"hell is other people's music."

11/24/05

"BE THROUGH MY LIPS TO UNAWAKEN'D EARTH": THE POETICS OF NATURE MAKING ME DIE

i've walked and i've crawled on six crooked highways.

i wrote a blog entry two nights ago but it somehow got lost in the abysmal depths of "cyber"-"space." it was the night before i drove out to ithaca to visit my cousin and the scientician (and soon to be youngest doctor of philosophy i know) michael j. nicolls. twenty-four years old, fuck me. what the hell have i done with my life? in any event, it was the night before i left and i walked onto my porch to find it completely covered in snow. this was the first real substantial snow of the year. clearly, i had forgotten to make a sacrifice to the god of the highway and he was pissed.

you will not see me staying here/to smoke and watch my porch fill up with snow.

the drive actually turned out relatively incident free and i got there more or less in the same condition as when i left. among other things we did, we were wandering around buildings at cornell and i happened upon an office door in the literature building that said "m. h. abrams." fuck me, m. h. abrams is still alive. the mirror and the lamp was written in 1958. doesn't he realise how old he is? to put his ancientness in perspective, my thesis advisor from college studied with m. h. abrams when she was in graduate school and she had, by the time i worked with her, had a long and distinguished career of her own. which is not to say that lisa is old, but... the the library catalogue tells me that abrams was born in 1912.

it only happens once a year; it only happens once a lifetime, make the most of it.

i am reminded of my old college roommate daniel complaining about freshmen girls skipping down the hill that one day in college it snowed in portland, singing "fox in the snow." he said it with contempt but i can think of few things as joyful and whimsical, especially now that the streets are paved with ice and i'm going to have to punch thumbtacks through the soles of my shoes so i don't slip and die when i walk outside. since it stopped snowing more than once a year in the pacific northwest in the early nineties, i've been complaining that the only snow i ever see is the fake, disneyland snow in whistler. but get me away, i'm dying; it's the second day of real snow in rochester and it's already gotten so bad i think i'm going to die. i realise that i was warned about this many many times over, but couldn't the pretty, domesticated snow last for at least another week before the ice storm? what i want is the snow that this picture metonymically invokes:

apparently, life was not all robert frost and little women.

i was speaking with a german friend of mine, also named daniel, and he was telling me about angela merkel. apparently, she and bush jr. (with blair perhaps playing thatcher?) look poised to begin another reagan-thatcher-kohl nexus of hegemonic evil. according to daniel, kohl calls merkel, "meine kleine m�dchen."

angie, they can't say we never tried.

i've been thinking about post-war german politics these days because i'm planning to work on two thoughts that have been occupying my brain recently when the semester ends. [disclaimer: what follows is vague, rambling, and unformed. �ed.] the first (discussed here) is a reading of nico's "the end" and "das lied der deutschen" as a response to vergangenheitsbew�ltigung by invoking celan's margarete. this recent essay, though of little intellectual interest, brings up several biographical facts about nico that inform my reading of lou reed's "berlin" (the song, not the album), which i think speaks to nico's performance of a german feminine figure of death (cf. vernant). nico, i want to argue, expresses the inexpressible: the traumatic and repressed for which, say, the medusa is a stand in. the other topic (discussed here) deals specifically with the inexpressible, that is, the sublime. i read dear nora's "when the wind blows" as an inversion of folk music's domestication of nature (e.g. "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," "a hard rain's a-gonna fall," "the answer my friends is blowing in the wind"). somewhat like the "la la la" of television personalities' "part time punks" and its denial of punk rock's masculinist authenticity, dear nora's "it goes, 'la la la la la'" cuts through the "truth" of folk music and exposes it as a lyrical mode that prevents women from speaking. for example, bob dylan's "the girl from the north country" (which, tellingly, dear nora covered, in doing so, transforming the narrative locus of the song): "please see if she has a coat so warm/to keep her from the howlin' winds." dylan's paternalism is obvious: he can domesticate nature (the wind, the rain) � he can manipulate the natural to stand allegorically for his "truth" � but a woman needs to be protected. he speaks; she cannot. perhaps just as central to my study, however, is the way dylan at once blocks the woman from speaking and subjugates her through the male gaze using the rhetorical strategy of the song's addressee. (note also that he doesn't say "see if she remembers me" but, rather, "remember me to the girl...") similarly, "blowin' in the wind," which invokes the inexpressible, is reshaped by dear nora. "when the wind blows," does not so much express what can't be expressed by ventriloquising nature as dylan does in "blowin' in the wind" and "a hard rain's a-gonna fall" but invokes the romantic sublime, the search for the inexpressable truth that inevitably results into headlong rush into death: "but i won't close the door, even if the wind blows 'cos/i want to feel the things that nobody knows." here, the i-want-to-say-what-can't-be-said is not a gesture towards the "truth" the way it is in the dylan songs i've mentioned; rather, it invokes the ability to speak. dear nora's katy davidson can only say "la la la" because she is a woman and is, thus, restricted to merely singing; she can be pretty but can't create meaning. take "how many years must a people exist/until they're allowed to be free/the answer my friend is blowin' in the wind" and maya angelou's

the caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

katy knows why the caged bird sings but she, like it, and like the wind that has been ventriloquised by dylan, cannot say why. they cannot speak. (on a peripheral note, see this t-shirt.)

