Delights for the Ingenious

Displacement

2007-06-27T12:06:38Z

After due consideration, I've decided it's time for a change.

That's my way of saying that this blog has moved, and will henceforth be found at:

delightsfortheingenious.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you all there.

Politiques Potentielles

2007-06-15T22:32:48Z

Via Blogmeridian (et al) comes a real underdog story. Paul Potts, mobile phone salesman, is competing in Simon Cowell's latest cringe-fest, "Britain's Got Talent", and has won over pretty much everybody (including me, insofar as I feel I need to support anybody in this particular race... better him than arch rival Bessie).

Everybody that is, except for one mean-spirited commentator (and overall pretentious arsehole, by the sound of it) — who's soon set right in the comments section, from tvanrys (who by the name I suspect might actually be Welsh and thus biased) downwards (not that I've read all the comments, mind you) — and the ever-vigilant Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten (so called because that's how long it takes to read — no joke).

20 Minuten (and only the German language edition, oddly enough), claim to have uncovered a "TV-Beschiss" (from German 'bescheißen' meaning, literally, to 'beshit' someone, i.e. to pull s.o.'s leg (a word previously featured on this blog with reference to my last trip to Switzerland, as it happens)). I'm sure the readers of 20 Minuten have gone to work feeling satisfied that yet another instance of media manipulation has been uncovered in a country other than their own, but the fact of the matter is, of course, that there in fact is no story here.

Even a cursory glance at Mr. Potts's Wikipedia page reveals that he has indeed appeared on television before, and that he has in fact participated in a masterclass of Pavarotti's (which I suppose technically might make him a student of his, but there is a subtle difference there somewhere, I'm fairly sure), and even sung in an opera or two at the renowned Bath Opera company, which just so happens to be an amateur company — which would seem to go some way towards vitiating the 20 Minuten's description of him as an "ausgebildeter Opern-Profi", it seems to me.

I mean, give the guy a break. So what if he's not quite up to professional standard — despite having, yes I know it's hard to believe, sung before, in front of people even? He still works at Carphone Warehouse and met his wife on the internet. Who cares if he's picked the only two operatic pieces your average British punter is likely to reward with a standing ovation; "Nessun dorma" from Italia '90 and "Con te partirò (feat. Sarah Brightman)" from every Mother's Day compilation of the last decade? It's a talent show, and a low-brow one at that. He's hardly going to do anything obscure, now is he?

Admittedly, I'm somewhat dubious of his decision to sing "Nessun dorma" again for the final on Sunday. Surely there's a third [p]opera hit he could attempt? "Ridi Pagliaccio", perhaps?

Hmmm. Maybe not. Still, if there are any Queen fans in the audience they might get it, but otherwise it might be ill-advised as a grand finale.

We shall see.

Edit: hey if Michael bloody Bolton(!) can do it... (!!!)

Ahem.

Otherwise, I suppose there's always "Ave Maria" or "O Sole Mio" (both of which Pavarotti appears to have sung with the unlikeliest of candidates, if you check the related videos).

OK, that's quite enough for one evening. G'night.

Protestens ABC

2007-06-05T10:35:26Z

From the front page of the culture section of today's Politiken, a hilarious image taken at the Rostock protests in the run-up to the G8 meeting.

No comment

Pantheon of the Improbably Named, part II

2007-06-03T11:33:28Z

Shepherd's Delight

2007-06-03T10:08:34Z

The transcendental apperceptive unity of the I

2007-04-27T02:43:25Z

Via 3quarksdaily comes a review of Douglas Hofstadter's latest book I Am a Strange Loop, upon which I felt compelled to comment (which is somewhat unusual for me, I must confess). Perhaps because I'm new to this commenting game, and perhaps feel slightly nervous posting comments on the TLS website, it comes across as far more pretentious and snooty than I had intended. Nevertheless, I stand by it. This is indeed a very old story; far from being "science’s last frontier", it seems to me more like one of its first, at least if you admit philosophy as a science, and Hofstadter's book strikes me as more philosophical than scientific.

Leaving Prof. Kriegel's lion example aside for the time being (including his apparent confusion as to the meaning of 'hallucination'), my question is: what's so disconcerting about this idea? What on Earth is the self if not a self-referential loop? Is this not the essence of "Cogito ergo sum"? The self thinks itself into being and through thinking maintains its existence, which also means it cannot un-think itself, until it stops thinking altogether.

