Thought for the day.

Being in a sock store is a good context in which to say "ahh, yes, socks, I think I'll need some socks."

The Critique Of Best Thing Of Time Lists

At the end of a year, and the end of a decade, it's obviously going to be a big time for Best Things Of The Time list. Of which the most common, or at least the most salient to me, seems to be Best Album lists. Like this one, this one, etc. Naturally I'm tempted to make one myself. But I start to wonder about the point of them. Like, what's the purpose? What are they trying to do? What would I be attempting to achieve by constructing and publishing such a list?

Obviously the answer is going to be different for me, just some dude writing on a blog primarily read by friends, than it is for something like Pitchfork, a widely read review site which represents more than the tastes of a single mind.

The most immediate and cynical answer is that they're about showing off how excellent your own taste in music is. I think this is the kind of answer that is presumed by some comments I got regarding my anachronistic top five list last year, that it displayed (and perhaps parodied) a certain standard exhibitionist structure, having a slightly surprising choice at number 1 (to be attention grabbing), an obviously great album at number 2 (to reassure audiences that I do have tastes that it is possible to relate to), something completely obscure at number 3 (to show of my obscure music cred), etc. My most immediate reaction to this comment was just "But, no, I actually think those were the best albums of that year, in that order." My more measured reaction was to think maybe I did not-so-consciously construct it that way.

A second answer, and one that particularly appeals to me, is that they are a purely self-indulgent, self-investigatory exercise: I've listened to all this music, I have some vague opinions about their values, and their relative values, and I'd like to just make it all a bit more explicit by ordering the albums, and writing a bit about each of them to justify my choices to myself. On this way of seeing it, actually publishing the list here on a blog is completely incidental; the real audience is myself, and actually writing it up, and apparently addressing it to an external reader, is just a way of ensuring that my thoughts are coherent, orderly, fairly argued, and understandable. This answer appeals to me because I already do plenty of things that look like this. For example, I construct iTunes playlists just of those songs that have brought me to tears, or those by Canadian artists. There's not much use to such lists, to me or anyone else, it's just that I like the idea of having access to reliable information about this. You know, for implausible emergencies? Again, what the hell is the point of using something like last.fm if not to gather pointless information on myself; it's not like anyone else would look at that information as much as I do. But the problem with that kind of information is that it's all purely descriptive, and unjustified. The end of year list thing is so interesting to me because it is a more evaluative form of this same kind of activity, and so, I think, much more valuable in itself.

Another purely self-interested answer to the question, and a related one, is: By resolving to make such a Best Of Year list, I thereby give myself some motivation to actually listen out all the albums in the year that I may've missed, that I have vaguely heard might be good, or that I've listened to, but not quite carefully enough. So with that list from last year, I actually went out of my way to hear all of This Year's Model, Excitable Boy and Peter Gabriel's first self titled album, just for the purposes of writing that post, which was a totally worthwhile exercise.

Another less solipsistic answer is the friendly suggestion that a good reason to make such a list is just to recommend awesome albums to everyone who might read the post. This obviously looks like the most noble answer, so it'd be nice if it were true. Unfortunately I'm not convinced that it is true, or if it is that it's particularly sensible. I mean, why wait until the end of the year, instead of just recommending stuff as it comes? Why try to recommend some set of 10 albums to everyone, rather than tailoring your recommendations to individuals? Why make such a list when there are already so many other people making such lists, such that if everyone was doing it for this purpose it would be collectively self-defeating, as everyone would have too many recommendations coming in all at the same time to possibly heed a significant number of them? Why force recommendations into such an unnatural format as an arbitrary amount of albums over an arbitrary period of time? The best answer to all these questions is probably just "it being the end of the year gives one a decent excuse to do it now, rather than never. The arbitrary format makes it doable without too much creativity." Also, despite all those issues, I can't deny the thought going through my head when I write such a list, "Man, everyone should totally love this album as much as I do." Though if I were to believe (and correctly understand) Kant, this may just be part of the idea that, in making an aesthetic judgement, I universalise it.

