29 September 2006
Magic Music Days
Today as I walked past the our neighbourhood chemist where the young homeless drug addicts queue up in the mornings to get their methadone, I noticed one of them was wearing a very garish and familiar t-shirt. The shirt was bright purple and flourescent pink and yellow and green and stated "Disney Magic Music Days!". I once owned a couple of these t-shirts because I endured the magic music days of Disney World at least a couple of times in junior high and high school, after our school band, like many others througout America, spent humilating weekends washing cars and selling candy door to door to raise money to pay Disney to bus us the many many hours to Florida to march in some parade around the amusement park. My guess is that Euro Disney has started a similar programme for kids in Europe, and just look where the UK ones end up: outside the chemist waiting to layer what's left of last night's heroin with NHS meth.
Somethin' Strange in My Neighborhood
Coming across
this window cleaner's
mode of transport
--it even says
"Who you gonna call?"--
thrilled me
even more than
all the guys
dressed like
my boys
at Bestival.
Gotta get
that thesis
written...
28 September 2006
M. was in France for 24 hours to assess a show and he came home around 6am smelling of New Orleans! I haven't got to chat with him yet about what he ate or what else he got up to, but his clothes have that distinct and yet impossible-to-put-your-finger-on aroma of sweet and spice and pralines and red beans and rice and beignets and spices that go in a crawfish boil that you sometimes smell randomly around parts of New Orleans. The only other time I've smelled that in Europe was when we went to a Senegalese restaurant in Paris a couple of years ago that served the best boudin I'd had in years. In fact, it was the only boudin I'd had in years.
Ghosts in My New House
We are purchasing a house in Kemptown, meaning we’ll stick around the UK for another year or two at least. It was supposedly used to house workers at the mill that was in the area in the 19th century. We take possession next Wednesday.
I'm two Fall songs in one lately ("There's a Ghost in My House" and "My New House"). Three times this month I have dreamed that the house is haunted. The first dream was terrifying and short; I was being chased in the dark. In the second dream, the current elderly owner of the house was desperate to impart some information to me. She did so in the form of a book of newspaper clippings that described the death of a little girl (Rosemary?) and her mum, who then appeared to me as ghosts. There was something to do with facial mutilation maybe. When I woke up M. asked if I'd had a nightmare and I felt sad and insisted on calling it a “scary dream” because "nightmare" seemed insulting to the ghosts somehow. The third dream had to with ghosts haunting us overhead as streaks of light and sound and me having to shout at them that we meant no harm and wanted to live in peace with them and that they better stop.
In response, I've been re-reading Anelia Jaffe's Jungian An Archetypal Approach To Death Dreams and Ghosts. Though simplisitic Jung-talk about the collectivity of supernatural experiences, it nonetheless drew my attention the figure of the gray man that Anna Karenina sees in her dreams, and then again just as she throws herself under the train. Funny to see him described by Jaffe as a "spirit-maniken" with all the automatonic connotations that holds for me. What to make of ghosts in dreams anyway? When two such vectors of the uncanny meet, maybe it kinda becomes banal and overly obvious. A pair of flapping wings back to the time of the US Civil War, as Mark E sang. As expected.
I'm two Fall songs in one lately ("There's a Ghost in My House" and "My New House"). Three times this month I have dreamed that the house is haunted. The first dream was terrifying and short; I was being chased in the dark. In the second dream, the current elderly owner of the house was desperate to impart some information to me. She did so in the form of a book of newspaper clippings that described the death of a little girl (Rosemary?) and her mum, who then appeared to me as ghosts. There was something to do with facial mutilation maybe. When I woke up M. asked if I'd had a nightmare and I felt sad and insisted on calling it a “scary dream” because "nightmare" seemed insulting to the ghosts somehow. The third dream had to with ghosts haunting us overhead as streaks of light and sound and me having to shout at them that we meant no harm and wanted to live in peace with them and that they better stop.
In response, I've been re-reading Anelia Jaffe's Jungian An Archetypal Approach To Death Dreams and Ghosts. Though simplisitic Jung-talk about the collectivity of supernatural experiences, it nonetheless drew my attention the figure of the gray man that Anna Karenina sees in her dreams, and then again just as she throws herself under the train. Funny to see him described by Jaffe as a "spirit-maniken" with all the automatonic connotations that holds for me. What to make of ghosts in dreams anyway? When two such vectors of the uncanny meet, maybe it kinda becomes banal and overly obvious. A pair of flapping wings back to the time of the US Civil War, as Mark E sang. As expected.
18 September 2006
05 September 2006
Pearls of Genius
My brother has written a funny account of his acting job for a Chinese film about Peral S. Buck (who was played by his girlfriend). On set on Mt Lushan, he took this photo of some beautiful prose of Pearl's, which reveals why she was so lauded as writer:
Years Gone By and I'd Say We've Kicked Some Ass
Happy 3rd year, bbbbbbaby! Who knew this song was about extreme sports?
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