beavis and butt-head watch the video for 'glamorous.'


the jesus lizard are a band from chicago, IL, by way of austin, TX.

before the jesus lizard, there was scratch acid. scratch acid formed in austin, TX, in 1982. they released two EPs and a full length album, their first self-titled EP and album 'just keep eating' released on rabid cat records in 1984 and 1986, respectively, while their final EP, 'berserker,' was released in 1987 on touch and go records, who would also release, in 1991, 'the greatest gift,' a retrospective containing both EPs and the full length.



this is the first scratch acid EP in its entirety.


in the beginning days of scratch acid, their lineup consisted of steve anderson on vocals, david wm. sims and brett bradford on guitars, david yow on bass and rey washam on drums. following anderson's departure after a few shows, yow moved over to lead vocals and sims took over bass duties. this is the lineup that recorded and released the two EPs and LP.



this is the 'just keep eating' LP.


scratch acid broke up in 1987. sims and washam went on to form the rhythm section for steve albini's first post-big black project, rapeman, who faced controversy from the outset due to their choice of bandname, which they 'borrowed' from a japanese comic book about a man who is a gym teacher by day, while by night he becomes the titular 'rape man,' a superhero of sorts who is hired to rape women. around the same time, yow and sims formed the jesus lizard with guitarist duane denison and a drum machine. in 1989, following rapeman's breakup, yow, sims and denison moved to chicago, IL, where they recorded the 'pure' EP with albini.



'happy bunny goes fluff fluff along.' one of the stranger songs on the EP.


'bloody mary.'


following the release of 'pure' and a few shows with the drum machine, they added drummer mac mcneilly to the lineup. an inspired pounder, mcneilly's deft time signature changes meshed seamlessly with sims' driving, grinding basslines to make for one of the most fearsome rhythm sections of 90's indie-rock. in 1990, the band recorded and released 'head,' again with albini, who would go on to record their albums up through 1994's 'down.'



'pastoral.'


'my own urine.'


'killer mchann.'


1991's LP, 'goat,' is probably the strongest release the jesus lizard did. it's all there, from the birthday party-style jungle pounding to the pins and needles jazz-inflected guitar work to the heavier than zep basslines and yow's tortured screams, wildman yelps and animalistic growls. one of the most masterful things albini did as a recordist (he doesn't produce albums and would hate to take credit for any musician's shitty choices in the making of one) was to keep yow's vocals low in the mix like another instrument. the effect, as michael azzerrad puts it in his book 'our band could be yr life,' is that yow sings like 'a kidnap victim trying to howl through the duct tape over his mouth. the effect is horrific,' and also completely enthralling.



here is the album in its entirety.


in 1992, the jesus lizard released the full-length LP 'liar.' in much the same vein as 'goat,' it's another masterpiece of heavy, fucked up american indie-rock (back when indie-rock meant loud guitars, anti-social lyrics and lots of healthy aggression).



full album.


in 1993, the jesus lizard participated in their best-selling release, a split with a then-huge band from aberdeen, WA, called nirvana. jesus lizard did a song from 'liar,''puss,' while nirvana included a b-side, 'oh, the guilt.' nirvana's frontman, kurt cobain, was an outspoken fan of both the jesus lizard and scratch acid, the latter of whom he namechecked numerous times in interviews as a huge influence on the early sound of nirvana. he was even spotted numerous times in a homemade scratch acid t-shirt.



here is the split.


in 1994, the band released 'down' and recorded a live LP for giant records, 'show.' down finds the band mellowing slightly, though it's still majorly intense. also in 1994, filmmaker kevin smith used a jesus lizard b-side, 'panic in cicero,' on the soundtrack to his debut film, 'clerks.''liar' and 'down' both feature cover art by malcolm bucknall, who also did the cover for their split with nirvana.





here are some of bucknall's works.



here is 'down' in its entirety, along with the bonus tracks included on touch and go's remaster of the album, including 'glamorous' and 'panic in cicero.'


in 1995, jesus lizard performed on the lollapalooza tour, as part of its most indie-centric lineup. other bands on the bill included sonic youth, pavement, yo la tengo, beck, hole and the beastie boys. cypress hill and sinead o'connor played a few dates each, as well. this is probably as good a time as any to delve into the madness that was the jesus lizard's live show. while not as psychedelic as fellow texas weirdos the butthole surfers, they gained some level of notoriety for their fucking electric live show. mcneilly and sims would lock in and pound out the rhythm while denison would stand stage right, pulling weird sounds from his hiwatt amplifier (and frequently a veleno or travis bean aluminum neck guitar, an albini fave that took hold throughout the nineties indie scene) and surprisingly few pedals. yow, however, was the star of the show. never sober, frequently incoherent and often naked, he would jump into the audience, taunt people and do his favorite trick, which he called the 'tight-n-shiny.' this involved holding his balls together so the skin on his scrotum became tight. and shiny. hence the name. usually, by a few songs into the set, yow would be shirtless and covered in a mix of sweat, beer, spit and sometimes blood.



'mouthbreather' live in washington, DC, 1991.


performing 'seasick' live in australia, 1996.


a full set from 1994.


there is so much great jesus lizard live footage floating around youtube. seek it out and have yr mind blown.

1996 was a year of change for the jesus lizard. mac mcneilly left the band to be with his young family. jim kimball took his place behind the kit. kimball also performed in a jazz duo with denison. for some reason they never bothered to explain, they always performed as the denison/kimball trio. this year also saw the band moving from touch and go to capitol, a major label move that netted them a higher advance and better tour support, but actually lost them sales. remember, this was the 90's, when 'selling out' was discussed at every turn. most fans thought there was no way the jesus lizard could continue to make the abrasive sounds they had become known for on T&G while signed to a major label. further change came in the form of a new producer, gggarth richardson. rumors abounded that this was because albini refused to record with the band now that they were on a major label, though he and the band both fervently denied this.

1996's 'shot' continues in much the same vein as the previous albums, so any worries of a major label deal softening this notably prickly band were unfounded and needless.



here is the band performing 'thumper' live on french tv. fun sidenote, as i loaded this video, i turned to look out the window of the library where i'm writing to see a little jackrabbit hopping along. what fortuitous timing?


here is the album in its entirety.


1998 saw the release of the only jesus lizard album to not be titled a four-letter word, a self-titled EP released on now defunct jetset records. recording this time out was done by john cale of the velvet underground, noted indie celeb/weirdo jim o'rourke and gang of four's andy gill, who also produced their following and final album, 'blue,' released the same year.



here is 'blue,' which is definitely a bit weirder and maybe less aggressive than their earlier stuff.


kimball left the band in 1998 as well, leading to their third and final drummer, ex-wesley willis percussionist brendan murphy. the jesus lizard played their last show on 27 march, 1999, in umea, sweden. based on their failure to take the alternative charts by storm, capitol dropped the band, and in june 1999, they announced their breakup.

following the breakup, yow returned to his day job as a graphic designer. sims kept active musically, performing with groups like sparklehorse on tour. mcneilly, too, continued to make music, though on a smaller scale. he wasn't up for touring much as he wanted to spend time at home with his family. denison was probably the most prolific of the former members, returning to the denison/kimball trio, performing with mike patton's tomahawk and joining ministry bassist paul barker's new group USSA.

in 2006, scratch acid reformed to play touch and go's 25th anniversary party and a couple select and quickly sold out shows. sims then moved to new york city to work as an accountant and keep busy with a solo project, dangerpuss. yow moved to LA and joined the band qui. in 2008, the jesus lizard reformed for a run of sold out club and festival dates with their original lineup, performing songs from the T&G days. late in 2008, touch and go reissued the jesus lizard's albums and EPs released on the label, remastered by steve albini with help from his shellac bandmate (and fairly legendary recordist in his own right) bob weston.

2010 saw 'probably the last' jesus lizard shows.


etc.
BOOK, released 2014 on akashic books, a publishing venture started by johnny temple of new york by way of DC art punks girls vs boys.
the unofficial jesus lizard homepage. photos, interviews, a concert chronology and pretty exhaustive discography, including bootlegs.




*

p.s. RIP: the great, incorrigible, role model poet Bill Knott. Today Rewritedept very understandably draws your kind and considerable attention to the seminal rock monsters Jesus Lizard, and please do his post's bidding for your own sakes, thank you. And thanks a whole bunch to our guest-host with the most. ** Bill, Such a terrific, lovely trailer, man. Wow. So nice. Yes, RIP: Bill Knott. That's such sad news. His poetry is so great. ** Will C., Hi, Will. Spring has sprung over here in Paris too. Borderline t-shirt weather even. I never read the book 'The Hobbit'. I didn't read 'LotR' until I was in my 40s and only because my boyfriend of the time sort of ordered me to. Weird. I had this weird prejudice against fantasy fiction when I was young, I have no idea why. Avoided it like the plague. Anyway, ... I got behind on reading while on my trip, but I'm trying to restart/catch up now. In fact, I'm putting together a '3 books i ... loved' post tight now, so I guess I'll save my recent reads/recs for that. You? ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks for your fine Eustache input. I only knew his work a little outside of 'TMatW' until recently. I will go check my email in a minute, thank you. ** White tiger, Wow, shit, that's awful and sucks, and I'm sure glad that you're okay. Fire = scary. How did the Chipotle interview go? There's one in Paris? Seriously? No, I had no idea there was one here. Whoa. I'm going to go see where it is today. It must be new. Weird, cool. ** Steevee, Yeah, the script/film sounds really, really promising. I'm glad you're back into filmmaking. Oh, gosh, your comment wasn't self-congratulatory in the slightest. Perish the thought. Having just seen 'MPA', I totally agree with you, and I think I'm going to watch 'Numero Zero' today even. ** Alexp336, The family disconnect due to extreme distance is weird, yeah. I suppose in my case I don't mind all that much in most cases. Friends disconnect, on the other hand, is rough. Hate that outcome. Oh, thanks about the PR interview and the porn thing. Very proud to have created thought. ** Hedi elkholti, Hedi! So sweet and great to see you! Yes, you know, I intended to mention yesterday that the thing that inspired the Eustache post was reading those pieces in 'Animal Shelter', and I totally spaced. That Schuhl piece is so incredibly good, and of course the interview as well. So, yes, I did get the issue, which is incredible, and thank you so much. I would really love to get those recent publications of yours if you don't mind. I would totally love that. And big congrats on the Whitney Biennial inclusion and chapbooks. What an incredible looking batch of booklets. I was feeling really sorry that I wasn't at the Whitney reading event the other night. Again, it's so lovely to see you here, and, yes, I hope to see you in LA or here or somewhere before too long at all. That would be the best! ** Magick mike, Mike! Holy shit! And you're still magick! Man, it's so very nice to see you. I miss you. Thanks so much for entering here and chiming in about Eustache. How are you, what's going on? Love, me. ** Gary gray, Thank you for the warm welcome. Um, no, I don't think I can confirm that, can I? I guess not. I saw enough penguins to fill all the seats in every venue on a Smiths worldwide reunion tour. Wow, that's some update on your end. It makes even my wild monthlong trip to the end of the world seem uneventful. Crazy and mostly great sounding. Thank you for my three new fans. Yeah, you sound good. Did Chicago feel different/good after all of that? ** Scunnard, J-ster! Howdy! I would be incredibly up for that guest-post, yes indeed! Incredibly! Both 'cos I'm excited for the discoveries and because I'm struggling to get the blog up to speed after my length bailing on it. Thank you! ** Chris Goode, Chris! Thank you! It's so nice to be back and just as nice to have you back, maestro! Oh, I was so nothing but proud to be able to rerun and be re-glorified by your amazing post. Wow, really, about that performance coming back to life? That's of course very exciting news, and I am of course so very still up for you doing that. I would love to be involved in any way that you want via in-person or a Skype thing or, yeah, whatever suits and helps in any way. Awesome, that's so great, thank you so kindly, Chris! You're in Plymouth? Have I been there? No. Is that Plymouth where 'Plymouth Rock' came from? Mega-love to you from your pal and eternal acolyte, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Development hell, yeah, been there, and yeah, ugh. Best of luck finding excitement with your twiddling fingers, and I hope hell passes by swiftly. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Eustache is really under known, so it's not so strange that you haven't seen his films yet. Wow, Avant Garde magazine, yes. I used to have a couple of copies of that, but I think I sold them when I was broke or something. I seem to be rested enough, and now it's back to work for me too. So much work to do, but almost all of it is a boon. Did you get your pecan pie? Slurp. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, Jeff. Great to see you! Hm, highlight ... ? Maybe kayaking in an iceberg graveyard. Pix forthcoming. I just watched 'Mes Petites Amoureuses' for the first time the other day, and I loved it. I highly recommend it. How awesome that you and Michael S. are talking! That's inspiring to think about. I got your email, and, yes, I actually have known about that for a little while, but I was told it was top secret because it was still kind of tentative, and I'm not sure if it still is top secret, but, obviously, I think that is such exciting news! You good? How's the new novel, etc. going? ** Paul Curran, Such a great trailer. It's very, I don't know, moving and heartening and stuff to see Bill and Marc involved in your book and its packaging/promo/etc. I don't know, yeah. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Ha ha, I don't know, I think that maybe relative to most guys my age I'm slim or something. Ugh, anti-smoker fascists. And those co-workers with gay-related fears galore. How do people get like that? I just can't figure it out. It so completely foreign. I'm sorry, man. Good to know that about them, I guess? ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Really, really good to see you! Yeah, I suspect that you would have been pretty spooked in Antarctica then 'cos it is a totally deserted, alien, raw, pure place. The otherness there is very intense. Awesome that SXSW occasioned those happy meet-ups. And the Roggenbuck reading. I sure hope I'll get to see him read at some point. I assume he'll get to Paris someday. I know that he's at least a little known and legendary here. Tentative RIP to The Mosquito Show. Man, that's sad news even though totally understood. I was wondering how in the world you were going to be able to do TMS and ALG and write your own work at the same time, so, yeah, that move makes sense. Interesting about the internal remake of ALG. Again, that makes sense. You're doing really great things with the site. I'm even more addicted to it than I used to be. Well, thank god nothing happened along the lines of the response to that Gene Morgan post on HTMLG. I found that really depressing and bewildering. The heat around place can get so crazy at the drop of a post. Anyway, so great to see you, pal. You have a fine morning, and mine's going A-okay at the moment, thanks! ** Rewritedept, Hi. Big in-person thanks for the awesomely designed light you've shown on Jesus Lizard today. My day? It was very good. Zac and I met with the casting director of our film, and now we're set to spend pretty much all day on Friday and Saturday auditioning possible actors/ performers, so it was a day of excellent progress. Good old Elvis Costello. That bar sounds cool. I drink once in a while, just not all that often or very much when I do, I guess. An excellent Friday to you too, buddy! ** Right. Begin or continue with your exploration of Rewritedept's intro/paean to the righteous Jesus Lizard now, thank you, and I will see you tomorrow.

___________________




stricherondope, 18
Munich

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Nathanthemis, 23
Lausanne

i love everyone. i enjoy getting shitfaced. anyone can join who wants me for any purpose. not that botherd about payments but if you want you can.

can't be: elderly, obese, unattractive, uneducated.

Guestbook of Nathanthemis

metoutdedans1320 - 26.Jan.2014
soft skin, a sick beast.
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he knows how to do, I told him to eat his balls and cock lick all his juice emale.
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he imagines his body unconditionally available content.
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kiss your dog.

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Prague

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FraiseTagada, 18
Paris

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RAFASEXY21, 21
Paris

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julespourvous, 20
Lyon

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anton76, 19
Rouen

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Leeds

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Julian-18, 18
Berlin

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PayAndGetFucked, 21
Antwerp

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Brăila, Romania

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I_needhause_escort19, 20
Blava Slavín, Slovakia

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douxdevergondateur, 23
Paris

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Essen

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AmericanBoyUSA, 18
Warszawa

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Position No entry
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Fucking No entry
Oral No entry
Dirty No entry
Fisting No entry
S&M No entry
Client age Users between 27 and 45
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



____________________





DXdrexon, 21
Paris

I was on a date with this really hot model. Well, it wasn't really a date date. We just ate dinner and saw a movie. Then the plane landed.

Dicksize XXL, Uncut
Position More top
Kissing Consent
Fucking No entry
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Skater, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Euros
Rate night 300 Euros




*

p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hi, B. Laibach, whoa, ha ha. They play here a lot, or it seems like it. If it's any consolation, I happened to catch some youtube clips of a concert they did here last year, and it was so over-theatrical and choreographed, it was sort of like watching Aerosmith play Disneyworld, albeit in a very bad mood, or something. ** David Ehrenstein, Eustache is also in Wenders''An American Friend', as I know you know. 'Mes Petits amoureuses' was really a surprise and really something. I was reading about Eustache he took a deliberately Bressonian approach re: the kid actors' acting, and that was really apparent and very effective. ** Gary gray, Nah, I didn't notice anything. You don't see the horizon very easily there. It's very mountainous. Circus of Books: *flashback*. Oh, a gay erotic comic, cool. I was just thinking the other day about how the queer comic was such a vital, oft-used, subversive form back in the mid-90s Queer Punk era, and I was lamenting its subsequent relative disuse. Yours sounds wild. I really would like to see it, yeah. Understood about the instagram reveal -- wait, your real name isn't Gary Gray, ha ha -- so a print version would be sweet to have and page-turn. Nice Rapeman clip. ** Will C., T-shirt weather was short lived here, if that helps. Paris is having this freak weather condition that's trapping pollution in the city to the point where you can actually see it in the air, which is super rare, and so travel on all metro and RER trains has been been made free of charge for the weekend as, I don't know, compensation, I guess. Same with sci-fi for me too. Unless it was psychedelic sic-fi like K. Dick or Cyberpunk and that sort of thing. Knausgaard's 'My Struggle': I don't know that. I'll check it out. Thanks! ** Rewritedept, Thanks again mucho, buddy. I'll give you the launch date your next post/gift on Monday. Well, yeah, it's our film, so we're doing the casting. It'd be weird if we didn't. The novel goes well. Well, I revise and rewrite a ton along the way, but I'm far from having a first draft finished. I'm maybe half-way through, I think, maybe. The auditions are next weekend, so this weekend is up for grabs. Don't know what I'll do. Go out and see some stuff of some sort of wonderfulness if I'm lucky, and I'll work on the novel and my other projects, I guess. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Awesome that you're digging Hainley's book. He rules. (My spellcheck changed 'rules' to 'riles', and that works too.) 'Plastik' looks very cool from the outside, as does that event. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Oh, I've meaning to ask you ... a Kenji Siratori blurb! How did that happen? Are you in touch with him? What is he doing these days? I haven't read anything new by him in ages. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Whoa, hey, man! You're the veritable sight for sore eyes. Yeah, I got to see Jesus Lizard, let's see, twice, and it was crazed. Didn't see them after Yow stopped drinking. Never could imagine what that would look like. Interesting about Albini's mixing. That's true, weird. You good? What's up, if you have the time and inclination? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Well, that pie will probably only be tastier when you do get to it. Anticipation constructs excitement and all of that. Hm, interesting about the Dalkey books. I hadn't noticed anything, but I do get a lot of them online in pdf form where it might not be so noticeable. I'll see if I can find a recent Dalkey title in a store here or something and have a look. ** Steevee, Hi. Fingers crossed about the actor. Yeah, I think getting it to him cold is probably the right move. When nervous, there can be that temptation to oversell that can be counterproductive. 'Bloody Beans' sounds very curious. The Chief Keef meets 'BoA' comparison is super curiosity making. I'll watch for it. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Awesomeness supreme about you being on 'Bookworm'! I was hoping that your contact with him might have meant that something was up. Great! I'm so sorry about the balancing drama re: 'The Red Chamber'. Sounds complicated, and I hope it disentangles acceptably. Your status on your novel sounds par for the course in a good way. I mean it sounds like its problems are those of a healthy novel, you know? Not sure if Antarctica will end up in the novel. Really, the way this novel works and siphons/fastens to my real life, literally anything could end up in there. Wouldn't surprise me at all. While away, I did work on it a little bit, but mostly in my head re: organizational issues and connections and stuff. ** White tiger, Hey! Yeah, no sooner did you mention the Chipotle than I searched it out online, and the main one is walking distance from me in Montmartre, so Z. and I will be heading up there asap. That's crazy, or crazy that I didn't know about that on my own given my constant Mexican food jonesing. And, mainly, huge congrats on the job! Whoo-hoo and so on! Next week! Where are you going to live in LA, do you know? That's sweet news, pal! ** Misanthrope, I keep reading about how all you American guys are fat. Doesn't seem right to me, but then I'm mostly in LA where fatness is less ... tolerated or something? I don't know. I'm scared of e-cigarettes. I don't trust them at all. They have a heavy weird cancer causing future reveal aspect or something else vibe about them, and I guess if I'm going to get cancer, I'd rather get it the old fashioned way. It is confusing, man, yeah. About those guys. ** Kyler, Hi, K. Ha ha, actually, whenever I'm in a bookstore, there's probably like an 80% chance that they won't have my books. Less true here in France though. Yeah, all of my books are in French except for 'TMS' and 'SiH' which will be in French this year. You wouldn't need to take your clothes off at our first auditions, but, at the second round auditions a bit later on, you pretty much for sure would. ** Okay. You're probably thinking 'escorts already?' due to how the slaves post was sitting here for such a long time, but, yes, it is that time of the month again. Enjoy, if you can and like. Have great weekends, and I'll see you come Monday.

'The work of José Esteban Muñoz—as a student, a teacher, a writer, and a friend—was electrified by his desire to tip the world toward something joyous in the face of intense opposition to that joy, toward a place that is more just and generous, but also more ferocious.

'José’s lifelong passion was to express the utopian gesture that responds to the awfulness of things as they are. The work of balancing hope against despair ran through his writings from the earliest to the most recent, and it was a work he associated with the queer, the minoritarian, and the brown. Under his attention, those terms became not generic categories but critical passageways. Queerness, for José, named the possible but also the “not yet.” The “sense of brown” (both the title and the subject of one of his books still forthcoming from Duke University Press, and first theorized in a seminal essay on the playwright Ricardo Abreu Bracho) indicated a form of discontinuous commonality, “not knowable in advance” but actually existing as a world, in the here and now. He mined a Marxist tradition that included Althusser, Bloch, Adorno, Fredric Jameson, and Jean-Luc Nancy, and used this radical tradition to show how the affirmations in his work required negations of and deviations from the status quo.

'“The challenge here,” José writes in an essay on the LA punk band The Germs, “is to look to queerness as a mode of ‘being-with’ that defies social conventions and conformism and is innately heretical yet still desirous for the world, actively attempting to enact a commons that is not a pulverizing, hierarchical one bequeathed through logics and practices of exploitation.”¹ There was something heretical about his own work in the academy, the art world, and everything betwixt and beyond them. In making a world for himself in which to flourish, he couldn’t help but build one for others too.

'Born in Cuba in 1967, brought to Miami by his parents as an infant, José Muñoz was always on the move. Leaving the Cuban-America enclave of Hialeah, where his youth played out to the sound of bands like X and the Gun Club, he studied at Sarah Lawrence College, where he first read Cherríe Moraga’s Lo Que Nunca Paso por Sus Labios (Loving in the War Years, 1983), which became for him a touchstone (especially its chapter, “La Guera”). José then entered Duke University’s doctoral program in Literature, which at that time was at a high point of prestige and influence. Under the guiding love and friendship of his mentor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and among a precocious, brilliant cohort of fellow students, José, a rising star and only twenty-six years old, was hired to teach at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He brought the “symposium of Eve” to “the broke-ass institute,” as his friend Fred Moten put it in a poem for José that appears in Moten’s 2010 collection, B Jenkins.

'When he arrived in Greenwich Village in 1994, José planted himself at the center of a circle of influence that would expand over a short two decades. His home functioned as a true salon. The most ferocious personalities conspired amid stacks of comic books and philosophical treatises, surrounded by punk ephemera, the remnants of late-night sessions, toys belonging to one of his adored animal companions, piles of manuscripts, and friends’ artwork. “José had this endless stamina for socializing,” friend and dramatist Jorge Cortiñas remembers. “It was a wonderfully seamless way of engaging with art and with artists.”

'José brought to the academy an archive of film, art, and performance that still astonishes readers of his first book, Disidentifications (1999). And he interpreted this archive using a sturdy theoretical apparatus that was never directed toward its own legitimation, but was instead devoted to the value of queer and minoritarian life, and to the mourning of queer and minoritarian loss. For José, experimental art, performance, and poetry were keys to “the practice of survival.” Prescient readings of the work of Félix González-Torres and Isaac Julien (attending to the forms of queer exile that shape the aesthetic practices of both) sit alongside groundbreaking writing on figures who, at the time, had received little or no critical attention. From the very beginning of his development as a thinker, he formed intense and collaborative relationships with artists. Vaginal Davis, Carmelita Tropicana, and Nao Bustamante figure heavily in his thought, and he figured heavily in their lives as an advocate, a friend, and as a critic. “José’s serious engagement with artists’ lives, practice, and work,” social theorist John Andrews observes, “has changed how many academics conceive the practice of theorizing. His work as a theorist countered the more rarefied modes of how academics and art critics use and produce theory.”

'The list of other artists whose careers José supported through his advocacy, his intellect, and his friendship is vast: Wu Tsang, Justin Vivian Bond, Kenny Mellman, Marga Gomez, Tony Just, Miguel Gutierrez, Jorge Cortiñas, Michael Wang, Kevin Aviance, and Kalup Linzy to put names to some. José sought links among artists few had the capacity to imagine as part of the same world. His second book, Cruising Utopia (2009), an exciting antidote to both mainstream gay and lesbian politics as well as to the “anti-social” turn in queer theory, set LeRoi Jones’s play The Toilet in conversation with the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, the paintings of Luke Dowd alongside performances by Dynasty Handbag and My Barbarian or poetry by Frank O’Hara and Elizabeth Bishop. Some of the book’s most moving passages grow from his familiarity with a wide range of gay scenes in New York City and beyond, especially those off the white, homonormative map. Underground and experimental social spaces were as important to him as Marxist philosophy and queer theory. He encouraged people to follow him, as a thinker and happy participant, into those zones.

'In José’s writing a performance, painting, photo, or literary text is not merely an “object of study” but a philosophical encounter, one that sits alongside other kinds of encounters, moments of collision and contact. For this reason, in his writing he did not lead with the information that facilitates the absorption of an artist’s work into the academy (a defense of the work’s relation to a canon, to art history narrowly imagined, to a disciplinarian articulation of “performance”). He offered instead a language that invites the artist’s work into the reader’s life, by way of his thinking. He drew other scholars into conversation about his muses, his Furies; his experiences of their work were not intended to be “his” but “shared out.”

'José redefined the meaning of “academic superstar” in Warholian terms: He had a way of finding beauty in what others considered to be their own damage, recalls Jonathan Flatley, a friend and co-editor (with Jennifer Doyle) of Pop Out: Queer Warhol (1996). José quickly transformed the academy not only through his writing but through his mentorship of a generation of scholars, many of who now work at some of the country’s most dynamic and prestigious departments.

'And so we met the news of José Esteban Muñoz’s death on December 3, 2013 with a collective howl. A constellation of artists, writers, curators, and scholars have spent the winter shaken by paroxysms of grief: José’s lifework as a philosopher/critic, which includes his practice of friendship, has been so integral to this community that we feel as if the very ground beneath us has disappeared.

'On February 8, at a memorial gathering at NYU, Justin Vivian Bond and Kenny Mellman reprised Kiki & Herb’s rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in tribute to José. Later that afternoon, Carmelita Tropicana" nofollow="nofollow">Carmelita Tropicana welcomed his friends to a Village basement bar, where filmmaker Guinevere Turner roused the crowd with a performance of her correspondence with José; the electronic duo Matmos staged a “Germ Burn for Darby Crash” in his memory; Miguel Gutierrez amplified a farewell “I love you” into a gorgeous sonic loop; Gus Stadler and Barbara Browning sang their cover of “Take Ecstasy With Me”; Kay Turner led a rousing reprise of Cruising Utopia as a punk anthem; and Nao Bustamante, wearing a nude body suit and veiled in the black cloud of a Vegas widow, planted herself face down on the stage and tore through “Lara’s Theme.” Nao peeled the skin off its lyrics (“Someday my love…”), marking out the distance between its sweet fantasy and the place we are in here and now. Then she rolled and crawled across the floor, from the front of the stage to the back of the bar.'-- Jennifer Doyle and Tavia Nyong’o, Artforum



_____
Extras


Tribute to Jose Esteban Muñoz


Jose Esteban Munoz's Memorial at Poisson Rouge


2013 Feminist Theory Workshop Keynote Speaker José Esteban Muñoz


Dr Vaginal Davis in dialogue with Jose Munoz


JNT Dialogue 2013: José Muñoz and Samuel Delany


José Esteban Muñoz 'Mark Morrisroe: Neo-Romantic Iconography and the Performance of Self'


Having A Coke With You, For José Esteban Muñoz


José Muñoz: Queer Utopianism and Cruel Optimism



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Further

'Remembering Jose Esteban Munoz' @ Social Text
'José Esteban Muñoz, in Memory and Futurity'
TAP DOCK | Celebrating José Esteban Muñoz
'José Esteban Muñoz (1967-2013): A Collage'
JEM 'Revisiting the Autoethnographic Performance: Richard Fung’s Theory/Praxis as Queer Performativity'
JEM '"The White to Be Angry": Vaginal Davis's Terrorist Drag'
JEM 'Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts'
JEM 'Performing the Punk Rock Commons: Queer Germs'
'Disidentification'
'The Disidentifications of Vaginal Davis & José Esteban Muñoz'
'Trading Futures: Queer Theory's Anti-antirelational Turn'
'Locating hope and futurity in the anticipatory illumination of queer performance'
'Muñoz, Basquiat, and Warhol: how bringing in comics with theory makes me wanna do art activism'
'Cultural Q's: In Memory of Jose E. Munoz: Making Queer Future'
'Who Was José Esteban Muñoz? 6 Things To Know About The Deceased Queer Theorist'
Buy 'Cruising Utopia' @ NYU Press



______
Interview
from Bad at Sports




Tell us a bit about Cruising Utopia.

Jose Muñoz: In Cruising Utopia I considered the work and life of figures from the historical queer avant-garde. I will discuss the life and work of Warhol superstar Mario Montez. Montez collaborated with Warhol, Jack Smith, Ronald Tavel and many other key figures from that scene. But Montez dropped out of the art and performance scene in the 1970s. He has recently reemerged and has great stories to tell. I look to him as a “Wise Latina” which was a phrase used by republicans who attacked Sonia Sotomayor when she was nominated to The Supreme Court. I describe Montez as a Wise Latina because she made a sort of “sense” that I think is worth considering today.

The prose style of your 2009 book Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity is at once poetic and deeply rousing. In particular, I’m enamored of this statement from your book’s Introduction:

“We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing." I love the radical openness of that idea. Can you talk a bit about the ways in which you want to re/define the concepts of ‘hope’ and ‘utopia,’ particularly when it comes to queerness and what you describe as a ‘queer aesthetic’?

JM: I was advocating an idea of hope that refuses despair during desperate times. I reject naive hope and instead offer a version of hope that is counter measure to how straight culture defines our lives and the world. I was trying to describe an idea of utopia that is not just escapism. Queer art or queer aesthetics potentially offer us blueprints and designs for other ways of living in the world. In Cruising Utopia I look at performances and visual art that are both historical and contemporary. But what all the work has in common is the way it sketches different ways of being in the world.

Which contemporary performance artists do you think best represent your idea that ‘hope’ can be more than just a critical affect, but can also present us with a viable methodology for mapping utopias?