Well... I suppose that is the disconcerting part, then, isn't it? That the self should be tied to the body is inherent even in the Christian doctrine of the reunion of soul and body after the Last Judgement, but that presupposes an immortal soul, which this system would appear not to allow for — although, actually, I don't really see why it couldn't...

Quote of the Day:

2007-04-16T13:30:22Z

"Statuettes of the Virgin Mary sit side by side with wolf-whistling toy mountain marmots. An uneasy alliance if ever there was one."

East Jesus, KS

2007-04-11T02:59:59Z

Having only just discovered Veoh, via www.alluc.org, I present to you: Jesus Camp.

'Tis downloading as we speak, which is good, as I must press on with my Eichendorff presentation, but I'm told this is really good.

Quote of the Day:

2007-04-04T01:18:57Z

“In Detroit and around the world, WrestleMania, a smorgasbord of hairspray, cleavage and monster body slams, remains as popular as ever.”
(Synopsis of this article)

"Absolutely guilty"

2007-04-03T01:31:50Z

I have always been inclined to agree with Sean Penn's last words in Dead Man Walking that "I think killin's wrong, whether it's me, or y'all, or your government", and so I was pleased to read a cogent, concise, expansion upon that sentiment by Justin E. H. Smith, who occasionally posts over at 3qd, and thought you might be too: here it is.

A Squeeze of the Hand.

2007-04-01T18:27:25Z

According to philoclea, the following is the greatest literary passage ever written in any language. I felt it was worth sharing. Guess what it's from.

That whale of Stubb's, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the
Pequod's side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations
previously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling
of the Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.

While some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed
in dragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm;
and when the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully
manipulated ere going to the try-works, of which anon.

It had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with
several others, I sat down before a large Constantine's bath of it, I
found it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about
in the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back
into fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times
this sperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a
sweetener! such a softener! such a delicious molifier! After
having my hands in it for only a few minutes, my fingers felt like
eels, and began, as it were, to serpentine and spiralise.

As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter
exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under
indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands
among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven
almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and
discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as
I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,--literally and truly, like
the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I
lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in
that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I
almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is
of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that
bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or
malice, of any sort whatsoever.

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that
sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till
a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself
unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their
hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate,
friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was
continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes
sentimentally; as much as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why
should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest
ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us
all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves
universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now,
since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that
in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his
conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the
intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the
table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have
perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In
thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in
paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

Overhead in 310 Hamilton

2007-03-22T02:24:20Z

TF: ...So I ended up arguing that pseudonymity is a "mode of transgression".

SS: How very antinomian of you.

TF: Why thank you.

Against authenticity in art

2007-03-01T17:54:41Z

The Arts section of today’s New York Times reports the theft of two paintings by Picasso. Inevitably, the sub-heading reads: “Two important paintings by Picasso estimated by the police to be worth a total of about $66 million have been stolen from the Left Bank home of his granddaughter Diana Widmaier-Picasso, the authorities announced Wednesday.” The inevitability here refers neither to the specifics of the crime nor to the particular paintings stolen; indeed, neither is addressed in the opening paragraph. Instead, what is deemed most significant about this story is the astronomical monetary value ascribed to the works in question. Nowhere in the article is there any specific reference to the importance of these paintings to the development of art in the twentieth century, or even within Picasso’s oeuvre itself. Admittedly, they are unlikely to have been stolen because of their inherent artistic (as opposed to economic) worth, but what should perhaps be surprising is the apparent lack of correlation between the two, besides the generic importance of the Picasso brand as a whole.

