The Sound of Silence

I was listening to this song before Cluff's class today. I've heard it many times. Those of you who have had Dr. Stallings will probably see why this caught my ear.

"Sound of Silence"

Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

The line "My eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light" jumped out at me. Notice before the other words about eyes and visions "the vision softly creeping"

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence

We then move from eyes to ears. The message doesn't arrive at it's destination, even with the flashing neon sign "stabbing" our eyes. I love Simon and Garfunkel. What poets!


Check out the song here if you need a refresher

Can we trust the experts?

After watching F for Fake I thought this article about Frida Kahlo was fascinating. A "trove" of Frida Kahlo's art was supposedly discovered. Some experts say it's absolutely authentic and others can "tell" from reproduced images that it's fake. I noticed that neither those who authenticated the art or those that called it a fake had very good grounds. It feels a lot like the Welles' movie....



Kahlo Trove: Fact or Fakery

Vampires in the news: A dream come true

I think I could not have asked Guillermo del Toro to write a better op ed piece. It's Frankenstein meets Dracula meets Tom Cohen writing about technology in literature (or film). It's fantastic (bad pun intended)! Enjoy.

"Despite our obsessive harnessing of information, we are still ultimately vulnerable to our fates and our nightmares. We enthrone the deadly virus in the very same way that “Dracula” allowed the British public to believe in monsters: through science. Science becomes the modern man’s superstition. It allows him to experience fear and awe again, and to believe in the things he cannot see.

And through awe, we once again regain spiritual humility. The current vampire pandemic serves to remind us that we have no true jurisdiction over our bodies, our climate or our very souls. Monsters will always provide the possibility of mystery in our mundane “reality show” lives, hinting at a larger spiritual world; for if there are demons in our midst, there surely must be angels lurking nearby as well. In the vampire we find Eros and Thanatos fused together in archetypal embrace, spiraling through the ages, undying.

Forever."



You can read the full text here:

Why Vampires Never Die

I finally finished Cien años de soledad. Many thoughts to come but for now, I need to read Paul's paper again now that I know what it's about. Hopefully I'll get a copy of La Marca sometime soon....

Music and more

I've given some blog space to my Borges class as you can see with the ugly minotaur on the page. Now it's time for some Cinema and Theory love. Today in class, we talked about Orson Welles F for Fake(just clips) and this song popped through my head. Enjoy.

Postal Service- Clark Gable

"Clark Gable"

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London underground when it struck me
That I've been waiting since birth to find a love that would look and sound like a movie
So I changed my plans and rented a camera and a van and then I called you
"I need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in
The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and I yelled "quiet on the set" and then called "action!"
And I kissed you in a style that Clark Gable would have admired (I thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear
That your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by?

Labyrinths

Today in Borges:
-Story from the point of view of Asterion (the minotaur)La casa de Asterion

-A dead man without a face in a labyrinth (or a few dead men really)

-And two kings, two labyrinths, one dead man in a desert.

This got me and Paul talking about labyrinths. Borges' literature is a labyrinth. But it's not simply a labyrinth, it is a web, a group of meanings and texts, that gets us lost, gets us "thinking."
Then we left our communal labyrinth of discussion (or our bifurcating garden) and all retreated into our private labyrinths.
I really hope I don't find David Bowie there.

More bifurcation

Well I'm procrastinating my reading on Lyotard (no, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce that). But I thought I'd report on the forked road story by Borges. Last Thursday I taught my 2:30 class with Christian and Paul. We set up our powerpoint (which included a picture of the 1980's something Bowie from laberinth....the jardín (garden) in the story is after all a giant laberinth. ). Well, just as I hoped, someone related the short story to Star Trek. And a million other things. It became the discussion of "los senderos que se bifurcan". What we got out of it was that alternate universes, choose your own adventure stories, multiple dimensions and class discussions are all related. The interesting thing in the story is...well read the story El Jardin de los senderos que se bifurcan (The garden of the forking path's or something like that) to make more sense, there's some pretty good translations out there. It's found in a work called Ficciones maybe translated as Fictions in English.
So I came home feeling pretty good about our presentation. I even got an e-mail from my profe telling us we'd done a good job. But the story doesn't end there. As random as a thought it is that an Argentine Writer from the 1920's has a lot to do with Star Trek and Science Fiction, I was validated on Friday. Mike Wilson, former BYU Spanish Grad Student gave us a presentation on Science fiction in the Southern Cone. Lo and behold, the thesis of his presentation was that Science Fiction was not created as a seperate genre in Argentina, but was part of the national tradition of literature starting with none other than basically the god of argentine literature, Jorge Luis Borges.
So maybe not such a crazy thought after all.
Who knows. Maybe I can even get a paper/article out of it.
Studying Science Fiction as a Spanish Lit major? Isn't life great?

Oh boy, it's a blog!

Well I'm doing it. I'm writing a blog.
(Hmmm...now what do I write? Books? We'll start with books.)
Well today I was reading a short story called "El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan" by Jorge Luis Borges. For those of you who don't speak Spanish, that roughly translates to The Garden of Roads that Bifurcate (I'm sure there's a better translation of that title somewhere, but we'll stick with mine for now. And to give you a rough idea, think two forks in a road but in Spanish, and with a maze with a German Spy who's Chinese).
Amazingly, of all the things this story about a Chinese german spy, it made me think of science fiction. There's this part where it talks about the infinite possibilities of time, and it reminded me of first Star trek (other dimensions and what not), then an Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and finally
For those who have not read Ender's Game do it now! Or read (at the same time) Ender's Shadow. My students in my Spanish class today asked me what books I like and I of course mentioned Twilight (how could I be in this family and not like it), Don Quijote, and Ender's Game. I really do enjoy Card's writing. His books present amazing stories and give you some good things to think about. (Good things to think about is pretty vague I know..but hey it's late and I've been writing/thinking about lit all day..give me a break!).
I suppose this concludes my first ever official blog post. Sometime I'll have to finish some thoughts on Card's writing. And maybe blog about all the movies I've watched recently including a French Film Noir called Riffifi. I get to go to the International Cinema 2-3 times a week and watch films for my class so stay tuned!