Yes, it is a bit spooky that he died within a day or two of Bergman, one of those things that you feel must mean something even though you aren't sure what it might be—which, come to think of it, is highly fitting for these two directors. Here is what I said a month or two ago about Blow-up:

I’ve somehow gotten the impression that this movie is no longer regarded as highly as it once was. Well, if that’s true, I don’t care; I think it’s a masterpiece, and phooey to those who disagree. It made a huge impression on me when I first saw it, when it was new and I was a college freshman, but I didn’t really know why. I suppose it was a matter of mood and atmosphere more than anything else. Now I think I understand it, and I think it comes closer to capturing an essential aspect of the cultural upheaval of the ‘60s than pretty much any other work of art I know of. I’m ready to see it again.

I'm still working my way through the rest of Antonioni's work. There is probably less great work there than in Bergman's career, but I can say of his best films exactly what I said yesterday of Bergman's: that they're among the few that I care about as much as I do my favorite books and music.

Here is the NY Times's obituary.

Provisional Last Word on Harry Potter

NOTE: There are no spoilers, properly speaking, in this post, but I do give my general opinion of the last book, so if you want to remain absolutely free of preconceptions about it you may want to skip this.

UPDATE: no spoilers in the post itself, but there are some in the comments.

As my wife said last night, this weekend has been “all Harry Potter, all the time,” at least up until the wee hours of Saturday night. Having decided that we would make one of our rare ventures into a theater for the most recent Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, we decided on Friday night to refresh our memories by renting its predecessor, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. That turned out to be a good idea, as I had forgotten most of it. Then last night we went to see Phoenix. And after we got home we both finished the Potter books we were reading, Deathly Hallows for me, its predecessor Half-Blood Prince for her. Both films were thoroughly enjoyable for the most part, although, as with the books, I wouldn’t make any great artistic claims for them. If you’re a fan and haven’t seen the new movie yet (which I guess is almost a contradiction in terms), you can look forward to portrayals of Dolores Umbridge and Luna Lovegood which could hardly be improved upon. I note in passing with dismay that Emma Watson (Hermione) has the unnatural-looking thinness that seems to be required these days of young women in show business; let’s hope it’s natural to her.

Here’s what I am not saying about the books:

• That they are risk-free. There is a real possibility that some readers might be confused and misled by the treatment of magic and wander into occultism. I don’t think they would be a great many, and if they go very far at all into that path, they have deeper problems, but it is a possibility. Although I’ve insisted that “magic” in Potterworld is not the magic with which occultists toy (or worse), there is at minimum a prudential argument against using the same paraphernalia for non-occult literary purposes.

• That they are completely compatible with Christian theology and morality. I’ve noticed a tendency on the part of some anti-Potter Catholics to speak as if they want to see in children’s fiction a theological correctness, in which every element of the story must conform explicitly to Catholic doctrine. The more extreme proponents of this view seem to imply that a work is to be rejected if any character in it ever commits a sin which is not clearly and specifically punished. A rigid application of this criterion would, obviously, be a recipe for artistic shipwreck, and require rejection of much or most of the world’s great literature.

  On the other side, there are apparently some Christians who do maintain that the books are thoroughly and specifically Christian. I think they’re overstating the case. I’ve heard it said throughout this controversy that J.K. Rowling is a Christian, but without any further detail. On the basis of the books I would guess—and I emphasize that it’s only a guess—that her Christianity is not very definite about doctrine.

• That they are great literature. There’s much in the books that I find distasteful (the gross-out humor) or unconvincing and unamusing (the depiction of the magical world as a sort of Halloweenized parody of the real one). There is certainly no remarkable prose craftsmanship on display. That’s forgiveable, as the story here is the main thing, but it’s certainly a major handicap if we are going to throw around the word “great.” I find them overall fairly lightweight, although they get better after the almost comic-book level of the first one, and often show real depth. But I don’t put them in the class with Tolkien.

Here’s what I am saying: the over-arching theme of sacrificial love in the story—the whole seven-volume story—disqualifies it from being fundamentally evil. I’ve been saying that with the qualifier “so far” until now. Having finished the last book, I can remove the qualifier.

I was, finally, somewhat disappointed in Deathly Hallows, but not because I think it retreated from the theme. Without going into detail that would spoil the story for those who plan to read it but haven’t yet, I’ll just say that as a work of fiction it runs into some difficulties. When the book arrived last weekend, my daughter, who is of the generation that have passed from late childhood to early adulthood reading the Potter saga, of course had first claim on it, and read it through in a day or so. When I asked her to tell me her basic opinion without giving away anything specific, she said, “It’s good, but some of it doesn’t hang together very well.” That’s my nutshell opinion, too. We both thought it seemed as if the latter part especially had been written in a rush.

Here are some links to other opinions, all of which contain major spoilers, so don’t read them if you don’t want to know how the story ends. I share many of the criticisms made by Ross Douthat and Eve Tushnet. The comments on Mark Shea’s post include some excellent debate about the question of magic, including some interesting observations by Sandra Meisel who has a formidable knowledge of history. And although I think he may be overstating things a bit, I like this remark by Shea himself, which I can quote without giving away anything:

Think about it: it must drive the devil freakin’ *nuts* to see imagery that has long been his property now being co-opted by this insidious Rowling person and turned to the service of Christ, inspiring people with Christ-like models of love and self-sacrifice and with a story of divine grace and mercy that clearly draws on the Christian tradition. I think God must be laughing his head off at this consummate work of jiu-jitsu. To have even the image of the *witch* bow the knee to Christ. Old Scratch must be mighty frustrated. If only Christian Harry haters could figure that out.

Spoiler-ridden opinion links:

Ross Douthat

Eve Tushnet

Mark Shea

Since I first encountered them in college, forty years ago, Bergman's films have been among the few that I care about as deeply as I do my favorite books and music, notwithstanding the fact that I had no clear idea what some of the more gnomic ones (e.g. Persona) were really about. As much as any artist, and more than all but a very few, he showed us the meaning of the absence of God. May he find the light and joy that were seldom seen in his work, but were all the more vivid for being rare.

