SXSW: PLAN OF ATTACK

many of our dear comrades-in-arms will play a city-wide music festival on land in austin, texas soon. with a preference for daytime free shows (and free alcohol), here's our tentative schedule...

first, the word is, if you stand in line 10am monday at waterloo records, you can get free tickets to hear the decemberists play the i.f.c. party 10pm tuesday at pangea.

wednesday the 18th, the only daytime act we truly want to see (so far) is the evangelicals, 2:20pm at the red eyed fly. it's free, with free bloody marys and free beer. doors open by at least 12:30. in the evening, if we can get tickets (and afford them), m.ward, the department of eagles, and st. vincent play central presbyterian church.

if we can't, it's okay, because on thursday, the department of eagles open at waterloo records. starts at 2pm, but we'll probably get there much earlier to war for position. a couple acts later, howard gelb (of giant sand) plays. that's all free, as is the cold war kids and m. ward playing auditorium shores on lady bird lake starting at 6.

now, the only official listing we can find for one andrew bird esquire is stubb's at 11pm, but we imagine that will be pricey and packed as fuck. that's rubbish. he has to be playing some parties somewhere and they just don't want them to blow up too quickly. so we'll keep our lobeless ears to the ground.

on friday, vetiver, followed by the heartless bastards, 2pm at waterloo records. gotta see that, and if we somehow miss m.ward the entire week, he's playing the noon-to-5 village voice media show at la zona rosa - probably closing. for monies, we could hear beach house, peter bjorn and john, and grizzly bear at cedar street courtyard; we shall see.

saturday, we have to see the blue scholars and common market close a noon-to-6 free-event at the palm door, but if we miss them there, we'll have to catch them at the do512 compound; they go on there at 9p.m. (looks like doors around 2pm; free entrance, free lone star). at auditorium shores, beach house and explosions in the sky play for free at 6pm. and there's always waterloo park, where we could sun-burn our tender hide again waiting on vetiver, akron/family, king khan, and the black lips, starting at high noon. last year they had stand-up comics as well.

if you can't attend, we're sorry, and offer you this free music as recompense...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1VHKORLKys
http://www.subpop.com/asse..ts/audio/5247.mp3
http://mog.com/music/Giant.._Sand/Chore_Of_Enchantment../Bottom_Line_Man
http://pitchfork.tv/dont-l..ook-down/department-of-eag..les-part-1-of-2/in-ear-par..k
http://blogg.svt.se/psl/20..09/02/13/musik-med-peter-b..jorn-and-john/
http://www.npr.org/templat..es/story/story.php?storyId..=18611276
http://video.google.com/vi..deoplay?docid=-63604091980..03350585
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=MzudkoWbgIU
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=yGOe5dj_-gE
http://cdn.stereogum.com/m..p3/Beach%20House%20-%20Gil..a.mp3
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=5c5MnsnWDes
http://www.dailymotion.com../video/x2e0z4_cold-war-kid..s-hang-me-up-to-dry-new_mu..sic
http://www.youtube.com/wat..ch?v=ToEPFDIzhNA
http://www.kcrw.com/music/..programs/mb/mb090216andrew.._bird
http://www.prefixmag.com/m..edia/grizzly-bear/deep-blu..e-sea-live-in-brooklyn-vid..eo/26523/


update: some possible last minute changes: since we've seen vetiver and the heartless bastards before, we may cut over to the flamingo cantina to hear loney dear at around 2pm and jason lytle (of grandaddy fame) at around 4. this will largely depend on how good waterloo records was as a venue on the previous day (thursday).

OR...

there's a new development in andrew bird-watch: k.e.x.p. says he's playing their gig at 1:30pm friday, waay down on south congress at some television station, to be immediately followed by peter bjorn and john...

http://blog.kexp.org/blog/2009/03/12/kexp-announces-live-broadcast-from-me-television-studios-during-sxsw/
we'd have to get there around 10 or before to feel at all comfortable about getting a good spot in line - a big roll of the dice, possibly sacrificing other safer bets for naught.

andy cabic/erika wennerstrom, emil svanängen/jason lytle, andrew bird/pb&j ...decisions, decisions.

14 ON 14

(14) the french kicks - swimming.
-- a favorite rock band of ours, but they've yet to buckle down and make a masterpiece. then again, perhaps that's what we like about them: they don't burn themselves out; their music sounds effortless; their beauty is subtle. 'all our weekends' was probably our favorite song this year. we include their daytrotter session and a videotaped session they did for bright young things:
http://www.daytrotter.com/article/1336/french-kicks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Exr6y954bXE

(13) hauschka - ferndorf.
-- this music will make your brain grow. just an exquisite piano-centric record filled with gorgeous compositions. john cage never made the prepared piano sound as good as volker bertelmann does here. this site lets you preview all the songs on the album: http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=268 - give 'blue bicycle', 'rode null', and 'schones madchen' a go, or allow this animated music video to heighten your alpha waves: http://pitchfork.tv/videos/hauschka-eltern

(12) the clips - matterhorn.
-- it's their debut and they already outdid bands like islands, tapes 'n tapes and coldplay this year. they remind us a bit of low flying owls, but since they're much superior song-writers - technically-proficient jammers and judicious harnessers of noise, we get the good feeling that these guys will be around much longer. we've dubbed their sound "'kid a' garage rock" due to their penchant for thommy yorke's piano-lines ('wire', 'darko', and 'abalone') and nigel godrich's atmospherics ('eyesuck'). mark our words: their next outing could conquer rock. you can listen to their whole album on their website: http://www.theclips.ca/

(11) vetiver - thing of the past.
-- okay, this album gets a little hokey at times: it's all covers of old-timey music, some of which failed to make the leap from vinyl to compact disc. but goddamn if they're aren't some great songs here; even the lamer cuts are well-done. in truth, this is probably only on our list because of one magic morning i spent listening to it on headphones, but judge for yourselves:
http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Vetiver/download/Hook__Ladder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqKCk9hk-xM

(10) vampire weekend - vampire weekend.
-- sure, they were over-hyped, but at least one of their songs had a peculiar way of making its way onto practically every mix c.d. we'd make this year: first it was 'walcott', then 'one (blake's got a new face)', then 'oxford comma', and finally, 'campus'. so they're not the next arcade fire - so what? they write pleasant, feel-good pop, and that's good enough for us. here's a live take they did with strings:
http://pitchfork.tv/special-presentation/vampire-weekend/part-4
and their wes anderson-esque, one-take extravaganza:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g

(9) evangelicals - the evening descends.
-- now this is a balls-out rock album, a band swinging for the fences: high-energy, multi-instrumental, loud, with great progressions, great solos, great melodies, and wonderful oddness. you'll see what we mean:
http://www.scjag.com/mp3/do/skeletonman.mp3
or check out their horror film spoof debut video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ydrfGYaO8Q

(8) fleet foxes - fleet foxes (and sun giant e.p.).
-- new folk revived by old gospel. robin pecknold is probably the most captivating new singer in popular music today. this record is fraught with flaws (as they've since admitted), but the raw power of the vocals trumps everything else. exhibit a:
http://vimeo.com/808568
exhibit b:
http://www.blackcabsessions.com/sessions.php?id=1213894850
exhibit c:
http://www.blogotheque.net/Fleet-Foxes

