----




Joan Didion’s Santa Anas: the new meme. But then Kevin Drum, The Washington Monthly’s prominent and generally wonderful blogger, wrote:



At the Los Angeles Times blog, Matt Welch was quick to second him:


I don’t think that either of these posts is merely scoring easy points – Didion provokes in her readers a genuine discomfort: is this really it? And to read that Santa Ana quote not in Slouching Towards Bethlehem but online, shoehorned between news reports, further highlights the subjectivity of Didion’s sensibility – her dramatic, conspiratorial, aesthetically-perfect weirdness.

It’s not just the non-fiction, though. I’ve heard the same criticism of her novels – that they’re at once overblown and somehow reductionist. That “near-secretive knowledge” – how unfair it is! Didion knows something we don’t, something we could have never learned on our own, because we haven’t gone that far – but follow the money, follow the votes, follow the guns or winds or highways or back-end points and you’ll find the answer, or almost find it (it’s always just out of reach, you see). Anyhow, that’s only a part of it. Let’s be clear: if there’s a “Didion Problem,” it’s a complex of intersecting problems.

So: are Drum and Welch wrong, or beside the point, or what? I’m not proposing a defense of Didion against some big mean bloggers. I suspect she’s doing just fine without my help. But their posts made me wonder: How do you build a “Didion Problem”? What’s the recipe and how does it work and why are Didion’s novels great? Is it redundant to even speak of this? After all, if there is a “Didion Problem,” it’s hardly one that Didion herself ignores. What other writer so ruthlessly interrogates her own work, both the fiction and non-fiction, delving into her own motivations for telling a given story together with all the reasons that said story is incomplete or provisional, certain details highlighted, others pushed off-stage, etc.? Which is of course one more part of the “Didion Problem.”





















1. A WOMAN

In both the fiction and non-fiction, there’s a woman at the center of things who is at once tough and fragile – though often in unequal quantities. In the non-fiction, this woman – call her Joan Didion – is prone to migraines, struggles with relationships and unexpected deaths, and is assailed by the malignant landscape in which she’s living – including, of course, those Santa Ana winds. And yet, this same woman is fueled by a stunning reserve of moxy, not flinching from investigating California speed freaks, El Salvador, the Reagan Administration, and so forth.

This woman – fragile yet strong-willed, caught up in the tides of history yet alienated from the narratives that might have worked, have sewn it all up, for previous generations – appears in all five of her novels.

The character was already full-realized in Didion’s second work of fiction, Play It as It Lays. In this novel, and the three that follow, the female protagonists have varying degrees of agency and intelligence, but all represent a blank at the center of the books. The actions of this protagonist – her sudden flights to the highway, or to another continent – are never fully accounted for. The motto of Maria, from Play It As It Lays: “NOTHING APPLIES.” As Maria says in one of the passages she narrates (the voice switches between two first persons and a third, adding to the dislocation): “Carter and Helene still believe in cause-effect. Carter and Helene also believe that people are either sane or insane…..Fuck it, I said to them all, a radical surgeon of my own life. Never discuss. Cut.”

2. SO CAUSE AND EFFECT, RADICALLY SEVERED

This is true not only for the protagonist (prone to decide, for instance – in The Last Thing He Wanted– to leave a plum Washington Post gig covering the ’84 presidential primaries to involve herself in the arms trade of her fatally ill father) but for the woman’s family, as well. In Play It As It Lays, Maria’s 4-year-old daughter is sick with a severe illness of the nervous system. In Democracy, the protagonist’s daughter leaves for Vietnam on a whim, just before the US pulls out. In A Book of Common Prayer we get a double whammy: “She lost one daughter to ‘history’ and another to ‘complications.’” The daughter lost to complications was born vomiting, and died shortly thereafter; the daughter lost to history joined a group of Marxist terrorists as a teenager. All of these occurrences are presented as arbitrary, unmotivated – we lived in a poisoned time, mentally and physically. As Maria famously says at the start of Play It As It Lays, “What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask.” In Didion’s world, we’re beyond such questions. (It is this attitude – and the undermining of it – which made The Year of Magical Thinking such a revelation; Didion was, as a hospital worker noted, “"a pretty cool customer" in the face of her husband’s death – a designation that would aptly describe any number of Didion’s characters – and yet she is beset by the worst ravages of grief. The classic Didion protagonist has been turned inside out, humanized. It’s a heartbreaking achievement.)

















3. MALIGNANT LANDSCAPES




Bacteria proliferate.
Termites eat the presidential palace, rust eats my Oldsmobile.
Twice a year the sun is exactly vertical, and nothing casts a shadow.
The bite of one fly deposits an egg which in its pupal stages causes human flesh to suppurate.

This description continues – Didion is one of those writers that it’s hard not to quote for pages at a time, there’s so much pleasure in her sentences – but the key point is her use of verbs that suggest decay, sickness, an all out assault on the human – though these descriptions are themselves, she admits, not quite right. Words in this country lose their meaning: “the emotional field of such names tends to weaken as one leaves the temperate zones. At the equator the names are noticeably arbitrary. A banana palm is no more or less ‘alive’ than its rot.”

4. WHICH ILLUSTRATES



And so on, for several more pages. This is by no means an exceptional paragraph; the narrator in Didion’s fiction is forever trying to get her mind around where the pieces are “on the board” – revelations which come, if the do, too late to do anyone any good. Such ruminations are necessarily endless. The paradox is that while Didion’s comprehension of power at the highest level can seem maddeningly reductive – throw together a few rumpled men and shadow corporations, stir – there is a narrative vertigo which prevents us from getting anything but a final fix on things; in the end, the novels are only ever glancing and fragmentary look at the big picture. Again from Democracy:“Jack Lovett had reportedly made some elusive deals with the failed third force (or fourth force, or fifth force, this was a story on which the bottom kept dropping out).”

















6. FEARSOME SYMMETRY















*

p.s. Hey. We begin the spate of mostly reruns with this thoughtful jewel brought to us the amazing writer and former d.l. Mark Doten. Enjoy, hopefully, and the blog sans me "in person" will see you tomorrow.

----





Stan Brakhage has left the world a legacy larger than we’ll ever be likely to get a handle on. With a body of work as large as his, one might find it difficult and ultimately pointless to try and reign it all in beneath a single umbrella. But there is a sheltering concept under which his vast array of films enjoys a bond: Brakhage wanted the world to learn to see again. He wanted us to rid ourselves of the shackles imposed on us by the rules of Renaissance perspective, to abandon the search for ever greater levels of visual acuity, definition, clarity and detail, and to re-embrace those parts of our experience that we have learned to let go unnoticed, or consider to be flawed by the standards of High Definition culture. As P. Adams Sitney notes, “When [Brakhage] decided to become a filmmaker he threw away his eyeglasses” (Sitney 1979:149). That about sums it up. (read the rest) -- Randolf Jordan, Off Screen

Those who consider cinema a narrative art form, and believe that films should have a beginning, a middle and an end - in that order - will have problems with the work of Stan Brakhage. His films were difficult also for those not willing to shed the conventionalised illusion, imposed by rules of perspective, compositional logic and "lenses grounded to achieve 19th-century compositional perspective". For Brakhage, the goal of cinema was the liberation of the eye itself, the creation of an act of seeing, previously unimagined and undefined by conventions of representation, an eye as natural and unprejudiced as that of a cat, a bee or an infant. There were few filmmakers - film director is too limiting a description - who went so far to train audiences to see differently. (rest the rest) -- Ronald Bergen, The Guardian








This is to introduce myself. I am young and I believe in magic. I am learning how to cast spells. My profession is transforming. I am what is known as "an artist." Three years ago I made a discovery which caused me dis-ease at the time: neither the society in which I had grown up nor my society of that moment, my college, knew what to do with me. They were wary of me. -- Dartmouth, 1955

I am devoting my life to what is inappropriately called "The Experimental Film," in America, because I am an artist and, as such, am convinced that freedom of personal expression (that which is called "experiment" by those who don't understand it) is the natural beginning of any art, and because I love film and am excited above everything else by the possibilities inherent in film as a means of aesthetic expression. -- in answer to a questionnaire, 1957

I would say I grew very quickly as a film artist once I got rid of drama as prime source of inspiration. I began to feel that all history, all life, all that I would have as material with which to work, would have to come from the inside of me out rather than as some form imposed from the outside in. I had the concept of everything radiating out of me, and that the more personal or egocentric I would become, the deeper I would reach and the more I could touch these universal concerns which would involve all man. -- interview with P. Adams Sitney, Metaphors On Vision, 1963

OF NECESSITY I BECOME INSTRUMENT FOR THE PASSAGE OF INNER VISION, THRU ALL MY SENSIBILITIES, INTO ITS EXTERNAL FORM. My most active part in this process is to increase all my sensibilities (so that all films arise out of some total area of being or full life) AND, at the given moment of possible creation to act only out of necessity. In other words, I am principally concerned with revelation. -- letter to Sitney, 1963








Complete filmography
Descriptions of all Stan Brakhage films
Stan Brakhage on the Web
Stan Brakhage @ Wikipedia












*

p.s. Hey. How about this quite old but still breathing paean to Stan Brakhage? Interested? Hope so. Expect another rerun with a couple of preprogrammed lines from me at the bottom tomorrow.

look at the dead boy 1:04



Fake Shooting Stabbing Snuff 1:25



fake blood packet stab kid stabs gut FX 3:01



Saw 6 5:41



Visual effect test_ Stab gut 0:05



iain claims to be nice after threatening to behead me 0:12



HOSTEL 3:12



Stab in the Chest Effect 2:58



stabbing myself 0:06



jeff stabs eli (the conclusion) 0:22



see you later fatty 0:21



fake stabbing snuff 1:06



fake snuff stabbing 2 1:29



Fake Snuff Stabbing Blood Spray 0:42



The fall of djtitoflow - Requiem 5:35



the death of poor boy prt 2 0:58



Boy gets stab after taking a refreshing shower 1:41



Sexy Bare Belly of A Young Guy Stabbed 2:13



kid gets killed by his mom 0:14



Knife Massacre Pt 9 3:50



kid gets stabbed in the back with a sword 0:13



boy gets stabbed 0:33



BEST knife stab into a kids head EVER. 1:07




*

p.s. Hey. An oldie that needs no introduction. I'm still working away on theater stuff in Halle, Germany, and presumably still alive and even thriving perhaps. More blog tomorrow.

----
Intro





The Basics

Psilocybe cubensis is a medium strength or typical psilocybian mushroom consisting of approximately .63% psilocybin and .60% psilocin in dried wild mushrooms. Indoor cultivated mushrooms tend to have higher concentrations. Note that potency of mushrooms can vary greatly from one batch to the next. The following chart shows approximate oral dosages for (dried) Psilocybe cubensis in grams.

Threshold: .25 g (1/100 oz)
Light: .25 - 1 g (1/100 - 1/28oz)
Common: 1 - 2.5 g (1/28 - 1/10oz)
Strong: 2.5 - 5 g (1/10 - 1/6oz)
Heavy: 5 + g (1/4oz +)

Onset: 10 - 40 minutes (when chewed and held in mouth)
Onset: 20 - 60 minutes (when swallowed on empty stomach)
Duration: 2 - 6 hours
Normal After Effects: up to 8 hours

Comparative potency of selected Psilocybe mushrooms



Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms time lapse (0:42)


Drying process of Psilocybe cubensis (0:17)


Magic Mushroom: The Forbidden Fruit (5:13)




Dutch Ban Hallucinogenic Mushrooms





Associated Press, October 7, 2007: 
Comparative Psilocybian Mushroom Strengths
Images of the Different Species





The Magic Mushroom Hunter:This documentary shows you how to find and identify the magic mushrooms by observing conditions, landscape and the local wildlife. (5:42)








The Hunt for Wild Magic Mushrooms:Introduces the novice shroom hunter to the basics of field identification. (6:44)




The Florida Mycology Research Center



Helping the research needs of Mycologists and Mushroom Growers since 1972

How To Place An Order:
FMRC no longer takes any credit card or online orders. This is because many are aware of all the records kept on such type orders. Although our customers order items from FMRC for Legal and Academic reasons, they do not want to be included in any “watched activity” or similar list, which the said OnLine method of payments can produce.

If you run across an item you wish to order, just write it down, include payment made out to FMRC, POB 18105, Pensacola, FL 32523, and just mail it in. Be sure to give a good readable shipping address. This is your best protection when ordering mycological items and it has proved itself since 1972.

Overseas And Out of Country Orders: Send payment in U.S. Dollars "CASH" or International Postal Money Order. Any check or Postal Money Order must be drawn on an U.S. Bank. If you send cash, large amounts should be insured. Canada orders should send "Canadian Postal Money Orders" making sure the amount is in U.S. Dollars and not Canadian Currency. These can be bought at your local post office. Payments should also include extra funds to cover Airmail Shipping. Without extra funds for this postage, orders are shipped by low cost land or boat. This can take many weeks sometimes. You may contact us at FloridaMycology@cs.com if you have any questions or need help with the extra money needed for this Overseas and Out of Country shipping.

For mail orders, simply write or type items you wish to order. Use catalog numbers whenever they are given. Always give complete description of item. Show what item cost. Total up the entire order. There are no other hidden charges like postage, handling, or insurance. You send only the amount listed. The best method of payment is a U.S. Postal Money Order made out to FMRC. Personal checks are accepted. FMRC will replace any item which is faulty, and will stand behind products listed in this catalog 100%.

As all products offered by FMRC are for "In-Vitro research purposes only, FMRC waves all responsibility for any injuries or legalities incurred through the use or mis-use of any products it sells.

Get your mushrooms here








from mushroomshowto.com: 



María Sabina was the Mazatec curandera from Oaxaca, Mexico who encountered the amateur mycologist and international banker R. Gordon Wasson on a trip to Mexico in 1955. On June 19th, 1955 she introduced him to psilocybin mushrooms during a healing ceremony. He became the first Westerner to experience the effects of these psychedelic fungi, followed shortly thereafter by Valentina Wasson. Wasson wrote about his experience with María and the psilocybin mushrooms in an article for Life Magazine in 1957.

In the Life Magazine article, Wasson referred to María Sabina as "Eva Mendez" in an attempt to protect her privacy, but the attempt failed. Over the coming years, María Sabina was inundated with visitors from the United States. The onslaught of "young people with long hair who came in search of God" disrupted her village and led to her arrest on more than one occasion by local federales. She sometimes turned visitors away, and sometimes introduced them to the mushrooms they sought, occasionally charging a fee, and often not.

María Sabina died in 1985 at the age of 91.







from Erowid.com
USA: Psilocybin mushrooms are not specifically named in the U.S. federal scheduling system, however their two primary active chemicals Psilocybin and Psilocin are both Schedule I in the United States. This means they are illegal to manufacture, buy, possess, or distribute (sell, trade or give) without a DEA license. Fresh and dried psilocybin mushrooms are considered containers of Psilocybin and Psilocin, making them illegal to possess as well.

Because spores contain no psilocybin or psilocin, they are legal to sell and possess (in all states except California, Georgia, and Idaho). But in most states, it is illegal to cultivate or propogate spores into mycelium since mycelium generally contains both psilocybin and psilocin.

Some states in the U.S. (Florida, New Mexico) and some countries have ruled that growing psilocybe mushrooms does not qualify as 'manufacturing' a controlled substance (psilocybin).

International: Country by country

Tested for in Standard Drug Tests? NO
Tested for in Extended Drug Tests? Sometimes
Possible to test for? YES
Detection Period in Urine: 1-3 days

The first thing to know about mushrooms and drug tests is that psilocybin and psilocin, the primary psychoactive substances in psilocybe mushrooms, are not commonly tested for in the standard drug test. The basic drug test, currently used for nearly all corporate and sports testing programs, checks for 5 types of substances

Cannabinoids (marijuana, hash)
Cocaine (cocaine, crack, benzoylecognine)
Amphetamines (amphetamines, methamphetamines, speed)
Opiates (heroin, opium, codeine, morphine)
Phencyclidine (PCP)

Even the extended employment drug tests used by most companies do not test for the presence of psilocybin or psilocin. For more information on the basic and extended drug tests...see the Drug Testing Vault.

It is, however, technically possible to detect psilocybin and psilocin with a drug test and we have received reports of psilocybin testing during criminal probation and a school-related drug test. Because they are less standard, these tests are more expensive to give than the basic test. The more expensive and comprehensive drug tests are sometimes used in cases where there is specific reason to believe that psilocybin mushrooms use is an issue; for example, an individual who is on probation for mushroom use might be specifically tested for the presence of psilocybin in hir system. However, generally mushroom use does not cause an individual to test positive on most random drug tests given by an employer or school.
-----




*

p.s. Hey. It's Mycology Weekend here at DC's. There is a real chance that I will be here live again starting on Monday, i.e. in two days from now when I'm in Berlin switching gears from theater work to film post-production work. If not, I will let you know the scoop and the schedule on that day in any case. Have fine weekends!

I thought the water tower was just a tower until you told me it was a machine to kill yourself with. I wished the woods I chased you through were infinite but the clearing they opened on was the meadow where your contrivance stood. It was dark, the thing and the ground beneath it, the clearing and the whole night. My tights were damp to knee height from the grass that ran likewise. You jumped at this ladder until you had a grasp on it. My screams were begs. I wrenched my ankle on the spotty soil. I slammed my head when I fell. Sparks like stars shot my gaze. There was no line then that could separate anything from anything else. There was no way then that I could see you throw yourself from the ladder because there was no way I could see you on it.











Lucy fell asleep on the bus. She just felt bummed out when she woke. It took her so long to walk home from the stop. She just got sadder. Her fingers rang numb in the cold. She had this headache. The girl was fucking crying by the time she turned down her street. She gathered herself on the porch as she played with her keys and the knob. Her parents were watching TV. The stairs made this sound when she paused on them. Hey. It was dark in her room and she turned on every light. Her eyes felt like skin drawn on bone. She sat on her bed. This rash on her foot made her breakdown, all dismal and wanting and aching. She hated herself, she thought sheíd give anything to stop feeling so bummed out. She just wanted to be able to feel good and get happy by getting drunk and doing drugs like a normal person. Her breathing sounded like hiccups until she held her breath. She got undressed and got into bed. Her clitoris felt sore when she touched it so she stopped. It was cold and she curled beneath the comforter. Her phone was in her jacket pocket, slung over the side of her dresser. When she got up in the morning she looked at it and saw she had all these missed calls and texts and when she read them it was just bullshit because nothing as horrible as what they said could be anything but





Into a black sky: an interview with Mark Gluth on the publication of his third book, The Goners (Kiddiepunk; 2015)


Diarmuid Hester: So we've waited four years for a new book by you and then two come out in the space of a year! Mark, you're really spoiling us...

Mark Gluth: Well, I'm really lucky that the two books are coming out so close to each other. No Other took a really long time to write, over five years but with breaks working on other stuff, and The Goners came together really quickly, maybe six or eight months total from conception to completion. So their proximity comes from the speed at which I was able to write them, or rather the speed at which I was able to be happy with what I had written when I wrote them. And then I was lucky enough to have Sator and Kiddiepunk believe in the books.


That's interesting you talk about the speed of putting The Goners together and the book feels very quick yknow? Like it's in flux or something: the characters seem really restless and hard to pin down and scenes are blurry and impressionistic. It's a very different vibe to No Other in that way.

Yeah, I wanted the book to feel in flux. I wanted each story to feel like a little three minute pop song. I got into how good pop songs offer this kind of distilled/concentrated version of themselves, and how a really perfect pop song achieves effects that are kinda hard to describe outside of just experiencing the thing. So in the novels I've written, I built them with the intention of the individual components having some staying power, and the books doing things that can only happen from the cumulative effects of the components. With this book I kind of imagined each sentence disappearing once you've read it. So there's a fleetingness to it all. I played around with how catchy and surface-y I could make the language. In early drafts of the book, I'd written each section as if a character was watching the story play out on a stage and like they were watching a play. I got rid of that, but it kept the kind of fleeting effect, I think.

Tied into that, I also began to think about what if the four main stories were just different versions of the same perfect or prototypical story. Like they mirrored some sort of Platonic ideal story or something. I was also really influenced by this book of stories by Marie Redonnet, which in English is called Understudies. All the stories in it have the same narrative shape, and they just mirror each other. I've always wanted to do something influenced by that.


Wow, yeah... So the characters, the text itself, they're both "goners," as soon as they're read, right? But that fleeting effect and the feeling that everything you know can quickly fall apart and the people you love are a whisker away from disappearing or dying and is really haunting and stays with you long after you've finished the book I think.

Yeah, totally. Like the book is a goner, full of goners. Or at least that's what I aimed for. It's cool that it stays with you. Ideally there'd be a kind of fading trail left in the wake of the book. Like the scent of a perfume fading or something, as opposed to No Other, which I hoped would kind of have a building rhythm and ends at a sort of climax. Anyway, it's my third book, and my third book where characters deal with the death of loved ones in some form, and I realized that for the time being this is the last way I want to write about this sort of thing, that I see my next book being very different. So I saw the book being a goner in the sense that this type of writing for me will be gone. I designed the coda as a way for the narrative to just disappear into a black sky or some sort of transcendent universality.


Can you tell me about the photos that accompany the stories? Seems to me that they're an important part of the mood of The Goners.

You know, the inclusion of the photos, which I'm totally happy with, came late in the game. With this book, and all my books, I ceded all visual decisions to someone who is vastly more capable than I am. Michael Salerno, who designed the book, suggested using some photos I'd taken because -- and I'm paraphrasing and he felt the captured the mood of my writing. So then we played around with selection, and one day the light was just perfect and I took four of the pictures that ended up in the book within about three minutes of each other. I do feel they document a mood and landscape that correspond with the text, and in a really low level way, they are kind of inspired by the way W.G. Sebald used images in his novels.


Your Instagram's wonderful and full of these beautiful, arrestingly ethereal photos. Do you see yourself working with other media like photography in the future?

Oh man I just take pictures incessantly. It's really instinctual and something I often do out of boredom. I guess my goal is just to take pictures of stuff I see, the way I see it, and Instagram is wonderfully set up to enable me to do that, ya know?

As far as other media, well Michael Salerno and I are collaborating on a screenplay. It's tough to sum it up, but I think it's going to be a really interesting hybridization of our two styles and styles that have a significant amount of overlap to begin with. It's really exciting and, to some extent super challenging. Writing novels is something I can do without really interacting with anyone during the creative process, so it's cool to have a back and forth with Michael as we go through this. It forces me out of my comfort zone. Of course it will be super neat to see what comes of it, I've written some stuff for it where, while I'm super happy with it, I feel a tad guilty because Michael will have to try to translate it to the screen.


I really can't wait to see what you come up with together! Before you disappear into the Washington woods, can I ask you a final question? It's one that Orwell and your beloved Joan Didion took a shot at... Why do you write?

Oh man, I think Didion's essay is perfect, and I felt such a kinship with her after first reading it that I'm not sure I can answer this without being in her shadow in some way. Having said that... I don't fully understand my desire to write or be creative or whatever, and I don't really want to understand it for fear of that understanding affecting it. But what I can say is, when I'm writing it's kind of like an organized day-dream state, or one where I bypass the normal filters at play in day to day life. When I'm writing well (meaning it's going well), I feel that I can be both intuitive and analytic at the same time, which is not something I can normally handle. I dunno. Whatever it is, I know I need to do it, because I crave it when I don't.





The world pulsed and wrenched. Dick ran like he was running for help. Andy knelt beside Luc looking like, were there good light, he would be studying him. Dick stopped. Andy closed his eyes. Cars sounded on a street somewhere behind the building in front of them. Lights flicked against shadows in the distance. Andy screamed Help, somebody. Dick said come on. He stood next to Andy and Luc then. His point was they could flag down a car or something. Andy didn't open his eyes. He heard Dick running away then come back. The kid grabbed his arm. He stood there then. Luc was this shape in the dark, darker than the shadow he was surrounded by. The boys ran through these puddles and their socks were soaked in their sopping shoes. Tears ran down Andy's face. He didn't see lights or cars on the street they tried towards. It didn't look like anything really.





Buy The Goners @ Kiddiepunk Press here.




*

p.s. Hey. It's a great day here. We get to help usher the new book by super-author and longterm d.l. Mark Gluth in a people-ward direction on the very day it is born. If you don't know, and you surely must, Mark is previously the author of the novel 'The Late Work of Margaret Kroftis', which I was very lucky to get to publish with my Little House on the Bowery imprint, and the novel 'No Other', recently pubbed by Ken Baumann's awesome Sator Press. I have my copy of 'The Goners' already, and it's an amazing little book that also looks fantastic thanks in no small part to the genius of Michael Salerno, master of Kiddiepunk Press. Anyway, you should so totally buy a copy. Seriously. And thank you, Mark, for letting this happen today! Otherwise, I'm here, and yet I'm not here. Let me explain. I'm actually writing this p.s. by necessity on Sunday night, Berlin time, so, for instance, I'm probably going to miss responding to some comments that come in afterwards, but I'll get to them on my next return. Here's the deal: At the moment, Zac's and my post-production schedule has us starting work early every weekday morning beginning today. And, for as long as that's the case, I will not be able to do the p.s. regularly while I'm here as I had hoped. We're trying to arrange for a later start in the day and a corresponding later work stoppage time at night, and, if that happens, I could be back doing the p.s. any day now. If not, the p.s. won't return live again until Saturday. My apologies. Second to lastly, since there aren't so many comments, I won't group them into days/dates but rather talk to them and to you in a big bunch. And lastly, only if you're interested, the big French newspaper Liberation did an article/interview with me re: 'Zac's Haunted House', in French, of course, and you can read it here if you like. ** Keaton, Hi, buddy. Did you see that some guy bought The Residents' one-of-a-kind box set for the asking price of $100,000.00? That seems like lunacy. Remind you ... okay, reminder: don't take drugs. My mom claimed she saw UFOS all time time. And giant floating talking pumpkins. And all kinds of stuff. Didion is pretty highly recommended by me. Based on this visit, so far, I have to say that I'm not very into Berlin, but time will tell. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! The Final Cut Pro 10 thing has been a huge headache mostly do to some ridiculous fucking snobbishness among Final Cut Pro 7 aficionados, of which there are many in our way, who technically can but don't want to work in FCP 10 because ... well, because they suck, basically. The problem has not yet abated and it may well cause us serious problems with the post-production, and I guess we'll find out starting today. Ridiculous. ** David Ehrenstein, Hello, Mr. E. Some of them good, ha ha, good one. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! Yeah, I read that. About the reunion. That's crazy. So curious to see the youtube footage from that. ** Kier, Hi, Kier! I've missed you! Thank you for telling me about your days! It's been a daily joy for me! It's really exciting to hear about you planning for the application, man. Have you gotten everything or most things figured out now? When is the deadline? If you told me already, I apologize for forgetting. I guess I'm going to give you a quick report on all the days since I last saw you in one continuous plop. Let's see ... So, we made it to Halle by plane. No problems. The powers-that-be put us (Zac and me, that is) up in a nice, roomy apartment on the river, which was cool even if we were hardly ever there. So, the afternoon we arrived, we walked over to the theater, which was easy 'cos Halle is tiny, and Gisele was doing rehearsals, but in German, so we just kind of watched and tried to figure out what was what. Then Gisele filled us in one the progress, problems, ups and downs. A big problem at that time was that the piece was way, way over 3 hours long, which is way, way too long. So we talked, and we decided right then to cut this one long scene where the ventriloquists were supposed to talk about the history of puppetry and defend their art against people thinking puppetry is just an old fashioned and really low art form. It was a very good scene, but it had to go, and that immediately removed an hour from the piece. We spent long hours for the next three days rehearsing and editing and changing and cutting from morning 'til night. It went really well. The ventriloquists are fucking amazing to work with, and they're geniuses at what they do. The piece got better and better. We cut another half-hour-long section, and we nipped and tightened other stuff and added new things as well. There's a ton of work left to do, and I need to revise the entire script now, but it'll be good. Also, as I think I mentioned here before, Gisele wants to do a television series, a puppet/ventriloquy show, for one of the big French TV channels, and she wants Zac and me to write the series, or, rather, write the pilot first and then series should the TV channel pick up the series. So we were watching everything also as research and inspiration for the TV pilot. On Saturday morning, we took a train to Berlin, and then we rushed to this movie theater where we were going to see our film on a big movie screen for the first time with the producers and with the two guys who are going to work on the post-production. It looked great on the big screen, and we were very happy and excited by that. Then we had a meeting. Okay, the good thing is that the producers seem to have given up trying to get us to change our film into what they want it to be. It's obvious that they don't like it much, but they said, with a deep sigh, 'We can live with it.' But, and it's too boring and complicated to go into, there are major problems with the post-production for the reasons I mentioned before about the version of Final Cut Pro that we edited the film in and the supposed incompatibility problem. So we've ended up stuck with an editor who doesn't seem to know what he's doing, which is very bad because he needs to a do lot of very intricate, complicated work on the sound and color correction, and we have a very limited amount of time to do the work, and it's just a big fucking fiasco because it shouldn't be difficult like this at all. We'll see how it goes today, but it really is a joke and nightmare how poorly prepared the producers and editors are to do the work we need to do. Ugh. We're just hoping that the guy is better than he seems to be, ha ha. Anyway, we did that. Then we ate Mexican food and crashed. Today was an off day, so nothing really happened other than walking around and trying to figure out how to deal with the problems tomorrow. That's my multi-day report for the time being. And how was your Monday and, likely, rest of your week, my dear Kier? ** Misanthrope, I don't envy the shoveling. Okay, we're even. Oh, shit, what's the latest on the pipe break and the temporary work quarters? Jesus. You didn't know or at least know of The 13th Floor Elevators? Huh. ** Jimmy Johns, Wow, spam. We haven't spam here in a long time. Wow. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! I haven't gotten the new Wire yet. It tends take three frustrating weeks to reach the Paris newsstands, or my favorite newsstand anyway. Are you back at work now? Oh, wait, having scrolled down now, awesome news! And your interview is on Vimeo, so I can see it sans nationalistic tech problems, as can everyone! Everyone, _B_A aka the great man of many letters, all of them capitalized and in bold type, Ben Robinson has been interviewed about his terrific, ongoing project Art 101 by Art In Scotland TV, and you can watch it no matter what country or kind of computer or tablet or phone or whatever else you have. That's right! It's so easy! Just click this to watch. Hooray! And, in addition, how's about this: an article written by Ben for the zine Sindigo on the subject of Heaven and Hell in the digital age. Fascinated? Surely! So, click this to read it. Thank you. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien! Really good to see you! Cool, yeah, the videos were kind awesome, right? And there's, like, hundreds more of them if you get addicted, and almost all of them are great. What's up, man? How's everything? You writing? ** Bill, Hi, Bill! Since it's now next week, I'm hoping your rough week has passed its expiration date. Ha ha, I'm keeping my eyes open. Yeah, Berlin, I don't know. I'm waiting for its famous seductive charm to show itself. It sure hasn't done that yet. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve! It's 9 degrees here too. Well, 9 degrees Centigrade. Or rather it was during the day, Now it's night, and it's ... let me check... 0 degrees Centigrade. I'm glad things turned out to be okay with that editor. I came across your little review of 'Fifty Shades' on Facebook, and I liked it a lot. Mushrooms are a nice drug. However, at least in my case, the wonderfulness tends to be proceeded by about 45 minutes of intense paranoia, so, yeah. Ah, a new review! Everyone, here's the great Steve Erickson aka Steevee's Gay City News piece on the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Film Comment Selects" series. ** Etc etc etc, Hi there, Casey! Well and intact: those two things are true. Yeah, the relentless cold in NYC and on the East Coast in general is nuts. It's so weird because over here we're having this totally mild non-stop non-winter. Thanks about the reruns. Fence is cool. There must be a batch of possible places for that piece, no? Where else are you sending it? ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T!!!! Work stuff is ... well, I'll know how it is after today. Can't tell yet. But the theater work went great. And we think our film looks amazing on the big screen for whatever that's worth. Yeah, Kp said he met up with you guys. Awesome! I haven't taken mushrooms or really any drug stronger than coffee for, like, fuck, so long. I did have a Margarita last night, which is pretty rare. So weird. Don't miss drugging though. Mushrooms are a sweet thing, though. ** Okay. No doubt I missed at least a few comments that arrived while I was asleep in the Berlin time zone. I'll get to them next time. Like I said, I don't know when next time, p.s.-wise, will be, but, worst comes to worst, it won't be any later that this coming Saturday. Hopefully sooner, but ... Take care! Enjoy the post on Mark Gluth's book and get yourselves copies, why don't you? See you ... soon.

----



The great documentary filmmaker Les Blank founded his own production company, Flower Films, in the late 60s, and all of his films since that time have been independently produced. Most of his films focus on American traditional music forms including (among others) blues, Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, Tex-Mex, polka, tamburitza, and Hawaiian musics. Many of these films represent the only filmed documents of master musicians who are now deceased. Other notable films by Blank on non-musical subjects include a film about garlic and another about gap-toothed women. His best known works are two films about German film director Werner Herzog: Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) and Burden of Dreams (1982), the latter about the filming of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. His most recent film, All In This Tea, begun in 1997 and released in 2007, is a profile of the Berkeley, California-based tea importer and adventurer David Lee Hoffman. He talks about his new film, Werner Herzog, and his life as a maverick filmmaker in this recent interview. Below find short pieces from eleven of his more than forty films.

'Pinocchio started it all for me, in 1940, when I was 4 years old. It happened at the Tampa Theater, one of the grand old depression-era movie palaces thankfully preserved still today, with all of its ornate and excessive decor, in Tampa, Florida. It has twinkling stars in the ceiling and clouds that float by. Plus lots of bare-breasted women with long flowing tresses seemingly everywhere I looked. One held the water fountain out for me to drink from. Others waved huge candlelabra of light and were strategically situated throughout the wondrous and mysterious, darkened stucco caverns. For a breast-fed kid of four it was most stimulating. There was no question of my willingness to suspend disbelief. And suspend it I did. I was instantly sucked into the cartoon from the first frame and I’m not sure I’ve ever completely returned.'-- Les Blank



fromThe Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins(1967; 2:10)
-- 'The great Texas bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins is captured in this emotional and revealing feature length film. Blank reveals Lightnin's inspiration, and features a generous helping of classic blues.'



fromSpend It All(1971; 2:46)
-- 'Blank's rich portrayal of the lives and music of the French-speaking Cajuns of Louisiana, featuring the Balfa Brothers, Marc Savoy and Nathan Abshire.'



fromHot Pepper(1973; 4:28)
-- 'Blank's musical portrait of Zydeco King Clifton Chenier, who combines the pulsating rhythms of Cajun dance music and black R&B with African overtones, belting out his irresistible music in the sweaty juke joints of South Louisiana.'



fromAlways for Pleasure(1978; 2:38)
-- 'An intense insider's portrait of New Orleans' street celebrations and unique cultural gumbo: Second-line parades, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest. Features live music from Professor Longhair, the Wild Tchoupitoulas, the Neville Brothers and more.'



fromGarlic is as Good as Ten Mothers(1980; 2:47)
-- 'Blank's zesty paean of praise to the greater glories of garlic is a passionate foray into the history, consumption, cultivation and culinary/curative powers of the stinking rose.'



fromWerner Herzog Eats His Shoe(1980; 5:42)
-- 'German film director Werner Herzog really does eat his shoe to fulfill a vow to fellow filmmaker Errol Morris -- boldly exemplifying his belief that people must have the guts to attempt what they dream of.'



fromBurden of Dreams(1982; 1:17)
-- ' Blank's feature-length documentary about the messianic German director Werner Herzog struggling against desperate odds in the Amazon basin to make his epic feature, Fitzcarraldo.'



fromSprout Wings and Fly(1983; 3:14)
-- 'Blank's emotional tribute to Appalachian culture profiles legendary, old-time fiddler Tommy Jarrell.'



fromIn Heaven There is No Beer?(1984; 3:19)
-- 'Blank's joyous romp through the dance, food, music, friendship, and even religion of the Polka.'



fromSworn to the Drum(1995; 2:23)
-- 'Blank's documentary tribute to Francisco Aguabella, perhaps the finest Afro-Cuban master percussionist still living.'



fromAll In This Tea(2007; 2:50)
-- 'All In This Tea takes us into the world of tea by following world-renowned obsessive tea expert David Lee Hoffman to some of the most remote regions of China in search of the best handmade teas in the world.'
----



*

p.s. Hey. So, it turns out that this trip to Berlin to do the post-production has been a total fiasco. Very long story very short, despite plans and assurances to the contrary, our producers have been unable to find anyone here capable of doing the post-production work on our film. Zac and I will return to Paris this evening, and we will have to try to find someone or someones there to do the post- work as soon as possible. Completely ridiculous, but there it is. What this means for you is that the p.s. will return live tomorrow and continue until/if the post-production work in Paris requires me to start work in the mornings. You will, however, continue to get rerun posts for the next shortish while because I was completely unprepared for this situation. For today, please enjoy this old post about Les Blank, and I will see you and catch up with your comments tomorrow.

