Happy Halloween

Yes, it's Halloween again, my favorite holiday.  I've recounted my famous/infamous Halloween killer in the fraternity house story on the blog at one time or another - and just told my students the story a couple of weeks ago, an annual tradition, as part of the discussion of the vagaries of memory.  For that reason I will not repeat the story again, but I will post this picture nonetheless.  One of the (few) advantages of being (unofficially) back on Facebook is that the system occasionally prompts you with a memory related to an earlier post, and this one popped up this morning.  I don't really remember the context although it was only three years ago, although, again, I remember in vivid detail the incredible/unbelievable Halloween story from almost forty years ago (even though it probably never happened) like it was yesterday.

He continues to haunt me.

My Years With Proust - Day 629

"Drawing closer in spite of myself to the monster that was mesmerising me, I answered: 'What! You don't expect me to believe that of all your group Albertine was the only one with whom you did that sort of thing!'"

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 559

Marcel continues his "interrogation" of Andree as he tries, clumsily, to get her to admit that she and Albertine were lovers.  As I was rereading this section I kept coming back to a similar realization that I've frequently had in relation to Albertine; that is, I wish I knew more about Andree.  If we've only received occasional glimpses into Albertine's mind, we get much less into that of Andree.  Obviously Marcel has always had feelings for her, even if they were only carnal, and that subset of carnality where you want to sleep with someone simply because they are the friend of your lover.  And inside of that subset there's an even smaller subset: your desire to sleep with someone simply because they are the friend of your ex-lover out of spite.  Even though Marcel refers to Andree as a "monster," she's still a monster who is "mesmerising" him.  Previously he wrote of Andree: "For the first time she seemed to me beautiful.  I said tomyself that her almost frizzy hair, her dark, shadowed eyes, were doubtless what Albertine had loved so much, the materialisation before my eyes of what she pictured in her amorous day-dreams, what she saw with the expectant eyes of desire on the day when she had so suddenly decide to leave Balbec." (pp. 556-557)  He also tells us that, "I gazed at her nevertheless, and, with such liveliness, naturalness and assurance as a person can must who is trying to make it appear that he is not afraid of being hypnotised by someone's stare. . ."  Obviously, there's much more to Andree than we've seen so far.

My Years With Proust - Day 628

Once, I had the illusion of seeing these unknown desires and pleasures of Albertine's, when, some time after her death, Andree came to see me.

   For the first time she seemed to me beautiful.  I said to myself that he almost frizzy hair, her dark, shadowed eyes, were doubtless what Albertine had loved so much, the materlialisation before my eyes of what she pictured in her amorous day-dreams, what she saw with the expectant eyes of desire on the day when she had so suddenly decided to leave Balbec. Like a strange, dark flower brought back to me from beyond the grave, from the innermost being of  a person in whom I had been unable to discover it, I seemed to see before me, the unlooked-for exhumation of  a priceless relic, the incarnate desire of Albertine which 'Andree was to me, as Venus was the desire of Jove.  Andree regretted Albertine's death, but I sensed at once that she did not miss her.  Forcibly removed from her friend by death, she seemed to have easily reconciled herself to a final separation which I would not have dared to ask of her while Albertine was alive, so afraid would I have been of failing to obtain her consent.  She seemed on the contrary to accept this renunciation without difficulty, but precisely at the moment when I could no longer be on any advantage to me.  Andree abandoned Albertine to me, but dead, and having lost for me not only her life but retrospectively a little of her reality, now that I saw that she was not indispensable and unique to Andree who had been able to replace her with others.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 556-557

So much for Marcel coming to peace with Albertine's memory.  Now he begins to press Andree for details about their relationship.  He's suspected for some time that the two women were lovers, but now he decided to find out for certain.  Instead, what he discovers is that Andree "regretted Albertine's death, but I sensed at once that she did not miss her."  This fact depresses Marcel.  Proust notes: "Andree abandoned Albertine to me, but dead, and having lost for me not only her life but retrospectively a little of her reality, now that I saw that she was not indispensable and unique to Andree who had been able to replace her with others."  As less and less people remember Albertine she fades away all the quicker.

For some reason this section reminded me of Anne Harris's brilliant and otherworldly, Self-Portrait (with Jane's Eyes), a painting that intrigues and perplexes my first year students.  It seems to me that Marcel was seeing Andree with Albertine's eyes, or maybe vice-versa.

My Years With Proust - Day 627

I pursued one living woman, then another, then I returned to my dead one.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 548

A very un-Proustian concise statement, which I will follow up with a very un-Scudderian short commentary.  I don't know why I like this simple statement so much, but I find it beautiful and sad. As Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics remind us, all we control is the exact moment that we are living now.  We can't change the past and we can barely control the future, and even our ability (or more likely inability) to make sense of either funnels through this one moment.  How much more difficult does this become when we always return to the "dead one."  However, and thinking back to the other day, we do owe the dead something.  Maybe we owe them memory and respect, but we shouldn't live with them any more.

My Years With Proust - Day 626

For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room, the Albertine who on the night when I had told her that we must part had said so sadly: "This pianola, this room, to think that I shall never see any of these things again" and, when the she saw the distress which I had finally communicated to myself by my lie, had exclaimed with sincere pity: "Oh, no, anything rather than make you unhappy, I promise that I shall never try to see you again."  Then I was no longer alone; I felt the barrier that separated us vanish.  As soon as this good Albertine had returned, I had found once more the only person who could provide me with the antidote to the sufferings which Albertine was causing me. True, I still wanted to speak to her about the story of the laundry-girl, but no longer in order to score a cruel triumph and to show her maliciously how much I knew. I asked her tenderly, as I should have asked her had she been alive, whether the story about the laundry-girl was true. She swore to me that it was not, that Aime was not very truthful and that, wishing to appear to have earned the money I had given him, he had not liked to return empty-handed, and had made the girl tell him what he wished to hear. No doubt Albertine had never ceased to lie to me.  And yet, in the ebb and flow of her contradictions, I felt that there had been a certain progression due to myself.  That she had not, indeed, confided some of her secrets to me at the beginning (perhaps, it is true, involuntarily, in a remark that escaped her lips) I would not have absolutely sworn.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 540-541

Marcel finally begins to understand his role in ruining his relationship with Albertine.  Upon reflection, Marcel realizes that, "I still wanted to speak to her about the story of the laundry-girl, but no longer in order to score a cruel triumph and to show her maliciously how much I knew." Instead, he simply wanted to understand, or, failing that, to just talk to her.  A conversation with his dead love runs through his mind: "I asked her tenderly, as I should have asked her had she been alive, whether the story about the laundry-girl was true." He accepts that she will will lie to him, but also begins to understand how he forces that lie.  With this he realizes, "Then I was no longer alone; I felt the barrier that separated us vanish."

My Years With Proust - Day 625

   What came to my rescue against this image of the laundry-girl - certainly when it had lasted for some time - was that image itself, because we only truly know what is new, what suddenly introduces into our sensibility a change of tone which strikes us, what habit has not yet replaced with its colourless facsimiles.  But it was above all that fragmentation of Albertine into many parts, into many Albertines, that was her sole mode of existence to me. Moments recurred in which she had simply been kind, or intelligent, or serious, or even primarily addicted to sport.  And was it not right, after all, that this fragmentation should soothe me?  For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room, the Albertine who on the night when I had told her that we must part had said so sadly: "This pianola, this room, to think that I shall never see any of these things again" and, when the she saw the distress which I had finally communicated to myself by my lie, had exclaimed with sincere pity: "Oh, no, anything rather than make you unhappy, I promise that I shall never try to see you again."

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 540

One of the best discussions we've had all semester in my COR 110 (Concepts of the Self) classes centered around Proust's idea of the different fragments that make up a personality, and which we weave into our perception of that person; truthfully, is there anything  that first year students love more than reading and discussing Proust (he asked, knowingly).  Proust revisits the idea once again as he reflects upon his failed relationship with Albertine and her death. He writes: "But it was above all that fragmentation of Albertine into many parts, into many Albertines, that was her sole mode of existence to me. Moments recurred in which she had simply been kind, or intelligent, or serious, or even primarily addicted to sport."  We all like to grouse about our lovers - or ex-lovers (and it's difficult to say whether we do it more during or after the relationship) - but in the process of doing so our we radically over-simplifying them into a single, easily understandable, easily quantifiable, concept, as compared to the complex amalgam they actually are. Proust continues, "For if it was not in itself something real, if it arose from the continuously changing shape of the hours in which she had appeared to me, a shape which remained that of my memory as the curve of the projections of my magic lanterns depended on the curve of the coloured slides, did it not in its own way represent a truth, a thoroughly objective truth to, to wit, that none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value, and that if a vicious Albertine had existed, it did not mean that there had not been others, the Albertine who enjoyed talking to me about Saint-Simon in her room . . ."  What jumps out at me is his suggestion that "none of us is single, that each of us contains many persons who do not all have the same moral value." I want to believe this, although is this too forgiving, too relativistic?  I (the totality of my being) did not have an affair with her (the totality of her being) but instead a more animalistic, morally bankrupt part of my self had an affair with a more animalistic, morally bankrupt part of her self.  We certainly concsciously compartmentalize our actions, but do we do it unconsciously as well?

