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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Empathy

 They say reading novels would increase your empathy, because you are identifying with other people. That might be true for some people.  But  I am skeptical.  Wouldn't the same thing happen when watching movies or tv?  You are identifying yourself with the people through whom the narrative is focalized.  Are people who watch more tv more empathetic? Or is there some magic to the printed page that makes this kind of identification better?  

What about novelists themselves?  They have had to read a lot of novels by other people to learn how to write.  And they are creating these empathy encouraging fictions. But a lot of novelists are jerks, or even worse. I think they can be as prone to narcissism or self-absorption as anyone else. Take Salinger or Neil Gaiman.  

I have read a lot of fiction.  I don't think that this has helped me become more empathetic.  To the extent that this is one of my traits, it is something that I have worked on self-consciously because it is the right thing to do. If I fail in this regard, it is not because I haven't read enough novels.  

My hypothesis is that while reading, we do identify with the protagonist.  In a sense we want what he or she wants, or we want that for him or her.  But in our own lives we are still the main characters. Fictional identification is not, primarily, a form of "empathy," because we are still taking that "main character" approach. We can rationalize flaws in a fictional character the same way we forgive ourselves for our own foibles.   

Some narratives encourage you to identity with gangsters and criminals.  We want Tony Soprano or Walter White to prevail over their enemies, especially when those enemies are presented to us as more brutal than the shows' protagonists. We can accept extreme violence in fictional worlds if we have dehumanized the enemy enough.  Do we have empathy for orcs, or for Lord Voldemort?  


Monday, February 10, 2025

A more relaxed attitude

 I can take a more relaxed attitude toward writing.  

Generally, I want to be clear, concise, accessible to general reader (even if that reader will never read me), free of jargon. No sign-posting.  

But, since I know I can do all of this, and don't have to worry about it.  I can be wordy if I want, on occasion. I can use judicious sign-posting where appropriate.  Etc... The point is to make the process of writing more relaxed, less stringently rule-bound. Maybe that relaxation is the secret ingredient I am missing?  

Sunday, February 9, 2025

Getting things wrong, some examples.

 Perloff and Bernstein calling poems "iambic pentameter" when they are not.  http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001165.html

At the time, I commented:  

The Bernstein example is actually worse, because he is making an argument that depends on the lines quoted being in iambic pentameter, the "meter of the empire." Perloff, who wrote her dissertation on rhyme in Yeats, was probably suffering from a moment of inattention, a momentary lapse such as could occur to any of us. She has many competent scansions in her critical works and is one of the contemporary  critics who pays most attention to form.

Whole disciplines based on sandy gr0und. 

Lazy thinking.

I guess we would have to distinguish between random error at the edge (unavoidable) and systemic error. 





Getting it wrong

 I'm interested in how things are misunderstood, or how mistakes get made.  I think the first thing to consider would be that not understanding reality is the base line.  We really don't know very much in the first place, and are prone to cognitive biases.  

The second thing would be to look at language. We think that language gets us somewhere, but, epistemologically speaking, language is inert. It is only as good as the base line of knowledge. We believe we advance through terminology, but our terms cannot be better than our knowledge.  That's why theological debates seem like pointless semantic exercises that lead us no closer to the truth.  A lot of magical thinking depends on putting a linguistic spin on things. (Language is very good at keeping track of what we do know, though. Definitions are important.)

So we have base line ignorance, and a misguided reliance on language.  

What especially intriguing is error among experts, in the exact area of their expertise, as in the replication crisis in the social sciences.  Error is normal, but there ought to be some gold standard, places in which error becomes exceedingly rare.  

***

In the humanities, our research is almost defined by confirmation bias.  We have an intuition taken from reading a literary text. The intuition is a valid piece of information about our own response to the text. Our next step is to bolster the intuition with confirmation from the same text.  We are in the famed hermeneutic circle.  Contrary to what Gadamer argues, most readers won't allow the text to correct them.  They will instead dig in to their reading. The literary text is made of language, so we create a metalanguage to explain it. The rhetorical strength of our writing then convinces other people of the validity of our interpretation.  All of this is fine.  Some intuitions really are better than others, or at least better argued. 

