Human Racing

- "Human Racing" by St. Vincent, from Marry Me (2007), performed on NPR's Bryant Park Project (2009)

The Photography of Helen Levitt

I've got the post-Halloween blues. Now it's that awful time of year when everyone gets hyped up for spending money and underwhelming family holidays. Don't get me wrong—I love winter. The quiet, the stillness, the oh-so-satisfying crunch of fresh snow under your boots. There's something so indefinably relaxing about the cold. At the same time, I'll miss the fiery leaves and spooky excitement of October.

As we move toward the end of the year, here's one last gasp of Halloween goodness, courtesy of Helen Levitt.

Levitt was a photographer who spent her life in New York. Born in Brooklyn in 1913, she developed an interest in photography after dropping out of high school. She became known for her "street photography," documenting everyday life in New York City, and she died in 2009 at the age of 95.

(As an aside, the idea of "street photography" fascinates me. While it has definite merits as an honest and candid form, it's also easily inclined toward exploitation—accidental or otherwise. Perhaps I'll flesh out these thoughts more in a future post.)

Nonetheless, I like these photos because of how they convey the excitement and idleness of a child's Halloween. They remind me of the eagerness I felt as a kid before trick-or-treating, and the exhaustion I felt afterward.

On this day after, I wish you rest and lots of candy.

NYC, 1940

NYC, 1940

Improvisation (Girl)

A month or two ago, I was feeling pretty down and decided to watch the movie Antichrist.

As you might guess from the title, this was not a wise decision. I went from being sad to disgusted and scared. The movie is saturated with hellish images of nature, like a fox disemboweling itself. There's also a lot of gruesome bodily harm, like Charlotte Gainsbourg cutting off her own body parts. And that's the least explicit description I could muster. There's also a fine scene in which Willem Dafoe, whose leg is attached to a grindstone, crawls into a foxhole to seek refuge from his grief-stricken, bloodthirsty wife.

In summary, this movie is messed up. Worth watching, if you like being unsettled and perplexed and physically uncomfortable. It's also got some deep commentary on femininity, loss, religion, and the like. Just prepare, if you do see it, to be a little fraught and grossed-out.

The final shot

So anyway, the imagery in the below poem reminded me (much less disturbingly) of Antichrist. I don't mean to impose my own associations, or to dictate your interpretation of this poem. I'm just blathering, as usual.

Regardless, may you read and appreciate this.

"Improvisation (Girl)"

I think she wanted to explain

                                      the silence

             hidden

within her voice—

blue egg in the nettles.

            She wrote something

on a rock, used the rock

                        to bash in the skull

             of an injured deer.

Bloodied swan-neck arms.

                                        She

slinks into her own viscera,

a baby fox

             backing into its trunkhole.

The wordbone's connected to the

                         gutbone.

Meanwhile, her desire

           for nobody now

bucks like a rabbit

                           under her ground.

by Rebecca Lindenberg, from The Logan Notebooks (2014) 

Beagle or Something

"Beagle or Something"

The composer’s name was Beagle or something,
one of those Brits who make the world wistful
with chorales and canticles and this piece,
a tone poem or what-have-you,
chimes and strings aswirl, dangerous for one
whose eye lids and sockets have been rashing from tears.
The music occupied the car where
I had parked and then sat, staring at
a tree, a smallish maple,
fire-gold and half-undone by the wind, 
shaking in itself,
shocking blue morning sky behind, and also
the trucks and telephone wires and dogs
and children late to school along Orange Street, but
it was the tree that caused an uproar,
it was the tree that shook and shed,
aureate as a shaken soul, I remembered
I was supposed to have one—for convenience

I placed it in my chest, the heart being away,
and now it seems the soul has lodged there, shaking,
golden-orange, half-spent but clanging
truer than Beagle music or my forehead pressed 
hard on the steering wheel in petition for release.

by April Bernard, from Romanticism (2009)

No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti

I heard this song covered by live performers at least three times in Spain, during all of which the audience passionately sang along. My lovely host mom Carmen, who explained to me many aspects of Spanish pop culture, said that this was the music her generation loved.

The band who originally recorded this track, Los Ronaldos, formed in Madrid in 1987. The lead singer, Coque Malla, has also embarked on a seemingly successful solo career, and he rerecorded this song by himself in 2009. The title means "I can't live without you," approximately. If somewhat unoriginal thematically, the lyrics are also very impressive. One of my favorite verses is:

Yo me quedo para siempre con mi reina,
Su bandera,
Ya no hay fronteras.

