My Year With Proust - Day 157

"Wholly occupied with what her companions were saying, had she seen me - this young girl in the polo-cap pulled down very low over his forehead - at the moment in which the dark ray emanating from her eyes had fallen on me?  If she had seen me, what could I have represented to her?  From the depths of what universe did she discern me?

   "If we thought that the eyes of such a girl were merely two glittering sequins of mica, we should not be athirst to know her and to unite her life to ours.  But we sense that what shines in those reflecting discs is not solely to their material composition; that it is, unknown to us, the dark shadows of the ideas that that person cherishes about the people and places she knows - the turf of race-courses, the sand of cycling tracks over which, pedalling on past fields and woods, she would have drawn me after her, that little peri, more seductive to me than she of the Persian paradise - the shadows, too, of the home to which she will presently return, of the plans that she is forming or that others had formed for her; and above all that it is she, with her desires, her sympathies, her revulsions, her obscure and incessant will.  I knew that I should never possess this young cyclist if I did not possess also what was in her eyes.  And it was consequently her whole life that filled me with desire; a sorrowful desire because I felt that it was not to be fulfilled, but exhilarating because, what had hitherto been my life having ceased of a sudden to be my whole life, being no more now than a small part of the space stretching out before me which I was burning to cover and which was composed of the lives of these girls, offered me that prolongation, that possible multiplication of oneself which is happiness."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 851-852

Proust continues his dialogue about the perception and reality of beauty.  In this specific case he become captivated by the young cyclist (who would eventually lead him into a larger circle of young women, including Albertine, that he would refer to as "the tribe", initially an "inaccessible, unknown world"). We'll learn more about "the tribe" later.  I think it is fascinating that he concludes, "I knew that I should never possess this young cyclist if I did not possess also what was in her eyes."  In classic Proustian fashion he immediately delves deeply.  There has never been a point so far in the work where he leaves his description of a woman, even one he loved, on the purely physical or carnal level.  One wonders if this is just because of his own personal decorum or the literary standards of his age or maybe his own homosexuality.  Is he able to speak so philosophically and eloquently about these women because he is not actually physically drawn to them?  Or maybe he exists more as a thinking and feeling entity than as a physical entity.  He proposes, "And it was consequently her whole life that filled me with desire; a sorrowful desire because I felt that it was not to be fulfilled."  Was it a sorrowful desire not because he might not know the girl, but rather that he was incapable of knowing her - and yet in not knowing her on a physical or surface level he was able to know her, or at least what she represented, on a much deeper level?

Finally, he does throw in one interesting qualifier about the cyclist:

   "I had looked so closely at the dark cyclist with the bright eyes that she seemed to notice my attention, and said to the tallest of the girls something that I could not near but that made her laugh.  Truth to tell, this dark-haired one was not the one who attracted me most, simply because she was dark and because (since the day on which, from the little path by Tansonville, I had seen Gilberte) a girl with reddish hair and a golden skin had remained for me the inaccessible ideal." 

Clearly, following my well-documented love of dark European actresses with terrible secrets, I would have fallen for the initial cyclist.  I wonder if we are imprinted by our seeming default setting for beauty by the mere happenstance of the first woman who beguiles us with love or lust?  Although even this is impact by a number of factors.  Proust is forever drawn toward women "with reddish hair and a golden skin," but also asks himself, "But had I not loved Gilberte herself principally because she had appeared to me haloed with that aureole of being the friend of Bergotte, of going to look at cathedrals with him?" So, Proust had loved Gilberte because of her association with a writer he loved, but then became the paradigm for physical beauty.  I guess as part of this self-reflection I should try and figure out why I am drawn to DEAWTS, which is clearly still prevalent as I spent all Memorial Day happily engaged in a protracted Juliette Binoche film marathon.

My Year With Proust - Day 156

   "That day, as for some days past, Saint-Loup had been obliged to go to Doncieres, where, until he returned there for good, he would be on duty now until late every afternoon.  I was sorry that he was not at Balbec.  I had seen some young women, who at a distance had seemed to me lovely, alighting from carriages and entering either the ballroom of the Casino or the ice-cream shop.  I was going through one of those phases of youth, devoid of any particular love, as it were in abeyance, in which at all times and in all places - as a lover the woman by whose charms he is smitten - we desire, we seek, we see Beauty.  Let but a single flash of reality - the glimpse of a woman from afar or from behind - enable us to project the image of Beauty before our eyes, and we imagine that we have recognised it, our hearts beat, and we will always remain half-persuaded that it was She, provided that the woman has vanished: it is only if we manage to overtake her that we realise our mistake."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 845

Obviously, Proust talks a lot about beauty and also a lot about Beauty, but I think this is one of his nicer reflections because it really speaks to the ethereal nature of Beauty.  Is Beauty, as compared to beauty, just a product of the imagination?  Maybe beauty is around us all the time, is more tangible, whereas Beauty has a more Platonic World of Form quality to it.  The problem with that is that it implies a greater universality to the concept of Beauty than I think actually exists.  Essentially, we can certainly disagree on what is beautiful, but can we disagree on what is Beautiful?  You might not agree with me that Juliette Binoche is the most beautiful woman in the world, but beauty is a more subjective concept.  [That said, you're sadly and stupidly wrong, because, as every right-thinking individual knows, Juliette Binoche IS the most beautiful woman in the world]  Theoretically, shouldn't we all agree on Beauty?  This takes me back to the notion that maybe Beauty is just an imagined, and deeply personal, concept.  Maybe we share the concept of Beauty, although the specifics vary from individual to individual.  This is why a fleeting glimpse would "enable us to project the image of Beauty before our eyes."  The reason why Proust, or anyone for that matter, would realize the mistake once they had overtaken their object of Beauty, is not because their eyes are too far apart or their nose slightly askew, but because they are real.   It seems to me that so much of Proust, or at least so much of my childish understanding of Proust, relates to liminal spaces, in this case the hazy border area between beauty and Beauty.  Maybe we as human beings are just poorly constructed to perceive Beauty; we can vaguely see that it's there, but our perception isn't finely tuned enough to truly "see" it. The clear comparison would be to our frustrating inability to see God.  One of the 99 Names of Allah is the Beautiful, and every religion has some similar notion that the Divine is beautiful.  We can agree upon its truth but we still can't see it.  We're all perceptually near-sighted, and we fill in the specifics of that blurry image with our notion of what it should be.  And maybe this is why we're so unhappy, why we mess up so many relationships - we're expecting Beauty and find only beauty, and can't negotiate the difference.

