My Years With Proust - Day 575

It seemed to me, when I abandoned myself to this hypothesis that art might be real, that it was something even more than the merely nerve-tingling joy of a fine day or an opiate night that music can give; a more real, more fruitful exhilaration, to judge at least by what I felt.  It is inconceivable that a piece of sculpture of a piece of music which gives us an emotion that we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality, or life would be meaningless.  Thus nothing resembled more closely than some such phrase of Vinteuil the peculiar pleasure which I had felt at certain moment in my life, when gazing, for instance, at the steeples of Martinville, or at certain trees along a road near Balbec, or, more simply, at the beginning of this book, when I tasted a certain cup of tea.  Like that cup of tea, all those sensations of light, the bright clamour, the boisterous colours that Vinteuil sent to us from the world in which he composed, paraded before my imagination, insistently but too rapidly for me to be able to apprehend it, something that I might compare to the perfumed silkiness of a geranium.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 381

Proust proposes, "It seemed to me, when I abandoned myself to this hypothesis that art might be real . . " Religions tend to promote the idea that the the divine transcendent is the true reality, and that everything in this world is a flawed copy (for that matter, so did Plato).  Could it be possible that art is the same thing?  We think of art as an attempt, usually flawed, of capturing the perfection of beauty, or, for that matter, the perfection of the divine.  Could it be that art is the transcendent perfect reality, while everything in this world is actually the deeply flawed copy of art?  Proust suggested, "It is inconceivable that a piece of sculpture of a piece of music which gives us an emotion that we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality, or life would be meaningless."  If perfection is unattainable, whether in the next world or in art, what is the point of this pain?

Discography Year Two - Week 3

I get up every morning around 5:00, partially because I'm an old man and old men get up early, but also because it's a quiet time at the Bleak House Orphanage for Sullen Teenagers.  I putter around the house, see to my morning ablutions and rituals, sort out my dog Loki (who greets me with a thump of his dinosaur tail; maybe the best moment of every day), rage against the president on Twitter, try to get some writing done, struggle with Proust, organize any Discography entries, and listen to music (quietly).  The other morning all of this came together in a disjointed but lovely fashion.  I was working on the latest entry in my never-ending, and never-interesting, ruminations on Remembrance of Things Past, and I came across this passage from Proust, a passionate lover of music:

This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth - two hypotheses which recur in all important questions, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them; and, in the case of Vinteuil's music, this choice was constantly presenting itself under a variety of forms.  For instance, this music seemed to me something truer than all known books.  At moments I thought that this was due to the fact that, what we feel about life not being felt in the form of ideas, its literary, that is to say intellectual expression describes it, explains it, analyses it, but does not recompose it as does music, in which the sounds seem to follow the very movement of our being. . .

Beyond the inspiration for a thematic week based on songs we used to hate but now love, I appreciate Proust's proposal that "music seemed to me something truer than all known books."  To me Proust is getting at the beautiful but tortured relationship between the head and the heart, and it's not that literature cannot evoke intense emotion, but that music is in and of itself emotion. I think it was Goethe (Dave Mills will doubtless correct me) who declared that architecture is frozen music.  Maybe music is slightly more tangible emotion, which means that we can, imperfectly, capture it.  We're in the middle of a very sad time in our nation's history and I can't tell you what this Discography discussion has meant to me, not solely because of the time that I get to spend with you great souls (even if only virtual) but also because of the music we share.

Oh, and I think we can proclaim Dave Mills the winner this week by acclamation for providing us with unrequited joy in the midst of this Trumpian dystopian nightmare.

Gary Beatrice

Jayhawks, Martin’s Song

The first two major label Jayhawks albums were full of great sounding songs featuring catchy guitar driven hooks and dynamic vocals and harmonies. For my money, this was the catchiest of them all. Sadly not much of their music has grabbed me since Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow The Green Grass.

That's it. That's the whole commentary. I have no idea what Martin's Song is about but it's catchy as hell. Give it a whirl and see if you agree. And stop by next week for my next insightful commentary.

