tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66949841766847569072024-03-14T00:17:03.421-07:00The Nighthouse of TelephonyThe Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-11992717544947080792016-02-12T03:22:00.000-08:002016-05-30T15:23:49.032-07:00Orange You Glad<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PMRIhKOw974/Vr29fVz5spI/AAAAAAAAAV0/Q9Xjcmc0XiI/s1600/pf_clockwork_titles_kubrick_tb2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PMRIhKOw974/Vr29fVz5spI/AAAAAAAAAV0/Q9Xjcmc0XiI/s320/pf_clockwork_titles_kubrick_tb2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LPW38CIMGkU/Vr29fK9bqeI/AAAAAAAAAVw/KzO4H2bD71U/s1600/co_parceltell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LPW38CIMGkU/Vr29fK9bqeI/AAAAAAAAAVw/KzO4H2bD71U/s320/co_parceltell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5UaHTu1Fv8/Vr29fVjlY5I/AAAAAAAAAV4/UsGfHqLX_b0/s1600/lounge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5UaHTu1Fv8/Vr29fVjlY5I/AAAAAAAAAV4/UsGfHqLX_b0/s320/lounge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Suddenly this week I have found myself bizarrely affected by a film that has been in my life for decades. Its like falling in love with an old friend, a sudden awareness that "THERE you are, how could I have missed this?" This happens so often with things that we have taken for granted, with things that have been a part of our landscape for so long as to be nearly forgotten, in some fundamental way...that even if we mention it, see it, talk about it, some other roof of awareness might still remain to be passed in our understanding and appreciation of it.<br />
<br />
Bowie brought me back there. Hearing "Ode to Joy" opening the Ziggy concert in the live film, it was suddenly impressed upon me how perfect it occupied that space, how much it told me of a subtext I had not given enough shrift.<br />
<br />
Frankly it is as if you discover a new galaxy, and suddenly you are creating things to fit into that universe.<br />
To me the main manifestation of this is pure color. Large swaths of color, as in the credits- deep primary tones, the blue houndstooth chairs in the living room, the melon walls, the orange and yellow 3-D blooms of the bedspread. All of it brings all things together- an esthetic point of reference that shines a light on hidden subtexts.<br />
Its aesthetic wholeness and perfection, its total-worldness, inspires even beyond the pure esthetic enjoyment of the space. It contains inside of it all things that I love the most. It is a trope that contains within it, all other tropes, and all the ones I love the best.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-71827875077977098062015-05-02T23:32:00.000-07:002015-05-02T23:32:04.426-07:00Plastic Promises<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7DCraH7aQX8/VUWvN8LZqYI/AAAAAAAAATk/00LD5rR80Qw/s1600/6066677082_1fb8bf7cb2_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7DCraH7aQX8/VUWvN8LZqYI/AAAAAAAAATk/00LD5rR80Qw/s1600/6066677082_1fb8bf7cb2_z.jpg" height="245" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I am a modernist by nature. Considering the readings I have been doing on fascism lately, I am even more comfortable with this. The term "traditional values" stinks of the gulag and oppression for me, and history agrees with this assumption. When anyone tells you they want to go backwards, be afraid.<br />
<br />
<i>Looking back</i>, however, is another story. Examination, contemplation. And modernism is rife with opportunities to do just that. The modern world is almost bursting with heavy matter- condensed experience. In fact it is so condensed that "looking back" into our nearest history is absolutely, deadly necessary. Things move so fast and fashion leaves so much behind, so much unsaid, that to me the Transistor Age (which, to my mind, is a far more appropriate starting point than the industrial age) could stand even MORE study. There are subtle currents everywhere. And the implications of those subtle currents are even more massive than they would be say, 300 years ago. The more things change the more rapidly they change. History's like some sort of kaleidoscopic spinning top in an avalanche, gathering momentum and new pictures all the way.<br />
<br />
So you find yourself effecting by strange things that might be a new product of a new kind of history. The uncanny is part of that, but I realize there is this other fleeting feeling I have had all my life that catches me unawares, and interests me, and something I have wanted to write of for some time.<br />
<br />
Its that WISH to comply with <i>a commercial ideal. </i>To want to believe in some fairy-tale magical way that a PRODUCT or a television show could really be a modern deliverance. To partake in that breathless sense that everything is possible through Products, and Chemistry, and commerce. How much HAPPIER you could be if you could let your truths go.<br />
<br />
Since I became a teenager, television has infuriated me. Not the shows always, but the <i>commercials.</i> Some of them were so sublime (those early eighties Chanel ads were out of this world and I LOVED the Chanel ads in the late eighties with the model Ines de la Fressange, and collected them)....so you saw what was possible, that ads could be wonderfully seductive and enjoyable, really, so you were mostly just horribly disappointed and felt almost gypped in some kind of unconscious way. It was like a fat song and dance that you saw through from the first second. And those pro-American Wal-Mart ads just made me want to load up a gun and kill myself. Just vomitous and so treacly and unreal and PANDERING, really, to your basest stupidest instincts. I have always found patriotism to be terrifying anyway, in too large a dose.<br />
(Sidebar-Lee Greenwood's pukey anthem "I'm Proud to be an American" was so strange to me and still is. It was bizarre and gutless. "Where AT LEAST I know I'm free"? I mean, it struck such a weird, bum note with me, that phrase. Its like the first part of that sentence is missing and that sentence is, "I may be homeless, and work at WalMart and my son was killed by cops and my other son died in Iraq for oil but AT LEAST I KNOW I'M FREE"! But I digress).<br />
<br />
So on the one hand, I am a huge fan of commercial art, especially from the mid-sixties to the very late 70's, and I have found truly sublime, well done stuff that shows the potential to make public art very special. There is an elegance that, were it rendered in today's idioms and images, is liable to leave me cold.<br />
But, looking back, there was a great era of creative work being done for public, commercial purposes that echoed a sense of forward-thinking that is so deeply missing from today's ads. Now there is this sense of wanting to go BACKWARDS, there is a "green" sensibility that is all fine and well and good but when it becomes tethered to "traditional values".....again, it's implications are very deep and very telling.<br />
<br />
I miss the Space Age. I miss the age where everything was possible through SCIENCE. I fully understand that science too has its limits, like every human system- democracy, communism, psychology, religion. But I fully embrace the logical in human systems and discourse. Without logic, all arguments are rendered null and void. You find yourself arguing over the improvable, instead of being curious enough to test the limits and ask questions. You cannot argue with an evangelical.<br />
<br />
It must be said here that I am a follower of Jesus all the way, and consider him a great revolutionary and a wonderful star to guide your ship by. But I abhor the vast majority of Christians and Christian Newspeak and groupthink and think they are heretics, to the core. They loathe the poor and only want to talk about abortion and gay marriage and no longer love their enemies, take care of their communities- the MLK Jesus is entirely absent from the 700 Club and "Left Behind" freak jobs that pass themselves off as Christians these days.<br />