My Years With Proust - Day 624

. . . whereas Albertine had deceived me as to her profoundest humanity, the fact that she did not belong to ordinary humankind, but to an alien race which moves among it, hides itself among it and never merges with it.  I had as it happened seen two paintings by Elstir showing naked women in a thickly wooded landscape.  In one of them, a girl is raising her foot as Albertine must have raised hers when she offered it to the laundress. With her other foot she is pushing into the water another girl who gaily resists, her thigh raised, her foot barely dipping into the blue water.  I remembered now that the raised thigh made the same swan's neck curse with the angle of the knee as was made by the droop of Albertine's thigh when she was lying by my side on the bed, and I had often meant to tell her that she reminded me of those paintings.  But I had refrained from doing so, for fear of awakening in her mind the image of naked female bodies.  Now I saw her, side by side with the laundry-girl and her friends, recomposing the group which I had so loved when I was sitting among Albertine's friends at Balbec. And if I had been an art-lover responsive to beauty alone, I should have recognised that Albertine recomposed it a thousand times more ravishingly, now that its elements were the nude statues of goddesses like those which the great sculptors scattered among the groves of Versailles or arrayed round the fountains to be washed and polished by the caresses of their waters.  Now, beside the laundry-girl, I saw her as a water-maiden far more than she had been for me at Balbec: in their twofold nudity of marble statues in the midst of a grove of vegetation and dipping into the water like bas-reliefs of Naiads.  Remembering Albertine as she lay on my bed, I seemed to see the curve of her thigh, I saw it as a swan's neck, seeking the other girl's mouth.  Then I no longer even saw a thigh, but simply the bold neck of a swan, like the one that can be seen in a voluptuous sketch seeking the mouth of a Leda who is rapt in the palpitating specificity of feminine pleasure, because there is no one else with her but a swan, and she seems more alone, just as one discovers on the telephone the inflexions of a voice which one fails to perceive so long as it is not dissociated from a face in which on objectivises its expression.  In this sketch, the pleasure, instead of reaching out to the woman who inspires it and who is absent, replaced by an expressionless swan, is concentrated in her who feels it.  At moments the contact between my heart and my memory was interrupted.  What Albertine had done with the laundry-girl was indicated to me now only by quasi-algebraic abbreviations which no longer meant anything to me; but a hundred times an hour the interrupted current was restored, and my heart was pitilessly scorched by a fire from hell, while I saw Albertine, resurrected by my jealousy, really alive, beneath the caresses of the young laundry-girl to whom she was saying: "Oh, it's too heavenly."

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 536-538

We've talked before about whether or not we owe the dead anything, with the most obvious debt being simply to remember them.  Once I shared a story about my wife reading our college alumni magazine and telling me, sadly, that one of our classmates had died.  There was a pause as I tried to place the name, and then she said, with that sense of patient resolve that long-suffering wives can muster, "You slept with her."  And then it all came rushing back to me, and I felt ashamed, not that we had slept together fifteen years earlier, but that I had forgotten her name. Rather, I was ashamed that I at least owed her memory.  Marcel keeps trying to forget Albertine, but is so fixated by her memory, and his prurient interests in her secret life, that he can't forget her.  He confesses, "while I saw Albertine, resurrected by my jealousy, really alive, beneath the caresses of the young laundry-girl to whom she is saying: 'Oh, it's too heavenly.'"

Discography Year Two - Week 8

Happy Halloween!!!  This is my favorite holiday, which only says good things about me.  I feel I should celebrate the esteemed Dave Mills for, unbidden and thus heroically, taking on the Halloween challenge by providing ghost-themed songs.  Clearly, I missed a great theme week: songs that, if not completely supernatural, take us to a very dark place; it reminds me of Kathleen Edwards's Alicia Ross, which is based on an actual murder case and Edwards sings from the perspective of the young woman during the last few moments of her life. Oh well, that will be a thematic week in Year 3.

On a happier note, this is Week 8 of the second year of our Discography music discussion.  I think this may actually be the most eclectic week we've ever had, and with this group that is saying a hell of a lot.

Gary Beatrice

Lenny Kravitz, Let Love Rule

There are two reason why I love "Let Love Rule"

First I love it because it is a great song.

Second I love it because it has such a great story that I can relate to.

Look, I've said it many times before that my musical tastes have become old and decrepit. I was cool for as long as Nirvana was, but as soon as their singer took himself down he took my cool quotient immediately down with him. Still today when my kids ask me to play something new I reach for the Dixie Chicks. Musically I believe that the year after 1992 was 2017.

So I still treasure an AC/DC interview in Musician Magazine in the early '90s. No apologies given, I thought AC/DC was a fine rock band and I read this article with enthusiasm. I found it amusing, and cool in a Beatrice kind of way, that Bon Scott believed that the last good rock band was the Beatles. The article's author pressed the point and Scott admitted that he really enjoyed "Let Love Rule". But after thinking about it further he admitted that he really only loved the song Let Love Rule" to be all that good.

When it comes down to it my musical tastes are more current than Bon Scott's.

Dave Wallace

Samantha Fish - You Can't Go

A friend recently dragged me to see Samantha Fish, and I'm really glad that he did.  Fish has released a few blues albums, but her most recent album goes more in the direction of R&B/soul.  She's amazing in concert, and I highly recommend seeing her live if you get a chance.  I've been describing her as "she sings like Amy Winehouse, and plays guitar like Eric Clapton."  Both of those statements are hyperbole, but not as much as you might expect.  You Can't Go is off her new album and was a concert highlight.  I've also linked to a live version of the song which is pretty fantastic.

Alice Neilery

Patty Griffin, Long Ride Home 

After a brief but interesting (as always) conversation with the Esteemed Mike Kelly today during which he played Ryan Adams’ absolutely gorgeous version of “Oh My Sweet Carolina”, I’ve been thinking about sad songs. You see, I had commented that hearing that song was going to put me in a good mood the rest of the day, after which he commented on its sorrow. I then mentioned that the choked up sensation resulting from such songs makes me more happy than sad. Or perhaps “happy” isn’t the right word. In love? Being still in what Rilke refers to as “the questions”? And when we’re most aware, isn’t the energy of every meaningful feeling the same? An aliveness? Alive as opposed to programmed by the mad shuffle of the day, I mean. Alive as in listening. On repeat.

Which brings me to Patty Griffin. If there’s one musician, one singer I’ve listened to most on repeat, at most times in my life, whenever I want to drop into my truest self, into a connection to life that is even more evident in moments of profound sadness, and therefore “puts me in a good mood the rest of the day”, it’s Patty. I have every one of her albums, and I have never, not even once, gotten tired of her. It’s not enough that her favorite author is, like mine, James Baldwin, she’s a musician of the highest caliber. More than that, especially in the case of her ballads, she’s a singer. She once said in an interview that her songs are born from what her voice “needs to do”, whether it’s a twangy moan, a rock/roll grit, a whisper.

“Long Ride Home” embodies the least extreme manifestation of her voice, which, typical of Griffin, exactly matches with the song’s somewhat regretful, somewhat hopeful lyrics. The literal and metaphorical use of “long ride home” doesn’t hurt either. When we’re driving from one place to another, we are literally unmoored, in between leaving and arriving. Metaphorically, sometimes it’s that undecided place-- no clear path, with many contradictory things true at once--that pulls at the cry in us. That pull is inherent in Patty Griffin songs. Especially this one. Especially once the chorus arrives: “I’ve had some time to think about it/as the sun sinks like a stone…”. No wait, the verses: Forty years go by with someone laying in your bed/forty years of things you wish you’d never said/how hard would it have been to say some kinder words instead…”. Or no, wait…that bridge: “Headlights searching down the driveway…” And oh my WORD that tune…and Emmy Lou Harris singing harmony!??! Let’s be honest. The whole song (most of her songs) pull at the insides of anyone with even half a soul, if for no other reason than relief: yes, that’s the groan, the whisper, the conversation, the minor chord, the perfect voice; that’s my feeling exactly. And relief, even when ferried in on the back of melodic sadness, can put one in a good mood. 