When a certain Lorca scholar sees the 4 palomas in a poem by Lorca as the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with no apparent evidence.  I want to call that a false form of "knowledge." I want to reject a lot of ways of reading and interpreting, as silly as a podcast claiming that autistic children can do telepathy.  But the only real answer is a kind of epistemic humility: I too am wrong (not always, but ignorance is still the baseline assumption.). 


Thursday, February 6, 2025

dream of lecture

 I got out of class in time to hear the last part of a lecture by a young woman from Spain. After the QandA, when people had left, I introduced myself to her and apologized for my lateness. Her hand was warm and damp when we shook hands. We started doing someone called 'michi tichi,' or a comparison of personal tastes, like "me gusta," "te gusta..."  I wondered when I woke up whether michi tichi was real thing (it isn't).  

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Dream of creatures

 There were these lizard-like creatures that we were taking care of.  They were furry rather than scaly, and the size of small dogs or cats.  They were clingy, but not cuddly, and we had to watch over them so they wouldn't get too close. A lot of moving from one room to another. I was relieved to wake up and find out that this was a dream and I wasn't responsible for these icky things.  

Thursday, January 30, 2025

Mediocre white people

 "When they finish taking away all the DEI and Affirmative Action protocols, mediocre White people still won't be able to get jobs because, in reality, our Affirmative Action protocols are so weak that they barely affect hiring practices. The main difference will be that mediocre White people will have only themselves to blame."

I found this in my Facebook feed today. I constantly see this kind of thinking, usually by someone who is a White person as well, as is the case here. The DEI and Affirmative Action is ineffectual: but we still need it! Taking it away won't make a difference, because those White people are not getting jobs now, and they still won't be getting jobs without it? Presumably, then, only minorities are getting jobs now?

Of course, statistically, mediocre (and inferior) people will always outnumber the excellent. I'm taking mediocre to be in the 40-60 percentile of whatever measure we are taking. So the inferior and mediocre will outweigh the good to excellent folks by 6 to 4.

Look, I'm in favor of Affirmative Action, but if it does not good, then it cannot also be indispensable.

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

TOC

Misunderstanding Lorca

1. Introduction: Lorca and Me 

2.     Lorca par lui-même

3.     Evaluating Poetic Translation: Rothenberg’s Suites

4.     The Death of the Subject

5.     Is Bodas de sangre a Work of Fiction? 

6.     Economies of Prestige: Lorca and the Literary Turn in Flamenco 

7. Teaching Receptivity 


Monday, January 27, 2025

Article in 10 days

 I've decided to write an article in 10 days. The idea is to increase the word count by 700 each day and end up with 7.000 words. I am on day 3 so I need to get up to 2.100 words. 

I've decided to do a critique of Rothenberg's Suites--unfinished business from Apocryphal Lorca. My observation is that he tends to be wordy and unidiomatic. Then I have to show why, and then draw some conclusions. The idea is that a translation that has added value cannot achieve this by adding extraneous words. Lorca is so pared down that the translation is virtually unforgiving.  

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Glossary

 The glossary is a set of “working definitions” of the key concepts used in this book.  

 

Classical. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the term classical refers to music that traces its origins to the music of European cultural élites, including music of the classical style per se (Mozart, Haydn) as well periods before and after periods (baroque, romantic, etc…).  

 

Context. Contexts can be geographical (spatial), historical (temporal), cultural (in any relevant sense of the word), and musical. Both the production and the reception of music are contextual, occurring in a place, a time, and with reference to particular cultural and musical traditions.  

 

The cultural turn. In musicology, the “cultural turn” is associated with the “new musicology,” or the movement to make music speak to issues of direct political or social concern, including gender and sexuality. See literary turn

 

Defamiliarization. Setting to music a poem in a way that takes it away from its expected context in order to associate it with new musical or cultural elements. See also irony 

 

Elegy. The grief-stricken memorialization, in poetry or music or both, of the life and tragic death of a human being who is felt to possess exemplary status. 

