"the machine starts to think it is somebody"

fellow krc summer denizen will crothers, currently rowing for the u of washington, caught on film what ergs get up to when left alone. i now can't see an erg without hearing in my head bobby darin singing "beyond the sea".

rowing friends: you know you always had a sneaking suspicion ... (and don't worry, no ergs were hurt in the making of this film)

non-rowing friends: i will simply quote buddy hackett, who played tennessee steinmetz in the original herbie movie, the love bug:

"It's happening right under our noses and we can't see it. We take machines and we stuff 'em with information until they're smarter than we are. Take a car. Most guys spread more love and time and money on their car in a week than they do on their wife and kids in a year. Pretty soon, you know what? The machine starts to think it is somebody."

cultural capital

friends have often heard me go off on rants about cultural capital in the academy. as the daughter of a working-class single mother i've often felt acutely my supposed lack of that caché of knowledge and experience which, as pierre bourdieu so famously pointed out, is the property of those in a normative class position in society. i'm incredibly sensitive to issues of class -- some would say 'oversensitive', and they wouldn't be wrong; i have a hair-sensitive trigger, and i don't like the way in which our current cultural climate likes to pretend issues of class don't exist.

don't get me wrong -- i'm in no way at odds with the palimpsest with which my habitus marks me. unlike some i know who work very hard to hide their origins, affecting behaviours they believe obscure what to them are embarrassing tell-tale signs, i see no problem with where i come from. however, i also think that acknowledging origins, at least in my case, doesn't necessitate aping "the folk". for me it's a strange balance -- i'm always already outside and inside at the same time. for example, i am often candid and colloquial (remember uncle ted?) but in a context that is in many ways the furthest thing from my mother's life experience.

now i would be guilty of oversimplification if i was to not discuss a facet of this whole situation that complicates things even further -- i was raised not only as the daughter of a working-class materialist feminist with conflicting conservative religious beliefs (wow -- that's another post all on its own!), but also as the daughter of a first-generation immigrant. my mother, with her german birth and french childhood, brought to our single-parent, low-income household a longing and nostalgia for her origins that inflected my class-proscribed experience of the world. at the same time that my mother butted heads with hegemony on many fronts, she also longed for the culture of her childhood that has in many ways been fetishized by the north american middle class as "european". mom's homestyle lunches of lipton chicken noodle soup and white bread, in many ways markers of class status, took on an intriguing hybridity with the addition of maggi seasoning and liverwurst. this hybridity has often helped me to "pass". other times, it serves as a glaring contradiction to all the things people assume i should be. i once remember having dinner at a friend's house when i was in high school. this friend's mother knew a little bit about my family background and had presumed to make assumptions about what kind of 'culture' i had therefore been exposed to. imagine her surprise when i manifested not only what she dubbed "european table manners" but also enough know-how to eat an artichoke uninstructed and unassisted.

this morning, when my browser opened to its home page, i noticed an article about the new biopic about edith piaf being released in france. the article discusses the nation-wide wave of nostalgia for the socio-cultural values connected to piaf. i confess to being overwhelmed by a nostalgia of my own, a nostalgia for a time when i wasn't so aware of the complexities of my identity -- when 'being' seemed much more simple. when my mother would get incredibly homesick, she would dig around in the stereo cabinet in the living room and come out brandishing an edith piaf recording. she had almost every recording piaf ever made. (sadly, in one of our many moves, the box containing all of these vinyl treasures was inexplicably lost). playing those records, and thus instilling in me an almost absurd knowledge of the french singer (absurd in that at the age of 6 i would ride my bike around the neighbourhood belting out the words to "non, je ne regrette rien"), she was momentarily back in the south of france with my grandfather patiently helping her guide her bicycle over the cobblestones.

there are times when i revel in my inbetween-ness and my awareness of it. i'll be the first to admit that the power of that knowledge has helped me negotiate the (at times) bewildering world of the academy. there are also times, like today, when i just want to be me: to eat my maggi infused lipton soup and sing along with la môme.

salt truck valentines

i've received such lovely valentines this week (sadly, nothing from george clooney ... but maybe it's still on it's way ...), but my v-day was made special by that great canadian institution -- the CBC. yes. you read that correctly. this morning, as i was nursing my morning cup of coffee and puttering around in my flannel pjs, inwardly shrinking as i looked out my window at the blowing snow, the ceeb's music segment on ontario morning, "heard deeply", played a track from eleni's new album, miracle of five. i'm convinced they were playing it just for me. please let me enjoy my delusion.

happy valentine's day all!

