Buy Nothing

One of my favorite holidays (Halloween) is recently past, and one of my other favorite holidays (Buy Nothing Day) is coming up.

Yet yours truly is in a bit of a quandary this Black Friday Buy Nothing Day. See, I work in a retail establishment -- an establishment which, normally, strives to be a place of community engagement, a place to welcome the otherwise unwelcomed; a place, in short, that I can feel proud to work.

But not on Buy Nothing Day -- no matter how educational the books being bought, no matter how exceptional the coffee, I do not want to engage in commerce on Black Friday. Last year I got the day off. This year doesn't look like I'm going to be so lucky.

So, I ask you, dear readers: how do I jointly honor my commitment to anti-capitalism (or at least anti-consumerism) while also doing my job to the best of my ability?

Occupy and Chefs (French and Swedish)

1) I spent some time at the Occupy Harrisburg protest last week. Here, Slate's legal writer steps outside of her area of expertise and gives a thought-provoking take on the Occupy movement. She parses it NOT in terms of the economy, but in terms of the media response to it, and Occupy's lack of re-response to that media attention: "Mark your calendars: The corporate media died when it announced it was too sophisticated to understand simple declarative sentences."

2) As Heather and I brainstormed for our Halloween costumes, we stumbled upon a shocking realization: the Muppets' Swedish Chef appears to be a parody of Julia Child's The French Chef. After doing my research, I realized that this is entirely possible, and that it is already written up on wikipedia. Nonetheless, I'll post two clips below. Note the similarities in theme music (in at :28 in the first video), kitchen decor, and mannerisms of the two chefs.

JULIA CHILD (this one is long -- just watch the first 45 seconds):


SWEDISH CHEF:


And finally, if you're still reading along, two of my favorite Swedish Chef videos here and here.

Update (30 days, surgery)

1) I am currently laid up in bed, under the influence of powerful painkillers, recovering from a minor hernia repair surgery. No big deal, just some mini-chicken-wire inside my abdomen and three incisions.

Painkillers do not mess around. I've been laying around the house, taking the occasional trip outside (around the block, to the back porch, to the market, etc.), and thought I was handling them well. No hallucinations, no fainting -- but today was my first big expedition: to work for a coffee cupping. Cupping, when it's not being used by industry types to ascertain coffee grades and salability, is like a wine tasting for coffee lovers. Ours is led by the informative and entertaining Phil Proteau of Counter Culture Coffee, and it's not a thing to be missed. Unfortunately, cupping also requires a high level of cognition and sensory recognition (does this coffee smell sweet? how sweet? sweet like a muffin or sweet like caramel?).  I was spaced out the whole time, able to focus mostly on staying on my feet and not choking on coffee (cupping involves a powerful inhaling SLURP to aerate the coffee). I hobbled home humbled by the power of Percocet.

Nonetheless, it was good to get out of the house.


2) I listened to a TED talk awhile ago about how doing something new for 30 days can positively impact one's life. So, as I lay here, I'm brainstorming for a good 30-day project for my post-recovery period. Possibilities include:

Create an alternate personality twitter account (inspired by Feminist Hulk)
Take a photo a day
Roast a batch of coffee a day (already pretty close on this one)
Cook something new every day


any suggestions?

Drive

A few thoughts on "Drive," mostly to clear it out of my head, where it's been for the past few days.

I) Sound. 
This movie will win some sort of award(s) for sound design or sound track. Both were phenomenal and unique, in my opinion the major element keeping this movie from feeling too "Hollywood." If you've seen it, imagine it with any other music, sound effects, dialogue mixing, etc., and realize how conventional it would feel.

II) Violence.
The violence in this movie was shocking, hard to do in this day and age. Some of it was necessary, some of it was gratuitous, but it reminded me of the power that violence really has (see my notes on "Reservoir Dogs"). In this movie, the violence is (or tries to be) redemptive. Unfortunate, as its virtuosic portrayal could have been a stinging commentary against violence.

III) Driver.
The lead character in this movie is unnamed (played by Ryan Gosling, listed in the credits as "Driver"), inviting us to read him as a cipher for all kinds of things, including: Video games (particularly Grand Theft Auto), Cars / the Auto Industry, White/Western Paternalism, The Dearth of Heroes, Blind Ambition. Pick your favorite Big Topic, and try to map it onto Driver as you watch this movie.

IV) Wrap-Up.
I can't in good faith recommend this movie. I didn't like watching it, though I recognize how well-done it is. The only exception to that statement is the long cold-open. That bit could play as a short film on its own, and be perfect.

Roasting

I'm not sure whether this means that my job has taken over my life, or that I'm in the job for the moment. Either way, it definitely means that, as I suspected during the earthquake, coffee has taken over my life.

I have begun home roasting in earnest.

It turns out that popcorn technology and coffee-roasting technology are very similar, so, after blowing out the heating element on an air popper, I ordered a Whirley Pop.

There are plenty of places out there on the internet where the process is described, but basically, the stove (or in my case, the working electric hot plate I found on my neighbor's trash pile) heats the pot up to approximately 400 degrees F, while the crank handle agitates the coffee beans to ensure that no one bean is heated for longer than the others.

I had my first cup of properly aired and roasted coffee from the whirley pop this morning. While it was not a revelation in the sense that some coffees from professional roaster Counter Culture (served at work) have been, it was an incredibly complex cup, full of nutty flavors and subtle undertones that Counter Culture's  coffee, roasted in North Carolina 3-4 days before we get it here in Harrisburg, never have.

A little practice, some good note taking, and (hopefully!) visiting with Aaron down at local roaster Little Amps, and I'll be cranking up some exciting coffees.

Fall Foods

All present in the house at this time:

Apples
Apple Butter
Apple Cider
Bourbon
Butternut Squash
Gouda 
Onion
Potatoes
Pumpkin Bread
Sage Sausage
Yams

Most of these ingredients (excepting the apple butter, apple cider, bouron, and pumpkin bread) are in a casserole (modified from this recipe) that is currently in the oven, making the house smell very warm and homey. Don't think I wasn't tempted to add the apple cider and the bourbon to the casserole too.

Overheard

I) A logging song, read (not actually overheard) in Ted Gioia's "Work Songs" (p. 142, in the chapter on lumberjack songs):

I am jolly shanty boy

Who loves to sing and dance.

I wonder what the girls would say

If they could see my pants!

With fourteen patches on the knee

and six upon the stern,

I'll wear them when I'm in the woods

And home when I return.

For I am on my jolly way,

I spend my money free,

I have plenty -- come and drink

Lager beer with me.

II) At the coffee bar, while working:

"Well, caramel's just peanut butter and jelly mixed, isn't it? Oh. No, it's not?"

III) At another neighborhood coffee house; a father and daughter (around age 4):

"That's quite a cough. Are you sick?"

"Yeah."

"Why? What are you sick from?"

"The moon."

(holding back laughter) "The moon? The moon is making you sick?"

(deadly serious) "Yeah."

Coffee Continued

I was planning on writing this bit as the final paragraph of my previous post, but it got a little long. Rather than consign it to the trash, I'll put it here.


Complications

The proliferation of cafes in recent decades is, of course, the product of coffee's Third Wave, begun in 1990s Seattle and spread across the country. Starbucks had a big role to play in this movement, and I'll spare the usual coffee-snob-hating-on-Starbucks routine to share two stories that happened during my coffee tour.

1) As I walked through the swanky Rittenhouse Square district, I passed three or four Starbucks. Inside, at the bar along the window, sat a man who I assumed was homeless: scraggly beard, dirty clothes, two bulging plastic bags tightly at his side. He swirled his paper Starbucks cup, smelled it, and sipped. His face lit up. I realize that's a cliche, but it's the only way to describe it.

2) The back alleys of the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood have their fair share of loading docks, dumpsters, and shadowy corners, and in one of them sits an old facade. Tiled and bricked in an art-deco style, faded yellows and greens barely overcoming the dust, it bore the sign "Rittenhouse Coffee."

These complicate my understanding of coffee. Apparently, crappy corporate coffee can transform someone's day . I doubt that the homeless guy would have smiled any bigger had he sipped on my pourover of Maragojipe microlot or my Sidama Macchiato. And apparently the past had its own coffee waves, come and gone, leaving behind artifacts like Rittenhouse Coffee, which has not (surprisingly enough) been revived by the current interest in 1) all things coffee and 2) all things vintage. Which leaves us with: When will our current coffee phase end, and what difference will it have made? Will Starbucks remain, making people smile, even when skilled baristas and single-origin coffees have fallen by the wayside?

