10 good things
I got the idea for a top-ten list from danschank (whose top-ten lists are more eloquently written than my own) and thought I’d try my own.
10.
Philosophical Hermeneutics - for all intensive purposes a Truth and Method-lite ( Gadamer’s magnum opus), nicely documenting the movement of hermeneutical thought, ‘culminating’ with Philosophical hermeneutics, throughout history. Divided into two parts, containing essential essays from Gadamer, the first part hits on the history of (traditional) Hermeneutics, the Universality of the Hermeneutical circle, the primordial nature of language (and how nothing can exist outside of it), and, also, how it relates to Aesthetics. The second part concentrates on Philosophical Hermeneutics’ relation with phenomenology and existentialism, and Heidegger’s fundamental concern with Hermeneutics. More than any other, this book has had a lasting influence on how I think and my philosophical endeavours. I plan on reading it again this summer as I find that it, paired with Grondin’s Gadamer books, Ricoeur’s writing on the Gadamer Habermas debate, and, of course, Truth and Method itself, continues to impact me, becoming more and more relevant to understanding how I see the world around me.
9.
Ne-Yo - arguably in need of no mention, it is for the purpose of the dedication of serious thought to Ne-Yo that I include him on this list of 10 things I think are noteworthy at the moment. It is without the slightest hint of irony that I celebrate this talented voice. While hip-hop has found itself worthy of critical review, contemporary R&B has had less luck. But it is this R&B which I see as the direct descendent of 1970s soul, one of the most innovative (and yet localized) genres of the last half-century. I take Ne-Yo as serious as I would Green, Mayfield, or Gaye. Ne-Yo evokes the style, and Astroglide delivery that Usher strives for, armed with lyrics which are most of all memorable, which is more than can be said about some of his contemporaries. And let’s not forget his brilliant match-up with none other than Ghostface Killah, pushing Ghostface into the realm of soul, where, in my humble opinion, he is most successful as an artist.
Here’s the Remy Ma Ne-Yo duet (in case anyone hasn’t heard it yet; note: not as good as the Ghostface duet):
8.
The films of Alain Tanner aren’t instantly likeable -- at least they weren’t to me, but they grew on me. While some films have a way of making the ordinary funny, Tanner has a way of making the humour in everyday life intriguing, yet not all that humourous - this is not a bad thing. An example is, in La Salamandre, the inspector who casually picks his nose while hailing the residents. Nothing transcends the commonplace in La Salamandre, yet it positions itself as a tad more self-aware and intriguing than the everyday. We are taken into a world where there is a mystery, and hard work is done to figure out such mystery, yet the audience is not compelled to care as much about the answer to this mystery as they are to the lackadaisical unraveling of events that seem to lead nowhere.
Yet, in the end this film feels like a critique of the comprehensive answers given to serve emancipatory projects, in this case, an article on the possibly murderous Bulle Ogier, which situates this film as one which has overcome the modernist tendencies, the Enlightenment’s goal of creating an overarching system of answers, still de rigeur in the 60s, and nods toward a new horizon where such pat answers are not of primordial focus. Add on top of this a great score by Jon Anderson (from YES).
Similarly, the struggle of finding answers (in this case to the question self-identity) is focused upon in In the White City and the final answer is deemed less important than the question itself. Tanner’s film acts as almost a metacommentary on Bruno Ganz’s 8mm film, capturing what he believes to be possible directions to the answer to his ontological question, which he is both trying to escape from and ask, simultaneously. It is through this run from his past than he finds, in his future, an understanding of his origin. By using European heavyweight Ganz to his advantage, Tanner joins the ranks of Rhomer, Wenders, Herzog and Schlondorff. Due to the nu-jazz score, typical for the time period, In the White City’s score did not impress me in the way that La Salamandre’s did.
Through both these films, of disparate genres, it is obvious that Tanner is just as at home in bringing his themes of ‘constant searching and questioning’ to very different mediums - a mark of some degree of noteworthy greatness, in my opinion.
