_____________
Puce MaryThe Temptation To Exist
'The Spiral is Frederikke Hoffmeiers third solo LP for Posh Isolation under her Puce Mary moniker, and follows where last year's critically acclaimed Persona left off. Working more precisely than ever, The Spiral binds the listener in a tight web of sharp synthesizers, hammering percussion, obscured vocals, field recordings, and blistering noise. Puce Mary manages to at once honour the history of industrial music and noise, as well as transform it. The Spiral is harsh, but the aggression of the compositions never feels unnecessarily overstated. It is an album that is easy to get dragged into but brutally hard to get out of, disclosing the underhand of control as censurable nurture. The Spiral goes through an extreme spectre of emotions, trying to be everything, feel everything, at once. The vestige of safety in dominance and submission is antagonised as audience and artist take turns being dealt blows. The Spiral charts this instability as a perennial tonic in sound.'-- Posh Isolation






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The FieldPink Sun
'I’ve always made music on the side of The Field, but focusing on playing live, it steals all the creativity for The Field. On the side I’d do all kinds of other things, but until Cupid’s Head… I felt so drained. Life itself takes you in other directions, but since this I’ve really been making a lot. I hopefully already have an album with like 14 tracks and each track is 20 minutes long — so an impossible album to release, but still it’s that, and making all kind of experiments. I haven’t felt this creative in a long time, but I think that also has to do with getting through the barrier and getting a Field album out and being done with that and kind of being completely blank and open. The pieces fell into the right spots at the right time, and just made me super into music again.'-- Axel Willner






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Lesley FlaniganSpeaker Synth
'Flanigan is a New York electronic musician who uses her background in sculpture to build her own instruments, amplifying and looping feedback through homemade speaker systems. Referred to as “speaker feedback instruments” in our interview, the handmade pieces of equipment are similar in structure and amplifying circuits, yet vary in size and source, imbuing each with their own unique voice. As the conductor and composer of these voices, Flanigan employs both the natural spaces surrounding her and her own voice to produce music that is emotional, improvisational, and highly physical. Much of Flanigan’s music starts under her own discretion through these built instruments. However, as the music begins to take form, everything from the height of the ceiling to the physical makeup of the stage can alter a composition’s trajectory.'-- Impose Magazine






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GreysNo Star
'For the past five Halloweens, Toronto has played host to Death to T.O., a marathon two-level party where 20-odd local bands dress up as some iconic group and cover a bunch of their songs in rotating 20-minute mini-sets. Last October, noise-punk quartet Greys performed as Smashing Pumpkins, a ruse that required not just an aesthetic suspension of belief (no dollar-store blond wig can make hulking bassist Colin Gillespie look like D'Arcy) but an ideological one as well. Essentially, the Pumpkins are Greys' polar opposites. Where Billy Corgan channels themes of alienation into unabashedly earnest, immaculately rendered grunge-prog, Greys power through theirs with bull-in-a-china-shop recklessness and snarky humor. And the messianic cult of personality and gothic flamboyance that Corgan so eagerly cultivates is antithetical to Greys' everyman, stage-leveling ethos. After all, Greys are the sort of band that write songs in honour of Fugazi's Guy Picciotto, while cheekily acknowledging that idolizing an anti-rock star like Picciotto is idolatry nonetheless ("You do what you do/ I do it, too!").'-- Stuart Berman






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David FiuczynskiFlam! Blam! Pan-Asian MicroJam!
'David Fiuczynski! Guitar shredder, maestro, researcher, composer and winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship. His latest excursion into the microtonal universe is Flam! Blam! Pan-Asian MicroJam! Jointly dedicated to 20th century classical composer Olivier Messiaen and innovative hip-hop record producer J Dilla, this ambitious venture has the guitarist-composer pursuing his passion for the notes that fall between the cracks with his intrepid microtonal crew. Over the last ten years David has embarked on a voyage of creation and discovery whose final (yet always transient) goal is to expand guitar language, technique and technologies by incorporating foreign music traditions, harmonies and styles to create a unique idiom that transcends them all.'-- Planet Microjam






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Jessy LanzaIt Means I Love You
'Jessy Lanza’s rise to a quiet prominence began with the arrival of Kathy Lee for Hyperdub back in 2013. It was a peculiar kind of sparse, one that would sow the seeds for the strange allure of her similarly minimalist LP. Three years on, Lanza’s continued to ensure that every action she takes is one that counts, collaborating with Morgan Geist’s rollerskates-and-bubblegum pop project the Galleria, and with DJ Spinn and Taso on the sultry, slow-burn footwork of You Never Show Your Love. As with her first album, Lanza’s latest record is produced alongside Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan. Her new single “It Means I Love You” marvellously beams in with a buoyant, irresistible groove and a will to move. It starts with steadily knocking beat and synth squeaks before shifting gears into skittish percussion as Lanza’s vocals take center stage. Her singing becomes direct and conversational, so enthusiastic to share that her voice runs away with itself. It’s unexpected, as her voice once seemed to shy away. “It Means I Love You” is one of Lanza’s most openly inviting, delightful, and arresting pieces of music yet.'-- Tayyab Amin






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Odd Nosdam Burrow / Center
'Having cut his teeth producing warped and bombastic beats as a member of cLOUDDEAD, Odd Nosdam has since gone on to record and release some of the most revered work in the post-millennial, abstract hip-hop world. Through his solo productions and various collaborations and remixes, the Anticon co-founder traces an indelible strain of super-saturated, no-fi weirdness that intersects British IDM, West Coast hip-hop, and ethereal drone.'-- anticon






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Youth Code Transitions
'In their sophomore full-length Commitment to Complications, Los Angeles' Youth Code have fleshed out the “hardcore industrial” aesthetic that's always been apparent in their live shows, where it's unclear if Ryan George's lead-fisted attack or Sara Taylor's black metal-meets-Converge rasp will do you in first. Their demo oozed with punk rawness, and while they sharpened their industrial instincts on their self-titled album, its production was a bit of a ...And Justice For All situation where the fidelity didn't quite sync up with its death-dance electronics and hardcore spirit. Here, they've amassed all their best qualities on one record, and explore more connections between the two worlds they come from.'-- Andy O'Connor






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Vanessa AmaraUntitled 5
'Vanessa Amara is the moniker for Danish musicians Birk Gjerlufsen and Victor Kjellerup, who create drone music with a deeply emotional core. Over previous releases such as King Machine and Both Of Us they took elements as overwhelming as church organs, manipulating them into something as intimate as it was awe-inspiringly huge. Those releases laid out the foundation of Vanessa Amara, but their new album, You’re Welcome Here, finally perfects it. You’re Welcome starts where Both Of Us left off, pinning you with the heavy church organ chords of ‘1’. The simply numbered track titles feel important, with each piece contributing to the album’s full sweep. ‘2’ and ‘5’ provide relief, evoking Stars Of The Lid’s arresting beauty through startlingly naked string quartet pieces.'-- Fact Magazine






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Matthew Revert/Vanessa RossettoSecret Celebrity Facebook Accounts
'Whereby two of the cutest cabbages in the cot create a soup unlike any other.'-- Penultimate Press






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Xiu XiuFalling
'Xiu Xiu are an archetypally "difficult" band. Hard to measure and, at times, hard to digest, they are experimental in the most literal meaning—not musicians exploring "experimental genres" of music, but ones who actually experiment, leading to music whose ideas travel the map so broadly as to be deemed unclassifiable when put together. This approach has led the band to develop passionate followers but also put themselves in a position where these constant new approaches not only alienate the mainstream but past fans as well. Given this perspective, the band’s latest release, Plays the Music of Twin Peaks, makes a lot of sense. It’s easy to see parallels between Xiu Xiu and David Lynch—both are challenging, uncompromising artists unafraid of real experimentation or the uneven results that come from it. Though the passing of time (and specifically the post-Mulholland Drive afterglow) has seen public view of the man’s work elevated to near-canonical status, for much of his career Lynch was seen less as a genius and more as a fascinating but flawed artist obsessed with the '50s and the death of the American Dream.'-- Benjamin Scheim






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Mart AviHumanista Orchestra
'Mart Avi has a special way to treat a Moment. Every tiny segment of his output looks like an elaborately designed art deco ruby, yet crafted as nonchalantly as one lights a match. The operatic daze of his first solo album leads you through abstract funk and suspenseful symphonies, saturated techno and cold soul, metallic beats’n’bells, right to the center of the wine-pop blasé of his young ghastly voice. After one paralyzing Moment, comes another paralyzing Moment. And you’ll recall those moments as hours fulfilled.'-- Porridge Bullet






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Chimurenga RenaissanceNunya Buziniez
'Chimurenga Renaissance is Baba Maraire and Hussein Kalonji. Tendai “Baba” Maraire, the architect of Chimurenga Renaissance, hails from world-renowned Zimbabwean music lineage, as his father was Abraham Dumisani Maraire. Abraham came to America where he helped initiate a flourishing Zimbabwean music scene in the Pacific Northwest. Hussein Kalonji is a first generation Congolese American born in Washington DC. His father was Raymond “Braynck” Kalonji, a world-renowned Congolese guitar legend credited with being the pioneer of the Congolese Rumba Soukouss sound. Baba Maraire and Hussein found it inevitable that they would eventually start playing music together. After seeing each other perform at various shows, they began to blend their two areas of expertise, hip-hop and African music, and they continued to record and develop the sound that would later become “Chimurenga Renaissance”.'-- Brick Lane Records






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Death Grips02
'Other than the ambient interlude “Interview E,” the EP mainly sees Zach Hill and Andy Morin doubling down on Jenny Death’s unhinged hardcore with a proliferation of over-driven drums and basslines that seem as if they’re fired from from a Gatling gun. And even though there’s not a clear human voice in the mix (save from a quick “Hi Everybody!” in “Interview F”), the instruments do plenty of talking. Listen closely to the slippery percussive sample smattered across “Interview C,” or the barking undercurrent of “Interview F:” the effects themselves are undeniably alien, but they still manage to communicate.'-- Zoe Camp






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Explosions in the SkyTangle Formations
'The Wilderness opens quietly, like early morning light, a mother's gentle hand rocking you awake in a childhood bedroom – sleepy, muffled first moments that are new but somehow familiar. Austin's Explosions in the Sky have mastered that feeling dozens of times over across their 17-year career. Tapping into visceral moments of humanity through cinematic instrumentals, the local quartet has spent its vaunted discography constructing expansive, emotional soundscapes. Their seventh album is no different: textured, ornate, and somehow seeping into the deepest parts of you. Notch it as the best Explosions in the Sky album since their previous high-water mark, 2003's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. Despite a more meditative and succinct approach to storytelling – the longest track clocks in at just over seven minutes – The Wilderness affirms that no one else knows how to build a song like EITS. "Logic of a Dream" unfurls with an unpredictable trajectory, encompassing both a frightening, dark cacophony and the sweet relief that comes after trauma has passed. "Disintegration Anxiety" comes on like a panic attack, while "Losing the Light" is a spacey, meandering sprawl, the sound of bleeding out. Breaking through after two-and-a-half minutes of uneasiness, "Tangle Formations" becomes a triumphant cadence. Along with a pervasive uncertainty endemic to all the group's work, there's trademark hopefulness strung throughout, fighting to prevail.'-- Austin Chronicle






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Richard BirkinAccretions
'If you've ever listened to Rachmaninov's 'Vespers', otherwise known as his All-Night Vigil, you'll perhaps be aware that even the word 'Vigil' carries with it a meditative quality. The definition of the word calls for observance, for a very deliberate type of spiritual focus. Rachmaninov was an owl of a man for whom the musical vigil could've been invented specifically, and so with his Vespers we're given the most contemplative, introspective example of this musical trope. Anyone hoping to add to a rich tradition trumped in modern times by the Russian master must be cautious - and Richard J. Birkin is certainly that. With his own set of vigils, handily entitled Vigils, composer and multi-instrumentalist Birkin manages to channel the core elements of the genre but also use it as a framework for bigger, more substantial dream sequences. There are five Vigils in total across the album, of varying length, timbre and character, interspersed with these more song-like works that fatten the whole quite beautifully. But it's the tessellation of details within this structure that impresses the most.'-- Daniel Ross, The Quietus







*

p.s. Hey. ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie. Thanks for thanking Terry. I know he was looking in, and I know he's grateful. My Wednesday was kind of all right. Catching up on stuff not related to my current work assignment like blog post making and things like that. Hung out with some pals a bit. I hope you squeezed in some recording. Which Dolls song? Great that the song you're working demystified a little. Yeah, getting the body right usually means it'll sort itself. That's true with fiction anyway. Doing the detailing is the best part. Well, for me. Do you feel that way? I hope yesterday totally panned out in your favor. How did everything go? Love from here, Dennis. ** Schoolboyerrors, Holy moly, hey, buddy! Sweetness to see you here! Yeah, Terry did a top notch job right there. I just, what, two weeks ago found that 'Fear of Poetry' doc on youtube. That was wild because I, and I think all of the surviving subjects, assumed it was lost for all eternity. I wonder who put it up? I'm trying to decide if I should post the whole thing here as a post, or if that's too self-indulgent. Anyway, that was trippy. How's it, man? Bernard says he's going to scoot down and hang with you a little soonish. And of course Zac and I are counting the days until we'll get to do the same. Big up and lots of love from me! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yeah, I think a lot of films that those of us, ahem, older film followers know well have been accidentally brushed under the carpet of the indie film mainstream. But I don't know. ** James, Hi. Yep, I did know about the Peter Gabriel theme park project. Did you know that it was a collaborative project with Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno? Apparently, they got as far as designing the attractions and laying out the park and choosing a location in Spain where it was to be built. I read an interview with Laurie Anderson somewhere where she says what happened is that she and Eno were satisfied and ready to go with the project but Gabriel kept wanting to fiddle and fiddle with it, and at some point they realized that he was never going to be satisfied so they pulled out of the project. Now I think it's pretty much completely dead. Really sucks, obviously. I have seen 'The Honeymoon Killers' but long enough ago that I don't remember her in it. I'll put it in the queue for re-watching. Never seen 'The Girlfriend Experience. I'll rectify that. My novel is coming along okay. It's a strange, very different kind of novel, and it's going to take me a while to get it right, but then that's always the case with my novels, I guess. Tokyo tickets secured! You're so lucky! I'm green. Shinjuku is an excellent place to stay, obviously. If you like, when the time gets nearer, I'll give you my personal tips to Tokyo must-sees. I might get to LA when Zac and I go over to SF for the 'LCTG' screening next month. That's the hope. I miss home, yeah, and, no surprise, both Zac and I want to check out the new Harry Potter theme park-ette at Universal and ride the new VR coaster at Magic Mountain. ** MANCY, Hi! Thanks on behalf of Terry. You great? ** Steevee, Hi. Thanks on Terry's behalf. Good, glad the q&a went well. Ah, the great Serge Daney. It's very cool that you did a panel re: him. The Larry Levan stuff I know is really all over the place from awful and blah to kind of wonderful. Cool figure, for sure.** Cobaltfram, Hi, John. I don't know that new Leyner, but I think it'll probably be very different than what Leyner did. It's not, like, clever with a capital C like he always is. I liked Leyner years ago, and then I lost interest for reasons I can't remember. I think the last one I read was 'Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog', which I remember liking pretty well. 'War and Peace'?! Whoa, that's serious. And a commitment. Kudos to you for tackling that monster. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! No, forcing never works. Reading something that really excites you can. That's for sure. Do you ever find yourself reading something, and something about it excites you, and you put the book aside and start scribbling (or typing) madly? I love when that happens. There are a bunch of books that will get me writing in a frenzy before I even get very far into them. And usually I never even finish reading the book. It's, like, 'Okay, book, thanks a lot! See you later!' Ha ha, that's the problem with really great titles. My day was kind of work-y, working on other than the stuff I'm having to work on right now, and some friends seeing, and pretty low-key but all right. Did Thursday turn out well? ** Crane's Bill Books, Hi! Welcome to here! You have a great name! (Jeffrey's nice too, of course). Thanks for the props. Terry gets all the credit. I was just the brick layer. Nice to meet you! Please come back anytime! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Okay, I'm going to google Broughty Ferry and see what Dundee's crown looks like. How did the art therapy go? Was it interesting enough? Obviously, great luck to you on the Andrew front. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, yeah, I saw 'Greaser's' in the theater when it first came out. Not since then. I really liked Downey's early films like 'GP', 'Putney Swope', and 'Pound' at the time. I don't know how they hold up. I'm imagining not entirely well. I saw your emails! Thank you! I'll open them and see what's what and get that set up and get back to you. Thanks a million, Jeff! I'm excited! You're making the Weinberger book sounds plenty interesting. I'm forced off my novel probably pretty much until the end of the month by the TV show project, unfortunately. I think the new stuff I'm working is going pretty well. I still haven't gone back and looked at all the stuff I've already written on it yet, but hopefully I won't think I was wrong when I do. What are you working on? ** Jonathan Bryant, Hi, Jonathan! My theory or whatever on the posts featuring slave and/or escort profiles is that ideally you get used to them enough to see the profile as a form, even kind of an accidental non-fiction literary form. A literary-ish form whose goal is a successful pitch. Then you think about how the individuals are approaching the form. That way you get the interesting aspects of their writing as well as the blows of their emotionality or creepiness or bullshitting or self-endangering or whatever. But I don't know. Great response to the amusement park post, thank you! That does my fan/fanatic heart very good. Well, me too. As you can imagine, fantasizing about what park I would make with billions available takes up a fair amount of my daydreaming time. Mine would definitely go bankrupt about a week after it opened, I fear. But it might be a cult hit. It sucks that it's possible to be a cult writer but not a cult amusement park owner. Thank you so much for reading my books. I really appreciate it. I like the way you're reading them. I mean, I realize this is very naive of me, but I've always hoped that readers will be able to get past the preconception that the sex and violence are shocking and horrible and begin to see that as a texture, a bent, as a strategy to get at something deep and also get at ways of constructing prose in a unique way. I used to think that would happen. Now I realize it won't except for unusual readers. So, yeah, I'm very pleased that you're reading them in that way. It is, literally, a dream come true for me. Thank you ever so much for letting me know that. I have to take the baseball plunge. I have to stop putting it off. And I think the Dodgers are winning now, if short term memory serves. How's life in general for you du jour? ** Okay. What did I do ... Right, I made you another music gig featuring things I'm listening to and into, and the idea is that you'll find things in there that you'll be into yourself, but of course it's a crap shoot, albeit without the crap. Have fun. See you tomorrow.

I don't really know how to open it except to say that I met Max through my wife while we were living in London, at that point he was taking a course at the Architectural Association. I remember reading his thesis at the time and being incredibly impressed by the erudition and style he had in a second language.

He approached me a few months ago to read some texts he had written in english and I was so blown away by them that I ended up coming on board as the editor.

I'm an architectural lug-head, i have no real knowledge of the field what so ever and that's been one of the real pleasures of the project, to gain some insight into a world i have very little knowledge of. What hooked me at first about this work though was it's style and how it firmly refused attempts to classify it.



Excerpt from the Author's introduction

"The following texts were written during an 11-month trip to look at architecture through Europe, Japan and Sri Lanka. Some can be read as guides, others as comments, while others still take the form of short stories, but most of them touch upon all these genres. I would say they are more about travelling to see architecture than they are about architecture itself, though the appreciation of architecture is not wholly disregarded. I would rather say that the travelling aspect couldn’t be separated from the architectural object itself. There is no such thing as the building alone, and every attempt to look at it has invariably some impact on what you see in it at the end."

"All this is to say that I am preoccupied with the gaze’s dependence/freedom on/from texts – the subjugation of the naked eye to the interpretative precedent, constantly trying to figure out what is there to see without them, if there is anything at all to be seen without them, if there is such a thing as authentic liking, and what the mechanics of liking are."


About the trip:

February: Vicenza (near Venice)
March: Venice
April: Rome
May: Paris
June: Paris
July: South of France
August: Vienna
September: Prague and around
October: Athens
November: Kyoto
December: Colombo (Sri Lanka)


About the "rules"

1. Take up "residence" in a city for at least 1 month. I did break this rule sometimes, with 3-4 day trips to Naples (from Rome), Marrakesh (from Paris), Switzerland (from Paris), Munich (from Prague), Armenia (from Athens). But my HOUSE was in a city per month. For example, I had a painting (reproduction) I took from home which I hung in every room I slept. So 11 months, 11 "homes".

2. I also tried to select very few buildings to see per city, so that I could go to them at least 3 times. Some of them I went to more. The motto has been "reading is re-reading". I don't know who said this really, I heard it from my IB English Lit Teacher, and it never really left me. The first time you are just in awe, the second time you start finding other stuff, the third time... well.... I tried to let an "idea" develop per place, and that took time.

I'll try to pinpoint the moment where I decided I wanted to travel. I guess the beginning was in 2011 when I learned about Le Corbusier's deviant "Grand Tour" of 6 months which he says was a sort of epiphany. But I tried to see that through a historian's point of view. There is also a talk I heard of an architecture historian who talks about learning architecture like a medical student learns medicine: they give you a CADAVER on Day 1, and you spend a year dissecting it. So he came up with the idea of DISSECTING THE CADAVER of architecture. But that without the appropriate guidance (maybe it means reading?), buildings do not give up their meanings easily.

Then one night I was watching a DVD about Frank Lloyd Wright (THE cantankerous American architecture GOD from the 20th Century, one of the most revered figures ever) and he spoke all bullshit stuff. He didn't care about the truth of his words. But he got all the historians trying to understand him...

NOW: At that point, I was reading Miyasaki's Temple of the Golden Pavillion snd I was also teaching 1st semester Architecture students about FORMATIVE TRIPS. So with that image in mind, I decided to do this.

I took about 20 books with me, bought many others.
I wrote to a teacher at the AA asking for good books to take, and he kinda said, well you're gonna need novels. I was a bit reluctant at first.

I could not write anything in Vicenza... but as soon as I got to my apartment in Venice, I wrote those 3 Scarpa essays one after the other. It flowed so easily. Venice was the beginning. I am indebted.

About the writing... It started more "essayish" following my readings of John Ruskin, an English "style" critic, who wrote a lot about architecture and lived in Venice. 19th Century, Arts & Crafts Idol.

In August I went to London and spoke with this teacher at the AA, the one who suggested novels, and I asked for a new batch of architecture books to read, now I was asking for books with more "style" in them rather than PhD formats. And he just said "why don't you just read novels, period".
He's a bit of a nihilist, he runs the AA's Journal.

In Japan the monk wrote "Once Only, Only Once" and I've been trying to say figure it out what it means... for me. Someone has brought up the fact that "Once" means "Eleven" in Spanish, so eleven months...

Anyway, that made an even further impression. And then in SriLanka I found a book by the same historian (Adrian Forty) about architecture and language.... and that got me thinking about style more. And then I found Stein's PICASSO among the books of Geoffrey Bawa (the architect whose works I went to peruse) and that changed it all.

I don't think I deserve too much space to say all this, maybe it would sound pretentious to go into the anecdotal.



















Prologue

To read ‘Once only, only once’ is to be taken on a tour through the parallel spaces of art, architecture, aesthetics and identity. Our guide and intersectional point of reference in this quest is the meticulously structured voice of its author whose finely planed sentences and rhythms of description reveal the multitude of stories already present, overlapping and inscribed within each term.

You’ll have noticed that I have invoked the notion of quest and I do not use the term lightly. This work speaks to the dissipation of time and aesthetic while armed to the teeth. As a leader in the guise of a companion Moya the narrator is unfailingly genial, gracious but resolutely clear and instructive. There is always an intelligence present, unafraid of itself, ranging across the broadness of its interests with the highest spec of accuracy and leading you into the layered questions that you must try to rescue yourself from. Make no mistake, to undertake the demands of this writing, the experiences and ideas nurtured within, is to follow Moya on his search, a search predicated on the subject and possibility of beauty, its qualities and manifestations and the potential of constructing both the habitable and the memorial. It raises, at various points, the question of beauty and its practicality with neither term attempting to renege on the other. Moya’s analytical eye scours beauty and when it emerges through a sublimely rendered detail, or an elegant solution to the problem posed by living, having to live, already homeless somehow— needing always to construct a time to live in— then the work enters a space of its own, a space in which the sudden relief from the promise of something a-temporal emerges (itself transcendent!) in a suturing of past, present and future.

Moya’s work then, for all of his complex investment in the classical, strikes me as curiously and triumphantly modern. This work of auto-architectural theory is full of the hidden spaces of the personal which it takes delight in elegantly arranging, providing all manner of hidden passages reminiscent of the Loos so joyfully described in the ‘Pseudo-diary of the Events that Lead to Meeting Michael Brummell.’

In the opening triumvirate of stories Moya toys with the notion of playing the travel guide in the style of Ruskin but the force of his own emotionally engaged aesthetic, the horror of an incomprehensible system, cannot help but plunge the reader into the book’s underlying structure: the hidden and alterable architecture of a self in which the threat and gift of travel, the identity in exile, at times trembles above and beneath the surface of what it touches.

For there is a parallel narrative at work, evidenced in the subtly transitioning mood of these stories, a sense of a consciousness that is at first chastened and bewildered, a consciousness whose intellect has been grated against both the success and failure of architecture, a consciousness that becomes tempered by the unexpected and moves towards the calmer, meditative serenity of the final few stories.

And all this is achieved with such lightness! The prose is not bombastic but instead accumulative, lighting up, drawing itself together like a constellation into a structure that can speak across disciplines. It shuns didactism while maintaining an unhesitant p.o.v and rigorous attitude. The force of Moya’s gaze is unsparing yet ruminative, the style designed and disarming.

Most importantly though, beyond all of this and deep within the playful particularities of the voice, one can clearly discern in this work the depths of an orphic attention, moving through the past and present towards life, trying to recall what it was that first shadowed its desire.

Thomas Patrick Kendall





















CONTENTS

1 Brion Vega Cemetery
2 Possagno
3 The Nightmare of Scarpa
4 Cats in the Hospital
5 The Trees of Rome
6 A complaint about the Exhibition at the Pompidou
7 The Stapler at the MAXXI
8 The Postnuclear Family
9 Wagner’s Postal Savings Bank
10 The Story of the Little Whale
11 Pseudo diary of the events that lead to meeting

Michael Brummel
12 Idrissa
13 On becoming a sort of theoretical architect considering

Corbusier as precedent
14 Once Only, Only Once
15 Corbusier’s Paradise
16 Mr. B



Book details

Hardcover (2.5mm)
textile cover
200gr paper
150g paper
Colour photography
Approx 122 pgs
200 first edition, individually numbered.
Available for pre-order



Website: http://www.onceonly-onlyonce.com/#!avance/qig9k




*

p.s. Today, the extraordinary writer and beloved, long time d.l. Tom Kendall draws your attention to a very, very interesting book thats's on the cusp of publication. I'm fascinated, totally sold, and anxious to get and read the totality. Please spend your local time today giving Max Moya's work your attention and finding out if you're like me. Anything that springs to mind in that regard that you don't mind sharing with Tom would be wonderful and, I'm sure, greatly appreciated by him, thank you. And thank you ever so much, Tom! ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, Diarmuid! Oh, uh, I don't know how I do it. I'm all, like, 'what?!' about the blog too. Awesome that the gig lead you places. Okay, I will make the 'FoP' doc into a post. My guess is that the pretty bad quality comes straight from the source. Who knows, but I assume that all there is of the doc is that uploaded rough cut and that it's just been sitting around on old VHS tape(s) in someone's attic for years. The director, Gail Kazinsky, screened the rough cut for those of us who were in it at some gallery to get our feedback right after the filming, and then she was supposed to edit it into final form, but I don't think it ever got further than the rough cut for whatever reason. It's weird because my memory has David Trinidad in the doc, but apparently not. No, he was around, and there's no good reason why he isn't in it unless he declined or was out of town when it was being made. He didn't move to NYC until fairly long after I did. We will have fun, that's for sure! I'm excited already! I'm not a huge Mapplethorpe fan. I think what you said the 'weird interstitial space' is the most interesting thing about the work, yeah. I mean, at the time, the classicism and formal constraint and b&w seriousness had this anti-apropos thing that made it pretty fresh and seductive. Obviously, a lot of people are still seduced by that. I feel like now his work has settled into having more of a relationship to fashion photography than to 'serious' work. Which would explain its ongoing popularity, if so. But his work has kind of gone dead for me, for some reason. I'd certainly love to be there for your intro. And I'm interested to see how the film frames him. With love back from me! ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie! Mm, Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, it turned out, I think. Ending with the total shock of Prince's death made it much stranger one, though, obviously. Four songs, sweet! Man, I hope there'll be a way to hear them or hear some of your songs. Your songs aren't on Soundcloud or somewhere, are they? Great about nailing the temporarily troubled song! Oh, no, I'm with you. Anxiety is an unspoken hero of the art making process. Finishing things, yeah. I'm one of those weird people who doesn't have a problem with that. I don't know, I always kind of assume it's basically about something as simple (if also totally complex) as confidence. I always look at finishing things -- which, to me, is inextricable from the action of making things public, I guess -- as an experiment. Or like as a situation where I'm going to get to learn things about what I do and how I do them. I think I have this basic confidence in my ... I don't know, talent, I guess, and an equal amount of curiosity about how I can work more successfully within my given talent. Is your problem finishing things tied to a fear of the reaction they will get? Puce Mary's great. I saw her perform recently, and it was mind-blowing. I you get the chance to see her perform, that's highly recommended. Money, right, duh, of course. Re: where their archives are. If you see this before you take off for Newcastle, fingers massively crossed that you both end up wanting the job and that they give it to you. What happened? Today Zac gets back from his travels, and we have to dive straight back into the TV script because our deadline is looming. Then I'm being interviewed for a French magazine about my novel that just got published here in France. Then I'm going to see a gig -- Thurston Moore and Stephen O'Malley playing live in collab at the Louvre. Should be nice. Best of the best to you on this fine Friday. Love, me. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Is that Richey Edwards book good? Does it have a theory about his death and/or disappearance? Oh, my inspiration books can be anything. I'm aways looking for new ones. And it's kind of random and unpredictable. Sometimes I'll start a book hoping and expecting to be fed as a writer and it doesn't happen. Then I'll read something just for fun, and something about it will set me off writing. It's weird. It's nice. Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry about the serious relationship talk. Did whatever happen end up being something you're okay with? That stuff is really hard. I hope it was okay for you. Let me know. My day was all right, just a bunch of usual stuff and then the news about Prince and being kind of stunned by that until I went to bed. ** David Ehrenstein, I wondered if you knew Downey. Yeah, his early films were very hip and available. My friends and I were very into them and talked about them a lot. And then he seemed to just disappear or something. Or his films lost their currency or something. And now he's largely just RDJr.'s father. That must suck. ** James, Hi. Nice bus listening. That whole record is terrific, obviously. Yeah in Spain. There was a specific location. I think the land was bought and everything. Yes, I got your email! The post is really fun and inspired, thank you! I'll post it on Saturday, the 7th. Very awesome of you, man. Thank you a lot! ** Steevee, Hi. Yeah, an incredible shock. I still kind of don't believe it. Really kind of inconceivable. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Cool that you liked the Lesley Flanigan work. She's pretty interesting in general. She performs live a fair amount. Watch for her. Oh, cool, that the Art Therapy thing was good and fully enjoyable! Get that scan, yes. I'd love to see the handiwork. And positive noises about your funding application too. A good day for you, excellent! ** Bear, Hi, Bear. Two wonderful days in a row is no small thing. Great! I'm pretty good, thanks. How are you doing the silent auction? Is it real world only or an online/crowdfunded thing? Extreme good luck with that! It's really nice to hear/see you feeling so upbeat about the play and the work involved. Hope and diligence in combo are the ultimate weapon. Yeah, I like Psychic TV. They're done so much in many different styles. I don't like all the phases. I'm not so into their 'rave' period stuff. I think it hasn't dated so well. I really like the early psychedelic, pretty stuff from the 80s, the 'Godstar' era, and I like some of the really noisy extreme stuff, and I actually really like the last few Psychic TV records. Yeah, it's crazy that we've been collaborating for 12 years. Gisele and I met back when I was still living in LA. I was invited to give a lecture in Lyon. Gisele, who I didn't know at all, wrote to me to ask if I would into staying an extra few days in Lyon and trying to do a collaboration. She sent me DVDs of her dance/theater work, and I thought they were interesting, so I said, Sure. And it was just one of those magical things where we hit it off personally and artistically right away. Then we spent three days making a piece together, and we wound making all but the final polish of our first piece 'I Apologize' in those three days. Then we had a public viewing, and it was really well received. When I moved to France not long thereafter, it made sense to keep working together, and we have ever since. We get along very well both as people and artistically. We've only had a couple of big disagreements. Ultimately, I think of our works together as being her works because theater is her primary form and it's her ass that's on the line in terms of the pieces' success or not -- whereas for me it's a very interesting thing to do in conjunction with my own writing -- so she has final say about everything. So when I don't agree with her on fairly rare occasions about how she uses my text, it doesn't bother me, and, in those cases, I just think of it as writing on assignment. I feel pretty lucky. We're very much on the same page the great majority of the time. Thanks for asking about that, man. What is it that made your friend think it was difficult working with you, if you feel like saying? Have a great day! ** Okay. Please do spend time with Tom's post and Max's work please, and do report back to Tom if you can. That would be great. See you tomorrow.

'In the early '80s, a friend invited me to a screening of Robert Bresson's The Devil, Probably, on the condition that, no matter what, I not say a word about it afterward. He claimed that Bresson's films had such a profound, consuming effect on him that he couldn't bear even the slightest outside interference until their immediate spell wore off, which he warned me might take hours. He was not normally a melodramatic, overly sensitive, or pretentious person, so I just thought he was being weird-until the house lights went down. All around us, moviegoers yawned or laughed derisively; some even fled the theater. But, watching the film, I experienced an emotion more intense than any I'd ever have guessed art could produce. The critic Andrew Sarris, writing on Bresson's work, once famously characterized this reaction as a convulsion of one's entire being, which rings true to me. Ever since, I've imposed basically the same condition on those rare friends whom I trust enough to sit beside during the screening of a Bresson film, and I'm not otherwise a particularly melodramatic, sensitive, or pretentious person.

'Bresson isn't just my favorite artist. There's a whole lot more to it than that, though the effect he has had on me is too enormous and personal to distill. On a practical level, his work constructed my sensibility as a writer by offering up the idea that it was possible for an artwork's style to embody a kind of pragmatism that, if sufficiently rigorous and devoted to a sufficiently powerful subject, would eliminate the need within the work for an overt philosophical or moral standpoint. Every artist tries in some way to find that least compromised intersection of planes where his or her ideas meet and slightly exceed the world's expectations, but I don't think anyone has found a more perfectly balanced style than Bresson. His work communicates an unyielding, peculiarly personal vision of the world in a voice so sterilized as to achieve an almost inhuman efficiency and logic. The result is a kind of cinematic machine whose sets, locations, narrative, and models (Bresson's preferred term for actors) function together as an unhierarchical unit so perfectly self-sufficient that all that is revealed within each film is the disconcerting failure of the models to fulfill Bresson's requirements. Their emotions resonate, despite a conscientious effort on Bresson's part to make them move about and speak as though they have none. The fact that the actors, unlike any other aspect of Bresson's films, are driven by individual feeling draws attention almost by default, and creates a relationship with the audience so intimate that it's almost unbearable in its aesthetic restrictions.

'A full appreciation of Bresson's work requires moviegoers to approach his films as though starting from scratch. This is a huge thing to ask of an audience, which is why Bresson's films will always select their admirers with care and infrequency. But the films earn that degree of commitment because, despite their intensive demands, they ask almost nothing for themselves. They're too plain to be considered experimental or avant-garde, and require no suspension of disbelief. But they're antitraditional as well, although their respect for the tradition of storytelling borders on the fanatical. They're neither difficult nor easy to watch, at least not in the usual senses of those words. Instead of flaunting their difference, or feigning modesty by deferring to the conventions of Hollywood film, they offer up an art so unimpeachably fair, so lacking in ulterior motivation that the effect is a kind of mimicry of what perception might be like were one capable of simultaneously perceiving clearly and appreciating th e process by which perception occurs. The only thing these films ask is that one share a fraction of Bresson's single-minded concern for the souls of young people whose innocence causes them to fail at the cruel, irrevocable task of adulthood.

'Apart from his first feature, the comedy Les Anges du peche, and perhaps the curiously terse if fascinating Une Femme douce, Bresson never made a film that's less than sublime. For whatever reason, his early, black-and-white films like Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest, and Mouchette are the most celebrated. But, if anything, his later, less widely circulated color films -- Four Nights of a Dreamer, Lancelot du Lac, The Devil, Probably, and L'Argent -- are the masterpieces among his masterpieces, to my mind. Many of the aforementioned stylistic tropes for which Bresson is alternately reviled and admired reached their full significance in this latter part of his oeuvre, as the lapsed Catholicism that gave his early, doomed characters the remote possibility of redemption and allowed viewers to interpret his work's introversion as a metaphor for religious self-erasure loses ground to an even more thoroughly hopeless notion of fate as the random and godless chain of events that structures a life. In Bresson's ea rlier films, the protagonist's almost inevitable suicide is a tragic segue into the comforting delusion of heaven; in the later films, suicide is the inexorable outcome, given the bleak circumstances; and the staggering numbness induced by Bresson's cold, mechanical witness to these deaths forms the least opinionated, and therefore only accurate depiction of suicide's consequences that I've ever come across.

