Sunday opera blogging Comments turned off

L’amour est un oiseau rebelle

By on September 12th, 2004

Today’s Sunday Opera Matinee on the radio is Bizet’s Carmen (this recording, I think) and, as I type this, I’m listening to Tatiana Troyanos singing the Habanera aria. She sings it less sultrily and more reflectively than other Carmens I’ve heard, almost (at least at first) as if the aria were half soliloquy. But her voice makes me want to fan myself. I think I’ll postpone the laundry I was going to do until after the final act. Not exactly subtle, Bizet, but then again, one doesn’t always want subtlety.

Dear WTJU Opera Matinee hosts: more Troyanos recordings! More! More!

Commonplaces, Food and Drink, Poetry, Quotidian 2 comments

Even the musky muscadines

By on September 12th, 2004

Virginia is the furthest south I’ve ever lived — except for Santa Monica, which I don’t count because I think of California as west more than anything else. So far it hasn’t been that much of a culture shock, but every so often I think "Hey, I really am living in the south." What prompts this thought is, usually, food. Moon Pies, for instance. Or creecy greens. I’d never heard of them before moving here, but now I see them canned in the grocery store all the time; this brand, with a cheerful yellow label with a picture of the plant on it, seems to be the most readily available. I haven’t tried them yet, in large part because I’d rather try cooking them myself and I haven’t been able to find the fresh kind yet.

The other southern-US-specific produce I’ve noticed is the bronze muscadine grape, also known as the scuppernong. Before this summer, I’d only read about them (I hazily recall puzzling references to "scuppernong arbors" in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, which I read when I was thirteen). But on one of my first grocery expeditions, there they were: huge, round, thick-skinned, bronzy-green grapes. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture’s scuppernong factsheet describes how their abundance impressed English explorers in 1584. You can make muscadine wine, though I’m not ambitious enough to try it; a muscadine pie would be more my speed.

The other thing that pleases me about seeing scuppernongs for the first time is that I can now picture the "musky muscadines" that appear in Wallace Stevens’ "The Reader":

All night I sat reading a book,
Sat reading as if in a book
Of sombre pages.

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight.

No lamp was burning as I read,
A voice was mumbling, "Everything
Falls back to coldness,

Even the musky muscadines,
The melons, the vermillion pears
Of the leafless garden."

The sombre pages bore no print
Except the trace of burning stars
In the frosty heaven.

— Wallace Stevens, "The Reader," in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

People have written before about Stevens’s borrowings from Keats’s odes, e.g. the almost palpable presence of "To Autumn" in the final stanza of "Sunday Morning." It occurs to me that "The Reader" is another poem that explores some of the same autumnal landscape, but from a much chillier and darker viewpoint. I also suspect Stevens’s muscadines to be related in some obscure way to the grapes in Keats’s "Melancholy" ode — the lines about "him whose strenuous tongue / Can burst Joy’s grape upon his palate fine" — in the way that Stevens’ Tennesseean jar in "Anecdote of the Jar" is a more domestic, New World variation on Keats’s Grecian urn. Note to self: reread Keats, buy muscadines, experiment with bursting them on the palate.

Politics 2 comments

Late night thoughts prompted by the arrival of a certain anniversary

By on September 11th, 2004

Periodically I wrestle with the question of whether my interest in all things aesthetic really means I’m just withdrawing from the world. It’s a serious question, because when I was younger, books and writing were my primary means of escape: when life got too difficult I’d pull a protective cloak of words over myself. So periodically, now, I look around me and wonder, how can I be sitting here losing myself in music or poetry at a time like this? Or rather, is all this my way of sticking my head in the sand at a moment when things desperately need fixing, and even if I can’t personally fix them, isn’t it irresponsible to turn away from them?

Because I see other people’s political apathy — or worse, their willed indifference to the fate of anyone outside their range of vision — and it makes me furious, but who’s to say that I’m any different? In the end, I’m probably not. And what if I use culture as a narcotic to lull myself into the same kind of complacency?

Just under three years ago, I turned off the TV after two or three days glued to the screen because I could not, just could not, watch that footage one more time, couldn’t stand any more speculation about who or what might get blown up next, couldn’t listen to any more man-on-the-street interviews with people calling for the bombing of the entire Arab world to smithereens. Having hit my saturation point, I spent the better part of a day listening to Bach’s two- and three-part inventions over and over and over. I couldn’t tell at the time if it was escapism, or some part of my brain looking for equilibrium, or what. It may have been simply the need to remind myself of what other things human beings are capable of besides mass murder.

But this evening I was reading what Joseph Duemer has to say about being "hard-wired to the aesthetic":

For all my political consciousness, I remain located in an essentially aesthetic space. But I do not make the mistake of setting the aesthetic above the social, political & historical spaces from which others write & speak. Others speak from other places & it is the totality of speaking that constitutes human Being. Clearly, these “spaces” or perspectives do not exclude each other & in fact intersect in complex ways; but speaking for myself only, I feel hard-wired to the aesthetic. I suppose there are geniuses who move freely among perspectives, but most of us, I think, are either born or early-trained to a particular way of looking at the world. This strikes me as a fortunate result of human evolution: each individual ideally can specialize in one way of looking at the world, but at the same time is capable of recognizing the legitimacy of other perspectives.

