about music, and the woods, and about God

But I accidentally posted it to "Just Me" and so it never got shared. Woops.

A [month] ago, Charlie Parr and Megafaun played at Nightlight in Chapel Hill, NC (Kauk shout-out goes here). So Megafaun seems to always end up on stage with the people they play with fantastic results.

So here are Charlie Parr and Phil Cook of Megafaun performing Parr's "Just Like Today."


If you're not familiar with Charlie Parr, what follows is a nice little performance of "1922" from the 2002 album of the same name.

It's been a much better week. The sky was blue (blue!) the last two days. The animals are back on the fields, which is very nice. The sheep stall is cleared out and the roof repaired. We still need to fix the walkways into the sheep and pony stables, though. I still count the days, but it's down to about 4 or 5 times a day rather than 50 or more (you think I exaggerate. I do not).

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There is a very neat article about Lukacs' life and career at the American Conservative titled "The Lettered Reactionary." It's worth your time. If you call me your friend, read it (I'm kidding of course*).

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I'm swinging again into more folk/folkish music after having listened to much more electronic, pop, and rap this year. Prepare yourselves for some year-end-music-list action here at my very own (it's mine, not yours) about music etc. blog.

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Have a gander at Coffee Ambassadors, one of those businesses with a conscience rather than a straight-up charity. I'm becoming more and more a fan of things that break down the distance between what we consume and the source. I'm not saying we should all become farmers (boy am I ever not saying that), and I'm not an agrarian. But I think some connection--even a peak--into the labor and lives devoted to making what you eat and own is a good thing. Coffee Ambassadors is working to do that with coffee. Not a bad thing.


*I'm not kidding.

My writing is miles ahead of where it was last year. And last year was better than the year before. So it's still growing, and I'm very happy about that. But I'm frustrated too. I want it to be better. I still read something I wrote five days ago and wince a bit. My titles in particular make me grimace the next day. Cheesy plays on metaphors, or things that are kind of clever but vapid, or try to say too much and end up saying nothing.

Pretty much since my sophomore year I've always thought my writing was almost good (prior to that I stupidly thought it was actually good). And then six months later I realize it's better but it's still not good.

I recently finished my last (last) reread of my thesis. I wrote that thing mostly in April and did some editing well into May. And less than a half-year later I can already see that my writing is better now, and I could correct some things. But I'd like to get to where I can read something I wrote a year ago and not cringe at how obvious I was.

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I really think Bradford Cox is one of the best things going in music right now. His albums are hard to appreciate (for me, at least) on a first listen, except for a song or two and a handful of parts from other songs that immediately sound fantastic. And they don't open up easily either. But somewhere around the fourth or fifth run through, the rest of the album starts opening up. Microcastle (last year's Deerhunter album) started to grow on me, and then just exploded on one particular listen. Logos (this year's Atlas Sound album) was more accessible initially and has been getting better and better, but so far there's no huge "a-ha" listen. One of the things I like most about a Bradford Cox album is that, while the more difficult parts eventually open up, the moments that grab you initially don't tire at all. I'm thinking here of "Nothing Ever Happened" by Deerhunter or "Walkabout" by Atlas Sound (feat. Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear, from Animal Collective).

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And speaking of Animal Collective, here's the video for "In the Flowers," the opening track to Merriweather Post Pavilion. The first minute or so of the video is a disconcerting collection of 70's-esque-footage, weird artwork, and other things I can't describe particularly well. Then at one point--and if you've heard the song and remember it, you could probably guess which part--it becomes incredibly trippy. The underlying sense of foreboding turns downright sinister thank to the bearded man and his Poloroids, and the video leaves you with a bizarre and disturbing image. This song (and album) are incredible.

When the semester is almost over people always say, "Ugh, I can't wait to get out of here" or "I can't stop thinking about going home" or “It will be so nice to be home.” I never understood that.

