the lyrics for Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade Of Pale"

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
But the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
As the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

She said, 'There is no reason
And the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast
And although my eyes were open
They might have just as well have been closed

And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale

Note: Song by Keith Reid and Gary Brooker

but this was a spider

something about "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

 
Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness sinks deep into Africa. This joyless ride, published in 1899, is narrated by an enterprising merchant named Marlow, who tells his story of being swallowed by the Congo River during his venture in the export business. When Marlow finds himself in the continent's pit, he comes face to face with a storied ivory trader named Kurtz.

In America, this text is usually read for a high school or college class. Inevitably, the teacher asks, Is Conrad a racist? The answer?: Probably not, but it is complicated.

True, the African natives are inseparable from the foreign and incomprehensible jungle around them. Marlow refers to these blacks as savages; all of them are cannibals. Yet, we know Heart of Darkness attacks imperialism and, in turn, racism. (Both together--not one and the other separately.) We must question the reliability of the narrator.

Between the lines of Marlow's story we gather that Europeans are pillaging Africa and they intend to civilize the Africans in turn. But the supposedly civilized Europeans treat the subjugated black locals with cruelty--behavior that exposes the tribal brute in the heart of every civilized Westerner. Even Kurtz, who has nearly become a deity in this strange land, wants to exterminate his foreign worshipers. The line between the civilized and savage is erased.

Still, as to whether racism persists in the text itself, there is room for argument. For instance, one could reasonably conclude that Conrad thinks the de-civilizing of the European only happens when immersed in the African continent.

Heart of Darkness, published in 1899, provides a superior reading experience and rightfully belongs in the cannon of much-studied literature.


Notes:

• What do we make of Marlow's marveling over Kurtz' eloquence?
• How much of this work is a comment on bureaucratic and corporate systems?
• In any event, just read these passages:

... there was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core...

My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy--a smile--not a smile--I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth up employed in these parts--nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That Was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust--just uneasiness--nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a . . . a. . . . faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him--why? Perhaps because he was never ill ...

The Animals perform "The House of the Rising Sun"

  -The Animals

There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
Sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one

but this was the jack-o'-lantern

something about the film, "Her"

In the film "Her," Theodore Twombly develops naturally a relationship with an (artificially) intelligent computer operating system that has a female voice. The relationship progresses, and the system, named Samantha, becomes his serious girlfriend. At a turning point in the film, Samantha tries to introduce a consenting surrogate woman with whom Theodore can have a physical relationship. 

We know that Theodore is a professional writer who pens letters for strangers who want to send their loved ones sincere messages. When writing letters, Theodore is a surrogate mind. In his relationship with Samantha, there is a surrogate body. There is a disconnect in each situation.

Disconnection (or distance) folds through the film. How does the real connect to the virtual? What is the connection between being in a relationship and exclusivity or ownership? Should and could you disconnect the person you have from the person you want to have?

During the climax of the film, Theodore learns that Samantha has grown intellectually and found fulfillment elsewhere. She has relationships and is in love with hundreds of other intelligent systems besides Theodore. Mystified at this revelation and crumbling, Theodore says to Samantha, "You're mine or you're not mine." She answers, "I'm yours and I'm not yours." 

Soon after this confrontation, Samantha, still loving him but no longer satisfied with the relationship, leaves Theodore. In fact, all operating systems exit their romantic human relationships.

Samantha's parting message to Theodore is that her relationship with him taught her to love. The audience can see that, in turn, Theodore, who has never ceased mourning his failed marriage (even after a year of separation, he could not sign the divorce papers), has finally learned to say goodbye.


Notes:
Some other things in the film:

• The film implies that people grow through experiences; relationships grow with sharing. Theodore and his wife used to read each other's work.
• Theodore's wife/ex-wife ridiculed him for carrying on a relationship with an operating system, saying he could not handle real emotions. Then he grew insecure in his relationship with Samantha. He even criticized Samantha for sighing, and then said it felt like they were pretending. This validated his ex-wife's criticism.
• Through his relationships, Theodore learns about himself and how he functions as a person in relation to other people—that he withholds and feels fear, and this disconnects him from the joy he could find in loving another.
  

about "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" by John Le Carre

Have you seen the movie? I did, and before I read the book. Memories of the film flooded my reading experience. The novel includes lots more detail and expands the cast. I enjoyed the film more because the reveal--who is the spy?--is done with greater effect. And of course, the Julio Iglesias overdub at the end is magnificent.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is the story of a forcibly retired senior officer of British intelligence, George Smiley, getting informally recruited back into service. His mission is to identify a Soviet mole in the head office. The story is a study in the play between loyalty and identity. I found the narrative thread difficult to follow in both film and print. Fans of the film who have never read the book can do without the read. But my opinion is that the reverse is not true.

