In this day and age, when instructed by one’s boyfriend to look out of one’s third floor window, one does not, admittedly, expect to see him cantering up the street on a white stallion, but one is nonetheless somewhat perturbed by the sight of him in a Santa hat with flashing red stars on it, and waving a pink pig lolly.
All in all, I think I rather like this day and age.
Just found out that I have a jurisprudence essay due this Friday. I must not have known about this because it must have been announced at one of the three seminars I decided to skive. Conveniently, I am also told that the major focus of the essay just happens to be the material covered in the aforesaid seminars. Somehow I always manage to do this to myself. It’s a sort of gift.
So, er, if anyone’s got (jurisprudentially informed) views on whether:
1. there is a right answer to every legal question, or
2. what function the notion of community has in the making of law,
I will be eternally grateful and consider naming my firstborn child after you (as long as you’re not called Prunella or Bubba or something similarly vile) if you send a few ideas my way.
[While we’re on the subject of my general crapness, I ought to write here and now that I had a productive power lunch today with Sabrina, where we tried to get our act together about our external moot in January (representing UCL at the Blackstone’s mooting competition), and I have to know something about incorporation of terms into contracts by December 28th so we can start assembling our cunning plan for world moot domination. Must not let Sabrina down. Must not let Sabrina down.]
[While we’re on the subject of my general malaise, I should also add that the only reason I’m typing this whinge right now instead of studying my arse off in the library is because we’ve all been evacuated due to what is apparently a fire emergency. This will, no doubt, give the little gremlins that live in the UCL library ample time to take the books I was using and hide them in Medieval Feminine Hygiene Products or some other ridiculously obscure section of the library. They do this frequently. I was hoping I’d foiled them today. Obviously not. Gah.]
It probably says something about the Beta Band when you’ve been listening to The Three E.P.’s, which you’ve owned for a while but somehow never listened to very much, and vaguely wonder why they’ve chosen to end the album with several renditions of the Ave Maria on unaccompanied saxophone, but you shrug your shoulders figuring hey, it’s the Beta Band, this is the sort of thing they’d do, and then you realize the album ended long ago, and it’s been your neighbour practising all along.
Tiny glittery stars are strewn along the floors of my hall, incredibly well dispersed from their original places on the tables at our Christmas dinner party by getting caught and carried in clothes and under shoes, or unstuck from noses and cheeks and foreheads. It’s rather nice.
The Christmas party had highs and lows, lows being the mediocre cuisine and people who couldn’t sing particularly well deciding they’d sing for what felt like particularly long, but of course we all clapped and squealed and hollered “Encore!” because that’s what this hall is like, highs being Mark’s unfailing ability to choose the exact moment a priest is walking by to be saying PUBES!!!, giggling with Tay about him getting his guitar out and leading everyone in a rousing chorus of “FEEEEEEEED THE WOOOOOORLD”, and a brief period in the bar where a small number of people were going absolutely apeshit dancing until everyone promptly decided they were far too drunk to continue and went off to vomit/attempt to pull/sleep.
Neither high nor low but just in a whole other dimension was Father J dressing up as the Queen (complete with handbag) and giving his version of the Queen’s speech (tailored for the hall), which included statements like a new pricing system for showers which would involve “50p for a 30 second spurt”, and then dancing to, unsurprisingly but terrifyingly, Dancing Queen.
Life was somewhat back to normal yesterday, or at least it seemed normal by the time I’d woken up at 2 pm. Have been grappling with a morass of practical really-must-do’s since then – Conflict of Laws reading, choosing my Big Jurisprudence Book option for next term (see below if interested), badgering NatWest about the Switch card they’re supposed to send me but haven’t.
[I’m going for Plato’s The Last Days of Socrates as first choice and Machiavelli’s The Prince as second. Discarded Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship and Montesquieu’s The Spirit Of The Laws early on because they take a more sociological approach to the law than I’m interested in, decided against Finnis’s Natural Law and Natural Rights, Dworkin’s Life’s Dominion and Mill’s On Liberty despite their legendary status because they felt like ground a little too well trodden, and finally eliminated Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic rather reluctantly later on because they sounded a little less fun than my final two choices, and also because, as Alec pointed out, it might ultimately feel unfulfilling and difficult to take them on without a wider grounding in philosophy.]