(7) jake one - white van music.
-- more albums like this will save hiphop: the underground working with heavy hitters without beef. here's brother ali, breaking it down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IHn0RuCQtw
and here's an instrumental that showcases jake one's mastery of his craft:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=divApaxAt2Q

(6) department of eagles - in ear park.
-- best three-song opening of the year: 'in ear park', 'no one does it like you', and 'phantom other'. after that, the album hits a lull, and can be trying at parts. not every song has to jam out, daniel, especially not the otherwise beautiful 'floating on the lehigh'. still, this is the school of rock music we belong to, whether we like it or not; we've probably listened to the songs we do like on this album more than any other album all year. so here's their boring-ass take away show which we loved:
http://www.blogotheque.net/article.php3?id_article=3604
their performance on don't look down:
http://pitchfork.tv/dont-look-down/department-of-eagles-part-1-of-2
and daniel rossen and fred nicolaus by their lonesome:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2HYd7tA3rs

(5) shearwater - rook.
http://vimeo.com/412102

(4) beach house - devotion.
http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2568-beach-house/1/

(3) immortal technique - the 3rd world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxSHQmnEc5A

(2) portishead - third.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PXZjAieC3c

(1) the walkmen - you & me.
http://pitchfork.com/tv/#/episode/2571-the-walkmen/1/

room in brooklyn

It was in the summer, there was no school. His parents had gone someplace for the weekend and I was spending the weekend at his house, which was near Coney Island, in Brooklyn. We lived in Brooklyn too, in those days, but in a better neighborhood than Joey's. I think we had been lying around the beach, swimming a little and watching the near-naked girls pass, whistling at them and laughing. I am sure that if any of the girls we whistled at that day had shown any signs of responding, the ocean would not have been deep enough to drown our shame and terror. But the girls, no doubt, had some intimation of this, possibly from the way we whistled, and they ignored us. As the sun was setting we started up the boardwalk towards his house, with our wet bathing trunks on under our trousers.

And I think it began in the shower. I know that I felt something - as we were horsing around in that small, steamy room, stinging each other with wet towels - which I had not felt before, which mysteriously, and yet aimlessly, included him. I remember in myself a heavy reluctance to get dressed: I blamed it on the heat. But we did get dressed, sort of, and we ate cold things out of his icebox and drank a lot of beer. We must have gone to the movies. I can't think of any other reason for our going out and I remember walking down the dark, tropical Brooklyn streets with heat coming up from the pavements and banging from the walls of houses with enough force to kill a man, with all the world's grownups, it seemed, sitting shrill and disheveled on the stoops and all the world's children on the sidewalks or in the gutters or hanging from fire escapes, with my arm around Joey's shoulder. I was proud, I think, because his head came just below my ear. We were walking along and Joey was making dirty wisecracks and we were laughing. Odd to remember, for the first time in so long, how good I felt that night, how fond of Joey.

When we came back along those streets it was quiet; we were quiet too. We were very quiet in the apartment and sleepily got undressed in Joey's bedroom and went to bed. I fell asleep - for quite a while, I think. But I woke up to find the light on and Joey examining the pillow with great, ferocious care.

"What's the matter?"
"I think a bedbug bit me."
"You slob. You got bedbugs?"
"I think one bit me."
"You ever have a bedbug bite you before?"
"No."
"Well, go back to sleep. You're dreaming."

He looked at me with his mouth open and his dark eyes very big. It was as though he had just discovered that I was an expert on bedbugs. I laughed and grabbed his head as I had done God knows how many times before, when I was playing with him or when he had annoyed me. But this time when I touched him something happened in him and in me which made this touch different from any touch either of us had ever known. And he did not resist, as he usually did, but lay where I had pulled him, against my chest. And I realized that my heart was beating in an awful way and that Joey was trembling against me and the light in the room was very bright and hot. I started to move and to make some kind of joke but Joey mumbled something and I put my head down to hear. Joey raised his head as I lowered mine and we kissed, as it were, by accident. Then, for the first time in my life, I was really aware of another person's body, of another person's smell. We had our arms around each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened; I am sure he was frightened too, and we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring of what so overwhelmingly stirred in me then, great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst. But out of this astounding, intolerable pain came joy; we gave each other joy that night. It seemed, then, that a lifetime would not be long enough for me to act with Joey the act of love.

But that lifetime was short, was bounded by that night - it ended in the morning. I awoke while Joey was still sleeping, curled like a baby on his side, toward me. He looked like a baby, his mouth half open, his cheek flushed, his curly hair darkening the pillow and half hiding his damp round forehead and his long eye-lashes glinting slightly in the summer sun. We were both naked and the sheet we had used as a cover was tangled around our feet. Joey's body was brown, was sweaty, the most beautiful creation I had ever seen till then. I would have touched him to wake him up but something stopped me. I was suddenly afraid. Perhaps it was because he looked so innocent lying there, with such perfect trust; perhaps it was because he was so much smaller than me; my own body suddenly seemed gross and crushing and the desire which was rising in me seemed monstrous. But, above all, I was suddenly afraid. It was borne in on me: But Joey is a boy. I saw suddenly the power in his thighs, in his arms, and in his loosely curled firsts. The power and the promise and the mystery of that body made me suddenly afraid. That body suddenly seemed the black opening of a cavern in which I would be tortured till madness came, in which I would lose my manhood. Precisely, I wanted to know that mystery and feel that power and have that promise fulfilled through me. The sweat on my back grew cold. I was ashamed. The very bed, in its sweet disorder, testified to vileness. I wondered what Joey's mother would say when she saw the sheets. Then I thought of my father, who had no one in the world but me, my mother having died when I was little. A cavern opened in my mind, black, full of rumor, suggestion, of half-heard, half-forgotten, half-understood stories, full of dirty words. I thought I saw my future in that cavern. I was afraid. I could have cried, cried for shame and terror, cried for not understanding how this could have happened to me, how this could have happened in me. And I made my decision. I got out of bed and took a shower and was dressed and had breakfast ready when Joey woke up.

I did not tell him my decision; that would have broken my will. I did not wait to have breakfast with him but only drank some coffee and made an excuse to go home. I knew the excuse did not fool Joey; but he did not know how to protest or insist; he did not know that this was all he needed to have done. Then I, who had seen him that summer nearly every day till then, no longer went to see him. He did not come to see me. I would have been very happy to see him if he had, but the manner of my leave-taking had begun a constriction, which neither of us knew how to arrest. When I finally did see him, more or less by accident, near the end of the summer, I made up a long and totally untrue story about a girl I was going with and when school began again I picked up with a rougher, older crowd and was very nasty to Joey. And the sadder this made him, the nastier I became. He moved away at last, out of the neighborhood, away from our school, and I never saw him again.
_

james baldwin. giovanni's room. 1956. pages 6-10.

