And We All Shine On
Wow, it's been a long time since I posted here, hasn't it? I wonder if anyone reads this still. If you do, post a comment saying so. I'd be curious to know.
Whether or not anyone reads this is less important than whether or not I write it, so if I write it to blind eyes then.. well... ok. That's fine with me.
It seems a little wierd to write about the 25th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon when I was never alive when he was. But I grew up with John Lennon nonetheless, through music and movies and stories, and I have grown to love him as dearly as anyone who was able to share in the vitality of his life. It is strange to look at tomorrow and say, "Alright, then. It's been 25 years since you left. I miss you. I never knew you, but I miss you."
I think the Lennon legend has been distorted, blown out of proportion. I don't think Lennon was a savior, an activist or a leader. I don't think he ever extended that deeply into our lives, not as John Lennon the man. I think that John Lennon has carved himself a spacious, unfillable place in the American -- the international, even -- heart as John Lennon, the Beatle. John Lennon the Beatle changed life as we knew it; he made us smile, he made us sing, he made us dance. He made us think, made us laugh, made us cry. John Lennon, the Beatle, was one of the two most important rock and roll songwriters of all time. The other is his partner, Paul McCartney the Beatle.
I have now devoted my life to the academic study of the Beatles and what they did to permanently change and revitalize a country they weren't born in. Lennon was the only Beatle to become truly American; to move here, to fight for his citizenship, and to win it. He died here, as well.
I won't do anything special tomorrow, I don't think. Maybe I'll listen to my favorite Lennon song, think for a minute, say a small prayer. There's not much we can do for him, after all; he is where he was meant to be, wherever that is (I happen to think that he's in a universe that looks like "Tomorrow Never Knows" sounds. That, I think, would have suited him).
I will offer him this, though, publicly and on the internet for anyone to find and see. Thank you, John Lennon, wherever you are, for devoting your life to music and to happiness. My world is better, happier and brighter because of what you wrote and sang. You never knew me, and I will never know you, but you gave me a gift all the same, and for that I offer your my eternal gratitude, thanks, and respect. Bless.
And, finally, because I love this man so much:
"The Wrestling Dog"
One upon a tom in a far off distant land far across the sea miles away from anyway over the hills as the crow barks 39 people lived miles away from anywhere on a little island on a distant land.
When harvest time came along all the people celebrated with a might feast and dancing and that. It was Perry's (for Perry was the Loud Mayor) job to provide (and Perry's great pleasure I might add) a new and exciting (and it usually was) thrill and spectacular performer (sometimes a dwarf was use), this year Perry had surpassed himselve by getting a Wrestling Dog! But who would fight this wondrous beast? I wouldn't for a kick off!
It says I posted three days ago, but I certainly don't remember that...
Anyway, this isn't really a post, it's just an instruction, because following this instruction will make your life better for 35 minuites.
Read this:
"Paper Tiger," in particular, effortlessly floats into of the realm of the hyper-real; there's nearly more silence than music. Spoon has always struck me as a band that, no matter how good the rest of their album was, could always be relied upon to produce at least one or two songs every album that would make my jaw drop ("Car Radio," "Everything Hits at Once," "Lines in the Suit"). And while Moonlight has far more than its fair share of stunners, "Paper Tiger" blows them all away. Daniel distantly croon-growls, "I'll never hold you back/ And I won't force my will/ 'I will no longer do the Devil's wishes'/ Somethin' I read on a dollar bill," over reverse-playback beats, solitary piano chords, and drumsticks; nothing else. It's an effect of singular elegance and power.
Now, Listen to this:
Kill The Moonlight
Tag, I'm it.
So the ever so wonderful and lovely Megadork sent me the first email I've gotten from her in months to say "Tag, you're it!" There's a musical meme going around right now. 10 songs y'dig. Of course, most of mine are something like 30-40 years old or older, but she asked and so she'll know...
Right now I'm digging (in no particular order):
1. David Bowie - "Song for Bob Dylan"
2. The Beatles - "You Won't See Me"
3. Ghosty - "(In A Big World) Little Dreams Count"
4. Bob Dylan - "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
5. David Bowie - "Andy Warhol"
6. The Silver Jews - "Smith & Jones Forever"
7. The New Pornographers - "From Blown Speakers"
8. Talking Heads - "And She Was"
9. The Beatles - "And Your Bird Can Sing"
10. The Beatles - "Run For Your Life"
P.S. - You can download the Ghosty song on their website (along with some other truly fabuous songs... great band), but I can't link to the MP3 directly.
