And now, about my most-anticipated movie of next year...

The New York Observer has a very insightful piece not just about this film, but also about why it is becoming more normal for women to find the idea of two men together appealing. Read before it's gone!

And if this inspires you to read the original story (obviously, a spoiler for the film).

Snape

Hilarious

A History of Violence

I love when I can re-use a picture...

A warning: the following is not a review of A History of Violence, David Cronenberg's latest, but a rumination on certain aspects of it. There will be spoilers galore, so if you still want to see this movie, stop right here. I mean it. I read too much beforehand, and I think the film would have hit me in a more visceral way if I hadn't.

First, I liked it. A lot. I wasn't entirely sure as I walked out a theatre, I had to think about it a bit, but now that I have...It is a bit too constructed in places, too crafted. On the other hand, wow.

One aspect I want to linger on is the two sex scenes. A friend told me he'd felt really uncomfortable watching them. Granted, he was in that theatre with his -according to the guy himself- uptight father, while I saw it with my significantly not-uptight (untight? downtight?) dad. Still, the guy complained that the scenes were, to him, "unappealing", "unpleasant" and the characters (played by Viggo Mortensen- who, I believe, must be the ultimate man, painfully perfect almost. Did you know he writes wonderfully, too?- and Maria Bello) "came of as unsophisticated retards".

Truth be told, I'd heard so much about these sex scenes beforehand that I was a bit let down. They weren't that explicit at all in terms of nudity (there is one shot of Maria Bello kind of nekkid that doesn't even technically occur in one of the sex scenes, and while we do get to see Viggo's buttocks, that's pretty much it) and while there was one sex scene, a pretty violent one at that, shown from beginning to end, it was to me fascinating rather than unsettling.

What also is uncommon about the film is that the first sex scene features oral sex, 69 to be presice, and many reviewers were boggled by this. I don't quite understand why. I mean, I both don't understand why it is so rare and why it was considered to be shocking in this one, especially because for once, this is not a gratuitous sex scene. It might not contribute to the plot, but it does work very well on both a personal and a symbolic level: it both illustrates the relationship between these two people and it creates a wondeful contract with the latter sex scene that really exemplifies the film's shift in tone, and the main character's shift in identity.

Let me expand a bit more on this latter thing. In the first scene Viggo is Tom Stall. He's not playing Tom Stall, he is Tom Stall. For example, as his wife gets changed in the bathroom, he is nervous, doesn't quite know what to do with himself. He straightens the covers, folds them open, grins at himself. He opens his shirt unsurely, starts undoing his belt, but it's clearly mostly because he doesn't know what else to do with his hands. When Edie comes out in the cheerleader outfid, he is honestly amazed. Another important characteristic of this scene is that it revolves around oral sex. This is not just for shock value at all, nor for titillation. It is because oral sex, no matter how much the giver might like or dislike doing it, is functionally a giving, unselfish act. Tom starts it to thank his wife, and she reciprocates. It shows that they love each other and are willing to sacrifice things for each other, and its innocence is further accentuated by their acting like teenagers. Mostly, it is in sharp contrast with the second scene.

In this second scene, the sex is all about taking. It starts out as a fight, kicking and grabbing throats, but all along there is sexual tension and this comes out soon enough. The sex is rough, with barely any words, and instead of the glowy aftermath of the first scene, it ends as abruptly as it started. Viggo is Joey in this scene, not the loving husband but the brutal, carnal killer. It's a scene that certainly unsettles, but for me, this was mostly because I found myself to be slightly turned on by it. I think this was probably Cronenberg's intention, just as it seems his intention with this entire film to confront us with how violence and sex appeal to us, turn us on.

What I admire about these sex scenes is the level of reality. I don't mean I think theses kinds of scenes happen everyday, but there's no soft focus, no underscoring music. Instead, there's clumsiness: in the first scene, Edie throws her husband's belt behind her and get startled by the sound it makes hitting the wall. In the second scene, we see her back later, covered with bruises: this sex is not without consequences, physical or mental.

