Two Swiss People’s Party politicians in a scuffle with the police

Yesterday, in the run-up to the peace summit at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland this weekend, Ruslan Stefanchuk, the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukranian Parliament, visited the Federal Palace in Bern, the seat of the Swiss government and parliament. With the main stairway blocked because of heightened security for Stefanchuk's visit, Thomas Aeschi of the far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) refused to take an elevator upstairs and got into a scuffle with the police. Aeschi's SVP colleague Michael Graber later said on Swiss television that he completely disagreed with the police's actions. As usual, members of a far-right party insist on law and order until it applies to them. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 June 2024)

 

The alleged “weaponization” of the legal system in the United States and the conviction of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on felony gun charges

For former United States President Donald Trump and his supporters, the trials he has faced, and especially his recent conviction on 34 felony charges in New York City, are politically motivated: "Can a President order his Department of Justice to indict an opponent just prior to an election?" (all-caps removed). But now President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been convicted on three felony charges for federal gun violations. As one joke I saw put it, President Biden is apparently not very good at "weaponizing" the legal system. It's also a nice irony that Trump and his "Second Amendment" supporters got the Hunter Biden conviction they wanted – but on gun charges. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 June 2024) 

United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and the “polarization” of United States politics

In the United States, "polarization" has allegedly paralyzed the country's politics, with Democrats moving left and Republicans moving  right. Supposedly, if "both sides" were willing to compromise, the country's political business could get done again. But when asked by undercover activist Lauren Windsor what could be done about polarization, United States Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that "it’s difficult [...], because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised." And Alito will not compromise on "return[ing] our country to a place of godliness." Polarization comes not from "both sides" but from a far right who want to impose their "Christian nationalism" on the rest of the country. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 June 2024)

 

Note: See Jay Kuo’s article about Alito’s remarks. 

Art, “its own special reality”, and the unreliability of Charles Kinbote in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” (1962)

In Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire" (1962), Charles Kinbote refers in one of his annotations to the late poet John Shade's poem "Pale Fire" to "the basic fact that reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average 'reality' perceived by the communal eye." This sounds like the character might well be serving as a mouthpiece for the author's own aesthetic views, but Kinbote's unreliability as a commentator and as a narrator at least complicates and perhaps even completely undermines any quotation of this particular passage as a clear, straightforward presentation of Nabokov's own understanding of art. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 June 2024)

A bike ride on a rainy summer evening

Yesterday I went out in the evening on my bike again, but this time it was raining. I took a different route to the river, so instead of going downhill most of the way I had to go up on a bridge over train tracks. And this time I was going across the river, where the wind picks up when it's raining and makes it feel like it's raining harder. Needless to say, there weren't many people out enjoying the weather, but in the park on the other side of the river a few young men were working out despite the rain. On my way back later, it was still raining. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 June 2024)

A bike ride on a summer evening

I coasted down the hill I’d have to ride back up again later. The summer evening sun shone off second-story windows and the mirrored sunglasses of several people walking up the hill. I got to the street with the tram and turned right to head to the park. A Friday crowd sitting in little clusters enjoyed the sun on the grass while little children scattered around them laughing past their bedtime. The river, its water high with all the recent rain, shimmered on the other side of the lawn. Time kept passing. Saying goodbye to the sun, the park, and the river, I went inside to hear a band or three. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 June 2024)

38 Republicans in the United States Senate vote against the right to use contraception

On 7 June 1965, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that married couples could use contraception without restrictions. On 22 March 1972, Eisenstadt v. Baird extended that to unmarried people, and on 9 June 1977, Carey v. Population Services International extended it to minors. Yesterday, on 5 June 2024, a 51-39 vote in the United States Senate "to protect an individual’s ability to access contraceptives and to engage in contraception" failed because of the 60-vote filibuster. U. S. citizens should consider this in the 2024 election: 38 Republican Senators voted against the right to contraception. (New York Senator Chuck Schumer voted against the bill for procedural reasons.) (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 June 2024)

 

A deep dive into The National

After binging on Wilco, I've turned to The National, a band I've known about for years now but never listened to. I've now gotten through the beginning of 2013's "Trouble With Me", the sixth of their ten studio albums. So far, I really like the sound of the band, which flows nicely out of my burst of listening to Wilco, and the baritone of lead singer Matt Berninger, which I already know from "coney island", the band's collaboration with Taylor Swift on her album "evermore" (2020). If none of the band's songs have stood out to me yet, that's in part because I have mostly had them on in the background. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 June 2024)

A deep dive into Wilco, especially “Cruel Country” (2022) and “Cousin” (2023)

Since I had fallen behind in collecting albums by Wilco and hadn't listened to them much recently, I picked up their two most recent ones, "Cruel Country" (2022) and "Cousin" (2023), and listened to their whole studio catalogue in order. From about 2005 to 2015, I listened to their first eight albums a lot, so those were all familiar old friends, with "Hummingbird" from "A Ghost Is Born" (2004) still being my favorite Wilco song. On the two newest albums, I particilarly like "Many Worlds" from "Cruel Country" as it stretches a small fragment of text out into seven minutes and fifty-three seconds of a lovely, textured instrumental crescendo and dimuendo. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 June 2024)

Read “Das nächste Dorf”, by Franz Kafka, in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of his death (in German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian)

Exactly one month before his forty-first birthday, Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis one hundred years ago today at a sanatorium in Klosterneuburg, Austria. To honor the anniversary of his death, spend one minute reading his story "Das nächste Dorf", which he published in "Ein Landarzt" in 1920. If you can't read German, I've collected four translations of the story: "The Next Village" (tr. Willa and Edwin Muir, 1961); "Le prochain village" (tr. Laurent Margantin, 2012); "La aldea más cercana" (tr. Juan José del Solar, 2003); "Il prossimo villaggio" (tr. Ervino Pocar, 1979). If you know translations in other languages, please add them in the comments (with the translator's name, if possible). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 June 2024)

 

Das nächste Dorf

Franz Kafka, "Ein Landarzt", 1920

 

Mein Großvater pflegte zu sagen: "Das Leben ist erstaunlich kurz. Jetzt in Erinnerung drängt es sich mir so zusammen, daß ich zum Beispiel kaum begreife, wie ein junger Mensch sich entschließen kann, ins nächste Dorf zu reiten, ohne zu fürchten, daß – von unglücklichen Zufällen ganz abgesehen – schon die Zeit des gewöhnlichen, glücklich ablaufenden Lebens für einen solchen Ritt bei weitem nicht hinreicht."

 

*

 

The Next Village, tr. Willa and Edwin Muir (1961)

 

My grandfather used to say: "Life is astoundingly short. To me, looking back over it, life seems so foreshortened that I scarcely understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that – not to mention accidents – even the span of a normal happy life may fall far short of the time needed for such a journey."

 

*

 

Le prochain village, tr. Laurent Margantin (2012)

 

Mon grand-père avait coutume de dire : "La vie est étonnamment courte. Maintenant tout se rassemble en moi dans le souvenir, si bien que, par exemple, je comprends à peine qu'un jeune homme puisse se décider d'aller à cheval jusqu'au prochain village sans craindre que – si l'on écarte la possibilité d'un accident – le temps d'une vie ordinaire à l'heureux déroulement ne soit que très insuffisant pour une telle course."

