| BENDING BEAUBORG |
[01 Mar 2005|02:12am] |
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M83- Car Chase Terror |
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Here is the first chapter of the novel I have been working on as of late. It is still early in its infancy, so be gentle.
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Chapter 1
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I
Brandon Beauborg tilted his chop-sticks down and to the left slightly, so that he could orient himself at just the right angle of vision to the fair-skinned Japanese youth before him. The boy was certainly extraordinary: lips flushed and fleshy when pursed, smiling always in perpetual polite surprise; shoulders that did not betray their frame and sloped strongly, but gently, into the welcoming tributary of his slender waist; Caucasian oval eyes of an unnaturally pale blue; thick, bristling hair that hung wispy and whimsy in a tufted arc over his head--it was all iridescent in the murky pool of light that soaked his lily-yellow outline like some strangely erotic kabuki aureole.
Beauborg did not understand a word of Japanese. He had only studied it conceptually--that is to say, broadly--for its unusual linguistic value. He imagined the youth was thoroughly contemporary in his interests as he discussed them avidly with his dinner guests. And what disappointing, patronizing company he kept! They were classmates, most likely, as the hunched over squinting demeanor of the two Japanese Jezebels reminded one of strained foreign exchanges and new poorly outfitted languages. No doubt his boy was commenting on the latest Harajuku fashion trends--or something of the sort. Meanwhile the two tepid trollops laughed their clanking steam kettle laugh and made a harvest crescent of their tea-stained teeth and went on about their usual domestic and academic trifles.
Yes, the studied and plastic ennui of his dinner guests aside, the boy would be liberal in his leanings--wouldn't he? For his temperament in political affairs must no doubt show most transparently in the almost foppish way he wore his black skinny leather tie. Ties are, in their essence, the nooses of the corporate marionette, yes, and he was wearing it up to the neck, granted. But still, it was leather, it was skinny, and most importantly, it was a relic from decades ago that deserved its cyclically fashionable resurrection.
In short, the whole thing was undeniably leftist. The fact that he could wear this veritable paradox of principles with pride made him patently liberal in his notions. He could accommodate his contradictions, and then some. For logic held no sway over his irrational Zen upbringing.
He couldn't fathom the boy in any other terms than classical ones. The uncanny presence of the golden ratio in his delicate facial bloom seemed much too imposing. Delicate, because there was tenderness in place of marble. There were no fluted columns to be found, but high pillared cheekbones. He felt he could capture the Fibonnaci sequence tracing elliptical dervish spirals from his uncleft chin to his unfurrowed brow. Indeed, he wished to knead and weave such ornate Persian tapestries in more southern regions of that rare exotic flesh, and he suddenly found his passion unbearably and naively violent. He was on the verge of becoming dangerously impulsive, if it were not for the sushi bar that--fortunately for the boy--kept his frenzied hands at bay.
Still, the youth was to Beauborg an ancient temple from feudal Japan that obeyed the same universal principles on which the Acropolis and the Pantheon were founded. He was to be regarded and worshipped as such: all his guests were to be given musically bubbling spirits and fattened on Indian sweetmeats. He was an ancient temple, yes, but one that bore the graffiti of a sprawling, scrawling postmodern spray--of light, of color, of time--that didn't know--or care for--its own history--except as a means to invert and subvert everything that went before it--and thus tempted again and again the indifferent but dutiful return of the eternal.
Yes, he was doomed. This boy would soon be gilded in iron and shaking his aggressive phallic stone tools at the infinitely copulating and unlistening primordial gods. He would wait in vain for the bountiful harvest that would never come, except with his own self-consuming demise.
But for now--the boy was armed only with a pair of flimsy chop-sticks. He was disarming Beauborg, in turn, with the expert way he lightly shook the broth from his udon noodles: a slight vibrato of the wrist that produced visible undulations in the fragrant Darjeeling tea Beaubourg was steeping with his seldom averted eyes. Then quite suddenly, for one stray moment, the boy's gaze clasped his own. It was like a steel trap that produced sweet blood from a snared and overtaxed limb. So, in alarm, Beauborg made his vigil more subtle and substituted darting syncopated glances for his previous artful scrutiny.
He was fascinated by the boy's singular approach to his sushi rolls--at each incremental snap shot. As if each roll were a gestalt to be eaten and savored wholly, with ginger, wasabi and soy sauce all inseparably intact. There was something distinctly socialist about the way he never broke his seaweed seal. Or perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps there was something spiritual about it. How the cucumber, the avocado and the tempura snow-crab became, and thus remained in his hands, all the way to digested oblivion, sublimely one. Beauborg looked down at his own plate in dismay.
What a poor western buffoon I am, he thought, to have my sushi rolls, without exception, decidedly unrolled! I jabbed these sacred emblems with regrettably unconscious hands and thus one became two. And, to add infamy to treachery, I had the audacity to ask the sushi waitress to dress my plate with more superfluous tartar sauce, or whatever it was. How dreadfully bourgeois!
