Busy busy busy. The machinery of life is complicated and unpredictable.

This post is lifted from Feuilleton.

“Invisible Jukebox is one of the longest running regular features in The Wire magazine, a cross between music interview and music quiz in which a different interviewee each month is asked to listen to a piece of music and identify the title and artist.”

The Wire back issues can be found at the Internet Archive.

1991
• Mark Springer
• John Harle
• Bob Stewart
• Kate & Anna McGarrigle
• Leon Redbone
• Bill Bruford
• Taj Mahal

1992
• Cabaret Voltaire
• Asley Maher
• James Moody
• Julian Lloyd Webber
• Steve Martland
• Ali Farka Toure
• Humphrey Lyttleton & Acker Bilk
• Billy Jenkins
• Neneh Cherry

1993
• Sonic Youth
• Don Pullen
• Coldcut
• Jack Bruce
• Lester Bowie
• Lydia Lunch
• Pee Wee Ellis
• Paul Weller
• Holger Czukay

1994
• James MacMillan
• Elvis Costello
• Steve Albini
• June Tabor
• Saint Etienne
• Ryuichi Sakamoto

1995
• John Peel
• Mark E. Smith
• Anne Dudley
• Future Sound Of London
• Bruce Gilbert
• Peter Hammill
• Mark Isham
• Robert Wyatt

1996
• Gavin Bryars
• Goldie
• Mixmaster Morris
• Courtney Pine
• Philip Glass
• 808 State
• Ice T
• Barry Adamson
• John Cale
• Henry Rollins
• Diamanda Galás
• James Chance

1997
• Harold Budd
• The Orb
• Airto Moreira
• Jah Wobble
• Sonic Boom
• Ivor Cutler
• Adrian Sherwood
• Arto Lindsay
• Van Dyke Parks
• Stereolab
• 4 Hero
• Bootsy Collins

1998
• Tortoise
• Julian Cope
• Suicide
• David Thomas
• LTJ Bukem
• Jesus & Mary Chain
• Spiritualized
• Talvin Singh
• Ken Kesey
• Derrick May
• Squarepusher
• Derek Bailey

1999
• Jim O’Rourke
• Autechre
• Kevin Shields
• Natacha Atlas
• Alec Empire
• Stock, Hausen & Walkman
• Blixa Bargeld
• John Paul Jones
• Terry Riley
• Lee Konitz
• Caetano Veloso

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 031 of 100)

Since it was looping through my head this morning, this week’s music segment includes “What the Hell Is It This Time” by the Sparks. Have you seen the new Sparks doc? I haven’t seen it yet, but I love anyone who can put humor in their music. For a minute I was thinking about making this an all-Sparks list (but just songs from the 21st century) but decided that would essentially mean just posting L’il Beethoven.

One of the things that made be fall in love with Cibelle was her cover of Raymond Scott’s “Lightworks.” The original and her cover both make the list this week.

There’s also some Hamid El Shaeri, Piero Umiliani (who is best known for “Mah Nà Mah Nà”), Jackie Venson’s latest, some Tackhead (from my youth! I wore this album out), a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song that I think isn’t about Jesus, Esquerita, who taught Little Richard everything, and concluding with a little anti-fascist anthem. I hope you’re right, Woody.

One of the ways I track down new (to me) music is through Bandcamp Daily.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 030 of 100)

Occasionally I’ll randomly select a movie from TCM to watch. Sunday I scored when I watched Stranger on the Third Floor. Not a good movie by most measures, but great German expressionist lighting and sets, and weird postures by the actors (‘throwing shapes’ I think Vince Noir calls it).

Today’s choice was amazing in its own way. I could tell it was a special kind of cringeworthiness when it started with an upbeat tune about the awesomeness of slavery (or slav’ry as they call it).

If this is slavery,

long live slavery!

If that’s it, slavery,

I do not want to be free

I do not want to be free!

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 029 of 100)

I spent some of the afternoon idly browsing through A correct and authentic narrative of the Indian war in Florida with a description of Maj. Dade’s massacre, and an account of the extreme suffering, for want of provision, of the army—having been obliged to eat horses’ and dogs’ flesh, &c, &c. by Captain James Barr.