Dave Wallace

Soundtrack of Our Lives - Heading fora Breakdown

One of the best bands of the late '90s/early '00s garage rock mini-boom was the presumptuously-named Soundtrack of Our Lives from Sweden.  They put out a few excellent albums, and "Heading for a Breakdown" is one of my favorites by them.

Kevin Andrews

You know that feeling when you hear a song for the first time and it grabs you and makes you listen to it over and over? These two songs found me in rather serendipitous ways. One I received at a radio promotion, the kind where they hang out at a store and broadcast every hour or so. The other woke me up in the middle of the night when I forgot to turn off a radio stream. They both struck me as quintessential pop songs that should have raced up the charts. Hope you like them.

The first is Catch the Sun by Doves  I happened to need a new cell phone when this was given to me. I had no expectations. The hook comes from the repeating guitar line which repeats throughout though it lacks a traditional guitar solo in the break. 

The rest of the disc is quite nice, very atmospheric. It almost plays like a concept album. The entire album is on Youtube if you’re interested. There’s a cover version of this out there that lacks the edge this has, I heard it once in a supermarket. Ignore the video, I think it was made by our first year film students.

The second song is Almost by Sarah Harmer  I was in the habit of listening to wxpn.org at night and fell asleep without turning it off. I grew up listening to XPN over the air when it was even more awesome than today. It’s the home of World Café and World Café Live – their club venue. Overnight they repeat the 4-hour WC show and this song came on and grabbed me by the throat. She’s has a great voice that jumps an octave at will. Here the hook is in the guitar part, which to me has this little sort of The Cure thing going on but also the killer chorus, “And if I am the sailor…”.

This is really atypical of her work, most of it leans toward the Folk section. Doesn’t the world already have enough awesome Canadian women singer-songwriters. Is there something in the water?

Kathy Seiler

Tedeschi Trucks Band, These Walls 

I’ve posted Tedeschi Trucks Band before, and this song is one of my favorites on their Revelator album. I love the melody and the India-themed instrumentals (the instrument being played is a Sarod) that blend so seamlessly with the bluesy guitar. Although I don’t know why, I’m always amazed how well music from different cultures blend, which will likely lead me to post some songs from Peter Gabriel’s Big Blue Ball album or Ofra Haza at some point. I suppose it just goes to show how universal music really is across the globe. While songs might seem very different, the universality of music cannot be denied. The stories that music tell are universal as well.

The lyrics of this song are most definitely blues; it’s about a woman who finds herself on her own after her man has left her, struggling to get by, hoping she will be able to keep her house standing, but all the while unable to forget him.

She prays, “O Lord, don’t let these walls fall down”

Cause it’s been so damn hard since her man left town

Says I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking, I’ve been thinking

‘bout you baby

Oh such a long, long time

And she can’t help but wonder

On those rainy Saturdays

Where he is and where he’s been

Is another trapped in his haze?

While I consider myself a feminist with some traditional leanings, I can’t deny that this isn’t a real story commonly experienced by countless women (and probably men). Both the music and the story cross both cultures and time.

Dave Mills

And now for something completely different...

This week marks a departure for me in terms of genre, but is consistent with my overall approach to this year's discography. Since I almost exclusively stream music, I can't scroll through a catalog of tracks on iTunes, a "greatest hits" soundtrack of my life, so to speak, to jog my thinking about what I might contribute to the discography on any given week. Thus I've decided to let my discography contributions this year be in the moment, sharing tracks that jump out from my weekly listening for whatever reason. I'm hoping this approach will lead to more contributions from me this year. Time will tell. But this, week, this strategy spawned this:

Earlier this week, a colleague referred to an Assistant Dean in another division on campus as a "half a dean." Upon hearing this, my mind went immediately to the Monty Python song,Eric the Half-A-Bee. I looked up the song on youtube so I could send it to my colleague in response to the half-a-dean comment. This, in turn, sent me down a rabbit hole (as youtube is wont to do) of old Monty Python material. Perusing this catalog, I realized how central Monty Python's music is to what I remember and love most about their comedy. While their sketches and movies are brilliant and hysterical, and have spawned many a quote and bout of speaking with a faux British accent ("Tis only a flesh wound!", "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!", and so on), the songs exemplify their genius in concise form. 