Finally, there is the possibility that the making of top 10 type lists at the end of a year is just some arbitrary Music Nerd tradition. Problem with this answer, of course, is that plenty of music nerds don't do it, so you're still going to need something like one of the above answers to account for those who do.

But then, of course, the most obvious conclusion is that all of the above considerations/motivations go into the construction of such lists. Still, I am still inclined to say that, for myself, the self-justificatory reason is still my strongest. Anyway, all that said, I will now go on to not end this post with such a list!

Try as I might, I could not stop them entering.

I have a certain problem.

In Scotland, there is a not insignificant sheep population. 7,131,000 sheep, according to some random internet source, which would make one sheep per person. This is admittedly somewhat less than Australia's equally dubiously estimated five sheep per capita. The difference, though, is that in Scotland, I seem to see the sheep all the time. They line the roads to Stirling, and roam the hills of Skye. I literally can't walk to the supermarket without passing a small flock (well okay, literally I could if I changed my route).


"But," I hear you say, "sheep are awesome. What's the problem?"

Well, I was getting to that. The problem is that whenever I see a bunch of sheep I instantly get the Robert Wyatt song Heaps Of Sheeps stuck in my head. I barely even noticed this song hiding in my library a month ago, but now rarely a day goes by that I don't think of it.


Now, of course, it must be said that it is a pretty great song! Dreamy and atmospheric... Lyrically amusing... Catchy, but in a Robert Wyatt kind of way. Which seems to be a good thing. So yeah, sure, it's fine. My only worry would be... If this continues. If six months from now I'm still humming Heaps Of Sheeps, secluding myself in some abandoned Folly, hiding from civilised society and the prying eyes of the ubiquitous sheep, clad only in a blanket ironically constructed from the very wool of the very sheeps that haunt me still. I would find myself clutching to my one remaining hope, that someday I may be free from the harrowing influence of the demon sheep, as Global Warming will have shrunk them down to nothing.



Of course, all that is pretty unlikely to happen. So I don't really know why I brought it up.

Skye? Hi!

So I went to the Isle of Skye with the St. Andrews Philosophy Reading Party last weekend, and it was excellent. Unfortunately, I don't feel I have much to say about it, basically because a certain James has already said it all, with greater vividity and thoroughness than I suspect I could muster (and that may be the first time in my life I have spelt "thoroughness" correctly without assistance).

Still, I suppose I could just point out the two major points of departure between our experiences!

1) I went there and back via the minibus, rather than in Simon's car. This was probably a less exciting affair, as my inability to go for extended periods of time without filling my ears with music, and my tendency to get carsick if I tried to turn around to converse with the Americans behind me, combined to incline me towards listening to my iPod much of the way up. Of course, that was kinda awesome, because the music was great. Just felt a taaad anti-social.

2) Sadly I did not join Konrad's acclaimed car trip to Talisker Rock, as I was heartily losing a game of Munchkin when it began (fun fact for Munchkin aficionados!: during this game I reached level 7, but then lost to the Wright Brothers. Back to level 1! Awesome). I did, however, later join a six-person stroll to said rock, and encountered the returning Konrad-Car en route, plus one rambling Skorupski. It was bracing, but involved significantly fewer seaweed-swords. Took about 4 hours there and back.

All in all, an excellent time! Rocks, waters, foods, conversations, sheeps... All one could possibly want from life. Or five things one could possibly want from life, anyway.

Glasgow and Richman. Mostly Richman.

So, I went to Glasgow to see Jonathan Richman. It was pretty good, the whole thing!

I took a train up from St. Andrews, which was cheaper than I expected (about £16 pound return), took about as long as I expected (around 3 hours each way, with a quick change at Edinburgh), and about as pleasant as I might've hoped (listened to musics the whole way, looked out the windows).

Glasgow was... Glaswegian. You know, city, pretty, nice. I visited Forbidden Planet and bought myself some more Scott Pilgrim for whatever reason. I had an excellent Goats Cheese Salad. I checked out some galleries and museums. Continued to be uninterested by classic art, continued to be excited by modern art, continued to... Be in transport museums for some reason.


