Strangers.

I haven’t essayed this sort of thing in a while, but I’ve been particularly industrious of late, so I thought I might have a little fun.

Here, then, are a baker’s dozen of random tracks – in the order they came about:

1. Part 086 of 240; Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl.
Well, that’s a strong start. This track has been so horridly digitized that it skips and hops worse than a rabbit in heat. I confess I never intended to read this book – hence I have it as an audiobook – it having been so ridiculously hyped. I have not yet managed even to listen to it. You should also have a sense, by this, of the fact that I haven’t managed to divide my iPod’s library into music versus audiobooks. That, Dear Reader, demonstrates neglect of the teachings of my alma mater.

2. Chain of Fools; The Commitments, The Commitments.
I think I owe this track, and its album, to S. Can you believe I still have not seen the film, despite having heard the excellent soundtrack many times over? So very good, this song!

3. Sinfonia No. 14 in B Major, BWV 800; Goldberg Variations, Inventions, Glenn Gould (Bach).
Now this – this – falls off what is likely my favorite of Gould’s Goldberg recordings. I find it impossible to decide between his 1955 debut and his 1981 endpiece, so I choose a middle ground: this recording, done in the late 1950s, live, which presents the artist at his most human. It is a wondrous set of recordings, replete with myriad little tics and errors, but it comes, I believe, the closest to what he intended, in his life, as a definitive interpretation of the Variations. Did you know, in his 1957 tour, he was the first North American pianist to perform in the then-Soviet Union since World War II? These Sinfonias/3-Part-Inventions are a secret treat on an unassailable album.

4. 051; The Goblet of Fire, Stephen Fry.
This I have also due to S., who procured, shall we say, the complete British recordings of the Harry Potter books (vastly superior to the American recordings, due entirely to the fact that His Greatness Stephen Fry is reading them). In this section, Moody approaches Neville (who is nervous) amongst Harry, Ron, and Hermione, after the demonstration of the cruciatus curse.

5. 16-60; The Half-Blood Prince, Stephen Fry.
Witness once again my ineptitude at dividing my music from my words! Perhaps this is fate at work. Here, Harry relates the death of an Important Character to Tonks.

6. Is This It?; Is This It?, The Strokes.
I took to The Strokes my senior year of college, at roughly the same time I took to Rufus Wainwright. O but this album conjures all sorts of early-twenties angst and confusion and excitement for me. I was writing my thesis on Arthurian literature (particularly the story of the Holy Grail) at the time, and was a psychological wreck for a colorful variety of reasons. Not a bad song, not a bad album. One which seems happy enough until you listen to the lyrics.

7. The Golden Compass; BBC’s The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman.
I really have no idea what is going on here – it’s about incisions and guillotines. Well, we do know what that is about, but I don’t know precisely at what point in the book this falls. This is a fine reading of the books.

8. Charley Patton Songs; How We Operate, Gomez.
I know I have heard this album many, many times, but I can’t recall for the life of me what this song is, or what it is about. Ok, so, I do know who Charley Patton is. But have I even heard this song before? I can’t tell.

9. Bob Dylan’s Blues; The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan.
Written “somewhere down in the United States.” I tried to claim Nashville Skyline, once and repeatedly, as my favorite Dylan album, but S. would not have it, on the grounds that I am not a fan of country music, or somesuch. So, all right, I can compromise. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is my favorite album, then. Not least because of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” There was this really fantastic website that used to – I don’t know if I can accurately describe this – draw pictures of singers/songwriters with the words of their songs, as a given song played in the background. I can’t find the Dylan one, but it was “Don’t Think Twice.”

10. Astarstund; Eivor Palsdottir, Eivor Palsdottir.
This is OK. I must have got it on an eMusic binge several years ago. I discovered a lot of Strange Obscure Things via eMusic a few years ago, but I haven’t been back since. The audiobooks (see above, re. Calamity Physics, which I seem for some reason to want to spell “Clamity”) were crappily (is that really an adverb?) digitized. But this is a pretty track. She doesn’t sound that much like Bjork. My friend from (and who know is back in) Iceland once played me a track of an Icelandic women’s choir singing about menstruation. It sounded to my untutored ears like they were singing “OUCH” over and over again, which is an accurate depiction. She made me listen to said track when several of us were on the subway back to Manhattan after being in DUMBO for an exceeding strange performance of Hamlet, wherein the company recreated (with a backdrop of the original filmed live version) Richard Burton’s performance (which was recorded and played “live,” as it were, albeit edited slightly, as they had something like 17 cameras about the stage, to several cinemas at the time; much like the modern practice of telecasting live performances at The Met in theaters near you), albeit with the backdrop of the film, albeit the film was heavily digitally-messed-with, to an extent that was most eerie, so that at some points you would see only a hand – and at others, they claimed not to have any video or audio of the original film, so, for example, they overlaid Bill Murray’s Polonius onto a blank screen. While this performance stuck with me for its strangeness, I sadly cannot recall the entire evening, as I became very ill indeed with some sort of flu immediately afterwards – which caused me to miss an Of Montreal concert, but that is another story entirely.

11. 2407; The Order of The Phoenix, Stephen Fry.
“Harry had the horrible sensation that his insides were melting. Extra lessons with Snape – what on earth had he done to deserve this?” Ahem.