Look at the boy: with his minimal, but extravagant, simplicity. A calligraphy landscape framed more by empty suggestive longings than form, and so all the more enchanting. Just look at him! All the more! All the more! Veiled in foggy dreams we never know what ancient enlightened patriarch sits smiling statue-still and content on the rolling grassy tiers of the sparsely brush-stroked hillside. Then we rend aside a veil and there he is, mad old Rinzai with staff in hand, overseeing this bloated human sphere from the lilting cosmic vapors of the universal Buddha-mind .
Beauborg felt he had, in these few pregnant minutes together, full of distant spaces but no less bursting with potential, learned a book-full from this boy and his two front-bowed geisha decoys. It seemed to him to be The Book, The Gospel, The Good News that every moronic Bible-selling slogan-man fails to sell. Even when the boy splashed searing udon broth onto his lap--which to Beauborg was a suspiciously sexual synchronicity that made his fertile nature cobra-coil in suspense--Beauborg felt no less privileged and tutored. For he noticed that the boy, without hesitation, dabbed his hand immediately to the aid of the viciously painted hussies. He had mistakenly thought they had also been be-brothed--with no regard for his own stains, which spread like sticky tendrils down his legs.
At this seminal moment the saturation point was reached and Beauborg felt he could stand it no longer. He could learn all the ways and wiles of life from this boy in one sitting. But where would that leave him? An uncurious philosopher is something that belongs in a Lewis Carroll fable astride the logic-chopping Mad Hatter. Such an unhappy entity was hardly fit for an academy--or rather a place of learning (Beauborg was careful to distinguish the two). Much less did the artless pedant deserve to be framed in a PhD placard, for which he had longed more than those fantastic eastern fairytales and, to put it obscenely, the tails of those selfsame eastern fairies. Still, it did seem that the department in which he had studied was almost exclusively the den of logic-chopping Mad Hatters. He resigned himself for one unstable moment to such a career, one that would be enabled by this youthfully omniscient panacea of knowledge that goes unspoken and can only be shown --represented to him by this beautiful, frightfully beautiful boy.
Then, just as he was savoring a thought, noticing its particularly youthful vitality…its possible scandal and intrigue…the way one sometimes thought as though one were a wild-eyed, sea-salted child planting elaborate sand-castles on the beach and setting up fortresses to protect the impermanent debris from the relentlessly lapping tide…just as he was contemplating how our customs are inextricably bound to our language, how the articulation and formulation of our grammar steers the uncertain helm of our thoughts…just as he was fathoming how the Japanese language is structured in such a way that the addressee always receives acknowledgement before the sender (unlike his native English tongue which always begins I, I, I and so nips itself hopelessly in the bud)…just as he was appreciating how the boy thought first of the little proper laps of those jaggedly angular figures before his own succulent buried treasures…he thought the lot of the Mad Hatter, needless to say, was grossly overrated, overpaid and overstayed.
Self-satisfied, though hardly resigned, Beauborg finished the last of the warm plum sake, raising the porcelain saucer to his lips as if in coital prostration to his visiting deity. The tangy eucharist was making him swoon. The attendant thoughts of locked limbs and the juices that were sprung from titillated orifices were not inconspicuous. As he gathered his belongings and apologized to the bewildered waitress for, in his words, feigning kinship with an obsolete aristocracy, he visited his salient icon thrice over his shoulder. On the third strike one of Beauborg's searching radar pangs in the abyss was returned. For the boy had apparently caught on.
It was a look of mocking acceptance. It was as if Beauborg's overtures had been duly noted and then--discarded. And it was sad, too, for both of them, this morbid recognition. Sad for the boy, because he no doubt detected something false in his suitor's impalpable molestations from afar. A simple salutation or nod would surely do. Then this whole sordid affair would innocently pass a sign of blushing flattery. But the boy felt himself an instrument for perverse literary games, Beauborg suspected.
Sad for Beauborg, indeed, because he had filled with an excess of tainted internal verbiage a silent space that deserved nothing more than the occasional intake of breath, throaty sigh and sideways appreciation of mutually hesitant glances. In his frustrating concern to express and discern those things precious to him, Beauborg had missed that most precious thing which is both inexpressible and indiscernible.
He walked outside and lit a cigarette, having learned a little something about the ties that bind such seemingly disparate facets of life as love and death. He felt his immune system weakening. The outside world was seizing the reigns that squirmed uneasily within him, jousting for their greedy share of his waning élan vital.
Just as in death, he thought, our bodies can no longer recognize what belongs to us and what does not--so in that moment of cobwebby clove smoke that clung in rivulets to his tattered over-worn noir trench-coat and the heavy ponderous clouds above, which seemed to dread their northeastern trek across rusty autumn skies because they were ready to hatch an imminent dark birth upon the world…when he could no longer see his Yellow Narcissus in the glass, obscured by his own hazily opaque reflection…he realized it was becoming more and more difficult to extricate himself from those things that he was coerced--no, fated--to love.
He was opening up. Or, in other words, he was dying.
And this revelation came both as a shock and a relief to Beauborg, who had never, in all his life, suspected himself of harboring either the capacity to love--or to die.