JM: I am interested in so much work that happens under the rich sign of performance. For years I have been following the work of artists like Vaginal Davis whose performances always insists on another version of reality than the ones we are bombarded by. I could substitute Vag’s name in the previous sentence with that of artists like Nao Bustamente, Carmelita Tropicana, Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian and so many other artists that I have encountered. I look forward to seeing more work that helps me glimpse something beyond the here and now.



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Quote





___
Book

Jose Esteban Munoz Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
NYU Press

'The LGBT agenda for too long has been dominated by pragmatic issues like same-sex marriage and gays in the military. It has been stifled by this myopic focus on the present, which is short-sighted and assimilationist.

'Cruising Utopia seeks to break the present stagnancy by cruising ahead. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, José Esteban Muñoz recalls the queer past for guidance in presaging its future. He considers the work of seminal artists and writers such as Andy Warhol, LeRoi Jones, Frank O’Hara, Ray Johnson, Fred Herko, Samuel Delany, and Elizabeth Bishop, alongside contemporary performance and visual artists like Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian, Luke Dowd, Tony Just, and Kevin McCarty in order to decipher the anticipatory illumination of art and its uncanny ability to open windows to the future.

'In a startling repudiation of what the LGBT movement has held dear, Muñoz contends that queerness is instead a futurity bound phenomenon, a "not yet here" that critically engages pragmatic presentism. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, Cruising Utopia argues that the here and now are not enough and issues an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination.'-- NYU Press


fromIntroduction: Feeling Utopia

A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth glancing at. —Oscar Wilde

Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of this moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing. Often we can glimpse the worlds proposed and promised by queerness in the realm of the aesthetic. The aesthetic, especially the queer aesthetic, frequently contains blueprints and schemata of a forward-dawning futurity. Both the ornamental and the quotidian can contain a map of the utopia that is queerness. Turning to the aesthetic in the case of queerness is nothing like an escape from the social realm, insofar as queer aesthetics map future social relations. Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insis- tence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.

That is the argument I make in Cruising Utopia, significantly influenced by the thinking and language of the German idealist tradition emanating from the work of Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. An aspect of that line of thought is concretized in the critical philosophy associated with the Frankfurt School, most notably in the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and Herbert Marcuse. Those three thinkers within the Marxist tradition have all grappled with the complexities of the utopian. Yet the voice and logic that most touches me, most animates my thinking, is that of the philosopher Ernst Bloch.

More loosely associated with the Frankfurt School than the aforemen- tioned philosophers, Bloch’s work was taken up by both liberation theology and the Parisian student movements of 1968. He was born in 1885 to an assimilated Jewish railway employee in Ludwigshafen, Germany. During World War II, Bloch fled Nazi Germany, eventually settling for a time in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After the war Bloch returned to East Germany, where his Marxian philosophy was seen as too revisionary. At the same time he was derided for his various defenses of Stalinism by left commentators throughout Europe and the United States. He participated in the intellectual circles of Georg Simmel and, later, Max Weber. His friendship and sometime rivalries with Adorno, Benjamin, and Georg Lukács are noted in European left intellectual history. Bloch’s political inconsistencies and style, which has been described as both elliptical and lyrical, have led Bloch to an odd and uneven reception. Using Bloch for a project that understands itself as part of queer critique is also a risky move because it has been rumored that Bloch did not hold very progressive opinions on issues of gender and sexuality. These biographical facts are beside the point because I am using Bloch’s theory not as orthodoxy but instead to create an opening in queer thought. I am using the occasion and example of Bloch’s thought, along with that of Adorno, Marcuse, and other philosophers, as a portal to another mode of queer critique that de- viates from dominant practices of thought existing within queer critique today. In my estimation a turn to a certain critical idealism can be an especially useful hermeneutic.

For some time now I have been working with Bloch’s three-volume philosophical treatise The Principle of Hope. In his exhaustive book Bloch considers an expanded idea of the utopian that surpasses Thomas More’s formulation of utopias based in fantasy. The Principle of Hope offers an encyclopedic approach to the phenomenon of utopia. In that text he discusses all manner of utopia including, but not limited to, social, literary, technological, medical, and geographic utopias. Bloch has had a shakier reception in the U.S. academy than have some of his friends and acquaintances — such as Benjamin. For me, Bloch’s utility has much to do with the way he theorizes utopia. He makes a critical distinction between abstract utopias and concrete utopias, valuing abstract utopias only insofar as they pose a critique function that fuels a critical and potentially transformative political imagination. Abstract utopias falter for Bloch because they are untethered from any historical consciousness. Concrete utopias are relational to historically situated struggles, a collectivity that is actualized or potential. In our everyday life abstract utopias are akin to banal optimism. (Recent calls for gay or queer optimism seem too close to elite homosexual evasion of politics.) Concrete utopias can also be daydream-like, but they are the hopes of a collective, an emergent group, or even the solitary oddball who is the one who dreams for many. Concrete utopias are the realm of educated hope. In a 1961 lecture titled “Can Hope Be Disappointed?” Bloch describes different aspects of educated hope: “Not only hope’s affect (with its pendant, fear) but even more so, hope’s methodology (with its pendant, memory) dwells in the region of the not-yet, a place where entrance and, above all, final content are marked by an enduring indeterminacy.” This idea of indeterminacy in both affect and methodology speaks to a critical process that is attuned to what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben describes as potentiality. Hope along with its other, fear, are affective structures that can be described as anticipatory.

Cruising Utopia's first move is to describe a modality of queer utopianism that I locate within a historically specific nexus of cultural produc- tion before, around, and slightly after the Stonewall rebellion of 1969. A Blochian approach to aesthetic theory is invested in describing the anticipatory illumination of art, which can be characterized as the process of identifying certain properties that can be detected in representational practices helping us to see the not-yet-conscious. This not-yet-conscious is knowable, to some extent, as a utopian feeling. When Bloch describes the anticipatory illumination of art, one can understand this illumination as a surplus of both affect and meaning within the aesthetic. I track utopian feelings throughout the work of that Stonewall period. I attempt to counteract the logic of the historical case study by following an associative mode of analysis that leaps between one historical site and the present. To that end my writing brings in my own personal experience as another way to ground historical queer sites with lived queer experience. My intention in this aspect of the writing is not simply to wax anecdotally but, instead, to reach for other modes of associative argumentation and evidencing. Thus, when considering the work of a contemporary club performer such as Kevin Aviance, I engage a poem by Elizabeth Bishop and a personal recollection about movement and gender identity. When looking at Kevin McCarty’s photographs of contemporary queer and punk bars, I consider accounts about pre-Stonewall gay bars in Ohio and my personal story about growing up queer and punk in suburban Miami. Most of this book is fixated on a cluster of sites in the New York City of the fifties and sixties that include the New York School of poetry, the Judson Memorial Church’s dance theater, and Andy Warhol’s Factory. Cruising Utopia looks to figures from those temporal maps that have been less attended to than O’Hara and Warhol have been. Yet it seems useful to open this book by briefly discussing moments in the work of both the poet and the pop artist for the purposes of illustrating the project’s primary approach to the cultural and theoretical material it traverses. At the center of Cruising Utopia there is the idea of hope, which is both a critical affect and a methodology.

Bloch offers us hope as a hermeneutic, and from the point of view of political struggles today, such a critical optic is nothing short of necessary in order to combat the force of political pessimism. It is certainly difficult to argue for hope or critical utopianism at a moment when cultural analysis is dominated by an antiutopianism often functioning as a poor substitute for actual critical intervention. But before addressing the question of antiutopianism, it is worthwhile to sketch a portrait of a critical mode of hope that represents the concrete utopianism discussed here.

Jill Dolan offers her own partially Blochian-derived mode of performance studies critique in Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater. Dolan’s admirable book focuses on live theater as a site for “finding hope.” My approach to hope as a critical methodology can be best described as a backward glance that enacts a future vision. I see my project as resonating alongside a group of recent texts that have strategically displaced the live object of performance. Some texts that represent this aspect of the performance studies project include Gavin Butt’s excellent analysis of the queer performative force of gossip in the prewar New York art world, Jennifer Doyle’s powerful treatise on the formative and deforming force of “sex objects” in performance and visual studies, and Fred Moten’s beautiful In the Break, with its emphasis on providing a soaring description of the resistance of the object. I invoke those three texts in an effort to locate my own analysis in relation to the larger interdisciplinary project of performance studies.

The modern world is a thing of wonder for Bloch, who considers astonishment to be an important philosophical mode of contemplation. In a way, we can see this sense of astonishment in the work of both Warhol and O’Hara. Warhol was fond of making speech acts such as “wow” and “gee.” Although this aspect of Warhol’s performance of self is often described as an insincere performance of naiveté, I instead argue that it is a manifestation of the utopian feeling that is integral to much of Warhol’s art, speech, and writing. O’Hara, as even his casual readers know, was irrepressibly upbeat. What if we think of these modes of being in the world — Warhol’s liking of things, his “wows” and “gees,” and O’Hara’s poetry being saturated with feelings of fun and appreciation — as a mode of utopian feeling but also as hope’s methodology? This methodology is manifest in what Bloch described as a form of “astonished contemplation.” Perhaps we can understand the campy fascination that both men had with celebrity as being akin to this sense of astonishment. Warhol’s blue Liz Taylors or O’Hara’s perfect tribute to another starlet, in the poem “Lana Turner Has Collapsed,” offer, through glamour and astonishment, a kind of transport or a reprieve from what Bloch called the “darkness of the lived instant.” Astonishment helps one surpass the limitations of an alienating present- ness and allows one to see a different time and place. Much of each artist’s work performs this astonishment in the world. O’Hara is constantly astonished by the city. He celebrates the city’s beauty and vastness, and in his work one often finds this sense of astonishment in quotidian things. O’Hara’s poems display urban landscapes of astonishment. The quotidian object has this same affective charge in Warhol’s visual work. Bloch theo- rized that one could detect wish-landscapes in painting and poetry. Such landscapes extend into the territory of futurity.

Let us begin by considering Warhol’s Coke Bottle alongside O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke with You”:

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St.
Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for
yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the
world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the
Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together
the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of
Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used
to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the
sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as
carefully as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you
about it

This poem tells us of a quotidian act, having a Coke with somebody, that signifies a vast lifeworld of queer relationality, an encrypted sociality, and a utopian potentiality. The quotidian act of sharing a Coke, consuming a common commodity with a beloved with whom one shares secret smiles, trumps fantastic moments in the history of art. Though the poem is clearly about the present, it is a present that is now squarely the past and in its queer relationality promises a future. The fun of having a Coke is a mode of exhilaration in which one views a restructured sociality. The poem tells us that mere beauty is insufficient for the aesthete speaker, which echoes Bloch’s own aesthetic theories concerning the utopian function of art. If art’s limit were beauty — according to Bloch — it is simply not enough. The utopian function is enacted by a certain surplus in the work that promises a futurity, something that is not quite here. O’Hara first mentions being wowed by a high-art object before he describes being wowed by the lover with whom he shares a Coke. Here, through queer-aesthete art consumption and queer relationality the writer describes moments imbued with a feeling of forward-dawning futurity.

The anticipatory illumination of certain objects is a kind of potentiality that is open, indeterminate, like the affective contours of hope itself. This illumination seems to radiate from Warhol’s own depiction of Coke bottles. Those silk screens, which I discuss in chapter 7, emphasize the product’s stylish design line. Potentiality for Bloch is often located in the ornamental. The ornament can be seen as a proto-pop phenomenon. Bloch warns us that mechanical reproduction, at first glance, voids the ornamental. But he then suggests that the ornamental and the potentiality he associates with it cannot be seen as directly oppositional to technology or mass production. The philosopher proposes the example of a modern bathroom as this age’s exemplary site to see a utopian potentiality, the site where nonfunctionality and total functionality merge. Part of what Warhol’s study of the Coke bottle and other mass-produced objects helps one to see is this particular tension between functionality and nonfunctionality, the promise and potentiality of the ornament. In the Philosophy of Andy Warhol the artist muses on the radically democratic potentiality he detects in Coca-Cola.

What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drink- ing. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

This is the point where Warhol’s particular version of the queer utopian impulse crosses over with O’Hara’s. The Coke bottle is the everyday material that is represented in a different frame, laying bare its aesthetic dimension and the potentiality that it represents. In its everyday manifestation such an object would represent alienated production and consumption. But Warhol and O’Hara both detect something else in the object of a Coke bottle and in the act of drinking a Coke with someone. What we glean from Warhol’s philosophy is the understanding that utopia exists in the quotidian. Both queer cultural workers are able to detect an opening and indeterminacy in what for many people is a locked-down dead commodity.

Agamben’s reading of Aristotle’s De Anima makes the crucial point that the opposition between potentiality and actuality is a structuring binarism in Western metaphysics. Unlike a possibility, a thing that simply might happen, a potentiality is a certain mode of nonbeing that is eminent, a thing that is present but not actually existing in the present tense. Looking at a poem written in the 1960s, I see a certain potentiality, which at that point had not been fully manifested, a relational field where men could love each other outside the institutions of heterosexuality and share a world through the act of drinking a beverage with each other. Using Warhol’s musing on Coca-Cola in tandem with O’Hara’s words, I see the past and the potentiality imbued within an object, the ways it might represent a mode of being and feeling that was then not quite there but nonetheless an opening. Bloch would posit that such utopian feelings can and regularly will be disappointed. They are nonetheless indispensable to the act of imaging transformation.




*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I so wish I could raise and lower the comments section like a drawbridge. Maybe after the next Blogger upgrade. Oh, yeah, nice interview with Scott about Derek Jarman and TSA. Everyone, _B_A recommends, and I second him, that you pop over to The Quietus site and read this interview with super artist and my pal Scott Treleaven about his experiences with Derek Jarman and re: his seminal '90s era punk/art zine 'The Salivation Army'. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Actually, a bunch of them were fully clothed, but, oh wait, leaping, hold on. Oh, him. Interesting choice. Oh, you wrote on the new Wes Anderson, awesome! I'll be so all over that asap. Everyone, Here's a total treat: David Ehrenstein writing on the new Wes Anderson film over at Fandor. I extremely recommend that you go over there immediately or soon thereafter and read said tome. It's called 'The Zweig Stuff: Wes Anderson’s Muse'. Hit that. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, buddy. Really glad to hear you're doing good. The trip related post is proving to be very hard to do well/get right, but I'm still on it. I saw a bunch of whales, yeah. Orcas, Humpbacks, Minkies, ... Amazing. You won't bore me to death if you want to ask. Feel free. Okay, yeah, it seems that I need to watch 'True Detective.' How, I don't know yet. I have a kind of loose policy against watching TV/movies on my computer because I spend so much time here already writing and doing the blog, but some friend's computer is fair game, so I'll see if any of my Parisian friends are addicted and into sharing. ** Bill, Probably, re: saving that money, I think. They were a jolly lot of escorts, relatively speaking. Luck of the draw. Oh, very cool! Your videos! Sweet! Everybody, This is cool, and this is a must-click situation we have right here. I.e., video re:/of master artist/d.l. Bill (Hsu's) two recent installation works is now online and available for your viewing pleasure. Hence, first click this, which will take you to video documentation of 'City-to-City' as recently seen at Zero1Garage in San Jose, CA, and then click this, which will lead you directly to 'Narcissus II', and, in that case, here's a behind-the-scenes description to whet your appetite: 'Narcissus II uses a biometric sensor to capture and amplify each visitor’s heartbeat. The EKG data is analyzed in real-time and translated into a unique sequence of short phrases specific to each user. The resulting animation is projected into a reflecting pool containing 9 gallons of spent petroleum. The poem that emerges is a true reflection of who we are – a moving image that both expresses, and then interrogates, our current sense of self.' Really excited to watch them, Bill, in just a mere half-hour to forty-five minutes, depending! ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. I too really like the hause escort's way with wordage. No, I haven't moved. 'Some form of personal life change'? You mean right now? Not that I know of, but I'm not sure what you meant by that. What did you mean? ** Sypha, Hi, James. You finally got your paws on the Current 93 book, cool. Good luck with that agent. That agenting stuff/negotiation can be really tough. Hang in there. Man, I'm obviously so sorry to hear that you particularly haven't been feeling well, outside and inside. What's your scheme to end this spate of maladies? Do you have a plan, or are you just waiting and seeing? ** Gary gray, Hi. Relevant or not, in my experience, it's pretty frequent that a newer writer will say (to me) that their work is too derivative of someone or something, and, when I read their work, I don't see the derivation or even necessarily an influence at all. It can be hard to see the signage of one's own distinct voice from the inside, I guess is what I'm saying. I like those two new ideas, duh. Yeah, nice. Definitely interesting. Never heard of Linco Printing, no, but their stuff looks good, so I hope they take your work on. I had never heard of Magcon before, or else I'm spacing out. Naturally, the clips are weird and very intriguing. In other words, if you want to do a Magcon post, consider this sentence to be a linguistic embodiment of me down on one knee saying 'yes, please'. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Oh, cool, about the Siratori thing. I'll go see if I can track down those video collages and the new book. Maybe I'll upgrade my old post about his stuff and relaunch it. I've only listened to two of BEE's podcasts: the Kanye West one, which kind of bugged me, and I started listening to his interview with The National, but I didn't get through it because I don't like The National, basically. I'll get in the habit of keeping up with his podcasts. I should. Oh, that's nice of Bret to say I'm nice. And to Marilyn Manson no less. He's actually quite nice too, although he'd hate that I said that, probably, if he saw this. I didn't get any jet lag, strangely and pleasantly, so I'm cool. B'day ... it's your b'day? Is that what you mean? Happy b'day, if so, and, okay, even if not 'cos ... why not? ** Steevee, Hi. No, I was going to see 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' on Saturday, but my plan got rerouted to the latter part of this coming week. I would be really surprised if I don't totally love it since I love all of his films except for 'Bottle Rocket', which I only like. I generally don't think that any subject matter creates an unsuitable approach. In fact, a lot of my favorite films and books and music, etc., start from a place of seeming unsuitability, I think. But, anyway, we'll see. ** Marilyn Roxie, Hi, Marilyn! Great to see you here. Thanks a lot about the escorts post. That's cool. Oh, and thank you so very much for the email/post! I just saw it moments ago, and I'll get it set up, and I'll let you knew the launch date really soon. Thank you, thank you! ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hey. I'm pretty sure Yow stopped drinking. Or I recall a bunch of press a ways back about his giving up the bottle. Not sure if that stuck or not. Hm, ah, interesting re: the dilemma about whether to move to Berlin or not. I see. Of course, albeit from very far away, I tend to think that if a life shake-up is tempting, it's probably the thing to do. But of course giving up a rent-controlled apartment is a tough decision. You couldn't sublet it? Is Berlin weak on the rock front? That's interesting. I guess, huh, yeah, I can't think of current bands from Berlin off the top of my head. That's curious. Let me throw your question out and see if any Berliners or Berlin-knowledgeabvle people can give you an answer. Everyone, Hey. Maybe you can help Mikel Motorcycle out by answering the following question if you have any knowledge in that area. Could you do that, if so? Thank you. Here's Mikel: 'I've been writing psychedelic rock and classical/ minimalist film-type stuff and I want to pursue both of those veins... which is one of my concerns about Berlin, is that from what I see/hear it's a very electronic scene and not rock, and while my rock stuff def has a lot of fuzzy/droney synth components and is driving/motorik, it's hard enough to find reliable people to play with here and I'm wondering if it's a rock-music wasteland in Berlin. I'm not concerned about the scene being small but want to be able to find people to play with. Hey other DC readers, anyone live in Berlin or have input on that?' So you're post-lit, or I mean post-writing fiction. That's interesting. (And thank you for the kind words.) Yeah, you can't do everything, and fuck fiction, relatively speaking, truly, if it doesn't excite you to make it. Where can I hear some of your music? Is it online anywhere? Could you direct me to access points, if so, and if you don't mind? I would of course love it if you feel like poking your head in here more often. It's a great thing to see you and get to catch up and talk. All love and respect back from me! ** Misanthrope, Hi. It's true that I haven't hung out at a Walmart in ... well, forever, since I don't think I've ever entered a Walmart for some reason. So I'll take your word about the preponderance of really big people in your neck. You still going to the gym? Well, yeah, who ultimately knows about e-cigarettes. This is really superficial of me, I know, but I've never seen anyone smoking one who I didn't think looked kind of ridiculous. Cool about the return of LPS, even with the unwanted baggage. I have Japanese bills for him, remember. Yikes, so, yeah, she sounds, you know, ugh. I'm sorry, but it's worth it to have the little big guy around, right? ** Rewritedept, Hi. Was David Brenner a comedy legend? I feel like that word 'legend' gets stuck on anyone who merely does what they do in public for long enough. If you appeared on The Tonight Show a lot, you're a legend? I don't know. Oh, I was going to say the auditions are next weekend, but you caught yourself, I see. Good fave GbV tracks. 'Red Men and their Wives' has often been my fave GbV track. No, I'm in no way nearly done with the first draft, Like I said, I'm maybe halfway through, and quite far from done. My weekend was fine but not especially amazing. Pretty work-printed and low-key with some pleasant wandering around. ** Brendan, Hi, B! Oh, sweet about that giant painting. I'm try too picture it. I can't picture it. You're such a surprise generator, man. God love you. I wish I could astral project into your studio. It even sounds really exciting so I can only imagine the in-person effect, wow. I know of Rupert Thomson, or of his name at least, but I don't think I've read him. I'll go goole that title. Thanks for the share. Photo of your garden please? On FB even? Or is it on FB somewhere already? I heard about the 90 degrees. Crazy as in scary. Or, is it not scary? It sounds crazy as in scary. ** White tiger, Aw, thanks, on behalf of the boys themselves, imminent Angeleno/angel buddy! ** Okay. The wonderful José Esteban Muñoz died suddenly and extremely too soon last year, and I thought I'd spotlight his most recent and possibly best book today out of respect and genuine hope that you'll check it out if you haven't. See you tomorrow.

*

p.s. Hey. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. No, I didn't move. Same place, room, everything, just ever messier. Thank you so much for working on a day for here and for agreeing to its hardness. That's super kind. I hope you feel much, much better. They look like Koi, it's true, but I don't know.   Seemingly. ** David Ehrenstein, He's well worth reading, as you could tell. Lovely piece on the Anderson. Kudos. ** White tiger, Hi, pal. I haven't checked it out yet. Tentative, fairly firm plans to eat my face off there later this week or weekend. I'll let you know as soon as it's under my belt. ** Empty Frame, Hi, buddy. Great to see you! Very happy that the post/book hit home. I do know those blue fugs, yes, ugh, sorry. Well, shit, don't burn up your studio, and for goodness sake leave your head intact, man. Those things, those fugs, they always burn off for reasons as mysterious as why they initially envelop, so hang in there and, well, here too, if you think my mostly optimism, etc. might rub off. I'm very good, thanks. Oh, the internationally famous Paris smog incident, yes. Well, there was a freak weather condition, low pressure mixed with unseasonably high-moderate temps, and that apparently trapped the pollutants. The temps dropped dramatically yesterday afternoon, and I think the smog drifted off to wherever smog goes. It's weird, though, 'cos I was out and about during the smog days, and it didn't look like much to me, but then I grew up in LA. ** Dan, Hi, Dan! Good to see you! Yeah, I should be here in Paris then, so I guess she should get in touch. I'll email you my cell number to give her, if you don't have it. It would nice to meet her, yeah. I'm doing great, and I hope you are too. ** Misanthrope, The rough with the smooth, eh? So often the case. Sorry. Just concentrate on the good of him being there and good that will be done for him, obviously, and I guess try to pretend she's like one of those noise artists I love and keep foisting on you guys who's giving you an epic, in-house concert, although I guess that fantasy overlay won't actually help much, oh well. I only grew a few inches from when I was in 6th grade, so yeah. Glad you're still on track for the European sojourn, obviously. Oh, shit, that sucks about the non-renewal. Maybe they'll wilt, like you said. At least you have until December. So that's what a herniated disc might be. I've always wondered what that meant. Be careful. ** Steevee, I'll let you know when I've seen the Anderson and found out what I think. That's cool that you're doing that for the BOMB blog/site. I like that place. I always look at that place. That's very cool. ** Torn porter, Hi, TP, or, rather, tp. I've seen very little of Franko B's work, for some weird/no good reason. I hung out with him a few years back, and he was a total sweetheart. The best performance art venues in Paris? There aren't really performance art-specific venues here, that I know of. Most relevant venues mix performance, dance, avant-theater, etc. together in their programming. Mm, so I don't know. Maybe the place that's the most risk taking and supportive of brand new performers/dancers is Menagerie de Verre. Otherwise, I can't think of a venue that's consistently 'the best' or anything. I'm not sure what you mean by 'catering to young people'. In what sense? You mean a place that programs performance art that targets young people deliberately? Uh, I don't think so, but then I can't think of a place like in other cities either. If you mean a place that programs new artists particularly, then MdV. I guess maybe a place like Point Ephemere would draw younger crowds when they host performance art events just because they're best known as a live music venue? Why do you ask that? Cool to see you, and I hope you get back inside yourself in a manner that suits/pleases you. ** Scunnard, Hi, J. Yes, your timing is absolutely impeccable, as always. Oh, wait, did I never respond to your query about your 'Weaklings'/Five Years piece? I might not have done that in all my recent traveling. Did you ask Marc/Tender Prey directly? That's the person to ask. ** Brendan, Hi, B. I can picture that. The big painting-in-progress. I sort of can. Your description may have been short but it was sharp-ish. Excited. May be it be born healthy and prosper thereafter. Yes, garden photos, I want! ** Armando, Hi, A! Really good to see you! Oh, man, I don't know the answer to that question. I haven't done Xanax since the very early '90s. Let me ask around here. Everyone, Can anyone answer this question for beloved d.l. Armando? Here's the question in his words: 'Is taking 17 mg of xanax over a period of approximately 12 hours kinda bad, or dangerous or something. I did that the day before yesterday. Feel quite tired and week and kinda sad, you know.' Please answer/help him out if you can. Thanks! Man, if you're not feeling good after doing that, that's probably your answer, right? I know I quit doing Xanax back when because it started fucking me up mentally or emotionally or both. Love, me. ** Will C., Genres are fickle terms, that's for sure, yeah. Generalizations are always bullshit, especially the official ones. I think the pollution is either gone or skulking off to find another victim. ** Paul Curran, Then happy birthday a second time! Did you have a blast? What did you do? Thanks a bunch for that Siratori link. I'll scour it today. Cool. And, ultra-cool: Beach Sloth did you! I just broke my usual habit of waiting on experiencing things that people link us to in the comments to read it quickly, and it's lovely! God love Beach Sloth. What a saintly, smart guy. I hope to shake his hand someday. Wait, the book isn't out yet, is it? I want to do a celebratory post upon its arrival. Is it already out? Everyone, as you probably and should know, the great Paul Curran's first novel 'Left Hand' is due out very shortly, and it's a meta-humdinger to put it mildly, and Beach Sloth aka the great arbiter/supporter/critic of all things even vaguely Alt Lit, has written a review of it already, and it's a beautiful piece of work, so I urge you very strongly to click this link and go read what BS has to say about PC's 'LH' ** Sypha, Great timing on the doctor visit. Please surrender to him, throw your body on his mercy, etc., and hopefully get some solid advice and tips and meds or whatever else to get you through this recent crap. ** Gary gray, Hi. Any date you want. As soon as you can do it, basically. Oh, how to do it? Well, hm, you can send it to me in a Word doc, Text File doc, etc., or pasted into the body of an email. If there are videos, show me where you want them to appear in the post, put links to where they are, and I'll go get them and imbed them. If there are images, indicate in the text where you want them to go, put their names/identifiers there, and send me the photos as attachments on the email, and I'll inset them on my end. I don't know. If you have any other questions about how to make the post, just ask. You see how the posts generally look, but, really, anything goes, formatting-wise, as long as it's something I can build/re-recreate in Blogger. 'Eden Eden Eden' rules, obviously. I read about the Schooly Q album yesterday, but I haven't tried it out yet. I will. Really nice prologue. I only read it through quickly once 'cos I'm in speedy p.s. finishing mode, but it reads excellently and intrigues appropriately. Paris has been A-okay since I got back. Nice to see it again. Oh, LA, cool. I love me some LA, as you know. Have huge fun. ** Creative Massacre, Hi, Misty. That's funny: I was putting together one of my image stack posts yesterday, and I kept seeing all these images from 'Bates Motel', and I thought, What n the world is that? So now I have my answer. That's all I know about it. I didn't even know it was a TV series until you said so. I'll see if I can find something to look at from it, video or something. Thanks! I'm well, and I hope you're doing really well. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Oh, before I keep forgetting, I'm posting your next guest-post on this coming Saturday. The Hicks one. Thank you, man! Nice close there. $8000 is nothing to sniff at. Sweet. My day was quiet and relatively productive, I guess. 'Valis' awesome. K. Dick is very addictive. Watch out, or don't watch out. I hope your Tuesday is in the upper echelon of Tuesdays. ** RAHUT, Ha ha, spam! I haven't had one of you spam people show up here in a while. Welcome, I guess, and nice try. ** Right. The post today is the post I made for today, and it's what it is, seemingly, if not necessarily what it intends to be because that's not my call. See you tomorrow.

