parlando

homecoming

Posted on June 19th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.

You are invited to Soren's homecoming, at the terrific Quarter bar, home of exquisite cocktails, made with love and priced reasonably.

Quarter is 676 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, just south of 20th Street, between 20th and 21st Streets. The closest train is the M/R to Prospect Avenue, which puts you off at Fourth Avenue and 17th Street; walk up the hill to Fifth Avenue and make a right.

26 June, Friday, 8 pm.

See you there!

1 comment.

kristian hoffman, "sex in heaven" (2002)

Posted on June 17th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.

Song Project #20

Did you know that reality tv went back to the seventies? And PBS started it. An American Family was shown in 1973, twelve episodes long, depicting an actual family, the Louds. And yes, the Loud Family got their band name from them (and no, not the Loud family on Saturday Night Live); but that's not what I'm writing about now.

Lance Loud, one of the sons, was gay, credited with being the first openly gay person in television history. Eventually he died of AIDS, in 2001. But first he led a critically-respected rock band, the Mumps, in New York City, part of the late-seventies CBGB's scene. A friend from high school, Kristian Hoffman, was the keyboardist.

Kristian Hoffman is not famous, but he should be; well, at least at the level of the new wave and no-wave bands that he played in. He played with Ann Magnuson and Lydia Lunch, and was in Klaus Nomi's band: he wrote "Total Eclipse", the most famous Nomi song. Eventually he arranged for Rufus Wainwright's band, and became a long-term keyboard player for Dave Davies's band. And he played around the Los Angeles scene in the eighties and nineties, becoming not famous, but known to musicians.

I didn't know who he was when I picked up a used cd in a pile of one-dollar cds, but the names made me curious. It was called &; in fact, it was an album of collaborations: fifteen of them, and all of them more famous than him. Rufus Wainwright, Russell Mael, Anna Waronker. Maria McKee. Ann Magnuson, Michael Quercio. Lydia Lunch! Stew! Van Dyke Parks! Paul Reubens?? Well, I bought it.

I didn't prepare myself for the barrage of hooks that came at me. From the first song to the last, one listen was enough to tell me this was a once-a-year find, one I'd play tomorrow and next day and twenty years from now; a top-five for the year. And fifteen songs in (out of 17), the song that blew me away:

Sex in Heaven

That's Ann Magnuson and Kristian Hoffman, trading off. It starts with Magnuson, hushed, piano-driven; the first hook, the verse hook, on the words "boy, earthbound", then loud drums, dum, dum, pause, dum, dum, dum, dum, dumdumcrash. Then repeat the verse. Then the chorus, the drums now there throughout, with tambourine, and guitar, Hoffman singing lead and Magnuson wordless harmony. The main hook at the end of the chorus: "where do I sign?" with the jump up an octave. Then stop, and head back into the verse, again hushed, but added vocal by Hoffman, though distant, ethereal. Then repeat verse, with two added keyboards. Then the bridge, then verse, once through this time, then the chorus, twice.

The chorus is amazing. It occurs four times, and each occurrence has a different musical lead-in to the title ("that's what is costs to buy a note so pure and high and so divine") and after the title ("the bottom line"), and that's gravy: the hook can stand by itself. And the words: it's about castrati, and the longing for the singer ("where do I sign?"), perfectly captured by the hook. That's a perfect pop song: words and music working together.

7 comments.

selling out

Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians.

On the Well, another "selling out" conversation has broken out. The Sex Pistols' "Filthy Lucre" tour has been cited as selling out; another reader has pointed out "but the Pistols were pretty much meta from the git-go."

Right; and they're a test case. They were selling out from the beginning. Yet Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols was not only a terrific album: it has lasted. The motivation was fake, but the feeling was real. Probably the single cause of it was Johnny Rotten, who delivered one of the most frightening, visceral vocal performances in history. An act, maybe; well, then, a really good act. Sometimes selling out is done with such consummate skill, it becomes art.

0 comments.

fifteen books in fifteen minutes (approximately)

Posted on June 15th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Lists, Words.

Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you -- The first 15 you can recall in 15 minutes.

Velma did this on livejournal, and I am curious what books my memory pulls up, especially now with my damaged memory.