BEST MUSIC VIDEOS (SO FAR) FOR 2008

it's our conviction that watching these will make you a better sapient creature. only you've gotta watch them all in order, in one sitting, and you have to watch them in full screen mode [in high quality (if available on youtube) or in detached video mode (on mtvu)]. don't forget to maximize volume level as needed. mission orders relayed. over and out.

http://stereogum.com/archives/new-andrew-bird-feat-dianogah-video-lull_010551.html
http://www.mtvu.com/video/?id=1586214&vid=228022
http://www.spinner.com/2008/05/23/beach-house-gila-video-of-the-day/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJ2YvRv3N4
http://www.wearethemasses.com/musicvideos/dodos_fools.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Octz-Rls1tI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoCtonftiXA
http://pitchfork.tv/videos/the-walkmen-in-the-new-year
http://www.spike.com/video/rip-portishead/2983205
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir-oBeMltLY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-22kD13rZE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AkCRcwhFQQ
http://www.prefixmag.com/media/okkervil-river/lost-coastlines-acoustic-live-in-norway-video/20615/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPMPLELTZU
http://court13.com/TimeToPretend_480.mov

THREE SUMMERTIME MIXES

copernicus crater
_

john coltrane - like someone in love [jimmy van heusen]
adam green - when the pretty face
heliocentrics - flight 583
amon tobin - ever falling
elbow - one day like this
black spade - she's the one (20's love song)
man man - doo right
the kooks - mr. maker
masta ace - good ol' love
max roach - tender warriors
mark ronson with kasabian - l.s.f.
patrizia and jimmy - trust your child, pt.1
elliott smith - figure 8 [bob dorough]
air - left bank
klimek - ice storm
laura veirs - lake swimming
the white rabbits - untitled (daytrotter session)
the ruby suns - oh mojave
goldfrapp - eat yourself
cut copy - eternity one night only
guillemots - falling out of reach
roy hargrove with common - freestyle
kelley stoltz - put my troubles to sleep
fleet foxes - sun giant
_

amaranthine haze
_

brad mehldau - wonderwall [oasis]
the black keys - work me [junior kimbrough]
grandaddy - where i'm anymore
nina simone - you'll never walk alone [rodgers and hammerstein]
fleet foxes - innocent son
the dodos - red and purple
spiritualized - yeah yeah
islands - to a bond
bon iver - for emma
charles mingus - hobo ho
clinic - the witch (made to measure)
man man - whalebones
animal collective - cuckoo cuckoo
radiohead - 4 minute warning
shearwater - sing little birdie
immortal technique - open your eyes
immortal technique with diabolic and raskass - the payback
_

yawntown
_

dosh - kit and pearle
emc - leak it out
fleet foxes - he doesn't know why
the french kicks - all our weekends
eliot lipp - the area
portishead - the rip
vetiver - hurry on sundown [hawkwind]
bun b with mya - good II me
cold bleak heat - pound cake
future sound of london - lifeforms (path 1)
times new viking - teen drama
shearwater - all the pretty horses [traditional]
erykah badu - me
vampire weekend - one (blake's got a new face)
death cab for cutie - you can do better than me
q and not u - everybody ruins
wolf parade - fine young cannibals
m83 - midnight souls still remain
_

cross-fade appropriately.

the bioavailable five

"Brainerd between Commonwealth and Cambridge St. is a sine wave of lung-busting hills through neighborhoods Tiny Ewell had described as Depressed Residential, unending rows of crammed-together triple-decker houses with those tiny sad architectural differences that seem to highlight the essential sameness, with sagging porches and psoriatic paint-jobs or aluminum siding gone carbuncular from violent temperature-swings, yard-litter and dishes and patchy grass and fenced pets and children's toys lying around in discarded attitudes and eclectic food-smells and wildly different-patterned curtains or blinds in a house's different windows due to these old houses are carved up inside into apartments for like alienated B.U. students or Canadian and Concavity-displaced families or even more alienated B.C. students, or probably it looks like the bulk of the lease-holders are Green-and-Bonkesque younger blue-collar hard-partying types that have posters of the Fiends In Human Shape or Choosy Mothers or Snout or the Bioavailable Five [241] in the bathroom and black lights in the bedroom and oil-change stains in the driveway and that throw their supper dishes into the yard and buy new dishes at Caldor instead of washing their dishes and that still, in their twenties, ingest Substances nightly and use party as a verb and put their sound-systems' speakers in their apartments' windows facing out and crank the volume out of sheer high-spirit obnoxiousness because they still have their girlfriends to pound beers with and do shotguns of dope into the mouth of and do lines of Bing off various parts of the naked body of, and still find pounding beers and doing bongs and lines fun and get to have fun on a nightly after-work basis, cranking the tunes out into the neighborhood air."

footnote 241 : "Popular corporate-hard-rock bands, though it shows where Bruce Green's psychic decline really started that, except for TBA5, these bands were all truly big two or three years past, and are now slightly passe, with Choosy Mothers having split up entirely by now to explore individual creative directions."
_

david foster wallace. infinite jest. 1996. page 582.

there will be snacks

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_

animal collective is right...

"you don't have to go to college."   

_

cognitive neuroscience with v.s. ramachandran - what studying patients with brain disorders (phantom limbs, synesthesia, autism) reveals about being uniquely human: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4684607596399338611

international relations theory with andrew bacevich - why a longtime conservative and west point graduate opposes the american commitment to global military supremacy: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1260516895818511114

combinatorial mathematics with stephen wolfram - how complex systems like the universe can originate from simple computations that're fundamentally undecidable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eC14GonZnU

2 + 2 = 5

here are two relatively new technologies we want to see combined... first (spacial) -- photosynth software,

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129.

second (temporal) -- the kronos projector,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2801608242770748903.

...that way we can navigate through composites of images/videos while altering their time - just like in the movie, minority report:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn2sLUJ-eLk.


sure someone has already thought of this... anyone want to buy us one?

FAVORITE TWENTY-FIVE HIP-HOP TRACKS OF 2007

25. Return of the Mac - Prodigy
24. Come Get It (Tekstrumentals) - Hi-Tek
23. Take Me Away - Lifesavas
22. Letter from the Government - Brother Ali
21. Gotta Eat - Lupe Fiasco
20. Movie Finale - Madlib
19. 2 Brothers from the Gutter - Pecee P with Diamond D
18. We Get Higher - Stat Quo
17. Life is 2009 - UGK with Too $hort
16. Come and Go - 50 Cent
15. Can't Win For Losing - Little Brother
14. Welcome to the Terrordome - Pharoahe Monch
13. None Shall Pass - Aesop Rock
12. 9mm - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
11. Gun Blast - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
10. Supa GFK - Ghostface Killah
9. Windmill - Wu-Tang Clan
8. Drivin' Me Wild - Common with Lily Allen
7. Surviving the Times - Nas
6. The Coolest - Lupe Fiasco
5. Soon the New Day - Talib Kweli
4. Gravy - UGK
3. Stagnant Waters - Dalek
2. Can't Tell Me Nothing - Kanye West
1. Dreams - Little Brother
___


and some music videos to go with...










_

on 'doing something'

What follows is part III of Anton Chekhov's short story, 'The House with the Mezzanine: An Artist's Story', written in 1896. Chekhov was a medical doctor in Russia for most of his life, then he began a career as a freelance writer around 1886, establishing himself as the founder of modern drama. The story tells of a 'perpetually idle' landscape painter who discusses the building of a 'medical relief center' with a busybody social worker..... Question is, who do you agree more with -- the artist or the reformer?
_________________________________________________________

III

'The prince is staying at Maloziomovo, and he asks to be remembered to you,' said Lida to her mother. She had just come in, and was taking off her gloves. 'He gave me a great deal of interesting news ... He promised to raise the question of a medical relief centre at Maloziomovo again at the provincial assembly, but he says there is very little hope of it.' And turning to me, she said: 'Excuse me, I always forget that this cannot be interesting to you.'

I felt irritated. 'Why not interesting to me?' I said, shrugging my shoulders. 'You do not care to know my opinion, but I assure you the question has great interest for me.'