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ShackletonFreezing Opening Thawing
'Every Sam Shackleton release is an event because only he can make music like this. Anyone who's seen Shackleton play live recently won't be surprised by the bright timbres of "Freezing Opening Thawing." The 11-minute title track takes the chintzy instrumentation of The Drawbar Organ and builds on the idea, daubing his signature basslines with staccato mallet melodies. It's less ritualistic and more psychedelic than before, charging forward with an aggression that also feels new, not quite the sprawl of his more recent work nor the loopy madness of his oldest material. But most striking of all is his new EP's artificiality. The release is said to place a newfound emphasis on synthesis rather than sampling, and each track is layered with glowing space-age sounds.'-- Resident Advisor






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Beatriz Ferreyra + Christine Groultlive @ Gaite Lyrique
'Beatriz Ferreyra was born 21 June 1937 in Córdoba, Argentina. She studied piano with Celia Bronstein in Buenos Aires (1950-1956), harmony and musicalanalysis with Nadia Boulanger (1962), electroacoustic music with EdgardoCanton (1963), and composition with EarleBrown and György Ligeti (1967). Between 1963 and 1970, she worked in the research department of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), participating in the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), under the leadership of Pierre Schaeffer. Since 1970, she has been working as a freelance composer.'-- Computer Music Journal






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Wild BeastsSweet Spot
'Much has been made of Wanderlust, the song that opens Wild Beasts' fourth album, and its vicious disdain for the musical peers who have become Americanised: "In your mother tongue, what's the verb 'to suck'?" spits Hayden Thorpe, coming as close to a snarl as that soft falsetto possibly can. At first the intention seems plain: as on their previous three albums, there is no pretence of fitting in. Wild Beasts revel in their idiosyncrasies; you can hear it in the duelling vocals and choral layers, the words that shouldn't fit, the tunes that veer off in unexpected directions. What's new here is that they have tempered and honed those flourishes. It's modest in its experiments, never forgoing an accessible ear for the sake of being difficult. Sweet Spot is typically ugly-beautiful, its crystalline vocals splattered with a thick 80s synth, while Nature Boy rumbles with delicious spite and menace: "Your only joy, your only bliss, your lady wife around his lips".'-- The Observer






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SculpturePlastic Infinite
'Plastic Infinite is a 7″ animated picture disc by UK-based duo Sculpture made to accompany a new track by the same name. Created like a zoetrope, the disc animates when played under a strobe light or filmed at 25fps. Comprised of duo Reuben Sutherland and Dan Hayhurst, Sculpture’s Plastic Infinite is an extension of their 2011 video for “Elk Cloner” and sees the duo push the limits of the zoetrope form, which has become short hand for particularly lavish limited edition releases.'-- thevinylfactory






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Flower OrgyStranded
'Brooklyn's Flower Orgy consists of three females and one male, and reside in Brooklyn's peninsular Red Hook neighborhood, which is actually shaped like a hook. Mixing throw back folk songwriting with a modern DIY psych vibe Nate Luce and company craft the kind of tunes that will make that next road trip really make sense. The band's tunes reside in present day Brooklyn but remind us of our future selves.'-- collaged






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ThouFree Will
'Within a genre that prides itself on theatricality, Thou’s lack of pretension and their commitment to the DIY world from where they came is refreshing. The band refuses to hide behind elaborate stage shows or tour laminates, releases boatloads of new material every year, and still prefers to pile into their beat-up red van and play all-ages DIY spaces. “Free Will”, is ominous and somber, building in intensity over the course of nearly 15 minutes and neatly exemplifying what's so compelling about Thou’s trance-inducing chords and tense, ultimately cathartic crescendos. Vocalist Bryan Funck’s near-feral howl commands and chastises, laying out the album’s themes of power, despair, defiance, and free will. His delivery may verge upon black metal in its throat-scraping mania, but the words he speaks are grounded in crushing reality, not fantasy. The demons he confronts are real.'-- Kim Kelly






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Compact Disk DummiesBritney Spears's Toxic
'Compact Disk Dummies is a Belgian electropunk-duo, consisting of two very young brothers (Lennert & Janus Coorevits, °1993 & 1995) who are in love with experiment, pounding basslines and shouting guitars. They started in 2010, and in the same year, they already won ‘Music Live’ and ‘Kunstbende’. After having played a lot of gigs, Compact Disk Dummies have become an experienced band with a strong live-reputation, which lets no human being able to stand still. That’s exactly what the jury of Humo’s Rock Rally thought, because in 2012 they won the finals!'-- collaged






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Vår At War For Youth
'When Vår’s music was first turned loose on the world a year ago it was under the banner War. The name suited the music: “Brodermordet” (“Fractricide”) was horrific, ugly, distorted and twisted to breaking point. At best it sounded like a recording of a punk gig recorded on binaural mics at floor level somewhere in the carpark; a conflict between harmonics and distortion where the distortion played dirty. Not a great surprise that War—later Vår (“Spring”)—was the project of two players in the Danish punk scene, a locus of bands in Copenhagen who blew up in 2011, Loke Rahbek of Sexdrome and Elias Bender Rønnenfelt of Iceage. They broke up amidst a raucous Japanese tour in February 2014.'-- collaged






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Giant SwanDid They Play Dogs?
'Giant Swan were first up, a duo plying a lush clamour of harsh ear schisms that materialised into gristlised rhythms, a lot of box teased goodness to soak up. These boys certainly knew a thing or two about the art of bending circuitry. Loops and pick-up burrs literally ear danced in textural plugholes of echoed vox, resurrected in scars and sycamore incisions that wavered from slithering invisible points, suggestions of words playing in your inner ear.'-- FREQ






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GnodThe Somnambulist's Tale, Pt. III
'There's a real whiff of rural menace emanating from Gnod. But that isn't to say the band are rooted, or even earthbound, in any sense of those words. Although operating out of Islington Mill in Salford, everything about the music the band make seems in permanent flux, in search of extreme moments of joy or abasement, whichever comes first. Is it the lost knowledge of the Gnostics, the magic of the ancient world, expelled from the human mind but now seeping back into consciousness through the primal and feral frequencies employed by the band? Or are they simply a devastating calibration of good ale, savage drugs and a brutal sound system? The Somnambulist's Tale is full of weird and beautiful moments – a terrible beauty, perhaps. The same basic percussive rhythm is at the core of both tracks, occasionally altering in tempo and sporadically dropping out to allow Salford Tom's chatter to filter through. The synths shimmer and hover in a slightly uneasy equipoise; the two tracks are seemingly sliced and spliced back together, but the whole thing blends into one seamless mélange of chatter and rhythm, a quiet clamor.'-- The Quietus






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Age CoinUntitled
'Copenhagen’s darkest underground, with the store and label posh isolation as a platform, keeps on producing new crisscrossing constellations within (post) punk and industrial. Age Coin is a duo of members from Lower and Vår, their music describes, according to themselves, what it’s like “when you’re feeling really low in a corner of the club”. With foggy, industrial soundscapes, they create bleak scenarios where the dim techno rhythm is hovering like an abstract threat of annihilation. A massive darkness built from steel and shabby electronics.'-- collaged






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Bee Masklive @ Enemy
'Nearly a decade ago, Chris Madak was an art world dropout fleeing New York for life as a slacker studio rat in his hometown of Cleveland with the masters of his first full-length release in tow. Madak was also busy refining the recipe of Living, creating Bee Mask, a project within which he would construct a private world of third eye-opening sonics, paranoid faux-ritual, and highbrow hesher in-jokes. This sensibility would find its fullest expression in the zero-gravity tape and electronics constructions of 2008′s dreamlike Hyperborean Trenchtown, an LP which also marked a farewell to Cleveland. Madak would strike out in search of a route off the grid, before blinking at the aesthetic void of communal living and running aground in Philadelphia, where over the next two years he all but disappeared into his home studio, descending ever deeper into his own sonic world and issuing a series of progressively stranger and more self-referential limited releases. Madak’s work reached an international audience when it was reissued in connection with the launch of the Spectrum Spools imprint of Editions Mego in 2011.'-- elastic artists.net






________________
Yan Jun live @ LUFF 2012
'Yan was born in Lanzhou in 1973, now based in Beijing. Yan's live performance engages space feedback, loop and voice/language to make hypnotic noise. He uses concepts of recycling, feedback and reduction to create sound art work, which relates to field recording, installation, image, video, publishing and multiple forms. He uses simple equipment (cd player, I-pod, md player, mixer, effector and low-drone voice, as well as some physical sound source). Yan runs the virtual creation Sub Jam since 1998. It has released some essential underground music and independent films. In 2004 he co-founded Kwanyin Records for experimental music and sound exploration.'-- rockinchina.com







*

p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Aw, thanks, Bill. About the post. I do try. Oh, man, those installations look so fantastic and on a roll. Talk about enigmatic and intriguing, and yet exquisitely interlaced. Marvels, maestro. I hope you got something awesome and responsive in return. Oh, yes, you're there, down there! Please report on what you see. Please. Wow. ** David Ehrenstein, I've always found that to be so. To their credit, I might add. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Things are good novel-wise. I'm shifting things around at the moment, restructuring the totality a bit, adding/subtracting. I've been working on this very personal, outrushing, discursive section for a while, trying to get it initially in place and substructured enough to work on the following section, which needs that footing and is a sequence of interdependent fairytales, and I've gotten to the point where I can concentrate on them for a while. So, it's good, thank you for asking. April 14, got it. Definitely want to do a intro/celebration post for the book. Let's confer as the time nears, or I'll have a think to think if there are things I can ask of you for it or something. So excited! ** Empty Frame, Hey. Oh, oops, Freddie Mercury in the head sounds kind of tumorous, but, hey, there are those who would consider that an imbedded crown or something. Excellent about the dispersing. May it wane and wane. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! What awesomeness to see you! You're in Tokyo, you lucky, lucky dog! How's my/our beloved Meguro? What have you been doing and seeing? Tell me. ** Scunnard, Hi, Jared. Yeah, me and ominous playgrounds are *like that*. Big buddies. No, I guess I didn't get your follow-up message. Or it got avalanched or something. Good, excellent, I'm glad that got resolved in the perfect manner. I miss that piece of yours. The ball still bounces when I drop it? Holy shit, thanks! ** Mikel Motorcycle, That would be really great if you could Soundcloudify some of your music. For me, obviously, and for the great unwashed, obviously. Thanks much for your thoughts on Xanax to Armando. Armando, If you're seeing this, Mikel Motorcycle spoke to your question in the comments yesterday. Thanks a lot, man. ** Gary gray, I'm on you being on it. Thanks about the Munoz post, yeah. Cool. Oh, I see: LA is fraught and not just the great place to visit that it seemed to be initially and sans respectful targeted reflection. But you're going in any case. Best of luck on the verbal reuniting with your ex. Maybe the talk will surprise you? In the good way? I read somewhere or rather multiple somewheres that the Amtrack writers residency thing is kind of a self-serving scam, but I forget why, and never trust the reactive typers of the internet, I guess. I'm in Paris, yes. Back here, mostly for next while. I like Aaron Dilloway, of course, but I haven't heard the new thing, but I have heard poz about it from Stephen, et. al., so, yeah, I'll get it. Good day, bud. ** Rewritedept, Hi, C. I did? Weird. What kind of shades do you reckon your dad's office needs now that you're done the requisite measuring? Ha ha, I actually loved that you wished my day was superfluous, even if it was a typo or whatever. Superfluity has a kind of sublime ring to it. I suppose it was both superlative and superfluous, on reflection. Maybe more the latter, to be existential about it. RIP: Scott Asheton indeed, Such a drummer. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool. Everyone, if you haven't had your fill of spooky playground imagistic input, know that kindly _B_A links you/us up to some links to more of the same but different over on William "Whitehouse, Cut Hands" Bennett's blog, if you're so inclined. That is good news. About the Art101 progress. Well, obviously, I'd be way into it if you want to promote it via a blog post here or something if that seems worth the time and effort. ** White tiger, Thanks, pal. Title courtesy of Mr. JM Barrie if it wasn't obvious. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks a bunch. It was fun stealing that title away from Peter Pan. Me, Kong? Maybe. Deadlines are weird. I have a love/hate thing with them -- 'hate' being the Halloween costume and 'love' being the scared little kid inside it or something. Same email address, you bet. Great luck with your work. ** Misanthrope, No, I'm the except one, but you can have sloppy seconds. Ouch, shit, well, you're gonna need to get that looked at by a pro eventually then, so, I don't know, save up or turn escort or something. I guess there's no right or wrong when it comes to mom/son ties and how they are enacted, but, yeah, that's a bit late in the game maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe LPS is just an unconventional son. ** Steevee, Great, congrats, Steve! That's excellent! Confidence is all you need, man. ** Okay. Today I'm redecorating the blog into a little club, as I occasionally do, and I'm inviting you inside to watch a gig that has my fingers and stamp of approval all over it. Will you? Will I ever know if you do? Probably not. Faith is a big part of making a blog like this one. Anyway, lots of good stuff to see and hear today, if you ask me, which you obviously haven't. See you tomorrow.

________________________




'Niceties debuts today and pokes a hole in the coma of language. The tired factions, lyric versus experience, this tribal cliché, mellifluous pretension, or language generating language, assaulted usually converse by the plain and sneering, story time, popped out of their tepid beers now by a handier relic, just got outmoded – combined to hurt itself inside a voice both beyond and including narration, the personal event broken to the heart’s proper arrhythmia. A flaying can still be vulnerable even if it takes you with it. The sobriety of our times cannot support this book because the general crusade has been swatted operatic. Anything without khakis is giggled about in these great plots for safety so-called artists use to call themselves important. How much precedence might ones pellet-sized message keep in the face of such wrought mystic twirling up the bowel meant for silence? Don’t fret. Mikesch is here to kick you out of your crib and flout the world that hasn’t started. Think those loops Markus swerves us through tied up in a Finnish peninsular whelp, with an elbow caught between each breath, the chorus tapping out a feel good suicide. I don’t want beauty unless it’s clawing me permanent.'-- Sean Kilpatrick









Elizabeth Mikesch NICETIES: Aural Ardor, Pardon Me
Calamari Press

'NICETIES is a subversive text of lingual dissonance in which vocality precedes sense-making operations. Its phonics disrupt narrative through syntactical atonalities.'-- Calamari Press

'It will hardly do the trick to say that NICETIES is a breath of fresh air. In Elizabeth Mikesch’s compressedly melodious prose, a reader inhales purifying drafts of something entirely unexpected in these literary dog days—not some novelty intoxicant concocted as a careerist stunt but some rarer ether releasing itself at long last into the world to dazzle, yes, but also to clarify so much of what we had never dreamed clarifiable about the ecstasy of our human mess.'-- Gary Lutz


Excerpt

In a cellar, I lived with a man who was humungous. He was a freak when he grew tall young, he said. His knees had bone chips in them. This is why he had a hobble. I had stayed very tiny, which he liked and had listed as his number one must-have in the ad about whom he would like to move in.

The walls where we lived were stone. The first time I saw the cellar, I followed him scuffing. He prickled at the click of my shoe.

Pick up your feet.

I hate to make a person mad. I tugged them off and climbed on his bed. I stood on his mattress above bricks to see how fucked of a slant.

Our bed was Siamesed.

My size made the most room for the both of us. We shared covers, which sometimes I stole. He never got mad about that. We slept in shifts. The part where we would switch who slept, our lapse, was when we would lie down beside one another to sleep through the droughts of no dreams. I blew out the nightlight after I ate soup in bed, from cold cans. I liked to turn my back to him and feel him there. I liked him breathing in the dark closer by than when he went to his side.

He wanted to know if I was staying once I had been there for a while. Mostly, I said to him softly, That may be.

I would count tiles. Spiders chomped at our might. Choruses inside me shucked corn. Sheet stains stayed awake with us looking up.

I adored the encrusted forks—I’d have to clean up after the two of us, after we deserted our pannukakku.

They made it from the place I came from with a bay and a county song for when there was no snow. Where we lived, we would sing through the radio out an old call for the patron saint of precipitation. I found I never summoned her now. When the sky leaked through the cracks once in awhile in our home, I felt something like batter without the leavening.

Here is a secret: I do care for being bundled, which was the draw for me living underground, where it is meant to stay cold. I like kindling. I love to be spun.

In the kitchen in the dark before there is sun, it is me in the sink at the bakery where I make ends. The baker comes in after I slashed my batard. Our refrigerator hums low along to what we do like a little grandmother.

The sheets account for the way we sit still and fuss our lips over cups. When I piss, I flip the fan, so I consider the sinkspout without hearing his sneezing. Then, I try to remember my dreams when I open my eyes.

Once before sleep, he said a doctor called his heart too large as a boy. It seemed he had said I know how I need. He told me if I found him to not leave the sheets on our bed.

I could not imagine being responsible for digging open the earth.

Cardamom is the name of the spice in the bread I braid. I bake in the night for work. I bleach the spice out of my nylons on my breaks: the mildewed roux.

In life, I am the queen, yes, in charge of anything having to do with foods. I make us ham sandwiches, the lettuce limply bowed out.

I want to make myself up to the daylight somehow. The way I lived, there was our sleeping and yeasts from the breads. There were not too many nights where I felt something final. I got frightened to think this would be the way. I thought about eating only onions I had grown down below, the occasional rutabaga. I thought I am tired of candelabra.

His moustache fell into the sink one morning and, worried, I dabbed at the fixture once he left to clean homes. He asked me to bite him until the bruises left yellow highlighter where his arms felt numb.

I once saw someone take a nail to a person.

When he turned over in bed, I had private thoughts about a room.

It was, after all, an agreement, I said to him through space. I saw just his back, but his light was kept on long after dawn. I was afraid to turn it off.



Trailer


Casino Deep Ellum


Artwork from NICETIES (by Cal A. Mari)




________________________




'Will Alexander is a poet whom critics have not been able to categorize easily. An African-American child of the post-World War II baby boom who grew up in south central Los Angeles, he also does not fit any clichéd image of that generation's avant-garde poets. The son of a World War II veteran, Alexander was influenced by the revolutionary struggles of the Third World that first inspired his father during a military tour of the Caribbean. The elder Alexander found there was a sharp contrast in how black Americans lived in the United States as compared to other Third World countries, according to Harryette Mullen, writing in Callalloo. "There, the elder Alexander was impressed to see black people in positions of power, and his story of that experience left a distinct impression on his son, who counts among his culture heroes Césaire of Martinique and Wifredo Lam of Cuba," Mullen noted.

'Born in Los Angeles, Alexander has remained a lifetime resident of the city. Although he received a B.A. degree in English and creative writing, he has followed his own direction in his writing and painting. According to Clayton Eshleman, writing in American Poet, Alexander was probably first published in 1981 in the small press literary journal Sulfur. Until the mid-1990s, he made his living in an assortment of low-paying jobs. He has since given readings of his work and held artist-in-residence posts at various colleges.

'Critics have observed that Alexander reaches for almost a whole new language, while making use of the inferences of the language he has at his disposal. Mullen explained: "Although Alexander resists discussions of the technical aspects of writing, it would be useful to have a fuller account of his process of lexical selection and combination; to understand how his reading habits and writing practices overlap in the intertextuality and diverse vocabularies incorporated into his poetry; to appreciate how certain rare, unusual, specialized, foreign, or archaic words are used in the poem for their precise denotative meaning, connotative meaning, metaphorical resonance, aural or phonemic qualities, or all of the above." As is common with surrealists, Alexander works through automatic writing, trying to achieve a state of trance, as Mullen pointed out. His preference for the British spelling of English words adds a whole dimension to his use of language, which becomes more than simply American and certainly differs from the "black" language of many modern African-American writers. Mullen concluded: "His literary influences connect him to an international avant-garde, just as his experience as an African American connects him to a black diaspora, and to the political struggles of Third World people."'-- The Poetry Foundation









Will Alexander Kaleidoscopic Omniscience
Skylight Press

'Kaleidoscopic Omniscience is a new collection from lingual contortionist and poetic sage Will Alexander, featuring his early works - Asia & Haiti, The Stratospheric Canticles, and Impulse & Nothingness. Alexander's prismatic and oracular voice cascades around bi-geographic confrontations, painterly morphologies, and the cosmology of the void. "[Alexander is] acutely conscious of the issue of poetic voice, and is unwilling to let poetry's potential for ventriloquizing or exploring the voices of others be subsumed in an impersonal écriture or ultimately homogenous montage. He seems as well interested in the spiritual dimension of poetry, especially in the degrees to which poetry can give us access to spiritual or emotional states beyond those we normally experience.'-- Mark Scroggins, American Book Review


Excerpt

The Apprentice

Here I am
posing in a mirror of scratch paper sonnets
sonnets as rare
as a live Aegean rhino

absorbing the cracklings of my craft
its riverine volcanoes
its spectacular lightning peninsulas
emitting plentiful creosote phantoms
from an ironic blizzard of unsettled pleromas

scouring through years of unrecognized pablums
of constant arch-rivalry with extinction
bringing up skulls of intensive discourse
by the claws in one’s mind
which seem to burn with systemic reduction

one then suffers poetic scorching by debris
by inaugural timber which flashes
by friction which flares up & harries
by unrecognized moltens collapsing in glass
of initial intuitive neglect

as if one’s fangs
were fatally stifled by incipience
by verbal range war didactics
by territorial driftwood
by sudden undemonstrative detractions
awed
by the diverse infernos of Trakl & Dante

one’s youngish body stands
devoured by reverential print trails
momentarily cancelled
by the loss of blasphemous nerves & upheaval
stung
by demeaning neutralities
ravaged
by a blank Sumatran solar psychosis
by a tasteless collision of rums in transition
by a conspiracy of obscured fertility by hubris

as one sucks in doubt from a wave of tumbling blister trees
there exists irradiations flecked with a gambled synecdoche
with indeterminate earthenware splinters
taking up
from aboriginal density
a forge of Sumerian verbal signs
cooked with a tendency
towards starfish hypnosis
towards psychic confrontational drainage
conducting one’s frictions in a torrential furnace of osmosis & ire

yes
apprenticeship
means poetry scrawled in unremitting leper’s mosaic
cringed in smoky interior cubicles
releasing various deleriums
as if pointed under a blackened Oedipal star
with its dark incapable tints
with its musical ruse of unspoken belladonna

poetics
an imaginal flash of Russian chamber lilies
stretching under a blue marsupial sun
like kaleidoscopic tumbleweed
fugaciously transfixed
upon an anomalous totem of glints
upon rainy Buenos Aires transfusions
above the urinal coppers of a flaming polar star rise

of course
kinetic
like magical malachite rivers
flowing from moons
blowing through the 3/4 summits of motionless anginas

I’ve looked
for only the tonalities that scorch
which bring to my lips wave after wave
of sensitivity by virulence

yes
a merciless bitterness
brewed by a blue-black tornado of verbs
in a surge of flashing scorpion chatter
in a dessicated storm of inferential parallels & voltage
like a scattered igneous wind
co-terminus with the bleeding hiatus & the resumption of breath

resolved by flash point edicts
by consumptive stellar limes
by curvature in tense proto-Bretonian fatigue

mixing magnets
juggling centripetal anti-podes & infinities
cracking the smoke of pure rupestral magentas

yes
hatcheries
floating through acetylene corruption of practiced mental restraint
to splendiferous vistas mingled with inspirational roulette
its mysteriums
always leaping like a grainy rash of scorching tarantellas
or leaking moon spun alloestrophas*
as if speaking
in irregular glossological green Dutch

a frenetic seminar on febricity
a reitteration of hendecasyllabic agitation & stinging
a ferocious vacillation
explosive as random “aggregational” nodes
mimed by a black consonantal dissection
its maximal priority
forked at “hypotactic inclusion”
with isochronous internal procedure
with ratios
with phonic penetralia by distortion
primed by anomalous “nuclear accent”
by a cadence composing syllables & compounds

yes
poetics
its force
jettisoned by “hypotaxis”
by ... paratactic co-ordination
& fire



Where Are You From? Will Alexander


Will Alexander reads 'Concerning Forms Which Hold Heidegger in Judgment'


Will Alexander with Makiko Goto




_____________________




'I picked Made to Break up, asked it to dance and it broke eight of my toes before we found a rhythm. Thing is–it ended up being a beautiful rhythm. Still, half the time I put into reading it was spent in limbo. I found myself constantly picking this novel up and then putting it down again almost immediately. That is until I found that rhythm. Then I finished it in a night.

'Here’s the set up: A group of friends in their thirties convene at a cabin at Lake Tahoe during a particularly devastating flood. A car accident leaves one member of the group sick and dying, and the weather knocks out any means of communication to the outside world. Instead they are forced to look inward and backward, and that’s where things get interesting. Though it’s always the same narrator, the tone changes radically between the cabin scenes and the flashbacks which take place outside the world of the cabin and in the main characters’ respective pasts. It’s not until we learn to distinguish between those two narrative modes that we really become immersed in Foy’s world. Once I began to understand the method to Foy’s tempered madness I became like an enthusiastic child, finally being let in on the secrets of the older and wiser.

'Foy could have won the reader early on with a more linear narrative or by placing some of the more digestible interactions earlier in the book. Friends at a Warhol-esque bash playing truth or dare, sharing phallic descriptions, stories about pubescent coitus with a stuffed monkey, three brothers sleeping with the same woman, all of these plot elements could have been intriguing up front. Instead, they’re parsed out deliberately. We only come to understand these people we are already acquainted with once we read their backstories. Foy gives you the experience of how knowing a person can change your perception of them, within the confines of the novel.'-- Jon Reiss, Brooklyn Based








D. Foy Made to Break
Two Dollar Radio

'Two days before New Years, a pack of five friends – three men and two women – head to a remote cabin near Lake Tahoe to celebrate the holidays. They’ve been buddies forever, banded together by scrapes and squalor, their relationships defined by these wild times.

'After a car accident leaves one friend sick and dying, and severe weather traps them at the cabin, there is nowhere to go, forcing them to finally and ultimately take stock and confront their past transgressions, considering what they mean to one another and themselves.

'With some of the most luminous and purple prose flexed in recent memory, D. Foy is an incendiary new voice and Made to Break, a grand, episodic debut, redolent of the stark conscience of Denis Johnson and the spellbinding vision of Roberto Bolaño.' -- Two Dollar Radio


Excerpt
from The Collagist

I'd just scanned an ad for a dildo inside Dinky's latest trash, Pink Champagne Bitch, when a turmoil of voices called me back.

"I'm telling you," Lucille shouted, "someone's out there!"

Dinky must have heard it, too. He lurched up hideous and swollen and said, "That's our book . . . Turn out the lights . . . No . . ." Then he cocked an ear to the door. "Who invited her?"

"I came in to check on you," I said.

"In the dream I was having . . ." I waited for him to go on about this dream but his words were dribble.

"In the dream you were having what?"

Dinky covered his face with the sheet and coughed. "Maybe we could ask those chuckleheads to put a lid on it. Do you think we could do that, Andrew?"

From the wall above him a clown gazed out with that comically lugubrious expression old people somehow feel compelled to adorn the faces of clowns in art. Dinky's great-goddamned-grandmother, or someone like her, had probably slapped it up.

"Even if I wanted to," he said, and looked away, "I couldn't." I watched him fumble with his pants. He looked like a child, with a child's confessional eyes. "Hickory, I mean," he said, though I'd known what he meant. His lips were trembling. He was speaking of himself as I. "I only wanted someone to hold," he said. I realized then the clown was staring at me, too, or so it seemed. I hated clowns more than anything, to say nothing of paintings of clowns. And now Dinky had to go and lay a guilt trip out. "About getting her on her back. You know I didn't mean it . . . Right?" His hands came up as if with a toxic globe. "Look at me," he said. I tried to look out the window but only saw myself. "How can a guy get any sleep with that?"

We heard Basil say, "Turn out the lights," and then Hickory something about a lamp. Meanwhile Lucille had begun to chant: "O my God O my God O my God."

The sounds were undeniable, clunky and deep at first, like a hammer on a hollow box, scratchy and thin the next. By the time we reached them, Hickory, Basil, and Lucille were at the window again, with just their eyes above the sill.

"Watch it, you guys," Lucille said. "Someone's out there."

"No one's out there," Basil said.

Dinky slid down the jamb and turned into a ball. "Is that why we're all on our hands and knees?"

"There," Lucille said, and pointed. "Did you see that?"

For just this once I wished she'd been lying, but she had seen what she'd seen. A shadow moved through the rain, then faded into mist. Then the sounds began again, leisurely nearly, steady, like a bridge troll, or maybe a giant, crunching on his bones.

"Who do you think it is?" I whispered.

On a talk show on the tube three enormous women argued round a little man while the singer from his box moaned about a girl with hair full of ribbons and gloves on her hands.

"You're out of your mind," Basil said. "I didn't see dick."

"Someone is out there," I said.

"Then that's it," Basil said, and strode to the door with his hatchet. "I go out there and holler, and no one answers, I don't care if it's the Queen of fucking England, when I see him, he's as dead as fuck. What's the matter, baldy?" he said when Dinky wouldn't budge. "Afraid of the big bad wolf?"

"The guy can hardly walk," I said.

"He's good enough to get out of bed, he's good enough to kick some ass."

"Blood," Dinky mumbled. "Bright red blood."

"Don't do it," Hickory said.

Lucille began to wail, something I couldn't get.

Basil glared. "You coming or not?"

We went into that fist of night, hunched against the rain, scared as hell, too, speaking for myself. Something was out there, in the wallows beneath the deck perchance, lurking and munching, and we were stoned and drunk and tired, to say nothing of critically blind. I looked to Hickory above me, her hand on Dinky's arm. The best my friend could do was prop himself up to watch. By the way she cradled him, I could tell it was all for show. She wanted him to think she thought he needed checking. The rain had soaked me through again, now. I felt dirty and soft and stupid as could be.

Basil moved crabwise down the stairs, brandishing the hatchet. "Whoever you are," he said, "you'd better stop fucking around, cause we mean business."

Once upon a time I'd fancied myself that bearded miser's secret spy for truth—once upon a time. Because now we were stuck in a game. Anything could happen, anything at all.

(cont.)



Trailer


D. Foy's Indiegogo Campaign Video for 'Made to Break' Tour 2014


Laundromat photography book




_____________________




'Witch Piss is a Chicago novel, but not a “love letter” like so many reviewers are wont to attach to any book so steeped in locale, so enamored by the idea of place as character that they forget that any place is the sum of its inhabitants, that New York, Paris, London and, yes, even Chicago, aren’t worth shit without people.

'Witch Piss is also a homeless guy named Spider Man and his shit-stained, wheelchair-bound girlfriend Janet. Witch Piss is crack pipes and piss jugs and temporary housing. It’s chess played on overturned buckets while oil from the Blue Line rains down from above. It’s a food pyramid built on burritos and 40 ounces. It’s “Howx” and Thox games; it’s “Hoowee, namn,” and “Gah be nuts!” and “Suh-mashed that bitch!”

'The written tradition is the oral tradition branded into parchment and paper, emails and ebooks, so when everything is fucked we can look back and say that at one point, things weren’t so bad. Sam Pink has taken the art of the oral tradition and pressed its face to the page, writing not so much in ink as in blood and spittle and King Cobra. The characters of Witch Piss speak from the streets, and Pink captures every nuance. Chicago slang, words cut and twisted from the throat to the tongue, bubbling forth with new or missing syllables and letters. The vernacular of Witch Piss is Chicago words, Chicago stories, but also human stories. The universe seems large, but you can traverse it in a few city blocks. ...

'Pink’s greatest asset is his bear trap prose. You’re reading Witch Piss and everything is normal. Well, not normal, but described pretty plainly. No purple prose, no literary ass sniffing. ...

'He also wants you to laugh. And feel sorry for people. Or not give a shit. It’s difficult to tell because the “plot” of Witch Piss is built, like some of the characters’ homes, out of cardboard. This is not a dig at Pink or his novels; plot just isn’t as important here. It would only cloud this travelogue of the grotesque. Ignore the questions swirling in your head and let Pink’s prose take over. Like a severed artery, building to burst when the tourniquet is in place, gushing all over the walls when the pressure is off, what Pink bleeds is Chicago itself—vile and angry, cold and lost.'-- Timothy O’Donnell, Atticus Review








Sam Pink Witch Piss
Lazy Fascist Press

'Sam Pink's newest book is classic Sam Pink: A minimalist view into people's lives. On this one, we have a nameless protagonist wandering about town, meeting people from the gutters, from the alleys, and bonding with them just for the bonding itself. The character's voice is bleak, as it is his world. The characters, the superhero obsessed Spider-Man, his wheelchair-bound girlfriend with a penchant for theft Janet, etc. They are all real people, and it is Pink's greatest skill to make us love them, make us root for them, make us bet our own emotional well-being on their sucess. Sam Pink is the true weaver of feelings of the 21st Century.'-- Pedro Proença


Excerpt

'damn, can't believe i'm a werewolf now,' he thought, walking down the street looking at his hairy paw.

but he'd known all along he was a werewolf, in some way. much like how an omelet knows it's an omelet, in some way.

he smiled his fangy smile and slicked back his luxurious werewolf hair with his claws.

'fuck it jo,' he thought.

just then, a clown jumped out of an alley and stood before him, menacing.

the clown did that side to side neck cracking motion then cracked his knuckles and said, 'well well, werewolf man. seems like it's time to settle some old business eh?'

'who the fuck are you?' said the werewolf.

'you mean you don't remember?' said the clown, rolling up his clown sleeves. 'perhaps you remember me by my old name, dr. scribblius q. choppletoots. i pinched your butt at a 311 concert many years ago.'

the werewolf touched his butt and whispered, 'you motherfucker.'

the werewolf went to run at the clown, but the clown pulled out a small laser gun and said, 'not, so, fast. impetuous aren't we?'

'it ends here,' said the werewolf.

'my my my,' said the clown. 'look who suddenly became a werewolf and grew some balls.'

then he began pacing, keeping the laser in his hand.

