"I am prepared for amazing things to happen": Me and You and Everyone We Know

Offbeat, beguiling, sweet-- unflinchingly honest -- a definite personal vision, but in a way resistant to description or delineation (impressions and shades rather than manifestos and Messages).

Things among many others to savour: the goldfish sequence; the 'hand on fire' image (and its lead-up); the score; the general wispy poetic disconnectedness of the mood.

Decided to watch it after a random passer-by commented on my IMP page that Miranda July seemed to fit with my listed 'likes'. Effect queerly difficult to pin down - at once pronounced and ineffable. But I like it very much.

Dead Like Me season 1

Also on the cd from Michelle were the first two (possibly the only two) seasons of this show Dead Like Me. Herewith the relevant part of the thank you email I sent Michelle:

I'm most of the way through the first season of "Dead Like Me", which I'm finding tres amusant. It's a cute concept which I thought, having watched the pilot, might be at risk of being a bit twee and maybe sort of boring, but far from it - I like it muchly, and generally the way that about once every couple of episodes it throws in something of such remarkably (and deliberately) bad taste that I can't help but laugh (the mauling of the protester by the service station bear comes to mind). Mandy Patinkin good value too - totally dorky yet with tons of gravitas (though we far prefer him as Inigo Montoya, natch - which is why you set me up with this show, right?). Also, George kinda reminds me of you - had you picked up on that resemblance? (I bet you hadn't - or, even if you had, that you aren't admitting it.)

To fill in the blanks: the premise is set up in the pilot, in which Georgia Lass (she prefers "George"), archetypal 18 year old slacker with an attitude (though to call her an 'archetype' doesn't do justice to the depiction of her character - but it's in the ballpark), is killed by a flaming piece of debris (a toilet seat, actually) which falls from a Russian space station, whereupon she discovers that she is now undead - a 'grim reaper' whose job it is to usher the souls of the recently dead to their next destination (the show is coy about where this might actually be). There's a motley collection of others in the city (Chicago?) sharing her portfolio (which is something like 'intrusively traumatic deaths' - which in practice means dying by, eg, being crushed by a falling piano, being crushed by a falling man while you're walking down the church aisle having just been married, (grislily) fruit guillotine, and, of course, mauling by aforementioned bear for whose rights you are ironically protesting); they meet at Der Waffle Haus, where Rube, their nominal boss, hands out their assignments on yellow sticky tabs; they're visible to the living (but look different from their 'living' selves - which is how they appear to other undead) and need to find some source of income in order to get by.

It's not really a black comedy/drama, though it's amusingly morbid in its general sensibility. Sometimes the deaths take on genuine pathos (the small child who dies in the train accident at night in either the pilot or the second ep, I can't remember, the gentle schizophrenic man who falls for George and then literally falls, the pair of lovers visited by Mason) while sometimes they're played for laughs - it's never depressing (and I say this as one who does occasionally get quite seriously down about the idea; well, who doesn't?) in part because it's so irreverent and in part because of the promise of something beyond which it holds out. Apart from the sporadic outbreaks of bad taste mentioned above (Mason's strip-searching in the airport comes to mind and then the subsequent bursting of the drug-filled baggie he's smuggled in up his rectum) I also get into the out and out profanity which pops up all the time, often but by no means exclusively from George, and also George's general anti-everything attitude (no surprises there).

(40-minute episodes; tops acting; decent characterisation and some nice development (though not as much as one might hope); neat episode structures; extended story arcs; generally clever writing.)

Carla Bruni - No Promises

Sometimes our friends just come through for us. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading about this album online somewhere; I'd heard of Carla Bruni before and had a vague idea that she was one of those old-sounding new chaunteuse types; I initially shuddered at the idea of anyone setting poems by Yeats, Auden, and others to music and laying them down on an album; but the review, while acknowledging the substantial 'hmmm' factor associated with the concept, was glowing about the record itself, so I was intrigued to hear it, not least because it included readings of two poems each by Dorothy Parker and Emily Dickinson (two of my fave poet types, of course); and lo, without any presaging, a cd arrived in the mail from Michelle holding a whole bunch of stuff - including, most fortuitously, No Promises. So yes, it's pretty good - chanteuse-y stuff with expected lounge influences and also a folksy, adult-contemporary-alt-countryish flavour which I like. It's nice.

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

So I've lived with this record for two or three weeks now, and I like it about as much now as I did after the first listen - which is to say, rather a lot. It really sounds like nothing so much as the new Wilco album, and so on the account of course I'm much into it; as far as their past stuff goes, the best 'hybrid' description is probably Being There meets A Ghost Is Born. They played, I reckon, about half of it at their show the other week, and the songs are the type to stick in the mind after just one or two listenings, and have that Wilco trick of getting particular lines (lyrical and otherwise) particularly embedded, and likely to pop up frequently and unexpectedly (I had the titular hook from 'Shake It Off" running around in my head at work the other day; the lines "the more I think about/The more I'm sure it's you" materialise a fair bit too; etc). That said, most of the best bits are the glorious electric guitar moments, obviously.

I always find it tricky to extract particular Wilco songs from their albums as my favourites, but at present I think I particularly like "You Are My Face", "Impossible Germany", "Side With The Seeds", "Hate It Here" and "Walken", though Sky Blue Sky really works particularly well as a whole (the bookends are important to that sense - "Either Way" and the first half of "You Are My Face" easing the listener in, and then "What Light" and "On and On and On" taking it out in mellow, thoughtful fashion. Anyhow, all round a very consistent set, and excellent with it.

Macbeth

The recent Australian one, transposing the play to a Melbourne gangland setting. I was predisposed towards liking the film, but actually found it a bit underwhelming - while the concept has possibilities, and those possibilities are realised to the extent that the moody, matt-and-shadow settings, garish costumes and foreboding score work well, this Macbeth struck me as fundamentally uninspired and unimaginative.

See, for me, while the film's good to look at, it fails to reconceptualise the subject-matter of the play in line with its altered setting - that's what I think is the underlying imaginative failure. A good example is the way the dialogue is delivered straight, in Australian accents - there's nothing wrong with that per se, but it's as if the makers of the film relied on the mere fact of difference/novelty to make this Macbeth watching, without any more (in fact, a further quibble here is that those lines aren't particularly well delivered - but that seems more a failure of execution than of conception).

Related to this are shortcomings in the way this revisioning represents its characters and the narrative as a whole. I don't mind unusual or new takes on either of these elements when it comes to Shakespeare and his canonical co - indeed, 'positively welcome' would be a better description than 'don't mind' - but it's disappointing when, as here, there doesn't seem to be any particular take at all.

Anyhow, I don't want to seem too negative about this film. I enjoyed watching it, and on one level it's well done. But it didn't satisfy me at all.

The Radio Dept - Pet Grief

What I'd expected, based on the two songs of theirs on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack - what would you call it, 'dream-indie-pop'? It's kind of wallpapery - pleasant and tasteful but not distinguished (the tunes not as striking as those on MA) - but nice.

Slow Down Tallahassee - "So Much For Love" cd single

Everything about this cd is just delightful. First, the music - a trio of two-and-a-half to three minute swatches of fuzzy, melodic girl-fronted indie pop, complete with oh-whoa-ohs, handclaps, keyboards and don't-look-now hooks around every corner. So the elements are all there, but in fact one of the most impressive things about the disc is the sturdiness and assuredness of both the songwriting and the execution...though of course being impressed is beside the point - the name of the game here is the music's immediate (and then continuing) effect which is, natch, where the delight comes in.

Over and above the music itself, though, is the aesthetic of the whole. The cd's a three-incher (ie, adorably tiny) and one of a limited run of 100 (mine's # 47); it came in the mail with a handwritten note from someone at the record company which puts it out (Cloudberry Records) - ending with the capitalised exhortation "don't stop indiepop!", no less - and a scissored-out scrap of a review of another band.

Here's what the band's myspace has to say (it's apt):

We met behind the bar of a seedy nightclub, serving endless drinks as Motown hits and disco classics stopped our hearts from giving in. Taking our inspiration from the paintings of Henry Darger, the writings of Dorothy Parker and Pablo Neruda, girl groups, playground gangs, paperback romances, tear-jerking pop and the burning ambition to write an album full of the greatest, most thoughtful pop hits that this country has ever seen, we formed a band and the fun began. JOIN OUR GANG, AND YOU WILL NEVER BE LONELY AGAIN.

* * *

Came across them through angels twenty, one of only two mp3-type blogs with which I more or less keep up (the other being motel de moka, which I secretly find rather inspiring).

Keating! @ the Comedy Theatre

I think that I almost certainly built this up too much in my mind beforehand, but it was still great. The best thing about it is the performance put in by Mike McLeish as Keating himself - the manic energy and posturing reminded me a little of Gob but with real charisma and, it seemed, genuine insight into his subject. Favourite songs probably the "the beginning is the end" one ("Gareth tell me more"), the "ruler of the land" reggae numbers, the Mabo bossa nova [?] and, of course, the Evans/Kernot love duet. Satisfying to have clear heroes (well, one hero really) to cheer and risible villains to hiss. Was glad of the way it ended, too - would've been a bit of a downer (pun unintended) without the closing rewriting of history (which also, of course, focuses all of our minds on the 'if only/what could have been?' question). All up, very pleasing!

