My Years With Proust - Day 386

But, after casting her eye over the two translations, my mother would have preferred that I should stick to Gallard's, albeit hesitating to influence me because of her respect for intellectual liberty, her dread of interfering with my intellectual life and the feeling that, being a woman, on the one hand she lacked, or so she thought, the necessary literary equipment, and on the other hand ought not to judge a young man's reading by what she herself found shocking.  Happening up certain of the tales, she had been revolted by the immorality of the subject and the coarseness of the expression.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 865

Proust continues to riff upon upon the thought of re-reading the Thousand and One Nights, either the Gallard or the Mardrus translations, both of which his mother had ordered.  It's interesting that his mother had been "revolted by the immorality of the subject and the coarseness of the expression."  I'm guessing the Burton translation was then clearly out of the question.  In my doubtless never to be completed manuscript of my never to be finished book on the epics I've considered whether or not I want to include a chapter on the Thousand and One Nights; at least in this first version I'm not, although I would hope to include it in the second volume, written in demand to the wild popularity of the first (he wrote, knowingly).  I mentioned yesterday that my proposed student trip to Jordan next year will be centered around the Arabian Nights, dealing with the question of how a work that is so synonymous, at least in the western mind, with the Arabic world can be, in so many ways, so utterly unrepresentative of that world and so unread in that world.  As we all know, the tales are mainly of Persian or Indian origin and it's considered pretty scandalous.  The default answer from many Muslims is that the reason that the Arabic world doesn't have an "epic," as much as we from the outside want to attribute the Arabian Nights to this region, is because the Quran stands as their epic.  It's an interesting proposition, and something I want to explore in my never to be finished manuscript to my never to be published book, or at least in my class, if Champlain doesn't cancel it.

Now, having said all that, this is the observation I find most fascinating/insightful: " . . . my mother would have preferred that I should stick to Gallard's, albeit hesitating to influence me because of her respect for intellectual liberty, her dread of interfering with my intellectual life and the feeling that, being a woman, on the one hand she lacked, or so she thought, the necessary literary equipment, and on the other hand ought not to judge a young man's reading by what she herself found shocking."  His mother is interested in his intellectual development, but is also respectful of its independence.  She also feels, and here Proust throws in the disclaimer "or so she thought," that she lacked the "necessary literary equipment" to comment on his readings.  I've been thinking a lot about my grandmother Maude, my father's mother, and how intensely intelligent she was, and how she was blocked by economic and societal limitations from pursuing her education after high school.  This is one, of many, reasons why she was so interested in my path towards my Ph.D.  Both Marcel's mother and grandmother come across as intelligent women who love culture, but obviously there is still an intellectual glass ceiling in place.

My Years With Proust - Day 385

   Calmed by my confrontation with Albertine, I began once again to live in closer intimacy with my mother.  She loved to talk to me gently about the days when my grandmother had been younger.  Fearing that I might reproach myself with the sorrows with which I had perhaps darkened the close of my grandmother's life, she preferred to turn back to the years when my first studies had given my grandmother a satisfaction which until now had always been kept from me.  We talked of the old days at Combray.  My mother reminded me that there at least I used to read, and that at Balbec I might well do the same, if I was not going to work.  I replied that, to surround myself with memories of Combray and of the charming coloured plates, I should like to re-read the Thousand and One Nights.  As, long ago at Combray, when she gave me books for my birthday, so it was in secret, as a surprise for me, that my mother now sent for both the Thousand and One Nights of Gallard and the Thousand Nights and One Night of Mardrus.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 864-865

I suppose that anyone who grew up reading it is only natural that at times of stress we re-immerse ourselves in our favorite books.  I've read books like David Copperfield or the Chess Garden many times, and I wonder if you could trace my emotional highs and lows based solely on when I read and re-read those works?   Like Marcel, there are certainly books that I associate with my childhood, although none of them are children's books per se (not that a Thousand and One Nights is a children's book, at least in its unexpurgated form).  As a young teenager I mainly remember reading Winesburg, Ohio and Sherlock Holmes and The Moon and Six Pence, although I must have read more age-appropriate books and for some reason they just didn't register.    To be fair, this may be more of a reflection of growing up in the middle of a cornfield in an age before cable TV or video games than any great statement about my intellectual curiosity.

I also find this statement from his mother interesting: "My mother reminded me that there (Combray) at least I used to read, and that at Balbec I might well do the same, if I was not going to work."  Maybe it's just our recent discussion of Marxist literary criticism in my Heroines & Heroes class, but I would propose that it's important to keep in mind that Proust is a product of a class where a life of leisure is an option (although, to be fair, aren't almost all writers products of privilege, at least intellectual privilege?).  I keep reflecting back upon the Tale of Genji, and how both stories are on one level stories of privilege, but somehow transcend that mere designation.

Finally, I should note that my wonderful friend Cyndi and I are organizing a student trip to Jordan for March 2018 in a Heroines & Heroes class where we'll be reading a selection from the Thousand and One Nights, which will force me - or maybe it's more accurate to say, enable me - to re-read a book I haven't read in depth in decades.

My Years With Proust - Day 384

   I ought to have gone away that evening and never seen her again.  I sensed there and then that in a love that is not shared - one might almost say in love - we can enjoy only that simulacrum of happiness in which a woman's good nature, or her caprice, or mere chance, respond to our desires, in perfect coincidence, with the same words, the same actions, as if we were really loved.  The wiser course would have been to consider with curiosity, to appropriate with delight, that little particle of happiness failing which I should have died without ever suspecting what it could mean to hearts less difficult to please or more highly privileged; to pretend that it formed part of a vast and enduring happiness of which this fragment only was visible to me; and - lest the next day should give the lie to this fiction - not to attempt to ask for any fresh favour after this one, which had been due only to the artifice of an exceptional moment. I ought to have left Balbec, to have shut myself up in solitude, to have remained there in harmony with the last vibrations of the voice which I had contrived to render loving for an instant, and of which I should have asked nothing more than it might never address another word to me; for fear lest, by an additional word which henceforth could not but be different, it might shatter with with a discord the sensory silence in which, as though by the pressure of a pedal, there might long have survived in me the throbbing chord of happiness.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 864

I should probably dissect this section thoroughly, and on a day when I am being pulled in less directions simultaneously I will revisit it, but let me at least take a quick stab at a couple thoughts before they disappear.

First off, as I say to often, note to self: make use of the word simulacrum in polite company more often.  Or at least say it around David Kite, because he'll certainly nod in recognition.