Philadelphia Coffee Pilgrimage/Evacuation

Four blocks over, two blocks down from my apartment;
the whole reason I'm even here in Philly.

I don't know if it's bad form to write about coffeeshops while using their free internet, but I'm doing it. I'm in Philly for the day, my neighborhood evacuated due to widespread central PA flooding from Tropical Storm Lee. Heather is attending a conference at one of the sports arenas, so I've ridden the Broad Street Subway two stops north to the first stop on my self-guided Philadelphia coffee tour:


I) Ultimo Coffee

The first thing I realize, approaching from the Snyder stop on the BSS is that I planned my tour backwards; Ultimo is paired with a local brewpub, but it's nine in the morning, so they're closed.  Had I arrived here later, I could've expanded this to a coffee and beer review.

Nonetheless, the coffee is wonderful. I'm starting off with a regular cup of brewed coffee, and they've got one of my favorite coffees of all time: Counter Culture's Finca El Puente, brewed with the Chemex. I've never had Chemex coffee before (it works a lot like a pourover brewer on a large scale), and this does not disappoint. Bright, with a clean finish, but not thin or watery. The experience was improved by the nearly-identifiable music over the speaker -- mellow, trippy guitar work and a familiar vocalist. It took me until halfway through my cup of coffee to identify early M. Ward.

The shop is small, but not cramped -- large corner windows let the sun shine on the battered wooden tables and the bar-style window seating. I didn't try their espresso, but the cappuccinos have well-executed latte art on the top, and they're using Apollo, so I have faith in their quality. I won't be acting on that faith -- I have a lot more caffeine to consume today, and I don't want to overload early on. I just overheard the baristas chatting about Orlando Arita, Counter Culture's latest espresso project, and one that I'll be experimenting with once I get back to Harrisburg.

A Chemex brewer.

II) Elixir Coffee

I wasn't planning on visiting Elixir, but as I searched for transit times to reach West Philly to meet up with Nathan and get to my next stop (Lovers and Madmen), Google presented me with this option, only a few blocks from my station. If Ultimo had the laid back charm of a South Philly brewery/coffeeshop, this place is all swank; located just off the Avenue of the Arts in the Walnut Street upscale shopping district, it has clean lines, wood and tile, and the smell of a spa (from the carafe of cucumber water, I think). I am seated at some of the only non-communal seating. Most of the chair space is along wooden benches at family-style tables. A nice touch, but most of the strangers sitting at them are (like me) tapping away on their screens.

Though tempted by their streetside sign ("Pour Over: Finca los Planes, Sumatra, Elida"), I decided to switch to espresso for stop number two. The Espresso Macchiato is my drink of choice, and, upon asking the barista, I learned that it would be made with a single-origin Sidama espresso. For those not familiar, single-origin espressos are a sort of coup-de-grace: most espressos are blended from coffees from a variety of sources to achieve a particular flavor. A single-origin can only be produced from an exceptional source coffee, by a roaster skilled at bringing out the minute particularities that reveal themselves in espresso.

The macchiato was (is; I'm sipping it as I write this) delicious -- the brightness of the Ethiopian coffee is evident, even as the chocolaty body is enhanced by the little bit of steamed milk in the cup. It has a complex, nutty flavor that is interesting at every sip. It makes me want another one, but I can feel my fingers starting to shake as I type. It's time to meet Nathan at the Clark Park Farmer's Market in West Philly for a break before heading to Lovers and Madmen.

III) Lovers and Madmen

Skipped the farmers market and met Abigail and Nathan here at Lovers and Madmen, just off of Market Street, near the Market-Frankford Line station at 40th Street.

Inside, the ambiance is different from the two shops before: more open space, more seating, more conversations than the two small shops before it. It might just be the time of day, but this place seems less hip and more welcoming.

I ordered a pourover coffee of Counter Culture's Maragojipe microlot. A microlot is a small portion of a coffee farm's seasonal take, usually selected by variety of coffee plant or from location within the farm (Maragojipe is the former). It is redolent of pistachio and plums, as described, so it was brewed well. The staff seemed less professional here; disconcerting in terms of expectations about coffee quality, but part of what made the place so welcoming when we walked in. The coffee is reassuring me, even as the baristas quibble about what kind of music to play.

Nathan and Abigail are sitting beside me discussing contemporary theater and literature, the kind of thing that the Scholar breeds, and the kind of thing that I haven't found at any of the coffeeshops I've visited today. Again, it might just be the company of the time of day, but this place feels like it engenders that kind of conversation. The aftertaste on that microlot doesn't quit. Even as we leave, the rum-like flavor remains on my tongue.

The counter at La Colombe.

IV) La Colombe

This place has always been my go-to spot for top-quality coffee in Center City, and yesterday's trip (yup, I'm writing from the next day now) only served to confirm this. If you can get a seat at La Colombe, it's a nice place to sit, but more often than not, the line stretches from the counter to the door, and all the seating is filled.

They focus on the espresso at La Colombe, and it shows. No menu posted, no flavored syrups, one variety of drip coffee on tap at a time; this is a place for coffee snobs. Their cappuccino is so creamy that one of my friends, upon tasting it, asked "What did you get? Hot chocolate?"

If it's variety that you seek, go elsewhere, but if you want to taste some of the best espresso beverages in the city (on the East Coast, even) go to La Colombe.


V) Conclusion

I have shied away from declaring any of these four cafes the "Best of Philly." I only visited four cafes, and my selection criteria were not at all scientific. And while La Colombe is the cafe I'll still visit the most (in part because of its central location) each of these cafes has its own charm, and should, if you get the chance, be visited. If you're heading to Ultimo anytime soon, pick me up some beer.

Characters from New Orleans

Heather and I took our honeymoon in New Orleans. We met some people.

Keel: Named for the central beam of a ship's construction, Keel was as centered as his name suggests. He was our tattoo artist, and demonstrated extraordinary levels of calm as we texted back and forth over a few days of our trip, sending artwork and suggestions back and forth, and as I fainted (keeled over, even) in the midst of the process. "He's cool," is what he said to Heather, "He'll be back in a minute or two." Then, when his co-worker turned Keel's music back on (doom/sludge/stoner rock, as he described it) he said, "Yo, this man passed out because there was no music. Thankfully, I was sticking him with a needle, so he came around."

The drag queen at The Country Club in Bywater: This story makes more sense if you realize that The Country Club is not a country club set on acres of green golf course, but an old New Orleans mansion in the Bywater neighborhood with a restaurant/bar inside and a pool out back, free to club members, available to others for a small fee. Heather and I swam there, had lunch there, and, ultimately, were accosted by this flamboyant woman, who said "Are you Amish?" This allowed me to discuss Anabaptist history, a discourse with which I am very comfortable. "You're so exotic," she said, "Can I see your chest?" "I'll have to ask my wife," I said.

The bartender at The Country Club in Bywater: He looked on with bemused exasperation during this whole episode, and I realized that the drag queen must be a regular there, like many of my regulars at the bookstore. I wanted to talk to the bartender, but was too busy asking Heather if I could show my chest to a drag queen. "I'm from another world," she said as Heather and I headed back to the pool, "really. I am."

The mystery couple: We actually learned their names at breakfast on day one, but quickly forgot. They had the vibe of those wanting to be forgotten; not the reserved, painfully shy kind of forgotten; they made conversation, and seemed interesting, but seemed to be hiding something behind their small talk. "They're having an affair, " said Heather. "Maybe they're here hunting for treasure in the B&B and they don't want anyone to know," I suggested.

The mystery couple's strange acquaintance: A young guy, younger than Heather and myself, joined the late-middle-aged mystery couple one night at Maison. We were further back in the shadows, eating po'boys and watching a young funk band when we saw them enter. We didn't want to see them, and they didn't want to see us, and before the show was over, the strange acquaintance had left them to their own devices.

P.S. See a selection of photos from our trip here. None of the folks above are pictured.

Earthquake

I roasted my first batch of coffee today. I used a popcorn popper and some green coffee beans given to me for my recent wedding. Pleased with the practice and with the smell, though concerned that coffee may be taking over my life, I brewed a cup at work. Too tangy, not enough body, I thought, so I tried it iced. Delicious. Then we had an earthquake.

