'Illusion arises when the perceptual system breaks down. Researchers study illusions to enhance their understanding of the otherwise hidden mechanisms responsible for accurate perception. Studying verbal illusions, therefore, may reveal something about the functioning of the language system. One such illusion is the verbal transformation effect, first reported by researchers in 1958. They found that listeners who were presented with a continuously repeating word or phrase began to perceive transformations — that is, changes in the repeating stimulus, relative to what the listener had perceived on preceding repetitions of the stimulus. Transformations ranged from one-phoneme alterations to drastic phonological distortions. For example, when presented with the word truce, participants reported hearing phonetically similar transformations, such as struce and truth, and the pseudoword struth, as well as dissimilar transformations, such as Esther.





'This transformation is also related to semantic satiation, a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then processes the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. The phrase "semantic satiation" was coined by Leon Jakobovits James in his doctoral dissertation at McGill University, Montreal, Canada awarded in 1962. The dissertation presents several experiments that demonstrate the operation of the semantic satiation effect in various cognitive tasks such as rating words and figures that are presented repeatedly in a short time, verbally repeating words then grouping them into concepts, adding numbers after repeating them out loud, and bilingual translations of words repeated in one of the two languages. In each case subjects would repeat a word or number for several seconds, then perform the cognitive task using that word. It was demonstrated that repeating a word prior to its use in a task made the task somewhat more difficult. The explanation for the phenomenon was that verbal repetition repeatedly aroused a specific neural pattern in the cortex which corresponds to the meaning of the word. Rapid repetition causes both the peripheral sensorimotor activity and the central neural activation to fire repeatedly, which is known to cause reactive inhibition, hence a reduction in the intensity of the activity with each repetition.





'What causes verbal transformations? The most detailed accounts of the verbal transformation effect to date are derived from a broad theory of speech perception and production known as node structure theory. Node structure theory is instantiated as a localist network model, with nodes (representational units) hierarchically organized into three levels: the muscle movement level, the phonological level, and the sentential level. The muscle movement level contains nodes specifically for the production of speech. Nodes at the phonological level represent sublexical linguistic units, such as syllables, sub-syllabic segments (e.g., onset or rhyme), and phonetic features. The sentential level contains lexical nodes for words and phrases.





'Both perception and production operate on the same nodes at the phonological and sentential levels. In perception, speech input first primes nodes at the feature level. Priming produces increased subthreshold activity (but not activation, as the term is generally used) in a node.It spreads in parallel across nodes, with its strength being positively related to how well it matches the input. In the same fashion, priming spreads to the phonological nodes and, finally, to the lexical nodes. At each level, priming strength is a function of the match to the input from the preceding level. Although several nodes may be primed at once, only the node that is primed to a higher degree than all the others becomes activated.





'How pseudowords are recognized and new lexical entries are formed is also described by node structure theory. Connections from nodes in the phonological system converge to form temporary lexical nodes that represent pseudowords. These connections are initially weak, and without frequent activation, these newly formed and fragile connections will decay. Repeated use of the pseudoword will eventually “commit” the node to permanent status, at which point it will become a new entry in the lexicon.





'Unique among models of speech perception, node structure theory provides a detailed account of the dynamics of representational units during repeated stimulation, which allows one to make precise predictions regarding the verbal transformation effect. In node structure theory, verbal transformations occur because of node satiation, which is a drop in the maximum attainable priming level of a node. Nodes at the lexical level or at the phonological level can become satiated. Satiation occurs because of repeated activation (not merely priming) of a node from continual repetition of the same utterance (e.g., the word cast). As satiation increases, the node’s priming level drops, eventually falling below that of a competitor node (e.g., the lexical node for fast) that is only moderately primed by the speech input, because of one or more mismatching phonological segments. Because the most primed node becomes activated in node structure theory, the competitor node (e.g., the lexical node for fast), which now has the highest priming level, will then become activated, resulting in the perception of a transformation (i.e., the word fast) by the listener.





'As the preceding description suggests, the amount of priming a node receives greatly influences the transformations perceived. A node that is unable to attain a great deal of priming will rarely become activated. One other factor that influences transformations, according to node structure theory, is neighborhood density, which is the number of lexical entries (i.e., neighbors) that are phonetically similar to the repeating stimulus. The more neighbors there are, the greater the number of possible competitors there are to become activated, resulting in a greater number and a wider range of transformations. Researchers have reported data that confirm this prediction.





'At the heart of node structure theory’s account of the verbal transformation effect is the concept of lexical node stability, which refers to the extent to which a node remains activated over its competitors. The more stable a node is, the less frequently it will lose out to other lexical competitors becoming activated. Stability is a function of a number of variables, such as the amount of priming transmitted to the lexical node from phonological nodes (i.e., acoustic–phonetic fit), neighborhood density, and strength of its connections, which is directly related to frequency of use. Thus, node stability should be inversely related to transformation frequency. In particular, nodes for words, which have strong and well-formed representations, should be more stable than nodes for pseudowords. Data from a few experiments partially support this prediction. In 1966, researchers recorded the number of transformations that listeners reported when hearing words and pseudowords repeat. He found that pseudowords elicited more transformations than did words, suggesting that nodes for pseudowords are less stable than nodes for words. In an analysis of the specific transformations (i.e., forms) that listeners reported, one researcher found a similar asymmetry, with pseudowords eliciting more forms than did words. Natsoulas also discussed the verbal transformation effect in terms of satiation and perceptual stability.





'Construction of an accurate model of word perception requires specifying the operation of representational units. At present, knowledge about their operation is lacking, which is why decisions on how to implement them in computational models, such as TRACE and Merge, must be guided by intuitions and indirect evidence. The hypothesized mechanisms of satiation and recovery, as embodied in node structure theory, begin to fill this gap by describing how reactivation of representational units might occur. The verbal transformation effect is well suited for testing the validity of this proposal, because the frequent perception of transformations provides a means of measuring node stability and, thus, linking it to one or more of these mechanisms.' -- Lisa Contos Shoaf & Mark A. Pitt, Ohio State University









Auditory Demonstrations

The demonstrations were designed for headphone listening, and since some of the effects involve different signals delivered to each ear, stereo headphones are recommended. If you click on the link, a new window will open and begin playing the sound file. You should adjust the playback so that the narrative portions are at a comfortable listening level.


RESTORATION OF ABSENT SOUNDS

Homophonic Temporal Induction
Broadband Noise
Tone (Fixed Levels)
Tone (Changing Fainter Level)

Heterophonic Temporal Induction
Tones

Temporal Induction of Speech:
Single Phonemic Restoration
Restoration by Noise

Temporal Induction of Speech:
Multiple Phonemic Restorations
Restoration by Noise


PITCH AND INFRAPITCH

Repetition of Frozen Noise Segments
"Whooshing" Infrapitch (2 Hz)
"Motorboating" Infrapitch (6 Hz)
"Motorboating" Infrapitch (15 Hz)
Noisy Pitch (40 Hz)
Pure Melodic Pitch (120 Hz)
Pure Melodic Pitch (300 Hz)


CONTRALATERAL INDUCTION OF TONE

Contralateral Induction


PERCEPTION OF ACOUSTIC SEQUENCES

Identification of Order
Nonverbal and Verbal Sounds

Global Pattern Recognition of Permuted Orders
Brief Nonverbal Sounds
Brief Speech Sounds:
The Vowel Sequence Illusion


ILLUSORY CHANGES OF REPEATED WORDS:
THE VERBAL TRANSFORMATION EFFECT

Diotic "Flame"
Dichotic "Flame"
Diotic Bisyllabic Reversible Word "Farewell/Welfare"
Dichotic "Farewell/Welfare"
Diotic Monosyllabic Reversible Word "Ace/Say"
Dichotic "Ace/Say"


test







'The philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno describes material as something which is a self-sedimented spirit, predetermined by society, in the minds of people. Based on this theory, the artist can only choose from a limited range of materials as dealing intensively with the material inevitably leads to a discussion with society. If an artist consciously tries to abandon this repressive paradigm he or she might only partly succeed since historical patterns will immediately be recalled. Adorno exemplifies the shabbiness and abrasion of the diminished seventh chord or certain chromatic passing notes in the Palm Court Music of the 19th century as musical taboos. According to him, these tones were not only outmoded but utterly wrong and did not fulfill their function any more. The truth or non-truth of a material is not decided on its isolated appearance but on its position within the prevailing standards of aesthetics.





'In music there are only few compositions that consist of merely perseverative repetitions. The composers rather express themselves by gradual changes of certain individual notes or entire figures. Minimal Art produces several pieces which use repetitions whose components do not change. Initially the repetitive moment is the most striking feature of Minimalist music. At the beginning of their Minimalist-oriented period many Minimalist composers work with highly repetitive patterns, like Philip Glass, who concentrates basically on repetition and static harmony for the electrically amplified violin in his composition Strung Out (1967). While Glass tends to vary the repetitions, Steve Reich employs this musical technique for his audiotape compositions and his piece Piano Phase (1967) in a continually unaltered way.





'The Englishman Michael Nyman and the founder of the Scratch Orchestra, Cornelius Cardew (born in Gloucester in 1939, died in London in 1981), are the most important European representatives of Minimalism. In his compositions Nyman primarily uses historic models and exposes them to never-ending repetitive procedures which vary only insignificantly. In Minimalism repetition does not mean an approximation to inartificiality in the sense of Popular music, but rather creates a visual rhythm or specific motion models. Repetition creates patterns either according to an exactly defined plan or by chance. The first way usually means employing mathematical logical processes and takes place in an environment of which the artist is fully aware, while the final result of the second way, a random process, is not directly predictable.





'Repetition is seen as one of the central characteristics of Minimalism but at the same time it is defamed as monotony or a consequence of a lack of originality. Minimalists are commonly accused of only seeking to disguise the centripetal force in music that inclines towards monotony. By the end of the 1970s at the latest, the term Minimalist is used more frequently as a swearword than as an art term. Nevertheless, retrospectively it is the expressionism that is to a large extent held responsible for the cultural setbacks during the Reagan era, while Minimalism in the 1960s, despite its restrictivity, allows for various cultural flows to develop. By restricting the material and the possibility of its modification, the criticised repetition inevitably leads to a Minimalist principle, even if some artists regard repetition as an independent movement. The composer Louis Andriessen (born in Utrecht in 1939) argues that for him the repetitive moment is always more important than the so-called Minimalism.' -- Christian Schrei



Terry Riley 'In C' (1964) (excerpt)



Steve Reich 'It's Gonna Rain' (1965)


Steve Reich 'Come Out' (1966)


Philip Glass 'Music with Changing Parts' (1970)


Gavin Bryars 'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet' (1971)


Michael Nyman 'Time Lapse' (1985)




*

p.s. Hey. As a reminder, tomorrow you will get a lovely new post, but no p.s. because I'll be tooling around in Bruges, and then the post plus p.s. combo will return on Thursday, whereupon I will catch up with the comments that have arrived between now and then. ** Misanthrope, Makes utter sense, the new vs. old thing. Car-wise, at least. I know that I don't need to repeat the hoary but, I guess, true old rule of thumb that not always getting what one wants is a good preparer. It would be good for the Neph to learn to want you to get what you want, even at his minor expense or something? The Undertaker is back? Why did you ..., what the ... ? Well, yay! ** David Ehrenstein, Gotta get those Gaddis letters. Whoa, re: 'Ganja and Hess'. Never heard of that or of Gaddis' turn. What a weird sounding combo that is. I'll try Youtube, et. al. ** Cobaltfram, Welcome, err, home. I'll check those Adams links asap. I've got a train to catch too soon to do it soon. Oh, wait, I saw 'Shaker Loops'. And a chunk of 'The Death of Klinghoffer' on video. Okay, right, I'm remembering now. Awesomeness supreme about you and Chris getting along so well. I'm searching through possible ideas/ways to turn the novel into something. I have one big, overriding idea, but I'm not ready to talk about it yet. I think it will need to have some degree of autobiography in it, but I'll probably need to find some kind of fictional or 'fictional' construct to house it in maybe. Doesn't make you a pussy, no. Mornings have their own special requirements. Eternally crossed fingers re: the book's rounds until you give me the great word. ** Alan, Hi, Alan! I already tried that. That approach was one of my failed rescue attempts. The problem was that it just made the central problem of my inability/ unwillingness to write autobiographically about myself worse. But there are some bits and pieces of that failed attempt that might be useful as meta elements if I can figure the novel out anew, I don't know. And how are you? ** Sypha, Ramsey Campbell, I know that name. Hm. I think maybe my mom read books by him, if that's possible? ** Grant maierhofer, Hey, man. Very nice post on Michael Kimball. I still have to read his latest one. Everyone, Mr. Grant Maierhofer has made a terrific post over on HTMLGIANT about the terrific writer Michael Kimball that I highly recommend you visit and devour today. This way. Oh, yeah, I was looking over that Criticism kerfuffle thing betwixt Chris H, ADJ, and those who comment on HTMLG this morning while coffeeing. I don't know. I always really like Higgs' brain and stuff, so I guess that's where I stand or something. That tank/sound art thing sounds, you know, really interesting. My brain did a somersault, so I hope that pans out so you can do/write that, man. ** Will C., Yeah, I tried to figure out how to do it yesterday, but, as is the case with all really good ideas, nothing crystalized right away. Never seen 'Girls'. If it's American TV from the past six years or so, I don't know it. I've seen three episodes of 'The Walking Dead', two episodes of 'Mad Men', a handful of French dubbed episodes of 'Breaking Bad', and ... that's about it. It sure is getting a lot of talk, that's for sure. 'Girls', I mean. So bad that it's great ... I'll have to think. Everyone, help out a fellow d.l., specifically Will C., by suggesting some movies that are so bad they're good for him to watch. Will you? Thank you. ** Rewritedept, I'm so sorry about your shittiest of all weeks. I hope the whole thing pivots either today or while you were asleep last night. My weekend was good. I finally saw Iceage play live last night, and they were even more phenomenal than I had imagined. Holy shit. Very highly recommended. Yeah, this week up through Monday is crazed in the best possible way, for me at least. I'm only going to be home in Paris for one day. I hope my busy week infects yours. ** Steevee, Cool about the Ozon interview. I didn't catch his latest when it was here. Sarah Polley, cool. Thanks for link. I'll have to read it later. Everyone, from Steevee: 'Following up our Houston hip-hop day, here's an excellent article on DJ Screw.' ** Chilly Jay Chill, Really, about its massiveness? I'll try to agenda-cize it. Oh, yes, Blanchot's 'unworking' theory was absolutely massive for me. It's central to what I'm trying to do. It in combination with Bresson's theories on a work's construction are virtually always a starting point for me. If I end up diverging with certain novels, it's by necessity and reluctantly. Probably obviously, the reason I'm happiest with 'TMS' and 'MLT' is because I think I found a way to implement my highest goal most purely and well in those cases, but I think it's pretty there and at work in almost all of my books, if not even all of them. I'm excited that your reading about that. What does that theory do in regards to your own theories or notions about fiction construction? ** Statictick, Ha ha, if I gave the escort and slave posts a rest, I think the blog's traffic would probably drop by half or something. Moms will have to deal twice a month, I guess. Okay, cool, yeah, tell me what happened after my traveling stint is done 'cos I will be more concentrated then, for sure. Love to you too, bud. ** Chris Cochrane, Mr. Cochrane! Good morning! Cool re: Wednesday recording session, and, okay, I'll get that CD, or, wait, stream it? I'll figure it out. How can I tell what tracks you are on? I'll look at the thing more thoroughly when I don't have an impending train. Gisele, and I guess me too, is/are doing a production of 'Rite of Spring' in, like, I think two years? Thanks about my travels. Should be safe. Should be great, I think. Take good care. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. Cool, thanks, about the eBooks post. Really good stuff there, obviously. James Bridle ... no, maybe I've never heard of him. Not sure. No, I think not. His interest in the collaborative relationship between artist and audience very much intrigues me since I think about that relationship all the time and as intricately as I can when I write. Great, I will definitely go investigate him courtesy of those links. Thank you a lot! Festo Air Penguins! Holy shit! That's amazing! Everyone, follow Chris Dankland's lead and meet Festo Air Penguins. Really, seriously, do. May a great Tuesday fall upon your 'hood. ** Dynomoose, You don't even need a kindle. Click in the appointed spot on anything, and they're right there. Ha ha, nice link. If the train has Wifi, and I think it does, that's how I will some minutes. Okay, what exactly is the Girl Scout Cookie situation? Tell me, tell me. ** 5STRINGS, You're living the life right now. Don't get rolled or whatever. Rolled in the bad sense. Life is fucking beautiful. Well, my sliver of it is. I totally agree. ** Billy Lloyd, I think you and your mother absolutely should, of course. And I think it should become a chain venture, reaching far flung lands like France and even further flung, making you guys mega-rich and making the likes of people like me mega-happy. And I guess fat too. Hm, on second thought, ... Thank you about my week. What's up with your week? ** Okay. Yeah, so, the post. I like it, obviously, but do you? The blog will refresh tomorrow without me particularly there to add my two cents, and then it will refresh again with me back on immediate board come Thursday. See you then.

*

p.s. The most honorable writer and d.l. Thomas Moronic takes control of the blog in my absence and gifts you with with a hand-picked concert by the supreme musical entity that is Xiu Xiu. Please give it up for XX and him in the comments arena, thank you. And thank you, non-moronic one. As stated yesterday, I'm in Bruges today. Last night I saw a hopefully great -- I'm writing this on Tuesday -- performance of Gisele Vienne's/ Stephen O'Malley's/ Peter Rehberg's/ my 'Kindertotenlieder', which is my favorite of all the theater works I've created with Gisele, and today I am exploring said Belgian town with my pal Zac, and tomorrow I will be back in Paris whereupon I will catch up with all of you. Enjoy today!

'Mira refers to the idea of mirror of the infinite, eternal and all symbolic thereto. Polis means the size of cities and ancient kingdoms. It is reminiscent of fabulous adventure ... and future.' -- Anne Fourcade


'The first grand scale theme park ever built in France, Mirapolis was located at Cergy Pontoise, a city 30 miles northwest of Paris. With a surface area of 220 acres, this amusement park opened in 1987. It featured up to 45 attractions. With its immense Gargantua statue, the world's second largest hollow figurative structure after the Statue Of Liberty, Mirapolis was recognizable from miles away. So why did this park last only 5 years ? First of all, the huge expanse of the park proved to be a very bad idea. The several roller coasters were located too far from each other, and people had to walk so far they found it annoying. Also, during the first year of operation, workers from nearby fairgrounds, angered by the competition, protested and sabotaged the park, distributing thousands of fake entrance tickets as well as breaking into the park to physically damage the buildings and attractions and physically attack the workers and visitors, causing Mirapolis to suffer huge financial losses. Within two years, the park's owner filed a petition for bankruptcy. One year later, the park, already a skeleton of itself, closed for good. In 1995, the Gargantua statue’s head threatened to fall down and was dynamited.' -- The Lost France












































Genesis

1982: American architect and theme park designer Anne Fourcade, formerly a higher up at Disneyland, proposes to build the first French amusement park in the city of Cergy Pointoise near Paris.
1984: Saudi businessman Gaith Pharaon decides to invest in the project. The budget is estimated at 500 million francs (more than 76 million euros).
1985: The theme park, now named Mirapolis, is green lit. The Society of Economic Studies and Strategy Consulting announces that France is very favorable to the emergence of theme parks and provide a bright future for the profession.
15 July 1985: Beginning of the construction of the park.
28 October 1986: Installation of the head of Gargantua, 11 m high, 28 tons.
May 20: Mirapolis is officially opened by Prime Minister Jacques Chirac . The park is open 10 hours a day and 200 days per year. It is forecast that between 2 and 2.5 million visitors will visit the park per year which corresponds to a turnover of 300 million francs (more than 45 million euros). The park could have, in theory, balanced its operations this year.
May 21: Mirapolis opens to the public. Entry costs 100 francs (15 €) per adult and 70 francs (10 €) per child. On this first day, 15 hours of violent incidents and acts of sabotage occur. 150 local fairground workers force their way into the park denouncing "unfair competition". They are armed with iron bars and clubs and destroy several facilities. There are 10 serious injuries, 650,000 francs of damage (99 000 €), and one million francs worth of commercial harm (152,500 euros). There are 3,000 visitors the first day.
May 22: Only 300 individual tickets are sold.
May 23: 10,000 visitors, half of which are at reduced group rate.
May 24: 1500 people come to the park entrance with fake invitation cards that had been distributed the day before by angry local fairground workers. The workers dump nails on the highway that leads to Mirapolis.
June: After 15 days of operation, there are only about 100,000 visitors when 150,000 had been expected. Moreover, it is mainly school groups with restricted rates.
October: Mirapolis closes its doors after a disappointing first season. It has drawn 600,000 of the expected 2.5 million visitors. There is a 20 million francs (3 million euros) loss. Anne Fourcade Anne withdraws from the project.





1988

May 12: Opening day after a further 100 million francs (15 million 245 €) investment. The singer Carlos occurs every Sunday in the park for four months. Now, the park offers more than 45 attractions. Admission prices revised downwards to 75 francs (11.5 €). New attractions include a 4-D cinema, a flight simulator rider, a large lake, a carousel-type ride called Balloon Race, and one of the largest roller coasters in Europe (Miralooping).
October: Season 2 ends with one million visitors. Slight improvement over the first season, but 1.2 million visitors had been necessary to recoup.





1989

April 1: Opening of the third season. There are eleven new attractions including a second roller coaster and a Ferris wheel at a cost of 30 million francs (more than 4.5 million euros). Entrance fees: 110 francs (16.75 euros) per adult and 80 francs (12 euros) per child.
April 30: The inauguration of Parc Asterix, a direct competitor.
July 11: In an attempt to draw attention to the park and increase revenues, a major boxing event is held there, attended by many stars (Yannick Noah, Jean-Paul Belmondo, etc.). The operation is a fiasco. The French boxer René Jacquot, defending the title of world champion, is knocked out in the first few seconds of the first round. In addition, the match is prematurely interrupted by a power outage.
November: Season 3 ends. Annual attendance has fallen to 640,000 visitors.
December 21: the appointment of an administrator, Ms. Jeanne Bertrand. The park's accumulated debt is 85 million francs (13 million euros).





1990

January 8: An additional 15 million euros is invested in the park.
January 22: The owner of the park, the company Paris-Parc, files for bankruptcy with 330 million francs in liabilities (50 million euros).
March: The Mirapolis site is pre-selected for as a possible location for the future Stade de France along with twenty-five other sites. The stadium would be built on the site of the park.
April 7: Mirapolis opens in confusion. A third of the park is closed for the entirety of the season. 420,000 visitors are expected this year. Price changed again: 100 francs (15 €) per adult and 75 francs (11.50 € ) per child.





1991

March 23: Mirapolis opens for its fifth season without changing prices.
Oct. 20: This is the end. Last day operating Mirapolis. The park closes at 18:30 permanently. This year, 400,000 visitors passed through the doors.
End 1991 : Crédit National Park, the park's last buyer, withdraws in the face of the imminent arrival of EuroDisney. The amusement park Mirapolis has ceased to exist, despite the 700 million francs (106 million euros) invested.





Extinction

1992: Contrary to rumor, no attraction is left open this year. The attractions are dismantled and sold to amusement parks in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Park Berlin Spreepark acquires thirteen Mirapolis attractions.
12 April 1992: Disneyland Paris opens. It precipitates the end of the operation of Mirapolis in view of the competition it represents.
31 December 1992: Following the end of the lease, Mirapolis becomes an industrial wasteland.
13 October 1993: The company Cergy-park, the park's owner, obtains a demolition permit.
31 August 1995: the statue of Gargantua is partially dismantled and blown up. This is the end.




















*

p.s. Hey. Wow, quiet around here. So, I'm back, very temporarily. Tomorrow morning, I go to Switzerland for a long weekend, and, due to the nature of said trip, doing the p.s. while there is kind of unrealistic. After today's p.s., there will be posts sans p.s.es until Tuesday whereupon the p.s. will return and everything will get normalized around here again. Tomorrow, you will get a quite fantastic new post. On Saturday and Monday, you'll get rerun posts that I hope you will be happy to see again or for the first time. I apologize for these unusual, almost consecutive interruptions to the blog flow, and I will catch up with all of the comments you leave in the next several days when I'm back on board next Tuesday.  Speaking of ... ** Tuesday ** Misanthrope, You're a good, forward-thinking Unc. Well, I hope the choreography of the Undertaker's return involves him winning yet again. Probably, right? The 20th?! But, yeah, what can you do? That's power hierarchies in general for you. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Ha ha, a few seconds of that mash-up was enough, but ha ha, yes. ** David Ehrenstein, Riley is the man. Or one of them. Yes, Russia is literally worsening significantly by the day right now. As Yury says, it's very hard to wake Russians sufficiently up so as to understand that they have the power to do serious damage to their government, but, when they do, watch out. Can only hope that moment is arriving. ** Lizz Brady, Hi, Lizz. Bruges was very nice and fun. Mm, I'm not sure if I would make a special trip to go there. I mean, it's pretty and weirdly clean, but it didn't seem like a eventful, necessary place. Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam sounds really good. All three of those cities are great and really different from one another both in looks and culturally and all that. Yeah, nice trio, I think. I didn't get to check on Buten yet because I'm so in-transit right now, but asap for sure. That search is locked in. Writing rut, me too. It'll dissipate 'cos ruts always do, but I hate when writing gets all sulky and all 'I want to be alone for a while', don't you? ** Will C., Oh, only one 'so bad it's good' recommendation. People are being very quiet here. Strange. And I haven't gotten a rec. list together on my end either. I will, and hopefully you won't be through that phase yet. ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! Thank you a lot. Yeah, I was happy about that post, so, yeah, cool. Intense start in the best way, I hope? I'll see you really soon, right? Yay! ** 5STRINGS, 'Living the life' is such a weird phrase. That 'the' always refers to something that involves being a master of capitalism or something. You're living a life. Me too. Right, we were on top that very tower where the guy jumped in the movie. Well, not on the very top because they don't let you go up there. You thought 'In Bruges' was a comedy movie title? I guess the word' Bruges' sounds kind of funny. ** Wolf, Wolf! Dude, so glad you liked it. Me too. I should do more posts like that. If nothing else, I'll have less comments to go through, ha ha. Same page, yes! And so soon on the same turf, yes? Yes! ** Grant Scicluna, Hi, Grant! Thank you, man. So cool that you finally got the Bresson bible. Well, I suspect that Bresson is in everything here and that I do in general in some way. Yep, I can link you to Bresson's 'NoC' right .... now. Wow, weird about the classification system there. I guess I have this romanticized image of you guys being all laid back and smiley. But then that's the image that has accrued around people from LA, which isn't true either. Good, no, great of you to start and carry through on that fight. And the community film project sounds really spectacular and beautifully thought through. You're doing really good, man, at least as seen from the outside. Things with me are really good and exciting these days. I'm doing great. It's nice, and thank you for asking. Think of you often too, G. ** Bill, We were. 'In', I mean. Bruges is pretty. It's clean, almost spooky Disneyland-style clean. Really glad you liked the post. Oh, so, how was that super eclectic sounding event? Really hard to imagine it in full.  Hard in a really good way. ** Sypha, Then I was thinking about some other Ramsey or Campbell because my mom definitely didn't read horror lit. ** Dynomoose, Understood about your impatience. Surely, they're in your hands and being sold like crazy by now. How good Girl Scout Cookies are is weirdness. I like you as a co-troop leader. I can totally envision that. I mean that as a total compliment, mind you. Aw, in other words. Ooh, DNA stuff, thank you. You are totally my Santa now. ** Wednesday ** Misanthrope, Snow! We're definitely done with snow over here, I think. No, definitely. I think there'll be some snow in my long weekend, though. Maybe that's just my half-brained Swiss assumption. Probably. Have a superb weekend, buddy. ** David Ehrenstein, Lovely long weekend to you! ** Statictick, Hi, N. Oh, I know you weren't. I was just being, I don't know, not wittily witty or something? It happened again?! Okay, yeah, tell me whatever you want/can when you want/can. Love to you! ** Steevee, Hey. Hm, I feel like I must have read interestingly written things about that, but I can't think of any specifics. Anyway, you seem to aced the gig perfectly without the input. Great, I look forward to reading it. ** S./5STRINGS, Yeah, I noticed your blog is a goner. Weird. I'll look for the writing repost then. Early spring cleaning? I enjoyed Belgium, thank you, and I should be able to say the same about Switzerland, I think. Make the most of whatever falls between now and Tuesday, man. ** James, Hi, James. It's doing me a world of good, literally. Yes, in fact, we went to Bruges' Chocolate Museum, so we not only ate, we learned while eating. Or we learned just prior to eating. We went to the French Fries Museum too. Same deal. Four days of awesomeness to you, pal. ** Okay. That seems to be all of you who showed up at the blog's train station to bid me or the p.s. or whatever a short-term farewell. Thank you to you and greetings to the quieter folks, and I hope you all have splendid weekends both here and elsewhere. Today, I leave you with a memorial to a French theme park that died before my time as a quasi-Parisian. Enjoy maybe, and watch for some hopefully cool posts in the next few days, and I'll see you guys full-fledged-style again on Tuesday.

I believe that in my original piece, On Stanley Kubrick Pt. 1, my intention was entirely selfish: I wanted only to understand why I felt the way I did about Kubrick's films; and to explore this in as much detail as possible. The result was a piece that I'm essentially happy with, but also something I feel was a bit limited in its scope regarding alternative forms of media to illustrate my feelings. The attempt here will be to join together those efforts in something perhaps equally as pleasing for the reader/viewer as it is me to put this together. My thanks go out to Dennis Cooper for allowing me this opportunity to share Part 2 first and foremost here on the blog, and to everyone who partakes in this blog on a daily basis. I've come to love this place and I trust the lot of us feel the same way. Think of this not simply as an essay (writing, film, images, music will be used and thought of as inextricable from one another; obviously I don't own these things and have done what I can to select the less commonplace sights you're likely to see when merely Googling the man) but as an attempt to stir up the very muddled pot of thought regarding one Stanley Kubrick. There are things still to be pillaged in that great oeuvre he left behind, and my hope is that by presenting this in the very human and stimulating environment that is the DC blog; a newer discussion might arise.

As a sort of further preamble (I promise to fuck off soon enough) here's the beginning of that aforementioned piece at Delphian Inc., which can be read in its entirety here.

Always the prospect existed in the back of my mind like some incessant and nagging nerve. The work put forth into the Pasolini writing and the Cocteau writing and even the books that shaped my life bit is all essentially some mutated derivation of this subtle and ever-present urge: an urge steeped in a sincere love and admiration for the works of one man, Stanley Kubrick.

