from Bread and Wine, by Ignazio Silone:

"are you perhaps saying that all divisions between men are artificial, and that struggles are useless?" Pompeo asked.

 "certainly not," Don Paolo said. "but some divisions are artificial, deliberately created to conceal real conflicts. there are divided forces that ought to be united, and artificially united forces that ought to be divided. many present divisions are based on verbal misunderstandings, and many unions are verbal only."

more later...

various updates

as many of you know by now, I've moved to the Bay Area; as many of you also know by now, I am watching every movie Keanu Reeves has ever made. I am far from the first person to do this and I'm certainly not alone in having devoted a not-insignificant chunk of 2019 to the endeavor. (and I mean 2019 specifically: I did not want to use the neologism variously spelled "Keanussance" or "Keanaissance" in this post, but it's unavoidable as what the Internet's termed this summer. incidentally, I did find "Reevesnaissance" in a semi-obscure 2017 listicle — used in reference to 2014 onwards, and then again in a couple of tweets referring to 2019 — but it never really caught on, I guess.)

what's refreshing about Keanu, and what's made this whole undertaking rather rewarding so far (despite the number of almost-but-not-quite-good movies I've made myself sit through) is that he's always, you know, very Keanu. what I mean by that is: there's a little bit of almost every Keanu character in almost every other Keanu character. even when he's playing about as against type as he's ever played in My Own Private Idaho (1991), as (what Gus Van Sant meant to be) the Prince Hal of the Pacific Northwest — the very rich, occasionally cruel, and aptly named Scott Favor — he finds it in his character to shove a bunch of sandwiches in a groggy River Phoenix's face, and it works. "look, Mike!" he says, far more cheerfully than any other character says any other line of dialogue in this film. "SANDWICHES!"

(sadly, I can't find a clip of this, so you'll just have to watch the whole movie — the real star of which is not Keanu but River Phoenix. here's the most heartbreaking scene.)

"SANDWICHES!" you can hear Ted Logan (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989) saying it, you can hear Neo (The Matrix, duh, 1999) saying it, you can hear Matt (River's Edge, 1986) saying it. you can hear Bob Arctor (A Scanner Darkly, 2004) saying it, although maybe he's not referring to actual sandwiches. you can even hear Donaka (Man of Tai Chi, 2013) saying it with a more sinister inflection. we might imagine that John Wick (uh, John Wick, 2014) said it before his wife died. Julian (Something's Gotta Give, 2003) probably said it to Diane Keaton's character, just as Chris (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009) probably said it to Robin Wright's character. if you ask me, Johnny Utah's "I AM AN EFF BEE EYE AGENT" line (Point Break, 1991) is contained somewhere in there, too, and of course the "I WANT ROOM SERVICE!" speech (Johnny Mnemonic, 1995) has the same energy — or the same lack of energy, really, the weirdly disarming stoner simplicity. perhaps this is why people have always said that Keanu's a bad actor; although it should be said that of late these "people" have disappeared into the woodworks or maybe they've just changed their minds. I was one of them when I first watched The Matrix, nearly a decade ago. a quick Facebook Messenger search for the film has me telling a friend that it's "such a good movie BUT Keanu's a bad actor." I wonder how much of my own opinion — and everyone else's opinion — of Keanu's acting was shaped by other people saying he was a bad actor, like, as a meme? because of his awful English accent (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1994), because of his nearly-as-bad Southern accent (The Devil's Advocate, 1997)? because of whatever on Earth was going on with his character in Much Ado About Nothing (1993)? my Messenger search unfortunately turns up nothing that might either prove or disprove any of this; all I know is that I had no idea what "good acting" meant when I was 13.