Tristania: Illumination

A year or two ago on the Caelum et Terra blog there was a discussion of guilty pleasures, with accompanying revelations. Being Catholics, we were careful to specify that we did not mean sinful pleasures—sin is sin, and when you sin you go to confession and try your best not to do it again; you don’t put it in the fridge with the intention of taking an occasional bite or sip. A guilty pleasure is one that isn’t a sin but in some way goes against your better judgment: if it’s food, maybe it isn’t good for your health or your waistline, like a bag of cheese curls; if it’s art, maybe it’s something of which your critical faculties can’t approve but which you nevertheless enjoy, like an old episode of Magnum P.I..

For my part, the thing that came immediately to mind when the topic was suggested was heavy metal music. I’m fascinated by sound for its own sake, and the dense, massive power and weight of the bass and guitar combination in metal is particularly fascinating—it’s as if someone had figured out how to organize thunderclaps. This music has never been something I wanted to hear very often, because in most of it the elements of music beyond the thunderclaps are pretty deficient, limited to the expression of rage and hostility. And the lyrics tend toward the hateful and violent, sometimes even the Satanic, and not in a tongue-in-cheek way.

A few years ago, thanks to eMusic, I discovered a sub-genre that I actually like and—I’m admitting here for the first time—has mostly moved out of the category of guilty pleasure. Sometimes referred to as gothic or symphonic metal, it adds melody, variety, and contrast, even subtlety, to the basic format, incorporating keyboards, strings, maybe even the occasional choir, and some of the techniques and ambitions of progressive rock. A sub-sub-genre sometimes described as the “beauty and the beast” style adds female vocals which typically are near-classical in their range and purity. Its atmosphere is not one of evil and violence but a gloomy, occasionally morbid, romanticism.

Of the bands of this type that I’ve heard, my favorite is Tristania. Considering that I have four of their five full-length albums, it would be dishonest at this point to pretend I’m not a fan. It’s true that I got the first three from eMusic for a negligible sum, when eMusic offered unlimited downloads for ten dollars a month. And it’s true that I don’t listen to them all that much, because their intensity wears on me after twenty minutes or so. And it’s true that much of their music—almost all their earlier albums—is marred by the presence of the so-called “death grunt” male vocal, which can best be described as the sound of a very large, very hostile Cookie Monster. But the interplay of the classic metal elements with the lovely soaring vocals of Vibeke Stene can be beautiful and very potent. I have half-jokingly described them as the Fairport Convention of metal. (Alas, Vibeke left the band last winter; one hopes they’ll find someone comparable.)

Their latest, Illumination, is an album very much worth full cd price. And my remark above about listening to them in small doses doesn’t really apply here, as the intensity is frequently moderated by quieter passages, and Beauty is given some really affecting melodies. They’ve gradually been leaving behind more and more of the conventions of metal and, as the AMG reviewer said, have almost re-invented the gothic romanticism of ‘80s bands like Bauhaus, Xymox, and the Sisters of Mercy (albeit with more power chords than synths). The mood here is predominantly one of melancholy, yearning, and regret, though there are occasional moments of bitterness and a couple of anti-Christian sentiments. As I wrote to a friend, I wish they didn’t think God is their enemy. I often think that people like them would be very committed Christians if they could ever get past their prejudices against the faith, because they seem to passionately desire what is real. The song “Sacrilege” reveals the misunderstanding: introduced by what seems to be a somewhat insipid Christian hymn, it defies the religion which they think would crush them. If they only knew…. In spite of that, I think they’re worth listening to, although certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. Their music is gloomy but, as the title of this album suggests, it does not hate the light:

But you must not fear the dark
I will watch over your sleep
Until the morning comes

(“Lotus”)

No doubt I’m reading too much into those lines, but they’re a good description of the way I feel when praying for someone I care about, especially those who may not be praying for themselves.

Here are: Illumination on eMusic, the official band site, and the MySpace page (very slow to load, but allows you to hear one of my favorite songs from Illumination, “Mercyside”).

And here’s a link to that CetT thread.

Unless you want them to learn about love and courage, faith and loyalty, and the importance and difficulty of learning wisdom.

(Please, no spoilers if you comment on this.)

Men almost always want a bigger television. By that I mean not only bigger than the woman in his life wants, but bigger than the one he already has. Most of the exceptions to this rule are men who on principle refuse to have a television in the house at all, and those happy few who have already maxed out what the house can accommodate. And of course his idea of "accommodate" is not the same as hers.

I recall a meeting a few years ago, attended by three or four men and three or four women. We were waiting on our boss to start the meeting and one of the women began to complain about the tug of war she was having with her husband, who wanted to replace their tv with a much bigger one. All the women sided with her. All the men sided with her husband, even though I personally would not feel more than a momentary pang if told I could never watch television again.

Our boss, a woman, arrived in the middle of this conversation. She and her husband have no children and live in a house that could probably contain any two houses belonging to the rest of us. Taking in the subject, she said, "I'm fighting that battle with my husband, too," and joined the rest of the women in wondering "What is this thing with guys and the monster tv?" The men of course were saying "All that room and you don't have a home theater?"

A Vignette

I mentioned in a comment recently that I have an array of unfinished projects that never cease to whisper accusations of neglect at me. One of them is a novel that I started some twenty or twenty-five years ago. There are a number of reasons why it’s languished for most of that time, and for all of the past ten or more of those years: workaday responsibilities and distractions, an almost ADD-like inability to concentrate, procrastination, plain old laziness. And then there’s the more fundamental problem that I’m not a natural storyteller. I’ve had from the beginning the broad outline of my plot but have had trouble with the details. I originally intended for it to be a quasi-detective story, which was one reason the plot was difficult: you need a pretty well-engineered mechanism for that.