Kathy Seiler

Hip Hop is Dead and I Can, Nas

I can’t hold back anymore, I’ve got to add some rap into the blog again. I’ll wait until later in the year to include some of what I would consider the “nastier” rap that I can be found listening to regularly (I am a nasty woman, after all). Instead I’ll focus on a couple of songs by Nas (Nasir Jones). Nas is a very well-known hip hop and rap artist who has had a lot of success since his debut in the 90s. My favorite song of his is Hip Hop is Dead. The rapping is so good in that song, and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida is the backbeat. Yes. Seriously. But I’m not reflecting on that song because it has a repeated line in it about murdering a DJ with an AK-47 and quite frankly, I’m just not okay with that right now. That said, you can still find me trying to hit every word on it on my drive into work or while working out, because I appreciate it musically.

My second favorite Nas song is I Can, which has a very positive message and features the voices of children on the track (I’m a sucker for kids singing). Throughout the song, Nas samples Beethoven’s Fur Elise. He also drops some historical knowledge on the listener. I’m a huge proponent, as an educator, of the power of music in education. It could be used for enrichment and knowledge of the arts, or used as a tool for learning. Music is also heavily mathematical, which most people don’t realize or appreciate. So, don’t anyone here tell me that you are bad at math, ‘cuz I ain’t hearin’ it. I'm well known for forcing my students to listen to jazz, blues, or classical during my science labs, and I've never gotten a complaint about it, only thanks from students for incorporating it into my teaching practice.

Nas is no saint and acknowledges that pretty freely. Some of his raps are gangster and some are positive. I particularly appreciate the message in the I Can song because in the current political climate, it almost feels like a protest song. We can all use some words of hope and comfort no matter what our situation, but I think it's particularly important for young people. The two simple words, “I can” are a great place to start.

Phillip Seiler

Sarge

A Torch

Needing to atone for last week's post, I offer this little gem from a band that should have gotten more notice than they did.

Sometimes you just need an unsubtle, punk pop rock song that starts fast, stays fast, and ends with an exclamation point. And given the near constant news of sexual harassment by powerful men these days, the song's message could not be more topical. The musicianship is tight and Elizabeth Elmore's vocals give this fierce little number exactly the punch it needs. There are no layers here, just good music.

"I think she'd had enough of trying to keep quiet"

Good.

Kevin Andrews

Before we start, go to Hulu or iTunes or wherever you go for such things and purchase or rent Soundbreaking. It’s 8 one-hour shows plus extra footage produced by Sir George Martin and shown by PBS last year. This isn’t a suggestion, it’s an order. Seriously, it’s freaking awesome, it’s better than potato chips. Have I ever lied to you?

Getting back to the theme of breakup songs, I was reminded last week by 500 Miles to Memphis (whom I had never heard before – thank you) that there’s nothing better than the American “He/She Left Me So I’m Drinking My Ass Off” song. Not the crap that passes for country music these days but the Hank Sr. kind of crying in my beer song. I’ve never actually had this experience myself so I can only imagine. I’ve never had a beer either.

Here are two of my favorite bluegrass songs in that vein. Both bands have incredible tenors and harmonies, and lightning fast pickers.

The Seldom Scene was a Washington DC area band formed in the 1970’s. The album that this song appears on, Old Train 1974, features a very young Ricky Scaggs and young and adorable Linda Ronstadt who sings on Through The Bottom Of The Glass. 

Hot Rise took their name from the leavening agent in a biscuit product that advertised in Nashville in the early 1950’s, kind of like Powder Milk Busicuits. This Here Bottle appeared on their first album in 1978.

Get yourself a cheap beer and a shot first. It’s OK to drink with breakfast, Hank would approve.

Dave Mills

For this week-of-Halloween discography, I give you a small sample of musical ghost stories from bands/singers I enjoy:

Band of Horses: Is There a Ghost

Lord Huron: Love Like Ghosts

José González: With the Ink of a Ghost

Dave Kelley

"Blues Hand Me Down"  Vintage Trouble

Vintage Trouble is one of my favorite bands to emerge in the last few years and at the top of my list of groups that I want to be able to catch live.  At their best, the band combines fifties soul and R&B influences like James Brown and Sam and Dave with raunchy down and dirty Stones style blues from the early seventies.  Any bastard that is produced by that biologically impossible musical mating is the Christ child of music that I enjoy.  Everything about that song is amazing, from the nasty guitar work, to the vocals, to the backbeat laid down by the rhythm section.  This should be listened to at the highest volume possible.  I am sending along links to two versions of the song.  The first is the version released on their album.  The second is a stripped down version that I like almost as much. 

Gary Scudder

Fats Domino, Ain't That a Shame

Not surprisingly, many songs have already held this week's slot before being moved back.  From the beginning I've always taken the approach of talking about whatever song was dominating my internal playlist that week, although it never stops me from thinking ahead and choosing songs and writing up commentaries, which then get bumped.  Obviously, I need to reconcile the two urges, but, again, I'm not that smart.  This week's song is, on the one hand, not that surprising, given that Fats Domino died this week.  On the other hand, however, it's a head-scratcher because I've never been much of a fan of 1950s music (and I would propose, upon mature reflection, unwisely).  My formative years were the 1970s and by then the music of the 50s had, unfortunately, passed on to the kitschy nostalgia stage, not helped by what Elvis had evolved into by then.  Plus, I think I had convinced myself that all 1950s songs were just gimmick songs like Clarence "Frogman" Henry's Ain't Got No Home (although, to be fair, it was used brilliantly in the film Diner). Or maybe I had already reached my pretentious prime (which, clearly, I've never left) where I didn't take music seriously unless he had some deeper meaning (as if many songs in the 1970s, or any decade, had a deeper meaning).  To be fair, my perception of this issue over the last dozen years or so has been colored by my fascination with jazz, and if you think about what jazz artists were doing in the 1950s it's difficult to take any US popular music pre-Dylan very seriously.  I know I'm cherry-picking, but, for instance, in 1959 the top 5 songs in the US were Johnny Horton's The Battle of New Orleans, Bobby Darin's Mack the Knife, Lloyd Price's Personality, Frankie Avalon's Venus and Paul Anka's Lonely Boy - oh, and Miles Davis released Kind of Blue.  Nevertheless, I've always had a soft spot for Domino's Ain't That a Shame, which, naturally, I gave another listen to this week.  What a killer song.

A Trip With the Boy

As we grow older we, naturally, spend much less times with our children, which makes the stolen moments you get together all the more precious.  I've proposed before that if I were going to compile a list of my all-time favorite moments everyone of them would feature my son, including my favorite day of all time, 18 June 1993 (which I've discussed on this blog previously).  In fact, when I'm generally discussing favorite moments I always use the disclaimer "Non-Son Related Moments," because every other moment would be, by definition, less precious to me.  I guess I'm feeling all of this a little more right now because, well, it's the changing season and we're approaching Halloween, my favorite holiday, but also because my son will be 30 in March (unbelievable, but true) but also because he's getting ready to move.  It's only a couple hours away, and I'm so incredibly happy for him (and proud of him) because he's moving for a much better job and he's in such a great place right now (as much as I normally dislike it when people saying things like "he's in such a great place right now"), but I will miss him.  It's been such a blessing to have him living a couple minutes away for the last couple years, which allowed us to get together pretty regularly, even if it was only for wings and football at Smitty's or movies at the Palace 9 or late night dessert at Denny's.  Recently he flew home to visit his mother in Cincinnati, and it makes me happy whenever they get to spend time together.  Now, as is so often the case when your home airport is Burlington, we flew out of another airport, in this case Montreal (flying out of Burlington is pricey and the flights get routinely delayed if not cancelled; which is the reason why we never originate our student trips out of here).  If we had to drive up to the Montreal Airport all the time it would be a grind, but if you only do it every few months then it becomes an adventure.  It led to a discussion between us about which is the smallest border crossing - and which one has the saddest agents - which we plan to investigate by trying to cross every one in the course of one day (somehow we think that the border agents will not think this is as funny, or as necessary, as we do).  The trip up was an early morning run, which meant that we got to stop at our favorite Tim Horton's for breakfast sandwiches and TimBits.  On the way back we went out of our way to Chez Pepe.  Along the way we discussed movies and music and philosophy and travel plans (he's still fixated on going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and life.  I've now added another favorite moment.