Psst! If we use red letters AND black letters, we can make profound statements without adding more lines of type!!
I know it's not a new phenomena by any means, but it seems to have become clearer and clearer, more and more prominent in the past, oh I don't know, three months or so. Or maybe it's just European.
What am I talking about? Slogans, slogans for cities and countries, that utilize overlapping red and black type to make a statement. Usually these statements are pretty neat, but they're suddenly popping up everywhere!
Well, if by everywhere you mean two places (at least) then... I'm right, dammit!
For example:
I amsterdam.
It's everywhere in Holland, on all my maps and the like. I like it, really, because it's clever and I'm Dutch, and I am Amsterdam, dammit!
Then this popped up in London:
7 M1LLION
LONDONERS
A very moving statement, especially in the wake of these fucking bombings and shit, and I appreciate the sentiment but this is a bit of a reach. I mean, you have to replace the first "i" in "Million" with a 1 so that you can have "1 London" spelled properly.
Anyone got any others? I'm curious how many other cities have adopted something like this.
The Five and a Half Minute Hallway
In times of great crisis and boredom, I seek out insanely complicated things. Movies, music, books, I like them all as layered and confusing as possible. I know a few people who find that to be entirely counter-intuitive, but I think it’s actually quite logical. People who seek out simple things in times of emotional distress are simply looking for a passing distraction to clear their heads before they can obsess over their problems once more. But I don’t obsess, I repress: as far as my emotional state is concerned, nothing is wrong. Admitting the problem means I have to deal with it, and I don’t deal with problems very well.
Complexity is the perfect escape then, you see? The more complex a work is, more of my time and brain-power is required to work through it. That means I have even less time to focus on what is bothering me. And lemme tell ya, a lot of things are bothering me right now
So what’s happened? I’ve developed an intense craving for House of Leaves, the modern-day Ulysses written by Mark Z. Danielewski. I read it last year, in February. I bought it over winter break after learning that it was a major influence on Radiohead during the sessions for Kid A and Amnesiac. I love Radiohead, and I love those albums (especially Amnesiac, actually) and was immediately interested in House of Leaves. So I bought it. It’s a 700-page behemoth, the story of a fictional documentary being academically analyzed by a dead blind man named Zampano, with footnotes (and another narrative) by a disturbed youth named Johnny Truant, which are footnoted by unnamed editors, and which, in reality, is all written by Mark Z. Danielewski over the course of ten years. The typography and format of the book are endless complex, a labyrinth of text that reflects the unfolding, supernatural labyrinth in The Navidson Record (Danielewski’s fictional documentary), incorporating fiction and real sources, and very, very difficult to get through until it grabs you. It took me from December to February to read the first two chapters. I finished the rest of the book on the eight hour flight back from Paris.
It is an incredible piece of fiction, a contemporary Ulysses (as I’ve already said), and a terrifically scary horror novel at heart. It’s endlessly surreal, using three different type fonts for the main narratives (Zampano’s academic analysis, Johnny Truant’s footnotes, and the editors’ footnotes). The word “house” always appears in blue (this is true of the word in all its invocations, including those in other languages) and the word “minotaur” always appears in red. The color technique is jarring and disorienting, as if the book needs to disorient its reader more. It occupied every brain cell I had. I need it right now.
I’ve settled for academic articles and doctoral dissertations (I’m in the middle of one that discusses the idea of the Uncanny, especially as espoused by Freud, as seen in the fictional Navidson Record, and not really even addressing the rest of the book), but it’s not satisfying. I could ask my roommate to send it to me, and I’m tempted to, but it would take another frustrating week to arrive. I don’t know what to do.
Interestingly, the online articles and dissertations seem to have developed a weird respect to Danielewski’s insistence on having house colored blue. Most independently published articles (not reviews from sites like Salon.com or other online publications [or print publications’ websites]) color “house” blue as well. But because it’s a device that Danielewski uses to subtly keep the reader within the fiction universe of the book, I find myself wondering if what I’m reading is really an analysis, or a Danielewski prank. After all, House of Leaves was originally published online… it only found print distribution after it developed an internet cult following. So who’s to say that Danielewski isn’t lurking around the web, adding to his decade-in-the-making masterpiece.
I want this book. Now.