In Eric the Half-A-Bee, you can find all the elements that make a great Monty Python song. The rock-band count off at the beginning of the song is immediately disrupted by a piano glissando, which ends in a quirky playful twist. Then John Cleese speaks over the piano in a dinner theatre music revue style, which then gives way to a rowdy bar song chorus. This all then comes to an abrupt end at about 1:45, when Cleese announces "The End." But that's not really the end, as the song then continues with choir, whistling, etc. for another 30 seconds or so. Lyrically, the song starts off intellectually with a metaphysical discussion of being, complete with Latin. But as the musical style shifts, so too the lyrics shift, from ontology to a farcical anthem about a specific injured bee named Eric. And then, as most Monty Python material manages to do, it falls abruptly from the highbrow to the lowbrow and Cleese declares, at about 1:35, that he loves Eric the half-a-bee "carnally" (which is then adjusted to "semi-carnally," in light of Eric's half-a-bee status). But the roller coaster ride doesn't end there, because after this confession, just before "The End," someone mistakes the "semi-carnally" lyric for the name "Cyril Connolly," a prominent British literary critic. So we're flung immediately back into the highbrow intellectual space where the song began. This sort of whiplash is just rollicking fun and is quintessential to their comedy, where fart jokes, philosophical theories, insults against the French or Australians, astute political commentary, and slapstick coexist lovingly within musical compositions pastiched from vaudeville, pop and folk music, classical composers, sacred hymns, political anthems, and, and, and... So this week, following the path blazed by Gary B's Disco Top Ten, here's my own homage to the 70's -- a Top Ten list of Monty Python songs, which I present in no real particular order and in thoroughly incomplete form:

1.  Every Sperm is Sacred, from The Meaning of Life

2.  Always Look On The Bright Side of Life, from The Life of Brian

3.  Philosophers Drinking Song, from Flying Circus

4.  The Lumberjack Song, from Flying Circus

5.  Sit on my Face, from Flying Circus

6.  There is no item number 6. (In honor of "The Bruce's" Philosophy Department)

7.  The Galaxy Song, from The Meaning of Life

8.  The Song that Goes Like This, from Spamalot

9.  The Spam Song, from Flying Circus

10. Christmas in Heaven, from The Meaning of Life

If there are, by chance, other Monty Python fans lurking amongst this blog's readership, which songs did I miss?

Alice Neiley

Yo-Yo Ma, First Impressions

Often I’m able to remember how songs arrive in my life, especially ones that affect me strongly. I remember being introduced to the original cast soundtrack of Showboat, for example (my dad sometimes played it Sunday mornings when we made pancakes), and I’ve been obsessed ever since. I remember the moment when my first girlfriend found an unopened David Gray CD in my car, popped it into the player, and we made out for at least four songs in a row – the girlfriend and I didn’t last, but David Gray and I are forever. I’ve racked my brain for days, though, and have absolutely no memory of where I heard this Yo-Yo Ma/Edgar Meyer/Mark O’Connor tune.  Meyer wrote it, and it’s from a bluegrass-folk-classical fusion album, called Appalachia Waltz, on which the three musicians collaborated. But I didn’t know that until today when I looked it up. I don’t have that album. Nor have I heard any of the other songs those three play together. I’ve heard this song, though – 221 times, according to my iTunes account. 

