Free dinner, my house, except I'm leaving

Really too bad that I'm leaving now, because I owe all of you a dinner. A while back, this guy e-mailed me trying to get me to promote his sub-par indie rock band, and I posted his e-mail address and told everyone to send him hate mail. So, just recently I got two messages from him, one of which said, among other unprintable things, that I have 24 hours to take his e-mail off this blog. I wanted to see what would happen, so I just left it as it was. True to form, exactly 24 hours later I get 38 e-mails confirming my subscriptions to Christianity Today Online, Discovery.com, and various porn sites. He is a widely-read man indeed.

The term is done, aside from my essays I haven't really started. One on Virginia Woolf and To the Lighthouse, the other on Basil Bunting's Briggflatts. I really just forgot both how to write essays and how to read poetry in general. It's been so long since I've dissected anything (formally) that I just feel stupid. Not to mention that I'm sick of it and I just want to go off and read some Wallace Stevens or Samuel Beckett or something. On the last flight home, I bought Love in the Time of Cholera (Oprah Book Club!) and read about half of it, now I'm maybe 3/4. It's so romantic I can hardly handle it, but a good book, and I like how nothing really happens, it's all memory.

I was having this conversation with Alyssa today, but I really just am looking forward to sitting and doing nothing with people. You really have to know people to just do nothing with them. Here, I get that occasionally going out for a pint after work or class, but that's only the rare week, and it's never quite as casual as it could be. I have got to finish these essays. I mean, start, but also eventually finish.

Wine-based pasta sauces are for the weak

What you do, you get the pan steaming hot, then lower the flame to a low growl; you throw in some oil, some minced garlic and sliced (not like a tree trunk, cut them the other way) shallots, boil some water for the pasta, and take out the zucchini. You slice that like a tree, then into quarters, you take out the mushrooms (flat, large) and bell pepper (old, yellow) and slice those up any way you can, toss them in there, throw in some dried oregano or marjoram or whatever it is you've got, maybe some pepper--reach for the wine then stop, wait. Think, wine, really? Again, for the nth night in a row, wine-based pasta sauces? Say, no, you don't control me. Reach for the Pernod. Oh, you thought wine was bourgeois but no no no Pernod is so bourgeois it's French. Those tomatoes you stuck in the boiling water to peel, take them out. Throw them away; they're no good to you--there will be no red you're too bourgeois now. The shallots are getting dry; add more oil. Move with confidence now; feel the upward economic mobility coursing through your veins. Pour in a capful of Pernod, another capful, really, just empty the bottle who do you think you're kidding. Drink in that strange dried oregano/anise tension, the we-will-put-aside-our-differences-and-move-to-the-Paris-suburbs aroma: je ne se quai indeed. Now you strain the penne that you didn't even know you put on to cook. You strain it, drizzle it in more oil, because, really. You cover the plate in a thin layer of pasta. You slide the sauce (now really just liquor-soaked vegetables) onto a circle in the middle. You have three concentric circles now, so perfect it might be Greek. You pour yourself some of that wine, wine, you weren't so bad after all you say, you just needed to get the swing of things, find your true calling. As you finish your pasta you swirl the half-glass left, you stand up, and you get your laundry out to dry. You hang it over a chair, because you can't afford a dryer and, let's face it, your bourgeois days are over now.

In penance

Really, it's been years (two weeks). Sometimes we all just need to take a sabbatical, regroup our thoughts, and decide what is and is not worth unloading into the ether.

The term is almost over, and Dublin seems more temporary with each day. Self-deception, probably, since I have two terms, four exams, four essays, and ten pieces for string quartet to complete before I leave. Not to mention that I need to go to Denmark/Sweden/Holland/Spain.

I forced them to cut my hours at work, and my housemate casually suggested I should probably get out more, though in nicer terms. I eschewed my studies (Virginia Woolf) for the day, and made a successful trip to the Porter House with a few people from work, in celebration of Katharina's last day. So now I'm nearly done with To The Lighthouse (with notes!) and I seem to have made better progress on my string pieces than I have in weeks. There's something to be said for leaving the house and taking a break. There's also something to be said for cask-fermented ale: slightly bitter, not so cold, not so carbonated, and definitely some hops. It can only be served from the cask/keg it was fermented in, so you can't get it more than a few weeks old, really. The New York Times had an article the other day about cask ales, so I had to search one out.

I'm leaving for home Tuesday morning, 6:30 a.m., for my Grandma's funeral. I find it hard to talk about with people here, and it's sometimes a necessity when I have to get time off work (missing Bewley's's (?) 80th birthday, they were sure mad about that) or get information on classes missed. I'm never good at taking sympathy, and I generally just want people to say "okay" and get the job done, not try some awkward comfort. I'm just glad that I'll be able to be home with the extended family, especially the ones who only exist in memories from the lake house my Grandma invited us all up to every summer. Strange the way cousins work, that I am no less related to these people I remember only vicariously as I am to the cousins I see every other day I'm home, or twice a year in Idaho.

In clarification, "Call me Chekhov" was a reference to how my day had no real structure, and ended in my getting up in the middle of the night to eat gooseberries from the kitchen. Really, though, I didn't fall asleep until about 4:30 that night.

I can't remember if I posted this link before, but if I did here's a new post of his. Jeremy Denk, a classical pianist, has some of the best musical thoughts I've ever read. Not just music, though, as that's too restrictive. In this one, he compares a passage he read in Watt by Beckett (just like me!) which he picked up in a Dublin book store (!) after playing a concert at the National Concert Hall (the analogy falls short). It is excellent, provided you study both the semiotic theory of Barthes and Beethoven's op. 96 Violin Sonata.

