MOVING BLOG!

As well as Blogger has served me here, I am moving my blog to Wordpress.com in what I dub a "sweeping web move." I like grand, I like dramatic.
I've been thinking about doing this for a couple weeks now. It's easier to set up multiple pages on Wordpress, which I'll use for the purpose of turning the blog into a more encompassing personal portfolio. It'll have pages for my photography and writing. I hope to be tweaking the layout a fair amount over the next couple of weeks, so don't get anxious as the site undergoes its troubling adolescent "trying to find itself" stage.

Presenting: Aesthetics of Everywhere, version 2, Wordpress edition, whatever... Please meet me there, and update your bookmark:
http://cbae.wordpress.com

Tripartite.

...and brief, since all I'm focused on is unwinding.

One. A brief ode to Twitter, presented in precisely 140 characters as is the rule:

twitter is trending topics. brief bursts of convo, rather meditated-upon, succinct. minimalistic in a maximalistic screen-immersion culture.

Two. Dr. Oliver Sacks, whose book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain I picked up last week, was a guest on the June 29th episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Talks about how music stimulates the pleasure center of the brain. It's neat how things seem to rush at once into your life. Trending topics, again.

Three. I may have forgotten my third thought. Will just say that I've been continuing with my David Foster Wallace binge... devouring Brief Interviews with Hideous Men nowadays on the bus ride to and from work. It's a collection of his short stories, wild yet controlled. DFW's got a way of reigning in these bizarrely constructed tales, in an auto-crash, can't-look-away fascination. They're urgent, causing the reader to feel that not only is it rude to stop reading, it may in fact be unsafe to do so. Fictional characters will hang in your conscience well after you've scrubbed your hands of the grit and oil. It's not simply that it's dark. It's also sad and here and real.
I can safely say that he does short fiction as well as he does essays as well as he does hyper-lengthy fiction. What a guy.

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan

Finished off reading an amazing "eater's manifesto" by Michael Pollan called In Defense of Food. It's a short and engrossing read on the problems with the American diet and how we can choose to reverse them. Pollan has an excellent way of subverting the obtuse language of food as we know it in the Western context. And much of it, Pollan argues, cannot even be called "food" - he cuttingly deems much of it "edible foodlike substance," ha! His writing is sincere and his tips for changing one's own diet to be healthier and more conscious are easy to incorporate. By not pushing vegetarianism or veganism but leaving the choice of diet open, Pollan hopes to change the death path of the quote-unquote average American.

Sidenote, re: deathpath - "In 1960 Americans spent 17.5 percent of their income on food and 5.2 percent of national income on health care. Since then, those numbers have flipped: Spending on food has fallen to 9.9 percent, while spending on health care has climbed to 16 percent of national income." This is outrageous.

In Defense of Food is a work that all people must read, because though we all eat, we are too often misguided or wrongly mystified, largely by a movement championed by the food industries (hand-in-hand with scientists) known as Nutritionism: studying nutrients in isolation to extract their supposed benefits, then injecting these into our food products.

• Wonder Bread with the whole grain removed and manipulated in the lab with any number of additives to make it white and soft.
• Milk with the fat removed, then - since the health benefits of the milk have been cancelled by doing so - adding in vitamins that are really only fat-soluble anyway. Low-fat or skim milk isn't real milk: you're drinking milk rendered less nutrient-dense and then patched up with additives so it resembles milk.
• And so on, and so on. Won't spoil the book.

Seriously though, best guide to eating I've read yet. And I thought I already had an idea of what's essential to nutrition... it's liberating to forge a path to more deliberate eating. It'll debunk those myths that are perpetuated all around us in order to sell more food-like substances in our groceries. Go pick it up as soon as you can: In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan.
Then take a good look at what you have on your plate. Is it food?

"Tales of music and the brain"

Schopenhauer is quoted in the introduction to Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, "The inexpressible depth of music, so easy to understand yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain... Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves."