(w/ Mehnaz, last Sunday afternoon following not one but two previous failed attempts on our parts to see it, tix having been sold out on both of those earlier occasions)

Nikka Costa - Everybody Got Their Something

Kicks off with "Like A Feather", the stripped-back funk of which is still both weird and cool six years on from when I must've first been hearing it on the radio, but the definite highlight of the album comes next - "So Have I For You", in which Costa channels Janis Joplin by means of a slidin' funk-soul-rock'n'roll meld, one of those that feels not so much like a hybrid as a reaching back to the original roots of the forms (albeit infused with a modern sensibility, much of which is imported by the glitzy production). The next couple, "Tug of War" and the title track, are good too, but she isn't able to sustain the quality over the whole record; still, all up it's well worth the listen...definitely a good 'un.

Everclear - Sparkle and Fade

I remember "Santa Monica" fondly - a neat tune and lyrics which make explicit the aspirational tenor of much of that kind of 90s post-grunge rock - and occasionally get out the triple j hottest 100 cd with the song on it, and have less distinct memories of "Heroin Girl" and "You Make Me Feel Like A Whore", but really it was more So Much For The Afterglow which provided the radio Everclear songs which aren't an entirely insignificant part of the soundtrack to my recollections of late high school, and that album would probably give me more than this one. Sparkle and Fade's okay, but it's nothing special and very uneven - a small handful of decent songs, and the rest all slur into each other.

Queen - Greatest Hits

There are lots of artists whose albums I feel no need to listen to, but for whom I'd quite like to own a best of; I mentioned in passing while talking to Kevin a while back that Queen are one such, and he kindly made a gift of this best of to me not long after. For me, the main point of having these collections is usually twofold - being able to listen to particular hit/famous songs whenever one feels like it, and getting a sort of high level overview of the artist's career - and it's more the first of those which is going on with Queen. Still, taken as a whole this 17-song set shows them to be a lot less overblown than I usually imagine them to be - or, perhaps more accurately, that the overblownness doesn't particularly get in the way of the songs. Most are familiar (endlessly familiar) from the radio - though I never realised that "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is, in fact, the song of that name, nor that it was by Queen!

2007 Law Week Oration - "Does Australia Need a Bill of Rights?" (the Hon Michael McHugh)

This was quite interesting, but more by virtue of who was delivering it than the oration's actual content. Justice McHugh's approach was to enumerate instances of deficiencies in the existing protection of human rights in Australia (focusing on immigration and detention, racial discrimination, and counter-terrorism laws) and argue that the alternatives to a (constitutional) bill of rights - ordinary legislation, common law, implied constitutional rights - are inadequate; he spent some time on the related arguments that the Westminster system of responsible government, independent judiciary, etc provides the best guarantee of human rights, that a bill of rights would be inconsistent with parliamentary sovereignty, and that such an instrument would politicise the courts and diminish respect for the judiciary.

Conversation afterwards was lively. Shaun, Jarrod and I repaired to the Corkman for fish and chips, a drink, and a fairly solid argument (mostly me v SEG) about first a variation on the old capitalism v socialism thing, and then (more on point) the legitimacy of implied constitutional rights; I must admit, Shaun probably ended up having the better of the first of those, but I'd score the second (which took place on more equal terrain, I suppose) as a hard-fought draw.

Plenty of others at the oration, including (very much without limitation) Nicolette, Vegjie and Sunny, which is par for the course with these things.

Y Tu Mamá También

This really took me by surprise. Steph pressed it on me a while back, and I was sceptical - nothing I'd heard about it particularly suggested that I would enjoy the film. (Two teenage boys go on road trip with older woman; prospect of sex and self-discovery; set in Mexico; ho hum.) In fact, though, from the cheeky opening scene through the depiction of the trip up to its climax (so to speak), and then on to the film's subtle and affecting epilogue, it offers a genuine journey. It's one of those pieces of art which just has something about it - it doesn't seem especially profound, but then again, maybe it is, you know? (It's quite straightforward in a lot of ways, but is somehow at once poetically economical and thoroughly earthy.) In any case, I liked Y Tu Mamá También very much.

Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway

Glossy of-the-moment pop - a mix of big ballads and anthemic rockers. Good value, though the first six songs on the album are far better than the second. "Since U Been gone" is the certifiable classic, of course, but I've plenty of appreciation left over for "Behind These Hazel Eyes" and "Gone" in particular. Hooks galore and songs well sold by Clarkson.

Tatyana Tolstaya - The Slynx

Though it's not a Great novel, there's something of an air of greatness to The Slynx (and not just because Tolstaya is Leo Tolstoy's great grand-niece...naturally, being the kind of reader that I am, I've never read Tolstoy anyway). It's a savagely dystopian vision of post-apocalyptic Russia with a certain amount of contemporary (and satirical) resonance - though I suspect that resonance would've been greater if (a) the novel had been written, say, 40 years ago and/or (b) I were Russian or at any rate more familiar with the culture than I am - and it has a darkly imaginative power which is compelling and not a little unsettling. At times it reminded me of Orwell, at others of Bulgakov, and its grotesque elements are well woven into the whole. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending; it further muddles an already muddled everything. Nor am I really sure what it's saying. But there's a thread running through it - some ineffable thing which gives the novel its haunting, memorable character despite its other failings.

Things to remember: the mice, the Slynx itself, the books, the plagiarism, the decrees, Benedikt, the Oldeners, the Degenerators, the pushkin, the exclamation marks, the golubchiks.

M J Hyland - Carry Me Down

This is excellent - a terse, tense, almost incidentally evocative piece of writing. It's told through the eyes of eleven year old John Egan, who is intelligent, opaque, and disturbed, and the narrative takes on those hues of his character with a sustainedness and a plausibility which is extremely impressive. It's difficult to get a handle on, but it's also thoroughly gripping from the first paragraph - Hyland eschews simplistic 'explanations' (both explicit and, the which is more difficult, implicit) for her characters' actions and thoughts, or for the circumstances of their subsistence, and also avoids straightforward or obvious resolutions to any of the (sometimes familiar) event-structures she throws up; she embeds in the fabric of the novel the same commitments evident in its content; the characterisations and plot strands are deliberately incomplete, and this incompleteness serves an important function in the whole.

It's odd. The book that Carry Me Down most reminds me of is The Catcher in the Rye, which I didn't particularly enjoy when I read it, and the details of which are by now very unclear in my mind. But a trace of the way it made me feel has stayed with me, evidently, and been reactivated by Hyland's novel. I'm not sure what it is, really. But it seems to me that there's something quite remarkable about Carry Me Down, in its apparent simplicity and deeper, murkier currents, and most of all (and wrapped up with all of that) in the way it completely inhabits the mind/world of its central character and pulls the reader along, almost claustrophobically, with him all the way down.

Steven Carroll - The Gift of Speed

I read about The Gift of Speed when it came out (2004, apparently), but my interest in reading it was piqued by a review of Carroll's latest, The Time We Have Taken, in an Australian Book Review a couple of issues ago. In particular, it was this passage which made me sit up and take notice:

...something else is being attempted, something rare in Australian fiction. The Time We Have Taken is breathtakingly ambitious, a Proustian narrative, allusive, reflective, elegiac and concerned very little with events as turning points in themselves. Instead, the minutiae of daily life and the unstoppable flow of time are at the novel's centre. This becomes a moving celebration of the quotidian and of the terrible beauty of the moment that we cannot see until change has rendered it past.

I've not read the more recent book, but in those lines, the reviewer, Christina Hill, captures much of the nature of The Gift of Speed. The narrative takes as its historical bookends the arrival and departure of the West Indian cricket team on its famous 1960-61 tour of Australia, and the events of tour are woven through the novel amidst several other strands, most prominently that of the sixteen year old Michael, growing up in suburban Melbourne and furiously practising his bowling with the aspiration of reaching a perfect moment, a moment of grace. The short chapters are told from several alternating points of view (one - and only one, I think - is told from two), present tense third person except those of Michael's aging grandmother, which are presented in the first person; the style is quite lyrical and very Australian.

I must admit, I admired this novel - liked it, even - more than I enjoyed it. About a quarter of the way in, I distinctly heard in my mind, in tones of woe, the words "oh no, it's a coming of age novel!", and while that didn't turn out to be entirely accurate (and even to the extent that it is accurate, that aspect of the novel is well done - the relationship between Michael and Kathleen Marsden, for example, is sensitively and precisely portrayed), there's enough of that here to put me on my guard. More tellingly, there isn't much of a story to it - which is hardly a criticism (and perhaps especially when that doesn't seem to be what the author set out to do in the first place), but makes it that much more unlikely that I'll really get into a book, and while The Gift of Speed has a lot going for it, it doesn't have the extra kick that a To The Lighthouse, say, or an Invisible Cities has, to really push me past the lack of story and bring me to love it anyway. So, overall response definitely positive, and it's grand to read a good novel set in Melbourne (even if near half a century ago), but it hasn't inspired me.

