367. Within a Budding Grove - Madame Swann at Home - Part 2

 

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Within a Budding Grove

Madame Swann At Home

P404 “...Sometimes, before going to dress, Mme. Swann would sit down at the piano... It was on one of those days that she happened to play me the part of Vinteuil’s sonata that contained the little phrase of which Swann had been so fond. But often one listens and hears nothing, if it is a piece of music at all complicated to which one is listening for the first time... Probably what is wanting, the first time, is not comprehension but memory... When the least obvious beauties of Venteuil’s sonata were revealed to me, already, borne by the force of habit beyond the reach of my sensibility, those that I had from the first distinguished and preferred in it were beginning to escape, to avoid me. Since I was able only in successive moments to enjoy all the pleasures that this sonata gave me, I never possessed it in its entirely; it was like life itself. But, less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best. In Vinteuil’s sonata the beauties that one discovers at once are those also of which one most soon grows tired, and for the same reason, no doubt, namely that they are less different from what one already knows. But when those first apparitions have withdrawn, there is left for our enjoyment some passage which its composition, too new and strange to offer anything but confusion to our minds, had made indistinguishable and so preserved intact; and this, which we have been meeting every day and have not guessed it, which has thus been kept in reserve for us, which by sheer force of its beauty has become invisible an remained unknown, this comes to us last of all. But this also must be the last that we shall relinquish. And we shall love it longer than the rest because we have taken longer to get to love it... The reason for which a work of genius is not easily admired from the first is that the man who has created it is extraordinary, that few other men resemble him...”

P406 “If I did not understand the sonata, it enchanted me to hear Mme Swann play. Her touch appeared to me (like her wrappers, like the scent of her staircase, her cloaks, her chrysanthemums) to form part of an individual and mysterious whole, in a world infinitely superior to that in which the mind is capable of analyzing talent.”

I include this to continue what he’s written about the “phrase” and also about the progression of art. But it seems to me that he is also talking about love. Romantic love but also the artful love of a courtesan. With that in mind it is probably a good thing that this passage, which starts with Odette “playing” for a smitten young Marcel, ends with M. Swann talking about the sonata and of those years of his life so that it is clear that Marcel is not alone with Odette.

Day 109 of pandemic. Also the 43rd anniversary of my arrival in San Francisco from Central Arizona. Still my only interstate move as an adult (my parents had moved three times by my age, not counting the war years.)

Restoration work has finally begun in my building so I was trapped on site waiting for contractors all day yesterday. Today all the scheduled work was completed so I was finally able to make my second, post lockdown, visit to Trader Joe’s supermarket. Once again everything has changed. I went once just before the official lockdown started and the shelves were virtually empty. Then a couple months ago, I stood in the over-a-block-long line to rush in and get a few essentials (microwave brown rice is as close as I’ve come to crack or meth. I don’t exactly approve of it but I can’t stop using). Today the line was half as long but now all the aisles are one way. That doesn’t sound too bad but it means there is one path you can, or are supposed to, take through the store. You can’t dart to the frozen section to check on the supply of organic brown rice before you start the rest of your shopping. Or see how much room is left in your basket after you get a six-pack of toilet paper. Yes, I did both of those things and then had to cut through the barriers to start again at the produce section.

Now I know that it is no longer enough, in this new normal, to have a detailed grocery list, you must also know where the items are so you don’t skip something and have to start all over again. And to tell you the truth, I don’t see the point of this but I’m not going to be more difficult than is necessary. I got everything I needed and I was able to pack it in my bags. But I will continue to shop at my local markets for everything they have. 

This is certainly not a way of life I foresaw 43 years ago when I arrived on a Greyhound bus. Though really I can’t complain. I’m in a better apartment. I have more money. I’m more physically fit. And there’s a decent chance that, a year from now, I will have access to the city again... or at least to what businesses still exist.

Day 115 of the zombie apocalypse... I’m tired of hearing about the pandemic. If someone would have predicted that I would go 115 days without eating anywhere but in my apartment I would have laughed. But here we are. Tonight I had my favorite veggie chow fun from the local Chinese place and a glass or two of cheap Chardonnay, but I enjoyed it at the little counter in my kitchen that is also my desk.