Salt Truck

Salt truck, salt truck
Clear my path
All my dreams have frozen fast
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a love I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck
It's a shame
Driving in the freezing rain
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a man I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck

Salt truck, salt truck
After hours
Spinning in the snowflake showers
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a friend I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck
Mean black ice
Swerving isn't very nice
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a love I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck

territorial much?

it's funny, really, the way one's identity becomes linked to place. the minute someone else sets foot on your hallowed ground, out come the flying fists. intrusion into one's space is a threat to the fiction of the coherent, whole identity that one so carefully crafts. fortune cookie gods forbid that self and other ("Other"?) should ever mix, that someone else ("Someone Else"?) should set foot on one's territory. due to recent events about which i must, for a variety of reasons, be reticent, i've been giving a lot of thought to place, identity, and, perhaps more important in this equation, territory.

no where is place more important than in a boat. each seat in a crew comes with its own number and its own set of responsibilities. 1 & 2, in the bow of the boat, have a much different job from 3, 4, 5, & 6. 7 & 8 share a unique bond as well. if the person wielding the oar in seat 5 is thinking mostly about driving down hard with her legs, the body occupying seat 7 is thinking mainly about relaying back to the rest of the crew the small nuances in technique and rhythm that 8 seat is spinning out in response to the coxie's instructions. this summer and fall i found myself thrown into 8 seat after a shakeup in the hierarchy of our crew (nothing scandalous ... just that our usual 8 seat had work obligations that kept her out of rowing for the latter half of the season). i found the mental and technical requirements of sitting in stroke both refreshing and challenging. i also faced a difficult-to-negotiate identity crisis. for my entire rowing career, i've always been 4 seat! my not-so-skinny thighs make me helpful in the "engine room" of the boat. in switching it up to stroke, for the first while, i didn't respond to the coxie calls addressed to me because i didn't think of myself as "stroke seat". there i would sit, blissfully unaware, as the coxie screamed in my face "stern pair! take us in!". usually, after a head-smack from 7 seat, i'd awaken to my new identity and start rowing. it took me weeks to fully adjust.

at the end of the season, i found myself surprisingly attached to my new identity, and the territory associated with it. when i had to move back to 4 seat for one practice, to give a much more experienced spare the seat she rightly deserved in the stern, i felt put out. someone was sitting on my seat with her feet in my shoes. what did she know about the trick to the oar lock, or the secret calls the coxie and i had devised to get the boat moving faster? she didn't, however, have my oar. that, with its "8" clearly marked just above the collar, i had insisted on taking with me. i had the strangest feeling of not knowing who i was. i was also a complete mess when attempting to answer commands from our coxie or coach. who was i? stroke seat? stern pair? bow four? a very postmodern moment, if i do say so myself.

at the end of the row, awed by our visitor's precision and power, i realized that i could share stroke seat and not compromise my identity. stomping around the boathouse, crabby and resentful about my supposed displacement, i didn't show the leadership that my coach had expected of me when she put me in stroke. through learning and displaying a little bit of decorum, graciousness, and deference, i did.

in my current situation, i'm trying my best to recall the lesson i learned this summer, even though i'm more in the position of being a visitor than a member of the regular crew. for all of the earth-shattering impact of what my friend jane, a grade school teacher, would call my "teachable moment", i'm having a very difficult time not behaving like one of jane's grade twos. i'm currently considering either barbed wire, or peeing around the parameter of the contested ground. as i wait for the mature, sensible shannon to appear, i keep reminding myself that wars waged over disputed territory are never a good thing.