while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad/in such an ecstasy!

the connection between nico and dear nora's songs is still tenuous in my head. both speak to the inexpressible, but function in different ways: nico addresses the bilderverbot (speaking of not speaking about the holocaust, see this) while dear nora addresses the ghettoisation of women in pop music. i suspect i have to look into the german romantic sublime, maybe caspar david friedrich, and it may take time to see if merkel invites bush jr. to bitburg, but i think what unites the nico and dear nora songs is... blowin' in the wind.

11/20/05

GROW MY HAIR, I AM JIM MORRISON

what a fucking douchebag.

11/17/05

GRACE, THE SNOW IS HERE

it's snowing outside and i'm grading papers and thinking about the song about playing connect four and listening to "that's when ya lost" � quite possibly the best song my meagre talents have ever produced, by the way.

11/15/05

LA LA LA LA LA LA

Walking down in King�s Road
I see so many faces
They come from many places
They come down for the day
They walk around together
They try and look trendy
I think it�s shame
That they all look the same

Here they come
La la la
The Part Time Punks

Then they go to Rough Trade
To buy Siouxie and the Banshees
They heard John Peel play it
Just the other night
They�d like to buy the O-Level single
Or Read about Seymour
But they�re not pressed in red
So they buy the Lurkers instead

Here they come
La la la
The Part Time Punks

They play their records very loud
They pogo in the bedroom
In front of the mirror
But only when their moms gone out
They pay five pence on the busses
And they never use toothpaste
But they�ve got �2.50
To go and see the Clash tonight

Here they come
La la la
The Part Time Punks

11/11/05

DIVIDED MEMORY AND POST-TRADITIONAL IDENTITY: GERHARD RICHTER'S WORK OF MOURNING

happy remembrance day. as previously stated, my conceived but yet unexecuted album will say "in my younger and more arrogant years" on the front cover. i've been listening to this album a lot lately � which is to say, it's been going through my head � and i thought i'd share the tracklisting.

1. my brother and i
2. answering the question
3. talking seattle activist blues (or) nineteen ninety-nine
4. the pen is mightier than the words
5. the no no no's
6. i remember bridget riley (d. treacy)
7. j.a., misunderstood
8. die die diaryland
9. fuck this shit
10. hopey glasses
11. river high (t. leo)
12. undergraduates (or) now my heart is sore

i was thinking of calling the album "and now my heart is sore," but it just sounded too emo. there's this other song called "song for balbir singh sodhi" that i like but can't seem to work in. in any event, as the title (taken from the first line of the seventh track) may or may not suggest, the album is about remembering the past, only most of the pasts in these songs are not my own, at least not really. i would also say that it's a bit premature for me to compose my sombre meditation on old age, even if i'm world-weary and wise beyond my years and i've been reading a lot of yeats recently. what came out of my head (or, rather, into my head in melodic form) were the relationships between people who are not me and their youth. why do i bring this up? because i currently find the passage from this to this to be the funniest thing in the world � funnier, even, than "byronic commando," the video game in which lord byron, who, on account of his club foot, cannot jump but, in its stead, uses his bionic strech arm to lift, suspend, and move himself vertically, defeats hitler in a fight to the death. but i digress. i'm thinking about revisiting my long scrapped r.mutt's greatest hits: �uvres in the dark joke/project. it will consist of rerecordings of a cross section of my better work (spanning from my earnest and na�ve beginnings in monop�le! to my tossed off, stupid joke songs in tradition and the individual talents) in the style of "dancing in the dark (premies starving tonight remix)," "devil baby theme [dfa dance punk(y) mix]," and the aforelinkedto "last valediction (lst vrsn i prms)."

speaking of remembering things, i miss the ping pong room. i saw katy davidson (speaking of songs that are jokes) tonight. her performance was, as always, great, but it was really just nice to see and talk to someone from the old country, the old country (portland) in this case being in the same country as the new world (rochester). i was saying to my friend gloria, who came with me and who enjoyed the show, that i'm never sure whether anyone else will like the music that i love. so much of what makes dear nora special to me is rooted in a specific time and place, the time being my sophomore year of college and the place(s) being the ping pong room, the red and black caf�, and the meow meow (as well as the imaginary spaces � imaginary because i've never been to these places � of rip city and the magic marker house). dear nora's first album we'll have a time remains one of my favourites but i often go months without listening to it. when i do pick it up again though, it's like proust's madeleine cake. but i don't want to get too emo here. the time for that has passed.

