Oct 3, 2009
Oct 2, 2009
Best Things For Friday
--The BEST televiseddocumentary.
--A low-fi compilation of Grimm's fairytales, all mashed, mostly untitled.
--This quite sweet archival Richard Prince review.
--A low-fi compilation of Grimm's fairytales, all mashed, mostly untitled.
--This quite sweet archival Richard Prince review.
Reading (aloud)
I get plain sleepy when I read, speaking out the words has always helped, and, of course, it's the best way to savor language. Last weekend, in Riverdale for the Days of Awe, and not a bit sleepy (and not engaging with electronics), I took up some of Nana's guestroom bookshelf and intoned it in a hushed kind of way. I'd forgotten how much I like the spook and watchmen interchange that opens Hamlet--
Enter Ghost
MARCELLUS
Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
BERNARDO
In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
BERNARDO
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO
It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS
Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
MARCELLUS
It is offended.
BERNARDO
See, it stalks away!
HORATIO
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit Ghost
MARCELLUS
'Tis gone, and will not answer.
BERNARDO
How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?
HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS
Is it not like the king?
HORATIO
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.
MARCELLUS
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCELLUS
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?
HORATIO
That can I; at least, the whisper goes so.
Our last king, whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
As it doth well appear unto our state--
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
BERNARDO
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
HORATIO
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Re-enter Ghost
I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
MARCELLUS
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
HORATIO
Do, if it will not stand.
BERNARDO
'Tis here!
HORATIO
'Tis here!
MARCELLUS
'Tis gone!
Exit Ghost
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
BERNARDO
It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Enter Ghost
MARCELLUS
Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again!
BERNARDO
In the same figure, like the king that's dead.
MARCELLUS
Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Horatio.
BERNARDO
Looks it not like the king? mark it, Horatio.
HORATIO
Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder.
BERNARDO
It would be spoke to.
MARCELLUS
Question it, Horatio.
HORATIO
What art thou that usurp'st this time of night,
Together with that fair and warlike form
In which the majesty of buried Denmark
Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak!
MARCELLUS
It is offended.
BERNARDO
See, it stalks away!
HORATIO
Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!
Exit Ghost
MARCELLUS
'Tis gone, and will not answer.
BERNARDO
How now, Horatio! you tremble and look pale:
Is not this something more than fantasy?
What think you on't?
HORATIO
Before my God, I might not this believe
Without the sensible and true avouch
Of mine own eyes.
MARCELLUS
Is it not like the king?
HORATIO
As thou art to thyself:
Such was the very armour he had on
When he the ambitious Norway combated;
So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle,
He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice.
'Tis strange.
MARCELLUS
Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour,
With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch.
HORATIO
In what particular thought to work I know not;
But in the gross and scope of my opinion,
This bodes some strange eruption to our state.
MARCELLUS
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land,
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task
Does not divide the Sunday from the week;
What might be toward, that this sweaty haste
Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day:
Who is't that can inform me?
HORATIO
That can I; at least, the whisper goes so.
Our last king, whose image even but now appear'd to us,
Was, as you know, by Fortinbras of Norway,
Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride,
Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Hamlet--
For so this side of our known world esteem'd him--
Did slay this Fortinbras; who by a seal'd compact,
Well ratified by law and heraldry,
Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands
Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror:
Against the which, a moiety competent
Was gaged by our king; which had return'd
To the inheritance of Fortinbras,
Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant,
And carriage of the article design'd,
His fell to Hamlet. Now, sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,
For food and diet, to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't; which is no other--
As it doth well appear unto our state--
But to recover of us, by strong hand
And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands
So by his father lost: and this, I take it,
Is the main motive of our preparations,
The source of this our watch and the chief head
Of this post-haste and romage in the land.
BERNARDO
I think it be no other but e'en so:
Well may it sort that this portentous figure
Comes armed through our watch; so like the king
That was and is the question of these wars.
HORATIO
A mote it is to trouble the mind's eye.
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun; and the moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse:
And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates
And prologue to the omen coming on,
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen.--
But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
Re-enter Ghost
I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:
If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
Speak to me:
Cock crows
If thou art privy to thy country's fate,
Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak!
Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life
Extorted treasure in the womb of earth,
For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death,
Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Marcellus.
MARCELLUS
Shall I strike at it with my partisan?
HORATIO
Do, if it will not stand.
BERNARDO
'Tis here!
HORATIO
'Tis here!
MARCELLUS
'Tis gone!
Exit Ghost
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is, as the air, invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
BERNARDO
It was about to speak, when the cock crew.
Oct 1, 2009
Love in This Club
Stupid me only started watching that Ken Burns Nat'l Parks number last night...and now the 30s have totally surpassed the soldierboy 40s on the historical hotness meter. How about this C.C.C.?!
In the Money
I don't know where I'm coming from or where I'm going right here. But I saw this teenager I'd never heard of on a best-dressed list (things I should never read) today. Her name is Jane Aldridge. She lives in Dallas, and she has a blog.