And with the rise of the evangelical Right comes with it a terrible hatred of intellectuals, science, and critical thinking. When you take a people who BELIEVE they will rise from the dead on Judgement Day, you are dealing with people who have no truck with the laws of even the farthest reaches of Quantum Physics. There is this bizarre denial of factual data, this complete reliance on their own interpretation of a vast trove of testaments that were discarded, shaped, and used to consolidate power and THEY DON'T ASK QUESTIONS. "Do I believe what John is saying when he contradicts Luke?" They don't ask that. They believe their CONFUSION is a blessing. That things are inherently unknowable and that to try is a heresy.<br />
In this atmosphere, the Space Age strikes one as so much more inclusive, so much more of a kinder place to be.<br />
<br />
I love and have begun collecting those Soviet space lapel pins (as I mentioned in my previous post) and that dizzying, swooping sense of a Great Future is a really, truly beautiful thing to me. "To the Stars"! is such a wonderful cry, a wonderful thing to reach for, far superior to a battle cry. That pride that just bursts from the vast amount of art created during that period of the Soviet space program (despite there being very compelling evidence that Gagarin was not the first Russian in space). A wonderful sense of possibility and BELIEF is written all over it.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GPTs1YvEe3o/VUW7ogbeEWI/AAAAAAAAAT4/MMWyegQ5L0E/s1600/drti-fvs-us.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GPTs1YvEe3o/VUW7ogbeEWI/AAAAAAAAAT4/MMWyegQ5L0E/s1600/drti-fvs-us.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fNlib2HRUkU/VUW7pwXitjI/AAAAAAAAAUA/VFhOnJlgSaA/s1600/soviet-space-program-propaganda-poster-27-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fNlib2HRUkU/VUW7pwXitjI/AAAAAAAAAUA/VFhOnJlgSaA/s1600/soviet-space-program-propaganda-poster-27-small.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
I DEEPLY value the intellectual, the scientific, debate, questions and criticism. I am also happy with mysteries, and do in fact agree that much of our universe IS unknowable. But I am ALSO in love with the journey, of the discovery, the bizarre and wonderful universe that science sheds its light on. I don't believe in cloning, or bizarre monkeying-about with the forces of nature. But gaining and reaching for a deeper understanding of nature and asking those questions is just a fantastical thing, really. It is completely, in my opinion, in total accord with spiritual life.<br />
<br />
So in that respect, its understandable that a certain class of advertisement or public art lends itself to a certain kind of romance. Arguably, that is its reason for existing, is to woo you. And I LIKE that feeling, frankly. And I am not sure why. I want to be complicit in that process. I want to believe- in a retrospective view through the lens of commercial art- that these things were POSSIBLE.<br />
<br />
I have often been reminded, wandering and exploring on those magical odd detourments I take often , that there is a certain smell that wafts from a department store in summertime that I find very romantic. A sort of "woosh" as you walk past and the automated doors open, giving you a blast of frigid air and a bright, plastic scent. The hotter it is that day, the more magical the effect, and you don't even need to go inside to feel uplifted. Its sort of a naive sense of "everything is still all right with the world" in that the A/C is going, we have bright shiny products, people will smile at you, you will find something that will change your life......<br />
<br />
This passes through my mind on such a subtle level that I forget to even be aware of it. It certainly makes a banal shopping trip that much more interesting. Wintertime is always grimmer somehow, shopping, what with Christmas and the vomitous music and the eye-raping displays of products you can never afford nor need at all. The romance goes out of it, and is only rescued by the enjoyment of the pretty lights or perhaps a small miniature scene on a white blanket of little trains going through tunnels, or talking dolls. That is the kind of nonsense I am always excited by. I'd rather to go to the Frye's electronics store in Burbank, with its crashed spaceship sticking out of the roof, that I would ever rather go to a Radio Shack (a store that used to REEK with analog stereo romance, and wonderful funky lights, and that solid-state smell I still so enjoy- and which has been entirely eradicated in favor of cell phone plans and IPhone cases).<br />
<br />
Give me nonsense and romance. Give me a wonderland of scents and colors and mystery and promise. Don't try to convince me that you are going down to earth with all your green-zen-garden hardwood-floor-organic esthetic. You are NEVER going to be that and putting that on is a LIE. Its selling us a past for which we were ill-equipped and ripe for ruin in the first place. Simplicity is MY job. I don't want it sold to me as a lifestyle. NEVER.<br /><br />I want the romance. The plastic promises. I know they can never be fulfilled. But I want to reach for something beyond myself. And commerce, and the terms it uses, can aid or abet any process. It is <i>lifestyle propaganda</i>. Putting a farmer in an advertisement will never convince me that that is your process. Or your lifestyle.<br />
<br />
I like the older, more promising, more silvery and glittering, lies the best.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-56314716002647880442015-03-30T00:56:00.000-07:002015-03-30T00:56:47.202-07:00The Architectural Uncanny<i>"<span style="font-family: ACaslonPro; font-size: 9pt;">The contemporary sensibility that sees the uncanny
erupt in empty parking lots around abandoned or
run-down shopping malls, in the screened trompe
l’oeil of simulated space, in, that is, the wasted margins
and surface appearances of postindustrial culture, this
sensibility has its roots and draws its commonplaces
from a long but essentially modern tradition."</span></i><br />
<div class="page" title="Page 4">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"> Anthony Vidler</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;">THIS. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;">There is probably nothing else that has so defined my life, apart from love and depression, as the uncanny. Its something I have chased all my life. From a very young age, I wanted that same feeling as I had when I heard ghost stories told by my family- I wanted that wonderful sense of dread, wrapped up in safety. Something about that is just necessary for my mind. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br />And the uncanny is literally defined as something that occurs in the most banal of environments. It isn't necessarily just a spooky building- its the fact that that spooky building is on a quite ordinary street. Its the juxtaposition, that tension. That sense of the surreal and spooky sidled up next to the almost grossly familiar. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;">Even before I fell in love with business architecture (and by definition, in this context, disused business architecture) I remember a dream I had as a very young child, not more than five. It was so vivid. I was in a city, at night, and there was a skyscraper, with some of the offices inside lit up. The most ordinary thing. But in the dream it was absolutely breathtaking. There was involved by strange association, a potted palm. The type you find in lobbies, the type that by definition are probably not even real. I had a set of Childcraft Encyclopedias (bless them, with their wonderful sixties typography, psychedelic woodcuts and visions of cities of the future, glowing in a white-glitter utopia) and there was picture of a clown on a small stage with a potted palm. It looked so- weird to me. So night-like. The dark stage which I could see behind the fake wall. Every time I thought of that skyscraper dream, I thought of that potted palm.<br /><br />So strange, like a piece of candy thrown into the junk drawer of your mind, adhering itself to other strange symbols. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'ACaslonPro'; font-size: 9.000000pt;"><br /></span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-42791599635455599592015-02-08T23:26:00.002-08:002015-02-08T23:26:50.450-08:00CCCRAzyNot sure exactly what set it off, in retrospect it seems nearly accidental. But somehow I randomly decided to look up ticket prices between here and Russia, and found them to be cheap. Very cheap. Remembering a longtime desire to visit Chernobyl, I started snooping around and found, again, cheap tours, cheap hotels, and an article that stated that the two cheapest tourist destinations for 2015 were the Ukraine, and Russia.<br />