'When I first saw The Devil, Probably at the age of twenty-eight, I wrote Bresson a number of long, desperate, worshipful letters offering to do anything, even sweep the floors of his sets, to assist him in his work. At the time, I would have given up my life, my friends, even my dream of being a novelist in order to help him create films that, to this day, are for me the greatest works of art ever made. It's an unjustifiable, perhaps even irrational claim, but I'm not alone in my devotion, which might also explain why my pleas went unanswered. Perhaps I was just one of many depressed young people who'd confused Bresson's stylistic perfection for a perfect solution and my letters went straight into the trash. In any case, I've now lived longer than any of the Bresson characters whose hopelessness I once took as a reflection of my own, and I credit his films, whose effect on me remains indescribable, but whose consequence to the novelist I eventually became is simply put: In my own dark, idiosyncratic art, I continue to do everything in my power to carry on a fraction of Robert Bresson's work.'-- Dennis Cooper



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Stills











































































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Further

Robert Bresson Website
Robert Bresson @ IMDb
Robert Bresson @ The Criterion Collection
'The Films Of Robert Bresson: A Retrospective'
Robert Bresson profile @ Senses of Cinema
'Robert Bresson: Primer'
'TO SEE THE WORLD PROFOUNDLY: THE FILMS OF ROBERT BRESSON'
'The supreme genius of cinema'
Robert Bresson's films @ MUBI
'Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson', by Susan Sontag
'Bressonians on Bresson'
'Anatomy of a Perfect Film: Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped'
'Caveh Zahedi Talks Meeting Robert Bresson'
Robert Bresson interviewed by Paul Schrader
'Robert Bresson as a Precursor to the Nouvelle Vague'
'Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film'
'How can I "get" Robert Bresson?'
'Take the Robert Bresson challenge'
'Editing and Framing in Robert Bresson’s Films'
'Robert Bresson: An Introduction'
'Robert Bresson: Depth Behind Simplicity'
'Inside Bresson's L'Argent: An interview with crew-member Jonathan Hourigan'
'Moments of Grace: The Films of Robert Bresson'
'NO ACTORS, NO PARTS, NO STAGING.'
'robert bresson: the failure to find the holy grail'
'10 Great Films Influenced by The Cinema of Robert Breton'



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Extras


Bresson on cinema


Hands of Bresson


Constructive Editing in Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket


Andrei Tarkovsky with Robert Bresson and Orson Welles Cannes 1983


ROAD TO BRESSON. With: Andrei Tarkovsky, Paul Schrader, Louis Malle, Dominique Sanda, Robert Bresson.



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Notes on Cinematography

'In his reaction against the filmed plays of traditional French cinema, Bresson used his unique sensibility to establish what he referred to, in a special, Bressonian, aesthetic sense (not the technical one) as "cinematography," that is, a language of image and editing entirely apart from the traditional, narrative mise en scène; one based on cuts, sounds -- the very stuff of cinema that makes it unique from every other art form. One of the techniques he used to achieve his ends was to film multiple takes of a scene, until whatever "artifice" in the performance of the actor had been worn away through repetition, and so, by his estimation, a more truthful performance could be obtained. To that end, he wrote his Notes on Cinematography.'-- No Film School

















(cont.)



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Interview (1970)




SAMUELS: You've said you don't want to be called a metteur en scene but rather a metteur en ordre. Does this mean that you think the essence of film is editing rather than staging?

BRESSON: For me, filmmaking is combining images and sounds of real things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is photographing with that extraordinary instrument — the camera — things that are not real. Sets and actors are not real.

S: That puts you in the tradition of the silent, film, which could not rely on dialogue and therefore created its effects through editing. Do you agree that you are more like a silent than a sound film director?

B: The silent directors usually employed actors. When the cinema became vocal, actors were also used, because at that time they were thought the only ones able to speak. A rather difficult part of my work is to make my nonactors speak normally. I don't want to eliminate dialogue (as in silent films), but my dialogue must be very special — not like the speeches heard in a theater. Voice, for me, is something very important, and I couldn't do without it. Now, when I choose someone to appear in one of my films, I select him by means of the telephone, before I see him. Because in general when you meet a person, your eyes and ears work together rather badly. The voice tells more about anyone than his physical presence.

S: But in your films all the people speak with a single, a Bressonian voice.

B: No. I think that in other films actors speak as if they were onstage. As a result, the audience is used to theatrical inflections. That makes my nonactors appear unique, and thus, they seem to be speaking in a single new way. I want the essence of my films to be not the words my people say or even the gestures they perform, but what these words and gestures provoke in them. What I tell them to do or say must bring to light something they had not realized they contained. The camera catches it; neither they nor I really know it before it happens. The unknown.

S: If it is true that your goal is the mystery you drew out of your nonactors, can anyone besides you and them fully appreciate the result?

B: I hope so. There are so many things our eyes don't see. But the camera sees everything. We are too clever, and our cleverness plays us false. We should trust mainly our feelings and those senses that never lie to us. Our intelligence disturbs our proper vision of things.

S: You say you discover your mysteries in the process of shooting...

B: Yes. Because what I've just told you was not something I had planned for. Amazingly, however, I discovered it during my first moments behind the camera. My first film was made with professional actors, and when we had our first rehearsal I said, "If you go on acting and speaking like this, I am leaving."

S: Your major characteristic as an editor is ellipsis. Do you leave more and more out in each version of a given scene, or do you instinctively elide things while shooting?

B: I always shoot on the dangerous line between showing too much and not showing enough. I try to work as if I were on a tightrope with a precipice at either side.

S: What I want to know, however, is whether you consciously eliminate things during editing or instinctively eliminate things as you go along. Put this another way: Did you eliminate as much in your earlier films?

B: I have always been the same. I don't create ellipsis; it is there from the beginning. One day I said, "Cinema is the art of showing nothing." I want to express things with a minimum of means, showing nothing that is not absolutely essential.

S: Doesn't that make your films too difficult? I'm not even thinking of the average viewer. Doesn't your extremely elliptical manner baffle even the educated viewer? Can anyone get all the things you merely sketch in?

B: Many do.

S: Aren't you worried about being too rarefied?

B: No. Here is the problem: The public is educated to a certain kind of film. Therefore, when they see what you call my elliptical films, they are disturbed. Bad critics say I am inhuman and cold. Why? Because they are used to acting; since they find none in my films, they say I am empty.

S: Let me ask you about your actors now. Jules Roy wrote an article about A Man Escaped in which he said that you never paid attention to your associates, that you were always locked into yourself, and that whenever you faced simple and difficult means toward a given end, you always chose the difficult.

B: Things are always difficult. And I lock myself into myself because often it seems that some of the others are against me. I find that when I don't concentrate, I make mistakes.

S: I noticed when I saw you shooting Four Nights of a Dreamer on the Pont Neuf that you were walking around, ignoring everyone, and continuously peering at the shooting area between two fingers. I also noticed that you make use of accidents. For example, a passerby walked behind your actors while they were performing, yet you did not instruct the cameraman to stop shooting.

B: It's possible.

S: You would use such an accident, wouldn't you?

B: Yes. In Pickpocket I deliberately shot the long sequence at the railroad station during rush hour so as to be able to capture all the accidental occurrences. I courted the reality of the crowd through the impediments they placed before my camera.

S: It is said that you shoot every scene many times. How do the actors respond?

B: Sometimes they react badly, so I stop; sometimes the third shot is the best, sometimes the first. Sometimes the shot I think the best is the worst; sometimes the shot that seems worst when I film I later learn is exactly what I wanted. I require from a shot something I am not fully conscious of when photographing. When we are editing, I tell my editor to search for what I remember as having been the most successful take, and as he is running the film through the machine, I discover that what I had not sought is in fact what I had always wanted. I must add that lately I don't shoot so many takes.

S: According to one of your interviews, in A Man Escaped you helped Leterrier to give a good performance through mechanical means. What were they?

B: By "mechanical" I mean, as I said before, words and gestures. Because I tell my actors to speak and move mechanically. For I am using these gestures and words - which they do not interpret - to draw out of them what I want to appear on screen.

S: For you, the nonactor is raw material - like paint.

B: But precious raw material.

S: You've said you don't even let him see the rushes.

B: That is true, and for the same reason I never use the same person twice, because the second time he would try deliberately to give me what he thought I wanted. I don't even permit the husband of a nonactress to see rushes because he would evaluate her performance and then she would try to improve it. Anyway, mechanics are essential. Our gestures, nine times out of ten, are automatic. The ways you are crossing your legs and holding your head are not voluntary gestures. Montaigne has a marvelous chapter on hands in which he says that hands go where their owner does not send them. I don't want my nonactors to think of what they do. Years ago, without realizing any program, I told my nonactors, "Don't think of what you are saying or doing," and that moment was the beginning of my style.

S: You are a person with no preconceptions.

B: None at all.

S: Whereas psychology is a closed system, whose premises dictate its method. Therefore, it discovers evidence in support of a preexisting theory of human behavior.

B: If I succeed at all, I suppose some of what I show on the screen will be psychologically valid, even though I am not quite aware of it. But of course, I don't always succeed. In any case, I never want to explain anything. The trouble with most films is that they explain everything.

S: That's why one can go back to your films.

B: If there is something good in a film, one must see it at least twice. A film doesn't give its best the first time.

S: I think that many of your ideas are a consequence of your Christianity. Am I right in saying that you pursue mystery without worrying that the audience will be baffled because you believe that we all partake of one essential soul?

B: Of course. Of course.

S: So that every viewer is fundamentally the same viewer.

B: Of course. What I am very pretentiously trying to capture is this essential soul, as you call it.

S: Isn't it ironic that you are known as an intellectual director? I have always thought you profoundly emotional.

B: Most of what is said about me is wrong and is repeated eternally. Once somebody said that I worked as an assistant director to Rene Clair, which is not true, and that I studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts - also not true - but this kind of error appears in nearly every account of my career. Of course, the worst mistakes concern my ideas and my way of working.

S: You've said that your films are sometimes solutions to technical problems. For example, you made The Trial of Joan of Arc to see if one could make a film that was only questions and answers.

B: I like exercise for its own sake. That is why I regard my films as attempts rather than accomplishments. People always ask me about the motivation of my characters, never about the arrangement of shots.

S: You seem more interested in putting shots together than in moving the camera.

B: No. My camera is never stationary; it simply doesn't move around in a blatant manner. It is too easy, when you want, for instance, to describe a room, to pan across it - or to show you are in church by tilting upward in a spiraling fashion. All that is artificial; our eye doesn't proceed like that.

S: You told Godard that you prefer as often as possible to replace image by sound. Why?

B: Because the ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can perceive only what is presented to it.

S: Would you prefer working in a medium where you could eliminate images?

B: No, I want both image and sound.

S: You just want to give the latter predominance?

B: Yes.

S: How do you prepare your sound tracks?

B: There are two kinds of sound in my films: sounds which occur during shooting and those I add later. What I add is more important, because I treat these sounds as if they were actors. For example, when you go into the street and hear a hundred cars passing, what you think you hear is not what you hear, because if you recorded it by means of a magnetophone, you would find that the sound was a mere jumble. So when I have to record the sound of cars, I go to the country and record every single car in pure silence. Then I mix all these sounds in a way that creates not what I hear in the street, but what I think I hear.

S: In this way you can reflect the mind of the character. For example, in A Man Escaped the amplified sounds of keys and trams etc. reflect the supersensitive hearing of a man in prison.

B: Yes. In that film freedom is represented by the sounds of life outside.

S: In view of your emphasis on sound, why do you avoid music?

B: Because music takes you into another realm. I am always astonished when I see a film in which after the characters are finished speaking the music begins. You know, this sort of music saves many films, but if you want your film to be true, you must avoid it. I confess that I too made mistakes with music in my early films. But now I use music, as in Mouchette, only at the end, because I want to take the audience out of the film into another realm; that is the reason for Monteverdi's Magnificat.

S: Why did you suddenly move to color in Une Femme douce?

B: Because suddenly I had money for it.

S: Did the new technique produce any special problems?

B: Yes. Since the first rule of art is unity, color threatens you because its effects are too various. However, if you can control and unify the color, you produce more powerful shots in it than are possible in black and white. In Une Femme douce I started with the color of Dominique Sanda's skin and harmonized everything to it.

S: The sight of her nude flesh is one of the most important in the film.

B: I am also using nudity in Four Nights of a Dreamer. I am not at all against nudity so long as the body is beautiful; only when the body is ugly is its nudity obscene. It is like kissing. I can't bear to see people kissing on the screen. Can you?

S: That's why you sometimes have your characters kiss each other's hands?

B: Yes. Perhaps.



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Robert Bresson's 14 films

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L'argent (1983)
'A director with as supple a foundation of cinephilic adoration as Robert Bresson is bound to inspire a lot of Olympian proselytizing, among auteurist converts and heretics alike, about the galactic elemental clarity of his filmmaking, spiked with as many buzzwords as possible such as “unforced,” “simple,” “open-ended,” “spiritual,” “philosophical,” “earthy,” “humane.” It’s almost to the point that reading about Bresson you’d imagine that his films are composed of shots of nothing but koi ponds, cala lilies, creamy, hemp-textured canvases, loaves of bread, or whatever else has become shorthand for cinematic transubstantiation. Which is why a film like L’Argent, which is admittedly unforced, open-ended, and humane (and, to throw in one further Bresson cliché to boot, excises any trace of narrative fat and works it to the bone), hits with the effect not so much reflecting a cleansing of the soul, but rather a ransacking.'-- Eric Henderson, Slant



Trailer


Excerpt


Bresson interviewed about 'L'argent'



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The Devil, Probably (1977)
'Of all the Bresson films that deal with suicide, The Devil, Probably most resembles a death march. Its impassive young protagonist, Charles (Antoine Monnier, great-grandson of Henri Matisse), single-mindedly rejects the solutions and opiates of a corrupt, toxic, late-capitalist world and succumbs to the tug of oblivion—although, lacking the will to do the deed himself, he has to buy his own death, hiring a junkie friend to kill him. In France the film was banned to under-eighteens, lest it give alienated kids any ideas. In the US it went unreleased until the mid-’90s. One of only two original screenplays that Bresson wrote (the other, Au Hasard Balthazar, has strong intimations of Dostoevsky), Devil may be his least typical film. The didacticism (newsreel footage of environmental disasters), blunt satire (especially in a scene with a Jacques Lacan–like shrink), and pronounced nihilist-atheist streak all made the film hard to square with received readings of Bresson—and, much like Antonioni’s post-’68 portrait Zabriskie Point, easy to dismiss as an out-of-touch geezer’s strained bid at topicality. (Bresson was seventy-six at the time.) Bresson influenced almost every major French filmmaker who came after him (beginning with Louis Malle, his onetime assistant, and Jean-Luc Godard, one of his most perceptive critics), but The Devil, Probably seems to have special significance for those who encountered it at a formative age. Claire Denis, an extra on 1971’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, has said that The Devil, Probably was the first film in which she saw her generation onscreen. It’s a clear touchstone for the cinema of Leos Carax, who absorbed its anguish and infused it with a mad romanticism. Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval’s recent Low Life, a haunting meditation on the possibility of youthful resistance, is essentially an elaborate riff on—or an urgent sequel to—The Devil, Probably. Olivier Assayas has written eloquently of his complicated relationship with the film, first rejecting it and then over time coming to regard the troubled Charles as “the truest portrait” of his younger self; Assayas’s most autobiographical film, Cold Water, owes a debt to The Devil, Probably, as will, perhaps, his upcoming Something in the Air, a coming-of-age story in the context of ’70s youth culture.'-- Dennis Lim, Artforum



Trailer


Excerpt


Excerpt



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Lancelot du Lac (1974)
'One suspects that Bresson wanted to interpret Arthurian legend in a way that would emphasize its petty emotions and physicalities. Why else should he stage Guinevere and Lancelot’s solitary moments in a hay-strewn loft? Why else should he let the camera linger a moment on Guinevere’s sensuous backside? Why else should he shoot a jousting match from the knights’ knees down? However, because Bresson’s cinematic personality is as deliberate and clean as it is, the viewer is tempted to chalk up the bizarre and moving experience of watching Lancelot du Lac to some latent spirituality or grace. Those of us with dissenting opinions can stretch out inside of Bresson’s films a little more, though—because the director is so fascinated with the visual, aural, and tactile worlds he films, it’s very easy to respond with equal fascination. One could say that Lancelot du Lac is about nothing more than the clanging of armor or the movements of legs, but the fact that he cares about the way situations look and feel, its textures and emotional tones (even as filtered through the singular Bressonian personality) is exceedingly important—and exceedingly cool. The chances that Bresson will impress those entirely and happily bred on contemporary Hollywood cinema are, sadly, not very good. His thin plots often elide psychology and conventional pacing, his actors’ distinctive line readings don’t initially appear very interesting, and some are bound to be puzzled by his fascination with unusual shots (such as extended close-ups of single body parts). But it’s not Bresson’s fault for being an uncompromising and distinctive artist—it’s to his credit.'-- Zach Campbell, Slant



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Conférence de presse Robert Bresson 'Lancelot du Lac' au Festival de Cannes



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Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)
'If one wants to be schematic about it, there are three levels of parody in Four Nights: 1) an obvious layer (the ridiculous gangster film) masking, as by ‘excessive light’, 2) a more subtle one extended over the time it takes to know the narrative figures, and concerning solely them; and lastly, 3) a more ambiguous level, poised on the uncomfortable threshold between two different feelings, held right on the verge of crossing into open risibility — the point at which one is not quite sure if one should titter, snicker, chuckle, cackle, guffaw, howl, etc. Jacques exclaiming “What have you done to me!”; the Brazilian singer on the tour-boat; Jacques’ stares at women totally unknown to him, at the start; his sad auditing of his own voice speaking the absurd ‘dreams’ on the cassette-player (one level of parody listening to another) — are among the examples. What all three levels have in common is romanticism as their reference, and some of its attendant manifestations. But this is not to be understood as a straightforward mockery of it — not entirely, at least. Bresson fixes sharply on the shallowness and naivety of its symptoms; but never without reminding us of the holes, and the lives, they are trying to fill. There is a clinging coefficient of sadness attached.'-- M. C. Zenner, Senses of Cinema



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Une femme douce (1969)
'Une femme douce (a.k.a. A Gentle Woman) was the first colour film that Robert Bresson made and immediately we see a break from the director's previous eight films, with a dramatic intensification of the austerity and pessimism that most characterise his work. Stylistically, the film is noticeably different from Bresson's black and white films and already there is in evidence the rigorous paring back, the striving to show only what is essential, that would obsess the director in his later years. The transition from Mouchette (1967) to Une femme douce, made just two years later, is as stark as it is brutal, and yet the two films are linked by a common Bressonian theme - that of escape from the penury of mortal existence through death. In the case of Mouchette, it is physical suffering that drives a girl to kill herself. In the subsequent film, a woman's suicide is prompted by a malaise of the soul, a revulsion for all fleshly things that incarcerate and repress one's spiritual being. Une femme douce is a film that is permeated with a sense of loss and separation. Frequently, the camera lingers on places where we expect someone to be, but all we see is a person-shaped void. Even when the two protagonists appear in the same shot, the disconnection between them is striking. Both have a profound need for love, and yet neither is capable of satisfying the other's needs - he is a cold materialist who, vampire-like, thrives on the misfortune of others; she a dreamer, an ethereal being that can barely support the notion she is composed of the same stuff as the rest of the animal kingdom. And when these two ill-matched souls do finally make contact, all too briefly in a sublime moment of tenderness, it is the spark that ignites the touch paper to their shared annihilation. This is Bresson at his cruellest and most pessimistic - not even love can bridge the gulf between flesh and spirit.'-- James Travers



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Mouchette (1967)
'“Between thought and expression”—as Lou Reed wrote in the Velvet Underground song “Some Kinda Love”—“lies a lifetime.” Mouchette, and maybe all Robert Bresson’s inexhaustible, majestic films, transpire in that puzzling space “between,” that incalculable “lifetime.” How, for instance, does a director as visually acute as Bresson and so insistent on “the resources of cinematography and the use of the camera to create” also imply the urgency of the unseen, the ineffable, the otherworldly? How does a filmmaker so attentive to metaphysical demands honor the press of our physical existence, whether everyday or tragic? The marvel of Mouchette inheres in the elegance, obstinacy, and capaciousness of Bresson’s double-mindedness. A rape edges into tenderness, suicide emerges as at once holy and appalling, and scene upon scene invokes, simultaneously, spiritual despair and an afterlife. Mouchette (1967) was Bresson’s final black-and-white film before he switched over to color for Une femme douce, in 1969. And there are vestiges throughout of the mournful, formally exacting work he created during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as intuitions of the tonal complexity and even fiercer pessimism that infused his late style. Mouchette herself is at least as solitary as Michel in Pickpocket (1959), and her village proves as claustrophobic as Fontaine’s prison cell in A Man Escaped (1956). Like Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Mouchette tracks hereditary alcoholism in the “malicious” French countryside, and Bresson adapted both movies from novels by Georges Bernanos, a gifted exponent of what he designated “Catholic realism” and also the author of the libretto for the Francis Poulenc opera Dialogues des Carmelites. Shooting on Mouchette started soon after Bresson finished Au hasard Balthazar (1966), and Mouchette seems a combination of the suffering Marie and the donkey, Balthazar, much as the hunting (rabbits) and poaching (partridges) episodes once again analogue human and animal misfortunes.'-- Robert Polito



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Robert Bresson on the set of Mouchette



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Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
'Godard’s famous claim that Au hasard Balthazar is “the world in an hour and a half” suggests how dense, how immense Bresson’s brief, elliptical tale about the life and death of a donkey is. The film’s steady accumulation of incident, characters, mystery, and social detail, its implicative use of sound, offscreen space, and editing, have the miraculous effect of turning the director’s vaunted austerity into endless plenitude, which is perhaps the central paradox of Bresson’s cinema. So concentrated and oblique is Balthazar, it achieves the density, to extend Godard’s metaphor just a little, of an imploded nova. Bresson’s twin masterpieces of the mid-sixties, Au hasard Balthazar and Mouchette—his last films in black and white—are rural dramas in which the eponymous innocents, a donkey and a girl, suffer a series of assaults and mortifications and then die. With their exquisite renderings of pain and abasement, the films are compendiums of cruelty, whose endings have commonly been interpreted as moments of transfiguration, indicating absolution for a humanity that has been emphatically shown to be not merely fallen but vile. Both “protagonists” expire in nature, one on a hillside, the other in a pond, their deaths accompanied by music of great sublimity: a fragment of Schubert’s Piano Sonata no. 20 and a passage from Monteverdi’s Vespers, respectively. (That these contravene Bresson’s own edict against the use of music as “accompaniment, support, or reinforcement” is significant; he later regretted the rather sentimental employment of the Schubert in Balthazar, and the film without it would be significantly bleaker in effect.) The representation of both deaths is ambiguous. The sacred music in Mouchette (Monteverdi’s “Magnificat,” with its intimations of the Annunciation), Mouchette’s three attempts to “fall” before succeeding, and the held image of the bubbles on the water that has received her body imply to many a divine, even ecstatic deliverance (and a perhaps heretical consecration of suicide). Similarly, Balthazar’s death, accompanied by the secular, albeit exalted, Schubert, as he is surrounded by sheep, suggests to several critics a glorious return to the eternal, a revelation of the divine.'-- James Quandt



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Robert Bresson interview: Au Hasard Balthazar



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The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)
'Released in 1962, and receiving mild-hearted reviews from the press, Bresson’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962) remained for a long time one of the French filmmaker’s most overlooked films. 40 years later, and in light of other adaptations of the trial that preceded and succeeded it – notably Carl T. Dreyer and Jacques Rivette’s masterpieces La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) and Jeanne la Pucelle II – Les prisons (Joan the Maid: The Prisons, 1994) – Bresson’s film, featuring low-key mise en scène detailing the precise period in which the Maid of Orleans lived, stands up as one of the most particular and transcendent works of his oeuvre. Whether or not we agree with Bresson’s statement that Dreyer’s mise en scène and notions of expressionist acting were “grotesque buffooneries”, we can consider this controversial statement as a starting point for examining his own construction of the film. This relentlessly edited, minimalist, sparse film, almost shot in automatic mode, is a direct affront to what he considered the “terrible habit of theater”, the “over expressive” (as he would say) method that he successfully avoided throughout his career.'-- José Sarmiento



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Pickpocket (1959)
'Pickpocket, like all of Bresson’s films, records the expiration of humane feeling in the modern world, the impossibility of decency in a universe of greed. This is amply illustrated in Au hasard Balthazar (1966), a film about the sufferings of a donkey so painful to watch that if you can see it through without weeping, you deserve to be hit by a Mack truck when you leave the theater. For Bresson, the casual destruction of life, any life, is the damning imperative of the human species. As William Burroughs put it, “Man is a bad animal.” This message is spelled out in boldface in The Devil, Probably, with its copious footage of man-made ecological disaster. Critics frequently link Bresson with Carl Dreyer, which is a bit like pairing August Strindberg with Henrik Ibsen. Like Ibsen, Dreyer has a seamless lack of humor and a solemnity that gives his films the gravity of a cancer operation In Bresson, however, the absurdity that delicately fringes Strindberg’s dark dramas echoes in whole passages of deliberately idiotic dialogue, in actions that speak volumes about nothing but feel uncomfortably textured like real life. Dreyer boils life down to its pivotal moments; Bresson shows that most of our lives are consumed by meaningless routines. This can be startlingly funny, just when you thought a Bresson movie couldn’t become more grim.'-- Gary Indiana



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A Man Escaped (1956)
'Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (1956) is generally considered one of the greatest prison-break movies ever made. It was inspired by the story of André Devigny, a decorated French lieutenant in World War II who escaped from Fort Montluc prison in German-occupied Lyon in 1943 and was awarded the Cross of the Liberation by Charles de Gaulle after the war. Except for the opening scene and the final shots, the entire film is set in the interiors and exteriors of a prison, modeled on the original, and follows the detailed activities of Fontaine (François Leterrier), the protagonist, as he prepares for what everyone tells him is an impossible feat. Bresson, having himself suffered cruelty and internment at the hands of the Germans during the war, wrote the screenplay and dialogue, based on a journalistic account Devigny had published in 1954 as “The Lessons of Strength: A Man Condemned to Death Has Escaped” (his memoir A Condemned Prisoner Has Escaped was published in 1956). Although the film’s preface assures us that it does not embellish that account, and Devigny himself acted as Bresson’s factual adviser, there are critical differences between his work and Bresson’s film. In fact, the first title Bresson considered, Aide-toi . . .—part of a phrase meaning “Heaven helps those who help themselves”—suggests that he was as attracted to the spiritual significance of the story as he was to Devigny’s scrupulous description of his experience. The film’s brilliant exposition of Fontaine’s daily efforts to convert the objects in his cell into the instruments of escape indeed became for Bresson the expressive means for the man’s pragmatic form of faith.'-- Tony Pipolo



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Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
'In the “portrait of the artist as disturber of the peace” that is Diary of a Country Priest, Bresson was still shedding the contingencies of contemporary cinema. But the film left enough of a mark on its viewers to become a milestone in the slow process of the liberation of postwar French cinema. Long after Cahiers du cinéma published his famous article “A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema” (No. 31, January 1954), which devotes a lot of attention to screenwriters Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost’s unproduced adaptation of Bernanos’ novel, only to denounce their alleged inanity and hail Bresson’s genius, François Truffaut would remember Diary of a Country Priest and the words of the priest of Ambricourt to Dufréty when he concluded the angry letter in which he severed all personal ties with Jean-Luc Godard: “If I was in your place and I’d broken the oaths of my ordination, I would prefer that it had been for the love of a woman rather than what you call your intellectual evolution.” Diary of a Country Priest is truly a rupture in the history of cinema.'-- Frédéric Bonnaud



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Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)
'Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is fixed in history as not just the second feature film by Robert Bresson, but as one of those movies that heralded an austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling. But not even Bresson, in 1944, knew that he was bound to become the author of Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Au hazard Balthazar, Mouchette, and so on. No one knew which way the wind would blow. And close attention to Les Dames reveals much that is unexpected or uncharacteristic—at the 1977 Bresson tribute at London’s National Film Theatre, it was seen as “an un-Bressonian film.” So it’s worth concentrating on the reality of 1944 if one wants to get the most out of this extraordinary film—and to see where Bresson was going. Robert Bresson then was in the prime of life. Putting it that way is not just to get past the image of the ancient, white-haired ascetic (the dead master even); it’s a way of noting that the women in Les Dames are photographed with something like the affection, or the sensuality even, that one knows from Max Ophuls, from Renoir or Howard Hawks. There is even a shot of Agnès (Élina Labourdette) trying on earrings, looking at herself in the mirror, watched by her mother (Lucienne Bogaert), that has a heady, casual eroticism in the faces, the jewels, the bits of décor, the glamour of reflection, and the soft focus of the burnished glass. It could be a moment from Max Ophuls—or Jacques Demy (Labourdette, ravishing as the mothered Agnès in Les Dames, would be just as glorious and insecure as the mother in Lola, and surely Demy felt that in his casting.)'-- David Thomson



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Les anges du péché (1943)
'One of the most astonishing film debuts ever, made while France was still under Nazi occupation. Bresson chose an apparently timeless subject: the way that people affect each other's destinies. Based on the real convent of the Sisters of Béthany, a secluded order of nuns are minutely observed in their rehabilitation of women from prison. If the salvation is tangibly close to a Resistance adventure, it is the simple human confrontations that fascinate Bresson - the consuming desire of secure, bourgeois-born Anne-Marie to save the unrepentant Thérèse, wrongly imprisoned for the sake of her criminal lover. Concentrated dialogue (with a little help from Jean Giraudoux) and moulded monochrome photography by Philippe Agostini contribute to an outstanding film. Rarely have the seemingly opposite worlds of the spiritual and the erotic received such sublime, ennobling treatment.'-- Time Out (London)



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p.s. Hey. I suppose that anyone who knows even a little about me knows that Robert Bresson is my favorite artist in any medium, always and of all time. I wouldn't be whatever writer I am if it wasn't for his work. Without the influence of his films and ideas, I probably wouldn't be a very good writer at all. Given all of that, it's strange that I've never made a full-fledged post about his work here before. I think I found that idea too intimidating. But one day recently I thought, Fuck it, and I finally did. So, this weekend you get a normal looking post about the least normal artist ever in my opinion. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Sure, that makes total sense. I'm a huge fan of Richey Edwards too, no surprise, I'm sure. I should get that book, obviously. Phew, at least to some degree, that the talk went as well as it could, and that you feel okay about it. I'm really happy to hear that! Now you can hopefully have a great, stress-free weekend! Yesterday was pretty good. The interview I gave seemed to go okay. I guess we'll see when it gets printed. And the concert with Thurston Moore and Stephen was great. They basically played a live and, I assume, largely improvised two-guitar plus effects soundtrack to a series of films by Maya Deren that were projected above them. It was great, really trancey and loud and ferocious. This weekend is probably going to mostly involve a bunch of TV script work. Zac and Gisele and I were supposed to go on a day-trip today to scout a big chateau in the countryside where were hoping that part of the TV series will be filmed, but the chateau owner is under the weather, so that's gotten delayed. Anyway, it should be okay. Do you have any special or non-special but nonetheless promising things planned? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Oh, I see. Still, it must suck to some degree that there was a following for his films and, presumably, more means available to make them as a consequence than now when his work seems to be largely forgotten? Jesus, it's weird to think Nicholson as being that old. I saw that Kevin Smith story somewhere. It is funny. ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, well, so much for my just saying to David that Downey's films are forgotten. That's good news! Like David, my memory has it that his best film is 'Putney Swope,' but I haven't seen it since the early '70s, so ... ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Oh, yes, I got the post, and it's all set up and ready to launch next Wednesday, the 4th. I had never seen his work before, and it is really something. Really strange and beautiful. Thank you so much for the post and for the intro to his work, man! Yeah, Prince's death is really a mindfuck. I still can't quite conceptualize it or something. Of all the death of musical greats recently -- Bowie, Tony Conrad, etc. -- it seem the most drastic. I guess because he was so young. And because he generated so much energy and non-stop inventing. Awful. How fascinating that Tin House is reissuing 'Montauk'. Wow, I have read it, but quite a long time ago. As you probably know, it's kind of a singular thing within his work because it's autobiographical and weirdly confessional. Pretty exceptional, as I recall. I remember it lacking or undermining the kind of particular quality of his prose that's so great in 'Holocene' and 'I'm Not Stiller' and 'Bluebeard', but, yeah, foggy memory on it. I would imagine it's very worth reading. I'm pretty certain I'll get and read the reissue. Cool move on Tin House's part. I don't know Berlin very well. I've only been there fairly briefly a few times, and I've always been busy with something when I was there. I'm a rare person who isn't that into Berlin, based on my limited experiences. I'll ask Zac. He's been there more than I have. And Gisele, who used to live there. If they have tips, I'll let you know. That's a pretty great, ambitious trip, cool. If you get a spontaneous urge to parachute down into Paris, I'd be very happy to to see you. ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie! Ah, yeah, confidence is the culprit then. It's tough, confidence. For me, putting stuff out there actually really helped my confidence. And, at the same time, it was humbling too. But I think that combo is a good one. It demystifies what you fear and hope will happen. The fears and the hopes are just fantasies. They're totally unreliable. On the one hand, making what you do real, in the sense of placing it out in the reality of collective experience or whatever, you get props, you get detailed to some degree opinions on what it is in your work that crosses over and communicates, and what is unique about what you do. That an important thing, understanding what's unique about what you make because it's kind of impossible to know that without getting objective viewpoints. And the support you get is real, and it means a lot. And you also realize that what you do has limitations as well and that there will be people who aren't interested or don't appreciate what you're doing. So it's kind of a really useful leveling experience, I think. Lack of confidence is just fear, right? It's not based in anything factual at all. So, yeah, I think doing the Soundcloud thing would be good. Just be really innocent about it, if you can, and not imagine what will happen. And remember that it's a long term, growing thing. Do you think that, your nervous behavior aside, the powers that be might be interested in giving you that job? Or are you saying it didn't work out? If it didn't, ah, you know, other opportunities will arise, always. My day was good, it did what it seemed like it was going to do. The Thurston Moore/Stephen O'Malley thing was really good. Like I told Dora, they improvised (based on preset plans, I'm sure) the soundtrack to some Maya Deren films. It got very ferocious. It was great. I haven't seen Thurston's new band live yet, but they're playing at the Louvre in a few weeks, so I'm going to hit that. I hope your weekend goes incredibly well! Lots of love from Paris and me! ** Brendan, Hey, bud! 1 pm on the 28th, gotcha. Will you have a working phone so we can call or text? (I'll email you my phone number in a minute). If so, you could text me or something when you're settled, and we can meet up immediately wherever. Or, if it's easiest, we could just make a plan to meet somewhere at an appointed time in advance. What's good? Excited to see you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I hope that event is fun today. I don't know the artists in the show. I'll investigate. And mega-hope that the meeting with Andrew happens tonight and closes that very lengthy circle. ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom! Thank you so very, very much again! The post got very, very good traffic in addition to the comments. Success! You have a superb weekend, my friend! ** Okay. I intro'd the Bresson post up top, so I'll just leave you to it. Have fine weekends. See you on Monday.

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Jeppe HeinWater Flame (2006)
Water Flame is an installation combining two elements usually opposed to each other in a spectactular but nevertheless minimalist way: a small sprinkling fountain with a flame burning on the top. This paradoxical constellation of elements creates an effect of astonishment and wonder.





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Sylvie FleuryGold Fountain PKW (2003)
Gold porcelain, plexiglass plinth, 18 x 62 x 62 cm







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Raffaelo Romanelli Untitled (1928)
Outside of the Starbucks in the Plaza of Kansas City is a thoroughly inappropriate fountain called "Boy and Frog." Why is this fountain inappropriate? If you can't tell from the picture, it is a naked young boy with his frog. When turned on, the water sprays from the little boy's peep into the frog's mouth. It is a little boy peeing in a frog's mouth! How is that appropriate for public viewing?! I first saw the fountain when my friend Anna came to visit me last year. We went to the Plaza and to look at all high-fashion things we couldn't afford and be "ladies who lunch." After lunch we went to get some coffee. That was when we saw it. A boy peeing into a frog's mouth. We both stared for a while, trying to be sure of what we were seeing. Then I looked around for someone else who was shocked by the fountain, but nothing. People were buying their lattes and going on their way. Apparently public depictions of little boys peeing in the mouths of amphibians is okay in Missouri. It was originally sculpted by Raffaelo Romanelli and was acquired for the Plaza in Florence, Italy in 1928 by John C. Taylor, the chairman of the J.C. Nichols Company. I'm all for artistic expression and extremely opposed to censorship, but I'm struggling to get what the creative merit to this fountain is.







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Klaus WeberSandfountain (2012)
As we move into what has been called the anthropocene age, in which we prove we can do just what we damn well please with the planet, traditional fountains are redundant. That is what makes Klaus Weber’s Sandfountain so timely. It’s a technological swansong which swaps a single water pump for some dozen sandblasting units. The sand will erode the concrete and you can already see the disconcerting way it shifts and cascades.







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Yoan CapoteTear Duct (2001)
In Tear Duct (2001), he replaced the top of a drinking fountain with a stainless-steel mold of the face of a classmate who had to support herself through prostitution, a prevalent social problem in Cuba at the time. When viewers put a coin in the slot of the fountain, red wine spouts from her mouth. People drinking from the fountain are put physically and psychologically into the position of her customers, watching the wine and their saliva drain through her eyes.







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Klaus WeberThe Big Giving (2007)
In Klaus Weber’s work The Big Giving a group of male and female figures are cast rising out of, or simultaneously sinking into volcanic-looking mounds of rock made from industrial steel waste. Their heads and hands protrude from the stone and streams of water gush from a different body part on each figure, spouting from mouths, eyes, ears and armpits.








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Charles Ray Ink Line (1987)
Ink Line is a sculpture/drawing/fountain consisting of a stream of jet-black ink pouring from a dime-size hole in the ceiling into a dime-size hole in the floor. Initially Ink Line looks like a strand of yarn strung the height of the gallery, a pulsating Fred Sandback sculpture, a free-floating Barnett Newman zip, or a disembodied Sol LeWitt. Get close and you’ll realize the line is liquid, glimmering, the consistency of syrup, moving fairly fast, fluctuating slightly, and thinner at the bottom than at the top. The ink forms a weird climatological aura around itself, slightly changing the humidity of the room.





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Bartosz and Malgorzata SzydlowskaFountain of the Future (2014)
A bright yellow statue of Vladimir Lenin answering a call of nature has been installed in Nowa Huta, the 'ideal socialist town' built on the edge of Krakow in the Stalinist era. Fountain of the Future, as the work has been dubbed by artists Bartosz Szydlowski and Malgorzata Szydlowska, references a statue of Lenin that once took pride of place in the district. The diminutive yellow version is a replica of a communist-era work which anti-regime activists tried to blow up on several occasions during the 1970s and 1980s.







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Joseph HavelEndless (2013)
Havel has created an “endless column” of books. Endless (2013), made from books cast in bronze and resin, emerges from the centerpiece of the Museum’s lawn, the Ballard Fountain. The column of books, cast from a stack of Sotheby's auction catalogues among others, stands almost 20 feet high and gradually transitions from bronze to translucent resin.






