tell me why
i might kind of like mondays..
the prof i’m TAing for this quarter blasted this as her pre-lecture warm-up song. this’ll be a good class.
you’re the greatest fun
a happy convergence of strings, trumpet, faux mexicana, resigned lyrics, fringe:
winter quarter consumption
what i’ve been taking in, while i should be writing during this last week of the quarter:
the show follows the capers of a pie-maker who can bring the dead back to life and back to death again at his mere touch, rendered in vivid greens, blues, and shades of red. i’ve read comparisons to the narrative touches of amelie and to the visual aesthetic of lemony snicket the movie. both seem apt, and both point to a preciousness in the show, the morbidness of it i’m sure meant to temper the precious: we see charred remains brought to life, but they’re brought to life by a man who can never touch his love because he’s already brought her back to life once, and to touch her again would be to lose her forever (cue scenes of the couple touching the same wall on either side, of hands held through gloves).
add another layer of unfulfilled love: the perky coworker in love with the pie-maker, a witness to his smitten state with the undead woman. love triangles kill me. olive! he will never love you!
- beach house, still
in describing them to N i likened their sound to a late winter on a beach in the northeast, montauk or something. in fact, i envision their music as the muted soundtrack for those beach scenes in eternal sunshine, if one were to extract that night scene with the collapsing house for instance, and loop it.
good song, crappy video:
“gila” — a great song, a not so bad video of a live performance. the song’s been on a loop for a few weeks now, but as with C, it’s been putting me in a mood. i might be ready to move on to some sounds anticipating spring.
- maynard and jennica
recommended by some website, i forget which, that promised a modern love story. i’m slowly reading through this, at the rate of 5 pages a day, hoping it’s not the chick lit that its cover indicates. it can’t be chick lit if it’s written by a man, yes?
- a box of pastillas sent by mom from the PI, apparently illegally says M
man, they were good. much better than the stuff that accompanied them:
my little historicists
at some point this will have to be addressed –
what seems to be the convergence of novel theory (the marxists, the post-modernists, the new historicists) and the effects of these debates manifested in my students’ writing, especially their orientations toward literature and the way they situate it in history.
what to make of things like…
‘back in ye olde 19th century, everyone was racist, unlike in our current day when we know better…’
‘representations of slaves in 19th c. literature was overwhelmingly negative’
the things they need/want/have to believe in order to secure themselves in the contemporary moment?
jameson might fit into this somehow.
words of encouragement
to counteract overwhelming skepticism.