Two videos - "TempBot" (dir Neill Blomkamp) and "The Country" (Billy Collins)

Two things recently sent to me without much or any explanation.

Jon from MS sent me a link to this video, completely sans comment (unless you count "cool short video", which I don't). It turned out to be called "TempBot", and to follow the travails of a robot temp in an office environment; I can't decide whether it's deceptively straightforward or deceptively subtle, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

And a few days later, Charlie, one from my open diary days (a long, long time ago), sent around this - an 'action poem' called "The Country" (subject line and entire content of accompanying message: Billy Collins is GOD. (Also: I'm not dead, just thought you all should know.)). It's a poem, set to animation; it begins "I wondered about you when you told me never to leave a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches just lying around the house because the mice might get into them and start a fire..." and then turns into a sweet, curiously profound-feeling parable of sorts. It's too lovely for words, and makes me feel warm and happy and somehow uplifted.

Frida Hyvönen - Until Death Comes

The cover says it all, really. Hyvönen's an eccentric with a piano, following her own meandering muse: her songs are wilful, simple, off-centre, self-enfolded, stop-start and surgingly tuneful (see: "You Never Got Me Right") and often out and out ballads (the one and a half minute-long "Valerie" is another highlight); her voice is soulful and honeyed but with that Scandinavian catch and chill; the music is like streaks of sunlight falling on winter sand...cool and profane, terse and poetic, it's finely wrought and immaculately executed, a reminder of the possibilities of music.

Tom Clancy - Clear and Present Danger

This is what I did on Saturday night: listened to Camera Obscura (Underachievers Please Try Harder), Saint Etienne (Finisterre), Philip Glass (The Photographer) and Godspeed You Black Emperor! (f#a#∞) while feeling a bit mopey and sort of disconnected for not particular reason and in the meantime writing a bit; started reading Clear and Present Danger to distract me from myself. Have duly finished it, and with a renewed appreciation of Clancy's ability as a craftsman and less insult done to my sensibilities by his politics than I'd expected.

"The Art of Bollywood" @ NGV International

I've been aware of and reasonably interested in seeing the exhibition, but I suspect I would've missed it had Kelly not suggested we check it out over the weekend (she wanted to go in part for the subject she's tutoring). Anyway, it was fun - I didn't learn much about Indian history, culture or cinema (not that I'm particularly knowledgeable about any of the above, but sometimes these things tend to wash a bit over one, especially at the level that the material for such exhibitions is generally pitched), but I liked looking at the posters and watching the film grabs. Highlights definitely the too-very-for-words technicolour of Bobby (definite 'oh my god' factor) and the unintentional humour of the action-packed exploitsof 'fearless Nadia' (though I was disappointed I didn't get to see the whip fight atop the moving training). Also liked the two focusing on a dancer being watched by others, mainly because of the wonderfully cheesy reactions shots of the audience members (the heroic Errol Flynn-like one with the giant jaw in the first, and the somewhat puzzled-looking man and the solemnly approbatory woman in the other).

"SF local mix" (IMP - April 2007)

Pleasingly, most of the artists on this cd were completely new to me - I'd only even heard of two (the Aislers Set and Jolie Holland) before. It's a nicely constructed mix, weighted heavily towards acoustic and lo-fi indie-pop, with a twee flavour to several of the cuts - the kind of music that I enjoy but only rarely take to heart...so I've liked listening to the mix, though I probably won't return to it all that often (with the luxury, of course, of always being surrounded by more music than I have time to listen to...so it goes).

(from Jaime in San Francisco, CA)

"Score!" (IMP - March 2007)

Music from films (hence the title of the mix - which, somewhat embarrassingly, I only this second got) and suitably cinematic/dramatic - leads off with Morricone's mighty "L'estasi Dell'oro" and continues in pretty much that vein, nearly all entirely instrumental and tending to be themes. I've enjoyed listening to it, but unfortunately the cd is scratched, so I can only listen to the first half.

(from Chris in New York, NY)

Scarlett Thomas - Dead Clever

The first in Thomas's Lily Pascale edgy series of detective fiction. A bit more generic than Seaside but still an engaging and not entirely straightforward read. To me, seemed to take a turn for the Secret History about halfway through, prompting me to wonder whether my thinking that was due to the influence of said novel on literature in general, or just on the way that I read the stuff.

James Morrow - This Is The Way The World Ends

Went for a bit of a browse in the city library the other day (in the course of which, incidentally, I encountered a strange prevalence of novels with Bowie-referencing titles - three all told, which has to be some kind of statistical anomaly) and came up with this and a couple of others. It's one of those smart, thistly, rather weird sci-fi books with a strong satirical bent - it's kind of like Vonnegut crossed with Dr Strangelove. Everyman George Paxton signs an unusual contract in order to attain a body suit that's promised to protect his young daughter from the effects of a nuclear blast - it's free, but he has to acknowledge his complicity in the nuclear arms race by perpetuating the proliferation of the suits. A nuclear exchange and holocaust duly takes place on his way home to his family, killing everyone, and he is rescued by a strange submarine which turns out to be crewed by representatives of the 'unadmitted' - temporary avatars of those who would have lived were it not for the holocaust and who now intend to put Paxton and five others on trial for their crimes. It's stormy and strange and unsettling; I don't particularly like this kind of stuff but it's effective.

Complete Piano Music Volume 1 (Debussy - Haas; Philips)

I've never really listened to Debussy properly, but my cloudy impressions and the fact that his music always gets described as 'impressionistic' led me to expect that this would be all dreamy, misty, oceanic mood music. In fact, I was surprised to discover, it's often quite churning and turbulent, exciting the mind's eye and causing the occasional stomach-flip, and all in all positively demanding attention (even if it seems to work best, at least for me, on the level of suggestion). Includes his Préludes and a bunch of other stuff - my ear has most been caught by the Images, and especially "Hommage à Rameau" (somewhat arbitrary to mention that one rather than any number of others - it just happens to be one which has resonated on several occasions and recently). Much more exploring to do with his work - looking forward to it.

Camera Obscura - Underachievers Please Try Harder

Less glitzy and more downbeat than their latest (see immediately below) but equally nice. It has to be said, Underachievers is quite Belle & Sebastian, but the best moments on the album - "Suspended From Class", "Number One Son" and "Books Written For Girls" - take that influence and run with it to end up somewhere neighbouring but subtly and integrally different.

Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country

Ravishing and delightful - ten sparkling, sometimes melancholy-edged, sometimes upbeat, sometimes both at once pop treats. Favourites: "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken", "Come Back Margaret", "Let's Get Out Of This Country", "Country Mile" and, especially, the sprightly 60s-hued "If Looks Could Kill". Which is half of the album already, and the balance aren't far behind.

A M Hammacher - Magritte

There are two main parts to this coffee table book - an introductory overview of Magritte's work (headings: "Magritte's Lucid Dreams", "The Problem of Magritte's Titles", "Magritte and the Linguists", " 'Unthought-like Thoughts' " and "The Hidden Affinity Between Magritte and Coleridge") and then 40 colour plates with analysis...I enjoyed the second part more, but then obviously most of the point of reading these books is to look at the pictures. This one spans the whole of his career and has a fair few that I hadn't seen before, and I was interested to see that some of his early stuff was quite stormy and expressionistic (eg, "The Birth of the Idol") and I was also taken by the ominous "The Huntsmen on the Edge of Night" (neither of which I can find online) from the relatively early days. Here are a couple that I already knew but which are still too great for words ("Time Transfixed" and "The Tomb of the Wrestlers"):



(also)

Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots & Something Rotten

In these ones, as in Lost in a Good Book, Fforde allows himself more outright jokes and cute gestures, and as a result they're far more fun to read than The Eyre Affair (another part of that might be the investment in the characters and world of the books which develops over the series). They're wonderful to read, anyway - by this point in the series (the most recent, I think), Fforde's well and truly found his tone and it's a treat. The literary allusions are the main game, and the fun that results from Hamlet, Heathcliff, the Cheshire Cat, Humpty Dumpty (not to mention the cloned Shakespeares) and plenty of others striding around and basically being themselves while also reflecting in their various ways on their own characters and reception in the 'real' world, but it's also cool to follow the way Fforde distorts our 'real' world into the 'real' world of Thursday Next (cricket --> croquet, various rewrites of history, Goliath Corporation, etc). I wish there were more!

Curse of the Golden Flower

Struck me as kind of like a cross between Raise The Red Lantern (which still haunts me, though my initial impressions were mixed) and Hero - the ritual and oppressiveness and Gong-Li-doing-her-thing of the former crossed with the martial arts and ruminations on empire of the latter. I didn't enjoy it as much as either of those other Zhang films - it's very heavy and, for me, doesn't pay off (it's melodrama dressed in period clothes) - and the colour-drenchedness started to wear after a while but there's no denying its very-ness.