 

Expectation. The listener has expectations shaped both by (1) his or her previous musical knowledge and experience and by (2) the piece of music to which he or she is listening at the moment. A piece of music can fulfill or frustrate expectations, either in relation what the listener is used to generally, or in relation to its own internal structure.   

 

Flamenquification (reflamenquification). The tendency, among flamenco artists, to set to music texts by Lorca (or by other poets) that in their original contexts are unrelated to flamenco. The singing of folkloric material that isn’t flamenco in a flamenco style (aflamencado). See also popularization.

 

Folklore. Any vernacular musical idiom as it exists prior to, or apart from, its commercialization.   

 

Fragmentation and recombination. Breaking off sections of a text to set to music; recombining short texts, or fragments of texts, to create new juxtapositions, in medley form or as separate components of a larger project. 

 

FusionFusion is hybridity that has become so well established within in a musical styles that the elements that have been combined are no longer perceived to be disparate. (Fusion is its own style of music, not necessarily perceived to be a combination of rock-and-roll and jazz as it was at one moment, when it was known as “jazz-rock fusion”). 

 

The “goose bump” effect. The frisson that the listener might feel upon discovering a unique combination of poetry and music, when both the poetry and music are perceived to have value, and their combination is even more valuable than either alone. See also the “value added” factor and the “meeting of the minds” theory

 

Hybridity. The combination of musical elements perceived to have their origins in more than one musical genre or style. The culturally “mixed” situation of postmodernity generally. See also fusion

 

Infantilization. The tendency to concentrate on Lorca’s children’s songs, or to perpetuate a more naïve or innocent construction of Lorca’s subjectivity.  

 

Irony. Irony in music occurs through a perceived disjunction between words and music, or, through the combination of warring elements, like a jaunty melody played over a dissonant texture. It can seem intentional, in defamiliarized settings, or accidental, in kitsch. 

 

Kitsch (cursilería). Vernacular adaptations of high culture that reduce the original to a stereotype, or that popularize it in a facile way. Generally a term of opprobrium.   

 

The literary turn. In any vernacular musical idiom, the impulse to set to music poetry in the literary tradition not previously associated with that idiom. Also, the perceived “elevation” in status of the vernacular singer-songwriter to the category of poet.  

 

The “meeting of the minds” theory. The idea that a translation, a musical setting or performance, or some other kind of adaptation, will be gain value through the combined creativity of two or more individuals. See also the “goose bump” effectand the “value added” factor.

 

Middlebrow. The elevation of “popular culture” to a higher, semi-elite status, or, in the opposite direction, an effort to make elite culture less intellectually challenging. In its origins a term of insult, but perhaps redeemable as the name for a productive middle ground between “high” and “low” forms of culture. 

 

Popularization. The process through which canonical texts of the literary tradition become more popular or better known through their association with vernacular genres of music. See also kitsch

 

Postmodernism. An era characterized, in the arts and in intellectual life, by hybridity of forms, the unsettling of cultural hierarchies, and the suspicion of “master narratives” (Lyotard).            

 

Recombination. See fragmentation

 

The “see also” syndrome. The tendency to mention musical adaptations of Lorca without thinking of them as rewarding of study in their own right. 

 

The snowball effect. The tendency of composers and performers to be drawn to poets who are already canonical, or who have already been set to music extensively. 

 

Translation. In relation to musical settings, the singing a text in a language other than that in which it was originally written. It may be associated with defamiliarization or other processes of recontextualization.

 

 

Triangulation. The relation between the listener and at least two musical, literary, or cultural contexts perceived to be disparate. Triangulation also occurs in the relation between the listener, the music, and the text.    

 

The “value added” factor. The idea that an adaptation can be superior to the original, with the addition of the creativity of the adaptor to that of the original creator. See also the “goose bump” effect.

 

Vernacular. A vernacular musical idiom in the Western context is one perceived to be either folkloric or commercial rather than classical. Some writers use the word popular in this sense, since that word can mean either folkloric or commercially successful. Not all vernaculars, however, are popular in the second sense. 