You see, though the artist in general would have the public believe his influences are as vast and sincere as any massive library, that his youth was spent only reading the most brilliant things, seeing the most brilliant films, painting the most brilliant pictures on the undersides of his desk, this is a fallacy. It’s more like five or ten. Five or ten individuals for which you naturally come to learn the biography, the bibliography, and if you’re lucky the autobiography of their existence.

One of these men—man of letters, per se, or not—for me is Kubrick. The man who when I was younger showed me a stark human darkness I hadn’t previously believed existed through films like Full Metal Jacket and A Clockwork Orange. His personification of evil and absolute human debauchery at times reaching such highs and lows that for months if not years afterward there were certain pictures I simply could not screen yet, the effects had been too deeply ingrained.

A key reason — and hence template for any true influence one could hope for — that Kubrick has remained so entirely at the forefront of my mental faculties is the simple fact that as he grows, as his death becomes more and more widely felt and hence his legacy that much more profound on the world of cinema, his work actually changes. No easy task, to be sure, to have one’s work change when in fact nothing on the screen moves differently, no sounds come out that went previously unheard, and yet I tell you this in the strictest and utmost sincerity: the rendition of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange was not the same film I watched when I was thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, or twenty-two; and I do not mean to bring this up as a personal phenomenon, for I don’t reckon that’s what it is. It’s a directorial phenomenon, where Kubrick has buried his films under so many layers, drawn so many connections to other works with the use of music and certain actors and visual imagery, that he could quite ostensibly be torn apart day-in day-out for the next five hundred years without so much as a glint of dust to mark up any of his masterpieces. The work is so adaptable that it is as much like real experience as any one thing could possibly be: the perception of one person—nay, even the same person at a different age—can be entirely foreign and undiscernible to the mind of another, and that’s what makes a true genius, what proves that a true artist is at work; that the merits of his output cannot be turned into any one genre, but spread so widely over the reach of human consciousness that depending one might detect a new genre with each flicker of light

This will be Part 2, and there's no telling how many parts there'll be further on down the road. Kubrick has proven an endless curiosity for me be it through strange criticism surrounding his work; a quotation picked up about his love of Jim Thompson; or Bret Easton Ellis tweeting about whether or not Kubrick's being 'gay' would have any interesting bearing over his oeuvre. Whatever it is, I'm drawn to it. I think most of us are drawn to his work at some point perhaps to such a degree that liking him now might seem banal; but I shudder at the thought of this. Kubrick is, for me, an undying resource of inspiration, confusion, vexation, happiness, interest, intellect, whatever-the-hell-else, and hence what follows will be a sort of love letter to the man.

In my previous entry I did what I could to make the bulk of the material shown my own writings and reflections upon numerous screenings of the film. This time, however, considering I'm under that pleasant umbrella of the 'transgressive blog,' I'll not hold back from sharing any material which you might find interesting, that which might in turn serve to enrich our understanding of one of the world's great cinematic practitioners.

Recently a free copy of that documentary Room 237 (Since writing this the original version I watched was taken down, both a shame and an illustration in the boundless interest we all have in his work)was made available on the internet and I spent the evening watching it, almost immediately deciding I'd spend the rest of that night watching every single Kubrick film I own. The documentary is, in sum, a conspiracy theorist's wet dream--rather nightmare--of the wide range of interpretations surrounding Kubrick's film, The Shining. The most important thing about this film, in my opinion, is its success in separating Kubrick's final achievement with the novel that laid the groundwork. Stephen King has made no qualm with expressing his artlessness in this arena regarding the adaptation and hence the sooner it can be pushed from the public memory that these two products are desperately connected, the better.

This is basically what the conspiracy theorists--the more sane ones, anyway--accomplish almost from the outset. The Shining, in its many interpretations, is at least first and foremost acknowledged as a film hinting at themes of the genocide of the American Indian and the eventual enslavement of Africans. The King novel, though expansive and lending itself to no shortage of interpretations, is certainly less a political thing than an attempt to explore the 'character' that is Jack Torrance as he relates to his family and the world around him as it closes in.

This is another common misconception among fans of the film who think of it as an achievement for horror cinema and not cinema on the whole. The tendency in public circles is to immediately reference the 'here's Johnny!' moment and a few choice blows with an ax to move on to discuss the Millennium Trilogy, or whatever; but this seems the greatest folly one could commit with regards to Kubrick's accomplishments as director.

A brief way to sum up Kubrick's relationship with the texts he chose to adapt for the screen is through a quote by Diane Johnson, the coauthor of The Shining's script; who said something like he 'chose a work that isn't a masterpiece so he could improve on it,' which rang true for everything--as far as Kubrick himself was concerned--except for Lolita.

Bearing in mind that simple bit of insight, and suddenly all falls in line. The Luck of Barry Lyndon is far from Thackeray's greatest work; and with something like 2001 Kubrick actually edged along Art Clarke in his writing of the novel just to have something fuller to riff off of while making the film. Any viewer of that movie, however, can in a moment understand that it would be nearly impossible to translate to the printed page. 2001 is likely Kubrick's best film because it's the closest thing the world might ever get to a fully-realized Stanley Kubrick picture. We have the psychoanalytical curiosity put forth in Eyes Wide Shut and yet we lack the labyrinthine set work of The Shining or the historical emphasis of Barry Lyndon; so I feel fairly comfortable in saying that with 2001 Kubrick achieved the one thing he'd set out to do his entire career, and the films prior to and following that masterpiece are variations on similar themes, with perhaps disparate sub-themes--i.e. man's sense of purpose in Full Metal Jacket, or violence and relationships in A Clockwork Orange -- explored deeper, though never with the sense of entirety as with his Odyssey.

Anyway, christ, I'm losing myself every time I begin typing. My apologies. I thought it might be ideal to follow a tendency Dennis often has of splitting up interests re anything into subcategories to give them each their due. Hence, I'd like to explore favorite images, sounds, and texts within or pertaining to any and all of Stanley Kubrick's films. This will essentially be the rest of the post, pleasant/jarring sounds, excerpts, interviews, and whatever else I can get my hands on to encourage a discussion of this bastard's works.



Faces/Images:

Peter Sellers. Of all the collaborators in Kubrick’s films it’s Sellers that leaves the strongest impression with me. His incomparable sincerity in Dr. Strangelove and his Brando-esque shapeshifting in Lolita are undoubtedly some of the best comedic performances of that, or any, time. Kubrick seems to have seen something in Sellers that transcended The Pink Panther and mere audience-pleasing hijinks; as in each of these films he’s completely elusive and remains impossible to pin down. I’ve come to think of him as a sort of Woody Allen-extension to the director’s potential psyche when approaching a film. If there’s something that transcends explanation and his name is anywhere to be seen in the credits, chances are he’ll be involved and hundreds of kids will model their cool precisely after him.









The Kubrick Face/Stare (If such a thing exists, though I tend to abjure this sort of thing I have to admit there’s something to this ‘thousand-yard stare’ inherent to so many of the man’s films). When a person feels impelled to call a work ‘psychological’ or references anything like the ‘human condition’ my skin grows hard and my eyes see red. If I believed Dostoyevsky wanted first to be a student of the human condition I’d have no interest in picking up Devils/Demons/Whatever they’re calling it now because the book would have no narrative pull. However, Dostoyevsky and countless other artists who’ve been charged with having their finger on the button of human psychosis retain a great deal of narrative pull; and hence my only conclusion can be they-don’t-fucking-care-about-critiquing-our-stupid-fucking-minds. If Kubrick thought some nameless thing lurked within the angered (male) face and hence had Vincent D’Onofrio, Jack Nicholson, and Malcolm McDowell stare into the camera like pissed off teenagers, I’d probably lose interest, but I don’t think that’s what happens here. Here we have the mere recurrence of a similar visage due to a maniacal cinematographer/director and hours upon hours of footage. Kubrick chose that fucking stare because it illustrated something visual and emotional that a wink or a shot of Jack Torrance clearing his throat—he has them, obviously—simply couldn’t accomplish. Is he carrying Freud along with him to the sets? I have my doubts. Are these stares akin to marble statues for our celluloid-addled brains? Probably. I’ll shut up. Just look at these fucking goons.

In order of the most immediately stirring (for me) to the least, here are several key examples:


Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket




Ryan O’neal in Barry Lyndon




Jack Nicholson in The Shining




Joe Turkel as Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining




Kirk Douglas in Spartacus





Children. Danny Torrance and the brothers Lyndon stand out as the most blatant example of Kubrick’s fascination with trauma/death as it effects the very young, however there are absolutely more—Alex DeLarge is essentially meant to be seen as pre-grownup/young man, the Harford’s kid in Eyes Wide Shut, et al.


Beginning at birth:

The Starchild as ‘The Starchild’ in 2001, a Space Odyssey




Danny Lloyd as Danny Torrance in The Shining




David Morley as Bryan Patrick Lyndon in Barry Lyndon




A fucking human child as Bryan Patrick Lyndon in Barry Lyndon

























































Sounds

Kubrick is, obviously, a master—perhaps the master—of using various pieces of music to emphasize the diffuse nature of his films—I’m thinking especially of Thus Spake Zarathustra with 2001; the uses of Schubert and Irish folk tunes in Barry Lyndon; the synthesized Beethoven for Clockwork; Johnny Wright and the Rolling Stones for Full Metal Jacket. Kubrick didn’t intend for his films to be read as completely self-sufficient entities with no room to stretch out and reevaluate themselves as time goes on. I like to think he placed certain sounds in certain places much in the way, say, Socrates would seek out ways of pushing conversation further to reach some philosophical understanding as opposed to finding the exact sentence; or scene; or song to make a film an end unto itself. This will also just be some of my favorites. Please do not hesitate to choose yours below!

In absolutely no order at all!!!! (in the interest of paring down the amount of goddamn videos in this post I highly recommend posting yr favorites in the comments!)
























(Can’t find part 1, sorry...still find this beautiful)







Texts:

Here I will obviously not address every book Kubrick liked or adapted, but rather those I feel haven’t been brought up in discussion of his work quite enough. For instance, A Clockwork Orange has been talked to death for all intents and purposes, yet The Luck of Barry Lyndon remains a relatively fresh and novel discussion point even if the novel itself hasn’t much stood the test of time. It’s an odyssey of sorts, which is interesting I suppose. Its style’s rather dry and yet Redwood Barry’s narration does lend it a certain palatability. That just for example, however; I have zero fucking interest in discussing William Makepeace Thackeray ever again.

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler. Although it’s frankly quite difficult to reconcile the Americanized/ contemporary take on this story with the original, I feel it’s important if only to acknowledge Schnitzler’s merit as a writer of strange philosophical weight and occasionally fascinating sexual substance. Admittedly I’d never have read Schnitzler’s work had it not been for this film, all the same I feel as if when I finally sat down to read Dream Story there was almost nothing marring or warping the experience resulting from having seen the film.

Re Kubrick and Schnitzler’s book (quoted from NOTES ON ARTHUR SCHNITZLER’S DREAM NOVELLA AND STANLEY KUBRICK’S FILM EYES WIDE SHUT, by Rainer J. Kaus, University of Cologne. Available here)

“For a long time, Stanley Kubrick had the intention of filming Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Novella. He purchased the film rights already in 1971. Schnitzler himself had also written a film script in 1930. At the invitation of the director, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, who wanted to take advantage of the success of other films based on Schnitzler's works, he wrote the manuscript for a silent movie version. In this he envisaged a real attendance at the ball which in the novella is transposed into a shared memory and which will crop up again in Kubrick later on as a party at Victor Ziegler's, a friend of the couple. But the film script remained unfinished. Pabst turned it down and it was not realized. It would be interesting to be able to compare both film versions. But we cannot do this. For a long time it was also not certain whether Kubrick himself had access to Schnitzler's script.

That Kubrick's analogous way of proceeding was probably immediately inspired by Schnitzler's own preliminary work has been demonstrated by research in the meantime, for Kubrick had asked Schnitzler's heirs for permission to read the draft script during his own preliminary work.

In Kubrick's film, Schnitzler's protagonists, Fridolin and Albertine, become Bill and Alice Harford. Kubrick's film composition employs cuts, supplements and changes to the novella in order to integrate it better into the film. The sequence of events in the whole story and also most of the dialogue are essentially similar to Schnitzler's.

Entire dialogue passages are adopted as well as the sequence of events. All the more significant are the smaller and larger deviations.

One of the most significant differences is that at the end of the film Victor Ziegler, obviously a friend of the Harfords, gives his commentary on the entire story to Bill. Victor confesses that he, too, was at the orgy. "If you knew about all those who took part in it, you wouldn"t be able to sleep at night," he says. Bill asks hesitantly about the beautiful woman who warned him. She was only a hooker, Victor replies. The whole thing was nothing but a staging, a "fake" to keep him from talking. He says the woman had been a drug addict, and the orgy did not have anything to do with her death. This conversation to make the background to the mysterious happenings explicable is not to be found in Schnitzler.

A further difference is the time of year at which the novella is set. In Schnitzler it is the carnival season in which people like to get dressed up and wear masks anyway. Apart from that, the choice of this time means that the story takes place at the end of winter. In Kubrick's version, the events take place in the time before Christmas, a sign of domestic family togetherness.

The password for admission to the secret society in Schnitzler is "Denmark" and refers to an experienced seductive erotic situation, whereas in Kubrick, the password is "Fidelio", a symbol for fidelity. This is a counterposition par excellence.

Also missing in Kubrick's version is the recollection which Albertine has in Schnitzler of the time shortly before her engagement when Fridolin was more reticent than she would have liked him to be. Whereas in Schnitzler, in the end, so to speak, all the threads run together in the dream, in Kubrick the climax of the film is Bill's visit to the orgy of the secret society.

Kubrick also takes the liberty of transposing the story in his own way. For him, film is a narrative artistic genre. The filmic narrative thus overlaps with the literary narrative. Kubrick's understanding of himself as an artist derives from the nineteenth century, even though the film is set in present-day New York.

Kubrick says in an early commentary on the subjects of his first films,

The representation of reality has no bite. It does not transcend. Nowadays I am more interested in taking up a fantastic and improbable story.

And he adds,

I always enjoyed representing a slightly surreal situation in a realistic way. I have always had a penchant for fairy-tales, myths and magical stories. They seem to me to come closer to our present-day experience of reality than realistic stories, which are basically just as stylized.

In his film, Kubrick knows how to refuse in a subtle way, precisely by apparently fulfilling the norms of the bourgeois art industry.

There are musical and typological allusions in Eyes Wide Shut in descriptive names such as "Restaurant Verona", "Café Sonata" and "Gillespie's Coffee Shop". Other symbols include the many texts in newspapers, advertisements and on posters. While Bill is being driven in a taxi to the location of the Bacchanalian society, a neon sign appears along the way with the enticing message "Happy Holiday". Kubrick makes further ironic and even cynical allusions with the name of the newspaper, "Holiday Special", in which Bill reads of the drug death of the mysterious woman. The headline on the front page, "Lucky to be alive", also seems to be very dramatic. In the jazz bar where he wants to meet Nightingale, a poster can be seen behind his back with the text, "All exits are final".

The places, architecture, interiors and their furnishings also have decisive significance in Kubrick's films. For Bill, the protagonist in Kubrick's film, the place of the orgy and the secret society signifies a counter-pole to his marital home. This is the site of the narcissistic affront to both marital partners.

Jim Thompson in general. I’m just such a fucking huge Thompson fan and when I first read of Kubrick’s experience working with him on Spartacus etc. nothing could’ve made me happier. Kubrick saw the genius of Thompson when America had stopped printing him and the world had deemed him so unfit as to render him a useless drunk until his last days. If ever I chose to entertain anything like spirituality, it would be the sort of being that arbitrarily brings together minds like Jim Thompson, and Stanley Kubrick.

Re Thompson and Kubrick (quoted from THE NOTHING MAN, Bevan, Joseph. Sight and Sound Vol. 20, Issue 6. Available here.)

“Central to Jim Thompson's failure was his alcoholism. His proper career in Hollywood began in 1955, when he was 49 years old. This was one of many desperate times in his life. The company that published his classic paperbacks, Lion, had shut down. He faced a return to writing true crime and other hack work in order to survive. He was also falling back into hard drinking. Stanley Kubrick suggested Thompson to his producer lames B. Harris-Kubrick was a fan of Thompson's dialogue and his classic novel The Killer Inside Me (1952) in particular. The pair wanted Thompson to adapt Lionel White's heist novel Clean Break into The Killing. The offer arrived not a moment too soon for Thompson, who had been working and writing hard since his mid-teens with only sporadic success. Yet Thompson's own 'clean break' in Hollywood would turn out to be only the postponement of a seemingly inevitable dissolution.

It's easy to see what attracted Kubrick and other directors and producers to Thompson's oeuvre: his dialogue was lively and acerbic; despite constant wayward digressions and pedantry his plots were inherently cinematic, filled with cliffhangers and danglers, honed by years of writing true crime and the strictures of pulp editors. His time working in seedy hotels and consorting with minor criminals and bent psychiatrists had given his work a unique character. Beginning his career as the author of proletarian Depression-era fiction, Thompson was a great admirer of Willa Cather's 'unfurnished' style, shorn of excessive description. The prose of Lion-era Thompson offered a space in which a film-maker could impose his own visual impression.

The mirror cracked.

However, there was also a helpless waywardness to Thompson's writing that reflected his personality. He tended towards extremism and squalor. The warped nature of his characters was far from ideal for Hollywood: Thompson wasn't so much hardboiled as cracked. His closest contemporary approximation is James Ellroy, another flawed but brilliant crime writer with a penchant for self-revelation. One of the reasons Ellroy has enjoyed more success -- as a writer, and at having his work adapted -- is that he beat alcoholism and turned his psychos into romantic, history-making Übermenschen. Thompson never did conquer his alcoholism, and his characters, without obvious exceptions, are natural-born losers. Hollywood could bear nihilism, extremism and tragedy. What it couldn't bear was an overload of plaintive empathy with the inadequate, from a fellow inadequate. It couldn't bear Thompson's vision of failure, nor the lacerating flippancy he used to mask it.

Thompson would go on to have a complicated relationship with Kubrick and Harris, defined by wrangling over proper accreditation and a sense of exploitation, worsened by his personal insecurities -- "I should probably be ashamed of my suspicions…" he confessed, "(but) I can never quite see these boys as philanthropists." Despite having his fingerprints all over the script for The Killing (1956), he only received a screen credit for having supplied dialogue. He disputed this with Kubrick, complained to the Writers Guild and had the credit changed.

In an ambiguous move Kubrick then rehired him for Paths of Glory (1957). It might be thought that Thompson, whose milieu was the 'concrete pasture', was an anachronistic choice for an adaptation of a novel about the French military in World War I; the French soldiers in his initial script sounded oddly Texan. Kubrick had novelist Calder Willingham do a rework, and on the strength of his version Kirk Douglas became involved. When Kubrick suggested returning to Thompson's script, Douglas angrily refused. Again there was an argument over credits. Willingham went on to claim it as all his work; Kubrick took primary credit and Thompson ended up being credited third. Ron Polito, author of the impeccable Thompson biography Savage Art, has since found evidence that Thompson's original script still accounts for much of the film. This holds up in close viewing -- his pessimistic touches are evident in Paths of Glory in the catty back-and-forth rhythms of the dialogue; in the rank-pulling of the colonels; and in the sour desperation of the condemned.

Whatever his involvement, Thompson made little from either of his films with Kubrick. He was left bitter, if unsurprised, possessing as he did a severe pessimistic streak. In Thompson's 1954 masterpiece A Hell of a Woman, hapless salesman Dolly Dillon, who is destined both to be castrated and to castrate, looks back on his wasted youth and protests his lot: "I've been knocking myself out for people almost from the time I began to walk, and all I got for it was a royal screwing."

Part of the power of Thompson's fiction lies in his own bitter experience of misuse. He lived in permanent apprehension of the worst happening and went some way to ensuring that it did. The sense of vulnerability and worried bonhomie that permeates his work was very much part of his character. He was a recidivist alcoholic, and while this was far from a unique trait in Hollywood, let alone amongst writers, he would prove to be the wrong sort of drunk to succeed. Shy, nervous and sensitive, he didn't enjoy meeting strangers, devolving in company to near silence or drunken rambling. He hated script meetings and having his work torn apart. Yet his talent still drew interest, even when he was in a bad way. His best novels have the drunk's terrible blend of dishonesty and honesty, being both sympathetic and repellent. They are just sick and sour enough to taste like life.

At other times his stories have a repulsive brio more suggestive of one of Thompson's other pastimes: injecting himself with amphetaminelaced vitamin shots. He was plagued by a list of neuroses: his disgraced sheriff father's cruelty to him; the heartlessness of the people he'd met all his life; the race issue (Thompson was allegedly one eighth Cherokee Indian) that he explored in one of his most messy, monstrous novels, Child of Rage (1972); and the issue of his infertility, his wife having suggested a vasectomy after their children were born. Asked which of his books most reflected her father's personality, his daughter chose his most self-negating, The Nothing Man (1954). Worsened by alcoholism, the triumvirate of self-pity, self-loathing and desperation was hardly ideal for a man hoping to make it big in Hollywood.

Kubrick and Harris would be Thompson's major contractors, commissioning two more scripts from him and paying him fairly good money, even when he was in hospital after having his first stroke at 52. Neither project (Lunatic at Large and I Stole $16,000,000) was ever completed. Kubrick moved on to that more patrician purveyor of murderous dysfunction, Vladimir Nabokov. Thompson would spend the rest of his life saying that Kubrick, initially so friendly and generous, had betrayed him. He liked to sit in his favourite Tinseltown spot, Musso & Frank's Grill, drinking and complaining. The man so apprehensive of being mistaken for "some old country boy" remained an isolated tourist in Hollywood; he was certainly far from an industry insider. One could view Thompson's dealings with Kubrick as those of an east coast sophisticate exploiting a faux-naif good-old boy, or simply as a self-loathing drunk engaged in self-sabotage. In signature Thompson fashion, it was probably something of both. Kubrick was more confident and successful, and Thompson's human vision, full of indiscriminate sympathies, was an inexact fit with the director's own more impersonal detachment. There is a postscript. In Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Jack Nicholson tells his wife, "I'm not going to hurt you Wendy…I'm just going to bash your brains in." This subtle and sadistic distinction is a paraphrase from The Killer Inside Me and the director's last filmic reference to his one-time collaborator.

The good-looking deals and their correspondent failure continued throughout the 1960s and early '70s. Thompson's best writing drew the attention of successful artists, but he was too convinced he would fail, or was too drunk or too compromised by fiscal problems to fully capitalise on his relationships. His writing had become all he had besides his family and his alcohol addiction. The remainder of Thompson's career in Hollywood resembled an elucidation of Sod's Law.”



NOTES, COMPARISONS, AND EFFLUVIA:


Comparisons:

The fight scene from Barry Lyndon being filmed…




The fight scene from P.T. Anderson’s The Master…




A scene from the recent adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel The Killer Inside Me…




A scene from A Clockwork Orange…








Toy Story 3’s eerie nods to The Shining…



Notes/Effluvia:
















http://www.fastcodesign.com/1664907/animated-gifs-capture-stanley-kubricks-most-immortal-shots


THANKS I’M GOING TO BED.





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p.s. Hey. Master writer and d.l. Grant Maierhofer has a pretty amazing post here on Stanley Kubrick for you, and I hope it makes your brains percolate and gives you big pleasure. Please share your thoughts with Grant in the usual commenting arena, thank you, and thank you so much, Grant! I'm on my way to Switzerland for the aforementioned several days-long away-time, and, although you will be getting two more posts between now and Tuesday, I and my p.s. thing will be ensconced in that away-time until then. The blog will see you tomorrow.

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p.s. Hey. I thought I would ask you to spend the weekend with the sublime Ronald Firbank courtesy of this old post that I found in unseeable tatters when searching the archive for things to keep you busy or whatever while I'm away. A little fixing and sprucing up, and there you go. Hope you like it. Hope you have great weekends. Hope you'll let me know. Expect the blog to show up around the time that you usually expect it to on Monday.

1. The Ice City


... by night (1:15)



... by day (0:28)


'The annual Harbin Ice Festival has been running since 1963 but has been disordered due to revolutionary alliances, eventually, the festival resumed in 1985. Harbin is the Capital of Heilongjiang a Province in China which is located in the Northern region right under the cold winds of Siberia. Harbin is the main source of ice and snow culture in the world. The average temperature in this area is between -31°C to -15°C, although the record low temperature the region has experienced was -52.3°C.

The highlight of the festival is the ice lanterns and the sculpture exhibitions. Thousand of exhibits can be viewed in this festival all made up of ice or snow which transforms the city of its normal nature into a landscape of no consequence but to surround the gleaming new city of whiteness and crystallized sceneries.

The ice and snow shows can range from small items to human size buildings and to towering pagodas, temples, and large buildings of many kind. You can also see some of the world’s greatest industrial icons being replicated in the Harbin Ice Festival like the Eiffel Tower and also the Great Wall of China.' -- Chinaveo.com




2. The Ice Palace


'Wedding at the House of Ice' (1878), by Valery Ivanovich Jacobi


'In the cold winter of 1739–1740, Empress Anna Ivanovna gave an order to build a palace made of ice in St. Petersburg. The palace and the surrounding festivities were part of celebration of Russia's victory over Turkey. She ordered the architect Pyotr Yeropkin to design the building. It was built under the supervision of Georg Kraft, who left a behind detailed description of the palace.

'The palace was 24 meters tall and 7 meters wide. Huge ice blocks were "glued" together with water. The garden was filled with ice trees with ice birds and an ice statue of an elephant. The outer walls were lined with ice sculptures. Before the palace there were artillery pieces also made of ice. The palace was also furnished with furniture made of ice, including an ice bed with ice mattress and pillows. The whole structure was surrounded with a tall wooden fence.

'The Ice Palace was built specifically to be the location of a mock wedding of two 'jesters'. Empress Anna had discovered that her son Prince Mikhail Alekseyevich Galitzine was secretly married an Italian woman. Empress Anna saw this as an affront because she was a Catholic, not Eastern Orthodox. The wife died soon after they were married, but Anna did not forgive Galitzine and decided to punish him in an unusual manner. She ordered him to become a jester.

'The Empress selected prince Galitzine a new wife, an unattractive kalmyk court lady jester Avdotya Ivanovna Buzheninova. She forced the prince to marry her and displayed the newlyweds in a procession towards the ice palace where they rode an elephant and were followed by a number of cripples. In the ice palace, the newlyweds were closed into an icy nuptial chamber under heavy guard. The couple survived the night because the bride traded a pearl necklace with one of the guards for a sheepskin coat.

'Empress Anna died the following year and the castle did not survive the next summer. The Russian reading public was made aware of Anna's mock palace in 1835, when Ivan Lazhechnikov (1792-1869) described her escapade in The Ice House, one of the first historical novels in the Russian language. The novel was made into a film in 1927.' -- ForgottenRussia.ru




3. The Ice Hotels


... in Jukasjarvi, Sweden (2:48)


'Sweden's Ice Hotel is built from scratch every year. A new design, new suites, a brand new reception - in fact everything in it is crisp and new. The Ice Hotel is situated on the shores of the Torne River, in the old village of Jukkasjärvi in Swedish Lapland. 10 000 tons of crystal clear ice from the Torne River, and 30 000 tons of pure snow generously supplied by Mother Nature are needed to build the Ice Hotel every year. The hotel sleeps over 100 guests, and every bedroom is unique. Covering more than 30,000 square feet, the Ice Hotel includes an Ice Chapel, the hotel itself, an ice art exhibition hall, a cinema and last but not least, the world famous ‘Absolut Ice Bar’.' -- ScanTours.com



... in Balea Lac, Romania (1:22)

'In 2006, the first ice hotel in Eastern Europe was built at Bâlea Lake (Romania), deep in the Făgăraş Mountains, at an altitude of 2034 m. It also features many attractions like bob-sledding and ice fishing, and can accommodate over 150 people per night.' -- Wikipedia



... in Alta, Norway


'If there is such a thing as a rustic ice hotel, the Alta Igloo Hotel in the northeast corner of Norway would be it. The rooms are not very large, and low ceilings make them a bit claustrophobia-inducing. Apart from its 80 beds the Alta Igloo Hotel houses suites, an ice gallery, an ice bar, an ice chapel and several lounges. The service building contains a luggage room where bags are stored safely during each stay. The rooms contain only beds, while other facilities such as toilets, changing rooms, showers and sauna are in the warm service building to ensure comfort.' -- The Travel Channel



... in Kemi, Finland (1:00)

'The Mammut Snow Hotel is not an ice hotel per se as it is made entirely of snow. Many of its furnishings and its decorations, such as the ice sculptures, are made of ice. It is located within the walls of the SnowCastle of Kemi, which is the biggest snow castle in the world . It includes The Mammut Snow Hotel, The Castle Courtyard, The Snow Restaurant and a chapel for weddings, etc.' -- Wikipedia



... in Quebec, Canada (4:41)


'Quebec's Ice Hotel is the creation of Jacques Desbois, who decided to try out the concept after reading about Sweden's Ice Hotel. Construction of the Ice Hotel begins every year in mid-December, the entire process lasting a month and culminating in the official opening in mid-January. Steel moulds and wooden walls are put up to form a skeleton of the hote; snow and ice is blown into the moulds. When the structure is frozen and secure, the wooden moulds are removed, leaving a hotel completely built of ice. In March, as the weather begins to warm, the Ice Hotel is manually thawed and removed until the following December.' -- Quebec-Travel.com



... in Fairbanks, Alaska (4:51)


'Aurora Ice Hotel is the only hotel in the United States made entirely of ice. The first year of operation, the hotel was shut down by Alaska's Fire Marshall until all rooms had smoke detectors and fire extinguishers installed. Six themed rooms, an ice bar, five fiber optic lit ice chandeliers, and a wedding gazebo make it quite a tourist attraction. It is situated next to what is billed as the world's oldest and largest Snow and Ice Museum.' -- Hotels.about.com


Designing an Ice Hotel by Robbie Moore: Every November, teams of international artists are brought to the village of Jukkasjarvi in Swedish Lapland to build a hotel from ice and snow. A few are veterans, like Australian designer and photographer Daniel Rosenbaum; others are students, architects, industrial designers, sculptors, painters, jewellers, textile designers, theatre designers, NASA shuttle designers, graffiti artists and comic book illustrators, who have never worked with ice in their lives.

For the Icehotel artists, ice is much more inspiring than industrial materials. It doesn’t create clouds of dust, unlike modelling with foamed plastic; there is no sense of wastage if things go wrong, unlike designing with wood or metal. Ice yields to a chainsaw like butter; a blade can be stabbed into it without risk of kickback; it can be sculpted rapidly, if you know the correct technique. It can be backlit, and imprints the smallest details; it is strong enough to be used for structure; but it is also temporary, and all the hard labour, triumphs and mistakes of the Icehotel artists are washed away into the Torneälven by midsummer.

