Phaze Major

The last time I was in a music studio... Macalester's electronic music lab (R.I.P.), spring 2009.

In His Image of the Day

Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga, 2011.

Hopefully she’ll direct another movie, but for now her body of work is as personal, particular and flawless as Charles Laughton’s.

~

Higher Ground workspace:

~

I couldn’t quite figure out what Studio Ghibli was doing messing around with The Borrowers, but having now seen The Secret World of Arrietty I can say it’s a perfect fit, one of the best, most relevant movies they’ve made. As nature continues to shrink one has to find new ways to make it large, so of course a sickly boy resting in the country and a tiny, tiny girl make excellent protagonists and awe-sharers. And awe not just in beholding the visual world, but the whole sensual world… gosh, this movie’s sound design.

Objections to My Week With Marilyn generally amount to a feeling that Marilyn has been displaced from the starring role in the movie’s title, and some boring nobody takes her place. But not really. The ending goes a little soft and maybe disallows a cynical reading, but the rest of the movie knows what it’s about: Imagine the title with emphasis on the “my,” just another person tasked with delivering Marilyn to the end of the week.

Also quite something: Pina (the great 3D movie); The Interrupters; The Mill & The Cross; Rampart (weird premonitions of an Ice Cube career revival, I swear he could be a major actor yet, playing against Woody Harrelson’s ego train might not be the best start but still I look back to “don’t know, don’t show,” his “coulda been a contender,” and know he’s still a contender); A Separation (how minor difficulties quickly make life impossible).

TV Highlights

Friends (NBC) 8 pm EST/7 pm CST
The friends, having not seen each other in years and each facing his or her own mid-life crisis, plan a six-way orgy with the help of Facebook.

The Bob Newhart Show (CBS) 9 pm EST/8 pm CST
Bob waits for Emily to visit him in the nursing home, but she never comes. But Howard shows up… in drag!

The Honeymooners (CBS) 8:30 pm EST/7:30 pm CST
Ralph and Alice decompose in their graves, far removed from the noise of the city.

Puke

I’m going to try to stop using the word “nostalgia” in reference to my affection for music, having realized it implies a period when affection for the music to which the nostalgia applies was non-existent or forgotten, whereas my affections have been fairly unchanging and consistently intense since childhood. I’d never say, for example, that I’m nostalgic for my family or that visiting my family is a nostalgia trip.

Are musicians nostalgic people? I don’t know if my feeling can be generalized, but I thought about it while reading Simon Reynolds’s piece on Lana Del Ray in the new Spin, where he says: “As time goes on, signs become steadily more detached from their historical referents, hollowed-out. These sounds, gestures, and time-honored phrases are entering into a free-floating half-life, or afterlife, of pure style—dated-yet-timeless beauty.”

I don’t object to the idea, really, but I wish he was more specific about these “historical referents,” which are written about as if they are self-evident and inherently meaningful. When were the signs of music ever attached to anything absolute, readily apparent, solid? (The graphic on page 51 doesn’t clarify much—does the first appearance of a color-coded genre represent the height of its realness, and if so, why?) Part of the problem has to do with how we imagine the lives of modern musicmakers. Are they just Internet-crazed symbol abusers who can’t decide what they like or like everything and who never learned about anything in an organic environment? More likely, they wake up with a small amount of stuff they want to say and self-imposed and/or natural limits on their means of saying it, most of this determined during formative years when signs seemed well-attached to their referents, if somewhat mysterious and confusing. ~ I’m probably missing the point, but still, things to think about.

Call for empathy

I remember reading that Deerhunter’s “Helicopter” is an act of “superhuman empathy,” which I always thought should read simply “empathy.” Scratch the “super,” because it reads like an attempt to excuse everyone else from a similar empathy with a character who really demands to be understood (it’s not the empathy that’s so super, but its translation into art), and scratch the “human,” because “human empathy” is redundant. So… let’s all have some empathy, people, it need not be superhuman.

~

For posterity, this New Yorker piece, which says everything I would ever want to say about how little we know about what things mean and who people are.