It had a disappointingly small impact on my life. I do not wish for collapsing buildings and widespread disaster, but I was at least hoping to be enlightened about the transitory nature of the earth we live on; the instability of all that we find most firm; etc. All of those things that the California folks (Ben Seretan, I'm thinking of conversations with you) tell me happen to their awareness of the world, living in a place where it so often shifts itself.

Instead, some tourists visiting the bookstore hollered down from the second floor "Hey, does the floor usually move up here?" Dumbfounded at the idiocy of this question, I could not respond. The news, trickling in via customers' smartphones and friends' arrivals, changed my assessment of the tourists' intelligence.

The espresso machine pulled a few shots too short, then. The liquid dripping from the machine shifted from a dark orange brown to a blond stream within 20 seconds, and the espresso tasted sour. Having just set the grinder to pull good shots at the beginning of my shift, I was perplexed. Then I realized that there had just been an earthquake. Thus, the only effect that the earthquake had on me only reconfirmed my fears that coffee is taking over my life: Because of the East Coast earthquake of 2011, I had to recalibrate the espresso machine.

Brief Updates

I) I'm married. Hopefully this is not news to most of you.

II) On our honeymoon, Heather and I both got tattoos. Hopefully this is news to most of you.  Mine: A Kestrel on my arm. Heather's: An Acacia tree on her back.

III) Harrisburg got a mention in the Huffington Post. The market profiled is directly across the street from the bookstore where I work, and is a favorite lunch stop.

IV) Lastly, a brief meditation on notes.
          We use a lot of post-it notes at the bookstore, communicating things like "Out of Izze sodas. Add to shopping list." or "These books are for a customer who is still browsing." Sometimes, though, the notes themselves are meaningless when removed from their context. This has lead my co-workers and I to create a category of "notes that are funny when stuck on ANYTHING." Perhaps this is only funny in context, or when needing to relieve a bit of tedium behind the counter, but imagine any of the following, on a post-it note, stuck on, well, anything:

           Science
           What is this?
           Please do not touch the artwork

Tree of Life

A harder movie to make a statement about, there hasn't been in a long time.

There are many ways to view "Tree of Life" (Malick, 2011): via trauma theory, via feminist theory, or, as I would like to view it here, as an entry in the current cultural dialogue of (post) postmodernity.

Though it has many hallmarks of postmodernity, including but not limited to, temporal disjunction, referentiality (the father displaying  a Brahms LP), and a narrator of questionable reliability, I posit this movie as a statement not of the irony so integral to postmodernity, but as a statement of sincerity; to use a stronger word: a statement of purity.

I have made a similar argument about another, very different movie: "Scott Pilgrim Versus The World." The sincerity of "Scott Pilgrim" is very different from the sincerity of this movie, but I wanted to acknowledge that the above statement about "Tree of Life" follows roughly the same lines as my argument about "Scott Pilgrim."

The sincerity of "Tree of Life" is so overwhelming as to be almost off-putting. For example: at times, the narrator says explicitly what the movie is about. In just about any other movie (Gran Torino, for instance) I find this to be an abuse of film dialogue; film is about showing not telling, and it is the showing that gets Malick off the hook. As the narrator says things like "there is a way of grace and a way of nature," the images are of things that could be both or either: the mother twirling underneath a tree, holding a child. The cryptic sequences of cosmological imagery, of fish, of dinosaurs (no kidding!) all serve a function with regard to the words of the narrator that is (ironically) ironic.

Not ironic in the sense in which I have been using it up to this point; ironic in the formal sense of contrast between image and word; this kind of irony is the kind you learn about in ninth grade English; the formal device that makes sitcoms funny; etc. It is only appropriate that Malick deploys this visual/aural irony in service of what, from my seat, looks to be a very sincere statement about some of my favorite things: the wonder of the world (the "glory," as his characters call it), the meaningfulness of small things and small lives, the power of love between people.

Unless I am grossly misreading this film, Malick seems to be sincerely endorsing these things as (borderline spiritual) values, and his film does a great job of carrying this message across. As I walked out of the theater, the sky over the semi-industrialized lot near the Midtown Cinema had never seemed more meaningful, more beautiful, more indicative of the imperfect miracle of humanity.

It is encouraging to feel these things upon leaving a movie, and it is encouraging to see someone so well-situated in culture (popular, artistically accomplished, critically acclaimed) endorsing something -- anything -- with such bald-faced sincerity. Props, Malick.

---

I realize, reading over the above, that it gives you a lot to think about if you've seen the movie, but doesn't really assess whether you should or should not see it (though I'm sure you know which one I would tell you to do). Nonetheless, if you're still not sure about laying out $11 or whatever a movie ticket costs these days (mine was $6, a perk of having a local art house with matinee screenings), let me point you to a review by a film critic whose opinions I usually agree with (and in this case, do, almost point for point).

Broad Street

"Yessir, Broad Street used to jump. Between here and, uh, up, uh, yessir, was about seven bars up and down here, people all out at this time a night."

The speaker was an old man, or maybe older-looking than he really was. He had one eye cloudy and one leg incapacitated, aided by a cane.

"You must be new here," he'd said, when I seemed uncertain whether to fill his 72 oz. thermos with coffee or soda. "Usually it's the tall guy with the hat who's here when I come in. They know me, he knows me."

He muttered as he spoke, often repeating himself, either within a phrase, or repeating phrases and stories.

"I used to be a shoeshine boy here, right out under here, when this was the Boston Store."

The Boston Store logo is still tiled in front of the bookstore.

"So here's my question," I said, interrupting the third iteration of that story, "Where was Broad Street? This is Third," I gestured out the picture windows, where the christmas lights strung along the top of the Broad Street Market shone, "And the cross street is Verbeke."

"Yessir, that side a'the market was Broad, and t'other was Verbeke, until, well, until, well this used to be a thee-Ater. The Broad Street The-Ater. And they was twelve of 'em, the-Aters, up and down this street, between the Capital and um, the, well, yessir, it used to hop, this street, fifty years ago."

The XM Satellite Radio was, it should be noted, set to "40s on 4: All Forties All The Time."

"Yessir, there was seven or maybe eight bars up and down this street, and the uh, the railroad men -- the piggyback cars, y'see, up at Seventh and Reily, and the railroad men'd come down here, and the market stay open till three in the mornin'. Three in the mornin', yessir, not like now."

I kept nodding, kept washing out milk steaming pitchers till they shone like mirrors. He was describing the 1960s, if his estimate of "fifty years ago" was correct.

"There were those bars, and the restaruant -- Arnick's. The Arnick family closed it down, but it ran right next to the market, and that and this here the-Ater, well you could barely walk on this street on a weekend night." He glanced into the empty bookstore. My co-barista walked the floor with a white towel, wiping down the tables, gathering the books. He looked back into the street. "Not like now."

I nodded, perplexed. The bookstore became the Boston Store in the 1950s, so this place could not have been a theater during the time that this man was describing, but nonetheless I could see it: The same Christmas lights bedecking the market, the railroad men like inland sailors, swinging into town with the same manic destructive energy of a shore leave.

"Yessir, it was quite the times then. I ran a shoeshine stand right here, and let me tell you, the folks all out, all done up, and yessir, Broad Street did jump. I live upstairs y'see. That's my truck. I been on this square block for forty years now."

He said forty, but by that time, I would've believed him if he had said ninety.

"Maybe it'll all come back, now that he's brought this place in. Y'all are open late, y'see, maybe the market'll open up into..."

And he walked out into the night, still muttering to himself.

(Arts and) Crafts

I) Intro

The distinction between arts and crafts (or "art" and "craft") is I'm sure, though I have never formally studied art, a topic of interesting discussion, with numerous scholarly articles weighing in on either side, and many, in this world of "post-," denying or reframing the binary. Though I little to no background in this, I will share my thoughts. If any of you more-educated folks care to share some articles whose points I am rehashing or would find salient, please let me know. I recognize also that there is a particular movement in art known as the "arts and crafts movement." I know very little about this, and it is not what I am writing about.

In a nutshell, I would like to define craft as a matter of control, and art as a matter of... something else. Perhaps "expression" is an appropriate term to use, but I am not set on that. I'm more interested in craft anyway.

