A Chronicle of the Current Revolution

Gangs of Cambridge/Radical Aesthetics/Chaotic Day

A few things. I am quite fired up from a number of occurences today, some experiential, some cognitive churnings. First, the fun thing that has been on my mind which is both experiential and cerebral.

1. I was in ‘The Copper Kettle’ a great restaurant right across from King’s College. Finished my delicious full English breakfast and got up to go. See a Magdalene College kid sitting at a table close by, scribbling in a book and reading though thick glasses; wearing Magdalene stash and looking aggravatingly clean cut and formica standard boring. King’s and Magdalene College are at exact opposite ends of the political/social/cultural spectrum in terms of Cambridge colleges; King’s being the most left-leaning and liberal (we have a hammer and sickle framed on our bar wall for goodness’ sake) and Magdalene being absolutely arch-conservative. It was definitely a meeting of polar opposites - on King’s turf. I thought: ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if the whole college thing was more like a gang system where if anyone from another college gang stepped on your turf you had the right to challenge them and sort their insolence out with fist and boot?’ Something like the Warriors, to be certain. It would work perfectly in Cambridge where everyone knows the college colours and crests instantly, and there is still enough of an honour system that if you say just fists, or just fists, bricks and bats, everyone would observe protocol without problem. Well, nothing against that kid, but the idea had such novelty I almost went up to him and asked him what the hell he was doing on King’s turf. Anyways, I walked out, and later ran the idea by a New Yorker friend who was definitely into the idea. Since this episode my friend and I have taken to using the term ’We should totally Magdalene that “person”’ if we think someone should get beaten up.

2. Ernst & Young, massive accounting firm I was told, put a small little box of chocolates in every student’s pigeon hole in the mail room at King’s today. I imagine they did this at every other college in Cambridge. The chocolates were quite good, and I simply ate them and didn’t think twice about the firm. Then someone sent this email around:

  …in your pigeonhole.

The cost to the government of abolishing all tuition and top up fees would
be around £1.4 billion
(http://bookshop.universitiesuk.ac.uk/downloads/whatsitworth.pdf).

An unlawful tax-avoidance scheme devised by Ernst & Young deprived the
government of £1.5 billion
(http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1562889,00.html).

Like the chocolates brought home by a husband after being caught screwing
his secretary, this little offering doesn’t really make up for it.

I’m with that cat, but I would settle for 1.5 billion pounds worth of chocolate though. I could probably get the girls around here to take care of it all within a few months - the English birds have quite the gnarly sweet teeth.

3. Sometimes you read things that get you questioning, angry, intrigued, feeling like literary/theoretical studies are actually relevant. Terry Eagleton’s ‘The Ideology of the Aesthetic’ has me worked up into the aforementioned manner. Maybe it’s an old work, or older minds who have studied philosophy for longer thinks it’s flawed - whatever - I am new to it. He suggests so many things that need serious contemplation, such as the idea that a ‘human subject’ could pose ‘an ideological challenge to the ruling order’ by ‘elaborating new dimensions of feeling beyond its narrow scope’. That idea gives the aesthetic and art, and the subject that conceives of and practices those disciplines an incredible power and privilege, and forces you to think about how to practice art or think aesthetics in such a way as to exceed the ideology of the ruling order. I really don’t want to bang on about this, but it is nice to have an epiphany about the relevance to the world of things that you have made your profession, and that your passions are also important and relevant to the world as well.  

4. Shipping company miscarried an important piece of mail. Spent way too long (and eventually 15 pounds for a taxi) getting out to the depot to get the damn thing resent. They resent it for free, lucky for them.

5. Everything closes so early here. It is impossible to get a box of cereal for breakfast at 7:00pm. Now I have to have beans again, or peanut butter on crackers.

