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Philip - 2008-08-15 03:26:15
And what is the encounter you describe if not a manifestation of consilience in all its glory? Lovely old Ed Wilson would smile if he read that, I'm sure.
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WVDan - 2008-08-15 07:56:44
Paula, did you ever share your thoughts on 9/11, whether in lyrics or prose?
One of my first reactions that day was, "I hope Paula's OK," thinking you still worked at Lehman Bros. I'm sure the rest of the LoudFan community held a thought or said a prayer for you as well.
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villain - 2008-08-15 09:56:39
I know I had several random conversations while I was reading "Infinite Jest," and I'm pretty sure a few were more substantive than "wow, what a big book!" but I can't remember any specifics. My all-time most memorable book inspired conversation was with a homeless guy in grand central station in, um, 1985? at about 3 in the morning (during CMJ). He took a good minute and a half to sound out "The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice" and then asked me why I was reading about vampires, because vampires are not good. Then we had a really fascinating conversation that really challenged a lot of my preconceptions and prejudices: the guy was barely literate and couldn't function in the so-called straight world, but he was by no means unintelligent, and he exploded Maslow's hierarchy for me.
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Paula - 2008-08-15 11:34:18
WVDan: Well, that's very sweet, thank you for saying that. I have my 9/11 stories, but I'm not sure how they are going to manifest. I tried writing a song about it (in an oblique sort of way) but I feel like it's a clunky topic.
he exploded Maslow's hierarchy for me
I had my Maslow blown when I read somewhere--where was it, tho?--about a woman who did extensive counseling with people in various refugee camps, and found that the universal thing that people wanted to talk to her about was "I have a crush on so-and-so and he doesn't seem to notice me, what can I do?" Which makes one wonder if romantic needs are almost as elemental as the need for food/water/shelter, or alternately, an entertaining distraction from same.
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chris - 2008-08-15 14:01:51
I appreciate that my story has made it to your blog. Just a point of clarification though. You seem to think it�s the book that is attracting these famous men to me when its pretty clear its my striking looks, masculinity, and questionable sexual tendencies.
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Paula - 2008-08-15 14:10:33
I had to downplay those things to make myself feel better...
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MacGregor - 2008-08-15 14:15:39
I believe that love is an elemental need, but I also believe it exists on other levels similarly to the way some people have an unhealthy relationship with food. Re books on trains: Reading Sci-Fi or Fantasy on trains attracts really creepy people.
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Philip - 2008-08-15 14:25:30
Elemental need! You seriously wonder about that?? Also, 9/11 songs -- are there any good (i.e., non-clunky) ones?
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Mr Lojban - 2008-08-15 14:29:44
I once had a stranger-book-conversation in a subway station. Someone asked me whether I was enjoying The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, and I said something along the lines of "It's quite good, but my favorite Nabokov is Pale Fire." But I love Pale Fire so much I often bring it up out of context.
But my premiere stranger-book-conversation is the one I had about twelve years ago, shortly after the breakup of a longish relationship, and I'm on jury duty, waiting in the jury room, and I see a cute girl reading The Information, so I start talking to her. Turns out to be R.T., through whom I met Paula. And here I am.
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Mr Lojban - 2008-08-15 14:34:35
9/11 songs: I'm really biased because I know her quite well, but I'm still quite fond of the two songs Livia Hoffman recorded after 9/11. They're not commercially available, though.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-15 14:38:39
Even the venerable Neil Young bombed out with a 911 song. It was dreadful. I think it was called Let's Roll or something like that. But my own feelings on all that are so complex and mixed that if I were to write a song there are certainly elements that would be left out--thereby rendering the song too one thing or another...
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Paula - 2008-08-15 14:40:32
The Info: Is that how you came into our lives? I didn't know that story! And I was reading that book around the same time, too, mostly cuz everyone suspected that it was about Julian Barnes.
9/11 songs: the ones that meant the most to me directly after 9/11 were the ones about other tragedies. I heard someone sing that BeeGees song "New York Mining Disaster 1941" shortly after, and the line "Have you seen my wife Mr Jones?" was devastating.
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Mr Lojban - 2008-08-15 14:58:16
That is the story. Embarrassingly I still haven't read any Amis. I shall have to remedy that.
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Philip - 2008-08-15 15:00:20
The most stirring song I associate with 9/11 is Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" -- After baseball tentatively started up again, going to Shea was became a matter of civic faith - though it sounds corny, it was very comforting. It was like, whatever else it was, 9/11 was very local -- it happened to us, to New Yorkers. (I remember Liza Minelli in a fireman's hat singing the national anthem at the first game back that had 50,000 people sobbing.) The Mets played "New York State of Mind after every game, as you filed out of the stadium, and love Billy joel or hate him, he is very much one of ours (as is nutty Liza). (I hate him, by the way, but that song still gives me goosebumps.)
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MacGregor - 2008-08-15 15:21:04
The song that nailed me after all that was Jeff Buckley singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. MTV (of all venues) played it over a montage of people at Memorial Services. That was pretty much all it took.