The wonderful story of London's heat wave, and six others
Once upon a time, far across the ocean, there was a rather small island nation called the United Kingdom. People in the United Kingdom were either Northern Irish (brutally marginalized and busy with a slow and painful civil war), Scottish (utterly unitelligable and resentful of the Queen for keeping them in the kingdowm when they could obviously govern themselves), Welsh (somewhere off to the side, rather into keeping to themselves), or English (probably overly bigheaded and certainly preoccupied with the fact that most people, when they say "British" mean "English," making them even more important than the rest of the kingdom). They lived in relative peace and harmony under the fickle British sky.
The capital of this somewhat sarcastic and unique nation was a city called London, a sprawling metropolis of neo-Classical architecture, Victorian buildings and numerous parks, green and damp from the near-constant rain. Gigantic red double-deck buses meandered through the streets, twisted and knotted in the mideval pattern, weaving in and out of the many cars and even greater hoardes of people. Most of the people who waited for these red giants lived in London, but as summer approached their numbers swelled further as tourists came flooding into the city. They came from everywhere: Paris, Amsterdam, Beijing, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. They came in all colors from white to neon blue, all shapes from stringbean to billiard ball, and all sizes from microscopic to towering giant.
Every year the natives of London (by and large about medium size and rather thin, though they came in a rainbow of colors) prayed and prayed for a real summer. "Give us some sunshine and heat!" they would cry, lifting their hands to the sometimes-grey sky. "Please, oh Lord, give us summer!" And God -- or Krishna or Buddha or Weather or Whomever -- looked down from the sky and laughed and laughed until tears rolled from his (her/its) eyes and sheets of rain once again fell on the sprawling city. The native sighed, the tourists yelped and the Big One Up There smiled in satisfaction.
The group of American students, in the Great City for only three months and eager to immerse themselves quickly, in a truly American fashion, sat on the steps of their apartment building in the Luxurious Part of Town (TM) and smoked cigarettes while eyeing the grey sky.
"This is bullshit," one of them said, tall and brown and angry that he was wearing long pants, "It's summer. Be hot!"
"No, I like it," another protested, curled up in the corner of the porch, cigarette loose in her hand, "This is perfect."
The Big One Up There heard their bickering and frowned in anger. "I'll teach the complainers a lesson," he (she/it) said firmly. "They question my decisions? Well, I'll show them what summer in London could really be like..."
And he (she/it) did, using his (her/its) humongous hands to sweep the clouds across the sky, allowing pure, unadulterated sunlight to stream down upon the island nation. "Sun!" the Londoners cried, throwing their arms up in celebration, "Summer at last!"
The Americans students ran out into the parks, frisbees and soccer balls held tightly in their arms like small children, rejoicing the heat of summer. Those who prefered the temperate, sometimes rainy weather, pouted sullenly and wished for a sprinkler or hose as they began to drip with sweat. The students and Londoners played and played, romping through Hyde Park, then to Trafalger Square to sit by the fountain, then to Buckingham Palace and Leicester Square and Picadilly and all the beautiful places they had longed to see in the sun-drenched summer they were used to back home. They romped for hours and trudged back to their apartments, smiles wide across their faces, sweat dripping from their brows.
As they entered the apartments, the smiles fell from their faces. "Yo, where's the AC?" the tall brown boy asked, fanning himself with his shirt collar.
"It's fucking hot," another boy complained.
"I told you so," said the quiet girl who took another cigarette out of her pack and stuck it between her lips before heading outside once more to smoke it.
"This is bullshit," they complained, "How can no one have air conditioning here?"
The Big One Up There heard them complaining and frowned furiously. In a big swoop of clouds and thunder, he (she/it) came down to London and appeared before the obnoxious American students.
"How dare you complain!" he (she/it) boomed, "I heard your pleas for real summer, for heat, and I gave it to you! Now you just find something to complain about again! You ungrateful little twats!"
The American students were taken aback by their tongue lashing (no one had thought to call them twats before, though upon reflection is seems that such blunt language might fix a lot of problems with Americans, at home and abroad) and simply stared at the Big One Up There with wide eyes.
"God!" he (she/it) cursed, stamping its foot impatiently, "I hate this shit!"
And with that he (she/it) was gone. The students looked at each other in shock until the front door opened and the sensible girl's face popped inside.
"It's raining," she said, and closed the door.
And in the great city of London, between the ancient soil and the new buildings, between the tourists and the locals, the foreigners and the natives, the raindrops fell, connecting them all in a great flood of water that finally broke the heat.
(Until it came back two weeks later)
If you cut me, do I not bleed?
