I finally saw Walk the Line on Monday.  As expected, there was fantastic music.  When I was in Adelaide, Mum was listening to the soundtrack, so I already knew that Joaquin Phoenix was a quite remarkable singer – even Reese Witherspoon was pretty good. 

 Johnny Cash really did have a crap life early on.  It’s interesting to think about whether Jack Cash really was as ‘good’ as Johnny obviously remembered him, but in the end it doesn’t really matter – if he remembered him like that, then that’s how it affected him.  Historical accuracy, in this instance, doesn’t really matter (did I really say that?).

The bro said, when he saw it, he expected Johnny to refuse the drugs when first offered, and he was quite disappointed when he did actually take them.  I guess you can rationalise it a bit by saying that in the 50s they didn’t really know so much about the effects of illicit drugs… but they were still illicit.  Anyway.  He took them.  They ruined his life for a while.  The whole story could be seen as a bit trite and even contrived, except that it’s true.

One of the really interesting sidelines, I thought, was the different people that he toured with:  Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis (who really came across as wild), Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison… the line between ‘country’ and ‘rock’ at that stage really was infintesimal.  They were all coming out of the same milieu, the same influences, and much of their stuff really does sound alike.  This is my justification for liking Johnny Cash.  Not that I need one; he’s (his music is) just so cool.

I just went to a free lecture at Melbourne Uni, on the invention of money by the Greeks in the sixth century.  It was pretty interesting:  the lecturer was fairly engaging to listen to, which is always a bonus.  I wasn’t entirely convinced by what he said about the invention of money itself – it seemed a bit vague, although admittedly the guy did say that the details were all in his book (plug, plug – he did it in quite a self-effacing way, though).  The more interesting side of it was the connection between the development of philosophy and money at the same time, in the same place (and he would have talked about drama, in particular tragedy, too, if he hadn’t had all of his time taken up by philosophy).  He defined philosophy as the view that the universe is an understandable system governed by uniform, impersonal forces.  The early philosophers all seemed to think that the entire universe is made up of one substance, in different forms.  The lecturer said that this was a result of Miletus (where the philospohers lived) being a monetised society.  Money was the most powerful thing in a non-monarchical society; it was capable of being exchanged for anything, and everything could be exchanged for money; and it was impersonal.  Viola.  Philosophy as we understand it.  Pretty interesting idea.