'Yes?'

'Yes. In my opinion a medical relief centre at Maloziomovo is quite unnecessary.'

My irritation infected her; she looked at me, screwing up her eyes, and asked: 'What is necessary? Landscapes?'

'Nor are landscapes. Nothing is.'

She finished taking off her gloves, and opened the newspaper, which had just been brought from the post. A minute later she said quietly, evidently restraining herself: 'Last week Anna died in childbirth, and if there had been a medical relief centre near, she would have lived. And I think even landscape painters ought to have some convictions on the subject.'

'I have a very definite conviction on that subject, I assure you,' I answered; and she screened herself with the newspaper, as though unwilling to listen to me. 'To my mind, all these schools, dispensaries, libraries, medical emergency centres, under present conditions, only serve to aggravate the bondage of the people. The peasants are fettered by a great chain, and you do not break the chain, but only add fresh links to it - that's my conviction.'

She raised her eyes to me and smiled ironically, and I went on trying to formulate my leading idea. 'What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all these Annas, Mayras, Pelageias, toil from early morning till dark, fall ill from work too hard for them, all their lives they tremble for their sick and hungry children, all their lives they are being doctored, and in dread of death and disease, fade and grow old early, and die in filth and stench. Their children begin the same story over again as soon as they grow up, and so it goes on for hundreds of years and billions of men live worse than beasts - in continual terror, for a mere crust of bread. The whole horror of their position lies in their never having time to think of their souls, of their divine image. Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity - that is, what distinguishes man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living. You go to their help with hospitals and schools, but you don't free them from their fetters; on the contrary, you bind them in closer bonds, as, by introducing new prejudices, you increase the number of their wants, to say nothing of the fact that they've got to pay the council for plasters and books, and so toil harder than ever.'

'I am not going to argue with you,' said Lida, putting down the paper. 'I've heard all that before. I will only say one thing: one cannot sit with one's hands in one's lap. It's true that we are not saving humanity, and perhaps we make a great many mistakes; but we do what we can, and we are right. The highest and holiest tasks for a civilized person is to serve his neighbours, and we try to serve them as best we can. You don't like it, but one can't please everyone.'

'That's true, Lida,' said her mother - 'that's true.'

In Lida's presence she was always a little timid, and looked at her nervously as she talked, afraid of saying something superfluous or inopportune. And she never contradicted her, but always assented. 'That's true, Lida - that's true.'

'Teaching the peasants to read and write, books of wretched precepts and rhymes, and medical relief centres, cannot diminish either ignorance or the death rate, just as the light from your windows cannot light up this huge garden,' said I. 'You give nothing. By meddling in these people's lives you only create new wants in them, and new demands on their labour.'

'Oh, my God! But one must do something!' said Lida, with vexation, and from her tone one could see that she thought my argument worthless and despised them.

'The people must be freed from hard physical labour,' said I. 'We must lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, not to spend all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and in the fields, but to have time also to think of their souls, of God - to develop their spiritual capacities. The highest vocation of man is spiritual activity - the perpetual search for truth and the meaning of life. Make rough animal labour unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves free, and then you will see what mockery these dispensaries and books are. Once a man recognizes his true vocation, he can only be satisfied by religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles.'

'Free them from labour?' laughed Lida. 'But is that possible?'

'Yes. Take upon yourself a share of their labour. If all of us, townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree to divide between us the labour which mankind spends on the satisfaction of their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need to work only for two or three hours a day. Imagine that we all, rich and poor, work only for three hours a day, and the rest of our time is free. Imagine further that in order to depend even less upon our bodies and to labour less, we invent machines to replace our work, we try to cut down our needs to the minimum. We would train ourselves and our children not to fear hunger and cold, and we shouldn't be continually trembling for their health like Anna, Mavra, and Pelageia. Imagine that we don't doctor ourselves, don't keep dispensaries, tobacco factories, distilleries - what a lot of free time we would have over, after all! All of us together would devote our leisure to science and art. Just as the peasants sometimes work communally, mending the roads, so all of us, as a community, would search for truth and the meaning of life, and I am convinced that the truth would be discovered quickly; man would escape from this continual, agonising, oppressive dread of death, and even from death itself.'

'You contradict yourself, though,' said Lida. 'You talk about science, and are yourself opposed to literacy.'

'Literacy when a man has nothing to read but the signs on public houses and sometimes books which he cannot understand - that we have had ever since the times or Rurik; Gogol's Petrushka has been reading for a long time, yet as the village was in the days of Rurik, so it has remained. What is needed is not literacy, but freedom to develop spiritual capacities on a wide scale. What is wanted is not schools, but universities.'

'You are opposed to medicine, too?'

'Yes. It would be necessary only for the study of diseases as natural phenomena, and not for the cure of them. If one must cure, it should not be diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the principal cause - physical labour, and then there will be no disease. I don't believe in science that cures disease,' I went on excitedly. 'When science and art are real, they aim not at temporary, private ends, but at the eternal and the universal - they seek for truth and the meaning of life, they seek for God, for the soul, and when they are tied down to the needs and evils of the day, to dispensaries and libraries, they only complicate and hamper life. We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can read and write, but we are quite without biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The whole of our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, is spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs ... Scientists, writers, artists, are hard at work; thanks to them, the conveniences of life are multiplied from day to day. Our physical demands increase, yet truth is still a long way off, and man still remains the most rapacious and dirty animal; everything tends to degeneration of the majority of mankind, and the loss for ever of all fitness for life. In such conditions an artist's work has no meaning, and the more talented he is, the stranger and the more unintelligible his position, as when one looks into it, it is evident that he is working for the amusement of a rapacious and unclean animal, and is supporting the existing order. And I don't want to work and I shan't... Nothing is any use; let the earth sink to perdition!'

'Misius, leave the room!' said Lida to her sister, apparently thinking my words harmful to such a young girl.

Zhenia looked mournfully at her mother and sister, and left the room. 'These are charming things people say when they want to justify their indifference,' said Lida. 'It is easier to disapprove of schools and hospitals than to teach or heal.'

'That's true, Lida - that's true,' the mother assented.

'You threaten to give up working,' said Lida. 'You evidently set a high value on your work. Let us give up arguing; we shall never agree, since I put the most imperfect dispensary or library of which you have just spoken so contemptuously on a higher level than any landscape.'

And turning at once to her mother, she began speaking in quite a different tone: 'The prince is very much changed, and much thinner than when he was with us last. He is being sent to Vichy.' She was telling her mother about the prince in order to avoid talking to me. Her face glowed, and to hide her emotion she bent low over the table as though she were short-sighted, and made a show of reading the newspaper. My presence was disagreeable to her. I said good-bye and went home.

_________________________________________________________

NINE STORIES

what we've been listening to around the strait of gibraltar...

