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Norwegian Wood

I just finished Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. It really is as great as all the reviews have claimed. Murakami's writing style is simple and understated, while the action he describes can be utterly surreal (the other book of his I've read so far is Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - also the name of a track by Future Sound of London, as it turns out).

But Norwegian Wood is more or less a love story. No unicorns or trans-humans. It's much simpler than some of his other material, but he nails the feeling - the forlorn barrenness of being young, confused and sick with love. And he nails the ache of loss. Puts into words the feelings for which words usually fail.

I have a ton of new books I want to get through, but decided to pick up Cities of the Red Night, by Burroughs again. I read the Cities trilogy (sometimes called the 'Late' trilogy) ten years ago in San Francisco, just before Burroughs died, and it blew me away - in my opinion, by far the clearest expression of Burroughs' vision or worldview (calling it a philosophy would be a bit much).

The books of the Cities trilogy are the most 'readable' of Burroughs' fiction, with the most linear narrative, but they're not easy. Those books are impenetrable the way Pynchon is impenetrable, but they leave you with the same sense of wonder at a world driven by forces that are too complex and too deeply intertwined to be understood by the rational mind, but which can be intuited in broad strokes by that unconscious part of us that merges with the world in sleep, or in transcendant moments.

I think I'm picking this one up again because I just found out I'm going to be in the States on business for a month, starting on Saturday. Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Orlando. A month of hotel life. I'm going to need some help getting through it.

Tori

Cec and I saw Tori Amos last night here in Copenhagen. I used to be a huge fan in the early 90s, but I only saw her once, fifteen years ago. I guess she's come full circle and is back to remixing a lot of her early work that I really loved - she played a lot of tracks from the early years.

Her first two albums, Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink were so exceptionally moving because they were powerful and intimate at the same time. Tori had a naivete and a uniqueness about her that really struck me then, and I thought that spark was missing from some of her later work. It was as if she'd been holding down a hurricane of emotion inside her, and then she let all of it burst out in a furious rush in those first two albums. Even without the spark of her early work though, she still today has perfect technique and a clear high voice like sirensong. It was good to see her again.

So, fifteen years, yeah. The music really pulled me back, remembering a lot of stuff I'd forgotten or pushed away. That kind of music works with memory the way smell does. The way I feel like a little kid again when I'm washed with the petroleum-and-ozone smell of subway air blowing up through gratings onto the street when I'm in New York, or the way I blank out for minutes at a time when I smell an ex-girlfriend's perfume on the metro or in an airport somewhere. Fifteen years sounds like a hell of a long time, but the words don't even begin to express the distance between now and then.

Fifteen years ago I was working at Tampa Theatre, and I saw Tori Amos by ushering the show, hiding out behind one of the spotlights so I could watch the stage after the crowd had been seated. It was great - Tori was gorgeous and the crowd was full of dyed-redhead teenage girls wearing white dresses.

Those days I was out dancing three nights a week in the industrial clubs in Tampa and St Petersburg. I'd just quit flying and had dived into the club scene for a while as I tried to figure out what else I wanted to do with my life. Everything that's happened, all the people that have come and gone, and I can hardly believe that all of it really took place, that I did those things, and that it wasn't some strange movie I might have seen once. I sure don't feel the way I used to back then. Saying "fifteen years" doesn't even begin to describe it.

So yeah, I have "grown up" concerns now in exactly the way Saint Exupery used those words as terms of derision, and I probably spend too much time at work. The battles we all had to fight in our 20s were different, but God knows they were no easier. As Tori reminded me though, at least we had a good soundtrack playing for us as we fought them.

Portugal & Spain

Just got back from a tremendous weekend with my Journalism school class. I mentioned before that we try to get together every other year - I really love this tradition because we're lucky to have so many people in different countries whom we can visit. And besides being able to spend a few days in a new country, it's always so great to spend time with the crowd and catch up with how everybody's doing.

This year, Ana's parents set us up in their summer house in Caminha - this idyllic small town just across the river from Spain. We swam in the garden pool, ate fresh salt and lime-crusted sardines off the grill, drank Port wine and talked about politics and life. The first night in Caminha, Carlos, Ana's father, opened a bottle of 1934 Port from the family reserve and shared it with us. Paradise.

The second day we explored the town a little bit, and at night we went to a restaurant across the border in Spain, where I had some of the best octopus I've had in my life. I wish we could have stayed in Portugal for another week, but we all had to get back to work, alas. At least Bram had the right idea and sold a story on premium Port wine to a magazine in the Netherlands, and managed to spend a week touring the wine regions before he met us. You're a role-model for all of us, Bram! Clearly, no hardship too great.

Here are pictures from the get together in Portugal.

I also put up new pics from Budapest in April, and commented the pics from New York in March.