My Year With Proust - Day 155

"And so, many easy-going men of the Faubourg Saint-Germain were without compunction when they spoke of Robert's mistress. 'Whores do their job,' they would say, 'they're as good as anybody else.  But not that one!  We can't forgive her.  She has done too much harm to a fellow we're fond of.' Of course, he was not the first to be thus ensnared.  But the others amused themselves like men of the world, continued to think like men of the world about politics and everything else.  Whereas Saint-Loup's family found him 'soured.' They failed to realise that for many young men of fashion who would otherwise remain uncultivated mentally, rough in their friendships, without gentleness or taste, it is very often their mistresses who are their real masters, and liaisons of this sort the only school of ethics in which they are initiated into a superior culture, where they learn the value of disinterested relations."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 838

Proust is recounting the general reaction to Robert Saint-Loup's mistress.  Obviously, there are several ways to unpack this brief section.  What jumps out at me is the notion of separation, and I am oddly reminded of my time teaching in Abu Dhabi.  The commentary shared by Proust is not only that of men, but men who are in many ways segregated from the rest of society.  When I was in Abu Dhabi the male students would ask questions about the female students - and the female students would ask questions about the male students - as if they were entirely different and unstudied species; I thought at the time that you could practically write a piece in a cryptozoological magazine about Emirati women.  A couple of years ago I taught a class called Arab Women Writers, which I loved and hope to teach again, and one of the themes that kept popping up from the female authors was this sense of isolation from their fathers.  It struck me as so strange because this was a society that places tremendous emphasis on family, but one which also constructed and accepted tremendous unassailable chasms, both inside and outside of the family.  In a way, the society that Proust is discussing mirrors the Arabic world I experienced.  The young men were dependent upon their mistresses to finish the job of "raising" them, and I can't help but wonder if it related to the fact that they were so generally isolated from whole segments of the population, especially the feminine.  Just think back to the beginning of the novel with Proust waiting in his room for his mother to steal a few moments away from the demands of her guests to tuck him into bed.

Discography - Week 6

It's very cool that we're already in Week 6 of our Discography discussion, and we already have songs lined up for weeks to come.  I'm excited that my great friend, titular little sister and most excellent travelling companion Cyndi Brandenburg joined us this week - and I like her selection quite a bit.  Great commentary this week, and I especially like Miranda's point about how we are influenced by what we experienced first as compared to what was produced first chronologically, which really gets out the intensely personal and subjective nature of music.

Gary Beatrice

Outkast, Hey Ya

I was delighted by our group submitting two Nirvana covers in the same week. For one thing, I didn't know two Nirvana covers existed.

Nirvana was always a touchstone for me. I had always prided myself as somebody who had a firm grasp at what was going on in popular music, both on the charts and around the edges where the cool folks flourished. I even fancied myself as somebody who gravitated towards music a bit before it became popular and introduced it to others. And I loved the occasions when it felt like everybody who was anybody was listening to something really cool and we all listened together. But when Curt Cobain shot himself, besides grieving the obvious heartbreaking loss of his life and talent, I had to come to terms with the fact that I was old, at least at it applied to music. I would never again have an appreciation for much on the charts. I wouldn't have any idea what the cool people listened to, and if I heard popular music, chances are I had no interest in it.

But for one glorious summer it happened again. Everybody who had any serious interest in music was jamming to OutKast and their hits The Way You Move, Roses, and my personal favorite Hey Ya. I can't claim that I discovered them or introduced them to anybody, and as a rap act I am embarrassed to say I wouldn't even have given OutKast a listen if Hey Ya weren't so instantly damn catchy. But my dear Lord what a soulful, funky fun slice of pop heaven.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Cowboy Junkies, Musical Key 

I have been thinking a lot about this whole “motherhood” thing lately.  Eighteen years ago when Sarah and Maria were born, we had no clue what we were doing, but I was pretty determined to figure it out and get it right.  Such high stakes, so much God-awful responsibility--yet deep down, I always suspected that contrary to popular belief, I was pretty powerless in terms of making much of a difference.  In the end, we just live every day the best we can, cross our fingers, and hope it all works out for the best.  When my daughters were barely toddlers, before Joey was born, I would often spend our long hours home alone by doing the one thing that seemed to soothe us all.  I’d play CDs, take turns holding them, and sway to the sounds.  Certain songs became staples, and “Musical Key” by the Cowboy Junkies is oddly one of the ones that I remember most.  The only song on the Lay It Down album co-written by Michael Timmins and Margo Timmons, it’s actually rather monotonous, with a permeating soulful melancholy that mirrors the often lonely boredom of everyday life, despite being an homage to a strong supportive family.   Being a mom gives me great joy, but it also comes with a dose of sadness and loss that I am not sure I can fully describe or explain.  In retrospect, one thing I have come to realize is that the monotonous day-in and day-out blur of life really is what ends up mattering the most.  

Gary Scudder

Buddy Guy, Done Got Old

This selection, much like this song, is somewhere between self-pitying and ironic.  It is a song off the extraordinary Buddy Guy album Sweet Tea.  In the song Guy is lamenting the things he can no longer do, but at the same time he fills the entire album with incendiary guitar work that puts the efforts of much younger musicians to shame.  A decade ago I played the entire CD for my son as we were travelling cross-country and he could not begin to believe that it was recorded by a man in his 70s.  Over the last year I've noticed how I'm increasingly being treated as an out of touch, if not outright embarrassing, remnant of a past age, the intellectual equivalent of a vestigial limb.  The thing is, it's not my students (who are actually oddly appreciative of my desire to make them read the Ramayana or to watch Swan Lake) or administrators (who can never quite reconcile my passion/petulance with their desire for untroubled calm), but rather my much younger colleagues who wish that I would simply go away.

Miranda Tavares

Social Distortion, Story of My Life 

As most of you are aware, I am the youngest member of this most amazing ongoing discussion. I say that to put this pick in perspective. Social D is the equivalent of The Clash for me. Yes, I understand The Clash was first, and was a major influence for Social D. But I was born in 1980, and I believe people are generally influenced by what they experienced first, not what occurred first chronologically. As criminal as it may seem, I was obsessing over Mike Ness before I knew there was a Joe Strummer. I knew all the words to Ball and Chain before I even heard Train in Vain. Social D defined my sense of self during my formative years. 

This pick is more about the band than the particular song. I was raised on Springsteen and The Beatles, exposed to the one hit wonder-type top 40 music of the '80s, then bombarded with the crap that was early '90's (Wilson Phillips, Milli Vanilli, New Kids on the Block) and I was starving for something meaningful, and something mine. I was a white, suburban, northern female brainwashed by MTV coming of age in the 1990's. Social D was my destiny.

In my view, the 1990's offered two options for a vaguely angst-filled teen bucking the mainstream: punk and grunge. Nirvana was integral. It captured the anger and confusion of growing up, questioning the reality presented to us, throwing away the norms. All of those feelings were inside me, but...I was a suburban kid. I had an ok life. Things were only as dramatic as I made them. Nirvana expressed things with a strength that I really did not feel. Social Distortion filled the void. They embodied the mundane sadness, dissatisfaction and banality that was the epitome of teenage life in middle america at that time. 

