are here as on a flooding plain: but at least we've got an umbrella.  And, of course, just as Arnold's imprecation does not really make much sense, given that "the world … Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light / Nor certitude, nor peace" (you're going to be true to your love in that world?), so too Rihanna's attempt to carve out some happiness comes off as at least a little self-deceived: as if an umbrella were a roof, as if even a roof would suffice!

I like the video too.  Pointe work!

Andalucia, when can I see ya?

From now on every post on this blog will have the following format: first, there will be something involving Sources of the Self; then, there will be something (or—I would hesitate to rule this out—somethings, though, as with so much, this really comes down to whether we prioritize shifting new things onto the stack or using our reduction rules as soon as possible, assuming, as is only natural, that we have some rule like <something> :: = [nonrecursive rules go here] | <something> <something>) completely unrelated.  I predict this rule will be upheld for at least one more post.  This meta-commentary, obviously, is excluded, and reference to it is strictly forbidden.

Victorian piety and sentimentality seemed to have captured the Romantic spirit.  For those who saw this whole world as spiritually hollow and flat, Romanticism could appear as integral to what they rejected as instrumentalism was. It merely offered trivialized, ersatz, or inauthentic meanings to compensate for a meaningless world. For those who hungered after some purer, deeper, or stronger moral source that the world of disengaged reason [title of a paper by Frankfurt!] couldn't provide, the expression of simply personal emotion or the celebration of routinized fulfilments was a travesty. And so the modernists as heirs to the Romantics turned against what they saw as Romanticism. The breach with their world had to be more thoroughgoing. (p 458)

In other words, We're number two—we try harder.  There is, I think, something pretty important about avant-gardes being said there, and an earlier version of a post that doesn't entirely disresemble this (except with relation to the existence predicate) included some blather about the discussion of so-called epiphanic theories of art, which manage to express better than I think I ever have some Ideas I've had about such things (heartening to know someone's managed to express them, even if they aren't really thematized) and another discussion, fortunately not already present in Taylor, though doubtless present somewhere, concerning the (IMO) somewhat pragmatically contradictory conservatism of some of the figures in the epiphanic tradition.  But none of that tonight! None of that, perhaps, ever.

Instead, I'd like to talk about some absentminded things I did recently.  These include making a salad and distractedly dicing a carrot really fine as for a mirepoix before realizing about halfway through that that's what I was doing (I blame the fact that it was to include both carrots and celery, which, I mean, what else would you be doing with them?  I mean, come on), cutting my finger and then wondering for a while if I had cut my finger (it sure feels as if I cut my finger, but I don't see any cuts), continually moving the book I'm currently reading away from where I'll actually be when I want to read it, and … as far as absent-mindedness goes, that might be it.  I did make the stupid decision last night not to write something down that I didn't want to forget on the grounds that of course I'd remember it, and then, of course, it was forgotten.  Now, I believe, I've remembered it, but I can't be sure.  (If I'm right, it was the sight of William Winant literally playing the wall at 21 Grand, by moving one of those soft-looking ball-mounted mallets across it. I would not have antecedently thought that could actually work, but it did, and it managed to produce tones in the contrabass clarinet range (I know this because Jacob Lindsay, who apparently knows a thing or two about oxtails, was simultaneously playing a contrabass clarinet). This is not, in the end, that remarkable.  The same concert featured the amusing-to-me sight of Weasel Walter wearing earplugs; this is amusing, if at all, only in light of the unlistenably loud cacaphony to which he subjected the audience at the Lou Harrison tribute at 21 Grand (everything is at 21 Grand) however long ago that was.)

