SOUNDTRACK: TOULOUSE LAUTREC-“Yesman” (2013).
Toulouse Lautrec are an alternative rock band from Romania. Once again, I would not have ever heard of them had I not looked fora song about Lautrec (since he is mentioned in this section of the reading).
Toulouse Lautrec have two albums out, Heroes and their new one Extraordinar. They sing in both Romanian and English and this song (which is the first thing that came up on my search) is entirely in English.
It starts out with some very cool guitar riffs (very math rock–I actually considered it might be an instrumental). Even the bass is doing something interesting behind the guitars. Then about 50 seconds in the vocals begin. And the singer has an almost American twang to him.
The chorus is a simple one, with ooh hoo hoo hoos. But the real fun is at the end of each verse–the I say no I Say no and I say yes I say yes.
I listened to this song a few times and really liked it a lot. It’s simple but solid alt-rock. Then I found their website and watched a few more of their videos. I really like the sound that they get–kind of buzzy guitars but otherwise very clean.
Check out the video for Yesman
and their site (which is in Romanian, but Google Translate will help you navigate)
[READ: October 20, 2013] Wittgenstein’s Mistress p. 61-120
This book is proving to be far less daunting and far more loose and fun than I anticipated. As you can see by my “read” date, I finished this almost two weeks ahead of time. In part it’s easy because unless I am gravely mistaken, there’s nothing really to “remember” about the story. There are details and I think they are ponderable, but there’s nothing that seems to really impact the story. It’s more a series of ideas.
It’s really quite an audacious piece of writing.
Wittgenstein gets his first mention on page 61
“Once Bertrand Russell took his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein to watch Alfred North Whitehead row, at Cambridge. Wittgenstein became very angry with Bertrand Russell for having wasted his day” [61].
There are some meaty existential issues brought up like
“Surely one cannot type a sentence saying that one is not thinking about something without thinking about he very thing that one says one in not thinking about” [63]. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 