7.
India Palace is Winnipeg’s best restaurant in my opinion. Tucked away in the hub of great food, in the West End, from first glance there is no reason to go here - it remains under the radar of both the food critics and the restaurant recommendations of almost everyone else. A small limited food selection does more to its service than disservice, as all 4 or 5 vegetarian selections, including their samosas (which is, itself, atypical of most East Indian restaurants in the city; most of the restaurants don’t include samosas on the buffet), have twice the flavour of their more popular competitors (e.g. East India Company). Quaint and almost always semi-empty, a newspaper clipping at the front which brags the almost embarrassing fact that Richard Gere eats here when he comes to our city, just adds to its charm.
6.
As Italian Giallo films become increasingly important to me, many of them finding themselves on my personal film-canon-in-my-head, the happening upon the www.killinginstyle.blogspot.com filmlog has been a well-timed blessing. Finding myself more often defending their merits as serious art against the critics of this fringe genre, this blog tends to provide me extra fodder, emphasizing, and often intellectually assessing, the elements which cause my enthusiasm: overwrought style, political subversiveness, mid-century modernist décor and aesthetic sensibilities, and some of the best damn film music you’ll ever hear (there are many links to great giallo soundtracks on the blog as well).
5.
I see Janet Cardiff's 40 Piece Motet, which won the Venice Biennale a
couple of years ago and which came from Winnipeg's very own Plug-In
Gallery, as a perfect artistic example of philosophical heremeneutics. The fusion of horizons is evident with the reconnection to history, our horizon that contains contemporary installation pieces collides with the horizon of 1575, where Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium nunquam habu first hit the ears of Queen Elizabeth I. We are hearing the same music, but in a different way (both physically - due to Cardiff’s placement of speakers - and because our horizon hears - that is, interprets - the music differently). Furthermore, Cardiff’s piece captures the Hermeneutical Circle better than any I can recall. As one walks by each of the 40 speakers, one hears the individual voice clearly, but at the expense of losing the collective voice. As they walk closer to the centre, the collective voice becomes louder drowning out the sound of a single voice. This piece captures the ambivalent inseparability of the holistic and individualistic nature of each text. As the history of hermeneutics suggests, it is difficult to know where to start when assessing a text, and, similarly how Cardiff’s piece hits the audience depends on where they enter the circle - and this goes to demonstrate the truth that an artwork is different to each individual who witnesses it, as they each enter the piece at different points, bringing with them fore-sight/fore-having (the projective structure of understanding).
4.
Bravenewwaves on CBC Radio2 . I grew up listening to this radio program which is still going strong into 2006 (founded in 1984). To me this program is the perfect type of investment of tax-dollars into the arts, as it is never narcissistic and always educational. If there’s one thing I love about Canada it is our crown corporations, which are quickly depleting (but CBC is still there). I joke that host Patti Schmidt (of Nanobot Auxillary Ballet) has been my longtime girlfriend, before meeting Chelsea, as I’d spend hours with her each night, listening to her voice astound me with knowledge of every facet of every band or artist. From free jazz to indie pop, from IDM to hip-hop, from microhouse to minimalist 20th-century avant-garde classical, this show attempts to introduce listeners to the widest array of music, each and every night for 4 hours straight. Starting with an hour of a random selection of music, spanning disparate genres, of many artists, the show move into a spotlight and sometimes interview with a specific artist or band for an hour. Following this, a live concert is usually featured, and into the late hours of the show avant-garde/experimental music/soundart is usually featured. On Friday and Saturday nights the last hours of the show feature the Official State Radio Disco Hour (in coalition with FCMM). Judging by the number of people I’ve encountered who have admitted to rarely if ever hearing this show, this is definitely an untapped public Canadian treasure.
3.
My professor got me a copy of The Ister, which is not available in the USA or Canada (which is unfortunate, considering it won the Quebec film Critics Award at the Montreal Festival of Nouveau Cinema). The Ister is both a filmed-poem and a meditation on Heidegger’s meditation on Holderlin’s poem of the same name.
