jeblog

phoku.6

existential game 10: create own soundtrack

This game requires a portable CD player of some kind.

Step 1: mapping out your day, or at least a small period of it.

Step 2: finding snippets of music appropriate to each activity in your day.

For doing sit-ups, perhaps some good trance/dance music, such as Thievery Corporation. For preparing lunch, Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" (if you're a carnivore) or Stevie Wonder's Secret Life of Plants (if you're a vegetarian). For doing laundry, something by some clothes-horse diva, like Annie Lennox. For showering, the theme music from Psycho.

The possibilities are endless.

Step 3: Burn all your music onto a CD and do your mapped out activities while listening the music mapped to your mapped out activities.

Step 4: After you're done with your activities, send your CD to a friend and ask him/her to either guess your activities, and/or do the same activities themselves to your soundtrack.

Step 5: Send the CD to me and I will judge which is the best and air it on all my Clear Channel stations, as soon as I get rich and do the hostile takeover thing.

Blake and books

Lately I've been fearing for my new media soul. Anyone who's read previous entries know about my obsession with (nostalgia for) the codex book. Well, lately it's been getting worse.

I've been reading a lot of William Blake for an independent study class. Initially I was being a good little cyborg and reading it only online at the Blake Archive, toggling between textual transcription and the image. But then one day I was stuck at school and decided to go, like, totally retrograde, and find a codex version. I found a set of folio editions published by the Tate Gallery.

I think I'm in love.

Not only are the reproductions marvelous, but there are also ample introductory and contextual materials, and annotations of the image AND the text. True, the Blake Archive has some of all that--along with its imcomparable compare function--but only on the most basic of levels. The editors do not disquisit to the extent that the editors of the Tate Gallery folios do. (I'm wondering if there's something about the online experience that limits such disquisitions, such as the fact that most folks spend about 30 seconds, if that, on any given webpage).

I especially like David Worral's edition of the Urizen books. And it seems to me that the (First) Book of Urizen, especially, should be read in codex format, rather than online (or rather the online version should be a supplement, but not the primary reading location). After all, it is largely a depiction of Blake's near nightmarish anxiety in the face of the Authoritative Book, exemplified by the Bible. It is a book that undermines and deconstructs the idea of the book, and that, paradoxically, needs to be read as a book for that deconstruction to be understood.

I will also allow that perhaps it also needs to be read as a dissected book, which is what it essentially is in its online form.

But conclusion is that reading Blake only online--when one has books such as the Tate Gallery edition available--does the work something of a disservice.

I don't have to turn my New Media badge, do I?

drumming redux

For the fourth consecutive weekend, I spent this past weekend drumming with a community of folks in an out-of-the-way place. This time it was with my buddhist sangha (community), at a retreat center called Charter Hall (former retreat of FDR), at the top of the Chesapeake Bay.

My buddhist friends were a little less familiar with drums than some of my previous weekenders, but they took to it eagerly. The highlight of the weekend for me was when, in the middle of a song I was singing and playing on dulcimer, the other folks began a spontaneous drum jam!

More and more I see drumming as a meditative practice. You drum until you realize you're drumming (look at me!), then you get self-conscious and lose the beat. Then, just as we are instructed in sitting meditation, you bring yourself gently back to the beat and stay with it as long as you can.

I've now started playing my bodhran (Irish frame drum) as any other frame drum, striking with the fingers, as a tool for concentration, after I finish my regular sitting meditation session. I think it's a valuable addition to my practice.

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existential game 9: cop bike baiting

This game is not for the faint of heart or the strict law-abiding.

Go out for a ride on your bike. Find a cop car. Find a stop sign. In sight of the cop car, run the stop sign. If you don't get stopped by the cop, you get a hundred points.

You get 200 hundred points if you run a red light in sight of a cop car.

If you total 1000 points, it buys you a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. Whether it actually gets you out of jail after a cop arrests you for running a stop sign or a red light is another matter.

