Word: contexts
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...order to give context to the disembodied desire of his two lovers, Aciman references a bygone European past, but manages to trivialize it by reducing it to a simple, romantic picture of the Old Country. Both Clara and the protagonist come from an Eastern European, Jewish background and move about in a world with scattered references to Dostoevsky, Rilke, Rohmer, St. Petersburg, Bellagio and Byzantium—one that is faded around the edges like a sepia photograph...
Aciman’s shower of allusions is too perfunctory to do justice to the ideas and places he is evoking. The nod to a different cultural context is shallow, but additionally becomes disturbing when Aciman uses metaphors reminiscent of the pain and trauma caused by World War II to describe the main character’s somewhat unconvincing anguish at Clara’s rejection. He morosely declares, “I’ll always hate you for this, for bringing me to the abyss and forcing me to stare down, the way they force a detainee...
...Bring Me Home,” the production isn’t enough to compensate for the weak songwriting and over-processed instruments, and the listener is left with an unoriginal track that feels vacuous and forced. Adu’s nuanced vocal performance seems, in the context of these songs, emotionless and bored...
...That Easy”— which ironically may be the best song on “Soldier of Love”—reveals the album’s deepest flaw. Despite an improvement in dynamic songwriting, the overly processed instruments and production which, in context of the stronger songwriting, is overbearing, keep the song from reaching the emotional peaks for which it aspires. A smoky upright bass pattern lightly supports the Sunday-afternoon strumming of the laconic acoustic and the waves of organ that sweep through the wide-open spaces of the song like wind...
Sack points out an often fatal misconception. "What I would hope, first of all," he says, "is that people would realize that just because a drug is prescribed doesn't mean it's safe. It's only safe in a context, and once you change that context and you start to mix it with other pills and alcohol, it's not going to be safe. The public needs education, and I think physicians, when they realize the risks, are much less likely to be pressured into prescribing them when they're inappropriate or, more importantly, prescribing things without adequate supervision...