Cronenberg seems like such an intelligent, fascinating man. I'd love to meet him and pick his mind, even if the thought of what I could find is a little unsettling. Or who am I kidding. It's because I think I might find something unsettling that I'm so interested, of course.

H.

Anderson Cooper

I don't know this lovely man myself..But I thought it was interesting how he was appropriated by two different groups on blogs I visit. Just shows how our view of public personae changes depending on our perspective.

1 month of neglect

This blog, I'm afraid, will be be neglected during November. I'll be writing and hopefully managing to fit in my school work as well. I'll try to post a few nice links every couple of days, and I promise I'll return to full activity in December!

Until then, I'll leave you with this little gem of overanalysis...

Dream Job #251

I'd like to host a radio show. A late night radio show, preferably, airing around 11 or midnight.

So you ask, why not just make a podcast? Everyone's doing it. It's not that hard. But podcasting, to me, has two main obstacles. No, three. First of all, the best podcasts, in my opinion, are those hosted by two people, not just one. One person talking to themselves bores after a while, but two people discussing is interesting to listen to (take Adam and Sam from Cinecast for example). Second, music is an issue. Either you're being illegal or you play very obscure music by bands who'd love any kind of attention. Brian Ibbott manages it on Coverville, but it's tricky, and too much work if you just want the occasional song rather than having a whole podcast revolving around music. Third, I'd love to do interview. Like the one with Ranses Shaffy I'm listening to at the moment. But it's hard to find interesting people willing to be interviewed, especially for a PodCast.

So, what would my show look like, ideally? Well, it would start with 5 to 10 minutes of remarkable news and developments, links maybe to interesting things, but also a list of the concerts for which ticketsales are opening (I always miss this stuff. Like the Sufjan Stevens concert. And the Belle and Sebastian concert last year. And the Ryan Adams concert the year before that). Then the rest of the time an interview with, and I see this concept very broadly, "someone interesting". Not necessarily famous. Not necessarily people involved in the arts, although probably many of them would be. Most importantly, not someone who's been in the news lately.

All the interview shows, everyone has something to sell. A new book, production, CD, etc. And that thing dominates the conversation, when instead I'd often just like to get to know the interviewee. So, the idea would be, someone with no particular aim for the interview, just chilling on the couch, talking about no matter what. Oh, of course I'd do research in advance, prepare questions to jumpstart the conversation, but if the consersation turns to cow tipping, then why not? Hopefully this would lead to less predictable interviews. More like the interviews in Interview, in a way, but longer and therefore hopefully a little more insightful.

The show would of course be interspersed with interesting music, about 4 or 5 songs total I think, one old, one new, all relevant to the interviewee. By the interviewee if he/she is a musician? Maybe one song or two, but definitely not all. Enough to give a taste of what the person does, but I'm more interested in what music they'd listen to, or in how they'd react to music they didn't know yet.

So yeah, one of the many (251 is a broad guess, but probably not too far off the mark) dream jobs I'll never have but like to dream about.

H.

N.B. The Picture is unrelated, but I've been working on an assignment about the Heisenberg uncertainty relation all day and this felt appropriate.

Blog Rolling

I finally joined the blogging community entirely: I have a blog roll now. These are the blogs I read. Here's why.

Geek Philosophy: The Flick Filosopher blogs. And she does it well. Many interesting links copied here, many insightful pieces on geekyness, and every week, a geek, a nerd and a dork. There is a bit too much emphasis, in my opinion, on how Gen-X is connected to geekdom, but then again, that might just be because I am not an Xer but I do consider myself a geek.

Nine by Six: my good friend Joost also blogs. Not updated often enough to my taste, but often interesting links when he does.

Aurgasm: a music blog with a very eclectic, interesting selection of songs, which can be downloaded free for evaluation purposes. Here's how I discovered Gabriel Mann's "Artichoke", and many other gems.

Mainly Movies: Tim also sometimes leaves me hungry for a new update, but his taste in movies is fascinating. He's currently working on a top 100, counted down, and any movie he selected I've either seen and loved or is on my to-see list now.

Nick's Flick Picks: Nick is also working on a countdown (I believe he started before tim, in fact). His picks are a bit less attuned to my taste, but he does elaborate on his choices a lot more, and always with enthusiasm and insight.