Somehow Gary had never gone to Chez Pepe, and he, like all right-thinking individuals, loved it.  Naturally, he chose the smoked meat sandwich and poutine.  We were in Canada, after all.

And here's the utterly epic gift he gave me for chauffeuring back and forth to the airport.  Wooooooo!

My Years With Proust - Day 623

When the laundry-girl must have said to her friends, "Just fancy, I'd never have believed it, but the young lady is one too," to me was not merely a vice hitherto unsuspected by them that they added to Albertine's person, a person like themselves, speaking the same language, and this, by making her the compatriot of other women, made her even more alien to myself, proved that what I had possessed of her, what I carried in my heart, was only quite a small part of her, and that the rest, which was made so extensive by not being merely that thing which is already mysteriously important enough, an individual desire, but being mysteriously important enough, an individual desire, but being shared with others, she had always concealed from me, had kept me away from, as a woman might conceal from me that she was a native of an enemy country and a spy, and far more treacherously even than a spy, for the latter deceives us only as to her nationality, whereas Albertine had deceived me as to her profoundest humanity, the fact that she did not belong to ordinary humankind, but to an alien race which moves among it, hides itself among it and never merges with it.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 537

I'm in the process of finishing up my self-portrait and concomitant presentation for my Concepts of the Self class so I don't have too much time to reflect upon this passage.  As I've said before, in my first and second year courses I often model assignments (never behavior, no one needs to act like me) so that the students can see what I'm looking for; professors often have no idea how their assignments actually play out and it would benefit them to take a stab at working them up themselves.  Anyway, I'm thinking about Cynthia Freeland's discussion, in her Portraits & Persons, about the different selves: Bodily, Moral, Reflective and Relational. While Albertine's true identity, if we can believe the sensational stories that Aime sent along, is different than what Marcel knew (although not necessarily different than what he imagined), and could be viewed through the four lenses that Freeland discusses.  At this point the one that jumps out at me is the Relational Self; essentially, that just as the self is a construct, it is a concept shaped and defined by the relationships in our life.  Proust records, "When the laundry-girl must have said to her friends, 'Just fancy, I'd never have believed it, but the young lady is one too,' to me was not merely a vice hitherto unsuspected by them that they added to Albertine's person, a person like themselves, speaking the same language . . ."  Albertine is "one too," and is thus defined by this relationship, both in regards to how she constructs her sense of self, but also the contest wherein others try and define her. I'm thinking about all this because my self-portrait relates, tangentially, to the question of faith, and my conversion a couple years ago suddenly redefined my relational self, both internally and externally.

My Years With Proust - Day 622

   Aime took londgings close to Mme Bontemps's villa; he made the acquaintance of a maidservant, and of a jobmaster from whom Albertine had often hired a carriage by the day.  These people had noticed nothing.  In a second letter, Aime informed me that he had learned from a young laundry-girl in the town that Albertine had a peculiar way of gripping her arm when she brought back the washing. "But," she said, "the young lady never did anything more." I sent Aime the money to pay for his journey, to pay for the pain he had caused me by his letter, and meanwhile I was doing my best to heal it by telling myself that what he had described as a familiarity which gave no proof of any vicious desire, when I received a telegram from him: "Have learned most interesting things. Have heaps of news for Monsieur.  Letter follows." On the following day came a letter the envelope of which was enough to make me tremble; I had recognised that it was from Aime, for every person, even the humblest, has under his control those little familiar creatures, at once alive and reclining in a sort of torpor upon the paper: the characters of his hand-writing which he alone possesses.

   "At first the young laundry-girl refused to tell me anything, she assured me that Mlle Albertine had never done anything more than pinch her arm.  But to get her to talk, I took her out to dinner and gave her plenty to drink.  Then she told me that Mlle Albertine often used to meet her on the bank of the Loire, when she went to bathe, that Mlle Albertine, who was in the habit of getting up very early to go and bathe, was in the habit of meeting her by the water's edge, at a spot where the trees are so thick that nobody can see you, and besides there is nobody who can see you at the hour in the morning. Then the laundry-girl brought her girl friends and they bathed and afterwards, as it is already very hot down there and the sun beats down on you even through the trees, they used to lie about on the grass drying themselves and playing and stroking and tickling one another.  The young laundry-girl confessed to me that she enjoyed playing with her girl friends and that seeing that Mlle Albertine was always rubbing up against her in her bathing-wrap she made her take it off and used to caress her with her tongue along the throat and arms, even on the soles of her feet when Mlle Albertine held out to her.  The laundry-girl undressed too, and they played at pushing each other into the water.  After that she told me nothing more, but being always at your service and ready to do anything to oblige you, I took the young laundry-girl to bed with me.  She asked me if I would like her to do to me what she used to do to Mlle Albertine when she took off her bathing-dress.  And she said to me: (If you could have seen how she used to wriggle, that young lady, she said to me (oh, it's too heavenly) and she got so excited that she could not keep from biting me.) I could still see the marks on the laundry-girl's arms.  And I can understand Mlle Albertine's pleasure, for that young wench is really a very good performer."

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 534-536

Suddenly some bizarre film noir version of a D.H. Lawrence novel has broken out.  Aime, who I am imagining as the less kick-ass version of Robert Mitchum from Out of the Past, continues to investigate Albertine's secret life.  If nothing else, at least Aime was a hard worker: "After that she told me nothing more, but being always at your service and ready to do anything to oblige you, I took the young laundry-girl to bed with me." Aime paints a provocative, especially for a century ago, although not terribly lurid, picture of Albertine's adventures.  In the letter Aime states: "The young laundry-girl confessed to me that she enjoyed playing with her girl friends and that seeing that Mlle Albertine was always rubbing up against her in her bathing-wrap she made her take it off and used to caress her with her tongue along the throat and arms, even on the soles of her feet when Mlle Albertine held out to her."  According to the laundry-girl Albertine was very passionate, something that doesn't seem to mark her love affair with Marcel; she shares: "The young laundry-girl confessed to me that she enjoyed playing with her girl friends and that seeing that Mlle Albertine was always rubbing up against her in her bathing-wrap she made her take it off and used to caress her with her tongue along the throat and arms, even on the soles of her feet when Mlle Albertine held out to her." Aime sums up the report by stating, "And I can understand Mlle Albertine's pleasure, for that young wench is really a very good performer."

My Years With Proust - Day 621

Even when she gradually ceased to be present in my thoughts and all-powerful over my heart, I felt a sudden pang if I had occasion, as in the time when she was there, to go into her room, to grope for the light, to sit down by the pianola.  Divided into a number of little household gods, she dwelt for a long time in the flame of the candle, the doorknob, the back of a chair, and other domains more immaterial such as a night of insomnia or the emotion that was caused me by the first visit of a woman who had attracted me.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p 533

There are times, despite my ever present skepticism, when I am reminded that Marcel did love Albertine.  Yes, he was often cruel to her, but aren't we often cruel to the ones we love? (As the great Canadian philosopher reminds us, only love can break your heart) In turn, I found his comment about little household gods to be as true as it was emotionally crushing.  We've all been there, and this also brings us back to previous discussions about the Museum of Broken Relationships.  Usually the little household gods reside in more tangible items: that discarded t-shirt from an ex-lover stuffed in the back of your drawer or that picture you hide in files on your computer.  They can be, as Proust proposes, "immaterial" - I remember being driven into an intense crying jag after me divorce after receiving an email informing me that my ex-wife and son would no longer be covered by my insurance.  It was a reminder of how I had failed them, but it was also another little connection that we shared, now lost. Proust's observation about how the "immaterial" could be "the emotion that was caused me by the first visit of a woman who had attracted me."  We've talked about this before, but when you're with a woman you've at that moment with every woman you've ever slept with, and not simply biologically.  Everything that you do at that moment is a product of every other time you've been with a woman, and her response at that moment is a reflection of every other woman's response from every other time.  It's why it's so difficult to start a new life simply by giving away the more tangible domains of the little household gods.