The obsession with how much a work of art costs, as being the only true measure of its worth, is perhaps first and foremost a characteristic of the mass media, but the exchange value of art nevertheless seems to haunt any discourse on the merits or demerits of art in and for society. $66 million may seem reasonable on some level for a pair of Picassos, but take a contemporary artist such as Damien Hirst for example and suddenly the price-tag on his work is more heavily disputed: “Hirst's pickled shark is rotting and needs to be replaced. Should it still be worth £6.5m?” was the headline of an article published last summer in the Daily Telegraph’s arts section. ‘Should it ever have been worth that much?’ seems to be the implicit question, and it doesn't take much to hear the majority of the Telegraph's readership uttering a resounding "NO!" in response. Whilst such concerns are a commonplace in discussions on ‘modern art’, the wholesale dismissal of the Young British Artists (YBAs) by the Stuckists (‘the first remodernist art group’), provides a key to what is at stake in this debate:

Art, to have value, must have meaning and the first person to experience this is its creator. This is why an artist such as Vincent Van Gogh could endure hardships of poverty and obscurity.
It is inconceivable, on the other hand, that anyone would spend 20 years pickling sheep for the sheer love of it. This is because the primary motivation of such work is not its intrinsic worth but its employment as a commodity and for the celebrity status it brings its manufacturer.

Whilst there is undoubtedly some truth in this statement, the reference to the ‘hardships of poverty and obscurity’ which van Gogh was forced to endure for the love of his art nevertheless betokens the Stuckists’ obeisance to the romantic ideal of the poor, hungry artist, eking out a miserable existence, devoted solely to the perfection of his art — a notion of artistic production which came to the fore in the nineteenth century, and found its most paradigmatic expression in the figure of the bohemian artist. There have of course been countless great artists before and since then who suffered little or no hardship during their career, achieved fame and fortune within their lifetime, and are revered as masters in their field; but they lack the mystique of the other, less fortunate figure.

Alfred de Vigny, whose play Chatterton provided an early model for this latter model, was not concerned with the ‘grands écrivains’ of the time; his subject was the ‘starving artist’ type, whose nature was purer and more rare; what defined it was not positive literary accomplishment, but a lack of capacity for anything other than his divine work. Born with feelings so deep and intimate that “ever since childhood they have plunged him into involuntary ecstasies, endless reveries, infinite imaginings,” he could only survive through being cared for by others. The image of the fragile, brilliant youth conjured up by Vigny is a powerful one, and it has lasted to this day, primarily, one suspects, because of the cult of originality to which it caters, and the concomitant aura of authenticity which it exhibits. Untainted by commercial concerns, at odds with the established social norms, this was the road to pure art. Needless to say, Vigny’s insistence on society caring for these individuals in practice served primarily as a vehicle for social critique — it is precisely because of the hardship suffered by artists that their art is considered authentic. State-sponsored art, with very few exceptions, cannot lay claim to that title.

The paradox of this quest for authenticity is that it invariably leads to radical un-originality, in the sense that a particular type or way of life is identified as authentic and those who aim seek to stand out as original, authentic individuals actually just end up copying the ideal type. Bohemia is a prime example of this phenomenon, and indeed, as Seigel points out, the origin of the term ‘Bohemian’ lies in the categorisation of an entire social group as outsiders. Not only does the homogeneity of the group speak against its supposed originality and individuality, but their separation from and disdain for bourgeois society and values is also completely mythical in nature, as two seminal texts from the period demonstrate.

Firstly, at the beginning of Honoré de Balzac’s famous The Unknown Masterpiece (1845), Poussin, the young neophyte, “beset by poverty”, comes into contact with Frenhofer, the old master, who offers to buy his drawing for a couple of gold pieces. Poussin is reluctant “for the talented youth had a poor man’s pride”, but Porbus, in whose studio the two had met, encourages Poussin to accept the offer, adding that “He has the ransom of two kings in his money bags!” Clearly Frenhofer, as the established, independently wealthy artist, able to devote himself to the perfection of his masterpiece, does not fit the model of the artist we’ve discussed so far. In fact, one might go so far as to suggest that Frenhofer’s Catherine, his ultimate distillation of womanhood, the perfect portrait, which he jealously guards, refusing to show her — his ‘wife’ — to the world, does not even comply with the ideal set forth by the Stuckists. For the ‘intrinsic worth’ or ‘meaning’ of the artwork is negated by its incommunicability.

Strikingly, Frenhofer’s first reaction to Porbus’ and Poussin’s failure to recognise Catherine in the portrait is to berate himself for his wealth as if it had inhibited his artistic worth: “I’m an imbecile then, a madman with neither talent nor ability. Just a rich man who makes no more than what he buys . . . I’ve created nothing!”. Meanwhile, Poussin’s faith in his own artistic potential is galvanised by the sale of his drawing: “Until now I doubted myself, but this morning I believed I can be a great man! You’ll see, Gilette, we’ll be rich, we’ll be happy! There’s gold in these brushes!”. Once more, artistic greatness is merely a means to end the poverty which engendered it.