I leave you with this scene from Johnny Mnemonic, in which Keanu (as the titular Johnny) accesses THE INTERNET in 2021!!!

early-november things

the temptation to not vote is massive when every other person on your feed threatens to end their friendships with all those who don't vote. (this includes a number of people I know, and also minor Kardashian-adjacent Steph Shep.) I'm not sure I want to be friends with someone who doesn't think to phrase their statement as "please vote for this candidate if you can" — who doesn't realize that the "simple" act of voting is more difficult for so many than it should be, and importantly, that it cannot in itself change anything for the better. (why not threaten to end your friendships with all those who vote for, like, Ted Cruz? I'm not saying that you should do that — maybe just don't post anything??? — but let's all stop pretending that we don't have strongly-held political opinions.)

(here's a piece re: Obama's "don't boo, vote" variation on this.)

anyway, I did vote, and all I'm going to say about any of it is that I would like those clamoring for a Beto O'Rourke presidential run to sit down and think a little harder about what it is, exactly, that they're proposing. it's a bad idea!!!

the discourse of virtue, cont'd

An advertisement, made by one William Dodge, appearing in the supplement to the Dec. 20, 1773 issue of the Boston Gazette:

Whereas Elizabeth DODGE the wife of me the Subscriber has refused to live with me; and I having paid for her Board as long as I am able, consistent with Reason or my Interest; — I do hereby forbid all Persons from Entertaining, Harboring, or Trusting the said Elizabeth on my Accompt; and I hereby declare I will pay no Debt she shall contract from the Date hereof.

the discourse of virtue

Regarding the proper installation and care of the mulberry tree — if you consider yourself a "public-spirited" citizen, you'll plant one immediately after reading this. For those looking to go the extra mile in expressing their republican virtue: you'll encourage your wives to drop whatever it is they do all day in favor of raising silkworms. From the Pennsylvania Gazette, reprinted in the Boston News-Letter of March 8, 1770 (spelling preserved, line breaks mine):

Within two Years last past, several Persons have raised Silk Worms within this and the neighbouring Provinces, and from their Success, we have great Hopes that it may be made a staple Commodity with us, for the Climate has agreed remarkably well with the Worm hitherto; our Summers are long enough to afford two Crops; the native Mulberry of this Country, is as good as any other to feed the Worm; the Silk which has been raised here, is of the best Quality; the Management of the Worm no ways difficult, and a Woman can earn more at raising Silk, than any other Business in the same Time.

But unless we have Mulberry Trees for to feed the Worms, the Culture of Silk cannot be carried on to any great Extent; and as many People might be willing to promote it by encreasing the Quantity of Mulberry Trees, provided they thought of it in a suitable Season; therefore this is to advertise all such, that the most favourable Time to propagate them is now approaching; and it is to be hoped, that every public spirited Person will use their Endeavours for that Purpose; the Expence of which will be small, the Trouble and Risque but little, and the Advantages many, although they should not be used for the Purpose of raising Silk; for the Mulberry is very good to feed and fatten Poultry, and the Wood, for many Uses, is equal to any that grows, especially for Ship-building, and it is said to be as durable as red Cedar, in Posts, &c. when full grown. 

2017: mixed media

I can't believe the last thing I posted on this blog was about Ezra Koenig! (Maybe some of you have forgotten who he is, given that he hardly tweets at all anymore. I don't blame you.)

Last year, I said I'd do away with reading challenges, and so I have. I've also done away with Goodreads ratings, for the most part: there's something absurd, isn't there, in asking the present-day reading population to rate Common Sense — for instance — on a scale of one to five. (It's currently at 3.97, for those wondering. One one-star review by a "Parentheses Enthusiast" remarks that the pamphlet is "DRY. DRIER THAN AN ANCIENT RAISIN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ATACAMA DESERT.") But here are five books I read in the past year that I would have rated four or five stars, I suppose, and that you might feel similarly about:

5. THE SHEPHERD'S LIFE (James Rebanks)
One of the first things I saw when I arrived in England last May, apart from the inside of the Manchester airport, was a group of sheep grazing on a highway median. That set the tone for the next few months, during which I developed a surprising affinity for sheep of all stripes; I picked this book up in the same airport on my way home. Rebanks writes of his childhood (and adulthood) spent as a shepherd in the Lake District, so there are no highway medians here, but it's no less interesting for it. The Shepherd's Life is at once memoir and cultural history (its subtitle, in some editions, is A People's History of the Lake District). It is better as the latter than as the former, although Rebanks's account of his journey from his sheep to Oxford to London and (finally) back to his sheep is necessary — it shows us that he's the best-placed person to do what he does in this book, which is to advance a critique of capitalist society from the point of view of a pre-industrial profession. I don't know if that's what Rebanks intended, exactly, but I do think that's what makes this book so valuable.

