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tarigwaemirAd Mundo Exteriore,
All right, so Mother is off doing laundry, which gives me some time to ramble on about the past few days. ^_^ Nothing of particular importance, really. On Sunday, my parents and I visited the Vanderbilt mansion in Long Island--Spanish Baroque architecture, with nearly every part of the house being stolen from various cathedrals, castles and monasteries (what a terrible loss of cultural heritage). I suppose we were supposed to have been impressed by all the luxury and wealth, but honestly, the bathtubs were smaller than ours. The tour guides attempted to be charming and interesting by dressing up as various members of the Vanderbilt household and speaking as if we were back in the past, year 1942, but they weren't very good actors and sounded mostly as if they were reciting from a oft-memorized script. It was mildly interesting, I suppose, but I think we enjoyed sitting on the grass on the manor grounds right below the mansion and gazing peacefully at the sea while eating peanut clusters more than the whole tour business.
On Monday, I finally got to meet the third member of Have Faith, Bamb0o-stick, who was, in fact, rather normal--much less shy in person than he is online. Marius, Bambi-chan (our, er, nickname for Bamb0o), Angelette-oniichan and I all went to see Shrek 2, which was cute and amusing, as expected, with clever allusions to Lord of the Rings, Mission Impossible, Mask of Zorro, etc. (Puss in Boots is officially my favorite character. Not that I'm alone...those kitty eyes caused the entire female audience to break out in a instinctive "Awwww..." I'm pretty sure a scientist out there has written a paper on how our reaction to babies and cuteness has evolved (I remember reading something in Discover about it a few years ago, and besides, there's probably a scientific paper on almost any imaginable natural phenomena, including champagne bubbles), so I think that naturally excuses me from indulging in that moment of sappiness. ^_^ Besides, I liked Puss even better in attack mode.)
Afterwards, Angelette and I went off by ourselves to karaoke--and oh dear, I really must be Korean, because I had so much fun and didn't even notice the two hours go by. >_> Well, I may be musically indifferent, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy singing; on the contrary, part of my lack of musical taste results from the fact that as long as I can sing along to it, I probably will tolerate it. (Well, unless it's Britney Spears twenty-five times in a row. >_<) I really do think it's a cultural thing. Even my tone-deaf father, who is probably the most unmusical Korean you'll ever meet, enjoys listening to sappy trot songs and will break out into atonal song whenever he's in a good mood. Plus, I swear Koreans have a song for almost everything that comes within their realm of experience. There's a song for newly fallen snow, for melting snow, for icicles, for five different types of sprouts, for every wildflower, for holding hands with your best friend, for holding hands with your first love, for holding hands with your mother, for skipping, for running, for walking, for standing still...I hope you get the picture. In any case, the real point being...I had a lot of fun, despite the...er...sketchy look of the place we were in. (The room was characteristically dark, lit by a disco ball and furnished in black leather. Well, that wasn't unexpected, but it was also huge because all the small rooms were taken. O_O) Definitely would like to do again sometime...although hopefully with more people.
On Tuesday, I lounged around and read (alternately) Mann's The Magic Mountain and The Riddle-Master of Hed. Actually, I'm re-reading Riddle-Master for the third time, this time in a "pay attention to the descriptions" mode. The first mode was "I need to find out the end of the story, ahh! in suspense!"; the second was "Oh, let's read more slowly and catch all those details that you didn't catch the first time when you were wolfing down the plot". Now, it's just for relaxation purposes. ^_^ As for Mann, The Magic Mountain really is very good (much easier to read than Doctor Faustus, which I've never finished, and a little less, hm, straightforward than Buddenbrooks). I also read a bit of the author's own little commentary on the book (which he wrote originally in English), and he recommends reading it twice to appreciate the musical use of leitmotiv throughout the novel. O_O I think I'll take his advice...I definitely have no conception of the larger structure of the novel at this point. Hans Castorp is a distinctly non-artistic character, or rather, a thorough bourgeois with a spark of buried, suppressed, forgotten artistic potential. Very far from Tonio Kroeger, who is born bourgeois but can't escape his artistic nature, closer perhaps to Aschenbach who buries his art in respectability (well, at the beginning of the story, I mean). Aschenbach, however, still is an artist...anyway, as Mother just reminded me, I have no right to make any broad generalizations about Hans Castorp before I've finished the book. >_< I just wanted to note, however, that it's a different experience because in all the books and short stories I've read so far, Mann usually does write about artists, whatever their relationship to conventional society, and the fact that Hans Castorp so clearly isn't makes this feel a lot different...and perhaps even a little easier. I know that Hans probably will undergo considerable development, but the fact remains that the starting point is not the same--we are beginning with the insider's perspective (inside society, I mean, although Hans is really an outsider). I guess one could say that Buddenbrooks isn't about artists either, but the way I see it, Buddenbrooks culminates in little Hans, who does have an artistic temperament.