I picked Story of my Life because it is representative of what Social D means to me. It's catchy. Pop-py. Simple. But... there's an edge. In Ness's matter-of-fact vocals, in the meandering rhythm guitar, in the drum beat that is somehow a touch faster than the laid-back tone of the song would seem to warrant, there's an undercurrent of someone who might break. It's not imminent or anything, but it's there. And, really, when you cut it all dawn to the quick, that's the story of anyone's life.

Nate Bell

Concrete Blonde,  Bloodletting 

For a change of pace, I am NOT picking a song with great symbolic depth or meaning, and also one that is not numbingly depressing commentary on the travails of the human plight.  So. Vampires...

Concrete Blonde (who, contrary to some opinions expressed previously--NOT a one-hit wonder) wrote this little ditty that is so perfectly 90's.  It's self involved, attempts to be introspective and deep (it's not), and edges into the quickly developing "goth" sensibilities of the time.  Yes, it's "moody" and about vampires.  Specifically, it's a very obvious homage to Anne Rice's first (best?) vampire book--Interview with the Vampire.  It is catchy, slightly hair-band metal in sound, with a dour mood, but at the same time fast tempo and strident in its vocals and screeching guitar.  It tries so hard to capture so much, but in the end, it's a catchy 90's pop song that just sits just inside one of the well-defined musical margins.  I actually like this song, despite the way I describe it, and the combination makes it quite fun, with a faux-ominous tone and a few very nice images in the lyrics.  Every time I stumble across it again, I can't stop singing the chorus, it's very infectious--though it has never made me want to dress in black and wear eye makeup:

I've got the ways and means

to New Orleans

I'm going down by the river where it's warm and green

I'm gonna have a drink, and walk around

I have a lot to think about...

add a nice little walking guitar riff, and it makes for a very enjoyable listen.  

Dave Kelley

The Hold Steady, Sequestered in Memphis 

Lineup changes have greatly reduced the quality of music being made by The Hold Steady, but damn, when they were good they were great.  By far my favorite record of theirs is "Stay Positive."  My selection this week is off that record.  It is just a fun fantastic rock song about a one night stand gone horribly wrong.

"It started when we were dancing.
It got heavy when we got to the bathroom.
We didn't go back to her place
We went to some place where she cat sits
She said I know I look tired
but everything is fried here in Memphis

In bar light, she looked alright
In daylight,she looked desperate
That's alright, I was desperate too.

Subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis

The song features strong work on guitar and piano and impassioned yet humorous vocals. Dave Wallace introduced me to The Hold Steady. Several minutes into the first show I saw,I was hooked.  The love they had for what they were doing was evident.  Pick up Stay Positive.  It will make you happier than a fat kid with a bag of donuts.

One of my favorite comedic riffs in the movie Clerks is when Dante repeats "I wasn't even supposed to be here today" every time another bad thing happens at the convenience store where he works.  In a similar vein, the singer in my week six selection repeats the line "I just came here on business" in a plaintive fashion as the song ends.  True that, but you follow one questionable piece of ass to the house where she cat sits, and you are "subpoenaed in Texas, sequestered in Memphis." 

Dave Mills

Flobots, Handlebars

OK, I got myself started down the path of nerdy hip-hop with last week's entry (a long and winding rabbit hole, for sure). I used to use this song in my classes, to introduce discussions of the Scientific Revolution, Renaissance, Modern Philosophy, etc. It unpacks the ways in which the good basic human impulses to be self-sufficient and autonomous, to take risks, to push boundaries, etc. can lead to disasters. In much the same way, the impulse that motivates scientific discovery and philosophical innovation, while engendering much good in the world, can also create monsters. OK, lecture over. It's also just a catchy song, and includes a violin and a trumpet, which is cool. The youtube video is the band's own indie music video for the song. Later, after they signed a record deal, the label produced a new video for the song. I prefer the band's original vision, but if you want to see the label's version, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/HLUX0y4EptA

Dave Wallace

Warren Zevon, French Inhaler 

Warren Zevon's self-titled debut is essentially a perfect album.  A brutal look at the seedy underside of Los Angeles, there's not a bad song on the album, and a number of them are classics (Poor Poor Pitiful Me, Hasten Down the Wind, Mohammed's Radio, Carmelita, Desperados Under the Eaves).  Yet this song, one of the lesser-known cuts on the album, usually impacts me the most.  I always thought that it was about a relationship between the narrator and a prostitute but, according to Warren Zevon Wiki, Zevon actually wrote it as an angry kiss-off to an ex-girlfriend.  (I like my version better.)  Lonely, self-loathing, and wasted, both narrator and paramour are lost by the song's end.

You said you were an actress

Yes, I believe you are

I thought you'd be a star

So I drank up all the money,

Yes, I drank up all the money,

With these phonies in this Hollywood bar,

These friends of mine in this Hollywood bar

Loneliness and frustration

We both came down with an acute case

And when the lights came up at two

I caught a glimpse of you

And your face looked like something

Death brought with him in his suitcase

Your pretty face

It looked so wasted

Another pretty face

Devastated

My Year With Proust - Day 154

  "'Monsieur,' he said stepping back a pace, and with a glacial air, 'you are still young; you should profit by your youth to learn two things: first, to refrain from expressing sentiments that are too natural not to be taken for granted; and secondly not to rush into speech in reply to things that are said to you before you have penetrated their meaning."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 823

Here are some words of advice that M. de Charlus delivered to Proust.  As words of advice go this isn't too bad.  Naturally I'd prefer the admonition of my grandfather Jum, the Hoosier philosopher, who told me, "If you're going to run with the big dogs you have to be able to pee in the high weeds."  In some ways this is just classic Hoosier folklore, but I have oddly tried to live my life by this approach.  Essentially, if you're going to be taken seriously as a big dog then you have to be able to do what the big dogs do.  So, if you're not good enough then find a way to get good enough.  I've had too many colleagues over the years who complained that people didn't take them seriously enough.  OK, then do something that would warrant you being taken more seriously.  Of course, my grandfather also famously said that women were like street cars, if you miss out on one go to any street corner and they'll be another one along in about five minutes.  I used to think this was bad advice, but streetcars are coming back . . .

