hello mum!

such a sad, sad situation

There was an old man whose despair
Induced him to purchase a hare:
Whereon one fine day,
He rode wholly away,
Which partly assuaged his despair.

(Edward Lear)

... several experiences in consciousness that I have had ...

"You may be indisposed to Waldo Frank, but I must recommend to you City Block as the richest in content of any 'fiction' that has appeared in the American 20th century. Frank has the real mystic's vision. His apprehensions astonish one. I have also enjoyed reading Ouspensky's Tertium Organum lately. Its corroboration of several experiences in consciousness that I have had gave it particular interest."

Hart Crane (in Ohio) writing to Allen Tate (in Kentucky), 15 Feb 1923

turning Japanese - snippets

Medbh McGuckian: "I also love Paul Muldoon's Japanese side, and recall a happy occasion in New York in a sushi restaurant where we felt really exalted!"

Ciaran Carson: "The desktop image of the PC I am writing this on is a reproduction of Hokusai's great print, 'Sudden Gust of Wind': under Mount Fuji, travellers' papers are scattered up into the air, they are holding on to their hats. I love its clarity, its movement, and its sense of humour."

(Journal of Irish Studies, XVII, 2002)

those are the pearls that were his eyes

Jambalaya

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have good fun on the bayou

Jambalaya, a crawfish pie and a file gumbo
’cause tonight I’m gonna see my machez a mio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

Thibodeaux, fontainbleau, the place is buzzin’
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style, go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou.

[corrections / quibbles positively welcomed]

found tv

a joy for ever

fair / not fair

unhemmed hereby pledges its support to a spanking new blog. It looks like it's going to engage with politics rather more explicitly than unhemmed does. (But then it's quite possibly true that all blogs would do well to engage with politics more explicitly than unhemmed does. Is unhemmed anxious about this? And why this mannered avoidance of the first person singular? It's been a long day.)

"Over the next month he'll be monitoring, meeting and observing the BNP candidates in his local area, Greenwich ..."

I don't envy you - but best of luck, old chum!

the rumors are true

Kenneth Koch

"On graduating in 1948 he moved to New York, where he lived in the same building as the painter Jane Freilicher, on Third Avenue at 16th Street, in an apartment only yards from the tracks of the El. One of his favourite recreations there was to don a rubber gorilla mask and gaze out of his window at passing trains."

(from Mark Ford's mini-bio in The New York Poets: An Anthology)

toybox

shameless self-promotion

It was only a matter of time. Historic recordings duly disinterred, dusted down, and digitally remastered.

the series is really shaping up, non?

Presenting ... Graham Allcott and the Peters Projection! (Why is he looking at us like that?)

a little chit-chat, April 1819

"Last Sunday I took a Walk towards highgate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park I met Mr Green our Demonstrator in conversation with Coleridge - I joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be agreeable - I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for near two miles I suppose in those two Miles he broached a thousand things - let me see if I can give you a list - Nightingales, Poetry - on Poetical sensation - Metaphysics - Different genera and species of Dreams - Nightmare - a dream accompanied by a sense of touch - single and double touch - A dream related - First and second consciousness - the difference explained between will and Volition - so my metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousness - Monsters - the Kraken - Mermaids - southey believes in them - southeys belief too much diluted - A Ghost story - Good morning - I heard his voice as he came towards me - I heard it as he moved away - I heard it in all the interval - if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at Highgate Good Night! It looks so much like rain I shall not go to town to day; but put it off till tomorrow -"

Keats, writing to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana

numberland

In the second of what might be a whole series of pop posts with 'Rugby roots', unhemmed invites you to lend your ears to numberland.

Dubes

I've not asked Dubes if he minds me 'promoting' this fantastic slice of pure pop magic, but until he complains that's what I intend to do. I only heard it for the first time a moment ago: if you listen hard you can hear Rugby in the background. (Or is that just me?)

Bernice Rubens on Elias Canetti

"It was during this time [in the 1950s, shortly after her marriage to Rudi Nassauer] that a Mr Elias Canetti came into our lives, and seemed to lodge there permanently. I disliked him from the start. I thought him a scrounger, but Rudi was much taken with him. Mr Canetti had written one novel, Auto Da Fé, which Rudi had read and was deeply impressed by. According to its author, so was the whole of Europe. Over the years I got to know this man and I realised he had but one single talent. That of self-promotion. He created mystery about himself. If you wanted to phone him, for instance, you had to let it ring twice. Then you had to put the phone down and ring again. Certain people could approach him, but only if they'd had a reliable recommendation. I thought it all rather pathetic. My father met him once and declared him evil. And as it turned out, he was right, though evil might have been an overstatement. He did not have the imagination to be evil. He was wicked rather, depraved, vicious and spiteful. His own life was dull and uneventful, and to compensate he would create intrigue in the lives of other people.

"My marital situation fascinated Canetti, and he curried favour with K [Rudi's mistress] in order to stir the pot. He moved around Hampstead couples and loners doling out destructive advice and waiting, with infinite pleasure, for the shit to hit the fan. He himself was married to a rather gentle victim, Vesa. He told me once how he envied me my children and what a sorrow it was for him that Vesa couldn't have any. Later I was to hear from Vesa herself that it was he who did not want any children and insisted on taking steps to prevent it. I hated that man. He was the only person in my life that I have ever hated. And I loved that hatred. It inspired me. It was almost a creative force. One day, I was driving up Haverstock Hill and Mr Canetti, deep in filthy thought, crossed the road in front of me. It was not a pedestrian crossing, and I could, quite legally, have killed him on the spot. "He came out of nowhere, m'Lud. It was impossible to pull up." But I refrained. I needed him around so that I could go on hating him. About 30 years later, he left England and went to live in Zurich. Nobody regretted his departure. As he had so often predicted, and had no doubt promoted, he won the Nobel prize and eventually died of old age. I marvelled that a man of such perverse nature could die of natural causes."

Strong stuff.

hungry sailors

"Accordingly our day's ration was brought out, and seating ourselves on a detached fragment of rock, we proceeded to discuss it. First we divided it into two equal portions, and, carefully rolling one of them up for our evening's repast, divided the remainder again as equally as possible, and then drew lots for the first choice. I could have placed the morsel that fell to my share upon the tip of my finger; but notwithstanding this I took care that it should be full ten minutes before I had swallowed the last crumb. What a true saying it is that 'appetite furnishes the best sauce.' There was a flavour and a relish to this small particle of food that under other circumstances it would have been impossible for the most delicate viands to have imparted."

Herman Melville, Typee (1846), Chapter VII

there's no two ways about it: some places have funny names