It was thus that Beauborg started his bending: in his unrequited longing for him, the boy, who would, in the end, meet his suffocating death clutched in the amphibian arms of one of those sickly saturnine succubi.
Then his cell phone rang. And he was called to the Museum.
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| KING OF BANDITS JING |
[18 Jun 2004|04:29am] |
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The Magnetic Fields- Deep Sea Diving Suit |
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I just got started on manga recently (with FLCL and Jukno Mizuno's cutesy acid stuff like Cinderella) and I'm really liking this one. The sketches--no, art work--gets better with every book (I started with Book 6), and each "realm" that Jing steals from has its own lesson to be learned, so the whole thing is like a series of parables. Book Six was all about a civilization that so worshipped its technology that it was willing to sacrifice its own citizens to keep the power running (the cult of light opposed the force of gravity that kept humans inferior and earthbound). So far the Zaza masquerade from the Fifth is my favorite, however.
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| ROBBIE D: THE LOTION SONG |
[18 Jun 2004|03:52am] |
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 predatory |
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The Unicorns |
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Has anyone else heard this creepy little piece of shit? I can't get it out of my head:
"Pump it. Pump it. Spread it. Spread it. Get it on your elbow, elbow. All over the place. All over your face. Yeah!"
I want to turn it into the new electrogoth Macarena and have everyone bring out a bottle of lotion and SLATHER it on whilst dancing with their elbows in the air.
That would fuckin rule.
Here is an interview with the demented bastard behind it all.
In his own words:
"I released my first booty song called "Lotion," which is about this horrid, scabby, sunburnt and peeling person who walks up and down the beach thinking that he/she is the most beautiful, commotion-causing creature in the world. It is very fun and kinda freaky."
I'll say. *cringe*
-D-
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| Siggy Bjork |
[18 Jun 2004|03:17am] |
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music |
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Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do |
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One of the best interviews I have read in a long, long time. Highlights include:
-Bjork talking about Merce Cunningham, John Taverner (get Protecting Veil now you idiots!), and John Cage like the kick-ass know-it-all she is.
-Bjork and Siggy agree: downloading is not evil, but if you really like something you should buy it
-Jonsi has never heard electroclash (good! cause the minute I hear him doing that stupid shit I'll blind him in his other eye)
-Michel Gondry has issues with other directors shooting Bjork's music
-Kjarri is hot, he looks like Jesus Christ, he was drunk at the MTV awards, he met Beyonce, and she didn't like Orri's smoking.
-Jonsi says () was too heavy to play in concert, and next album will be more poppy (cringe)
-Bjork's next album will be more vocal in nature
-Jonsi is gay (oops! not in interview, just had to remind everyone)
In other news: How come I never heard that freakin APPLE was delivered to Sigur Ros' music, because it is Chris Martin's favorite band? (psssst, I am a closet Coldplay fan, but I feel better listening to Elbow's new album because it delivers the same sweeping sentimentality with songs like Powdered Blue, Grace Under Pressure and Switching Off and it isn't too popular)
AND check out this trailer for the upcoming Siggy documentary. Highlights: Kjarri in an elf hat (yummy) and Dave Gahan TRYING to wax poetic (but he can't because he isn't Martin Gore)
i-d magazine interviews björk, jónsi and kjarri
( Read more... )
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| Ladies and Gentleman: THE PSEUDOSPHERES |
[17 Jun 2004|05:02am] |
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 indescribable |
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Amon Tobin- Permutations |
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This piece of non-Euclidean geometry represents perfectly the ideal spiritual path I have set for myself in life.
But first, a physics interlude.
If there is not enough mass in the universe to cause the space-time continuum to be positively curved, or flat, and instead turns out to be negatively curved (as in the pseudosphere), the chaffing infinities that appear when physicists try to splice the equations of relativity with those of quantum mechanics should disappear. Why? Because on a pseudospherical (or saddle-shaped surface) all parallel lines curve away from each other...meaning, there would never be an infinite density of points (i.e. subatomic particles becoming "quantum foam" at the highest level of resolution) and there would instead be, at the very bottom, a kind of repulsive force keeping things apart. Einstein had a place for such a repulsive force in his equations (his "cosmological constant" if I'm not mistaken) and I think it is due to make a comeback. As for myself, I don't believe there is as much dark matter in the universe as some physicists are inclined to believe. The implications of a pseudospherical universe are really astounding. But more on my physics theories another time.
I was reading one of Sven Davisson's articles for the "journal of experimental spirituality" he edits called ASHE (www.ashe-prem.org), where he talks about the dual relationship between Nuit and Hadit in Crowley's writings (issue No. 3, "There is no God where I am") that prophesizes a new direction to be explored in the post-Christian western world. A true New Age that stresses exteriority over interiority, and a relational self rather than an essential one.
Hadit is the dimensionless, extensionless point at the center of a circle. Nuit (Egyptian goddess who arches over us as the sky) is the circumference, the boundary-limit. In the previous Age of Osirus (as Crowley terms it) we were seeking that dimensionless point and encouraged to reside within its empty core. In the New Age of Horus we realize that this core cannot be realized by virtue of its emptiness, and we instead treat it as the vital impetus pushing us out toward the liminal experiences that are Nuit's domain. Hadit, then, is the watcher which cannot watch itself because it is doing the watching.