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Eli - 2008-08-15 15:23:27
Usually hipsters in SF are too hip to admit they might be excited or interested in the book I'm reading...and WAY too hip to want to talk to me about what they might be reading. Recently, I was reading Up In The Old Hotel, a collection of stories by Joseph Mitchell. I go to a public health clinic that serves mostly homeless people, tranny sex workers and people who live pretty much on the margins and then me. THAT is where I have the very best book conversations...and conversations in general. A man a few seats down with a very strange hairdo and excellent posture asked me what I was reading, I told him and then the whole room joined in discussing their favorite authors and novels.
My 9/11 song association is Rufus Wainwright's In a Graveyard.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-15 15:31:49
I shouldn't be flippant about book conversations with strangers--In the very early 80s I was riding the N6 bus from Hempstead to Jamaica and reading Naked Lunch--and not quite getting it really--not enough life experience perhaps. A very drunk man struck up a conversation about it, and about modern novels and life in general. Ronald, as he introduced himself, had been a college professor in Haiti and was seeking political asylum in the States, and working as a janitor in Farmingdale. I saw him a few days a week for the next several months, and he pretty much guided me through a lot of reading material. These encounters fairly well account for a large part of my education and understanding of literature and writing.
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Flasshe - 2008-08-15 15:46:00
Paula, I just wanted to say that this is my favorite post of yours from the past few months. Not that you've been slacking lately or anything, but you know what I mean. Very funny/entertaining. More!
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Paula - 2008-08-15 17:55:16
Thanks, Flasshe--I'll have to write about Fetchin' Bones more often.
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Baby Party - 2008-08-15 18:09:39
I saw Fetchin' Bones once, but I can't remember where or when. And I only just now got the wordplay in their name.
I couldn't listen to any music for weeks after 9/11. Everything annoyed me. And generally, I turn to music first for consolation. So, it was frustrating. Every piece of music I tried sounded like ants singing - that trivial. I remember the first music I enjoyed was a Megan Reilly show at CB's Gallery sometime in late October. This was right after a long boozy dinner where a friend of a friend regaled us with hilarious stories of riding the rails in the 80s, and I laughed so hard I cried. And thanked him for giving me my first belly laugh since That Day. I guess that loosened me up to let more in. "Like an axe in a frozen sea." But I have no musical touchstones for 9/11.
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Paula - 2008-08-15 18:21:21
I was only able to listen to two things in the weeks after 9/11: Cat Stevens's Teaser and the Firecat, and, inexplicably, GbV's Isolation Drills, but those albums have other associative ties so I don't link them to That Day.
However the music that reminds me of 9/11 now is Rufus W's Poses, particularly the title track, which I had on constant rotation all that summer.
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Paula - 2008-08-15 18:24:26
And the "ants singing" thing is what prevented me from reading novels. "Ants writing." It's why I still haven't read The Corrections!
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Flasshe - 2008-08-15 20:14:25
I'll have to write about Fetchin' Bones more often.
For the record, I don't really like Fetchin' Bones - the lead vocalist's voice is too grating. Although I inexplicably own one or two CDs by them.
Oh, and I liked your Josh Kelley/Katherine Heigl post a lot too...
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Chris - 2008-08-15 20:27:26
I don't read books about 9/11, listen to music, or watch movies about it.
I think our culture has become obsessed with the tragedy, giving it far to
importance. Yes it was awful, yes 3,000 people died, but on the scale of
global catastrophes its gathers way to much attention. For me that exposes
what a weak, selfish, self important culture we have become; look at me, I
had a tragedy! When you look what our parents generation endured; or even
what the bulk of the planet endures, its so minor.
Ok yes, its about us, yes it happened to us, and that is important. We are
New yorkers and we have the right to grieve, give voice to the pain/stress
of that moment. Lets move on. In addition the administration has taken
advantage of that feeling, and used the emotion for political gain. Its like
I don't want to feed into the culture of victimhood that has surrounded it.
Am i so wrong? Am I crazy? 9/11 changed everything? Thats life. There is no
people who ever lived who did not deal with events of that magnitude on a
far more constant basis. Lets grieve the old fashion way, in private and without the media watching.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-15 20:44:08
Chris--I'm glad you said it. I agree with you entirely. That said, the novelty of grief and fear... it was a heavy, heavy time for a lot of people. Most of us here--myself included--it was brand new...
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Paula - 2008-08-15 21:16:43
I don't read books about 9/11, listen to music, or watch movies about it.
Just want to point out that while I agree with your sentiment, I don't think this discussion ever veered into that territory...People were commenting on the music they listened to right after 9/11, and observing that there really haven't been any good songs (so far, that we know of) about it. Oh, wait, except this one.
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chris - 2008-08-15 22:27:49
Paula; yes you are correct, but I wanted to rant...
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bad meow - 2008-08-15 23:57:40
I was listening to Sandy Denny right before 9/11, and the song "Next Time Around" has haunted me ever since: Because of the architect the buildings fell down.