----



























































----



*

p.s. Hey. Since a bunch of you asked me about the Google/Blogger policy change thing, I'll talk about that up here. Yes, I got one of those emails and, in my case, one that seemed specifically directed at blogs that already have the warning label since it said my blog might be particularly affected and might be monitored via the changed policy. Taking the email's words at its word, my understanding is that the policy change is specifically and only about sexually explicit images and videos. If they had demanded no more sexually explicit text, this place would be in big trouble. Even though I think it seems like I post a lot of sexually explicit images here, I actually don't, or rather I haven't in years other than maybe 4 or 5 images per each escort or slave post. So, I won't be posting full frontal/hard-on pix or asshole shots or xxx images in the escort and slave posts anymore. I'm guessing/hoping that simple butt shots aren't going to be a problem, although maybe I'm being naive. The rules's "out" that sex images are okay if the intent is artistic feels pretty subjective and unreliable. I mean, I think the escort and slave posts are art/literature, but I kind of doubt I could persuade Google that that's the case. I've started going back and removing the "offending" images from the older escort/slave posts. It's a time-consuming hassle and a headache and a drag, but it's not a big deal to me since those posts have never been about sexually titillating viewers. Years ago, I used to occasionally do posts centered around pornography. In those cases, I'm going to go back through the archive and try to find them. If I can maintain their original intent with a bit of editing, I'll do that, and, if I can't, I will take them offline. Sucks, but this blog is not a porn or sex blog, and I'm willing to lose some old posts if it helps the blog from being shut down or forced into privacy. As far as the option of migrating the blog elsewhere, I've looked into that, and it is really not an easy thing to do. Blogger's code and formatting is specific, and if I moved the blog elsewhere, I would need to reformat each individual post by hand, and there are 4,325 posts as of this morning, and I'm just not able or willing to do that incredible amount of work for now. If the changes I make to the blog are not enough, and if Google forces me to make the blog private, I will reconsider the idea of migrating the blog at that time. So, that's my plan. Now, I'll catch up with the comments starting with the few I missed last weekend. ** Saturday ** Steevee, Hey. Nice about the temperature's return to niceness, obviously. How was 'It Follows'? ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, so those are the monsters of Rock. I always wondered who Rock's monsters were. I'm Facebook friends with Cody Cachet. He's a really sweet guy. Yeah, he's had some problems, and, in fact, he's currently in rehab. I don't think he looks bad now, but then I never objectified him even back when he was doing porn. ** Kier, Hi! Drat, or, rather, so lucky lucky you about the snow. No, Berlin was exactly like Paris, very mildly coldish and rainy. Bleh. 'The Babadook' isn't good? Oh, that's disappointing. I've been kind of excited to see that. I guess I already gave you my Berlin day report last time, so I'll do the succeeding day below. ** Cap'm, Hi, Cap! Wow, awesome story. I was in one of those SF Victorian houses once. I couldn't decide if it would be cool to live in one or not. But I wasn't on mushrooms, sadly. Anyway, wow. Thanks, sir! ** Monday ** Damien Ark, Hi! Mm, your decision on how write/edit, i.e. focus on less, on a chunk, a single thing, on a new thing is probably a really good one. Based on my experience. Dude, throwing stuff aside and starting over is an incredibly writer thing to do. I do that all the time. It's a sign that you are a writer if anything. Mushrooms seem like they're totally in the finals for best drug, at the very least. Enjoy, man. Yeah, an unfortunate snag currently and hopefully momentarily in our post-production, but that's my life's goal for the immediate future. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, sir. ** Steevee, Cool, interview. Everyone, here's Steevee interviewing the Argentinian dude Damián Szifron, director of the new film "Wild Tales".' Bill, Hi, B. Yeah, I just don't get Berlin's charm, or maybe it's been overhyped, or maybe I feel like the justified praise has just been hype or something. It's okay, but I really don't have a feel for whatever is supposed to be so great about it. Granted, this just-ended, truncated trip was really not a happy one, so that could be part of it. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. No weirdly, I didn't take a single photo of the theater work, which is weird. I'll start doing that so I can cover the construction of the piece to some degree on the blog like I used to do because that was fun. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Thank you for the lovely response to Mark's book! ** Tomkendall, Tom! Hey! Really, really good to see you, man! You good? What's going on? ** Kiddiepunk, Masterful work and achievement, sir! There's some news, and I'll talk to you later about that. ** Keaton, I haven't sprung for a box set in ages. Or not music. I think I've bought a couple or few film box set things. Ooh, 'A Sentimental Novel' is so great. And Radiguet. That's some very good input there. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! Well, if we had stayed in Berlin and done the post- the way the producers wanted, the film would have suffered, but we're hoping to find an appropriately really skilled person or persons here in Paris to do it, and I would imagine we will. Or, well, we have to. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Thanks for the awesome response to Mark's and Kiddiepunk's achievement. Well, yeah, I would love a copy for damned sure. Simmons and Kilpatrick are both great writers, so that's pretty great and deserved couple of blurbs you got there. Best to you, buddy! ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, well, silver lining: you're working, but the added metro time sucks, duh. Yeeks about the furnace. My last morning in Berlin, I plugged in my coffee maker and blew a fuse in the hotel that knocked out all of the electricity on the entire floor I was staying on. And since I was on the ground floor, that included the hotel's lobby and dining room and offices, and etc. I was not their favorite ever guest. ** MANCY, Hi, Stephen! ** Sypha, Hi, James! ** Mark Gluth, Thank you again so much for the launch post. I'm very honored, and the book is just gorgeousness and genius central man. Oh, fuck, my very best wishes and luck to Erin's mom. That's terrible. My mom broke her hip twice. Ugh. ** Tuesday ** Keaton, I don't even know what to say about that dream, wow. I'm ... honored? I am, ha ha, even without the ha ha. Wow. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks, David. It just means more fucking work and more money and time that we thought we wouldn't have to do/pay, but so it goes, I guess. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Yeah, as I stated up above, I did get that email, and I guess that (up there) is how I'm hoping to approach it in a hopefully successful way, at least for the moment. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Ditto. ** Heliotrope, Hi, Mark! Ain't that the truth. Presumably it shouldn't be too, too difficult to find the right person or persons here in Paris. Why it proved to be so difficult in a major culture center like Berlin is a very strange and good question. Jesus, Mark. That's really fucked up and, obviously, very worrying about your incident and the unwillingness for your insurance to pay for tests. I mean, wtf about the insurance assholes! Gosh, man, if you think it's best or the only option to just go on and hope, I mean, that is very worrying, as you can easily imagine. Not that I wouldn't do the same thing, because I almost for sure would, but ... okay, Jesus, take whatever care you can of yourself, okay? I might get to see you pretty soon if travel plans pan out. This mess with the post-production has thrown a wrench into things, but, ideally, I might be in LA at least for a short time in the next few weeks to month. Mega love to you! ** Kier, Hi. Well, if I'm understanding the new rules correctly, I don't think I need to stop doing or remove the escort and slave posts because the xxx in them is largely in the text. I will delete possible "dangerous" images, and maybe I'll give those posts a more ambiguous title so as not to draw undue attention to them in the future. I don't know. It sucks in any case. The big mess in Berlin slows things down, mostly. And could well add more expense, and we're already over budget. But if we can find people to do the work, it's a lot easier and more pleasant to do the post- here in Paris. I should know soon. Only 10 works? That must be hard. Are you choosing, like, a selection that shows how you work in different areas, i.e. drawing, collage, sculpture, photo ... ? Or are you concentrating on the works you think are best irregardless of the medium? Or ...? Do hang in there and try to destress yourself as much as you can. I predict a superb outcome, not that my prediction is any help. Yesterday, ... first I told my hotel that I was leaving early. I had booked the room through Monday because that had seemed like the minimum amount of time we would be in Berlin. And the hotel will not refund the money I'd paid for the additional days, and that really sucks, obviously, but so it goes. Then Zac and I met with one of our producers and with the editor who's hopefully doing the compositing and special effects for our film. That went okay, I guess, but we'll see for sure once he starts showing us what he's done. Then we basically packed our stuff, went to the airport and we flew back to Paris. I got home around 9:30 pm, did this and that, ate, and crashed. Blah. I'll try to have an interesting first day back in Paris. How was Wednesday for you? ** Steevee, Thanks. Hopefully we'll sort out the post-production stuff right away, and time will tell, I guess, if I can manage to get the blog to fly under Google's censorious radar. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Hopefully everything will work out okay. We'll see. Fully enjoy the Members Show and Tell, and knock them out, which I have no doubt you will. ** Rewritedept, Hi, Chris! I haven't seen you in ages, and now I know why. Thank for the blog day! Such a thing is badly needed right now. Thank you! I'll write to you with the launch date. ** Mikel Motorcycle, Hi, Mikel! Good to see you, man! Thank you a lot for the offer of help. We'll see if I need it. I mean, if they mean what they say, then it's just a matter of removing some photos and backburner-ing some old posts. Not great at all, but not a massive change. But I guess I won't know until late March if I've done the trick or not. Take care! ** Keaton, Decency is as decency does? ** Misanthrope, Yeah, I'm a big optimist too. I should know if we're going to solve the problem in the next few days. You make me wish I had a hillbilly Facebook friend. ** Okay. Back to normal, so to speak. Here's a strange old post from ye "good" olde days. Have at it. See you tomorrow.

----
Hey everyone,

as you see here is the self portrait day you all contributed to. I'm really happy and grateful that so many people participated. I wanted to apologise as well to a few people who's emails I missed, I mean I think I left a question or two unanswered. My mistake, and I'm sorry. But I think the turn out is pretty amazing. It's funny, whenever I meet someone new I have the urge to make that person a mixdisc. A sort of 'hi nice to meet you... this is what I feel, what I feel about myself... and hope it moves you like it does move me' if that makes sense. Over the years I have received in return alot of nice mix tapes as well.To me, it enhances impressions I have of people. And after starting the first SPD about 2 years ago with (self) photographs it's good to hear everyone now. Thanks dennis for having a day like this. take care everyone and please don't stop the music.

xkoes


Akechikogorou

5 musical selves (in particular disorder)

1. The Beloved One
Einstuerzende Neubauten: Fiat Lux
mediafire link
One part of this long song ends with the lines, 'Wer von uns beiden, wer von uns beiden ist der Geliebte?' ('Who of us both, who of us both, is the beloved one?') I am, well, the subject and the object of that question I suppose. And the word that is repeated a thousand times in the last part is 'Hirn-Lego' ('brain lego').

2. Someone who happened to find himself defined as a freak
The Notwist: One with the Freaks
mediafire link
Strange how little it took (from my point of view) to become one of 'them'... And it's not a nice, Rimbaud-like experience, believe me.

3. The Insatiable
Prefab Sprout: Appetite
mediafire link
'In which case I'll name you after me...'

4. Simply the One Who Listened to this Song Sheena Ringo, Gips mediafire link

None of these songs is among my favorites, but I do like them and I've chosen them because I recognize in them something which defines me. This one in particular is not exactly a great song, but has been included for the reason that I listened to it on endless repeat between the day of my first date with my present girlfriend & love of my life, and the day when she first kissed me (which was on our 3rd date, about 1 month later). And it brings back the thrill of dose days every time I listen to it again.

5. The Friendly Voice of Desparation (and Cynicism, at times)
Pavement: Fight This Generation
mediafire link
The song title speaks for itself I guess.



Bernard

If every gay white male imagines he's secretly harboring the spirit of a fierce black diva, mine is Eartha Kitt.

C'est Si Bon
I want to be evil
Usku Dara
I love Men
Where Is My Man?
It's All About Sex
Cha Cha Heels (with Bronski Beat)
Love For Sale
All By Myself

And finally, from Fostbraedur:
An Icelandic Comedy Sketch about Eartha Kitt


David Ehrenstein

Marianne Faithful: "Song For Nico"

Watch

These women are me.

Cheers, David Ehrenstein



Cody Reding



Short Thingy: I guess I would call myself a music addict and so I feel obliged to make a music self portrait. There was too much music to choose from though. I picked the best songs that describe me off the top of my head though. Anyway enjoy. From, Cody





Tony O'Neill

sendspace link

This is collection of songs that all have personal resonance to me, or that formed the soundtrack to vital moments in my life. Each song on here sends a chill up my spine, or can transport me immediately to a specific place: some good, and some bad. This is the soundtrack to growing up, breaking down, fucking up, getting clean, starting over. The whole shebang. The hardest part was keeping it down to 15 songs…

Track Listing

Holes by Mercury Rev
Breaking Glass by David Bowie
Beaming by Scientist
Loomer by My Bloody Valentine
Las Vegas Man by Suicide
Glass by Joy Division
Animal Nitrate by Suede
Evergreen by The Brian Jonestown Massacre
Marijuana In My Soul by Ranking Dread
Babies by Pulp Skag Lover by The White Sport
No Xmas For John Quays by The Fall
Vertigo by The Libertines
Made Of Stone by The Stone Roses


Joe M

Watch

Text: I've just discovered that many people think the 'you' in Perfect Day is Heroin. I don't agree. I think it's about this:





Blair



Pavement's 'Range Life'
Too bad "fuck" is bleeped.

AND




Math T



the math t ep
download it track-by-track incl album art- here
download the whole thing in a .zip- here

my musical tastes are easy but specific,
guitars: jangly, quick
percussion: intuitive
singers: fey, worldly, boyish
symbology: the Brit<->American eternal

01 Sister, I'm a Poet by Morrissey
i startle every listen, 'no reason to talk about the books i read but still i do', 'long long alone waiting at the light but not this time'. a song that's showed me more things about myself than i can count. it also has my favorite pop song mannerism, a title that completes a lyric [the word 'poet' is absent from the song].

02 Harborcoat by R.E.M. [live in germany 1985]
flaunts access to some symbolic language that i thrill to just barely recognize.

03 Last Post on the Bugle by the Libertines
holy riff + perfect words, an anthem disguised as a jig, 'caught up in a phrase as they led him away.'

04 Add It Up by Violent Femmes
clearly the greatest song ever written about math.

05 Ceremony played by New Order [original by Joy Division]
cautious hope incarnate. perfectly heterosexual + great to dance to = beautiful and rare.

06 Make Me Smile played by Erasure [original by Steve Harley + Cockney Rebels]
the outro to humankind's existence. everybody sing!

07 Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground
and i came of age to this one thousand million times


->
Scott Coffey

i was a lonely freckled kid living on maui with my mom and her new boyfriend on maui, halfway up the extinct volcano - sometimes in the clouds. we lived in this new circular wooden almost cliche mid 1970s house with a wraparound deck that had amazing views of the rest of the island. inside were white stucco walls that a nail wouldn't stay in unless you found a stud so i'd have to tape my movie posters up. my room was huge with dark blue shag carpeting that smelled like how i imagined peoples houses on the mainland must smell. i stuck everything into the corner my bed, my records... i smoked pot and fell asleep every night listening to the "rock" station - pink floyd, led zeppelin and dreck like foreigner, kansas, styx, bad company and the occasional bliss of jagger belting something out for me to jack off to but otherwise a desert. one night i was really fucking almost halucinagenically stoned on the pot i stole from my mom's boyfriend's underwear drawer and i was watching this short-lived bad variety comedy show on ABC called Fridays -- ABC's answer to saturday night live and suddenly this happened......



i was never the same. i cut off my long leaf garret feathered hair in the mirror that night, to the horror of my mother, and went to the record store an hour away and bought london calling. the big hawaiian dude that worked there let me take the london calling poster home with me. that record changed everything for me -- what music could be, how i could feel - simultaneously tough and fey (compared to the absurd exaggerated masculine charade of the stupid surfers i lusted after.) and that "anger could be power" and "he who fucked nuns will later join the church" and "revolution rock"...... joe strummer became my hero but i wanted to smell Paul Simonon and i smeared myself with cum thinking about his voice and lips and the image of him smashing his bass on the cover of london calling..... and this....




Mark Gluth

mediafire link

I had a lot of time to think about this SPD, so after various drafts I settled on the idea of creating a mix tape that I would make for folks to let them know what kind of music I'm into. Like something I'd give to a new friend. Here it is:

Track 1: If We Wait - Guided By Voices. The electric guitar during the second chorus/fade out moves me beyond almost any other moment in art that I've been exposed to. I think I understand what ecstatic truth is when I hear this song.

Track 2: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Sea Of Tears) - Destroyer. I had a feverish dream that I was listening to this song and it moved me to tears. Then in the dream i was writing on this blog that I had a dream that I was moved to tears while listening to this song.

Track 3: The Dust You Kick Up Is Too Fine - Sunset Rubdown. I love it when lyrics apparently mean so much so much to the the singer but are a puzzle to the listener. Also, this song is as an argument as any for the the genius of Spencer Krug's singing voice.

Track 4: Siege Of Antioch - Uziq. This song does everything right to my ears.

Track 5: Alan And Dawn - Benoit Pioulard. I think this guy's is a genius, and I think this is his best song.

Track 6: Archangel - Burial. when the bass part comes in, this song just kills me.

Track 7: Are You Swimming In Her Pools? - Swan Lake. Spencer Krug's second and final appearance on this list. The dude's voice moves me.

Track 8: Mona Ride - Greg Ashley - Just a haunting little track from an overlooked album. I could listen to hours of this type of simple, sad, haunted, lofi indie rock. Like most things, the vocals and the structure are key.

Track 9: The City - Marmoset. Marmoset are godlike and this song is full of secrets I've yet to unlock.

Track 10: The Girl's Of Summer - Arab Strap. I think this is song sums up what Arab Strap did perfectly.

Track 11: Something On Your Mind - Karen Dalton. This is the newest to me but oldest by release date song here. Her voice is amazing and I wonder why she never saw more success when she was alive.

Track 12: Kangaroo - Xiu Xiu. A cover, one of my fave songs by them. the perfect way to end this list.


SYpHA_69


link to mix cd

Extracts:

"Wherever you go I will be carcass Whatever you see will be rotting flesh Humanity recovered glittering etiquette Answers her crimes with Mausoleum rent"

JG Ballard sample: “I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror”

"A moving aria for a vanished style of mind A noble debut tackling vertiginous demands Has absence ever sounded so eloquent so sad I doubt it?"

"Take a hollowpoint revolver
Shoot down the rapids of your heart
Blow the fucking thing apart
Blow the fucking thing apart"

"So many blazing orchids burning in your throat Making you choke, making you sigh, Sigh in tiny deaths... So Melt!"

1984 sample: "I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.

"I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
holding you but I only miss these things when they leave
I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn
life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
self-disgust is self-obsession honey and I do as I please
a morality obedient only to the cleansed repented
I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
a truth that washes that learnt how to spell
the first time you see yourself naked you cry
soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
he loves me truly this mute solitude I'm draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing
sleep can't hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
shadows aren't clean, false mirrors, too many people awake
if you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else
I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
so damn easy to cave in, man kills everything."

"I'm becoming less defined, as days go by
Fading away, well you might say I'm losing focus
Kind of drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself
Sometimes, I think I can see right through myself
Sometimes, I think I can see right through myself
Sometimes, I can see right through myself

Less concerned, about fitting into the world
Your world that is, cause it doesn't really matter anymore
(No, it doesn't really matter anymore) No, it doesn't really matter anymore
None of this really matters anymore

Yes, I am alone, but then again I always was
As far back as I can tell, I think maybe it's because
Because you were never really real to begin with
I just made you up to hurt myself"

Nico (1984): "A true artist must self-destruct."


Statictick

These songs represent most of the bullshit that's made up my past year. I love them. Catharsis or whatever.

Elvis Costello has been my favorite since I was a wee. 'I Hope You're Happy Now' says it all by it's title, then Elvis says it more.

Box dot whatever switched my initial ordering of the songs, so fuck that. Bear with me.

American Mars is my favorite Detroit band. Their new record, 'Western Sides,' means a lot to me. 'Democracity' is a stand-out.

Mark Eitzel and American Music Club remain some of the most excellent and unrecognized artists in the medium of sound. 'I'll Be Gone' tags Eitzel's singing voice. It makes me cry almost every hearing.

Bryan Ferry's 'Another Time, Another Place' .... well, what can be said? Genius.

The Dexateens are a new band for me. 'Fingertips' caps their last record, and snags most of my emotions. (Fuck those emotions.) They just rock.

Finch just rocks, as well. A short-lived boy-metal band. Gorgeous stuff. 'Without You Here' makes too much sense; but I'm the romantic type even when I'm jilted.

'There's too Much Love' by Belle and Sebastian is a song I danced to with my dogs and cats, but not the Ex-boyfriend. How can someone not enjoy a B & S concert I flew him out to LA to see? What a dick. What a great song.




Aj

imeem link

my playlist is essentially a list of songs that i've been completely obsessed with in the past six months or so, listening to them on repeat for days or weeks on end until i got sick of them, plus "my sweet lord/today is a killer" by nina simone because it's my favorite song of all time. "we hold the land in great esteem" is my second favorite. but yeah, all these songs are totally amazing!



Dennis Cooper



Today I feel like this song is by me.


Alice in Chains



It was too hard to pick my all time favourite songs and there were too many to songs that have had profound impacts on me. So this is just twelve songs that I thought might sound appealing together, it also lasts roughly the length of one side of a cassette. I did however take ages selecting these, I had a potential playlist 100 songs long that I kept chipping back until it was a manageable twelve. Big Star, Sonic Youth and Television all lost out last minute. I then spent a while deliberating over the order to put them in; time well spent though, such is the joy of making a mixtape.

1 James White and The Blacks – Stained Sheets
2 The Books – Be Good To Them Always
3 The Modern Lovers – Hospital
4 Half Man Half Biscuit – Twenty Four Hour Garage People
5 The Adverts - Bored Teenagers
6 Big Black – He’s a Whore
7 Teenage Fanclub – Like A Virgin
8 The Wedding Present – Always The Quiet One
9 The Replacements – Sixteen Blue
10 Suicide – Ghost Rider
11 Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Young Shields
12 Fleetwood Mac – Man of the world


Michael Karo

perhaps my favorite song ever. it's short, interesting and weird, just like me!



how ironic that my LEAST favorite musician in the world (phil collins) plays on this song. for a detailed analysis of the song from eric tamm's "brian eno: his music and the vertical color of sound" click on the image below.



eno as a sexy bitch:



Dungan

sendspace link
Whenever someone asks me a question along the lines of what my favorite music is, I always draw a blank, and I'm tempted to ask if I can go and look at my records before answering. Since I have trouble with this, I'm submitting a tiny list of some of my favorite songs from this moment, right now, in no particular order, as my self-portrait.


Black Peter
mediafire link
here are 2 pics n 1 link of song that i made w my band for my self portrait assesment.
song CAKE sums it up: "Im gonna have my cake and im gonna eat too i dont see nothing wrong with that if its something i want to do"






Tally

zshare link

This mix addresses my inability to express my unquenchable desire for a girl verbally. It was made in los angeles california while I was on a trip visiting friends. All of the records included were purchased or found on the same trip to la. Its push button style, but recorded into audacity. I really like it because it addressed me so personally.... all of the records i bought on the trip were purchased without consideration for making her,ali, a mix... but then i searched through the 40 or so pieces of vinyl i had to find some reflection of my love in their grooves. This mix is also interesting to me because it was put together with me keeping in mind her love for a canon of classics (mitchell, dylan, stevens) that i dont usually get very into. So i listened to all of these albums that I found at my friends house and tried to find tracks to include. Theres also an original production, the second to last song- it flips a vocal sample from a joni mitchel song and then reworks it into a hyper edited drum pattern...... This seemed like a great climax to the mix because it combined our two interests......... Theres also a kind of grand narrative or trajectory- me emerging from my insular IDM-y interests, my lonelyness, and then my aopropriation of these other voices to express this explicit sexual desire and then everything kind of cascades down


thomas



it's the third track here
it's called "Walking the foodmiles".
"This is a new demo by my band Plus (www.myspace.com/mmmplus). The words are from a notebook where I wrote down things that came into my head while watching old sci-fi movies on TV and reflecting on the state of the planet right now. So it's a stream-of-consciousness, but an environmentally conscious stream..."



Adjoun



yousendit link
rubber toy - ivor cutler


Tigersare



Track 1:
"stay on the beat" (guy blackman, live with sly hats on 2SER FM, Sydney, November 2007):
sharebee link
this was me and geoff/sly hats on the radio late last year, after getting home from our first world tour...we sound tired but attuned to each other. the song is about my experiences with my boyfriend in japanese gay bars in 2003-2004. more information: www.myspace.com/guyblackman

Track 2:
"fall again" (kath bloom, live at Cafe Nine, New Haven CT, November 2006)


kath bloom is my favourite living songwriter, and to me the fact that i put out her music on my label Chapter doesn't compromise this sentiment in any way. more information: www.myspace.com/kathbloomchapter



Chris Goode

mediafire link
I gave myself a limit of eight tracks, because like all good middle-class Brits, I'm hardwired to think in terms of eight-disc lists. I expect everyone will say the same thing: how difficult, and fascinating, this task was; and how everything shifts at the point that you realise that just a bunch of songs you really like won't necessarily add up to a self-portrait. So: I could try and explain the process behind arriving at this final selection. I could easily and happily write a thousand words about each of these tracks, the people and the times and the ideas that they bundle together. But for once, I'm going to err on the side of saying less than everything, and closer to nothing.


Brendan Hamilton




Marc

THE KNIFE
THE KNIFE
THE KNIFE

watchwatch 2

It's hard to describe the appeal of The Knife, probably because I think they're genius and the more I listen/see them, the deeper the constellation of their ideas, music & visuals can get. Their music is composed of distortions, which interests me. Lot of times you'll hear Karin Dreijer's vocals pitchshifted, and apparently for Silent Shout (2006) Olof Dreijer used this music software which distorted and "changed the shape of" a sound over a particular period of time. They have a reclusive weirdness about them, which is part of their unique vision. If you listen to the lyrics closely, you'll get to the outer limits of pop: a defiant, weird, synthesized trail of being hungry, being sad, being in love, being anything extreme.

Particularly in their last album, Silent Shout (2006), The Knife tells a story of post-apocalyptic, electro-tribal, commercial-confused radioactive innocence. Their videos are half-awake dreams with bizarre elements, like a transexual serenading a group of thugs, a creature with a paper-plaster face dreaming of another creature and talking about this dream of losing it's teeth and being half woman/half man, a herd of mingling sheep at night.

I read an interview where The Knife said one of it's biggest influences for Silent Shout, their third album, was David Lynch, whose movies they watched ceaselessly while creating the album. They were particularly influenced by the scene in 'Mulholland Drive' with Betty and Rita crying in the middle of the night at a clandestine theater, listening to Rebecca del Rio sing. I wasn't surprised by this conduit for the imagination, and I've also been long mesmerized by that scene (and Lynch) too. Like Badalamenti's chords, The Knife (especially with their limited live show in 2007) explore this mode of feeling that (for me) is like the chapel for a youth culture that's dominated by atheists. It's entirely now, and there's a lot of punchy yearning in it's system. The Knife just have this way of getting inside of the confusion of our sensory organs & laying them flat on the table for view. They have this way of pulling out and layering odd, jambled pulses and chords that are cold and Scandinavian, wintry and really vital. If I had to post a picture of The Knife to represent the inspiration I feel when I'm listening to them, it would be something like a stark empty plain, probably in Northern Sweden, some cornstalks lining one side, a crow in the distance, a black night bright sky holding a few remote stars in it, and a figure somewhere far off with an unusual mask and a long black trenchcoat, holding just as much mystery and disturbance, as mania and glee.


JW Veldhoen




I picked her up at a hotel across from the art school, she had needle marks and wore a yellow slicker and a Thor t-shirt, and she had her gold hair in pony-tails, but she was Japanese. I hired her off Craigslist as a participant in a ww4m that I said I was looking for. I was expecting a blond Asian but I wasn't expecting her to be like Kathleen Hanna crossed Aika Miura. DATY+PSE+Greek.

You all look the same. Caucasians.
Cock, Asian, I say. My eyes grow blue when I stare. I point her a contorted finger.
I'm sorry?
You heard me!

She smiles and pulls on her bag and takes out a phone and tells me she has to make a call to check in with her agency. I listen for whatever code might pass for a creepy weirdo alert but she says something in Japanese at the end that I don't understand.

My name is Cammy she exhales, as I told the agency to tell her to say, with a fragrant nicotine, and I wonder aloud if I was too forward, and she called for her security, and she says no, she's sure of my signs, and what I want. I ask her what I want and she says to put my cock up her ass for $400, which is only half right. We walk to the train and go to a town past a dozen freeway overpasses and then we walk in to the woods until we get to a decrepit tower that is filled with leaves and the musk of abandoned years. I break us into a stairwell covered in graffiti and littered with cigarettes and condoms and we climb to the penthouse. The hall is dark and the room at the end opens to a view of the ocean. This is one of the few abandoned buildings of this size that still has windows, and I know I'm writing this because I'm writing in a style, and I'm saying nothing with Cammy because she doesn't exist but as a sign that only she is sure of. It isn't my intention to break your belief or unbelief either way on this, so I shouldn't say, I don't want to be considered too forward.

Some point I am making again and writing within a certain frame of literary production, shall we say. I don't hate anyone who perverted my hate. This happens because I say so. This is happening because I say so. I'm not doing this for anybody or because of anything. There is nobody waiting for us and she asks when the other girl will arrive. They told her we were going somewhere abandoned, so it seems stupid for her to be surprised when I shoot her in the foot. I don't like the trend towards sudden violence as a reader and tend to question it as an expression of power by a neutered voice, and in this case I'd be right.

I've written this before. I'm repeating myself and others, but I'm writing this because it keeps happening.

She's tied up and I've got my hand covered in her shit and now I have it in her mouth and now I 'm feeding my cock into her ass and now her hands are turning purple from hanging off the pull-up bar I installed prior to this, and now I'm punching her like a husk on a hook, and her ribs break easily and softly, and turn purple, and now she is bleeding inside, and now her front teeth are gone, and her eyelid is shut, and I have to stop to get some rest. I'm not imitating or imagining anything. I'm not lecturing you. This is not a failure of imagination or my inability to analyze the components of my desire. I disagree
that hate is perverse, and I don't believe I am mirroring. I don't believe in mirrors. I am not a vampire. This is not an ego orgasm. I came in her ass, twice. She was alive the first time. This is still not enough, this is an old trope, it isn't true, the insight facile, if non-existent, the transference that occurs is merely message, repetitively misogynistic, and I've already done Étant donnés in my writing. And I obviously have mixed feelings on Goethe, that Nihil humani a me alienum puto. Now I've put cheese in her snatch like Bret Easton Ellis, and now I'm sawing her in half like one of DC's Guro. I'm not doing this and the point has already been put at bay again, and again, and again, and this self-portrait has worn so thin as to make me very tired, as though I've approached the end of something, like the end of the line, but this thought isn't very original, and now I'm watching myself in the mirror, to my surprise, and I look tired, hunched over, typing with a pack of cards scattered everywhere, the ace of hearts and the ace of spades nearest both of my hands. Her body smells like Eritrea, and I've never been to Eritrea, but you must trust signs, because everything means something other than what it seems to mean and when the words come they must be said, except if you mind the repetition. I have to stop writing this because I'm writing this again.

I'm asked: So, your writing is pretty fucked-up?
Writing now is fucked-up, so I dunno.

I'm not sure what copyright means when I have come on my hands. I wrote my first novel because I lied and said I started a novel and when I was asked about it I said it was called Tiles because that was the first thing I saw when I was asked and I liked bands and titles that were slack.

This didn't take me much to write and I didn't think about it for very long before I wrote it. Maybe I procrastinated for a few days, but otherwise.

This song is by Aural Exciters, I don't know anything about it but I like it. I stole the picture with the Google search anal lollipop.


Winter Rates

mix tape download link
Winter Rate's Musical Self Portrait Mix Tape Track List & Liner Notes.

1. the who - a quick one
the who was my first favorite rock and roll band. this was about third grade and the older kids in the neighborhood were blasting "The Kids Are Alright" album in their garage. I have it on vinyl now but the version of "a quick one" on that is from the rolling stones rock and roll circus. you can see why they didn't want to release that t.v. show after the who blew them away. this is the studio version. it can make me cry.

2. pink floyd - set the controls for the heart of the sun (live on the radio)
after the who i went thru my cerebral pink floyd phase. i was really hooked on "the wall" thru jr .high but when i discovered their early psychedelic work i was a believer. from the moment i heard the early floyd i knew i'd have many years of drug use ahead of me.

3. butthole surfers - whirling hall of knives
i discovered the buttholes when i was in 8th grade via thrasher magazine. they had a rad interview. i went to the local mall record store and bought rembrandt pussyhorse, their latest album, on vinyl. i later worked at this store and had to systematically box up and send back all the vinyl, and then all the cassettes without barcodes...which is how i discovered mudhoney (see below). the butthole's mix of punk, classic rock, and psychedelica was my kind of alchemy. i still consider them my favorite band.. smoke a fat one and listen to this on headphones, with the right weed you'll levitate. and they scared me in the right way. i saw 'em in nyc in '88 when i was 15 at the porno theater that travis bickle takes cybil shepard in taxi driver. amazing.

4. bob dylan - girl from the north country
i grew up on the jersey shore in the suburbs. i went to an all boys catholic high school which was out in the sticks. my friend used to drive me to school before i had my license, it was at least a 30 minute drive but he took the long way on the back roads thru the farms, we'd always watch these cool ducks on this frozen pond. we'd smoke a joint and listen to tunes. freewheelin' bob dylan was a favorite. the harmonica solo would last FOREVER when we were stoned and it panned back in forth between the speakers in his honda civic hatchback with the kick ass alpine stereo.

5. velvet underground - what goes on
when i was working at the record store mentioned above i had the world's coolest boss. rick mcmorrow. he turned me onto most of the things i'm into today. including these guys. best guitar tone ever. i wish i could find him. he was a couple years younger than me now (i'm 34) and i was 17 and impressionable. also the first openly gay man i ever knew.

