The Film Noir Experience

My iPod and my new laptop don’t seem to want to play nice with each other. You really have to work to make them work together. I’ve needed, for a long time, to remove some digital junk from my life (much of which has, in one for or another, found its way onto my iPod) and I’ve taken this opportunity to go through some of this stuff and cull it from my iPod and my life.

Even if I still end up with the same metaphorical amount of baggage, in the end I will be short some of my literal baggage. As it turns out, I am in possession of a number of backup copies of stuff from my latest ex. (”Latest” is perhaps the wrong word to use here, since we and I have not been together now for almost two years.) As it turns out, if you just keep adding things to your disc-space enabled iPod without actually checking to see what is there, this sort of thing happens.

Anyway, I loaded a bunch of my music from my iPod to my computer and then told iTunes genius to make me a playlist based on ‘Joga’ from one of my favorite Björk albums Homogenic. So, it played ‘Joga’ for me. All of Homogenic is complex with techno beats and strings and eerie and excellent Brörk vocals and lyrics that resonated with me when it came out in 1997 and that recently have come to resonate with me again. For example, I’m going hunting/I’m the hunter/I’ll bring back the goods/but I don’t know when from ‘Hunter’ (which it played later down in the list). I’ve been working on my qualifying project (so that I can eventually progress to the dissertating stage of the PhD) these lyrics just seem to fit. I have this idea, this hypothesis. And, from here I have to go hunting. I have to figure out if anyone else has blazed this trail I’d like to be on. I have to collect data and see if it supports my hypothesis. I’m going hunting. I’m the hunter. I will get the goods. But, I don’t really know when.

So, iTunes plays me this song and it follows it immediately with Bill Frissell’s “I am not a farmer” from his album Disfarmer. With no techno beat. With no vocals. Just guitars and some eerie strings at the end. This combination made me smile. I would never have thought to put these two things together. Yet, here they are. Different, yet alike. But, while I would say “I’m a Hunter” of myself, I don’t think I’d ever say, “I’m not a farmer”. In a literal sense, I do grow herbs and orchids in my apartment. And, I’m considering (have been for awhile now) expanding my little venture to include window boxes. (I think I might get enough sun to grow swiss chard, which would be lovely.) It seemed to me, when I first saw this that two things, namely hunters and farmers, were different. But, perhaps not. Perhaps, you would have to specify that you are the kind of hunter that gathers all of the necessities via hunting. I am a hunter and I am not a farmer. The alternative would be to say that I am a hunter and also a farmer, so someone who does a little cultivating and a little hunting. I am now intrigued by this.

Album: Homogenic
Artist: Björk
Song: Hunter

Album: Disfarmer
Artist: Bill Frissell
Song: I Am Not a Farmer

NPR is freaking amazing, in case you didn’t already know that. I am a devotee. I have driveway moments all the time. Back when I lived in Iowa City, I was listening to a music show that was broadcast from the station at the University of Northern Iowa. I remember I was driving home from work, actually. And this song came on about religion. No, spirituality. No, life.

So, the song was just a guy with his guitar (and maybe a backup mandolin) in the studio singing this song about the miracle that is living. The song is about how when you’re little, you’re told about all these amazing things that happened back in the day and you think, “Gosh, why doesn’t anything cool like that happen now?” I mean, Joshua and the army of Israel brought down the walls of Jericho with their trumpets. Moses parted a sea. But, the older you get you come to realize that the world is full of things that are incredible and improbable and how wonderful that is.

And, to think, if I hadn’t been going home from work at that moment, I might never have heard the song at all.

Album: Million Year Mind
Singer/Songwriter: Peter Mayer
Song: Holy Now

So, I’m not really sure that I approve of shopping for a cause (because *more* of your money would actually get where its going if you just gave to a reputable foundation) but recently I’ve bought a lot of music from which the proceeds have gone to charity.

Most recently I’ve bought the single Everybody Hurts put together by Simon Cowell and to which a bajillion artists contributed.

I’ve always liked this song because there is just something comforting about the notion that everybody at some point feels a little pain and that’s is just part of life. Its a nice little nod to the saying, “This too shall pass.”

“When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone….(just remember) Everybody hurts, everybody cries. Hold on.”

It is a really nice cover of the song, maybe not as slow as the original. And, all the different artists adding a their own little touch really focuses the ubiquity of the experience of life sucking. I highly recommend it.

Album: Everybody Hurts-Single
Artist: Helping Haiti
Song: Everybody Hurts

I have had a sinus infection and two ear infections this past week. Which I didn’t think sounded all that bad when the doctor told me that. I was already feeling pretty bad and she gave medicine and a number of other things to do (like take two hot showers a day and use saline spray 6 times a day). But, then I started taking the antibiotics and everything got so much worse. Before, I had just been in pain. After I started the medicine, I was still in pain AND I was leaking some of the most disgusting garbage out of my person….I won’t further horrify you with details except to say that I have gone through 3 boxes of kleenexes (in addition to a bunch of toilet paper I used when I ran out of kleenex, I roll and a half each.)