You know when you’re finally so relaxed you feel like crying? How wonderful that moment is and how it bubbles up to your throat from somewhere completely mysterious? That’s this song for me. Within the first few notes, I usually breathe such an enormous breath with such a long exhale that, if my headphones are in, Karen asks, “so, what’s going on there?” It’s not necessarily my favorite song, or even my favorite classical one, but it embodies a groundedness I can’t seem to access very easily in regular life, and an easy, full bodied movement that often remains elusive as well. All I can really say is that this song, without a doubt, the one song I would choose to live inside, if one day I was granted such a gorgeous choice.  

Dave Kelley

"Memory is a terrible thing, if you use it right."  Kathleen Edwards "I've Been Afraid"

"Memory allows us to return to a time and a place where we knew we were loved."  Don Draper   "Mad Men".

"In Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound."  Don Draper

My week three selection is "Galveston" written by Jimmy Webb and performed by the late great Glenn Campbell.

Like I am sure the rest of you, I know many people who have suffered or are suffering from dementia.  Within the last few months, a dear friend has lost her mother and a close friend from my time in the Prosecutor's Office lost her own life to complications from this foul disease.  Other close friends have parents who still draw breath but are no longer even a shadow of themselves due to dementia.  As the above quotes are meant to illustrate, memory can be a blessing and a curse.  I would argue that they are both a blessing and a curse to anyone who has ever lived on this earth for any length of time.  I believe that an advantage that animals have over us is that they spend no time worrying about the past or the future.  Thank God for our opposable thumbs, indoor plumbing, and comfy couches.  

This song has been a favorite of mine since childhood.  A time and a place where I knew I was loved.  It has absolutely nothing to do with dementia of course.  It is one of many great songs that were written by Jimmy Webb and sung by Glenn Campbell.  The singer is apparently a soldier in Vietnam thinking about the girl he left behind in Galveston, so it is to a degree about memory.  The lyrics really do not matter to me so much.  It is the melody, the instrumentation, and the vocal performance.  Many songs I loved when I was 5 are now cringe inducing.  This ain't one of them.

As you all know, Campbell suffered for years from dementia and ultimately died of it.  There is an excellent CNN documentary about his final tour which took place well after the dementia was pretty advanced.  He needed a teleprompter to help with the lyrics and was also very dependent on his band members (which included two of his children) to remember what song was next.  The truly amazing part to me was that he remembered the melodies precisely and was also able to play guitar very effectively.  Clearly his disease had impacted his non-verbal memory much less than his verbal memory.  We all obviously love music, and it seems clear to me that music is very fundamental to the human race.  Music has existed ever since civilizations did.  I suspect there was music even before there was language.

For whatever reason, I have been even more nostalgic lately than usual, and I am typically a very nostalgic mother fucker to begin with!!  At 55 I am trying to get a better grip on how to use memory wisely and not negatively.  That is definitely still a work in progress.  I am just thankful I still have my memories and would probably get a one way ticket to Oregon if I ever got this diagnosis.  Well I don't remember where I put my keys, wallet, or cell phone, but you know what I mean.  I hope this song evokes some good memories for you.  It is so nice to have the blog rolling again.  

