Happy 2014, geeks!
It's really fucking cold outside!
Today in Chicago, it's record-breaking cold. We're talking wind chills of minus 50 degrees, here. In other words, it's the perfect time to wrap up in three different blankets, a scarf, and write while wearing fingerless gloves!
There are so many great things happening out in the world of music while I huddle with my Macbook in front of my space heater. First up, the much-anticipated arrival of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings' new album, aptly titled Give the People What They Want. (You can stream the full album on NPR.)
"Retreat" (and its delightful, animated video) almost makes me forget that I'm currently living in the Arctic. This was recorded before her cancer diagnosis and battle, but I still take it as further proof that Sharon Jones will kick anything's ass. She is the boss.
Next on my list is Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, largely because I'm geeking out over their upcoming album's name (Wig Out at Jagbags) and this video for "Lariat" accompanied by the lyrics, in French. (Also, to the girl applying eyeliner and the dude reading in the tub, je vous aime tous les deux.) You'll have a crush on the star of this video by approximately 34 seconds in, too. I promise.
"Tu n'est pas ce que tu n'est pas."
I can't stop listening to this next one from James Vincent McMorrow, either. Maybe it's just how high and perfect his voice gets when he sings, "I remember my first love." I can't wait to hear what else he's bringing on his new album Post-Tropical.
I found this next gem over at Disco Naïveté. Brace yourself. This girl can sing. Here, she's doing a cover of James Arthur's "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You," and I can't wait to hear an original. Holy shit:
What's on your music radar this January? Tell me everything.
Showing posts with label french. Show all posts
Showing posts with label french. Show all posts
Monday, January 6, 2014
Monday, June 25, 2012
"But What Will I Write?"
I’m reading Simone De Beauvoir’s roman à clef, The Mandarins, right now—and I say roman à clef partly to sound superior, snotty, and French, and partly because, well, that is what it is. In it, she fictionally depicts the lives of some Parisian intellectuals at the end of World War II. And, because I looked it up on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia knows all, I can break it down for you a little bit more: the character Henri Perron is thought to be Albert Camus; Robert Dubreuilh, Jean-Paul Sartre; and Anne Dubreuilh, Simone De Beauvoir.
Et voilà!
So, now that we’ve gotten this far, perhaps I can get to the point. Henri, who is also the editor of a leftist newspaper called L'Espoir, has recently published a critically acclaimed novel and has announced his plans to write a “light novel.” Of course, the more he talks about this, the more everyone gets excited and asks him a lot of questions about this “light novel.”
Too bad he doesn’t have the first clue what it’s about.
Now, bear with me, as I’m certainly no French intellectual—I know, I know, you’re shocked!—but my favorite aspect of the book so far is Henri’s inner struggle with self-definitions. Is he political, or is he a writer? Is he both? And his bigger question, considering how much he and everyone he knows has changed since before the war, is:
So I might not be a post-WWII French intellectual, but anyone who defines oneself as a writer could likely identify with these nagging questions. You ask me what I’m writing, right now, and while on one side, the honest answer is, I’m writing Groupons five days a week and some blog posts here and there; the other, equally honest answer in my mind, is that I’m writing much more. I am writing scribbles of thoughts in a journal; I am constructing ideas and sentences in my head that may or may not ever make it on a page; I am questioning multiple times a day, “What will I write?”; and yes, I am writing Groupons and blog posts.
Yet still my head alternately feels too full to narrow down an idea or too empty to write anything at all. This has been driving me absolutely out of my mind, until I read the following passage, and I suddenly calmed the fuck down.
An excerpt from The Mandarins:
I can only wonder if this “light novel” of Henri’s will ever even happen. That’s the problem with questioning yourself so much, isn’t it? After awhile, the only thing you have energy to do is go to bed. But maybe, later on, all that questioning will lead to action, and you’ll write something better, and more worthwhile, than you ever imagined.
After all, Camus wound up winning the Nobel Prize in literature. But it wasn’t for his novel. It was for his political essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.
Maybe I should start telling everyone I'm in the midst of writing a light novel. Next step, the Nobel Prize!
Just a thought...
Et voilà!
So, now that we’ve gotten this far, perhaps I can get to the point. Henri, who is also the editor of a leftist newspaper called L'Espoir, has recently published a critically acclaimed novel and has announced his plans to write a “light novel.” Of course, the more he talks about this, the more everyone gets excited and asks him a lot of questions about this “light novel.”
Too bad he doesn’t have the first clue what it’s about.