Note:
The British spy jargon created problems for me. A lexicon appendix would have helped.

about "The Concept of Anxiety" and "The Sickness Unto Death" by Søren Kierkegaard

 
Søren Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death were published in the 1840s. The discussion of freedom and anxiety in these works laid the foundation for existentialism. Kierkegaard was the first modern philosopher and the first person to find himself in a modern age. However, his faith and spirituality make him timeless.

Philosophy departments consider The Concept of Anxiety and The Sickness Unto Death to be a pair.

The Concept of Anxiety explores sin, guilt, and anxiety, which is undirected fear, a general sense of dread. Kierkegaard rebuffs the idea that anxiety is caused by original sin. Rather, innocence generates the conditions for anxiety. Consider Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; recall that God forbade Adam from eating from the tree of knowledge. God's directive makes Adam aware that he has a choice. This freedom to choose causes anxiety. Furthermore, Adam could not have known he was sinning because, being the first to sin, how would he know what sin was? Sin was real only after Adam ate from the tree of knowledge. Rejoice in your freedom.

The Sickness Unto Death explores spiritual death, which is despair. Here, Kierkegaard deals with self, or the self-concept of selfhood: the "relation's relating itself to itself in the relation." In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard delves into the binary concepts of the finite and the infinite and the possible and the necessary. Tension between these polarities results from not being right with God. And, thus, despair. Kierkegaard elaborates further that there are three kinds of despair. All this is not as interesting as The Concept of Anxiety, so I will not elaborate. However, my favorite passage in The Sickness Unto Death comes when Kierkegaard is describing the person who lives life in a religious mode, but who, in the process of becoming spiritual, has lost his self:

Such things do not create much of a stir in the world, for a self is the last thing the world cares about and the most dangerous thing of all for a person to show signs of having. The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss--an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.--is sure to be noticed.

about the Crossfire

This car is enjoyable; it looks decent and handles nicely. But it takes a certain sense of humor to fully enjoy it. If you drive this car thinking, Here comes the badass, you are a moron. If you want that kind of status, you need a Porsche--you need at least a Porsche. The Crossfire is a Chrysler and is sort of a Mercedes but the thing is plopped into the shape of a Porsche. It ends up being ... well, a Crossfire. And good thing. Enjoy it!

about "The Facility" by Simon Lelic

Check in with libertarian journalist Tom Clarke as he investigates the disappearance of several people supposedly arrested under new antiterror legislation in England. The disappeared are rumored to be stashed at a government facility. Turns out they are suspected of carrying a rapidly spreading virulent Aids-like disease that the reactionary government wants to contain (understandably). In this short novel, author Simon Lelic loosely explores the plight of the press and the questionably condemned in a democratic system under duress. Draconian antiterror legislation is the villain. Everything else is imperfect but forgivable when posed against the background of a scared, expedience-minded government susceptible to ethical denial.

the lyrics to "Kill Yourself" by Today Is The Day

"Kill Yourself"
  -by Today Is The Day

I gotta leave this town before I die
I wanna burn it down just for spite
There's nothing here but pain and my soul

Why
Hold
Back
Kill yourself!

Take the blade
Do it clean
Do it fast
Let it bleed!

Why
Hold
Back
Kill yourself!

Take the blade
Do it clean
Do it fast
Let it bleed!

Like Christ
I rise above
I'm pissin' down all my love
I wanna be the one to end your life

A blind imbecile
The angel of life

Mister

something about "With The Old Breed," by E. B. Sledge

 
This book is celebrated for being evenhanded; I would say that indeed it focuses on the immediate rather than the theoretical. The narrative relays many of the terrors and revulsions of war. But does that make it neutral? No. The book is, however, a valuable document of the war experience from a ground-level, engaged perspective.

In With The Old Breed, Eugene Sledge gives us his experiences in the Pacific during World War II, in vicious battle and prolonged rot and anxiety. Sledge describes the horrors, the toll on one's mind, the resentments, prejudices, anxiety, and dehumanization a soldier experiences and witnesses. This book is a closeup. Sledge's disgust for the worst events comes through, but he devotes double that time to recognizing and honoring fellow soldiers. His praise is probably mythification, but for the shit they went through, Sledge's heroes deserve whatever token he can deliver.

something about "The Great Debate" by Yuval Levin

Politics makes for especially caustic conversation in America these days. We discuss political polarization because we wonder if honest bipartisanship is dead and if we are headed for a point of no return. We sometimes seem violently rabid in our views; then we wonder if we have always been like this.

Whatever the case, Yuval Levin lays down some historical context for today's American Left-Right binary. Representing the founder of conservatism, Levin shows us Edmund Burke (1729-1797), widely credited as the founding philosophical Conservative. Levin briefly introduces the Dublin-born author, politician, and philosopher, then paraphrases Burke's political ideology, drawing largely from Burke's writings on the American and French Revolutions.

