Through a Lens*

This weekend was pretty culturally rich: Four movies, and a trip to the Met that was one of my most enjoyable in ages. TOH bought me a book of 1001 Paintings to See Before You Die, and we'd selected the Met's paintings featured** to guide our trip. It did add something, meaning that I didn't spend the whole time sitting in the Velázquez and El Greco rooms, Mark didn't just try to drag me around the armour, and we looked at things differently. We also got to look at the musical instruments, which was a surprisingly good and interesting room.

However, I was struck by the phenomenon of photo-taking as viewing yet again. One of the things that I utterly fail to understand is the taking of photos of the exhibits. If it's for a sketch, maybe that's fair, but why not just buy a print or a postcard? What particularly bothered me was the instrument room, where so many people just walked through and didn't stop, they just paused to take photos without actually looking at anything. It really is as if having seen the object is more important than the object itself.

This ties in with WUB's extremely thoughtful post about Cloverfield, in which she states that documenting is increasingly more important than responding. It extends to everything, but nothing quite brings it to mind like a museum. I really wish art at school had instructed us in ways of looking at things; just as useful, and more so for completely untalented hacks like me. In fact, that might have helped me with my own artistic attempts. Nonetheless, I do try to look, understand, and slowly I'm learning. It takes a discipline that you have to instil; most of us are so lazy, it's just easier to snap and not think.

* I almost entitled this "Life Through a Lens" and then remembered it was a Robbie Williams album title, so no go there. Although, of course, "thru" was the spelling he used, which is particularly repugnant to me.
** Dude, if you're going to write a book like this, then having an index by location might be pretty effing useful. Just a suggestion.

Random Generator: Feb 08

If my utter blogging and podcasting heroines at Pandagon insist, I'll oblige:

1) Gronlandic Edit - Of Montreal. The vocals remind me of Clor, in turn of things along the Buggles lines, but the bassline is much funkier and dancetastic (that's a word, isn't it?). The vocals could veer Hot Chip-ish, with which I would have real problems... I don't know quite why I loathe Hot Chip so, everyone tells me they're awesome, but I remain unconvinced. But it's one of those arch songs, with clever harmonies, that lots of people like and I can take in small doses - the bass definitely saves it. I could dance to this in the right mood. And there's no higher praise than me shaking my tail.

2) Newme - Jamie Lidell. Can I tell you just how overfricking excited I am about Jim, Jamie Lidell's new album? I may burst. A few days ago he announced the first single (which I will listen to as soon as my ten songs are up). He's playing in May & June over here - dates not yet finalised - and I may burst again. This is actually possibly one of my least favourite songs on the album, but live sounds awesome - his habits of looping and pissing around with the songs means that things like this, The City, they just make more sense.

3) Born in the U.S.A. - Bruce Springsteen. I love the Boss. Not much else to say. A mate of mine had a seminar with Bruce Springsteen once, where Bruce had done the reading, and had to raise his hand to answer questions and put forward his viewpoint like the students. I was quite drunk when she told me this, and I thought it was appropriate to keep yelling "The Boss does not have to raise his hand when he wants to speak." Yep, I did. I also jumped on a booth and sang Roxanne to the bar. It was one of those nights.

4) Jacqueline - Franz Ferdinand. I've been listening to the second album a bit more, and I really like it; I'd forgotten it took me a while to like this one. But the second one is really clever, pretty and interesting. This song reminds me of driving through France to Spain when TOH and I had to collect all my stuff from Barcelona to move home. We borrowed a car from a family member, took the ferry to France (Dieppe? Le Havre? I can't remember!). Then we drove out, and once we were on the road with directions safely followed, we decided to put this cd on the radio, and it really was the start of the journey. We listened to the album going across this utterly beautiful, enormous suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere. This should go on those driving albums - along with Layla, Born to Be Wild, that sort of thing.

5) Chaos - U.N.K.L.E. Remember when James Lavelle could do no wrong? Now look at him! (click on artists, and he's the guy with the stringy long hair.) What happened? I hate it when my teenage crushes start to... well, have hair like that. This album wasn't that good, and this was not one of the best songs on it. I wonder why I even have it.

6) Demarre Le Chauve - Pepe Bradock. This comes from a wicked collection, Beats & Pieces, put together (I think) by L'il Louis Vega. I still haven't been to his sets at Cielo. I suck. Maybe later this semester...

7) Run - Air. I've not listened to Talkie Walkie much, but I think I should, and just try and approach it differently from Moon Safari. The comparisons are unfair, because they're just not trying to do the same thing here, so I think I've not been mentally with it to give it a fair go.

8) Diamonds and Pearls - Prince. I, like the rest of the US, went through a Prince renaissance after the Super Bowl performance last year. Because it was AWESOME and I had forgotten how much I loved him. This is such a ridiculous song - the middle 8 with the very late 80s / early 90s guitar solo. But it works, basically because it's Prince.

9) The Blast - Talib Kweli. I love this tune. The beat, the gentleness of it, the old school feel, the way it seems to shimmer. The Gil Scott-Heron bit at the end doesn't harm it, either. Kweli is consistently excellent. Love it.

10) I Wanna Grow up to Be a Politician - Utterly perfect timing what with the primaries... brilliant to end on!

Cross-posted to Last.Fm.

Accompaniment

This week I've struggled through The Trial. I think it is no coincidence, with my Law & Lit hat on, that ordeal can be synonymous with trial. I'm still not sure what I think about the book. It didn't go where I thought it would, but I'm not sure if I thought the ending was a cop out. I'll think on.

Anyway, part of the struggle was eased by challenging myself to find music as a suitable companion for my reading. The first vivid memory of finding music to suit a book was when I was about fifteen and reading La Bête Humaine. I'd also just started listening to The Smiths, and can clearly remember sitting on my father's sofa, with How Soon Is Now? blaring through the system. What a bloody typical, pretentious teenager I was. Rats, and I thought I was so clever. And yet, and yet; the music really did suit the twisting tale of dark human nature and trying to suppress it, for some reason.

Therefore, this week I have tried to find something that suits Kafka. I needed something dark, oppressive, and overwhelmingly able to conjure dank, claustrophobic cities, with their swarming humanity and utter disregard for your being. For that reason, I found a few things in my collection. First, Untrue by Burial was absolutely perfect. Second, Timeless by Goldie - a serious blast from the past but suited magnificently to the task. TOH also suggested Tricky - and I agree. Almost anything basically, except the first album - too tuneful. Nearly God, Pre-Millennium Tension, Angels with Dirty Faces, all of those would have gone down a storm.

But now I'm onto Camus, so of course I've gone for MC Solaar. Any excuse. Plus it's the only French music I have other than Edith Piaf, which seems altogether a bit too... wrong. But I may be vastly underestimating the effect - I'll have a go tonight. Particularly as they're just about to get into the fight with the Arabs. I think Ma Vie En Rose would surely be perfect. Ahem.

Priorities

A couple of things have quite severely upset me over the past few days - the crap Lewis Hamilton has had to endure, plus me reading the comments on Marca which seem to indicate that the people posting really do not understand that calling someone a "fucking black" or a "black shit" is a problem, not that using the word "black" is a problem; also apparently he's "not really black" so it doesn't count. Also, I keep stumbling upon this ad - when reading sports pages, reading about dining, whatever - in the nytimesonline for Secondlook.org, which simply reads "Roe v. Wade allows termination of a pregnancy throughout the nine months. Isn't it time we rethought?"

Ugh.

And then, someone you love goes through something awful and you realise that all this anger really is something for another day.

Watersports

SPOILER ALERT: Of my very few readers, I know one hasn't read To Kill a Mockingbird and I also know he plans to read it soon. So, sweetheart, maybe you should skip this first paragraph. Other SPOILER: this is self-righteousness incarnate, so mum, please ignore the tone!

I've just finished re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird. There, the vague moral victory in the court case is that Atticus makes them doubt that a guilty plea is right. This is Alabama, in the 1930s, all too believable.

Therefore, this makes a Mississippi Supreme Court's decision in 1922 seem even more remarkable, particularly in light of Attorney General Mukasey's all too predictable sanction of waterboarding techniques. Why on earth anyone thought he'd be different from Gonzales, I really don't know. Oh, yes he is different - he doesn't come across as quite so slimy.

A (nerdy, clearly) law type has uncovered White v. State, which was a case whereby a young black man confessed to the murder of a white shopowner. Only problem - he was tortured. Well, not if you're Michael Mukasey, but yes if you're the Mississippi Supreme Court.

Just think about it - 1922, a Mississippi court orders a retrial because the confession of a black man was obtained under torture by white men. Having just seen the Kara Walker exhibition at the Whitney, I understand a little more deeply (although confusedly, it must be said) the swirling, depthless hatred and misunderstanding and misery of relationships between white and black throughout American history. Nonetheless, despite that, the Court was able to distinguish between what was right and wrong in this instance. I'll give you a few excerpts (emphases are all mine):

the hands of appellant were tied behind him, he was laid upon the floor upon his back, and, while some of the men stood upon his feet, Gilbert, a very heavy man, stood with one foot entirely upon appellant's breast, and the other foot entirely upon his neck. While in that position what is described as the “water cure” was administered to him in an effort to extort a confession as to where the money was hidden which was supposed to have been taken from the dead man. The “water cure” appears to have consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession. Under these barbarous circumstances the appellant readily confessed that he knew where the money was, and told them that it was out at the “dredge ditch.” They then took the appellant to the dredge ditch to find the money, but there was no money found there or anywhere else so far as this record shows.

So in a nutshell: they tortured him AND it failed to provide the required information.
And I'll leave you with my favourite sentence from the judgment:

Confessions induced by fear, though not aroused by spoken threats, are nevertheless involuntary, because the fear which takes away, the freedom may arise solely from the conditions and circumstances surrounding the confessor.