Think Denk

Call me Chekhov

A day, like a story, needs an arc to end. This is the dilemma I face at 2:30 in the morning, after spending my day off reading a novel (Eureka Street, for class) and consuming double-digit cups of tea, not leaving the house except for a brief half-awake foray to the baker's for a loaf of bread and box of said tea. I now buy cheap tea (Ireland's favorite, the box says) and have it with a spoon of sugar--a far cry from my loose-leaf Darjeeling days. The teaspoons here are truly teaspoons, though, while the tablespoons are more like shovels.

It helps that Eureka Street (Robert McLiam Wilson) is a pretty easy novel to read, to stop, and to start again. Bombs in Belfast with one-liners with profanity that you'll have to consult me in private for, as I've been informed that we have younger readers around.

In other news, I received an e-mail by "an avid reader of Dublin on Nitrogen" asking that I mention an unnamed NYC band on the blog. Apparently my posts on classical masterpieces and experimental contemporary music convinced him that I was looking to expand into the genre of forgettably mediocre indie rock. What can you do, people just pulling at me from all directions in an attempt to reach the coveted "Andrew's friends and relatives" demographic.

On some blogs, people post e-mail addresses with an invitation to bombard that person with angry e-mails. I'm going to try this. Any one of you who has pent-up aggression, please misdirect this aggression to: Congratulations! It worked! If it elicits the proper response ("Please remove my e-mail address, my inbox is overflowing and paramilitary groups are threatening my family. Sincerely, Bryan.") then I will throw a celebratory dinner. You're all invited, provided you fly to Dublin.

Omelets and music--what else is there?

1. Omelets:

I cannot seem to get the omelet to fold over properly and seal, without breaking. I left out the spinach today (added basil) to try to reduce the mass, but left in the tomatoes. Really, tomatoes are necessary. The eggs broke over them, however. Left over roasted garlic (from the hummus), tomatoes, basil, pretty good omelet all things told. However, the lack of spinach really creates a void. The basil does not account for the mass, the crunchy nature of the spinach leaf. It struck me: in attempting to contain perfection, must we inevitably leave something out? Conversely, in attempting to contain all that we wish to account for, must we be satisfied with the always-broken nature of the container?

Yes, I just implicitly compared breakfast to philosophy.

2. Music:

I have two choices for music: my computer speakers, which are a bit tinny and low-volume, do not give the total-immersion effect that I'm used to; my headphones, which have something wrong with the wire and only work in one channel, or go out of phase when the wires cross. Seeing as how the headphones are more expensive than I'd like to admit, I'll have to repair the wire once I get home. I might save the broken wire to get crazy noises some time. I'm used to listening to music constantly, from large studio monitors designed to give the most accurate response for mixing and balance. But, since I couldn't bring my mixer and giant speakers trans-Atlantic, I'll have to make do with what I have. Before, either Luke or I would always have music playing through them, and I would cannibalize the library's classical and jazz collections for a new sound.

The Trinity music library is all digitized and huge, but I can't seem to properly listen to it, not to mention that my hard drive is full. This is a bit painful, and each time I get something new I must delete something else, or else my computer slows to a halt due to lack of memory and breaks, spilling eggs all over the kitchen table.

I need very small windshield wipers

for my glasses, that is. Riding in the rain is tolerable for the getting wet, slow pace, and inevitably unpredictable cars, but not being able to see really tips the scales. I just go by shapes, really.

In the last two days I've been to two concerts: Two Gallants (always a favorite), and Vanbraugh Quartet (National Gallery). First, Two Gallants. They were weathered, it seemed. I remember the more youthful energy (or maybe my own reflection of them?) five years ago, in Ray's Golden Lion. Then a smoky bar where the adults in back were a mix of alcoholics, band members' parents, or chaperones, the Two Gallants opened unknown for Mu Meson and stole the show. The next time they came, the building was packed for them. Now I think they may have been drunk, and only smiled occasionally. I would like to interview them and ask some of the same questions as I did for my 10th grade newspaper article to see how they respond. See if the label signing wore down their spirit for the road. Still an excellent concert, however--held the audience rapt; there were ends of songs where we had forgotten it was a song, forgot to clap until it set in. I feel sorry for him, though. They don't look like they're having the fun of a rock band.

I have a new analysis of them. They are a modernist spin on 20s blues ballads, gone electric and distorted. The narratives do not take place in reality, getting the girl, running from the sheriff, but are all internal monologues where the crucial point is the realization of the self, or just any realization at all. There isn't a physical change, only a psychological one. And the guitar playing is superb.

The warm-up band was Blitzen Trapper from--not kidding--Portland. They sounded like Lynard Skynard with four synthesizers, dual guitar lines, and three-part harmony. In essence, if Lynard Skynard lived in Oregon. Two of them grew up in Salem; one was from Yakima (I interviewed them). Very friendly guys. I said I might try to go to Portland for their gig at the Doug Fir on December 21. They're playing with Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, one of the indie rock pantheon--probably the upper end of the pantheon. Apollo or something.

Vanbraugh Quartet--two Schubert quartets and Steve Reich's Different Trains, a piece for recorded train/speech samples and strings. The highlight of the Schubert was Death and the Maiden. Putting it up against Reich was brave--Schubert's glorious Romantic melodies could not have a better contrast than Reich's harmonic drone, essentially lack of melody. However, they matched in a strange way. Death and the Maiden is a fairly programmatic piece; indeed, Schubert is known for his songs for voice and his programmatic music (that is, music that follows a narrative or "plot"). Different Trains incorporates samples of interviews that Reich conducted with his governess, on memories of his trips from Chicago to New York, visiting both parents, three holocaust survivors, and a porter. It follows, chronologically, before the war, during the war, and after the war. Dates fly by, "1939, 1940, 1941," to different harmonies. Try to find the Kronos Quartet's recording, if you can. Or, if you want to. It may be the only one out there, actually, but it's the original group that Reich had in mind.

