We now have a deadline for getting the music and foley, as well as the final editing, finished for The Music of Jo Hyeja, and that is the 9th of March. This became our deadline because that’s when we will be taking the final cut of the film to get the audio postprocessing done. (By some kind of organization in Seoul that supports independent filmmakers by dong this kind of work for them, either inexpensively or free of charge — to the filmmaker, at least.) This means I have a ton of stuff to do, especially because we also learned, from …
Month: February 2012
Blogging Pound’s The Cantos: Canto II
For those who don’t know, I’m writing a series of posts about Ezra Pound’s massive book-length poem The Cantos as I work my way through the poems. My readings, designed to help me write a novel featuring Pound as an occult adventurer (more on that here), will stray from the merely academic to the unusual and highly fanciful, so take all this with a grain of salt! If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, there will be a menu where you can go back to the beginning of this series. Today, I’m continuing with the Cantos, and specifically addressing Canto …
Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian
When I was walking down a quiet road in Rome about a year ago, searching for a present for Miss Jiwaku, I stumbled upon a little English bookstore, which according to the bookmark I got there was called “The Almost Corner Bookshop,” at 45 Via del Moro, Trastevere. I remember the shop a little, and it put me in mind of a little English bookshop I visited in Thailand, somewhere near Khao San Road, before I learned to avoid that district. Both of those shops were unusual in that they seemed to have a really literary clientele, well, assuming the …
“The Journey to the East” by Herman Hesse
For those who noticed the quotation marks in the title, rather than italicization, yes, this is a novella, not a novel, though it is published in book form. The version of the “The Journey to the East” I read is the translation by Hilda Rosner, and this is a little book I picked up at The Strand in New York when I visited several years ago. Having a hankering for shorter books these days, I dove into it this afternoon. I discovered that it is a far different book from what I expected. It is advertised, in the back cover …
Korean Brewday: Black Mak — My First Makkeoli
I’m hosting a party this Monday night for some people I know to see our friend Chris off, as he leaves Korea for India, and then parts unknown, a day or two later. Chris is gluten-intolerant, so I figured it might be nice to finally try make some makkeoli for him… I’d been planning on doing so for a long time, but never gotten around to it, so I thought I should bloody well get it done.
Religious Upbringing and The Basis for Ethics
A friend of mine once commented that my experience of religion, from the way I talked about it, reminded her of the way some people talk about a bad trip on LSD… the kind of story where someone ends by explaining, “And that’s why I’ll never touch the stuff again.” Well, that’s not completely true. I do read about religion sometimes; look at the last book I reviewed here, for example! I sometimes read about the history of Christianity, or of scriptures, because quite frankly, that was the governing tradition of the West the way capitalism is our governing paradigm today. …
Another Draft Down, And Diagnosis of Stories
I’ve just put the finishing touches on another story draft: “Moura,” a piece I got a rewrite request on about a year ago, but which I really couldn’t quite make work. The things I wanted ambiguous, people seemed to think weren’t clear enough; that was the main complaint, besides that it’s kind of slow and sometimes (in the earlier draft) felt like nothing happened in parts. Some of that is addressed, though in rereading the story at a great remove, I still didn’t see what was wrong with it… not until I started reworking it. Then, I realized, the whole …
The Gospel of Corax by Paul Park
Before I begin to discuss this book, two disclosures: 1. I was a student of Paul Park’s at Clarion West 2006. Which I don’t believe skews my reaction, and is probably less significant than my second disclosure, which is that 2. I was force-fed Catholic dogma and doctrine from an early age, and extricating myself from the clutches of the Church was a hard battle for me. With the background I suggest in point number 2, you might wonder why I was interested in reading a book like Park’s, and I’ll be honest: if I hadn’t met Paul and been …
The Traneumentary, Shooting for Trane, and Pound/Trane in Comparison
First of all: if you’re interested in John Coltrane, there’s a wonderful podcast series (titled The Traneumentary) which has now concluded, but which is worth working your way through — the segments are brief but contain interviews with all kinds of jazz musicians, producers, and other folks, as well as discussions of specific tracks in voiceover on the tracks themselves. For more on the origins of the project, see here. It’s wonderful, and full of bite-sized chunks, and very professional — and for those Trane fanatics out there whose significant others or friends ask, “So, why Trane?” I think it …
Cantico del Seoul
by Gord Sellar The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. 빨리 나가라! Now lettest thou thy professor, Now lettest thou thy professor Drink in peace! The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea, The thought of what Korea would be like If space opera had a wide circulation… Oh well! It troubles my sleep. (With no apologies to Ezra …