soundtracks for words
apropos of soundtracks as you read, this:
fall flotations
during this past week, in the wake of the written exams, i’ve been on a consumingconsuming binge, grateful not to have to give any intellectual effort back in return: duck, pie, marzipan in my mouth, new dress on my back, atlas sound in my ears, romantic comedy on the eyes.
the premise of kate and leopold is pretty ridiculous: the duke of albany follows the not-mad-scientist into the future and falls in love with the scientist’s career ladder-climbing ex-girlfriend. the movie is predictable [kate follows him to the past; their reunion: “i love you!”, kiss, dance, end scene] but polished. it’s also infinitely readable — the policeman (the state) stepping in at the end, in a gesture to save kate from what seems to be her suicide but is actually her leap into the past [the state, whose presence is a reminder of the movie’s illogic, tears a rent into the movie’s world]. but what i really want to share is this moment, at the 4:45 mark, when leopold is taking in the wonders of his nyc some 130 years later:
hahaha: “are you suggesting madam there exists a law compelling gentlemen to lay hold of canine bowel movements?”
just ridiculous. and isn’t that the point?
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atlas sound’s logos will keep me afloat, floating through the autumn quarter and maybe through winter. there’s an arc to this album, from the first track’s warm, sample-hugged arpeggio, through its pop-melodic middle tracks, to the bleep-bloops of its closing. the sonic arc holds together a collection of wanderings into spaces of loneliness (or fear of it?) that bradford cox is so good at rendering. the album is washed out and dreamy on the whole, insistent and sad when i need it to be, and otherwise just there, all melancholic background when my mind is somewhere else.
some of that jangly pop from the middle of the album:
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this blog, said the gramophone, is one of those music blogs that lean indie pop. instead of passing judgement though, the tracks are accompanied by little narratives that have nothing to do explicitly with the songs but are rather in some “inspired by” relationship to them, like they’re meant to paint a visual, situational landscape alongside the aural experience. the songs aren’t always that interesting, but i like the reading/listening combo — soundtracks as you read, music that has just a slight, even tenuous connection to the text. if i wrote more and more seriously, i’d like to embark on a project of soundtracked short stories.
it’s autumn
that moment when summer stumbles into autumn.
the summer side [still summer in LA, no?]:
into autumn [and soon winter!] loneliness & chilly chilliest evening times:
what’s the deal with terry, julie, and this watcher-from-windows?
when life was warm and love was true
more stevie for a saturday morning
notes on another viewing of high fidelity
1. john cusack, you make a great troubled [music-]lover
2. how perfect this song is, for itself and for the end of the movie
give it to me gently (knowledge, i mean)
like in star trek, the recent one, when Future Spock transfers decades’ worth of memory and emotion into Not Yet Capt. Kirk’s head by mere touch, and kirk staggers away afterward disoriented and pained. or how in state of war maya lies hand-to-hand and body-to-body on top of her future daughter-in-law, to impart entire personal histories as a way of welcome into the family.
this is what i wish grad school was like: total knowledge import in a single sitting, and any accompanying pain dealt in one huge but quick blow.
instead my narrative is a string of discrete experiences of pain and joy, composed of moments in seminar when i say to myself, i knew that, i should i have said something; during particularly stimulating conference panels or talks when i’m awe-struck at a speaker and a potential future self, thinking, one day i’ll know enough to reach conclusions like these; and most frequently, when i listen to classmates and friends offer accounts that weave together our short lifetimes’ worth of knowledge into neat, intelligent packages, that make me wonder, how and when did you accrue all this knowledge and synthesize it? where was i? what have i been doing all this time?
and of course, those hours and hours of actual intellectual work – me in front of a book, at a talk, in an advisor’s office, sitting passive in seminar.
it used to be the knowledge itself that was torturous. (flashback to my first experience reading foucault: confusion and tears, ‘this man is no roland barthes’) now it’s the experience of acquiring it and seeing it at work that gives me palpitations.
silently, quietly
on repeat, and at the top of my early summer playlist –
and i don’t know why; it’s definitely not blonde redhead’s best song.
maybe it’s tictactictac … tumtumtumtumtum; or the sailor and port metaphor; or those wispy background vocals that inch up when the melody steps down; or a sound that crosses the rhythmic thumps of blondie and the melodic earnestness of 60s girl groups.
sounds like: leaving for the summer to the unknown known.
for something
(i was there!)
just tell me how it ends
these days, a folding into myself, a resetting of fortified walls to surround, secret passwords to enter, enigmatic responses to decode: a series of protective measures.
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already there’s a tumult around what will likely be a jarring, out-of-body next few months — i leave for a 2.5-month trip to the philippines a couple of days after my oral exams in june. to anticipate your next questions: yes, i’m excited; and nervous, and dreadful, and uncertain.
let’s just skip to the end, can we? straight to the promises of a september after a long, unordinary summer: to catharsis in the form of a long drive down the i-5 and back; to some sort of synthesis of what has transpired and hopes for what will come; to reunions with familiar friends who will register for you how you’ve changed (and to assure you you haven’t changed at all); to naps in my armchair before lush trees on 10th st., sun and breeze reaching into the open window.