Going through old notebooks

Considering I'm something of a pack-rat, I started to scrapbook recently in order to keep all my ticket stubs, scraps of paper, photos, etc. all together for some future nostalgia-ridden viewing. Here's a scribbled note I came upon from 2005- or 2006ish: "I can't even express how beautiful it was flying into Atlanta as the sun set, through big fluffy clouds like wisps of pulled cotton candy." The handwriting's shaky, as if the thoughts were pinned to paper amidst a scene more viscerally confrontational than careful ink and set line-widths. And that's it, you know - the scrambling attempt to turn those feelings into sticky preserves, knowing all the while that the pulp'll liquefy, spill away. Words can come close, and they'll capture the pulse behind it, but mostly they will sound less real, more idealized.
I don't remember that sunset now (I barely remember flying to ATL): I can guess at the sensations from the words I saved through this minute description.

Consider the Lobster and other essays, David Foster Wallace

Looking for entertaining reading that is also seriously thought-provoking and keen?
The essays in David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, which cover a variety of topics (the porn industry, the English language's clash between Descriptivists and Prescriptivists, sports memoirs, etc), are substantial enough to get into the real grit of things and raise some downright profound questions, and short enough that one doesn't have to commit to a much more lengthy text [read: Infinite Jest. No, seriously, read it this summer].

Quick run-through of faves from Consider the Lobster.
My #1 is absolutely "Authority and American Usage," which can be found online, but is certainly better consumed in traditional format on the page - and consider that fact modernist irony, please. Plus, the footnotes look better rapidly scaling down in font size. If you're a linguistics geek or have just completed a course reviewing the histories of the English language (as I have most recently done), you will devour it. And even if you think you've heard everything there is to be said about the English language's development, you will benefit from DFW's wit and candor in treating the subject. Trust me... but, disclaimer: please be a geek about language.

"How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart" is the one about sports memoirs. Really it's more about what we seek from such supremacy in sports skill - the kind of grace that is also sought by Updike's Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, for example. Choice tidbit: "Maybe what keeps us buying [these sports memoirs] in the face of constant disappointment is some deep compulsion both to experience genius in the concrete and to universalize genius in the abstract." We want answers, and we want insight into how to be great. Or what that might feel like, at the very least.

"The View from Mrs. Thompson's" is an article on DFW's experience of September 11th 2001 in Bloomington, Illinois. I found this line about residents of midwest towns such as Bloomington to be notable:
"...And they watch massive, staggering amounts of TV. I don't just mean the kids, either. Something that's obvious but important to keep in mind re Bloomington and the Horror is that reality - any felt sense of a larger world - is mainly televisual." Just painfully well-put.

Other great, much longer essays are "Up, Simba" in which Wallace travelled with McCain's 2000 campaign for Rolling Stone Magazine, and "Host" which profiles talk radio host John Ziegler. It's tough choosing favorites from this collection because I couldn't help but read the book straight through, even though originally I had asked myself, "Really? Am I going to want to read the article about a lobster festival?" Yeah, I guess I did.

First thoughts upon waking.

The knowledge that comes to you in a dream - from whence does that information spring? Could it be a filter of the world that is unconscious while awake, then becomes consciously foregrounded while asleep? How is it that I seem to learn things from my dreams? I'm not talking "oh I learn that I'm anxious about X or Y event." Rather, say, a fact about an artist, details about a historical figure, or some piece of information that a friend has kept from you. And it's not a regular occurrence but I could believe that this happens more often to some others. Probably we catch a whole lot more in passing than we can account for.

Iranian election photojournalism

Passing on a link to photos from the tumultuous scene following last Friday's Iranian presidential election. Really remarkable photography that gives a glimpse into the charged atmosphere there.

Dean & Britta, June 5th at the Black Cat

I've grown so accustomed to a fast internet connection that it seems tough to get by when you're just sitting around waiting for a page to load. Trying to pay bills online, but even the Bank of America website is taking its sweet time loading... and watching music videos doesn't seem worth it right now. Either way, it's a nice relaxing day - my day off!

