A Screaming Comes Across the Sky...

Alas, all I have time for today is a quick bullet-point summary of the week that was. Significant events of the week:

Yiftach and I walked 130 blocks in the glorious sunshine on Thursday, in the process circumnavigating virtually the entirety of Central Park.

On Friday night James and I went to see Ambulance Ltd. at the Mercury Lounge. They were really quite awful. But earlier that day we saw Taylor Carman give a very interesting paper on the unique role of the humanities - they unconceal the world, in Heideggerian terms - and spent the journey there and back arguing about that, which was significantly more interesting.

Yesterday Daniel and I carried a very large bookcase from West 72nd (btw. Morningside and Columbus, no less) to my apartment - my arms ache today, but at least my book situation is marginally more manageable. I thanked Daniel with a quite frankly splendid lunch, before the two of us headed to the Bronx to do buy some bits and pieces for Daniel's new apartment, which also required a lot of carrying. But the trip to the Bronx completed my set of New York boroughs! I've now, finally, been to them all. The view from 225th on the Bronx is excellent: you can see the northern point of Manhattan, and then trace its outline. The northern tip is, unsurprisingly, rather different from the southern point.

Last night Adam, Daniel, and I visited James and Mary's new apartment. And very nice it is too. But much, much more excitingly than that, we all climbed out onto the roof and took a look at the amazing view. If you lean over the edge a little (it's safe, honest Mum!) you get an amazing view of the Empire State Building and downtown, and we could also make out the lights of three bridges in the dark, plus eagle-eyed Adam noticed the huge History Channel advert on the way into Manhattan from northern Queens. On the other side we could see into other people's apartments. It all got a bit too Rear Window-esque, however, so we retreated back inside to watch the inexplicable Zardoz. I'd never even heard of this film, but evidently it's some kind of American rite of passage. I think that Adam must have had one too many Sour Patch Extremes, because he was squealing and squeaking and shouting "It's in his head!!!" for literally the entirety of the film.

Today I found, and subsequently disposed of, the first cockroach that I've seen in my apartment this year. I reiterate: I do not like cockroaches. I cannot get used to them, and no amount of reading The Metamorphosis will convince me to empathise with their plight. The English do not get on with cockroaches.

I got tickets for Natalie and I to see Pearl Jam at Madison Square Garden on June 25th. I'm also going to the show on the 24th on my own. I care not for the words of the dissenters: PJ may not be cool, but I love them anyway. And they are a band who are genuinely committed to their political values (although, apparently, not to their less wealthy fans. 3 tickets = $270. Me = poor). And all of this means that Nat will be visiting for a week or so in June!

Coming up this week: after an unprecedented four days without a guest, Hotel Taylor welcomes my oldest and dearest of friend Jon for a week. Next Saturday evening I have tickets to see a band in Brooklyn with Jon and James, but unbeknowst to me when I bought them, that is also the first night of Pesach and I've been invited to a Seder meal at Liran's house. Religion or music? Charles Taylor is no doubt penning a treatise on the matter as we speak.

Well, this has turned into a longer post than expected. One day I will get around to writing something of actual substance. I just need some time. The deadline for the Harvard paper looms, as does my (self-imposed) deadline for the History of European Ideas review. And papers need to be written. None of this is getting done, however, because I'm too busy reading some excellent books recommended to me by various faculty members and suppressing my excitement at my new PhD dissertation idea. More soon.

Songs for the Deaf: Black Cat - Ladytron; More News From Nowhere - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds; Severed Hand - Pearl Jam

The Kindly Ones

Well, what a hectic and busy week or two. Guests, prospective students, conferences, shows, work: I've been running around in a happy if tired haze for many days now. In the midst of all of this I once again took on the dreaded machine of US bureaucracy, this time successfully. I went back to the Social Security Administration building and applied for my SSN. Then I went and dropped the form off with Sean Sawyer at the History Department office, only to (of course) subsequently receive an email requiring me to fill in yet more forms. Then, yesterday, having received my SSN with fortuitous haste, I completed my Federal and State taxes. This wasn't quite as nightmarish a task as I'd feared, and the results left me happy indeed: whilst I owe New York State $42 (all those high-class call girls come at a price, after all), the Federal government owe me $842! And quite right too; it's disgraceful that the US government tax academic stipends and fellowships at all, let alone the ridiculous rate I was on. But, whilst I'm bemoaning these issues, why oh why don't the UK and USA have a tax treaty? The US and Germany? Check. US and China? Yep. US and Yemen? No problem. But the UK, the country which loyally follows America on its myriad international adventures? Hell no.

A few days ago I helped my friend Liran to write a lecture on Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes. Liran is a friend of Daniel's from Israel, and currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU. He did his MA in Paris under the supervision of Julia Kristeva, which is pretty great in and of itself, but even more interesting (from my perspective) was his PhD dissertation, a critique of Freud's account of death drawing on existential pyschoanalysts like Binswanger, May, Fromm, and my old friend Irvin Yalom. Just to say again, Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, whilst dauntingly large, is one of the significant and impressive books I've ever read, and has decisively shaped a lot of my thought, both intellectual and personal.

Anyway, Liran's lecture was excellent, and it was really good fun to go through the text with him, debating the meanings and nuances of various words in the English language. Given the very extreme nature of Littell's novel, however (about which I knew nothing before Thursday), this led to some conversations which drew a few quizzical looks: "How I about, 'spattered'?" I would venture. "Spattered? What does it mean?" replied Liran. "Well," I explained, "let's say I shot you in the head. The stain it would make on the wall would be a spattering of blood." "But it would also include pieces of brain and skull and so on, not just blood?" "Yes, it could." "Spattered it is then." And I won't go into our discussion of the syntactical legitimacy of the phrase, "a bout of masturbatory excess." "Bout?" asked Liran...

Well, I guess there's plenty more to say, but I've already wasted enough of your time. Happy birthday to James. Oh, and the paper I'm giving at Harvard in May has a title: 'Between Fidelity and Redlichkeit: Leo Strauss's Zionist Synthesis'.

Songs for the deaf: That's When I Reach for My Revolver - Mission of Burma; Hold On Now, Youngster - Los Campesinos!!! (a great album, even if they sound uncannily similar to Architecture in Helsinki at times); (Hey You) What's That Sound? - Les Rhythm Digitales; The Mending of the Gown - Sunset Rubdown (again).

A final thought: "To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames." - Robert Musil.