Which is not to say I didn't have my fair share of (self-inflicted) end-of-semester misery. I would predictably burn out completely about two or three weeks before finals started (and then usually muster a little life for the last week and a half). The flames from my burn-outs are somewhat legendary. I'm thinking here of chewing already-used coffee grounds, yelling maniacally at poor Sean in the Grewcock dining room (shortly after astonishing Sam with my zombie-like-presence), 2 AM Mocha/ice cream/double cheeseburger runs with Chase or Jared, and stewing in my been-up-three-days-straight odor in either the old snack bar or the Friendly Dump (apologies and thanks to the parties mentioned).

But I could never grasp why someone would dwell on somewhere. For me the solution was (generally) to put my head down and immerse myself in finishing. I never even began to think about home, because that just made me more miserable—and impotent to do my work.

In all I honesty I don’t know if I have ever actually been homesick before. I mostly live in the present—or the past (more on that later). I might have trouble throwing myself into something initially. But if I have trouble sometimes adjusting, I don’t tend to mentally “check out” early. Even as a little kid at camp I always had a blast by day two and did not think about going back home. I was always happy to see my parents but never homesick. The first night of my first summer at Eagle Lake as a counselor I remember asking myself, "What am I doing here??" The next day I jumped in without second thoughts. And as the summer neared the end, and we were all ill and exhausted, I didn’t think about leaving. I worked and lived in the present.

I believe this is mostly positive because it means I don’t waste the present by thinking about the future. I don’t generally wallow in self-pity or dwell on how bad things are—except for the week or two of burnout, and even then it’s a very in-the-moment self-pity and misery. And it meant that my senioritis was actually fairly mild—I was as lazy as ever, but it wasn’t especially effected by wanting to be done. And that’s why, rather than having my grades slide at the end, I actually had my best GPA ever by quite a margin.

On the downside, this may be part of my laziness and procrastination. I live in the present and put off the future. Or I get stuck in the past for a while, totally unprepared to adjust to what’s next. Suddenly I’d be finished with finals and home, and I couldn’t even enjoy it—not only because I was invariably sick for a week, but also because it was a complete surprise. The most dramatic example was my sophomore year. I spent most of the first semester recovering from camp, and a lot of friendships were permanently damaged because of that.

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I have spent the last two weeks completely immersed in the opposite extreme, wallowing in utter homesickness—possibly for the first time in my life. Physically I’m shoveling the sheep stable, but in my mind I am somewhere—anywhere—else. (By the way, forking manure has pretty much been 70% of my work for over a week, because they only clean out that stable once a year… so that’s six months of manure from thirty sheep and straw accumulated). I count the time left here literally to the hour (as in, I think or even say: 2 weeks, 6 days, 12 hours… 2 weeks, 6 days, 9 hours…).

Like never before, I’ve made a game out of living in the future. I inventory everything I’m looking forward to in the next 12 months and live there in my mind. Spending a few days in München. Reading and listening to music at my favorite coffee shop in Tucson. Spending time with friends in Tucson. Talking with my parents. Maybe a road-trip with Will. Seeing Mandi when she gets back from Djibouti. Grad school visits which will hopefully be ways to see friends too. Going to Hillsdale’s graduation, seeing so many wonderful friends, the wedding (which I have no mental image of in my mind, but just this fuzzy blankness that makes me laugh and get excited). Hopefully getting into graduate school and starting a new segment of my life.

And when I’ve run out of things to look forward, I start over or find a new aspect of how that will be so much better than here.

On the positive side I am probably going to over a somewhat better transition in December. But this is not a good way to live. Actually it’s terrible. I am certain that I was right all along never to give into the urge to wallow. It makes me so much more miserable than otherwise. I cannot live in the moment or appreciate the great parts (and they do still exist) of living in rural Germany and speaking German all the time.

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Thursday I made a decision. No more wallowing. I will not think about the future except where necessary to finish grad applications and coordinate trains/flights/etc. I will not count the days. I will not live somewhere else in my mind or daydream about another place. I will live where I am. Even when where I am is in that VERDAMMTESCHAFSTALL which I hate intensely. I will find what there is to enjoy here, and I will deal with what isn’t enjoyable here and now.

The Low Anthem song off this summer's Oh my God, Charlie Darwin.  I've posted this song before, but it was one of those photo collages, not a video.  And it's a great song.  So here's the video.  I tend to really like these animation story-telling videos.



And speaking of animation story-telling, here's the video for "On the Water" by the Walkmen.

Over the last three weeks I've taken a lot of photos and haven't had time to put them online.  So I've decided to do them in small chunks.  I'm putting them all in an album on Facebook: "Veitlahm und die Nähe" but in groups.  The first subset is from Kulmbach, where I go to market with Florian twice a week to sell our wares.

Der Plassenburg, one of the most impressive castles in Germany, overlooks our market.  Like, practically hangs over it.



See what I mean?  Here is our regular set-up.



That's Florian.



And those are our flowers.



And have a look at our delicious little Backerei.



And our cheeses.

This is quite long, but I trust that the schadenfreude so gleefully displayed in Pt. 1 will carry you through. It’s not so short and vicious, but more of a drawn out misery.

The last two days have been below freezing in the morning and then beautiful during the day. Yesterday was warm, and I picked apples in a t-shirt the whole afternoon. The fruit trees, planted here twenty years ago by Florian himself, stand on various hills affording stunning views of the surrounding area. (As I pick, I think: I will have fruit trees one day.)

Today was almost as beautiful and not quite so warm. After market we needed to change fields for the animals again (as I explained in Pt. I). Normally we set up our fences adjacent to the last field. The animals simply shuffle from one field to the other. A few times we’ve had to run the animals through town to or from the farm. It’s pretty simple. Florian leads the animals, and I come behind to encourage the stragglers. The road is clear and surrounded by woods or homes: no distractions. Once, though, a dump truck in the middle of the road made everything briefly hectic as all the animals filed by on either side—one confused cow charged down a path/alley and ran around in peoples’ backyards for a while.

But today we must go about a kilometer through open fields to the new area. (As we pass the old field in the tractor to set up the new fences, and the animals are standing so prettily, I think: I will have a few animals one day. Not so many, but a few.) Apparently, though I didn’t know it at the time, they haven’t been here in the last three years because of dry seasons. We set up the fences, return, and lead the animals out. Florian in front, me behind.

We’re over halfway there. The hill goes up on the right of the road and down on the left. Our field is ahead and downhill on the left. The young cows become agitated in new territory, criss-crossing the road, frightening the sheep and goats, and generally ignoring Florian. When they run a hundred yards up hill to the right, I must chase them, go higher, and push them back down to Florian. But instead of going back to the Florian they run in front of him. All the cows are now in a pack passing our field and eventually stopping where the meadows meet the woods just below the road which continues on into the woods. The other animals run around wildly. Florian goes down to open the fence calling to the animals.

I am walking slowly because I do not want to spook the cows into running down that road which leads I don’t know where—a mistake. I should have sprinted and cut them off. They slowly meander towards the road while Florian begins shouting, “Schell! Schnell!! SCHNELLER!!” and then I sprint and the cows hit the exit and are gone and I run for a half-kilometer till the road opens to a new field where the cows are chomping on grass. They are uphill and to the right. I circle left and around and behind, gasping cold air. (I am worried, but I think: This is pretty funny. I will have to write about it on my blog.) My lungs are unhappy. Successfully behind them I start calling and waving my stick. So I am calling and hallelujah they are heading back down the road. Until one son-of-a-bitch sees something that interests him left and uphill (bastards know I can’t handle the incline.). Then he’s off and they’re all gallumping away and I—still wheezing from before—am desperately stomping uphill after them.

These are old hills populated for thousands of years. Celtic folk somehow carved out agrarian lives here so that every large hill or small mountain in this area is a series of inclines and fields. (As I run I think: I have no idea how high this hill goes or how far these cows are likely to run or what emergency services will send out search parties for lost cattle.)

