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[december 02, 2004 - i'm depressed, depressed, deprehehessed...i'm depressed. it's december second, 21:00, cold outside and i haven't' made any progress that would be worth mentioning. today the preparations for the second, big deleuze conference in the summer [organized by thomas & prof. f.] started.
so, i'm depressed. but x. and i went out having indian dinner tonight, so that was a silver lining. today on undertow the guy who is making the documentary on suzanne sent in a link to a short video clip. i was enchanted. it was about ten minutes long and it showed suzanne in jack hardy's house on a songwriter's exchange meeting. you know, there is this group of new york singer/songwriters who meet twice a month at jack hardy's house and then they're drinking, presenting new material to each other and discuss each other's songs. and the film showed a group of about twenty people, suzanne among them, and some of them were playing songs and - to be quite frank - they were not better than some of the stuff that i've written ... a while ago. and i thought: "yes" and my heart went "yes" and my mind went "yes" and i suddenly felt that i was at the wrong place in my little office with my little dissertation and my little future prospects in academia and my task of labeling folders for conferences. and i wished myself into the film, among the people and onto the sofa o which suzanne was sitting, listening attentively to some of her colleagues' songs.
http://homepage.mac.com/mooncusser/Vega/iMovieTheater185.html
what else? the seminar went fine. we discussed butler and although i had prepared the text pretty meticulously and had put together an elaborate script and structure for the session i had to improvise after ten minutes into the discussion. but it went well.
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
Date: 19 Nov 2004 19:19:13 -0800
From: postmaster@someprovider.netThis is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Unable to deliver message to the following recipients, due to being unable to connect successfully to the destination mail server:
Subject: Re: song lyrics[december 3, 2004 - ]
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 21:54:31 +0100
Checkers Evergreen <blondiesd@someprovider.net>hi blondie,
thanks for the mail! the lyrics you refer to are from david byrne's song "glass, concrete and stones" from his 2004 cd "grown backwards."
if it is the song that you're searching for it should have been mid-tempo, rather quiet, without drums but with a great strings-arrangement.
hope i could be of help,
cheers,
philipp
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what i forgot to say:
ICH SCHEISS AUF EURE LEITKULTUR!
my personal favorite: http://homepage.mac.com/mooncusser/Vega/iMovieTheater159.html
[december 4, 2004 - i've got to get back to something real. got to get back to something real, i've got to get back to something real with you]
played
spider solitaire and lost ten times in a row. felt that i am about to get
a cold so i turned up the heating and fixed myself a tea with honey and
fresh lemon juice. went shopping food. felt sorry for myself. did the laundry.
felt more sorry for myself. lost another game of solitaire. now it's one
o'clock already. watched the 1955 movie all that heaven allows with x.
yesterday night. another kind visitor filled out the feedback
form. she also asked for a 200 lurkers cd :o) by the way, it's [december
5, 2004] already. sunday. gray. no traffic on the avenue. x has
left half an hour ago to go home to work on her thesis. i will have to
work as well. i have to really, really blacken a couple of pages today,
otherwise my mood will be really bad! we will have a department-christmas
party at thomas' place in aachen the weekend before christmas. the other
day thomas came storming into the office: "i've got a special task for
you, phillip!" he announced, waving the first page of an article he is
about to publish about the motif of "the fold" in literature and architecture.
for this article he needed a photo of this very page all crumpled up [...und
zerknüllte es in vier teile!] and he wanted me to make it. and then
he was joking about the high-profile work he was giving us (nina was in
the room as well, erasing pencil marks from a book that thomas had borrowed
from the library) - yes, it was really funny. i was laughing my head off.
laughing my head off laughing my head off. it's really encouraging and
motivating that one's *professional* opinions and skills are valued so
much! makes it so much easier to work on the dissertation knowing that
one can at least crumple pages, label folders and sort emails. what would
thomas do without me?!??
it's noon now and i'll start writing now! unfortunately the cold has made itself at home in my body and i'm not really feeling too well.
it's almost two and already it's getting dark. blackening pages is a slow process unfortunately. just had a little break to eat something. and while i was chewing mechanically, lost in thoughts, i remembered a conversation x. and i had this morning. she told me that she had checked out some of the video clips from the mooncusser web page (see links above) that chris seufert had made for the vega-documentary, and how surprised she was by the "phone bloop" clip in which suzanne shouts out "fucking hell" when the telephone starts ringing during an interview. "do you think that she is bitchy?" x. asked me. and it made me think of the little story suzanne posted about a year ago about a show in 1987:
... That reminded me of the last show of 1987. It is customary for the band and crew to get mischievous on the last day of a tour, playing pranks. I was very nervous that day, and it was right before Christmas. What was going to happen? I hate being humiliated publicly. I fretted about it. Suddenly Steve Hall (our lighting designer at the time) swung down from a rope dressed as Santa Claus. "Here comes Steve Hall dressed as Santa Claus" I said helpfully, hoping he'd go away soon.anyway, i taped suzanne shouting "fucking hell" and it's my new 'you've got mail' sound. so each time a new mail comes in suzyv says: "fucking hell!" hey! *i* do think it's funny!"Ho ho ho," he said, flinging these little Christmas crackers around. These are beautifully wrapped English things that you pull a straw out of, and they go off with a bang. Mike, my long-standing bass player, pulled on of them, and something hit me in the back of my newly shorn neck. My manager filmed the whole thing. On the film you hear something like this - Bang. "Oww!!" I rub the back of my neck. The next thing I know I am pointing at Mike, saying "That hurt, motherfucker!!" As I recover, Steve eventually leaves the stage, and I confusedly launch into the Queen and the Soldier.