Some weeks ago I had an email conversation with a friend who’s trying to find a publisher for a novel she’s written, which caused me to locate and read the fragments of mine. I thought it had potential. I told her I’d send her some samples, but have, as usual, found it hard to organize that project. So I spent the time which ordinarily goes into writing my Sunday journal in doing so. The vignette which follows is brief enough to post. So, Vicki, here it is.

The time is the late 1970s. The place is Atlanta, approximately. The narrator is a thirty-ish ex-musician and current Ph.D student (history) who’s been asked by a hospitalized friend to track down an old girlfriend.

*****

I located the building at a little after eleven, and when I had stopped the car the street was silent. The neighborhood was shabby but could have been worse. The old house sat square in its small high yard, having been built on a mild slope which had been cut away for sidewalk and street. A brick wall, eighteen inches or so high, kept the yard from spilling out into the street but would not, to judge by the way it sagged outward, continue to do so for many more years. The house was like most of those in the neighborhood, tall and blocky and needing care. At the windows were torn screens and sagging air conditioners. While I sat there, putting off the task, wondering whether it was too early to wake up a bunch of hippies on a Sunday morning, a Led Zeppelin song came crashing into the street. After thirty seconds of that I figured no one within a couple of hundred feet could still be sleeping, so I got out of the car. As I stepped onto the sidewalk the music stopped abruptly, leaving the tail of someone’s fury in the air—fucking bastard—and with that for my trumpet call I marched up the two steps to the front walk, up three steps to the porch. I found the name on a mailbox and opened the front door.

The front hall breathed of an old sadness, with its dark wooden floor and wallpaper of a decorous, abstract, and empty pattern, long faded, having had little enough life in it to begin with—a pattern too mechanical to do anything but lock the mind into itself, suggesting or recalling nothing. It held, permanently, the mood of a lonely Sunday without festivity. Beer cans and other debris were scattered around, much of it looking as if it had been there for a while.

A staircase on my left ran up toward the rear of the house. I climbed, noticing how sturdy the banister had remained, sliding my hand along it and taking my time, having no wish to meet the woman I was seeking and half-hoping Darlene’s trail would end here.

When I stood at the door of 207 I could hear running water and the sound of a television. When I knocked, there was a tattoo of light feet moving away from the door, and in a moment the sound of the water stopped. The footsteps returned, more slowly, and there was movement on the other side of the door. A kid, I thought, figuring that I was now being examined through the peephole in the door. Kids home alone, with instructions not to answer the door. I tried very hard not to stare into the peephole, and looked everywhere else, feeling like the mischievous character in an old comedy, feigning innocence, hands in pockets, eyes wandering. At last I turned around and looked over the balustrade down into the foyer.

The door opened behind me. Turning, I saw the face of a woman with wet hair looking past the chain.

“Gina goddamn well better not have sent you over here this time of morning.”

“I don’t know Gina,” I said. “I’m looking for somebody who used to live here. Last I know she was in 205. Darlene Jeffrey. Did you know her?”

She paused. “Yeah. Don’t know where she is now, though. What do you want with her?”

I told her who I was and why I was looking for Darlene.

“Wheeler’s a shit,” she said, “but I guess you can come in. Not that I can help you much.”

She opened the door and we looked at each other. Her dark wet hair, parted in the middle, fell past a face that was somewhat pretty but hardened, not so much by her expression, it seemed, as by something in the bone, as if she had been put together by a builder whose work was solid but lacking in grace and finish. She wore a dark blue tank top and jeans, filling them with a body that was rounded but trim.

At a distance of ten feet or so behind her, in a frayed-looking robe of pink terrycloth, stood a little girl of eight or ten with long dark hair which I took as proof that the woman was her mother. Windows on the east side of the room let in the clean September light, but the one slightly open window didn’t let in enough fresh air to defeat the cigarette smoke and the close greasy smell of bad housekeeping. To the right, opposite the windows, were a kitchen and what I supposed must be a bedroom—all I could see was a floor littered with clothing. Beside the kitchen door, a crumpled grocery bag full of garbage seemed in immediate danger of toppling because of the heavy gallon-sized wine jug which had been imprudently added to what had already been a full load.

She gestured toward a battered-looking green couch which filled the space in front of the windows. At one end of the couch was a table upon which sat a small color television. I recognized the program: Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power.” I sat down on the other end.

“She’d rather have cartoons,” said the woman, “but she’ll watch anything.” She nodded in response to the little girl’s look, and the girl jumped up on the other end of the couch without looking at me, drawing herself up as if to keep as far away from me as possible.

“She doesn’t like guys,” said the woman.

I waited to see if she would explain the remark. She didn’t. Over the little girl’s shoulder I watched as the eye of the camera drifted across a choir in sky-blue robes. The girl was humming softly, her face almost against the screen. The camera panned to the bright windows of Reverend Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral.

“She asked me once if that was heaven,” said the woman. “You remember that, Glad?” The little girl didn’t answer.

“Pretty boring heaven, it looks to me,” I said.

“You might not think so if you’d seen some of the stuff she’s seen,” said the mother, her eyes on the television, or on the little girl, but her vision far away, and again offered no explanation. Though the way was open for me to inquire, I didn’t.

“This is kind of distracting,” I said, “for all concerned. What if we talk in there, where we won’t bother her?” I pointed to the kitchen. The woman gave me a suspicious look, then shrugged. “Whatever.” As she stepped into the kitchen, the little girl spoke, without looking around.

“Do you want me to turn it up?”

“No, honey, that’s ok.”

“Is ‘Glad’ short for something?” I asked.

“Galadriel,” she said. “You know, from the trilogy.”

The position of the wine bottle in the garbage bag was as precarious as it looked, for the whole thing toppled to the floor when I brushed it as I entered the kitchen, scattering eggshells, paper, banana skins, and tuna cans over the floor. It seemed to break the ice; she laughed and began to talk while I cleaned up the mess. She offered me a cup of coffee but with so many apologies for its age that she convinced me to decline it. She poured herself one and lit a cigarette.

