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Wind and rain and cold and cigarettes smells like Holland to me, and that, for me, is the smell of Europe.

Sometimes you are stuck on a problem….and you just can’t solve it. And it appears that that problem is related to another frustrating thing.

And sometimes you spend wasteful hour after hour on it…

And you go to bed. And in the morning you make one change, and not just that problem, but others magically clear up.

And everything works….

Spoiler content if you view the extended entry… (more…)

Derrida was one of the lit-crit, Post-structuralist philosophy icons landmarks that defined English programs from the 80s to the present day.

Derrida was consistently interested in finding out where what we see of the world came from. What are the filters that pre-evaluate our data for us? There are a whole lot of ivory tower buzzwords associated with Jacques and his interest but I’ll not play party to toying up my own pedantic sycophantic philo/lit-crit snob reputation by using them here. [Wikipedia Entry]

Derrida, as he expresses in his biography/documentary, Derrida, became interested in how people see the world through filters as an French child growing up in Algeria. It was his countrymen’s brutal occupation and racism that pushed him to consider and re-consider how people think not at the psychological level or the neuroscientific level, but as manipulators of symbols of communication.

What is the power of a racial slur? What does this building say about our culture (an extension of Foucault), etc.

One of the great pleasures I had in my education was hearing Dr. Louis Mackey (star of several Richard Linklater films) lecture on the moral systems of the the deconstructionist school viz. Kirkergaard’s conception of morality (i.e. the battle between “the ethical” and “the aesthetic”).

{ Aside: Alasdair McIntyre of Notre Dame once said something I’ll never forget: The choice between the ethical and the asthetic is not the choice between good and evil, it is, rather, the choice as to whether or not to view the world in terms of good and evil }

The last thing is that he was a philosophical rascal! Too ofter the post-modern crown are people with edgy glasses and turtle necks (Outfits by Steve Jobs) and don’t seem to be able to laugh at their discipline. Ed Allaire once said about philosophy: “The car’s been broke for 3000 years and yet everyone keeps working on it!” Derrida never got so caught up. When people he was arguing with would start to take their position too seriously, he would enter jester mode and break up their puffed-up positions.

An example is, when in an argument with Searle about signification, Searle had done some copyright voodoo to prevent citation of a piece of text. Derrida then took the copyright notice itself, and applied his theory to it. He does this in the book Limited Inc.

He was a real fun read. Farewell!

The iPod’s random play feature is certainly my favorite. While there are times when I am annoyedat it for choosing to play “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” in the middle of my cardio exercise, sometimes it helps meld interesting mental connections.

See, I consume music by the boatload, only thing that will even be close in competition is books. The Social Bobcat could tell you of the traditional order of teenage boredom in the suburbs of Houston along FM1960 included a general triangular attack of “Book Stop” (later Barnes and Noble), some mexican food place, and the CD Warehouse.

As a result of 4 binders full of discs, I have tons of MP3 on my computer and my iPod that I don’t think of often. But sometimes the random search on the iPod does something amazing. From my Nick Cave, “Live Seeds”, the song “The Ship Song”. Moments later the same song was played again, but as a cover on Concrete Blonde’s “Still in Hollywood”.

And the song, well it’s beautiful. I put the lyrics in the extended entry. (more…)

Surprisingly clever, and perhaps the most consistent I have read with respect to its theory of time travel, this book is quite good, especially considering that it is Niffenegger’s first novel. It would almost be timeless, save for its odd (and unnecessary) references to early 1980s punk bands.

So says Dedman of The Time Traveler’s Wife.

He complaint follows this pattern of argument that For all books, if it is “timeless” then it does not contain references to popular movements of the day.

This is sheer nonesense.

The rhetorical retort to “for all” is to provide a single counterexample. I proffer two.

Is Dedman’s paragon, The Great Gatsby any less “timeless” ( and frankly I’m not even sure that it’s worth that accolade on any grounds at all ) because it includes huge segments of “Ain’t We Got Fun” intemix’d just as the Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” is woven into a sequence of TTW?