Me dejaré llevar a ningún lugar.

My translation skills are far from apt, and I think the Spanish is so much prettier, but the rough English equivalent is below:

I stay forever with my queen,

her flag,

there are still no borders.

I don't let myself go anywhere.

I rather like Coque Malla's acoustic rearrangement, so here it is for you to experience and enjoy. Fair warning: I'm not entirely sure what's going on in this video, but the music's what really matters, right?

-"No Puedo Vivir Sin Ti" by Coque Malla, from La hora de los gigantes [The Hour of the Giants] (2009); originally released by Los Ronaldos on 4 Canciones [Four Songs] (2007)

"At Sunset"

While I was nosing around at the Grolier this weekend with my mom, I came across a poem called "How I Am" by Jason Shinder. I'd never heard of him before, so I did some reading (of course) and found out that he died in 2008 of cancer. He wrote in these journals before he died, journals he called “cancer diaries.” It seems remarkable to me that, even in the face of mortality, he was able to maintain a realistically optimistic perspective on life: “The hours are left for vanishing and also for joy and for blessing and gratitude.”

Here is a poem he wrote.         

* * * * *

“At Sunset”

Your death must be loved this much.

You have to know the grief—now.
Standing by the water’s edge,

looking down at the wave

touching you. You have to lie,
stiff, arms folded, on a heap of earth

and see how far the darkness

will take you. I mean it, this, now—
before the ghost the cold leaves

in your breath, rises;

before the toes are put together
inside the shoes. There it is—the goddamn

orange-going-into-rose descending

circle of beauty and time.
You have nothing to be sad about.

 

by Jason Shinder, from Stupid Hope (2009)

Tommy Says That Portland Is Great

Half the cool girls, yeah they look the same.

...If you were wondering, here is some context.

-Japanther, from Tut Tut, Now Shake Ya Butt (2009)

Today was swell. We left Missoula, and on our way out of the hotel we spotted this sweet little scene. These three were just walking, very slowly and noiselessly, along the Clark Fork River.

I was overjoyed to see this little girl eating ice cream at, like, 9:30 a.m.

On the way out of town there were a lot of remains of forest fires. My dad enlightened us about the smokejumpers who died in the Mann Gulch Fire, which was fascinating (a brief background is here). Though we weren't exactly at the site of the fire, it was moving to see the burned-out tree carcasses and reflect on what those men must have endured.

A view North from I-90, just West of Missoula.

After that, we drove through Idaho and stopped in Wallace for gas. It seemed like a pretty colorless town, although I did see a sign for a place called Polaris, which has to be a brighter place. Maybe. Here's the main downtown.

"Pre-Mix before you Re-Mix."

Leaving Wallace and weighing our options, we decided to make haste and head to Spokane. We didn't see much of the city itself, having stopped in what I think were the eastern suburbs, but we drove through and caught a glimpse of downtown, which reminded me a bit of Saint Joseph, Missouri or Manchester, New Hampshire. The buildings seemed fairly old and full of character, and I appreciated that a lot. There's something about the charm of the worn-in that never fails to appeal to me.

Again, a northern view of Spokane from I-90 West.

Continuing West, we stopped in Boardman to buy gas after getting stuck in a traffic jam (overturned trailer, belongings strewn all over the highway; attempted noun phrases to seem more like Nabokov or someone else way more talented than I) before ending up on I-84 to Portland. Maybe it was the lighting, or maybe it was the Columbia River, but man. It was easily the most scenic route we've driven so far.

I-84 West, overlooking the Columbia River and Washington state on the opposite shore.

Finally, after hours of driving, we finally arrived in Portland. The first thing we did was to drive to Reed College, which was where I almost went to school. After spending less than five minutes on their campus, I decided (maybe a bit snobbishly) that Wellesley's campus is infinitely prettier. For all its flaws, I'm happy I ended up there. But I digress. After getting settled in at our hotel, we drove across the Willamette and caught another view of Mount Hood in the distance.

This doesn't do it justice at all. I'll blame it on shooting from a moving vehicle.

As for our evening in Portland, we wandered around the Pearl District and visited Powell's Books. Go figure. I managed to come back to the hotel with only three items: The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore, Alturas de Macchu Picchu (The Heights of Macchu Picchu) by Pablo Neruda, and El Beso de la Mujer Araña (The Kiss of the Spider-Woman) by Manuel Puig. This means that I have a lot of reading to do before bed (which, for the record, I still feel a huge brain-eloquence disconnect, so I apologize if this is sloppy or hard to read or anything else undesirable). Until tomorrow!