6. mudhoney - this gift
working at the record store we had to send back tapes without barcodes. i liked this band name, the song titles, and the look. longhairs who weren't hippies. like me at the time. this was '89. i stole this and put it in the tape deck of my friend's pick up truck. whoa. all their shit was out of tune and off key and i loved it. soon i learned words like sub pop and grunge. soundgarden and nirvana, who i saw the day before nevermind came out in '91. but mudhoney will always be my favorite grunge band and this is the first tune i heard. 7. big star - kangaroo i was trippin' balls on mushrooms in college, and not in a good way. my drunk friend frankie barged in and took over the stereo, and saved me and changed my life. 8. pavement - summer babe love at first fucking spin. never has a band so instantly struck a chord. 9. the modern lovers - girlfriend i used to work at harvard med. school library and i would walk thru the fenway everyday to get there. on my way home from work i often stopped at the museum of fine arts. when i finally took my beloved to the fenway and sang this song to her (a song i put on a mixed tape for her when i fell in love) i wept. i'm a weeper. (the fenway is a park with these cool public gardens, as opposed to fenway park nearby)

10. 11. neutral milk hotel - king of the carrot flowers pt. 1, 2, 3
my friend gave me this vinyl for my wedding and it was the first thing i put on when i woke up dazed and confused as a married man. i wept tears of joy.

12. trumans water - aroma of gina arnold
these guys are my best friends and this song rules. dennis likes 'em too and i'm over a year over due on a trumans water day for his blog.

13. the bugs - fuckin' a right
these guys are my best friends and this song rules

14. panda bear - comfy in nautica
this is the most recent music that really impressed me.

SELF PORTRAIT WARTS AND ALL

15. the lawn - queen of the radiant salamander

this was the rock band i was in for 6 years. no self portrait would be complete without it. i wrote and "sang" this one. title is a Vollmann reference. i gave him a cd once and he drew a cool salamander queen in my copy of "royal family". i doubt he ever listened to it. i don't think he's much of a rock and roll fan.

16. the people's tongue - really junky (the saga continues)
i'm still in this "band" and i immodestly like what we do a lot. white people shouldn't rap.

17. the geese - cal's requiem
this is me on guitar and lyrics, my wife on heavenly pipes.

at this point i can only cry about all the omissions. thx so much dennis and especially Koes for all the work for this SPD. listening to this mix now and realizing that i should have never started with two epic long songs, the a d d folks usually crap out... this one is for the die hards.


Heliotrope05



mediafirelink

I was thinking that this mix doesn't truly capture where I've been at recently...then I made the cover for it (in the zip file w/the mp3's). The cover is of a Ben Shahn lithograph I inherited from my mother. It was an anniversary present from my father to her in 1971 and now hangs in my living room. That's when I realized that the mix did indeed reflect what's been going on somewhere in my subterranean depths. Memory, longing, and reflection...ultimately, wishful thinking wed to the pragmatic...enough time has passed through my days to make me wish that some parts of these ideas would take on an obscure impermanence...hence,"Nothing Ever Lasts". But then this mix gives the lie to that, now doesn't it.

Much of the music on this mix recalls a time that only exists in my imagination. Of course, each song has a real place in my time, and I love all the songs for various reasons...but overall, they just signal a moment when I went on auto-pilot and found a mix in my head...a moment passed away...a snapshot now concrete and questionable.

So, here I am, concrete and questionable. I made this SP for all of you in thanks. Hope you enjoy at least some of it. Heliotrope05...Mark



Craig

mediafire link

A Lonely Chord – Tsunami Bomb

This song is mostly about trying to find yourself and it really relates to my struggles of trying to find myself and determine a path for myself in the world.

Negative One to Ten – Tsunami Bomb

Focuses on the importance of music, this song really just reinforces how much a favorite song or even a song you only hear once, can make an impact on your life. I have quite a few experiences like that, and new music that speaks to me is always so cool.

20 going on … - Tsunami Bomb

Granted I'm 21 now, but again this song just speaks about coming of age, finding your place, not giving up, not fucking around and realizing your potential.

Vivo per Lei – Andrea Bocelli

'I live for her', not exactly the best since I'm gay but its just a beautiful song of devotion and just ultimate love. Something I may not have currently, but know exists and that romanticism is a part of my life.

Apology Song – Decemberists

The reason I chose this one is pretty simple, childhood mistakes, but fessing up and apologizing. I have the habit of often apologizing for things that I have no control and no fault over, very very frequently.

I Like Pretending – IAMX

Simple enough this song relates how I feel about the importance of fiction and being able to step away when everything gets too much. Also and how the line of fact and fiction is always so thin.

Laundry Day – The Action Design

This song is more of a cautionary note for me, it's about making sure you think about where you're really going in life, what you really want out of it, and just making sure that you take those chances and seize it.

The Scissors Game – The Action Design

Just a little bit of scorn, not something that's a big part of me, but something that is there. I've been betrayed lied to and let down enough that there are plenty of people that make me feel this way.

Jupiter – Holst

Jupiter, by far my favorite of the 7 planets. Instrumentals are a bit harder to explain their relation to life, but its soft spoken but deeply powerful sounds speak to me and mimic a personal sense of strength yet gentility.

Pain – Mitsumune Shinkichi

An intriguing and slightly mysterious jazz track, again instruments seem to convey emotions better than lyrics, and this felt right.

Black Sheep – Sneaker Pimps

This song is pretty clear from the title, its not something I really relish on, or focus on, but its still a part of me and should be included as a portrait of myself. Not only of my family, but in general, and its something I'm working over.

In the Waiting Line – Zero 7

Another song here that's just about my life as it is just kind of a shuffle from one place to another. Just how culture and most of life is a rush to hurry up and wait.

Take the Reins – Tsunami Bomb

Another Tsunami bomb track, and hits along the same common themes. This one is more of a 'hey, you think you know everything, think about it, and actually get out and live life." This just reflects my struggle and pushing for independence and freedom, and how its obtainable and more than you think.


Uli

hello everybody!

this hafler trio-track inspired me many times. and sometimes i mix some tracks around it, as i did today!
i hope you enjoy it even if it is a little dark (or perhaps not dark enough)!

yours uli

mediafire link

The Hafler Trio - Alternation, Perception and Resistance It would seem that still after all these years perception is essentially thought to be a passive process. This view supports the notion that the redifinition of these terms is long overdue. This can only be accomplished if we take the leap into integrating all the aspects of our interaction and utilisation of the world and all that it contains. This method, which provides the only true form of communication, involves the crystallisation of information through all the sensory channels. Viewed from only one angle, or separating one element from another, we are left with only flat, two-dimensional ideas. This addition of one more element is an improvement, but the structure is still outside us. We must move, alarming though this may be to some, to the realm of conscious form, to the allegory and to the element of participation in information. We may no longer dissect our world in secluded laboratories, thinking we have found in a test-tube the laws by which the world turns. W hat then must be done to bring this state of affairs into being? Firstly we must break down and dig up the roots of the misconceptions already in place.

It may seem that this is happening already but all this is no more than a stream of happy accidents with no aim, no connection. We must then dredge what remains of the material to be used in this vision of communication on higher levels and re-present it to ourselves so that we may realise just how important our task is. We must then open up the channels. but all at once: there must be no weeds to choke our carefully nursed crops, and, we must wait for the harvest. Let us begin this process immediately with a demonstration of what effects can be created with the simple use of electrical angle realisation. It must be stressed that the more conscious effort the viewer puts into the exercise, the deeper will be the understanding of the material employed. Perhaps by now you are already thinking that you are beginning to speak this language of direct perception. But perhaps you are not... Imagine a light pulse, sent out from a source in the direction of the motion of the source. If you can transfer the result of thus in your mind to other forms of information... The senses which make us up are like machines in a factory. They are quite capable of working in the dark, but work much better when candles are lit in the room in which they are installed. But when electric lighting is installed, their efficiency improves further, and when the shutters of the factory windows are flung open, and daylight is allowed to enter, the machines work at maximum efficiency. But the fact remains that only the manager of the factory can pull the switches.


Thomas Moronic

“Due to dull technical crap, I couldn’t upload MP3s this week, so I made a video mixtape.

• Le Tigre – Keep On Livin’
• Sonic Youth – Pink Steam
Sonic Youth have been my favourite band since my early teens. I like how it never feels like they’re past their best. So I chose one of their most recent songs to show that.
• My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow
• Slowdive – Alison
• Husker Du – Could You Be the One?
• Ideally I would have liked to put up something from Bob Mould’s solo album The Last Dog & Pony Show, maybe Who Was Around, or Moving Trucks, but there was none of that stuff on Youtube. So I’ve chose this Husker Du track which is taken from my favourite album of theirs (Warehouse). I got this CD for £2.50 in a second hand record shop when I was fifteen and it’s never gotten old.
• The Smiths – Reel Around the Fountain My favourite Smiths song, which is saying something. The most perfect lyrics ever.
• Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – There She Goes, My Beautiful World:
Hard to choose a favourite Nick Cave track. I like this video because he gets the words a little muddled in a fun – so-into-the-performance-it-doesn’t-matter kind of way.
• Lou Reed – Caroline Says II
The best song from the Berlin record.
• Antony & the Johnsons – You Are My Sister
Reminds me sitting with two very special people after a party that lasted two days. We were all still fucked, slowly coming down and wide awake. Everyone else had left twelve hours ago but because of the drugs we were still wide awake. One of my friends had never heard Antony before, so we put this on to try and bring us back to earth.
• The Fall – Theme From Sparta FC
Because Mark E Smith is Mark E Smith.
• Elastica – Stutter
• Idlewild – In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction
This song makes me think of someone very special who I will never stop loving, no matter how hard I try sometimes.
• The Magnetic Fields – With Whom To Dance
My favourite is the very first album. But any Magnetic Fields hits the spot for me.

I’d better stop myself. I could go on all night.
TM x



Misanthrope


Maps by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs
To the Birds by Suede (live)
Pretty Vacant by the Sex Pistols
The Crystal Ship by The Doors
Killing of a Flashboy by Suede (live)
Modern Romance by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (live)
Atmosphere by Joy Division
Rebellion (Lies) by The Arcade Fire
Lazy by Suede
Moonlight Drive by The Doors
The Best Day Ever by Spongebob Squarepants


Alistair



--"Music"

from

Before Disappearing Completely

I've been waiting for a guide to come take me by the hand…

I think if some witch wearing a black pointy hat decided to place an irreversible spell on me, and the result of this spell would mean that I could only enjoy either literature or music, either one or the other, but not both, and I got to choose, I would have to choose music, basically because music is the form that throughout my life has most deeply and directly fed and affected that bloody organ I call "my heart."

And if the conditions of this witch's spell were even more severe, conditions not revealed to me until after the spell had been cast--for example, not only would I be unable to enjoy books, but I would only be able to listen to one song for the rest of my life, over and over, I'd probably choose Joy Division's "Disorder", the first track on their 1979 album Unknown Pleasures.

I think it's the perfect song, simultaneously bleak and uplifting. Unlike some of the band's other songs, which revealed just how scary not only their music was, but all music is-voice and machines, voice and machines--it's one of the band's poppier moments, and when I think about it, I really love pop music. The song's so perfect, both heavy and light, that I really wouldn't mind if a witch put this spell on me, so I could spend the rest of my life intently listening to and studying this song. In fact, I'm looking for this witch.

Alistair


Imnotstopping

artsjournal link

There is a short introduction in French. Then there is, not a self-portrait, that would be totally pretentious, but a sublime piece of music that I have loved ever since one morning in August 1957, at the Assembly Rooms, at the Edinburgh Festival. Just as Janos Starker (not Casals, as here) was about to start, a blond crew-cut American boy came in late and took the empty seat next to mine. At the end we were both in awe. The Bach was a knock-out. We spent the day together, going to a great Monet exhibition. He was about to go to Harvard. We wrote letters about the state of the world for a few years, then they fizzled. Whare are you now, Stan Junior? (An answer is not required).


Perspects


Dr. Doom (1968) – The 13th Floor Elevators

Enjoy!


You-x











*

p.s. Hey. I think a whole lot of the links in this old Self-Portrait Day are dead now, and it's mostly a conceptual thing, but I invited it back anyway or even for that very reason maybe. ** David Ehrenstein, First of all, huge congrats to you and Bill on your marriage yesterday! That's very, very, very happy news! Everyone, awesomeness in the form of Mr. E's marriage yesterday to his longtime love, the writer and general smarty-pants supreme Bill Reed, which you can almost kind of participate in by going over to David's Fablog and seeing this related post. Then you can see the happy couple actually doing and celebrating the deed if you go here. Do it. Yeah, the clean up is a drag and laborious as hell. I didn't realize for how many years I've been doing these escort/slave posts. Yeesh. ** James, Hi, James! Nice to see you, man! There are sufficiently talented people here in Paris for sure. It's just matter of (1) are they available on short notice, and (2) can we afford them? We'll know soon. Well, I've never been to Madrid or even to Spain, strangely enough, but, nonetheless, I highly, highly recommend you go to Tokyo because it's absolutely one of the very greatest places/cities on earth. I'm completely in love with it, and I think everyone who can afford to make the trip should go there. Good day back to you, sir! ** Sypha, Hi. Ha ha, I'm going to hope that the fact that your tower of boobs is in anime is enough to spare it from Google's wrath. Fingers crossed. ** Tomkendall, Hey! You're back, awesome! Moving to Peru, that's very cool. Where in Peru? Not that I know Peru or anything although I did "live" there for a summer when I was fifteen, and I saw a little. It really does sound like a new job is a very good idea. Love to you, man. ** Steevee, Hi. I'm not sure why Google/Blogger has suddenly decided to do this now. I know that it's targeted at porn blogs, of which there are very many, and I just hope my escort and slave posts aren't going to qualify in their eyes, at least after I denude them, which I spent most of yesterday beginning to do. Ugh. 'It Follows' sounds pretty worth seeing, huh. I'll see what its status re: France is. Thank you! ** Kier, Denopher, ha ha. That has an especially nice ring. I think it's the syllables combo. Yeah, that makes sense not showing your stuff in too many mediums. Still, 10 is so few! Obviously, it's to save the committee's eyesight or something. Cool that you have someone you know might have an idea of what will appeal to them. Let me now what your friend says. Oh, thank you, my friend, for picking me. You know, if there's anything I can do to help, with a recommendation or anything at all, you'll tell me, right? I don't know what good I could do, but, if you think I might help in some way, don't hesitate. I've never played 'Silent Hill', which seems really weird. Wrong system, basically. Yesterday I ended up spending the great majority starting the retrospective cleaning up of the blog posts. It was laborious, let me say. Basically, whenever possible, I'm just removing all the nudity and sex images from the escort/slave posts. But sometimes the only image I have of a guy is hardcore, so then I have to drag the image off the blog and crop it and reinsert it, which is adding a bunch of time. Bleah. I got back to late 2010 yesterday, and that seems to be around the time my porn-centric posts started fading out. I'm having take all of those offline. Anyway, what I'm saying is that most of my day was spent sitting at my computer doing that. Otherwise, Zac and I are heavily on the search for people to do our film's post-production. Christophe (Honore), who's one of our film's producers, is being a massive help and trying to find people for us. We really need to do the post- in the next three weeks if it's at all possible both because we need to get the film ready to submit to the Cannes Film Festival, and the deadline will be approaching then, and also because Z. and I are supposed to go on a trip to the West Coast on or around the 10th. And we need to make a few minutes-long 'promo reel' about the film to start getting industry and festival people interested, so we'll be working on that and starting to do the last pre-post- sound correction today. I did a little beginning of a search for a new apartment, which wasn't very promising as of yet, shit, and ... that was that? Yeah, I think that was that. How is and was Thursday, pal? ** Omar, Hi, Omar! Really nice to get to see you! Yeah, it sucks, it's lame, it's generalizing crap. I think the blog won't really change that much other than the escort and slave posts being less graphic visually, but it's a big hassle anyway. I hope you're doing great! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, sucks for sure in every possible way it could suck. Really nice that your talk went over so well! ** Keaton, I want the R-G box too. Well, duh. Civility, huh, yeah, I get that. Most of it was 'old on young' thing from the heyday of Russian porn online dominance. Cool mail! ** Misanthrope, Oh, yeah, I think causing themselves to be objectified is a big part of porn stars' job, or, wait, probably more the job of the porn's director. I just never did that to him. In fact, I never really paid attention to him back then. Then he friended me on FB, and I thought, this guy looks familiar, but it took me a while to put two and two together. Yeah, I just don't think he looks bad now. If you want my somewhat educated guess, I think the drugs were what made him skinny, and think his weight gain is partially normal and partially anti-depressant-related. He's rehabbing for alcohol, so there's that too. Anyway, he's not a wreck or anything. He's a lovely guy who seems totally upbeat and is doing well. He just drinks too much, basically, but I don't think he's an example of a porn casualty or anything. Sorry about the lack of eye candy. You make me wish there were iPhones back then 'cos that you-wasted-in-the-pit, etc. thang would make a hell of viral youtube video. ** Jeffrey Coleman, Hi, Jeff! Sucks, yeah. Sure, I've considered restarting elsewhere, but, to me, x-ing out the dicks and assholes and stuff isn't such a big thing other than the obnoxiousness of being censored and the hassle of cleaning the blog's long history. And, whether it makes sense or not, doing that restart feels too official or something. I like that the blog is just this weird, random thing that happens almost of its own accord with my fingertips and brain weighing in or something. I think I've read Chris Moran. I'll have to check, but, yeah, I think so? A little, at least? Well, that's very interesting about Brian O'Blivion. I've heard some kind of rumor, but it's vague to me now. Huh. I wonder if I can suss out the culprit somehow. I'm going to get all over GnOme Books as soon as my schedule leaves me a little more alone. Thank you a lot for that tip and recommendation. I trust your opinion implicitly. That's a perfectly legit and even inspired play on my name, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks! ** Hyemin kim, Hi! Yeah, the policy change is a big drag, but, ugh, there it is. I'm in Paris. I was supposed to be Berlin right now and for the next week or so at least, but plans changed, and now I'm unexpectedly here, and there'll be reruns for the next short while because I set them up in advance, and I don't have new posts to present at the moment. I'm good. I hope you're good too. ** Right. See what you can do and make out of this old, probably all-but-dead end Self-Portrait Day made for us by the now lost/gone but wonderful d.l. Xkj aka Koes. See you tomorrow.

----
He (April 9, 1942 – July 6, 1972) was an Academy Award-nominated American actor born into a theatrical family in Brooklyn.



He made his much-acclaimed Broadway debut at the age of 7 in The Member of the Wedding and also starred in the 1952 film version.



He also starred in his own television series, Jamie (1953-1954) which, although popular, was cancelled due to a contract dispute.



He made his mark onscreen as an adolescent in the controversial 1959 drama Blue Denim, co-starring Carol Lynley.



Although the only lead actor not to be Oscar-nominated for Hud, he went on stage to accept the Best Supporting Actor trophy for co-star Melvyn Douglas.



He delivered another widely acclaimed performance at the age of 22 as Jere Torry, the screen son of John Wayne in In Harm's Way (1965).



In a career spanning the years 1951 to 1972 (including six Broadway plays and 16 movies), he made his last screen appearance in Wild In The Sky.



He watched as Paul McCartney wrote the song "Wait" during the filming of the Beatles movie Help! and had hoped to embark on a music career.



He asked his friend Gram Parsons to back him in a recording session. Parsons claimed that he sang harmony better than anyone except Emmylou Harris.



He was critically injured in a traffic accident in the Denver suburb of Lakewood on the evening of July 6, 1972.



He was pinned under the wreckage of his motorcycle for some time before being taken to Denver General Hospital. He died 4 hours later.



Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris later co-wrote a song entitled "In My Hour Of Darkness", whose first verse refers to the accident that killed him.



"Once I knew a young man / Went driving through the night, / Miles and miles without a word / But just his high-beam lights. / Who'd have ever thought they'd build / Such a deadly Denver bend; / To be so strong, to take so long / As it would till the end."



25 years later, most of his films are forgotten. In all of youtube, there's just one clip of him at 7 years old. Almost no one under 50 knows his name.




*

p.s. Hey. Heads up to those who care about such things that new posts will take over the blog again starting on Tuesday. ** Rigby, Rigster! To what do we owe this vaunted appearance by yours truly? Oh, wait, death, I should have figured, ha ha, whatever that means. (Coffee's just barely starting to kick in.) How are you, dare I ask? Love, me. ** Tomkendall, Hey, Tom! Lima, right, that makes sense. I was there on that aforementioned short term living-in-Peru deal for a few hours, so I have no handle on it. I was almost entirely in the small city called Trujillo. Know it? No big deal in and of itself, but a lot of great archeological stuff around there. Can you teach English? Seems like ex-pats usually end up doing that job. I love Pere Ubu's 'Breath'. Great choice, pal. ** Sypha, Hi. Yeah, that post was basically a graveyard, but graveyards are cool. 'Goners' is awesome, no? I'm sure I'll read the Kim Gordon book 'cos it has to be a page turner. I'm sure I will never read 'Angels in America'. ** Keaton, Wow, 'French Hole', blast from the past. There's all kinds of little clues about the insides of 'TMS' in there. It's almost a strategy guide or something. Ton is a good name. It should catch on. There certainly seem to be people who are not entirely without taste who like the new Marilyn Manson album, so, at the very least, you're probably not insane. ** David Ehrenstein, Those were lovely pix of you happy guys! Awwww, and all of that, sincerely. You guys doing any kind of honeymooning? Awwww, nice marriage-related youtube pick too! ** Steevee, Hi, S. Very interested to read that review. Everyone, mighty Steevee has taken on the latest film by the occasionally mighty David Cronenberg. Latest being 'Maps to the Stars'. Know what he thinks by pressing on these words. Good point about the effect of porn starring on porn's employees. ** Kier, Kier! Ottar's opinion/idea makes a bunch of sense to me, yeah. Yes, sure and please send me the 10 if you would like. I'll be very happy to give you my two-cents. Cool, exciting! The censoring has been tedium central, yep. You're moving too? Why and where ideally? I love Silje. I haven't even met her, but I love her. She sounds really smart or something. Spookily smart. But then I don't know how sheep normally behave or think or anything, and, of course, the stereotype devised by egocentric humans is that they're not the brightest eggs, but then humans can have such boring and self-serving imaginations. My day: Zac and I did film work. We didn't end up starting to work on the promo reel because we need to get the film 'image locked', as they say, meaning edited to a final state other than the sound and color work, before we do the post-, which we hope to start doing any day now, so we went through the film again and made some very, very last edits, just tiny stuff like adding or subtracting a second or a little more or less from a handful of shots. But that took a while. We'll start on the promo reel today. Uh, oh, we had good news because we have kind of needed to finish the film before we go to the West Coast, and we're going for this very special thing that I probably shouldn't talk about, and it was scheduled to happen on the 13th, which would have given us only two weeks to finish the film, which is basically unrealistic. So I contacted the special thing people, and they agreed to delay the thing two weeks, so now we'll have a month here to finish the film, which is totally doable if we find our color and sound editors soon. What else ... oh, I used my ATM card somewhere recently that got hacked or something, so my card got cancelled, and I have to wait for the new one to arrive to be able to withdraw money or buy anything, so I'll be living on the cash in my wallet for hopefully only a few days, which should be doable. And I spent the leftover time cleaning the blog's past life of porn and nudity, and I think that, as of this morning, it's 'clean' although Im sure accidentally missed a bunch of stuff because I realized while doing the cleaning that I used to post porn here a lot in the blog's early days, and often under poetic, non-porn names, so I would imagine I missed things. Anyway, here's hoping I've gotten the blog up to Blogger's new code, and we'll see. Uh, I think that covers yesterday. How did you spend the current 24 hours that humans have decided to call 'today'? ** Cal Graves, Howdy, Cal! Good to see you! Thank you for the luck, man. I should be okay, but probably only with the help of luck like yours. Rimbaud questions, okay. I found Rimbaud when I was 15 because I read an interview in Rolling Stone where Bob Dylan talked about him, and I was into Bob Dylan at the time. I'm pretty sure the first Rimbaud book I read was this one. My favorite Rimbaud book in English is this book/translation. Do you have Rimbaud discovery memories or book opinions, 'cos I'd be interested? Awakening-via-a-cup-of-you-ly, Dennis. ** Misanthrope, It was indeed our old pal Koes handling the duties on that post, yes! Well, your question is tough 'cos I would guess 90+ percent of porn stars leave the biz and have lives that we will never know about, but I can say that I've known a fair number of guys who've done porn work for some length of time beginning back in the '70s, and not a one of them were casualties of porn. The great majority were as 'normal' as you and me. It just interested them enough to have sex on film to use it as a money maker. Some of them were fucked up, but their fucked-up-ness preceded and transcended their porn work. I don't see porn as a soul sucker and destroyer of the performers. Where do you get that? I mean, there have been people who've done porn whose lives ended badly, and they get the press, but, really, how do you know that it was the porn work that doomed them and not something more overall and deep in them? Casualties make a lot noise, and the porn stars who then just move on to do other things don't. Most people who star in porn for a while don't become name-recognition stars. They're just making money with their bodies for a while. I guess I don't see how porn work inherently = casualty any more than being a musician in a band = casualty, even though the musicians who end up crashing get the post-fame ink. That equation doesn't make sense to me, I guess. You did tell me that story before, but I liked reading it again. I think my only crash-out at a rock show was at a Melvins concert where a couple of guys tried to beat the shit out of me and a couple of friends. They mostly just ripped our clothes and got us kicked out of the venue, and it was mostly fun. ** Right. I found this old post in the blog's past and kind of thought it was nice, so I'm passing it on to you again for better or worse. See you tomorrow.

______________

Boy-Sweet-Home, 23
I want someone qualified to do brain surgery on my ass. Use all your experience and knowledge, all of your tools, toys, instruments, your hands and even feet, if necessary, all your expertise and finesse of human biology to figure out why my ass has controlled and destroyed my whole life and then either disable it, or if you can't, make the problem permanent.

If my only choice is option no. 2, I'm looking for an ASS fanatic. He is only interested in ass, little soft ones like mine, to eat it, fuck it, fist it, use it as a game piece, own it ruthlessly and routinely. But I’m not interested in being a punching bag to help you feel superior because inside you feel insignificant or you’re down-trodden at work. My ass must be the only thing that makes you weak.





_____________

Medusa, 19
I'm here to solve all your doubts and if i answer your questions at least I want to receive a "thanks"
That is what they do people well educated

I need money for school, I have school so i cant really go to far places like Japan etc

I'm young, but not stupid so don't try to trick me

If you want to own me send a photo in your first messege without photo you can fuck yourself





_____________

TheCrow, 21
Hi ,my name is The Crow, i live Europenion country Latvia-Riga
what may be possible ? and what can you offer me ? )

I sleep with you
I give you constant sex
My cum will go where you want it

Sex for free, You not pay me.
Maybe i look master (in an monogramuos relationship)

1) you pay ticket) Riga-your city
2) I work "assistant" + you help me registracion account
3) I life your apartament ( and "work")
4) in any time you want -We will free sex
5) I not pay Rent,
6) my interesed play computer games (WoW)
7) I stayed for 2 months and after i go back Riga
8) Thanks!






______________

flaws08, 22
My life is like a mercy game, ducking and dodging crooked cops On a mission fishing for feddy, ready to make a knot I'm use to having less, and I just can't deal with the stress And it seems like everywhere I go, y'all fuck with my mess until it bleeds, To deal out these deeds, then you die, And when it's my time hope I don't cry.

I AM HORNY OLWAYS .





______________

TroubledMind, 22
To get this out of the way—I am a pussyboy. I'll explain.

While I go about my day-to-day life as a man, my dream is to assume a totally anally-focused sexual role wherein my cock is totally ignored, by others and by myself. One wherein I cum from being penetrated, only, and otherwise not at all.

In other words, my ideal partner is a man who has no interest in cocks beside his own. A man who fucks his bottom in a jockstrap to blot out the pussyboy's defunct birth-genitals, supplanting the bottom's masculinity in favour of his own. Not selfish, necessarily; the sort of exchange wherein eating out the bottom's pussy is a proportional, though never expected, recompense for the attentive cocksucking the bottom gives to the top. The sort of relationship where, even after so many nights, the top has never so much as seen the bottom's male-parts—or, if so, only incidentally or accidentally.

That should give you an idea of what I mean.







______________

LostInTokyo, 22
If you're lost in Tokyo, let me help you out. I like to listen to your sadness and dislike of boys and try to give it a solution or try my level best with my body to help them out.I always try to make people aggro just through sharing me.I love to have sex with angry older men, They are the best and i want them to fuck me hard on my desk.But I don't share my personal details its not that i dont trust people but i like to be alone in my world.








______________

ArthurRimbaud, 18
Here I am, what are your other two wishes?

I am the great boy poet come back from the dead through mystical means and looking to help a new Verlaine type out of his daily routine and offer him a charming loophole.

Conservatives, skeptics, cynics, fuck off right away. I think you understand my being very direct about that.

Thank you for your message and intense interest about me.






_____________

Inferiorfriend, 24
I'm interested in forming an unequal friendship with another guy. Straight, bi or gay, the point is that you will be able to treat me as the lesser partner. This could include eating better food when we go to a restaurant together, making me dress poorly while you wear the best clothes - and in private getting more intense with it if you like: tellings-off, slaps, or even spitting when you feel it's called for. I'm happy to go further if you prefer that, but equally happy to keep it pretty implicit.

I'm an otherwise regular boy who goes to crunch fitness and is into photography, but I grew up being seen as inferior by my classmates and humiliated at home. Being in an inferior role is the only way I am truly comfortable with.

Cheers,
Your inferior friend







_______________

Imsodoomed, 19
Hi my name is Spike!!!!!!! I've been sexually obsessed with my father since I was 6 years old. Ever since I could cum, at age 10 until I was 15, I masturbated to fantasies of him fucking me at least 3 times every day. Nothing else mattered to me. The rest of my life was just a horrible deprivation. When I was 15 my parents got divorced, and my father confessed to me that he was also closeted gay and had been sexually obsessed with me all my life. You can imagine the explosion that happened that night! Our lust for each other was so intense that fucking seemed like kids play, and we quickly moved into a master and slave relationship. Since the age of 15, I've been subjected to every kind of extreme sexual use and abuse, torture, experiments on my body and mind and emotions, and you name it. It never stopped, we couldn't stop ourselves. Our need for each other was so violent and intense, he almost killed me many times. I had to quit school at 16, and he quit his job so we could have each other 24 hours a day. I'm now 19 and will turn 20 in a few weeks. A few months ago, he started complaining that I'm too old for him, and his lusts have begun wandering to much younger boys. This frightened me to death, and I came up with the idea of him renting me to other men who don't love me like he does and who don't give a shit about me to use and abuse as badly as they want with no limits while he was watches. Thank God this really excited him. He confessed to me that he's been fantasizing about something like that for a long time. He confessed to me that his biggest fantasy has always been watching me be tortured and killed. He said he has been fantasizing about killing me himself since I was 4 years old, but he couldn't. Those times I mentioned that he almost killed me weren't accidents like I had thought. My surviving was the accident. My father has agreed to this new arrangement, and we could definitely use the income. We're looking for men to use me very extremely in front of my father. We're asking a minimum payment of $500 for basic rape and sadism and to go further you'll need to pay more. You must be very attracted to me and have very extreme sexual tastes and be ready to be very sadistic to me. As my goal is to keep the love of my father, I request that you don't actually kill me, but the closer you get, the more chance I have to keep him, so we can go quite far in that direction. I realize the risk I'm putting myself in, and I realize I'm only going to get older and less exciting to him. I don't want to die, but if it were to happen now, I can see that it could be for the best, and I guess there are worse ways to go.






______________

Droolingcumguzzler, 20
Done watching THE BOY NEXT DOOR @GATEWAY CINEPLEX
Such a waste of time.

I'm in a sham of a relationship with a girl but it's not who I am. I NEED a release! I am gagging for spurting cocks and will do literally ANYTHING, watersports, gang banging, ANYTHING. my mouth and arse will be yours to flood ;) First I want you to prove to me you're worth my time though, so send me pics of you cumming on my pictures to my mobile.






______________

justuntitled, 18
I am 100% masochist 18 yr-old boy in Copenhagen who wants a man to break every bone in my body.

Please I am serious so you better does to.






_____________

Virgin, 18
Plz start to fuck me.

I will be on amyl.




______________

cassiuslibertine, 23
Hey you.

I just got back to America. Loved the Netherlands. Found myself a passion there.

Turns out I'm into androgyny, armpits, getting beaten till I cry then fucked hard, commodity fetishism and the secret thereof, filthy perverts who are also good people, getting flogged and fucked to Rammstein, getting fucked to techno, getting flogged while giving a blowjob while you're playing video games, goth, ice cubes.

Turns out I'm also really good company.







_______________

getfuck, 19
Im still a virgin and need some crystal. Its the only way i will find the courage to do it. I dont drink so crystal is the best way plus i love crystal lmfao. Hopefully after tonight i will love cock and cum. Thats if im not to drugged to move lol. Anyone who can get me crystal meth please email me.

This is an odd message but im putting it to people cos im gagging for cock but too nervous and was told crystal will make me do it. So the first person to tell me they can get me some crystal meth to take away my inhibitions gets to come round mine and drug me up and take my virginity tonight/early morning.





_____________

watchoutWATCHOUT, 18
I found out 2 years ago that that I'm a Demon! I really love it! but I need someone to control me. You can't be anyone, but you should know how to tame a Demon. No psychiatrists or priests, I tried and destroyed them already.

I mourn for guys age 16-20, Big boys, muscular boys, Fat boys, white boys, black boys. I choose you and then I'm all yours! For all the worms, stay away, don't even try! I don't want to destroy you but I will! I am not a boy, I am a Demon!

Sorry.. Mentally unstable. I fuck shit up. Bipolar. Depression. Anxiety. Mental/nervous brakedowns. I'm hunted by the memories that still lurk within this hell I like to call my head. Alcoholic.

!!Warning!! I'm only 16 years old, but in the Netherlands it is allowed to serve people as a slave.

!!Warning!! I am really dangerous !!Warning!!





______________

ithinkimhungry, 19
Hello MASTERS and OWNERS my name is Fagboi(real name is Kevin it is no longer used) and I am a very experienced submissive faggot object that wants to be owned. I am looking for brutal and sadistic torture at the hands of a sick owner.i have been trained since i was 14.I HAVE NO LIMITS.i want to just exist to suffer insurmountable hell.
i have been subjected to severe beatings and extreme torture.I am not owned at present but have been trained by father and uncle. My life is simply to take pain. i am always restrained and live in a cage since 14. I am hored out for use and abuse.
i only own 6 jockstraps 1 pair of jeans and 2 wife beaters and a pair off shorts for the gym.
on the day I graduated high school I was permanently stripped of all clothing and also had all body hair from neck down permanently removed.the hair on my head and eyebrows is also kept shaved off. the foto i put here with my face is me 1 week before graduation but the rest is new.
My current trainers have a saying (PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY).I feel there really is nothing I have not been subjected to all these years.
here is a sample of a session just last week.
I was taken out of cage and led by leasch to middle of dungeon where I was hooded and gagged,had my ass plugged,nipple clamps applied,my leather wrist cuffs were fastened behind my back and my ankle ones had a short length of chain fastened to them .I then had a jockstrap put on and was taken out to car were I was put into trunk or transport to my uncles farm. Upon arrival I was removed from trunk thrown on ground and chained to an atv. I was then dragged to an out building were 6 guys were waiting. after being unchained from ATV I was re-chained to wall. The blindfold on the hood was removed and I saw on the concrete floor in front of me there was a huge pile of human and animal shit.
Well I was unchained from the wall and my wrists were re-chained behind me and I was thrown into the pile of shit and forced to roll around in it for about 20 minutes while more was dumped on me.then after that was done every person in the room pissed all over me .
when that was done i was dragged back outside re chained to ATV and dragged to another building for washing which consisted of being strung up by wrists to a post outside and hosed down with cold water and scrubbed with a hard bristle scrubber.after washing I was chained to ATV to run behind it and led to uncles house where I was strapped to saw horse for ass beating and fucking and my mouth also got plenty of use then to.
after the 8 hour session I was taken back to my fathers house by my uncle locked in a cage in the bed of his pickup.the whole session was incredible and I really enjoyed it.THANK YOU SIRS FOR READING THIS WORTHLESS FAGGOT'S PROFILE.
My cousin who is also a faggot slave has a profile on here to his is 19yo4brutaltorture.