An expansion rather than a contraction.
This is all well and good. But some occult scholars (like the friend who literally stabbed oneness into me in a previous post) interpret all this to mean we should be constantly transgressing any and all taboos and never intentionally "impose" limits on ourselves.
That is to say, if we can get rid of all sense of disgust, and we are able to comfortably eat our own shit, for example, we have reached a kind of moksha, or liberation--if not enlightenment entirely--and fuck anything that would stand in our way.
Well, as much as I am for liminal experiences that push us past our stultifying insecurities, I believe true freedom is not the ability to transgress any and all boundaries but PRECISELY the ability to set the RIGHT perimeters and criteria for oneself, so that one is not always "stepping out of bounds."
In conversation with said friend, I mentioned that I had just recently transgressed the societal taboos against drinking, smoking, doing drugs and having sex. While this has expanded my senses (and my appreciation thereof) considerably, it would not be a case of "total freedom" if I followed my cravings blindly and smoked, fucked, and ingested whatever and whenever I felt an impulse to do so.
Such thinking is merely an excuse for sade-istic licentiousness. And one would not be free. On the contrary, one would be a slave to one's own desires.
One must have Zen bones to retain one's structure. And one must have Zen flesh to retain one's plasticity.
Zen Flesh. Zen Bones.
So the compromise here would be: smoke, but only 1 or 2 cigs a day, if that. Fuck, but only with your partner, and/or those people your partner agrees to fuck.
This is why the middle path is likened to a razor's edge. It is very easy to fall into addiction, and it is very easy to avoid something altogether. But to have something...yet not have it completely...that is the hazardous balancing act.
That is why I love the pseudosphere. As it has been described on one website:
"A pseudosphere, like a sphere, can be thought of as a 2-D surface. The sphere is smaller than the plane: it bends back on itself and is finite, whereas the plane is infinite. A pseudosphere, however, is bigger than the plane. Both plane and pseudosphere are infinite, yet the pseudosphere manages to have more room. You might say that the pseudosphere is more intensely infinite then the plane." (http://www.cs.unm.edu/~joel/NonEuclid/pseudosphere.html)
In other words, a pseudosphere may, at first, appear to be smaller than a plane (which is apparently infinite) because it bends back on itself and clearly has finite boundaries...but look closer and you will see that it is more intensly infinite than a plane because the closer you get to the liminal areas the faster you approach infinity. A perfect emblem of the middle path--neither right hand, nor left hand--neither completely grasping, nor completely letting go--realizing that the greater the retention, the greater the release--a figure that is at once bounded, but infinite: the pseudosphere.
P.S. If I were to hypothetically form a band, I would call my collective The Pseudospheres. At least our logo would be easy to figure out.
-D-
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| A new way of doing philosophy |
[16 Jun 2004|04:05pm] |
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 quixotic |
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Cursive- The Recluse |
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A perfect example of how Zen and postmodern philosophy (namely, deconstructionism) go hand in hand.
A good friend and I were debating certain metaphysical questions the other night, and the whole time my friend was gesturing emphatically with a knife pointing in my direction and trying to make the assertion that everything is ultimately one and/or should return to oneness. I replied that such a gesture intrinsically deconstructed everything he was saying, because by pointing the knife in such an aggressive way he was implicitly establishing the very duality between Self and Other his speech-act was trying to overcome. This was his performative error. And I didn't need metaphysics to prove him wrong.
All in all, it was a very Zen moment, and it reminds me why all the great Zen masters were so distrustful of metaphysics. It gave me hope that there is a different way of doing philosophy. Not through utterances, but performances. And that is why I now consider film to be the most philosophical of all the mediums. Moreso than the conventional essay. And why I may, in the end, focus more on film than philosophy per se.
As Wittgenstein knew better than anyone, some things can only be shown, not said. And whereof we cannot speak, thereof we portray in cinema.
-D-
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| SUMMER MAKE GOOD |
[16 Jun 2004|03:49pm] |
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The Dears- Don't Lose the Faith |
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I have been waiting for this release a long, long time, and I can only say this: If you like the sparse, spacey, somewhat cold, somewhat minimalist direction the other artists in the Icelandic trio (namely, Bjork and Sigur Ros) took with Vespertine and (), then you will like the progression from FINALLY WE ARE NO ONE to the album featured here. My favorite MUM song remains The Land Between Solar Systems, but Weeping Rock, Rock and Will the Summer Make Good for all of Our Sins come in very close.
To be quite frank, the whole Strokes, etc. scene bores me. If it weren't for the likes of Interpol, I wouldn't even listen to what the New Yorkers are putting out. I could care less about Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their ilk. Karen O, as a lyricist and a vocalist, pales miserably in comparison to the singers of Blonde Redhead and Stereolab (I can't recall their names offhand, fuck me), and the only reason she is touted more than the other two is because she whores herself out on glossy trendy mag-covers and shows more skin.
