Wednesday

And I barely know what to do with myself.

That’s the way it is after finishing a thing that’s had your brain for six weeks. It’s like finishing a semester of college. You kind of sit there and marvel at the empty space.

I’ll figure things out today, clean up, clean out and bring out the files with all the ideas that have gone unwritten and unworked on for the last couple of months.

Life’s changing, and in more ways than one.

So a quick digest:

Writing: Nothing! Not even in this space!

Reading:

Not much book progress, but a couple of articles online and in print worth noting.

This, from Calvin Trilling in the New Yorker, was very funny.

A review of a biography of Greta Garbo.

A review of a book about how various cultures have divinized human beings.

The best part of this last article is that the reviewer takes apart some contradictions in the book’s claims – claims that stories about “primitive” cultures divinizing a westerner (Captain Cook, for example) are nothing but colonizer’s propaganda. The reviewer points out that this isn’t a universally accepted view, and further points out some contradictions in the author’s own stance. As well as arguing that refusing outright to believe that these cultures might have divinized a human being displays a superficial understanding of these religions and spiritual landscapes.

Such accounts belie the salacious coverage that so often characterizes stories of “man worshippers” from around the world. Yet they are sometimes presented here in ways that overlook their atavistic nature and their ancient origins. Where Western figures were deified, or allegedly deified, they were not worshipped as new gods or viewed as godlike on their own merits; rather, they were drafted into preëxisting cosmologies, similar to the way the Aztecs consolidated imperial power by replacing Mixcoatl, a Toltec man-god, with Huitzilopochtli. 

Listening:

To a lot of Bach, Saint-Saens and Rachmaninoff. I believe the Rachmaninoff will be the first played at a recital, in early February, with the pressure building on the Saint-Saens (it’s a concerto).

And for my part, I picked out a couple more Scarlatti for my own playing – using this list.

Watching:

I watched a bit more of 8 1/2 last night via the Criterion Channel, but was too tired to give it the attention it deserved. So I finished off by watching two jazz shorts from the 30’s, one featuring Duke Ellington, the other Cab Calloway – the latter being…pretty off the wall and surreal. I mean, it’s Calloway, so what do you expect?

Best scene in the latter – band members appearing from the train sleep compartments to practice:

Cooking:

I read about ten recipes, then pulled together a soup with that leftover turkey (it’d been in the freezer, don’t worry) and turkey stock and Thai-ish ingredients, including fresh ginger, Thai Basil and green curry paste. It was ….excellent.