3.20.2004
destroyer, your blues (take two)
the title track of the new destroyer record (scroll down for previous post) is called "notorious lightning." and that about sums up the vibe of the whole thing...
most old reviews of destroyer eventually name drop david bowie as a point of reference. but just as the destroyer of albums past was not the familiar bowie -- if it was bowie at all (more "man who sold the world" than "thin white duke," i would argue)-- the "eighties" of your blues is not our familiar 1980's. and unless you've been biding your time with infomercials about the book of mormon, or if (like me) you've sat through krull several times during the past year, chances are you haven't heard keyboard effects like these in a long, long time. this is not the 80's nostalgia you might find on a magnetic fields record. in fact the only "indie" comparison worth mentioning is bobby conn, and even that only makes sense superficially.
the weird thing about your blues is that, structurally, the songs are, for the most part, similiar to "early" destroyer records. by that, i mean that the long guitar jams of this night are gone, and tight, quirky pop structures have returned. that said, they've brought with them an onslaught of affected, quasi-new-age embellishments-- fake horns, synth strings, reverby vocals... to accuse this of being "too much" seems to miss the point. it is waaaay too much, and it is an obstacle worth reckoning with.
i use the word "obstacle" because i can imagine how these songs would sound if recorded according to my expectations (basically more warm and organic, i guess). and they're really good songs, by and large. the album is structured really well, and there's no filler-- which i think scarred the second half of his otherwise brilliant thief. so the only thing standing in the way of pure, expected enjoyment is this initally disgusting production aesthetic. one could "accuse" this album of a number of things: insincerity (snore), reactionary posturing, snobbery and even bad taste. of all of these, bad taste is probably most appropriate, though it doesn't matter much. clearly the aesthetic of the album generates a significance, and that's why i've ultimately warmed up to it.
i'm a die hard fan of destroyer. perhaps the one problem with the non-hierarchical nature of independent music is that when everyone is assumed to be on the same level, it becomes far more embarrassing to admit you're a fan of something/one. but i'm coming clean about it. that said, i had a lot of sentiment going into this record, and it made for a strange mix when it clashed with the inevitable disneyland-tolkien sentiment of its garrish synth work. good, bad, right, wrong-- to someone like me, these faux-orchestrated sounds are intimately familiar. if i were to hear limahl's theme from the neverending story, i might not like it aesthetically, but it would surely "take me somewhere" in terms of nostalgia.
we are asked to suspend our disbelief more often than we assume in music, i think. take alt-country, for example. let's face it, folks-- yankee hotel foxtrot was not written by the joad family. and if it was, they'd be on their way to williamsburg, not california. so when dan bejar asks me to "warm yourself by the fiery stage" (on track 5), i'm inclined to put my suspicions aside, and do it.
ultimately, the success of the album is its ability to prey on its evocations. and its newfound content is escapism at its purest. new-age sword and scorcery. fairytale epics and endings. this is the stuff of deep, deep solipsism. as destroyer's lexicon expands to include unicorns and dragons, it includes a new pathos as well.
most old reviews of destroyer eventually name drop david bowie as a point of reference. but just as the destroyer of albums past was not the familiar bowie -- if it was bowie at all (more "man who sold the world" than "thin white duke," i would argue)-- the "eighties" of your blues is not our familiar 1980's. and unless you've been biding your time with infomercials about the book of mormon, or if (like me) you've sat through krull several times during the past year, chances are you haven't heard keyboard effects like these in a long, long time. this is not the 80's nostalgia you might find on a magnetic fields record. in fact the only "indie" comparison worth mentioning is bobby conn, and even that only makes sense superficially.
the weird thing about your blues is that, structurally, the songs are, for the most part, similiar to "early" destroyer records. by that, i mean that the long guitar jams of this night are gone, and tight, quirky pop structures have returned. that said, they've brought with them an onslaught of affected, quasi-new-age embellishments-- fake horns, synth strings, reverby vocals... to accuse this of being "too much" seems to miss the point. it is waaaay too much, and it is an obstacle worth reckoning with.
i use the word "obstacle" because i can imagine how these songs would sound if recorded according to my expectations (basically more warm and organic, i guess). and they're really good songs, by and large. the album is structured really well, and there's no filler-- which i think scarred the second half of his otherwise brilliant thief. so the only thing standing in the way of pure, expected enjoyment is this initally disgusting production aesthetic. one could "accuse" this album of a number of things: insincerity (snore), reactionary posturing, snobbery and even bad taste. of all of these, bad taste is probably most appropriate, though it doesn't matter much. clearly the aesthetic of the album generates a significance, and that's why i've ultimately warmed up to it.