#4 through #1, under the cut.

I think a lot about GRIT, and even more about the dollar number of Angela Duckworth's fee every time she is invited to tell some of the highest-paid people in the country how they can become even more highly-paid; the (unintended, I think, I hope) implication is that they've gotten where they are because of something inside them. they have grit, and others don't.

do you think we've lost something by turning psychology into a numbers game? "Luria had the right idea," I remember texting my mother, soon after (perhaps during, in which case: she scolded me for texting during class) the guest lecture during which I got this impression; during which Angela Duckworth showed us (with the best of intentions) that academic research, too, can get you to Wall Street. I don't really take issue with Duckworth herself. she acknowledges the many limitations of grit, especially as "measured" by a questionnaire; she has discussed her issues with the very idea of "measurement," re: what ought and ought not to be "measurable." opening a lecture to an Intro to Psych class with a reference to the career path that (one could be forgiven for assuming) so many in the ultra-high-capacity auditorium might aspire to — maybe it was an attempt to meet students where they were at. the problem lies with those who interpret concepts like grit for their own benefit, which is surely how Duckworth ended up talking to a bunch of investment bankers in the first place.

all this is to say that I finished The Mismeasure of Man recently and I'm growing more and more suspicious of numbers. they'll provide an almost transcendental backing for anything! 

the age of the blog

A brief check-in, taking the form of a rather belated PSA: notable Internet user and Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, 32, has taken down the final post on his erstwhile blog "Internet Vibes"—yes, the post entitled "I HATE BLOGGING," after which we never heard from Mr. Koenig again.

30 July 2016

(It's a well-known post, previously referenced on this very blog.)

You see the lone difference between the two snapshots, barring their dimensions. "New Age Family Vacation Alert" simply preceded "I HATE BLOGGING" chronologically; it's not new material. (When are we getting that from Vampire Weekend, by the way?) It seems that "I HATE BLOGGING" (the post) has disappeared from the blog. It's not much of a reach to thus presume that "I HATE BLOGGING" (the sentiment) has disappeared from Mr. Koenig's heart.

5 October 2016

Perhaps Mr. Koenig sensed the winds of change before the rest of us and used that simple "delete post" operation to tell us—us being his fans, who all tend to skim the headlines every morning, by choice or not—this. The age of the press is, sadly, over. The age of the blog (or the one-man newspaper, take your pick) has begun anew. Stay tuned.

revisiting 'buddy holly'

In times* like these—times in which we can't help but ask "what's with these homies?" every time we're confronted with the day's headlines—it would perhaps behoove us to reconsider some of the choices we've made. Not in ride-sharing apps, and definitely not in business-to-business lumber; simply in music. Specifically, I mean the choice you probably** made today to listen to any song that's not Weezer's 1994 single "BUDDY HOLLY."

*This is timely, I promise. Mary Tyler Moore (yes, she who you are when I look just like Buddy Holly) died two weeks ago. Rest in peace.

**I don't mean to paint with a broad brush; some of you are making the right choices already. I'm literally listening to "Buddy Holly" by Weezer right now, a friend shouted over her shoulder, one earbud in and one earbud out, as she power-walked past me this Monday.

2016: six books you'll like and several you might

[An aside: 2017, for me, is the year I do away with reading challenges -- because a) certain things took precedence, rightly, over my book-a-week goal this year and will continue to do so in coming years, b) if I'm ever going to finish The Making of the Atomic Bomb once and for all, I'll have to spend a solid summer on it, and c) in times like these -- not the times that try men's souls, but the ones leading up to them, if we're lucky -- I'd like to reread the complete works of Laura Ingalls Wilder.]