My Years With Proust - Day 620

The painful mystery of this impossibility of ever making known to her what I had learned and of establishing our relations upon the truth of what I had only just discovered (and would not have been able, perhaps, to discover but for her death) substituted its sadness for the more painful mystery of her conduct.  What?  To have so desperately desired that Albertine - who no longer existed - should know that I had heard the story of the baths!  This again was one of the consequences of our inability, when we have to consider the fact of death, to picture to ourselves anything but life.  Albertine no longer existed; but to me she was the person who had concealed from me that she had assignations with women at Balbec, who imagined that she had succeeded in keeping me in ignorance of them.  When we try to consider what will happen to us after our own death, is it not still our living self which we mistakenly project at the moment?  And is it much more absurd, when all is said, to regret that a woman who no longer exists in unaware that we have learned what she was doing six years ago than to desire that of ourselves, who will be dead, the public shall still speak with approval a century hence?

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 530

Marcel mourns the death of Albertine, not simply because she is dead, but because she is dead he can't share with her that he had discovered that "she was the person who had concealed from me that she had assignations with women at Balbec." As we know from Ecclesiastes, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.  Why do we feel the need to share with others our knowledge of their failings?  This is made even more absurd by our desire to share it with the dead as well.  It's not simply a case where we discovered something unpleasant about the dead (remember, I'm a historian) and we feel that we owe it to posterity to set the record straight.  Rather, we need to go to the dead themselves to let them know that we know.  If we catch up with them in heaven/hell/purgatory/void will this actually make them feel different about themselves - or change their placement in these locations?  No, it will just make us feel better about ourselves.  It's important that the dead know that we're too smart to be tricked, at least forever.  Happily, Proust is clearly aware of the folly of feelings, and is commenting more on the folly than the crime of him not being able to confront Albertine.

The Ravages of Time

Here's a picture that I didn't even know existed. As part of my Concepts of the Self class every fall I do a new self-portrait to model the assignment for my students (and I'm sure I included my clumsy attempts at art on the blog before).  In a mail to the rest of the Core Division I asked a technical question in regards to adapting a photograph for my self-portrait.  Jeff Haig responded with this picture, which he then manipulated to show how it might be accomplished. This was snapped, I later figured out, at Ken Wade's retirement party last year when I was dragooned into speaking. I'm clearly an ancient soul and time has had its way with me, but as pictures of beached wrecks go this one isn't bad.

I'm mainly trying to figure out what Wehmeyer, Mills and Lange are thinking.

Haig's efforts were much better than the original picture, and has definitely inspired me on how to proceed with my self-portrait.  Luckily, I work with much smarter people.

My Years With Proust - Day 619

   At last I saw before my eyes, in that arrival of Albertine at the baths along the narrow lane with the lady in grey, a fragment of that past which seemed to me no less mysterious, no less horrifying than I had feared when I imagined it enclosed in the memory, in the look in the eyes of Albertine.  No doubt anyone but myself might have dismissed as insignificant these details on which, now that Albertine was dead, my inability to secure a a denial of them from her conferred the equivalent of a sort of probability.  It is indeed probable that for Albertine, even if they had been true, even if she had admitted them, her own misdeeds (whether her conscience had thought them innocent or reprehensible, whether her sensuality had found them exquisite or somewhat insipid) would not have been accompanied by that inexpressible sense of horror from which I was unable to detach them.  I myself, with the help of my own love of women, and although they could not have meant the same thing to Albertine, could more or less imagine what she felt.  And indeed there was already an initial pain in my picturing her to myself desiring as I had so often desired, lying to me as I had so often lied to her, preoccupied with this or that girl, putting herself out for her, as I had done for Mlle de Stermaria and so many others, for the peasant girls I met on country roads.  Yes, all my own desires helped me to a certain extent to understand hers; it was by this time an immense anguish in which all desires were transformed into torments that were all the more cruel the more intense they had been; as though in this algebra of sensibility they reappeared with the same coefficient but with a minus instead of a plus sign.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 527

Marcel continues to consider the implications of the revelations from Aime's letter that confirmed his worst fears about Albertine's sexual proclivities, "a fragment of that past which seemed to me no less mysterious, no less horrifying than I had feared . . "  That said, Marcel tries to understand what drove Albertine's desires, and has to admit, "I myself, with the help of my own love of women, and although they could not have meant the same thing to Albertine, could more or less imagine what she felt."  It is fascinating, but also frustrating to a modern reader, that Marcel feels compelled to suggest that the women "could not have meant the same thing to Albertine."  He clearly understands the similarities: "And indeed there was already an initial pain in my picturing her to myself desiring as I had so often desired, lying to me as I had so often lied to her, preoccupied with this or that girl, putting herself out for her, as I had done for Mlle de Stermaria and so many others, for the peasant girls I met on country roads."  It's impossible to read this passage and not reflect back on his comments about "inverts" during his discussion of the Baron's homosexual love affairs, and all of this is difficult to reconcile with Proust's own homosexuality.  At the same time, we can't celebrate Remembrance of Things Past for it's modern feel without also recognizing that one of the reasons why it seems so startling modern is the limited cultural age in which he wrote.

Back to Jordan

I can't believe that this spring will be three years since my last trip to Jordan.  It was almost fourteen years ago, December 2003, when I made my first visit there for a three week State Department grant-funded trip to study Islamic/Arabic culture.  Since that time I've probably passed through Jordan a dozen times, and I never thought I could possibly stay away for three years at any one stretch.  Happily my friend and colleague Cyndi and I will be leading seventeen students there in March as part of my Heroines & Heroes class.  We'll be reading parts of the Arabian Nights and discussing the work's complex relationship with the region.  Obviously, I'll have much more to say about the trip in the coming months.  It feels great to be going home.

The Petra money shot: a bedu riding a camel down a Roman road with Nabataean ruins in the background.

My Years With Proust - Day 618

"Monsieur,

   "Monsieur will kindly forgive me for not having written sooner to Monsieur.  the person whom Monsieur instructed me to see had gone away for a few days, and, anxious to justify the confidence which Monsieur had placed in me, I did not wish to return empty-handed.  I have just spoken at last to this person who remembers (Mlle A.) very well." (Aime, who possessed certain rudiments of culture, meant to put "Mlle A." in italics or between inverted commas. But when he meant to put something in brackets he put it between inverted commas. In the same way Francoise would say that someone stayed in my street meaning that he dwelt there, and that one could dwell for a few minutes, meaning stay, the mistakes of popular speech consisting merely, as often as not, in interchanging - as for the matter the French language has done- terms which in the course of centuries have replaced one another.) "According to her the thing that Monsieur supposed is absolutely certain. For one thing, it was she who looked after Mlle Albertine whenever she came to the baths. (Mlle A.) came very often to take her shower with a tall woman older than herself, always dressed in grey, whom the shower-attendant without knowing her name recognised from having often seen her going after girls. But she took no notice of any of them after she met (Mlle A.). She and (Mlle. A.) always shut themselves up in the cabin, remained there a very long time, and the lady in grey used to give at least 10 francs as a tip to the person I spoke to.  (Mlle A.) also used to come sometimes with a woman with a very dark skin and a lorgnette.  But (Mlle A.) came most often with girls younger than herself, especially one with very red hair.  Apart from the lady in grey, the people (Mlle A.) was in the habit of bring were not from Balbec and must even quite often have come from quite a distance.  They never went in together, but (Mlle A.) would come in, and ask for the door of her cabin to be left unlocked - as she was expecting a friend, and the person I spoke to knew what she meant.  This person could not give me any other details as she did not remember very well, 'which is easy to understand after such a long time.' Besides, this person did not try to find out, because she is very discreet and it was to her advantage because (Mlle A.) brought her in a lot of money. She was quite sincerely touched to hear that she was dead.  It is true that so young it is a great calamity for her and for her family.  I await Monsieur's orders to know whether I may leave  Balbec where I do not think that I can learn anything more. I thank Monsieur again for the little holiday that he has procured me, and which has been very pleasant especially as the weather is as fine as could be.  The season promises well for this year. Everyone hopes that Monsieur will come and put in a little apparition.

   "I can think of nothing else to say that will interest Monsieur," etc.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 525-526

In the wake of Albertine's death Marcel attempts to gather information about Albertine's activities, and whether or not his suppositions about her trysts were in fact correct. "Alas, I had supposed that it would be immaterial to me, even agreeable, not to see Albertine again, until her departure had revealed to me my error. Similarly her death had shown me how greatly I had been mistaken in believing that I sometimes wished for her death and supposed that it would be my deliverance.  So it was that, when I received Aime's letter, I realised that if I had not until then suffered too painfully from my doubts as to Ablertine's virtue it was because in reality they were not doubts at all." (p. 524) Aime provides him with a glimpse into a world that Marcel suspected, and it's not the first information that he receives that confirms his worst fears.  Nevertheless, it's difficult for a modern reader to feel feel any shock at the revelation or to muster any great sympathy for Marcel's feelings.  Part of this is gender-related (aren't we hard- or soft-wired to pull for the underdog) for much the same reason that in the Aeneid we sympathize with Dido and not Aeneas (in a way that the ancient Romans would not have understood).  In addition, Marcel's efforts to draft help to investigate Albertine's secret life just feels like a violation.