1 : Air Jel

1. no solution - jel.
2. silent spring - massive attack.
3. le vent nous portera - noir desir.
4. did you see the words - animal collective.
5. harrowdown hill - thom yorke.
6. smash - avishai cohen.
7. manitoba - tapes 'n tapes.
8. dear mr. supercomputer - sufjan stevens.
9. displaced - hanne hukkelberg.
10. theme - moondog.
11. can we go back - hi-tek.
12. goin' back to the bridge - asie payton.
13. slowly - amon tobin.
14. me & you & him - palaxy tracks.
15. django - vince guaraldi.
16. little wing - jimi hendrix.
17. strange apparition - beck.
18. lady madonna - the beatles.
19. bad penny blues - humphrey lyttelton.
20. movie theme - beck.
21. alpha beta gaga - air.
22. enough of nothing - cody chesnutt.
_

2 : Cakewalk

1. grinnin' in your face - son house.
2. everybody daylight - brightblack morning light.
3. got to let go - band of bees.
4. prank calls - kelley stoltz.
5. runnin' - the heartless bastards.
6. why? - andrew bird.
7. you know i'm no good - amy winehouse.
8. hate it or love it - the game with 50 cent.
9. move on up - curtis mayfield.
10. gronlandic edit - of montreal.
11. and one (on one) - lilys.
12. man in a shed - nick drake.
13. color bars - elliott smith.
14. scary - bjork.
15. take five - tito puente.
16. irene - rose melberg.
17. lifesaver - emiliana torrini.
18. chant du menestrel - clara rockmore.
19. venice beach dub - stuph.
20. cakewalk into town - taj mahal.
_

3 : Extraneity

1. oliver nelson's stolen moments - telefon tel aviv.
2. atlas - battles.
3. new disaster - elliott smith.
4. i see who you are - bjork.
5. from brighton beach to santa monica - the clientele.
6. norwegian wood (this bird has flown) - the beatles.
7. trouble - bikeride.
8. race in - battles.
9. the chills - peter bjorn and john.
10. mozzarella swastikas - adam green.
11. ocean of noise - arcade fire.
12. dejeuner de soleil - julliette greco.
13. this time - dj shadow.
14. tonto - battles.
15. clam, crab, cocke, cowrie - joanna newsom.
16. the confession - andrew bird.
17. bottom line man - giant sand.
18. thirteen - elliott smith.
19. droplet - apples in stereo.
20. indie rock & roll - the killers.
_

4 : Satanists

1. wooden - apparat.
2. fit song - cornelius.
3. courtesy laughs - phoenix.
4. no girl in my plan - two lone swordsmen.
5. satan said dance - clap your hands say yeah!
6. tulips - papercuts.
7. climbing up the ladder (parts iii and iv) - trans am.
8. sensuous - cornelius.
9. private honeymoon - benjy ferree.
10. i can love you in a wheelchair, baby - benni hemm hemm.
11. there is an end - the greenhornes.
12. interlude - the funky 16 corners.
13. nobody knows you when you're down and out - nina simone.
14. live with me - massive attack.
15. sleep warm - cornelius.
16. oh! you pretty things - david bowie.
17. walken - wilco.
18. lime tree - bright eyes.
19. dreams of leaving - the clientele.
20. only ones who know - the arctic monkeys.
_

5 : A Door Slightly Ajar

1. julia - taken by trees.
2. hold on - john lennon.
3. i shall be released - bob dylan.
4. care of cell 44 - the zombies.
5. landed - ben folds.
6. either way - wilco.
7. rollin - the high llamas.
8. hope - the submarines.
9. play tough - the apples in stereo.
10. brandy alexander - the walkmen.
11. you are my face - wilco.
12. meditations on speed - lilys.
13. ruby - the silver apples.
14. rock bottom riser - smog.
15. and so i know - stone temple pilots.
16. side with the seeds - wilco.
17. even so - rachael yamagata.
18. the way i feel inside - the zombies.
19. simple twist of fate - bob dylan.
20. bring on the lucie (freda people) - john lennon.
21. the lakes of canda - the innocence mission.
_

6 : Sick with Vampires

1. yellow datsun - neva dinova.
2. fools gold - the stone roses.
3. mahna mahna - cake.
4. welcome to the terrordome - pharoahe monch.
5. uncommon valor: a vietnam story - jedi mind tricks.
6. prisoners of war - organized konfusion.
7. letter from the government - brother ali.
8. us placers - kayne west (remixing radiohead).
9. rapperfection - edan (remixing radiohead).
10. daytona 500 - ghostface (remixing radiohead).
11. down is the new up - radiohead.
12. bring back the funk - paul weller.
13. hate it or love it - the game with 50 cent.
14. incarcerated scarfaces - raekwon.
15. the movement - inspectah deck.
16. if you can't say love - the visionaries.
17. stop fronting - prodigy.
18. fantastic - da backwudz.
19. backstage pass - mobb deep.
20. mahna mahna - the muppets.
21. perhaps vampires is a bit strong, but... - the arctic monkeys.
_

7 : Everyone Is A Pope

1. man born to party dies partying - onion news radio.
2. gate 7 - gui boratto.
3. new house of the pope - frank black.
4. auton - silicon scally.
5. acid bells - efdemin.
6. lujon - henry mancini.
7. bridge - amon tobin.
8. anthem for the earnest - the bad plus.
9. yekermo sew (a man of experience and wisdom) - mulatu astatke.
10. sleep talking - ornette coleman.
11. stately, yes. - efdemin.
12. useless information - apparat.
13. arpeggi (live at the ether festival) - radiohead.
14. pushing back - enduser.
15. candyman - philip glass.
16. bergwein - efdemin.
17. figure 8 (school house rock cover) - elliott smith.
_

8 : Mockingbirds

1. green grass - tom waits.
2. all day breakfast - jel.
3. vodou - schneider tm.
4. soft revolution - stars.
5. little one (quick dance) - bartok.
6. you know i'm no good - ghostface.
7. mr. grieves - t.v. on the radio.
8. trains to brazil - the guillemots.
9. how could i forget - the faint.
10. eyes to form shadows - dalek.
11. granadinas - carlos montoya.
12. hasty boom alert - mu-ziq.
13. possibly maybe - bjork.
14. mutual slump - dj shadow.
15. same ghost every night - wolf parade.
16. mascagini's cavalleria rustica - william orbit.
17. you never know - immortal technique.
18. andvari - sigur ros.
_

9 : We Eat Awkwardness for Breakfast

1. octet - deerhunter.
2. black cat john brown - alamo race track.
3. you may be blue - vetiver.
4. be with - koushik.
5. tarnished - dalek.
6. lovely creature - nick cave.
7. my moon my man - feist.
8. red latern girls - vetiver.
9. kid on my shoulders - the white rabbits.
10. path through the forest - the factory.
11. the garden at night - the clientele.
12. i wanna be your dog - iggy pop.
13. rebel girl - bikini kill.
14. fleur de saison - emilie simon.
15. stoffer - benni hemm hemm.
16. i could stay - loney, dear.
17. i know no pardon - vetiver.
18. lucky to be me - bill evans.

sic semper tyrannis

in this interview with journalist bob woodward, former defense secretary donald rumseld compares the worsening situation in the war zone of irak to the ordinary incidents of crime in any large metropolis. can't imagine why they edited out the profound reasoning which was to follow, can you?
_

MR. WOODWARD: And the number of attacks are going up actually.

SEC. RUMSFELD: That's probably true. It is also probably true that our data's better, and we're categorizing more things as attacks. A random round can be an attack and -- all the way up to killing 50 people some place. So you've got a whole fruit bowl of different things -- a banana and an apple and an orange.

MR. WOODWARD: But somebody said up to 900 attacks within one week last month.

SEC. RUMSFELD: I can't validate that. I'd have to go back and look.

MR. WOODWARD: I mean, that's unexploded IEDs, that's counted as an attack; detonated IEDs, close engagements, standoff attacks and attacks on Iraqi authorities.