______________

Puss, 22
Hi. I am ticklish everywhere but my feet are by far the most sensitive part of my body. I am pathetically ticklish on the bottoms of my feet. Along with them being ticklish I keep them flawlessly soft and smooth. Here is my foot care routine:
1. I never go barefoot.
2. I scrub my feet in the shower every single time with a loofah and scrub brush.... yes it tickles like HELL.
3. I rub baby lotion into them 3 times a day.
4. Every night before bed I soak my feet in baby oil for at least an hour while watching TV or chatting online.
5. I sleep with socks on after using my 3rd coat of lotion on them after soaking.
6. And Finally, I get a pedicure every single Friday.
I hope to get to talk with all of you very soon.





______________

MissUnderstood, 21
i prefer to serve one guy for my lifetime in which includes love........

"sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. but, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. show me the person they sleep with and i will tell you their valuation of themselves. no matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act that forces them to accept their real ego as their standard of value."

i am transgender on hormonal therapy 3 months. my dick will be erased in 2 years.

please be under 37 years old.





______________

MynameisOatmeal, 24
90% sub who needs to go 100%. The missing 10% is because I'm Bi.

First i need to confess the times i have tried to be a man and be forced to develop full faggot slave consciousness and purge all pretensions to manhood. i need extreme interrogation and to be degraded, broken down and reduced for every inappropriate thought or feeling.

Next thing You may want to do is to stick that speculum in my cock hole deep, then maybe do some sound cleaning. Then piss in it. Then spit in its gaping hole. Then stretch it further with ass dildos and fuck it with Your cock and Your fist to tear my cock to pieces and squirt the deep pussyjuices out. Then laugh at the shredded meat drenched in cum and piss and kick it until there's nothing but pure blood pouring out.

Chubbies who force this faggot to worship Their cocks throughout as food dribbles down on its pathetic whore mouth make this pitiful shitfuck gracious.

Also need friends.






_______________

aLackOfInnocence, 18
I got raped a few weeks ago by two cops when I was drunk and learned some shit about myself.

; I'm a f*ckin hore !!

... and I am very happy for you.





_______________

sloppyrentboy, 21
Fuck me until I pass out.
No limits, more brutal and sadistic the better as extreme as possible!!!
Im finishing my final year of schooling and the freedom of adulthood is not for me.
In London but can be chloroformed and taken anywhere.
Get it?!?!
$50





______________

Fartslave001, 23
I like you







*

p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Yeah, yay on the Blogger policy change, but boo on the timing since I spent over two days denuding and de-porning my blog, including this weekend's slave post, for naught. So, yay about the future, but boo. ** David Ehrenstein, Awww, yeah, so sweet. ** Sypha, Hi. Ah, interesting about 'AiA's influence, and I'll happily have had my only reading experience of it filtered through your imagination's strainer and re-inventor. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. That interview with you was way cool, by the way, you charismatic so-and-so. The special thing is non-work related. Well, I mean it could end up doing something that ends up doing something to the work, but it's mostly this rare chance to see something that almost nobody has seen in person. Secret will be revealed to whatever degree the thing allows me once it has been seen. ** Steevee, Hi, S. Very interesting review of the Cronenberg. Even though I haven't seen it (yet), I can fully imagine myself agreeing with you. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Oh, it's not a project, as I just told Ben, or, well, I guess the act of just visiting something is a project in a way. Yeah, I'm pretty involved and under the gun with finishing the film right now. And the theater piece. It's all good, though. Bernhard, awesome. Yeah, he's up there with the best of the recent century's best for me. 'Woodcutters' is excellent. He kind of isn't ever not excellent to some high degree. For years I wanted to write a novel in the form of a video game strategy guide, with illustrations and graphs and so on. I was addicted to them for a while. I think a novel in that form could be really exciting. Maybe I'll do that someday. Really interesting to know that about what DFW said re: 'IJ'. Makes me want to read it again. Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about that new tech post.gif novel all the time. Dwelling in that potential realm a lot. Nothing has coagulated yet, though. But, yeah. I definitely want to do at least one more non-text novel in this cycle I'm working on. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Holy, wow! Glove! Dude, no way! I was just thinking hard about you not two days ago! So inexpressibly great to see you! Wow! Yeah, it was labor intensive to say the least, and pointlessly so, it turns out, i.e. defanging the blog's past. Oh, well. I think mid-'08 is right on that SPD. I think I might have done another sort of musical one or something? Excellent post-SPD SPD entry, man. Let me ... Everyone, Yesterday, one of the all-time great d.l.s of this blog, the one, the only, the precious Dreadful Flying Glove returned to the fold after a long time away, and he shared what would have been his entry in yesterday's rerun SPD had he entered, and it is this. Please welcome him back with a rewarding click. So, how are you and where are you, man? Are you still in SA? It would be beyond awesome if you can and feel like hanging out here again. T'would be such a boon. Major hugs and big, big love to you, maestro! ** Kier, Hi, ... Kierlossal! Damn, that wasn't a very good try. C+ for effort, at least? Yeah, but Blogger has changed their mind now, which is good, but now it's like I scrubbed and cleansed until my blog was all children-friendly and then the children cancelled on me. Cool, mail me stuff, yes, great! Good idea to move to Oslo irregardless. Or, I don't know, it makes sense in my imagination, but I still think the school(s) will grab you. I'm scraping by too, until Monday, assuming I manage to catch the Fed Ex guy, which isn't easy to do at the Recollets. I think peat is right. I know what peat is. Or ... I know what 'peat moss' is, whatever that is. I mean I've seen peat moss, so peat must be peat moss without the moss part? Yesterday Zac and I spent the day making the promo reel for our film. We're not done with it yet. It's hard to do. It's basically to try to sell our film, and neither one of us is very marketing savvy, and we resist that kind of stuff, not to mention that our film isn't easy to consolidate into some hypey thing. It's a strange, quiet (mostly), poetic, deep thing. We tried stuff, and some things seemed okay, and some didn't. We were told to make something 'sexy' and 'pop', and since our film is neither sexy, albeit flecked with graphic sex, nor pop, it's a tall order. Anyway, we'll surely figure something out today, and I would imagine that the powers that be will want us to redo it anyway, I don't know. We got the final, mixed version of the music we're going to use over the end credits, and it turned out great. There was some back and forth with our producers and with Christophe H., who thinks he should have post-production guys for us to work with by the end of the weekend, fingers crossed. That was kind of it. More a lot like that is scheduled for the weekend and hopefully progress thereby and other stuff too. How did your weekend treat you, pal? ** Cal Graves, Hi. Dendal ... like Stendhal? Like Stendahl but with a 'd' for dastardly and minus an 'h' because I'm less homey? That was the first association that sprang to mind. What?! Those workshop people are morons or something! Oh, no, are they all 'don't think you're smarter or more clever than the historical figures who invented fiction's conventions'? 'Cos the world is full of those boring kind of people who are all full of their boring selves and who will never end up writing anything potentially exciting or important. Go for vindictiveness, in other words, sure. If you want to get Rimbaud's greatness, read 'A Season in Hell', I say. I think that's his masterpiece. 'The Illuminations' is amazing too. Basically, those two long works are far greater than any of his shorter poems, I think. Ha ha, so what musical torture device would I choose? Hm. A mellotron. You? Gold Star-like for Robot Boy-like, Dennis ** Kyler, Hi, K. Wow, sounds intense and mysterious. That's a lot of clashing emotions to try to conceptualize into a single, fluxing state. Well, that's very, very good news about your first novel's official future birth! Hooray and congrats to you and the no doubt fine people at RS! ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, useless surgery. It was some kind of useful technical exercise though, I suppose. Anyway, butts and dicks will be back starting with next month's escorts shebang. Jeffrey Combs: I don't think I know who that is? I'll do the google thing. Thanks, B! ** Okay. You get a weekend full of relatively usually demure slaves this month and, I don't know, pay attention and treat them well and so on and so forth? Seem like a plan? Have excellent Saturdays and Sundays, and I'll see you again on Monday.

'Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine.'-- NT



Webs of Maya



Twin Musical Tesla Coils playing Mario Bros

Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programmed into the computer software.



Bowie as Nikola Tesla in 'The Prestige'



Nikola Tesla: The Philadephia Experiment, Time Travel Secret

In the 1930's Nikola Tesla got involved with a group with was experimenting with moving through the Time/Space continuum. In the early 1930's, the University of Chicago investigated the possibility of invisibility through the use of electricity. In 1939 this project was moved to Princeton's Institute of Advanced Studies, this is not far from Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Experiment, otherwise known as Project Rainbow, has been a subject of long controversy and debate. It was an attempt by the Navy to create a ship that could not be detected by magnetic mines and-or radar. There was also talk of invisibility projects and mind control experiments. The truth behind this project will never be known to the public. Many of the stories associated with this infamous experiment are wild: whispers of men 'freezing' in time for months, rumors of men traveling through time, and horror stories of men becoming stuck in bulkheads or even the floor of the ship itself.



Tesla's Bladeless Turbine

The Tesla bladeless turbine consists simply of multiple shaft mounted disks suspended upon bearings which position the rotor system within its cylindrical casing. In operation high velocity gases enter tangentially at the periphery of the disks, and flow through the narrow spaces between them in free spiral paths to exit, depleted of energy, through central exhaust ports. The slight viscosity of the moving gas along with its molecular adhesion to the disks combine to drag them along, efficiently transferring the fuel's energy to the disks and on to the shaft. There are some who believe that if this engine was built using advanced technology and materials it would have a power-to-weight ratio that compares favorably with bladed turbine engines.



Jack White shows Meg White his Tesla Coil



How to build a Tesla Coil



Nikola Tesla's Egg of Columbus

A significant event deserving recognition this year is the 100th anniversary of Nikola Tesla's momentous exhibit at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. It was 100 years ago at this world's fair that Tesla and George Westinghouse first introduced the American public to the alternating current electrical power system. Among the exhibits was a novel demonstration known as the "Egg of Columbus" used to explain the principal of the rotating magnetic field and the induction motor. A reproduction of this device, presently on display at the Belgrade Nikola Tesla Museum, is shown in operation.



UFO.TV's Secret of Nikola Tesla starring Orson Welles



Tesla Continuum

Tesla Continuum is analog-digital reversable movie produced by Rudjer Boskovic Institute from Croatia for 150 anniversary of Nikola Tesla.



from 'Violet Fire', an opera about Nikola Tesla

The extraordinary life of inventor Nikola Tesla (1856—1943) provides the framework for the world premiere of Violet Fire, a multimedia opera. The production debuted in July 2006 at the National Theater in Belgrade, playing four sold-out performances and receiving enthusiastic critical and popular response. On October 18, 20 & 21, 2006, the Brooklyn Academy of Music presented the opera’s US premiere in New York as part of its Next Wave Festival, featuring singers from Serbia’s National Theater.



DESTENI channels the spirit of Nikola Tesla



Unveiling the Tesla monument at Niagara Falls

Nikola Tesla designed the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls, New York which started producing electrical power in 1895. This was the beginning of the electrification of the United States and the rest of the world. Today, Tesla's AC electricity is lighting and powering the globe. Nikola Tesla is the genius who lit the world. Now, the inventor of alternating current has a permanent tribute overlooking the Horseshoe Falls at Niagara Falls, Canadian side. As a boy, Tesla saw a picture of Niagara Falls and told his uncle in Lika, Croatia, that he wanted to put a wheel under the falls to harness the power of the moving water.



Tesla & the Bellboy



Tesla technology turns on a lamp



'You're a Man Out of Time': Horrible 80s retro synth rock song about Tesla



The World's Largest Extant Tesla Coil in Newcastle, Oklahoma

Tesla's main claim to fame lay with his invention of the alternating current motor. Tesla believed that alternating current was vastly superior to (Edison's) direct current, but the problem was the lack of a practical motor. Alternating current is practical because of the fact that it can be altered or converted to suit a variety of situations. For example, if the voltage is made quite high, then the current necessary for a specific level of power is very low. This low current then becomes very efficient when sending electrical power over very long wires. (This is the reason why the power lines running across the countryside are at very high voltages.)



Tesla's Eulogy

Room#3327": The room in the New Yorker Hotel where Nikola Tesla lived for last ten years of his life and died impoverished on January 7th, 1943. NYC's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's Eulogy to Nikola Tesla as delivered on January 10, 1943, written by Louis Adamic.




*

p.s. Hey. New posts again starting tomorrow. ** Nicola Smith, Hey there! Sweetness to see you! That's great news, wow! At long, long last! I'll go score the book pronto, and if by some chance you want to use a post here as a intro/promo thing, just let me know 'cos you know I'd be very happy to do the place's humble part. Everyone, The awesome thinker/writer and long, long time d.l. Nicola Smith has co-edited a fantastically interesting sounding book that's been in the works for ages, and it's out! It's called 'Queer Sex Work, published by the venerable Routledge. Here's a bit of the jacket copy: '"Queer Sex Work" explores what it might mean to ‘be’, ‘do’ and ‘think’ queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies – including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BSDM – and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex.' I highly recommend this book to you, and I highly recommend you click this and go check it out and pick up your own copy if you're able. This is such wonderful and exciting news, my old pal! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! Whoa, not only do we get the gorgeous haikus themselves, but we get a whole related multi-media shebang! I'll give it a thorough watching when I'm out of here, and I'll ... yeah, what the heck, I'll imbed that video down below, if that's okay. Anyway, ... Everyone, The great scribe Thomas 'Moronic' Moore almost always responds to the slave posts by writing an exquisite haiku to each and every slave that you, no doubt, have read and luxuriated within in the comments arena. This month, Mr. Moore has gone an extra mile, and ... wait, he'll tell you: 'I don't know why - maybe I had one too many coffees this morning or something - but I ended up making a video to accompany the slaves/slave haikus this month. I made a collage of some of my noise/some audio from porn, and me reading the haikus (which starts at about 1:20).' To facilitate your experiencing of this bonus, I've imbedded the video down at the bottom of the p.s., and please click it in the appropriate spot once you get down there. Can't wait, T! ** Hyemin kim, Hi. Happy belated birthday to your mom! Thank you for the wise words about my blog's sexuality! I'm happy to answer the questions , and I'll do my very best. My brain space to answer well and interestingly will depend on when and how the post-production on our film happens. We're waiting to find out right now. Hopefully, it'll happen before mid-March. When that's ongoing, it'll be tough because I'll be working on the film very long hours. But I'll figure out a way, Oh, and on March 24th, tentatively, I'll be traveling to the US, and I won't be able to do it for the couple of weeks after that, if the trip happens as planned. Thank you very much for wanting to know more of what I think. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thank you for the trailer help. Ours is weirder, unfortunately or fortunately. I'm very looking forward to the new Greenaway too. ** Kier, Hi! I got your email. I'll open it and look through the stuff hopefully later today. Excited! Thank you! I liked imagining what brain surgery on an ass would be. Well, yeah our film is neither pop nor sexy, I don't think, and neither is the trailer we've made, so it could be back to the drawing board for us. Sigh. Your weekend seems like it was kind of relaxed and scrambled at the same time, nice. Mine: Uh, on Saturday Zac and I finished the promo reel. Well, all except for some compositing work that needs to be done in one shot, and Zac's the tech one of us, so he's doing that solo, and hopefully it'll be ready to get its thumbs up or down later today. We're still waiting to hear about the post-production people, which is a little stressful because we need and want to get that underway asap. On Sunday, I stayed home and did stuff I need to do. First, I started revising the script of the new theater piece after all the changes and cuts and additions we made in Halle, so I spent hours starting to do that. Second, I started the serious looking for a new apartment via relentless searching of online real estate sites. There are some possibilities, I think, but we'll see, and I find that kind of stuff really stressful, but it has to happen. So, basically, I spent all of Sunday doing those two things and basically nothing else. Today, hm, don't know yet. And you and Monday? How did you two get along? ** Bill, Hi. Thanks for the surgery condolences. Let's face it, Blogger could easily flip their policy once again, and at least I'll be ready. Oh, he was in 'The Frighteners'. I haven't thought about that film in ages. Huh. I think I remember him. Yeah, I know what bargaining is like, and acceptance is inevitably at the bottom of that waterfall, I guess. Still, ... ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. So, hopefully you're in the process of moving into the new place today. I envy your being at that point. I hope my search goes as easily as yours. £160 for that painting seems like an awfully good deal. Has the bidding made that number skyrocket? Thanks for the link to the new Rachel Maclean/Errors video! ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Wowzer, that is really, really great news, man! Fucking A! UofI is a wise place, it turns out. Who'd have thunk? Or, well, why not, I guess. Anyway, hooray, man! Everyone, Grant Maierhofer, writing master, has a couple of new pieces up that I recommend to you. First, here's'Twenty-Seven Theses on the Act of Generating Potential Artworks as a Human Animal in the Year of our Bored Two-Thousand and Fifteen' @ the always great Queen Mobs Teahouse, and, secondly, here, at the same general location, is 'CONTROL AND SUICIDE PART ONE' about, in GM's words, 'Ian Curtis, Corbijn's "Control", and shit.' Go, yes? Thanks a bunch, man, and love back to you! ** Alex McRainey, Hi, Alex! Welcome to here! That's incredibly nice and kind of you to say, thank you so much! It looks like I can discover and follow your own writing at the Rough Trade blog, and I will do that. Obviously, please feel free to hang out here and comment whenever it pleases you. ** Cal Graves, Hi. As in Ken Doll tweaks me the most, so I'll go for that one. Cool, thank you. Oh, that's a good instrument choice. A dijorydo and a mellotron would sound really good together. We'll have to do a duet if your question turns into a granted wish. Wow, curious question today. I'm going to give myself exactly 15 seconds to think about that. Hold on. 'Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954, by Jeffrey Cartwright'. Yours? Holey, Dennis. ** James, Hi. That's interesting. That makes sense. I'm probably going reinsert boy parts again starting with the next escort post, but I think that, from now, on I'll think very carefully about the decision to include them or not, which should be interesting. 'Charade' was one of my mom's favorite movies. Being taken to see it in a theater is the second moviegoing memory of my life after a memory involving 'Bambi'. Thank you, J., and love back to you. ** Keaton, You think? I feel like I've met guys who only sort of like bordering merely tolerate facials. You're dreaming a lot these days. Or maybe your fingers are just more involved afterwards. Those are nice ones. I got nothing on the dream front to give you in return. Squat. Zero. ** Steevee, My guess is that, in Imsodoomed's case, his 'life story' is about 150% wank fantasy. I've heard of Nils Malmros, yes, but I don't think I've seen his work. Maybe it's more accessible here in France? I'll find out. Sounds quite curious. ** Misanthrope, Hi. I don't think my ripped shirt was very hot, though. I think my ripped shirt was the exception to the rule. It sounds like the porn thing is a personal issue for you, so, yeah, leaving it as a disagreement is probably the best way. What you wrote did raise a question. You don't have to answer it, obviously. So, given your idea about porn being destructive and soul-sucking for porn performers, when you watch porn, is the idea that you're watching them be destroyed as people part of the erotic appeal for you, or do you shut that idea out when you're watching porn and pretend you're at an erotic Disneyland or something? Well, wouldn't the fire department be the culpable party, suing-wise? Jesus, LPS's mom is so grotesquely predictable. Sorry, man. ** Okay. Our last rerun, at least until such time as our film's post-production affects the blog negatively again, centers around Mr. Tesla. Have it be your day around here, if you like. See you tomorrow.


Thomas Moronic 'Slave Haikus February 2015'

'One of the great performers in cinema in the past 30 years, the acrobatic, elastic, kinetic Denis Lavant has defined some of the best films from the world's best filmmakers. Appropriately associated with the films of Leos Carax, in which he has appeared in 4 of 5 features (as well as a short), and one of the greatest endings in movies, the dance sequence of Claire Denis'Beau travail, the stage and film actor is something of an idol of cinephiles, almost exclusively lending his talent to auteurs.

'Lavant was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, in France. At 13, he took courses in pantomime and the circus, fascinated by Marcel Marceau. He trained at the Paris Conservatoire under Jacques Lassalle, and began his professional career in 1982 in theatre, acting in Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice. In 1982 he appeared in the television film L'Ombre sur la plage, before playing the minor part of Montparnasse in Robert Hossein's Les Misérables, which was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Special Prize.

'Lavant appeared in several further minor roles, most notably in Patrice Chereau's early, defining 1983 film L'homme blesse, before making his breakthrough in 1984 as the lead in Boy Meets Girl, playing a depressed, aspiring filmmaker who falls in love with a suicidal young woman. The film marked the directorial debut of Leos Carax, with whose films Lavant has been associated ever since.

'In 1986, Lavant and Carax worked together again on the thriller Mauvais Sang and again in 1991 on Carax's third film, the legendarily disastrous yet increasingly respected Les Amants du Pont-Neuf. In both Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Lavant starred opposite Juliette Binoche. In 1998, Lavant appeared in the iconic Jonathan Glazer-directed video for the UNKLE song Rabbit in Your Headlights, and in 1999, he played one of the lead roles in Beau Travail, directed by Claire Denis. His famously intense, strange dance at the film's conclusion to the old disco hit "Rhythm of the Night" is considered one of the defining moments of '90s film.

'In 2007, Lavant appeared in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, in which he portrayed a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. Lavant, who does not speak English, took an intensive language course in preparation and learned his lines phonetically. His longtime associate Leos Carax appears in a supporting role as the main character's talent agent.

'After appearing in a series of interesting but mixed achievement films, including Camping savage (Wild Camp), a stylish French revision of the slasher movie template, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's commercially successful A Very Long Engagement, Lavant and Carax re-united in 2008 for the anthology film Tokyo!, which marked their first work together since Lovers on the Bridge and Carax's first major directing work in nearly a decade. Carax's segment for the film, called Merde, starred Lavant as a violent monster who lives in the sewers of Tokyo and speaks in a gibberish language, venturing out occasionally to attack passersby.

'In 2012 Lavant starred in Leos Carax' brilliant film Holy Motors where he plays a "chameleonic actor on assignment, ferried around Paris in a white limousine and changing en route from beggar-woman to satyr to assassin to victim." The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and it won both Carax and Lavant numerous prizes internationally.'-- collaged



___
Stills


























































____
Further

Denis Lavant @ IMDb
'Denis Lavant, Céline entre les lignes'
'Denis Lavant- Leos Carax: 30 ans d’une relation hors norme'
'New Spaces: A Conversation with Denis Lavant'
Denis Lavant @ Twitter
'Holy Motors: Denis Lavant interview'
'Denis Lavant, le jumeau aux cent visages de Leos Carax'
Denis Lavant page @ Facebook
'Denis Lavant dans l'univers de Koffi Kwahulé : "C'est toujours le début d'une aventure…"'
'Denis Lavant: Sovereign Design'
Video: 'Master Class: Denis Lavant'
Video: 'Watch Jonathan Glazer's Demonic Chocolate Bar Ad starring Denis Lavant'
'WHY HOLY MOTORS'S DENIS LAVANT SHOULD BE NOMINATED FOR THE BEST ACTOR OSCAR'
'CineHeroes | Interview de Denis Lavant'
'DENIS LAVANT | Cris & Poésie'
'Denis Lavant: "Je fais confiance à mon ordinateur organique"'
'Faire danser les alligators sur la flûte de pan, Denis Lavant'
The Denis Lavant Archive @ Film School Rejects



____
Extras


The Wizard, a film about French actor Denis Lavant


Casting / Denis Lavant / Boy meets girl / Leos Carax


Denis Lavant, entretien vidéo


DenisLavantPod 1


LE DUENDE AU CORPS: un portrait de Denis Lavant



______
Interview




What about your first meeting with the director Harmony Korine, how did it happen? It is said that when he wrote the character of Charlie Chaplin, he was just thinking about you to interpret this character, is that true that he wrote this character especially for you?

Denis Lavant: Yes, absolutely. I actually learnt that some time after we’d first met. I was very impressed to hear that, because I know that Harmony Korine wanted to meet me because he saw me in the films I made with Leos Carax. It means that he met Leos Carax, he saw his movies, or at least the three in which I played. And so I think that’s why he wanted to meet me and give me the role of Charlie Chaplin’s impersonator.

You don’t speak English, do you? Did this create difficulties for you during the shooting?

DL: Yes, it was quite awful for me. When I met Harmony Korine, I found him very sympathetic, but we actually barely communicated at first time, or we always needed the help of an interpret. I’d never wanted to learn English because I found this language kind of commercial and I didn’t find any interests in learning it.

And now that you have been confronted with these language difficulties, is there still no interest in speaking English?

DL: Not really, sometimes maybe. But I am, above all, a theatre artist, so the first language I am used to speaking is French. What I can say is that playing in English with English actors was, for me, the target of this film, especially during some of the trickiest scenes, for example when I had to speak while playing table tennis. I actually had to attend an intensive English course prior to the shooting.

What was your first reaction when you first read the screenplay? Did you accept this role immediately?

DL: Yes, immediately. I know the film can appear a bit strange and difficult to follow and to find its meaning, but it was what I liked in it. I love the fantasy in this film. For me, this film is about the dignity of the human identity, the search of people for their identity. This film show how the character of Michael Jackson’s impersonator decide to go to this community to search his identity. That’s why I was very impressed when I first read the screenplay: How something that appeared to be just full of fantasy and disorganised, actually broadcast beautiful and strong ideas.

Mister Lonely is also a dark film, quite pessimistic. Did you feel any loneliness during the shooting?

DL: Yes it is a pessimistic film. But I didn’t feel lonely. It was even one of the films during the shooting of which I felt the least loneliness. The atmosphere during the shooting was indeed really warm, first because the actors were all very nice, and also because we were disguised all day like insane people (laughs).

In one scene, your character’s wife, Marylyn Monroe’s impersonator, tells you that sometimes you looks more like Hitler than like Charlie Chaplin. What do you think? Did you play more Hitler or Charlie Chaplin?

DL: I actually felt like I played a character. I started with looking at myself, to find what I had in common with the comic character invented by Charlie Chaplin, not Charlie Chaplin himself. I found in him some similarities with my face, my physic, and also with my ability to play acrobatics and pantomimes. And then, I also appreciated the character of Chaplin, the spoiling of his image or its exaggeration. The way it was also a caricature in life and how awful he became. That’s why Marilyn says that to him. But what is surprising too is that, when I was preparing for my role, I also used the DVD of The Dictator in which there is a documentary showing a parallel between Hitler’s rise, his access to power and Charlie Chaplin’s carrer. And it showed how the character of Charlie Chaplin, who was wicked in his first comic films became more humanist. And how Hitler also built his character, with his moustache and the way how all his public appearances were directed. He was also kind of an actor. Except that, in Hitler’s case, it became a craziness because there was no more separation between the human being and the representation. On the contrary, Charlie Chaplin had this cleverness to show that his character was a character and when he got rid of his moustache, he was a normal human being, a director and an actor.

But your character is also quite sensitive and he sure love his wife, we can even see him cry. Maybe he is not as devil as we all think?

DL: Maybe he loves her, but still. For me he portrays the human craziness. He could be called a ‘narcissistic pervert’ (strong laugh). He actually could be both sincere and awful. And what is interesting is that all human beings are quite like that. I mean, there is no pure gentleness and pure badness, everyone is situated between those to extreme points. And my character is closer to the awfulness, he likes making the other suffer. He is also very jealous.

Are you a ‘narcissistic pervert’?

DL: I hope not (laugh). But I think that everyone has impulses, that fortunately he doesn’t develop. Everyone can be schizophrenic or paranoid or a narcissistic pervert. And as an actor, I can appreciate that very well (laugh).

Director Harmony Korine said you are one of his favourite actors with Buster Keaton, Humphrey Bogart and James Dean. What do you think of being compared with such actors?

DL: The three of them, it’s a lot! (laugh). I really appreciate Buster Keaton because he was above all a burlesque actor, such as Chaplin, and I was really inspired by them. I admire them a lot. I also started by playing without speech, that’s why I feel really close to them. I started only later to work on theatre texts.

You have played in lots of theatre pieces. Did this film, with the show of the impersonators and their fancy dress, remind you of the theatre?

DL: Yes absolutely. This film was a great show. And, as for me, I am above all a theatre actor, so I really enjoyed it. I play for the cinema quite rarely and have an important role in a big film only every two or three years.

It is said a lot that you are a ‘physical’ actor, an actor that plays a lot with his body. Is that true?

DL: That’s true. I agree with that, but in the same time, as an actor, I think that an actor has always to be physical, when he plays for the theatre as well as for the cinema. It is part of the mise-en-scene, of the play, an actor can be either physically restrained or exteriorise a lot, it all depends on the style of each one. Maybe I am more physical than the average (laugh), but I admit it. It is part of my pleasure. I love dancing, I love all my body to play. For me, a role isn’t just a face and a voice, and the great actor that I admire are those who use their body to give a shape to their character, for example Marlon Brando, whose acting has so much style.

What could you tell us about your plans for the future?

DL: This year, I have also played in a film by director Merzak Allouache, which was a great adventure as it took place in the Sahara desert and I played a fashion photographer. What I really enjoyed is that it was a more ‘normal’ role given to me, less extreme than the one I had in Leos Carax, Claire Denis or Harmony Korine’s films. I have played a lot of extreme characters, often marginal, so it was the occasion for me to have the experience of a film dealing with a more conventional day-to-day. Apart from the films that I’ve already finished and should be soon released, I am also going to Japan to shoot my fourth film with director Leos Carax.