I don't know who Jane's parents are, but (though she talks up sales and ebay) I know they are very generous. It's overwhelming. I think she looks great, but what comes of always having been a sophisticate? I mean, I always fancied myself one, thought like one, but sartorially, I was absolutely a high school student and then absolutely a college student (and I'm still recovering). In school, I did not look like everyone else, but I definitely looked my age. I wore a mix of thrift/vintage, mall clothes, and treats, special (cherished) gifts from my forebears, both masculine-feminine 70s hand-me-downs and designer wish list wishes sweetly granted. I, like most, am an odd mixture of appreciative and creative and jealous and down-trodden. Mine is some variation on the commonest American experience--aspirational and still hungry.
And my point-of-view is pliable. The years at St. Mary's and P.A. brought out bits of sport and prep, the habit of my surroundings. The transfer to a big Memphis City School my junior year drew out the video-girl in me. On my first day, I wore vintage Levi's, a cable knit sweater, and no make-up; on my second, skin-tight stretch denim, door-knockers, and plenty of lip gloss. Brandeis (oy) led me to Juicy sweats and pink pink pink, some J.A.P. sensibilities (that weren't too divergent from my recent public school education). And my NY drop-out days made me tougher and 80s-er. These were accents beside/over the big constant: my stylish ma and pa, who laid an urbane, politically engaged foundation, via garments and films and music and housewares and paintings--ART (a definite generosity). Babble...I think I'm trying to say that I still tread with uncertainty. I still fuck up. I lead, and then follow. I have yet to look my best.
The "Fay-shun World" seems to think a strong, unrelenting, unassailable p.o.v., a perch in the clouds is ultimately stylish. It is the way the editorial community has reacted to this girl, as a "mature dresser," "fearless and self-knowing, distinctive, never wrong." I think that's dull and inappropriate for The Youth. Goths, punks, metalheads, d-boys--these high school uniform-wearers are not so smug, not necessarily "self-knowing." I mean, I LOVE A UNIFORM. But a balance of rule-boundness and flexibility (and humanity) is best, I think. And lots of people do this in their own way. And, honestly, Jane Aldridge does this. She's not one for high-low, but she does old-new and tough-pretty, Texas-Japan. I suppose what makes me uncomfortable is not some unvaried-ness of ideas/structures, but the 'separate peace' of so much cash and luxury, the unvaried-ness of cost and quality. This child breaths thinner air than we do. Her brand of stylishness is necessarily rare. It is a mechanism (whether intentional or no) for distancing, for drawing lines of demarcation. This is normal, natural. it happens in all strata. The jock wears a suit to school on Fridays, a letter jacket off-campus to assert his social status. But that is bound to high school. Only other teens feel the effects. Jane Aldridge, on the other hand, is a fashion-plate of old and big class difficulties, ones that affect us all, those twice and thrice her age. There is just always an implied inaccessibility in high fay-shun things and people. And she is being lauded PROFESSIONALLY, as an (oooooof) icon. A few fancy things in the mix (I can't knock that)...only ever fancy things (it gives one the willies).
I could be wrong. I'm running on empty. Like I said, I'm jealous. She looks older than me. I'm mad (in the positive sense) about luxury and fineness and flash (saw one of those this morning and OH MY). But I'm madder about democracy. Jane's way of dressing is a bit too...Aristo--unsettlingly unAmerican and unfriendly. You know? I'm conflicted and foggy. There is an insider-outsider note that I'm not hitting. I might just find her ease with and "carrying off" of grown-up wares scary. Teens have such ease when they're stylish, the ease of freshness and confidence in freshness, but what happens when that teen is dressed as her mother rather than her friends? And I strongly dislike shoe fetishing. What do y'all think?
Addendum: Pillow and I talked about this last night...she had been knowing about it for a few months and reminded me of the elephant I forgot to mention: BEBES ON THE INTERNET. duh.
Sep 29, 2009
The Darkness
Almost October. Autumn is only ever one thing for me: Eastern Massachusetts. Aspirational like book-shopping and Commuter Rails and being teen*aged, dismal like exams and infirmaries and being teen*aged. I'm drawn in. Even as anxieties up and over an approaching winter mount, I crave wind rain and grey grey grey. I've been positively wishing away the sun (a thing I know I'll soon regret). The first Darkness has taken hold, and I am trying to conjure it fuller (heady, concussively), though it will surely expand on its own, suffocate us all until a trip to the Islands is the ONLY KIND OF FIX (thank G-d for New Year).
Though, post Yom Kippur, I'd imagined something like this. Today, I got my nails painted thus. German vamp.
