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Rereading: White Fang

The only thing that's keeping me reading Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec) are these effusive Amazon reviews, which promise that if I just stick it out a bit longer all will become clear and wonderful and no longer stupefyingly boring. I've been reminding myself of all this for 78 pages now, which is not unreasonably long for a book to get going (many others have wonderful beginnings and then meander into mediocrity), but I must say that much of what's keeping me grimly soldiering on is the need to believe that I'm still an intellectual being in fields other than the law.

Another obstacle to my making headway with the book is the presence of White Fang on my bedside table. Somewhere in Spain, talking about childhood reading, we discovered that we both really loved White Fang but were less enthused with The Call Of The Wild, because White Fang was way cooler than Buck, who sometimes tended towards wussiness. But despite the fact that I knew I'd always had a definite preference, and I'd probably read both books over ten times each when I was younger, I couldn't actually remember distinct plotlines for each one any more. These memory lapses tend to trouble me quite a lot, less because of the simple argh-it's-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue aspect of trying and failing to remember, more because of that old worry I have about how much I've forgotten - that I haven't just forgotten particular nuggets of knowledge, but that I've also forgotten I ever possessed the knowledge at all.

So I got the book out of the UCL library the other day, and it's honestly been like a homecoming. What's fascinating is that standard aspects of narrative like plot and the names of characters are still hazy. What swims back to me with startlingly familiar clarity are little, relatively insignificant things. At the beginning, the revelation of the lone man battling the pack of wolves with firebrands, of the wonderful intricacy of his being - the way his little finger, too close to the flame, automatically re-adjusts itself on the wood. I used to be able to see that little finger shrinking from the flame, the wolves skulking in the darkness out of the corner of my eye. When the puppy later named White Fang first ventures out of the den where he was born, tumbles into a nest of baby ptarmigans, picks one up in his mouth and naturally begins to eat it, I could always taste the salt of its blood, feel the splintering of delicate bones.

Bar Top Dance Leads To Riots, Collapse Of Nation

If you're Singaporean or know Singapore well, Bar Top Dance Leads To Riots, Collapse Of Nation at talkingcock.com is absolutely, intensely, please-stop-my-stomach's-in-agony funny.

Autumn Leaves

You couldn't ignore leaves yesterday. They were everywhere, streets, gutters, pavements, air. At one point along the street they were curiously crowded on a spot of pavement between two bollards and a parked car, as if they'd been herded in and corralled like animals. We wondered whether a sweeper might have been along earlier, but surely it wouldn't have made sense to merely sweep them there and leave them?

In the quest for a pub that was open (it was just before noon), we walked through leaf whirlwinds outside Mabel's Tavern, and had to literally lean well into the wind (not howling or wailing, but incredibly robust) to cover the last few metres to The Rocket. In Safeway people were scrunching through the fruit and veg section over the leaves that had been blown well into the store and all over the floor. The Goose finally opened, and we settled down on the couch for a lazy lunch over Sunday papers and sprinklings of conversation.

Every now and then along the pavements there were sizable branches, noticeably out of place on the ground in their more-than-twigness. On the way home from evening mass the ends where they broke off from their standing trees gleamed white in the dark.

Somewhere in all this is the hour we gained when the clocks went back, and gut feeling tells me it was well spent.

Affirmation

In conversation the other day Alec told me his idea for starting his own website. It would be called Your Blog Is Shite, and he would write rants about how completely pathetic the blogging community is, with featured links to illustrate his points. He assured me he'd get to mine as soon as he could.

Continuing in this romantic and sensitive tradition, we're going cottaging (dumb sleazy joke intended) for our first anniversary. Our cosy getaway of love is called The Hole.

Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia

I'm not sufficiently steeped in Mogwai musicology to be able to tell yet whether Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia are highest-form flatterers or shameless copycats, but in the meantime I'm thoroughly enjoying the tracks I've downloaded, and at the very least it has to be said that the name totally kicks ass.

Do Black People Love Nick Cave?

Scattered thoughts while trying and failing to understand international trade law, and listening to Nick Cave (No More Shall We Part):

• Something about the dinky piano instrumentation in 15 Feet Of Pure White Snow reminds me of Tubular Bells (Mike Oldfield), in a good way.
• I think God Is In The House doesn't really work as the title of a Nick Cave song, unless he's trying to be ironic. If I were a bootleg remixer, I'd find some way to do God Is In The House vs Jesus In The House (Novelty Irish release by Father Brian and the Fun Loving Cardinals) vs Our House (Madness). Perhaps all to a house beat.
• I love whoever came up with Black People Love Us, despite being yellow.

Oh dear. This is one of those days where boredom breeds banality.

