My Year With Proust - Day 189

   "The twittering of the birds at daybreak sounded insipid to Francoise.  Every word uttered by the maids upstairs made her jump; disturbed by all their running about, she kept asking herself what they could be doing.  In other words, we had moved.  True, the servants had made no less commotion as in the attics of our old home; but she knew them, she had made of their comings and going something friendly and familiar.  Now she listened to the very silence with painful attentiveness.  And as our new neighbourhood appeared to be as quite as the boulevard on to which we had hitherto looked had been noisy, the song (distinct even at a distance, when it was still quite faint, like an orchestral motif) of a passer-by brought tears to the eyes of the exiled Francoise. Hence, if I had been tempted to scoff at her when, in her misery at having to leave a house in which one was 'so well respected by all and sundry,' she had packed her trunks weeping, in accordance with the rites of Combray, and declaring superior to all possible houses that which had been ours, on the other hand, finding it hard to assimilate the new as I found it easy to abandon the old, I felt myself drawn towards our old servant when I saw that moving into a buildings where she had not received from the hall-porter, who did not yet know us, the marks of respect necessary to her spiritual wellbeing, had brought her positively to the edge of prostration . . . Which, it is high time now that the reader should be told - and told also that we had moved into it because my grandmother, not having been at all well (though we took care to keep this reason from her), was in need of better air - was a flat forming part of the Hotel de Guermantes."

Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, pp. 3-4

And so we have officially moved on to the third volume, The Guermantes Way, of Remembrance of Things Past.  I don't know if I have anything utterly profound to say about this introductory passage (or any passage, for that matter), but I thought it was important to include it for context.  That said, the response of Francoise is interesting here because she, while trying to put her best face forward, clearly fears change.  As the excellent Sanford Zale reminds us, "cats don't like change," which is generally part of his view that things were clearly better in the past.  My ex-wife probably would have been happier living with Sanford, because she also really hated change.  She one time said that she wanted to do the same thing at work every day, which for me would have been a fate associated with one of the lower levels of Dante's hell.  I think I tend to be more like Proust himself in this occasion because I tend to welcome change.  Oh, and speaking of change, I've started volunteering at the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf.  I used to volunteer when we lived in Atlanta at the Georgia Radio Reading Program, but once I moved to Vermont things always seems to crazy - starting with the three hours I spend commuting back and forth from Barre.  And then for years I ran the Global Modules program.  I've reached the point where, while I am balancing several projects (which already need more attention), I seem to have great control over my day, so I wanted to get back to volunteering.  Plus, I've just come to believe that it's essential to give back, a belief that has been amplified by some personal changes I've made, which I'll get around to talking about some time.  Oddly, I spent four and a half hour this morning just washing dishes, and actually liked the monotony of doing the same thing.  Hmmm.
  

My Year With Proust - Day 188

   "I knew that my friends were on the front, but I not not see them as they passed before the links of the sea's uneven chain, at the far end of which, perched amid its bluish peaks like an Italian citadel, could occasionally be distinguished, in clear weather, the little town of Rivebelle, picked out in minutest detail by the sun.  I did not see my friends, but (while there mounted to my belvedere the shout of the newsboys, the 'journalists' as Francoise used to call them, the shouts of the bathers and of children at play, punctuating like the cries of sea-birds the sough of the gently breaking waves) I guessed their presence, I heard their laughter enveloped like the laughter of the Nereids in the soft surge of sound that rose to my ears. 'We looked up,' said Albertine in the evening, 'to see if you were coming down.  But your shutters were still closed when the concert began.' At ten o'clock, sure enough, it broke out beneath my windows.  In the intervals between the blare of the instruments, if the tide were high, the gliding surge of a wave would be heard again, slurred and continuous, seeming to enfold the notes of the violin in its crystal spirals and to be spraying its foam over the intermittent echoes of a submarine music.  I grew impatient because no one had yet come with my things, so that I might get up and dress.  Twelve o'clock struck, and Francoise arrived at last.  And for months on end, in this Balbec to which I had so looked forward because I imagined it only as battered by storms and buried in the mist, the weather had been so dazzling and so unchanging that when she came to open the window I could always, without once being wrong, expect to see the same patch of sunlight folded in the corner of the outer wall, of an unalterable colour which was less moving as a sign of summer than depressing as the colour of a lifeless and composed enamel.  And after Francoise had removed her pins from the mouldings of the window-frame, taken down her various cloths, and drawn back the curtains, the summer days which she disclosed seemed as dead, as immemorially ancient as a sumptuously attired dynastic mummy from which our old servant had done no more than cautiously unwind the linen wrappings before displaying it to my gaze, embalmed in its vesture of gold."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 1017-1018

And so we bid adieu to Balbec, but also to Within a Budding Grove. "For we had had to leave Balbec at last, the cold and the damp having become too penetrating for us to stay any longer in a hotel which had neither fireplaces in the rooms nor central heating." And, I guess, metaphorically, Proust is being forced to move on from a life that, despite his best efforts (or maybe in need of his best efforts), has failed to provide the emotional superstructure to survive winter's chill. I'm trying to decide how Proust has changed over the first two volumes of Remembrance of Things Past.  He's certainly more self-aware, but still very emotionally clumsy, although I don't know if he's abnormally so on either front as compared to anyone else his age.  His powers of perception and analysis and self-reflection in many ways make him seem much older than his actual age.

"And after Francoise had removed her pins from the mouldings of the window-frame, taken down her various cloths, and drawn back the curtains, the summer days which she disclosed seemed as dead, as immemorially ancient as a sumptuously attired dynastic mummy from which our old servant had done no more than cautiously unwind the linen wrappings before displaying it to my gaze, embalmed in its vesture of gold."  Not surprisingly, this sentences brings me back to the times when I've transitioned from one phase of my life to another: leaving for college; starting graduate school and getting my first apartment; selling and moving our of our first house in Atlanta; getting a divorce; moving out of my hotel after a year in Abu Dhabi.  In all of them it's amazing to think of how quickly vibrant life became the ancient dead.

My Year With Proust - Day 187

   "Geographers or archaeologists may conduct us over Calypso's island, may excavate the Palace of Minos.  Only, Calypso becomes then a mere woman, Minos a mere king with no semblance of divinity.  Even the qualities and defects which history then teaches us to have been the attributes of those quite real personages often differ widely from those which we had ascribed to the fabulous beings who bore the same names as they.  Thus had there faded and vanished all the lovely oceanic mythology which I had composed in those first days.  But it is not altogether a matter of indifference that we do succeed, at any rate now and then, in spending our time in familiar intercourse with what we thought to be unattainable and longed to possess.  In out later dealings with people whom at first we found disagreeable here persists always, even amid the factitious pleasure which we have come at length to enjoy in their society, the lingering taint of the defects which they have succeeded in hiding. But, in relations such as I enjoyed with Albertine and her friends, the genuine pleasure which was there at the starts leaves that fragrance which no artifice can impart to hothouse fruits, to grapes that have not ripened in the sun.  The supernatural creatures which for a little time they had been to me still introduced, even without my being aware of it, a miraculous element into the most commonplace dealing I might have with them, or rather prevented such dealing from ever becoming in the least commonplace."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 1012-1013

I've always had this theory that all graduate school does, at least in the short term, is make you hate your own field.  By the time I earned my PhD from the University of Cincinnati I was sick of school, and had suffered through a pretty wretched experience with my adviser, that I didn't even go to a history conference for around three years.  I was just sick of history.  Part of it is just exhaustion, certainly, but I also believe that you reach this point because you strip away the mythology and see how it really works - and you're left somewhere between underwhelmed and horrified.  What's that line from Bismarck, "Laws are like sausage, it's better not to see them being made." I suspect that love follows the same general rule.  In this passage Proust is comparing getting to actually know the young women who made up the troop to geographers and archaeologists excavating Calupso's island or the Palace of Minos, acts that provided invaluable knowledge but also made mythological beings terribly, terribly human.  Proust reflected upon first seeing the girls, "My desire had sought so avidly to learn the meaning of eyes which now knew and smiled at me, but which, that first day, had crossed mine like rays from another universe. . ."  And then you realize that your lover can't get organized and acts like an utter lunatic at times, and you wish you could go back to your imagined relationship.  Something terrible does happen when you pull back the curtain and see who the Wizard of Oz actually is, but you're still better off knowing.  Hell, as much as Odysseus loved his time with Calypso he eventually leaves her for something more tangible (although he's probably not the best person to go to for dating advice).

Rewarding Emma

In an earlier post I recounted the adventure when I took my student Emma to Dr. Mehta's Hospital in Zanzibar to look after her scratched cornea.  While we discussed her general imbecility at length (and, truthfully, who changes their contacts at the beach?), I also have to admit that she was a good patient.  Consequently, to reward her for her heroism we decided to find someplace to grab a more substantial breakfast (and also because it was too late to track down the rest of the team who were on the other side of town).  This led us to the Africa House Hotel, which we stumbled into simply because it looked nice (and potentially cool, which was especially important as we broiled in the equatorial sun).  It was also the first time we met the esteemed Ali G.  He told us that since we weren't staying at the hotel and because it wasn't prime breakfast hours that he'd have to whip us up something special.  I figured this meant that it was going to be pretty expensive, but since we were already resting comfortably in the blessed shade I said yes (figuring that we'd find room in the budget somehow).  As it turns out the breakfast was both fantastic and also inexpensive.  We love Ali G.  It was the first of several visits to the Africa House, and I wish I were sitting there right now, kibitzing with Ali G, soaking in the beautiful view, and drinking an appropriate adult beverage.

