Rojak: Dance Apocalyptic.

Rojak is a regular collection of assorted links as well as a bulletin summarising the week (or thereabouts) on this blog.

Assorted

Richard Matheson has died. [via The New York Times]

Hopscotch/Rayuela has turned 50! [via Conversational Reading]

Janelle Monáe’s new album, The Electric Lady, will be out September 10. [via Instagram]

She has also released a new song from it, titled “Dance Apocalyptic”. [via Pitchfork]

Richard Brody has written something on Orson Welles. [via The New Yorker]

Nick Cave is doing something interesting with 20,000 Days on Earth. [via The Guardian]

Beckett’s Not I will be performed on the telly. [via The Telegraph]

David Bowie has been offered a recurring role on TV sseries Hannibal as the titular character’s uncle. [via Pitchfork]

Cover versions of Shakespeare to come. [via The Guardian]

Where literary places meet real maps. [Placing Literature, via MOBYLIVES]

Bulletin

This week:

• Bobby Bland died.
• Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba.
• Jonny Greenwood’s The Master soundtrack.
• Something on humour.
• ILO ILO.

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Omnivore: Something’s fishy.

Omnivore is a regular report on some of the things that I’ve been enjoying during the week (or thereabouts).

Finished up with David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, and will move on to something new today!

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Friday music.

Here is “Jama ko”, from the album of the same name by Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba. [via YouTube]

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ILO ILO in Singapore theatres soon.

Anthony Chen’s prize-winning ILO ILO has been picked up by Golden Village and will soon be showing in Singapore theatres.

[via YouTube]

It opens 29 August.

[Official website]

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Translating humour.

So—if I’m Groucho—would I be inclined to remove obstacles to international comprehension? Would I understand how to pivot a joke from English to French, or—if I were Bassem—from Egyptian Arabic to English? Would I have to worry about the English equivalent of Emad Eldeen Adeeb instructing me to buy tiger-themed bed sheets, too? (And seriously? Tiger themed?) I know I’d be tempted to take the Bakhtinian route and lean into the fact that an act of translation would be taking place—that someone could achieve English as She Is Spoke by intention rather than by accident (and that’s not the only way to lean into this, but it’s the first example that came to mind)—but I’m not so sure if that’s the best, most fruitful way to do it.

On translating humour. [via The Paris Review]

Incidentally, I just reached the translating humour chapter in David Bellos’s Is That a Fish in Your Ear? yesterday.

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Bobby Bland dies.

Bobby Bland has died at the age of 83. [via Pitchfork]

Below you can see him performing “Members Only”. [via YouTube]

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Monday Master.

Good morning. It’s a slow and lazy Monday morning. Singapore appears to finally be out of the haze. Here is a tiny bit of Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack for The Master. [via YouTube]

The film is out on video now and I should really get to watching it.

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Rojak: Utter failure.

Rojak is a regular collection of assorted links as well as a bulletin summarising the week (or thereabouts) on this blog.

Assorted

A while ago, I was recommending Sebastião Salgado’s Genesis. This certainly throws a sad dimension into the mix. [via duckrabbit]

“I have a desire to be told off, to be not allowed to get away with it.” Interview with Lars Iyer. [Full Stop, via Conversational Reading]

Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington) have released a remix of the whole Random Access Memories. Have a listen. [via Pitchfork]

A bunch of writers reflect on failure, a topic which I have been increasingly fascinated with. [via The Guardian]

New music from Arcade Fire coming in September. [via Consequence of Sound]

The Millions recommends “The Apartment” by Aaron Burch. [The Collagist, via The Millions]

And a little Paul Valéry here. [via Time’s Flow Stemmed]

Bulletin

This week:

• Henrik Nordbrandt.
• Tadeusz Różewicz.
• Oleg Pavlov.
• Franz Kafka (for kids).
• Gordon Lish.

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Omnivore: Translation.

Omnivore is a regular report on some of the things that I’ve been enjoying during the week (or thereabouts).

I’ve started on Is That A Fish In Your Ear? by David Bellos. This is one of those weeks when I become concerned about the number of books that I have simply because I’m not reading as quickly as I usually would be (which isn’t very quick at all) and sales season means that I’ve got another batch incoming.

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Interview with Tadeusz Różewicz.

Yes. For me, poetic creation was about action, not writing pretty verses. Not verses: facts. I created – it’s what I thought, it’s what I still think – certain facts. Not (more or less successful) lyrical bits and pieces. I reacted to events with facts – which I gave a verse form – and not with ‘poetry’. That’s why, even though I was a diligent student of the Masters of the Word, I was never interested in so-called ‘schools of poetry’ and their market-place, auctioneering rows about versification and metaphor… Speaking ‘directly’ was to lead to the source. To the restoration of banal faith, banal hope, banal love. Love that conquers death. Love conquered by death. Those were my concerns, those simple matters. The poems where I strained for originality, uniqueness, ‘novelty’, they’re of secondary importance. Possibly from the point of view of ‘aesthetic experience’, they’re better than the others. You can’t have ethics alone. But avant-garde dogmatists had created so much havoc; the only remedy was to replace what people call ‘poetic meaning’ with ordinary meaning, common sense. I consciously began to give up the privileges of ‘poetic meaning’. I turned to the banal truths. After a short trip to the land of ‘poetic meaning’, I go back to my rubbish heap.

Here you will find an interview with Polish poet Tadeusz Różewicz. [via 3:AM Magazine]

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