And, spookily enough, found that a momentarily lost brother of mine is apparently traveling right now in Eastern Europe and the former CCCR (USSR).<br />
<br />
Fancy that.<br />
<br />
Of course, the fact that Putin is doing his KGBest to raise a dead Soviet Union from the ashes by making a play for the Ukraine (and Georgia, and Chechnya, etc.) probably renders those countries a bit tricky to actually visit as of this writing. So, apart from Chernobyl, which is a must-see and far out of the reaches of Eastern Ukraine (the hotspot and border), I have decided to forego any travel there for the moment.<br />
<br />
For the moment.<br />
<br />
But it really sent me off into a wonderland, which is a healthy thing for me to be sent off in every couple or so years. If you are an artist you know what I am talking about. I think that every artist's esthetic should evolve, like a growing thing. It should take signals from the air around it. Its good to get a slug of something that gets you all jazz-handy and jumping around, something that informs your brain weather and gives you new pictures.<br />
<br />
Principle among these new obsessions, and a place that has actually begun to eclipse Chernobyl for me, is Buzluzdha.<br />
<br />
Say it with me.<br />
<i>Buzluzdha. </i><br />
<i>Just the sound of it makes my eyes roll back into my head. </i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wNcZrt86v8U/VNhRoDwRgSI/AAAAAAAAAR8/GzrNRm3TDSM/s1600/buzludzha-communist-party-bulgaria__880.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wNcZrt86v8U/VNhRoDwRgSI/AAAAAAAAAR8/GzrNRm3TDSM/s1600/buzludzha-communist-party-bulgaria__880.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>I have never been so obsessed with a building. </i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5R7JG8gPLBM/VNhTR5ZjZrI/AAAAAAAAASc/frl1-Fvs4dM/s1600/Urban-Exploration-Urbex-Communist-Party-Headquarters-Buzludzha-Bulgaria-4-DR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5R7JG8gPLBM/VNhTR5ZjZrI/AAAAAAAAASc/frl1-Fvs4dM/s1600/Urban-Exploration-Urbex-Communist-Party-Headquarters-Buzludzha-Bulgaria-4-DR.jpg" /></a></i></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j_M4tbhxCUg/VNhSqqQs3zI/AAAAAAAAASE/l0mF-MQR6dA/s1600/Urban-Exploration-Urbex-Communist-Party-Headquarters-Buzludzha-Bulgaria-25-DR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j_M4tbhxCUg/VNhSqqQs3zI/AAAAAAAAASE/l0mF-MQR6dA/s1600/Urban-Exploration-Urbex-Communist-Party-Headquarters-Buzludzha-Bulgaria-25-DR.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
These pictures come from <a href="http://www.thebohemianblog.com/" target="_blank">Damien Richter's amazing Bohemian Blog.</a> I insist that you visit. I warn you tho, if you are at ALL into abandoned places, you will be up all night reading of his exploits. But Buzluzdha tops them all for me. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Its an abandoned Communist Party HQ, built in 1981. Terrifying in its concrete glory, it stands isolated on a mountain in Bulgaria. I have spent countless hours of late reading about it, planning a whole vacation around it, dreaming of it, thinking of laying in its frightening, hulking maw. These pictures don't even include its fascinating inner auditorium, which features a hammer and sickle in its center.....YOU MUST see more photos. Do this. Fall down the rabbit hole as I did. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Its almost like some Brutalist beast, or some kind of UFO. Never have I seen a building that just made me want to fall down in front of it in terror and some kind of awe. But awe gone all the way is probably alot like terror. Something biblical in that, I am sure. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
It isn't just Buzluzdha, tho. That held the key that unlocked a flood of other associations, and it left me wondering why it had taken me so long to notice that many of my favorite things or fascinations- clean lines, Brutalist architecture, abandonment, time warps and disquiet- are all to be found in the former Soviet Union, in big, fat, terrifying hordes. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
I have long had a fascination with the poles- particularly the Antarctic, just because of Captain Scott really. But something about snowy places began to seem very surreal to me. Very frightening. Unknowable. Maybe its because of "The Shining", but winter, REAL winter- and places rendered uninhabitable by the cold- hold a real claim on my imagination. Throw some abandoned satellites in there and some old hulking concrete Commie monuments and you have a recipe for Place I Must See Now. (I do understand that not all of EE or Russia lies under a constant blanket of snow. But winters get real there, lets not kid ourselves).</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
SO that sends you off on a million tangents. Every day for weeks now I have been googling "abandoned Eastern Europe" or "communist architecture" and peeing myself looking at the pictures. I don't even know what to see first. I read everything I can find, have combed through pages upon pages of Youtube searches, and that sends you off into another rabbit hole. Soviet Sci-fi, for instance. Or Soviet space docus!!!! I mean, don't even get me started. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
I am learning that if you are someone like me who obsessively collects content (videos of all sorts) and has for years, you have probably plundered through mountains of crap looking for jewels and you get real good at sifting. Since I am constantly chopping up film to make videos and VJ I had gotten that smug sense that I had pretty much devoured the lion's share of what was out there, and just kept my eye out for recent uploads- no need to march into the hinterlands and beat the bushes like in years past. This is how I learned that you are doing yourself a disservice if you are not diligently searching Youtube using <i>foreign search terms</i>. I Babelfished "Soviet advertisement" and getting the phrase "CCCR реклама", I unleashed a torrent of creaky old adverts that I will probably spend the next few months sifting through. Adverts with music whose provenance can only be guessed at (one doubts that Soviet officials- and I use the term to cover all its Bloc officials as well- were too concerned about properly crediting the music they ripped off), whose meanings and products are hidden in a Cyrillic fog. Which makes them WAY more fun. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/fjik-IE13sY/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fjik-IE13sY?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
And then there are things that give you a glimpse of the daily life of your ordinary citizen. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Witness this housewife's ad for some fryer contraption. A carousel of amazing strange fryups are panned over dramatically. But the thing I find most fascinating about this advert is, glancing out the window, you see a typical Soviet apartment bloc and bleak, gray skies. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/NGmuou-g1_U/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NGmuou-g1_U?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