The Eagles

Last night, just as I was about to go to bed, YouTube suggested a recent live performance of an Eagles song. “One Of These Nights,” to be specific. And this is where the addictive quality of YouTube kicks in because how can you listen to just one Eagles song? And after you’ve listened to several performances in recent decades you can’t help wondering, “But what about back in the ‘70s?” So I watched a couple of those videos too.

Even though the Eagles followed some of my favorite musicians out of Laurel Canyon -- C,S,N & Y, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa -- they came a little later and were never “my” band. I can’t tell you why.

Listening to them last night I noticed how they were really the descendants of the musical tradition that came out of Buffalo Springfield in the shape of Poco. There has always been a Country & Western aspect to Buffalo Springfield -- signified by Steven Still’s hats, if nothing else. Poco ran with it but were only a moderate success. The Eagles did much better. 

It’s worth noting that Gram Parsons, and then Emmylou Harris, were also working this C&W crossover terrain. Emmylou Harris’s band, after Parsons’ death, was actually more Country and she stayed on that, and finally the Bluegrass, side of music.

The Eagles went mainstream but their songs, mostly story songs, are very Country. It’s hard to be less of a one-hit-wonder band than the Eagles, and yet I think some of my problem with them is because of “Hotel California.” It’s a great song, but not really a typical Eagles song, and yet it’s great success may have distorted the image of the band. Just speculation here. But it doesn’t give me a peaceful easy feeling.

Hitchhiking in Colorado in the ‘70s I got a long ride with a guy who played nothing but the Doors. I carpooled to Yosemite at the end of the ‘80s with a guy who played nothing but the Eagles. This may have been what Hesiod had in mind when he said, “moderation is best in all things.” Though I guess he could also have just said, take it easy.

One of my favorite people died yesterday. She was 85 and it wasn’t COVID-19, but it still deserves a mention. She could be annoying. She imposed our alley garden on the neighboring properties. I will end with my favorite Janet story, but she was the spirit and story teller of our little building. When she was forced to leave, three years ago, the building suffered.

She died early in the afternoon of Bastille Day, though, because of the zombie apocalypse I hadn’t realized that it was Bastille Day -- normally I would be greening the local Bastille Day event. I only talked to her twice, on the phone, after she received her fatal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. We didn’t have the opportunity to talk things out over the building’s house (cheap) wine and local (not very good) pizza the way we would have if she had still been in residence. Their “real” home was way out in the country and with the zombie apocalypse and all, getting out there was next to impossible. 

I would have liked to have visited one last time, with our common friend who is currently holed up in Sweden. It wouldn’t have made any difference, but it would have been worth the trouble. She was fortunate enough to have home hospice care at the end and her hospice care providers were two of her granddaughters. Life doesn’t get much better than that. As is often the case, death most disadvantages the survivor. This couple has been together since high school and now he is alone. 

Now for that story: When she was in residence she would water the garden in our alley. I try to waste as little water as possible when I water but after Janet watered it always looked like a main had burst. One day she got a little carried away and, since she had a good hose in her hand, started washing down the windows of the building next door to us. She went from window to window until there was a scream from inside the unit... the window had been open and she blasted the inside of the apartment with a strong spray of water.

I’ve been busy with HOA work again, but am caught up again. It is now 140 days into the zombie apocalypse. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, my favorite event of the year has been officially cancelled for 2020. We’re now past the time for the big Art & Soul Festival in Oakland -- one of my favorite East Bay events. Also for the Berkeley Kite Festival that usually happens the same weekend.

Last week I walked a record eight blocks from my apartment to buy a new laptop. My old one was so slow it was only semi-functional. I’m still fully in social distancing mode.

Recently there was a train derailment and fire followed by a partial collapse of the railroad bridge over Tempe Town Lake, the old Salt River bed. On YouTube tonight I saw a video of the explosion of part of the bridge as they continue clearing away the debris so that they can rebuild the bridge and restore service. This drove me to Google Map and a survey of my old neighborhood. Almost nothing remains of what I knew back in the mid-’70s. 

At that time I lived in the Casa Loma apartment building with a shared shower and only a half bath in my unit. The kitchen and dining room was in what had been the sleeping balcony, since enclosed. It was a delight in Spring when the citrus trees were in bloom and much less of a delight in summer when the little AC unit mounted on the wall struggled to control the temperature as I tried to sleep days while driving a taxi at night.

