I found this on the sidewalk the other day. It looks like the handle one uses to pry up the metal burner lids on an iron stove, but who had an iron stove out behind the library? 1850's tailgating re-enactors?
This post is my life as a sculpture exhibition. This number seemingly emerged out of the ground at my life's auxiliary exhibition space behind the CVS.
Meanwhile, back at the gallery, I love this thing because 1) this photo makes it look like a giant Ellsworth Kelly sculpture on a massive warehouse gallery floor instead of just a mouse replacement on my beat up desk and 2) it makes you feel like a gestural genius moving about the screen, a classical guitarist except with browser windows.
Seriously, if you are at all inclined toward the ecstatic and exploratory, Penderecki's Partia for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra is worth a listen. like noise rock scored for The Grand European Tradition, played with the determination of army ants trying to dismantle a helicopter and drag it down to their lair. Or something. Wow.
Also wow:
Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal. Monstrous the first vertebrate that succeeded in standing on two feet and thus spread terror among the beasts still normally and happily crawling close to the ground through the slime of creation. Astounding the first telephone call, the first boiling water, the first song, the first loincloth.
The opening passage of Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes, who passed away today. My buddy Terry passed away two years and two days ago and I don't say this to get all up in a death, but he's been on my mind. When I was all astir about Roberto Bolaño like everybody was, Terry read The Savage Detectives and went, "Eh. But have you read Terra Nostra? Now that's a great Mexican novel." and he was right.
And then when I heard that the Kodak plant in downtown Rochester was discovered to have had a nuclear reactor in its basement, I wanted nothing more than the old coot to be perched up at the coffee shop so I could tell him about it, if only so he'd tell me about something better. I'd play super obtuse music like the Penderecki thing above for Terry on my phone as we sat outside and swatted mosquitos and talked about Mexican novels and weapons-grade uranium and so on. Anyway, wow some more, and to the living business of busy living in our world.
It was just me at guitar class last night so Dave had me sing. I waded through a decent reading of "Sweet Jane" and a sub-garage approximation of "Strychnine" but as we played around with E♭open tuning, I stumbled on a version of the chorus lick from the Mavericks' "What a Crying Shame" which is another of those greatest songs ever. I attempted a falsetto and it wasn't horrible. OK, maybe it actually was horrible, but it didn't feel horrible.
The horrible/not-horrible line is being similarly walked with my slide playing. So fun up there on the line. Look at the level of not-horrible-ness radiating from me. I'm like Aquaman or something!
This is a great cover of a Springsteen tune by the Mavericks. Nothing horrible here. Everything is perfect in this video - from Tammy Wynette's hair down to the knick-knacks on the bookshelf. I want to sip pricey bourbon with Tammy Wynette while she watches her stories in that living room.
I had more, like a Facebook chat with one of my comic book scholar friends about Pulp, the Smiths, houseflies and Yoko Ono, but I'm saving it up for a collected volume to be titled Talking With Dudes About Music in the Night (and in the Day). It will be salient, as they say. Possibly ebullient. Meanwhile, here is Yoko Ono being fly.
This sounds genius accompanying any music. Try it!
I needed to hear "Lodi" then I needed to hear the whole record then I needed to start a country rock band then I needed to just listen to Creedence and let them take up that yoke and then I needed to get back to work and come up with something else to listen to. This McSweeney's article about "bandwiches" offers this analogy:
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Alligator sausage, ketchup, relish, seeded hot dog bun.
and all I'm saying is I know of two places in town where you can get that, and like CCR, it's good, I'm down with it, finding it occasionally, possibly momentarily perfect even, but rarely the best long-run option for what you're after. Finding what works for you is important.
Beachwood Sparks, "Ponce de Leon Blues" does the trick for me.
"Like a brown bird nested in a Texaco sign, I got a point of view"- Silver Jews, "I'm Getting Back into Getting Back Into You"
I'm glad President Obama made what I think is a very logical and decent stance on same-sex marriage, political chess move that it may be. It is crazy that he should have to. I support same-sex marriage just as muss as I support different-sex marriage. See how goofy that sounds? I even support couples not being married. Or triples. Or people not being in relationships. Or whatever. I feel stupid trying to articulate this. Marriages other than your own are like science; it doesn't matter how you feel about them. They are there outside of your acceptance.
The Vulgar Boatmen, "You and Your Sister"
Are sister wives married to each other or are they just spokes off the wheel of a man? Either way, I'm down with you being down with that too. Or not. I'm down with a lot. But it still doesn't matter. One of my former grad students was surprised to discover that marriages in the US are not arranged; it didn't occur to him that they weren't.
My wife has super powers. That's all I know about marriage. Powers stronger than that of Creedence Clearwater Revival and totally hot, same/different-sex, n-partnered unions and alligator sausage and political arguments and the head rush from eating cotton candy with a gloomy angel on a Coney Island Ferris wheel (see below). Combined. Even more super than strange powers, which is still the best song ever. When we kiss it's like a flying saucer landing. I'm gonna go listen to it five or six times in a row while you all go get married to each other.
Good ol' Silversun Pickups. Of all the bands whose new album always strikes me as a winner, inspiring thoughts like, "I should listen to this band more!" and then never do until the next new album comes out, they are my favorite.
Give it a listen through this Spotify widget!
A limb from the water oak out front came down last night and put a hole in my roof. You could see the stars from inside at the attic access pulldown stairway and it was kinda pretty. The kind of image that might make for a Silversun Pickups EP cover. I forgot to take a picture of it so I couldn't make "fixing a hole where the rain gets in" jokes on Facebook. Instead, we had a nice meeting with our homeowner's insurance guy, a guy nice enough to almost make me not completely suspicious of the whole insurance industry, and then I spent the morning throwing limbs off the roof.
The whiteboard paint wall in my new office is on point. Last time I was so enamored with an office accouterment is when we all finally got email. I just crossed something off on the "To do" sector of the wall with inordinate pleasure.
Yesterday, after walking back from getting some delicious ghetto falafel with friends from Atcha, I asked whether something said was a teleological or ontological justification for something. It was ontological. It was like living in a funnier, slightly less pensive, significantly more smartass version of Austerlitz, where old Sebald has an ongoing conversation with a dude who can tell his teleo from his onto. The subject was Superman. Didn't Superman get here on a spaceship? Is traffic ontological? My company was with comic book scholars, of all things, but everything stands for either God or yourself or both, no matter what you are talking about.
Unless you are talking about tea; Atcha has the curious, final word on that (see above).
