July 30 - August 2, 2008

Killing Yourself to Live 85% of a True Story

Chuck Klosterman

2005, hardcover

16 cards

Chuck Palahniuk and Chuck Klosterman are different people. I now know that. Even better, Chuck Klosterman's books are about music and they are interesting and they are well written. Klosterman writes about music as a listener but his gift is talking about it as it fits into a person's life, how it infiltrates thinking and understanding and relationships. While the larger subject of the book is an assignment about how rock stars have died, the personal epiphanies and thoughts of Klosterman loom larger than any discoveries that could be made (and rarely were) when say, standing on the spot of the plane crash of the Big Bopper Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. The observations Klosterman offers appear true to life he lives and there's a sense of honesty in the way he writes about them (even though that might factor into the 85%, 15% ratio). While he's wrong about a few things (no one needs to own Brittney Spears releases p. 16- thinking like this is why there are so many Jethro Tull records where used records are sold), that's ok, no one is perfect and if they were, that would probably be boring.

Some excerpts [with my comments in brackets]:

1- "Ohio. I was qualified to live in Ohio."

4- "We are all tourists, sort of. Life is tourism, sort of."

9- Chelsea Hotel- Stanley Beard, "The kind of person who wants to stay in Room 100 is just a cultic follower. These are people who have nothing to do....You will see that they are not serious-minded people. You will see that they are not trying to understand anything about death."

11- "I have no idea how people travel."

-"Death is part of life."

-"However, this is not necessarily true for rock stars; sometimes rock stars don't start living until they die." [The NYTimes recently had an article related to this- artists and death]

13- "Somewhere, at some point, somehow, somebody decided that death equals credibility. And I want to figure out why that is."

14- missing Car Rock

15- not owning vinyl or a turntable [hmmmmm]

18- diners [not that he really goes to many- chain restaurants instead]

19-compares a woman to the one in "Jolene" by Dolly Parton [How is this the first book I've read this year that mentions Dolly Parton????]

29- Honesty Room

-"...and one day I was structuring my entire life around spending time with her."

33- Springfield, Mass. Basketball Hall of Fame

-"Springfield is a poorly organized town." [So true!]

-"Like all museums, it's a rip-off." [not always true, but understood. Hall of Fames are always a rip-off.]

-"In theory, the Basketball Hall of Fame should simply serve as a pleasant distraction from the road and an opportunity to buy a t-shirt."

34- (Great White concert fire)- "In West Warwick, what used to be a tavern is now an ad hoc cemetery- which is the same role taverns play in most small towns, but not as obviously as this."

42- "Half the people who attend concerts only go so that they can tell other people that (a) certain shows were amazing, and (b) other shows sucked."

42-43- "I honestly believe that people of my generation despise authenticity, mostly because they're all so envious of it."

- Chevy Cavaliers [a friend, when I told her about his mentioning of Cavaliers as a working class car alongside IROCS, said that he probably meant Cavaliers from the 90s. And if he's not, Jettas and other non-working class cars are for suckers.]

45- Synchronicity by The Police

46- "Like all modern people, I had no relationship with anyone in my building."

53- (Washington monument) "but what is this 500-foot masonry structure supposed to tell me? What is it supposed to make me understand? ... I'll never understand why people need to see things just so they can say they saw them."

57- Petula Clark Downtown list

58- "Artists who believe they have any control over the interpretation of their work are completely fooling themselves."

61- "Every summer, Hollywood movie studios convince millions of people to see blockbuster movies they know they're going to hate."

-"Who really cares who Lindsay Lohan is dating? Almost no one."

-"But it's still information they need to have. This is because those people care about something else entirely; they're worried about the possibility of everyone else understanding something they're missing." [v. true]

63- North Carolina

64- "...I must run: Running keeps me alive." [also in agreement here]

64- "This NC oxygen is delicious..." (mentions Superchunk) [yes except when it is above 90]

67- "At their core, the final outcome to every football game (including the Super Bowl) is wholly meaningless.

70- Mary Beth- dreams and media

79- The Standard Hotel

84- (people talking about dreams) "It's a way for people to be honest without telling the truth."

86- Wilco- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot- 9/11 [The thing he missed with this is that the album was streaming on the internet when 9/11 happened. That was the really eerie part of the album and 9/11.]

87- "...what can you say when skyscrapers collapse?"

91- "Right now, most rock journalism is just mild criticism with a Q & A attached. Nobody learns anything (usually) and nothing new is created (ever).

92- "...the pursuit of intellect and the so-called 'life-of-the-mind' makes people broaden their classification for what can be reasonably classified as important."

112-113- "We are always dying, all the time. That's what living is; living is dying, little by little."

