[happy new year!]
[the neighbors]
Across the street from the South Korean Mission to the United Nations is a construction site where the new United States Mission to the United Nations is going up to replace the old United States Mission to the United Nations (picture of the entrance showing the seriously dated old architecture).
The new structure is designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Associates Architects, the same folks who brought us the architecturally muddled but kind of cool Astor Place Sculpture for Living, that grand symbol of the death of bohemian East Village. (Sorry, kids: the ongoing eastward migration of hipness has crossed the river, passed through Billyburg and settled on Bushwick — for the moment. If trends continue, hipsters will be living in Middle Village, Queens, by about 2050.)
Emporis has details, the most intresting being that the new structure will be 22 stories, with no windows on the first six floors to make it harder to blow the place up. Friendly. They’ve also got construction pics, including a nice shot showing the temporarily exposed flank of the Ugandan Mission and the Korean Mission across the street, behind the crane. From this photo, you can probably work out that we can peer down into the construction site from our windows.
Of course, there are other ways to get a look. Cryptome, a rather cryptic and moderately creepy website, has an Austrian-domain-hosted page full of pictures of North Korean diplomats and their Mission, towards the bottom of which are a couple of shots of the US Mission construction site, one of which is labeled “The New US Mission to the UN Under Construction at East 45th Street and 1st Avenue, Photographed Through a Vacant, Unlocked Guard Hut.” Nice.
Oh, and on a local note, the cement for the project is being provided by the Gowanus Canal’s own Quadrozzi, in whose trucks I am tempted to try hitching a ride to work.
[immortal]
James Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006)
So the Mothership has come to collect. On Christmas no less. Even his death has a kind of rhythm.
James Brown is dead, but James Brown will never die. As long as human beings still listen to the popular music of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries, they’ll be hearing James Brown. He’s everywhere, especially now that hip-hop has become a global music with a reach even greater than rock and roll.
I’d say rest in peace, but that was never JB’s style. The funk goes on, and wherever James is now, they’re all gonna have a funky good time.
[dinkum]
I need to learn other Englishes. This thought occurred to me as I read the word “dinkum” in a New York Review article by Clive James about Robert Hughes.
I know American English in great detail, including its slang, its clichés, its style and usage. With British English I am less richly familiar, but I have a good sense of it. And I have had at least some exposure to Indian English. But what about Australian English? New Zealand, South African, Jamaican English?
I have found my exposure to other Englishes — including the broken Englishes of non-native speakers — to be rewarding. I should make an effort to pursue the literatures of other Englishes.
[speeches]
I’ve just updated the speeches section of Palaverist, including a link to Secretary-General-Designate Ban Ki-moon’s acceptance statement from back in September, when he was first appointed.
[holiday greetings]
Silent Night | The Baby Jesus | Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer | Noël | Little Drummer Boy | Jingle Bells | White Christmas | Santa Claus Is Coming to Town | Love Is | The Three Wise Men by 슬기둥 (Sulgidoong) (캐롤집 [Carol House]) (Via Music from Korea)
Happy Yule! The actual solstice will take place at 7:22 pm this evening.
Happy Chanukah! Tonight we will light seven candles, and tomorrow night will be the full eight (in both cases not counting the shamash, which is used to light and stand guard over the other candles).
And a few days early, a Merry Christmas! We’ll be spending ours with Jenny’s niece Emily, some aunts we don’t know, and a pot roast. We do not expect the pot roast to survive.
Today’s musical selection is an unusual twist on the old (and not-so-old) Christmas carols. Seulgidoong is, according to the only information I could find, “a leading modern chamber ensemble devoted to popularization of traditional music by modernizing it. Its 9 members have given distinguished performances of their unique music. They combine traditional music and new world of music in a unique way to create an original repertoire.” Sure. I’m not convinced it’s genius or anything, but hey, how many times have you heard “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” played on gayageum and geomungo?
[live]
I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again | Not a Crime | 60 Revolutions (YouTube Videos) by Gogol Bordello (Gypsy Punk World Strike)
When I was younger, rock concerts were major events in my life. I would find out about a show through a listing in BAM or the Guardian, buy my tickets early and let the anticipation build over weeks or even months. Against the backdrop of tedious mediocrity that was high school, an upcoming concert was a glowing beacon, a reminder that there was a grander, funkier, freakier world out there and that I could access it if I wanted to. Going to these concerts, I knew I was a part of something larger than myself. And back in high school afterwards, I would be sustained by the secret knowledge I’d gained at the Stone or the Omni or the Phoenix Theatre, seeing Primus or Soundgarden or Fungo Mungo: I am not like the rest of you. This is not my whole world.
Once I had a car, concerts became less of a big deal to get to, and consequently less of a big deal. What had once been a breakthrough to an ecstatic new world was now a mostly enjoyable but fairly regular amusement. Once I moved to New York in ’93, concerts became even less meaningful. Try as I might, I failed to find any scene in New York that could stand up to the multi-ethnic, genre-muddling loopiness of the Bay Area. Where bands back home wore wild costumes and leaped around like lunatics, the East Coast scene seemed to require that bands dress badly and stand around looking bored.
Concerts still involved painful noise, crowds, cigarette smoke, long lines, overpriced tickets, late nights, sweat, bad drinks and horrendous opening acts, but the payoff was less. I no longer needed rock concerts to help me locate myself in the world or feel cool.
I’ve been to plenty of concerts in the years since then by artists I really like, but it’s rare that I’ve felt that old sense of anticipation. Today, though, it’s back. Tonight, I’m going to see Gogol Bordello at Irving Plaza, and I feel the giddy thrill of adventure in store. Check out the live clips and you’ll see why.
Bonus: Not a Crime (Video)
[good grades]
I am happy to report that my brother got his grades back from his first semester at Arizona State University, and he has a 3.93 GPA. Well done!
[when do we plan?]
A curious difference between English and Korean is the way we refer to future intentions.
In English, we say the phrase “I plan to” in present tense to indicate something we intend to do in the future: I plan to go home.
Like English, Korean has several different structures to indicate different levels of intentionality. In English, we construct these forms out of various words that color the meaning: I’m thinking of going; I mean to go; I plan to go. In Korean, it’s done with verb endings that don’t have independent meaning.
For the strongest level of intentionality short of I will — translated by my textbook as plan to — Korean uses the form ~기로 하다 (~giro hada). And what strikes me as interesting is that the past tense — ~기로 했어요 (~giro haesseoyo) — is used where we use the present.
Here’s an example:
Korean: 오늘 저는 집에 가기로 했어요. (Oneul jeoneun jip-e gagiro haesseoyo.)
Translation: I plan to go home today.
Literal translation: I planned to go home today.
I think the Korean formulation is more accurate in a certain sense. By the time something is set as your intention, you’re done with the planning. Of course, the Korean grammar form doesn’t quite literally mean to plan, so it’s hard to say. Still, the idea is that you set your intention in the past, and now that intention carries on separate from your ongoing creation of it. In English, by contrast, if you say I planned to go home today, the implication is that you now have a different intent; only by maintaining the plan in the present tense — by continuing to plan — do you demonstrate that your will remains firm.