Heidegger’s writing on The Ister was filled with admiration for Germany, an argument for an affiliation with tradition and an appreciation for personal roots. As my own family’s history sprouts from the exact place Heidegger references, the mouth of the Danube, I found the film incredibly personal and pertinent. As impressive as the film and its length (291 min.) are the bonus features on the DVD: Werner Hamacher lectures on Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course on Holderlin, Jean-Luc Nancy talks about drawing, Bernard Stiegler has a section entitled ‘Adopting Elsa’, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg (best known for directing Wagner’s Parsifal, and Our Hitler) talks about Myth today, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe talks of the Ski Lift at Todtnauberg.
If there are any Heidegger or Holderlin enthusiasts out there who would like a copy I’d be happy to burn you a copy.
2.
My longtime American friend, Holly, whom I met at an International Jazz Camp many years ago, is a member of a band, Cave Deaths, whose debut, Glacier on Fire, is definitely worth checking out. Let it be first mentioned that my friendship with her is inconsequential my praise for this album. That said, what stands out most in this CD is her demanding presence via trumpet and keys - one of the many aspects of this band that separates it from your everyday mathy art-rock quartet. The mathy element should obviously appeal to those that dig unconventional time signatures and such, yet shouldn’t scare off those in search for a decent harmony behind the technical brilliance. A brilliant mix of atonality and harmony and a half-sung/half-spoken lyrical delivery is the exact combination that made me dig fellow Minneapolisers The Vets so much, who, it just so happens, is the bassist’s other band.
MP3: Over Shellfish
1.
Getting married. Definitely something I’ve looked forward to my entire life. Unlike many guys, I have always eagerly anticipated having one permanent love, a wife to spend the rest of my life with. July 7th at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church (followed by a reception at the Winnipeg Art Gallery) this dream will be realized -- it is most definitely my the number 1 best thing on both this list and in my life.
10.
Philosophical Hermeneutics - for all intensive purposes a Truth and Method-lite ( Gadamer’s magnum opus), nicely documenting the movement of hermeneutical thought, ‘culminating’ with Philosophical hermeneutics, throughout history. Divided into two parts, containing essential essays from Gadamer, the first part hits on the history of (traditional) Hermeneutics, the Universality of the Hermeneutical circle, the primordial nature of language (and how nothing can exist outside of it), and, also, how it relates to Aesthetics. The second part concentrates on Philosophical Hermeneutics’ relation with phenomenology and existentialism, and Heidegger’s fundamental concern with Hermeneutics. More than any other, this book has had a lasting influence on how I think and my philosophical endeavours. I plan on reading it again this summer as I find that it, paired with Grondin’s Gadamer books, Ricoeur’s writing on the Gadamer Habermas debate, and, of course, Truth and Method itself, continues to impact me, becoming more and more relevant to understanding how I see the world around me.
9.
Ne-Yo - arguably in need of no mention, it is for the purpose of the dedication of serious thought to Ne-Yo that I include him on this list of 10 things I think are noteworthy at the moment. It is without the slightest hint of irony that I celebrate this talented voice. While hip-hop has found itself worthy of critical review, contemporary R&B has had less luck. But it is this R&B which I see as the direct descendent of 1970s soul, one of the most innovative (and yet localized) genres of the last half-century. I take Ne-Yo as serious as I would Green, Mayfield, or Gaye. Ne-Yo evokes the style, and Astroglide delivery that Usher strives for, armed with lyrics which are most of all memorable, which is more than can be said about some of his contemporaries. And let’s not forget his brilliant match-up with none other than Ghostface Killah, pushing Ghostface into the realm of soul, where, in my humble opinion, he is most successful as an artist.
Here’s the Remy Ma Ne-Yo duet (in case anyone hasn’t heard it yet; note: not as good as the Ghostface duet):
8.