I certainly don't want to dissolve many generations of pain and paranoia into a a mere artistic statement. But I can't help but be fascinating with the entire Soviet schlock- the bizarre architecture, the cold formality of a dead satellite, the eavesdropping spookiness of it all. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
I have been told that to travel to Russia, its best to have a friend on the ground to show you the ropes. As a new friend said, "things can go wrong there very fast". I have never liked authority, and have always quaked and jabbered in the presence of cops as if i carted dead bodies or kilos of coke round in my trunk (and I have never done either). I can't even imagine being given the "show me your papers" number by a real, bonafide Russian official. I would probably start crying and apologizing for whatever American crimes I am supposed to be guilty of by association. I just have no spine in those circumstances. I can't even imagine what it must have been like to KNOW that informers are a part of every single human enterprise- even down to the grocery store you work at. I can't imagine living under a dictatorship.</div>
<br />
And maybe that's something to do with why I find Communist leavings so interesting. I have often thought about how all the abandoned factories all over America, all the middle-American abandoned cornfield-adjacent ghost towns, the entirety of Detroit, told a story about a passing age. "This bank/fast food/housing project/factory is gone now because (insert poignant-and-possibly-angering reason here)." It really told a story to me.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
When you put this level of abandonment as it stands in Eastern Europe and Russia, the story told is FAR more poignant and spectral than ours. There are still countless stories waiting to be told, and probably many are being covered over afresh by Putin as we speak. Because Putin is very much of the old guard. He is a former KGB man who has been laying the groundwork for the resurrection for much of his life. He wants to bring all of it back-with a capitalist swagger thrown on top. He has NO PROBLEM with coming off as the ultimate James Bond villain. He is like something out of a spy novel. And he is for real, and he controls much of Europe's energy supply, due to his making-nice with Europe (and screwing Ukraine/Chechnya in the process). He doesn't care if you think he is an underhanded sonofabitch. His flat effect and strange attempts at seeming like a "regular guy" are somehow terrifying. If anyone on earth could start WW3, be sure its not some guy in a cave wearing a robe and a machine gun, ISIS notwithstanding. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tMdRkmfw2Rk/VNhg5pktj1I/AAAAAAAAAS0/P_Gnttfqdzg/s1600/th%2B(4).jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tMdRkmfw2Rk/VNhg5pktj1I/AAAAAAAAAS0/P_Gnttfqdzg/s1600/th%2B(4).jpeg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
So. Luckily, it thus far appears that he will keep his hands off EE for the time being. This summer I shall go there. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-1816552970990066552014-11-28T18:37:00.001-08:002014-11-28T18:39:10.346-08:00Melanie Gaydos and the Myth of "New Beauty"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ooNggqbG98c/VHkpaiVkFOI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/cWA0ZCgY2W8/s1600/eric%2Blee%2Bbowman%2B%22chemical%2BFragments%22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ooNggqbG98c/VHkpaiVkFOI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/cWA0ZCgY2W8/s1600/eric%2Blee%2Bbowman%2B%22chemical%2BFragments%22.jpg" height="320" width="230" /></a></div>
<i> photo by Eric Lee Bowman</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Melanie Gaydos.<br />
I love you.<br />
I want others to love you.<br />
But I have to be careful in my approach.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BDepVsH1uxc/VHktdPErC4I/AAAAAAAAARI/DBQzTkSfwYY/s1600/943578_368013856638615_1793067688_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BDepVsH1uxc/VHktdPErC4I/AAAAAAAAARI/DBQzTkSfwYY/s1600/943578_368013856638615_1793067688_n.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a>Melanie Gaydos is a model. She was born with something called ectodermal dysplasia. This changes one's ability to grow hair, have sweat glands, effects the nails and teeth, and in fact seems to be an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of unusual detours from the norm. Hers is a severe case. But she wanted to be a model. And she is one. A high fashion, fine art model, perhaps one day on a runway, already featured in a number of music videos.<br />
<br />
One thing straight tho.<br />
The more time I spend with her pictures, the more I think of her, the more I understand her, the harder it is to stand the obvious pandering that happens. People love her DESPITE her face. People think, "oh, poor girl, how brave, that DESPITE her face, she wants to be a model. How sweet". They commend her on her bravery (which of course she must have, truly), they deride the norms of beauty and focus on her body (because "DESPITE" her face her body is, it is true, extraordinary, and so on).<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iPYf5bDl4V8/VHkth1dqxWI/AAAAAAAAARM/HFvJ8SVKAtI/s1600/sylvia%2Bmakris%2Bfine%2Bart%2Bphotgrapy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iPYf5bDl4V8/VHkth1dqxWI/AAAAAAAAARM/HFvJ8SVKAtI/s1600/sylvia%2Bmakris%2Bfine%2Bart%2Bphotgrapy.jpg" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I have to say that I honestly, truly, DO think she is beautiful. This isn't some soft-peddling of what is obviously a face that is unusual, a disease that I am sure has caused her numerous difficulties in her life. But the more I look, the more I see, and the more I feel awake. I feel like another sense opens up when I see her. It isn't some pitytrip for a woman suffering. Its someone looking at another and saying, "no, you know, I really LIKE this. I really DO think this is something else. I want more of this in my life".<br />
Her mouth, in particular, I find beautiful. When she wears lipstick, her face takes on such a wonderful shape that it blows my mind.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oZVSOg3pUf8/VHkwNr3GM1I/AAAAAAAAARY/sZ8r1K-cs_4/s1600/tumblr_ly4xyxu97E1r8912xo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oZVSOg3pUf8/VHkwNr3GM1I/AAAAAAAAARY/sZ8r1K-cs_4/s1600/tumblr_ly4xyxu97E1r8912xo1_1280.jpg" height="320" width="241" /></a></div>
The WAY she conveys in her photos- there is something she is bringing forth that i can't put my finger on. Its like she is dispensing this new wisdom or something. I kept thinking, "new beauty"....<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJ4N4zsciLg/VHkwz2SoA7I/AAAAAAAAARg/PA8iy_vUUY0/s1600/tumblr_myvq4kL7Ni1rwbfpeo1_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bJ4N4zsciLg/VHkwz2SoA7I/AAAAAAAAARg/PA8iy_vUUY0/s1600/tumblr_myvq4kL7Ni1rwbfpeo1_1280.jpg" height="400" width="265" /></a></div>
but that's bullshit.<br />
<br />
Beauty is beauty. As she herself said, "beauty is a state of being...I have never felt I was ugly and I don't feel that way now".<br />
It isn't about saying, "yes, maybe, I could look at that and not feel sorry for her and I think her struggle is beautiful, poor girl". NO. NO.<br />
It really isn't that.<br />
Beauty is beauty. Just because you get locked in and fooled by an overwhelming majority doesn't mean that when someone like Melanic comes along (which is, of course, never) you should softpedal and make it sound like she is no different from others. She is AMAZINGLY different. She is WONDERFULLY different.<br />
<br />
You may, upon first seeing her face, be shocked. I was. I had to know- is she real? What is happening here?<br />
Then I got really profoundly touched by her interview for "What's Underneath". I cried. Alot.<br />
Then I got over it.<br />
She is so much more than even THAT.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/sdvaTzWvbPA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