There is so much that is good and profound in this brief section that I feel that I am desecrating it by this morning's cursory reflection, but let me at least say this by way of starting the discussion.  I think all of us have a day that defines all relationships.  Off the top of my head I think I can easily come up with one for every serious relationship I've ever had (although it would be interesting to see if the women involved would choose the same day).  It's that day when all the fates are aligned and you think that you could never, ever be happier.  At the time you're greatest fear is that what if you were never that happy again, or, God forbid, that you would never see that person ever again.  But here's the thing, it is the happiest that you'll ever be with that person, and, in fact, every day after that fact is at best a dim reflection in a cracked and fogged mirror.  And one of the reasons why all those days is never going to be as happy is because they compare so unfavorably to that perfect day.  Maybe the answer is that it should be the last day you're ever with them.  Maybe Proust is right: "I ought to have left Balbec, to have shut myself up in solitude, to have remained there in harmony with the last vibrations of the voice which I had contrived to render loving for an instant, and of which I should have asked nothing more than it might never address another word to me; for fear lest, by an additional word which henceforth could not but be different, it might shatter with with a discord the sensory silence in which, as though by the pressure of a pedal, there might long have survived in me the throbbing chord of happiness."  While no other day can rival that one day, maybe your memory of it, which you can cherish in your heart, can rival it.

There's too much here, so I will return.

The Young Man and the Sea

I am, per usual, desperately far behind in posting pictures from foreign travel, which was sort of the point of this blog when it started ten years ago.  Recently my brand new phone gave up the ghost, and I was afraid that I had lost hundreds of pictures from Iceland (except for the ones I could have reverse engineered from Facebook [although I would have had to rejoin FB] and Twitter postings).  Happily, the cloud, which I normally roll my eyes at, saved the day.  Still, I'm scared straight and I need to get those pictures up before my own personal intellectual cloud dissipates.  Here's a nice picture of my son on our last full day in Iceland, when we ended up just bumming around the peninsula near our hostel, instead of heading much further inland - mainly because of the challenge of trying to work around four hours of daylight.  It turned out to be a fantastic day, one of my all-time favorites, and I'll get that story up soon.

Standing next to an old lighthouse and thinking about the end of the world, at least geographically.

The Magi

Just posting a great picture of my long-time friend Dave Kelley that was featured in a newspaper story back in the Nati.  This is Dave in his life as a Magistrate, or, as we will refer to him from now on, The Magi.

I have received the same look many times when he's scolded me on the totally inappropriate nature of a trade proposal in our rotisserie baseball league.

My Years With Proust - Day 383

I had before me a new Albertine, of whom I had already, it was true, caught more than one glimpse towards the end of my previous visit to Balbec, a frank, kind Albertine who, out of affection for myself, had just forgiven me my suspicions and tried to dispel them.  She made me sit down by her side on my bed.  I thanked her for what she had said to me, assuring her that our reconciliation was complete, and that I would never be harsh to her again.  I told her that she ought nevertheless to go home to dinner.  She asked me whether I was not glad to have her with me.  And drawing my head towards her for a caress which she had never given me before and which I owned perhaps to the healing of our quarrel, she drew her tongue lightly over my lips, which she attempted to force apart.  At first I kept them tight shut. "What an old spoilsport you are!" she said to me.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 863

A couple things jump to mind after reading this section.  First off, Marcel is blowing his opportunity at make-up sex, and we know that the only thing better than make-up sex is prison breakout sex.

More importantly, this section reveals something key about Marcel: for all of his sophistication in many ways he's a classic man who is dealing with the classic virgin/whore dichotomy that drives so many women crazy.  This is the same Marcel who has visited houses of assignation and who openly groped the serving girl in that cheap restaurant, but now he finds himself flummoxed because Albertine tries to shove her tongue in his mouth.  Why?  Simple, because he loves Albertine or he may love her or he fears that me may love her.  If she were a woman that he didn't know then he'd welcome her shoving her tongue down his throat, but he's now placed her in a different category and that whorish act is no longer acceptable.  And, certainly, it doesn't go one way.  Women can be equally at fault on that front; the depths of casual depravity to which they will happily explore when they are a girlfriend or a mistress would horrify their fiancee or wife avatars.

Discography - Week 45

Yes, we've reached Week 45 in our year-long Discography music discussion, which, even with my incredibly stunted Hoosier-driven sense of math, means we have less than two months left.  It's difficult to believe, but in turn makes me cherish these weekly discussions all the more.

Gary Beatrice

Johnny Cash, I Hung My Head

I'm going to let your collective bad moods effect me one more time but I'm telling you that, in the immortal words of Elvis Costello, next week I Get Happy.

I am taking a risk listing an American Records era Johnny Cash song because I can't possibly write comments as insightful as Dave Mills did with Hurt. Ultimately, however, I could not go a year without recognizing I Hung My Head.

Folsom Prison is classic Cash. One of my favorites, one of everybody's favorites. But even though Cash shot a man just to watch him die, and then he hangs his head to cry, his voice betrays that he is still a man of defiance and swagger. Not so on l Hung My Head. Here when he shoots down a lone rider, again for no apparent reason, he lives out his remaining dies with horrifying guilt. I submit that this is what regret sounds like.

Dave Wallace

Bruce Springsteen - Land of Hopes & Dreams

And for my last Bruce song, something more hopeful.  The greatest "late-period" Springsteen song (and a Top 5 all-time Bruce song for me), Land of Hopes and Dreams captures much of the Springsteen philosophy and mythology.  His anthem about "saints and sinners" provides much needed optimism about our future right now:

Leave behind your sorrows

Let this day be the last

Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine

And all this darkness past

Big wheels roll through fields

Where sunlight streams

Oh meet me in a land of hope and dreams

Phillip Seiler

Sure on This Shining Night

I had a ninth grade biology teacher who allowed me and a few friends to lunch in his classroom rather than deal with the hell that is the High School cafeteria circa 1983. Mr. Phoebus had a turntable in his cabinets and would play classical music while we ate, chatted, and generally tried to pretend we were way more adult and sophisticated then we were. He had a preference for Pavarotti. My father also had some classical music that I had grown up listening to. I asked Mr. Phoebus if he liked the only name I could remember from my dad’s collection: James Galway. He responded he liked the flutist but that there was no substitute for the power of the human voice. 

It took years before I understood what he said that day. And my song this week is one of the purest expressions of his truth. Sure on this Shining Night by Morten Lauridsen is a modern choral piece written in 2005. It has quickly become a staple of choral societies and High School choruses (thankfully, usually the select choirs.) The text is a James Agee poem which I include in its entirety. 

“Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground. 
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand'ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.” -Agee 

It is a life goal to be part of a chorus that sings this stunningly beautiful piece.

Dave Kelley

"Ah, there's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars wouldn't fix."  Tom Waits

"They say I have never had any hits and am difficult to work with like those are bad things."  TW

I know we post about songs and not entire records, and being a compliant eldest child I will stick to that format.  Not before suggesting that we would all profit greatly by sitting in a recliner in the dark with multiple pours of your favorite hard liquor and listening to Tom Waits' masterpiece "Rain Dogs" from beginning to end.