SEC. RUMSFELD: What do you suppose how many things of those character occur in countries that aren't at war in a given week?

MR. WOODWARD: I've heard you --

SEC. RUMSFELD: Detroit, Chicago, anywhere. I mean, you look at the number of homicides and rapes and armed robberies and attacks and shootings, and goodness knows -- (inaudible) --

[Passage deleted mutual consent and ground-rule]

_

_

of perfect days for banana fish

Hence gloomy thoughts
No more my soul shall dwell
On joys that were
No more endure to weigh
The shame and anguish of the evil day
Wisely forgetful
O'er the ocean swell
Sublime of Hope I seek the cottag'd dell
Where Virtue calm with careless step may stray
And, dancing to the moon-light roundelay
The Wizard passions weave an holy spell

Thomas Chatterton was an English poet and forger of pseudo-medieval poetry, who served as an icon of unacknowledged genius for the Romantics... On 24 August 1770, he retired for the last time to his attic in Brook Street, carrying with him the arsenic which he drank, after tearing into fragments whatever literary remains were at hand. He was only seventeen years and nine months old...  

::: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton

Why then write Sonnets or Monodies? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps nothing else could. After the more violent emotions of Sorrow, the mind demands solace and can find it in employment alone; but full of its late sufferings it can endure no employment not connected with those sufferings.

::: http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2000/v/n17/005900ar.html

click here to continue your quest

TOP FIVE ALBUMS OF 2006

_

5 : Brad Mehldau Trio - House on Hill.

there's no one playing piano today who is in the same building as Mr. Melhdau. both of his hands have well-developed frontal lobes all their own. he's our generation's answer to Art Tatum. but one would suspect with such virtuosity that we'd have to accept some counter-balancing lack of soul, that he'd hit us with so many speedily-delivered notes we'd long for the stripped-down melodies of pop. you only need listen to the final phrases of 'Embers' to hear this isn't so. here we learn to appreciate how Melhdau can distill his polyphonic cacophonies down to an uncluttered theme that was hiding in the background and, once revealed, hangs in the air for long afterward. despite the glorious excess of his improvization, it's his subtlety that most strikes us, how the slightest of shifts can alter the entire edifice of a song. with this method he can spell-bound you (as in 'August Ending'), he can send you meandering through the synaptic latticework of your brain (as in 'House on Hill'), or he can tie you up in knots (as in 'Backyard'). for the jazz-haters out there, listen to what Mehldau does with the addictive beat laid down by Jorge Rossy on 'Bealtine' which also includes an edgy solo from bassist Larry Grenadier that ever-seems on the verge of flying off the handle. one can tell Rossy, Grenadier, and Mehldau have been going at it for a long time by the immediacy of their responsiveness to one another - they exemplify the tight trio. and all these songs, even those that get lost wandering off nowhere, add complex layers upon one another, not for complexity's sake, but to demonstrate that when the journey is the destination, the sky's the limit (...or is it?).


4 : Regina Spektor - Begin to Hope

when it comes to beautiful distinctive female vocalists, Ms. Spektor is rarely mentioned in the same sentence as Bjork or Joanna Newsom, but we began to hope this album would change all that. if you need a demonstration, try for a moment to hit the faultless falsetto of "heart-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-art" in her song 'Fidelity', then ask yourself, who else's voice can be as simultaneously quirky and porcelain? whether she's hollering or whispering, Spetkor knows exactly how you need to be kissed. and in spite of the fact that she's only recently come into her own in the studio (finally), she continues to flaunt a mastery of the piano unrivaled by the contemporaries of her genre (Emily Haines, for example), as the song 'Edit' is guilty of on both counts - clean production featuring a gal who really knows how to play her instrument. Fiona Apple wishes she'd written a song as bluesy and tearful as 'Lady' (or thought to work with a saxophonist as sultry as Ralph Williams). and Ms. Apple could never pull off a lyric as funny as 'summer in the city means... cleavage, cleavage, cleavage', nor infuse the same line with heady nostalgia two minutes later. our favorite, however, remains 'Field Below', which plows as deep into the emotion of our time and place as 'Like a Bridge over Troubled Waters' did for its. gives us chills every time.


3 : Nas - Hiphop is Dead

after seeing Pitchfork rank Clipse's rap-kitsch as 7, we'd have to agree with the title of Mr. Nasir Bin Olu Dara Jones's fantastic contribution to the discussion of the state of hiphop. (but we suppose most people knew Pitchfork lost its mind when it left Gnarls Barkley, Pharrell, the Roots, Jurassic 5, and Hi-Tek outside the club while Clipse got v.i.p. treatment.) even though this is the message we desperately need to hear right now, and Nas shares with us a deep reverence for the history of his craft and his people, it's also a superbly sampled and syncopated ride, as the flow on 'Hope' smacks us awake with its breath-taking display of raw talent (and an excellent vocal accompaniment to boot). whoever takes Nas's point in a solely negativistic way obviously hasn't listened to the inspirational 'Let there be Light'. what's wrong with not aiming for the club? what's wrong with not bragging about pimping and purchasing shiny expensive consumer goods? it's not as if Nas speaks any less highly of illicit drugs (see 'Blunt Ashes'); he simply uses them for creative meditation instead of recreational anesthesia. if you're worried things might get too serious, then listen to this stand-out (our vote for best hiphop track of the year) - 'Can't Forget about You'. and please don't discard this unforgettable album because it samples Nat King Cole (who, we're sure you know, often demeaned womyn by pouring champagne on their tits).


2 : Daedelus - Daedelus Denies the Day's Demise

of all the solid electronica to choose from - from the Knife to Nathan Fake to Eliot Lipp to Tiga (not to mention all the new releases from old heavyweights like Prefuse 73, Cut Chemist, DJ Shadow, and Squarepusher) - this one's exquisite timing and texture sets it apart. from the first to the last, Mr. Alfred Wiesberg Roberts has the uncanny capacity to make our head and skin feel light. needless to say Daedelus is a genius when it comes to incorporating horns, strings, and drums, but what other sounds aren't made listenable here? annoying screams? yep. wind chimes? got 'em. television narrator circa 1955? sure. even noise never sounded so good. we go from skipping along on a sunny afternoon ('At My Heels') to the depths of ominous pits ('Never None the Wiser') and back, from the hiphop-inspired ('Lights Out') to the techno-inspired ('Sawtooth E.K.G.'), from music for dancing ('Sundown') to music for melting into your living room furniture ('Sunrise'), everything flows and fits together seamlessly with a firecracker sense of surprise. plus, the musical heritages in practically every region of the world are represented, from Cuban to African to Brazilian to Indian and so on. still the trip feels like it's over before it begins. it's dense yet effervescent. contemplative yet funky. and no track this year has given us a warmer smile than 'Viva Vida'. it's a dreamy breeze that's not only enough to make you deny the day's demise, but forget what day it is as well.