1. Little, Big by John Crowley
2. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
3. At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan)
4. Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino
5. Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr (aka Alice Sheldon)
6. Love Trouble by Veronica Geng
7. The Most of S.J. Perelman
8. Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme
9. Lanark by Alaisdair Gray
10. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
11. The Collected Poetry of James Merril
12. The Collected Essays of George Orwell [5 vol.]
13. The Collected Poetry of W.B. Yeats
14. The Collected Poetry of Emily Dickinson
15. The Novellas of Hortense Calisher

The Collected Essays of George Orwell is cheating. And I wanted to include a book I'd never read -- probably The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer -- but that felt like cheating, and cheating is proper only once per list, I figure.

Your turn.

2 comments.

"a philosophical discourse suitable only for the strong"

Posted on June 14th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics.

I picked up Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie yesterday at a flea market. It was published in 1942, and it is bracing. It starts, "It is time for man to make a new appraisal of himself. His failure is abject. His plans for the future are infantile." Etc. It also presents an attack on destructive mothers -- "momism" -- which gained the most attention at the time; a glance at the relevant chapter is deeply sexist. But the book is an attack on nearly everything. I think I'm going to enjoy this.

0 comments.

a video by we were promised jetpacks

Posted on June 14th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.

A very good video for "Roll Up Your Sleeves" by We Were Promised Jetpacks, on Pitchfork TV.

0 comments.

home

Posted on June 2nd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.

I'm home, after eight months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. I'm out, I'm free, I'm terrified. Now I've got to figure out how, well, everything by my myself. Of course, Velma is here, mornings and evenings and weekends, and I've got a home care attendant every day. But I want to do it by myself.

Good news and bad news: I got social security disability, but it's not enough. I figure I can work again in about six months; at least, I hope so. In the meantime, I am asking for charity.

Thank you. I really wish to not have to do this anymore.

1 comment.

riverhead

Posted on May 26th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.

Monday was a test day: Velma and I rode the Long Island Railroad, with fast changes, and we made it, though it was hard, especially my visit to a bathroom on our return trip. Turns out our car didn't have a bathroom; the bathroom was in the next car down. So I trudged the narrow aisle, assisted by left-sided seat handles, but I couldn't open the door; fortunately my friend Rob opened the door. Then heading back: and my face fell. The left-side seat handles were the only seat handles. So, very carefully, I made it back, trailing Rob in case I fell.

It was a good thing, because we had an excellent time. In fact, I had a wonderful time, the best time since the stroke. Good barbecue, seventy-ish, beautiful woods, and friends: Gavin and Jen, Bill and Theresa, Rob and Ally (and various kids). All of them except Bill seen for the first time since the stroke. Most of the discourse happily revolved around music; I gamely kept up the conversation, though it's hard, and sometimes I couldn't (I mean, I understand everything, but I can't participate).

And you know, I think for twenty years I had underrated myself as a writer. Rob, for instance, is a very good writer; I look up to him. (As I do also Gavin and Bill and Velma.) (Probably Theresa and Jen and Ally too, but I've never read them.) I found out Rob read lots of things here at Parlando, and enjoyed it. And, well, that felt good. Maybe I am good. (And sometimes, of course I am good; I am good, I am mediocre, I am somewhere between.)

The point is, now I am broken. I want my writing skill back again. And I really, really mean it: I will never take my writing talent for granted again.

12 comments.

reading

Posted on May 23rd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.

"Virgin Violeta" by Katherine Anne Porter.

Violeta is fifteen, infatuated with cousin Carlos who writes poetry. But Carlos is taken by Blanca, Violeta's older sister. Carlos is casual with Violeta. But when the two of them are alone, Carlos holds her arm kisses her: "Violeta opened her eyes wide also and peered up at him. She expected to sink into a look warm and gentle, like the touch of his palm. Instead, she felt suddenly, sharply hurt, as if she had collided with a chair in the dark. His eyes bright and shallow, almost like the eyes of Pepe, the macaw. His pale, fluffy eyebrows were arched; his mouth smiled tightly."

Violeta is terrified; Carlos then does denial: He kissed her like a cousin. "'Ah, you're so young, like a little newborn calf," said Carlos. His voice trembled in a strange way. 'You smell like a nice baby, freshly washed with white soap! Imagine such a baby being angry at a kiss from her cousin! Shame on you, Violeta!'"

The story is a violation, and Violeta, while clear that something is wrong, doesn't know what it is. And she keeps it inside. But her infatuation with Carlos, and his poetry, has turned bitter.