 

*

 

La aldea más cercana, tr. Juan José del Solar (2003)

 

Mi abuelo solía decir: "La vida es asombrosamente breve. Ahora, en el recuerdo, se me condensa tanto que apenas logro comprender, por ejemplo, cómo un joven puede decidirse a cabalgar hasta la aldea más cercana sin temer que – dejando aparte cualquier calamidad – ni aun en el transcurso de una feliz y corriente alcance ni de lejos semejante cabalgata."

 

*

 

Il prossimo villaggio, tr. Ervino Pocar (1979)

 

Mio nonno soleva dire: "La vita è straordinariamente corta. Ora, nel ricordo, mi si contrae a tal punto che, per esempio, non riesco quasi a comprendere come un giovane possa decidersi ad andare a cavallo sino al prossimo villaggio senza temere (prescindendo da una disgrazia) che perfino lo spazio di tempo, in cui si svolge felicemente e comunemente una vita, possa bastar anche lontanamente a una simile cavalcata.” 

First edition of Ein Landarzt, 1920

Five teenagers convicted and later exonerated; one businessman calling for the death penalty then and now convicted

Five teenagers were arrested in Central Park in New York City on charges of assault and rape. One businessman called for the death penalty to be reintroduced in the state: "I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer [...]." The five teenagers were all convicted and imprisoned. Twelve years later, another man confessed to the rape in the teenagers' case, and their convictions were vacated. Now, another twenty-three years later, that businessman, who in a civil case has recently been ruled to have committed rape himself, has been convicted on thirty-four counts of falsifying business records with the intent to violate federal campaign finance limits. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 May 2024)

André Holland in Rebecca Hall’s “Passing” (2021) and other films I’ve seen him in

When I first watched Rebecca Hall's 2021 adaptation of Nella Larsen's 1929 novel "Passing", I focused on Tessa Thompson's performance as Irene Redfield, as well as on the visual storytelling by cinematographer Eduard Grau. On a second viewing, I've noticed André Holland's performance as Brian Redfield. But then other performances I've seen by Holland have also been excellent, including his roles as Kevin in Barry Jenkins's 2016 "Moonlight" and as Andrew Young in Ava DuVernay's 2014 "Selma". He's also in DuVernay's "August 28th: A Day in the Life of a People", which links poems and historical events that took place in the United States on that day from 1833 to 2008. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 May 2024) 

André Holland and Tessa Thompson in “Passing"

Lightness and intensity with Caroline Davis (alto), Julian Shore (piano), Chris Tordini (bass), and Allen Mednard (drums) at the Bird’s Eye Basel, 29 May 2024

When the rippling ringing of the ride cymbal flies from the long day into an open night and the snare-drum accents and alto-sax accidentals dance to bass snaps and strums and piano swirls and whirls, the first minute of the evening’s music clears ears and finds minds and makes magical beats for feet and hands and tapping fingers, and the first untitled tune with its bells and whistles from Caroline Davis’s alto to Julian Shore’s piano to Chris Tordini’s bass to Allen Mednard’s drums shimmers and glimmers and skips and turns and swerves and curves enough for an entire evening with lightness and intensity, and then there’s still so much more. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 May 2024)

“A kind of emotional excitement” in Nella Larsen’s novel “Passing” (1929) and “exoticism” in Rebecca Hall’s 2021 film adaptation

In Nella Larsen's "Passing" (1929), the black main character Irene Redfield explains her theory about white women's interest in black men to her white friend Hugh Wentworth: "I think that what they feel is — well, a kind of emotional excitement." In the 2021 film "Passing", director and screenwriter Rebecca Hall kept Larsen's words for this dialogue but also has Irene (Tessa Thompson) introduce the concept of "exoticism". Today, when I heard that word while watching the movie for a second time, I wondered if it might be an academic anachronism. According to Google's Ngram viewer, it was used in the 1920s, but by 2019 it was used ten times as often. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 May 2024)

Books I’ve been re-reading for courses and exams, and a note on “Great Expectations” and “The Great Gatsby"

My recent posts on Vladimir Nabokov are all related to my re-reading of him to prepare for a Master's oral exam this week. At the same time, I have been re-reading three novels for a written Bachelor's exam I will grade next week: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925), John Dos Passos's "Manhattan Transfer" (1925), and Nella Larsen's "Passing" (1929). And with me teaching Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861) this semester as well, I keep associating all those novels with Dickens – but especially "The Great Gatsby", whose overlapping with "Great Expectations" begins with the titles and continues in their explorations of what happens when poor young men have "great expectations". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 May 2024) 

“The monstrous semblance of a novel” in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” (1962)

In Vladimir Nabokov's novel "Pale Fire", Charles Kinbote writes his notes to John Shade's poem "Pale Fire" and includes a line "written [...] in the margin of the draft": "The evening is the time to praise the day". In the political and poetic world that Nabokov builds in his novel, that line in a draft is only saved by the work of the annotator. But in Nabokov's novel itself, it is not a deleted line but part of the final version in which Nabokov turns a fictional poem and its annotations into what Kinbote himself explicitly does not want his work of annotation to become: "the monstrous semblance of a novel". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 May 2024) 

The “Acres of Perhaps” in Emily Dickinson’s “Their Hight in Heaven comforts not”

After I came across the "grand peut-être" in the supposed last words of François Rabelais and recalled "the unshakeable PERHAPS" in "Brief Pause in the Organ Recital", by Tomas Tranströmer, in Robin Fulton's translation, I was struck today by another nominalization of "perhaps" in the poem "Their Hight in Heaven comforts not" (Fr725), by Emily Dickinson: "I cant see - // The House of Supposition - / The Glimmering Frontier that / Skirts the Acres of Perhaps". I searched my digital version of Dickinson's complete poems and scrolled through her many uses of "perhaps", but this genitive metaphor (parallel to the "House of Supposition") is her only nominalization of the word. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 May 2024)

The “grand Sylvain”, the “Poplar Admirable” (or Admiral), and the “Grosser Eisvogel” in Léon-Paul Fargue, Vladimir Nabokov, and Anne Duden

As Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) was not only a novelist but a lepidopterist, his memoir "Speak, Memory" (1951/1966) is full of butterflies and moths, and once, he even lists lepidopterans in literature, including the "grand Sylvain" or "Poplar Admirable" in "Les quatre journées" (1941) by Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947). Nabokov uses the older expression, "Admirable". I first learned that butterfly's English name when I once came across a "Grosser Eisvogel" in "Hingegend", a poem I was translating by Anne Duden; I first thought of the "Kingfisher" ("Eisvogel") but then found out that the "Grosser Eisvogel" is the "Poplar Admiral." (But in the end, Duden told me she was referring to a large kingfisher!) (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 May 2024)

Tracing a phrase from Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” (1962) to François Rabelais and Tomas Tranströmer

In "Pale Fire" (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Charles Kinbote annotates poet John Shade's unfinished poem "Pale Fire". For the phrase "the grand potato", Kinbote refers to the supposed "last words" of François Rabelais (1483/1494?-1553): "Je m'en vais chercher le grand peut-être." This line first appeared in the life of Rabelais included in the 1693 translation by Peter Anthony Motteux (1663-1718) of Rabelais's "Gargantua et Pantagruel" (1532-1564). For me, it echoes "the unshakeable PERHAPS" in "Brief Pause in the Organ Recital" ("Kort paus i orgelkonserten"), from "The Wild Market Square" ("Det vilda torget", 1983), by Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015), as translated by Scottish poet and translator Robin Fulton (b. 1931). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 May 2024)

Jan Lundgren and Hans Beckenroth’s duo arrangement of “She’s Leaving Home”, by The Beatles

At their duo concert at the Stadtcasino in Basel last night (which was before the solo piano set by Fred Hersch that I wrote about yesterday), pianist Jan Lundgren and bassist Hans Backenroth played a gorgeous version of "She's Leaving Home", by The Beatles (from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", 1967). The original has Paul McCartney singing the first verse and McCartney and John Lennon singing the chorus in a beautiful multi-tracked arrangement. In Lundgren and Backenroth's arrangement, Backenroth played the verse melody on bass, and Lundgren took over on piano for the chorus melody. This arrangement appears on the duo's 2022 album, "The Gallery Concerts II: Jazz Poetry" (ACT). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 May 2024) 

Fred Hersch plays “After You’ve Gone”, by Turner Layton and Henry Creamer (1918)

During his solo set at the Stadtcasino Basel this evening, pianist Fred Hersch played what he called "the oldest standard I know": "After You've Gone", from 1918. It was written by Turner Layton and Henry Creamer, an African-American songwriting duo, and first recorded by white American singer Marion Harris. I have three versions in my music collection, by Benny Goodman (1935), the Quintette du Hot Club de France (1937, in a compilation of Django Reinhardt music), and Sidney Bechet (1943). Hersch's performance fit beautifully into his wide-ranging set, and with it, he took the opportunity to pull out some stride-piano chops just before returning to the melody to finish the tune. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 May 2024)

Moral judgments in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (1955)

For Vladimir Nabokov, as he wrote in his 1956 afterword to "Lolita" (1955), the novel "has no moral in tow." Yet Dolores Haze herself provides moral judgment of the Humbert Humbert who calls her "Lolita": although he may insist that "it was she who seduced" him, she later refers to "the hotel where you raped me" and says he "had attempted to violate her several times when [he] was her mother's roomer." And even Humbert ultimately condemns his treatment of the "slave-child" he trapped in a "background of shared secrecy and shared guilt": "[...] there were times when I knew how you felt, and it was hell to know it [...]." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 May 2024)

“Mumbo Jumbo” in Thomas Hardy’s “A Pale of Blue Eyes” (1873) and Francis Moore’s "Travels Into the Inland Parts of Africa" (1738)

In "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (1873), Thomas Hardy refers to "a species of Mumbo Jumbo." As so often, I wondered then about the history of an expression I did not know had been around that long. The word is first recorded by the "Oxford English Dictionary" in English geographer Francis Moore's "Travels Into the Inland Parts of Africa" (1738), where it refers not only to a god, spirit, or idol, a "dreadful Bugbear to the Women, call'd Mumbo-Jumbo", but also to "a cant language [...] called Mumbo-Jumbo". Perhaps I would have long since known about the word's African origins if I had ever read Ishmael Reed's 1972 novel "Mumbo Jumbo"! (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 May 2024)

Thomas Hardy avoiding a conventional ending for a romance novel in “A Pair of Blue Eyes” (1873)

Thomas Hardy's "A Pair of Blue Eyes" (1873) begins with Stephen Smith, a lower-class young man trained as an architect, in love with Elfride Swancourt, whose parson father forces her to break off her romance. After Smith goes to colonial India to seek his fortune, Elfride falls in love with Henry Knight (without knowing that Knight was once Smith's mentor). When Smith returns from India as a wealthy man, the novel seems to be heading toward Elfride finally choosing between the two, but Hardy chooses a less conventional ending: without the two men's knowledge, Elfride has married someone else and died just as they were on their way to confront her. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 May 2024)

“Fishing for compliments” with Marcel Proust

I came across an English expression in Marcel Proust's "Du côté de chez Swann" (1913): "'Puisque vous le voulez', répondit Odette sur un ton de marivaudage, et elle ajouta: vous savez que je ne suis pas 'fishing for compliments.'" I would have thought that "fishing for compliments" was too recent to be used in a scene taking place in nineteenth-century France, but the entry for this sense of "fish" in the "Oxford English Dictionary" includes the phrase in an 1803 quotation: "I feared he would think I was fishing for a compliment." And the general figurative sense of "fish" of trying to indirectly "elicit a particular response" goes back to 1570. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 May 2024) 

“Another Step”, by the Martin Lechner Band, with two lyrics that I wrote

"Another Step", the new album by singer Martin Lechner's band with Dave Feusi on tenor saxophone, Roland Köppel on piano, Patrick Sommer on bass, and Andreas Schnyder on drums, begins with two songs that Martin and I wrote together: "Black Bird" and "Magpies". In each case, two older eight-line poems of mine caught Martin's attention, and he began to set them to music. But then he wanted more lyrics, so I had to find my way back into two poems that had long since seemed finished to me. But I managed to write more than he needed, and then he picked out parts he liked and put them in the songs. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 May 2024)

 

Putting my raincoat into my backpack in case I end up in “the meddle of the mudstorm” (“Finnegans Wake”, 86.20)

This morning, I checked the weather report and saw that rain was forecast starting around 6 pm. Since I wasn't sure I would come home before the "Finnegans Wake" reading-group meeting at 6 pm, I put my raincoat into my backpack. After I did end up coming home at 4:30 pm, I decided I might ride my bike back to the meeting. Although the weather report no longer forecast rain, I took my raincoat along anyway. During the meeting, just as we were discussing "the meddle of the mudstorm" (86.20), there was a cloudburst outside, and I was happy to have my raincoat "tospite the deluge" (86.23-2) on my ride home. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 May 2024)

Phrases Emily Dickinson wrote in 1862

These are phrases from Emily Dickinson poems that R. W. Franklin dates to 1862: "this brief drama in the flesh" (279); "Thunder - in the Room" (292); "Recordless Company" (303); "the Juggler of Day" (321); "Some Transatlantic Morn" (326); "That Phraseless Melody" (334); "In Leagueless Opportunity" (342); "Not all Pianos in the Woods" (347); "She dances like a Bomb" (360); "Some rumor of Delirium" (361); "a fond Ambush" (365); "Sufficient Dynasty" (375); "Syllables of Velvet" (380); "Drums off the Phantom Battlements" (406); "A pleading Pageantry" (414); "The Gnat's supremacy" (419); "a baffling Earth" (447); "A Geometric Joy" (456); "a Wake of Music" (462); "The Cruel - smiling - bowing World" (496). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 May 2024)

The community of dancers by the stage at the Tamikrest concert in Basel on 12 May 2024

Down in front at the Tamikrest concert at the Gannet in Basel last night, a small community of dancers formed during the show. There was me, an old white guy in my Tamikrest T-shirt; there was a pair there together – a stocky bearded light-brown man and a turban, and a white, ponytailed woman in a black outfit; there was a thinner brown man in a long-sleeved black button-down shirt; there was a small young light-brown woman in a white top that shone when the black lights were on; there was a brown woman who was the best dancer of all, with her long curly hair bound on top of her head. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 May 2024)