“Darlene and I were actually pretty good friends,” she began. “She thought I was real mature and experienced, which I guess is true—at least the ‘experienced’ part.” She grunted. “I tried to kind of look out for her. Not that she listened much. I guess nobody likes advice unless it’s what they want to hear. She wanted to be free and have a good time, but I kept telling her to get serious. Look, I told her, if you’re going to be on your own you got to take care of yourself, because nobody else is going to. Hang on to your money, go to secretarial school or something. And don’t ever give a guy nothing. I told her it was going to get real old, waiting tables just so you can hang out in clubs on your day off. But she was just a kid, you know? She’d agree with everything I said, sweet as could be, then turn around and do just the opposite.”

The kitchen table reminded me of my childhood: it was an old one with a 1950s look, red marble-like formica and heavy round chrome legs, though the chrome was pocked and rusted in places. The table was covered with more dishes than the two of them could have used for one meal. I sat down in front of a half-full bowl of wet Cheerios.

The Clientele: Suburban Light

One rainy Saturday evening in 1976 I wandered into the only serious record store in town. By “serious” I mean it was like the record shop in the movie High Fidelity—the owner, Paul somebody, and most of the people who worked there were passionate music lovers, zealously evangelistic for the music they loved and mercilessly contemptuous of anything they thought at all meretricious. Having more than a little of the obnoxious music geek in me, I often got into lengthy discussions and arguments there. The store was dim and dusty and crammed with record bins of unfinished wood, not much better built than packing crates, and generally had a slovenly look about it, which was quite misleading, as the stock was meticulously organized. And if you still had trouble finding what you were looking for, most of the staff knew exactly where to find it, or could explain when it was expected or, possibly, why they would not soil themselves by stocking it.

I wonder if there are still such stores. In big cities, I suppose so, but this was a small college town, and the store is long gone. I moved away, so I don’t know for sure when it folded, but I don’t think it survived the transition to the cd era; somehow the cd was never quite as romantic as the lp.

The reason I had nothing to do on this Saturday evening was that I had recently been on the losing end of a breakup. Maybe I was looking for company at the record store. And, thinking back on it, I expect I had unconsciously decided to buy myself a present, an album I’d never heard before that would give me something besides her to think about for a while. The bright friendly windows gleaming through the heavy rain, full of new releases and rarities, were as inviting to me as a bar might have been to someone more convivial. I went inside, shaking off the rain, and found the store empty except for Paul—it was Saturday night. After a few pleasantries he left me alone to browse. I made a mental note not to stay past his nominal closing time, even though I knew he wouldn’t chase me out. An aging unmarried hipster with wire-rimmed glasses, hair vanishing in front and pony-tailed in back, pudgy, he didn’t have anything better to do, either.

I couldn’t find anything I really wanted. In a what-the-hell sort of mood I started browsing the expensive imports and collector’s items, something I rarely bothered to do, as I couldn’t afford them. In the second category I found a used copy of an album called Suburban Light. I’d never heard of it or of the group, but something about the title phrase appealed to my mood, as did the cover art.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“The Clientele? Oh, that’s great. A totally unknown classic. It came out at the end of 1966 and flopped, then the critics rediscovered it a few years ago, but it’s hard to find. Sort of early psychedelic English kind of thing. It doesn’t sound like the Kinks but since you like Something Else so much you’d probably like it. Bring it here.” Another nice thing about the store was that Paul remembered your tastes: Something Else was one of my top five post-British-invasion/pre-Sgt. Pepper English albums.

I took it over to the counter. He slipped the disc out of its jacket—although it was used, it seemed to be in very good shape—and dropped the needle, expertly, on “Reflections After Jane.”

It was beautiful and under my circumstances almost preternaturally appropriate, so that was enough. I bought the album, even though it was outrageously expensive at something close to twenty dollars. I was so bowled over by the song that I probably would have paid that much for a 45. I thanked Paul, hurried back to my apartment in the rain, and spent the rest of the evening listening to the album several times in a nostalgic haze. It turned out that “Jane” was probably the best thing on it, but at least half of the songs were in its class, and if it didn’t quite deserve the “classic” designation it was certainly a very happy discovery.

*****

Except for the description of the music, and the fact that I was living in a small college town in 1976, the preceding is pure fiction. But it’s very believable fiction: that’s what the music sounds like, and that would have been an appropriate time, place, and manner in which to discover it. Suburban Light actually came out in 2000. Its best moments capture a mid-‘60s feeling in a way that anyone who has either actual or vicarious nostalgia for the time won’t be able to resist it. It’s definitely one of my top ten mid-‘60s English pop revival albums. And I hear it’s not even their best.

 Here is the band’s web site.

According to Get Fuzzy--and me.

I've long been fascinated by la difference as an intellectual question (that is, as distinct from the emotional obsession with the opposite which kicked in around age thirteen). I think the interest began back in the early '70s, when radical feminists declared that there were no psychological differences between the sexes, except in those respects in which women were superior. It causes me to drive my wife crazy sometimes by expecting her to be able to explain everything every woman thinks or does. ("Why do y'all....?" "I don't know").

Anyway, looking around for further information on the question of which sex is more talkative, I found this NPR report on the same study discussed in my last journal. This paragraph near the end interests me:

In general, they found that women tend to talk more about relationships. Their everyday conversation is more studded with pronouns. Men tend to talk more about sports and gadgets, and their utterances include more numbers.

This supports what I was saying about the real difference being what each sex tends to find more interesting, but I was struck by the thing about pronouns. I realized some years ago that pronouns are a source of friction between me and my wife, making it difficult for us to work closely together on an everyday task like putting away dishes.

She: That one goes over there.
He: Which one?
She (impatiently): That one. Right there.
He: (exasperated): The yellow one?
She: Yes.
He: Where?
She (what is his problem?): There.
He (what is her problem?): On the second shelf beside the plates?
She: Yes! (implied: dammit)
He: (exit huffily)

I thought this was just us till I ran across C.S. Lewis's mention of it (can't remember which book--perhaps one of the space trilogy). But two women often seem able to communicate very smoothly in this way, as if there is some near-telepathic agreement about the antecedent of every pronoun.