Flat Chronicles: Friendly Party People

Drunk man on street outside our flat: All you part-y people 'earin' me I wan' ya to say BOO!
Me, in bedroom/Tamara, in kitchen (simultaneously): BOO!

I like our flat. It's friendly.

Dinner Parties And DJ Shadow Gigs

The frustrating thing is that while I was drifting through the world on autopilot (see previous post) I was actually doing lots of fun things, which I probably didn't appreciate as fully as they deserved.

We had a dinner party of sorts on Friday - Tamara pulled off an impressive three-course feat a few weeks ago, and Alec wanted to return the favour. Avril, Chris, Kevin and me were just along for the ride, although I must mention that I tried to make myself useful in the kitchen by clearing rubbish, handing him things, and unsuccessfully breadcrumbing the bacon. (Note to self: must really make an effort to do the same at some point, although given current level of culinary skill, would be better off buying ready-meals from M&S and pretending to have cooked them.)

On Saturday we (me, Alec, Benny, assorted others) headed south to see DJ Shadow at the Brixton Academy. We missed the first two opening acts (Fingathing and Beanz from Antipop Consortium), which I was fairly disappointed about, because I had a feeling I'd have liked them more than Soulwax, who were good novelty fun but didn't really get me dancing except for when they played Kool Thing (Sonic Youth) and It's Hot In Here (Nelly, and I'm not ashamed). I've never really taken to The Prodigy's Outer Space, and was even less fond of it last night when it prompted Wanker Lad behind me to convulsing, elbow-jabbing heights of ecstasy.

Shadow put on a good show, but as DJ gigs go I had more fun at Orbital, and still remember the Scratch Perverts being very much the shit when I saw them at Fabric Live a few years ago. To be fair, factors beyond his control were at work. When I hear a hip-hop beat I want to dance - by this logic, I would obviously have wanted to dance at many points during his performance. The problem is that he doesn't really make the sort of hip-hop I like dancing to, he makes the sort of music I listen to on cold, late nights alone in my room, Organ Donor cascading down from the speakers and feeling like I'm the only one awake in the world to hear it. So I was torn, I guess. The atmosphere at the venue tempted me into dancing, but when I did I wasn't really dancing the way I like to dance. I was also too short to be able to fully appreciate his visuals from where I was in the crowd, though what I saw of them when I craned my neck or tiptoed was good.

But as I said, none of that was his fault. He put in a solidly competent performance, included new spins on album tracks, and built a good rapport with the crowd, and I suppose that's everything you want from a DJ gig. If I'd seen it before I left Singapore to come to the UK it would have absolutely blown my mind. After three years here, I recognize quality when I see it - and Shadow was most definitely quality - but I've also seen a lot of it, and I guess it's hard to make me gibber these days, which I must say is worrying. Having said that, the next gig on the agenda is Fugazi (Nov 3), which will probably succeed in the gibbering sweepstakes, even if only because I am likely to spend most of it crushed to an inch of my life between sweaty, bald, tattooed hardcore punks.

I'm Sorry, I Was Somewhere Else

Something has been wrong. Over the past few days I've been grouchy, boring, incapable of holding up my end of conversations, and have generally found any sort of interaction with most of the world extremely annoying. (My smart-arse friends will probably send reassuring emails telling me nothing was different, but give me the benefit of the doubt for now.)

It started with a rut on Thursday due to sudden panic about time passing and my brain remaining empty of Masters-related knowledge, and frustration with my lack of ability to get out of bed before noon. It then passed into a weird dreamy antisocialness, going through the day with minimal mental engagement with the world around me. Like I'd switched off cognition and gone on autopilot. I think the major point I want to make is that if you're someone who's interacted with me in the past few days, I'm sorry, I was somewhere else.

I think I'm back now, though.

I Wasn't Made For Diplomacy

The reading on cultural relativism I've been doing for my comparative human rights course has been boring me so far. This isn't because it's especially tough or dry, it's because it's just so earnest and civilized. Human rights are important. Social and political cultures are complex and diverse. It's really, really difficult to figure out how best to protect everything and everyone, but we must keep trying. GROUP HUG!!!

In contrast, Voltaire once said he would rest in peace only when the last king was strangled in the entrails of the last priest. Philosophical discourse must have been so much more fun in those days.

Waking Ear

Yesterday while walking into college, people on the streets were looking suspiciously at me. Perhaps it's because I was wearing bright red on a cold, grim rainy day. But I have a feeling it was more probably the fact that I was humming Tom's Diner (the lyrics aren't the thing, though. It's that melody line that loops through basically the whole song and NEVER LEAVES YOUR HEAD, EVEN HOURS LATER, DAMMIT...), which was in my waking ear that morning and unfortunately had to be inflicted on everyone else.