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Bob - 2008-08-16 05:50:46
Sally Timms's song "Dark Sun", including its line "too late; the planes all left on time", and its talk of "scratching in the dust" and of "when the first one falls" does put me in mind of 9/'01, but it was written in '99. And, presumably, was intended to refer to bombs anyway. Picking up on Chris's point, though, (and going where one isn't sposed to), too many firefighters went with the glorification of firemen too much, with an eye to budget pie opportunity, when cops died there too, and when none of them would have thought to charge in in the way of desperate escapees if they knew that the building was about to fall down ("they went up when everyone else was going down..."). Although it can of course be horrific in a big city, it is in a way easier to do an adrenalized job than to have some unexciting daily dread of a job where f'd up citizens may want to stab you with dirty needles and the like. And it's interesting that paramedic firemen, more of whom encounter some of those dreadable, inglorious dangers that some cops do, did not tend to be the ones fanning the "America's bravest" flare-up. Not that cities don't need their fire departments, but some counties could actually save money, without wasting lives, by just letting things burn and replacing them, and could upgrade their teachers (whether or not they think that they can be heroes) with the savings. But indeed, it's a bit distasteful, and even a bit disrespectful, to milk tragedies in disproportionate ways.
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anne - 2008-08-16 06:09:48
I met my friend Dan because I was reading a book while standing and waiting for Freedy Johnston to play a show at the Lakeside Lounge in 2000. I think it was Portrait of an Artist... so it was a pretty pretentious book and thing to do, and he called me on it. And Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot had some pretty prescient (since it was recorded prior) lyrics that conjure 9/11, e.g. "tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad sad songs"
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Paula - 2008-08-16 10:42:08
One more response to Chris's comment that I meant to add earlier: although I think 9/11--the event itself--is a clunky and almost certainly doomed-to-fail topic for books, films, etc., we also have to accept that fact that its themes are going to come up in our art, collectively, as we continue to process and address the core issues.
To give a dorky example: what are Cylons if not stand-ins for a new kind of enemy that we never had before, playing by different rules? What is the Galactica but a stand-in for our country, and the fleet = the rest of the world.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-16 15:01:22
Paula--Interesting example with the BG. Science fiction seems to be the perfect realm in which to explore such themes without stumbling over cliches and redundancy. The movie and show, Alien Nation did a great job with racism, immigration, xenophobia... the difficulties of newcomers adapting to a new world and a new culture... assimilation, nationalism, ethnic identity, pride and awareness. Certainly not new themes in art, but well handled--the writers/creators should really be commended. The X-Men, in comic book form anyway, did a great job as well, though the films fell far short of the depth of the original writing.
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MacGregor - 2008-08-16 15:25:48
In recent months, whilst mining the depths of my own history for this memoir project, I keep coming across songs that somehow, by choice and often by accident, became the soundtrack for specific time periods. For several months after 911 I found it hard to listen to anything but instrumentals. There were few songs that either explained my feelings or soothed in any way. But more personally, the summer of 1975 was a big one for me, and there are songs I've hardly heard since then that always recapture that... 10CC's I'm Not In Love, Orleans' Still The One, Maureen McGovern doing that song from the Poseidon Adventure, War's Why Can't We Be Friends, and anything from Captain Fantastic... basically all the AM radio hits of that summer... those rare moments when I hear any of it now I get very nostalgic. Takes me right back to the Jersey shore and I can smell Coppertone and hear pinball machines.
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chris - 2008-08-16 15:41:08
There is Soul Couhing song "is Chicago, is not Chicago" written in 98 or so. The recurring lyric is
"A man drives a plane into the chrysler building". That song, one of my favorites, got kicked out of the cycle pretty soon after 9/11.
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WVDan - 2008-08-17 07:41:38
The best 9-11 song I've heard is"Beautiful Day" by Beth Sorrentino, formerly of Suddenly Tammy. Gorgeous, not clunky at all. The mp3 is online somewhere.
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Paula - 2008-08-17 19:11:27
You can hear that track here
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MacGregor - 2008-08-17 22:59:07
Wow... so Beth Sorrentino proved me wrong. It can be done!
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MacGregor - 2008-08-18 14:54:20
The poet BILLY COLLINS did a good job with the very cumbersome topic as well.
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Baby Party - 2008-08-18 17:02:32
You know what pisses me off? That my feelings and grief about 9/11 (as a New Yorker and as someone who lost a friend in the towers) not only is expected by the current admininstration to serve the purpose of their craven aims and warmongering; but is also scrutinized by the left (and I consider myself far to the left, and fully capable of separating my feelings about 9/11 from my political opinions about it) for selfishness, triviality, and general un-pc-ness. It does seem hard to make art about this, and I have not exposed myself to much because I'm afraid of opening that wound, but I hope people don't stop trying, media focus or not. There have been great works about art about grief and tragedy and death and war for millenia (and lots of sentimental crap, too). Media and political exploitation are conditions under which many of them were created, but no reason for artists to avoid the topic if they feel compelled and up to the challenge. So there's my rant.
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