It has all been done before. There is nothing avantgarde or front-line about them, no matter how hard they try. Just a burnt-out rehashing of retro sounds from a dead era. A fake anger that is neither political nor personal--just self-indulgent glam-rock that isn't even that glammy. We need a new era--not a rebirth, but a complete discontinuity. That is why the Canadian/Icelandic post-rock scene exists. But do we always have to be "post" something? Why can't we be "pre" something?
Hence, MUM and co.
Also, we need more bands that sound like BROADCAST. No, scratch that. We need more sonic innovators that do their own thing LIKE Broadcast.
And...why hasn't anyone heard of Sufjan Stevens yet?
Pick up GREETINGS FROM MICHIGAN and A SUN CAME and you will not only hear one of the most lyrically innovative voices out there, but also music that spans the world over and takes Eastern/Arabic/Indian/Celtic influences with jazzy/electronic/indie-rock sounds and a Philip Glass/Steve Reich sensibility under its belt and keeps the punches and pop-hooks rolling. There is also something strangely religious about him, in songs like The Transfiguration (from Seven Swans). Even though the imagery comes from the Old Testament (which I despise, with the exceptions of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon) he sings it in a way that I can identify with. All in all, Sufjan Stevens is a perfect staple of the kind of wise eclecticism that defines high postmodernism (as in high classicism, etc.) and the millenial generation. Highly recommended.
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| PERSONA |
[16 Jun 2004|01:44pm] |
Do you want to understand why Ingmar Bergman is THE master of close-up cinematography as well as light-and-shadow? Do you want to see why Liv Ullman has THE most dramatic face in cinema history? Do you NOT want your art-house friends to snicker when you say you are a film-buff and what you really mean is that you have seen every **movie** Hollywood has crammed into your local cineplex and you have no idea what the auteur theory of cinema means and why international directors in the 60s took themselves and their artform so seriously? Then watch PERSONA and die happy.
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| TEXHNOLYZE |
[16 Jun 2004|01:31pm] |
Anyone out there who loved LAIN and HAIBANE RENMEI as much as I did NEEDS to check out this anime. RIGHT NOW. Yoshitashi ABe and friends do it again. Another stellar work of art. Anime done by the likes of David Lynch.
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| LEFT IN THE DANCE |
[15 Jun 2004|11:09pm] |
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Elbow- Switching Off |
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So here is a poem I wrote about my Mt Shasta experience, where a HUGE rave/pagan festival was held to celebrate the alignment of Venus with Earth. This piece was borne out of a mushroom trip that sent me dancing for well over three hours, where I collapsed in a trance state and was woken by a dog/wolf that came out of nowhere and licked my face, just as my lover, Norman, was holding my hand and describing to me (my eyes closed) how the rising sun cast a beatific shaft of light on our faces, reminding me why I'm still here and why I didn't choose to leave the body then and there. The whole situation was so beautiful it seemed to be orchestrated from above. I will try to get some pics up another time, but until then, this is what I learned:
1
This boy, here, with lips pursed
and a brow drawn by lines
of too much thinking--
a harsh shadow over a broad nose
and drowsy eyelids, with a neck
that cranes habitually to the left
and a handshake that retreats
too soon and stutters--
I left him in the dance.
This boy, here, who thought
solitude was fashionable, and who
would stretch dirty lawnchairs
over clean-cut grasses and wonder,
alone, how the people who live
assembly-line lives in Euclidean houses
could be happy when the faraway birds
migrating northbound to some unknown
primitive wilderness were calling them out
of their vicarious digital travelogues--
I left him, too, in the dance.
This boy, here, who sucked a tit
that left him cold, and who was
otherwise fascinated by the throbbing
cyclopean stare that drooled
lovely pearls when lit by
thrashing tongues, fevered lips--
who got bent and spread-eagled
because male receptivity was sexually subversive
and proved he could take it like a man
when really all he wanted was to feel like
the shudders had been lifted
before a single human gaze
for one transparent moment--
I left him, too, in the dance.
This boy, here, who thought
he was a Democrat, but then realized
their proposed socialist safety net
would increase his taxes--
and who was too tender to flirt with the Republicans
because they didn't give a shit in the first place--
and who found himself somewhere in the middle
disillusioned with media spectacles
slightly Green but technicolored
looking for something more real,
more mystical than politics--
I left him, too, in the dance.
This boy, here, who thought
God was first a man got through a virgin
whose tears were rosary beads to be cried
and counted before bed every night in prayer--
and who started looking for divinity elsewhere--
in equations--in the stars--
in the ghosts of galaxies
their spectral light reaching
from their burnt-out graves
on the periphery of time
like the last retreating gasp
of a dying legion
looking back over their lives
before the last nuclear blast--
and still later looked for it
in the drugged but lucid eyes
of someone to whom he just made love
and the expectantly vacant moment
when
any possibility of discerning
where his body began
and the other ended
was nil--
I left him, too, in the dance.