Shortly I am over the rise. The cows are ambling/jogging, and I manage to catch up to the stragglers. We jog towards a huge stone covered on top and on one side by hill. It seems man-made at a glance, but as I come closer and then run by I am not sure. Hours later Marianne says that it is a foundation of an ancient watch tower. Marianne, by the way, followed Florian and I in the car with tools. She has bad feet and cannot run.

I am trying to run up on the cows left so as to push them back down and to the right where I hope our field and Florian are. I have heard or seen nothing of him or her since I followed the cows down the road into the woods. But we are now going uphill and as I pick up the pace, so do they. In fact they leave me behind. I am now livid. Nothing is funny. I would like to cuss at them or kill them, but I am working with pantheists who might distrust my karma if I yelled at animals. Florian and Marianne do not cuss often, though today Florian taught me that when everything goes wrong Germans say, “Sheiß die Wand!” (“shit the wall!” which is just great).

After I’ve run perhaps fifty yards I am ganz kaput and the cows are over the rise and gone, perhaps in another county. (I think: I hate everything.) I am now struggling to keep walking uphill. When I summit to the next field, there they are, just chomping away. Mother fuckers. Florian appears somehow. He is a dozen yards to my right, and I am grateful. He is cursing the cows wonderfully auf Deutsch, and I am very sad that my German is so poor that I cannot understand most of it because it is a beautiful and gutteral thing, his curses. In case you’ve forgotten I am still dying here. Lungs starting to freeze. Did I tell you it’s evening and getting colder? It’s evening and getting colder. And darker.

Our meadow is now directly behind us as we face the cows, perhaps a kilometer downhill. Florian calms and tells me to circle left while he calls his “A-ya” that they normally heed so well but now seem utterly indifferent to. These animals are clearly not going to follow him, so he starts circling right and behind and resumes cursing. They see his move and begin to run away. I must now sprint fifteen yards and then face eight or nine cows weighing God knows and convince them that they ought to turn around. Did I mention our cows have horns? Our cows have horns. There are three possibilities, as I figure it. One. They ignore and run by. Two. They turn around (please! turn around!). Three. They spear me like Mrs. May from “Greenleaf” or trample me like Simba’s dad.

Out of rage and fear I start shouting at the animals, cussing in a way I didn’t know I could. I am threatening to turn them into cow patties, to stab them in the udder. I am saying uncouth things about their mothers.

They split the difference between options one and two. They turn but head perpendicularly to us to my left, Florian’s right. So now he is sprinting and turning and facing them and cussing. He gets them to stop and turn. He is now behind while I am in front. Because we cannot very well switch places he says that I must lead.

Now there are two options. One. They ignore. Two. They follow. Lose-lose. To have the cows once again charging at me? And if I sprint they’ll sprint and they sprint faster than I do, but if I slow would they slow too or would they trample me? They start to follow me (I think: Oh God! Oh God! Help!). At this moment maybe half the sheep and goats come over the rise looking as confused and flustered as I no doubt do. I ignore them and go over the rim of the field. Going down this steep hill scares me even more because the cows will want to go fast downhill and I am likely to fall and then die. But they don’t want to go over the rim and start trotting along the rim to their left with Florian cursing behind. Miraculously, inexplicably, I hear Marianne from somewhere ahead of them shouting and then they over the rim twenty yards to my left and running mostly in the right direction! But no one is leading them. Florian is hitting a very impressive pace. I follow, running and certain I will break my ankle.

Here the sequence of events is jumbled, probably because I was suffering minor brain damage at the time due to lack of oxygen. Somehow Florian is in front of the cows, and we are all headed in the right direction. Except for the sheep and goats and Marianne, who are not running with us but about whom I do not think.

The cows head left but I cut them off. We are trotting instead of running. We go over the last road before our field, which is back in a corner against the woods. Less than two-hundred yards ahead, and there is a cornfield on the left and I am bearing a little right to funnel them in. But oh verdammte Sheiße just opposite our field between the cornfield and the woods is a 25-yard gap where the cows decide to head instead of following Florian, and I am on the wrong side to cut them off. They aren’t running so much as ambling. Florian is dead tired and knows that if he pursues they will not turn and follow but will only run faster.