I was struck by the casual brutality of the following passage. This is how the soldiers treated other soldiers.

“[February] 29th [1836]—Buried another Louisiana volunteer, named Gray. On his arrival at Tampa Bay, he had become extremely ill, and was left behind on the sick list, when General Gaines marched; soon after, his malady turned to madness, which was, I fear, confirmed by the treatment he received. Instead of being properly attended to, he was chained by the leg, outside the Fort, with nothing whatever to shade him from the burning sun. He was kept in this state several days; he was at length admitted into the hospital, but it was too late; he died soon after. Poor fellow! He perished far from his friends and home, the victim of the grossest negligence and brutality. Such conduct in the medical department should not be overlooked.”

Barr was in Louisana in January 1836 when he decided to volunteer to travel to Florida and fight the Seminoles who didn’t want to be forcibly removed. Initially his company was assigned to guard Fort Brooke, so the first part is just reporting on what is going on around the Fort.

“On the 12th, I received the unwelcome intelligence that my company had been selected to remain in the Fort, to guard the sick and baggage, and to my great mortification was compelled to march inside the piquets.”

Barr’s regiment left Florida at the beginning of May, so this brief diary covers February, March, April of 1836.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 028 of 100)

Today I started Taste of Marrow by Sarah Gailey, the second of the River of Teeth series.

I loved the first novella River of Teeth and recommended it to anyone I thought would enjoy an alt-historical America where gender-bending cowboys rode hippos instead of horses. Well, maybe not cowboys, but definitely hippo riders.

Here’s the blurb from River of Teeth:

“In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.

“Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.

“This was a terrible plan.

“Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.

Here’s the blurb of Taste of Marrow:

“A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its greatest waterway.

“Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: “And not a soul escaped alive.”

“In the aftermath of the Harriet catastrophe, that crew has scattered to the winds. Some hunt the missing lovers they refuse to believe have died. Others band together to protect a precious infant and a peaceful future. All of them struggle with who they’ve become after a long life of theft, murder, deception, and general disinterest in the strictures of the law.”

These books are definitely part of the ‘cozy weird’ genre I’m loving right now. You can get the two novellas in a single volume titled American Hippo.

Last year I read Upright Women Wanted about queer librarians in what seems like the old west US, but is actually the future. That had a similar cozy feel, but I don’t know if all of Gailey’s work is that way. I kind of suspect not, given the description of The Echo Wife.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 027 of 100)

My current escapist lit is Defekt by Nino Cipri. I read Finna over the summer and when I saw there was a…well, not sequel exactly, but another work in the same world…I picked it up without hesitation.

These are novella length (or possibly just short novels), and I found them to be well-paced comforting weirdness. Is that a genre? Cozy weirdness? That’s the genre I want. This might be what Charlie Jane Anders has in mind with the term ‘sweetweird‘.

Anyway, here’s the blurb for Defekt:

“Derek is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn’t need time off.

“To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team — four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?”

And here’s the blurb for Finna.

“When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store — but not that one — slips through a portal to another dimension, it’s up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company’s bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.

“To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.”

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 026 of 100)

BLOGGING PROGRESS REPORT: Today is day 25 of 100 days of blogging. So far I’m enjoying it. Sometimes it’s challenging to find something to write about, or something I want to point to. This has led me to evaluate my own information diet. Why am I not finding more cool stuff to share or to think about?

FAIRY UPDATE: I’ve made substantial progress into the fairy research. I have a pretty solid outline and today I spent quite a bit of time working on the first draft. I’ve kind of had May as a loose deadline, and after today’s work I think I might have a first draft by then (or maybe a 0th draft I can start turning into a presentation).

SCHOLARLY WRITING THAT COULD BE POETRY: This is the opening paragraph of a chapter titled “The Invisibles: Toward a Phenomenology of the Spirits” by David Abram in the book The Handbook of Contemporary Animism edited by Graham Harvey.

“To live is to dance with an unknown partner whose steps we can never wholly predict, to improvise within a field of forces whose shifting qualities we may feel as they play across our skin, or as they pulse between our cells, yet whose ultimate nature we can never grasp or possess in thought. To affirm our own animal existence, and so to awaken inside the world, is to renounce the pretension of a view from outside that might some day finally fathom and figure every aspect of the world’s workings. It is to acknowledge the horizon of uncertainty that surrounds any instance of knowledge, to accept that our life is at every point nourished and sustained by the mysterious.”

