tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-207828192024-03-18T20:59:47.036+01:00andrewjshieldsAndrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comBlogger2576125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-48757158522776375092024-03-18T20:59:00.000+01:002024-03-18T20:59:01.341+01:00A curse and “a mighty gun” in two Emily Dickinson’s poems<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">In preparation for my Emily Dickinson seminar this fall, I've begun rereading R. W. Franklin's "The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition". At 10 poems a day, I'll be ready for the beginning of the term in mid-September. As always with Dickinson, I keep noticing things I hadn't noticed before in her work, such as the curse that ends "I had a guinea golden" (Fr12): "And he no consolation / Beneath the sun may find." I was also struck by the eerily twenty-first-century violence that ends "My friend attacks my friend!" (Fr103): "Had I a mighty gun / I think I'd shoot the human race / And then to glory run!" (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-92087702349750769482024-03-17T21:17:00.006+01:002024-03-17T21:17:37.818+01:00A warm, sunny West Phliadelphia afternoon in October 1989<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">On a warm, sunny afternoon in October 1989, I went out in T-shirt and sandals to go to a West Philadelphia cafe and sit at a table by the window. The sun warmed my face through the glass, and I immersed myself in whatever I was reading for my graduate-school courses. At one point, I looked up and saw the leaves on the tress outside shivering with a rising breeze, while further up a black cloud was looming to the West. In the next twenty minutes, as the temperature dropped and a heavy rain fell, it seemed like autumn was coming at just that moment. It was a cold walk home. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-2322289929612791852024-03-16T23:51:00.002+01:002024-03-16T23:51:15.956+01:00The Tom Ollendorff Trio with Conor Chaplin, James Maddren, and special guest Tim Garland at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 16 March 2024<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">When Tom Ollendorff takes a solo on his hollow-body electric guitar, he plays singable single-note phrases that shift seamlessly into melodic sequences of chords, and then he drops in an fast flurry upwards or downwards that might end in another set of chords, or just one and another singable phrase. The rhythms of those chordal passages highlight his interaction with Conor Chaplin on bass and James Maddren on drums as they all hit a few accents together before Ollendorff soars off into another flurry of melodic ideas. Tonight at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, the trio was joined by saxophonist Tim Garland on tenor and soprano, who especially sang on soprano. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 March 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-5143083320594440032024-03-15T21:51:00.002+01:002024-03-15T21:51:49.737+01:00Gambling in lyrics by Robert Hunter and by Taylor Swift<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter often mentioned gambling, as in "Loser" ("I can tell the Queen of Diamonds by the way she shines" – "Garcia", 1971) or "Scarlet Begonias" ("In the thick of the evening when the dealing got rough / She was too pat to open and too cool to bluff" – "From the Mars Hotel", 1974). Taylor Swift's occasional gambling images are usually figurative, as in "Foolish One": "My cards are on the table, yours are in your hand" ("Speak Now (Taylor's Version), 2023). But "Cornelia Street" mentions "card sharks" ("Lover", 2019), and in "the last great american dynasty", Rebekah blows money "on card game bets with Dalí" ("folklore", 2020). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-44752056352463397422024-03-14T14:02:00.004+01:002024-03-14T14:02:41.963+01:00Marlon James on Beyoncé haters; me on Taylor Swift haters<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Novelist Marlon James posted about Beyoncé: "[T]here is something about Beyoncé that make haters explode and I'm not sure what it is. They simply have to make you know." I could say the same thing about my experiences with my teaching of a course with Rachael Moorthy on Taylor Swift's lyrics: The “haters” of Swift “have to make you know” that they hate her, every chance they get. </span>I try to follow Swift's advice about "haters": "I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake I shake it off, I shake it off." But they make me keep having to "shake it off" again and again and again, and it gets tiring. <span lang="EN-US">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: center;"><span lang="EN-US"><img alt="A white background with black textDescription automatically generated" height="133" src="blob:https://www.blogger.com/e21d2471-b677-482a-a7db-9edc3f6d19ff" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="640" /></span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;"> </span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-5032180373692778912024-03-13T21:16:00.005+01:002024-03-13T21:16:44.034+01:00A