Oum at Volkshaus Basel (11 May 2024) and Tamikrest at Gannet Basel (12 May 2024): Dancing and running into students

Last night I went to the Volkshaus in Basel to hear Moroccan singer Oum with her sextet (oud, trumpet, saxophone, bass, percussion). I danced right fron the beguining. The rhythms were unfamiliar to me, but I could usually find one instrument to guide me. And sometimes I just swayed to the vocal melody. My Moroccan student Nora from my 111-words class was also there, delighted to finally see one of her favorite singers. Tonight, then, I went to the Gannet in Basel to hear Malian band Tamikrests. It was my second time seeing them, and once again I danced all night – and ran into my student Fionn, from the same class! (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 May 2024) 

Press inquiries about my Taylor Swift seminar

For my Taylor Swift seminar this semester at the University of Basel, I have received about fifteen press inquiries from newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations. Until the other day, they were mostly from Switzerland, with four from Germany (one of which I turned down because it came with only a few hours' notice for a live radio discussion). But now I have also received an inquiry for an email interview from the newspaper "El Mundo" in Madrid. It's been quite an experience, but as I recently said to University colleagues , I am looking forward to teaching Emily Dickinson this fall and not being asked for interviews about her. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 May 2024)

Martin Lechner and Band at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 10 May 2024

At their concert at the Bird's Eye in Basel last night, singer Martin Lechner and his band (Dave Feusi, tenor saxophone; Roland Köppel, piano; Patrick Sommer, bass; Andreas Schnyder, drums) played jazz standards, pop songs from the eighties and nineties, and original tunes. Two of the latter featured my lyrics ("Black Bird" and "Magpies"), and I enjoyed them a lot, but as with Samara Joy's wonderful performance of "Guess Who I Saw Today" at the Volkshaus in Basel last month, Martin was at his very best in two songs where he could dig into the role of a clearly defined character: the standard "It's Only a Paper Moon" and Radiohead's "Creep". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 May 2024)

Basel singers performing Taylor Swift songs at Mitten in der Woche on 8 May 2024

Last night at the Mitten in der Woche "swiftomenal" event at the Kaserne in Basel, I sang two Taylor Swift songs accompanied by Fabio Gouvea on electric guitar: "Champagne Problems" and "Never Grow Up" (with "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by Tom Waits). There were also four more riveting performances of rearrangements of Swift songs: Baschi Hausmann sang "State of Grace" to solo electric guitar; Jasmine Albash sang "Cruel Summer" and "... Ready for It?" to solo keyboards; Laine sang two unreleased Swift songs with solo acoustic gutar, "Need You Now" and "This Is Really Happening"; and Jenny Jans and Axel Rüst sang "Exile" and "Lover" with acoustic guitar and keyboards. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 May 2024)

A nine-part blackboard on the last paragraph of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (2005)

For today's discussion of the last paragraph of Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005), the nine students wrote on one-ninth of the blackboard each: words or phrases from the paragraph; keywords for their ideas; concepts from criticism; links to our other two Ishiguro novels ("An Artist of the Floating World", 1986; "The Remains of the Day", 1989); links to literary history or theory. Each student presented their ninth of the board for discussion with the others, while I mostly remained silent until the end. With one student absent, I wrote a new idea of mine about "Never Let Me Go" in the empty ninth: "Il faut imaginer Kathy H. heureuse." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 May 2024)

Like it or not: A podium discussion on “Postcolonial Theories” at the University of Basel

The podium discussion on "Postcolonial Theories" in the Aula at the University of Basel this evening featured Professor Falestin Naili (Near and Middle Eastern Studies), Professor Erik Petry (Jewish Studies), and Dr. Henri-Michel Yeré (Sociology / African Studies) from the University of Basel, as well as Dr. Kijan Espahangizi (History) from the University of Zurich and Swiss writer Christoph Keller as moderator. In a wide-ranging discussion, one moment has stuck with me as a figure for those historical and contemporary conflicts dubbed "postcolonial": Dr. Yeré, a Swiss scholar who was born in the Ivory Coast, mentioned that his mother tongue is French, the colonial language, "whether I like it or not". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 May 2024) 

Saxofour at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, 4 May 2024 (and memories of the World Saxophone Quartet in San Franscisco in the 1980s)

In the mid-1980s, I heard two incredibly memorable performances by the World Saxophone Quartet at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco: Julius Hemphill, Oliver Lake, Hamiet Bluiett, and David Murray. Last night at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, I was reminded of the WSQ's wonderful combination of energy, arrangements, and humor by a performance by saxofour with Florian Bramböck, Klaus Dickbauer, Christian Maurer und Wolfgang Puschnig. Playing in front of Jean Tinguely's "Grosse Méta-Maxi-Maxi-Utopia", the Austrian saxophone quartet performed a wide-ranging set of original compositions (with jokes in between) and concluded their intense and entertaining set with an encore played while walking up the steps into that gigantic sculpture. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 May 2024) 

“I’m against …” – “So you’re for …?"

"I'm against diversity, equity, and inclusion." – "So you're for uniformity, inequity, and exclusion?" – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against critical race theory." – "So you're for gullible race superstition?" – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against antifa." – "So you're for fascism?" – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against decolonization." – "So you're for colonization?"  – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against being woke." – "So you're for being asleep?"  – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against identity politics." – "So you're only for your own identity?"  – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." – "I'm against the radical left-wing." – "So you're for the reactionary right-wing?" – "That's not what I meant!" – "Sorry." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 May 2024)

Jazz, Poetry, and Community

After listening to The Choir Invisible with Charlotte Greve (alto saxophone, vocals), Chris Tordini (bass), and Vinnie Sperrazza (drums) last night at the Bird's Eye in Basel, and then reading Sperrazza's thoughts on his blog about jazz and community on the way home (a community exemplified by that trio's interplay), I read a Facebook post by British poet John McCullough about my late Anglo-American teacher Denise Levertov, and then another by Canadian poet (and London resident) Nancy Mattson about how American poet (and Athens resident) A. E. Stallings mentioned visiting me in Basel in an article on Canadian poet Anne Carson, and I felt like part of an international poetry community. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 May 2024)

Durs Grünbein, Taylor Swift, and critics who say their works are too long

 In 1999, German poet Durs Grünbein published a 229-page collection of new poetry, "Nach den Satiren" (Suhrkamp). I read three reviews that all said he should have published a much shorter collection (80 to 90 pages). Each reviewer listed poems they thought were either definite keepers or obvious flops. I compared the lists and saw that one reviewer's keeper was always another reviewer's flop. I remembered this after reading many reviews of Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department" (2024) that list songs she should have cut – with everyone disagreeing about the keepers and flops. All this speaks for long collections of poems or songs that readers or listeners can curate themselves. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 May 2024)

The 1978 film “La Cage aux Folles” at the Fine Arts Cinema in Palo Alto, California, in the early 1980s

For several years in the early 1980s, the Fine Arts Cinema on California Avenue in Palo Alto, California, ran Édouard Molinaro's 1978 movie "La Cage aux Folles", starring Ugo Tognazzi and Michel Serrault. I moved to Palo Alto in September 1980 for my last two years of high high school, and I'm pretty sure I saw the movie at that cinema before starting at Stanford in September 1982. Today, when I read a student's text about having seen the musical in high school a few years ago, I realized the film was probably my first experience of a work that challenged the homophobia of the 1970s culture I grew up in. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 May 2024) 