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Aldo FroeseFountain #5 (2010)
A waterflow is directed through the frame of a wheel barrel. As time passes, the water changes color and turns from clear to yellow, orange, red, brown and ends up as almost black.







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Bruce NaumanOne Hundred Fish Fountain (2012)
The Nauman sculpture, one of the largest artworks the artist has ever made, is a functional fountain comprised of 97 bronze casts of fish that are suspended throughout the air that noisily shoot water out of their mouths into a large basin below, occasionally coming to a complete halt.





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Andrew SalomoneVomiting Doll Punch Bowl Fountain (2015)






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Roman SignerKayak with Fountain (2015)
And out on the terrace there was another bloody kayak – this one had been put on top of a fountain and had a hole put in it so it looked like it had sprung a leak! LOL. ART.






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Ice sculpture fountains















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Doug AitkenFountain (earth fountain) (2013)
Fountain (Earth Fountain) (2012) is blatantly derivative of a more famous work. In a large rectangular vitrine the letters “A-R-T”, built from Lucite, ooze smooth creamy mud resembling milk chocolate. It immediately recalls Robert Rauschenberg’s Mud Muse (1971)—itself a large rectangular vat filled with mud rigged to bubble and sputter like lava. The use of the word “ART” here merely underlines one obvious subtext of Rauschenberg’s piece: that something as ubiquitous and abject as mud could so effectively be corralled into the realm of art. This makes Aitken’s rather polished version more like CliffsNotes for a canonical work than anything else.





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Tue GreenfortCrystal Fountain (2014)





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Santo ToloneFontana Angelica (2014)
Santo Tolone’s immersive “Fontana Angelica" is a working fountain based on a design by early 20th century architect Piero Portaluppi. As the name hints, the original fountain would have been decorated with angels, but Tolone’s version is stripped down to just the plumbing of the fountain. What remains is a simple, structural beauty. It’s also an exhibition within the exhibition: Tolone curated a display of coins made by other artists in the pool, including works by John Baldessari, Tim Foxon, Nick Fusaro, Ryan Gander, Micah Lexier, Jonathan Monk, M/M, Alek O, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Wilfredo Prieto, Rob Pruitt, Yann Sérandour, Jack Strange, Santo Tolone, Amalia Ulman, and Anne de Vries.





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Taro ShinodaModel of Oblivion (2006)
Inside the screens is a small room containing “Model of Oblivion,” in which a visceral red liquid is clinically pumped across “white cliffs,” creating a vision as sinewy as human muscles on a white table. Explaining his approach, Shinoda says: “In my mind, waterfalls are connected to oblivion. When I stare at a waterfall, I go into a daze and forget reality. But the essence of myself is always there, even when I forget everything. I tried to express that here in an abstract sense.”







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Daniel WurtzelFeather Fountain (2010)
Feathers, mirrors, fiberglass and air





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Sam Durant Proposal for Public Fountain (2013)
Proposal for Public Fountain centres on a fountain sculpted from black marble – a prototype for a larger installation in a public setting – together with a series of related graphite drawings. The structure features a reproduction of an armoured water cannon, which sprays a jet of water onto a hooded figure bearing an anarchist flag. Its note of polemic is a defining aspect of Durant’s art. Poised between detached commentary and acerbic critique, it recasts a contemporary episode of state authoritarianism in the ‘stately’ aesthetics of public stonework.








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Slavs and TatarsReverse Joy (2012)





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Olafur EliassonBig Bang Fountain (2014)
Every few seconds it is illuminated by photoflash lightning. The image of the bright dancing water leaves a ghostly impression in the mind’s eye. Keep watching the flashes of silver water and you see blue impossible forms in the afterglow.






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Robert GoberThe Heart Is Not a Metaphor (detail)
Gober’s chapel in honor of September 11, 2001, originally shown at Matthew Marks in 2005, is one of the culminating rooms in the exhibition. At the front of the chapel are two doors through which one can barely make out a naked pair of legs submerged in a running bathtub. The child peeks through the cracked door and sees something it cannot understand—something it is, perhaps, not supposed to see.






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Eli Hansen and Oscar TuazonHuh (2012)
Toilet, stell, water, 68 X 36 1/4 X 47 1/4 inches





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Unknown Decapitated Head Drinking Fountain





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Vincent HouzeInteractive Fountain Mapping (2016)
The result of a collaboration with AV&C, an experiment where one can control a simulated liquid flow and watch it splash against a geometric sculpture. It was premiered during SEGD Xlab conference 2015 in New York. As in previous experiments the liquid simulation is driven by the nVidia library Physx FleX that I implemented in TouchDesigner, which is used for the mapping and overall set up.





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Dan Flavinproposed fountain in memory of Pablo Picasso (1974)
Black ballpoint pen on white looseleaf notebook paper





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Thiago Rocha PittaInverted fountain (2003)
Thiago Rocha Pitta is best known for his “collaborations” with nature, outdoor interventions that harness its forces, processes, and beauty. Here he has created an inverted fountain by the side of a lake.






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Hany Armanious Fountain (2012)
Fountain (2012) is based on an anatomical model of the inner ear and a weathered outdoor table. Meticulously carved in Opal Bianca marble at ten times the model’s original size, the ear is a complex and mysterious form, containing transparent resin casts of the ear drum and cochlear. Instead of running water Fountain evokes the idea of water, through its references to the fluid of the ear canal, the undulating contours of the marble, and the translucent resin shapes that sit like droplets of liquid trapped inside the ear.







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The world largest dancing fountains, Burj Khalifa






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Denis Adrien DebouvrieJeanneke Pis (1987)
Jeanneke Pis is a modern fountain and statue in Brussels, which was intended to form a counterpoint to the city's Manneken Pis, south of the Grand Place. It was commissioned by Denis-Adrien Debouvrie in 1985 and erected in 1987. The half-metre-high statue of blue-grey limestone depicts a little girl with her hair in short pigtails, squatting and urinating. It is located on the east side of the Impasse de la Fidélité / Getrouwheidsgang (Fidelity Alley), a narrow cul-de-sac some 30 metres long leading northwards off the restaurant-packed Rue des Bouchers / Beenhouwersstraat. The sculpture is now protected by iron bars from vandalism.






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José LermaFountain (2014)
'A Critical Analysis of Central Banks and Fractional-Reserve Banking from Austrian School Perspective,' an installation that takes form in the shape of a 10% fraction of a circular fountain which is flanked by mirrored walls. An essay by Spanish economist Jesus Huerta de Soto, from the Austrian School, serves as the inspiration for the work and title. The percentage reflects the minimum requirement of liquid assets the United States' financial institutions are required to hold by law in order to operate. 'A Critical Analysis...' presents a contrast to the interaction the portraits have with each others' reflections, instead of borrowing from the impressions of each piece to build on the final compositions, the fountain completes itself through the illusion of a whole in the mirrors, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. The installation is activated through performance in which water sounds are made by participants standing within the structure as sculptural elements of the fountain itself.






*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. 'A Man Escaped' is one of my favorites too. It's probably my second favorite of the b&w films after 'Mouchette'. The Anne Wiaemski book is great, what I've been able to find of it English. I think the absolutely must-have Bresson book is the incredible and recently revised/enlarged compendium book edited by James Quandt, 'Robert Bresson'. That book is just a never ending source. A not very well known book about Bresson that's very hard to get ahold of and really great is 'Fragments: Bresson's Film Style', by Lindley Hanlon, if for no other reason it includes a long, fascinating interview with Antoine Monnier. Humbert Balsam was very good friends with my French publishers and with other people I know here. I almost met him once, but he was indisposed. But I've been super lucky to meet and talk to three Bresson models: Guillaume des Forets and Isabelle Weingarten, the co-leads of 'Four Nights of a Dreamer' and Florence Delay, who played Joan of Arc in 'Procès de Jeanne d'Arc'. Thank you for your considerable thoughts and expertise! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! Oh, I think I would it way too impossible for me to write about Bresson. That memorial piece that I used in the post and that I wrote for Artforum was already really hard. Bresson's work makes me dumbstruck, which is one of the things I love about it. Yes, excellent news that 'Notes ... ' is being reprinted! Thanks, man. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. 'TD,P' definitely resonated with punk, and I would imagine that 'spiritual' connection helped me into the film since I was very punk at that point. I think probably it was more the latter, i.e, post '68 that Bresson was working with. Thank you for suggesting a Bresson book by me. No, like I think I said, I've kind of sworn off writing non-fiction for the foreseeable future, and trying to write about Bresson would be the hardest ever task. Either I would write the best thing I could ever write or I would tear my hair out in frustration. But thank you. ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie. Yeah, it is weird, but, yeah, my awe of Bresson ties my tongue. I hope you find those films helpful or useful or something, obviously. My weekend was pretty work-y. It's going to be a kind of non-stop very heavy work week for me. Vis-à-vis the TV script because the deadline is this weekend, and there's still a ton to do. So, my weekend was mostly working on that and meeting with Gisele and Zac in regards to that. It got cold and wintery here again, which I really like. That was cool. How did the vocal recording go? After that, is it mostly just mixing and polishing, or ... ? On Stephen's work ... he's really prolific, so ... let me see. Sunn0)))-wise, you probably can start anywhere. I personally really love the collaboration album they did with Scott Walker, 'Soused', but not everybody does. I recommend KTL, his 'band' with Peter Rehberg that they formed for Gisele's and my piece 'Kindertotenlieder' wherein the play live. Maybe start with the first album 'KTL' (Editions Mego). Solo ... well, he's putting out a new solo album pretty soon, and it's amazing, so maybe wait for it. I'll remember to give you the scoop when it's time. Awesome, I'll be very honored to be your future Soundcloud's first invitee! I'll start getting excited for that. Ah, yeah, with the job, I don't know, ... i'mI kind of am into the idea of fate and destiny and all that stuff even though it makes no sense and is surely just a trick of the mind, but I have to believe that something much better for you will come along. Love to you and Glasgow from me and Paris! ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom. Thanks a lot, man! 'Lancelot du Lac' is my second favorite Bresson film. Oh, cool, it would nice to meet Max. I probably won't be here from the middle of May to near the month's end 'cos Zac and I will be showing the film in San Francisco and probably visiting LA, so it will depend on Max's and my timing, but I would love to meet him if it's possible. In any case, yes, give him my email. Where is the Architectural Association event taking place? ** G.r. maierhofer, Hi, Grant! Thanks a lot, man. Cool about the 'SL' book. What constitutes sooner than later? Dude, this is going to be your year! Awesome! I'm really happy that Tim Dlugos's work was important to you. That's, you know, very heartening. Send me the pdf or whatever, and I'll make the blog into your oyster. Good luck with everything! Great to see you! ** H, Hi, h. Thank you. No, the interview was copied and pasted from somewhere ... I think from an online pdf? Nerval and Adorno are a very interesting couple, yes. Huh. Fascinating. And thank you for your interesting read on NYC. I'm really glad it's still a good source for you. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dóra! Cool, yeah, I have a bead on that book so it looks like it'll be in my grubby hands before too long. It's weird that relationships can put a heavy cloud between the muse and you, but they so often do. At least when they first start and seem like they could be the ultimate thing. Short and kind of barely there pieces are sometimes the best pieces! We're hoping to go see the chateau this weekend. We'll see. We need to in order to be able to write the 3rd TV episode that's entirely set there, but luckily we only have to turn in a synopsis of that episode right now. Fun and cool about that exhibition! Did it go well with your writer friend? Exciting! My weekend was pretty much nose-to-the-grindstone work-filled, but it was all right. This week is going to be non-stop work too, I fear, but I plan to sneak in some stuff worth talking about. So, your weekend and your Monday were charm central, I trust? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thank you very, very kindly, my friend. I'm so sorry you're feeling poorly. Do take great care of yourself until that passes. Oh, jeez, about the delayed Andrew meeting. At this point, it almost seems like Episode 4 will be finished before #3! ** Unknown, Hi, Pascal! Thank you a lot, man. Seeing Bresson films in the cinema is massively preferable, if you ever get the opportunity, yes. Take care, buddy. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli! I'm so sorry to hear you've been sick. Was the workshop interesting? Or was it reduced to a blur by your not feeling right? I look forward to talking more when the bed is done with you. ** Kyler, Hi, Kyler. Oh, wow, I hope it was a meaningful experience. To watch 'TD,P', I mean, obviously. Curious to hear what that 'AP' music is all about. The idea is so ... unpromising. To me. ** Bill, Hi, B. Oh, Paul Clipson, yes. Lucky you to get to see the films. Was it via the Cinematheque? Thank you for the link. I'll scour it. ** Bear, Hi, Bear! Thanks a lot about the post. I only knew a little about that evolution of acting and why. That's really fascinating. Acting by candlelight is kind of an exciting idea. Has anyone contemporary tried doing that? Hm, I guess it might end up being just gimmicky, but there's beauty in the idea. Yeah, thank you for explaining that. Great about the fundraiser. Yeah, let me know about the crowdfunding thing. I'm happy to support that and get the word out however I can. From what you wrote, yeah, I can imagine that the issues you had with your collaborator/friend were probably due mostly to the doggedness she probably felt she had to maintain since directing was new to her and probably in some way felt like a vehicle she was driving and whose forward moment she had to stay concentrated on. I mean, as opposed to being a problem based in your technique. I know in my work with Gisele, the only really stressful time we had was when we were making a piece of ours called 'This Is How You Will Disappear'. It was the first time we were working with a massive set and huge technical issues. In that piece, the stage is covered by a large, dense forest, and there's this complicated, long fog sequence that has to very carefully controlled and holograms and two live trained birds on stage who had to do particular actions and so on. If you want to get an idea, here's a trailer for the piece that shows the set up. Making that piece was the only time Gisele and I had issues about anything in our work. I thought some of the texts were being delivered in a way that undercut what they were meant too do, but Gisele was so overwhelmed by trying to keep such a complex production working and moving forward that my input about that and the changes to the piece that my suggestions would have required were just too much for her to process under the circumstances. Ultimately, I love that piece, and I understand why she staged the texts like she did, but I think if the production had been simpler, she would have agreed with me, for better or worse. So, yes, it sounds like, in your case, probably a matter of stresses beyond your or her control in a way? Your thought about how people think/assume 'everything "should" work' makes a lot of sense, and is a very interesting thought. Huh. Yeah. Thank you a lot, man, for for the great explanation and the inspiriting words. I hope you have a great Monday ** Okay. I thought I would ask you to consider fountains today. Not sure why. It just seemed like an idea. Hope it pays off. See you tomorrow.

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'Brion Poloncic, a musician and author also, is deliberately withdrawn and elusive. Choosing not to participate in the artist talk, he lets his obscure statement and symbolic, abstract work speak for itself. He is at his most revealing when he writes, “following your dreams is like climbing up, hanging on, and riding the bucking bronco.” And crash landing as well, as his most forthcoming trademark cryptogram, “The Journal,” fairly screams its headline, “Schizophrenic.” True to form, as with his other pieces, the cipher for encryption remains hidden up his sleeve…….Poloncic’s world is puzzling, psychological and paradoxical, on the one hand Poloncic bares his troubled soul to the viewer only to overwhelm one with a myriad of iconic imagery and text messages virtually impossible to decipher in their mazelike patters…………..Furthermore, while Poloncic’s art in emotionally charged, it is also intellectually stimulating and aesthetically pleasing. His meticulous, almost obsessively drawn geometric and organic topography resemble pictographs with symbols both familiar and unfamiliar, especially in his “Untitled “ series of two inks on paper and his four variations of “Xanthous Mermaid Mechanics,” 1-4 which in spite of their separate iconography are united by one visual motif, a wide-eyed, open-mouthed figure in fear and pain………This image dominates Poloncic’s title piece, “Xanthous Mermaid Mechanic,” split as it were into two symbolic, blue and red extremes of the same coin or personality and a lot of stream of consciousness text including: “In space lit dimly by xanthous suns and small, sallow fireballs…but God is here now.” This is either a mixed message or a balanced one, but not so in Poloncic’s most overt piece, the aptly named “The Journal.” In this darkest work, even the banner headline “Schizo-phrenic” is split as is what may be its muse or source, the words “love-affair” which are embedded in a paisley-like flower in the center of the canvas. The artist leaves little further doubt as one of the many entries in his journal says “I read schizophrenia was a choice to take the high road. I feel it might be a low at best, terror at worst.” And perhaps a final word, “I’ve been hurt,” written to be legible when held up to a mirror, another sign of a doppelganger or double. Judging by the above, art is also a form of therapy for Poloncic, a way of keeping “it” together if not a cure-all. In “The Journal,” there is a direction for the viewer, “Enter here” but nowhere is there an exit, presumably for the artist as well.'-- Michael J. Krainak, Omaha City Weekly

'I used to philosophize about the possible realisms concerning communication of the soul, the subconscious mind, and the communal consciousness contained within my subjective experience. But, nowadays I like to keep things simple and cliché on different levels. Whereas I once thought my art transposed thought and invisible “stuff” into black line drawings, I have arrived at something simpler, where the interconnectedness , similarities, differences, contradictions, and undetected realms of nature all work together to achieve a state of perpetual harmony and resolve. I consider my art the kin of improvisational jazz and free-style rap where things ‘just happen’. But, I always arrive at the same conclusion, that life should be approached and lived with gratitude and enthusiasm.'-- Brion Poloncic








Brion Poloncic Psychedelic Everest
JEF Books

'If there isn't already a genre of writing called psychedelic realism, Brion Poloncic has created it with his book Xanthous Mermaid Mechanics. Each selection vibrates with color, spirals through experience and lands squarely in the territory between humor and madness. Madness imbues each of these pieces, yet Poloncic's view of the world seems remarkably clear-eyed. Suicide form letters, advice for the newly-diagnosed schizophrenic and an appreciation of his mother are the more straight up prose pieces. Some others read like they were channeled through some long ago beat sensibility; the language rich, evocative and rhythmic. Poloncic's book is a structural hybrid, Some pieces are short and pithy, two sentence salutes to spiritualism or an ode to a revered writer. Burroughs makes an appearance when he dictates a story through the writer's meth-charged brain. Longer pieces venture into the seamier side of the Omaha 90's music scene…blow jobs behind closed door, drug-addled debutantes slumming and transvestites turning tricks. But this is not a trip to the dark side. Humor and grace make frequent appearances and there is something sweet under the pathos, as if Poloncic wants to show us the dark, then let in the light. And, as reader, we trust him as a tour guide because his vision is so human, rings true and, at times, is so damn funny.'-- Vicki Wood, Art Move Magazine

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Excerpt

        Uh which student? Here we go and tulips and love and sweetness and doves my my the buzz gets you and lies down beneath the blankets and then here she comes again and stops in midair like a helicopter bug like you’ve never seen one. Oh my this place sure is a mess, coming in low and aloft with finesse bows and banana peels and concession stands and a morphing hoop from which nothing much comes but does not give up all the same post war mint and dollar store laundry detergent amiss a flood a Miss a dud and woops here goes the best the ephemeral the bloody smoke on which we choke fuck for heaven’s sake and not to get excited please bring me back she said at caffeine dreams and I write from them, the was a gourd I hate people when the band was travelling to Kansas City, I am exactly like, enough purpose so outside English have some control and me, enough purpose so outside, religious or philosophy class pretty cool, I loved critical thinking, oh god texture, every single dot, now generalize that fifth, and it’s like shut up but then you think of it and it’s like Jesus! I oxford, no one really understands, one fourth of the population, it’s really funny, she’s also hilarious and I’ve never read a book like that before, I get into each subject, dumb dancing are hilarious right to do and everything, quantum theory, the opposite of what you want to do. I don’t know what to do about it, people have dedicated their life to this, it’s all about being self-aware, you have no idea, it just made me laugh, not unless you are into science, I am not one percent I am not suicidal, all you do it…..i am really unsaid, I’ve decided pages stamped in quinoa and either that or can we go inside no dean faction if you like the silent teaching talk to them and I know It sounds stupid but the birds and stuff like that and I make friends and I don’t question about something, and then I have a syllabus and to be in two classes at once, and it was hard to focus on mine but she was like oh yeah we can do this and that’s what got me into the classes we take and r.B. and one and our contagion and honestly there is some…….i blanched it all too. I don’t’ want to take it so I don’t take it all and she did the math and it would be the same price if I had gone to metro. Double prospectus like 18 credit hours which I absolutely believe dissolved errrr….that’s what we don’t like if I schedule and also we have a lot. A professor and language about a girl wish I had known awe man that’s a bummer and oh that stopped everything and I know I have a schedule and so I started out, it’s nice to start out tense and a chess match or a close approximation of bad well known and bad establishment I have all the verbs. Tuesday Wednesday class and I ended out at eleven and grand slam this sucks on with the classes it’s the most wayward chuckle and they took a nap like amazon for ours. Damn girl! A lot of abilities a cycle weird to ride ok it’s not everything but your opinion is wrong science defacto a girl again she asked oh where I been and I need science needs typing question ok with all matter its boring to me and it’s a shitter but I want to adhere but I just don’t know gather anywhere what a creative train wreck ha ha ha I was gonna go inside every done that? Honestly I am not educated enough and that was gonna be my first I’m on it will not be well founded. That’s a pitchfork I’m burning Halloween like I said I am waiting if you take a big wherever you are to one guitars plus is the next one you’re welcome thank you. It’s kind of weird but it’s not this kind of awesome, oh my god are you cause I walk in oh abandon that heavy seriously it is something of the girls I think talking about what you think and laugh ha ha. I mean it’s like a grocery store it happens even not knowing ha ha politically clap snap clap laughter do you vote well not challenge the pull by the time we drop all the elements it will look like glasses look better for them am I addicted now fair enough thank you for the porpouri and a floppy daze we used to do well it’s local I just abhor a shakes plus that will be oh the vacuum is us numbers numbers a game of backgammon not if he is railed with shit like you. Where is it? That is so I think it was skier a good time for the letter bonze get the flies out of here where glad I am not charging today oh I’ll look at it lovely pardon he does look like a’s finally go home what would we need next day oh jadon beat Chicago she’s still bitchin I know an ice jockey where ride the mule and hence a starter I went to once we’re gonna do bottom drop off yeah this tom he did their shoes the story yeah feel like surfing like one shoe naw I don’t think I saw do you know that one half courier curry oh yeah feel it brakes like good job aha! Is not way wings, yeah. God. More coffee? And uh, they say didn’t have anything spray paint which is youthful which isn’t rather incite cuz beans don’t burn in the kitchen ha wow they are nine thirty thank god they are a train does he? Where is alien coup if you don’t have to work fine frightened ha ha ha is all this for real for some reason our torpedo is that all of them um yeah cody beat that then again do you like katy? That is work done we’re gonna be elated get into that but I think I guess you could say this he had a rock inside his shave what about tort you French for turtle I’m going for three could be a beer can others release like lance does, yeah responsive have they left already so you and the bitter college we haven’t grubbed their high pitched feel shadowed but nice guy they are um Macy’s you have long legs oh gosh talons fur maid that’s mine really all that smoke first day planters oh my gawd vroom oh yeah that’s right okay thank you thank you head some people ruth I’ll bet on rudiment she really admired my dad double garry tell you this four way they had such a crime are gonna be so long it takes so long. I did it once last week, I don’t really think I’m gonna need this, she’d have it out of the way, one in line to do it…dizzy is like the light and we get it right but we don’t like it often like howdy okay flipflop and the guy is like here go check first state stuck with rough diamonds a lot of amount of reason but mental a good address I make it out I knew three thousand out of nowhere well be it starts to be that was the first time I was dreaming of it I really down you make have a good night I’m out.



Brion Poloncic


Brion Poloncic




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'In "The Animal Mode of Inescapable Shock," Anne Boyer writes, "If an animal is shocked, escapably or inescapably, she will manifest deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her. If she has manifested deep reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her, she will manifest deeper reactions of attachment for whoever has shocked her and then dragged her off the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for electrified grids. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for what is not the electrified grid. Perhaps she will develop deep feelings of attachment for dragging. She may also develop deep feelings of attachment for science, laboratories, experimentation, electricity, and informative forms of torture."

'In her book-length collection of essays, A Bestiary, Lily Hoang explores this complicated relationship between abuse, attachment, affection, and autonomy. Juxtaposing fragments of the author’s personal life and other ephemera, Lily Hoang weaves together images of rats, tigers, fairy tales, a dead sister, Asian/Orientalism, time, an abusive ex-husband (a self-described anarchist who demands alimony), myth, memory, an occasionally lying, occasionally cheating lover, family etched onto the body, feminism, teaching, an addicted nephew, violence, compulsion, and one night of hedonistic pleasure with an old school friend. This structure, like Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz or The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, works best when the fragments speak to each to create a whole, something larger than the sum of its parts. Hoang’s A Bestiary accomplishes this through both subtle and clever means. ...

'As the book’s title suggests, there is no shortage of beasts in this book, both animal and human. The humans in this book treat each other badly and then try, sometimes, to do better. They struggle against addiction and their own asshattery; they feel the pull of family like thread sewn just beneath skin. They drive 500 miles to visit their lover who lies. They themselves lie. They burrow into friendships, into teaching, into fairy tale and myth. And alongside the humans, the beasts roam, both symbol and salve. Rats run mazes and press levers, tigers haunt villages, goats are both feast and sacrifice, rabbits perform cunning tricks, and in the Great Race, the pig always, always finishes last.'-- Melissa Reddish








Lily Hoang A Bestiary
Cleveland State University Press

'Rarely have I come across tenderness, venom, and fire held so intimately, so exquisitely, as in Lily Hoang’s A Bestiary. This book would be impressive enough as a collection of finely-forged fragments, but as it weaves itself into an even more impressive whole, my hat came off. Lily Hoang writes like she has nothing to lose and everything at stake.' -- Maggie Nelson

'A Bestiary is a work of great subtlety, precision, in­telligence, daring, and emotive keenness. It seems completely contemporary (by which I mean that it is unlike anything I’ve read and that it makes me want to change my own writerly procedures). With head­long, reckless, improvisatory gestures, Lily Hoang prompts us to rethink what literature today can dare to aspire to. Her intellectually magnanimous book’s position on the threshold between recognizable ‘lit­erature’ and some other vanguard form of perfor­mance/utterance made me feel happy and stimulated and dizzy (in a rapturous way) while I was reading it.'-- Wayne Koestenbaum

'The most perfect use of fragmentation, myth, lan­guage, fairytale, and terrible beauty that I have ever seen in my life. I’m swooning. My faith in what writ­ing can be has been restored.'-- Lidia Yuknavitch

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Excerpt

On My Birthday, Dragons, & Intestines

Today, I am thirty-three, the year of Christ.

My parents are devout Catholics. Before my sister is dead, she is a perfect failure of a daughter. To God, they ask: why?

My dead sister’s son puts heroin through his body. He calls it: dragon.

Because he does not remember it is my birthday, my lover says today is sarcasm day—when all of Facebook does.

My hypochondriac mother on odysseys to explain sadness, because it must be something physical. Until—her insides push outward: uncontrolled liquefied shit: while driving, in stores, not quick enough to the toilet: its stain and stink. Its embarrassment.

Cancer does not explain my mother’s sadness, but they prescribe her SSRIs all the same.

They prescribe her medicinal marijuana pills to bring appetite back, to disrupt pain. When I tell her what they are, she throws them in the trash. Drugs, she says. She says, No, both words in English, to show how bad drugs are, medical or not.

I write a story in which I list out my parents’ prescriptions—the battle of journals to publish my Asian American plight.

I disgust.

I write an essay in which I list out my prescriptions. It feels too honest, but I publish it anyways.

I am not worth a nickel of shame.

My dead sister’s son, I can’t imagine how the cessation of dragons feels, his fall.

From one map come others, centuries ago: Here there be dragons, at the edges of our flat world, but there were never any dragons.

The amount of medical marijuana I smoke daily. For me—psychiatrically—it is prescribed: legit.

Many months ago, a friend gives me a bottle of oxy. I crush them up and snort.

Many days after that, I am reading at a conference in Denver and I am rationing my lines and I remove my intestines into the toilet of my hotel room, I gather all my shakes and fevers and sweat it on out. I am a ghost. Imagine the dragons.

Is it bad that I continue to check social media, counting the well wishes for a birthday that portends death and resurrection?

My mother on the edge of the world, hardly surviving.

I remember—the shadowing of her skin, how warmth to her feels like ice—the perpetual motion machine of excuses for my absence.

I cannot handle my mother’s sickness. It is not fear of contamination. It is simple fear.

My simple fear: death—hers, but that doesn’t happen yet, instead I have a dead sister and we are all guilty.

Bhanu, writing me a letter that will one day add up to become a book, about the rape of a woman in India, her intestines mashed up with a metal pipe.

My father smokes a pipe. Daily, my mother warns him of cancer, using herself as proof.

Yesterday, an explosion. My lover texts me: an explosion. I take pictures as proof, as memory, the building was vacant, intestine intact.

Later, he says: All the other guys’ girlfriends took way better pictures. I say: I’m not your girlfriend.

I don’t say this. I’m lying. But I wish I’d spoken up, for proof that we no longer are, or maybe his mind is changed, but it isn’t—I know.

(cont.)



Lily Hoang - Fiction


Lily Hoang Reads from Changing


Delta Mouth 2012 Lily Hoang




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The Fourth River: Why do you write and for whom?

Tyehimba Jess: I used to write for political purposes strictly. I was interested in writing poems that would inspire people to take political action. That’s what “when niggas love Revolution like they love the bulls” is all about. Those poems were for black people. But you know you can’t control who reads your work.

So, after a while, I came to accept the idea that I was writing for everybody. Even when I thought I was writing for black people, not all black people agreed with what I was writing. It is difficult to say that you are writing for one particular group of people. It can limit your imagination. After a while, I was like, “OK, I am writing for the entire world.” I think that later on, it became about writing for me.

The more I write, the more I realize it is about conveying a message. My poetry is pretty clear. Generally, you know what I am writing about by the end of a poem. I try to write that way. But it is working internally, as well.

When I am doing these poems, these syncopated sonnets and all that, I think I am trying to find a way to tell two different stories in one breath. I am looking for metaphors beyond the rhetorical that link into the shape of the poem and [into] the way the poem is read on the page.

FR: Philip Larkin once wrote, “the impulse to preserve lies at the bottom of all art.” In your case, what are you preserving in your poems?

TJ: Yes, I guess I am in the business of historical preservation. There were a few things I was trying to preserve. One was Leadbelly’s legacy but also the idea of the work that the old music has done for us. When I say “us,” I mean nationally what that work has done.

That legacy continues. The thing I think about a lot is the roots of the music, particularly in regard to the African community and the African-American contribution. With this new work I am doing, it is beyond the music. It is about theater and literature as well. When you look at the intellectual property, so much of that property has been generated from the black community.

Paying homage to Leadbelly, trying to present a portrait of his life, to me, meant recalling the pain and the joy that went into making that music. It lies at the bottom of American music. So I guess I’m back where Philip Larkin was: at the bottom of his preservation.








Tyehimba Jess Olio
Wave Books

'With ambitious manipulations of poetic forms, Tyehimba Jess presents the sweat and story behind America's blues, worksongs and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. OLIO is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.'-- Wave Books

______
Excerpts

Blind Boone’s Pianola Blues

They said I wasn’t smooth enough
to beat their sharp machine.
That my style was obsolete,
that old rags had lost their gleam
and lunge. That all I had
left was a sucker punch
that couldn’t touch
their invisible piano man
with his wind up gut-
less guts of paper rolls.
And so, I went and told them
that before the night was through
I’d prove what the son of an ex-
slave could do: I dared them
to put on their most twisty
tune. To play it double-time
while I listened from another
room past the traffic sounds
of the avenue below.
To play it only once,
then to let me show
note for note how that scroll
made its roll through Chopin
or Bach or Beethoven’s best.
And if I failed to match my fingers
and ears with the spinning gears
of their invisible pneumatic piano
scholar, I’d pay them the price
of a thousand dollars.

And what was in it for Boone?
you might ask…

Might be the same thing that drives men
through mountains at heart attack pace.
Might be just to prove some tasks
ain’t meant to be neatly played
out on paper and into air,
but rather should tear
out from lung, heart and brain
with a flair of flicked wrists
and sly smile above the 88s…
and, of course, that ever-human
weight of pride that swallows us
when a thing’s done just right…
But they were eager to prove me wrong.
They chose their fastest machine
with their trickiest song and stuck it
in a room far down the hall from me.
They didn’t know how sharp
I can see with these ears of mine—
I caught every note even though
they played it in triple time.
And when I played it back to them
even faster, I could feel the violent
stares… heard one mutter
    Lucky black bastard…
and that was my cue to rise,
to take a bow in their smoldering
silence and say, Not luck,
my friend, but the science
of touch and sweat and
stubborn old toil. I’d bet
these ten fingers against any coil
of wire and parchment and pump.
And I left them there to ponder
the wonders of blindness
as I walked out the door
into the heat of the sun.


100 Times

I say “nigger” a hundred times before breakfast every morning just to keep my teeth white.
–Paul Mooney, Comedian

Of course, I was skeptical, but because there’s often wisdom in the hardest humor, I stood before the mirror one sunrise and began my morning chant. All repeated calmly for the first week, but with flavors added on as the regimen continued into the second. 50 with er and 50 with a. 1/4 as question, 1/4 as surprise, 1/4 as anger, 1/4 implying the complaining “please.” All alternately whispered, shouted, laughed, snarled—all in search of the ideal whitening formula. After four weeks I remained skeptical. However, perseverance paid off by the sixth, when colleagues remarked on my brightened, hazeless smile, when friends alerted me to a steely glint in my grin.

I doubled the regimen to maximize results. Week eight saw a 2/3 increase in brightening, with a luminousness approaching diamond quality, particularly in the lower incisors. The uppers were sun white, never leaving room in their shine for shadow. Side effects became audible as well as visual: a small echo became perceptible after each repetition in my mantra, such that the cadence assumed a wondrous worksong rhythm. Upon closer examination, magnifying mirrors revealed one (1) small, brown man peering into the side of each tooth’s mirror-smooth enamel, each one appearing only briefly before each utterance. Alarmed but intrigued, I enhanced my treatment. Various gesticulations were added to the morning litany. Sneers, chuckles, sighs, and facial contortions were enhanced throughout. As a result, the echo’s intensity increased from slight windy whisper to low murmur, to small and steady chorus each morning, a daily affirmation of my will to shine. A halogen glare burned from my mouth throughout the day. I’ve become a walking lighthouse of shine—the ritual has grown above and beyond and through me. I wake each morning to stand before my mirror, and before I open my mouth I hear the chant begin above and around me, as if I were in the middle of the mantra’s core, as if I’m one in a circle of prayer. I’ve found others who hear the chant with me, or they’ve found me, those who rise up with me each morning to stand before our mirrors with the diamond-sharp sound of ourselves polishing each tooth until we gleam—our number grows daily. We shimmer and shine inside the bulging head of our chant, polishing our glowing mirrors, staring into the glare until we shield our eyes.



Tyehimba Jess - Syncopated Sonnets


Tyehimba Jess reads "Another Man Done"


Tyehimba Jess, “Against Silence”




________________




'Nineteen provocative fictions and docufictions comprise Death Café. Each narrative is independent of the other yet connected thematically by what perhaps can be described as “daring not to avert one’s eyes from the unjustified pain and sorrow that populate the globe.” Jaffe’s work examines, through different eyes, eyes of the other—the oppressed, the marginalized, the mad, the inevitable—until the examining seamlessly gives way to inhabiting. This ideality is underscored in “Inhabit,” a multiple-discourse docufiction that explores the deeper aspects of suffering as the narrator seeks to inhabit crucial moments during the lives and deaths of individuals who have made artistic, loving, even ugly impacts on the world. In one section, the narrator inhabits the nearly failed suicide of the “Maladroit when not masterful” Vincent Van Gogh and recalls Artaud’s words, “Suicided by society.” He dwells in the deathbed moments of the Aldous Huxley and later Blake with his beloved Catherine. When interrogated as to whether he wishes to inhabit Theo Van Gogh—the great-great grandson of Vincent’s brother—filmmaker, racist xenophobe, who is murdered and martyred, the narrator replies simply, “No.” Later he concedes that while Vincent would not wish for a descendant like Theo, he would understand. “The world moves forward and back. Proceeds by oppositions.” ...

'In the docufiction “Stockholm Syndrome,” Jaffe draws on the reported account of Wolfgang Priklopil who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl in Austria, held her captive for eight years, and eventually committed suicide when at age 18 she escaped. Afterward, the girl says of her captor that he “was a part of her life and ‘in a certain way’ she mourned his suicide.” Further, we learn that she wept inconsolably when she was informed he had killed himself. As the narrator interrogates the story, the girl expresses that she does not feel that Priklopil robbed her of her childhood, “I don’t have the feeling I missed something important. As far as I can see, children are robbed of their childhood one way or another.” Later, alone, she pays her respects at the morgue before his burial and lights a candle for him.

