page.19

"My dear loser, Glenn greeted Wertheimer, with his Canadian-American cold-bloodedness he always called him the loser, he called me quite dryly the philosopher, which didn't bother me. Wertheimer, the loser, was for Glenn always busy losing, constantly losing out, whereas Glenn noticed I had the word philosopher in my mouth at all times and probably with sickening regularity, and so quite naturally we were for him the loser and the philosopher, i said to myself entering upon the inn. The loser and the philosopher went to America to see Glenn the piano virtuoso again, for no other reason. And to spend four and a half months in New York. For the most part together with Glenn. He didn't miss Europe, Glenn said right off as he greeted us. Europe was out of the question. He had barricaded himself in his house.For life. All our lives the three of us have shared the desire to barricade ourselves from the world. All three of us were born barricaded fanatics. But Glenn had carried his barricade fanaticism to the furthest. In New York we lived next to Taft Hotel, there wasn't a better location for our purposes. Glenn had a Steinway set up in one of the back rooms at the Taft and played there everyday for eight to ten hours, often at night as well. He didn't go a day without playing the piano. Wertheimer and I loved New York right from the start. It's the most beautiful city in the world and it also has the best air, we repeated again and again, nowhere in the world have we breathed better air. Glenn confirmed what we sensed: New York is the only city in the world where a thinking person can breath freely the minute he sets foot in it."

- The Loser
Thomas Bernhard

coffeeshop cd tracklist

I burned a CD for the coffeeshop. Here is the tracklist:

1 - Your Blood - Destroyer
2 - Luscious Life - Patrick Watson
3 - Pacific Theme - Broken Social Scene
4 - Ceremony - New Order
5 - Pulling Out Weight - The Radio Dept.
6 - Plus/Minus - Scarecrow
7 - I don't need love - I've got my band - The Radio Dept.
8 - Around The Roller Rink - The Velvet Teen
9 - Dead Disco - Metric
10 - Blonde Redhead - 23
11 - Azure Rayy - If You Fall

Garden State

"The days were gone when being in a bar band was a state of grace"

- Garden State
Rick Moody

Translator's Note

"For English-speaking readers approaching a novel by Thomas Bernhard for the first time, a word about his somewhat peculiar orthography and punctuation may be in order. Bernhard's sentences are very long, even for a German reader accustomed to extended, complex sentence constructions. Further, the logical transitions between clauses ("but", "although", "whereas") are often missing or contradictory, and the verb tenses are rarely in agreement. Bernhard's frequent and unpredictable underlining also defies conventional usage. Sometimes he italicizes the title of Bach's compositions, sometimes he treats them like a common noun. On the other hand, he often gives the names of restaurants, towns, pianos, and people an emphasis that conventional German and English orthography exclude. These and similar oddities have been rigorously maintained in the present translation as the reflection of Bernhard's characteristic voice."

Note on "The Loser"
- Thomas Bernhard, 1991

on page 161

"This was the state where professional baseball was first played (in Jersey City), where the first trade union was organized (in Haledon, of silk factory workers from Paterson), where Aaron Burr had his duel (in Weehawken). It was the state with the most traveled pavement in America. An historical place. The state that first sold malted milkshakes and filtered cigarettes. Lapels were narrow then. Parking spaces were wider. Shopping bags were made of paper. Bergen County was the seat of much change. So when Louis Giolas had completed his job interview with the gigantic carpet at the Paramus Park Mall, where, in a bid for personal advancement, he was hoping to become one of the store managers, he thought he'd take a spin around like he used to when he was a kid."

Garden State
-Rick Moody

A Samuel Beckett Poster

Priest's Knees

i can see, how Destroyer is going to totally take over my blog but i can't help it!

Priest's Knees

I was just another west-coast maximalist exploring the blues,
ignoring the news from the front where they're taking her children away.
Taking them where they wanna go: Tall ships made of snow invading the sun.

Some people call me 'Angel' on their deathbed, in a dream.
That's right, the Czar's father thought things could've gone differently
last night, but they didn't...

And I couldn't bear to follow you there, where trauma exists in the sky.
20th Century Masters welcome these disasters, and so do I.
But, no!
Oh baby, please don't go up into it!

a fine line...

