from a late Alexandrian

I don't really have much to say about today's entry beyond what follows being inspired in part by Cavafy's "Dareios" and a conversation I had with a moron (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) about trans-Pacific influences in American poetry and pop culture. Cavafy is a-whole-nother can-o-worms, so I'll leave him be for now.


from a late Alexandrian scholiast in the Roman period, [Diogenes]


on the second burial of Polyneikes

we don’t like to admit that what Antigone was burying
was the ground. we’d rather call it something else:
her politics, her brother, the latter of which belies our faith
in the immortality of the human subject. Antigone believed
this too: it was her brother, was Kreon’s politics.
but the genuine tragedy of the human subject is that it was
neither, that its immortality has nothing to do with us.


on the argument of Oidipous and Kreon

Kreon does not know precisely what Oidipous
too knows not, and his willful failure to speak
about that which he does not know syncopates
Oidipous’ earnest and dire ramblings. Kreon
is the silence to perceive all melodic rhythms
nascent in the cacophony of the poetic line.


on a famous quotation from Emperor Shun in 文心雕龍

詩言志、poetry speaks not so much intention as
the will, the will to create and make, which is why
歌永言、the song composes the words, those words
by which lyric announces itself and not the poet.


of a line quoted by Zigong for sake of clarification

如切如磋、“as cut, as filed;” not belabored by numerous
strokes of anxious care, the beauty of the simple cutting
into living wood comes from unintended revelations;
如琢如磨、“as chiseled, as polished;” stone, then, too,
its surface not smeared with brushing powders, shines
easily having suffered the pain of but a single strike.

自問自答 - Answering Your Own Questions

It's occurred to me that, in my rallying against the vast sea of craptasticness that is J-pop since the 80s, I have rallied many to my cause that do not fit this totalizing view of contemporary Japanese pop music, but never Mukai Shutoku 向井秀徳. Sure, if you step outside of the purview of Music Station, there are plenty of acts like Midori in the "hardcore" scenes that are worth paying attention to, but I focus on pop in my persistent belief that popular art doesn't have to necessarily equate with bad art.

I warn you in advance, the following is quite long, quite dense, and likely to incur a TLDR.



Mukai is not well-known outside of Japan but there is relatively infamous as the head of the now defunct band Number Girl (yeah, I know that looks like a penis on that dude's face, but it's actually a tengu mask), a prolific solo artist and producer, and currently as the "brains" behind the Zazen Boys. I bring jimon-jito to your attention in part because it poses an interesting problem. I know most of you don't understand the Japanese, and honestly it moves so fast I have a hard time keeping up. I don't really think comprehension is all that necessary to understand what Mukai is trying to do in this song. The way he seamlessly moves in and out of rhythm with what he's playing, between what I will call verse phrasing and prose phrasing, creates interesting tensions between the ease with which you can listen when his verse phrasing acquiesces to your rhythmic expectations and the ill-at-ease from having to experience his prosaic rambling over the top of a relatively straightforward chord structure on the guitar.

This song was once described to me as Japanese hip-hop to the extreme. I have to disagree; rap, freestyle or not, doesn't sound like this. There the primary concern is flow, the ease and deftness with which the mc moves from one phrase to another by constructing patterns of syncopated but related sounds and meanings. Mukai's song is about disrupting flow, the prosaic phrasings serving as a kind of vocal dissonance that actually intensifies the easy effect of the verse phrasing, the flow.

I think it's brilliant. It's rare you'd ever hear me openly praising someone, but there you have it. It's pop, and it's brilliant.

Hektor and Andromache

I think I'm just gonna let this one speak for itself, such as it is.

bold Hektor heckled her. within the walls.
her tears his baby beckoned forth.
within the hallowed walls. within and without.
the tempered fighters raged. with iron and
with bronze. between her tears the baby
wailed. what Hektor hurried on.
what Hektor. what spektor of doubt
haunted the hollow of the walls.
in the hollows of her wailing. hope.
she hopes to know despair. how Hektor
shocked. how wholly her dismissal.
of Hektor's valor. of baby's value.
how whole her resignation. wailing
within the walls. the wales within
her brow. without his helm. the babel-ing
displaced. from baby back to bride.
Andromache is bride. who wars
with men. in silence. men's cry
what tempers ironed bronze. what
Andromache. within the whollow walls.
would say. if she were war with men.
Andromache indifferent as the sunset
shone a pulsing star upon his helm.
the march of bold Andromache.
without the walls. from temples
to the waling men. he brow
enwrit with anger. know Andromache
to die complete. in else's arms.