Why all this music?

To be alive: not just the carcass

But the spark.

That's crudely put, but...

If we're not supposed to dance,

 

Why all this music?

-- Gregory Orr, Concerning the Book that is the Body of the Beloved

Death is the new black

If the sprightliness of Spring is leaving you feeling slightly down, take heart: there's a slew of moribund entertainment cropping up to help lift your spirits back up again.

I'm not exactly sure when Death became such a blockbuster, but like flats, fringes, and Madonna, looks this trend might just end up sticking around for a while. Or should I say for eternity? 

I spotted Mary Roach's Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife while browsing through my favorite bookstore, Daunt Books, in Notting Hill. My immediate thought: not exactly the kind of book you'll see lying around hospital waiting rooms. In spite of my cynicism (I judge books by their covers), it seems to have received universally positive reviews, with its author praised as 'one of the best kept secrets in America.'  This might be why I haven't heard of her.  Why am I always the last one in on a secret? If you end up liking Six Feet Over, you can always move on to Mary's other book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.

If you're in the mood for an exhibit, you can visit the Wellcome Collection to view Life Before Death, made up of '24 sets of photographs taken before and after death.' According to its website, the artists 'asked 24 terminally ill people if they could accompany them during their last weeks and days. From these vigils came a series of insightful descriptions and photographic portraits taken before and after death. Far from being gloomy, these... reveal the preciousness and transience of life, and make us question what we often take for granted.'

Finally, you can buy a pair of cute grim reapers, one male, one female (guess which is which) from designer toy site Vinyl Pulse. Their names? Ciao Ciao and Adios, of course.

 

SATC (Spam and the City)

Speaking of Pinoys and canned meat, here's a blog entry on egg dipped and sugar glazed Spam by LifeFlix, a Pinoy designer based in New York. Her inspiration? Tony Bourdain's show No Reservations. 

I wonder if Amy and Romy will eventually come out with a Spam-themed book sequel?

Thanks to lovely soulsis for the meaty link, and to LifeFlix for the photo and the Spam nostaliga. Yum yum!

Very canny

"Indeed, wherever they are...Pinoys seem unable to wean themselves away from canned meat, no matter if all around them is freshly harvested food. Someone said it is a gastronomic hangover from the American liberation days."

-- Randy David, musing over the Filipino diaspora after being served carne norte adobo from well-meaning (and inventive) Pinoys abroad, in Reflections on Sociology & Philippine Society (2001: 76)

Carrie: The Resurrection

And by 'Carrie,' I don't mean that knife-throwing waif with mother issues from Stephen King's 1976 horror flick, but rather Carrie Bradshaw, patron saint of big hair and urban singlehood. 

I cringed when I heard that a Sex and the City (SATC) movie was in production, and debated whether I could drag myself to watch it. I loved SATC, but was relieved when it finally capped off its sixth season. By then the show had lost much its original fire. It was time to let Carrie and friends happily ride off into the celluloid sunset. A SATC movie sounded too much like a vanity project, like George Lucas's tragic Star Wars prequels, The Simpsons Movie, Rocky Balboa (I could go on and on...). It smacked of a cash-in, an unnecessary exhuming of a pop icon skeleton.

But, hey. After watching this, I realized, who am I fooling? Vanity project? Cash-in? Who cares. SATC will always be SATC. I'll be at our local VUE theater on the 30th of May, along with a stampede of other women, rooting for Carrie. 

See you there.

Inverted telescope

"I did not find a good name for this experience till almost a quarter of a century later, when I was in the Philippines and teaching myself to read Spanish by stumbling through Jose Rizal's extraordinary nationalist novel Noli Me Tangere. There is a dizzying moment early in the narrative when the young mestizo hero, recently returned to the colonial Manila of the 1880s from a long sojourn in Europe, looks out of his carriage window at the municipal botanical gardens, and finds that he too is, so to speak, at the end of an inverted telescope. These gardens are shadowed automatically -- Rizal says maquinalmente -- and inescapably by images of their sister gardens in Europe. 

"He can no longer matter-of-factly experience them, but sees them simultaneously close up and from afar. The novelist arrestingly names the agent of this incurable doubled vision el demonio de las comparaciones...the spectre of comparisons."

-- Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons (1998: 2)

Losing it

You have got to hear this.  

BBC Radio 4 inspires a mesmerizing sense of pride and admiration among the 61 million odd inhabitants of this small island, and has managed to do so without sounding like a state mouthpiece. 

Each show feels warm and intimate, creating a sense of connection through the medium of voice. In spite of the standardized British accent, it never feels alien (unless it's The Archers.. I can't stand that show) Five years ago, new, alone, and without a TV, I sought solace in radio. It ended up being my first, and best, guide to decoding the many oddities of this very Angry Island.

 

How is it possible to have a state run, state owned, monolithic media outfit without an authoritarian government to match? I'm sure it's all explained here. Speaking of giggles, I am reminded of the truism that they tend to erupt at the worst times -- even for Kings. Though not every episode (the King's included, which I found just plain weird) is as charming.