1 : Thom Yorke - The Eraser

if some big Mr. Fancy Pants (Logan Keese, for instance) was so stupid as to give us authority over some music awards ceremony this year, it'd go something like this... best album art : Stanley Donwood. best producer : Nigel Godrich. best male vocalist : Thom Yorke. best song : Black Swan... yet having said that, this record took a while to grow on us. first we only dug the mathematical precision of Godrich's ambient soundscapes, which go from subliminal to explosive during the last minute or so of every song. so we put off fully listening to the album for a month or so. then randomly 'The Clock' struck our fancy, then 'Black Swan' hooked us, then 'Analyze' and 'Atoms for Peace', or maybe it was the other way around. in any case, by the end of the avalanche, we could even savor every tiny morsel of organized chaos on 'Skipped Divided' and 'Cymbal Rush' without feeling sick, and 'Harrowdown Hill' became our favorite cut: 'i'm coming home, i'm coming home to make it alright, so dry your eyes' is enough to make a manatee wilt (and be sure to listen for the trance-inducing instrumental break at three minutes and twenty-five seconds). it wasn't Mr. Yorke's effortless vocal calisthenics, clinging to high-pitched notes in his non-chalant way which ultimately put this work over the top for us, but its lyrical content. it's an indictment of conformity and greed and all the other evil shit we're forced to passively witness yet seem unable to stop. the personal is political is personal, alluded to best when Yorke tells the story of David Kelly (see below). the real question is, how can we absorb the superficiality of the way we live today and turn it into an authentic cool? this entails having the courage to be terrified, and the self-confidence to be fractured. it means going from a paralyzing cynicism to wit, from a depressing isolation to open rage. it means cultivating a stoicism that keeps some tender core of yourself from being cheapened and poisoned like everything else. it's about holding on to a sense of the sublime amidst seas of pollution, and learning to let something gentle and pure shine forth amidst the grime of unjust and unethical sociopolitical complexes... there are those who say 'fuck it' who are completely ignorant of all that's wrong, and then there are those who can honestly face all that's wrong and still say 'fuck it'. speaking for the Dark Manatees, Thom Yorke is the reason sentient beings like us can continue to live in a world which killed John Lennon.

_

Harrowdown Hill in Oxfordshire is notable for being the place where the body of Dr David Kelly was found in 2003. His evidence had raised questions about Saddam Hussein's possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction — the official justification for the UK government's decision to invade Iraq. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Yorke said, "The government and the Ministry of Defence... were directly responsible for outing him and that put him in a position of unbearable pressure that he couldn't deal with, and they knew they were doing it and what it would do to him... I've been feeling really uncomfortable about that song lately, because it was a personal tragedy, and Dr Kelly has a family who are still grieving. But I also felt that not to write it would perhaps have been worse." In another interview, Yorke said that "Harrowdown Hill" is "the most angry song I've ever written in my life...".

SHOEBAG JOHNSON AND THE GOLDEN TICKETS

our whispers wake no clocks.



we lack the courage of our addictions.



home taping is killing music!



there goes the afternoon.

let down and hanging around...

_


living in a glass house :

"once again, we are hungry for a lynching.
that's a strange mistake to make.
you should turn the other cheek."

    - radiohead.

_


the hangman at home :

"What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day's work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and kill about
The weather, baseball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
A rope--does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It's a good and dandy world we live
In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon-gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair--the hangman--
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess."

    - carl sandburg.

_


the hanging man :

"By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid :
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did."

    - sylvia plath.

litcrit wanderlust

here are some snippets from novels...

"Why so sad, my friend? What could be bothering you? You're young and strong, without any family to tie you down. ... No one thinks less of you because you were not born in these parts; in fact, everyone respects your conduct and your talents... You can read and write and figure... You have spirit; you have a good, logical head on your shoulders. And, on top of all that, you are the best-looking young man in town. Only twenty-four years old! I don't understand why you keep to yourself so much... You act as if you were better than everyone else, like we're not worthy of your company!" - George Sand, The Black City, 1860.

...

"... but much to his surprise he grew aware of a strange expansion of his inner being, a kind of restive anxiety, a fervent youthful craving for faraway places, a feeling so vivid, so new or else so long outgrown and forgotten that he came to a standstill and - hands behind his back, eyes on the ground, rooted to the spot - examined the nature and purport of the feeling.

It was wanderlust, pure and simple; but it pounced on him as a seizure, intensifying into a burst of passion, even a hallucination. His desire could virtually see, his ability to fantasize, unlulled since his hours of working, conjured up all the wonders and terrors, all the variety of the earth, which he strove to envision. He saw, saw a landscape, and monstrous, a primordial jungle of islands, morasses, and alluvial inletsl saw hariy palm shafts near and far striving upward out of rank and rampant ferns, realms of fat, swollen plants with fantastic blossoms; saw eccentrically misshapen trees plunging their roots through the air and into the ground, into stagnant waters reflecting green shadows; saw bowl-sized, milky white flowers drifting on surfaces and outlandish species of birds, with hunched shoulders and deformed beaks, standing in shallow liquids and inertly ogling sideways; saw the sparkling eyes of a couching tiger between the knotty canes of the bamboo thicket - and he felt his heart pounding with horror and enigmatic longing. Then the vision faded; and shaking his head, Aschenbach resumed his promenade along the fences of the gravestone yards." - Thomas Mann, Death in Venice, 1912.

...

 "There hung the sense of buffering, insulation, she had notcied the abscence of an intensity, as if watching a movie, just perceptibly out of focus, that the projectionist refused to fix. And had also gently conned herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair. When it turned out to be Pierce she'd happily pulled out the pins and curlers and down it tumbled in its whisphering, dainty avalanche, only when Pierce had got maybe halfway up, her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass. But dauntless, perhaps using one of his many credit cards for a shim, he'd slipped the locked on her tower door and come up the conchlike stairs, which, had true guile come more naturally to him, he'd have done to begin with. But all that had then gone on between them had really never escaped the confinement of that tower. In Mexico City, they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled "Bordando El Manto Terrestre," [see below] were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had taken her away from nothing, there'd been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on supersition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?" - Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, 1965.

gaydar

295.

Brief habits.— I love brief habits and consider them an inestimable means for getting to know many things and states, down to the bottom of their sweetness and bitternesses; my nature is designed entirely for brief habits, even in the needs of my physical health and altogether as far as I can see at all: from the lowest to the highest. I always believe that this will give me lasting satisfaction now—brief habits, too, have this faith of passion, this faith in eternity—and that I am envied for having found and recognized it:—and now it nourishes me at noon and in the evening and spreads a deep contentment all around itself and deep into me so that I desire nothing else, without having any need for comparisons, contempt or hatred. And one day its time is up: the good things part from me, not as something that has come to nauseate me—but peacefully and sated with me as I am with it, and as if we had reason to be grateful to each other and thus we shook hands to say farewell. Even then something new is waiting at the door, along with my faith—this indestructible fool and sage!—that this new discovery will be just right, and that this will be the last time. That is what happens to me with dishes, ideas, human beings, cities, poems, music, doctrines, ways of arranging the day, and lifestyles.— Enduring habits I hate, and I feel as if a tyrant had come near me and that the air I breathe had thickened when events take such a turn that it appears that they will inevitably give rise to enduring habits: for example, owing to an official position, constant association with the same people, a permanent domicile, or unique good health. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect,—because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.— Most intolerable, to be sure, really terrible, would be for me a life entirely devoid of habits, a life that would demand perpetual improvisation:—that would be my exile and my Siberia.

296.