'werewolf,' said the clown. 'let me be clear, there is nothing i'd love more than to laser you in the nipples and finish off what i started long ago. but to be frank, i simply must return to my laboratory to finish work on my Klaktonius Decimator. so i think,' --he laughed-- 'why, i think i'll let my friend deal with you instead.'

and with that he snapped his fingers.

out from the alley there came a giant anthropomorphic muscular lobster with a mohawk and nose ring.

'meet my friend, Nogzor,' said the clown.

Nogzor snorted like a bull and stepped forward menacingly.

the clown said, 'i'm sure you two will be good friends.'

and with that he pocketed his laser and got on his rocket-powered segway and took off, laughing like 'snee hee hee hee.'

the werewolf smiled and did that neck cracking motion and said, 'it's just too bad i ain't got no butter with me.'

then they both rushed towards each other and performed simulataneous jumpkicks.



Sam Pink reads from 'The No Hellos Diet'


Sam Pink interview


"Rontel" by Sam Pink -- A Single Sentence Animation from Electric Literature




*

p.s. Hey. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! There was. Oh, as a fellow lover of Tokyo, I so hope you can be a regular there. I'd love to be. Anyway, I can feel your pleasure in my bones. I'll google 'Hi-Red Center'. Sounds very cool. Enjoy every morsel. ** DavidEhrenstein, Thanks, I'll go see what Mr. Fiennes has to say. ** _Black_Acrylic, That new Shackleton is really nice. Well, consider it a done deal then. The Art101 post. Great! Just let me know what's what and when, and let's do it. It would only be an honor for here/me. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man. I love Bee Mask too. And Var, of course. The new Wild Beasts is really good in a sneaky way. Wow, I wish you had that on video too. Maybe you could do a historical re-creation? ** Sypha, Thanks for the not so belated kudos re: the playground post, sir. Agents can take forever if ever, I hear. Ha ha, 'fuck that shit' could be a way to go, but you might wait a little bit and give it a fighting chance 'cos you never know. But, yeah, self-publishing is as legit nowadays as anything else. ** Brendan, Hey. Thou, yeah, right? Me too, obviously. Cool. Oh, man, thank you so much for the garden pix. I luxuriated heavily. So healthy! That pepper, those cacti. You're the blog's official green thumb bearer. Have you and Joel compared notes? You guys should. And that last pic, which I think I saw on FB maybe (?), is a beaut, so true. Anyway, you spruced up my visual component or something, my friend, and you're a serious bud! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hey! Too long a time no see, for sure! Excellent! The trip to the moon, ha ha, was mind-blowing. Thanks about the gig. I know, I was crushed when I read that Vår are no more. Their album was my album of last year. I imagine you've already heard their new, pretty, Art of Noise-y farewell track, but, if not, it's here. No, I haven't seen the Pitchfork Festival line-up. You mean the Paris edition? If so, shit, I'll find that straight away. I like Marching Church. I think they're getting increasingly more interesting. Wait, you're going to interview Elias?! For the blog ... wait, for this blog? No, you didn't mean for my blog, did you? I'm being greedy, right? Anyway, in any case, that's amazing! Oh, I'm sure I can think up some questions for him. Can I have a day or two? I really want to meet that guy. Just the other week I was really, really urging Gaspar Noe to cast Elias in his new film. I keep missing my chances to meet Elias. Shit, that's so great, you interviewing Elias, shit! Man, thank you for letting me think up a question or two. Wow. ** Steevee, Hi. I got the new Thou through ... channels. Yeah, 'smug' and self-consciously hipster seems to be one of the big beefs with Jarmusch's stuff. Except in a couple of cases, I've always just found that vibe/sensibility in/behind his films interesting and flavorsome, I guess. ** Starlon H, Hey! Wow, it's really nice to see you! It's been ages! Best laid plans, I guess, but whatever, you know? Writing poems in college is as fruitful as anything else. 5 good poems is a pretty good ratio, actually, I think. Some big or great or something poet once said something to the effect that if you can write more than one good poem, you're a good poet, which, I don't know, made sense to me somehow. Well, I've been reading the books in the post today mostly. I just got a couple of books in the mail that I guess I'll read next: Lucas de Lima 'Wet Land', and Richard Hawkins 'Fragile Flowers'. The Romantics are a great bunch to have a love affair with. Oh, I like them a bunch, even though I haven't read/reread them in a long time, which I should do. Sweet reading there, long story short. You sound good, you do. Please stick around if you feel like it. That would be a boon. ** Rewritedept, Right, office non-chic re: the shades, sure, what was I imagining. Dead baby sleep ... I'm going to spend the rest of the morning trying to imagine that. My yesterday was ... maybe not exceptional. Productive, I guess. Did this and that. Nothing earth-shattering but, you know, goodness prevailed. Jump out of bed ideas are usually the best ones. Unless you're drunk or too stoned in bed. It's all about editing, man. Best day! ** Misanthrope, Huh, are you weird as shit? Am I too weird as shit to know? I think so. I mean I think I'm too W.A.S. to know not that you're W.A.S. 3 and counting! 3 is a good number. I have an odd numbers fetish, as you probably know or could tell if you spent a minute thinking about it, which you shouldn't. Sounds like you're mending unless it's one of those irksome phantom mending signs. I hate those. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, you love Yan Jun! That's cool. Yeah, he's great, really subtle and thoughtful. Am I growing younger? I think maybe it's that my insides are in a lifelong holding pattern or something. I wish my outsides were. Well, no, I don't really wish that. Maybe a more slow motion trajectory. ** That's that. I read those books up there and had a very positive experience doing so, and so I recommend that/them. I even managed to read 4 books rather than my usual 3, which I guess means something that is probably not so interesting. Anyway, see you tomorrow.

(1)




'Louis Tussauds in Great Yarmouth, is different from many wax museums, in that it remembers the stars and famous people as they were at their height of fame and influence.

'See your gallery of how people looked, how the passionate owners captured them at this time and preserved them for your enjoyment. Many wax museum update their models to keep the realistic to reflect the current looks or styles.

'If you are looking back to the 70s, so the stars as they were. Nostalgia and memories. Show your grand children the stars and leaders during your generation and help us bring the museum to life.'-- Louis Tussauds House of Wax





January 3, 2014:'The world’s worst waxworks collection has been snapped up by a mystery buyer from the Czech Republic, just over a year after it closed amid a storm of ridicule. Jane, 83, who still lives above the former attraction in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, with 86-year-old Peter, said: “All the models and machines and frames were sold in one go. I don’t really know who the chap was but he took everything. We hadn’t planned to leave and we miss the business terribly. But me and my husband have both been ill and thought it was foolish to keep going. We had a lot of bad press and I feel a bit irritated that the local people didn’t stick up for us a bit more.” Peter, who ran the museum for 57 years, admitted in 2008 that the models became so old they were no longer lifelike.'-- Daily Mirror









Prince Charles



John Lennon



Freddie Mercury



Sean Connery



Simon Cowell



Rowan Atkinson



Princess Diana



Tom Hanks



Pierce Brosnan



Prince William



Peter Sutcliffe



Tom Jones



Johnny Depp




Harry Potter & Hermione Granger



Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan



Charles Manson




The Beatles



The Fonz & Telly Savales



Julia Roberts



Arnold Schwarzenegger




Michael Jackson



Jack Nicholson



Johnny Cash



Prince Edward



Quentin Tarrantino



?



Shirley Bassey



Queen Elizabeth



The cast of 'Eastenders'



Adolf Hitler



Elton John



Star Trek



Cliff Richard



Picasso



Sylvester Stallone



Justin Bieber



Walt Disney



?



Elvis Presley



John Travolta



Cher



Tom Cruise



Richard Nixon



Bruce Springsteen



David Bowie





(2)




'The methods taxidermists practise have been improved over the last century, heightening taxidermic quality and lowering toxicity. The animal is first skinned in a process similar to removing the skin from a chicken prior to cooking. This can be accomplished without opening the body cavity, so the taxidermist usually does not see internal organs or blood. Depending on the type of skin, preserving chemicals are applied or the skin is tanned. It is then either mounted on a mannequin made from wood, wool and wire, or a polyurethane form. Clay is used to install glass eyes. Forms and eyes are commercially available from a number of suppliers. If not, taxidermists carve or cast their own forms.

'Taxidermists seek to continually maintain their skills to ensure attractive, lifelike results. Many taxidermists in the US use bears, though some use creatures such as snakes, birds and fish. Although mounting an animal has long been considered an art form, often involving months of work, not all modern taxidermists trap or hunt for prize specimens.

'Taxidermy specimens can be saved for later use by freezing. The taxidermist then removes the skin, to be tanned and treated at a later date. Numerous measurements are then taken of the remaining body. A traditional method that remains popular today involves retaining the original skull and leg bones of a specimen and using these as the basis to create a mannequin made primarily from wood wool (previously tow or hemp wool was used) and galvanised wire. Another method is to mould the carcass in plaster, and then make a copy of the animal using one of several methods. A final mould is then made of polyester resin and glass cloth; from which a polyurethane form is made for final production. The carcass is then removed and the mould is used to produce a cast of the animal called a 'form'. Forms can also be made by sculpting the animal first in clay. Many companies produce stock forms in various sizes. Glass eyes are then usually added to the display, and in some cases, artificial teeth, jaws, tongue, or for some birds, artificial beaks and legs can be used.

'An increasingly popular trend is to freeze dry the animal. This can be done with reptiles, birds, and small mammals such as cats, large mice and some types of dogs. Freeze drying is expensive and time consuming. The equipment is costly and requires much upkeep. Large specimens can be required to spend as long as six months in the freeze dryer, although it is the preferred technique for pets. Freeze dried animals, though, may later be susceptible to being eaten by carpet beetles.'-- collaged




















































































badtaxidermy.com




*

p.s. Hey. So, I totally spaced out yesterday and forgot that Zac and I are auditioning performers for our film project from 9 am this morning until 7 pm tonight, so I will not be able to do the p.s. today. I apologize. Tomorrow, Saturday, it's the same deal, but, if I'm not fried when I get home tonight, I'll try to do a nighttime p.s. and get to as many of the comments from yesterday or today as have appeared by then and as I can manage and then post that degree of my responsiveness as a semi-p.s. on Saturday. We'll see. Anyway, yeah, sorry about that. Hopefully, I'll see you more thoroughly tomorrow, and, in any case, the blog will back and new for the weekend.

William Melvin "Bill" Hicks (December 16, 1961 ñ February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist and musician. His material, encompassing a wide range of social issues as well as religion, politics, and philosophy, was controversial, and often steeped in dark comedy. He criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, which he characterized as oppressive tools of the ruling class that "keep people stupid and apathetic."
-from wikipedia.



bill hicks on LSD.


i first became aware of bill hicks in high school, at which point he had been dead for 6 years or so. as a young man into drug experimentation, revolutionary thought and punk rock, his work seemed tailor made for my enjoyment. in fact, i remember hearing him once on acid and being amazed that someone had had all the same thoughts i did before i even knew i had thought them (sidenote: LSD can make you think some fantastic shit). what amazed me about his work was that, like other comedy legends like george carlin or mel brooks, he used humor to make his audiences face truths in their lives and the world around them. you could laugh and laugh at his routines while also being provoked to think.





I loved when Bush came out and said, "We are losing the war against drugs." You know what that implies? There's a war being fought, and the people on drugs are winning it.
-bill hicks, 1990.



hicks on marijuana use.


hicks on marketing.


You know I've noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going around this country ever since around 1980, coincidentally enough. I was in Nashville, Tennessee last weekend and after the show I went to a waffle house and I'm sitting there and I'm eating and reading a book. I don't know anybody, I'm alone, I'm eating and I'm reading a book. This waitress comes over to me (mocks chewing gum) 'what you readin' for?'...wow, I've never been asked that; not 'What am I reading', 'What am I reading for?' Well, goddamnit, you stumped me...I guess I read for a lot of reasons ó the main one is so I don't end up being a fuckin' waffle waitress. Yeah, that would be pretty high on the list. Then this trucker in the booth next to me gets up, stands over me and says [mocks Southern drawl] 'Well, looks like we got ourselves a readah'...aahh, what the fuck's goin' on? It's like I walked into a Klan rally in a Boy George costume or something. Am I stepping out of some intellectual closet here? I read, there I said it. I feel better.
-sane man, 1989.





there's an old quote: 'scratch a cynic and you'll find an idealist underneath,' or something along those lines. basically, though, it posits that those among us who are cynical misanthropes (it doesn't look so bad on paper, but it kinda hurts to be called one, particularly since most people can't fucking pronounce misanthrope) were at one point filled with hope and optimism, and that the daily stupidity that one is exposed to in the world is enough to ruin that. yes, we still hope there's hope, but every day we're shown something else to doubt that.



bill hicks' final performance on the david letterman show.


understandably, bill hicks courted controversy rather regularly. the above video was taped for letterman but did not air on the show. theories abounded that it had to do with the bit about crosses at the end, or maybe the segment on pro-lifers. letterman himself stated that the final decision to not air the segment was his, and that, upon re-viewing the segment, it should have been allowed to air.



hicks on non-smokers.


They proved that if you quit smoking, it will prolong your life. What they haven't proved is that a prolonged life is a good thing. I haven't seen the stats on that yet.
-1991.



bill hicks is goatboy.





You see, I think drugs have done some good things for us. I really do. And if you don't believe drugs have done good things for us, do me a favor. Go home tonight. Take all your albums, all your tapes and all your CDs and burn them. 'Cause you know what, the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were rrreal fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few tunes
-1992.



hicks on pornography.


Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally on our planet, serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying that God made a mistake. Like on the seventh day God looked down, "There it is. My Creation, perfect and holy in all ways. Now I can rest. [Gives shocked expression] Oh my Me! I left fuckin' pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Hehe, that was the day I created the possum. Still gives me a chuckle. But if I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to Ö use it. Now I have to create Republicans.""Ö and God wept", I believe is the next part of that story.
-1991.





I asked that question once ["Are there actually women in the world who do not like to give blowjobs?"] and a woman yelled "Yeah, you ever try it?" I said "Yeah. Almost broke my back." It's that one vertebra, I swear to god it's that close. I think that's the next thing to go in our next evolutionary step. Just a theory, and a fervent prayer! And now all the guys are going, "Honey, I have no idea what he's talking about," ...but guys, you know what I'm talking about. I can speak for any guy here tonight: guys, if you could blow yourselves? Ladies, you'd be here alone right now...watching an empty stage. ...Boy, my parents are proud of me! "Bill, honey, you still doing that suck-your-own-cock bit?""Yeah, ma.""Good, baby, that's such a crowd-pleaser."
-1992.



hicks on rock'n'roll.


They're putting the cart before the horse on this pornography issue. Playboy doesn't cause sexual thoughts. There ARE sexual thoughts, and, THEREFORE, there is Playboy. Don't you see? I know these sound like deep philosophical questions, "What came first, the hard-on or the Madonna video?" and "If a hard-on falls in the forest, do you go blind?" and "What does an atheist scream when they come?"
1991.



hicks on desert storm.


I was walking through Central Park, and I saw an old man smoking. Nothing makes a smoker happier than to see an old person smoking. This guy was ancient, bent over a walker, puffing away. I'm like, "Duuude, you're my hero! Guy your age smoking, man, it's great." He goes, "What? I'm 28."

in 1993, bill hicks was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. he kept it to himself, mostly, only letting family and a few close friends know, though he started beginning every performance by telling the audience it was his last show. people just thought maybe he was getting burned out from being on the road for so long, maybe? he performed his final show at caroline's in new york city on 6 jan 1994 and then moved back in with his parents in little rock, AR. on 14 feb, 1994, he quit speaking and on 26 feb, 1994, he died.







*

p.s. Hey. The honorable Rewritedept will get you through the weekend via the story of -- and some works by -- the late, beloved comedian Bill Hicks. Please chime in with your thoughts, reactions, and so on, and let the guy in charge know, okay? Thanks, and big thanks to the Department of Revision himself. Okay, so it's Friday night as I type this, and I just got back from a very long but very productive days of auditions, and my brain is quite fried, but I'm going to do the best I can to get to the comments I can from Thursday and Friday. Forgive my inner/outer space and my inordinate speed please. Any comments I don't get to today, I'll get to on Monday. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. You can't sleep and I'm falling asleep. This should be interesting. Country music ... yeah, some for sure, Townes Van Zandt is great, I totally agree. There are a few people from more or less his generation whom I like a lot, but I can't bring their names out of my temporary wasteland of a memory, I guess I also like the old school country guys, like, you know, George Jones and Tammy Wynette and those guys. Of course I love some of the early country-meets-rock maestros like Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, and others. I don't know. I'll think more when my head isn't toast. My pleasure about those movies. So glad you liked them too. Awesome to see you, man. Hope breakfast did its job. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Cool, cool, about that show. Yeah, Paul Curran lives in Tokyo. Paul Curran, Did you see Tosh Berman's comment from Thursday? He has an art show in Tokyo that he recommends to you. Check it out. ** David Ehrenstein, No, not that Elias. This Elias (singing). ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi, man. Oh, no, that festival is in LA, shit. Fuck, maybe I can get there. That looks just incredible. For my blog, oh my God. That's crazy. I'm so excited. Yeah, I'll think up questions, and try to make them interesting, smart questions because he's easily prickly and bored, for sure. Anyway, that is so amazing. I'm blown away. Thank you so much, wow! Thanks for your email address. Mine is: dcooperweb@gmail.com. More soon. ** Sypha, I think I saw that Oscar drawing or one of her drawings for your book. It was beautiful. Cool reading there. I'll note them when I'm not so brain dead. Thanks. ** Will C., Hi, Will. That's a great idea, the online publishing platform. I would love to learn more when the time is right. ** Steevee, Ah, you reviewed his thing. I'll go read it tomorrow. Everyone, Steevee reviewed that Lars von Trier's guy's new/first Nymphomaniac thing. No, I have no interest in seeing it. His films gotten as many chances from me as I have in me. Oh, well, that's interesting that part 2 wasn't so good. Why? You're right about 'The Terrible Twos'. Reed seemed to clean out his fiction a bit after the first few novels. I don't know why, but I think something gets lost. ** Cap'm, Hi, Cap! Cool! Sorry to have to meet and greet you with such a burnt out brain. I haven't read any of those books except 'Zen and ... ' when I was, what, a teen? Huh. I'll write their names down and think about them tomorrow. Thank you! Really, truly good to see you! ** Heliotrope, Mark! Buddy! First, warning about my hugely diminished brain power at the moment. Yeah, we've been all over the place indeed. I promise stories as soon as I can construct adjectives. We're gonna mostly stay in Paris for a while 'cos we have a bunch of projects to work on, apart from very short trips probably to the UK and maybe Germany. Next big trip will quite possibly be an Iceland/Greenland combo. Nice guess. We're talking seriously about that. Perth, wow, maybe. Why Perth? So sorry about the cluster attacks. Wish I could do non-invasive brain surgery via vibes and help. Really great that things are going so well with J. at the Mouse place. That doc sounds cool. I watched that doc about Gene Clark last night. That was inherently really interesting, duh. I want to see the Robert Wyatt doc. I don't think I even knew there was one. Okay, I had better fly onwards to get through this, but, man, so sweet to see you, my pal of pals. Tons of love. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Will Alexander is really something. Oh, gosh, thanks! ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. There you are. See my thing up above about Tosh's comment. Blake's thing on 'LH' was really nice. Things are happening, man. ** James, Hi, James. The Mikesch book is really good. I'll look for your email, thanks. Love back to you. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. We all have those weird things we do and think secretly that no one else knows about, don't we? Or maybe it's just you and me. Oh, shit, what a mess with LPS and the dreaded mom. Sorry. Oh, Phelps, yeah, I don't know. I have no problem within him being dead, that's for sure. ** Rewritedept, Hey. Thanks again so much for this weekend, buddy! 'Witch Piss' is good, yeah. Oops, about your sister sorry. 'Swing Kids', weird. My friend is in that. I can't remember much about it. I changed it to 'Weekend', as you see. Roughish draft, okay. Those No Wave pix on the Wire's site? Yeah, very cool. ** Kyler, Oh, sure, all that waiting and frustrations, sure, that's how it goes, that's the story. Patience, I guess, or as much as you can. Oh, no, no audition sharing. Definitely not, sorry. This is very not that kind of thing. This is a situation where there needs to be a lot of trust and privacy and stuff. Anyway, yeah it's not a porn film. Early on, that was the idea enough for me to use the characterization, but it's not that anyone. It's not trying to be a full-on, simple titillation fest at all. ** White tiger, Hi! Oh, wow, yeah, that sounds complicated. I did go to the Paris Chipotle. It looks and is pretty much the same as in the States, just much more expensive. Very popular. Long line. Delish burrito. A pleasant experience. I'm sure I'll be back there regularly. Secret menu?! What's on it? How can I access its food? Love, me. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, P. Ha ha. Great crow story. It's not really a porn movie anymore, but it has explicit sex in it. The auctions went great. We have four or five guys we're really excited about and want to cast, and a couple of strong maybes. So pretty good for one day. One more day to go. It's exhausting, though. All of the guys we definitely want to cast will be naked happily. Four of them say they'll have sex on film. We'll see. ** Empty Frame, Thanks. Weird, you grew up near there? You did make it sound like a place I would love to visit. Maybe when we go to the UK. I don't think I know Polly Morgan's taxidermy, but I am really tired right now. I'll find out for sure tomorrow. Thanks again! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Ha ha. I have seen the fantasy animal taxidermy. Or some. It might make for a post of its own, I thought. So far, we just explained the project, had them read something, filmed them walking around, asked about their willingness re: nudity and/or sex. In the second round, it'll get more detailed. Cool temples. Any links/pix? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi Ben. Auditions are going really well so far, thanks. How was 'Under the Skin'? ** Gary gray, Hi. I'll look for your email. Thanks, man. ** Okay. That's as far as I could get before completely crashing. Sorry for my rush and for any other problems. Be with Hicks/Rewritedept. I'll go audition some folks. Enjoy your weekends. See you in Monday.

*

p.s. RIP: Jan Hoet. Hey. As always with these sorts of posts, apologies for the gradual if ever page load. ** Marcus Whale, Marcus! Hey, man, so great to see you! I'm actually seeing Gisele today, and I'll ask her if there has been any progress on getting the theater stuff down there. I would say that Zac's and my film would be an Australian shoo-in, but, ha ha, our producers said to us, You know, this film will probably never get shown in Australia. I guess your laws about the sexually explicit are a bit tough, but we'll try. I think you can get all of the later Bresson films on DVD legitimately except for 'Four Nights of a Dreamer' and 'Un Femme Douce', which are held back due to rights issues or something. There's a low quality bootleg of 'FNoaD' for sale out there if you do a search. I own that, and it's better than nothing, but it looks pretty crappy. There's a link to some google spot where it says you watch it, probably that same bad boot version, but I couldn't get the player to work. You can try. That's here. I've never seen even a boot of 'Un Femme Douce'. Otherwise, the late Bresson films are officially out there. So, how are you? What's going on? I would love to know. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, maestro. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. I think I read on FB just moments ago that Tosh is en route back to LA. ** Steevee, Thanks much for your read on the second part of 'Nymphomaniac'. Yeah, that sounds like par for Von Trier's course and kind of what I expected. It was definitely tiring to audition guys for eight hours. Brain-drain tired. Especially because a few of them only speak French, in which case Zac did all the talking/asking, and I had to concentrate hard to translate /understand them as best I could. But, tiredness aside, it was fantastically interesting and very pleasant. Everyone was so cool. For that first round, we didn't have them read from the script. I gave them an old text I wrote that was basically a kind of wandering, casual, but complicated monologue, and we were basically just paying attention to the sound of their voices and whether/how they would act it out, hoping they wouldn't act it out since we're planning to take a kind of Bressonian approach with the dialogue and performing in general. ** Ken Baumann, Ken! Wowzer, it's you, right here where you partly belong, not to be possessive or anything, ha ha. Man oh man. This is nice! I'm still trying to finish a post about the Antarctica trip, but it's really difficult to get it into a worthy place. Anyway, long story in a word: it was unbelievable, mind-boggling, amazing. Oh, at first it made me sad that LA seems to have lost its magnetism for you, but then I felt sad and weird that I felt that way. Strange.Wow, St. Johns sounds really remarkable. I mean what it's requiring of and doing for you. So, kind of what you'd hoped, no? No, I don't have 'Earthbound', the book yet, only due to all the traveling and access disorganization, but I'm dying for it, and I'm going to punch 'Buy' as soon as I sign off here today. I did read that excerpt that got posted, and it was crazy great. Dude, I've missed you a bunch, and so hugs galore for letting me see you through the magical inadequacy of language. Huge love to you and A! ** Rewritedept, Howdy, C. Thanks again so much. The weekend ruled inordinately. 'Propeller' is a goodie. So's the other just-pre-'Bee Thousand' wonderwork 'Vampires on Titus'. Yep, I got 'Teenage Satanists 2' handed to me in person. One of the perks of sharing a city with KP. I traded him a 'Weaklings (XL)'. 'TS' rocks to say the least. Second day of auditions also went really well. We're meeting later today to decide which guys we want to have come back for the second round of auditions in a week and a half. Yes, I meant CB. My weekend was very productive and tiring and exhilarating. Not bad. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. What is the chapter about, if you can say? My grandmother was a taxidermist, and I grew up in a house full of stuffed animals and birds and reptiles and stuff. No peacocks, though, but wild peacocks wandered the streets of our neighborhood. ** Sypha, It was indeed Halloween-themed, as I recall. And super sharp and sweet, yep. What's the new story going to be about, or what is your hopeful projected storyline, I guess I mean? ** Pilgarlic, Hi, pal. Well, it still has explicit, porn-like sex in it, at least in theory and in planning, so hopefully it'll be a sort of 'cake (art) and eat it too (porn)' situation. There's a ton of dialogue in it, often during the sex itself. Big experiment there. Let's see ... I think, yes, there'll be some articulate verbal output at money shot time, although I'm not sure they'll be money shots. I don't know. We're still developing the visual style and stuff. It'll be easier to say this summer when we hopefully shoot it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool, I definitely want to see 'UtS' then. I saw posters for it, so it must be around here or almost. Great that the rough cut is looking so good! Awesome! ** Bill, Hi, B. Cool re: the photos organization, if it interests you and if you don't mind. Gotcha on the photo inadequacy. That's the big problem with the Antarctica post I've been trying and failing to make. It just doesn't translate. Holy shit, you were at that temple in the photo? Of course I've seen it in photos and have been given fairytales in return. Wow! ** Kyler, Hi, man. Oh, no, no, no offense at all. I realize that I haven't really talked about the film here since it became more (or less?) than a porn film. There has been lots of development that's too blah blah-requiring to explain at the moment. So, yeah, totally understood. ** MANCY, Hey! Thanks, man, nice to be back. Thanks about the last stack. Here's another one, but simple(r) for better or worse. Lucky you to get to see Thou. This weekend is the PRESENCES électronique festival here, and I'm going to catch as much as I can: Matmos, Mark Fell, Fennesz, Mimetic, etc. New yours on Vimeo! Sweetness! I'll click and luxuriate in those two in just a few minutes from now. Thanks! Everyone, masterful visual/motion artist Steven Purtill aka d.l. MANCY has a couple of new video works up and ready to be watched on Vimeo, and, if you're a Purtill fan, you know that doing link travel to said treasures is crucial, and, if you aren't an acolyte yet, hopefully you can feel the magnetic pull. Go here. It's great that you seem to be getting a lot of work finished and out lately. Exciting/excited! And I'm glad that you got to see 'Stemple Pass' and liked it. Always and definitely much better to see Benning's work on a screen. Cool, man. Great to see you! ** L@rstonovich, Larsty, my bud! How the heck and even hell are you? Lucky you re: 'Breadcrumb Trail'. I so want to see that. I just read Drew Daniels' excellent piece on Slint in The Wire, and I'm especially anxious (to see it). Yeah, you good? ** Right. If my stack loads and works, I hope it suits. See you guys tomorrow.

Untitled (Foodchained), 2013


'The 28-year-old, Virginia-born Kevin Beasley is an artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Over the course of his residency, Beasley's temporary space has become a tossed salad of rubber, resin, boxes of cassette tapes, and antique audio equipment, materials that correspond to the two fundamental threads of his recent work: sculpture and sound.

'His work utilizes media including sculpture, photography, sound, and performance to navigate notions of origin and identity. Familiar objects, personal effects and sound elements from various sources are manipulated, distorted, and mixed, acts of removal from their original context that simultaneously investigate their histories. Through this process, they are broken into minutiae and partial forms and also expanded – gaining resonance and new meaning.

'Beasley's sculpture and performance begins with the insistence on the most basic yet complicated aspects of being – what we know to be present is relative to our own ability to conceive it and because we are unable to experience it or to perceive it with our senses does not mean it is not there and that its being there is in fact so vital and foundational to everything that follows. While a significant amount of his materials are personal, their inclusion is not to posit an autobiographical narrative nor are they there to signify or testify to his particular lived experience. Rather they indicate the importance of origin and identity for Beasley as something which is always suspect and that he is constantly negotiating.

'The work evolves out of an inventive, performative process that incorporates found materials into composite objects. Beasley gives structure to these materials using a mixture of polyurethane foam and resin; during the half hour the compound takes to set and harden, the artist is able to push and mold the objects into their sculptural form. His sculptures trace the movements and actions of the artist’s body while also themselves resembling bodies or flesh, though fragmented or dismembered. Reworking traditions of Process art and assemblage, Beasley’s sculptures are rooted in the personal and particular contexts of their materials and in the urban, postindustrial landscapes in which the artist has lived, including Detroit; New Haven, Connecticut; and New York.'-- collaged



______________
@ a Kevin Beasley show


Kevin Beasley show/opening at Neal Davis Gallery



_____
Further

Kevin Beasley @ The Butchers Daughter Gallery
Kevin Beasley @ Art Slant
Kevin Beasley @ Facebook
'Latency: A Collection of Work by Kevin Beasley'
'Kevin Beasley: Shaking the Museum
'The New Futurists: Kevin Beasley
'KEVIN BEASLEY IN NEW YORK'
'And in My Dream I Was Rolling on the Floor'
'From Ashy to Classy Mix I (Valley of Ashes)'
'The Young Guns: 8 Whitney Biennial Artists Born After 1980'



____________________
I Want My Spot Back (2012)
interview from Mousse Magazine







'One year ago Kevin Beasley shook up the Museum of Modern Art in New York—literally. Just out of grad school the artist presented his sound performance, I Want my Spot Back, for which he processed voices of dead Hip Hop rappers and transformed them into bloodcurdling wails blasting through the entire Museum’s Atrium.'





We are standing in the MoMA Atrium, the scene of the crime, so to speak, where you…

Kevin Beasley: Where the blood was spilt.

Yes, where you performed I Want My Spot Back almost exactly one year ago. How would you describe the piece to someone who wasn’t there?

KB: I performed as part of Ralph Lemon’s, Some sweet Day series, which he had conceived for the MoMA Atrium. The performance consisted of me mixing “acapellas” from early-to-mid-Nineties deceased rappers. It was a project I’d been working on for probably about a year and it kind of culminated here—in its best iteration—because it was a real physical exploration, even in the way I was trying to gather the music or gather the sounds, and what I was thinking about in terms of where the sort of body is in these voices and these spaces. Doing it in this space allowed for all of that to be extrapolated because of its cavernousness. It was kind of crazy, I remember Ralph saying, when we were walking to do the first performance, Ralph was like, “I’m scared, man.” [laughs]

What was so scary about it?

