—The Star-Crossed Lovers
Duke Ellington - The Star-Crossed Lovers
“The piano trio finished an original blues number and began the intro to ‘Star-Crossed Lovers.’ When I was in the bar, the pianist would often strike up that ballad, knowing it was a favorite of mine. It wasn’t one of Ellington’s best-known tunes, and I had no particular memories associated with it; just happened to hear it once, and it struck some chord within me. From college to those bleak textbook-company years, come evening I’d listen to the Such Sweet Thunder album, the ‘Star-Crossed Lovers’ track over and over. Johnny Hodges had this sensitive and elegant solo on it. Whenever I heard that languid, beautiful melody, those days came back to me. It wasn’t what I’d characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me. My nerves were sharp as a blade, my eyes shining with a piercing light. And every time I heard that music, I recalled my eyes then, glaring back at me from a mirror.”
— Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun
Frida's Corsets
Frida Kahlo wore plaster corsets for most of her life because her spine was too weak to support itself. She painted them, naturally. She covered them with pasted scraps of fabric and drawings of tigers, monkeys, plumed birds, a blood-red hammer and sickle, streetcars like the one whose handrail rammed through her body when she was eighteen years old. They remain to this day in her famous blue house—their embedded mirrors reflecting back our gazes, their collages bringing the whole world into stricture. In one, an open circle has been carved into the plaster like a skylight near the heart.
My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.
—Haruki Murakami (via murakamistuff)
(Source: ft.com, via murakamistuff)
more than just a meme
evidently it’s more than just some repetitive try-outs on “how to put it and where to” - o’er the time it has become iconic.This certain scene from the movie - Downfall, so far it has been used in numerous gags and spoofs but this - as it seems is the best or wait-a-minute….!
"'Love matters, but does it matter that love is present? Love's absence, or at least its endless pursuit and longing, might prove more satisfactory."
As technology bounces us forward into futures we do not choose, it is seductive, poignant, retro, fanciful, nostalgic, to dip back into a past that is nearby but gone – like a house you used to walk past before they pulled it down.
I come from a time b4 mobile phones. So does this story. Imagine fighting with your lover on a landline. You hang up, like we all do, then when you feel a bit less hurt or self- righteous, you phone back but there is no reply.
Grab your keys, jump into your car, race to see her or maybe him, because you worry someone else will be in the bed before it’s cold. You worry you have blown it. You worry.
In the car, racing past anonymous lights on the motorway, you suddenly wonder if the no reply means X is racing towards you …
Do you go back? Do you go on? Stop at a garage and call again? It couldn’t happen could it, mobile in your pocket?
The tension in the story depends on the unknowing. Soon Calvino imagines a perpetual time, the time out of time of long car journeys where it becomes unnecessary to arrive. You have a lover. You are racing towards her/him. Your lover is racing towards you. You will never meet but meeting is no longer the purpose of the journey.
There is a kind of ecstatic doubt at the heart of the story; love matters, but does it matter that love is present? Love’s absence, or at least its endless pursuit and longing, might prove more satisfactory.
The headlights coming towards you: Is that your lover?
The car racing past you: Is that your rival?
And who are you? Lover? Beloved? Cipher?
From the Guardian’s delightful short stories podcast.
(Source: hndrk)
Haruki Murakami.: Ever had questions about "Kafka on the Shore"?
Ask Philip Gabriel! The professor of Japanese literature and translator of some of Murakami’s books, such as “South of the Border, West of the Sun”, “Kafka on the Shore” or one of the volumes of the upcoming “1Q84” is on Twitter and will answer all the questions tagged “#1b140_q”. In case you…
(Source: The Atlantic, via murakamistuff)
it gives a great sense of relief to see in words, in a character - where someone can define both - being humbled and being intrigued
- Interviewer: Nakata, the other main character, is a lovable victim of the school disaster who is unlike everyone around him. What led you to create this sort of character?
- Haruki Murakami: I'm always interested in people who've dropped out of society, those who've withdrawn from it. Most of the people in Kafka on the Shore are, in one sense or another, outside the mainstream. Nakata is most definitely one of them. Why did I create a character like him? It must be because I like him. It's a long novel, and the author has to have at least one character he loves unconditionally.
