September 2010
19 posts
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Tom Waits' 20 favourite albums. →
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“My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but...”
– J. B. S. Haldane
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Adam Curtis' It Felt Like a Kiss. Watch... →
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Great Interview with a mail clerk during the Great...
American Memory at the Library of Congress is my new favourite thing.
I found this while researching the lives of America's blue collar workers for my essay on Hawaiian music. In the first part, he tells us why he loves to listen to the advertisements on radio - he admires the announcers for their ability to sound so sincere about something they know to be a lie. In the second half, he talks about the power of music, and how it could be used to persuade normal citizens not to vote.
Radio interviewer: What sort of things do you like to listen to?
Mail clerk: Don't think that I'm trying to jibe you - but I like to listen to announcers while they are trying to sell something.
Radio interviewer: Just what do you mean by that?
Mail clerk: I mean that for real drama I've never found anything that entertains me more. All the finest shades of human emotion are expressed in their voices. At first, most of the selling talks were crudely presented, but now, selling by radio is almost an art. I'll admit that it's probably very hard to do a good job of radio-selling. A speaker must feel somewhat like a man on a tight-rope who is trying to perform half a dozen tricks at the same time. He must think of his sponsor, read his script carefully, keep at the proper distance from the microphone, and finish with a second or two of the allotted time period. But that is the easiest part of his job. To really succeed, he must keep under control every vibration of his voice. He must not sound nervous nor over-anxious to do well; he must make absurdities sound reasonable; he must sound sincere even though he knows that the product he is advertising is a harmful drug or an actual poison...
[...]
Radio interviewer: Is music your favorite form of art?
Mail clerk: Possibly - yes, I suppose it is. And aside from the pure enjoyment I get listening to it, I'm very much interested in its social suggestions that, in spite of this era of nationalism and censorship are still allowed to go free. It seems to me that music is far more revolutionary then words are, and I wouldn't be surprised if the time comes when it will be censored as books are censored. Of course in Germany the works of composers with Jewish blood have already been banned; but that isn't the kind of censorship I mean. I mean it may actually become unlawful for composers to write music that goes to emotional extremes.
Mail clerk: Do you remember the 'Blue Monday' song that came out in Europe - Austria, I think - a couple of years ago? Many people committed suicide, they were made so depressed by it. If one song can make people kill themselves, isn't it very likely that other songs often control many actions of men in their daily life? Turn normal citizens into tramps, philosophers, or non-voters? The fact is, any beautiful and perfect work of art makes our daily existence seem very drab by comparison. Do you see what I mean?
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Disillusionment by Thomas Mann
The short story the song Is That All There Is? is based on. Full text here. “I may begin by saying that I grew up in a clergyman’s family, in quite a small town. There reigned in our home a punctilious cleanliness and the pathetic optimism of the scholarly atmosphere. We breathed a strange atmosphere, compact of pulpit rhetoric, of large words for good and evil, beautiful and base,...
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“In early 1943, the Japanese government banned Hawaiian music in Japan, including...”
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If you love Donald Barthelme, you'll want to see... →
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Less Than Zero and Lunar Park
I spent the end of the Summer at Alice’s house. Staying at a friend’s house is a great way to broaden your interests. Because your choice is instantly limited, it’s different to a bookshop or a library, and if your friend has good taste, you’ll be aquainted with some new reads that you may have otherwise neglected. This is how I came to Bret Easton Ellis. My only...
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Anomie
Photo of Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner
Anomie in common parlance is thought to mean something like “at loose ends.” The Oxford English Dictionary lists a range of definitions, beginning with a disregard of divine law, through the 19th and 20th century sociological terms meaning an absence of accepted social standards or values. Most sociologists associate the term with...
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Acedia
A painting of the Desert Fathers
Acedia (also accidie or accedie, from Latin acidĭa, and this from Greek ἀκηδία, negligence) describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one’s position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one’s duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct ...
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Awesome Welles
Fakery, Truth and Orson’s Ghost
An article I wrote in the Summer of 2009.
When I was a child, I was enthralled by images of the space age. They had this simple and hopeful power, unlike the images of greed in the popular culture of the time. Back then, I thought human salvation could be found in science, but now, I am increasingly critical of the company it keeps, and I realise:...
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Hotel Bauen Shakes the Tentacles of the Old World...
An article I wrote in the Summer of 2009.
In 2003, in the wake of Argentina’s worst economic crisis, the former employees of Hotel Bauen took over their bankrupted and neglected workplace and began to run it democratically.
Constructed in 1978, with large government subsidies, for years Hotel Bauen was run into the ground by its owner, Marcelo Iurcovich, who took the profits for himself...
