(Edit: replaced first paragraph and link which mysteriously disappeared upon first publish.)
This one's for Arbi-everything-sounds-good-in-French-trista. I heard this on the radio yesterday, and had to find it. It's David Bowie's Space Oddity covered --in French-- by Lucien Midnight. Not just French, but Quebecois French. Which is like three or four kinds of awesome, right there.
Tangentially, it took me a while to find, so I also came across a great 1999 cover of same by Natalie Merchant (sorry, but it's in English!):
But, even more interestingly, how, HOW?! did I teach foreign language classes for so many years without realizing that ABBA actually had French, Spanish and German versions of most of their own songs?!?!
I'm picturing language lab exercises, class dance-offs in costume and 70's hair....so many possibilities...
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Monday, September 27, 2010
Online lessons
Just came across this article on CNN.
The website for the organization.
Can't wait to check some of it out. Maybe I'll go back in time and actually 'beat' Chemistry... or Stats. hmm, is there Stats over there? /going to see/
I'm especially interested in watching some of the history lessons to see how well the format works for the humanities. I wonder if it's high school style history (i.e. 'facts', dates, etc.) or college-style history...
Might be fun to sling together a couple of lessons in random humanities fields. It would be a distraction from what I should be doing, but that hasn't stopped me from doing about a thousand other non-priority projects this month.
The website for the organization.
Can't wait to check some of it out. Maybe I'll go back in time and actually 'beat' Chemistry... or Stats. hmm, is there Stats over there? /going to see/
I'm especially interested in watching some of the history lessons to see how well the format works for the humanities. I wonder if it's high school style history (i.e. 'facts', dates, etc.) or college-style history...
Might be fun to sling together a couple of lessons in random humanities fields. It would be a distraction from what I should be doing, but that hasn't stopped me from doing about a thousand other non-priority projects this month.
Friday, February 27, 2009
What she was wearing
I heard this poem earlier this week on The Writer's Almanac, and really liked it. I also thought Keillor read it very nicely.
I'm definitely checking out more works by this poet.
What She Was Wearing
this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it
you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said
and these are my arson gloves
so you don't set fire to something?
he asked
exactly
and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots
I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?
and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas
and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Stranger in a Known Land, or Frontier Living
I've been thinking a lot lately about liminal space and construction of identity. Mine and LPs, mostly. It seems pretty complicated to me, and I'm not sure I've fully formed my ideas about it, but it's a theme I seem to cycle around to from time to time, so I figured I'd share the short version, and maybe cycle back here to expand next time I'm thinking about it.
Most of you know LP and I are an international, bilingual couple. That's one/ two? borders. We have each lived in each other's country of origin for significant periods of time. What we have noticed, and have confirmed as a pretty common experience with other bicultural folks, is that once you have truly crossed a border and lived in that other culture to the point of comfortably accepting many of the societal constructions of that place, you can't really ever completely come back home. That is, when you come back to the place you originally called home, it doesn't feel completely natural either. You have done irreparable 'damage' to your default world view. You can see why certain 'givens' in your culture seem silly/shocking/obscene to foreigners, because they now seem silly, etc. to you, too.
This can be a good thing, of course, but right now I am trying to get a feel for the size of the impact on a human psyche over a lifetime of not being able to go 'home'. Or maybe trying to figure out what two people can do in such a frontierland to create their own home(land?). But also, right now we are living in a few other significant liminal spaces as well, so it is perhaps more on my mind than usual. And I don't mean to say that it's horrible: it's just different, I think, from what I perceive most other peoples' experience to be.
So, if you feel like it, please tell me about your experience of being 'other' or of being caught between two worlds. Can people who share a similar experience meet up and be citizens of some combined no-man's land, even if their original border crossing happened on a different kind of threshold? What do you think? I have a practical/objective hunch that our situation is not as exceptional as I subjectively feel it to be, yet that assumption doesn't make it feel less real to me. Why should that be?
Most of you know LP and I are an international, bilingual couple. That's one/ two? borders. We have each lived in each other's country of origin for significant periods of time. What we have noticed, and have confirmed as a pretty common experience with other bicultural folks, is that once you have truly crossed a border and lived in that other culture to the point of comfortably accepting many of the societal constructions of that place, you can't really ever completely come back home. That is, when you come back to the place you originally called home, it doesn't feel completely natural either. You have done irreparable 'damage' to your default world view. You can see why certain 'givens' in your culture seem silly/shocking/obscene to foreigners, because they now seem silly, etc. to you, too.
This can be a good thing, of course, but right now I am trying to get a feel for the size of the impact on a human psyche over a lifetime of not being able to go 'home'. Or maybe trying to figure out what two people can do in such a frontierland to create their own home(land?). But also, right now we are living in a few other significant liminal spaces as well, so it is perhaps more on my mind than usual. And I don't mean to say that it's horrible: it's just different, I think, from what I perceive most other peoples' experience to be.
So, if you feel like it, please tell me about your experience of being 'other' or of being caught between two worlds. Can people who share a similar experience meet up and be citizens of some combined no-man's land, even if their original border crossing happened on a different kind of threshold? What do you think? I have a practical/objective hunch that our situation is not as exceptional as I subjectively feel it to be, yet that assumption doesn't make it feel less real to me. Why should that be?
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