Asphalt Eden

VoicePost 1043K 5:09

“see post” Transcribed by: asphalteden

In Our New Great Depression, we'll see the return of obscure candy bars, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of our economy, the Mars Bar, Oh Henry!, Zagnut, Abba Zabba, 5th Avenue, Clark, Valomilk, Sugar Daddy. We'll sit upon our front porches, or stoops, or stand on the lines outside the offices of unemployment, regarding the empty wrappers of the new Drifter bars, the charming double paks of Hoover Shoes, and, of course, the delicious Bindlestiff and its rich coconut center.

In Our New Great Depression, we'll likely feel the freedom we always imagined we'd have if we were unshackled from the chains of our money and status and power, all as we continue hunting down money and status and power. All of our pains and headaches and stress conditions will disappear, replaced only by the dull ache in our stomachs; it will seem as if it can never be filled.

In Our New Great Depression, we'll come to see the great automotive graveyard, two lanes of sagging heaps miles long, and marvel at how they used to build 'em. Remember the Escalade and the Land Cruiser? Remember how the H3 used to glide down thin country streets, like a great yellow Wandering Albatross, its magnificent lines like the flowing arteries of our nation's trucking industry? Remember the X5, the LX, the Cayenne? Our tremendous shipping crates, filled with the bounties of democracy, in this case two children and their preoccupied parents; like a fleet of Flying Fortresses over Japan and Germany; like great sharks.

In Our New Great Depression, it seems to us that the Moon is always the same in the sky, some nights an ever-vigilant eye, other nights a tiny sliver of a scalpel, constantly regulating and deregulating. Some nights it isn't there at all.

In Our New Great Depression, or perhaps after, grandpa will hoard all sorts of useful items in the basement of our home, because you never do know what you might need someday. This box will contain cellphones of every description, ones that can text, ones that can Tweet, ones that can blog, ones that have blurry photos of intoxicated faces stored upon the bountiful hidden green dales of their microchips, all grins. This box will contain purses of every description; this box will contain the heels of a hundred pairs of shoes; this box will contain pages and pages of old manuscripts, careful memoirs and suspense tales, good for fire starting and scrap paper and insulation of our home's thin walls. The mule out back has a Prada feedbag.

In Our New Great Depression, we will sadly load a DVD player and IKEA mattress atop the frame of our ailing Ford Focus, and begin our way west. The poor dog might well get hit by a cruising H3 on the highway, and poor grandpa might not make it either. But we heard from a handbill there's work in the great valley in California, work picking peaches and other fruits, and maybe a decent place to live with showers and real flush toilets, and no place a man with a tractor might come to and knock the walls down. We've just got to try and find it, JC, we've just got to.

In Our New Great Depression, there's this old shirt we have. We never really wore it much, but now it's a good shirt, maybe the best one. They all get worn out in a while, but this one is still fresh and new inside the closet, waiting, we think, or at least it looks like it is. Sometimes we take that shirt out and hang it on a chair, button it up around the chair's back, primp its button collar, smooth the sleeves. That shirt is waiting and we're gonna wait too, just keep waiting.

In Our New Great Depression, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and Anne Hathaway and Amy Winehouse and Jennifer Aniston and Matthew McConaughey finally find love in the pages of their new mimeographed Tijuana Bibles, made somewhere uptown. We snigger and trade copies as we ride the rails in the cramped baggage compartment of the Amtrak Acela Regional train to Scranton, PA. Looking for a dead little town to kick around in, maybe an abandoned foreclosure to squat inside, all hunched around a barrel fire, roasting squirrels for our Appalachian stew.

In Our New Great Depression, the sex is so much better now, for we clutch at each other on the ground and try to pull ourselves down and down, almost through each other, down to under the ground, as fast as we can.

In Our New Great Depression, some guy on the internet, one of the few left, says we only have to live through ten years of this, only ten years of it all, and that World War III will probably pull us out of this terrific mess the Democrats have gotten us in.

In Our New Great Depression, we hear a faint knock on our door, should we still have doors, and, upon opening, we find it is Little Orphan Annie and her plucky dog Sandy. She looks up at us with her two great voids, the ageless eyes that have seen decades come and go, the two beautifully vacant orbs of fortitude and love. We fall to our knees before her and she tousles our unkempt hair, whispering softly, "Chin up, chin up," as little, magnificent Sandy nips gently at our fingertips.