But we were talking about Hopscotch, a book which, for them as don't know, admits of two official ways of reading.  One can read chapters one through fifty-six in that order, and then stop, or one can read the chapters in the following order:

73 - 1 - 2 - 116 - 3 - 84 - 4 - 71 - 5 - 81 - 74 - 6 - 7 - 93 - 68 - 9 - 104 - 10 - 65 - 11 - 136 - 12 - 106 - 13 - 115 - 14 - 114 - 117 - 15 - 120 - 16 - 137 - 17 - 97 - 18 - 153 - 19 - 90 - 20 - 126 - 21 - 79 - 62 - 23 - 124 - 128 - 24 - 134 - 25 - 141 - 60 - 26 - 109…

And so on, until one has read them all.  It was only today that I noticed the following disappointing but not in retrospect that surprising fact: while the chapters above 56 occur nonconsecutively and perforce nonmonotically (so that one reads 73 before 71, eg), chapters one through fifty-six, even in the augmented ordering, appear in consecutive order.  I had thought, foolishly perhaps, that the very inter-chapter discontinuities that would allow for the introduction of extra chapters in between would also permit their reördering, resulting in a much different narrative (the narrative might still, of course, be much different).  But such is not the case.  At the very least this answers my question of whether, after reading the book conventionally, I should right away read it again in the other order: I will not.

The translator to the white courtesy phone, please

And now a complaint about Sources.  Taylor is in the habit of quoting things in French or German, after which he rightly provides a translation.  Except sometimes he doesn't.  Usually he doesn't after fairly short lines, which presumably aren't that important, but then why include them anyway?  But at least then you know that you aren't getting the translation.  Sometimes he acts in a fashion (lights, please) altogether more sinister, as here on p 470:

Breton's aim was to get from himself "un monologue de débit aussi rapide que possible, sur lequel l'esprit critique du sujet ne fasse porter aucun jugement, qui s'embarasse, par conséquent, d'aucune réticence, et qui soit aussi exactement que possible la pensée parlée" ("a monologue to be spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of the critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the slightest inhibition").

Even I, with no French, can tell that the quotation has not been translated completely.  (Only now do I think to check the footnote, where we read that the translation was quoted in a different book.  But surely Taylor has French enough to finish the job?)

Unrelatedly, the utterance by me earlier today of the rather too too phrase "Time moves in one direction only, my friend: the direction of increasing regret" caused me to remember that this clown (to whom the utterance was directed) once came up with the excellent variation "every time god closes a door, he locks it", which it only just now ocurred to me fits perfectly with the Oulipian cut-rate proverbs such as "red sky at night, enjoy the sunset"; "redhead at night, sailor's delight"; "many are called but few are home"; "who steals my purse is out of luck", which apparently are to be found in Bibliothèque oulipienne vol 60, by François Caradec (I despaired of ever finding this again, but it turns out I cleverly put a bookmark at just the right place in the Compendium).  I think a list of such things would be perfect for publication in McSweeney's.

Bork bork bork

The Sources of the Self is, if it is nothing else, at least a good source (ha!) of some interesting quotations:

The endless battle within me makes me like what acts without inward battling: that is why I like necessity & the laws of motion & the doings of dead matter generally … Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage; moments of peace are brief and destroy themselves … All this is autobiography, not philosophy.

Bertrand Russell scripsit, in a letter; it is not indicated to whom. 

At last once again, content for an old title

A dilemma faces me: do I buy pre-cleaned squid parts from Whole Foods for $6 a pound, or uncleaned whole squid from the Japanese supermarket for $2 a pound?  I would, of course, have to clean the latter myself; fortunately, I know a song about doing that.

Maneuvers such as the Horizontal Fold, the Topiary Cut, the Unfurling Poster, and so forth

First of all, not only have I read the text in question, but I was dead serious.  The future perfect isn't about what will happen, but what will have already happened: much more of a dead looming weight than the mere future, or, for that matter, any of the past tenses.  It doesn't seem wrong at all to say that Against the Day is concerned with that ineluctability, and I would go so far as to lay it down as a general rule, that every novel in which there's an element of time travel is concerned as a matter of tense not with the future, but the future perfect.

Second: at a cafe near my house lives a table set out with the usual stuff—sugar, cream, stirrers, and the rest—as well as butter and what seems to be some sort of drupy jam, to deck out the bread which they also purvey—but also with a bowl of gherkins, each neatly sliced in half.  For what? Savory things from the kitchen come with garnishes and whatnot already supplied, they charge for other salty things such as dishes of olives, and there can't be many people who think that what would really complement their coffee would be half a tiny pickle.  Other than me, anyway: I adore gherkins, counting them an excellent example of the class of foods which, despite being vaguely disgusting, are simultaneously delicious and impossible to stop eating.  I fear, though, that if I were to walk over and take ten or fifteen at a go, the people working there would be displeased, and I want them to think well of me.