Now, getting back to Proust, the relative merits of the advice from M. de Charlus are not helped by the fact that he then followed it up with, "You make me realise that I was premature in speaking to you last night of the charm of youth.  I should have done you a greater service had I pointed out to you its thoughtlessness, its inconsequence, its want of comprehension."  This is the inevitable snarky side of advice from the old to the young, and I guess it's to be expected.  Partially it's just context.  Someone much younger, either a girlfriend or a newly minded Ph.D. colleague will get revved up about something and your initial thought is, "why do you care about that?"  You have enough years of experience that you've seen earlier avatars of the same situation come and go and you know it's really not that important.  However, you also have to be honest enough to admit to yourself, "yeah, at thirty-one I would have been just as pissed off about this issue."  Experience doesn't mean anything if you don't turn the lens on yourself.  Truthfully, and sadly, the reason why there is often a dismissive side to the advice from the older generation to the younger generation is that we envy and fear their passion and their potential.  It's not as if our time in Middle Earth is at an end, but we're not going to bring about a revolution, and our younger colleagues might just do that.  What I try and tell myself, and obviously not always successfully, is that one of my jobs is to help them bring about that revolution.  I have to help them make me obsolete, which kind of sucks, but is the way of the world.

Now, that sounds good, and in many ways I believe it to be true, but does that mean that I like it and that I will go quietly into that good night?  Hardly.  There's a reason why I chose Buddy Guy's Done Got Old for this week's Discography discussion.  I've often joked that when I'm no longer the scariest guy in the room I don't want to be in the room any more.  By this I don't mean scary in a physically threatening way, but I just have to be that guy who, to paraphrase Ric Flair, is just "the man," the one you have to take into account, the one you will have to measure yourself by.  There is a point in your career when the most use you can be is to help shape the development of junior faculty, and that is truthfully one of my goals, but it is not easy.  As is well-documented, I will not age gracefully.

My Year With Proust - Day 153

" . . . And La Bruyere tells us that that is everything: 'To be with the people one loves, to speak to them, not to speak to them, it is all the same.' He is right: that is the only true happiness.' added M. de Charlus in a mournful voice, 'and alas, life is so ill arranged that one very rarely experiences it.  Mme de Vegiene was after all less to be pitied that most of us.  She spent a great part of her life with the person whom she loved.'

   'You forget that it wasn't 'love' in her case, since it was her daughter.'

   'But what matters in life is not whom or what one loves,' he went on, in a judicial, peremptory, almost cutting tone, 'it is the fact of loving.  What Mme de Sevigne felt for her daughter has a far better claim to rank with the passion that Racine described in Andromaque or Phedre than the commonplace relations young Sevigne had with his mistresses.  It's the same with a mystic's love for his God.  the hard and fast lines with which we circumscribe love arise solely from our complete ignorance of life.'"

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 819

It's difficult to imagine improving upon these words by my generally witless commentary, so I should probably just stick to providing a little context.  Marie de Rabutin-Chantel, the Mme de Sevigne, was a seventeenth century French aristocrat known for her beautiful letters, which I have to admit, to my shame, that I know merely by reputation.  Her collected letters, most of which were written to her daughter over a period of thirty years, were published and are considered a classic of French literature (another gaping hole in my so-called education, and another reading project).  They were favorites of Proust's grandmother and his mother. She is famous for writing, "I know of no sorrow greater than that occasioned by a delay of the post." In an age where we are constantly and instantly linked up with folks via email and text and Twitter it's difficult to imagine what a letter meant to an earlier generation. Of course the medium all too often defines the message, and while we are constantly in contact it is surface-level reactive chatter, as compared to a more reasoned, reflective response that we've taken the time to prepare in a letter.  My excellent friend Sanford, a French scholar in his own right, will often ask people to write him actual, physical letters. I'm going to have to have a chat with him about Mme de Sevigne, which we may have to carry out via an actual exchange of letters.  Of course, I'm already starting to think of what I would like to tackle after I've finished reading and commenting on Proust, so maybe reading de Sevigne's letters would be an option.  I've also thought about delving more deeply into the Meditations or the Pillow Book.

My Year With Proust - Day 152

   "In the human race, the frequency of the virtues that are identical in us all is not more wonderful than the multiplicity of the defects that are peculiar to each one of us.  Undoubtedly, it is not common sense that is 'the commonest thing in the world'; it is human kindness.  In the most distant, the most desolate corners of the earth, we marvel to see it blossom of its own accord, as in a remote valley a poppy like all the poppies in the rest of the world, which it has never seen as it has never known anything, but the wind that occasionally stirs the folds of its lonely scarlet cloak.  Even if this human kindness, paralyzed by self-interest, is not put into practice, it exists none the less, and whenever there is no selfish motive to restrain it, for example when reading a novel or a newspaper, it will blossom, even in the heart of one who, cold-blooded in real life, has retained a tender heart as a lover of serial romances, and turn towards the weak, the just and the persecuted.  But the variety of our defects if no less remarkable than the similarity of our virtues."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 796

"Undoubtedly, it is not common sense that is 'the commonest thing in the world': it is human kindness." This is a statement that one would expect to find coming from Dickens than Proust, but one that I agree with wholeheartedly.  The concept of kindness is championed so readily in religions that we almost overlook it.  In one of my favorite Hadith the Prophet pointed out that every act of kindness is charity, and charity is one of the Five Pillars.  And every religion has a similar message, but because it is repeated so consistently we don't listen that attentively or we're suspicious (why are you telling me this? is it because we're actually not kind creatures by nature?  why are you so mean?).  Rather, I do think we routinely find it in the "most desolate corners of the world."  I have been treated with such kindness by so many people all around the world that it is humbling.  I was initially going to give several examples (and I still might) but there were so many that I didn't know where to start.  One of the reasons why I've experienced so many acts of kindness is, oddly, because I've come to believe that I'm a kind person.  I would have never believed it, and been somewhat horrified at the "accusation" but so many of my friends and students have noted it over the years that they've half-convinced me that they're correct.  My students, especially, see beyond the performance piece of Scudder as the Scourge of God and always end of writing things on their evaluations like, "the first week I thought you were the most obnoxious person I had ever met and I alternately hated and feared you, but then I realized that you're a really nice guy who would do anything to help me."  Now, of course, I'll get my revenge against any student who makes a comment like that, especially if they repeat it, but there is actually a lot of truth in it (as much as it kills me to admit it).  I know this sounds an awful lot like teenage girl wall poster philosophy, but I do think that most of the problems of the world would be reduced/eliminated if we could all treat each other with more basic kindness.  It's not that much of a reach because I do think it is our default setting, and one that somewhere along the way we are "taught" to overcome.