I had friends over after the concert, cooked butternut squash au gratin with toasted hazelnuts, goat cheese, leeks, cream, all baked. Also pita and red pepper hummus. The pita did not puff properly. I might need to use white flour. The squash dish was excellent. Check it out:

Butternut Squash Gratin

The world is too much with us

Whenever I work more than a few days in a row without doing anything real (i.e. reading), I find that I'm not really the same. This happens on weekends, when I go from spending the whole week studying to working late and sleeping late. This summer when this happened I picked up an old Norton Anthology and randomly read some of Wordsworth's sonnets. This one stuck out:

     THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
         Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
         Little we see in Nature that is ours;
         We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
         The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
         The winds that will be howling at all hours,
         And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
         For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
         It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
         A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;                         10
         So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
         Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
         Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
         Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Link: Article on English poetry
                                                    

C-F#-B

I am eating sugar from a jar. I used to never put sugar in my tea, but now it's just so enjoyable. Plus, really, at 6-7 cups a day it is basically how I drink water, since the tap is never warm and kind of funny tasting. Sometimes I have the sugar for my tea, then just take a little extra spoonful for myself. (If you're wondering: brown sugar)

I've been struggling for the last two weeks with music composition. It's a minuscule credit-weighting, but the work in it is just so unending that it's a good "what do I do now" activity. Anyway, I haven't had a piano but I just bought a 2-octave USB/MIDI keyboard for 100 euros. After wrestling with technology I still had no inspiration, nothing that I could see as "new music," nothing that I feel drawn to add to the West's distended canon.

I thought about my dreams of becoming an ex-pat writer; I thought about Joyce and Hemingway. I thought, how is writing music any different from writing words? I've been writing and listening to this manic Dublin music from Donnacha (comp teacher, Gra Augus Bas), or the minimalism of John Adams (Nixon in China) or Steve Reich (Music for 18 Musicians); it drew me in, but I could never see myself writing that. I wanted to be able to convey a sense of place just as they do.

Now, whenever I sit down to write or revise or piece together ideas, I put myself in the desert (shrub-steppe, if you will). I've found one chord (C-F#-B, roughly) that hits me. I can't get away from it; no matter what voicing I try it in it gives this sense of nothing, openness, no structure yet some clear coherency. It could be put into a tonal idiom but it doesn't fit there either. It is a wasteland. Wish me luck.

I'm going to name the piece (really, 10 short pieces for string quartet) "Wallace," after both the street where I live and Wallace Stevens. As it's a bit presumptuous naming something after a Pulitzer Prize winner, I'll back this up by giving one specific poem that made me take this on:

Wallace Stevens
The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

A short interval

(what the Irish call intermission) for my reading.

I've started to accent Ts. As in, "three twenTY" instead of the northwest-slurred "three twendy." I don't say "tree" for "three" yet, though. It's involuntary and only happens at work when I'm talking to the Irish. Sometimes Americans, when I'm trying to fake being not American.

Reading The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien for this contemporary Irish lit. class. It was banned and everything, burned, whatever. I'm not especially enjoying it. It's tough for me to just enjoy a novel that refuses to overwhelm me. As in, a novel that is a telling of a story and not a total immersion. She doesn't capture the voice of the girl the way Salinger captures Holden. And, coming after Katherine Mansfield (last week, modernism), the more beautiful parts of her prose just seem flat and a bit contrived.

In other news, I'm going to read a lot of Mansfield. I intended to skim a few short stories after I finished work (1 a.m.) Thursday for Friday morning but I ended up reading so carefully all the assigned stories. Ironically, after I went to bed at 4 a.m., I slept through class the next morning. I need a coffee maker. I cannot bear to face the day knowing that I have to ride 20 minutes in order to get bad coffee. I took 125 grams of Guatemala Antigua Fairtrade from work tonight and intend on making use of it as soon as I find a french press.

Anyway, better get back to the grind of reading easy fiction. She mentioned "C.K. Chesterton" (the girl gets G.K. Chesterton's name wrong; they're at school in a convent) in the book and it just made me want to go pick up some hardcore philosophy/theology, subsequently failing all my classes and spending all my time reading books that don't apply to class.

Interesting article from Mother Jones (surprisingly more even-handed than originally thought) on Baylor University, and generally the tension between liberal, modern education and religion. At one point in a quip about hate speech the writer suggests that the doctrinal problems of Christian schools are not confined to Christian schools alone; that secular institutions unwittingly are subject to their own doctrines that need to be revealed in the light of liberal education in general.

Professing Faith

Deconstruct that. (My new catch-phrase, a la Seacrest out).

Om-Elette

Through a happy accident where I thought our juicer was a food processor, I now have a huge tub of freshly cooked chickpeas, and a juicer with scraps of chickpeas in the blades. So, when making myself an omelette this morning, I decided, hey, I'll throw in some chickpeas. Turns out they happen to be the greatest omelette (now a "scramble") ingredient of all time--along with wild rocket, basil, rosemary, red bells, infant tomatoes, garlic, and a bit of sea salt.

But now I must digress for a moment. Looking at the word "omelette," I cannot help but see "om" and "elette." Does this imply that eggs softly cradling a seemingly infinite array of foods is in some way related to the natural vibration of the earth? Is the blanket of eggs a miniature representation of the ancient "om," bringing disparate elements into harmony through realization of their inherent interconnectedness? Are we the vegetables; is nature the eggy mess?