My score the last time I played: 300 points. I swear. And with that, I now announce my retirement from this game.

existential game 8: cake temptation

Spend an hour cooking in a kitchen with a lemon supreme cake on the counter. Make sure you're hungry. The game is passing the cake without cutting a slice and gobbling it down. 100 points for everytime you pass it without partaking (the scoring ends when you take a slice).

My score the first time I played: 300.

The next time I played: 200.

I then honorably retired from the game. Someone had to finish that cake.

tale of a temporary text

I'm very intrigued by the idea of impermanent or temporary texts. William Gibson's Agrippa is a prominent example but really such texts are all around us.

I had an interesting experience with one this past weekend. I spent the weekend out in the woods dancing and drumming around a fire. There were some artists there (twin brother artists in fact) who, as part of the festivities, facilitated the creation of a sand painting mandala, similar to those made by Tibetan monks.

I was not part of the crew who created it but I was part of the crew who destroyed it, in Tibetan style (to signify impermanence), at the conclusion of our all night drumming session. I played the Tibetan singing bowls while others made new designs in the sand, destroying the old designs, slowly sweeping all of it away.

I saw the text for five minutes before it was gone. It was beautiful--a narrative, more visual than verbal, of our weekend together. Besides that I cannot describe it. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn't have a camera and besides that would have defeated the purpose of the whole endeavor. I could not preserve it.

I realize your experience of this particular text (dear reader) was even more ephemeral than mine. Welcome to impermanence!

a doodle

Speaking of underlinings and notations in used text books (see BELOW), I found this doodle in a book (Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism) loaned to me by Orrin Wang. Can someone tell me who "S.C." is? Probably one of those French theory guys (and I know, I really should know who all of them are).

reading readings

Like most grad students, by necessity I buy most of my textbooks used. If I'm lucky, I inherit the books of a middling student--that is, one who doesn't make too many notations or underlinings in the text. If I'm really lucky, the notations and underlinings are in pencil, and can be erased. Such is the case with my textbook for my Victorian literature class.

Even if the notations are few and in pencil, however, I still get annoyed. The other day, for instance, I was doing my reading for class and found myself doing as much erasing as notating and underlining. It wouldn't been as bad if I and the previous notation-maker and underliner were in some agreement on what was important in the text, but we seemed to be completely at odds.

For instance, he (or she) underlined "Match'd with an aged wife" in the first stanza of Tennyson's "Ulysses." What does that have to do with anything? The really interesting line comes immediately after that one: "I mete and dole / Unequal laws unto a savage race." At least, that's the one my professor pointed out (and I dutifully underlined).

And then this person underlined "I cannot rest from travel; I will drink / Life to the lees." Come on! I thought. That's so obvious, and so undergrad! (Of course, so is italicizing "so.") It reminded me of a line from some cheesy, pretentious, dorm-room poster.

Then, the worst of all: "I am become a name." Such a nothing line. Not worth underlining. Though I can blame that as much on Tennyson as on the notation writer.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Erase, erase, erase.

Thank goodness the notation writer ran out of steam half-way through "In Memoriam A. H. H." I could read the second half of the poem in peace, not having to make any erasures.

But by that time I wasn't annoyed as much. I was actually becoming intrigued. By reading the underlinings (before erasing them), I felt like I was getting to know the underliner a little bit. I was, in fact, reading somebody else's reading, someone else's map of the material; I was seeing it through somebody else's consciousness. Which, when you think about it, is pretty remarkable.

I began to re-think some of the things I'd erased. Maybe "an aged wife" is significant after all. I mean, where is Penelope is Tennyson's poem? Not even named. She's just the old lady at home who keeps Ulysses from making a final tour with his mariner buddies. I think Penelope deserves better, and so, apparently, did the previous underliner.

Then "I cannot rest from travel; I will drink / Life to the lees." I admit, it's a pretty good line and it may have seemed overly obvious to me because when I was an undergrad I memorized it, that's how good I thought that line was then. I probably underlined it as well, way back when.

