paigerella's Podcast
Wed, 27 June 2007
A Great Cacophony of Onomatopoeia
 

A Great Cacophony of Onomatopoeia

 

"Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattle market, cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere. Ruttledge's door: ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves. Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us.

That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know.

M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk. When she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods."

                                                                          - Bloom in Ulysses

The Sirens-- what are they?

In this episode, Molly is about to have a licentious affair with Boylan, and Bloom knows about it (poor Poldy!). Bloom tells himself that she needs sexual flings to keep her youth. They both know that Bloom can no long make love to Molly-- ever since the death of their son, they have been unable to have sex. There is a lot of the father/ son theme throughout Ulysses with Bloom and his son, Rudy; the Christian God and his son, Jesus; and Hamlet and his father's ghost.

Boylan and Molly have their appointment at Bloom's house, in Molly's bed, at 4:00. Bloom ducks into a restaurant to eat lunch and sees Boylan there. Not only that, but he watches Boylan watch an attractive waitress. He also feels for Molly, having to wait for Boylan.

Finally Boylan leaves and, throughout the next few pages, his trip across doublin is interjected in the narrative. Bloom decides, while he's in the restaurant and while he's imagining Molly with Boylan, to write a letter to Martha (with whom he has an "affair" by letters-- they never meet.) However, the letter can't take his mind off of Molly and Boylan and the piano music in the bar only exacerbates his feelings as the songs are about guilt and infidelity. Ah! Finally Bloom can't take it anymore and he has to get up and leave.

The Sirens: This episode reflects the Siren episode in Ulysses. That's when Ulysses and his crew go past the sirens in his ship. Luckily, they have been forewarned and prepared: Ulysses has his crew stop their ears with beeswax and they tie him to the mast while they sail by. Why? The Sirens are like merwomen who sing to sailors. The sailors go into a psychological frenzy and feel as though they have to go to them. There are, however, deadly rocks and they always follow the Siren's call to death upon the rocks. Ulysses goes crazy, while tied to the mast, and begs his men to let him free. Fortunately, he has warned them of this behavior beforehand and they've been instructed to ignore his pleas, which they do. Ulysses and his men go safely past the Sirens' call.

An interesting note: the Starbucks mascot is a two-tailed Siren, calling for us, the consumers, to go to Startbucks (and crash upon their deadly coffee beans?)

This episode has a lot of music to it. The men are playing music at the piano on the bar. The blind man, who tuned the piano and accidentally left his tuning fork, tap-taps his walking stick along the street as he makes his way back to retrieve it. Boylan jingles change in his pocket as he makes his way across town. The men clapclappityclap their hands in cheers at the end of a song. Bloom muses on singing and on the day he and Molly met. The sounds have a great cacophony of onomatopoeia and alliteration, and are, in many places, meant to resemble a symphony of words.

You will also find references to sea shells, women pressing the shells up to their ears and to men's ears (the sirens calling to the sailors) and the two barmaids who are supposed to physically represent sirens (they get a lot of attention from the guys).

That's Episode Thirty-three, Baby! You can hear it for free on iTunes- just do a search at the iTunes store for "Ulysses Podcast," and you can catch it online at http://paigerella.libsyn.com !

Ciao bellissimi!

-Paigerella
Category: general -- posted at: 4:28 PM
Comments[6]
Thu, 26 April 2007
Ulysses, Episode 24!
Some excellent Dedalus for ya'! If you haven't been listening with the show, no problem! :) Just drop in, it's all beautiful. And this section, in particular, has some amazing verse. amazing verse. She said, amazing verse, verily verse she said it verse yes verily, amazing. Hamlet, I am your Father.
Direct download: Ulysses_Episode_24_Here_and_Now.mp3
Category: general -- posted at: 2:07 AM
Comments[4]
Thu, 12 April 2007
Singapore: Notes from the City of Lions

 

Notes from the City of Lions

 

You wouldn’t have thought it, but Singapore is filled with mosquitoes in the autumn. They buzz in the breeze, heading toward you: dinner; you: warm; you: succulent; you: pulsing. They know. They see you. And there are swarms of them. Great, black clouds of mosquitoes rise from the marshes around the island. They rise and then they head right toward you, right into the cities, right into your room. Even if you were careful, even if you kept your doors shut, your windows closed, and your lights on low, when you go to bed you’ll hear them circling. Bzzzzzzzzzz! Their little wings like wound up rubber band toys hitting bits of paper. They’re like a baseball card in bike spokes, and then that buzzing is right in your ear, intensified by that marvelous saxophone in your head, and you jolt up! And you hear it fly off to the farthest corner in the ceiling, near the closet, where it knows that you can do nothing.