Speaking of classic art... I saw Jonathan Richman! This is a valid segue, as he sang a song about Vermeer, and another about Pablo Picasso.

I suspect no one I know who is reading this blog listens to Jonathan Richman, possibly despite my occasional prompting, so here's an intro: He's an American musician from Boston, who made an excellent, classic Punk-inspiring album in the early 70s, then decided he didn't want to do that any more, and started making naively innocent, childlike music, then deeply affected sentimental singer/songwriter type stuff. For lack of a better description. That wasn't a great introduction. Anyway, the point is that he has this certain nerdy, sensitive, innocent persona, and a few metric tons of sincerity to back it up. He also has a certain history, with a catalogue of hits that are stylistically very disjoint from his current way of writing and performing music. Luckily, I think most in the room (which was nicely packed) were very familiar with all his work, and there to see the modern Richman, not the early 70s one. Incidentally, the average age would've been... Early 40s probably. I have such old-man tastes.

Anyway, the performance was great. Purely joyful. Never have I seen a performer smile so damn much while on stage. Never have I heard so much handclapping and singing from an audience. The band consisted of him on guitar, plus one Tommy Larkins on drums. Occasionally he would put down the guitar to pick up a cowbell, or just dance awkwardly. Or to strike this pose:


Yes, that is a terrible pose, but he did it, like, 4 times, and it always got a bit of a cheer. By which I mean Audience Going Wild. He was very capable of creating such a reaction. It's something to do with Absurdly Endearing Sincerity, I think. Also, he had a few techniques like... Well, the mid-song banter was always enjoyable (like in the middle of Egyptian Reggae, "Who would've thought this would be a hit record?"). And he has a way of encoring individual songs, which I've never really seen before. As in, when a song gets a particularly good reaction, he picks up his guitar again and runs through the chorus a few more times. Which tends to just create an even bigger reaction. He did it twice with No One Was Like Vermeer, and gave the delightful impression that he would never finish with his last song of the night, My Baby Love Love Loves Me, which had most of the audience singing along (fairly incompetently, which really didn't matter).

Anyway, in case anyone cares, or at least for my own memoryification, here's what he played!:
1) I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar (An insanely good choice of opening, as it immediately encourages both singing and dancing)
2) Pablo Picasso (With a great spanish guitar kind of sound, which made it extremely dissimilar to the punky original)
3) Springtime In New York
4) Keith Richards (New. Excellent.)
5) Egyptian Reggae
6) When I Dance
7) Because Her Beauty Is Raw And Wild
8) Girlfriend
9) Time Has Gone By So Fast
10) Let Her Go Into The Darkness (My least favourite of the night, for whatever reason)
11) Mr. Sorrow (?) (New? Pretty good!)
12) Old World (This is pretty interesting, because it's on both his first, and his latest albums. Back then he says he "stills loves the Old World," these days he wants to "say goodbye to the Old World." Time seems to have made him less nostalgic.)
13) Stultified (?) (New. Rather good!)
14) No One Was Like Vemeer (Best song of the night, for my money)
15) Le Printemps Des Amoureux Est Venu (So French.)
16) Es Como El Pan (An excellent song, even if it's twelve times too Spanish for me to understand.)
17) My Affected Accent (New? Look, no online video is going to capture how great this concert or this song was, but I'm going to embed one below anyway)
18) This Romance Will Be Different For Me
19) My Baby Love Love Loves Me

So yes, this was one of the greatest concerts I've been to, and well worth excellent-anyway trip to Glasgow. It's made me somewhat more optimistic about the idea of travelling to another city in order to see a gig now and then, even though it was quite a bit more expensive than, you know, just living in the same city. Maybe it'll be easier going to Edinburgh, but they don't seem to get quite so many good shows there, alas. Here is some kind of video!:

Parfit, Sidgwick, and Kant.