{ For the record I think F. Scott’s best works are his short stories (much like Stephen King). “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and “A Diamond As Big as The Ritz” come to memory quickly }

Is Catcher in the Rye prevented from transcending all generational barriers because Holden’s peer can whistle “Tin Roof Blues”? Does the work suffer for having references to Just One of those Things”, “Little Shirley Beans” , “Oh, Marie!”, “Smoke Gets in your Eyes”? Surely not.

I think Dedman has a right to claim that he finds their mention distracting, or make an aesthetic claim that writers ought not do something — but to strip access to the Platonic object of The Timeless on these grounds seems to overlook that “timeless” literary achievements have existed in the world that are guilty of the same offense.

This entry is rather long I may be refining proofreading over the next several days — sgh

The Time Traveler’s Wife is the finest modern work of literature I have read in recent memory.

First, a spoiler warning. I will discuss spoilers in the extended entry, so you can read this first part without fear of spoiling any twists and turns. In the extended entry section I will ruminate upon the plot action. If you want to stay absolutely free of any tampering, do not read furthur. PLEASE buy the book, read it, and come back It’s that good. In the vernacular of Jerry Seinfeld fat-free yogurt episode, it’s fuc <beep!> good! Mad thanks to James Dedman.

I started this book at about 11am while in Hawaii and I did not put it down until I was done. I stopped for lunch, a maui mist (er, two), a hop into the pool, but every minute of the day my mind was upon the action of this story. It’s haunting, captivating, and gripping.

TTW is a modern working of Classical Romanticism

I believe the key to understanding TTW is realizing it’s roots in what I call Classical Romanticism. While Romanticism as a movement is generally dated during the 18th century, its forebears run clear back to the origin of the Western canon of literature in Homer’s Odyssey. I shall first take a pedestrian definition of Romanticism, map that definition into the Hellenic Greek time period (thus explaining Classical Romanticism) and then describe the parallel between Classical Romanticism in The Odyssey and TTW.

The high-school definition of Romanticism (adulterated by my Philosophy BA) that I recall is that it is the artistic movement that, after Man defeated God in the Enlightement, realized that Man gets his ass kicked - psychologically, emotionally, literally, by the Unknown Forces that create majesty and peril (but, isn’t that the definition of God anyway?). In light of this state of Man, Romanticism celebrates his achievements in art and suffering and emotion.

{ Aside: One could argue that all literary criticism since then is merely an exposition from the foundation of “How do you interpret Romanticism?” So, TTW as a Romantic paragon shall, naturally be rooted in, “How does Steven view the Romantic project?” }

The scope of this entry is not to “characterize Romanticism in detail” - that’s the scope of work for a PhD and far beyond a simple blog entry. Nevertheless I stake three essential qualities underlying Romantic work, the Trinity of Romanticism if you will. These are the three superhuman forces we can’t avoid, that we fight tooth and nail when they enter into our plans without our being “ready” and that avoid us like moths to camphor when we seek to control then when we think we are “ready”: Time, Love, and Want.

Separation is the active side of want and will be frequently spoken of hereafter as synonymous unto want.

One of the books that most informs my views on love and romance is The Odyssey. I knew that while the action was about Odysseus - his game of “Nohbody”, his sexual enslavement to Circe, his agon and logos , the real story was his desire to return back to Ithaca and his faithful Penelope.

Ten years (Time), separated by Time and distance, Odysseyus and Penelope slowly work their way to each other. The field that separated them was “distance” (Troy, Charybdis, Circe all as landmarks upon the return). Thus the story of the Odyssey is Penelope waiting for her husband to travel the x and y of the grid lines of the sea.

Upon their reuniting we know that in a spiritual sense they have actually never been apart a day. This quote tells us:

Their secret! as she heard it told, her knees / grew tremulous and weak, her heart failed her. / With eyes brimming tears she ran to him, / throwing her arms around his neck, and kissed him, (Odyssey, XXIII, 204-8, Fitzgerald trans).