Waits voice is unique in many ways.  His singing voice sounds like he has been smoking unfiltered cigarettes, drinking Irish whiskey, and gargling glass since he was three.  His lyrics/poetry have their origins in many areas of music but sound like no one else could possibly have written them.  To me he is part poet laureate of fever dreams, part resurrected vaudeville singer, part the bard of desolation row, and part alien sent to fuck with our minds.

I narrowed my selections this week to two songs off of "Raindogs."

"Downtown Train"  Tom Waits

Rod Stewart has recorded many awesome songs, but his cover of this one both sucks and blows.  The orifginal on the other hand is a magnificent raw song about longing and desire.

Despite the fact that the singer is all decked out and "shining like a new dime" he has not been successful in winning the heart of th one he loves.  He is dismissive of all of the other Brooklyn girls he sees on the downtown train.  "They're just thorns without the rose."  If only "I was the one, you chose to beyour only one."  The delivery definitely gives one the sense this is never going to happen.  No "Pretty Woman" moment here where the girl turns and stops walking towards him.

"Time"  Tom Waits

I find this to be one of the haunting and beautiful melodies in music with great vocals and instrumentaton.  I do not know what the lyrics are about necessarily but still find them amazingly poetic.

"The things I can't remember,

tell the things I can't forget

that history puts a saint in every dream."

I heartily recommend a close listen.   

Gary Scudder

Bill Evans, Waltz for Debby

I know I've said this before, but when we began this journey almost a year ago it never occurred to me how much jazz music I would include, and thus, I guess, how important jazz is to me.  That said, as I've admitted, I have a pretty pedestrian sense of the art form, best shown by my slavish devotion to Miles Davis and Bill Evans; not that they're not geniuses (a term I don't throw around lightly, by the way) but because I think they're more default settings.  I've always liked Bill Evans, which makes the title of my favorite album of his, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, a nice fit.  Over the years I've grown to love his music very deeply.  As I've said many times, he seems to play notes that only he hears - or, to put it another way, he brings out notes on the piano that others can't find (which I think is probably true of all great musicians, no matter what instrument they play).  This week I'd like to talk about another of my favorite pieces, Waltz for Debby.  I'm including the version from his album of the same name, although it made its initial appearance in an embryonic form on his first album, New Jazz Conceptions.  The Waltz for Debby album is drawn from a legendary live recording with his best trio from the Village Vanguard, made even more famous by the tragic death of bassist Scott LaFaro in a car wreck a week after the recording.  The death of his friend crushed Evans and he went into seclusion for a while.  You can buy either the Sunday at the Village Vanguard or the Waltz for Debby album, they're both drawn from the same session; essentially I guess it depends how much you love bass.  The former, as an homage to his friend, was mastered by Evans to play up the bass slightly, and the latter is more like the original sound.  They're both wonderful.  For some reason this song always reminds me of Dave Kelley, although we've never talked about it, and, in fact, I'm not certain that he's ever heard it before.  Evans wrote the song for his niece, and it appeared in a minute and eighteen second version on his first album, and then he expanded it on the later album - an approach I wish more artists would take (I guess they do in live recordings, but it's an interesting thought experiment because it would show how you've developed, both musically and intellectually/emotionally, over the years).  Anyway, I know how Dave dotes on his niece (and his nephew, for that matter), and it sounds like the gift he would give her if he could.

My Years With Proust - Day 382

It is moreover the property of love to make us at once more distrustful and more credulous, to make us suspect the loved one, more readily than we should suspect anyone else, and be convinced more easily by her denials.  We must be in love before we can care that all women are not virtuous, which is to say before we can be aware of the fact, and we must be in love too before we can hope, that is to say assure ourselves, that some are.  It is human to seek out what hurts us and then at once to seek to get rid of it.  Statements that are capable of so relieving us seem all too readily true: we are not inclined to cavil at a sedative that works. Besides, however multiform that person we love may be, she can in any case present to us two essential personalities according to whether she appears to us as ours, or as turning her desires elsewhere.  The first of these personalities possesses the peculiar power which prevents us from believing the reality of the second, the secret remedy to heal the sufferings that this latter has caused us.  The beloved object is successively the malady and the remedy that suspends and aggravates it.  Doubtless I had long been conditioned, by the powerful impression made on my imagination and my faculty for emotion by the example of Swann, to believe in the truth to what I feared rather than of what I should have wished.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 862-863

Note to self: use the word cavil more in polite company, but only if I want to annoy people.

Proust tells us, "It is human to seek out what hurts us and then at once to seek to get rid of it."  And why do we do this?  I believe that it is true, but I suspect that it would take a far greater mind than my own (which is not a particularly exclusive club) to sort that out, and if someone did it would bring about an end to almost all literature.  Maybe it's the desire to do the impossible, in this case to make the unhappy woman happy.  I'm sure over the years I've paraphrased Milan Kundera's brilliant observation that the surest way to get a woman into bed is through her sadness.  However, I wonder if it actually works the other way around as well; the surest way for her to get us into bed is through her sadness.

My Years With Proust - Day 381

But she assured me that she bore me, at least, no resentment.  "If it had been true, I would have told you.  But Andree and I both loathe that sort of thing.  We haven't reached out age without seeing women with cropped hair who behave like men and do the things you mean, and nothing revolts us more."

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 862

Albertine kicks back against Marcel's comment, defending herself against his accusation that she is involved in a lesbian relationship with Andree.  Her words are strikingly similar to those Andree herself spoke during the incident featuring Bloch's niece (and her scandalous affair with the actress).  So, if nothing else, they have their story straight.  I find Albertine's description of "women with cropped hair who behave like men and do the things you mean . . ." very interesting, and it speaks volumes about societal expectations for women and their appearance at the time.

My Years With Proust - Day 380

Having relinquished for my benefit that remote hour which she spent without me, among her own people, Albertine was giving it to me; I might make what use of it I chose.  I finally made bold to tell her what had been reported to me about her way of life, and said that notwithstanding the profound disgust I felt for women tainted with that vice, I had not given it a thought until I had been told the name of her accomplice, and that she could readily understand, loving Andree as I did, the pain that this had caused me.  It would have been more astute perhaps to say that other women had also been mentioned but that they were of no interest to me. But the sudden and terrible revelation that Cottard had made to me had struck home, had lacerated me, just as it was, complete in itself without any accretions.  And just as, before that moment, it would never had occurred to me that Albertine was enamoured of Andree, or at any rate could find pleasure in caressing her, if Cottard had not drawn my attention to their posture as they waltzed together, so I had been incapable from that idea to the idea, so different for me, that Albertine might have, with women other than Andree, relations which could not even be excused by affection.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 861-862

Marcel continues his argument with Albertine in regards to the rumors of his sexuality, and one is left to wonder if he is jealous of her or of Andree or simply of the fact that any woman, anywhere, would choose another woman over him.  Marcel confesses, "I finally made bold to tell her what had been reported to me about her way of life, and said that notwithstanding the profound disgust I felt for women tainted with that vice, I had not given it a thought until I had been told the name of her accomplice, and that she could readily understand, loving Andree as I did, the pain that this had caused me,"  As we've discussed before, how much of this is just vanity, taking the opportunity to slip into a God-like status that somehow justifies criticizing someone else's life, but more appropriately justifies our own inflated sense of self.