'With just a subtle massaging of emphasis, Jaffe manages to expose the hidden assumption in the original reporting—the girl is better off back with her society. But with her conflicted thoughts carefully articulated in Jaffe’s treated text, along with the egocentricity of the so-called authorities, the barrage of media attention, her dysfunctional family and the pointed reminders of the historical complexity of her society, the reader cannot help but wonder to what degree that assumption is valid.'-- Susan Grace, Autre








Harold Jaffe Death Café
Anti-Oedipus Press

'Death Café resumes and refines Harold Jaffe’s ongoing anatomy of the world in pain. Featuring 19 innovative fictions and docufictions set in Africa, Europe, China, India, the Middle East, and the benighted US, the collection addresses issues of global warming, political defiance, committed art-making, dream space, and speculative discourse. As always, Jaffe works his literary voodoo in variable tonalities that are uncannily formulated, displaying unequal doses of razor-edged satire and compassion.'-- AOP

_____
Excerpt

Stockholm Syndrome

An Austrian teenager held captive for eight years in a dungeon-like room on the outskirts of Vienna says her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, was part of her life and “in a certain way” she mourned his suicide.
    Eighteen-year-old Krista Ludwig is reported to have wept inconsolably when told that Priklopil killed himself.
    After Krista Ludwig made her escape on Wednesday, Priklopil, 44, threw himself under a commercial train traveling east to Bucharest. The train was delivering electronic hardware and pigs for slaughter.
    Krista Ludwig said she sympathized with Priklopil’s 89-year-old mother and planned to telephone her. (Priklopil’s mother is suffering from dementia and subsists in a nursing home near Graz, the “second city” of Austria, where the steroidal, gap-toothed governor-action star of California, Schwarzenegger, was birthed).
    Krista Ludwig, said to be pale and trembling and to weigh just 42kg, less than she did as a 10-year-old, managed to flee her abductor after he sidled away to take a call on his mobile phone as she vacuumed his car, a 2003 white Audi sedan, in the driveway of the abduct house.
    The time was three-fourteen pm, on a Wednesday, precisely eight years to the day and very close to the precise time that she had been kidnapped on her way to school.
    Did Krista Ludwig realize it was exactly eight years to the day and hour since she was taken captive?
    “No.”
    Why then did she choose that very moment to attempt to escape?
    “I was ready to leave so I left.”
    Now 18, Krista Ludwig insists that communications technician Wolfgang Priklopil had not robbed her of her childhood.
    “I don’t have the feeling I missed something important. As far as I can see, children are robbed of their childhood one way or another.”
    Krista Ludwig said her lengthy abduction actually spared her bad habits such as smoking, drinking to excess, injecting heroin or speed, snorting cocaine, playing video games, and having “false friends”.
    What was a typical day like with Wolfgang Priklopil?
    Between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m., Krista Ludwig and her abductor, who usually did not go to work, she said, would have breakfast, a sweet roll and coffee with heavy cream, or schlag.
    The rest of the day Krista Ludwig would spend doing housework, reading, talking, cooking.
    “That was it for years. Everything tied to the fear of being alone.”
    If she was fearful of being alone why didn’t she attempt to escape sooner?
    “It would be the same somewhere else.”
    Nor was it clear from Krista Ludwig’s statement whether by “housework,” she referred to working in her room or elsewhere in the large ramshackle house.
    What did she and her abductor talk about?
    “Different things. I am not prepared to go into details.”
    What did she read?
    “Greek and Nordic myths, anthropology. The great god Zeus abducted virgins.”
    Was Wolfgang Priklopil a version of Zeus?
    “No. He was not my lord and master. I was just as strong. Perhaps stronger.”
    She used an Austrian expression to indicate that at times Priklopil treated her tenderly, but at other times cruelly.
    “He carried me in his arms but also trampled me underfoot.”
    Investigators have been trying to determine whether Priklopil had an accomplice, based on a 14-year-old boy’s account at the time of the kidnapping that he saw two men drag young Krista Ludwig into a white Mercedes van.
    But Krista Ludwig insisted that Prikopil acted alone. Moreover there was a later report that the 14-year-old boy was hyped up on coffee with schlag when he gave his account.
    Priklopil “carried out the kidnapping himself. Everything was prepared,” Krista Ludwig said, adding that they then “decorated” her room together.
    Photos released by police show the underground hiding place in Prikopil’s gabled, two-story wood house in Strasshof village outside Vienna, where he kept young Krista Ludwig: a small, cluttered, windowless room with washbasin, “squat toilet,” cot, cupboards and narrow concrete stairs leading up to a trapdoor.
    No “decorations” are visible.
    Because blueprints to the house were unavailable, investigators could not say for certain whether there were any other hidden compartments, dungeons or cells.
    In her statement, read by flamboyant Viennese psychoanalyst Max Friedrich, who has been “treating” her, Krista Ludwig urged the media to respect her privacy.
    “Everyone wants to ask intimate questions, but they don’t concern anyone,” she said via Max Friedrich.
    She felt well, she said via Max Friedrich, if “maybe a bit patronized” at the location where she was currently held, and she appealed for more respect from the media.
    The location was described by police as a secure institutional space with “carers” under the supervision of Max Friedrich.
    Max Friedrich, with his unruly leonine grey head, wraparound mirror shades, corncob pipe, and unsteady, stiff-legged gait, cautioned the media to show restraint, insisting Krista Ludwig was severely traumatized and the intense media coverage was capable of victimizing her all over again.
    Krista Ludwig’s parents, who separated after her abduction eight years before, complained that they had not been told where she was being held.
    “Why can I not see my child?,” her mother, Birgit Dieskau, pleaded in a Sunday supplement newspaper interview
    Max Friedrich confirmed that Krista Ludwig did not wish to see her parents again after their brief reunion. “Nor is that unusual under these extraordinary circumstances.”
    Regarding what actually transpired between Krista Ludwig and her middle-aged abductor beyond the housecleaning, unspecified conversation, and consumption of sweet rolls and coffee mit schlag, the young woman refused to say.
    After spending the first years locked in the dungeon-like room, which Priklopil had furnished with toys, books, magazines, and chewing gum, but neither television nor computer, Krista Ludwig was, she confided, via Max Friedrich, allowed to make occasional, brief, unaccompanied outings to the village.
    Police are trying to determine if Krista Ludwig had a sexual relationship with her captor. And if so, the nature of the sexuality. If it was sadomasochistic, as suspected, then how far did it go, and were the roles steadfast or did they alternate?
    She said, “Perhaps I will tell Dr. Friedrich one day or someone else. Perhaps I will never tell. The intimacy only belongs to me.”
    A police photo of kidnap suspect Wolfgang Priklopil was presented at a news conference in Vienna. Smooth face with arched brows, a widow’s peak, and a small fleshy mouth, he bore some resemblance to the pious, silver-tongued former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
    Meanwhile it has been confirmed that Wolfgang Priklopil (what remained of him after he threw himself under the train) was buried secretly under a false name. The secret burial was to deter vandals, officials explained.
    There were just two mourners not including Krista Ludwig. She paid her respects alone at the morgue the day before the burial and lit a single candle. Only Priklopil’s mother (severely demented and in a wheelchair) and a former business partner’s sister, “legally blind,” were at the unspecified gravesite.
    The ceremony lasted seven minutes, Austrian radio said. No priest was in attendance and nine-and-a-half policemen stood guard.
    According to Max Friedrich’s diagnosis, Krista Ludwig suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological condition in which long-held captives begin to identify with their captors.
    The American heiress Patty Hearst was arguably the most famous contemporary example of Stockholm Syndrome after her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early ‘70s.
    After extensive cosmetic surgery and long hours of psychological debriefing, Hearst recovered and resumed her life as a self-consumed billionaire heiress.
    Police Major General Gerhard Haeckel, of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau, said investigators are continuing to follow up on “every lead” in the case, which until last week was Austria’s second greatest mystery.
     The greatest Austrian mystery of course is how a homely, ill-educated vegetarian dog-lover with a comical Chaplain mustache became the most charismatic genocider of the 20th century.



Harold Jaffe: "Anti-Twitter" | Talks at Google




*

p.s. Hey. ** H, Hi. 'Model of Oblivion' ... oh, yes, cool. I actually had forgotten about Sedgwick's employment of 'fountain', but yes, that's a great bonus. My Monday was swamped with work on the TV series script. That is my lot in life until at least the weekend, I think. A couple of possible screening for Zac's and my film 'LCTG' arose yesterday, so I started those pursuits. I was pretty home- and computer-bound. How was yours? I don't know Ranciere's 'The Intervals of Cinema', but your description and recommendation are enough to get me chasing it, so I will start looking today. Thank you so much for that tip! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, and I especially like his color. Oh, Tim Parks. I like his writing/thinking. I'll read that asap. Thank you, D. ** Jamie McMorrow, Bon Mardi, Jamie! Yeah, is that fountain cheesy? Maybe. I like it too. Maybe being a big fireworks fan -- me too and, in fact, I've got a fireworks post coming up soon for folks like you and me -- helps. I would say my ultra-busyness is good. Well, if ARTE doesn't end up wanting our TV series, I might look back on the busyness differently, I guess. Was that Stephen lecture the RedBull one he did in Paris recently? I was there. That was excellent. Sorry about the slowness of the vocal recording, but what's that whole thing about the tortoise and the hare? I can't remember, but I think the tortoise wins. I'll go google search Louis Michel Eilshemius. Awesome. Did the exhibition live up? It's still wintery here, yay. Have a most fine, fine day, Love, me. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! I will, by hook or by crook. It's the kind of English language book that shouldn't be too hard to find in the couple of English bookstores here. It's interesting how when you imagine a relationship it's so ... I don't know, wow, but they're always unpredictable. Another feather in the imagination's cap. Great, great about the meeting with your writer friend. Did your writing and scrapbook work end up excitingly? I'm glad you liked the post, and thank for noting your interesting favorites. My favorites? If I had to choose, let's see ... Charles Ray's 'Ink Line' is one of my favorite artworks, so that one, obviously. I saw Olafur Eliasson's 'Big Bang' in the real, and the videos don't catch how mind-blowing it is in person. And I do like 'Model of Oblivion'. All that red. Thanks about the script. It's a brain-drain, but I guess most good things are, right? Well, maybe not most, ha ha. Have a lovely Tuesday! What happened? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. This Thursday ... okay. Fingers crossed. And its splendidness is all that really matters. I like that Portishead cover. I'm surprised because I think 'S.O.S' is sublime in the original version, but they managed to fool with it very well. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Very curious to hear what you think of 'High Rise'. It's still not in France. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Thanks, man. Oh, I see. The workshop does sound super interesting and super taxing simultaneously. 'The Big Moment' is a strange decision re: the title. Much, much less intriguing, in English at least. Four of my books are going to be published in Germany in the new few years, and I'm curious what the titles will become. Hopefully not something like 'The Big Moment'. Have an excellent day! ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! Yeah, the Hein's cool twist is so slight that it's maximal or something. Thanks for going back over the posts. The Anger is ' Eaux d'Artifice'. _B_A linked to it in the comments somewhere if you want a quick fix. Yes, the Leslie Thornton Day its launching tomorrow, in fact. Interesting installation of that film. In her gallery work, she's been working with the circular lately. Shit, sorry that the link didn't work. Here's a link to a brief, not fantastic video showing quick looks at a few of the circle/pair pieces. Thanks a bunch, Marc! Love, Dennis ** Misanthrope, Hi, George, I think your (gloriously) weird mind can find the weird (and glorious) in anything, that's what I think. I think that eternally peeing fountain person would be difficult to pull off technically, but that's only a reason to attempt it. Maybe that's what you can do with your Noah Matous slave or whatever his name is. I'm busy too, man. Whew. High, crampy five. I light the wrong end of a cigarette probably every day. Man, not a good taste. Whoever those guys are who told you you're ugly are way ugly total stink-faces, guaranteed. LPS is the fucking man! Go-go-go! Your mom sounds kind of wise. ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, Alistair! Tuesday is gonna be a bit too work-y for my taste but you know that goes. Windy Venice! That a beautiful image. Windy LA in general! There's something about LA that makes it seem very mystical when it's windy. How's stuff? Any news from your agent or anything? Big love to you and to Tim too! ** Kyler, Hi, K. Ah, a review. Visually dazzling is good. Funny is good. Huh, okay. It's hard to imagine I'll ever see it unless it comes to Paris, which I suppose it might. I'll test out that song in the video to start. Thanks a bunch, Kyler. ** Alan, Hi, Alan! Very good to see you, my friend! Thank you for alerting me to that comment. I would never have seen it. I wonder how I can answer him. Hm, I'll go find the comment and see if his profile has any contact info or something. Thank you very much, man. How are you? ** Right. There are yet four more books I read and loved in recent times for those of you who are looking for things to read and find yourself intrigued by my squib-like portrayals of them. Have at it. See you tomorrow.

'Leslie Thornton has long been considered a pioneer of contemporary media aesthetics, working at the borders and limits of cinema, video and digital media. Such seminal works as her ongoing series Peggy and Fred in Hell (1985- ) operate in the interstices between various media-forms, often using simultaneous, interacting projections of film and video to address both the architectural spaces of media, and the imaginary spaces of the spectator’s involvement. Thornton uses the process of production as an explorative process, a collective endeavor “position(ing) the viewer as an active reader, not a consumer.” She is a contemporary of such fellow explorers as Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Gary Hill, Michael Snow, Alan Sondheim and Harun Farocki, all artists who are opening up new spaces for media, re-mapping its boundaries within the projective spaces of the museum or gallery as well as within the public spaces of the cinema, television and internet transmission. Thornton’s career to date has been a unique and unusual one. She was one of the first artists to bridge the boundaries between cinema and video, to explore their complicities and resistances, and to embrace their differences as positive, and even complementary, attributes. Thornton’s complex articulations are both edifying innovations in media form and content and tacit deconstructions of the principles, presumptions and promises of technically reproducible artworks. Her projects are ongoing and provisional, and she had been unafraid to return to, and rework, and rethink, issues, topics, subjects. Her works have had a profound impact, and an enduring influence on an entire generation of media artists, critics and theorists.

'"Her work found its first location, and inspiration, in what in those times was understood as an ‘avant-garde’ film practice; the quoted term, suspiciously suspended, is rarely invoked in these times, but the rigor, the pure oppositional avowal, and the belief in moving imagery’s electro-shock potential evinced in her work insist on its essence and instincts to be one with those of what now seems undeniable as the classical genius of, first, American, and second, transnational, non-industrial cinema, in the questioning, ransacking mode familiar since having filled one of the spaces left vacant (gaping) after modernism moved away from here."-- Bill Horrigan

'One of Leslie Thornton’s earliest interests was mathematics, a fascination that was encouraged by her father Gunnar Thornton, a nuclear physicist and engineer, and her grandfather, an electrical engineer. During the Second World War both men had–unbeknownst to each other–worked on the Manhattan Project, the top secret development of the atomic bomb. Gunnar Thornton was one of the youngest scientists working on the project. He had determined, while still a student, that an important new frontier in scientific research was probably well underway, and that it would be his chosen area of research. His professors at Harvard were evasive or noncommittal, but inference and persistence paid off, and Gunnar Thornton was brought into the project early on. His father, Jens Thornton, was the electrical engineer whose task had been to design the electrical plant at Oak Ridge where the methods of refining radioactive materials were developed. It wasn’t until after the cessation of hostilities that the men discovered–through an article in a local Boston newspaper–that they had both been working on the Manhattan Project. “I had always wondered,” remarked a family member, “why, for a couple of years, these two men, who were so passionately involved in science, only talked to each other about sports when they were home, a topic they weren’t even very much interested in.”

'Perhaps it is within this context that, even as a child, Leslie Thornton began to develop certain insights regarding technology and ethics, language and silence, and a sensitivity and attentiveness to the contradictions, ironies, and ambivalences between localized actions and global events. How was it possible to reconcile the brilliant, gentle man she loved and admired with the revelation of the consequences that ensued in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Both images are true: he, Gunnar, was a man of character and ethics, who believed in the peaceful development of atomic energy, yet whose work had played a role in the shaping of an anxious and dangerous future. Thornton’s dark and magisterial Peggy and Fred in Hell, in its strange divarications between promissory terror and transcendence, might be read as a profound examination of the tropologies of cold-war apocalyptics, the vicissitudes of conflicting narratives, and what one might call a certain paratactics of the image. Peggy and Fred in Hell charts a troubled trajectory between event and mediation, with a profound skepticism throughout concerning the favored foregroundings of technical modernity: photography’s verisimilitude and the index of the photo-chemical trace as guarantor of the real, the consequent presumption of a privileged link to the true and actual, and the promise of recuperability through ever-extenuating forms of technical reproducibility. She finds suspect the naturalization of prosthetic instruments, and the political interests behind certain orders of narratological closure. Thornton has an almost tragic sense of loss, of what is incommensurate in technologies of the image, of the impossibilities and aporias circumscribed by language and in media, a sense of what is profoundly irrecuperable and inconsumable. And a very strange relation to cinema, its histories and practices.

'Recently Thornton has begun making larger scale installations related to Peggy and Fred in Hell, which she refers to as “environments.” Utilizing fragments from already accomplished sections of this work, mixed with newly produced sections from the 30 hours of archived footage she has shot, and with new or found footage, she has constructed a series of site-specific works. Using multiple screens and transmissions, they are a natural development of Peggy and Fred in Hell, which used simultaneous interacting film video and audio projections, which forgrounded their habitation of specific spaces. In these recent media installations she uses three registers (precisely edited loops of differing durations) which are ‘mixed,’ almost as one would music, producing a resonant three-month-long para-narrative work. The different loops are precisely edited and set to play in a randomized phase pattern so that no repetitions occur between the three registers of images on screen over the course of their exhibition, producing a tacitly self-editing work, an ‘artificial intelligence’ allegorizing itself.

'Thornton’s exploration of an intermittent episodic structure in Peggy and Fred in Hell, in her site-specific installations, and in The Great Invisible are, in an important sense, one of the most direct articulations of the problematics of media’s artifactuality in confrontation with its forms of transmission, dissemination and distribution. Media’s strange economies, reflecting a globalized and dispersed data-space far different from the traditional projective/consumptive spaces of cinema and television, become an integral axis of Thornton’s formal and conceptual working. Her works are variable, ‘mixed’ and dispersed across time, they punctuate a given architectural space or context, they are permeable and plural, stable within their instabilities. In this they reflect, and engage, a deep substrate of media, one which has always been the case, and which has always been suppressed: that technical reproducibility in and of itself, is both uncontainable and uncontaining, and that, moreover, it becomes, in itself, a structuring principle of subsequent media. As Leslie Thornton is well aware, this does not abnegate what of the world passes through mediation, but inflects and reflects upon that passage in fundamental ways. In this sense her works are also a tacit and critical link between both contemporary digital dataspaces and the tradition of formal, technical, aesthetic, and theoretical innovation within and between media.'-- Thomas Zummer



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Stills










































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Further

Leslie Thornton @ Senses of Cinema
Leslie Thornton @ Video Data Bank
Video: Leslie Thornton works @ Crane.tv
'Hell Is for Children: ED HALTER ON LESLIE THORNTON’S PEGGY AND FRED IN HELL'
Leslie Thornton's films on Ubuweb
'The Kaleidoscopic Visions of Leslie Thornton'
'Leslie Thornton by Feliz Lucia Molina'
'ARTIST IN FOCUS: Leslie Thornton'
Leslie Thornton's movies on MUBI
'Leslie Thornton. Aesthetics of uncertainty'
Leslie Thornton @ Strictly Film School
'Constant Discovery: Leslie Thornton’s ‘Radical Symmetry’'
'horror film 1: shanghai blue', by Leslie Thornton
'For the Hell of It'
'Worn Story', by Leslie Thornton



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Extras


Leslie Thornton. Looking and Seeing: "I Like to Watch". 2012


Midnight Moment May 2014: Leslie Thornton, Binocular Menagerie


Serpentine Galleries Park Nights 2013: Leslie Thornton & James Richards


Cognac Wellerlane interviews Artist Leslie Thornton at Winkleman Gallery



_____
Interview




Irene Borger: I’ll begin with a quote from you, Leslie. “My own interest is in the outer edge of narrative where we are at the beginning of something else.” What led you, at this time as an art maker, to de-stabilize the narrative?

Leslie Thornton: That grew out of a kind of dislocation for me. The way language works has been a life-long preoccupation, starting in childhood when I was painfully shy and had trouble speaking. The kind of extreme self-focus of shyness, the kind of analysis and appraisal that is nearly constant, and in a way objectifies language, even for a child. Language is something outside. Speech was like an object, an enemy, a barrier. It was externalized. Language was overwhelming, inadequate to describe or convey many things – I had a basic sense of this in childhood. Much later, when I began to study linguistics and also semiotics, I found an intellectualization of something I had already been struggling with – the point being that I didn’t get there through a predominantly intellectual process. Then came more complicated questions about culture and language, how culture is embedded in language. Which led – it’s not a linear process exactly – to concerns about the dynamic nature of any one culture and cultural proximities and crossing-over, change. I think my own estrangement from speech has very much shaped all of my work, and may account for some of its qualities, because it’s deeply rooted emotionally for me.

IB: I’m stuck on this phrase: “to de-stabilize the narrative”. To even question form in the way that you’re interested in is unnerving because it questions a core of the way we learn to think. The reason that [divergence] is so threatening to people is because it doesn’t operate according to the conventional structures or habits of the mind.

LT: Yes, culture as narrative. The mind as narrative. Narrative reflects specific cultural presumptions. Recognizing that, one can’t help but think: then there must be other possibilities for narrative – reflecting other times and places and agendas, past, present, and future. I’m not capable of an involvement in the dominant forms of narrative in cinema, for instance. To study, it feels oppressive and limiting. I choose to be engaged on another, perhaps more critical and intuitive side. But on this other side, there’s a potential for ecstasy that I don’t think you find in conventional forms.

IB: Why is it that ecstasy becomes possible?

LT: It is probably the case that thought is largely structured like language. But, there is a kind of thinking outside of language that can surface sometimes, especially in art-making, probably in a lot of other arenas as well. Intangible, erotic, intuitive, pre-verbal, but precise. Those moments are extremely pleasurable, frightening, or stimulating.

I’ve been reading and thinking about mysticism lately, because of the film I’m working on, The Great Invisible (2002) [about a 19th century woman, Isabelle Eberhardt, who passes herself off as a man and becomes an exalted Sufi in North Africa]. Every form of mystical practice involves techniques for reaching an ecstatic state. However, couched in religious or philosophical terminology, the process is usually body-related and could involve exhaustion, a lot of repetition, a lot of movement, and music or rhythms. One’s physical and psychic environment becomes de-familiarized. I think I use a related strategy in film to produce a heightened experience. I will work with a familiar trope like suspense, or anticipation, and then just keep pushing that button, without the expected next step or resolution. There is a familiar residue of narrative form. The exciting part is then bringing in other elements that aren’t familiar at all but that are saturating to the viewer.

IB: Like what?

LT: Illogical things, mispronunciations, peculiar combinations of sound and image that are somehow startling, excessive beauty. Working with duration that seems inappropriate. The viewer has to deal with it; it stimulates the mind to cope with boredom, for instance. Generally, in culture these discomforts, stimulations, are blocked out; they are not speakable, packageable, or they are disruptive. The closest to transcendence that we get in pop culture might be violence, the lust for violence.

IB: There are many roots into trance-making but there are two poles, even in meditation practice. One is a saturation, the other is the ascetic. In our culture, you seem to be saying, we just use the mode of over-stimulation.

LT: Probably there are similar things going cognitively at either extreme. I’m interested in boredom. My interest comes out of the experience of the most hardcore structuralist films from the ’60s and ’70s. I think these films often produced profound boredom, which forced you somewhere else. None of the artists or critics would ever say that [laughter] but in a way, watching three hours of the camera whirling around in a barren landscape, as in Snow’s La Règion centrale (1971), you have a profound response, if you commit to stay. You feel you’ve had a life-changing experience. A voluntary experience of boredom. The mind becomes very active. All kinds of images and scenarios begin to play. I think of John Cage too.

IB: I was just thinking of him.

LT: There’s a kind of mystical aspect to this.

IB: Are you saying that in your way of making films you’re very conscious of the experiential aspect for the spectator?

LT: I think that’s my main focus. And, as the stand-in spectator, I have to judge by the intensity of my own responses. It’s a thinking and feeling moment, where the thinking and the feeling – we don’t have a word for it – when they can’t be separated. That’s the moment I’m always looking for. It’s not something that comes back to rational formations or very focused arguments or ideas. It’s about a spreading out, spreading and coagulations, chemical reactions in the work that can produce surprising moments and thoughts for the viewer. It’s also important for me that the work not just be addressed to an “enlightened” or experienced audience. I’m trying to make things that are stimulating to watch at the same time that a critical voice is operating.

IB: If people are not used to looking at structures that differ from the beginning/middle/end of the classical Aristotelian scheme, how could they learn to enter your work?

LT: Seeing things more than once helps. Seeing that there is a kind of pattern or structure across several works. Talking about it. Relaxing. Often the people who are having the most difficulty are my colleagues, and not, let’s say, an audience off the street.

IB: Why?

LT: Conflicting agendas or aesthetics. The crowd that bothers me is the visual artists, the art people who don’t get into this kind of work and say they watch films for entertainment only. And the fine arts system that supports one-liner video installations, but can’t deal with anything more complex. Avant-garde film and video take up similar issues to those in the art world, yet there’s very little acknowledgement of this. The film or video work can be more sophisticated, more developed conceptually, yet media remains the most marginalized of the art forms. It’s an orphan. Because media is associated with entertainment and information systems, it’s not perceived as a formal artistic medium. The apparatus per se is limited by the conventions for its use. Photography went through this stage in the 19th century. Experimental media belongs within the history of art. Photographers fought for recognition. I think media artists haven’t done enough to try to change the system, but they are up against something huge. And now the preoccupation with “new” technologies – that has really become the bandwagon. It will take a long time to sort out what’s of value here.



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8 of Leslie Thornton's 37 films

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X-TRACTS (1975)
'This was my first 16mm film, made with Desmond Horsfield. For the image we created a gridded score of movements, both within the frame ('subject moves right to left') and between the camera and the subject (zooms, pans, tilts...,) using this as a shooting script. The sound was derived from an old journal, read out loud and then cut-up into the same units of time as the image, ranging from 3 seconds to 1/4 second. Assembling the material was largely mechanical, following the predetermined score. That a tonal portrait of a person emerges was an after effect; we thought of the film as a structural or indexical system of sound/image relations, and viewed the soundtrack as a linguistic experiment, working with the building blocks of speech.'-- LT




(Watch the entire film)



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Adynata (1983)
'A formal 1861 portrait of a Chinese Mandarin and his wife is the starting point for this allegorical investigation of the fantasies spawned in the West about the East, particularly that which associates femininity with the mysterious Orient. ADYNATA presents a series of oppositions-male and female images, past and present sounds-which in and of themselves construct a minimal and fragmentary narrative, an open text of our imaginations, fears and fantasies.'-- Women Make Movies



the entire film



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Peggy and Fred in Hell: The Prologue (1985)
'Peggy And Fred In Hell is one of the strangest cinematic artifacts of the last 20 years, revealing the abuses of history and innocence in the face of catastrophe, as it chronicles two small children journeying through a post-apocalyptic landscape to create their own world. Breaking genre restrictions, Thornton uses improvisation, planted quotes, archival footage and formless timeframes to confront the viewer's preconceptions of cause and effect. "At its most distinctive, as in the endless and eternal Peggy And Fred In Hell cycle, Thornton’s work wanders past the medium’s limits and finds the medium’s origins.” —Bill Horrigan, Wexner Center'-- collaged



Excerpt



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Dung Smoke Enters the Palace (1989)
'An anti-narrative adventure traveling through a phantasmagoric environment void of stability. The video presents a bizarre compendium of archival and industrial footage accompanied by a noisy soundtrack of music and voices from the past, as if echoing the ether of the viewer’s mind. Thornton’s distinctive visual style of collaging random elements elicits an eerie sense of being lost amidst past and present, breeding a confusion that complicates any clear reading of the image.'-- Video Data Bank




(Watch an excerpt here)



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Strange Space (1994)
'Thornton asks viewers to question how one sees “space"—whether literally or figuratively— and what is being revealed? Images of a sonogram session grant viewers access to what is typically reserved for medical analysis—“inner space.” The body, probed and revealed through technology, is collaged with imagery from lunar probes, drawing parallels with how technology also allows us to see where we were previously unable—“outer space.” A poem by Rilke about the interior quality of thought is contrasted with the clinical voice accompanying the images.'-- Video Data Bank




(Watch an excerpt here)



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The Last Time I Saw Ron (1994)
'Made in memory of the actor and my friend, Ron Vawter. Ron passed away shortly after the opening performances of the play "Philoktetes Variations," directed by Jan Ritsema and co-authored by Ritsema and Vawter. It was produced by the Kaaitheater in Brussels. All of the images in this video were originally created for the play.'-- LT



the entire film



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Photography Is Easy (2010)
'In the ongoing project Photography is Easy, Thornton continues her investigation of the production of meaning through media such as photography, film and video. Thornton and a companion are seen hiking through a desert, photographing and recording the journey. Shots of desert landscapes are overlaid with the artist’s running commentary and text about Thornton’s experience of making a photograph. Questioning the value of the rarified image, Thornton investigates the porous boundaries between the still and the moving image.'-- Electronic Arts Intermix



the entire film



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LUNA Trance (2013)
'"Coined the “Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn,” the legendary Parachute Jump at Coney Island was built in 1939 for the World’s Fair in Queens. In a moving image triptych exploring nature and technology, memory and place, Thornton follows swarming seagulls through three iterations of the same image to her imaginary space—a whole new universe, she’s said, that’s much different from the world we live in." - Artsy. LUNA is based on a single image of the decommissioned Parachute Jump in Coney Island, with seagulls swarming the structure. The iconic image is digitally re-processed to embody different eras of cinematic and televisual imagery, beginning in 1900 and leading into our present. The artifice of the digital image is accompanied, haunted, by actual (authentic) archival sound recordings spanning the same period, beginning with early Edison recordings. LUNA moves through six variations on a theme, in poetic traces that cross the span of a century.'-- collaged



Excerpt




*

p.s. Hey. ** ASH, Hey there, Ash! It's great to see you, man! Oh, very cool that you'll come to the 'LCTG' screening in Brighton. Zac and I will be there to introduce the film and do a q&a and stuff. I figured you would have done Euroheedfest before. Huh. Yeah, every year I'm dying to go, and circumstances always conspire against that, it sucks. Yeah, I'll try to pre-plan for next year. The new GbV? I've only listened to it once so far because I'm over my head with work, but I think it's really exciting. What do you think? Awesome to get to talk, pal. ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Glaswegian! Parisian here. I think it might just be the tiniest bit less wintry today, but it's too early to tell. My Tuesday was work, work, and more work. Heavy crunch time. That and meeting with Zac to work together for a while was it. Productive, at least. Well, we have to turn in the finished proposal to ARTE at the beginning of May. Then they will take six weeks to decide if they want to go further with us. So, there'll be a lag after the submission. Yeah, it would be really great if they buy it for all kinds of reasons. I think it's pretty fucking good, if I don't say so myself, but I have no clue what TV people think is pretty fucking good. Our thing is weird and unusual-ish, but it's pretty entertaining and not obscure or transgressive or anything. Harold Jaffe is an interesting writer, yeah. His stuff is really flat and factual seeming on the surface, but it's complicated inside. It's good. I think springing for that book is probably a good deal. I haven't read 'Down and Out in Shoreditch and Hoxton', and I need to. Oh, I've liked things by Sheila Heti. I don't that one though. Wait, you got that job? Whoa, that's cool. So, will you need to relocate for it? Awesome, congrats! Really interesting about Eilshemius. I didn't get a chance to investigate him yet due to the work swamp. I definitely will. My Wednesday is going to be basically like yesterday but with a different name, but I hope yours holds unexpected fun. Love, Dennis. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Eileen is everywhere these days. She's such a star. That's so deserved and awesome. You guys are going to be scattered at sea route? I still have this weird wanting to be buried thing, I don't know why. Good morning back to you, sir! ** Sypha, Hi, James! Good to see you, man. I missed you. But it sounds like you were very fruitfully occupied. Very excited to hear the new album. So curious to hear what your current music making interests are. Great! Obviously, I'm happy you're liking the Gide. Like you know, that book was very big for me when I read it. Celine is really great, and there kind of couldn't be an any more different a kind of writer from Gide than him, which is cool and also a terribly constructed sentence. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, D! I don't know how those things work either, and I've had a whole life of trying to figure that out. I guess they're just ... (cue moody music) ... one of life's great mysteries. Diary-like sounds good. Diary-like is cool because it can be cool for what it is and it can also be like storage room full of stuff you can use for something less diaristic work later. If that makes sense. I'm think that joining the 'thesis delaying' group must be a little relaxing for you at least. No, my day was stuffed with work. As will be today. Oh well. Tomorrow an old friend of mine from LA comes to Paris, so at least I'll get to be forced to break up the work spate to hang out with him. What was Wednesday like? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. 'Olio' was a real discovery for me. Very good, I think, and I think that new Lily Hoang book is the best thing I've read by her. I forgot to ask Zac yesterday because my head got so clouded and burnt by work, but I'm seeing him in a while, and I wrote a note myself  to ask him. Gisele's gone, but she gets back tomorrow, and I'll ask her when I see her. The only tip I can think of in the meantime is The Boros Collection. If you don't know it, it's this collector's contemporary art collection stored/viewable in this amazing old WWII bunker. They give guided tours. You have to make an RSVP in advance. It's a nice thing to do, and its worth it just for checking out the building itself, which is great. Zac's and I just finished our 'final' draft of Episode 1. Gisele is reading it, and then we'll make a final draft after consulting with her. Today we're finishing our version of Episode 2 to send to her. We're maybe half-way through finishing the synopsis for the 3rd Episode (we only have to submit a synopsis of it for now). Then we have do the overall synopsis, statement of intent, logline, etc., which is the worst part of the work. All by this weekend, so we're a bit crazed. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, right? I found his stuff recently, and it's pretty fresh and electric. 'Frazzled' is a great way to describe it. He's also a very strange painter and records very strange albums. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. That sounds fairly promising about 'High Rise'. I don't even know who Tim Hiddleston is, I don't think, or not by name. Cool, thanks a lot! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Wow, 73. Just based on your descriptions, she sounds younger. Nice. Pride sounds like a perfectly rational response. Heck, I don't even know the dude, and I feel pride. Of course those work guys are ugly trolls with nothing better to do with their miniature piles of brain cells. Well, I mean, yeah, it seems like it was pills, but we'll see. But it does seem like it. So sucks. I don't really care how he died, I just hate that he did. I was lucky to see Prince live the first time really early, just before 'Controversy' came out, at this small, weird gig at a now-defunct roller rink in West Hollywood. I didn't know anything about him. I mostly just went because I thought seeing a gig in a roller rink sounded fun. ** H, Hi. Me too, about the film. We're supposed to meet with our new producer about our next film in the next few days, and we're itching to start working on it. Thank you about the books post, and have most pleasure-filled day whatever that entails. ** Okay. D.l. tender prey recently saw a film by Leslie Thornton in London, and his reporting back about that inspired me to make a post devoted to her terrific films. I hope you enjoy it. See you tomorrow.

Italo disco is a dance music genre that’s never afraid to let its feelings show, and the tearjerking Italo ballad is perhaps the purest expression of the form. I don’t know if maybe this style is the legacy of Italy’s great operatic tradition but anyway, I’ve long had a love for these exquisite songs of heartbreak and pain. The music’s hardly danceable in any conventional sense and the sounds all serve to create a feeling that’s hard for me to define. There’s usually a profound disjuncture between the big emotional force of the lyrics and the limited technological means at the musicians’ disposal. The whole package creates an effect that I find to be both uncanny and psychedelic. I hope this playlist might provide a way in, so see if you can feel it:



Dario Dell'Aere – Eagles In The Night



Dario Dell'Aere is a New Wave musician, producer and singer from Milan, Italy. At the end of the 1970's Dario performed in a mime show that was influenced by the glam cliches of David Bowie. In 1979, Dario met Victor Life outside a cinema and began a lifelong collaboration of projects: Diamond Dogs, Ice Eyes and Fockewulf 190. Musically, the duo were inspired by the Human League’s “Reproduction” and John Foxx’s “Metamatic” and visually they took cues from New Romantic’s Visage and Ultravox. With the Fockewulf 190 moniker, they created their own dark blend of Italo disco releasing the hit singles “Gitano” and “Body Heat” in 1984.

By the end of 1984 the duo took a break and Dario went into the studio and recorded his debut solo single “Eagles In The Night”. One of the most coveted Italo Disco 12”s, it was released in 1985 on Market Records. The song features unique xylophone-like synthesizer notes that Dario’s deep vocals float over. Lyrically, the song is about a spirit that flies above the heights of the world in search of a true love to share with a partner. Clocking in at over 8-minutes of melancholic, the song’s mid-tempo kitsch comes with backing vocals from Dario’s sister, Nora Dell'Aere. On the B-side is the shorter instrumental version with the occasional "oh wacky co-co" refrains from Dario.
https://anost.net/en/Products/Dario-Dell-Aere-Eagles-In-The-Night/

I love this song so much.. His strong, dark voice drives me ...going crazy.. Dance with me..
Italogirl1000






Fockewulf 190 – Body Heat


Victor Life

The story of Fockewulf 190 started when you and Dario (Dell'Aere) met outside a cinema in Milan in 1979. Can you tell us about how the band evolved from there and what those early years were like?

Full of enthusiasm, we had the power of seducing everyone who got in touch with us, especially the dandy guys from the Taxy Club, the historic New Romantic club in Milan where we used to play live. Everything seemed possible for Fockewulf 190... immediately a crew of fans made us like their little stars.

By 1984 it seems as if there had become a greater mystical element in your music, in tracks like 'Gitano' and 'Body Heat', and of course you enjoyed greater commercial success in other countries during this time too. Can you tell us about the message you were trying to convey in your music, and also how the band were treated by the Italian music industry at this point?

1984 wasn't crucial only for us, but also for an entire generation brought up in 1977 between the energy of Punk and the electronics of Kraftwerk, the glorious dreams of the The Thin White Duke and the New Romanticism of synth-pop. The last wave before the end, like in the best apocalyptic prophecies, for us could be only linked to the electronic and futuristic mysticism, philosophically esoteric, imperial in its theatrical shape and plasma'd by oriental sounds. The idea was to re-unite the different styles into one centre of gravity, something so strong in spirit, soul and body, to not leave space for anyone else, recreating something mythological like the Ziggy Stardust era.

Not even the great Bowie himself, who wrote the best mythology of the sci-fi rock, managed to have such an extreme vision... the last link, the final chapter of the Diamond Dogs legend. That was our idea and in the scene they were talking a lot about us, but nobody had the guts to seriously invest in our band, not even the ones who considered us the new Rockets. In the end being Italian, as I said before, was a curse that made us live in a cage, not even made of gold... more or less a silver one!
http://magicwavesradio.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/interview-victor-life-of-fockewulf-190.html

Great melody, synths and Fred Ventura´s performance. Italoclassic! ****
mvalvee5






Flexx – Love Theme From Flexxy-Ball



'Zeit' was your first song under name Fred Ventura, but earlier you you had project 'Flexx' and the song 'You'll Never Change (Theme From Flexyball)'. What is 'Flexyball'? Movie? Could you tell us a little bit more about it?

It was just a fantasy we had in the studio when we were recording the track in october 1983, there is no movie and no soundtrack, just a funny idea....

Fred, who was or were your inspiration(s)?

A lot of different music and artists, not only dance music even if I felt a natural need to make danceable music, but my biggest influences were Joy Division, New Order, Giorgio Moroder, Bobby O, The Human League, Patrick Cowley, Kraftwerk, D.a.f, Etienne Daho…..