~

What pop music have we been tolerating this past year? I’m pretty fond of “Sexy & I Know It,” “Love You Like A Love Song,” and the part on the immensely superior (can’t believe I’m saying this) club version of “We Found Love” where the vocal sounds like falling even as the notes rise. Next update in a year or two, there might be a few more good radio songs by then.

a lighthouse light, lit up,

A springtime mix CD, intended primarily for an upcoming drive to Las Cruces:

[1] Real Estate – “Blue Lebaron”
[2] No Age – “Chem Trails”
[3] Pat Benatar – “We Live For Love”
[4] Big K.R.I.T. – “Dreamin’”
[5] Tennis – “It All Feels The Same”
[6] Yuck – “Georgia”
[7] Boogie Down Productions – “Stop The Violence”
[8] Jay Reatard – “Nightmares”
[9] Girls Names – “Bury Me”
[10] Elton John – “Son Of Your Father”
[11] Eric B. & Rakim – “Chinese Arithmetic”
[12] Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – “Share The Red”
[13] Stereolab – “Motoroller Scalatron”
[14] Television – “Days”
[15] Perfume Genius – “Take Me Home”
[16] TLC – “If I Was Your Girlfriend”
[17] Queen – “Misfire”
[18] Avi Buffalo – “What’s In It For?”
[19] The Ropers – “Waiting”
[20] Bettie Serveert – “Heaven”
[21] Janet Jackson – “Together Again”


Hoping to also spend a lot of time listening to the new Shins, and the full albums that contain those choice Bettie Serveert, Reatard and Malkmus cuts, all of which are perfect for the road and the latter of which I'm starting to realize is as lovely and quotable as a lot of the best of Malkmus: the distortion is way too clear, etc.

Finally: TLC's CrazySexyCool is full of surprises, including that strange Prince cover, almost identical to the original except for the vocals...

Brian Finds His Man

I always figured the girl Brian Wilson sings to on "Don't Talk" either doesn't exist or would quickly lose patience with his true love ways. So...


BRIAN: I can hear so much in your sighs.

MIKE: Take me home.

BRIAN: And I can see so much in your eyes.

MIKE: Tend to me.

BRIAN: There are words we both could say.

MIKE: Baby, lay me down easy, for I have grown weary on my own.

BRIAN: But don't talk, put your head on my shoulder.

MIKE: Oh, alone, I wither and I bruise ... I run my mouth like a fool! I'll be so quiet for you.

BRIAN: Come close, close your eyes and be still.

MIKE: Look like a child for you.

BRIAN: Don't talk, take my hand and let me hear your heartbeat.

MIKE: Be like a shadow of a shadow of a shadow for you.

BRIAN: Being here with you feels so right.

MIKE: Take me home, tend to me.

BRIAN: We could live forever tonight.

MIKE: Baby, lay me down easy.

BRIAN: Let's not think about tomorrow.

MIKE: For I have grown weary on my own. Oh, alone, I wander aimless, I work the corner of an endless grid.

BRIAN: And don't talk, put your head on my shoulder, come close, close your eyes and be still.

MIKE: I'll be so still for you.

BRIAN: Don't talk, take my hand and listen to my heartbeat.

MIKE: Like a dead god, wait until my eyes part.

BRIAN: Listen, listen, listen.

MIKE: Oh, all for you.

BRIAN: Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder. Don't talk, close your eyes and be still. Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder. Don't talk, close your eyes and be still. Don't talk, put your head on my shoulder.


Notes:
1. Sources:
The Beach Boys, "Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)"
Perfume Genius, "Take Me Home"
Neither of which ever uses the word "love."
2. Sort of what I was trying to get at here.
3. It just occurred to me how much Perfume Genius has in common with Randy Newman, in the economy of his songs and especially in the way he sings "tend to me."
4. But let's please not actualize this dialogue, aural mash-ups are the worst.

ALSO

COLLAPSE INTO ZAC

Michael Jackson

.


Sunlight on marker on cardboard, 2012. One day I'll have the means to scan it.

- - -

"She will climb a ladder to the roof of her house to watch the sky and hold a bone to the sun."

There seems to be a whole industry of children's books about Georgia O'Keeffe here in New Mexico. That's my favorite line from one of them.

Sun/shadow today:


Ceiling apparition:

Forever 24

i. Strange Cases

Genitals Of Lunacy

The cocks, lunatic as advertised, had also, as one might expect in a porn whose title derived from a Nico song, something quite sad in their aspect.

The Lincolns

Case study: A man with 500 personalities, each of them Abraham Lincoln at different points along the sexuality spectrum, from totally straight to totally gay, and y-axis variations thereof.

SSI Sex Scene Investigation

A TV procedural that opens each week with the aftermath of a bizarre sex scene. Investigators have to reconstruct the peculiar set of sexual proclivities that led to such a scene.

Top Of The City

Careening from the sickbed toward a urinal at the top of New York City. There's an open window next to you as you piss and the black-and-white hatch mark city yawns below, a situation that always makes you want to jump down into the inky, rainy depths of the page.


ii. The Strange Case of Angelica, Manoel de Oliveira, 2010









So, a film that tests the divide between photography and manual labor, that shows us a man who, because his only claim on the physical world is through his camera, begins to drift away from it? Either way, an amazing film with Magritte-like specificity in its visuals. I'm sure that's a testament to the lighting, and yet the movie appears to exist in a world of only natural light. ~?~

- - -

Rabbit Hole, on the other hand, appears to have been filmed using nothing but the most high-powered bulbs. Even in a bowling alley scene, the actors are bathed in a blinding heavenly glow. And yet, they do some good acting inside it.