0 comments.

the heart of it

Posted on May 22nd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.

         [Katherine Anne Porter, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"]

Oblivion, thought Miranda, her mind feeling among her memories of words she had been taught to describe the unseen, the unknowable, is a whirlpool of gray water turning upon itself for all eternity . . . eternity is perhaps more than the distance to the farthest star. She lay on a narrow ledge over a pit that she knew to be bottomless, though she could not comprehend it; the ledge was her childhood dream of danger, and she strained back against a reassuring wall of granite at her shoulders, staring into a pit, thinking, There it is, there it is at last, it is very simple; and soft carefully shaped words like oblivion and eternity are curtains hung before nothing at all. I shall not know when it happens, I shall not feel or remember, why can't I consent now, I am lost, there is no hope for me. Look, she told herself, there it is, that is death and there is nothing to fear. But she could not consent, still shrinking stiffly against the granite wall that was her childhood dream of safety, breathing slowly for fear of squandering breath, saying desperately, Look, don't be afraid, it is nothing, it is only eternity.

Granite walls, whirlpools, star are things. None of them is death, nor the image of it. Death is death, said Miranda, and for the dead it has no attributes. Silenced she sank easily through deeps under deeps of darkness until she lay like a stone at the farthest bottom of life, knowing herself to be blind, deaf, speechless, no longer aware of the members of her own body, entirely withdrawn from all human concerns, yet alive with a peculiar lucidity and coherence; all notions of the mind, the reasonable inquiries of doubt, all ties of blood and the desires of the heart, dissolved and fell away from her, and there remained of her only a minute fiercely burning particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied upon nothing beyond itself for its strength; not susceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself composed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will to live. This fiery motionless particle set itself unaided to resist destruction, to survive and to be in its own madness of being, motiveless and planless beyond that one essential end. Trust me, the hard unwinking angry point of light said, Trust me. I stay.

0 comments.

terrible truth

Posted on May 20th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.

"Hello," said Dr. Hildesheim, "at least you take it out in shouting. You don't try to get out of bed and go running around." Miranda held her eyes open with a terrible effort, saw his rather heavy, patient face clearly even as her mind tottered and slithered again, broke from its foundation and spun like a cast wheel in a ditch. "I didn't mean it, I never believed it, Dr. Hildesheim, you mustn't remember it--" and was gone again, not being able to wait for an answer.

The wrong she had done followed her and haunted her dream: this wrong took vague shapes of horror she could not recognize or name, though her heart cringed at sight of them. Her mind, split in two, acknowledged and denied what she saw in the one instant, for across an abyss of complaining darkness her reasoning coherent self watched the strange frenzy of the other coldly, reluctant to admit the truth of its visions, its tenacious remorses and despairs.

"I know those are your hands," she told Miss Tanner, "I know it, but to me they are white tarantulas, don't touch me."

"Shut your eyes," said Miss Tanner.

"Oh, no," said Miranda, "for then I see worse things," but her eyes closed in spite of her will, and the midnight of her internal torment closed about her.

         [Katherine Anne Porter, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider"]

1 comment.

he/she

Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.

Linking words, helping words, are really hard. Articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions -- especially conjunctions; sometimes I will fill up with nouns and verbs, but I can't complete the thought. Today I explained why Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" is important to me (it's directly about the 1918 flu pandemic, which Porter nearly died from) to my speech therapist. And nearly every time, thirty or forty repetitions, I said "he" instead of "she" (and my speech therapist corrected me). Sometimes I marvel that my mind is fucked up this way; I mean, I never mislabeled pronouns since my infancy. Most of the time, though, it's really irritating.

7 comments.

katherine anne porter, "maría concepción"

Posted on May 11th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Short Stories.

Friday I finished Porter's "María Concepción", the first story in Porter's oeuvre, and my first story since my stroke.

"María Concepción" is the story of a young murderess in Mexico. She was left by her husband and his lover, fifteen-year-old María Rosa, to go to war. The two come back as deserters; Concepción kills Rosa. The town bands together behind Concepción; she was liked, and Rosa was not.

María Concepción is impressively numb. At the end, she is happy, but her husband is now numb.

0 comments.

untroubled where i lie

Posted on May 9th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words.

