Summer Reading: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I've been posting a lot on my research blog about the novels I've been reading this summer, but I realized that I actually should be doing those posts over here since they aren't really full of research thoughts. I just want to keep track of the books I've been reading. And I should be reserving that blog for my ruminations on abjection and subjectivity. (It's not published, well, publicly, but let me know if you want to read it and I can open it up to you).

I just finished a lovely novel called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery who is a French philosophy professor. I loved how she took abstract philosophical ideas into real world lives and experiences in this novel. It's a much better way to talk about these issues, and I wish I could do something like that. I'm thinking I might try something similar in my paper on autobiography, but I doubt my skill could carry the concepts into a narrative like Barbery does.

I loved how the characters grapple with death, class struggles, and the meaning of art. And the take away point of the novel is to recognize that death is imminent, but to not be crippled by this knowledge or act in bad faith, but to be as authentic as possible. "The important thing, Paloma said one day, is not the fact of dying, it is what you are doing in the moment of your death." And being sincerely engaged in building, rather than destroying, something is the measure of a good life.

My favorite moment in the book is when Madame Michel, the autodidact consierge of a high-class apartment building, is thinking about the validity of education, especially higher graduate research.

Should you study Plato, Epicurus, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel or even Husserl? Esthetics, politics, morality, epistemology, metaphysics? Should you devote your time to teaching, to producing a body of work, to research, to Culture? It makes no difference. The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good, or rather joining the ranks in a field of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of a sterile elite--for this turns the university into a sect. 

I've been struggling the last couple months to write a paper, mostly because, I realized, I want it to be new and different and brilliant to say something extremely complicated in an elegant way. And that's too much for me. It puts a tremendous roadblock up. But I'm realizing that I'm losing sight of what I've been doing and wanting to do all these years. I'm not that eloquent and my thoughts don't run as deeply and as abstractly as I'd like them to, but I desperately don't want to get caught up in the fan-boy masturbatory academic world whose only function is the "self-reproduction of a sterile elite." I want to engage in works that I love, that fascinate me, and try my hardest to elevate thought and contribute something.

The book is also about enjoying the small pleasures in life, which I have not done lately at all. "I have finally concluded," the 12 year old Paloma says, "maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had some to us, an always within never"

I used to have those moments more often, I would go out into the world and look for them. It was easy to find them in Russell Square or the British Museum in London, or in Central Park in New York, or in the immense silence of the Uintas while fishing with my mom. I even remember the delight I felt when I was in Provo and I could hear someone practice their bagpipes down the street. These moments of wonder don't happen in Louisville, but maybe I'm not looking for them. Maybe it's because there's a train yard outside my window and I live above a frat house. Or the dreadful and humid heat, the low-flying planes, the trains screaming and blocking my path out of the train yard where I live. I haven't had many little pleasures since I moved here last year, but maybe when I move into my own little apartment on a shady street I can relax a bit and be wondered by art and nature again. We'll see. For now at least I have the novels I've been devouring this summer.

And French films about awkward anxious people who fall in love. And the cute songs at the end of such movies.
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a Canterbury tale

	Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
	The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
	And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
	Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
	Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
	Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
	The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
	Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
	And smale foweles maken melodye,
	That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
	So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
	Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
	And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
	To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
	And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for the seke That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke

Cathedral and St. Augustine Abbey ruins

If you don't know already, those are the first lines from Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. I had to memorize these first lines in Middle English and recite them in a class I took on the 14th Century, and it was actually really fun. (If you've never heard anyone read these lines in the Middle English before, I've included the youtube video at the bottom of the page.) For the few of you who don't speak Middle English, here's the gist: Once spring comes along in April, and the weather starts getting really nice, people grow a little antsy and start thinking about leaving the house and going on a pilgrimage. A lot of those people, from all over England, head out to Canterbury to visit the cathedral where St. Thomas a Beckett was martyred. And there you have it.

Today I joined in that very long tradition of pilgrims to the shrine in the Canterbury Cathedral.  Just like Chaucer explains, once the weather turns nice and the warm breezes blow I get antsy and feel compelled to leave the city, enjoy the clean country air, and visit some cathedrals.  Today was the loveliest day I could have chosen for such a pilgrimage.  My journey was actually quite short. Since I took the fast train from London, it was only a 50 minute, rather comfortable and boring, pilgrimage.  There certainly wasn't enough time to tell any tales (and I was alone anyway), but I did enjoy the beautiful countryside.

how many holes does it take to fill up Albert Hall?

