Zompist Bboard Again

How Fiction Works by James Wood

It's a collection of literary criticism, but more specifically it runs through various facets of novel-writing (unreliable narrators, characterization, etc.) with examples pulled from all kinds of novels. I found his opinion that "rounded" characters are overrated to be especially interesting.

Chiptune A E F T H E T I C

A few Iranian pop songs about getting drunk It's kind of interesting that lots of modern Persian songs have explicit references to wine and getting drunk.

First "Mast" by Iranian singer Omid Soltani. The title of the song means 'drunk'.

Then what is perhaps my favorite example so far, namely this song. The second half of the chorus is:

وقتی تو نیستی باده و مستی نداره
جز اشک حسرت ساغر هستی نداره
Vaghti to nisti bâdeh vo masti nadâreh.
Joz ashk-e-hasrat sâghar-e-hasti nadâreh.
'When you aren't there, there is no wine or drunkenness.
There is no wine cup in the universe but the tears of yearning.'

And finally, this fun song (lyrics and translation here).

The Punjabi parts of this K-pop song are both hilarious and kind of cringey at the same time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahif51hqeA8

You should read his ode to the river as a prologue, and then the entire bridge trilogy. "Disaster" may be the most famous by far, and the last verse is indeed sublime, but it may actually be the least bad of the three.

It's also uncanny how much of a narrative they create, despite being written years apart. For instance, the first of the trilogy praises:
...your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array
And your central girders, which seem to the eye
To be almost towering to the sky.

The second laments:
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses
At least many sensible men confesses

And the third, while not explicitly acknowledging the disaster, proudly praises again:
your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array,
And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye
Strong enough all windy storms to defy.

It's so charming that we're dealing here not just with a man who feels forced by circumstances to include the phrase "your central girders" in one poem, but with a man who finds that phrase so poetic that he feels a need to include it in at least three different poems...

Most of the Iranian movie The Cow (گاو‎ Gāv, 1969), plus bits and pieces of all of the following:

An Afghan action(?) movie called Panāh (2008) that seems to be mostly in Dari despite what IMDB says and was apparently filmed in Mumbai but is about an Afghan refugee smuggler in Bulgaria

Afghanistan's first movie Like Eagles (مانند عقاب Mānand-i-Uqāb, 1965)

A Party in Hell (شب‌نشینی در جهنم Shabneshini dar Jahannam, 1956), the oldest Iranian movie I can find with subtitles (in English, in this case)

I'm curious as to where all the images in this video come from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOlvJ2jVuWM (the video is relatively recent, but the song is an old Dari song from Afghanistan, I think maybe from the 60s)

And at least I found out where all the parts with the waterfall are from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-OeMHxTP0

I just binge-watched two huge Netflix hits end-to-end.
Dark, season two: is probably the greatest series of the last few years. Fun fact: I used to live in a city just like Winden, complete with dark ominous woods and nuclear power plant. No time travel, though. (We did have two serial killers operating nearby and UFOs sightings on a regular basis).

Stranger Things, season three: a huge disappointment. And that's an understatement. Apparently the writers have forgotten how to do horror. Also, they apparently know nothing about being a nerd and being in a relationship. That's a pretty impressive feat.

I'm trying to read the second edition of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) - there's supposed to be a third edition out next year. When I say "trying to read", I don't mean that the book is bad - it's both interesting and well-written. It's just that I keep getting distracted by other things. Maybe the people who keep claiming that modern technology is destroying everyone's attention spans are on to something.

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2019 8:47 am Dark, season two: is probably the greatest series of the last few years. Fun fact: I used to live in a city just like Winden, complete with dark ominous woods and nuclear power plant. No time travel, though. (We did have two serial killers operating nearby and UFOs sightings on a regular basis).

Funny it is mentioned. I never watch films or series unless back at my parents' place. Found myself binge watching season one yesterday and it truly is good. The town of Winden feels very relatable.

I binged /am binging two shows I've not watched before.