The Hailsham canon of literature and art in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” (2005)

Unlike their fellow clones raised elsewhere, the "students" at the Hailsham school in Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go" (2005) are educated in the history of English and European literature and art. Along with the painter Pablo Picasso, the writers the narrator Kathy H mentions include William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Franz Kafka (and two still alive today, Edna O'Brien and Margaret Drabble). Yet Hailsham's jam-packed literary and artistic canon for its cloned organ donors does not include any writers with non-European backgrounds. Perhaps novels by Nella Larsen or Zora Neale Hurston would give the clone underclass ideas about overturning the social order they are raised in. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 April 2024)

Two groups at the Volkshaus in Basel: Andreas Schärer, Kalle Kalima, & Björn Meyer; and Gretchen Parlato and Lionel Loueke

This evening's concert at the Volkshaus in Basel began with the trio of Andreas Schärer on vocals, Kalle Kalima on electric guitar, and Björn Meyer on electric bass guitar. They performed songs from Schärer and Kalima’s “Evolution” (2023, with Tim Lefebvre on bass). It was my fourth time hearing them, and the music opens up more with each show. Then came the duo of Gretchen Parlato on vocals and percussion and Lionel Loueke on electric guitar and vocals with songs from their “Lean In” (2023). Loueke's looping creates relaxed grooves of layered electric guitar combined with his rhythmic chanting and lead-guitar lines, all providing a beautiful foundation for Parlato’s singular singing. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 April 2024) 

Joseph Sobran and a quotation from him in a meme

"In 100 years, we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college": This quotation from Joseph Sobran has been appearing on my Facebook feed. Joseph Sobran (1946-2010) was an ultra-conservative journalist who was fired from William F. Buckley's "The National Review" in 1993 for being "contextually [?] anti-Semitic." He later spoke at conferences organized by Holocaust denialists David Irving and the Institute for Historical Review. My friends sharing this meme might also note that, based on his public Facebook feed, Thayrone Xington, who posted the meme and wrote, "Let that sink in", is a MAGA supporter and a transphobe, among other far-right things. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 April 2024)

 

A search for a recording of a Bach Sonata for Flute

In the 1970s, I loved my father's LP of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonata For Flute No.1 In B Minor, BWV 1030. In 2017, I couldn't remember the flautist's name, so I carefully listened to many recordings for their tempo, their overall sound, and harpsichord accompaniment (not piano). The first of Peter-Lukas Graf's two recordings sounded too cold, but his second, despite piano accompaniment (his daughter Aglaia), was still gorgeous, so I bought it and Aurelie Nicolet's version, which fit all my criteria. Today, I finally found my father's flautist's name: Poul Birkelund. The LP with Finn Viderø on harpsichord is available used, but I don't have (or want) a record player. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 April 2024)

Taylor Swift’s “The Black Dog”, The Starting Line, Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”, and Aretha Franklin

Taylor Swift's "The Black Dog" from "The Tortured Poets Department" (2024) imagines an ex with a new partner: "When someone plays The Starting Line / And you jump up, but she's too young to know this song." Only two singles by The Starting Line were successful between 2002 and 2007, so a young person today might well not know them. In Steely Dan's "Hey Nineteen" from "Gaucho" (1980), a thirty-something man dates a nineteen-year-old: "Hey Nineteen / That's 'Retha Franklin / She don't remember the Queen of Soul." Aretha Franklin's greatest successes were from 1967 to the early seventies, so she might have been unknown to many younger people in 1980. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 April 2024)

Taylor Swift and Wilco and songs with identical titles (plus Glenn Kotche on drums and Ethan Hawke in “Boyhood” and “Fortnight”)

In 2014, when Taylor Swift released "Shake It Off" on "1989", I connected it with Wilco's "Shake It Off" from "Sky Blue Sky" (2007). Swift's song shakes off what others say; Tweedy's anticipates being "awake enough" to shake off dreams. Now, Swift has released "I Hate It Here" on "The Tortured Poets Department", echoing Wilco's 2007 "Hate It Here". These two songs share a musician: Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche plays on Swift's tune. Further, on a camping trip in Richard Linklater's "Boyhood" (2014), Mason Evans, Sr. (Ethan Hawke), plays "Hate It Here" for his son (Ellar Coltrane) – and Hawke has a small role in Swift's video for her new single "Fortnight". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 April 2024)

 

Two concepts of “the reader” that aren’t necessarily compatible

A problem with the concept of “the reader” is that it can mean two things that aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. On the one hand, there’s a linear reader who reads once from beginning to end. This is the reader Walter Benjamin describes in "The Storyteller" (1936) as having a "consuming interest in the events of the novel", the one who wants to know what is going to happen and why. On the other hand, there is a reader who knows the whole work and has read it repeatedly. This is the reader James Joyce describes in "Finnegans Wake" (1939) as "that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia" (120.13-14). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 April 2024)

Vieux Farka Touré at the Volkshaus Basel, 22 April 2024

I had a fourth-row seat right in the center for Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure's concert with his band this evening at the Volkshaus in Basel (as part of the Offbeat Jazz Festival). But I didn't sit in it. Instead, I stood over to the right side of the seats and danced right from the beginning. As always with Malian music, I had to figure out anew how to dance to each tune: sometimes by listening to the bass, sometimes to the drums, and sometimes to the intertwining lines of guitar and ngoni. But the extended jams offered plenty of opportunities to find my way into the nuances of the rhythms. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 April 2024) 

Taylor Swift songs and Miss Havisham & Estella from Charles Dickens’s “Great Expectations” (1861)

I hear Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861) in Taylor Swift's "right where you left me" ("evermore", 2020): "Help, I'm still at the restaurant / Still sitting in a corner I haunt [...] / Dust collected on my pinned-up hair." Dickens's Miss Havisham has also stayed "right where you left me" in her house, with everything around her "covered with dust". Now Swift's "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me?" ("The Tortured Poets Department", 2024) recalls Dickens's Estella, raised by Miss Havisham to get revenge on men: "You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me / So all you kids can sneak into my house with all the cobwebs."  (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 April 2024)

Cassandra in Greek mythology, Christa Wolf, and Taylor Swift (plus a pinch of Friedrich Nietzsche)

During our listening party yesterday afternoon for Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology", I was first struck by her song "Cassandra" for its mythological title that reminded me of "Kassandra", by German novelist Christa Wolf (1929-2011), whose work was the subject of one-third of my doctoral dissertation back in the 1990s. But then I also thought my co-teacher Rachael Moorthy would like the song, as she has already noticed Swift's multiple references to women from Greek mythology. And finally I laughed at how Swift gave another spin to the Nietzschean aphorism we had discussed on Wednesday in connection with her "Cruel Summer": "What doesn't call you makes you aware." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 April 2024)

First listening to Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” (2024)

At six am, I listened to Taylor Swift's new album "The Tortured Poets Department." It struck me that the album may have a first single, "Fortnight", but it doesn't sound like it was written and produced to be a blockbuster single. Not only that, none of the other fifteen songs have that feel to them either. At eight am, the album almost doubled in length (to 31 songs) with the release of "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology". That's what some of my Taylor Swift students and I listened to at our listening party this afternoon. So far, the two songs I like most are "Cassandra" and "Peter" (as in Pan). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 April 2024) 

