Back to bend of bay

I try to rationalize my absence (laziness) by telling myself that writing a blog titled "Dublin on Nitrogen" while in the haven of a Richland basement would be a lie. Really, though, I was just playing Beethoven. Tons of Beethoven. Also some Debussy. Scriabin when I was feeling it.

So, I got back to Dublin Friday morning after traveling since 5 a.m. Thursday, after sleeping for all of an hour Wednesday night. I truly cannot sleep before traveling. Something in me feels that since I will be gone for so long I just need to enjoy every last microsecond of wherever I am. In this case, it mostly meant playing Beethoven and reading and eating leftovers.

I checked my schedule today (Saturday), after sleeping all day Friday and napping/reading all of Friday night. I saw that I was scheduled to work tonight until midnight, and Sunday from 3-10, and almost cried. I don't have my essays done, and they're due Monday afternoon. If I end up turning one in late I won't be too sad, but I couldn't stand turning both in late, or even poorly revised. Particularly, the one on Basil Bunting. I really like the poem, the class, the professor, and even my essay so far. The other one, on Virginia Woolf, might take a little more work, but I'll probably do fine. So, I did what I always do in a crisis: play piano. After a solid half-hour of Beethoven (and some Debussy), I decided to call in and say I couldn't make it, a solid 1 1/2 hours before I was scheduled to work. I said I was very sorry, tried to sound broken up, and the manager didn't really say anything, just thanks for calling. I'd like to keep this job for at least the next two months, unless I get some jazz gigs. Not so much for the money as for the peace of mind that I get from not having to keep a solid budget.

I've been slowly reading Beckett now, in my off-time. I'm on the first of his trilogy of short novels, Molloy. I have this theory that reading Beckett destroys one's ability to read anything else. He includes pages regarding a particular character's thoughts, and next to nothing about physical description. We don't even get the name "Molloy" until about a quarter in, and it's a first-person narration from his point of view. There are endless permutations of every possible outcome of a situation, cyclical and repetitive. The dialogue is not in quotes, not paragraphed out (there aren't even very many paragraphs for that matter), and often ended with asides saying, essentially, that this conversation took place mostly in his mind--in reality, he probably just grunted unintelligibly.

How does it ruin me then? Well, now when I try to read "normal" novels I get bogged down by the slightest physical description. I can now withstand pages and pages detailing a character's system of organizing his "sucking-stones" into different pockets so that he has a proper rotation of stones in his mouth, yet I can barely tolerate a half-paragraph of his-boots-were/her-eyes-were. Beckett just seems to take all of what other authors deem a necessity, throw it out the window, and in its place insert what seems an extravagance, a mockery of what was once considered essential. He, obviously, was not the first; Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner all used stream-of-consciousness. However, Beckett has an irreverence toward what seems like the book itself. He does not work in this stream-of-consciousness in the Joycean way where it gives in to grand metaphor and Dedalus's Grecian/philosophical allusions. His does not make the claim a la Finnigan's Wake that in the part is represented the whole; his seems to point to itself as if to say, look at this, it means nothing.

I would compare this to Beethoven if I could. Give me two pounds of coffee, the scores of his late quartets, and a week.

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