Deposhify

The other day I was in the midst of a Zanzibar travel planning meeting with my friend and colleague Steve.  Our budget for our upcoming trip to Pemba was out of whack, and as we dissected it we figured out that it was because our friend Kombo, as a proud Pemban, had thrown everything but the kitchen sink at the students in his proposed itinerary, but that he'd also bumped up the poshness of the hotels.  We had much the same issue when we putting together our India/Sri Lanka trip last spring.  Our friend Inder did an extraordinary job, but we had to run through a few iterations where we had to ask him to deposhify things, especially the hotels.  Normally I would assume that our tour guides were just boosting their profits, but that's not the case with Inder or Kombo. Rather, I think they were trying to assure that we had as great a time as possible while also showing off the best their countries have to offer.  That said, I think it also speaks to the perception, very common overseas, that Americans are pretty soft and generally bad travelers.  Sadly, there's a lot of justification for that accepted view.  One of the reasons why I devote so much time and effort to planning these trips is that I want to change my students' worldviews, and an essential part of that relates to getting them out of their comfort zones.  So, deposhify is a word I use a lot in my emails.  I'd like to think that I made it up (much like remasculate) but since my international friends always understand what I'm talking about I suspect that I didn't.

I think I sent this picture to a couple of my friends back at Champlain with some line like, "this is how we roll in the Core."  Of course, the exact opposite is true, as this is how we definitely try not to roll on a Core trip.  There's no point leaving a gated community, which American universities are quickly becoming, to head off to another gated community.  Still, that pool was pretty sweet.

My Years With Proust - Day 617

   But to what purpose, since even if, at that moment, she had had time to see herself as she was, we had both of us understood where our happiness lay, what we ought to do, only when, only because, that happiness was no longer possible, when and because we could no longer do it - whether it be that, so long as things are possible, we postpone them, or that they cannot assume the force of attraction, that apparent ease of realisation save when, projected on to the ideal void of the imagination, they are removed from their deadening and degrading submersion in physical being.  The idea that one will die is more painful than dying, but less painful than the idea that another person is dead, that, becoming once more a still, plane surface after have engulfed a person, a reality extends, without even a ripple at the point of disappearance, from which that person is excluded, in which there no longer exists any will, any knowledge, and from which it is as difficult to reascend to the idea that that person has lived as, from the still recent memory of his life, it is to think that he is comparable with the insubstantial images, the memories, left us by the characters in a novel we have been reading.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, pp. 518-519

Marcel continues to struggle with Albertine's death, and he makes the realization that the "idea that one will die is more painful than dying, but less painful than the idea that another person is dead . . ."  Don't we all have that fantasy about attending our own funeral, mainly we want to see how distraught every woman is who didn't sleep with us is at that moment (which, of course, begs the question of why all these women are at your funeral)?  It's funny that in that fantasy none of us are ever said.  Instead mainly we just view it as validation of that the fact we were right or that our genius was underappreciated.  We never imagine that we're going to cry at the loss.   Maybe we're crying at the unknown.  There is so much that we didn't know about that other person - and so many things that we wish we had said or done - whereas we're pretty certain about who we are/were.

My Years With Proust - Day 616

   Why had she not said to me: "I have those tastes"? I would have yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them.  In a novel I had real there was a woman whom no objurgation from the man who was in love with her could induce to speak.  When I read the book, I had thought this situation absurd; had I been the hero, I assured myself, I would first of all have forced the woman to speak, then we could have come to an understanding.  What was the good of all those futile miseries? But I saw now that we are not free to refrain from forging the chains of our own misery, and however well we may know our own will, other people do not obey it.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 517

Marcel proposes that if only Albertine had honestly and openly told him of her bisexuality he would have "yielded, would have allowed her to gratify them."  Beyond the fact that cuckold porn is a thing (this guy told me about it), are we supposed to believe Marcel?  He was so consistently and uncontrollably jealous it's difficult to believe that he would have quietly acquiesced; it just would have changed the nature of his mania.  Although . . . he doesn't really seem that passionate about her sexually, and instead appears more fixated on controlling her than truly physically possessing her.  The scene where Marcel masturbates while Albertine sleeps is, as we discussed, one of the most powerful metaphors in the novel, and speaks to his desire have her in his life as compared to truly sharing his life with her.  However, if he's that interested in controlling/using her, would he be able to stand her gratifying "those tastes"?  And, if Albertine is truly bisexual, would Marcel more gracefully handle her being with a man or with a woman?  As Proust himself observes, "But I saw now that we are not free to refrain from forging the chains of our own misery . . ."

My Years With Proust - Day 615

We are well aware that the woman whose face we have before our eyes more consistently than light itself, since even with our eyes shut we never cease for an instant to adore her beautiful eyes, her beautiful nose, to arrange opportunities of seeing them again - that this woman who to us is unique might well have been another if we had been in a different town from the one which we met her, if we had explored other quarters of the town, if we had frequented a different salon.  Unique, we suppose?  She is legion.  And yet she is compact and indestructible in our loving eyes, irreplaceable for along time to come by any other.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 513

"Unique, we suppose?  She is legion."

We are taught to believe that in all the wide world there is that one woman that we are destined to marry.  Part of it is the brain playing its evolutionary games to make us stay with that one person to raise our young (which are absurdly helpless because of our slow-developing brain).  Part of it relates to the mythology promoted by popular culture.  But is it true?  I'm certainly on record, especially in this poorly-written blog, of suggesting that the opposite is true (and, yes, I accept the irony of me, of all people, saying that).  I shared the story from last year's India/Sri Lanka trip where the students had such a profoundly different response to La La Land than Cyndi and I did.  To the students it was a tragic story because they didn't end up together. To their professors, with a couple extra decades under their belt, the ending was redemptive.  However, that wisdom (or acceptance) comes from years of life, and often heartbreak, but it's not something that we believed at our students' tender age.  Instead, we would have agreed with Proust: "And yet she is compact and indestructible in our loving eyes, irreplaceable for along time to come by any other."

My Years With Proust - Day 614

One wants to be understood because one wants to be loved, and one wants to be loved because one loves.  The understanding of others is a matter of indifference to us and their love importunate.  My joy at having possessed a little of Albertine's intelligence and of her heart arose not from their intrinsic worth, but from the fact that this possession was a stage further towards the complete possession of Albertine, a possession which had been my goal and my dream ever since the day when I had first set eyes on her.  When we speak of the "niceness" of a woman, we are doing no more perhaps than project outside ourselves the pleasure that we feel in seeing her, like children when they say: "My dear little bed, my dear little pillow, my dear little hawthorns." Which explains, incidentally, why men never say of a woman who is not unfaithful to them: "She is so nice," and say it so often of a woman by whom they are betrayed.

Marcel Proust, The Fugitive, p. 506

Proust tells us, "One wants to be understood because one wants to be loved, and one wants to be loved because one loves."  This doesn't bring us to a definitive conclusion on the question of my Marcel loves Albertine, but it gives us even more information on what loves means to him.  We fall in love, and we expect the woman to love us and to understand us.  Consequently we are focused like a laser on that one person and the "understanding of others is a matter of indifference to us and their love importunate."  Of course, there are few things less out of our direct control than making another person love us or even understand us, but they are both annoying necessities after we have fallen in love. Is it any wonder that we are so consistently miserable in love when we have chosen a quest for which we have so little control.

    

Discography Year Two - Week 7

Amazingly, we've already reached the seventh week of the second year of our Discography music discussion, which also means that it's our first thematic week. The theme, as laid out in far too much detail in Week 5, is what song you would donate to the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia.  Now, this could be a classic breakup song, or it could be that one song which is inexplicably hanging around, like some leftover artifact from an ex-lover, that you really should have gotten rid of a long time ago.  If nothing else, we will all feel much spiritually lighter after this week.