Gary Scudder

Gordon Lightfoot, Beautiful

This is an awfully strange choice for me.  Truthfully, it wasn't my first choice, or even my second, for the week, and both have been pushed further back for later weeks.  I went back to last year's strategy of just writing about what I was listening to or thinking about that particular week.  The other night I rewatched the Vincent Gallo film The Brown Bunny. Yes, that film, for all you Chloe Sevigny fans, which includes me; I will be the first one in line at the grand opening of the Chloe Sevigny "Wait, you just bet me that I won't do what in a movie?" Hall of Fame (the first two entries will her roles in The Brown Bunny and as the pre-op transsexual hitman/woman in the Irish series Hit or Miss.  I can remember watching The Brown Bunny a decade ago and absolutely loathing it, but recently I read an interesting article defending the film (sort of), mainly because the critic was talking about destroying it in a review when it previewed at Cannes for, among other things, it being bloated and endless, but how Gallo had actually listened to the critics and cut out fifty minutes and thus it actually ended up being a pretty interesting film.  Well, I can testify that I did like it better ten years further down the road, although it may take another decade or two before I think it's a good movie.  It may just be that this time I stayed awake all the way through to the penultimate infamous scene, and then, more importantly, the final scene which is the big reveal.  There are endless scenes shot through the front window of a drive west (although fifty minutes less than the early version) and for about fifteen minutes I thought I was watching outtakes from Manos, Hands of Fate (shout out to the esteemed Phillip Seiler).  Oddly, right in the middle of a lengthy sequence of some highway scene the Gordon Lightfoot song Beautiful began to play.  Now, I have no idea how in the hell Gallo got permission to play that song in the movie because all the other music was canned dross.  It suddenly occurred to me that I had not heard that song in years, if not decades, and that it was, for lack of a better word, beautiful.  At the same time it struck me that one of the reasons why I really liked the song at that moment, beyond a general nostalgia which seems to be impacting all of us recently, was that it stood in such jarring contrast to the ugly tedium of the film.  Like everything else, it's all about perception.  Years ago I remember seeing A Beautiful Mind and thinking that it was a terribly overrated film, but that it was possibly because leading up to it a dozen people had informed me that it was incredible and would change my life for the better (blah blah blah).  At the same time, if I had stumbled into the theater to kill time one afternoon and watched the film with no advance notice I would have probably really liked it.   In the case of the unexpected appearance of Beautiful in the midst of The Brown Bunny I was completely caught off guard, and found myself enjoying a lovely little moment.  The Buddhists talk about satori, or sudden enlightenment, and I don't think it reached that profound level, but it was as if I were walking across the barren Deccan plateau in India and suddenly came across a brilliantly colored rose; its beauty would be magnified by its surroundings.  Anyway, the point is that something profound was going on, and I once again cursed my limited Hoosier education - and the fact that my mother clearly didn't take vitamins when she was carrying me - and thus my inability to understand its deeper meaning.  Luckily, I'm in a music discussion group for far wiser souls.

My Years With Proust - Day 574

This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth - two hypotheses which recur in all important question, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them; and, in the case of Vinteuil's music, this choice was constantly presenting itself under a variety of forms.  For instance, this music seemed to me something truer than all known books. At moments I thought that this was due to the fact that, what we feel about life not being felt in the form of ideas, its literary, that is to say intellectual expression describes it, explains it, analyses it, but does not recompose it as does music, in which the sounds seem to follow the very movement of our being, to reproduce the extreme inner point of our sensations which is that part that gives us that peculiar exhilaration which we experience from time to time and which, when we say "What a fine day! What glorious sunshine" we do not in the least communicate to others, in whom the same sun and the same weather evoke quite different vibrations. In Vinteuil's music, there were thus some of those visions which it is impossible to express and almost forbidden to contemplate, since, when at the moment of falling asleep we receive the caress of their unreal enchantment, at that very moment in which reason has already deserted us, our eyes seal up and before we have had time to know not only the ineffable but the invisible, we are asleep.  It seems to me, when I abandoned myself to his my hypothesis that art might be real, that it was something even more than the merely nerve-tingling joy of a fine day or an opiate night that music can give; a more real more fruitful exhilaration, to judge at least by what I felt.  It is inconceivable that a piece of sculpture of a piece of music which gives us an emotion that we feel to be more exalted, more pure, more true, does not correspond to some definite spiritual reality, or life would be meaningless.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 381