6. ON WOMEN AND REVOLUTION (Crystal Eastman) if you can find it.
Crystal Eastman (1881-1928; prolific writer, co-founder of the ACLU) was an extraordinary woman, but the titular and is an extraordinarily misleading and. I picked up this long out-of-print book (here!) in the hope that each essay inside addressed women and revolution together, but On Women and Revolution is in fact divided into two parts: Crystal Eastman on Women and (surprise) Crystal Eastman on Revolution. The former section is, I think, of more interest to the casual feminist than the latter is to the casual leftist; Eastman's writings on feminism are at once mordant (Winston Churchill is "full of beans" to her) and moving, and it's worth noting just how many of her concerns remain our concerns -- a full century later.

(Almost) as before: #5 through #1 + extras, under the cut.

here lies harry potter (1997-2016)

(his creator killed him)

Let's get this out of the way: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them isn't a particularly good film. It's like J.K. Rowling tried to combine the childlike whimsy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone with the rather grown-up plots and characters of her Cormoran Strike novels. If that sounds like it wouldn't work -- well, it didn't work. Fantastic Beasts doesn't have a cohesive "feel": it never quite decides whether it wants to embody the spirit of its namesake book or be, uh, vaguely American Gothic? (Who knows, honestly?) Rowling also seems to have attempted to write a novel instead of a screenplay: Fantastic Beasts is full of throwaway dialogue that works beautifully as character development in her later, 800-page Harry Potter books, but that sort of thing doesn't work so beautifully in a two-hour film whose most interesting character is a Niffler.

Now, if you ask the Harry Potter fanbase, many of the eight Harry Potter movies aren't particularly good films either -- but the books they're based on are wonderful. After all, that's why Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone became a film in the first place. Fantastic Beasts is a blatant attempt to cash in on the franchise's enduring popularity, and its inspiration isn't a beloved children's story, but a spin-off book that was itself a blatant attempt to cash in on the franchise's popularity (for charity, so I won't complain too much). Like most mistakes, the Fantastic Beasts film would be forgivable if Rowling and Yates promised to never do anything like it again, but --

the real john latham

An Ornithologist, Probably John Latham?

a choice bit of titus andronicus 3.2, before it becomes thoroughly objectionable

TITUS ANDRONICUS
Peace, tender sapling; thou art made of tears,
And tears will quickly melt thy life away.

[MARCUS strikes the dish with a knife.]

What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?

MARCUS ANDRONICUS
At that that I have kill'd, my lord; a fly.

TITUS ANDRONICUS
Out on thee, murderer! thou kill'st my heart;
Mine eyes are cloy'd with view of tyranny:
A deed of death done on the innocent
Becomes not Titus' brother: get the gone:
I see thou art not for my company.

MARCUS ANDRONICUS
Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.

TITUS ANDRONICUS
But how, if that fly hd a father and moth?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamented doings in the air!
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast
kill'd him.

la gloire + la guerre

The current political climate makes particularly relevant Combeferre's little anti-imperial staircase-ditty at the end of Les Misérables III.V*, which goes like:

Si César m'avait donné
la gloire et la guerre,
et qu'il me fallût quitter
l'amour de ma mère;
Je dirais au grand César,
"Reprends ton sceptre et ton char!
J'aime mieux ma mère, o gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère!"**

ten books i can in good conscience recommend to almost every single one of you (+ some i can't)

[out of all the ones I read in 2015, the full list of which you can find here.]

10. A MADMAN DREAMS OF TURING MACHINES (Janna Levin) if you like the idea of logic more than you like logic itself.
A brilliant little book that's highly speculative in its detailing of the lives and loves and genius and internal suffering of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing: but Levin doesn't seek to depict these men with total accuracy (this is a work of fiction, after all) so much as she wants to make us feel the beauty and revolutionary nature of their ideas, contrasted with the ultimately tragic lives they led -- wracked as both were with loneliness, illness and the myriad punishments of nonconformity. Their ideas intersect as their lives parallel each other (resulting in a few genius storytelling moments) and (bonus!) the book's held together by the ever-present Wittgenstein. (I maintain that he's haunting me.)