Kevin Andrews

The tree loves the ax… how much time do we have? My entry into the Museum of Broken Relationships is Essence by (you guessed it) Lucinda Williams, the patron saint of broken relationships. The (highly condensed) back story: I was in a relationship for five or six years with someone who lived about 4 hours away, she was/is a devout devotee of Ms. Williams and soon I became one too. One random Saturday we were driving around doing Saturday things and at one stop this song came on as we parked. We sat in the parking lot listening. If you’re familiar with this song you know it’s one of her most passionate, almost graphic. Even the guitar solo is rated R. If you don’t blush listening to it you should see a doctor. The song ended and we went into the store. Nothing crazy here but we can say the Vice President would not have approved.

Fast forward a few years after the 4-hour drive became too much, ending the relationship. I stopped listening to LW altogether attempting to avoid the memories. Another random Saturday in the car with the new relationship (sorry if that sounds impersonal) and a LW song, Righteously if you’re curious - another song to blush to, comes on the radio. All the years of listening and shows and all that LW together stuff came flooding back to me in a flash. It took me a few minutes to become “present” again. I almost felt guilty for hearing her again. I was tempted to explain all of this to said new relationship but quickly realized this might not be a good idea. The flood passed I went back to denial. Epilogue: I can now listen to LW at will and am I’m still friends with previous relationship but not the latter.

Gary Beatrice

Tim Carroll, The House Ruth Tore Down

Happily married for 31 years, I don't have a break-up song. If I have one from a prior relationship I don't recall it. But I will play along.

My song would be short and would feature a hook that was catchy as hell. It would also end several of the vocals with a sound that strikes me as what a wolf would make if his paw was caught in a trap. Most importantly it would feature a pun around the best player in baseball history.

Now if only I'd been dumped by a Ruth.

Dave Wallace

Tom Petty - The Waiting

I know that Mike Kelly just selected this song a couple of weeks ago, but it was the first one that I thought of when Gary announced our theme for the week.  Plus, it always me to pick another Petty song.  I was dating my first serious girlfriend around the time that Petty released this song, and I completely related to it as we both headed off to separate colleges.  Of course, long-distance romances are usually doomed, and The Waiting proved more difficult for me than for her.  She quickly found a new beau, I did not.

Miranda Tavares

500 Miles to Memphis, Sunshine in a Shot Glass

Well, I struggled with this one. I have as idyllic a marriage as one can get in this imperfect world, and I am not one to hold onto things, so any anger/sadness/regret about past relationships has long since faded, and there just weren't any songs that I felt I could personally write about. I was going to do Long Black Veil, because holy crap, it's pretty much the Holy Grail of broken relationships. I mean, at least the vast majority of us get out alive. Then I was going to do 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, because there is nothing worse (for yourself, your partner, your friends, your family) than sticking it out in a relationship when you've mentally thrown in the towel. Then I was going to get all existential, because Gary didn't specify who the relationship had to be with, and do Slow It Down, about feeling like your relationship with yourself is ending. But then reason (and by that I mean Nate) prevailed (and by that I mean said, WTF, how can you NOT do this song?!). So I will quit pretending to be cerebral and talk honestly about my total lack of ability to cope. 

My long term coping skills are great. I can rationalize anything, I can forget painful memories, I can let go that which cannot be understood, I can remove myself from poisonous people, and I have amazing friends on whom I am not afraid to lean. All of these make getting over an ending relationship easier than a lot of people have it. But short term? There's only one. I drink.

I suppose there are worse things. After all, I don't just drink to deaden the senses; I drink to do something.  And because I am so busy lifting glass to lips, I don't have time to send regretful texts or emails (I don't drunk text), or stalk my ex, or slash tires, or burn belongings (or bridges), or cut up pictures, or any of the hundreds of stupid things people do when their hearts are breaking. I can say with certainty that if Nate left me tomorrow, I would not get plastic surgery, or have anonymous sex, or buy a sexy sports car, or even get a makeover. But I would get really drunk. And I would be drunk every night for several weeks, until some time had passed and my feelings were no longer too strong for me to bear feeling, and the urge to burn bridges had abated. 

Which brings me to Sunshine in a Shot Glass. All that that I just rambled on about in the above paragraph? They boil it down to just a couple of verses. 

Nate Bell

Trying to ease back into the blog, as my head has been devoid of song.  So, no well reasoned or erudite musing will be found here, but just a good song.  Well, 2, technically.

The Mississippi Sheiks, Sittin' on Top of the World

Since the theme (I am told) was relationships ended, or heartbreak, or some such, of course the best source for such songs is The Blues.  Old school blues.

I chose this one, "Sittin on Top of the World", as it speaks to that phase *after* the initial raging, sobbing and tears.  "Sittin' on Top of the World" speaks to that period where a person finds themself steeped in delusion, telling the world that "yes, I am indeed fine, never better!" ...and all the while the bitterness still seeps from the cracks in the facade.

The original by the Mississippi Sheiks is the undeniable best, but I also find that Jack White does a smash-up job of this song, and it too is worth a listen:

Jack White, Sittin’ onTop of the World

Phillip Seiler

The real challenge of this week's theme is not that I am blogging with my spouse but that we have been together so long, 29 years, that, if you do the math, that puts any of my possible song donations at 1988 or earlier. I think we can all agree that the 80s were a terrible time for music and while many will also note my love for this era and the many times I have already mined its depths for posts on discography, we live in an age when blatantly false declarations can be made with no resulting consequence to the hypocritic making them and who am I to buck the new normal? (But really, lyrically, the 80s were pretty bad) I did pull out an old mix tape from a former girlfriend and played it on my commute this week. Sadly, she had excellent taste in music and I refuse to give any of her selections away. And truth be told, we weren't together long enough for any of them to be especially meaningful in the context of our relationship. (One side note however, I was utterly delighted to once again hear a mix tape with the needle drops clearly and beautifully preserved. That is a nostalgia we can all get behind, I think.)

So, what to write about and donate to the Museum of Broken Relationships? I have decided to donate the song I most remember having to endure while consoling friends about their broken, early teen relationships. 

Journey, Separate Ways (World Apart)

I hate Journey. I hate this song. I hate this video. (Don't @ me.)

With all that said, I remember this being the song that my friends turned to when everything fell apart in their late middle school, early high school relationships. Did they really believe that no matter how long it took, they would still be waiting for their lost partner? I suppose in those moments, they did. But we are older now and perhaps a bit wiser. We can actually go separate ways and it will be okay.  

Finally, I would like to contradict most everything else I have posted and say that I actually enjoyed hearing this song again and it wasn't as bad as I remember. (The video was worse though.) And I am thankful I grew up in a time when a bunch of guys this unattractive and with such terrible mustaches could actually get a recording contract and fill stadiums. Maybe the 80s weren't completely terrible. (Ron Howard's voice: They were.)

Alice Neiley

To be honest, I’ve only been in a handful of romantic relationships, only two of those lasted longer than a year, and one of those two is the relationship I’m currently in, so…I don’t have much to work with. On the other hand, the two ‘long-ish’ relationships before Karen were in my very early twenties, so the dramatics of heartbreak (especially evident in my musical choices) were in full swing.

For now, I’ll focus on one of those relationships, with two songs:

The first, “This Time” by John Legend, is a power ballad without the power, so essentially just the drama that the power leaves behind. 

It’s a song from the perspective of a regretful ex-lover, promising he won’t take his girl for granted this time, if she takes him back. This tune had just been released on Legend’s new album when my then girlfriend broke up with me, and I listened to it on repeat for weeks. Weeks. The melody, and especially those lyrics, were exactly what I wanted her to sing to me after she came back, asking for my forgiveness and telling me she didn’t mean it when she said my walk was “too dykey” for her taste. I won’t lie, if this one comes on the radio, I don’t change the station every time.

The second: “AwakeAgain” by Jake Newton (a much better tune than Legend's). 

So, did I mention this girlfriend was a (very pretty) singer songwriter? Did I mention she used to sing and play her guitar for me a lot? Yeah. Unfortunately, she was also quite selfish, sometimes mean, and very lost, but I ignored all that for just long enough to fall in love with her perfectly broody music and her beauty. Such is life. She sang/played this Jake Newton song for me early in our relationship, and it became one of ‘our’ songs somehow, even though we rarely listened to it together. In contrast to the first tune, this one never comes on the radio, and I avoid listening to it. Most of the time. As Scudder said in his description of this theme week—there’s always that occasional ‘tree loves the axe’ moment…;)

Cyndi Brandenburg

I am one of the lucky ones, because my past "broken" relationships are
mostly characterized by true connection, deep love, formative life
importance, and unfortunate bad timing.  With billions of people
wandering around planet earth simultaneously, I'd be a fool to ever
think that there is just one, and only one, love out there for me to
find. There are in fact innumerable possibilities, and in the course
of my life, I've had a good run of it as I've stumbled across some
amazing ones.

