Lists and music: a very good match.
My best friend and me sat down to list our ten favourite albums in pop, rock and indie music. Classical, jazz and blues albums were not included.
This was my list:
1.. REM – Murmur
2.. Leonard Cohen – The Future
3.. 16 Horsepower – Low Estate
4.. Moloko – Things to Make and Do
5.. Deus – In a Bar under the Sea
6.. Nine Inch Nails – Pretty Hate Machine
7.. Lucinda Williams – West
8.. Sparklehorse – Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain
9.. Jim White – No Such Place
10. Camera Obscura – Biggest Bluest Hifi
And this was hers:
1.. U2 – Achtung Baby
2.. Kate Bush – The Dreaming
3.. Lou Reed – Magic and Loss
4.. Nirvana – Nevermind
5.. Sonic Youth – Dirty
6.. Heather Nova – Blow
7.. Suzanne Vega – 99,9 F
8.. Joni Mitchell – Blue
9.. Tori Amos – Boys for Pele
10. Babes in Toyland – Fontanelle
The band Therapy? very unluckily ended as number eleven on both mine (“Troublegum”) and hers (“Infernal Love”).
Monday, August 13, 2007
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
A young man who stopped being average
Halfway Paul Auster’s postmodern detective story Ghosts, protagonist “Blue” dresses up as a tramp and calls himself Jimmy Rose. His disguise includes ‘a flowing white beard and long white hair’. This is the effect:
“These final details give him the look of an old testament prophet. Blue as Jimmy Rose is not a scrofulous down-and-outer so much as a wise fool, a saint of penury living in the margins of society.”
To describe Blue’s disguise in these words is kind of a wry joke. In the past months, the real Blue has come to resemble such a fool more and more, ‘living in the margins of society’.
Initially, in February 1947, he was your perfect average guy, content to live the life carved out for him. Ok, he was a private detective, that’s a bit unusual. But he was a very sensible one, level-headed, down-to-earth. He expected to marry his girfriend and settle down, just like everybody else. He would certainly not question his life.
But then he stumbled upon a real strange assignment. For months he was to sit in a small rented room, spying on the man across the street, named “Black”. Black, living in a similar room, did nothing but read and write. So Blue’s life slowed down dramatically: no chases, no danger, no excitement. Many times he could only report: Black is still writing.
This unsettles Blue. He starts brooding and worrying over things that never troubled him before. His girlfriend and his old supervisor become strangers to him. He grows obsessed with Black’s ‘real thoughts’. Ironically he clipped out a newspaper article at the beginning of the story, about a man with a similar obsession. On an enclosed photograph the man was portrayed: ‘The look in his eyes is so haunted and imploring that Blue can scarcely turn his own eyes away.’ A few months later, Blue could well look the same.
This tragic story about Blue’s downfall was one of Auster’s first (1986). He would write many more about average individuals who stop being average. The thing that disrupts them varies. It can be a nearly fatal disease (Oracle Night), a large inheritance (The Music of Chance) or a plane crash killing off one’s wife and children (The Book of Illusions). Every time the protagonist becomes an outcast.
So what about all these outcasts? Maybe the point is just that it can happen to anybody. Or perhaps we are to realise that outcasts may teach us something, just like the bible’s prophets. Then again, Ghosts could be a defense of the writer’s profession. Writers just sit in a room and write. An easy life? After his strange assignment Blue knows better.
By the way, Paul Auster's Jimmy Rose is probably named after Melville's, another outcast, starring in the 1855 short story of the same name.
“These final details give him the look of an old testament prophet. Blue as Jimmy Rose is not a scrofulous down-and-outer so much as a wise fool, a saint of penury living in the margins of society.”
To describe Blue’s disguise in these words is kind of a wry joke. In the past months, the real Blue has come to resemble such a fool more and more, ‘living in the margins of society’.
Initially, in February 1947, he was your perfect average guy, content to live the life carved out for him. Ok, he was a private detective, that’s a bit unusual. But he was a very sensible one, level-headed, down-to-earth. He expected to marry his girfriend and settle down, just like everybody else. He would certainly not question his life.