The more I look the more I am amazed. When I spend some time with her photos and then look at other people, its just not as interesting. Its just not as....yes, beautiful.<br />
<br />
The whole dialog of "stretching" one's idea of beauty to encompass Melanie Gaydos is just.....shit. Its shit. What is beauty? Really? Symmetry? A body without scars? A mouth that is not a cleft palate? Can a cleft palate be beautiful?<br />
<br />
I think it is. I am glad to learn this lesson and not be someone crying. She is beautiful to me. There is no "new" beauty, just new eyes to see what has always been. Its an extraordinary lesson in my own bullshit. And a lesson in keeping your eyes and mind open.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-74770972983546524592014-07-10T00:01:00.001-07:002014-07-10T00:10:21.561-07:00Jamaican NoirI decided to make a playlist that exemplified that sound that i have started calling "Jamaican Noir". There is that subsect of Jamaican stuff whether it be dub or ska that has a disquieting tone to it....like a shadow cast of a long gunman after dark in the streets of trenchtown. Noir is the only thing to call it.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ajLmaOAOAI/U746O0VV-sI/AAAAAAAAAQY/Ks4dUgVNJvg/s1600/1289.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ajLmaOAOAI/U746O0VV-sI/AAAAAAAAAQY/Ks4dUgVNJvg/s1600/1289.jpeg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The first song in this mix is Big Youth's "Keep Your Dread"....which just sounds so shadowy and worried that it starts things off at the very right tone. There are a few tracks here like "Blacula" that might not have the most worried tone, but they have a MAD tone that just sounds like everyone is on a bad trip. There are 35 songs total on this playlist, just download the zip file and open everything up and the playlist will just populate in order. Apart from the first couple songs I didn't agonize too much about the order. Didn't do any crossfades- this is all just raw MP3's. Wish I had the time and the right material to make an accompanying clip loop but I alas do not.<br />
<br />
You can download it all <a href="https://www.mediafire.com/?612phf15zcf31kf" target="_blank">here</a>. Enjoy.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-39900452286073636012014-04-07T21:51:00.002-07:002014-04-07T21:55:48.583-07:00Creepypasta, Memes, Orbis Tertius and Time Awayhaven't spent much time nurturing this blog of late. had a bit of a crisis of confidence, as they call it, in my life and my esthetics. i recently left a collective in los angeles that i had been a part of for five years. was hellbent on either writing a book or making a film about Broadcast, but James cannot be involved due to his schedule and his still-overwhelming grief. I am hoping that someday that story will still be told, but it might be a long while. in any case, my own work must go on, which consists of my education, and focusing more on the fine arts. I have moved into a new place which is providing me with alot of peace and time to get things realigned in my mind. i have definitely been suffering from a lack of creativity, but today i felt the forces come back and am back on the case, working on a new video and getting some other things, like my website for my video work/vjing, up and running.<br />
<br />
now that that explanation is out of the way i would like to share some interesting intersections.<br />
<br />
a few days ago, i spent the evening as i sometimes do wandering round the web. being at an impasse will do that to you. but i rediscovered a fascinating bit of 21st century fiddling that i have been fascinated with for a while- the creepypasta.<br />
<br />
for those that don't know, a creepypasta is a meme or false mythology that is made with two intentions- to frighten, and to go viral. its the internet equivalent of an urban legend, but constructed specifically with the knowledge that it is not true, with (so i surmise) the hopes that others will believe it is true.<br />
<br />
my longtime favorite in this genre centered around a 1970's children's show called "Candle Cove". Apparently this was a television show with dark undertones and lots of children screaming, and there were purported viewers of this show that remembered watching it as a child. These "memories" featured this tidbit- their parents claimed that the entire time they were viewing it, all the parent could see on the tv was static.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/o2h5ym6ZlVY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br />
<br />
some more very strange creepypastas can be found <a href="http://listverse.com/2014/04/03/10-creepypasta-that-will-scare-you-silly/" target="_blank">here.</a><br />
<br />
for some reason, it only occurred to me this weekend how Borgesian this all is. It instantly reminded me of the story "Orbis Tertius" by jorge luis borges, one of my favorite writers. In this story, a false mythology/cosmology by a Council of 100 is distributed, inseminated really, throughout the culture. The idea was to supplant reality by rewriting history. every time a member of the council died, they were replaced, ensuring that the rewriting would go infinitely. Language, flora and fauna, everything was being re-imagined over hundreds of years, seeping into the culture with the eventual aim of eradicating the previous human history completely.<br />
<br />
i have always been a fan of urban legends, and am fascinated with the way they occur and what they say about the culture that they infiltrate. its also fascinating to realize that people are unwitting participants in the building of myths, which really are what urban legends are. the idea that groups of people purposefully have chosen to create new urban legends, release them and watch them go is very interesting to me. and it brings up a lot of interesting notions.<br />
<br />
first off, there are a few creepypastas i have stumbled on without realizing their false provenance that scared me absolutely silly. <a href="http://theweirdnewsdaily.blogspot.com/2013/03/charlie-noonans-last-interview.html" target="_blank">This is one of them.</a> The tricky thing is, that when you decide to research these, inevitably you are faced with endless blogs and posts repeating these ad infinitum, making the discovery that they are in fact, NOT REAL, much more difficult to do.<br />
<br />
here is where my love of quantum physics comes in and leads me to ask, "if a whole bunch of people begin believing that these things happened, have they in fact happened?"<br />
<br />
the idea of reality is something i have always questioned and even before becoming immersed in quantum physics i realized that reality is nothing but a mass agreement. its a bunch of people who have decided that this, and not this, is reality, and there is this denial that reality is far more fluid than people realize. in other words, reality as we know it is only a consensus. there is literally nothing that can be called "absolute reality". its subjective. even with a mass consensus, its simply a consensus that our subjective reality is "real". and we can of course never know what another's reality is. fascinating, really.<br />
<br />
with this in mind, you begin to wonder if the roots of some of these memes will not become so obscured that many people will begin to believe it. people as a whole don't tend to research everything they come across. call it the death of critical thinking. if people read it somewhere, they tend to believe it. i am not so cynical as to believe that people are merely sheep, because i don't believe that they are, but i do believe that humanity as a whole (especially in the western world with our mass of "entertainments" and media overload) are VERY easily distracted. when you are easily distracted you can be easily fooled. this is something that every magician knows instinctively.<br />
<br />
if fifty people believe that charlie noonan existed, that "candle cove" was a real show, that a demented kleenex ad screened in japan led to mass suicides, is it not, in some sense, real? in a landscape of holographic multiverses, what does this imply? does not this imply or impart a degree of "reality"?<br />