We had a fine anniversary weekend and I am feeling pretty good. Last night, in the pool, especially in the deep end, I thought about the vagaries of the current market—when younger, I used to fantasize about a new depression, and how it might change the public psyche of conspicuous consumption for the better in the long run. Such fantasy seems so naïve to me now. My pelvic difficulties appear to be exacerbated by my lengthy swims, but the health and mood benefits of the latter outweigh the discomfort; a trade-off I've decided to live with. Like dealing with the market panic, attitude is truly all.

I like to watch Bill Moyers Journal on PBS—I guess it's slewed liberal, but only because we're in an America where everything to the left of the gibbering nationalistic disaster-porn of today's right wing is considered liberal bias. It, and the New Yorker, are the two places I read about the current state of affairs—wry fatalism from NY musos, (rather like that guy in Les Miz who makes fun of the revolution shortly before his bullet ridden body collapses on the barricades); and compassionate, concerned commentary in a country that, largely, understands and appreciates neither.

After seeing Echo & the Bunnymen, followed by Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist a day later, I'm thinking of and remembering high school a little. I haven't enjoyed a movie more this year; it's something of a paean, it seems to me, of what it was like to be a teen in NYC during the late 80s and 90s, fogged up by its supposedly current setting. That movie, for all its occasional single dimensionality, hit me with nostalgia for back-then real hard. It's funny, because, intellectually and emotionally, I don't really miss it at all. Things were so lonely back then.

To those of my friends in NJ: if you're looking for fine Polish cooking, may I recommend Ania's? Finest pierogies I've had since childhood, and if there's anything we need right now, it's good comfort food to remind us of the agrarian good old days in the old country. The owner even tried to convince my father, in Polish, to hook me up with her daughter. "He's married already," he replied.

I'm like jelly from a spa appointment this morning and the vacation time we're on.

After a fine Mediterranean meal at Gus's Place, we settled in to Le Poisson Rouge for the show. It's a nice venue, with long tables arranged tight for cabaret seating. I found this a little too "close" so we chose a small table near the middle rear. I'd foolishly left the zoom lens at home, so I was unable to get any really "good" shots, though I feel the above picture of Library Tapes, the opening act, demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of viewing live electronic music. He sat before a piano and tape recorder with closely miked wind-chimes, a pretty slide show of various environmental photos cycling nearby. I'd heard a few Library Tapes tracks here and there, but had never been grabbed before by any of them. The live act was no different for me, though the prerecorded atmospheres on the tape deck were nice enough. I find the current crop of minimal-piano-flavored ambient somewhat precious (aside from Goldmund), and this was very much in that vein. The music was similar to the visuals displayed: decaying architecture and vague skylines, eventually looping around and repeating. A lot of it sounds like the uplifting sort-of-modern classical characteristically played in indie films; not really my tea.

As forewarned by some of you, there was a man with a truly enormous zoom taking photos here and there, the shutter noise klack-klacking like a ruler on knuckles. I thought, "Note: do not buy that lens or do that yourself." There was also a Beefeater gin event that night, and we received free gin drinks for filling out a little card. They had men and women dressed like beefeaters, perfect for the congregation of arty weirdos and their girlfriends' hairdos.

ACME was next with a piece by Ingram Marshall (present in the audience, in fact) which was spooky and dramatic, in the October Dark Shadows way I like so well. I will have to be on the look out for some of his things. They then played a Philip Glass piece that felt over-long, but quite pleasant nevertheless. I'm struck by how strong the classical ensembles feel when alongside the contemporary electronic acts. The new artists seem so woefully thin or anemic when compared—perhaps a lesson for those new performers who wish to touch upon modern classical tropes without the rigor? Anyway, I felt this portion of the bill was the highlight. Also, what is it about female cellists? They appeal to me on a cellular level.

