I need assistance in the music department again. I need a spring summer mix with upbeat tunes. Nothing melancholy. All hopeful. Nothing depressing. Nothing that reminds me of anything depressing. Please advise via comments.
I've read a couple of modern literary novels recently. Sometimes I feel like I just shouldn't do that. As with most novels, there is an exploration of love through plot . These novels make me think that maybe I think too highly of love. For heaven's sake, shouldn't we want to move heaven and earth to have and keep it once we've found it? And if we aren't really willing to do that, can it be called love? Do modern characters speak for humanity? Have we decided that instinct is a value greater than all others? That love doesn't require anything of us? (sidenote, that rant made me think of the Kundera novel, "Identity". In the light of my rant, it's really a good novel.) (I guess I don't mind when novels present this type of behavior, but I hate when it's presented without any critique of the characters.)
I realized that maybe the flimsy portrayal of love in novels is why I'm not a fan of romances in general. I was trying to remember moments in novels where love seemed real and I thought of "Anna Karenina" and Levin waiting for Kitty to give birth. Then I thought of the way the Kundera novel ended. I'm wondering if you have any novel suggestions where love's depths are actually expressed.
Ennui. It's a great word an a horrible feeling. I remember looking up the word in the dictionary while reading "Pride and Prejudice" as a young teenager. The word appeared in an article this week and then made it's way into a revision of a poem and then made it's way into my head. Luckily the thought made me cry. As long as I'm able to do that I don't feel completely detached in an ennui sort of way.
Can everyone please quit using the phrase "brain fart"? 1. It's crass. 2. It doesn't make sense. 3. Every time someone says it I try to figure out what that physically looks like in the anatomy of the brain and I just stop listening to the person who said it.
I ought to figure out what to eat for lunch. Salad? Probably.
Sorry that I talked about novels during national poetry month, but it feels strangely poetic to do so.
P.S. You really ought to say a little prayer for me.
14 comments:
Sounds like a Glenn Miller summer.
I really despise the phrase, fartknocker. I have no idea what it means, and its seems like it is crass to the core.
Novels I suggest are...Jane Eyre, Til we have faces, and then Phantastes in that order. I read those in that order back in College and it totally changed my perspective on Love in general, but this may be from a male point of view.
Train to Pakistan has a nice love story in the shakesperean sense of the word, very heroic, very tragic. The movies A constant Gardner, and the Painted veil, I believe were wonderful love stories, so perhaps the novels would match.
That is it.. Christopher
I also hate the phrase "buttload." My students though, can't get enough. As for books about love, TC Boyle's "The Inner Circle" has an interesting take on it, that seems to explore lots of depths and complications. Also, "House of Sand & Fog" is fantastically depressing, but one of the causes of all the conflict is the sudden flush of found love and other characters' inability to trust it.
I hate that phrase so much I can't even type it.
For fun not depressing music, might I suggest the Enchanted soundtrack and/or movie.
I'm going to go with A Thousand Splendid Suns for a book in which love's depths are expressed. Although The Kite Runner was probably a better written book, I liked Suns better. You've got to love a book that makes you sob. Or not, maybe.
thanks for the suggestions. i have a copy of kite runner in my house now. i think i'm really angry at the character in the book i'm reading and his free use of the phrase "i love you". it's written in 1st person and there's no hint of insincerity when he says it.
The Alison Krauss/Robert Plant CD is my suggestion. I really like it, and it makes me happy to listen to it. Ooh, and also the Mike Doughty CD "Haughty Melodic." Very upbeat.
I am no help on books right now. I am struggling my way through Mrs. Dalloway for a class right now. I do not like it. But I like straightforwardness, and this book seems to lose me in its stream of consciousness symbolic-ness. (Interesting, though, that stream of consciousness doesn't usually bother me in poetry. Hmm. Maybe because I know it's going to be relatively short and therefore easier to get through.)
I have really grown fond of Josh Garrell, don't know if he is summer or not though... http://youtube.com/watch?v=U6csM0TLZIs - youtube music...
Painted Vail was beautiful. I'm working on my list.. so wait up.
I'm no good to you on the music front, but one of my favorite books and one I feel is a great picture of love is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
sick.. i spelled veil wrong.
Thanks everyboday for your suggestions. Hopefully I'll get to read/listen to everything soon.
sick... I misspelled everybody.
"Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love" Jane Eyre
M.I.A - Boyz, Paper Planes, Come Around
Coconut Records
New Young Pony Club - Ice Cream, The Bomb
Beck
Goldfrapp - Fly Me Away
Telepopmusic - Breathe
Frou Frou - Breathe In, Shh
CSS - Music is My Hot, Hot Sex
Tegan and Sara - nineteen, where does the good go
Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton - Our Hell
The Billionaires - I Love You Mother Nature, Butterflies
Queen.
Miss TK & The Revenge - Sunshine, Sunshine Where Are You?, Banana
The Ting Tings - Shut Up and Let Me Go!
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