Finally, "I am become a name." Is it really a nothing line? I started thinking about it and realized it was saying something about celebrity. Ulysses has become a celebrity because of his past exploits, and he seems to have some ambivalence about that. It's even more interesting if you think about it in terms of Tennyson's anxiety about becoming a celebrity. When he wrote it, he wasn't yet Poet Laureate; in fact, it seems that that was the last thing Tennyson wanted in his career. So, here is the young poet using the old hero as a mouthpiece, voicing his anxiety about being a public poet, only to find himself years later the Poet Laureate, the most public poet in the English language. For better or worse, he became a name.

So, the previous underliner and notation maker helped me read Tennyson in a new way (and I haven't even touched upon the notations, many of which were equally provocative). Maybe I shouldn't be erasing the underlinings, but rather preserving them, and making my own underlinings in a different color. Maybe this is what we should all do with our used books, and then on the fly-leaf at the end of the book inscribe our email address so that--should we choose to sell our book back to the college book store--we might possibly have a conversation with those readers who will be reading our reading after us.

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existential game 7: timely tea-ing

Bring a mug of hot tea with you to your desk. Drink it before it gets cold. It's harder than it looks! If you succeed, your reward is...a mug of hot tea. If you do not succeed, your booby prize is...a mug of lukewarm or cold tea. Which, given the particular tea, may not be such a bad thing. I find that Sleepy Time tea is fine lukewarm or cold--and may even be more sleep inducin

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

existential game 6: pen retention

At the beginning of a new school semester, attach a pen to the spiral binding of a notebook. See how long you can keep it there. Beware whom you lend it to--many people are notorious passive-aggressive pen stealers!

If you manage to keep the pen, with the notebook to which the pen was originally assigned, your university English department will gold plate it for you. Check in with your dean about it. There are just a few forms to fill out...

bookmaking

Yesterday I made a couple notebooks. Nothing fancy, a little odd even, but they serve my purposes. I also enjoyed making them. I think I'll put in some thumbnails here and write about the bookmaking process below them.

I wanted to have two distinct notebooks for my two classes this semester at the University of Maryland (in the past I've scribbled into numerous notebooks and then have to collect from three or four little notebooks the notes from one class). I also wanted the notebooks to be small--3.5 x 6 inches, say.

The only notebooks I found that were the right size were spiral notebooks with obnoxious covers. So, I took the covers off (slipping them off and back on the metal spiral binding) turning them around, to the blank white side. Also, since I'm a left-handed writer, I wanted to make sure the metal spiral binding was on the right side of the notebook, so it wouldn't interfere with my hand. So I turned the book upside down.

Then I went online to find some nice pictures. Since one of my classes is a Victorian literature class, I wanted something iconically Victorian. I went to the Rossetti Archive for that.

My second class deals with the Romantics. So I needed an iconically Romantic image. That I found at the Blake Archive.

Extra credit to those who can name the images on the cover of my two new notebooks without first going to those websites (oh heck, extra credit for those who do go to those websites).

As for the pens, those are my official class pens. I'm not usually so anal as to have assigned pens for each class (maybe I should have tried differently inked pens?), but I thought I would give it a try this time. I especially bought a pen with a clip so I could clip it to the spiral binding. Let's see how long it takes me to lose them.

So there it is, how to make your own notebook. Try it at home, boys and girls!

jeb at the rnc with the rwu

I've been meaning to put up a link to a photo gallery with photos from my weekend with the Rhythm Workers Union at the RNC Convention--but I had to finish the gallery first!

Now it's done and here's the link:

http://www.wam.umd.edu/~byrnejo/nyc_04/nyc_04.html

Enjoy!

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existential game 5: googling authors

Try to find the full name of a writer whose middle name you know but the rest of it you're totally blanking on by Googling, using the middle name.

It helps if it's an interesting middle name, like, for instance, Makepeace, instead of, say, Ed (my middle name).

100 points for each time you succeed in finding the full name of a writer (including middle name).

Using Makepeace I found the full name William Makepeace Thackeray. I made no other attempts. +100 points.

review of Mira Nair's Vanity Fair

Another quick review.

I went to see this film because I'm curious about film depictions of the Romantic era Regency period (though in this case, it's filtered through the Victorian imagination of Thackeray, and then filtered again through the imagination of a feminist Indian film-maker). But also because I heard that Mira Nair, the director, had "Bollywoodized" this classic English story.