There is a fine line between missing someone and thinking about someone. I didn't realize that till today.

April Book List as it looks on this bright, early-spring day..

1 - The Loser - Thomas Bernhard
2 - Distant Star - Roberto Bolaño
3 - Dr. Faustus - Thomas Mann
4 - Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo (the sixth attempt)

adding Distant Star to the list.

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño is short and sounds like a great trip according to The New Yorker:

"The melancholy folklore of exile" pervades this novel, which describes the divergent paths of three young Chilean poets around the time of Pinochet's coup. At university, the unnamed narrator and his friend are fascinated by a mysterious new member of their poetry workshop. Alberto Ruiz-Tagle is "serious, well mannered, a clear thinker," but his poems seem false, as if his true work were yet to be revealed. It becomes apparent that this is literally the case when Allende's government falls: as an Air Force officer for the new regime, he becomes famous for writing nationalist slogans in the sky. (The left-wing narrator, now in jail, reads them from his prison yard.) Bolano's spare prose lends his narrator's account a chilly precision—as if the detachment of his former classmate had become his country's, and his own."

A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point Once Said

(I have gone back to Destroyer)

A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"As per your wishes, I left you for dead.
I left England to the English."

Is it always one thing or the other with you?
"Forgive them, my Lord, they know not what they do!"
"Hey, your friends are fucked, in so far, as your friends are an ancient
beast bronzed in tar!"

Have I told you lately that I love you?
Did I fail to mention there's a sword hanging above you?

"Those who love Zeppelin will soon betray Floyd."
I cast off these couplets in honor of the void.
I was here to stay.
I would weather the storm.
I pictured heaven on earth made of clay as your form dictated...

I went down to the garden with the noblest of intentions.
I felt the need to be brief.
I stuck a rose between my teeth and had a laugh.

The sun sets at the speed of light, so I thought I also might leave this
Port of Woe on tall ships made of snow invading the sun.

A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"I've never read 'so-and-so, so why mention him here, in this square
where culprits axe me, my dear.
Tried to enjoy myself at the Society Ball, really I did.
Froze on Union Street, it was springtime, I was just a kid lost in a map
of the stars others called 'your eyes.'
It was a trap!
It was a good time!
It was hard to realize!...

I can't win.
I can't even walk.
Baby, you should talk.
Baby, you should hear what you're saying.
They said - "Don't look back!" but I looked back.
It was a bore.
It was a fucking horror.
It was - well, honey, you know quite well what you are...

A Dangerous Woman Up To A Point once said -
"People come, and people go, and people lie nameless in the snow..."

Death In Rome

"Death In Rome" is a book about a German composer, Sigfried, who is in Rome for the performance of his symphonic work conducted by his friend. He is not in a hurry to conjure new images of the dead-gods in one of his unfinished work nor does he have anywhere to go or any self-important person to meet. All he is doing is wandering around the piazzas and markets of Rome. He lives like every moment of his life is mutually exclusive to the one preceding it. He has no plans and he hates his memory. And through his memories, the writer nudges us, pushes us to look at the Horror of War, the Total War, waged by Nazis in their attempts to convert the Continent into a single Corporation under Fuhrer.

Writer creates a portrait of Sigfried's family by letting Sigfried to narrate his thoughts and then switches back to a more ambivalent narrative voice. In a way, the book works as a post-novel where everything exists in parallel from the prehistoric Deities that overlooked Rome from Olympus to Sigfried's angst-ridden trysts with abused-boys under the streets of Rome to his uncle, the renegade Nazi General who "served at the altar of Death and fed Death aplenty". Everything is in the past and Rome as it exists now is new, gleaming and forward-looking and wants to desperately cling on to the delusion of eternity. This is where Sigfried gets to have a dialogue with himself and Death (which stands for many things by the end of the book) makes a comeback.

soup·çon

[soop-sawn, soop-sawn]
–noun
a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor.

[Origin: 1760–70; < F: a suspicion, MF sospeçon < LL suspectiōn- (s. of suspectiō), for L suspīciō suspicion]

—Synonyms dash, bit, hint, vestige.

Bad plans..

