I recall writing how at some point circa 1987 I had an epiphany that there was no longer room for Madonna in my music world. That's actually pretty accurate, and it had to do with hearing Suzanne Vega. Suzanne and Madonna tended to cancel one another in teenage record collections in 1980s, as anecdotal evidence suggests.
So yeah, I never listened to Madonna Ciccone's albums after True Blue.
Dopamine remembers that album--it always remembers early-to-mid 80s pop. I'm listening to True Blue now, as it rains so hard that there's a flash flood warning, and I'm cleaning the room that's Nick's and my bedroom and also my office. Tomorrow I start teaching again.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Saturday, August 25, 2012
The Latest Tesla Craze
It's about the fact that he never got rich as much about his inventions. In the 21st century, Tesla gets reinvented as Edison for and of the 99%. Discuss. Thanks to Sven Clem Cvek Šubrak for this link. Or: the fascination with Steve Jobs dies with the man, but Tesla lives on.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Food Food
Today I bit into a piece of bread with mystery meat pate of Croatian provenance. (Pure nostalgia food that I brought home from a recent visit to Cleveland. I could find this pate in Chicago, but I don't tend to go looking for it. It always waits for me in my brother and sis-in-law's house in the most rock'n'roll city in Ohio.) While eating this delicacy, I was watching a video clip from the campiest Yugoslav horror comedy of the 1980s, Strangler vs. Strangler. Why that film was not recognized in Cannes or by the US Academy of Moving Pictures (or whatever the Oscar thing is called) I will never know. According to the IMDB, it did get some love at the Chicago International Film Festival, in that it was shown there in 1985. While watching the said clip, I managed to hurt my jaw, some joint up there on the upper right side where the jaw meets the skull.
That made me think about my poor choice to eat a big piece of white bread made out of genetically manipulated wheat, I'm sure, with the salty, non-nutritious nostalgia pate spread on it.
A few hours later, I was getting hungry again, but this time I felt the urge to eat some fish. Off to Pete's on my trusty old bike. Once there, I couldn't decide between salmon and tilapia fillets. Got both.
Once home, I proceeded to fry up that salmon (a half-pounder, enough for two servings, 4 bucks, can't beat that), later ate half of it with a side of grits mixed with goat cheese and topped with boiled (really briefly) arugula. But before all that, I cut of up one of tilapia fillets into little cubes and ordered it to marinate in my freshly squeezed lime juice. It obeyed, what else.
Jalapeno peppers fought back, as if they were not happy to join diced tomatoes, onions, and chopped cilantro along with lime-juice-treated tilapia for my ceviche. They, the jalapenos, kept biting, leaving their capsaicin in the pores of my skin. It's still here. But guess what. It feels kind of good. Just a good, warm, tingling sensation.
Baby, baby, close your eyes now...
That made me think about my poor choice to eat a big piece of white bread made out of genetically manipulated wheat, I'm sure, with the salty, non-nutritious nostalgia pate spread on it.
A few hours later, I was getting hungry again, but this time I felt the urge to eat some fish. Off to Pete's on my trusty old bike. Once there, I couldn't decide between salmon and tilapia fillets. Got both.
Once home, I proceeded to fry up that salmon (a half-pounder, enough for two servings, 4 bucks, can't beat that), later ate half of it with a side of grits mixed with goat cheese and topped with boiled (really briefly) arugula. But before all that, I cut of up one of tilapia fillets into little cubes and ordered it to marinate in my freshly squeezed lime juice. It obeyed, what else.
Jalapeno peppers fought back, as if they were not happy to join diced tomatoes, onions, and chopped cilantro along with lime-juice-treated tilapia for my ceviche. They, the jalapenos, kept biting, leaving their capsaicin in the pores of my skin. It's still here. But guess what. It feels kind of good. Just a good, warm, tingling sensation.
Baby, baby, close your eyes now...
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Live at Quenchers
Vedran shot these on 8/10 at Quenchers and posted them on youtube.
"Up on the El"
"Lullaby"
To Vedran and the rest of the friends who made it: many thanks!
"Up on the El"
"Lullaby"
To Vedran and the rest of the friends who made it: many thanks!
Some Conceptual Changes
I will go ahead and begin using this blog not just for random musings, but for announcements as well--to announce a show or a publication or a reading. I believe people can sign up to follow this blog by e-mail pretty easily. That means they'll get my spam only if they really want to take the time to sign up. That's only fair, isn't it?