The films of Alain Tanner aren’t instantly likeable -- at least they weren’t to me, but they grew on me. While some films have a way of making the ordinary funny, Tanner has a way of making the humour in everyday life intriguing, yet not all that humourous - this is not a bad thing. An example is, in La Salamandre, the inspector who casually picks his nose while hailing the residents. Nothing transcends the commonplace in La Salamandre, yet it positions itself as a tad more self-aware and intriguing than the everyday. We are taken into a world where there is a mystery, and hard work is done to figure out such mystery, yet the audience is not compelled to care as much about the answer to this mystery as they are to the lackadaisical unraveling of events that seem to lead nowhere.
Yet, in the end this film feels like a critique of the comprehensive answers given to serve emancipatory projects, in this case, an article on the possibly murderous Bulle Ogier, which situates this film as one which has overcome the modernist tendencies, the Enlightenment’s goal of creating an overarching system of answers, still de rigeur in the 60s, and nods toward a new horizon where such pat answers are not of primordial focus. Add on top of this a great score by Jon Anderson (from YES).
Similarly, the struggle of finding answers (in this case to the question self-identity) is focused upon in In the White City and the final answer is deemed less important than the question itself. Tanner’s film acts as almost a metacommentary on Bruno Ganz’s 8mm film, capturing what he believes to be possible directions to the answer to his ontological question, which he is both trying to escape from and ask, simultaneously. It is through this run from his past than he finds, in his future, an understanding of his origin. By using European heavyweight Ganz to his advantage, Tanner joins the ranks of Rhomer, Wenders, Herzog and Schlondorff. Due to the nu-jazz score, typical for the time period, In the White City’s score did not impress me in the way that La Salamandre’s did.
Through both these films, of disparate genres, it is obvious that Tanner is just as at home in bringing his themes of ‘constant searching and questioning’ to very different mediums - a mark of some degree of noteworthy greatness, in my opinion.
7.
India Palace is Winnipeg’s best restaurant in my opinion. Tucked away in the hub of great food, in the West End, from first glance there is no reason to go here - it remains under the radar of both the food critics and the restaurant recommendations of almost everyone else. A small limited food selection does more to its service than disservice, as all 4 or 5 vegetarian selections, including their samosas (which is, itself, atypical of most East Indian restaurants in the city; most of the restaurants don’t include samosas on the buffet), have twice the flavour of their more popular competitors (e.g. East India Company). Quaint and almost always semi-empty, a newspaper clipping at the front which brags the almost embarrassing fact that Richard Gere eats here when he comes to our city, just adds to its charm.
6.
As Italian Giallo films become increasingly important to me, many of them finding themselves on my personal film-canon-in-my-head, the happening upon the www.killinginstyle.blogspot.com filmlog has been a well-timed blessing. Finding myself more often defending their merits as serious art against the critics of this fringe genre, this blog tends to provide me extra fodder, emphasizing, and often intellectually assessing, the elements which cause my enthusiasm: overwrought style, political subversiveness, mid-century modernist décor and aesthetic sensibilities, and some of the best damn film music you’ll ever hear (there are many links to great giallo soundtracks on the blog as well).
5.
I see Janet Cardiff's 40 Piece Motet, which won the Venice Biennale a
couple of years ago and which came from Winnipeg's very own Plug-In
Gallery, as a perfect artistic example of philosophical heremeneutics. The fusion of horizons is evident with the reconnection to history, our horizon that contains contemporary installation pieces collides with the horizon of 1575, where Thomas Tallis’s Spem in Alium nunquam habu first hit the ears of Queen Elizabeth I. We are hearing the same music, but in a different way (both physically - due to Cardiff’s placement of speakers - and because our horizon hears - that is, interprets - the music differently). Furthermore, Cardiff’s piece captures the Hermeneutical Circle better than any I can recall. As one walks by each of the 40 speakers, one hears the individual voice clearly, but at the expense of losing the collective voice. As they walk closer to the centre, the collective voice becomes louder drowning out the sound of a single voice. This piece captures the ambivalent inseparability of the holistic and individualistic nature of each text. As the history of hermeneutics suggests, it is difficult to know where to start when assessing a text, and, similarly how Cardiff’s piece hits the audience depends on where they enter the circle - and this goes to demonstrate the truth that an artwork is different to each individual who witnesses it, as they each enter the piece at different points, bringing with them fore-sight/fore-having (the projective structure of understanding).