My Years With Proust - Day 379

However, in that rhythmical oscillation which leads from a declaration to a quarrel (the surest, the most effectively perilous way of forming by opposite and successive movements a knot which will not be loosened and which attaches us firmly to a person), in the midst of the movement of withdrawal which constitutes one of the two elements of the rhythm, of what uses is it to analyze further the refluences of human pity, which, the opposite of love, though springing perhaps unconsciously from the same cause, in any springing perhaps unconsciously from the same cause, in any case produce the same effects? When we count up afterwards the sum of all that we have done for a woman, we often discover that the actions prompted by the desire to show that we love her, to make her love us, to win her favours, bulk scarcely larger than those due to the human need to repair the wrongs that we do to the loved one, from a mere sense of moral duty, as thought we did not love her.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 860-861

First off, note to self: use the word refluence more in polite company.

Secondly, as I've proposed on this blog previously, one of my regrets in my failed first marriage (well, as I've said to my ex-wife, it you were together and looked after each other for close to a quarter century I have trouble calling it it a total failure) is that I didn't fight enough.  Instead, I either withdrew (still one of my failings) or I just tried to make things right and get through the day.  Re-reading this passage from Proust made me think of blacksmiths (and my ex-student and friend Andrew Smith who has taken up blacksmithery as a hobby) and how they work metal, constantly heating it and beating it and then re-heating it, with the result that the resulting piece is much stronger and longer-lasting.  Maybe this is what arguments, or, at least, in Proust's words, the "rhythmical oscillation", do: they strengthen the relationship by forging and reforging it.  So, avoiding arguments doesn't prolong the relationship; rather, it just leaves it fragile.  Why do I think of these things in my late 50s?  This might have proven valuable information when I was married.  Stupid Proust.  Actually, I'm the stupid one for reading the first couple volumes of Remembrance of Things Past so casually two decades ago.

Discography - Week 44

And we've reached Week 44 of our year-long Discography music discussion.  I'm not saying that we're still pissed off about Trump and that we're still depressed, but we are starting off with a World War I poem . . .

In honor of the esteemed Dave Kelley, but more generally as an homage to life, death and memory:

"Dulce Et Decorum Est"
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling.
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plungers at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent from some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Gary Beatrice

My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges

"It ain't evil if it don't hurt anybody."

Is Jim James a hippy or a libertarian?

I don't know and I don't care, at least 2/3 of the way through when James' falsetto gives way to the fantastic instrumental break / speed up. To me MMJ is all about the sound. And "Evil Urges", with its funk/ soft rock / disco/ rock 'n roll mash up, delivers.

Dave Wallace

Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad

Originally the title track of a largely acoustic album, Springsteen revived The Ghost of Tom Joad with an incendiary live version featuring Tom Morello on guitar and guest vocals.  They then recorded a studio version for the High Hopes album.  Their version only amped up the the original's anger and rage at our country's amnesia of the neglected and abused.  And, of course, quoting Tom Joad's famous speech is guaranteed to warm the cockles of the heart of anyone who loves Grapes of Wrath.

Kathy Seiler

Nikka Costa - So Have I For You 

My newer playlists are getting a little stagnant so I've gone back to some albums I haven't listened to in a while. Nikka Costa isn't terribly well known as a singer but she's got a funk/soul/blues vibe and some great lyrics to her songs. This week's selection is from her "Everybody Got Their Something" album from 2001. She hasn't seemed to do much musically in the last several years.

This song expresses how the current state of affairs of our country makes me feel, which is pissed off and subjected to the dominating views of a bunch of idiotic middle-aged white men (no offense to the readers intended, I'm not generalizing to anything other than the GOP). It seems there is backward movement on every front right now; immigration, environmental issues, vaccination attitudes, women's reproductive rights (I am NOT a "host", Oklahoma)... shall I go on?  The song expresses the feelings of constantly being subjected to someone else's rules and has some lovely analogies in it, including my favorite: 

"Just like sea has spent eternity at the mercy of the moon, so have I for you"  

To its credit, the song has a message of rising above the subjugation and choosing to be positive, both in lyrics and musically at one point, where it starts to remind me of songs from the 60's. I haven't managed to channel that positivity yet, but maybe if I put the song on replay I'll manage it.

Mike Kelly

Gravity's Gone -- Drive by Truckers 

Earlier in the week, Scudder reported that some members of this community think Mike Cooley is only the third-best songwriter in Drive By Truckers. This is patently false.  This bad hombre can turn a phrase and is probably the only person profiled on this discography that has coined a phrase in Urban Dictionary. Here- look.

Even though this should be enough to settle this nonsense, let's take a look at a classic Mike Cooley verse from this song:  

"Those little demons ain't the reasons for the bruises on your soul you've been neglecting
You'll never lose you're mind as long as you're heart always reminds you where you left it
And don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming
If you were supposed to watch you're mouth all the time I doubt you're eyes would be above it"

So there's a lot here. One of the things about the Ever South is that rarely do people come right out and say what they mean and so when it happens, it's refreshing and surprising and mostly leads to good things.  MC knows this and wrote a whole verse about it in this song of excellence.  It speaks to how he's the whole region's wise big brother whose advice you don't necessarily always want, but always need.  From songs like Surrender Under Protest which tells hard truths about the confederate flag to songs like Ghost to Most which reminds people to be conscious of the fact we all have our own shit to attend to, Mike Cooley sees it the way it ought to be seen.  

He's that friend who you take to breakfast the day after a night's worth of bad choices and helps you maintain perspective. He's that rock star I could teach in Rhetoric I about concisely saying original things and he's easily the best songwriter in the DBT.  

Dave Kelley

Let me begin with two warnings.  This is very stream of consciousness and contains not one, not two, but three songs.

