This song is one that I would remind myself when I feel like I'm wasting my time over people/ situations that I know would do me no good. Most of the time, you need someone (or a song) to remind you not to waste your precious time. Thanks, Jarvis!
This month, I spent most of my days thinking about how I should better plan my time so that I could do other things outside work and school. I enjoy those two but there are days when i just want to read a good book and write my heart out.
It's a Saturday morning. In a few hours, I'll be going to the office for some extra work. This is not my idea of a great weekend but at least I have a few minutes in the morning to write, type and mentally prepare myself for the stressful week.
I'm currently listening to an Italian version of Romance in Durango called Avventura a Durango. I used to not listen to Romance since I used to think it's just a weird Dylan version of Marty Robbin's El Paso. I'm now beginning to see that the song is actually beautiful. It's like El Paso but not so much.
Another song I associate with Romance in Durango is Desolation Row from Dylan's 1965 album Highway 61 Revisited. To me, Romance is the romantic sibling of Desolation because they both sound hot and bring a sense of urgency. El Paso doesn't sound urgent even though it's a song about a man on the run. Anyway, the perfect time to listen to these songs is when you're traveling around the Luzon Central Plain during the peak of the dry season.
Fabrizio de Andre, the guy who sang Avventura a Durango, also wrote an Italian version of Desolation Row. His version is called Via della poverta and it's a song I listen to every once in a while.
... to write a new post to welcome the year.
I started the year watching a documentary on John Steinbeck. The documentary featured Melvyn Bragg in America, talking to people about the enduring legacy of Steinbeck and visiting the places featured in several of his works. One work featured in the documentary that caught my interest was The log from the Sea of Cortez. It's a book I've never heard of before, and it's about Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts's expedition to the Sea of Cortez in California. As someone who spends days away from home doing fieldwork, I was inspired to also chronicle the environments of the places I visit. Doing so will allow me to discover new things about places and give me a better understanding of the people inhabiting them.
Another documentary I saw this month was about Renoir. I didn't know much about him before watching the documentary, and it was nice that it presented a detailed story of his life and works. What I got from the documentary was this renewed interest in learning about Paris' urban planning. Renoir lived when Paris was undergoing major changes in its city design, which influenced the subject and themes in many of his works. He was able to bridge the past and the present by taking inspiration from the works of those who came before him to make artworks that reflected the realities of his time.
Out of all the artworks featured in the documentary, I like those that featured groups of people doing everyday things. Pont Neuf reminds me of what it's like to live in the city with all the noise and the constant movement of the people.
Speaking of city life, the Renoir documentary inspired me to try the works of Emile Zola, whose 20-novel work Les Rougon-Macquart features stories exploring life in Paris of people from different social classes. The novel I want to read from the series is The Ladies' Paradise, which is set in a department store. The idea sounds cool, tbh. Mannequin (1987) is the only work I know that's set in a department store, so this girl is interested in exploring more department stores. Also, as someone exposed to department stores and malls, I'm interested to see what makes their 19th-century bastions of consumerism different from the ones we have today.