The concept and structure of the hotel were pioneered in the 1990s by architect Åke Larsson and sculptor and land artist Arne Bergh. They set upon the largest and safest possible snow-built form for the hotel suites, and invented a methodology for simple duplication. Steel framework domes set on skiis, or huge red inflatables are used as moulds for all the suites and public spaces. Blanketed with a metre of snow thrown up by a machine, they hold their shape as the snow sinks, compacts and binds around them. The steel frameworks are hammered free and slid out with a tractor, and the inflatables are simply deflated and removed. The Ice Bar mould leaves a space inspired by the Basilique Cathedral in Reims; the mould for the suites leaves a dark, seven-metre-long void, with a chapel-like catenary arch roof vaulting four metres into the air. Ice pillars give extra support to the huge arches over the public spaces. (cont.)




4. The Iglu-Dorf




'Iglu-Dorf igloo village lies high above the town of Zermatt, in the Swiss Alps. Creator Adrian Gunter built his first igloo, with the help of friends, in 1996 to get an early start on skiing the next day. Since then a small empire of igloo villages has sprung up across the Swiss Alps. Inuit artists create traditional Eskimo artworks in the walls throughout each Village. Beds in the Iglu-Dorf are raised platforms made from snow, topped with foam pads over which sheepskins are spread. Expedition sleeping bags up to -40º C are provided. Prices start at 99 euros ($134) for a standard igloo and 159 euros for a "romantic" igloo, which is a private room or suite for two. A "romantic-plus" suite gets you your own toilet.' -- Cicily Corbett



5. The Snow Fort


Killthecorporacy shows you the Snowy Fortress of Doom (4:12)



Funnyfilmers3355 shows you his Saskatchewan snow fort (2:52)



MagnusDonvon shows you his Snow Fort 2007 (6:33)


'Snow forts consist of walls of piled and compacted snow. They may be "open" or "closed", that is, a person in the snow fort may be completely surrounded by the walls on all sides, there may be a "door", or the person may be completely exposed except in one direction. The last variation is used for snowball fights where opponents have forts facing each other and attack exclusively from their own fort. Existing structures such as the walls or concave corners of a building can be used as part of the snow fort, allowing for faster and easier construction. A snow fort can also be a tunneled-out burrow built in a large snow drift. Snow forts are usually at least knee-height and one-roomed. Forts built for snowball fights may be higher, and ones built for "house" may have lower walls and multiple rooms. When used for snowball fights, snow forts often have sections where the wall is lower, through which the occupants throw snowballs.' -- Wikipedia

How to Build a Badass Snow Fort by Dethroner.com: 'One of the best things my step-father ever taught me was how to build a proper snowfort. Oh sure, I’d carved out a few cubbies in snowdrifts before, but nothing like the labyrinthine lairs I soon began developing like missile bases under the snow. Assembling a good snow fort is an all-day endeavor. It’s work. But the rewards—a toasty nest in which a kid can kick back with a candle, some cocoa, and a few books for a few hours—are totally worth it. If nothing else, it’s an early lesson that the best things sometimes take a little sweat'.




6. The Ice 'M'




'Publicity stunts are a way of life in Vegas, and frequently they go awry. So, I was somewhere between dubious and indifferent when Nathan Burton (the second most famous magician named Burton to work the Vegas Strip) announced that he would freeze himself in a 15 ton block of ice to endure 24 hours while surrounded by 95 showgirls. The goal, as I understand it, was for Burton to stand still and awake while inside the ice without touching the ice. This was sort of confusing to me as a magic trick. But I got the promotional idea: the ice block was shaped like the letter M, and thus the event called attention to the name change of the shopping mall Desert Passage to Miracle Mile Shops. Nathan Burton stepped inside his ice M with showgirls in the morning around 11 AM (predicting he would last for 24 hours). Anyway, Burton and the showgirls wound up lasting all of 7 1/2 hours in the ice. The press release blames unanticipated heat and wind for forcing Burton to reluctantly end the stunt for safety reasons. Heat and wind in Nevada in May? Who would have thought that could be possible?' -- The Los Angeles Times Blog




7. The Ice Sculpture


'Ice Sculpture Destruction' (0:37)



'Bad Kid' (0:08)



'Quentin Tarantino smashes my ice sculpture' (0:11)




8. The Snow Globe




'Precisely when the first snow globe, also called a waterglobe or snowdome, was made remains unclear, but they appear to date from France during the early 1800s. They may have appeared as a successor to the glass paperweight, which became popular a few years earlier. Snow globes appeared at the Paris Universal Expo in 1878, and by 1879, at least five companies were producing snow globes and selling them throughout Europe. Snow globes became popular in England during the Victorian era and, in the early 1920s, crossed the Atlantic to the United States of America where they became a popular collectors item. In the United States, the first snow globe-related patent was granted in 1927 to Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.' -- Wikipedia


a. Scunnard a.k.a. Jared Pappas-Kelley's 'Snowglobes People Have Given Me'
b. Jill Ann Loew's Snow Globe Museum
c. Andy Zito's Snow Globe Collection
d. The NYC Snow Globe Collection
e. LA Law's Corbin Bernsen, Snow Globe Collector and His 7000 Globes
f. Snow Globe Collection for Sale




9. The Ice Cube




'Pagophagia (a form of pica, a craving to eat unnatural articles such as rocks, paint or dirt) is a little known term that is not known by many physicians. It describes the act of ingesting excessive amounts of ice cubes. I am writing this today to alert patients and physicians to the symptom of pagophagia and its variants. Pagophagia is never volunteered by patients it must be pursued by questioning. When asking an anemic patient about diet you should always inquire about ice cube eating. Now that there are new water bottles ice cube eating has been modified by some to bottle freezing. The patient will often take their water bottle and place it in the freezer and when just right the inside of the bottle will be liquid and ice cold. I have been told by patients that that is the best water there is. Other patients will go to fast food portals and order extra large iced tea or cokes with a large amount of added ice just to get their teeth into the ice cubes for as long as they last. Others will just sip on a glass filled with plain ice cubes. What’s going on here? No one knows for sure.' -- Glenn Tisman, MD


The Ice Chewers Bulletin Board




*

p.s. Hey. I'm still gone, but I am on way back to Paris and to this blog's control booth at this very moment. There's a rerun post for you. Hope you dig it. I will see you with a new post and a p.s. and whatever news and whatever else I have to tell you tomorrow.

1. Detention hearing

















































2. Lane is charged with three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of aggravated attempted murder, and one count of felonious assault.













3. Judge orders a competency hearing

















4. Judge sets a date for the competency hearing












5. Lane pleads not guilty by reason of insanity








































6. Judge orders Lane to be tried as an adult














7. Lane pleads guilty on all counts























The Chardon High School shooting




*

p.s. Hey. I now rejoin the blog in progress. ** Thursday ** Scunnard, Hi, man. Thanks about the Mirapolis post. Bruges was is pretty looking and very clean. Relaxing with just tweaky enough visuals, if you like old Flemish things, I would say. Switzerland says hi back. ** Misanthrope, That's super sad about Paul Bearer. Loved that weirdo. Zac works in a number of mediums. He's very interested in creating events/ transformations in pre-set public spaces. Hence the ice rink piece that I'm collaborating with him on. He also makes videos and other things. Difficult to categorize overall, which is why he's so brilliant. Yeah, I'm sure at some point I'll showcase his work here. He's also making a post for the blog, which will show up at some future point. Switzerland was fantastic. Yeah, I will definitely take your word on the Will Self. I've never liked what he does, as you know, and it's hard for me to imagine what could change that, but awesome for you. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Carver and Perec are a curious combo. Hunh, nice in a weird way. No, I didn't know about that all-MK 'Texte zur Kunst'. I'll definitely go find that. Thanks a bunch, man. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Oh, sure, it's totally possible to sustain a theme park that not a franchise vehicle. At least over here. For instance, I'm going on a Scandinavian theme park road trip in early May to visit/explore as many of said parks as possible in a week and a half or two weeks, and most of them are autonomous oddity-type places. Glad to hear you came around on 'Crash'. I hardly ever read big books. Very rarely. It takes a lot to get me to do that. I'm just more geared toward short novels, always have been. Attention span issues or something maybe. My trip was really great, thanks, and I hope your weekend-plus followed suit. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. I remember the name Ken Burdick. Hm, I'll google him to see what I know and don't. I did not know about that new Wes Anderson. Wow, fantastic! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Great, great! I know, such a incredible show, right? And the Kandor room was a total highlight. So happy that you got to see it, man! Yeah, let me know what's good re: the YnY thing. I should be in Paris for the next almost two weeks. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thank you a lot about the Mirapolis post. Re: why 'Kindertotenlieder' is my favorite: Mm, a lot of reasons. One thing is that it was, or so far is, the kind fruition of a certain aspect of the work that I've done with Gisele which I particularly like: that is, it's very dense with multiple things and layers of meaning/ narrative/ tone happening simultaneously in different parts of the stage simultaneously, so viewing the piece is a very active experience and it feels kind of random, even though everything is extremely planned and organized. So there's an illusion of messiness and spontaneity that makes the piece feel very alive, I think. Since 'Ktl', Gisele has become interested in a much more cleanly laid out choreography where the focal point is clear and not in question. For me, the earlier approach is the more interesting. It's also by far our most emotional piece, and I like that about it. I should say too that it's the piece of ours in which I had the biggest hand in terms of its overall construction and structure and so on, so that could well add to my favoriting it, I don't know. Oh, sure, the way the Blanchot impacts your thinking re: your work makes a lot of sense, yeah, very nice. Mm, well, strictly speaking, I had to abandon the 'unworking' idea to some degree or other in all of my novels, but I think it's most interfered with in maybe 'Try' and 'Guide', I'm not sure. Thank you a lot for asking, Jeff. ** Lizz Brady, Hi, Lizz! As a peaceful break, Bruges would work. Oh, Paris hostels .. I know of a couple that are supposedly good, but let me check for the latest opinions on them because hostels seem to be notoriously up and down. It will go away, yeah, trust me. I always tell myself that anyway, and it's always true, I think. I hope the work you are doing is great. Sure sounds it. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Your theory is sensible. But I guess in cases where there are guest-posts, as in the ones by Thomas and Grant while I was gone, I would like to think people would respond to them both hopefully out of interest and to show support for the people who take the time and put themselves out there to make/ present the posts because, in those situations, it isn't about me, and I don't respond to comments directed towards the guest-hosts, so there's no burden placed on my end of the p.s. People here should always do what they want to do, commenting-wise, but my hope is that whatever sense of community there is around here would lead commenters to naturally want to acknowledge each others' efforts, I guess. I've often wished there was a better, more melancholy 'Roller Coaster Tycoon' style game. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man. Oh, yeah, Alvin Lee, I just read that. It's interesting or something that those guitar god types from the 60s/70s who were basically known for playing extremely fast like, say, Lee or Johnny Winter, haven't ended up getting the long-term legendary status of their fellow guitar gods of that era. ** S., Hey. So, are you S. now for the duration? Bruges is kind of creamy, yeah, but maybe not elastic. Pristine more like maybe. You found your boy? That's cool. Weird and awkward are always high points, I think. Did you write? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I just really, really like the idea of you doing your work in that eclectic context for some reason. That kind of surrounding does something really cool and confusing in the best way to your work in my head. I can't explain it, I guess. ** Alan, Hi, Alan. Oh, sure, it has been worthwhile and instructive on many levels. I haven't totally abandoned the novel, I'm trying to reinvent it. I'm now trying to use some of its material and its essence to create something in which George and his specific meaning are still important, but are components or grounding or historical benchmarks or something in a novel that would be more about ... I don't know how to describe it yet. I don't really want to talk about it yet, I guess. Something extraordinary has happened in my life that needs to be written about, and whereby what I was trying to do with the George novel might have some relationship maybe, I'm not sure, so ... yeah, I can't really describe it. Long story short, it was very worthwhile and it may yet see the light, albeit in a very different way than I had intended. Thank you a lot for asking, Alan. ** Grant Scicluna, Hey there, Grant! Yep, you got it, thank you. Me too, about designing parks. Heck, a friend and I were talking about designing a theme park on the train trip home yesterday, so, yeah. A very alluring dream. You good? What's the latest on everything? ** Friday ** Grant Maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Thank you so, so, so much, man! It was/is an astounding thing. ** Oscar B., Hey! Whoa, how about this snow? You guys good? Call me, or I'll call you guys in a while. ** Misanthrope, Ha ha, yeah, I don't, uh, think I had a whole lot of impact on Switzerland's memory banks. Okay, well, I was getting off a bus at one point, and the bus driver somehow didn't see me, and he shut the door on me as I was stepping off, which sent me plummeting face first onto the street where I scraped the shit out of my face and knee, bruised some ribs, and my hands got all cut up, and the cuts started pouring blood, but I don't think Switzerland noticed really. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you for your wise Kubrickian thoughts. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. ** S., Oh, the writing did happen between Thursday and Friday, very good. Wow, you're going Blanchotian too? Sweet. ** Grant Scicluna, Hi, Grant. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hm, no, I feel like I don't have any feeling whatsoever about that Spielberg 'Napoleon' thing. I guess I feel totally unintrigued. Do you think there's a reason to hold out any kind of hope whatsoever about that? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. ** Statictick, Jesus Christ, N. I mean, what is the explanation? Was it an accidental sleepwalking injury, and, if so, what does the added violence mean? New med-related? That is truly horrifying. What does the doctor say? ** Saturday ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Thank you seconding my Firbank love. I really need to get off my ass and ready that Brophy bio finally. ** Rewritedept, Hi. You getting settled is very good news. New apt. too. Finally. ** Steevee, Great about your 'Badlands' piece. Did re-watching 'NBK' change your opinion of it at all? I'm certainly not a fan of it either, but I haven't seen it since its original release. ** Pilgarlic, Hey. Wonderful to read your thoughts on Kubrick. That was great. Thank you, man! ** Matty B, Hey, Matty! How totally great to see you! I was seeing all the stuff about AWP on Facebook, and it did sound very fun and sweet, and I had wished I could have been there. It's such a fantastic time for new writing now, and the convergence there seems really momentous. Thank you for the kind words. The pdf ... I don't think I got it? If I did, it must have gotten totally lost, and, if so, I apologize, and, yes, I would love to read the newer/final version if you don't mind. How exciting that's it's complete! Thank you a lot, man! ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! I just saw that you're going to be doing a reading at SXSW! You excited? So wish I could be there. Thanks for the WSJ article link. I'll read it pronto. My sense is that this is going to be a big year in terms of finding out what kind of 'market' there is for Alt Lit. It seems like the transitioning to mainstream or trad/big house publishers is starting to pick up in a bigger way what with Tao, Roxanne Gay, Michael Kimball, and others getting 'picked up'. It feels like the beginning of a snowball, but we'll see. And there seems to be a real jump in how the larger book-related media seems to be attending to Alt Lit. I'm sure you saw that Matt Bell is on the cover of Publishers Weekly. That's kind of amazing. What happens with Tao's book should be telling. And it will be extremely interesting to see if there is a positive occurrence for Alt Lit associated writers and readers once the work is available in both the traditional publishing form as well as in the internet based, much more innovative and open context. I'd like to think that the major publishing context will function as a kind of offshoot or helpmate or souvenir stand or something re: the online context rather than something that would reduce the Alt Lit online world into a writers workshop-slash-feeding ground, maybe functioning in the way that DVDs relate to actual movie making or something. I don't know. So much going on, so much to wonder about and speculate on. It's an exciting moment. Anyway, thank you a bunch, Chris. ** Monday ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yeah, I woke up this morning to a major snowstorm here. Crazily late in the season. In progress and, thus, still a beauty. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thanks a lot about the posts. Actually, on the aforementioned (i.e. up above somewhere) Scandinavian theme park extravaganza road trip that I'm going to take with my pal Zac, we have tentatively penciled in maybe staying at Bjorli Ice Lodge if we have time. It's nearish Oslo, which makes at least theoretically do-able. I know some but not a ton about Charles Fourier. I think I've read some of his writings. Yeah, a day about him would be a great way to find out more. I'll give it a shot. Thank you, man. ** Misanthrope, Oh, you do, do you? ** Okay. We are now caught up, and onwards we go. I think the post today has no need for a caption attempt, so enjoy, and I'll see you tomorrow.

'Macaulay Culkin has opened the doors of his trippy New York apartment-turned-art studio. The 32-year-old former child star, who looks considerably healthier than he did this time last year, is posed inside his $2 million SoHo pad. But while most would do a little tidying up before letting cameras into their home, Mr Culkin seemed happy with the litter-strewn look, leaving cigarette piles.. alcohol bottles and half-emptied cans of Red Bull kicking around. e also decided to wear a bizarre outfit for the occasion topping off his 'artist at work' guise with a shoulder-length peroxide blonde wig and Jackie O sunglasses.

'Mr Culkin explained that he snapped up the roomy 5,100-square-foot condo, described as a 'playground workspace', because it reminded him of the 1988 film Big. "After seeing Big, I wanted a loft space with an elevator that opened directly into my apartment, just like Tom Hanks did," he said. A Nineties theme runs throughout the place with Nickelodeon game-show decor and a wacky Nintendo-themed room. Mr Culkin - who is worth a reported $15 million - isn't the only one to live at the flat and it is also home to his friends Adam Green and Toby Goodshank. Mr Green and Mr Goodshank are both former members of the indie rock band Moldy Peaches. The trio got together last February to form the art collective Three Men and a Baby (3MB).

'Mr Culkin explained at the time: "We cleared out everything, laid down plastic and went a little nuts at the art supply store." Their debut show titled Leisure Inferno included brightly colored paintings punctuated with Nineties cultural references. The cast of Seinfeld standing nude on the Wheel of Fortune; Korn’s lead singer, Jonathan Davis, playing to a surreal crowd that includes E.T. and Wally from the Where’s Waldo series; and Kurt Cobain rendered as a character from the 1995 film Hackers.

'Describing 3MB's inspiration Mr Culkin said: "We took a lot of things from our own youths, from 5 to 25 years old. It’s almost self-referential in that we’re referencing ourselves when we’re referencing Hackers. It’s essentially a box within a box." While their home-turned-studio is stuffed with bright decorations and pots of paint, the place feels conspicuously devoid of actual art. But apparently that's because most of the group’s shared creations are currently on display at Le Poisson Rouge, a bar and gallery space in Greenwich Village.

'Mr Culkin's last acting job was on the TV series Kings back in 2009 and his last film was the dark comedy Sex and Breakfast back in 2007. At the height of his fame the Home Alone star was regarded as the most successful child actor since Shirley Temple and once quipped: "I’d made enough money by the time I was 12 to never have to work again." Last February it was speculated that Mr Culkin had developed a drug habit when he stepped out sipping Red Bull looking emaciated.

'The National Enquirer reported that he was "close to death," because of an addiction to prescription medication and heroin - claims his publicist told MailOnline were "fictitious" and "categorically without merit." Now that Mr Green and Mr Goodshank have left New York on music tours, Mr Culkin is now working on his next book, a collection of non-fiction stories about his friends which will be a follow-up to his 2006 novel Junior. "I’ve been about 80 percent done with the first draft for far too long. But now I’m going to make sure it takes up some of my energy," he said.' -- collaged



___
Stills




















































_____
Further

Macaulay Culkin @ IMDb
Fuck Yeah, Macaulay Culkin
Macaulay Culkin Fansite
'A Gallery Of Macaulay Culkin's Art'
'Troubled child star Macaulay Culkin's solitary lunch for one at Taco Bell'
'Step Into Macaulay Culkin's Terrifyingly '90s Hipster Apartment'
'Macaulay Culkin: Little Boy Lost'
'Don’t Macaulay Culkin Your Parents'
Macaulay Culkin: 'I'm Michael Jackson's Doo Doo Head'
Macaulay Culkin’s iPod presents A Saved by the Bell Valentine’s Dance
Photos from Macaulay Culkin’s iPod: Christmas Beach Edition
Macaulay Culkin Soundboard
Video: 'E TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY Macaulay Culkin'
Buy Macaulay Culkin's 'Junior'



________
Exploitations


Macaulay Culkin Addicted To Heroin


Macaulay Culkin Attempted Suicide?


Macaulay Culkin Dead or Alive?


Macaulay Culkin Near Death Worries Now Coming From His Parents



____
Junior




THE INTRODUCTION.

NowHere Near Nowhere.

I want to make one thing clear before we begin: I am not a writer. I couldn't possibly be a writer. I have written and rewritten the words "Introduction" or "The Introduction" so many times in the past couple of years that I'm convinced I was not born to do this. Writing could not be my calling after the mess I've made of all this. This has taken way too long. The whole process of writing this book was so agonizing and ate away at so much of my time that there's no way I can't finish now. But at this rate I never will. It took me ten minutes to write this very sentence. I'm no writer. This is not my calling.

Why is it so difficult now? This used to be a comforting thing. Writing this book was fun. It made me feel better. I'm not comfortable right now. I've never felt comfortable explaining the way that I am. This (the newest in a long line of introductions) is already a failure and I've barely begun. Here I am, only on the second paragraph, and I already feel like I'm blowing it.

It's just that in the past year I have gotten way too many people involved in this project -- agents, publishers and so forth that I feel I've been disappointing with my lack of results. I'm just ready to let this go. I'm just ready to give up and say this is it and nothing more. You can have it because I have nothing left.

Not in any kind of painful way, but it's hard for me to talk about this project. It's just that I don't know what it is anymore. I could just be imagining this, but people see this book in different ways. I could show this book to ten different people and have them form very different opinions of what it is and what it means to them. Sometimes I feel like I have a dozen different people inside of me. I've always been that way and I've always written stuff down. But this is different, this is the introduction of my book. I can't just wing it.

My real problem is that after a while I decided to save this introduction for last. I figured that one of the reasons this intro was so hard to write was because I needed the book and all its parts to be in place before trying to sum it all up. And to be quite honest with you, most of the material in this book is foreign to me now.

If I wanted to be all David Copperfield about it, I could say I began this project more than two decades ago on a hot summer day in a New York City hospital, but the truth is I only became of aware of it actually becoming a book in early January of 2001. It is now crawling to the end of 2005 with the completion of this endeavor nowhere in sight. So much of it was written so long ago that I may have lost sight of what it meant, not only to the reader, but to me as well. Perhaps that is why I have found it so difficult to introduce this part of myself to the rest of the world, because I don't know what it means to me anymore.

So much has changed since I first sat down and began to write this book. I've changed. I got arrested recently and to be quite honest with you it wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be. I got a new dog and I named her Audrey. I found a girl (a real girl) that I'm in love with, and if you can believe it, she loves me back.

I'm looking at her right now, in fact. She bought me a new computer and on the desktop there's this picture of her on the beach. She and I and a bunch of our friends went to Hawaii recently. I had never been there before and I enjoyed myself very much. We had a house right on the beach. A couple of days into it, while sitting in the shade nursing my new sunburn, she decided to try surfing for the first time. And needless to say it was quite a funny sight. If you've never seen someone take their first surfing lesson before, then drop this book and everything else you're doing immediately and arrange it. It's well worth it. On one of her many tumbles into the ocean a friend of ours must have snapped a picture of her. Her butt is on the board as she's washing ashore and she has this smile on her face. It looks like you've just surprised a five-year-old with a truck full of candy. I'm talking ear to ear. Every time I turn on my computer and I see this picture it makes me happy. I know how lucky I am to have someone that makes me feel that way, believe me. I'm lucky to have her.

My point is I didn't have her or that picture when I started making this book. (I may have had other pictures, but that's a different book altogether.) I didn't have a lot of things I do today. I was just some twenty-year-old punk kid who thought he could just whip out some book when I started writing this. Now I'm a twenty-four-year-old accused felon with a dog that shits all over my house and a girlfriend that can't surf. I can't account for that person or what he wrote four years ago. I can't remember his intentions.

So I've decided (just now in fact) that I'm going to disassociate myself from this book completely. I think it's the right thing to do. Too many of the people around me are scared of it, and rightfully so. I've put my words in a position to be easily misinterpreted and used against me. So from now on this is not my book. Understood?

Maybe some visual aids will help us both. This is me. And this is my book. Get it?

Me.

My book. v There, I think that helped us both better understand that this is my book and not me. This isn't even a proper representation of the way I feel at this very moment. This is just a collection of words put together in a way of my choosing to tell some kind of story. So from now on nothing you read (including this introduction) is my fault, it's the book's fault.

See how I got myself off the hook? A real writer wouldn't have done that. I am not a writer. I am a fraud, and you can quote me on that. I can read the headlines now. "Young man uses connections to get book published." The reviews nearly write themselves. In fact, I wouldn't be very surprised if these last couple of sentences are the most quoted of any other. I'm a sham, a fraud, and a failure all at the same time. And this introduction proves it.

One of the things I hate most about this book is that it is all about me. Much like anyone with too much time on his or her hands, I feel as though I am the most important person on earth and everything I do is relevant. I say the most charming and inspired things when no one is around. I think I might have something to say and that everyone in the entire world wants to know about it. Almost everything people do is artistic. That doesn't make it art. I may be being too hard on myself but that is the reality of my world and I'm letting you know how aware of it I really am. I'm not trying to pass this book off as something it is not. This is just a bunch of stuff I put together and someone said

"Hey, you should write a book," so I did. It might not be your cup of tea. You might only get a couple pages into it and throw it in the trash. You might not even give yourself a chance to read this very sentence. But who knows, you could be one of the people out there who might actually like it. You may be able to say all the things about it I can't say for myself. But then again, I'm not a writer.

So here it comes, the book. You can say anything you want about it now. It's not mine anymore.

the end . . .



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16 of Macaulay Culkin's appearances

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John Hughes Uncle Buck(1989)
'In this cheerful, lightweight comedy, excruciatingly clumsy, disorganized, and messy Uncle Buck Russell (John Candy) becomes the screens most unlikely babysitter since Clifton Webb in Sitting Pretty. While their parents are away, eight-year old Miles (Macaulay Culkin), six-year old Maizy (Gaby Hoffman) and their teen-aged sister, Tia (Jean Kelly) are left in the care of Buck. Surprisingly, the very inept Uncle Buck entertains the younger children who come to love him and earns the respect of Tia when he rescues her from her worthless boyfriend. However, in doing so, Buck nearly loses his long-time girlfriend Chanice (Amy Madigan). John Candy is delightful in the leading role giving a touching and notable comic performance.'-- Allrovi



Excerpt



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John Hughes Home Alone(1990)
'Home Alone was set—and mostly shot—in the greater Chicago area. Other shots, such as those of Paris, are either stock footage or film trickery. The Paris-Orly Airport scenes were filmed in one part of O'Hare International Airport. The scene where Kevin wades through a flooded basement when trying to outsmart the burglars was shot in the swimming pool of New Trier High School. A mock-up of the McDonnell Douglas DC10 business class was also put together in the school, on the basketball courts. Some scenes were shot in a three-story single-family house located at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the village of Winnetka. The kitchen in the film was shot in the house, along with the main staircase, basement and most of the first floor landing. The house's dining room, and all the downstairs rooms (excluding the kitchen) were built on a sound stage. The house was built in 1921 and features five bedrooms, a fully converted attic, a detached double garage and a greenhouse. "Kevin's tree house" in the backyard was built specifically for the film and demolished after principal photography ended.'-- collaged



The original trailer


The screams



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Howard Zieff My Girl(1991)
'To cut to the inevitable: Yes, Macaulay Culkin, the towheaded young megastar of Home Alone, kicks the bucket in My Girl — and no, the big event won't be nearly as devastating to little ones (at least not to those over the age of 8) as, say, Bambi's mother getting gunned down by hunters. This will come as a relief to many parents, but it's also a testament to the emotional level at which My Girloperates. The movie unfolds in TV Land, that clean, well-lighted place where life comes in episodes and there isn't a tragedy that can't be resolved in 17 minutes. If only the movie didn't pile on conflicts like a Freudian layer cake. By the time Culkin's character dies, it happens so casually that it's almost as if he'd moved away.'-- Entertainment Weekly



Excerpt



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John Landis Michael Jackson's Black or White(1991)
'Michael and I had an understanding about my father. He knew what that was all about. He'd lived it. It's not like I can just bump into people on the street and say, Oh! You too! It doesn't happen that often. Michael's still a kid. I'm still a kid. We're both going to be about 8 years old forever in some place because we never had a chance to be 8 when we actually were. That's kind of the beautiful and the cursed part of our lives.'-- Macaulay Culkin






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Joseph Ruben The Good Son (1993)
'Who in the world would want to see this movie? Watching The Good Son, I asked myself that question, hoping that perhaps the next scene would contain the answer, although it never did. The movie is a creepy, unpleasant experience, made all the worse because it stars children too young to understand the horrible things we see them doing. Macaulay Culkin's character is a very evil little boy; the movie could have been called Henry, Portrait of a Future Serial Killer. But what rings false is that the Culkin character isn't really a little boy at all. His speech is much too sophisticated and ironic for that, and so is his reasoning and his cleverness. The character would be more frightening, perhaps, if he did seem young and naive. This way, he seems more like a distasteful device by the filmmakers, who apparently think there is a market for glib one-liners by child sadists.'-- Roger Ebert



Trailer


The Making of The Good Son



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Howard Deutch Getting Even with Dad(1994)
'In Getting Even With Dad, a straight-arrow 11-year-old (Macaulay Culkin) whose mother has died gets dropped off in San Francisco with his father, an ex-con (Ted Danson) who has ignored him. The boy tries to foil his dad's final heist and fix him up with a female police investigator. Anyone who was hoping that by now Macaulay Culkin would have outgrown the Home Alone character can forget it. He may be 13, but he's still cute. He still outsmarts every bad guy, parent and cop he runs into. And the kids still think it's pretty funny. Macaulay Culkin's character was supposed to have a short haircut in this movie, but Culkin, who had let his hair grow at the time, liked his looks and did not want to cut it. His father, Kit Culkin, demanded on behalf of his son that he be allowed to keep his hair the way it was, pointing out that his character was more a rough around the edges, working class boy and not a clean-cut, prep school one. He got to keep his long hair.'-- LA Times



Excerpt



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Donald Petrie Richie Rich(1994)
'Richie Rich was Macaulay Culkin's final film as a child actor. The movie received negative reviews from critics and maintains a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 20 reviews. However, Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars saying he was surprised how much he enjoyed it and though it wasn't the greatest movie, he liked that it had style and didn't go for cheap payoffs. Richie Rich earned a Razzie Award nomination for Macaulay Culkin as Worst Actor for his performance in the movie (also for Getting Even with Dad and The Pagemaster) but lost the award to Kevin Costner for Wyatt Earp. The film also fell short of recouping its budget at the box office, with a $38 million gross in North America in a $40 million budget. It was however a home video success, with $125 million in VHS rentals.'-- Wiki



