For no strong reason, except perhaps that ten songs make an album, I'm calling an end to "The Office Tapes." The new album will be called "Notes From A Homemade Tree." Further updates as events warrant.
. . . And now an event warrants. A new song, this one with an electric guitar that brings the rock. Ten points to whoever guesses the make of the guitar:
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Old Geography
In the summers between college years, I used to bike to a grocery on South Shore Drive in Holland Michigan. This was about two miles. It seemed like a long way because I was extremely sedentary (fat) then. It gave me time to write a (very bad) poem in my head about people from college. I don't remember the poem, but I remember the people involved.
If I were going to make the ride in Holland again, I would probably take a side-trip down 32nd Street, to see the repairs on the road. A nigh-biblical (ok: maybe only nigh-minor-prophet) flood completely washed out 32nd Street and mostly washed out 147th.
Then, in the summer after I got married, I was living in the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago. (That the neighborhood shares a name with the street in Holland is pure coincidence. It's not even the same lake that each is on the south shore of.) From the apartment in Chicago, I rode my bicycle to a chain guitar store in Burbank, Illinois. I had no particular need, I wanted to go somewhere cool. That ride was about eleven miles.
In Chicago, when I was going to the guitar store, I got a little lost because of another disaster straight out of the bible. (Measured demographically, disasters in Chicago are probably at least an order of magnitude bigger than anything that ever happened to Jerusalem.) I'm referring to the freeway that runs through the neighborhood. It may be a freeway to the cars on it, but to bicycles and houses, the skyway is a giant wall, like something put down by the Assyrians or the Romans to symbolically punish the natives for their feeble resistance.
Racially– and Chicago is an amazingly race-conscious place– I would be a Roman in this situation, getting lost under the seige defences built by my own government. I didn't realize this at the time, I just thought I was on my way to a music store.
If I were going to make the ride in Holland again, I would probably take a side-trip down 32nd Street, to see the repairs on the road. A nigh-biblical (ok: maybe only nigh-minor-prophet) flood completely washed out 32nd Street and mostly washed out 147th.
Then, in the summer after I got married, I was living in the South Shore neighborhood in Chicago. (That the neighborhood shares a name with the street in Holland is pure coincidence. It's not even the same lake that each is on the south shore of.) From the apartment in Chicago, I rode my bicycle to a chain guitar store in Burbank, Illinois. I had no particular need, I wanted to go somewhere cool. That ride was about eleven miles.
In Chicago, when I was going to the guitar store, I got a little lost because of another disaster straight out of the bible. (Measured demographically, disasters in Chicago are probably at least an order of magnitude bigger than anything that ever happened to Jerusalem.) I'm referring to the freeway that runs through the neighborhood. It may be a freeway to the cars on it, but to bicycles and houses, the skyway is a giant wall, like something put down by the Assyrians or the Romans to symbolically punish the natives for their feeble resistance.
Racially– and Chicago is an amazingly race-conscious place– I would be a Roman in this situation, getting lost under the seige defences built by my own government. I didn't realize this at the time, I just thought I was on my way to a music store.
Monday, November 2, 2009
My Dissertation
Walking home from school today, I realized that I could pretty well sum up my entire dissertation (or, more to the point, the whole of Longinus' On the Sublime) in about one sentence: If you write, you are a legitimate writer in exactly the same way that the greatest writers of all time were writers. (One could logically extend this thought to any other activity: If you paint pictures, then you are a painter just as Picasso was a painter.)
This sounds a little starry-eyed for academia, but it is an interesting thought. Another version of the same thing: only a small collection of logistical difficulties prevents any person from getting in the ring with Vitali Klitschko. It is otherwise a physically and conceptually possible thing to do. Most people wouldn't even feel demeaned by the ensuing knockout.
This sounds a little starry-eyed for academia, but it is an interesting thought. Another version of the same thing: only a small collection of logistical difficulties prevents any person from getting in the ring with Vitali Klitschko. It is otherwise a physically and conceptually possible thing to do. Most people wouldn't even feel demeaned by the ensuing knockout.
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