For Marcel, the artist in Henri Murger’s The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, there truly is gold in his brushes, or as he says of his ‘Passage of the Red Sea’, which he’s been trying unsuccessfully to submit to the Salon for several years: “When one thinks, there is a hundred crowns’ worth of colour in it, and a million of genius, without reckoning my glorious youth which has become worn as my hat over it [...]”. Unfortunately, when he finally finds a buyer for it, Marcel gets little return on the amount of colour and genius that went into the painting’s production. Its final hanging place, as a sign outside the Jew Médicis’ shop becomes a sign too of the intimate link between art and commerce. Marcel may interpret the customers’ admiration of the new sign as his having reached an audience of ‘real people’ and thus spurned the stuffy and doctrinaire Salon, but as his painting now fulfils a function other than that of a work of art, this is hardly a vindication of his greatness as an artist.

Going back to the article on the decomposition of Hirst’s pickled shark, and the discussion of what constitutes an ‘original’ work of art that follows, we find the following: “[C]onservators had also faced problems with Pierre-Auguste Renoir. The reds he used in his paintings had faded badly because he had used substandard red paint.” If Renoir’s fading reds demonstrate an inability to afford high quality paint, does that serve to enforce or undermine the myth of the ‘starving artist’? Either way it anchors artistic production in the sphere of financial considerations, but it might also enhance the martyrdom of artists in a capitalist world. Certainly, the notion that he might have opted for a cheaper red so that he could enjoy a glass of wine with his mates from time to time is incompatible with the popular/romantic vision of the artist, despite, or indeed perhaps precisely because such an artist has never really existed, and even in those artists who assumed such an identity, it was always primarily performative, and its stage was the modern capitalist market economy.

Stillleben mit Bügeleisen

2007-02-20T04:59:23Z

I sometimes forget the existence of things.

2007-02-06T03:36:59Z

There is no more.

The sentence above is a possible first sentence for a novel I'll never write, as provided, inadvertently, by a friend of mine. If I ever do write the book, I shall thank her for the little dactylic tetrameter that started it all.

Overheard in Butler Café:

2007-01-22T21:38:19Z

Guy 2: [sauntering up wearing a "Rutgers Invitational" T-Shirt] Hey what's goin' on?
Guy 1: [seated] Oh hey, what's up? What were you doing at Rutgers?
Guy 2: Oh it's for this golf tournament. [turns to show back of T-shirt] Yeah so for Spring Break we have to go to San Diego.
Girl: [seated] Wow.
Guy 2: [taking a seat] So get a load of this class I'm taking, I can't even believe this is a class. It's called "Clint Eastwood movies".
Guy 1: Wow, so what's that all about.
Guy 2: I dunno, we watch Clint Eastwood movies, and this guy talks about them.
Girl: Who's Clint Eastwood?
Guys 1 & 2: You don't know who Clint Eastwood is?
Guy 2: He directed, like, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima.
Girl: Oh wait, does he have like really high cheekbones and squints a lot?
Guy 2: There ya go. 'Do you feel lucky?'
Guy 1: [laughs[]
Girl: [uncertain] Wait, is that from a movie?

Have you had your quark today?

2007-01-22T15:15:41Z

So it appears that one of my German 101 students this semester is related to the people who run 3quarksdaily. This is perhaps not at all remarkable, but that blog is certainly both enjoyable and informative, and I would urge anyone who has not yet discovered it to join the ranks of illustrious readers (Pinker, Dawkins, Byrne, etc.). Why, only this morning I read a hilarious comment on Dan Brown, which has put me in a good mood for the day, so thank you J. M. Tyree.

Edit: and thank you Anthony Lane... twice the fun.