As may be clear to people who know me well, or long time readers of this blog, I'm rather fond of the philosopher Derek Parfit. His book, Reasons & Persons, is one of the greatest I have read. Despite this, I have for a long time put off reading the draft manuscript of his (maybe) soon-to-be-released book that has been floating around the internet for so long, originally titled Climbing The Mountain, now apparently called On What Matters. I usually figure I might wait until it comes out in book form, thinking that I'd prefer not to read something of such length online, and that it is, after all, still a draft. But after reading a paper in which this draft manuscript is actually cited, I thought I might check it out again. I downloaded the latest draft (approximately 600 pages long), and read the introduction.

This is how it begins:

While describing how he came to write his great, drab book The
Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick remarks that he had ‘two masters’: Kant and Mill. My two masters are Sidgwick and Kant.

I have already fallen in love with this book. Though it is early days yet (Parfit explains that he came to Kant in the 90s, well after having written Reasons & Persons), I am inclined to say that my two masters, at this point, are Sidgwick and Parfit. He goes on to discuss his two masters for the rest of the introduction. His quote-heavy musings on Sidgwick echo my own; the man is a brilliantly clear, careful writer, always precise, rarely wrong, frequently dry. And, of course, to the right kind of temperament, very inspiring.

His thoughts on Kant, of course, struck me somewhat harder. As you may also know, I am not a man who is fond of Kant. I can't say I've read much of his work, I probably haven't even got through The Groundwork Of The Metaphysics Of Morals (I actually can't remember). Parfit claims "It is Kant who made really bad
writing philosophically acceptable." (I have recently heard it claimed, by a German, that he is actually easier to read in the English translations). Parfit portrays Kant as a really angry man, who is at his best when he calms the hell down. He shows Kant to be a self-contradictory, frequently incorrect extremist, redeemed by the occasional profound truth.

To be honest, I am not overwhelmingly convinced to make the leap into Kant's oeuvre just yet. In coming to St. Andrews, I had the option of taking a course on Kant, but quickly opted for Philosophers Of The Scottish Enlightenment instead. However, I have again heard the familiar claim that there is something a bit odd in reaching this point in a Philosophical career without having taken a course about Kant. Perhaps I shall take solice in the thought that Parfit himself came to Kant only rather late in his Philosophical career, and after producing at least one masterwork. He writes: "...unlike some [of] Kant’s other readers, I never hated Kant, and I have now made my peace with him." I am not sure this could ever be true of me: I think I may just already hate Kant.

So, St. Andrews eh?

I'm in St. Andrews! How about that. It's pretty good here. Good weather, a decent supermarket (Morrison's?) not tooo far away (though some kind of Harris Farms type place would be delightful (UPDATE!: I just had a salad made of stuff from Morrison's, and it was Delicious! So, good stuff. Their range isn't huge (fresh fruit/vegwise), but their produce is good!)). The uni is good, the classes are good, the people are good, the Good is good, the good good good good. Everyone I meet seems to think I'm English. Or occasionally American. Or, in one case, German. No one yet has managed to guess that I'm Australian. Until I tell them, I mean. Then they guess it, on the basis of fairly strong evidence.

Here's where I'm living, a flat in a university-housing-complex-thing by the name of Albany Park:


It's a rather horrible looking building, and not that much prettier on the inside, especially since I've already made a mess of my room:



Also, it can be kinda loud, especially when people... Open doors. It was also incredibly hot, until I worked out how to turn the radiator down. Anyway, the surroundings are much prettier. Here's the view from my window:


See, a view of the ocean! If you can look past the Other Horrible Albany Park Buildings, and Car Parks and whatnot. Still, pretty awesome walking along the beach to and from uni. In fact, here's some shots of the beach! It has a sandy part, and a rocky part. The rocky part rocks. The sandy part... Also has its merits.



And because I can't think of anything much witty or interesting to accompany it, here's a picture of Albany Park/St. Andrews from atop a hill:


And here's a picture of my feet, which were frickin' cold after taking these photos.


I don't think I'll be walking around barefoot any more, at least until Winter's over.