Theories of consciousness & justice need to include & account for this plurality at the heart of human Being.

— Sharp Sand: Hard-Wired for the Aesthetic?, 9/10/04

And that’s it — that’s what I wanted to say. I’m still figuring out how to live in the world with my own aesthetic hard-wiring, but that’s a start.

(If you’re wondering where all this comes from, it’s partly to do with tomorrow’s date [whoops: today’s — I have to make an effort to go to bed earlier], and partly with certain arguments concerning the relationship between aesthetics and politics that I encountered a lot while working on certain portions of the dissertation, and that still go on in my head to this day. But I suspect it has more to do with the 9/11 anniversary factor.)

Quotidian 6 comments

Green, red, orange

By on September 6th, 2004

You know what? Cheerfulness, contentment, and a work life that includes a lot of full and interesting days are all very good things. But these are not optimal conditions for blogging. If I were still back in the midwest, keeping irregular sleeping hours, stressing out about teaching, and fretting about my future, I’d probably be posting a lot more. If it weren’t for the fact that I still have the urge to write, I’d start to suspect that it’s true that there’s no writing without angst and neurosis. Not that I’d go back to that. It’s more that I’m still casting about for topics to write about now that I no longer feel compelled to bitch about academia, and "I’m just generally liking life right now" gets a little repetitive after a while, true though it is.*

In fact, speaking of academia, I’m kind of enjoying the attached-yet-detached feeling of being on a university campus but removed from the classroom as the fall madness starts up. Instead, I’m doing shifts at the reference desk, and when lost-looking first-year students come up and ask for help understanding the mysteries of Library of Congress call numbering, I think "awww, they’re so cute" instead of "why aren’t they better prepared?!" and then I help them figure out where to find what they’re looking for. I’m going to lead a few how-to-do-library-research training sessions for undergrads and others, and I’m rejoicing in the thought of doing the interesting parts of classroom teaching with no papers to grade. It’s also become clear to me that I still believe in intellectual inquiry; all I’ve done is to start looking for it along paths other than those that I used to think were the One and Only Road to Mt. Parnassus. And the trek has been uncommonly pleasant so far.

Fall is almost here; I can feel it. I caught the tail end of summer this weekend at the Charlottesville Farmers’ Market, where everyone was selling heirloom tomatoes in every possible weird shape and color. I bought some of a green-and-orange striped variety called "Zebra" and have been making the best tomato sandwiches I’ve made in some time. (Now if only I could get bread as good as I used to be able to get, they’d be the best tomato sandwiches ever.) At the market, a man selling shrubs pointed to a little Japanese maple in a pot: its topmost leaves were already starting to turn red. Later in the afternoon, walking home, I noticed how the sunlight was taking on that slightly faded look that means the earth is moving farther away from the sun summer is over. [edited to fix science error; thanks, Yami!] I spotted some bittersweet growing by the side of the road, a sign of fall that I still associate with Septembers in Baltimore and walking to school and being warned by my mother never to eat the bright orange berries, no matter how shiny and edible they looked.**

Last night it started to get noticeably cooler at the end of a dark lowering day, with leaves swirling dramatically. It occurred to me that last year, this kind of weather would have just made me depressed: oh no, summer’s over, winter’s coming. But something has happened. It’s like somewhere along the line, I forgot why I love this time of year, and suddenly it’s all come rushing back.

* Setting aside general angst about the state of the world, of course, and whether I should be looking for jobs in Canada just in case a certain current president gets re-elected, and all that. [On rereading, this sounds more flippant than I intended it to be. The worrisome thing is that four years ago when Bush won the election, or rather had the election handed to him, I said I’d move to Canada and I was being flippant. Now I’m not joking anymore. So, anyway, flippancy or no, there are still plenty of things that I fret about; they’re just not as immediately connected to my day-to-day life.]
** But was the bittersweet I remember American bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), or bittersweet nightshade (Solanum dulcamara)? I kind of think it was the second one, because I also remember its striking purple and yellow flowers. Any botanists out there care to assist?

Grab bag 1 comment

Surrealist marketing games

By on September 2nd, 2004

The Prior-Art-O-Matic randomly generates product descriptions, producing some splendidly surreal results:

Design #1752498960
It’s a cigarette lighter that’s made of solid gold! It induces lucid dreaming and runs on compressed air.

Design #4258102746
It’s a saucepan that can disable electrical hardware, emits heat and runs on six little wheels.

(I’m picturing it racing madly across a countertop attacking the other appliances, like those tiny hostile aliens in that Twilight Zone episode with Agnes Moorehead.)

Design #2368148569
It’s a computer mouse that’s laced with vodka! It loves children.

