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Showing posts from March, 2024

Baumgartener

"Baumgartner looks down, intending to study the grass at his feet, but as his eyes travel southward, their journey is interrupted by the sight of the little paunch bulging from his once flat belly and the zipper of his pants, which is not zipped up as he thought it was but open, wide open. Baumgartner is aghast. Not again! he cries out to himself. Keep this up, nit-wit, and it won't be long before you've forgotten your name." p. 108 Baumgartner , Paul Auster

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Reading The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot, because it's mentioned in Baumgartner by Paul Auster . I get the translation of the Dante quote . I read about Lazarus . "At the time of its publication, "Prufrock" was considered outlandish, but the poem is now seen as heralding a paradigmatic shift in poetry from late 19th-century Romanticism and Georgian lyrics to Modernism." ( Wikipedia ) "The poem, described as a "drama of literary anguish", is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability for decisive action that is said "to epitomize [the] frustration and impotence of the modern individual" and "represent thwarted desires and modern disillusionment". (op cit) "Prufrock laments his physical and intellectual inertia, the lost opportunities in his life, and lack of spiritual progress, and is haunted by reminders of unattained carnal love. With visceral

Inca

(Listening to You're Dead to Me about the Incas.) They called themselves the Tawantinsuyu. It was centered in Cusco Peru, but went from the tip of Columbia to Chile and Argentina. Cusco means stones, stones are important in the culture. It's the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. "one of the greatest imperial states in human history" without the use of the wheel, draft animals, knowledge of iron or steel, or even a system of writing." (Gordon McEwan). I've been to Ecuador for 2 months, and I remember thinking it's Incas, and then there's people before them, and the Spanish after them. The Incas are around the time of War of Roses and Tudors, and was bigger than the British empire. England is 2 million people, and Incan empire is 14 million.  There's no writing, just Spanish settlers who encounter them. As Sheldon Cooper points out the first computer might have been a  Quipu . I'm always amazed that in a way it's fairly recently tha

America

Distressing articles about how the sea has warmed up in scary ways. Ignore that.  Trump keeps saying incendiary provocative things to get attention, and the press seems duty bound to report on it without editorializing. They want horror, but there's also an element of normalizing his madness. The press hasn't figured out how to not amplify him, give him free publicity.  His base thinks he doesn't really means the horrors he spouts, and those who hate him, believe him. His base is shrinking, but he thinks he's owning the libs. Every horrible story about him coming out in an effort to discredit him, and he is discredited as he will ever be, but his base doesn't care, they don't mind the grift, corruption and horror, they see it all as owning the libs, which is what the opposition party is all about. They like every mention, retweet. There is no bad Trump news to them. He can't be self defeating, even as he shoots himself in the leg and becomes less and less im

The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind

This would be a boring mundane novel if not for the lightning bolt that flew across my mind. This guy who's living a small life as a bank guard, decides to move out of his apartment because a pigeon gets into the hall.  I'm struggling to do some simple things, and that pigeon represents the simple things I could do to improve my life but I don't.  NYCFC, my soccer team, is nicknamed the pigeons. They're sleepwalking through another season because of the coach.

Dr. Molly Miller

So the algorithm gave me Molly Miller , like this  video  (Wild World YouTube). She seems to be playing jazzy guitar these days, though she plays with Jason Mraz .   Just watched video interview . Unfortunately there's another blabbermouth being interviewed there, so that's annoying. Here's a longer talk and play video , technical, I could listen to her. Another . She's an educator, has a PhD, wrote a book. So knowledgeable.  I'm totally in love with her music and style. She seems to be down to earth and collaborative.  9 to 5 Cine All I have to do is dream Spry I created a Spotify playlist for her . I can't confirm she's on all the stuff not under her name, I haven't verified all that. I don't know if she's on the stuff of her brothers band at the end, but she does play with him.  I think what I like about her is the combination of passion and technique, simplicity and complexity, style and substance. She's sexy but it's her musical mind

Community

Last month to watch Community  (2009-2015) on Netflix, it leaves in April in the USA.  I don't think I've watched a show over and over more. I have insomnia these days and when I wake up in the middle of the night, if I don't put on a show or an audio book I can sometimes think negative thoughts, when my protective ego hasn't woken up yet, and so I put on a show or a book, and it's not a great way to watch a show, but it's also a way to have a show sneak into your consciousness in weird ways.  I watched the show over and over before I started falling asleep to it. I find ensemble shows utterly fascinating. I'm also loving Young Sheldon right now. Anyway, you go on line and people defend or hate on a character is such an interesting window into their lives, not so much about the show. Hamlet is indecisive, and you could say you hate him, but without the indecisiveness there is no play, so maybe it's more about plot device instead of a comment about psycho