Queering the Apparatus: a surprising choice only for those who are unaware of my fascination with gay culture. Damion's posts range from Vintage images of men in various states of undress, to comments on gay culture and polls about gay icons. Funny, irreverent, and extremely readable.

Modern Fabulosity: it's almost impossible to talk about Queering the Apparatus without mentioning ModFab. Updating more often, with more naked men and more newsbits, but -in my opinion- just a little bit less charm, it makes the perfect companion to Damion's blog.

Poetry, sexy? Hell yeah

I guess Wednesday will become poetry day, as the poetry committee meeting are on that day. It was, once again, friendly, with a nice atmosphere, and inspiring. So many poets from so many nationalities, so many subjects and styles... But tonight, what got to me most was Pablo Neruda. Oh, I knew his name, had heard some of his poems. But Steef brought with him tonight "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" and well, I fell in love. Just for clarity's sake, with Pablo, not with Steef. Maybe it's because I was in a romantic mood because of Lanchka's wonderful problems. Anyhow, I didn't want to deprive you of this little nugget, the first paragraph to Love Poem #XIII entitled "He Ido Marcando" or "I have gone marking". First the original, then the translation.

***
He Ido Marcando con cruces de fuego
el atlas blanco de tu cuerpo.
Mi boca era una araña que cruzaba escondiéndose.
En ti, detrás de ti, temerosa, sedienta.
***
I have gone marking the atlas of your body
with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst.
***

So, yeah, hot much? Oh well, true, the guy himself isn't thát appealing, but still, a cute guy whispers these kinds of words in my ear and I'm a goner. As long as he doesn't call me honey sweet, that is.

Next week in the poetry entry, I'll treat you to some Leonard Cohen. Sexy too, but a little darker, kinkier, in a way. It all goes to show that poetry isn't as stuffy as people think it is. I mean, some of my attempts at poetry also were quite suggestive as well.

H.

Magazines

There was a Boomerang meeting/get-together/drink tonight, and obviously, the topic turned to our search for identity, to what we should want for the Boomerang.

I have no easy answer.

The thing is, making the ideal magazine is tough, maybe even impossible. There is no magazine right now that I read cover to cover every month. There used to be - Science & Vie Junior, a French Science Magazine - but I outgrew that years ago, and nothing has replaced it.

The problem is, I don't really know what would.

Maybe I'm spoiled by the internet, where you can easily pick and choose what you like. Maybe it's because I have odd tastes. I don't know. All I know is that while I like music magazines, I usually only read them at the train station ebcause the ten to fifteen minutes I have to spend there are usually enough to read all the parts I find interesting. Movie magazines are nice but ridiculously expensive, and don't really rival the internet-only stuff. There is one movie magazine online that I usually read entirely, Bright Light Film Journal. The drawback? It only comes out once every three months. As for the so-called "lifestyle" magazines, they bore. And the political ones usually have one or two interesting articles that really go in-depth about something, but they're terrible, well, unhip about a lot of things, articles about things like blogging or geeks or anything related to that always annoying me with their fragmentary, condescending nature.

There is one magazine I discovered in the US that I found particularly intriguing: Interview. All there is inside is interview of celebrities, actors and musicians mostly, by their colleagues and friends: people they've worked with, people they know, people who'll skip past the basic boring questions and ask unpredictable ones. The result isn't always great,but it never fails to be different.

I really have no reason for complaining about missing the one definitive magazine for me. After all, there's the internet, and it is my companion. I kind of assemble my own magazine in a way. Take an interview from the New York Magazine, a humor piece from the New Yorker, a billiant idea to make the iPod video succesful from a site called the SFGate, a philosophical article on postmodernism , the sex column from The Onion AV Club, and finally an article on Dada from the IHT. My own magazine, of sorts. The only prolem being that it takes some time to assemble.

Does the internet make magazines superfluous? I doubt it. The most interesting articles I find online usually come from a printed magazine. And despite my not having found the ideal magazine yet, I'd love a subscription to Interview, to McSweeney's, to The Believer, to The New Yorker, to Rolling Stone and many, many others.

