Music for Airports

Prior to my fact-finding trip a few weeks ago, I had never flown before. I suppose I am a product of car culture; if I wanted to go somewhere, I’ve always driven. This is difficult when you are on a limited schedule though. Flying is faster. I’ve done buses and trains, but never planes.

I notice that almost no one writes about airports; they write about destinations, and conferences, and almost everything but the intervening flight, or negotiating the ubiquitous airport. I’ve been known (prior to 9-11) to loiter at airports. I’ve always thought they were interesting spaces. My only experiences were with LAX (Los Angeles) and Little Rock’s airport, picking up and dropping off people. As a smoker, my perspective always centers on how difficult it is to get “out” of the damn things to level out my body chemistry. The last time I was at LAX they had little arboretums set up so that smokers could step out without running the gauntlet to get outdoors; at Little Rock, the place is small enough where it is only a minor hike to get out of it.

Boarding the little CRJ for the first leg of my flight, I wasn’t in the best of shape physically. A persistent ear-infection had everyone around me worried about how I’d deal with the change in pressure. That proved to be the least of my problems. Nothing was open at LR airport, so I was forced to drink a coke because I was so parched. Without bourbon or rum, I find coke completely intolerable. It is too damn sweet. After getting on the flight, my partner insisted that I chew gum. I haven’t even tasted gum in twenty years. I forgot how sweet it was. The combination of the coke and the gum hit my stomach like a bomb. I was nauseous already. The flight was worse than a carnival ride, with the little plane bobbing and weaving and leaving my stomach always fifty feet behind.

Arriving in Detroit, I immediately began looking for some sort of exit where I might smoke a cigarette and calm myself. It was shocking to find that it was probably a two-mile journey to find any area that allowed smoking. Along the way though, I was distracted by a light-show a football field long. The movie doesn’t do it justice. I’m used to being charged admission for such spectacle. It seems to me that this is what happens when old acid-heads design airports. At least it distracted me from the uproar in my stomach. I tried to drink a cappuccino that was so hot it nearly melted its way through the thin paper cup, racing down the moving walk-way amid the cute flashy-lights and airport music.

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I’ve been working on a bunch of stuff that has me distracted right now. However, I hope to have actual content again sometime soon. In the meantime, I thought I would at least poke my head out to keep the blog from disappearing again.

*This just in:

I must ask room for a single verse of Mr. Landis’s poetry. It is from an address “To John Landis, Author and Artist,” by himself.

“Thy graphic pictures of real life,
In every part in keeping rife;
Brilliant colors and glowing tint,
Like gold thrice refined from the mint
Studded with agates and diamonds round,
In dazzling brilliancy abound:
Astonishing to contemplate!
Masterly they are! yes, first-rate!”

If it be not a paradox—the one sane point of Mr. Landis’s character is his monomania for money-getting,— or, more briefly, his money-mania. The last time I heard of him he was selling twenty or thirty a day—the net profit amounting to twice the pay of a member of Congress. This, you will agree with him, is “masterly, yes, first-rate!”

from Brother Jonathan, March 4, 1843

I finally got around to defending my thesis proposal on Monday. Busy Busy Busy. Writing Writing Writing.

Holiday Traditions

This evening, I was reminded that it is nearly time for what has become an important holiday tradition: Titus Andronicus.

It started innocently enough.

I read the play on Christmas day sitting on my parents couch.

When I got to the penultimate scene, dinner was ready.

The next year, I purchased the Julie Taymor film version, and screened it just before the holiday to get myself in the correct mood. The year after that, there was an added twist. I timed baking a cherry pie to coincide with the final scene in the film, as I screened it with my girlfriend.

She brought it up today: “It’s just about Titus time isn’t it?”

It’s curious how these little traditions are formed. Rather than Frosty the Snowman or a Charlie Brown Christmas, I’m in the mood for Titus. It may be macabre, but it’s true.

It’s a wonderful life, eh?

Madam Scribblerus

from Historic Houses of New Jersey by W. Jay Mills, 1902

In the last years of the eighteenth century, during our breach with France, Madam Scribblerus conceived a violent aversion for everything French. Other Perth Amboy dames might look to France for their manners and their gewgaws, but she ” detested” the nation. Taking the matter to heart, she set about to improve the perverted taste of the town, and hurled several bombastic poems at the ” frog-eaters.” The following one, written at the beginning of Jefferson’s administration, is a good example of them.