Simplicity

2007-01-10T12:53:53Z

Despite, as far as I am aware, never actually having tasted instant noodles in any shape or form, I am inclined to agree with the author of this 'appreciation' of Momofuko "Mr. Noodle" Ando, recently deceased, that it is reassuring in some ways that they should have been invented by a single person. In fact, until now it had probably not consciously occurred to me that the time of individual, independent 'invention', the kind where a person's name lives on in the product or item they have invented, has probably passed. Everything is depersonalised, fragmented, outsourced, and companies, not people, are the 'individuals' of our age.

Still, none of this means that I'm going to run out and buy Cup Noodles for lunch today, or any other day, even in the unlikely event that the British Library cafeteria serve such a thing.

Mid-day repast

2007-01-09T13:44:16Z

What is it with using poncy names for basic foodstuffs just to be able to charge an arm and a leg for them? You know what I mean? Like cheese and onion crisps that claim to be "mature cheddar and spring onion" crisps, or my favourite, "malt vinegar and sea salt" for salt 'n' vinegar. In the British Library; had a sandwich for lunch. It was labelled as follows: "Chicken, sun blush tomato and tarragon mayonnaise, £3.00". I'm surprised they couldn't have come up with a more impressive sounding name for their poultry. I mean, was it free-range, at least? Or why not call it by its real name: Gallus gallus domesticus? Or rather, the meat thereof. As accompaniment I had a banana (labelled: fresh fruit, 55p) and tap-water. To compensate I was forced to purchase a reassuringly prosaic "medium filter coffee" and a non-denominational "cookie" from the cafeteria downstairs for £2.60 altogether.

Edit: on a tangentially related note, I came upon this just now whilst trying to think of an appropriately poncy thing to call a spade, and was, quite naturally, appalled at the following:

Rosalie Maggio, in The Bias-Free Word-Finder, writes: "The expression ['to call a spade a spade'] is associated with a racial slur and is to be avoided", and recommends using "to speak plainly" or other alternatives instead. In another entry, she writes: "Although by definition and derivation 'niggardly' and 'nigger' are completely unrelated, 'niggardly' is too close for comfort to a word with profoundly negative associations. Use instead one of the many available alternatives: stingy, miserly, parsimonious..." Beard and Cerf, in The Official Politically Correct Handbook, p. 123, report that an administrator at the University of California at Santa Cruz campaigned for the banning of such phrases as "a chink in his armor" and "a nip in the air", because "chink" and "nip" are also derogatory terms for "Chinese person" and "Japanese person" respectively. In the late 1970s in the U.S., a boycott of the (now defunct) Sambo's restaurant chain was organized, even though the name "Sambo's" was a combination of the names of its two founders and did not come from the offensive word for dark-skinned person.

They can't be serious, surely? This must be some sort of joke? Even if Maggio, Beard, and Cerf don't think so, then please let Mr. Israel appreciate the absurdity of their comments. Please?

I mean, forgive me for being snooty and élitist or whatever, but I find it utterly and profoundly unacceptable to suggest that one ought to bowdlerise the English language in such a moronic manner purely for fear of offending those ignorant and dim-witted enough to think that 'a chink in his armour' might somehow be offensive to Chinese people! Naturally George Formby's 'famous Mr. Wu' is a different matter. And as for calling spades something other than spades: what is one to use to tend one's garden in this brave new world, I wonder? And I suppose we shall have to ban playing cards until a suitable alternative to the offending suit (of cards, not armour) is found as well?

Pshaw!

Here's a blog entry I didn't write

2006-12-05T23:18:18Z

http://www.unphotographable.com/

Here's an interesting website I stumbled upon today whilst looking for something else. I may have something to say about it later, but for the time being, I'll just let it speak for itself.

Ripples

2006-11-14T02:08:18Z

Gosh, looks like my insignificant response to Kerry's botched joke the other day got picked up on someone's radar, and I've now earned a mention on Ray Robison's blog, whoever he is. The only other person he appears to cite is Rush Limbaugh, so I'm in some distinguished company.

Still, average Joe or not, I shall have to mind what I say around here. People are evidently reading...

Things Exploding II: Everything Explodes!

2006-11-13T16:05:27Z

This article from the New York Times caught my eye today, and in particular this paragraph somewhere near the top:

"But as part of a corporate shift under the new Disney chief executive Robert Iger, the studio pledged this summer to make fewer films and focus on family-friendly movies that are marketable across all the company’s businesses, including theme parks, plush toys and television. That meant Mr. Bruckheimer was now in the onscreen amusement park business — a far cry from the highly stylized, color-saturated movies and television shows that made him famous."