4.
Bravenewwaves on CBC Radio2 . I grew up listening to this radio program which is still going strong into 2006 (founded in 1984). To me this program is the perfect type of investment of tax-dollars into the arts, as it is never narcissistic and always educational. If there’s one thing I love about Canada it is our crown corporations, which are quickly depleting (but CBC is still there). I joke that host Patti Schmidt (of Nanobot Auxillary Ballet) has been my longtime girlfriend, before meeting Chelsea, as I’d spend hours with her each night, listening to her voice astound me with knowledge of every facet of every band or artist. From free jazz to indie pop, from IDM to hip-hop, from microhouse to minimalist 20th-century avant-garde classical, this show attempts to introduce listeners to the widest array of music, each and every night for 4 hours straight. Starting with an hour of a random selection of music, spanning disparate genres, of many artists, the show move into a spotlight and sometimes interview with a specific artist or band for an hour. Following this, a live concert is usually featured, and into the late hours of the show avant-garde/experimental music/soundart is usually featured. On Friday and Saturday nights the last hours of the show feature the Official State Radio Disco Hour (in coalition with FCMM). Judging by the number of people I’ve encountered who have admitted to rarely if ever hearing this show, this is definitely an untapped public Canadian treasure.
3.
My professor got me a copy of The Ister, which is not available in the USA or Canada (which is unfortunate, considering it won the Quebec film Critics Award at the Montreal Festival of Nouveau Cinema). The Ister is both a filmed-poem and a meditation on Heidegger’s meditation on Holderlin’s poem of the same name.
Heidegger’s writing on The Ister was filled with admiration for Germany, an argument for an affiliation with tradition and an appreciation for personal roots. As my own family’s history sprouts from the exact place Heidegger references, the mouth of the Danube, I found the film incredibly personal and pertinent. As impressive as the film and its length (291 min.) are the bonus features on the DVD: Werner Hamacher lectures on Heidegger’s 1942 lecture course on Holderlin, Jean-Luc Nancy talks about drawing, Bernard Stiegler has a section entitled ‘Adopting Elsa’, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg (best known for directing Wagner’s Parsifal, and Our Hitler) talks about Myth today, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe talks of the Ski Lift at Todtnauberg.
If there are any Heidegger or Holderlin enthusiasts out there who would like a copy I’d be happy to burn you a copy.
2.
My longtime American friend, Holly, whom I met at an International Jazz Camp many years ago, is a member of a band, Cave Deaths, whose debut, Glacier on Fire, is definitely worth checking out. Let it be first mentioned that my friendship with her is inconsequential my praise for this album. That said, what stands out most in this CD is her demanding presence via trumpet and keys - one of the many aspects of this band that separates it from your everyday mathy art-rock quartet. The mathy element should obviously appeal to those that dig unconventional time signatures and such, yet shouldn’t scare off those in search for a decent harmony behind the technical brilliance. A brilliant mix of atonality and harmony and a half-sung/half-spoken lyrical delivery is the exact combination that made me dig fellow Minneapolisers The Vets so much, who, it just so happens, is the bassist’s other band.
MP3: Over Shellfish
1.
Getting married. Definitely something I’ve looked forward to my entire life. Unlike many guys, I have always eagerly anticipated having one permanent love, a wife to spend the rest of my life with. July 7th at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church (followed by a reception at the Winnipeg Art Gallery) this dream will be realized -- it is most definitely my the number 1 best thing on both this list and in my life.