Most of downtown Tempe was very old. Mill Ave was lined by decent sized masonry buildings while, closer to the tracks, there were old detached houses. The old highway bridge still existed back then and you could walk out on it but not cross to the other side -- or at least not safely. The old highway landed on a raised strip of land that also formed the left side of the local baseball field. I seem to recall some small stands and lights at night. The tar divided, concrete squares of the old paving continued through the residential neighborhood. I’m not entirely sure of it’s complete path, but I found another abandoned bit of it over near the Orange Julius stand on Rural. It was a hobby of mine to trace the old highways through Phoenix and Tempe, almost nothing remains of them now though I did find the strip along the baseball field though I think the paving is gone.

Back then the Sunset Limited train still passed that way and I liked to watch it pass almost as much as I liked riding on it. There was a small rail yard closer to the Casa Loma that smelled perpetually of citrus -- not the blooms of spring but the smell of juice from cars loaded with citrus that must have set in the sun there waiting to move on down the line. It was a sweet, not entirely unpleasant scent.

The Casa Loma, too, remains, though it looks completely different. Aside from the remains of the old Mill on the other side of Mill Ave, I’m not sure there’s a single additional brick or patch of pavement from when I lived there. I think more people now live there, which is good, but their experience is generic suburban. It has lost the character it had.

Our dating system is confusing. We are, technically, still in the 2nd decade of the 21st century but we are also out of the teens and into the twenties. Did anyone consider having a year zero? Wouldn’t that have been better? And it’s not like anyone would have had to deal with a year zero, it would only have been called that after the fact.

Time has been steadily passing. It is now day 155 of the zombie apocalypse and I am returning to blogging. I've been watching some health related videos on YouTube talking about plant based diets and the shortcomings of even a veggie diet. This has forced me to reevaluate my shelter in place diet.

I'm eating less sugar, which is good. And drinking less iced tea which I don't know how to judge. I'm eating more frozen and restaurant cooked food and a lot more bread, so more sodium. I'm eating fewer salads and more cheese and eggs. My diet is still much better than the average American, but that's a really low bar. It may be time to finally return to Whole Foods and stock up on some of my usual healthy staples.

I've decided to put off my optional dentist appointment but to see my eye doctor and probably my chiropractor for my usual six month adjustment. That will be strange as it will be like returning to normal times but, as a friend put it, while dressed up like a bandit.

It is now day 190 of the plague and, as you might guess, I’m having a hard time returning to this. I really wanted to wrap up my HOA project but that seems to be beyond my control. Since I last wrote we have undergone a new plague of wildfires and the resulting smoke. This should have given me more time to write, since I couldn’t leave my apartment for almost a week, but that’s not the way it worked.

Now, however, we are at what should be the peak of my greening season and I have to at least say something about that.

I continue to exercise, though the poor air quality has frequently curtailed my outside hikes/climbs. The social/political situation here in the USA continues to get more and more interesting -- from the perspective of a student of history. I continue to eat pretty well. In fact my diet has gotten much better with an emphasis on legumes and flaxseed and also a reduction in dairy.  

So let’s get to what is on my mind these fraught days: Greening and The Magic Mountain. Sorry.

The weekend coming up would have been the Northern California Dragon Boat Races at Lake Merritt in Oakland. Not only is this one of my favorite events (though diminished from what it was out on Treasure Island) but it is also the warm up (for me) to my favorite event, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival which is on the first weekend of October. HSB is being held this year, but it is an online event. Not at all the same thing.

I congratulate myself on being in decent shape so I probably could work the events if they happened. But, in fact, that is stretching the truth. I am in decent shape given the circumstances but working hard for eight plus hours on warm to hot days is my yearly fitness test that I only can pass after building up to it slowly over the greening season. I wouldn’t bet on my being able to stay on my feet for my normal twenty-four hours of HSB madness.

On the otherhand, I’m in a good position to get in shape for 2021, should the plague come to an end. 

The other day I found myself wondering what the current political/social craziness reminded me of, and it finally came to me. To summarize, on the right there are white supremacists who seem determined to provoke the insurrection they’ve longed for. On the left the anarchists think that we need to burn everything down so we can... I don’t know, start over again in a state of nature? At any rate, they hate each other but both are equally determined to destroy the status quo.

