Archive of June 2004
Robert Quine 1942-2004
I don’t know how I missed the news until today–;Robert Quine died last month at 61, apparently a suicide by heroin overdose. It sounds like he was pretty distraught after the death of his wife. I’ve got my copy of the Voidoids’ Destiny Street–;that’ll be in my headphones today. (Everybody seems to think Hell is all about “Blank Generation”, but “The Kid With the Replaceable Head” is where it’s at for me.) Richard Hell’s official site has its own very personal Quine obit, with a lot of links and sounds.
I saw Quine play live once long ago, on the “New Sensations” tour with Lou Reed back in 1984. I find out now from this interview the poor guy apparently had a lousy time on that tour–;didn’t get along with Reed or the rest of the band. He claims to have been largely mixed off the work he’s credited on with Matthew Sweet, also. He comes off as pretty temperamental, but in that good way that comes from having very particular and demanding tastes.
On a completely irrelevant personal note, I can’t help noticing that although the circumstances and manner of death were of course very different, Quine died at the same age and around the same of year that my father did thirteen years ago.
07:06 | 0 CommentsThe best in this kind are but shadows
As I mentioned yesterday that I was going to, I went to this seminar on Midsummer Night’s Dream held by the local chapter of the St. John’s College alumni association. I’m glad to report that I had a marvelous time.
As I drove down to South Michigan Ave. to get there, I began to get somewhat nervous about the whole thing. I don’t even quite know what that was about–;it wasn’t as though I was playing out any kind of specific nightmare scenarios in my head; I just had this sort of weird visceral reaction–;to the whole idea of going, I guess. It passed quickly though, once I found a place to park and made it in the door on time. Right off the bat, Mr. Tuck was pretty much still exactly Mr. Tuck, to the degree that it’s difficult to see where he put 13 years of aging. There were about 16 or so people in attendance, with a pretty wide age range (not surprisingly, all white and sort of middle-class and nerdish looking).
At this point, I’d really like to say something about the discussion that we had, but it’s really difficult to put into words. What can you say about a good seminar, except that it was good? I can say that it had the same thoughtful silences, the same groping attempts at questions and ideas, and the same tendency to run topically far afield, but keep returning to the same few key themes in different ways, as all of the very best class sessions I remember from the college–;and maybe someone reading this who has also been there will know what I’m talking about. It is of course both a very sublime and a very silly play, and we managed to talk about the comedy and the poetry of it. I want to say we all managed to learn from one another, but that doesn’t quite do justice to the way in which the play became probably more complex and mysterious and flat-out confusing when I walked out than it had seemed going in. But I’m afraid that could sound kind of a lame cliché of “socratic method” or some shit, that I found out how much I didn’t know and all that. It wasn’t like that at all, though. It’s more that it’s a really enchanting play, and we got to brush right up against some of that enchantment, in a surprisingly direct way.
I suppose the crucial thing to draw from that last paragraph is that it’s really necessary and accurate for me to keep making “we” the subject of all the sentences. It was truly a group process, a collaborative effort to come to some sort of grips with this really slippery text. I think to get a good discussion, you have to have that going on. I mean, it takes individual effort as well; people need to bring enough ego to the table to have something to contribute. The idea of contribution is essential, however–;everyone has to be willing to give to the larger conversation, as well as to listen and “follow the argument” as the saying goes.
Yesterday I got to be part of that happening, in a way that I haven’t in a long time. It didn’t always happen at St. John’s, nor have I found it only at St. John’s in my life. But it’s rare, and important, and I’m glad I was around for it. Perhaps later some notes on what I’ve found about the play itself, but for now just wanting to try to describe the feeling of having the discussion.
Also, it was a perfectly gorgeous Chicago summer day down by Grant Park, of which the seminar room offered a lovely view, and a bunch of us went out for pizza afterward. All around, I had a blast. A weird, bookish, nerdly blast, but a blast nevertheless.
22:11 | 0 CommentsSummer footwear
Lately, as some may know, I have been complaining in public about men wearing sandals (besides the BBS post just linked, some regular readers may recall a few anti-man-sandal words right here on this page not long ago, before I pressed ‘reset’ on the archives). In light of my public stance (insofar as a blog and bulletin board with a combined total readership in maybe the high tens constitutes a ‘public’) I think it’s only fair to admit that I somewhat hypocritically own a pair of sandals, and have been known to walk around in them from time to time (as recently as this week!). They are, of course, easy to put on and take off, and offer the well-known sandal advantages of keeping my feet well-ventilated while protecting their soles from various pointy hazards and sun-baked pavement.
But on the other hand, they have the distinct disadvantage of leaving my toes hanging out for all the world to see. Unlike some men I could mention (by name! I’m serious!) I think I keep my toes pretty well-groomed. Sometimes the problem with men’s toes is they are especially nasty, but even with my neatly trimmed, fungus-free toenails and relative lack of toe hair (toe hair? ickickick!) my toes are still masculine toes and therefore can only be ridiculous and stupid-looking, even though not actually disgusting. This is, as I say, about the best a man can hope for from his toes, that they manage to avoid being overtly revolting. They will certainly never be, like, appealing at all.
Obviously, I have not only a distinctly heterosexual male perspective on this matter, but a ridiculously gender-biased double-standard here. That is, I think a woman’s toes can be very attractive indeed. Fortunately, this does not seem to me to be a crucial issue in gender-political fairness, so I’m gonna hold on to my attitude, though it may seem unenlightened to some: female toes pretty, male toes stupid–;end of story.
All of the forgoing, however, is as mere prologue to my real issue. The recent fashion popularity surge of the man-sandal appears to have brought about the near-extinction (in the US, at any rate) of my favorite sort of summer footwear, and indeed one of my favorite items of apparel, bar none. I speak of the linen-and-jute espadrille. Some may scoff that the espadrille is far too eurotrash for American shores, but to me they are ideal warm-weather footwear. Not only better-looking and (natch) more toe-concealing than sandals, they are also actually more comfortable. The woven jute sole can be ouchy on the bottoms of your feet at first, but after some wear and getting accustomed, it’s like a little foot massage, just walking around. The linen upper lets in cooling breezes, while providing your foot with shade from the sun’s harmful UV rays. And best of all, no strappy bits to have to wedge up between your toes or dig into the tops of your feet. The only way they could be improved is if they were perhaps a bit more durable for urban wear, but if you buy ‘em cheap, hey–;frequent replacement is no big deal.
Except that lately–;thanks, I’m quite sure, to all the sandal-mania–;you can’t seem to buy them at all. A thorough search through Froogle and Amazon turned up just one pair of men’s espadrilles, which were not only cut unattractively, but had uppers of canvas, God help me. So I go on walking the dog in my sandals, parading my dorky toes around for all the world to see, muttering curses at the arbiters of fashion. What I think I’m gonna have to do, is just get a pair of white Jack Purcells, and wear ‘em without socks all summer. Actually, that seems like a pretty good compromise.
06:58 | 0 Comments