For most of my life I've been trying to convince people how important art is.  I've been preaching that art is good for the soul, that it will bring you to a heightened sense of self awareness, world awareness, people awareness. Art can make you a better person.  I believed my professors when they told me this, and I hoped my students believed it when I taught them this. But honestly? I don't know if I ever really felt it, and sometimes I wondered if I was straight up lying to them.

the wall

The history geek in me took over my body today and spent three hours tracing the ancient Roman wall of Londinium.  I love the word Londinium. It sounds like I made it up, but I didn't.  That's what the Romans called it.  They came here in 43 AD and stuck around until 400 AD or so, and they didn't even build a wall until around 200 AD.  Some say that they don't really know why the Romans decided that they needed to build a wall.  I think it must have been that they were Romans and Romans need to build massive things.

It was originally 20 feet high and 2 miles in length, and it did end up being useful to raise money since most of the gates were tolled gates.  Most of the wall is gone now, except for little bits, but it didn't get torn down until the 17th and 18th centuries, and a lot of it simply got absorbed into buildings, or used as foundation, and in most spots it's buried 15 feet under the road.  After the blitz in 1940 a lot of the west side of the wall became visible, and all of the awful rebuilding they did in the 1960s (Barbican...ugh) was done around the exposed wall.  I bet they just loved building super modern ugly buildings next to those ancient ruins.  I bet they thought it was a really powerful contrast.  It's kind of funny now that some of those areas seem to be falling themselves into a bit of a ruinous state.

It was a bit tricky to find all the parts of it.  I had to use a walking tour podcast that I didn't really care too much for because it took way too long to do, and a lot of times the guy just read off the plaques that were right in front of me.  But, now I know where to go to find the wall, and I hope I can show other people because it really is a neat thing to see.

Now, ruins trouble me a bit.  I remember when I first saw the Forum in Rome and hating it.  I couldn't see the point a bone yard in a beautiful vibrant living city.  I've since learned that the hot, empty boneyard of the Forum used to be a mosquito infested swamp with some grassy areas where cows lived.  And the horrid bare Colosseum was up until the late 19th century covered in hundreds of plants that weren't found any where else in Italy and had likely been transported there by all of the wild animals they brought from throughout the empire to slaughter.  It used to be a place where poets and lovers would wander and explore and bring picnics.  It's a shame those ruins don't have the same wildness to them anymore.

Another reason why ruins trouble me is because I think I always just took them for granted.  They were there in and of themselves.  I never thought of them actually becoming ruinous, or if I did it was in a romantic sort of decay.  It bothers me when I find out their actual histories.  Rome's Colosseum and Forum became stone quarries, the Parthenon was blown up by accident in the 17th century, the Roman wall in London was fully intact until the 19th century, when they decided to just tear it all down to make room for more buildings.

Although discovering these facts bothers me a little, in reality, I love that cities adapt, get rid of the things they don't need, recycle and reuse building materials.  That's a living city, and I think that's why I found the Forum in Rome so bothersome.  The bone yard, the sepulcher, is out of place there.

I'm glad I went out today to look at this. It is a fun walk, but my favorite part was not actually the wall. I promise to blog about that tomorrow.

Emil Alzamora's Stretched Figures

I love these sculptures by Emil Alzamora, seen on Beautiful/Decay Cult of the Creative Arts. I love how they stretch and manipulate the human form to create such beautiful, and disturbing, shapes. And I love how with each one, no matter how odd the manipulation may be, the beauty of the human form shines through.

you are not my typewriter, but you could be my demon moving forward through the flaming doors

I've found that when I title posts with lines from songs I can trick the people who are looking up lyrics to read my blog.  So, if you're here looking for lyrics to Wilco's "War on War" you're still in luck!  They're at the end of the post, along with a nice video from youtube.  I hope that means if you're a Wilco fan you'll love me and start following my blog.  