_______________
17 of Denis Lavant's 90 roles

______________
Patrice Chéreau L'homme blesse (1983)
'L'Homme Blesse is a 1983 French film directed by Patrice Chéreau, and written by him and Hervé Guibert. It won the César Award for Best Writing. The film is a stark portrayal of the homosexual underground in the dark, midnight streets of Paris. The film focuses on Henri (played by Jean-Hughes Anglade, who gives a courageous and intense performance), a friendless young man whose difficulty in accepting his own homosexuality further alienates him from a world where he has been set adrift. Alone, self-exiled from his family, Henri turns to the midnight Parisian streets, where he meets Jean, (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) a tough pimp and thief. Jean initially manipulates Henri's confused vulnerability, but later, secretly drawn to him, embraces him into his clique of fellow theieves and male prostitutes. This is a difficult film to watch at times, as Henri is one of the most excessively alienated characters ever filmed. The film's conclusion is a startling denouement to a life hurtling wildly out of control.'-- collaged



Trailer


Excerpt



______________
Leos Carax Boy Meets Girl (1984)
'Boy Meets Girl resembles a number of other movies, sometimes coincidentally. The rich, erotically velvety black-and-white cinematography recalls Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, while the surreal one-thing-after-another-over-a-night plot evokes After Hours. The film's most explicitly reminiscent, though, of both Jean Luc-Godard and Jim Jarmusch's early work, only Carax doesn't share their self-congratulatory snobbery. Breathless and Stranger than Paradise (released the same year) revel in the coolness of not giving a damn. Carax's characters, however, assume these cool poses awkwardly and with little satisfaction, and their stumbling humanizes them and grounds the movie's endless conceits down in tangibly earthly disappointment. When Mireille (Mireille Perrier) cuts her hair short in place of a suicide attempt, she unmistakably resembles Jean Seberg, but with a far greater degree of emotional exposure: There's an explicit element of desperate compensation to this gesture that transcends name-dropping. Alex (Denis Lavant) is one of the most common variations of this youthful creature: the aspiring filmmaker who sees everything through the scrim of what could or might be a movie. Alex is also director Leos Carax's real first name, and it's pretty clear that this film, his first, was intended to represent a form of biographical exorcism. It's a try-out movie about trying out, as the text explicitly concerns a wanderer in search of emotional fulfillment, though he occasionally passes that off as looking for artistic inspiration. The self-reflexivity here is about as elaborate and alternately exhilarating and maddening as it would be in Carax's subsequent films.'-- Slant Magazine



Excerpt


Excerpt



_______________
Claude Lelouch Partir, revenir (1985)
'French film Partir, Revenir would always be remembered for its musical score.This film's solid foundation has been built around a mesmerizing musical score composed by great Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff and Michel Legrand.Those who know about French director Claude Lelouch and his "large than life" films would surely be aware of the fact that Mr.Lelouch had directed all kinds of major stars of French cinema.This phenomenon is quite visible in this film as there is something unique about unparalleled Lelouchian method of handling actors. This is one reason why players like Annie Girardot, Jean Louis Trintignant, Marie France Pisier, Michel Piccoli and Richard Anconina who are veritable stars of French cinema remain true actors when they are in a Claude Lelouch film. While making Partir, Revenir, Claude Lelouch has ensured that there should not be any hint of an impending sensationalism and suffering.This narrative device functions well in this film as it has neither tears nor trauma with which audiences generally tend to associate Holocaust/Nazi themed films.The true beauty of this film lies in its many scenes of joyful madness.'-- IMDb



Excerpt



_______________
Leos Carax Mauvais Sang (1986)
'Michel Piccoli stars as an aging gangster stricken by fear who ropes in a young Denis Lavant (a son of a dead cohort) to help with a heist. While staying with Piccoli, Lavant becomes drawn to Piccoli’s young mistress played by Juliette Binoche. Carax seems to pick up where Godard left off with Breathless. There’s a relentless and wild energy to the film that plays with the tropes of gangster films while also making the gangster film both absurd and beautiful. Carax jumps from the kineticism of frantic but controlled handheld camerawork to static close-ups and composed shots, and more, which makes it a whirlwind of style. Denis Lavant brings his own unique energy too. He’s always great to watch because of how he moves and here that’s put to great use, one scene in particular of him running and thrashing to Bowie’s Modern Love got me pumped ‘cause he really match’s the energy of the song. On top of everything it’s also kind of a sci-fi film with a virus that attacks those who have sex without love and other odd additions. All the little oddities and film references never really distracted from the film though, if anything they just enhanced the powerful bond between Binoche and Levant as they are so unfazed by the madness due to being consumed by each other.'-- Herzog Baby



Excerpt


Excerpt



_____________
Leos Carax Les Amants Du Pont-Neuf (1991)
'Carax capped his “Alex trilogy” with this dizzyingly romanticized valentine to l’amour fou, once again casting Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant as the title characters, a homeless couple who set up a love nest on the bridge over the Seine. The young filmmaker received permission to film on Paris’ famous Pont-Neuf, but when that proved unfeasible, he built a replica in southern France. This combination of realism and artifice spills over to the film itself, which includes a semi-documentary sequence shot in a homeless shelter. The relationship between the lovers is by turns touching and unsettling, with Carax juxtaposing the beautiful with the sinister so as to heighten both – reminiscent of Claire Denis. This alchemy of beauty and ugliness is a key to unlocking Carax’s approach to filmmaking; it amounts more or less to a particularly cinematic worldview, one that comes to the fore in his subsequent work.'-- Harvard Film Archive



Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt



______________
Jean-Michel Carré Visiblement je vous aime (1995)
'Des obsessions, des rites, des bizarreries, et un grand mystère : la folie. C’est à cette question que s’est intéressé le réalisateur Jean-Michel Carré en 1995, dans Visiblement je vous aime, un film à la fois beau et dérangeant incarné par Denis Lavant et par les pensionnaires du Coral, un lieu de vie situé près de Nîmes accueillant des jeunes autistes, des psychotiques mais aussi des jeunes en difficulté sociale. Le sujet du film de Jean-Michel Carré est sensible, et il nous intéresse. Car c’est précisément de la folie dont nous allons parler chaque dimanche après-midi dans « Fol été ». Une heure pour évoquer cet étrange basculement de la raison, grâce aux témoignages des patients du Centre de Jour Antonin Artaud de Reims mais aussi grâce un invité, un artiste, qui a choisi d’explorer le thème de la folie, en créant un spectacle, en écrivant un livre, ou en réalisant un film… Cette semaine, c’est Jean-Michel Carré.'-- France Inter



Excerpt



_______________
Claire Denis Beau Travail (1999)
'In Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999), the eminence of doom is almost palpable; from the foregrounded terrain of war, to the protagonist Galoup’s (Denis Lavant) exclusion from the taut brotherhood of legionnaires and his reflections on mortality, it is a text concerned with endings, limits, and the finite nature of being. Based loosely on Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Beau Travail tells the story of French soldiers stationed abroad and the power struggle (both hierarchical and libidinal) between Chief Master Sergeant Galoup and his subordinate Gilles Sentain (Grégoire Colin). The geographic specificity of the legion in Djibouti, Eastern Africa places the men in a country defined as a border itself, straddling the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and couched between the limits of Eritrea and Somalia. In this sense, the film is concerned with the finite—with the ends of things—and the formal elements substantiate the film’s refusal to succumb to a totalizing narrative, particularly that which is so often associated with war films: patriotism.'-- cléo



Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt



_____________
Veit Helmer Tuvalu (1999)
'Nearly devoid of dialogue, Tuvalu relies on the physical expressiveness of its cast to convey the story. The style of the film is reminiscent of the movies of the silent era and also of the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is known for Delicatessan, The City of Lost Children, and Amelie. The movie is mono-chromatic, having been hand-tinted in a "brighter-than-sepia-tone" and blue, and occasionally green. The result is a film that is visually striking, filled with dramatic contrasts - from open, barren landscapes to the closed, intricate spaces of a bathhouse. Production design and cinematography are exceptional. Tuvalu is one of those rare films that gives moviegoers the opportunity to see the art of the motion picture through new eyes. Inventive and engaging, it crosses boundaries and makes us want to come along for the journey. Made for less than two million dollars it, ironically, delivers more fun than most big-budget Hollywood "ride" movies. As such, Tuvalu earns my highest recommendation.'-- 24 Frames



Trailer


Excerpt



_______________
Lionel Delplanque Deep in the Woods (2000)
'Deep in the Woods is one of several films in recent years to deconstruct the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale. Director Lionel Delplanque sets in with a stylish grip and never lets up – that is the pleasure of the film. For a time, you are not even sure what type of film Deep in the Woods is. It is only in during the last third that the film reveals itself to be a slasher film rather than a monster or werewolf story. The young cast are a standard victimology spread for a slasher film with about as much depth of characterization, although they do at least get more naked than their modern American counterparts do. Delplanque manages quite ably able to keep everything in the film in a constant state of unease. Suspicion shifts between each character – including the victims – and back with deft regard. The film is never better than during the early scenes where Delplanque creates something both superbly amusing and sinister out of Francois Berleand’s suggestive sexual advances on Vincent Lecouer. Delplanque also creates some fine scenes with cameras eerily prowling through midnight forests, some unique novelty deaths and an eerie scene where the wolf costume comes alive to attack Maud Buquet as she emerges from the shower into a bathroom that has seemingly become an entire netherworld filled with steam. Delplanque’s constant generation of stylish eerie imagery sets Deep in the Woods head and shoulders above most modern post-Scream (1996) studio-processed teen slasher fodder.'-- Moria



Trailer



______________
Jean-Pierre Jeunet A Very Long Engagement (2004)
'A Very Long Engagement has two distinctions. First, one of the five condemned men, played by Denis Lavant, is a socialist welder. Very few films have represented any working-class individuals -- even minor characters -- as socialists. Films, as well as other forms of fiction, tend to portray socialists as middle-class intellectuals and workers as indifferent to politics -- the tendency that not only erases working-class socialists from history but also harbors a condescending view of workers' intellectual capacity. A Very Long Engagement is an interesting partial exception (partial in so far as the socialist welder is represented as unable to reach his fellow workers except by joining them symbolically through an act of individual refusal). The second distinction, the more extraordinary, is that A Very Long Engagement shows a French soldier killing a French officer during an offensive. The soldier, Benoît Notre-Dame (played by Clovis Cornillac), sees the officer kicking the bodies of dead French soldiers whom the officer curses as incompetent cowards, and, outraged, he suffocates the officer in the mud. Nobody sees his act (except the audience), so he does not get charged with murder. And, among the five condemned men, he is the most resourceful survivor, saving Manech's life and escaping himself. What other film has shown a soldier kill a superior and get away with it?' -- Critical Montages



Trailer


Excerpt



______________
Christophe Ali, Nicolas Bonilauri Wild Camp (2006)
'In Sam Mendes' American Beauty, poor Kevin Spacey undergoes a life-altering experience while watching Mena Suvari perform a cheerleading routine, one that leads to epiphanies both pleasant and ugly. Directors Christophe Ali and Nicolas Bonilauri tread on similar ground in Wild Camp (Camping sauvage) to a point, inserting married-with-a-kid ex-con Denis Lavant as a man who crosses paths with teenage temptation, here in the form of free-spirited Isild Le Besco. But unlike American Beauty, Wild Camp tilts the playing field a little differently as we are left to watch Levant slowly succumb to the thoughts he tries to suppress, and society be damned. Some viewers may have to adjust their own moral compass for a film like this—as the whole older man/teenage girl affair typically exists as taboo—and directors Ali and Bonilauri paint their two star-crossed leads as randomly misguided in their own rights, but underneath it all, true to each other. It's tough to dislike either of them, even though we know what's about to happen probably can't end happily. Both Blaise and Camille have reached a point in their own lives that seems insurmountable, and that familiar searing tingle of sexual chemistry and attraction seems to make it all seem better. The narrative quickly moves to a darker, less than bubbly resolution, and all of the pensive glances and furtive touches slowly erupt into a sad extension of teenage angst.' -- Digitally Obsessed



Trailer


Excerpt



_______________
Harmony Korine Mister Lonely (2007)
'Mister Lonely is a very unusual, sometimes even strange film, which combines two stories, without apparent link between them. The first story is about a Michael Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) who lives alone in Paris and performs in the streets to make ends meet. At a show in a retirement home, Michael falls for a beautiful Marilyn Monroe look-alike (Samantha Morton) who suggests he moves to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands. Michael discovers there Abraham Lincoln, the Queen, the Pope, Madonna and the others preparing for the commune’s first gala. He also meets Marilyn’s daughter Shirley Temple and her possessive husband, Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant). Meanwhile, a group of missionary nuns in a Latin American Jungle soon sees a miracle happening when one of them accidentally falls from a flying plane. Even if it could sometimes appear difficult to follow, for example to establish the link between the two main stories, a strong idea emerges from this film. It is all about human identity and the search of each person’s own identity. Even if pessimistic at times, this film is closed to the burlesque genre. The reason for this film to be seen is that it carries everyone to a supernatural world, never mind your understanding of its meaning, full of flying nuns and impersonators, who’ll surely allow you to escape from a daily routine.'-- France in London



Trailer


Excerpt



______________
Leos Carax Merde (2008)
'There's nothing in recent memory quite like Merde. Defiantly pushing the bounds of good taste, reveling in its own sense of outrageousness, Leos Carax's short film—the middle segment of the multi-director triptych Tokyo!—is the best kind of provocation: an act of incitement performed for the pure pleasure of the thing. In this regard, Carax's stance is a lot like that of his hero. As the titular character arises from his subterranean home to terrorize the Tokyo citizenry, everyone tries to explain his anomalous presence (the Americans link him to Al Qaeda, the Japanese to the Aum cult), but despite the tantalizing tease Carax gives us of leftover military equipment from Japan's 1937 China campaign in the character's underground cave, Merde's actions can't be accounted for by any existing political context, only by his generalized hatred for humanity. As embodied by the brilliant Denis Lavant, done up with a turned-out eyeball and wispy, red beard, Merde is a truly inspired creation. Introduced through a series of street-level tracking shots, the character shuffles his way down the pavement garbed in only a tatty green suit, grabbing crutches from handicapped people, spitting on babies, and shoving money down his throat before descending back to the sewer from where he came. The scene's an exhilarating rush of pure cinema, Carax's camera pulling back to keep pace with its relentless subject who, like his director, bulldozes through any considerations of propriety with a disregard so pronounced and a sense of disgust so evenly distributed among its targets, that it finally proves liberating.'-- Slant Magazine



the entire film



_______________
Eva Ionesco My Little Princess (2011)
'Even without the wire hangers, Eva Ionesco’s semi-autobiographical debut, My Little Princess, feels an awful lot like other monster-mommy tales, only this time, the director seems to be underplaying, rather than exaggerating, the particulars of her horrific upbringing. The helmer, daughter of Parisian photographer Irina Ionesco, achieved notoriety at an early age after appearing nude in her mother’s provocative portraits. Princess shows her still quite conflicted on the subject — and the casting of Isabelle Huppert, here in ice-queen mode, conveys everything about the odd blend of alluring glamour and twisted psychology. Huppert will be pic’s best shot at reaching famously conservative American auds.'-- Variety



Trailer


Excerpt



________________
Leos Carax Holy Motors (2012)
'Films are always getting described as surreal, whether they are or not. But this year we saw a genuinely surrealist movie. Leos Carax's Holy Motors is unfettered by logic and common sense; it takes off in all directions – inspired by Cocteau, Franju, Lynch, Buñuel, Muybridge, Kafka, Lewis Carroll and many more. It's a kind of road movie. Monsieur Oscar is an enigmatic businessman, played by Carax's longtime collaborator Denis Lavant, being ferried around Paris in the back of a white limousine, driven by Céline, played by Edith Scob. He has a number of mysterious appointments, for each of which he has to apply a new and elaborate disguise. But what on earth are these appointments? In the course of each, he seems to enter a different or parallel universe in which his persona is unquestioningly accepted. He is an angry father, a homeless bag lady, an assassin and even a motion-capture studio model whose acrobatics create a weird and wonderful erotic animation which we are permitted to see and which doesn't seem any more or less real than everything that comes before or after.'-- The Guardian



Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt



_______________
Sophie Blondy L'étoile du jour (2012)
'A circus is set up by the sea where the wind is cold and the audience scarce. While the shows are entertaining, the tensions among performers grow by the day. Angèle loves Elliot but the dangerous Heroy is determined to win her over by any means. With Denis Lavant, Béatrice Dalle and Iggy Pop. The circus is a favourite backdrop for films that are anything but festive. In Sophie Blondy’s second feature, she introduces a motley mix of characters who are bound together in obscure ways. The story is set in a depressing town on the French coast, where the performances are held in front of half-empty benches. The real excitement is primarily outside the circus tent, where the sad clown Elliot (Holy Motors’ Denis Lavant) has an affair with ballerina Angèle, to the fury of the circus director Heroy - who will stop at nothing to conquer the object of his love. Apart from being plagued by the director, Elliot is also tormented by his silent yet eloquent conscience, surprisingly played by Iggy Pop. And in The Morning Star we also see Béatrice Dalle, in her typecast role of flamboyant gypsy soothsayer.'-- iffr.com



Trailer



______________
Arnaud des Pallières Age Of Uprising: The Legend Of Michael Kohlhaas (2013)
'Anyone unfamiliar with German author Heinrich von Kleist and his 200-year-old novella Michael Kohlhaas will likely spend much of Age Of Uprising—the book’s puckishly misnamed second cinematic translation, and a 2013 Palme d’Or nominee—twitchily anticipating a Braveheart-esque orgy of ass-kicking, bastard-impaling payback. Set in the 16th century, in what’s now part of Berlin, this austere, forbidding film follows a humble man on a self-immolating quest for satisfaction after a baron illegally confiscates two of his horses, then returns them wounded and broken. Kohlhaas (Danish star Mads Mikkelsen) takes the horse-pilferer to court, but the nobleman uses his influence to get the case dismissed. There’s almost no music, just the pervasive rasp of a brutal wind whipping a landscape as beautiful and unyielding as Mikkelsen’s indelible face. And then there’s the matter of its pace, which can fairly be described. As. Unhurried. Contemplative. Languid. Glacial, even. This is certainly intentional. It imparts a sense of life in the 1530s as brief and full of hardship, with little hope that one’s fortunes or station in life might be improved. Midway through, when a priest warns Kohlhaas that only humility and forgiveness can achieve the ends he has chosen to pursue through violence, even the speech seems to last an eternity. (The priest is played by Denis Lavant, memorable from 2012’s mind-bending Holy Motors.) This indolence probably helps the film to lodge more stubbornly in the audience’s memory, even as it makes it a minor chore to sit through.'-- The Dissolve



Trailer


Excerpt




*

p.s. Hey. ** Nicola Smith, Hi! No problem, pal. Nipped in the bud. Really glad you liked the oldie. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. What is that really old joke? Shit. Oh, wait ... 'Sartre: To do is to be. Romper Room: Do be a do bee. Frank Sinatra: Do-be-do-be-do'. Happy birthday to the very great Jacques Rivette! ** Steevee, Hi. Just the other day I was wondering if Rivette had made any films lately, and I did a bit of research, and, very sadly, he has advanced Alzheimers. I did a quick search, and discovered that at least one Malmros film, I don't remember which, had a release in France. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! I loved the Vimeo extravaganza! It's great! Blog days would, of course, be incredibly welcome, and thank you very kindly for having the impetus. Nice day you had there, and, whoa, very cool that Jamie got and likes your "SC'! ** Keaton, Well, you should, natch. So, you're one of those sneak attacked facial guys. I met one of you once. Tricky on the other end sans blindfold or other blinding accoutrement. Yeah, dreams are like comic books for me. I respect them but I never indulge consciously. Wow, that's an interesting response to Tesla. A first maybe. ** _Black_Acrylic, Fucking cars and their innocent troublemaking. You have such nice parents. You're a lucky dude. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Thanks about the post and for the post-production best wishes. We're still looking, but hopefully we'll get it underway any minute. Oh, man, sucks about the horrors popping up. That Braxton gig sounds completely dreamy. He is so great. As respected as he is, he still seems vastly underrated and absurdly marginalized. I'm not a big Sylvian fan, to be honest, no. I respect his smartness and his daring and all of that, but listening to his stuff doesn't ever interest me very much, and I'm not really into his voice. Enough people with high standards love him, so I guess he's worth you getting to know his work to some degree, but I'm not really the guy to help out, I guess. ** Sypha, Hi, James. I haven't read 'Tree of Smoke', no. I've intended to. Johnson's very hit or miss for me. The ones I've liked are, if I remember, 'Resuscitation of a Hanged Man', 'Jesus Son', and 'Already Dead'. Well, yeah, the invitation to appear in that anthology is the perfect opportunity to get the writers block unblocked, I think. Deadlines/goals can be the key. Hope so in your case, obviously. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I've always admired your particular combination of the traditional and utter lunacy. The balance definitely qualifies as the human body equivalent of experimental fiction, which, as you know, constitutes a big up in my case. Thanks for answering my question. It was a weird, kind of unanswerable question, I guess, but you did good. I get it. I find it really hard to believe that anyone who makes cam porn of themselves doesn't know -- and they probably even hope? -- it'll end up all over the racier corners of the web's fucking place. Anyway, gracias, buddy. ** That's it? Okay. We return to new posts today with the above coverage-type thing re: the amazing French actor Denis Lavant. I hope it does something interesting inside of you. See you tomorrow.

an interview with mary timony around the release of helium's 1997 LP 'the magic city.'


mary timony was born in october, 1970, in washington, DC, where she grew up down the street from ian mackaye's family. she's played guitar and sang in groups like autoclave, helium, wild flag, and--currently--ex hex, in addition to several solo release and other projects.

she first got into punk rock from a rites of spring/beefeater show she attended when she was 15. in addition to this, she's pretty much a guitar prodigy. just watch the videos and listen. she slays.



go far.


autoclave was started by timony and christina billotte, along with nikki chapman and melissa berkoff. they released two EPs, the first being a 7" collboration between K and dischord (under the moniker disKord records), and the second being released on billotte's label mira, with dischord distributing.



i'll take you down.


because timony was attending college at boston university (where she majored in english lit), autoclave shows were infrequent, and the band broke up after doing a weeklong tour with fugazi. billotte went on to play in DC post-punks slant 6, while timony took over mary lou lord's position in a new group called helium.



XXX.


after a couple lineup changes, helium's lineup solidifed as timony on vocals and guitar, shawn king devlin on drums and polvo guitarist ash bowie on bass. their first releases were the 7" singles 'american jean' and 'hole in the ground' (b/w 'lucy').



the american jean.


in 1994, helium released the 'pirate prude' EP on matador records, for whom they would record until their breakup.



i'll get you, i mean it.


love $$$.


in 1995, they released 'the dirt of luck' LP, which gained some radio play. around this time, timony began to suffer from depression.



beavis and butt-head watch the video for 'pat's trick.'


three singles were released from TDOL: 'pat's trick,''superball,' and 'honeycomb.' they all recieved airplay on MTV's '120 minutes,' but not a lot happened in terms of huge record sales.



honeycomb.


pat's trick.


superball.


in 1995, there was also an EP released, featuring 'superball' and additional songs. 1996 saw the release of the 'no guitars' EP, produced by mitch easter (REM, pavement, pylon, etc), who would also produce their final album, 'the magic city.'



sunday.


silver strings.


as mentioned above, mitch easter produced the sessions for 'the magic city' (named after the famous strip club in atlanta where some say twerking was invented, if that seems significant to anyone).



leon's space song.


'I still feel like that when I walk into music stores sometimes, so I tend to just go places where I know people. If I ever go to a repair shop where there's an old guy I don't know, it's possible that they could be condescending. I know as a young woman in my 20s, I definitely noticed that people were like, Oh, she's just a singer, she doesn't know how to play guitar. They're shocked that you know how to play guitar; that's weird. Now, at my age, I don't know; if anyone made a judgment about me, I wouldn't really care. It's not my problem. Also, it's really different in rock music now. I think in the '90s when I was playing in bands, there were less girls; it was much more like you were a female car mechanic or something. It was weird, especially coming from the hardcore scene, which was all men. I grew up in D.C. in the '80s hardcore scene, and it was pretty much all guys' bands.'
from an interview with NY mag, on the subject of being a female guitarist.



lady of the fire.


devil's tear.


in 1999, timony teamed up with carrie brownsein of sleater kinney, and they released an EP, 'the age of backwards,' under the name the spells, for calvin johnson's international pop underground series on K records. they would team up again in 2008 to release another EP (digitally this time, via brownstein's 'monitor mix' blog for NPR), 'bat vs. bird.'



the age of backwards.


can't explain.


bat vs. bird


champion vampire.


after helium split, timony found herself alone and broke in boston. she had dated ash bowie for a time while helium were doing their thing, but that ended. she was depressed again, probably even moreso than during the helium time, and used her two solo records released during this time, 'mountains' and 'the golden dove' to address and work through her feelings.



i fire myself.


the valley of one thousand perfumes.


blood tree.


dr. cat.


in 2005, she teamed up with devin ocampo, formerly of DC math group faraquet, to record and release 'the ex hex' for lookout! records, as well as contributing to deftones singer chino moreno's side project team sleep, performing vocals on the tracks 'the tomb of ligeia' and 'king diamond.'



9x3.


return to pirates.


king diamond.


in 2007, kill rock stars released 'the shapes we make,' by the mary timony band.



curious minds.


sharpshooter.


here is a video of a group mary was in with jonah takagi, TJ lipple and winston h. yu, called the soft power (though the group was called pow wow before lipple joined) working on an unreleased album.


in 2010, wild flag was announced. wild flag were something of an indie supergroup, containing timony alongside carrie brownstein and janet weiss of sleater-kinney (janet also plays in quasi and used to drum with elliott smith, among loads of other stuff) and rebecca cole of the minders. wild flag released one single and one LP for merge records before quietly calling it quits.



electric band.


romance.


something came over me.


here is a really rad video of wild flag covering 'judy is a punk' and 'see no evil.'


after wild flag, there is now ex hex, consisting of mary, laura harris on drums and betsy wright on bass and vocals, who have also released one single and one album for merge (the single being the LP track 'hot and cold'; the album is called 'ex hex rips' and it's totally true). they are currently on tour everywhere (except las vegas, for which i am super heartbroken). instead of trying to describe their sound (but think garage-y power pop, i guess?), here are more videos that will give you a good idea what they sound like...



hot and cold.


waterfall.


don't wanna lose.


here is a full performance they tracked for KEXP in seattle.


ephemera, etc.
mary timony on twitter.
instagram.
ex hex.




*

p.s. Hey. Today, one of our local maestros, the inimitable Rewritedept, draws your attention to the history of the musical stylings of '90s/'00s rock god Mary Timony, and you will have fun combined with some degree of enlightenment, I'm positive, so please prove me right, if you can, thank you! And thanks a bunch, R! Also, note: Last night my glasses broke in half, and, at the moment, they are scotch taped together and balanced precariously on the bridge of my nose, and I'm doing this p.s. while looking through a film of tape, and that might affect the p.s. in some way, so, warning, I guess. ** Earl&Nadine, Hi! Welcome! You have such a cool name. Thank you a lot. I like that word robust, and I will wear it like a buttoner. Please come back any old time. ** Bacteriaburger, Hi, Natty! Really, really nice to see you, pal! You good and hopefully far more than good? 'Holy Motors' is something you should see, I think, yes. Best of the best to you! ** DavidEhrenstein, I second your 'he most certainly does.' ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! Lavant is kind of always great. I highly recommend his other Carax films, and he's wonderful in the wonderful 'Mr. Lonely'. Thank you! ** Sypha, Hi. Oh, wow, I think you might be right about the Johnson thing in 'SiH'. Weird. 'Angels' is really good, yeah. I forgot about that one. Enjoy the crush, man. Gender's just a word. And pursue, if your heart and other organs deem that right. ** Keaton, Hi. Interesting. Facials are so symbolic. In art, I find symbolism kind of duh or something, but, in sex, it can be meta. Strange, that. You kind of like the band Tesla? Wow. I think I kind of don't. Based on the MTV hits. I think maybe the singer had really good hair though? Whoa, new, partially XXX thing by you! Everyone, Keaton has taken full advantage of Blogger's policy reversal move by building a particularly hot or at least 'hot' Emo-like post on his space with his usually mastery, so go get wowed, titillated, or whatever else by '50 Shades of Cray Cray'. ** Kier, Hi! Dennhibition's awesome. How do you do that? Will Patton, cool. Someone talked about him here just the other week. How interesting. No luck on the apartment thing yet. It's tricky. I found a few possibilities online, but they were taken by the time I queried. Now I found another few, and I'll try to jump on them. Ugh. Nice days you had, both of them. Yesterday ... Some online apartment searching. Then ... oh, Zac's mom is in town, and she's likes chocolate, so I went out to try to find her a special chocolate as a gift. My first attempt was this crazy looking thing that I had seen a photo of online. So I bought it, and, luckily, I bought a second one to taste because I didn't understand all the listed ingredients. So, I stepped outside the patisserie and bit into the extra one, and it tasted unbelievably awful. I had to spit it out. I went back inside and asked them what was in it, and they said 'crab meat'. It must have seemed like a great idea to the chef, but it was a disaster. So I searched further and just ended up buying her a more normal chocolate. Zac was still working on the tech of the promo reel yesterday, 'cos it turned out to be more complicated than we thought, so he did that, and we didn't work on the sound correction yet. I worked on the new theater piece script instead, and it's almost finished. I mostly did that. Then, fuck, in the evening, my reading glasses just suddenly broke in half! It was a horror. I tried fixing them with Super Glue, and it didn't work at all, so now they're scotch taped together and weird looking and barely work, so I have to get new glasses today, sucks. That (trying to fix the glasses) is pretty much what I did all evening until bedtime. How did today work out for you? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Good, good, about the move. And awesome about the DJing gig. Maripol, wow. It's a show of her jewelry, or ... ? ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Me, kind, why? I mean thank you! You too. Thanks for the envy. I think it's safe to say on this late date that Paris is past snow's expiration date. ** Thomas Moronic, It sure is, man. Good morning! ** Right. I will go try to find an optometrist place now, and you guys bask in Mary Timony, okay? And talk about your basking to Rewritedept maybe, okay? See you (hopefully not through a film of tape) tomorrow.

_______________




Ella Sweeney: How important is the idea of the collective in the work that you do?

Lucy K. Shaw: I would say that it’s completely vital in the sense that I don’t feel sufficiently interested in myself or in my own work to spend all of my time thinking about it. But I do have an incessant compulsion to be involved in the process of creating something.

Working with others, and by that I primarily mean editing other people’s work but also crucially finding a way to work constructively and harmoniously with other editors, for me, is much more consistently rewarding than writing, publishing and showing my own work. I think personal successes and accomplishments, while important, can often feel ultimately kind of lonely. But the thrill of completing and presenting something you’ve worked on very hard with other people can really be a beautiful and fulfilling feeling.

ES: What kind of impact do you think collective practices have on a movement such as feminism?

LKS: I can only really speak on this from my personal experience. Until I met Sarah Jean Alexander and Gabby Bess, who were also pretty much completely unknown at the time, I hadn’t ever really felt like there was a place for me or for my work.

But once we started supporting each other, we were able to build Shabby Doll House and Illuminati Girl Gang into these bold, far-reaching magazines and to publish the work of so many other writers and artists who we believed in. And one of those people was Samantha Conlon, who later went on to form Bunny Collective. Another was Luna Miguel. Another was Mira Gonzalez. Another was Stacey Teague. Another was Ashley Opheim. I’m not trying to take credit for other people’s successes here, but rather to demonstrate that it’s all cyclical. We have all helped and supported one another unquantifiably, and often merely by existing at the same time.

So I think, in terms of how these types of collective practices can advance a movement like feminism; I was probably quite convinced for a long time that if I was going to succeed in writing or art or actually any type of field, that I was going to have to become an exception to the rule. That I would have to be the only successful woman in whatever it was that I was doing, and that I would have to do all of this on somebody else’s terms, as part of a landscape which already existed.

But now I know that just isn’t true.








Editors Lucy K Shaw, Sarah Jean Alexander & Stacey Teague SHABBY DOLL HOUSE READER
Shabby Doll House

'You can now subscribe to receive the brand new Shabby Doll Reader direct to your inbox on the first Sunday of every month. This new, downloadable .pdf is the perfect companion for the Shabby Doll House super fan, with exclusive features, interviews, reviews, news and even more of whatever else we feel that we need to show you. It's time for us to take this up another level. The first issue was released on February 1st, 2015. You can subscribe now to receive it. Your $4 a month membership fee allows us to bring you the highest quality in poetic entertainment. Thank you for supporting Shabby Doll House.'-- SDH


Excerpts













Trailer


Oblivious


Pretend



_______________




'Mark Doten’s debut is the most audaciously imaginative political novel I’ve ever read. It’s also very “literary,” though couched in a sci-fi premise: In an alternate reality, a Christ figure (“the Akkad boy”) has been attached to an information-extracting machine (“the Omnosyne”) that will feed his soul (“information”) into “the Cloud.” We are to be presented with transcriptions of the stories that have poured out of this boy over the course of a four-day interrogation. But it turns out that he speaks in other people’s voices — voices from our own reality — and what we actually get is a burlesque of monologues and stories that rewrite our own fraught cultural narratives.

'Most of these pieces are too weird to be easily described. Osama bin Laden tells us about feeding his followers into the mouth of a mechanical bird. Dick Cheney learns to love himself. Mark Zuckerberg tries to survive an eschatological video game. “Mark Doten” discusses race politics with Barack Obama — along with about 10 other story lines by characters famous and not. They are by turns hilarious and disturbing, often shifting into surrealism or Kafka-style absurdity. There are traces of Beckett’s influence, and David Foster Wallace’s, and, perhaps most obviously, of Robert Coover’s “The Public Burning,” but overall the sheer poundage of originality is remarkable.

'The Infernal takes place at a junction of aesthetics and politics. Doten starts from the essential premise that reality is not inevitable, that the world we have is one we’ve made, which he ferociously disassembles, remakes and feeds back to us as twisted gospels for dark times.'-- NY Times








Mark Doten The Infernal
Graywolf Press

'Doten has written a ravishingly mad post-Bust riposte to the collaboratively written Internet text— the Wiki, which doesn't document facts so much as it documents the process by which 'facts' are generated and then perpetually overwritten.'-- Joshua Cohen

'In Doten’s artfully deranged debut novel, the 'war on terror' is revisited as a feverish science-fiction odyssey. . . . Doten frames his post-historic 'memory index' in virtuosic, antic prose, but his goal is neither purely satire nor surrealism for its own sake. Rather, [The Infernal] constructs a new language to confront atrocity and becomes in the bargain a story that truly thinks outside the cage.'-- Publishers Weekly

'Mark Doten has fashioned a thrilling, idiosyncratic attack on the mytho-historical madness of our time. The Infernal is a brave, crazy, magnetic debut.'-- Sam Lipsyte

'The Infernal is insane. Mark Doten turns his war criminals into the lecherous cartoons they might really be, as if the Warren Report were a drugged-out musical. From now on I want all of my novels this brilliant, this crazily pitched, this original.'-- Ben Marcus

'Serious, future-altering genius.'-- Dennis Cooper



Excerpt







(cont.)



Trailer: 'The Source'


UNPRINTABLE with Mark Doten, Ned Beauman, and Simon Critchley


Soho Press Editor Mark Doten



_________________




'One of the most important poets of contemporary Japan, Hiromi Ito's impact has been summarized by fellow poet Kido Shuri as follows: “The appearance of Itō Hiromi, a figure that one might best call a ‘shamaness of poetry’ (shi no miko) was an enormous event in post-postwar poetry. Her physiological sensitivity and writing style, which cannot be captured within any existing framework, became the igniting force behind the subsequent flourishing of ‘women’s poetry’ (josei shi), just as Hagiwara Sakutarō had revolutionized modern poetry with his morbid sensitivity and colloquial style.”

'The 140-page narrative poem Wild Grass on the Riverbank (Kawara arekusa) represents Hiromi Itō’s dramatic return to poetry after several years of writing primarily prose works. First serialized in the prominent Japanese poetry journal Handbook of Modern Poetry (Gendai shi techō) in 2004 and 2005, Wild Grass was published in book form in 2005. ... The critic Tochigi Nobuaki has said that in Wild Grass, “We, Ito's readers, are witnessing the advent of a new poetic language that modern Japanese has never seen.” Wild Grass explores the experience of migrancy and alienation through the eyes of an eleven-year old girl who narrates the long poem. In the work, the girl travels with her mother back and forth between a dry landscape known in the poem as the “wasteland,” a place that resembles the dry landscape of southwestern California [where Itō now lives], and a lush, overgrown place known as the “riverbank,” which resembles Kumamoto, a city in southern Japan where Itō’s children grew up and where Itō still spends several weeks each year.'-- Jerome Rothenberg








Hiromi Ito Wild Grass on the Riverbank
Action Books

'Translated from the Japanese by Jeffrey Angles. Set simultaneously in the California desert and her native Japan, tracking migrant children who may or may not be human, or alive, Hiromi Itō's WILD GRASS ON THE RIVERBANK will plunge you into dreamlike landscapes of volatile proliferation: shape-shifting mothers, living father-corpses, and pervasively odd vegetation. At once grotesque and vertiginous, Itō interweaves mythologies, language, sexuality, and place into a genre-busting narrative of what it is to be a migrant.'-- Action Books


Excerpt
from Jacket 2

By late summer, everyone on the riverbank was dead,
Not just the once living creatures, but the summer grass, the rusted bicycles, the summer grass,
Cars without doors or windows, the warped porn magazines, the summer grass,
Empty cans with food stuck inside and empty bottles full of muddy water,
Girl’s panties and condoms, the dead body of father, and so much summer grass

The riverbank meant only to control you
The summer grass touched our bodies
The seeds falling down onto our bodies
Recently, on the bank, I noticed a kind of grass that multiplied conspicuously
It is about one meter high and stands like some kind of rice
It has ears
It is everywhere
It glimmers white in the dim evening light
Sticky liquid oozes from the ear
The dogs get sticky
The dogs smell terrible
The dogs agonize and rub their bodies onto the ground
The man from the riverbank appears in the evening
Every evening he appears, sits in an arbor
Completely alone
Aged, unpolished and shabby, pale as a corpse
When his penis rises up
A smell rises like the one from the rice-like grass on the bank
The penis in his hands shines and shines

The flowers of the kudzu also rise up, I notice the arrowroot flowers rising up here and there, one day, we became tangled in the tendrils of the kudzu plants, I heard something slithering along abruptly, no sooner had I heard this when a tendril trapped my heel, it hit me, and knocked me on my back into a bush, there the Sorghum halepense rattled in the wind, an unfamiliar grass shook releasing its scent, then the tendril stretched all the further, crawling onto my body, getting into my panties, and creeping into my vagina, I… I inhaled and exhaled, I exhaled and the tendril slid in, I inhaled and the tendril slid out, I exhaled again and it slid further in, like the leaves of the kudzu my body was turned this way and that, my body was forced open and closed over and over, and Alexsa watched all of this, Alexsa was watching, watching and smiling, I became angry, so angry, I got up and shoved Alexsa away, she fell down on her back, the tendrils clung to Alexsa too, Alexsa also turned this way and that, the tendril also went inside her vagina, deep inside, and she started to cry

Everyone was dead
Father
Brother
Mother and me

Ahh…I think to myself
Think I'll pack it in
And buy a pick-up
Take it down to L.A.
Find a place
To call my own
Or maybe a hot sprint
One that heals eczema, dermatitis, neuralgia
Menopausal disorders, diabetes, infectious diseases
A hot spring in a hot sprint to fix you up right away
To soak yourself, open your pores, scrub your body, swell up
And then start a brand new day

Hey I’m itchy, so itchy, my younger brother cried, I told him not to scratch, but he did it anyway, the place he scratched soon turned into a blister, I didn’t scratch it that much, only a little, brother cried, but even if he only scratched a little, the place he scratched turned into a blister, all over his body were blisters, after they ruptured, they got inflamed and full of pus
My little brother no longer seemed like himself, he was horribly swollen, he rolled all over the house, mouth open, wheezing, crying,
Crying,

I want to take him to a hot spring, Mother said I’ve heard of a hot spring good for your skin, if we’re going, why don’t we take our dead father and dead dog along to put in, so just left everything as it was, dirty dishes, old clothes, wet towels just as they were, then we carefully laid my wheezing brother on the rear seat, and we stuffed some other things in the car, my little sister, spare clothes, dead bodies, dogs, plastic bags, pillows, food and drink (even some flowerpots), so much stuff, and then we took off, as I stared at the road from the passenger seat, I asked, how do we get there? Mother replied as she drove the car, it’s over that mountain

That hot spring is
A hot spring that fixes you up right away
Soak yourself, open your pores, scrub your body, swell up
And fix your eczema, blisters
Skin infections, ringworm
Dermatitis, infectious diseases
Atopy, allergic diseases
Dead bodies, death, dying, and having died
Try to fix you up and
And start a brand new day
Anyway
Let’s go over that mountain, Mother said
The back seat was full, no space left
As for space, the car was old and rickety from the start
But still we stuffed it full with
Things, garbage, food
People, dogs, dead bodies
So there was no space
The dogs stunk
The dead bodies stunk
My brother was wheezing in the back seat
My sister sometimes cried out as if she’d just remembered
She’d left something back at home
Please go back, I forgot something
No, we never go back
We just go further
Beyond that forked road
Isn’t that Toroku?
Isn’t that Kurokami?
Isn’t that Kokai?
The Jyogyoji crossing
Through Uchi-tsuboi
Up Setozaka slope
Shouldn’t we go
All the way over there?
I know the way to the big tree
Where the samurai-turned-monk used to live
At his big tree, we turn right at the three-way intersection
We see the huge treetop of his big tree
From here, it looks so huge
If you go under and look up, it blocks out the whole world
There’s a path only for tractors and pick-ups
Turn right at the three-way intersection
There’s a small stone bridge, we cross it
Then another three-way intersection
Go straight
Go straight
Go up the road
Go through mandarin orange orchards on both sides
And when we come out
We come to mountainous roads
Where it’s dark even during the day
The road meanders through a forest with shining leaves
The road meanders
Comes close to a cliff
Then separates from it
Ahh… I think to myself
Think I'll pack it in, and buy a pick-up, take it down to L.A.
Mother started to sing in a key way too high for her
Ahh… Think I’ll…
A tangle of karasuuri flowers and fruits
Ahh, Think I’ll…
A flourishing bunch of worm-eaten leaves
A scarlet flower is blooming
It must be a garden species that escaped somebody’s terrace
In the shade of the plants, a large white flower is blooming
A flower pale and white
That can’t be a garden species
It’s so pale because it’s in the shade
Another car comes
We pass each other
That car must be coming back from the hot spring
All fixed up, the driver must have fixed his skin trouble
And come back, thinking this, I try to get a good look
But it disappeared into the distance in a flash
Much further and we’ll be at the seashore
The seashore facing west
Doesn’t look like there is a hot spring
Beyond this is the pure land, Mother said
The dog noticed the smell of the sea
It stuck its nose out the window, howling for the sea
We should’ve crossed a large bridge, Mother said
I forgot the name, but it’s a large bridge
There were big floods there late in the nineteenth century
And again in the mid-twentieth century
Lots of earth, sand, and drowned bodies caught on the bridge
‘Cause of that bridge, the floods downstream were even worse
We screwed up when we missed that bridge
All the water we’ve seen has just been small streams
We’ve definitely gone the wrong way, Mother said
We’ll never get there if we keep going like this, Mother said
The dog howling for the sea rose up in the rear seat
And walked across my little brother
Alexsa shouted
We’d better start all over, Mother said
She must have given up
My brother let up a sharp cry
You can’t give up
Is that the only option?
Shut up, Alexsa shouted
I told you, I told you, my little sister wept
The dog barked
Lots of dogs barked
Alexsa shouted, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t, I can’t
No one ever listens to me, she said
She sunk her face into her thighs, curled up, started to sob
Her voice grew louder, more childish than brother’s
More infantile than sister’s
Cried on and on, on and on
Nothing else
On and on
On and on
We should have turned around
But if we did, we’d just get more lost, mother said
Let’s keep going down the hill to the sea
Then go home round the cape
So that’s how we got back home
Nothing fixed
Nothing found
Nothing
We failed
It’s no good
It’s all over



Trailer


Ito Hiromi 伊藤比呂美 "The Maltreatment of Meaning"


Hiromi Ito, 10-19-10



_______________




Most Swedish poets have built their reputation in Sweden and remained. You seem to be doing so in reverse, your repute growing sizeably in the US before Sweden…

Johannes Goransson: I don’t think I have much of a reputation in the US, but yes it is probably bigger than it is in Sweden.