It was Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse.

I know, after I posted the last link from Alex Ross (classical critic, New Yorker) you probably all subscribed to the New Yorker, and read his blog every day over breakfast (like I'm doing). But on the off chance that you didn't, I have another New Yorker article on the effects of the internet on classical music. It is excellent. Also, check out Jeremy Denk's blog (linked in the article). I read it forever last night, and his post on Quartet For the End of Time is pretty incredible. Actually, the quartet itself (Oliver Messiaen) is incredible. He wrote it in a concentration camp when he found out that three of his fellow prisoners were a violinist, cellist, and clarinetist.

The Well-Tempered Web

Undressing Mannequins on Grafton Street

I believe this makes me a regional poet. Grafton street is the downtown pedestrian-only shopping district, also where I work. Lots of tourists, lots of street musicians, although I do not address these aspects here.

Undressing Mannequins on Grafton Street

Her left arm reaches round the waist—she pulls
the cashmere cardigan off blended wool;
she wrests the suede purse from the elbow,
unbuckles senseless trousers, with no help
from the passive, blank-faced statuette.

They will not budge, these stoic animals,
nor bend a knee to step into a shoe.
Until they finally stand nude behind
the glassed-in storefront, making no more sense
than they once did when they were fully clothed.

Preview: sounds like "Birds in the gulf - Boo, the nice louse"

Instead of giving you my book list all at once, it will be slowly revealed to you.

Henry James - Turn of the Screw: good lecture, talked about how the "reality" of the ghosts doesn't matter because the narration is all that exists.
Katherine Mansfield - Selected Stories: I think it's Prelude, some "Je ne" French title, and two others. For Wednesday.

I'm feverish, can't sleep, and blogging. That's like three sicknesses at once. I hacked and coughed all through work today. A huge group of foreign tourists came in 10 minutes before closing, and it took an hour and a half to get cleaned up. That's 9 1/2 hours straight. More than I go to school. I just figure I'll make enough money by December and then quit.

I saw the Crash Ensemble (Donnacha Dennehy is the artistic director) last night for their 10th anniversary show. They also played from noon until 10:30 tonight. Insane. Just an assault on aurality. I don't even think that's a word. But it's almost an anagram of "reality" so I have to keep it.

www.crashensemble.com - I know, I'm getting lazy.

Also, first one to guess the book in the title gets cake.

Modernism -- the voice talking at me.

My schedule for classes has changed, and I now have about 7 1/2 hours of class per week. Apparently this is a full load, because everyone is saying that I'll be busy. So far, it looks like I have a novel/collection of poems/play per week in both Contemporary Irish Literature and Modernism, while in Post war/Post nation/Post-1945 British/Irish poetry we're covering an author's collected/selected works every two weeks. Music classes will be as time-consuming as always. Sitting alone in a small room, slowly and deliberately putting dots on a page.

Modernism is my first large lecture class I've ever had. And, for the first time, I recognize why people hate English majors. If, say, I had started at a large school bent towards economics, business, engineering, some other practical thing, and had to take a class like this it would make me hate the academic literary society forever. They stand up there and talk about the context of modernism, the basis for experimentation, the world wars and ex-patriots, and the purpose is not enjoyment of the piece of writing at hand. The purpose is to examine Woolf's stream-of-consciousness narrative in some abstract way, never getting around to the act of reading itself. There is no focus on interaction (therefore enjoyment) with the book, because the class is too huge to give anything other than biographical facts and established interpretations. I will probably enjoy it, though, for the reason that I'm interested in modernist literature and it will basically be an independent study course with an added lecture. Plus I've already read half the stuff on the list.

Of Post War/Post-Nation, my professor Gerry Dawe said, "I really just wanted to call it 'Poetry: A Seminar,' but that wouldn't work with the whole course booklet and everything." Basically, we're reading poetry. He gave us some other suggested reading--biographies, letters between poets, the context of the nations--but said it's mostly going to be the poetry itself. He has recordings of the poets, and at the end he will bring in some living recent poets to chat. That class might be my favorite. I've heard of a few of them, and read a bunch of Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney, but I'm looking forward to finding some new favorites here.

I'm going to have a new housemate soon. One is moving out, and another (Danish)girl is going to move in soon. Apparently she left the last place because they weren't clean enough. So I am clearly the ideal housemate.

I just realized I need a link. This one is probably less enlightening than the last few. Although maybe not the Karl Marx ventriloquism one. That was kind of dumb.

McSweeney's - Lists

Bicycles, Love, Death, Karl Marx's party trick

Last night, coming home from work, someone opened a car door right in front of me and I flew off my bike. I was going about 13-14 mph, too. I was also glad there wasn't another car behind me. They gave me a ride home, at least. So, I didn't go to the hospital because I hate hospitals, but this morning I could barely walk. I ended up calling in sick to work, about 20 minutes before I was supposed to go. I feel bad about that, but it should be okay. Bicycling is actually easier than walking now, since I don't put any stress on my leg. It's probably just seriously bruised, swollen. I suppose it's a lesson to always ride in the middle of the street, even if you have a huge halogen light on front of your bike. Well, it will make a good first-day-of-school-why-are-you-hobbling? story.

If you have listened to the WNYC broadcast of Donnacha Dennehy, congratulations. If not, I would recommend skipping about 16 minutes in, where Donnacha is interviewed for a bit, followed by his ensemble's performance of Gra Augus Bas (Love and Death). It's one of his most-performed pieces, written for the Crash Ensemble of Dublin.