Anyway, I thought of this particular song because, as you'll see, I mention a book in this post called Krieg dem Krieg, which translates into War on War.  It's a hard book to look at, so I don't recommend looking it up, but it's basically a propaganda book published by a pacifist to show the horrors of war.  It's very gruesome and unpleasant, but I think he drives his point home well enough.  Anyway, on with the post. 

I went to see the doctor today.  It was my first experience with national healthcare and I have to say that it so far really hasn't been that much different from my experience with privatized healthcare.  I did have to wait for twenty minutes, but I can't remember ever being directly ushered into an examine room in the States.  The appointment was for only 10 minutes, which is quite short, but I felt that it made it far more pleasant for me. The doctor was kind and efficient, he listened to me and referred me for blood tests and then I left.  The best part was that I left without having to settle a bill.  

Did you know that the NHS was established in 1948 so that healthcare could "meet the needs of everyone, be free at the point of delivery, and be based on clinical need, not ability to pay"? Such insanely radical, communist, ideas that can undo the entire economic and social system of a once great, and soon to be fallen nation.  oh.  wait.  The NHS was started in 1948? And it's 2011? Where are all the death panels? Am I missing something?

Also, why is it that in the US we rarely hear about national healthcare and its successes?  I didn't even know that the UK had national healthcare for so long.  I know the system is far from perfect, but it seems to be functioning.  I wish I'd known more about it during the healthcare debates last year. 

Anyway, I'm blogging now during my lunch break because I've decided that I need to compartmentalize my time a little bit more, and after lunch I must focus on researching at the library.  I've realized last night that if I want to stay in London to finish this PhD I must work much harder than I have been.  I need to submit papers to conferences and journals and I need to show that I'm using my time very wisely on my thesis research.  I have to give a presentation in a couple of weeks on my research and I want to blow their socks off.  

I've shifted the focus of my topic and I feel a lot less anxious and restrained now.  I'll keep talking about World War One and the body depicted in art from the time, but I've decided to expand the view into other wars and at the same time narrow down the kind of bodies I'm interested in looking at.  The type of body is the grotesque male and female body, and I'll look at stuff from Walt Whitman, to Goya, to the war poets, to Dix, to the Dada movement, to Catch 22.  I'll look at these depictions of the grotesque body often as a type of anti-war protest and also as means of healing and transcendence. That sounds nice, yeah?  Yeah, I thought so.  Here are some images I am considering: 

Dix, "Stormtroops advancing under a gas attack" from Der Krieg, Intaglio etching, drypoint

Goya, This is worse 1812-15 Etching and wash, 157 x 207 mm

Janco, Mask, 1919

Wounded Soldier from Krieg dem Krieg (War on War) 1924

I know that these aren't the easiest things to look at, and I apologize for that, but I think they are extremely compelling and necessary for us to be aware of. Also, I personally love what this artist has done with the idea of facial reconstruction, and I will definitely discuss him.  So now I'm off to the British Library to do some nice reading about the body in wars.  My goal is to spend the next 4 hours in there and come out with some great ideas.   

War on War 

by Wilco 

It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
It's a war on war
There's a war on

You're gonna lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die

Just watching the miles flying by
Just watching the miles flying by
You are not my typewriter
But you could be my demon
moving forward through the flaming doors

You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay?

You have to lose
You have to lose
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive

You have to die
You have to die
You have to learn how to die
if you want to want to be alive, okay? 

living with a painting, day one

I was thinking the other day about how much I hate museums. I think I hate going to museums the same way I hate reading books: I get overwhelmed by the content and the time it takes for me to get through it all.  I hate that you have to "get through it all" at a museum, like there's a time limit.  You have to see everything in a couple of hours.  I personally can't be in a museum for longer than a couple of hours. I go mad and get angry and want to run away.  There's just too much stuff.  I hate how I can only give each painting a quick glance or, at most, five or seven minutes contemplating its lines and colors and textures and context and subject so superficially that I might as well not even look at it.  I forget it the moment I leave, unless I find a postcard of it in the gift shop, but the postcard is merely a reminder of its existence, a reminder that will probably find its way to the bottom of a pile of postcards, or tacked to a wall with fifty other reminders.