My late father saw combat action in Europe in the Second World War.  One of my most prized possessions is a bunch of letters he wrote home to his parents while overseas.  Recently I spent an evening in my recliner with several pours of bourbon reading a number of the letters.  It is odd in a good way to read such letters written by your father more than fifteen years before you were born.  I recognize aspects of the man I knew growing up, but other parts of his writing are from a version of the man that was but a shadow by the time that I came into being.  That propelled me to ruminate about who we are.  Our twenty year old self, our forty year old self, our fifty four year old self.......?  Or are we an amalgam of all of our selves.  Methinks that is a subject better left to a Scudder class exercise than my superficial ass.  

The lunatic currently occupying the Oval Office certainly has the ability to drag our nation into at least one foreign war.  He and some of his team share the same vision of the world as a dark, dangerous, and evil place that jihadists have.  Last weekend I pulled into the grocery store parking lot and saw a woman who appeared to be in her fifties emerging from her car.  On her car was a bumper sticker that listed he name of a male, the fact that he was a Marine, and writing indicated that he had been "deployed to heaven" several years ago.  I can only guess that it was his Mom.  She also appeared very sad.  Now maybe she was sad because she had a headache, recently been laid off, or had had an argument with her husband a few hours before.  I of course leapt to the assumption that she was sad because her boy had been killed overseas.  I instantly got choked up and needed a minute to compose myself before getting out of my car.   

All of the above led to my selections this week.

"Momma Bake aPie."    Written by Tom T. Hall.  Recording by Drive By Truckers".

Tom T. Hall is a criminally underrated songwriter IMHO.  He wrote this song during the Vietnam War about a young man who has lost his legs in combat flying home to reunite with his family.  The fact the he attempts humor and tries to be nonchalant only makes it more powerful to me.

"Momma bake a pie

Daddy kill a chicken

Your son is coming home

11:35 Wednesday Night."

"Momma will be crying and Daddy's gonna say

Son, did they treat you good?

My uncle will be drunk and he'll say

Boy they're doing some real great things with wood."

"The War"  Lucero

Parts of this song remind me of things my Dad told me about the war.  Other parts are the point of view of a man very different than my dad.  This is an autobiographical song about the writer's grandfather.

"Three times I made sergeant

I'm not that kind of man

And pretty much as quick as I could

I'd get busted back to private again

Cause taking orders never suited me

Giving them out was much worse

I could not stand to get my friend killed

so I took care of myself first"

I'd be no guest at the table of the Lord

His food was not to be mine

Cause I cursed his name every chance that I could

And I reckon that's why I'm still alive."

"With a Memory Like Mine"  Darrell Scott. 

Told not from the point of view of a soldier but instead of a father waiting for a train to return the body of his son killed at war.

"In a little country graveyard

on a dark and dreary day

They laid a flag upon the casket

and the casket in the grave

I couldn't stand it any longer

And I knew not how to pray

I cried Oh Lord I hate to leave him

All alone beneath that clay

I can see him as a baby

I can hear him call my name

I can feel him under fire

And I see him rising from the flames"

I am not a parent, but this song reduces me to a puddle of goo whenever I hear it.

To end, I would highly recommend reading "Dulce Et Decorum Est".  It is a great poem written by Wilfred Owen who served in WWI.  The fact that he was killed in action before the war ended only adds to its power.

Gary Scudder

This post was inspired by the esteemed Gary Beatrice, who has forgotten more about music than I will ever know.  He pointed out a few weeks ago how Mike Cooley has grown as a singer/songwriter for the Drive-By Truckers, especially after Jason Isbell left the band.  I think he's always been a really good songwriter and I think he's becoming a great songwriter.  Mike Kelly and I had one of the great "Dude!"/bromance/hug-it-out moments at the Drive-By Truckers concert when they played Marry Me, one of my favorite songs and I one I promoted months ago.  So, with this in mind, I'd like to talk about two Cooley songs:

Drive-By Truckers, Surrender Under Protest and Primer Coat

I'd argue that, as much as I love Patterson Hood, it's actually Cooley who has written the best songs on the last two albums.  A lot has been said about Surrender Under Protest, and rightfully so, and it was my pre-concert pick to start the DBT set (my son correctly picked Ramon Casiano, in itself another great Cooley song).  It takes a talented (and ballsy) songwriter to take a line like "compelled but not defeated" from the Southern Lost Cause mythology, and turn it upside down and make it an anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement - and then Cooley takes a step back and reflects how we sadly insist on always being the "other's other."  English Oceans, their previous album, is an oddly overlooked DBT album, and Cooley's Primer Coat has quickly become one of my favorite songs.  It deals with another Lost Cause: life.  Now, understand that I'm not waving a white flag, and my friends will tell you that I kick back as hard as anyone.  Instead, I guess my point is that like the original Lost Cause, life is shaped as much by the mythology of a stolen victory, in this case it's a man whose youth and vitality and relevance are stolen by the passing of time, emphasized by a wedding (as it often is).  In this case we're really talking about two weddings, that of his daughter coming up and the memory of his own.  His wife, probably because women are more in tune with the constant flow of life and death, takes it much better. "It comes to women and they survive but when the same comes to men/ Someone comes for their babies, something dies there and then."

I love the description of the girl in the parking lot, and it's classic Cooley:

"Slinging gravel in the parking lots and looking tough on the hood
A girl as plain as primer coat leaves nothing misunderstood
Her mother and I through trembling lips, a steady hand on his own
The future of every rebel cause, when all the fighting is gone."

It's only after a few listenings that you realize that there are generations crossing in this song, and that the "girl as plain as primer coat" could either be the man's wife or his own daughter. And here's the thing, primer coat may be plain, but without it the paint job doesn't last as long.  So the song is really told from several perspectives, and it reflects on an upcoming wedding but also on the passing of time.

"My sister's marrying in the spring and everything will be fine
Mama's planning the wedding, Daddy's planning on crying
She's slipping out of her apron strings, you'd best leave him be
He's staring through his own taillights and gathering speed."

As I stumble, "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed," towards my 60s, I appreciate the line, "He's staring through his own taillights and gathering speed."

Yes, the "future of every rebel cause, when all the fighting is gone."

Cyndi Brandenburg

Here is one more....it is not about DBT in general or Mike Cooley in particular, even though I'm a fan despite that unfortunate phrase he coined (and I witnessed that "dude!"/bromance/hug-it-out moment, which was truly a beautiful thing to behold--talk about scattered moments of joy).  

When in doubt, Wilco always works.

Wilco, How to FightLoneliness 

Sometimes, adulthood feels dreary even when life is arguably pretty great and contains moments of joy scattered all over the place.   The reality that this is what we get, that what appears so under control is actually a ruse for how much is out of our control, can be downright depressing.  Plus, Donald Trump sure isn't helping matters.  He actually takes that sense of things being out of control from the self-indulgent to the "holy shit this world's truly going to bloody hell" level.  But driving home from work yesterday, I noticed that the feeling that set in wasn't about any of that.  It was actually simpler, predicated on something more basic. It was loneliness, which is weird, given the crowd of smiling faces and the room full of love I had literally just left behind.

