First, the weather report. Not much to praise about, it has been slightly above zero degrees and rainy, making the streets slippery and days dull grey. Not much reason to be outdoors then.
The scenery in post New Year’s Eve downtown Helsinki hasn’t been postcard material lately.
Music from the internet
The past months I’ve mostly been listening to music on Tidal, which has been a decent alternative to Spotify, although probably not better in anything else than sound quality (which is always a thing of debate is it noticeable).
Maybe the most listened to band of the week is Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, their music is a weird fusion of progressive Black Sabbath riffs with a singer that sounds a bit like Lemmy. Not sure what to make of them, but they were great live last year anyways.
I’m linking their album via Bandcamp, which is in many ways a much cooler streaming service than Tidal or Spotify. The streaming of music there is free and without ads, as they get their revenue by taking their share of providing a marketplace for artists and music labels to sell their music. Many c-cassette’s, compact discs and vinyls have found their way to me via Bandcamp.
Language research or bust
Last week I had the thought of seeing public art around Helsinki and giving a closer examination of them. For this post, I’ll pick the bronze bust of Matthias Castrén located south of the National Museum of Finland.
I had no knowledge of this guy before, but Castrén was a linguistic adventurer, making two long trips to Siberia searching for the origins of the Finnish language and other minor things like translating the national epic Kalevala into the Swedish. He pretty much laid the foundation of research in the linguistics and ethnography of the Finnic, Ugric and Samoyedic peoples. The first professor of Finnish language at the university of Helsinki died at the age of just 38 (1813 – 1852). Thanks to this bust, now I know something new.
The bust of Castrén is by sculptor Alpo Sailo, who was a pupil and close friend of the great Aleksis Gallen-Kallela (the famous Finnish artist, whom without the imagery of Finnish national identity would be quite different).
Planting in exchange of focusing
The mobile phone is one of many time sinks and distractions of concentration. One app I’ve used in hope of keeping my eyes off the screen is Forest, which allows me to grow virtual plants and trees in a set time frame, but if I do something else with my phone during that time (excluding picking up phone calls), the plant will die, which is always a sad face thing.
It works to some degree, but only when I remember the existence of the whole application. Yet it seems I have been using it somewhat according to its year review (these yearly recaps seem to be really popular these days). I only wish it didn’t crash so often, so I can’t recommend it fully.
“Flourishing Grass” is not what you might be thinking.
Another movie by Ozu
I went to watch another film by Yasujiro Ozu, Floating Weeds (1959), which was even more marvelous than last week’s Equinox Flower. I’m really digging his style that is so differently refreshing from today’s established standards. I’m thinking perhaps I should give it a shot myself how I could replicate it with my own camera. Would need tight spaces though and a certain focus range for the lense.
In any case, there are still a few left to be seen in the cinema (there is a theme screening of his later works). I’m sure I’ll go watch them, as this has also proved to be a good Japanese language listening practice at the same time.
Ayako Wakao starring as a young actor of a travelling theatre troupe in Floating Weeds.
There, another unfocused blog post, but bear with me. Practice makes perfect (although that is something I’m ultimately not aiming towards here).