(w/ parents)

Laura Veirs - Saltbreakers

In some ways, it's funny that I've followed along with Laura Veirs in the way that I have. I got into her through her first widely-available record, Troubled By The Fire, which I still think is by far her best - it has a kind of crystalline plangency, a simplicity and a clarity which is delightful. But the next two, Carbon Glacier and Year of Meteors (excluding Orphan Mae, which actually predates TBTF but only got a wide release after Carbon Glacier hit), are quite different, and while they're both pleasant and interesting, and have some good moments ("Salvage A Smile" is a fave), neither especially excites me. Saltbreakers is much in the vein of Veirs' latter-day style, and while it's probably the best of the post-TBTF records, I suspect it may be the last of hers that I'll automatically buy...it's good but there just isn't enough sparkle.

Live: 29/5/05; 20/1/07 (I've just noticed how enthusiastic I was about her again in the immediate aftermath of that more recent show, which wasn't even that good...so perhaps it'll prove cyclic).

Fratres (Arvo Pärt - Benedek - Hungarian State Opera Orchestra; Naxos)

The main draw with this recording is the multiple recordings of "Fratres" in various arrangements that I hadn't heard before (in fact, I don't think I've heard any of these done before) but it also includes Pärt's "Festina lente for strings and harp ad lib.", "Summa for strings" and the ubiquitous "Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten".

Stephen R Donaldson - The Runes of the Earth

A re-read. Still good.

(last time)

Wieland Schmied - Giorgio de Chirico: The Endless Journey

De Chirico was a kind of proto-Surrealist, his key work done in the early 20th century, a major influence on Max Ernst as well as on those who came after him. I'm much more drawn to his mysterious, dream-like plaza scenes ("The Red Tower" & "Mystery and Melancholy of a Street"):


than to the mannequin ("manichino") ones (though, as "The Disquieting Muses" evidences, they're not mutually exclusive categories):


I haven't delved deeply into his work (this book is the first substantial collection I've read/looked at), but I get the impression that de Chirico's paintings were characterised by a number of repeated ramifying motifs and life-long preoccupations...much is made here of his friendship with the poet Apollinaire and the way in which he was influenced by classical mythology, particularly the figures of Ulysses and Orpheus.

The Watson Twins - Southern Manners

This is very nice (much better than the Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins stuff I've heard, by the way) - a melding of folk, country, general americana and a bit of an inoffensive easy-listening strain (best song "High School" would have fit right in on the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, which I've actually been listening to a bit lately, goodness knows why). Hem is the closest analogy I can think of, with touches of the Cowboy Junkies, Mazzy Star (sans electric guitar) and the Sundays stirred in...

Andrew McClelland @ Alley Bar, Friday 20 April

Auspicious beginning when I arrived just after 8pm to meet Swee Leng as planned and found her outside talking to the night's entertainment (they slightly know each other) who guaranteed me a good time (I didn't tell him that I've never paid to see comedy before and was possibly a bit of a sceptic). Still, his promise was fulfilled - I enjoyed the show, based around the theme of "Andrew McClelland's somewhat ambitious plan to make the world a better place" (or words to that effect). Much laughing. Particularly enjoyed the bit where the girl sitting next to me (she looked vaguely familiar, as if we might have met at a party long ago, or perhaps clerked together or something) totally lost it for several minutes. McClelland has a very endearing presence - he's like a giant puppy dog, quite physical and plenty energetic, and his material is good too (though a lot of the charm's in the delivery). It wasn't profound and nor was it meant to be, but it struck me as very solid and well done.

Lisa Miller @ Readings, Friday 20 April

Had some spare time between knocking off work and going to Andy McClelland so sauntered up to Readings in Carlton to see Lisa Miller's album launch - half a dozen songs or so, some old, some new. It was nice.

Frank Miller and Lynn Varley - 300

About what I expected after seeing the film, which is very faithful to the novel. Enjoyed the film more, actually - probably that medium lends itself more to this kind of story-telling. Interesting that some of the scenes in the film which I'd thought were very 'graphic novel-y' (eg, the slowed down fight sequences in which the Spartans swivel and pirouette through opponents) in a "I can imagine how these were drawn in panels" way actually don't appear in the novel at all.

Wilco @ the Palais, Wednesday 18 April

Solid show; I'm glad I went, and it was sure fun to see Wilco live. Still, three main reasons why I'm not more enthusiastic about it:

1. Having listened to Kicking Television as much as I have, I was already familiar with a lot of their live tricks (eg, the ramping-up of "Handshake Drugs"), and most of the old songs they played were off that set. The new ones sounded good, though - quite rocky, with some flourishes.

2. The Palais is a nice venue but I'm not really used to going to shows where the act is so far away and so small. It was like watching the Wilco toys. It was cute the way Jeff Tweedy was all bow-legged the whole time, or at least that's what he looked like from on high (he also has an endearing stage presence and banter).

3. They didn't really play any of my favourite favourite songs, though "A Shot In The Arm" got a run and was the highlight for mine.

Support act was Glenn Richards from Augie March, who played mostly (but, I think, not all) Augie March stuff - didn't excite me.

(w/ David)

Tori Amos: Video Collection - Fade To Red

Watching this was a real trip down memory lane, back to the days when I adored Tori. I think that even then I was aware of and a bit put off by her sheer self-absorption, and that's something which comes through very clearly in these videos, none of which I'd seen before except "Spark" (downloaded back in the time when that was still unusual) and "Crucify" (caught on rage once, years ago) - she is everywhere in them, front and centre, as dramatic (histrionic) as you could wish. I was a bit disappointed that the videos don't particularly reflect the colour schemes of the album covers - I tend to do this a lot in general, but with Tori albums in particular (and especially venus and choirgirl) I very much think of the music in the same tones as the colours of their respective covers.

"Songs from Julian"

A mix cd from Julian F; no immediately apparent theme (except maybe a small NZ slant) but lots of excellent music, most of it by artists previously unfamiliar to me.

The song most likely to be stuck in my head is "Death and the Maiden" by the Verlaines, and particularly the sung-chanted refrain: "Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine...". I would guess that they're from the early 80s; presumably they're named after Paul rather than Tom Verlaine (if either) but they do sound a bit like Television. Hella catchy either way. Also particularly enjoy "The Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton" by the Mountain Goats (I laughed out loud at the "hail hell" bit the first time I heard it, and it's got a heck of a great tune - I oughta listen to more of this guy's stuff), the stately folk/country-tinged low-key rockism of "Body's in Trouble" by Mary Margaret O'Hara and the heart-struck drama of "Sparrow Falls" by Woven Hand (which must surely be the guy from 16 Horsepower and is as good as anything on Secret South).

Other pleasing things about the mix:
* The closing song, "Infiltration", is by Sam Phillips, and is just the kind of thing I like - that sort of country-infused adult-oriented singer-songwriter stuff. But there's also a story about Sam Phillips in particular...see, somewhere along the line the Stealing Beauty soundtrack became a bit of a key record for me, carrying a great deal of emotional/affective freight (dreamy, airy, a bit melancholy but also very light - about exactly what you'd expect, given the music) given that I've neither seen the film nor ever had any direct external association formed with the soundtrack, and the two songs which close it are the key tracks in that respect: "You Won't Fall" by Lori Carson - and "I Need Love" by Sam Phillips.
* Whereas by contrast, "Dead Dogs Two" by Clouddead is normally precisely the kind of thing I would dislike, from the title to the self-consciously experimental and slightly tinny sound, but it's completely ace.
* Roxy Music! "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" is overblown and grand. hee hee.
* The singer in Van Der Graaf Generator sounds an awful lot like Bowie.
* "Run Run Run" by Goldenhorse is neat, and not really what I would've expected of the band based on their entry on the She Will Have Her Way set - equal parts 80s post-punk, 90s indie-pop and general post-millennial indie.

Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

Was inspired to read this despite my only lukewarm positive response to The Eyre Affair after a conversation with one Buffy at T's party the other week, during which I (a) learned the true ending of the 'real world' Jane Eyre and (b) was told again that they improve after the first. Glad I did, too - Lost in a Good Book is lighter and more fun than the first in the series. Thursday Next is an engaging central protagonist and it's nice to see recurring supporting characters appear (and those characters are generally treated fondly); in this one, too, particularly enjoyed the Kafka pastiche.

Jodi Picoult - My Sister's Keeper

Picoult's not an author that I'd ever have been likely to read without one of her books being foisted on me - I've not (and still don't) know much about her, but my vague impression has always been that she's a kind of writer for the middle-brow and for women (this is me at my most open-minded and unsnobby, évidemment) - though the vagueness of that impression is becoming obvious as I try to specify it right now - and unlikely to do much for me. But having one of her books foisted on me is exactly what happened a while back, thanks to Trudy from MS, and having read My Sister's Keeper, I find that (1) my preconceptions about the content of Picoult's work were entirely accurate and (2) my preconceptions about their effect were, as it turns out, a bit off the mark, 'cause while you could never mistake this novel for high literature, it has a lot going for it and worked for me nonetheless.

The premise is this: Kate is born with leukemia, of a form that can only be staved off by frequent transfusions - and, sometimes, more invasive transplantive surgeries - from a very close match. Neither her parents nor her elder brother is close enough; her parents, confronting this battle for their daughter's life, decide to have another child who will (through a bit of scientific engineering) be a suitable match...so what happens when that second daughter, Anna, begins to grow up (she's 13, I think) and wants to make her own decisions about her body, after a childhood of being subject to constant discomfort and pain, both physical and emotional?