Mozart in the Jungle was a delight. It's fun and joyous, but with a serious heart and solid characters. And, obviously, great music. The first season doesn't know what it wants to be - the pilot is one thing (going more for the grittier, "sex, drugs and classical music" of its subtitle), and then the rest of the season veers between some really good episodes in the middle, and then suddenly into much-too-broad comedy for a bit. But the second, third and fourth seasons are more consistent. It's never great - with half-hour episodes and a quota of laugh-cues to meet, it doesn't have time to get too deeply into things - but it's consistently enjoyable to watch. I found myself repeatedly thinking "what sh... oh bugger it, I'll just watch an episode or two of MitJ...". It's musically admirable, too - the first season sticks perhaps too closely to the classical pop charts, but it gradually starts becoming more interesting - the last couple of seasons actually commissioned some new pieces, and tried to call attention to some forgotten composers. And one episode is just Messiaen. But it shouldn't scare off anyone not interested in the music, either - the soundtrack is an accompaniment, not the point of the show.

Those who know too much will quibble with how unrealistic the details are at times, and the fact that despite all the conducting in it, it's been consistently edited so that all the conductors are a beat out. But it feels true to the spirit of the thing. It also gets genuinely interesting in its storytelling by the end, particularly from a feminist point of view, and the ending is the sort of downer that was clearly intended to set up drama for the next (now never-to-be) season but has ended up an impressively nuanced and challenging conclusion.

You have to be able to tolerate some silliness. But it's worth it.



Alias is... hmm. Well, first off, I was really impressed from the very first episode. It's taut, thrilling, action-packed, character-based, and it does genuinely groundbreaking things with narrative structure (it feels almost as though the first season is divided into chapters of random length, and then chopped into episodes in a way that doesn't match the chapter structure in the slightest, but that means ending with lots of cliffhangers and lots of episodes starting in media res (but others starting and ending at downbeats, so that unless you're watching the clock it's hard to tell how long each episode has left). It sets up a really interesting premise.

But dear gods, it's the best example ever of "doesn't know what it wants to be". It sets up one show in the pilot, then flirts with pivoting into all that Raimbaldi bollocks, which never quite fits. It seems to zig a little at the end of the first season...

....but then midway through the second season it virtually reboots! In a single episode, the entire plot structure of the first season is wiped off the board, and we're effectively into a different show. Then it reboots again at the end of the season, skipping two years into the future, and sets up a really intriguing scenario... which it promptly ignores, with another mid-season reboot that as well as getting rid of all the interesting material suddenly decides to have one character do a 180-degree turn and reveal that they've been a completely different person the entire time. Honestly, it's American-soap-opera plotting! There isn't actually an evil long-lost twin with a goatee, but if there were, they'd fit right in! On the other hand, the third season does have an actual, episode-by-episode developing plot, which is more than the first two really had...

...and then, beginning of S4, a character looks at the camera and says "last year sucked!", and everything is reorganised again, at least in part in a flagrant and lampshaded attempt to get back to what worked in S1. I'm only a third of the way through, and so far it doesn't really work, but I'll wait and see. I'm now not so much 'binging' as 'crawling' (there are five seasons in total).

And it's not just the plot. Lots of elements of the style change continually. Even just looking at the set is confusing. Season 1, the sets were realistic: some people worked in poorly-lit open-plan offices, while others worked in an old-fashioned office with small offices full of paperwork, and there were chains of command and bureaucracies and everyone was low-level. Season 2 and Season 3, they transition to a giant marble palace, and it's unclear who has what authority. Now Season 4, they're in the set of a far-future SF thriller, everything a blur of perfect white. What damn show are you trying to be!?

It should be said, while it has some good episodes, it has some contenders for "intentionally worst episode of anything ever". The reboot episode mid season 2 is so godawful you wander how the actors could keep a straight face. And season 1 has an even worse episode that is, literally, people interrogating the protagonist into explaining the plot of the show (like, listing everyone's name and job, and then explaining all the backstory), seemingly just so that clips could be used in future intros and previously-ons.

