Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Ode to Solo Time (Uncut)

by Jazzy D

Late house quiet. Lights down low.
Need prowls up your spine like a thing you know.
Fingers find you already hard, already leaking,
Mouth half open, brain gone, body speaking.

No foreplay. No permission. Just command.
Spit in your palm. Close your hand.
First stroke is a snarl. Tight. Obscene.
You hiss and set the rhythm mean.

You’re filth and liturgy at once:
Altar boy, sinner, god, and wants.
Every drag of skin peels the night back.
Pre-come strings, you work it, thick, down the track.

You think in flashes: mouths, hips, the word yes.
Your hips chase your fist in shameless excess.
Base to crown, twist at the head, again.
Grip stuttering to that edge, then back from the end.

Edges stack. Vision whites at the seams.
Thighs iron. Toes curl. Nothing redeems.
You swear, guttural, not a word they’d print.
Balls drawn up, every nerve in sprint.

Then the snap. God, the snap.
Ruin in waves. You jack it through each wet slap.
Ropes hot across your belly and hand,
Pulse after pulse you didn’t plan.

You ride it out, still stroking, mean and slow,
Milking aftershocks that won’t let go.
Chest heaving. Wrecked. Lit from within.
Come cooling, sticky, honest on skin.

After is gospel: heartbeat, breath, grin.
Blanket to mouth. Silence pouring in.
No one to thank. No one to blame.
Just you, undone, and glad you came.

Zadie Smith "White Teeth" (Penguin)





White Teeth by Zadie Smith is an energetic and sprawling epic about class- and color-stratified Greater London. It's difficult to summarize - one reviewer (Maya Jaggi in the Guardian) explained, "Its characters embrace Jehovah's Witnesses, halal butchers, eugenicists, animal-rights activists and a group of Muslim militants who labour under the unfortunate acronym KEVIN." It centrally follows two families with roots in Jamaica and Bangladesh, the fathers of which met in the war. A scientist's genetic programming of laboratory mice sets up a clash of science, compassion and religion that affects them all.

It's astonishing that the author, half-Jamaican herself, was 24 years old when she wrote this. Its rich story and bravado would seem to have come from someone much more experienced. Is it post-racial? It struck me as more "frankly racial" than "post". It also provides glimpses into a London not often portrayed. I can see why it's received all the accolades it has.

Kang Han "We Do Not Part" (Penguin)







This is a tragic tale of South Korean history. It is revealed through the friendship of two women, Inseon and Kyungha. Inseon has had a horrifying accident while engaging in carpentry and is in the hospital suffering terrible torment as her injury is being treated. She asks her friend to come to the hospital immediately and then begs her to travel to her home to care for her beloved bird. Kyungha agrees when she realizes that Ami has no other means of survival and will surely die if she does not go. However, she must leave immediately and the journey is harrowing as she is forced to travel there in the midst of a dangerous snowstorm. Once she arrives, she is haunted by memories, dreams and visions. Through these revelations the reader learns of a gruesome period of time that has been covered up and hidden.
Inseon had been researching a tragedy that had directly affected her own family, a mass murder that had resulted in thousands upon thousands of deaths throughout the country, but she concentrated her research on Jeju Island where she lived. The slaughter had been justified by the imperative to stamp out Communism. Suspected citizens and their families, the elderly and the infants, who were thought to be connected in any way to Communism, were arrested, murdered and tortured. The methods used were absolutely barbaric. One of the most difficult reveals for me was the insinuation that the United States was complicit in this horror.
The visual images of bloodstained snow juxtaposed over its feathery beauty is painful. The details of the suffering are truly distressing, and I found it to be a difficult book read. The message is dark, but it is important because it reveals a little-known part of history as it shines a light on a massacre that took place on Jeju Island, in the mid-20th century. It took place in the time of the Korean War and is a story that should see the light of day.

This novel was also about friendship and the nature of the love between a husband and wife and a parent and child. How has the horror of that massacre traveled from generation to generation? How have the survivors been able to cope with and handle the tragedy? What was it that drove Inseon to research the massacre so intensely?

There were paranormal, mystical scenes that were totally otherworldly. The movement of the story was also sometimes confusing, but the lyrical quality of the narrative made it compelling, just the same. I listened to the audio along with the print read of the book, and the narrator made it spellbinding. However, I think most readers will have to research the real back story of the Bodo League massacre, in Korea, to understand why it occurred and why there were long-term effects on society and the world.

T. A Williams "Murder In Tuscany" (Boldwood Books)




Recently retired London DCI Dan Armstrong was given a two week creative writing course as a retirement present by his former colleagues. The focus of the course is a surprise to him, and several times he has thought of not attending. But the location in Tuscany is a drawcard.

The fact that the writer who has initiated the course is found dead after a couple days, stabbed to the heart in his dining room while Dan is visiting the police in Florence becomes an added bonus.