141- Rumors Fleetwood Mac [which I discovered is a fabulous album only this year]

143- Jeff Tweedy- transcendent moments, unintentional

-CK mentions guitar strong at the beginning of Fleetwood Mac's "I Don't Want to Know" [my favorite song on the album]- "we loved hearing the inside of a song."

164- "Nothing is going to happen tonight."

166- "...reading was a kind of neutral, reactive way to spend an evening."

171- (3 import stores) "I will never understand what people want out of life."

173- "...the things I write are often things I would never say."

195- Thomas Jefferson to Lewis and Clark- seeing mastodons

196- westerly

198- Led Zeppelin and guys

201- talk radio- though Dick Cheney dead

202- "Right now it would be easier to find uranium than college kids."

205- "I don't miss high school at all."

-"I have nothing to say, but I can't stop myself from talking."

216- "That's the history of KISS and those are the contents of my heart."

217- "I love KISS because the world makes sense when I think about them. Art and love are the same thing. It's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. It's understanding the unreasonable."

224- Kurt Cobain's death- people unconnected to Kurt, Seattle or grunge- "...suddenly chose to remember themselves in a completely different way."

227- "...his death changed the history of the living."

-"Kurt Cobain was that popular-yet-unpopular kid who dies for the sings of your personality."

230- (people needing to believe he lived under the bridge) "...Maybe it's something they need to believe, because if they don't, they will be stuck with the mildly depressing revelation that dead people are simply dead."

-"...everything else has nothing to do with the individual who died and everything to do with the people who are left behind..."

231- checking email

232- "We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy."

-"But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like....4 or 5 of these people."

-"the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real and the feelings are real- but you create the context."

233- Lucy Chance- "The bar misses you."

235- "I am ready to be alone."

July 15 - 27, 2008

Magic for Beginners

Kelly Link

2005, Paperback

7 cards

Kelly Link, the book's back cover says, lives in Northampton, Massachusetts where I used to live. It would have been wonderful to meet her and talk about wonderful things like Faery Handbags. But then again maybe it's better to read about Faery Handbags, because as she writes, "Meeting writers is usually disappointing at best."

Faery Handbags is the title of the first short story in this captivating book and while it stands out as the shiniest gem in the bunch, the others are enjoyable too in their descriptions and tales told about zombies and the people who wear cat skins. I am always drawn to writers who notice the minor things that make up life, and sometimes the things that make it seem worth living. Link notices Cadbury Creme eggs, Moon Pies and (perhaps invents) squeezeble pork (which, while not something I would enjoy others might), with the best of them (I remember first noticing such slight mentions of everyday things that fill our lives in Douglas Coupland's books). Link arrives at truisms in her stories with moments in thrift stores and with friends and families, truisms that we all need to be reminded of sometimes, and truisms we hope are indeed true.

Some excerpts:

1- "I used to go to thrift stores with my friends. ... Everything is arranged by color, somehow that makes all of the clothes beautiful."

2- "But the point is, if you're looking for a particular thing, you just have to keep looking for it. You have to look hard."

4- Scrabble

-zippery

5- faery handbag

7- "purse big enough to hold all of the village and all of the people..."

8- "Even nightmares have to sleep now and then."

9- "He was still way too smart, but he was finally smart enough to figure out how to fit in."

11- "It's better to cook what I want to eat, and clean up when I decide to clean up."

12- "I also know how to say I love you, but I'm not going to ever say it to anyone again, except Jake, when I find him.

14- Cadbury Creme egg

20- "Remember when you don't know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble."

37- squeezable pork, Moon Pies

39- "The customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an asshole."

52- "'Nobody ever really knows what they want,' Charley said. 'Why should that change after you die?'"

65- "Summer is the time of ghosts. In winter, ghosts are easy to spot."

-"There is no word for war or travel."

77- donuts

119- "her mother has painted a little door. It isn't a real door, except when Tilly goes over to look at it, it is real."

129- "The witch vomits up...love letters (mislabeled or sent without the appropriate amount of postage and never read)..."

137- "And when you have children you need houses to put them in."

161- "'Do you like museums?' Will says. She looks like a girl who goes to museums."

166- postcard

168- lemurs

170- "Modern art is a wast of time. When the zombies show up you can't worry about art. Art is for people who aren't worried about zombies."

170-171- things Soap has been thinking about

171- Busby Berkeley

176- "Everyone has a zombie contingency plan."

178- olives

179- "He doesn't belong anywhere."

181- shopleaving

206- orange-juice colored corduroy couch

207- "What kind of television shows the characters in television shows watch."

-"She's an enigma wrapped in a mysterious t-shirt."