- - -

An exchange from Margin Call:

First guy: "You could have been digging ditches all these years."
Second guy: "Yeah, and if I had at least there'd be some holes to show for it."

I like that second guy (Kevin Spacey), I imagine he'd have a similar response if instead of "digging ditches" it was "doing nothing at all."

- - -

Chronicle was great, I just sort of wish the father character had been a washed up former star of the grunge scene, collecting royalties, not a retired firefighter collecting disability.

- - -

Some critics have been floating around the idea of a "Desert Island DVDs" list, which, according to the arbitrary but pretty smart rules laid down, must include ten feature films, one short film, and one self-contained season of a TV show. I don't exactly know what's meant by "self-contained," but I'm thinking my choice in the latter category would be the first season of Roseanne, not because those episodes were necessarily the funniest, but because in beholding the decor of the earliest incarnation of the Connors' family home (esp. the living room), I could endlessly explore my own childhood, while I sat there washed up on the shores of my mind on that desert island.


iii. Early 2012

Watch me drift away.















iv. Early 2013

I could easily end up back in Minneapolis. Some suggestions for improvement before I return:

1. Demolish the K Mart on Lake Street and pave Nicollet equally, north and south.
2. Let the Gay 90s buy Block E and turn it into a center for troubled teens. Staff it with the displaced workers from the K Mart.
3. Improve the bus transfer system. Here in Albuquerque, $1 buys you a one-way pass on the city bus, and $2 buys you an all-day pass. There's no 2-1/2 hour transfer limit to keep bus riders in a state of constant panic and crush their spirits.
4. Never let Eclipse Records go out of business again. Tax breaks?
5. Finish the light rail.


v. Listening habits

Saint Etienne's Sound of Water, tracks 6-9.


vi. Drinking habits

Non-existent. I'm so happy poverty has finally allowed me to overcome the embarrassment of ordering soda at the bar.


vii. Oscars

This year's Best Picture nominees look a lot better when I break them down into groups.

Excellent: The Descendants, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, Moneyball, The Tree Of Life, War Horse
Quite good: The Artist
Forever refuse to see: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help

My personal favorite is probably War Horse, but I'll never admit to it. So, my favorites in the top nine categories, with honorary props to the cast of Moneyball and the awesomeness of Kung Fu Panda 2...

Picture: Hugo
Director: Terrence Malick
Actress: Rooney Mara
Actor: Gary Oldman
Supporting Actress: Melissa McCarthy
Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer
Adapted Screenplay: Moneyball
Original Screenplay: Midnight In Paris
Animated: Rango

Decay

Of the self:

[in medias res]

Dark nights trying to sleep stomach on fire
Delusional from hunger so I couldn't get tired
Imagining the equalizer going from green to red
Words that rhyme together just appear all in my head
And I'm sorta like Neo with the Matrix codes
I try to escape it hoping the drugs'll numb my soul
Say I'm getting old, time's running out
Repeating instrumentals trying to figure patterns out
I never leave the house ain't slept in three days
Popping pills, writing, drinking and smoking hay
Weaving kicks and snares, trying to dodge these hooks
Keeping it original something that's overlooked
The way a nigga going might go out like Sam Cooke
Or locked up calling home for money on my books
'Cause if this shit don't work nigga I failed at life
Turning to these drugs now these drugs turned my life
And it's the downward spiral, got me suicidal
But too scared to do it so these pills will be the rifle
Surpassing all my idols, took the wrong turn
But can't go back now so let the blunt burn
'Cause now it's my turn if I fuck it all up
It took a while to get here now I depend on these drugs
I took a while to get here now I depend on these drugs

--Danny Brown, "XXX"
(adapted from the transcription at Rap Genius)


Of another:

Death is on the telephone
I lie and say she isn't home
If only he would make a move, instead
He sleeps in her bed

I waste away my days with you
I'd rather spend them like you do
All skin and bones but in your eyes
I say to you, you're still alive

You can tell me time will heal
But you don't know the way I feel
I never had imagined death
Beyond the vague and cold last breath
But now I see his many forms
The way he builds up like a storm
And all the pain and all the sighs
The world in my mother's eyes
In her eyes

--Dum Dum Girls, "Caught In One"


And yet, two of last year's most vital moments in music. There are some people I'm so glad number among the living. They have music, and we have them.


Mildred Pierce, Todd Haynes, 2011.