THE LIMITS OF SERENDIPITY ON THE INTERNET: To me, serendipity seems harder than ever on the internet. Since my attention is a commodity and is constantly being directed by commercial forces, it feels less likely than ever that I’ll stumble across something weird and unexpected that sparks my curiosity. That stuff is still out there when I specifically look for it, but part of the joy of serendipity is discovering stuff I never knew existed, much less could ask for by name.

(Horace Walpole in writing about “The Three Princes of Serendip” captures the meaning of serendipity – “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.”)

NO ATTRIBUTION: An article I’m reading quotes the following, but doesn’t provide attribution. (I couldn’t find anything on Google, but I suspect it’s probably Yeats). I love the conciseness of this —

“The mind changing changes all.”

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 025 of 100)

Here’s the David Abrams paragraph from above broken into a more poetical-looking format:

“The Invisibles”

To live is to dance

with an unknown partner whose steps

we can never wholly predict,

to improvise within a field of forces

whose shifting qualities we may feel

as they play across our skin,

or as they pulse between our cells,

yet whose ultimate nature

we can never grasp

or possess in thought.

To affirm our own animal existence,

and so to awaken inside the world,

is to renounce the pretension

of a view from outside

that might some day finally fathom and figure

every aspect of the world’s workings.

It is to acknowledge

the horizon of uncertainty that surrounds

any instance of knowledge,

to accept that our life is at every point

nourished and sustained by the mysterious.

Here’s a news report about a project some friends of mine are working on.

Crab Devil is the overarching organization. The Peninsularium is the immersive art experience. The Crab Devil space (when it opens) will include a craft brewery (Deviant Libation), an art gallery (Tempus Projects), and the Peninsularium.

They’ve been putting up some cool behind-the-scenes stuff on their instagram lately.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 024 of 100)

At lunch the other day the topic of country music came up and someone asked me what country music I liked. 

I couldn’t really think of much at the time, so I thought tonight I’d put together a country and country-adjacent list. I don’t know if this is my “favorite” but this is what had me grooving tonight.

(100 Days of Blogging: Post 023 of 100)

What is the discipline that studies the asking of questions?

I mention the following occasionally in my work presentations:

“A large majority of recent graduates from top U.S. universities and colleges reported that they felt that college failed to prepare them to ask questions of their own.”

“Principled Uncertainty: Why Learning to Ask Good Questions Matters More than Finding Answers” by Barbara Fister (Fister is a librarian notable enough to have her own Wikipedia entry).

Fister’s essay came out only a few days ago, but I read the research to which she’s referring in 2016.

It occurred to me this morning because I was considering writing a longer essay (series of blog posts?) on question asking.

Perhaps instead of teaching children for twelve years to answer questions, we should be teaching them how to ask better questions.

If you want to know what I do with my days during February (and September) the section “No Question About It” (in the Principled Uncertainty article) captures it perfectly.

“College instructors are likely to say they assign inquiry to encourage creativity and original thought. In practice many research assignments are designed primarily to expose students to preexisting scholarship and to promote familiarity with library resources and academic writing conventions.”

I’m the librarian that explains library resources.

The whole essay is well worth reading.

That said, it never really gets into the question of how do we ask better questions. How do we teach students to ask better questions? How do we teach ourselves to ask better questions? If I were going to put together a syllabus on asking better questions, what would be on that syllabus?

If you like this Fister article, you might also want to read her “Lizard People in the Library” from last year.

In this same vein, a few years ago danah boyd gave a talk reflecting on how information/media literacy’s mantra of “do your own research” helped feed today’s abundant crop of conspiracy.

“It’s one thing to talk about interrogating assumptions when a person can keep emotional distance from the object of study. It’s an entirely different thing to talk about these issues when the very act of asking questions is what’s being weaponized. This isn’t historical propaganda distributed through mass media. Or an exercise in understanding state power. This is about making sense of an information landscape where the very tools that people use to make sense of the world around them have been strategically perverted by other people who believe themselves to be resisting the same powerful actors that we normally seek to critique.”

danah boyd

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