Did you publish a lot of poetry in Sweden before you left? Is there an audience of your work in Sweden now?

JG: No, I had barely started to write when my family moved to the US. I’ve published Swedish translations and some interlingual poems in a few places, but mostly I publish in American journals and with American presses. It is true that I have found a lot of writers with aesthetic ideas in common with me in Sweden. And in many ways I feel as in tune with them as I do with most American poetry. But then I feel very in tune with Korean poet Kim Hyesoon and I’ve never even been to Korea.

You often work in prose poems, blocks of texts that seem to be craving out aberrant, at times playful, surreal chunks of image led poetry. Do you enjoy maintaining the epithets of a narrative throughout your work so that in its detail and language it can be aggressive and innovative?

JG: I like your suggestion that the “aggression” and “surreal” are at odds with the “narrative.” It certainly feels at odds to me when I write it. Many of my books are “novels” but they are hardly written with a narrative arch in mind. I write on a very much more micro-level: I have a sensation or sentence in mind and then I try to exhaust everything using that kernel (and with everything I primarily mean myself, but also our entire culture, it’s a futile idea no doubt).

And yes, there are a lot of “images” in my books, though often they are involved in a kind of near-montage-like series that do not on the whole come together (like the synthesis of Eisensteinian montage) but tends to keep moving until I and the poem are exhausted and we stop. Images do tend to be considered kitsch in American experimental poetics, a poetics that tends to be skeptical of the kind of absorptive, spectacular quality of images. But I’m very much interested in the spectacular and absorptive, in affect and poetic effects, in the visceral and fantastic.

I’m not all that interested in “innovative” poetry. To me it usually denotes a kind of high culture, high taste label. And also a sense of linear futurity that I think is not only boring but oppressive. I’m far more interested in the degraded and anachronistic, the trashy and the melancholic. Even “the poetic.”

But it’s true that my poems are very “aggressive” or violent, Joyelle [McSweeney] wrote an article on the “ambient violence” in my work a while back. That seems true. In my mind art is very violent, but that’s not separate from the narrative. It’s in the very conflict within the artwork. I’m always at odds with myself, with my books.








Johannes Goransson The Sugar Book
Tarpaulin Sky Books

'We live by breathing oxygen, but we also die because of oxygen. We live feeding on nature, but we also die because of nature. But, Everyone, do you realize, as you live, the fact that you are citizens of Nature, citizens of Earth? We drink silver, and we are just those who have immigrated to a movie that features Nature. Immigrant is the Observer. Observer is the poet. Poet has several bodies. I that acts and I that observes the I that acts. I that follows the I that observes. I that records and condenses. Johannes Göransson’s poetry is a bang bang – art of these I’s. A film of the Earth’s paths seen through the eyes of someone with an out-of-body experience. And poetry that has smashed the boundaries of genre. Like the mandala of Potala Palace I have seen in Tibet, Göransson condenses within a single poem the inside and outside of Nature’s and Earth’s time. It’s as though his poetry takes us to the forest in Lar Von Triers’ Anti-Christ, where it’s filmed, but then suddenly we find ourselves standing in front of a vanished movie theatre of our home. Göransson’s poetry is a film that Death peeks at, the scene of shooting the film, the film shot on a roll of film, the movie theatre, the Arcadia. A single poem is the world’s interior and exterior, it convulses wildly like an animal that has eaten the poem’s interior and exterior all together with silver. bang bang.'-- Kim Hyesoon


Excerpts

The Law Against Foreigners Involves Mostly The Body

I should know. I’m a foreigner and I want to live in Los Angeles but Los Angeles just wants to take photographs of my body when it’s all dank.
That’s the weird part.
It’s also interested in my body when dogs bark at my genitals but it pretends that’s just evidence of it’s social conscience. It wants to find the human in me, even if it takes ripping this lamb mask into a thousand shreds and hanging it up on the wall.
And feign outrage when I go numb.
I leave good “teeth marks” I’ve been told.
I take a bad photograph because the model was hurt.
Poetry is like a bad photograph because the camera doesn’t work. Or a child is caught stealing from the candy store. Caught fucking a homeless person.
I have a social conscience too and it makes me want to burn the sheets after sex. It makes me scared of lice.
Poetry is so beautiful when it involves gasoline. Or when it gives you a gun that clicks. A dead woman is the most poetical topic in the world.



The Rotten Heart Of Sin Is Exquisitely Mannered

Homeless people are good for images, photographers love them. I find them disgusting when they get killed and when they fuck they smell really bad on your dick.
Swans on the other hand are beautiful when they burn in crime movies.
In this crime movie, we’re at the shooting range again. Imagine all that apricot mess, all those ridiculous ornaments. All that pork. We can’t leave. We don’t have the proper documentation.
Images get in the way of dignity, the poets tell me. Poetry gets in the way of money, the whores tell me. I fuck both and I don’t even have to pay. I’ve got that card: Get out of jail free. Exterminate the brutes yeah.

*

I write about spectators and use the same rifle on sick animals.
I love movies and my son’s body ticks like a movie.
I hate the movies because it is cold in here.
I have cancer in the movies probably.
A woman gives me a scorpion and children give me cancer.
I really only live at night, I’ve been told by the movies,
which is ridiculous because I use my hands to make the signs: wrecks, chandeliers, hotels, decades, ownership society.
It’s ridiculous because nobody can drive a stake through a sack of locusts.
Part of me wants to be paid for the meat but part of me wants to give it away like a whore.
The whores wear oriental robes, it’s all the rage.
Everyone is angry in the movies.
Everyone is scared in the corridors.
I tell my son to stop ticking but he can’t hear me because the whores are laughing too loudly and the plague makes tokens of itself.
I love movies and perfume.
It’s the new double, made from tiger blood.
It’s the new breakthrough, made from tiger blood.
Milk is the weirdest when you’re having sex.
I’m having a milk heart and that’s why I can’t watch the movies
without getting scared. The milk gets all over. The deer gets all narrative.
I turn on the surveillance, the heat.
The effect is ominous: the reverse wound.
I look horrified in the image and also “satanic” due to the milk.
You spumey fuck.



My Sperm Gets In The Flowers

I woke up from the girls tearing apart orpheus dolls and spitting the seeds out the window. The prostitutes cheered. Now I’m wearing my Orpheus head like an illicit sign from the underworld.
The whores think I’m a pornographer and that I would tear their heads off.
I probably would.
What’s the war with my wife and I? We lay killed-like in our den, our bodies covered with sugar and sperm. Who are we at war with? Baghdad, of course.
Baghdad of silk and ceremonial daggers.
Baghdad dolls with limbs that burn safely and with smaller dolls without heads.
Baghdad porn: We watch it until we vomit and then we watch it some more. We’re embedded in art. We close our eyes and let the light wash over us.
Everybody is always talking about “gratuitious violence” and “gratuitious sex.” It’s the only kind.
It’s like when people say “Porn hurts everyone” ... But most of all I’m eating another dripping burger.
Flowers are the most violent props.
The Starlet would not have approved of us killing butterflies with cigarette lighters.
It’s Christmas Eve.
I’m writing a novel, my wife is listening for the words “pionees” and “lillies” on the broadcasts from the underworld.
Instead the broadcasts tell us that they birds are “thrashing around the hole.” It’s of course Hollywood speaking in tongues. Mother tongues and moth tongues. Tongues that tell me to name our next child Nico after the underworld. After Baghdad. After our favorite actress who is totally shaven and nameless.
Maybe we consume by looking but if so, consumption is a very fragile thing.
I color my hair red as blood.
I cover the street with dead girls.
They are all ready for war.
I’m already famous.



10th Annual SLC Poetry Festival [Johannes Göransson]


Rabbit Light Movies -- Episode #7


Bonk! Sept 26, 2009 Johannes Goransson




*

p.s. Hey. ** Bacteriaburger, Hi, N! Cool, you're back! And very cool about the launched mss. Fingers heavily crossed that they find wise guys. And then further coolness about the fellowship. Really nice to hear that things are active and good with you, man. I'm really good, finishing a film I co-made, working on a new theater piece, novel, blah blah. I have absolutely no complaints. Take really good care until next time, Natty! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D! Oh, excellent: a new piece by you, and a new doc with my old pal Kirby half-behind the wheel, which I didn't know about. Thanks! I'll read it greedily. Everyone, that great finesser of the film-related thinking and writing gig, Mr. Ehrenstein, has a new piece up at Keyframe about the newly new documentary 'The Hunting Ground', co-directed by the very fine Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, whom he interviews with his consummate smarts, etc. Sounds like a pretty must-see film, and the must-ness of reading Mr. E's take/queries re: it goes without saying, naturally. Get in there. ** Kier, Hi! No, I don't eat seafood. I didn't even eat seafood back when I was a very young meat-eating lad. I've always hated the taste of fish and seafood for some reason. The chocolate was gross, and I came home brushed not only my teeth but my tongue too. I liked your quiet-ish day. Mine was kind of too. Let's see ... well, I ordered new glasses. I don't really like the frames. For some unknown reason, something about my eyes or something doomed me to choosing between only about 25 possible frames, and the ones I chose were the least offensive but still not very flattering. But they were really cheap: 40 Euros including new lenses. I'm picking them up almost as soon as I finish this. Right now I'm still looking through a collage of glass and scotch tape. So, I did that. Zac stopped by to pick up his mom's chocolates on the way to seeing her off. I think I finished the revision of the new theater piece script, but that's up to Gisele, and I guess I'll hear her verdict today. I found three, maybe four new apartments that seem like possibilities, and today I'm going to try to schedule a chance to look at them soon. One's near here around Republique/Canal St. Martin, and that one's my favorite in theory vis-a-vis the location. Another one is near Centre Pompidou, which is okay. And the last is by Bonne Nouvelle, which might be okay, but the location isn't exciting. I worked on blog posts. We uploaded the promo reel of our film to private Vimeo, and we'll see what the powers-that-be think. We're starting to stress about the fact that we haven't yet nailed down the post-production people because time is getting short, but we were promised news today. Talked to some people. Not much else. Today we start trying to get the sound of our film as polished as we can within our means to hopefully save us time and money when the pros take over. Now, let's talk about you. Did last night surprise you, and, either way, how did Thursday treat you? ** Keaton, Aren't they symbolic? I mean they're just a little lukewarm plop, so it seems like it's about what the plop symbolizes. Sex is weird. I did like the Emo post! I mean, are you serious? I loved it even. I'm no fool. That would have been a good blurb for Blake's novel. ** Steevee, Hi! Stuff by you to read and to be influenced by, cool. Everyone, Steevee, whom you all know, has written about Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov's new film 'The Lesson' under his official name Steve Erickson @ The L Magazine, and that's your cue to go experience/learn something under his guidance, so ... do. Wow, your description of 'Jauja' makes me really excited to see it. I love and miss the '70s "acid Westerns" genre. Very cool. I'll see what possibilities there are. Thank you a lot for that tip! ** Misanthrope, That 'gay is a choice' thing is about that Tea Party weirdo Ben Carson, right? He seemed to be Facebook's outrage ignition yesterday. ** Rewritedept, Thanks again for the Timony shebang, man! I really liked Wild Flag. I'll have new glasses in exactly 1 hour and 11 minutes from the moment I am typing this. No, the West Coast trip got delayed because we need to finish the post-production on our film first, and we still haven't been given the green light to start, so I'm not sure when the West Coast is going happen. Take care, buddy boy! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, Mr. M! Bon and, more accurately, beyond bon day! ** Okay. There are four books, except in the case of SDHR, which is a journal, that I got under my belt and loved a bunch lately. As always, I highly recommend every last one of them to you all. See you tomorrow.

*

p.s. Hey. ** Jonathan, Hi, man! I thought you were probably in Dublin. Oh, Berlin was a complete fiasco. We had to come back here to do the post-production, and it's currently a bit of a difficult situation, but we'll figure something out and fast because we have to. Do record your new voice. Ah, sucks about the hampering by the certain body. May smoothness prevail immediately. Oh, wow, I haven't even checked that email address where your text ended up in about two years. Weird. I do know a little about CCRU, yeah. Cool. When are you back in Paris? I want to see you, as does Zac. At the moment, it looks like we'll be here finishing the film until the 24th. Bon everything! ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh! I wish I could be at your upcoming 'Sundays' event. I don't think I could do raw fish. I don't know. I've gone this long without eating sentient beings, and I feel like I would be really sad if I broke that or something. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D! Great interview with Kirby and co.! I'm excited to see that doc. I getcha on Carson. He seems even worse than Caine, no? ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey! I didn't know that Macbook Airs came in teeny tiny. That seems charming. Very cool that you saw Morton Subotnik. Big envy on that. I'm a sucker for homemade-seeming electronic pieces too, for sure. I love The Kitchen. They might show Gisele's and my new piece. It's in talks. The Doten novel is amazing! Highly, highly recommended. Next to read for me? Mm, I'm most excited to read the xTx novel. That's #1 among the stuff just published. The new Shya Scanlon, Lucy K Shaw's 'The Motion'. I'm currently reading Joyelle McSweeney's 'Necropastoralia', which is really great. You? ** Kier, Hey, hey! The Doten novel is incredible. I am a touch of a teeth brushing fantastic, just a bit, yes. Gisele's feedback got delayed until probably tonight. Dizzy? Yes, please, do what you need to get that sorted out, okay? Promise! It was probably Silje's vaccination, right? That makes total sense. 'also spent some time making this fence braided out of willow branches that grow in the earth. it was windy.': That sounds like the first two sentences of an awesome novel. Excellent birthday gift! The huge majority of yesterday was spent at Zac's correcting the sound on Scene 3. Oh, first I got my new glasses. I'm wearing them. At first everything looked really clear but slightly blurry/shaky, but I guess it was my eyes adjusting 'cos everything looks okay now. Zac says they're not as cool as my old glasses, but they're okay. Anyway, we worked and worked. Things are a bit stressful because it's beginning to look like we might not be able to find people to do the post-production. Long story. If not, we may have to do it ourselves, which will be very hard because we're not pros at all, and it will be a huge amount of work. We're kind of worried about that. I think we'll know one way or another today. After work, we went to the Pompidou to see Jonathan Capedevielle's new theater piece 'Saga'. It was a tough go for me because it's not only very, very talky but most of it is delivered in a southern French dialect/accent, so I was pretty lost. But it's always great watching Jonathan do anything. Not much else. I swallowed some quick food post-show and crashed. Today's probably another long work day for me. And for you? ** Cal Graves, Hi, superCALifragilistic... etc. I'm good, a bit stressed. Paris is temperate and very nice. Harlan Ellison as a book friend. Or his book as a book friend. Interesting. I don't think I've ever read him. Sci-fi is my weakest genre. Oh, pup play, yeah. That's very, very popular on the master/slave sites. Very. Weirdly, the slaves into pup play almost never manage to write interesting profile texts, which is why I rarely feature them. Mm, well, a kink/fetish that really intrigued me, and which was kind of a master/slave fad briefly about, oh, five years ago, is worming. It's pretty much dead now. I haven't seen anyone seek a worm or want to be a worm in a long, long time. Basically, what worming involves is that the slave has his arms and legs amputated, his genitals removed, all the hair on his body removed, and sometimes he's blinded, and he becomes a worm. Then I guess the master would keep this worm like a pet and fuck it and abuse it and stuff. I think the fetish died out because it's just about the most impractical fetish to implement pleasurably on both sides that I've ever come across. But it interested me. Oh, wow, you/wrote posted a thing by you! It looks amazing at a glance. I'll read it as soon as I'm able. Everyone, superstar writer and d.l. Cal Graves has launched something he wrote that looks fantastic over on his blog The Uvular Trill, and this is a very rare opportunity, folks, so do go check it out. Awesome! Contrapuntally, Dennis. ** Steevee, Hey.Thanks for the news about that festival. It looks very promising indeed. All kind of potentially great stuff. Curious about the Jennie Olson. And the Jarman, Rappaport, etc. too. And the Peggy Ahwesh, whom I just made a post about. Cool! ** Misanthrope, Oh, please, you're plenty and more 'smart enough' for Mark's book, give me a break, man. It's just an adventure. Mark's a totally incredible reader, yeah. Oh, what reading was that? Hm, at the New Museum? That's it, right? Did I actually say I read well. That's cool. I almost never think I read well. It's probably because I was reading old work from the '80s, and, back then, I used to think about the fact that I would probably have to read things aloud when I wrote them because I did a ton more readings back then. That might be it. Thank you for the kind words, buddy. Ben Carson just seems like one of the hundreds of extremist right wing politicians running for Center of the Media's Attention first and for actual office as a distant afterthought. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Wow, three o.o.p. books that I most think should be in print again? Off the top of my head? Hm, okay, Tony Duvert's 'Strange Landscape', Lawrence Braithwaite's 'Wigger' or 'Ratz are Nice', Nathalie Sarraute's 'The Golden Fruit'. What would be your three? Oh, cool. I read your conversation about the Acker book at BOMB, but not the review. Thanks, I will! Everyone, the great Chilly Jay Chill aka Jeff Jackson has reviewed the controversial new Semiotext(e) book of Kathy Acker's correspondence with critic McKenzie Wark aka 'I'm Very Into You', and it's one of those must-read deals -- Jeff's review, not necessarily the book itself maybe, I don't know -- and you can check Jeff's thoughts here. ** Sypha, Hi. Whenever you do, I think you'll be blown away maybe. ** Right. Today' post speaks lucidly for itself, I think. See you tomorrow.

Announcing the Game Fiction Anthology from Gold Shader Press.

The Gold Shader press is now accepting submissions for our Game Fiction Anthology. Game fiction is an umbrella term used to categorize any work of literature inspired by the activity of playing, making, or even just thinking about games. Game fiction is already popular in many on-line communities, taking the form of fan fiction, meta-fiction, creepypastas, haunted game stories, twine adventures, and other innovative forms of writing. We’re also looking for creative— game related— non-fiction.

Your stories could takes place in the worlds of classic videogames, tabletop games, schoolyard games, games of chance, or the real world...it doesn’t matter. We want all of it.

This is a paying publication, looking to publish smart and innovative authors who can help establish game fiction as literary genre. All styles of writing are welcome. The only discriminating factors in our selection process are originality and quality.

We are also looking for flash fiction to publish on our front page and our YouTube channel.

Submission guidelines can be found here.






Game Fiction from Around the Web.

1. Skyrim’s Secret by Sean Blevins.

I entered the mansion, which turned out to be nothing more than a bare frame on the inside. No furniture, lamps, or trophy heads were present to decorate the wood walls; the only decoration this place had was a small podium on the very back wall with a featureless black book resting on it. I approached the book and pressed the prompt to read it (which oddly didn’t give the title, it just said “Read”), though disappointingly the page was completely blank except for a number 1 in the upper left corner. Placing the book down, I turned to leave and was unexpectedly greeted by an NPC I hadn’t seen on the way in.

It was a young woman, apparently a Nord, with jet-black hair and wearing a long blue gown… more


2. Silent Hill: Adam and Eve by Alexk86

Under the light, the body of the dead girl casts a high shadow against the wall. While the corpse is slouched back over chair, its shadow seems to sits upright - looking down on its host. The blood over her shirt and tie, over her skirt, has dried into a dark, flaky crust. The large dry puddle around the chair resembles a large flat scab on the floor. Adam steps closer, hesitantly. The girl's legs are tied to the legs of the chair, around the ankles, with what looks like telephone wire. Her hands are tied behind the chair with rope. Adam steps right up to the body. Looking down on her he can see that all of her visible skin has been shaved away, with what was probably a small knife or straight razor. Her crimson flesh has a pattern of long vertical strokes across it, with a few thin, oblong, diamond shaped shreds of skin that the person who skinned her had missed. On the top of her head, there are a few tiny patches of scalp left, with strands of hair hanging from them. Her eyelids are gone. Her bulging eyeballs are almost entirely visible. Dried and crusted over, they seem to stare with terror, or surprise, at the ceiling… more


3. Starcourt by Anna Anthropy

”PRISONER!" booms the Robailiff. "You stand accused of thefollowing crime:

Hijacking the Orion Express!

Presiding over your trial will be the honorable Judge CrinkleCut." The Judge smiles at you as they take their place uponthe Justice Dais - they're the head of the rival gang! Someonepowerful must have set this up. But you're not withoutresources: you yourself have THREE FAVORS that you can callin when you need them.

"Fancy meeting you here," says the judge. "You've beenaccused of a very serious crime. Do you have a lawyer torepresent you? If not, the Court will supply you with aperfectly servicable Public Defendroid… more


4. Polybius Reloaded

1-26-2004

He killed himself. Didn't leave a note, just offed himself with his shoelaces in the closet. I don't think they suspect a thing- he was a troubled kid, didn't really have any friends. I feel horrible. The funeral is next week. Was it because of the game? Dear god, I hope it isn't that strong. I hope this was just the final straw for him.

2-12-2004

I never should have played it myself. I was so curious, so curious as to what could have caused him to kill himself. Was it that fantastic? Was it such an ecstatic feeling that one would kill themselves rather than do without? I found out. I played it. The game itself wasn't too interesting. But I lost myself in the colors, the spinning shapes, the beauty. I came away from the five-minute session with a buzz not unlike that of sex but so much stronger... So much stronger that even now I'm itching to play again. I must. I don't want to, but I must. Is this how addicts feel?

2-15-2004

I'm so near to my goal. But I don't want to give it up. It's mine. I don't care if my wife feels I'm spending too much time in my workshop. I didn't even come to bed last night. I haven't actually slept in days. I can feel my mind fraying at the edges. I never should have played it. It's mine… more


5. Choice of the Deathless by Max Gladstone

The sky over the demon world is broken. Lightning licks the strange geometries of cloud. Around you rises the demon-city Akargath, warped crystal and flame, thorns and razor wire. And this is the nice part of town.

Gods, you hurt. Your skin's a burned ruin. Bones in your ribs grind when you breathe. Your suit hangs in tatters from your body.

Your enemy stands before you: a towering figure of glass and knives. Cackling madly, he raises one hand. Dark power crackles along his talons.

The battle's taken almost all your strength. Your Craft, your own power, stands at ebb.
If you don't win this thing soon, you're done… more


6. The Luzhin Defense Vladimir Nabokov

At this point a strange thing happened. Turati, although having white, did not launch his famous opening and the defense Luzhin had worked out proved an utter waste. Whether because Turati had anticipated possible complications or else had simply decided to play warily, knowing the calm strength which Luzhin had revealed at this tournament, he began in the most banal way. Luzhin momentarily regretted the work done in vain, but nevertheless he was glad: this gave him more freedom. Moreover, Turati was evidently afraid of him. On the other hand there was undoubtedly some trick concealed in the innocent, jejune opening proposed by Turati, and Luzhin settled down to play with particular care. At first it went softly, softly, like muted violins. The players occupied their positions cautiously, moving this and that up but doing it politely, without the slightest sign of a threat — and if there was any threat it was entirely conventional — more like a hint to one's opponent that over there he would do well to build a cover, and the opponent would smile, as if all this were an insignificant joke, and strengthen the proper place and himself move forward a fraction. Then, without the least warning, a chord sang out tenderly… more


7. The Glass bead Game by Hermann Hesse

How far back the historian wishes to place the origins and antecedents of the Glass Bead Game is, ultimately, a matter of his personal choice. For like every great idea it has no real beginning; rather, it has always been, at least the idea of it. We find it foreshadowed, as a dim anticipation and hope, in a good many earlier ages. There are hints of it in Pythagoras, for example, and then among Hellenistic Gnostic circles in the late period of classical civilization. We find it equally among the ancient Chinese, then again at the several pinnacles of Arabic-Moorish culture; and the path of its prehistory leads on through Scholasticism and Humanism to the academies of mathematicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and on to the Romantic philosophies and the runes of Novalis's hallucinatory visions. This same eternal idea, which for us has been embodied in the Glass Bead Game, has underlain every movement of Mind toward the ideal goal of a universitas litterarum, every Platonic academy, every league of an intellectual elite, every rapprochement between the exact and the more liberal disciplines, every effort toward reconciliation between science and art or science and religion. Men like Abelard, Leibniz, and Hegel unquestionably were familiar with the dream of capturing the universe of the intellect in concentric systems, and pairing the living beauty of thought and art with the magical expressiveness of the exact sciences. In that age in which music and mathematics almost simultaneously attained classical heights, approaches and cross-fertilizations between the two disciplines occurred frequently…. more


8. Suffer like me by Kuroi Diamond

I undo the belt on my dressing gown and it falls away from my body with a rustle of silk. I gaze at the reflection of my naked body in the full length mirror and sigh.

Once upon a time, my skin was smooth and unblemished, pale as alabaster. My one real vanity, really. But now…

Scars brand me all over, their horrid pinkness looking like earthworms crawling across my skin. I shudder at the thought.

I'm lucky, I suppose. I'm obviously still alive and each of the scars were obtained fighting for my life. I know that many other girls like me, many other Ruders have not been as fortunate.
A horribly snide laugh echoes softly from the mirror and I look up in shock.

"Staring at yourself again, Alyssa? Aren't you the vain one?" the pale-skinned menace says and I barely manage to stifle a horribly girly squeal of indignation as I cover myself.

"Go away!' I try to be as quiet as possible, but my anger at him, no, it is difficult to control "How dare you?" I can hardly believe that this thing has the nerve to invoke such magicks in order to torment me.

"Oh, what can I say? I'm a daring person." They reply, a malevolent smile on their black-painted lips. I growl softly in annoyance… more


9. Doom 3: Thy Flesh consumed.

Mars was a desolate planet.

Sandstorms wreaked along its dry, waterless surface. The temperature was slightly cooler than Earth, but the air was toxic.

On this bare rock, there stood one technological outpost. The United Aerospace Corporation had built this outpost on the edge of the world – the edge of habitable space – to showcase the technological marvels they could produce. Underground, scientists conducted secret experiments unknown to public eyes. Yes, this was the quintessential scientific laboratory, even complete with its own "mad scientist".

"Mad scientist" is something Betruger had gotten used to being called. With a blind eye and a hunched back, he wasn't surprised people took him that way. He had a malicious tone in his voice, something he rarely noticed nowadays with all the work… more


10. Halting state by Charles Stross

It's a grade four, damn it. Maybe it should have been a three, but the dispatcher bumped it way down the greasy pole because it was phoned in as a one and the MOP who'd reported the offence had sounded either demented, or on drugs, or something — but definitely not one hundred percent in touch with reality. So they'd dropped it from a three ("officers will be on scene of crime as soon as possible") to a four ("someone will drop by to take a statement within four hours, if we've got nothing better to do"), with a cryptic annotation ("MOP raving about orcs and dragons. Off his meds? But MOP 2 agreed. Both off their meds?").

But then some bright spark in the control room looked at the SOC location in CopSpace and twigged that they'd been phoning from a former nuclear bunker in Corstorphine that was flagged as a Place of Interest by someone or other in national security… more




*

p.s. Hey. This weekend it's a great pleasure to not only turn the blog's front space over to a longtime pal and comrade of DC's who is instituting a great project in the shape of a book but possibly also offer you writers out there and in here the opportunity to get involved. Please see what's what, and, if the shoe fits your imagination and inclinations, I urge you to think about submitting work. Cool. Enjoy, and thank you a lot, you-know-who, for letting this place help out. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Well, I'm still hoping to get out West towards the end of the month if everything falls into place here, and that's the question. RIP: Albert Maysles, and sad that he went right on the cusp of the 'Grey Gardens' rerelease. ** Cal Graves, Hi, deCal. Worming is as out-there as any fetish I've come across on the M/S sites this side of the occasional snuff seekers. Sweets? In the last two days I've had a Japanese macha cake, a pain chocolate, a few chocolate truffles, and a wedge of a Jean Paul-Hevin Peruvian 80% dark chocolate bar. And you and your recent relationship to sweets? Parallaxally, Dennis ** Damien Ark, Hi! I have heard of ZTT, yes, in fact. I looked over the shoulder of a ZTT aficionado on a few occasions. I thought it was really awesome, and I wish I had access, although it would interfere in everything else I'm doing, unfortunately. You good? ** Sypha, I think I've only played, err, four of those games. Cool, exciting re: the new Sypha Nadon! Everyone, Here's Sypha, and listen to him and do what he offers if you know what's what, and I know you do. Here ... he ... is: 'I uploaded the 3rd (of 5) Sypha Nadon archival releases to Mauve Zone Recordings today. This one is called "Decadence," and was recorded in the summer of 2001. It was the last of my cassette-only albums. It can be listened to/downloaded here'. ** Kier, Hi! Ha ha, den fever. I think I've experienced that. The house where I grew up had a den, and it was weird. Man, tapped for energy, yeah, get yourself checked out, okay? I guess it's the weekend so you can't until Monday unless Norway is a magical place where everything functions normally on the weekend, and that seems plausible. Glad Silje felt better and treated you right again. Yes, I will give you my two cents by Monday at the very latest. Sorry, things have been a bit too confusing here. Yesterday ... Zac and I worked all day on the sound of Scene 3, and we've got it as polished as we can. Yesterday was also the day that we were forced to realize that we're not going to get the help we need and that we were promised to finish our film, which is completely fucked up. So, basically, we're going go to have to figure out how to finish the film almost on our own, which was not supposed to be our job, and is something we're not qualified to do, but our producers suck, basically and almost totally. So we have to get the sound as perfect as possible ourselves without the technical help and studio time that doing that involves. We've asked Kiddiepunk to come over from Spain for a couple of days and help us with the color correction. The one thing we can't do on our own is the sound mixing, which is essential, so I guess we have to try to find someone in Paris with those skills and a little free time really fast who will spare us at least one day for $$$ to do that. I don't know how we're going to find that person, but we have to. The deadline for submitting the film to Cannes is quite soon, so the next couple of weeks are going to be hard. So, yesterday was sobering. After Zac and I finished working, I met with Gisele. Her feedback on the theater piece script wasn't bad, and I can make the changes she wants pretty easily. So I have to spend part of the weekend doing that because the script is due back with the performers so they can start memorizing it right away. Then I came home and started trying to figure out how to find the sound mixing person. Then I crashed. That was Friday. This weekend there's a lot of work to do. I might go to a concert (Holly Herndon, Bjarni Gunnarson, Ilop Varisanen) tonight at the Presences Electronique Festival. But, yeah. How was your hopefully super weekend, K? ** Mark Doten, Hi, Mark! Yay! Man, your novel is insanely amazing! Holy shit! I got a copy or, rather, a pdf, but I don't think it was from Graywolf. I think it was from one of my generous US insiders who send me stuff. I would love a copy though. I'll still be at this address for another six weeks: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin, 75010 Paris, France. Thanks for coming in, man! And huge congrats on the novel and re: what looks to be a pretty great response so far, no? Love, me. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Really interesting review of the Acker book. I'm starting to soften re: actually reading it. Good book choices! I'd love to read them all, except 'Yesterday, which I've read, and maybe especially the Queneau. Three more? Uh, James McCourt 'Time Remaining', Herve Guibert 'The Compassion Protocol', Bo Huston 'The Dream Life'. Nothing but disappointing, unfair news from the producers. Yeah, it sucks that we're not getting the support we need and were promised. We're almost on our own. Fingers crossed. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John! The movie business is hard. Um, I think I'll probably be here during at least part of your visit. My trip to the West Coast got delayed due to film production issues, but I think I should be back by then. Hope so. ** Steevee, Excellent! Congrats on the assignment and congrats to us who'll now get to see the festival vicariously. Houellbecq's a pretty good writer. I've never been over the moon about his work, but he's worth reading. 'Whatever' isn't really indicative'. It's very early. His love of being provocative/ ambiguous politically doesn't interest me so much, but, yeah. Worth a read. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Yeah, then I probably did read well or honestly believed I had. I do remember being interested by how emotional that 80s work was, and I remember deciding I should do that again, and that, I think, started me on the emotional novel I'm working on now. I don't like action games. Or fighting games. I hate fights in games. I'll quit playing a game if I can't win a fight in three or four tries. I read statements by Carson prior to the gay thing that seemed to locate his ideas in the more hysterical, paranoid area of so-called conservatism, but, hey, politics, we should probably leave that be, no? I did not know that about ancient Egyptians. Sweet. ** Goldshader, Hey! I was hoping to make someone if not everyone come in their pants, and it's good to know I got so close with you, at least. Such a great thesis topic, wow! Today, here it is, man! ** Kyler, Denmother, yikes. That one made me feel something very strange. Congrats, in other words. Well, if it makes you feel any better, 'The Weaklings' didn't get nominated in the poetry category, and I was dead certain that it wouldn't be, given the Lammys' conservatism. Still, sorry to hear that, man. Obviously, it should have a total shoe-in. ** Right. Back you hopefully go to the post up there, and give it your all, please. And have fine weekends in general. And I will see you back here on Monday.