A museum is no way to view art.  Art should be lived with. How can I possibly understand a piece of art if I only glance at it, if it's not there with me to return to when I'm not thinking of anything in particular? It's funny how I thought of this and then when I started reading a book by Stephen Fry called The Ode Less Traveled about writing poetry, he says: Poems, "as with a good painting are not there to be greedily taken in at once, they are to be lived and endlessly revisited. The eye can go back and back and back, investigating new corners, new incidents and the new shapes that seem to emerge."  Clearly I need to live with a painting.

I've had this idea before but have never taken the time to see it through.  So I decided now was the perfect opportunity.  I would go to a local museum, find a painting and visit it every day for at least a week. I would spend at least an hour in its presence, not necessarily staring at it for an hour--I would write, listen to music, read, and the moments when I pause or get distracted I would look at the painting, and allow my eye to slip across it, lingering on a particularly lovely line or shading, sweeping through its figures and focusing on a bit of color I hadn't seen before.  This is how I want to experience art, not rushing through a museum so that I can say I've seen it all.

So today I went to the Tate Britain to meet my painting.  My criteria for choosing a painting were pretty arbitrary: 1) it had to be something I'd consider putting on my wall at home, a painting I wouldn't object living with, and 2) there had to be a soft seat near by.  That's all.  There were some early 20th century paintings I quite liked but not a soft chair in the room, so I moved on to another room  Finally I chose this painting:

It's called Theseus and the Minotaure (Interior at Minos) by Keith Vaughan finished in 1950.  I don't particularly love the painting, but that's one of the reasons I chose it.  It's like when you meet someone at school or church, and you get along fine but they're not your favorite person, and then you get to know them and sometimes you become pretty good friends, or at least you understand them better and can appreciate who they are.  That's kind of what I'm hoping will come of this experience.  

One interesting thing I noticed about the painting is that I counted 78 crescents in it.  That's a lot of crescents. That's pretty much what I got from it today, but I have a whole week to acquaint myself with it and think more about it.  Today was just the initial meeting.  I think this is going to be a fun experience. 

busy busy

I'm trying really hard to keep my life as busy as possible. The busier I am, the better I can maintain a decent sleeping schedule, the more I can get done and the less time I have to sit around and be dramatic. So, when my department secretary called me this week and asked if I could take on another teaching assistantship I didn't hesitate for a second. I'll be TAing Humanities 202, getting an extra 1o hours a week. That's double what I was making last week, so I'm very pleased. I can't wait to see my next paycheck.

Taking on another class, 50 more students, and two more teaching hours on Friday will be kind of crazy, especially since I am defending my thesis this semester and applying to PhD programs, and taking a Comparative Literature class that has a heavy load of reading. Fridays will be the most interesting days. I have class at 8:00, then I teach 202 at 10:00, 101 at 11:00 and 12:00 and another 202 at 1:00. That's 4 hours of teaching in row. I'm going to be exhausted. At least I'll be done with the day by 2:00 and feel accomplished.

Tomorrow will be class prep day, but I also need to figure out what the heck is going on with my thesis. If I have to defend in early March that means I need to get a copy of my draft to my readers as soon as possible.

Oh, I've also finally opened up an etsy shop. It's still coming together, but today I took photos of items and posted two of them. I've been anxious about this, and getting it going was a big accomplishment for me. I have lots of stuff I'd like to sell and I'm tired of just talking about it. I also just organized most of my yarn and found a lot of great stuff I can use to make more items, and I have some good ideas. Before I get a new project started I need to finish off a few more things and get all the finished items up on etsy. That should be a good weekend project.

dance dance revolution

I used to really hate dance. Watching any kind of dance bored me. I couldn't understand the point of the arbitrary motions, which so often felt cheesy and ridiculous. When I taught Humanities 101 I knew that I would have to have a unit on dance, and I also knew that the fact that I hated dance so much would make it difficult. So I decided to try a little harder to appreciate dance, to learn from what I taught my students. It's been a slow process but I think I'm beginning to really love dance like I've never loved it before.

