Florence + The Machine

On the way back from Chicago yesterday (see next post), I was introduced to a song that I absolutely love.  Fairly newish, 2009 I think, but I am hopelessly out of date regarding music so extremely new to me.  I don't listen to that many groups w/strong female leads - mostly just Niyaz, early Tori Amos, and a little PJ Harvey - but I this this singer is dynamic.  I saw comparisons to Amy Winehouse, but since I never listened to her I can't comment.

Dog Days Are Over
 
Happiness hit her like a train on a track
Coming towards her stuck still no turning back
She hid around corners and she hid under beds
She killed it with kisses and from it she fled
With every bubble she sank with her drink
And washed it away down the kitchen sink

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your loving, your loving behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

And i never wanted anything from you
Except everything you had and what was left after that too, oh
Happiness hit her like a bullet in the head
Struck from a great height by someone who should know better than that

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

Run fast for your mother, run fast for your father
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your loving, your loving behind
You cant carry it with you if you want to survive

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
Can you hear the horses?
'Cause here they come

The dog days are over
The dog days are done
The horses are coming
So you better run

The Sound of Building Coffins

My review of an awesome book that everyone should read (now).

New Orleans in the late 18th to early 20th century.  A place full of death, hope, and rebirth, of yellow fever, voodoo, and the discovery of jazz.  This story is about the Morningstar family and a cast of others connected with them through fate, coincidence, or love.  It is hard to place Maistros’ book into one particular genre.  It is historical fiction, magical realism, and horror, but more importantly it is also literature at its very best.  

From the first page, the grotesque (a theme throughout) is evident as we are introduced to a nine year old boy carrying “a burlap bag, full of fresh fetuses.” The supernatural permeates the story; ghosts, zombies, and voodoo Queens.  Music is also important, one of the main characters is Buddy Bolden said to be the first man to front a jazz band.  But not just music in an abstract way, rather literally music - lyrics and sound - are central to the plot of this story.  In fact, the entire book is a sensual experience, encompassing the sights of turn of the century New Orleans, but also the sounds, smells, and even the texture of the city.  

Maistros’ novel is about people, the hard times they lived in and the difficult choices they had to make admist death, violence, and racism.  Ultimately, however, the author has produced a story about hope and rebirth (both literal and metaphorical).  Water is a key symbol of these themes whether in the form of the Mississippi River, the bayou, or the storms that bring flooding (both nurturing and destructive).  It is hard to imagine this book in a pre-Katrina era.  The motifs that take center stage here are ones expressed recently by residents of New Orleans who did not evacuate or those who left only to return because they could not stay away.

The Sound of Building Coffins is an amazing first novel, an amazing book in general that I would recommend to anyone no matter your usual tastes.  I won’t say that it is perfect of course.  There is some initial disconnect between Book 1 and Book 2 (it takes place several years after the opening scenes).  It took me a few chapters to get back into the story after the break.  Also the writing is at times disjointed, but for me this fit with the mood of the story. Others might find it off-putting. Regardless of these minor issues, this book is absolutely worth checking out!

The Sound of Building Coffins by Louis Maistros (2009)

Song of the Day

Interrupting the regularly scheduled program (i.e. protesting) to give you a song: (video link under "song of the moment")

EARTH INTRUDERS
BJORK
We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches

Turmoil! Carnage!

Here come the earth intruders
We are the paratroopers
The beat of sharp shooters
Come straight from voodoo

With our feet thumping
With our feet marching
Grinding skeptics
Into the soil

Shower of goodness coming to
End the doubt pouring over
Shower of goodness coming to end

We are the earth intruders
We are the sharp shooters
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo

I have guided my bones through some voltage
And love them still
And love them too

Metallic! Carnage! Furiocity! Feel the speed!

We are the earth intruders
We are the sharp shooters
Flock of parachuters
Necessary voodoo

There is turmoil out there
Carnage, rambling
What is to do but dig
Dig bones out of earth

Mud graves! Timber! Morbid trenches!

Here come the earth intruders
There'll be no resistance
We are the canoneerers
Necessary voodoo

And the beast
With many heads
And the arms rolling
Steamroller!

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches

Forgive us, tribe

We are the earth intruders
We are the earth intruders
Muddy with twigs and branches
Marching

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Whilst down South I decided to read a book about the South.  Specifically about Jim Crow and desegregation.  My brother is a public history major and specializes in Louisiana history - so he had quite a few books to choose from.  The one I picked The Strange Career of Jim Crow by C. Vann Woodward is essentially a series of essays published as a short history.  It was very readable, and his argument was convincing, but it is not in any way an introduction to the subject. I am ashamed to admit that I didn't know enough about major events in Southern U.S. history to totally follow the names, events, and theories that Woodward referenced throughout.  

But I did like this quote:

"When a scientific theory ceases to account for the observed facts of common experience, however, it would seem to be time to discard the theory." (109).

Place and Space

"Place is not only coadunative but also...deconstructive -- deconstructive of oppositions that it brings and holds together within its own ambience.  These oppositions include binary pairs of terms that have enjoyed hegemonic power in Western epistemology and metaphysics.  I am thinking of such dichotomies as subject and object, self and other, formal and substantive, mind and body, inner and outer, perception and imagination (or memory), and nature and culture themselves."

-- Edward S. Casey. 1997.   "How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: Phenomenological prolegomena"  (36)