My Year With Proust - Day 151

"If I had spent two or three hours in conversation with Saint-Loup and he had expressed his admiration of what I had said to him, I felt a sort of remorse, or regret, or weariness at not having remained alone and settled down to work at last.  But I told myself that one is not intelligent for oneself alone, that the greatest of men have wanted to be appreciated, that I could not regard as wasted hours in which I had built up a lofty idea of myself in the mind of my friend; I had no difficulty in persuading myself that I ought to be happy in consequence, and I hoped all the more keenly that this happiness might never be taken from me because I had not actually felt it.  We fear more than the loss of anything else the disappearance of possessions that have remained outside ourselves, because our hearts have not taken possession of them.  I felt that I was capable of exemplifying the virtues of friendship better than most people (because I should always place the good of my friends before those personal interests to which other people are devoted but which did not count for me), but not of finding happiness in a feeling which, instead of increasing the differences that there were between my nature and those of other people - as there are between all of us - would eliminate them.  On the other hand there were moments when my mind distinguished in Saint-Loup a personality more generalized than his own, that of the 'nobleman,' which like an indwelling spirit moved his limbs, ordered his gestures and his actions; then, at such moments, although in his company, I was alone, as I should have been in front of a landscape the harmony of which I could understand.  He was no more then than an object the properties of which, in my musings, I sought to explore.  The discovery in him of this pre-existent, this immemorial being, this aristocrat who was precisely what Robert aspired not to be, gave me intense joy, but a joy of the mind rather than the feelings."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 791

This is the continuation of Proust's description of his new friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup, which in the end filled him with a sense of melancholy because it made clear to him how much happier he was when he was by himself.

"But I told myself that one is not intelligent for oneself alone, that the greatest of men have wanted to be appreciated . . ."  The central theme of this entire section seems to be Proust's ability to separate himself off from actual human contact, which proves invaluable for dissecting other people but awfully limiting in regard to living a happy life.  Here other people seem to have a purpose, but mainly as sounding boards for the "greatest of men."

"We fear more than the loss of anything else the disappearance of possessions that have remained outside ourselves, because our hearts have not taken possession of them." This passage reminds me of my friend Dave Kelley.  He and I used to get depressed every time we left New Orleans, until he finally decided that there was no reason to be sad because it was inconceivable that we wouldn't be coming back there.  Essentially, it would be sad if we were never coming back, but of course we'd be back so it was just time to start planning the next trip.  This made me feel better.  Now, running this experience through this specific Proustian lens, the point might be made that in this case we had reached a point where we didn't worry about losing something, in this case a city, because we had already possession of it in our hearts.

"He was no more then than an object the properties of which, in my musings, I sought to explore.  The discovery in him of this pre-existent, this immemorial being, this aristocrat who was precisely what Robert aspired not to be, gave me intense joy, but a joy of the mind rather than the feelings."  It seems to me that Proust's greatest gifts are his powers of observation and analysis, but I think I might argue that his greatest weaknesses are his powers of observation and analysis.  For a person of intense emotions Proust can also be coldly detached in his analysis of others.  Here Saint-Loup is fascinating much less as a friend than as a category or a social construct.

My Year With Proust - Day 150

   "It as promptly settled between us that he and I were to be great friends for ever, and he would say 'our friendship' as though he were speaking of some important and delightful thing which had an existence independent of ourselves, and which he soon called - apart from his love for his mistress - the great joy of his life.  These words filled me with a sort of melancholy and I was at a loss for an answer, for I felt when I was with him, when I was talking to him - and no doubt it would have been the same with anyone else - none of that happiness which it was possible for me to experience when I was by myself.  Alone, at times, I felt surging from the depths of my being one or other ot those impressions which gave me a delicious sense of well-being.  But as soon as I was with someone else, as soon as I was talking to a friend, my mind as it were faced about, it was towards this interlocutor and not towards myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure.  Once I had left Saint-Loup, I managed, with the help of words, to put some sort of order into the confused minutes that I had spent with him; I told myself that I had a good friend, that a good friend was a rare thing, and I savoured, when I felt myself surrounded by assets that were difficult to acquire, what was precisely the opposite of the pleasure that was natural to me, the opposite of the pleasure of having extracted from myself and brought to light something that waas hidden in my inner darkness."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 790-701

Here Proust is discussing his new friendship with Robert de Saint-Loup, who "was one of those people who believe that merit is attached only to certain forms of art and life, had an affectionate but slightly contemptuous memory of a father who had spent his time hunting and racing, who yawned at Wagner and raved over Offenbach."  His "melancholy" over his friendship reminds me of the Roman general Scipio Africanus' famous statement, "I am never less lonely than when I am by myself."  It's a quote that I've often repeated - and a  view that I've often championed - because it does reflect something I've felt all too frequently over the years.  Sometimes it is only when you're with a group that you truly understand how you don't fit in.  However, a lot of the time that is nothing more than an immature, self-pitying, Sorrows of Young Werther-esque self-absorption.  As Goethe, through Werther, reminds us, "The human race is but a monotonous affair." And speaking of which, does anyone even read Goethe anymore?  That would be a great title for a book on educational and cultural decline: The Last Generation to Read the Sorrows of Young Werther.  It is actually the perfect book for college students to read because Werther mirrors their own narrowed worldview.  I should really include it as the required text in Heroines & Heroes (essentially, Werther as hero - analyze, go!) but they are so increasingly emotionally fragile that a small (but growing) number would find it too painful.  What is more sad, a professor self-regulating based on students being intellectually unprepared for an assignment or students being too emotionally brittle to tackle a difficult subject?  However, I actually think our students are a lot smarter and stronger than we give them credit for, and that they will rise to the challenge if you only care enough about them to give them a challenge.  Hmmm, The Sorrows of Young Werther in Heroines & Heroes?  It's growing on me.

Finally, and decidedly not self-pitying, in real time I've finished Within a Budding Grove and have started The Guermantes Way, which will make itself manifest in a few weeks here on the blog.

My Year With Proust - Day 149

"My intelligence might have told me the opposite.  But the characteristic feature of the ridiculous age I was going through - awkward indeed but by no means infertile - is that we do not consult our intelligence and that the most trivial attributes of other people seem to us to form an inseparable part of their personality.  In a world thronged with monsters and with gods, we know little peace of mind.  There is hardly a single action we perform in that phrase which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul.  Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them.  In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 784-785

Proust proposes that "adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything."  I'm not certain that I agree with him, although if it were true it would certainly make me feel better about my choice of a career.  My students, while capable of extraordinary acts of assclownery, are intellectual sponges and they do want to learn, and it's our job to figure out the best way to do that (which is not to treat them like consumers - and customers who are always right - and to acquiesce to every one of their demands).  So I do agree that adolescence is generally the time of life when we learn the absolute most, but I don't think I can go as far as Proust (who I think is essentially just making a point anyway).  I feel like I've lived a life in and of itself since I turned fifty: starting a new life, spending a year in Abu Dhabi, visiting a dozen countries, getting engaged twice (although apparently always a best man and never a groom), continually exploring new ideas in the classroom, working on a couple books, making a life's worth of friends, leading multiple students trips to places like Jordan and Zanzibar and India etc.  More on point, and I would argue more importantly, I think I've learned more in my fifties than in any previous decade,  Doubtless part of this relates to the fact that I think we're always prepared to learn more each succeeding decade simply because we possess context that we didn't have before.  More over, in this case I think it's true because I made a very concerted effort to recreate myself and become an active part of the world, and thus I learned more because I tried to learn more.