Design #2193499468
It’s a diamond ring that kills weeds down to the root, takes high-quality digital photos and is covered with realistic fur.

(Meret Oppenheim does jewelry?)

Design #3243200629
It’s a beermat that looks like a fish! It can play Mornington Crescent.

Design #2594003802
It’s like a normal hair gel, but it connects to the web.

(Now that’s what I want from my hair products!)

They have exquisite corpses too. Or maybe you’d just rather have some sound effects? *yodel-ay-dee-hoo screech whum tsssss whum tsssss bash ZZZIP (creaaak) fssshh whomp fssshh whomp*

(c/o Frogs and Ravens)

Television 1 comment

Reality TV-watching confessions

By on August 29th, 2004

I hadn’t visited Relevant History in a while, but I see that Alex Pang, like me, is hooked on The Amazing Race. Personally, I don’t think Mirna and Charla were as detestable a duo as Colin and Christie. Well, primarily Colin. If Christie develops some common sense and dumps her ugly-American boyfriend, there may be hope for her yet. But I really, really wanted to see Colin’s sorry tantrum-throwing ass get hauled off to jail in the last episode. (I can’t wait to see what the snarky recappers at Television Without Pity make of it.) If they win, I will lose all faith in humanity. And yet I can’t tear myself away on Tuesday nights.

So. Team I hate most: see above. Team I was sorriest to see get eliminated: Bob and Joyce. (They were one of the only couples who reacted to stress by being sweet to each other — and I got a big kick out of watching them play hockey in the St. Petersburg episode.) Team I’m rooting for: Chip and Kim. Go, Chip and Kim, go!

Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart! Comments turned off

Definitely not your grandma’s kind of knitting.

By on August 29th, 2004

And in honor of my recently unpacked yarn stash: sexy knitting from Knitty! I bet I could use a pair of fishnets. And the whip that doubles as a belt is pure genius.

Cindy commented here earlier that knitters and librarians have both become sexy of late. Librarians who knit are, of course, doubly sexy.

Commonplaces 2 comments

Personal anthology: H.D.

By on August 28th, 2004

This is in honor of my finally having unpacked my books and filled my bookshelves. I’d almost forgotten I had a copy of this lovely little anthology of Imagist poetry, but I was very happy to dig it out of the bottom of a box. My mother had this book when I was growing up, and I used to read through it, poem by poem. It was quite possibly my first introduction to Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, and Amy Lowell. When I found a copy in a used bookstore some months ago, I realized that I remembered nearly everything in it.

(Michelle, wasn’t it you who had a whole bunch of posts about H.D. on your old blog? I couldn’t find them to link to them, but if I could, I would.)

Song

You are as gold
as the half-ripe grain
that merges to gold again,
as white as the white rain
that beats through
the half-opened flowers
of the great flower tufts
thick on the black limbs
of an Illyrian apple bough.

Can honey distill such fragrance
as your bright hair —yet as rain that lies clear
on white honey-comb,
lends radiance to the white wax,
so your hair on your brow
casts light for a shadow.

— H.D.

Uncategorized 4 comments

Return of the school dreams

By on August 25th, 2004

It’s that time of year again, and even we postacademics are dreaming about school. Dorothea’s account of her grad-school dream suggests that such dreams never quite go away. Sure enough, a couple of nights ago, my unconscious dredged up a vague but anxiety-ridden scene in which a nameless, faceless professor and I were looking at a student’s paper together. The professor, who was apparently supervising my grading, was saying in an indignant tone, "This is a terrible paper! I’d give it a D! What did you give it?" and I was trying desperately to think of a way to avoid telling her that I’d wimped out and given it a B-plus.

It’s ironic, because although I’m going to be doing a bit of instruction this year (mostly training students how to find what they’re looking for at the library), I’m definitely not going to be grading papers. Maybe this is my mind’s way of reassuring me: "See what you no longer have to deal with?"

In other news: The move is finally, finally done! All I have to do now is unpack. And unpack and unpack. And invest in a few new pieces of furniture to replace the ones I got rid of before I moved out here.

Sunday opera blogging 2 comments

Furniture? We don’t need no stinkin’ furniture! We have bel canto!

By on August 22nd, 2004

I’m still furnitureless, and the apartment still smells of smoke, but the landlords have promised to send someone around tomorrow to check the vents and figure out what else needs to be done. Which is good, because I was having visions of myself going slowly mad, "Yellow Wallpaper"-style, trying to find the source of the phantom smoke.

But I have just discovered the Sunday Opera Matinee on WTJU, and Jennifer Larmore is singing glorious Rossini arias, from Tancredi and La Donna del Lago and Otello, into my rapt ears. (Isn’t she just stunning? I wish I lived in France so I could see her as both Alcina and Orlando in Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso this fall. But I will settle for looking for her all-trouser-roles-all-the-time "Call Me Mister" CD.) So, overall: life is looking good.

(On a related note: I see that the Met radio broadcasts are still going to be happening this season. Hurrah! There’s my Saturday-afternoon schedule for the winter and spring.)