It turned out that the library was closed today. Therefore, no Bernhard or Rick Moody for me. My dates are messed up. I figure, i will give another reading to Pedro Paramo and see how far it can take me this time. The day is bright outside.
Marie Antoinette's soundtrack is great. I will write about it later.

The Loser from Delcat

The Loser's Catalog No.

Sigfried on page 50

"I listen to them, speaking knowledgeably of new finds, discussing archaeological digs and museum treasures; and I love them too, love the old gods, love beauty long buried in the ground now visible once more, I love the proportions and the smooth cold stone skin of the old statuary, but still more I love Rome as it is now, alive and manifest to me, I love its skies, Jupiter's fathomless sea, and I imagine we're drowned, we're Vineta, and up on top of the element that washes around us are ships never seen by us, sailing on dazzling seas, and Death casts his invisible net over the city, I love the streets, the corners, the stairways, the quiet courtyards with urns, ivy and lares, and the raucous squares with daredevil Lambretta riders, I love the people sitting on their doorsteps of an evening, their jokes, their expressive gestures, their gift for comedy, their conversation which is lost on me, I love the bubbling fountains with their sea gods, nymphs and tritons, I love the children sitting on the marble edge of the fountains, those tumbling, garlanded, cruel little Neros, I love the bustle, friction, barging, and shouting and laughter and looks on the Corso, and obscenities that are whispered to ladies in passing, and I love the stiff, empty larvae of the ladies' countenances, which the dirt helps to form, and I love their replies, their humiliation and their pleasure in these indecent tributes, which they bury underneath their street-masks in their real faces, and carry home with them and into their women's dreams, I love the gleaming affluent shopfronts, the display of the jewellers and the bird hats of the milliners, I love the snooty little Communist on the Piazza della Rotunda, I love the long, shiny espresso bar with the hissing, steam-belching machine and the men sitting there, drinking hot strong bitter-sweet coffee from little cups, I love hearing Verdi's music booming out in the passage i n front of the Pazza Colonna from the loudspeakers of the television studios and echoing back from the fin de siecle stucco facades, I love the Via Veneto, the cafes of Vanity Fair, with their funny chairs and colourful awnings, I love the leggy, slim-hipped models, their dyed hair the colour of flame, their pale faces, their great staring eyes, fire that I can't touch, I love the happy, stupid athletic gigolos in attendance, traded by the wealthy corseted ladies, I love the dignified American senators who get audiences with the Pope and can buy anything they want, I love the gentle, white-haired automobile kings, who spend their fortunes on supporting science, art and literature, I love the homosexual poets in their tight drainpipe jeans and pointy thin-soled shoes, living off awards and shaking their jangling silver bracelets coquettishly back from the overlong cuffs of their shirts, I love the old mouldering bathing-shop anchored in front of the Castle of the Angels on the turbid Tiber, and its naked red light-bulbs in the night, I love the small, secret, incense-steeped, art- and ornament-crammed churches, even though Kurenberg finds baroque Rome disappointing, I love the priests in their robes of black, red, violet and white, the Latin Mass, the seminarians with fear in their faces, the old prebendaries in stained soutanes and beautiful greasy Monsignore hats with funny red chords round their waists and fear in their faces, the old women kneeling at confessionals with fear in their faces, the poor cracked hands of the beggars in front of the carved and worked portals of the chapels and their fear trembling like the vein in their throats, I love the little shopkeeper in the Street of the Workers, cutting great slices of mortadella like leaves, I love little markets, the fruit-sellers' stalls all green red orange, the tubs of the fishmongers full of obscure sea-creatures and all the cats of Rome prowling along the walls..."

Book List for April

Books to read:

1 - Windup Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
2 - Dr. Faustus - Thomas Mann
3 - Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo (one of the most inaccessible texts, i have ever come across, in all its simplicity and brevity)

John Berryman

Thanks to Marcel for introducing me to this gem:

John Berryman - Dream Song No. 28

Snow Line

It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be to eat
nothing. I am unusually tired.
I'm alone too.

If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I'd say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his notes I loved?
There may be horribles; it's hard to tell.
The barker nips me but somehow I feel
he too is on my side.

