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| The New Pornographers & Wittgenstein |
| 06.26.04 (12:44 pm) [edit] |
Others have already pointed out that a line from The New Pornographers's "Chump Change" ("... the world is that which is the case") is drawn from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
But it's also a handy way to think about anthropology, which has been on my mind because of the book (since it's called Anthropy and has to do with the study of human life) and because I've been putting together my Ph.D. exam section on ethnography.
You know when you're breaking up with someone and the music playing in the background seems to unnervingly relate? That's like The New Pornographers and library research.
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| A Week in Revue |
| 06.26.04 (9:46 am) [edit] |
Art kids party.
They eat food
and watch music.
Music kids
blow lids
off all that lit shizz.
Lectures
at punk venues
mean art kids
rock out
now. I eat food
and watch music.
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| Table talk |
| 06.17.04 (4:30 pm) [edit] |
The last post generated a bit of discussion, so I thought it might be worth trying a new way to discuss a topic. I'll ask a question for which I'd like to hear your answers. If you answer them, you can pose another question for everyone.
Q: When someone is joking around with you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, would it be better to say something serious or something funny? Why?
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| The Cool and the Lame |
| 06.14.04 (7:15 am) [edit] |
Since I never got to try on my new suit for the Griffin Literary Awards (I missed Adam at Union Station and saw The Saddest Music In the World with Lisa and Sou instead), I was itching to try it for a wedding that Lisa invited me to. (Here is a http://www.livejournal.com/us... to her account of the festivities.)
Which also meant that I had never worn my tie clip. Bonnie and I found it in a vintage shop. Ever the romantic, she wanted to engrave it with a tiny R where it crosses over the middle of the tie. The first five engravers she contacted wouldn't do it in the amount of time I had before I had to catch my bus (two hours). If the sixth wouldn't do it, as she put it, it wasn't meant to be.
Like all good details, the R is too tiny to see except from up close. It reminds me of how opera singers have elaborate costumes that most audience people won't see, but the details are what make their characters believable, especially to the singers themselves.
The wedding was in a modern-looking church in Newmarket. The ceremony was led by an Asian priest with a pronounced accent. When he read scripture, he sometimes corrected himself, which produced snickers in the audience. "Jackie Chan." During the first few audible comments, I looked back and realized that the congregation was white. The priest continued to read scripture and, as the rules go, the congregation would respond appropriately with the words they knew. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the words were a kind of power the congregation bonded over, words that they thought the priest aped as a parody of an English-speaking person. I didn't sing with them--I didn't know the words--and when we sat down, someone said "She Bangs," and people for rows around couldn't keep themselves from laughing.
"Why weren't you laughing?" I was asked afterwards by a man who looked like a football player despite his burgundy shirt and tie. "We find all of these things funny--funerals, weddings, whatever. We like to have a good time."
I didn't have an easy answer for him. Guys (a constant conversation topic between Bonnie and I) have a tactic we call, "Cool Chick / Lame Chick." This is how it works: a guy (who often have a few buds in tow) makes a joke. This joke usually has to do with women. The woman in the group is then faced with a decision that may or may not be posed explicitly: is she going to be a Cool Chick (i.e. laugh along, whether she thinks it's funny or not) or a Lame Chick (i.e. not laugh along, explain why she doesn't consider it funny, squirm, or leave). If there is more than one woman in the group, then the decision becomes exponentially more difficult because each woman's decision acts as precedent for the rest of the women. In any case, the It's Just a Joke is the weapon of choice for the Laid-Back Guy.
Jim, let it be known, was not the only Laid-Back Guy at the wedding, but as a man with a neck as wide as a pigskin and a penchant for classic rock, he had adapted "Cool Chick / Lame Chick" nicely for Asians like me.
So when they requested "She Bangs" during the reception dancing, I sat it out. Don't get me wrong; I put everything into my dancing and people appreciate it. As the dancefloor filled, a number of the dancers our age would refuse to let me sit down. A blonde bridesmaid in red kept leading me by the hand to dance as I'd try to leave. A guy with spiky strawberry blond hair would give me the guy-bonding "props" gesture. Later, in his amazement, he said to Lisa, "I don't know how he does it. Maybe it's his clever Chinese feet."
The details are everything: you stay quiet because you're Chinese; you dance hard because you're Chinese. You're publishing your first book because you're Chinese; you're doing your Ph.D. in English literature because you're Chinese; every word you speak seems in contradiction to what others see in your skin: these are the details that others can't seem to see except from up close.
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| Montréal, where plates are stacked with smoked meat |
| 06.06.04 (9:23 pm) [edit] |
This weekend, the League of Canadian Poets met for its annual general meeting in Montréal. I went with my friend Adam, whose book won the League's award for best first book.
My publisher suggested that I bring my manuscript to Anne Carson, who gave the guest lecture this year. Consistent with my work habits, I interspersed working on the manuscript with yabbering with Adam on the train, eating carnivorously, and buying bagels at the finest bagélériés the city has to offér.
The Cast:
matt (he publishes his name in small caps because he's such a humble guy) is the president of the league. he is a tall, guy-next-door kind of fellow, has blond spiky hair and wears a jacket that makes him look like a security guard.
Triny, like Chris and Adam and I, published her book this year with Nightwood Editions. She and Adam tell jokes like siblings who are just about to hit each other.
Chris, who was shortlisted for the award that Adam won, is a tall lanky guy with glasses and hands for storytelling. If he's quiet and something really strange happens (like poets dancing to oldies during the gala dinner, let's say), he becomes very quiet and says, "Wow," very emphatically, every now and then.
The Gala:
I recorded Adam's Lampert reading and acceptance to mp3 using my fancy little mp3 player. I burned him a copy on CD. You can hear him threaten to read one of Chris Banks's juvenalia poems and, if you listen carefully, you can hear Chris freak out in the background.
Unlike Adam, who accepted his award with aplomb, I shat myself approaching Anne Carson for a blurb. I had written out my introduction several times on hotel stationery. I think I remember saying something stupid about Virginia Woolf, which, in retrospect, was probably lethal. In the moment, however, Anne just looked at me blankly and said, "I don't do blurbs." I hadn't figured out what to say next so I just went back to my table with my manuscript. I only worked up the courage to give her the manuscript once I reasoned with myself that, if she turned down even taking it, then at least she wouldn't see how much my style rips hers off. But, well, gee, I printed out the copy for you and don't feel obligated to read it if you're too busy, but she took it and said, "Thanks," with the same blank look.
Now I'm scared she'll read it. It's meeting your childhood superhero and trying to flex.
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