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Vance Maverick

@vancemaverick.bsky.social

Computer programmer and composer in San Francisco vancemaverick.com

12365 Posts1512 Follower1067 Folgt
Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 3d ago

#HATM made me curious, but I realize my taste is pretty different from many others on here. Two minor points: 1: As a teenage aspiring composer, I once met Bill Conti, and he was kind to me. That said, his music here is irritating.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 4d ago

Not sure which is likelier or which would be better -- that Laura Miller of Slate has never read a famous "Autobiography" which is neither by nor really about its nominal subject, or that she figures we can't be trusted with that information.

Cusk is an experimental novelist, one known for incorporating elements from her own life into her fiction, and Life of M, which comes out on Aug. 25, is particularly tricksterish piece of work in that respect. From the beginning of the novel, Cusk hints broadly at the dubious veracity of her (unnamed) narrator’s account of M’s life. In the first sentence, the narrator recalls telling M that “I was thinking of writing her autobiography.” An autobiography is, of course, written by its own subject, and since the narrator isn’t offering to work as M’s ghostwriter but to produce the book entirely on her own, the statement is nonsensical.
Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 4d ago

I made an irritating comment in response to something. As I waited for it to post, I noticed a dumb typo. The realization freed me from the compulsion to make a dumb remark, so I immediately deleted. Guess I’m more afraid people might catch me in error than that they might clock my pedantry

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 5d ago

Compatible with what Will is saying is a tone of whimsical irony. The elaboration is for fun — “As if we should want to make this funny!” And he succeeds in spinning out a mild pleasantry about getting being better than spending into a paragraph worth reading.

Will Wilkinson@wlknsn.xyz · 5d ago

I’ve been thinking a lot about the thoughtlessness of AI writing. One of the many things that makes Melville’s prose so dazzling is the EXTEME rigor of the way he surprises, deepens and extends his metaphors and cultural touchstones. AI simply can’t, and not for the same reason that most of us can’t

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 5d ago

I saw the headline first, and thought, "sounds like the LRB". The first line of the article: "Some books​ can be judged by their covers, others by their titles".

London Review of Books@lrb.co.uk · 5d ago

‘Medieval people took hygiene seriously and anticipated our views on the importance of a balanced diet, regular exercise and what we would now call psychosomatic healing.’ Barbara Newman on medieval wellness. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 5d ago

I think Aaron is being willfully curmudgeonly here, striking a rhetorical pose that rejects Eliot’s striking of a rhetorical pose. (The enjambments might irritate me if there were a clear meter going on.)

aaron boothby @ellipticalnight.bsky.social · 6d ago

"april is the cruellest month," no it isn't, shut up, but more specifically the god damn -ing verb enjambments of the first five out of seven lines in The Waste Land drive me up the fucking wall

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 7d ago

On FB, a composer in my circles posted a variation of the familiar thought that contemporary classical music is unpopular because it lacks melody, with a starting list of composers that she feels are writing melodic work. The old USENET quibbler in me wants to respond on the piece's own terms ...

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · last wk.

Has there been discussion of the quality of Wilson's blank verse? I remember being a bit unsure of it with the Iliad, but convinced by the Odyssey. It's not just a conservative choice but a hard one with illustrious predecessors (both Brownings!), and I think she makes it work.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · last wk.

Is this EDM? It's brilliant (though you may wish to avert your eyes from the video). I should note that I came across it by a strange backward route, and have no notion of its associations for normal people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAjR...

Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (Official Video)

YouTube video by Daft Punk

youtube.com

Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · last wk.

I don’t post music much here but I agree. And I want to see other people’s music posts. I like almost everything, except EDM.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · last wk.

I may have posted this before, but it's still awesome. The aesthetic is in continuity with the postwar avant-garde I imprinted on as a teenager, but it's individual, beautiful, and full of variety. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjOE...

Unsuk Chin - Cello Concerto (2006-8/2013)

YouTube video by Victor Alexander

youtube.com

Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · last wk.

I don’t post music much here but I agree. And I want to see other people’s music posts. I like almost everything, except EDM.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · last wk.

This piece (see archive dot is) is good, sympathetically untangling more and less valuable aspects of Carson. The comparison to Rupi Kaur is not drawn out, but could have been. Something of the "thin" lapidary aphoristic style is common to the two. www.thenation.com/article/cult...

The Myths of Anne Carson

Throughout her long and prolific career, Carson has specialized in unexpected juxtapositions between modern life and ancient times, contemporary art and the literature of the past.

thenation.com

sarah mccarry@sarahmccarry.bsky.social · last wk.

some of us have not forgotten that emily wilson compared ann carson to rupi kaur

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · last wk.

I found myself thinking of the concept of proprioception, as I was cutting up a chicken. I realized that I had one hand in the cavity while I carved into the chicken from the outside with the knife in my other hand. I paused a moment and changed my grip.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 2w ago

One of the beliefs or prejudices I picked up along the way, New Critical perhaps, is that the real action is inside the frame, and the museum merely a means of access. Occasionally I get surprised by the effect of the space, as with the Guernica at the Reina Sofía.

The Guernica, in a room by itself, crowds held back on the right.
I go by Rob@papashot.bsky.social · 2w ago

The sheer weight of history, I’ll grant you, but to me the beauty of the Louvre is traversing through the big galleries, hot and crowded, of which the Mona Lisa is a part, and then escaping up to the dark, quiet, cold and lonely section for Flemish paintings. Transcendent.

Vance Maverick@vancemaverick.bsky.social · 2w ago

In "A Most Wanted Man" (2014), the American actors have richly worked-out German accents, which slip for some reason on proper names. "Bachmann" and "Hamburg" sound, it's true, not like American pronunciations but not German either