II) Craft as Control

It was my practice as a musician that led me to this definition of art v. craft. I was a mediocre percussion student under Chick Sperell for a few semesters at Swarthmore, and he, as he assessed my progress and dealt with my frustration at the seemingly endless rhythm, polyrhythm, tempo, rudiment, etc. exercises, gave me this framework. "These are your tools," he said, "and you need to be skilled enough with your tools to pull out any one at any time you need it. You need choices, and if you're not skilled, you limit your choices musically." This part that he used the word "musically" to indicate is what I will refer to as "art." But first, craft: what Chick was saying about craft is that craft is control. A good musical craftsperson can control exactly what s/he is doing musically. As a drummer, playing alone in a silent room, I can vary tempo, rhythm, playing surface (head, rim, sides), etc. at my will. The more able I am to switch from one basic unit (ie, playing in duple time; 1/8ths, 1/16ths, etc. to playing in triple time; triplets) the more control I have. Thus, pure craft would be an ability to, at any time, make any sound possible from the drums I have.

This is not really a realistic goal. I doubt that even Buddy Rich could always, every time, make some brand new shift while playing, but it is the extreme. To use another example from my own musical experience, the banjo. Bela Fleck, I have no doubt, can, at any moment, make any note that is possible given the physical restrictions of the banjo (ie, absolute low and absolute high notes, as constrained by string lengths and tensions). I, however, cannot. He is therefore a better craftsman than I am.

III) Art and Craft

The art in this example would come out in what music critics refer to as "musicality." Fleck, for instance, sometimes gets accused of making albums that, while technically accomplished (full of craft, for our purposes), are musically repetitive, empty, trippy, etc. This is a misapplication of artistry.

Art, then, is separate from craft. Even the perfect drummer, who can, at any moment, make any sound she chooses (as constrained by the physical realities of drums), must, in a group setting, make choices that are musical. The range of choices she can make are expanded every time she expands her repertoire of rhythms -- every time she broadens her craft -- but if she applies those rhythms wrongly (playing a samba beat during a jazz waltz) she has made bad art.

Art, then, is in/formed by craft. Good art, however, can come from a bad craftsman. Think of the Delta Bluesmen, formally unskilled, only able to play a few chord progressions, yet makers of powerful, powerful music; or of the early Punk rockers, unable to "play" their instruments, yet also responsible for artistically viable creation. They had some level of craft (otherwise they would have been unable to make music, by my definitions of craft and art (by extension, music)), but their shortcomings as craftsmen did not hinder their art. These examples encourage me.

IV) Crafts?

I am still figuring out what to say to those who "make crafts." The traditional distinction between art and craft (as I understand it) is that art is decorative/expressive and craft is functional. The shortcomings of this distinction hit home for me as one who appreciates/makes folk music. Is a sea chanty, a work song, a craft (useful because its rhythm keeps the sailors hauling together) or an art (expressive of the realities of a particular chanteyman or a particular cultural moment)?

What are "crafts," if "craft" is the rudimentary skills that enable artists to create art. Are well-designed and well-made coasters art? Are functional objects merely exercises, a drummer sitting alone in room tapping out paradiddles, or is there some aspect of "craft" that I have overlooked?

To be continued?  
As I demonstrate my lack of blogging craftsmanship, showing neither brevity nor a particular coherence in this post...

Fi'ty

Remember my story about the guy who sang the catchy little ditty about a book for his girlfriend?

Well the saga of Fi'ty has come to a sad end.

After the day I refused him fifty cents, Fi'ty became one of our better regulars at the store, asking for free water and napping quietly and unobtrusively upstairs in the lounge. If there's one thing I've learned at this job, there are plenty of loud and obtrusive ways to nap, and this guy was a nap pro. No snoring, no stinky feet, no disruptive sounds, no accosting other customers who took his couch; in short, just the kind of regular we want to have around.


So it was with great surprise that, one Tuesday, driving downtown, I saw Fi'ty getting hauled into the back of a police cruiser. Surprise, but not shock or horror; plenty of folks in Harrisburg have the cops after them. As "Isaac Newton" told me once "Sometimes the cops got it out for ya, but they can't be out following every warrant every night, and it's best to get to know the ones you can." I figured Fi'ty had stumbled into some minor trouble. My upstairs neighbor at my new place had received a notice bearing the words "I am authorized to arrest you on sight" because of a surfeit of unpaid parking tickets, so Fi'ty's arrest was something passed right through my mind that night.

Of course, it shouldn't have. Earlier that week, an acquaintance was filling me in on an armed robbery at a local handicraft shop. "Robbing that place was his first mistake," he said, "A craft store? What was he after? Screen printed T-shirts?"

You have by now realized that the robber was none other than Fi'ty, and no, he was not after screen printed t-shirts. Yes, he went about his robbery in an unfortunately ill-prepared manner. According to the Patriot News' reportage, he entered the store, browsed awhile, then pulled on a ski mask and, threatening the clerk with a knife, took all the money from the cash drawer. He was arrested a few hours later with all the money still on him. He was sitting on a stoop a few blocks away on the same street. Re-read those last sentences and realize how little premeditation went into this crime. He had the money on him. He put on the ski mask after entering the store. He was sitting on a stoop on the same street. It was on the stoop that I saw Fi'ty getting taken away.

This story raises an important postscript: What does one say to an acquaintance after he is released from jail? Should he be allowed back into the store? After all, as Beth (one of my managers) pointed out, "He wouldn't rob us. He sleeps here," demonstrating a clear understanding of the principle of "you don't shit where you eat." Still, should re-entry be denied as a consequence, a loss of the (business) community's trust in Fi'ty? And why are these decisions left to the business community? Is the regular community in a place to welcome Fi'ty back from jail and take steps to ensure that he doesn't do things that lead back there?

And of course, the P.P.S. that, comically and tragically, ran through my head anytime news about this whole story was broken to me: "Fi'ty cent / Fi'ty cent / book for my girlfrien' / fi'ty cent."

Fulfillment

Fulfillment -- heralded by religions and self-help books, achieved, today, by yours truly.

It was minor fulfillment, more in the sense of fulfillment of a mission than the sort of deep fulfillment promised by the above. But there is a consonance, and one that should be neither overlooked nor over-exaggerated.

It is important, for this story, to know that pour-over coffee is a brewing style currently all the rage in the coffeehouse scene. It allows the barista to control, via speed and timing of pouring, the flavor of the cup of coffee, in addition to the usual parameters of temperature of water, and the relative and actual amounts of water and coffee grounds.

All that to say, it's a way to make really good coffee or really bad coffee, and the finished product can be mostly credited to (or blamed on) the skill of the barista.

It was with a pour-over that I found fulfillment.

I poured the last bit of water through coffee grounds, let it drip into his cup, and handed it off to him. He sipped it, paused, and sipped it again.

"Ehh?" I said, asking for confirmation of what I had told him before he ordered: this was going to be good coffee.
"That is good," he said. "In fact," he paused again -- he is a very precise type of person, not one to say something unconsidered, "This is the best cup of coffee I have ever had. This--" by this point I was beaming "--is coffee non plus ultra."

Thus, I fulfilled my barista role, by making the best cup of coffee ever.

I was, it should be noted, working with great coffee to begin with: Counter Culture's Kilenso Mokonisa. Most of CC's coffees are great, but this one is the kind of coffee that makes even the untutored sit up and take notice. It is a "natural sundried coffee," which means that the fruity part of the coffee (the cherry) is left intact (surrounding the bean) while the coffee is dried in the sun for a period of a few weeks to a few months. This process allows the natural fruit flavors of the coffee cherry to leach into the coffee bean, producing a flavor like the artificially-flavored coffees (blueberry, raspberry, etc.) found in so many coffeeshops, yet far more complex and subtle.

All that to say that he was more likely to notice this coffee than any other coffee, that the pump had been primed by his awareness of pour-over as a method endorsed by the coffee-geek subculture; all that to say that he's a regular, and could have been flattering me.

But I saw his face when he first sipped that cup, and I knew then that I had done exactly what this job is all about. The idea that life can be surprising; that another world is possible; that a cup of coffee can be so much more than a cup of coffee; these are tenets of my faith, and central to my vocation, and to find them expressed so clearly in so mundane a moment at work was inspiring.

Life will go on; the struggles at the bookstore/coffeeshop are not resolved, nor is anything outside of work, but I have done it. I have made the perfect cup of coffee.

Fun Thing

As my comment on the previous post indicates, I have just read David Foster Wallace's well-known essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."

m.v. Zenith

The essay details1 DFW's experience aboard a Caribbean Cruise ship, and what is most interesting is that I, perhaps a few years after DFW made his voyage, made my own voyage aboard the very same vessel: the Celebrity Cruises' m.v. Zenith2.