thesis on early Taylor Swift, immediately disproven<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">This morning, I was putting the finishing touches on my presentation for the Taylor Swift session today. My topic was wit and "Mr. Perfectly Fine", a song Swift wrote in her teens for "Fearless" (2008) but only published on "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" in 2021. I wrote a note for the lecture: There's not much wit in the songs on the first two albums, so the wit of "Mr. Perfectly Fine" stands out when "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" comes out. – But as I typed up that thesis, "Hey Stephen" from "Fearless" came up, with Swift laughing at her own joke: "But would they write a song for you?" Thus was my thesis disproven. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-46098190651451362182024-03-12T20:05:00.001+01:002024-03-12T20:05:15.058+01:00The triple meaning of Montresor’s toast to Fortunato’s “long life” in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">On their way to the titular Amontillado in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), the narrator Montresor and his friend Fortunato pause in Montresor's catacombs to drink wine, and Fortunato offers a toast: "I drink [...] to the buried that repose around us." Montresor responds: "And I to your long life." For Fortunato, Montresor's toast is an unambiguous conventional formula. For Montresor, it has two senses: the one Fortunato hears, and the irony of his planned murder of Fortunato. But the unidentified addressee of Montresor's story hears three senses: Fortunato's single meaning, Montresor the imminent murderer's double meaning, and the wit that Montresor the storyteller offers to be appreciated. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-14410753513012702142024-03-11T18:54:00.001+01:002024-03-11T18:54:31.824+01:00A possible echo of “Nights in White Satin” (1967, The Moody Blues) in Taylor Swift’s “gold rush” (2020)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">Two particular moments in Taylor Swift's "gold rush" (from "evermore", 2020) echo something I heard long ago (and am sure I've heard many times). At 1:00 and again at 2:10, the music swells with string sounds (perhaps Jack Antonoff's Mellotron). Just now, I've followed a hunch and listened to "Nights in White Satin", by The Moody Blues (from "Days of Future Passed", 1967), which has moments at about 0:50 and 1:50 that might be what I've been hearing in "gold rush" (and which features Mike Pinder on Mellotron). Still, I'm not yet sure that this is what I've been hearing in the back of my mind when I hear Swift's song. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-41404006642623912502024-03-10T21:55:00.002+01:002024-03-10T21:55:10.364+01:00An exemplary three-part song about three moments in a life: Greg Brown’s “If I Had Known” (1990)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">As in the two three-part Taylor Swift songs I mentioned yesterday ("The Best Day" and "Never Grow Up"), each stanza of Greg Brown's exemplary "If I Had Known" (from "Down In There", 1990) takes place at a different time in the speaker's life: the first is about going fishing as a boy, the second about a first kiss at fifteen, and the third about a night of love-making on a roof during a meteor shower. The first two choruses each say "if I had known, I might have stopped fishing / kissing right then", while the third offers the song's twist: "If I had known, I'd do it all over again." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-4411459363182278532024-03-09T21:07:00.001+01:002024-03-09T21:07:09.132+01:00Three part songs with themes and variations: Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” (1969) and Taylor Swift’s “The Best Day” (2008) and “Never Grow Up” (2010)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">In Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" (from "Clouds", 1969), the three verses each have their own theme (clouds, love, and life), as well as a turn in the middle at "but now". Then the choruses all refer to looking at those themes "from both sides now" and "not knowing" each theme "at all." Such a three-part theme with variations offers a model for writing songs; it can also be found in Taylor Swift's "The Best Day" (from "Fearless", 2008, with its three "best days") and "Never Grow Up" (from "Speak Now", from "Speak Now", 2009, with a small child, a young teen, and a young woman who has just left home). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-26450079765551972402024-03-08T08:28:00.002+01:002024-03-08T08:28:29.685+01:00“Going Slow” with the Roberto Bossard band at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 7 March 2024<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">At the Bird's Eye in Basel last night, Raffaele Bossard on unaccompanied bass introduced "Going Slow" with a melodic solo that gradually established the song's rhythm. Then his father Roberto, the bandleader, joined his son on guitar for some counterpoint. After first drummer Dominic Egli and then pianist Lukas Gernet added their accompaniment to Roberto's solo, tenor saxophonist Toni Bechtold joined in to finally play the composition's main melody. After Bechtold soloed, Gernet's wide-ranging solo was accompanied by the rest of the band vamping, an approach I've only heard for drum solos before. This tune exemplified the group's arrangements, which frequently played around with the standard head-solos-head frame for jazz improvisation. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-71772475445843094332024-03-07T18:46:00.005+01:002024-03-07T18:57:05.521+01:00My FC Basel – AC Fiorentina souvenir scarf<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">On Thursday, 18 May 2023, I went to the <a href="https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2023/05/medical-emergencies-at-football-match.html">match</a> between FC Basel and Fiorentina, the second leg of the Europe Conference League semifinal, and I bought one of the souvenir scarves that combine the colors of the two teams and include the date of the match. This winter, I've been wearing it whenever it's been cold, and I've learned to tie it around my neck so that the team names at the ends are clearly visible. Several people from Italy have asked me about the scarf, and people from Basel keep asking me if there's a match today. But for me, it's just a good memory that keeps me warm. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 March 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-91550900593182312772024-03-06T21:21:00.001+01:002024-03-06T21:21:12.899+01:00“Purple with ill-smelling dye”: The river in Coketown in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">The Coketown canal in Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854) is "purple with ill-smelling dye." Purple dyes were among the first synthetic dyes developed in the mid-nineteenth century, and one center of the discovery and production of those dyes was Basel, Switzerland, where I have made my home since 1995. However, Dickens's novel was published two years before William Henry Perkin synthesized mauveine in London in 1856. And both parts of the company that first became Ciba-Geiby and then later Novartis began to produce the synthetic fuchsine dye in 1859. So something made Coketown's river purple, but it wasn't the synthetic dye that was discovered two years after Dickens finished the novel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-55943901909807605932024-03-05T09:14:00.002+01:002024-03-05T09:14:12.959+01:00Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson: Sixth cousins thrice removed<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">As Michael Sainato <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/04/taylor-swift-emily-dickinson">reported</a> in The Guardian yesterday, Taylor Swift (b. 1989) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) are apparently sixth cousins thrice removed: “Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut)”. I wondered again about how related distant cousins are. According to a table in a 1983 <a href="https://isogg.org/wiki/Cousin_statistics">study</a> by Kevin P. Donnelly, sixth cousins once removed have a 94.40% chance of having "no detectable DNA relationship," so while there might be a genealogical link, any literary relationship between the two is more likely to be due to Swift reading Dickinson rather than any shared genes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-37930037405948395652024-03-04T23:32:00.006+01:002024-03-04T23:32:50.435+01:00“Some sort of witty retort”: Mr. Stevens and possible autism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” (1989)<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">In Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" (1989), the English butler Mr. Stevens repeatedly worries about the problem of "bantering" with Mr. Farraday, the new American owner of Darlington Hall after it has left the Darlington family. But on his trip to the West Country to meet Miss Kenton, the Hall's former housekeeper, he also worries about how to converse with the locals at an inn where he is staying: "[S]ome sort of witty retort was required of me." I've read the novel many times already, but only now have I noticed that Stevens's uncertainty about wit and "bantering" could be a sign that he is on the autism spectrum. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 March 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-8849284252447477072024-03-03T19:01:00.002+01:002024-03-03T19:01:24.345+01:00The correlation between popularity and quality in popular music <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">The other day, I had occasion to look at the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists ">list of best-selling musical artists</a>" on Wikipedia. Nine artists are listed as having sold over 250 million records: The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Queen, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Rihanna, and Pink Floyd. Lately, with me teaching a course on Taylor Swift's lyrics, I've been hearing a lot of people insisting that pop success does not equal musical quality. Almost all of them, though, are from my generation (plus or minus a decade), and I know that they would all celebrate some or many of those artists for the quality of their music. Here, at least, popularity correlates with quality. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 March 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-38530660068491449402024-03-02T08:29:00.000+01:002024-03-02T08:29:01.879+01:00The Pablo Held Trio at the Bird’s Eye in Basel on 1 March 2024<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="OLE_LINK7" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Pianist Pablo Held began his Pablo Held Trio concert with bassist </span></a><span lang="DE-CH" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel at the Bird's Eye in Basel last night with a statement that they work without a setlist and play continuous blocks of music in their sets. What followed was two relaxed and melodic suites of music in which composed passages seemed free and free passages seemed composed. When Held began the second set with a solo piano section, I noticed at one point how Landfermann and Burgwinkel prepared to join in – and then did not. This was just one way in which I saw how they made decisions about what to play and when. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 March 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-73038400625505094292024-03-01T07:19:00.001+01:002024-03-01T07:19:04.671+01:00“A lot of spaces” between Taylor Swift and James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">When Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died on 9 August 1995, Bob Dylan wrote a moving statement that included this point that has stuck with me ever since: "There’s a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes but he filled them all without being a member of any school." That is, Garcia's music ranged from folk to rock and roll to free jazz, and everywhere in between. I remembered this on Wednesday when I went from my Taylor Swift course in the afternoon to my Finnegans Wake reading group in the evening – there's "a lot of spaces" between them. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 March 2024)</span><span lang="DE-CH"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-46492322019944914582024-02-29T17:23:00.002+01:002024-02-29T17:23:18.738+01:00A metrosexual Swiftie<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="DE-CH">One day when Miles was four, we went to the swimming pool. After some splashing, he began playing in a sandbox; I watched him and enjoyed the weather. Then I noticed that three boys who were maybe ten or eleven years old were looking at me and whispering to each other. That week, my visiting niece had painted my toenails, so I wondered if that had gotten their attention. Sure enough, one of them then pointed at my toenails and asked, "Are you metrosexual?" I remembered this story yesterday when I had all my fingernails painted in the ten colors Taylor Swift associates with her ten albums. I'm a metrosexual Swiftie! </span><span lang="EN-US">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 February 2024)</span><span lang="DE-CH"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUpo6pDG5FPjW5sGkUq_J52GUFP1H1EP2aFgJBCA4szObSxgQXFesWEtUpOmwKIacP7kQ6pF53yB9qhJ2CWucZqquI26cA4q-plMSNKDO20WvfcnR3aJU46lXeupHgPtTvYAXgUoYbDCli8EX36BYflFJOAlVxUSj59DRPYwqbP9sBb2-ApOFb0g/s4032/IMG_9639.HEIC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUpo6pDG5FPjW5sGkUq_J52GUFP1H1EP2aFgJBCA4szObSxgQXFesWEtUpOmwKIacP7kQ6pF53yB9qhJ2CWucZqquI26cA4q-plMSNKDO20WvfcnR3aJU46lXeupHgPtTvYAXgUoYbDCli8EX36BYflFJOAlVxUSj59DRPYwqbP9sBb2-ApOFb0g/w480-h640/IMG_9639.HEIC" width="480" /></a></div><br /><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span><p></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-85964533331998768812024-02-27T21:01:00.002+01:002024-02-27T21:01:34.615+01:00The difficult but rewarding narrative promised by the opening of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “An Artist of the Floating World” (1986)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="DE-CH">In our first discussion today of Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World" (1986), we concluded that the opening sentence of retired painter Masuji Ono's narrative not only provides directions to get to Ono's house but also offers instructions and encouragement for how to read the narrative as difficult but rewarding: "If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees." This may be a "steep climb", but it promises visibility. </span><span lang="EN-US">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 February 2024)</span><span lang="DE-CH"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-89176350265467056222024-02-26T22:28:00.003+01:002024-02-26T22:28:48.055+01:00Weaknesses for the sake of the despicable in “Great Expectations” (1861) and in my own life<p style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="DE-CH" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">In Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861), when blacksmith Joe Gargery plans to visit his upwardly-mobile brother-in-law Pip in London, Pip is happy Joe will visit him at the apartment he shares with Herbert Pocket, and not at Herbert's parents' house, where the unpleasant Bentley Drummle also lives. Pip fears Drummle would look down at working-class Joe: “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.” I'm reminded all too well of my schooldays: bullied myself, I rejected the interest of a charming girl who was just as unpopular as me, because my bullies would have made fun of us. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 February 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-88791316587368319662024-02-25T17:38:00.003+01:002024-02-25T17:38:44.206+01:00Music from the Alex Sipiagin Quartet at the Bird’s Eye, plus a marriage proposal (and some Taylor Swift)<p style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">Last night at the Bird's Eye in Basel, Alex Sipiagin (trumpet and flugelhorn) played two wonderful sets last night with a superb band: pianist </span><span lang="DE-CH" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">Antonio Faraò, bassist Makar Novikov, and drummer Sasha Mashin. Sipiagin's son Nikita played alto saxophone on one tune. But one couple will remember more than the music: after the first set, a man proposed to his partner from the stage. She accepted; he gave her a ring. But I remembered the proposal rejected in Taylor Swift's "champagne problems": "Sometimes you just don't know the answer / 'Til someone's on their knees and asks you." Anyone making a public proposal better be sure the answer will be "yes". </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 February 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-82124017919700713132024-02-24T12:17:00.000+01:002024-02-24T12:17:01.373+01:00Ed Yong’s “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" (2022)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">In his brilliant book "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" (2022), Ed Yong dedicates chapters to senses humans have as well as those only other animals have: smells and tastes, light, color, pain, heat, contact and flow, surface vibrations, sound, echoes, electric fields, and magnetic fields. The next-to-last chapter, "Uniting the Senses", considers how the senses an animal has come together to form each individual's view of the world, with an especially fascinating discussion of how animals distinguish their perceptions of the world from their perceptions of their own actions. The conclusion addresses "Threatened Sensescapes": how humans disrupt the senses of the world's other animals. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 February 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-41661201645725555852024-02-23T21:30:00.002+01:002024-02-23T21:30:45.751+01:00The sound of Taylor Swift’s early and recent albums<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Baskerville, serif;">In my preparation for my Taylor Swift course, which starts next week, I keep going through her albums in chronological order. Whenever I get to the end and go back to the beginning again, I experience a small shock: from the mostly sparse and often ambient textures of the three latest albums ("folklore", 2020; "evermore", 2020; "Midnights", 2022) back to the power pop country of 2006's "Taylor Swift" and 2008's “Fearless”). I don't dislike the latter; in fact, I find much in them to admire and appreciate. But to me, there’s much less space in the sound of the early records, less room for my kind of listener, in a sense. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 February 2024)</span> </p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20782819.post-44801768615054365772024-02-22T20:52:00.001+01:002024-02-22T20:52:17.378+01:00"He prophets most who bilks the best” (“Finnegans Wake”, 305.1-2)<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Baskerville, serif; margin: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">"He prophets most who bilks the best": This line from James Joyce's “Finnegans Wake” (1939, 305.1-2) parodies the Rotary Club's 1911 motto, "He profits most who serves best." Instead of coming from service, Joyce's profit comes from fraud. And it is not just being the best fraud, but also defrauding the best people. Then, "profits" as "prophets" makes prophets not servants of the divine but rather frauds themselves, and prophecy becomes being "practiced at the art of deception" (to quote Mick Jagger in a Rolling Stones song from thirty years after "Finnegans Wake"). The combination of profit and prophecy – of capital and religion – thus makes for the best deception of all. </span><span lang="EN-US">(Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 February 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrew Shieldshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com0