The short chapters are told from a range of alternating points of view in the first person present tense, which works well: those of Anna; each of the parents (Brian and Sara (that latter sometimes from a few years back, to provide the back story and fill in why she made some of the choices she did)); Anna and Kate's troubled brother Jesse; Campbell, the lawyer who retained by Anna on a pro bono basis; and Julia, the court-appointed guardian ad litem.

For me, the main pull of My Sister's Keeper is the emotional dimension rather than the 'ideas' aspect - Picoult is very good at involving the reader, at showing multiple sides to a story, and she works the situation for all the pathos that it's worth. There were times when I felt that I was being manipulated, but those tended to be the points at which there was some kind of actual emotional response, so I didn't mind.

Dixie Chicks - Fly

Their well-publicised spat with US country music radio notwithstanding, one of the most immediately obvious things about the Dixie Chicks' most recent album was its fm radio-friendly sheen. Fly, by contrast, while hardly rough around the edges, allows itself more spaces and more unevenness, and is a better album for it; nice to hear the lap steel and dobro more prominently too. First half is noticeably stronger than the second, songs like "Cowboy Take Me Away" and "Goodbye Earl" sticking in the head. They don't take themselves too seriously, either - there are plenty of good-time songs and yee-haw moments, none of them grating.

So Frenchy So Chic - 2005 & 2007

Bec P set me up with these, seemingly mainly for the sharin'. The 2005 set has struck me more than the '07 one - the songs on it seem much more distinct, not necessarily in the sense of being more differentiable from each other, but rather in that they tend to be more intrinsically memorable in their own rights. Anyhow, some favourites across the two sets:
* the two which kick off the 2005 disc, Helena's "Né Dans La Nature" and Keren Ann's "End Of May", both touched with shades of Francoise et al
* also the third on that disc, in a different vein, "Qui De Nous Deux" by M, which I've definitely heard before (one doesn't quickly forget that kind of crooning)
* the rainy-day moodiness (apt of course, given the title) of Daniel Darc's "La Pluie Qui Tombe"
* Fabienne Del Sol's take on "Laisse Tomber Les Filles"
* the skittery dream-brood of Mansfield TYA's "Pour Oublier Je Dors" (I really do wonder about the extent to which I'm taking my cues for these responses/descriptions from the titles of the songs)
* Rose's "La Liste"
* Dominique A's "Dans Un Camion" (another I've heard before)

Actually, I've heard bits of the 2005 one before. Hanging around with Sarah V - the only real live French person I've actually meaningfully known (I think) - one time, the subject of music came up, and it was one of the cds that she picked for listening in Basement Discs...if memory serves, she liked "Qui De Nous Deux" (that was probably where I previously heard it, actually) and also Paris Combo's "Baguée" and "Poêmes" by Les Hurlements De Léo, and I definitely recall the disgusted face she made when I said that I'd heard and liked "Laisse Tomber Les Filles" when it came on.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run

Thought it was about time I heard me some Springsteen beyond Born in the USA and the usual radio tracks; glad I did, for Born To Run is bloody magnificent. The key tracks are the epic soarers slap-bang in the middle of the record - "Backstreets" and "Born To Run" - but the whole album is utterly grand. It's rock and roll as celebration and aspiration, and it works from the word go.

The Devil's Backbone

Penny gave this a huge rap, so I went to see it on Sunday afternoon at ACMI. Enjoyed it - it's suitably ghostly, and the 'western' elements are well done too.

"You Don't Need Darkness To Do What You Think Is Right: New Geographic Music"

It had a Kevin Shields track I hadn't heard before ("Outro") and a Nagisa Ni Te track called "Me, on the Beach" which I thought might be a reference to "Mimi On The Beach" (having listened to it now, it doesn't seem to be), plus some Pastels, and it didn't seem to be a record label comp, so I was intrigued; it was going cheap, so I was sold (so to speak). It's a fairly quiet, dreamy set, hanging together well as a whole - that certain kind of indie that will never excite but possesses a quiet charm nonetheless.

Raymond E Feist - Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon & Honoured Enemy (with William R Forstchen)

Have read Magician several times since first encounter in primary school (I actually own a copy); the other two in the series probably only once each prior to this time. Went through them quickly, but I don't think I'll be re-reading the series again any time soon - this time, they just seemed a bit bare (even the massive Magician, though that one least so) despite the epic, fate-of-worlds scope. I don't think that I've lost my taste for fantasy, but those tastes have changed and maybe I'm more demanding nowadays.

The other - Honoured Enemy is a full-length novel (though on the short side) and set as an outtake from the Riftwar (ie, during the event of Magician). It's quite fast-paced and narrower in its focus, and reasonably taut, but the writing suffers from the same flaws.

Trewin Copplestone - Modern Art Movements

An old book of my uncle's which has been lying around my room for years. Published in '62, revised in '67 (my paperback edition '72) - covers 20th century movements in what we traditionally think of as 'art' (ie, of the painted kind). No mention of abstract expressionism but I suppose there will always be quibbles with these kinds of survey works.

Accessible overview commentary and plenty of full colour plates - a good 'un and not noticeably dated. (Though there is the question of whether there has been a substantial 'art movement' which could be placed in the same tradition/lineage as those in this book since it was published - Pop Art comes naturally to mind, but to me that seems more of a clean break (not to mention infinitely more shallow - which is kinda the point, but that doesn't mean I have to like it), and likewise with various streams that could fall under the umbrella of 'postmodern art').

Examples:

Fauvism
Matisse - The Green Stripe



Cubism
Gris - Still Life in Front of an Open Window



Expressionism
Munch - The Dance Of Life



Futurism
Boccioni - Electricity



De Stijl
Mondrian - Composition



Surrealism
Dali - Premonition Of Civil War

Gene Wolfe - Innocents Abroad

I remember that series of Wolfe's that I read a while back was good, and that plus the neat cover illustration (I later discovered that it's a Magritte - figures) was enough to get me to borrow this collection of his short stories. The inside of the dust jacket contains some rapturous praise from the Washington Post Book World, comparing him to Dickens, Proust, Kipling, Chesterton, Borges and Nabokov, before going on to nod at H G Wells, Jack Vance, H P Lovecraft and Damon Knight (who?), and I can see where this kind of enthusiasm comes from, even if I don't share it in full measure. Wolfe's a wonderfully intelligent craftsman of genre fiction - his stories start in unexpected places and twist even further away from what one would expect, but they're always true to themselves and always (perhaps like all the best fantasy and horror writing) seem like diffracted reflections of the familiar.

Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Have wanted to read this for some time now, and with much (albeit ambivalent) anticipation; as it turns out, I do like it - sure it's pretentious, but I think that Special Topics just about pulls off its central conceit (that is, its structuring in overtly literary terms, chapters named after famous works of literature &c), a success which owes something to the multi-faceted way in which Pessl develops that notion, something again to her ability to evoke a mood and a difficult-to-describe sense of depth, and perhaps still more to her commitment to not allowing those structuring ideas to obscure Character and Story within the novel.

Storywise, the most obvious reference point is The Secret History, from the introductory self-conscious musing on the narrator's own Life Story through the central motif of the eccentric group of college students orbiting around a charismatic lecturer via a death that is flagged in the opening pages and plenty of other parallels, and I'll make the comparison: Special Topics is not as good. But it's still an engaging, serious-minded and impressively conceived and executed, and surprisingly subtle thing of a novel and, I reckon, pretty much deserving of the raves.

New Buffalo - Somewhere, anywhere

Starry and lovely - this is very fine. Not as immediate as The Last Beautiful Day, but if anything even more affecting than that other.

The Illusionist

Jarrod wanted to see this because of the Philip Glass score and I was happy to go along because (a) I'm a drifter and (b) The Prestige was good and I like Edward Norton and don't mind a Glass score myself. Anyhow, it's not by any stretch of the imagination mind-blowing, but The Illusionist has a few tricks up its sleeve - the main things going for it are the blurry soft-focus effects and the quality acting of all four of the leads, Norton in particular.

300

I was keen to see this - I'm always up for a spectacle, and 300 seemed likely to fit the bill, not least because of the Frank Miller connection. It is a genuine spectacle, and I liked the hyper-realism (well, the hyper-everythingism, really) and the battle scenes...it's well done. I'd probably watch it again, just for the visuals and the spectacular battles, but it doesn't quite come together in the way that Sin City, say, did.

(w/ Sid)

New York Dolls, Phoenix, Jarvis Cocker and the Pixies @ "Best of V Festival", Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Wednesday 4 April

By happy arrangement, each of the acts playing here was better than the last, at least by my lights (the squealing teenage girls who basically totally lost it while Phoenix were on stage, say, may well have begged to differ). The New York Dolls were quite good albeit totally not my kind of thing - they were into what they were doing, anyway (trashy rock n roll - equally parts Van Halen and the Stooges), and didn't seem to mind the relative lack of audience at that point. Phoenix were okay as well - I'd only heard "Too Young" and a couple of others before, but it turned out that I'd gained a pretty fair idea of what they were about...slightly disco-y of-the-moment indie-rock with an eye to the mainstream. All of their songs kind of sounded the same and they were pretty Killers-esque in places, but you know, they were okay.