And by the way, I think the chances are excellent that an accurate word count would find that I talk more than my wife on the average. She's fairly taciturn, and I'm either silent or loquacious, depending on who's around and what the topic is.

You think I'm being sarcastic? Not at all:

First of all, I just wanted to make a beautiful thing, and something that honored God.

This is from an interview with eMusic which you can read in its entirety here. The topic is her newly-released album, Theology. I'm more familiar with her somewhat notorious and flamboyant public displays of some years ago than with her music, but two songs from this album appeared as sort of a sneak preview on eMusic some months ago, and they're extremely good. Yeah, ok, her actual theology may be over on the flaky side of the street, but sounds like her heart's in the right place. And it's great to see a star walk away from the high life to raise a family and pray.

Sibelius: Kullervo

This choral symphony in five movements was written when Sibelius was only twenty-six and suppressed not long after its premiere, remaining unperformed for many years. As best I can tell from a bit of reading, the suppression was a result of bad reviews and the composer’s own doubts about the work. But it’s really very fine. True enough, it’s not in a class with his mature masterpieces, but it still often carries that sense of depth and mystery that’s so characteristic of this composer, who is one of my favorites. In a broad sort of way it might be compared to Mahler’s orchestral songs, with maybe a bit of Rite of Spring thrown in, not in the sense of technical similarity but in that there seems a similar impulse to evoke the archaic (this is of course the earlier work by twenty years or so). It’s cruder than Mahler, as befits its epic subject, a brutally tragic episode from the Kalevala.

As I don’t have the knowledge and vocabulary to discuss a classical work in much detail, I will direct you here and here for further background and description. If you’re an admirer of Sibelius’s better-known work and don’t know this piece, do yourself a favor and find a recording of it. I’ve been listening to this one. It seems a fine performance, but as a download it doesn’t include the text of the vocal parts, and I haven’t been able to find one on the web. Even without that, though, if you’ve read a synopsis it’s pretty clear what’s going on, and the lament of Kullervo’s sister in the third movement, followed by Kullervo’s cursing of himself, is very powerful even if you can’t follow it word-by-word. The fourth movement, “Kullervo Goes to War,” seems a weak spot to me, thematically: yes, it makes sense that after the shattering events of the third movement Kullervo would go to war “merrily,” but it ought to be a somewhat crazed merriment. The fifth movement re-establishes the atmosphere very effectively.

This is what America needs.

And this is what America deserves.

Idiot Winds

You probably saw the news story that appeared in the past week or so giving an account of a study that claims to have disproved the common notion that women talk more than men. (It’s a common notion among men, anyway—women in general may not agree.) Clio has an amusing yeah! in response.

I’m not convinced that the study’s conclusions are correct. It was, after all, only a few weeks ago that I ran across another news item (which of course I can’t find now) about another study which claimed to have established that women’s brains are far better equipped for verbal communication than men’s. I believe the researcher illustrated her findings with a metaphor comparing a six-lane freeway to a country lane. If those findings are true, well, it stands to reason that there would be more traffic on the freeway.

But let’s assume for the sake of discussion that the first study is indeed correct, and that most women don’t use a statistically significant greater number of words in the course of a day than most men do. What would account for the perception that women talk more? Supposing that the perception is held and propagated by men, I think it might be a result of the fact that men and women tend not to be interested in the same things, or rather not equally interested. If you are talking about something in which I have little, zero, or negative interest, I will probably think you are talking too much.

Any generalization about male vs. female psychology should be preceded by a big flashing sign acknowledging that it can never be more than broadly accurate. So consider such a caution as being inserted here, and here is my generalization, unsupported by any evidence other than my own observations: women in general are more down-to-earth than men in general. I’ve often been tempted to say that women (please assume the qualifier “in general” after the words “women” and “men” in the rest of this piece) are more practical than men, but that’s not really correct, as it implies effective practicality, and I don’t necessarily think that’s predominantly the case. But men are more likely to be interested in the abstract, the general, the large, and the grand, women in the concrete, the particular, the small, and the humble.

This, I think, is at the root of the conviction widely held by members of each sex that the other is sort of stupid. A man may think less of a woman’s intelligence because she is uninterested in big ideas, big systems, big plans. The same woman might think the same man is an idiot because he has no idea what’s going on right under his nose.

It’s also, I think, unquestionably true that women are more interested—more actively and consciously interested—in human relationships than men are (cf. The Lifetime Channel vs. Spike TV). It’s not so much, as men charge, that women want to talk about their “feelings” as that they want to talk about their relationships with other people. Arguably, I suppose, this is an instance of concern for the particular, but at any rate, it becomes part of the stereotypical scenario: it’s the end of the day, husband and wife are both tired, and the wife wants to chat about what she’s been doing all day, family matters, and other very down-to-earth things in which the husband, especially at that moment, has low-to-negative interest. His conclusion: she talks too much. (I’m not, by the way, assuming a stay-at-home wife in this example; it applies equally to a marriage where both husband and wife have jobs.) If, however, he is an Alabama football fan and she wants to talk with equal volubility about Nick Saban’s prospects for the next season, he’ll probably think her quite a conversationalist.

A few more observations that may or may not be valid: I think it’s in The Screwtape Letters that C. S. Lewis places the observation that women tend to talk more when they’re tired, men to talk less. If I remember correctly, the junior tempter is instructed to exploit this. I’ve seen some evidence that this is true. Also, I think it may be true that women are more likely to go into a sort of idle chat that is perhaps an effect of the ease with which words travel the above-mentioned six-lane freeway, and to which the speaker herself is not entirely attending. And women may have more of a need and propensity to “vent”—to unload frustration or anger by talking (i.e., complaining), as opposed to, say, shouting, cursing, and hitting things.

Any of these might register in the male mind as she talks a lot. Likewise, a long discourse by a man on Myself: Accomplishments, Plans, and Significance would get much the same reaction from a woman, at least any woman who’s not in love with him.

From Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Lucy has used a spell "which would let you know what your friends thought about you," and what she heard has spoiled a friendship that was just beginning. Aslan arrives:

"Child," he said, "I think you have been eavesdropping."

"Eavesdropping?"

"You listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you."

"Oh that? I never thought it was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn't it magic?"

"Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean."

"I don't think I'd ever be able to forget what I heard her say."

"No, you won't."

"Oh dear," said Lucy. "Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn't been for this--and been really great friends--all our lives perhaps--and now we never shall."

"Child," said Aslan, "did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?"

Terri Hendrix: The Ring

Most of what I said about the Terri Hendrix album I reviewed a few weeks ago, Places In Between, applies equally to The Ring, so I’ll make this brief. The two albums are very similar in style and quality. I think The Ring is, overall, a more consistent set of songs, so I’d give it a bit of an edge. But Places also includes several of my favorite individual tracks, such as “Wish.” In the days of the mix tape I might have constructed my own superlative forty-five minute album containing the best of both. Now I can just put them on an mp3 playlist. According to AMG, the album that followed this one, The Art of Removing Wallpaper, “delivers in full the promise” of Places In Between. It will probably show up here sometime in the next month or so.

Here is the eMusic page for The Ring, which includes the AMG review and sound samples.

An Uneasy Fourth

As a member of the melancholic-American community, I don’t generally feel a lot of exuberance on the 4^th of July. Quietly reflective is more my style: I usually go down to the bay, a few hundred feet from my house, and watch the fireworks launched from the town pier a quarter of a mile or so away. Or, if our daughter is playing in the local pops band, we go to the park where they play and sit on the grass. Hearing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which is a magnificent piece of music, in the dark as the fireworks begin is celebration enough for me. This year it rained and the band didn’t play. I was torn between walking down to the beach for the fireworks and staying inside and watching another episode or two of The Twilight Zone from the SciFi Channel’s marathon. Only a sort of duty led me to choose the former at the last second.

I love The Twilight Zone, and part of the reason is that it seems the product of a better America. By “better” I don’t mean that I think it was necessarily a morally superior time; in that respect I’m inclined to see the changes since that time as a break-even affair: much has changed for the better, much for the worse. What I mean is that I think the American soul was healthier. It may not have been wiser, but it was more open to genuine wisdom, and its principles were more fundamentally sound and more generally accepted. It would be more difficult now to articulate a set of principles acceptable to all or most of our myriad factions. And I think the national character was more sound. That vague but powerful set of sentiments and unarticulated principles to which we give the name “decency” has decayed vastly.

I found myself on the afternoon of the 4^th thinking I love my country but I’m tired of her. And maybe we need some time apart, I thought, like a character in a movie romance. There’s a madness about the USA. There always has been, but—and maybe this is just a personal quirk—to me it seems worse in recent years, and to be driving us toward a fall.

I’m tired of little things and big things. I’m tired of the way dirty parking lots seem to be taking over more and more of the landscape. I’m tired of belligerent drivers in bloated-looking vehicles. I’m tired of the sheer bogusness that surrounds me, of shopping centers with names like “The Shoppes of Olde Towne Pointe” and subdivisions with pseudo-rustic names that must have been chosen from a mix-and-match list of words (“Orchard Ridge,” “Hunter’s Trace”).

I’m tired of the well-off who have pushed the cost of housing in my little town so high that it’s becoming impossible for the children of people who grew up here to stay. I’m tired of their expensive smug little boutiques that have replaced all the bread-and-butter businesses downtown. I’m tired of the violence and squalor of the poor that drive away anyone who can afford to move. And I’m worried about the chasm that separates the two. I’m tired of our intractable racial problems, of reading in the paper every other day of some stupid and vicious crime perpetrated by young black men while the black leadership apparently continues to believe that responsibility for solving the problem lies primarily with whites.

I’m tired of free-marketers who enthuse about “creative destruction” from their secure perches in foundations and universities. I’m tired of socialists who want us to believe that the Leviathan government is a species of family. I’m tired of the sophistical intellectuals who believe that their awesome mental powers make them superior to the rest of mankind who cling to superstitions like the sacredness of human life.

I’m wearied in my soul by the tragedy of the Iraq war—and I do think it’s a tragedy, not a crime, as many believe. And in respect to that and many other questions I’m tired of the journalists and pundits (and for that matter of my fellow citizens) who grab hold of a half-truth and try to beat their opponents to death with it. I’m extremely tired of lawyers, politicians, and bureaucrats who conceive of the law as a struggle for power by means of the creation and manipulation of rules.

Most of all I’m tired, sick and tired, of the hate, hysteria, and unreason of our politics. I don’t believe a nation can hold together indefinitely when two large minorities—I refer, roughly, to liberals and conservatives—believe that our fundamental problem is the existence of the other. I don’t think I’m an alarmist, and I don’t think we are presently in any real danger of civil war. But this level of hatred prepares the ground for violence. Don’t fool yourself that we aren’t capable of it.

Much of this is a mere funk, and it will pass away. What troubles me more deeply and persistently is the fear that we are no longer a people who either understand or desire the concept of liberty as we once did. The famous prayer from “America the Beautiful” expresses the idea with perfect accuracy and concision:

America, America,
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.

For how many, or how few, of us are these words any longer an aspiration? It’s hard to imagine a Wellesley professor even feeling, much less writing, such sentiments today (see the song’s Wikipedia entry). “Liberty” is degenerating into a superficial “freedom,” the license to do anything you like in private life, at the price of surrendering genuine political and economic freedom. “Self-control” seems a quaint notion, perhaps evidence of internalized oppression. The government becomes not the guarantor of some reasonable level of order and fair play but a source of “benefits,” and politics a scramble for them.

I wonder if they teach Carl Sandburg in the schools any more. He was in my high school literature book, and a couple of his poems made a lasting impression on me. He wasn’t as great a poet as some thought him in his time, but he’s not negligible, either. Whenever I hear someone describe us as “the greatest nation in the world,” I hear this poem in the background.

