in the spirit
The second term of my second year as an English Literature student was probably my low point in terms of motivation, discipline and feck. One of the tutors whose job it was to make my ragged lazy ass do some work was a young, serious man teaching Restoration comedy (mostly good), Rochester (bleak and nasty as fuck but brilliant with it), and Dryden (holy God, the worst writer I ever studied), among other things. He had a monkish quality, the kind of mental intensity and rigour that tends to suggest a person can never quite gel with the day to day practical indignities of the modern world, and he gathered us in an appropriately spartan, dingy basement classroom. I felt a little guilty at the time for my comparative intellectual flab and slop, and the guy was also forced to endure precocious stunts like one of my fellow students returning her copy of Rochester's poems, torn in two, in place of an essay (this may have been the first time I understand the awe-inspiring power of the puritan streak that can be present in radical politics).
So I hope the poor long-suffering man had some inkling of the effect he had in making at least a couple of us buck our ideas up and get back in the game that year. In particular, he once told us something that has stayed with me ever since, and which I try to apply whenever I write about any kind of art or culture or... pretty much anything. He said: "When you write an essay, you should always try to ensure you capture something of the nature of the subject in your writing itself." In other words, it's not good enough to write about something, you have to write "in the spirit" of the work - in yr lunatic Christian mystic sense. A form of possession.
With that in mind:
Sugababes - 'In The Middle'
omiFUCKINGgodthisisthebestUHUHUHsongEVER!!!!!!!
...
Thank you.
So that's three great singles in a row, and one of them was even a ballad - plus they haven't yet put out 'Nasty Ghetto' despite the amount of play it's getting (which makes it their 'Friday Night', Darkness fans). I suppose I have to go get the album now.
The second term of my second year as an English Literature student was probably my low point in terms of motivation, discipline and feck. One of the tutors whose job it was to make my ragged lazy ass do some work was a young, serious man teaching Restoration comedy (mostly good), Rochester (bleak and nasty as fuck but brilliant with it), and Dryden (holy God, the worst writer I ever studied), among other things. He had a monkish quality, the kind of mental intensity and rigour that tends to suggest a person can never quite gel with the day to day practical indignities of the modern world, and he gathered us in an appropriately spartan, dingy basement classroom. I felt a little guilty at the time for my comparative intellectual flab and slop, and the guy was also forced to endure precocious stunts like one of my fellow students returning her copy of Rochester's poems, torn in two, in place of an essay (this may have been the first time I understand the awe-inspiring power of the puritan streak that can be present in radical politics).
So I hope the poor long-suffering man had some inkling of the effect he had in making at least a couple of us buck our ideas up and get back in the game that year. In particular, he once told us something that has stayed with me ever since, and which I try to apply whenever I write about any kind of art or culture or... pretty much anything. He said: "When you write an essay, you should always try to ensure you capture something of the nature of the subject in your writing itself." In other words, it's not good enough to write about something, you have to write "in the spirit" of the work - in yr lunatic Christian mystic sense. A form of possession.
With that in mind:
Sugababes - 'In The Middle'
omiFUCKINGgodthisisthebestUHUHUHsongEVER!!!!!!!
...
Thank you.
So that's three great singles in a row, and one of them was even a ballad - plus they haven't yet put out 'Nasty Ghetto' despite the amount of play it's getting (which makes it their 'Friday Night', Darkness fans). I suppose I have to go get the album now.
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