Tag: Gardener

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GARDENER READ THIS – Blood Meridian

Wow, over one year since my last entry.  No sense writing too much about the void year, so I will simply summarize it as…corona sucked up most of the fun in 2021 and I will quickly enumerate my 2021:

My 2021

practicing basketball

studying Japanese (not hard enough)

scootered around Shikoku, Japan and got rained on for at least 7 hours but felt like 42.

got a new job / moved to a new city 

joined a new basketball team (everyone is young and fast as hell)

started working out (cardio + strength training) seriously

lost 7 kilos

acquired a coffee addiction

learned that I really dislike packed trains

said goodbye to really special people

said hello to really special people

made a ton of music and left it on my computer for no one to hear.

Time for 2022…


2022 is the year of the book!  

Currently, already four books are completed.  I figured putting all my ideas on what I read up here wouldn’t hurt at all.  It might even come in handy in the future.

Starting with Cormac McCarthy’s epic Blood Meridian (BD).  

What a book.  It was my second time reading it and I thoroughly enjoyed it even more; my second time around.  

The first time I read (BD), I was a university student and had been reading it for a modernism class.  I remember liking it, but also found it incredibly challenging.  I was utterly lost among McCarthy’s novel words and paragraphical long sentences.  

Difficulty aside I found the characters extremely interesting. I don’t think I can compare any villain I have come across before to the Judge.  Maybe Walking Dead’s season 6 Negan has the bits of the Judge’s sinisterism, but I will admit that they are not all that alike.   


Reading it a second time…I still got lost in the paragraph long sentences, but that feeling of being lost had some vague familiarity this time.  It was like a hazy déjà vu where I slightly felt I had been in this place before and was able to traverse my way through it. It is McCarthy’s grand, prolific, descriptions of landscape. 

I recognize that rather than the characters and plot the landscape had a much more significant impact on me when reading.  The descriptions of the desert and mountainous ranges are incredible.  And to be completely honest there were several times I had to look up vocabulary to help complete the images in my mind, and even when confirming definitions, I sometimes still couldn’t grasp the meaning. 

” That night they rode through a region electric and wild where strange shapes of soft blue fire ran over the metal of the horses’ trappings and the wagonwheels rolled in hoops of fire and little shapes of pale blue light came to perch in the ears of the horses and in the beards of the men.”

McCarthy, Cormac. Blood Meridian, or, The evening redness in the West. , 1992. Print.

Writing that is simply focused on inanimate objects is no easy task.  With that frame of thought writing exceptional well about inanimate objects to the point that your reader is in awe of that inanimate object is a very very special skill. 

Ah and final thoughts, I am pretty sure I learned various vocabulary that I will never use in any of my writing, speaking and unless I read this book again will never come across it in another book.

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Searching Sylvan Review

  • Searching Sylvan Review
  • With these reviews I will attempt to do as little research as possible. Why bother with research? Why have possible errs and omissions, that are not my own, in my posts…A amiable university professor, who is well versed in the outlaws of solitary, indirectly taught me the importance of taking ownership of all of your own errs and omissions. That is what I will dough…I mean do!
  • Young Miami native: QuESt.In terms of biographical information I confess that I know little about QuESt. Prior to his most recent album, I was privy to his relationship with, an artist I respect tremendously, Mickey Factz.
  • QuESt’s recent project Searching Sylvan, I assume his name is Sylvan. (Edit: I tried to finding a credible source that his name is Sylvan. Couldn’t I have a pretty good feeling it is) The title itself, to me at least, conveys a lot of what the record entails, Inner Reflection.
  • My hypothesis is QuEST’s name is Sylvan and he is trying to find self. Expounding on that notion, QuESt is lost and maybe if he tells us his journey he can finally find his way. As a whole the project conveys emotions of being bewildered within one’s own solitariness. He is far from his dream and submerged in his own doubt.
  • I find in hip-hop we are within a moment where there is much more self-reflection. Not to say he was the originator, but Kendrick Lamar exemplifies that earnest inner reflection through a hip-hop record can be successful. With QuESt’s record it is undeniable that Lamar’s influence is present and consistent throughout. In hip-hop influence is often confused with copying or not being original. Among the hip-hop enthusiasts mimicking another artist’s style is equivalent to the academic claims of plagiarism from a university.
  • Restriction in any art form leads to devolution.
  • There are versions of replication or an artist trying to reproduce previous successful frameworks. All the hopes for gaining mainstream success. QuESt (I’ve now come to hate typing the name out correctly) does not fall into either of those categories. His narrative is earnest and though he does incorporate a formula that has most recently been commercially a success (Good Kid Mad City), it is obvious that he is not using this framework in hopes of gaining public favour. Additionally if QuESt desired quick popularity there are many other routes, which require less effort as well, he could have taken to be popular.
  • In 2014 music has become no different then many of the other consumed products, on the globe. Consumers need it rapidly quick; quality may not even be an essential need anymore. This idea is not new, I am sure older generations have felt this way for decades. Hip-hop has become a ring tone factory, where the recording process has become a small challenging moment before the possibility of millions. Searching Sylvan is clear, calculated, concentrated contemplation. Hope you find what you are looking for QuESt.
  • [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/48597518″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]

 

  • – Dwayne