Misanthrope

 In Moliere's play, the main character's act of misanthropy (among other things) is to refuse to praise a bad poem. 

This reminds me of the polite fiction that prevents us from telling our friends that their poetry is not very good. Generally, you can be reasonably smart and know a lot about poetry, but that doesn't mean your own work will be good. And from that mediocre position you can feel superior to many, but most of us don't go around making enemies of other poets. Because if everyone told the *truth* the institution of poetry would not survive. Generally, one's own opinion of own work is inherently biased. 

Obviously famous but also bad poets get most of the venom, because of the gap between the reputation and the reality.  

intellectuals

 "El grupo de intelectuales y amigos entusiastas que patrocina la idea del concurso..."

Lorca uses the word "intellectual" in this sense in 1922. It would be interesting to know how common this usage was, when it became a common word and concept in the Spanish language. We associate it with Zola and the Dreyfus affair. But did Unamuno, Ortega, etc... use this concept about themselves?   

Adorno

 Adorno was the only big name theorist who wrote about music at all. As a consequence, people in popular music studies still use Adorno, despite Adorno's dislike of popular music. I did a blurb for a book on a Spanish jazz pianist, that used Adorno, because of this. Of course, with the requisite apologetics. It is a good book and my blurb was complimentary, sincerely so. This is just one of those odd contradictions. Somehow, Adorno's harsh words about jazz don't matter. 

He lived until 1969, so he had time to rectify, if he cared to or wanted to. He outlived Coltrane, for God's sake.   

Dream of gullibility

 In this dream I was the victim of many scams, the most gullible person ever. I was tricked into going someplace that involved climbing up a weird tower / bridge to cross a street. I was very fearful. Then the evidence was shown to me of previous practical jokes or hoaxes to which I had fallen. 

***

A dream of a few nights ago: I found an instrument in a house where I was visiting with strange keys that looked like red and yellow leaves of a plant, and was going to play Bemsha Swing on it, but then realized it only had seven notes. As I played, the instrument disintegrated. 

Audubon

 On a wine tour of Tuscany I was on, there was a guy who worked for the Audubon Society. He told us of a conflict: they had considered a name change, and rejected it (because Audubon was a slave-holder). The younger employees were in favor of the change, and the leadership not so much. The guy I met was younger and part of the movement to change to be more inclusive.  Our local Jayhawk Audubon society will change its name (to what it hasn't been determined). I'm not super opinionated on this issue, though I am skeptical of symbolic gestures like this. I don't think most people even know much about Audubon as a person in the first place.    

*** 

Our chancellor and provost put out a message about the AA case. Since my university has qualified admissions (you get in if you meet a standard metric), we don't have Affirmative Action, but of course we still needed a Message of Deep Concern for the Decision. Once again, our leaders are deeply concerned, etc... I disagree with the Supreme Court, but as the father of an Asian American I think it was quite damning that Harvard ranked Asian American applicants lowly for the personalities--without having met them, of course. It was by a considerable rate, too.   

***

We have 2.5% raise. Inflation is at 4% so far for 2023. Last year we got 5 (inflation was 6.5). No merit increase, so work on the merit committee where we parse our colleagues contributions is pointless. We are voting for the union this fall, if all goes according to plan. 

So suppose we had a salary of 100,000 

Five percent is 5000, so that is 105,000.  

2.5 of 105,000 is 2625, so that is 107,625. 

To keep up with inflation we would have to have 106,500 the first year, then 110,760. We have lost 4,000 to inflation. (Me, less, because I don't make 100 grand).  Not to mention we got almost nothing in 2021, when inflation was 7%.  

How and why

 Often I find myself sifting through existing scholarship and trying to figure out an implicit consensus, and presenting that as my thesis. In other words, I am not demonstrating that other people are wrong, but trying to arrive at a strong statement about what all of us supposedly think. This only works if nobody else has come up with an explicit statement of this implicit consensus. 

People could be wrong, of course, but my idea is that Lorca is well-understood, but that he requires me to explain how and why. 

Law of lengthening limbs

 I once devoted substantial time to research the “law of lengthening limbs,” that states that “Friends, Romans, countrymen” or “Pride and Prejudice” sound better than *“Sensibility and Sense” or *“Lucinda and John.” I found it in legal doublets ("aid and abet") and in soap opera titles (“The Bold and the Beautiful,” The Young and the Restless"). This seemed both well-known and under-analyzed. My own subtitle (“Translation, Parody, Kitsch”) violated the rule, as did Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead,” but I could find more evidence for it than against it. The real object of study here is my own weird fascination with things like this! One of many research “dead ends.”