From Haloes to Hospitality

This week I have been fired by the wish to show up to all of my classes virtuously, at an excellent juncture as it turns out since a great proportion of the students are staying away in a presumable spillover from the holidays, so I feel the beginnings of a halo glimmer around my head whenever I — exquisitely on time — tread into a classroom these days.

Since this semester's schedule combined with the necessary repetition of the prelanguage course demands that I be at university at 10:00 on Mondays and 8:30 every day thereafter, I have been going to sleep before midnight and waking up spontaneously between 3 a.m. and 7, then relaxing as I like to do in the tranquillity of nighttime, and then taking as long or as little time as I like to dress and pack things together, and then going out the door.

Today I had a prelanguage course Greek grammar class preceded by a first-year Greek grammar class, followed by the overview of Turkish literature lecture which has set in since two weeks before the Christmas holidays after all the Persian literature was overviewed by a different professor.

In the first-year grammar we reviewed the present active participle — ταξιδευοντας, etc.— in sentences which were so incredibly depressing that I had no idea what was going on until I realized that the chapter's theme was criminal justice and prison sentences. For the prelanguage course there was a little vocabulary mixed in, and we had to complete small, much more cheerful exercises surrounding the four seasons: ανοιξη, καλοκαιρι, φθινοπωρο, and χειμωνα.

In the Turkish literature class I recognized the letter wāw on the chalkboard from my small discursions into Persian vocabulary and felt tremendously pleased with myself. I should have known the kāf, too.

***

Anyway, I've had little projects at home going on, and one of them was to dabble in modern music again and figure out what I like. I did this in possibly the stodgiest way thinkable, by looking at NPR's 2012 best-of lists and then listening to over a hundred songs on YouTube. In terms of genre I felt quite undiscriminating, but I wasn't especially taken by electropop and nostalgic folk music from urban types (along the Mumford and Sons line, which I — probably unfairly — now think of as 'fauxlk music') and the kind of punk music where pale young women who seem on the verge of passing out sing feebly off-key whilst playing the keyboard, and that while I felt less self-conscious when my parents walked into the room when I was listening to jazz I found most of it incredibly boring, and I really do like rap music because I think it has more substance than most other stuff. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but the real rap like the Wu Tang Clan separately and collectively do intimidate me because they can feel so hard and joyless and genuinely aggressive, but the rest is kind of easier to hear.

'Skyfall' bowled me over, but I only listened to part of it once and I wonder if the reaction was proportionate; at least it is nominated for an Academy Award, so . . . Arvo Pärt was on the list, and much to my surprise because contemporary classical music all falls under unoriginal, neurotic, self-indulgent overintellectualizing minimalist tosh concocted by academic aesthetes in my mind, I liked the song, as it was performed by an Estonian choir.

The musicians I had heard of before were Bonnie Raitt and Neil Young, and perhaps unsurprisingly I also liked them best. Above all, both musicians' voices are like instruments which they have learned how to use, with the twang and the colour and everything beautifully calibrated and mature (like a fine wine, to add another cliché to this paragraph), which less experienced singers seem to try to replace with lovely sincerity but little originality through Bob Dylan- or Dolly Partonesque affectations. Bruce Springsteen, I was surprised to find, seemed anodyne despite the persona.

But the only songs which have stuck in my head this year are "We Are Young" from fun., as well as "Whistle" from Flo Rida and that song from One Direction, which I had already heard because the apprentice in the bookshop and I listened to them together during the summer. I've heard 'Gangnam Style' and 'Call Me Maybe' the requisite number of times, too, but I thought that Gangnam Style was kind of harsh and degenerate — though I think that most people who look at the cheerfully absurd-seeming music video will probably wonder what on earth I mean.

As far as the singers accompanying themselves on the piano went, I considered it best to ignore the offerings in that line, excepting rare cases like Diana Krall's. Because if the piano is to have no tone and no expression at all, and a rather sparse score, one might as well prod around a well-tempered and multicoloured Fisher Price keyboard for noise-loving two-year-olds. But I consider the horrendousness in this area more due to the absence of effort (or of respect for the instrument) than of talent.

In the end, I pruned these 100+ songs into two shortlists — one for fun songs and bands, and one general list which I am planning to revisit:


Hospitality (Eighth Avenue)
Hot Chip (Look at Where We Are) (video brilliant but very disturbing, though, in ways you don't expect when you begin to watch it)
Icona Pop (I Love It)
Jack White (Sixteen Saltines)
Justin Martin (Don't Go)
Kishi Bashi (Bright Whites)
Lianne La Havas (Is Your Love Big Enough?)
Little Big Town (Pontoon)
Scissor Sisters (Let's Have a Kiki)
The Lumineers (Ho Hey) ('ho' and 'hey' a bit harsh on the eardrums)
Sarah Jarosz (Annabelle Lee)
Poliça (Dark Star)
Alex Winston (Locomotive)
Lianne La Havas (No Room for Doubt)
Ensemble Caprice (Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, Allegro)
Nick Moran Trio
The Walkmen (Heaven)
Boy Eats Drum Machine
Pat Metheny Unity Band (Breakdealer)
Ulysses Owens Jr. (Good and Terrible)
Django Django (Default)
The Tallest Man on Earth (Wind and Walls)
Citizen Cope (One Lovely Day)