i'm a die hard fan of destroyer. perhaps the one problem with the non-hierarchical nature of independent music is that when everyone is assumed to be on the same level, it becomes far more embarrassing to admit you're a fan of something/one. but i'm coming clean about it. that said, i had a lot of sentiment going into this record, and it made for a strange mix when it clashed with the inevitable disneyland-tolkien sentiment of its garrish synth work. good, bad, right, wrong-- to someone like me, these faux-orchestrated sounds are intimately familiar. if i were to hear limahl's theme from the neverending story, i might not like it aesthetically, but it would surely "take me somewhere" in terms of nostalgia.
we are asked to suspend our disbelief more often than we assume in music, i think. take alt-country, for example. let's face it, folks-- yankee hotel foxtrot was not written by the joad family. and if it was, they'd be on their way to williamsburg, not california. so when dan bejar asks me to "warm yourself by the fiery stage" (on track 5), i'm inclined to put my suspicions aside, and do it.
ultimately, the success of the album is its ability to prey on its evocations. and its newfound content is escapism at its purest. new-age sword and scorcery. fairytale epics and endings. this is the stuff of deep, deep solipsism. as destroyer's lexicon expands to include unicorns and dragons, it includes a new pathos as well.
3.18.2004
literary masochism
i stumbled across this fun article the other night, which appears to have been written shortly after the lydia davis translation of proust's rememberance of things past was published.
(what comes next will be more relevant if you read the article first, but whatever...)
...this piece was really appropriate to me because i'm totally guilty of the sort of thing he's (humorously) arguing against. the problem with me is this: i love books, but i hate reading. not entirely true, but it has a nice ring to it. like most of us, patience is not something that comes easy (insert reference to flux-of-imagery-in-a-hyper-mediated-world here). and while i agree that reading proust is "a trackless, opiated pleasure," as mr. sadler argues (with great sass), it still hasn't helped me finish swann's way in any of my three attempts.
for me, the problem with "dense" or "difficult" reading is often in the structure, rather than the content. when i've attempted swann in the past, i found myself constantly fading into my own little world of evocations. pleasurable? yes, but frustrating when you've been sitting with a book in your lap for an hour and you've only managed to work your way through 4 pages, having re-lived 14 seperate smells from your childhood (or whatever). i'm not used to what's expected of me in a novel like swann. i'm used to some semblance of a plot, with its occasionally dull punishment-and-reward system of investigations. and when i do come across something free-form and open, it's rarely written with the gentlemanly restraint of ol' marcel.
i'd argue that this kind of literary masochism can be quite good, actually. the self-inflicted torture of difficult reading isn't neccessarily a penance or an ego trip (though it can be both). often it's simply the discomfort of adjustment. and i think that some of the best things i come across (books or otherwise) come from difficult places, and require unfamiliar approaches. i think it is in areas like this that a passive experience (i.e. sitting and reading) becomes active... and "active" is often the best way to go into something.
that said, here is
five good books i never finished, but one day plan to finish:
1. the magic mountain by thomas mann: got three hundred fucking pages in (!!!) and bailed... it was all those looong medical descriptions. couldn't keep it up.
2. powers of horror by julia kristeva: read the opening chapter about ten times (really useful to my paintings/drawings, actually), and scattered bits and pieces throughout (stuff on totem and taboo, etc.)... i actually breaked to read some celine with the intention of going back to it. that was, alas, about four years ago...
3. sentimental education by gustave flaubert: i have no good excuse for this one. it's not really that tough of a read, even. i had just finished madame bovary about two years back when i went into it. eventually, i think i just needed a break from all the realism. it's good though. i'll get around to it.
4. the phenomenology of spirit by hegel: still eyeing me from the shelf...still only halfway through... so much to chew on... so dense... makes me miss being in school. this one is HIGH on the list of getting-back-to.
5. invisible cities by italo calvino: ok, i'll end on a bright note... i've been reading this book for honestly about five or six years. i read it like it's a book of poetry. i pick it up, read a page or two, smile, and put it back down. i'm currently very close to the end. but i sorta never want to finish it. seems like a book that should never be finished. i mean that as a compliment.