I'm too alone. I see no end. If we could all
run, even that would be better. I am hungry.
The sun is not hot.
It's not a good position I am in.
If I had to do the whole thing over again
I wouldn't.

who does this guy think he is?

I remember when Jeff Buckley died. I read about it some place or wait, maybe I read a year or two after he had died on some now-defunct online magazine. That was 1999, i think, he had been dead for two years already like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Although, i came across his music in 2001 and was blown away. He was channeling Nusrat and had this eerie quality to his music. It took me a while to get to that link between Nusrat and Jeff Buckley.
Now, this guy comes and thinks he is brave enough to step into the territory populated by dead giants.

Democracy in a Cartoon - Ibn e Warraq

a quote from Ibn-e-Warraq's article on free speech in the West

"On the world stage, should we really apologize for Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe? Mozart, Beethoven and Bach? Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Breughel, Ter Borch? Galileo, Huygens, Copernicus, Newton and
Darwin? Penicillin and computers? The Olympic Games and Football? Human rights and parliamentary democracy? The west is the source of the liberating ideas of individual liberty, political democracy, the rule of law, human rights and cultural freedom. It is the west that has raised the status of women, fought against slavery, defended freedom of enquiry, expression and conscience. No, the west needs no lectures on the superior virtue of societies who keep their women in subjection, cut off their clitorises, stone them to death for alleged adultery, throw acid on their faces, or deny the human rights of those considered to belong to lower castes."

full article is here: Democracy in a Cartoon - Ibn e Warraq

Führer on page 8

"and there were oak leaves in the barracks , proliferating on decorations and on tombstones, and there had always been a picture of that twitchy and repressed type, the Führer, with his Charlie Chaplin moustache, looking benevolently down on his herd of sacrificial lambs, the boys in uniform now ready for the slaughter."

-- Death in Rome
Wolfgang Koeppen

Or the Evening Redness in the West

I am blown away by Cormac McCarthy's writing. Blood Meridian was the first book, i read by him. The novel mainly takes place in 1840s in south-of-Texas and south western united states where the scalp trade was thriving. It is a novel about journey set in an unforgiving terrain which haunts and overwhelms the travelers who are out to kill and claim material possessions, lucre. But it is also, a novel set in a biblical space where questions about the nature of Man and his propensity to violence and questions about Nature itself haunts the murderers who are out to move out West in their contractual obligations to kill as many native Indians as possible.

"Is it? Where is yesterday? Where is Glanton and Brown and where is the priest? He leaned closer. Where is Shelby, whom you left to the mercies of Elias in the desert, and where is Tate whom you abandoned in the mountains? Where are the ladies, ah the fair and tender ladies with whom you danced at the governor's ball when you were a hero anointed with the blood of the enemies of the republic you'd elected to defend? And where is the fiddler and where the dance?
...I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?
...Only that man who has offered up himself entire to the blood of war, who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance."

--Blood Meridian

St. Paddy's Day!! - Snow - drunk mofos

quoting one of the best of them mofos:

the snow is general all over Ireland

- James Joyce

and that goes for the northeast at the moment.

... as a conversation

It occurred to me the other day, as i got out of Bert's armed with my new purchase, that and yes, that Sonic Youth LP Goo, could be given to someone once i am done listening to it. That all art is expendable, destructible(Destroyer rings!) and utterly useless. In one way, Art is essentially a conversation, like any other, between the artist and his audience. Like a conversation, it is an experience and like a conversation the interaction with any kind of art is unique every time. Just like a conversation cannot be relived and redone over and over, an artistic expression exists only once coming out of the Art-piece and every time we go back to our favorite record, Goo in this case and listen to it obsessively over and over to just try to tease out one more bit of something, everytime it is a different experience and then after a while living with certain artists through their work, it becomes us, like the way we carry the snippets of our friends' vocabulary and thought patterns in our languages and conversations as we go along. Therefore, it is kind of pointless to collect art or to keep my cds and books etc. in order. For instance, I should have given away John Banville's - The Sea to this clueless person who did actually inquire about that book. Instead of leaving it with people who i know will not read it and use the book as a prop to put their dinner plates or their pistols(if it was a Colonel from Macondo) or shopping bags or whatever on. Oh, well...
PS: Goo is a brilliant old Sonic Youth record and with 20% off going on Bert's at the moment, it is a very good bargain. I am going to press play once again.