*for those patiently waiting for the second half of the victorianists' superbowl play-by-play, i promise to report back very soon.

superbowl for victorianists

tonight, my local pbs station is screening the new bbc/masterpiece theatre adaptation of jane eyre -- all 4 hours back to back. we're approaching half time and so far, as filmic interpretations go, there's only been one nasty play.

in the novel, there's a fantastic scene where rochester disguises himself as a fortune teller in order to not only expose the shallow character of miss blanche ingram, but also to probe the depths of his beloved jane. there's so much at play in this moment -- lots of wonderful ambiguity flying about concerning rochester's manliness and his presumed whiteness/britishness. in this film adaptation, rochester hires a gypsy woman and hides behind a curtain so as to better overhear jane's unguarded conversation with the woman. i suppose there's a "gossip/eavesdropping" angle that could be worked if one wanted to discuss the effect this scene has on eddie f's virility, but it just isn't the same.

post-half time, the game will be riding on how the film handles two things: 1) the explanation and exposure of bertha and 2) the portrayal of saint john (yes, yes, "sinjun") rivers.

momentary break from misanthropy or i luuuurrrrve eleni

i'll be the first to admit that, in part, my blog hiatus has been motivated by the seasonal misanthropy that descends upon me in february. february, the month of love, has been consistently disastrous for me when it comes to love (and like, and lust). all the way back to my first boyfriend (when i was, metaphorically, knee-high to a grasshopper, unschooled in the ways of love -- thanks uncle ted!), right through to the penultimate C---- (the evil, nasty one), ending most recently with the mangling of my heart in february of 2006, februaries have been months of horror. the relationship pundits claim that more break ups happen in january than any other month due to the post-holiday reality check that many experience. i can thus explain my february romantic disasters in only one way. i was born a month late ... literally. my poor mother was close on 4 weeks past her/my due date when i finally decided to arrive. i often use this little factoid to explain many things: my procrastinatory ways, my late blooming nature, and, it hit me today, my experience of februaries.

i've been clomping around lately with a giant black cloud of misanthropy hanging over my head. i felt the best course of action was to take a little break from spinning myself as an on-line commodity, because, well ... i just haven't been myself. today, however, kismet intervened and brought a little of myself back to me. after a work session at a coffee shop downtown, i was browsing through the CD section of indigo, and came across eleni mandell's new album miracle of five; some poor store clerk, not privy to the wonder that is eleni accidentally stocked the shelves full of her new release 4 DAYS EARLY! if G is nuts about the beatles, i have a similar relationship, perhaps on not so grand a scale, with eleni mandell. i was introduced to her by the penultimate C----, who gave me her first album, wishbone.it very quickly became the soundtrack of my life. when we broke up, i made the ridiculous mistake of returning the CD to him with the rest of the crap that one returns in fits of romantic pique. i've regretted it ever since, along with many other facets of that relationship.

ever since that fateful day, i've made a small career of collecting eleni mandell CDs, introducing friends to her music with an almost evangelical zeal, and i'm proud to say, corresponding with the wonderful eleni herself. her fan base is still small enough that she returns e-mails from fans. based in LA, she makes occasional forays into canada for concerts in montreal and TO. i kid you not, she lets me know when she's coming!

if disasters are associated with februaries, eleni is often the medicinal salve that helps mitigate the fallout.following the loss of wishbone, i stumbled across thrill in a CD store in ottawa one fateful february day. snakebite was released the week i was a victim of the federal government downsizing due to a round of budget cuts. country for true lovers came out the fall i started my PhD and experienced the shock and trauma of returning to grad school for another round of self-doubt.i found afternoon in a TO record store while there for a victorian lit and cult conference where a (one-time) good friend openly snubbed me and sent me to my hotel room in tears.

finding miracle of five today reminded me that my misanthropy usually lifts with a change in my personal barometer. the lyrics of "moonglow, lamp low" only brought that home to me once again.

Moonglow, lamp low
All I need is a rainbow
And true love just like sugar in my coffee

Moonbeam, sleeping
All I need is a sweet dream
And true love just like honey in my tea

The sky says goodbye with the wink of an eye
Bright blue yawning to the west
Windows are shining as the sun goes down fighting
And the houses on the hill are getting undressed

Moonshine, dream time
All I need is a goldmine
And true love just like sugar in my coffee

The sky says goodbye with the wink of an eye
Bright blue yawning to the west
Windows are shining as the sun goes down fighting
And the houses on the hill are getting undressed

Moonglow, lamp low
All I need is a rainbow
And true love just like sugar
True love just like honey
True love just like sugar in my coffee

Coffee
Coffee