Whatever your level of interest in the Latin Mass, you really should read this letter, if you haven't already. It's beautiful and moving. There's a very readable copy at Whispers.

"Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows." Amen, amen, amen.

So, the motu proprio that greatly broadens permission for the Tridentine Mass has arrived. In case you want to read it and haven't already located it on your own—two conditions which I doubt apply to many people who read this blog—Whispers in the Loggia, a blog which chronicles Vatican doings on a pretty detailed level and which therefore I hardly ever read, has all sorts of information.

Personally I don't have a great deal of interest in this. As I've mentioned before, I don't generally pay a lot of attention to ecclesiastical or liturgical details. And the few Tridentine Masses I've attended have mainly served to make me realize why reform was so needed and desired. But I do have one comment.

When I first started looking seriously at becoming a Catholic ca. 1980, I was struck by two phenomena related to the Latin Mass: the deep love and longing which some Catholics retained for it, and the contempt in which they were held by those in and around the hierarchy who held the liturgical reins. I was baffled by this. I was like someone who walks into a family quarrel and quickly sees that the ostensible subject of the quarrel is only a place-holder for some much deeper conflict. The two sides pretty much hated each other, for reasons I didn't understand.

I especially didn't understand why it seemed so important to the establishment that the old Mass be utterly stamped out. Here were a sizable minority of Catholics who were obviously heartbroken that the worship they loved had been taken from them, and the official response treated them as pests or worse—in James Hitchcock's memorable phrase, "malicious troglodytes." I remember one delightful old lady, who is probably dead by now—snow-white hair, brilliant blue eyes, vivacious, articulate—who was, I suspect, driven almost literally mad by the situation, and had fallen into the sort of dark conspiracy-minded paranoia which infects some of the ecclesiastical right.

That situation, by the way, is one reason why the word "pastoral" has a bit of a taint about it. One heard often of the need to be "pastoral" to various disaffected groups on the leftward side of the Church: to angry feminists, for instance. But those who longed for the Latin Mass were treated as pariahs. It's probably too late for that old lady, and no doubt for many more like her, but I hope this new permission will help to heal some of the wounds of the past forty years or so.

It's always bothered and/or amused me that believers in materialistic evolution can't seem to avoid saying that evolution, or nature, designs living things. Google the phrase "designed by evolution to" (include the quotation marks) and you'll see some examples. It seems to be a verbal reflex that's very hard to suppress, even though it sends a very unwanted message, like Peter Sellers's saluting arm in Dr. Strangelove. There's also a tendency to take the next step, and attribute some kind of consciousness to nature or life or evolution. In this excellent note by Wesley J. Smith at the First Things blog, I notice, among his quotations from materialists who seek to deny the special nature and significance of the human, this one: “We are all of us, dogs and barnacles, pigeons and crabgrass, the same in the eyes of nature, equally remarkable and equally dispensable.” Nature has no eyes, figurative or otherwise, nor any consciousness to look through them, or to regard anything as dispensable. Even the concept of indifference is too anthropomorphic to apply here. But people will postulate some kind of guiding hand in the world, and this cold blind one will have to do for those who won't have the living one.

Many years ago—something over twenty—I noticed and wrote about this peculiar lust to deny that there is anything special about human life. What baffled me then and still does is why many of those who push it seem to think it will lead to some sort of compassionate humanitarian improvement over those bad old religions. Smith is right, I'm pretty sure, to expect something quite other. I don't see why it should even, in the long run, make us nicer to animals to conclude that neither we nor they are genuinely significant.

I just saw two of them from my office window, maybe three quarters to a mile and a half away. Fascinating. They were quite small, not the city-destroying kind. They were like tentacles coming down out of the cloud (the really dark cloud), feeling around, then withdrawing. One of them found something: suddenly a stream of debris came rushing up the funnel, then spread out into the air at some altitude and got blown around some more. Roofing material, I think. In one of my next lives I'll be a storm chaser and be killed when I venture too close to a big one.

UPDATE: NOT SO COOL: Just got a call from my wife, who had just gotten a call from my daughter, who was driving in the area where the debris-sucking touchdown happened, who reports that the debris source seems to have been a WalMart not far from here (my distance estimate was pretty accurate), and there are ambulances in the area.

She says that chasing tornadoes is not a good idea. Running away is a much better idea.

Further Update: only a small number of minor injuries. That's cool.

Reveries of a Mostly Retired Smoker

Just as there are no ex-Marines, there are no ex-smokers. You may retire from active service, but if you ever smoked, you are a smoker, and always will be.

—John Derbyshire

I vividly remember my first cigarette, or perhaps I should say the sensation it produced, which I can only liken conjecturally to one which I happily haven’t experienced, that of being stabbed in the throat. I believe it was a Salem. I know the event occurred in a car driven by Andy S. (his parents’, no doubt), and that I was fifteen. Andy, a childhood friend, a year older and in possession of a driver’s license, was probably also the provider of the cigarette. I think my brother David, who had already been initiated, was also there, and he and Andy both got a good laugh out of my startled choking.

Why in the world did I ever smoke another one, or even take the second puff on that one? The obvious and only reasonable explanation is also the correct one: adolescent bravado and status-seeking. I have no memory whatever of the steps by which I progressed from that first puff to a full-blown habit, or how long it took. I do know that in my last three summers in and just after high school I worked on the family farm, and that I smoked heavily then (sometimes over two packs a day). A lot of the work consisted of driving a tractor, which was pretty monotonous most of the time and left one a lot of leisure to daydream and smoke.

Part of the cachet to be gained by smoking involved knowing what one liked, having a favorite brand and looking down one’s nose at others. This could be treacherous, as selecting an unfashionable brand could open one up to the sneering and jeering which is such an important part of teenage social expression. In this I can say I was to some degree my own man, for I discovered, after a period in the wilderness, that unfiltered cigarettes tasted better. Unlike the initial smoke, this preference was not a gesture of masculinity: I really did like unfiltereds better. They were too strong for most people and so even if it wasn’t a fashionable taste it seemed to get a little respect. Camel, Pall Mall, Chesterfield—these names still have a friendly sort of air about them in my mind, especially the last (it had a flavor that hinted at sweet or nut-like, which I remember perfectly) and carry with them a sense of great pleasantness, like the thought of a favorite food.