The outside is impressive but fairly plain, but it is beautiful inside.  I'm hoping to stay there sometime and not just frequent its balcony bar.

The amazing Ali G on another visit when he had set us up a special front row table at a fashion show, to which the students didn't attend (reason enough to have failed them).

Emma looking more like a failed mixed martial arts fighter than a student, but she quickly mended.

The first course, and, truthfully, the fruit probably would have been enough.

And then the second course.  I think we charged us less than $10 a piece, if that much.  Again, we love Ali G.  If you're thinking of visiting Zanzibar I highly recommend the Africa House.

And the view.  It's Zanzibar.  Steve and I are actively planning our next student trip, when we're planning on staying longer.  Who leads a life wherein you can say things like, "On my third trip to Zanzibar."  I'm stupidly, illogically blessed.

My Year With Proust - Day 186

   "No matter which of my friends of the little band I thought of, how could the last face that she had shown me not have been the only one that I could recall, since, of our memories with respect to a person, the mind eliminates everything that does not concur with the immediate purpose of our daily relations (even, and especially, if those relations are impregnated with an element of love which, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come)?  It allows the chain of spent days to slip away, holding on only to the very end of it, often of a quite different metal from the links that have vanished in the night, and in the journey which we make through life, counts as real only the place in which we are at present.  My very earliest impressions, already so remote, could not find any remedy in my memory against the daily distortion to which they were subjected; during the long hours which I spent in talking, eating, playing with those girls, I did not even remember that they were the same pitiless and sensual virgins whom I had seen, as in a fresco, file past  between me and the sea."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 1012

Proust once again touches upon the power and immediacy of memory, but also its maddening malleability.  However, what's jumping out at me at this moment is his statement: ". . . if those relations are impregnated with an element of love which, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come."  Now, if a love is unsatisfied, which could either mean unrequited or at least not consummated, then I then I think that you are, by definition, always living in the moment about to come.  But what if the love is unsatisfied simply because you're not satisfied?  You're not simply mooning over the other person, and the love is consummated, both emotionally and physically, but you're not satisfied in the relationship.  To me, if this is the situation you find yourself in then you're doubtless living in the moment yet to come even more than before the relationship was ever a relationship or before it was ever consummated.  Here you have the "normal" anticipation and desire and frustration related to an unfulfilled emotional and sexual release, the very things that leave you focused on the moment yet to come, but you also add to it another driving factor: the dream of not being in the relationship, where the moment yet to come promises something very different.  And this got me thinking - aren't all loves unsatisfied?  Granted, one of my huge problems is an inability to live in the moment, but upon self-reflection it seems like every relationship I've ever had has been dominated by "the moment that is about to come."  So, this might be a purely individual and personal flaw, and helps explain why I'm such a lousy partner.  Or, maybe the truth is that all loves, even healthy ones, are unsatisfied?  I remember seeing a TedTalk by Helen Fisher once where she and her team had put a whole bunch of folks who had just been dumped in an MRI machine (yes, as I've always said, scientists are just cruel; a larger version of the kid who pulled the wings off flies).  They were trying to get a clearer handle on the chemical changes in the brain caused by love.  One of the many interesting points she makes in the talk is that when we're in love we're in a constant state of need; we crave the other person.  The irony is that when we've been dumped our friends, when trying to be helpful, encourage us to think with our brains instead of our hearts, but, of course, the reality is that it's the brain which is playing these horrible chemical tricks on us as part of its long-term evolutionary plan. In my mind (although if we can't trust other brains I don't know why we'd trust mine) this just proves my point: all loves is unsatisfied.  We always need more time and intimacy and sex, and if we don't, if we're truly "satisfied", then it's probably not much of a relationship and more of a well-chosen roommate.

My Year With Proust - Day 185

"It was perhaps because they were so diverse, the persons whom I used to contemplate in her at this period, that later I developed the habit of becoming myself a different person, according to the particular Albertine to whom my thoughts had turned; a jealous, an indifferent, a voluptuous, a melancholy, a frenzied person, created anew not merely by the accident of the particular memory that had risen to the surface, but in proportion also to the strength of the belief that was lent to the support of one and the same memory by the varying manner in which I appreciated it.  For this was the point to which I invariably had to return, to those beliefs which for most of the time occupy our souls unbeknownst to us, but which for all that are of more importance to our happiness than is the person whom we see, for it is through them that we see him, it is they that impart his momentary grandeur to the person seen.  To be quite accurate, I ought to give a different name to each of the selves who subsequently thought about Albertine; I ought still more to give a different name to each of the Albertines who appeared before me, never the same, like those seas - called by me simply for the sake of convenience "the sea" - that succeeded one another and against which, a nymph likewise, she was silhouetted.  But above all, in the same way as, in telling a story (though to far greater purpose here), people mention what the weather was like on such and such a day, I ought always to give its name to the belief that reigned over my soul and created its atmosphere on any day on which I saw Albertine, the appearance of people, like that of the sea,  being dependent on those clouds, themselves barely visible, which change the colour of everything by their concentration, their mobility, their dissemination, their flight - like that cloud which Elstir had rent one evening by not introducing me to these girls with whom he had stopped to talk, and whose images had suddenly appeared to me more beautiful when they moved away - a cloud that had formed again a few days later when I did get to know them, veiling their brightness, interposing itself frequently between my eyes and them, opaque and soft, like Virgil's Leucothea."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 1010-1011

Here Proust is reflecting upon the different Albertines that dominated his days, and how he became a different person in response to each.  He paints a detailed and beautiful picture of the different physical forms of Albertine:

"On certain days, thin, with a grey complexion, a sullen air, a violet transparency slanting across her eyes such as we notice sometimes on the sea, she seemed to be feeling the sorrows of exile."

"On other days her face, smoother and glossier, drew one's desires on to its varnished surface and prevented them from going further; unless I caught a sudden glimpse of her from the side, for her matt cheeks, like white wax on the surface, were visibly pink beneath, which was what made one so long to kiss them, to reach that different tint which was so elusive."

"At other times, happiness bathed her cheeks with a clarity so mobile that the skin, grown fluid and vague, gave passage to a sort of subcutaneous gaze, which made it appear to be of another colour but not of another substance than her eyes; sometimes, without thinking, when one looked at her face punctuated with tiny brown marks among which floated what were simply two larger, bluer stains, it was as though one were looking at a goldfinch's egg, or perhaps at an opalescent agate cut and polished in two places only, where, at the heart of the brown stone, there shone like the transparent wings of a skyblue butterfly, her eyes, those features in which the flesh becomes a mirror and gives us the illusion that it allows us, more than through the other parts of the body, to approach the soul."

"But most often, too, she showed more colour, and was then more animated; sometimes in her white face only the tip of her nose was pink, and as delicate as that of a mischievous kitten with which one would have liked to play; sometimes her cheeks were so glossy that one's glance slipped, as over the surface of a miniature, over their pink enamel, which was made to appear still more delicate, more private, by the enclosing though half-opened lid of her black hair; or it might happen that the tint of her cheeks had deepened to the mauvish pink of cyclamen, and sometimes even, when she was flushed or feverish, with a suggestion of unhealthiness which lowered my desire to something more sensual and made her glance expressive of something more perverse and unwholesome, to the deep purple of certain roses, a red that was almost black; and each of these Albertines was different, as is each appearance of the dancer whose colours, form, character, are transmuted according to the endlessly varied play of a projected limelight."

Proust uses Leucothea, a character from Greek and Roman mythology who was transformed into a goddess, as the fitting metaphor of Albertine's transformations.  Of course, in this case it's not the gods, but rather Proust who is carrying out the transformations.  Once again, it speaks to the power of perceptions, which can not only shape our sense of our lover's personality but even her physical appearance. For some reason I fell to thinking about the number of times, I think twenty-nine, that Cezanne painted his wife.  I guess it's not that surprising that I immediately defaulted to Cezanne since we just finished discussing modern art in my Aesthetic Expression class.

Madame Cezanne in a Striped Skirt.

Madame Cezanne with Loosened Hair. This is my favorite.

Madame Cezanne in Blue. 

Madame Cezanne in the Conservatory. 

Madame Cezanne Leaning on a Table. 

Madame Cezanne in a Yellow Chair. 

In Concepts of the Self we always talk about the concept of "air," that indefinable something that defines you.  It's that mysterious thing that your mother sees in a picture of you that leads her to say, "oh, that's so him," whereas to us it just seems like a picture of an anonymous blob.  One wonders why Cezanne painted so many portraits of his wife.  Did she like having her portrait painted (and from the look she is giving in Madame Cezanne with Loosened Hair I would guess no)?  Or was she just a convenient model because she was always around?  Or, was Cezanne actively trying to capture or air, her essence? And, if so,  I wonder if Cezanne felt that he had ever actually captured her "air"?