_________________
Death And VanillaCalifornia Owls
'Crackling recordings of old seances, inexplicably exploding tea cups… The supernatural is an important factor for Death And Vanilla as aesthetic source material and methodological starting-point. The Malmö-based duo loves library music, electronic pioneers and the golden age of analog synths, and they play their music on instruments and amps from the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, not only in order to recreate the sound and the atmosphere they love, but also to channel the ghostlike qualities in old spring reverbs and loose contacts. A kind of analog glitch, you might label their prac­tice. “From Elsewhere” is typical of the contradictory impulses in the name of the band. The sweetest melody is delivered by a female voice which seems conjured up from the other side, or at least the Seventies.'-- Joakim Norling, Friendly Noise






_________________
Jefre Cantu-LedesmaLove After Love
'A master of romantic abstraction, Jefre Cantu–Ledesma is not new to the scene. In fact, he’s been releasing a steady stream of music for nearly twenty years. With the brilliant album A Year With 13 Moons, however, the ever–prolific Ledesma appears to be hitting a new high. Or low, depending on how you like to see things. Using a friend’s reel to reel tape player, Cantu employed electric guitar, modular synthesizer, drum machine and concrète sounds from his surroundings at the Headlands, recorded while walking to the studio, cooking in the kitchen, talking with friends, the ocean, films he was watching, driving in a car. Everything was record stereo to tape. There is only one track with overdubs – otherwise each take is a true document of an entirely live take. Born & raised in Texas, Ledesma’s formative artistic years were spent studying painting & sculpture in San Francisco. He began playing & releasing music in 1996 and has developed a steady relationship as a collaborator – he’s released notable collaborations with Liz Harris (aka Grouper) as Raum, with Alexis Georgopoulos in his Arp project and with their ensemble The Alps, as well as filmmaker Paul Clipson. Ledesma also founded the influential label, Root Strata, who have released music by Oneohtrix Point Never, Keith Fullerton Whitman, and Grouper, and continue to release new and archival works.'-- Mexican Summer






_________________
The Blind ShakePollen
'Minneapolis three-piece The Blind Shake crafts dense, massive locomotive music—powerful sounds with the ability to careen through one cinematic, post-apocalyptic chase scene after another. The band’s latest album Breakfast of Failures comes clanging and crashing through these confused times. Fronted by brothers Jim and Mike Blaha along with friend Dave Roper on drums, the trio was tunneling through the underground since before telephones could talk. With six full-length albums to their credit, several singles, three collaborations with psych legend Michael Yonkers and another with downstroke warrior John Reis, The Blind Shake continues to push the sliding scale between catchy punk songs and pitch-red noise. “The Blind Shake is at once spacey, primitive futuristic, and brutal: a kind of backyard extraterrestrial minimal surf-punk party. One guitar, one baritone guitar, a fuckload of reverb, and a drummer who deserves an Olympic medal.”'-- SF Weekly






_______________
Taman ShudViper Smoke
'Taman Shud is not ‘about’ working in a fucking office, it is about blood, sex and evil. We are a magical weapon against tedium,” states one missive posted by the London quartet – who released an EP with Fat White Family in 2013 – on their Facebook page. Debut album Viper Smoke goes some way to backing up that claim; an unholy combination of ghoulish moaning, the blackest strands of psychedelia and nightmarish song titles (‘The Hex Inverted’, ‘The Hissing Priest’s Remains’). On ‘I Tego Arcana Dei’ (Latin for ‘bury the mysteries of God’) a howling barrage of jagged guitars splices through rumbling bass and gloomy vocals, before ‘Book Of Lies’ slows to a reflective pace, and sounds even more cult-ish for it. Brilliantly terrifying.'-- NME






_________________
An Autumn For Crippled ChildrenGleam
'Carving a little niche as one of the better and more evocative offshoots from the much-maligned ‘blackga(y)ze’ genre, An Autumn for Crippled Children have produced their fifth full-length in the beautifully desolate The Long Goodbye. Still as mournful as their titular season and child welfare status and yet uplifting as though hope is breaking through the oppressive clouds, everything that you liked before is here. I really can’t review this badly since I feel they absolutely nail the style that they strive for – this is the best work AAfCC has produced – but there is a distinct feeling that the Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings™ will soon hit. This is their plateau and they must develop in order to remain relevant. As before, AAfCC are at their melancholic best when crafting expressive soundscapes and atmospheres. The judicious deployment of synths across their oeuvre is stronger than ever here, as principle conveyors of melody. Sweeping strings and deft keys adorn all tracks and serve to afford some hope and uplift the mood, while the fuzzy guitar leads and tortured vox tussle to drag you through myriad upsetting emotions.'-- Angry Metal Guy






___________________
Shit and ShineElectric Pony 2
'Craig Clouse is many things, and one of those things is a man with a dream. Specifically: a dream to repeatedly offend the boundaries of taste, logic, and definition. The vehicle with which he achieves that dream is his band Shit and Shine, which due to Google now implementing some nanny blocker, I can apparently no longer plug into Google. So here we are, 10 years into the lifespan of Shit and Shine, and the band has become an ever-evolving line-up of musicians for an ever-evolving sound. Their new album 54-Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral suggests a more electro direction, while the presser promises that the band’s “essence is morphed and feverishly formulated into extraterrestrial aural landscapes.” I personally wouldn’t be surprised if Grouse had found a way to record and speed up the sound of tectonic plates colliding.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes






_________
K-X-PMelody
'As a listener, the way that frontman Timo Kaukolampi talks about his band K-X-P's sophomore LP II might make you a little concerned about your own mental health. And for good reason, as K-X-P are band not to be trusted, perhaps even feared. Take the Finnish group's regrettably overlooked but excellent self-titled 2010 debut, which orbited a smorgasbord of maximalist pop fragments around lockstep motorik rhythms, ultimately leaving brains pleasantly gooped like a sous-vide egg. But it's with III that the self-proclaimed "anti-band" has taken things to a new level, as Kaukolampi has attested to infusing their sound with "free jazz, drone, noise, pop, rock," with an overall emphasis on trying to tap into something "more punk." He's even adopted a sort of alter ego, combining the personalities of "a lunatic occult reverend, a yoga teacher, John Lydon, Freddie Mercury and Rob Halford." Because why not? For a band that should've gotten your attention the first time around, there's no better time to fly off the handle a little bit than with your new release.'-- Zach Kelly






_________________
Jojo HiroshigeBlack Night, White Snow
'I first started creating tapes with an open reel deck at home in 1974. I formed the improvising band SLOTH in 1977, and in 1978 formed ULTRA BIDE, who started touring live houses – I played bass. A year later, I formed Rasenkaidan and Hijokaidan. Hijokaidan started to get popular in 1980, and we appeared on the V.A. compilation Shumatu Shorijo. We released our first album Zouroku no kibyou in 1982, and released our 35th anniversary album Saita hana ga hitotsu ni hareba yoi in 2014. I began my solo activities in 1997, started BiS Kaidan in 2012 and Hatsune Kaidan in 2013. That same year, BiS Kaidan debuted on Avex. We disbanded in 2014. I basically try to play improvised noise without conventional song structures or melodies. There are many artists who influence me. A few that come to mind are Zunou Keisatsu, Yamashita Yosuke Trio and Derek Bailey.'-- Jojo Hiroshige






__________
TlaotlonOdys
'Twisted, maximalist and hyper-cerebral electronica from New Zealand (now Melbourne-based) producer Tlaotlon aka Jeremy Coubrough, who has produced a number of distinctly frenetic records in the last few years for Dungeon Taxis, Epic Sweep and Trensmat. After recently replacing the old PC (a rugged dusty chunk of components in an exposed case with no protective panels) on which he built those experiments in noise and dismantled techno, Coubrough explores a new kind of narcotically euphoric virtuality on a new machine, with added synthetic stimulation from a new e-cigarette. Synths, distorted samples and drum sequences hustle for space and attention only to crumble outward into wide open space, an endless-point-cloud vapourized/vapourizing domain. Insanely manipulated, growling digital vocals are drilled into huge, rapturous synth chords that are above all suggestive of an escapist urge to interact with but ultimately soar above power and technology, whether it’s the machine of the NSA, marketing, or emojis.'-- 1080pcollection.net






_______________
Marching ChurchHungry For Love
'Elias Bender Rønnenfelt is best known as the lead singer of Iceage, but his solo project Marching Church has been in existence since 2010. Today it was announced that Marching Church will release a full-length album titled This World Is Not Enough in late March as a collaborative project between Rønnenfelt and an impressive host of musicians, including Kristian Emdal and Anton Rothstein (Lower), Cæcilie Trier (Choir of Young Believers), Bo H. Hansen (Hand of Dust, Sexdrome) and Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary). In a press release for the album, Rønnenfelt comments: "Improvisation, something I have never done before, was crucial in the making of this album. The album works because of the band’s incredible ability of breathing life into these loosely written and at times very simple ideas and experiments. Though Marching Church might be a dictatorship, This World is Not Enough was very much a collaborative effort. Everyone involved does other projects as well, but I wouldn’t want to see it as a “side project.” That term seems degrading."“Hungry For Love” is atmospheric and audibly improvisational, beginning with Spanish murmurings followed by Rønnenfelt’s trademarked, panting vocals.'-- Stereogum






____________
Anthony NaplesRis
'Anthony Naples crash-landed in dance music pretty much out of nowhere, creating a hubbub with the first song he ever wrote. Since then we've watched him grow, moving through a number of different dance styles. Perhaps the most compelling bit has been his artsy phase, partly represented by two EPs on The Trilogy Tapes. He continues that streak with his debut album, Body Pill. The breezily off-the-cuff way Naples assembles these tracks feels natural and intuitive. It's the mark of an artist who learned to make music himself, on his own terms, rather than following anyone else's rules or guidance. Even the smaller moments have merit, like "Pale," a two-minute diversion that sounds like a gentle snowfall and then just disappears. Body Pill is thoroughly understated throughout. It's an odd little album that only shows us part of the Anthony Naples puzzle, which is probably appropriate for an artist whose work seems to come in small and unusual bursts of inspiration.'-- Resident Advisor






____________
Kreng Depression
'The Summoner is a tricky album to address. It’s based on five established stages of mourning, but the songs represent personal retaliation to losing a number of close friends. It takes the listener on an almost structured journey that seems so far removed from the actual physical state of grieving that it has every potential to fail at the first hurdle. Grief and loss are often perceived as chaotic sensations constantly in flux, and to feel sympathetic while being guided across a linear suite of bereavement is quite an ask. That’s how I’ve ended up approaching this record: with both curiosity and an unhealthy dosage of skepticism. Because as much as we would like to rationalize the process, mourning can’t be so easily simplified into set stages or sequences that a person passes through — and even if mourning does happen to fall in line with these stages, the transitions through them are purely subjective and certainly can’t be allotted a specific time frame. “Acceptance,” the supposed final stage of mourning and the closing track on The Summoner, can be blown apart at any moment, only for the entire set of stages to recur. The album is therefore conceptually interesting on various levels, because the more attention one pays to the structure of each piece, the more the album begins to develop as an apparent rejection of categorization, outlining the one certainty that binds our lives together.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes






________
WireJoust and Jostle (live)
'Wire, the sparse and fearsome British postpunk heroes, are on a very, very short list of important and influential bands who are still making music that can hang with their early material. The band has stayed plenty active in recent years, and if you listen to any of their records from the past decade or so, you will hear a band who knows the value of hypnotic repetition, of slash-and-burn guitar riffs, and of general ferocity. The band’s last album, 2013’s Change Becomes Us, was made up entirely of unrecorded songs that they’d written decades ago, and good though it was, it felt like it might be an early sign that this band was finally slowing down. But they’ve just announced that they’ve got a brand-new self-titled album coming out this spring. And “Joust & Jostle,” the first song they’ve shared, shows how wrong that impression was. “Joust & Jostle” is a tough and terse two-minute song, but it has a sweet sense of melody underlying its menace.'-- Stereogum






_________
NotsDecadence
'There were a number of fine bands that sprung up in the late ’90s post-Riot Grrrl surge who were left fumbling in the fog of alternative rock’s exhaust. Groups like The Need, Shesus, Satisfact, The Not (a Cincinnati band), and a few other early Wire-inspired punks added synth squeal to their agitated, basement gig screech. The Gossip made it out of that retreating time, otherwise much explosive femme fury was forgotten. This Memphis crew reanimate that skizz while retaining some of the recent trashed-up tradition of their home digs and label, Goner. First formed a couple years ago as an aside for Natalie Hoffmann (guitar) when she was in Ex-Cult, and her pal, drummer Charlotte Watson, Nots have become a fearsome foursome, honed their group yell, nervous drum slapping, slightly echoed grinding guitar and three-finger keyboard whirring, and are ready to tour out on this quick cut ‘n’ run debut slab.'-- CMJ







*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, good suggestions. Actually, a Nabokov novel/video game adaptation is not a horrible idea at all. ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, Alistair! Greetings to sun-baked you (and Tim and Frida) and Venice from clouds-cooled me and Paris. Giant yay about the continued revising and its winning ways. Can not wait! Do you have any idea when you'll be 'finished' finished? Love from me. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Yeah, that happy segue was almost a complete accident. Almost. Very, very close. Things are looking slightly more upward re: the film stuff as of this morning. Fingers crossed. But, yeah, we shouldn't have been put in the position to have to do and sweat all of these problems. Spilt milk, I guess. I think the film might actually be amazing. Fingers still crossed. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Glove! Glovester! Awesome! Wow, I don't think I knew about that Thomas Disch work. That's completely fascinating. I will join you in poring over it imminently. Might even swipe a bit for the blog, come to think of it. Thank you! Those are delicious sounding puzzles, yeah. I've already waxed frequently here about 'Eternal Darkness', the old game where, using the heights of the tech available at that time, that time being early '00's, I think, the game made you go insane, literally. Not just your character/protagonist but the real you too. Second year of your PhD! That's going well, I hope? Can you give any basic detailing to what that's like and about? I offer you a preliminary welcome to the world (body?) of vegetarianism. Anything particularly hard for you to give up? The only thing that was particularly hard for me to lose way back when was salami, for some bizarre reason. I didn't make the gig. Long story. Oh, well. I really like Holly Herndon, so missing her is sad. I just glanced/peeked (can ears peek?) at that acreil stuff, and I'll definitely be indulging further later. Nice! Thank you! Coincidentally, there's some stuff up above that I've been listening to of late. I might especially recommend Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, if you don't know his stuff. Pretty enchanting. Greatness to see you! ** Bill, Hi, B! Thanks on behalf of me and anonymous. The film stuff is a drag, but we might be over the biggest hump. We might have found a sound mixer. We'll maybe know if that's the case this afternoon. IRCAM is a great idea that I hadn't even thought about. Thanks! 'Strawberry Statement', cool, you watched that! How in the world did someone decide on that title? The Strawberry Alarm Clock must have been big at the time? Here's to the slow down! Lovely Monday, pal! ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Thanks. Yeah, the stuff we're having to figure out and do is supposed to be the producers' job for absolutely sure. Ours are used to putting out much looser, trashier looking/sounding films that can be kind of half-assed visually and sonically with no problem than the rather meticulous film we've made. Anyway, things are maybe looking up now, and live and learn, and all of that. I saw 'My Friend Victoria', actually. I can't even remember how. Yeah, it was an interesting film, for sure. I liked it quite a bit. I don't know 'Wild Life', I don't think. ** Misanthrope, Hey, G. I do remember that, yes. Yeah, Carson seems like the usual Republican candidate just with his own jostling particulars. I do also remember that walking conversation and our agreement. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me that much. I mean, I'm not the kind of anarchist who's interested in vocalizing in an insistent way that anything systematic is bullshit, etc. Listen and learn. I've heard of Hannibal Burress, I think. Wasn't he in the news recently or something? That was a sweet sight you saw, and, yeah, you probably should have praised his gentlemanliness, but he probably knows he's cool or something. Weird to get allergied-out at Game Stop. They let dogs in Game Stop? Why not, I guess. I hope you feel right as rain now. Wow, 'right as rain', where did that saying come from? Strange. ** Kier, Denella like Nutella I hope? Or like ... what's-her-name from '101 Dalmatians'? Denella Deville? Or both simultaneously? I'm jonesing for that game manual novel I wanted to write -- and still want to write -- too. Do you feel better? Do make that appointment if you don't. I didn't go the concert. Should have, probably. Gisele and Stephen went. I'll get their review today. Rain, rocky beach, lighthouse, sad surfer? Has there been a better combination of anything? Can't think of one. Shit, about the chicken and the disease. RIP, and hopes against its further spread. You go to Oslo on Friday? Wow. Nerves are natural, but it'll be exciting, K-ster! My weekend: On Saturday. we didn't work on the film as planned 'cos Zac wasn't feeling so hot. So I worked on the theater piece script, which is almost finished now. I contacted two people looking for leads on a sound mixer, and one recommended someone, and I wrote to him, and he says he might be available and into doing it, and we're going to talk to him today. So, that's promising. Zac's and my dear friend -- and the subject of our ongoing documentary film -- Fujiko Nakaya, the great Japanese fog sculptor, is in Paris, and we made a plan to meet with her, so that's exciting. I made a couple of blog posts. And, hm, probably other stuff I'm forgetting. On Sunday, Zac and I spent all day into the evening doing the sound edit on Scene 5 of our film, and we got about a little over halfway through, and we'll finish that and maybe start a new scene today. We have to keep sound editing, marathon-style, this week to get the film ready to be mixed asap. Editing took up most of the day/night. And then I came home and just did some emailing and stuff. What happened during your Monday? Oh, I wrote to you this morning. Hope it helps a little, and, like I said, if you want to talk, let's do it! Love, me. ** Keaton, I think in most cases? I suppose there could be tons if you happened upon some paranormally virile guy or were being team tagged? I suppose the stuff's temperature could be hot if the emitter had a high fever or something maybe? Video games are good for the writing. Well, for mine. I hope your lief arrives by Fed Ex Overnight. ** James, Hi, James. Nice childhood story, man. I didn't play games a a kid either because there weren't video games when I was a kid, sadly. We just had pop-up books. My frames are not radically different. Different shape. More rectangular than the old ones and than I wanted. I guess they're not so different, though. Almost everyone who's seen me wearing them don't even blink much less ask what happened to my glasses. Happy Monday to you! ** Okay. There's my new gig. There's some of the new music I've been liking. Hear what you think, I guess. See you tomorrow.

'All serious art presents a challenge to its interlocutors, resists paraphrase and frustrates interpretation. The strange richness of Peggy Ahwesh’s filmmaking throws us up against the paucity of our own language. “Do I have words for what I am seeing?”: watching and re-watching her films provoke this question – the spectre of ineffability. This experience seems ever more curious when we consider the place granted to language in the films themselves. The films often cite (or even recite) any number of literary, theoretical and philosophical texts. Yet this practice of citation, appropriation and allusion, of folding language into, or asking it to hover above, the image is predicated on an understanding of the shortcomings of language itself. For Ahwesh’s work proceeds first from the act of seeing, or more accurately, looking – at the world and the bodies that inhabit it.

'Ahwesh was reared in Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, in her own words, “one of those sad industrial towns” near Pittsburgh. She went to school at Antioch College in the 1970s where she studied with Tony Conrad (“a father figure”) and was introduced to radical artists and filmmakers like Paul Sharits, Carolee Schneeman and Joyce Wieland. She returned to Pittsburgh after school, threw herself into its burgeoning punk scene and started shooting Super-8 films that documented, quite idiosyncratically, the things, people and places around her. In organising a film series at an art space called The Mattress Factory, Ahwesh decided to invite as her first guest George Romero, a Pittsburgh filmmaker himself, whose native city had paid him little notice before Ahwesh’s invitation. Their meeting led to Ahwesh’s working as a production assistant on Romero’s Creepshow (1982). The immersion in Romero’s phantasmagoria seems so uncannily fitting, given the trajectory of Ahwesh’s career, as to be nearly over-determined, yet, as anecdote (Ahwesh recalls that she was “assigned to entertain Stephen King’s son and played ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ with him”) it manifests the unstudied and nerdy cool of Ahwesh’s films themselves.

'Ahwesh creates a kind of renegade arte povera ethnography of the everyday, approaching culturally complex issues and individuals with disarming simplicity and intelligence, and with risk-taking vulnerability, humor and abandon. Most often drawn to the immediate and the personal, Ahwesh's films combine hanging out and acting out with serendipitous occurances and telling details. Her characters are outspoken and the films talk back to the muffling zeitgeist.

'Ahwesh's films are unparalleled documents and beautifully distilled essays about ruptures in human continuities. In the contrasts posed between childhood, adolescence and adulthood, we experience the beauty and pain, the consequence of knowledge and the submersion into the social. Ahwesh's films penetrate to the heart of American ritual in an unprecedented way. Some of the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne were able to reach into the transfiguring moments when an ossified Puritanism spilled over into shocking carnival-- exposing the hidden order of things and the true nature of it's celebrants. Ahwesh comes at similiar concerns from a unique perspective, unearthing the subterranean roots of sandbox antics, doll playing, bedroom dalliance and tantrums, tourist attractions, social gatherings and the S/M rodeo of love relationships.

'Ahwesh's films act as semi-guided tours that break all the rules of protocol--charting the off handed moments of impact--both the civilizing and transgressive elements that contribute to our social construction and private sense of self. The films identify and unglue some of our notions of romance, sexuality, violence, language. The bind that they leave us in is the bind of our own bodies, our inherited histories, our status as a partially occupied territory within the prevailing culture. These films celebrate also a truancy from that culture, a blistering that leads to disruption and self definition."'-- collaged



__
Stills
























































_____
Further

Great Directors: Peggy Ahwesh
Peggy Ahwesh @ Wikipedia
Peggy Ahwesh @ Ubuweb
Peggy Ahwesh's Vimeo Channel
Peggy Ahwesh @ Video Databank
Peggy Ahwesh @ FELIX
'Vertov from Z to A edited by Peggy Ahwesh & Keith Sanborn'
Peggy Ahwesh @ Underground Film Journal
'Peggy Ahwesh responds to NOT BORED!'s posting'
Christopher Higgs on Peggy Ahwesh’s 'The Color of Love'
Audio: Peggy Ahwesh and Barbara Ess's 'Radio Guitar'
Review: 'Kissing Point' by Peggy Ahwesh at Microscope Gallery
'A Shimmering Analog Memory: Artists' films in Pixelvision'
Leo Goldsmith on Peggy Ahwesh's 'Nocturne'
'Corpse, Corpus, Contingency: On Peggy Ahwesh's 'deadman' trilogy'
'… And Peggy Ahwesh as Burt Reynolds'
'Experiments In Film: She Puppet
'ENACTIONS AND DISRUPTIONS OF IRIGIRAY IN THE FILMS OF PEGGY AHWESH'



________
Additionals


New York Underground Film Festival '08 Trailer by Peggy Ahwesh


Episode 1 Module 5 - Peggy Ahwesh Interview


'Dubai Fountain' by Peggy Ahwesh


'the ape of nature' by Peggy Ahwesh



_____
Interview




You take pride in your Pittsburgh background, in part, I assume, because it’s been important in experimental filmmaking, with Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Field of Vision, the scholar Lucy Fischer at University of Pittsburgh. Also, it’s Warhol’s hometown. But maybe on some level it’s most of all George Romero. Is it true that you worked on George Romero films?

Peggy Ahwesh: Yeah. I moved back to Pittsburgh after college. I went to Antioch from 1972 until 1978. I studied with Tony Conrad, who I still think of affectionately as a father figure, the elder statesman in the field who bequeathed upon me the esoteric knowledge of initiation that propelled forward . . . [laughter] whatever. I also studied with Janis Lipzin. And Paul Sharits was there. Cecil Taylor was artist-in-residence. Jud Yalkut had a radio show that I listened to a lot. There was a lot going on.

I particularly remember a show Janis organized: Joyce Wieland, Carolee Schneemann, and Beverly Conrad did presentations. It was a major event for me to meet these women and hear them talk about their work.

I’m from a little coal town down river—Cannonsburg (famous for Perry Como and Bobby Vinton), one of those sad industrial towns. But I loved Pittsburgh and still have a lot of nostalgia for it. I found it very freeing, artistically; I felt like it was mine; the landscape was mine, the people were mine. Everything about it was up for grabs. I liked that it was "nowhere." It was not overdetermined as an art melieu like New York.

I got very involved with the punk scene there in the late Seventies and made a lot of great friends overnight. We documented the punk bands, and we were all making Super-8 sound films, and there were all these crazy characters to put in your movies.

My first job was at this place called the Mattress Factory, which was just opening in the north side in what’s called the Mexican War streets, a rough-and-tumble working class neighborhood with slight gentrification. I’m sure that neighborhood has changed. The Mattress Factory was this big art warehouse, and I ran a film series there. For my first guest I decided to call George Romero. He told me that no one in Pittsburgh had ever invited him to show his work locally. I was the first. I couldn’t believe it.

He came with his wife, and we showed The Crazies [1973] and Night of the Living Dead [1968]; one program at the Mattress Factory and another in a local high school. It was great. He was so friendly, open, vulnerable, not an egomaniac in any sense. I also knew a lot of people who worked in his movies, including several of the guys who were the red-neck bikers in Dawn of the Dead [1979]; they were George’s lighting crew and worked locally.

I worked on Creepshow [1982] as a production assistant, but I did all kinds of bizarre jobs--like I was Adrienne Barbeau’s assistant at one point, which basically meant going out and buying her specialty foods because she had very particular tastes. And for about a week I was assigned to entertain Stephen King’s son and played "Dungeons and Dragons" with him. I had a walk-through in a shot where Adrienne Barbeau gets shot in the head at a lawn party. And I worked with the camera crew in the scene where the guy finds this meteor and the green stuff gets all over his place. People had to make the green stuff and dress the set, and I helped the camera people get the right amount of out-of-focus green stuff in the foreground and in the background.

I had a very flamboyant best friend, Natalka Voslakov. She’s in some of my movies, and I shot some of her movies. She was one of the staples of my Pittsburgh years, an incredibly striking woman. Of course, she got a much better job with Romero than I did [laughter]—she was first assistant to the assistant director. My friend, Margie Strosser, who I’ve worked with over the years, was an assistant editor. We all got to know each other.

At what point in this history do you start making films?

Ahwesh: I made Super-8 movies before Pittsburgh, at Antioch and elsewhere, but when I landed in Pittsburgh, everything sort of came together. I was very involved; my boyfriend was a filmmaker--all my friends were filmmakers, musicians, photographers. The punk scene was us and various hangers-on. We would document the bands, and the bands would play at the clubs where we showed movies—we were our own on-going entertainment.

In 1980 at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, I did a big group show of local filmmakers. I was hot on the idea of group shows because they got everybody involved.

I did some shows where I’d put people’s names in the calendar and make up titles for films they hadn’t made yet. For one particular show I announced "Wrapped in American Flags" by one person; "Dreams Congo" by another. But often people did make films to go along with these titles. That wasn’t a thing you could sustain, but it was fun as a programming concept. We had a good time with it. It was a kind of cinematic match-making that went hand in hand with the parties and general flirtations among us.

Were you a movie-goer as a child or an adolescent?

Ahwesh: I was not a movie-goer. I was horrified by most movies. I thought they had bad gender politics, bad cultural politics, and were a waste of time. I was a hard-core idealist as a youth. My relationship to music was much more profound and organic, which is still the case. Basically, movies came second to music, but I did abhor popular films.

Even early in your life?

Ahwesh: Yes. I only started to be able to watch film in college and only unconventional films. I remember going into Kelly Hall at Antioch to see my first experimental film, Bruce Conner’s Cosmic Ray [1961], and the week after that, Masculine Feminine [1966, Jean-Luc Godard], but these films I did not understand. I was tortured by them, and found them completely infuriating--but they stuck in my craw. I couldn’t figure them out, but couldn’t forget about them either.

Of course, allowing myself to be turned onto them was a large area of growth for me. I come from a working class background. My parents are small-town, fairly conservative, church-going people who never cared about art.

When you told me you’re the same age as Su Friedrich, I was shocked—I think of you as a generation younger than Su.

Ahwesh: Actually, I’m a little older than Su. In Hide and Seek [1996] Su puts young girls in a narrative film where they’re playing with records and reproducing a Sixties girl party. In my movie, the vision machine [1997], I have adult women pretending to be girls, who smash the records and have a big fight and pour beer on the record player. It’s a very similar terrain, except that my imagistic and symbolic relation to experience is inverted. Su and I are friends and we think very similarly, except that my work shades one way and hers shades another.

Yours shades toward Jack Smith; hers, toward Frampton.

Ahwesh: Totally. I make a pastiche of many things. If I had to pick an experimental filmmaker whose philosophical method I borrow, it would be Jack Smith, although he’s one of the most irritating performers and filmmakers I’ve ever known. Just unbelievable. For years I did in Super-8 a lot of the things that he did. I would let people go on for hours and then turn the camera on, and they’d already be on the floor drunk and not able to function: "I thought we were gonna make a movie!" Or I would shoot all this stuff and just use the last roll. Or I’d rearrange the rolls in a way to make what I shot less coherent but more provocative.

Allowing something to erupt out of a nothingness--I love that. And that was already there in those first Pittsburgh films. Nothing was happening in Pittsburgh; we were just hanging around. "What can we do today?""Let’s put on weird costumes and dance around. Let’s make a movie." And things would just erupt out of seeming chaos. And films would get shot. Of course, editing was an entirely different part of the brain. As an editor, I was always interested in the things that were happening right in front of me that I didn’t recognize, but that I was involved in on some level.
In my personal relationships; I like people in transition. I’m most comfortable, I think, with people who are going through something—they’re having an ecstatic time, or a bad time, or a lot of things are happening and they’re overflowing with changes. I’m attracted to that.

When I talked to Ken Jacobs about the Nervous System pieces, I was saying that one of the difficulties with those pieces is that I can’t take notes: what’s happening is performative and so evanescent that you can’t really hold onto it. Now with your films I can take notes, but I stay mystified, partly because the films seem so open-- though when you talk about Martina’s Playhouse, it all seems very obvious.

Ahwesh: I think you have resistance to my work—perhaps you simply don’t like it. Is it possible that the problem is that it’s so much a female point of view--which includes that openness? There are people who don’t like the film because there’s no explicit authority telling them how to think about the images or structuring the material in a way that reduces it to formality. I refuse to do both those things. I just refuse.

I think it’s just that you don’t like my movies—not that you don’t get them.

Even when I don’t like your films, I still want to understand them.

Ahwesh: Also, my work has an under-achiever, self-deprecating quality and maybe that’s deceptive in some sense. You know, working in Super-8 is a devotion to the minor, to the low end of technology, to things that are more ephemeral and have less authority in the world. I am on the very edge—another Jack Smith tradition—of a whole enterprise that’s on the verge of collapsing.