We're picking up where we left off yesterday (as we will pick up tomorrow where we're leaving off today, in one of those Proustian paragraphs).  Proust is talking about music that he initially didn't like but then grew to love, either because he learned to overlook the ugliness or understand the beauty.  Not surprisingly, this is only the jumping off place for an even more profound discussion; as he tells us: "This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth - two hypotheses which recur in all important question, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them . . ." So, we can grow to love art (or Art) if we can grow immune to the ugliness or understand the beauty, but is this also true of reality (or Reality) and the Immortality of the Soul (or the immortality of the soul)?  Is there ugliness to the Immortality of the Soul?  Doubtless there is ugliness on the road to the Immortality of the Soul, especially if we factor (and that's a very big if) in that religion is a necessary part of that path.  Even if we divorce religion from the process there is certainly ugliness on that thorny path as we strive to control our ego (as we say in Islam, "the most excellent jihad is the conquest of the self").  But what about the Immortality of the Soul in and of itself?  Would our short but tangible mortal life suddenly become ugly if it was truly nothing more than a glorified hiccup, a proving ground where joys are a penalty?  Maybe an Immortality of anything, even of bliss, would be the ugliest of ugly paths.  Never changing, never growing, never desiring - how can that be anything other than ugly?

My Years With Proust - Day 573

In the music I had heard at Mme Verdurin's, phrases I had not noticed, obscure phantoms that were then indistinct, turned into dazzling architectural structures; and some of them became friends, that I had scarcely distinguished, that at best had appeared to me to be ugly, so that I could never have supposed that they were like those people, antipathetic at first sight, whom we discover to be what they really are only after we have come to know them well. Between the two states there was a real transmutation.  At the same time, phrases which had been quite distinct the first time but which I had not then recognised, I identified now with phrases from other works, such as that phrase from the Sacred Variation for Organ which, at Mme Verdurin's, had passed unperceived by me in the septet, where nevertheless, like a saint that had stepped down from the sanctuary, it found itself consorting with the composer's familiar sprites.  Moreover, the phrase evoking the joyful clanging of the bells at noon, which had seemed to me too unmelodious, too mechanical in its rhythm, had now become my favorite, either because I had grown accustomed to its ugliness or because I had discovered its beauty.  This reaction from the disappointment which great works of art cause at first may in fact be attributed to a weakening of the initial impression or to the effort necessary to lay bare the truth - two hypotheses which recur in all important question, questions about the truth of Art, of Reality, of the Immortality of the Soul; we must choose between them; and, in the case of Vinteuil's music, this choice was constantly presenting itself under a variety of forms.  For instance, this music seemed to me something truer than all known books. At moments I thought that this was due to the fact that, what we feel about life not being felt in the form of ideas, its literary, that is to say intellectual expression describes it, explains it, analyses it, but does not recompose it as does music, in which the sounds seem to follow the very movement of our being, to reproduce the extreme inner point of our sensations which is that part that gives us that peculiar exhilaration which we experience from time to time and which, when we say "What a fine day! What glorious sunshine" we do not in the least communicate to others, in whom the same sun and the same weather evoke quite different vibrations.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 380-381

We're in the middle of one of those very Proustian paragraphs that are, beyond being four pages long (I sometimes make my first year students read passages from Proust, and I always tell them to feel like this man felt but not necessarily write like this man wrote), which has so many extraordinary points that it will almost certainly give birth to four different posts.  Marcel is reflecting, once again, on a piece of music by Verdurin and, not surprisingly, takes us to a metaphysical realm.  He starts off talking about musical works that he initially didn't like and then eventually loved, and vice-versa.  Proust tells us, "Moreover, the phrase evoking the joyful clanging of the bells at noon, which had seemed to me too unmelodious, too mechanical in its rhythm, had now become my favorite, either because I had grown accustomed to its ugliness or because I had discovered its beauty." In turn this made me think of musical works that I initially didn't like but then grew to love, although I like to think that most of the time it was because I discovered its beauty than grew accustomed to its ugliness.  While there are many examples, for some reason the one that jumped out to me first off are works my Edward Elgar.  Years ago I bought an Elgar CD mainly because I loved (and still love) Jacqueline Du Pru's performance of his Cello Concert to E Minor (which I'm pretty certain I've celebrated on our weekly Discography music discussion). Rounding out the CD was Janet Baker singing Elgar's Sea Pictures Op. 37, which initially was something I just ignored until the Cello Concerto started. However, over the years I began to pay more appreciate Sea Pictures more, mainly because I think I just studied it more, until eventually I began to the CD mainly because of Sea Pictures, especially Sabbath Morning at Sea (not that I stopped loving the Cello Concerto). Again, I would argue it was because I discovered the beauty of Sea Pictures, and not simply because I was bludgeoned into submission.

