Recently coming back from Austin, a city that was so near and dear to my heart for so many years, I left with a pretty empty feeling, and was reminded of Death Cab for Cutie's song below.
I have fought with the idea that I left too soon, and not early enough to both prolong and prevent certain aspects of my life that Austin both fed and fed off of.
Cities are strange, and I have so many strange affinities for many of them around the world. Some I want to embrace, others I am intrigued by, but only superficially, and some I am down right intimidated and in awe of.
With Austin, it feels so provincial, and that can be comforting, but also disconcerting. Going to the same coffee house and seeing the EXACT same people as from 20 years ago is great, but also creepy.
I leave Austin each time with less nostalgia and more analgesia. You just don't move me any more, baby. I love you, but, our time has passed.
So, I guess, now, I am, sadly enough, when returning to Austin, a Tourist...sadly.
Amongst many things, I am rather particular, much to the initial amusesment of people, which usually dissipates to tolerance, then followed by annoyance of my particularities. As such, I don't have many friends, and, well, I probably wouldn't be so keen on myself either. But, I am stuck with myself.
One of my things that I am rather particular about is covers. There is nothing like a good cover, but a bad one, well, I have no mercy. Furthermore, not just a cover, but an acoustic rendition of a song can be beyone painful. Coming from one who has no musical ability whatsoever, but pure appreciation for everyone who does, I do give credit where credit is due.
Hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, the BEST cover I have EVER heard was on piazza San Stefano, in Bologna, by a guitar-slinging guy who belted out "Black" by Pearl Jam.
I have seldom been in awe of acoustic singing, outside of Sinead O'Connor, and a very small number of others, but this kid nailed it.
Why am I thinking of "Black"? Well, been discussing tattoos of late and it did cross my mind, as well as a discussion about covers and the further merits of Eddie Vedder versus Cobain, etc. Well, ol' Eddie V. is tops for me amongst the Grunge crowd, so I guess the combination of the memory and the tribute came together, hand over hand.
To be present seems to be the hardest condition for humans, to really, truly be present in a situation actually takes effort, which seems quite absurd when you think about it. But, there's the rub, when you think about, you are no longer in the Present, but somewhere else, thinking about it.
The way we speak and communicate also has much to do with it. As a lover of languages and amateur linguist myself, I have been fascinated by the issues of Time in all of the languages that I have studied, and how that is so integral to our very thinking and communication. Some languages will avoid certain tenses like the plague, while others will be highly conditional or literally stuck in the Past, English being one of them. We are nearly conditioned to be conditional and to use the Past more than most modern languages that I have encountered.
I believe that the conundrum about the glass being half empty or half full, depending upon one's disposition towards pessimism or optimism is largely linked to how one view's the Past, Present, and Future.
If you believe that the glass is half empty, most likely you are stuck in the Past, dwelling on what has been lost, or what you could have had, or could have been, and not what you are.
If, however, you believe that the glass is half full, you may have placed too much stock in the Future, and may not even realize what you have right in front of you. Although superficially it seems that it is better to do so, to view the Potential of the situation is still vastly inferior to viewing the actuality of the situation, which is the Present.
We are prone to sleepwalk through life, always looking backwards to the Past or forwards to the Future, all the while, the Present slips away infinitesimally by us, passing through a gossamer filter from the Future to the Past.
Thinking about this, I am reminded of Gotye's recent "Eyes Wide Open" video and lyrics.
I love to walk, whether in a large Metropolitan city, out in the county, along a beach, up a mountain path, or sometimes in circles as it often feels. But, there is something special about the Walk.
And, there is also something special about walking a big city at night.
Last evening, after dinner I took the Tube down to various stops near the Thames and did some walking. I was nearly alone. Partially because of the more business aspect of the area and there is no residential, and partly because nearly the entire city was packed in all of the pubs watching the Soccer match, from which you would sporadically hear roars of frustration, jubilation, or anger.
So, I had a chunk of London to myself, almost literally for the span of nearly an hour. I felt like I was in a story such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, in which I was walking through a post-apocalyptic urban waste land, devoid of much human contact.
But, it was a fitting last night for this particular visit to London, which was different in many ways than the previous ones.
I did have Snow Patrol's song in my mind at times, and it was rather fitting.
