Interesting things happen all the time.
The other day a conversation began over a song that I was playing in the cafe. The song is a very well done revision of Bob Dylan’s famous “Like A Rolling Stone” and the group is named Articolo 31. It appeared on the soundtrack for Masked And Anonymous, the 2003 movie starring Bob Dylan (surrounded by a fantastic cast) as a world-weary musician in an oh-so-slightly fictitious third world country. The soundtrack includes some previously unreleased Dylan material, a couple re-recordings, and over a dozen very interesting covers of his music done by bands from all over the world. The Magakoro Brothers perform “My Back Pages,” fully translated and sung in Japanese - though they added an almost forty second long introductory vocal sample of an unidentified evangelical preacher. Hmm. Well, aside from that and Dylan’s performance of “Cold Iron Bound,” which highlights the dramatic climax of the movie, this little Articolo 31 ditty was pretty much my favorite tune from the soundtrack. “Come Una Pietra Scalciata (Like A Rolling Stone).” It’s largely unrecognizable as Dylan, save for the giveaway vocal sampling used for the titular chorus. Virtually all the words are delivered rapidly by a male rapper in a language similar but certainly not identical to Spanish. I was able to make that distinction on my own, but I was also too lazy to look up what nationality the musicians were, so I guessed at Portuguese and left it unconfirmed. Well, the other day at the cafe, a regular customer who I’ve spoken with about politics on a couple occasions came up to me and asked about the music.
It turns out that this guy teaches Italian, in Italy, to American students, using modern cultural material - particularly music, including that of Articolo 31. He recognized their voices and, of course, the Dylan sample, and was just thrilled. I got his email address and sent him the one song that night and burned a copy of the whole soundtrack and gave it to him a couple days later. I’ve contributed to the cultural and linguistic education of students in Italy who I’ll probably never know. This is one of my favorite parts of working at the cafe.
Ah, I’m struck now by that wonderful catharsis that comes from finally authoring something that’s been bouncing around in my consciousness for days. Ah. Now I can’t think of what else to write.
Dr. David Thorpe made an excellent point some time ago about why exactly Natasha Beddingfield’s music sucks - she writes songs about not being able to write songs. Listen closely to Unwritten and try to identify the few aspects of musicianship hidden underneath all the glossy pop production. They’re not very impressive.
On this long and dark flight across the country I reread Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”. It is not the American translation which my high school literature class was made to read, but the lovely British translation done by Stuart Gilbert. I love the extra depth of surreal existentialism lent by British turns of phrase and wording from the middle twentieth century. Even though I’m crushed in the very back in the plane, I feel like sharing my three favorite passages from the book. Seriously, though, I’m typing on my upper thighs and can’t really read what’s on the screen at all. The old man in front of me leaned way back, the guy to my left is watching a movie on his laptop and using the armrest, and the guy on my right is sleeping - but he’s one of those guys who sprawls while sleeping, so not only is the armrest unavailable for my use, but his foot has been runover no less than four times by the stewardess’ carts. Ha. Oh, and the obnoxious teenagers lining the row behind aren’t so bad now that I can’t hear them - say yes to good headphones, say no to being a twat. Good thing I’m not trying to be an inspirational speaker since that’s the sort of tagline that comes to my mind, huh? Oh hell, there’s probably a market for it. Nevermind. British audiophiles, here I am. Let’s go.
The papers often speak of a “debt owed to society” –a debt which, according to them, must be paid by the offender. But talk of that sort doesn’t touch the imagination. No, the one thing that counted for me was the possibility of making a dash for it and defeating their bloodthirsty rite; of a mad stampede to freedom that would anyhow give me a moment’s hope, the gambler’s last throw. But, all things considered, even this luxury was forbidden me; I was caught in the rattrap irrevocably.
Try as I might, I couldn’t stomach this brutal certitude. For really, when one came to think of it, there was a disproportion between the judgment on which it was based and the unalterable sequence of events starting from the moment when that judgment was delivered. The fact that the verdict was read out at 8 P.M. rather than at five, the fact that it might have been quite different, that it was given by men who change their underclothes, and was credited to so vague an entity as the “French people” –for that matter, why not to the Chinese or the German people? –all these facts seeded to deprive the court’s decision of much of its gravity. Yet I could but recognize that, from the moment the verdict was given, its effects became as cogent, as tangible, as, for example, this wall against which I was lying, pressing my back to it.
