MM

 Manuel Machado writes that between cante jondo and other forms of flamenco there is as distance as between "Baudelaire ... y el pueblo." 

Ode to Awkwardness

An ode to something graceful would be natural, so to get at awkwardness we would think about something endearing in its youthful joy, or shy and stuttering, attractive but not in a conventional way. An obstacle overcome. Awkwardness depends on grace, in the same way that asymmetry presupposes symmetry. 

The paper is cheap...

 

The paper is cheap; the font is ugly;

the binding looks flimsy; there are some smudges on the back cover.

This book might be brilliant, 

for all I know;

it is written in a language I do not know. 

Ineffability

 I have a critique of Lawrence Kramer's critique of ineffability.  ("Oracular musicology"). It seems to me that music really is ineffable, and that there is a good reason for the trope.  I think it is rooted in the very structure of musical language, which seems to be saying something, but we don't / can't know what it is saying, exactly. It is a language with phonology, prosody, syntax, punctuation, but without determinate semantic meaning. It has semantics, but not of a determinate kind.  So the romantics invented the trop of ineffability for music (previously a trope applied to mystical experiences).  But they did so because music is like that.  Kramer wants to eliminate ineffability because he wants to talk about musical meaning in a more determinate way.  Odd for a postmodernist!  

The music paradox

 The idea is that music suggests the existence of a different world, a world where such as thing like music existed. But, since music exists in our own world, then this other world is not truly other: it is our own, after all. But we have to go through these particular steps to get to the realization that music exists in our own world, because music suggests the existence of a different world, a world where such a think like music existed. But, since music exists in our own then the other world is not truly other: it your own, after all, But we have to go through these particular steps to get to the realization that music exists our own world, because music suggests the existence of a different world, 

Strout

 Some women I know were talking about Elizabeth Strout the other day.  I downloaded one of her books on kindle, and I think I have serious allergy to middle brow earnest realist fiction.  To me, it's not well written at all. Some of it is just flat, but then there will be a purple patch or a misconceived simile.  This is a wildly successful writer who has shows and movies made of her work. 

Superstition

 There is something else I'm trying to track down: Kenneth Burke notes at one point that the rain dance is done right before the rainy season begins. It is not that people believe, naively, that the dance causes the rain; instead, the dance is a ritual preparation for the coming showers.  

We might think there are many kinds of magical thinking. Other people's behavior manifests itself as magical, from our perspective, but our own kind of magic is invisible to ourselves because it is integrated into our behavior and thought patterns in a seamless way.  

[Update: I've found a reference to Wittgenstein's critique of James Frazer along these lines.  I'm not sure if Burke makes the same critique or if I was misremembering.  Burke does talk about Frazer as well.  The idea is that the Western mind talks about rain dance as a kind of cause effect relation, but its real meaning is "let's celebrate the beginning of the rainy season."].