Not having seen any Bollywood films, but having read interesting things about them, I'm not a good judge of whether Nair Bollywoodized Thackeray's story, but it certainly depicts how deeply India, the Jewel in the Crown, and the birthplace of Thackeray, had seeped into the consciousness of imperial Great Britain--and vice versa, as Nair shows an India equally fascinated with the British, though resentful and rebellious (rightly so) of the British Raj. (I have read that Nair was influenced, in her thinking about the film, by Edward Said, so it might properly be said that she didn't Bollywoodize but rather Saidized Thackeray's novel. I would need to read more (some) Said to say more about that).

There is one dance number, where Reese Witherspoon does a sort of India-period Madonna, to jaw-dropping effect, but that seemed more an homage to MTV rather than Bollywood.

All that said, the acting is quite good (especially Reese W. and James Purefoy as Rawdon Crawley), and the cinematography sumptuously colorful in sub-tropical, subcontinental Indian way. And I'm glad to see that the Romantic/Regency period was such a groovy time, especially if you were lucky enough to have colorful Indian servants.

review of Zhang Yimou's Hero

Quick review:

Saw two interesting films last weekend: Hero, a film by Zhang Yimou, and Vanity Fair, Mira Nair's latest film.

Hero, visually, is a stunning film. Beautiful (and very zen) compositions, and amazing fight choreography, in the style of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It also plays with a Rashomon-style narrative structure, with multiple, contradictory story-lines (which are color-coded!), showing the slippery nature of reality, and the "truth."

What I found most interesting were the scenes set at the calligraphy school. There the main character, known as Nameless, comes to kill an assassin. Nameless is convinced that he can learn the secret to his swordplay, his fatal flaw, by studying his calligraphy brush-stroke. First, the idea that we can learn someone's character, or soul, through hand-writing, is one that fascinates me. But then it gets more interesting when the school comes under attack and the calligraphers calmly do their heroic scribal work while arrows fly about them, continuing to write even when arrows land in their backs. The implication is that not only can we learn someone's soul from their hand-writing, but through dogged writing, the scribes can save the world!

As the digital world slowly supplants older forms of writing, I feel a nostalgia for hand-writing. If hand-writing really reveals the soul, isn't it a shame that we don't hand-write anymore? And if hand-writing can save the nation (by building character), shouldn't we somehow try to save it? The film touches on this concern, this nostalgia, which of course reflects an anxiety, that something valuable will be lost in the onrush of the new.

I'm excited that I have a new director to explore (never having seen any Zhang Yimou films). A film well worth seeing, especially for those, like myself, who like the choreography more than the fight in the fight choreography, and don't like a lot of blood (for those that do, go see Kill Bill).

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existential game 4: tenor/sopranos 2.0

Guess which year and episode of The Sopranos I was writing about in the previous entry (which is BELOW this entry. I know, you'd expect it to be ABOVE this entry. SEE BELOW.)

existential game 3: tenor/sopranos

Guess the tenor singing during an episode of The Sopranos. 100 points for each correct guess; -100 for everyone you miss.

Recently I was watching The Sopranos with some housemates and I played this game. My first guess was wrong. I said, out loud, "Mario Lanza," when it was later revealed to be Luciano Pavaroti. I was thrown off because, in the show, the flaky sister asked the not-so-flaky sister something that their mother, who was in the hospital, liked. The not-so-flaky character said "Mario Lanza." So naturally, when the flaky sister went to the hospital, and was playing a recording of some tenor while her mother slept, I assumed it was "Mario Lanza." I was wrong. It was Luciano. -100

Later in the show, when I was doing something in the kitchen, I heard another tenor on The Sopranos. I was pretty sure it was Andrea Bocelli. But this time I kept my mouth shut. Which is too bad, because it was Andrea Bocelli. I could have been back to zero, but instead I'm still down a hundred.

Final score: -100

a genet coct[eau]ail

It's nearly 1am and I've made two blog entries I didn't intend to make, and have not made the ones I intended to make. I've been truly night scribbling...