If you would rather read a transcript of Karl Marx as a ventriloquist dummy, go here:
Cabinet Magazine Online: I Can See Your Ideology Moving

There's a great article from the same issue on Heidegger. I mean, if you feel like a trip through nothingness.

Real Irish people!

Pretty busy days. I was supposed to wake up this morning but I just curled up and slept through the meeting with the music 3rd and 4rd years. No problem, though; everyone here is in such chaos that they don't notice. I am taking:

Modernism
Shakespeare
Free composition forum with Donnacha Dennehy
Post-tonal advanced music analysis with Michael Taylor
Ethics: Philosophical and Theological
and Approaches to Theological Ethics with M. Junker-Kenny
Post War/Post Nation: British and Irish Poets since 1945 with Gerald Dawe

I almost took an "Exile in two languages" course covering Beckett and Nabokov, but then at the last minute the English dept. lady said that if I was really going to do poetry I should take Gerald Dawe's course. Apparently he is a real live Irish poet and knew/knows pretty much all the poets on the course list. Sounds awesome.

Donnacha Dennehy is a real live Irish composer, with commissions for the National Symphony, WNYC radio, and some other stuff. Into acoustic/electric things. Sounds really wild.

In other news, I have some digits in my phone now. Like, 5-6 acquaintances, one of who plays the sax. Might play some jazz some time.

I went to the RTE (like BBC for Ireland) National Symphony Orchestra tonight. The program was Tchaikovsky (Capriccio Italien, op. 45), Volans (Trio Concerto, Irish composer, came up for the curtain call), and Prokofiev (Suites No. 1 and No. 2 from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64). The curtain call for Prokofiev was around 10 minutes long, with a short encore of one movement. Tickets were 5 euros for students. I think I'll go every week. Next week it's Sibelius, Rachmaninov, and Nielsen. Pretty wild.

I'll leave you with a link to Donnacha Dennehy's WNYC broadcast from Merkin Concert Hall. This is a lot like what the concert in that strange room behind the locked door was like. Except better.

Donnacha Dennehy, WNYC: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/newsounds/episodes/2007/04/11

More Danes, and a new feature

I met another Dane today. Cool guy, Fredrick. Studying sociology for the term at Trinity, with more of an edge toward Marx and Weber than the Chicago-Berkley school. Danes, I've found, are easier to understand than the Irish. The on-campus pub (seriously, Ireland, what do you expect?) is cheaper than anywhere else in Dublin.

I met some others, too, but it was hit-and-miss. Some of them were going to a party tonight, called a Traffic Light Party--where you wear red if you're attached, green if you're not, and yellow if you're somewhere in between--and one guy (American, New York) had to have that explained to him. Ah, college is a time for education.

This is a rather short post, due to my recent lack of reflection and journalistic recordings. Somehow, as I became more occupied my life became less interesting. Pumped through the tubes, I'm afraid, would only amplify my non-activity. So, I read a lot of articles online, and after much deliberation have decided to begin to share them. I have many saved up, but this one is one of my favorites. Alex Ross, the New Yorker music critic, has a book and eponymous blog--The Rest is Noise--that I've begun to enjoy. I might buy the book sometime soon. In this link, he critiques Wallace Stevens as "pure sound," which is sometimes true (Tea at the Palaz of Hoon--some things must be read aloud). Come bathe in some Stevens.

Alex Ross on Wallace Stevens:
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/04/more_to_come.html

Surprisingly mundane

No friends yet, but I feel some in the wings.

After work the other night the manager pulled us pints of Murphy's (Guinness's nitrogenated cousin) and we hung around and talked for a while. The guy who runs the Bewley's Cafe Theatre is a jazz bassist, graduate of Trinity, so I might try to be his friend. I'm working almost 40 hours next week, as well as doing orientation activities, so it might be a long week.

Today I played piano for the second time in three weeks. The first time was at a music store, when I just sat down and played for a while, but this time was in Bewley's Cafe Theatre. I found out that they have a piano there all the time, so now I might just practice whenever I can. It wasn't an unordinary experience, except in its mundanity. That sentence makes no logical sense, but when you travel to a foreign country and all your habits are broken and you find a way to reconnect with those habits in some extraordinary circumstance you'll understand.

Orientation tomorrow. Hopefully the Jazz Society has a booth that I can assault.

Not quite awake at 2 p.m.

So, the job just got a bit better, in the sense that free things make something better. A large part of the Cafe is a restaurant called Cafe Bar Deli, a light Italian-style restaurant with good food and a relatively casual feel. But what I didn't know is that during closing they feed all their workers--gourmet pizzas, pretty salads, pasta dishes--so, naturally, the Bewley's employees just walk up there and take some food for ourselves. Also, at the end of the night, I took a loaf of black bread. I mean, the Hungarian man said I could. Small payment for having to ride my bike back at midnight.

Really, that is almost all that I've been able to do lately. Working from 3-midnight or 5-midnight makes it tough to get up very early, and I'm just waiting until I register next week. So, until then.

Bye, bye Miss American Pie

...is the song that Alessandro, the very tall Italian man was singing, in a country accent, behind the espresso bar today. Apparently, in his version, they drink "whiskey and wine."

Bewley's, as a new person, is pretty funny at this moment in time. First of all, the ownership has changed hands around three dozen times in the past year. Second, the management has changed almost as often. So, the new owner came by this morning, saw the disorganized, chaotic mess
that it was, and called a meeting. I didn't have to go, because I'm new, so I just stayed behind the bar and served customers. Moral of the story: everyone is stressed out because someone's getting sacked. It's like a reality show, except there aren't eleven million people watching. But I'm working all week, 30 hours or so, so that's good.