But the cigarette I remember most fondly is one that almost nobody else liked, and is probably no longer available: the unfiltered Kool, a short cylinder of stout tobacco marinated in menthol that delivered a sharp, stunning blow to the taste buds.

I smoked all the way through college and into my mid-twenties, and I often wonder how much it may have blighted my youth. I was relatively small and definitely puny and would no doubt have been that way under any circumstances, but smoking can’t have helped.

With a bit of maturity I began to think it was a habit I should drop, and about that same time, my mid-twenties, I realized I was not enjoying it all that much, and was in fact tired of it. By then I had given up the unfiltereds, probably out of some dim attempt to make peace with the instinct of self-preservation, and was down to only half a pack a day. I recall thinking that if I wasn’t going to smoke any more than that I should just go ahead and quit, and one day I did. I think I was twenty-seven.

I really didn’t find it very difficult to stop. As best I remember, I was tempted, much less than overwhelmingly, for a few weeks, and after that had no problem. I can only attribute this to some matter of body chemistry, as my will power is certainly in general not very strong. I watched other people struggle desperately, even to the point of having physical symptoms, and often fail, and counted myself lucky.

It was roughly ten years before I smoked tobacco again, and I remember the occasion well because it showed me how quickly the weed can re-assert its influence. On the birth of his first child a co-worker took up the old custom of giving out cigars. I started to refuse the one he handed me, then took it partly out of courtesy and partly because a thought something like it might be nice flitted through my mind. A few days later I smoked it, found it mildly enjoyable, and thought that was the end of it.

But within a day or so I found myself thinking about buying another cigar. Then a day or two after that I dreamed about smoking, and realized the hook was in.

That was, I think, roughly twenty years ago. Since then I have smoked perhaps, on average, two cigars a year. I have an ancient box of cheap and stale Tampa Nuggets, and now and then I take one out. Now and then one of my sons buys me an expensive cigar for birthday or Christmas or Father’s Day. And after my daughter’s wedding last fall, when all the guests were gone, my sister-and-brother-in-law lit cigarettes and I asked for one, my first since roughly 1975, over thirty years ago. I had to smoke it like a cigar, the nerves in my throat being now very much alive, as when I was fifteen.

My father smoked for decades. I think he was in his forties, maybe his early fifties, when he gave it up for good. We were comparing notes about it once and I remarked that I didn’t really feel much temptation to take it up again as a regular habit. He shook his head. “If I were to go to the doctor,” he said, “and hear that I only had six months to live, I would stop on the way home and buy a pack of cigarettes.” In the event, when he actually did have only months to live, he did not, as far as I know, resume smoking. I didn’t think to ask him about it, but I assume the illness took away the appetite, which seems unjust. As drink to lechery in the porter’s speech in Macbeth, it provoked and un-provoked, but with the poles reversed: if it provoked the performance, it took away the desire.

I don’t have the craving for tobacco that my father retained, but I look forward greatly to the occasional cigar with a glass of bourbon—nothing but bourbon seems to complement the smoke as well. Call me a retired smoker, then, but one who keeps a hand in. Every few months I find the desire growing on me, and then I plan the occasion, as I did last week, promising it to myself and then anticipating it through the work week, until yesterday when I sat out in the yard swing at dusk with a Tampa Nugget and a few fingers of Old Crow. And though I am rarely tempted by cigarettes these days, given an unfiltered Kool I would light it up in an instant.

By the way, my epigraph is taken from Derbyshire’s column “The Straggler” which appears once a month or so (every other issue, maybe?) in National Review. I disagree with Derbyshire on many political and religious matters, but “The Straggler” is almost always a pleasure. This very engaging installment is called “Keep Hope Alight!” and is in the April 16 issue. Hitler, it seems, loathed tobacco.

Too many of them just don't seem to get the idea that you're supposed to dig in your heels as either a Progressive or a Traditionalist. Distressing as it may be, here's another sign that an end to the liturgy wars may be in sight, from the Shrine of the Holy Whapping.

ZZ Top: Tres Hombres

Ok, wipe that smirk off your face: you know you like “LaGrange.” If you don’t recognize that title, click here to refresh your memory (Windows Media sample). I’ve been wanting to hear the whole album for a while, since I read an interview with some famous guitarist, can’t remember who, in which he described it as a “treasure chest of [lead guitar] tones.” A local thrift store obliged me with a well-used LP, and maybe that’s a good way to hear it. The overall sound is so thick and skuzzy that the pops, clicks, and sizzle of the LP only give it more atmosphere. The gatefold photo—and remember, this is an LP, so it’s roughly 12x24 inches—is of a big sloppy Mexican meal with piles of tortillas, several heavy cheese-covered enchiladas etc. literally hanging off the plate, guacamole, peppers, beer, and limes. And it’s a good image for the music. This is not something I’d want as a steady diet, but as an occasional indulgence it’s very tasty: straight-up spicey blues-rock that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Yes, it’s full of great guitar playing, with a big, thick, scuffed-up, noisy tone (according to that interview, guitarist Billy Gibbons uses a quarter for a pick). I’m a little disappointed in the songs, though. To my taste only about half of the eleven songs get past the hurry-up-and-get-to-the-solo class, “La Grange” being one, and undoubtedly one of the top one-riff, two-chords, two-changes songs ever written. (The riff is said to have been swiped from John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillun,” but I haven’t heard a version of the latter that’s exactly the same. Gibbons’s singing is a more direct imitation.) Other favorites: “Waitin’ for the Bus,” “Hot, Blue and Righteous” (not what you think—it’s about an encounter with an angel, apparently), and “Jesus Just Left Chicago.” The latter might seem irreverent, but you can’t really argue with this:

You don’t have to worry
Because taking care of business is His name