So I make a quick and rather heroic decision. In spite of my exhaustion, I run like the wind brokenly jog while wanting to cry or puke or die. I run along the cornfield across from the cows. I can outrun them because they aren’t really running, and then I can go around the cornfield and push them back to Florian. I do so and am sending them the right way. Somehow: Marianne is now fifty yards behind me with all of the goats and sheep. They are mulling around her. Florian leads the cows (they follow!) and says that I should turn around and help with the sheep. I turn back to call the sheep, while Marianne shouts not to leave the cows.

I stand there puzzled between the two, but the sheep wonderfully decide I look like fun and run towards me. This allows me to fulfill both orders (fulfilling the sometimes contradictory orders of Florian and Marianne is a skill I haven’t yet acquired). When we clear the cornfield I have to sprint twice more to keep the cows from heading right, but they go in. They go in! And the sheep and goats too! And then, from relief and anger, Florian cusses up a storm once again. We close them in and leave and spend the rest of the evening tired and angry.

Since I last posted München pictures here, I've added quite a few photos to my München Facebook album.  So, in reverse order, beginning with assorted München:



Feldherrnhalle



Theaterinkirche.

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And just now I've added some of Schloss Nymphemburg to the München album, though they were taken two weeks ago.





Schloss Nymphemburg: basically the Bavarian Versailles, the place where the kings of Bavaria lived since the 17th century and where the head of the House of Wittelsbach still lives (interesting sidenote: Jacobites still consider him the rightful heir to the thrones of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France... throw in Bavaria, that's some empire, eh?).

The backyard's not too shabby either.




It was only about a fifteen-minute stroll from my house in München, so I went there near sunset with Sandhi's bike.





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And lastly, I put in a small new album on Oktoberfest.  I went four times.  The first time was just an hour at night on the first weekend to get the experience.  It was pretty neat.  When we came into the Hofbräuhaus Bierzelt, a big band on a raised stage was playing traditional Bavarian music plus some German oldies in the middle of about a thousand people standing on tables singing and dancing.  Then a few minutes later they started up a cover of "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones and place went nuts.  "I CAN'T GET NO!" etc.  It was fun.  The second and third times were the second weekend (aka "Italian weekend" because so many Italians go) and involved a total of four hours standing in lines outside the Bierzelte and not getting in.  That was certifiably not fun.  The fourth time was in the middle of the week.  We found a spot in the Biergarten outside the Hacken Bierzelt, and that's where most of the photos come from.



The look on my face kind of weirds me out here.




These are the Spanish guys Sandi became friends with.




These guys were on our right whom I befriended.  Guy in the front is German.  He speaks English with an Aussie/German accent because he learned English in Australia with another guy from their group.  The other guy in this pick is, I think, Slovakian, though that may have been a different guy in their group.

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Still to come: photos from the farm I'm working on.  I have a bunch on my computer right now that I need to pare down, and I want a few more before I post.  Suffice to say: I've had a healthy introduction to the shit-shoveling aspect of farm-work the last two days.  There was a sudden frost so we had to bring the animals in.  But they go out again tomorrow, hopefully until November, so I can put go back to slipping on manure instead of shoveling it.  In cuter news, we have these new young goats.  They aren't exactly babies, because they stay at other farms with the mommas for a while before they come here, as I understand it.  But they are not used to human contact, so we had to lead them with rope to the other animals today.  Poor things were freaking out.  When I would stop to calm them, I could feel their wild heartbeats through their fur.  And their most extreme bleats sounded freakishly human.

Man I love this album.  So good.  So strong, lyrically.  Gorgeous.

Today has been the worst day.  Even though I haven't worked as much as normal (9 hours so far, probably another one hour yet; normal day is around 12 hours), the last four hours were miserable.  Let me tell you about them.  It ended in a way I may find funny tomorrow.

