The Sound and the Fury

A kid in my Spanish class is named Gray Spottswood Atherton. Let me give you a moment for that to sink in.

. . .

Alright, moving on. I have a paper for Figal-sensei due this monday, which I’m not looking forward to writing. But, if I’m going to major in English, then I need to suck it up. The English department is offering a class completely on Ulysses next semester. I can’t describe how much I want to take this class. Unfortunately, it’s departmental honors, so I’d need a 3.25 GPA to take it. It is also Engl 274, I believe, and I haven’t taken even Engl 101, so it would be like suicide. It also conflicts with the botany class I want to take. I guess I’ll just have to hope that they offer the class again before I graduate.

The smoke from the concert made my lungs tight and full, and it took even the frozen air of fall several days to scrape clean the capsules on which the slow and steady tread of my living is beat out.

“I remember my father’s sermon on the seed, which he told by candlelight, in the church basement in Pennsylvania. It was during the blizzard of 1975. The Women’s Auxiliary sat in a circle around him, sewing blankets. He leaned across a table and said that the hour had come for us to put an ear to the seed, to hear the lightning scratched there, late news of our human spring.” Li-Young Lee The Winged Seed

I think I have too many books going right now: To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf, Book of my Nights and The Winged Seed Li-Young Lee, The Art of Fiction John Gardner, and I’m about to start Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. I think I’m going to work on them in that order.

On Friday night, my friends and I went outside and smoked hookah. Or rather, we went outside and watched John Saba smoke his hookah which he just got in the mail. Then we headed over to Tower Records, which is going out of business. This makes me very sad, because I found the store to be very cool. I bout a Psapp CD and an indie graphic novel by Alex Pardee called The Secrets of Hollywood. The graphic novel is hysterical. It consists entirely of somewhat disturbing illustrations of random, violent images with complete unrelated captions attached to them. The captions contain such shining gems of knowledge as “SpongeBob SquarePants is loosely based on the life of William Shatner,” “Christina Aguilera speaks fluent dolphin,” “Sean Penn has a nervous tick that is seamlessly edited out of each film he is in…. His tick: at the beginning of each sentence, he shouts “in the name of Elric, prince of the elves, demon be gone,” and “Mos Def’s anus is actually a portal to a dimension full of candy and wonder.” Sheer genius. Later we went to Cafe Coco, the extremely deck coffee house near campus.
I just got back from the Broken Social Scene concert. It was amazing. It was also very loud, though Natalie and Tricky, who have gone to many more concerts than I (this being my first), said that the show was at a great volume. I just don’t have rock and roll hearing. The opening band was Do Make Say Think, which turned out to be as awesome as people have said they were. Despite being not a fan of contemporary instrumental music, DMST was amazing. Actually, they shared many of the same members as BSS. Not letting social norms get in their way, BSS replaced the standard water bottle with plastic cups full of red wine; unorthodox, yet sophisticated. On a side note, smoking is bad for you. Please excuse me while I try to wash the smell of it from my clothes and hair.

Listening to: Broken Social Scene and Psapp

A video! Courtesy of Kristy!

And the days are not full enough

And the nights are not full enough

And life slips by like a field mouse

Not stirring the grass.

-Ezra Pound

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So much happened this weekend, I hardly know where to start. Let’s try chronological order:

On Friday I got to see the marching band in the football game. It was like I remembered, only smaller. Their show was very good, and I enjoyed the stands tunes immensely. I’m not sure I was that excited about the game even when I went to that school, though Emma and I were very big into stands tunes last year. Miriam and I of course stayed up late watching tv.