WIth the recent ruling against the former Penn State football coach, Sandusky for 45 counts of sexual abuse, this title is a bit sensitive, I am aware.
However, this has to do with something else. Currently, I am in London, and was reminded of Faithless's song "Dirty Ol' Man," which is likewise not about a pedophile or lecher, but about big, urban cities, such as London.
What strikes me most about being in London again for the fifth time in 25 years or so, is that each time, like Manhattan, it becomes less and less dirty. When I first came here as overwhelmed teenager from America and London being the first European city I had been to, (though depending upon whom you ask, London is or is not European), I remember how DIRTY it was and all of the visceral, urban smells I had not been familiar with in places I had been before in the States.
This time, however, I am truly struck with how CLEAN central London is. Granted, there are still very dirty parts, to be sure, but I am really amazed more and more how these very large urban centers continue to become cleaner and cleaner in the past 10-15 years.
Of course, Kensington and Notting Hill Gate are not what one would think of as dirty, though I have been in several much grittier and "real" areas in London, but here is a sign from Dawson Place, part of the tony neighborhood around here.
Holy Crap! And, I mean, that must be one Holy Crap, because that is one helluva an expensive Dog Poop. For us Yanks, that is more than $1500 dollars for a doggie cigar misplaced.
When I first went to Antwerp in 1990 or so, you could not dodge the innumerable dog poop piles on the streets. Now, in 2012 Antwerp, you would be hard pressed to find any. Not that I WANT to be dodging doggie bombs, but the difference is pretty amazing.
Having lived in Madurai, India and visited Varanasi recently, there is not much I would be surprised to see in a city, and those truly are about as dirty as a city comes. In fact, not sure I want to see if one can be worse. And, perhaps that perspective has permanently changed my views on dirt, filth, and the human condition in a city, but still, the urban centers of London, NYC, Dublin, Paris, Antwerp, and so forth are definitely not the "dirty old men" cities of merely 25 years ago that I once saw.
What was interesting is that about 50m from this sign, there was a pile of vomit, most likely from a heavy night out of drinking, which was not cleaned up. I wonder how much that would be fined?
The dichotomy between James Joyce and Samuel Beckett could at times be so implausible that it seems like they were fictions of their own fictions.
Joyce, perhaps the most verbose writer who has ever lived and may ever live and could arguably be the simultaneous progenitor of Hyper-Realism, Modernism, and Post-Modernism. That is a broad statement, but one that can be backed up by the author of Dubliners, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake respectively. Joyce was a polyglot, polymath, and polygraphic on a scale that may never be seen again. Nearly 80 languages have been identified in Finnegans Wake at some level, to give one such example. There are entire concordances of Joyce's neologisms and centers, such as the one here in Antwerp devoted to deciphering his volumes and volumes of scripted notes, that also happen to be in various handwritings, including Beckett, who for a time helped Joyce scribble his notes due to a hobbled eyesight that left Joyce nearly blind.
Beckett, who was perfectly bi-lingual with French and would actually translate his work back into English, was a minimalist by comparison. With not many more words than one would find in a Dr. Seuss book, Beckett would break the blank page with a turgid laconic method that has also yet to be matched.
Partly due to their mutual Irishness and partially due to exile in Paris and perhaps in part due to other external circumstances, Joyce and Beckett did have an interesting relationship, one that was further compounded and complicated by Joyce's mentally-ill daughter, Lucia, having a sexual fascination for Beckett, much to his and Joyce's discomfort.
Joyce and Beckett find themselves being put together for a variety of reasons at conferences dedicated to Joyce, or Beckett, or topics such as Modernism, Post-Modernism or archives with such fine scholars as Antwerp's own Geert Lernout and Dirk Van Hulle leading the charge.
Some years ago, on Bloomsday, someone sent me this video, though I am blank to the page about whom right now, but I remember being at the Harry Ransom Center, a treasure trove of Joycean materials where I was a curator and Joycean collaborator with international conferences and research, and I remember perhaps literally falling off of my chair when I watched this video. To me, although most lightly Joyce was not so boisterous, unless he had too much to drink as he was known to do, this is pure comic brilliance about capturing two protean and enigmatic Irish and worldly writers as Joyce and Beckett.
