calendula
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Monday, January 7, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
I just had the most wonderful night, accidentally - a friend offered me a free ticket to a classical music thing, which was really lovely in itself, and as I was leaving I happened upon a bar where an r & b band was making nice work of Roberta Flack's 'Feel like Making Love' - I ducked in and got a beer, and then when it was followed by Cyndi Lauper's 'Time after Time' and then back to Roberta for 'Where is the Love', I decided to stick around. Seems like I stumbled on the motherlode of Singapore r & b and blues - the core band were brilliant, with two Singaporeans and two African Americans, and they had a bunch of friends there doing equally wonderful guest spots - through various shades of Chicago and Mississippi blues, and plenty of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc - so many of them my favourite picks. There were only 25 people in the bar, half of them musicians - I'm pretty sure most of the musicians could have stood up to play in almost any blues band in the world.
I kept my table and simultaneously wrote and rocked out as they played, dismantled the chase poem in a fun way... want to go back next week.
reading stories from someone who left here, holding welcomes for people arriving.
dazed look
conversation doesn't hold
the wrought iron ceiling's starry
kids thirsty
let's get used to moving on
to higher ground and
learning the language
because we want to
new words for rain
I have money
can we settle here
dazed look
conversation doesn't hold
the wrought iron ceiling's starry
kids thirsty
let's get used to moving on
to higher ground and
learning the language
because we want to
new words for rain
I have money
can we settle here
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
I read this thing in the NYT today, and the comments... http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/make-me-worry-youre-not-o-k/
So many angry, disdainful comments. I know I'm on the 'dumb' side, but this teaching method aside, I don't mind confessionalism or therapeutic writing or tragic memoirs. Sometimes I like them. I like to applaud when people who struggle tell their story. I don't see the decline of culture. Culture as fortification will keep doing its thing, endorsing itself.
" Where will it end? Not in the rebirth of great literature, in the incarnation of a James Joyce or a W. B. Yeats. How will it end? With these people in charge of "creative writing"? -- Badly, and for a long time, until the geniuses emerge again. Until then, we have this . . ."
Oh, where will it end! Joyce and Yeats aren't going to stop being Joyce and Yeats because someone taught confessional memoir writing. Only difference is dummies who were never going to be Joyce or Yeats got to write about their lives, other dummies got to read them, some money changed hands, maybe somewhere in there someone felt something was shared. Maybe something important, and sharing made someone feel more human. Or it was a cynical trade, exploitation and lies about life, although it seems a bit too convenient to paint it ALL that way... I know some of it is that, but -
"The confessional memoir is a symptom of an affluent culture expiating its guilt and frustration. Laying bare flaws and scars is to claim suffering as a badge of honor, as dues paid, something soft people need to do to claim legitimacy."
Yeah soft people... fuck soft people and their 'claim' to so-called legitimacy...
*
I suppose this is the view of someone seeing 'an affluent culture' as a total object, with a single sequential operation: have affluence, become soft, lay bare/claim suffering, claim honour, pay dues, legitimise whole, buy further affluence with legitimation....
And it means the commenter's identification with the sufferer and the affluent is total, because in her formulation those roles are indivisible from each other and from the rest of the culture. All contempt is self-contempt, I read somewhere.
So many angry, disdainful comments. I know I'm on the 'dumb' side, but this teaching method aside, I don't mind confessionalism or therapeutic writing or tragic memoirs. Sometimes I like them. I like to applaud when people who struggle tell their story. I don't see the decline of culture. Culture as fortification will keep doing its thing, endorsing itself.
" Where will it end? Not in the rebirth of great literature, in the incarnation of a James Joyce or a W. B. Yeats. How will it end? With these people in charge of "creative writing"? -- Badly, and for a long time, until the geniuses emerge again. Until then, we have this . . ."
Oh, where will it end! Joyce and Yeats aren't going to stop being Joyce and Yeats because someone taught confessional memoir writing. Only difference is dummies who were never going to be Joyce or Yeats got to write about their lives, other dummies got to read them, some money changed hands, maybe somewhere in there someone felt something was shared. Maybe something important, and sharing made someone feel more human. Or it was a cynical trade, exploitation and lies about life, although it seems a bit too convenient to paint it ALL that way... I know some of it is that, but -
"The confessional memoir is a symptom of an affluent culture expiating its guilt and frustration. Laying bare flaws and scars is to claim suffering as a badge of honor, as dues paid, something soft people need to do to claim legitimacy."
Yeah soft people... fuck soft people and their 'claim' to so-called legitimacy...
*
I suppose this is the view of someone seeing 'an affluent culture' as a total object, with a single sequential operation: have affluence, become soft, lay bare/claim suffering, claim honour, pay dues, legitimise whole, buy further affluence with legitimation....
And it means the commenter's identification with the sufferer and the affluent is total, because in her formulation those roles are indivisible from each other and from the rest of the culture. All contempt is self-contempt, I read somewhere.
Went to pick up a coffee table at a nearby apartment tonight - a retiring Chinese couple are moving out, to where I don't know, wish I'd asked. I knew from my first visit yesterday that the wife was tricky - she was vague when I asked about a chest of drawers, told me to come over rather than confirming or denying that it was still for sale. And her pitch worked - after four flights of stairs in the heat, I went for the table.
Tonight she was in fine form. There were papers and knick-knacks everywhere, two timid young Indian couples were following her from room to room, browsing the piles of stuff. Strauss was pumping from the stereo and every time any of us tried to settle a deal she waltzed on to show something else, crying out with wonder at the things she had to sell - Look here! Very good bargain! Veeeeery good quality!
The table, she said, was a precious wood from New Zealand, and she was amazed to learn we were also from New Zealand. It had been $50, she said, showing her photocopied flyer for proof - now was only $30, but if we polished it up we could sell it for $100 - no, not $100, $400, $1000!
And then she tried, quite unsuccessfully, to interest any of us in the large painted Chinese vases, or the beer cooler with built-in radio.
The table has some dings in it and a weird diagonal streak in the grain. It's solid, heavy and medium-toned - too dark and dense for rimu, and too rough-grained for kauri. It's too long to be a very good fit for our living room, but I really like it. Knowing nothing about woods, but pretending to, I speculate that it is cedar or Canadian redwood. N speculates coconut or daffodil stem. We agree that it may be from the interior of a baobab.
Tonight she was in fine form. There were papers and knick-knacks everywhere, two timid young Indian couples were following her from room to room, browsing the piles of stuff. Strauss was pumping from the stereo and every time any of us tried to settle a deal she waltzed on to show something else, crying out with wonder at the things she had to sell - Look here! Very good bargain! Veeeeery good quality!
The table, she said, was a precious wood from New Zealand, and she was amazed to learn we were also from New Zealand. It had been $50, she said, showing her photocopied flyer for proof - now was only $30, but if we polished it up we could sell it for $100 - no, not $100, $400, $1000!
And then she tried, quite unsuccessfully, to interest any of us in the large painted Chinese vases, or the beer cooler with built-in radio.
The table has some dings in it and a weird diagonal streak in the grain. It's solid, heavy and medium-toned - too dark and dense for rimu, and too rough-grained for kauri. It's too long to be a very good fit for our living room, but I really like it. Knowing nothing about woods, but pretending to, I speculate that it is cedar or Canadian redwood. N speculates coconut or daffodil stem. We agree that it may be from the interior of a baobab.
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