You sang the song 'Bodyheat' by Fockewulf 190. Did you know this is someone else song? Can you tell more about this please?

Turatti asked me to write a melody and lyrics for the Fokewulf track, they didn't like the original version, I simply wrote it and sing it in few hours, nothing else, it was very easy to do it and now I love the track more than ever...
http://www.italo-interviews.com/FredVentura_2.html

This release would fit the genre, and definitely is among the italo freaks, classic italo disco. Nevetheless, it's just an excellent piece of early 80's italo disco history.

Electro ballad a like song with strong vocals sung by one of the finest italo disco voices, Fred Ventura, telling the story, told millions of times, and giving a man's point of view regarding an heartache, will, difference and a need.

I love the arrangement of the song. It's epic, full journey, like a song mixing from ballad to another synthetic dimension.

That's exactly what italo is all about. You can always expect surprises and miracles, personal mental explosion.

At the end of the song it just goes wild, Fred Ventura has done his vocal job and has left the building, leaving space for synthesizers to create a spacey atmospheric world of italo disco arpeggiators.

I just love it. It's excellent.
GeorgeSpruce
https://www.discogs.com/Flexx-Love-Theme-From-Flexxy-Ball-Youll-Never-Change-No-More/release/387820?ev=rr







Flying D.J. – Marilyn


Marzio Benelli

easily my favourite Italo-Disco song of all times. A true gem.
cocabots






Sensitive – Driving




It is so easy and so difficult at the same time to review a breath taking masterpiece like this one... What can we say about this song except that it is the best possible example of Italo perfection. Well, at least in my personal opinion. It is loaded with a lot of emotions going through some sadness, melancholy and fragility all in a very refined way with a dark and boosted up galloping baseline. The instruments are just perfect and well thought, and the vocals, well, they maybe are even better.. All the ingredients were there to create something that won't be forgotten in the years that would follow.

Knowing this, it could be remarkable, but this song is bringing you exactly in the mood you want to be and so it doesn't have to be a sad or melancholic mood. Me for example I just get very happy with it, tons of emotions and goosebumps from the deepest! It was their very first official release as a group and their love for the music is really painted on that song. You're feeling that devotion till the very last second.
Weird that it never broke glasses into the charts back in the day.. Maybe because of the tons of releases that came out in a very short period of time in that area, but anyway, it's a real pleasure to see and discover that it finally gets the popularity it deserves!

A truly wonderful production from David Zambelli, but most of the credits goes to the real creators of it: Sergio Bonzanni as the composer & Salvatore Pileggi on the vocals. Gigi Vavassori gets the same credits for his help in creating this wonderful piece of musical history! The song was recorded in 1983 at the Regson Sound Studios in Milan (Italy), the day after Scotch recorded there famous 'Disco Band'. The instruments used in the song are an Elka Synthex, a Korg Poly 61 and a E-mu Drumulator. The picture on the sleeve is Sergio Bonzanni in the studio together with Salvatore Pileggi.

Definitely my absolute favorite song of all time!! No words could EVER describe this song as it should be...
Aftering_at_my_way
https://www.discogs.com/Sensitive-Driving/release/422118






Decadance – On And On


Franco Rago and Gigi Farina (a.k.a. Atelier Folie, 'Lectric Workers, Expansives, Decadance, Wanexa, Pleasure Discipline, Message from the Future)

"On And On (Fears Keep On)" is a total masterpiece production in the italo disco genre. The same people behind 'Lectric Workers and many other infamous italo projects present us with this song under the alius of 'Decadance'. The song shares male/female vocals - the male has a very heavy Italian accent, while the female vocals are probably the best example of just how amazing an italo song could be. All in all, this is a very dark song and is something like a love song meets electro-synth crossover. I love this song so much and don't doubt it's level of demand one bit.
magic00
https://www.discogs.com/Decadance-On-And-On-Fears-Keep-On/release/94807






Paul Paul – Burn On The Flames


Fred Ventura

I waited too much
I've wasted my time
I'm looking at shadows on the wall of my room
The beat of my heart is so tired to run
The pictures of her make me feel so alone

Burn on the flames! Walk on the flames!

I've wasted my youth
I've cried too much
Life is so hard and so full of troubles
I make my choice, my mind is still late
I wanna forget from the people I saw.

Burn on the flames! Walk on the flames!
Burn on the flames! My life, my life Burn on the flames! My life, my life Euh-euh-euh.

The night is so clear
My booze is soaked up
I'm looking for something for the bottom of my heart
The silence around sound to me like a theme
And they like it fire alone in the dessert

Burn on the flames! Walk on the flames!

I've wasted my youth
I've cried too much
Life is so hard and so full of troubles
I make my choice, my mind is still late
I wanna forget from the people I saw.

Burn on the flames! Walk on the flames!
Burn on the flames! My life, my life Burn on the flames!
My life, my life Burn on the flames!
My life, my life Burn on the flames!
My flames, my flames Burn on the flames! My life, my life






Hélicon – You ... See

All around, "You... See" is one of the finest Italo Disco songs ever created. This one is very beautiful, VERY beautiful! Male/female vocals, softer beat, instrumentation is just perfect. This is definately top 10 for my favorite Italo Disco songs of all time! This song does it for me everytime, always and forever an Italo gem!
magic00
https://www.discogs.com/H%C3%A9licon-You--See/release/299967






Felli – Diamond In The Night


Gianfranco Felli

"Diamond In The Night" is a true classic and will rank forever among my favourites. I love it how the refrain changes from "Your love doesn't shine" to "Let your love shine" in the progress of the song.
latscho
https://www.discogs.com/Felli-Diamond-In-The-Night/release/346417





Savage – Don't Cry Tonight


Roberto Zanetti aka Savage

Were you inspired by some artists to make Italo disco? For example, High-energy music existed before Italo-disco, one could say that Italo is the child of High-energy in some way (a logical continuation of disco music). You know who Bobby Orlando and Patrick Cowley are. Did they have some influence on you ?

Of course they influenced me. as you state Italo disco is an evolution of High-energy. I think our style is a medley between the High-energy's sound and the Italian melodies.

The year 1983 is far away from us now. Your first single was Don't Cry Tonight. How did you compose this song ?

I was in a blue, sad moment of my life. the melody went out from the deep of my soul. It was written in five minutes.

Italo disco is a very nice and strong music. Your song Don't Cry Tonight in an example of a beautiful, soft song, a very good song for our heart and soul, for our thoughts. Italo disco in general is the most beautiful music in the world, don't you think so?

Yes, I agree. Many thanks for you compliments.
http://www.italo-interviews.com/Savage1st.html

I Loved, I love you and I will love you forever! I remember with this song!
doge663






Mike Rogers - Just A Story

I can listen to a recording day and night, thanks to this amazing recording who created it many thanks
yakyle9






Marc Line - You Can Break My Heart


Marcello Catalano

Probably one of the most coruscating Marcello Catalano's jewels, as much smooth for the ears as it is not to be found at every street's corner ! A record seemingly that's worth the price.
vinylric






Moskow - Come Back


Angelo Valsiglio

Unlike others, I love this song because it's beautiful and, for me it doesn't matter if the record is 10 cent the euro or 3000.

Clear and easy-to-understand vocals (you're an Italo, I don't want you to be clear), excellent drums programming (lots double kicks but why that snare ? ok..), wonderful melody and sounds/effects during the song.

** You might like the Instr. version more

Is that record worth the money for a "love" song ? you decide..
MyMine
https://www.discogs.com/Moskow-Come-Back/release/216797






G.J. Lunghi – Acapulco Nights

Such an absolutely perfect song. The keyboard hook and lead female vocals are especially outstanding. Owwww!!!
beagletender






Lame'– You've Got The Night

Thank you for sharing this with me Triggerfs, I have been listening to this song in my room for the last 5 hours having an emotional breakdown. This track breaks my heart two ways, first the percussion through the track.. amazing.. The final destruction to my soul comes at 3:27ish when he starts beckoning to her, and then the final "but if you want it, you got it...." and thats when the tears pour out….
partyeffectsdotbiz6






The Hurricanes - Only One Night


Tess

If you haven't heard this Italo classic, then hear it! The intro from 0:17 gives me goosebumps and the voice is wonderful. One of my absolute favorites ever. Produced by Tess (aka Fancy).
webhamster
https://www.discogs.com/Hurricanes-Only-One-Night/release/126243






93rd Superbowl - Forever And A Day

Great and crazy synth action, wonderful long break in the middle, this song has it all for me. One of my personal favorites that never left my head since the first time I heard it. Pitch it up a little for maximum effectiveness!
https://www.discogs.com/93rd-Superbowl-Forever-And-A-Day/release/518476






Ventura - Another Time


Bruno Tavernese

One that grew on me a lot over the years, with solid production (as always) from the master Bruno Tavernese.
The singer is not out of tune at all, she has a powerful husky voice which I love.
One of few italo 12" maxis with great (different) songs on both sides, actually the b-side "Another Time" is better for me.
Be sure to watch the incredible and spirited video performance of that one.. what a stage presence!
hysteric
https://www.discogs.com/Ventura-Touched/master/120549






Jules - I Want To…

Simply amazing.
My Number One in the Top Ten!!.
TheItalodancers






Ghery M & Ocean D - Love's Emotions

VERY NICE!!!!!






George Gray - Life

Those many italo songs I have searched, I havent found. Instead of all that I found this thanks to Qlee Italo Disco Radio. and RSDH in Holland. And I am thankful for it. There is very little music like these. Its not about sounds, lyrics and arrangement only, but how it makes me feel due to the all about this itself.

It also seems more than just mainstream italo ( which was made for money).
alexelaist3






Lisa G. - Call My Name

Another wonderful 80s italo disco masterpiece! The intro has a Very cutting crew "I just died in your arms" feel imo. Lisa g"s vocals are quite lovely and the over all production Is flawless! :-) :-) :-)
garyvictor
https://www.discogs.com/Lisa-G-Call-My-Name/release/561437





For my friend and DJ colleague Scott Duncan aka Il Discotto who introduced me to so much of this wonderful music.




*

p.s. Hey. Today artist and d.l. supreme _Black_Acrylic gives us an amazing overview and sampler of the Italo Tearjerker genre. I've had a few days to play with the post pre-launch, and I can tell you that it's jam-packed with discoveries and delights galore. You will have fun. That much is guaranteed. So, have that fun at the behest of _B_A today, and please let him know what you think of what you're hearing. Thank you, folks, and giant thanks to you, Ben. Now, as you can tell by the weird shortness of this p.s., I have not been able to do my usual full-fledged responding chat with you today. The reason is that I have suddenly been hit with a severe writing deadline this morning, a deadline that I will struggle to meet as it is and would never be able to meet if I let myself luxuriate in interacting with you. I'm so sorry for the unexpected pause. But I will catch up with all of the comments from yesterday and today tomorrow morning when I will be again in a respite between work assignments. So, don't be shy about commenting today, and, especially, please speak to _B_A to let him know that his great and hard work was not for nothing. Thank you, and thank you for your patience. I will blab at and with you tomorrow. Take care until then.

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Juniorone, 22
Hi - I am Johann Jr. I am now gay and have strong gay inside me since I was 14 and now join for experiences. My parents had a very bad divorce so I spent last year and half in Amsterdam with my uncle. I went to MIND SET program for two days a week for a year to come out to myself and now here. I explain later. I have had no gay sex. I will live half time with mom in London and half in Frankfurt with dad. They will figure out school as Im behind. I have only seen gay in magazines, video and movies and it excites me. I dream of being kidnapped, captured, unstraightened, powerless under gay control. Guys my age to 50 is what I picture. I am for real now to do it. The MIND SET program readied me. It mixes mind control, hypnosis, brainwash, mind fuck and opening up totally. I am craving gay life. I hope to experience now. Thank you very very much.

Comments

Anonymous - 23.Apr.2016
Who's licking my feet after walking around Walmart parking lot?





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uneverything, 23
Satanic bitch offering his holes and self to vicious men who wants an extra game : fuck and destruct me in front of my satanic altar, blasphemy , autodeist , materialism , the vast darkness of the universe is naught but violence , suffering , death , cataclysm -- the life cycle itself requires these things , i hv been chosen as desirable bait by my lord Satan , i m dangled by him into the world for men to taste his wanton gifts , n hope that you will use me to shock him , for cruel shock is Satan's only vice, and he is waiting for you.

Comments

killerman44 - 26.Mar.2016
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_. ~ * ° * ~~~~ _..- + * ~~~~ ° * + -.._ * .- + * ° * + -.._
Wanted to sail past just want to quickly and
leave you a nice greeting








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BYourDog, 21
Typical club kid in Taipei with very popular ass and extraordinary open minded personality hoping to combine the two for someone.

My screen name is a reference to The Stooges, not to my interest in puppy play which I don't have.






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NotCompleteNonsense, 19
Currently a full time student that is seeking a weird man with a healthy supply of sleeping bags, down jacks and pants, and down suits to tie me up in. I love the feel of it and the sweat that drips all over me as I bake inside.
I'm pretty much ok with anything you want to do as long as I'm in the down. No being nice and polite to me ever just have fun with the bag and don't ever give a shit about me.
In my head the ultimate would be to suffocate or dehydrate all the way in there but I'm not really looking for anything long term right now.







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PoznTwstd, 23
Back after short break more than POZ now and actually sick.. fuck!
I hauled shit thru my short stupid fucking life didnt I?
Im still cute but I dont pay attention to myself like I did.
Need 24/7/365 permanent no limits NOW. Not a minute less!






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Hello, 20
I'm 20, have a way huge thing for superheroes and have a few superhero costumes.
Looking to be captured by a villain (you can choose your own or make one up but know the Marvel universe is where I masturbate) tied up and gagged tight and then demasked to reveal the nerd I really am. I'll probably cum when you do that but you can keep going obvs.
If you can pretend you know me from school or something and can't believe I'm Spiderman or Captain America (for example) in a believable way I'll go insane (in the sexy way).
Obvs if your fantasy is to rape Spiderman (for example) that would be ideal just don't expect me to look like the guy who plays Spiderman in the movies.
I do have a face picture but I work with kids so I'm sure you understand that I don't want it all over the Internet.
I'm not here for sex or a relationship... Been there done that, got the t-shirt, just want to be a superhero and get tied up and demasked and raped.





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notfromprepschool, 18
I want my cock locked up without access to the key. My sole purpose in life is to serve my keyholder if I can find one. My current cage was cheap and now rusted so a new one will be purchased in April unless someone wants me locked up before I can buy myself a cage.





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bitcoin, 24
I have a young sub boyfriend who I like to have people use when I already have or am not around.
Like to have all sorts of things tried out on him. I want people to try things they have never tried before.
Like when he's blindfolded and tied up so that people can feel comfortable and he won't know what's coming. Also like him to think it's me then reveal it by talking at some point.
I am his older girlfriend but he knows about and accepts my interests so it doesn't matter if he ends up marked and scarred.
Sorry that I don't have a face picture up. I'm not ashamed of him or anything, but sadly there have been some people in the community that I would rather not recognise him.






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Headlikeahole, 22
Hi,i'm headlikeahole.if you want to get drunk with me then do shit you text me to my mobile number.you can add me also on my tagged account.i love to drink if you want join with me.nothing much else.shit will happen in face to face when the drunk will come.when i'm drinking i'm easy going ready for rape.i'm a huge fan of AC/DC.saw them perform & it was the best night of my life.

Comments

Fuellmichab - 22.Apr.2016
I had him the other night. What he means is he needs to drink so much he passes out before you can fuck him. Before then nothing. And this boy can drink let me tell you. I wouldn't want to be his liver.






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Repackme, 19
Hey,

I'm very weak and am looking for a guy who thinks that's hot.

Pin me to the ground and fart and burp in my face. Make me lick the dirt from in between your toes. Make me lick and suck the sweat from your armpits. Make me lay on my back, roll up onto my shoulders with my ass in the air. Sit on my ass, hole to hole and shit a turd into my gaping hole while you piss down into my open mouth. Then I can rim your sweaty ass and lick your balls before I suck your cock.

Electrocute me with a cattle prod if I do things wrong.

Just do everything in a compassionate and caring way, knowing that it's what is good for me.

Have better pics, will send if you ask, I'm just quite a private person.

Would like to live in USA at future.

If you don't participate in aftercare don't message me.






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follow-you, 24
I am just looking for men who like to be sucked until they cum in my mouth, and watch me swallow their sperm. What I mean is I'm looking for one man who wants to have that service all the time. I do not provide other services. I'm also trying to realize my dream of moving to San Francisco.

Live your penis is the motto.









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MostExtremeSlave, 18
It wants to be decimated until it's still technically alive but brain dead. It can accept a short preliminary period of sex as a passive. It is uninhibited and loves to lose its mind and be shocked so can be destroyed for a long time and without hurry. Its limitations are: murder, cannibalism, and that's it.

SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO DO WHAT YOURE AFRAID TO DO.

Comments

MostExtremeSlave - 29.Mar.2016
Thank you, I hadn't thought about that. I still want it tho.

Passzziv - 29.Mar.2016
Hi I wonder if you have thought this through? Lets say someone tortures you into a vegetable. Then you lie there smashed and brain dead. Then what? If he can't murder you, he keeps a vegetable alive in his house until you die of natural causes?





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S.L.U.T, 22
Hello,

I’m a 22 year old Italian and I’ve come to London to help you live out your boy track star slave fantasies . I compete regularly, have a seven inch dick, an ass whose beauty will make you lose brain cells, and offer sexual services to dominating gentlemen who like to reward people with love in return for one or two hours, or one or two nights, of unchoosy sexual excitement.

If you want me for one or two hours, my limit is bruising. If it's one or two nights, my limit is penetrating the skin. If you want me for a week or more, my limit is penetrating the skin in the neighborhood of my arteries (I know where they are).

In terms of love, I'm happy to negotiate based on your comfort with expressing love, but I won't do anything for less than the words "I love you" and some cuddles.

The only caveats are that I spend a lot of my weekends in Rome, so am not regularly available, and nothing permanent, as much as I'd love to, because in August I’m off to Berlin to study anthropology at Humboldt and sex in the Berghain.







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happygolucky, 23
I bet i will be the best fuck yet.
Be with a hotel room or a vacant home.





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love_to_get_fucked, 22
hi my little will you be taken properly apart then let me know MY DIG IN YOUR MOUTH ASS

WITH ME YOU WILL HAVE THE 2 ... A word

TO ALL THOSE WHO ASK IF THERE SEX (read my book "gold") ..

FAN NOT VERY LONG DISCUSSIONS HERE .. THANK YOU GO ARSENAL





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NaturalAss, 22
In a world everybody is clean including most of me I like dirty smelly hairy men.
Natural sex is my mojo.
Love my hole eaten pounded toyed churned fisted and you name it but I won't wash it out first it's not a sink it's an ass.
If you want my ass you'll get an ass like any other.
You fuck an ass, what did you expect ?






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Dabbler, 18
I live in a small town at the far end of the state of Montana, there's not much to do so I'm always looking for something new to try.

I was talking to a "master" on here for a few months. He convinced me to quit school to relocate to him. Unfortunately his profile was gone shortly after telling him I quit. Go figure.






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IceMe, 23
Hey thanks for ready. I am a college student, close to graduation. Please don't be fooled by my innocent cute look, I am really not innocent. I am a bug chasing pig seeking Gitmo level torture, mental erasing and retraining, branding, charring, maiming, limb removal, frenzied sadism, castration, dick removal, and much much more. I am graduating soon meaning I am open to sn*ff provided it's for a reason. Thanks for reading =)






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Pushover, 22
lust. again
just only asking lust try to call me
not to transgender
the pleasures of which has never suffered
to explore my inner things

have some issues about so much
please to lust what i am (head down)






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PetrSaid, 19
If I look familiar that's because I did porn in 2015 under three names. You probably know me as William Higgins star Petr Said.

I am not pretending to be something I am not.

I am in the best SHAPE of my LIFE.

I have been hot to men and I am bored to death with being like that and I want to be someone's nothing.

I am looking for bondage first of all along with many other things that I won't take the time to mention.

I'm a Germaphobe. Use that problem how you want but just know I go batshit crazy about germs.

My only other limits are women and children. I do not like them. Not just sexually, I mean AT ALL.

I've been given a month to get out my flat so will be homeless.

Need this badly.

Got passport.








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TakeMyDignity, 18
If tears of shame turn you on, please respond.

Thanks.

Harry

ps I'm only after much older men. That means men older than 45 years old. Make that 55. I like men much much older than me and bigger and heavier. Like the heavy set, bear type daddy is the bare minimum as long he acts like a real bear from the forest and isn't just some nice fat man who calls himself a bear so he can get get laid. If you are younger then 55 years old and respond to my profile I will know you did not read what I wrote and I will hate you.






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NoLimits/SafeWords, 18
I am wasted teenage flesh 4 Sadists

Extreme captivity, imprisonment, insanity

You will know what you want... You will take it...





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IamStoned, 21
Welcome to take me to the strong men at the level of those who wish to experience moments of oblivion but first take me to your dealer or Amsterdam. Classless young stoner at a level not any crypto inteligentka. When you decide to meet me you're absolutely certain that I just open your front door and not substituted by the same boy who not takes drug.






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FinalLeap, 21
I'm 21. Sadly the time has come that I seek a final owner. I knew I would one day want to give myself to someone completely, but that age and maturity in which you are ready can be hard to judge. Please read on as I explain why I want final.

I have aspects of me that mean I can't compete with other pretty young slaves. I carry physical and mental scars from my time as a slave. I've been farmed out many times, and contracted HIV. I wouldn't of chosen this path, but I lost any sense of self worth I had.

What I can offer is myself as a complete 24/7 no limits slave. Being HIV has put things in perspective and I realise how worthless and disgusting I am. I'm prepared to now sink to the sickest most depraved levels you wish. My body is now only useful for depraved torturous treatment and I will sacrafice it for my owner.

If you want to inflict anything on a young guy, please look beyond my health and take me. It may just be for these several years, but I know there is a master's darkest desired I can fulfil out there. I now have no SS number or records, I can come to you, sign and be done.

Strip me, whip me, beat me, rape me, torture me, cage me, punish me, feed me shit, make me drink piss, watch me take vomit, fist me, brand me, cut me, strangle me, punch me, stab me, mutilate me, watch me scream, hear me beg, watch me cry, break me, slaughter me.

I trust my future master to know an appropriate time and way to terminate me. There will come a time where all I'm suitable for is fatal torture. I'm a screamer and crier so consider you have an appropriate location to give me the treatment discussed. You'll like it or your money back. Just kidding I'm free.






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Imanolimitspig, 24
I'm actually 14 looking for total sadist abuser so who's interested

I think SM will be very interesting

I'm single

In my pic I was tanned but not now





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HurtSoul, 24
i recently came into possession of it. im told it was found disoriented being gangbanged in a bathhouse in istanbul last august. when it could not be identified the bathhouse sold it to a local master. he used, shared and rented it until early january when he sold it to a master in hungary. i came into possession of it through a trade with the hungarian in december. i'm ready to trade or sell it to interested masters. its very docile, has troubles with speech, otherwise in good health. doctor friend of mine thinks it mightve had a stroke when it was on vacation. its passport and other i.d. is long lost. i think its american or canadan, 23 or 4,5? im told the top 2 pics were in its phone which is now lost. its tall, working with 9 inches, very slim, little hair. it has almost no limits. when it doesnt like something it says "no joe" or something like that. thats how you know.







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floodmyguts, 20
My thing is I look and act like a tough straight boy and I am one unless there s a dick in my mouth then I get totaly fag gay pathetic. The dick has to be on a guy tougher than me so a soldier or police or "master" in you guys lexxicon. I do nt like any other gay shit like anal and kissing, although getting felt up is nice but i have definate limits. I have a girlfriend and would like to keep it that way. So yeah what I m pretty much looking to do here is raise an army of helmet headed meat soldiers. They ll drop by and attack my face until I m gay and open fire in my mouth.






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YourMajesty, 18
When you look at me do you want to pierce my face everywhere with needles? If you answered "yes", then hit me up. I've recently discovered that my favorite sensation is the lightning-sharp agony of needles in my face.






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beautiful_legs, 24
I'm a stunningly beautiful and kinky bottom that would like to be be fucked by a large dildo collection. Dicks are also welcome to use my hole but would need to be a guy I get along with in a normal situation.

I would like my ass to be a regular fuck toy and dildo receptacle for someone and build up lots of trust that might lead to me taking a fist.

As of my profile being made I am still an anal virgin so would need someone to coach me through this amazing experience. I might even let you lock me in your basement and fist me for the rest of our lives.






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SoWhatAreYouWaiting, 21
I'm new to this site, definitely not new to being a submissive "piggie" bottom slut.
I have a rich, older sugar daddy boyfriend who loves pretty trash fem boysluts like me and I would like to keep him for financial and emotional reasons.
Nothing turns him on more than when I come home late at night trashed on chems and alcohol and a little beaten up after having had my brains fucked out by some sleazy macho pick up. That drives him wild and he'll eat me out and fuck me for hours and when I show up really wasted and sloppy and violated the effect can last for days.
I don't know what he'd do if I showed up after some serious rapist and sadist had their way with me but I sure as hell want to find out!
Give me hell your way no limits as long as I can still walk and talk after and help me give my boyfriend something to remember forever!
I should probably mention that I'm an addicted tweaker slam whore and I'll do everything and anything for some slam.








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Tellmewhatiam, 19
I feel I'm a nice, sincere, romantic, loving, affectionate boy who is confident, responsible, intelligent, and down to earth.

I look for someone who is Mature, Strong, Responsible, Respectful, Sincere, Caring, Romantic, Intelligent, Trustworthy, Loyal, Down to Earth and who has a Good Sense of Humor.

Whether it's sitting in traffic or having a romantic evening under the stars or surrendering my ass to your cock and all the cocks of your friends or even strangers of your choice, time together is special to me.

As far as what I like to do, it could be anything from a romantic evening out of dinner and dancing, walking hand in hand along the beach at night, reading poetry to my lover, getting my ass pounded by you and by anyone else you want, or just cuddling on the couch and watching a good movie.

I love most styles of music and love to see it performed live. I love to watch movies, theres just to many favorites to mention, the main genres I like are Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Action, Drama and Suspense. I'm not really into horror movies, and I'll watch a Sci-Fi movie here and there, like the Matrix (First one is Great!) or Star Wars, etc.

Must love to kiss and cuddle. Must have a huge dick and want to fuck me constantly. Would be preferable if you have lots of friends with huge dicks who'll fuck me either with you or when you're not around. We can talk more when we meet about our likes and dislikes. I have been told that the eyes are like a window into a person soul.

I should tell you that I kiss and take cock with my heart, but I love with my soul.








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nootheroption, 19
it is time
like to be loat not kidding
are a very ok







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louieward, 18
I need someone to control every move I make.

That includes every molecule of my beauty.

I don't have a car and I live in a dorm.

Welcome to the circus at the end of the world.





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Toiletformen, 21
Toiletslave looking for installation. Want to spend the rest of my life as a toilet. Heavily in bondage in a toilet shape with no hope of release. Put me in your shower stall, take the grate off the drain, put my ass over it. Use me for all of your waste. Turn on the shower after and aim at my mouth to "flush" your shits down the toilet and clean my face. Based on my research I will probably die after about 5 weeks and I don't mind but I'm sorry about that.





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TheUltimateChallenge, 21
I'm so desperate to find that one man whose skill with rope is unparalleled that I've designed the ultimate challenge.

You get to use as much rope or as little as you want. My only restriction is that hands must be bound together. You set the terms: time, place, duration. It can be as little as 30 minutes or as long as overnight (8 hours). My goal is to get free, your goal is to make the bondage so secure that I can't escape.

If I win the challenge, you aren't out anything (except maybe a plane ticket and a hotel room). If you win, you get the ultimate reward: a bondage slave. A permanent slave. A no-way-out slave. You get to keep me forever. No catch. No options. No alternative. Of course, if you want a different reward, we can discuss that.






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NickJones, 18
I'm 18, in College. I like to cuddle. I want someone to snuggle and watch films with and mess around together. I want someone nice and caring! Please be 25 or under. I'm looking for Mr right :) I'm fully straight acting
Gay (I do not do sex and I do not give bj's).
I'm weird tho and not normal.

I don't feel pain properly and I don't feel pain in my Dick and it's used and don't feel pain in my balls properly either and they get like, kicked, punched, kneed, jumped on anything really. Been going on for 12 years 😂😂 litteraly balls of steel so if we did meet you can do whatever.

No jks I'm also a bit crazy at times .

Its lucky I don't give a damn and nor do they and nor do my crotchness area 😂😂😂😂.
It's been going on for years so and I'm not using then for anything
U can do what u like with them, So they are used as doormat, footrest, beat up toy, having my dick and my balls (mainly dick) destroyed, crished, played with, kick, stomp, trample, knee, jump, punch, slap, squash, crush, flick, play with, pinch. All that. 😂

Just a word of warming, I can't bj or do the physical sex bit.
I can't bj because I just can't I think it has something to do with bad gag reflexes, smell and taste. And if I had a bf I'd let them have a fuck buddy as long as they don't have kids 😂 .

And I do talk and look and walk normally if u were wondering 😂.

If you want to talk about anything or ask any questions even if they are really weird just fire away.







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AcquiringSlaves, 21
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: I am not seeking a slave. I have one. This is only a guide for masters who are looking for slaves from this site. I hope this will help promote our safety and security, as well as protect us from scammers, posers and con artists. The photo is of my slave. I've uploaded it only to show that you do not need to be hasty or reckless in order to take ownership of an extraordinary slave. He is not available for sharing, use, rental or purchase. Please do not ask.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When seeking a slave, these are the 5 things you have to do:

==================================
FIRST THINGS FIRST: CHECK THE COMMENTS
==================================
(1) Do not choose solely based on face value, the speed with which they give you an erection, or their limits. You have to check their comments.
(2) If their comments section is disabled, or if there are no comments, you have to be very careful. It may be a sign that the slave you are dealing with may be a scammer or poser.
(4) If there are comments, make sure that the authors are not anonymous.
(5) If the authors of comments are anonymous, entertain some doubt. Remember that a slave may have multiple profiles in this site. It may be possible that such anonymous entry might have been made by the slave himself or his cohorts using other accounts owned by them.
(6) If the authors of comments are not anonymous, click on their profiles. Check if these masters are still active. Check the number of their visitors. Check their photos. Try messaging them to get feedback about the slave. If you feel that despite the non-anonymous entries the slavr profile may be a fake one, then do not take the risk.

==================================
CHECK PHOTOS: YOUR FANTASY MAY JUST BE A FANTASY
==================================
(1) This can be quite tricky.
(2) Some slave accounts do not have photos but once you message them, they will send you some upon request.
(3) Some accounts have lots of photos but may not be the real photos of the person handling the account.
(4) The safest way to go about this is to verify the slave through Skype, WeChat, Viber or similar applications.
(5) I suggest that you insist on using any of these applications, and if the slave refuses to do so, it may indicate a fake trade.

==================================
HELLO: CONTACT SLAVE
==================================
(1) Slave profiles usually provide their contact details.
(2) Try inquiring through text initially.
(3) If through text a potential period of usage or purchase seems plausible, give them a call to finalize the details.
(4) Listen to the slave's voice carefully, is it authentically meek, subservient? Listen to the background, try to feel his basic character or lack thereof and personality or lack thereof through his voice.

==================================
MANAGE EXPECTATIONS: GET WHAT YOU WANT
==================================
(1) Tell the slaves what the exact services and duties are that you want to avail them of. If you want to do extreme things with them, be explicit. Be detailed and be direct to the point.
(2) It is likewise very important to ask them what their limits are and what they are willing to do. Many slaves claim to be no limits, but very few of them are. Don't be general with each other and simply agree to no limits. Tell them the most extreme things you will do to them and demand a yes or no answer to each activity.
(3) Given this, ask them about their degree of interest in each extreme activity. For instance, do they love and crave it? Are they not into the activity but will let you do it because a slave has no say? When being forced to do something they don't want, do they tend to fight back or cry or accept the torture stoically? There are important things to know in terms of planning.
(4) If they say no to an extreme activity that is a necessity for you, perhaps the problem for them is in the details. Don't accept their no on the surface. Negotiate until the two of you have agreed on a version of the extreme activity that is acceptable to you both.
(5) If you are seeking 24/7/365 permanent enslavement, don't forget to ask your slave about his possible allergies, phobias, dietary requirements, medical problems, behavioral quirks, and so forth. In my experience, slaves who claim to want to become pure objects will only become objects that have the slave's personal and medical problems.
(6) Most of all, you have to ensure and insist that the services you have agreed upon will be provided once the slave is in your possession. I suggest drafting up a contract that details precisely what the slave is required to do under your ownership. Have him sign it immediately upon arrival. Yes, such a contract is not legal and binding but most slaves are so obsessed with being slaves that they will not realize that.
(7) You must be able to assert that there will be no other additional, hidden or surprise hesitancies on the slave's part to fulfill the services they are required to perform, and they must leave their worries and opinions at the door.
(8) If your slave -or the master who is selling you the slave -requires money for his ownership, do not pay in advance through money remittance or any other load transfer schemes.

==================================
LEVEL UP RISK TAKING: MEET UP
==================================
(1) If you plan to acquire your slave through the popular form of fake kidnapping, make sure the place you have chosen is well off the beaten path and always kidnap your slave very late at night even if the abduction spot is in a seemingly remote place like a forest.
(2) Refrain from inviting him to arrive at your home. Arrange to meet him in an isolated place, always very late at night. Upon meeting, immediately confiscate his mobile phone, frisk him for weapons and listening devices. Then place a hood over his head to blind his sight, handcuff or otherwise secure his wrists, always behind the back, and place him the trunk of your car or of a rented car then transport him to your home.
(3) The reason for frisking him for weapons and listening devices is assure yourself that he is not a scam artist or an undercover cop. Do not assume that if he is 18 years old he is not in the employment of the police or FBI. This is recommended in every circumstance and always if you and the slave have agreed to enjoy any illegal activity.
(4) If your slave is entering 24/7/365 servitude, always demand that he has either adequately explained why he will be out of touch with his family and friends for the foreseeable future. Demand he show you proof that those close to him will not be searching for his whereabouts. Proof can be in the form of emails, recorded conversations, text message exchanges, and so on. If he truly wants to be a permanent slave, he will understand why this is necessary and will follow your instructions to the letter.
(5) Before commencing the services that the slave has agreed to, it is advisable for you to remind him again of the services required to be performed by him in great detail, the punishment he will receive if he neglects to serve you as agreed, and the extent to which you will punish him should he continually misbehave. If you have agreed upon no limits, make clear to him that you will not hesitate to execute him if necessary.
(6) Enjoy the rest of the time you two are together.
(7) If the period of enslavement is short term, it is suggested that you leave a comment in the slave’s account for the benefit of other masters interested to avail of his services.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
SPOTTING A POSER/SCAMMER/FAKE SLAVE
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

(1) He's a fresh looking, fashionably dressed teenaged boy who claims to have had many masters and is a very experienced 'piggy bottom' or 'pain slut' or 'human toilet' and so forth.
(2) His comments are disabled.
(3) He wants permanent no limits slavery and he'll be a slave to anyone who wants him and he doesn't care what his master looks like or how old he is or what race he is.
(4) He uses photos of Justin Bieber (or another pop or TV star) as his profile photos. As much as you or I or any master dreams that Justin Bieber is secretly a sex slave who wants a master just like you, he isn't and he doesn't.
(5) He claims to have no friends or family members and is free and ready to be abducted into lifelong no limits slavery for the rest of his life.
(6) He claims to be a no limits slave but insists any sex you have with him must be safe.
(7) He does not respond to your queries or does not answer your questions directly.
(8) He claims to be 100% passive but acts arrogant or impatient or secretive whenever you ask important questions.
(9) He gives out tales of sadness and pity and personal tragedy and asks to be hypnotized and brainwashed into an emotionless, selfless object. Even if he thinks he can be completely reinvented, he will always be a whining pain in the ass.
(10) He says he is a model or was until recently an international porn star or escort or that he is very educated and classy and high end, which we all know is a big joke.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
IF YOU WANT AN HONEST SLAVE, BE A GOOD MASTER YOURSELF!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(1) Not all slaves here are fake or posers. I would say maybe 1/3 are indeed what they claim to be.
(2) Immobilize them. Lock them in a cage. Lock them in a cell. But do not trust right away.
(3) Make sure you use them on your own schedule.
(4) Feed them adequately but not too well. Being a slave is a sedentary life and they will easily get fat.
(5) Treat them with the premise of respect but do not respect them.
(6) Value your time, and never value their time.
(7) If you get angry and want to damage them heavily, give them a notice they will be damaged beforehand.
(8) Schedule heavy anal activity ahead of time so they will have time to clean themselves.
(9) Give him a kiss if you think he is worth it.
(10) Offer poppers or drugs or drink as a sign of goodwill.






