erhebung

An Institution

I knew The Simpsons had been around for a while, but I was still taken by surprise when I noticed a message (some­thing along the lines of: “thanks for watching; here’s to the next twenty”) at the end of a recent episode. This means, shock­ingly, that all of my students are younger than the show; and that, most dis­tress­ingly, I am now twenty years older (or there­abouts) than I was when I first saw the show in the UK.

When I was in sec­ondary school I felt it was the greatest thing ever produced for American tele­vi­sion; and later, when I was in Olympia, home of Matt Groenig’s alma mater, Ever­green College, I still felt that way; and watching it now, in 2010, a day off my 29th (damn) birthday, the feeling persists, potently. And I do hope The Simpsons con­tinues to be funny and wise long into the future, as I have come to rely on it.

(Amus­ingly, as I was writing this, ‘Way Down in the Hole’ started playing, a track that connects to another truly great tele­vi­sion series produced in the last twenty years; all of which reminds me I need to download some episodes of Homicide. On an uncon­nected note, the new season of 24 is very bad, in many ways, but some of the cast seem to be trying very hard, so I am perservering: foolish, I know.)

Music of the Ox

Over the last few weeks I’ve fre­quently found myself drifting to sleep to the sound of Amiina, an Icelandic musical quartet with a dreamy, min­im­alist sound. I’ve also been listening to múm, who I may have men­tioned on erhebung earlier, Library Tapes, a group whose backlist I have only just started to explore, and Jóhann Jóhannsson, an artist with a very pleasing sound (I’m listening to ‘Bangkok Norðursins’ from Dís right now).

The Year of the Ox just ended, the Year of the Tiger just began; fire­works are still exploding (Explo­sions in the Sky, Friday Night Lights — good stuff), and will continue to explode for a few more days. Last year I listened to a lot of music, and I’ve been going through my Last.fm account, con­sol­id­ating my memories. There was a lot of Regina Spektor (I can’t remember when I first heard her, but it was love on first listen), quite a bit of Laura Veirs (a fas­cin­a­tion with Viers’ voice has been creeping up on me slowly), not enough Basia Bulat (I heard Bulat while walking to work in Mianyang one day, and pro­ceeded to listen to the same track all morning), lately a con­sid­er­able amount of Emily Haines (as with Spektor, love at first listen, and as with Spektor, I’m not sure when I first heard her voice, although it might have been while I was in South Korea, after Chris recom­mended Metric), a smidgin of Char­lotte Gains­bourg (daughter of Serge Gains­bourg), and a dose, here and there, of Seu Jorge (thanks to Hugo for that one).

Here is what I wrote about Jorge a week or so ago:

I won’t ever tire of listening to Seu Jorge’s Por­tugese rendi­tions of songs ori­gin­ally sung by David Bowie. What grabs me is in part the genius of the ori­ginals, in part of the beauty of the trans­lated words, words I under­stand only tent­at­ively, each clause or sentence calling on memories of the English, but remaining, always, a little mysterious.

These are some of the Por­tuguese lyrics to ‘Starman’:

Adeus amor
Não sabia que horas eram as luzes eram baixas oh como
Debrucei-​me para trás em meu rádio oh oh
Alguns gato foi deitada abaixo um pouco de rock n roll lotta soul, disse ele
Então o som alto pareceu desvanece-​se uma ade
Voltou como uma voz lenta em uma onda de Hase ha fase
Jive que DJ não werent que foi nebulosa cósmica

Há um Starman waiting in the sky
Hed gostaria de vir conhecer-​nos
Mas ele acha que ele ia explodir nossas mentes
[…]

It’s a beau­tiful version, full of seductive sounds creating very vivid imagery. I like, in a way, that in these versions, for me, the meaning of the lyrics is at a remove from the music.

Also, recently, a lot of Beirut. Aston­ish­ingly beau­tiful music. The Flying Club Cup has been played almost every day for the last couple of weeks, either at work or at home. Beirut can be con­nected to Arcade Fire via Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy), and then from Arcade Fire it is only a short leap to David Bowie (the version of ‘Life on Mars’ recorded at Fashion Rocks is spine-​tinglingly good). I imagine this concert was memorable.

Broad­cast & The Focus Group Invest­igate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was an unusual col­lab­or­a­tion between one group I knew of, one I didn’t. I listened to it a lot, for a time, and need to revisit it. When I first got it, it was, like Amiina, some­thing I listened to before sleeping; but I should listen to it while walking, to see what thoughts it inspires when released into the wild. (Walking, music, pho­to­graphy — I am happy to think about the first of these things, right now; the third is off-​limits, thoughts of cameras and images cur­rently creating a numbness.)

In my mind, that album is clustered together with albums by Elegi, Natural Snow Build­ings, and Max Richter. Richter’s music is dense with meaning, but light on the ears; pos­sessing density, but touching gently. I always feel that the com­pos­i­tions are like self-​contained poems. I hope to be listening to Richter a lot more this year. Natural Snow Build­ings have a darker hand, perhaps, but are no less beau­tiful for it. Their album Ghost Folks can be down­loaded in its entirety from Last.fm.