My Year With Proust - Day 184

   "My longings were now once more at liberty to concentrate on one or another or Albertine's friends, and returned first of all to Andree, whose attentions might perhaps have touched me less had I not been certain that they would come to Albertine's ears.  Undoubtedly the preference that I had long pretended to feel for Andree had furnished me - in habits of conversation and declaration of affection - with, so ti speak, the material for a ready-made love for her which had hitherto lacked only the complement of a genuine feeling, which my heart, being once more free, was now in a position to supply.  But Andree was too intellectual, too neurotic, too sickly, too like myself for me really to love her.  If Albertine now seemed to me to be void of substance, Andree was filled with something which I knew only too well.  I had thought, that first day, that what I saw on the beach was the mistress of some racing cyclist, passionately interested in sport, and now Andree told me that if she had taken it up, it was on orders from her doctor, to cure her neurasthenia, her digestive troubles, but that her happiest hours were those which she spent translating one of George Eliot's novels.  My disappointment, due to an initial mistake as to what Andree was, had not, in fact, the slightest importance for me.  But the mistake was one of the kind which, if they allow love to be born and are not recognised as mistakes until it has ceased to be modifiable, become a cause of suffering.  Such mistakes - which may be quite different from mine with regard to Andree, and even its exact opposite, - are frequently due (and this was especially the case here) to the fact that people take on the aspect and the mannerisms of what they are not but would like to  be sufficiently to create an illusion at first sight.  To the outward appearance, affectation, imitation, the longing to be admired, whether by the good or by the wicked, add misleading similarities or speech and gesture.  There are cynicisms and cruelties which, when put to the test, prove no more genuine than certain apparent virtues and generosities.  Just as we often discover a vain miser beneath the cloak of a man famed for his charity, so her flaunting of vice leads us to suppose a Messalina a respectable girl with middle-class prejudices.  I had thought to find in Andree a healthy, primitive creature, whereas she was merely a person in search of health, as perhaps were many of those in whom she herself had thought to find it, and who were in reality no more healthy than a burly arthritic with a red face and in white flannels is necessarily a Hercules.  Now there are circumstances in which it is not immaterial to our happiness that the person we have loved for what appeared about her is in reality only one of those invalids who receive such health as they possess from others, as the planets borrow their light, as certain bodies are only conductors of electricity."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 1005-1006

The budding relationship between Proust and Albertine has broken off, and he has turned his attention, with little apparent enthusiasm, to her friend Andree.  It probably didn't help that Albertine had steered him in her direction.  In anger Albertine tells him, "Own up now, it's Andree you're in love with. Besides, you're quite right; she's ever so much nicer than I am, and absolutely ravishing!  Oh, you men!"  However, there's a problem: Andree and Proust are simply too much alike, or at least that is Proust's opinion.  "But Andree was too intellectual, too neurotic, too sickly, too like myself for me really to love her."  Sadly, I suspect he's probably correct.  One of the problems that I think plagued my relationship with my ex-wife was that we were, at least initially, simply too much alike.  I think we saw in each other the things we loved best about ourselves, and thus we mistook friendship for a passionate love. It's not that we didn't love each other, because we definitely did.  Because we were so similar we never created the apparatus within the relationship for us to not be the same person, if that makes any sense.  When we began to change - well, when I began to change pretty dramatically; and, as I've said, in the end it was my fault because I think I both changed the most and also did a poor job expressing how I was changing and what I needed - we didn't know how to handle suddenly being so different.  It had never been part of the relationship.

To be fair, maybe there is nothing that can be done to figure out relationships.  In a couple much later relationships I can remember making the point that we didn't really have much in common.  The point was not critical, but rather as part of conversations about seemingly odd couples I proposed that it didn't really matter because we didn't have anything in common.  In both instances the women seemed utterly stunned, not simply that I had said it, but, that it was actually completely true.  Which, of course, beings up the question of perception once again: in what ways did you think that we had something in common?  The relationship I had with the lovely young British woman was, on the surface, the most illogical relationship, but in regard to day to day life, it was probably the most logical, natural relationship I've ever had.  We got along so famously every day, and thus in the light of a lived relationship we seemed to have everything in common; and, I would argue, probably the only kind of "in common" that matters.  It was only when you took a step back and looked at it analytically that you realized that we had nothing in common.  Once again, this is why the brain is consistently our most bitter enemy.

Discography - Week 10

We're back on track this week after our first, and I think successful, thematic week.  We're due for another one in Week 17 which has already been agreed to based on secret negotiations and a binding oath between the excellent Gary Beatrice and myself.  Until that point we'll be following our usual beautifully anarchic path of proposing whatever pops into our fevered brains.

Dave Wallace

Tom Petty, American Girl

Counting Crows, American Girls

Doubling up this week!  Two different songs with almost the exact same titles, and I love both of them.  Petty's first great song (although it arguably shares that distinction withBreakdown, also off his first album), American Girl serves as a great introduction to the early Petty sound.  Chiming guitars, background vocals evoking the Byrds, sneaky bassline, and a great solo from the perpetually underrated Mike Campbell.  I had a huge crush on an "American girl" one summer when I was a teenager, and I essentially listened to this song non-stop,

So, a couple of decades later, the Counting Crows have the nerve to write a song with essentially the same title as this rock classic.  I should have been outraged, right?  And I would have been, except that American Girls is terrific.  I'm not a huge Counting Crows fan, but this song is awesome. Ultimately as unattainable as Petty's American Girl, the object of Adam Duritz's affection makes him feel great but gets away (maybe because he didn't treat her so well!). Fantastic backing vocals by Sheryl Crow.  And the repeated "Oh, oh, oh, oh" chant at the end is amazing.

Gary Beatrice

X, The Have Nots

Dave Wallace has exceptional musical taste and he has turned me on to a ton of great music. We don't often disagree about music, but we disagree about X.

X was the third best band of the punk era behind only The Clash and The Ramones. Not only were they criminally underrated as a punk band, they remain one of the great underrated American bands of any genre. Four of their first five albums are well worth listening to, but I'd refer the uninitiated to their great two disk compilation Back to the Base.

What makes X so compelling is not just John Doe's songwriting, and the way he and Exene Cervenka traded vocals in such an unorthodox but hypnotic manner, but the tight, driving rhythm section with Doe on base and Bonebreaker on drums, and Billy Zoom's driving guitar work. Back to the Base includes an instrumental version of The Hungry Wolf and it is as powerful a rock anthem as you will hear, even without the great vocals and lyrics that the more well known version of the song features.

"The Have Nots" captures X with one of their best performances and also at a lyrical peak, emphasizing two of their common themes: the plight of the working poor (This is the game that moves as you play) and the Los Angeles music scene. Rock 'n' roll at its finest.

Miranda Tavares

Bottle Rockets, Smokin’ 100’s Alone

This was the first Bottle Rockets song I ever heard, and it caused an immediate obsession. This song is not really representative of their sound, and I truly love their sound, but this song is still my favorite. Is it because it is about a girl bereft, and I, too, have felt the pain of a girl bereft? Possibly, but that doesn’t feel right. Is it because the subject of the song is regretting making a hard, healthy decision, and is debating doing the easy, self-destructive thing by taking it back, and come on, who can’t relate to that? No, still not resonating. Is it, as my husband says, because I am from Cleveland, and a lyric contains the Cleveland-esque unnecessary preposition at the end of a sentence (“where’s he at?”)? No. 

It’s the guitar. That easy strum, followed by the rolling, melodic plucking after each line that makes you look up from whatever you’re doing in piqued interest and vague recognition, similar to a dog’s head tilting at the sound of his master’s voice. That guitar that feels like a stroke of your hair followed by an absent-minded, affectionate drumming of fingers by your spouse on the tender part of your neck. The guitar that’s akin to settling into bed, taking a deep breath, and letting out all of the frustrations of the day on exhale. 

The lyrics are good, but forget them. The vocals are solid, but who cares. If you need some chill time, you have two choices: fold yourself into the lotus position while trying to look at the tip of your nose, or throw on this song and let the guitar heal you from the inside out.

Nate Bell

Little Richard, Long Tall Sally

I was recently reading 11/22/63, and with Stephen’s King’s love of 50’s music, I couldn’t help but muse on it, and think about the very earliest roots of rock and roll, when things were simpler and tamer…perhaps.  I was also thinking a fair bit about Prince, and the many tributes we have heard from him, on this blog, and elsewhere.  Which made it dawn on me how incredible and revolutionary Little Richard has been.

Think about it, this is the very first struggling of rock and roll as an emerging music form.  We talk recently about how revolutionary, genre- and even gender-bending Prince was.  But the man can’t hold a candle to Little Richard.

