(no subject)

I found amusing that, an hour before work ended, I opened a box containing paperback novels, most of which were either Oryx and Crake or Shopaholic Takes Manhattan.

On leaving work, I took the subway south to the Queen station. I got out and headed towards The Bay, buying an apple from a prepubescent girl Scout out of nostalgia (I do have my Chief Scout Award) and entered. The Bay is a wonderful consumerist paradise, but I entered to check the hours of the Thomson Collection. It's closing after this weekend, the artworks being handed over to the AGO and likely not being put on display for another couple of years. Both Saturday and Sunday, the collection will be on display from 11 am to 5 pm, at a regular cost of 4 dollars for adults, 2 dollars if you have a Bay card.

I then took the subway north to the Museum stop. I happened to sit a quarter-meter away from an arguing couple, heterosexual. He complained that she was complaining too much; she was complaining that he wasn't listening to her complaints; he complained that he was putting too much on him. It made for dispiriting background noise until I got out at the ROM. This Friday, they were having a free showing of The Girl with a Pearl Earring at 8 o'clock. I decided to go.

I killed some time at Glad Day, which is currently in the process of consolidating its stock since they cdlosed down one of the store's two floors. Unfortunate, that; also ironic, since I subsequently went to the Indigo in the Manulife Center, to copy a certain quote.

Before the movie, I saw a trailer for what looks like an entertaining movie version of Anne Holm's children novel I Am David, followed by less entertaining Eulogy Stage Beauty.

Then came the main feature. Wow. The acting was good; the cinematography was almost preternatural in quality. Two posts--one [REVIEW], one [BLOG-LIKE POSTING]--to come imminently.

Sometimes, when I'm very lucky, after experiencing something particularly stimulating I enter a very fun sort of mental state, focused and very creative. I feel that way now.

More to come.

[BRIEF NOTE] Alan Moore on Culture, and Culture in the World

Taken from V for Vendetta page 18 (panels 3 through 9) and page 19 (panels 1 through 3), a dialogue between V and Evie, the young woman he rescued from rape by government thugs in post-apocalyptic Britain.

V: We are in the Shadow Gallery. This is my home.

Do you like it?

Evie: All of these paintings and books . . . I didn't even know there were things like this.

V: You couldn't be expected to know. They have eradicated culture . . . tossed it away like a fistful of dead roses.

Evie: All the books, all the films, all the music . . .

The music is beautiful. You must thing I'm really stupid . . . All I've ever heard is the military stuff they play on the radio.

But all this stuff on your dukebox sounds so . . . I dunno . . . alive. What's this playing now? The woman's voice doesn't even sound English.

V: It's not. And the word is "Juke-box." With a J.

The song is called "Dancing in the Streets." It's being sung by Martha and the Vandellas, perhaps the term "Tamla Motown" is familiar to you?

Obviously not. Hardly surprising, I suppose. After all . . . they eradicated some cultures more thoroughly than they did others.

No Tamla and no Trojan. No Billie Holiday or Black Uhuru.

Just His Master's voice. Every hour on the hour.

We'll have to see what we can do about that.

I've commented on this Alan Moore masterpiece before. Valerie's letter was what particularly got me that time.

"An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us."

The dialogue quoted above gets me this time.

It's not a coincidence, I think, that totalitarian regimes and aspirants worldwide--Stalin's Soviet Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nazi Germany, the Algerian Islamists--want so to restrict popular culture, to manage it, to strip it of passion and lust and energy and contradictions and leave it inert and useless.

Over in the comments at Hurry Up Harry, someone mentioned that V for Vendetta was the book that made him get involved in shaping the world.

I find myself indebted to Alan Moore on two accounts. I wonder if he'd be interested in knowing how that title managed to shape my life?

[NNWM] The Louisiana Interface

My previous post on my NaNoWriMo world's popular music brought the world's Louisiana (still a state of the American union) to mind.

Up until the Civil War, for instance, half of Louisiana's population spoke French natively, and la francophonie louisianaise was fairly vibrant. It was also closely associated with Slave Power, though, and under Reconstruction government recognition of the French language was rescinded while the old Francophone dynasties were undermined. Market competition did the rest, pushing French in Louisiana to extinction and Louisiana to its current nondescript competition.

Louisiana evolved rather differently, in large part due to a significantly greater influx of French immigrants in a significantly long French tenure in the Francophone core of the state, and because of the greater radicalism of the Louisianais. Graduated abolition began early; later, Louisiana managed to find itself on the Union side, emerging with its Francophone nature intact and with a prosperous trading economy. In the 20th century, Louisiana becomes one of the United States' major interfaces with the wider world, interacting with a largely French-using rest-of-World, translating from an insular and Anglophone United States. As a liberal and fairly pluralistic enclave, it also stands out in the context of the wider South.

American popular music--jazz and r'n'b in particular--can trace their origins to New Orleans. In a world where residents of that city are likely to call themselves Néo-Orléanais but can draw on only a limited domestic market in French owing to language differents, touring in the wider world seems like a good way to earn a living.

I don't think I'll do anything with this in Going North. Think of it as extra background.