Tonight I went to BYU's Christmas Around the World, a folk dance show that they've been doing for the last 50 years. BYU has the biggest World Dance program in the world, and the dancers are extremely talented. I hate saying this, but I was moved to tears at the very first number, and it was not the first time this has happened. Since I've been trying harder to understand and appreciate dance, I'm finding that I can't help but cry when I watch a dance performance. The energy they create is palpable, and I'm so impressed with the talent that I just tear up. I hate even more saying this, but I cried when I watched the finale of Dancing With the Stars last week. I couldn't help it. Kelly Osborne was so beautiful and had worked so hard, and you could tell how happy she was with herself even though she didnt win. Her experience was life changing and it was really incredible to watch her dance. And Donny Osmond was so humble and wanted so much to have that trophy that he worked his hardest while still being incredibly supportive of the other competetors. It's true he's been a performer for some time, but to dance ballroom like that he had to force himself to change a lot of his habits, and he was incredibly graceful in doing so. I just loved watching these people have so much passion in their dances. I wept like a baby. And then tonight it happened again. I don't know what's happening to me.

One thing that I thought was particularly interesting during the Christmas performance tonight was the Irish dancers. I recognized one of the soloists and as I looked at my program, sure enough she was one of my former 101 students. AND, this is what I love the most, the program said that these soloists were champion level dancers. I had NO idea that this girl was a champion level Irish dancer. Even though she did mention that she danced and that dance was a huge part of her life, she said nothing about this fact every time I talked to her about dance. Such a funny girl.

After the performance we watched Strictly Ballroom, which I thought was pretty appropriate. I loved it so much more this time than I did the first time, and I almost teared up again when the couple was dancing the Passo Doble, one of my favorite dances.

So who would have guessed? It looks like I love dance. I love the energy and the passion. I love how light the dancers are on their feet and how watching them makes me feel lighter. I have been kind of depressed a little lately, distracted and stressed, and I realized today that I'm losing sight of the things that could lift me out of my funk. I decided to watch some documentaries on contemporary 21st century art, and I got that light feeling as I saw these artists create and as their art challenged me and made me feel alive. I'm focusing so much on all the things I have to do, all the research I should be doing, the books I should be reading and the movies I should be watching, that I'm forgetting to have aesthetic experiences with other forms of art. And this bothers me because as a Humanities teacher this is what I try to get my students to understand, that aesthetic experiences are necessary for a balanced and happy life, and here I am neglecting these things, the things that I love so much and that lift my soul. I'm glad I learned this lesson today, and I hope I can make a point to have more art in my life more often.

bunch of little randoms

The week since I last posted about the David Byrne concert has been slightly insane. I quit my job last Tuesday so that I could focus more time on the class I'm teaching and on my thesis. Then I started teaching, and that has been quite the experience so far. I've been putting a lot into that, and I'm hoping it's showing. I have the tendency to ramble or say things without thinking (thus insulting people and spouting off inappropriate things) but I think I'm improving. Maybe I just needed some practice.

I feel slightly hypocritical because I am requiring my students to post 3 blog entries every week and I didn't even post anything last week, but I suppose I have my excuses. For one thing, this class takes a lot out of me, and when I sit down to blog it's usually complaints about all the things I have to do which is not interesting. In fact, I have the suspician that this post is very uninteresting as well. But that's ok, it's just a bunch of randoms. I spend hours preparing for the two and a half hour class, the equivelant of 3 fifty minute class periods. When my mom asked me what I did yesterday and I told her "prep for class and teach" she didn't believe it was all I did, but it was. It's a good thing I love it so much.

I hope that what I try to get accross to my students is working. I hope that they learn how important it is not to just feel and experience art but be able to read and talk about it as well. Maybe I'll keep working on making that point throughout the semester. I can't even begin to say how enriched my life has become because I can read and talk about art. I can examine it and understand it and reach new levels of experience that I wouldn't have by simply taking it at face value. I think we need to start analyzing right away.

I went to Moab last weekend with my good friend Brittany. We had a good time camping, and there were some interesting people to be around. I finally got to go to Arches National Park and enjoy the beautiful arches. I don't like hiking as much and that's because I'm lazy, but it was a wonderful experience.
Here's me at Delicate Arch

Where I am standing under this arch is actually quite precarious. I kept imagining myself sliding down the side and smashing my head open on the rock below. I don't know how so many people can visit and not all die. It just takes one slip.