So anyway, between Phoenix and Jarvis Cocker, we met up with a friend of Nenad's (one Steve) who got us into the seated area in front, which was seriously something like a hundred times better. Hardly anyone was sitting down, with most folks standing near the front, but the rising 'bowl' arrangement of the stadium meant that anyone standing on any of the steps had a brilliant view from only a few metres away - it was grand. Jarvis, impossibly thin, was ace - put on a real show, complete with constant jerky 'dancing', karate kicks, wriggling around on the ground, and, at one point, an extended swing and hang from one of the giant speakers, plus plenty of witty banter between songs. And the music itself was tops too - I hadn't heard any of his solo stuff before, but it seemed very much like Different Class era Pulp (I've had "F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E." stuck in my head since the show, and many of the songs have stayed with me from that one hearing (the "black magic" one was cool, and of course the magnificent show-closing anthem "Cunts Are Still Running The World" (it may have a different title than those words of the chorus, but I doubt it)). Wonderful!

And, finally, the whole reason I'd gone along - the Pixies. And they were just great, pure and simple. Rattling through all of their famous songs ("Monkey Gone To Heaven" and "Wave Of Mutilation" thrown in very early on; "Here Comes Your Man" flood-lit with rainbow coloured lighting to go with the joy it brought somewhere in the middle; "Debaser" and "Where Is My Mind" nearer the end (and "Gigantic" to round off the encore)), and doing so with both a remarkable tightness and an air of loving every minute of what they were doing, it was an honest to goodness live music experience, borne upwards by the anticipation and appreciation of the crowd. Black Francis (hard to think of him in those terms, having been long accustomed to "Frank Black") sang and screamed just as he does on record, Kim Deal was just hella cool, and the four of them really seemed like a band; more than that, they really seemed like the Pixies. The sound was great, the guitars tearing away (though I'd somehow expected them to be rougher-sounding live), and I realised for the first time just what monsters of anthems some of their songs are (I've always thought that the production on Doolittle, the only of their records that I've listened to a lot, does the band no favours at all). I like the Pixies without ever having been fanatical about them, but their set the other night was really something else, both on its own terms and for the new life with which it's imbued their songbook and the band itself for me.

(w/ Nenad)

Black

An installation/performance (four actors in a confined central stage with audience sitting, standing or moving around and above them) presenting a kind of cut-up, non-narratival interpretation of the death of the "Black Dahlia". The space within which it takes place is significant (in more than one sense) and plays a constitutive role in the surrealistic, dream-like ebbs and flows (and occasional abrupt outbursts) of the actors' movements and dialogue; Black is a dramatised presentation of both the events it 'portrays' and the broader collective processes of imagining and reification of those events (and the forces and compulsions lying beneath what is seen or consciously known, making themselves felt only through their effects and in shadowy hints at the edges of awareness and vision). Interesting and compulsive - I liked it.

(w/ trang)

Peter Hartcher - "Bipolar Nation: How to Win the 2007 Election" (Quarterly Essay issue 25)

Didn't initially strike me as one of the most obviously incisive QEs that I've read, but on further reflection I think that the quality of analysis in Hartcher's piece is actually quite high, and that I may've been misled by the seeming familiarity of what he has to say - though the broad outlines of his argument aren't new, the particular way he wraps them together adds something. Takes the ideas of Australia as the "lucky country" and "frightened country" as orienting themes and looks at the strategies employed by Howard and Rudd to date, particularly in relation to national security and the economy. People have been talking a lot about this next federal election - more than I remember them doing about the last one - and me, well, I've been thinking that an awful lot may ride on who gets in, even more so than usual.

China Miéville - Un Lun Dun

Miéville's first foray into "childrens' literature", and very nicely done it is, too. Un Lun Dun has the weirdness of his other work, but it's less dark and more whimsical, and also less dense, all of which works well (not least given the book's intended audience). It doesn't have the darkness of the Borribles books or the creepy unnervingness of Coraline, say, though I think it has some affinities with both, but neither is what Miéville is shooting for here. One thing that the novel does have is an endless inventiveness - as always with him, there are countless images to savour which appear fully-formed in the mind's eye (not to mention the generous number of illustrations, drawn by Miéville himself, which appear throughout) and, in this one in particular, he really goes to town with verbal invention as well. The explorer with a birdcage containing a bird for a head (actually, the bird is the explorer, using a human torso and limbs as a vehicle), the super-strong diving suit-enclosed school of fish (named "Skool", of course), the heroic bus conductors (and buses with feet), the killer giraffes, the binja, the words-come-to-life ("utterlings"), the intelligent broken umbrellas ("unbrellas"), and Curdle the milk carton, to name just a few...

Stephen King - Night Shift

I've read these before - Night Shift is one of the collections of King's short stories. It's from earlyish in his career, and the stories are less developed than his later ones, but still very recognisably him.

The Best of McSweeney's volume 1 edited by Dave Eggers

Have been reading this on and off for the last few weeks, and have probably now read as much as I'm going to in the near future. Has its moments, but no real standouts ("The Republic of Marfa" by Sean Wilsey is my favourite). Noticeably more overtly 'experimental' than volume 2.

The Wrong Man

A bit too clever-clever and somewhat derivative of The Usual Suspects; distinctly offbeat in a way which is distracting and probably deliberately so; big cast for a film I'd never heard of before I watched it on dvd (Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Liu). Enjoyable.

Air - Original motion picture score for "The Virgin Suicides"

Airy and nice, apt to and part of the film.

Update

A while between drinks here - my laptop gave up the ghost and I've not yet got around to sorting out a new one, and the frustrations of work have been, well, frustrating. Still and anyway, here goes.

Sarah Waters - Affinity

The only Sarah Waters books I've read, and now I've read it twice. I can't remember why I read it the first time - it may've been just one of those that one picks up in a library (probably Rowden White, oh I miss that library) on the strength of its cover and then takes home for the intriguing blurb, though possibly on the back of all the kerfuffle about the tv adaptation of Tipping The Velvet. Still, it was a great read then and I raced through it - atmosphere to burn and a ripping story, too. This time, I made myself go more slowly, but it was still all over in a couple of days. It's a honest to goodness Victorian ghost story, done with a modern sensibility which has nothing of the anachronistic to it (at least as these things are reckoned). Waving the flag for readable lit fic.

"It was not death, for I stood up" - Gabrielle Bell (Emily Dickinson graphic poem)

This is great.

Scarlett Thomas - Going Out

Reading Going Out made me understand for the first time why Thomas continually draws the Coupland comparisons - which isn't necessarily a good thing (it's been years since I read him, and even at the time I was fairly iffy) as far as I'm concerned. As with a few books I've read lately, it didn't seem to take off until about midway through - initially it just seems to be just too deliberately shooting for zeitgeistal flavour and wasn't doing a great deal for me, though that early section is punchy enough to keep me going. Where it takes off is at about the point where everyone comes together for the road trip and starts running around completing various related missions (the shopping trip, the spacesuit construction), Leanne reveals that she thinks she's a witch, and things generally really begin percolating. I raced through that section to about two or three chapters from the end this morning on the bus. 

It's not that the novel is especially life-affirming - though it shoots for that in the final chapter, and doesn't really get there - but somehow it worked upon me anyway. It's quite different from PopCo and The End of Mr Y, and not as good as those others, but even still, it has something.

Match Point

Quite enjoyed this but it didn't send me into raptures. All the actors are good, and Rhys-Meyers is exactly right (in a bit of a "the new Jude Law" sort of way); Scarlett's Nola is kind of the way I've always imagined Jordan Baker, though more voluptuous and deliberately alluring. Reminded me a bit of Closer - that glassy sense of amorality - and is neatly constructed. Still, good rather than great.

By the by, doesn't the new Woody/Scarlett film look just excellent.

The Brothers Grimm

Well, it's Gilliam, and it has the colour and the invention and the grotesque whimsy (whimsical grotesquerie), and it's pretty engaging. But it's a bit of a mess, really, and just doesn't quite work. I did like Cavaldi, but then I always enjoy characters like him.

Gladiator

I still think that this is one of the best epics out there, but it definitely lost a bit for me on this viewing - it's just not as thrilling as it was the first (and second?) time round, years ago now.