So I've had a full 24 hours to reflect and smoke and sleep and generally let yesterday sink in. It was the second serious terrorist attack I've personally experienced, technically the third I've lived through (I was only 8 when the World Trade Center was bombed, and I think I watched the news while playing Barbie, so I don't really count that one, nee?). I have to admit, I was generally convinced after 9/11 that this kind of thing wouldn't happen again, that I wouldn't be in the immediate vicinity of a terrorist attack, that I wouldn't have my life disrupted by it again. 9/11 was so discombobulating, so utterly out of the ordinary, that I didn't really think it could happen again. Haha, it did.
London is a truly remarkable city. I chose to study here this summer because I've been to the city three times before, and each time I do my best to figure out a way not to go back home. I really adore this place, and I did years before yesterday even happened. But yesterday was the day when I realized that if I ever had the means and opportunity to move here permanently, I would do it without a second thought. I also made a pact with a friend to come back in 2012 (if we're not living here already) for the Olympics.
I left the Crofton, my dorm, at about 5 o'clock yesterday with a friend, determined to make it to Camden Town (and Camden Market therein) in order to buy some herbal relief and relaxation (*wink*). Normally, to get to Camden, we walk to Gloucester Road station on the Picadilly line and take that to Leicester Square, switch to the Nothern line and get off at Camden Town station. All in all, on a good day, about 20 minutes each way. We would have been back by 6. But, of course, the tube was closed yesterday and we couldn't do that. So we walked up to Hyde Park gate, which is half a block from our dorm, on High Street Kensington. Luckily, they had started running buses again by then (walking to Camden takes about 2 hours, since I live in Kensington which is on the south-western corner of Central London), and we caught a number 10 which took us to Warren Street tube station. Warren Street's only a few stops away, so we walked to Camden Market from there, which only took about 15 minutes. Herbal relaxation was plentiful, despite the increased police presence (they were wearing bright yellow reflective jackets and were concerned with WAY more importnat things than two kids buying pot... plus, if they had caught us, we would've gotten a ticket for about 50 GBP), and we quickly found and bought some. Then we had to figure out how to get back.
We smoked a joint, under this little bridge with lights on the bottom of it, that covers a little canal that's, I guess, a little estuary of the Thames, but it totally looked like a little slice of Amsterdam, which is why we deemed it to be our smoking spot. But as we were finishing, typical British weather kicked in. That morning, during the attacks, it had been grey and overcast, and had rained lightly for a bit. Then, in the early afternoon until we smoked it got all sunny and gorgeous. Then... it POURED. I mean, poured. I was wearing my Ugg slippers without socks, and they squished for the rest of the day, and are STILL drying out today. We got soaked. We took refuge in a pub called The World's End, and when it stopped raining we approached a policeman to give us directions. He told us to find a C2 bus, and that should take us at least to Oxford Circus, where we could get another bus.
Well, the C2 didn't come for a long time, so we gave up and started walking. We walked to Tottenham Court Road (that took about 45 minutes), the first promising place for catching a bus. The 10 ran through there, so in theory we could've caught that one and taken it all the way back to half a block from our apartments. We waited for about half an hour before catching a 73 to Oxford Circus, then an 8 to Marble Arch and then a 10 home.
But while we were waiting at Tottenham Court, we began to realize that the city was full of people. Everyone was getting off of work and wandering around, looking lost and confused as they tried to figure out how to get home. The London Underground carries approximately 3 1/2 million commuters every day. To say that London is a bit lost without it is an understatement. But my friend and I were simply awed by the buses and police officers showing everyone how to get home. All the rail services were operating, the overground trains and trams, the coaches and buses, the airports. Just the tube was closed. And everyone, people who spent all day in offices and on cell phones on the tube, was talking to everyone else. Asking after the news, how are you, do you know how to get home? Are you hungry, are you okay. It was incredible. Simply incredible. I didn't mind waiting because all of a sudden London wasn't just a city with lots of different people, it was a community. A much closer community than I -- or any foreigner -- had ever realized. It may not look like Londoners give much of a damn about anyone other than themselves, but they do. They actually care a lot.
What happened yesterday was and is bewildering and upsetting. How can it not be? That kind of violence, against completely innocent people, is always horrific, whether it happens in London, New York, Washington DC, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Laos, or anywhere else in the world. Innocent people are innocent people, no matter where or who they are. The kind of anger and hatred that motivate terrorism are so foreign to me, so completely unimaginable, that I have trouble understanding how you even get the idea into your head. But it's okay; we're okay. London's already bouncing back, and I would guess that we'll be back to gloating over the Olympic win in about a week.
Thanks, anyone who IMed or emailed me to see if I was okay. I am okay; in fact, I'm more than okay. I'm happy. I'm in London.
