I’ll bet you didn’t know I have a Ben Lee record. But hey, why shouldn’t I? He is terrific in The Rage in Placid Lake, which is an utterly terrific film anyway, and the song of his in the closing credits is actually rather impressive.* There’s no reason I shouldn’t have one of his albums. I used to have a Meshell Ndegeocello album too, but it went missing along with the Hendrix I owned and I think three Ed Kueppers. Nor can I find Hatful of hollow just at the moment. Why, out of all the CDs I own, should I have lost just these pop ones? Perhaps I didn’t care enough. I should have looked after my stuff. I might have taken greater care to have known the catholicity of my tastes. I mean, everyone was always categorising me, sob, because I’d made such efforts to prove I was a jazz hard-arse. I could blame them, or I could be honest: in fact, I asked for it.
Anyway I have this Ben Lee record, Breathing Tornados, and he wrote the lyric that heads this post. It’s a line I think of often, as life proceeds. ‘Cigarettes will kill you’ is another, although a couple of nights ago I dreamt I was smoking and it wasn’t absolutely unpleasant. I was, in a way, finding a place for it in my life – which is totally ridiculous, of course.
Something did happen, though: you know I said I was going to sit the LSAT? Well I did. And it was an experience; the temperature in the room was about 2°C and the test went for fucking hours, although afterwards I wandered through Carlton and ran into my brother and a friend of his at Jimmy Watson’s, and that bit was lovely. It was good to hear some of my fellow ’SATters telling each other during the break how difficult the test was; this had been my impression also.
Anyhow weeks went by and then I received my score and it wasn’t smashingly good but it certainly could have been a lot worse. And now the U of M has offered me a place in the JD but a) because it requires me to pay $34K a year, and b) because I’ve been doing a lot of serious, sober thinking in the last little while, I’m probably going to suggest they offer it to someone else.
‘My self-indulgent intermezzo ends’ is another line that has a home in my line-repertory; The Rake’s Progress is an opera of which I simply can’t get enough and Baba’s last moments with Anne are tremendously moving. The conclusion isn’t lost on me either.
This site has suffered from what may be an orthodoxy of online establishment: it arrived, it was fussed over a little, and then it was let to sit for a bit. ‘Ignored’ may not be too grandiose a term. I resolve to improve. ‘For idle hearts and hands and minds…’
* ‘actually rather impressive’ is the kind of faint praise I offer against the risk of incriminating myself. In fact I believe that the song, ‘Naked’, is very good indeed.
23/viii/2013
On seven nights of the week, dinner is cooked, and each comprises a dish containing exactly one from among fish, beef, pasta, lamb, rice, ham and dried beans. Complements to the given ingredients include soy sauce, yoghurt, mozzarella, green beans, honey, lotus root and sweet corn.