KB: The fact that it was so loud and so obtrusive. From an earlier iteration, I knew people were really struggling with the aggressive nature of the tracks. They were all a cappella versions, but the way I had expanded and extracted the frequencies and the different layers within those vocals made it very powerful. In order to hear and feel it that way, it just needed to be amplified that much and the Atrium is a transition space, people are passing through. The Edvard Munch Scream had arrived as a special loan in the Painting and Sculpture Galleries that week, so people were mainly coming for that—not expecting this very overt sound from which they couldn’t escape.

I remember the sound penetrating everything; my body, the space, the walls, the adjacent galleries, the windows and skylights were shaking. It was very overwhelming. Were you aware of the audience reactions during the performance?

KB: There was constant movement happening, that I caught in my peripheral vision. Once, towards the end, I noticed that the group of people had really thinned out. People were kind of like, “okay, I’ve had enough” [laughs]. I’m also in the center of it, it’s really visceral for me too, but I was working to try to maintain that feeling for myself as it was happening, because I’m trying to reinvent it as it happens.

With the live mixing?

KB: Yes, there is a lot of pre-production in this piece, a lot of manipulation and moving frequencies and things around. But the live performance is really the opportunity for me to expand and dig deeper, changing the pitches, controlling things with my hands—I didn’t have a given set list. There was the first track which was this Biggie interview and then there are a couple parts that I kind of wanted to do something with. In Tupac’s Smile there’s a part where Scarface says, “And now a moment of silence, let us pray.” From that moment on, I kind of reel in all the other sounds and honor whatever is in the track. But it’s always evolving, I don’t know when that’s going to come and if and how it’s going to happen, what’s going to be layered. It’s like being a club DJ, you have your tracks, but when you are mixing them you have to react and respond to the moment.

How did you start making the work?

KB: Initially, it came from this interest in speaker building. I started DJing and it made me get back into Hip Hop; like Biggie, Gang Starr, Big L, and Tupac, something I grew up with. I was very interested in actually just playing with it (Hip Hop) and it made so much sense to me, because at the time I was making objects; to me it was beyond just dance or meeting a crowd, it was another tool that I had in my studio and I was really interested in really thinking about: like what is my relationship to this music? How has it shaped me? I think that that sort of questions made me say, “well, maybe I should just go back to it in a way, and try to explore what it was in the music that I was so drawn to.” I was very into P Diddy, he did a lot of really amazing stuff in terms of production, obviously the whole Death Row thing was really—the way like gangster rap on the West Coast was just very sort of definitive and broke out. I then said, “okay, what is the most sort of human bodily thing in all of these tracks?” And that’s their voices, their presence. So I just started searching for a cappella tracks and I got really interested in listening to the breathing in between, like Biggie was a heavy breather you know [laughs].

You were interested in the breathing?

KB: [laughs] I felt, “I should really listen to that and see if I can extract the low frequencies from just his breathing”; and then I started to slow the tracks down. (In the past) I had a drum teacher who told me, “You know, if you want to become a better drummer, then you should play everything really slowly to understand time, to understand the feel of something.” I guess that was just kind of a natural thing for me, to slow the music and these voices down and then it gets into the actual recording devices, into the production, the timbre and the quality of the voice, the quality of the instruments being used to record. That also interested me, because of the high production values of this rap from the early-to-mid-Nineties—the golden age of rap.

You mentioned earlier that Ralph told you he was scared, right before the first performance. I remember him being very worried about the piece being too loud and aggressive, that it would get shut down. Did you intend the work as an attack?

KB: That wasn’t the intention. For me it was a matter of necessity. During the rehearsal we were asking for more speakers, to make sure there were no pockets where people could escape, because that kind of immersion could allow people to hear and feel what I was trying to do, like exploring something within that space.

But some people did perceive it as an aggression. We received a lot of complaint notes from visitors that day.

KB: The most angry letter said, “Never let Kevin Beasley in the building ever again, Jesus Christ people!” [both laugh] You know, when I first saw them I thought, “where is the positive letters?”

Most of the other work you have been making manifests itself in sculptures. How does sound play into that?

KB: Yes, I am mainly doing sculptures, but sound for me is just as physical, tactile and experiential as any other material, and there is also an equal amount of play, if not more. With this piece, sound was being translated into another kind of material and then came back out through this very physical experience; through dancing, through reverberations in the floor and the wall. I find this very interesting because it’s another material I can use to help understand myself and my environment: where am I located, where are other people located in relationship to me? It helps me bridge social aspects, like “how can I understand someone else through this kind of material?” and “how can they understand me through it?” For me, this gets into art making in general.



____
Show



Untitled (Wrong), 2013 (detail)
resin, body pillows, t-shirt, hooded sweatshirt





untitled (helmet), 2011
t-shirt, polyurethane foam, plastic, spray paint, paper pulp









...for this moment, this moment is yours..., 2013
Steel, masonite, wood, felt, acrylic, rubber bands, cassette tape, Akai x-1800SD reel to reel player

'Beasley has sourced approximately 4000 cassette tapes from family, friends, record stores and the Internet. Ranging from commercially sold audiobooks, popular music, independent labels, mixtapes, and home recordings, they have been cut and spliced together to create 52 reels, holding approximately 40 hours of sound and music each. These reels exist as mixes – combinations of various sounds by a number of authors that play constantly during the gallery’s opening hours, corresponding to a cycle of human consistency. Spanning intentions, genres, and decades, the resultant sound demonstrates a complex relationship with the history of the work’s materials. Their obsolescence at the same time triggers a series of familiarities and emotional connections.

'Played through a reel-to-reel player, an incompatible device, both sides of each tape are heard at once. Interrupting even the most familiar of referents is a layered, alternate track (albeit played in reverse), an ambiguous and sometimes unintelligible sound that asserts itself as an unknown entity. The work hinges on the presence of a listener yet the exhibition itself represents only a partial span of its length with the same sound never played twice. Over the course of the exhibition, performances by Beasley and invited guests will occur in the space, with a live recording made on the reels. Replacing the previous recordings, these newly introduced elements contribute to the ever-evolving nature of the work and its experience; it is growing and deteriorating at the same time.'






lord have mercy, 2011
Ethernet cable, coaxial cable, polyurethane foam, plastic, sweatband, underwear, Medical IV







untitled, 2012
Cotton gin motor





untitled, 2010
various items and mediums







...all different: for I do, I suppose, partake, 2013
Various items & mediums, performance

'When one strikes a bell there are several tones that prevail, yet the hum tone is one that lies an octave below the strike tone, the resonance being that of multiple tones within one note/or tone of an instrument. A layering that happens at the time of the actual singular act where a multitude is always produced. So what happens when “we” recognize the initial parts as a multitude and seek to expand that multitude exponentially?

'...all different: for I do, I suppose, partake of multitude is an exhibition by Kevin Beasley, comprised of two parts: a site specific installation made from 30 varying wind chimes and a performance building live feed from the installation and pre-recorded sound bites.'








Untitled (Jumped Man), 2014
Polyurethane foam, resin, soil, coat sleeve liners, and a pair of Nike Jordan size 18 shoes





Untitled (Sack), 2012
Foam, resin, T-shirt, mattress cover, cotton, and thermal shirt






untitled (cranial brush), 2011







Your Natural Growth (Once Hyberbolic), 2010
basketball, cellulose, cast acrylic, polyurethane adhesive






Untitled, 2011
glass, latex, oil painting, paper pulp and cast plastic







Untitled (swallow), 2013
foam






Untitled (2013)

'Beasley’s sculpture trapped a mess of domestic objects in a monolithic slab of what looked like concrete or tar. Pieces of a stroller and a suitcase are buried alongside Q-tips, clothing, and a coat rack, all of them splayed throughout the black, surfacing here and there in semi-recognizable form. You imagine someone kicking out a cheating spouse and dumping the contents of their life on the street, and then the artist strolling by and casting the whole thing. The work feelsalternately familiar and alienating; it’s hard to tell if you want to lie down on it or run away.'-- hyperallergic.com




*

p.s. Hey. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Paris spring is being very changeable. It feels in-between, which is nice. 'Impersonal gentleness' is such a beautiful idea. Wow, yeah, I'm going to think about that all day. With my poetry, I think personalizing is okay. It's a pretty personal practice, or relative to my fiction, or relative to my fiction before the novel I'm working on, I guess. Oh, I'm so sorry about your puppies. Of course I understand about the post, and I wish I knew what to say, and here's where words fail, but I send and give you hugs, I'm so sorry. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, yes. Bressonian on the inside. I don't know that the film will look Bressonian. Hopefully it'll look Zac-ian. ** Bill, Yeah, nice line-up. I'll see as much as I can, and I'll spread my review. So, how was the new Tsai Ming-Liang? ** Sypha, True, about that climb's fitting in thing. Too bad it hadn't spun off a gif, 'cos it could have been. The only time I wrote a synopsis for a novel of mine, I got into big, big trouble, but I wrote it before I had written the novel, so that's apropos of nothing. Wild. ** Steevee, Do you have a particular feel that you want in the performances, or are you going to see what actors you like and want and then figure that out, or ... ? ** Rewritedept, Oh, yeah, sad about the GWAR guy. I saw them live once a billion years ago. They were funny. I never thought their records were much of anything. Do you? Jesus, all that meat you eat, yikes, but apples and oranges and whatever floats your boat and other LA-isms. Oh, that's okay about the rough draft. I wouldn't have any time to read it for a while anyway. My brain is crazed and fried with all the input and output I have going on at the moment. That's a lot of 'ifs' about GbV, LA, etc. I have no idea, no clue when I'll be next in LA, etc., etc. But in theory, it sounds lovely, you bet. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I'm the honored one. Oh, the blog, at its best, is set up about two weeks in advance, but usually it's more like a week or so in advance, so just tell when you're ready and give me a little lead time, not much, and it'll be no problem scheduling the post for pretty much whatever day you want it to appear. ** Torn porter, Hi, man. Packing's important, or, well, needed. I'm glad MDV looks doable. It feels doable from the outside. Cool. Paris isn't that friendly towards drag? Hm, I have no idea. I mean, there's drag here, but I don't know. I'm not much of a night person unless it's a music thing. I'll ask Jonathan Capedeville. He'll know. His performance work involves drag a lot. Best of the best with all the prep for the big move, and awesome of you to stop by amidst that. ** Misanthrope, You still need some climbing skills here in Paris where elevators, etc. are fewer and farther between, as you might remember. And skip Antarctica if you don't want to climb. It's climb city. Ah, so LPS is on his way after all, sweet. Assuming nothing contrary pops up. All of that horrible wax museum's figures were bought by some place in the Czech Republic, so it'll just be a bit more of a stretch to see them now. ** Kyler, Helluva Nietzche quote. Cool that you're officially on this year's list now! And alongside not only Kevin Killian but with his great, great, so long out of print classic novel 'Shy', one of the great novels of its generation. I haven't read Dostoyevsky in, wow, forever and day. Sounds nicest. ** That's it? Well, okay. I have this young artist Kevin Beasley in my gallery today. I like his stuff, obviously. See if you like it based on what you can tell based on the show, please. Thanks. See you tomorrow.

Rowland apparently wrote “Shivers”, a song that would later become his albatross, when he was sixteen (according to Nick Cave). He went on to write better songs, but only marginally. Irritating for him but fine when you consider what a great song that is and one you’d be happy to have written at any point in your life. Howard says it was a satire of over-dramatic love-songs, but it’s one that could only have been written by the tortured romantic he was (if the accounts of those who knew him and the documentary are anything to go by).





“Wildworld” is less sinister, more darkly romantic, Cave’s twin obsessions with the sacred and the profane popping up again with “our bodies melt together, we are one, post-crucifixion, baby.” This is a seam he’d continue mining up to the present day, still surprisingly successfully at times. The guitar moment of this song for me isn’t, surprisingly, the juddering Link Wray explosions in the chorus but the almost slinky down-strokes playing off Pew’s bass during Nick’s grunt solo at the end.











“Hyperspace” has a hypnotic riff, mood-swing drums and a fantastically snotty vocal performance that is in places double-tracked. The ominous piano line all but buried in the mix is a nice touch. Finally, “Crowned” is the highpoint of the record, with outbreaks of fuzz guitar tantrum married to splashy reverb piano and propulsive tribal drums. Not only is this song full of the kind of religious references that are a staple in the work of his former Birthday Party sparring partner, but “through the vaporous veil of my shotgun bride” seems to be a reference to his project with Lydia Lunch, Shotgun Wedding (1991).

Marilyn: Lydia Lunch has always scared me. A lot of my own baggage around gender had gotten in the way of me being able to appreciate strong women — personality, talents, the whole bit — until very recently. Lydia is the sort of artist I had run away from, mentally screaming, too sonically intimidated to get involved. I did go through a period a few years ago of replaying “Atomic Bongos” just because it is so damn catchy, but other than that, I was just brimming with a mixture of fright and confusion over why her bored murmur or scary caterwauling was considered artistically relevant. I stayed far away, I rolled my eyes and scrolled right past if one of her photos appeared wherever I was browsing around online.




--------------------* ----p.s. Hey. First of all, this p.s. is in a weird, wrong spot because there's some kind of formatting going on in the post today that has incorporated it, and I can't seem to get the p.s. out of the post's formal embrace. So, yeah. As for that post itself, ... In a cool semi-rarity, the blog presents the first part of a two days-long presentation by d.l. Marilyn Roxie and the so-far more mysterious Dan Wreck on the work and life of Rowland S. Howard, sadly late and inarguably great solo and oft-collaborating music maestro. There's a lot up there whether you know Howard's doings or not, and please enjoy then talk back to our guiding duo, thank you. And, of course, thank you so much to Marilyn and Dan. ** Tosh Berman, Well, my pleasure, T. Oh, man, that's some scary and unthinkable jet-lag right there. Recover immediately and without a trace and as soon as possible. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Happy you found the post/show interesting. He's in the current Whitney Biennial if you by some chance get to NYC in the next couple of months. Much love to you about your loss. That sounds so hard. Oh, sure, that's weird/difficult for me too, about the personalization of the work of met artists. At least with poetry, maybe the double-exposure can be, I don't know, useful even when fighting off the pollution. ** Bill, Glad you dug it. Ah, too bad, about the new Tsai. Can you speak to the problem? How's everything else, and how much longer are you there? ** Steevee, At least in our auditioning, charisma is pretty much the deciding factor, but, like I said, acting isn't called for. Yeah, I guess mentioning the 'same-sex kiss' beforehand is a good idea if you can figure out a way to do that smoothly, which I'm sure you can. Yeah, the new Thou is nice, I think. Oh, I think that's a nonsense idea that only people of a certain race, gender, etc. can write about 'themselves'. There are cases after cases of debunking evidence re: that mythology going back forever. That advance disqualification seems really knee-jerk to me, but I'm so not into collective identity notions as a preemptory united front. ** Rewritedept, I guess my review of GWAR live would be that they were crazy fun for the first maybe three songs and then it was sort of like, 'Yeah, I get it, I get it.' They were/are one of those bands where you, or I at least, wish they did an early Jesus and Mary Chain kind of thing live, i.e. play for fifteen minutes then split, leaving behind the startling resonance to do the rest of the work. Hey, if you like meat, eat it. I don't know, I haven't eaten meat or fish since I was 16, and my health and energy have always been quite solid. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Very pleased that it interested you. Cool, cool, re: your plan to keep me alerted, thanks, and enjoy all the excitement! ** David Ehrenstein, Greetings. ** Misanthrope, I imagine that, after all that time in the gym, your body will make Paris's climbing issues into a mere hop, skip, jump issue. You know, I never saw 'Napoleon Dynamite'. Weird, I guess, right? The author of whom you speak has been super supportive and kind towards me, so I'll keep my review of his works off-blog, although I suppose you can probably guess. I will say that I thought the 'TH' movie was worse than the book. ** Marcus Whale, Hi, M. Pleasure. 'FNoaD' is on youtube in its entirety? Weird. Wait, no, that's just an 8 minute except. I knew about that. Cool, anyway. Great to hear that you're on so many projects. New Collarbones, cool, and new you solo, even cooler. Excellent, I'll go listen to the new Scissor Look split EP. Exciting! Everyone, Marcus Whale, long term d.l. and an amazing musical artist of way big range, has something new up on Soundcloud: a split EP called 'The Finer Things' featuring his project Scissor Lock in combo with a track or tracks by Cassius Select, whom I don't know. Anyway, get over there and listen/download/buy/etc., won't you? Thanks a lot, Marcus. Mm, no, I've been involved in the full-on making of a film before. I've written scripts for directors, none of which have ever been made, but, in the case of this film, it's a real collaboration with Zac. He has total input re: the script, and I have as much input as I want into the directing and visualization, although he's incredible, and I mostly just end up saying, 'Yes!' Otherwise, I made a few terrible experimental short films in a college film class way back when, but that's it. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Well, at least that agent sounds fairly custom-made to give your novel a serious bit of consideration, so that's promising. Sparks is god, as I know you know I think. ** Well, that seems to be that for yesterday. So, shall we concentrate our efforts on today then? There's plenty there to make your acquaintance and even more. Enjoy. See you tomorrow.

It may or may not be hyperbole to say that after I heard those opening words to “Dead Radio”, the first song on Teenage Snuff Film, there was no going back: my life isn’t over yet, it could be too early to say. It was a powerful moment though: subtle drums; a mournful violin; subterranean bass and, of course, that unmistakable guitar sound. Like Ennio Morricone soundtracking a teen drama directed by David Lynch. Or some equally trite metaphor: there’s simply nothing like it, and it’s a good job there’s no shortage of words as I recklessly waste them trying to describe the impact it had on me. I played the opening track a few times, then on to track two: Breakdown (and then…)

Photo by Andrew J. Cosgriff

I hate Talk Talk. I love These New Puritans, who always get compared to them, and I get the feeling I should like them but something about them just makes me see red. Mark Hollis’ quavering voice just reminds me of the choreographed “emotiveness” of a lot of today’s stadium indie groups who coincidentally like to namedrop Talk Talk. It’s not his fault and I’m sure he wouldn’t like me either. However, as songwriters they’re clearly excellent and Rowland’s version of “Life’s What You Make It” illustrates that. I refused to believe it at first but sure enough that prowling, sleazy bassline is present in the original amid the rolled up jacket sleeves and gated reverb snares. However, Howard’s braying guitar asides and sepulchral vocal lifts it into a whole other realm. Like Johnny Cash’s covers of NIN’s “Hurt” or Bonnie Prince Billy’s “I See a Darkness”, this recording takes a song recorded by an artist in their youth and alters it. Here, the title repeated throughout is the bitter statement of a man languishing on a waiting list for treatment for grave health problems of his own making through years of destroying his body, regretful but still sneering at the idea of preaching to anyone about how they should be living their life.






The last word on the subject, for now, is this documentary by Ghost Pictures where various people who loved and/or worked with Rowland eulogise him. The subject matter is tragic enough but it’s really hammered home by the endless procession of icons (Henry Rollins, Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, etc.) looking absolutely shattered, struggling for words to describe the man’s talents. This is no hagiography, though: it looks that way at first, but in the second half his addictions are examined unsparingly. A boy who was, effectively, Rowland’s adopted son speaks movingly of his relationship with him in the early years of his life. Footage of him in the hospital at the end of his life contrasts with him onstage in The Birthday Party: a reverse chronology from a sad, broken presence to the force of nature grappling for the spotlight with Nick Cave. However it’s not all that clear cut: even at the end of his life he was a force to be reckoned with and knew how to command a stage, and even as a healthier young man his fragility was apparent and unconcealed. Even at the end, he left us wanting more.
*  p.s. Hey. And here aka the blog is back with the glorious part 2 of Dan Wreck's and Marilyn Roxie's post-shaped tome about Rowland S. Howard. Please continue to explore and enjoy and talk accordingly with Marilyn, Dan, each other, and even me, if you like. Thanks much! And continued, huge thanks to Dan and Marilyn. The p.s. today is again magnetized to the post for unknown reasons, and apologies for that if it bugs. ** Bitter69uk, Hey, man. Nice to see you. Great, apt paean to Mr. Howard. Thanks a lot. Very cool about the Lydia Lunch interviews. I'll go read them, and I'll pass the links along. Everyone, here's bitter69uk with two great adds to the Roland S. Howard fest: 'The wonderfully bleak song "I Fell in Love with a Ghost" more than lives up to its title - Lydia at her most anguished and despairing. I love the Shotgun Wedding album Howard and Lunch made together, too. I posted two old 1990s interviews I did with Lydia for punk zines MAXIMUMROCKNROLL and Flipside on my blog if anyone is interested. She talks a bit about Roland S Howard in them. Read them here and here.' Thanks so much! I hope you're doing great. How are you? ** Marcus Whale, Hi, M. Wow, you're right! That's it! Let me immediately spread the boon. Everyone, extraordinary musical artist and d.l. Marcus Whale passes along this link, which will lead you to youtube and, specifically, to an implant there of the entirety of Robert Bresson's completely incredible film 'Four Nights of a Dreamer', one of my all-time favorite films as well as a film that has never been on DVD and which has been unbelievably hard to get to see. Need I say how highly I recommend you watch 'FNoaD' if you at all have 1:18:43 to spare. Wow, since my copy is in LA, I'm going to rewatch that as soon as I possibly can. You're a saint, man. Let me pass on your second link too, while I'm at it. Oh, and I listened to the EP, and I really love the Scissor Lock stuff a lot! Saint squared. Everyone, the same Marcus Whale has also passed along a link that is directly relative to the post today/ yesterday. In his words: 'Oh, and some people might be interested, the band HTRK, who were pretty intimate with Rowland S Howard in the last years of his life, have a new album out for streaming. ** David Ehrenstein, I know, right? ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Detoxing, ha ha, nice. Oh, wow, that is really beautiful and charismatic, that thing you've wrapped. I mean, yeah, if it's easy and no trouble, I would be really pleased to have it, obviously. Thank you so much! ** Bill, Hi, B. So, you still have some time there. Germany, cool. So close to Paris and yet a whole other world. EmptySCape seem really interesting at first glance. I'll study that site later. Wish I could study your gig more later. Maybe some evidence will appear? Exciting. Everyone, if you're reading this while being in Hong Kong by any chance, do oh do go see maestro Bill Hsu play in your vicinity on March 30th. Here's the info. Okay, I see: about the Tsai film's problems. Even with the astonishing Denis Lavant in it! Oh, well. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Yeah, I think there are metabolisms that take to vegetarianism like flies to honey, like mine, and those that get weird when they go there, and it's a crapshoot. My week is going really well. Yeah, getting some good novel work done. Finished a poem for the first time in a year a least. Set up round two of the auditions for Zac's and my film. Etc. Good stuff. Cogitation is a big, even the biggest part of writing anything, and you gotta let it happen. It's key. So, no worries about your 'green retard'. Sweet, obviously, about Tony Molina, and every finger crossed. Creedence? Err, I never think about them, and I wasn't into them when they and I were young. Favorite song by them? Jesus, okay, uh, ... 'Tombstone Shadow' maybe? ** Steevee, That sounds very promising about your successful connection with Noor. In theory, that could really do the trick. Ugh, sorry to had about the stone passing, ouch. I didn't know about that Brothers & Sisters album. Huh, sounds very worth an investigation. I will, and thanks very much, Steve. ** Lula, Hi, Lula! Welcome to this place! Thank you a lot for sharing Dan's and Marilyn's post. Everyone, kind visitor Lula alerts you to the existence of a Rowland S. Howard Tribute Page, and it looks really rich, so please supplement your post intake by checking it out and, if you're an FB person, 'liking' it. ** Daniel Shea, Hi, Daniel! I'm so happy that you came inside. Thank you a lot for the post. Obviously, it's just fantastic, and I've been listening to RSH a ton ever since you guys sent it to me. I've also been listening to your music via Nervous Wreck, and really, really liking it a lot, so thank you for being so multifacetedly great. In fact, ... Everyone, one of your guest-hosts yesterday and today, Dan Wreck, is also known as Daniel Shea, commenter of yesterday and one of two people behind the musical unit Nervous Wreck, whose music I highly recommend to you. You can go hear Nervous Wreck's album 'Leave Tonight' over on Bandcamp by clicking this, and do. Kudos all around. And thank you very much for your kind words about my stuff. Hey, if you feel like commenting more or hanging out here anytime, please do. That would be great! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Cardio, right. Joel does that. He explained to me what that is. Sounds good. Short bursts of excruciating pain definitely trumps long spurts of same. May that fucker fade and fade until it ain't shit. Yeah, I'm not interested in Hollinghurst at all. And, you know, not Chabon either. Not just not my thing(s). ** Kyler, Hi, pal. ** Marilyn Roxie, Marilyn! Aw, thanks so much for everything. You're so great, and so is it. Yesterday's post got huge traffic and hits, just so you know. So, it's a ... hit! Thank you, thank you! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, Thomas! How are you? It's so great to see you! It's been a while. What have you been up to? How is everything going? Love, me. ** Done. Roland S. Howard is awaiting you just to this p.s.'s immediate north, so scroll in that direction now, thanks. See you tomorrow.

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'In 1947, British engineers destroyed the North Sea island of Heligoland (home of a Nazi naval fortification) with the help of 4000 tons of wartime ammunition. The blast -- the largest single non-nuclear explosive detonation until the 1985 Minor Scale detonation at White Sands Missile Range -- released about 3.2 kilotons of TNT-equivalent energy.'-- gizmodo










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'Michael J. Oliver, American citizen born in Lithuania, fond of numismatics, decided once to found a new nation. He got in touch with British authorities to put up a tax-free state in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and of course failed with this. He found in an atlas that there were two atolls in formation at the north of the territory of Tonga, known as Minerva since a ship named this way had wrecked because of them. Oliver and a friend, Morris Bud Davis, bought a ship in May 1972, engaged some men, and with this brought some sand on Minerva, to make it become a real island. When there was enough sand to make it possible to walk on Minerva, they proclaimed the Republic, Davis becoming president, and Olivier making money with the coins (with goddess Minerva) he made for his state. Tuphou IV of Tonga was rather unhappy to see this republic be born in his kingdom, and sent the Tongan army there, where the soldiers took the flags of the new republic and replaced them with the Tongan flag. The battle was soon resolved when an ocean storm washed away the island's sand and submerged the atoll underwater for the next ten years. The reef continues to pop up every 10 years, do its stuff, and then go down again. That island falls under Tongan jurisdiction; as soon as it is up, the king orders the Tongan flag to be planted there. Sometimes it's too late...'-- crwflags.com









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'With a name like Dead Man's Island, you might think that the small protrusion of rock was doomed all along. But the tiny island at the entrance to the San Pedro harbor was so steeped in romantic lore that many Southern Californians -- powerless to stop the dynamite and steam shovels -- greeted its demise in 1928 with sorrow. Dead Man's Island was named for the shallow graves dug into its flat top. Various legends give different accounts of who was buried first: the last male survivor of San Nicolas Island, an Indian named Black Hawk; an English sailor who died while anchored at San Pedro; a smuggler who washed ashore on the island and died there of thirst or hunger. No one knows for certain which (if any) is true, but it's clear that by the 1830s the local, Spanish-speaking population knew the outcrop as Isla de Los Muertos. In photos, it appears deceptively small; in fact, it measured at least 800 feet long and 250 feet wide. Rising 55 feet above the surface and separated from the San Pedro bluffs by nearly a mile of open water, Dead Man's Island was the bay's most conspicuous landform. Unfortunately, tidal forces started carving away at the island. As crumbling rock exposed buried coffins, the bodies were moved -- the six servicemen to the Presidio in San Francisco, and the civilians to San Pedro's Harbor View Cemetery. As part of a program of extensive harbor improvements, the U.S. government decided to remove the island wholesale in 1928.'-- KCET












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'The phantom Sandy Island has been blamed on an error by the crew of a whaling ship from 1876, the Velocity, which originally recorded the land mass, known as Sandy Island, midway between Australia and the French-governed New Caledonia. Though the island has existed on maps for hundreds of years, a group of Australian scientists went searching for it in the Coral Sea last month and could not find it. Shaun Higgins, a pictorial librarian at Auckland Museum who was intrigued by the mystery, now believes he has solved the case. He says the ship’s master aboard the Velocity reported a series of “heavy breakers” and some “sandy islets” on an admiralty chart and that the unusual features spotted by the crew were copied over time as an island. “As far as I can tell, the island was recorded by the whaling ship the Velocity,” Mr Higgins told ABC radio. "My supposition is that they simply recorded a hazard at the time. They might have recorded a low-lying reef or thought they saw a reef. They could have been in the wrong place. There is all number of possibilities. But what we do have is a dotted shape on the map that’s been recorded at that time and it appears it’s simply been copied over time.”'-- The Telegraph







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'Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara Island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction. Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and its disappearing neighbor Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.'-- The Independent









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'Rose Island was a short-lived micronation on a platform in the Adriatic Sea, seven miles off the coast of Rimini, Italy. In 1964, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa built the 400-meter-square platform, supported by nine strong pylons on the seabed. Reportedly, this platform eventually housed a restaurant, a bar, a night club, a souvenir shop, a post office, and perhaps a radio station. The artificial island declared independence on 24 June 1968, under the Esperanto name "Insulo de la Rozoj". Stamps, currency, and a flag were produced. The Italian government sent troops to crush the rebellion. Two carabinieri and two inspectors of finances landed on the "Isole delle Rose" and took over the just-born state. The platform's Council of Government sent a telegram to protest against the violation of its sovereignty, and the injury inflicted on local tourism by such a military occupation, but this was ignored. The island was destroyed by the Italian Navy.'-- crwflags.com












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'Bermeja, a tiny uninhabited island to the northwest of the Yucatán Peninsula, seems to have disappeared. One century, it's sitting pretty at 22°33' N, 91°22 E in the Gulf of Mexico; the next, it's vanished, confounding maritime investigations and aerial surveys alike. And the Mexican people want to know where it went. Theories abound regarding Bermeja's mysterious fate. Was it a casualty of global warming and rising sea levels? Did an underwater earthquake shake it clean off the radar? Or did the CIA blow it up, as conspiracy theorists suggest, with a view to expanding US sovereignty in the oil-rich Gulf? In 1997 the Mexican and US governments negotiated a treaty to divide Hoyos de Dona, a stretch of international waters taking in the area where Bermeja was once believed to be located. Seized by a renewed interest in the long-lost island's existence, the Mexican government sent an expedition out to find it. The search yielded nothing and the treaty was signed. Three official investigations took place in 2009. All three used the most whizz-bang technologies at their disposal, leaving no wave unturned and no depth unplunged. Yet Bermeja remained elusive. According to Irasema Alcántara, from the Geography Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), "We've encountered documents containing very precise descriptions of Bermeja's existence. There are photographs taken of the island that look like no other island within a thousand miles. On this basis we firmly believe that the island did or even does exist."'-- Lonely Planet









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'Pleasure Island was an amusement park located in Wakefield, Massachusetts. The park, billed as the "Disneyland of the Northeast", was in business from 1959 to 1969. During its short existence it went through several owners and was financially handicapped by New England's relatively short summers. Covering 80 acres (320,000 m2), the park featured a plethora of rides and other attractions, including the Space Rocket ride, the Pirate Ride, the Moby-Dick ride (which featured a spouting mechanical whale rising from the depths), the Wreck of the Hesperus (dark ride), the Old Chisholm Trail (dark ride), theme restaurants, a shopping area, an arcade, mini-golf (from 1967), a carousel, Monkey Island, and many others. Actors would stage mock gunfights in the Western City or threaten to attack riders on the boat rides. The park's "Old Smokey Line" was a narrow-gauge railroad using equipment leased from the Edaville Railroad. Another park feature was the Show Bowl, where performers such as Ricky Nelson, Michael Landon, The Modernaires, the Three Stooges, Clayton Moore, Don Ameche, and Cesar Romero appeared.'-- collaged















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'Whale Skate Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands was a tiny dot of land in the vast Pacific, about 10 to 15 acres in size. It was covered with vegetation, nesting seabirds, Hawaiian monk seals and turtles laying eggs. It no longer exists. "That island in the course of 20 years has completely disappeared," said Beth Flint, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist for the Pacific Remote Island Refuges. "It washed away."'-- heatisonline.org








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'The World, the ambitiously-constructed archipelago of islands shaped like the countries of the globe, is sinking back into the sea, according to evidence cited before a property tribunal. The islands were intended to be developed with tailor-made hotel complexes and luxury villas, and sold to millionaires. They are off the coast of Dubai and accessible by yacht or motor boat. Now their sands are eroding and the navigational channels between them are silting up, the British lawyer for a company bringing a case against the state-run developer, Nakheel, has told judges. "The islands are gradually falling back into the sea," Richard Wilmot-Smith QC, for Penguin Marine, said. The evidence showed "erosion and deterioration of The World islands", he added. With all but one of the islands still uninhabited – Greenland – and that one a showpiece owned by the ruler of Dubai, most of the development plans have been brought to a crashing halt by the financial crisis. Penguin claim that work on the islands has "effectively stopped". Mr Wilmot-Smith described the project as "dead".'-- The Telegraph











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'Holland Island was originally settled in the 1600s, taking its name from early colonist Daniel Holland, the original purchaser of the property from the Dorchester County Sheriff. By 1850, the first community of fishing and farming families developed on the island. By 1910, the island had about 360 residents, making it one of the largest inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay. The island community had 70 homes, stores and other buildings. It had its own post office, two-room school with two teachers, a church, baseball team, community center, and a doctor. The wind and tide began to seriously erode the west side of the island, where most of the houses were located, in 1914. This forced the inhabitants to move to the mainland. Many disassembled their houses and other structures and took them to the mainland, predominantly Crisfield. Attempts to protect the island by building stone walls were unsuccessful. The last family left the island in 1918, when a tropical storm damaged the island's church. A few of the former residents continued living on the island during the fishing season until 1922, when the church was moved to Fairmount, Maryland. In October 2010, the last remaining house on Holland Island, built in 1888, collapsed.'-- collaged















_________________
With its lagoon, sandy beach and ramshackle wooden buildings, Challis Island looks like the perfect place for a pirate to hide from the law. But this island is in land-locked Cambridgeshire, not the Caribbean. And its multi-millionaire owner James Challis may be forced to walk the plank – by planners – because he did not apply for permission to build the island’s fantasy village. They have ordered him to pull it all down. Mr Challis, 29, spent several million pounds creating the artificial island in the middle of the lake on his family’s country estate five miles north of Cambridge, and transforming it into his own pirate-themed paradise. Mr Challis said it had been created in memory of his grandfather John Dickerson, who acquired the 60-acre site in the 1970s for the extraction of sand and gravel. Mr Dickerson had started work on converting the lake into an area to be used for recreation by his family and had built a boat house there, but he died in 1999. The family is expected to hear the fate of the island within weeks. South Cambridgeshire district council said: "We appreciate Mr. Challis's efforts and creativity, but the law is the law, and I'm sorry to say that the destruction of his fantasy island is all but assured."'-- Daily Mail
















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'Deshima, known as Dejima in Japanese, was a small artificial island in Nagasaki Bay (approximately 150 feet by 500 feet) on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu. From 1641 to 1845, Deshima served as the sole conduit of trade between Europe and Japan, and during the period of self-imposed Japanese seclusion (approximately 1639-1854) was Japan's only major link to the European world. Though Dutch merchants were generally confined to the island, it nonetheless served as a conduit of considerable culture exchange in both directions. The exchanges ranged from hydrangeas to knowledge of electricity and paralleled a similar exchange passing between the Japanese and Chinese merchants, who were also permitted to trade at Deshima under similar controlled circumstances. It was destroyed during the modernization of Nagasaki harbor in the 20th century.'-- World History Connected











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DragonLegend2013: I just finish winning a battle in dinosaur island and collected some bones, after an hour in my iPad the game reload and the island is not there anymore. Is there a bug? Can someone advise? Thanks

Balgruff: Check your storage, maybe you accidentally bought everything and it's in your storage now. Either that, or it's cause the iOS version is reportably unstable.