New favorite quote: "In a world thronged with monsters and with gods, we know little peace of mind."  I think it relates to the discussion above because the reason why you actually learn something in adolescence, as compared to the more staid and practical world of adulthood, is that is frequented by gods and monsters, that is, a world where the impossible is eminently possible.  If I'm continuing to learn in my fifties it might simply be that I've tried to keep that world alive.  Does this mean that I will know little peace of mind?

My Year With Proust - Day 148

   "I watched the trees gradually recede, waving their despairing arms, seeming to say to me: 'What you fail to learn from us to-day, you will never know.  If you allow us to drop back into the hollow of this road from which we sought to raise ourselves up to you, a whole part of yourself which we were bringing to you will vanish forever into thin air.' And indeed if, in the course of time, I did discover the kind of pleasure and disquiet which I had just felt once again, and if one evening - too late, but then for all time - I fastened myself to it, of those trees themselves I was never to know what they had been trying to give me nor where else I had seen them.  And when, the road having forked and the carriage with it, I turned my back on them and ceased to see them, while Mme de Villeparisis asked me what I was dreaming about, I was as wretched as if I had just lost a friend, had died to myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 773

OK, now we're definitely getting into the mystic.  Granted, Proust was a highly sensitive soul, but what could make him feel that "I had just lost a friend, had died to myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god." Proust was on a carriage ride with Mme Villeparisis and saw three trees:

   "We came down towards Hudimesnil; and suddenly I was overwhelmed with a profound happiness which I had not felt since Combray, a happiness analogous to that which had been given me by - among other things - the steeples of Martinville.  But this time it remained incomplete.  I had just seen, standing a little way back from the hog's back road along which we were travelling, three trees which probably marked the entry to a covered driveway and formed a pattern which I was not seeing for the first time.  I could not succeed in reconstructing the place from which they had been as it were detached, but i felt that it had been familiar to me once; so that, my mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment, Balbec and its surroundings began to dissolve and I wondered whether the whole of this drive were not a make-believe, Balbec a place to which I had never gone save in imagination, Mme de Villeparisis a character in a story and the three old trees the reality which one recaptures on raising one's eyes from the book which one has been reading and which describes an environment into which one has come to believe that one has been bodily transported." pp. 770-771

Where we might have just seen three trees, Proust, as was his wont, saw much more.  The image and the resulting emotional spasm was so profound that "my mind having wavered between some distant year and the present moment, Balbec and its surroundings began to dissolve and I wondered whether the whole of this drive were not a make-believe, Balbec a place to which I had never gone save in imagination, Mme de Villeparisis a character in a story and the three old trees the reality which one recaptures on raising one's eyes from the book which one has been reading . . ." What did Proust see?

"I looked at the three trees; I could see them plainly, but my mind felt that they were concealing something which it could not grasp, as when an object is placed out of our reach, so that our fingers, stretched out at arm's-length, can only touch for a moment its outer surface, without managing to take hold of anything.  Then we rest for a little while before thrusting out our arm with renewed momentum, and trying to reach an inch or two further.  But if my mind was thus to collect itself, to gather momentum, I should have to be alone.  What would I not have given to be able to draw aside as I used to do on those walks along the Guermantes Way, when I detached myself from my parents! I felt indeed that I ought to do so.  I recognised that kind of pleasure which requires, it is true, a certain effort on the part of the mind, but in comparison with which the attractions of the indolence which inclines us to renounced that pleasure seem very slight.  That pleasure, the object of which I could only dimly feel, which I must create for myself, I experienced only on rare occasions, but on each of these it seemed to me that the things that had happened in the meantime were of little importance, and that in attaching myself to the reality of that pleasure alone could I at length begin to lead a true life.  I put my hand for a moment across my eyes, so as to be able to shut them without Mme de Villeparisis's noticing.  I saw there thinking of nothing, then with my thoughts collected, compressed and strengthened I sprang further forward in the direction of the trees, or rather in that inner direction at the end of which I could see them inside myself.  I felt again behind them the same object, known to me and yet vague, which I could not bring nearer.  And yet all three of them, as the carriage moved on, I could see coming towards me.  Where had I looked at them before?" pp. 771-772

Just as it is, by definition, impossible to define the ineffable, would it be impossible to actually force yourself to see the un-seeable?  I agree with Proust's belief that to do so he would have to be alone.  While it is lovely to visit exotic locations with another person the profundity of the experience becomes localized within the relationship and allows very little opportunity to extend to the greater environs, either physical or metaphysical.  While your experience in Salalah with that woman might be as elevated as the realization that you do actually love her or as base as the realization that no one is around and that this might be the perfect time for some extracurricular carnal gymnastics, they are still very self-contained, and doesn't leave a lot of room for finding God.

"Or had I indeed never seen them before, and did they conceal beneath their surface, like certain trees on tufts of grass that I had seen beside the Guermantes way, a meaning as obscure, as hard to grasp, as is a distant past, so that, whereas they were inviting me to probe a new thought, I imagined that I had to identify an old memory?  Or again, were they concealing no hidden thought, and was it simply visual fatigue that made me see them double in time as one sometimes sees double in space?  And meanwhile they were coming towards me; perhaps some fabulous apparition, a ring of witches or of Norns who would profound their oracles to me.  I chose rather to believe that they were phantoms of the past, dear companions of my childhood, vanished friends who were invoking our common memories.  Like ghosts they seemed to be appealing to me to take them with me, to bring them back to life.  In their simple and passionate gesticulation I could discern the helpless anguish of a beloved person who has lost the power of speech, and feels that he will never be able to say to us what he wishes to say and we can never guess.  Presently, as a cross-roads, the carriage left them.  It was bearing me away from what alone I believed to be true, what would have made me truly happy; it was like my life." pp. 772-773

So, what are we to make of all this?  I know I included much more actual text from Remembrance of Things Past than I normally do (and, again, these blog posts are designed to, among other things, inspire you to acquire Proust's work and not as a replacement for it) but I think that this particular section is fascinating, and I felt it needed a lot of context - and, well, I don't think I'm going out on a limb to point out that Proust is a better writer than I am, so the more material from the original the better.  While Proust doesn't talk much about organized religion, it's difficult for me to read this passage and not revert to the image of the three crosses or even the Triune God.  However, Proust, like seemingly more and more modern day Americans, seems more spiritual than truly religious so I'm hesitant to go there; that said, even if you're not currently religious you probably still carry within you the cultural remnants, even vestigial ones, of your childhood faith.