 

Volatility (Kramer). The fundamentally unstable and sometimes arbitrary or “forced” relation between words and music in vocal settings.   

 

Words without music. A tendency in popular music studies to analyze the words to songs without paying much attention to the music, or to the relation between words and music.  

Floating phrasing

 In this particular style of phrasing, we can still feel the 1 and 3 musically, and the strong syllables that ought to fall on those musical beats. The overall sense of phrasing, though, is fluid: the phrasing floats above the metrical beats, and the accents can be anticipated or delayed, or otherwise displaced.  There is a kind of "stretchiness" there. Sinatra does this, and Lester Young, for example, as an instrumental example.  (I dislike it, in Sinatra, when it becomes a mannerism.). 

The result of this is a conversational tone, a  more flexible speech rhythm superimposed on a 4/4 beat, without being subjected to it. The brilliance of it is that the musical rhythm no longer forces the speech rhythm into a Crustacean* bed.  

___

*Not the word I need, but "Proctrustrean" is too hard for me to spell right now. 


"September Song" by Sarah Vaughan. 

Dated

I am watching these jazz videos while I do other work.  Black and white footage of the musicians all wearing suits in the 1950s looks good. Colored footage of the early 80s, with musicians wearing casual clothes in mismatched colors and long hair (on men) looks very dated.  Something much older still looks stylish, whereas the late 70s early 80s style looks horrific (to my eyes).  This is really the nadir of men's fashion.  My own admittedly biased value judgements aside, the paradox here is that something more recent can seem more "dated." Perhaps the effort to appear more contemporary backfires, because that contemporary style is more ephemeral?  

I'm watching one now with Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond. Brubeck has these bellbottom plaid pants and a green shirt with a weird collar. His brown belt is worn high above his hips, old man style.  Paul Desmond at least has a suit on, though I don't care for his orange tie. The drummer has a bright red shirt and purplish pants.  

The music, of course, is great.  


[UPDATE: It is actually from 1971. I was way off.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcMPxonimUo


Hallmarks of a certain style of translation

 I'm not saying it's bad, but it's bad for me.  It might be bad for you too. If you turned all this inside out, you'd get what I think of as "good" translation. (A lot of my thinking here is based on Antoine Berman, as applied by me to the translation of the Suites by Jerome R.)

1.  It's "creative," but its creativity tends not to produce anything of actually creative value. The translator feels the need to "show his work," by putting in things irrelevant to the original.    

2. It adds and subtracts.  It tends to be wordier, more pleonastic and redundant than the original (do you see what I've done there?), but also inexplicably leaves things out. Rothenberg, for example, will often leave off the definite article when both Spanish and English need it idiomatically.  We would say "The river is high," not "River is high." 

3. It is unidiomatic in the target language, but often not in any way that serves the original either. 

4. It obscures the structure of the original. It has enjambment that seems gratuitous, for example. Couplets will become tercets.  

5.  It is not a respecter of tropes. If the original uses chiasmus or asyndeton, the translation will simply ignore the tropes and translate the meaning. 

6. It is insensitive to the poetics of the original.  It standardizes everything, makes everything sound the same.  

7. It lack real conviction or consistency.  

8. It justifies a lot of this by appeals to sophisticated theories of translation.  Any complaints will be dismissed as an adherence to outmoded theories, excessive literalism, or the denial of the rights of the translator to be "creative" or "free."  The translator might cite Walter Benjamin or Lawrence Venuti.  

Sure, translation theory is valuable and interesting in its own right, but there is not one overarching theory that should govern all practices.  

Thursday, January 23, 2025

I wrote this poem in a dream:   


Clean beneath the desk!  

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

I'll arouse reminiscences

 Saying Goodbye



I will be saying goodbye

at the crossroads,

heading off down that road

through my soul.


I'll arouse reminiscences,

stir up mean hours.

I'll arrive at the garden spot

in my song (my tiny white song),

& I'll start in to shiver & shake

like the morning star. 