208- "When the woman who invented Hello Kitty was asked why Hello Kitty was so popular, she said, 'Because she has no mouth.'"

-pirate-magicians

212- Velveeta-and-pickle sandwich

218- "Can I ask you a question?"

220- Meeting writers...

235- "It would be easier if I had a brother ...Or a sister. I'm tired of being good all the time. If I had a sibling, then we could take turns being good...but it sucks having to figure out everything all by myself."

236- (calls to the phone booth) J. "complains about all the things there are to complain about, and the silent person on the other end listens and listens."

243- (Talis) "Somebody has to be the person who doesn't [talk]. The person who listens."

244- "Except secrets can't have secrets, they just are."

249- maps

-corn mosaic

250- "Bob Dylan is singing about monkeys."

251- "He writes in his blog about what he's reading."

256- "...I didn't get any postcards."

262- "Imaginary houses are sexy. Real houses are work."

274- records

278- "Tell me a story so that I'll remember you."

287- kazoo

292- giraffes

297- "I love you, but it's not about love, Ed, it's about timing."

May 29 - July 9, 2008

Bob Dylan The Essential Interviews

edited by Jonathan Cott

2006, hardcover

35 cards

Quotes from Bob Dylan's interviews reminded me of Andy Warhol's approach to the interview, playing with it and making it into something greater than it started. While there are a lot of interviews to read here one sees how true Dylan stays to his approach to meaning what he says and saying what he means both with interviewers who get it and those who do not.

Select lines:

ix- "To live is to be slowly born." Antonine de saint- Exupery, Flight to Arras

23- "I looked around and saw all the people pointing fingers at the bomb. But the bomb is getting boring, because what's wrong goes much deeper than the bomb. What's wrong is how few people are free. Most people walking around are tied down to something that doesn't let them really speak."

24- "All I can do it be myself. I can't tell them how to change things, because there's only one way to change things, and that's to cut yourself off from all the chains. That's hard for most people to do."

25- "Just because you're free to move doesn't mean you're free."

38- "songs are songs...I don't believe in expecting too much out of any one thing."

44- "There aren't any answers, man. Or any questions..."

45- French guy, unpaginated book in a box

48- "Most people who don't like rock and roll can't relate to other people."

49- "You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist."

51- collecting

53- "You gotta listen to the Staples Sisters, Smokey and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas. That's scary to a lot of people. It's sex that's involved. It's not hidden. It's real."

54- "Great paintings shouldn't be in museums. Have you ever been in a museum? Museums are cemeteries. Paintings should be on the walls of restaurants, in dime stores, in gas stations, in men's rooms. Great paintings should be where people hang out."

-"Just think how many people would really feel great if they could see a Picasso in their daily diner."

58- "If it happens, it happens. Whatever my hopes, it never turns out."

84- "Happiness is a kind of cheap word."

86- "Despite everybody who has been born and has died, the world had just gone on."

"I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet."

96- "Art, if there is such a thing, is in the bathrooms, everybody knows that."

101- "My older songs, to say the least, were about nothing. The newer ones are about the same nothing- only as seen inside a bigger thing."

104- "You can't lost what you never had."

106- "People have one great blessing- obscurity- and not really too many people are thankful for it."

108- "There doesn't seem to be any tomorrow. Every time I wake up, not matter in what position, it's always been today."

116- "No, I think it was Ben Franklin. He said (I'm not quoting it right) something like, 'For a man to be (something or other)- at east, he must not tell all he knows, nor say all he sees.'"

128- "You know, you might sometimes be with someone who's got no song to sing, and I believe you can help someone out..."

175- "The highest purpose of art is to inspire."

206- "But, you know, sometimes you get too close to something and you got to get away from it to be able to see it."

215 "...I see beauty where other people don't."

218 (truths) "One is that if you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure."

220- "Art is supposed to take you out of your chair. It's supposed to move you from one space to another."

228- "People are people to me."

229- hearts beating in the same rhythm

232- "The only true mirrors are puddles of water."

235- "Uncompromising, that's what makes a good artist."

248- "The simple things which are true usually astound people."

259- "Everybody sees in the mirror what he sees- no two people see the same thing."

262- (soul mates existing) "Sure they do, but sometimes you never meet them."

-"Your real feelings come out when you're free to be alone."

298- "Protest is anything that goes against the ordinary and the established."

299- "I never really like The Basement Tapes..."

300- "People need a leader more than a leader needs people, really."

306- "I'm always in love." (Jeff Tweedy read this interview)

312- "So I had to write what I wanted to sing 'cause nobody else was writing what I wanted to sing."

336- "Never give 100 percent"

400- "It's anything you want it to be."