The parade on Saturday was cancelled due to some circumstances which I will discuss momentarily. I was very disappointed; I had really been looking forward to hearing the drumline and seeing what Aaron and Ariel had come up with for cadences. The HC dance was that night, but unfortunately I had to leave for King Lear before Miriam and Andrew went to pictures, so I didn’t get to see them dressed up. The production of King Lear which Kristy and I saw at The Goodmand Theatre was a very interesting interpretation. The sets were extravagant. The costumes were effective. The acting was excellent. The sound and lighting were explosive (often literally). The directing (and line cutting), however, were often erroneous. It felt as though the whole play had been stripped of its redemptive quality. Robert Falls seems to have edited away all traces of the theme of forgiveness, a theme which I find to be the focal point of the play. Lear should be first and foremost about the struggles amongst King Lear, Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia. It is most importantly a play about the trespasses and absolutions thereof with the royal family. The secondary focus of politics and the commentary touching them should be a very far second. Just as Hamlet has almost nothing to do with politics despite their prevalence as a backdrop, so should the politics in Lear serve only as a backdrop or highlight to the more important goings on within the immediate family of King Lear. I did not approve of the liberties taken with the characters of Edmund, Edgar, and Kent. Shakespeare’s Kent, while somewhat quick to temper, always intended well. Falls creates a malicious Kent willing to trespass against the rules of common sense civility (aka anal rape with pieces of car machinery). Edmund is presented as a heartless, cruel, greedy man, willing to destroy whomever necessary to facilitate the acquisition of his desires. This holds true in the text. However, a key set of lines in the penultimate moments before Edmund’s death was cut. These lines, indicating a repentance on behalf of Edmund, contained within them one integral facet of the message of repentance and forgiveness. Edgar, conversely, is presented as a “fop,” to use Mr. Berger-White’s word. He is first shown as a comical parody of the homosexual stereotype. Later, his madness renders him inhuman. I had seen madness in Shakespeare’s plays as always tinged with tragic nobility, containing some semblance of honor and dignity, being solely devoid of logic (and even then not always entirely illogical, as seen in Hamlet). The actor, however, did nothing to alleviate the heavy hand of Mr. Falls. It seemed that Edgar simply yelled all of his lines. Edgar, in my eyes, is one of the best characters in Lear, containing quite a bit of complexity, and more than a little humanity, compassion, and mercy. King Lear, while having its fair share of bodies at the end of the play, is not the body-strewn promontory of the end of Hamlet. The focus in Lear was never on the death toll, or even the tragic consequences of foolish actions, as Falls would have it. Falls’ message seems to be even darker, considering that the focus was placed on the darkness and corruption within the disintegrating regime of King Lear.

On Sunday I missed church to go downtown with Kristy, Austin, and Max. I was very happy to see Austin again; it had been quite a while. He’s doing a radio show now at Lake Forest College on Tuesdays from 10 am to 12 noon (www.wmxm.org). We ate at the Earwax Cafe which, despite its name, had some excellent food. I had a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich with some kind of soup that tasted like squash. I also had a very good cup of lapsang souchong tea. Afterwards we headed right across the street to Myopic Books, a used bookstore. I picked up a copy of Book of My Nights by Li-Young Lee and Futureshock by Alvin Toffler a book recommended by that most august teacher of clarinet and English, Mr. Kulikie. I also got another book, but it is a present for a special little someone so I can’t disclose the title as of yet. Due to our collective ineptitude at navigating Chicago, Max missed his bus back to school in Minnesota. This turned out to be a most fortuitous accident as I had an extra ticket to Hamlet that afternoon, and he was able to come with Kristy, Austin, and myself. The performance of Hamlet was very good, if not a little uninspired. The reading was very straightforward, and I would say “safe.” The director Terry Hands uses color (or rather the lack of color) in a fairly predictable way. Black and white are used to delineate between the “Hamlet” side of the cast and the “Claudius” side of the cast. The players were neutral and thus dressed in grey. The only real colors seen in the play were the red and gold worn by the players during The Murder of Gonzago/The Mousetrap. Although I appreciate traditionalism, I had hoped for some more depth of directing. The actors were, of course, very excellent. I find it surprising that I have nothing more to say about this production of Hamlet. They play itself is brilliant, but this production did not evoke like the Goodman production of King Lear. At any rate, I had dinner on Sunday back at home with my family and Austin.