(what comes next will be more relevant if you read the article first, but whatever...)
...this piece was really appropriate to me because i'm totally guilty of the sort of thing he's (humorously) arguing against. the problem with me is this: i love books, but i hate reading. not entirely true, but it has a nice ring to it. like most of us, patience is not something that comes easy (insert reference to flux-of-imagery-in-a-hyper-mediated-world here). and while i agree that reading proust is "a trackless, opiated pleasure," as mr. sadler argues (with great sass), it still hasn't helped me finish swann's way in any of my three attempts.
for me, the problem with "dense" or "difficult" reading is often in the structure, rather than the content. when i've attempted swann in the past, i found myself constantly fading into my own little world of evocations. pleasurable? yes, but frustrating when you've been sitting with a book in your lap for an hour and you've only managed to work your way through 4 pages, having re-lived 14 seperate smells from your childhood (or whatever). i'm not used to what's expected of me in a novel like swann. i'm used to some semblance of a plot, with its occasionally dull punishment-and-reward system of investigations. and when i do come across something free-form and open, it's rarely written with the gentlemanly restraint of ol' marcel.
i'd argue that this kind of literary masochism can be quite good, actually. the self-inflicted torture of difficult reading isn't neccessarily a penance or an ego trip (though it can be both). often it's simply the discomfort of adjustment. and i think that some of the best things i come across (books or otherwise) come from difficult places, and require unfamiliar approaches. i think it is in areas like this that a passive experience (i.e. sitting and reading) becomes active... and "active" is often the best way to go into something.
that said, here is
five good books i never finished, but one day plan to finish:
1. the magic mountain by thomas mann: got three hundred fucking pages in (!!!) and bailed... it was all those looong medical descriptions. couldn't keep it up.
2. powers of horror by julia kristeva: read the opening chapter about ten times (really useful to my paintings/drawings, actually), and scattered bits and pieces throughout (stuff on totem and taboo, etc.)... i actually breaked to read some celine with the intention of going back to it. that was, alas, about four years ago...
3. sentimental education by gustave flaubert: i have no good excuse for this one. it's not really that tough of a read, even. i had just finished madame bovary about two years back when i went into it. eventually, i think i just needed a break from all the realism. it's good though. i'll get around to it.
4. the phenomenology of spirit by hegel: still eyeing me from the shelf...still only halfway through... so much to chew on... so dense... makes me miss being in school. this one is HIGH on the list of getting-back-to.
5. invisible cities by italo calvino: ok, i'll end on a bright note... i've been reading this book for honestly about five or six years. i read it like it's a book of poetry. i pick it up, read a page or two, smile, and put it back down. i'm currently very close to the end. but i sorta never want to finish it. seems like a book that should never be finished. i mean that as a compliment.
3.17.2004
destroyer, your blues: entry one
ok, so i'm two thirds of the way through the new destroyer album, something i've been looking forward to with an adolescent giddiness which, thankfully, hasn't softened any with age when it comes to great music. anyway, it's really strange. the reviews i've read (click on the link for one) warned me, but i didn't quite believe them. full-on synth orchestra effects, enough to make you feel like you're stuck inside an 80's sword-and-scorcery flick. definitely divisive stuff here-- plenty material to alienate an audience. at this point, i'm not sure where i stand. but being as though i love his earlier albums (especially streethawk: a seduction), i figured i'd document my initial bewilderment. expect more on this...
3.16.2004
our anniversary
here is hans blix, quoted in an article in the NYtimes, on our year old war and our administration:
"They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons," he said. "Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
pretty harsh stuff. while i'm at it, moveon is asking folks to send letters to local news sources urging, eh, minimal enthusiasm (to say the least) as we mark the one year point since the iraq war began.
"They wanted to come to the conclusion that there were weapons," he said. "Like the former days of the witch hunt, they are convinced that they exist, and if you see a black cat, well, that's evidence of the witch."
pretty harsh stuff. while i'm at it, moveon is asking folks to send letters to local news sources urging, eh, minimal enthusiasm (to say the least) as we mark the one year point since the iraq war began.
