the milieu

“If you could rename yourself, what would your name be?” There are quite a few ways to take this question because of the ambiguous phrasing.

1. In contemporary American English, the question implies that one can change one’s name.  In this interpretation, the operative clause is “what would your name be?” - which is another way of asking what nomenclature you would like to respond to and/or with which you identify. Thus an appropriate response would be a name you choose because you like it or find some meaning in it. That’s pretty boring but also pretty common.

2. One subtext of the question emphasizes an association between “name” and “self.” “Rename yourself” is the operative clause in this subtext, and (both in proximity and conceptual content) it weds name and selfhood. The questioner is not asking what name you LIKE, but rather what name best indicates who “you” are. Further, if the questioner means this, she is probably also the kind of person who believes in magic and/or the supernatural. In her understanding, language possesses true power, either to describe or affect the material, which indicates an IMMATERIAL reality superseding the physical.

3. However, the question starts with “If.” “If” is a word which should always slow the reader down. There is the possibility that the questioner insinuates that a name CANNOT be changed and is asking either (a) a hypothetical question to analyze the answerer, or (b) asking a question about what a name would become if it could be changed. Rephrased in light of possibility (b), the question becomes: “If ANY name could be changed, what would ANY name be?” As a side note, this is the kind of person whom you might find tiresome or annoying at first. But chances are, if she thinks that much, she’s a pretty careful person whom herself chooses friends based upon deeper convictions. Therefore she is probably loyal and trustworthy.

[just some food for thought]
-brian.b

I came to this album with mixed feelings. The words “I Will Possess Your Heart” emerging from my radio left me nonplussed, but I couldn’t get them out of my head. From the first high note Ben Gibbard hits in “Bixby Canyon Ridge,” however, it is clear that Death Cab has spent the last two years working hard. In many ways, Narrow Stairs feels like a return to pre-Transcendentalism Death Cab, albeit cleaned up, polished, and better for the journey. With its fast tempo, dizzying lyrics, and nose-dive refrains, “Cath…” resurrects a Photo Album sound that many had thought lost for good. “Your New Twin Sized Bed” showcases Gibbard’s ability to take a common item and - as if by incantation - extract a moving tale from the molecules. “Pity and Fear” pulls the album’s tempo up for one last peak before subdued melody and evocative lyrics of “The Ice is Getting Thinner,” which may be one of Gibbard’s best songs ever.

One thing that may help a listener understand the album is to put it on repeat and listen to it two or three times straight through. I think that the album employs a cyclical season similar to the Julian calendar. There are twelve songs and twelve months, and the album begins with the same image with which it closes - death and ghosts in a riverbed. “Cath…” is a disillusioned wedding song in the month of April, and “Grapevine FIres” employs the heat of August to discuss a turn towards winter.

All in all, new fans will find something to like, if not love, in Narrow Stairs. Long-time fans may feel like Death Cab has become too mainstream, and this album could entrench that opinion. This reviewer, however, thinks that the album deserves the purchase.

[4.5/5]
-brian.b

Apologies to the three of you who still check this website. I’ve been back in California and fairly preoccupied with family and friends. I will be posting to this website more regularly starting now.

Keep your eyes open for the following:
- some comments on The Darjheeling Limited
- commentary on remarkable passages from Proust’s Swann’s Way
- a review of Death Cab for Cutie’s newest album

For those of you on the east coast, I’ll be back in Florida next Monday. Which is very weird.

[----]
-brian.b

Mountain Man
For my Father

At the base of my mountain
you call - “Brian, come down.
It’s time to go home.”
In response I declare
“I - AM - A - MAN!”
But with each word,
I move my chubby feet
one more step towards you.

You repeat your command.
I repeat my song and dance,
drawing nearer to you
with each step
through space and time.
You laugh and gather me up
effortlessly as though I am air.

Safely in your arms I look back
to the mountain I transcended -
now a hill, now only a mound
of drying grass receding from sight
behind the curve of your shoulder.
I will dream tonight of being like you,
strong enough to carry myself,
powerful enough to turn
mountains into mounds.

In the French Countryside, 1946

Wind asks a bomb-wrecked barn
to find meaning through its damage.
“Be well, be well,” Wind whispers
into the barn’s wooden frame.
I know this because I’ve waited,
I’ve sat in the hayloft and listened
for Wind and the barn to speak.

They speak as one to speak at all.
Like a gunman in an abandoned cathedral
venerating a forgotten crucifix,
the two enemies only make sense as one.
Wind and the barn sing together,
homologous and content.

-brian.b

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[see? grad school's easy.]
-brian.b

Simone VI

The sunlight climbs in uneven slivers out
from under the Venetian blinds. I awake
to the end of a half-remembered song
rolling over the drifts of dream, a receding
snow in the springtime. I can’t recall
the song’s words - only the melody bars
my way back to the flatlands I could bend
with a word or wish, the place where you
and I resided together happy, alone.

I reach into myself, clutch the fragments,
but already you are once again you,
no longer me. And (once more) before
rising, I whisper your name into my sheets
where I keep it safe from the tyrant History.

“There was this girl.  Her name was Simone.”

-brian

I found out about I Am Robot and Proud through a compilation called “Starving But Happy” and was pleased to find a few full length albums available through iTunes. I immediately bought this album and listened to it for about three straight days - something about the serendipitous treble playing against mild distortion and evenly distributed basslines was really gripping. For a while. Ultimately, however, the magic wore off, and “Electricity” became good fodder for ambient/electronic mixes I use for the writing process. I suggest you buy a song or two before you invest in the whole album. I recommend “When I Get My Ears” for its incredibly chipper, near birdlike upper cadences, “The Scholars and the Travellers” for the tense theme and really good refrains and creative use of vocals, and “Center Cities” for the way it rounds out the set with a slight bit of melancholy. Those really are the standout tracks, take them or leave them.

-brian.b

My professional investment in critical theory notwithstanding, I am also an amateur poet on the side. I won’t force you to see these lines but click through if you’re interested in the other side of my literary self.
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