i've learned a lot over the years from katy day. when she gets too emo, for example the song "this is not a test," she undercuts the sincerity with a bald-facedly stupid line: "this is not a test but i haven't seen you smile in a while/so tell me if you want me to, i've got the style/to turn a frown into a big fat smile/oh" (note the ham-fisted rhyming of "style" and "smile"), or, on the heartbreakingly poignant song "love song for my friends":

now you are gone
you left me here
in a quiet house
full of recorded memories
i want to call
i know i won't
you're on your way
there's not much more to say

but i need you badly my very best friends
we will party again when you come down
i'm not clowning around when i say i love you

i need you badly my very best friends
we will party again when you come down
i'm not clowning around when i say i love you
'cos you're the best dudes
that i know.

you've got to hear the song to really get how achingly heartfelt it is � so heartfelt, in fact, that even the lines "we will party again when you come down/i'm not clowning around when i say i love you" come off not only as completely sincere, but as not stupid (aside: note the self-referentiality of "i'm not clowning around"). but the last lines, "'cos you're the best dudes/that i know," sung with her eyes closed (a bald-facedly stupid line delivered with a completely straight face), is almost brechtian (i'm thinking not only of brecht's theatrical interruption, but also the overlapping of dialects and narrative voices in his poetry that even clement greenberg appreciated � though greenberg somehow found a unity to praise in brecht's fragmentations and ruptures). katy began her set tonight with her eyes closed, singing the first two lines of "hey jude" until she couldn't suppress the smile on her face any longer. "just kidding." so sure, all my songs are jokes � and, more often than not, stupid jokes � but i'd like to think they're a little more artful than, say, yet another straight, white, middle class boy with a guitar who really means it. i should note, by the way, that when katy undercuts her emo parts with a stupid line (though not necessarily when i do it), it actually reinscribes the song with sincerity, either by levelling clich� with an over the top, overt clich� or by the juxtaposition of conventional song language and conventional song themes with the ("low") language and themes of the everyday (cf. "hung up," which kind of does both, but in sneaky ways).

six years ago, when i first discovered dear nora, i introduced the band to an old friend of mine, a friend with whom i'd grown up sharing home taped cassettes. his response: "it's nice but it's lacking a little, you know, substance." my old roommate daniel had a slightly more nuanced criticism of the band: "i hate dear nora, especially that song about the wind blowing." he was referring to the chorus of "when the wind blows" being too twee: "and i know when the wind blows, it goes something like nobody knows/and i know when the wind blows, it goes: la la la la la/la la la la la, la la la la la la la." personally, i think it's one of the most brilliant lyrical moves in the history of pop music. making reference to the line "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" from bob dylan's "subterranean homesick blues" and, of course, "the answer my friends is blowin' in the wind," katy draws the listener in, promising truth and authenticity � substance � and gives us twee in its tweest la-la-la form while asking the very relevant questions, why are you looking for truth and authenticity in folk-pop songs and, furthermore, what the hell truth did you ever get from elliott smith? therein lies the truth in pop songs: katy unmasks the marking of authenticity in the singer-songwriter, the simulation of sincerity through the acoustic guitar or singing emo-ly, the sexual division of labour, and the masculine rock tropes, all in little bedroom (girl-)pop songs ostensibly about thinking back emo-ly at the past. yes, it was definitely great to see katy again, even if it did remind me of how i miss the ping pong room. and now my heart is sore.

11/06/05

HAVE YOU EVER SUNG ALONG TO NEW DAY RISING?

in the middle of the summer, my friend ian calls me out of the blue on a weeknight and says, "i'm bored, you wanna go see grant hart?" i'm skeptical � i'd never heard grant hart's solo work and i assumed that it was overorchestrated confessionally emo starbucks-folk songs like bob mould's (or westy's, for that matter) � but it's a weeknight and i'm either going to go to the lamplighter and see grant hart or i'm going to sit at home and watch law and order reruns so i get changed and leave the house. the opening band was so bad i wanted to die. it was one of those nights and neither of us were feeling very good about our decision to not sit at home and watch law and order reruns � or, in ian's case, west wing dvd's. but while ian and i were trying to ignore this awful band, a smelly dirty guy with long hair keeps walking, nay staggering, by our table. judging by his appearance, clothing, and odour, i assume that he's a homeless guy with a couple of bucks in his pocket. the second band plays and this guy keeps buying drinks and shiftily walking around the area we're sitting at. some of the other people in the club clutch their coats and handbags suspiciously everytime he stumbles by their table. when grant hart takes to the stage ian says to me, "i knew that weird old guy was going to turn out to be grant hart."