The case ends up changing the direction of Dan's life.

An enjoyable cozy read.

James White "Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking" (Corvo Books)




A good, solid look at some of the most common logical mistakes. There were one or two amusing moments when the author actually committed a fallacy he'd just argued against, and there were a few places where he allowed his political preferences to color his arguments, but for the most part, it is a badly needed corrective to some of the most egregious mistakes being made in modern discourse.

This should be required reading for everyone, especially the devoted MAGA and Brexit generation who don't seem to have even a modicum of critical thinking skills and would prefer to have someone else tell them what to think.

This book has both a humorous and very pointed, yet concise way of walking the user through the various logic breakdowns and falacies that are encountered in the current spin filled 'news' of the day.

Winifred Watson "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" (Persephone Classics)



Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a book with two settings. It's either a charming, frothy Cinderella-esque fantasy where the eponymous character, teetering on the verge of destitution in 1930s London, sees her life transformed over the course of a single day following an accidental encounter with glamorous nightclub singer Delysia; or a brick-to-the-face of antisemitism, xenophobia, and that weird interwar insistence that what a woman really loves is a man who'll shake her, tell her they're an idiot, and insist that "obviously she needs a little physical correction."

Oof. The ratio of froth delight to yuck was such that I was just able to get through the book without throwing it away entire;y. While I've heard so many people recommend this as a much-loved comfort read, I don't think I'll be coming back to it. In fact, dear reader, avoid it.

Umberto Eco "Interpretation & Overinterpretation" (Cambridge Universoty Press)





In 1990, Umberto Eco was invited by Cambridge University to give the annual Tanner Lecture. He chose for his topic the somewhat academically contentious area of literary interpretation or rather the question of whether one can set limits to the range of what a text can be said to mean. Over the course of three lectures Eco tries to establish that, whilst it may not be possible to prove which of any competing interpretations is correct, one may be able to point out those interpretations which are perhaps unfounded. Following the three lectures are responses by Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler and Christine Brooke-Rose with a final reply to his critics by Eco although in this review I shall focus upon Eco's lectures..

In his first lecture on 'interpretation and history' Eco traces the history of Hermetic tradition in interpretation dating back from the dialogues of Hermes Trismegistus (one of my favourite names from philosophy, Trismegistus meaning thrice wise). He shows how, if we accept Hermetic thought, interpretation is essentially endless. "A plant is not defined in terms of its morphological and functional characteristics but on the basis of its resemblance, albeit only partial, to another element in the cosmos. If it is vaguely like part of the human body, then it has meaning because it refers to the body. But that part of the body has meaning because it refers to a star, and the latter has meaning because it refers to a musical scale, and this in turn because it refers to a hierarchy of angels, and so on ad infinitum'. Essentially a text would never have meaning because each interpretation could lead to another leaving the text as a meaningless shell. If we reject this theory, he argues, we arrive at the conclusion that a text has meaning. We are "not entitled to say that the message can mean everything. It can mean many things, but there are senses which it would be preposterous to suggest". This is the theme he takes up in his second lecture.

Overinterpreting texts is the subject of the second lecture and Eco starts by listing the ways in which images or words can be connected, the very basis of semiosis, by similitude, by homonymy, by irony, by sign and so on. Similarity is important for interpretation because 'the interpreter has the right and the duty to suspect that what one believed to be the meaning of a sign is in fact the sign for a further meaning'. However, as Eco puts it, 'the passage from similarity to semiosis is not automatic'. In other words if a text suggests something to you by means of similarity does not mean to say that it is a valid or useful interpretation of the text. Eco shows how Gabriele Rossetti's attempt to interpret Dante in the light of Masonic-Rosicrucian symbolism is ill-fated as he goes in search of a pelican and a rose. "Rossetti, in his desperate and rather pathetic fowling, could find in the divine poem seven fowls and eleven birds and ascribe them all to the pelican family: but he would find them all far from the rose". Rossetti's interpretation had another pitfall to overcome, that he was looking for symbolism that was not conceived until after Dante had written his Divine Comedy.

In the third lecture Eco poses the question of whether 'we should still be concerned with the empirical author of a text', his rather surprising answer is not really. Taking an example from his own work The Name of the Rose, in the trial scene William is asked 'What terrifies you most in purity?' and he responds 'haste'. On the same page 'Bernard Gui, threatening the cellarer with torture, says 'Justice is not inspired by haste, as the Pseudo Apostles believe, and the justice of God has centuries at its disposal'. A reader asked Umberto Eco what connection he had meant to establish 'between the haste feared by William and the absence of haste extolled by Bernard. The answer was that the author had intended no connection but that the text had created its effects whether he wanted them or not.