Despite these many things, I am in a good place, albeit angsty and edgy. Maybe there isn’t anything wrong with that - especially if this place goes ‘Gangs of New York’ on us all. Peace and love,

 Peter Morelli

Strange Beautiful

Every Friday at King’s College we have what is called ‘Grad Drinks’. The King’s Grad society gives the Social Secretary funds to buy lots of drink and put on an affair - there is a lot of university/collegiate sanctioned drinking at Cambridge just so you know. I have been iPod deejaying these grad drink nights which has been additional fun, but I just wanted to formally lodge that last night’s Grad Drinks was absolutely legendary: pitchers of cocktails and dirty lagers, all my crazy people, everything turning into a mad dance party to old school funk and K-os with some upbeat tracks by The Go! Team and others spun in. So that was my Friday night, and it was terrific.

It is just gone Sunday morning here; half twelve as the English would say. So I can officially look back and comment on the strange beautiful Saturday I just had. I woke up late, ate a bagelwich from the fridge which I found free on a platter in the bar on Friday (great find), and had just one cup of delicious coffee. I had planned to read a poem and play a song at ‘Unheard Of’ a poetry and music open mic night being held at the new student-run art space that has just opened up on Jesus Lane, so I started going over the poem I wanted to read, one I have been working on for awhile and thought I would bring to completion by performing; it is called ‘Supplication: To Not Knowing’. Incidentally, if you want to read it just email me and I will send you back a copy of it in a document form of your choosing.

I spent all day working on the poem, bringing it to its final version and working through the rhythms and lines, it was a wonderful way to spend a day. I finished just in time to make it to Evensong at King’s College Chapel; the bell was sounding, calling everyone in just as I had done play. I rushed out and ran into a friend at the entrance to the hostel I stay in, and she held me up talking about a gray cardigan she might have lost for quite some time, as always happens when you are in a rush (bell still sounding). She told me she had a dinner with a whole group of boys and I called her a smart woman, then I took off. I mention her because she reappears later, you understand.

Evensong was amazing last night, a celebration service for the feast of Candlemas. To mark events like this, the choir usually begins the Evensong by starting at the far west end of the chapel, beyond the organ screen so you can’t see them, and then walk to us at the east end in procession, singing as they go. So we can’t see the choir at all, but suddenly we are all standing, waiting for something to happen. Then, in the far west of the Chapel the choir starts to sing, and they start singing Ave Maria, a beautiful beautiful arrangement, and you can’t see anything, just hear these voices far and distant sounding off the fan vaults all airy and golden. I tell you, it seemed angels were on the other side of the organ screen, out of sight but not hearing. Amazing. Ave Maria was sung at my Nonna’s funeral, so the song brought her back as well, and it was a very powerful moment.

Left the chapel, went home, collected my guitar and notebook, walked to The Shop on Jesus Lane. Bought a chicken salad sandwich on the way there, ate it on a bus stop bench beneath a streetlight. Entered The Shop, tonnes of people which is a great sign for the new space, signed down to play, watched a lot of people do great readings and performances. Highlights include: friend playing a concertina with his hands and a tambourine with his foot doing cover of Destiny’s Child and cover of Shakira, cat who played great Nick Drake style folk tunes, friends reading heartfelt and good verses, a T.S. Eliot reading, and the buzz and jitter of performing myself. I read ‘Supplication: To Not Knowing’ like planned, and played a new song called ‘Works and Days’. Had two cups of good tea.

Took off and got a bit of pizza at Gardenia’s Greek Restaurant. Ate it while watching the highlights of Arsenal beating Man City 3-1. Gunners all over City in the end of the game, bloodthirsty and deadly, it was wonderful to watch.

Walked home around 11:00pm and ran into my friend from before right in front of Spalding Hostel, where we both live. She was being escorted by a friend, and was ridiculously lashed (drunk). Her friend was taking care of her, and asked if I would make sure she would be okay from hereon in; I agreed and her friend took off. I walked my drunk comrade up to her room, and she collapsed on the bed. Not really knowing what else to do, I just played her lullabies on the guitar until she seemed to be asleep. Then I put my guitar away and just sat with her until it turned into Sunday, prised my fingers from her hands and slipped out quietly, turning the light off as she continued to sleep peacefully. I feel honoured and lucky that I have friends who trust me as much as she does and are as close as we all are; we really all take care of each other here, as we are the only family we have immediately around us right now.  