Trailer


Richie Rich in 5 Seconds (Extended)



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Harmony Korine Sonic Youth's Sunday(1998)
'"Sunday" was the loudest, most conventional rock track on Sonic Youth’s 1998 effort A Thousand Leaves, but it was the second version of the tune to be released. The first landed on the soundtrack of Richard Linklater’s 1996 film subUrbia, which itself was an adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play. It starred Giovanni Ribisi, Parker Posey and Nick Zahn, but by the time 1998 rolled around, it was director Harmony Korine and Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin who were repping doomed hipsters. It still skews strange, ten years later, watching Culkin and Thurston Moore bang their heads in slow-motion. Especially since there is nothing slow about the track: It rocks holy hell. It’s an odd juxtaposition, but Harmony Korine is all about that.'-- Wired





The Making of Harmony Korine's 'Sunday'



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Randy Barbato Party Monster(2003)
'It's weird when people say [about Party Monster], "Oh you did this to get away from the work you did before." Well, that implies I'm trying to break out of some kind of box that I've been put into. The reason I took so much time off is I felt the industry defined me, and I wanted to define myself. So I had to take back my own life, and I had to go away for eight years. I was losing touch with my family and I hadn't done a full year of schoolwork in my entire life, so I had to take control of myself again. Before, I was doing things that I didn't really want to, and I lost the joy, because it became like a machine. I was being forced to do something I didn't want to do. But when I look back on it, I did truly enjoy doing it. It was just a matter of finding the joy again, and I think I have.' -- Macaulay Culkin



Trailer


Excerpt



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Brian Dannelly Saved!(2004)
'I think that at the heart of this movie is a really good Christian message. It’s a really faith-based movie with a good Christian message, a good message over all. The basis of any religion, let alone anything Christ-related, is be a good person, be good to the people around you and accept them for who they are. And that’s it, whether you’re a Buddhist or anything like that, that’s the message. I think that’s the underlying message of this movie, which is be good, accept people for their faiths or what they believe in or don’t believe in, and you can make a family whatever you want to make it as long as you accept people for what they are, no matter what their faith is. I think overall it’s a good Christian message. I hope Christians get it, I hope they really dig it.'-- Macaulay Culkin



Trailer



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Macauley Culkin reads from his novel Junior at B&N (2006)
'Novels written by celebrities tend to be grating, solipsistic affairs. Given a choice between Ethan Hawke’s literary fiction and the veiled memoirs of glittering train wrecks like Nicole Richie, most sane people would choose television. When I heard that Culkin was now a novelist, I rolled my eyes along with everyone else, a reaction I had to suppress repeating when he prefaced our chat by announcing, “The funny thing is, I’m not really a big reader, not a big fan of books in the first place.” But Junior turns out to be oddly, unwittingly . . . compelling. A postmodern mishmash filled with drawings, epistolary fragments, personal manifestos, and public diatribes, the book is best appreciated as a piece of conceptual art rather than a legitimate novel. Tear out the pages, staple them to a wall, and you’d have a deconstructionist installation, an accidental dissertation on the crippling self-consciousness brought on by early fame. Child Actor: Fall and Rise.'-- New York Magazine



Excerpt



___________________
Miles Brandman Sex and Breakfast(2007)
'Sex and Breakfast tries to say something meaningful and profound about sex and relationships, but the script is so poorly conceived and constructed that any message it may have had is muddled up beyond recognition. If you're looking for an enlightenment, you're likely to end up either confused or angry; if you're looking just for entertainment, look somewhere else. The movie tries so hard to be important that it never even tries to entertain, and it ends up being neither. As a result it may be one of the dullest and most forgettable movies you'll see, despite its shock value (which is much less shocking than it tries to be), the admittedly intriguing subject matter, and the competent editing and cinematography. The sad truth is that the only real draw it has is a group sex scene featuring the kid from Home Alone.'-- IMDb



Excerpt



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Orange (UK) Phone Operator Ad(2007)
'Cinema advertisement for the UK phone operator Orange and the Orange Film Board featuring 'the men from Orange' meeting former child star Macaulay Culkin on the set of a serious prison movie. The two men convince Macaulay that his serious prison drama needs an input of some 'Home Alone' style slapstick. "You've been doing this whole 'loner' thing forever. What age are you now...15?"'-- collaged






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Adam Green The Wrong Ferrari(2011)
'The Wrong Ferarri is a feature-film written and directed by Adam Green. Conceived on Green's European music tour in the summer of 2010, the film was shot entirely on an iPhone camera, with Green writing the script for the actors on index cards. Scenes were shot in France, Prague, Venice, The Jersey Shore and New York City. Green has stated that The Wrong Ferarri was inspired by Woody Allen's Bananas, Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, "Weird Al" Yankovic's UHF, Robert Downey, Sr.'s Putney Swope and the television show Seinfeld. The film contains strong profanity, sexual themes, and several scenes of nudity and is unrated by the MPAA.'-- collaged



The entire film



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Macaulay Culkin's iPod(2012)
'Last year, Macauley Culkin quietly started a new job as a New York DJ at Le Poisson Rouge, a club managed by Tabisel, also a former child actor. Each of Culkin’s parties come with its own theme, usually tangentially related to adolescence. He had a prom where he crowned his own king and queen. After the paparazzi snapped a shot of him in February, looking scraggly and gaunt on a New York street, he hosted a canned- food drive to mock the tabloids that wondered whether he had been starving himself. Tonight’s dinosaur birthday party is like a piece of performance art: a former child actor’s reinterpretation of childhood. Its actual meaning is harder to understand.'-- Daily Beast






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3MB Collective Discusses Their Gallery(2012)
'Macaulay Culkin’s not dying — he’s just embraced the path of a starving artist. Apparently, Culkin has teamed up with buddies Toby Goodshank and Adam Green to form 3MB Collective, an art group whose debut show, “Leisure Inferno,” is opening at The Gallery at Le Poisson Rouge (where Culkin currently hosts weekly dance parties) on September 13th. In this in-studio video, a mostly barefoot Culkin shows off the group’s ”hell-raiser disco luau” art, including a naked painting of the cast of Seinfeld on Wheel of Fortune and an homage to Kurt Cobain as a hacker of the “deep web,” and talks about the joys of collaborative art.'-- Flavorwire







*

p.s. Hey. ** S., S. is good. It also looks kind of like a reared-up snake about to strike a little round thing. Okay, good, if all of that seems good. You sound better. ** David Ehrenstein, Yeah, Fourier, curious cat. Did some looking around. Interesting. I think that guilty verdict re: the 'cannibal cop' is a travesty, at least from what I know about the case, which isn't everything, of course, but still. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. Thank you, ditto. Oh, yeah, I read 'The Recognitions'. It's fantastic. I've read a bunch of long novels, I am just less in the mood or something for them now than I was. Your Billfold thing is up! I'll read that today, naturally. Cool! Everyone, the one and only writer and d.l. John Fram aka Cobaltfram has a no-doubt key and ultra-enchancing new article over at The Billfold called 'How Not to Write, Market and Sell a Supernatural Romance Novel' that you really want to read, I'm pretty sure, so just do that then, why don't you, okay? I like Pierre Boulez a lot, but I'm not sure if I've heard 'Pli Selon Pli'. The Mallarme connection will get me all over it, in any case. Thank you for the alert. My plate contains, let's see, novel attempts, planning for my next trip in a bit less than two weeks, final checking of the French translation of 'The Pyre' text before it gets sent to the printer and made into a book, strategizing and prep for a couple of projects, fun, adventuring, etc., off the top of my head. I thought it was interesting that his acne intensified until he plead guilty whereupon his skin smoothed out again for whatever reason. Okay, I'll check that John Adams thing, thanks! ** Steevee, I think I need a couple of more listens to the Bowie to make up my mind about it. I'm of at least two minds so far. Fingers crossed that your editor is good with your no doubt perfect decision about needs to be in the 'Badlands' piece. Excited. ** Statictick, Hi, N. Oh, you think it's epilepsy-related. I guess that makes sense, at least from way far away where I am. Well, God, I hope there are no more incidents until the 18th when hopefully somehow they can't be killed in their cribs. Man, your toughness is something else. Major love and all else to you. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi, Billy! Very sweet to see you! Oh, that's okay, I was away from here too. So the non-stop doing stuff is the really good kind of doing and non-stop, right? I got that vibe. Well, and now having read an additional one of your sentences, I see that you yourself proclaim what's happening as exciting, so, so much for my instincts. Tell me more when you feel like it. I'm real good. I was traveling, working, and enjoying everything since I last saw you, I think. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. 'Pola X' is terrific, right? Really glad you got to see it. Did you see 'Holy Motors', I forgot? I saw your email in my box, yay, and I'll get to it hopefully later today. Thanks! ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, man, you obviously really need to get that endoscopy, unpleasant as it and the prospect may be. Ken Baumann has Crohn's, as I think you probably know. He wrote a fascinating piece about it that I can try to find for you if you didn't read it already. Anyway, dude, get that done and let me/us know what happens, okay? I saw that typewriter of yours in my FB feed. Sweet looking thing. I can not imagine ever voluntarily using one of those things again. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh. Who, me? Thanks. Yeah, I don't know. I think I have some kind of eye for visual things, but, when there's motion involved, I think I would get a little lost, but I'm talking with someone who has an amazing eye for visual motion about collaborating on a movie or movies, and our ideas are extremely synced, and I'm pretty sure that'll happen at some point. And I'll keep you in my mind for some kind of eye-popping visit when the time comes, sure. I'm of course really glad to hear that work is going okay. That seems like a pretty good par for the course. ** Misanthrope, Right, aw, Antonio's entreaties, yeah. Jesus, fuck death. Luckily, the bus topple was more embarrassing than devastating. I'm down to some ribs pain and a semi-swollen thumb. I'm a klutz. I think Self is a pompous prick in his writing too, but, hey, that's as legit an angle as any other, and if it works it works. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, cool, about how the post grew on you. Yeah, differently organized than the stack posts for sure. Definitely more linear and respectful of the thing. Yeah, I see, and, yeah, hopefully on the Spielberg. I don't know. I guess I'm still not convinced re: why that should happen. I took a short break from the Hell memoir for no reason other than busyness on my end, but it's riveting and a lot of fun. I think you'll dig it. ** Will C., Hi, Will! I'm doing great, thank you. That Seattle move sounds really good. It's pretty nice there, as I'm sure you well know, and being there certainly doesn't seem to hamper the writers I know who live there or around there. When will that happen? Mm, I don't like Will Self's work. Just a taste thing. The guy can write, obviously, but there's a pretension/superiority thing and related attitude in his work that just irritates the shit out of me. Although I've had personal encounters with him, and I found him quite unbearable, so I guess that impact can't be discounted. And even though it shouldn't make a difference and hopefully doesn't, he really dislikes my work, so there's that going on. ** Alan, Thanks, Alan. We'll see, but, at the moment, I'm hopeful. Oh, you know, Jeff should probably explain 'unworking', if he cares to 'cos I think that was his (?) term to describe the Blanchot idea. I think he explained it a bit in the initial comment in which he brought it up, but I can't remember where that comment is exactly. Chilly Jay Chill, If you can/want, could you give Alan a thumbnail description of 'unworking'? Thanks! I was responding to 'unworking' by just thinking about Blanchot's central notions of language. Hold on. This is a long quote, sorry, re: Blanchot's ideas, but I think it's maybe a good, helpful one although kind of basically put: 'Blanchot draws on the work of the symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé in formulating his conception of literary language as anti-realist and distinct from everyday experience. 'I say flower,' Mallarmé writes in Poetry in Crisis, 'and outside the oblivion to which my voice relegates any shape, insofar as it is something other than the calyx, there arises musically, as the very idea and delicate, the one absent from every bouquet.' In the everyday use of language, words are the vehicles of ideas. The word 'flower' means flower that refers to flowers in the world. No doubt it is possible to read literature in this way, but literature is more than this everyday use of language. For in literature 'flower' does not just mean flower but many things and it can only do so because the word is independent from what it signifies. This independence, which is passed over in the everyday use of language, is the negativity at the heart of language. The word means something because it negates the physical reality of the thing. Only in this way can the idea arise. The absence of the thing is made good by the presence of the idea. What the everyday use of language steps over to make use of the idea, literature remains fascinated by, the absence that makes it possible. Literary language, therefore, is a double negation, both of the thing and the idea. It is in this space that literature becomes possible where words take on a strange and mysterious reality of their own, and where also meaning and reference remain allusive and ambiguous.' ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Great to see you! And right after a Blanchot reference coincidentally. I'm doing very well, thank you. Great news about your writing progress and your curious and nice sounding advisor. I understand your house dream. I've been dreaming aloud and not just dreaming of chateau/ castle living, and actually thinking how it can be feasible, but not doing that alone. That would be too much for me. Of course your questions will be fantastic! That is a given if there ever was a given! Me too: face to face is infinitely better. Love to you. ** Chris Dankland, Of course there's not a clear way to feel about someone who did what he did, but the mechanisms of the law, and the completely subjective and arbitrary decision to, say, try him as an adult when he was not an adult purely out of bloodlust and vengeance, and of the thoughtless, kneejerk public opinion re: what he did, which generalizes it into something that ends up having nothing to do with what he did and why, ... it's those kinds of things that make me the angriest of all. Yeah, I think I'm with you if you're saying that the exploration of marketing and promotion in the Alt Lit scene is more of an aesthetic exploration of the mechanisms of publicity and of the cult of personality than an actual climber strategy. There's a lot of ambiguity there in any case, and it's fascinating. Interesting about the Heiko Julien thing. I wonder if that's true. Why not, I guess. I see his work as something that could transition into 'the book' and work very well there. The really interesting part of the transition will be when/if publishers start fishing around for writers whose work isn't immediately comfortable in some way in 'the book'. Heiko Julien presents a very interesting possibility. It's interesting and exciting that Matt Bell and Amelia Gray and Michael Kimball and others are making the transition, but their work seems, at least in theory to me, to have 'the book' as a hoped for destination or something. It gets trickier and more intriguing if, oh, seriously internet based writers like H. Julien or Guillaume Morrisette or Walter Mackey or ... on and on, are presented with that cusp. I haven't read STD's piece on AWP yet. I'll go do that. Thank you! Yes, the Malick and the Korine are out in theaters here. I might be seeing the Malick today, in fact. We'll see, but I'm very excited to see both of them. You take care too, man. ** Okay. We've got MC in the spotlight today, so have at it, and I'll see you tomorrow.

'The year has begun with a lively debate regarding the direction and role of field recording. On sites such as The Field Reporter questions have been raised regarding several aspects of field-recording-based productions. Reading a number of posts there are three recurring concerns in the debate:

'1st: the perception that there is an elitism in field-recording which fails to foster an audience beyond other field-recordists. My response: field-recording lacks a strong theoretical structure in which to interpret it – unlike other disciplines which have had centuries of trained thought to support them field-recording is still young and relatively unknown beyond its circle of practitioners. A stronger theoretical base might increase its profile beyond the majority of us whose work only exists on nebulous internet platforms.

'2nd: the rise in cheaper technology has enabled less professional recordists to saturate the pool of field recordings with “second-rate” work. My response: expensive equipment does not guarantee a good ear or a good technique. Nor does it provide interesting ideas on what subject to record. Indeed, starting with low-end equipment can make the recordist much more resourceful and creative.

'3rd: the perception that field recordists are increasingly focussing on sounds from exotic, or developing, locales in a way that reeks of neocolonialism. My response: for those without the financial means these recordings present us with a world we might never experience. Listening to such recordings has the potential to increase our sensitivity and wonder towards the world’s cultural and environmental diversity making us much more likely to respect our global heritage rather than devastate it.

'The tone of some critics in the current debate seems quite harsh, especially when one of the primary aims of field-recording is to promote the experience of listening for everyone rather than a limited, exclusive, few. In any discipline there will always be a hierarchical structure which defines what is of value, a canon to instruct us as to what is “good” and what is “not”. As we have seen in art and literature the inherent danger of a canon is that it benefits some while disadvantaging others. Is this recent debate the beginning of such a process?

'It is true that the time needed to listen to the work of field-recordists can be extensive. Just as there will always be too many books to read, too many galleries to visit, and too many movies to watch, there will also be too many field-recordings to listen to. Narrowing your focus of attention to either a few favourite field-recordists or areas of field-recording, as you would with any other discipline, will overcome this problem.

'Every debate should forward some positive elements so this post will conclude with a promotion of some field-recordists whose work I listen to regularly. By following their work over the past few years I have listened to sounds from all corners of the earth, they have sharpened my ability to listen and broadened my sense of place in the world:

* 'Sebastiane Hegarty: a British artist, writer and lecturer whose recordings have featured on radio and film.
* John Grzinich: an American sound and video artist now living in Estonia, he also co-ordinates the MoKS residency program.
* Des Coulam: a British ex-pat living in Paris, he documents the many sounds of Parisian streets, arcades and subways.
* Vladimir Kryutchev: a Russian reporter and field-recordist who documents the sounds of local village life.
* Magnus Bergsson: an Icelandic field-recordist whose recordings focus on the urban and natural spaces of Iceland.
* Ian Rawes: a reporter and field-recordist for the London Sound Survey.
* David Velez: a Colombian field-recordist whose recent essay “El Coyote” is an immensely insightful and sensitive reflection on why he chooses to record the subjects that he does.' -- Sounds Like Noise








_____________________
Toshiya Tsunoda Air Vibration Of Elevator Motor Room In Stairwell
'For 15 years, the Yokohama based artist Toshiya Tsunoda has been releasing remarkable acoustic works into a world that he seems to hear like no one else. His CDs are the most idiosyncratic and rigorous to be found among the many field recording releases of recent years, though his work is just as easy to place in the sound art frame. Tsunoda has a background in visual art (he studied oil painting at university) and the idea of landscape permeates his practice. “The most important thing for my field work is the possibility of describing the experience of landscape,” he reports. “I want to know how to fix the experience of landscape. It’s a different method to using photography to fix it. We can see the outline of objects clearly in photographs. But when recording, things are not so clear and it is difficult to distinguish what vibrations travel in the place. It’s like a moving sculpture. I find many possibilities to connect with perception and recognition."'-- The Wire






_________________
Aki Onda Bruise & Bite
'The latest collection of Cassette Memories from Japanese field recording maverick Aki Onda comes spun along a grizzled cocktail of bewitched and alienating tape hiss. Cinematic by the project’s distinctive virtue, this warped and distorted concoction arranges spliced chunks of stock excerpts from the artist’s curious expeditions to Mexico: birds screeching, tires spinning, waves crashing, distant pop tunes wavering, and a slipshod assembly of marching street bands, all over a rickety tide of AM crackle and gorged, tumultuous static. This most recent installment is momentous, an exploit that commands one’s attention as a nostalgic journey is curated, across the border, via an assemblage of busted tape recorders and crackerjack manipulation techniques.'-- Tiny Mix Tapes






__________________
Annea Lockwood Tiger Balm
'During the 1960s Annea Lockwood collaborated frequently with sound-poets, choreographers and visual artists, and created a number of works which she herself performed, such as the Glass Concert (1967), later published in Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, and recorded on Tangent Records, then on What Next CDs. In this work a variety of complex sounds were drawn from industrial glass shards and glass tubing, and presented as an audio-visual theater piece. In synchronous homage to Christian Barnard's pioneering heart transplants, Lockwood created the Piano TranspIants (1969-72), in which old, defunct pianos were variously burned, "drowned" in a shallow pond in Amarillo, Texas, and partially buried in an English garden. During the 1970s and '80s she turned her attention to performance works focused on environmental sounds, life-narratives and performance works using low-tech devices such as her Sound Ball (a foam-covered ball containing 6 small speakers and a radio receiver, originally designed to "put sound into the hands of" dancers).'-- collaged






____________________
Yukitomo Hamasaki The Garden #3
'The Garden is a work based on the methodology of field recording. However, the natural and urban sounds in this work were not recorded by the artist himself. Instead, all sound materials were recorded or downloaded from various websites in the Internet. Yukitomo considers the inside of the Internet as one of the new fields for "behaviors". The field recording sound, both natural and social sound, can be regarded as traces of "behaviors." In The Garden all sound materials were selected arbitrary from the online world, and there are no relationships between each sound. All natural sounds in this piece were recorded in various time and space, and all performed sound were created based on various thoughts, tastes, genres and cultural background. Then, all these sounds were edited to compose as one piece. The Garden is the work with removing personal ID and locality of sound files, then, reconstructing them in the new context.'-- matter recordings






__________________
Peter Cusack The Horse Was Alive, The Cow Was Dead
'Peter Cusack is particularly interested in environmental sound and acoustic ecology. He has examined the sound properties of areas such as Lake Baikal, Siberia, and the Azerbaijan oil fields, and is interested in how sounds change as people migrate and as technology changes. In 1998, Cusack started the "Your Favorite London Sound" project. The goal is to find out what London noises are found appealing by people who live in London. This was so popular that it has been repeated in Chicago, Beijing, and other cities. He is involved in the "Sound & The City" art project using sounds from Beijing in October, 2005. Cusack's performances are a central part of the book Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory (Toop, 2004) by his old collaborator and respected music critic and author, David Toop.'-- collaged






_________________
Jason Kavanagh [clm]
'My compositions first begin with a concept. Not a sound, but an impression of what that sound is. This involves an interpretation that is filtered through me. I recognise the Self to be a key constituent of any sound and what I aim to produce are sound pieces that capture the subjective and inter-subjective activity and experiences which underpin the way in which a listener engages with their aural reality. This piece began with field recording, followed by a high level of sound design. The recordings were processed and manipulated into the sounds which you can hear. The sound files were then queued as samples and I recorded a one take arrangement, this arrangement was then gradually sculpted and moulded into the finished work by further alteration of volume, EQ and effects parameters.'-- JK






_________________
Christina Kubisch The Magnetic City(excerpt)
'Christina Kubisch belongs to the first generation of sound artists. Trained as a composer, she has artistically developed such techniques as the magnetic induction to realize her sound installations. Since 1986 the artist has added light as an artistic element to her work with sound. Christina Kubisch's work displays an artistic development which is often described as the "synthesis of arts" - the discovery of acoustic space and the dimension of time in the visual arts on the one hand, and a new relationship between material and form in music on the other.'-- discogs






___________________
Francisco López Seeds of Bird
'Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For more than thirty years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, workshops and sound installations in over sixty countries of the five continents.'-- collaged






_________________
Jana Winderen Heated(excerpt)
'Heated is Jana Winderen's blistering live set from her recent trip to Japan as part of 'Norwegian Music Today'. This first CD follows her only other release to date, a 7" vinyl limited edition, Surface Runoff, on Autofact [USA, 2008]. Improvising from recordings taken on field research trips, she forces the power of the hidden to the surface, making the unheard audible. Its a strange world down there; a world of which we know little, replete with its own instrumentation and orchestras. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of glacier crevasses are brought to the surface. She is occupied with finding sound from its hidden source, like blind field recording.'-- touchshop






_________________
Justin Bennett Ovipool
'The widely ranging work of Justin Bennett is as rooted in the audiovisual and visual arts as it is in music. Central to his thinking and his work is a process-orientated approach and an interest in the elasticity of the concept of ’space’. Bennett produces (reworked) field recordings, drawings, performances, installations, photographs, videos and essays. He brings the characteristic potentials and capacities of each medium into every new work, paying no heed to the divisions between these media. Recently his work has focussed on urban development, technological progress and the relationship between architecture and sound.'-- Sounds of Europe






__________________
Jez riley French Evening Chorus, Blue Mountains
'My work involves elements of intuitive composition, field recording (using conventional & extended methods), photographic images/ photographic scores and improvisation. In recent years I have been working closely with specific spaces (natural and man-made), capturing moments that connect with a personal sense of place. I am fascinated and passionate about the infinite detail and expanding vistas of life around us, its sights and sounds, often overlooked or hidden, and their ability to help us experience anew the environments in which we spend our time. My creative output focuses on this never ending, joyous exploration and has increasingly involved a closer relationship with audible silence, active listening, stillness & the empathy of compositional lines. These evolved from my need to always remain open to my emotive, intuitive response to situations & environments’-- JrF






_________________
Roel Meelkop Live at kuS
'Roel Meelkop (1963) studied visual arts and art theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. His musical activities date back to the early eighties when he started THU20, together with Jac van Bussel, Peter Duimelinks, Jos Smolders and Guido Doesborg. THU20 have released several tapes and CDs and performed regularly in Europe. The working method of THU20 included many discussions about how to compose and why. This period was crucial in forming his ideas and concepts about sound and how to organise it, but it was not until the mid nineties that he was able to fully realise these ideas. The purchase of a sampler and later a computer radically changed his possibilities of working with sound, offering infinitely more control and freedom. Since then he has worked steadily on a body of work, most of which was recieved enthusiastically in the small but dedicated world of sound art.'-- kOAN






_________________
Hiroki Sasajima In A Crowd
'I’ve long been fascinated by the detail of sound, whether in a dense audible field or in the quietest environment. Indeed, it is locations we think of as ‘still’ that draw me in most. The actual spaces that we human beings inhabit in everyday life, of course, are always closely connected to theirs. From a bush in our yard, a park at a city street corner, to areas that are rural, a myriad of communities exist in various places. In Japanese culture, appreciating the sounds of insects is a tradition that goes back to olden times, their sounds enjoyed as songs, a voice or a message from another creature. Many such sounds exist in the changing of the seasons and in a delicate natural environment, certain to keep stimulating our own sensibility.'-- Hiroki Sasajima







*

p.s. Hey. ** David Saä V. Estornell, Well, hi there, David! Lovely to see you! I don't think the concept of late applies around here, so no worries. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Very, very excellent and beautiful words about Blanchot's 'désoeuvrement'! What a pleasure and a great clarifier. Thank you so much! ** Misanthrope, Haven't hitchhiked since I was maybe 16. No fucking way. Yeah, re: Self, to each his own, etc., always.  ** S., Hey. I don't get MC being beautiful. I just think he's a cool seeming guy. In love, worse, yeah, that perception of oneself when in love happens, but it always seem like defensiveness or something? Everyone, S. made a blond Emo boy stack on his blog called 'Butterscotch Nuts', if you like. My fave is Send Swedish Fish. ** Wolf, Wolf! The nearly here Wolf! I don't think MC's trajectory has had overt tragedy in it. I think that's all media overlay. So, you're coming tomorrow now? The snow thing is really that bad? Strange. I think trains, etc. are back to mostly working order over here. Anyway, give the alert when you hit this soil. Can't wait! ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. Well, like I said, I haven't followed every minutiae of the trial, but I have followed it, and, based on what I know, I don't agree at all. Back when I was researching sex murder, serial killers, etc. for my work when I was younger, I let myself go pretty far in trying to experience what such things would be like, and how one could accomplish them, choosing 'victims', etc., never with any remote idea of doing anything in the real world, and it seems to me that the guy was at least quite possibly or quite likely just getting into his fantasy, and scaring/exciting himself by edging towards 'doing it'. I'm going to read further, but, right now, I'm of the opinion that he was largely convicted because the jury were freaked out by the detailing of his fantasies that were presented in court, and that they were incapable of understanding the difference between imaginative indulgence and actual real world crime planning. So far, that makes the most sense to me. ** James, Ha ha, I was going to say. Glad you liked it, man. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. No, I didn't read it yet 'cos I was busy and out all day/evening, but I will today. The occasional long book still calls. But I always preferred the shorties. European-style. Most of the French novels that I think are great are at least relatively short. If I can help it, I'll never read another Henry James novel as long as I live, and I can't imagine ever actually reading Proust. Just don't care enough. Thanks for the 'Pli Selon Pli' excerpt/vid. I'll do that today too. No, didn't do the 'Atomic' thing either yet. Yesterday got eaten. I have a feeling that the Boulez will be the more immediately enjoyable to me. The stranger and more dissonant or whatever, the more comfy I become. But we'll see. No, I can't tell about the translation, but my friend Zac looked over it yesterday and pointed out a bunch of problems, and he's going to fiddle a bit and see if he can right it. I'm mostly working on the novel in my head right now. I need to conceptualize how to make what I'm thinking about work, and some possibly workable forms and shapes and structures are starting to come to me. I'm going on a trip in about a week and a half with a friend that's specifically intended for us to hold up in the 'middle of nowhere' and work on our respective works and some collaborative stuff, so I'm mostly organizing and planning ahead for that. I never met MC. I ate in the same restaurant with him once. Catty Will Self story? No. I'm not very catty or into dishing, really. I saw your email. Thanks! I'll open it today! ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Really, really great to see you! I'm back here for about a week and a half. Yeah, much traveling lately and for the foreseeable future too. Speaking of, I'm finally going to Japan! For about three weeks or so with a friend in June! If it's okay, I would love to hit you up for tips and etc. when the time gets closer. When do you move there? Wow, that's a very harsh series of life blows. I'm so very sorry about your friend -- I don't need to tell you about my sympathies re: that -- and, God, all the best wishes in the world for the mums, and, yeah, let's talk/Skype when you're ready. That would be good. You're in the next Cityscapes? Awesome! What a good mag! Love to you too, P. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris. No, I haven't read MC's book, but, after reading/posting that intro, I actually really want to. I thought that was terrific. The 1000th post! Congratulations, man, and such a 'job' so extraordinarily well done! Everyone, the mighty Chris Dankland celebrates the 1000th post on his seminal THE NEATO MOSQUITO ALT LIT FIREWORKS SHOW site featuring, in his words, 'a long list of [and related linkage to] the 240 or so people I've featured on there since starting it...' This is momentous, folks! Head over there! ** Will C., Hi, Will. No, no click with Self. More click with Burroughs. That Ohio shooting got strangely lowkey coverage. I think some proximate, more theatrical high school shooting pulled the headlines out from under it or something. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. ** Steevee, Hi. I'm still not enthusiastic about the Bowie, and I'm still putting my finger on why. I would certainly imagine that MC has done drugs, yeah, and so what, but the 'heroin addict, near-death' stuff seems completely fabricated. He gets skinny, grows out his facial hair, and the crap starts flying. He's been extremely pale forever. Like I said, I ate across a restaurant from him once when he was maybe 14 or so, and he looks like a ghost at the best of times. Anyway, drugs, sure, why not, but self-destructive drug spiral seems like bull. ** MANCY, Hey, man! I'm good. Well, I think I'm fighting off a chest cold today, or rather trying very hard to, so, generally great, and not sure today. And you? ** Sypha, Yeah, get that done and sorted and nailed. Wow, lotsa books, and all of a high character, etc. Nice. ** Alan, Yeah, I agree totally about the cop thing. No, I've never read 'Rameau's Nephew'. I'm not sure I've actually ever read more than excerpts and quotes by Diderot, actually. Is it proving fruitful? ** Stephen, Hey! How ultra-great to have you here again, my pal. And with such a beautiful, very 'you' comment. You good? I hope you're getting lots and lots of love for your incredible novel. Big love to you! ** Bollo, Hi, J. Cool, me too, re: MC love. I'm doing really well, thanks. Anne Sexton, wow. I haven't read her since I was a faux-suicidal young poet looking for ways to articulate the misery. Interesting. Was 'Transformations' part of your research? I know, yes, about the Xenakis Mego thing, no? ** Okay. There's a gig up there for you which I hope you will attend between now and tomorrow. Thank you! See you post-that.