The responses are interesting. Richard Rorty, ever the pragmatist argues that interpretations are essentially pointless and what is more important is how we use and enjoy literature. Jonathan Culler attacks Eco's notion of overinterpretation and takes up his example of Rossetti's Dante interpretation arguing that it is in fact underinterpretation as Rossetti had been following false leads rather than positing valid interpretations of the material that was actually there. Finally Christine Brooke-Rose rather side-steps the debate with a lecture on Palimpsest history.

It is certainly an interesting debate and Eco makes his arguments with his usual charm and good humour (I would love to see him talk). Sadly it appears that Eco's respondents were not supplied with his lectures in advance which meant that Rorty's response was to an earlier piece by Eco in which he put forward a different argument and Brooke-Rose was off-topic nearly altogether but the most interesting aspect of the book is Eco himself. His general principle is spot on, there definitely has to be scope for determining the degree to which any given interpretation is valid. He is also right in suggesting that once a text has been created that it takes upon a life independent of its empirical author therefore any appeal to the author for a 'correct interpretation' is not strictly valid.

This framework should not be used to discourage the search for meaning in texts. "At the beginning of his second lecture Umberto Eco linked overinterpretation to what he called an 'excess of wonder'...this deformation professionelle, which inclines critics to puzzle over element is a text, seems to me, on the contrary, the best source of insights into language and literature that we seek, a quality to be cultivated rather than shunned'. Basically I'm saying feel free to interpret texts any way you like but I reserve the right to say that you've overinterpretted.

In sumation, the book would have been better if all speakers were singing from the same hymn sheet although what does get said is very interesting.

Kevin Powers "A Shout in the Ruins" (Sceptre)





George Seldom is an old man who decides to take some time to revisit his personal history on a road trip. He travels through the Deep South and as he does so the reader is given some of the events that have led to a country on the brink of race equality. The plantation of Beauvais is owned by a cruel master Levallois who, even before the Civil War, has recognised that industry is the way forward, not agriculture. His neighbour goes to fight in the war and Levallois usurps his land, his daughter and his life. Rawls has been in love with Nurse but both are purchased by Levallois and are subject to his mind games. Reid goes off to war a proud Confederate but returns to find that he has lost everything. Minor characters fight for what they believe is right.

This is a complex and very moving book which looks at aspects of the Civil War and the changes in society from numerous perspectives. The characters are not easy to pin down - Emily seems powerless to stop her fate but does she fight back in the worst way. Even the minor characters, the gang leader, the apprentice and the boatman are given a sympathetic perspective and the descriptions of violence are visceral in the extreme. I hadn't read Powers' first novel but know it was well received, I can see why

E. Lockhart "We Were Liars" (Hot Key Books)




In We Were Liars, E. Lockhart carefully crafts Cadence’s character, focusing on her battle with a form of amnesia and the aftermath of an accident that is deeply tragic. The theme of facing truth, guilt, and accepting responsibility is the essence of Cadence’s character. Cadence’s development becomes critical as she unearths haunting truths about her childhood that took place during her fifteenth summer. She finally begins to surface from the fog of grief and confusion, volatility, and harsh realities she has long evaded.

Particularly, the use of fairy tales alongside Cadence’s physical pain serve as immense points of character development in the novel. Relatively to her fractured family dynamics, the fairy tales she tells throughout her life embodies her attempt at coping with the overwhelming reality. The island, striking yet isolated captures the destructive nature of Sinclair family; they are beautiful, escaping the realities occurring beneath them. The overarching message within these symbols highlight the antagonizing duality people face with maturing and the fact that to truly heal from anything, you must embrace every shard of reality, not just the appealing fragments.

Personally, I resonate with Cadence’s journey when reflecting on times in my life when I struggled to face painful memories. Reading We Were Liars reminded me that pretending things are fine doesn’t make the hurt disappear, true healing comes from honesty, even when it’s painful.

dash; 22 July 2021), also known as Pita, was a British-Austrian composer of electronic audio works. He was the head of Editions Mego, which he founded in 2006 as a successor to Mego.

In an interview conducted in 2016, Rehberg stated that he did not want to peddle music "in its own little box",which he felt was the norm at present. Describing his impression regarding timbre, he believed that "dissonance and resonance have to co-exist for the other to work". François Bonnet, who collaborated with Rehberg on Recollection GRM, felt that his music came to be more dense as his career progressed. He described how it retained its "radical and bold" character, while becoming "deeper, more ambivalent, more moving".



Peter Rehberg – at GRM



File under Experimental, Abstract, Noise, Glitch, Electroacoustic.

ENJOY

The Wire magazine tribute to Peter Rehberg.

https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/walking-on-the-ground-you-broke-rob-young-remembers-peter-rehberg

GRM is Groupe de Recherches Musicales. The Groupe de Recherches Musicales ( GRM ) is a music research center specializing in sound and electroacoustic music . Pierre Schaeffer founded the GRM in 1958 , and two years later it joined the research department of French Radio and Television (RTF) . In 1975 , following the breakup of the ORTF , the GRM was integrated into the INA (National Audiovisual Institute ).