I guess the dilemma is even bigger because I vaguely, in the back of my mind, still have the ambition to become a magazine writer, even seeing this blog partly as a training ground (keeping in mind that all the entires here, except for the Boomerang articles, are first drafts written down at high speed) for that. But the ultimate magazine will probably remain a dream.

H.

Oh, and if you're interested in the ideal magazine cover? See this.

Giant Squid is tired of all the media attention

Or, alternate title, Why we're all unworthy to lick McSweeney's tentacles.

Seriously. This particular case of brilliance we can thank Greg Ruehlman for, but so many other pieces deserve to be lauded as well...

And let's not forget this one, maybe my favorite of all time.

I've been thinking a lot about what it is to be a geek lately, because the NRC, a Dutch newspaper, showed in an article this weekend that it clearly doesn't get it (as a whole, Dutch people don't seem to have much affinity for geekdom).

All I can come up with is examples. Links. McSweeney's, for example, is prototypically geeky. And after seeing this, the whole concept of what a geek is could not be more clear. But how to put it in words...I'll get back to you when I figure it out.

H.

Phoenix again (how ironic...)

I saw this picture on calendarlive and I just couldn't not post it.

The interview is pretty interesting too. It makes me want to meet the guy, talk to him myself.

On Cash

Until not to long ago, I thought Into the Ring of Fire was a Kings of Convenience song. And it is. But I thought I'd mention this little fact to illustrate how little I know about Johnny Cash and his music.

Still, I really want to see the new biopic about him, with Joaquin Phoenix in the main role and Reese Witherspoon -as a brunette- playing June Carter Cash. Why? I don't know. From the reviews I've read it's pretty straight-forward, following the biopic formula, not very interesting cinematically. Also, the director, James Mangold, delivered the insult that is "Kate & Leopold". Yet I'm intrigued.

Partly it's because the trailer is good. But mostly it's because Joaquin Phoenix is one of the more interesting and most criminally underused actors out there. And I'm not just saying that because he's so dashing in that troubled bad boy way. I admit I don't know much about Johnny Cash and how he walked, talked, sang, spoke, but Phoenix certainly inhabits someone in the few glimpses the trailer offers.

Finally, and I'm almost ashamed to say this, the poster art intrigues me. It suggest something grittier, less polished, than most biopics. I know I shouldn't like a book just for its cover, and no movie just for its poster, because posters give an even more unreliable representation than trailers do. Still, the marketing guys & girls did a good job on this one.

I'm having one of those period where many careerd all of a sudden appeal to me. Because of the West Wing it's mostly speechwriter at the moment, but poster designer certainly ranks up there.

Daydreams are fun.

H.

From the Bookmarks vault

How not to interview someone. Just when you think it's as bad as it could possibly be...it gets worse.

If I had 140 euro I didn't need, this is what I'd buy.

Who would you rather wipe your ass with?

If whisky makes you poetic, or if poetry makes you want to drink whisky.

Finally, if you like your news happy.

The Sweet Life

The last few days have been rather unusual for me in that I have been strangely aware of the fact that I'm a girl. And no, it's not that time of the month. I just think my sister's elegance offensive might have finally kicked in. And there were some contributing factors.

It started on Sunday when, after a frustrating day procrastinating unhappily (which is a very different thing than the happy procrastination I engaged in today) from the physics homework lying next to my laptop. Oh, I tried. I read through things three times, even made neat little cardboard sheets with all the definitions found in my hellish reader, but it wasn't until I decided to go wild and not to care about what my -male- classmates and my -male- professor would thing, i.e. to write my homework on pink paper this time, that the hoped-for breakthrough happened and the solution to (half of the) problems started pouring out.

Emboldened by my victory, I put on my most feminine shirt the next day, bright pink (though not baby pink, hell will have to cool down just a little bit more before I ever wear thát color) and with a bared shoulder, and watched the first episode of "Commander in Chief", a new series in the US featuring Geena Davis as a female president. It's not a great show, but it fit my mood, and made me feel even more convinced that being a girl was something I should advertise more, in a way. Something to take into account, maybe even to take advantage of.