At 3 PM we went to gather wood.  The day before Florian had chainsawed down four very large trees into a field.  We had to clear the field of all the excess sticks and debris and what-not.  This turned out to be much more work than anticipated.  We should have had rakes and trash cans.  We had hands.  It was cold (upper 40's, perhaps), and it was lightly raining/sprinkling the whole time.  The first half-hour was miserable until my hands numbed up.  I was wearing my trail runners which are supposedly waterproof.  The left shoe mostly is, but the right definitely is not.  So within an hour my right sock was soaked and my left was damp.  At one point light sprinkling suddenly turned into heavy rain and sleet.  We ran for cover under the tractor but my pants were totally soaked before I got there, and any dryness remaining in my left shoe was gone.  Finally, without finishing, we left because we had to change the fences before dark.

All the animals are free-range and they eat like crazy.  We have temporary fences we change every couple days.  Last week while stepping over a fence I ripped a pair of old work jeans I brought with me.  So I bought these new work pants on Saturday.  They don't really have inseam lengths, so they are naturally a little too short.  Thus I wear them low.

Dusk quickly became dark well before we finished changing the fences. At one point we had to cut through a hedge before setting up a fence.  Florian accidentally sent a branch flying into my face without ever realizing it.  Ten or fifteen minutes later I ripped my new work pants while stepping over a fence.  Shortly thereafter I slipped on a huge wet cow patty I couldn't see and started to fall, but I caught myself with my left hand... in another cow patty.  So my hand was covered in freezing and wet manure which I sort of half wiped off on the grass.  A couple minutes later I had to pee.  Afterwards my hands were so numb I couldn't rebutton these newly ripped pants, so I stuck my thumbs in my mouth to warm them up.  And realized I was sucking on cow shit.

Title track from the fantastic new album.

I read in Colossians yesterday about continuing “in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven.” Immediately I thought of the David Bazan interview I wrote about a few weeks ago. One particular part keeps popping up in my mind.

Bazan mentions “this bullshit parable” basically about how a coal needs surrounding coals to stay lit, because alone it goes out. Then Bazan says, “And I just thought, ‘If there's a real mystical energy that’s coming from this being, from this belief, then the coal just has to keep burning regardless. The surrounding coals can't be the driving force keeping it alive.’” It’s something I’ve heard a few times from different people… this idea that the best way to measure the truth of Christianity is to cut yourself off the Church so you can take a more objective view and see if your faith holds up.

To quote Jellon Lamb, “How extraordinarily quaint!” How very 19th-century positivist of you! And it’s a pretty stupendous feat because it manages to include emotionalism and mysticism too. Wow! I’m impressed! Individualistic, unrealistic, inhumane, pseudo-mystical and unbiblical all at the same time.

In what world (hint: not this one) does isolating yourself from people who agree with you ensure that, oh, now you’ll find out the real truth? “I’m gonna see how much I really love reading by watching TV all the time! ” In what reality (hint: not human) does isolation—and not intimacy—lead to understanding? “We’re gonna test the strength of our marriage by separating!”

It’s ridiculous! And it is, to me, a mini-portrait of some of the major problems of contemporary American Protestantism, which has essentially given over to the modern individualistic view of man just as everyone else is moving beyond it, while also upholding emotionalism as a legitimate proof of faith. So we’ve managed to combine the silliest elements of rationalism (distance enhances understanding) with the silliest elements of mysticism (the amount of caffeine/sleep/drugs you have=faith or no faith). You have Christians absurdly defending empiricism against scary post-modernism, thinking that, oh gees, without objectivity we can’t possibly defend Christianity! And at the same time encouraging people to see emotional highs as proof of faith, which naturally leads to the conclusion that lack of emotion (or, in Bazan’s case, “mystical energy”) implies lack of faith or legitimacy.

People end up cutting themselves off from the Church so they can see if this mystical energy holds up.