I have a few, and by that mean, a handful few indulgences when it comes to television, and to the naked eye, they seem even more trivial. One of my old friends I have recently been in contact with was humored to imagine me watching American sitcoms here in Belgium. Many of the days Justin and I spent together were mired in "all-too-serious discussions of life and the meaning or lack thereof," so to send him a short list of the shows I actually watch here was rather funny, in a middle-aged, "ha ha" epiphany kind of way. I think.
The one show I did leave out on my list for him, however, was "The Big Bang Theory," which is a Chuck Lorre production, though without Charlie Sheen in it. The Star, or at least by default of the show is the über-genius Physicist, Sheldon Cooper, portrayed by Jim Parsons, who is the most misfitted misfit in a world of misfits. I remember first watching the Big Bang a few years ago and just could not stand it, but over there years, like stinking Limburger cheese, it grew on me, and I became endeared by poor Sheldon and his plights of not fitting in, and knowing that feeling all too well. Raised in Texas as the story goes, and as Parsons was, Sheldon just never fit in and eventually found his way into the big leagues of Theoretical Physics.
When I was at Amarillo High School, intermittently, though ultimately graduated from there, there was a true genius amongst us, Andrew Chamblin. Ultimately, Andy, as we were wont to call him, proved his mettle on the world stage, being a protégée of both Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking at Oxford and Cambridge respectfully. If you are not familiar with the gravity of what that means, it is beyond rock-star status. It is like Bono calling you up one day to sub in for U2 because he has a sore throat. Something along those lines.
Andy was on the cutting edge of Theoretical Physics, like Sheldon, though there was a difference, one that may have been fatal, yet at the same time opened him up to the world, giving him a broader perspective upon things.
His main field of interest, last I could ascertain was the domain of Branes and multi-dimensional models of black holes and the pressing question of what exactly the universal constant means, not to mention being involved in the sexy science of String Theory.
However, Andy is dead now for several years. Complications connected with living a life outside of the experimental cage led to some fatal complications in Andy's health, and his untimely death at 36. To put into perspective of what he did, he has a bust at Pembroke College in Cambridge next to Sir Isaac Newton, and has memorial dedicated to him each year with a physics lecture in Cambridge with the likes of Brian Greene and Paul Davies, (the latter with whom I was fortunate enough to share high table at in Pembroke for one of the memorials) and a musical recital dedicated to Andrew in Oxford, each year. Not bad for a kid from the sticks of Amarillo.
I was in contact with Andy in the last months before he died, but did not know he was so sick. We were tossing around ideas about collaborating on physics-based short stories and he had sent me a short "screenplay" of sorts to review about Amarillo. I sent a heavily edited version back to him at one point, and never heard back. I thought he was offended, or had just moved on. I inquired further and learned that he had died.
One thing that Andy was amazing about is that he had a huge range of interests, well beyond physics and math, despite being an off-the-charts genius in both. He was also human in that he was known to be a horrific cheat and liar on the golf course as he was on the golf team. Yet, he also built a home-made harpsichord in high school and was one of the very few people who enjoyed word play and literary references as much as I did. We shared Calculus class and every day Andy and I would bore the entire class with endless puns and obscure references, as I still seem to do with people. It made high school bearable for me.
I was not a big fan of education, and the fact that I became involved with education was a direct result of my not wanting to be part of the problem, but in my egotistical way, to be part of the solution. I wanted to be an educator who did not ignore the human component.
Tonight, watching a re-rerun (all we have here) of The Big Bang Theory, I was reminded of Andy and of how he was not like Sheldon, when Penny asks Sheldon, "So, Who is Radiohead?" after Sheldon had just proclaimed that because he studies physics he has the keys to the universe. By his patented dead-pan blank stare, it is clear that he has no idea who Radiohead is, thus temporarily giving Penny, the "uneducated" waitress of the Cheesecake Factory the edge.
Some, like Dr. Chamblin, do seem to be tapped into a higher order of understanding, and I don't think that they are products of education, as much as I love to think that good teachers do it all. I was fortunate to have many good, if not great, teachers, but, there is something more out there.
We still need to know who Radiohead is, or the equivalent, no matter how high the ladder we climb, or fall from. Andy did know such things, and he is a model for me to realize that life is precious, life can be fleeting, and if we are not careful, we can become mere Paranoid Androids.
Rest in Peace, Andrew, may we never become mere unthinking Androids, at any cost...
