Making jokes about my condition.
I am going for a walk
I'll be back in half an hour.
Watch over the children
I'll be back in half an hour.
The MOUNTAIN GOATS, Against Agamemnon.
* * *
I have just watched a very good movie. Yes, my children, the Empire strikes back, which is the best of the three by far, and not just on the merits of its score, which is probably Williams's best work ever. In the interview by Leonard Maltin of George Lucas which preceded the feature, GL compares JW to Korngold, and I was simply ravished. I plan to see the new one very soon indeed. Don't tell me about it: I can manufacture disappointment well enough on my own.
Current music: Georg Muffat, Nobilis Juventus, a collection of Lully-esque orchestral suites bearing charming programmatic titles: Indissolubilis Amicitia, Quis hic?, and my favorite, a kaleidoscopic chaconne called Propitia sydera, Lucky Stars (it features a long section in mixed time-signatures, autumnal changes in mood -- it is Baroque boiled down to a pulp) . Muffat's family were expatriate Scots who eventually settled down in the opulent employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg, the legendary Max Gandolph, whose carven arms infest that city like stone ants. Muffat is all imagination: the entr�e for the fencing masters is intended for a ballet of fencers, and has a marked accelerando, and Die Reiter features pistol-shots.
Current joy on Earth: a facsimile edition, via the miracle of inter-library loan, of the first book of pi�ces de clavessin of Elizabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre.
Current beverage: Orange juice and strawberry vodka, � l'imitation de Mlle. EN.
Current job prospects: Please, can we talk about something else?
SLB is keen to take the name of our collective to heart, and establish a literary salon in the house. The closest thing we have so far is Buffy night, which is, of course, sacrosanct; however, it will take more than vampires and lesbian witches to re-germinate the sweet arts of conversation in the polluted soil of the twenty-first century. I am reading the letters of Mme du Deffand at the moment; such vicious gentility! I have a -- perhaps well-deserved -- reputation for merciless wit, but am as a sweet-tempered retard next to these old froggy bitches. One of them, visiting her dying daughter-in-law, says, loud enough for the unfortunate girl to hear, "I can't stay in here: it reeks of corpse!" Another, on her deathbed, is talking to her lover; her friends ask her if she would like to see her husband: she replies, "Oh, no. They'll send him in with the sacrament."
To spell it out explicitly: seventeenth-eighteenth century France is the knot in the middle of my intellectual back: I love its spirit, its drama, its music -- but the blood-soaked cost of that free thought makes me reach for my pitchfork. No, worse: it makes me wonder which side of the Bastille I stand on. I should leave the topic before I get all Port-Royal on your asses.
The guy who corrals the shopping carts at the local supermarket complemented me on my Magnetic Fields tee-shirt. I suppose we're winning -- but what is it we win? As soon as anything becomes in the least marketable, it acquires the stench of burning sulphur about it. Ugh.
* * *
I suppose I should review the Bright Eyes concert ECG and I went to. I'm sorry. I'm not proud of the fact, but I rather like Bright Eyes. I think I like Bright Eyes because I wilfully misunderstand him. I assume that to maintain that level of pose on a stage, CO must be absolutely marinating himself in irony. Perhaps (Jack Daniels is probably closer to the mark). Perhaps not: trees are not ironic and still I can bring myself to say I love them. I love the timbre of his voice, quite independent of the pathos it is rumored to convey. I love the way he chews his big words and lets the little words shoot straight out. As long as I suffer the illusion that his confessions are a form of elaborate self-parody, I shall be happy. I do not wish to be enlightened. Once in a blue moon, I wish to enjoy myself in whatever sordid way I can.
The Good Life were also quite good, with their weird little New-Ordery-Synthy-Cure-y whinge-punk. Tim Kasher, will you or nill you, has pipes like a Silbermann R�ckpositiv (they're SWELL!) and can command an audience but still not come off as too much of an asshole. Nevertheless, what won me over to them was the thin girl in the hot pink Doric chiton who twiddled the synths with nervous Kraftwerk-esque stage-presence. Later she played flute with Bright Eyes and seemed to open up a bit: it was the most touching human drama on the stage all night. Well, I was rooting for her. The May Day were a pleasant enough country band, who, as ECG put it, weren't too strong in the self-awareness department. But they had a cellist and violinist, which is a start, and did some pretty, sophisticated things with their arrangements. Music aside, the highlight of the evening was the sweating mass of nineteen-year-old indie-emo boys, the overpowering aroma of a thousand mothballed thrift-store sweaters. I felt old and out of touch, not to mention randy as a goat, but somehow it was all right.