Roger Ebert say in his review of Fellini's La Dolce Vita that it is a different film for him every time he sees it, depending on who he is at that point. This might explain why, when I finally saw this classic yesterday evening, what struck me most is what the film says about gender roles and views of feminity and masculinity. There might not be a harem scene as in Otto E Mezzo, but the main character (played by the gorgeous yet too sleazy Marcello Mastroianni) clearly has a problem with what he wants in a woman, with what he should be as a man. And the women in this film are, while stereotypical, very interesting.

Anita Ekberg as Sylvia is infantile and beautiful, but she's interesting, not because of her inpredictability, but because -while she lets Marcello chase after her and sweet talk her in Italian- their interactions always stay on her terms. And what to think of Anouk Aimée's character, a bored, rich nymphomaniac on the one hand, who proposes to Marcello, showing her vulnerability, only to discard him a few minutes later when she gets him to be vulnerable. There's the whole virgin/whore paradox in this film (literally even, with many whores and an appearance by the madonna), but the female characters are, while just as desperate and lost as Marcello, much more layered than you would expect.

My thoughts on the movie as a whole are still confused, I'll need to see it again. It fascinated even if it was almost three hours, but it still feels too much to me like a jumble of scenes, and I still need to figure out the connections, the thematics, basically the point of it all. Most films resemble novels or plays, on occasion history books, but Fellini writes poetry with his films, and like poems, they take time and contemplation to decypher. I remain convinced that there is more to them than empty imagery, and I think that's what makes his films great and not merely confusing.

Today, continuing my exploration, I decided to wear my new skirt for the second time, and a nice sweater offering ample decolleté. The skirt feels nice and swishy, and it makes for armfuls when I go to the bathroom, but I'm still not a fan of pantyhose. It felt nice though, feeling elegant and feminine (although everything needs its limits, I díd wear my "Fezza" underpants underneath the fancy skirt to compensate). I know I'm not the elegant, feminine type...but playing the role for a day was interesting.

H.

P.S. Joyful announcement! If you now google "As cool as a fruit stand", you get this blog and my blogger profile. It's not that I actually expect people to google that exact phrase, but it does feel nice to have, in a way, conquered my own little corner of the web.

Maybe Dutch can be a poetic language after all...

Sometimes it takes a foreigner to make notice what's great about your culture.

No, I am not changing my opinion of Dutch films. But Orion, my neighbour's American friend, who's staying here at the moment, introduced me tonight not just to one but two great Acda & De Munnik songs.

The first one was "Als het vuur gedoofd is" (when the fire's gone out), the song "Het regent zonnestralen" (it's raining sunbeams), a fabulous song as well, is apparently a sequel to. It's about Herman, again, sitting in the park thinking about opportunities missed. Acda & De Munnik are at their best when telling stories, finding poetry in everyday life, without having to use "poetic" language.

The second song, "dag Esmee", is also of the narrative kind...About someone running into a high school friend. And that's all I'll say, because the story's probably best when unfolded by Acda & De Munnik.

Why is it that it takes a foreigner -with, admittedly, a surprising grasp of Dutch for someone who's only spent 6 months here-to notice these songs? Oh, sure, every Dutch person knows "Niet of Nooit Geweest"(not or never been is probably the best translation, but it's not great) by heart, and that's a great song too, but why don't we go looking for these hidden gems?

Yet another thing for my wish list then. I'd better be on the lookout for a very rich Sinterklaas.

H.

Run for Cover

A lot of people look down on covers as being little more than rehashes of much better original material. That is, when they're aware they're listening to a cover at all: I am convinced the majority of teens who loved Limp Biskit's "Behind Blue Eyes" had no idea it was not an original. Not to mention, a little further back, Boyzone.

I am divided on the issue. There are just too many bad, or, even worse, pointless covers out there. But every once in a while someone gets it right. In my opinion, the great covers do more than just, well, either singing the song in a slightly different arrangement of increasing the beat. They reinterpret the songs. They give them new meaning. They make you appreciate the originals better. And they stand on their own as true works of art.