Verses
"I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)"
James Brown
(1968)
When you touch me
When you touch me
Good God
When you touch me
Lookie here
I can't stand it
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love
I can't stand your love
You don't love nobody else
Get back, I can't stand myself
Can't stand your love
Good God
Early in the morning
Can't get it right
Had a little time
With my baby last night
Early in the morning
Gotta do the walk
My baby, just let me talk
When you touch me, good God
When you touch me, alright
Come on, baby, hold my hand
Just want you to know
I'm a soul man
Can't stand it
Can't stand it
Can't stand it, lookie here
Can't stand it, baby
Can't stand it
Can't stand your love
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love
Lookie here, baby
What you want me to do
Baby, what you want me to do
You made me, made me love you
You give me fever, my body's wet
You give me fever, break out
In a cold sweat
Baby, good God
Baby, lookie here
Sometimes I want you
Sometime I call
Sometimes I ring so hard
Come on, good God
Baby lookie here
Can't stand your love
Can't stand your love
Can't try a new love
Can't stand your love
I can't stand it
I can't stand it, good God
Can't stand it, alright
I can't stand it, alright
Bass, lookie here
Bass, Tim
Help me out, Tim
Show me how you work
A little bit Tim
Good God, Good God
All right, can't stand it
Wait a minute time, Tim
Let me get this whole thing
Together over here
Can't stand it
James Brown
(1968)
When you touch me
When you touch me
Good God
When you touch me
Lookie here
I can't stand it
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love
I can't stand your love
You don't love nobody else
Get back, I can't stand myself
Can't stand your love
Good God
Early in the morning
Can't get it right
Had a little time
With my baby last night
Early in the morning
Gotta do the walk
My baby, just let me talk
When you touch me, good God
When you touch me, alright
Come on, baby, hold my hand
Just want you to know
I'm a soul man
Can't stand it
Can't stand it
Can't stand it, lookie here
Can't stand it, baby
Can't stand it
Can't stand your love
Can't stand it
I can't stand your love
Lookie here, baby
What you want me to do
Baby, what you want me to do
You made me, made me love you
You give me fever, my body's wet
You give me fever, break out
In a cold sweat
Baby, good God
Baby, lookie here
Sometimes I want you
Sometime I call
Sometimes I ring so hard
Come on, good God
Baby lookie here
Can't stand your love
Can't stand your love
Can't try a new love
Can't stand your love
I can't stand it
I can't stand it, good God
Can't stand it, alright
I can't stand it, alright
Bass, lookie here
Bass, Tim
Help me out, Tim
Show me how you work
A little bit Tim
Good God, Good God
All right, can't stand it
Wait a minute time, Tim
Let me get this whole thing
Together over here
Can't stand it
Verses
Excerpt from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, 1927 (trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter)--
"This being carried upward into regions where he had never before drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living conditions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty--it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in between. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be reminded of this continual climbing, of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky.The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor."
"This being carried upward into regions where he had never before drawn breath, and where he knew that unusual living conditions prevailed, such as could only be described as sparse or scanty--it began to work upon him, to fill him with a certain concern. Home and regular living lay not only far behind, they lay fathoms deep beneath him, and he continued to mount above them. Poised between them and the unknown, he asked himself how he was going to fare. Perhaps it had been ill-advised of him, born as he was a few feet above sea-level, to come immediately to these great heights, without stopping at least a day or so at some point in between. He wished he were at the end of his journey; for once there he could begin to live as he would anywhere else, and not be reminded of this continual climbing, of the incongruous situation he found himself in. He looked out. The train wound in curves along the narrow pass; he could see the front carriages and the labouring engine vomiting great masses of brown, black, and greenish smoke, that floated away. Water roared in the abysses on the right; on the left, among rocks, dark fir-trees aspired toward a stone-grey sky.The train passed through pitch-black tunnels, and when daylight came again it showed wide chasms, with villages nestled in their depths. Then the pass closed in again; they wound along narrow defiles, with traces of snow in chinks and crannies. There were halts at wretched little shanties of stations; also at more important ones, which the train left in the opposite direction, making one lose the points of the compass. A magnificent succession of vistas opened before the awed eye, of the solemn, phantasmagorical world of towering peaks, into which their route wove and wormed itself: vistas that appeared and disappeared with each new winding of the path. Hans Castorp reflected that they must have got above the zone of shade-trees, also probably of song-birds; whereupon he felt such a sense of the impoverishment of life as gave him a slight attack of giddiness and nausea and made him put his hand over his eyes for a few seconds. It passed. He perceived that they had stopped climbing. The top of the col was reached; the train rolled smoothly along the level valley floor."
Sep 28, 2009
OFF WITH THEIR SHARK EYES!
I'm actually pretty inspired by Kristin Cavallari's new promo for The Hills. I've loved this Yeah Yeah Yeah's songs since the album dropped, and while this "bitch" never quite left, I like to think I'm getting a new groove with my birthday approaching. And juxtaposed with Olivia Palermo and her overly complex shoe choices both trying to be badass, it's kind of gorgeous in its second viewing...
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