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Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Astor Piazzolla
My writing soundtrack lately has been a bunch of stuff by Astor Piazzolla, arguably the greatest tango composer of the past century. He writes complex, textured, jazzy stuff. It's brilliant. A couple of selections:
Libertango - Yo-Yo Ma and, uh, Some Other People
One of my favorite recordings at all time. The cello part is just the bee's fucking knees.
Chin Chin - Astor Piazzolla
Arguably the finest jazz accordion solo you'll ever see. A strange and beautiful song.
Meditango - Moscow Quartet
And another song I love, in a bizarre (Eastern European) musical arrangement. Perhaps one of the best things about Piazzolla is the flexibility of his music, which seems to fill a huge range of possible instrumentations.
Libertango - Yo-Yo Ma and, uh, Some Other People
One of my favorite recordings at all time. The cello part is just the bee's fucking knees.
Chin Chin - Astor Piazzolla
Arguably the finest jazz accordion solo you'll ever see. A strange and beautiful song.
Meditango - Moscow Quartet
And another song I love, in a bizarre (Eastern European) musical arrangement. Perhaps one of the best things about Piazzolla is the flexibility of his music, which seems to fill a huge range of possible instrumentations.
Target and Strangeness
In order to actually be ready for our trip, JR and I went on an errand-running trip of epic proportions yesterday. We borrowed KJ's car and more or less spent an entire 9-5 workday amongst the soul-crushing strip malls that form a terrifying ring of consumerism around the suburban outskirts of Madison. In a weird way, it was the most compelling pre-trip thing that we've done so far. More than shopping for coats online, or researching the cost of a Navimag ferry in Patagonia, or booking hostels in Valpo, buying all the little things for our trip was what made it hit home that we were leaving for six months. There was something about buying toothpaste and razor blades and deodorant and Ziploc bags which made this all strike home as being, well, real. The past few weeks have been abstracted and dreamlike and, despite constantly reading travel blogs and trip suggestions on the Internet, I've never been able to put myself there. The research has felt like a mental exercise or a kind of fiction that I've built around myself to preserve my sanity in grad school; but that sense of dislocation, that patina of disbelief that hung around this trip, all that fell away the moment I picked up a bottle of sunscreen and thought to myself, "Just how much sunscreen do I actually need?"
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am lousy at projecting forward. But I'm at the point where I can see myself brushing my teeth in a hostel sink somewhere in Patagonia. And even as that dispels one kind of strangeness - the strangeness of planning for something I can't quite envision - it invites an altogether different one. This new strangeness is much more exciting, though it bears an accompanying sense of anxiety (an anxiety that very easily gets caught up in the usual end-of-semester and pre-holiday anxieties). But it's also made everything here feel even more bizarre.
On an unrelated note, it's snowing again - another 2-4 inches tonight. (That's what she said.) Or maybe that's a related note after all: looking at the snow, all I can think about is the fact that I'm going to a country where it's currently summer. And that the only snow I'll see in the next few months will be on the tops of the Andes. And that I'm happy it snowed so much before I left, because watching snow fall on sparse, gray days reminds me of snow days as a kid and traveling in Germany. Part of me is going to miss Wisconsin. But that part of me is definitely not the toes on my left foot, which are currently frozen due to Thieves poor heating system.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am lousy at projecting forward. But I'm at the point where I can see myself brushing my teeth in a hostel sink somewhere in Patagonia. And even as that dispels one kind of strangeness - the strangeness of planning for something I can't quite envision - it invites an altogether different one. This new strangeness is much more exciting, though it bears an accompanying sense of anxiety (an anxiety that very easily gets caught up in the usual end-of-semester and pre-holiday anxieties). But it's also made everything here feel even more bizarre.
On an unrelated note, it's snowing again - another 2-4 inches tonight. (That's what she said.) Or maybe that's a related note after all: looking at the snow, all I can think about is the fact that I'm going to a country where it's currently summer. And that the only snow I'll see in the next few months will be on the tops of the Andes. And that I'm happy it snowed so much before I left, because watching snow fall on sparse, gray days reminds me of snow days as a kid and traveling in Germany. Part of me is going to miss Wisconsin. But that part of me is definitely not the toes on my left foot, which are currently frozen due to Thieves poor heating system.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
This is Not a Freak-Out
So, I'm sitting in Thieves again, trying to write the remainder of my endless, deliriously-written paper on queens and corpses and tombs and Pygmalion and--HOLY SHIT WHAT AM I EVEN WRITING RIGHT NOW.
But I'm not really writing, because there are two women sitting across the shop from me, and one of them has - and I mean this without any hyperbole - the cutest fucking baby I have ever seen. She's a girl, somewhere between 0 months and 3 years old (I don't know how to gauge baby age). But she's tiny. And happy. And she basically just sits there and smiles and flails her arms about and squeaks. And every once in a while - and this is the best part - her mom hands her a Cheerio out of a bag, which she grabs with both hands and nibbles on very slowly, like a squirrel. It's just plain awesome. But I'm starting to creep out the mother, so I think I'll just pay closer attention to writing this. Cute damn kid, though.
On an unrelated (or is it related? I don't know anymore) note, we're under the two-week mark. As in, two weeks from now, I'll be on a plane careening over Colombia. That thought is giving me increasing horror, as my Big-Ass To-Do List still has pretty much everything on it. And another student just asked me to write him a recommendation. Crap crap crap crap fuck crap fuck fuck crap balls crap nutter butters. (Hello, working at home. My parents are going to kill me for being buried in my books for my first several days back in CT.) Oh, well. I guess it can't be helped.
Well, I'm going to go try to re-center my chi by watching the squirrel-baby some more. Creepiness be damned.
But I'm not really writing, because there are two women sitting across the shop from me, and one of them has - and I mean this without any hyperbole - the cutest fucking baby I have ever seen. She's a girl, somewhere between 0 months and 3 years old (I don't know how to gauge baby age). But she's tiny. And happy. And she basically just sits there and smiles and flails her arms about and squeaks. And every once in a while - and this is the best part - her mom hands her a Cheerio out of a bag, which she grabs with both hands and nibbles on very slowly, like a squirrel. It's just plain awesome. But I'm starting to creep out the mother, so I think I'll just pay closer attention to writing this. Cute damn kid, though.
On an unrelated (or is it related? I don't know anymore) note, we're under the two-week mark. As in, two weeks from now, I'll be on a plane careening over Colombia. That thought is giving me increasing horror, as my Big-Ass To-Do List still has pretty much everything on it. And another student just asked me to write him a recommendation. Crap crap crap crap fuck crap fuck fuck crap balls crap nutter butters. (Hello, working at home. My parents are going to kill me for being buried in my books for my first several days back in CT.) Oh, well. I guess it can't be helped.
Well, I'm going to go try to re-center my chi by watching the squirrel-baby some more. Creepiness be damned.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Work Break
Dear god, how had I completely missed this video? I basically live on the Internets, so it alarms me whenever I miss an awesome, Muppet-related, gangsta-rap mash-up. Clearly, I should be on the Internets even more.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
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