 

One might say that I’m tired of Singapore, so tired that all I do now is notice the mosquitoes. But that’s not true, I just happen to notice something that’s so prevalent that no one here, no natives, seem to even see anymore. Like mountains that you pass every day of your life while driving to work and then one day, while driving home from work, it dawns on you. Mountains! You never knew. And their glory and majesty, their presence, holds you captive as you drive by, and maybe for most of your drive home. And then it’s gone, and then due to the same traffic that keeps your eyes focused on the bumper ahead of you and the times when there’s a space in front of you and someone is trying to merge in, though they don’t have enough room and you just know, you know it’s going to slow you down… well, you don’t see the mountains anymore. Not until you realize, again, that they’re there. They remind me of lovers. They remind me of what I could be one day. A lost mountain, there and yet… like mothers to small children. Recognized for brief moments as the need arises, then sunk into the background of a theater burgeoning with video games, primary colored balls, and other squealing children.

 

They say that boredom is what creates psychotic tendencies in the normal psyche. So even the perfectly, absolutely, swearing with my left hand in the air normal person can develop psychotic tendencies due to the desk job. The only thing that keeps psychotic tendencies, induced by long hours with little to do, under control is adventure, excitement, the act of doing something new. You could say that that’s why I decided to move to this once fishing island, to this island occupied by the British in World War II, this abundance of plant life, exotic birds and natural resources. One could say that that’s why I moved. Or one, like myself, could say that the craziness lead me to it. That Singapore, now, is, as Antilla Joez said, like a Diamond Consciousness. It is my poem, it is the outpouring of all that I know and all that I can know, concentrated into a fine beam, a laser, and then crushed into white, sparkling, laser diamonds. And I wear these diamonds, on my wrist, in my watch, on my ears, and I know that then I have no reason for soundness, no reason for tranquility of the mind. My mind is on my wrist and dangling from my ears. I’ve crystallized it with the pressure of a millennium, and now I’m free. Free to go where I want, to be who I want to be. A Diamond Consciousness. Free to move from the weight of the mountains. Free to reclaim this Singapore, the city of the lions.


c paigerella! 2007
Category: general -- posted at: 9:04 PM
Comments[3]
Fri, 9 February 2007
Therefore the World
". . . I arranged to meet someone in a cafe in one of my favourite squares in Paris (therefore the world) - la Place Contrascarpe, which is further north, round the back of the Pantheon and near the Sorbonne, a walk up hill through some twisty little streets. . . It's famous in a literary sense as Hemingway and Hadley lived and drank here when they first moved to Paris and he immortalised it in "A Moveable Feast", plus Samuel Beckett hung out here and allegedly based the two tramps in Waiting for Godot on the "clochards" who hung out under the trees (and still do!). Anyway, I found out there is a Joyce connection too - he lived just a few yards off the Place Contrascarpe for the final work on Ulysses - you have to get in this front gate... It's famous in a literary sense as Hemingway and Hadley lived and drank here when they first moved to Paris and he immortalised it in "A Moveable Feast", plus Samuel Beckett hung out here and allegedly based the two tramps in Waiting for Godot on the "clochards" who hung out under the trees (and still do!). Anyway, I found out there is a Joyce connection too - he lived just a few yards off the Place Contrascarpe for the final work on Ulysses - you have to get in this front gate:'
Category: general -- posted at: 9:08 PM
Comments[4]
Fri, 9 February 2007
A Cafe Creme
". . . I went in and had a reverential cafe creme, and stole a couple of quick snaps - I'm pretty certain it is the same place and I don't think it can have changed much, it seems very 1920's to me, it's unpretentious but is effortlessly stylish - it has a lovely sinuously carved central wooden bar full of assiduous waiters, light brown tones everywhere, little curlicues carved over the blackboards, great mirrors along the walls, a huge clock above the door looking like the one at New York Central Station..... So I think it is still Michauds and I could imagine Joyce eating and drinking here after a day's work with Nora, the children and devout followers of his turning up to buy him a drink - apparently one night he was wheeled back to the Hotel Lennox in a wheelbarrow!"

(Gosh, isn't he a good writer?! -paigerella :)
Category: general -- posted at: 9:05 PM
Comments[1]
Fri, 9 February 2007
Michaud's
Come out of the hotel, turn right, and at the first crossroads (according to my book), was a neighbourhood restaurant called Michaud's. Hemingway writes about Joyce and his family eating there every night, "the whole Celtic crew" and there is a story of Hemingway eating with Joyce there and EH sitting "in a silent stupor of worship" at the great man. It was a real literary hangout apparently. On the very spot described is this characterful brasserie:
Category: general -- posted at: 9:04 PM
Comments[2]
Fri, 9 February 2007
Joyce & Paris!

Hi Everyone!

One of my listeners was so inspired by Joyce and his love of Joyce and the literary scene in Paris that he vacationed there and took all sorts of photos! I'm going to post the photos with his descriptions here, and I hope that you all enjoy them :). It's like a literary tour through La Belle Paris.

Category: general -- posted at: 5:36 PM
Comments[4]