Friday night I went with two of my best concert buddies to see Dean & Britta at the Black Cat. You might also know Dean Wareham from Galaxie 500 or Luna, the influential indie rock bands he formed in the 80s and 90s. Or you might not. Anyway, my friends Chris and Pete got me into Galaxie 500 pretty recently, so I'm a recent fan. But Chris has been following Dean Wareham for something close to 20 years and on Friday, he finally got to meet him! We also met Britta, who is gorgeous. Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips are married and play together as Dean & Britta. Seems a bit poppier than the older stuff, but they're a great live act. The Black Cat was pretty packed that night with a mix of longtime devotees and new listeners.


Watch a video of Galaxie 500's "Tugboat." Also check out the music video for Dean & Britta's "You Turn My Head Around" and others.

Video of the Chamblin Bookmine

Wow. Here's a video of the Chamblin Bookmine, a used-book store of epic proportions in Jacksonville, Florida. I would love to wile away my time there. It's difficult for me even to limit my Idle Time visits to an hour - and Idle Time Books is many, many times smaller than this place looks to be.

The aisles of the Chamblin Bookmine remind me a little bit of the "Five and a Half Minute Hallway" from Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Eerie, almost otherworldly... A hallway that knows not the bounds of physical bounds nor human perception. The Borges quote inserted into the video doesn't exactly interfere with that strangeness, either.

Star Trek film

My day off today - just returned from seeing the Star Trek film (out now in theatres) with some friends. I wanted to post quickly to recommend it, as a non-Trekkie, to anyone looking for an entertaining film. Plenty of excellent CG, and packed full of action with a solid cast. It was pleasantly surprising for me, someone who has probably never seen an entire episode of the Star Trek series before. It's directed by J.J. Abrams, aka the co-creator of the Lost series.

Sundays are excellent and it feels great outside. Cherish these fine fleeting moments before the humidity moves in full-force.

Sriracha Chili Sauce

Okay, I realize I'm obsessed with Sriracha sauce (aka "rooster sauce" or "cock sauce"), but I'm finding it's not that uncommon to be... check this out: the New York Times article about it, "A Chili Sauce to Crow About," is presently the #1 most emailed article. What! To its credit, however, it's a good condiment for practically anything - obviously in pho noodles, but also atop any savory rice dish or mixed into other sauces. And new visitors to our house almost unfailingly comment on how great the stuff is. Sriracha-users seem to be pretty enthusiastic fans!

This school year = complete. One more year for me. Time to start on my summer reads!

And a link for ya'll. Here's a neat YouTube-based collaborate music project called In B Flat. These videos seem to harmonize well no matter what order in which you start playing them. Sounds pretty atmospheric, art-school... it kind of depends on which you choose, though. I can't really figure out what's going on with the Nintendo DS there - is the game console itself making the noise?

My present self reading with past self, who had written for future self.

Just some musing during my re-read of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien:
High school literature class. Learning the language of archetypes, of parallelism. Listing notes on syntax, emulating the rhetoric, claiming recognition of a "transferred epithet." Scribbling that in the margin a half-page above an unfinished meditation on juxtaposition of -

A re-read is an instance of
notes expounding upon notes,
a book carrying a weight great
with pen-ink and trailing thoughts.

(Also confer Billy Collins's poem, "Marginalia.")

Link: Forbes ranking of the 20 Best Places to Live in the World

Go here to see the slideshow of the 20 best, ranked by Forbes.
This is pretty neat because I am looking to get out of the DC area in the next few years, mostly because I've never lived anywhere else. According to this list, I'd probably have to cross over to western Europe or Canada to achieve the highest quality of life... I don't know. Anyhow, this does not help to quell my wanderlust. I'm gonna have to take a weekend roadtrip ou deux this summer.