I've italicized the elements Rothenberg introduces here that might be seen as redundant, or absent in the original, of this poem from Lorca's Suites.  Every decision seems to lead towards a greater wordiness. It's as though the translator had forgotten English. Who says "start in to..." instead of "start to"?  Or "arouse reminiscences" instead of "awakening memories"?  The future progress is really weird here: "I will be saying goodbye."  Who talks like that?  


Exceptions to the prosodic rules

 Suppose there is an exception to the rule that strong metrical beats will fall on beats 1 or 3.  

For example, I found in a Taylor Swift song a phrase in which there is a strong beat on 1 2 3 4 of a single measure. Or you could anticipate a beat, singing it on the and of 4 of the previous measure, or delay an emphasis to later in the measure.  

A subsidiary of this rule would be that breaking it involves syncopation or a special kind of phrasing.  The breaking of the rule is felt to be different. In practice, where the accent fall is more fluid, but that does not prevent 1 and 3 from being the strong beats in principle.  

I'm not quite sure what to do with the practice of certain vernaculars in which the 2 and 4 receive emphasis.  For example, you don't clap your hand of snap your fingers on 1 and 3 in gospel or jazz. A jazz player will set a metronome, but treat that as a hi hat, on 2 and 4, not as a downbeat.  

 I would say that they are still the 2 and 4: otherwise they would just be the 1 and 3!  

enjambment in Lorca: a hypothesis

 Here's my hypothesis.  Lorca is a poet attuned to song, and there is no enjambment in song. He will enjamb, but not in a way that affects the (hypothetical) musical phrase. In this example, the enjambments occur between stanzas, and each stanza is a phrase.  Leaving aside the refrain, we have rhyme with the last words of each stanza, first volver, amanecer, ayer, and then retornar, manantial, mar.  The enjambment is emphatic, but doesn't interfere with the intonational phrase.  Groups of two or three lines form single phrases.  Stanzas of four are binary, with two groups of two.  


    Yo vuelvo

    por mis alas.

    

¡Dejadme volver!


¡Quiero morirme siendo

amanecer!


    Yo vuelvo 

    por mis alas.


¡Quiero morirme siendo

ayer!


    Yo vuelvo 

    por mis alas.


¡Dejadme retornar!


Quiero morirme siendo

manantial.


Quiero morirme fuera

de la mar. 

Tuesday, January 21, 2025

A dream the night before classes start

 I was to perform at some literary event, and had no idea what to do. I was holding a large book in my hand. I had a few ideas, but the other performers went before me and I had forgotten what I was going to do. So when my turn came, I began a monologue, which I improvised almost perfectly, with no ers or ups or hesitations, something like

"Once  upon a time there was a man with a book. He carried it everywhere he went, and it became associated with him like a hat or cigarette with certain film characters. He didn't always read it, but he always had it with him. I don't mean to imply that he didn't read it. At times he would read entire 50 page chunks of it at one sitting...."  

I woke up and then the dialogue could not continue. 

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Heaven for Jonathan

 I have this smart tv.  It has channels of music, one a jazz station.  I turned it on and was regaled with Coleman Hawkins, with Cozy Coles on drums, a drummer I knew by name only, but he is great. I heard them play Autumn Leaves, Moonlight in Vermont, All the Things you are, and a few other standards. 

Then, the station played Sarah Vaughan singing Lover Man. It couldn't get any better, but now they are playing a long set of Paco de Lucía.  I know it's not jazz, but it's my second favorite genre, Flamenco. I am afraid to go to bed because what could be next? 

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

Bach - Wachet Auf


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2h7jZLCtgM


Lorca's "Despierte la novia' based on Bach's Cantata. The German text says: "Another [call] of the voice at midnight and of the wise maidens who meet their celestial Bridegroom."  From Matthew 25.  