What all this reminds me of is “The Great Petulance” toward the end of The Magic Mountain. I understand Mann to be arguing that everyone in his microcosm for Europe was fed up and longed for some violent solution to all the disagreements. I think America is in the same state. We haven’t done anything as cathartic as the Civil War in almost 150 years and we are bored. Also, we don’t remember history well enough to understand how nasty something like that can get. Or maybe we just don’t care. We want to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

These are the times that remind me why I became a Burkian conservative in the first place. What saddens me is that it will probably take twenty years to get the good books on this history and that’s getting close to my Sell By date. I don’t fancy holding on that long just for this. (And two centuries might be more realistic.)

221, Oborozukiyo

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Genji in mourning

The period of mourning lasts for months and Genji stays with his wife's family along with his new son. 

p174 ...He had not forgotten to ask himself whether she [Murasaki] would be bored and lonely without him, but he thought of her as an orphan he had taken in and did not worry himself greatly about what she might be thinking or doing, or whether she might be resentful of his outside activities. This was pleasant for him. [This was the same way he had treated his wife, and has been rebuking himself about.]
...

p179 [Back at his own house] It was a tedious time. He no longer had any enthusiasm for the careless night wanderings that had once kept him busy. Murasaki was much on his mind. She seemed peerless, the nearest he could imagine to his ideal. Thinking that she was no longer too young for marriage, he had occasionally made amorous overtures; but she had not seemed to understand... She was clever and she had many delicate ways of pleasing him in the most trivial diversions. He had not seriously thought of her as a wife. Now he could not restrain himself. It would be a shock of course.

p180 What had happened? Her women had no way of knowing when the line had been crossed. One morning Genji was up early and Murasaki stayed on and on in bed. It was not at all like her to sleep so late. Might she be unwell? As he left for his own rooms, Genji pushed an inkstone inside her bed curtains.

At length, when no one else was near, she raised herself from her pillow and saw beside it a tightly folded bit of paper. Listlessly she opened it. There was only this verse, in a casual hand:

"Many have been the nights we have spent together
Purposelessly, these coverlets between us."

She had not dreamed he had anything of the sort on his mind. What a fool she had been, to repose her whole confidence in so gross and unscrupulous a man.

It was almost noon when Genji returned. "They say you're not feeling well. What can be the trouble? I was hoping for a game of Go."

She pulled the covers over her head. Her women discreetly withdrew...
...

p181 He drew back the covers. She was bathed in perspiration and the hair at her forehead was matted from weeping.

"Dear me. This does not augur well at all." He tried in every way he could think of to comfort her, but she seemed genuinely upset and did not offer so much as a word in reply. 

"Very well. You will see no more of me. I do have my pride."

He opened her writing box but found no note inside. Very childish of her -- and he had to smile at the childishness. He stayed with her the whole day, and he thought the stubbornness with which she refused to be comforted most charming.

It interests me that the author has given this character her own name. Thinking also of Fyodor Karamazov, I wonder if anyone has written about the importance or meaning of an author bestowing their name on an important character?

Here we learn why there has been so little aside from personal affairs. The ailing old emperor is talking to the new emperor about Genji,

p195 "Look to him for advice in large things and in small, just as you have until now. He is young but quite capable of ordering the most complicated public affairs. There is no office of which he need feel unworthy and no task in all the land that is beyond his powers. I reduced him to common rank so that you might make full use of his services. Do not, I beg of you, ignore my last wishes."

He made many other moving requests, but it is not a woman's place to report upon them. Indeed I feel rather apologetic for having set down these fragments.

The old emperor dies and Fujitsubo returns to her family home, with her son I assume, who is also Genji's son. No one besides these two seem to be aware of this, despite the resemblance.

Even though Fujitsubo is still empress and their son is still crown prince, their faction is now out of favor with the reign of the new emperor, who is very young and dominated by his mother's family. I kept being reminded of the Eagles song, "New Kid in Town" as I read about Genji's reduced status at court, though, so far, there is no newer "Genji" on the scene. Though you would think that would be almost inevitable. 

Oborozukiyo

I'm more than a little confused by the family rivalries. I think Oborozukiyo is the princess Genji romanced in the dark without knowing exactly who she was. She is a daughter of the Minister of the Right -- the one who is now in power -- and he just found Genji in her bed. This had been going on for some time. Fujitsubo and the Rokujo Lady are both in religious retreat for political or personal reasons. Murasaki is still being groomed. Genji manages to keep busy even when out of favor.