In the end I think his response to the three trees is more important than why that particular image inspired his response.  I've been trying to think if I've ever had an experience that intense, one that almost dislodged me from reality; in some ways his descriptions almost reads like certain poems from the Sufi mystic Rumi.  I remember sitting in a little out of the way church in Vienna, around the corner, I think, from the Hotel Wandl where I stayed so many times, and having a very otherworldly experience wherein the silence was so deafening that I could hear it.  At that moment I thought, with almost complete certainty, that I was on the cusp of something extraordinary and that if I just sat there a little while longer I would find God (and this was at a time when I certainly wasn't looking for God, which probably explained the relative ease in finding God at that point - which also circles us back to the point I raised above in regard to forcing oneself to grasp the unknowable).  Tragically, or happily, someone walked into the church at that moment and noisily broke my concentration and the moment was gone.  Beyond that, my moments when I think that the universe is trying to tell me something always are found in deserts.  Doubtless I'll eventually play a very active role in my own demise by wandering off among the sand dunes in search of truth.

Drawing this ridiculously lengthy post to a close, I should return to the question of why Proust felt that "I had just lost a friend, had died to myself, had broken faith with the dead or repudiated a god."  His despair was certainly not caused by the fact that he failed to grasp the transcendent, because, well, how many people ever successfully accomplish that near impossibility.  Rather, I think his frustration was generated by the fact that he, at least temporarily, stopped trying. The mundane world swallowed him up, and his attempt to be alone, even if it just meant shielding his eyes, so that he could focus on the intersection of the tangible and intangible worlds, had failed, and failed for the worst possible reason, he halted in his pursuit.

Discography - Week #5

As we enter the fifth week I don't know if we can touch the transcendence of a week that included Blessed from Lucinda Williams and I Want to Take You Higher from Sly and the Family Stone; however, they are some amazing eclectic choices this week. And I think Gary Beatrice is the early leader in the Totally Eclectic Didn't See That Coming Award competition.

Dave Wallace

Lush, Ladykillers

Lush was a female-led shoegaze band out of the UK when Brit-pop was big.  Hugely underrated here in the US, their music was melodic, ethereal, moody, epic, and powerful; they're one of my favorite band of the last 20 years.  (And their inevitable reunion has just taken place!)  So, of course, my favorite song by them sounds like nothing else that they've done.  A thundering feminist anthem, with a killer guitar riff, Miki Berenyi slams the vain, shallow guys who pursue women without understanding who they are or want they want.  "I'm as human as the next girl, I like a bit of flattery / But I don't need your practised lines, your school of charm mentality so / Save your breath for someone else and credit me with something more / When it comes to men like you, I know the score, I've heard it all before."  

Gary Beatrice

Justin Timberlake, SexyBack 

Justin Timberlake, guilty pleasure? Hell no. This motherfucker knows how to act.

My daughter came of age during the great boy band era and we frequently argued the merits of N'Synch versus the Beatles. Ultimately I won that battle (and yes I took the Beatles) but mostly because I could send her to bed without desert. Oddly enough now that Margie and I think JT rocks, Jessica will have nothing to do with him. Such is life.

At any rate, you will never convince me that this song doesn't kick ass. Take it to the bridge.

Dave Kelley

Gary Beatrice was the first, but certainly not the last, to include a Lucinda Williams selection.  I second every comment that he made about her and applaud his particular song choice.  She works in a musical style that I love and is certainly one of, if not the best, lyricists going.  What I particularly love about her (other than the ridiculously sensual way that she sings the word "baby" in a number of her songs) is that she does not shy away from any subject no matter how painful or personal.  To say she "keeps it real" would be a huge understatement.  I had a hard time figuring out my selection for her.  "Bus to Baton Rouge" is on my short list for best lyrics ever.   In a very frank song about a difficult childhood she concludes that: 

"The ghosts in the wind that blow through my life

Follow me wherever I go

I'll never be free from these chains inside

Hidden deep down in my soul"

However, that isn't my choice.  This is.

Lucinda Williams, Lake Charles

This is an unbelievably moving and poignant song that she wrote about a former lover and key influence who died young as a result of cirrhosis of the liver.  It is off of her album "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" which is one of my favorite records of all time.  He was apparently someone who loved life, music, Lake Charles, and unfortunately alcohol.  She apparently rushed to see him before his passing but got there too late.  Although he was not born there, Lake Charles was where he considered home and where his friends scattered his ashes.

"We used to drive through Lafayette and Baton Rouge

In a yellow El Camino, listening to Howling Wolf

He liked to stop in St. Charles, cause that's the place that he loved"

"Did you run, about as far as you could go

Down the Louisiana Highway, across Lake Ponchatrain

Now your soul is in St. Charles, no matter what they say"

The chorus of the song is what gets me every time.  Apparently it gets to Lucinda as well because I have heard her say that she typically is unable to bring herself to play the song live because she has difficulty getting through it without becoming too emotional.  Although she missed being at his bedside when he died, Lucinda envisions how she hopes that it went down.

"Did an angel whisper in your ear

and hold you close, and take away your fear

in those long, last moments"

Just about exactly ten years ago, I made a rushed middle of the night drive to the emergency room where my mother passed away shortly before I arrived.  Driving home after doing the shit you have to do in that situation, the chorus of Lake Charles came uninvited into my head and brought me a certain amount of peace.  The friends who are by our side when the shit is not only hitting the fan but burying it are the friends we keep in our life and our heart forever.  I guess the same is true about songs.  Thanks Lucinda.

Sorry to get so heavy this week.  Next week I will revert to a sha la la la sing along song.  :) 

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, Birds

Yes, the question that has riveted America - that is, how long would it take me to include a Neil Young song - has finally been answered.  Actually, I was going to hold out longer as a personal challenge, but this song came up in conversation with the excellent Dave Kelley on my trip back to the Midwest and I decided to go ahead and face the unavoidable.  That said, I chosen a relatively obscure choice, Birds from the album After the Gold Rush, one of my favorite albums and one that might be my choice for greatest album cover (now that would be an odd choice for a thematic discussion week).  Another thematic topics would be: songs you can barely listen to because they cause you physical pain, and Birds would fall into the category.  First off, however, there are more pleasant reasons for me choosing the song, starting with the fact that I just think it's beautiful.  I also like the fact that it's short - I've found versions that are barely a minute and a half - and I like the fact that Young wrote and recorded songs for the song itself and not for the demands of radio stations.  Essentially, Birds is a two minute song and Cowgirl in the Sand in a ten minute song because that is what it took to tell the story, and if it doesn't fit the rotation then don't play it (I don't know if he then said, "well, duh" but he might have).  Now, the darker side of it is that I always associate it with my ex-wife, which has both wonderful and painful associations.  One of the first things that we had to talk about was a shared love for Neil Young, and I used to joke that she just married me for my Young album collection.  However, it's also a song about the end of a relationship, especially one person leaving, and thus it hits home in a very painful way on the loss of a relationship and friend and also my extreme guilt over my failings.  I was listening to part of Young's discography on the drive in and there were two different versions of the song on both disks I pulled out randomly from the backseat, which meant that it was determined to be heard - and that it decided to also be a metaphor for the weekend of my mother's funeral.