The reason this topic came up because there's a podcast I listen to called "Coverville", and today one of the covers in the latest show was so beautiful it gave me the shivers. Covers being so varied, in genre as well as in quality, listening to coverville is always a gamble: there will be some songs I won't like, some I think are ok, and every once in a while there will be a gem.

So then, my top 5 covers. Counting back, first the name of the song, then the original artist, then the cover artist.

Honorable mention: more an alternate version than a real cover, but it's great nonetheless: Anouk's Reggae version of her own Nobody's Wife

5. El Tango de Roxanne - Sting & The Police - the version from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack

4. Such Great Heights - Death Cab for Cutie - Iron & Wine

3. The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel - Grayson and Wonfor (this is the song that gave me the shivers. A spare, slightly slower, acoustic guitar only version that is just amazing)

2. Smells like Teen Spirit - Nirvana - Tori Amos

1. Wonderwall - Oasis - Ryan Adams

And I left out so many... Rufus Wainwright's version of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah because it's a little too similar to the original, Tori Amos' Angie because I already had a cover by her, All of Seu Jorge's covers of David Bowie because they're a translation as well...

Know any covers I should know about? Please tell!

H.

The Princess Bride

I think there's something about the Princess Bride that you either get or don't get. I watched the first half of it tonight with two of my unitmates, and while I had a shit-faced grin on my face the entire time, they didn't really see the joke, one of them even calling it annoying.

*Sigh*

They don't see the mixture of adoration and gentle mockery towards all the old, filmed-on-set, swashbuckling adventure movies. They cringe at the costumes, music, backdrops, and while they understand it is intentional they just, well, don't get it.

Movies which inspire such a radical division usually also give rise to rabid fandom, and this movie is no exception. The Flick Filosopher (herself so much a fan she's writing a book about this movie) recently linked to a retelling of LOTR entirely in Princess Bride quotes, something perectly possible since every single line of this film is quotable.

Describing the charm of the Princess Bride is almost impossible. Suffice to say that it always maes me giddy, makes me want to be a kid again and experience the power of stories for the first time. It is ironic, but without feeling superior to the material, and that's something that's hard to find. Maybe that is ultimately what explains the 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Or maybe it's just the simple fact that this movie is as perfect as they get.

---You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But, only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!"---

Some administrative notes

As you might have noticed, my Sinterklaas Wish List has disappeared from the sidebar. It is now hidden in a post I've backdated to October 5th, two months before Sinterklaas. It has been replaced in the sidebar by a list of link to what I believe are some of my more interesting posts, or those at least that I think should be easily accessible from the main page, among them the Sinterklaas list.

Looking back through those posts I realise I've neglected one point of my declaration of principles, namely the point that I would included images. I'll try to be more consistent from now on, after all, it is definitely true that images lighten up the page and make the whole wall of words less inpenetrable (or so I hope). Incidentally, today's picture is approximately what I see when I hang back over my chair, seeing the back of my room upside down, something I do quite often.

One last point, you might have noticed that I have caved in and corrected the spelling of the name of my blog, my initiative being futile anyhow. Also, googling "As cool as a fruitstand" yields dozens of reminders of past blogs and cringe-worthy traces I left on the Internet. Googling "As cool as a fruit stand" does not yield anything as of yet, but hopefully my blog will show up there soon. If you like my blog, please link to it under the new name, and hopefully Google will pick up on it soon.

I promise a real post later today, now that I've gotten the practical notices out of the way.

H.

Once you fucked it, it's yours

Before I start on the topic, a short note. Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature today. The press statement lauded him for "uncover[ing] the precipice under everyday prattle and forc[ing] entry into oppression's closed rooms,". The precipice under everyday prattle...gotta love it. I have actually never read or seen anything by Mr. Pinter, but I'm sure he'll be impossible to avoid in the next month or so.

*****

Lani invited me along to a "Salon de mots" tonight. We had no clue as to what it was exactly, imagines slam poetry and whatnot, but after Spongebob Mac 'n Cheese and soesjes we biked towards the small café "De Leugen" (the Lie).