‘Cambridge really casts a spell’, someone once said. I remain, my dear friends, your most humble and loving servant,

 Peter Morelli

Basically Amorphous

The monumentality of certain events seems to preclude their being capturable in print media. Such a first sentence is purposefully ungainly in order to emphasize subconsciously the difficulties inherent in transcribing immensities. The first two sentences should indicate I am back in Cambridge, studying, reading, writing, a whole heck of a lot.

Over the holidays, after a brilliant time back home and in Colorado with my brother and his wife, I was in Switzerland for a week playing ice hockey. It is this trip which in a sense is problematically monumental, as I really want to communicate how beautiful and clear it was in Switzerland in this south-east, in a region called the Engadin but understand that it would take quite some time to do so. I will let pictures do most of the work eventually, but will say to begin that it was a brilliant first step onto the continent proper for me, and that touring around the valleys and villages of the Engadin on foot and by train, playing hockey all day and drinking coffee and reading when I wasn’t playing hockey was a wonderful way to get ready for Lent term. Stay posted for pictures.

So back in Cambridge. Wind so strong today, and there was a major ghostbuster sky. Started raining like madness and then hailing alongside the rain, the winds whipping it all into whips and it cleared all the streets right out. I watched from my bay window and it was quite a scene.

My coffee maker is in play again, and I forgot how good the coffee vendor’s houseblend is - especially if you have it ‘black as the devil and sweet as sin’.

For those of you who are avid comic/graphic novel readers, the quoted phrase above might give away that I have now read Alan Moore’s ‘The Watchmen’. Simply amazing. Mike thanks for the Christmas gift - it kept me up till three on a number of nights.

Want to shout out to Louie at the records office. Man put a human face on bureaucracy, renewed my faith in the kindness of people and got me five transcripts within a day. I walked out of the records office stunned and beaming, and am incredibly thankful for his kind gesture. I got him a good bottle of red as a gesture of appreciation and in an effort to pay it forward.

Out playing music in the streets one night, a violinist walked past and I asked her to join me for a few songs. She did, and we dashed off a few great numbers. The combined strings, guitar and vocals called out the homeless people however, and soon we had a madman drunk named Mick hanging out with us, and another homeless busker who heard us playing and wanted to join in. The busker had a really out of tune guitar, but he asked if we knew Bob Dylan and started playing ‘All Along the Watchtower’, so we played along with that while Mick clapped along and drank. It was quite a motley assembly of riot and music, and the cctv cameras noticed: at one point while we were playing I looked up at the street light and the cctv camera that watches the intersection was trained on us, the cold dark eye of the man staring down at us kids, as Dylan might’ve sung it. Anyways, after the song myself and the violinist headed off realizing things were getting a bit dodgy. Walking her home I found out that she is a guerilla gardener, and has been planting flowers and shrubs and things all over Cambridge in the dead hours of the night. It was quite a night.

Crashed my bike. Hit a speedbump in front of Fitzwilliam College that I didn’t see and went over the handlebars. Broke the fall with my hands and then just lay there for a while; when one crashes like this, the feeling of being safe on the pavement and just lying there peaceably while you sting is so comforting. I collected myself and then went to meet my supervisor and a Clare scholar I was meeting for the first time. I think things went well despite my entrance to the College. I then had to get back on my bike to get to a lecture, and found out my brake cable was snapped from the shock of the crash. I rode it ‘cross town anyways, and made it to the lecture on time, which turned out to be well worth the risks involved in biking through British traffic without brakes. A bit of hardcore blood-sport academia here, if I might say so.

