the diary of antoine roquentin

Let’s get the obligatory concert shots out of the way. I apologize for the haphazardness of this post, but it’s two weeks jammed together.

ACRYLICS @ MERCURY LOUNGE

A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW @ MERCURY LOUNGE

EFTERKLANG @ LE POISSON ROUGE

And, in addition:

The “F” train stop at Bryant Park

Amusing graffiti in the William Paterson University library bathroom.

This was in a friend’s roomate’s closet in the apartments at the university.

My aunt Anna’s 97th birthday. Yep, 97. Noventa y siete.

My uncle’s casket. My mom asked me to take this picture. I can barely look at it.

I guess the last time I wrote was after the funeral. I’m still not sure how to put that behind me.

I haven’t really been doing much more than usual, other than going to the university pool a few times this week. Also, my voice recognition software is getting more and more unreliable. It randomly inverts the last two letters of any word it transcribes. I’m just going to roll with it.

Tonight is the first night that I’ve been at home in what seems like forever. It’s so quiet here that all of my thoughts have a certain sheen to them. I wish they were in higher resolution.

I think I’m just feeling depressed because I read the end of House of Mirth and it’s an ending of absolute despair. I’m also in my abode and it’s overflowing with papers and tickets and magazines and envelopes that I have to go through this week, and the painting that I still have to finish for Matt (it was supposed to be a Valentine’s Day gift).

That’s not to say I haven’t been doing anything fun. On the contrary, I saw Neon Indian on Friday of last week after my Aunt Anna’s 97th birthday party!

At the venue, I ran into the lead guy (the band is really only him) and he cut in front of me to use the bathroom. I thought it was pretty funny. There were these crazy drunk girls on acid in front of us who couldn’t have been a day over 16, but they were absolutely enamored with the band and made it a much more fun show.

The IFC Center is doing this program of Beigelow vs. Cameron midnight movies, so Matt, Yevgeny, and I went to see The Abyss on Saturday. It was the first time that I was introducing them to each other, but they got on very well. We had dinner at French Roast before the show, which was delicious. I actually hadn’t seen the movie all the way through, and it was beautiful (especially on the big screen).

Sunday I’d been looking forward to for weeks: it was the Washed Out show at Mercury Lounge. However, the day of the show I wasn’t really feeling it. The Washed Out EPs that I’d been listening to nonstop a few weeks ago were feeling tired. I had looked forward to it too long to actually not go, but my excitement was renewed at the very first song. One, the Washed Out guy is ccuuute as fuck. Two, that type of dreamy, gritty pop really excels in a tiny venue. Three, the audience was loving it and I couldn’t help be swept away by their enthusiasm as well as my own. My pictures didn’t come out, but I have video:

“Belong”

“New Theory” (probably my favorite Washed Out song)

“Hold Out”

This week my social calendar isn’t as jam-packed. Tonight Yevgeny and I went to see this silent Gary Cooper movie on loan from the Library of Congress (this is the only print extant) called Wolfsong. I met up with him an hour or so before the movie and we got some cake and coffee at this little bakery on Bleecker. The movie was actually pretty cute, although a bit implausible. Since it was silent, this man played this piano score that he had written specifically to accompany the events onscreen through the entire film. It was a wonderful piece, so much so that I was almost shocked at the end of the performance when the announcer said that it had been composed specifically for that viewing.

I always feel as if someone I personally know has died once one of my favorite characters die in a novel. I felt like Lily Bart (of House of Mirth, which I finished a few hours ago waiting for the bus) was my secret accomplice, peeking into the indelicacies of Fifth Avenue magnates. Now, she is almost a pathetic character, destroyed by her hubris.

Inherited tendencies had combined with early training to make her the highly specialized product she was: an organism as helpless out of its narrow range as the sea-anemone torn from the rock. She had been fashioned to adorn and delight; to what other end does nature round the rose-leaf and paint the humming-bird’s breast? And was it her fault that the purely decorative mission is less easily and harmoniously fulfilled among social beings than in the world of nature? That it is apt to be hampered by material necessities or complicated by moral scruples?

I am to write a Marxist critique of the book, but that must take a back seat to the largest of the papers that I will be working on this spring break: a six-page opus on Emily Dickinson. I went out and bought her collected poems yesterday at the Union Square Barnes & Noble and headed down for a quick coffee and study session at Think. I feel like I’ve been going at a breakneck pace these last few weeks and I just need to spend some time at home: clean off my desk, answer some of my letters, finally get that second bookshelf so I can get rid of the stacks of books all over the floor.

Tonight I’m devoting to relaxation, after all of the tedious work I did today. Oh! How wonderful, I have my Critical Writing book. I left it here by mistake last week, but now it’s perfect because I can use it for my paper.

I have three due.

6 pages – Emily Dickinson
2 pages – House of Mirth
4 pages – (but doesn’t have to be “done” on Monday) Critical Writing [on climate change]

I need to dump all the photos off my camera and upload them (I have pictures of countless shows on there) but I’ll do it tomorrow.

I’m taking my GRE on Saturday. I’m not really prepared, but I’m not sure what I would do to “prepare,” since it’s supposed to test analytical thinking. Right? I think my nervousness will probably bring me to check out some test prep books at B&N tomorrow.

Also on Saturday I’m going to a this cocktail party/tour of the new exhibit at the New Museum for Contemporary Art. The New Yorker has an interesting take on the show.

I can’t wait until school is over and I can get back to pleasure reading. Notable books on my queue that are waiting patiently on my shelf:

Marcel Proust – Schwann’s Way (the first book in In Search of Lost Time / Remembrance of Things Past)
Roland Barthes – S/Z
Jean Baudrillard – The Intelligence of Evil (Or the Lucidity Pact)
Roland Barthes – Mythologies
Jorge Luis Borges – Collected Works (I’m 2/3 done with this, he’s one of my favorite writers these days)
Edwin A. Abbott – Flatland

And, of course, Amy Hempel’s Collected Stories. They are almost so beautiful I can’t bring myself to read more than a few at a time.