05.26.2002 – day
Originally written 05.26.2002.
media check. peter told me to check out if on a winter’s night a traveler by italo calvino. the library didn’t have it in translation, but it did have invisible cities, so i’m reading that instead. the framework of the book is that marco polo is describing cities that he has encountered during his explorations to kublai kahn. the book is a series of descriptions of these cities. it’s a really interesting read, and unlike anything i have read before. it’s refreshing to read something which has innovations of form. after reading a collection of generally unsatisfying d.h. lawrence short stories, i just wanted to read something that provided some sort of interesting narrative. but, as much as i like storytelling, it’s not everything in literature, and sometimes the manner in which ideas are communicated is every bit as important as the ideas themselves. it’s not that calvino’s ideas are uninteresting though. in describing the cities, he doesn’t so much describe physical places, but how man creates and destroys memory, dreams, hopes, desires, etc. this summer, i think my literary project might be to write about columbus’ skateparks in the style and context that calvino writes about cities in the book. additionally, for one who’s seen my fair share of cities in the last few years, i find the writer’s unique perspective on the concept of ‘city’ to be an interesting way to contextualize my travels.
media check 2. watched hedwig and the angry inch for my second time. watched it with iain who hadn’t seen it before. he liked it, and i found it every bit as satisfying the second time as i did the first. gives me hope that i might actually like musical theatre. the film is just so impressive in execution in so many ways. the costumes, the art-direction, the flow of scenes (which are sometimes so disparate that one could imagine that this on-screen interpretation could have gone horribly wrong), and of course the amazing score. to be honest, thematically, i can’t really get that much out of such stories about sexual identity, but as a total product, the film is such a tidal wave of creativity and expressiveness that one can’t help but be empowered. my brother mentioned to me that he wanted to work on some mixed media music projects (music + literature reading + original spoken word), and i’d like to combine those things to provide some sort of narrative. if i could come up with something one tenth as good as hedwig, i think i’d be happy.
our flat played a football match against the flat below ours today. well, it was only a real match for about 20 minutes or so. we were down a man, but i think we were the better team. the reason the game degenerated was because the other team had brought champaign to the park, and by the time the game was over, they were starting to get pretty drunk. i was a little annoyed, as i tend to take games pretty seriously. my mom can probably tell some choice stories about me wailing on tim when i was younger and trying to get him to play street hockey with me. anyway, i still got some energy out of my system, and it was pretty funny to see me running around with my bssxe t-shirt amidst kids trying to play football while holding a bottle of “buck-fizz”.