I have to say that I love the desert. I didn't used to. Not until a couple of years ago actually when I read an article in a class about how our love for green is really just a social construct and that we should try to find beauty in the delicate blends of browns, reds, grays, and of course the bright blue of the sky, found in the desert. It's such a peaceful place as well. This is one of my favorite photos I took on our hike to Landscape Arch:

What a wonderful place to be. I'm glad that I discovered how gorgeous the desert can be.

Once in a lifetime

Last night I had the fortune to go see David Byrne in concert. Within the last year my tastes in music have shifted in time, so to speak. My favorite bands and artists now are all from the 70s (Glam rock: David Bowie, T-Rex, Sparks, Roxy Music, proto-punk and punk especially) and the early 80s (Post-Punk, New Wave, etc.) A friend of mine introduced me to the Talking Heads last summer through what is now one of my favorite films, True Stories which was written, produced, and directed by David Byrne the lead singer of the Talking Heads. The movie is a celebration of people in all their absurd glory. When I found out that David Byrne would be playing in Salt Lake I knew I would go.

I almost didn't because tickets were so expensive, but thanks to my brother-in-law who works at the U, we got 2 free tickets. There wasn't an opening band, and I was surprised at all of the yuppies there at the concert (I mean really, am I the only 25 year old in love with David Byrne?), but it ended up being fantastic. My sister and I found perfect spots right at the very front of the stage, probably the best spot in the whole amphitheatre. The weather at first was a little crappy, but it ended up being a really lovely evening with no rain and no wind. The atmosphere was perfect.

David Byrne came out wearing all white with white hair and sheepishly approached the microphone. "Hi, I'm Dave," he said and then explained that they would be playing music from the new album, Everything that Happens Will Happen Today that he made with the legendary Brian Eno, as well as some older things from his solo career and from the Talking Heads. I felt a little awkward because I was the only one dancing at first, but after two or three very funky songs the whole crowd was up an moving. By the end of the concert everyone within my sight of vision was dancing and the roar of the crowd when it was over was deafening. He ended up giving 4 encores.

I knew he would deliver a truly amazing show, but I wonder how many of the people there were taken by surprise. I wonder if they expected that they would have such a fantastic time. Not only was the music amazing (the new album is very dancable and they played several older songs with the Talking Heads' signature funky sound), but the visual performance was also incredible. All of the band was dressed in white including his three back up singers and three dancers who performed choreographed pieces for almost every song. The dances were definitely fun, but they also told the stories in the songs, and David Byrne took part in almost each and every piece. One woman was dressed in white shorts, a little t-shirt, white leggings and tennis shoes. She was adorable with a hair-cut that gave her a striking resemblance to a young Shirley MacLaine from the Apartment (as Lindy pointed out). The other woman was dressed in trousers, a button-down shirt and a jacket. She gave off a little more androgynous vibe and often danced with the other woman rather intimately. The third dancer was a man, similarly dressed in a shirt and pants and had some wild hair. I loved every piece they performed and wish that I could see and analyze the whole show again. I saw one of the numbers performed on the Colbert Report and absolutely loved the way they made the song so visual, and I was really pleased to see that as such an important element to the whole show.

I have a little bit of a rating system set up for concerts. I take in to account the ticket price, the atmosphere, the audience, the music, the visual aspects, where I am standing (and how many tall people are in front of me), the price of the merchandise, the overall joy of the concert, and the likelihood that I will continue to listen to the music. Wanna see my scores?
Ticket Price: FREE!!! 10
Atmosphere: lovely evening, it didnt rain on us, it was outside so I wasn't stuffy. 9
Audience: great audience, got into the music, a bit older but danced way more than young audiences. 9
Music: 10
Visual: the dancing was amazing. 10
Where I was standing: NO tall people in front of me, plenty of room to dance. 10
Merch: $10 t-shirt! but $10 buttons. 8
Overall Joy: 10. Definitely a 10. Just like in True Stories, David Byrne creates joy. That's all there is to it.
Likelihood I will continue to listen to David Byrne: Duh. No doubt. There are still Talking Heads albums I have never heard before! 10!

Ok, so based on this I am going to have to put that show into my number 1 slot of all time favorite shows. That's a huge step, but the fact that the ticket was free and that I will always listen to David Byrne beats out Arcade Fire for the number one slot. It was a perfect show.

The end.