Other than the above such things, it is library and library and then a drink at 10:30. I really can’t complain. I will make sure to keep the updates, commentaries and inconsequentia more regular now since I have started this up again. I hope you are all well, and big hugs. I, of course, remain your most humble and obedient servant,

 Peter Morelli

End of Terms

A little story: I walk out of King’s College looking at King’s College Chapel; enter the streets through the porter’s lodge and am hailed by a friend; I go over and give her a hug and tell her I will see her in London next Tuesday at the Jeff Wall retrospective and she tears off down the cobblestone street on her quirky red bike wearing a Russian fur hat; the whole moment and all that is significant and meaningful in it crystallizes and hits home and I realize I love this place and my life here, that I have certainly found my place and my people. A nice realization when you are fourteen hours, an ocean and a continent away from home by the fastest practicable travel method available to us at this point in time. Term is done here, and the past week has been a series of fun and relaxed events spent in the company of the few left at King’s.

Last night a bunch of us went to see CSS play at the Corn Exchange; a terrific show and CSS was tremendous. Lovefoxx particularly impressed me: her vocals were in great form and she danced around like the little Brazilian madball she is. She also wore two one-piece spandex/leotard outfits; the second encore outfit meant (I think, though it only covered the body) to look like a Mexican wrestler’s match mask, complete with large eyes and teeth. I was really impressed with the whole band actually. And the opening band ‘Metronomy’ was solid as well, with some really danceable, good songs. I liked the singer’s voice as well, and think that he was pleasantly familiar with Joy Division’s vocal style without being painfully derivative, as other bands one can think of are. A good night.

Today was spent mainly in mailing out Christmas packages and parcels, something that always reminds me of the scene at the beginning of ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ where Lucy sees Mr Tumnus carrying all his gifts past the lamp post, as the way the reader on the story tapes and the way Lewis describes that scene gives such a good sense of the magical Christmas spirit imbued in the brown paper wrappings, the armful bundles of packages and the cold walk through the winter winds and crisp frosts to mail them off to divers destinations. I always exclude Mr Tumnus’ questionably treachery and insidiousness from this pleasant mental resonance however!

Anyways, the walk to the post office was made really Christmasy by the buskers who really are quite exceptional. Buskers in Cambridge (except for one maddening guitar and creaky scratching voice individual) are generally terrific, perhaps unlike Vancouver. I walked by a beautifully tuned choir singing carols, and past a brass trio playing classical standards and singing. When I went back out for a coffee later that latter trio was playing that beautiful classical song that makes one think of angels, and descends in such magnificent steps, and it gave me shivers (not just the cold I tell you) on account of that song provoking such powerful associations but me not being able to place its name or what it was. A very musical city, Cambridge.  

Only a few more days till I fly home to Vancity. I am planning to go see a series of ghost stories at a small theater tommorow night, and maybe go to tea with some friends on Thursday. Other than that I am going to be reading on the French Revolution, working through Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, and reading the books a kind friend I met in the library lent me to read over the break.

The two songs that define my current state and place in Cambridge right now and set up the spectrum from joyful to reflective that I am moving back and forth through right now, are:

‘All My Friends’ - LCD Soundsystem.
‘And I Was A Boy From School’ - Hot Chip.

If you listen to those two songs in that order, I need say no more. I remain, dear friends, your most humble and loving servant,

Peter Morelli 

Hours In A Library

The library at King’s is very warm, especially if you wear a sweater. Outside today was not warm at all. There was still frost on the front yard of the college at 4:00pm, the flagstones frosted and people wearing large parkas and walking briskly to get out of those crisp Iceland winds (they say the winds in Cambridge blow straight from Iceland).

That cold made the little ice rink at Parker’s Piece beautiful yesterday morning; six of us from the Blues team had a good three on three tournament. It was a wonderful day for it, clear sky, sun, good ice. Nice way to start a day, although getting up early made me so sleepy later I had to sleep in the library on the heater for an hour or so.

