So I live in Appalaaaahchia
Just got back from playing some of Copland's Appalachian Spring...always a great experience. Apparently I live in Appalachia, or Appalaechia (I can't give you the phonetics of this, although from my New England perpsective, the southern pronunication of it is really fucked up. REALLY). These musical rehearsals remind me of how much I miss playing in an orchestra, and how much I hate pretentious obnoxious musicians. Don't get me wrong, there are musicians and there are musicians...but most wanna be professional musicians have a neurotic streak that breaks the scale on what that really means.
Last night was pretty much perfect. Well, almost. I was studying at Fido's, having some coffee, and just plain chillin out. Then I went to Dylan's birthday get together over at the Villager Tavern...it reminds me of Roark's at home!!! Let me give you a little background as to why all this is...Hillsboro Village, just off of Vandyland, is a very trendy artsy yuppie kinda neighborhood. I go there because I like the coffee, and the microbrewed beer at Bosco's (shout out to the Germantown Ale : ) as well as the indie movie house, The Belcourt Theater, one of my havens in Nashville. Most of the bars and cafes there are super yuppie and trendy, some have good desserts, bla bla bla. It's not a bad place, but it's a very specific type of place, if you dig. So last night, Dylan was turning I don't know how old - upper 20's perhaps? my guess is 28 or 27...and we got together at this bar, the Villager. He sent us all an email saying that it was his birthday, and as such, he requested that we all do something ridiculous. His requests were a) wear a tiara, b) wear a prom dress, or c) get generally dressed up. I did none of the above, but was sorely tempted when I saw a tiara in a store earlier in the day...unfortunately it was in the Village, and hence it was $30, and so there was no tiara to be had really. So I went and it was just chill as shit. The walls were plastered with photographs of barpatrons of old and new, and the "Under Pressure" came on...and then some Rolling Stones, and then "Let's Stay Together"-- and it was like I was in NY, in my hometown bar, with some friends. It was really freaky. Then I went to see
Morvern Callar, which was amazing, and distilled some things for me about my mood the past couple of days...I won't get into it just now. And then I went back to the Villager. The evening had some hiccups...but all in all, it was great. When we were leaving to go to Bosco's the sky just opened up, and I was really happy to walk in the rain. The only problem with this is that by the time I tried to go home, the roads were quasi flooded, and I was nervous about hydroplaning car wreck whatnot, especially since my road always floods even with a little rain. But it was raining like a sonofabitch, so it was really scary actually. But I made it home, and parked right away, I couldn't really see all the lines and whatever. Then I ran in the rain to my apartment.
That was the perfect part of the day.
Then I dicovered that Navel's sleeping bag was on the floor in my living room. The inescapable boy trouble...and when he came in, he really wanted to talk to me and was being über friendly and all this. What a juxtaposition. He and I live on different planets.
Anyway. HOpe all is well out there. I gotta leave this comp lab and go to the library, because it is closing at 5pm. What bullshit!
Peace and chicken grease / have a great weekend ---------
bloggorific!
phrase of the day: "Is that a turd in your pocket?"
A couple of days after Mark's birthday...
I was sort of going to take a hiatus from blogging...something about not getting enough work done to satisfy myself or something like that anyway. But here I am again despite all that. Maybe it was Marty's post of the past when he was talking about IM time suckage that made me cut down on the blog. Maybe it's just because I am busy as shit. Tis the season.
Things in Nashvegas have been pretty okay as of late. I've been doing lots of writing, and have toe holds into two papers at the moment -- one for Race and American Democracy, one for French Feminism. In the former, I'm basically exploring Alexis de Tocqueville's responsibility as an author - both to his aristocratic hosts / his readers, as well as to the individuals and races he depicts in his account. It's getting interesting, I think - I start with a play into AT's ambivalence as an author / individual regarding race relations, and some of the possible causes for the almost contradictory standpoints he depicts. There's a foray into his views on Native American dialects (short footnote on how they might be similar to the Old English inflectional system) and then into his responsibility. Foucault stops by and talks about the importance of the intellectual / role of the intellectual, and Sartre caps off the evening with a song and dance SONG AND DANCE about radical responsibility. My favorite Dane was going to stop by for dinner, but he couldn't make it...there was something rotten in the state of Denmark, so his views on the individual didn't work into it. The French Fem paper is shaping up to be one about the nature of discourse and the possibility of the feminine voice from within it - seen through Freud, Irigaray, Le Doeuff, Anzaldua, and Kristeva. I basically go the Irigarayian (that is definitely not a word, but skip it) route into critiquing Freudian theory and then am going to try to discuss the implications that has for discourse amongst these different philosophers. Ultimately, for most of these individuals, it comes to the idea of the border -- and exploding the border, the limit, etc of discourse...straddling the border in a certain sense (at least for Irigaray) in order to attack both from within and outside of the system. But my finale is going to be about how that is all well, good, and important, but that positing a new system or doing more than just pointing to the problem and teasing out its implications is necessary to the development of a new form of discourse. I still haven't gotten the ending worked out in my mind, so I will let you know how all that will go... I think I basically have to posit my own solution - do some real philosophy to try to solve the problem. Good thing I am an 'apprentice philosopher' as Lucius Outlaw puts it.
Saw Robert Altman's MCCABE and MRS. MILLER the other night. Fucking amazing. Marty, I don't know if you have seen this one or not, but it rocks my ass off in so many ways. I'm also planning on going to see MORVERN CALLAR this weekend which looks like an awesome movie...I don't know if you've heard about it or what but it's playing at the indie movie house here.
What else? I've been diggin on nature a lot lately. I always dig nature, but when I'm outside at V-t I just look at the intersection of the trees and the sky - most of the time I'm cropping the shot of the film in my head to get the proper angle on the beauty. I started a poem on this, but it isn't ready yet. Vanderbilt is a national arboritum (sp?) which makes it extra nice...to be in a city, but yet go to school in a park.
big ups to Flynn, PhiLL, and Marty.
Hey Marty
Thanks for the call. I would have called ya back, but I didn't get the message until this morning. I was out trying to study last night with only mixed results. Cafe Coco - the 24 hr oasis it is had some people I knew there, and it was sort of a struggle to pay attention to Kierkegaard and most everything else. I just wasn't in the zone. I need to be back in the zone soon however. Work sucks...
On another note...
Sorry I haven't been posting. Not much is going on but work and studying. I saw part of the WRVU 50th Anniversary bash on Friday...I have been lack with the station because grad school is haaaad core and so only saw the Features play. Good shit. I wanted to see Spoon, but I didn't know when they would be on. Nice weather then...and minutes later lots of wind and a half hour later some rain. This weekend was a chill on, but today we're supposed to be up to about 60 or so. We'll see.
Nothing else to report as of now. I don't feel very creative at the moment. I'm playing classical music though - Evan's ballet he wrote for
Pinocchio, and Copland's Appalachian Spring...which is, as always AMAZING.
Hope all is well. A good day to all -
