Alex Jones's Blog, page 4
May 10, 2023
Romantic (and nostalgic) in the rain
All I can say is that my life is pretty plain, and I like watching the puddles gather rain.
All I can do is read a book to stay awake, it rips my life away, but it's a great escape.
Blind Melon
All I can do is read a book to stay awake, it rips my life away, but it's a great escape.
Blind Melon
May 5, 2023
Thank you, Mr. Vonnegut
In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond:
“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!"
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Thank you Ravenous Butterflies for the tip.
“Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!"
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Thank you Ravenous Butterflies for the tip.
May 4, 2023
Spring surprise
This is one of those gorgeous spring mornings when the air is crisp and clear, the birds are chirping joyfully as they flutter about, the trees are lush with glimmering emerald foliage, flowers are bloomng everywhere you look, even blossoming from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the golden sunlight cascading from above seems to banish all shadows. Spring in the city pulls all the darkness from your thinking, to quote Belle and Sebastian.
And then in my first meeting of the day I reach into my bag and realize that my cat threw up on my agenda.
OK, good to have a little perspective. Thanks, Peanut!
And then in my first meeting of the day I reach into my bag and realize that my cat threw up on my agenda.
OK, good to have a little perspective. Thanks, Peanut!
May 2, 2023
The Bilingual Brain - Choose Your Language
In most of the interviews I've done, sooner or later the interviewer will sort of squint and smile and ask me this question: "Why did you choose to write Il Traduttore in Italian?"
Of course that question is asked to me in Italian... Perchè hai scelto di scrivere Il Traduttore in Italiano?... because, yes, all the interviews about Il Traduttore have been done in Italian. The book doesn't exist in English. Not yet, anyway. It's all a little bit weird and convoluted when I start thinking about it. I've lived less than half my life in Italy, and then somewhere along the line, I decided to write a book in my second language - Italian. And yet, no, I never actually decided that, it was not part of any master plan, like Jhumpa Lahiri and her longterm plan to write in Italian, which she acheived with "In Other Words." Well done Jhumpa. But my path was not a path, it was more like a hunter-and-gatherer who emerges from the forest and realizes he must adapt to this newfangled thing called civilization. It just happened.
On the other hand, the answer I end up giving my interviewers is more straightforward: "I wrote it in Italian because the main character, Patrick Bird, lives in Italy (like me) and is surrounded by Italian friends and colleagues (like me) and his participation in the plot is that of an "adopted" Italian (yep). The narrative point of view would have been totally skewed and ersatz if Patrick had explained everything in English (bizarre that I am doing exactly that right now) because he participates in the story as an INSIDER. He's not some kind of anthropologist describing the crazy locals for the folks back home. He has "gone native."
That's the key right there. You speak the local language and you are an insider. You are inevitably part of the local community. If you don't speak the local language, you automatically set yourself apart as an outsider. The foreigner who speaks the local language is of course still an outsider (he or she will never totally master the local accent and will always make frustrating little mistakes that the locals perceive as cute) but now he or she is "our" outsider. The ex-foreigner who has now been accepted into the tribe. It's speaking the local language which allows for this passage-slash-transformation, nothing else will do the trick.
Being bilingual, speaking a foreign language... it never gets old. It's something I find endlessly fascinating. Besides getting accepted by the locals, speaking a foreign language allows you to break through the iron bars of your mother tongue, allows you to see what's been beyond saying for much of your life and imagine totally new expressions. What could be more intellectually stimulating than that?
Sure, if you want to say "The cat is on the table" it's the same in Italian "Il gatto sta sul tavolo." But things start to swerve off into unexpected directions pretty quick. Let's think about food, about eating. In English if you enjoyed eating in a restaurant, you'll probably say, "The food was great." But in Italian it would sound weird to say "Il cibo era buono," it would almost come across like saying "The food wasn't rotten or expired." In Italian in that circumstance you'd say "Si mangia bene" which translates as "You eat well there." What is being expressed is the experience of eating, the overall quality of the act itself, which includes, yes, the quality of the food but goes well beyond. In English we don't perceive the experience in the same way, we focus on the food. Only by learning a foreign language would such an expression make itself "sayable" because without learning that foreign language, that particular way of describing the experience will never have occurred to you.
I could go on about this for days. And sometimes I do, when talking to other bilingual friends.
But in interviews I keep it short and sweet. I keep to my straightfoward answer, which is, after all, totally authentic and, I hope, a little insightful as well.
Of course that question is asked to me in Italian... Perchè hai scelto di scrivere Il Traduttore in Italiano?... because, yes, all the interviews about Il Traduttore have been done in Italian. The book doesn't exist in English. Not yet, anyway. It's all a little bit weird and convoluted when I start thinking about it. I've lived less than half my life in Italy, and then somewhere along the line, I decided to write a book in my second language - Italian. And yet, no, I never actually decided that, it was not part of any master plan, like Jhumpa Lahiri and her longterm plan to write in Italian, which she acheived with "In Other Words." Well done Jhumpa. But my path was not a path, it was more like a hunter-and-gatherer who emerges from the forest and realizes he must adapt to this newfangled thing called civilization. It just happened.