DragonLegend2013: I had check the storage, it is not inside. Try resetting my iPad and still not inside. Please can you help? I need dinosaur island to win the dinosaur dragon. Thanks.

CaseyBarker: That happened to me also please someone help i want to get the dinosaurs

RubyDiamond: There are Dinosaur Island in iOS device ? Why i don't know it... it don't shown up ?

CaseyBarker: Guys if someone knows whats happening please post any info you have I can't figure out how to get the island back










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'The British explorer Richard Sowa built his own floating island off the east coast of Mexico in 1998. Spiral Island was created from more than 250,000 plastic bottles collected in large fishing nets. Sowa put a bamboo flooring over the bottles, and carried sand and plants onto Spiral Island. The empty, lightweight bottles floated on the top of the Gulf of Mexico and supported Sowa's home and garden. Spiral Island was destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Emily.'-- NatGeo











____________________
'Map-readers knew about Brazil long before America was discovered; but they didn’t think of it as a giant country on a distant continent. Brazil, also known by the name Hy-Brasil, was a small, mist-shrouded island in the North Atlantic, not too far off Ireland’s west coast. Only, Hy-Brasil never existed. Shown here on a Mercator map dating from 1623, it was one of many phantom islands that haunted marine cartography, sometimes for centuries, before more accurate observational techniques (and ultimately satellite photography) eliminated them all. Hy-Brasil’s first recorded appearance on a map dates from around 1325, as Bracile on a portolan map. In 1497, Spanish diplomat Pedro de Ayala reports home that John Cabot, the first European to visit North America since the Vikings in the 11th century, had made his journey with “the men from Bristol who found Brasil.” Sometimes fantasy became indistinguishable from fact. Hy-Brasil was rumoured to be continuously obscured by mist, except for one day every seven years. It must have been on one of those days in 1674 that captain John Nisbet, piercing a sea fog, anchored before the island, and sent a party of four ashore. The amazed sailors spent an entire day on Hy-Brasil, meeting an wizened old man - an Irish monk? - who provided them with gold and silver. A follow-up expedition by a captain Alexander Johnson also found Hy-Brasil, and confirmed captain Nisbet’s findings. But thereafter, Hy-Brasil reverted to its elusive self. When shown on the map, its location was usually to the west or southwest of Ireland, but Hy-Brasil has also been located in the Azores, and shown as either one or two separate islands. As it’s very hard to disprove a negative, Hy-Brasil’s unfindability per se did not cause it to disappear off the map - only to shrink. When last observed on a nautical chart, as late as 1865, it had become the diminutive Brasil Rock. The phantom island’s last appeareance took place in 1872, seven years after its removal from official nautical charts. The traveller T.J. Westropp, having already seen the island twice before, had brought a shipload of witnesses (including his mother) to verify his sighting of Hy-Brasil. The party did indeed see the island appear - and then disappear, never to be seen again. A fitting end for a phantom island.'-- big think.com







*

p.s. Hey. ** Bill, Hi. First it was. Weird space, in an interesting way? Well, luckily I have a big imagination, so, if need be, I'll document it theoretically with my own twist. Thanks for the link/clip. I'll check them out post p.s. Of course 'veeeery slowly' is the kind of characterization that floats my boat, but there are limits, even to slowness, and I believe you. Me in Germany in May/June? Anything is possible, and we will be rehearsing Gisele's next theater piece near Leipzig, so ... I'll ask her for the schedule, and maybe I'll get lucky. I think I'll be generally in Paris in those months albeit with possible shortish trips away now and then. Would be awesome were you to get here, obviously. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, that's totally okay, of course, whenever and only if it's really easy for you and all of that. I like dreaming about them in the meantime. Yes, that scene in 'Four Nights of a Dreamer' with the boat and the music is one of my very, very favorite moments in the history of cinema, so, obviously, I'm happy you liked it a lot too. ** Gary gray, Hi, G. All I know about Exene's current goings on was some kind of house clearing auction of her belongings that she just held/promoted online, but ... conspiracy therapist, whatever that is? Wow. I'll watch the clip, thanks. Everyone, here's gary gray: 'have ya'll seen what Exene Cervenka from the band X been up to? ~it's not a conspiracy~ she's a conspiracy therapist! pretty fun stuff if you ask me.' ** Steevee, Here's hoping you get not only replies but ones fruitful enough to let you be choosy. I've never had kidney stones, but it sounds awful and strikes the imagination in most unpleasant fashion. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. I saw your email, but I was out all day yesterday, and I'll check it in a few minutes. You have a copy of that AR-G already?! How did you do that? Wow, envy like you can't even imagine. Need that bad. ** Dan Shea, Hi, Dan! One more massive thanks to you for the amazing two days of work and effects. Oh, cool, that you're into posting here more. Really happy to hear that. I'll do my best to post stuff here that's worth posting about in return about. Yeah, thank you once again, and it's great to meet you, and have a really swell Friday. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Nice preview there. And meaty even. I'll go indulge asap meaning this afternoon. Everyone, as you might know, _Black_Acrylic is embarking on a really exciting new project in the form of a youtube channel called Art101. He's given us a bit of a preview of what's come to come, and I urge you to check that out. Here he is: 'By way of a preview for ART101, I put together a compilation of clips and stills here on my blog. There's plenty more still to come of course, and you'll be kept fully updated with all the details.' ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! So really great to see you! Oh, not 'by the by' in the slightest. What a strange, nice phrase: 'by the by'. Really happy to hear that the Germany show went so well! Well, of course it did! Yes, my novel goes well too, and the film is going great guns, and we're really in the thick of it now. No obvious connection between the novel and film, no, but, as I mentioned here a while back, I think, this novel and my life du jour are very connected and double floodgate-like, so it's totally possible that the film experience could end up somehow in the novel. Man, so sweet to see you! Please be here as much as your life and wipedness and work and everything else allow. Love, me. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. God, she sounds like an ever-encroaching mess. I didn't even like 'The Swimming Pool Library'. I'm a hard-ass, ha ha. I don't know, the goals of that kind of writing where the conventional story is still treated like God in His throne and the writer concentrates on gussying up the throne just so utterly doesn't interest me. What's that saying: ' ... like putting lipstick on a pig'? 'A teenager getting his butt cheeks all torn to shreds by a razor': what in the world are you referring to, ha ha? ** Rewritedept, Sounds good: the scenario, context, etc. of you 'tbj' story. Deafheaven live would obviously be nice. Never seen that. Oh, no, no, you're not sending too many guess-posts. Au contraire! I need guest posts badly always, and yours always rule, so the more of them the more grateful I am and the more satisfied 'the customers', I'm sure. Thanks! Yeah, I've been really busy. Not sure what'll happen with the poem. I wrote it for someone, and I guess I'll try to figure out if it'll do the trick if it goes on show for general others. I'll try for a good Friday. It'll be busy in the really good way. Good luck making your day pony up. ** Okay. Today's post is entirely what it appears to be, as far as I can tell. Hope you like it. See you tomorrow.

call me Socrates. it make it easer to understand there’s gonna be a sense of pedagogy within this post. maybe some irony to create some distance. i guess, i’m trying to say don’t trust me. hopefully you will research everything i bring up. this will be presented in 4 stages. i hope it will brings you close to the outlook i have on this subject. i’ve exhausted days trying to bring you the proper way to express my interest.

can the obsession of youth reveal the hidden depths of being, of thought and history? is there a amalgamation when a well lived person attempts relating to a much younger life? can alchemy be achieved? or does it just offer better, more exotic, jerk off fantasies? is that one of the same?

anyway you look at it. whatever it is. it is very fun. please fall down the rabbit hole with me. please help me understand what is it these people do. all of it is a mystery to me.

i present to you magcon


——


stage 1: #Schema

these boys are so easy to fall in love with. hearts n shit. i think i can get along with all of them. one day i’m gonna meet them on the street and they will be so enthused i like them as much as i do! we will hang out on the beach and listen to music. i think they will like my tastes



Cameron Dallas Vine Compilation


Nash Grier Vine Compilation


Carter Reynolds Vine Compilation


A Day in the Life of Aaron Carpenter


Best of Shawn Mendes Vines


Best of Jack and Jack Vines (Jack Gilinsky and Jack Johnson)


Ultimate Matthew Espinosa Vine Compilation


Condom Challenge Taylor Caniff


DEM WHITE BOYZ


——


stage 2: connection

one day they will retweet me and they will follow me. we share so much in common! like they love tacos! I LOVE TACOS! the like good music. IVE LEARNED SO MUCH NEW MUSIC BECAUSE OF THEM! OH MY GOD! Cam just tweeted I’ll always like you. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH! but those other bitches need to get off my man.





twitters

Cameron Dallas

Carter Reynolds

Taylor Caniff

Jack Galinsky

Shawn Mendes

Nash Grier

Matthew Espinosa


——


stage 3: follow

I met so many cool people! i can only trust other magcon fans! there is just something about what they do that brings together cool people. i’ve been emailing someone in nyc who said i could stay with him when they tour. IM SO EXCITED! he lives in a one bedroom so it’s gonna be small. but just knowing he like magcon i know we will get along.

http://www.iphoneogram.com/u/890934555

http://thosemagconboys.weebly.com

http://www.pinterest.com/lestauff/magcon-boys/

http://mendesmerized.tumblr.com/post/80202413322/meeting-the-boys



~fan fiction

http://www.wattpad.com/33856527-catching-feelings-magcon-fanfiction-chapter-1


excerpt:

they gave me a group hug.

“i missed you so much!!! wow you look so different. I almost didn’t recognize you.” said payton

“awww i missed you too and thanks i guess”


http://www.wattpad.com/story/11000876-a-dream-come-true-magcon-fanfiction


“being a fangirl means forever dreaming and imaging meeting your idols. but when rose and her best friend journey does, it becomes so much more then she could ever had dreamed about


——


stage 4: show

I just got to nyc! the show ticket was $200. thats nothing to meet magcon! i hope they see me! i got the vip experience and i’m just so excited!!



first ever magcon houston TX


Making Cameron Dallas Dance


Water Chugging Competition


Magcon boys Being Silly on Stage


On Stage With the Magcon Boys & a trampoline


Magcon VIP Experience


My Magcon Experience


end


I hope this inspired to you research this “band”. it is very rewarding. i hope this enriched your day

love gary




*

p.s. Hey. Awesome writer/artist and d.l. and first time guest-host gary gray has concocted what I feel safe in saying I believe is a shoo-in weekend's worth of entertainment and exploration triggering for you in the form of the phenom, the wtf, the at once crystalized and yet mysterious Magcon. Why don't you read and click and de-puzzle-out his post accordingly. Sound good? And talk to Gary, why don't you too? Thanks a bunch. And, gg, man, what can I say? Big, big gratitude. ** Bitter69uk, Hey. Yeah, I did an initial clicking on that Exene stuff and stopped short pretty fast, not really wanting that cloud of latest developments within her brain to do a number on my memories and presumptions. Yikes. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, I don't know. Can't be, right? Floater quartz is indeed an extremely beautiful name/bait. Wow, you know, thank you! That's so kind and just ... wow! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I need to get and read that Rampo. I haven't, and he's great. Yeah, weird, depressing, weird, surprising as hell: the Exene stuff. Did you feel the earthquake I just read about? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. 'Boom!', ha ha, now that's a movie, not to mention a title. Did you feel that same earthquake that I just asked Mr. Berman about? You've written on the Vivian Maier doc! I so want to see that. Incredible story and incredible work. Awesome, I'll read what you wrote pronto. Everyone, the writer and d.l. who needs no introduction aka Mr, David Ehrenstein has reviewed the new documentary 'Finding Vivian Maier', which you may or may not know concerns the recent-ish discovery of the previously unknown and brilliant photographer VM, and it's an amazing story, and I'm dying to see that doc personally, and  blah blah, and what I'm meaning to say is that, obviously, I think you want to go read Mr. E's thoughts on the film for just all kind of reasons. It's here.** Cobaltfram, Cuh-cuh-cuh-Cobalt! Hm, doesn't have quite the same ring. Dude, you're back! It's been ages since you came back and then went mysterious again. Missed you, buddy! What's up with me? Tons. Yeah, you told me/us about the break up with Chad. I hope things have settled even a lot since then. Oh, shit, sorry about the L,B pass. But you sound squared away and strong. Are novels harder than non-fiction things of similar length/ambition? I guess that makes sense even though, for weird me, it's probably the opposite, as hard as novels are. It makes sense, yes: what you said. Novel goes very well, I think, I hope. Oh, yeah, this one is going to finish itself with my help and enter the world unlike the completely failed last/George one. The film I'm referring to is what used to be 'the porn film' and is now a film that works with the representation of explicit, pornographic sex, basically. Directed by Zac, (re-)written by me with input from Zac. It's happening. Casting is in progress, producers are on board, the money required is hopefully coming in very shortly. Yep, I'm still doing my thang here or maybe 'thanging my do' would be more accurate. The Bookwormhole is a good hole. Great! Recent reading by me ... I guess check my 'books I loved' post of several days back. Really busy, so I'm reading in spurts, and not enough. What have you read that you can talk about with passion? Anyway, yeah, sweet to see you. Stick around if you like and if that feels good, man. ** Rewritedept, Hi, C.  But that acoustic with drummer thing sounds exciting. Uh, recent mind-blowing music? Hm. Not entirely mind-blowing, but I got off on a afternoon-long revisit of late '80s and early 90s neo-psychedelia stuff yesterday. Known and less known stuff. That was cool. Might well do a related gig post here. Hoping to see a couple of gigs tonight and tomorrow via this weekend's Presences Electronique Festival if I can. Matmos & Christian Fennesz & a Bernard Parmagiani tribute thing tonight, and then Nurse with Wound and a couple of electronic dudes tomorrow. Might be a mind blow, if I make it. Oh, before I continue to keep forgetting, your 3rd guest-post will launch here next Thursday. And now you've sent me another one, you saintly type. Thank you ever so much! Thin Lizzy: I only know the obvious tunes, I think. Yeah, I mean, I like the obvious tunes. 'TBaBiT' is kind of an inarguable bit of pop/rock wonderment. Their deeper cuts are really good too? Weekend, mine: no auditions, that's next weekend. Related work, though. Those gigs. Hoping to get some intensive novel work done. A couple of meetings with in-town people I need to meet with. Should be a solid weekend. And yours? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Nice about the Gainsbourg 33 1/3 book. I know of it, of course, and I keep forgetting to actually get it. And I'll go see what Navid Nuur's show looks like, thanks! ** White tiger, Tiger! Aw, cool, thanks, pal! Oh, yeah, I asked Zac about the secret menu, and he was, like, 'Oh, yeah', and explained. I was/am thinking of testing out the French Chipotle by asking for at least a quesadilla as soon as this afternoon. Knowing there's a Chipotle here has changed my menu's landscape much more radically that the words Chipotle and menu could possibly indicate to an American given Paris's weak but getting better Mexican food landscape to date. The paycheck, not to mention your name on it: sweet! I have a Wii here, yeah, but, you know, I haven't even plugged it in to my TV monitor in maybe two years? Weird. I swore off video games while I was working on 'TMS' for conceptual reasons that I can't remember exactly, and I've never forced myself to break that rule for no real reason at all, and, hence, I haven't played a videogame properly in fucking ages, which is depressing. I'll plug it in this weekend and see if it still works. Joel got a Wii U for the LA pad, but, no, I haven't, obviously. What's your video game playing been like? Any tips to help get me back on track? ** Misanthrope, It's kind of like magic to me that writers can start with stories in mind. So foreign. Mine come infected as hell with problems, albeit exciting problems. Jesus, about you almost getting killed. Just reading that started to freak me out. Shit. I'd try to think up some advice to avoid that in the future, but there isn't any, is there? You're like a coin being eternally tossed down a wishing well, and so are we all. Fragile us. It's weird. Glad you're okay, huge duh. ** And with that, get (re)settled with Magcon and their vehicle aka Gary gray's lovely presentation, thank you, and have great weekends, and I will see you guys back here on Monday.

__________________

fuckkmoi, 20
I do not need to know your name, I need to know your beast ...Do not touch me or if you want, touch.

I do not use the word REJECTION ...Everyone's welcome to ...

We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.






_________________

last_boy_on_earth, 19
hello my name is Philip so i like my slave so i am the young bleak slave.
hello my slave how are you i like my slave.
im 18 not 19.








_____________________

Ruckus, 24
Well, I'm a tough boy. I havent been scared in a long time, and I really miss the adrenaline. So I wanna be tied up by a guy who knows how, and gagged so I cannot utter a word or get it off! Then I want to be scared to death. No safe word, no-one will know where I am. Then the chap or chaps who I have surrendered myself to, go a bit off the rails. Wether you decide to let me go or not is up to you. So there you have it. If the worst comes to the worst then so be it. Wether I go through with this or not depends on you - your message to me has got to be right - I will know it when I see it.





___________________

DeathBat, 21
I'm interested in slavers&masters. I'm slaver.

I'm not a good person to describe my self. but all i can say is "I am what you Think"





____________________

VERY_YOUNG_slave_slut_thing, 18
Before I go into detail, i need to warn you. I have no limits, and I am the MOST horniest boy you have ever met.

Okay well, as you know, I have no limits.

Okay so I am into Human experimentation (I will go into detail below).

Human Experimentation:

Okay, have you ever wanted to do some sexual experimentation, but not to yourself?

Well, thats what I’m offering, you tell me the experiment, and I will conduct them on my body.

This can be used for real research or just for your amusement/pleasure. I will then provide you with either live footage (cam) or picture/video of the experiment.

Some samples could be:

- What happens if you eat nothing but your own shit for a week?

- Does your piss/shit taste/smell any different if you eat a lot of a type of food?

Yes, I am available for private or group cam sessions. I can be a long term cam slave, so get ready to use me and abuse me. I will only cam with the people that have the most hardcore ideas.

I hate boring people.







____________________

Like2beConquered, 21
If you can find me my old master(( his name is Eric and on here he was/is mspmaster or something like that)) I will do anything for you.





____________________

findbigcocks, 22
hey I'm from Glendale, I don't care about your age or your race, anything I don't care. I'm just looking for someone to shove their cock in either of my holes. I've just moved out from my parents for the first time . . so I'm glad I don't have them breathing down my neck anymore. My fantasy: Being put into chastity for so long so that my useless dick become unable to erect anymore. That way I will become a perfect bottom that cum only through his cunt.






__________________

Artist, 23
I'm looking for an artistic daddy.

I feel like I am looking for someone unique, someone with a specific intelligence and imagination that i believe is rare.

I like creativity. I had a guy once put 2 drumsticks in my ass because he thought it was funny. I live that kind of creativity. I encourage you to put a carrot in my ass and an apple in my mouth.

Last thing, I can come quick sometimes, so daddy should be able to take his time before letting me come.





____________________

TAKEMEDESTROYME, 20
NOT INTERSTING FAGGOTS MASTERS
.NOT REALY NOT STAY HERE
ONLY BODY

NO
.NNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNO






_________________

Wantbadly, 19
I've never tried anything!

My EYES can HYPNOTIZED anyone that looks at it!

If you can't say something nice, stick my ASS in your mouth and shut up!







_________________

GMUWHO, 21
I'm seeking an online Master to remotely manage my electrically enhanced Dreamlover 2000 Pro male management unit. If you would be interested in zapping someone's nuts with a click of your mouse then drop me a line.

English major at GMU, but doing PW&R—so there's hope, right? Right‽‽‽‽ Yes, I just used an interrobang. And I also broke a grammar rule by using more than *two* exclamation/question marks to convey emotion.







____________________

KrazySubBoy, 18
Red Head dyed black with a nice pink hole if you're white or maybe yellow/hung and love to go deep purple.






__________________

iwillobey, 21
Im a mma fighter and personal trainer and feel like most of my life is in my control at all time. Im looking for someone to take 100% control of me in the bedroom. A total slave to them. I want to please them in every way possible. I dont want to be in any control. Im open to it all except being bled to death. Bled almost to death is hot, but bled all the way to death freaks me out.





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Ihavealways, 19
Here for one day and tommorow I need a spanking. And I want to eat your ass.






____________________

destroyme, 24
bottom worthless ,passive naieve ,vunreable ,unstable depress24/7, alchoholic sucidal

looking to meet hard extreme violent dominant sadistic murderrer only.

if you need a guy you can slowly fuck with the head off and watch your work turn him into object that nonexsists purely for your sick pleasure ,genuine only

everyone iever known will thank you





____________________

GrantMeIsolation, 23
This boy is ready to embark on a journey. This boy is looking for permanent enslavement. This boy doesn't want a job. This boy doesn't want a social life. This boy is looking for all the freedoms and responsibilities a pet has: none.

As previously stated, this boy is looking for permanence. This boy wants to go into his situation knowing that he will never be returning to the outside world. This boy is not a criminal, nor is this boy running from anyone or anything. This boy simply knows what he wants, and knows that major things must be sacrificed in order to attain his aspirations.

This boy wishes to be transformed through hypnosis, brain washing, sensory deprivation, brain surgery/damage, major body and cosmetic surgery or whatever his owner requires into an animal (dog or horse maybe) who has no responsibility and no capacity to make decisions. Once the transformation begins, the boy NEVER leaves. That's it!






______________________

BreakMyNose, 24
break my nose, blacken my eye, leave me with a hole that anyone can slide anything into, and i'll know you love me.





____________________

Rainbowrider, 22
Been messing with my hole ever since I discovered it. Very insatiable and talkative boycunt (big toys, fisting, air farting etc.) here. If the chem is right, cunt muscle tearing and destruction until permanent slop/gape up for discussion. I have discovered that I will only be truly happy when this has happened.





____________________

Flaws, 18
breath in air and you will never breath out water, try to take the painful truth than to believe lies that burden your personality

let's just say
im not totally
normal,,

i do always say that
praise the angel that trade his
wing and halo for a horn and tail,,
you know who em i talking about?
yup ^^ yup its satan

i choose not to be
an ugly beast that all of you scared off
but a beautiful swan that scared to all
of you..,,

i value my ass as the most precious treasure i have..
i hate it being criticize
but i love everything else of me being criticize,,
i just love exploring new things.

i do still believe in anything that are impossible in reality.
i have dark fantasies in my head,,
i like to share these with other pervs
before and during them eating my shit.

thats right im a slave who wants a master
who loves,, needs,, CRAVES to eat my shit.
i'm not weird,,
i just want to be unique

and that's the end of my confession





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about_the_whore, 19
I've watched the porn a lot and my best friend is really into it as well. He is straight but he kind of showed me a little about it. He spanked me and he tied me up and left me while he played video games so I think it's really hot. Seek Master 58-80 years old.





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Willing2mate, 20
Love being fucked like a dirtly little slut by rutheless top guys, wether your a pig, a daddy, a bear any kind of guy really any kind of age unless your a creepy overwight small cocked weird old guy or or fem. Otherwise everyone who's kinky, filthy, raunchy and loves to smash their cock hard as they can/like into a boy hole until its a funicular pile of raw meat* sticking out of my stuppid slave ass can organise something.

* i use to have one of my dogs sleep in my room when i was a kid, and wheni was about 12 thats when i started jacking off, so i decided id let my dog lick my cock and my hole and one time my dog got so into it he bited and chewed up my hole so bad i had to be rush to the hospital and my parents freaked out and put the dog to sleep and i loved it.






*

p.s. Hey. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thanks so much for speaking to Gary and his post. ** Cobaltfram, I was thinking the problem was the 'c' versus the 'd', but there was this famous song when I was a kid that went 'Kuh-Kuh-Kuh Katie / beautiful Katie ...', so I guess it's the hard 'balt' versus the soft 'ennis'? Yeah, the 'ready' issue, that's interesting. I think for me, I have no idea when non-fiction is finished or ready because it never completely belongs to me. So the prose's finish is always blurry. Well, everybody in the world loves 'Swann's Way', don't they? Seem like it. I liked 'Concrete Island', but it's been decades since I read it, so who knows? Sure, I like Gass a lot. Everything I've read by him. He's pretty terrific. I have zero interest in seeing 'Nymphomaniac', and I'll be shocked if change my mind about that. I don't think I know what 'The Great Beauty' is, at least while at the level of consciousness I am at the moment, but I'll search for it and see what's what. That's cool, whenever you can/want to post/hang out would be awesome. Why is your schedule erratic? ** David Ehrenstein, Good morning. That Ewert thing: ugh. I guess the aftershocks are still happening? I always really liked LA earthquakes. They're kind of profound somehow. My fave Warhol book by far is his novel 'A'. I think it's amazing and very, very underrated. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Didion is so fucking good. I'm actually very gradually reading 'The Last Thing He Wanted' right now, which I think is thought to be a lesser book by her, and, whether or not, her writing is just so great. My condolences to you about your grandmother. I'm so sorry. I hope the wake and funeral pass un-painfully and meaningfully. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. Just so you know, I'm with you on those insane, meta-parking/no parking signs. Picked up that 33 1/3 Gainsbourg this weekend in fact, so ... cool! ** Marilyn Roxie, Hi Marilyn! 'Very interesting to repurpose the 'boy band' concept in this way': really well put, and I totally agree. ** Rewritedept, Thanks for the link to the GbV show. I know it, I guess of course. Nice set. And '96 show at the Whisky vid too. I was there that night, although I don't think the top or back of my head makes an appearance. My favorite Thin Lizzy-related thing is a track on the first, great Johnny Thunders album where Lynott, Thunders, and Steve Marriott trade vocals on one track. Mostly '90s neo-psych, so post-Paisley Underground. I made the related gig, so I guess you'll see/hear. I've heard Sproton Layer, yes. It's been a while, but I remember it being quite interesting. Still have not seen 'GBH', it's crazy. This week for absolutely sure. Got writing done this weekend, yeah. It was good. Stuff, this and that. This week: co-writing w/ Zac the film Gisele is going to direct, prep for the weekend's auditions for Z's and my film, novel, friends, I don't know. Should be good. Hope your Monday is magical too, and that it infects the follow six days according, dominos-style. ** Gary gray, The man! Hi, G. Thanks so much, buddy. You excited and bewildered and enlightened the folks, and that's kind of the holy triumvirate of responses. My vibes weren't killed, at least, no worries. Everything is good to know, you know? ** Steevee, Hi. I guess it's a conceptual project, or post-conceptual, or inadvertently conceptual, or something. Huh, I've never gotten why people revere Verhoeven as a filmmaker. I've tried, read all the essays, heard the reasonings proffered by admiring friends, re-watched some of his films, but nah. I remain in the camp that thinks his stuff is made in such a way that accidentally, or at least semi-accidentally, encourages conspiracy theorizing or something. I imagine that I'm just missing the true boat, but there it is. I will read your review when it's public and try again. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oops, oh well, 'next'/this week is near and here at least. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Yeah, funny and great that fiction can start and be desired from such seemingly oppositional mindsets without any right or wrong. Art has the capacity to totally rule, and it often does. Semi-often. Often enough. ** Okay. This time of the month = that kind of post, and there it is, what do you know? May you be swept away in your own unique ways by the guys' things until I see you tomorrow.