While I have no friends yet, I feel like I might soon. Maybe by the end of the week. I mean, don't put bets on it, but it's a possibility. Until then I'll just keep to my Beckett and Cormac McCarthy.

Howth, environs

I've been composing this as I pedal.

After waking up and finally getting out of bed around two today, I had a quick lunch and decided I had better do something that I can write about. Yes, I structure my life around you. So, now I am sitting on the rock-shore at Howth watching two masts rock back and forth while surreptitiously picking my nose, hoping nobody notices. I would take a picture, but my camera ran out of batteries at the cemetery.

Howth is really a pretty fishing village. Even the new suburban condos and hipster fish bars can be overlooked in light of the view of the water and the salty smell of the sound. Technically, this is probably a bay, or a cape, but it seems so much like the Puget Sound that I forget what ocean it is.

But I didn't know any of this before I got here. According to Google Maps, this would be a simple eight-mile each way trip along the shore. However, due to the Irish philosophy of not posting street signs, I was surprised by a roundabout--with, of course, no signs. Oh, there were signs for directions to schools, shopping centres, just not streets. So, I asked for directions: "Oh, go down there, take a right--no, left, right, straight, you'll be on the main road." At least, I assume those were her directions. They were really a combination of left, right, and straight, with no landmarks or streets. To be polite, I went the general direction she was pointing and got lost. Eventually, after many lefts and right, I found a bus stop map that showed me where to go. I believe the reason Joyce is so hard to understand is that he wanted his writing to be authentically Dublin.

The sun is setting; I will write more at home.

That was a blog entry, direct from Howth shore, via my notebook. Edited for clarity, but nothing else really. I could continue this narrative through the rest of the entry, but why bother. I went back, got lost again, asked a Garda (Irish police) for directions, got lost again, made it back eventually. But pictures, now for some pictures.

First, the view from the bike ride there. This looks a bit dirty, and it was, but it was not what Howth's shore itself looked like. The shore itself was rock, but the water was far cleaner. The only downside was that you had to circle around past the yachts and hip bars, as this fishing village is now a wealthy suburb.

Second, the cemetery at Howth. This was just as the sun was about to begin setting, and the light was quite pretty. The building in the middle is the shell of an old church.

I'm tired after a 25-mile round trip, but it was nice to get out and not go into a city. I'm sick of seeing the same street musicians every day. Although this man played violin behind his back:

The new kid

Well, it looks like I need a new place to read. Bewley's is going to work out as a job, but not as both a job and a place to hang out and read. I think the difference, that is, why I could hang out at Barracuda's and not at Bewley's is that Barracuda's was a job mostly for fun. Not only that, but I was genuinely invested in the coffee and the drinks that I made. Bewley's, on the other hand, I don't really care about. Maybe just "not yet," but some of the details of the espresso were lost in the pounding-out of drink orders. I could bore you with details and rants of over-extracted shots, but really?

Luckily, I stopped by The Cheese Pantry, just near my house, and so I'll have to give that a trial. Good soups, not good coffee. But, know what? I don't care about the coffee. I finished Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner, my mother's favorite book, and it got me thinking about migration in literature. In other words, not literature as "quest," because I believe that is over-generalized--it is not all about the Odyssey--but rather as migration, a search for the self within the turmoil of change. So, while it's not my new favorite book, it's a good read; plunge through it.

This is turning into a book blog, because I have no friends in this country. I started the novel Watt by Samuel Beckett last night. Unexpectedly funny, and more readable than his later works. It was written just before Waiting for Godot, and is one of his last pieces of writing in English. As the back cover says, it is distinctively Irish. Really, that's why I bought it. I know next to nothing about Beckett's novels, but bought it because I wanted something untranslated and explicitly Irish.

It has given me some good quotes, so far. Mainly two I would like to share. First, the middle of section one: "But he being what he has become, and the place being what it was made, the fit is perfect." As an internal monologue of Watt's, this shows some very subtle yet profound insight into his mind. I'm not sure I would put it in the realm of Calvanist predestination, but maybe closer to the Zen-like (I'm guessing; I'm not a very Zen-like person) acceptance of whatever is, simply for the sake that it is. Second, the end of section one: "...of the new day at last, the day without precedent at last." Such fantastic wordplay. New, without precedent. Okay, enough. I miss writing essays. Could you guess?

This week's wrap-up; wine-based sauces.

The most important element of security, to me, is a reliable grocery store--one where you know exactly where to find the tomatoes.

Really, store-bought pasta sauces are a crock. All you need is to sautée some garlic, throw in some peppers and oregano or whatever, eighth some tomatoes, and dump in a third-cup of red wine and cook it down. Way better than Prego.

This week has been a lesson in bicycling. Specifically, not dying. The bicycles share the lanes here with taxis and buses. Now, I don't know the workings here, but it seems counterintuitive to put the bicycles with a) the largest vehicles; and b) the most aggressive, hateful, no-regard-for-safety vehicles. So, I've managed to ride into town and back safely, without dying, and even rode back at midnight the other night. Which would seem like the most dangerous, but it was really probably the safest. At midnight, once you pass the city centre, the sidewalks are empty. It made for a very nice ride.

I've been reading Angle of Repose, my mother's favorite book, every day while at Bewley's Cafe in the James Joyce room (ref. the post about how I beat James Joyce). I view it as a part of my routine. I ended up getting a job out of it, though, and I start this Saturday at 7 a.m. The building is right on Grafton Street (downtown, pedestrian only) and has two restaurants, three cafe areas, and a small theatre. And I'm in love with the waitress.