Third: Parts & Labor really suck.

A worn-out tweed jacket

It's really too bad when a seemingly good idea turns out to be quite trivial.

I'm convinced

The terms Blühendes (blossoming), Fliessendes (flowing), and Seiendes (essent) are not haphazard examples. They are carefully interrelated. Blühendes: in Heidegger's dialoge on language ("Aus einem Gespräch von der Sprache", in Unterwegs zur Sprache), the Japanese interlocutor notes that the word for "language" in Japanese is "koto ba". What is significant about this word is that it implies "the appropriating occurrence of thel ightening message of grace" (koto) and "the leaves of the cherry blossom petals" (ba) (Unterwegs zur Sprache [Pfullingen: Neske, 1959]). This means that langauge is closely related to blossoming.

"Carefully" is an interesting word choice (& I would have thought that "Blühendes" would be better translated as "a blossoming thing", leaving "blossoming" for "Blühen"; if that's right, the entire discussion is somewhat wrongheaded, in addition to being bafflingly placed).

Death Praxis

John Leonard!

Band name!

Thee Loathsome Fuckeres.

Hooray for me!

I successfully [read] chapter one ("Der Spaziergang") of part one ("Ein Kopf ohne Welt") of Die Blendung.  Wooo.  Only 480 pages to go.

Ob ich nur immer den Mond ansehe

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam tamen non datur.

Thursday translation attempt: lang und hager

Although he had suffered from this hour [Obwohl er diese Stunde auskostete; I'm not really sure if he enjoyed the hour or suffered from it], he held to his routine.  Before stepping across a busy street he hesitated a bit.  He preferred to keep an even pace; in order not to hurry, he waited for a favorable moment.  Then someone called out loudly to someone else: "Can you tell me where Mutstraße is?" The questioned person didn't reply.  Kien was surprised; there were silent people aside from him on the open street.  Without looking up, he listened close.  How would the questioner react to this silence.  "Pardon me, please, could you perhaps tell me where Mutstraße is?"  He increased his politeness; his luck remained meager.  The other said nothing.  "I believe you have heard me.  I would like to ask you for some information.  Perhaps you could be a friend and tell me how I might find Mutstraße."  Kien's thirst for knowledge was awoken; he knew no curiosity.  He intended to have a look at the silent person, supposing that he persisted even now in his silence.  Doubtless the man was thinking and wanted to ignore every interruption.  Again he said nothing.  Kien commended him.  Among thousands one person with character, who resisted chance events.  "Hey, are you deaf?" cried the first man.  Now the second will retaliate, thought Kien, and began to lose his pleasure in his protege.  Who controlled his mouth when someone insulted him? He turned towards the street; the moment to cross it had come.  Astounded at the continuing silence, he held back.  Still the second said nothing.  A correspondingly stronger outbreak of his anger was to be expected.  Kien hoped for a fight.  If the second proved to be the usual sort, then he, Kien, would remain undisputably what he considered himself to be: the only one with a character who was walking here.  He considered whether he should already look back.  The course of events was playing out to his right.  The first man was raging: "You have no manners! I asked you in all politeness! What's gotten into you? You brute! Are you dumb?" The second remained silent. "You will apologize! I don't care about Mutstraße! Anyone can show me that! But you will apologize! Listen!" The other didn't listen. Thus he climbed in the esteem of the eavesdropper.  "I'll hand you over to the police! You'll know who I am! You skeleton! And this is supposed to be an educated man! Where did you get your clothes? From the pawnshop! That's how you look! What are you holding under your arm there? I'll show you yet!  Go hang yourself! You know what you are?"

[Then the man hits Kien and steals his bag, for he all along was the second party.]

Weasel Walter is capable of being a remarkably sensitive percussionist; I saw it with my own eyes

This sounds like it was an awesome festival and whatnot but I am moved to remark that Clogs, like the Books, are way overrated.