i went out to see grant hart again tonight and it was inspiring. i walked out of it saying to my friends, "i hope when i'm old and fat i'll still be happy messing up guitar parts while singing my old songs." there was grant hart on the stage all by himself with a painfully out of tune electric guitar slung around his neck singing "green eyes." after the song, he looks out at the crowd all hazy eyed and moves to the corner of the stage, away from the stage lights. he looked and sounded for all the world like one of those homeless guys on the corner of granville and robson with a pawn shop electric guitar, a practice amp, and a generator, only he was singing some of the most widely loved songs any american punk rocker ever wrote. he went on to play a lot of songs from warehouse and his solo albums, as well as a bit of candy apple grey and nova mob stuff, but you should have heard that one oldster yelp with delight when he started "the girl who lives on heaven hill," "books about u.f.o.'s," "terms of psychic warfare," "i'm never talking to you again," "flexible flyer," "pink turns to blue," "it's not funny anymore," and, fuck me, "diane." know this, i don't even really like h�sker d�. landspeed record may very well be my favourite hardcore LP but i certainly don't love zen arcade and new day rising like you probably do [just who in the hell do i think i'm writing to? �ed.]. but grant hart touring the continent playing songs he wrote twenty years ago is everything music should be and, at the same time, everything it isn't. [sidenote: fuck you careerists (read: steve bays) and thank you andy dixon for the new secret mommy album very rec.] grant hart could easily call up merge records and they'd give him a fistful of money to re-record a solo album of those old h�sker d� songs and he'd sell a hundred thousand or so copies and make some good money. but he just continues driving to sleepy little punk rockless towns like rochester, new york to play these songs he obviously loves in pissant little clubs with safe, straight white middle class teenage-boys-who-obviously-used-to-listen-to-papa-roach emo bands opening for him to twenty people at a time. when i saw him in vancouver in the summer � vancouver, british columbia, where h�sker d� once upon a time played legendary shows with d.o.a. and the subhumans � there was less than forty people there. grant hart. singing "die"-fucking-"anne." to nobody. out of profound respect, i didn't yell "ultracore" when he asked for requests. i don't think i have to tell you that some asshole repeatedly yelled "freebird."

11/04/05

SO JOIN THE STRUGGLE WHILE YOU MAY, THE REVOLUTION IS JUST A T-SHIRT AWAY

"Speaking before a six-story banner of revolutionary Che Guevara, Chavez urged the throng � including soccer great Diego Maradona and Bolivian presidential hopeful Evo Morales � to help him fight free trade."

in may of nineteen sixty-eight, my mother used her maiden name
she was only thirteen at the time
my mother lost her maiden name but take a look at what she gained
she gave birth to a son in nineteen eighty-one
i missed out in nineteen ninety-nine, my classmates went to march in line
in seattle, no more double-u.t.o.
i felt bad about it at the time, eighteen in nineteen ninety-nine
i wasn't sure of just what we were fighting for

activism has a cost, for words we gained was thought we lost
"seattle, no more double-u.t.o."
my mother said to question why, before you speak or trust your eyes
especially before you change your name
but i was told, "if it's all the same, can you join the movement that we've named
'no double-u.t.o.,'" but i just couldn't go

i thought back to my mother and "the indignity of speaking for others"
and political economy won't reform itself, no
hear you me that you can't write an essay on a brick
and i think that it's more complicated
than shattering the window of a store.

note: the one thing made me think of the other. i do think fighting free trade is a worthwhile endeavour, by the way. merely repeating "no double-u.t.o.," on the other hand, is probably less helpful. i am, as always, wary of slogans and images that stand in for discourse, however. relevant questions include: why have the less industrialised countries of north america been asked to lift trade restrictions while america maintains promoting its own natural resources through government subsidies? if we reintegrate a closed world economy, what become of nations that have, due to western european or american colonialism, become dependent on a single staple that is of little use to its own population? do the poorest labourers of the world economy get to speak in this discourse? are they not happier working for pennies in sweatshops than watching western industry vacate their countries? are they wrong to think so? and, if so, says who? and if it is, as i suspect, impossible to de-globalise the world economy, what needs to be done? these are questions that i don't think can be adequately addressed by the triple threat of "end world trade," vandalism, and a silhouette of ch� guevara's face.

incidentally, the name of the new r.mutt and/or tradition and the individual talents album, fully written but just sitting there not to be recorded for some time, is "in my younger and more arrogant years," though "we have no gift to set a statesman right" also came to mind. of course, i'm wary of espousing crypto-fascist sentiments so it had to go, the indolence of my girlish youth and my amusement upon this winter's night be damned.

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