*

p.s. Hey. Apologies again for having had to step out yesterday. ** Wednesday ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! I used to keep a diary religiously when I was a kid, but then the desire faded out for some reason. But sometimes this p.s. is like a diary in a way, I guess. The work I'm doing is intense, but I think it's getting done. Still, it'll be my entire life pretty much at least until Monday. How was your London-returning friend? How's everything? ** Jamie McMorrow, Paris and all of its millions of residents send you their greetings using me as their vehicle. Super busy is the word, or, well, the two words. Superbusy. That works too. Cool, a funny mood. I want to be in one of those. Oh, right, it's not so far betwixt Glasgow and Edinburgh, so you can commute. And read a lot on the way, if it's by train. Or listen to a lot of music, if it's by train or car. Yes, yes, I would seriously love it if you did a guest-post! That would be fantastic! Do it about anything you like. Cool, thank for wanting to, Jamie. Thank you too for the work-wishes. Yeah, I'm like a machine at the moment. It's interesting, but my brain is toast, burnt, burnt toast. Love, Dennis. ** David Ehrenstein, If Rosenbaum likes something, that something is pretty much guaranteed to be very good, in my experience. I'm sorry the piece about LCTG is so hard to place. I so appreciate you trying. Yeah, it's a difficult film, and my attached name does as much harm as good in many quarters. Thank you, David. ** ASH, Hi! Yeah, that's what I heard. About that cinema. We're excited. Oh, well, yeah, I would love to hear your band's new record and give you my opinion! Where can I get it? ** Steevee, Hi. Roeg might have done something quite curious with that novel at that point in time. Look forward to your piece. Everyone, Steevee has written an undoubtedly fine piece about a new DVD set of documentaries about JFK for the Roger Ebert site and your attendance there is highly recommended. Here's the entrance. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, the new one is all MIDI? That does something really cool to my imagination. Awesome. 'Pooh', ha ha. It's funny when translated books' slang ends up telegraphing that they were translated a long time ago. ** _Black_Acrylic, Takashi Miike doing 'Concrete Island'! Now there's a hell of an idea! ** MANCY, Hi, Stephen. Cool, thank you, glad you enjoyed the Thornton fest. Its weird, I was the opposite with Cronenberg's 'Crash'. The first time I saw it, I was dazzled. The second time I saw it, it really bugged me. ** Alan, Hi! Well, I'm very glad to hear that Sujatha's book apparently got through that rough patch, and, more than anything, that you're working on a novel! Take good care. ** Misanthrope, Hi, George. I understand your feeling about pill deaths. I'm like that about heroin deaths. Morning! ** Tender prey, Hi, Marc! Cool, I'm very happy that you, of all people, enjoyed the post. Thanks so much for the trigger and for everything. I hope your squeezed time pays out. I'm in the same boat. Same life raft. Love, me. ** Thursday ** Oriol Rovira Grañen, Hi there! It's really nice to see you! Thanks a lot for the tip on Tobias Bernstrup. It looks very intriguing. I'll scour. You good? I sure hope so! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Yep, I picked up on that right away too. ** Tosh Berman, A very fine morning to you, Mr. Berman. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Thank you again so very much! It seems to have both brought much joy and enlarged the cult! ** Bear, Hi, Bear! That Royal Shakespeare Company production does sound really beautiful. Wow. I'll look at the trailer to get a peek. Thank you! I'm very glad that everything is sorted with your friend/collaborator. That particular production of Gisele's and mine is especially complicated. We've been trying to get it a gig in NYC for years, but it's very costly to mount/import, as you can tell. I think it'll happen. Naturally, I'm thrilled that you liked 'Mouchette', Bresson being my personal god among gods. Thanks about the deadline. It'll get done, I'm sure. I'm sure you know what it's like when work gets super-crunched right near the end. Have a fine Friday. How are things progressing with your new piece? ** Jamie McMorrow, Hi, Jamie. Me too, re: deadline. We have to meet it, so we will. But, boy, could we use another five days or something. Great day and love to you! ** Sypha, Hi, and thanks, James! ** MANCY, Hi, buddy. ** Bill, Hey, Bill. Yes, we have to turn in the majority of our formal initial proposal for the TV series to our producer on Monday. Then a few more descriptive and schmooze-related texts by Wednesday. Then, if the producer thinks they're set, it goes off to ARTE next week followed by six weeks while they decide if they want to take the next step and give us development money. I hope the weekend will prove to be your hectic week's curative ending. ** Okay, we're caught up. You're getting your monthly slaves a day early because I have something that seems more weekend-like set for tomorrow. See what these well-meaning, needy guys do to you. See you tomorrow.

I. Transfixing Stillness

'Keanu Reeves missed his calling as a silent film actor.

'Critics and viewers alike refer to him as stiff, shallow, fake, always playing himself. These opinions have been repeated enough that they’re treated like fact. But this critique misses something. Keanu’s power lies not in transformation or the ability to wrap his mouth around clever word play. No, Keanu is at his most powerful when film is at its most elemental. Like Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, and the greatest of silent actors, Keanu has immense screen presence and a keen understanding of communicating story through physicality, albeit with a very modern inflection. A simple glance or curled lip can unfurl lengthy character history or upend expectations.

'But this isn’t the commonly held image of Keanu as an actor. He’s been steadily working since the mid-1980s, his earliest defining role one-half of the titular loveable but dim-witted duo in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989). Through a variety of high profile blockbusters, low-key dramas, and interested misfires in period pieces, Keanu is still stuck in the amber of our first impression; we don’t treat him with the seriousness he deserves. At best, Keanu is regarded as a guilty pleasure. At worst, he’s seen as a truly bad actor of little worth. No matter where you fall, you likely believe he isn’t worthy of critical study or even much respect for his craft. But this image—of odd blankness, affability but dim wit, worth only found in action films—ignores how purely cinematic his acting style is. For Keanu, acting isn’t a mode of transformation but a state of being. He transmutes story into flesh.

'In the biography Furious Love, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger recount Richard Burton’s bafflement, acting alongside Elizabeth Taylor in the splendidly overwrought Cleopatra (1963), over her seeming lack of technique: “ ‘She’s just not doing anything,’ he complained to [Joseph L.] Mankiewicz.” But the director pulled him aside and showed him footage “that took his breath away.” Burton, Kashner and Schoenberger explain, “was struck by Elizabeth’s absolute stillness,” and learned from her “how to tone down the theatrical performances for the camera’s cool eye.”

'I’ve often wondered if Keanu’s costars ever think the same thing, since he has a similar transfixing stillness. Bret Easton Ellis once noted that Keanu has a “stillness, an awkwardness even, that is unusually empathetic. He is always hypnotic to watch.” When you watch him opposite actors with more pronounced tics—like Robert Downey Jr. in A Scanner Darkly— Reeves almost seems like he’s doing nothing. But still, your eyes gravitate toward him.

'Because of Keanu’s style, the gap between his good and bad performances is a chasm. There is no middle ground for him (which perhaps explains some people’s distaste for his work). Keanu’s failed performances are those that push him toward a theatricality against his natural instincts. They also tend to be the kind of roles actors use to challenge or prove themselves—difficult accents, lush period pieces, reliance on verbal dexterity. The most damning performance in his career is that of Jonathan Harker, the fiancé to the legendary vampire’s object of obsession in Francis Ford Coppola’s fever dream take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If you ever come across a list of the top acting miscasts, Keanu’s performance in the film is likely on it. The critical reaction to his role is so poor it has its own subsection on the film’s Wikipedia page. It’s hard to figure out which review is the most damning. Total Film writes dismissively that “[y]ou can visibly see Keanu attempting to not end every one of his lines with ‘dude.’” Entertainment Weekly said he appeared “out of his depth.” AskMen was especially vicious, writing, “It’s one thing to cast Keanu Reeves as an esteemed British lawyer, but it’s quite another to ask him to act alongside Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins[...] [They] ran circles around the poor Canuck, exposing his lack of range, shoddy accent, and abysmal instincts for all to see.”

'Yes, in Dracula Keanu is overburdened by the period costumes, lost in the details of each frame as if he were another illusion, appearing as though he’s wandered onto the wrong set. This isn’t because he’s out of his depth. It’s because he’s fighting against his natural instincts as an actor. The harsh criticism of Keanu’s performance in Dracula seeks to dismiss his career as a whole. But Keanu wouldn’t have such a long-running, successful career without fulfilling a cultural need or tapping into something primal that draws our attention.

II. The Crossroads of Virile and Vulnerable

'One critical consistency between Keanu’s virulent pans and more beloved roles (think of the tender-hearted hustler in 1991’s My Own Private Idaho) is the common refrain that Keanu always “just plays himself.” The harsh ring of “just” implies a lack of craft and worth as an actor. The statement also assumes we truly know the personalities of stars. We can rattle off details of Keanu’s tragedies during the 1990s (stillborn child, death of his girlfriend eighteen months later), find plenty of platitudes about his kindness, and get a narrow view of his personality through interviews. The act of thinking we know a star as high-profile as Keanu isn’t novel, especially in the age of never ending press cycles and paparazzi. What’s more fascinating, though, is what the “playing himself” criticism says about Keanu as an actor.

'Critics and audiences alike have a warped view of the history of acting, as if “true” cinematic acting began with the deification of Marlon Brando, followed by the 1970s glory days of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Each of these actors pronouncedly transform themselves from role to role. They take on various accents with panache, layer on idiosyncrasies, whittle their bodies down or bulk themselves up. A character is a costume to put on and never take off until the last camera rolls. It isn’t a coincidence that Jake Gyllenhaal and Matthew McConaughey’s recent renaissances and newfound respect both involved dramatic weight loss. Keanu is one of the few high-profile modern actors to not go for willful physical transformation or uglify himself for gravitas. If you’re not “transforming” as an actor, there is a belief that you’re doing something wrong. This line of thinking harkens back to the idea that we must suffer for our art. But Keanu is more powerful than actors who rely on physical transformation as shorthand for depth, because he taps into something much more primal and elusive: the truth.

'The first time we see Keanu as FBI Agent Johnny Utah in the beloved surfer-crime drama Point Break (1991), he sits on the hood of a car seemingly unperturbed by the rain pouring down on him. It takes a moment to recognize the shotgun that sits in his lap. His hair slick. His tight black shirt and jeans clinging to his impressive body. The camera holds close to his lips as he unfurls a piece of gum and puts it into his mouth, and then we see a sequence of him blasting through a gun course at Quantico. This introduction gives rise to the kind of action star Keanu grows into, much different than his 1980s predecessors who tended to be powered by an unerring confidence and machismo. Their emotional landscapes weren’t as developed as their biceps. The opening of Point Break illustrates how Keanu’s relationship with the camera informs his onscreen masculinity. He carries himself with a supple vulnerability, at times even a passivity, that seems at odds with the expectations for an action star.

'I’ve found myself attracted to Keanu’s presence because of the way he marries typically masculine and feminine qualities. He’s both intense and vulnerable, kind and tough, honest and mysterious. Keanu, of course, isn’t the first star to exist at the crossroads of virile and vulnerable. Actors like James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and Paul Newman embody a similar alchemy that have drawn women (and men) to them. But these actors often seem to fight against the lustful gaze of the camera, while Keanu supplants himself to it. Where they seem cynical, disinterested, or too wounded as a romantic lead, Keanu is utterly open.

'In Point Break, he’s a hotshot with a gun and a badge. But he’s also an object of lust for the camera (and audience), with a disarmingly open smile. Furthermore, without the help of a woman—the short-haired pixie vixen surfer Tyler (Lori Petty)—he wouldn’t be able to integrate himself into the gang of robbers/surfers led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). This artful dynamic—a woman of greater skill guiding a passive man into a world beyond his imagination—develops even further in The Matrix (1999). Some of this, of course, exists on a plot level. But Keanu tends to let his scene partners take the lead, becoming almost a tabula rasa on which they (and we) can project our ideas of what it means to be a hero, a man, a modern action star.

III. Modern Loneliness

'Constantine (2005) has a lot working against it. As an adaptation of the Hellblazer comics from Vertigo, it isn’t memorable. But as a continuation of Keanu’s thematic exploration of loneliness as an actor, it is. Constantine casts off most of the comics’ canon for the screen. Gone is the London setting, the character’s British background. The cynicism, chain smoking, and dark humor remain, even though Keanu (who is of Chinese, Hawaiian, and English descent) looks nothing like the blonde-haired comic character. Searching for emotional truth in a fantasy comic adaptation involving a working class magician who can see angels and demons and toys with the black arts seems like a fool’s errand. But sometimes you find grace in unlikely places. Amongst CGI demons, Tilda Swinton’s androgynous take on the archangel Gabriel, and lots of hellfire, Keanu somehow provides a trenchant take on the burden of loneliness in the big city.

'(When looking closer at Keanu’s career, loneliness comes into focus as a thematic preoccupation. He’s often disconnected from the world around him, forging relationships only with intense effort or by accident. While he’s a great romantic lead—more so in films where romance isn’t the main plotline—I think he’s even better suited to moments when he’s wading through the cold, dark waters of spiritual isolation.)

'The loneliness that comes with the modern metropolis—like Los Angeles, where Constantine resides—has a different tenor than loneliness anywhere else. It’s magnified to such a great degree in part because of the bizarre effects of population density. Everyone handles loneliness differently. Many, like Constantine, take to trying on addictions and seeing which fit. And addiction aside, most people dealing with loneliness—including myself—acquire weird habits to fill the darkness. A small moment about thirty minutes into Constantine (just before he meets Rachel Weisz’ earnest, Catholic cop who has yet to realize she’s being swept up in a battle between heaven and hell) illustrates the idiosyncrasies that come with loneliness.

'Constantine sits alone under the harsh fluorescent lights of his apartment, doing what he does best—slow self-destruction at the hands of smoking and alcohol. A spider as sickly as the peeling paint on his walls tumbles across the table. He puts the spider under an empty glass, watching it for a few moments with dull curiosity as it makes sense of its tiny, glass prison. He blows some cigarette smoke into the glass, but keeps the spider trapped. “Welcome to my life,” he remarks. It’s a series of small gestures only the lonely think of, then actually go through with. Enacted by other movie stars, this moment could come across as maudlin or empty. But the great beauty of Keanu’s skill makes the short scene at once painfully earnest, chillingly lonely, and aching with self-pity.

'Constantine taps into a lot of what makes Keanu sincerely watchable and an actor of surprising depth. An emotional truthfulness? Check. Strong physicality? Just watch the way he plays with a pack of cigarettes or curls his body when he has a coughing fit. Interesting handling of modern masculinity? It’s all there, even if the film isn’t always aware of it. And nine years later, Keanu would finally find a vehicle that perfectly amplifies his strengths.

IV. Keanu Reeves, Action Star (A Certain Baggage)

'John Wick (2014) stars Keanu as the titular former assassin, so feared he gained the nickname Baba Yaga (The Boogeyman). From the moment we see Keanu as John Wick, he carries himself like he’s wounded. These psychological wounds eventually give way to physical ones. His peaceful retirement is first interrupted by the death of his wife, then his old life creeping back in. Before her death, his wife arranged for him to receive an adorable puppy named Daisy, meant to help him grieve, and Wick gradually warms up to the dog. Unfortunately, he crosses paths with Iosef (Alfie Allen), the obnoxious son of a powerful mob boss/former associate. Maybe if Iosef knew of Wick’s reputation, he wouldn’t have brutally beaten Wick, killed Daisy, and stolen his 1969 Mustang. This crime leads Wick on a quest for revenge through a deadly world full of the ghosts of his past profession. John Wick synthesizes Keanu’s greatness—his central, thematic loneliness; his command of physicality and stillness; and his peculiarly vulnerable masculinity.

'On the surface, John Wick is a simple, classic story of revenge with some of the most impressive world-building I’ve seen in years. Beyond that, though, it metatextually capitalizes on the story arc of Keanu Reeves, Action Star, regaining his title in the genre. He sells every punch given or received, every thrown knife, every ounce of blood spilled. There is weight to the action in the film. You see the toll it takes on his body and, at times, a minute shift of his expression acknowledging how age affects performance. When he’s already wounded and gets into a fight for his life with Ms. Perkins (Adrianne Palicki), we feel it.

'Wick is cut from the same cloth as Alain Delon’s assassin in Le Samourai (1969), whose cool stoicism and impressively-styled badassery yields a heavy influence. But while Delon and his kin seem sharp and cold, like cut glass, Wick is powered by something altogether different—longing, loss, connection. In Keanu’s hands, Wick isn’t void of emotion—or struggling with its first pangs—but brimming with it.

'The film frames Wick as mythic. His face moves from mournful to vengeful at a clip. His eyes lock with a man just as he stabs him in the gut until he dies, while lights the color of cotton candy blue and magenta shift the architecture of his face to something fearsome. Keanu tells Wick’s story through his body—the way he wears a suit and his wedding ring, the cool determination in his eyes, the flash of warmth in a brief scene with Addy (Bridget Regan), the slackness in his face when he sees Daisy dead. This is a man who has nothing to lose, who carries the weight of his history with each step—and “his” history here is both Wick’s and Keanu’s. Stars like Keanu bring a certain baggage with them—the roles we’ve loved, the bitter taste of when they’ve failed us, half-remembered gossip. This context informs John Wick.

'There are actors we admire, and then there are the stars we love. The best of them get under our skin, becoming a part of our lives, following us through tragedies and triumphs. Keanu is one of those stars for me because of the sheer joy watching him brings. But there’s also the joy for the medium that radiates off him. Actors like Keanu—who find beauty in stillness—are why film was created in the first place. It’s a medium that can show us the truth of the human condition in a way no other form can. Keanu often taps into the truth of the shifting boundaries of modern masculinity, of how our bodies tell as much of a story as what we say. John Wick is as much a slick revenge flick as a fairytale. Keanu Reeves is back, the film seems to be whispering to us.

'But was he ever gone in the first place?'-- Angelica Jade Bastién



___
Stills















































































___
Further

Keanu Reeves @ IMDb
Mr. Reeves, a fansite
Keanu Reeves is immortal
whoa is (not) me :: Defending Keanu Reeves, a fansite
Keanu Reeves Network, a fansite
'Why I love… Keanu Reeves'
'How Keanu Reeves Went From Action Star to Riding Giant'
Keanu Reeves @ Twitter
'51 YEARS OF KEANU REEVES’ AMAZING HAIR'
'New Keanu Reeves Movie Makes Just £88'
'6 Films That Prove Keanu Reeves Should Do More Comedy'
Sad Keanu Site
'Keanu Reeves has written a book about shadows'
'The Quiet Man: The Riddle of Keanu Reeves'
'Keanu Reeves: The Man Who Isn't There'
'Turns Out Keanu Reeves Is One Heck of a Shot'
'Seduce Her Like Keanu Reeves'
'My mum was a Keanu Reeves superman'
'8 Movies That Almost Starred Keanu Reeves'
'I WAS IN A BAND WITH KEANU REEVES'
'The 7 Greatest (True) Keanu Reeves Stories Ever Told'
'You owe Keanu Reeves a life
'Complete Field Guide to the Facial Expressions of Keanu Reeves'



____
Extras


1983 Keanu Reeves Coca-Cola Commercial


Keanu Reeves Makes A Spago Getaway On His Vintage Motorcycle


Keanu Reeves - Dogstar Original- Keanu Sings! "Isabelle"


Sad Keanu BBC interview


Keanu Reeves Reading From Paul Gauguin's ‘Noa Noa’


Keanu Reeves on Turning 50



_____
Interview




DENNIS COOPER: Is it true you're playing a male prostitute in Gus Van Sant's next film?

KEANU REEVES: Yeah, I play Scottie, who's based on... Hal? Prince Hal? From, um, Shakespeare. I come from a wealthy background I've denied. And I've been on the streets for three years.

DC: By "the streets," you mean Santa Monica Boulevard, right?

KR: Yeah, yeah. But in Seattle. It's not quite au courant. It's more about family. I call it "Where's Dad?" Hopefully River Phoenix will be doing it with me. And if that happens, then who knows what's going to happen.

DC: You'd both be prostitutes?

KR: Yeah!

DC: What a funny idea.

KR: Yes. He'd play a character called Mike, who has an extreme case of narcolepsy. So he'll pass out and awaken and the film follows him around. I'm more like a side character.

DC: Sounds cool. Any relationship between this and Wolfboy, that gay play you did in Toronto early on in your career?

KR: [laughs] Um -- wow. No. The guy that I played in Wolfboy was a jock who just lost it. He was under so much pressure he didn't know what was goin' on. Then he fell in love with this guy who gave him back his sense of power. And even then I dumped the guy. [chuckles] And he killed me. Cut me.

DC: Yeah, I heard.

KR: He sucked my blood.

DC: Friends of mine in Toronto sent me some yellowed clippings about Wolfboy.

KR: What did they--? I don't recall.

DC: Oh um, just that it was disgusting. The play was revolting, etc.

KR: Oh, yeah!

DC: And there should never have been anything like it perpetrated on a stage.

KR: Really! Well, that's kind of cool. The poster was the cast in white T-shirts, kind of wetted down. I had my eyes closed and this guy is almost kissing me with this like grin? So the first couple of performances we had leather boys comin' out. You know, caps and the whole deal. And they were walking out at intermission because there weren't enough shoes flying.

DC: You grew up in Toronto. Wildly? Innocently?

KR: When I see stuff in L.A. now I realize how safe and sheltered my upbringing was. We didn't even do graffiti, you know? We'd build go-carts called Fireball 500. I mean we did sling chestnuts at teachers' heads, and in grade eight hash started to come around, and LSD kinda. But Toronto's become like a shopping center now. Under all those banks you can actually go shopping fourteen city blocks underground. You can buy Lotto tickets every five hundred feet.

DC: You play bass guitar, right?

KR: Do I play it? You know, it's all relative.

DC: You're not starting a band a la River Phoenix?

KR: Um, I wouldn't mind doing bar-band shit, I guess.

DC: What kind of music do you listen to?

KR: O.K., where to begin, where to begin? Let's see, Husker Du, Joy Division... The Ramones changed my life. Oh, and what's that band? It's like an industrial band.

DC: British, or Canadian, or--

KR: American. Black... Black... Big Black.

DC: Oh, they're great! Do you know their song "Kerosene", about these kids who are so bored they light each other on fire just to have something to do? Someone should buy the film rights to that song. Maybe you?

KR: Yeah. Who else do I like? There's the Pixies, but I mean I don't know if I love 'em. I was telling some guy in a frat in San Diego what bands I like and he says, "Oh, so you like slightly alternative music." [laughs]

DC: Were you into punk when it started? I guess you must have been pretty young.

KR: I'm like second-circle punk. But yeah, man! [clapping] Totally! G.B.H. and the Exploited are my two hard-core bands of choice. I love playing them too.

DC: Actually, I've always thought there was something very punk about your acting, not only your erratic energy but the way you seem incapable of conveying dishonesty, no matter who you're playing. Which I guess is why you have this punk cult following.

KR: Oh, yeah. King Punk.

DC: No, really. For instance I know these punks in Toronto who adore you so much that they invented a dance called the Keanu Stomp. The dance is based on the way you walked in The Prince of Pennsylvania.

KR: No!

DC: Yeah. Apparently it's turning into a bit of a fad. There are slam pits full of punks doing the Keanu Stomp even as we speak. In fact, two of these punks, Bruce La Bruce and Candy, who head up this gay-and-lesbian-anarchist group called the New Lavender Panthers, begged me to ask you some questions for them. Is that O.K.?

KR: The New Lavender Panthers! Whoa! Sure it's O.K.

DC: All right: "Why haven't you made a movie with Drew Barrymore yet?"

KR: Oh, ho, ho! They're not up on their Keanu lore, because I did work with Drew on a Christmas TV special. This was after she got off drugs.

DC: "Was Rob Lowe gross to work with on Youngblood?"

KR: What?! No, Rob's O.K.

DC: "Why haven't you worked with Molly Ringwald yet? Do you want to?"

KR: I want to! I want to! I want to!

DC: "Why haven't you made a European art film yet? (Might we suggest Dario Argento, Michelangelo Antonioni, or Lothar Lambert?)"

KR: Oh, yeah. I'll just send them a tape of me going, "Whoa! Bodacious!" Sure.

DC: And finally, "Are you gay or what?" Come on, make it official.

KR: No. [long pause] But ya never know.

DC: Cool. So are you very politically aware?

KR: No, I'm an ignorant pig. I'm makin' movies in Hollywood, you know? The things that I'm doin' are pretty sheltered. For me, acting is very self-involved, especially between projects. Once you get a part, you're liberated. You can find out what that character thinks.

DC: Your character in Parenthood was kind of weird politically.

KR: Yeeesss?

DC: Well, initially he was an outsider in every way. He even had a different energy level from anyone else in the movie. But by the end he's happily ensconced in that big family portrait with all the other characters, holding a newborn infant.

KR: Yeah. I dug that guy, man. He was trying.

DC: Well, at one point your character does this monologue about how his father used to wake him up by flicking lit cigarettes at his head. It concluded with a statement that could be interpreted as vaguely homophobic.

KR: Really! Like what?

DC: He says, "They'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father these days," which seems to imply that "father" is some kind of godlike state, and "butt-reaming asshole," i.e., gay male, isn't.

KR: Oh, that is homophobic. It's weird.

DC: Your character does this fantastic double take right after that. Some friends of mine interpreted that as your trying to express your discomfort as an actor at having to say that line.

KR: "Butt-reaming asshole" was a weird line. But no. The character's just dismissing his past. He understands it, he's beyond it. It was ugly and he doesn't want any part of it. That double take's like him going, "Fuck that shit."

DC: Do you want to have a family?

KR: Yeah.

DC: Do you have a serious girlfriend?

KR: Um -- not -- not that heavy. I want kids.

DC: How many?

KR: Three.

DC: What sexes?

KR: Whatever comes out.

DC: Do you read much? Books, I mean.

KR: How about if I said I don't read as much as I'd like to?

DC: Nothing recently?

KR: Um, yeah. I've been rereading Letters to a Young Poet and Autobiography of Malcolm X. And some John Rechy novels, as research for the Gus Van Sant film. Oh, I love Phillp K. Dick.

DC: Me too. I just saw Total Recall.

KR: How is it?

DC: Disappointing. Everything's in the trailer. The K. Dick story it's based on gets avalanched about an hour in. Then it just turns into an excuse to blow $70 million.

KR: Explosion movie.

DC: Yeah.

KR: Have you read Dick's short stories? He'd begin writing by having like a fantasy, like -- he would take a glass and go, "Hm, that's ironic." And write a story, you know?

DC: Well, he was on speed all the time.

KR: I want to be on speed! I've never been on speed. I want to be a speed freak for a while. Is that a stupid thing to say?

DC: No, no. I love speed. I mean I used to do speed all the time. Trouble is, you do get really depressed for three days afterwards.

KR: It burns you out?

DC: Yeah. It's ultimately not worth it. I used to do crystal meth, which is scary. I'd snort it.

KR: Yummmm! Wild!

DC: I know. It's yum indeed. Speaking of speed, you do a lot of films. Do you like it that way?

KR: Yeah, definitely. Like recently Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter has been having reshoots. In between those I did a couple of parts in student films.

DC: Didn't you do a Shakespeare play in Massachusetts last year?

KR: Oh, yeah, The Tempest. I played Trinculo, and it was a blast. Andre Gregory played Prospero. His daughter Marina played Miranda.

DC: Gregory must be intense.

KR: He was very intense. Anyway, my next half year is pretty much set. I'm doing Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Part 2, or Bill and Ted Go to Hell, or Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. We're also doing a Bill and Ted Saturday-morning cartoon, and that's kind of trippy. And before My Own Private Idaho with Gus I'm doing Riders on the Storm with Kathryn Bigelow.

DC: Based on the Doors song of the same name?

KR: No, at least I don't think so. I play an FBI agent who has to infiltrate some surfers who are bank robbers. The character is a kind of adrenaline junkie, and then there's this other adrenaline junkie, and they push each other into jumping out of airplanes, shooting guns, shit like that.

DC: Is he a classic Keanu Reeves-ian character -- sweet, confused, distracted, awkward?

KR: I call it victim acting.

DC: Do you make a point of seeking out roles like that?

KR: Well, I don't know about Manifest Destiny and all. You get what you put out and all that shit? I guess it's just been my lot so far.

DC: Even your creepy characters are so sympathetic. In I Love You to Death you were supposed to be a thief, but--

KR: No, my guy was just harmless. Larry Kasdan wanted this guy to be beat up by the world, just kind of in a daze. Harmless and drugged. So they hired me. [laughs]

DC: That daze is one of the things I really love about what you do. You're always kind of talking around what you actually want to say.

KR: Right, right.

DC: Most actors just manufacture emotion and expect audiences to match it. With your characters, it's their inability to produce that's the key. They're often, if not perpetually, distressed, spooked, weirded-out by the world. They're always fighting with their contexts.

KR: Always, man, always.

DC: Granted most of them are teenagers, but they're not exactly future stockbrokers, which seems like the teen norm nowadays.

KR: No, not at all. Actually, the futures of most of my characters are pretty bleak. [laughs] Who knows what they're gonna do?

DC: Do you research your characters?

KR: Definitely, definitely. Right now with this film Riders on the Storm I've been hanging out with athletes, FBI agents, police, people in college fraternities. I'm seeing a whole other part of the world, you know? When I did Ted I took stuff from cartoons. Stuff comes up that you never thought of. I look for physical things, background, and emotionally where the character's at for every second. I'm pretty flexible. I've studied some of the Uta Hagen techniques and Stanislavsky, and I've done some -- you know, some basic physical Grotowski exercises, and I've read some Artaud. A lot of times you get tired, cause you're seventeen and you got a certain kind of energy that they dig. You know? In some of the character stuff, I've had a chance to explore more, working with a whole new caliber of people, like Stephen Frears, Tim Hunter. River's Edge! That's a movie, man. American cinema!

DC: Yeah, a great movie. I keep waiting for Tim Hunter to do another movie. It's been years now. He did a Twin Peaks.

KR: He did? Did you see it?

DC: Yeah.

KR: What was it like?

DC: It was nice. It was sparer than the others. Not quite as surrealistic. So, where do you think you fit into the Brat Pack, if at all?

KR: The Brat Pack? I have nothing to do with them.

DC: Do you think your acting style s fundamentally different from theirs?

KR: Jeesh! What?! No! Agggghhhh! I really respect those guys, man. Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Kiefer, Rob Lowe, all those guys. They've really set a path for us. Who would have thought that you'd give a development deal to a twenty-three-year-old actor?

DC: Well unlike them, you don't seem like a career socializer. I never see your mug in Details, Vanity Fair, etc.

KR: Right. I guess 'cause I'm a nerd.

DC: You don't avoid trendy photo ops?

KR: No, I dig going out, but -- you know, I have fun. I don't get many invitations and stuff -- it's just kind of whatever happens. Once in a while I'll ask my friends, "What're you doing? Where are you going? What's going on?" I'll go see art, I'll do whatever -- buy a drink, dance, play. All that shit. Sometimes I go to clubs. I dig the blues, man. The blues have always had some of the best times, best feelings I've ever had. The last person I saw was Buddy Guy, but it was in a bad space. Just bummed me out. Everyone was sittin' down, and they had candles in the middle of the tables! So it's like, "Bababawawa!" [He mimes a frenetic guitar player] And everyone's like [claps politely], "Excellent music."

DC: It must be weird making films, seeing a smallish group of people constantly for four or five months, then never seeing them again.

KR: Yeah, right. "Howya doin', man?""Bye.""See you at the Academy Awards."

DC: Do you want to say something about your motorcycle? I saw it parked out front.

KR: My motorcycle. My 1974, 850 Norton Commando, high performance English touring motorcycle. Yaaggghhhhhh!

DC: Didn't you have a semi-serious accident?

KR: I've fucked up a couple of times.

DC: I thought so. When you took your shirt off in Prince of Pennsylvania you had this porcelain upper body. But when you had your shirt off in Parenthood, it looked all gnarly.

KR: [laughs] I love that bike, man.

DC: Well, not to be too parental or anything, but don't kill yourself. You've got a pretty love-struck cult of fans to think about. And you're getting more and more famous. I mean that's quite a responsibility.

KR: Yeah, I'm pseudo-quasi.

DC: Pseudo-quasi-famous?

KR: Pseudo-quasi. I'm not really around. I'm around. Yeah.

DC: So where are you, if you know what l mean?

KR: Um -- lately?

DC: O.K.

KR: Lately. Training, surfing. On the weekends I've been kind of cruising the boulevards. L.A. is so trippy. Chhww. It becomes like a small town really quick. On those weekend nights the prostitutes are out, and the kids from school, and people cruising, and in the clubs all that stuff is going on? I ride my bike sometimes. I'll just go out, say, around one? Midnight? And I'll ride until four? Goin' through the city to see who's doin' what where, you know? Going downtown, riding around and just -- I care, you know?

DC: About--

KR: Yeah. Just to look around. Great.



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19 of Keanu Reeves' 85 roles

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Peter MarkleYoungblood (1986)
'I knew Keanu Reeves before he was famous. Aren’t I special? Self-mockery aside, I was indeed fortunate to have grown up in a hip part of downtown Toronto and been immersed in a neighborhood that encouraged art and attracted creativity. That’s how I became connected with Keanu and, ultimately, how he came to help coach my bantam house league hockey team. Keanu, whose family also lived in Yorkville, was classmates and best buds in public school with my older brother, Andrew. They were tight – so close that Keanu was, years later, best man at my bro’s wedding – and hockey became a shared experience when they played together for North Toronto. They decided to give back one year and co-coach my club at Don Valley. Keanu, a ‘tender with a style all his own, focused on the crease. In the photo above, Keanu is sporting the yellow Wigglesworth Warriors jersey, I’m the awkward kid in the front row with the over-sized blue Cooper gloves (that I’d won as a door prize the year before) and Andrew is top row, far right, rocking the classic beard. I don’t recall how well we did that season, but I do remember thinking Keanu had a gift. I’d seen him play a handful of games at a competitive level, and despite him not having much formal training, he stood out. He was a raw talent, acrobatic and unrefined, but he could steal wins.'-- The Hockey News



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Tim HunterRiver's Edge (1986)
'There’s a lot of Nirvana in River’s Edge. Most “what’s the matter with kids today?” films have their juvenile delinquents in some kind of drag: black leather jackets (Blackboard Jungle, The Wild One) or spiked hair and safety pins and pet rats (Suburbia, Next Stop, Nowhere, aka “the Punk Rock Quincy episode”). But the kids in River’s Edge dress in ripped jeans and T-shirts and chunky, shapeless sweaters. It’s sexless (the only sex scene takes place under a shitty maroon sleeping bag with bullfrogs croaking in the distance and a dead body being simultaneously disposed of not too far off). “The thing about a shark,” Robert Shaw famously observed during the “USS Indianapolis” speech in 1975’s Jaws just before all hell breaks loose, “is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… till he bites ya.” The kids who populate River’s Edge, Keanu Reeves’ Mike, Ione Skye’s Clarissa, Daniel Roebuck’s Samson, etc., don’t seem to be living, buzzed on sixers, many of which they must steal from a harried liquor store cashier (the great, recently late Taylor Negron), as they’re underage. Until they bite you. It’s hard to capture boredom on film without boring an audience (Richard Linklater’s Suburbia, for one, tries and fails). What keeps viewers of River’s Edge on, well, edge is the sense that these black-eyed, dead creatures in inside-out heavy metal tees (Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, even the band logos are muted) is that they might bite. It’s a sickening feeling and you cannot turn away.'-- Salon



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Marisa SilverPermanent Record (1988)
'The opening shot of Permanent Record is ominous and disturbing, and we don’t know why. In an unbroken movement, the camera tracks past a group of teenagers who have parked their cars on a bluff overlooking the sea, and are hanging out casually, their friendship too evident to need explaining. There seems to be no “acting” in this shot, and yet it is superbly acted because it feels so natural that we accept at once the idea that these kids have been close friends for a long time. Their afternoon on the bluff seems superficially happy, and yet there is a brooding quality to the shot, perhaps inspired by the lighting, or by the way the camera circles vertiginously above the sea below. Permanent Record is Silver’s second feature, after the wonderful Old Enough (1984), which told the story of a friendship between two 13-year-old girls who were from opposite sides of the tracks but were on the same side of adolescence. In that film and this one, she shows that she has a rare gift for empathy, and that she can see right to the bottom of things without adding a single gratuitous note.'-- Roger Ebert



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Stephen FrearsDangerous Liaisons (1988)
'All the main characters use American accents. Since this is consistent, it is not annoying. Rather than have an unconvincing array of accents, or actors struggling with affected ones, the film is comfortable with a simple convention: aristocrats speak with American accents, and servants speak with Scottish accents. A young, very attractive, and at the time unknown Uma Thurman plays an innocent who is seduced by Valmont, and a young and awkward Keanu Reeves, before he too was very famous, plays a music teacher in love with her. Despite Keanu's lack of acting ability, he does not harm the film, being well enough cast as a bumbling non-entity.'-- Lloydian Aspects



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Stephen HerekBill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
'On the verge of failing their most heinous oral history exam, Bill (Keanu Reeves) and Ted (Alex Winter) find themselves on a most excellent adventure…traveling through history in a telephone booth with a guide named Rufus (George Carlin). On their journey they meet the likes of Billy the Kid, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and Freud and then bring them back for their test. They must also find a way to stay together in the present because the future depends on it.'-- Nighthawk Cinema



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Ron HowardParenthood (1989)
'This feel-good family ensemble piece from director Ron Howard manages to avoid being oversentimental, and the result is an affectionate, leisurely comedy about the joys (and otherwise) of bringing up children. Steve Martin grabs the comic honours as the elder son of a family headed by crotchety Jason Robards, although there are fine performances, too, from a star-studded supporting cast that includes Dianne Wiest, Rick Moranis, Mary Steenburgen, Martha Plimpton and Keanu Reeves. Howard handles the large number of different story strands adeptly and he makes the most of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel's sharp script and some neat set pieces, notably Martin's cowboy turn at his son's birthday party.'-- Radio Times



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Lawrence KasdanI Love You to Death (1990)
'Keanu plays Marlon James in this 1990 film I Love You to Death. Marlon is a deeply-stoned, would-be-killer that is profoundly absent minded. I am taken by Keanu's passion for the art of entertainment as he draws an image of Marlon into the picture with an unrated hair fashion that compliments his role rather perfectly.'-- collaged



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Gus van SantMy Own Private Idaho (1991)
'River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves star in this haunting tale from Gus Van Sant about two young street hustlers: Mike Waters, a sensitive narcoleptic who dreams of the mother who abandoned him, and Scott Favor, the wayward son of the mayor of Portland and the object of Mike’s desire. Navigating a volatile world of junkies, thieves, and johns, Mike takes Scott on a quest along the grungy streets and open highways of the Pacific Northwest, in search of an elusive place called home. Visually dazzling and thematically groundbreaking, My Own Private Idaho is a deeply moving look at unrequited love and life on society’s margins.'-- The Criterion Collection



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Kathryn BigelowPoint Break (1991)
'For one of the few female directors working in Hollywood to take on a film built entirely on the relationship between two men was unexpected. But Point Break turned out to be Bigelow’s most subversive film yet. She and Cameron quietly reworked the script, and delivered her one non-negotiable demand to the producers. Keanu Reeves – then known as the goofy-hot young star of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and not much else – would be her leading man. To say this didn’t quite fall in step with received wisdom is understating it. For more than a decade, action heroes had been glistening American dreams of domination, endlessly re-fighting the Vietnam War on screen and winning. But by the late 1980s, the public appetite for these one-man armies was waning. In 1987, the British high-street art shop Athena launched a poster called L’Enfant: a black-and-white photograph of a shirtless man cradling a baby. It sold five million copies. Softness was back in fashion. Arnold Schwarzenegger knew it: that’s why, in 1989, the actor went straight from Total Recall to Kindergarten Cop. And so did Bigelow. Johnny Utah was as all-American as heroes come: a jock turned lawman, with a name inspired by the legendary quarterback Joe Montana.'-- Telegraph