It's also weirdly misogynistic. Its one of those 1990s "feminist" things that's all about "strong women". She's so strong that she can spend half the running time wearing only her underwear, and/or fetish gear. [the intros are also wildly varying in tone. Starts fairly neutral, goes into a really gritty thriller phase... and then Season 4 takes the intro and sticks a highlight real of the heroine's most revealing costumes over it. Not, like, clips of her doing things while wearing her underwear, but just pictures of her wearing underwear and/or fetish gear. It's so gratuitous you almost have to applaud its flagrancy]. But more seriously than that: she's a "strong woman" so she can kill people [or not - for some bizarre reason she seemingly isn't allowed to take a gun anywhere so every time has to knock out someone shooting at her and take their gun (and then mostly not kill anyone). For a show in which the male characters are constantly slaughtering people, and that isn't even afraid to have sympathetic characters fairly brutally killed, it's just weird!], but because she's still a woman she has to periodically collapse into debilitating hysterical fits of crying, anger, confusion or childishness, that a male coworker has to snap her out of. And her emotions ALWAYS, particularly early on, blind her to any sort of larger picture, so again a man always has to lecture her until she stops having a tantrum.

I mean, you can see where the writers are coming from, because given what she goes through it's no wonder she's always one stubbed toe from a breakdown. But it's just such a weird thing - 90% of the time ultra-capable badass, 10% of the time either trauma victim or stubborn child - and it creates such an ugly imagery of the supposedly-capable-and-popular woman actually having to be propped up by the genuinely-capable-but-overlooked men all the time.

On the other hand, the show has a fantastic performance from Victor Garber, particularly early on, back when the show had a lot more edge to it. Sadly, he, and the show as a whole, have been gradually softened.


So I have mixed feelings. I'll finish watching it, though, and I don't regret having done so. I'd certainly recommend the first season and a half, although to be honest I'm not really convinced there's much point watching beyond that. The rest of the show so far, although there have been good episodes, has mostly been the writers setting up intriguing mysteries, and then either ignoring them or completely half-arsing on-the-fly explanations.

[its showrunner went on to create Lost]

Ars Lande wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2019 8:47 am Stranger Things, season three: a huge disappointment. And that's an understatement. Apparently the writers have forgotten how to do horror. Also, they apparently know nothing about being a nerd and being in a relationship. That's a pretty impressive feat.

I'm surprised by this verdict. I'm not quite with the majority (who I think have decided it's the best one yet) on this, but it certainly seemed better than S2, and in some ways richer (though less focused) than S1. I don't have body horror issues, so I wasn't terrified and freaked out as a lot of people seemingly were, but it was effectively creepy throughout - though, it's true, like a lot of sequels it's more an action-thriller than a pure horror (which is a good thing, so far as I'm concerned).
But in particular, I think one thing everyone's singling out for understandable praise is its painfully accurate depiction of nerdy childhood romance!

Do you mind me asking what you thought the errors were?

[I will say there's one terribly unrealistic plot point in it - the idea that any heterosexual teenage male would be able to just ignore Maya Hawke. But apart from that...]

Anyway, I've recently encountered two songs I didn't know before.

The Vagabond is an early Ralph Vaughan Williams effort (I think he'd written a dozen or so songs and a few small instrumental pieces at this point) with lyrics by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's not exactly sophisticated... but I've found myself humming it several times since (particularly when walking, due to that tramping rhythm). It's a good indication I think of what RVW would go on to do - there's a strong feel of the folk song about it.

Litanei Auf Das Fest Allerseelen, on the other hand, feels in some ways almost the opposite - where The Vagabond is a brash, storming song with a folk music flavour and little subtlety, Litanei (lyrics by Johann Jacobi (FW Jacobi's brother)) is achingly soft and mature. Again, it's actually an early work - Schubert must have been around 19 at this point, and there's a touching innocence to it that marries well with the typically Schubertian Romantic lushness. It feels odd to point out the relative optimism of a song with lyrics like "and those who knew no peace but still had courage and strength to give on a field strewn with corpses in a world half asleep" - but this is a Schubert who still believes in the possibility of peace for the traumatised (this was still many years before his syphillis set in). It's certainly not his most accomplished song - at this point he'd already written The Erl-King! - but I think it's one of the most beautiful I've found so far.

