Musings

DFW on the modern age.

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David Foster Wallace in interview. You’ll have to turn the volume up, as it’s quite quiet. It’s part one of ten – I’m up to three, and I’m pretty sure you should watch it. It starts on humour, and moves on to talk about the things we worship and the way we are as a society. It relates a lot to Infinite Jest, (although the book was published seven years before this) – I suspect it bridges the gap between that book and the unfinished The Pale King. It’s similar to his commencement address from Kenyon College in 2005 (now published as This Is Water) – which you can (and should) read here.

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: Arts,Musings
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In which I am having problems deciding who to vote for.

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So, until recently I was registered to vote in North East Fife, where Sir Menzies Campbell is happily ensconced as LibDem MP.  I like Sir Ming generally, and the LibDems generally, and if I’d stayed registered up there I would have merrily mailed in my vote for him, and it wouldn’t have made any difference in the world if I hadn’t because a blind monkey could see how safely seated he is in that part of the world (also, he is going to be graduating me this year, and you don’t want to not vote for that person, just in case they drop a medieval mace on your head rather than the bit of velvet they’re supposed to use).  Anyway, since I don’t really live in St Andrews any more and have a better idea of the political issues in Cornwall than I do in Fife anyway, I thought I’d re-register at the ancestral home, where I would be living if I weren’t hiding out from the lack of Classics jobs at a research institute in Geneva.  I figured my vote would matter more there (see, St Ives’ Voter Power stats as opposed to North East Fife’s) and I would be more engaged, which I think is generally a good thing. However. I am attempting to engage and failing on many fronts – notably the fact that I cannot decide who to vote for. So, please to offer me any advice or opinions that you think I should consider as I decide.  Read more...

: Musings,Politics
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in danger of becoming self-congratulatory?

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The NYU Institute of Journalism have released the nominations list for their ‘Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade’. It’s a good list – but then I would say that, because I’ve read/watched a chunk of them.     I read Andrew Sullivan and Nate Silver pretty much every day, I follow Ezra Klein on twitter and read his blog intermittently, I podcast This American Life – and Jon Stewart and David Foster Wallace are just flat out amongst my favourites of all time in pretty much any category.   Clearly, the fact that they’re all included on this list (along with a bundle of things I’ve read or watched/been meaning to read or watch) makes me a very smart and engaged person. Right?  The list is good because I would recommend stuff on it, and I’m good because the NYU Institute of Journalism have just validated my tastes.

It’s a fairly narcisstic approach to a nominations list – but c’mon, isn’t this probably most people’s response to any nomination list?  People get cranky about the fact that their film of the year doesn’t win the Best Picture Oscar because they want the Establishment to validate their tastes and choices – and if they don’t then there is clearly something wrong in the Establishment, whose opinion is made ‘less valid’ than that of the individual by their refusal to endorse it. This may be especially true of people (admittedly, I am one of them) who roll their eyes every year at the Academy’s choice of Best Film not in the English Language and demand to know where City of God/Pan’s Labyrinth/Let the Right One In were, and hold forth about how they should have been on the Best Picture list as well. Of course, then you get to enjoy your superiority – and it’s a toss up as to which is more enjoyable.  Read more...

: Media,Musings
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In which I talk fuzzily about Ryszard Kapuściński

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The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński

The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuściński

I’m having a moment of interested consideration about the new biography of Ryszard Kapuściński which claims that much of his reporting was heavily fictionalised and about some of the outrage about this.  As outrage goes, it’s fairly mild and seems mostly confined to those working in journalism (for example in Jon Snow’s latest blog post)  – but then Kapuściński is hardly a household name in the UK, and I’d be prepared to bet that the majority of people here who have read his work have come to it as travel literature, where the line between ‘truth’ and ‘atmosphere’ is more easily, and perhaps more legitimately, blurred than in journalistic reportage.    I came to him through his collection of essays/reportage, The Shadow of the Sun, which I thought sounded interesting based on a review I read and which I then bought with some Christmas money and enjoyed immensely.  It’s been a while since I read it, but I’m still inclined to think that it’s one of the best collections of writing about Africa that I’ve read – not necessarily factually, but in terms of painting a picture and capturing an atmosphere.  Read more...

: Arts,Media,Musings,Travel
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Tears for the Past

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tears for the pastWater from melting snow drips down one of the stelae in the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

I think the fact that I don’t really understand the Holocaust Memorial’s artistic/architectural nature and yet was still affected by it speaks to how well done the memorial is.  I don’t get how or why a field of concrete stelae is supposed to or can memorialise the Holocaust – but it *does*.    You walk between the rows of these blocks, which are of various heights – in the middle you are completely dwarfed by them – taking turns as and when you want to turn to find your own way through the field.  If it is a metaphor for history, then it’s almost scarily effective – each turn has its own impact on the trail you leave behind you, and can cause you to end up emerging somewhere else around the edge of the field – and with no distinguishing features on the blocks there is very little to aid you in picking out a very specific path as you go through or reaching a specific destination.  You could walk through in a straight line and miss a lot.  You could very deliberately count your way through, taking certain rows, and still miss a lot.  You could aim for an exit point and wander as vaguely as you liked towards that goal. Or you could wander at will, and end up anywhere, or get completely lost.  It’s dislocating and chilling – especially in the snow.  Read more...

