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MUSIC
This month I have been listening to Cory Chisel, The Low Anthem and a lot of Bob Dylan. I never really registered Dylan’s ‘Modern Love’ when it came out, but I have circled back to it, and enjoyed it tremendously. I love all the references, the mash-up of folk and blues, the re-imagining of great and seminal source material. Plus he’s singing well.
Cory Chisel’s “Tennessee” and the Low Anthem’s “Charlie Darwin” have been on near constant rotation. Both melancholy, expansive, deep, soulful, sad and transcendent. A lot of adjectives for two songs, but they both have the power to give rise to all those feelings in me.
BOOK
I’m re-reading “Pride and Prejudice” on my iPad, and enjoying the old/new mashup. It’s great for traveling as my bag isn’t nearly as heavy from being stuffed with books. I never tire of Jane Austen’s particular phrasing, her delightful use of language. I am excessively diverted.
FILM
“Never Let Me Go”. The New York Times review said it was best to know as little as possible about this film before going, and I had not read the book, so I went thinking it was just a love story.
It’s science fiction, but the science and the fiction part are treated with such nonchalance and neutrality that it is even more devastating when it dawns on you what the facts and narrative actually are. The film worked for me on several levels: part love story, part science fiction, part metaphor and part existential reflection on time, potential, futility and hope. I want to see it again to see if there are even more levels I’m missing.
