The Dance of La Javanaise

Some songs can be listened to over and over again, time after time, and for me La Javanaise, by the enigmatic french crooner Serge Gainsbourg, is one of them.

La Javanaise, a dance, a fictitious dance, a phonological dance, a dance of words.

Serge's ears, as well as being a protruding burden he carried around with him, hear a beauty in language which he catches in his net and lets fly in our direction, but only les temps d'un chanson.

Oh 1975 Woody!

"You know, if it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. I think that the worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

Woody "Boris" Allen's assertions in Love and Death (1975) are unabashed Russian-enlightenment-one-liners. You know, that classic ilk of comedy.

 

Sonja rants: "But judgment of any system of phenomena exists in any rational, metaphysical or epistemological contradiction to an abstracted empirical concept such as being, or to be, or to occur in the thing itself, or of the thing itself." Boris sighs: "Yeah, I've said that many times..."

Boris: a) Socrates is a man.(b) All men are mortal.(c) All men are Socrates. That means all men are homosexuals. I'm not a homosexual. Once, some Cossacks whistled at me. I happen to have the kind of body that excites both persuasions.

I don't question his logic or ambition when he took on this 18th Century Russian comedy, as unexpected as it was when it popped onto my radar, though I do wonder whether Woody Allen saw this is a ludicrous challenge to make a comedy of the enlightenment or an obvious choice. He does it with such slight of hand it seems an obvious choice for a comedy.

“But I was, alas, a juvenile, and juvenility was my only cultural institution”

Witold Grombrowicz's Ferdydurke. This book whisked me away on a grotesque roller-coaster. 

Or perhaps it illuminated something within, routinely banished from the intellectual spotlight.

A stunning and playful whirlwind, the "thirty year old" school boy meets his match with the "modern schoolgirl", with youth and immaturity laughing at all things pompous, mature and proper. But it is not about a school boy, it is about Grombrowicz refusing to simmer down and be "adult", when it is clearly more fun to be daft and unconstrained.

Gombrowicz has that knack of elevating the reader with his visionary and perceptive rants on human nature, punctuated by mundane-slang ("the mug") and farcical slap-stick which has a refreshing freedom to it.

He writes in what can only be described as Gombrowicz-tongue and attributes the greatest nuance to everyday objects no one would care to notice:

The calf. 

The mug. 

Innocence. 

At the same time he effortlessly interweaves broad philosophical criticisms of school, art, literature and time that creep up on you out of the mayhem, given extra punch being framed by the juxta.

What a joy to find such a playful and artistic celebration of juvenility. Rarely does a literary genius target that inner child in us, let alone suggest that it is THE part we should celebrate. A slap in the mug for the constraints of maturity.

Moral Backlash

Greg Smith's public letter illuminates a glimmer of hope in the 'morally bankrupt' world of banking. Arguable our world today.

It may not make that much impact today and I am sure I place more value on his statement than he is really due, but with wikileaks disclosures, News of the World exposures I can help but feel there is a moral backlash that has built up over time. A backlash which is allowing people to choose which side of the moral line we stand.

Principles are there to be tested. We have to put our hands up when we break them and resist apathetic compliance when other stray too far from the path.

Perhaps Greg Smith's public resignation has helped redraw a bit of that collective moral line that is so faded and flexed we have struggle to see it anymore.

Why I resigned from Goldman Sachs

In Pursuit of Intellectual Promiscuity

"..Not thinking within the narrow confines that define an academic field but branching out to all domains of knowledge. We were intellectually promiscuous, and proud of it!"

Mark D. Hauser