Pleasant distractions abound, though. Amazing dinner at Alec’s, cooked by Larry (home-made bread, tortellini, duck, The Mother Of All Chocolate Cakes, wine, some other alcoholic beverage that tasted of lemons). Excitement about Friday’s Tori Amos gig, and Saturday’s outing to Rent. Slight consternation as to how to avoid nudity and freezing in Andorra in a few weeks, note to self: find out about renting skiing clothes.
Recent arrivals from Django:
April March: Chrominance Decoder
Right now I find myself incapable of saying more about this album other than that it is incredibly boring. Nothing of the rambunctious tweeness that made Chick Habit such a romp. The liner notes are amusingly pretentious and say things like “So April is a child. But nothing is quite what it seems. Could it be that she really loved you, Mr Clever? And what, or who, does she think of when the end-credits dissolve from the TV screen and the murmur of radio parasites wraps her in electrical snow?”, but I can write nothing about the music, because each of the four times I have tried playing it, it fades into the background within minutes, and believe me, when you have a very bored Michelle ploughing through the Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters 1968 and longing for distraction, something has to be very boring indeed if it doesn’t distract. And this album is very boring. Please talk to me if you have heard this album and like it. I would like to stop being bored.
Sue Garner & Rick Brown: Still
Earlier this year I described them (inadequately) as “Sarah McLachlan’s voice singing with Ani DiFranco’s attitude accompanied by Sonic Youth remixed by Tortoise”, and I am unfortunately unable to come up with a better description, but they really do deserve better than my fumbling reductive comparisons. Different feels to the songs depending on who’s singing: her tones are as dulcet as anything the Lilith Fairies can warble, and his are as nondescript as most of indie-rock’s finest, but in every song you feel this is a band that likes the subtleties of sound – in a lot of the second track (I Like The Name Alice) the sound we hear with the most clarity and detail are the steely plucks of the guitar, with her voice farther away, and each note’s got a twang, a twist, an emphasis of its own that the other notes don’t have. A note of its own in the wider scheme of notes. This appeals to me. I’m a believer in the individuality of notes.
(Still eagerly awaiting Leaves Turn Inside You, which has yet to arrive.)
(Elsewhere in the convenient world of online music reviews, Pitchfork likes the new Silver Jews, Flak reviews the Piano Magic compilation, and I really wish I could rave about MJ’s latest as much as PopMatters does.)
(Did I mention Chrominance Decoder is boring?)
Not-so-burning but still infuriating question of the day: why, why, why do something like half my Google hits seem to come from people searching for Audrey Tautou’s mammaries? And why the hell am I first on the list?
In other news, I have nothing more disturbing to report from Luke’s latest visit to the UK than a phallic salad (large leek, effect enhanced by cherry tomatoes) and a violated wok. This is a good thing, considering that on previous visits he has perfumed my room with Spam and given Nazi salutes to oncoming cars on narrow one-lane roads in Scotland.
Today I have walked along a still-sleeping Brick Lane on a bagel mission, and had a leisurely breakfast in a room with a skylight, and jazz, and lovely company. I have ridden on the tube half-blind because I didn’t have my spectacles (this time with a cast-iron excuse for not making eye contact with the guy asking for change: it’s not that I was deliberately avoiding his gaze, I just couldn’t see his eyes to begin with), although once the train is moving the world outside isn’t any more of a blurred rush without specs than it is with them. I have walked home down Gower Street in a quiet riot of sun and blue and leaves, and scrunched through fallen yellow in the UCL compound. I have been rather happy.
Based on the events of the past few days:
Just like that, a week gone and nothing written here about it. Cue inevitable cliche (time, fly, fun, blah).
Get thee behind me, Real Life.
For now, have some Primo Levi, who I’ve been enjoying these days in rare moments of solitude:
After R.M. Rilke
Lord, it’s time; the wine is already fermenting.
The time has come to have a home,
Or to remain for a long time without one.
The time has come not to be alone,
Or else we will stay alone for a long time.
We will consume the hours over books,
Or in writing letters to distant places,
Long letters from our solitude.
And we will go back and forth through the streets,
Restless, while the leaves fall.
(You might also want to read Rilke’s Autumn Day, which the above poem was written in response to.)
Currently playing, probably too loudly, on my speakers:
My neighbours are possibly feeling less than Christian love for me right now.