Studying literature

It was brought to my attention that the Mechanics Institute Library was starting it's three year Proust cycle. They also are reading Tristram Shandy. Unfortunately, a little checking revealed that the Proust group was already closed (I suppose they reached their desired group size). But the truth is that, as much as I like each of these works, they are not the books I would most want to read with a group, and an "expert." 

Last week (some time ago now) a woman won a $700 million lotto which had me thinking what I would do if I had that kind of money -- the usual building/charitable stuff, mostly -- but now I'm thinking I could probably hire "tutors" to bounce ideas off of and hopefully teach me something I hadn't noticed myself about books of interest to me. I could pester someone about Quantum Chromodynamics without feeling too guilty. A new definition for "private university." Would it be better to participate in a small class setting, rather than a tutorial?  Maybe. Maybe not.

I'm also considering starting a multi-year project to blog Civilization and Capitalism... don't you judge me!

130. Proust Was a Neuroscientist

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Call me Nostradamus...

Yes, I am sore today. Putting on and taking off my jacket now comes with sound effects. 

I compounded Having finally made it to the gym; Being sore the day after the gym; and Discovering that the local (Chinatown) branch library isn't open until 1pm on Fridays (noticed when I tried to open the door at Noon) to excuse my ignoring both my budget and diet for lunch. Since I needed to hang around for about an hour, I went to my usual North Beach haunt (Caffe Puccini) for something different (their eggplant sandwich) and a glass of red. Now I'm worried about the place as it was empty at the lunch hour.

Proust Was a Neuoscientist

By Jonah Lehrer - Houton Mifflin Company 2007

My reason for going to the library was to pick up a copy of our next book club book. I would have been happy if the book had only been about Proust, but in fact Proust is just one of the artists sampled for their contributions to neuroscience.

From the Prelude
The author writes about his days as a lab technician,

pix It was simple manual labor, but the work felt profound. Mysteries were distilled into minor questions, and if my experiments didn't fail, I ended up with an answer. The truth seemed to slowly accumulate, like dust.

At the same time, I began reading Proust. I would often bring my copy of Swann's Way into the lab and read a few pages while waiting for an experiment to finish. All I expected from Proust was a little entertainment, or perhaps an education in the art of constructing sentences. For me, his story about one man's memory was simply that: a story. It was a work of fiction, the opposite of scientific fact.

But... I began to see a surprising convergence. The novelist had predicted my experiments. Proust and neuroscience shared a vision of how our memory works. If you listened closely, they were actually saying the same thing.
...

pxi We now know that Proust was right about memory, Cezanne was uncannily accurate about the visual cortex, Stein anticipated Chomsky, and Woolf pierced the mystery of consciousness; modern neuroscience has confirmed these artistic intuitions...

pxii The moral of this book is that we are made of art and science. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff.... 


Walt Whitman
I learned two interesting things reading this first section: The phrase "Leaves of Grass" is a printing term where "leaves" are pages and "grass" is "compositions of little value." The other interesting thing is that Whitman continued to revise both his poems and his book (adding more to it) from 1855 until just before his death in 1891. When his body was examined after his death it was discovered that nearly every organ in his body was ravaged my tuberculosis.

So what I now want to know is how does what he wants to say in 1891 differ from what he wanted to say in 1855, and how much of the change is a result of age and illness? Has anyone published an edition that includes both versions so you can see the young and old poet juxtaposed?

This would be interesting for any writer, but the reason he is included in this book is because he is "a self-described poet of the body..." who argued that "... the soul is made of flesh." To the extent that this is true, the soul -- and thus the poetry -- of a young and healthy man must vary a great deal from the soul of an old and very ill man. How could it be otherwise? 

Vertigo

Have I mentioned how interminable Sebald's paragraphs are? They sometimes go on for pages. And they may cover a number of subjects and include what could be many transitions. You come to a point that should be a good place to stop and resume later, but there is no paragraph break to make it easy to relocate your place. It occurs to me now that I just need a post-it to use to mark where I'm stopping. 

