The Joke and Jack Johnson

Just finished Milan Kundera's first novel "The Joke". I really like it, more than most of his novels, perhaps apart from the subtle "The Unbearable Lighness of Being". It's sweet, funny, dark but less skeptical than his later novels. It's ironic that sometimes a joke can ruin a man's life: his careear, his ideas, his love, his friendship. But is a joke really a joke or does it mean more than a joke? And is the way people take seriously to a joke a joke too?

(Perhaps the difference is that some jokes are unique while some jokes are shared by many people, and in being share, these jokes appear no longer jokes, though taking individually, one by one, they are definitely jokes. Well, in that sense, is Communism a shared joke?)

One passage of the novel reminds me to Sartre's famous line in his play No exit: "Hell is other people":

"We lived, Lucie and I, in a world of devastation; and because we lacked the ability to commiserate with the things thus devastated, we turned our backs on them, offending both them and ourselves in the process. Lucie, my Lucie, so much and poorly loved, is that what you have come for after all these years? To plead on behalf of a devastated world?"

The ending is rather beautiful and somehow comforting, a coming-back, a consolation with the devastated world.

Spent the whole evening to listen again and again to the beautiful, warm and melancholic album "In between dream" by Jack Johnson.

What a sweet song! How I love it.

Do You Remember- Jack Johnson

Do you remember when we first met? I sure do
It was some time in early September
You were lazy about it, you made me wait around
I was so crazy about you, I didn't mind

So I was late for class, I locked my bike to yours
It wasn't hard to find, you painted flowers on
I guess that I was afraid that if you rolled away
You might not roll back my direction real soon

But I was crazy about you then and now
The craziest thing of all, over ten years have gone by
And you're still mine, we're locked in time
Let's rewind

Do you remember when we first moved in together?
The piano took up the living room
You played me boogie-woogie I played you love songs
You'd say we're playing house now you still say we are

We built our getaway up in a tree we found
We felt so far away but we were still in town
Now I remember watching that old tree burn down
I took a picture that I don't like to look at

Well all these times they come and go
And although it don't seem so long
Over ten years have gone by
We can't rewind, we're locked in time
But you're still mine
Do you remember?"