This boy, here, who distrusted
his senses because he could not feel
with his world-weary heart
the bittersweet prick of all those Things
that tickle our nerve-endings
and make life worth living--
and who was converted to
touch, smell, sight, sound, taste
by the inexplicable grace of
a crushed-velvet space
of substances too coarse for addiction
and too fine to be given up--
all burnt in an offering,
a tempered ring of spicy clove-smoke
blown drunk with tangy red wine
across eager wet lips ready to kiss
and an Air on a G-string
that was played so sweetly
it fell off and revealed
a glistening white buttock
ready to fuck--
all he needed to make him happy--
I left him, too, in the dance.
( Read more... )
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| Angel-ah |
[26 May 2004|03:13am] |
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Blonde Redhead- Elephant Woman |
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Just thought I'd give props to someone--of all the people I have met over the past couple of weeks at parties and hang-outs--whose extraordinary intelligence, grace and talent stands out in my mind: ANGELA EVOY. She spearheaded one of the best art shows I have ever seen (the Second Saturday in April at Pipeworks with the live DJs, henna, massage-therapists, free food and wine) and her "Community of Consciousness" continues to put on the best backyard/house parties this side of California. No, they are not only parties. They mean something. It is a communal effort, with people bringing their gifts together and sharing esoteric ideas, not only through the canvass, but the spoken word and music as well. Our generation is not completely postmodern. The old Boomer ideals are still alive and well, just with a healthy dose of irony and a sleek skepticism that is just fine enough to siphon out a lot of the New Age bullshit with its fluffy candy-coated optimism but coarse enough to tolerate notions that grate on the nerves of the would-be rationalist.
Sacramento may be a small city--but as Angela and her cronies have proved, it has a big heart. Check out her art work, which evokes the dark childlike wonder of a Tim Burton film, whilst at the same time retaining a geometric/mathematical sophistication that warrants a deeper appreciation. This is evident in the piece "Pythagoras Day Dream" where the Holy Tetraktys is outlined in the receding column of sillhouetted trees:
http://www.geocities.com/angela_evoy/artpeepshow.html
So yeah, that's what I've been doing lately. Feeding on the creative energy of others, and doing little myself, at least in the spontaneous literary sense (although a screenplay is now pending and my schoolwork has kept me busy). At least I am being constructive in another sense, perfecting a new degree of closeness with my current relationship and fine-tuning my social skills and spiritualizing my senses with a whole array of new substances from crystal meth to clove cigarettes to sake. Thankfully, I have learned the lesson of moderation well, and I have navigated the golden mean in all these things admirably--so you won't find me turning "junkie" any time soon. The only addiction I can foresee getting me into trouble in the near future is sex. My leanings toward polyamory don't sit all too well with my current paramour. I missed out on an orgy party not too long ago. I'm up for trying that out once. As with all things. At least Norm is up for a bathhouse trip. That should be interesting.
I guess one could say the theme of the past couple of months has been that oft-repeated piece of sade-ism: "In order to know virtue, one must first acquaint oneself with vice."
And of course Crowley's incitement to "Inflame Thyself!"
It's just another phase of my life. Welcome. The pendulum swings from asceticism to hedonism...and thereafter, if all goes well, finds its center of gravity.
Let's just hope I survive til then.
P.S. COACHELLA! I know, I know. It deserves its own entry. In time. But I'm waiting for the pictures to get developed. But: I GOT TO MEET STUART MURDOCH FROM B&S IN PERSON! I got my "Fans Only" DVD signed by the band. Sigh. I can now die happy. What did I say to the indie elder statesman? Read it and weep:
"Your lyrics and your voice mean so much to me. I really believe first it was Morrissey, and now Murdoch. You are the new literate voice of our generation."
His reply:
"Thank you so much. That means a lot to me."
Short, sweet, and DEADLY.
Did I mention he looked so hot I almost creamed my homorific tight denims? Well, he did--and, I did. Then I find out by reading his online diary that he was one of the costumed creatures in the Flaming Lips set. HAD I ONLY KNOWN? Stalker-material I am. Oh yes. Stuart--I will be your Christina Ricci! We would be happy together! Even if you are quasi-Christian...or perhaps more aptly put, have leanings toward Gnosticism. Oh well. Even Morrissey has "forgiven Jesus" these days.
P.P.S. Norman made me a Morrissey painting. Love cubed. Scan pending.
P.P.P.S. It has been a long time coming, I know, and they are probably old news but I have to say it: I OFFICIALLY LOVE BLONDE REDHEAD! Pick up MISERY IS A BUTTERFLY and do the whole shoegazer/headphone thing in the dark as you melt into the falsetto-tinged sonic arms of this beautiful Japanese woman and her two French bosom buddies:
-D-
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| FILMS FILMS FILMS |
[20 Apr 2004|02:28pm] |
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Baraka Soundtrack |
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List of memorable FILMS I saw over the past couple of weeks. That's right, FILMS. I don't watch MOVIES (unless Norm makes me). If you guys saw/heard something cool you'd do the same for me, right? It's all about networking. We live/learn more when we live/learn vicariously.
Incidentally, how much do we love the Japanese film industry?