Now, I don't want anyone getting the impression that I'm a big fan of Mr. Bruckheimer's œuvre, and ordinarily I would have applauded any attempts to force him to stop making those horrendously overblown action films of his, but this isn't quite what I had in mind. As Terry Gilliam pointed out during an interview on the BBC's Hard Talk a while ago, there's an incredible amount of cowardice in the motion picture industry these days, and this, as he put it, owes largely to the fact that the studios are now parts of multi-national corporations, and thus are all run by middle management, instead of the ballsy tycoons from the forties and fifties, who would occasionally take risks on films, which might make or break the entire company. Now the studio bosses are just worried about keeping their jobs, and not at all about the fate of the company, or, god forbid, the innovative quality of the films they produce.

Film has never really succeeded in establishing itself as an independent art-form, primarily because of the huge financial investments involved in its production. The revolutionary potential foreseen by the likes of Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin was never realised, and as Andrew Bujalski argued in Vol. 3 of n+1 Magazine, there really is no such thing as 'independent' cinema, citing Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, which, with a reported budget of $218, is supposedly the cheapest film ever made, as an example:

"Still, records were made to be broken, and perhaps you can be the first person to break the two-digit barrier for revolutionizing cinema, why not? But unless in your spare time you've developed innovative new modes of distribution, someone is still going to have to spend hundreds of thousands to get your film into theaters. (In the case of Tarnation, hundreds of thousands were necessary before the real work of distribution even began, just to clear the legal rights to the music and film clips employed throughout.) All of which is to say, unless your film is the surprise hit everyone sincerely hopes it will be, or you've gotten away with a wildly overoptimistic advance from someone, you still are unlikely to make your $99 back. The economics of distribution are unfriendly to all, but particularly gruesome for the independent."

I suppose ultimately one might hold out hope for free, independent, internet distribution via sites like YouTube in the future, but it seems highly unlikely to me that a) production companies and big business would allow such a thing to progress unimpeded, or b) that independent film-makers themselves would be content to forego any returns on their investment at all, and once they start charging anything at all for access to their work, it's a slippery slope, that's all I can say.

In an industry in which everything is about cross-marketing, naturally film is the only medium to suffer from conglomeration of this sort. Traditionally, merchandise has 'tied in' with the film, but this is no longer quite so clear. Books are now written with the expectation of being made into films (e.g. Thomas Harris's Hannibal, which Martin Amis aptly criticised for having 'stage directions' in the past tense in place of real description or narrative), and, getting back to Bruckheimer, Pirates of the Carribean was inspired by a ride at a theme park. Generally speaking, the sources of artistic inspiration are beyond reproach — or else simply of little interest — but when both the theme park and the film in question are owned by Disney, things start to smell a little fishy.

A quick glance at the last lines of the New York Times article reveals a slight counter-current, though: "If Disney does not want to make the movies he produces, Mr. Bruckheimer said, 'We'll make them someplace else.'" However, if another studio is more willing to make Bruckheimer's less family-friendly films, I very much doubt it's for their inherent artistic merit, but rather they want a slice of the box-office and cross-marketing cash cow. "I am the audience", Bruckheimer asserts in defence of his keep-it-simple attitude to character development. And I'm afraid to admit that he may well be right.