The West Wing seasons 3, 4, 5 & 6

Phew - and now normally transmission can resume for a while. Some things about The West Wing, in no particular order:

- The way that everyone says "ok" all the time, especially in the early seasons, often because what's been said before is just, you know, so darn intense that there's nothing else to say.
- The episode in which Zoe is kidnapped is probably the single most tense tv episode I've ever seen, and to the strains of Massive Attack's "Angel", too, though a large part of that is probably due to my investment in the show. But the single most memorable moment is the micro-scene where Amy asks Donna if she's in love with Josh and the camera cuts immediately.
- The various strands in episodes are often thematically related - something I tend to notice near the beginning and then forget all about as the story takes over.
- Josh is my favourite, and has been from the start. I probably don't seem much like him to other people, but I definitely identify.
- The show plays fair - it sets things up using generic conventions, and it has the confidence to develop them over a long period. For example, from about halfway through season 1 I was thinking that there had to be some kind of romance between Josh and Donna, and also expecting that Hoynes would end up showing his patriotism somewhere along the line.
- I didn't know about the MS.
- There's a pretty serious dip in quality in seasons 4 and 5 (and especially 5), but it really picks up again in 6.
- Toby as press secretary is gold.
- It does get a wee bit distracting the way pretty much every woman who passes through is extremely attractive (in a "hang on, this isn't how the real world is" rather than some kind of sub-libidinous way, natch).
- The episode structures keep things interesting (eg, sometimes opening with a flash-forward) - it's only really around aforementioned season 5 that things feel formulaic.
- Lots of episodes give me a rush and a chill down the spine.
- I do particularly enjoy the court and judge-related ones.
- If only everyone I worked with was like the people in this show!
- So much more to say but what says the most is that I fully intend to watch it all the way through from the beginning again once I've done this final season 7.

One season to go!

Drugstore - Drugstore

This, Drugstore's debut, is in a similar vein to Palomine, actually, though it tends more towards clangour and noise (and brevity) than that other. Isobel Monteiro's rasp is in fine form throughout, and the band's knack for a beguiling melody is well in evidence across the album. The music is maybe too low-key, too basement-esque, to get me really excited about it, but still, Drugstore is an unobtrusive treat.

Bettie Serveert - Palomine

Pleasingly lo-fi early 90s jangly-fuzzy melodic mostly downbeat indie-pop; "Palomine", the one I'd heard before, is a good taster for the rest of the album.

José González - Veneer

This seems nice enough, but I don't really have the patience to listen to 'guy and his acoustic guitar' albums with full attention these days. I do like the cover of "Heartbeats" though.

Sarah Blasko - What The Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have

Although many of my musical faves are singer-songwriters, I maintain what I think is a pretty healthy suspicion of the breed in general, and this has carried through into my not having been particularly attentive as far as the new crop of female Australian s-s/writers go. Sarah Blasko, though, has gradually come to stand out over the last few months; I first heard her through her spare, spectral reading of "Don't Dream It's Over" on the wonderful She Will Have Her Way, and her songs always seem to be playing on the radio, first thing in the morning as I'm struggling towards wakefulness, too early (it's been a long time since I was a triple j kid but I still wake up to the strains of the station every weekday).

It's a good context in which to hear this music, too - groggy, still half dreaming, wrapped in darkness with perhaps scattered light straggling through. But what started to strike me after a while, after the pleasing crystalline starkness of Blasko's sound had become more familiar, was the strength of the songs and the melodies - while they're not the sort to have one humming them all day long, nonetheless each one stuck after I'd heard it. I couldn't have hummed one if I'd tried - not after only that one hearing - but I knew I'd know any of them if I heard them again. And in fact, that's how it's turned out - "[Explain]" I think I'd heard a few times (during the day as well), but I'm certain I'd only heard "Always On This Line" and "Planet New Year" (that latter, wryly sweet and more upbeat, too, being the one that tipped me into buying What The Sea Wants...) once each yet knew them straight away when I heard them tonight on record. So even though I didn't really know any of her songs beforehand, the album sounded half-familiar to me - again, dream-like. Reference points: New Buffalo, Laura Veirs (and I think that Blasko sometimes sounds like a female Thom Yorke). Favourite song possibly "The Garden's End". This will be an apt accompaniment, I think, as the nights grow longer and winter creeps stealthily closer.

Beirut - "Lon Gisland" ep

I got around to buying Gulag Orkestar, and the version in the stores at the moment comes with this presumably earlier ep, which is good in much the same way as that other - assuming that this did come out before the lp, it seems that his sound was already pretty fully-fledged here.

The Best of the Ronettes

Man, this is exciting. I've been looking for this for ages, and then suddenly, last weekend, passing through Missing Link for a cursory browse on my way somewhere else, what should confront me from the racks but a best of the Ronettes! It kicks off with "Be My Baby", as of course it must, and from thereon in it's 18 songs of girl group bliss, much of which I haven't heard before because of Phil Spector's curmudgeonly refusal to license his songs for release on compilations on other labels. So yes, it's wonderful, and while I haven't got as into their stuff as the Shangri-Las, it's still very great indeed.

Oxford Collapse - Remember the Night Parties

Neat and fairly inventive, of-the-moment but also backwards-looking indie rock (backwards-looking say to five or ten years ago, I mean) - good stuff. High point at the moment definitely the yowly ricocheting anthemicity of "Please Visit Your National Parks" but I suspect that repeated listening will bring others into prominence.

Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

I don't know, maybe I just don't like family sagas, because for me, Middlesex didn't start to really pull until its focus shifted mainly to Cal/Callie themselves, as opposed to his/her family and antecedents (though I see the importance of the family/history aspects given the novel's preoccupation with genetic (in both the broad and the narrow senses of the idea) causes, effects, etc), at which point I began to feel very involved - Eugenides brought me to empathise completely with his unusual narrator, and I think that a lot of that comes down to the way he grounds his main character's experience in some seemingly universal (or, at least, readily recognisable) human narratives, desires and so on. It's not that the family stuff isn't well done - but it just doesn't engage me, or not as much, anyway.

When I read a novel, I want to get a story - stories - from it, but that's not enough to be satisfying...'Story' may not, on its own, be enough, but it's not that 'character' or 'ideas' are either, whether on their own or in conjunction with 'story' (and obviously you can never meaningfully disentangle these various strands). Maybe what I'm trying to get at is that I'm engaged by a sense of narrative consciousness and construction, not necessarily self-reflexively (either on the part of the empirical author or the narrator themselves - which goes as much for third person as for first person writing), of the way that things present themselves (or are presented) to us, us as readers and as characters 'within' the text - that's what I felt began to come through more in the second half of Middlesex that I didn't feel in the earlier stages, even though the events of the plot and interesting characters kept me going through those early sections.

Anyway, obviously that's a bit of a personal predilection...As to other aspects of the novel, the sex-gender aspect is handled with a reasonable degree of sophistication, I felt (and obviously I say that as a former Butler-reader, etc, etc), and I (surprisingly) enjoyed the way that the Greek-ness of the characters was front and centre and felt I learned a bit about the Greek people, if we can ever make these kinds of statements (based on literature or otherwise). Quite enjoyed the drawing out of historical events too. All in all, though, for me, Middlesex is a solid three-out-of-five type book and no more...it just seems to lack some extra indefinable ingredient that I can't express but know when I see it.

(By the way, I'm pretty sure that I've skimmed Middlesex before, because a lot of it felt very familiar and I definitely recognised one or two passages outright. Must have been during my 'not reading books properly phase'...)

Notes on a Scandal

After the exhibition, we still had a few hours to kill before Jarrod's birthday do, and though I hadn't been particularly interested in seeing it, Notes on a Scandal was the film that best fit both timings and interest levels (we really wanted to see Dreamgirls but sadly it wasn't screening any more); anyway, it was actually very good. It's a film that really depends on the performances of its leads, Dench and Blanchett, and both are quite magnificent - totally believable and (hoary old cliche) fully inhabiting their characters.

The affective nature of this film is difficult to pin down in some ways - it keeps the viewer somehow at a slight distance, and I couldn't work out afterwards why I'd had that impression. Some of it may've had to do with the ever-cyclic Glass score, which runs through virtually the whole of the film's running time (if not actually the whole of it), and it also made sense when I read later that the screenwriter had also done Closer, a film with which it has a fair bit in common (and more and more in common, the more I think about it). It's very funny in spots, too. I probably wouldn't watch it again, but I'm glad to've caught it.

"Attention Please! Posters from the Gerard Herbst collection" @ Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne

Went to this with Steph, who sold it to me on the basis that the poster being used to promote the exhibition (see left) had something of Magritte to it (surreal elements, plain and shaded elements, 'bowler hat', and other aspects more intangible). It turned out to be a collection of posters, mostly from Poland and more or less adjacent countries circa 1960-1970 - film and theatre posters for the most part, and a few others (a striking Amnesty International one comes to mind). Tended to be pretty heavy, almost to the point of being oppressive - faces and hands were recurring motifs. Also some (quite amusing) ones from workplace safety campaigns in Britain, also from around that time I think. Interesting, although I wouldn't want too many (any) of them on my bedroom wall!

"Jazz Convulsions" (IMP - February 2007)

This comment from the cd's creator says it best:

That music got under my skin many years ago, starting with Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong. The two greatest cornet players of jazz ever and friends...one white, one black. Destined to never play together in public, but only in secret jam sessions after the clubs had closed to a privileged few. Sometimes with this music playing, the right reading material (preferably with your Gatsby within reach), maybe throw in a Hitchcock silent, and you can pull a "somewhere in time" a la Christopher Reeve. But this activity can become somewhat addictive, so consider it only in moderation.

I'm liking this mix a lot - even though my previous exposure to jazz doesn't extend much beyond a bit of Miles and a smattering of Coltranes John and Alice, its moody, smoke-wreathed, after-dark sounds made sense to me straight away.