I was around 12 at the time, and so did not have the same perceptual abilities of DFW vis-a-vis irony, issues of privilege, and the literary resonances of the Celebrity Cruises brochure. I definitely did not have his wit. I probably had a similar amount of arrogance.

Anyway, my memories of the trip are much spottier. I remember being disappointed in the ship's library (probably because it didn't have any books about Star Wars 3). I remember being prepared, with my sister, to clean up in the kids' mixed doubles ping-pong tournament before our aggressive style of play sent five ping pong balls out to sea 4. I remember wearing a black suit with a mustard-colored clip on tie that I thought was the height of practicality because if I were to drip any mustard onto it, it would disappear. Mustard was and is my favorite condiment.

Most of those memories are neutral (except for the ping-pong story, which I treasure). I don't feel the same level of snide hostility that DFW feels towards cruising in general, though I recognize, as he does, the myriad injustices that pervade and sustain the luxury cruise industry.

But my best memory of a cruise ship comes not from being on board one, but of seeing one from afar. It echoes the end of the essay, where Wallace writes: "...seeing, from the perspective of this nighttime sea, the good old Nadir complexly aglow, angelically white, lit up from within, festive, imperial, palatial . . . yes, this: like a palace."

SSV Corwith Cramer

I had that point of view once. During my offshore seminar at the Williams-Mystic program, our brigatine, the SSV Corwith Cramer encountered two luxury cruise ships in the Bay of Maine. Probably not the megaships that cruise the Caribbean, but nonetheless answering to DFW's description.

My watch was on deck duty that night, and I forget who was at the helm, but I was standing bow watch. Bow watch was my favorite duty on the Cramer, especially at night. The work entailed tethering one's safety harness to one of the forward stays and peering forward into the darkness, untethering and walking aft every hour, or to report navigational lights or other oddities. So it was that, on the lookout for a small green light, flashing every 3 seconds, I spotted, far out on the horizon, one, quickly resolving into two, yellow lights. I untethered and walked aft, reporting to the helm and to our watch officer, both of whom seemed very unconcerned. I returned forward, and over the course of the next three hours, saw the lights become clusters of lights, then lighted ships, then, just as we were about to be relieved of the deck, two cruise ships docked side by side. Cabin lights, lights atop their false stacks, a glow that, from a few nautical miles out, appeared to be strings of Christmas lights strung up on their decks, all glowing into the darkness, all of this doubled, as the ships seemed close enough to be passing drinks back and forth. See DFW's description, excerpted above, and the full text, at the end of "A Supposedly Fun... etc." for a poetic description.

I remember that clearly, leaning with my leg on the boom, tethered to the forward stay, glancing back over the Cramer, dark, except for her port and starboard, green and red lights, and shivering, thinking of all those people, ostensibly aboard a ship. It is only in regard to this that I join DFW in his snide hostility towards luxury cruises, and wish to say this to cruisers, and even to DFW's ghost himself: disabuse yourself of the notion that you are on a ship. Find a real ship, one that does not seek, via stabilizers and thrusters, to divorce herself from the motion of the sea. Get out of sight of land, out of sight of floating protuberances big enough to be land, then say that you have been on a ship.


- - -

1 And I mean details; in my paperback edition, it runs just under 100 pages and divided into 13 chapters 13-14 chapters, the discrepancy deriving from a 30-page, hour-by-hour catalog of one day's events, which could comprise a significant part of chapter 13, or be considered its own chapter.

2 DFW consistently refers to the ship as the Nadir, which, until I just now looked up the more technical, astronomical definition of Nadir, I did not find particularly funny.


3 The film franchise, not the missile defense program.


4 We made it to the semifinals, and had a decent chance at glory before the kids' program staff decided to cut their losses and not give out any more balls.

Things That Happened Today

I have (yet again) decided that it is perhaps my path in life to be A Writer. Of course, the first problem is that I also want to be other things  (a barista; a musician; a traveler) and the second is that writing (along with all these other pursuits) often involves more doing than being. And doing takes time.

Today, for instance, I spent a good hour playing my banjo, because I have an upcoming gig, and I want to be A Musician, and to be A Musician one needs gigs. But I outpace myself; before writing about my experiences today (an important writerly discipline) I must explain myself 1. I am returning to a discipline of writing 500 words every day. I practiced this discipline once for a sustained period during college. I believe it was six months. I believe that during these six months I was a better writer, though I cannot recall if it ever got me any writing gigs, and it certainly did not advance my writerly career to the point where I am writing anything at all these days really.

So I return to the exercise, first begun because 1) E.B. White was a great essayist and I wanted to write like him, and 2) Ray Bradbury said that he wrote 1,000 words every day of his life, and while I didn't (and don't) want to write like him, I admired (and admire) his resolve and his output 2.

But why do exercises at all? After all, if we extend the word "exercise" to another context, most people successfully walk from place to place without ever engaging in anything that they might call exercise 3. Baby Havah, for instance, can practically walk, yet she cannot conceive of a semantic difference between exercise activity and transportational activity. She has never exercised, yet she has (almost) achieved the practical end towards which the exercise is directed. This sort of extension is, of course, linguistically and metaphorically ungrounded, so I will move on to the original point of the exercise: Writing About my Experiences Today.  Baby Havah was part of my experience a few days ago, so do not expect to see her as the page rolls on. Now, the ostensible focus of this piece:

THINGS THAT HAPPENED TODAY:

• My doorknob fell off, stranding me outside during my dinner break, forcing me to, using my pocketknife, unscrew my front window and break into my own apartment. I was then unable to properly reattach the front window, so my apartment is currently very vulnerable to intruders.
• I discussed the paradox of choice with a man with an English accent who was delighted to be discussing the paradox of choice as he was being overwhelmed by the paralyzing selection of teas.
• I cooked my friend a vegetarian lunch.
• I tasted homemade Amish rootbeer.
• I decided, while sitting on the toilet, to starting writing 500 words a day. I made this resolution twice, both times while on the toilet.
• I played the banjo.

These are the things, among others, that I did today.

The exercise is grounded in that important writerly assumption that writing is borne out of experience. This may or may not be true; I was recently reading a book by Northrop Frye, which suggested that writing is borne out of societal convention, not experience. My reading of that was, of course, something I experienced 4; I finished that book days ago, which is why its reading is not included on the list above.

The exercise is also grounded in the idea that an essay has a reason to be; that is, that it is not merely an unconnected string of 500 words (probably more, at this point), but that is has some sort of Central Idea; that it has, in the words of the high school English class, A Thesis (Statement) 5. Not that every day's 500 words have some sort of Deep Meaning (and not that every day's will be posted here), but that perhaps, maybe once a week, maybe once a month, the aspiring Writer can turn his daily experiences into something that somebody might, for some reason, be willing to read.

The real reason that I hope to continue in this exercise is not technical. It is not about developing my Voice As A Writer or because I hope to publish one whole year's worth of recollections these in a little book (182,500 Words, I call it in my imagination) 6. I re-begin this discipline because it entails a valorization of the mundane things of daily life. It says to the fallen doorknob, to the homemade root beer and the vegetarian soup, "I care about you, enough to write about you." 7

- - -

1 Sorry for all the run-ons and my skeptically disengaged tone. I've been reading a particular, well-known author and essayist recently a, and undertaken this exercise as a sort of stylistic pastiche.
    a Guess which one

2 Part of why I stopped trying to write was that I felt that I could not write without worrying what people would think of my writing once I was a Great Writer, and while I have since concluded that such thinking is unhelpful and vain, if anyone in any bio ever written of me lists my influences as E.B. White and Ray Bradbury, I will personally club her or him to death with hardcover printings of those authors' works, purchased online, from a bargain bookseller, for that express purpose.

3 Except for that very place-to-place walking, which, especially if they are hip, fitness conscious people too lazy to get to the gym or to walk for purposes other than transportation are very willing to point out as exercise.

4 Though Frye would perhaps argue that regardless of the individual reader's experience of reading the text, the text acts, as evidenced by the fact that it can act on multiple readers who may be having multifarious experiences while reading it.

5 That same thesis statement to be accompanied by, according to Mrs. Zehner, my 10th grade English teacher, five and only five paragraphs of supporting and concluding material. This arbitrariness always bothered me, yet here I am engaging in a exercise with a similarly arbitrary (and numerically consonant) constraint.

6 "Greg Albright's work was influenced by popular writers such as Ray Bradbury and E.B. --- AAAGGGH!!!" the author bio will read.