Damn. What a last sentence there, huh? One sentence. Thirty-five words. Seven commas. Damn.
Another equally ridiculous fantasy of mine was to frame new laws, altering the penalties. What was wanted, to my mind, was to give the criminal a chance, if only a dog’s chance; say, one chance in a thousand. There might be some drug, or combination of drugs, which would kill the patient (I thought of him as “the patient”) nine hundred and ninety times in a thousand. [sic] That he should know this was, of course, essential. For after taking much thought, calmly, I came to the conclusion that what was wrong about the guillotine was that the condemned man had no chance at all, absolutely none. In fact, the patient’s death had been ordained irrevocably. It was a foregone conclusion. If by some fluke the knife didn’t do its job, they started again. So it came to this, that–against the grain, no doubt–the condemned man had to hope the apparatus was in good working order! This, I thought, was a flaw in the system; and, on the face of it, my view was sound enough. On the other hand, I had to admit it proved the efficiency of the system, It came to this; the man under sentence was obliged to collaborate mentally, it was in his interest that all should go off without a hitch.
Vile psychological warfare, I say, to make the condemned desire a successful execution. Indeed. And finally, from the very very end, the showdown between our protagonist and the priest:
“No! No! I refuse to believe it. I’m sure you’ve often wished there was an afterlife.”
Of course I had I told him. Everybody has that wish at times. But that had no more importance than wishing to be rich, or to swim very fast, or to have a better-shaped mouth. It was in the same order of things. I was going on in the same vein, when he cut in with a question. How did I picture the life after the grave?
I fairly bawled out at him: “A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That’s all I want of it,” And in the same breath I told him I’d had enough of his company.
But, apparently, he had more to say on the subject of God. I went close up to him and made a last attempt to explain that I’d very little time left, and I wasn’t going to waste it on God.
Then he tried to change the subject by asking me why I hadn’t once addressed him as “Father,” seeing that he was a priest. That irritated me still more, and I told him that he wasn’t my father; quite the contrary, he was on the others’ side.
“No, no, my son,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. “I’m on your side, though you don’t realize it–because your heart is hardened. But I shall pray for you.”
Then, I don’t know how it was, but something seemed to break inside me, and I started yelling at the top of my voice. I hurled insults at him, I told him not to waste his rotten prayers on me; it was better to burn than to disappear. I’d taken him by the neckband of his cassock, and, in a sort of ecstasy of joy and rage, I poured out on him all the thoughts that had been simmering in my brain. He seemed so cocksure, you see. And yet none of his certainties was worth one strand of a woman’s hair. Living as he did, like a corpse, he couldn’t even be sure of being alive. It might look as if my hands were empty. Actually, I was sure of myself, sure about everything, far surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That, no doubt, was all I had; but at least that certainty was something I could get my teeth into–just as it had gotten its teeth into me. I’d been right, I was still right, I was always right. I’d passed my life in a certain way, and I might have passed it in a different way, if I’d felt like it. I’d acted thus, and I hadn’t acted otherwise; I hadn’t done x, whereas I had done y or z. And what did that mean? That, all the time, I’d been waiting for this present moment, for that dawn, tomorrow’s or another day’s, which was to justify me. Nothing, nothing had the least importance, and I knew quite well why. He, too, knew why. From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother’s love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to “choose” not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. Surely, surely he must see that? Every man alive was privileged; there was only one class of men, the privileged class. All alike would be condemned to die one day; his turn, too, would come like the others’. And what difference could it make if, after being charged with murder, he were executed because he didn’t weep at his mother’s funeral, since it all came to the same thing in the end?
I want to write but can’t fit my elbows any deeper into my ribcage. This is definitely the most unpleasant flight I’ve ever been on. I feel like stew. Like an ingredient in stew. And so are the people around me. God, I’m in a big flying pot of man-stew. Gross.
