First of all, I ask for forgiveness.

Some hundred years ago I got a lovely email from Rebecca Mosley from the band Cogwheel Dogs. At the time, I was too absorbed in term papers and research for my thesis to sit down and type up a proper post. There is actually no good excuse for not doing that, so I apologize.

I do like to bitch about how the world is going to the dogs. But if those dogs were made of cogwheels, the expression would be decidedly optimistic. It’s great to hear that there are still young band who care enough to write to people about what they do and who they are. And who record in an attic. It’s obviously not the most convenient and luxurious way to work but for someone like me it flips the imagination switch. Attic, garage, and cellar are where the great musical stories begin and, really, there could not be too many songs eulogizing those places. At some point I stopped going to concerts because it seemed like no one snuck out to their attics, garages, and cellars to do music anymore. Part of the problem was my own skepticism, part of it was that truly the numbers of idealistic and hard-working beginner bands decreased sharply. That’s the wrong kind of dogs. It takes some openness and, I think, some atti(c)tude that is largely missing today to do these personal mud-stained things. That’s the right kind of dogs.

I tend to like music that is somewhat ascetic but based on a concept that unfolds in time. There must be a story behind it that can’t be written down so that music indeed is the one medium through which it can come. Hence perhaps my inability to do justice in writing to sounds.

I most definitely lack talent to give you a verbal taste of what to expect when you click over here. I’m impressed by Rebecca’s blog, the band’s website–I’m a sucker for visual wit, I’m afraid. As for the sounds: I like where these songs are going. They are going places and can take you there, which is what songs, essentially, should do. That’s a great beginning and I’d love to see where the songs go from here. I hope there’s a song about the attic somewhere along the way…

Animals and Your Soul
If you’re like most people, baring your soul is tough, so the first thing you should do is get yourself an avatar from the animal world on which you can project your fears, your loves, and, most importantly, your festering hates. We suggest finding an outcast member of the animal kingdom to represent your soul’s voice. Perhaps start with a lemur. Say what you really want to say, but as a lemur might say it. Everyone will be all “Wow, I’ve never read a poem from a lemur’s perspective before!” (“Poetry by the Numbers” by Gary Rudoren)

I don’t know what kind of writing animal I could I be. It’s difficult to type or hold a pencil with a paw.

I know. It seems I should quote one of her brilliant, ironic poems to celebrate her birthday. But wouldn’t the poet feel bored if she happened to stop by? Sto lat, Droga Pani. (Tak na wszelki wypadek, gdyby tu Pani się przejazdem znalazła.) I wish us all many more of those poems. And if Wisława Szymborska should ever click over to this blog, I link her discreetly to one of my favorite poems by Mary Jo Bang. Because what could inspire writing more good poetry if not reading someone else’s good poetry?

As much as I hate cigarettes, I love how delighted W.S. looks in this picture. There are songs about such moments…

Sitting in my spam queue was a message from someone called “Jesus” — a few unintelligible links, unfortunately. Nothing Andy Warhol could telephone God about.

Homesickness has caught up with me under the guise of a summer cold. It’s ridiculous: my nose a leaking faucet, I go to sleep early like a baby and the only thing that calms me is reading Herbert and Szymborska in bed. Remembering the old gods, although they’re merely pieces of names and roadside statues, is aspirin for confusion. It could be that the cold is punishment for forgetting Midsummer. In which case I should check with neo-pagan websites what I am to expect next. Perhaps finally toads and snakes falling out of my mouth with every cussword? That would be a very practical solution to my nutrition issues.

What I should have been doing on June 24:

After the dancing, I would have had to jump over that fire for a hypothetical idiot destined to marry me. Then, around midnight, I would have had to take off the lovely wildflower garland, put a candle in it, and let it float to the other shore of a lake (with the hypothetical idiot in mind). The hypothetical idiot would have had to go into the woods in search of the fern flower that blooms only on that particular night. Should my garland sink before reaching the shore and his ass be bitten off by wild pigs, there would be little hope of us finding each other and getting married. The whole ritual would have to be repeated the following year.