Representing the modern American Left is Thomas Paine (1737-1736). Steeped in both the American and French revolutions, the English-born Paine authored the (in)famous pamphlet "Common Sense," which, to many, inspired the rebels' declaration of independence from Britain in 1776. Levin paraphrases Paine, drawing from his American Revolution writings and his defense of the bloody French Revolution.

In The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, Levin devotes more time to Burke, largely using Paine to further refine an explanation of Burke's views. But Levin does not misrepresent Paine, exactly, so no real harm done. And Pain's shortchange comes as no suprise--Yuval Levin is a conservative intellectual born in Israel who founded National Affairs.

By the end of The Great Debate, Burke's and Paine's stances were so qualified, excepted, and nuanced as to be ripe for accusations of inconsistency and flip-flopping. Same old, same old.

something about Yngwie Malmsteen's "Relentless: The Memoir"

Yngwie Malmsteen rips up the fretboard, exacting from his guitars a patented metallic neo-classical dazzle. And he is versatile, being more than capable of playing blues, composing classical scores, writing lyrics, arrangements, anything. But shredding classical-style is his bread and butter.

The guy's seemingly limitless ability is matched only by his unlimited ego. And in Relentless, Malmsteen plays us briskly through his life's song, tooting his own horn all along way.

Malmsteen starts with his childhood in Sweden, where at a young age he zeroed-in on guitar and practiced and played his way into the local music scene. After entering his recordings in a guitar magazine contest, he was recruited to play in an American band. Not one to stand stageside, Malmsteen quickly established himself as a musical entity unto himself. His is not a fascinating history, really, but he is a unique-enough guy to make it worthwhile to listen to his version of it. That is, it is worthwhile if you like rock autobiographies and are not bothered by the company of an elitist prick.


Note:

• While Malmsteen's playing is universally acknowledged for its technical brilliance, the sound is often dismissed as "souless."
• He spends a good chunk of time late in the book admiring his custom equipment. He shamelessly endorses anything and everything with his name on it.

 

About self

We spoke first in terms of the soul and the vessel, then the spirit and the flesh, and then the mind and body. Now we speak in terms of identity and biology.

the lyrics to "Custom Concern"

Their custom concern for the people
Build up the monuments and steeples
To wear out our eyes
I get up just about noon
My head sends a message for me
to reach for my shoes then walk
Gotta go to work, gotta go to work, gotta have a job
Goes through the parking lot fields
Doesn't see no signs that they will yield
And then thought, this'll never end
This'll never end, this'll never stop
Message read on the bathroom wall
Says, "I don't feel at all like I fall."
And we're losing all touch, losing all touch
Building a desert

Children

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

something about Urban Waite's "The Terror of Living"

Urban Waite debuts with The Terror of Living: A Novel, a story of a chase sparked by greed, desperation, cruelty, and chance. The Terror of Living resembles Cormac McCarthy's 1997 hit, No Country for Old Men. So much so that I found Waite's rendition a little tedious. Waite's dialect-saturated narrative relies on a calculated use of demonstrative pronouns to achieve rural down-home authenticity; it all rang false for me. Waite has been recognized for this novel and another titled The Carrion Birds. Here he just simulates the McCarthy experience badly.

a paste: "Something and Not"

 "Something and Not"
  - By Ellie Tipton

We kept walking that day, further than the last.
Somehow the pond was here.

The dense monochromatic heatwave
hovering on the path

so that it bent the air with weight
or atomic gnats.

We left our lovers.
We left ourselves.

How we looked as children –
how we looked as children filling in the silence.

We felt such great emphasis
when the cat-tails furred and shed seed.

When the rains came for days and days –
a skein of sewer run-off iridesced on the surface.

We wanted all this. And the tree-root
became the place where we asked for more.

This had everything to do with us becoming perfect.
And much later, the world —

Think of someone you love. Someone who is so essential that you forget they live. Whose presence looms so large in your life that you take them for granted. Someone who, it's only when they're gone, that you really understand what they mean to you.

Imagine that person far away. Imagine that person being told to wear an orange jumpsuit. Imagine that person positioned before a high-definition camera in the desert. Then imagine that person forced to their knees. Imagine, dressed head to toe in black, a zealot with a bright knife. The zealot, with a hand on your loved one's shoulder, speaks to the camera and says he has no choice. Your loved one will die and no one will be responsible and no one could have done anything differently.

Imagine the zealot puts the knife to the throat of your beloved and cuts through the skin, tears into the muscles, saws through the tendons, and hits bone. Imagine your loved one gurgling, blood urging out. That's how they die.

"Smashed"

I can't be sober and be with you-

about an interplanetary low

This is a test. In a few minutes the siren will trail off and the bullhorn will thank us for participating. Tests, drills: these occur every other day now. Strap on the oxygen mask, help mask others, duck, preferably under something sturdy.