Another Dublin favorite so far is The International Bar, just near Grafton Street. While all the surrounding places have been modernized, cleaned-up, whatever, the International still has that 70s, pre-economic boom charm. They have comedy nights three or four times a week, jazz every Tuesday, this singer-songwriter night on Mondays. There's this tiny room upstairs and a lounge downstairs where the people are. Most importantly, the people I've talked to there are pretty cool. Aside from the one guy who said "Love Islam!" and made a beard motion.

Almost two weeks in Dublin and today was the first time I got rained on. I should probably tell Arthur Guinness.

p.s.: If you add parmasean (the real Reggiano stuff, not the shakey-cheese) just before you take the sauce off, it will stick to your teeth. Delightful.

Important tips for selecting a duvet

Who ever thought bed linens could be so troublesome? Trying to bike back up the hill to my house with a duvet on the handlebars and a cover in my backpack while the wind whipped my bike back and forth through rush-hour traffic is something I'd not like to repeat. But the forecast says it will get to 2 deg. C. (36-ish Farenheit) tonight, so I'm sure I won't regret the decision. As it is, we don't heat the house yet (not until October, apparently) so it's a battle against the elements. Mostly the element of cold.

Clearly, it was necessary for me to arrive in Dublin a month early, but what I didn't realize was that getting things in order mostly involves waiting. Waiting for the bank account to clear, waiting for international transfers to happen, waiting in line at the student fees office for a letter confirming I have, indeed, paid the school. So, I spend my days reading in Bewley's Cafe. Coincidentally, I may end up with a job there (hopefully in the James Joyce Room) after the manager said he definitely needs another part-time barista and will give me a call this week. At least I have something to do in the future. Even the near future seems so far away sometimes.

I am a social caterpillar

For the past week or so of nights in Dublin I've found that I don't have much to do. Short of any plays to see, I've found that I really just want some human interaction, people to talk to. Not necessarily friends; I'll probably make friends when I start school in October. This is like the not-over-the-breakup-testing-the-waters part of my social life. Needless to say, I am not too good at casual conversation with a group of strangers when I can only occasionally understand what they're saying.

Here follows a brief set of guidelines I've taken upon myself, as well as the one success story involving Denmark:

There are a few "NOs" that are important to note. Obviously, one should not sit down with a couple on a date. Either you would be uninvited, or you would be too invited, in which case it would be weird. However, there is always the hard-to-spot double date. In this case, the same criteria apply. Next, I avoid sitting with a group of all guys, as they always ask where the girls are, when, obviously, they're on (double) dates. Finally, as tempting as it is, I try my best (sober) not to sit with a group of all girls.

So, what does that leave? A group of guys and girls, out for a friendly pint, makes some good conversation. To date, I have only found one of these groups and they were Danish students who quickly fled the country.

These students were in O'Shea's Pub, a small pub out of the common pub district which has Irish music seven nights a week. There was one Irish man singing and playing guitar and making bawdy jokes: "The next song is called Finnigan's Wake. During the chorus, you clap until the word 'wake.' Men, if you continue clapping you'd better buy me drinks for the night. Ladies, you will give me your bra. Unless you don't wear one, in which case you'll have to prove it."

So, the pub was almost all 50-and-up, people who knew the songs, except for this one small group of five people, two girls and three guys, clearly not on any date-related activity. I asked if I could sit down and, after I did, was asked two questions--one of which is not really a question. First: "Where are you from in America?" Second: "You voted for Bush!" If it's early in the evening I say no the second question. If it's later in the evening I threaten to bomb them.

I ran into these Danes again at the same pub a few days later, just as they were leaving. I talked to one of the girls (Veibeken, I think) for a bit, and I think she started hitting on me. They said some things in Danish and then moved and told me to sit by her. I then found out they were high school seniors on a school trip. So, that was weird.

Moral of the story: if you're lonesome and looking for funny conversation, try Irish music and Danes. I might visit Copenhagen soon. They are just so friendly.

Andrew: 1; James Joyce: 0

around halffour today bewleys cafe james joyce room but sitting inside now with that scone finished and taken that coffee and tea all gone I reached the final word Yes on page six hundred forty four molly or penelope says Yes to poldy or ulysses this is the cumulation of many clouds of words or that you cannot quite make the meaning of but somehow it reaches through and finds proteus or protons or something think of these scribbled all over sheets of manuscript exercise exercise indeed at least exhausting if it is something in this james joyce room in bewleys that waitress I cant quite get the words out as she stares at me waiting for my order or waiting for me to ask for the check her eyes are a bit haunting Im not sure if all of eire has eyes like that but I must say I hope so and this is a bit much for indulging myself if you have made it through I say thank you and congratulations although we will have to post the score then You: 1; Andrew: 0.

Yeats runs out of paper

There is a large W.B. Yeats exhibit at the National Library right now. It includes documentary films, original publications, and artifacts from his life. However, the most revealing items are his hand-written manuscripts. Specifically, the manuscript for "The Second Coming."

These manuscripts humanize Yeats, who seems at times to be detached, majestic, and almost superior. He writes in this ballad-like verse, where the words seem to come easily. The manuscripts, then, are nearly mundane. He writes, "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Moves toward Bethlehem to be born?" Moves? Of course, he promptly crosses it out to write "Slouches," but this alone crushes my thoughts of the man. Not only that, but it is a line squashed onto the end of a page, a poem where he clearly did not plan his space well. I wonder if, had he carried a binder of loose-leaf paper with him at all times, would we have a poem twice as long? Surely, that wouldn't get anthologized nearly as much. I think, part of the appeal of this poem to English teachers is its succinctness--little do they know, he really just ran out of paper.