I was re-listening to Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and the ilk, hearing the lyrics, listening carefully to the music.  And then there was Little Richard.  When you hear Long Tall Sally, the tempo is intensely fast, the piano out-Balls of Fire-s Jerry Lee, the vocals are LOUD, and a little harsh, the sound is raw.  AND - a big AND - those lyrics are raw, bawdy and very dirty---incredibly so for the mainstream of the early 50s.  Here was the true pioneer of rock and roll, more than Elvis with his “racy” dancing, and louder, more graphic, and more, well, Rock and roll than any of his contemporaries.  Long Tall Sally is still a classic that many people play, and it stands up to the test of time.  It is bold, loud, fast, fun and it ROCKS. Which still strikes me with the thought that this was one of the *first* songs that “rocked”.  And it’s sung by a gay/bisexual black man telling a story of the “other woman” someone’s uncle went  to, to step out on his aunt.  It doesn’t get much more Rock and Roll than that.  And all this was coming from an Omni sexual, makeup-wearing black man, in the South.  But even Jim Crow was tapping his foot along to Little Richard.  I don’t think Rock and Roll has had such a true innovative, audacious musician and personality either before or since.  

Cyndi Brandenburg

Ani DiFranco, Hour Follows Hour 

This is officially the first week of summer, and the gloriously boring monotony of summertime days has started to kick in.  Each hour follows hour more like a trickle than the usual rushing flood, which for some of us means that along with extra time on our hands, there’s extra space in our minds.   This is not necessarily a good thing because it invites the sort of wistfully bittersweet self-indulgent reflection that we’ve all engaged in at one point or another.  You know the kind…. An authentic appreciation for all that we have in this life, coupled with a critical look at all that we’ve done, all that we’ve been, and all that we so desperately still hope to achieve. 

Hour Follows Hour is the perfectly-paced sound track for this kind of thinking.   It carries classically Ani themes:  time, water, gravity, imperfection, love, etc., etc., etc.  But in opposition to the Garden of Simple where “you were never anything but beautiful to me,” she challenges us to come to terms with the irrational complexity of our emotions and behaviors.   “Why do you try to hold on to what you’ll never get a hold on? You wouldn’t try to put the ocean in a paper cup.”

In reality, our lives are just one big stretch, and “we can only hold so much is what I can figure.  Try and keep our eye on the big picture, but the picture keeps getting bigger.”   Despite references to “blame” and “bad things,” this one is not about the kind of recklessness she captures in her song Shameless, but rather how we can reconcile the unexpected irregularities and inconsistencies of our lives into something meaningful over the long run--and ultimately (hopefully), come to the same conclusion that she did.   

Dave Kelley

The Who, Young Man Blues

   My parents were older when they had me and had no interest in rock music.  They did not disapprove, it just was not on their radar.  I grew up in a home with big band music, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and Nat King Cole dominating the record player.  Hell, the Ray Conniff Orchestra was much bigger than The Beatles at 1010 Winding Way.  I was the oldest, so I had no big brother or sister to get me into rock music at an early age.  There I was, bereft of musical taste or knowledge, wondering the hard streets of Kenton Hills humming Captain and Tenille songs, not even aware of the dream to rock and roll all night and party everyday, until.......

     In high school, there were a few guys, Dave Wallace amongst them, that were Who fanatics.  I fell hook, line and sinker.  The first record I ever bought was Who's Next.  I listened to it non-stop and anxiously awaited the opportunity to be the only one home so I could play it at top volume.  As a boring old fart now, there is simply no way any record could ever hit me that hard again.  At one point when I was around 20, my entire record collection consisted of every official Who release, several bootlegs by the band, solo records from Townshend and Daltrey, and Darkness on the Edge of Town.  I am happy that my taste has become slightly more eclectic, but The Who will always be that first band that just blew my mind.  

My selection this week just happens to be another cover.  The live version of "Young Man Blues".  Originally written by the jazz guitarist Mose Allison, The Who transformed it into a hard rock, bordering on metal, anthem.  The playing on it is other worldly.  Keith Moon was simply the most amazing, energetic, and inventive drummer ever.  On the video which is attached, pay attention to how it is the drummer and not the singer or lead guitarist who just dominates the performance.  He and Townshend are completely locked into each other.  I love the bit where Moon tries to bounce his stick off of the drum and catch it in the air.  He misses, gives a big "well I fucked that up" grin, grabs another stick and resumes playing.  The bass is just amazing as well.  Entwhistle was the only member of the band to just stand there and play, but damn he produced a lot of sound out of that bass.  Daltrey does his early seventies cock rock strutting and screaming while Townshend does his usual combination of rhythm and lead guitar.  I highly recommend picking up the extended version of the Live at Leeds disc to see just how many fantastic sounds can be produced by just three instrumentalists.    

Mike Kelly

Jason Molina, O Grace

Stupid me for not recognizing how good Jason Molina was until after he drank himself to death a couple years ago.  Lucky me for figuring it in time.   

I chose "O Grace" out of everything in the Jason Molina catalogue for a couple reasons.  First, the dude can bust out a simile (I'm still as lonesome as the world's first ghost).  That line is a cigarette burn to the aorta and only those who feel nothing could argue this point.   

But the second and more interesting reason is that this song can be read in two ways depending on how the listener wants to hear it.   At once, this "long way between horizons" can be interpreted as the futile search for something you're never going to find, or it's a reminder to celebrate just how expansive life's possibilities are in between the time you're born and the time you die.   

If read the first way, it is assumed there is a single storyteller lamenting how everything is going, but if you're feeling hopeful, the song is a dialogue between two people and she's telling him to buck up when she scolds, "Oh boy, if you stop believing/that don't mean that it just goes away."  Depending on the day, there's enough ambiguity to go around.   

Either way, it's beautiful.  

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, Like Hurricane

I'm going to show a complete lack of originality and creativity this week and just stick with one of my all-time favorite songs, Young's Like a Hurricane.  Beyond a marked genetic proclivity, this song is the main culprit in my deafness today.  While there were Young songs that I came to earlier in my life (I still can't listen to Helpless without getting emotional), this song was the first one I ever felt. And by felt I mean not only emotionally, as I had with Helpless, but also physically, the way I guess you do with all music but I would argue is especially true with rock (later when I had more experience with women I think I unconsciously retrofitted Cowgirl in the Sand for the same purpose). I included the main link to the version from the Live Rust album, but every one of them, ten thousand listens in, still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck: the original from American Stars and Bars, the version from the Rust Never Sleeps movie, this odd one from the early 80s in Berlin (maybe his most energetic performance), and even this MTV Unplugged version played on the pipe organ.  I chose the Live Rust version for a couple reasons.  First off, it may be my favorite version, but it also reminds me of my senior year in college when a couple of the underclassmen used to wait patiently in my room and when they saw me walking across campus after my last class on Friday they would put my speakers in the window and play this version much too loudly, which marked the official beginning of the weekend (why the junior faculty don't do that now is beyond me).  It's the version I want played at the end of my funeral.  Now, why did the song speak to me so powerfully and intimately?  I think I reverse engineered it a bit.  I've always felt that way too many people have responded to me very negatively.  To be fair, I've brought a lot of it on myself through my general petulance and bouts of my famous temper and oftentimes snarky sense of humor, but also because of the performance piece that is SCUDDER (as compared to gary scudder, the painfully shy kid from southern Indiana with crooked teeth, a speech impediment and not much intellectual self-confidence, who constructed SCUDDER to hide behind).  I've always felt that I was a pretty calm, grounded and even oddly kind person, the metaphorical eye of the hurricane, but people just saw the gale force winds.  Even today if I'm at the gym and I'm getting ready to lift too much weight on the bench press (because, well, I may be a fifty-six year old male, but I'm still a male, and there might be girls around; we can laugh, but I have dropped the weights on my chest and pinned myself to the bench, brilliantly) I stop and play this version, again way too loudly, with the classic teenage belief that it will somehow give me superhuman strength.

My Year With Proust - Day 183

   "I had supposed that my love for Albertine was not based on the hope of carnal possession.  And yet, when the lesson to be drawn from my experience that evening was, apparently, that such possession was impossible; when, after having had no doubt, that first day on the beach, that Albertine was licentious, and having passed through various intermediate assumptions, it seemed to me to be established that she was absolutely virtuous; when on her return from her aunt's a week later, she greeted me coldly with: 'I forgive you; in fact I'm sorry to have upset you, but you must never do it again,' - then in contrast to what I had felt on learning from Block that one could have all the women one wanted, and as if, instead of a real girl, I had known a wax doll, my desire to penetrate into her life, to follow her through the places in which she had spent her childhood, to be initiated by her into the sporting life, gradually detaching itself from her; my intellectual curiosity as to thoughts on this subject or that did not survive my belief that I might kiss her if I chose.  My dreams abandoned her as soon as they ceased to be nourished by the hope of a possession of which I had supposed them to be independent."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 996-997

Fallout from the ill-timed kiss of Albertine the night she spent in Proust's hotel.  I'm including this section partially because it provides useful background information on her and their relationship, but also because it raises interesting questions.  Mainly, I think it begs the question of whether you can have love without desire, at least at the beginning of a relationship?  Clearly, there is that sad point in most relationships where desire seems to dry up completely and both sides agree to the new normal.  However, by then you have a life time of memories and compromises to "justify" that decision.  No matter what your relationship turns into I would argue that it starts off based on desire.  You never look at that woman across the crowded room and think, "I really want to co-sign a mortgage we can't possibly afford with her."  It always starts with desire.