7 Of course, tonight's writing was not really about those things at all. It was about style, about reassuring myself that this return to the writing game is possible, that I've still got it, a fact of which I cannot assure myself. It's a pastiche of David Foster Wallace, by the way.

Harrisburg

I recently moved into the apartment that Heather and I will be sharing after the wedding. It is a two bedroom, a few blocks from where I used to live, and even closer to my favorite parts of midtown.

A few discussion questions follow:

1) Internet. 
Should we (Heather and I) get it in our apartment? At my last place, there was a strong, unprotected connection nearby. At the new place, no such luck. So should we spring for the web? Would this increase or decrease general togetherness? Is it worth the dough? Thoughts from any of y'all would be appreciated.

2) Beer. 
There are two bars (both owned by the same establishment) relatively close to my neighborhood boasting 50+ beers on tap. Why did it take me so long to find this out? Which beer should I try next (see their full list here)?

3) Fourth.
As someone belonging to one of the traditional peace churches, I always feel conflicted come Fourth of July. I love barbeques and fireworks, but I do not want to be complicit in rampant nationalism and the myth of redemptive violence. What creative things can I bring/wear/do to creatively subvert the fourth?

Motopony

This song was recently mentioned on NPR's All Song's Considered, and while I tend (with exceptions) not to like rock music or any of its hyphenates, I loved hearing this. Go ahead and click on that first link to give it a listen. Thanks to KEXP's "Song of the Day" for posting that. It's downloadable too!

I haven't bought the album (yet), but I have previewed all of the tracks online, and it's interesting that this song, "Seer," is indicative of the band, not necessarily in terms of quantifiable music qualities (the album veers from the softly strummed folky sound of "June" to the rock sounds of "Seer" back to the ragtimey "I am my Body" and into the electronic feel of "God Damn"), but in terms of the atmosphere.

I was at first mystified by "Seer," since it was introduced (on NPR) as a song by a band that channels the spirit of the Pacific Northwest. "Seer" for me, does not channel that feeling. The opening guitar riff, coupled with the lyrical references to "the river" make me think that this song is a response to Paul Simon's "Peace Like a River." In the context of the album, however, I can feel that Pacific Northwesterly vibe, even though I've never been there.

And by the way, it's Motopony like a motorized pony, not Motopony like metonymy.

The Regulars

It came to me, as I was shelving the kids' books at the store, that this isn't necessarily the place I would bring my children, if I had any, if I knew about the people who regularly frequent the bookstore. In the store at that moment was a rogues' gallery of people whose idiosyncrasies were not necessarily evident on the surface: Stephen* the Anarchist and his stripper girlfriend, Tom the washed-up philosopher and fan of 1960s bowling leagues, crazy Frances laughing uproariously at "something I was just thinking about," and bearded, backpack-toting, sometimes-drunk Isaac Newton.

It is normal to me to have these people around. There are plenty more people I could name and describe whose identifying characteristics sound like absurdist characters from a Beat poem or a Russian novella, yet they are the people I expect to see every day, whose coffee preferences I know--when they are well-off enough to buy coffee, which, for some of them, is not often.

Once we get too many of "the regulars" in the store we have to be wary. They are all ticking time bombs, each with their own issues that could require immediate individual attention, mostly so that we as a staff can preserve the illusion for our other customers that this is a normal, quiet, place of erudition, where the only noise might be the clacking of chess pieces or the occasional philosophical debate.

Isaac came up to the counter, rambling on about how everyone had missed me while I was away in England, but how Liz**, my co-worker, had been great, and I was practically obsolete. Liz gave me an "I'm a little creeped out with where all these compliments are going" look just as Isaac began comparing Liz to a powerful Amazon woman, gesturing to his chest to demonstrate that the Amazons cut off one breast to better wield their bows and arrows. Liz and I glanced at each other. Isaac's bus came, and he darted out the door.

"He is so close to being acceptable," I said, "but sometimes he just blows it big time."
I thought back to the time when Isaac had put me in the awkward position of having to throw him out for being rambunctiously drunk in the midst of a free, in-store concert. Not wanting to call the cops, knowing his past run-ins with them, I stationed myself near the shop door, and each of the five times he stumbled back, I turned him aside, reassuring him each time that he could come back when he was sober, but that there was no way I was letting him inside.
"I know, I know," said Liz. "They all are, and that's why it's so frustrating."

We thought of Isaac, reading and intelligently identifying with Don Quixote; of Frances, using her encyclopedic knowledge of 60s rock and folk artists to hold long discussions at the counter; of Stephen, reminding his anarchist friends (in the stacks, when he didn't know I was just around the corner) that "we can steal books from Barnes & Noble, 'cause they're corporate, but we don't steal from this place."


I don't really know what to do with all of this, except sneak people free coffees when I can and loan them bus money when I can and chastise them for panhandling when I can and listen to them when I can. Because I stand at the coffee counter for most of the day, it is the last one that I do most often. I don't really know how to make their lives better, or if they want their lives made better, or if I'm really just as crazy as any of "the regulars." Until I do know, I'm just going to keep an eye on them, to see if I can help them, but also to make sure that they don't cause a ruckus in the bookstore.


*I've changed all of the names, including Isaac Newton's, though Isaac does indeed go by the just-as-unbelievable name of another famous scientist. 

** Liz's name hasn't been changed

Packing Light

In about an hour, I set off for Iceland and England, asked by my hosts to pack light.

I was recently visited by my good friend Kristen, aka Gingersnap, who is through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Going on a gear run with her made me reassess both the contents of my apartment (not able to be carried on my back for a few months) and my packing for this trip. In short, I crammed all of my clothes into a compression sack, cinched it down, and will be flying to England with a daypack-sized backpack and my camera case.

The problem, of course, is the books. I bought, at the bookstore, for a mere 50 cents, a copy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. Long, interesting, critically acclaimed, and published in stubby mass-market paperback with a cover that makes it a dead ringer for The Da Vinci Code. That's the perfect airplane book. The other book was the problem: The Same Axe, Twice, by Howard Mansfield, problematic not only because of the unnecessary comma in its title, but also because I was halfway done with it when I packed. Bringing half of a book's worth of already-read pages would overfill my backpack.

I did the only thing I could do: plopped down on my parents' couch and steamrolled my way through the second half of the book. It is worth reading slowly, though it holds up very nicely when read fast.

Messianic Children's Books

I've recently read two children's books whose tone can be described as "messianic." This is an esoteric word to use, particularly in describing children's literature. I will let my examples speak for themselves.

I) Surfman

First, the more obscure: The Coming of the Surfman, by Peter Collington. The book concerns a young skateboarder-turned-surfboarder caught between two rival gangs, and the intervention of the enigmatic Surfman, whose departure leaves the gangs back at each others' throats and the boy hoping against hope for the Surfman's return.

Such a summary minimizes the power of this book, and I have summarized it in a way to make the messianic imagery stand out. In fact, the illustrations veil the allegory to a satisfying degree, and it is their power that carries the story.

II) Maniac

The second book is more widely read, particularly here in Pennsylvania, the author's home state: Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli. The eponymous hero is the messianic figure, who bridges the racial, geographic, and soci-economic divides between the East End and the West End in the course of his own search for home and family.


The book's outstanding introduction is what brings me back to this book, casting what might otherwise be a good, run-of-the-mill children's book in the light of myth, legend, and redemptive change.

III) Messianic Narratives

Both of these books are very good, which makes me wonder two things: is the messianic narrative, one that I always consider to be an abstract, adult concept, present in more children's literature (please share suggested titles in the comments)? And, what about the messianic narrative applies to childhood.

Surfman's messianic narrative is one of waiting and hoping for the return of a good thing. Maniac's messianic narrative is one of miraculous action towards community change, and the community's reaction. That is putting them in socio-religious (abstract, adult) terminology. How would a child read these stories?

Not being a child, and without children myself, I can speculate that childhood is a time of waiting; of understanding that one's agency is limited and that change can only come from the return of the Surfman.

That said, childhood has also been cast as a time of timelessness; of the unselfconsciousness that we cast as the innocence of youth. Maniac Magee works in this light; the boy believing and doing the impossible, unlimited by the constraints of the adult world, yet effecting real change in that world.

IV) Conclusion

As a Christian, it is tempting for me to spin these observations into some neat reflection on the messianic narrative through which I view the world, but that would be doing both of these books a disservice. They tell different stories, and present true mysteries of the world in very different (yet similar) ways. Needless to say, it is my religious background that causes me to read them in this way, yet I suspect that someone without my biases would also find strong messianic imagery in these texts.