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Francis Ford CoppolaDracula (1992)
'Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a double offender, in the sense that both Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder come up short in the accent (and, some might argue, acting) department. His Victorian lawyer Jonathan Harker (just listen to his “Bloody wolves chasing me!” to say nothing of the way he pronounces Budapest when reading from his diary) and her Mina Murray/Elisabeta (the “surrounded by majestic mountains, lush vineyards” speech in the absinthe scene is a hoot) are both — ahem — bloody awful. And it could have possibly been avoided if they’d consulted with those great British thespians in the movie, Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Richard E. Grant. Instead, we’re left with a literal horror show.'-- Time Magazine



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Gus Van SantEven Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)
'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is one of the more empty, pointless, baffling films I can remember, and the experience of viewing it is an exercise in nothingness. How did this happen? Cowgirls has been directed by Gus Van Sant, whose most recent features were Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, both fine, strong-minded, creative films. Nothing in them would suggest that his next work would be like a throwback to the blissed-out 1960s, in which the very idea of women living and working on a ranch would be its own justification. One of the more peculiar aspects of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is that the movie presents us with notions that might barely have been daring 30 years ago, and expects us to be amazed today. It's in a time warp. That it's also written and edited in incoherent bursts of disconnected and arbitrary events is no help.'-- Roger Ebert



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Bernardo BertolucciLittle Buddha (1993)
'Bernardo Bertolucci in Little Buddha has found a wonderful vehicle for teaching about Buddhism. One of the keys to the film's emotional undertow is the casting of Ying Ruocheng as Lama Norbu. This veteran of the stage and screen in China, who played the Governor of Fushun Prison in The Last Emperor, comes across as a wise and compassionate holy man. In an important scene in the film, Lama Norbu explains reincarnation to Jesse's skeptical father: "In Tibet we think of the mind and the body as the content and the container." He holds up a cup of tea, then smashes it, and observes: "The cup is no longer the cup, but what is the tea?" He pauses and concludes: "Like the mind after death, the tea moves from one container to the next, but it is still tea." And to make a final point, Lama Norbu wipes up the liquid from the floor and squeezes it out. "Still tea," he chuckles.'-- S&P



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Robert LongoJohnny Mnemonic (1995)
'Johnny Mnemonic almost works as metafiction produced by an implied Gibson continuum, the 1995 of the world that would go on to produce cyborgs and cyberspace. It almost forces the viewer to observe the technological and corporatist progress of their own lives. The blatant branding for fictional brands, the odd casting, the reversal of cultural sway. All of these could combine together to criticize the corporate machine that produced this movie, to criticize the hegemony of Hollywood. In practice, though, Johnny Mnemonic only has an odd feeling of kitsch, as though it were the earnestly bad product of an only slightly different present. While much about cyberpunk holds true today, especially the core idea of culture shock caused by technological progress making life unrecognizable, Johnny Mnemonic falls into the gap where dystopic ideal met with dystopic reality. In a 2007 interview, Gibson described his writing as no longer being about the future, but rather “speculative fiction of the very recent past.” While Gibson caught up, and, in his own words used “a toolkit that was in large part provided by science fiction” to “a handle on the world today,” Johnny Mnemonic fell just short. But somewhere inside that deeply mediocre movie is a vision of that Gibson continuum, just out of reach.'-- Wired



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Lana Wachowski, Lilly WachowskiThe Matrix (1999)
'I was very lucky. I got a call from my agent, saying that these directors, the Wachowskis, wanted to meet, and they sent me the script, and the script was absolutely amazing, and I went in to meet with them, and they showed me some artwork, of their vision, and an early version of "bullet time," and it was very exciting and inspiring. We ended up hanging out in a parking lot outside the offices just talking and riffing, and we basically just kinda shook hands - they told me they wanted me to train for 4 months prior to filming, and I got a big grin on my face and said: "Yes." That's how it happened.'-- Keanu Reeves



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The Matrix Behind The Scenes - Flying


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Sam RaimiThe Gift (2000)
'Keanu Reeves is probably the creepiest thing in this movie becoming very believable as an abusive and threatening figure. In the movie he’s a very intimidating figure as he harasses Annie almost non-stop. Giovanni Ribisi is good as the troubled Buddy Cole, Annie’s friend and often protective spirit who seeks her guidance for his mental problems. His scenes are the saddest as he seems to be struggling with his own insanity. The movie has a great story with a creepy ending that shows why Sam Raimi is such a cult figure. An uneven yet entertaining genre entry that shows off some great performances by an all-star cast and tense writing by Thorton and Eppison, The Gift is a solid supernatural thriller.'-- Cinema Crazed



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Mike MillsThumbsucker (2005)
'Reeves is often dismissed as the pretty-boy face of Generation X, one who provides the surface-level sincerity we’ve come to expect from techno-dystopias like THE MATRIX trilogy (and inspiring innumerable paranoid hackers, but whatever). So we rarely get the chance to see our leading man in a role where his listless charm and quixotic ways are brought fully to bear in an ironic context. Which is sad: Here is a man whose brand is ripe for roles with character duality. We’re not only entertained by THUMBSUCKER’s orthodontist on a vision quest who quotes Yoda; we’re dying that he’s played by Keanu Reeves.'-- Sundance.tv



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Richard LinklaterA Scanner Darkly (2006)
'The rotoscope animation of A Scanner Darkly will be instantly familiar to those who saw Linklater and Sabiston’s Waking Life, but the differences between the two are nonetheless radical. Waking Life operates like an anthology, pairing monologuists with animators in segments that emphasize their individual flourish; it wasn’t important for the look of one sequence to match the other, just as it wasn’t important for one big thought bubble to link up with another. Produced by a now-defunct major studio boutique, Warner Independent Pictures (a comic misnomer if there ever was one), A Scanner Darkly has the more uniform style of conventional animation, but there’s artistic purpose behind it, too. Fluidity is the chief goal here, a sense of identities, realities, and altered realities bleeding into each other to such an extent that they become indistinguishable. As a fellow agent says when jokingly introducing the scramble-suited “Detective Fred” to the Broad Bear Lodge, “Let’s hear it for the vague blur.”'-- The Dissolve



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Keanu Reeves Man of Tai Chi (2013)
'Man of Tai Chi, Reeves' feature film directorial debut, has the same sometimes-awkward blend that Reeves brings to the table as an actor. The film is super serious (as befitting the martial arts genre, where everything is a matter of life or death), with moments of strange stilted dialogue (also par for the course) and scene after scene of thrilling physical combat, filmed with grace and certainty and no small amount of awe for the athletes involved. There's one masterpiece of a scene that takes place in a hidden night club floating in the bowels of a cargo ship in Hong Kong harbor. The setting is surreal: the circular stage painted with psychedelic dizzying swirls and the circular tables surrounding said stage, not to mention the bored elegant silent crowd, is reminiscent of the midnight theatre scene in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive or the freaky tiered nightclub in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Gesture. Each fight gets more dangerous. The stakes rise. Death is the only possible outcome. Reeves approaches the genre with respect and passion. Man of Tai Chi is hugely entertaining.'-- Sheila O'Malley



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Chad StahelskiJohn Wick (2014)
'Keanu Reeves had come to be considered a slightly ludicrous box-office burnout – until recently, when this brutally single-minded revenge actioner reignited his career by grossing $79m worldwide. Directed by the actor’s former stunt double Chad Stahelski (David Leitch is officially credited as a producer, but co-directed), John Wick features Reeves as a much-feared assassin, recently retired from working with Russian mobsters. At the start, Wick is in mourning but takes heart when he receives a posthumous gift of a puppy from his recently deceased wife; she presumably ordered it on PetsFromBeyondThe Grave.com. When callow mob scion Alfie Allen kills the dog, Wick’s wrath is unstoppable – and so is the film. John Wick can legitimately be called mindless violence – in a good way, sort of. There’s not much going on except Wick ploughing his juggernaut path through a world in which pretty much everyone is a Ruthless Assassin – there’s even an upmarket hotel exclusively for Ruthless Assassins. John Wick is more like a shoot-’em-up computer game than any film I’ve seen, and makes no bones about it. It’s slick, utterly to the point and surprisingly enjoyable – if you don’t have qualms about enjoying a movie in which there are no characters, only targets with varying scores. Reeves is robotically saturnine, his vacant centre (and matching vacant exterior) making this an almost zen-like exercise in wholesale slaughter as abstraction.'-- The Guardian



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John Wick Fight Scene Choreography Training




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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Let me just slip my fandom re: Jim Steinman sideways into your talk with steevee. Good morning! It was a joy to host the tearjerking post, my friend. Your cat! I love it! It's like a Batcat. Everyone, check out Ben's cat. Have a terrific weekend, pal. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, D! In a way, right? Sweet that your meeting with your friend was so awesome! Oh, no, I'm so sorry to hear that about your dog. Have you found anything out yet? That's really stressful. Yes, this weekend will be a marathon brain-taxing sprint to the finish line, yikes, and it won't be totally over on Monday, but hopefully the final work next week will be less greedy. Have the very best Saturday and Sunday that you can! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. There is a considerable strain of passive aggressiveness in quite a number if not even the majority of the slaves. I wonder the the prospective masters know that they, in fact, are the prey in that equation. Well, if I see 'Crash' again, I might really like it. I can't tell which of my viewings/reactions was the more objective one. No surprise, I'm sure, that the Spade/Koteas fuck scene doesn't do a thing for me. ** Steevee, Hi. Huh. For me, watching them fake-fuck is like watching the timer on my microwave when it's cooking my veggie-dogs. Hm, that is strange about Carpenter not being able to get a film financed. I guess it has been a while since he had a real hit, but he had a bunch of hits, not to mention being an influential genre master. Weird. ** Jamie McMorrow, Tickertape parade on the Champs Elysee to you! Whoa, busy, yikes, for sure. My brain feels literally numb, which quite a weird sensation. Food and sleep are holding their own so far. But, yeah, by Monday I might be a bit of a scarecrow. Yeah, the AC/DC thing, I know. I was very happy when I found that sentence. And TakeMyDignity's ending too. I love when the slaves or escorts have a gift for a great ending. I always kind of thing of those profile texts as being a specific literary form like the sonnet or whatever, but when they know how to nail an ending, my literature-izing of their texts feels much less pretentious, which is nice. Great, great, about the guest post! That's so cool of you! Yeah, send me the document when you're done, and if you need any advice or whatever about the formatting re: blog formatting or anything, just ask. Really, thanks! That's exciting! New entrancing song! Have you nailed it yet? What's your weekend looking like? ** Sypha, Ha ha, yeah, I actually did think, Oops, I'm going to freak Sypha out if I include that guy's photo, but then I thought, Well, I should give Sypha the chance to decide if he's freaked out for himself, so I went for it. Sorry. Sort of. Not really, ha ha. Ah, but James, maybe that lack of scintillating content will be even more scintillating to him. He can interpret that severe parsing on your part in any way he wants and make up some version of you in his head that, upon publishing his thesis, will then become the official viewpoint on you as a person. Are you cool with that? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Ha ha, good one, man. Oh, well, as you see, the weekend post is just kind of a fun one, assuming everyone has something to feel and say about Keanu, and I suppose that I'm supposing they/you will. Schmoozing is my idea of water-boarding. I still haven't read Brad Gooch's book, which i just ridiculous of me. I'm going to get it this weekend. How is it? ** Okay. So I had a fondness for Keanu Reeves moment and, while it lasted, a post was sought, accrued, organized, and ultimately placed on the blog's launch pad. Enjoy? Surely, in some way, right? See you on Monday.

Thailand Girandola





A woman seemingly orgasms loudly and in public location to awesome fireworks show.





Sky Ladder Firework by Cai Guo-Qiang





insane fireworks battle





San Diego, IB all fireworks go off at once by accident 4th of july 2012





Fireworks At School!?!?!?





Its called "macleta", they do it often in the southern parts of europe, like Spain and Italy





Amazing Japan Fireworks you never seen





Fireworks War, Greece: Annual event where the citizens of two neighboring towns battle with rocket fireworks to see who can ring the church bell in the other town first.





Bootleg Fireworks Fail





Daytime Fireworks Never Seen Before





Huge Fireworks Explosion: 900 Millimeter Shell





Youngjae got hit by fireworks 😭😭😭😭





Molten Iron Fireworks Show in Nuanquan Town, China





Using outdoor fireworks.... indoors.





OSLO FIREWORKS 2013 ACCIDENT 3 Dead





Fireworks Blind Child 1974 Public Info Film





Dubai New Year's Eve Fireworks Burj Khalifa





5 AK-180 (900 shots) Roman Candle Gun





Fireworks factory explosion caught on camera in Colombia




*

p.s. Hey. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Cool, I hoped it might be a pleasant surprise. I always like Keanu even when he's bad because he's always trying so hard not to be, and I like watching him try as much as I like watching him succeed for some reason. Here's truly hoping the treatment for your dog works really well. That's tentative very good news! Great! My weekend was nonstop work and totally exhausting. I feel about 1/3 as intelligent as I used to be today. Hopefully, that will wear off. How's Monday? ** Colin, Hey, Colin! Whoa, this is really, really nice! I don't know if you saw, but I actually featured an essay by you in a post here recently, about Charles Matton. Or, well, I thought that Colin was you. Am I wrong? Anyway, it's so sweet to see you! And I'm glad the Keanu fest seemed insane. Oh, man, thank you so much about 'Zac's Control Panel'! I'm so happy to hear that. That's one of my very favorite things I've ever done. And I'm super honored that you would want to use it for your class. Thank you so incredibly kindly, man! I would love to come over there sometime and do something, of course! That's exciting! Yeah, just give me a shout if or when that seems like a thing to do. All the very, very best to you, Colin! Happy morning, if it's still morning! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I think Keanu is like a post-Warhol Superstar in the classic superstar mode. Cool that you were classmates with Tim Hunter. I've never been able to figure out why, after 'River's Edge', maybe the best 'teen' movie ever made, he basically faded out as a film director and just ended up directing TV, like some 'Twin Peaks' episodes, occasionally. ** Sypha, Hi. I'll join Bill in saying you really should at least watch 'River's Edge' and 'MOPI'. And 'A Scanner Darkly'. Oh, no, I forgot about your boobs assault, but, now that I remember, I am only flush with pride. I don't think your future planning is far-fetched or conceited at all. People often make this weird assumption that the writers who are beloved of the current top literary critics and readers are 'the important' writers of our time, but,  if you look at history, it's as you said. It's actually extremely unusual that a writer who was considered an important writer in his or, once in a very rare while, her time ends up even being read and remembered 100 or whatever years later. It's the writers who were not known at all or considered marginal freaks whose work ends up getting the long, long life. Really, almost always. ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. I second Steevee in recommending 'John Wick', which is a terrific movie, probably Keanu's best film post-'A Scanner Darkly', and he's great in it. Got my eye on a copy of Brad's book. ** Steevee, Hi. I was just agreeing with you to Bill about 'John Wick'. Weirdly, at the time of that interview when Keanu was young and a new thing, his heritage was almost always talked about in the press and interviews about him, to the point where it didn't seem interesting to ask him about it. In the intro to the interview, which I didn't include, that got referenced. ** Bernard Welt, Hi, B! Mm, I can't remember if that candle/theater example was referenced or not. My brain is burnt toast this morning after too much writing work for three+ days straight without a break. I'll watch Ms. Dench when I am normally equipped upstairs again, if I ever am. Lovely to see you, B. Where are you in the relation to the end of that era? ** Jamie McMorrow, Ha ha, nice. I had to do way too much writing too fast this weekend, and my brain is roadkill, and whatever part of it is usually available to be clever is like a broken femur inside that smashed up thing, and so, for this morning only, I must greet you with a simple but heartfelt 'hi'. A flat weekend sounds like a madcap vacation to me at the moment, ha ha. Ooh, I like how you did that twisty metaphor thing about your new song. That's a great sign. Where's it at today? Nice Keanu moment in the Heti book. I have to read that. I hope my Monday will be lazy. It won't be, so I guess I hope it will be a little lazy. We'll see. Love to you from the big P and from the less big DC! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi. Sorry to have snuck them up a day. I though Keanu might be more weekend-friendly. As I've been saying up above, my brain is dead this morning, so I'm not even going to insult your haikus by dragging my ugly brain cells over them at the moment, but the minute they see the light again, I'm so there. Thank you! ** James, Hi. Yes, I did the Keanu interview in person. It was at some restaurant on Melrose that he frequented and loved. They opened the restaurant early and privately so he and I could do it there in peace. Cool about the Jaffe. Thank you for thanking me. ** Misanthrope, Well, of course. His turn in 'Thumbsucker' is one of his best later turns. Yeah, no, Keanu was funny and smart and great in my company. I'm sure he still is. Sometimes I wish I was a prick, but, alas. I aimed for my deadline and did what was needed to hit it, and now I am half or less the man I used to be. Until tomorrow, at least. ** Right. I just gathered up some instances of fireworks that I thought would fun for you guys to watch, so I hope you will. See you tomorrow.

'When My Amputations was published in 1986, it was heralded by writers and critics as a major literary achievement. Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, and Charles Johnson spoke of Clarence Major's mind and talent, his inventive use of language that drew together influences from black music, poetry, the blues, and painting. A reviewer for the New York Times wrote that My Amputations is “distinguished by a rich and imaginative prose poetry of evocative power.” Awarding it the 1986 Western States Book Award for Fiction, jurors Denise Levertov, Robert Haas, Jonathan Galassi, and Sandra Cisneros deemed the text “an explosively rich book about a man pursued by his shadow…. My Amputations is distinguished by the extraordinarily inventive rhythms of its language. A book full of laughter and rueful sadness and swift contempt, its deepest resonance is the hunger to be healed.” The critic Jerome Klinkowitz wrote that My Amputations is “living fiction, as close to a truly organic text as we are ever likely to see.”

'Since this extraordinary reception, the study of contemporary literature has evolved dramatically, providing contemporary critics and scholars with the language, vocabulary, and theoretical concepts to re-read My Amputations, not as an “experimental” text, but as a masterpiece of postmodern fiction, as a catalyst in a new historical and epistemological development in American literature. Reflexivity, fragmented authority, indeterminacy, play, uncertainty, difference, ambiguity, and open-endedness — these post-structural and postmodern concepts challenge many of the suppositions of modern thought and modern literature. As a consequence, traditional notions of realism seem inadequate. The proposition that the writer is the “creator” of something “original” has come under serious attack. The unquestioned assumption of the text's literariness — that is, that the text possesses certain qualities that place it above the matrices of historical conditions — has been undermined profoundly. By questioning so many naturalized conventions and assumptions about modern literature, My Amputations signifies new ways to think and live in the world. Most importantly, these advancements and developments allow critics to point out how this text radically re-describes African American subjectivity.

'In the 1970s and 1980s, as academics and critics struggled to come up with new uses for literature, Clarence Major had already embarked upon a literary mission to re-define the novel. Indeed, so many of the postmodern tendencies highlighted by literary theorists, and so abundantly present in My Amputations, had been evident in Major's work for years prior to that. In an interview early in his writing career, Major told John O'Brien: “the novel… takes on its own reality and is really independent of anything outside itself…. You begin with words and you end with words. The content exists in our minds. I don't think that it has to be a reflection of anything. It is a reality that has been created inside a book. It's put together and exists finally in your mind.” For Major, from All-Night Visitors (1969) to No (1973) to Reflex and Bone Structure (1975), to Emergency Exit (1979) and to My Amputations (1986), these texts do not reflect the social real; they are an addition to it, or are artistic objects in themselves to be admired for what they are. They have their own presence in the world, representing complex networks of ideas, images, and feeling. They refer only to themselves and to other texts. In the earlier novels All-Night Visitors and No, Major uses graphic sex to demonstrate that fiction is a linguistic invention. In later novels such as Reflex and Bone Structure, Emergency Exit, and My Amputations, Major uses personal fragmentation to explore anti-realism or the fiction-making process.

'From the beginning, this knowledge and awareness gave Major the freedom to use his imagination to create fiction that allows the reader to have an experience, rather than an ill-conceived reflection of life. Choosing not to model his fiction on “the linear and formal notion of realism traditionally practiced by Negro and Black American writers,” Major eschews linear plot, causal logic, progress, realistic character development, and resolution. He expands the novel to incorporate other forms of speech and images such as painting, jazz and blues improvisation, techniques of detective fiction, porn movies, and cubism, as he speaks to human dimensions and possibilities that have been repressed and/or excluded in realistic texts. But in using these different forms of representation, he disturbs and even subverts their dominance, causing them to exist in this inter-textual flux.

'In the 1970s, this must have been an arduous, difficult task for Major. He began writing his postmodern, anti-establishment fiction and achieving literary recognition in the aftermath of the turmoil of the 1960s. This was a time when individuals and artistic and literary communities drew clearly defined cultural and ideological lines. In many ways, he was marginalized. In not writing realistic fiction or catering to the New York literary establishment, he did not achieve the commercial successes of his contemporaries such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Also, in the 1970s and 1980s, Major's brand of meta-fiction put him in direct opposition to black aesthetics and the racial uplift of African American critics, as well as in opposition to mainstream American literary critics who read African American literature in a reductive, stereotypical way. He readily responded, arguing that a black aesthetic view of literature was as stifling and repressive as a Eurocentric view. Both close down the writer and restrict him to the service of certain political ideologies. He was also accused of not writing about “real” black people, or dealing with race.

'But Major does deal with race. Rather than choose race as his theme and racial conflict as his subject matter, Major probes beyond the merely political to find the roots that link the African American experience to all human experiences. His characters are black, but race “is not the totality of their identity.” For Major, blacks have other human identities and dimensions. In taking this approach to African American subjectivity, he obviates the “tendency to stereotype the [black] Other” and instead represents blacks as complex and varied, with the experience of race being one aspect of that complex existence.

'Major's My Amputations is told by an omniscient narrator who shifts from third person to first person, moving in and out of the mind of the protagonist, Mason. The text has many modes: impressionistic, visual, and meta-fictional. Minimizing representational effects, it constructs the narrative in physical blocks of diverse materials, rather than in logical paragraphs. One of its techniques includes using language to build what Major calls “visual panels,” like Cubist pictures, which are complete within themselves. But within each block, which is filled with multiple and varied poetic imagery, the narrator constantly moves forward and backward in time.

'Another technique used in My Amputations is a jazz/blues mode of improvisation that offers different takes on key situations and events. When the narrator tells the story of Mason Ellis in a jazz/blues style, he repeats information always with variations. For example, the narrator tells us of Mason's childhood in Chicago. But when he recounts Mason's childhood a second time, he also tells us that Mason was born in red-dirt Georgia. In his jazz-influenced account of Painted Turtle, one of Mason's female friends, the narrator tells us of her relationship with Mason and how it ends. Later, he does a riff on the relationship, but this time he elaborates further, recounting how the two first met.

'This riffing on various themes and situations happens throughout the text. The narrator gives us several different versions of Mason's stay in the Air Force. He gives different riffs on the Chemical Bank robbery, without hierarchy or privilege. In giving us this play on the various events and situations in the text, the narrator, and thus Major, demonstrates that language cannot completely master a subject, that language cannot pin down meaning. It can only give us significations of the subject or the social real.'-- W. Lawrence Hogue



____
Further

Clarence Major Website
Clarence Major Resource Page
Clarence Major @ The Poetry Foundation
Clarence Major @ afropoets
Book: 'The Art and Life of Clarence Major'
'Conversations with Clarence Major'
'Energy Made Visible: A Conversation With Clarence Major'
'Walt Whitman, Clarence Major, and Changing resholds of American Wonder'
'A Minoring of Major and Some Top Gunn'
'Postmodernism, Traditional Cultural Forms, and African American Narratives'
'To Define an Ultimate Dimness', by Nathaniel Mackey
'Six Orphans and Circuses: The Literary Experiments of Leon Forrest and Clarence Major'
'Against Commodification: Zuni Culture in Clarence Major's Native American Texts'
'"I follow my eyes": an interview with Clarence Major'
Buy 'My Amputations'



____
Extras


Swallow the Lake - Clarence Major


Black Nature



____
Interview




Your fiction and your poetry seems to be chronically referred to as “experimental”…
“Chronic” is a good word for it…

...and that seems to be juxtaposed to the term “conventional,” and these two terms keep cropping up. I’m interested in finding out what those terms mean to you, and why do you feel that “experimental” is used to describe your writing in general?
For me they’re troublesome—very troublesome—but I think it’s an effort on the part of people who need to define writing in terms of genres, in terms of categories, to do just that. It seems to be the convenient way of dealing with things that are in the marketplace. It’s “black” or “experimental” or “feminist” or “historical romance” or whatever. Basically we live in a culture that requires these definitions. It’s kind of a tag. I’ve agonized over tags, and I think there’s no way around them, so I don’t fight them anymore. Those are labels that are either useful or detracting at times, depending on where you are at the moment or where the customer is at the moment, or where the researched or book reviewer is at the moment.

What’s the connection to your writing? Why do you feel it’s termed “experimental”?
Because, I guess, as the reviewer said in yesterday’s L.A. Times, it’s because there is a tradition of Afro-American fiction and poetry, and that tradition has been—in fiction, especially—realistic, or naturalistic. “Social realism” is what it’s generally called. It means that Afro-American writers have traditionally made a sociological or psychological—and it’s usually both—examination of the so-called black experience, which is another term that has no meaning whatsoever.

There is no single black experience. There are certain kinds of cultural aspects of the experience of black people generally that might be summed up in that way, but it seems to minimize the importance of diversity within the culture. That’s just one of the troublesome things about labels. The minimization.

Well, the terms are double-edged. Reviewers can employ them in an effort to valorize certain writers’ work—experimental can be avant-garde and “fresh”—or they can marginalize writers through the same labels.
Yes, and this is exactly what happens, normally. Especially with Afro-American writers, or even any so-called subcategory of writers in this culture: women, Native American, Asian-American—whatever. It’s generally considered “the other” division. There is a kind of crossover point, too, at times. It seems to me that the ethnic identity of a writer is not what causes that kind of definition to take place. We have examples of that—Frank Yerby, Willard Motley—just in looking at black writers. There’s always been a concurrent tradition of black American writers who have not at all concentrated on the elements that cause Afro-American literature to be defined as a subcategory. Yerby, as you know, every book he wrote was a bestseller, but they were poplar novels—romance novels, essentially.

I think the defining element takes place at one level of decision on part of the writer—what an individual writer chooses to write.

It’s also possible to write out of an ethnic experience and at the same time transcend those definitions, just as Ralph Ellison has done. Toni Morrison has done that. Also Alice Walker. That happens because the writer has tapped into some elements of the human experience that transcend the merely cultural. Now, when a writer does that, it doesn’t necessarily follow that society is going to pick up on that and bring the writer into the mainstream; that doesn’t necessarily happen. A writer such as Charles Chestnut, for example, was never really brought into the mainstream as a celebrated American writer.

You dedicated your novel Emergency Exit, published in 1979, “to the people whose stories do not hold together,” from a quote from Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises in which he writes, “I mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together.” What did that dedication means for you in 1979, and further, what does it mean when a story doesn’t hold together?
I was trying to justify the structure of that book, which was a system of fragmentation, but a system nonetheless. In other words, a fragmented form that was essentially a unified, coherent entity. I do believe art has to have form. As William Carlos Williams said, “There is no such thing as free verse.” There is really no such thing as a free novel, it’s not like life. Life is kind of formless and pointless at times, but a novel really can’t be that way, just as a poem can’t be that way.

There’s an organizing intelligence? A structuring…
Yes. It has a kind of internal integrity. It’s like a leaf or a tree or a rock, or anything that can be seen to have its own intelligent system. In using that dedication I wanted to justify my form in that novel. I think it was probably the most radical novel I’ve written in terms of form, and therefore the least accessible, and commercially the least successful. But I don’t know whether the novel itself is a success or a failure; I don’t know that about any of my books. I haven’t felt the need to write that kind of novel again. Once I’ve been down a river, I just like to travel another way.

You've talked a lot in interviews about process. How, for you, the pleasure's in the process. So, so you ever have one of those poems that's just (snaps fingers) there?
Yes, yes. That's a great pleasure. That's a gift. Everything falls into place just beautifully. But sometimes, with poetry, I have to see the shape of it on the page. Over and over and over, before I find the poem that's in there somewhere, somehow, trying to emerge. I do a lot of drafts.

How do you feel about the difference between the way a poem is on the page and the way it might be at a reading? The trade-off between someone alone, silently reading one of your poems, able to take her time and think about it in diferent ways, or that same someone hearing you read it, hearing the rhythms and the intonations as you intended them?
Most of my poetry lends itself to the voice and is meant for the ear. I hate to think of the page as solely a blueprint. I think a lot of visually interesting things are going on on the page. But reading the poem to an audience is a different experience. Poetry is a verbal art. It's music made with words.

And those words have a certain shape and relationship to each other. A certain kind of cadence and a certain kind of sequence, the rising and falling of the voice, the line.

I teach poetry. I teach a very large class (about 125) called "Close Reading of Poetry." I try to get the students to understand these issues and to enjoy the poetry first, because if you go at 'em right away with "you gotta learn all these technical terms," you lose 99% of the class. I've had some successes, I think, with students because I take just the opposite approach. I think the difference is that a person who writes poetry understands poetry in a different way than an academic, a scholar.

You said in one of your interviews that you like to try new things and that the most challenging thing about writing fiction is selecting the right voice and developing and understanding that voice.
It's really hard. In poetry, we try to say what cannot be said.We are after things that speak to us on a much deeper level. That represent something so innate, we know it but we can't really say what it means. We know it when we see it.

And that's never been the objective of fiction. Fiction has always had more of a relationship with history. By that I mean: it represents, through the device of historical consensus, the truth of collective human experience. People go to Dickens, say, because he gives us a picture that validates that consensus.

I want to end with a quick question about small-press publishing. You mentioned to me that you would much rather publish with smaller presses, and I was hoping you’d elaborate on this.
Well, it doesn’t always happen, but when it does, the experience can be very satisfying in that there is one-to-one, personal, caring contact with the editor. With Fun & Games, the editor, Jim Perlman, was in touch with me nearly every day by phone. The chances of that happening with a large press are almost zero. With the larger presses, of course, you have advantages: distribution is better, the book can be found in bookstores—though not always. I mean, just because Random House publishes it doesn’t mean it’s going to appear in a bookstore. But in general, publishing with smaller presses is usually satisfying on the personal level.



___
Book

Clarence Major My Amputations
Fiction Collective 2

'In My Amputations, Clarence Major goes Ralph Ellison one better...' [this is a] 'picaresque parody of the literary hustle...Major writes with one of black letters' most experimental fictive voices (as well as its most lyrically unhinged), and the pleasures of this novel come more from the fluid sophistication of the text than from its venting of authorial ire...Major deftly adapts his improvisatory voice to the exigencies of the narrative moment...My Amputations should easily win Major renown as a prose prestidigitator of the first rank. He handles an encyclopedic range of voices, sensibilities, and zeitgeists (Afro American, American Jewish, African, Italian, German, English, French) so skillfully that they seem authentic rather than satirical...In flight from the black writer pigeonhole, Major has become the mythographer of a host of imaginary selves. Yet the confident byplay of folkloric and literary citations in My Amputations suggests that major's alienation from the social fictions about black writers hasn't alienated him from his roots...Taking his inspiration from all five senses, a multicultural intellectual curiosity, and a polymorphous tongue, Clarence Major has given American fiction its Hopscotch, a cosmopolitan Third World man's guide to ruminating tongues.'-- Greg Tate

'My Amputations is a dense and complex work, as readers familiar with Clarence Major's four previous novels...might expect. A book in which the question of identity throbs like an infected tooth, My Amputations is a picaresque wailing out of the blues tradition; it is ironic, irreverent, sexy, on a first-name basis with the human condition, and defined in part by exaggeration and laughter...My Amputations is distinguished by a rich and imaginative prose poetry of evocative power...the effect is spectacular, like the eruption of fireworks against a dark, featureless sky...Street-smart, versed in the blues, jazz, literature, art, European classical music and philosophy, this narrator is familiar with the cultural signposts of Western civilization.'-- Richard Perry, The New York Times Book Review

'Mere description cannot convey the wild humor and audacity to be found here, nor the anxiety and cunning. The virtues of My Amputations are all active ones, best summarized, perhaps, as jumpiness...[Major] has fashioned a novel that is simultaneously a deception and one great, roaring self-revelation...It's tone should be recognizable to anybody who's ever gotten nervous looking into the mirror."-- The Nation


____
Excerpt

















*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Laying a Sufjan Stevens song over Anger's 'Fireworks' seems like a really bad idea, so I think I'll just imagine that could have been like. Tim Hunter does a lot of TV, huh. And, in the States, they seem to be saying TV is where it's at, so I guess he's doing okay after all. ** James, Hi. Me too, about my brain. I am far from finished with the TV show work, so, very sadly, my novel is back hibernating again for at least a short while. The Keanu interview was in both of those books. I think everything in 'All Ears' except for a not good piece I wrote about Sonny Bono ended up in 'Smothered in Hugs'. I really like 'A Scanner Darkly', and I agree that it's the best Dick adaptation. 'Bladerunner' is a better film, I think, but 'ASD' is much truer to Dick. Thanks. I have to go right back to work today, so I hope yesterday's break was enough. I can't tell yet. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh, I definitely think so too. ** Jamie McMorrow, Bonjour! Cool, I'm glad you got to watch a few of clips. Based on the evidence, you might have been the only local who even bothered to, so extra special thanks. Monday was fairly relaxing. Oh, about the post formatting. The standard way to do it is to send the text in the post to me either in a doc (Word, Text Edit, etc.) or pasted into the body of the email. If you're using photos, indicate in the text where you want them to go with identifiers. Send the images as attachments. For videos, paste either the link to the video or the embedding code in the spots in the text where you want them to go. I'll assemble the post based on your instructions. Does that make sense? Will that work? If you have any more questions or anything, just ask. Thank you, Jamie! Slingshotted love, Dennis. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Increasingly good news about your dog, whew, nice. Yesterday was my break day. Today I have to go back to work again, this time on the overall synopsis, statement of intent, and other schmooze stuff. Then there'll be final correction on the episode texts after the producer reads them today and gives us feedback. So, very unfortunately, I'm going to be a typing wreck for the rest of this week. But tonight Zac and I are showing our film 'LCTG' to critics and press at Club Silencio, so that'll be nice, although that's stressful too. I envy your pretty calm. I'll try catch up with you on that by the weekend. Have a superlative Tuesday! ** Jeremy McFarland, Hi, Jeremy! Really good to see you! I hope the semester's wrapping is, or will be, securely and successfully taped shut asap. I've never understood why people think it's fun and clever to say or write mean things about Keanu. I always find those attacks nothing but self-indicting or something. Oh, China didn't work out, I'm so sorry. I guess you sound okay or resigned about that though, which is good. And when you do eventually go there, you'll be more 'there' due to your mouth's ability to wield Chinese. There probably won't be a screening near you, but the DVD is coming out pretty soon, so there'll be that. I've been overworking and fried. And I have to start doing that again today after a brief break yesterday, But I'm okay. It's all for the good, but I feel like my brain is a patient being discharged from a hospital a little too early or something. The TV show is the thing that's causing the overwork. Other than my complaining, it's going well. Oh, wow, that is so cool about that painting! That totally woke me up. So cool of your friend, and an honor, and it's a pretty terrific painting too! Awesome, man. Lots of love to you! ** _Black_Acrylic, Welcome home, Ben. Very glad you're good. I was watching CNN international last night for some weird reason, and their news coverage stuff was suddenly interrupted by a live/on the scene countdown of the last five minutes of that Spurs/Chelsea game plus crazed, celebrating Leicester fans, so I could tell that was a big, big deal. Best of the best, as always, re: Andrew today. ** Steevee, Hi. I read about the new Hockney doc. Yeah, if you see the old film about him, 'A Bigger Splash', it was made crystal clear way back then. I think his work really fell off after the '70s and started to seem very exercise-y and homage-y and overdone, but his early paintings and drawings are still really strong. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Ha ha, I am, I guarantee you, not twice myself at the moment. And I haven't hit the deadline yet. I hit the first part of it. But I will, for today at least, quit complaining. I read about the cat movie. I think I'll skip it. ** Sypha, Hi. Ah, that is a fun fact. Yeah, I seem to be able to hit assigned deadlines, but, like Mr. Martin perhaps, my novel has been in the starting gate for an awfully long time. Boob Day was really good, man. I have no clue about the pleasures or not and the natures of those pleasures or lack re: 'titfucking'. Theoretically, it seems like it could be hot or something. ** Bernard Welt, Hi, Bernard! Clearing out your office: Wow. I don't think I've ever known anyone who actually had to clear out their office in the real world. I guess I imagine it being sort of like prisoners clearing out their cells on their release day. I have known three people who did that. Two of them said they cried while, at the same time, hating themselves for crying. It probably isn't like that for you. I like very much every single detail of all of your upcoming plans. Especially the Paris part. It would be really great if you can help me with the Donald Day, yes. That would be wonderful. Nice haiku, buddy boy. I'm green. Tom Mandel! Holy god, what whoever said from the podium ... That makes me want to die. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh! I am okay other than my brain, which is very tired. No, we're supposed to have out TV series package ready by the end of this weekend. Then the network will get it. Then, supposedly, we won't hear what their decision is for six weeks. The first episode has a cliffhanger. The second one doesn't. The last one has, at the moment, a very crappy ending because we still haven't figured how to end it yet. Nice to see you, pal. ** Colin, Hi, Colin! Thank you, sir, about the essay. Without it, there wouldn't have been a post. Oh, wow, you've set up a hell of a great line-up of people coming over there. Awesome! Yeah, just hit me up whenever the time comes that me coming over seems like a cool idea. Thanks, man. Have a really great day. ** Right. Today I draw your attention to this very fine novel by the fantastic but weirdly too often overlooked novelist and poet Clarence Major. See what you think. See you tomorrow.

Daisuke Yokota is one of the most talked-about young Japanese photographers. He’s been praised for his meticulous approach to photographic experimentation, combined at times with visceral performances and his willingness to continuously test the limits of photography.

Born in 1983 in Saitama, north of Tokyo, Yokota is part of a generation of young artists using photography in subversive new ways. His approach combines multiple rephotographing and printing, and applying acid or flame to the end results. He is working out of, and pushing forward, a Japanese tradition of photobook-making and performance that harks back to the visceral experimentation of the Provoke generation and the work of the relentless photobook-maker Daido Moriyama.

