If you are bored it is not because you are boring. Version 1: It all began with a band called Joy Division. Version 2: It all began in a band club in the western town on the cliff edge - Mqabba... the usual motley crew played too cool for school pool, I sat drinking foul wine, I was bored, I looked at the pictures of fireworks and pictures of short men with brown, stumpy legs looking proud as peacocks, embracing the tubes of gunpowder with the passion of a reunited lover.
Added to the crew was a Frenchman, and together we sat and discussed l'ennui, les choses banales, les clichés, les trucs ordinaries...the Frenchman smiled and shrugged, how was he ever going to explain why the French had so many good words for the commonplace, the bore and the dullard?
Why is it so utterly chic to me (another fabulous French word Anglo Saxons have had to borrow) that with a dismissive turn of the head a French man or woman may do away with the thing? Is Goddard to blame, or is it simply the French way, to always be a little bored, pas drôle, pas possible...
It should come as no surprise then, to reflect on the many English interpretations for drôle - funny, amusing, humorous, strange, comical, odd, peculiar, weird, curious... and so it is quite interesting (for oneself) to assume the French ennui as opposed to the bland British boredom. I do not think anyone will notice the difference, but you certainly will, and your boredom will turn into a mild amusement that keeps one eyebrow cocked and one ear pricked as the shoulder turns - one can even say it in Italian if French is too tricky, for they also do boredom quite elegantly - "mi annoio, but I'm still here, listening, sort of!" (Nota bene: the verb is reflexive, for no one else but the self is to be blamed for this flatness of spirit).
I am now deeply ensconced in the Alberto Moravia novel entitled La Noia, or Boredom in English. The very title, which once read The Empty Canvas, gives me much pleasure; it is an utter relief that someone has sat down at a desk in the beautiful, eternal (so how could it ever be boring - pah!) city of Rome, and for several months explored the nature of boredom with his scratching pen or noisy typewriter - I come to learn that Moravia grappled with his boredom and so, I would imagine, this novel is his attempt to overcome it this novel along with many others, for it is the boredom that compels a man to become a writer, is it not!? From a cold and calculated distance the protagonist watches himself disassociate; he is wealthy, secure and bright but just bored, bored, bored, gripped by ennui, or rather la noia. He examines it, celebrates it, he is utterly intriguing; I have not for one moment been bored while reading it....
Perhaps boredom is the greatest stimulus of all, it is a wall so great and stark that we must break it down by indulging in it completely, that or bang your head against it, forever waiting, waiting, waiting, che noia...
It is in the dark, dank, hopeless streets of Manchester that the band Joy Division and the visionary Factory Records rises up in the 1970s. In Copenhagen last week, the Danish Film Institute's Cinemateket projected a recent BBC documentary entitled The Factory, in which the story of the record label is retold. When listening to Tony Wilson, one of the founders of Factory Records, it becomes clear that all of it stemmed from inertia; the music a cry above the bleak, working class life where unemployment was rife. England never looked more grim, more stark, and yet the phenomena of sound breaks through the wall, a haunting echo that mirrors the streets it resounds in. Through the boredom came this: a band called Joy Division (the name taken from the Nazi concentration camp novel, House of Dolls) with a melancholy, mesmerising front man called Ian Curtis, who committed suicide at the age of 23.
Joy Division then become New Order ‒ as I type I listen to their first album, Movement, recorded in 1981. It is curious to note little transition taking place within the music, as they leave Ian Curtis behind, better times for the new band can be hoped for ahead, perhaps, but it can hardly be heard in the music. It is still dark and melodic, stricken with grief, but the journey ahead for New Order is part of contemporary musical history, evolving into one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the 1980s, producing a unique sound that continues to influence many of today's musical artists.
Indeed boredom, when properly explored, can take unexpected paths, and southern Sweden, a pleasantly uneventful part of the world, is the perfect place to indulge in a New Order blue Monday with a sullen smile upon your face.
Added to the crew was a Frenchman, and together we sat and discussed l'ennui, les choses banales, les clichés, les trucs ordinaries...the Frenchman smiled and shrugged, how was he ever going to explain why the French had so many good words for the commonplace, the bore and the dullard?
Why is it so utterly chic to me (another fabulous French word Anglo Saxons have had to borrow) that with a dismissive turn of the head a French man or woman may do away with the thing? Is Goddard to blame, or is it simply the French way, to always be a little bored, pas drôle, pas possible...
It should come as no surprise then, to reflect on the many English interpretations for drôle - funny, amusing, humorous, strange, comical, odd, peculiar, weird, curious... and so it is quite interesting (for oneself) to assume the French ennui as opposed to the bland British boredom. I do not think anyone will notice the difference, but you certainly will, and your boredom will turn into a mild amusement that keeps one eyebrow cocked and one ear pricked as the shoulder turns - one can even say it in Italian if French is too tricky, for they also do boredom quite elegantly - "mi annoio, but I'm still here, listening, sort of!" (Nota bene: the verb is reflexive, for no one else but the self is to be blamed for this flatness of spirit).
I am now deeply ensconced in the Alberto Moravia novel entitled La Noia, or Boredom in English. The very title, which once read The Empty Canvas, gives me much pleasure; it is an utter relief that someone has sat down at a desk in the beautiful, eternal (so how could it ever be boring - pah!) city of Rome, and for several months explored the nature of boredom with his scratching pen or noisy typewriter - I come to learn that Moravia grappled with his boredom and so, I would imagine, this novel is his attempt to overcome it this novel along with many others, for it is the boredom that compels a man to become a writer, is it not!? From a cold and calculated distance the protagonist watches himself disassociate; he is wealthy, secure and bright but just bored, bored, bored, gripped by ennui, or rather la noia. He examines it, celebrates it, he is utterly intriguing; I have not for one moment been bored while reading it....
Perhaps boredom is the greatest stimulus of all, it is a wall so great and stark that we must break it down by indulging in it completely, that or bang your head against it, forever waiting, waiting, waiting, che noia...
It is in the dark, dank, hopeless streets of Manchester that the band Joy Division and the visionary Factory Records rises up in the 1970s. In Copenhagen last week, the Danish Film Institute's Cinemateket projected a recent BBC documentary entitled The Factory, in which the story of the record label is retold. When listening to Tony Wilson, one of the founders of Factory Records, it becomes clear that all of it stemmed from inertia; the music a cry above the bleak, working class life where unemployment was rife. England never looked more grim, more stark, and yet the phenomena of sound breaks through the wall, a haunting echo that mirrors the streets it resounds in. Through the boredom came this: a band called Joy Division (the name taken from the Nazi concentration camp novel, House of Dolls) with a melancholy, mesmerising front man called Ian Curtis, who committed suicide at the age of 23.
Joy Division then become New Order ‒ as I type I listen to their first album, Movement, recorded in 1981. It is curious to note little transition taking place within the music, as they leave Ian Curtis behind, better times for the new band can be hoped for ahead, perhaps, but it can hardly be heard in the music. It is still dark and melodic, stricken with grief, but the journey ahead for New Order is part of contemporary musical history, evolving into one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the 1980s, producing a unique sound that continues to influence many of today's musical artists.
Indeed boredom, when properly explored, can take unexpected paths, and southern Sweden, a pleasantly uneventful part of the world, is the perfect place to indulge in a New Order blue Monday with a sullen smile upon your face.