There hasn't been a post for a while but I am not dead. Just very busy. Here is a lovely clip of New Year's Eve in Den Haag. It's pretty insane. Imagine the biggest unorganized firework event you've ever seen. Then imagine it going on for 14 hours. People were letting off fireworks at 10am on 31 December and it only increased in density until around 11pm when there was 2 straight hours of this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18VITJW2S98
Also, I now have a proper composer's website: http://www.davidpocknee.com
dp
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Monday, August 3, 2009
Da Vinci Diary
So, on Saturday I started reading 'The Da Vinci Code'. In Dutch. Why? Because I have been frequently told it is exremely badly written and designed for people with a reading age of five, hence it should be at a perfect level for my purpose of trying to learn Dutch. Or so I thought.
On Saturday I read the first 2 and a half pages. It took me one and a half hours.
The next pages were a bit easier and, once I got into the habit of ignoring all words that I didn't know that weren't verbs or nouns (screw you adjectives! Why do I need to know what type of hand a person has? Isn't it enough to know that they have a hand?) by Sunday I had managed to reach page 25. During this laborious process I did pick up plenty of vocabulary though and the sentence structure is really easy to follow, plus, the dialogue is so cliched you can pretty much guess what they're saying even if you don't know some of the words. I shall give a full lowdown of the intricacies of reading The Da Vinci code in the next podcast.
So: Start Date: 1 August 2009
Da Vinci Diary.
Date: 2 August 2009, Page 25.
On Saturday I read the first 2 and a half pages. It took me one and a half hours.
The next pages were a bit easier and, once I got into the habit of ignoring all words that I didn't know that weren't verbs or nouns (screw you adjectives! Why do I need to know what type of hand a person has? Isn't it enough to know that they have a hand?) by Sunday I had managed to reach page 25. During this laborious process I did pick up plenty of vocabulary though and the sentence structure is really easy to follow, plus, the dialogue is so cliched you can pretty much guess what they're saying even if you don't know some of the words. I shall give a full lowdown of the intricacies of reading The Da Vinci code in the next podcast.
So: Start Date: 1 August 2009
Da Vinci Diary.
Date: 2 August 2009, Page 25.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
On The Spice Girls
Following the death of Michael Jackson I realised there was a lucrative market for articles evaluating a celebrity's contribution to popular culture. To this end I submit this piece which any national newspaper can feel free to use should all of the Spice Girls suddenly become tragically and permanently mangled in a propeller-related speedboat accident:
On The Spice Girls
The Spice Girls were one of the defining groups of the past ten years. Though their output was sometimes controversial, none could claim it was not challenging, thought-provoking or ground breaking.
Taking their name from the commodity mined in Frank Herbert’s acclaimed Science Fiction masterpiece, Dune, few could deny the power that the group wielded over popular culture. Though their visual aesthetics were often lightweight and fivrolous, the music was anything but. The lyrics, often impenetrable, with their densely-packed metaphors and multilayered meanings, both puzzled and delighted the general public and created an obsession among fans.
Take this fragment from their breakthrough hit Wannabee:
"Aisle tail ewe wart eye warned
War tie real leery Lee warned
Eye warner, eye warned her, eye war now real leery leery Lee won a sicker sicker
A few warn abbey mile loafer
Hue go toga twee them I’ve wren does.
May king loafer raver
French hip nave horrendous.”
The first stanza seems to make a Shakespearean link to the witches in the first scene of Macbeth; their references to ‘tail’s, ‘eyes’, and ‘warts’ mirror the similar items the witches use in their diabolical potions. The extract also seems to make frequent religious references: ‘aisle’, ‘abbey’, and ‘nave’ are all mentioned, perhaps hinting at a spiritual dimension to the song - but also notice that these are all physical manifestations of religion. In this song, the spiritual is firmly fixed in the real world! Throughout the extract there is a sense of foreboding, the first stanza refers repeatedly to warning someone, or something, and ‘war’, ‘eyes’ and ‘leery’ are frequently mentioned, seeming to indicate the song is a satirical comment on our war, surveillance and alcohol-obssesed society.
However, the Girls’ intelligence was not just limited to the music medium. In 1999 they made the jump into film. The movie was Spiceworld, an allegorical retelling of Herbert’s Dune and a scarralous and biting sideswipe at David Lynch’s adaptation, which they felt was “ill-conceived, badly executed and devoid of the edge, verve and energy of the original – a sorry excuse for an adaptation which is almost without merit and destroys anything that was beautiful in the original source text”. No wonder that Lynch famously refuses to speak about The Spice Girls and has never metioned them in an interview.
The accompanying album, also entitled Spiceworld, was a conceptual affair based around Herbert’s text and, though misunderstood by critics, remains their finest work.
With their intelligence worn firmly on their sleeve and their unashamed love of Science Fiction, it was not long before other female artists took up the Girls’ powerfully feminist and unashamedly Geek outlook. Britney Spears took up the Spice Girls’ mantle with her 1998 Marquis De Sade-inspired concept album: Hit Me Baby, One More Time’.
