I had an old friend over to my place this afternoon, someone I bumped into last week who I hadn't seen in a long time.
He always seems to be doing stuff, as in, his life seems productive, but not in the crass capitalist way, like he made 55 widgets yesterday.
Rather, he seems to be on the path of the life worth living. Anyway, seeing him on New Year's Day, the 11th anniversary of my moving here to Toronto in search of a grander life, was a helpful, nay, necessary reminder of why I am here, and not in Calgary, or even Vienna.
Speaking of which, Mark Kingwell had an article in the Saturday Globe about idleness. Although I'm certain it is in part to help sell paperback copies of his Idler's Glossary, it is delightful nonetheless.
As always, I recommend you ignore the comments by "readers", unless you are a sociologist, and then, they may supply you with something useful, like how people who desire their own subjugation resist the possibility that it is they and not their overlords, who threw away the keys to their shackles.
I am busily looking for mine...if you find them, don't hesitate to drop me a comment.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Taking Stock
I took the always crowded King Streetcar to work this morning, just as I did this day last year.
Except a lot of things are different, one of those things being that I don't live near the King streetcar anymore. If only that were all that was different.
The Transcontinental is both a pale reflection of my "real" life, and an all-too accurate representation of my inner life. It is full of certain hopes and desires, of ambitions, some realised, most not at all, and it tells a particular story about me, but one that seems not very familiar to my self-conception.
I am happy that so many more people have visited the Transcontinental this year than in previous years, but I am discouraged by the fact that despite the visits, fewer people comment. When one starts to think about this, they start to think about how they can "attract" people here, and I too think often of that.
One of the things I think I need to do is write better. The writing here seems more laboured and yet also lazy, although not because I have posted more. Something is missing.
There is a part of me that wants to do some kind of list, set some kinds of goals here for the next year, but I look at the goals I've set here, like my January 1st, 2007 goal to post every day, and how it, like all the other goals, was not achieved.
So maybe my new year's resolution for the blog is that I'm not going to set any goals, or make any more promises here. I am just going to keep going, and see where things take me, because that approach in other aspects of my life, where I take up those lines of flight, has been enormously productive.
And, as you can see, the site looks completely different. I hope you like that too.
Happy New Year!
Except a lot of things are different, one of those things being that I don't live near the King streetcar anymore. If only that were all that was different.
The Transcontinental is both a pale reflection of my "real" life, and an all-too accurate representation of my inner life. It is full of certain hopes and desires, of ambitions, some realised, most not at all, and it tells a particular story about me, but one that seems not very familiar to my self-conception.
I am happy that so many more people have visited the Transcontinental this year than in previous years, but I am discouraged by the fact that despite the visits, fewer people comment. When one starts to think about this, they start to think about how they can "attract" people here, and I too think often of that.
One of the things I think I need to do is write better. The writing here seems more laboured and yet also lazy, although not because I have posted more. Something is missing.
There is a part of me that wants to do some kind of list, set some kinds of goals here for the next year, but I look at the goals I've set here, like my January 1st, 2007 goal to post every day, and how it, like all the other goals, was not achieved.
So maybe my new year's resolution for the blog is that I'm not going to set any goals, or make any more promises here. I am just going to keep going, and see where things take me, because that approach in other aspects of my life, where I take up those lines of flight, has been enormously productive.
And, as you can see, the site looks completely different. I hope you like that too.
Happy New Year!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Small World - Tabling Heine
Earlier today, I was reading Raminagrobis, a wonderful blog that I first encountered via the Varieties. Having read the latest post, I was going to add the blog to my roll. However, I'm working on a paper on Heine, and so wasn't going to do it today.
In Die Harzreise, Heine mentions schoolboys declining "mensa" in the genitive. I was curious to see if he was in any way referring to the ecclesiastical use of the term, as my paper concerns secularization.
So I googled "mensa latin grammar" - and Raminagrobis was the first hit! Turns out he posted on the various cultural differences between latin grammars. Heine's reference made me wonder if mensa isn't also common as an early paradigm in German Latin grammars, and sure enough, page 21 of the Lateinische Grammatik here at google books, the first declension is "mensa" , although this 1837 grammar uses "via" on page 38...
Anyway, and this is certainly no strong counterexample to the cultural differences in noun declensions Raminagrobis cites, but it seems that the shift from "mensa" to "agricola" in German grammars of Latin appears to be a more recent one, as I am pretty sure that Heine here is playing with what would have been common knowledge at the time.
And with that, perhaps the most esoteric blog post I've ever written.
In Die Harzreise, Heine mentions schoolboys declining "mensa" in the genitive. I was curious to see if he was in any way referring to the ecclesiastical use of the term, as my paper concerns secularization.
So I googled "mensa latin grammar" - and Raminagrobis was the first hit! Turns out he posted on the various cultural differences between latin grammars. Heine's reference made me wonder if mensa isn't also common as an early paradigm in German Latin grammars, and sure enough, page 21 of the Lateinische Grammatik here at google books, the first declension is "mensa" , although this 1837 grammar uses "via" on page 38...
Anyway, and this is certainly no strong counterexample to the cultural differences in noun declensions Raminagrobis cites, but it seems that the shift from "mensa" to "agricola" in German grammars of Latin appears to be a more recent one, as I am pretty sure that Heine here is playing with what would have been common knowledge at the time.
And with that, perhaps the most esoteric blog post I've ever written.
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Smoking Bishop
The thing I most enjoy about Christmas is the sheer variety of traditions that magically appear around this time, most of which either never existed until a few years ago or were long dead until someone with a web page and a 19th Century cookbook resurrected them. So maybe it's not the variety of traditions appeals to me, but the receptiveness to the new through the back door of tradition.