<br />
i do believe in things like the law of attraction, having seen in manifest in my life in a myriad of ways. i need a new scarf, or a printer, and within a few days, after focusing, it will "find" me. the more sure i am, the quicker it seems to happen. the belief that it will happen is of course the one necessary ingredient to these proceedings. belief makes things so.<br />
<br />
in twenty years, will our world be so littered with memes that we have forgotten that they are not true? I remember rumors from my childhood- that joan jett had died in a plane crash, that prince was dying of AIDS, etc- and laugh about them now. obviously, enough people believing in something does not make the thing come to pass always.<br />
<br />
but these were actual people. these were rumors. if you create a false reality, whole cloth, what will be the long term effects? i so very much wish that borges were still alive. i believe he would have much to say on the subject- and i think it would have delighted him.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-38374057377273012132014-01-30T21:51:00.002-08:002014-01-30T21:51:45.907-08:00Dear Trish<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rSBew8d2o84/Uus4sd6Ql_I/AAAAAAAAAPw/qt-tKdChOBI/s1600/th.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rSBew8d2o84/Uus4sd6Ql_I/AAAAAAAAAPw/qt-tKdChOBI/s1600/th.jpeg" /></a></div>
Its been about 15 days since the 3rd anniversary of Trish Keenan's death. It occurred to me tonight how unreal it still feels. Even tho I never knew her, her music has been such a force in my life- akin to when I discovered punk rock. The bearing she has had far outweighs not knowing her.<br />
<br />
I have been working for a couple years now on my Broadcast Project, where I attempt to make a video for all of their songs. I think I am on the 17th one now, but it started to feel like it wasn't enough. So, I have decided to make a full length documentary about the band, with James' blessing (which I am waiting for, and hoping for the best, as we have been in contact, crossing fingers....). Even if that blessing never comes, I still feel like there is something i NEED to do to make people more aware of them. I don't know why. You think you get past the age of that kind of fandom, but I realized with this band that I hadn't. Its like the need to build a monument to something beloved. You just HAVE to.<br />
<br />
I believe in quantum physics and parallel worlds, and in one of those worlds Trish is still alive and is working on another EP and the band is getting even weirder and there are still many more songs to come. I would get to see them live many times, perhaps make some videos for them, I would get to tell her what their music meant to me.<br />
<br />
But we live in this world. Rest in peace Ms Trish.<br />
<br />
<br />The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-41432139055069756432013-11-11T00:42:00.002-08:002013-11-11T00:42:55.774-08:00Probabilities/PossibilitiesI am a Scorpio Rising. Mercury, which has been in retrograde, is now no longer, and its in Scorpio. We just had a New Moon Solar Eclipse in Scorpio as well, and for whatever you think that's worth, that's quite a heavy alignment for communication. And also for understanding things and being able to untangle and decipher and learn and listen.<br />
So that's probably why I am getting these flights of reverie and heavy thought this evening, about the Great Wide Whatever. Heavy musing, cue hippie sitar music.<br />
<br />
I started thinking about possibilities, versus probabilities. My favorite thing in the world is probably Quantum Physics, and that is largely a theoretical science. Black holes and anti-matter and multiverses and the Sloan Wall and other creepy, yawning, black, sonorous, massive, invisible things. But you are dealing in probabilities alot of the time here. You are saying, "if i extrapolate backwards mathematically, then the big bang would have happened this way". this is a probability, and not a certainty. its based on physical laws and likelihoods and there is that word again, probabilities. It PROBABLY happened that way. It most likely did. When it rains, and you go outside, even if it isn't raining anymore you see a wet ground and you can say, "it PROBABLY rained", and people would think you were an idiot. Because there is no PROBABLY about it. its a given that it rained.<br />
<br />
If you writ this larger, you can probably start to see what i did, that probabilities are what most people live their lives on, and not its more ephemeral and fun counterpart, possibilities.<br />
<br />
think about it.<br />
<br />
you get in your car knowing that you are probably going to get to work or the supermarket or the daycare or wherever. you are on a track of probability. you turn the stove on and put a pot on to boil and you know that probably when i come back ten minutes from now the water will be boiling. and ad infinitum, on through the day, through your life.<br />
the problem with this is is that it puts us in a mindset that deals only with probabilities, with what we like to call certainties, and which certainly do not exist. we take the probabilities in our life and we try and graft that way of thinking onto what should be a separate mindset, that of possibility. we think that we should only deal with what we have some kind of legitimate reason to believe could probably happen. we don't have a lot of time to daydream, to think out side of the box (i loathe that term, is got all these corporate connotations for me, but i digress).<br />
but this- this is the thing that i am realizing sets us up for a life wherein we do not allow ourselves to truly absorb and understand the fact that there are NO certainties (barring one), which is actually really good news. of course by certainty i mean, something that is going to happen every time the exact same way, or that every effort and action you make will have a reaction that is reciprocal. we all know that is not true. my physics class taught me that- that you can work your ass off and still get nowhere. and by nowhere i mean "not where you thought-and farther behind than you hoped". the only certainty in this life is death. everything in between is totally up for grabs.<br />
not having certainty is something that the anxiety-prone classically struggle with the most. you can start worrying that a piano is gonna drop on your head out of a clear blue sky, or equally fantastic and improbable things. its funny in a way that the anxious seem to realize that there are no certainties and that this sends them into a negative headspace when really, its pretty amazing WHAT could happen, but they never feel good about that. if anything can happen, then certainly, statistically, some of that is gonna be great. its the old adage, the bad news is that there are no certainties. the GOOD news is that there are no certainties. but they only seem to be able to deal with the negatives. THAT makes sense to them. its like a gravitational pull on your psyche- naturally everything must go downward. there is really no reason to not be as transported by the glory of possibility as opposed to your fears of what could happen. think about it.<br />
what it is about certainties that make us feel so safe? why is it that we are so prone to building foundations on shifting ground, literally and figuratively? we have to have security, some kind of security. i've always noticed that gypsy types, travelers, seem to have an internal core that gives them some sort of home inside themselves. they are at home everywhere.<br />
<br />
but again i digress.<br />
what i am leading to here is that we take great chances on only allowing ourselves to see what is probable. what is probably going to happen. it brings us comfort. it also boxes us in, and denies us other realities. we get caught in the workaday world, and think that the entire other side of things, that which is possible, is actually only what is probable.<br />