I met my first true love in high school, and we have remained friends
ever since. We managed to make that relationship last for a good long
time, and even persevered through some pretty significant geographic
distances our first year of college. (Well, there was that secret
mid-winter rendezvous that our parents never knew about, but I
digress).  The song that reminds me the most of our relationship, the
one that we actually called "our song" in a cheesy yet arguably
unconventional way, given typical teenage tastes of the early 1980s,
the one I will never be able to hear without all the accompanying
memory-laden associations, is I Will Be Here For You by Al Jarreau.

Then I went and broke up with this lovely guy my second year in
college, because I met my next big love. With my new one, I studied
abroad, travelled around Europe together in the most romantic of ways,
and despite his incredible musical talent and my complete lack
thereof, occasionally sang together in harmony.  In particular, I will
always remember lounging around together with a guitar on the floor of
his dorm room and working up a version of By My Side (Godspell).  

We split a couple of years later, but
I'm sure a piece of my heart has managed to still stay right by his
side.

The easiest thematic choice for this week's is probably the song I
binge-listened to after my love #3 abruptly broke off our engagement.
Hearts CAN be horribly broken. Who knew? My grandmother was right when
she told me,  "he just gave you the biggest gift of your life by
walking away from you now."  Of course, I didn't see it that way at
that time, but I did meet Bill pretty shortly thereafter, and as a
result of his immediate and steady rock presence in my life, I stopped
playing Sinead O'Connor's Last Day of Our Acquaintance on repeat for
good.

Timing is everything. Life has a funny way of throwing you curve
balls, yet still working out pretty nicely.  When it's all over, said,
and done, maybe some obscure truth surrounding the inexplicable notion
of an inescapable "love of my life" will fully materialize.  I trust
that if it does, that person will magically follow me into the dark,
despite the odds, but either way, I know all THIS LIFE has been full
of lots of love and hopefully will end beautifully--as it should.

Kathy Seiler

For My Friends, Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa

As you know, I’m married to another individual who contributes to this blog, and we’ve been together for 29 years (26 of those years married). So, a breakup song is in a very, very distant past for me.  If I were to post a theoretical breakup song related to marriage, I think the best one I could pick would be Burn from the Hamilton Soundtrack. But that's not the song I'm posting about this week.

My selection this week is as close to a broken relationship song as I can get that’s worth contributing. Perhaps you can think of it as the treatment needed to prevent a relationship’s permanent commemoration in the Museum of Broken Relationships. It could be lovers or just friends, of any gender identity in the pair, although I admit to envisioning this song applying best to “bromances.” That’s probably because it’s sung from a masculine point of view, ironically, by a woman.

Musically, this is blues-rock. Beth Hart’s voice is nothing short of a natural wonder to me, and I have a love/hate relationship with her vocals. She has one of the most powerful, gritty female voices I have ever heard. When I found out she was white, I was nothing less than totally shocked, as I assumed she was a woman of color when I first heard her sing. I don’t know if she gets that sound by smoking three packs of cigarettes and drinking a fifth of Jack Daniels before lunch every day, but it sure does sound like that’s a possibility. I don’t know how she could keep a lung capacity like that and smoke, though.

Hart often collaborates with Joe Bonamassa, who is an amazing blues/rock guitarist I’ve posted songs from in last year’s Discography. His guitar riffs in this song match Hart’s voice perfectly, with the same sort of quality heard in her voice. The words, raw, jagged, and driving all come to mind. The video is from a live performance but Hart’s vocals are almost perfectly matched to what is on the album recording of the song, which speaks to her vocal abilities. I don’t know how she does that unusual vibrato, and I can’t decide if I like it or not. But it’s amazing.

The song is not complex in its lyrics, which speaks to how easy it is to stay friends with someone. When conflict arises, somebody has to say they are sorry, and that’s best done over a drink. Clearly the hardest part of this very simple fact that somebody has to swallow their pride. Easier said than done for most, I think, no matter what kind of relationship.

Dave Kelley

"Its chaos.  Be Kind"  Patton Oswall

 The above referenced line is from Patton Oswall's amazing new Netflix standup special "Annihilation" in which he is not only drop dead funny as usual but also spends at least 20 minutes discussing the unexpected death of his wife last year and how he is trying to deal with their young daughter's pain at the loss of her Mom.  He talks about the fact that while he is not overly religious he always believed that there is some sort of rational framework to the universe and existence.  His late wife disagreed and argued everything is chaos.  Just be kind.  He then points out she won the argument in the shittiest way possible.

I was raised in a very religious household but admit to a lot of doubt about the existence of any supreme being.  Literally no answer to that question would surprise me in the least.  There are several phrases, well intentioned though they are, that really always make my head want to explode:  "It is all part of God's plan." "Everything happens for a reason."  "It was meant to be."  I could not possibly disagree more with all of those clichés.  ( I totally respect the opinion of those who do trust in those things, because after all, this shit is unknowable.)   We can minimize or maximize or chances of health, success, prosperity, etc. by our actions, but if the die are cast and come up snake eyes, you are fucked, fucked you are.  Life presents us all with both good and bad opportunities, and how well we choose obviously has a huge impact on what happens.  I am not saying we have no control, I just believe that our control is limited.  Fate is not something that I believe in at the least.  The universe is not totally random just almost totally random.

One last thought on the above quote.  I love the inclusion of the words "be kind."  To me those words, other than being a concise statement about how we should conduct ourselves always, save the entire quote from being nihilistic.  I have no use for nihilism.

I hope no one is offended by that preamble. 

"You're Still Standing There"  Steve Earle/Lucinda Williams

Two of my favorite musicians team up on this classic song written by Earle.  There is someone who has never really been out of my life but who has drifted in and partially out over many years.  In my more naïve younger life I had some romantic notion that she eventually would drift in and stay in.  I now recognize that not only would that have probably not been a good thing, but also that nothing is fated to be.  My torch burned out many years ago on this situation, but the theme of the blog post when combined with the Patton Oswall show made me think of it. 

The music and the lyrics are fantastic, and the song also contains one of my favorite lines.  "Your memory cannot keep me warm, but it never leaves me cold."

Gary Scudder

Kathleen Edwards, Empty Threat

For a person who has had such a long, pathetic history of failure with women it's funny and/or amazing, but also completely appropriate, how many songs I associate with relationships: Neil Young's Winterlong and Cinnamon Girl, Lucinda Williams's Minneapolis and Those Three Days, the Cranberries' Linger, Kathleen Edwards's Summerlong, etc. Happily, although maybe also strangely, I've come to peace with these songs, and even with some of the women associated with them (although not all).  However, that's not true of every song, with a prime example being Empty Threat by Kathleen Edwards.  Everyone knows how much I love Edwards, but I can also say that Empty Threat would not make my top twenty list of her songs (although I do like it a lot).  Instead, it just captures a time in my life.  On the other side of the planet, and at a time (in my early 50s) when I thought I was past such foolishness, I fell in love with a lovely British girl (usually just referred to as the LBG).  We were engaged and she was going to move to Vermont, and we were actually well into the visa process, and then we were going to move to Hong Kong, and then it suddenly ended.  And in the end that's OK.  I think she had actually been unhappy, and more than she was letting on, for several months, and nobody, especially her, deserves to be unhappy.  Still, it just ended and she immediately disappeared and I never heard from her again.  I can create all sorts of narratives to explain the sudden end and the disappearance, but it doesn't really matter; and, anyway, we both were haunted by more ghosts than any two people should have to deal with.  The closest I ever came to hearing from her again was once on Facebook, and I'm not on FB very often so you have to understand how random this is, I saw a picture that her sister had posted; it was a picture of me photoshopped next to an actor from a bad horror movie.  She had linked the picture to a mutual friend with one of those "separated by birth" notes.  Now, to be fair, we did look a lot alike, but my initial response was that I had just become an inside joke about a foolish period in her sister's life (to be fair, the LBG never responded to the post, nor do I even know if she's on FB anymore).  I think we all want our ex-lovers to think of us gently, or at least to think of us occasionally.  For this reason my initial response to the picture - much like my response to Empty Threat for a long time - was just to feel gutted.  But here's the thing, we were together for a year and a half and I'm thankful for every stupid day we spent together. So, I just clicked Like and moved on, much like I've done with the song itself.  That said, I'll be quite content to leave it at the Museum.