But then he stumbled upon a real strange assignment. For months he was to sit in a small rented room, spying on the man across the street, named “Black”. Black, living in a similar room, did nothing but read and write. So Blue’s life slowed down dramatically: no chases, no danger, no excitement. Many times he could only report: Black is still writing.
This unsettles Blue. He starts brooding and worrying over things that never troubled him before. His girlfriend and his old supervisor become strangers to him. He grows obsessed with Black’s ‘real thoughts’. Ironically he clipped out a newspaper article at the beginning of the story, about a man with a similar obsession. On an enclosed photograph the man was portrayed: ‘The look in his eyes is so haunted and imploring that Blue can scarcely turn his own eyes away.’ A few months later, Blue could well look the same.
This tragic story about Blue’s downfall was one of Auster’s first (1986). He would write many more about average individuals who stop being average. The thing that disrupts them varies. It can be a nearly fatal disease (Oracle Night), a large inheritance (The Music of Chance) or a plane crash killing off one’s wife and children (The Book of Illusions). Every time the protagonist becomes an outcast.
So what about all these outcasts? Maybe the point is just that it can happen to anybody. Or perhaps we are to realise that outcasts may teach us something, just like the bible’s prophets. Then again, Ghosts could be a defense of the writer’s profession. Writers just sit in a room and write. An easy life? After his strange assignment Blue knows better.
By the way, Paul Auster's Jimmy Rose is probably named after Melville's, another outcast, starring in the 1855 short story of the same name.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
What dying on Iwo Jima is like
Of course we all know that war is a very bad thing, and I would certainly not credit a movie for shouting this blatant truth into my ears. But "Letters from Iwo Jima" is not like that: it's a well-told, beautifully shot and subtle movie about ordinary people who are trapped on an island, facing fearful odds against an enormous fleet that stretches out to the horizon.
The ones being trapped are a division of Japanese soldiers, entrenched in the barren soil of Iwo Jima, in 1944, and the enormous fleet obviously belongs to the Americans.
Yet, the Americans are not just enemies. At least not for the general of the Japanese, who studied in the USA and has close American friends. Towards the end of the movie he reads aloud a letter of an American pow to his Japanese men. It’s a touching letter, proving the American to be a lot like themselves. The general attains his object: ‘I thought Americans were monsters,’ says one of his men, ‘but they are not.’
However, the movie luckely doesn’t want us, or the japanese, to believe that americans are nothing but noble – next thing we see are two of them killing off some japanese pow’s.
Appearances are deceptive: this might be the film’s motto. We get to know some japanese soldiers a little better, through flash-backs and their letters, which are (I think) real historical documents. Gradually we need to adjust our ideas of their characters, as the coward appears not so cowardly and the ruthless one proves not so ruthless.
But then again, one thing is clear as can be: war really is a very bad thing. This movie’s stylish bleak imagery may not hammer its message into the audience, but it speaks all the louder.
The ones being trapped are a division of Japanese soldiers, entrenched in the barren soil of Iwo Jima, in 1944, and the enormous fleet obviously belongs to the Americans. Yet, the Americans are not just enemies. At least not for the general of the Japanese, who studied in the USA and has close American friends. Towards the end of the movie he reads aloud a letter of an American pow to his Japanese men. It’s a touching letter, proving the American to be a lot like themselves. The general attains his object: ‘I thought Americans were monsters,’ says one of his men, ‘but they are not.’
However, the movie luckely doesn’t want us, or the japanese, to believe that americans are nothing but noble – next thing we see are two of them killing off some japanese pow’s.
Appearances are deceptive: this might be the film’s motto. We get to know some japanese soldiers a little better, through flash-backs and their letters, which are (I think) real historical documents. Gradually we need to adjust our ideas of their characters, as the coward appears not so cowardly and the ruthless one proves not so ruthless.
But then again, one thing is clear as can be: war really is a very bad thing. This movie’s stylish bleak imagery may not hammer its message into the audience, but it speaks all the louder.
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