when i think about it really alot rests on this- its like a yin and yang, good and evil, black and white thing. probabilities and possibilities. they are two entirely different forces acting on us all the time.<br />
<br />
if you jump off a building, there is a high probability that you are going to hit the ground. but the possibility exists that a freak wind stream could come along and bear you up to land on the next roof unscathed. babies are tossed about by tornados and are planted bottom down in a field, just fine. the probability of that baby dying is quite high. but the possibility always existed that it would NOT die, that it would it be just fine.<br />
possibility runs both ways, of course. you could put water on to boil and take a shower and come out and your entire electrical system has gone haywire and the wiring in your wall is on fire. you can't PLAN for possibility. it just is, right there, all the time. its the multiverse in action- the innumerable possible worlds that probably do exist, but we can only imagine the possibilities (the word probably used on purpose here).<br />
<br />
if you were to really absorb that concept, its pretty heavy to realize the ramifications. the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction is something i have been studying for a while now. i have been in a sort of mental bootcamp for the past several months, especially, trying to root out and unlearn a lifetime of inherited and naturally rotten thinking. i am still in the process. i am sure i always will be. to some degree.<br />
but really taking a moment to realize that staking all your claims on the probable might lead you away from fantastical happenings.<br />
<br />
i understand that not everyone is like me or most of my friends. most people are content to follow, to not question, to raise their kids and just sort of get on with it without alot of pondering. i always marveled how many people in the world were content to work the same job for years without blowing their brains out. most people don't need the level of stimuli and change that i need. not everyone would be happy cozying up to absolute possibility. this isn't a putdown. some people don't ask why. people that do are sometimes tortured by it. its not always fun and its not always productive. its sometimes a great pain in the ass.<br />
but i think that learning to embrace that is something that must be an essential part of any life-affirming practice. getting out from under only what is probable is akin to realizing that your past does NOT have to dictate what your future is. that just because something happened one way in the past doesn't mean that its going to happen that way in the future. getting out of the prison of probability sometime and allowing yourself to graze in the land of possibility helps you ideate what exactly you want- and don't want- from this life.<br />
that is a really heavy realization, no?The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-7548976569941357282013-10-21T01:46:00.001-07:002013-10-21T01:46:48.770-07:00Science is PsychedelicI spend alot of my downtime watching documentaries about physics, i am taking a physics class this semester, and i spend alot of my time (a part time job amount-easily 20-30 hours a week) doing physics homework. as slippery as the concepts are and as badly as i am failing at the math side of it, i continue to become more fascinated and more passionate about the whole prismatic realm that i am slowly walking into. its more like crawling, falling, teetering into Lidsville, like a toddler who can't do quadratic equations yet but she is in the room with it, and soon she will grow to be able to reach that doorknob to get to the NEXT level. i have chubby little baby legs in Lidsville right now. But i can SEE it. i can sense it.<br />
<br />
there is no doubt that we really are in a different kind of psychedelic age. this is something that excites me to no end. its something i talk about and think about and read about and write about alot. i try and get everyone excited about it because artists are notoriously anti-empirical science, much more likely to believe in ephemeral concepts than what a scientist tells them.<br />
<br />
i think the medical establishment has contributed to people's cynical view of research and facts and study of the physical world. we see medicine as a vast moneymaking machine devoid of fairness or care- at least in america. we tend to view Big Pharma and corporate medicine in the dim light they often deserve. and often science is in service to the military-industrial complex, another reason to view it with suspicion. and of course the Bomb would not have been possible without physics.<br />
<br />
I would like to see, and be a part of, a movement that wrestles science away from the establishment even in some brief, symbolic sense, and puts it in the hands of the people who need it the most. people who need to understand the nature of the universe so that they no longer brood and worry about these things. its tied into our ultimate human potential, and its wrapped up in a lot of if not most new age thinking that artists and bohemians like myself have always been interested in. and it is absolutely essential to understanding the law of attraction or manifestation, or positive thinking, or whatever writer this week is calling it. its all part of a grand design and you no longer have to- nor can you-leave science out of the equation. there is one long hallway, and each of you have been approaching each other down this long dark tunnel, and the light you saw was each approaching the other. once you meet, you can go upward and out of the tunnel and beyond all of it, and shine a light so that everyone can see.<br />
<br />
that is probably in some sense what was meant by all the resurrection parables in every religion- that something comes back in a wave of light or a flash from above after a period of darkness or death or a quest of some type. i think leading our way out of darkness must involve the coming together of the two halves of our potential, our collective brain- the scientific, and the spiritual. these two sides of us have always been at war. we distrust what we can't see. but what we know now is that what we cannot see is where the action is REALLY happening. for the first time in human history mankind is actually down into the cosmos spelunking into minute, teeming worlds of weirdness and wonder. we have learned so much about the workaday world but in a sense we have learned nothing that would properly prepare us for the way things really are. this is the most bizarre twist perhaps EVER in the history of mankind. such a global shift in our thinking on the cellular level is the next revolution. it will not be political and it certainly won't be artistic. but all those realms will inevitably be influenced by this shifting earth of ideas. there will be no way to avoid change.<br />
<br />
i really intend to be a part of this world and i want my art to be informed by it as well. the more i can learn about science the more i can literally create- both mentally and physically- the world i want to reside in. the machines and synths i intend to build, the music i want to make, my creativity is general and the profession i want to take on are all now a part of the same thing. there are no longer conflicts in my life between doing art or doing something practical. it is all now literally the same thing, tho it is still in the conceptual stages while i work my way through school and process and learn.<br />
<br />
i want to very much get beyond any preconceived ideas about space and science fiction and all the silver-clad retrofuturistic hooha that inevitably creeps up when one talks about a "tech" aspect of art. i loathe techno music. but i adore other kinds of electronic music and certainly love synthesizers and so-called artificial tones. there are other possibilities in expressing this esthetic that i am interested in now. i do not want to invoke some hamhanded futurism. i don't enjoy the typical "technoir" visual or tone or flavor. more than anything its about NOW, the present moment and the power that lies in it. its not taking off the planet Venus. <br />