This is the female’s version of the recognition, Odysseus’ recognition is quoted by Niffenegger at the end of the volume:

Now from his breast into his eyes the ache / of longing mounted, and he wept at last, / his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, / longed for as the sunnwarmed earth is slonged for by a swimmer / spent in rough water where his ship went down / under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea…and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, / her wihte arms round him pressed as though forever.

You see we know that while fortune intervened and separated the bodies of these two, their souls remained entwined across distance.

In the modern age, in the post-Einstein era we, as moderns, see time as just another ray upon a Catesian coordinate system, extending forwards and backwards. Time has become a field upon which we can pick times and arcs with (x,y) precision. Is it, as above that while fortune intervenes and separates the bodies of the two across time, do their souls remain bound together?

Niffenegger’s story says yes. Our male protagonist has a genetic condition that like epilepsy, suddenly takes control of him, and flings his body, naked, into an earlier time, in another location, generally within the timeframe of his lifetime. They first meet when he is 36 and she is 6, thus introducing this element of two souls “meant to be together” even if time and distance arent quite aligned yet. We know it’s only a matter of time (and distance!) until they do.

Early within the book we are told what that final alignment will look like, what the bliss of their Fated meeting will look like:

I turn, prepared to start explaining again, and find myself face to face with Henry. / I am speechless. … Henry is working at the Newberry Library, standing in front of me, in the present. Here and now. I am jubilant….I’m at a loss because I am in love with a man who is standing before me with no memories of me at all. Everything is in the future for him. (TTW, 4).

Could Niffenegger and Homer be literary Henry and Clares, lovers bound by a text about split lovers, separated by 3000 years?

So Niffenegger cruelly plays the part of time and distance (as she must). Our lovers are separated my the capricious hand of bitch-faced Fortune. Oddysseus and Penelope are rent apart by the forces of war and allegiance. Clare and Henry are split by time and distance the only thing that is left from our trinity is the beverage that slakes no thirst: want.

Thus this story is rightly understood as a Modern interpretation of Classical Romanticism.

TTW avoids irritations about the time-travel conceit by revelling in its mystery

Any story that involves time-travel generally rankles a rational reader. There are the inevitable plot loops, weird anomalies questions about free will and predestintation that get one into on existential fit.

Niffenegger has an ingenius solution: don’t deal with it. The characters don’t sit around like philosophy majors debating the matter. They don’t care. Henry and Clare have a phenomenological life. They care about these questions and discuss them from time to time, but they recognize that they are alive, this strangeness intervenes and that they can’t control it, and instead question how to find eudaimonia - the life worth living — or how to love each other better in spite of this intervening difficulty.

TTW explores an odd attribute of love, you do become a time traveler

When one loves someone long enough and is around them long enough somehow their life starts entwining itself into yours. Suddenly their stories become your stories. Their truama, their challenge, their victories, their flesh your flesh, their memory your memory suddenly you can in fact explore their history as if it were your own.

In this way, one can almost read the entire story of how your rememberance of your life without your lover seems incomplete and their lives seem more real because your mind had to dream it all. Your own life you can passively live while apathetically interpreting data, but theirs, due to the work, is hyperreal.

This, however, is but one study of the the nature of Love, Want, and Time that Niffenegger guides us through. I do not wish to explore them all here, I hope to merely have given you a tool and and an interpretation with which to examine this work and enjoy it more.

TTW features passionate scenes of intimacy

I’ll not dwell on this, but Niffenegger takes joy in vivid and real depictions of intimacy. Robert Solomon once lectured to my Existentialism class that sex is an activity with a million different meanings - not all of which are nice, decent, or beautiful. Niffenegger doesn’t fade to black in a series of pretty mattress-floppings; she explore manipulation, domination, release, and passion in a very adult and (generally) un-vulgar fashion.

The characters are flawed, wrong, and real

They do good things and they make bad choices - sometimes in spite of their relationship. This caused one of my biggest problems with Clare towards the end of the book (Read More if you like. I need the help understanding my anger on this one.).