AN EPIGRAM

Says William to Thomas I’ll hold you a bet
That the French are confoundedly frighted;
They thought they our Federal Ships had o’erset,
But they find that they staunch are, and righted.

They slighted our Pleno’s and made a demand
That we a shameful Tribute should pay them,
Or else (as they plundered at Sea) on the Land
Neither Rapine nor Murder should stay them!

But those who are born in the woods can’t be scared
By the croaking of Bull-frogs in ditches.
Nor will we of Frenchmen at all be afraid,
A people who’re sans honor, sans breeches.

They’ve taken our coats from our backs, and say too
That they will have our shirts and our smocks, air;
But faith if they try it the project they’ll rue,
For we’ll give them some flesh-burning knocks, sir!

They’ve tried ev’ry art which deception could frame,
But our Congress too wise were to heed them.
They’ve Heaven defied, and have put aside shame,
And have gone all lengths the Devil would lead them.

Little of Elizabeth Kearny’s work ever saw the light of the press, and it is sad to think much that would have interested posterity should have been lost when the original manuscript was destroyed. Although apart from Philip Freneau, Joel Barlow, and Timothy and Theodore Dwight, the four most noted disciples of American literature of the time, she deserves a small place in the history of our belles-lettres. In her own Perth Amboy she was a much lauded celebrity and had her large group of admirers. These were the solace of a life adversity had narrowed and blighted when in its full bloom. Their praise to her ears was the world’s sweetest lullaby. When surrounded by them she forgot the whispers of carping care and smiled with Calliope.

R*pture

For absolutely no good reason at all, I was thinking about the similarity between two words: rapture and rupture. The connection is obtuse at best; the Happy Tutor had been going rapture happy and I had been reading an interview with Bruno Latour that argued that the great rupture with history proclaimed by modernism never occurred. Of course, it seems pertinent to point out that there hasn’t been much rapture either.

Standing in the shower, I started playing with the vowels. There is very little difference in vocal position between æ and ε. I don’t know why it made me inordinately happy to realize that the shift was directly equivalent to the change brought on by the great vowel shift in English. So then, the progression from rapture to rupture is phonetically understandable.

However, exactly why it would seem normal to travel from a happy word to a sad one is still a bit beyond my grasp. Ruptures hurt.

Derelict

In looking at this illustration from Willis J. Abbot’s 1897 book The Blue Jackets of 1812, I was confused. Why was it captioned “derelict”? The young lady depicted does not seem at all derelict to me. Perhaps there was a derelict inside the object she peers into? It took pages of reading for my thick skull to register that the hand-carried device she is peering into is the derelict in question. The pages recount the departure of the British after the Revolutionary war. The ostentatious carriage is abandoned, and a matter for the curiosity of a young lady.

I can be really dense sometimes.

Wanna be a Member?

There is an old Betty Boop cartoon which I love called “Bimbo’s Initiation” where Betty’s odd canine love interest, Bimbo, is beset upon by droves of frat-boy like creatures who insist that he become a member of their organization. The chorus repeats endlessly: “Wanna be a member? . . . Wanna be a member? . . . Wanna be a member? . . .” Bimbo replies over and over: NO!!!!! In the end, the oddly druidic frat-creatures take off their robes and reveal that they are all replicant Betty Boops.

For some reason, the rhetorical strategy (and the tune which plays when you surf in) of NRA Blacklist sounds much the same. The every-changing parade of celebrities in the top corner says something about our culture. “Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?” [via Dust from a Distant Sun]

Methinks they are barking up the wrong tree of the rugged individualist American vibe, although they are likely to gain many signatures. It reminds me of something the director of an arts council said to me once—“I don’t mind politics in art, as long as I agree with the politics.” Why on earth would it be supposed that I might want to have my name placed next to Ben Affleck? NO!!!!!!

Perhaps it’s just the hope that a surfer will identify with at least one of the names that flash across the top. After all, that’s probably what the whole Charleton Heston/NRA connection was all about. However, though I am anti-gun, I am also anti-Whitney Houston. The connection is not persuasive to me at all.

Moving uncovers the strangest things. I don’t know why I’ve held onto this empty box of Nutty Bars for twenty years. Perhaps I thought that advertising collectables might go up astronomically in value. Perhaps not.

As I recall, this particular version of box-cover art was changed rapidly. I saw it on one trip to the supermarket, and on the next trip it had been changed to something else. I like to think that the graphic artist had a nice laugh at Little Debbie’s expense.