That night, as I was lying in bed, I suddenly realized that I had called Mikey a motherfucker into the microphone in front of 2000 people. I apologized the next day.
[december 9, 2004 - i look like a big man, but i only got a little soul]
grande
maleur! thomas' ibook broke down! again! fuck you, apple! and the apple
support is not really a help, either! what it all comes down to: thomas
is using my ibook, he'll probably take it to the states over christmas
which means that i don't have a laptop when i'm in bielefeld over the holidays
:o(((( i wanted to work, then. the seminar went very well this week! even
though i was ill. the cold caught me full force when the week began but
it's gotten better now. the colloquium was good as well today - we discussed
serres and materialism in general. i think a couple of basic things started
to make sense when the session was over - for at least the next two or
three days until i have forgotten everything all over again.
i'm still working on the fucking forschungsstand. i more or less have to start from scratch and come up with a completely new structure for the chapter on the critical reception of cohen's works. thomas suggested in a friendly ordering tone that i should group the presentation of the secondary literature according to topics and/or approaches. i had planned to do a chronological presentation. anyway, i realized how hard it is for me to let go of paragraphs that i have already written. even if they don't fit into the new structure anymore i still try hard to keep them - it took me an entire day to come to the realization that i will only be able to continue writing on the bloody chapter if i let the introductory page finally go for good. hopefully i will straighten things out even more tomorrow. we'll see. here's how many christmas presents i already have: 0
[december 14, 2004 - this is the attack of the present on my remaining time]i know, i know - i promised to update the journal more often. spent the last three days formatting and rewriting the olomouc article for publication. i think it has reached its final form now, thank god!
i'm in a weird blumfeld-phase, listening to the b-side cd that i burned long ago and never really appreciated. put new strings on my guitar. fantasized about a frust kauf: checked the internet for guitar equipment. maybe i get myself a little chorus or reverb. or both. a multi effect panel. there's a nice one for acoustic guitars by boss: boss ad-3. but it's 200 € :o(((((( i'm not quite sure whether i've got THAT much frust already.
tomorrow evening is the christmas party of the english seminar. could be fun. might as well be the horror! the entire staff of the seminar will be there. also all the professors. and since thomas had an "open talk" with professor absentor last week the atmosphere might be a little frosty. but there should be enough glühwein to at least let the peasants of academia loosen up a little bit!
and then on saturday the "small" christmas party will take place at thomas' place just with thomas, princess superstar, achim, nina, bernd, leyla, martin holz and me. it's also a kind of farewell party since achim and the princess will leave the department in january :o( which means that big changes are ahead! because from the new year on we will employ two new student workers who will 'replace' achim and the princess. we have already posted an ad and have chosen three out of about twelve applications - and on friday we will meet and finally decide which two will get the job.
a propos application: got a phone call from the dfg today. they have received the network application and had a couple of questions about it, but nothing to worry about. i tried to explain as good as possible how we had planned the various meetings and the two conferences and it seems like organizing one of the conferences in harvard should be no problem. now we have to see whether the application will be accepted in the first place and we will get the 60,000 € of funding. it might take up to six months however before we will get a definite answer :o( so keep your fingers crossed!
"geschichte wird gemacht und macht mich krank
.
.
.
.
.
punk"
[december 22, 2004 - no music attached]wow what a day! it went by in a flash! the whole week, as a matter of fact. thank god he ibook is back :o) thomas' was broken so he used mine and i had already feared that he would take it to the states and that i would be at my parents' place on christmas without a laptop! but they managed to fix it in time. phew!
got another set of answers :o)! we're approaching the magical *50* border!
i've got the seminar now, so i have to run!
[december 23, 2004 - i'm tracing your face up in the space]it's 16:40 and slowly getting dark outside. there's not really any christmas mood here on the corridor. achim and nina are still working in the office next door, bernd is teaching, thomas is on his way home and i am trying to finish the forschungsstand. princess superstar is on her way to mexico - she's staying with a friend who's spending a year in mexico city. x. has left for her mother's palce this morning. i thought that i migh at least add an image a day to the journal, since i don't find the time to update it regularly any more. so the image of the day would be this:
| i.m.a.g.e...o.f...t.h.e...d.a.y.: |
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[december 27, 2004 - take the long way around the sea...]
| i.m.a.g.e s...o.f...t.h.e...d.a.y.: |
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| my sister pressing her nose against the windowpane. my parents' christmas tree |
[december 28, 2004 -uni macht blöd. beweis: click here. i'm sitting in the office and there's nobody here except for me. and blane!! it's snowing heavily.
| i.m.a.g.e...o.f...t.h.e...d.a.y.: |
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[december 29, 2004 -the snow has gone and it's perfect 'cracking' weather. 'the sun is shining dizzy golden dancing green...' it's 12:30 and i can't get myself to star finish the forschungsstand. have headache. susan sontag died yesterday.
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