Now, that was the easy part of the equation, and I'll have to hold off the more complex discussion until tomorrow because I'm presenting next week in our George "Honey Boy" Evans Symposium and somebody is going to have to finish my talk.

My Years With Proust - Day 572

The same bouts of gloom begin again, the same difficulty in living together makes itself felt, only a parting is no longer difficult as before; we have begun by talking about it, and have then put it into practice amicably.  But these are only premonitory symptoms which we have failed to recognise.  Presently, the temporary and benign separation will be succeeded by the terrible and final separation for which, without knowing it, we have paved the way.

   "Come to my room in five minutes and let me see something of you, my darling one.  It would [be] so nice if you would.  But afterwards I shall fall asleep at once, for I'm almost dead."

   It was indeed a dead woman that I saw when, presently, I entered her room.  She had fallen asleep as soon as she lay down; her sheets, wrapped round her body like a shroud, had assumed, with their elegant folds, the rigidity of stone.  It was as though, reminiscent of certain mediaeval Last Judgments, the head alone was emerging from the tomb, awaiting in its sleep the Archangels' trumpet.  This head had been surprised by sleep almost upside down, the hair dishevelled.  Seeing that expressionless body lying there, I asked myself what logarithmic table it constituted, that all the actions in which it might have been involved, from the nudge of an elbow to the brushing of a skirt, should be capable of causing me, stretched out to the infinity of all the points that it had occupied in space and time, and from time to time sharply reawakened in my memory, so intense an anguish, even though I knew that it was determined by impulses and desires of hers which in another person, in herself five years earlier or five years later, would have left me quite indifferent.  It was all a lie, but a lie for which I had not the courage to seek any solution other than my own death.  And so I remained, in the fur-lined coat which I had not taken off since my return from the Verdurins', beside that twisted body, that allegorical figure. Allegorising what?  My death?  My love?  Presently I began to hear her regular breathing.  I went and sat down on the edge of the bed to take that soothing cure of breath and contemplation.  Then I withdrew very quietly so as not to wake her.

Marcel Proust, The Captive, pp. 366-367

On the one hand this is simply another example of Proust foreshadowing the tragic events from The Fugitive (spoiler alert: look away).  In a rare moment when they're not bickering, Albertine says, "Come to my room in five minutes and let me see something of you, my darling one.  It would [be] so nice if you would.  But afterwards I shall fall asleep at once, for I'm almost dead."  Yes, she's almost dead.  However, on the other hand there is so much more going on in this scene, and I found it to be one of the most moving scenes in the entire novel. Proust writes: "It was indeed a dead woman that I saw when, presently, I entered her room.  She had fallen asleep as soon as she lay down; her sheets, wrapped round her body like a shroud, had assumed, with their elegant folds, the rigidity of stone."  Every one of us, when we're young and madly in love, have laid awake in bed staring at the sleeping face of our lover, seeing nothing but life and quiet vitality and the future.  But someday it will be different.  There's always that moment when we visit our parents in the hospital and this time when we wait by the side of their bed while they're asleep all we see is death on their face.  Someday we will see the same thing on the face of our lover, and unlike the logic of our parent's coming demise, we will be facing the work of an illogical and inconsiderate, and thoughtless, God.  Naturally, Proust sees beyond mortality.  He shares, "And so I remained, in the fur-lined coat which I had not taken off since my return from the Verdurins', beside that twisted body, that allegorical figure. Allegorising what?  My death?  My love?"  He could wake her, and might of at a different point in their relationship and in his own life, but he left her alone. "The I withdrew very quietly so as not to wake her."

My Years With Proust - Day 571

   Besides, we feel that in these lies there is indeed a grain of truth, that, if life does not bring about any changes in our loves, it is we ourselves who will seek to bring about or to feign them, so strongly do we feel that all love, and everything else in life, evolves rapidly towards a farewell.  We want to shred the tears that it will bring long before it comes.  No doubt there was, on this occasion, a practical reason for the scene that I had enacted.  I had suddenly wanted to keep Albertine because I felt that she was scattered about among other people with whom I could not prevent her from mixing.  But even if she had renounced them all for ever for my sake, I might perhaps have been still more firmly resolved never to leave her, for separation is made painful by jealousy but impossible by gratitude.  I felt that in any case I was fighting the decisive battle in which I must conquer or fall.  I would have offered Albertine in an hour all that I possessed, because I said to myself: "Everything depends upon this battle." But such battles are less like those of old, which lasted for a few hours, than like those of today which do not end the next day, or the day after, or the following week.  We give all our strength, because we steadfastly believe that we shall never need it again.  And more than a year goes by without producing a "decision."

Marcel Proust, The Captive, p. 360

"We want to shred the tears that it will bring long before it comes."  We've been talking about Marcel's battle with Albertine, which ranges - and rages - from bitter recrimination to jealous remonstration, but somehow, and sadly, without the sweaty interval of make up sex.  Proust knows that they're fighting over nothing, but, as he tells us, "Everything depends upon this battle."  The head of my doctoral committee at the University of Cincinnati told me once that the reason why university politics were so brutal and cutthroat was because there was absolutely nothing at stake.  Maybe this is what happens with dead relationships: nothing is really at stake any more, so the battle must be fought to the death.  As he notes: "But such battles are less like those of old, which lasted for a few hours, than like those of today which do not end the next day, or the day after, or the following week.  We give all our strength, because we steadfastly believe that we shall never need it again.  And more than a year goes by without producing a 'decision.'" Earlier in Remembrance of Things Past Proust spoke eloquently about the terrible nature of habit, and it seems that his battle with Albertine has fallen into that category.

Oh, and, stupid spellchecker, how do you not know how to spell remonstration (I knew how to spell it, but the spellchecker didn't recognize it)?  Apparently I inadvertently set the spellchecker on second grade level by mistake.

Baseball in Zanzibar

Just another quick posting, this time of a picture I snapped in the downstairs common room at the Flamingo Hotel in Stone Town.  There are dozens of books lining the walls, most left, doubtless, by folks passing through (I should really try and come up with a list of the books I've left in hostels and hotels over the years - that would be an interesting assignment or novel).  There's also a TV, which is on all day long, usually with a soccer game or an Egyptian soap opera.  When Steve and I were in Zanzibar in May there was actually a baseball game.  Now, I don't watch much baseball anymore, for any number of reasons, some personal and some systemic, but I still have a childlike love of the game, and it gave me joy to sit down on the faded, dilapidated couch in Zanzibar and watch a little bit of the game.  It reminded me of the watching baseball in other foreign countries and how it made me feel connected to home.  When I taught in India I skived off half a day once so that I could get up early and watch the All-Star Game, a game I never watch at home, but it was the only game that ESPN India was showing that summer.  I remember being driven to fits of rage in Abu Dhabi because the local sports channel kept cutting off the end of games (soft of an Emirati equivalent of the infamous Heidi football game).  It was that exciting world series between Texas and St. Louis where the Rangers kept getting to within one strike of winning the championship then the Cardinals wold hit a home run.  Well, sadly, I missed most of that drama because the local channel switched over to a previously scheduled lightweight boxing match.

Recently, in response to the Jemele Hill situation, and in support of her, I tweeted: "I am a professor and a lover of baseball and jazz, and I'm also calling Trump a White Supremacist."  Beyond an age where we are forced to routinely call the President of the United States a White Supremacist, mainly because he is a White Supremacist, it's interesting that I naturally identified myself in regards to baseball.