I was also amused by Proust's discussion of having a wax doll instead of a real girl, and not simply because of his choice of words in describing his desire to "penetrate" into her life.  It obviously reminded me of the scene in Lars and the Real Girl (a grossly underrated movie) where Lars introduces Bianca to his brother and sister-in-law.  The thing is, going back to the paragraph above, desire is easy, love is hard - so maybe Lars had the right idea.  Having said that, he eventually "decides" to kill off Bianca and found a true relationship with a real girl, so maybe there's hope for us all.

My Year With Proust - Day 182

   "I found Albertine in bed.  Leaving her throat bare, her white nightdress altered the proportions of her face, which, flushed by being in bed or by her cold or by dinner, seemed pinker; I thought of the colours I had had beside made a few hours earlier on the front, the savour of which I was now at last to taste; her cheek was traversed by one of those long, dark, curling tresses which, to please me, she had undone altogether.  She looked at me and smiled.  Beyond her, through the window, the vfalley lay bright beneath the moon.  The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those flushed cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had so shifted the reality of the world for me away from nature into the torrent of my sensations which I could scarcely contain), that it had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life which circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison.  The sea, which was visible through the window as well as the valley, the swelling breasts of the first of the Maineville cliffs, the sky in which the moon had not yet climbed to the zenith- all this seemed less than a featherweight on my eyeballs, which between their lids I could feel dilated, resistant, ready to bear far great burdens, all the mountains of the world, upon their fragile surface.  Their orb no longer found even the sphere of the horizon adequate to fill it.  And all the life-giving energy that nature could have brought me would have seemed to me all too meagre, the breathing of the sea all too short to express the immense aspiration that was swelling my breast.  I bent over Albertine to kiss her.  Death might have struck me down in that moment and it would have seemed to me a trivial, or rather an impossible thing, for life was not outside me but in me; I should have smiled pityingly had a philosopher then expressed the idea that some day, even some distant day, I should have to die, that the eternal force of nature would survive me, the forces of that nature beneath whose godlike feet I was no more than a grain of sand; that, after me, there would still remain those rounded, swelling cliffs, that sea, that moonlight and that sky! How could it have been possible; how could the world have lasted longer than myself, since I was not lost in its vastness, since it was the world that was enclosed in me, in me whom it fell far short of filling, in me who, feeling that there was room to store so many other treasures, flung sky and sea and cliffs contemptuously into a corner. 'Stop it or I'll ring the bell!' cried Albertine, seeing that I was flinging myself up her to kiss her. But I told myself that not for nothing does a girl invite a young man to her room in secret, arranging that her aunt should not know and that boldness, moreover, rewards those who know how to seize their opportunities; in the state of exaltation in which I was, Albertine's round face, lit by an inner flame as by a night-light, stood out in such relief that, imitating the rotation of a blowing sphere, it seems to me to be turning, like those Michelangelo figures which are being swept away in a stationary and vertiginous whirlwind.  I was about to discover the fragrance, the flavour which this strange pink fruit concealed.  I heard a sound, abrupt, prolonged and shrill.  Albertine had pulled the bell with all her might."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 995-996

Through a series of maneuverings Albertine arranges to spend the night at Proust's hotel, and then invites him to visit her room.  As he recalls, "What was going to happen that even, I scarcely knew.  In any event, the Grand Hotel and the evening no longer seemed empty to me; they contained my happiness."  In this beautifully written section Proust deftly balances out the worlds of love and carnality and expresses his urgent and confused emotions. "The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those flushed cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had so shifted the reality of the world for me away from nature into the torrent of my sensations which I could scarcely contain), that it had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life which circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison."

I've been lucky/unlucky enough to have been in love several times in my life, so I can completely sympathize with Proust's exaltation and disappointment.  He writes, "How could it have been possible; how could the world have lasted longer than myself, since I was not lost in its vastness, since it was the world that was enclosed in me, in me whom it fell far short of filling, in me who, feeling that there was room to store so many other treasures, flung sky and sea and cliffs contemptuously into a corner."  What's that line from Hamlet, "I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."  In this case "infinite space" is bound inside of Proust.  I've felt some measure of this several times, although, typically, I think I felt it most acutely the first time I felt in love.  I was twenty and she was twenty-four, and the entire world was a droplet inside of me, but I was a droplet inside of her.  Not surprisingly, this entire experience reminds me of some of the songs on Neil Young's first album, which beautifully express the fragile emotion and tangible pain of love: If I Could Have Her Tonight, I've Been Waiting for You, What Did You Do to My Life? and I've Loved Her So Long.  Young had just "broken up" with Buffalo Springfield, so maybe there's some symmetry here - or maybe I was just listening to the album a lot during that moment (which seems pretty likely) and it's just imprinted on my heart and mind. Beyond the Proustian implications, it is a criminally overlooked album, and if not for the dreadful Last Trip to Tulsa it would be one of his best.

Note to self: use the descriptor "vertiginous whirlwind" more often.

My Year With Proust - Day 181

"My room seemed to me to have become suddenly a new place.  Of course, for a long time past, it had not been the hostile room of my first night in it.  All our lives, we go on patiently modifying the surroundings in which we live; and gradually, as habit dispenses us from feeling them, we suppress the noxious elements of colour, shape and smell which objectified our uneasiness.  Nor was it any longer the room, still with sufficient power over my sensibility, not certainly to make me suffer, but to give me joy, the well of summer days, like a marble basin in which, half way up its polished sides, they mirrored an azure surface steeped in light over which glided for an instant, impalpable and white as a wave of heat, the fleeting reflection of a cloud; nor the purely aesthetic room of the pictorial evening hours; it was the room in which I had been now for so many days that I no longer saw it.  And now I was beginning again to open my eyes to it, but this time from the selfish angle which is that of love.  I liked to feel that the fine slanting mirror, the handsome glass-fronted bookcases, would give Albertine, if she came to see me, a good impression of me.  Instead of a place of transit in which I would stay for a few minutes before escaping to the beach or to Rivebelle, my room became real and dear to me again, fashioned itself anew, for I looked at and appreciated each article of its furniture with the eyes of Albertine."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 987-988

Initially I included this section because it is another example of Proust's almost unmatched ability to recreate a scene, both through his powers of observation and mastery of imagination and language.  It also brings back a bit of a melancholy memory, which I guess is perfectly for a pretty dreary summer Vermont day.  A few days ago I posted a picture, borrowed from Google Earth, of Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, where I spent a year while on sabbatical.  I lived in a hotel, which should have been the very definition of the "place of transit," except, like Proust, I fell in love there and then it became home.  Instead of a place where I would either retreat from the world - or spend as few minutes in as possible because it emphasized my loneliness - it became a place that will always have a place in my heart.  However, there is also the tyranny of time and place, as we were essentially bound within the confines of that world and faced too many demons, both real and imagined, to try and exist together in a wider world. Or, as Proust reminds us, "In a world thronged with monsters and gods, we know little peace of mind." So, in our little contained universe we knew no monsters and gods, and thus we had plenty of peace of mind.  However, in the end those same monsters and gods that plague us so horribly also allow us to grow and come to terms with the world.  Maybe we just needed to more deliberately face them.

My Year With Proust - Day 180

   "We went back to the wood to pick up the other girls and go home together.  I knew now that I was in love with Albertine; but, alas! I did not care to let her know it.  This was because, since the days of the games with Gilberte in the Champs-Elysees, my concept of love had become different, even if the persons who whom my love was successively assigned remained almost identical.  For one thing, the avowal, the declaration of my passion to her whom I loved no longer seemed to be one of the vital and necessary stages of love, nor love itself an external reality, but simply a subjective pleasure.  And I felt that Albertine would do what was necessary to sustain that pleasure all the more readily if she did not know that I was experiencing it."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 987

So out of the troop Proust has determined that he actually does love Albertine, which we need to know because it sets up so much of the rest of the novel.  Classically, and probably wisely, he decides not to tell her because she would lose interest in him.  This has sadly been my experience more than once with women who desperately wanted me to tell them that I loved them, only to tire of the new reality once I had made that leap.  However, we've discussed this painful topic endlessly so let's let it die a quiet death.

Of more interest is Proust's own personal reasons for not saying it.  "For one thing, the avowal, the declaration of my passion to her whom I loved no longer seemed to be one of the vital and necessary stages of love, nor love itself as an external reality, but simply a subjective pleasure."  Before leaving the dying patient, maybe this helps make sense of my previous paragraph.  While I tend to groan when someone makes a distinction between loving someone and being in love, I do think there is a difference between being in love and focusing on love as a "subjective pleasure."  While a woman may tire of love, there's a much greater chance that she'll tire of a "subjective pleasure."