We just came to the point where he finally makes his way to Verona and checks into a hotel under the name of someone from the 19th century, Jakob Philipp Fullmerayer. Fullmerayer was from a town on the other side of the Alps (and Austria) from Sebald's hometown in Bavaria. They certainly have something in common, though I'm not sure what Sebald is getting out here. (As usual.) Fullmerayer is an interesting character but Sebald merely adopts his name for a moment. He doesn't say any more about him.

Candide

P109 ...He [Voltaire] has been inspecting his new estate at Ferney and finding that there is more involved than the cultivation of plants. He has acquired peasants who depend on him. What is the state of the community? Half the land lies fallow, the curé has celebrated no marriages in seven years, the countryside is depopulated as people rush to nearby Geneva. Taxation (especially the salt-tax) destroys those who remain; either the peasants pay and are reduced to abject poverty, of they evade payment and are clapped in jail. ‘It is heartbreaking to witness so many misfortunes. I am buying the Ferney property simply in order to do a little good there. . . . The prince who will be my liege lord should rather help me to drag his subjects out of the abyss of poverty, than profit from his ancient feudal rights....

P110 This is a new voice in Voltaire’s letters. We have seen how many times he had sought to intervene on the social or political scene and been frustrated. Here at last the right opportunity in time and place comes to hand. By acquiring seigneurial rights he is freer, he says, than when he possessed only his home in Lausanne and his ‘country cottage {guinguette}’ in Geneva, where the people were ‘a little arrogant’ and the priest ‘a little dangerous’... Already before he is even installed at Ferney he has taken up the cudgels against the curé of Moens, who is the malefactor extorting money from Voltaire’s peasants and forcing them to sell their own lands...

P111 At the end of 1758, Voltaire tells d’Argental with pride that he has created for himself ‘a rather nice kingdom’ (D7988). At last he has his new principality: he is now both roi and philosophe. His installation at Tournay on Christmas Eve 1758 was of fitting dignity and pomp,with sound of cannon, fife and drum, all the peasants bearing arms and girls presenting flowers to his two diamond-bedecked nieces. ‘M. de Voltaire’, writes a spectator, ‘was very pleased and full of joy . . . He was, believe me, very flattered’... As Candide begins to enjoy, a few weeks later, the success which has never deserted it, so too does Voltaire enter at last into his kingdom. In his sixty-fifth year, François-Marie Arouet has finally realized himself as M. de Voltaire. [Footnote: François-Marie Arouet is the name of an insignificant Paris bourgeois; M. de Voltaire (wherever his name comes from) is a gentleman, a seigneur, a person of European repute.]

So when Candide speaks of cultivating his garden he really does have in mind a good Tory existence. And I suppose Ford Madox Ford’s having Christopher turn his back on Groby is to make his point that, in the bourgeois age of the Great War, there is no longer a place for the seigneur. In the 20th century one can only cultivate a very small, private garden and even then it must be supported by trade (the antique business).


But now I must turn to the other book that shares the name of its protagonist: Faust. You can see Goethe ending his book with Faust also cultivating his garden -- ripped from the sea and funded by piracy. What I haven’t repeated above are the passages about how Voltaire disliked the British Navy because they were interfering with his trade -- capturing and selling either ships he had an interest in or ships carrying cargo he had an interest in. I also skipped the passage about his attack on the slave trade (and the sugar trade) which was inserted in Candide at the last moment. Ferney wasn’t ripped from the sea, but I suspect Voltaire’s wealth (all wealth) came with some unsavory write-offs. Mephisto’s Violent Men always have a hand in these transactions. Still, to give Faust his due, his intention was similar to Voltaire’s. But just as Voltaire was participating in the economic system that would soon lead to the French Revolution, Faust’s efforts caused as much harm as they offered future promise. Faust really is Goethe’s Candide in some ways.

Next - 131. Walt Whitman

29. Chatty

Previous - 28. Random

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Bad Swifty

One really should confess ones shortcomings, both to others and to oneself, so here goes: The other day I discovered a cache of longer versions of Glee covers (with lyrics) on YouTube. I finally made it to Santana's (Naya Rivera's) cover of Taylor's Mine and it was a revelation. I've heard Taylor Swift's version of her song many times and there are some great parts, but Naya's version was so much stronger. 

