NXNE SCHEDULE

  I will be there, celebrating a record-business related achievement- multiple actually, that shall remain secret for now.  I will be carrying copies of Dirty Beaches Badlands record, on my person, if you are around you may ask for one.

  Due to the celebratory nature of this NXNE trip, I have cause to reflect on my relationship to this blog, and the word that comes to mind is "profit." Not in the small-minded narrow sense that Wall Street analysts use that word to mean "gain" (Profit: pecuniary gain.)(DICTIONARY)  Rather, I use the word in the sense that it was likely most often used BEFORE the 19th century:

 Profit: to gain an advantage or benefit: He profited greatly from schooling.

  In other words, I think I've profited in ways OTHER then financially.  Specifically, I think I've contributed to a greater consciousness of local music events in my community, and I've helped people gain access to music that has effected their lives.

   Here are my picks for NXNE starting tonight:

THURSDAY
Silver Dollar Room
486 Spadina
Toronto CA.

CROCODILES MIDNIGHT
DIRTY BEACHES 1 AM
CHAINS OF LOVE 11 PM

FRIDAY
Lee's Palace
529 Bloor W
Toronto CA.

DUM DUM GIRLS 11 PM
DIRTY BEACHES 10 PM
CULTS MIDNIGHT
WRITER 9 PM

SATURDAY
YONGE DUNDAS SQUARE
"YONGE AND DUNDAS"

CULTS  7 PM
DIRTY BEACHES 5 PM
DD/MM/YYYY  4 PM

Love Those Palm Springs Area Santa Rosa Mountains

This is an example of a good, steep mountain rise.

Here is a tip about looking for good mountain views:

1. You want someplace civilized from which to view the mountains: looking at amazing mountains from a shack in the woods, or after 20 hours of travel does not count.  Preferably you want air conditioning, a pool, internet and cable tv before viewing mountains.
2. You want a mountain range that does not have foothills in front: MAKES FOR OBSTRUCTED VIEWING.
3. You want someplace warm: The mountains of Alaska, and Tibet, are amazing, but it is cold as balls there.

  Bearing those factors in mind, I have to say that the Santa Rosa Mountains which lay directly south of Palm Springs present the best view I've, personally, ever seen of mountains because of their proximity to South Palm Springs, their immediate ascent skyward from the desert floor, and the fact that Palm Springs itself is a fantastic place from which to view mountains.  It's funny because I went on line to find a photograph but couldn't.

Rhetoric, Memory, Violence: The Medieval Theater of Cruelty

Rhetoric, Memory, Violence:
The Medieval Theater of Cruelty
by Jody Enders
p. 1999
Cornell University Press

   This is a book that achieves profundity almost in spite of it's stilted, heavily-influenced-by-french-cultural-theory style of writing.  Enders, a Professor of French and Medieval Studies at UCSB (Santa Barbara) comes close at times to a major contribution to the field of "history of ideas," but she's so caught up in her own specialty (French medieval manuscripts) and the "rules" of 90s era academia, that the interesting points of Rhetoric, Memory, Violence are almost hidden from view.  Certainly, reading this book was no pleasure- quite a chore, actually- it was so bad that I had an index card with the main theses written on it, and would then pull the card out every time I got confused and had to remind myself what the f*** Enders is going on about.

   The essence of Ender's argument in non-academic-jargony English, is FIRST: that the study of Rhetoric is embedded into the minds of recent scholars and influences their writing in both subtle and not-so subtle ways. SECOND: That the relative decline of the importance of Rhetoric in recent centuries has served to mask the important role that it played in justifying TORTURE during the middle age.  THIRD: That the link between Rhetoric and Torture continues to shape our thought processes, to the point where we, as a society, basically enjoy torture because it helps maintain (intellectual) order.

  If it sounds like something Foucault or Derrida would say, that's because Enders is obviously inspired by their work in the "archeology of knowledge."  From my perspective, she's on to something, but her omission of pre-Classic and non-written linguistics makes her final conclusions rather shallow.  At best, she's talking about a cultural trait that developed alongside the birth of Rhetoric in Greek/Roman times.  Surely, any link between order and violence in a modern state like America extends beyond the study of Rhetoric to the period when languages like Greek, Latin, German and Sanskrit were spoken, and not written.  Without integrating this piece of the puzzle, the insight that Enders can provide to,  "the roots of...cruelty lie in the language of some of the foundational narratives of Western Civilization." (p. 232.)

  Well, OK- but you didn't prove your point.

The 100 Greatest Non Fiction Books (LONDON GUARDIAN)

The 100 Greatest Non Fiction Books (LONDON GUARDIAN)

Languages of the Palm Springs Area Indians

    The Agua Caliente Indians of Palm Springs are one of ten or more independent clans of the Cahuilla tribe from the Shoshonean division (Takic) of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Their traditional communities were located in the Palm, Andreas, Murray, Tahquitz, and Chino canyons.


    Personally, I find it interesting that the Palm Springs area indians were from the same linguistic family as the Aztecs.  That is as least as interesting as learning that Sanskrit and Latin are from the same language family.


    Look, let's say you are trying to determine the "history" of a non-historic group of people.  You have two choices: One, dig around in the dirt or two, look at the relationship of the language to other languages.  Both techniques can be effective in discovering historical facts about where a certain group of language speakers came from.


   So, it's crazy that the Palm Springs area tribes spoke a language from the same linguistic family as Aztec, right?  Here's an interesting comparative linguistics article written by Jane Hill on Uto-Aztecan Hunter-Gatherers:  Language Diversity in the Takic Spread and the Numic Spread Compared  (ABSTRACT)


  Also, it's crazy that the "NUMIC" or northern Uto Aztecan branch is from Death Valley- just north of the Palm Springs area.  The climate must have been different back then- that's all I can say, but I find it interesting that this geographic area- so inhospitable today- was the locus of such a strong linguistic group.  A group that has endured to the present.