My Year With Proust - Day 179

   "But to a great extent our astonishment springs from the fact that the person presents to us also a face that is the same as before.  It would require so immense an effort to reconstruct everything that has been imparted to us by things other than ourselves - were it only the taste of a fruit - that no sooner is the impression received that we begin imperceptibly to descend the slope of memory and, without realising it, in a very short time we have come a long way from what we actually felt.  So that every fresh glimpse is a sort of rectification, which brings us back to what we in fact saw.  Already we no longer had any recollection of it, to such an extent does what we call remembering a person consist really in forgetting him. But as long as we can still see, as soon as the forgotten feature appears we recognise it, we are obliged to correct the straying line, and thus the perpetual and fruitful surprise which made so salutary and invigorating for me those daily outings with the charming damsels of the sea short consisted fully as much in recognision as in discovery.  When there is added to this the agitation aroused by what these girls were to me, which was never quite what I had supposed, and meant that my expectancy of our next meeting resembled not so much my expectancy the time before as the still throbbing memory of our last encounter, it will be realised that each of our excursions brought about a violent change in the course of my thoughts and not at all in the direction which, in the solitude of my own room, I had traced for them at my leisure.  That plotted course was forgotten, had ceased to exist, when I returned home buzzing like a beehive with remarks which had disturbed me and were still echoing in my brain.  Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creation, different from that which immediately preceded it, if not from them all.  For the minimum variation that is to be found in these creations is twofold.  Remembering a strong and searching glance, a bold manner, it is inevitably, next time, by an almost languid profile, a sort of dreamy gentleness, overlooked by us in our previous impression, that at the next encounter we shall be astonished, that is to say almost uniquely struck.  In confronting our memory with the new reality it is this that will mark the extent of our disappointment or surprise, will appear to us like a revised version of the reality by notifying us that we had not remembered correctly."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 978-979

Remember (no pun intended) a few posts ago when I was lamenting how I wasn't as blown away by the end of Within a Budding Grove as I had been by earlier sections of Remembrance of Things Past?  Well, this current section has rectified that problem because it is wonderful. Two short passages really jumped out to me:

"So that every fresh glimpse is a sort of rectification, which brings us back to what we in fact saw.  Already we no longer had any recollection of it, to such an extent does what we call remembering a person consist really in forgetting him."

"Every person is destroyed when we cease to see him; after which his next appearance is a new creation, different from that which immediately preceded it, if not from them all."

Do we in fact actually destroy someone as soon as we cease to see them?  As we've discussed previously, neuroscience and especially psychology seems to tell us that there are no pristine original memories.  Our memories actually only go back as far as the last time they were recalled, and doubtless every time they're accessed they're modified before being stored away again.    So I guess our original memory of the person was, by definition, destroyed a long time ago.  However, if reality is only perception, then shouldn't that person actually be more real resting comfortably in our imagination?  I guess I would have no, and thus agree with Proust, because our perception of that person, and thus our reality, is different every day, so we really are destroying that version of the person when we cease to see him.  Our memory of even that perceived version of the person is different than what we felt when they were standing right in front of us, and it will be different again once we see them again, so for all intents and purposes that person is destroyed.

I know this is not what Proust had in mind, but I can't stop reflecting back on a line from the Bhagavad Gita: "The wise grieve neither for the living nor the dead. There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we cease to exist."

My Year With Proust - Day 178

   "No doubt this astonishment is to some extent due to the fact that the other person on such occasions presents some new facet; but so great is the multiformity of each individual, so abundant the wealth of lines of face and body, so few of which leave any trace, once we are no longer in the presence of the other person, on the arbitrary simplicity of our recollection, since the memory has selected some distinctive feature that had struck us, has isolated it, exaggerated it, making a woman who has appeared to us tall a sketch in which her figure is elongated out of all proportion, or of a woman who has seemed to be pink-cheeked and golden-haired a pure 'Harmony in pink and gold,' that the moment the woman is once again standing before us, all the other forgotten qualities which balance that one remembered feature at once assail us, in their confused complexity, diminishing her height, paling her cheeks, and substituting for what we came exclusively to seek other features which we remember having noticed the first time and fail to understand why we so little expected to find them again.  We remembered, we anticipated a peacock, and we find a peony.  And this inevitable astonishment is not the only one; for side by side with it comes another, born of the difference, not now between the stylisations of memory and the reality, but between the person whom we saw last time and the one who appears to us to-day from another angle, and shows us a new aspect.  The human face is indeed, like the face of the God of some oriental theogony, a whole cluster of faces juxtaposed on different planes so that one does not see them all at once."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 977-978

So the reason why relationships fail is not that you become bored with that other person, but rather simply the clash between imagination and reality.  There is really no real other person.  Rather, there is only our perception of that other person, and since perception and memory are so inherently flawed and readily fungible the other person, and especially the memory of the other person, is what ever we consciously but probably unconsciously turn them into. The reason why absence makes the heart grow fond is that absence allows us to revel in the imagined version.  "We remembered, we anticipated a peacock, and we find a peony."  It's much harder for me to turn you into something that I desperately love and desire if you're right here with me.

"The human face is indeed, like the face of the God of some oriental theogony, a whole cluster of faces juxtaposed on different planes so that one does not see them all at once." Here is Picasso's Nude in an Armchair.  So, do we take cubism to to have a philosophical and emotional side as well as a purely artistic one?

I was walking through a Picasso exhibit in a museum overseas once (sorry to be so vague, but I've visited a lot of museums overseas, and they inevitably seem to be having Picasso exhibits; which brings us back to the chapter on museums in Freeland's But Is It Art?) and I had my first instinctual flash that maybe Picasso was a genius after all.  The walls of the exhibit were filled with quotes from the painter and one of them essentially said (and, I'll have to call into question the accuracy of my own memory here - I can't critique the validity of memory in a general sense and recognize that it relates to me as well) that the reason why he sometimes paints eyes or hands disproportionally large is that it represents reality.  If I fall in love with a woman because of her eyes then in my perception I actually see them larger.  Reality is a tricky thing.  I'm reflecting back on it because all of this is complicated by Proust's point about the multiplicity of images that make up a woman's (or anyone's) face.  It's like the old joke about an actress wanting to be photographed in a way that showed off her "good side," which might not be my perception of her "good side," which might in turn be destroyed by rotating one centimeter too far.

My Year With Proust - Day 177

"But natural history teaches us that such an organisation of animal life is indeed to be observed, and that our own life, provided we have outgrown the first phase, is no less positive as to the reality of sites hitherto unsuspected by us through which we have to pass, even though we abandon them later.  Such was for me this state of love divided among several girls at once, Divided, or rather undivided, for more often than not what was so delicious to me, different from the rest of the world, what was beginning to become so precious to me that the hope of encountering it again the next day was the greatest joy of my life, was rather the whole of the group of girls, taken as they were all together on those afternoons on the cliffs, during those wind-swept hours, upon the strip of grass on which were laid those forms, so exciting to my imagination, of Albertine, of Rosemonde, of Andree; and that without my being able to say which of them it was that made those scenes so precious to me, which of them I most wanted to love.  At the start of a new love as at its ending, we are not exclusively attached to the object of that love, but rather the desire to love from which it will presently arise (and, later on, the memory it leaves behind) wanders voluptuously through a zone of interchangeable charms - simply natural charms, it may be, gratification of appetite, enjoyment of one's surroundings - which are harmonious enough for it not to feel at a loss in the presence of any one of them.  Besides, as my perception of them was not yet fulled by familiarity, I still have the faculty of seeing them, that is to say of feeling a profound astonishment every time that I found myself in their presence."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 977

I've found the latter stages of Within a Budding Grove less moving, not that it doesn't contain some interesting segments and clearly essential foundational material.  All novels feature stretches, either intentional or unintentional, that do not fire the imagination of the reader.  Looking back on my notes in the book I find more simple vertical lines marking a section or brief notes such as "first appearance of . . ." or "Antisemitism as fashion" as compared to vertical marking lines combined with underlined passages and stars and scribbled notes such "nice metaphor - aquarium glass - fish/wealthy - later devoured" or "stupid decision not to go to Hong Kong" or "beauty + happiness vs. syntheses."  I think what I'm trying to say is that this stretch was important for moving the story along, but had fewer of those moments that immediately moved me to deep periods of self-reflection.  

Most of this section focused on Proust getting to know the troop of girls which included Albertine.  It is interesting to me that at the beginning he doesn't really know which one he loves, but that he's made up his mind that he will love one of them. It was "rather the whole of the group of girls, taken as they were all together on those afternoons on the cliffs, during those wind-swept hours, upon the strip of grass on which were laid those forms, so exciting to my imagination, of Albertine, of Rosemonde, or Andree; and that without my being able to say which of them it was that made those scenes so precious to me, which of them I most wanted to love." I always associate that more structured and almost scientific approach to love with women.  It is cruel joke that women are considered more romantic than men, because nothing is further from the truth.  When it comes to matters of the heart women are cold-hearted assassins.  Percy Sledge had it right when he sang When a Man Loves a Woman. However, it may well be that I'm just as guilty in this case of being cold-hearted.  It could also be completely true that Proust loved the moment and the place and, for that matter, the whole group, so much that he couldn't cull out the one he loved the most.  Of course, he will pick the wrong one, as is human nature.  As Flaubert reminds us, "Whatever else happens, we shall remain stupid."