It was small, cramped, but the atmosphere was interesting, with people ranging in age from twenty to sixty. We met up with Anita, a friend of Lani's who apparently liked my blog (which means she múst be a fantastic person, dontcha think?) and the show began with a bang, or rather, with a guy playing some weird kind of, well, I believe the term is "mouth harp". Cute, too. And more importantly, he could sing. Very well even. It turns out he's the singer of the band Dial Prisko, a name I'll definitely remember. Even more so because apart from the mouth harp, he also played...the tea pot.

I won't give a list of all the poets and what I thought of them, because I find that on poetry nights all the words blend together anyhow, no matter how different the styles and the subject matter. Unfortunately, most of it was in Dutch, and for some reason, Dutch poetry doesn't get to me like English poetry can. The main poem went on for too long, getting interesting only near the end, and there was only one Dutch poem with rythm to it, with metre and flow.

The lone English poem was by an Australian woman, Prue Duggan. It was interesting, especially her vision of Anna Karenina, but I wasn't entirely convinced. Maybe it's because someone once told me that in truly great poetry, every word should feel irreplacable, like it's the one and only possible word in that particular place, and I did not get that idea from her poems. However, her poems were the most interesting to me of the entire night, and the title of this post is the closing line to one of her poems.

Far be it from me to say that writing poetry is easy. I had a poetry period in my first year at UC, and I got very frustrated with it because my poetry simply wasn't good. Poetry, good poetry? It's freaking hard.

I've been getting back into poetry, as you've maybe noticed from me mentioning Dylan Thomas records and leaving the text of an entire Kings of Convenience song here, but this (together with the poetry committee meeting yesterday) really kicked me back into. Biking back, words came rushing over me like they haven't in years, not enough yet to start letting them out, but enough to raise the hope that I might actually produce something again.

I looked through my old poems again tonight. Some made me cringe, most did, to be honest. But some...Oh, they're not good poems, but some that I forgot I wrote surprised me by not being as bad as I remembered my writing being.

In a way, reading back is like digging into my own past, worming myself into the mind of who I was two years ago. Scary, maybe even more so than reading old blogs. It's strange. It's me, I can remember me then, remember feeling and thinking the same but then, it's not really me any more. I can pinpoint exactly between which poems I got together with Joren, in between which poems we broke up...And yet, I don't remember it feeling very intense or important at all.
If I do start writing poetry again, I'll probably create a special blog for it, but until then, I just thought I'd leave you with this poem, written a year and a half ago...I don't think it's particularly good, even for me, but I think it gived a good impression of what I used to write.

Ticking Away

A bomb warning at the station:
in the train I think of ominous
ticking under my seat, imagine
a small round black warmth pulsing.

In my last split second
I’d wonder at how
when the sun shines
the world seems to unfold.

It will freeze tonight,
as the cold fragments
which once were me
will be sniffed at by
lonely patched dogs

Maybe I’d reincarnate
a tall elegant tower with three white wings.
And then another girl with morbid fantasies
would see me through the wagon window,
and smile, because not everything is rotten,
while her life slowly ticked away.

Over and Out.

H.

Other people's words today, apparently

Kings of Convenience - Homesick

I lose some sales and my boss won't be happy
But I can't stop listening to the sound
Of two soft voices blended in perfection
From the reels of this record that I found

Everyday there's a boy in the mirror
Asking me what are you doing here
Finding all my previous motives
Growing increasingly unclear

I’ve travelled far and I’ve burned all the bridges
I believed as soon as I hit land
All the other options held before me
Will wither in the light of my plan

So I lose some sales and my boss won't be happy
But there’s only one thing on my mind
Searching boxes underneath the counter
On a chance that on a tape I’d find

A song for
Someone who needs somewhere
To long for

Homesick
Cause I no longer know
What home is




This song started playing, and I was reminded of why I love the Kings of Convenience. They're music is gorgeously melodic and soothing, but aside from that their lyrics can be unexpectedly moving. I could go on and on about them, about the spare, quiet melancholy that exudes from their songs, about how no two voices have sounded so right together since Simon & Garfunkel, about how outrageous it is that in Europe all you can find by them are 30-euro imports... Instead, I thought the lyrics would speak for themselves.