On Monday I visited school. The mood was somewhat somber for a reason which I suppose it is acceptable to discuss here. Friday night, supposedly while driving from one party to another, [Ryan] (‘07) and [Alex] (‘06) were killed when their car slammed into a tree near Deerfield High School. [Alex], who was driving, had a BAC of well over the legal limit, and [Ryan] had marijuana in his system. The three other boys in the car have since been released from the hospital. It was for this reason that the parade was cancelled and the mood at school somewhat less mirthful than usual. This is a tragic occurrence, but I would hardly call it an accident. The word “accident” implies that the situation was beyond the control of those involved. I find it idealistic and even ignorant to claim that it was nobody’s “fault.” Of course it was somebody’s fault. In fact it’s several people’s fault. You can blame the education system for not educating teens on the possible dangers of driving intoxicated, but as a former student under this system, I can tell you that this is not the case. You can blame their parents for not instilling in their children values that prevented them from drinking, or even prevented them driving having already drunk. This may or may not be the case here. You can blame their friends for allowing them to partake of substances illegally and then allowing them to drive in an obviously altered state of mind. Having a Deerfield education, there is no way that [Ryan and Alex] did not know the dangers of driving while inebriated. Thus, you can’t say that it’s their fault for not having the common sense not to drink and drive. Of course they knew not to drink and drive. Rather, Ross and Danny are at fault for being too selfish to consider the possible effect that their actions might have on others. They were too concerned with having a good time to care about what might happen because of it. They knew that the probability of a car accident increases drastically when the driver is drunk. However, they decided to take part in this high-risk activity anyway, not giving a damn about how their actions might affect the lives of the people that loved them. In consequence, they have permanently altered the lives of their friends, family, peers, and teachers. Imagine what [Ryan's] twin must be going through due to his brother’s selfishness. I can only pray that those people whom I love will think of everyone who cares for them before doing something like this.

The somber mood at school aside, I was glad to see some of my old teachers. Miriam had Profe. Rockitis this year, which should be interesting for her. Profe. Quintero gave me a mini-lesson on direct and indirect object pronouns with reflexive verbs when I stopped by to see her, which was more than kind of her. I had a very long talk with Mr. Berger-White about the Shakespeare performances and other literature. He was impressed that I read all of Moby Dick this summer. We talked about the curriculum changes he made this year. He also suggested Gravity’s Rainbow for me to read. I’ll look into it when I have finished To the Lighthouse on which I am to report to JBDubs touching its teach-ability.

I finally headed back to school on Tuesday after a delightful late lunch with Miriam at The Cherry Pit…I mean Kevin’s Place. My flight was supposed to be at 1:10. However, this flight was cancelled. Because of this, I had to reschedule on a 2:30 plane to Dallas (because Dallas is between Chicago and Nashville and thus a logical place for a connecting flight from one to the other). In Dallas I had two hours before my 8:00 flight to Nashville. After finally arrive at Nashville I waited around for a bus, and got back to my room at 10:00, which really wasn’t that much later than my expected arrival time of 3:00. At least I got to finish A Portrait of the Artist. It was excellent.

Listening to: “Green Typewriters Part 8″ on Dusk at Cubist Castle by The Olivia Tremor Control

Midterms sure were…fun…. I’m just glad that I’ve finished. The setup for college is very different from highschool. I don’t have daily homework. I hardly even have sporadic assignments. Then all of a sudden tests sneak up on you, and you don’t really know the material because you haven’t had homework. My study skills in highschool weren’t the best, as I’m sure many of my teachers could tell you. I just cruised by on my ability to take tests really well. I’ll just have to learn how to study for tests.

May I just take one minute to reiterate how excited I am about coming home this weekend (as if I haven’t been talking about solid for the past two weeks). Here’s my schedule:

Friday: Leave for airport at 12:30-ish. Arrive home at 5-ish. Go to the DHS game and see the band. Have a good time and eat real food.

Saturday: Get up for the parade at 11:00. See Miriam and Andrew before they go to the dance. Go downtown to see a production of King Lear which apparently contains an added anal rape scene.

Sunday: Go to church in the morning. Head downtown with Austin and Kristy to see Hamlet. Eat more real food.

Monday: Hang out with Austin and see my teachers at DHS.

Tuesday: Head back to school in the afternoon.

Halloween!
Listening to: Chicago and Yellowcard (sometimes you just need some good whiny punk)
“You know some guys just can’t hold their arsenic.”