I leave you with the prompt from above: Is the messianic narrative more common in children's literature that we may have thought? Why do these stories seem to ring true with children, who might not grasp all of their complexities?

Busy Busy

Hunting for a new apartment amidst election fervor and the new rigors of a full-time job.

Nonetheless, a few moments can be set aside to mention movies I have seen recently

Burn After Reading
Potiche

And some that I hope to see

The First Grader
The Tree of Life

Banana Chili

No, no, not banana peppers grafted onto chili peppers and grown organically. Instead, this phrase describes one of my staple large-crowd dishes (chili) combined with one of my staple methods of cooking (use up whatever is sitting in or on the fridge or freezer or countertop).

I use words like "staple" as though I cook a lot, or as though I am some sort of chef. In fact, my cooking is limited to things that I can fry in a pan or simmer for hours in a big soup pot. Sometimes I stray beyond these limitations, but not often.

Naed had, three weeks ago, given us two grocery bags of nearly dead bananas, which I quickly froze, to prevent their further decay. I believe I was hoping that a blender would appear, allowing for smoothies, or that I would become motivated to bake bread, allowing for banana bread or perhaps banana muffins or cookies. Both of these beliefs were equally foolish.

Instead, while cooking the chili (opening the stewed tomato can, opening the black beans can, opening the corn can, dumping all into the pot), I remembered that those bananas were probably going to go bad soon, even in the freezer.

I removed them, contemplating their resemblance to slugs, contemplating the delicious chili aroma in the house (having since added peppers, onions, garlic, ground beef, pepper, paprika, and salt), contemplating the impact on my bank account of having to order three or four pizzas if this went horribly awry, contemplating the appropriateness of banana chili as a concept.

After being microwaved and peeled, the bananas resembled slugs even more so than they had previous to their microwaving and peeling. Whereas previously, they had resembled garden slugs, the kind that wreck the lettuce crop and shrivel when salt is poured upon them, the bananas now resembled the kind of slugs that feature prominently in sci-fi horror movies, the kind of slugs that cause the action hero to reach for his grenades instead of his trusty laser gun, the kind of slugs that have a slug queen who instructs them, via slug gurgles, to enslave humanity.

I mashed them in a bowl with a wooden spoon and dumped them into the chili, which my guests found delicious. I told them that it was banana chili. I did not tell them about the slugs.

Ur-Texts: Goodbye?

While I realize that I only have a few more ur-texts left on my list (see below), I am postponing the project. I have too many good books building up on my shelf that I need to read. Working at a bookstore, this happens. The book that tipped the scales though, was not from the bookstore. It was a hardcover copy of Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, that I bought for a dollar at a local church yard sale. Joel has been recommending this book to me for over a year, and I decided it was time.

A few loose ends to wrap up (for now) on the ur-texts project:
1) The boundaries of the project (ONLY reading ur-texts) slipped, and I recently read Coffee: A Dark History. I hope to post on it soon. I also began reading in Ched Myers' commentary of the Gospel of Mark, Binding the Strong Man.
2) I realize that, at the inception of this project, I had a list of ur-texts to read. I will now post the (slightly amended) list, featuring links to my posts on the various texts. Starred texts have been added since the project began.

- The Dharma Bums (Kerouac) posts I and II

- One Man's Meat (White) posts I, II, and III

- Moby-Dick (Melville) posts I, II, and III

- Cannery Row (Steinbeck) posts I, II, and III

- The Prophet (Gibran) struck from the list; see the post

The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence) the post

still unread are

- various poems (Berry)

- The Lord of the Rings (Tolkien) which I strike from the list for timeliness's sake.

- For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway) which I strike from the list since it is merely a favorite, and not an ur-text.

- *The Art of War (Sun Tzu) a surprise for many who know me; I hope to write on this book soon.

- East of Eden (Steinbeck) the book I name when asked for my favorite book of all time.

- *Freight Train (Crews) the ur-ur-text; the first book I ever read.

*     *     *

So there it is. It feels freeing to put the ur-texts to rest for now. Having gone just over halfway down the list, I hope to finish at some later date. For now, I can say that a common theme to many of my re-readings is the importance of context. The books that most shaped me shaped me to some degree because of the books themselves, but also because of where and when I read them. Or, as Melville says in Moby-Dick:

"Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts."

Boil Water Advisory

I only found out about the water-boil advisory when  Heather (who has now moved to Harrisburg) and her housemate Liz reported that they had no water pressure. By that point, I had already had a few cups of contaminated city water, and figured that I would be no worse for the wear. That was on Tuesday.

Wednesday, we heard that water pressure would be restored in affected areas, but that we should continue to boil all water for 1-3 minutes. This meant that at home, the dishes mounded up in the sink -- more than they usually mound up in the sink, anyway. At the cafe, we refrained from serving iced drinks, limited our menu to tea and coffee.

Thursday, we were expecting the advisory to be lifted, to no avail. Bottled water sales spiked, and visitors from outside the city, when reminded that we were not serving ice, did a double-take, then nodded in sympathy.

Today, the city's website held this disheartening notice: "Mayor Thompson said today there is optimism in the City Bureau of Water that the water boil alert, currently in effect, could be lifted by Sunday." I boiled another pot of water and resigned myself to the stink emanating from the dirt sink in the apartment.

Then, the city posted this notice:

"City Mayor Linda D. Thompson has just announced that the 'Boil Water' alert, active in the City most of the week, has been officially lifted by the City Bureau of Water.
'The water tested clear today, for the second day in a row,' Mayor Thompson said this afternoon, 'so we're in good shape to lift the alert and just in time to celebrate the holiday weekend!'"

Never before have I celebrated Easter by welcoming the resurrection of potable tap water.

Muppets

So I read this in the now semi-pay-walled New York Times, which reminded me about how, about a year ago, I used my waning access to Swarthmore's resources to educate myself on The Muppets.

I had never seen any Muppet texts (movies or TV), so I watched a season's worth of episodes selected from seasons one and two, and read the entirety of this book.

I can't remember anything in particular that I learned, but it was very nice to finally be conversant in a well-known, hilarious media text. I tell you this, mostly to get you to read the New York Times piece at the top, so if you haven't used up your allotted 20 articles this month, go to it!

Reservoir Dogs

I saw this early Tarantino film a few weeks ago, and it has been occupying that part of my brain that thinks about films, both because it is interesting, and because I haven't seen anything else very recently. 

My thesis is twofold: Firstly, I argue that the violence in Reservoir Dogs is non-redemptive. Secondly, I argue that this is a meditation, not on real-world violence, but on movie violence.


I) Non-Redemptive Violence

Not a really badass crime movie, despite publicity photos like this one.

"Reservoir Dogs" is incredibly violent. Unlike so many Hollywood films, however, almost none of the violence is redemptive. Rather than engage in a lengthy discussion of Walter Wink's "myth of redemptive violence," I will simplify the notion of redemptive violence to "violence that ennobles the perpetrating character." Most instances of violence in Hollywood films fall into this category: Luke Skywalker killing Emperor Palpatine; the "heroics" of the platoon in "Saving Private Ryan," etc. Even if these movies contain instances of non-redemptive violence (the empire destroying planets), the dilemmas raised by those acts of violence are resolved by more acts of violence (destroying the death star).

"Reservoir Dogs" first piqued my interest when I realized that (with one exception) none of the violence ennobles the characters, and that the subsequent acts of violence do not resolve the dilemmas that the violence has created, except in that SPOILER ALERT all the perpetrating characters end up dead at each others' hands.


II) Temporality

Part of why this works is that the movie uses flashbacks. The advent of the violence is thus disconnected from its causality, as in the cut from the early slow-motion "walking down the street" sequence to the scene of Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) comforting the visibly wounded Mr. Orange (Tim Roth). Were the events arranged sequentially, the violence would seem more meaningful and ordered; the flashbacks, while still allowing us to (eventually) understand the motivations for the acts of violence, allow us to experience the effects of violence (Mr. Orange bleeding out on the warehouse floor) in tandem with the events of violence themselves (the botched jewelry store heist).