“In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” in memory of Dickey Betts (1943-2024)

On hearing the news that guitarist Dickey Betts of The Allman Brothers Band died today, I went to put on his tune "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", the live version from the band's March 1971 concerts "At Fillmore East", with its glorious guitar solos by Betts and Duane Allman sandwiching Gregg Allman's organ solo while Berry Oakley on bass and Butch Trucks  and Jai Johnny Johansson on drums push all the soloists and each other to beautiful climaxes and interludes between them. My dear old friend Paul Baer, who sadly committed suicide in September 2016, loved this tune, so for me today it's "In Memory of Dickey Betts and Paul Baer". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 April 2024) 

Taylor Swift, Friedrich Nietzsche, and aphorisms

Taylor Swift's "Cruel Summer" (from "Lover", 2019), includes a variation on an aphorism by Friedrich Nietzsche: ""What doesn't kill me makes me want you more." In the "Lover" session of our Taylor Swift seminar today, I asked the students how they use (and have heard others use) the Nietzsche aphorism from "Twilight of the Idols" (1888): "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." While some of their responses make the aphorism a principle of resilience, one student referred to how it can also have an effect of "toxic positivity". The students also pointed out that many Swift lines have also come to be used as aphorisms, and not only by Swifties. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 April 2024)

Paul Krugman on “GOP radicalism” and the failure of “centrists” to see it

Columnist, economist, and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman observes in the "New York Times" that if self-declared "centrists" "were willing to admit the fundamental asymmetry in our political debate, willing to admit that if DC is broken, it’s because of GOP radicalism, they would have done it long ago. It’s not as if this reality was hard to see." But as such people who want to seem "Serious" and "sensible" will not blame "polarization" on one side alone, they will continue to not see the reality of politics in the United States today. And here's the thing: Krugman came up with this take not in April 2024 but in April 2013. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 April 2024)

The compression of the time frame in James Ivory's 1993 film of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "The Remains of the Day"

James Ivory's 1993 film of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel "The Remains of the Day" compresses the time frame of Ishiguro's story. In the novel, the events recalled in 1956 by Mr. Stevens, the butler-narrator, run from a 1923 international conference put on by Stevens's employer, Lord Darlington, to another meeting at Darlington Hall in about 1937. In Ivory's film, the initial conference takes place in 1936, with a secret meeting "three years later" about the Sudetenland crisis in September 1938. While the compression of the timeline might make sense in the film version, Ivory and his screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala could have been more careful about the actual dates of historical events. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 April 2024) 

Faith Ringgold at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts in February 2024

During my February visit to Massachusetts, my sister, my mother, and I visited the Worcester Art Museum (WAM), where there was an exhibition of work by Faith Ringgold (1930-2024), who died yesterday. I walked into the small room containing in her work and was immediately spellbound by "Picasso's Studio". This quilt from WAM's collection, which is part seven of Ringgold's sequence "The French Collection", depicts a young African-American woman modeling for Picasso with "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" in the background, with the model's story framing the image. Ringgold's use of texts in her images has made me interested in teaching a course on her wide-ranging work, from such quilts to children's books. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 April 2024)

Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” and the 200th Anniversary of the death of Lord Byron

Taylor Swift's "The Tortured Poets Department" will drop on Friday, 19 April 2024. This morning, while paging through the 4 March 2024 issue of "The New Yorker", I have just read the beginning of an article by Anthony Lane about English Romantic poet Lord Byron, who "succumbed to a fever on April 19, 1824, in the town of Missolonghi, on the west coast of Greece, at the age of thirty-six." For a possible link between Swift and Byron, I've found only a BBC article that mentions Byron as one example of "a tortured poet" but does not note that Swift's album is coming out on the two-hundredth anniversary of Byron's death. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 13 April 2024) 

My result with an exercise for students in writing long sentences

After the hitherto mostly pleasant Sunday afternoon reunion of old college roommates for a round of their favorite card games abruptly ended with a surprisingly fierce dispute about the relative merits of French, Italian, and Australian wine, someone on the ground floor of the old brownstone turned on the flickering light in the musty stairwell, and the party's last guest, still so shocked by all that anger about such a trivial subject as to be sure something else must have been going on, cried about a long-lost love on the way home under the star-filled winter sky that the last traces of the cloudless day's light had long since faded from. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 12 April 2024) 

Never Any Tag

Clutter and cushions and glasses and cups and saucers and sauces and bottles and cans and canisters and candle drips and winey drops and beery drabs and one-faced photos and two-faced snaps and middle-finger poses and outstretched tongues and crucified eyes are the aftermath strewn across the stained rugs and spotted carpets and scratched parquets that barefoot or stockinged or hosed or sandaled gals and maids and lasses and dames are tiptoeing between with their highest wildest heels in their tireless tired hands and their slippery sticky fingers after a latte evening and an airy morning as we arise to gather up ourselves and everything on another dawning Never Any Tag. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 April 2024)

“Stop Making Sense”, the Talking Heads concert movie, in 1984 and 2024

I saw Talking Heads on 6 December 1983 at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium (now the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium), the week before the four shows filmed at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood to make Jonathan Demme's 1984 movie "Stop Making Sense". The movie reinforced my memory of the concert's images, such as David Byrne running around the stage during "Life During Wartime", dancing with a lamp during "This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)", and wearing a giant suit during "Girlfriend Is Better". Tonight I saw the 40th anniversary restoration at the kult.kino in Basel, and it remains one of the most extraordinary works of art I have ever experienced. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 April 2024) 

“The piano is a sculpture”: Jason Moran plays Duke Ellington in Basel, 8 April 2024

“The piano is a sculpture. The piano is a machine”: Thus spoke Jason Moran to begin his solo concert of Duke Ellington music last night at Basel's Martinskirche. During “Black and Tan Fantasy”, he put the pedal down to carve a two-handed sculpture of mobile bass notes. As he lingered on his patterns, the piano-machine’s high strings sang overtones that grew ever louder every second. “Care is built into the walls” of the church, he said later, and after describing his afternoon visit to Claude Monet’s “Waterlilies” at the Fondation Beyeler, Moran made “It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That a Swing” a statement of Ellington’s painterly achievements. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 April 2024) 

“J’ai oublié les mots”: Gregory Privat in Basel, 8 April 2024

The day’s last light fades through the stained-glass windows of the Martiniqueskirche in Basel on this summery Monday evening in early spring. Gregory Privat touches the keys, the hammers strike the strings, and arpeggios, octaves, and melodies resound from the open lid of the grand piano (whose polish reflects it shimmering interior) and echo through the church to our insatiable ears. Then he sings, he loops his words into choirs, he touches the keys more and more, and his voices fly up to the frescoes so many have seen in the silence of the church for centuries and centuries: “J’ai oublié les mots; J’ai oublié les mots; J’ai oublié les mots.” (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 April 2024) 

“For you and I” and “of you and I” in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” (1989)

In Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" (1989), the butler-narrator Mr. Stevens tells the housekeeper Miss Kenton they just accept a decision made by their employer Lord Darlington: "His lordship has made his decision and there is nothing for you and I to debate over." This construction with "you and I" after a preposition appears several times in Stevens's usage, including in the novel's final pages: "Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make a small contribution count for something true and worthy." Its appearances always mark class boundaries – between Lord Darlington and his employees; between Stevens and people from lower classes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 April 2024)

Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” (1957) and Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” (2017)

After discussing "The Blank Page" (1957) by Isak Dinesen (1885-1962) with students on Friday, 22 March, I discussed Taylor Swift's "Blank Space" (from "reputation", 2017) with students on Wednesday, 3 April. I didn't notice the coincidence of the titles until I was preparing the song and noticed the connection between blankness and writing: "I've got a blank space baby / And I'll write your name." In a 1981 article, Susan Gubar interpreted Dinesen's "blank page" as "an act of defiance" against the erasure of women from literary history. In that light, Swift defiantly asserts herself as the writer who controls the story in "Blank Space" and writes stories in her songs. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 April 2024)

A New Yorker cartoon and the fantasy of emigration from a reactionary United States

The Daily Cartoon on the "New Yorker" website for 4 April 2024 depicts a father reading a bedtime story to his daughter: "And so, freaked out about the coming election, they moved to France and lived happily after." The idea comes up whenever the forces of reaction in the United States take power, or just come close to doing so: we can move to Canada or to Europe. But right now, France (like other countries to emigrate to) is facing its own takeover by a radical right-wing party: Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (which was founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972 and called the Front National until 2018). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 April 2024)

 

“Allkey dallkey”: Four years of rereading “Finnegans Wake”

In my Facebook Memories this morning, I read a quotation I posted four years ago today: "Allkey dallkey, sayd the shop’s housebound, for he was as deep as the north star [...]ey" (James Joyce, “Finnegans Wake”, 317.5-6). I was struck then and now by "allkey dallkey" as a variation on "okey dokey" – a trace of how long the latter phrase has been around. That was during my first reading of the novel, which I completed on 28 October 2021. Of course I immediately started my second reading of this novel of "recirculation" (3.2). And today, on 4 April 2024 I read the same passage that I quoted on 4 April 2020. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 April 2024) 

A phrase about Paul Celan and the title of a book by Alfred Bodenheimer

I've been occasionally reading a couple pages in Bertrand Badiou's "Paul Celan. Eine Bildbiographie" (Suhrkamp, 2023). Today, on page 58, in the chapter about Celan's life in Bucharest from Spring 1945 to November 1947, I read a section about how Celan (1920-1970) changed his name in 1947 from Antschel to Celan: "Mit dem Namen des Vaters bruchlos brechen." He broke with his father's name by changing it, but he did so without a break by reversing the Romanian spelling "Ancel" to get "Celan". I was struck by Badiou's expression because a decade ago I translated a book by Alfred Bodenheimer, "Ungebrochen gebrochen. Über jüdische Narrative und Traditionsbildung" (2012), as "Unbrokenly Broken." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 April 2024)

Doctor Eckleburg in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925) and King Gillette in John Dos Passos's "Manhattan Transfer" (1925)

"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high": F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" (1925) mentions this faded billboard "half way between West Egg and New York" seven times in all. Early in John Dos Passos's "Manhattan Transfer" (1925), a bearded man sees "an advertising card" with "a highbrowed clean-shaven distinguished face [...]. Under it in copybook writing was the signature King C. Gillette." While Gillette never reappears, the advertisement is effective: the man buys a razor, goes home, and shaves. Fitzgerald's old billboard is nothing but an insistent symbol, while Dos Passos's new advertisement is simultaneously really effective and potentially symbolic. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 April 2024)

Racist attacks on Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and the systematic racist effects of redlining in the city

Emmanuel Felton's article in yesterday's "Washington Post", "Baltimore mayor weathers racist attacks after bridge collapse," refers to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a thirty-eight-year-old Democrat who has been described on white supremacist Elon Musk's microblogging site X as looking "like your average street criminal." But Mayor Scott wants to address Baltimore's problems, "including undoing the damage done by racial redlining," that caught my attention. The practice of drawing red lines around minority neighborhoods in the United States may seem like history, but even in the last decade multiple banks have paid steep fines for discriminatory lending practices. That context links racist attacks on Mayor Scott and racist practices he aims to undo. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 April 2024) 

Beyoncé’s incredible run: "Lemonade" (2016), "Renaissance" (2022), and "Cowboy Carter" (2024)

Last week, I took a deep dive into all of Beyoncé's albums to prepare for the release of her "Cowboy Carter" on Friday. I've listened to Beyoncé in bits and pieces in the past, but never all at once. Her first five albums – "Dangerously in Love" (2003); "B'Day" (2006); "I Am... Sasha Fierce" (2008); "4" (2011); "Beyoncé" (2013) – are all full of good songs and are more than worth many listens; I was especially struck by "If I Were a Boy" and "1+1". But "Lemonade" (2016), "Renaissance" (2022), and now "Cowboy Carter" (2024) are extraordinary; they belong to any list of three great albums in a row by the same artist. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 31 March 2024)

"Your body renews itself every seven years”: An idea that’s been around at least since John Dos Passos’s novel “Manhattan Transfer” (1925)

I'd have assumed that the idea that the cells in human bodies are completely replaced in a seven-year cycle arose during my lifetime, so I was surprised to find Congo in John Dos Passos's 1925 novel "Manhattan Transfer" making the point in a scene before World War One: "Your body renews itself every seven years." While I haven't been able to find out when the idea originated, or with whom, I have learned that while the average life of human cells may be seven to ten years, the life spans of cells vary widely, with some cells in the lens of the eye forming in the embryo and surviving until death. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 30 March 2024)

Reafference, exafference, and a possible origin of the mind (thanks to Ed Yong’s “An Immense World”)

According to Ed Yong's "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" (2022), organisms distinguish between the sensations of their own activity ("reafference") and those from outside ("exafference"). Even organisms with a few hundred neurons have a system like this: the signals generating activities split to also predict how each activity will feel. The predicted perceptions can be compared to actual perceptions to distinguish "reafference" from "exafference". Yong quotes neuroscientist Michael Hendricks: sentience might be "the process of sorting perceptual experiences into self-generated and other-generated." If so, the origin of the mind must lie in that separation of self and other, even in the simplest nervous systems. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 March 2024)

My imaginary eleven-piece band for a joint country-pop tour by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift

Back in 2018, I imagined a jazz nonet to tour with Beyoncé, but with her turning to country music now with "Cowboy Carter" due out tomorrow, I've come up with an eleven-piece band of international musicians from the United States, Benin, Cuba, Chile, and the United Kingdom for a joint country-pop tour by Beyoncé and Taylor Swift with jazz soloists, big-band arrangements, and several other incredible singers: Rhiannon Giddens (banjo, vocals), Lionel Loueke (guitar, vocals), Chris Thile (mandolin, vocals), Esperanza Spalding (bass, vocals), Eric Harland (drums), Alison Krauss (violin, vocals), Nicholas Payton (trumpet, arrangements), Soweto Kinch (alto saxophone, rap), Jany McPherson (piano, vocals), Robin Eubanks (trombone), and Melissa Aldana (tenor saxophone).  (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 28 March 2024)