After the skate, I went to Fisher’s Hall for its last Book Fair ever. I got some incredible treasures from this brilliant bookseller, Conor: actual 1820 printing of Robert Bloomfield’s ‘Rural Tales’ (Conor told me he has seen this one sell for three hundred pounds - I got it for six); Complete works of Cowper - a 1909 Oxford calfskin bound edition; Works of Crabbe, ‘The Complete Illuminated Manuscripts of Blake’ (what a find!), ’Country and the City’ by Raymond Williams, and ‘Early Irish Myths and Sagas’, trans. Jeffrey Gantz. Such treasures! I tell you, any book you want will turn up here somewhere without you even looking hard; somehow England reads your mind and then puts the right book in your path whether you are even conscious you want the book or not.   

Interesting article discovered while searching the Royal Historical Society bibliographical archives today: Evans, Alun. ‘The Ralahine Horse Reaping Machines’. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 124 (1994), 153-62. What an incredible band name that would make: ‘The Ralahine Horse Reaping Machines’. It might even match ‘Wolf Blitzer’. What an obscure article and title.  

Okay, I didn’t think I’d be able to top that last article, but here’s another one I found: Sheehan, John. ‘A seventeenth century dried cat from Ennis Friary, Co. Clare’. North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 32 (1990), 64-69. I didn’t spend time reading this one. It wouldn’t make a good band name, maybe a good jerky.

Listening to lots of ‘Hot Chip’, and so forth.

A polish guy who sold me a coffee at Don Pasquale’s as I was fueling up for the last few hours of the night told me he has at least six shots of espresso a day. I told him that this was a respectable amount, but it would be better if his coffee consumption had to be measured in numbers of buckets like mine.

After all day in the library, I am going to head home, fall asleep and dream about bibliographies and citations as my day has been composed of little else. Only a day and a half of hard work more, then everything is done, and I have CSS, Cambridge exploration, London exploration (Jeff Wall exhibit/retrospective on Tuesday) and free reading and writing to look forward to. Goodnight, and as Cymodocea says in ’the Aeneid’:

‘Crastina lux, mea si non inrita dicta putaris,
ingentis Rutulae spectabit caedis acervos’.*

I remain, dear friends, your most humble and obedient library-bound servant,

 Peter Morelli 
_____
* ‘Tommorow’s light, if you suppose my words are not in vain, will behold huge heaps of slaughtered Latins’. I sat in the Latin Literature section of the library all day today.

Something About That Good Old Fashioned Musicale

I have this sudden sentiment, listening to the dance track, ‘Flashdance (Paul Rincon Mix)’ and thinking of the dance/rave room at the King’s ‘A Fundamingle Divide’ affair that went on last Friday, that people have forgotten or are afraid to be properly musical. I feel that this is the problem with the djs who were spinning in the dance/rave room last Friday. Maybe I am asking for a Frankie Wilde (who doesn’t actually exist), but why can not people drop beats that have melody and music to them? Rhythm is so heavy it makes you dance till you kick the bucket and go out laughing, melody makes you live so much you do not want to die, together they are such an excruciating mix one will burst frantically. So please: keep the musical in the rhythmical.    

Interesting Inconsequentia

The bibliographic resources here are incredible. A short anecdote: Searching for a book on how avarice becomes socially sanctioned in the eighteenth-century, I discover this tiny little volume on a really high shelf. It’s old, so much so I can’t really make out the name of the author on the spine. I open the cover, and on the inside is a little pasted-on piece of paper that says: ‘King’s College Cambridge’ and ‘Presented by the Author (Fellow) 1926’. I flip over the page to see who the author is, intrigued, and read: ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’ by ‘John Maynard Keynes’. I am holding in my hand John Maynard Keynes’ personal copy of his own work, which he must have at some point bequeathed to the library while he was a fellow at King’s. Not only this, but there is a small note at the bottom of the title page that reads: ‘Published by Leonard & Virginia Woolf at The Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London, W.C. I 1926’. The work I am holding also went through Woolf’s Hogarth Press. Quite a find. I couldn’t resist - I took it home with me and ‘The End of Laissez-Faire’ now rests on my mantel.