_________________



EskortHampus, 18
Stockholm

If you want to be happy You've got to be with me I said, happy,me!!

Fucking active / passive
Oral active / passive
Watersports -
CBT -
Fisting -
SM -
Bondage -
Dirty -
Kissing yes
Massage -
Safer Sex -
Rate / Hour 100
Rate / Night 400
Rate / 24h 0



___________________





vergil, 21
Brussels

hi im simple person and i do believe being simple is can be harder than complex You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end

i need help my mom want me to leave the house I dont know where to go,within this week i need to leave,please help me....

im escort..just for ML..suck ur Sick ...cos i cant massage

do not fall in love with me..

im just in need please be my savior

Dicksize M, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Underwear, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



__________________




teensdoit, 20
San Diego

fries are a type of life that does not like boredom and no belive in formalties ... in other words I love crazy life

i am hot 99999999999 99999

i am hot //////// /////////// ---------- ----------- ------------ ----------------

call me when u're sober

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position Top only
Kissing Consent
Fucking Top only
Oral Top
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Techno & Raver
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 50 Dollars
Rate night 150 Dollars



___________________





itsfake, 24
St. Louis

HOT IN MY HEART AND ...pants!
BE SURE YOU KNOW HOW TO HANDLE LARGE ONE!
WHAT CAN U OFFER TO GET MY ATTENTION?
I might give what u want if u offer something good.
I like to be dominant with the young.
I like to be submissiv with the mature!
In 5 words: I'm generous with the generous.

Somewhat unrelated and vague (hopefully some of you may relate): sometimes I feel I've lost a bit of what I used to be, and I'm stuck between feelings of that being the natural order of things and/or it being a matter of wanting exposure.

Fucking active / passive
Oral active / passive
Watersports active
CBT active / passive
Fisting -
SM -
Bondage -
Dirty no
Kissing yes
Massage active / passive
Safer Sex always
Rate / Hour 0
Rate / Night 0
Rate / 24h 0



___________________





fuck-old, 18
Denver

Nice boy, quiet but sometimes the crazy.
Try me out, taste my hole lick my balls.
You are found the best.
An extraordinary escort with a Brain Check.
If I were a chocolate in a box, you’d choose me every time.
Its a little odd doing this but its me and i like it.

Hey -- you all right?

Dicksize M, Cut
Position More bottom
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting No
Fetish Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 10 Dollars
Rate night 200 Dollars



____________________






Niklas_mens, 21
Dusseldorf

Rich men have the best system who desire to want to help the young boy.
It would be nice to know if people with businessman show business and politics.
To be able to excel in their passions and express myself I need a lot of money.
I wouldn't prefer promising craps just to get a booking.
If you approach it seriously as I do, everything should improve my mood.

Fucking active / passive
Oral active / passive
Watersports active
CBT no
Fisting no
SM -
Bondage no
Dirty no
Kissing upon agreement
Massage active / passive
Safer Sex always
Rate / Hour 120
Rate / Night 450
Rate / 24h 750



__________________





Eden0092, 20
Paris

I Amar I had sex for money. I will wait.. till the day "I" can froget "you"... or the day. Without money, do not do. I do not get home. I need 30k so bad.

Fucking -
Oral -
Watersports -
CBT -
Fisting -
SM -
Bondage -
Dirty -
Kissing -
Massage -
Safer Sex -
Rate / Hour 200
Rate / Night 0
Rate / 24h 0



________________





Escortmatt, 20
Antwerp

Are you looking for some hot, funny, and sophisticated guy for going to the theatre, musical or pounding arses all night?

Coucou!

I was made for giving and receiving pleasures in all matters. Everybody says that I suck dick pefectly.

Take me out of here!

Time to nearest airports:
30 mins to Brussels airport
1,5 hour to Amsterdam airport
2,5 hours to Paris airports.
2 hours to London.

Dicksize M, Cut
Position Top only
Kissing Yes
Fucking Top only
Oral No
Dirty No
Fisting No
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 3000
Rate night 3000



_________________





yougottapayforme, 24
Brussels

UGLY, STUPID AND THE WORST ESCORT EVER.

I am looking for a good man, older than I. I am looking for a kind man.

Dicksize M, Cut
Position More bottom
Kissing Consent
Fucking More bottom
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Passive
S&M No
Client age Users younger than 25
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



________________




PumpkinCuteBunny, 19
Dublin

I'm not competing with anyone. Because, you are not as good as me. If quality, intelligence and total attention to your needs and desires is what you are looking for, you have found your muse. Sex is an art and I (yeah! You got that!) and I am an artist. And I really need the money to pay rent. And you really need sex. Win-win situation.

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active / passive
S&M No
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Underwear, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 150 Euros
Rate night 400 Euros



_________________





slow-gin, 23
Timișoara, Romania

if I got a problem, a problem gotta problem til it's gone.

one thousand loves the smell of panties sperm. likes to suck and get sperm in my mouth and kiss on the lips. i'm a serious guy.

i can be yours for temporary and only be urs for life long on permanent bases. for temporary u can ask the details for further and for permanent buzz me.

i am doing this work as i am in need becoz my grandmother need to operate her for kidney transplant and i want to save her.

i repeat i can be ur server or mistress for whole life i am dam cute.

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty No
Fisting Active / passive
S&M No
Fetish Sportsgear, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 35 Euros
Rate night 90 Euros



________________




QueerBull, 25
London

Save a boyfriend for a rainy day — and another, in case it doesn’t rain.

A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that’s subtraction.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing at the moment due to Crystal Meth.

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Consent
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting No
S&M No entry
Fetish Sportsgear, Underwear, Uniform, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 15 Pounds
Rate night 80 Pounds



________________




Heath-StaxusPornStar, 20
Prague

I am a professional porn star who's missing Homes :-) I would like to know the nice man who would like fiddled with me. I am playful but also predatory, you can provide entertainment for me who dreamed of. I travel, I recognize new things, I would be very happy if I could share this joy with you. Sincerely ♥ Heath

Dicksize XL, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active
S&M Soft SM only
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Skater, Rubber, Underwear, Skins & Punks, Boots, Lycra, Uniform, Formal dress, Techno & Raver, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans, Drag, Worker
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



_______________





lazy, 19
Wuppertal

it's up to you my BOSS!

take me home, BABY.

I have no any " Manager ", cause I hav enough brain in my head for chat.

no, please dont want to cum in my mouth, Im not your boyfriend!

hahaha they were sleeping on me ZzzZ.

Dicksize L, Uncut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking More bottom
Oral Versatile
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active / passive
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Sneakers & Socks, Drag
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour ask
Rate night ask



________________



Gabby, 21
Vienna

I am gabriel and I want to fuck who I want to give a blowjob and I what?

Dicksize XXL, Uncut
Position Top only
Kissing Yes
Fucking Top only
Oral Top
Dirty Yes
Fisting Active
S&M Yes
Fetish Leather, Skins & Punks, Formal dress, Sneakers & Socks, Jeans
Client age Users 18 to 22
Rate hour 120 Euros
Rate night 500 Euros



________________





myass4u, 24
Bucharest

I promise u’ll experience d best … not as Professionals but with d difference like Love, Papering, Careening n everything that u dreamed.

Why u need an Escort, just 4 a lust or u need 2 crunch yr thirst of heart n d desire of Soul. The size 6’ to 12’ will never can satisfy u. That’s 4 sure.

When u go back 2 yr Love once, yr boyfriend, yr girlfriend or 2 yr life partners u should feel as fresh as the drops of winter morning swallow all d dust, pollution 4m d flowers, leaves, stem n d green grass.

Go placidly a mid the nose n hast, n remember what peace there may be in silence.

U’ll feel as if the water of the sea waves will rise 2 their extreme heights n travel to d sea shore, slender themselves.

Talk to you later.

Dicksize XL, Cut
Position Versatile
Kissing Yes
Fucking Versatile
Oral Versatile
Dirty WS only
Fisting Active
Fetish Leather, Sportsgear, Rubber, Underwear, Boots, Uniform, Formal dress, Jeans
Client age No restrictions
Rate hour 100 Dollars
Rate night 300 Dollars



_______________



the_rolling_stones, 24
Missoula

me slim and 50kgs....and me as 24 age....dnt want to show off and....me quite young bt helpless....so anyone wants me....to be the winner in life....

Dicksize M, Cut
Position No entry
Kissing No
Fucking No entry
Oral Top
Dirty No
Fisting Active
S&M No entry
Fetish Leather, Rubber, Underwear
Client age Clients over 50
Rate hour 3 Dollars
Rate night 500 Dollars



_________________




butterwithjam, 22
London

I spit in the face,I piss on you, I force you to blow my cock ,I break your ass, I slap over your face and I put my sperm on you because you're a slut anyway !

(be patient, I'm learning english.)

Fucking active
Oral passive
Watersports active
CBT active
Fisting active
SM active
Bondage active
Dirty active
Kissing -
Massage active
Safer Sex always
Rate / Hour 0
Rate / Night 0
Rate / 24h 0




*

p.s. Hey. So, yesterday I ended up getting really sick out of the blue, and I'm feeling a little better today, but, nonetheless, warning re: my brain fuzz + p.s. + you. ** Grant maierhofer, Hi, Grant. Really glad to hear it, man. ** Wolf, Hi, W! Are you here yet? Oh, I've always been really kind of cautious with money, so I probably would have put most of the million in the bank, and, uh, gosh, I don't even know. I'm really un-extravagent. Yeah, maybe started a press or some kind of art foundation or something. My brain is too weak to think it through. Arctic here? It's cold, but it's not hellishly so. Well, my dashboard weather widget says it's 0 degrees outside, so I guess it is arctic, oops. Let me know when you get here. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. My reading of it showed no real, direct evidence that he was going to kidnap her for real, but I'll read more and see if that changes my mind. ** Cobaltfram, I really hate it when people gossip about me, so I try not to do that about others to maintain good karma or something. Thanks for the dedication thing. The 'mermaids' line is nice. Sickness kept me from reading or listening to anything but maybe today if I improve. Hm, somehow Boulez doing an opera rings a bell, but I'm not sure. 'Madame Bovary' is great. I like 'Sentimental Education' better. I don't dislike Henry James. I read a couple of his books, and they, and what he does with his writing, just didn't interest me very much. Yeah, I'm excited by the idea of not ever reading Proust for some reason. ** MANCY, Best of the best of luck getting through your finals, man. Chris Watson, yeah, I was just concentrating on trying to get an interesting group with enough variety so, yeah, that's why, I guess. ** Scunnard, Cool, I really want to see that. ** Sypha, I know. I read 'Turn of the Screw'. I've never heard of George R.R. Martin, but I guess that's no surprise. ** Alan, Great, I'll put 'RN' on my list then. Yeah, like I said, I just don't have any interest in reading Proust, so I'll just leave his whole thing a blank, I think. ** Tomkendall, Dude, sweet, congrats! Doesn't seem like you'll need luck, but you've sure got it! Awesome! Let me know what it was like, okay? Lots of love to you, T! ** Will C., Oh, thanks. I don't know how I do it either. I'm not sure if I've heard Biosphere. Hm. I'll go find 'Substrata'. Thanks a lot! Cool. What's the latest on your end? ** S., Oh, I wasn't thinking about sex, just the text/photo combo. I've got this queasiness about pure surface objectification, you know. I hope you, however, enjoy the striating. **
Steevee, Hi, Steve. I didn't know what 'Upstream Color' is about. Interesting. I hope it gets over here. 'Spring Breakers' opened here last week. I'm going to see next week sometime. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I got knocked over by sickness yesterday, but, assuming I continue to feel better today, I'll get back to you on the article thing. Sorry for the interruption. Really, really nice poster. ** Misanthrope, Wow, sweet, weird story there. I think I stopped hitchhiking at, uh, 16 maybe 'cos I got kidnapped at gunpoint and driven around for, like, 8 hours scared shitless before I got away, so that kind of took care of it. ** Ken Baumann, Ken! Thank you. I will see 'UC' as soon as I get the chance. Very cool and envy on the 'Spring Breakers' plus Harmony in person thing. Saw Blake's awesome blurb! And a nice review somewhere that Chris Higgs linked to on FB. So excited! I want to do a big post on the book when it's coming out, okay? I want to celebrate the fuck out of that thing. Nice that you got the pilot thing finished. Crazy, in what sense? A year? Man, time is so weird, and I'm so glad you're feeling great! Big, big love to you, buddy! ** Polter, Hi, Polter! Hooray to see you! You're selling the house? Where will you go? Other than having gotten hit with some giant sickness yesterday and trying to reemerge today, I'm really good. Been traveling a lot, and will continue to. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'l be in Oslo as part of an upcoming trip 'cos a friend and I are going to Scandinavia in May to visit as many theme parks there as we can, and there's one right next to Oslo, so I think we'll be staying there. We should meet up! And my friend is the greatest person in the world, so you should meet him too. I'll let you know when it's planned out. God, I'm sorry about your friend. Jesus, I'm sorry. We're staring to get flowers here. We had a last giant snowstorm the other day, and now it's all thaw and warmer looking sunlight. My future is amazingly great at the moment. I'm very excited. Life is really good these days. It's like magic. Well, seeing you is always such a joy! Thank you, thank you! Pages of love to you, my pal! ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! So glad you dug the gig. I know, the Aki Onda was great, no? He's so amazing. I'll go listen to and get that Chris Watson, cool, thank you a lot. Yes, I know there's a German radio play of 'Period'. I know nothing about it, what it's like, if it's any good, or anything. All I know is that it has been broadcast twice. Have you heard it? What is it like? ** Bollo, Hi, J. No, Aki Onda is back in Brooklyn now, I think. He was going to come stay at the Recollets again, but I think that something came up that prevented it, unfortunately. Stay or go, tough. Which did you choose, and where did it lead? ** Right. Escorts. I'm going to go work on getting my health normalized now, and I'll see you in hopefully sharper shape tomorrow.

'vanity pressings, demos, song-poem albums, souvenir records, samplers, outsider music, exploitation labels, gospel / religious albums, specialty albums, children’s records, night club / lounge act albums, organ music, motion picture soundtracks, and any other unique & curious stuff I dig up' -- Bill Robinson

Click the pix -- PKinman












































































































































































*

p.s. Hey. Silent DC's reader and sonicologist PKinman has some out there musical outlets for you to investigate this weekend, and I hereby add my official stamp of entrustment, so enjoy yourselves and please speak to our kindly guest-host of what you find herein, thank you. And thank you, PK! I'm continuing to upswing, health-wise, and I assume I should be my fully normal whatever again by Monday. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Nice to see you first, and your responsiveness to itsfake is rich and lovely, thank you! Love to you too! ** Misanthrope, Yikes. Thanks, I'm crawling upwards. Gonna see Wolf and Tender Prey today. That should help. ** L@rstonovich, Hi, Larsty! Oh, yeah, shit, I seem to have missed your thing yesterday. I was kind of not totally well, so, ... it was probably my eyes. No hatred, good God, no! Oh, thanks a lot for the add/link. I don't know Tucker Martime. Great! Pretty fucking good? Awesome, I love that! ** xTx, Hi! Oh, thank you a lot! I'm being bettered, I think. Sweet iamaltlit score on the great 'Billie', pal! And what is this new book of yours that's coming out from CCM? You good? Miss you, my buddy! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. I don't know, I guess I'm just fatigued by all the strong urgings to read Proust that I've been hearing all my adult life, and I'm just in this perverse phase of being excited by the idea of dying without ever having read him. Probably just my mood or something. ** Ken Baumann, Ken! Awesome, thank you, yes! I'll probably try to hit you up for some party favor stuff or something as the launch time approaches. And I'll nail May 14th down. Okay, yeah, the script sounds sweetly wack even though I've never seen 'Games of Thrones'. But I've seen posters for it in the metro, so I get the setting and stuff anyway. Yay! How did you find 'SB'? ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Oh, yeah, if I read the info on that second radio play correctly, it was 1969 when I was 16, so that's definitely not real. The last one, 'The Undead', wow. That was actually a live performance work I made with Ishmael Houston-Jones, and that radio station just played the audio from it on air, so I don't think that counts. The only radio play I've ever directly been involved in was 'Jerk', and they don't even list that. Oh, well, blah blah. Interesting, thank you! Yes, I actually clicked over to that Hetfield 'yes' thing yesterday when someone posted it on FB. Pretty funny. The Soundboard is new, though, and I'll go horrify myself imminently. Thanks a lot, Uli. Have a great weekend. ** Cobaltfram, I'm not against Henry James, I just don't care one way or the other. I've read Balzac and Zola, but it was a long time ago, so I don't have clear memories of what I thought. I think they were great and all that. Uh, on the hitchhiking/ kidnapping thing: at one point, the driver/ kidnapper picked up a bunch of his friends, thinking it would be 'fun' for all of them to take me on a scary joy ride, which is what happened for a few hours, but then, when the driver stopped somewhere to score drugs, one of his friends took pity on me and said if I drove all of them home, he would let me go. So that's what happened. 'Godot' opera, weird. Hunh. I saw a production of Berg's 'Wozzeck' a long time ago. Yeah, I remember it was pretty great. We don't get daylight savings time over here for another week or week and a half or something, I think. That delay thing is strange. Take it easy. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. No, there hasn't been a Joe Meek Day, and I would really love to have one, if you don't mind. That would be fantastic! Thank you! ** Steevee, You seem to be okay with the heavy changes, yes? Excited. ** Sypha, I suspect you'll like 'Diary of an Innocent' more, but we'll see. ** Okay. Be with PKinman's weekend, thank you. I'll go retrieve the last vestiges of my good health from wherever they're hiding, and I will see you on Monday.

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Florence Foster Jenkins is a new one on me. Goodness, as in ... gracious. Everyone, DE adds one Florence Foster Jenkins to PKinman's weekend, quite understandably, as you can see. ** Esther Planas, Hi, Esther! So very good to see you! Paris is less qualified for the term freezing day by day, thankfully. Chilly, though. I'll bet: on the shock to your temperature's gauge. I'm very happy that the field recordings gig was so timely. Marc and Wolf were here this weekend, and still are for a day or so. I saw them less than I had dreamed in advance due to lingering under-the-weather body stuff on my end, but they powered the place. Love, love, love to you! ** xTx, Hey! I thought it was thoughtful too, yeah, in addition to its enthusiasm being so savvy. Short stories! Great! And CCM is very cool. No, something clearly happened 'cos 'Billie' never got here, very sadly, and it would have arrived by now if it was going to. Urgh. If you can spare another and don't mind sending it to Joel's and my place, that would be so nice! Writing is a struggle 'cos I'm trying to reinvent my novel, and I haven't figured out how I can do that yet, if I can. I'm going on a trip next week that's about holding up with an artist friend and working on our stuff, and I'm hoping that'll help. Xoxoxoxo in hardcore return. ** Math Tinder, Hey, old buddy! Thank you on PK's behalf! What's up? ** Paul Curran, Yes, that's the plan! Japan in June. We should start getting more specific about the time frame and where we want to go, and will be in need/want of tips and stuff soon. Well, would be amazing if you're there too! Belated happy birthday to you, Paul! Did you have fun? ** L@rstonovich, Nice, buddy. Sounds very nice. Ceviche, yeah, I guess salsa is as close as we fish-phobes get. Which I would imagine is not that close, really, given fish's dominating flavors. Very good about the rear view hurdle. I wish I could have Jen's nettle tincture too. I'm having a weird hell of a time getting entirely rid of whatever this thing is that I've got. Thanks, L. ** Ken Baumann, Ken! Very cool. I think this is the week for me and 'SB'.  And I'll go get those Q&A bits out of your Twitter. My brain's not functioning either. I can't tell what's missing. Something. Love to you, man. ** Chelsea kane, Hi, Chelsea! I'm glad your trip went so well, and, yeah, next time you're heading over, just give the word. it would be a total pleasure. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! I was hoping I'd feel a lot better by now, but I guess I'm getting there, and I'm about to get busy, and that can hopefully do the finalizing work. Thanks about the Culkin post. Yes, I do understand what you mean about the blog's contextualization and vibe, that's very interesting. I hadn't thought about that, or at least hadn't shelved it in my analytical area, until you mentioned it. Anyway, beautiful thinking about him. I'm totally with you. I hope your weekend was great. Was it? ** Steevee, Didn't see that about 'SB''s opening numbers. That's very sweet. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I'm really glad the email back and forth thing worked out well. Of course I'm excited to see what you make. Thank you so much, man! ** MANCY, Yes, re: Iceage! Enjoy! See if you don't think Elias is one of the most charismatic front men ever. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. They were good. Due to my feeling still kind of shit, we mostly sat places. Coffee and some food. But they -- W&TP -- seemed to be in the spirit of the place. Uh, that is so not great news, man, and I'm very glad you hear you've taken preemptive measures with your diet. Don't play around with that stuff, man. It's time for you to get lean and mean, as it were. Let me know how everything goes in as much detail as you can. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Oh, you know, not that I was out and about very much at all, but I couldn't tell it was supposed to be green or whatever here. Maybe there's a Irish district in Paris or something where everyone crammed themselves or something. Oh, right, I have weasel a copy of the Hannum Kiddiepunk book out of the maestro. Have a Monday like none other. ** Right. Today I ... well, you see. See you tomorrow.

*

p.s. Hey. ** Math Tinder, Nice. ** Cobaltfram, Well, ditto, dude. Mm, I've never thought of Boulez in relationship to R-G, no, but the point of comparison doesn't seem crazy or offbase, so I'll dwell on it, thanks, cool. I put 'Infinite Jest' among the best novels published in my lifetime, so I guess that's an opinion for you. The whole world has daylight savings time, doesn't it? I don't know, it's because of the earth's weird revolutions or something, isn't it? I don't know. I don't mind it. I like the changing of when the sun and the dark arrive. It renews or tweaks everything or something. My health seems to be finally getting tolerable again as of yesterday, fingers crossed, and thank you for asking. And yours? ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, sir. ** Tender prey, Hey, Marc! Thank you, thank you. Yeah, to great to see you guys! I'm going to call you as soon as I finish this. I got your message yesterday, but not til late 'cos I was out seeing the new Malick. Thanks for preview on the PdT show. Yeah, I think Zac and are going to try to go this week if poss., and I'll keep my anticipation for the maze piece focused on this mysterious element. If you're at the d'Orsay, I hope it's feeding you, and I guess I'll find out voice to voice shortly. ** xTx, Hi, pal! Yeah, something will come of it, I guess, I just don't know what yet. There's stuff there, and i just needs to be breathed differently into life or something. Thank you a lot for sending one to Joel. It should get there okay. It's just France's very strange appetite for foreign mail that screws things up sometimes, grr. Lots of love! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I've got my eye out of that issue, and I think I'll be in reach of a friendly shop today or tomorrow. Excellent 'Annie' there! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thank you, Jeff! Sorry to hear that you're all drained. Okay, cool on the Kiarostami. I think I missed its French run, but I'll get a download or DVD. Hunh, that's not good about the Flaming Lips thing. Hm. I'll try it, though. I saw the new Malick yesterday. I thought it was incredible and exquisite. It didn't wrench me emotionally like 'ToF' did, but it's not that kind of film. Malick is doing even more of the fast shots and quick cutting that he was doing in 'ToL', but constantly. I thought it was just mesmerizing and very moving a lot of the time. Obviously, I highly recommend it. I'm going to go see it again asap. Might see the Korine this week, if the time is friendly. That's a plan anyway. Oh, no, so sad about Blaster Al Ackerman. Oh, that's really sad. RIP. ** Positbreakup, That's the spirit! How's everything, Josh? ** Todd!, Hello there, Todd!, and welcome to here. Okay, I'll go check out that site/page when I get done here. Thanks a lot! ** Steevee, Yes, please give the word when the Slate piece is up, and the words on its construction and editing too. Cool. ** Misanthrope, No more youtube problems than usual on my end anyway. I'll try the Suede single, thank you. Yep, yep, get rid of that shit. You'll feel so much better, man. You'll start enjoying walking so much that you'll stand in line waiting to walk like it's a theme park ride. Didn't get a double post, so, hm. That's a nice poem you've got started there, man. It hits a bunch of great marks at the same time. Sweet. ** Sypha, Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, James. Something's got to give. Well, at least you're being very productive on the writing and producing front. When I'm sick, I can't do shit and have no interest in doing shit, so something is bettering you somewhere inside. ** Statictick, Yeah, it had a cathartic or ironically cathartic effect on me, so I thought I would share. Well, that's good that there's no sign of epilepsy, right? Or would you prefer that answer to your body's questions rather than this big mystery? Never have seen Franco's 'Justine', I don't think. I think I heard meh about it, but I don't remember really. Could be fun. Franco + Sade has a theoretical charm offensive. Feel ever and ever better, N. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! I started feeling better yesterday, so hopefully that'll continue. My friend Zac came back to town, and he always has a curative effect, and seeing the new Terrence Malick film no doubt helped a lot too. And I'll bet your vibe had a big part as well. I'm glad you're feeling good! Interesting: what you read. Yeah, sensible, I think, hm. But then your counterpoint makes much sense too. Curious. Well, he was shouting at the air, but I think the air was himself, and I think the shout was love, so I'm not sure. Love you too! ** Starlon H, Hey! How really, really nice to see you! It goes good here, other than some bad health of late that is hopefully trundling off somewhere. Thank you about 'Closer'. Aw, well, I can't speak for Bret's book, but mine's ass is prime to be kicked, and I think you're just the guy to do it, so please do. ** Armando, Hi, A! Thank you, man. Yeah, it had a kind of nice 'wipe the slate clean' quality about it, no? You have a good day too! ** Right. On to the next blog thing. A thing of self-explanatory thingness, I think, I don't know. I will see you tomorrow.

I think tonight I am beginning to understand some impulses
That a friend of mine Joe Ceravolo seems to have been having
And which others have certainly had
Which makes no difference
But which might make him seem terribly silly for a while
And which if I’m right I’m beginning to feel myself
About now and therefore sympathize with
It’s a cheap sympathy when you have to come about it like this
But who cares

Listen, Joe Ceravolo
You’re OK

-- Ron Padgett



'Joseph Ceravolo (a civil engineer who was born in Queens and lived much of his life in New Jersey) emerged in the late-1960s as a promising, in-the-wings figure of the hip, art-connected New York School poetry scene. But the attention from his first full-length book—the brilliant Spring in This World of Poor Mutts (Columbia University Press, 1968), winner of the first Frank O’Hara Award for Poetry—eventually began to wane. By the time he published his masterpiece in 1978—Transmigration Solo (Toothpaste Press), a small-press collection mostly written 18 years earlier while spending a gloriously-inspired autumn in the outskirts of Mexico City—Ceravolo was no longer in poetry’s spotlight. His admirers, though fervent, were mostly reduced to fellow New York School veterans. A decade later, Ceravolo died of cancer; he was only 54, and left behind just a handful of small-run, out-of-print collections.

'But Ceravolo’s poems have remained vibrant and compelling enough to be passed on between generations of poets like a secret—like the hidden location of some remote, only-reachable-in-negative-tides mystical coastal cave. Stylistically, Ceravolo’s singular poetry is, on the surface, primarily cubist and insistently abstract. His strongest poems are typically short, no longer than a page: bursts of pure sensory aesthetic and graceful motion wound around a fearlessly-probing, celestially-agog voice. His best work is an inseparable mesh of boiled-to-the-bone wonder and fear, where every moment seems to come at you unexpectedly.

'Beneath Ceravolo’s obvious abstraction and from-all-angles, quicksilver imagery, his poems have a subtle, but firm narrative and linguistic architecture that holds everything together. His are not the random, stir-the-pot-&-let-the-synapses-fire, pop-culture or obtusely-personal snippets of imagery and phraseology that are the hallmark of post-modern poetic descendants like the LANGUAGE school. It is, in fact, Ceravolo’s commitment to an undercurrent of continuity and progression (both within and between poems) in collections like the gorgeous Transmigration Solo that gives his work its depth and allows him to coherently explore complex and larger themes despite the linguistically, syntactically and imagistically fragmented nature of the individual pieces.

'The results of Ceravolo’s constantly opposing poles are poems that seem to hover at the border of visibility, flickering between states of solidity and abstraction—merging the earth-bound with the ephemeral in a way that reflects our mind’s inexact fusion of senses and thoughts. In addition to his intricate inter-poem structures, Ceravolo’s collections create a strong intra-poem architecture that unites and expands the scope of the work as a whole. Both a linguistic economist and an intertwiner, Ceravolo weaves throughout his collections repeated images and language that become his poetry’s own mythology. These elements build and evolve as the poems unfold, each reappearance drawing new lines in the collection’s archeological sediment.' -- R. Salvador Reyes, Tottenville Review



_____
Extras


Literature Book Summary: Collected Poems


The Elkcloner 'Crossfire' (lyrics by Joseph Ceravolo)


Stephen Emmerson covers Joseph Ceravolo



______
Further

Joseph Ceravolo Website
The Joseph Ceravolo Project
Audio: Joseph Ceravolo reading his poetry @ PennSound
JC @ The Project for Innovative Poetry
Joseph Ceravolo @ Goodreads
Jerome Sala on JC @ espressobongo
Three poems by JC @ American Poetry Review
'Reading Joe Ceravolo's 'Migratory Noon' with Ron Silliman'
'Poetry as music: A different way of thinking'
Buy 'Collected Poems'



_______________________
Letter to David Shapiro, 6/29/65





Dear David,

I was so glad to get your letter. We never did meet at Weequahic Park for lunch but they’ll be other times for that. I used to go to the park every day and write. Each day I’d write a few lines of what I thought was a complete poem. Then I put them all together and called it The Green Lake Is Awake.

Anita is crying now. Paul is sleeping and Rosemary is getting ready for bed. She has it pretty rough being with them all day long. We seldom get out. Sunday we went to the movies of 8th St. N.Y. and saw The Red Desert by Antonioni. It’s a beautiful film about a woman or women in general, and how they are so confused in this world or the anti-nature world that man trys [sic] to make for himself. Sometimes it’s such an unnatural world where none of his real feelings come through. On the way out of the movie we met Ted Berrigan going in. He is publishing my long poem and it will probably be out next month. Rosemary made a beautiful cover for it. It’s called FITS OF DAWN. I’m starting to get nervous and excited about it.