The constructs of contemporary American adult life naturally lead this way, I suppose.  And with maturity and responsibility, we smile, and join in, and keep at it, because running recklessly away or driving off into the distance doesn't work.  What was once overt teen angst morphs into something subtler and deeper--a loneliness that we can try to fight, but that in the end, we just have to learn to live with.

Phillip Seiler

Everything But the Girl “Missing”

I think you would be hard pressed to write a more brilliant lyric than “And I miss you/ like the deserts miss the rain”. At first, it seems so obvious and simplistic (junior high poetry!) Of course the deserts miss the rain. The absence of rain is what makes a desert a desert! But then, you start to see the brilliance of this little phrase. How do deserts miss rain? Do they long for that which never comes? Is it momentary joy in between long droughts of longing? Do the deserts resent the rain for staying away? Is it all just echoes and faint memories of what was?

And then to have it sung by the incomparable Tracey Thorn. Oh there is a voice full of crystal clear longing or despair or mystery or all of these. And just when you can’t imagine Ben Watt’s accompaniment getting much better at capturing the yearning and the loss? Moment 2:24, the music begins to fall away. First the guitar, bass and drums, then the strings (except for a beautiful, diminishing echo of what was last played), until it is just Thorn and the synth. Will the song fade away, fall apart, turn to dust? No. Everything returns and life crashes back in. Or maybe the pain returns or the longing fails to subside into acceptance.

You, dear listener get to decide. It’s a Rorschach blot in musical form.  

(If you have never heard their cover of Only Living Boy In New York, you can fix that here.

My Years With Proust - Day 378

She looked so sweet, so wistfully docile, as though her whole happiness depended on me, that I could barely restrain myself from kissing - with almost the same kind of pleasure that I should have had in kissing my mother - this new face which no longer presented the lively, flushed mien of a cheeky and perverse kitten with its little pink tip-tilted nose, but seemed, in the plenitude of its crestfallen sadness, moulded in broad, flattened, dropping slabs of pure goodness.  Leaving aside my love as thought it were a chronic mania that had no connexion with her, putting myself in her place, I let my heart melt at the sight of this sweet girl, accustomed to being treated in a friendly and loyal fashion, whom the good friend that she might have supposed me to be had been pursuing for weeks past with persecutions which had at last arrived at their culminating point.  It was because I placed myself at a standpoint that was purely human, external to both of us, from which my jealous love had evaporated, that I felt for Albertine that profound pity, which would have been less profound if I had not loved her.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 860

"I thus appeared at one and the same time to be apologising to her, as for a want of courtesy, for this inability to begin loving her again, and to be seeking to make her understand the psychological reasons for that incapacity as thought they had been peculiar to myself."  This sentence is from the page before, as Marcel and Albertine are discussing their relationship, and he is trying to explain to her, and to himself, and to the universe, why he doesn't and can't love her again.  As someone once told me in a similar situation, "yeah, and how's that going for you?"  As they are talking Marcel finds that Albertine is transforming in front of him, "this new face which no longer presented the lively, flushed mien of a cheeky and perverse kitten with its little pink tip-tilted nose, but seemed, in the plenitude of its crestfallen sadness, moulded in broad, flattened, dropping slabs of pure goodness." He finds that his jealous love "had evaporated," and instead he "felt for Albertine that profound pity, which would have been less profound if [he] had not loved her."

I also find it interesting that he writes, "that I could barely restrain myself from kissing - with almost the same kind of pleasure that I should have had in kissing my mother - this new face . . ."  Many times I've talked about one of my favorite books, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which, as all right-thinking individuals know, is the greatest American novel.  In the wonderful chapter "Death," which I often have my students read, the main protagonist, as much as the novel has a main protagonist, reflects upon the death of his mother, and how her unexpected passing had caused him to have to cancel a date with a woman he loved, or thought he loved, and it annoys him.  He has this thought while sitting in the room with his shrouded mother, and he has this thought that not only is she not dead (pretty common) but that she is actually vibrant and young beneath the sheets.  The result is a wonderful and unsettling psycho-sexual moment worthy of Freudian psychology, which, to be fair, was at it's peak when Anderson was writing - but which also fits in beautifully with this comment from Proust (writing at about the same time).  Maybe this all makes sense, at least to me, in that it proves, not that Marcel loves Albertine, but rather that he doesn't love her.  It seems to me that Marcel loved his grandmother unconditionally, but that, while he loved his mother, he always felt cut off from her love (wow, let's talk about Freudian) or at least that he never had enough time or attention from her (going back to that extraordinary scene at the beginning of the novel where he, as a child, waits in the room for his mother to sneak up to see him).  Isn't his relationship with Albertine a mirror of his relationship with his mother?  Aren't they both relationships which are unfulfilling and maddeningly just out of touch, and which are never truly consummated?

Zanzibar Again? and again

Sometimes I reflect upon the words of my wonderful friend Sarah Cohen, who one time opined (delivering the lines with a mixture of affection and exasperation), "You know who has your life?  No one has your life!"  I don't think my life is as dramatic as she suggests, but I have been very fortunate (although, I will add that I can't remember too many times when anyone actually just handed me something; it may pain me to admit this, but I've worked really hard - although, as my friend Debi would propose, my marginal success is mainly based on being tall).  I mention this simply because I'm heading back to Zanzibar again - and then again.  We're currently interviewing students for a unique year-long interdisciplinary class that we've cooked up, which will include a two week trip to Dar Es Salaam and Zanzibar (including Pemba) during our winter break.  Last year's trip was so amazing that we decided to just blow it up - if one class was fantastic, then why not two?  If one week was extraordinary, why not two?  The logic seems essentially flawless.  By way of prep we're heading back in May for a week, which we're in the middle of planning.  So, by next January I'll be strolling around Stone Town for a fourth time, which doesn't even make sense.

I may be crazy, but I have this suspicion that the beach in Zanzibar will be more pleasant in January than the shore of Lake Champlain in Vermont.