On to stuff I wanted to blog.

I was in New York City this past weekend, taking part in some of the festivities celebrating the tradition of creative and loyal (for me, anyway) dissent in a world in which such dissent is increasingly criminalized. Tomorrow I will blog my little photo album from the weekend and explain a little more about what I mean by the above.

While in NYC, I was staying in the lovely home of a friend, in Greenwich Village, whose parents are both literary agents. It was a house full of books, which seems a rarity these days, a veritable heaven for bookworms such as myself.

On my last day there I had the opportunity to peruse the library in the super-skylighted upper story, where there was one whole long tall wall of books, maybe ten shelves high, with one of those book shelf ladders-on-wheels, like you'd see in a proper old book store, to reach the higher shelves. Again, a bibliophile's wet dream (maybe dry, dusty dream would be more apropos). While perusing, I came across a book that got me very excited.

It was a first-English edition of Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers. Just the title was enough to get me to pull the book out of the stack--even though it was obviously in a delicate state (fig. 1). Once I pulled it out I discovered something that made me run for my camera. It was an amazing paratextual element--the drawing of a young Jean Genet by Jean Cocteau (fig. 2).

It wasn't just the fact that this great queer writer, at the beginning of his notorious career, had been depicted by a great queer artist and film-maker--a wonderful confluence of marginalized genius; it was also the care that had been taken to make it look like it had been inscribed--I might even say "scribbled"--in pencil on that cover. It looks like someone had handed Genet's book to Cocteau and asked him to do a quick likeness of Genet, as if he were doodling on a cocktail napkin.

I think whoever thought of adding that doodle to the cover was brilliant, and certainly someone who loves books as artefacts, as objects d'art (certainly I'm allowed a somewhat pretentious French phrase when I'm writing about Genet and Cocteau). And why was I so excited about seeing it? Because I'm someone who loves books as artefacts, as objects d'art.

And yet my excitement was tempered by the thought that such examples of book art are rare to the point of nonexistence today, and that the man who owned the book--the literary agent whose home I was staying in--probably knew that better than most, being very well acquainted, in the day-to-day dealings of his trade, with the bottom-liners and bean-counters who run most publishing houses today.

But then I was excited again by the thought that this man might be my literary agent someday...but that's a tale for another time.

more codex reversals

I'm still thinking about how the technology of blogging reverses the writing and thinking processes of codex texts, and in effect rewires our brains. To whit: since my blog narrative appears in reverse order, with my first thoughts of the night appearing far down the queue, I've been reverse-thinking, that is thinking in such a way that my freshest thought comes last, and gets blogged last. It's a tough, counter-intuitive job, trained as I am to think in a linear fashion, with my point or punchline appearing at the end of the phrase or paragraph.

I suppose I could blog it all out on paper first, or using a word-processing program, and then enter it in reverse order. But then that wouldn't be true blogging. Which would make me feel guilty. SEE ENTRY BELOW (which was composed before this one, though your codexed mind will trick you into thinking it was composed after...see what I mean?)

guilt already

I've had opportunity over the past few days to make blog entries but I didn't because it was during the day. Because I've named my blog "Jeblog: Notes of a Night Scribbler" I feel that I should, like, only do entries at night. Otherwise I'd be a fraud. I wouldn't be like Kafka, toiling all day in mind-numbing labor (at a bank), and spending my night doing my true creative work (like writing stories about waking up one morning as a cockroach).

I should mention this at the start: guilt is my number one motivator. Not only am I feeling guilty about not blogging enough, but I also feel guilt, as expressed above, for misrepresenting myself as a night scribbler. And then I had a whole bunch of photos I wanted to put on on the blog and I just have time to get to it tonight, so...GUILT.

So maybe I should ask for absolution from the guilt of not blogging every NIGHT. But then, without the guilt, I wouldn't get anything done. Maybe indulgences then. There must be a place on the web where you can go to procure indulgences, which forgive you for something you haven't even done yet.

Now I'm feeling guilt about being frivolous with this blog entry.