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Then again, don’t worry about it. Jesus died for the feeling you’re going to get from watching this awesome performance of “Worried Mind” by Megafaun (with assistance from Bon Iver and, eventually, the crowd) in Tucson, AZ earlier this week. Thanks for the tip Hannah. Music starts about a minute and a half in.

A fascinating short Q&A session with a man generally seen as a patriarch of the Religious Right, though I don't think he's ever been quite so adamantly "Republican Jesus" as others.  Perhaps that is a consequence of his Watergate past.  Whatever the case, he never quite made the step of others on the Religious Right from respected ministry leaders to political godfathers.

And now, he says:

"We made a big mistake in the '80s by politicizing the Gospel. We ought to be engaged in politics, we ought to be good citizens, we ought to care about justice. But we have to be careful not to get into partisan alignment. We [thought] that we could solve the deteriorating moral state of our culture by electing good guys. That's nonsense. Now people are kind of realizing it was a mistake."

I love that.  That seems to me to be a great balance.

He does go on to say, "What we're seeing in society today is a direct consequence of the church failing to be the church."  The implication being that a healthy church guarantees a healthy society?  I'm not sure I agree, considering the conditions in which the church sometimes thrives.

He also says, "What happened in 18th and 19th century England, with the Wesley Movement and with William Wilberforce, was ideal."  I'm not sure about that either.  We can say it was good, but when you make something into an ideal you run the risk of removing it from the particular historical circumstances which made it beneficial and forcing it into circumstances where it is not good.

More than four years removed from the studio, Sufjan seems to be finally putting together another album.  Since Illinois and The Avalanche, we've gotten Christmas music, the BQE, and a handful of scattered tracks.  The tracks were uniformly good and all over the place, from the relatively standard "Majesty, Snowbird" to the low-fi screecher "In the Words of the Governor" to, most recently, the heavily electronic "You are the Blood."

But in the last week he's unveiled five or six new songs in concert, and the three I've managed to hear tend towards "You are the Blood."  I am very excited about his new music and glad that he's not settling into a rut.  Can I just say that I am pretty annoyed that, after almost no touring since early 2007, Sufjan decides suddenly to put together a major tour while I'm in Europe?  That's annoying.

Well, here's "There's Too Much Love" by Sufjan Stevens, live in Ithaca, NY.  The audio is good for a YouTube video, and this track sounds the best given those constraints.




Hear the others here.

For starters, here's the four-song run I just absent-mindedly listened to due to artist name ordering in my iTunes: "Kiss the Ring" by Raekwon, "Killing in the Name Of" by Rage Against the Machine, "Judy is a Punk" by the Ramones, and "Love Story" by Randy Newman.  Awesome.

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Just put a München Facebook album up.


Siegestor ("Victory Gate") (enscription: Dem Bayerischen Heere: "To the Bavarian Army" or maybe "Troops")


The path I take home from the U-Bahn station.


Mariensäule ("Mary's Column," basically)


Normales Kaffee.  Yum.

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In other news, I keep waiting for the sequel to this Luvs Commercial when the babies start doing hard drugs and impregnating each other.

"They all handed their week's work in, and I lifted the pile of fresh poems in the air to feel its weight.  It was unusually heavy, because one of the poems was twenty pages long.  I knew who it was by.  It was called 'Pythagoras Unbound,' and it was by an overeager boy who talked a lot about Czeslaw Milosz.  I skimmed the first page and I saw the word 'endoplasm' and I went cold, like I'd eaten a huge plate of calimari."

I did not realize that Nicholson Baker was familiar with Hillsdale students.  (ziiing)

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this:

"Let me tell you a story about David Eckstein. One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with Eckstein. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints. Other times there were one set of footprints. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow, or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. So I said to David Eckstein, "You promised me, Eckstein, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I noticed that during the most trying periods of my life, there have only been one set of prints in the sand. Why, when I have needed you most, have you not been there for me?" David Eckstein replied, "Because my little legs had gotten tired, and you were carrying me." And I looked down and saw that I was still carrying David Eckstein.