Nonetheless, I like real characters and respect an author that can make you love a character despite being disappointed by them. I rather suppose that’s what it’s like to have children many times.

With this section I will close my generalized review. In conclusion, TTW combines a form of primal Romanticism which explores separation not in terms of distance in space, but distance in time. Through my “Romantic Trinity” different aspects of love and desire are explored, jubilated in, and wept over. It’s a beautiful odyssey Niffenegger takes you on.

Conclusion

I loved this book.

I can tell you that at certain points in this story I felt my stomach churn with sorrow, I felt my heart burn with desire. I jubilated with Clare upon finding Henry and listen to the ticking clock with her as I awaited his return. Right about page 520 I thought I was going to be sick: i felt my throat seize, my pulse race, and I could barely make it to the next page. It opens so many emotions and thoughts in such an intelligent way.

I hope that I’ve encouraged you to read this fine work. It is the first novel by Audrey Niffenegger and I look forward to many more great works by her. (more…)

Now that James Dedman has outed me as a total diehard Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan (I have mentioned them before in other posts) I will now comment on what’s so amazing about the YYY.

I first became really aware of their music one night when P-dizzle and I were up at Chez Maman up in Potrero. He and I had showed up in the later evening and we were sitting there eating when this beautiful dark-haired Prosperina type entered the restaurant (which, to be truthful, is a glorified hallway with stools).

Being of the genetic disposition to find beautiful dark-haired Presperina types enchanting I waited until she ordered, assured she wasn’t waiting for a boyfriend to show up, and then invited her to join us at our table (she was alone).

We chatted a bit and started talking about Hollywood films and, invariably, Steven Soderbergh

This led to my (now-retired) “Soderbergh hasn’t done anything good since Sex, Lies and Videotape” (in my hyperbole I forget about “Out of Sight” and I must say that “Ocean’s 11” renewed my respect for him and renewed the caper film - in short, I was wrong.).

She asserted he was “indie” and I said he had lost it.

{anyone that is producing Dick’s A Scanner Darkly can’t be all Hollywood}

Well, whaddaya know, she had acted in one of his films, playing one of the infected victims in “Erin Brockovich”. So she, certainly, was in a much better position to know than your humble armchair film critic.

But she didn’t seem too put off and went on to tell me that she had just seen her brother’s band’s show just a bit earlier down the hill at Bottom of the Hill.

The girl? Meredith Zinner. Her brother? Nick Zinner. His band. The YYY. Fate had stepped in.

The next day I went down to Amoeba and picked up the YYYs’ “Master” EP. I loaoded it into the iPod and played it the next morning on my commute on the Caltrain.

The Master EP

Holy jhonka (apologies Strongbad)! I’ve never heard so much lo-fi libido in a song.

As far as I can tell, this EP was designed for one purpose: to inflame libidos wordlswide. Hell, the first line you hear on the album is “Bang bang bang, the bigger the better”.

It’s an art-school Janis Joplin, but instead of beguiling you, and weakening you, and delivering you a peace, love, and happiness-ing “come hither’ - Suzy O is filling Molotov cocktails and is prepared to beat you senseless, burn down your house, club you, and drag you back to her filthy west-side crash pad. When you hunger she’ll give you animal cookies, when you’re thirsty it’s brown water or beer (beer would be the better option), and rest assured, you will be … sometimes only the Dutch word works … vernietigd … turned to nothingness.

Here are the lyrics to Bang! (naughty talkings inside!).

And she’s not bi or gay or straight, she’s just an out-and-out-pure sexual dynamo. Her lines about the “Mystery Girl” are poetic and sensual:

the girl hit hot like a barracuda baby she floated on air like a crest of wave she was a primal instituation she was a danger to herself yeah … Not a day goes by i wanna disappear Into her eyes a mother pearl and my head feels dead with all this useless fighting But my heart aint dead cuz it keeps on loving

But at the end of this mini-opus EP on sex and art and NYC there’s an uplifting and daunting anthem to the generation in “Our Time”.