________________
11 of Peggy Ahwesh's 25 films

___________
Bethlehem (2009)
'Interior and exterior spaces are transformed into mystical places in Peggy Ahwesh‘s lyrical meditation of an experimental short film, Bethlehem. While the film is mostly about general states of being, she does manage to tie in two actual Bethlehems: The most famous one in Jerusalem and the other one in mid-east Pennsylvania, which is Ahwesh’s home state. Ahwesh also alternates between inside and outside spaces, as well as between populated locations and people-less ones, giving all the same mythic quality through, obviously, the lyrical score, but also how the mostly non-moving camera soaks in its subjects through obtuse angles and framing. Many shots, particularly of Ahwesh’s human subjects, are from below or in intense close-up, granting them an element of grandeur even though they are occupying fairly mundane spaces.'-- Underground Film Journal



the entire film



__________
The Third Body (2008)
'An appropriated film, portraying the arrival of Adam and Eve to an exotic Eden, is intercut with appropriated videos of virtual reality demonstrations, among them a human hand shadowed by a computer-generated rendering, medical robots conducting a virtual surgery, and people dressed in bulky headgear navigating virtual spaces. As the title suggests, cyberspace adds to the Genesis legend a third possibility, a virtual existence that challenges natural and social definitions of gender and morality. Ahwesh writes, "The tropes of the garden, the originary moment of self knowledge and gendered awareness of the body (what is traditionally called sin) is mimicked in the early experiments with virtual reality. The metaphors used in our cutting edge future are restagings of our cultural memory of the garden. Wonderment regarding the self in space, boundaries of the body at the edge of consciousness and the inside and outside skin of perceptual knowledge."'-- Electronic Arts Intermix



the entire film



_______________
Beirut Outtakes (2007)
'Composed entirely of film scraps salvaged from a closed Beirut cinema, Beirut Outtakes is a collage of sensational visions. Ed Halter writes in the Village Voice: "Outtakes appears to be a ready-made, albeit one tailor-made for Ahwesh's career obsessions, pre-filled with her signature elements: gleeful disruptions of high and low, affection for decayed textures, a peeping eye for lurid sexuality, and a fascination with unlikely images of the Middle East. Just one sequence of a go-go-booted belly dancer wriggling in an Arabic-language cinema advertisement for home air conditioners alone has the power to shatter more stereotypes than 500 pages of Edward Said.'-- Ubuweb



the entire film



______________
w/Bobby AbateCertain Women (2004)
'CERTAIN WOMEN is based on the novel of the same name by populist Southern genre writer Erskine Caldwell (written in 1957). Caldwell´s ´pulp´ storytelling, proto-feminist stance and unabashed social dramatization are a distinct vision of the condition of women -- specifically working class women. There is little redemption in the tales of Erskine Caldwell, but there is over-the-top despair, social criticism and the reality of human wickedness. Bobby Abate and Peggy Ahwesh shot in a variety of low-end video formats, including spy-cam, VHS and DV. The cast is comprised of non-professionals chosen by the directors for their unique personalities, stock character looks and on-screen magnetism. Both directors participated fully in all aspects of the video´s making including production design, cinematography, sound design and editing. This cautionary tale of four heroic yet ordinary women is fashioned out of the past but relies on the filmmakers´ observations of the present historical moment and its political reality.'-- collaged



Excerpt



________________
The Star Eaters (2003)
'The Star Eaters is a 70-minute narrative video. The story of The Star Eaters merges the enigma of the night sky, its intoxication and desire, with the exhaustion and emotional decay of the boardwalk in Atlantic City. The film is told from the point of view of a woman adrift in the gambling joints and false-glamour of Atlantic City and her relationships with various hustlers, the ocean, her ex-lovers, and her own memory. The themes of the film are gambling, risk taking, transgression, and the quest for meaning.'-- Creative Capital



the entire film



_______________
She Puppet (2001)
'Re-editing footage collected from months of playing Tomb Raider, Ahwesh transforms the video game into a reflection on identity and mortality. Trading the rules of gaming for art making, she brings Tomb Raider's cinematic aesthetics to the foreground, and shirks the pre-programmed "mission" of its heroine, Lara Croft. Ahwesh acknowledges the intimate relationship between this fictional character and her player. Moving beyond her implicit feminist critique of the problematic female identity, she enlarges the dilemma of Croft's entrapment to that of the individual in an increasingly artificial world.'-- Electronic Arts Intermix



the entire film



______________
Trick Film (1996)
'Activities at home with Mistress and her naughty pet.'-- PA



the entire film



_______________
The Color of Love (1994)
'The film of Ahwesh’s that most determinedly takes on the subjects of sexuality and vision is undoubtedly The Color of Love (1994). Essentially it is a found footage film. According to Ahwesh, a friend dropped off a load of old film canisters that had been left outside, prey to the elements. Inside one canister Ahwesh discovered a Super-8mm pornographic film of two women making love to each other and to a man who appears to be dead or unconscious. The film had become degraded and decayed which gave it an amazing richness of color and texture. Ahwesh “did an improv on the optical printer”, “slowing some sections down and speeding others up a bit, repeating some things, and elongating the cunt shots”. Then she added a score of tango music. What resulted is one of the most beautiful and provocative artefacts in film history. The use of the tango music seems a clear nod in the direction of Un Chien andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1928). Like its surrealist predecessor, The Color of Love is an assault on the norms of vision. It is explicit; it shows too much. The seductive surface of the film (if ever there were a case for haptic cinema or embodied vision, this is it) draws us into a pas de deux of attraction and repulsion.'-- Senses of Cinema



the entire film



_______________
The Scary Movie (1993)
'The Scary Movie is another collaboration with Martina Torr, who by the time the film was shot, was some years older than she was in Martina’s Playhouse. Shot in wonderfully high contrast black and white with very low key lighting, the film is one of Ahwesh’s most beautiful and most light-hearted; it is also the most reflexive of her many nods towards the horror genre. The film features Martina and co-star/playmate Sonja Mereu. While Martina is costumed in cheap girls’ dress up clothes, Sonja has a fake moustache, black gloves and prosthetic monster fingers. The first shot is a repetitive and jerky hand-held pan of a hand drawn music score while the sounds of Psycho-like violins play on the soundtrack. So begins what might be called an anatomising re-reading of the horror genre. The entire soundtrack is a pastiche of music and sounds native to the horror film – screams, strings, squeaking doors, footsteps, etc – although with a few corny phrases and sound effects that sound as though they’ve been lifted from a Warner Brothers cartoon. At various points a prosthetic rubber hand (obviously manipulated by a human extending from offscreen space) reaches mock-eerily to caress Martina who pretends to be asleep. Sonja probes/assaults Martina with kitchen tongs and later stabs her repeatedly with a tin-foil knife, and in turn is stabbed by the rubber hand wielding a similar weapon. In the middle of the film’s duration, Sonja holds up a poster announcing the credits (she is credited as the “Doctor/Killer”, Martina as the “Patient/Hand Lover”). Then we see the girls screaming, then dancing. They seem to have escaped their outing into the horror genre. The film ends.'-- Senses of Cinema



the entire film



______________
Martina's Playhouse (1989)
'In Martina’s Playhouse everything is up for grabs. The little girl of the title oscillates from narrator to reader to performer and from the role of baby to that of mother. While the roles she adopts may be learned, they are not set, and she moves easily between them. Similarly, in filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh’s playhouse of encounters with friends, objects aren’t merely objects but shift between layers of meaning. Men are conspicuously absent, a ‘lack’ reversing the Lacanian/Freudian constructions of women as Ahwesh plays with other possibilities.'-- Pacific Film Archives



Excerpt



_____________
w/ Keith SanbornThe Deadman (1987)
'Charting the adventures of a near-naked heroine who sets in motion a scabrous free-form orgy before returning to the house to die--this film combines elegance, raunchy defilement and barbaric splendor.'-- Jonathan Rosenbaum



the entire film






*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Man, that Tom McCarthy piece is so tiresome, but I've been curious about him due to all the talk of his literary adventurousness, ha ha, and it's good to know he's actually not, at least in the brain pan, so thank you much for the alert! ** Keaton, Ah, 'imagine it', gotcha. Sex's expansive effect on the imagination is probably the best thing about it. I think Spring started here yesterday. Yeah, nice here too, but winter was such a blah rip-off of a season over here. I only really like adventure/strategy games. My favorite game would probably be whatever the game equivalent of an abandoned house would be. That youtube thing was so Sypha. ** Thomas Moronic, Me too. So, so anxious to hear the album. And see them. They're playing here in April, I think. Are they hitting the UK? Really glad you dug the gig. That's awesome. Most of Jojo Hiroshige's stuff is much noisier than that track, but it's really good. ** Kier, Hi! As in wench, cool. Ooh, how about Drench! As in ... well, drench! Or as in wrench. Cool, the noose one was my favorite of the two I suggested. Yeah, let's find a time to talk or Skype when the times get right. That would be very cool. I think I know that body-depressed-when-the-head-isn't feeling. It's really strange. It seems like it should be fun or something, but I don't remember any funness. Was the psych appointment a blow out in the good way? Yesterday Zac and I sound-edited again all day into the evening. We finished Scene 5 except for this one character's voice that's a little too bass-y, but we'll need to get someone whose more of an expert in editing tech to get it where we want it. Then we started on Scene 4, and that's been easier than the other two scenes so far. We're about halfway through it. We may have found our sound mix guy, fingers heavily crossed. He's watching the rough cut of the film today, and then we'll meet with him tomorrow to hopefully finalize the deal unless he doesn't like the film. Gisele and Stephen bought a flat recently, and they're moving in this summer or fall, and right now the place is under construction and has no roof, and Zac and I wanted to go see that, but the only time we could was at 6 pm yesterday, and we were working too hard. Anyway, the editing was my day. I'm still fiddling with the theater piece script. There's one little thing that has proven hard for me to get right, but hopefully I'll figure it out today. Yeah, really, that was it, and today will likely be another day about which I'll only talk about editing tomorrow. How was your psych visit and everything else? ** Steevee, Good news about the seeming goodness of your new psych, but that does sound annoying about the pharmacy. I didn't know that pharmacies are selective about products. I thought they were all the same place with the same everything available but with just slight differences in the physical design and the employees. ** Sickly, Hi, Sickly! Yeah, me too, about the McCarthy article. I couldn't even finish it. Why is that almost always when a so-called, much touted ... I don't know, 'cutting-edge', 'adventurous' UK novelist decides to spout off about literature itself, he -- and it's always a he -- winds up revealing himself to be a reactionary, self-loving pseudo-brainiac and bore on the subject. A lot of people have recommended McCathy's fiction to me as wild and smart, but, after reading that, I'm so much less interested in reading his stuff. But enough. You're very welcome for the gig and thank you a lot for taking your valuable time with it. The version of the Wire song on the album is extremely better than that live version, but that was the only bit of the new LP on youtube, Vimeo, et. al. Really good album. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I'll check out that Hannibal guy out for sure. Cool you looked up that 'rain' phrase. Zac and I were trying to figure out where it came from yesterday sans google. All we could think was it had something to do with farming? I love that 'falls in a straight line' reason. That's beautiful. Oh, dog residue rather than dog, okay. Man, your dog allergy is hyper-sensitive. ** Alistair McCartney, Hey A! Thank you for exploding the enthusiasm in me. It felt great. And it's still there! Or I mean here. No doubt something about the sound editing will end up playing out in my writing. It's very laborious, and I'm basically just sitting there conferring with Zac while he does the actual dirty work, but I'm finding it quite mesmerizing. I'm such an editing junkie. This year for your book's finish line, yes! Man oh man, I'm really looking forward to that, big A! Love to you and to all of your all and sundry! ** Cal Graves, Hi, Cal. I think that record is going to be so ace for sure. Cool that the gig unblocked writing stuff for you. Is there a better outcome even possible? Well, I guess winning the lottery and finding true love and all of that kind of stuff maybe. I'll try to use this off-question day to fine-tune my answering abilities. Have a great one! ** Okay. You guys know the work of Peggy Ahwesh? I wonder. She's a pretty interesting filmmaker, so, obviously, I recommend that you familiarize yourselves with her oeuvre to some degree or other, if you're aren't already familiar, and only if you feel like it, of course. See you tomorrow.

6 am









6:20 am











6:40 am








6:58 am








7:03 am









7:08 am








7:09 - 7:13 am

















































































7:14









7:16-7:28





















7:32









7:33









7:35-8:00








*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you, sir. ** Steevee, Hey. I really like those two shorts too. Yes, strange that there was no mention in the post of her being Syrian-American. That's ultimately my fault, but it's interesting that I don't remember finding anything amongst the texts I searched out that mentioned that very much if at all. I totally get that Houellbecq's not the Arab-bashing reactionary of media lore, but I don't believe at all that he doesn't intend to provoke. That just makes no sense whatsoever. But, anyway, you've made me curious to see that film. ** Sypha, Apparently, ha ha. Yeah, I wondered if the game fiction anthology might be something that would inspire you to submit. Well, if it's in your 2nd collection, which isn't out yet and for a while, I would think that piece qualifies as unpublished, no? I think so. Nice book scores. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Yeah, that was disappointing, at least to someone (me) who was quite curious to read McCarthy based on the praise going about. Why are these guys so resistant to forwardness? It seems really weird to me, this adherence and loyalty to modernism and post-modernism. I'm doing a post on the xTx book tomorrow, coincidentally. I have a jones to read 'The Disaster Artist'. And I've never even seen the complete 'The Room'. Good to know that it's a bunch of fun. I think I'll get it in anticipation of my next long train/plane trip. Cool, thanks, man! Depending on how a meeting with a potential sound mix guy goes this morning, things might finally be beginning to sail, at least sail through the fucked up waters we're stuck in due to incompetence at the top. I'm really happy with the film, and I've watched it probably about 700 times at this point, ha ha. ** Keaton, Who doesn't? Well, there must a few. I don't think I'll ever fall in love with London. I've tried and tried, and ... nah. That's what Pittsburgh sounds like? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Kristof's 'Yesterday' is very nice and beautiful, but it's also very slight compared to the trilogy. A very minor work, but, if you love her prose, of course it's worth reading. Probably not if it takes big bucks to do so, though. I'm already on the hunt for that Queneau. I've read most of his novels, and I've only vaguely heard about that one before. Getting it is my new book-related goal in life. The new Wire is really good. Terse but pretty. Short songs. I'm just getting into it, but, so far, I like it more than the previous couple, although I did really like the previous couple. There's an exciting tautness, tension in it, I think. ** Misanthrope, I think I will too. Sometimes those old Americanism sayings have this kind of gorgeous poetry in them that makes me think that Americans used to be more generally poetic or something. Sympathies galore on the allergies. I mean this clothes/dye thing I've got sucks beans. Sucks beans? They say allergies get worse as you get older. Mine seem stuck in place, but I was Mr. Anything's Cool until the early 90s. ** Cal Graves, Ha ha, I'll bet. I hope that at least some of the shit you have to get done won't strike you as shit once it's done. Photography? Do I not show photographers here much? That's interesting. I used to, years back. Well, hm, long term, off the top of my head, I like Bill Henson, Nan Goldin, Weegee, Louise Lawler, Bernard Faucon, ... I would need to google-search my memory for more. But, yeah, I should showcase more photography. Weird. Who are some fave photographers of yours? ** Okay. I made breakfast for Zac, but you can eat it too. There's plenty for everyone. See you tomorrow.

'xTx’s book Today I Am A Book takes her craft in a whole new direction. Civil Coping Mechanisms does a very truly grand thing indeed by publishing this, her best, piece of work. Indeed the writers here at Beach Sloth fought tooth and nail for a sneak peak at the book. Having read it multiple times, reveling in the joy and tragedy of the book, the team here at Beach Sloth is convinced that it is one of the finest things put to paper. In a world where fewer and fewer things are put to paper, this is a huge accomplishment.

'The book opens on a redwood forest in Northern California. Over the course of eons the trees grow ever closer to the light. By talking amongst themselves the trees gain a sense of purpose. In particular one tree begins to get rather spiritual talking about growing towards the light. With rapt attention the other trees pay attention growing with the spiritual leader tree. Fast-forwarding through this brief setup in only 130 pages, the trees arrive to the visit human inhabitants moving amongst the trees. Unable to comprehend the fact that the trees are an integral part of a state in a country called “The United States of America” the trees grow like they always have. Eventually liberal-minded individuals visit the forests and take pictures of themselves next to the trees using various filters on their camera phones to make themselves look cool.

'For a while the tree accept this fate, as they have accepted many worse things in the past. The spiritual tree leader worries at what this intense commercialization of the forests might do. Will the attention help protect fellow trees or make them more vulnerable? Before the spiritual tree leader can come to a satisfying conclusion, he is struck down by the power of a chainsaw. Finding it ironic as the trees were only days away from creating their own defense mechanism that involved shooting acid at humans, the spiritual tree leader is driven away, never to see his tree flock again.

'Deep in the recesses of a paper making factory the tree wonders what horrible thing it will be transformed into. The tree finds itself being ripped apart. Out of the remnants the tree finds itself turned into a book. At peace with its future the tree says to itself Today I Am A Book and is proud to be an exclusive edition of the last Harry Potter book.'-- Beach Sloth






____
Further

xTx's Nothing to Say blog
xTx interviewed about 'TIAAB' @ Nerve
'A Look At the Textured Cover of xTx’s “Today I Am A Book”'
xTx interviewed @ Electric Lit
The Sunday Interview: xTx @ The Rumpus
'52 Weeks / 52 Interviews: Week 32: xTx' @ Monkeybicycle
Podcast: xTx interviewed @ Other People w/ Brad Listi
Poems by xTx @ Pank
'Abandonment', a story b xTx
Chaos Questions #7 – xTx @ Enclave
'Dear Wigleaf,'
'Things You Find on a Train', a story by xTx
'Ready', a story by xTx
xTx @ Facebook
'Today I Am A Book' @ goodreads
'today xTx came out with another book'
Buy 'Today I Am A Book' here



____
Extras


Story Swaps: xTx and Scott McClanahan


Mel Bosworth reads 'Standoff' by xTx


Alex J Allison reads 'Standoff' by xTx


'Normally Special' by xTx, reviewed by Wing Chair Books



______
Interview
from Literary Orphans




What does your writing space look like? Paper? Laptop? A study? A bedroom? A car outside a Dunkin’ Donuts?

xTx: It looks like my lap and it looks like a jailhouse lunchroom with no windows.

Where do your ideas for writing projects come from? Do you sit down and actively brainstorm, or does the jelly-filling just hit you walking down the street?

xTx: Definitely the jelly-filling. Or sometimes a jellyfish. It’s definitely a hitting though.

When you’re in your special writing place, writing out the jelly, are you listening to music? If so, what kind(s)?

xTx: I usually like to listen to anything by William Basinski when I am writing because they are all the same and they all put me into trances. Right now I am listening to Wye Oak. This one time I co-wrote an entire book listening to Neutral Milk Hotel’s, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

What book was that? (that you co-wrote listening to Neutral Milk Hotel)

xTx: It was Shudder Pageant, co-written with the awesomely talented and bearded Mel Bosworth.

Was there a particular moment that spurred you to submit your work?

xTx: Yes. Before i started submitting stories I was only blogging. One of my blog friends posted that he had a story published in an online zine. It was an amazing story. I had no idea there were such things as online magazines. I started exploring. I got the courage up to submit. Here we are.

You and Roxane Gay have an amazing partnership and friendship; can you talk about the first time you interacted with her?

xTx: All I remember is that her online presence intimated me. She accepted one then two stories from me for PANK and tentative email communication began from there. It was an unfolding that is continuing to this day.

Is there anything you can share about the novel you’ve been writing?

xTx: It is a dark novel about a magician set in a world that bends different than ours.

When you say that your upcoming book’s world bends differently than ours, can you give away any tidbits about that? (If it’s too soon I understand!)

xTx: I think ‘bends differently than ours’ says it all without giving anything away. I’ll leave it at that for now.

What inspired you to write about a magician? Are we talking fantasy with real magic magician, or now-you-see-it/now-you-don’t magician?

xTx: We are talking both of those types of magicians combined. I was inspired by my “story” title, “Nobody Trusts A Black Magician.” I thought, who is this black magician? And then I saw him, in a decrepit one room apartment, sitting on a wilty bed, underneath a flickering light bulb hanging from a cracked and peeling ceiling, his hands on his knees, his head wanting to be buried in those hands and he looked so sad and so pathetic. It was then I knew I wanted to draw him. Find out why he was so sad. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Do you think we should separate the art from the artist?

xTx: Yes and no. Not sure that is possible. I think it depends what you want to attach and what you want to separate. Those things are able to be sorted out maybe, but overall, if it came from me, it is of me, I think.



___
Book

xTx Today I Am A Book
Civil Coping Mechanisms

'Today I Am A Book is maddening, the ‘I’ bringing you in close only to wink and push off again. It is an alluring, irresistible book. And it was written by xTx. That should be all you need to know. She is a master and we are her grateful subjects.'-- Lindsay Hunter

'Today I Am a Book​actually feels like many books​,​ wound ​expertly ​into one. ​It’s a book of compelling narratives​. A book of destabilizing experimentation. A book that entices you with wild imagination and then bucks you with raw and real ​emotion. A book that makes you laugh​, then ​gasp. It is surprising, rollicking, and powerful; a perfect stage for xTx’s singular vision.'-- Diane Cook

_____
Excerpt
from Nerve

Today I Am Unemployed

Today I am unemployed. So far, every day feels like a Saturday. Yesterday while I was driving around in the middle of the morning running errands something felt wrong. It felt like I forgot something. I kept looking down to make sure I was wearing pants.

Reality is weighted, heavy. It is an anvil tied to the all of you, pulling you down. Extra gravity. At night it turns to locusts. A tiny, swarm with equal heft. They nest inside the mind. They are a wriggling, restless mass. They don’t let you sleep.

Last night I brought shit into the bed. I smelled it everywhere but I didn’t do anything and he didn’t notice.
In the morning, I found shit on my elbow and on my wrist. I untucked the fitted sheet and folded it over the smears so the maid wouldn’t see.

Last night was a living, awake, nightmare. The kind where when you wake up from not really being asleep, it is still there.

Tomorrow is Saturday.

I wonder if it will feel like Thursday.


____
Stories

What Naomi Says

They didn’t find the body until weeks later. Its hands chewed off, the rest of it torn through like an old sheet. Naomi said it smelled exactly like death should.

I ate the peach just pulled from the fridge. Its juice ran down my chin, cold, like, “Wake up chin! Wake up!”

My silence, my chewing, just made Naomi talk more. I learned things I didn’t want to. Things people reading the newspaper would never know. I thought of a giant mother hiding the eyes of its thousands of children. I thought, my life should have so many hands.

It didn’t.

I was left to see everything, thanks to Naomi.

Especially thanks to Naomi.

After all the facts and peach meat were spent, she stopped me from throwing the pit in the trash. Instead, she pulled me, pit-fist first, out the back door through the garden she’d left to die and back to the trees that lined the creek.

“There. Throw it there,” she ordered, pointing.

The morning paused while I wished for a giant mother with matching hands. Then, taking a breath full of how death should smell, I aimed at the thing, threw.



The Mill Pond

All of my tank tops are striped the wrong way for a girl of my size. They are also too short. My belly bulges out from beneath the bottom like, "Hey, wanna play with me?" My corduroy pants are also striped, but in the fabric. That is how they are made. My hair hangs like greasy blanket fringe. I feel like a stripe. I am a stripe. A big bulging stripe painted down the middle of a highway by a drunk highway stripe painting guy—probably my dad.
    My mom won't buy me new tank tops because she thinks forcing me to wear tops that are way too small for me is motivation for losing weight. I don't tell her that the only motivation it is giving me is to put on my shortest tank top, go out in the backyard to my old playhouse and kill myself with her sewing scissors.
    "We can go shopping for some new clothes when your belly fits back inside, Tinker." She says this in a voice that I would like to punch. Also, it is hard to judge an infant, I know, but there should be laws against naming your baby daughter Tinkerbell if the baby's father's family has a history of obesity. Seven pounds, two ounces at birth turning into 160 at age thirteen on a 5'2" frame is a recipe for misery. "Bertha" would've been kinder.
    The tank tops belong to last summer. My belly belongs to this summer. My mom won't buy me new tank tops because she is cheap and also poor so she is blaming it on me and my belly. I wear my cords because I won't wear shorts because of my thighs. They are too wide for the style of shorts they sell now. My thigh flab bulges out from the too tight leg holes. I tried on a pair of light brown ones once and my thighs looked like upside down ice cream cones. The flavor they looked like was a sort of watery peach strawberry swirl, like how if those two flavors melted out on a white kitchen floor in long thick strips that looked exactly like my legs.
    There is no way I am going to wear boys shorts or my mom's shorts. She actually told me, "It's stupid to wear pants all summer, Tinker. Why don't you wear one of my old pairs?" Then she held up a pair of jean shorts that looked like a perfect light blue square. I walked out of the trailer and after the screen door slammed shut I heard her say, "What?" and then, to herself, "I like them." I could picture her through the side of the trailer, holding them in front of her, against her straight waist, a square on a square. I kicked a rock at the dog and then walked to the Shop N Save to get a Suzy Q.
Even in my cords my thighs rub together. My pants don't wear out in the knees first. Ever. And, if I ever ran—which I never do—smoke would wisp from the hot friction, especially in cords. Something about the raised stripes mixed with the valleys between them. Air flow mixed with fusion energy or something. I think we learned about it in science class but I sit in the back, in the corner, away from everything, not paying attention, so I could be wrong. There is a window in the back of that classroom that looks out towards the road. Across the road there is an old farm. Next to the farm there is a field. Behind the field there is a row of trees. Behind the row of trees there is another field and then another row of trees and then there is the mill pond. I go to the mill pond a lot and so when I sit in the back of class and Mr. Lewis is teaching about fusion energy and molecules and things, I stare out the window in the direction of the mill pond and his voice becomes cicadas.

I take the long way to the mill pond now. Last summer I would take the shortcut through Mister Dean's property because it cuts out almost a mile. I'd duck through the broken part in the fence that separates his property from the road and I'd follow the chicken wire alongside his east garden until it hit his cornfields and then I'd walk through the widest row until I came to the end of it and go through the fence and down to the dried riverbed before following that to where the field for the mill pond started. If you kept going straight on the riverbed, you'd get to the outside of town and that's where the Shop N Save was. Cutting through Mister Dean's property was the quickest way for me to get to both of my favorite places.
    He'd always be out there in his garden. I'd hear him first. Whistling and humming, whistling and humming. He wore a ladies straw hat and it would bob above the tomato plants like a lady was there picking the ripe ones.
    I never really paid attention to Mister Dean and I didn't think he paid much attention to me until one day he was just there leaning against a fence post like he was waiting for me.
    "Your name's Tinkerbell, right?"
    "Yes."
    "Where you going all these times you walkin''cross my property?"
    I didn't want to tell him the mill pond because I didn't want anyone to know about my secret place so I just told him I was going to the Shop N Save to get a drink.
    "I got a drink," he said. "I got Kool-Aid. Why don't you come up? It's hot."
    I looked at Mister Dean and then I looked at the fence post and then I looked at my feet and then the fence post and then Mister Dean again.
    "You come up or you don't come 'cross my property no more."
    And because I dreaded going the long way and because it was really hot and because I didn't know what else to say, I came up.
    And that's how I started having Kool-Aids with Mister Dean.
    He had a real house with a porch that only had one chair. He would make me sit on the chair and he would lean against the porch rail facing me or he would sometimes sit on the stairs, sideways, so he could look at me. Mister Dean was about as old as my mom, I guessed. I didn't like how I could always hear his breathing, this raspy gurgle. It never left him, even when he was speaking. It made me think of the cicadas at the mill pond and how their buzz never stopped, it just filled up the air like a jar. Mister Dean's breaths were like that but they never became part of the everything so that eventually you didn't hear it anymore. His shirts bunched funny in the back and I wondered if he hid black filmy cicada wings under them.
    I found out later he did not.

I don't know why they call it a mill pond because there is no mill. Maybe there was one there back in the 1800's or something but now there is not. I sometimes walk around in the brush around the mill pond looking for, like, relics of a mill. Ruins, I guess; pieces of something that used to be whole. Like old concrete slabs or stones or a broken turny-wheel for energy making, like the ones on riverboats like they have on the Mississippi. Maybe some sort of old chutes that look like playground slides, but rusted. Big wooden beams with iron spikes sticking out of them. Big chunky things that look like they were put together with strong hands that knew how to make things that would last forever.     They'd be broken but still strong. They would still look dignified, even though they were just old pieces of something bigger.
    The brush is high in places and where there is no brush, there are weeds. I have looked as much as I can even though I might get bit by ticks or snakes. I just feel like I want to find proof of something that I feel is true.
    But I never do.

We drank the Kool-Aid out of jelly jars that were always dirty but I never said anything. We'd sit on his porch and drink the Kool-Aid until it was gone. We would talk about things that people talk about when they don't really have much to say to each other; water-treading things. I looked at my Kool-Aid a lot; some days pink, some days red, some days purple or blue. Sometimes he'd ask me how old I was even though I had already told him before. Sometimes he'd look at me for a long while and then say, "Tinkerbell . . . " like he was rolling my name around in his mouth and then he'd shake his head and laugh a little. He mostly looked at me and did little nods. And breathe.
    I must've said something about Suzy Q's once and one day he brought me one with my Kool-Aid. I told him, "No, that's all right." And he said, "No girl, you go on. Eat it." And I said, "No, I'd better not. My mom . . . " and he said, "Your mom, what?" And I didn't want to tell him about how my mom won't let me eat sweets and how she hides all her cookies even though I always find them and how I heard her on the phone telling her best friend Avery how "Tinker's just gettin' so goddamn big." And, so, I just set that Suzy Q down on my thigh for as long as I could, like it wasn't delicious, like it was a turd or a dead thing like I wasn't sitting there wanting with every part of me to shove it right into my mouth. But after a while, I did. I ate it. I ate the Suzy Q. I couldn't help it.
    Mister Dean watched me eat the Suzy Q. How I unwrapped it and shook it out into my fist like it was a squeezed out pup. How I let the wrapper fall. How it blew across the dirty porch wood and fell off the side. He watched how I took it with both my hands and pulled it apart, slowly. How I listened to the quiet wet split of the cream pulling away. How I smelled at it, the sweet chocolate scent erasing the faint cherry smell of Kool-Aid and the wet dirt smell from his just watered garden. He watched as I placed one half down on my thigh, cream side up and ate the other half with my eyes partly closed like when I was alone. Shoving and chewing and swallowing until its length was gone and then licking each of my fingers clean of its guts. Mister Dean watched me eat each half like he'd never seen anyone eat anything before.
    "You really like them things, don't you?" His breath, for once, sounded gone.
    And I didn't answer because he already knew the answer.
    "You want another one?" He asked me this in a voice meant for church.
    And I didn't answer that question either and he didn't wait for it. He got up from the stairs and disappeared into the house. When he came out he had the box. He leaned himself against the porch railing, opened the box, got one of the little chocolate cream cakes, and reached it out to me, just far enough to where I'd have to reach.
    "Say please," he said.
    I didn't want to, but then I did.
    Mister Dean watched and then Mister Dean made me say please two more times.
    Later on the only please I would say would be followed by the word, 'stop'.
    On the Kool-Aid days, I'd never make it to the mill pond.

There is a little dock on the mill pond. There is a little row boat tied to the dock. I guess it belongs to the farmer, but nobody uses it. It never moves. I know this because I put a rock on it once. I put it in a wobbly place so if someone were to use it, it would surely fall. The rock is still there. The rope that ties it has moss growing on it and a spider web that always stays the same. The oars sit like an X in the belly of it. It might as well be on land.
    After I am done looking for ruins, I lie on the dock, on my back, and pull my tank top up to my boobies. I rub my belly in the sun. I pray nobody comes but I also hope they do. Nobody ever does. Dragonflies land on the rowboat rope and then they fly away and then they come back and then they fly away again. Sometimes they land on my knees. It's quiet there. The water never moves. It doesn't really have a shore. Its outsides are mostly cattails, and by the dock, lily pads. Every so often there are clear plops that break the hum of the cicadas that like to do their buzz when it's so hot outside. Their buzz sounds like how the sun feels hot. The wet frog plops are the only cool sound out there. The middle of the mill pond is a perfect circle. The water is black like it refuses to reflect the sky or can't. From the sky, looking down on the mill pond, I'm sure it looks like a big green eye-ball, the cattail heads brown flecks in the green, its middle the shiny black pupil, staring up at the clouds. Like me.
    I think about falling into that black pupil sometimes. Untying the rope, disturbing the spider web, falling the wobbly rock, and climbing into the belly of the boat. I have never rowed anything, but I would figure it out and paddle through the iris of green cattails and lily pads until I got to the pupil. I could lie on the boat for a while, there in the middle of the pupil. Stare up into the sky with it; just me and the mill pond's pupil. The dragonflies would find my knees and I would rub my belly in the sun. When I felt ready, I would stand up in the boat. I'd stand there in my too short, too small striped tank top and my striped in the fabric pants and my blanket fringe hair and I'd think about the ruins I could never find. I'd think about how I knew what it was like to be a ruin. The cattails would watch and the cicadas would hum their buzzy heat song and when I jumped into the pupil's shiny black it would make a cool plop sound like the frogs' do. On my way down I'd wonder if I would ever be found and how nice it would feel to be looked for.




*

p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Well, while you seem to have put the ass/anal near the center of commenters' attentions yesterday, I nonetheless like to think that my pancakes had something t do with it too. Yeah, never been to Pittsburgh. Or even close. Don't know why. It sounds colorful in some kind of unique way, huh. The accent thing, huh. Maybe I'll do a Pittsburgh post or something. Weirder things have happened, I think. I realize that I don't know what the limerick form entails, which is weird, I guess, so I don't know if those are limericks are limericks or 'limericks'. I mean, they're nice and funny in any case. Whoa, you were productive yesterday. Everyone, Keaton has held out an offer to 'bring [you] diamonds'. Who in their right mind would say no to that? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Well, at least over here, Houellbecq has successfully provoked, if, that is, getting the media all swerved in his direction counts constantly, and I guess that does count a lot these days? RIP: Richard Glatzer, and, of course, I'm very,very sorry for your personal loss. I only met Richard once, strangely, when I did a reading ages ago at his old Sit-and-Spin Club. Did you ever go there? It was a very cool, fun place. ** Steevee, It does seem that way, yeah. ** Damien Ark, Aw, thanks a lot, buddy! ** Bill, Proud, chuffed, humbled to have fortified you for the day, B. Taman Shud are interesting, maybe slightly more in theory than in experience, I don't know. Not bad, though. Shit, you too? I mean re: the allergies. It is the start of spring though, isn't it, when those annoying sleepers awake? In LA, spring always wrecks me for, I don't know, a week, two of them? Feel much, much better. ** Cal Graves, Weird how something as simple as an ass can cause an obsession with same to grow creepy, but it's true. Heck, I've kind of gotten a whole 'career' out of paying attention to that creepiness maybe? Ha ha, D'is, nice. Thank you re: my giffery, sir. Yeah, shit always results from any ambition, and I guess it's all about the proportion and whether the shit part is inspired enough. God knows shit and genius have a tendency to pal around. Oh, I liked that thing on your blog that you sent me/us too a lot, btw. I forgot to tell you. Yeah, you write so good, among other things. Deep bow. Wow, I don't know any of those photographers you mentioned, by name at least, off the top of my head. Here comes google. A piece of furniture? Hm, does a ladder count? Maybe a ladder. You? ** Kier, How do you do that, seriously? Dentagious. I should be copyrighting all of these derivations. Co-copyrighting them with you, or, wait, on your behalf. Yeah, that. Thanks about my/Zac's breakfast. Your psych will be at the meeting? Wow, that's interesting. That's cool. You finished your app! Congratulations, pal! Awesome! It would totally make sense if your recent tiredness was just or mostly stress, right, sure, huh. I hope so. Or I mean I hope it vamooses now that the big thing is uploaded. You should apply to those things, right? I mean, just remain pragmatic about how difficult it is and how undoubtedly political the decisions are and all of that. Or, I don't know. See how you feel. Oh, god, the slaughtered sheepling. RIP. What you said makes sense, though, yeah. Yesterday was kind of intense. The only boring part is that this lower back problem/weakness I've had all my life flared up yesterday, and basically I'm in near-constant pain down there and have to spend boring time stretching it out and flattering it with painkillers. Blah. Otherwise, Zac and I were working on the sound edit of Scene 2 when we got the news from our producers that, in order to meet the deadline for submitting our film to the Cannes Film Festival, we'll have to Fed Ex them a DVD of the finished film by next Saturday at the latest. It would have been nice if they'd informed us of this deadline weeks ago, but okay. So the next week/nine days is going to be intense. We lined up the sound mixer. Only problem is that one big reason we hired him is that we were told he has his own studio, which cuts down the costs. But he informed us yesterday that his studio is being relocated and is unavailable for two weeks. So, we're going to have to do the sound mix in really not great circumstances at Zac's place and try to get as clean a sound as we can by the deadline in that non-pro set-up and then go into his studio later on and do the final mix. So we'll start doing that on Monday, and then Kiddiepunk will come mid-week and we'll do the color correction and make the film's titles and end credits with him. And we have to hope the guy doing the special effects and compositing work will get his work done in time that we can insert the corrected frames and scenes into the film by Friday. It's going to be very tight. So, that was a lot to learn, and now we'll be in a work frenzy for a while. Anyway, we finished Scene 2, and then Zac had to reload all the sound files for Scene 1 because they were slightly fucked up, and that's a very laborious task, and I couldn't help, so he started doing that in hopes of being finished by this morning so we can work on the Scene 1 sound, and I went home. There's a possible new apartment that looks good, but whether I can grab it in time is a question. Empty apartments don't last long here, and my being a foreigner makes renting a place much more difficult than it is for natives. Ugh. Sorry, all of that is kind of boring to read, I know, but it was my day. Today more sound editing, some groaning in pain, a gallery opening later, and trying to get my shit together re: applying for that apartment. What did Thursday do to you? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, Jeff. News about the sound thing is up in my day report to Kier. Good news, but it's going to be crazy next week. Favorite Queneau books? Hm. I would say, in addition to 'EiS', 'Pierrot mon ami', 'We Always Treat Women Too Well', 'Zazie dans le métro', and 'The Blue Flowers'. Very cool, about the Schroeter piece. Where will it appear? ** Thomas Moronic, Thanks a bunch, Mr. T! ** Right. Today I'm focusing attention on the new book that I'm most excited to read. It's en route to me. xTx is an amazing writer. Check it out. See you tomorrow.