Then he grounded out weakly to second."

I don't much like toilet paper dispensers in homes (of course I like them in public places because it seems more sanitary).  I like the roll free.  I like to put the free end of the roll in my palm and then entomb or cocoon or mummify my hand with a quick wrap or two.  Then I pinch the layer or two with my thumb and pull perpendicularly to rip the serrations apart.

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I'm reading The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker's new novel.  It's very good and it makes me wish I'd brought a book of poetry to Germany.  I thought about taking Wallace Stevens, but then I thought that I almost never pick poetry over a novel or short story or history, so why bother?  Perhaps a mistake.  I have an "Advanced Reader's Edition" that I saw and immediately bought at Bookman's ("Not For Resale").  It says, "Do not quote for publication until verified with finished book."  Which kind of nags at my mind, like, "Did he change this?  Or this?"

I find myself constantly at a loss for words because of the limits in both the quantity and quality of my vocabulary. Not only do I not know most German words, but my grasp on the words I do know is highly shallow (for example, the shades of meaning between these translations of “to listen” are completely lost on me). But here’s the shocking part for me. The more I successfully think in German, the more I find myself struggling not to find German counterparts but to think in any way at all. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Earlier today someone asked me, “Wie geht’s?” (“How’s it going?”). I said, “Gut.” That wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t particularly true either—just the same meaningless response I’d give in English. But because banal questions oddly make me introspective, I probably would have thought about how I really felt. Reconstructing the moment now: I have a bit too much caffeine, a bit too little food in my stomach. I do not feel grumpy. As a matter of fact, I'm enjoying myself. But were something minor to go wrong I might easily become frustrated.

At the time, however, my mind was an utter blank. Gears were churning, brow furrowing, but nothing was coming of it. I wasn’t failing to express my thoughts: I had no thoughts. I had feelings going on. No thoughts. Not German. Not English.

Part of the argument for a liberal arts education goes that if you can’t express something, you can’t think it. So the old “you know what I mean” doesn't suffice. How can I know what you mean if you don’t know what you mean? And if you did, you could say it, and then maybe I would—partially. Now I don’t entirely buy that argument, because half the time I do know what you mean when you say that I know what you mean. Emotions precede expression. Nevertheless, emotion does not become thought without expression, and thinking coherently requires symbol, language, and words.

That abstract idea has become astonishingly manifest. To be honest I felt a small panic. As dramatic as it sounds, that void of expression has some horror in it for someone who has basically been reading and writing full-time for four years and hopes to spend the rest of his life reading, teaching, and writing for a living. Obviously I’m not losing my English comprehension as I learn German (far from it). But in that moment and in many others like it, my failure of expression is simultaneously a failure of thought.

There’s of course a small success to it too. Speaking another language requires not simply new rules and new words but also a different kind of imagination. The goal of language learning is not translation but native thinking—not to think of a sentence auf Englisch and then substitute in German words, but to think in German. And I was thinking in what German I had to express how I felt: none.

Tangentially (briefly), the difference between imagination in American English and in German is minor compared to the change from a verbal imagination to a pictorial one. I am reminded of a blog I recently read that wondered whether getting kids to read is (a) a losing a battle and (b) even a good thing, if their imagination is developing differently. The explosion of visual communication and the comparative shrinking of verbal communication undoubtedly effects our imagination and attention spans: and I’m stodgy (and hypocritical) enough to think that the move from article to blog to tweet is not healthy.

On that note, here’s a music video I like.

Do I like your look?  No.  You're barely out of your teenage years.  You're not that serious, even though you think you are.  Same goes for me, incidentally.

Do I like your music video?  Absolutely not.  Obnoxious and unoriginal, I've got to say.

Do I think you merit all the hype you've been getting and the stellar reviews?  Possibly, but right now I have to say no, probably not.

Are you still a good band, is XX a good album, and is this worth listening to?  Well, considering that I strive not to let "overrated" be synonymous with "bad": yes, yes, yes.