I also wanted to say that I've missed reading books set in this era (pre-World War I Europe, late nineteenth to early twentieth century). I have no actual knowledge or experience of the setting, geographically or historically, but most of the classics I've read cluster around turn-of-the-century Europe. This "literary space" thus brings with it a certain familiarity, born not of actualities but of commonalities among the set of books I've read. I missed thinking and existing in this space. The literature I've read for the past two years have either been Modern, contemporary, American, or early nineteenth century, which are all wonderful in their own right, but not quite as embedded in my mental landscape. I'm speaking of the literary dimension, not the actual historical time period, so please apply the appropriate blinders.
Yesterday, went to see Raymonda, performed by the American Ballet Theatre, at the Metropolitan Opera House. Was rather disappointed--a company dancer actually tripped and fell--because the choreography was so out of sync with the music and the dancers lacked sufficient practice. The final pas de deux between Raymonda and Jean de Brienne was beautiful, though, and the prima ballerina was talented, even if the rest of the company looked amateurish in comparison to the NYCB. We've decided to stick to NYCB in the future, however. ::shrugs:: Oh, and the music was wonderful too, with a lot of brilliant harp solos. ^_^ Need to buy it someday.
All right, Mother's back, and off I go to watch...yes, another video. ^_^
...Tari
All right, so Mother is off doing laundry, which gives me some time to ramble on about the past few days. ^_^ Nothing of particular importance, really. On Sunday, my parents and I visited the Vanderbilt mansion in Long Island--Spanish Baroque architecture, with nearly every part of the house being stolen from various cathedrals, castles and monasteries (what a terrible loss of cultural heritage). I suppose we were supposed to have been impressed by all the luxury and wealth, but honestly, the bathtubs were smaller than ours. The tour guides attempted to be charming and interesting by dressing up as various members of the Vanderbilt household and speaking as if we were back in the past, year 1942, but they weren't very good actors and sounded mostly as if they were reciting from a oft-memorized script. It was mildly interesting, I suppose, but I think we enjoyed sitting on the grass on the manor grounds right below the mansion and gazing peacefully at the sea while eating peanut clusters more than the whole tour business.
On Monday, I finally got to meet the third member of Have Faith, Bamb0o-stick, who was, in fact, rather normal--much less shy in person than he is online. Marius, Bambi-chan (our, er, nickname for Bamb0o), Angelette-oniichan and I all went to see Shrek 2, which was cute and amusing, as expected, with clever allusions to Lord of the Rings, Mission Impossible, Mask of Zorro, etc. (Puss in Boots is officially my favorite character. Not that I'm alone...those kitty eyes caused the entire female audience to break out in a instinctive "Awwww..." I'm pretty sure a scientist out there has written a paper on how our reaction to babies and cuteness has evolved (I remember reading something in Discover about it a few years ago, and besides, there's probably a scientific paper on almost any imaginable natural phenomena, including champagne bubbles), so I think that naturally excuses me from indulging in that moment of sappiness. ^_^ Besides, I liked Puss even better in attack mode.)
Afterwards, Angelette and I went off by ourselves to karaoke--and oh dear, I really must be Korean, because I had so much fun and didn't even notice the two hours go by. >_> Well, I may be musically indifferent, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy singing; on the contrary, part of my lack of musical taste results from the fact that as long as I can sing along to it, I probably will tolerate it. (Well, unless it's Britney Spears twenty-five times in a row. >_<) I really do think it's a cultural thing. Even my tone-deaf father, who is probably the most unmusical Korean you'll ever meet, enjoys listening to sappy trot songs and will break out into atonal song whenever he's in a good mood. Plus, I swear Koreans have a song for almost everything that comes within their realm of experience. There's a song for newly fallen snow, for melting snow, for icicles, for five different types of sprouts, for every wildflower, for holding hands with your best friend, for holding hands with your first love, for holding hands with your mother, for skipping, for running, for walking, for standing still...I hope you get the picture. In any case, the real point being...I had a lot of fun, despite the...er...sketchy look of the place we were in. (The room was characteristically dark, lit by a disco ball and furnished in black leather. Well, that wasn't unexpected, but it was also huge because all the small rooms were taken. O_O) Definitely would like to do again sometime...although hopefully with more people.
