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The lyrics to the Helsinki complaints are here: http://www.complaintschoir.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=197
I might be biased, but I liked the Jerusalem Complaints Choir best of all the ones available here: http://www.complaintschoir.org/choirs.html
From http://complaintschoir.org/choirs.html, we have this explanation:
In the Finnish vocabulary there is an expression Valituskuoro. It means “Complaints Choir” and it is used to describe situations where a lot of people are complaining simultaneously. Kalleinen and Kochta-Kalleinen thought: “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to take this expression literally and organise a real Complaints Choir!”
It’s brilliant: sweet and funny and true.
I admit that I haven’t been keeping up with Since You Asked as much lately, but that’s only a special case of not having kept up with anything that doesn’t have a schedule lately. He’s a good writer and some recent topics have been interesting, so even though the intro wasn’t compelling today, I followed the link. The letter was odd, rambling, long. I read it mostly because I wondered what the heck Cary was going to make of the mess. His response spilled over to an extra page, and I clicked through to page two mostly because I couldn’t quite make sense of where he was going with the response, and then I stumbled onto this:
…as creative people, in the scale of things, our own personal difficulties and hurts do not matter — not in and of themselves: They only matter to the degree that they help us to connect with others. They matter because we use our shame and humiliation to imagine how it feels to be beaten with electrical wires, to be housed in a lightless grave for months on end, to be led to the ovens. Our little suffering is of no importance except where it allows us to connect….
There’s more, and I recommend reading it all. He has a book of these questions and answers, too. I haven’t read it yet, so I don’t know if he included the question that got me hooked, but I feel confident in recommending it. After all, everyone loved Ask the Pilot’s book last year!
Even if you’re not the sort to follow links in blogs, stop now and go read Cary’s response to the question on http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/col/tenn/2005/08/10/phone_breakup/ out loud now. Seriously. Oh, just do it.
So I do start The Year of Living Biblically last night, and find that one of AJ’s advisors is Andy Bachman, whose blog you will find linked off of The Child’s blog, which is in the list to the left. The Child credits him with inspiring him to aspire to be a rabbi, so I’m taking this as a good sign. Not that I need good signs–the book is fine on its own so far!
BTW: My guess about the timing was wrong, though. The child created during Know-It-All is only a tot when the author comes up with the idea for the book.
So AJ Jacobs was amusing when he spoke at the opening night of the Jewish Book Fair. I was a fan from reading Know-It-All, but hadn’t expected to rush out and buy his new book in hardback, but he was so charming and all that that I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get an autograph. If you are a Jewcy person, you can find out more about him there; a suggested start is this one. He describes himself as Jewish, in the same way that the Olive Garden is Italian. I haven’t started reading it yet, but during his talk, it sounded like the religious school bomb went off when his eldest hit the appropriate age. It’s amazing how strong the urge to inflict religious school on your children can be. I’m glad it’s a better experience than continues to improve.
So I haven’t started reading The Year of Living Biblically yet because I’d been finishing up Collapse. It’s no Guns, Germs & Steel, but better than Why is Sex Fun? Some parts are fascinating, but towards the end, I felt like I was reading lecture notes. I’m all in favor of Anthropology, Archeology and History, but calls to action aren’t as thrilling.
Except for “King Corn”! It starts a week-long run at Alamo Ritz on Friday, and so I’m doubly thrilled. When I walked past the Ritz on Halloween, Read the rest of this entry »