Spears took De Sade’s intelletuallism, poeticism and sexuality to create a steaming mix of surrealist imagery. Its origins were in Rene Char, but it was littered with references to the free-associative writings of Joyce and Woolf and flashes of Chaucer, as can be seen in her breakthrough hit, Hit Me Baby, One More Time:
“Mile own lean essays skill in me
I’m a scone fair’s iced elbow leaf
When arm gnaw twee the yew aisle ooze my mined
Soak if mere sign
He to me bay bee won matt aim”
The Spice Girls have left an indelible print on contemporary culture with their forthright intellectualism, proto-feminist ‘Girl Power’ sloganeering, and unabashed love of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Hopefully their trailblazing impression will be felt for many years to come.
dp
On The Spice Girls
The Spice Girls were one of the defining groups of the past ten years. Though their output was sometimes controversial, none could claim it was not challenging, thought-provoking or ground breaking.
Taking their name from the commodity mined in Frank Herbert’s acclaimed Science Fiction masterpiece, Dune, few could deny the power that the group wielded over popular culture. Though their visual aesthetics were often lightweight and fivrolous, the music was anything but. The lyrics, often impenetrable, with their densely-packed metaphors and multilayered meanings, both puzzled and delighted the general public and created an obsession among fans.
Take this fragment from their breakthrough hit Wannabee:
"Aisle tail ewe wart eye warned
War tie real leery Lee warned
Eye warner, eye warned her, eye war now real leery leery Lee won a sicker sicker
A few warn abbey mile loafer
Hue go toga twee them I’ve wren does.
May king loafer raver
French hip nave horrendous.”
The first stanza seems to make a Shakespearean link to the witches in the first scene of Macbeth; their references to ‘tail’s, ‘eyes’, and ‘warts’ mirror the similar items the witches use in their diabolical potions. The extract also seems to make frequent religious references: ‘aisle’, ‘abbey’, and ‘nave’ are all mentioned, perhaps hinting at a spiritual dimension to the song - but also notice that these are all physical manifestations of religion. In this song, the spiritual is firmly fixed in the real world! Throughout the extract there is a sense of foreboding, the first stanza refers repeatedly to warning someone, or something, and ‘war’, ‘eyes’ and ‘leery’ are frequently mentioned, seeming to indicate the song is a satirical comment on our war, surveillance and alcohol-obssesed society.
However, the Girls’ intelligence was not just limited to the music medium. In 1999 they made the jump into film. The movie was Spiceworld, an allegorical retelling of Herbert’s Dune and a scarralous and biting sideswipe at David Lynch’s adaptation, which they felt was “ill-conceived, badly executed and devoid of the edge, verve and energy of the original – a sorry excuse for an adaptation which is almost without merit and destroys anything that was beautiful in the original source text”. No wonder that Lynch famously refuses to speak about The Spice Girls and has never metioned them in an interview.
The accompanying album, also entitled Spiceworld, was a conceptual affair based around Herbert’s text and, though misunderstood by critics, remains their finest work.
With their intelligence worn firmly on their sleeve and their unashamed love of Science Fiction, it was not long before other female artists took up the Girls’ powerfully feminist and unashamedly Geek outlook. Britney Spears took up the Spice Girls’ mantle with her 1998 Marquis De Sade-inspired concept album: Hit Me Baby, One More Time’.
Spears took De Sade’s intelletuallism, poeticism and sexuality to create a steaming mix of surrealist imagery. Its origins were in Rene Char, but it was littered with references to the free-associative writings of Joyce and Woolf and flashes of Chaucer, as can be seen in her breakthrough hit, Hit Me Baby, One More Time:
“Mile own lean essays skill in me
I’m a scone fair’s iced elbow leaf
When arm gnaw twee the yew aisle ooze my mined
Soak if mere sign
He to me bay bee won matt aim”
The Spice Girls have left an indelible print on contemporary culture with their forthright intellectualism, proto-feminist ‘Girl Power’ sloganeering, and unabashed love of Frank Herbert’s Dune. Hopefully their trailblazing impression will be felt for many years to come.
dp
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Well, I moved house two weeks ago and I'm currently looking for a job for next year. I'll be back in England between 5-11 August, though.
I'm currently in the novel setion of the library and wondering if the Da Vinci Code (or 'Het Bernini Mysterie', as it is weirdly titled in Dutch) is badly enough written for me to be able to read it in Dutch...
dp
I'm currently in the novel setion of the library and wondering if the Da Vinci Code (or 'Het Bernini Mysterie', as it is weirdly titled in Dutch) is badly enough written for me to be able to read it in Dutch...
dp
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Podcast #8
The last podcast for this academic year as I shall not have internet for the next two months. It'll be the last podcast but I'll still come on here to put things into writing as I'm staying here over the summer.
It's all over at: http://haagcore.tumblr.com
dp
It's all over at: http://haagcore.tumblr.com
dp
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Haagcore 6 & 7
Haagcore 6&7 are now up at tumblr.com/haagcore. Hope you enjoy them. In my next podcast (#8)I shall be giving you a roundup of the academic year and a fond look back over the last 10 months. It will also be slightly more focused than the last couple, hopefully covering exclusively Dutch topics such as: Dutch politics, Finding somewhere to live in Den Haag, Dutch bureaucracy, Dutch smoking legislation and much, much more.
See you later,
dp
See you later,
dp
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Jumping ship
Hey, I've finally found a solution of where to host my podcasts. They can now be found at http://haagcore.tumblr.com/
I'll use this site for the podcasts and I think I'll keep this as the main blog.
There'll be two new blogs coming soon. Apologies for the lack of posting I have been very busy and there have been a few technical problems.
Hope all is cool.
dp
I'll use this site for the podcasts and I think I'll keep this as the main blog.
There'll be two new blogs coming soon. Apologies for the lack of posting I have been very busy and there have been a few technical problems.
Hope all is cool.
dp
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