MALLaRME'

Dream Journey: Someone panned a new Mallarme' translation by calling it: "A Throw of the Dice Does Not Eliminate Chance Starring Erik Estrada" and I set out to look for an old VHS copy.

The Twelve

What I find most disagreeable about last night's nightmare was that it was predicated on my yearning for justice. Justice?! That cottage industry, like plastic surgery, golf carts, and pet grooming!

I appealed to a small room of Twelve Passive Agressive Men With Foot Wide Spotches of White Glow-in-the-Dark Paint on their Faces.

Museum of Modern Art

The warden was gone from the prison, which had been converted from its previous use as the Museum of Modern Art. A mob functionary entered in a suit and murdered an inmate, and a prisoner realized he could escape. He ran out the front door, and ran towards a field in his stockinged feet. Then a feeling of laziness and futility came over him, and he realized that there was a chance he could strike a deal by testifying about this and other murders. He returned hoping he would not be charged for escaping. The warden has just returned with his wife and daughter with department store bags and a take-out lunch. He told the warden that he had just gone out to get them both coffee and donuts but the place was closed. The warden nodded his head.

Anonymous

When I go somewhere I always forget to learn the word for 'anonymous.' Then at the 1:33 mark at the Old Masters Gallery I say 'this guy with the funny one word name is sure prolific!' It is only when his work begins to span five centuries that I come to a realization.

Bright lights

Dreams last night were a caricature of my thoughts on the way home from a party last night, and I would like to think that that would lend itself to something interesting or entertaining, but this wasn't it. Someone complaining that 'Gandhi' the movie had been reissued and was being shown in two parts, seperate admission. Or loitering in a small book store with a large window and bright lights where everyone could be seen from the street, which was significant because I had just escaped from prison. It was a good book store: it wasn't that I didn't care about getting caught but I just lost myself in the moment.

At Night Time

Dream: There was a small tower with a bronze statue of a man with the head of an owl, which my brother had the job of guarding with a machine gun.

Place Blanche

Dream: I had arrived suddenly in Paris, but got into a bus at the airport (impossible) and it took me northeast of the city center despite the sign saying Place Blanche, where I couldn't get out into the street but was trapped in a social realist amphitheater that had a slide show of wax animal sculptures and a brochure about the artist.

I was at the Jersey Shore, folks were building a tacky restaurant/bar where the sand dunes had been. I apologized to the hosts that I didn't have my special guidebook to the area, which only exists from a previous dream, which lists the addresses of old radical newspapers and birthplaces of jazz icons that aren't there.

Morente

This afternoon I was having lunch and the DJ on WPRB Princeton introduced Enrique Morente's first song from Omega in a manner that suggested he was a Morente novice. The DJ was very cool when I called and big about my corrections and recounted them in detail on the air, except saying that Morente was a guitarist rather than a cantor, which I never said, but repeating my recommendation that the best and perhaps most cost-effective way to stock up on Morente discs is to just go to Spain. El Flamenco Vive has a website but the postage is such that you might get a cheap flight to their store in Madrid for a little more, after which you can browse through their stacks and talk everything over with the staff.

Searching out flamenco is an art, best practiced in Seville and the south coast cities but Madrid has great nights. Many of the great budding gypsy musicians are living in Madrid sprawl. Check out the entertainment guides, ask around, stay up late. If you can't sleep, don't: stay up til 6 in the Plaza Santa Ana (but steer clear of North City Center at that time; if you get in trouble seek out the street cleaners in yellow outfits). Las Meninas and Guernica both look even better red-eyed. One night I had gypsies telling me to 'shut up' my clapping (the rhythm section; people clapping in the audience) but after listening to them for an hour all around me I started up again and they said I picked it up okay.

The best Morente album you can get in the states is "Cante Flamenco", a mellow duende fix. 'Lorca' is another rock album, like Omega, which also has over the top studio production. The whole album grows on you, even if you are a US indie rock devotee used to restrained use of sythesizers etc., but if you are a fan of Lorca's poems you'll want to hear the last song on the album a few times... trust me on this.

Two people

Dream: At a cafeteria table I sat across from the theater director and said, ‘now you have to discuss theater politics for another three hours.’ He laughed and got up to get more food. Then Max Beckmann took his seat, with his gay lover in tow (Beckmann was actually straight). I started asking Max questions, and the guy next to me kept protesting: ‘It doesn’t matter, he’s two people, two people!’ and I wanted to punch him out.

Consensus

Let’s come to a consensus on literary theory! You can enter your aesthetic treatises and we can then open the floor to a moderated discussion. When the time comes we’ll put it all to a vote!

Then be careful what you write, if it does not conform to our aesthetic you will get lots of aggressively-worded emails from your All About Your Caste friends!

Review: On Television

A class war, financed by its victims.

Juan and Gil

I just got Esquivel’s ‘More of Other Worlds, Other Sounds’ (1962) and while listening to ‘La Mantilla,’ I thought, ‘hey did this come before Gil Evans’ arrangement of ‘Concierto de Aranjas’ in Miles Davis’ ‘Sketches of Spain?" But no, Sketches came out in 1960. That’s a long time ago, forty-five years, for that album to have come out. The years are longer when there are more people, using telephones, cars, and electric lights you can see from the sky.

Paz on Blogs

"When I arrived in the United States I was surprised above all by the self-assurance and confidence of the people, by their apparent happiness and apparent adjustment to the world around them. This satisfaction did not stifle criticism, however, and the criticism is valuable and forthright, of a sort not often heard in the countries to the south, where long periods of dictatorship have made us more cautious about expressing our points of view. But it is a criticism that respects the existing systems and never touches its roots... Almost all the criticisms I heard from the lips of North Americans were of the reformist variety: they left the social or cultural structures intact and were only intended to limit or improve this or that procedure."

-Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, p22

So Octavio, you don’t want to hear about the kid who ripped me off at the appliance store?! How everything in our country would be fine if we could just nail that W bastard for treason? How weddings today always seem to serve salmon and a garden salad? This is an outrage!!

Meet My Caste

Not a comp sci major, I can't seem to fathom in my hour of clicking why I can't post on the blog iankeenan.blogspot.com, "Introducing the Dearth of Entries." But I suppose fate can't get enough of the dearth. There's a few entries I wish to post which will be forthcoming.