Hayden's "Everything I Long For"

Yesterday, while driving Juliette to school and listening to the news, which Juliette hates to do, I heard a story on NPR about Indian Classical Music: "Another Reason Not To Sleep." The story talked about Indian music and the fact that there are different melodic scales for different times of day and different seasons. Of course, this reminded me of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons.Quickly, though, my thoughts went to the music I listen to in every season. Instead of thinking about it in relation to four seasons though, I usually think about the music I listen to in regards to spring/summer and fall/winter. Since fall is almost upon us, September 22, I decided to take the next few days to present my top ten albums for the fall/winter. I'm not ranking the albums in any particular order. I'm just presenting them as the ones I listen to when the weather starts to change.

Album 1: Hayden Everything I Long For (1995)

If you've never heard of Hayden Dresser, you don't know what you're missing. While I've never lived in an extremely cold environment during the winter, Hayden's music, and specifically his voice, makes me think about what it would be like to be snowed in with nothing to do but listen to music through long winter nights.

The first time I heard Hayden was on MTV's 120 Minutes, remember when they used to have good shows that actually played music. Anyways, the video for "Bad As They Seem" came on, and I immediately liked it. The song a detuned guitars and his low voice made him sound hypnotizing. "Bad as They Seem," in case you were wondering, is about a guy in Hayden's neighborhood who sat on his roof in a lawn chair all day. The song is Hayden thinking about what that guy was thinking while on the roof.

  After getting Everything I Long For, the other songs started to stick out, especially to a sophomore/junior in high school. The standouts to me have always been "In September," "Stem," "Hardly," and "When This is Over" which is about Susan Smith. A few years ago, I used this song to show students what a ballad is, and it went over pretty well.

To conclude, if you listen to the whole album, not on Spotify, there is a great sandwich recipe at the end of the last song. Enjoy! 

The Winter's Tale and The Fire Next Time

Right now, I'm working on Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1611)in between chunks of The Faerie Queene (1590), Chartier's The Origin of the Book, and other miscellaneous works. As of right now, I've made it through the IV.3. So, I do not have anything substantial to say at this point; however, I have noticed a few things that I want to kind of point out so I will not forget them. To begin with, I am intrigued by Leontes' unsubstantiated jealousy concerning Hermione. He even becomes suspicious of one of his Lords, Camillo. This jealousy arises because Leontes enlists Camillo to kill Polixenes, Hermione's suspected lover. Camillo defaults and informs Polixenes of the plot, and they both leave Leontes' Sicilia under the cover of night. Leontes, enraged now, has Hermione arrested and put on trial. The trial proclaims her innocent; however, a prophecy also gets passed down, that Leontes will not have an heir until his "bastard" daughter is found. His son dies, and Hermione also dies.

What interests me here is the jealousy that Leontes feels. It really reminds me of Malbecco and his wife in Book III cantos ix and x of The Faerie Queene. Here, Malbecco fears that his wife, Hellenore, will run away with any man who enters his castle. She does, with Paridell. There is more to the story than this, but the idea of sequestering the maid and feeling jealousy without evidence to support the feeling really intrigues me. At the end of canto x, Malbecco actually turns into jealousy. Along with Malbecco, I also think about Leantio in Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women (1616). Here, Leantio marries Bianca and essentially keeps her in his house while he is away because he is afraid of her possibly inconstancy. While he is away for work, she does get out of the house, with the help of Leantio's unwitting mother, and she does become inconstant by messing around with, and eventually marrying, the Duke.

In conjunction with the sequestered nature of women, I also started thinking about the idea of foundlings, especially since this concept appears over and over again in Spenser's epic with characters such as Arthur, Belphobe, and Amoret. What to make of this right now, I don't know, but I like the idea.

Finally, I really enjoy the fact that Act I of Shakespeare's play begins with Polixenes' to leave Sicila. Leontes cannot convince him to stay, but Hermione can. At the beginning of Act IV, after 16 years have passed, Camillo attempts to leave Polixenes and Bohemia. However, Polixenes convinces him to say. Along with this conjunction between the first and second halves of The Winter's Tale, I also found the Shepherd's opening comments in the play (III.3) interesting. He says,

I would there were no age between ten
and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the
rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting
wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing,
fighting.

While these lines convey real wisdom from a rustic, they also, at least as far as I have read, convey a foreshadowing of Florizel's departure from court to visit Perdita. He's sixteen at the time. There may not be anything here, but I think the the Shepherd's comments then Polixenes' argument to keep Camillo in Bohemia have some type of connection. I could make something out of the pastoral setting, especially in relation to reading Spenser right now, but I will not.

The Fire Next Time

What can I say? Nothing really. Whatever I write here will utterly fail to do any justice to James Baldwin's words and ideas. So, I will begin with a brief clip from a speech he gave circa 1979 at UC Berkley.



When I get a better idea of what I want to say about the two work in The Fire Next Time, I will post them. Until then, let me know what thoughts you may have.