3 rules of musical prosody

 1. Strong syllables fall on beats 1 or 3.  [Generally, linguistic and musical beats are aligned.] 

2. No enjambment! [Generally, linguistic and musical phrases are aligned.]

3. Melodic contours (shapes, up and down movements) line up with the phrasing of the line.  

The rules can be broken, but... breaking the rules produces tension or awkwardness. Not breaking the rule is (almost) never noticeable. I don't take it as breaking the rule if the strong syllable anticipates the 1 of the measure by an 8th note or less. But the listener might feel some tension.  That tension is built into the genre, in the case of jazz, where you are supposed to anticipate or delay a bit.  

The music of the music is stronger, takes precedence, over the music of the poetry, which can be more subtle and varied. It can seem to destroy the text, then. But the revenge of the poem occurs when the listener gets irritated if the poem is stretched too far out of whack.  You can override my rhythm, says the poem, but you will pay for it.  

When I set some Niedecker poems, I followed the rhythms and contours of the poem as much as I could, but I noticed a flaw, that I set the word "cranberry" as CRAN-be-REE instead of CRAN-BE-rry.  

 

Tracing another song

The original text is called "Serenata," and occurs in Lorca's book Canciones.  He took the poem and changed it a bit to include it in a play, Los amores de don Perlimplín y Belisa en su jardín.  Lolita becomes Belisa.  There is tune associated with it, probably composed by Lorca himself.  

Billy Strayhorn also set it to music for a production of LADDPYBESJ.  He doesn't use Lorca's melody, but another one of his own invention, but the melodies have a similar shape or contour, in their rises and falls.  


Here are some relevant videos:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rhjnYjKckQ


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoA40wQgJ58


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcA6I8vWx8Y


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhiT__Zjmhw&t=51s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTHJ77bOcnY



Tracing a song (or 2)

 There is a song called "El vito." There is another called "Anda jaleo."  Lorca recorded the latter with La Argentinita in 1931.  "Anda jaleo," though not written by him, is associated with him, like the other 9 songs he recorded, and a few others he did not record but have become attached to the canon of Lorca songs.  

"El quinto regimiento" is a Spanish civil war song that begins with the melody of "El vito," using that song as the verse, and the "Anda jaleo" song as the chorus. The words are now "venga jaleo," rhyming with "Franco se va de paseo." 

The fifth regiment song was sung by American folk singers. It tells of the founding of the fifth regiment in Madrid at the beginning of the civil war.  There are two versions of the lyric, one saying "el pueblo madrileño / fundó el quinto regimiento," the other saying "el partido comunista." 

Coltrane using "El vito" as the basis of "Olé Coltrane."  A Colombian born choreographer did a ballet called "Las desamoradas" using Coltrane's "Olé" and the plot of La casa de Bernarda Alba, by Lorca. 

***

I could do a similar genealogy with other songs. "Despierte la novia" from Bodas de sangre, for example. 

Another would be "The Flowers die of love" from Don Perlimplín.  Here there are two melodies, one by Lorca himself, and the other by Billy Strayhorn.  

Tuesday, January 7, 2025

qualia

 Qualitative critique of Spanish meter is almost non-existent.  It struck me too that most people in the literary field today would not even have the kind of response that Saintsbury has to Shakespeare's verse.  

I thought of a poor young man I met once in Spain, a native speaker of English, who would read iambic pentameter aloud by stressing the strong syllables strongly and resorting to a sing-song rhythm.  I think of a student in grad school with me who couldn't tell when blank verse was blank verse, literally could not scan it.  

Metrics is largely concerned with establishing what the rules are. In this sense it is not qualitative at all.   

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Dream

 There was an anti-Trump movie everyone was talking about. I didn't want to see it because I was afraid I would be irritated by the smug condescending people I thought would be talking about him. I was outside in the lobby of the theater, having seen only the first five minutes. I wanted to hold on to my own brand of anti-Trumpism without this interference!  

A colleague came and wanted to borrow my hat. Then we lost sight of him. Later, it was clear he had gone somewhere else. I thought I would eventually get the hat back. 

There was a bird with distinctive markers flying around. It allowed us to get close. I realized that the bird had a pink sticker of Snoopy on his back. I was asking my friend T to help me identify the bird. The other colored markings seemed to be part of the bird, not attachments like this sticker.