: Musings,Photography,Travel
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Slightly More Positive Reflectiveness.

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Yes yes, the iPad.  No, no, I’m not an Apple Fanboy or Apple Evangelist.   After all, yesterday on the Twitters I did declare: “@Rage_DyingLight I just hate Apple Evangelists. I’m quite attached to my iPod touch, but it’s hardly curing world hunger.”   And later yesterday evening I did declare: “I have to say, I can see nothing that tempts me towards an iPad. Even the ‘ooooh shiny’ isn’t really working for me right now.” And then I got scolded and down I was a cold, heartless person, and I got cranky and yelled back – because that’s what I mean by Apple evangelism, the assumption that everyone should want an Apple product and if they don’t there’s something wrong with me.  And no, not everyone who owns Apple is an Apple Evangelist, it’s just that those who are are SO LOUD.  And that puts my back up, and I get stubborn and declare that ‘I don’t want anything Apple except my iPod.’  Read more...

: Musings,Tech
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Noughties lists…

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I wanna join in! Lists of the year, PAH. Lists of the decade, HURRAH. Though, at the risk of turning into Toby Ziegler, why does the decade end this year, and not next year? Why is the  decade not 2001-2010, rather than 2000-2009?  Can we bring up the bit where there wasn’t a year nought, or is that all cliche and annoying? Anyway, moving on…  Lists! Lists are fun. Top Tens!  I can do books and TV and movies of the decade, although we should all bear in mind that I have not yet started watching The Wire.  I probably can’t do theatre, not sensibly, since I don’t go very often (as often as I’d like), though I can wave my arms up and down and talk about the few things I did see and the plays that really stuck with me, and music. Hmmm, I’ll try, but that might get quite random, and will essentially be ‘Ten records what I have loved with absolutely no critical or aesthetic thought behind it’. I think they’re going to be unordered lists, because, well, trying to rank things like The Assination of Jesse James, The Lord of the Rings, and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind against each other is kinda daft. They’re also going to be lists that mix up the things that I think have been really really good with things that have become a part of my personal furniture. So the Eyre Affair may knock Fortress of Solitude out of the books list because it has been a bigger part of my decade.  Just be warned, it’s going to be a little bit bonkers, and pretty much all about me, with no real grounding in any theories of aesthetics.  Read more...

: Arts,Musings
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The Pixar Lamp is brought to justice

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Beautiful, brilliant, funny, and not a little disturbing.

(via wired uk)

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Well Gosh…

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… but it sure does look like I have a website.

At least – it’s as done as it can be for now, until I do some more writing. I’ll sort out some more photo albums soonish, and I have categorising of various things to do, but I can do all of that whilst watching television across several evenings. I don’t have to spend more hours at the computer forgetting that there are things called meals to be eaten and an outdoors to be visited. Oh but it’s going to be nice to get back to that. And even to work – since tomorrow is the first of October, so I should be starting that.

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Arrival

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So, I have arrived in Cologne. It was a loooooong day of trains. Left St Erth at 0700, and arrived at Koln Hofbahnhof at 2115, by way of London and Brussells. Did I mention it was looooong. And my big suitcase was superheavy (which was partly why I got the train), and now my arm is so tired from pulling it that I can barely hold a pen to write a list of all the things I need to do tomorrow.

But my new landlord met me off the train, and brought me to the apartment, so I have a very hazy idea of where I live, except that it’s about 10 minutes walk from a direct train/tram (seriously, it starts as a u-bahn, and ends up overground like a tram) into the city centre, and that there’s a nearer stop if I don’t mind changing once along the way.  I know that there’s lots of shops on a street that we walked up, including a supermarket that opens at 7am, which is good, as I will need breakfast tomorrow (having had a cereal bar and satsuma for supper). I know that the university is vaguely ‘up-the-way’, and I’m going to trot off there tomorrow to find the international office, who were supposed to be emailing me about an appointment for tomorrow, but haven’t – but I have been invited to a concert and drinks, and to a reception by the mayor, and a city tour, and offered shiny public transport deals, so I guess I can go find them about the other stuff, like police registration and banks. My German appears to be coming back – at least, I can understand a good deal, but I don’t have the confidence to talk yet. My default foreign language is still Italian, so I need to crack that habit. Tomorrow I think I will be writing lists of conjugations and declensions, and pinning them up around the apartment to help me out.  Read more...

: Life in Koeln,Musings,Travel
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