#9 through #1 + extras, under the cut.

2015 in film, with blinders on

Yours truly was truly bad at watching Great Films outside of my preferred genres this year. That aside, these are the five films of 2015 which I enjoyed the most and which I am very invested in all of you watching and talking about with me. (I guarantee you I did watch more than five -- more than ten -- films that came out this year, and that not all of them prominently featured the letter 'M' in the title. I'm not scrounging for films to fill up this list. These are the cream of the crop, y'all.)

listen up, y'all

"Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train." — Keynes

Everything in my life came together in the space of three seconds earlier tonight. I found the connection; the universe is telling me something. Now, what that something is, I don't know — but I am nearly 100% certain that the ghost of Ludwig Wittgenstein has everything to do with it! If you would, consider the following:

1. The book I've most thoroughly digested (and enjoyed) since I moved to Philadelphia: The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace. WITTGENSTEIN.
2. I have been on time to one linguistics lecture this semester. (This isn't my fault, mom. My programming class is in a biology building, and the walk takes ten years on a good day.) And who did we discuss in that lecture? Only a "very interesting fellow by the name of... WITTGENSTEIN."
3. On a lark (lark, what a! plunge, what a!), I went rooting around for books in West Philly last Thursday. I found four, as mentioned earlier. the first one I read is about Alan Turing and Kurt Gödel (A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, Janna Levin, I recommend it). Whose ideas hold the book together? Why, those of WITTGENSTEIN.
4. My father's primary piece of advice to me has always been "when you have nothing to say, say nothing." This is a corruption of "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," which hails from the TRACTATUS-LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICALUS, which is the only book ever written by WITTGENSTEIN. This is something I mutter under my breath often while in the library, for there is inevitably some blockhead Skyping sans shame in the No-Cell Zone.

This is it, y'all. I am an unwitting Wittgensteinian, devoid of wit but full of gene snit. Updates on the haunting to follow... perhaps.

Trainspotting is wonderful, but I'm convinced that listening to "Lust for Life" one too many times left me with an extremely painful ear infection — my first in 13 years, perhaps? I mean, of course I've had it in the ear before! I was (according to my parents) a baby with a perpetual ear infection. I had tubes put in when i was young. Before I went under, whoever was anesthetizing me asked me what I liked to do for fun, and I said I liked to play with Barbies in the driveway, which was a blatant lie. To this day, I am not entirely sure what the tubes were for. I'm also not sure why I said what I did.

buddenbrooks

as mentioned earlier. i wish i could read german, or at least appreciate exactly what certain german dialects (the usage of which mann seems so fond) imply about their speakers. i cannot and may never, but i recommend this book anyway, as it was recommended to me — for those who read jane austen and know something of german history and eat chocolate with an eighty-five percent cacao content.

lost in (the first, lowe-porter) translation: much of the book's charm, i think.* i could barely get past the endless descriptions of one (1) dinner at the beginning of the book. i had no idea how anyone, much less the highly intelligent person who recommended it to me, could call buddenbrooks their favorite book. the woods translation remedies this; it wasn't a chore to read, not at all. it was a joy! the purest of them! plein de gratuitous french to boot! the chapters are of such manageable sizes that buddenbrooks managed to break my heart every morning over a bowl of oatmeal.**

consumed, lately

by forces within and without: me. i've been at college for one-point-five weeks, in class for point-five. the bullet journal has kept me out of trouble. by "out of trouble," i mean that i've taken my multivitamin every day, i haven't been late to anything (yet), and i did my laundry before i ran out of clothes. two small victories! and one big one! yes, that last is really an accomplishment, considering that i didn't pack enough clothes.

by me: a few books, more films (rare!), some good food. even more not-so-good food.