Proust believed that there was an exclusivity that was central to love, but which didn't exist at the beginning or the end of a love affair. "At the start of a new love as at its ending, we are not exclusively attached to the object of that love, but rather the desire to love from which it will presently arise (and, later on, the memory it leaves behind) wanders voluptuously through a zone of interchangeable charms . . ."  This I believe is completely true.  At the beginning and end of an affair you fall back into a general desire for love as compared to love with that one person.

Discography - Week 9

We've arrived at Week 9, and our first thematic week.  Maybe we should plan on doing one every couple months, which will put us on pace for Week 17.  Should we make a gentle-person's agreement to plan for another thematic week then (doesn't matter to me, as we say in Indiana, "I don't have a dog in that fight")?  This week our theme is: Covers that are better than the original songs.

There are so many great choices this week.  Bob, who clearly lacks a moral compass (or a calculator)  went a little crazy, but he picked the theme so he gets a papal dispensation (plus, it's hard to argue with any of those choices).

Oh, and I just wanted to add that we're over two months into this and we've never had any song picked twice in the same week.  Granted, there are millions of songs, but I don't think our musical tastes are that worldly different and I thought one week there might have been an overlaps.  As we've discussed, it is still completely permissible to write a commentary on a song that has already been celebrated.  By definition each one of our responses would be different.

As always, if I've missed your email give me a nudge, and if anyone wants to include a song just send it my way and I'll update the webpage.

Bob Craigmile

Various artists

Various albums.

Los Lobos, Politician  

Jesus Christ!  This fucking song!  Any time you can beat Cream at their own game, you’re doing something.  The intro is a little riff that seems like a quick sound check, then boom the elephantine lick (that Cream actually wrote) kicks in, and THEN he fucking adds to it with a little bit of screeching work above the 12th fret and then back to the lick. The later guitar solo, probably by David Hidalgo, makes the hair on my neck stand up.  Damn.

Ryan Adams, Wonderwall 

Even Noell Gallagher admits it’s better.  So spare and spacy.

Ryan Adams, Times Like These

Didn’t think it would be possible but he did it.  I really like Foo Fighters and Dave Grohl and this is a great song by them.  But RA just completely killed it.  He has such a good and versatile voice it’s kind of amazing to listen to the variety of songs he sings.

Dwight Yoakam and Flaco Jimenez, Carmelita

Dwight was born to sing this song.  Not even Linda Ronstadt can beat this one.  It proves a country song can come from anyone and be about anything when done right.

Los Lobos, Bertha

I used to be of the opinion that The Grateful Dead were awful, until I actually listened to their songs.   Maybe it was the tie dye, maybe it was the patchouli.  Anyway, this song has such a playful feel in the Lobos’ hands it’s just incredible.  It’s hard to imagine knowing, much less loving/hating someone named Bertha these days.   Eventually I heard the tone of Garcia’s guitar correctly.  The movie about them in 1974 is incredible too.  But this cover by LL is where I first heard this song and it’s a great one.

Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

So completely obvious, I know.

Dave Mills

Original: Hurt, by Nine Inch Nails (1994)
Cover: Hurt, by Johnny Cash (2002)  

When I saw the announcement for this week's theme, I knew instantly, with Scudderian Certainty, what the right answer was. This is to say that all right-thinking individuals should agree with me that the best example of a cover that is better than the original is Johnny Cash's version of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." Cash's reworking of the NIN song powerfully demonstrates the difference age, experience, and context can make.

The original was recorded by Trent Reznor (the primary creative force and sole constant band member of NIN) when he was in his late 20's. I discovered NIN around 1990, the year after they released their first full-length album, Pretty Hate Machine. That album, but especially its most famous track, "Head Like a Hole," was my anthem during my junior year of college. Having just dropped out of an engineering program and the Air Force ROTC in order to study philosophy (much to my parents' concern), Reznor's music fit with my angsty, rage-filled sense that, while I had no idea what I would now do with my life, it was better than serving "god money." "Hurt" is a quieter track from NIN's third album, The Downward Spiral. But, quiet though it is, in comparison to other tracks, it still lashes out at the world (and the self) and still is suffused with a slightly creepy and menacing industrial aesthetic. The lyrics convey an isolated sense of pain, the feeling that no one understands one, the sense that whatever one attempts, one will just cause more pain and misunderstanding for all involved. Bottom line: the original is the music of a young man, a man who, like myself as a junior in college, hadn't really lived yet, but is full of insecurities about what life will hold.

The cover was recorded by Johnny Cash at the age of 70, one year before his death. Cash's age and experience totally transform Reznor's lyrics, moving them from the space of 20-something angst to the space of the sadness and remorse that can only be expressed by one who has truly lived, truly made mistakes, truly suffered and caused loss. Consider the line "Everyone I know goes away in the end." Said by a young man in his 20's, the line speaks to failed friendships and romances. Said by a 70-year-old man, the line speaks not only to this but also to the loss even of those with whom our relationships have not failed. But don't just listen to Cash's song. The music video is a must-see. It contains footage from Cash's own life, his relationship with June Carter, his musical career, his awards, his religion, etc. All of this footage is brilliantly arranged in the form of a vanitas painting, a tradition of still-life painting in Holland that was intended to remind its viewers of the brevity of life, the immanence of death, and the foolishness of wasting life pursuing wealth, fame, pleasure, beauty, etc. The paintings were filled with images of things like fresh fish and meat, cut fruit, arranged flowers, lighted candles, etc. Each is beautiful in its own right, but each is also already in the process of decay. In a very short time, the fish and meat will stink, the fruit will rot, the flowers will die, the candle will burn out. Cash transforms "Hurt" into a self-reflective vanitas of his own life. Powerful stuff. While I still, thankfully, have a while to go before I'm Cash's age when he recorded this song, the years since my college NIN days have made Cash's version of this song feel much more meaningful and authentic than Reznor's original, though that felt meaningful and authentic at the time.

Reznor himself was so moved by Cash's version that he said this: "I pop the video in, and wow... Tears welling, silence, goose-bumps... Wow. [I felt like] I just lost my girlfriend, because that song isn't mine anymore... It really made me think about how powerful music is as a medium and art form. I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone. [Somehow] that winds up reinterpreted by a music legend from a radically different era/genre and still retains sincerity and meaning — different, but every bit as pure."

When the original artist hears the cover and says "that song isn't mine anymore...", that's about as clear as you can get.

Mike Kelly

Dave Mills was almost right in his beautifully written post about Johnny Cash's "Hurt."  The problem though is that "Hurt" was a good song way before the Man in Black got his hands on it and this song wasn't.  

Ryan Adams, Blank Space

Before Ryan Adams covered it, Blank Space was the anthem of fleeting romances that pop up (phrasing) at the end of 9th grade and fizzle out by the 4th of July.   This trite pop cultural bon bon was part spoof of T-Swift's mediated love life and part a slightly humorous shot across the bow to potential suitors.  The video includes some subtly smart homages to Tiger Woods and other tabloid cover boys.   But here's the striking thing- I spent all last summer driving my kids around and this song came on 95 XXX in Burlington nearly every time I was in the car and the only time I thought twice about this song was when I was wondering exactly what a "lonely Starbucks lover" was.  But then last fall, the RA version dropped on a Friday morning and I woke my entire crew up with an ejaculation (I know, phrasing)  of HOLY SHIT and played this song on repeat through breakfast.   

This cover is better than its original because RA was able to imagine a teenybopper hit for what it was actually saying and (unlike me) recognize it for the genius hidden behind the auto tune and the repeated spins on pop radio.  Instead of being a soundtrack for the immature junior high hookups, instead it served as a gentle warning for the the people who really do have "a long list of ex-lovers" and know themselves well enough to understand what the other person is getting into at the onset of a hookup.   It's the song you listen to on Sunday night after she sticks around your house for most of the day after a date and you start thinking to yourself, "well, this is starting to get fun, but she has no idea....".  

Because in the Ryan Adams song, the couple isn't "young and reckless."  They aren't young, instead, they're "so goddamn reckless" but are still capable of holding out for mix of the risk, anticipation and the giving yourself over to someone else that makes the start of a relationship a kaleidoscope of emotion that's every bit as fun as pop hit with the windows down right after your 16th birthday.   

Miranda Tavares

Counting Crows, Friend of the Devil 

Pretty sure I am committing blasphemy here, but I’ve never been a Grateful Dead fan. Yes, there’s good music there, but  I don’t really dig the jam band sound for which they’re known, and I totally can’t get passed Jerry’s high, reedy vocals (which is also why I’ve never liked Neil Young; hey, if I’m going to get kicked off the blog, might as well do it in one fell swoop ;) ).  Friend of the Devil, as originally recorded by the Dead, is pretty fast-paced and up-beat, with some admittedly good guitar picking. The Dead started slowing the song down in live performances, but none that I’ve listened to comes close to the entirely new face Counting Crows put on the song. The mournful vocals (to be fair, Adam Durtiz pretty much only does mournful) are absolutely perfect for the loneliness inherent in the lyrics. The richness of the guitar and piano adds some depth and feeling sorely missing from the original version. 