Back to paper-writing. I've been just cranking out the pages lately (but of course in a more artful manner than that denotes, I should hope). Oh, and somebody remind me to write sometime about how everything I read seems to converge and allude to each other and music even, music aligns in such concord to the words on the page and the thoughts that seem to emerge everywhere. Almost enough to make one believe there is a configuration natural to living or thought... But I digress; that's a whole 'nother post at least. And, o! I have some fresh thoughts on social networks online and offline to expand upon, too. Possibly also a feature post on the musical genre of "freak folk," in time. There's a lot of writing to be had here.

Quotation for this lovely morning.

From an interview with Harold Bloom on the subject of reading in the modern age: "You cannot even begin to heal the worst aspects of solitude, which are loneliness and potential madness, by visual experience of any kind, particularly the sort of mediated visual experience that you get off a screen of whatever sort."

In honor of tax day having come and gone:

My brother sent me this link - a visual representation of where your Federal tax dollars go. Nicely laid out, especially for those of you who grasp numbers better in spiffy graphical form.

Leaving Tangier, Tahar Ben Jelloun

Likely the most notable aspect of Tahar Ben Jelloun’s newest novel to be translated from French into English, Leaving Tangier (2009), is his unique storytelling through the series of “character sketches.” People of all backgrounds and experiences and relations to Tangier are made real and alive through their speech, reflections, and cultural mannerisms. Most of their tales are quite tragic: stories of prostitution, drug-dealing, and trafficking run rampant in Tangier’s seedy coastline locale. New people are introduced abruptly; their narratives are then weaved together through the highly ambivalent relationship between Azel and Miguel, separately from Morocco and Spain, who together represent the portal city of Tangier. Leaving Tangier shows Tahar Ben Jelloun’s developed understanding of what it feels like to straddle two nations and how difficult it is to completely sever the ties to one’s homeland. His knowledge of expatriation is as vast as his characters are numerous.

In this novel of simultaneous descent and brief bouts of enlightenment, migrants are torn about their past and national identity. Azel, the protagonist, is described at one point as “street trash” by his rich Spanish “lover,” who is all too willing to take the Moroccan man’s body even without receving his heart. Their acts flow parallel to the Strait of Gibraltar, claiming the Moroccan lives that sorely strove to reach new prospects in the glamorous land over the water. Drowning becomes a purgatory move in this sense, cleansing years of raw history.

Eliot for your morning, Hegel in the evening.

From the second of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot:

...Had they deceived us,
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

And to somewhat clarify his meaning here (poetics must be murky; philosophy too), Hegel's owl of Minerva:

The lesson of the concept, which necessarily is also taught by history, is that only in the ripeness of actuality does the ideal appear over against the real, and that only then does this ideal comprehend this same real world in its substance and build it up for itself into the configuration of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then a configuration of life has grown old, and cannot be rejuvenated by this gray in gray, but only understood; the Owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall.

Perhaps a to-do list is in order.

There's a Chinese curse: "May you find what you are looking for." And the Rolling Stones realized, "You can't always get what you want."

The implication is that nobody really wants to get what they're searching for. The drive for it arises from the ignorance that complete achievement would be crushing. Your ego would fail, miserably incapable of reconstructing itself in relation to the achievement of complete satisfaction. You'd have to then define yourself by the possessed. It's continual goal-setting for safety. Because of this, there's no completion - you can't win life. There's more to be had.

Here's the epiphany. (Yes, I prefer to blatantly over-dramatise the trivialities of my own life - I embrace this practice fully because I see we all inevitably form the centers of our relative universes anyway. So, "epiphany.")
We can't stop searching. We create our own meanings. Nihilism may work (or not, whatever - haha) in theory, but the realization that we're not going to get there doesn't mean we shouldn't start the journey anyway. Life is one grand, interrupted action and it is only assigned significance because hey, we're human. There's no reason to stop those cycles, but there is literature to make it feel valid. May you keep searching.