Testing Testing

Here is the problem: I have settled the problem of web-hosting for at least the next year, and have significantly more space in my postgraduate computer account in which to frolic. Unfortunately, as I type this I have the distinct feeling of standing on a stage in an empty auditorium because I haven't managed to post anything on my standby blog at Blogspot directing traffic here. Also, I don't seem to be able to find myself here in Google searches, which I'll try to remedy by discreetly including some keywords (Michelle Michelle Michelle ineffable ineffable ineffable blog blog blog) in this post.

But hopefully, the problem will get solved at some point, and I suppose those of you who do manage to find me are the ones who really, really want to (yup, all three of you). So this is where I will continue to brew my word stews of boring day descriptions, struggling music writing, occasional links, and inscrutable Michelleness. Keep coming here if it floats your boat and thanks for bearing with me this far.

[Oh yes: it would be nice if you could let me know you've found me again. I confess I do sometimes like keeping track of all you. :) ]

Whoops

Oh, goodness. In the midst of trying to make passionate love to my textbooks, I almost forgot: university IT-powers-that-be insist on me getting a new computer account, which will affect the URL of this site. If this site suddenly disappears, please keep in touch with me at theineffable.blogspot.com, where I'll be posting until I sort out the new webspace.

I suppose this would all be easier if I went and did the domain name thingy like all the grown-up bloggers do.

If Google Says It, It Must Be True

According to Google I am the number three resource on the Internet for indieness. Right on. I is well cool.

Flat Chronicles: Kind Of Settled In

The domestic pleasures I've been enjoying lately don't really make for sensational blogging, but I'll write about them anyway.

• Central heating finally works (Yay Alec for figuring it out!). Temperature in flat thankfully no longer the same as temperature outside.
• Basil plant well-recovered from its downward spiral into dessication. (Out of desperation we absolutely drenched the soil with water.)
• Carpenter's finally fixed curtain rods (no more fear of death by falling-curtain-rod-concussion) and adjusted height of shower bracket (no more fear of hypothermia while soaping). You'd think the automatic objective of anyone putting a shower bracket into a wall would be to put it at a height at which the shower head could actually be put into it, but apparently not so with whoever did it for this flat. Unimaginable joy last night with the realization that I could actually have warm water cascading down me while I soaped, instead of doing so shiveringly while I clenched the shower head between my knees.
• Bookcase and shoe-rack finally assembled. Shoe-rack relatively simple with only one kind of nail used, but bookcase very complex with multiple screws involved. Much loud cursing when I discovered, after building the whole bloody thing, that the unvarnished side of one of the wood shelves was facing outward rather than towards the wall, but will think up inventive ways to either cover it or exploit it artistically.
• Very importantly, we have unlimited Internet access. Downloading has begun, along with associated time-suckage, loss of ambition, eventual ruination of lives etc.

I also forgot to mention before, that not content with perpetrating navel-gazing, geekness and chronic social dysfunction only in my own person, I introduced my flatmate Tamara to the joys of Blogger. Unveiling of our new kinky FlatmateCam soon to come. Well, not really, given that we spend most of our time eating, drinking and girltalking, which I suppose isn't particularly arousing.

Alt-Country Limits

I'm still trying to decide whether or not to go to any of the Further Beyond Nashville gigs. The best ones are at the Barbican, which recently spectacularly failed to impress me with its sound architecture. Over there, I'm torn between Will Oldham + Sparklehorse and Lambchop Quartet + Alejandro Escovedo. On the other hand, Alejandro Escovedo's doing a solo gig at the Borderline, which is a venue I've always wanted to try.

A third, and actually quite pertinent, consideration, is that perhaps there's only so much alt-country I can even take. My latest Neil Young purchase (Comes A Time) features the lyrical gem "In the field of opportunity, it's ploughing time again". It is followed by a song called Motorcycle Mama.

Story of my life.

Story of my life.

Hurt Pride, Bruised Back

A lot got done today, though nothing in completion. Shoe rack bought and lugged (but they were out of desk lamps and laundry baskets, so I have to go back). Textbooks obtained (but I have to go back in search of one more tomorrow). The one thing I managed to do quite meticulously was injure the right side of my body while falling down some stairs. Right knuckles grazed, right elbow whacked, and an impressive bruise coming up on the right side of my back in pretty twilight colours.

I went to mass at my old hall for the first time since returning to England. It felt immensely comforting from the minute I walked in and sat down, but I'm still trying to figure out if that was because of the chapel's nostalgia and familiarity for me, or because it happened to be the first time since returning that I'd gone into mass feeling unhappy enough to be in need of comfort. A poem got written about it, but as usual I have too little confidence in the quality of my poetry to make it public.