11a. REDACTED Another Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter (Half-Blood Prince again)

11b-f. REDACTED. More Stephen Fry. As well as a bit from Stephen King’s Night Shift as read by, of all people, Danny Glover.

12. Strangers; Dummy, Portishead.
More of my college life rising to the surface! I liked the first two albums. And the live album. Third, not at all, but perhaps it has to grow on me. This particular song is good for zoning out, with its weight and heft.

13. Don’t You Evah; Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon.
Someone gave me this album. I don’t think I’ve listened to it many times. It isn’t that I don’t like Spoon. It’s simply that I’m indifferent.

And now to go turn on the turntable. Glenn Gould playing Bach. This one. I have it on vinyl. Happy, the purging of my eardrums.

Silly girl.

I was meant to be grading, this morning, but I went on a quest through my bookshelves to find something else entirely. I did find that, but I also found several old notebooks of mine, one of which I wrote when I was in a peculiar situation in life – as being thoroughly, utterly, whole-heartedly consumed with an Idea that was like a fever, so it is hard to read that particular set of scribblings now – and another of which, well, have a look at it yourself:

Mind you, this was back in the summer of 2005, when my outlook on life was at once very open and expectant, and very grim.

This made me think – though I’ve been thinking of it lately in any case – about what it was like to be a graduate student at my Particular Institution.

I will say this: I had any number of disheartening things related to me about my work, viz.,

“This makes no sense.”
“You don’t seem to have an argument here.”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“This is good, but you couldn’t ever publish it.”
“What the hell were you thinking when you wrote this?”
“Why didn’t you read essays in the language of the original poem?”
“Let’s just keep this idea of writing a trade book between the two of us, shall we?”
“You shouldn’t be allowed ever, ever, ever, near a word processor again.”*

And so forth.

But the worst thing anyone ever said to me, the most difficult, that around which I’m still trying hard to wrap my addled brains, was this:

“Lianne, you’re turning into the kind of person who never finishes anything.”

I’d reply now, as an instructor: Don’t you realize that writing is never finished? There can always be something more, something else done? Writing is a process? etc. etc.

But those words, when they came, were unfortunate. And they have been creeping into my conscience ever since.

True, I finished my dissertation, insofar as anyone can ever finish a dissertation.

But I worry now: what if I am that sort of person, the sort that doesn’t finish things?

I don’t mean publishing articles and essays – no, that’s expected of me, that I expect of myself, that is a discrete task which I can sit down and readily accomplish, howsoever little I will be pleased with the eventual result.

I mean, on a deeper level, what it means to really be through with a thing. To put it to rest. Is seeing it in print enough, for example. Wouldn’t I read it, months or years later, or even moments after I’d gotten the hard copy, and think to myself, Well, that’s another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into? What would I do? What could I do?

All of this is by the way of saying – be careful what you say to people who depend upon you for validation of their work. They listen, they comprehend.

Be you not quite so brutal.

*This was actually said to me (as were the others), but this was said during my dissertation defense. I have no defense for it. I cut and pasted large chunks of things, in desperation, and this naturally led to some unfortunate repetitions of certain paragraphs within mere pages of one another.

Always cries at endings.

In other words, expletive expletive expletive expletive! The Hazards of Love sounds so deliciously wonderful on vinyl, on my wickedly fantastically sublime DeVore Gibbon 3’s.

That is all.

Post script: Coup de foudre in Montreal is THE BOMB. As in: The bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb that will bring us together. Ask me.

Old and new and old again.

There is this lovely weird junk curiosity shop here, called Jean Deaux (formerly, or as a previous annex to, a think called “John Doe,” har har har dee har har). It is so bizarre. I really can’t think what to make of it. Just scattered piles of stuff, including ridiculous, mind-boggling numbers of old records. Many of them are in fine shape. We bought several (read: loads) this weekend. S picked up a recording of Glenn Gould doing Bach and Beethoven piano concerti – and I was angry, that he wouldn’t let me get it, and keep it for mine own.

Then we listened to it: like listening to a perfectly good performance on a hissing and unruly radio. I said: “OK. It’s yours.” Sad, but necessary.

But Jean Deaux is kept by Exceedingly Nice People. Even if they haven’t (as the sign says) got any coffee.

I do so love it in this little town.

Better late –

etc., etc.

The October issue of Open Letters Monthly is up and ready for your perusal (has been these eight days). It’s the best-seller issue, so you can read clever takes on those books which are currently absorbing your hard-earned dollars.

I wrote something different, i.e., not about a best-seller, and it was my first attempt at a criticism of a collection of short stories. What I admire most about Maile Meloy (and there are many things to admire) is the cleanliness of her prose and plotting. The notions, the ideas, at work in her story may be complex, may bother you long after you put the story down – but everything about the writing is so tidy, so neat, that it’s a wonder that such complexities can unfold.

Viz.:

Because what Meloy is singularly skilled in is articulating the simultaneous acknowledgment of a desire contrary to plausibility and the desire – deep, unrelenting, maddening, painful – for the fulfillment of that desire. Rather, situations, characters, even life itself hang poised above this and in her stories. The stories could easily frustrate a reader in their resistance to narrative and emotional resolution, yet Meloy’s simple, unhurried, at times plaintive writing leave one pensive more than anything else. How do we ourselves deal with this and?

Ok, so: you need to read the review (and the A.R. Ammons poem from which Meloy takes the title of her collection) to get the italicized ands. So, you know, have at it. And suchlike.