Conflicted Feelings: Literature, PoliSci, Anthems

Some upcoming themes.

Proust is drawing me back.  There’s a wonderful reading of the Madeleine event on YouTube—runs over nine minutes.  I’ve listened to it two nights running.  Tonight I added the All-England Summarize Proust Competition (Monty Python).  Yep—Marcel is luring me back.  Probably not the best way to begin a brief Summary of Coming Events.  But I have my tea and cookies here (grin).

It’s difficult to write about conflicting feelings, but will try.

This morning I finished reading Andrew Holleran’s Dancer From The Dance.  Curious that this book should have appeared in the late 1970s, just before the arrival of AIDS.  Holleran writes beautiful prose but, like Edmund White and Felice Picano, pulls me in opposite ways all at once.

Politics—or at least Political Science.  Earlier today I was thinking I should have majored in that.  Then again, theory is never the same as practice.  

The thoughts came because I’ve been listening to various national (and other) anthems.  And tonight I watched some archival footage on YouTube.  I saw Stalin and Khrushchev and Che Guevara.   Somehow, I like to hear historical figures speaking, in their own language—whether I understand the language or not.  I’ve listened to Hitler and Mussolini—can’t remember for sure about Franco.  Of course, this is connected with my interest in languages.

Yesterday, I attempted to learn something about Anarchism—unsuccessfully, I think.  I’m more and more interested in how people organize to get things done.  Can that be “anarchism??”  I suspect not.

Indeed, theory is never practice.  Awhile back, I stumbled on a recording (again on YouTube) of Paul Robeson singing the Soviet National Anthem.  More conflicting feelings!  The melody is the same as the current Russian National Anthem, but the words come from Stalin’s time, the time of the Nazi invasion of Russia.  The old words move me—even the ones about the “Soviet Fatherland”—but I’ve studied Russian and Russian history, and know that the Russian word soviet means “council,” with a history and context predating the Bolsheviks.

Meanwhile, along with these conflicting feelings, there still lurks the essay I began last year, “On Affection.”  Somehow I must get on with it—but the contradictory thoughts and feelings:  Love and Fear; Attraction and Repulsion; Trust and Disinterest.

Tonight I sat glancing, inexplicably, through the Santa Clara County Verified Home Services Free Service Guide.  Behind me, someone was watching No Country For Old Men.  Meanwhile, in the living room, someone else was watching Bad Santa.  Conflicting feelings!  But one must move forward.

I’ll be elaborating on some of the above themes soon.