On the other hand, the answer I end up giving my interviewers is more straightforward: "I wrote it in Italian because the main character, Patrick Bird, lives in Italy (like me) and is surrounded by Italian friends and colleagues (like me) and his participation in the plot is that of an "adopted" Italian (yep). The narrative point of view would have been totally skewed and ersatz if Patrick had explained everything in English (bizarre that I am doing exactly that right now) because he participates in the story as an INSIDER. He's not some kind of anthropologist describing the crazy locals for the folks back home. He has "gone native."
That's the key right there. You speak the local language and you are an insider. You are inevitably part of the local community. If you don't speak the local language, you automatically set yourself apart as an outsider. The foreigner who speaks the local language is of course still an outsider (he or she will never totally master the local accent and will always make frustrating little mistakes that the locals perceive as cute) but now he or she is "our" outsider. The ex-foreigner who has now been accepted into the tribe. It's speaking the local language which allows for this passage-slash-transformation, nothing else will do the trick.
Being bilingual, speaking a foreign language... it never gets old. It's something I find endlessly fascinating. Besides getting accepted by the locals, speaking a foreign language allows you to break through the iron bars of your mother tongue, allows you to see what's been beyond saying for much of your life and imagine totally new expressions. What could be more intellectually stimulating than that?
Sure, if you want to say "The cat is on the table" it's the same in Italian "Il gatto sta sul tavolo." But things start to swerve off into unexpected directions pretty quick. Let's think about food, about eating. In English if you enjoyed eating in a restaurant, you'll probably say, "The food was great." But in Italian it would sound weird to say "Il cibo era buono," it would almost come across like saying "The food wasn't rotten or expired." In Italian in that circumstance you'd say "Si mangia bene" which translates as "You eat well there." What is being expressed is the experience of eating, the overall quality of the act itself, which includes, yes, the quality of the food but goes well beyond. In English we don't perceive the experience in the same way, we focus on the food. Only by learning a foreign language would such an expression make itself "sayable" because without learning that foreign language, that particular way of describing the experience will never have occurred to you.
I could go on about this for days. And sometimes I do, when talking to other bilingual friends.
But in interviews I keep it short and sweet. I keep to my straightfoward answer, which is, after all, totally authentic and, I hope, a little insightful as well.
April 27, 2023
Pleased to meet you
I'm an American from Atlanta who's lived in Italy for over twenty years. I work as an English professor at the University of Parma. I also translate, do live interpreting, work as a "voice actor" (dubbing and voice-overs), write and perform for the theatre, coach flag football, help organize a monthly storytelling group, and sing in a punk band called the "No Bones."
See what I mean about "cutting out the backstory"? There's plenty going on in the here an now.
Did I mention my wife and I have two teenaged children and a dog named Pesca and a cat named Peanut?
Most importantly, for the purposes of this blog and being a "Goodreads Author," I have written a novel in Italian called Il Traduttore which was published by Massimo Soncini Editore.
Pleased to meet you.
Piacere.
See what I mean about "cutting out the backstory"? There's plenty going on in the here an now.
Did I mention my wife and I have two teenaged children and a dog named Pesca and a cat named Peanut?
Most importantly, for the purposes of this blog and being a "Goodreads Author," I have written a novel in Italian called Il Traduttore which was published by Massimo Soncini Editore.
Pleased to meet you.
Piacere.
April 26, 2023
Backstory cut-out
Cutting out the backstory, The writer in me knows that there'll always be time to add that later, if at all... I remember a line from Richard Ford's "independence Day" something like "readers dread hearing that slow creaking sound of the writer opening his personal Davy Jones Locker in the middle of a cracking good story." So I'm going to raise a glass to Richard and leave my own Davy Jones Locker shut tight, for now.
April 24, 2023
Howdy! What am I doing here?
Walking down the street in Parma today, wearing my University of Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt, an older man and his wife smiled at me and said, "Go Dawgs!"
We stopped and chatted for a a few minutes: Gary is a retired UGA grad, worked for decades as a Major League Baseball scout, now on a two-month tour of Italy with his lovely wife Judy.
He said, "So, what are you doing here?" with a gentle, curious tone of voice, and because he's not only American but also a fellow Bulldog, there was no need to add "Sorry to pry."
We both knew and appreciated the fact that "What are you doing here?" is a welcome question for a couple of Georgia boys who just happened to cross paths in Parma, Italy.
TBC
We stopped and chatted for a a few minutes: Gary is a retired UGA grad, worked for decades as a Major League Baseball scout, now on a two-month tour of Italy with his lovely wife Judy.
He said, "So, what are you doing here?" with a gentle, curious tone of voice, and because he's not only American but also a fellow Bulldog, there was no need to add "Sorry to pry."
We both knew and appreciated the fact that "What are you doing here?" is a welcome question for a couple of Georgia boys who just happened to cross paths in Parma, Italy.
TBC
