November 2006

Books read:

Why Not Me? – Al Franken
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nite-Time – Mark Haddon
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Jonathan Safran Foer
The History of the Middle East – Peter Mansfield
Peter Pan – J.M. Barrie (abandoned)
Heroes, Gods and Monsters of the Greek Myths – Bernard Evslin
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree – Nick Hornby

Music enjoyed:
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene
The Foo Fighters – Skin and Bones
Lily Allen – Alright Still
Gomez – How We Operate
Alex Camaaño Mix - Secret Lunch Hour of the Librarians

I was riding high above the road in the charter bus on my way home from school when I first really got the chance to sit down and listen to Skin and Bones by The Foo Fighters. To my left was the blackened sky that together with the dark sea spiralled off into a black infinity only to be broken up by the occasional commercial liner ship, floating beacons of civilization trudging infinity. To my right was the purple sky of the setting sun. The undulating mountains provided the background of shadows blocking the sun while the palm trees in the foregrounds were indistinguishable yet through shape. The scene to my right was of shapes that had been cut out of black construction paper and placed on a dark purple backing. Why is the dusk sky purple in Valencia? None of this description has much if anything to do with The Foo Fighters or their new acoustic live album, but it has everything to do with the image that will be in my head everytime I hear this album. This album can’t mean the same to someone else like it does me because they weren’t there to see the purple sky and the black palm trees. No one else was paying attention to the perfectly lined glowing globes floating across pitch black nothing to my right. No one else was being re-introduced to “Marigold”.
I met Marigold in 199_. I was blown away by its restraint and by the fact that the drummer was singing, Dave Grohl could sing…who knew? Of course that realization seems silly by now. Yet Marigold remained a needy infant that demanded inclusion into my mix tapes. I couldn’t deny it and from 199_ until 200_ Marigold graced at least one version of a mix tape or CD that I made to win over new friends. You know what…Marigold is all grown up now and he doesn’t need me anymore. The quiet little bedroom tape has given way to a full on aurchistral experience.
I like my live albums muddy. As far as I can tell the mastering and recording of Skin and Bones is near perfection. You can hear the strings restrain against the guitar pick before they leap off into their protesting sigh. It is crystal clear, as if I really was carrying the band along with me in my Dell mp3 player. I shouldn’t like it, but I do…it seems right.
I read on the bus on my way to school and I listen to music on the way home. One way is too loud and I need the book to escape, I couldn’t hear the music anyway. The other way is too dark and I need the music to escape, I couldn’t read the words anyway. I get most of my reading done either on buses or while waiting for them. Here is what I have learned in my bus stop literary conferences….I don’t like Peter Pan. I have been trying to read it for about three weeks now and I keep finding other books to pick up so that I can interrupt it for something else. I continued to do this until I could justify it to myself why it was that I wasn’t able to connect or care about this book. In between my experience with Peter Pan I read The History of the Middle East. I would have made a terrible physicist or European/African/Asian. Once we start dipping into negative numbered years I have problems. The BC(E) dates mess with my head, my grasp on time is very linear and it can only move in a progressive direction, once the numbers begin to digress so then does my comprehension. It is impossible to accurately discuss the history of the Middle East without counting backwards for a good portion of the book. The beauty of being an American is that there isn’t much math expected from me in my history lessons. The other beauty of being an American is that I can make ignorant statements such as the former and it can be shrugged off because well…I’m American.
I started reading The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby and I am stealing his format. I don’t look at is theft I look at as an exercise in free verse thinking. Lately I have been trying to hard to coherently connect dots with lines that would form into a cohesive short story with an absolute beginning middle and end. I had all three of those things and then I lost the ends. A little while later the middles stopped happening, now I am forced to suffer notebooks of beginnings. Eventually those are going to go away too. I am exercising, I am writing….there is no beginning other than to describe a particular Thanksgiving evening in Valencia Spain while listening to a particular song, which incidentally transpired at the end of my day…there goes my beginning.
I wonder what’s on television right now….