His process is meticulous to the point of obsessive. He shoots on a compact digital camera, prints and rephotographs the results on medium-format film, then prints them again several times using heat and light to mark or distort the images. He stands out because his results tend transcend the sum of the parts. Or, to put it more brutally, his creative process does not appear more interesting than the results. The idea, execution, and final work are all of an equal and often mysterious intensity.

- Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian






Daisuke Yokota on the influence of Aphex Twin on his work:
“There’s a sense that you can’t really see him, and this confusion is interesting to me. Then, to speak about his music, there’s a lot of experimentation with delay, reverb, and echo, which is playing with the way you perceive time. Of course, there’s no time in a photograph, but I thought about how to apply this kind of effect, or filter, to photography.”



BACKYARD series























THEY and WATER SIDE series


























NOCTURNES series

















FOSSIL series




















SITE series
























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p.s. Hey. Today Chilly Jay Chill aka the amazing writer/author Jeff Jackson shares the work of artist/photographer Daisuke Yokota with us. I don't know about you, obviously, but I didn't know this work before Jeff/CJC made the post, and it's a pretty great discovery. Pore over the selection today, please, and let Jeff know what happens to you when you do that. Thank you all, and extra-special thanks to you, Jeff. ** Jamie McMorrow, High powered good morning to you, Jamie. Great, thank you kindly, about the guest-post. I'm excited. Yes, hard work becomes my lot in life again today, but enough of my brain cells have healed that I think I can handle it. The deadline is that we now have to finish the TV series package. Gisele has three trusted people reading the scripts, and I suppose there'll be further revisions, and we have to write the introduction and schmooze texts that go with them. We have a meeting with the producer today, and I guess we'll know after that if we're near the finish line or not. Cool that you watched all the fireworks vids! The sky-ladder thing is insane, right? The guy who made that is a Chinese artist who primarily makes thing with fireworks, and this stuff is pretty mind-blowing in general. And the rest, yeah, agreed, thank you. I'm really happy that we share the fascination. The Silencio screening went really well. Great response and some excellent opportunities on the horizon because of it, which was why we did the event. Thanks, pal! Nail Wednesday, and I know you will. Love, me. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dora! Cool. Yeah, Clarence Major is a really amazing writer but he's kind of weirdly overlooked these days, I don't know why. The work is progressing, yeah. I'll just be really glad when we can finally send the package off, I think this weekend or just after, and I won't have to think about it for six weeks. The Silencio thing was really good. I guess you know it's David Lynch's club. He designed the whole place, and I think owns it. It's cool, but it's not as wild and weird as I had imagined. It's very much a club for rich people, and it's very chic. Very nice, but not a place I can imagine hanging out or anything. And since the membership is super expensive, I don't think I will. What happened between morning and night for you today? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Yeah, I figured. Cool that you're big on Major. Thanks for the link to the Philip Hensher piece. I like his pieces, so I'm looking forward to it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. It went well. It was essentially a press screening for journalists and industry folks, and the response was fantastic, and I think it'll lead to some good things, which was the point. Ah, okay, about the hopefully very short further delay. I'll watch that Leckey film as soon as I get some breathing room. Thank you, man. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Great, great thanks for the post. Like I told you, his work is completely new to me, and I'm quite blown away. Yeah, Major doesn't get anywhere near the attention he should, and I feel that, with the rise in experimentation in US lit, he's an obvious forebearer and unique writer who logically should be lauded and read far more. Kind of strange. The screening went very well. Like I said above, it was for press, basically, and it was almost all journalists and some film festival/industry people. It's a very small theater, 28 seats plus some folding chairs for overflow. The q&a seemed good. Silencio, as I was saying to Dora, is nice but it's very oriented towards the rich and powerful. It's situated way underground, which is cool, and Lynch did the decor and furniture, which is kind of tastefully Lynch-like but awfully tasteful. It's cool, don't get me wrong, but my expectations that Lynch's association would make it strange in some interesting way were kind of dashed. Oh, thank you so much about the possible screening thing! You go to Berlin so soon! I'm hoping you got a ton of recommended things to do. I'm imagine you have. How long are you there? Is it just straight to Berlin and then back home? That's exciting! ** Misanthrope, It is a nice title, right? I don't know Key & Peele. I'm so out of it about States phenoms and stuff. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. I finally had eyes enough to read your haikus, and they were divine, my friend. Major is kind of under the radar these days. He was much better known ten, twenty years ago. I can only imagine that the new job has thrown your schedule into chaos. I hope it's going well. Is it? I blabbed a bit about the screening and Silencio up above. It went really well. Take care, pal. ** Bill, Hi. The Ladies Party, yikes, yes, I really have to read that. Mr. Ewert! ** Okay. Enjoy Jeff's lustrous and far more post today, people. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

In the early 1980s, there was this really vital scene of young poets, fiction writers, and artists of different kinds in Los Angeles. I was part of it along with a number of other young LA-based writers, some of whom went on to be well known and established literary figures. I happened to be the Director of Live Programming at the time for a literary foundation and performance space in Venice called Beyond Baroque. Because I had semi-control of that space and its facilities, it became kind of our writer gang's headquarters. We did readings there, held workshops, invited writers young and old that we really liked from NYC, San Francisco, and elsewhere to give readings, and used the foundation's typesetting equipment to make the literary zines that most of us were editing at the time. It was an exciting and super formative era for us.

In 1982, an aspiring filmmaker named Gail Kazinsky started coming to Beyond Baroque events. She was very interested by what was going on and asked us if she could make a documentary film about the writers and our scene. I guess we said yes, and she spent a few weeks filming at Beyond Baroque and offsite as well. For whatever reason, she decided to focus on a small group of writers within our larger group. The chosen ones were me, poet Amy Gerstler, poet/artist/performer Bob Flanagan (RIP), artist/performer and Bob's partner Sheree Rose, poet Ed Smith (RIP), writer and musician Jack Skelley, and Jocelyn Fischer who was the Director of Beyond Baroque.

In the billing for the unfinished film that resulted, 'Fear of Poetry', poet David Trinidad is also listed as being in the film, but he doesn't seem to appear in the surviving footage. Strangely, the New York poet/musician Steven Hall is featured prominently in the film, I guess because he happened to be hanging out with us. So perhaps Gail mistakenly thought he was David Trinidad? Just to give a larger context for the film, some of the other members of our young local writer gang whom you might know but who didn't end up being included for unknown reasons include writer/artist Benjamin Weissman, NPR 'Bookworm' host Michael Silverblatt, novelist Jim Krusoe, poet Kim Rosenfield, and others.

Gail Kazinsky put together a rough cut of the film not long after she finished shooting and showed it to the participants and friends at a gallery in downtown LA. We gave her our feedback and then she was supposedly going to finish the film. Shortly thereafter, she moved away from Los Angeles, I think maybe to Chicago. After that, we never heard from her or had any news about the film again. We assumed she had abandoned the film and eventually assumed the footage was forever lost. But, very recently, some mysterious person uploaded the rough cut in multiple parts onto youtube. The quality, as you'll see, is quite poor. I don't know if that's because the footage the person used is a late generation copy or if the original footage has just aged and decayed very badly.

The writer and theorist Diarmuid Hester suggested to me the other week that it might be a good idea to showcase the rough cut of 'Fear of Poetry' here, and, as you see, I have done that today. I'm not sure how interesting the documentary will be for most or even any of you, especially in such an unfinished and visually challenging form. For me, and I'm sure for the other surviving writers who are featured, it documents a period in our lives as writers and people that wound up being extremely important to us. A year after this film was shot, I moved to NYC, followed shortly thereafter by Ed Smith and David Trinidad, and, because of those changes and others, the scene documented in the film ended and evolved into something else. That's the story. You can ask me for more details if you want. In the meantime, I respectfully foist this on you today.


















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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Good morning, David. Thanks a lot for responding to the photos. ** Jamie McMorrow, Salut, Jamie! Yes, I saw your email last night! Thank you so, so much! Yesterday was a swamp for me, but I'll have some free time this afternoon, and I'll check out what you sent, and see if everything is clear, and I'll write back to you. Yeah, thanks a ton, that's very exciting! It was very, very cool to screen the film at Silencio. Being a Lynch-designed club, the theater there is, naturally, a top notch and great space. Wednesday was basically another day of non-stop work and meetings. There are a bunch of corrections we have to make, so the work load is heavier than we had hoped, but everything is due by Tuesday so at least I can look forward to some peace, I hope, right about then. Did you get to mess with your self-revealed song? So, it's down to detailing stuff now? Cool! Have a splendid day with enough time to do at least a little of what you really want to do. Love from here and me. ** Bernard Welt, Hi, B. I discovered the Donald B. page on FB yesterday. Wow, it's great! Who's doing that? There's a bunch of photos and stuff that I've seen before. Fantastic work on somebody's part. I will, of course, pass along and promo the book event, for sure. I reposted 'The Dark Side of Disneyland' here not very long ago, a few months. I'll make a new, 'welcome to the world' post, and I'll probably swipe some stuff from the FB page, and if you have anything to spare for the post, that would be great. Thanks so much! ** MANCY, Hi, Steven! I'm good but way overworked but good! Really excited for that new project you're hinting at on FB. If you want a birth post here to announce it or anything, I'd be only honored to do something. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh! Thank you! ** Bear, Hi, Bear! My week has been productive. Not much else, ha ha, but productive, yes, thank you. Thank you about the Keanu post. I think he's a pretty cool and good hearted guy, yes. That's great, great news about finding that space/venue! Congratulations, man! What a relief! Wonderful! How was the experimental dance piece that constituted your celebration? ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Oh, boy, yeah, I can not wait until this project is finished and sent off to the powers that be. My brain is almost empty and operating on fumes at this point. Yeah, Silencio really isn't weird. The cool things about it are subtle. Like there's a stage area where bands and djs play that's kind of a reference to the red room in 'Twin Peaks' with red curtains and stuff, but it's very non-offensive. I mean, it's a nice place, comfy, it's just not mind-blowing in any way. I hope your busy school day did whatever school can do for someone with your larger than life talents. Me, I'll be working non-stop yet again, but Zac and I do at least have a big meeting with the producer of our new film this morning where hopefully we'll find out how and when we can start actually working on it. Take care! ** Steevee, Hi. Very, very cool about the Terrence Davies interview! I'm the wrong person to give you advice about that question, but let's see if others have ideas. Everyone, Steevee would love some advice about something. If you have ideas, can you help him out? Thanks! Here he is: 'I'm interviewing Terence Davies next Tuesday. Can you think of a productive way to ask about his sense of "gay shame" and his statements in previous interviews like "I will go to my grave hating being gay?" His first three shorts already touched on how miserable being gay makes him. I'm tempted to ask him if he thinks he'd still feel the same way if he were 20 or 30 years younger.' Interesting about the new Eno. I admit I haven't been intrigued enough to buy recent records by him in a while, but you've sold me on getting that one. Cool. I hope you woke up feeling 'up' enough to get the busy stuff accomplished. ** _Black_Acrylic, Howdy, Ben! Thanks for the great response! ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff! Thank you again so much! And sorry about initially leaving out some of the photos. I must have been a little spacey when I assembled the post originally. Wow, 10 days. You should really get to know the place then. Nice. I'm way excited about the new 'Twin Peaks'. There hasn't been a shred of leaking info that hasn't made it seem very, very promising. Ozick: I tried reading her, a couple of books, back in the late 80s when it seemed like a lot of smart people were reading and recommending her, and, a the time at least, it didn't do very much for me, to be honest. Why, I don't know. If you read her, I would be curious to know if I should try her again. And thank you so much for the venue-related emails! That place looks really good to me, and I forwarded the mail onto Zac, and I'll be seeing him this morning. I'll see what he thinks, and then I'll write to you today. Really, thank you, Jeff! ** Armando, Hey, man! Really nice to see you! I'm in Paris. Wait, you're in LA! Wow, that's very cool. To check out? Hm, where are you staying? Amoeba Records, Museum of Jurassic Technology, MoCA or LACMA if there's anything good there, ... I'll have to think. The house I grew up in? It's in this city/LA suburb in the San Gabriel Valley called Arcadia. The address is 995 Hampton Road. I'm co-writing a possible TV series with Zac for Gisele Vienne to direct. It's about a ventriloquist and her puppet. We're getting the script and proposal ready to submit to the TV channel ARTE right now. Love and hugs right back to you! And have tons of LA fun! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Yeah, Howard's end was very sad. It was rough. And, yes, incredible how much things have changed. Have a great one, B! ** Okay. So, like I said up above, there's an unfinished, in bad shape documentary about my and other young writers' formative days in LA, if you're interested and if you can bear the awful shape that the footage is in. See you tomorrow.

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Guy GoldsteinYes/No Questions (2014)
Yes/No Questions uses a dozen amplifiers whose fronts are covered with a photographic print of drum leather, usually found on snare drums. The sounds coming from the amplifiers are those of voices repeating the words “yes” and “no” in different languages. The sound waves create ink stains on the print of the drum leather. This embroidery appears as a violent act, which injures the canvas in a desperate attempt to give form to the inherently formless stains.





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Ceal Floyer‘Til I get it Right (2012)
Ceal Floyer’s sound installation ‘Til I get it Right seems to be a comment on the artist’s strive for perfection. It’s a loop that is created from a song of the same title by the American country music singer-songwriter Tammy Wynette. Ceal Floyer just used the lines “I’ll just keep on” and “‘Til I Get It Right,” to create an endless mantra-like soundtrack.






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Kaz Oshirxvarious works (2002 - 2009)
Early in his career, Oshiro became known as a master of deception. He recreated ordinary household objects such as kitchen cabinets, microwaves, mini fridges, guitar amplifiers, and stereo speakers. What first appears to be a three dimensional object reveals itself, upon closer looking, to be a painting on canvas. Complete with markings resembling ordinary wear and tear endured by objects that figure into everyday life, Oshiro’s works are made using a realist technique, which is so convincing that the paintings can be easy to miss as they blend into the environment. Assembled from stretched canvas, Oshiro’s paintings are complete with painted fixtures, which aid in the deception. The unraveling of deception only happens upon inspection behind the façade and through openings in the back of the work.










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Maya DunietzThistle (2016)
Thicket is a tangle of thousands of iPod ear buds that reverse the music listening experience they usually offer from the intimacy of the individually chosen stereo sound to the public space of the installation that they form. The multichannel soundtrack with which the digitally steered amplifier creates a sound landscape that the visitor can wander around also serves as a second experiential layer that abstractly overlaps the invisibly reverberating matter of this work. This work of art, thus, explores the common ground between sound art and art installations. Its ephemeral sound patterns also escape categorization, as one’s trajectory through the space of this work creates a largely random, individual hearing experience of a modulated, elusive score made of musical citations and found sounds.









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Byoungho KimThree Hundreds Silent Pollens (2009)
aluminum, piezo speakers, microspeaker, condenser microphone, mixer, amplifier, 600 x 900 x 450 cm






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Alberto TadielloMelisma (2014)





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Banks VioletteSunnO))) / (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror (2006)
At the Maureen Paley Gallery in London, June of 06, Violette created sculptural representation of SUNN O)))s entire backline in cast resin and salt, including amplifier stacks, instruments, effects & accompaniments. In addition, black laquered stage platforms and sound panels were created as a basis for the groups actual backline setup, and a selection of drawings were presented within the context. The result of this performance and collaboration, which was conducted in a sealed gallery space, was intended to generate a feeling of absence, loss and a phantom of what once was’.







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Gyula VárnaiThe Form of Thought (2001)
sound installation wood, cloth, cables, 2 amplifiers, 8 speakers, computer, sounds of arrows shot and hitting the target), 180 × 1500 x 110 cm








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Ariel BustamanteVolumen Sintetico (2011)
The work is composed by 1629 earphones embedded in a 180 cm diameter wooden parabolic antenna and 24 electronic boards that distribute sound from a mp3 player to each earphone. The parabolic geometry allows for all the sound sources to coincide at a focal point one meter away from the structure's center, which results in a noticeable increase in the general volume due to the addition of each earphone's low decibel intensity. Another characteristic of this work is that the disposition of the earphones causes the sound to stop being individual and become public. This is due to the fact that the earphones are exposing their faces, or their speakers' fronts, which are usually hidden inside of the ear. This disposition of elements refers to a large speaker, a medium that reproduces sound; however, this is not a neutral medium, like the common home speaker.





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Paul KosThe Sound of Ice Melting (1970)






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Richard GaretBefore Me (2012)
Garet’s work takes many shapes, from sculptural installations to digital projections to live performances. Before Me fits into the first and last categories: it is a sculptural assemblage of outmoded technologies, and the spinning marble amounts to a live performance of sorts. The work’s centerpiece is an old LP record player with its platter upside down and revolving at 33 ½ revolutions per minute. The marble at the upturned edge can advance only slightly before its momentum is overridden and it rolls back to its starting point. This action continues endlessly, suggesting the plight of Sisyphus, a king in Greek mythology who was compelled to push a boulder up a mountain only to have it repeatedly fall back to the mountain’s base. Garet explores what is often considered background noise, and here the background (the platter on which a record is typically placed for playing) is central to the piece, the director of the marble’s fate.






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Michelle Jaffé Wappen Field (2011)
Wappen Field is a sculpture and sound installation comprised of 12 chrome plated steel helmets resembling face guards. Each helmet’s dedicated speaker transforms the sculptural installation into an immersive audio environment. Vocal recordings originally created by Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, culled from seven diverse performers, are composed by Michelle Jaffé & spatialized algorithmically by David Reeder in SuperCollider.








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Jeroen DiepenmaatOde ... (2015)
“Ode…” consists of 83 music boxes in a forest in Diepenveen in the Netherlands, all playing two notes when a cord is pulled. When multiple boxes are activated, the noted come together, creating a melody. Just like two people can meet each other coincidentally, and can become inseparable.





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Omar VelázquezPariah (2015)
Pariah explores the origins of noise and power through chaos theory elements, and how these may relate to the practice of art and rock n’ roll aesthetics. On opening night, several guitarists performed and took part of the work. A metal barricade with LED police traffic light bars ghostly lighted the space as they played cathartic riff rituals. During museum hours, visitors can freely manifest themselves physically and mentally by playing an A minor-tuned custom made guitar at a low 432hz frequency.






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John WynneUntitled installation for 300 speakers, player piano and vacuum cleaner (2010)
John Wynne's installation is at once monumental, minimal and immersive. It uses sound and sculptural assemblage to explore and define architectural space and to investigate the borders between sound and music. The piece has three interwoven sonic elements: the ambient sound of the space in which it is installed, the notes played by the piano, and a computer-controlled soundtrack consisting of synthetic sounds and gently manipulated notes from the piano itself. Because none of these elements are synchronised with each other, the composition will never repeat. The music punched into the paper roll is Franz Léhar's 1909 operetta Gypsy Love, but the mechanism has been altered to play at a very slow tempo and the Pianola modified to play only the notes which most excite the resonant frequencies of the gallery space in which it is installed. Sound moves through the space on trajectories programmed using a 32-channel sound controller, creating a kind of epic, abstract 3-D opera in slow motion.






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Sergei TcherepninMotor-Matter Bench (2013)
Rigged with transducers, Sergei Tcherepnin’s Motor-Matter Bench (2013) welcomes sitters, and then, through bone conduction, they’ll hear a composition. Their bodies will actually transmit sound.







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Darren BaderAntipodes: Parmigiano-Reggiano (detail, 2013)







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Wei-Hao TsengTalking Forest (2016)
In his project, Tseng tries to unite the consciousness of the audience, image, and sounds in order to complete an artwork with motions, image, and sounds. He uses electricity conducting inks and pencils as mediums to create sounds from the resistance noises generated by feedback loop of amplifier. The unique sounds made by the mediums are their ways to communicate and transfer. In fact, Tseng’s work has transcended the pure exploration of sounds, bodies, technology, and interaction. His work brings us to the ground of new media art, showing a distinctive art form and expression belonging to this era.






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Martin KerselsBuoy (1999)
mixed media including a mirror ball, a Walkman, an amplifier, a speaker, a tin can, a flashing light, and a motor.





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Lisa KirkUntitled (Speaker) (If You See Something… Say Something… soundtrack included) (2011)
maple, oak, 24.75 x 16.25 x 12.25 in.






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Christian SkjødtIllumination (2014)
Illumination is created specifically for an 18th century wine cellar in University of Latvia’s Botanical Garden in Riga. The work is an examines the translation of the outer circumstances, harvesting the energy from the sun (via 100 solar modules), and bringing this into the cellar in the form of sound (via 10 autonomous analogue systems). Here the sounds are spatialised, where it investigates the special acoustics of the dome shaped wine cellar. Each system/speaker is tuned to the Concert A (440 Hz) under optimal sunlight conditions, resulting in microtonal cluster-type texture due to the weather conditions and the rotation of the planet.





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Anthony JohnsonMemoirs of a Wall (2012)
As my day-job over the past fifteen years, I have worked in behind-the-scenes roles within the art industry, predominately installing and de-installing artists‘ works and exhibitions in galleries, museums and other public and private spaces. In the process of developing the idea of Memoirs of a Wall, I followed a line of thought that started with the chronological gap in between exhibitions on a gallery's annual calendar. The role of exhibition installer entails operating within the fallow grey zone on the exhibition calendar, and within the non-exhibited gallery site as a space of labour, when it is in-between exhibitions, and neither here nor there. These notions of inter-state times and spaces were given further form by the given architecture of the Carnegie Gallery, where a façade of white gallery walls stand autonomously within the large heritage-listed council building. I think of it as a room trying to disguise itself as another — architectural cross-dressing, if you like. Between the original walls and the display walls, there runs a long tight corridor only forty centimetres wide, along the longest wall within the space, and accessible only by ladder. I began thinking of this difficult to access passage as an analogy for the grey area I occupy in my roles as an artist and an exhibition installer, to that chronological gap between exhibitions – the space of nothing. For the work, Memoirs of Wall, all the pre-existing anchor point holes of the longest wall in the Carnegie Gallery were re-perforated from the back of the wall to the front. As you'd expect, the vast majority were in a central horizontal band along the length of the wall. Then with a hammer, I punched out two eye-holes for myself in the centre of the wall. Throughout the exhibition opening, I wore the wall like a mask, with my eyes visible to the audience from within the gallery space, who could then visually engage with me. Within the gallery, a microphone on a stand was adjusted to touch the wall at the point where my mouth would be relative to the eye- holes. This microphone was 'live' and connected to a small amplifier positioned next to the stand. However I remained mute throughout the performance, but the volume on the amplifier was tuned relatively high, to pick up on sound within the gallery. The monotonous drone of the crowded space resulted in a low pitch drone, but at times it neared a point of high-pitch feedback. The shriek of feedback never quite happened, but the immanent threat of the wall screaming created anxious moments within the crowd, and groups would pause conversation to quieten the threatening din. This reflexive adjustment occurred numerous times throughout the performance, the amount of noise in the space shifting, particularly in relation to people's proximity to the wall. The work thus introduced a participatory element, which established a spatial audial rapport between the audience and the wall I occupied.





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Tim BrunigesMIRRORS (2014)
Acting as “sound mirrors”, these curved surfaces collect, compress and amplify all sound occurring in front of them. When received, sound is pushed outward along the edges in the opposite direction. Because the two slabs are placed in front of each other, sound is being transmitted back and forth over a ~8 meter distance, constantly amplifying the sound in the room. This all is supported by a second layer of sound: two speakers and a microphone embedded in the parabolic reflector, amplifying the sounds in the room and playing them back with different layers of digital delay, creating a tension with the purely acoustic “delay”.






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Nicky TeeganPrayer Battery (2012)
The cult demands complete fanaticism and dedication to these devotional objects. These objects are charged with a spiritual dimension. They are mystical beings. This is a space of worship, fetish and indulgence for the cult. A shrine is built in which all of the objects are directed towards. It is a void, a cite of incantation or prayer. A drone plays towards the void, it is a charge, resonating throughout the space, generating a state of hypnosis. The drone is powered by a another devotional object, a prayer battery, containing the charge of chants and rituals powered by the cult. Footage of a ritual is played in the corner of the room looping eternally. The figure is shrouded by protective material. Canonised, it holds a relic of the void and performs a ritual of devotion towards the poster on the wall that depicts a utopian world in which these mystical objects originate from.







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Yoshihiko Satoh Present Arms (2002)
Yoshihiko Satoh takes mass-produced goods that have become part of our every day life, enlarges and/or multiplies them, creating sculptures that unleash the energy residing in their function and shape. In 2002, he won the Kirin Art Award Grand Prix for “Present Arms”, a 12-neck guitar conceived as a challenge to a rock guitarist he idolizes.









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Ceal FloyerScale (2007)
Often suffused with a distinctly wry sense of humour, Floyer’s works have an offbeat quality, with the dialectical tension inherent in commonplace representation being inserted into revelatory notional compositions. In Scale, the artist exploits the dual meanings of the title itself, verb and noun, as speakers serially mounted to recreate escalating steps play the sound of footsteps ascending and descending. The footsteps scale the speakers, while the speakers play back a new kind of “scale” – liminal rather than musical.






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p.s. Hey. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Cool, I'm glad the documentary was interesting. Yeah, that period was kind of huge. It's so interesting and cool and, I guess, obvious that a time and phase of life that just seems, like, there, normal, what you're doing at the time, can end up seeming so vital and special later. When perspective and memory take control of the past, it's so strange and interesting. Ah, Silencio's all right. I just imagined a club designed by David Lynch (!), and my imagination ran too far away. The producer meeting was great! A lot of progress. We start applying for the additional funding we need for the film on Tuesday, and we'll be setting up a rough schedule and figuring out the budget and stuff in a few weeks. Very exciting. It did add to my already insane workload this weekend because now there's even more things we have to write and do by Monday in addition to the avalanche of TV series stuff, and fuck knows how we'll be able to do everything, but we will, and, yeah, Zac and I are very hyped and happy. Oh, is your new blog up and readable now? I've been so overwhelmed that I haven't had time to check. But if it's there, I will asap. Great! I hope today is easily as cool as your yesterday. ** Jamie McMorrow, Sunrise in the form of a sentence to you, Jamie! Yeah, yesterday was great 'cos Zac and I made big progress on our next film, and that's the project I'm most excited about, but the workload has only increased as a result. I'm really surprised that I can actually think well enough to do this p.s. right now. Yes, the guest-post! It's great and looks beautiful, and I'm totally thrilled. One thing, up to you. Because you only sent the images imbedded in the Word doc, I can't extract them, so the only way I can use them to take screen grabs of them from the doc, which, in some cases, will involve shrinking them to fit on my screen. I can do that, no problem. I just wanted to say that if you want to send me the images again separately and on their own, and I can also use them that way without any size reduction. Up to you. But we're all good, and I'll post it a week from tomorrow. Awesome! Yeah I know good anxiety, for sure. Cool. Man, have a supremely good day. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, D. Thanks for the input for Steevee re: TD. Oh, wow, that is really, really great news about Keyframe at Fandor! Wow, thank you infinitely for that, David! I can not wait to read it, and that's just completely thrilling! Thank you so much! Zac and I are very, very honored! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. Yeah, trippy, right? As a BB predecessor of yours, I know exactly of what you speak. I've thought for a long time that there really needs to be book about Beyond Baroque, and an oral history book is the ideal way to do it. Plus, it would even be kind of juicy given all the rancor in the poetry community about that place and re: what you, Benjamin, Bob Flanagan, Fred, me, and others tried to do with the programming. That really should happen. I haven't been there in forever, but, yeah, it seems like an entirely different place. I feel like I also would feel very alienated being there. ** Cobaltfram, Hi, John! Well, the documentary, at least in that rough cut, isn't a very good documentary, so, in that sense, I think the degradation makes it seem more special or like there might be the potential under the muck that it's better than it seems, and that's good. Me, of course, I wish it was crystal clear so I could see everything better, but that's natural. I know of 'Dark Souls', of course, but I don't have a PS3 or 360 -- I've always been a Nintendo-only guy for some reason -- so I can't play it, sadly. You make it sound pretty great, so if I ever have enough time in my life again to play video games, it could be the push I need to get other systems. Cool that you're so close to relocation, and thanks for sticking my oeuvre in such promising sounding ... hands, ha ha. Take care, buddy. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! So great to see you! Thanks a lot, man, and thanks for watching it. Huh, I never imagined that your time at ALG would have been interrupted by that kind of behind the scenes jealousy and spite, but, duh, of course. Yeah, from my time at Beyond Baroque, I know exactly of what you speak re: the balancing act. I remember thinking that my programming and focus choices totally made sense and that I was being fairly objective, and I would be so confused when people reacted with so much subjectivity, even though, yeah, why wouldn't they? They wanted in, and they had no feeling or interest in the place itself being the best it could be. I ended up quitting the job at BB very abruptly because I was getting so much shit from people, and the people who liked what I was doing just acted like everything was fine and weren't defending me, and I just couldn't take it anymore. Well, definitely, if you want my opinion, concentrate on your own writing as much as you can for as long you feel like you need to in order to get to a place where you can do your work and support others publicly at the same time. That said, I'm excited by the prospect of you doing that again in some new form. I did read and really loved the Jessa Crispin interview, yes. She has such a good, smart head on her shoulders. That was great and really needed, I think. Your comment was great, Chris, and there wasn't a non-riveting syllable. Right now I am insanely busy, and it's cutting severely into my ability to keep up with stuff. The sites I look at, even under these circumstances, are pretty much the expected ones: Real Pants, Entropy/ Enclave, Queen Mobs Teahouse, Dark Fucking Wizard, and a couple others. Have you found any sites or places you can recommend? Fine day to you, Mr. D! ** _Black_Acrylic, Thanks, Ben. Oh, right, yes, I need to check the UK election results today. Very curious. ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Makes a certain sense about your decision re: Davies. Plus, I don't know how much time you have with him, but raising that topic could easily color the rest of the interview for him emotionally. Complicated with that theater working guy. I hope it sorts itself out okay. ** Misanthrope, Unfinished, ha ha, sure, that makes sense. When I see images of myself when I was younger, I feel very disoriented mostly. On the one hand, I can't imagine projecting myself into that former body because I look so foreign, but I know that if I did, I would probably feel pretty close to how I do now except more stressed or distracted or hurried or something. But I don't know. ABBA is genius. At least on that one topic, Joe knows his shit, ha ha. I haven't heard the new Beyonce, or, more likely, I have and didn't know I was hearing it. I don't care very much, I guess. ** Sypha, Hi. Good, I'm so you liked it, and, yeah, the journals at the end are amazing. I think they, or the fact that they were there as part of the novel, is what was most influential about that novel for me. ** MANCY, Hey! Good, great, awesome, I would totally love that post! ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. Glad you liked the doc or what it showed. I too am very excited about the New Narrative book, and I have absolutely no idea what it's going to be. I think they just finished and turned it into the publisher, which I think is Nightboat? Glad the swing of the new job is getting rhythmically synchronous with you. Ooh, great cover! Everyone, Thomas Moronic aka author Thomas Moore's upcoming new novel now has a cover designed by our own genius Kiddiepunk, and it's a sweetie, and you can glimpse it here. You may have already said, but is that title derived from the Var song title? Of course I like the idea that there would another Var-memorial title out there in addition to 'LCTG'. ** Armando, Hey, man! Yay, you're enjoying LA, and LA is enjoying you too! Fucking cool! Good, you're seeing a lot, actually. That's great. Even Palm Springs, whoa! Enjoy every tiny detail and morsel of the place, man! Love, me. ** Okay. Today's thematic is the amp. Why? God knows. Anyway, it is. Go enjoy what's up there, if you will can and if you will. See you tomorrow.

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p.s. Hey. This weekend the right and honorable author and d.l. James has devised a pictorial brain twister for you bookworms and others out there. And, if you're sufficiently seduced and game and all of that, James would like to offer you a challenge with a reward. And here I quote him ... 'The DC'er who guesses the most items correctly (author, title), will win a free personalized copy of Valencia'.''Valencia', if you haven't guessed, is James (Nulick's) latest and new and quite superb novel, so not bad incentive at all if you'd like to dig in. Basically, have fun, give your memories and connected brain cells some exercise, and, whether you choose to enter his contest or not, please write something to James in the comments area to reward his generosity and hard scanning/thinking work please. Thanks! And thanks a ton and a half, James! ** Jamie McMorrow, An opening sentence like a conveyer belt carrying an endless array of croissants, eclairs, pastries, and pain au chocolats to you, Jamie! Thanks about the post! It was cool, right? I was kind of into it or into making it or whatever. And thanks for your patience about the post issues, but I think we'll have everything right as rain today. Friday was ... can you guess (?) ... a ton of working. Quite diligent and progressive, at least. Got somewhere. Have a long ways to go, so this weekend is already bought and assigned. Oh, well. I think we'll have a fairly good idea of when we can actually start working in a hands-on way on the film after we have a big meeting with our producer in a few weeks 'cos then we'll have it budgeted and stuff. Latest for the actual shooting would be early next year, but Zac and I are jonesing to get started, so if there's a way to bump the start date up, we'll finagle that. Was the music day solid? Or I guess I mean was the solidity creatively out-putting to your satisfaction? Do you have your weekend planned? Have a terrific one! You love ABBA! Love, Dennis. ** Raymond, Hey! Excellence to see you! I'm glad you got your internet up to speed. Yeah, this blog is not very friendly to the internet-speed-impaired. I'm good, just mindbogglingly busy with work at the very moment. It's very nice to have you back! That piece of yours based on the April escorts post looks fantastic! I'll give myself a work break today and scour it. Thank you for doing that, and, of course, this place and I are honored to have given your work materials. Everyone, d.l. Raymond has composed a really, really interesting looking piece of found writing based on materials from this past April's escorts post, and you can join me in reading it and benefitting greatly by doing nothing more difficult than merely clicking these blue words. Oh, now that's when Mogwai was Mogwai. Sharp! Wow, what an amazing thing you wrote about Patti Smith. That was great! Thank you for putting it here. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I read a little about the Scottish portion of the elections. I guess a qualified good? Monday, 5 pm, gotcha. I'll light my imaginary votive candle at the strike of that hour. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Oh, cool, I love when the posts are surprises. My favorite amp things? Hm, ... There's something about the simplicity of the first Ceal Floyer piece that seems kind of eerie. I did like the one in the forest/ walkway, yeah. I think Lisa Kirk's ones are beautiful. I am a human work machine right now and will be until Monday at least. It's interesting. It's like I have to try to be as non-complicated a human as I can, or rather I can't daydream right now, I have to only solve problems and act robotic. It's interesting, but only so interesting. Cool, cool, as soon as I can find a little space to let my real self leak out for a work break, I will give myself the gift of gazing upon your new blog. I can't wait! Lithuania! One of the performers in our film was Lithuanian, and he was raving about Vilnius, and now I really want to go there. Was the reunion with your friend fun? Do you get to travel much, or have you? Do you have favorite places you've traveled to? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David! Thanks for the link to the Penman piece. I like his writing, and that piece looks good and smart enough that I feel like, if I read it, the tiny interest I had in reading 'M Train' will be completely gone, which is a good thing. For some reason. ** Bernard Welt, He's a good FB page maker, that's for sure. Thanks about the Donald post. Yeah, I'll try to put it up on pub day (the 15th) or just before because I might be taking off for San Francisco around then. Oh, yes, everyone here who is physically capable of getting to the Donald event should. Hold on. Everyone, here's Bernard Welt, and he is absolutely right that you who are reading this within and/or around NYC should so totally go the event for uncountably many reasons. Bernard: 'DC blogsters, if you are in New York, you should show up to celebrate Dennis' friend Donald Britton's collected poems, now published 22 years (can't believe that) after his death, and including "Italy," the collection Dennis published with Little Caesar. The Facebook invitation to the book party is here. Tibor de Nagy Gallery 724 5th Ave NY Friday May 20 6:00-8:00 pm. If you are there, please look out for me (you can ask Philip Clark, who'll introduce some readings from the book), and say hello.' Who is reading at the event? So wish I could be there, ugh. ** Alistair McCartney, Hi, Alistair! Thank you about the amps and their makers, man. Good question about what Banks Violette is doing these days. I feel like I haven't heard his name very much in a while. Dude, that's such great news about your agent loving your book! What a relief, eh? That's fantastic! Onwards and upwards, and, yeah, why not try everywhere, giant and less giant? I'm excited! Let me know what happens if you feel like it and have a chance. Cool! Work on my end is super heavy, load-wise, but I think it's going well. 'Fable' is one of my all-time favorite novels. I love Pinget's work pretty much across the board, but I think that one is especially amazing. Love from me to you! ** Steevee, Hi. Tell me about it. The Beyonce album hype. There's this weird phenomenon that has always been there but seems especially ratcheted up right now where people project so much stuff wildly onto things that are basically just solid, well crafted, smart, canny. It's like people are constantly hunting for some new thing that's good and popularly known enough that they can use it to create a mass whirlwind of mutually targeted pontification that will make the thing they're talking about important due only to the fact that it's generally known and under discussion. Or something. I feel like there was a time when people did that but critics didn't just use their reviews to mirror the projection with articulate verbiage. It's very strange, and very interesting, but a little spooky. And it's not just with music or art in general, I mean ... the more fanatical fans of Trump and Sanders seem like they're on acid or something. Very weird. And, yeah, all or some of that stuff will switch over to the new Radiohead on Sunday, sure as shooting. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Well, I did in fact play my recorder through an amp at times, but I'm sorry to say that didn't help. Oh, I see, about the footage. Yeah, I can see that the mannerisms and so on that currently define me were still pretty coltish and a little hyper, awkward back then or something. Oops. About your little accident. Been there, man, not recently, but yeah. See, if Noah Matous, or whatever his name is, was your slave, he would have very happily cleaned that all up for you with his tongue and then used his mouth as a blowdryer until no trace of your crazy pee mistake remained. Time for tight jeans, George. ** Armando, Hey! Man, the fun you're having is making me really miss my beloved LA. You so did the place up and maxed it out, that's awesome! Nice city, yep, that's for sure, And you went to Disneyland! You are a man of fine and consummate taste! George did have a Disneyland fetish in general and a daydreamy fascination with that ride in particular, yes. Fantastic, big A! So glad you had a great time. Safe trip home! Love, me. ** Okay. Now go have as much fun and whatever else you can with James's spectacularly neat post, okay? Great! See you on Monday.