"I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.” -- Raymond Chandler

"This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings."-- Joan Miro

"The time of a cigarette is a parenthesis, and if it is shared, you are both in that parenthesis."-- John Berger













Cigarettes in contemporary art: Jac Leirner 'Lung', Yang Yongliang 'Cigarette Ash Landscape', Tom Wesselmann 'Smoking Cigarette', Richard Prince 'Untitled (man's hand with cigarette)', Xu Bing 'Tobacco Project', Marcel Duchamp 'Couverture-Cigarette (Stripped-Down Cigarette Tobacco)', Chris Jordan 'Toxic Forest', Julian Opie 'Ruth with Cigarette 3', Jon Pylypchuk 'Cigarettes', Pavel Büchler 'Work (All the cigarette breaks)', Robert Larson 'Quantum Marlboro', Chris Jordan 'Running the Numbers, An American Self Portrait (2006-2007)', Wilhelm Sasnal 'Girl Smoking (Anka)', Roy Lichtenstein 'Cigarette', Maria Nordman 'Filmroom, Smoke', Donna Conlon 'Step on a Crack', Camilo Rojas 'Flavor', Paul Erschen "Newport Room', ...














Cigarettes is identified by Harry Mathews as his only "purely Oulipian novel." Its method of composition has not be revealed beyond a statement that it is based on a "permutation of situations".

'During this time, I decided to write an Oulipian novel. And I created this abstract scheme of permutations of situations in which A meets B, B meets C, and so forth. There’s no point in looking for it now because no one will ever figure it out, including me.'-- Harry Mathews

'In the Oulipo, there are two schools of thought. People like Calvino and Perec said that the author should acknowledge the methods he’s been using. And the other clan, which included Raymond Queneau and myself, thinks it’s much better not to let on, because this will keep the reader straining to find out.'-- Harry Mathews

INTERVIEWER: Cigarettes... Why that title?
HARRY MATHEWS: The question, “Why is the book called Cigarettes?” is a question that should be asked.

















'Jessica Price was assaulted in the street by Carl Powell, who attempted to strangle her and dragged her to a remote spot to kill her. But she asked to share his cigarette, which convinced him not to harm her. After the 23-year-old called police to report her ordeal, she learned that he had killed another young woman in almost identical circumstances just a month earlier. She had recently returned from travelling overseas and was enjoying a reunion with friends on the night of the attack. Although the evening did not wrap up until 3am, she decided to walk the 40 minutes to the family home alone, as she was very familiar with the route. She listened to her iPod on the walk, but when she noticed a stranger catching up with her she turned down the volume in order to be on the alert. Seconds later he lunged at her, wrapping his hands around her neck and throttling her. 'I noticed he was smoking a cigarette,' she says, 'and with the little breath I had left inside me, I managed to say "Can I have a drag?" I don't usually smoke, but I asked for a drag, if only so he could see I had something in common with him. He gave me a drag and even apologised for scaring me. After a while, I just said to him, "Look, you're headed in the same direction as me. Let's walk together".' He clutched her hand as they started walking back up to the main road, with Mr Price making a mental note of where Powell dropped his cigarette butt. 'I told him I needed to get home as my mum would be frantic. Then he said to me, "At least feel what you're doing to me," and he shoved my hand down his trousers. I squirmed as he smiled. I thought quickly and said, "But we shared a cigarette!" That seemed to confuse him, and he let me go. "You're right," he said, almost sheepishly. Then I escaped. I hope he burns in hell.''-- Daily Mail













'The flip-top cigarette pack is one of the most successful pieces of packaging design in history. Tank Books pay homage to this iconic form by employing it in the service of great literature. We have launched a series of books designed to mimic cigarette packs – the same size, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane. The titles are by authors of great stature – classic stories presented in classic packaging; objects desirable for both their literary merit and their unique design. Titles: Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness", Ernest Hemingway "The Undefeated" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", Franz Kafka "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony", Rudyard Kipling "The Man Who Would Be King", "The Phantom Rickshaw" and "Black Jack", Robert Louis Stevenson "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", Leo Tolstoy "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and "Father Sergius".'-- Tank Books













Irving Penn






'Candy cigarettes predispose children who play with them to smoke the real things later, new research concludes. The look-alikes made of candy or gum are marketing and advertising tools that desensitize kids and open them moreso to the idea of smoking later on, says study leader Jonathan Klein of the University of Rochester. Candy cigarettes cannot be considered simply as candy, Klein said. The study is the first to show a statistical link between a history with fake cigarettes and adult experiences with real smokes—22 percent of current or former smokers had also regularly consumed candy cigarettes, while only 14 percent of those who have never smoked had eaten or played with candy cigarettes often or very often. Candy cigarettes reportedly have been restricted or banned in Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, among other countries. Legislative bans also have been proposed in several U.S. states and in New York City over the years, but all these failed except in North Dakota where a ban stood from 1953 until it was repealed in 1967. In the United States, candy cigarettes are typically sold next to bubble gum and trading cards, but some retailers refuse to sell them. For instance, Wal-Mart bans the sale of tobacco and tobacco look-alike products to minors in its stores nationwide.'-- livescience.com


















"Did the game of stealing please many? Here, on the other side, they were in sync, their bowls of muesli crooning to the sidelong bats of evening, and then they were let out to smoke a cigarette in the meadow."-- John Ashbery

"We sure live in a bizarre and furious galaxy, but now it’s up to us to make it into an environment for maps to sidle up to, as trustingly as leeches. Heck, put us on the map, while you’re at it. That way we can smoke a cigarette, and stay and sway, shooting the breeze with night and her swift promontories."-- John Ashbery

"There is a great deal on the ground today, not just mud, but things of some importance, too. Like, silver paint. How do you feel about it? And, is this a silver age? Yeah. I suppose so. But I keep looking at the cigarette burns on the edge of the sink, left over from last winter. Your argument's neatly beyond any paths I'm likely to take, here, or when I eventually leave here."-- John Ashbery














Cigarettes in the feed: History's Dumpster: Forgotten Cigarette Brands, Bird Starts Fire With Cigarette, Burns House, My Strange Addiction: Eating Cigarette Ashes, Check Out These Weird Russian Cigarette Brands That Target Young Girls, Cigarette Butts Help Bird Nests Repel Parasites, Patent: Cheese-Filter Cigarette, Camel “Crush” cigarettes spray menthol from internal capsule, Electronic cigarette explodes in man's face, blows out his teeth, part of tongue, ‘Vaping’ culture ridiculous, Tobacco advertising in the 1920s was weird, Cigarette Smoke Tricks, Cigarette-Smoking Monkey Weds Fellow Primate, Would You Drink Tobacco Flavored Vodka?, Medicinal uses of tobacco in history, Polar Cigarette Cards, Dad’s plea to litterbugs fuelling son’s cigarette butt habit, The Cigarette Century, School allows kids fag breaks to stop them bunking off, "Fu King" Smoke Shop Name Has Residents Fuming, Artist creates Brad Pitt portrait using cigarette ash, Smoking While Pregnant May Lead To Gay Babies, ...












'In Cigarettes are Sublime, that great elegy to smoking, Richard Klein predicts a time when there are no smokers left anywhere in the world: 'What was once the unique prerogative of the most refined and futile dandies, having become the luxury of billions of people, may abruptly vanish. Will anything have been lost? On the day when some triumphant 'antitabagist' crushes under his heel the last cigarette manufactured on the face of the earth, will the world have any reason to grieve, perhaps to mourn the loss of a cultural institution, a social instrument of beauty, a wand of dreams?' Well, something will have been lost - the entire 20th-century movie canon for a start. Can you think of any good movies without smoking in them? March of the Penguins, anyone? If you discount historical films such as Barry Lyndon or Ben-Hur, a diet of non-smoking films would be almost unwatchable. But what would be most tragically lost are the great black-and-white smoking films of the 1940s - Casablanca, Now, Voyager, The Big Sleep - where wreaths of smoke are an essential and beautiful part of the cinematography, and where smoking quite clearly stands for sex. All these symbolic nuances will be lost once smoking is abolished. Already, I think they are being distorted as modern audiences view smoking with new, health-conscious sensibilities. There is a great scene in The Graduate when Mrs Robinson draws on her cigarette just before Benjamin suddenly kisses her. She holds the smoke in until the kiss is finished and then exhales, with just the slightest hint of contempt. At the time (and to me still), it seemed the ultimate proof of her sophistication, but I suppose to modern, non-smoking audiences it just seems disgusting.'(cont.)-- Lynn Barber
















Q:Why do a lot of writers and musicians smoke cigarettes?

A: Stress. Unfathomable, breathing down your neck stress.
A: That, and usually some sort of a death wish, but in a very odd sense. Or even a wish to have some control over your own destiny.
A: Because contrary to popular belief, creating art, literature, and music does not come easy. Creating something of actual relevance and substance is often an intensive struggle, and can inadvertently create a lot of stress. Some even go as far as to say that any good artist must suffer.
A: Because artists like to be intoxicated in one way or another. Perception is everything in their line of work.
A: Nicotinic receptors in the brain. Nicotine helps to stimulate the neuro-muscular junction. It also helps to stimulate awareness and short term memory function.
A: smoking has always been an intellectual activity. historically, the smoking of tobacco to the smoking of fine herb was done by someone with at least enough knowledge to identify usable plants, usable parts of plants, and proper preparation of herb to make it smokable. my guess is this is primarily because the psychoactive effects smoking of certain substances has on the mind puts one in a adjacent state of mind to normal states of conciousness. This juxtaposition in the mind creates friction between the two experienced states, allowing for interesting thoughts, feelings, and perceptions to be formed. These effects could easy be seen as going hand in hand with the goals desired by writers and musicians. Since smoking weed is illegal and cigarettes are legal and highly addictive, it makes sense that writers and musicians would utilize cigarettes to help create desirable states of mind for the creative process.
A: cuz lower/middle-class life sucks.












How to inhale a tornado:'The trick works best with a hookah, so fill the hookah's cone with tobacco just as you would with weed. Do not put anything in your base except water. Milk will ghost it and cause mold even if you clean it. A few ice cubes and cold water means less flavor but a potential for thicker clouds. Use shisha with a high glycerine content, like fantasia. Use a vortex, phunnel, or bowl that stops the juices from dripping into the base. Manage your heat well and you should get thicker clouds. Another option is to skip the hookah and use an electronic cigarette, or personal vaporizer. If you use an eLiquid that's high in vegetable glycerine on a low-resistance device, you produce very thick clouds of vapor that are slightly heavier than air. In any case, whether using the e-cigarette or hookah method, take a huge drag and hold it in your lungs. Basically, let out the smoke slowly from your mouth directly onto a flat surface. If it's milky the smoke will just sit on the table top. Make sure the table is clean and it should be cold. Also don't forget to make sure theres no air current (fans). Basically your face has to be touching the table to be able to get a nice plane. You can also freeze a marble slab and chill the smoke by breathing it into a frozen beer mug then pour it on the marble. The smoke will sit low and react like this. Then in a fluid motion slide your hand (in a karate chop position) through the smoke and raise it quickly. You can rotate your finger above the vortex to get a better tornado but after awhile you can get good enough where you don't need to. I shit you not the entire plane of smoke shot up vertically into a perfectly cylindrical 1.5 inch diameter vortex about an inch off the table. We just looked at each other in awe afterwards to confirm that we weren't tripping and just freaked the fuck out. Craziest shit I've ever seen. This is a marvelous form of sorcery.'-- trees


















“He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.” -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"Tobacco, divine, rare, super excellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosophers' stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases ... but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul."-- Robert Burton

"The smoke is inhaled very sharply and the teeth are bared. Then the head turns to give you a profile and the smoke is exhaled slowly and deliberately and the grey jet stream becomes a beautiful blue cloud of smoke. What are they trying to tell us?"-- Jeffrey Bernard









*

p.s. Hey. ** Zach, Hi, Zach! Yeah, the Magcon thing is very mobius/Escher/black hole/multi-headed svengali. They beg to be the setting of a meta-novel or a French theorist's tome. Ha ha, Ruckus, I know, ouch. I'm so glad you're here, and yeah, as often as possible would be way sweet, obviously. So, what's up and going on in your head and world? ** David Ehrenstein, Morning. Oh, yes, I've seen the hyperbolic US press stuff. Well, here's the real deal as best I understand it. First, the new Paris mayor is a plus re: Hollande since she's Socialist, so she/that is not a problem at all. The thing is, these were regional elections in which towns and cities elected new mayors, essentially. It wasn't a mid-term election/ congress type thing. The UMP, which is the French equivalent of the Republican party but without the Tea Party element, did well, no surprise, given that Hollande is very unpopular. As for the FN (National Front), whose name is singlehandedly generating the US press's textual hysteria, candidates from their party were elected mayor in 11 French towns, most of them very small towns, and only one of which I had ever even heard of before. That's not good, obviously, but think about this way: if there was an FN party in the US, there would hundreds of small US towns with FN/far right mayors. If the Tea Party, which is basically the American FN without official party status, were a bonafied political party, ditto. Prior to that election, there were FN mayors in 4 French towns, and it went up to 11. That's what happened. Hollande has had to shuffle his 'cabinet' and replace the Prime Minister because the Socialists didn't do so great and because the French government always does that when their party does less than stellar in the regional elections. So, the FN is gaining popularity, yes, and the press, even here in France, knows a scary story that they can forefront, play with, filter through scare tactics, etc. when they see one. Long story short, Hollande is unpopular. Thus, the middle- and far-right wing parties are benefitting, the left wing parties are benefitting (they did better in the regional elections than they ever have before too, which, of course, the US press isn't even mentioning), and the Socialist party is suffering. France slides from middle left to middle right all the time, just like the US does. The incremental success of FN in that election is ugly, but that success in and of itself does not mean the country of France is turning to the Far Right in some broad sense. Headlines proclaiming such, and even the less doom-enhanced ones I've seen like 'Far-Right National Front Drubs President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party' (Huffington Post), are bullshitty and very spun. ** Sypha, Hi, I haven't read 'Blue Nights'. I have it. McCullers is great. I haven't read 'Clock Without Hands'. I'd love to know what you think of it. That Liberace Fan Club thing is very sweet to think about. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. I read a little bit about 'The Great Beauty'. Sounds curious. I'll check to see if it gets a release here. Ah, full time at the job, right, I see. That would fill up the schedule for sure. Nice about the new money, though. And the city adjustment period makes sense and seems natural. Even shifting from LA to Paris was a super adjustment for me, writing-wise. What if they say they've never read Proust at all? Does that help qualify or help disqualify them? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, cool, I'm glad you're reading the Mikesch and liking it so far. What's your day like? Shit, yes, RIP: Frankie Knuckles. I just saw that awful news a moment before I started the p.s. Very sad. He was killer. ** Steevee, Hey. Yeah, I know Verhoeven's Dutch films, or most of them. I like some of them pretty well, 'The Fourth Man' especially. I guess not enough to see them as founts of developing genius or anything. I mean, early Von Trier is pretty good too. Early Wolfgang Petersen too, for that matter. I just don't get or don't buy, I guess, the line of thought whereby 'Showgirls' or 'Hollow Man' or 'Starship Troupers' are meta-critiques, etc. I just think that take on his work involves a whole lot of reading-in, projection, imaginative input, etc. And I've never read an interview with Verhoeven that proves he's doing all that stuff consciously, only interviews in which he nods his head with his mouth when interviewers suggest his work has that multi-facet. I have heard Strypes, yeah. Maybe I feel about them like you do. The way their stuff is locked-in with the '60s model is kind of fun, but their conservatism doesn't interest me, and their fan base seems fueled by some kind of wish to feel nostalgia for something they were too young to experience and have heavily romanticized or something. I think there's charm there, etc., but there were enough dimensions to make me go past the testing phase with them. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, I don't know what Artist wants either. I guess that's what intrigued me about his text. I mainly like the confusing spaces and hinted/undeveloped aspects of those slave texts, I guess. Or something. Thank you for paying such good attention to them. That always makes me happy. Snow, wow. We've made it into an identifiable spring over here without having had a bit of snow. Sad. ** Rewritedept, Uh, yeah, I stayed for the encores, Oh, gosh, I've seen GbV and/or Pollard sans GbV a lot. I don't think I could count those times up, at least at the moment. Hope the jamming with your drummer went good. Do you literally 'jam' with him? Does 'jam' still mean what it did when the Grateful Dead did it? Ha ha, Steve Marriott is so incredibly not from Yes, ha ha, that's hilarious. Lindo, cool. Gracias in theoretical advance. ** Misanthrope, Art can definitely save the artists. I'm not sure if it can save anyone else. Well, wait, of course it can. *raises my hand*. I always write in fragments even when they're not fragments. I agree with you that those four actresses are guaranteed amazing no matter the circumstance in which they are doing their things. ** Okay. Do you like Cigarettes Day? My idea is that you don't have to like cigarettes to like their Day, but maybe it would help? I don't know. See you tomorrow.

How do you write something like this? Those of you who have been commenting on this blog and/or reading it for a while will know d.l. Jheorgge. He commented on and contributed to the blog for a long time, almost daily for a few years. He last commented here in August of 2013 to share some of his work and give us what seemed to be tentatively promising if unsettling news about his battle with lymphoma, which he had been diagnosed with not so very long before then. Jheorgge's real name was George Michael Taylor, and he was a writer and artist. Very horribly, I was told yesterday by a close friend of his that he passed away a few days ago. I only met George in person twice, once in London, and once in Glasgow, and we had of course necessarily far too brief visits and conversations on those occasions, but I knew him well and loved him a lot because we had talked and shared so much here, and so our in-persons were very sweet, and he was an incredible, lovely, very talented guy. This news is so sad, and there are no words for it. But I want to pay tribute him here in some way, so I've gone back and gathered together all the contributions he made to the blog that I could find, and I'm sharing them with you below.


___________________

from Self-Portrait Day: My Halloween Costume, October 29, 2011





http://twitter.com/#!/philipghostuhh



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from Favorite Books Lists, as devised by some readers and distinguished locals of DC's, October 12, 2011


'A Clockwork Orange'– Anthony Burgess
'A Crackup at the Race Riots'– Harmony Korine
'Actual Air'– David Berman
'Anarchy of the Imagination' (Fassbinder interviews & essays collection)
'Chroma'– Derek Jarman
Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
'Deathtripping'– Jack Sargeant (collection focussing on the Cinema of Transgression)
'Elective Affinities'– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
'Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said'– Philip K. Dick
Francesca Woodman, 1992 Scalo publication of photographs w/ Philippe Sollers introduction
'Franny & Zooey'– JD Salinger
'From Hell'– Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell
'Gerhard Richter October 18th, 1977'– ed. Robert Storr
'Giles Goat-Boy'– John Barth
'Good Morning, Midnight'– Jean Rhys
'Guide'– William Eggleston
'HARPO SPEAKS!'– Harpo Marx
'Herzog on Herzog'
'Infinite Jest'– David Foster Wallace
'La-Bas'– J.K. Huysmans
'Le Grand Meaulnes'– Alain-Fournier
'Lynch on Lynch'
'My Loose Thread'– Dennis Cooper
'Notes on the Cinematographer'– Robert Bresson
'On Nietzsche'– Georges Bataille
'Our Lady of the Flowers'– Jean Genet
'Passacaglia'– Robert Pinget
'Period'– Dennis Cooper
Peter Greenaway: Interviews collection
'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'– James Joyce
'Project for a Revolution in New York'– Alain Robbe-Grillet
Projections 11: New York issue (interviews with New York filmmakers)
'Ray's a Laugh'– Richard Billingham
'Selected Poems'– James Tate
'Stoner'– John Williams
'Story of the Eye'– Georges Bataille
'The Atrocity Exhibition'– J.G. Ballard
'The Bad Son'– Harmony Korine
'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency'– Nan Goldin
'The Basketball Diaries'– Jim Carroll
'The Confidence Man'– Herman Melville
'The Notebook'– Agota Kristof
'The Perfect Childhood'– Larry Clark
'The Theatre & its Double'– Antonin Artaud
'The Weaklings'– Dennis Cooper
'The White Hotel' - D.M. Thomas
Time Out Film Guide 9th edition, 2000
'Topology of a Phantom City'– Alain Robbe-Grillet
'True Norwegian Black Metal'– Peter Beste
'Wittgenstein's Mistress'– David Markson
'Writings of the Vienna Actionists'– Gunter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkogler



____________________

a video created by and featuring Jheorgge, April 11, 2011



SUM DUM STOREY UF WUN DUM FUK'N RABBITT (2011)



____________________

for Writers Day, August 9, 2008

I get into things kinda obsessively so, like to the point where I suffer multiple stab wounds off the saturation point and am left for dead in my bed while my inspiring whatever has am-scrayed.

So my writing ends up being inconsistent, or it has so far cause I'm really just sucking up whatever style and content is fascinating me at the time and dropping it down on paper.

I think this makes me feel like a charlatan a little, or mebbes dilettantish but I think it's alright really cause out of all the obsessions writing and all it's opportunities and perversions and dead forests has never grown stale (unlike the corpse in the washing machine).

I've sent in two really recent features I did for the UK based music magazine Plan B, both of which I enjoyed doing a lot.

The other pieces are fragments from a series of poems titled 'Black Metal Hospital' that I'm in the middle of writing. They are based on some recent trips to Ward 8 at the Western General Hospital here in Edinburgh, reimagined through the blunt prism of a fifteen-year old boy who lives only for True Norwegian Black Metal music and silent comedy.








_________________

from David Lynch Day, July 19, 2008





'Fred Madison/Pete Dayton (for The Weaklings)'

by Humors



_________________

from The Best of Me According to Some of You, June 13, 2008


reckless, my fist
in his throat now,
face leaky, embar-
rassed and pleading,
zoned, urinating
all over himself.

jerk off, come,
pay, and he's split-
ting, says, "hey,
thanks a whole fuck-
ing lot," like it's
a joke, like he isn't.

-'Some Whore'



____________________

from Self-Portrait Day: I, Xmas Present, December 14, 2007


I uploaded an MP3 of 'Coptic Light' by Morton Feldman. Here's the direct link.


I also wanted to offer this youtube link of Sonic Youth demolishing a piano -





and finally 'Bertie's Christmas Eve' by Saki. Here's the first part -

It was Christmas Eve, and the family circle of Luke Steffink, Esq., was aglow with the amiability and random mirth which the occasion demanded. A long and lavish dinner had been partaken of, waits had been round and sung carols; the house-party had regaled itself with more caroling on its own account, and there had been romping which, even in a pulpit reference, could not have been condemned as ragging. In the midst of the general glow, however, there was one black unkindled cinder.
    Bertie Steffink, nephew of the aforementioned Luke, had early in life adopted the profession of ne'er-do-weel; his father had been something of the kind before him. At the age of eighteen Bertie had commenced that round of visits to our Colonial possessions, so seemly and desirable in the case of a Prince of the Blood, so suggestive of insincerity in a young man of the middle-class. He had gone to grow tea in Ceylon and fruit in British Columbia, and to help sheep to grow wool in Australia. At the age of twenty he had just returned from some similar errand in Canada, from which it may be gathered that the trial he gave to these various experiments was of the summary drum-head nature. Luke Steffink, who fulfilled the troubled role of guardian and deputy-parent to Bertie, deplored the persistent manifestation of the homing instinct on his nephew's part, and his solemn thanks earlier in the day for the blessing of reporting a united family had no reference to Bertie's return.
    Arrangements had been promptly made for packing the youth off to a distant corner of Rhodesia, whence return would be a difficult matter; the journey to this uninviting destination was imminent, in fact a more careful and willing traveller would have already begun to think about his packing. Hence Bertie was in no mood to share in the festive spirit which displayed itself around him, and resentment smouldered within him at the eager, self-absorbed discussion of social plans for the coming months which he heard on all sides. Beyond depressing his uncle and the family circle generally by singing "Say au revoir, and not good-bye," he had taken no part in the evening's conviviality. ----Eleven o'clock had struck some half-hour ago, and the elder Steffinks began to throw out suggestions leading up to that process which they called retiring for the night.

"read the rest"



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2 photos of Jheorgge from a performance of 'Kindertotenlieder' in Glasgow, May 28, 2007



(l. to r.) Rigby, Jheorrge, Wolf, Emma Mackay, Atheist



(l. to r.) Emma Mackay, Wolf, Jheorgge



___________________

from Self-Portrait Day: My Dead, April 28, 2007


'Looking at a photograph of a gravestone with yr name on it is a pretty immersive mental experience I find. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially to any ghosts. I recently read an interview with Jennifer Herrema from Royal Trux, where she stated that when the group were released from their contract by Virgin records in the late 90's, the reason given was "too many notes, too confusing. Children need something to rollerskate to." I'd like that to be carved onto my gravestone/ e-stone/ torso when I'm kaput.'






__________________

from Naked Self-Portrait Day, January 30, 2007







I only like my body when it's giving me pain.



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Jheorgge's last comment, August 6, 2013

hey dennis, this is a beautiful day, just as a tribute to the genius of bresson alone. it's an exciting thing to see yr digging into his work for novel inspiration, although I know he's never far from yr thoughts (or mine really).

life update, if that's cool - my lymphoma seems to be cleared up but I know have this rare disease called HLH which I had never heard of and seems to usually affect infants. I've moved to London which is proving to be a pain because the treatment for this HLH is another 2 months worth of chemo and then a stem cell transplant from my sister, and the commute to the hospital, as well as the fact that I can barely walk (!) is proving to make life pretty hard. I'm also alone in my flat all day trying to distract myself. I wrote and finished a new story that I'm happy with - it's called 'A Goat-Fucked Causality', if anybody wants to read it, the link is here - http://jheorggemichaeltaylor.tumblr.com/post/57504647131 or A Goat-Fucked Causality. It's on my tumblr for now.

anyhow, i'm gonna try and soldier on through this time, get better, less angsty. ug. sorry to be the bearer of bad news so often lately man. love to you, and like everyone else i'm sending heavy deep sleep thoughts to yr parisian loft, and dreams that inspire.

jheorgge x



_____________________

3 drawings by Jheorgge, August 6, 2013


Headbanger’s Ball



Oh Fuck Something Is Wrong (AS USUAL)



Ghost Pagoda



____________________

Jheorgge's tumblr: go 2 hell (A Vestal Sinner in the Cave)
Jheorgge's blog: black metal hospital
Jheorgge's Favorite Albums
Jheorgge's Photostream @ Flickr
Jheorgge @ Facebook




*

p.s. Hey. Sad day. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. I always like when someone I meet hasn't had the input of something obvious or something whose input is considered to be a standard or a must. My immediate impression or illusion is that they could be made differently, and it makes me interested. It sounds like 'The Great Beauty' must have long since come and gone here, theater release-wise. I'll look elsewhere, thank you. My writing goes very well. I work on the novel pretty much every day, all the time, and, so far, I can do that and work on my other projects (film, theater) without a particular problem. ** Huskerdont, Oh, Emma, I'm heartbroken, and, yes, I read your message yesterday, and you see what the post is today. I hope you're holding up as best you can. I'll write to you today. It's just so terrible, terrible, terrible. I send you my love and wish for strength. ** Kyler, Hi. 8 a day is pretty good. I'm just under a pack a day. I can write without them, or I have at the times when I've quit, but the months and months of relearning how to concentrate without them is the huge problem. ** Adrienne White, Hi, Adrienne. It's really nice to see you, pal. You're doing the ecigarettes. I'm scared of them. But I shouldn't be? You're okay with them for the most part at least? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Congrats on the book tour's success. I was following it on my FB feed as best I could. Any pix or video of the Solar Anus event? Yeah, I like D. Foy's book a lot. Riippi's too. Megan's book sounds really interesting. I'll go find it. Thank you, Jeff. I'm doing okay. The novel goes steadily and well, I think, and the film stuff too, but it's crazy a lot. Zac and I are power-working on the script for Gisele's film today, and then we do the second round of auditions for our own film this weekend, and then on Monday I go to Halles, Germany for three days to work on the new Gisele theater piece. A lot, but it's all great. How is your novel building at the moment? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. I'm glad my read on the politics here helped. It' complicated, obviously. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Oh, yes, the texts are what interest me, and the photos are just illustrative to me, so I'm always happy when people don't just cruise those posts looking for lookers. I know, those Ashbery quotes were such beauties. ** Brendan, Hi, B! Awesome, thank you a lot! ** Zach, Your small bead dream just worked itself into my daydreams. Eerie. Circle of life. 'Ulysses', that's big. What is the class? You digging it? There are literally ecigarette shops here on every other block, and, at the same time, it's very rare that I see more than maybe one person smoking one in public per week. I think either those shops are mafia fronts, or the French consider it uncool to smoke them in public. Probably the latter reason. Double yahoo from me re: your happy return! ** Sypha, Hi, James. I smoke, but I feel pretty great almost all the time, it's weird. I do think that my lifelong vegetarianism has some kind of canceling out effect, so I guess I am in the camp that thinks diet is a key. I only know those two obvious Suzanne Vega songs, or maybe a few more too, so, yeah, I'm a know-nothing re: her, but I believe you. Glad the McCullers is being great. That's enough to get me to go get it somewhere somehow. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I made a deliberate effort not to include Hirst in the post. It would have ruined the whole thing. Do please avoid eating anything that looks the slightest bit wonky. ** Magick mike, Hi, Mike! Me too, buddy. ** Bill, Do you know what profession has the highest number of cigarette smokers? Nurse. I found that out while making that post. Doctor comes in 5th. I'm glad you liked Lim's book. Yes, that's really a very, very good book, I think. I know, I got that same email about Alex's show, and I felt the same thing. Drat. ** Chris Dankland. Hi, Chris. Misanthrope already answered your question correctly, but I smoke Camel Blues. They're the European equivalent of Camel Lights, but they taste a little different and better to my taste buds. When I smoke what I really want to smoke, it's Camel Wide Lights, but they don't sell them over here. It's really, really hard to quit. I think that's true about the smoker empathy/connection. The nods and hellos exchanged between smokers on the doorsteps of restaurants, etc. do seem warmer than the usual ones, at the very least. Definitely would like to smoke a cig with you. Let's make that happen somehow. Hope you're doing great, my friend. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. You met Jheorgge, you remember? In Glasgow. Thanks for letting Chris know. You know me so well. Oh, shit, about the latest and hopefully not last switch in the LPS comes home story. Fuck. I'm really sorry for you both, a lot. ** Rewritedept, Thanks. You did seem like you were in not such a great mood yesterday. Hope it has passed. How are the good things in your life going? I'm good, thank you for asking. ** Robert-nyc, Hi, Robert! Does anyone ever call you Bob? I can't imagine it. You're so not a 'Bob'. Thank you kindly about the post, and big congrats on your 11 years of freedom. I've only heard a couple of tracks off the new Liars album, but I liked them a bunch, and I need to get that. I really like the cut of their ever-surprising jib. Take care. ** Gary gray, Have a great time in LA. Big envy on your Skylight shopping spree. Let me know how it goes, please. Safe travels. Love, me. ** Okay. Today is such a limited celebration of someone as great and dear as Jheorgge, but I hope you'll look at it and think of him. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

a brief preface:

the tag 'lo-fi' is commonly applied to describe music that is recorded in less-than-professional settings, or music that sounds as though it was. home recordings like those made by groups like guided by voices, pavement or the thermals, for example. not all of these songs are lo-fi in the traditional sense. some are lo-fi by virtue of the time or circumstances in which they were recorded. others aren't lo-fidelity recordings at all, but just songs that have undeniable pop sensibility despite their off-kilter sound. some of these songs were released as singles, others are LP cuts that i find myself revisiting over and over to figure out what about them appeals to me so much. in fact, the more i think about it, calling this a list of 'lo-fi classics' might be misleading. better to say that this is a short list of songs that i consider to be examples of perfectly written pop, despite their sometimes less-than-stellar recording quality.