I was torn between choosing the Counting Crows version or the Lyle Lovett version. Lovett’s version is much more stripped down, a couple guitars and a cello, which really highlights the loneliness (the backing vocals in the Counting Crows version detracts from that, I think). But Lovett lacks the intensity Durtiz displays. In Lovett’s version I hear too little feeling, too much acceptance of his lot in life, as though he has come out through the other side already and is stripped bare. In the Dead version I hear…jauntiness, I guess, which causes a disconcerting, overly-contrasting discord in relation to the lyrics. In the Counting Crows version, in each word, I can hear the both the wild-eyed desperation and impending resignation  that a man on the run must be feeling.

Nate Bell

Led Zepplin, When the Levee Breaks 

Many of you may have noticed by now that I really like the old bluesy styles, and often like old folk and blues songs.  You all being studious music buffs know very well that Led Zepplin stole a LOT of their source material from old blues songs to avoid any copyright issues and make boatloads of money.  Nevertheless.

When the Levee Breaks is a fairly old blues song about the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and recorded originally in 1929.  I love the Mississippi  blues style, and the original is a typical mournal dirge with slide guitar and a plaintive lament.

Led Zepplin takes this basis and adds their typical overwrought guitar, but keeps the heavy, low beat-based minor tone of the original, setting the stage for a feeling of heaving, distraught pathos.  Completely revolutionary at the time was their use of a specially recorded drum track which was mixed and compressed through 2 channels to bring out the echo they had originally created by having Bonham play the drums in a stairwell.  They then took Plant’s harmonica and mixed his harmonica echo in reverse, so that the echo came ahead of the sound.  The combined result is a ghostly, echoing, and still can nearly raise the hair on the back of one’s neck.  The ghostly, haunted quality is almost as though the spirits of those drowned in the ‘27 waters has risen to give their lament to the instruments.  The slight distortion and fuzz only add to the surreal sound of the entire track--as if the whole performance was live recorded on a phantom steamboat that had arisen from the wreck on the mighty Mississip.  This is also one instance where the higher, reedy vocals (I generally dislike) only add to the over all plaintive and soulful quality of the song, rather than a more usual gravelly rendering so common with a Delta Blues tune.  It’s a masterful work of art that takes the original far beyond what was possible, or even imagined at the time.  I would only hope the bluesmen of the early 30s would approve of phantasmagoric rendition.

Cyndi Brandenburg

Sara Bareilles, GoodbyeYellow Brick Road 

Despite how easy it would be to default to a cover of a Dylan song that's better than the original (you know the one(s)), my first instinct is to choose something performed by Ani DiFranco. She is one of my favorite artists, and she has done some amazing covers--such as “When I’m Gone,” by protest singer Phil Ochs.  Check it out.  Given my privileged liberal upbringing, Phil Ochs’ work has a surprisingly comfortable familiarity that I can’t quite justifiably place my finger on since he died when I was barely 10 years old.

But the more I think about it, in the spirit of this week’s theme, the more I feel compelled to choose an amazing cover of a really popular yet rarely reinterpreted song.  Plus, I doubt many of you have even heard of Phil Ochs.  And so Ani will have to wait another week . . . 

Instead, listen to this version of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Sara Bareilles.  Beyond the obvious—a female taking on a man’s song and reinterpreting it so as to totally own it as her own—this version made me hear the lyrics in a completely new way.  I listen to it again and again because it makes me FEEL SOMETHING, which the original Elton John version never inspired.  Equally important, it caught the attention of my 18-year-old daughter Maria, who pays attention to music in the same ways I assume we all did when we her age. She is the one who suggested it, and her insights must be important, even if we don’t know for sure why.

Gary Beatrice

Willie Nelson, Marie 

Steve Earle famously said that Townes Van Zandt was the greatest songwriter ever and Earle would stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in his cowboy boots and scream that. Of course the fact that he named his son Townes tells you something as well.

Personally I'd take Dylan, but there is no denying Towne's songwriting brilliance.

The problem was that Van Zandt had severe mental health and addiction issues, which likely contributed to his notorious impatience with the recording process. A notorious wanderer, Townes had little interest in surrounding himself with a talented band or producer and even less interest in multiple takes of his performances. In his youth he had an interesting though limited voice, but as he aged hard living took that from him as well.

But he still had his songwriting right up until his death. And "Marie", one of the saddest songs I ever heard, about a down on their luck homeless couple and their unborn child, may be his very best song. But Townes' own version was so rough that I barely noticed it until the incomparable Willie Nelson brought his voice and personality to the tune giving it the performance it deserved.

Frankly I am surprised there aren't more TVZ covers. Most of the best known covers, including the entire Steve Earle "Townes" release, are of Van Zandt's best known songs, songs that he has at least some credible performances of. But there are some deep tracks like "Marie" that could make some careers.

Dave Wallace

The Beatles, Twist and Shout

So, a cover that is superior to the original?  Lots of good possibilities.  The Dylan category alone has two classics - All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix and It's All Over Now, Baby Blue by Them (well, really Van Morrison).  The Prince category includes I Feel For You by Chaka Khan and Nothing Compares to You by Sinead O'Conner.  But I wound up going with the Beatles classic cover of the Isley Brothers' Twist and Shout (itself a re-write of their classic Shout).  Famously recorded at the end of a long session, John Lennon shouts himself hoarse as the band rips through the song.  They took a fairly standard R&B number and created one of the greatest rock and roll songs of all time. I couldn't find the original studio version on-line, but the link is to a good live version.

Dave Kelley

"She asked, are you a Christian child?  And I said, Ma'am I am tonight."

"Walking in Memphis"  Marc Cohn

Darrell Scott, Wayfaring Stranger 

My choice as the cover that exceeds the prior versions of the song is "Wayfaring Stranger" as done by one of the great criminally unknown performers of our time, Darrell Scott from Eastern Kentucky.  I had never heard of him before going on a music cruise several years ago.  I saw him multiple times on the cruise, and he blew me away on every occasion.  Fantastic singer, writer, pianist, and guitar player.  He wrote "No One Leaves Harlan Alive" and "Long Time Gone" which others have turned into hits.  He is a featured player in Steve Earle's all-star blue grass band and also played lead guitar in Robert Plant's Band of Joy.  This is a very old song covered by many including Neil on his recent Americana album.  No version I have heard touches the one done by Scott on his "Live in New York City" CD.  He is accompanied by a drummer and an upright bass player.

"I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger

I'm traveling through this world of woe

Yet there's no sickness, toil nor danger

In that fair land to which I go

I'm going there to see my Father

I'm going there no more to roam

I'm only going over Jordan

I'm only going over home" 

 "I know dark clouds will gather 'round me

I know my way is rough and steep

Yet beauteous fields lie out before me

Where God's redeemed, their vigils keep

I am going there to see my mother

She said she'd meet me when I come"

"I'll soon be free of earthly trials

this form will rest beneath the sod

I'll drop the cross of self-denial

and enter in my home with God

I'm going there to meet my Savior

He said He'd meet me when I come

I'm just going over Jordan

I'm just going over home" 

As someone raised in a deeply religious family, I believe I was taught a very kind, loving and compassionate set of morals based on faith.  Because of that, I am horrified by the militant, judgmental, ignorant and often out and out hateful brand of the faith that grabs so much attention now.  Not only do I love the performance of "Wayfaring Stranger" that I selected, I am deeply touched by the message.  My faith wanders at times, but when I listen to this song, why Ma'am I'm a Christian tonight. 

Gary Scudder

Miles Davis, Concierto de Aranjuez

Now, I know that you were all expecting me to choose Neil Young's cover of Clementine from his Americana album, which would be a noble choice because it fulfills what I would consider a fundamental rule of a great cover: it's so good, so unique and knowing, that you think that it was written by the covering band; in this case, it's seems like Clementine was designed for Crazy Horse (thrash and Drive-By Truckers level warped - who knew that song was so dark?).

However, I'm going to pick Davis' cover of Concierto de Aranjuez from the seminal album Sketches of Spain.  There has been so much written about Sketches of Spain that I don't think I could add anything even remotely insightful, so I will simply point out that it was recorded within a year of Kind of Blue.  Davis, at the height of his protean genius, quickly and effortlessly moved from recording the definitive jazz album of all time to a completely different but equally innovative and brilliant album (although my students don't agree with my view that it marks the high point of western civilization; certainly my birth between the release of the two albums put a damper on things).  Davis and Gil Evans (his close friend and collaborator) wanted to record a "Spanish record," and in the process created a fusion of jazz, classical and world music.  This piece, a re-envisioning of the adagio section of Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, opens up the album (and definitely give a listen to the original, also amazing).  I can't even imagine what people thought when they played the album for the first time, especially coming hard on the heels of albums such as Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess, and Birth of the Cool.  Davis plays trumpet and flugelhorn.  He felt that the melody was so strong that "the softer you play it the stronger it gets."  Required.