Joshua Bell Playing Sibelius (Barbican, 2002)

Much shrieking was done on Wednesday night when, while browsing through a Barbican programme I'd picked up on a whim, I suddenly discovered that Joshua Bell was playing the Sibelius violin concerto tonight (BBC Symphony Orchestra, Sir Andrew Davis).

The first thing I'll mention, with my usual "I'm not an expert BUT" disclaimer, is that the acoustics of the Barbican concert hall seemed as dreadful as legend has made them out to be (as the Telegraph puts it, "the last great exemplar of how not to build a concert hall"), despite the much-vaunted revamp. I shudder to think what it must have been like before. Sound seemed brittle and strangled, struggling to reach us like a tethered dog on a cruelly short leash. This rendered the Stravinsky programme opener more damp squibs than Fireworks, and Joshua Bell's highest notes in the Sibelius sometimes got drowned by the orchestra.

I came home and listened to my recordings of the Stravinsky and Sibelius. The Stravinsky recording has all of the caprice and pizzazz that sputtered and died in the concert hall. The Sibelius is the classic Jascha Heifetz recording, and I was quite worried before tonight that because I've grown to love this particular one so much, that I'd be unable to appreciate Joshua Bell's rendition for what it was. My concerns proved unfounded simply because he was brilliant enough to make comparison unnecessary, perhaps a little less note-perfect than Heifetz, but he brought out all the delicacy and poignance that the divine, divine first movement begs for, and delivered enough fiery virtuosic touches to keep the thrill-seeker in me happy as well, so no complaints at all.

And then we come to the second half of the evening. I am far from conservative and close-minded where it comes to taste in music, but Colin Matthews' vile Renewal really did seem to tick all the stereotypical failure boxes of modern composition. I have no problems with dissonance and repetition, but I felt as if I was descending into a neverending quicksand of disharmony without ever touching ground. Writing in weird-tone scales is all very well for stoking intellectual libido, but it leaves the average listener with little or no awareness of when resolution or evolution takes place, much less any melodic pattern of notes that's capable of staying in the mind. And I'm not even arguing this from the viewpoint of the aggrieved pleb. Having played for five years in an orchestra which regularly included modern compositions in its repertoire, I'd venture that while I'm far from being an expert, I do have a little more understanding of modern music than the average listener - not that it helped tonight.

After sitting stupefied for the first three minutes, Avril and I unfortunately started on one of our giggling episodes. These usually involve muffled hysteria, sometimes snorts, in all the most inappropriate situations. We managed to calm down after ten minutes of acute stomach pain, and thankfully only experienced sporadic outbursts of mirth over the next forty bloody minutes of the piece before its merciful end.

Postgrad Library Privileges Totally Rock

Finally I can point to a tangible benefit I am obtaining from this Masters: as a postgraduate I can now borrow TWENTY, COUNT 'EM!, books from the UCL library, instead of my previous limit of ten. I tottered home happily yesterday with nine books and will return for a second lot soon. Only two were actually about law.

• The Past (Galway Kinnell)
• Corson's Inlet (A.R. Ammons)
• Collected Poems (Philip Larkin)
• Poems For The Millennium (a huuuuuuge anthology and therefore enticing even if naffly titled)
• A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (James Joyce, first foray - fingers crossed)
• Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec)
• The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight (Vladimir Nabokov)
• Legal Aspects Of The Information Age (Ian Lloyd)
• Cases And Materials On Intellectual Property (W.R. Cornish)

I'm a happy bookworm. Between this and the fact that after two years of living in a hall with no Internet connections I now have unlimited access in my flat, the pertinent (rhetorical) question I am beginning to ask is: who needs a social life?

Onion/McSweeneys Links

20 Percent Of Area Man's Income Spent Ironically (The Onion)

Also see All Chewbacca's Dialogue In The Comic Book Version Of The Empire Strikes Back (McSweeney's).

Argos Bliss

Perhaps I will know I have finally arrived in life when my yearly romp through the Argos catalogue ceases to be a source of intense pleasure. For the moment this joy no doubt belies my shocking lack of sophistication because of course only the working classes shop there, dahling. I am nonetheless incorrigible in my bliss. The path to practical necessities like laundry baskets and storage solutions is happily paved with Vidal Sassoon Maximum Funk It Up! hair dryers (a multi-function nozzle for choppy or smooth!), cordless hair straighteners and floating candle sets, and while I fall short of being girly enough to actually buy any of these, I'm most definitely girly enough to love looking at them anyway.