And there's an always fruitful and pleasurable avenue of exploration of the eternal recurrence of holiday traditions - the myriad ways in which one can get soused with warm drinks!
To wit, via the Valve, a link to a holiday drink I had never heard of, but solely on account of the name desperately want to try - the Smoking Bishop.
It sounds like a nice mulled wine, but if this NPR program on the beverage is any indication, the recipe at the Valve may not be the one you want to be going with...Instead, I would suggest you trust the Irishman towards the end of the broadcast segment who modifies it slightly for our modern, naïve tastes, and makes it "taste good"!
Enjoy!
And there's an always fruitful and pleasurable avenue of exploration of the eternal recurrence of holiday traditions - the myriad ways in which one can get soused with warm drinks!
To wit, via the Valve, a link to a holiday drink I had never heard of, but solely on account of the name desperately want to try - the Smoking Bishop.
It sounds like a nice mulled wine, but if this NPR program on the beverage is any indication, the recipe at the Valve may not be the one you want to be going with...Instead, I would suggest you trust the Irishman towards the end of the broadcast segment who modifies it slightly for our modern, naïve tastes, and makes it "taste good"!
Enjoy!
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Elliott Carter! Daniel Barenboim! James Levine!
All in one studio - together at last.
What else would prompt me to post three times in one day?
A Transcontinental exclusive!
What else would prompt me to post three times in one day?
A Transcontinental exclusive!
Elliott Carter, 100 years and still alive despite the fact that he killed classical music for the People
The best part about Eliott Carter's centenary is that, for perhaps the first time ever in modern classical music marketing, the composer we are lionizing today with concerts, retrospectives, symposia, ephemera, salutary compositions, and sombre critical inquiry over the very fate and nature of classical/modern/serious music is the following:
ELLIOTT CARTER IS STILL ALIVE
It's nice to think that he's around to get some kind of bemused enjoyment out of all of this.
And the entire classical blogosphere has typed lauds into their blogs as well, a veritable youtube symphony of praise.
That's pretty much it. Oh yes, and this:
Serialism forever! Tonalität ist tot!
Nuts to you, Sandow and Gann, with your zany post-classical future of classical music wickedness!
Schönberg! Schönberg! Schönberg! (although he too, is dead)
ELLIOTT CARTER IS STILL ALIVE
It's nice to think that he's around to get some kind of bemused enjoyment out of all of this.
And the entire classical blogosphere has typed lauds into their blogs as well, a veritable youtube symphony of praise.
That's pretty much it. Oh yes, and this:
Serialism forever! Tonalität ist tot!
Nuts to you, Sandow and Gann, with your zany post-classical future of classical music wickedness!
Schönberg! Schönberg! Schönberg! (although he too, is dead)
Der Vorleser: The Movie: The Discussion
As a budding germanist, I should probably have some kind of quota for posts which relate to my field of study...barring this, here's an interesting conversation from WNYC between actor Ralph Fiennes and Leonard Lopate about the upcoming movie adaptation of Bernhard Schlink's novel The Reader.
That reminds me - I'm very critical of Canadian media and society what I don't think works, but I rarely, if ever, attempt to offer any solutions.
Listening to WNYC reminds me that I need to address that. To that, I think exactly what Canadian society lacks from a media perspective is, um, WNYC...the big question is how to make that happen...but more on that some other time.
UPDATE: The player isn't working, so here's the direct link!
That reminds me - I'm very critical of Canadian media and society what I don't think works, but I rarely, if ever, attempt to offer any solutions.
Listening to WNYC reminds me that I need to address that. To that, I think exactly what Canadian society lacks from a media perspective is, um, WNYC...the big question is how to make that happen...but more on that some other time.
UPDATE: The player isn't working, so here's the direct link!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Utopian Argumentation
This Ads Without Products post reminded me of a something I often see in magazine articles or newspaper profiles about a group with idealistic aims (note how I avoided that other word [see above]).
The trope is as follows: these idealistic people are striving for utopia. But wait - "utopia" means "no place" in the Greek, so therefore, clearly, the ideals of this group or person will never come to pass. Because "utopia" means "no place".
Or maybe you've seen this one: Group X's utopian ideals are misplaced, because there is no such thing as a utopia, because "utopia" means "no place".
There is some interesting interplay between use and definition. Prior to the defining moment, "utopia" or "utopian" is employed as a pejorative, used to mean "pie in the sky", or "fanciful". But inevitably, these pie in the sky ideas, like helping the poor or opposing torture, are refuted via etymology.
So implicit in the common use of the word "utopia" is to make explicit one's belief that a word's etymology governs reality, that etymology functions as a natural law to which we all must submit.
Which is nonsense, isn't it? Maybe I'm being utopian...
The trope is as follows: these idealistic people are striving for utopia. But wait - "utopia" means "no place" in the Greek, so therefore, clearly, the ideals of this group or person will never come to pass. Because "utopia" means "no place".
Or maybe you've seen this one: Group X's utopian ideals are misplaced, because there is no such thing as a utopia, because "utopia" means "no place".
There is some interesting interplay between use and definition. Prior to the defining moment, "utopia" or "utopian" is employed as a pejorative, used to mean "pie in the sky", or "fanciful". But inevitably, these pie in the sky ideas, like helping the poor or opposing torture, are refuted via etymology.
So implicit in the common use of the word "utopia" is to make explicit one's belief that a word's etymology governs reality, that etymology functions as a natural law to which we all must submit.
Which is nonsense, isn't it? Maybe I'm being utopian...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)