Hapax legomena in Taylor Swift’s “crumpled masterpiece”, “All Too Well (Ten-Minute Version)"

Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Ten-Minute Version)", from "Red (Taylor's Version)", 2021, the ponders a relationship as a work of art destroyed by an ex: "But maybe this thing was a masterpiece / Till you tore it all up." In Swift's work so far, "masterpiece" is a hapax legomenon – a word that appears only once in a corpus. Another such word in "All Too Well" is "crumpled": "I'm a crumpled-up piece of paper lying here." With the "crumpled-up paper" of a self after a breakup and the torn-up pieces of that "masterpiece" of a relationship – out of these singular words – Swift composed the song that many have considered her own masterpiece. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 March 2024)

The shirt in Walter Benjamin’s Franz Kafka essay and the scarf in Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well"

In preparing to discuss objects in Taylor Swift's "All Too Well (Ten-Minute Version)", I remembered a story I learned from Walter Benjamin's 1934 Franz Kafka essay. In a Chassidic village, the men gather in an inn; in the corner sits a newly arrived beggar. When everyone says what they wish for, the villagers want a workbench or a son-in-law, but the beggar says he wishes he was a king who escaped a war in his nightshirt and eventually found himself in this village. "What good would that do you?" – "I'd have a shirt." – Objects (that imagined shirt; the scarf in "All Too Well") transport stories from kingdoms to villages and back. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 March 2024)

My students and the animal imagery in a passage about Mr. Bounderby in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854)

When the lies of Mr. Bounderby in Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854) have been exposed to an uninvited crowd in his home, he ushers them out with "blustering sheepishness": "[...] he could not have looked a Bully more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped." When I gave this paragraph to my students today, I only asked for comments and interpretations, but they immediately picked up on the animal imagery, which one student even linked to another phrase about "a pedigree." As always, an open discussion led to the primary points that I would have mentioned, while also generating many other angles that I had not yet noticed. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 March 2024) 

Somi and the microphone at her concert in Basel on 23 March 2024

I had a front-row seat at the Offbeat Jazz concert at the Volkshaus in Basel last night by the singer Somi. She served her voice well by how she stood on stage: instead of holding the microphone right up to her mouth as so many singers do, she stood back from the microphone stand and used the microphone primarily to capture the direct sound of her singing, rather than to amplify it. At moments when her band played more quietly (bassist Keith Witty, drummer Otis Brown III, pianist Toru Dodo, and saxophonist Jowee Omicil), I could even hear the power of her voice more from the stage than from the speakers. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 March 2024)

Pale young woman with long brown hair at the supermarket

The pale young woman in the supermarket line has long brown hair halfway down her back. – This morning, she brushed it in the armchair by the window, idly gazing across the street while the church bells rang nearby. She smiled when she finished, as she always does, and she stood up and took her coffee cup to the kitchen. – When the cashier tells her that the bananas had to be weighed, a blank look takes over her face: she doesn't understand. The cashier smiles and goes to weigh the bananas. When she pays, the young woman manages to smile again as she packs her groceries and then heads for the door. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 March 2024) 

Remembering reading Isak Dinesen’s “The Blank Page” (1957) and teaching it today

I usually remember when I first read texts that struck me, especially ones I read in college clauses. But although I know I read "The Blank Page" (1957), by Isak Dinesen (1885-1962), during my studies (along with Susan Gubar's 1981 article "'The Blank Page' and the Issues of Female Creativity"), I'm not sure what course it was in. Still, I often remember the story's image of a gallery of framed, blood-stained sheets from aristocratic wedding nights, with one sheet blank, along with Gubar's discussion of the story as an allegory of the history of women's writing. And today, I discussed it with students again for the first time in many years. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 March 2024) 

Holiday sauce, the Easy Bunny, and our familect

Years ago, our friend Audrey from Paris visited us in Basel and was horrified to see me making hollandaise sauce from a mix. So she taught me how to make it from scratch: melt butter slowly over low heat, mix in egg yolks, lemon juice, and salt, take it off the heat, and whisk it until it's nice and creamy. Our children were small then, and after one of them called it "holiday sauce", that became our family's term for it. Around the same time, one of them also called the Easter Bunny the "Easy Bunny", but that term did not go on to become a permanent part of our familect. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 March 2024)

“Working Class Heroes”: From Stephen Blackpool in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854) to John Lennon and then to Angelo Herndon

When Kailana Durnan referred to Stephen Blackpool from Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854) as a "working-class hero" in her 2018 article "Getting Bored with 'Hard Times,'" I immediately began singing John Lennon's 1970 song "Working Class Hero" (from "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band": "A working class hero is something to be." After I wondered whether the expression preceded Lennon's song, I was able to find multiple uses of the phrase going back to the 1930s, with the first reference being to Angelo Herndon, an African-American labor organizer whose conviction for violating Georgia's insurrection law was overturned by the United States Supreme Court in the 5-4 decision in Hernon v. Lowry in 1937. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 March 2024)

Taylor Swift, “the sin of wit”, and an “erroneous attribution"

For last week's Taylor Swift session, I discussed wit in "Mr. Perfectly Fine" from "Fearless (Taylor's Version)" (2021). To begin, I quoted Swift: "Swift has the sin of wit, no trivial crime." Several students had written about the song for their 30-second texts due before the session, so I used their comments to start an initial list of the varieties of wit in Swift: wordplay, mockery, and sarcasm. At the end of my presentation, I revealed my own joke, my "erroneous attribution" (Jorge Luis Borges): it was not Taylor Swift but Jonathan Swift who said, in his "The Author Upon Himself" (1713), "Swift had the sin of wit, no venial crime." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 March 2024)

A curse and “a mighty gun” in two Emily Dickinson’s poems

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)

A warm, sunny West Phliadelphia afternoon in October 1989

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)

The Tom Ollendorff Trio with Conor Chaplin, James Maddren, and special guest Tim Garland at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 16 March 2024

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) 

Gambling in lyrics by Robert Hunter and by Taylor Swift

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)

Marlon James on Beyoncé haters; me on Taylor Swift haters

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. 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. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 March 2024)

 

  

A thesis on early Taylor Swift, immediately disproven

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)

The triple meaning of Montresor’s toast to Fortunato’s “long life” in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846)

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)

A possible echo of “Nights in White Satin” (1967, The Moody Blues) in Taylor Swift’s “gold rush” (2020)

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)

An exemplary three-part song about three moments in a life: Greg Brown’s “If I Had Known” (1990)

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)

Three 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)

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)

“Going Slow” with the Roberto Bossard band at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 7 March 2024

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)

My FC Basel – AC Fiorentina souvenir scarf

On Thursday, 18 May 2023, I went to the match 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) 

“Purple with ill-smelling dye”: The river in Coketown in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854)

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)

Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson: Sixth cousins thrice removed

As Michael Sainato reported 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 study 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)

 

“Some sort of witty retort”: Mr. Stevens and possible autism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” (1989)

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) 

The correlation between popularity and quality in popular music

The other day, I had occasion to look at the "list of best-selling musical artists" 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)

 

The Pablo Held Trio at the Bird’s Eye in Basel on 1 March 2024

Pianist Pablo Held began his Pablo Held Trio concert with bassist 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. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 March 2024) 

“A lot of spaces” between Taylor Swift and James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”

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)