Dan Bejar is indestructible...

So, i just found out that Dan Bejar of Destroyer has got himself a brand new band with two other members from two other bands. Infact, they even had an LP out in November. I came across their two songs on their MySpace Page and just like Destroyer's stuff, they sound quirky and weird at first listening which is promising - because, it is always a good sign for the things to come as you get further into a Destroyer record.

Evening Episode and bad taste some more..

I have gotten back to Evening Episode's New Love. It is just the right tune for a lazy sunday afternoon.

On some more bad taste in mouth: I got kicked out of a bar last night. My first official eviction from a bar. It is never too late, i guess, for certain things to come about in life.

Bad taste in mouth...

Last night, i ran into a crazy old argument with a friend on our way back from Philly. Much of the anger that i had, had to do with myself for not anticipating his position. Infact, it was one of those discussions that kept going horribly off-kilter with every new quip that was supposed to bring the discussion to some sort of a middle-ground actually having an exact opposite effect. Bad, stupid stuff.

The Good, The Bad and The Queen

So, after much prodding and drunk-hipping by peeps; i am finally converted to the greatness of this record. Damon Albarn and bassist from Clash are part of this unnamed band.

list (revisited)

...and one more:

4 - Garden State by Rick Moody

a little bit of joyce

"I suggested to him about a transparent show cart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blotting paper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she's writing."

-- Ulysses, pg. 154

list

Books i am reading right now or plan to in next three weeks:

1 - Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
2 - Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
3 - Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen

If i am done with these by the 30th of this month, I should be looking into Mann's "Dr. Faustus".

flying fish - imperial espresso porter

So, last night i was sitting at this bar and there was this lady sitting at the bar (thick newyork accent) and there was this guy who came by and tried to chat up everybody. I was reading juan rulfo's mindblowing work - pedro paramo - and this guy pretty much interrupted me from across the bar and asked me what i was reading then a second later he was trying his best to locate Karachi within Pakistan but obviously failing. The novel is pretty complex which is kind of an understatement to say given it is attributed to be the root of the so called magical realist fiction. There are voices talking to other voices, kind of like a dreamscape where everything is skillfully woven according to some hidden motif. And there was a line to the effect that dying people take away a bit of life from the people we know. Well, that seemed to be a pretty concept.

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me

"it's all the same, even though we choose to forget that and refuse to think about it so that we can continue to be active and to act without knowing, to decide without knowing and to take those poisonous steps; it's all the same, walking down a particular street or getting into a car at the invitation of the driver who, from his seat at the wheel, pushes open the door for us, taking a plane or picking up the phone, going out to supper or staying in our hotel staring distractedly out of the sash window, celebrating a birthday and growing up and going on having birthdays and getting called up, initiating a kiss that leads to other kisses that will force us to linger and for which we will be called to account, asking for or accepting a job, watching the growing storm without bothering to seek shelter, drinking a beer and looking at the women sitting on their stools at the bar, it's all the same, and every one of these things can bring in its train knives and broken glass, illness and malaise and fear, bayonets and depression and regret, the tree struck by lightning and the fishbone in the throat; as well as the fighter plane at one's back and the barber's blunder; the broken high heels and the large hands pressing on your temples, my poor temples, the lit cigarette and the back of neck averted and damp with sweat, the creased skirt and the undersized bra and then the naked breast, a woman tucked up in bed apparently sleeping and a child who dreams in blissful ignorance beneath his inherited scene of aerial combat. "Tomorrow in the battle think on me, when i was mortal; and let fall thy lance" "

taken from Javier Marias' Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.

1.

...in the beginning there was a blog. The purpose was to note down things mostly lit., music or film related in one single place. Sometimes it looked like a performance and other times it was just plain boring but besides having this as a cache for everyday whimsies and flimsies, this served as a connecting point to the main thing: Writing.
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PS: as an afterthought, i think it would be kind of nice to have a number system in place for such blog entries which contain policy statements, dangling somewhere in time, like above.