SUICIDE CLUB (starts out with a group of Japanese schoolgirls hurling themselves in front of a subway train; also a great j-rock/visual kei moment near the end, and a roll of chain-linked flesh sliced off the backs of children)
ICHI THE KILLER (what hideous smile lurks beneath the scars and piercings? ichi is like a deranged power-ranger who dismembers his victims via ice skates)
TETSUO THE IRON MAN (omg, just look at the images, and...a penis-drill? also some homo stuff, with my favorite line, "we will destroy this fucked up world with our love")
THE SILENCE (another one of my Bergman favorites...the cinematography is delicious, the "small people" are terrific, the tanks are scary, the sex scenes are devastating, and Esther's suffocation scene with the sirens going off hit me like a knife in the gut)
WINTER LIGHT (a man goes off and kills himself because his pastor cannot console him with the usual religious drivel)
FANDO AND LIS (another omg, if you like Fellini and/or Bunuel, you will LOVE Jodorowsky, the nails on chalkboard sound effects in the film are particularly unnerving, and the way Fando treats Lis is just miserable...some of the scenes almost made me vomit--esp. the one with the old women squeezing the testicular looking things in their hands--and such a reaction from my desensitized brain is rare)
THE LOSS OF SEXUAL INNOCENCE (a little dull, but the whole Adam&Eve thing between the black guy and the white chick was hot--I saw his cock&balls--and the scene where they run over the little blue boy in the desert was striking)
BARAKA (I am convinced that seeing this film is a form of visual enlightenment and everyone should see it at least once in their lifetimes, a perfect union of the grotesque and the sublime, it goes from a chicken processing factory to the sistine chapel and back again, with a beautiful sampling of world music)
THE LAST MINUTE (omg, best situationist-oriented film I've seen since Fight Club--as it says on the back, like A Clockwork Orange meets Trainspotting, some of the best dialogues/monologues I've heard in a long time, Tarantino eat your heart out)
DEMONLOVER (my two favorite cultures/languages back-to-back: French and Japanese...a film about an underground adult manga industry that takes things a little too far with their internet torture site...and Gina Gershaw...who could ask for more?)
REPULSION (really turned me on to Roman Polanski...but was disappointed by The Ninth Gate...about a girl who is "repulsed" by human contact...the closer she gets to a person the more insane she becomes...the whole hands coming out of the wall thing was freaky...and the cracks...and the guy who rapes her every time she gets in bed)
FAUST (my first Jan Svankmajer film...so far, I like the Brothers Quay better, but the claymation was excellent--especially the fetus that turns into his head--the puppets were more kitsch than menacing, but funny--especially the part where he makes love to one--the homeless dude who takes the legs off the victims was creepy, some of the lyrical verse told by the jester was insightful, and the whole angel head vs. the demon head was a nice touch)
SLEEPER (my first Woody Allen film...what can I say? cheesy, but it wasn't meant to be taken seriously, right? I can see where his famed wit comes in with lines like "if you don't believe in god or politics, then what do you believe in?" and the reply "sex and death." lots of political overtones, an orgasm-o-tron, an orb that gets you high, an annoying but beautiful Diane Keaton, and the only thing left of Our Great Leader is a nose)
and more I can't remember...oh well...til next time...
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[02 Apr 2004|03:47pm] |
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Bach Cello Suite No. 2 |
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Professor Hunter showed THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY in film class the other day. Ripped my guts out. I identified with EVERY family member in the film. The sexually frustrated and alienated son. The schitzophrenic daughter who is torn between the world of her insane mind and the world of everyday reality. The vacuous novelist-father who thinks more about life than lives it. Somehow, Bergman, more than any other director, manages to articulate my deepest desires and fears. The scene where God makes his grand entrance in the form of a giant spider that tries to penetrate the dying brain of the daughter makes me tremble every time I think about it. And the mock-stage-play scene about death. And the borderline incestuous desperation scene between sister and brother that takes place in a washed up wreck of a ship on the black raining shoreline. And the final scene between father and son: "I don't know whether love is proof of the existence of God...or whether love IS God."
From the AMAZON.COM review:
"Through a Glass Darkly concerns a psychologically fragile woman, Karin (Harriet Andersson), who seeks recovery from a nervous breakdown while on a remote-island vacation with her family. Unfortunately, her father (Gunnar Björnstrand), a successful writer, regards her with clinical detachment, her husband (Max Von Sydow), a doctor, feels unavailing in the effort to treat her, and her brother (Lars Passgard) is wrapped up in his own quest for sexual fulfillment. Karin's descent into further loneliness and delusion exacerbates the heretofore unspoken alienation at the heart of this entire family, and drives the characters to brood over the existence of God (or, in Karin's case, imagine that God is the chilling spider hidden behind an attic door). Through a Glass Darkly is a heartbreaking, powerful work of art."
Apparently this is just one film in a trilogy. Has anyone seen the other two? Gotta get my hands on this box-set. I was equally impressed by the other films I saw of Bergman:
THE SEVENTH SEAL
HOUR OF THE WOLF (favorite- some of the most disturbing expressionist images I've ever seen in a film, especially the drowning boy)
WILD STRAWBERRIES
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| THE GODS OF COMMERCE |
[02 Apr 2004|03:11pm] |
I got this one via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) t3knomanser. Come on people. I'm culling through the LJ rubbish and giving you pearls here. This is all about community and recognizing each other's work. Right?