3.14.2004
the plague of fantasies, revisited
well, i finished the plague of fantasies by slovenian theorist slavoj zizek a few days back, and i've been thinking it over. i'm certainly guilty of the usual laziness in reading zizek, being only an occasional dabbler in theory/philosophy (i'd like to read more, though), with little under my belt as far as time spent with the elusive jaques lacan. the blessing/curse of zizek is that he is in many ways the ideal thinker for someone like me (late 20's, out of school, with few people who want to hear me ramble about slavoj zizek, etc.). zizek breaks down complicated, seemingly abstract ideas (from lacan, marx, politics, hegel...) and puts them in relatively understandable terms (with considerable use value). he is, in a way, a great substitute for school. and he moves at a rapid fire pace, bouncing along from lacan to hitchcock to porn etiquette to bosnia to why his relatives resent him (one of my favorite little bits of this book). part of the pleasure of reading him is that, with so many concepts and judgements being thrown around, you're bound to find certain things insightful and others dismissive (not to mention frustrating).
(having said all of that, please recognize that i jot all of this down partially as a record for myself and that what you are about to read is highly questionable as an informed review of the book. i am, in all of this, still a baby...)
anyway, there's some great stuff in plague. the over-arching theme of the book (i guess) is how fantasy orchestrates desire in a constant push/pull in relation to its "object." zizek is careful and extremely insightful in his analysis of how "ideology" informs even our most basic actions. and for better or worse, he locates essentially the whole of contemporary life into a kind of socio-politcal coding (note the infamous passage about how different nations utilize different toilet designs, and what this means for national identity). it's written through the lens of ideology-- how it structures, splits, punishes and rewards a desiring subject. zizek is, in essence, doing with freud precisely what freud would forbid-- using psychoanalysis (via lacan) in application to culture, in a political manner. zizek claims himself to be a marxist, but his strategies are so insistently negative in a sense-- so destructive to assumptions and intentions-- that it's rather hard to come out of a book like this with a very clear politic.
not that i'm complaining. a book that invests so much time in dismantling ideology is probably best not to whip up one of its own too hastily. but there are still such currents at work. the bit at the end of the book ("the unconscious law: towards an ethics beyond the good") makes intruiging usage of kantian ethics-- as a rather unlikely inspiration for contemporary political thought. building on the very formal structure of this element in kant's thought-- and citing various attempts to expose its traumatic kernel-- zizek (eventually) argues in favor of what he (as well as alenka zupancic, who i may read next) calls an "ethics of the real." this notion is (i think) a marriage of the structural nature of kant's thought (the categorical imperative, perhaps) and the lacanian notion of "the real" (as a traumatic and elusive rupture capable of exposing desire as pathological; a yearning for something that, in essence, can never fully be attained). what i got out of all of this is that zizek wants ethics to begin with the lacanian real-- investigating the circumstances which give rise to it-- as a way of structuring one's relationship to ideology. through such crucial pockets of intensity (my words here, not his), one might argue that the various desires/investments/enjoyments leading up to the "real" event would be rendered with greater clarity. such a cultural transparency could be the key to a less illusionistic notion of the political, perhaps, while side-stepping certain superficial aspects of postmodern tolerance (zizek is occasionally downright reactionary-- and i would argue hypocritical-- in his attempt to set himself at a distance from multiculturalism, etc.).
to bring all of this back to planet earth a bit, i will add that the final chapter of this book made me feel a lot better about suffering through kant over the past few years. reading kant, i would often wonder "what can i do with this??? am i just reading this so i can bring it up and sound smart???" and so on and so forth. but beyond his dry, repetitive style, there are some pretty weird ideas in there. and with someone like zizek around to contextualize them, i can build on both what i've read in the past and the spin zizek puts on him, and have plenty to keep me busy on the walk home from work.
to get back to zizek, my one looming problem at the end of the book (this is my third by him, and i could say this of all three) is his insistence on getting to the bottom of things. it is no coincidence that zizek is obsessed with the genre of mystery (in hitchcock and patricia highsmith especially). he writes like a detective. and with hegel and lacan (and the bizarro kant i mentioned above) as his tools, he cracks away at his case. this process, in my estimation, holds the notion of truth a bit too dear. it's funny how in the midst of all the lacanian termonology, a basic true/false structure essentially remains. zizek is almost too sure of himself in a way, as he posits his various splits between drive and desire and so on. as someone coming from an art background, i must remind myself from time to time that truth isn't all that interesting in the first place.