(from John in Philadelphia [?])

The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

It's good, very good in fact, from the get-go - that is, from the ominously stormy, climbing but never quite resolving introduction of "Black Mirror" - but the moment on Neon Bible when I first really thought "yes!" to myself came somewhere in "Intervention" which, crashing through in waves, is towering and unabashed and really just too magnificent for words.

Generally, the album has more of a mythic quality than Funeral and it seems more clearly to be grounded in classic rock and roll than the band's debut (which sounded, when it first exploded upon us, near completely sui generis); to my ears, the record is resonant with the echoing highways of Bruce Springsteen, and peopled by the shadows of some of rock's most darkly, fervently inspired figures, haunted visionaries like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Nick Cave. But the ornately baroque, heightened undercurrent of fraughtness that has most characterised the band's sound in the past still dominates, and their urgency and fire hasn't diminished one bit, nor their propensity for dramatic, veering shifts and subversions of both the traditional rock songbook and the expectations set up by the beginnings of their own songs.

My initial sense is that Neon Bible is a more challenging and more substantial album than its predecessor lp, if lacking in the obvious immediate high points of that other (the pleasures of Neon Bible are more subtle than those of Funeral), and probably a darker one, and likely to be just as rewarding over time, if not more so. On the strength of this record and what they've done so far, I reckon that the Arcade Fire are right on the verge of greatness.

Lucinda Williams - West

From the opening lines of first song "Are You Alright?", I felt in sure hands with this record, Williams' latest. I don't know if it's her best album (though if it's not, it's pretty close), but I do think that it could well be a culmination of sorts - the apotheosis of everything she's recorded before. Expansive and unhurried, it's the sound of an artist with complete faith in her voice and songs; more than anything else, it sounds like a Lucinda Williams record, but to me West also seems to partake of that same pure, rich stream that runs through Emmylou Harris's best work - a clean, fierce kind of ache which is grounded in the dirt but also has something of the stars to it. It's understated and restrained and it burns slowly all the way through, but if West isn't a masterpiece, it's the next best thing to one.

Belle and Sebastian - "Dog on Wheels" ep

Their first ep - really basically just Stuart Murdoch and Stuart David (though Mick Cooke does bring his trumpet to the title track). It seemed the right time to finally buy this; lately, I've been listening to B&S a lot again, especially Sinister and Arab Strap; and very charming it is, simple and under-adorned, and lightly touched by that always lightly felt magic. Title track, an early version of "The State I Am In", the mildly rocky "String Bean Jean" and, lastly, "Belle & Sebastian" itself (which I hadn't heard before). Sweet.

New Buffalo - "About Last Night" ep

I think this was her debut - it was definitely before The Last Beautiful Day, anyway. And, like that other, it twinkles and shimmers and is oh so fine.

"Astralwerks: Fallwerks 2006"

A record label comp - Beth Orton, Sparklehorse, Phoenix, Placebo, Hot Chip and others. The only song that's particularly caught my ear is the Radio 4 cut, "Packing Things Up On The Scene", in which they get their rock on a lot more than I'd have imagined given the other stuff of theirs that I've heard.

St Jerome's Laneway Festival, Saturday 24 February

Once again, the laneway festival comes through with a great day. I went with Vanessa this year, and we linked up with David and Justine (and, with them for a while, Wendy L) pretty quickly. As usual, lots of familiar faces - hooked up for a while with a girl I'd met in passing at the Australia Day croquet picnic (Ellie [sp?] - a friend of Michelle's, I think), briefly touched base with Vera and waved at an ex-seasonal clerk (one Cassidy) from the toilet queue, etc. Crowd colourful and friendly - there was a lot of smiling happening. Taking public transport to and fro was a good move as it allowed me to drink which, it has to be said, definitely improved the experience.

The first two bands I saw, I'd both seen in the past, supporting others. Love of Diagrams (who curtain-raised for either Interpol or Pretty Girls Make Graves when I saw them a few years back - I can't recall which) were, as I'd remembered them to be, angular and rockin' and pretty darn good. I don't remember them having as much in the way of vocals as they did today, but memory can play funny tricks, and besides their sound may well have evolved; anyhow, the whole package has more than a bit of Sleater-Kinney (mid-period) to it now, which is no bad thing. Then Bumblebeez, who were heckled throughout when opening for Radiohead back in '03 [?], but here were quite endearing with their fun-oriented hip-hop/rock hybrid thing.

Saw the second half of the Archie Bronson Outfit set and enjoyed it - three bearded guys banging out hectic, vaguely asthmatic guitar rock. Then Camera Obscura, who were very nice though their sound didn't travel particularly well in the laneway setting (they did do a delightful "Let's Get Out of the Country") - I always feel as if I should listen to them properly, and seeing their show hasn't pushed me particularly in either direction.

Only caught the middle part and some of the end of Love Is All, which is kind of a shame because, based on what I did hear of it, their set was one of the highlights of the day. I haven't retained a strong impression of what the band actually sounded like (there was a saxophone and a girl singer, neither of which I'd expected) but they were darn good.

After that, Youth Group and the Sleepy Jackson, both of which were loved by the crowd but neither of which did particularly much for me - the former had a few decent songs but seemed a bit middle-of-the road, and while the latter definitely knew how to sell what they had, I still found their music a bit underwhelming.

Then came the Walkmen, who were good and, with "The Rat" produced one of only about three songs that got some serious crowd singalong happening (the others being "Forever Young" and "Young Folks"). When listening to their albums, I'm always struck by the scratchiness of the band's sound, which comes not just from the singer's voice but from everything else as well, and I've sometimes wondered whether it was a production thing or just a music thing (I've also wondered whether I'd find their music more satisfying if they had a fuller sound going, though possibly it would lose some of the urgent edginess in the process)...anyway, in light of that, it was interesting that the same wavery-ness was shot through their live set, producing a similar response from me. But they rocked pretty hard and yeah, theirs was probably my favourite set of the day.

Riding the good energy, next up was Peter, Bjorn & John, who were pretty good, but I didn't get much of a sense as to what they were really about (a bit of pop, a bit of rock and plenty of melody, but it was all kinda muffled). After that, went upstairs to see a bit of Ground Components (who were shambolic and rough-edged and exciting (and, in the case of the singer, skinny and topless)) but by then was feeling that it was time to move on, and so I did.

>> 2005
>> 2006

Scarlett Thomas - The End of Mr Y

It was somewhere between the sex scene on the glass table and the bit where Apollo Smintheus, eight foot tall mouse god, starts running around shooting people with his bow and arrows, that I decided that Scarlett Thomas was my new literary crush...said mouse god resides in the Troposphere, a metaphorical/imaginative/real space accessible by imbing a particular homeopathic concoction and then staring hard at a big black dot drawn on a piece of paper or cardboard; it's a realm in which all consciousness is connected, natch, and it's possible to 'surf' other peoples' minds through being and time.

Some of the many things which make The End of Mr Y so grand:
* The way that it connects up so many theorists and ideas in ways that I've done myself, and wraps them all up in a novel-narrative that's both crazy and compelling, and also ultimately satisfying - Heidegger-Derrida-language-consciousness-absence-being-phenomenology-postmodernism (with more fleeting references to, amongst others, Lacan and Poe) - and then some...the 'then some' including Baudrillard (who I've always vaguely disrespected and expected to be a rather facile thinker - but who I've never actually read and now think perhaps I should), Samuel Butler, and plenty of quantum physics.
* The wonderfully effective use made of the first person present tense voice - ideal for a phenomenological representation and conducive to both a clean postmodern flatness and lack of affect, and to an affecting and striking immediacy, according to what's most appropriate at any particular point.
* The unforced integration of contemporary technology - ipods, email, blogs, web searching. I read an article a while back which commented that people hadn't really worked out how to write about technology and its impacts yet (in fictional settings), which I thought was true as far as fiction in which said technology isn't front and centre goes (by contrast to, say, cyberpunk etc which is deliberately and centrally concerned with mapping out such impacts and relations), but Thomas does it as well as anyone.
* And, relatedly, the way that Thomas's voice is thoroughly of the now - hip, cynical, casually erudite, frequently profane - but still feels somehow classically literary.

Actually, as a novel, The End of Mr Y has plenty of flaws. But I forgive those flaws easily for, well, all of the above reasons and plenty more.

"Why Refugee Law Still Matters" (James Hathaway - 25th Allen Hope Southey Memorial Lecture)

Saint Etienne - Smash the System: Singles and More

Oh, I do love Saint Etienne. Why? Well, it's not easily expressed (some previous attempts: here, and here, and here, and here). I often think of them and Belle and Sebastian as of a piece, and what ties them together in my mind is that, more than any others', their music represents something for me - some hazy ideal of elegant disaffectedness, at once brightly lit and sepia-toned, thoroughly contemporary and yet not at all made for these times, breezy and subtle and shot through with something wistful...music for the heart and for the inner life.

I think that there might be as many as three Saint Etienne compilations out there, but this seemed the one to get, and it's sheerest delight across the whole of its 2 x cd playing time - much of it I knew already, some I didn't, but it all, you know, it all just fits.