As a little girl, I tried not to fall asleep, lest I should dream of my future husband.

It’s quite possible that the celebration as it looked like when I was growing up was a mere aberration of our Slavic ancestors’ rites. But if you can provide the bored wooden statue of Światowid with some entartainment, why not do that? I might drop by later this summer for a picnic with the gods. (Those cycles of nature: I’m packing again to leave in mid-July.)

The small pictures are from the open air museum in Lednogóra, where we used to celebrate Slavic Midsummer back in the 1980s and early 1990s.

(Image found when googling Virginia Woolf; astoundingly, that’s pretty much what I look like in the morning)

If a room of one’s own is all you need to unleash your hidden Shakespeare’s sister, why does it not seem to be working for me? Apparently, the brilliant writer/scholar in me, once unleashed in my room, is primarily interested in dusting the bookshelves and washing the dishes. Vacuuming is also good, as is unclogging the kitchen sink. She is the artist of domestic neuroses. If I had a striped wallpaper, I’d have phantom women figures pulling at the bars whenever I was left alone.

It’s all much better when I put Virginia Woolf’s ideas in a box and go write in cafes or the library. No dramatizations of “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” no cleaning, perhaps no genius. But text. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what the game is about.

Maybe Shakespeare didn’t have a sister for a reason? (Maybe he did, I don’t know; maybe Anne Hathaway wrote his books anyway, and no, not wearing Prada.) Or I could never be her, not just because of temporal impossibility.

Yet another maybe: Maybe there is a good reason why Virginia Woolf wasn’t an advice columnist? Having servants could have skewed her understanding of the domestic, since she never attended to the hygienic and aesthetic aspects of the water-closet.

Sunday. Birds and all. Rain clouds hanging in lazy indecision. Open text document devouring on my screen. I’ll face some more hours, having cleaned everything in the house, and skip the walk to the river.

Thesis is being written. I can’t tell you how exactly but it’s happening. With the side-effect of a big dent in my provisional “coffee fund.”

I’m in Thesisland. It’s not a particularly interesting country. Most of the time, I feel like I know where I’m heading and then I realize I don’t speak the language. I constantly trip on the cobblestones with which they paved the whole place. I’m looking for the border. Will send a postcard soon. Maybe.

As you know, this is a blog about celebrities. OK, it isn’t, even if Jacques Derrida and his cat were here. I don’t think I have what it takes to write about celebrities–nor have any real desire to possess those qualities.

I don’t know if it was a childhood accident I cannot remember which might have impaired my image-storing, but I’m stuck with this vague idea of the artist as a person who hangs out in decadent cafes, sneers at consumer society, and makes art (making art is this haze blurring the picture). In this idealistic image I find little place for secrets dug up in the dumpster or amateur psychoanalysis. I like pretty dresses from movie premieres, in small doses. Mystic fraternizing with famous people in their various kinds of pain or knowing what they think without knowing them are beyond me.

Lazily browsing for some information about Alanis Morissette’s new album, I mostly found pictures of her from the Today show followed by “deep and insightful” remarks about how her thighs looked in gray pants and possible causes of weight gain. I wish people were more creative in inventing problems for themselves and just let go.

It’s probably the fault of my unremembered childhood accident, but I cannot comprehend certain trends in popular culture (so that you don’t say I blame everything on growing up in communism). One of them is the glorification of packaging femininity (don’t I sound smart?): ‘lady lumps for bling,’ or something equally awkward-sounding. With this video, Morrissette becomes another exemplary artist in my gratuitous series of posts and comments about ‘the idea of the artist.’ Down on planet Earth, she makes my day.
 
 

 
 
I decided to spare the reader my ruminations on what this parody does. The music and Morissette’s interpretation of the lyrics suffice. And I just love how uncomfortable everyone looks in this video.