My Years With Proust - Day 377

Why should chance have brought it about, when she is simply an accident placed in the path of our surging desires, that we should ourselves be the object of the desires that she feels?  And so, while feeling the need to pour out to her all those sentiments, so different from the merely human sentiments that our neighbour inspires in us, those highly specialised sentiments which are those of lovers, after having taken a step forward, in avowing to the one we love our passion for her, our hopes, we are overcome at once by the fear of offending her, and ashamed too that the language we have used to her was not fashioned expressly for her, that it has served us already, will serve us again for others, that if she does not love us she cannot understand us, and that we have spoken in that case with the lack of taste and discretion of a pedant who addresses an ignorant audience in subtle phrases which are not for them; and this fear and shame provoke the counter-rhythm, the reflux, the need, if only by first drawing back, hotly denying the affection previously confessed, to resume the offense and regain respect and domination; the double rhythm is perceptible in the various periods of a single love affair, in all the corresponding periods of similar love affairs, in all those people who self-analysis outweighs their self-esteem.  If it was however somewhat more forcefully accentuated than usual in this speech which I was now making to Albertine, this was simply to allow me to pass more rapidly and more vigorously to the opposite rhythm which would be measured by my tenderness.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 858

I think this passage exists somewhere between Neil Young's I Believe in You and the Drive-By Truckers' Pauline Hawkins.  What is the logic of love?  If Proust is to believed, at least at that moment, precious little: "Why should chance have brought it about, when she is simply an accident placed in the path of our surging desires, that we should ourselves be the object of the desires that she feels?"  There is also a shame and remorse in Proust's words as he reflects on the dishonesty of love and desire: "we are overcome at once by the fear of offending her, and ashamed too that the language we have used to her was not fashioned expressly for her, that it has served us already, will serve us again for others . . ." Every single one of us, if we have a shred of honesty and self-knowledge, will cringe at that line.

My Years With Proust - Day 376

Albertine incited Andree to actions which, without going very far, were perhaps not altogether innocent; pained by this suspicion, I would finally succeed in banishing it.  No sooner was I cured of it than it revived under another form.  I had just seen Andree, with one of those graceful gestures that came naturally to her, lay her head lovingly on Albertine's shoulder and kiss her on the neck, half shutting he eyes; or else they had exchanged a glance; or a remark had been made by somebody who had seen them going down together to bathe: little trifles such as habitually float in the surrounding atmosphere where the majority of people absorb them all day long without injury to their health or alteration of their mood, but which have a morbid effect and breed fresh suffering in a nature predisposed to receive them.  Sometimes even without my having seen Albertine, without anyone having spoken to me about her, I would suddenly call to mind some memory of her with Gisele in a posture which had seemed to me innocent at the time but was enough now to destroy the peace of mind that I had managed to recover; I had no longer any need to go and breathe dangerous germs outside - I had, as Cottard would have said, supplied my own toxin.  I thought then of all that I had been told about Swann's love for Odette, of the way in which Swann had been tricked all his life.  Indeed, when I come to think of it, the hypothesis that made me gradually build up the whole of Albertine's character and give a painful interpretation of every moment of a life that I could not control in its entirety, was the memory, the rooted idea of Mme Swann's character, as it had been described to me.  These accounted contributed towards the fact that, in the future, my imagination played with the idea that Albertine might, instead of being the good girl that she was, have had the same immorality, the same capacity for deceit as a former prostitute, and I thought of all the sufferings that would in that case have been in store for me if I had happened to love her.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 832

Marcel, despite his earlier protestations that he was not a jealous person, is certainly suffering over Albertine.  One wonders how much of this is a deliberate attempt on Albertine's part to inflict pain on him.  Proust tells us, "I had just seen Andree, with one of those graceful gestures that came naturally to her, lay her head lovingly on Albertine's shoulder and kiss her on the neck, half shutting he eyes; or else they had exchanged a glance; or a remark had been made by somebody who had seen them going down together to bathe . . ."  If these are unconscious actions on the part of Albertine and Andree then they are remarkably self-confident or largely oblivious to the world around them, and especially the pain that they were causing Marcel.  All of this makes me think that they are consciously doing their best to inflict pain, although, as we've seen, he's hardly blameless and not above treating Albertine fairly shabbily and provoking arguments.  As we know, once jealousy takes over then it seldom ends gracefully, and Marcel even finds himself reflecting back on "some memory of her with Gisele in a posture which had seemed to me innocent at the time but was enough now to destroy the peace of mind that I had managed to recover."  He even begins to compare his situation to that of Swann and his long-standing struggles with Odette, and fears that he, too, will end up "tricked all his life."

My Years With Proust - Day 375

But Albertine had at once turned back towards me a gaze which nevertheless remained strangely still and dreamy. Mlle Bloch and her cousin having finally left the room after laughing very loud and uttering the most unseemly cries, I asked Albertine whether the little fair one (the one who was the friend of the actress) was not the girl who had won the prize the day before in the procession of flowers. "I don't know," said Albertine, "is one of them fair? I must confess they don't interest me particularly, I never looked at them.  Is one of them fair?" she asked her friends with a detached air of inquiry.  When applied to people whom Albertine passed every day on the front, this ignorance seemed to me too extreme to be entirely genuine.  "They didn't appear to be looking at us much either," I said to Albertine, perhaps (on the assumption, which I did not however consciously envisage, that Albertine loved her own sex) to free her from any regret by pointing out to her that she had not attracted the attention of these girls and that, generally speaking, it is not customary even for the depraved of women to take an interest in girls whom they do not know. "They weren't looking at us?" Albertine replied without thinking.  "Why, they did nothing else the whole time." "But you can't possibly tell," I said to her, "you had your back to them." "Well then, what about that?" she replied, pointing out to me, set in the wall in front of us, a large mirror which I had not noticed and upon which I now realised that my friend, while talking to me had never ceased to fix her beautiful preoccupied eyes.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 830-831

Marcel and Albertine continue their cat mouse which is as much about deciphering her sexuality as it is about the tortured nature of their relationship.  In response to a question about the appearance of Bloch's sister and her cousin, Albertine, feigning indifference, asks, "I don't know, is one of them fair?"  Marcel admits that he "did not however consciously envisage that Albertine loved her own sex."  On the one hand a reader today would say, "seriously? well duh," although I suspect that this response is as anachronistic as Proust's failure to make the connection.  In today's age when homosexuality or bi-sexuality is much more readily accepted, I guess I would argue that making that connection would be a more natural part of the thought process, as compared to an age when it was less common (or least the acceptance of it was less common) and thus making that intellectual jump would have seemed more scandalous, and thus more far-fetched.  I loved Proust's use of the mirror in the scene, which allowed Albertine to watch the young women while seeming to be focused on Marcel.  There was, in fact, as Proust discovered, "a large mirror which I had not noticed and upon which I now realised that my friend, while talking to me had never ceased to fix her beautiful preoccupied eyes."  Albertine sees the young women, and more importantly actually sees herself, in the mirror.