I ran across an old post, one of my favorite poems, by John Clare. Now I love it even more; it fills me with inner peace, and believe me, right now that's hard:

I am -- yet what I am, none cares or knows;
    My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
    They rise and vanish in oblivion's host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes:
And yet I am, and live -- like vapours toss't

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise --
    Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
    But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best
Are strange -- nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
    A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
    And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below -- above the vaulted sky.

             --John Clare, c.1842

I know, it's distraught, not at peace. Clare was crazy, inside an institution. (And of course my friends have not abandoned me.) But I feel it; especially the longing, in the long past.

1 comment.

reading

Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Reading Classics, Writers, Short Stories.

Today we began with pain. My physical therapist was switched; Douglas was now my PT. And boy, he caused hurt for a half an hour. And I mean, I wept. My arm was bad -- the tone was steadily worsening, and finally it was time to do something about it. It will be bad every day for at least a while. But what can I say? This is the road to being better. I hope.

So I rewarded myself. I sat down, coffee in hand, and I read a story from The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. This was my first story, for pleasure, since my stroke. It's ten times harder than before. But I can do it. I chose Porter because, A) she's adult; B) she's awesome; and C) she's pellucid; she's not difficult, but she's very very good.

Now it's been half an hour writing this post. It's tiring. But still: I am improving, every day. And now I can read fiction. It's good. It's funny; for the past ten years, my fiction reading dropped to nearly nothing (except for pay). But now, post-stroke, I'm itching for fiction. And now, I can. Slowly; but I can.

3 comments.

thank you

Posted on May 1st, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.

I'm immensely grateful. As I said, this is humbling, but also this is renewing. I have good friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

0 comments.

asking

Posted on April 30th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.

I've put up a Paypal donate button here. Unfortunately, I pretty much am disabled. That means we are surviving on one half -- Velma's -- earnings, and social security hasn't come through (and it probably won't cover nearly enough in any case). I am sure sometime in the future I can work; but not now. So I am asking.

This whole experience has been humbling. But -- I remind myself -- I am alive, and getting stronger. Thank you, every one of you.

5 comments.

waking

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.

I am waking up. My mind, hesitantly, fitfully, is stretching, stirring. My right leg is continually improving; today, I walked several steps without anything: no cane, just my legs. [edit: Not exactly. I had on my splint. I forgot it because it's with me every day, except sleeping. I cannot walk very well without it; walking with no cane, forget it.] My right hand maybe is improving; it will be four months since the last sign of improvement.

I wrote a letter to work, the first time. My boss wrote back immediately. She said -- gratifyingly -- all my friends were concerned, and some of them followed my adventures here. (Hi Mary!) It's good to know, maybe three, maybe six months away, there will be proofreading (even if sometimes slow; it's like that sometimes).

Today, for the first time, I really truly believed, I think, that I can overcome this. There is permanent damage, yes. But I can go on. I'm still desperately hoping that my mind will recover 90% to 100%. I will be anxious until that day, maybe one year, maybe three. But I am hoping.

8 comments.

16 april 2009 listening

Posted on April 16th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Mediocre. Yet another shoegaze thing; I forget every song once another song's started.
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Every song is catchy, but every song, once you pay attention, is not that much. Still, every song is catchy; maybe every song is better one at a time.
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Still not getting it, though it continues to interest me.
No Age - Nouns
First time. Hmm. Noisy.
Deerhunter - Weird Era Cont.
Ahhhhh. That's it. Lovely and weird, first time. The flip side, as it were, of Microcastle (which I already fell in love with); when Microcastle leaked, Deerhunter came up with another disc, two-for-one. And it's awesome, too.
Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
First time. Sounds really good. Thick sound, but still has hooks. "So Haunted" is Pixies verse and the Sound chorus.

3 comments.

15 april 2009 listening

Posted on April 15th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Music.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
An album of normal-length songs -- so was Strawberry Jam. Otherwise, it's the same thing, only more compact. Lovely. Still remind me very much of Incredible String Band, and I'm baffled by others not seeing the same parallel.
Flight of the Conchords - Flight of the Conchords
One the many hilarious jokes of this band is the way that they parody Prince like no one since Ween.
DJ/rupture - Uproot
Cool. Very cool. I can't describe it. Techno with afrodub. One of many many sounds that I can't describe, more each day. But exciting.
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Pleasant disco, but not adventurous or in really expert hands. But pleasant!
The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
"All our songs are sing along songs." They're growing on me, fast. The sound kinda like the late Replacements, except they're clean.

1 comment.

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