Related to those three, to dif­fering degrees, is Philip Glass. I listened to Koy­aan­isqatsi very fre­quently last year. The music is so effort­lessly, tire­lessly good, and the world does feel, “out of balance”, so the tracks became, at moments, con­cil­itary: like old friends who nod in silent agree­ment at some mutually acknow­ledged problem. Other music by Glass that stood out this year: his score for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, and also his score (from 2002) for The Hours (I had failed to make the con­nec­tion with The Reader — has Stephen Daldry really only made two films in ten years?), a film about Virginia Woolf (I have been listening to a dram­at­isa­tion of The Waves, and have also been won­dering if I should read, again, To the Light­house).

On a com­pletely dif­ferent note, there was also a lot of Tegan and Sara and Belle & Sebastian, this year, according to Last.fm. I can remember the Tegan and Sara (it was some­thing about Shanghai, and cleaning, and needing to feel upbeat — “I feel you in my heart…”); the Belle & Sebastian, however, is explic­able (I have listened to them since before uni­ver­sity — 1997, or there­abouts; and I always listen to them, peri­od­ic­ally), but a bit strange (I don’t remember listening to them much over the last six months; I don’t remember my nos­talgia, or cravings, pointing me in that dir­ec­tion). Also con­nected to this is a fairly recent burst of Pulp (‘Mile End’ still sounds so vividly alive). (From ‘Mile End’ my mind goes straight to my time in London, nat­ur­ally, and to a com­pletely dif­ferent set of memories, but not memories that seem to have a dis­tinctive musical signature.)

And so ends, a little abruptly, a little glance at the music of the last year. There is more, I am certain, but that is what comes to mind, right now. May the Year of the Tiger be equally intriguing.

Seeing the Tending of Fields

I just read ‘Starting New Chapters’, an excel­lent essay by Hannah Pierce-​Carlson. Def­in­itely worth reading, if you haven’t already. Here is where it really caught my attention:

There is some­thing about this coun­tryside that reminds me not to take it for granted. I can see coun­tryside back home, but I will never see old women tending the fields.

What do we see, everyday, that we can’t see anywhere else?

Her diary of a cycling trip through China in 2007 is also full of inter­esting obser­va­tions.

Old Friends, Old Photographs

Last night was a night of Metric, everyone wanting to fall in love, everyone wanting to play the lead; and yes­terday, daytime, was a day of talking with old and dear and too-​long absent friends. And during one con­ver­sa­tion, someone asked how I achieved the look in the pho­to­graph below, and I explained that the figure was moving, and the camera was also moving, the camera fol­lowing the figure, and so everything else became blur, a wash of light; and that that the light of night had a greater intensity on film than the light of day. I think my friend described the pho­to­graph as hyper-​real. The music of Metric also has a greater intensity at night (as does much music). So: night and day; moving and tracking; clarity and blur; old friends, old photographs.

Xi’an, 2006.

Exploring Today (Yesterday)

Wrote this yes­terday, but didn’t get chance to post it here:

Exploring today: found some deli­cious speakers, but decided they were probably too expensive; also found some very cheap in-​the-​ear head­phones, but decided they were probably too cheap; bought some apples and had a bizarre exchange with the apple-​seller; was told by a lady in a DVD store that I was pretty, then told her that she was pretty too (there was blushing); tasted a nice syrupy cake; wandered around and thought about whether or not I needed a digital camera (pretty sure I don’t, but…); met some amusing, lively people at work, one of whom used to study in Xi’an (“I miss the food”, she said); chatted with a wise lady who remembered being given candy by US soldiers when they lib­er­ated Germany (and last night that same lady talked about how once, while living in Paris and missing home, she had listened to Gounoud’s Faust; her descrip­tion of some of the closing scenes — the depic­tion of The Brocken? — has stuck in my mind). More exploring tomorrow.

Ahoy!

Whiskey has been drunk and train ticket has been bought. And earlier I bought some new combats (not sure if that word is able to cross the Atlantic without a visa; mine are greener than these). Also con­tem­plated cutting my hair, but didn’t go through with it. I am now drunk (Becky supplied the whiskey, and I believe has incrim­in­ating pho­to­graphs) and shouting at (and chasing) an incred­ibly insolent cat.

Changes

More changes, it seems: in the next couple of days, I’ll be heading north-​easterly. I’m expecting it to be inter­esting. Today the plan is to get some new clothes (it is cold out there), get a train ticket (it is quite far from here), and then drink some whiskey (Becky appar­ently has a bottle). We’ll have to see how it all goes.

The image below is two pho­to­graphs, or perhaps two vari­ations of the same pho­to­graph. On the left is a scan — a lab scan I tweaked, a little — of a frame from a roll of film exposed at the begin­ning of 2007; and on the right is another frame from that roll, but a frame I scanned myself (and tweaked, a little) a couple of weeks ago. I think I was going for a dif­ferent look (steeper curve, deeper blacks), the first time I saw the image. I like both.

Xi’an, 2007.

