DAILY PHOTO: Hillside Fortifications, Minchukallu Betta
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Five Wise Lines from In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
Have you never felt a sort of fear in the face of the ageless, a fear that in that room you might lose all consciousness of the passage of time, that untold years might pass and upon emerging you should find you had grown old and gray?
But our thoughts do not travel to what we cannot see. The unseen for us does not exist.
This was the genius of our ancestors, that by cutting off the light from this empty space they imparted to the world of shadows that formed there a quality of mystery and depth superior to that of any wall painting or ornament.
I wonder if my readers know the color of that ‘darkness seen by candlelight.’ It was different in quality from darkness on the road at night. It was a repletion, a pregnancy of tiny particles like fire ashes, each particle luminous as a rainbow.
Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of light and shadow.
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BOOKS: In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō TanizakiMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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Tanizaki’s essay on Japanese aesthetics doesn’t just show the reader the simple, rustic, and weathered traits of Japanese beauty, it fully submerges them in an otherworldly place ruled by different principles of seeing. So enamored with this pre-modern Japanese aesthetic was Tanizaki that we are convinced he would give up all present-day conveniences to see the world this way (but, alas, he recognizes the impossibility of maintaining a household or business in today’s world that way.)
While the book is principally a tour of this Japanese shadow world, moving from architecture to toilets to lacquerware to Noh plays to skin tones to hotels (with other stops along the way,) it is also a critique of modernity, and particularly a modernity shaped by the West by virtue of Western countries building a lead in a number of key technologies. The most crucial of these technologies, and the one Tanizaki most decries, is electric lighting, which does away with the artistic beauty that derives from the interplay of varied toned shadows (and occasionally a little bit of light.) [I should say, he’s not bashing the Western technology or ways, but rather how poorly they work with maintaining Japanese aesthetic ways.]
I’d highly recommend this book for all readers. If you’re interested in aesthetics, art, architecture, culture, or “things Japanese,” then all the more so, but I can’t remember the last time description pulled me into a book as hard as this one. The essay can be a bit rambling and shifts from euphoria to rant and back, rapidly, but that is part of its magic.
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“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing” by Rumi [w/ Audio]
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
NOTE: Translation from Persian by Coleman Barks & John Moyne in The Essential Rumi published by Harper Collins.
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BOOKS: The NEW Comedy Bible by Judy Carter
The NEW Comedy Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Writing and Performing Stand-Up Comedy by Judy CarterMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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As the title suggests, this is a soup-to-nuts exploration of building a standup comedy act. While the bulk of the book discusses how to build jokes that work in a comedy club setting, it also gives helpful tips on relevant issues such as stage fright, hecklers, bombing and bomb recovery, set arrangement, and editing material. It offers many insights that may seem counterintuitive to a neophyte reader.
In writing, there is a common distinction made between “plotters” and “pantsers” (as in “by the seat of one’s pants.”) Plotters do a lot of research and outline everything thoroughly before beginning to write (as most people understand the writing process.) Pantsers like to get right into the typing and are willing to have a much messier process in exchange for greater feelings of spontaneity and surprise. A similar distinction seems to exist in standup comedy. Jerry Seinfeld might be the posterchild for the comedic plotter, writing and rewriting jokes on paper and having an already finely honed collection of jokes when he goes into the comedy club to revise through audience feedback. Other comedians seem to like to work by riffing and editing material on the fly. My point is: this book will definitely appeal most to plotters. That said, I think it has a lot of useful information that will save pantsers a great deal of trouble, but I suspect those with intense pantser proclivities will be skeptical of such a step-by-step approach.
The book is set up as a workbook woven into an instructional guide. That is, it has exercises throughout. It also presents a lot of jokes and partial bits by headlining comics to help the reader see how successful comics apply the principles in question.
I enjoyed reading this book and found it helpful. I thought that many of the exercises were quite helpful in triggering joke ideas. If you are looking for a book that deals in both joke writing and comedic delivery, I’d highly recommend this book.
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Barren Hill [Haiku]
the trees are bare;
winter winds picked them clean.
a bird lands, chirps, & flees.
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DAILY PHOTO: Light & Shadow on a Midwinter Afternoon
Rhapsody on a Windy Night by T.S. Eliot [w/ Audio]
Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one,
The street lamp sputtered,
The street lamp muttered,
The street lamp said, 'Regard that woman
Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin.'
The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two,
The street lamp said,
'Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter.'
So the hand of a child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
'Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.'
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
The lamp said,
'Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair;
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.'
The last twist of the knife.
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PROMPT: Wild Animals
Yes, frequently. Even in the city where I live, Bangalore, I see black kites, herons, and egrets on a daily basis, as well as the occasional monkey (macaque.) [Notably, Bangalore — like Mumbai — has had issues with Leopards in the city, but I’ve never seen them.] But when I travel to wilderness areas, there’s lots of wildlife to be seen. A couple weeks ago I visited Ranganathittu Sanctuary and saw marsh crocodiles, macaques, pelicans, and painted storks. In India, I’ve seen rhino, wild elephant, mongoose, cobra, and many other creatures. In Africa, I’ve seen most of the big ones (lion, elephant, hippo, giraffe, zebra, cape buffalo, etc.)
I was just learning from the wildlife in the park this morning as I watched chipmunks scurry around in a circle of ravens, and that kind of surprised me that the chipmunks didn’t seem phased. I see ravens eating bigger rodents (city rats are about the size of housecats,) but they made no moves on the chipmunks. Maybe chipmunks have stronger kung fu, or maybe they just don’t have enough meat on the bones. I don’t know.
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BOOKS: Everyday Shakespeare by Ben & David Crystal
Everyday Shakespeare: Lines for Life by Ben CrystalMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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This is like a word-a-day calendar, but with a quotation from Shakespeare for each day (rather than a vocabulary word.) Also, each quote has accompanying text that explains what the quote is from, what it means, why the language says what it does, and the context in which an individual might use Shakespeare’s words today. [Note: while that last bit (i.e. how to employ the Bard’s words today) is a major theme of the book, I wouldn’t recommend it. It will make one look more like a pretentious nincompoop than like a clever wordsmith.] That said, the book still has great value for anyone interested in Shakespeare’s work, specifically, or the evolution of the English language, more generally. In dealing with many phrases that describe workaday activities that were common then as now, the book builds a niche different from books that deal in the grandiose phraseology of war and aristocratic life.
Many people struggle with Shakespeare, and this book helps make clear why some of the statements that were about mundane matters had the meaning they did. I would put people’s difficulties with Shakespeare into three buckets. First, poetic and non-colloquial language in which the reader knows all the words and their meanings, but the poetic / stylistic language and grammar throws them for a loop. This book shouldn’t really need to deal with this one, but it does a little bit. Second, evolutionary language drift, in this case the reader knows the words but is thrown off because they don’t mean what they once did. The book is quite helpful in clarifying these changes. Third, the revolutionary shifts, these involve words and phrases wholly unfamiliar to the reader because they deal in activities and perspectives not present in our daily lives. The book explains these changes, as well, but there aren’t a great deal of them because the selections are supposed to be applicable today.
The book draws from the entire Shakespeare canon, but more heavily from the plays than from the sonnets or long form poems. (Also, not surprisingly, it draws more heavily from the popular plays — i.e. many of the tragedies and the popular comedies — than it does from the more obscure plays (i.e. most histories and a few of the others.) This only makes sense, and I was happy to see references to sonnets, histories, and other Shakespearean poems at all.
All in all, this is an informative book and is recommended for those who are interested in getting into Shakespeare, or who are intrigued by the ever-shifting landscape of the English language.
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