I was hooked.

Suzy O’s beer froth.

Famed for drinking incessantly, jumping around, spitting, swallowing beer frothing it and spitting it back out - Suzy O has all those dynamo, crazy, holy shit what is that girl doing on stage antics that make for a great show.

On the flip side, she says that she loves being onstage because her parents are coming out to see showws and she thinks it’s good for them.

Dichotomy.

Nick Zinner’s guitar work is stellar. For just one guy on the stage his guitar work is absolutely brilliant. So much noise and anger and sound. Such brilliant melodies. Such crushing noise. It’s similar in the density to Phil Spector and The Raveonettes.

Brian Chase’s four star drumming. His drums are hollow, powerful, precisely-hit. They anchor the entire sonic barrage that Suzy and Zinner deliver. Without it it would be noise beyond balance and containment but the drums, thos fabulous drums tell us where we are and give the air-element fresy the earth needed to stay in this sonic sphere we live in.

A few months later they released their full-length album and we continue to be amazed. It has touching songs like “maps” (which has an equally touching video to go with it!). More generational anthems like “Y Control” and a cadre of “Take off your clothes, light some stuff on fire, and worship Dionysus” hymns.

Dedman’s post tells of a DVD release . Can’t wait!

It’s great! I’ll generally watch anything that chronicles the evolution of musical styles over time (especially post 1950). I really enjoyed watching the history of hip-hop - explaining where it came from, what its underpinnings were, how completely clueless Reagan was about urban blight…it was outstanding.

It starts off with the old school - GrandMaster Flash, etc. and explores the interesting liason between the NY Punk Rock / New Wave and Hip-hop scenes, moves to tracking the rise of DefJam and LL Cool J, Run DMC, and the Beastie Boys, then charts the bi-coastalization and the gangsta’ rap movement that culminates in the death of Tupac Shakur and Chris Wallace and stops where hip hop now is, many many new areas exploring hip-hop (the Atlanta scene, Nelly ruling St. Louis, The Paranoic grandeur of the 5th ward Geto Boys of Houston, etc.)

Ultimately hip hop is the expression of this is where I come from, this is what it’s about, gimme a beat, and I’ll tell you about it.

I love hip hop when it’s done well — it’s sort of the way i feel about country music. What’s put out by the big players sucks terribly. If you find a scene where true innovation is cooking you may find the purest and most enjoyable expression of the art form.

Ultimately it’s the culmination of the Beat poet work - a beat, a rhyme, an expression of identitiy. In our age of inauthenticity, could the reason that this is the most influential musical art form today be any more apparent?

Well but a few days ago I finished my first sizeable Cocoa application.

It has been wiledly ruminated in the academic community that Marey Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein, is actually a meditation on the creative process of creating a novel. Originally one starts with the highest of aims, through a series of deals with the devil one manages to make something come to life, but that thing is inherently unholy, can’t be controlled, and winds up going out and killing indiscriminately.

I feel the same way about my first sizable Cocoa application - no I do not think that it is going to run rampant on a murderous spree, asking all sorts of questions about Kantian morality on the way - rather, it started off with the purest of noble intentions. Somewhere along the line I came to pray for its (or my) death.

Well OK, death would be a bit melodramatic in this case. Completion - removal - something. Just get the foul thing away from me.

Then intervened my vacation in Hawaii and I found myself renergized slightly upon return. Somehow, stepping away opened the possibility that I could find that spot that athletes “Dig Deep” to get to. I finished the app.

So now I have it and have used it for its designated end. While the exterior product is sufficiently clever and useful, the coder perfectionist in me that rails against Windows and things like that demands that I refine it. So I guess I will do so, move to a higher state of grace.

But the nice part is that the cancerous outgrowth of Aaron Hillegass’ Cocoa Programming using Mac OS X that like a tumor has been attached to me for the summer season can now be, much thanks to my shoulders and back, left at home.