I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH in concert from NPR (July 7, 2009 at Washington DC’s 9:30 Club).

I’m not sure how I learned that this show was online.  But I was pretty delighted to see NPR hosting a live Sonic Youth show (this is actually the 2nd Sonic Youth show they’ve hosted and the older one is still online.  Sorry, the previous concert is removed, but there’s a three song set from WXPN (with interview) available here).

The coolest aspect of this is that it is downloadable.  The uncool aspect is that it is one long stream, so it’s not easy to split.  Although they do give a track listing, which is nice.

This is a good, if somewhat mellow show.  It features all of their new album, The Eternal, as well as a few choice oldies: “Hey Joni,” “Shadow of a Doubt,” and the opener, “Tom Violence.”  There’s not a lot of crazy noise, and most of the songs don’t last more than 4 or 5 minutes.  In fact, the photos show pretty standard guitar setup (no drum sticks in guitar strings or anything).

I was only able to listen on really crappy headphones, which I ‘m sure do nothing to the layers of noise that the band produces, but as soon as I can get it switched over for car playing, I’m sure it’ll bust out the speakers.

The whole set is about 90 minutes.

And if anyone knows just what is going on at the 59 minute mark (just before “White Cross”), and possibly even what song that is, let me know!”

[READ: July 26, 2009] “This is Water” [sort of]

I hadn’t been planning to read any other DFW pieces before I finished Infinite Jest (why, I figured, confuse the issue?).  But when I was looking around Amazon for something or other, I saw this “new” book and was obviously intrigued.  Then I read the reviews, and almost every review (both 1 and 5 star) said that it is a speech from 2005 commencement at Kenyan College and that it’s available online.

But now, with the publication of the book, it pretty much isn’t available online anymore.  [I found my copy though the Internet Archive, and marginalia.org.]  The copy that I have isn’t exactly the same as the book (in the only part I compared, the word “uniquely” appears in the book where it didn’t in the transcript, while at the same time, in the transcript there’s a preface that is funny and endearing which isn’t in the book).  But for all intents and purposes, let’s say that I have read the book.  (Plus it was easier to put the cover image than to find an image from the speech).

The reason not to buy the book: it is only this speech.  The speech printed out online to 7 pages.  The book itself is 144 pages, with basically one sentence per page.  Weird.  This is totally a library checkout or a download situation.  Although, when I finally saw the book in Barnes & Noble, I realized the kind of book it is: it’s a small “gift” type book, square, about 4 inches tall, with large print, the kind of thing that you might give to a graduating senior if you weren’t exactly sure what else to get him or her.  Although interestingly, it was tucked away in the philosophy section.

Anyhow, the speech is pretty great.  And those who fear his high-falutin’ langauge will note that it is absent here.   This is a speech for just graduated kids (and their parents).  It details the uses of a liberal arts education (and the use is mostly to be able to make good decisions).  Or more importantly, to be fully aware of your surroundings.  The title refers to a joke that fish don’t know what water is.  And we, likewise, take the obvious for granted.

He also, hilariously, details dullness and tedium of everyday life (specifically the grocery store and its soul-deadening lights).  You can decide to be pissy about the crowded store or the traffic jam or to try and think about it in a different way.

The speech is funny, it is thought-filled, and, in terms of Infinite Summer, it was very well-timed as a digression.  Because a major portion of it sounds like part of his A.A. section of IJ.  In fact, I was convinced that he was quoting from himself.  This would have been especially funny, since he ends the section by saying “On one level we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, cliches, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. [emphasis mine]”.  But I don’t think he quotes directly from IJ.

The kernel of the decision-making is that there is no such thing as not worshiping.  And it is advisable to choose a spiritual type thing to worship–“be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some inviolable set of ethical principles”–because anything else will eat you alive.  Worship money and you’ll never have enough, worship beauty, and you’ll always feel ugly, worship power and you will need more and more power.

But these are default settings, and you can’t feel bad if you tend towards these ideas.  It takes a lot to get past them, and ideally, your education will help you makes these decisions.

And so, it comes as something of a summary of one of the points o IJ. And that’s pretty useful to have as a way to keep focused on the task at hand.

Even if you don’t want to read IJ, or you’ve given up on it, track down this speech, it humanizes DFW in a way that many of the passagaes of IJ do, if you let them (and you get to them).

I wish I had DFW as my commencement speaker (although he was unknown when I commenced) because my speaker was a journalist for CNN or something like that and who the hell cared what she had to say (the fact that I can’t remember her name says something, although I think it was Woodward (although clearly not of “and Bernstein fame”)).

This is pretty heady stuff for a commencement speech. And I have to wonder what any of the grads in the audience thought at the time.  Indeed, had any of them read IJ?  And what a pre-graduation challenge THAT would have been!