Chabon on the road

You must realize the heading is deliberately obtuse, yes?

Michael Chabon reviews Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books (15 February 2007). Also articles by Buruma, Coetzee, Krugman, Pfaff — a stellar lineup.

Vancouver's Finest

A while ago I posted a rumour that The Police were to reunite. Turns out they’re rehearsing right here in Vancouver!

Into Great Silence

I saw Into Great Silence a couple of nights ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. What a tremendous film: a documentary about the lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, remotely located in the French Alps. The Carthusian is considered the most stringent of the monastic orders in the Roman Catholic church: severe vows of silence, solitude, and poverty. The film is long (160 min.) and very quiet. Also very beautiful. The photography is exquisite: the camera watches the monks as they work, worship, and pray and there are sublime moments in the images of drying dishes, falling snow, ringing bells. The sounds are minimal and therefore all the more significant: dripping water, creaking wood, shuffling feet. For a Western film, it all feels very Zen! As the viewer is taken through the season at the monastery, the faces of these men become familiar and one leaves feeling a sense of respect for these individuals who (even as I write!) are participating in a rigorous attempt to become closer to their God.

Or not. Part of me thinks it’s craziness! If I try to think of such a lifestyle myself, I don’t think I could last a day, let alone a lifetime. And yet the audio/visual resources of which I avail myself ceaselessly (computer, newspaper, television, radio, etc.) can sometimes leave me feeling almost nauseous. Maybe there’s a paradoxical kind of freedom to be found in such penitential restraint?

Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys. . . .

circusmuseum.nl

Bird Songs

I like what Sasha Frere-Jones writes about Andrew Bird in the latest New Yorker:

For years, the Chicago musician Andrew Bird took the stage alone, save for a violin, an electric guitar, a glockenspiel, and a sampler. Using these instruments, and an ability to whistle really well, Bird could perform his pastoral, zigzagging songs all by himself. . . . Bird . . . is about to release a new album, “Armchair Apocrypha,” . . . a vast, optimistic album about depressing things such as falling planes and empires; it downplays Bird’s whistle and keening violin and sounds a bit more like progressive rock of the seventies. Bird’s ambitions place him in a rough alliance with other artists who are writing long, complex compositions, such as Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom. Perhaps they are enlarging their songs in response to a world that has been dwarfing the charms of a three-minute single. Or perhaps they all know about the planetary alignment that’s due in 2008.

“With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope.”

The Laughorist discusses the serial comma.

Portland *hearts* Vancouver / Vancouver *hearts* Portland

According to Gordon Price in his latest online mag, Price Tags (PDF format), the admiration is mutual.

How far can you get in two seconds?

Via Simon at imnoslacker, this is just plain fun: “I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.”

Running from Camera

XXVI

The half-moon westers low, my love,
And the wind brings up the rain;
And wide apart lie we, my love,
And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,
In the land where you do lie;
And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,
You know no more than I.

A.E. Housman (1859–1936)

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da

Is all I want to say to you.