Saturday afternoon miscellany

Well, it's definitely Spring here in Germany: hay fever season has started. The chestnut trees have leafed out and are pushing up those funny little pyramids of blossoms, the magnolias are already fading, the goldenrod has turned green. It's wonderful to walk home from work in daylight again.

At the turn of each season, I say to myself "this is my favourite season;" each has its special appeal and particular wonderfulness. The lengthening of the days surprises and delights me anew every year.

Gescheit werden

I am invited to a birthday party this evening in Mannheim, 90 kilometers away, for G's brother's Lebensabschnittsbegleitung who is turning 40 (a significant age, read on). I've known them for years, through meeting them at G's home, and like them well enough - and it seems to be mutual. The odd thing is, G and U won't be there, they have too much work on and are too tired. I am in two minds about this: part of me is pretty damned tired too and would most like to go to bed right now and just stay there until noon on Monday, another part scorns this first part as a weakling and a coward and says that a little socializing would do us both much good. What to do, what to do? I will of course go.

There is a popular saying here in Schwabenland, der Schwabe wird erst mit vierzig gescheit (the Schwabe acquires wisdom at forty). Reaching the Schwabenalter is correspondingly a major milestone and cause for great celebration. I have found an ideal present for the birthday girl, a small book entitled Endlich Nichtdenker!, a self-help book on how to give up thinking on the model of the endless stream of stop-smoking-now bestsellers. It begins: "Congratulations! If you follow my plan ... this will be the last book you ever read." Accompanied by a packet of Quaxi Fröschli (gummi-frogs with marshmallow bellies, muy delicioso) to keep things from getting too desperately serious.

Library

I had lived several years in Stuttgart before it occurred to me to go the public library here, but it has become a standard fixture of my Saturdays. It's odd that I am seldom in the library for more than twenty minutes, though I can spend hours (literally) in bookshops, but it's true: I run in, drop off the returns, gather a handful of English-language fiction on the first floor, then a second handful of German-language fiction on the second, possibly checking the (computer) catalogue if a book has caught my eye during the week, then past the automatic self-service checkout and home. The system is a bit clunky, but fully integrated and available online: I can reserve books and extend due dates from home with a cup of tea by my side. I can even ask them to send the book to my local branch library for collection if I don't feel like going downtown.

Not that I ever do, my local branch library has the most ridiculous, user-hostile, opening hours imaginable: every day is different. It is allegedly open for some portion of every weekday and Saturdays too, but the fact is that it has been locked up and empty every time I have tried to get in.

Music

Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

Does anybody not know the next line? This beat, these harmonies, still bring a tear of joy to my agéd eye. It was the soundtrack to my childhood, though it never occurred to me to buy one of their albums until I saw this compilation in my favourite record shop this morning. Heavenly.

It's automatic when I
Talk with old friends
The conversation turns to
Girls we knew when their
Hair was soft and long and the
Beach was the place to go

Suntanned bodies and
Waves of sunshine the
California girls and a
Beautiful coastline
Warmed up weather
Let's get together and
Do it again

The carefree Los Angeles of these songs (cheap gas and full employment, a permanent early evening in late summer) is as irrecoverably gone as Saigon's pre-war incarnation as the Paris of the Orient. Nothing but this music could ever make wish to see LA, but oh my it does. It does.

Intermezzo

Just had a look out the window, then ran around the apartment closing windows: to judge by the clouds, there is one hell of a downpour coming.

iTunes

I've been (mis-)using my iPod as a portable CD player: choose a CD, press "play", listen to the CD, rinse and repeat. Recently I discovered the joys of the random shuffle, it turns the iPod into a radio station that plays only my favourite music - with neither ads nor DJ. What's not to love? Today in the local Apple shop, I noticed a display of iTunes Music Cards, gift certificates for the iTunes shop. So I bought one, and have purchased five songs. Among them, Alanis Morissette's You oughta know: definitely not the Beach Boys. We are in Basic Instinct territory here: don't bother with the cops, just call an ambulance, it will be needed by the time it arrives. Ten years on, it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

More music

I've bought eight CDs in the last fortnight, and given away three of them. Fans of early music should run, not walk, to hear Nicolas Gombert's Missa Media vita in morte sumus sung by the Hilliard Ensemble, mediaeval six-part harmonies well sung and magnificently recorded (a typical ECM product, I have to say). I've already given away one copy of this, and know two people who will be getting it for Christmas.

I also bought and gave away two copies (so far!) of the Gotan Project's second album Lunático, late-night modern tango with (mostly) slow melodies, sparse arrangements and a fabulously dark groove. Highly recommended, and not just for tango fans: aficionados of e.g. Massive Attack's brand of slow'n'heavy funk will enjoy this too.

And last but not least, Neil Young's 1992 album Harvest Moon. The title song is my current candidate for Loveliest Song Ever Written:

But there's a full moon rising
Let's go dancing in the night
We know where the music's playing
Let's go out and feel the night

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon