Fiction Plane this time. They closed their set at the concert with this song. Lots of energy, great performance, fun to watch…but it’s still kinda freaky. I suppose I’ll get over it eventually. No sense not enjoying the music till then though.

So we saw the Police live in concert at the MCG last night. I’m still not over it, but at least now I can speak and write about it. It was absolutely amazing not just because they rock but because it was so weird to see them at all – they did break up in ’85/’86, after all. Seeing them up there after being a fan for almost as long as I can remember and knowing that it was all over for most of that time was simply surreal. And I can’t honestly say I know any other band quite like I know the Police. I actually have everything they’ve ever done as a band, plus a lot of what they’ve done solo. I know the band history. I even spent enough time poring over their biographies as a teen to have random details at my fingertips years and years later. But most of all, I know their songs so intimately that each time they’d vary the chords or beat slightly to start a new one, I’d know the words even before I registered what the song actually was and basically sang along with the whole concert.

On the whole, they didn’t vary the songs very much from the album versions, and even where they did I knew where they were going because I’ve listened to so many concert recordings. Most of the variations were the kind the Police themselves made back when they played, but some were more Sting-y. Interestingly, they didn’t really play any of the songs Sting has sort of absorbed into his own repertoire. I’d have loved to hear Bring on the Night, Low Life, Demolition Man or Shadows in the Rain, for instance. I don’t know if that was deliberate or whether they just didn’t feel like doing them. The set list itself was the same they’ve been playing throughout. They opened with Message in a Bottle and then went into Synchronicity II, following that with Walking On The Moon. Then came Voices Inside My Head, When The World Is Running Down. Don’t Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears and Hole In My Life. Everyone went suitably mad for Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and Wrapped Around Your Finger was really really good with Stewart Copeland using gongs, chimes, bells, xylophone, and all manner of percussion to give it that air that it has. De Do Do Do De Da Da Da was a fun follow up. Then we had Invisible Sun, which was accompanied by lots of images of children living in poverty. That theme continued with Walking In Your Footsteps, but then they changed the pace again with Can’t Stand Losing You followed by Roxanne and then ‘closed’ with King Of Pain ( I think). They came back with So Lonely and Every Breath You Take, and then came back again to do Next To You before leaving the stage for good.

Fergie opened for the Police. Yeah. It was odd at first, but she was actually quite good – she’s one hell of a performer and sings her guts out. Yes there’s lots of posturing and posing – that’s what her music is like after all – but along with that she did a Black Eyed Peas medley and, what was most surprising, a few covers of Guns and Roses-type music that were actually quite fun. I could have done with a little less ass-shaking (Yes, you have a bottom. Wow. I’m thrilled to bits for you. Really I am.) but that’s really my only gripe and even that’s a bit forced because it was, as I said, good fun.

The big shock though, was Fiction Plane. We weren’t seated yet when they started playing so I couldn’t see the stage, but I remember thinking, man, that sounds a lot like Sting, only it can’t be because that’s not a Police song. We might not have gone down at all, only the music was echoing horribly in the hallways so we thought we’d go ahead even though it was about 7pm and we knew the Police wouldn’t be on till 9:30. I vaguely remembered that there were two opening acts listed on the ticket so I figured this was whoever it was that wasn’t Fergie and thought they sounded pretty good once we got away from the hallway echo and started making our way down the steps to the ground (did I mention that we were on the ground? Not in the prime, thousand-dollar seats, obviously, but not too far from the stage either and the perfect distance from one of the big screens.). And there on stage was someone who was clearly not Sting by my god did he look like him. And sound like him. This is what he looked like. Go look. It’s uncanny. And then I remembered that yes, Joe Sumner* has a band and yes, there was something about him touring with the Police. But it was weird to actually see someone whose existence I’ve been aware of pretty much as long as I’ve known anything about the Police. Anyway, I got over the weirdness enough to quite like the band and want to hear more. They’re playing tonight at the Ding Dong Lounge in Melbourne and while I don’t know if I’ll make it, they’re definitely worth a look.

* To clarify: I assumed that anyone reading this would be aware that Sting’s actual last name is Sumner, and that his eldest son’s name is Joe and would therefore get the reference. Obviously that wasn’t entirely reasonable given that not everyone was a 14-year-old Police fangirl.

The American Kennel Club has released a list of the ten most popular dog breeds in the US. Beagles have been on the list since 1915, apparently so that wasn’t a surprise. Neither were the Labs and Retrievers, but I was quite happy to see German Shepherds at number 3.

This just makes me want a dog even more, but we can’t at the moment – we don’t have the space and even if we did I don’t think the our building allows pets. When we do, though, I’m thinking of adopting a shelter or rescue dog instead of getting a puppy. While I love raising puppies and I think they’re quite possibly the most adorable things in the world, I want a grown up dog. Of course it’ll probably have to be trained to some extent and will need time to settle in too, but that’s easy enough to do with all but severely traumatized dogs (and I don’t think shelters would be handing those out by the cartload anyway.). Plus, with a grown up dog, what you see is what you get. Whatever the breed characteristics and parents’ temperaments, a pup will develop its own personality and it may end up clashing with that of its owner. It’s easier to gauge whether you’ll get on with a grown up dog

Ideally, I’d go for a German Shepherd, but really any big, sturdy, intelligent and preferably slightly goofy dog would do. Dogs generally aren’t stupid and generally are at least slightly silly, so that’s not a tall order, really. I may also have to reconsider the size because of space and time constraints (though really if you can’t give a dog the time it requires you might not want to get one at all). Jack Russells have recently tripped my radar and I’ve found the ones I’ve met absolutely adorable. And even though they’re little, they’ve got tons of energy and I’ve seen them keep up with much bigger dogs. Beagles have some appeal too, though I tend to prefer sharp-muzzled dogs – I feel for some reason that I can read them better, but that’s probably because those are the kind of dog I’ve always had. While I might consider adopting a Lab or a Golden Retriever because of the two lab mixes we had back in Islamabad and because they’re such incredibly sweet natured and intelligent animals, I just don’t see myself connecting with them the way I do even with random Shepherds or Russells (yes I stop to pet dogs on the street if they approach), much less my late, wonderful Shepherd, Pooks.

Some places I’ll be looking at when the time comes (or now, really – no harm just looking, right?) include:

The RSPCA’s adoptapet site which lists animals awaiting adoption in its shelters across Australia and allows you to search by animal, state, and shelter. On the left nav bar, you’ll also find information on the adoption process, animal selection process, pet care and maintenance, as well as good reasons why shelter animals are the way to go.

Another great site is Pet Rescue, which lists a large number of independent shelters across Australia. It’s not owned by any one shelter but is instead a volunteer-run service that enables shelters to place their rescue animals up for adoption online. The amount of information provided about each rescue animal is, from what I’ve seen, pretty thorough and they’ll tell you right off whether the animal can be moved interstate. They too have lots of other information available and also put forward a good argument for adopting rescued animals.

For a straight list of Australian dog rescues and shelters, there’s always About.com’s list.

In his article In Praise of Melancholy, Eric G Wilson writes:

I for one am afraid that American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am concerned that to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?

My fears grow out of my suspicion that the predominant form of American happiness breeds blandness. This kind of happiness appears to disregard the value of sadness. This brand of supposed joy, moreover, seems to foster an ignorance of life’s enduring and vital polarity between agony and ecstasy, dejection and ebullience. Trying to forget sadness and its integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos, this sort of happiness insinuates that the blues are an aberrant state that should be cursed as weakness of will or removed with the help of a little pink pill.

He goes on to talk about the role of melancholy in creativity. He’s not advocating the kind of depression that can be self-destructive or dangerous to other people, but talking about a kind of sadness or melancholy that comes from the knowledge that we are essentially fractured ephemera, but which makes us appreciate what time we do have and makes us strive towards some kind of wholeness.

That reminds me of something Coleridge said about the necessity of opposites. If we didn’t have sadness, how would we appreciate joy?

Wilson’s book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy will be published this year.

The Kooks. I first heard this at least a year ago and scribbled the song title (She Moves In Her Own Way) on a piece of paper so that I’d remember to get it. I found that little scrap of paper a few days ago – having forgotten completely about the song and the band – and since then have been addicted to this song.

I’ve heard the terms ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ thrown around often and what irks me is that it is assumed that these must flow from some kind of religious foundation. So it was heartening to read Steven Pinker’s article The Moral Instinct in the New York Times yesterday. It’s a fairly long article and just about all of it is quotable so I’d suggest just going there and reading it from beginning to end. It talks about what we perceive as moral, why we do so, how the ‘moral sense’ can be tricked, and how it evolves as we adapt to changes in our world. It’s a very interesting read that will probably surprise, interest, and possibly upset you, all for good reason. I’ll be looking into his books in the mean time – I’ve spotted a few titles that sound like they’d flesh out my own research into language rather well.

Ian McEwan on literary realism:

The kind of fiction I like and the kind of fiction I most often want to write does have its feet on the ground of realism, certainly psychological realism. I have no interest in magical realism and the supernatural–that is really an extension, I guess, of my atheism. I think that the world, as it is, is so difficult to capture that some kind of enactment of the plausibly shared reality that we inhabit is a very difficult task. But it is one that fascinates me. I have just re-read a couple of Saul Bellow novels, Mr. Sammler’s Planet and The Dean’s December. I really get a thrill from his engagement with the momentous task of what it is like to be in the 20th century in Chicago or even Bucharest, what the condition is, what it’s like, how it is now. This is something that modernism shied away from–the pace of things, the solid achievement of weight in your hand. So I remain rather committed to that. But also to what is psychologically real–the small print of consciousness, the corners and vagaries of thinking that when you read them in another writer, and they are done well, you just know they are right. Not only because you had this thought to yourself, but because that way of thinking seems so ineradicably human.

From The New Republic.

Gosh the week passes by fast when you’re not doing much of anything. Well ok, I’m reading a bit, but I’d do that anyway so it doesn’t count.

This came out when I was in DC and is one of the songs that remind me most strongly of it, even though I hate the ending about as much as I like the beginning (of the song, that is).

The Magnetic Fields this time. This adorable but ‘unofficial’ video is by youtube user FreundKateFreund.

Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.

And it just gets better. This was published in November last year, but it deserves to be referenced again and again. Via the Little Professor.