Voice

Though it's a tense race, I like vocal music marginally better than instrumentals. Wait, is that true? It depends, but the preponderance of favoured music in my conscious collection belongs to sung songs. There are gems of minimalist and orgiastic instrumentality, too: the ancient zither with its not entirely minor music, complex chorale of drums releasing what Chatwin referred to as "additive" rhythm, vis a vis the European tendency to create structure from subtraction, and of course, the classic pensive room of the piano, the golden autumns of the oboe, the dignified hunt of the French horn, the folksy fiddle from Slavic tragedy, the rolling grasslands of Mongolia in the horse-head violin, et al.

But with chansons and all things sung, one can hum or sing along. Reminds me of carousels, the way I could be carried along by something I loved, larger than I and assuringly mechanised, but musical (the bodiless playback of recorded times). All I have to do is lean into the galloping happening and wait to catch on the next verse or demi-phrase when it swings by confidently with its long arm. Close my eyes and I am whirling past my 6th or 7th year again on the enormous electric glittering wheel of horses and gilt hall mirrors inXiaoyaojing, laughing headstrong into the wind and trees that will always just miss this body in the controlled turbulence.

I was going somewhere into the future, fast. The people who stood behind the menthol green railings were soon spun into the past, even when the machinery slowed and lights came into focus, and I ran towards them still thrumming with momentum, displaced with a glimpse, however unrecognisable, into the future.

* * *
Was a little unwell this morning though I usually like granola. Perhaps it was the salmon sashimi I consumed with nary a bit or bite of shame for the price President Hamilton had to pay. Skipped wushu and read and took a nap while listening to "Saturday Night Fever". I've found my lullabye.

Nothing feels so good as knitting while being entertained. It's not a linear contest--it's not that knitting is better than swimming in waterfall pools or riding through wild lily fields or having a chat with a living poet of some means, but knitting w/b/e is its own peculiar pleasure. I'm planning a new scarf with persimmon- and dun-coloured yarns I bought yesterday from a lady who spoke of C-town and this country (and all its inferior denizens) as unbearably primitive. I've never met a lady with such a cosy hobby who had such a crushing superiority complex. But I liked that she spun her own yarn (quite competently and evenly, a difficult thing to master if my first year at hippie camp was any testament--I did not guess that raw wool would be both so greasy and lumpy--hey I grew up in a smoggy demi-city).

Then she dismissed my favourite yarn, "Manos del Uruguay": "Oh, I just didn't want to get on the bandwagon like everybody else". For those unacquainted with Manos yarns, they are spun and dyed by a co-op of over 200 women in Uruguay. It's a workers' rights kind of place with traditional kettle-dying techniques that produce the most wildly sumptuous colours. The slight striations in hue only add to the richness of the stuff. Clearly, I love, love this stuff--all those earthy, brilliant, TRUE colours--if Keats had seen them, he would have gone a little more crazy. This sublime stuff of the knitting gods was not available to me yesterday. I picked colours from the brand preferred by the lady in the shop, who loomed larger-than-life in her tiny wood sitting room of a business like a queen-bee crowded in by all the spinning wheels, drapes of dyed mohair and sheep's clothing. Her cubby-holes even had the countenance of a hive, close and somehow, crawling, with twisting skeins.

* * *
"Mysterious Skin" was very good, though I suppose there was such insurmountable hype. The acting was non-histrionic and en pointe, the story important. I liked the way it was told. It was sometimes very harrowing to watch, but necessary. A film that elicited more reluctance to keep eyeing yet more immediate urgency to do so was "City of God", which is set in a different time and place, but also considers the extreme losses some children experience. I had meant to see "Mysterious Skin" since last year, when I read about it in a Roger Ebert review. Mr. Ebert and Mr. A.O. Scott of the New York "Times" are my trusted guides through the uneven brambles and meadowlands. I hope Mr. Ebert recovers quickly. It had never occurred to me before this summer that he would one day not be around to share in and illuminate so many people's love of cinema. Mr. A.O. Scott is younger, thankfully, but I haven't taken very well to the newish reviewers in the "Times" and I've already ranted here about the divergence of hermeneutics I share with the Salon critic, S. Zacherek, though her colleague, A. O'Heir, is more my cup of tonic.


During my second year of college, instead of doing reading, I'd often trawl through Roger Ebert's reviews new and old, simply enjoying his experience of films that I may never get to see. I seriously considered entering film journalism then, but still had hands full of fine arts projects and was not about to give them up. After university, I was not sure about what to do with life, but rathered make things than critique them for a living. Self-critique and informed analysis of other are crucial parts of any artist's automatic processes, but not for a living. This is not to be disrespectful to the revered critics. I consider them teachers whose students range farther and wider than most.

Now, I'm beholden to the whims of the orchid plant on the window sill and hunger. How inconvenient is the latter. As much as I love eating, the necessity of eating makes it more trifling. It's a bit like the difference between solitude and loneliness. A good meal is like solitude: deliberate, voluntary, luxurious and something to be sought. Mere satisfaction of hunger is a bit like loneliless: unwelcome yet clockwork, ineluctable, dictatorial.

And now, will enjoy waffles with hot butter and cool jam. Mmm...