Bob Craigmile

Ryan Adams, Dirty Rain

Many people think that Ryan Adams’ best album is “Heartbreaker”. To be sure, it’s a strong album with “To be young (is to be sad, is to be high)” and “Come pick me up”.  But for me Ashes and Fire is better and the second cut, Dirty Rain, is great.

It’s a classic Adams sad song.  Sadness about relationships is what Adams does.  He described it in one youtube video as “can’t get out of fucking bed” songs.  He recently reinterpreted Taylor Swift’s 1989 album in its entirety as a way to deal with the end of his marriage.  The fact that he started out in country rock may mean he’s finally coming full circle.  He has said he used country as a means to an end (getting heard).  It seems like an unlikely strategy.  But this song has a country heart at its core.

In any case, I rediscovered him after my own marriage imploded and I began a bit of an obsessive period with his stuff.  This is not a great strategy for rebuilding your life and ego.

“Now I'm here lookin' through the rubble

Tryin' to find out who we were”

The end of a relationship is (or should be or can be) a time to reflect on who you are and were.  Sometimes this leads to new growth, or to simple festering of old wounds.  

“And your eyes were filled with

Terror and smoke from the gasoline”

The whole thing of “stages of grief” is a myth.  This is what Adams is here to tell you.  You should listen, because there is no linear path through grief.  One of my group therapists says “it ain’t over till it’s over, the only way through it is through it.”  Avoiding your grief (and other feelings) is a cherished american white male tradition.  Maybe music helps us to deal with it subconcsiously.   Maybe, and certainly at times for me, it makes it worse.   

“So, may the wind blow, may the moonlight know your name

So, let the needle move the record 'round

'Til the walls cave in and you and I are out there

Dancin' in the dirty rain”

It may be dirty rain, this world, but we can still dance.

Miranda Tavares

Jack Schultz

Nate Bell

Dave Mills

The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, Television the Drug of the Nation

This is basically Marshall MacLuhan in 1990s West Coast Industrial Hip Hop form. Need I say more? All things considered, it's a bit lacking in subtlety, but so too was pretty much everything in the 90s. If we can forgive it for being from the 90s, we can see that it carried the legacy of Gil Scott-Heron ("The Revolution Will Not Be Televised") into the late 20th century and paved the way for later socially-conscious hip-hop acts like the Fugees and Wyclef Jean. Michael Franti, half of the Disposable Heroes, went on to form Spearhead, which has produced some good angry politically activist music over the years, before turning a bit too "We Are the World" for my taste with their recent stuff, like last year's "Once A Day" or last month's "We Are All Earthlings."

Mike Kelly

Here it is.  The first iteration of "Best Songs Ever" is here just in time for gin and tonic season.  Feel free to pass this along to others who may enjoy it, but know that you guys are my beta testers so you also get to suggest revisions.  

The methodology was simply this-  Songs I remember and love subdivided into four categories:  Hair Band, 120 Minutes, Rap and One-Hit Wonders.  It is absolutely an incomplete list, however there will be fierce debate and much joy that results.  I'll try to find an actual bracket and fill it out.  

A few notes:  I tried to end at 1990 but really it's "Pre Nirvana" that's the cut off.  Alternatively, the dates could be titled Mike's Life in Songs: Kindergarten to Puberty." Also, since this is (at the bottom of it all) a drinking game, the 120 Minutes bracket won't be filled with enough somber brit rock for Cindy's sensibilities.  

Enough with the blather.....

Hair Band Division

1) Living on a Prayer -- Bon Jovi 

16) Up All Night --- Slaughter

8) Tesla -- Love Song

9) Aerosmith -- Angel

4) Home Sweet Home -- Motley Crew 

13) Nothing Else Matters -- Metallica

5) Heaven -- Warrant 

12) Sweet Child O Mine -- Guns and Roses 

3) Pour Some Sugar on Me -- Def Leppard

14) When the Children Cry -- White Lion 

6) Patience -- Guns and Roses

11) Here I Go Again -- Whitesnake 

7) 18 and Life -- Skid Row 

10) Born to be My Baby -- Bon Jovi 

2) Every Rose Has Its Thorn -- Poison

15) Once Bitten Twice Shy -- Great White 

Matt Pinfield Division

1) Boys Don't Cry -- The Cure

16) Heartbreak Beat -- Psychedelic Furs

8) Boy With a Thorn in His Side -- Smiths

9) Ball and Chain -- Social Distortion

4) Bizarre Love Triangle -- New Order

13) Greetings to the New Brunette -- Billy Bragg

5) Punk Rock Girl -- Dead Milkmen

12) I Melt With You -- Modern English

6) Anchorage -- Michelle Shocked

11) Fall on Me -- REM

3) Knock Me Down -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

14) Under the Milky Way -- The Church

7) I'll Be You -- Replacements

10) Beds are Burning -- Midnight Oil

2) Wave of Mutilation -- Pixies 

15) So Alive -- Love and Rockets 

Alpine Blast Division

1) Humpty Dance -- Digital Underground

16) Me Myself and I -- De La Soul 

8) Straight Out of Compton -- NWA

9) Me So Horny -- 2 Live Crew 

4) It Takes 2 -- DJ Easy Rock and Rob Base 

13) Funky Cold Medina -- Tone Loc 

5) Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta -- Geto Boys 

12) My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me -- Geto Boys 

6) Bust a Move -- Young MC

11) Push it -- Salt and Pepa 

3) Freaky Tales -- Too Short 

14) Brenda's Got a Baby -- 2Pac

7) Children's Story -- Slick Rick

10) Do Me -- Bell Biv Devoe 

2) Push It -- Salt and Pepa

15) Everything's Going to be Be Alright -- Naughty by Nature

One Hit Wonders 

1) To Be With You -- Mr Big 

16) Heart and Soul -- T'Pau

8) Keep Your Hands to Yourself -- Georgia Satellites 

9) What I Am -- Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians 

4) Angel Eyes -- Jeff Healy Band

13) Power Windows -- Billy Falcon

5) High Enough -- Damn Yankees

12) Walking in Memphis -- Marc Cohn

3) Nothing Compares to You -- Sinead O'Connor 

14) I've Been Thinking About You -- Londonbeat

6) She's Like the Wind -- Patrick Swayze

11) Almost Paradise -- Mike Reno 

7) Joey -- Concrete Blonde

10) And We Danced -- The Hooters

2) Wicked Game -- Chris Isaak 

15) Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover -- Sophie B Hawkins