Supposedly there is a Picasso hidden somewhere in King’s.

The electrical engineering of most domiciles and buildings in England is not particularly safe; the rather dodgy nature of most wiring, circuitry and general electrical rigging in this country means that all electrical appliances must regularly be subjected to testing for functionality and safety by a team of well-paid professionals. I can sleep safe tonight knowing that all my electrical appliances and gadgets are functional and perfectly safe. God knows, it would be awful if my little two pound alarm clock exploded in an angry fit at an abundance of electrical current supercharging its posterior.

Coffee can be had at two places up until ten thirty in the evening in Cambridge so far as I am aware (I heard there are a few more venues for legal late night caffeination but have yet to find them; I believe one is a government sanctioned injection site somewhere off Mill Road): ‘Agora at the Copper Kettle’ and ‘Don Pasquale’. Tonight around ten I went to Don Pasquale with a friend and had a delightful cappuccino which the barista topped with a smiley face in cinnamon. In other news, on the way over to Don Pasquale my friend and I witnessed a delightful young women with the most massive yet immodestly displayed breasts I have ever seen, ride by on a bicycle. I am really quite sure she is incredibly intelligent. My friend and I discussed what college she might hail from, and what she might study.

Cambridge might be getting a proper ice rink.

I saw Elgar’s ‘The Apostles’ on Wednesday night, a brilliant short oratorio performed in King’s Chapel by the Cambridge University Music Society and special guest solo singers. Stephen Cleobury - the most stylish and brilliant conductor I have ever seen - conducted. Elgar composes beautifully, but I believe he is at his best when he gets carried away, dramatic, brash, bold, intense and daring to the overwhelming point of near instability - at least those are the musical moments I enjoyed most in the performance.

CSS is coming to Cambridge on December 17th. I plan to go and dance a lot, seeing as all my coursework and applications will be completed three days before that venerable date. I really hope Lovefoxx marries me; that would be a great end of term reward.

To close, I’ll relate a rather fortuitous incident, which is intriguing merely by the fact that it is an anecdote that doesn’t really belong anywhere: I got a free pair of Vans slip-ons from the lost and found box in the mail room, just my size. The porters gave me the go ahead on my find, and after disinfecting them with a Dettol spray I use to clean house, I have been wearing them with the joy only a free pair of comfortable and stylish shoes can bestow upon a man who’s often about town on one errand or another.

I remain, dear friends, your most humble and obedient servant,

 Peter Morelli

P.S. - I think that Grizzly bear accomplished some perfect songs on their album ‘Yellow House’. I believe that ‘Knife’ is one such perfect song. As well as perhaps ‘Lullabye’. Listen and let me know what you think.

Christmas In November

I had a nap this afternoon, and I woke up to loud Christmas carols bouncing around in my room and off the walls like drunk reindeer - loud I tell you. I wondered a little about this, as it seemed a little out of place, and so decided to go get some groceries and determine the source of this ruckus. Upon closer inspection, once I reached market square, there was a brass band on a huge stage (near the massive Christmas tree just put up yesterday) just blasting out Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph at absolute top swagger. The whole market was filled with people dancing, eating cakes, and I saw an Ice Queen on stilts marching around and terrifying children with her frosty magic. It is only 18 November. Needless to say, the English seem to get the holiday spirit quite early, as the whole spectacle was a celebration in anticipation of lighting the town Christmas tree tonight. I have to say, despite Christmas in November feeling a little preemptive, when an old school big dance hall swing and jive band hit the stage and fake snow started shooting out from the stage and fluttered down all over, filling the square like a real snow fall, I actually started to feel a little Christmasy, smiled, and thought about chocolate and coffee; which I have since had.