On getting my damn tags right

2006-11-07T06:58:12Z

In part in response to this discussion from a community over at Last.fm, particularly the comment by leridan, and coupled with my continuing efforts to organise my unwieldy digital music collection (currently resting at 88.2Gb, or just under 1313 hours' of music), I began to ponder the ways in which the digital revolution, and on-line databases such as Last.fm in particular, might be changing the way in which 'song identities' might be conceived. There has long been a discrepancy between the designation of works of classical and popular music. For the most part, in record shops, classical music is listed by composer, whilst pop music is listed by recording artist. Naturally, this is primarily for practical reasons, but it nevertheless betrays a fundamentally different conception of the identities of the pieces. Beethoven's 5^th Symphony is still Beethoven's 5^th Symphony regardless of which orchestra happens to be playing it, whereas there seems to be more reluctance to accept this with regard to pop music (as this little exchange demonstrates (it actually starts a few posts above that, in #94, but you can reconstruct it, or simply scroll up a bit)). This, however, does not pose a significant problem as far as mp3 tagging is concerned, mp3 tags being very much anchored in the popular tradition, and thus allowing little leeway for classical or jazz compositions — in the case of ‘Hallelujah’, either Leonard Cohen or Jeff Buckley would occupy the 'artist' tag, and that would be that. When it comes to my recording of the Goldberg Variations is by Beethoven or András Schiff is a thornier question, especially since I also have a recording by Glenn Gould of the same piece, and it would be plain impractical to label both as being by 'Beethoven', since I wouldn't be able to tell which version I was listening to (except that Schiff's version is infinitely more delicate and less self-indulgent than Gould's); yet I imagine Last.fm is more interested in it being the Goldberg Variations than which version specifically — unless it's more interested in knowing whether András Schiff is a more popular pianist than Glenn Gould. Either way, the point is that the current system makes no allowance for such distinctions, and in any case such distinctions would be immensely impractical where most pop music is concerned.

The digital revolution has spawned — or rather, propagated — another phenomenon, namely that of exhaustive, official bootlegging, a trend epitomised at first by the 72 live albums Pearl Jam released from their Binaural tour, and taken to its logical digital conclusion on their website http://bootlegs.pearljam.com/ where they publish recordings of every single show they play, and have also begun to make archival material (such as the '92 NYC and Las Vegas shows) available. Obviously the trade in bootleg tapes is as old as the hills, most notably in progressive rock (and, of course, Bob Dylan) circles — any music which features performative variation is liable to be bootlegged, whilst you're unlikely to find many audio recordings documenting a wide range of Take That concerts, although you may find (or have found, rather, perhaps) clandestine video recordings of performances, but that is somewhat irrelevant to the present discourse — and in such circles it has always mattered which version of a particular song was in question.

Let's say I'm listening to ‘21^st Century Schizoid Man‘ by King Crimson. While I might be prepared, at a push, to accept that the version on In the Court of the Crimson King is the same song as the live version off the Epitaph boxed set, since it is from the same period and performed by the same line-up, I would be less inclined to accept a posited equivalence between the studio version and one performed by the Wetton-Cross-Bruford-Fripp line-up on from the mid seventies, on, say, the Great Deceiver boxed set. But it doesn't even need to be quite so specific. The version of ‘Careful with That Axe, Eugene’ on the first disc of Ummagumma is fundamentally different from and vastly superior to the studio version released on Relics. Are they the same song? Is the incredibly slow, grooving version of ‘Even Flow’ as performed in the early days the same as the faster, more rocking version Pearl Jam play these days?

Even with the designation (Live) in the title tag, there is no reason to suppose that two live versions of the same song are the same. Needless to say, such distinctions are meaningless as far as the statistical efforts of the people behind something like Last.fm are concerned, for which it makes total sense to have all instances of ‘Even Flow’ or ‘21^st Century Schizoid Man’ count as one song, since they're not ‘Breakerfall’ or ‘Larks' Tongues in Aspic, Part II’, but the question is, if the Last.fm statistical database is meant to reflect what people are actually listening to, in how far does the blurring of such distinctions affect the way in which people actually conceive of that music? It has already caused me to listen to music exclusively through my computer, rather than on CD or even off my iPod, since such 'listens' wouldn't get 'scrobbled' and thus I would feel that my statistics weren't truly representative of what I'd been listening to.

Why on earth this matters to me, or who the hell I think gives a damn is a different matter.

Hard(l)y har

2006-11-01T15:18:50Z

See, what I don't get about Kerry's recent gaffe, is that whichever way you understand it, it's not particularly funny. I mean, he's speaking to a bunch of college students, encouraging them to make the most of their education, and citing George W. Bush as an example of what'll happen if they don't. But Bush went to Yale and Harvard! Surely he's an argument against an Ivy League education rather than for one?

What we need is some sophisticated political humour around here, that's what I say.

fearful_syzygy @ 2006-10-29T19:24:00

2006-10-30T00:34:05Z

I'm assuming the bit from today's edition of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me about Rush Limbaugh laying into Stephen Hawking in addition to Michael J. Fox was a joke.

...right?