(congrats if you've made it to the bottom of this incoherent mess)
(having said all of that, please recognize that i jot all of this down partially as a record for myself and that what you are about to read is highly questionable as an informed review of the book. i am, in all of this, still a baby...)
anyway, there's some great stuff in plague. the over-arching theme of the book (i guess) is how fantasy orchestrates desire in a constant push/pull in relation to its "object." zizek is careful and extremely insightful in his analysis of how "ideology" informs even our most basic actions. and for better or worse, he locates essentially the whole of contemporary life into a kind of socio-politcal coding (note the infamous passage about how different nations utilize different toilet designs, and what this means for national identity). it's written through the lens of ideology-- how it structures, splits, punishes and rewards a desiring subject. zizek is, in essence, doing with freud precisely what freud would forbid-- using psychoanalysis (via lacan) in application to culture, in a political manner. zizek claims himself to be a marxist, but his strategies are so insistently negative in a sense-- so destructive to assumptions and intentions-- that it's rather hard to come out of a book like this with a very clear politic.
not that i'm complaining. a book that invests so much time in dismantling ideology is probably best not to whip up one of its own too hastily. but there are still such currents at work. the bit at the end of the book ("the unconscious law: towards an ethics beyond the good") makes intruiging usage of kantian ethics-- as a rather unlikely inspiration for contemporary political thought. building on the very formal structure of this element in kant's thought-- and citing various attempts to expose its traumatic kernel-- zizek (eventually) argues in favor of what he (as well as alenka zupancic, who i may read next) calls an "ethics of the real." this notion is (i think) a marriage of the structural nature of kant's thought (the categorical imperative, perhaps) and the lacanian notion of "the real" (as a traumatic and elusive rupture capable of exposing desire as pathological; a yearning for something that, in essence, can never fully be attained). what i got out of all of this is that zizek wants ethics to begin with the lacanian real-- investigating the circumstances which give rise to it-- as a way of structuring one's relationship to ideology. through such crucial pockets of intensity (my words here, not his), one might argue that the various desires/investments/enjoyments leading up to the "real" event would be rendered with greater clarity. such a cultural transparency could be the key to a less illusionistic notion of the political, perhaps, while side-stepping certain superficial aspects of postmodern tolerance (zizek is occasionally downright reactionary-- and i would argue hypocritical-- in his attempt to set himself at a distance from multiculturalism, etc.).
to bring all of this back to planet earth a bit, i will add that the final chapter of this book made me feel a lot better about suffering through kant over the past few years. reading kant, i would often wonder "what can i do with this??? am i just reading this so i can bring it up and sound smart???" and so on and so forth. but beyond his dry, repetitive style, there are some pretty weird ideas in there. and with someone like zizek around to contextualize them, i can build on both what i've read in the past and the spin zizek puts on him, and have plenty to keep me busy on the walk home from work.
to get back to zizek, my one looming problem at the end of the book (this is my third by him, and i could say this of all three) is his insistence on getting to the bottom of things. it is no coincidence that zizek is obsessed with the genre of mystery (in hitchcock and patricia highsmith especially). he writes like a detective. and with hegel and lacan (and the bizarro kant i mentioned above) as his tools, he cracks away at his case. this process, in my estimation, holds the notion of truth a bit too dear. it's funny how in the midst of all the lacanian termonology, a basic true/false structure essentially remains. zizek is almost too sure of himself in a way, as he posits his various splits between drive and desire and so on. as someone coming from an art background, i must remind myself from time to time that truth isn't all that interesting in the first place.
(congrats if you've made it to the bottom of this incoherent mess)
dawn of the dead
so, i've decided i'm watching dawn of the dead again prior to the remake. i watch it at least once a year. and now is the time. dawn of the dead is one of my all time favorite movies. i would say top five, with-me-on-a-desert-island-style favorite movies. just the right blend of shape-shifting, weird and unstoppably comprehensive (i'm referring of course to the director's cut, to dork things up even further).
i'm curious about the remake, and not at all worried. the commercials look ok, and it has sarah polley in it, who seems pretty cool to me. ving rhames may be annoying in cell phone commercials, but i can see him doing well in the context of the film. whatever. more on that when i see it.
in the meantime, i urge you all to see the original. it's wonderful.
unless you can't deal with gore, of course.
i'm curious about the remake, and not at all worried. the commercials look ok, and it has sarah polley in it, who seems pretty cool to me. ving rhames may be annoying in cell phone commercials, but i can see him doing well in the context of the film. whatever. more on that when i see it.
in the meantime, i urge you all to see the original. it's wonderful.
unless you can't deal with gore, of course.