WITCH - silver lady.



WITCH (we intend to cause havoc) were a band from zambia. they combined elements of american rock, soul and R&B with some nigerian highlife sounds and a touch of american/british psych and prog. this song's chorus made me jump out of bed one time at 3AM because i thought it was an english beat song that i had never heard before. when i figured out who it actually was, it made me even happier because i had become so quickly and deeply smitten with their music.



deerhunter - vox celeste.



deerhunter are one of those bands who straddle the line between lo-fi and more commercial recordings. their breakout, 'cryptograms,' was recorded in a professional studio, but featured an often dense, very layered sound with lots of reverb. follow up 'microcastle' was recorded in new york at nicolas vernhes' rare book room studio and featured a cleaner sound, but it was accompanied by bonus album 'weird era continued,' a collection of home and practice space tracks that tends closer to fuzzy dream-garage workouts like this one than the understated ronettes-on-downers tracks on 'microcastle.'



pavement - debris slide.



pavement's early singles hid pop perfection under layers of feedback and tape hiss, to the point where the 'lo-fi' tag followed them throughout their career, which included such decidedly non-lo-fi turns as recording with nigel godrich (radiohead, REM, beck). this is one of those songs that i probably listened to ten times in a row the first time i heard it. if you're into shitty recordings hiding amazing songs and you don't have pavement's first LP, 'slanted and enchanted,' as well as their early EP collection 'westing (by musket and sextant),' what the fuck is wrong with you? go buy that shit immediately. you should probably get 'crooked rain, crooked rain,' too. it will make you less of an asshole.



yo la tengo - the river of water.



it was really hard to pick a YLT song for this list, as they have so many classics. i decided on 'river of water' mainly because it was their very first single. a super catchy song that sketched a blueprint for the yo la tengo sound that would follow.



beat happening - cast a shadow.



beat happening and singer calvin johnson's K records were perhaps the earliest champions of the lo-fi sound. in fact, it could be said that they originated many of the hallmarks of lo-fi, from the sometimes-recorded-to-boombox sound to the simple but hooky songwriting and often rudimentary musicianship, though groups like the raincoats and, before them, the shaggs, could also be argued to be progenitors of the sound.



h¸sker d¸ - eight miles high.



for listeners who weren't raised on punk rock, with its emphasis on performance over perfection, a legacy of records made quickly and on the cheap and the tendency of some groups to bury their melodies in layers of guitar fuzz, screams and other noise, groups like h¸sker d¸ can be a little difficult to deal with on first listen. this song worked as a sort of rosetta stone to the h¸sker sound, as, if you could catch the melody in this one, it became much easier to find the pop content of their stuff, especially their earlier, more hardcore-sounding songs. also, if you grew up hearing the byrds' version of this one a lot (like i did), it's pretty fun to hear them totally desecrate a hippy classic, even though their version is really faithful to the original, distortion and shitty recording notwithstanding.



nirvana - marigold.



notable for being the only nirvana song that kurt cobain didn't sing or play guitar on, this was dave grohl's first turn at lead vocals. while not as much of a rager as the tunes that would appear on the 1995 debut of foo fighters, it's in the same vein as early FF single 'big me,' ie. a quick blast of jangly, sugary goodness, with cobain behind the drumkit for good measure (grohl did all the instruments on the first FF album, which he recorded at the same place this track was done, the laundry room; basically a step up from home recording, but a pretty small one).



guided by voices - echos myron.



guided by voices formed in dayton, OH, nineteen-something-and-five. they played a few poorly recieved shows around town before retreating to singer bob pollard's basement for the better part of a decade spent crafting album after album of home recorded pop goodness, equally indebted to british invasion psych as to spazzy UK post-punks like wire and swell maps. this one's one of their more straightforward songs, and a perfect example of the songwriting genius that is robert pollard.



tony molina - don't come back.



tony molina is from san francisco. he sings in some hardcore bands and then writes stuff on his own that's like if bob pollard was born in the 80's and grew up on early american hardcore instead of mid-60's british psych. all the songs are short and sweet and sound like they came from sort of alternate universe where rivers cuomo never made a shitty record. his 'six tracks' EP is only available as a matador singles club thing, and it's probably worth spending the $80 or whatever the fuck it costs just to get that record cuz every song on it is a gem. his first "LP,"'dissed and dismissed,' is just about to be rereleased, although by the time this goes live, it probably is already available. seek it out. listen. thank me later.



mirah - sweepstakes prize.



mirah yom tov zeitlyn is an olympia, WA, based songwriter who records primarily for calvin johnson's K records. she's also absolutely fucking adorable, as you can tell from the picture above. this song's off her first album, 'you think it's like this, but really it's like this,' which she recorded with phil elverum of the microphones to a four-track in his basement. i only have her first three records, so i can't claim to be a super-fan or anything, but all three get pretty constant heavy rotation around my house. if you're into excellent folk-pop tunes, i strongly recommend grabbing this one or its follow-up, 'advisory committee.'



the thermals - born dead.



the thermals are from portland, OR. their debut album, 'more parts per million,' was recorded by singer hutch harris to a four-track machine in his kitchen. he also played all of the instruments, though the liner notes credit forever bassist kathy foster, as well as former touring members ben barnett (kind of like spitting) and jordan hudson. their current lineup consists of harris and foster with drummer westin glass. MPPM, 'fuckin' a,' and 'the body, the blood, the machine,' were all released on sub pop, while the following two albums (2009's 'now we can see' and 2010's 'personal life') came out on kill rock stars. currently, the thermals record for saddle creek records, who released 2013's john agnello-produced 'desperate ground,' a continuation of their scrappy punk-pop songwriting, with slightly cleaner production than on the first album.



le tigre - deceptacon.



after bikini kill broke up, kathleen hanna moved to new york, bought a sampler and started making electronic-influenced punk music, first releasing an album under the name julie ruin, and then getting the group le tigre together with johanna fateman and sadie benning, who in 2001 left the band and was replaced by JD samson. le tigre were known for their trashy synth and drum machine sounds (courtesy of an alesis HR16 and hanna's sampling keyboard) and politically conscious, pro-LGBT and feminist lyrics, as well as for playing shows complete with video screens, matching costumes and choreographed dance moves. this album's great for drunken dance parties in tiny apartments.



the replacements - color me impressed.



the replacements could be another poster band for the lo-fi movement, with their first two albums and the EP 'stink' consisting of raw, sloppy first-take garage punk. what set them apart from most of the punk/hardcore bands around at the time was lead singer/songwriter paul westerberg's excellent ear for choruses. their later stuff became more produced and slightly cleaner sounding, but they retained the pop sensiblities that first started to show on their old records.




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p.s. Hey. Thank you all for yesterday. Today we soldier on, hopefully minus the soldier, with the help of Rewritedept's picks and paean re: Lo-Fi, a genre that happens to garner much love from me and mine as well. Please see what he has done, listen as well as watch when the vids give you something to watch, and corral your minds accordingly, and feedback in your guest-host's direction, if you will. Thanks, and thank you a ton, Rwd. ** Marc Vallée, Hi, Marc. Really good to see you. Yes, and thank you a lot. ** Kiddiepunk, Hi, bud. Yeah, fucking heart-wrenching. Hope you're good. I'll call you in a bit. ** Paul Curran, Hey, Paul. I was really caught by terrible surprise too. I was excited to see on FB that your book is being 3D-ified at the printers! ** Bitter69uk, Hi. Yeah, Sarah Lucas, there you go. I wish I had thought of her when I was building the post. Thanks, man. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes, for sure. ** Gregoryedwin, How really good it is to see you, my friend. Thanks for the thinking and for the kindness. I hope you're doing spectacularly well. Love, me. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Yeah, so sad, thank you a lot. ** Cobaltfram, Hi. Yeah, me too, I had hopes galore. Thanks, man. ** Tosh Berman, Good morning, Tosh. The beauty of the tribute was all his doing, of course. ** Magick mike, Hey, Mike. Wow, that's ... That's such great news, though, that his work will be in Lies/Isle. He surely was so happy about that. Thank you a lot for the link to his music. I was trying to find that link/place when I was setting up the post, and I couldn't remember the location or find where it could be. Everyone, One of Jheorgge's many talents was in music, and I had hoped to direct you to the music he made yesterday, but I was foiled by my memory and by google's lack of help. Magick mike knows, however, and he shared the link yesterday. So, Jheorgge made a really fantastic EP consisting of 3 tracks under the moniker Judith Prietht. It's called 'Untitled at Birth', and I hope you will both give yourself the great pleasure and pay further tribute to Jheorgge's memory by clicking this link to his spot on bandcamp and having a listen. Thank you. Again, thanks so very much, Mike. Love, me. ** Kier, Oh, Kier, it's so lovely to see you. Yeah, it's so sad, so hard. In one of his last last posts on his FB page, your work came up as being important to him. The drawings based on his naked SPD photos are amazing. Everyone, the great artist and d.l. Kier made three drawings a while back inspired by the photos that Jheorgge had used in his contribution to the blog's Naked Self-Portrait Day, and you saw them yesterday, and here are Kier's works: 1, 2, 3. A serious convergence of two amazing talents there, so please check them out. I'm good, Kier. Oh, man, I've missed you a lot too, as has this place. I'm so happy to hear that you're doing well. That's such good news. I would love to see you more, very needless to say, so, yeah, please be here whenever it feels good and right. Giant love to you, my pal. ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark. Thanks a lot for the good words. Crazy to see that photo of Cass. I never knew him in context with motorcycles, but I really hardly knew him. Peripherally in high school through Robert, and I was only starting to know him for real for the short time that he and I went to PCC simultaneously. That's excellent, excellent news about the positive input from the alternative medicinal stuff. You're feeling better and ... believe, man, that's all that matters. Love you too, big M. ** Jonathan, Hi, J! Always really nice to see you. Understood entirely about the busyness. Berlin, cool, any highlights? Shows? Great, yes, fill me in, please. Yeah, any amount that you can and want to be around is and would an eternal boon. ** Zach, Hi, Zach. It's true, yeah, I've noticed too that ecigarette smokers seem to end up looking like infants with overgrown pacifiers in their mouths. The loudish, sort of mechanical sound when they take a drag is kind of spooky too. Wow, so the class is all about the book. I like that. Figuring out how to read in a new way is really exciting. I'm always trying to find newness re: reading on my own, but having a guide and 'Ulysses' as the scoutmaster sounds, yeah, great, makes sense. Over here in France, you're supposed to go outside even when you smoke ecigarettes, but few do. When they do, they're definitely stigmatized and eyed/treated like unwanted dorks by the other exiled smokers, I've noticed. ** Wolf, Hi, Wolf! I've been thinking about you a lot and missing you big time. Beautiful, beautiful words about George, all of which ring utterly true to me. Fucking world. When you have the space and mood to, I would love to hear how you're doing and what's going on. In the meantime and always, mega-hugs and love from me to you. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Thank you a lot for saying that about him. I hope you're doing great. ** Nicki, Hi, my dear pal! Yeah, I know, so incredibly sad and terrible. Thank you for putting words here to your remembering. Of course I hope you're doing so well, my friend, and, now that I so luckily have you before me, or at least 'before' me, I send you my love today as I do always. ** Rewritedept, Hi. Thank you so much for today's pretty post and for helping lead us all out of the dark and into the light, or into the relative light, at least. Hope you get to see GbV, obviously. And, yeah, I'm so sorry for all that crap you're having to deal with from your mom. I guess if I'd thought about it, I might have wondered if you were a closet Deadhead given the range of your tastes and all that. Thanks for saying that about the blog. You and everybody else gets the credit. I'm just sitting here posting stuff and being amazed and going whoa. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thank you. I wondered if you had known George, he being a fellow Scottish d.l. and all, but it's not like Scotland is a pub, I guess. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Yeah, I know, yeah. So true: everything you said about him. It's just inconceivable that he's gone, and, yet, there it it: reality, I guess. ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc. I know, so heartbreaking. Thank you, man. Take good care. ** Sypha, I don't really know old he was. I would guess maybe late 20s, but I'm not sure. Wow, that is pretty fore-fronted for that time. Huh. I'm looking forward to reading it. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Thanks for the good and kind words. For and about George and about the blog. I feel very, very lucky to be the guy who has the password to this place. And thank you so much for sharing his video and mentioning the tribute on ALG. That's so great. I know he would have been blown away. Hugs back to you. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Punch in the gut is right. Well, you know, thank you about the blog, and I of course totally agree, and I say that from the place of feeling as lucky as everyone else here that the blog is what it is. It's a combination of magic and collective doing, I think. I'm still hoping something will happen that'll get LPS back to you. Given her track record, anything, bad and/or great, albeit not by her doing in the case of the latter, seems possible. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. I don't know if the blood is real. It looks real, but fake blood can look pretty real. Sorry to hear about the Earthlink-caused mess. But wonderful about the VV gig and that you're meeting with the actor! *** Rigby, Hi, Rigster. Missed you, man. Those photos you put on Facebook this morning are great, beautiful, thank you! He was a great, great guy and a maker of wonderful things and all the rest. It's so unfair. I send you a whole fucking bunch of love, pal. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, so elegant, that's a great word for it. Best to you, B. ** Okay. With that, let's enjoy the deliberately fidelity-impaired stylings of the stuff chosen for us by the fidelity-unimpaired Rewritedept. Have the best days you can, and I'll see you tomorrow, no doubt.

'Ulrike Ottinger is, to use a somewhat outmoded term, a cinematic artist in the literal sense. Her exceedingly artificial visual worlds contain a cornucopia of allusions to art history and literature, from the ancient statue of Laocoon with his sons and the legend of Joan of Arc to Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. She uses these works as raw material for fantastical stories told with a visual opulence that reflects her predilection for costumes, masquerades and transformations of all sorts.

'Ottinger’s very first film, Laocoon & Sons (Laokoon & Söhne, 1973), set the course she was to pursue in her subsequent work. It’s about the metamorphic quest of Esmeralda del Rio, who as a widow by the name of Olimpia Vincitor goes off in search of her past, shortly thereafter turns into ice-skater Linda MacNamara, and ends up taking on the male identity of a gigolo called Jimmy Junod. The continual metamorphoses catapult the viewer into a whirl of confusion in which nothing is final or permanent, nothing definite.

'“Things are constantly occurring here that run counter to the strictures of theatre,” summarizes the narrator at a certain point in the film. This observation may also serve to characterize a leitmotif in all of Ottinger’s subsequent work, in which carnivalesque and commedia dell’arte scenes seasoned with a pinch of Baroque morbidity are interwoven with borrowings from science fiction movies to form a unique narrative blend – a blend that defies all conventional pigeonholing of style or genre.

'From the outset, the filmmaker worked with an almost exclusively female crew. Tabea Blumenschein created the wonderful costumes and masks for many of Ottinger’s pictures, and actresses like Delphine Seyrig, Magdalena Montezuma, or Irm Hermann, who gained fame in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films, make multiple appearances in her works. In spite of all that, Ottinger’s art cannot be reduced to a “model for an alternative female art world”, as persistently claimed by feminist critics. On the contrary, taken as a whole her oeuvre is more about exploding socially sanctioned gender categories of male and female. This bent is illustrated, among other things, by all the satyr-like figures, bearded ladies and other hermaphrodites and freaks that populate Ottinger’s visual universe.

'In addition to her feature films, Ottinger has made a series of films about her travels that rank among the best that the contemporary documentary genre has to offer. They tell of foreign parts from the perspective of the familiar. Here again the dominant theme is transformation: the deliberately subjective perspective makes the foreign appear familiar and instead places our own culture and customs in a strange light. A penchant for oriental and Asian culture is unmistakable in her choice of subjects.'-- Goethe House



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Stills





































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Further

Ulrike Ottinger Website
'Undiscovered Countries: The Films of Ulrike Ottinger'
Ulrike Ottinger @ imdB
Ulrike Ottinger @ Women Make Movies
Ulrike Ottinger Filmproduktion @ Facebook
Official 'Prater' Website
Book: 'Ulrike Ottinger: The Autobiography of Art Cinema'
'Ulrike Ottinger's Chronicle of Time'
Ulrike Ottinger's 'Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press'
Ulrike Ottinger interviewed
Video: 'Ulrike Ottinger: An Interview' @ Video Data Base
Ulrike Ottinger @ mubi
'Decadent Fetishism in Ulrike Ottinger’s Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia'
'Encore! Nonconformist German director Ulrike Ottinger
Jonathan Rosenbaum on Ulrike Ottinger
'Ulrike Ottinger: What’s Left to be Seen'
'Notes on the Cinema Stylographer: Ulrike Ottinger'



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Extras


ULRIKE OTTINGER: NOMAD FROM THE LAKE


ULRIKE OTTINGER on PLACES


Ulrike Ottinger. The Sociology of Film and Cinema. 2007


Filmgespräch Ulrike Ottinger



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Interview
collaged




You're a German filmmaker. What are we to take away from this: "German".

Ulrike Ottinger: I find myself rather isolated in the German film scene, particularly among my women colleagues, because my films come out of the tradition of fantasy and surrealist filmmaking. Besides that, my experience as an artist, especially in Paris during the sixties, is rather unusual for a filmmaker. My eyes have become extremely sensitized to visual images. My film BILDNIS EINER TRINKERIN, for example, on one level offers a sightseeing tour through Berlin. I construct my films with images. I use a syntax of images, whereas most German women filmmakers seem conventionally tied to dialogue. I seek new images for the new content which is proposed by a woman's experience. This may be why spectators often complain about my films' length and dense imagery. They are not accustomed to an associative style, beyond psychological motivation.

One can see parallels in your development at the level of representation: in your early films both elements - on the one hand the artificiality of the figures, of their charcteristics, of the decor, and on the other the semidocumentary, "unstudied" camera work - seem to clash in every image, only to merge at the end. Ticket of no return comes closest to a definite separation: the emphasis throughout is on the playful and the contrived. Now we have the clear juxtaposition of two aesthetic stances: fiction and documentation.

UO: There have always been clear confrontations in my films. In Ticket of no return, fiction and reality carry on a dialogue which is commented upon by the ladies "Social Question", "Exact Statistics" and "Common Sense". All the while the urgent appeal for "Reality" sounds from the airport loudspeakers. Freak Orlando is the attempt to present the totality of culture, power and politics as an historical tableau, in which "reality" appears as a bewildering trompe l'æil. In Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia, the carriers of Western culture riding on the Trans-Siberian are confronted first with their own culture, travelling as they are in their own museum, which is then unexpectedly held up by a foreign culture.

In your films you construct worlds out of "everyday myths", out of "epistemes" and social roles in order to tade your characters (whether they are this way by choice or force of circumstances) to the margins of normality and beyound. The political aspect of your films is the dream or utopia of freedom which can arise in the viewer's mind - the freedom to be different.

UO: It was not my intention to create exotic images. The film is concerned, rather, with the transport of culture. If exoticisms arise in the process. they are never identified with "the foreign" per se but rather with the unsuccessful encounter with the foreign. I don't mean that only negatively, because the results are sometimes interesting. My film is devoted not to exoticism bur rather to nomads. These can be Mongols, but also job-seekers, Jewish intellectuals and artists, refugees, those travelling for edification or adventure. I see the route of the Trans-Siberian and also the Silk Road as a sort of guest-book of cultures, in which the most various influences leave their mark. The theme of the film is the infectiousness of nomadic ideas.

You have worked with the same actresses time and time again, in particular Delphine Seyrig, and always seem to be striving for a mixture of "professionals" and "amateurs." These amateurs, however, are often people who give the impression of having already tried to gain control of their everyday reality by playing themselves. On what principles do you choose your actresses so that they can take your characters beyond their function as representations of abstract types, and make them into living subjects?

UO:"Amateur" and "professional" are two different performance techniques which, once again, carry on the dialogue between documentary and fiction on another level. For me, it is not a matter of living or dead subjects, as long as they fully realize their performance technique.

In talking about your films, one can emphasize the aspect of the (cultural) journey, of movement through particular situations, which also always remain journeys through time - something reminiscent of the great era of the silents, with its episodic films. But one can also focus on your predilection for puzzles, for the playful jumbling of established patterns, and thus for artistic self-reflection. And thirdly, there is the particular tension in all your films between documentation and fiction - a relationship which today's cinema as a whole is perhaps in a position to carry the furthest. In what context would you place your work?

UO: I play with many contexts and various narrative forms. The classic introduction of the four western protagonists, who, as it were, sing their arias on the stage, observes the unities of place, time and action. The well-organized interior makes of nature an artificial exterior. But whilst the tundra rolls past the windows in painted tableaux, the people inside hear its siren call. Unaccustomed stories penetrate the familiar surroundings, which in the end are invaded by an exterior oblivious to all this domestication. In the grasslands, under the open sky, epic singers introduce Mongolian time.

Godard once said, "Technique is the sister of Art." Would you agree with his attribution of gender?

UO: Art has many Siamese twins.



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9 of Ulrike Ottinger's 18 films & installations

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Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1977)
'Madame X, the cruelest and most successful pirate of the Far Eastern seas, puts out a call to all women seeking a world full of gold, love, and adventure to join her crew and become marauders on the high seas. But even after their first pitiless attack on a yacht carrying hilarious caricatures of bourgeois male hegemony leaves them awash in plunder, the increasing assertion of the new pirates’ identities and desires leads an already chaotic journey into absolute bedlam. On the women's ship Orlando the flags of attack, leather, weapons, lesbian love and death are raised with a beauty which dispenses with a total domination of the viewer's gaze. The aesthetic is strictly stylized, exhibiting itself without overwhelming us.'-- ulrikeottinger.com



Trailer


Excerpt



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Ticket of No Return (1979)
'A portrait of two unusual but also extremely different women. One rich, eccentric, hiding her feelings behind a rigid mask, consciously drinks herself to death. The other is a known drinker in town. In the course of the story they try to get to know each other, but they cannot come together. The background is Berlin, thrown open to a grotesque kind of sightseeing (drinkers’ geography) and complemented by authentic contributions from people who live here or are visiting, rock singers, writers, artist, taxi drivers. With Tabea Blumenschein, Magdalena Montezuma, Nina Hagen and Eddie Constantine.'-- Women Make Movies



Excerpt


Excerpt



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Freak Orlando (1981)
'This, apparently her most monumental film project, is nothing if not ambitious—inspired by Virginia Wolfe's time-tripping feminist tract ORLANDO, the film (according to a synopsis published on Ottinger’s website) means to present “a history of the world from its beginnings to our day, including the errors, the incompetence, the thirst for power, the fear, the madness, the cruelty and the commonplace, in a story of five episodes.” What that quote doesn’t reveal is that this politically incorrect film’s world is populated entirely by freaks. In other words, Ottinger’s aims are similar to those of Todd Browning’s FREAKS and Werner Herzog’s EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL: a vision of our world as a giant freak show, a concept FREAK ORLANDO takes farther than Browning or Herzog ever did.'-- fright.com



Excerpt



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Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984)
'Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press is Ulrike Ottinger’s epic media studies fever dream. Plotting to boost circulation of her multinational media empire, Frau Dr. Mabuse (art film icon Delphine Seyrig) molds dapper aristocrat, Dorian Gray (60s supermodel Veruschka von Lehndorff), into a tabloid celebrity of her own designs. Introducing Dorian to a world of power and intrigue, Mabuse pairs him off with opera star Andamana (Tabea Blumenschein). But as readers tire of the new couple’s amorous exploits, Mabuse dispatches her maniacal henchmen (Fassbinder regular, Irm Hermann, Magdalena Montezuma, Barbara Valentin and writer, Gary Indiana) to kill off Dorian’s paramour. And so begins his plummet into the seedy, criminal underbelly of 1980s Berlin. Dorian would be Ottinger’s last entirely fictional feature of the 1980s as well as the final film in Ottinger’s Berlin trilogy, in which a “stylized composition provides a sightseeing trip through Berlin,” that is, at once, fictional and phantasmagorical, yet also wholly documentary in its depiction of the city’s architecture and underground milieu.'-- Dirty Looks NYC



Tiny excerpt



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Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986)
'Seven Women Seven Sins represents a quintessential moment in film history. Seven women filmmakers invited to direct for the seven sins were amongst the world's most renown: Helke Sander (Gluttony), Bette Gordan (Greed), Maxi Cohen (Anger), Chantal Akerman (Sloth), Valie Export (Lust), Laurence Gavron (Envy), and Ulrike Ottinger (Pride). Each filmmaker had the liberty of choosing a sin to interpret as they wished. The final film reflected this diversity, including traditional narrative fiction, experimental video, a musical, a radical documentary, and was delivered in multiple formats from 16, super 16, video and 35mm. After the initial television airing Maxi Cohen went on to prepare it for a theatrical release, unifying the formats into 16mm. The theater release of Seven Women Seven Sins caused quite a stir. People lined up around the block to see this compelling anthology of the seven deadly sins.'-- NYWIFT



Trailer



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Prater (2007)
'The fabled Viennese amusement park, Prater, is the centerpiece for Ottinger’s meditation on vanished pre-war Europe and its fascination with machines and entertainment. Ottinger skillfully pieces together the park’s history, interweaving remarkable archival footage, interviews with members of the carnival worker families who are the park’s lifeblood and new fictional footage starring Veruschka as a latter-day Alice gliding through the Prater’s Wonderland. An intellectual thrill ride, Ottinger’s film makes delightfully unexpected turns with its harnessing of diverse writings by the likes Josef von Sternberg, Elias Canetti and Elfriede Jellinek.'-- collaged



Trailer



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Under Snow (2011)
'In the Echigo region of northwestern Japan, where heavy snow blankets entire landscapes and villages for more than half the year, a distinctive way of life has evolved. Time follows a different, slower rhythm, and everyday routines, along with religious rituals, wedding traditions, festivals, foods, songs, and games, are adapted to Echigo’s austere living conditions and natural beauty. Ulrike Ottinger’s latest film leads us into this mythical country, turning her lens on daily and communal life under the snowy mountains. Narrated in English by American literary and media theorist Lawrence A. Rickels, this stunning documentary sequences merge with the tale of students Takeo and Marko, played by Kabuki performers. Their journey through the past and repeated encounters with the present find them wondrously transformed with help from a beautiful vixen fox. Under Snow is clear evidence that Ottinger, whose career spans more than four decades, remains one of world cinema’s most original artists.'-- Women Make Movies



Trailer



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Floating Food (2011)
'Ulrike Ottinger’s Floating Food is an installation exploring eating as a cultural and religious ritual, and the cultural connotations of water. The installation is composed of film montages, photographs, ethnographic objects and sculptures that include a Samurai robe made of dollar bills and a shaman’s costume. The renowned filmmaker, photographer, and collector of images and texts from around the world displays various aspects of her creation in a huge collage. Water, the central motif of the exhibition, is considered by Ottinger as more than simply a representation of a theme. Rather, water embodies a principle of thought, of life and of work.'-- collaged






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Weltbilder (2013)
'In Weltbilder, the various aspect of artist and film-maker Ulrike Ottinger's œuvre -- film, opera and theatre directing, stage design, photography and ritual objects inspired by her travels -- all flow into a large-scale installation extending through several spaces. School wall charts covered with postcards and embroidery are the starting point for the installation, which meanders between reality and fiction, bringing alive different worlds through photographs from Mongolia, Eastern Europe and Mexico. Thematically linked objects, wall pieces and processed photographs are woven into a dense network of images and stories. The staging is supplemented by the presentation of an excerpt from Ottinger's Taiga (1992) -- a film which describes her journey to the yak and reindeer nomads of Northern Mongolia and tells the histories of these two peoples -- and the expansive slide installation Bildarchive. The exhibition offers a fascinating encounter with Ottinger's now sensitive, now strident, open and personal view of the world, history and culture.'-- Hans-Jürgen Köhler







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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, very good point. And lovely adds! I finally saw the new Wes Anderson last night. Loved it, thought it was glorious and genius, of course. It's not my favorite of his, I don't think, but it was swoon city from start to finish. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. You can send me stuff whenever you like. The sooner the better, but anytime soonish is good. Then let's plan to launch the post on the 14th! Makes sense, right? Man, this is so long awaited and so exciting! ** Cobaltfram, Fuck is the word. I lost my mom a few years ago, and it's still so confusing. As for your question, it's a good question. It was probably due to a lot of reasons. There was likely some punk residue, there was my worship of Bresson's aesthetic, there was my anarchism, there was my personality which is determinedly (at least in my hopes) non-intrusive and attentive, there was my interest in articulating confusion with as much clarity as possible. Also, I've always tried to work as complexly as I can at the limit of my abilities, and I think the style I began using with 'Closer' was as elaborate as I could control given my talent's stage of development then. I had tried doing something more thick and florid in my first novella 'Safe', and I felt it didn't work the way I wanted to, so I experimented after that with pulling back carefully, and I guess the voice I used beginning at around 'Closer' was where I felt comfortable enough to challenge myself and the reader as fully as I could. I've always gone for austerity in my writing because I know my personal lack of austerity will balance the tone out and make it something stranger. My new novel is extremely personal, and it's working with various styles at this point, from straight out (albeit very created and subterranean) cathartic talk to devotional writing to more artificial styles -- the fairytale, faux-chat, compacted minimalism, and others. Hopefully, it's quite grounded while being flighty and full of attempt too. The style you're experimenting with in your novel sounds really appealing to me, no surprise. ** Nicki, Hi, Nicki! Such a treat to get to see you two days in a row! Wow, Tom is 3 1/2? That's so wild! Time, weird. 'Systematically erases your life': Really? It really feels like that? That ... thorough? I'm so happy that you still think of this place and us and check in. You're the best, d.l. formerly known as Atheist! Lots of love. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi. Really nice words to Rewritedept. Thank you. ** Rewritedept, Hey, bud. Thanks so much again. I was going to correct your GbV birthdate, but then I got trainspotter paranoia re: wanting to do that and didn't. Formatting it was fun. Good thing about the goodness of your day. My Friday is going to be long and packed by the first day/night of our second round of auctions for Zac's and my movie. We'll be testing performers with the dialogue for the first time, and they have to get naked and act out a scenario, and so on, and so forth. It'll be a brain fry, and hopefully we'll be able to start casting for real by the end of the weekend. Fingers crossed. ** Empty Frame, Hi, man. Yeah, I know, it's just awful and so sad. I'm good, and I hope you are too, and I hope we'll get to interact more lengthily soon. ** Kier, Good, fingers crossed into a giant insect-like shape that the new/old drug does every trick in the book for you. Yes, I remember you were on a farm, and you still are, on a new one! That seems really cool, I don't know why. Well, why not? The coolness is totally explicable. Biggest hugs to you, my pal. ** Zach, Hi, Z. Totally, yeah: your characterization of lo-fi's primary pleasure. And, huh, really interesting to think of Tim Hecker's stuff in that light/context. My imagination is listening to my memory of the last time I listen to him (yesterday) with a new intricate difference. Nice. Thanks, my man. ** Steevee, Oops, and then hooray re: the VV's mix-up. I haven't seen that Ozon. I'm curious. Cool that Earthlink is back in the building. I think I've read about Young Fathers, but I haven't heard them. Sounds subtly fascinating. I'll check the album out, thanks. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, man. Awesome stuff to Rewritedept. Totally pleasure to read. And, to intrude a bit, I'm totally with you on that White Fence album. It was/is super intriguing and seductive in this way that's both familiar and really strange. ** Misanthrope, Aw, you're such a good guy, man, doing that for LPS. ** Right. Do you guys know the films of Ulrike Ottinger? If not, I guess you can use today's post to at least start knowing them, if you feel like it, which of course I hope you do. See you tomorrow.