Its simplicity gives it an interesting feature, incidentally: unlike most of his songs, this is purely strophic (it's the same tune sung repeatedly to each verse, rather than the tune changing to match the content of the words), and Schubert did not make clear what the lyrics were. He gives the tune and three sample verses, but that fits the old strophic convention, in which singers could sing the entire song, or only selected verses. Most modern versions give two or three verses only, but each singer picks which verses they prefer...

On interesting thing about the juxtaposition of these two songs: although Vaughan Williams was ten years older when he wrote his song, it was Schubert who was, by several orders of magnitude, the more experience composer: when he was 18, Schubert wrote around 150 songs (so a little under one every two days), and would go on to write another 110 the next year (I don't think we know the exact order); he'd already written dozens before turning 18, including Erlkoenig and the revolutionary Gretchen am Spinnrade. Grove describes a period of around 15 months during this time as "a burst of creativity almost unrivalled in the history of western music" - in addition to the 200-odd songs, he wrote two string quartets, two symphonies, two masses and four operas, while working full-time as a schoolteacher, and in his spare time as a private tutor, while also being a music student, and having a busy social life.

"Mui No'chinong Si Melaba," a song in Tanchangya, a minority language in Bangladesh (related to Bengali and Assamese but with Sino-Tibetan substrate influence as a result of relatively recent language shift):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-5Ogf-Eobg

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Jul 18, 2019 6:14 pm Do you mind me asking what you thought the errors were?

Sure! (I meant to anwer earlier, but the temperature these past few days was way out of the safe range for my brain, I'm afraid.)

Salmoneus wrote: [I will say there's one terribly unrealistic plot point in it - the idea that any heterosexual teenage male would be able to just ignore Maya Hawke. But apart from that...]

Well, that was even worse than the . I assume she was supposed to be "Hollywood homely" though?

I don't really remember much about season 2. As I recall, it was pleasant enough but not as good as season 1. In any case, I'm demonstrably wrong with respect to season 3. I don't think I've read a single negative review, so I've more or less come to terms with the fact that I'm completely wrong. That said:
Oh, and I followed zompist's recommendations and read the Anubis Gates on vacation. (I was supposed to read that year's Goncourt winner, but I'm afraid evil clowns and Egyptian sorcerers beat up disaffected unemployed French alcoholic factory workers again.) It's just as good as Mark says -- it's a bit like a very good Dr. Who episode.
Tim Powers was very big in France when I was a kid I believe : I remember seeing his books in supermarket shelves back then. I never bought them; they were kind of scary for a ten-year old kid, and then he went out of fashion. Powers' political views must have had something to do with that: Heinlein disappeared from the shelves in much the same way.

"María Belencha," a Quechua song by Los Bohemios del Cusco (there used to be a specific (probably older) clip of this exact same song by the exact same performers that I was partial to, but it's been taken off YouTube by now):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImNcMtOWXKk

Also, I found the instrumental wayñu "Chacabamba Parquecito" by The Blind Street Musicians of Cuzco! I love this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFgBDLBTBVE

A Libyan Arabic song I know nothing about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8HhTqo4h3o

And an instrumental song from the Libyan Sahara that I fantasize about trying to play by ear just because it would be amazing if I could do that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J60HUFh_Af0

I'm reading Tokyo Shinobi Squad and The Last Saiyuuki. The former is just a generic battle shonen that initially makes a controversy. I don't care it it will get cancelled. However, I'm convinced the latter to be cancelled, even though I enjoyed it better.

"Okurisa," a song in Kinyarwanda about grazing cattle performed in Uganda by Sandra Karigirwa at the turn of the century:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWAqWLc5qvI

Listening to the Fulani song "Bunyon," courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways, from the northern Beninese commune of Kouandé for the first time in probably more than a dozen years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7sLqyOrJyw

The Fulani live all over West Africa. "Bunyon" is an instrumental Fulani song played on flutes (fulannu) very similar to the ney and a calabash (hellere) accompanying a young girls' dance and accompanied by clapping. I first heard this song on Encarta 1996. I think they recorded 0:20-0:44 but cut out 0:36-0:40 to make it shorter since the melody is pretty repetitive. I'm guessing Encarta decided to remove this song before 1999 because I don't remember finding it on my cousin's Encarta 1999(?) CD and can't find it at all on the archived website.