Do Anything

The most con­sist­ently inter­esting thing I read last year was Warren Ellis’ Do Anything, a series of columns pub­lished on the Bleeding Cool website. Here are links to each of the indi­vidual install­ments: 001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010, 011, 012, 013, 014, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019, 020, 021, 022, 023, 024, 025, 026. I highly recom­mend taking a look.

Twenty-​Ten

So, 2010 is here. We’re not quite at manned missions to Jupiter, yet, but NASA does have a few inter­esting missions planned. On a related note, I like io9’s 15 Reasons To Live For The Next 10 Years.

In other news, I’ve finally updated scribeoflight.org, which feels like a good start to the year.

The song of the day has been ‘Changes’:

I watch the ripples change their size,
but never leave the stream
of warm imper­man­ence and
so the days float through my eyes,
but still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your con­sulta­tions:
they’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

I have a feeling it’s going to be an inter­esting year.

Mr. Chu

Around a year ago pH and I encountered Mr. Chu. Mr. Chu seemed to be present, albeit in dif­ferent personas, in six pho­to­graphs I had taken around that time: he was an Everyman, one single meta-​man who rep­res­ented many others. The idea was to present his story in Acts and Scenes, the first set of images the six scenes of the first act. The plan then was for more to follow, and more may yet follow; but for now Mr. Chu inhabits a place, a floating world, that is cur­rently off limits. This post is a memorial to Chu, wherever he may be. The captions below each pho­to­graph were created during the Gtalk chat that led to the creation of the set itself.

Scene One — “ONE, two, three, four, Mr. Chu thought as he walked the alley to the Bureau…”

Scene Two — “The head­lights silently approached and Mr. Chu wondered, for a moment, if they were coming for him…”

Scene Three — “As usual, on these nightly trips to his fate, Mr. Chu felt deeply the pain of the infinite commute towards darkness.”

Scene Four — “Mr. Chu had powers, he realised; it was just a matter of deciding how to use them.”

Scene Five — “He stood in the station as he always stood, Mr. Chu to himself, Mr. Chu to the rest of the world.”

Scene Six — “Later in life, Mr. Chu would look back on his failures and try to find out where he had wrong, how he had become the pianist who always hit the wrong keys.”

The Wall Came Tumbling Down

Cur­rently avail­able on the website of The New York Review of Books is a good review of some his­tories of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here is a snippet:

Every writer on 1989 wrestles with an almost unavoid­able human pro­clivity that psy­cho­lo­gists have christened “hind­sight bias” — the tendency, that is, to regard actual his­tor­ical outcomes as more probable than altern­at­ives that seemed real at the time (for example, a Tiananmen-​style crack­down in Central Europe). What actually happened looks as if it somehow had to happen. Henri Bergson talked of “the illu­sions of ret­ro­spective determ­inism.” Explan­a­tions are then offered for what happened. As one scholar com­mented a few years after 1989: no one foresaw this, but everyone could explain it after­ward. Reading these books, I was again reminded of the Polish philo­sopher Leszek Kołakowski’s “law of the infinite cor­nu­copia,” which states that an infinite number of explan­a­tions can be found for any given event.

[…] [Mary Elise Sarotte] reminds us, for example, how close East Germany may have come to blood­shed in Leipzig on October 9, 1989: the author­ities mobil­ized a force of eight thousand men, including police, soldiers, and Stasi; hos­pitals were told to prepare beds for possible victims. […]

I don’t know as much as I should about the events leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I don’t think I’ve ever much pondered the other turns history might have taken at that time. I do remember seeing it on tele­vi­sion: I was young, but the images of all the people — such happy people! I remember being amazed by the displays of extreme joy — on top of dif­ferent parts of the wall, recorded (at night? I recall it being night, on the tele­vi­sion) and broad­cast by the BBC, burrowed deep into my mind, my ima­gin­a­tion, and I can still visu­alise the room, the tele­vi­sion set, the school uniform I was still wearing as it was a weekday night (a Thursday — I checked). I knew it was important, that much was apparent; but I doubt very much I fully under­stood the implic­a­tions of what I was unfurling. And now, years later, there is a tempta­tion to lets its sig­ni­fic­ance fade away, leaving only the echoes, the ripples — the visual detritus. But I think there is value in remem­bering why, and also what it meant. So, I need to do some reading.

A pho­to­graph of people atop the wall which for decades had cut their country in half. (Source)

Big Dark Eyes

While on a par­tic­u­larly lengthy ramble through the interweb last night, I stumbled upon an article about Pablo Picasso ori­gin­ally pub­lished in a 1950 edition of Time magazine. Here is a snippet:

Today Picasso’s own face is leathery, seamed and wrinkled, illu­min­ated by big dark eyes which some­times sparkle but more often stare off into the distance. He is old and fat, but still powerful: his chest and belly, brist­ling with white, goatlike hairs, are mahogany-​tanned. At 68, he still dom­in­ates the whole canvas of modern art.

The internet, today, is full of stars.

A portrait of Pablo Picasso by Gjon Mili. (Source)