May 12

100 Words: I'm trying to take a more embracing approach to blogging about reading. I don't want to feel defensive or like a failure, so there will be days when I don't read, and I want to be ok with that. On this vacation I've made it a point to disconnect from work, the soccer website, everything. Just enjoy my family, the vacation and everything that isn't home. It's done wonders for my brain, allowing me to enjoy myself in a way I rarely do at home. Not that I don't have fun, but I feel like there's always something in the back of my head that I'm behind on. Ruins too many good moments, worrying about other shit I haven't done yet. Today's reading was done on the flight home to El Paso. 

Summary: In the Seattle airport, waiting for our transfer to the El Paso flight, I passed by the SubPop store. I wandered in and avoided the vinyl (I had bought plenty in Portland). What caught my eye was a long row of the 33 1/3 books along the wall. The series is great for music lovers, as each one focuses on a single album. I love them. The one I picked out was Sigur Ros ( ). Effectively, the book is a long essay on an album I've long loved. Hayden focuses primarily on the language used by Jonsi throughout the album, Hopelandic. The language isn't a functional language in a communication sense, but is used oftentimes by the band in their music. The book was well-written and really helped me appreciate the album in a new way. One interesting aspect was the discussion of the band's recording approach, recording the album in the "first pool" in Iceland. The band used the pool (without water in it, obviously) as their recording studio, because they loved the the echo provided by the walls of the pool. That sort of information is great. I've always loved Sigur Ros and this album is top 2 (Takk is a personal favorite), reading this in a single sitting, while flying into El Paso was a great experience. I always recommend listening to the album while reading someone's writing about it. Finished this in one session. Also read another 30 pages in David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet which I picked up in Portland. 

Quote: "Much as the utopian always contains within it the potential for catastrophic failure, the dystopian also contains its own inverse, and so, in post-rock, running alongside the nostalgic lamentation is a contradictory thread of jubilation and transcendence."