III) The Exception

The only act of violence that is in any way redemptive occurs during the famous "Stuck in the Middle With You" sequence. SPOILER ALERT. Just as Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) is about to immolate the captured policeman (Kirk Baltz) Mr. Orange, barely alive, shoots Mr. Blonde, saving the officer's life and revealing himself as the police informant. This is the film's only ennobling act of violence. Shortly after this (in diegetic time; a series of flashbacks intervene in non-diegetic screentime), the officer is killed, rendering the only redemptive act of violence meaningless; redemptive and meaningful in terms of the development of Mr. Orange's character, but meaningless in utilitarian terms.

Mr. Orange ennobled.

It could be argued that Mr. White's actions in the standoff at the film's conclusion also ennoble him. He draws his gun, and ultimately shoots one friend (Joe) in defense of the honor of another (Mr. Orange). This situation is complicated firstly by the fact that he shoots his old friend Joe, hardly an ennobling act, and secondly by the fact that his friendship with Mr. Orange is revealed to be a lie. When Mr. White learns that he has been betrayed, he also kills Mr. Orange, undoing whatever redemption he may have earned himself in the standoff.

Even though we sympathize with the characters committing the acts of violence, particularly Mr. White and Mr. Orange, "Reservoir Dogs" gives us no way to justify their violent actions.


IV) Movies

So, having arrived at the conclusion that "Reservoir Dogs" implicates systems of violence as being non-redemptive and meaningless, I initially thought "whoa, what a great pacifist movie!" This then led me to wonder about the movie's bearing on other systems of violence in the world, and I came to the conclusion that this is a movie, not about systems of violence in the world, but about systems of violence in the movies.

My first clue was the closed-off nature of the movie: It occurs, diegetically, within the confines of a warehouse. The violence that occurs occurs within a closed system (Mr. Orange is shot by the bystander, and then shoots her), affecting nothing beyond itself. This is not true to real-world systems of violence, which have all kinds of far-reaching effects beyond themselves.

My second clue was the fact that this is a Tarantino film. Tarantino is famous for making movies about movies, and this is one of the movies that gave him that distinction.

My third and most telling clue was the temporal positioning of the movie itself. Though it was made in 1992, the movie hearkens back to 1970s gangster films: the cars, the soundtrack, the famous "badass slo-mo scene," even the casting of veteran crime-film actor Harvey Keitel. Why make a movie set in the 1970s when the story would play just as well set in 1992? This movie indicts a particularly seminal period and genre of Hollywood filmmaking, and, by extension, Hollywood filmmaking in general.


V) Conclusions

While I enjoyed thinking about a movie with (almost) no redemptive violence, I was disappointed that its lessons could not be applied to real-world violence, except in a bluntly moralistic sense. Nonetheless, a movie that indicts movies for their unquestioning embrace of the myth of redemptive violence is good movie to have around, and it will be hard for me to see any onscreen violence without parsing it though the lens that "Reservoir Dogs" has afforded me.


Reservoir Dogs at IMDB and Wikipedia, two resources used in writing this analysis.

Ur-Texts: The Practice of the Presence of God (and The Prophet)

This book has a lot in common with "The Prophet." Rather than being written by an early-20th-century Lebanese-American poet, this one was written by a late-seventeenth-century French monk.

They are definitely not the same book, don't get me wrong, but reading them back to back has illuminated the connections between them. I still hold to my statement that "Practice... etc." is one of my Ur-Texts, while "The Prophet" is not.
 

I) Formal Similarities: Retelling

"The Prophet" works as a series of poetic/philosophical monologues, each prompted by a question from a citizen of Orphalese, whence the titular prophet is preparing to depart.

"The Practice of the Presence of God" engages in a similar sort of framing: rather than the townspeople inquiring of the soon-to-depart prophet, Father Joseph de Beaufort informs us of his conversations with the already-departed Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.

This distancing paradoxically gives weight to the accounts; while historians value the primary source, literary myths gain value from repetition. Thus, the fact that the sayings of the prophet and Brother Lawrence are coming to us "second hand" (metaphorically, in Gibran's case, and more literally in Joseph de Beaufort's) makes them more credible.


II) Content Similarities: The Smallness of Large Things

"Practice... etc." is about the smallness of large things; or rather, of the largest of things, God. Though he lives in a convent, Brother Lawrence does not report of finding God at prayer times; indeed: "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament."

So, too "The Prohpet" sacralizes the mundane. Each citizen asks a question relating to his or her daily pursuits, and the prophet shares the spiritual resonances of that thing, just as Brother Lawrence creates/participates in the sacrament of the washing of the pans.

I had trouble, while typing this, deciding whether to call this idea "the smallness of large things" or "the largeness of small things." On the surface, they sound synonymous, but they accent different parts. I chose the one I chose because these books are not, for example, about making the washing of dishes great, but rather finding the greatness in the washing of dishes. Thus, the smallness of the large things (general spirituality in "The Prohpet," and a Catholic/Christian conception of God in "Practice... etc.) is revealed. It is not only in the large place ("upon my knees at the blessed sacrament") where the largest thing can be found, but also in the smallest place ("in the noise and clatter of my kitchen").

NOT Ur-Texts

I realize that this blog has become pretty much an all-ur-texts-all-the-time blog. I am working my way towards the conclusion of that project, realizing that I am getting a little fed up with it. I just want to read all the cool books I've been gathering over the past couple of months, but been prohibiting myself from reading. I excised The Lord of the Rings from the list, mostly so that I can be done soon.

Anyway, in other news, I have been thinking about Libya. I agree with this guy.

Also, if the chatter and fairly substantial hints that I've dropped haven't made it at all clear, it's time for me to tell you: I'm getting married.

Ur-Texts: The Prophet

While reading Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet," I realized that this book really hasn't been that formative to me. I love reading it, and it has moments where its language really shines, but it has not had any kind of serious or notable influence, at least not as notable as the influences of the other books I've been re-reading.

It expresses very eloquently ideas that I have about the world, and though I am striking it from my list of ur-texts, I would not miss the opportunity to share some quotes:

"Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him, saying, 'This for God and this for myself; This for my soul and this other for my body?'"

"If this indeed be the hour in which I lift up my lantern, it is not my flame that shall burn therein. Empty and dark shall I raise my lantern, and the guardian of the night shall fill it with oil and he shall light it also."

Ur-Texts: Cannery Row II or III

I just finished reading Cannery Row, and feel that, rather than summing up the book as a whole, it may be better to discuss my favorite of its chapters, chapter 17.

I) Truth

This chapter more than anything else Steinbeck has written (except maybe "Log From The Sea of Cortez") demonstrates his ideas about non-teleological truth. The narrator recounts Doc's previous search for truth, then Doc, on a collecting expedition, picks up a hitchhiker, who reprimands him for drinking and driving. Doc promptly casts the hitchhiker out of his car, threatening violence. Immediately thereafter, Doc orders the beer milkshake, which he has been contemplating since early in the chapter. "Well here is was and what the hell," thinks Doc, and then, as the chapter reaches its climax. Doc drinks the beer milkshake, and realizes that it tastes "just like stale beer and milk."

The milkshake has, at this point, become a sort of Holy Grail stand-in, yet Doc's triumph in finding it is preceded by a moment of bad faith with the hitchhiker, and followed by a lie ("I've been drinking it for seventeen years"). This Grail is clearly not some powerful image of purity as much as it is a thing for the sake of the thing.

It is this kind of truth that Steinbeck is after: things are what they are. It is a philosophy that has a lot of resonance with both Zen Buddhism and biology, and though I am neither a Buddhist nor a biologist, I like this kind of truth, partially as a result of this book's warmhearted, funny, deeply sad and touching portrait non-teleology.

II) My Beer Milkshakes

In my first post on "Cannery Row", I linked to a piece I wrote for the Williams-Mystic student literary magazine about my experience making a beer milkshake there, but that is not the only beer milkshake I have made.

My good friend Jesse Albanese, maybe after having read "Cannery Row," or maybe just having heard about it from me, was curious about the beer milkshake. Ben and Nathan were also there, and so we made a second beer milkshake. There are a few ways to explain why that beer milkshake was not nearly as satisfying as the first beer milkshake. It could have been that the higher quality of the ingredients paradoxically lessened the quality of the milkshake. It could have been that, having just had dinner, we were not hungry for it. I suspect, though, that it was because a second beer milkshake is an impossibility; that the value of the beer milkshake is in the experience of fearing it and accepting it. Once that experience has been had, it cannot be re-had.

III) Conclusion

Having had tangible impact on my real-life actions is something that few books can claim on me, and so, between the beer milkshake(s) and the reading at Cannery Row, this book's position on my list of ur-texts is indisputable.