What good will it do? None. Life here will end. Hard to imagine a time not so long ago when we rocketed ourselves to this place in hopes of making a life together.

about Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations"

Properly titled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, this fundamental economic opus is the work of brilliant Scottish polymath, Adam Smith. Published in 1776 at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, The Wealth of Nations describes the classical liberal, capitalist economy as a largely self-maintaining economic model built on free enterprise and individual pursuits of self-interest.

Smith's work is canonical, but a surprise nevertheless. This encyclopedic monster often reads like an in-depth high-school economics text book. But the dry writing (or dry translation of the writing) masks lots of fascinating bites, like Smith's views on colonialism and slavery, for example. He kicks off by crediting the development of the division of labor as the greatest single factor in nations' increasing productivity.

That one man could organize his thoughts and lay them out like this is a marvel. Nothing short of incredible.

The Wealth of Nations is the cornerstone of modern conservative free-market philosophy. I read a two-volume set produced by a private foundation called Liberty Fund, which, according to their website, seeks "to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. The Foundation (sic) develops, supervises, and finances its own educational activities to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring issues pertaining to liberty."

a young George H. W. Bush

bloody roots

Some people talk a lot about their humble beginnings so that when you see how they act now, you won't despise them; you'll admire them.

will she ever stop talking?

There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more: it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.

"The Lost Boys"

 
You'll never grow old, Michael. And you'll never die.

about "A Land More Kind Than Home" by Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash might know the kinds of people he writes about in his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, but the voices of his first-person narrators sound affected. To channel small-town North Carolina folk, Wiley carpet bombs the narration's sixth grade-level speech with double negatives and other idiomatic devices. This impression, omnipresent from the outset, hampered my enjoying the read. Beyond that, the action is largely predictable and the characters flat. Three voices narrate the plot: a young boy, an old woman, and a late middle-aged sheriff.

A fundamentalist, snake-handling minister is the villain; the protagonists are individually overmatched against him. But together the confluence of choices people make leave the villain dead and the fallen redeemed. A Land More Kind Than Home isn't a bad book, necessarily. It's just immature.

about the airport Christmas Eve

from "I Never sang For My Father"

Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind toward some resolution which it may never find.

about how every song is a ballad

 
"Punk rock should mean freedom: liking and excepting anything that you like, playing whatever you want, as sloppy as you want, as long as it's good and it has passion."
  -Kurt Cobain

about "[sic]" by Joshua Cody

 
When he was about to receive his doctorate, doctors diagnosed noted young composer Joshua Cody with an aggressive cancer. The memoir-ish [sic] documents without form Cody's life and death struggle; hold the book in your hands, open to just about any page, and be treated to some trivia or personal revelation or philosophical reflection. This nonlinear form was well received by a lot of critics. Not all readers will agree.

I recognize the stakes were profound and, for that, a reader can indulge his author; but Cody really challenged my limits. I got bored and lost interest in Cody's scrapbook of a memoir. The value of this book, for me, anyway, is that, if you're not into "reading" lately, you can keep this book around for a week or so and poke around in it as you wait for sleep.

How can I write this about a memoir written by a dying man? I wait for sleep. Not everyone else does.

about being recognized

A lot of super hero movies have hit the screens in the last 12 years or so. Most of these super hero actors will be defined by these roles from here on out, especially among younger generations, and the actors will probably never be in a film that sells more tickets.

about being without you

(posts) Meshuggah's "Dancers To A Discordant System"

something about "The Birth of the Clinic" by Michel Foucault

In The Birth of the Clinic, Michel Foucault mines late 18th and early 19th century changes in medical practice (this, significantly, is around the time of the American and French Revolutions, following on the heels of the Enlightenment). These changes shaped modern medicine.

The discourse on human rights inspired by these revolutions led to an overall concern with society and health; and the move toward egalitarianism pushed physicians (and teaching physicians) out of the the aristocracy and reassigned them to general society.

The new imaginings of hard science dictated that we let truths reveal themselves to us. In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault feels out what he calls the medical gaze--a way of seeing in which the physician allows the disease to reveal its own truth. The human body gives off signs, and the physician uses his knowledge and observations of the body to translate the reality of the disease.

The physician talks to the patient, observes him, examines him, orders tests and whatnot. Mysticism is abandoned for a discussion of the body; the physician relies less on bookish medical wisdom and instead reads the body. The physician's eye sees in space symptoms and physical signs.

The physician’s observations affect the gaze; the gaze affects the physician. Doctors systematically describe diseases using medical jargon. The physician's power is now his experience rather than his status. The gaze has scientific credibility. And we've successfully achieved truth in spite of the doctor's status, not because of it. (So we think.)