I read your poems a number of times. Of the three little ones I liked “What do you say, bank named for a cripple” etc. best. Of the long one part I I liked better than part II. In fact I found something nice in all of them but sometimes a line or word brought me down and I couldn’t get with the reality that you must have felt. What I mean is at the sacrifice of making it a sure poem, you may have taken something from it. What I felt most was Part I.

I think I’m obsessed with reality, I don’t mean realism but that sense of reality, like “I’m really here and I feel it” even though I can’t explain it. Something like that. Which everyone feels and you recognize it when you see it in a poem.

As for my own poetry, I haven’t been writing much at all. Maybe it’s working inside me but who knows. Sometimes I think maybe I’ve done the best I could and everything [cut off in photocopy] through my head. I go to the clinic at 9:00 pm on tuesday night and talk to my psychiatrist for an hour. Many unsettled things. Who wants to transmit my neurosis to my children? or hold back love to my wife? I’ve had needed to go for a long time and finally I’ve done it.

I just can’t wait for my vacation. We are going down the shore. The Jersey shore is so beautiful. We went to North Wildwood last year and that water and sand and us playing in the sand is on my brain.

Tell me about where you are. Is Julie with you? I hope she’s all right. That was a pretty big experience she went through; and you too.

A Music & art form. It sounds great. Or is it — not as good as it sounds. That word I obliterated was “boring.” I didn’t want to give you any ideas. But I can’t really imagine it.


NEWS ITEMS

1. Newark reservoirs are very low. Everyone is walking around dirty.
2. Paul is always dirty but gets a bath every night and a shower.
3. Every time the weather is really hot the fish in the lake keep jumping out and you think you saw something but it was real.
4. Rosemary is almost finished with therapy. Her husband is just starting.
5. No amount of wisdom or learning can make a person live in the present. He just has to live.
6. The west does not understand the east.
7. Nor does the east             “                 the west.
8. They are both the same — naked.
9. Poetry is a flock of geese flying out of formation being in formation.
10. This news is bullshit. But it was real?

Regards to Julie. Love from Rosemary.

                                Joe



____
Book

Joseph Ceravolo Collected Poems
Wesleyan University Press

'Like an underground river, the astonishing poems of Joseph Ceravolo have nurtured American poetry for fifty years, a presence deeply felt but largely invisible. Collected Poems offers the first full portrait of Ceravolo’s aesthetic trajectory, bringing to light the highly original voice that was operating at an increasing remove from the currents of the time. From a poetics associated with Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery to an ever more contemplative, deeply visionary poetics similar in sensibility to Zen and Dante, William Blake and St. John of the Cross, this collection shows how Ceravolo’s poetry takes on a direct, quiet lyricism: intensely dedicated to the natural and spiritual life of the individual. As Ron Silliman notes, Ceravolo’s later work reveals him to be “one of the most emotionally open, vulnerable and self-knowing poets of his generation.” Many new pieces, including the masterful long poem “The Hellgate,” are published here for the first time. This volume is a landmark edition for American poetry, and includes an introduction by David Lehman.' -- WUP


_______
Excerpts


Lighthouse

All this summer fun.
The big waves, and waiting
(the moon is broken)
for the moon to come out
and revive the water. You look
and you want to watch as
men feel the beer breaking
on their lips, and women seem like
the sun on your little back.
Where are you closer to everything?
in the plants? on the photograph or
the little heart that's not

used to beating like the waves' foam?
              A wasp is
looking for a hole in the screen.
No. There's no man in the lighthouse.
There's no woman there, but there is
a light there; it's a bulb.
And I think how complete you are
in its light. Flash......... Flash.....
....................................
And I think of how our own room
will smell; You lying on one bed
and we in the other,
facing the... flash.....
.....................Flash




Love Song

Like a punch in the face
planetary lights and stars,
do I see Spring.
The ground is frozen.
Dawn like the colors of an old fire
illuminates the south-east.
The ground is frozen solid,
yet not to permafrost,
yet not to this inner core
which glows like coals for you.
Overcast comes, overcast goes
the ground is frozen but not the core,
but not your eyes
which glow like coals
but not to permafrost.




Where Abstract Starts

I sit here it is 4:00
Should I say it?
Death occurred to me
And the fit over bounded
My physical thought
As I lie here




Great Plains

What, no one here? No one
around here? No buffalo?
Like sleeping on the toilet bowl...
Drifting toward love...

The dogs are out this morning
jumping on top of each other
Is there a real release with them?

But, no one here.
There's no buffalo, only dogs,
this morning, where dawn
and a wild wild bird fly away.




Autumn Torches

Monday morning in the Americas
cloudy bright, cloudy bright,
cloudy bright, clouds to bright.
The earth people going to work.
So this is what it’s like
to be in a trance awakened by the fires
and silence in the cold
with soft voices disappearing.
The day coming on like an intoxication
with no control on the watery shore
of struggle in autumn.
Monday morning
the screech of my eyes
opening into dawn
My eyes speeding to the woman
standing over me;
In my ear
a mother and father returning
for an instant, the bread and coffee
on the hot stones
in the next room dream.
I have turned in my sleep.
Do I enter the deep?

Monday morning creation ascending
to celestial paradigm
in the conflagration
of dumped computers
and magnetic erasure of world data.
The coffee staining
the arms straining,
a ladle pouring
ingots in the noise.
The strength returning
to the center of the crossed body
Another kiss another sigh
Monday morning:
in the sky
a bird’s cry.




Nothing

Nothing exists that does no empty.
Who are you feeling?
Who do you bite in the morning?
Our health?
when we're sick


is the body coming.

            Our love,
a mountain fuming
        in the ocean


like a graceful race such as
black. When the shores overtake
in the continent.
When the heroes are phony,
and our house less than rubble
will there be a bite, a memory still left?




*

p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Hope the new Suede lives up to the billing for you. That 'hearts being in it this time' thing has been the press release squib that cried wolf too many times for me to take it at heart's value. Really strange about evil youtube. How would that work? I don't know anything about that techy kind of stuff. Log off? The new Bowie isn't growing on me like I'd hoped. Nice things here and there, though. For me, the new Wire album, which I'm getting today, is the excitement point du jour. ** S., There is top secret important stuff on cassettes. At least on the ones in my LA pad. Yeah, sounds like you need a change. Canada? Why not? Where there? Paris is good, I think. Let me think. Yeah, it's good. I'm spiritually good and physically trying. ** Paul Curran, Thank you, Paul! Yeah, what's with the hostage-taking, long haul illnesses going around right now? Mine too is taking forever to breathe its last. ** MANCY, Thanks a ton buddy! ** Paradigm, Hi, Scott! Yeah, I was happy to find that MacKaye photo, as you could tell. Me too, on my novel. Logic says I'll figure something out. Next week is when I'll dig in and concentrate and find out, I hope. I hope your projects give you some give. Sometimes there's just nothing your consciousness can do, as you said. So weird. But lack of inspiration/ focus makes for a vague and ultimately flimsy enemy at least. What's the new music you're imbibing? ** Cobaltfram, Thanks for the Boulez link. 'IJ' has my 'one of the best' seal. I think inching laboriously toward health stability would be more accurate. Better than nothing. I can't imagine getting through 'AK'. I think I tried once. I guess I just don't believe in what books like that believe in so much. Admiring salute to you for doing so. Yury did mention something about that. Cool. Oh, yeah? Nicholson Baker said that, did he? Barring the unforeseen, yes, my great friend Zac and I will be going to Japan for about three weeks in June. Mega-excited about that! ** David Ehrenstein, That back-up singer doc sounds fun, yes. ** Steevee, At last! Everyone, go over to Slate and read the superb Steevee aka Steven Erickson's no doubt fantastic article on 'Badlands' and serial killer films -- 'How to Shoot a Serial Killer'. That does sound like you went through the wringer. Back when I was an Editor at Spin and wrote for them constantly, they changed Editor in Chiefs at some point, and a piece I wrote ended up having maybe two paragraphs that were actually written by me in it, and that was the end of working with them for me. So excited to see 'Spring Breakers', more than ever. ** Toniok, Hi, Tonio! Thank you kindly. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thank you a lot, man. Yeah, I didn't set out to make it re: my novel and its problems, but it ended being useful, and its shape was ultimately dedicated. Mm, I would say 'To the Wonder' is more connected to what Malick was doing in 'ToL' than being some giant leap. They're different kinds of films, but, like I think I maybe said, he's furthering the kind of editing and short shots that he was working with in 'ToL' into a continual strategy, and the inter-character dialogue is even more extremely minimal. He's working with imbuing speed with the contemplative and a quality of gradualness. It's very intricate stylistically, and the decisions feel more intuitive than before maybe. Yeah, you should definitely see it. I thought it was stunning. ** Alan, Hey! Weird, yeah, I saw your comment, but then my eye must have made some kind of leap due to scrolling around or something when I was in the responding phase, very sorry. I will take that recommendation, and thank you very much! ** Un Cœur Blanc, Oh, thank you, my friend! Thank you so much! ** Sypha, Actually, there were two Harry Styles things in there. Ugh, so, are you getting a doctor to try something else or upping your dosage or something? Nice length on that short story. I like that length. Well, that news is very cool anyway. ** That seems to be it. Joseph Ceravolo has been a very underrated 'New York School' poet for ages, and now his stuff has been collected and made available at last, and I thought that was an occasion to celebrate, and there you go. See you tomorrow.

'A radical feminist and a well-known figure of the Manchester punk and post-punk scene, Linder Sterling was known for her montages, which often combined images taken from pornographic magazines with images from women's fashion and domestic magazines, particularly those of domestic appliances, making a point about the cultural expectations of women and the treatment of female body as a commodity. Many of her works were published in the punk collage fanzine Secret Public, which she co-founded with Jon Savage. One of her best-known pieces of visual art is the single cover for Orgasm Addict by Buzzcocks (1977), showing a naked woman with an iron for a head and grinning mouths instead of nipples.

'"At this point, men's magazines were either DIY, cars or porn. Women's magazines were fashion or domestic stuff," Linder has said. "So, guess the common denominator – the female body. I took the female form from both sets of magazines and made these peculiar jigsaws highlighting these various cultural monstrosities that I felt there were at the time." Linder was also a partner of Howard Devoto, a founding member of Buzzcocks, who left the group to form Magazine. She also designed the cover for Magazine's debut album Real Life (1978) and was known for her 'menstrual jewellery' (beads and ear-rings made of broken coat hangers with absorbent lint dipped in translucent glue and painted red, in order to resemble bloodied tampons) and the mythical 'menstrual egg-timer' (a series of beads with different colours – red, white and purple – devised to chronicle the cycle from ovulation to menstruation) that she designed for Tony Wilson's Factory Records (designated Fac 8), which never entered production. She also collaborated on a short film called Red Dress, a rare Factory/New Hormones project.

'In addition to visual art, Linder has in recent years devoted herself to performance art, which includes photography, film, print and artefact. Centred around the themes of outsiderdom, religious non-conformism, ecstatic states and female divinity/sainthood, her performance art evokes mythical figures ranging from historical figures such as St. Clare of Assisi and the founder of Shakers, Mother Ann Lee, to the Man With No Name, Clint Eastwood's character from Sergio Leone westerns. "I find glorious parallels between Leone's portrayal of the heroic and the malign with that of legal and illegal activity in north Manchester – or 'Gunchester'. Think of it as Lowry with guns."

'In 1997 she put on a one-woman exhibition in London's Cleveland Gallery titled What Did You Do in the Punk War Mummy?, and the next year she performed a work called Salt Shrine– filling a room in a disused Widnes school with 42 tonnes of industrial salt. In 2000, her work in different media was exhibited in Cornerhouse, Manchester, under the title The Return of Linderland, featuring the short film Light the Fuse, which combined re-enactment of scenes from Leone films – with Linder performing in drag as Clint Eastwood – with images of modern day cowboys and young men from north Manchester. Her performance pieces in subsequent years have included The Working Class Goes to Paradise (2001) and Requiem: Clint Eastwood, Clare Offreduccio and Me (2001). A new instalment of Working Class Goes To Paradise was played on 1 April 2006 in the Tate Gallery, as a part of the Tate Triennial 2006. With the musical accompaniment provided by three indie rock bands playing simultaneously for four hours, a group of women re-enacted the ritualisic gestures of 19th century Shaker worship, while Linder performed assuming different roles, including that of a figure from one of her photomontages, that of Ann Lee, and of a fusion of Ann Lee, Christ and Man With No Name. Audience members were able to view the performance and to join in.' -- collaged



_____
Ludus

'In 1978, Linder Sterling co-founded the post-punk group Ludus, and she remained its singer until the group split in 1983. She designed many of the band's covers and sleeves, or posed for artistic photographs taken by photographer Birrer and used for Ludus sleeves and the SheShe booklet that accompanied Ludus' 1981 cassette Pickpocket. Ludus produced material ranging from experimental avantgarde jazz to melodic pop and cocktail jazz, characterised by Linder's voice and unorthodox vocal techniques (which occasionally included screaming, crying, hysterical laughter and other unusual sounds), as well as her uncompromising lyrics, centred around themes of gender roles, love and sexuality, female desire, and cultural alienation. Although critically acclaimed, they never achieved any significant commercial success. Most of their material, originally released between 1980 and 1983 on the independent labels New Hormones, Sordide Sentimentale and Crepuscule, was reissued on CD in 2002 by LTM.'-- collaged



'Breaking The Rules'


'Mirror Mirror'


'Anatomy is Not Destiny'


'Hugo Blanco'



______
Further

Linder 'Femme/Object' @ Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
'Linder Sterling, Femme/Object' @ i-D
'LINDER STERLING’S MANCHESTER VOODOO. "CLINT EASTWOOD, CLARE OFFREDUCCIO AND ME: REQUIEM".'
Video: Meet Linder Sterling @ TateShots
Linder Sterling Discography
'Linder Sterling pushes your buttons'
'Fuck Morrissey, Here's Linder'
Video: 'Linder Sterling and insomnia'
Linder Sterling's book 'Morrissey Shot'
'In Rehearsal: A Sneak Peek at Linder Sterling’s New Ballet'
'Linder, the artist with the hex factor'
'Linder Sterling and Jon Savage: The Secret Public'


____________
Forgetful Green

'Artist Linder Sterling's short film Forgetful Green was surely the highlight of The Frieze Art Fair, for which she collaborated with Vogue photographer Tim Walker as well as designer Richard Nicoll. Set for the most-part in a Colchester rose field, the film documents the morning after the artist's 13 hour improvisational performance The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated From The House of FAME at the Chisenhale Gallery A cast of memorable characters, including Linder herself, inhabit the film's glaringly vivid surroundings, acting out as Walker describes "a display of human sexuality, lunacy and chaos." With a pace that's exhilarating to the point of nausea, 'Forgetful Green' is a cinematic version of a sugar-high.'-- glass






___________________
Interviewed by Morrissey




MORRISSEY: You and I first met at a Sex Pistols sound check in Manchester in 1976. You’ve been steadfast and constant in my life ever since. My main admiration of you, quite apart from your physical beauty, is the fact that you move at all times within your own laws. If I’m aware of this, then you must be. How do you define it to yourself as you gaze into your shaving mirror at 9 A.M.?

LINDER: We move in a world of too many myths. I have no desire to be Nico, who was as much a creature of mythology as the Minotaur is. My interest in mirrors belongs more to the world of Cocteau and Fellini—as gateways to an afterlife or as reminders that all reflection is a form of religion. If I move within my own laws, then I do so through the looking glass, where, as Alice discovered, all is the same yet reversed and that which is pretty becomes ugly. Hello, Nico.

MORRISSEY: Even though as an artist you regularly abandon your work to the appraisers, do you value what is said by those who are not artists?

LINDER: Artists make the worst critics. I lead a remarkably insular life. I’ve made a series of conscious decisions about how I want to live at 55 years of age, which probably doesn’t differ that radically from the decisions I made at 20. I like the disappearing act, and I like not knowing what people think about me.

MORRISSEY: At every stage, your work—recordings, photography, montages, etc.—reads as screams. For what reason would the screaming ever stop?

LINDER: Sometimes I glimpse Linder at 80 years old, still screaming. It’s the way that I was born and the way, no doubt, that I will die. I now meditate each day at dawn in order to find silence. Sometimes I’m successful. The screaming would only stop if the universe would see fit to remove the layers of overstuffed eiderdowns that I feel have been crushing me since childhood.

MORRISSEY: There have always been vibrations of menace in everything you produce. Yet your general demeanor is very correct and polite, and you are extremely witty. Is art a part of the naughtiness game, in that it excuses us from all adult obligations and we can run riot with the slapdash emulsion? Is it your own private graffiti? Or is your art your droppings?

LINDER: [Musician] Patti Palladin once said that I sounded like Julie Andrews, which, of course, I took as the greatest compliment. Call me Maria. If there are “vibrations of menace” in the work I make, then they resonate of their own accord. When artists set out to disturb—unless they happen to be Goya or Gina Pane—they tend to fail. The Australian critic Robert Hughes once wrote that American art schools began to fail in the ’60s because they taught “self-expression.” “At this,” he wrote, with bone-dry sarcasm, “no one could fail.” For me, art is the conversion of a personal experience into a universal truth—or making a trip to the chip shop sound cosmic. At this, you have never failed. “Loafing oafs in all-night chemists. . . .” [lyrics from Morrissey’s song “Now My Heart Is Full.”]

MORRISSEY: I think art is a miracle, and I’m so relieved at those rare moments when someone gets it right. But how do you avoid being a copyist? After all, we all work with the same set of words and the same set of materials.

LINDER: I have always worked with found material—a photograph, a magazine, a film still, myself. I commence the creative act and I’m quite happily guilty of theft. The trick that follows is to find the gesture that returns newness to the familiar; my familiars are the inanimate objects I work with. I restore the implicit to the explicit. All of which brings me to the business of wordplay, which is vital to the way I work. I pore over my etymological dictionary with the same rapt excitement and saucer-sized eyes that a schoolboy from Eccles would have while poring over Razzle magazine.

MORRISSEY: Art is also the gluttony of the self-engrossed, isn’t it? Well, it needs to be. But are there not moments, mid-stroke, when you think to yourself, well, perhaps I’m a bit of a nutter? I hope not, of course.

LINDER: Being a bit of a nutter is included in the job description of any artist worth the price of admission. Most of the artists whose work I really love were completely bonkers—or, rather, had to appear to be completely bonkers and enter the realms of the truly mad in order to make an iota of impact on a generally obese and indifferent world. Think of Sun Ra. Even the ambulance crew who picked him up believed he was from Saturn. Gilbert & George paint their faces orange and stand outside the local mosque for a few hours, not even blinking. People come up to them and ask them hugely intimate questions about how they should run their lives. And Joseph Beuys lined a gallery with thick gray felt, which seemed to suck the air out of the world. . . . Most artists, by rights, should be unemployable and living in Hackney. Many are. But the artist is in many ways the village idiot, recast as a superhero. If you’re looking for me, you’ll find me by the pump. I’m trading stray wisps of straw with the idiot from the next village. . . .

MORRISSEY: I dislike the “use” of animals in art, such as in the work of Damien Hirst. But in your latest performance piece, “Your Actions Are My Dreams,” you have a woman serenely sitting atop a calmly satisfied horse, which is, of course, alive and healthy. Do you agree that Hirst’s head should be kept in a bag for the way he’s utilized—and sold—dead animals?

LINDER: Dead butterflies, cows, horses, humans, sheep, and sharks—it reads like the inventory of a funerary Noah. How many halved calves suspended in formaldehyde does the world need? To my way of thinking, none.

MORRISSEY: Do you place yourself inside your own art because, well, because you are art? Leigh -Bowery famously sat for hours behind glass—as “the object”—and the public queued up and scribbled lavish notes. Are you a step away from this, or does it all become too much of a diet of oneself?

LINDER: I have always treated myself as a found object.

MORRISSEY: So, you walk out of the Tate St. Ives [the Tate museum recently acquired several pieces of Linder’s work for its collection] having displayed your wares to the art hounds, and suddenly you see fat Christine Cowshed on the seafront tucking heartily into cod ’n’ chips. How do you relate it to your work at the Tate? How can both worlds possibly meet?

LINDER: I grew up on a council estate surrounded by fat Christine Cowsheds. Every town in the world has at least one Christine, with her head in a bag of chips. In some ways she’s my ultimate nemesis. The everyday and the commonplace put the fear of God in me. My whole childhood was spent waiting for a bus. Yes, it was raining. In Greek mythology, -Nemesis gave birth to Helen of Troy. But this Christine will probably give birth to a boy named Kai, meaning keeper of the keys, which is the chosen name of [soccer player] Wayne Rooney’s first child and forecasted to be the number one boy’s name in Britain by the end of the year. Imagine, Kai Cowshed may one day be your bank manager. The latchkey kids of Lancashire shall return renamed, but never to Tate St. Ives. You have to have good skin and at least one novel under your belt before they’ll let you in.



____
Show



























































































*

p.s. Hey. Today, another silent reader of this blog comes to its rescue, this time in curatorial guise and from my 'hometown' Paris, where Linder Sterling's retrospective is currently on view at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Please follow wARC's lead and check out the show. Thank you, and thank you greatly, wARC! ** Misanthrope, Oh, well, not being into Wire is not a rare disease, so shit happens. Not having any particular attachment to Suede myself, I'll approach that new one of theirs with a 'give em a chance' attitude too. People seem to like the Bowie, or a fair amount do. I like it. I'm just not amazed/surprised or anything. Congrats on the contractor badge! Could you tell the difference right away? ** S., Yeah, I don't know, sex with unknowns as escape/cure when lonely and sad and etc., I don't know. Never made anything better for me, mostly the opposite, but I guess it must work for some folks since it's such a go-to thing when people get down, I don't know. I'm so not in that state of mind and body myself right now, but I hope it works for you, if you really want to go that way. Saw that you reposted the stories . That's good. I'll reread them asap. Emo stack! Everyone, the d.l. now known as S. and formerly known as 5STRINGS has made another of his vaunted, dark and bright and moody and clever Emo stacks, and it's here, and it's charm offensive title is 'Chirp, Tweet, Pink'. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you, David. Yes, he does lovely stuff, well worth the time for sure. ** Sypha, Two Wire naysayers in one day, interesting. I read 'Broom of the System' a long time ago, but I liked it very much while also thinking that David hadn't quite yet gotten his voice to its genius level yet. Well, David was definitely not a homophobe, and I don't remember the references/ characters you're mentioning, but it seems like I can guarantee you that they were meant to be challenges. ** Cobaltfram, I liked everything about it. It being 'IJ'. I can't imagine that I'll ever read 'AK', but one never knows. Hard to imagine getting back into reading the 'classics'. I feel like I did that back when I needed classical input or something, but, yeah, taste needs are perpetually unpredictable. Yury has all his stuff to do here, but I'll probably scout things out for him while I'm there. My health is still taking forever to get sans bleah, but I guess it must be heading there. I did get your email. Yeah, like I told you back when, this part is stressful and can take for what feels like forever, and you've got to adjust your expectations' pace accordingly, but I continue to know it will work out splendidly. ** Grant maierhofer, Hey, Grant! Just read your terrific interview with DRP on HTMLG! Everyone, writer/d.l. Grant maierhofer has interviewed knock out writer Donald Ray Pollock ('The Devil All the Time', 'Knockemstiff') over on HTMLGIANT and has also written some sharp stuff about his work, and this click is highly recommended. Real glad you enjoyed the Ceravolo. Ace about that potential good news. Heavily crossed fingers, man, and, yeah, let me know. A guest post of any sort from you would be extremely welcome, if you don't mind! I'm in a bit of desperate need for posts at the moment. Thank you, G! ** Steevee, Strange (or not?) that your Slate editor would want his own knowledge and take to be that reflected in a piece he oversaw? Seems strange to me. Cool about the better Voice experience. Can't wait for your 'Room 237' piece, and the one on the Liberace 'film' is a tasty idea. ** Alistair McCartney, Alistair! Hey, man! So awesome to see you! I'm great, other than a spate of shitty health that I'm very slowly fighting off, but what can you do? You finished your book! Holy shit! Fantastic! Dealing with agents: wow, complicated question. It so depends on the person and on his/her personal style and agenting strategy. Maybe let me know the specific questions and situations, if or as they arise, and I can speak to your experiences vis-a-vis mine that way. But, mainly, wow, that's so exciting! Iceage were extremely awesome! I extremely recommend that you go see them live if you get the chance. Aw, thanks about 'Try', man. So, yeah, please let me know what happens with the agent. I'll be anxious and excited from now until any news arrives! ** Bill, Ha ha, in that photo he does, no? Totally understood about the busyness. Hope the payoff is massive. I have next week off too! Love to you, B! ** Starlon H, Hi! Thanks, man. Oh, I completely and totally disagree with Bret about DFW. Seems like envy/jealousy happening there plus the fact that DFW didn't like Bret's stuff and said so in print. So, I don't really take their back and forth very seriously. No, it doesn't really bother me when people compare my stuff with Bret's. Our work is incredibly different, but we both grew up in LA and write about a particular kind of LA malaise and set of characters and stuff, so I understand why people see a superficial resemblance. And Bret and I like each other's work, so it's cool. Thanks about my health stuff. Whatever got ahold of me is fighting eviction more harshly than I'm used yo, but I'll win and hopefully am winning already. Babies' fists can do serious damage, man. Hare and the tortoise kind of thing maybe. I have all the faith in the world in your literary power, just so you know. ** Okay. Head back up into my galerie today and see what wARC has in stock for you, won't you? I'll be back tomorrow.

How much were those early Ultravox! records conceptual, and how much getting wires and boxes to fit together and seeing what you could produce with them?

John Foxx: Both, really. The point was to find out what these strange new instruments could do that hadn't been done before - I figured that new instruments had always radically altered music in the past - for instance the electric guitar. Here was the next major shift - the synthesizer. It could make violent extremes of sound, from subsonics to bat calls. At that time we wanted a total experience. It was a sort of sonic terror allied to the most extreme guitar feedback possible plus a battery of megawatt strobe lights. No-one walked away unchanged from those mid-period concerts. On the other hand, we were equally into romantic lyrical beauty. The synths could do both.

Daniel Miller at Mute Records often talks about the inevitability that younger musicians would start to buy synths rather than guitars as soon as the technology became affordable in the late 70s. Is that how you saw it?

JF: Yes, Dan is quite right. All the bands wanted sonic mayhem by all and any means. Synths supplied that in a new way.

Were you similarly disenchanted with ‘trad rock’ formats?

JF: There was no underground at all at that time. London was dead. All the existing formats seemed exhausted. We were all floating around London forming and reforming bands and trying new things out. Then The New York Dolls arrived and galvanised the entire scene. Real glam trash. Beautiful. They proved it was possible to be trashy and good at the same time. Kicked everyone into action at a desperate moment. They saved us all. At that moment, I was drawing lines into New York and the Velvets, European avant garde and electronic music, previous generation's Brit Psychedelia plus a ragged sort of insulting glam. I guess this was the start of the New Wave. By the way, whoever coined that New Wave byline is my hero. Because a New Wave is precisely what it was - and precisely what was needed at that moment.

Was it the case that your songwriting ‘needed’ the development of synthesizer technology, or that you could have adapted it in a previous musical generation?

JF: I think I could have written and recorded in any period, but of course there's no way to be sure. I started off singing and playing a 12-string guitar in the Bolton Octagon in 1973, then in a room over a Salford Pub, supporting a Manchester band called Stackwaddy. At first the room was empty. Eventually it became full. But there was nothing happening in Manchester then, No scene at all, so I had to leave for London and got the band started. The idea was to be London's Velvets. We even had a base in a factory at King’s Cross. The members of what were going to be The Human League came down there, totally by accident. The synths allowed more possibilities. I was becoming really interested in what could be made in a recording studio that couldn't be rehearsed or developed in any other way. After [hearing] 'Tomorrow Never Knows' I realised that the studio was really the most important instrument of the future. That's why we got Eno to work with us. It was either him or Lee Perry.

How is that a very forward looking artist like yourself has ‘fallen through the cracks’, to an extent.

JF: I don't think there are any cracks to fall through - either people like you or they don't.

Lack of careerist ambition?

JF: To some extent. I'm actually wildly ambitious, but reconciled to the fact that my ambitions don't fit with many people's expectations.

Interests in things outside the silly pop merry-go-round?

JF: I don't think pop is silly. I think it's an accurate snapshot of certain current concerns and desires. If you want to be even a peripheral part of it (as seems to be my role) you have to select carefully where you attempt to interject yourself, if at all. Mostly not at all. That's not humble - its absolutely realistic.









________________
Ultravox! The Wild, The Beautiful And The Damned(1977)
'Depeche Mode claimed to be punks with synthesizers, but it was Ultravox! who first showed the kind of dangerous rhythms that keyboards could create. The quintet certainly had their antecedents -- Hawkwind, Roxy Music, and Kraftwerk to name but a few, but still it was the group's 1977 eponymous debut's grandeur (courtesy of producer Eno), wrapped in the ravaged moods and lyrical themes of collapse and decay that transported '70s rock from the bloated pastures of the past to the futuristic dystopias predicted by punk. Epic tales of alienation, disillusion, and disintegration reflected the contemporary holocaust of Britain's collapse, while accurately prophesying the dance through society's cemetery and the graveyards of empires that were to be the Thatcher/Reagan years.'-- collaged





_____________
Ultravox ROckwrok(1977)
'Whilst the group's first album had been a product of the David Bowie/Roxy Music-esque side of glam rock, their second was considerably more informed by the burgeoning punk movement, although it also marked the group's first widespread adoption of synthesisers and electronic production techniques. Money from the first album was used to improve the band's equipment, and funded the purchase of an ARP Odyssey and, most notably, a Roland TR-77 drum machine. "ROckwrok", the lead single, was an unusually sensual paean to unrestrained sexuality, the song featured a chorus which began "come on, let's tangle in the dark / fuck like a dog, bite like a shark" and lyrics such as "the whole wide world fits hip to hip" - despite which, it apparently achieved airplay on BBC Radio 1 on account of Foxx's garbled vocal delivery.'-- collaged






_______________
Ultravox Slow Motion(Live At Reading 1978)
'Co-produced by Conny Plank and Dave Hutchins, Systems of Romance featured the band's heaviest use of electronics to date. More New Wave orientated than the glam- and punk-influenced tunes that characterised their first two albums, Ultravox! and Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, its style was partly inspired by German band Kraftwerk, whose first four albums were produced by Plank. The opening song, "Slow Motion", was indicative of the band's direction on the new album. Though based around conventional rock guitar, bass and percussion instrumentation, it featured a number of rich synthesizer parts throughout the piece rather than simply a discreet solo or special effect. For drummer Warren Cann, "it perfectly represented our amalgamation of rock and synthesizer, many of the ideas and aspirations we had for our music gelled in that song".' -- collaged






_________________
Ultravox Quiet Men(Live At Reading 1978)
'With 1978's Systems of Romance, Ultravox! left punk behind and single-handedly blue-printed the entire New Romantic movement to come. Gone was the brittleness of Ha!-Ha!-Ha!, replaced by a rich lushness of sound that would define the forthcoming genre. Shifting from the political to the inter-personal, gone too was the overwhelming sense of looming Armageddon, replaced by more generalized (and mundane) feelings of alienation, "Dislocation," and unease. "Quiet Men" is a Lowry painting brought to life.'-- collaged






__________________
John Foxx No One Driving (1980)
'Foxx's solo debut after leaving Ultravox!, Metamatic, achieves the same emotional transcendence as his previous group's early highlight, Systems of Romance, despite a new reliance not just on synthesizers, but on a musical framework dependent on them. On Metamatic, Foxx cultivates a curious air of disinterest that never seems truly bored, but is much more extreme than even his unarguably distant vocal style for Ultravox!. It holds up as one of the peaks of the early-'80s fascination with emotionless, Kraftwerk-inspired synth pop.'-- collaged






___________________
John Foxx Underpass(Live on ToTP 1980)
'Recorded in what the composer described as "an eight-track cupboard in Islington", Metamatic was engineered by then-unknown Gareth Jones. Foxx's electronic equipment included ARP Odyssey, an Elka 'String Machine' and a Roland CR-78 drum machine. His keyboard skills were rudimentary at the time. Regarding the album's air of clinical artiness, Foxx later confessed to "reading too much J.G. Ballard" and "imagining I was the Marcel Duchamp of electropop". Half a dozen tracks referenced automobiles or motorways, most obviously "Underpass" and "No-One Driving".'-- collaged






_______________
John Foxx Europe After The Rain(1981)
'The opening track, "Europe After the Rain", encapsulated the style of the album as a whole, featuring discreet synthesizer work in concert with piano, acoustic guitar and a digital drum machine; its title came from a Max Ernst painting. The tune of "Night Suit" betrayed a funk influence, whilst its lyrics were among many on the album that alluded to 'The Quiet Man', an alternate persona Foxx had developed prior to Ultravox's Systems of Romance and which inspired one of its key songs, "Quiet Men". Foxx saw The Quiet Man as the epitome of detachment and observation, and claimed to often write from his perspective.' -- collaged






___________________
John Foxx The Hidden Man (1983)
'The Golden Section is a 1983 album by English musician John Foxx. A progression from the sound of The Garden (1981), Foxx called The Golden Section "a roots check: Beatles, Church music, Psychedelia, The Shadows, The Floyd, The Velvets, Roy Orbison, Kraftwerk, and cheap pre-electro Europop". The album was Foxx's first work with a producer since his final Ultravox album, Systems of Romance, in 1978; The Golden Section was co-produced by Zeus B. Held, well known in the Krautrock scene of the 1970s. In addition to Foxx's wide array of synthesizers, the production made extensive use of vocoder effects and sampling, along with traditional rock guitar.'-- collaged






__________________
John Foxx & Louis Gordon Shifting City(1997)
'When John Foxx returned to music in 1997, he released two CDs within a very short space of time. Shifting City was closer to the "classic" Foxx sound of his earlier albums than Cathedral Oceans. With the assistance of Louis Gordon, Foxx created a CD of frightening experimental electronic sounds. To try to categorize this CD is very difficult. But one common trait runs throughout the music: strong melodies. Foxx has always been able to write very clever, beautiful tunes, and Shifting City is no exception. The songs are layered with exciting sounds, but the base of the music, the melody, is there throughout.'-- collaged






_____________________
John Foxx Cathedral Oceans(1997)
'Cathedral Oceans is a long ongoing project by Foxx, the first recordings that appear on this album were made as early 1983. In 1987 Cathedral Oceans material was played live by Foxx in various buildings, gardens and cathedrals in England and Rome. As a result of the long genesis of the album it does sound somewhat fragmented in places, but the overall effect is soothing, almost pastoral ambience created by extensive usage of reverb and echo coupled with gregorian chanting. The sound of this album is far removed from the steely detached cityscapes Foxx is best known for.'-- collaged






__________________
John Foxx & Harold Budd You Again(2003)
'Harold Budd met John Foxx when he attended one of Foxx's performances of his "Cathedral Oceans" ambient work. Out of that grew this collaboration. A very easy-on-the-ear offering, packaged in stunning artwork, the first disc ("Translucence") is largely given over to Budd, with his piano phrasing as limpid and dreamy as ever. The second disc ("Drift music") shows more of Foxx's influence and has a more electronic sound. In fact, Foxx seems to be shaping up as one of the best interpreters of ambient music. The music changes gradually and slowly as in many of Brian Eno's best works (unlike, say, Jean Michel Jarre's "Cousteau" album where the time changes were far too rapid). Lets hope another collaboration will be on the cards soon.' -- collaged






________________
John Foxx & Louis Gordon Crash and Burn(2003)
'Having gone his own way, the less-than-prolific (Crash And Burn is his 7th studio album in just over 20 years) Foxx has always contrived to re-invent himself with every passing phase, and with his second album The Garden, possibly invented the ethereal goth sound that made the likes of The Cocteau Twins and Lush rich a decade later. As comebacks go, Crash And Burn is not so much a return to form, but an astonishing (and sometimes brutal) introduction to someone whose genius has gone largely unrecognised by today's youthful record buying public, although with any justice this album will change all that.'-- collaged






_____________________
John Foxx & Louis Gordon Ray 1 Ray 2(2003)
'Teaming with producer/synthesist Louis Gordon, Foxx returned to the sounds and themes of Ultravox's Systems of Romance and Metamatic on Shifting City. Foxx is still obsessed with the dislocations created by the modern world — at heart he's a 19th-century romantic trapped in the computer age. Foxx and Gordon look backwards and forwards at the same time — while exploring retro sounds, they don't ignore the advances of electronic dance music over the previous decade, and at times their music resembles techno artists like Underworld. A welcome return to form.'-- collaged






____________________
John Foxx & Louis Gordon From Trash(2006)
'From Trash may have its dark side – the title is an indication of that – but it’s a far more accomplished and varied record, taking a measured approach that achieves more control without compromising on any emotion. Foxx’s deadpan vocals are still a feature but there’s more melody to be found. While tracks like "Freeze Frame" sound more formulaic and could easily be plucked from previous records, the moving "Never Let Me Go" finds a slow, subdued grandeur, with an electronic pulse supporting Foxx?s vocal and a slow travelling harmony. It’s strongly reminiscent of an early Peter Gabriel solo effort, and subtly moving.'-- collaged






__________________
John Foxx & Robin Guthrie My Life as an Echo(2009)
'Mirrorball is a melodically affecting exercise in ethereal ambience -- precisely what you might expect from two artists whose CVs list collaborations with Harold Budd. That's not to set Budd up as an overarching influence, though: Foxx and Guthrie come to this album with their own long-established and distinctive pedigrees, the former as an electronic pioneer and the latter as chief architect of the Cocteau Twins' unique dream pop lullabies. Mirrorball bears the musical fingerprints of both, combining Guthrie's trademark hypnotic, echo-laden melodies with the kind of otherworldly, cavernous spaces that Foxx mapped on Cathedral Oceans. Like David Bowie on "Warsawa" (and Guthrie's former bandmate Elizabeth Fraser), Foxx sings lyrics that aren't recognizable as English; he favors improvised vocals that suggest a hybrid of Latin and glossolalia.' -- collaged






___________________
John Foxx & The Maths Destination(2011)
'When artists return to the fray after a long break, they are immediately forced to play their trump card.Devoted fans will pine for new material from a retired musician for an almost indefinite period of absence. But returning stars are only guaranteed treatment like the prodigal son for a finite amount of time. In short, comebacks can often unwittingly remind the public of why said artist was forced to leave the spotlight in the first place. But John Foxx is different. After a lengthy hiatus from recording and playing live (between 1985 and 1997), Foxx has gone from creative strength to strength.' -- collaged






___________________
John Foxx & The Maths Running Man (2011)
'For someone who seemed to drop off the radar completely between, say, 1983 and 2010, John Foxx has been pleasingly prolific of late. Evidence is his third album in as many years in collaboration with The Maths (aka Benge), and a cursory glance at the Foxx discography reveals over twenty albums released, in various guises and collaborations, since 1997 - disproving any notion that this Foxx has only recently broken cover (though he did in fact retire from music in the late eighties, working as an illustrator and art lecturer under his given name of Dennis Leigh). It's obvious by now that this is no revival act, so perhaps it's time that we stopped comparing Foxx's new output to that of his perceived heyday - as frontman of Ultravox mk.1 and solo hitmaker with cult classics like 'Underpass' and 'No-One Driving' - and started judging it on its own merits, and by contemporary standards. For at age 65, Foxx the arch-futurist still more than measures up.'-- collaged






______________________
The Soft Moon vs. John Foxx & The Maths Evidence (2012)
'Dennis Leigh is 63. His alter-ego John Foxx is, however, ageless. As alien-handsome as he was 35 years ago while inventing synth-pop with the first line-up of Ultravox(!), this Lancashire-born cult hero of electronica has, at various points, been a photographer, video director, graphic artist and designer of book jackets. But something always pulls Foxx back to his singular and hugely influential music, and his marking out of a territory involving analogue synths, discreet metallic rhythms, pop-meets-classical tunes, urban dystopia, and a feel of European existential angst and detached alienation from a world of humans he doesn’t understand – or perhaps understands only too well. Like many an 80s synth maestro and 70s post-punk, Foxx has stuck to his sonic guns, and seen the world inevitably come back around to his way of thinking. He has never seemed so relevant, nor sounded so modern, as he does in 2012.'-- collaged







*

p.s. Hey. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. What does the badge look like? Probably too much to hope that it's star-shaped and made of tin. Well, I hope you're there that long too, quite obviously. I think waiting for last minute discounts is usually a workable idea. Spring makes Europe more desirable, but not as covetable as summer does. I like pro basketball okay, but I never watch it until the finals, if I ever do. I feel like I've got too much routine in my life as it is. ** David Ehrenstein, Yeah, saw that VK's getting married, and to a woman, no surprise there at all. May bliss overcome them both. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. I still like books better too, but digital has its thing. As Sypha said, 'IJ" might be easier to read in book form, but, I don't know, maybe not? Sure, I read the classics, or I mean some of them. Uh, mostly in school, I think, but it depends on what 'classic' means. I read guys like Flaubert and H. James and so on and so forth on my own, but, like, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and stuff like that were class assignments. I mostly only wanted to read French lit when I had a choice. Never wanted to read, say, pre-50s American classics. Like I've said, the big stories and big characters and sweeping insights about humanity and stuff just never held much interest for me. I was against their status as 'the great fiction role models' since I was a young teen. I always read avant-garde lit when I had a choice since I was about 14 years-old. But, yeah, I had some kind of phase where I checked 'the classics' out to be sure, but I usually only read about a quarter of them maybe and got bored and stopped, I think. Reading them makes sense though. Well, I have no doubt whatsoever that it'll work out well for your book. Just curious as to how your route as a published author will begin. ** Wolf, Hey, Wolf! It was so awesome to see you! I only started feeling pretty okay and normal yesterday. Bad timing there. I think I'll maybe go see the Linder show, I don't know. Probably will pop in when I go to the Palais de Tokyo or something. Will definitely for absolutely sure see the Dark Romanticism show at the d'Orsay, though. Assuming it'll still be up when I get back from my work trip thing. I'll tell G&S too. You betcha. Cool. I'm so glad your trip ended on that high note. Me? I'm ... what am I doing ... uh, finishing the 'Pyre' translation fix-up. Helping Zac build a 6 foot Kinex Ferris Wheel that we will be using as part of a film project on our Scandinavian theme park tour trip. Pre-trip errands. Blah blah. I'm good. You thinking of Days for the blog is so kind, and that will so, so really help me out. I don't think I know who Barron Storey is, which is exactly why I really, really want you to do it! Big old, or, rather, forever young love to you! ** Empty Frame, Hi, Frame! I'm good. Yury's fashion line hasn't launched yet. He's still getting everything ready. He's not going to launch with a runway show/ presentation. He's launching in some other way, which has bought him a little needed time to complete the collection and website and all that stuff. The George novel is a semi-disaster, and I'm not sure what's going on with it. I'm trying to turn it into something else, if I can. Not sure. Tough times on that front. But I'm taking a weeklong 'get away and work' trip on Monday with my artist friend Zac wherein we will ideally hold up in the semi-middle of nowhere and make a lot of progress on our respective projects, so we'll see. Japan, yes. Nope, no Gisele connection there. I'm going with the aforementioned Zac purely just to explore, have fun, etc. There are a million things we want to check out there, and we're in the early stages of compiling a list and mapping out the trip. Sorry you didn't like Linder on wARC's behalf, but c'est la vie, and she's new to me, and my opinion on what she does is vague and in process. Oh, gosh, thanks about the 'Them' thing. We had to cancel the upcoming performances of 'Them' in Poitiers 'cos Ishmael just had to have emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery! But he's okay. Much love back. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Oh, oh, oh, how was the studio visit? Tell me! ** Sypha, Hi. Not a very accurate account of Wire's music and the different historical phases of it, but that's okay. I don't remember that 'Broom' character, but, like I said, I'm sure any 'homophobia' in the novel was meant to be uncomfortable making. Yikes, on your schedule! Thank god for the upcoming days off. Yeah, the classics, I don't know. I mean, obviously, there must be super great work amongst the classics, and I've read some super great classics, but that whole 'you have to read the classics' thing is just bullshit, I think. It just seems to derive from some nonsensical protectionist attitude about the past. I know I didn't get anything that I know of as a writer from reading them. Of course I'm a weird writer. ** Pilgarlic, Hi, man! Nice to see you! It's interesting that you mention Lady Gaga because it's kind of a well known thing that Gaga 'stole' her idea for the 'meat dress' from Linder, who did that same thing back in the 80s. Very cool thoughts on DRP too. You good? ** White tiger, Hi, Math! Hey, buddy! Oh, I'm so sorry about the boredom with the bay and about the break-up with your muse. That sounds very painful. I'm so sorry, pal. But it is exciting that you're finally getting your name changed! I wish I could sit under that tree with you afterwards and watch you smoke pot. Very cool about Kyte visiting. Kyte's awesome. You guys'll have a blast, I think. Great! Wow, that 'pacific ephemeris' thing looks really cool. I'm going to go try to decode it or something. Everyone, the great artist and d.l. White tiger aka Math tinder has started this thing called 'pacific ephemeris', and you will be so glad you click thisand go see what it is. Guaranteed. Whole bunches of love to you, my pal! ** Steevee, You would think so, wouldn't you. Strange. I don't have much hope for the Soderbergh/ Liberace either, and I'm not even sure why not. At Cannes? Interesting. I guess the schedule is imminent. ** Statictick, Hi, N! Man, yeah, ongoing love and support and ratcheted up great vibes from me, my friend. I stopped listening to the Bowie. I'll try it again one of these days. Ah, happy to hear you came around on MBV. Now that's a comeback record. The new Wire is really gorgeous, I think. I think I'm in love. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, cool, great! So glad the Linder post hit the spot. I always liked Ludus. It was really nice to revisit them. Oh, wow, that text of yours and the page it's on look great! I'll read it just in a little while. Everyone, the mightiest of mightys aka _B_A has a new text up on this place called 'The Annotated Palace Collection', which is a weekly blog inviting writers to respond to one of the fifteen horror films that make up the Palace Collection. I know it sounds complicated, but it's not, so just click this and forget my intro. ** S., Dude, if it works for you, go for it, which you are, so, yeah. Why do you have trouble making friends? You're so friendly and cool. I blame wherever you are. Listening to The Cult, ha ha, hey, maybe, right? Their tastes are your oyster. ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, A! I'm feeling better and better finally, thank you. You too, I hope. I know, is that not so weird when you suddenly can't wake up and work on your book? So weird. What happened to the second book? Wasn't there a possible second book that you were writing at the same time, or was it that they consolidated into one book, I can't remember? Aw, gosh, thanks, man, re: 'Try'. Yeah, so excited to hear how it goes with the agent, and, jeez, to get read your new book! Holy shit! ** Grant maierhofer, Hi! Saul Bellow, wow, I haven't even thought about in him, like, a zillion years. He was such a big dog lit guy back when I was forging ahead as a writer as best I could. I think I read one of his things and just thought it was okay or something, but I think what he does isn't my thing. Anyway, just to say how weird it is when a writer's name is practically ubiquitous and then you realize it has become a faint memory. But maybe people are reading him again? The Pollock piece/interview was great, man. I like Egon Schiele, sure. What's not to like, I think? Later, pal. ** MANCY, Hi! You saw Iceage last night? Dude, is Elias not so the mega-riveting stage presence? Whoa. I'm going to hang out with him and them when I go to Scandinavia. Really curious about them. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Which Blanchot are you focusing on? I'm glad the Day was close to gorgeousness. Sweet. Lovely day, my friend. ** Okay. John Foxx, pioneer electronic guy and kind of awesome in general, I think, but now the gig is yours, not mine, so see what's what. See you tomorrow.

I arrived in Manhattan in greasy jeans and a six dollar haircut. I was twenty-one. I wore clothes I’d been wearing since high school. My body hadn’t changed. I was 120 pounds, a sliver of an idea. The year was 1991. My clothes were the clothes of a salvage lot boy. People on the sidewalk didn’t seem to notice. They pushed through their days with an importance I didn’t understand. Briefcases held entire worlds. Handbags were clutched like bejeweled secrets. New York had not yet been sanitized by Giuliani; it was still dirty enough to feel dangerous. I lived in New York during the spring semester of my junior year of college. The college I attended in Iowa offered an off-campus study program. I could live in Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York for a semester. I chose New York.


It was late January. My plane landed at JFK. It was cold, but not as cold as Iowa. It was a wetter cold. It sunk through one’s body. I walked down sidewalks I’d only dreamed of, the Manhattan of a hundred films. I was among the anonymous and the faceless. A thousand dreams turned behind the eyes of each face I looked into. How did she get here? What did he do for a living? I walked among them. I too was anonymous.


Three other students from my college had chosen to live in New York for a semester. We were all boys. Other than William the Blind, they were the only people I knew in New York. In 1991, William the Blind was a young writer with two novels and a book of short stories under his belt. I hadn’t met him yet. I was nervous.


Before we left for New York, the college advised us to be on our best behavior. We were representing the college, after all. I only knew the three other boys in passing. It was a small college. One boy was a theatre major. One boy was a business major. The third boy, my roommate, was a musician. I was majoring in English. We had simple American names. The college placed us on the fourteenth floor of a pre-war hotel. It was called the _____ _____ Hotel. It was dirty but familiar, like an old friend coming off a three day meth binge. We were juniors, all twenty-one. We were in the greatest city in the world. She opened her legs to us. We went inside. We drank, and drank some more. I took in her odor. She beckoned me, undressed me, and stripped me naked. She showed me many things. I cannot name them all.


Our favorite bar didn’t have a name. The business major was from Omaha. I think these guys are homos, he said. I looked at the clientele. They were old perfumed dolls wrapped in cellophane. I recognized the history of secret lives. I think you’re right, I said. Brian shrugged. Doesn’t matter, he said.


The boy I got along with the easiest was the theatre major. Shockingly, he wasn’t queer. He had a girlfriend. She was a theatre major, too. The theatre major was interested in set design. Why, I asked. I like the idea of creating new worlds, he said. We’re not that different, I said. No, he said. One night I went with Kevin, the theatre major, to the unnamed bar. A man approached him as we sat talking on our barstools. I’m with him, Kevin said, pointing a finger in my direction. The man looked me up and down, made a hissing noise and walked away. It was as if I didn’t exist. He must like Asians, Kevin said. A rice queen, I said. Kevin laughed. We ordered a pitcher of Miller Genuine Draft. People came and went. Most of them were old men. We were the youngest people in the bar. Somewhere north of our third pitcher I told Kevin he was beautiful. Thank you, he said. I kissed him on the lips. You’re drunk, he said. Have another beer, he said. He laughed as he poured warm beer into my glass. It was the extent of our romance.


▪





I walked the streets of Manhattan at night. I walked them alone. The college had warned us not to. The sidewalks didn’t know the letters in my name. I liked the idea of not having a history. I could be anything I wanted to be. I chose to be a piece of garbage. I had a size twenty-nine waist and a clean white dick. I would fuck anything. I would only be young once, I thought. I found myself on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Grand Street. There were Asian characters on the marquees and Asian characters in the shadows. I wished Kevin, my beautiful Chinese friend, were with me. I heard a voice come from a wedge between two buildings. Hey boy, you need some company? Yes, I said. How polite, I thought. This is a great town. An old black woman emerged from the shadows. She wore a calico rabbit fur coat. It fell to her ankles in a rainbow. The material looked cheap and prickly. We’re both poor, I thought. She grabbed my hand. Her hand was calloused and grimy. Mine was soft and unfamiliar with the dark shadows of the world. I felt very worldly, walking with a lady of the shadows. An elderly man tapping a cane on the sidewalk looked at us. He quickly looked elsewhere. The woman pushed open the glass door of an apartment building. The lobby smelled of mothballs and sickly layers of old paint. She guided me to a stairwell. She got on her knees, her coat sweeping the floor beneath us. With a snap of her wrist she unbuttoned my jeans. She opened the fly of my briefs. In a moment my penis was in her mouth. Her mouth was warm yet somehow detached. I looked down. My penis had a condom on it. I felt the warm rush of history. I came into the condom. She stripped it off, spat, and threw it on the floor. I pushed myself back inside my jeans. She opened the door. The night hit us full-on. It was much colder than it had been only a few moments earlier. I gotta eat, she said. How much money you got? I pulled my wallet from my front pocket. My father told me to keep it there. Harder to steal, he said. I had a twenty and two ones. Twenty dollars, I said. Is that all you got? I searched the pockets of my jeans. I removed stray change and a few subway tokens. I opened my hands to show her I was telling the truth. Give it to me, she said. I gave her everything. She fingered the night’s quarry. After a moment she handed the subway tokens back to me. You gonna need those, honey. We walked together a few more steps. She touched the small of my back, then turned and disappeared into the shadows. I searched my pockets. I was hungry and now I had nothing.


▪


I’d wanted to be a musician, not a writer. I shared this with the musician. So why aren’t you a musician, he asked. Because I can’t read music, I said. He laughed. I didn’t like the musician. I thought I did, but I didn’t. He came from a wealthy family. His parents were divorced. His father lived in Chicago. His mother lived in Santa Fe. He was an only child. He had a real name but everyone called him by his nickname. I’ll call him Chad. He laughed like a strangled finch. He was a drummer. I don’t want to play something dumb like the drums, I said. I want to play keyboards. A short thin sound passed between his lips. The words pissed him off. I knew they would.


▪


The college placed us on the fourteenth floor of an old hotel near W 75th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. I could see the Beacon Theatre from my window. Kevin roomed with Brian, and I roomed with Chad. I wanted to room with Kevin. We weren’t given a choice. I tried to like Chad. He made it difficult. He was very particular about his face, his clothes. He kept his drums in a corner near the door. They’re very expensive, he said. His father had shipped them from Iowa to New York. They took up a lot of room. I had to be very careful when I opened the door. I was a writer. All I needed was a notebook and a pen. The room didn’t have a desk. When I wrote I lay on my stomach on my bed. It didn’t affect my writing. In New York we had four professors who worked closely with us. There was a music professor, an art professor, an English professor and a theatre professor. The music professor was a man in his late sixties named Murray. He lived in Manhattan during the week. He spent the weekends in Marblehead, Massachusetts. I suspected he was queer. I wore tighter shirts on the days I met with him. I looked ridiculous, a toothpick with a nylon stretched over it.


The art professor was named Kathy. She lived in the city full-time. She had a studio on W 39th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. She was in her late forties. She had short-cropped hair and a long, severe face. She wore heavy black glasses. They sat on the bridge of her nose or dangled from a beaded necklace that appeared to be handmade. The English professor was a woman in her late fifties named Ana. She had written articles for the Village Voice and other periodicals of some note. Before the New York semester I’d written to Ana and asked her if it would be possible to meet with William the Blind. I told her of The Rainbow Stories, how his words had changed the way I thought about writing. She said she would see what she could do. It shouldn’t be that difficult, she said. I studied his words. The words rearranged my thought patterns. I waited to hear back from her. I had my doubts. I drank, got stoned, went to class, and slept with my girlfriend. November bled into December. I continued writing. The sentences I wrote got longer and longer. I didn’t like them. They sounded false. I scratched dark lines through them. I was awake most nights. I hacked at my words until only the bones remained. Snow fell outside my dorm room window. I wanted my words to fall as lightly as the snow.


My girlfriend read books about the collapse of the Soviet Union. She didn’t have much time for me. If she was busy I’d walk back across campus to my dorm room. I’d get stoned and strip down to my underwear. I was a junior. I lived alone. My dorm room was on the eighth floor of The Tower. It was known by most kids as the dork’s dorm because one had to have a 3.0 or higher to live in it. I often wondered what happened behind the bland doors of the other dorm rooms. Were people getting stoned, drinking, having sex? Calling their mothers to ask for more money? Sometimes when I was bored I’d get stoned and play a game I’d read about in Hustler magazine. I tied an end of my belt to my doorknob. I looped the other end around my neck. I pulled the belt tight and leaned forward until I nearly passed out. I pushed the pads of my feet against the door. My body was a compressed spring. I drifted in the darkness. The dim flash of orange on the underside of my eyelids illuminated the room. I felt the warm rush of history. The floor was concrete. It was easy to clean.


▪


My advisor called me into his office shortly before fall semester ended. The writer has agreed to meet with you, he said. Congratulations. Please remember to use your time wisely. I promised him I would. I left his small office. I imagined the young writer living in New York. I returned to my dorm room. I looked at his photograph on the dust jacket of You Bright and Risen Angels. He looked mild and bookish. It was a lie, I thought. He had witnessed the horrors of the world. He recounted them with clinical precision. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of the earth is uniform. I memorized the words. I, too, lived in darkness.


▪





William the Blind had published three books. The books had caused a bit of a stir in the literary world. I owned all three in hardcover. The Rainbow Stories had changed the way I perceived the world. Someone in the world shared my afflictions. I would work with William and report what I had learned to my professors. Was it possible to learn how to write? I didn’t think so. But I thought it possible to relearn how to see.


▪


Ana was in her late fifties. She and her husband had an apartment on the Upper West Side. I looked closely at her face. I could tell she had been beautiful when she was young. She and her husband did not have children. Two small dogs sat on the sofa near her. I sat across from Ana in a wingback chair. The dogs flattened their ears against their heads. They pointed their noses toward me and regarded me with suspicion. Ana’s apartment was filled with books and paintings. I couldn’t tell if the paintings they were right side up or upside down.


Ana was massive. Her thighs were two great logs that sat cooling in a fire. Not even the elements could alter them. William will meet with you soon, she said. Yes, I said. In a few days, I said. Her husband popped his head around a partition that separated the kitchen from the living room. He was a balding man with a slight build. He wore a cardigan and tie. I was sure he was retired. Would you like a glass of wine, he asked. Yes, I said. I didn’t know anything about wine, though I’d once gotten deathly-drunk on a bottle of Night Train in high school. The only thing I was sure of was my ignorance. You’ll need a typewriter to write, Ana said. I have an old IBM Selectric. You may borrow it, if you like. Thank you, I said. I’ll have it delivered to your hotel, she said. The dogs looked at me from their perch near Ana’s legs. You’re garbage, they said.


▪


The musician possessed a certain beauty that came from privilege, but his outlook soured anything remotely beautiful about him. He could play music but he didn’t understand the meaning of compassion. His parents’ divorce had little effect on him. He’d been sour a long time. What’s wrong with you? I asked. I don’t know what you’re talking about, he said. He unbuttoned his shirt. He stripped off his undershirt. He had the body of a malnourished boy. He held a bottle to his chest. The smell of cologne filled the air, changed its shape. I didn’t wear cologne or jewelry. I didn’t wear a watch. I did nothing to ornament my body. A writer should be faceless and forgettable. I rolled onto my stomach. I wrote notes in my composition book. He pulled on a clean t-shirt. I’m going out, he said. Good, I said. He closed and locked the door. Thoreau wrote how vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. I believed Thoreau was telling me I needed to fuck more whores, but I wasn’t sure. I kicked off my shoes and drifted, the sounds of Manhattan squawking fourteen floors below me.


▪


Ana’s IBM Selectric was delivered to the hotel by courier. When it arrived I went out and purchased a cheap writing desk from a thrift shop. It was made of wood, simple and unadorned. I carried it through the lobby and into the elevator. The clerk nodded and continued reading a paper. I returned to the lobby and asked the clerk if he had a spare chair I could borrow. He had a thick Indian accent. I’ll see what I can find, he said. Ana’s Selectric was reddish-orange. It had rounded edges. It was very heavy. I moved my writing desk under the window and placed the Selectric in the center of it. I plugged it in and turned it on. The typewriter had a satisfying hum. I liked the chunky sound it made when I ran my fingers over the home row. The desk clerk rang a few hours later. I found a chair, he said. Thank you, I said. I would now record everything Manhattan had to teach me on clean white sheets.


▪


I came home drunk after spending an evening with Kevin. We went to a club to meet people. Everyone assumed we were together. Neither of us found a stranger to go home with. I didn’t think Kevin would sleep with anyone. He seemed very committed to his girlfriend. I decided the next time I went out I would go alone. I wanted to witness the flesh parade the city had to offer. Kevin was at my side. I sheared off the top of my skull, scooped out my brain and soaked it in rum. We left the club near closing time and disappeared into the bowels of the subway. I’d forgotten how to walk. My feet were in my shoes but they weren’t cooperating. Up and down, I told myself, up and down. We exited the subway and walked a few blocks. The smudged glass doors of our hotel stood before us. Kevin rang the buzzer. The night clerk let us in. Kevin pushed the door open. I hooked a finger in one of his belt loops and followed him into the elevator.


Kevin helped me to my door. After I unlocked it he walked down the hall toward his room. I pushed the door open but something was blocking the doorway. I pushed harder. Hey, asshole! Chad yelled. Those are my fucking drums! I was disappointed to see Chad home so early. Sorry, I said. I shut the door with a click. Manhattan was safely contained on the other side of the door. Chad reminded me how expensive his drums were. I’m sorry, I said. You’re drunk, he said. I sat on the chair the desk clerk had loaned me. I don’t touch your stupid typewriter, asshole. I looked at Chad and covered my ears with my hands. He raised a middle finger. You need to get laid, I said. Fuck off, he said. I lined my fingers up on home row. Each time I pressed a button I heard a solid chunk chunk chunk but nothing came out right. I hit the keys with a violence that manifested itself as nonsense on the paper. I bent over the desk and opened the window. The cold wind of Manhattan settled on the blankets. I grabbed the cord of the Selectric and gave it a quick yank. I picked it up with both hands and tossed it out the window. Jesus Christ! Chad yelled. A loud crash sounded in the street below. Someone shouted fuck you! I opened the door. Chad and I raced toward the elevator at the end of the hall. I can’t believe you did that, he said. It was very late. The night clerk looked up as we passed his desk. I buzzed the door open. I pushed the heavy glass toward the night. A few people strolled along the sidewalk like ghosts. Ana’s typewriter sat in the middle of the street, mangled and unrecognizable. Chad and I picked the pieces off the street and dropped them in a gutter behind a salt-stained car. I’m fucked, I said. Chad laughed. We should get back inside, he said. It was the first time the little finch had laughed in weeks.


▪





I was at the Village Vanguard with Kevin, Chad, Brian, and our music professor Murray. A band I didn’t recognize was playing music I didn’t know. It was apparently popular with old white men. Murray ordered a drink. We watched him for subtle cues. Order a drink, he said. You’re all twenty-one. Once Murray’s approval had been secured we ordered drinks. I ordered a rum and Coke. Chad ordered an old fashioned, a drink he’d obviously heard his father order. Kevin ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. Brian ordered a rum and Coke, which surprised me. He usually drank beer.


Halfway into the second set Murray asked how my writing was coming. Not good, I said. I threw Ana’s typewriter out the window the other night. Fourteen floors down, I said. I illustrated my point by dragging my index finger from an imaginary hotel window to the imaginary street below. Boooooooooeeeewwwww, I said. Pwwwwccchhhhh. Someone kicked me under the table. Murray laughed. You’re joking? I wish I were, I said. Murray didn’t appear surprised. I laughed and took another drink. I was young and strong. Murray was old and weak. What could he do to me? Murray quietly cleared his throat. The band played for another half hour. When they finished we got up and said goodnight. Murray quickly turned and headed out the door. It was cold outside. The warmth of the club had nearly lulled me to sleep. Outside, the rain reminded me that I was alive and very much alone in a big city that didn’t know my name. Taxis chortled and honked, their wheels in cahoots with the wet asphalt. Did that really happen? Kevin asked. I shook my head yes. My stomach felt heavy. I knew I’d made a mistake.


▪


Two days after my confession Murray came to see me at my hotel room on the fourteenth floor. He was dressed in dark green slacks and a brown cardigan. He reminded me of a religious studies professor I’d taken a class with in Cedar Rapids. Gather up your things, he said quietly. I placed my clothes and my books in my ugly brown suitcase. I threw my composition book on top of everything. I closed the suitcase and snapped the latches in place. I’ll need your room key, Murray said. I dug into my jeans pocket. I followed Murray into the elevator. Nothing was said between us. He looked down. I looked down. I considered the worn floor of the elevator. It had no knowledge to impart. Murray stopped at the front desk. The clerk seemed to understand I was checking out. He nodded. Murray thanked him. Let’s grab something to eat, Murray said. He held the hotel door open for me. A cab was waiting. I got in. Murray got in behind me. At the café I placed my pathetic suitcase against the wall of the booth. It suddenly seemed very small. Murray sat across from me. He placed his order. I ordered a large breakfast. I wasn’t sure when I’d eat again. The waitress brought our drinks. Once she was out of earshot Murray said you’ve been expelled from the program. I’m sorry. You can’t stay in your old room. And it’s best if you don’t associate with the other students. I stared at my iced tea. Should I return to Cedar Rapids? I asked. I think you need to return home. I don’t have enough money for a plane ticket, I said. Perhaps you should contact your parents, Murray said. We’ve rented you a hotel room for three nights. You should have things sorted out by then. I’m sorry, son. I brushed away a tear with the back of my hand. My face felt hot. You could’ve killed someone, Murray said. You’re damned lucky.


▪


I took a bus to William and Janice’s apartment on East 66th Street and York Avenue. William was preparing to go on a trip to a faraway land, a land of ice and mystery. He showed me a handmade book he called The Happy Girls. The cover was made of metal. What should I do? I asked. William the Blind was only eleven years older than me, but those eleven years had been very instructive. They kicked me out of the program. I’ve been expelled from school. I don’t have any money, I said. I was on the verge of crying. I did not want to cry in front of William the Blind. William was very patient and very polite. He had the patience of a much older man. The Happy Girls was illuminated by red bulbs. I must have looked like a lost child scanning the aisles of a grocery store for its mother. Batteries, William said. He thought for a moment. Well, you’re young. You have a nice body. You could dance for money. Dancing always leads to other things, you know. You could do that, William said. William’s girlfriend Janice had made beef jerky for his trip. He bit off an end and handed it to me. It tasted good. I never thought of that, I said. I didn’t want to admit to William the Blind that the idea of prostitution scared me. It was fine if other people sold their bodies, but I didn’t want to resort to selling my own. There was death, disease, and queer bashing to consider. It was too much to turn over in my mind. I was not brave like William the Blind. I never would be. I said yes, I would do that. I lied. Good luck on your trip, I said. I left the student apartment that William and Janice shared near the Memorial Sloan - Kettering Cancer Center on East 66th Street and York Avenue. I wouldn’t see him again for another twelve years. When I saw him again we would both be in Los Angeles, far away from New York. I would be old and he would be older. The years would pass between us as years pass between brothers. The names remain the same and nothing seems to change.


▪


Magda lived on the twelfth floor of the _____ _____ Hotel. The first time I saw her I was feeding a roll of quarters into a payphone in the lobby. I was talking to a friend in Rio Minolta. I turned and there was Magdalena. She was slowly walking through the lobby. She was in her late sixties. She was dressed in red and gold. She wore a flamboyant hat. She moved very deliberately. It pained me to watch her walk. I was dressed in my usual garb, old Levi’s and a black t-shirt. Magda slowly lifted a hand and waved. I waved back. I saw her again at the mailboxes a few days later. She wore a different hat. I was expecting a letter from my mother. Someone said hello. I turned. It was Magda, though I didn’t know her name at the time. I said hello. She stepped closer and grabbed my penis through my jeans. You’re such a sweet boy, she said. Come see me sometime. I’m in 1216. She turned and shuffled toward the elevators. Was she a succubus? A demon roaming the halls of the hotel? I wasn't sure. I was too naive to understand such things.


▪


I found myself at her door. I was holding my ugly brown suitcase. Magda was poor but she had two small television sets. One was in the bedroom. The other sat on the counter in the kitchen. They were always on. They spoke to me in Spanish. I liked this because I didn’t have to think. Her front door opened into a kitchen and a living room. The bathroom was in one corner. The bedroom was nothing more than a bed separated by thrift store partitions. A heavy green fabric was draped across the partitions. Her window looked out onto a different view of the city than the one Chad and I had shared. I couldn’t see the Beacon Theatre from her window. I leaned out as far as possible. No, no, mijo. You’ll fall! Like many New Yorkers, her entire life was contained in five hundred square feet. My bedroom back home in Rio Minolta was smaller than a whore’s shoe closet. I was used to small spaces.


▪


I quickly determined Magdalena was not a woman, though she always dressed as one. I didn’t own the words to describe her. She often kept both televisions on simultaneously. They were on Spanish channels, though not the same channel. Broadcasters echoed and mimicked each other. Commercials battled for my attention. Garish shows clanged against each other like Fiesta ware. I was convinced Magda was trying to rewire my brain. She cooked things I didn’t like. The dishes were hot and spicy. I didn’t recognize the names she used. I bent over the commode one evening and watched everything I’d eaten exit my mouth in a violent red swirl. I was too weak to shower. Magda bathed me. Why get dressed if you’re not going out? Magda asked. If I wanted money all I had to do was walk or lie around the apartment in my briefs and nothing else. I would sit across from her in the kitchen with my ass on a flimsy chair, my legs draped across the sofa. Her apartment was an exact replica of the one I’d shared with Chad. It was small and chipped and dull. The muscles of my legs twitched like a rabbit held against its will. I stretched out on the sofa with my hands behind my head and the heels of my feet against the opposite armrest. I became so accustomed to wearing only briefs that I once stepped outside the door and realized I had no clothes on as I waited for the elevator. I jogged down the hall and knocked on Magda’s door, a pink naked idiot.


▪





Magdalena was from Ecuador. I was born Nicolás Lara, she said. I come here when I was very little, just a girl. My mother was very disappointed when I was born. I already have three boys, she said. I want a girl! Growing up I knew I had a boy’s body but I was really a girl. I told my mother. Never tell anyone, she said. Life will be very hard for you. I come to New York. It was much different back then. Not so expensive. I went to school to learn English. I taught myself how to walk like a boy, but it was no use. I was not a boy. I learned English. I cleaned houses. I made money but I was very sad. One night I went to a club with a friend and saw mariposas, men dressed as women. I finally found others like me. I missed my home, mi familia, but I knew it could never be like this. I would never be free. Magda held a pocket square to her eye. I listened to her story. I searched for Nicolás Lara under the clothes, the makeup. I could not find him.


▪


One evening I lay on the sofa watching Sábado Gigante. I drifted off, woke up, drifted again, dreamt I was wearing a uniform. I pushed a broom in a parking lot. Was it my father’s wrecking yard? A pad of asphalt sat in front of his office, but I didn’t recognize the surroundings. I felt a vague presence hovering over me. The broom made swishing sounds as I pushed a small pile of gravel along the black surface. Someone whispered my name. I opened my eyes to find Magda leaning over me. She was bathed in the phosphor-blue light of the television. She had the twisted face of a demon. She slowly rematerialized into human form. She was dressed in a pink nightgown. I looked for breasts. I couldn’t see any. She clicked her nails against my skin and slowly pulled my briefs to my ankles. I lay motionless. I tried to speak. I couldn’t. Magda pulled a kitchen chair close to the sofa. She sat on it. Play with yourself, she said. I closed my eyes. I moved my hands over my body. I pictured Kevin’s face. The flickering light of the television tinted my skin milk-blue. I heard a rustling in the darkness. Magdalena murmured words I didn’t understand. After I finished she cleaned me with a dry washcloth. She held the washcloth to her nose. Her face looked younger, her hair darker. I want to take a shower, I said. Go ahead, mijo. I crossed the floor with my bare feet. The floor was very cold. Just beyond Magdalena’s window Manhattan squonked and hissed. I wondered how many apartments entertained unnamed horrors behind closed doors.


▪


Can I have some money? Of course, mijo. Get my purse. She always called me by something other than my name – honey, mijo, baby. I was not a baby. I was twenty-one. I never corrected her. She fed me. She let me live with her. She rarely touched me. What did I care if she got off watching me walk around in my underwear? If I had to jerk off for her, so be it. I was hungry and the city waited outside the door. We all make accommodations. Adjust, focus, rewire. Mother once told me men are never satisfied. She was right. Plates in the earth moved against each other. Mountains slowly turned to sand. The seafloor drifted from blue to darkness, and things between Magda and me quickly changed.


▪


I became a prostitute. I offered myself to her three nights after I moved in. Candles were lit. An old Spanish movie played on the television in the bedroom. It was her idea of romance. Her eyes were obsidian. Some unknown creature conspired behind them. I lay on the bed. Her hands drifted over my body. I started pulling off my briefs. She stopped me. Let me do it, she said. I felt her nails against my skin. Her gnarled fingers played my body like a grand piano. They summoned notes I didn't recognize. Your skin is so white, she said. I shut my eyes. Her mouth closed over me. I felt weak. I couldn’t move. I thought only of good things. I was grateful to be out of the cold and away from everything I knew. I thought of the money she gave me. Sometimes we are vampires, and sometimes we fall prey to them.


▪


The days stretched out like an old snake warming itself in the sun. There was always a Spanish program on the televisions. Candles flickered in the shadows. Magdalena blessed the dark corners of the apartment with pungent oils. She spoke to black formless shadows. They whispered back. She applied makeup in the morning but never went anywhere. I grew bored. I read my books, the only books in the apartment in English, but I quickly grew tired of them. Magda had an old pair of hair clippers in the medicine cabinet. I stripped off my briefs one morning as she watched television and boiled a pot of tea on the stove. I plugged the clippers into an outlet above the bathroom sink. I turned them on without a guard in place. I started from the front of my scalp and moved the clippers over my skull. The oily buzzing of the clippers was reassuring. My hair fell into the sink, the wastebasket, on the floor. When I was done I scooped up my hair and put it in the trash. My scalp was white. I rubbed my hands against it. Hair drifted into the sink. I turned on the water and stepped into the shower. When I stood under the water black pieces of me swirled down the drain. I felt lighter. The water ricocheted off my skull. I turned the water off and dried my scalp with an old soft towel that had been washed a hundred times. I dried my body and walked nude into the little kitchen where Magda sat watching her program. My skin was pink from the hot shower. It tightened and pulled against itself. Magda rarely turned the heat on. Too expensive, she said. I stood naked before Magda, bald and pink. She stifled a little cry. She crossed herself. You’re not a boy anymore, she said. She hugged me in the cold air of the apartment. I felt trapped. If I don’t leave soon, I thought, I may never leave.


▪


I got a job as a short order cook at a small diner near Amsterdam Avenue and West 80th Street. The old man who hired me was friendly but terse. You done this kind of work before, kid? Yes sir, I said. Can you start tomorrow? Yes sir. Call me Lloyd, he said. You’ll start at minimum wage. You live close by? 75th Street and Amsterdam, I said. Good. Make sure you’re here on time. Come with me. I followed him into a small office with a sign on the door that said EMPLOYEES ONLY. He took down Magdalena’s phone number, which was really the phone number of one of the three payphones in the lobby. He handed me a black apron. This one’s yours. I’ll see you tomorrow, yes? Yes sir, I said. Call me Lloyd, he said. I shook his hand and told him thank you. Be sure you’re here at 6 A.M., he said.


I would be free of Magda’s apartment with its Spanish programs and butterscotch walls. I would be free of her restless hands, if only for a few hours. I walked toward the hotel. Magda had talked to the night clerk. He lives with me now, she said. I never saw my friends Kevin or Brian. I imagined them somewhere in the city taking tours with professors and writing down important things in notebooks. I thought of the musician, my stupidity at tossing the typewriter out the window. I stretched onto the bed and cried with my back against the sound of the dueling televisions. I sensed Magdalena was standing behind me. What’s wrong, mijo? I thought of my mother and father, my siblings. I thought of my friends in Cedar Rapids. I was very far away from everything I knew. I got a job today, I said. The cold air of the apartment brushed against my back. Oh, that’s good, she said. That’s very good. She rolled me onto my back. Despite her age, she was very strong. Her hands tugged at the waistband of my jeans. I ran my hand over the surface of a wall. Nothing in the world belonged to me, not even myself.


▪


I worked long enough to collect one paycheck. The money was very insignificant. I smelled of grease each afternoon as I made my way home. The smell stayed in my hair. Shampooing my scalp didn’t help. I hated my job. I hated Magda’s bony fingers. I hated Manhattan.


▪

I told Magda I wanted to go home. She was upset. She sat at the little kitchen table and shook like a dog. She held a pocket square in her hand. She dabbed her eyes. Her eyeliner was smeared against the broken surface of her cheeks. Do what you must, dear. If you want to go home, you should go home. I understand. Broke and broken, I called the elevator. When the doors opened I approached the payphone in the lobby downstairs. I dialed my father’s number. It was late March. I’d been living with Magdalena for a month. I’d told my father I lived with an older woman. What he didn’t know was the older woman was a man from Ecuador who dressed as a woman. My stepmother answered the phone. She sounded five thousand miles away. I asked to speak to my father. Rio Minolta was three hours behind New York. It was early evening on the west coast. I want to come home, Dad. My father was silent. I imagined him sitting in his La-Z-Boy, watching one of his programs. You tired of living in that big city, son? Yes, I said. I did not hesitate. Well, come on home. I’ll put money in your account. Call us with your flight number. We’ll pick you up. I replaced the receiver in its cradle. I got back in the elevator and made my way up to 1216. I unlocked the door. Magdalena sat on a chair watching the television in the kitchen. She would not look at me.


▪


My entire life fit inside a small ugly brown Samsonite. I packed my clothes and the few books I’d brought from home. I threw my notebook in my suitcase. Nothing I’ve seen is worth saving, I said. Don’t say that, Magda said. You may think that now, but it’s not true. The things you learned here will mean something to you one day. Trust me, mijo. She gave me oranges for the trip. She gave me a handful of candies wrapped in crepe paper. The gold foil of the candies shone through the paper. I didn’t like the candies. I didn’t like Magda’s old ways. But she had kept me off the street. When I was cold, she kept me warm. I tried not thinking of the other things. There was always a price to pay. I opened the crepe paper and stuck a few candies in my pocket for the flight home. On the plane I leaned against the Plexiglas and imagined my father picking me up at the airport in his old Ford truck. I pulled the shade down to blot out the light. I wanted to forget Manhattan, forget Iowa. I awoke when the plane hit a patch of turbulence. I pushed my hand into my pocket and removed one of Magdalena’s candies. An old man sitting next to me tried making conversation, but I ignored him. The butterscotch candy was cheap and brightly-colored, much like Magda. The best candies are those that are unwrapped, eaten, and quickly forgotten.


▪


It would take many years to learn that a writer is never up front and center, a writer is always in the shadows. A writer observes; he does not participate. A writer must take notes in his head. People don’t trust people who carry notebooks. A writer never passes judgment on people who populate her fiction. A writer loves words but also knows when to do away with them. I thought I understood these things when I was young. I did not. I only understood one volume setting: loud. I was a fool. I shouted yet I had nothing to say. I was a compass yet I had no sense of direction. A real writer has no soul, William the Blind said. A writer’s job is merely to observe and reflect, to be a mirror and a chameleon. William tried telling me this. I was young. I did not listen. It would take years to learn what he meant. I tripped. I fell. I shunned friends and family. I spent days in my bedroom at my keyboard. I typed until my back ached. I spoke to black formless shadows. They whispered back. I emerged from the darkness. The sun was very bright. At last, I thought. I am a recording angel.


▪





I’ve only returned to New York twice since I lived there so long ago in 1991. The streets have the same names. The buildings are the same, but there is a subtle difference. The danger is gone. The sidewalks are clean. I see my face reflected in shop windows. Old grates and metalwork have been burnished by people who were not born there. I miss the dirt. I walked by my old hotel, the hotel where I lived, where Magda lived. It is no longer called the _____ _____ Hotel. It is no longer a hotel. It now houses condos, or apartments, or flats. It doesn’t matter. I could not afford to live here now. Neither could my teacher, William the Blind. The true artist and the middle class have been trampled underfoot by a million polished soles. The shop windows look through me. They do not see me. I thought of Magdalena, how kind she’d been to me. I’d treated her poorly. I’d been ungrateful. I was young. I was sure she was dead. I got drunk in the Village and raised a glass to her. An old queen tried hitting on me. I pushed through him and stumbled toward the door. I pissed in an alley near W 10th Street and Waverly Place. Fuck you, New York. Fuck the brocaded nouveau riche with their rhinestoned assholes. I never knew you.

Magdalena died a few years after I left. She died in 1993, when I was twenty-three. River Phoenix also died in 1993. It was such a shock because we were the same age. 1993 was a bad year. Two plus three is five. Not a good number.

I never wrote to Magda, as I said I would. Once I returned to Rio Minolta she rarely crossed my mind. She had shared her bed, her tiny apartment, her life with me. We talked in her kitchen among cutlery and old china. She lit a candle in front of her mother’s image every day. She taught me to have faith in myself. You are your own person, she said. No one can take your beauty from you. You must live life while you are young, she said. When you’re old all you have left are shadows.


▪


I have very few things left from my time in New York. There is an old composition book. A few faded photographs. A New York public library card issued to me by the borough of Manhattan. A bill from Dr. Irene Shapiro, a physician on Central Park West who treated an unidentified illness I wrestled with for a week. There is Kevin’s face, lingering in my mind. In late March the grey concrete of the sidewalks flowed into the gutters, the alleyways, the passages between thoughts. All these things fit neatly inside a funerary box that measures six inches wide by ten inches long. I put it away and seldom open it. It is in a closet somewhere in Rio Minolta, in a home that no longer feels like home. I tick days off the calendar. Each strikethrough equals one day closer to death. I am alive, and my time here is very brief. I packed my suitcase and took the A train to John F. Kennedy. Before I left Magdalena held me one last time, her entire body shaking beneath her clothes. She pushed a tight roll of money into my jeans pocket. Live each day like you’ve got a full refrigerator, mijo. The bastards won’t know the difference.







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p.s. Hey. Writer extraordinaire and d.l. James is back this weekend to share another piece of his novel-in-progress with us in special post form, and a lustrous compelling thing it is, so please take some time to get it under your considerable belts and then speak to him re: the effect, thank you. And mightiest of thanks to you, James! So, tomorrow I leave on a trip to the middle of France, specifically this region called Auvergnes, where I'll be hold up, endeavoring to work on my troubled novel and some other projects in league with my artist friend Zac, who'll be using the isolation and concentration to work on some projects of his own, albeit with some mini-escape trips to explore the area, which is famous for its history as the volcanic region of the country. What this means in terms of the blog is this: Apart from a new slaves post late next week, the blog's post aspect will be in reruns until I get back. As far as the p.s. goes, my idea/plan is to pop in here a couple of times during that period to do the p.s. and catch up. That'll likely happen spontaneously and without forewarning, so I guess expect the expected on an unexpected schedule. Early the following week, everything will return to normal here. Makes sense? Probably, right? ** Scunnard, Well, thank you, sir. You good? What's up and new? ** S., Nice stack. Like the color neg stuff. Color neg is an underrated way to go. Everyone, writer/artist S.'s Emo image stackage project continues apace and classically at this location. An 80s party? Why? Well, why not? I only know/like the Cult's obvious hits, which would be, what, oh, 'She Sells Sanctuary' and, uh, oh, 'Love Removal Machine'. I wasn't so hot on that album Ian Astbury did with Boris last year or whenever. He's a big Sunn0))) fan, though, god love him. I don't know. Hope the party rocked. Stay your own personal equivalent of gold. ** Cobaltfram, Yes, RIP: Chinua Achebe. Understood about the approach to the classics. I feel like I read everything for tech and style, old or new. Or that's what I concentrate on and then the content filters in simultaneously however it does. So, if classics are too content-y and narrative-y and all that, they might as well be 'Gone With the Wind' to me. Yeah, I know Morton Feldman's work. Liked it a lot back in the day when I was way into contemporary serious music. I saw him 'perform' his work a few times. I don't think of him as a minimalist at all. That tag seems really, really off to me. Yeah, I think 'modern classical music' informed my work somewhat. Maybe sneakily or something. Not as consciously as experimental film and experimental non-classical music has. I think maybe the pace and tempo, and, of course, the non-linear structures and dissonance, were the most influential. I don't know. ** David Ehrenstein, You remember them? I guess VK always seemed so heterosexual with a dash of bi-curiosity that no other possibility ever crossed my mind. And I guess my fantasies don't need an external patine of truthiness or something. Well, I suppose that's pretty obvious, ha ha. I wish Soderbergh had made the long-in-process 'Cleo' musical written by Robert Pollard before he quit. That's my one big complaint. ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, A! Oh, I see, yes, about the extra material and possible other books. That sounds quite comforting. Are you going to try to jump into one of them, or are you going let yourself have a phase of pure real world living for a while? Thanks, man, about my troubled novel thing. I don't know. I hope so. No, the Iceage hanging out will be during a big Scandinavian theme park-visiting road trip coming up in May. Take good care, my pal. ** L@rstonovich, Hey! Ah, I remember you guitar nazi guys. You were so charming and down to earth and everything, ha ha. Oh, shit, on the heave ho from your contentious friend. But it sounds like these tete-ouch-tetes fade out kind of quickly? But, yeah, that sucks. You feeling righter now, 24 further hours later, I hope, I suspect? ** Steevee, I guess Soderbergh has proven that his interests lie way all over the place? I don't know. I know people who work with him, and I certainly have never gotten the impression that he's at all homophobic, but, I don't know. I guess we'll see. When do you see the Liberace film? ** _Black_Acrylic, Yay, a fellow John Foxx fan at last! High five! Cool, excited about the MK piece, of course, and, again, of course, the Joe Meek Day would be amazing. Sure. 'The Pyre' will be easy for you because there's no text/talking whatsoever during the performance part, and the 'book' component that arrives at the end of the performance part, and which is written by me, will be bilingual. So, yeah, no sweat at all. ** Misanthrope, Well, at least it has your photo on it. That's cool. I always liked Shaq. I thought he was kind of a genius. I haven't followed him at all since he left the Lakers other than when he says or does something extracurricular that makes the news. ** Un Cœur Blanc, Hi! Oh, I haven't read 'Le dernier à parler'. I'm not even sure if it has been translated. Hunh. I'll go check. You have a very lovely weekend and beyond! ** White tiger, Hi, Math! You'll be fine and stronger yet, I know you will. Oh, you told me how to decode that! Thank you! Now I'm really excited, and I'm going to look at it with more complicated eyes. I'm loving it. It's fucking beautiful. Lots of love from me. ** Okay. Go back up there and read James' wonderful work if you haven't already. The blog will return on Monday with a hopefully exciting rerun post. I will see you guys, p.s.-wise, before too long at all, I think, so just take care and hang in there until then, okay?

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Wood Look Vintage Pottery Ashtray
'Beautiful vintage pottery ashtray looks like real wood. In excellent condtion. Circa 1950s-1960s, marked by maker on base. Measures 9" long, 5.5" at widest and 2.25" tall. Excellent natural cabin decor. Squirrel not included. Made in the days when smoking accessories were works of art. So when you need to pull out an ashtray, whether it be for the occasional cigar, cigarette, smoking pipe, hand-rolled, or even for a place to put your incense and candles, get out an ashtray that reflects your taste and style.'

Too Young to Die Ashtray
'In this ashtray designed by the renowned contemporary Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, the image is from a painting of Nara's entitled 'Too Young To Die' which was included in an exhibition called 'I Don't Mind, If You Forget Me' at the Yokohama Museum of Art in September 2001. At 10 inches in diameter, this ashtray can double as a dish!'
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p.s. Hey. I'm in Auvernges, France working away on my stuff, and you get ashtrays today. I'll check in with you via a p.s. soon. Here are a few photos (below) of what it looks like where I am, if you're interested. Take care.

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Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is a well-known British artist celebrated since the mid-1960s for her distinctive, optically vibrant paintings. Along with Victor Vasarley, she is one the pioneers of the genre of art that later became known “Op Art.” She explores optical phenomena and juxtaposes color either by using a chromatic technique of identifiable hues or by selecting achromatic colors (black, white or gray). In doing so, her work appears to flicker, pulsate and move, encouraging the viewer’s visual tension. Riley’s vibrant optical pattern paintings, which she painted in the 1960s, were hugely popular and become a hallmark of the period. “The uncertainties of a drawn structure increase when it is composed of similar, repeated elements," Riley has said. "Because they are small and compacted, these elements begin to fuse while they are easy to separate when they are big.” In the mid-60s, Riley spent two years copying Seurat’s painting, Bridge of Courbevoie, to learn about his painting technique and his use of complementary colors. She describes the process as “being a revelation to her” with regard to color's secret relationship to the hues of black and white. Soon after, in 1966, Riley begins to use color as well as black and white to achieve new optical effects.

In the early 1960s, her works were said to induce sensations in viewers as varied as seasickness and sky diving. Works in this style comprised her first solo show in London in 1962 as well as numerous subsequent shows. Visually, these works relate to many concerns of the period: a perceived need for audience participation (this relates them to the Happenings, for which the period is famous), challenges to the notion of the mind-body duality which led some people to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs; concerns with a tension between a scientific future which might be very beneficial or might lead to a nuclear war; and fears about the loss of genuine individual experience in a Brave New World. In 1965, Riley exhibited in the New York City show, The Responsive Eye, the exhibition which first drew attention to so-called Op art. One of her paintings was reproduced on the cover of the show's catalogue, though Riley later became disillusioned with the movement, and expressed regret that her work was exploited for commercial purposes.







'When Samuel Beckett was a young name in the early Thirties and trying to find a basis from which he could develop, he wrote an essay known as Beckett/Proust in which he examined Proust's views of creative work; and he quotes Proust's artistic credo as declared in Time Regained - "the tasks and duties of a writer [not an artist, a writer] are those of a translator". This could also be said of a composer, a painter or anyone practising an artistic metier. An artist is someone with a text which he or she wants to decipher.

'Beckett interprets Proust as being convinced that such a text cannot be created or invented but only discovered within the artist himself, and that it is, as it were, almost a law of his own nature. It is his most precious possession, and, as Proust explains, the source of his innermost happiness. However, as can be seen from the practice of the great artists, although the text may be strong and durable and able to support a lifetime's work, it cannot be taken for granted and there is no guarantee of permanent possession.

'It may be mislaid or even lost, and retrieval is very difficult. It may lie dormant and be discovered late in life after a long struggle, as with Mondrian or Proust himself. Why it should be that some people have this sort of text while others do not, and what 'meaning' it has, is not something which lends itself to argument. Nor is it up to the artist to decide how important it is, or what value it has for other people. To ascertain this is perhaps beyond even the capacities of his own time.'

Audio: Five excerpts from a 1988 BBC interview with Bridget Riley








Intake (1964)


Blaze 1 (1962)


Blue (1968)


Hesitate (1963)


Cataract 3 (1967)


Fall (1964)


Ad Code 1 (1962)


Movement in Squares (1963)


Untitled (1966)


Loss (1964)





Jim Isermann


Peter Schuyff


Stoner Lounge


Christopher Wool


Op Art Handball


Peter Halley


Bridget Riley Breakdown


Youri Messen-Jaschin


Linda Besemer


Hestbak
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Bridget Riley speaks about her work




Bridget Riley Documentary, Pts. 1 - 3


Andrew Graham-Dixon on Bridget Riley


Bridget Riley in conversation with Michael Bracewell @ Frieze Art Fair




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p.s. Hey. If you're seeing this, I seem to be ensconced in this intended work-heavy hideaway, and so, instead of a proper p.s., I say hello and escort this revived post about the great Op artist Bridget Riley to you, which I hope you'll enjoy, at least until tomorrow when something else will show up, with or without my verbiage in tow. 'Til then ...

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p.s. Hey. Things are going really well down here in Auvergnes, or they were as of yesterday afternoon when I wrote this, and surely they still are. I should be able to say more soon, perhaps even tomorrow, we'll see. For now, please take a day full of sad guys and their reasonings. Thank you.