Finally, Deaf Center came on and performed a brief set (perhaps twenty minutes?) which was culled largely from Pale Ravine. I like the way their music builds so much tension with little release. Still, their set seemed so truncated that it was hard to get a bead on it. In all, it was a good show, and a great value in a city that's always had a dearth of non-techno electronic music events. Check out the Wordless Music WNYC site for recordings of some past shows (including Stars of the Lid from a few months ago)—I'm skipping SotL's second 2008 show, but I'll probably be at Tim Hecker in December. This kind of event needs support to continue.
( blurry deaf center shot )

I try to do new, unexceptional things on a regular basis. This morning I watched a documentary on John Cage courtesy of Ubuweb (well worth the fifty minutes), and saw him scrounging, vuzh-like, on the forest floor for edible mushrooms. I thought, today is the day I'm going to start "getting to know" mushrooms. I've never been a big eater of them, though the idea of hunts for what you can find in nearby woods is deeply appealing to me. I doubt I'll ever progress pass the store-bought rarities, and so I bought a package of the most boring white ones, as starter mushrooms, and cooked them in a mac and goat cheese arrangement tonight. By far the best part was the mushrooms, which had absorbed the olive oil to yield a surprisingly complex and earthy flavor ... I think this is going to be a fun avenue of food to explore. Recommendations and recipes are most welcome. I find a site like Ubuweb also most welcome—a limitless source of unusual footage to explore on topics I might not otherwise find attractive but for idle curiosity.

My fifth wedding anniversary is next week and I've some time off planned. I have a few things to do, but I will certainly relax, and spend the long weekend much like I did the last weekends. Saturday and Sunday I reread Watchmen for the first time in, oh, about eleven years, and was amazed at how much I'd missed the first go-round. I believe I need to revisit a lot of material that I might have been too impatient or insensitive to truly appreciate the first time. It will be a pleasure to read Little, Big once again. But, yes, I am having a big anniversary and I really outdid myself with Bianca's present. I liked it so much I wanted to keep it for myself when I received it. I'll have to photograph it when it's no longer a secret—I'm just so pleased.

Tomorrow night I am seeing Deaf Center live, along with Library Tapes and a classical ensemble. Now that I am properly armed with photographic equipment and the means to Photoshop the results into looking fine, I'll be documenting the event as best I can. I am not so familiar with Library Tapes, but I hope to find more to enjoy in their live show than I did in the scant recorded stuff I've heard. Then, next week, it's Echo & the Bunnymen at Radio City, playing the entirety of Ocean Rain with an orchestra. I've always loved that kind of pomposity in alt rock, though the Bunnymen's earlier paisley grind is far more to my taste. Photos of all to come.

Download: Quiet Sounds Episode 20: The Very Soul of the Machine
(Please right-click to download.)
71.3MB - one hour, seventeen minutes, forty-five seconds

Mandala sequencing and blissed-out cloud-hop.

Tracklist:
1. “Departure from the Northern Wasteland” (edit) by Michael Hoenig from Departure from the Northern Wasteland (Kuckuck) (start time: 1:10)
2. “Arrival” by Steve Roach from Empetus (Fortuna) (9:19)
3. “Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night” (edit) by Coil from Musick to Play in the Dark 1 (Chalice) (11:48)
4. “Movements of a Visionary” by Tangerine Dream from Phaedra (Virgin) (18:07)
5. “Patashnik” by Biosphere from Patashnik (Apollo) (25:44)
6. “Tascel_7” by Arovane from Atol Scrap (DIN) (31:56)
7. “Lomond” by Loess from Wind & Water (N5MD) (37:20)
8. “Amalia” by As One from A.R.T.¹ 12" (A.R.T.) (41:46)
9. “Xtal” by Aphex Twin from Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (Apollo) (48:19)
10. “Broken English from Europe″ by Metamatics from From Death to Passwords Where You're a Paper Aeroplane (Hydrogen Dukebox) (52:45)
11. “Flextone C” by Atom Heart from Flextone (Rather Interesting) (58:39)
12. “Resurgam” by Loscil from Submers (Kranky) (61:55)
13. “Snowflake 6” by Yagya from Rhythm of Snow (Force Inc.) (68:40)

thequietsounds

To my photographer friends: if I wanted to take photographs that looked like these, what section of my SLR how-to book should I be studying especially? Or were these created with the help of software?

"take a picture of yourself right now.
don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
post that picture with NO editing.
post these instructions with your picture."