So, I started antibiotics a week ago today. And, it wiped me out. I am apparently still a little wiped out because I just woke up from a nap and I am shortly headed to bed. (I want to read just a little first.)

So, a soundtrack can really make (or break) a film. Love Actually is one of my favorite films (and, yes, I realize its a Christmas film, but I could watch it at any time in the year). And, I was thinking about it the today; it would be a completely different film without its soundtrack.

I love the film because you are so happy when Sam (played by Thomas Sangster) and Jamie (Colin Firth) triumph in love. You’re touched by Daniel’s (Liam Neeson) devotion to his recently passed spouse. You want to smack Sarah (Laura Linney) for letting Karl’s (Rodrigo Santoro) hot, mostly naked (Brazilian) personage go. You feel a sense of catharsis when Mark (Andrew Lincoln) finally says what he needs to say and moves on. You’re touched when Billy Mac tells his manager, whom he calls Chubs, that he’s come to realize that he’s spent his whole life with his fat employee, and in truth, “The People I love is, in fact, you.” And, you are devastated when Karen (Emma Thompson) is herself devastated after discovering her husband’s possible infidelity. (Oh, and the Prime minister/Natalie stuff is hilarious and wonderful.) But, you feel all of these things because of the soundtrack.

Karen tells Harry near the beginning of the film, after he asks why she still listens to Joni Mitchell, “I love her and true love lasts a lifetime. Joni Mitchell is the woman who taught your cold English wife how to feel.” And, Joni Mitchell sets the tone of their relationship. Her heartbrokenness is set against the background of Mitchell’s hauntingly beautiful “Both Sides Now” (which by the way, if you’re never actually listen to the lyrics, I really recommend it). Her heart breaks and so does yours while Joni Mitchell croons about having looked at love from both sides and after this coming to realize that she really doesn’t know love at all.

Karl and Sarah are set to Eva Cassidy’s “Songbird”. This was apparently the filmmaker’s second choice. He had imagined the scene to Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Come on Come on”. But, this tune really does end up being perfect and fitting in completely with the feel of the scene.

And, the ending of the film gets me every time, calling back to its beginning with the arrivals at Heathrow while “God Only Knows” plays on in the background. “God Only Knows what I’d be without you” the Beach Boys tell us as we see image after image of husbands, wives, daughters, sons, brothers, mothers, sisters fathers, friends reunite. Its such a powerful and all encompassing sentiment, What would we be without the people in our lives who love us? What would we be without the people in our lives that we love?

Its a good film, but how the music plays into the action really makes it remarkable.

Song: Both Sides Now
Performer: Joni Mitchell
Album: Both Sides Now

Song: Songbird
Performer: Eva Cassidy
Album: Songbird

Song: God Only Knows
Performer: The Beach Boys
Album: Love to Love

So, I had a cold over Thanksgiving. And, an ear infection. And, then another cold over New Years. I almost lost my voice; it was pretty sexy. And, now, 4 weeks into the semester and I’ve down for the count AGAIN. I don’t know what the problem is. I am coughing. I have the post-nasal drip, which is causing a sore/scratchy throat. I eat vegetables and drink green tea! And, I sleep! Why is this happening?!?! I’ve been trying to clean everything, in case there are some residual germs just hanging out waiting to reinfect me, but I’m really concerned this might be an immune system problem (because freaking out about things like that is fun.)

Anyway, my cats have been doing their level best to be adorable and cheer me out of my cold-having funk. Lily, who has only been with us since July as progressively been sitting closer and closer to me. Lily is a lovely cat, but in her time with us she hasn’t been overly snuggly. If you’re sitting on the couch, she’ll sit behind the couch nearish to you, that’s the sort of contact she wants. Or, she’ll ask you for a scratch on the head and then when she’s had enough, she’ll thwap you with her paw before walking away. We’ve come to think of her as a Prom Queen. She is very beautiful, and very particular about how she will interact with you, the lowly people who didn’t even make it into the court. So, last night, I was watching a movie and she jumped up onto the couch and slept for awhile. Then, after Cooper, my James Dean kitty, was done sitting my lap, she ventured into it. While this isn’t the first time she’s sat in my lap, I think its the longest she’s ever been in my lap. I’m well impressed that she’s deigned to sit with my lowly personage. She is currently sitting on the floor next to my feet; I think she’s contemplating a move to dislodge the laptop. We shall see how that goes.

This morning, I received an email from the friend’s mother who coordinated my adoption of Lily. She found a picture of her as a kitten.

Lily as a kitten

How freaking cute is she?

I love napping. But, I keep falling asleep and its a problem when I have things to do. I don’t know what to do about this.

When you first learn something, it is very exciting and even though you make a mistake you really don’t mind it because you are still learning.

Sadly, there reaches the point where you are still new to something but you’ve made so many mistakes that you feel like you should be beyond that by now. You aren’t. And, you end up doing the same silly things over and over again until you ask someone and they tell you, “Oh, its because it works this way.” You come to realize that your conceptualization of something is completely different from how the thing actually is (or works). You reframe your thinking and you set out to do things right.

But, you still make mistakes. And, its still so very frustrating.