The foyer of the library held a few posters on James Joyce and Ulysses. To extend this paper-related electronic post (ironic?) I would like to add that Joyce wrote most of Ulysses on sheets of children's manuscript practice paper. Of course, in non-chronological order, without any real structure until he assembled the episodes into a serialization. Why did he do this? They were the cheapest, most available sheets of paper around. The Moleskine notebook may be hold the spirits of Hemingway and Picasso, but to be a true modernist you must ransack the children's school supplies.

The U.S. is getting destroyed in rugby. Against some small country, probably some country we've either bombed or where we've supported a dictator's coup. I guess this is their little way of sticking it to the man. Beat us at something we don't care about.

Classical music, BYOB

Well, I have been to some strange performances, but this one must top them all. A small hatch in the side of a garage door, in a seedy back-street of Dublin 1, with a tiny spray-stencil painted "17/21" which was apparently the address. Around the performance time, there was a sign up, "The Shed," with a phone number to call if you wanted to be let in. That's right, you had to ASK to attend this performance. Needless to say, the venue was packed.

When I entered, it was a bit early so there was still sitting room. The sign out front had said "BYOB (no bar)," so people were cracking open cans of Carlsberg and discussing the future performance, last minute rehearsals, whatever needed to get done. I can't recall the Oregon Symphony putting "BYOB" on their programs, but I might be wrong about that one.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, the composer (Brian Flynn) was quite good. He was a recent Trinity graduate in composition and electronic music, and this current group was called Engine Room Orchestra. His other music is at www.myspace.com/briangflynn and it is more fully composed than the pieces they played last night. He said afterwards that this was only their third gig, so they were focusing on more signal-based pieces, in case people got lost. Oh, that contemporary music. I bet Mahler never played in a construction site.

Recapitulation:

Still living in a hostel, I finally (very quickly, by Dublin standards) secured a room in a house. Now that I have some peace of mind, and especially now that every moment on the internet is not spent at daft.ie trying to find a home, I felt like I should communicate with the rest of you.

As I have been a bit tardy in establishing this thing, here is some recapitulation of events I've taken some notes on.

9-7-07:

I'm sitting here on the plane, less than an hour from Dublin, savoring the last red round freshly picked tomatoes--courtesy of my aunt Suzanne's garden--I'll have in, likely, a long, long time. The time will soon be 16 hours of travel, 8 hours of lost time, bringing me to 5:45 a.m., right about the time yesterday I checked my bags in Seattle. Upon landing, I should have no trouble finding my ride: Evan, a "short, fierce" man by Dennis's words. I'll probably be expected to repay him by playing bicycle polo and breaking a limb or two. This promises to be a long day; after searching for roommates and a house I'll probably have to explore the town. Hostel accommodations, after all, are not the type to encourage tucking in early.

Really, I was lost this entire day. Since Dubliners don't seem to believe in street signs, and since I couldn't find north, I walked maybe 20 miles trying to get around the city. It was the first day in months (the rainiest summer in 103 years) that it was sunny, and it was hot and humid. I don't even remember what happened. I looked at a house, right across the street from the Guinness factory. Didn't get it. Probably for the better.

On that note, celebrate with me my first Irish pint, from the International Bar, on Grafton St.

9-8-07:

Busy, busy day. I almost knew where I was headed, saw "Bones" at Trinity College's Samuel Beckett Theatre, saw Josh Ritter at the Tripod club on Harcourt, ate at Kennedy's Pub right next to Trinity, walked a lot.

Kennedy's was an excellent place; vegetable soup and a Guinness for lunch, with a cappuccino slightly later. Once I become established I may apply there, for 20 hours a week or so. They serve excellent coffee, perfectly steamed milk, right around the corner from Trinity. I will become a regular.

I also ran across a coaster saying "Coors Light -- Now on tap!" If I see it again, I'll take a picture.

9-9-07:

Bicycle polo is likely one of the scariest sports, especially if you haven't ridden a fixed-gear bike before and don't know how to stop. I mostly spent the game running into people and having bicycles fall on me. Basically a lesson in pain tolerance. Speaking of pain tolerance, rugby seems to be the most violent sport I have ever seen, aside from professional wrestling. Coincidentally, it is also Ireland's second love--the first being Gaelic football, a more violent form of regular football. Regular football, of course, meaning soccer.

Does anyone really think the NFL is violent? How about a bunch of unpadded guys pummeling each other, when a tackle does not end the play but rather escalates the violence? Needless to say, Ireland won, but 35-17 against Namibia is shameful. Yes, the 2007 Rugby World Cup is off to a rough start for Ireland; if they want to make it to the finals over Argentina and France they'll have to win by more on 9-15 against Georgia. Because after that, there's only France and Argentina--and they'll need quite a buffer of points in order to have a safe lead. As Colleen said, "My god, you're not even American any more."

9-10-07:

I successfully got a house. At first I didn't get it, but then they texted back and said I did. I feel like I'm on HGTV. Either way, I'm now living with three others, all in (I think) their late-20s or so, mostly professionals and architects. But it's a good price, right off the bus which heads straight to Trinity, and I have my own double room. The kitchen is also huge, and there's a garden out back. It seems safe, as it is very residential. It won't be a crazy place, so that will be nice during the weeks where I actually have to work.

9-11-07:

The day of this post. I got my bike back, although something is seriously wrong with it. I'll fix it later. For now, I had lunch at Davy Byrne's pub--Moral pub, according to Leopold Bloom in "Ulysses." A small salmon sandwich, with Guinness. Then a cappuccino and small scone at Bewley's. With this much time, I feel inclined to have two small lunches instead of one lonely one. Davy Byrne's pub, the original Dublin gastro-pub:


Comment if you feel inclined. Also, send this to all my friends and family. Your friends and family, too, if they seem interested.