Mine is a classic Country song. This tune is from earlier in Taylor's career when she was still in Nashville, and it shows. But I never noticed just how good, and Country good, the song was until hearing Naya's version. Now, the virtue of Glee is that they most often framed their covers in an emotional context -- in this case the troubled relationship between Santana and Brittney -- so some of that rubs off on my reaction to Naya's singing. But I really don't think that's the key ingredient. It could also be that I'm just hearing the song with fresher ears in this new version. But, again, I doubt it. 

On We Found Love, Naya does an amazing job of capturing the little vocal things that Rhianna does that makes that song so memorable. I can't speak to her cover of I Love You Like a Love Song, because I don't know the original version, but Naya's cover, in its long form, is now one of my favorite Glee songs. 

Here's Naya's Glee version of Mine for your consideration: 

Faust

Really, Doctor Faustus. I'm re-reading my blogging of this book from February of last year. This is the first time I've reviewed this material since reading The Brothers Karamazov, and especially Ivan's dream sequence. I might as well say that it's the first time I've re-read it since the last time I read it, as you always bring that to a re-reading as well.

I envy my friend who is into the double digits of her re-readings of Proust, both because she started before me, and so can recall what it was like to first encounter this world as a quite young woman, but mostly because she can read it in French. 

Am I at four readings? I'm not entirely certain. But I can't imagine getting into it again for at least a decade. I'm much more likely to re-read Parade's End (almost certain, in fact) and even The Magic Mountain. I was thinking, after Doctor Faustus, that I didn't need to go back to TMM, but now I'm thinking it would be interesting. That was the original plan after all -- to tackle Goethe's Faust and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy before blogging TMM. And instead Doctor Faustus and The Brothers Karamazov turned out to be even more important. 

I just realized I haven't blogged Parade's End, either. And that would be especially challenging as I would want to talk about Tom Stoppard's screenplay as well as Ford Madox Ford's original text. Just the other day I was thinking about some of the things Ford did in his final book that revised or undercut assumptions from the earlier books. And as wonderful as I think Stoppard's screenplay is, it couldn't capture the literary marvels of the text. What's compelling about Parade's End is both the story and the way it is told. 

My aunt, who passed away last year at 94, never read a book twice. She saw it as a waste of reading time. I could see going the other way and only reading books I had read before. Not that I would, there are still too many important books I've yet to read. But I do think that would be a reasonable plan. For one thing it would guarantee that you weren't wasting your time on books you wouldn't end up liking.

And, as long as I'm reflecting back on earlier blogs, a friend is traveling around the south of England and today posted photos of Exeter cathedral on Facebook. I immediately thought of the fictional Henry Ryecroft and his snug cottage not that far from Exeter. I really should go back and add links to my later posts about disease and genius in Doctor Faustus (what I was reading last night) and autism and genius in Thinking In Pictures. George Gissing and Mann, I suspect, would have gotten along just fine, but it's hard to imagine what Gissing would make of Temple Grandin, in her Western outfits, designing more efficient (and more humane) slaughterhouses in America. Would either Gissing or Mann have been receptive to her science based interpretation of her world? That is hard to imagine.

Tiny 

After attending my only boat show, in the mid-1960s, I became enamored of sailboat interiors. I still look at mid-size boat tours on YouTube, but have added RV tours and, more recently, Tiny Houses.

I think what appeals to me, beside the intimacy and efficiency of these spaces, is the attention to detail. In larger spaces you can waste space or not pay much attention to entire walls or even rooms. In a tiny space every cubic inch has to justify itself.

Of course I've also argued that often these spaces I see on YouTube are in fact over-designed. Intensely planned and crafted fixtures often mean that there is only one way to use the space. A Lamborghini is a thing of beauty and perfectly designed for its purpose, but if you need to pick-up a purchase or take friends to dinner, a Tesla X is far more flexible and -- dare I say it -- practical.

If I ever had the opportunity to design a tiny space (I forgot to mention container conversions, which may be my favorite) I would start by subtracting as many of the features you commonly see as possible. I would try to introduce functional minimalism as well as aesthetic minimalism (the decorative details of many of these designs would make the Victorians blush.) I could even demonstrate this concept in my own tiny apartment except that making marginal improvements in such an awkwardly small space simply isn't worth the bother. And so I read Dwell magazine instead.

Next - 30. Less chatty