On Tuesday, I lounged around and read (alternately) Mann's The Magic Mountain and The Riddle-Master of Hed. Actually, I'm re-reading Riddle-Master for the third time, this time in a "pay attention to the descriptions" mode. The first mode was "I need to find out the end of the story, ahh! in suspense!"; the second was "Oh, let's read more slowly and catch all those details that you didn't catch the first time when you were wolfing down the plot". Now, it's just for relaxation purposes. ^_^ As for Mann, The Magic Mountain really is very good (much easier to read than Doctor Faustus, which I've never finished, and a little less, hm, straightforward than Buddenbrooks). I also read a bit of the author's own little commentary on the book (which he wrote originally in English), and he recommends reading it twice to appreciate the musical use of leitmotiv throughout the novel. O_O I think I'll take his advice...I definitely have no conception of the larger structure of the novel at this point. Hans Castorp is a distinctly non-artistic character, or rather, a thorough bourgeois with a spark of buried, suppressed, forgotten artistic potential. Very far from Tonio Kroeger, who is born bourgeois but can't escape his artistic nature, closer perhaps to Aschenbach who buries his art in respectability (well, at the beginning of the story, I mean). Aschenbach, however, still is an artist...anyway, as Mother just reminded me, I have no right to make any broad generalizations about Hans Castorp before I've finished the book. >_< I just wanted to note, however, that it's a different experience because in all the books and short stories I've read so far, Mann usually does write about artists, whatever their relationship to conventional society, and the fact that Hans Castorp so clearly isn't makes this feel a lot different...and perhaps even a little easier. I know that Hans probably will undergo considerable development, but the fact remains that the starting point is not the same--we are beginning with the insider's perspective (inside society, I mean, although Hans is really an outsider). I guess one could say that Buddenbrooks isn't about artists either, but the way I see it, Buddenbrooks culminates in little Hans, who does have an artistic temperament.
I also wanted to say that I've missed reading books set in this era (pre-World War I Europe, late nineteenth to early twentieth century). I have no actual knowledge or experience of the setting, geographically or historically, but most of the classics I've read cluster around turn-of-the-century Europe. This "literary space" thus brings with it a certain familiarity, born not of actualities but of commonalities among the set of books I've read. I missed thinking and existing in this space. The literature I've read for the past two years have either been Modern, contemporary, American, or early nineteenth century, which are all wonderful in their own right, but not quite as embedded in my mental landscape. I'm speaking of the literary dimension, not the actual historical time period, so please apply the appropriate blinders.
Yesterday, went to see Raymonda, performed by the American Ballet Theatre, at the Metropolitan Opera House. Was rather disappointed--a company dancer actually tripped and fell--because the choreography was so out of sync with the music and the dancers lacked sufficient practice. The final pas de deux between Raymonda and Jean de Brienne was beautiful, though, and the prima ballerina was talented, even if the rest of the company looked amateurish in comparison to the NYCB. We've decided to stick to NYCB in the future, however. ::shrugs:: Oh, and the music was wonderful too, with a lot of brilliant harp solos. ^_^ Need to buy it someday.
All right, Mother's back, and off I go to watch...yes, another video. ^_^
...Tari
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Books
Date: 2004-06-03 12:14 pm (UTC)Re: Books
Date: 2004-06-03 01:07 pm (UTC)Plus, I hated the Brontes, although they're considered essential reading in English literature. ^_^;;
I do plan on trying Heinrich Mann too, someday. Thanks for the rec! ::puts The Loyal Subject on her reading list::
...Tari
Re: Books
Date: 2004-06-04 04:22 am (UTC)But then, there are older books who are quite interesting. It's probably a matter of personal preference ^^.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-03 02:38 pm (UTC)And of course karaoke is gooood! xD!! XD!! >__>
And I finally read... and FINISHED... Memoirs of a Geisha... XD! hehheh... Only been years after Jennifer told me to read it...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-03 03:55 pm (UTC)