Now, bear with me, as I’m certainly no French intellectual—I know, I know, you’re shocked!—but my favorite aspect of the book so far is Henri’s inner struggle with self-definitions. Is he political, or is he a writer? Is he both? And his bigger question, considering how much he and everyone he knows has changed since before the war, is:
What in the hell will he write about, the past or the present?
So I might not be a post-WWII French intellectual, but anyone who defines oneself as a writer could likely identify with these nagging questions. You ask me what I’m writing, right now, and while on one side, the honest answer is, I’m writing Groupons five days a week and some blog posts here and there; the other, equally honest answer in my mind, is that I’m writing much more. I am writing scribbles of thoughts in a journal; I am constructing ideas and sentences in my head that may or may not ever make it on a page; I am questioning multiple times a day, “What will I write?”; and yes, I am writing Groupons and blog posts.
Yet still my head alternately feels too full to narrow down an idea or too empty to write anything at all. This has been driving me absolutely out of my mind, until I read the following passage, and I suddenly calmed the fuck down.
An excerpt from The Mandarins:
Henri imagined a solitary country home, pine trees, the smell of the scrub. ‘But what will I write?’ He continued walking, his head empty. ‘The trap is well laid,’ he said to himself. ‘Just when you think you’re escaping, it slams down on you.’ To recapture the past and preserve the present with words is all very fine. But it can be done only if there is someone to read them; there’s no sense to it except if the past, if the present, if life counts for something. If this world has no importance, if other men mean nothing, what point would there be to writing? There would be nothing left to do but yawn in boredom … Only there isn’t time enough for everything, that’s the tragedy of it. Once more the refrain began repeating itself insistently in Henri’s head… What was he to do? Give in? Not give in? Get involved in politics? Write?
He went home to bed.
I can only wonder if this “light novel” of Henri’s will ever even happen. That’s the problem with questioning yourself so much, isn’t it? After awhile, the only thing you have energy to do is go to bed. But maybe, later on, all that questioning will lead to action, and you’ll write something better, and more worthwhile, than you ever imagined.
After all, Camus wound up winning the Nobel Prize in literature. But it wasn’t for his novel. It was for his political essay, Reflections on the Guillotine.
Maybe I should start telling everyone I'm in the midst of writing a light novel. Next step, the Nobel Prize!
Just a thought...
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Ne Me Quitte Pas!
Hey Rainbow Groupies!
It's not annoying at all when I title a post in French for absolutely no reason, right? That's what I thought!
In case you've been wondering, I have not left you. I'll never quit you!
But, alas, the source of my power, AKA my beautiful Macbook, has passed. It is no longer among us. It is, comment dit-on en francais, DEAD. (Mort!) And by dead I do mean I spilled an entire glass of water on it a couple of weeks ago. And, because I am not getting paid to blog, I get paid to write about other stuff, it has been difficult to keep up when I don't have my faithful companion waiting for me at home.
But never fear! My shiny new Macbook Pro will be a part of my life by tomorrow at the end of the business day.
In the meantime, I've been remembering how to write with a pen, scrawling the makings of an essay in my journal. If I can read my own handwriting and then finish it, of course it will make an appearance here. Get excited: It's about kickball. And puberty! Neat!
Until all this magic happens, here are two incredibly different songs called "Ne Me Quitte Pas," by two incredibly different but equally awesome chanteuses.
Ne me quitte pas, mon cheres!
hugs and bad excuses to poorly speak French,
Alison[composes]
It's not annoying at all when I title a post in French for absolutely no reason, right? That's what I thought!
In case you've been wondering, I have not left you. I'll never quit you!
But, alas, the source of my power, AKA my beautiful Macbook, has passed. It is no longer among us. It is, comment dit-on en francais, DEAD. (Mort!) And by dead I do mean I spilled an entire glass of water on it a couple of weeks ago. And, because I am not getting paid to blog, I get paid to write about other stuff, it has been difficult to keep up when I don't have my faithful companion waiting for me at home.
But never fear! My shiny new Macbook Pro will be a part of my life by tomorrow at the end of the business day.
In the meantime, I've been remembering how to write with a pen, scrawling the makings of an essay in my journal. If I can read my own handwriting and then finish it, of course it will make an appearance here. Get excited: It's about kickball. And puberty! Neat!
Until all this magic happens, here are two incredibly different songs called "Ne Me Quitte Pas," by two incredibly different but equally awesome chanteuses.
Ne me quitte pas, mon cheres!
hugs and bad excuses to poorly speak French,
Alison[composes]
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