A firm reputation.— A firm reputation used to be extremely useful; and wherever society is still dominated by the herd instinct it is still most expedient for every one to pretend that his character and occupation are unchangeable,—even if at bottom they are not. "One can depend on him, he remains the same":—in all extremities of society this is the sort of praise that means the most. Society is pleased to feel that the virtue of this person, the ambition of that one, and the thoughtfulness and passion of the third provide it with a dependable instrument that is always at hand,—it honors this instrumental nature, this way of remaining faithful to oneself, this unchangeability of views, aspirations, and even faults and lavishes its highest honors upon it. Such esteem, which flourishes and has flourished everywhere alongside the morality of mores, breeds "character" and brings all change, all re-learning, all self-transformation into ill repute. However great the advantages of this way of thinking may be elsewhere, for the search after knowledge no general judgment could be more harmful, for precisely the good will of those who seek knowledge to declare themselves at any time dauntlessly against their previous opinions and to mistrust everything that wishes to become firm in us,—is thus condemned and brought into ill repute. Being at odds with "a firm reputation," the attitude of those who seek knowledge is considered dishonorable while the petrification of opinions is accorded a monopoly on honor:—under the spell of such notions we have to live to this day! How hard it is to live when one feels the opposition of many millennia all around! It is probable that the search after knowledge was afflicted for many millennia with a bad conscience, and that the history of the greatest spirits must have contained a good deal of self-contempt and secret misery.

297.

The ability to contradict.— Everyone knows nowadays that the ability to accept criticism and contradiction is a sign of high culture. Some people actually realize that higher human beings desire and provoke contradiction in order to receive some hint about their own injustices of which they are as yet unaware. But that the ability to contradict, the attainment of a good conscience when one feels hostile to what is acccustomed, traditional, and hallowed,—that is still more excellent and constitutes what is really great, new, and amazing in our culture, the step of steps of the liberated spirit: who knows that?

299.

What one should learn from artists.— How can we make things beautiful, attractive, and desirable for us when they are not?—and I rather think that in themselves they never are! Here we could learn something from physicians, when for example they dilute what is bitter or add wine and sugar to a mixture; but even more from artists who are really continually trying to bring off such inventions and feats. Moving away from things until there is a good deal that one no longer sees and there is much that our eye has to add if we are still to see them at all—or seeing things around a corner and as cut out and framed—or to place them so that they partially conceal each other and grant us only glimpses of architectural perspectives—or looking at them through tinted glasses or in the light of the sunset—or giving them a surface and skin that is not really transparent: all this we should learn from artists while being wiser than they are in other matters. For with them this subtle power usually comes to an end where art ends and life begins; but we want to be the poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.

304.

By doing we forego.— At bottom I abhor all those moralities which say: "Do not do this! Renounce! Overcome yourself!"—I am well disposed toward those moralities which goad me to so something and do it again, from morning till evening, and then to dream of it at night, and to think of nothing except doing this well, as well as I alone can do it! Whoever lives like that, one thing after another that simply does not belong to such a life drops off: without hatred or aversion he sees this take its leave today and that tomorrow, like yellow leaves that any slight stirring of the air takes off a tree; or he may not even notice that it takes its leave, for his eye is riveted to its goal, and forward, not sideward, backward, downward. "What we do should determine what we forego"—that is how I like it, that is my placitum [principle]. But I do not wish to strive with open eyes for my own impoverishment, I do not like negative virtues,—virtues whose very essence it is to negate and deny oneself something.

307.

In favor of criticism.— Now something that you formerly loved as a truth or probability strikes you as an error: you shed it and fancy that this represents a victory for your reason. But perhaps this error was as necessary for you then, when you were still a different person—you are always a different person—, as are all your present "truths," being a skin, as it were, that concealed and covered a great deal that you were not permitted to see. What killed that opinion for you was your new life and not your reason: you no longer need it, and now it collapses and unreason crawls out of it into the light like a worm. When we criticize something, this is no arbitrary and impersonal event,—it is, at least very often, evidence of vital energies in us that are growing and shedding a skin. We negate and must negate because something in us wants to live and affirm, something that we perhaps do not know or see as yet! —This is said in favor of criticism.

_____

nietzsche. the gay science. 1882.

lonely hunters

'And how many of us are there in this country? Maybe ten thousand. Maybe twenty thousand. Maybe a lot more. I been to a lot of places but I never met but a few of us. But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watched the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun - the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.'
_

carson mccullers. the heart is a lonely hunter. 1940. page 128.

captain crunch

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

___

buk. love is a dog from hell. 1977.

a working class hero is someting to be

is destroying symbols of imperial power okay even when it causes the deaths of innocent civilians?

_

Randal: So they build another Death Star, right?

Dante: Yeah.

Randal: Now the first one they built was completed and fully operational before the Rebels destroyed it.

Dante: Luke blew it up. Give credit where it's due.

Randal:And the second one was still being built when they blew it up.

Dante: Compliments of Lando Calrissian.

Randal: Something just never sat right with me the second time they destroyed it. I could never put my finger on it-something just wasn't right.

Dante: And you figured it out?

Randal: Well, the thing is, the first Death Star was manned by the Imperial army-storm troopers, dignitaries- the only people onboard were Imperials.

Dante: Basically.

Randal: So when they blew it up, no prob. Evil is punished.

Dante: And the second time around...?

Randal: The second time around, it wasn't even finished yet. They were still under construction.

Dante: So?

Randal: A construction job of that magnitude would require a helluva lot more manpower than the Imperial army had to offer. I'll bet there were independent contractors working on that thing: plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers.

Dante: Not just Imperials, is what you're getting at.

Randal: Exactly. In order to get it built quickly and quietly they'd hire anybody who could do the job. Do you think the average storm trooper knows how to install a toilet main? All they know is killing and white uniforms.

Dante: All right, so even if independent contractors are working on the Death Star, why are you uneasy with its destruction?

Randal: All those innocent contractors hired to do a job were killed- casualties of a war they had nothing to do with. (notices Dante's confusion) All right, look-you're a roofer, and some juicy government contract comes your way; you got the wife and kids and the two-story in suburbia-this is a government contract, which means all sorts of benefits. All of a sudden these left-wing militants blast you with lasers and wipe out everyone within a three-mile radius. You didn't ask for that. You have no personal politics. You're just trying to scrape out a living.

(The Blue-Collar Man (Thomas Burke) joins them.)

Blue-Collar Man: Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but what were you talking about?

Randal: The ending of Return of the Jedi.

Dante: My friend is trying to convince me that any contractors working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when the space station was destroyed by the rebels.

Blue-Collar Man: Well, I'm a contractor myself. I'm a roofer... (digs into pocket and produces business card) Dunn and Reddy Home Improvements. And speaking as a roofer, I can say that a roofer's personal politics come heavily into play when choosing jobs.

Randal: Like when?

Blue-Collar Man: Three months ago I was offered a job up in the hills. A beautiful house with tons of property. It was a simple reshingling job, but I was told that if it was finished within a day, my price would be doubled. Then I realized whose house it was.

Dante: Whose house was it?

Blue-Collar Man: Dominick Bambino's.

Randal: "Babyface" Bambino? The gangster?

Blue-Collar Man: The same. The money was right, but the risk was too big. I knew who he was, and based on that, I passed the job on to a friend of mine.

Dante: Based on personal politics.

Blue-Collar Man: Right. And that week, the Foresci family put a hit on Babyface's house. My friend was shot and killed. He wasn't even finished shingling.

Randal: No way!

Blue-Collar Man: (paying for coffee) I'm alive because I knew there were risks involved taking on that particular client. My friend wasn't so lucky. (pauses to reflect) You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... (taps his heart) not his wallet.


-- Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994).