Oh and...
Stay away from the idols of the marketplace!!!
( Read more... )
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| Cute Culture vs Anti Cute Culture in Japan |
[31 Mar 2004|02:17pm] |
This comes to us via mopedronin
( Read more... )
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| IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS |
[27 Mar 2004|03:13pm] |
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The Smiths: Sweet and Tender Hooligan |
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So, as I have been studying classical music for a couple years now, I have compiled a little list of classical essentials that any postrocker who is into bands like Tortoise, or Sigur Ros, or GY!BE, or Rachel's, can enjoy. BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS PEOPLE!
MAHLER: Symphonies 2, 5, 6, 9, 10 (the Deryck Cooke performing version...if the flute solo in the finale doesn't immediately get your tear ducts prickling then you are most likely dead inside already) Most downloadable piece: the adagietto from Symphony No. 5. With the exception of Samuel Barber's famous adagio for strings (get it! get it!), it doesn't get any better than this. And the adagio from Symphony No. 9 is the closest you will ever get in music to experiencing the final act of dying and letting go of...everything. The last sigh on the fading strings makes me tremble every time.
SHOSTAKOVICH: try to get your hands on a collection of his string quartets, but start with String Quartet No. 8 if you can find it online. Dark, brooding, and knows how to rock.
ELGAR: the BEST cello concerto EVER! Try to get the Jacquelin du Pre version. She was famous for this piece.
SCRIABIN: I love his piano sonatas, even the atonal ones, but his tone poems are awesome too. Check out "Poem of Fire" and "Prometheus." Very impressionistic and mystical. Reminds me of Ravel's "Daphne and Chloe," another great example of French impressionism.
TCHAIKOVSKY: try to get a collection of his gigantic tone poems (especially Francesca da Ramini) but definitely start with Symphony No. 6. By far the most tragic piece in the repetoire, with a finale that will send you straight to the grave.
RACHMONINOV: definitely don't miss out on Piano Concertos 2 and 3 (the one with the cadenza that drove Geoffrey Rush in SHINE insane). No one can rock out on the piano like Rachmoninov. And the melodies just melt your heart.
SCHOENBURG: "Verlacht Nachte" or "Transfigured Night" (try to get the one with the full on string orchestra instead of the eight piece--what a lush, vibrant, erotic sound)
RICHARD STRAUSS: "Death and Transfiguration" and "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (awesome tone poems--Strauss was one of the best orchestrators of the late Romantics, hands-down--the last one inspired by Nietzsche)
MAX BRUCH: go for the violin concertos--they definitely rock
PHILIP GLASS: Symphonies 2 and 3 (minimalism rocks)
STEVE REICH: Music for 18 Musicians (done entirely with percussion instruments--more minimalism that rocks--especially the marimbas--heavily influenced Tortoise)
BERLIOZ: more great tone poems (especially King Leer) but start with the "Symphonie Fantastique" (the only person who rivals Berlioz in terms of sheer melodic skill is Tchaikovsky)
STRAVINKSY: don't miss the ballet scores, esp. "Rite of Spring" and "The Firebird" (the former always makes me want to join a tribe somewhere and do some rain-dancing)
BRAHMS: "Tragic Overture" and the Four Symphonies (especially the First--he didn't compose a bad symphony, really, while I dislike a couple of the Beethoven symphonies)
SCHUMANN: again, the Four Symphonies, my favorite probably being the Fourth--it would be a toughie if I had to decide between Brahms and Schumann
BRUCKNER: like Mahler and Beethoven and Schubert, he did the whole nine symphonies thing, and I tend to like them all--the most famous is The Romantic No. 4, but I really like the first movement of the 6th and the adagio of the 9th--he DID compose some pretty weak finales, but what can you do?)
GORECKI: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (put on your headphones and turn this one on in the dark--best played after a loved one passes away, or after a really bad breakup)
Well that's about it for now. I'm sure as I look back through my 100+ classical cd collection there will be more to come. Now you can be cool like me and blast MAHLER out the window while you are cruisin the hood with yer homies.
Werd.
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| BE LIKE STEREOLAB! |
[27 Mar 2004|04:08am] |
Ok, it is official: in terms of sheer coolness, the chick from Stereolab beats the chick from Yeah Yeah Yeahs hands down.
And I have the interview to prove it. What other band can cite surrealism, dadaism and situationism as influences AND sing in French without sounding pretentious? You just KNOW they know their shit. Put on their new cd. I dare you.
Not only will you not be able to stop bopping your head through the 13 lush, layered, retrofunkadelic songs, but you may also feel an inexplicable urge to host cocktail parties with all your favorite avantgarde artists in the Hamptons and/or have sex on one of those furniture props from the milkroom scene in Clockwork Orange. For real. Homos everywhere agree: creaming to Stereolab is the best.
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