My Years With Proust - Day 374

   Some days later, at Balbec, while we were in the ballroom of the casino, there entered Bloch's sister and cousin, who had both turned out extremely pretty, but whom I refrained from greeting on account of my girl friends, because the young one, the cousin, was notoriously living with the actress whose acquaintance she had made during my first visit.  Andree, at a whispered allusion to this scandal, said to me: "Oh! about that sort of thing I'm like Albertine; there's nothing we both loathe so much as that sort of thing." As for Albertine, sitting down to talk to me on the sofa, she had turned her back on the disreputable pair.  I had noticed, however, that before she changed her position, at the moment when Mlle Bloch and her cousin appeared, a look of deep attentiveness had momentarily flitted across her eyes, a look that was wont to impart to the face of this mischievous girl a serious, indeed a solemn air, and left her pensive afterwards.  But Albertine had at once turned back towards me with a gaze which nevertheless remained strangely still and dreamy.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, p. 830

"Methinks she protests too much."  A couple days after Albertine threatened to throw herself into the ocean and take her own life in response to Marcel's accusations all is apparently forgiven if not forgotten.  Albertine, Andree and Marcel see Bloch's sister and cousin, the latter of which has shocked polite society by "notoriously living with the actress whose acquaintance she had made during" Proust's first visit.  In what seems like a plant, Andree suddenly whispers to Marcel, "Oh! about that sort of thing I'm like Albertine; there's nothing we both loathe so much as that sort of thing.."  Essentially, I think Albertine and Andree put together one of the clumsiest ruses (I'm flashing back to an Archer episode) to deflect attention from their own desires and actions, and I suspect that Marcel is having the same reaction.  At the appearance of Bloch's sister and cousin "a look of deep attentiveness had momentarily flitted across" Albertine's eyes, and she turned towards Marcel "with a gaze which nevertheless remained strangely still and dreamy."

My Years With Proust - Day 373

Not knowing exactly what fibs she had told me, "It's quite on the cards that I contradict myself," she said.  "The sea air makes me lose my head altogether.  I'm always calling things by the wrong names." And (what proved to me that she would not, now, require many tenders affirmations to make me believe her) I felt a stab in my heart I listened to this admission of what I had but faintly imagined.  "Very well, that's settled, I'm off," she said in a tragic tone, not without looking at the time to see whether she was making herself late for the other person, now that I had provided her with an excuse for not spending the evening with myself. "It's too bad of you.  I alter all my plans to spend a nice evening with you, and it's you that won't have it, and accuse me of telling lies.  I've never known you be so cruel.  The sea shall be my tomb.  I shall never see you any more." At these words my heart missed a beat, although I was certain that she would come again next day, as she did. "I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the sea." "Like Sappho." "There you go, insulting me again.  You suspect not only what I say but what I do." But my lamb, I didn't mean anything, I swear to you.  You know Sappho flung herself into the sea." "Yes, yes, you have no faith in me." She saw from the clock that it was twenty minutes to the hour; she was afraid of missing her appointment, and choosing the shortest form of farewell (for which as it happened she apolgised on coming to see me again next day,m the other person presumably not being free then), she dashed from the room, crying: "Good-bye for ever," in a heartbroken tone. For, knowing what she was about at that moment better than I, at once more severe and more indulgent towards herself that I was towards her, she may after all have had a fear that I might refuse to see her again after the way in which she had left me.  And I believe that she was attached to me, so much so that the other person was more jealous than I was.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 829-830

Marcel and Albertine's evening ends, predictably, badly and dramatically.  Albertine, in high color, threatened, "The sea shall be my tomb . . . I shall drown myself, I shall throw myself into the sea."  Sometime in the hoary mists of time the threat to "throw myself into the sea" must have worked, because people still continue to use varieties of it.  Marcel's response, "Like Sappho," is about as it ever goes.  He so unimpressed he's able to dig up the appropriate lesbian themed suicide reference on the fly (unless he had thought of it earlier and was just waiting to say it: "Like Sappho." Mike drop.).  His follow-up remark, "But my lamb.  I didn't mean anything, I swear to you.  You know Sappho flung herself into the sea" only shows how unfazed her is by her threat (and reaffirms my theory that he'd been sitting on the Sappho jab).  Nevertheless, she did return the next day, so I'm guessing the water was cold.

My Years With Proust - Day 372

I sensed that Albertine was giving up for my sake some plan arranged beforehand of which she refused to tell me, and that there was someone else who would be as unhappy as I was.  Seeing that what she had intended to do was out of the question, since I insisted up accompanying her, she was giving it up altogether.  She knew that the loss was not irremediable.  For, like all women who have a number of irons in the fire, she could rely on something that never fails: suspicion and jealousy.  Of course she did not seek to arouse them, quite the contrary.  But lovers are so suspicious that they instantly scent out falsehood.  With the result that Albertine, being no better than anyone else, knew from experience (without for a moment imagining that she owed it to jealousy) that she could always be sure of not losing the people she had jilted for an evening.  The unknown person whom she was deserting for me would be hurt, would love her all the more for that (although Albertine did not know that this was the reason), and, so as not to prolong the agony, would return to her of his own accord, as I should have done.  But had no desire either to give pain to another, or to tire myself, or to enter upon the terrible path of investigation, if multiform, unending vigilance. "No, Albertine, I don't want to spoil your pleasure.  You can go to your lady at Infreville, or rather the person for whom she is a pseudonym, it's all the same to me. The real reason why I'm not coming with you is that you don't want me to, because the outing with me is not the one you wanted - the proof of it is that you've contradicted yourself at least five times without noticing it"  Poor Albertine was afraid that her contradictions, which she had not noticed had been more serious than they were.

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain, pp. 828-829

Marcel and Albertine are in the middle of an argument, which we'll revisit tomorrow.  Albertine's lies have become tangled and clearly obvious, or at least they have to Marcel.  They've reached the point in the argument where they've passed beyond deciphering the truth (which is not the same as post-truth; yeah, I know, I can't let our great national travesty go) to the stage of assured mutual destruction, where all that matters is inflicting pain.  Marcel says, "No, Albertine, I don't want to spoil your pleasure.  You can go to your lady at Infreville, or rather the person for whom she is a pseudonym, it's all the same to me."  Now of course, classically, he he just confided to us that he "had no desire to give pain to another, or to tire myself, or to enter upon the terrible path of investigation."  We are always the worst judge of our own actions, even Proust (or at least the fictive Proust).  This is one of the chief reasons why I hate to argue - I lose track of myself and my own motives so quickly.  My ex-wife, a very wise woman (accept in her choice of husbands), claimed that I was hard to argue with because I immediately went for the jugular; sadly, I think she was/is completely correct, and it is is prominently featured on the laundry lists of personal flaws I'm striving to overcome.

It is interesting that Proust proposes that Albertine, "like all women who have a number of irons in the fire," always made use of suspicion and jealousy, even if she did so unconsciously.   Albertine knew, again, maybe unconsciously, that she "could always be sure to not losing the people she had jilted for an evening."  Instead, that person "would be hurt, would love her all the more for that." And, yes, once again the perversity of human desire.