Saturday, July 21, 2012
A Friend's Gift to Herself
Sometimes (only sometimes) Marxism can't explain things. Here's one. Material conditions determine everything. But do they? Take these two types of material conditions:
1) When I was in my early 20s, I was a refugee, moving from one small apartment to another with my impoverished family. I was attending Belgrade University and later the Center for Women's Studies and most of my meals consisted of a slice of bread with some kind of a spread on it, usually jam. (A slice of a real loaf, granted, not the wonder bread nonsense.) I couldn't travel--I had no money and no legitimate passport. I had no job other than occasional tutoring.
2) Now, in my late 30s, I can afford a small apartment in Chicago where I live with only one person, my husband. We have enough food, sometimes we even eat out or order in. I can't travel outside of the US at the moment, but soon enough I will be. Meanwhile, I fly to a different US city for an academic conference about twice a year now. I have a brand new Ph.D. Some say that, as a grad student, I lived below poverty line, but compared to my early 20s (and late teens and mid and late 20s as well), I am rich. In the fall, I'll have my very first full-time college-teaching job.
Despite these two sets of contrasting material conditions, my creative process is much the same. Ideas for and realizations of poems, songs, and prose pieces come to me in waves, and the content is not that radically different either. Yet the world is a different place in many ways now. (That's why you also always need some Freud along with your Marx.)
Of course, I'm pushing this critique of the Marxist theory merely as a stylistic/rhetorical trick. Ta-daaa!
But the point is that certain things do influence your creative process much more than the relative poverty/riches you live in. Basically, it boils down to time. If your workload is more than full time, and plus you're a parent, you simply don't have the time (I imagine) for ideas to pop up, brew, and get realized.
Here's what a writer friend I've known since our early-to-mid 20s, whose free time is very limited, has just started: http://simplecreativeyear.wordpress.com/ She will spend 5 minutes each day doing something simple and creative and she'll document it on her blog. It's her gift to herself for her 38th birthday, but she might not realize that it's also her gift to all of her friends and admirers. Happy birthday, and good luck, KS!
1) When I was in my early 20s, I was a refugee, moving from one small apartment to another with my impoverished family. I was attending Belgrade University and later the Center for Women's Studies and most of my meals consisted of a slice of bread with some kind of a spread on it, usually jam. (A slice of a real loaf, granted, not the wonder bread nonsense.) I couldn't travel--I had no money and no legitimate passport. I had no job other than occasional tutoring.
2) Now, in my late 30s, I can afford a small apartment in Chicago where I live with only one person, my husband. We have enough food, sometimes we even eat out or order in. I can't travel outside of the US at the moment, but soon enough I will be. Meanwhile, I fly to a different US city for an academic conference about twice a year now. I have a brand new Ph.D. Some say that, as a grad student, I lived below poverty line, but compared to my early 20s (and late teens and mid and late 20s as well), I am rich. In the fall, I'll have my very first full-time college-teaching job.
Despite these two sets of contrasting material conditions, my creative process is much the same. Ideas for and realizations of poems, songs, and prose pieces come to me in waves, and the content is not that radically different either. Yet the world is a different place in many ways now. (That's why you also always need some Freud along with your Marx.)
Of course, I'm pushing this critique of the Marxist theory merely as a stylistic/rhetorical trick. Ta-daaa!
But the point is that certain things do influence your creative process much more than the relative poverty/riches you live in. Basically, it boils down to time. If your workload is more than full time, and plus you're a parent, you simply don't have the time (I imagine) for ideas to pop up, brew, and get realized.
Here's what a writer friend I've known since our early-to-mid 20s, whose free time is very limited, has just started: http://simplecreativeyear.wordpress.com/ She will spend 5 minutes each day doing something simple and creative and she'll document it on her blog. It's her gift to herself for her 38th birthday, but she might not realize that it's also her gift to all of her friends and admirers. Happy birthday, and good luck, KS!
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Hitsville UK Cover
This is the first track for the project "Uspavanke za Stashu/Lullabies for Stasha." Stasha is my baby niece, a superb product of Zorica and Marko Jankovic.
This track is of course by The Clash, written by my favorite troubadour Mick Jones.
Stay tuned for more songs in the coming days! All recorded at home, typically in one take, plus vocal overdubs. That's the plan.
This track is of course by The Clash, written by my favorite troubadour Mick Jones.
Stay tuned for more songs in the coming days! All recorded at home, typically in one take, plus vocal overdubs. That's the plan.
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