<br />
really its a bout a modern psychedelia devoid of all the trappings of the <i>idea</i> of psychedelia that has become codified- a swirly sitar, a tie-dye shirt. like something trish keenan said once about psychedelia being a way of seeing and challenging form and temper. going beyond a simple style to actually making people more aware of how weird the world really is. moving them to believe that through art and music.<br />
<br />
(sidebar-honestly nothing bothers me more on an esthetic level than shock value. its the thing that i value the least in rock music, really. i am not talking about screaming jay hawkins, i am talking about "i want to fuck you like an animal" and ugliness and blood and violence without meaning or context. the coolness of violence. even tho i adore hiphop i have to take breaks from listening to it because of the swagger. i don't like ghastly images used in art just to piss people off. its really i think quite damaging and not really a revolution at all. its like GG allin smearing himself in his own shit and flinging it on the audience. its "piss christ" in a museum. it isn't robert mapplethorpe, it isn't an artist who uses something that could shock SOME people to show a kind of beauty in what used to be in the shadows, but those who simply go for the jugular out of pure spite. its the people who made "cannibal holocaust" or "a serbian film", it isn't "holy mountain"or pasolini. there is a fine line and everyone draws it themselves according to their own taste but i personally will never and have never gone for the shocking in my own art. i don't find shock necessary to bring people to a higher level. i would much rather mesmerize.)<br />
<br />
i am not sure what all these concepts will bear but i am definitely going to continue meditating on it and planning on it and creating it, making it real.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-8311618874800389892013-10-20T13:04:00.001-07:002013-10-20T13:04:25.455-07:00"Let's Scare Jessica To Death"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lwzdVC2O_l8/UmQtfT9YpMI/AAAAAAAAAPU/DUVAS0OUp5Q/s1600/th.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lwzdVC2O_l8/UmQtfT9YpMI/AAAAAAAAAPU/DUVAS0OUp5Q/s320/th.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Last night, here in our wonderland, we watched this film on the Big Wall outside. I have long considered this film to be on a very short list of best b-movies ever made, but I don't know why I have insisted on even calling it a B movie all these years. Maybe its because I first saw it on "Movie Macabre"? They didn't exactly show Polanski on a regular basis there. Whatever the reason, i think it is quite time to cease calling it and accept the fact that this is an A movie that has simply escaped too many people's attention. And its a real shame. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Brief synopsis: Made in 1971, "LSJTD" tells the story of Jessica, played to heartbreaking effect by the wonderful Zohra Lampert. Jessica has just been released from a mental hospital, after 6 months of treatment for some vague breakdown we are never really told much about. She and her husband (Barton Heyman) and a hippie friend (Kevin O' Connor) buy a apple farm out in the Connecticut wilds to get away from it all, but strange things begin to happen immediately. The line between what is truly happening and what is simply Jessica going nuts again is of course, made purposely vague and never really comes quite clear. This gives the film a spooky tension that I find much preferable to typical horror over-acceleration. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LS9AK0-uJQQ/UmQtcHrT6kI/AAAAAAAAAPE/kNgJc0vflxI/s1600/lets-scare-jessica-to-death-9.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LS9AK0-uJQQ/UmQtcHrT6kI/AAAAAAAAAPE/kNgJc0vflxI/s320/lets-scare-jessica-to-death-9.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Zohra Lampert is the key to much of this film's charm. The fact that she is not a huge star is one more reason to loathe and despise Hollywood. On the other hand, one gets the sense that the only reason she didn't make it is because she probably didn't want to, which is something I could understand. You can tell that she has so much character, so many chops, is so heartfelt and genuine, that she must have been running purposely in the opposite direction from fame and stardom. She MUST have. there is simply no better performance in a movie of this caliber by someone who did not die shortly afterwards that did not lead to more fame than what she has received. Its quite puzzling, and while the film would have still been enjoyable without her in it, she alone raises it to its deserved status as a cult classic.<br />
It also doesn't hurt that she is absolutely gorgeous with such a soulful, expressive manner, and says even the most ordinary things in such an extraordinary way.<br />
It reminds me of something Patty Duke said in her autobio, regarding one of her early films, "Me, Natalie". There was scene featuring Al Pacino in what I think was his very first appearance on film, She commented that you could tell that there was something special about him even tho he only said the phrase, "so, do you put out?" I think her words were, "it was like seeing laurence olivier in dinner theatre in Florida". THAT is how Zohra comes across. Just TOO damn good to have been ignored unless it was by her own choice. One can tell that she is possessed of depths that most actors are not, and I could very much imagine her purposely flying under the radar so she could live a peaceful life and teach pottery to underprivileged kids or something. She is JUST the type.<br />
<br />
Mari-Clare Costello, on the other hand, is much more in the realm of normal acting chops and does a servicable, creepy job as the slutty free-lovin' folk-guitar playin' perhaps-a-vampire girl who tries to sleep her way through the whole house from the get go. Her actions in this film really do freak you out a little bit- she just seems to strike the wrong chord and go too far. Which is a GOOD thing. She gives you an added dimension of psychological squeamishness that is unexpected in the context to a film like this.<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4Y44A52i_M/UmQtcIKm_QI/AAAAAAAAAPI/Kt8wGFYim9w/s1600/lets-scare-jessica-to-death-8.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m4Y44A52i_M/UmQtcIKm_QI/AAAAAAAAAPI/Kt8wGFYim9w/s320/lets-scare-jessica-to-death-8.png" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Beyond the acting is the overall oft-mentioned atmosphere of the film. It has gotten bad reviews (even from a couple of my friends) for being too slow. Its been called dated, hokey, vague. I don't agree with any of this, of course- one man's vague is another man's atmosphere. This film is filled with so much subtlety that you have to be a fan of subtlety in general to get anything out of this film. I think it takes a page out of Polanski's book in that regard. If you were to sit down and watch "Rosemary's Baby" six times in a row, you would find new things in it every time. Polanksi really does stick little bits in here and there that most people simply don't notice. People are hamhanded and lazy. They like actions that they can decipher without too much thought. They miss subtleties of dialogue because they are checking their voice mail or running their mouths. They have no idea what they miss.<br />
<br />
I never understand those types. They miss all kinds of colors.<br />
<br />
Another film this reminds me of is "The Innocents". It definitely belongs in some kind of sub-genre of creepy psychological horror- while watching this last night the phrase "gentle horror" came to mind. Something cold like a wind, a steady rise instead of jabs of shock. This is the MOST difficult thing to do, of course- its easier to show tits and blood and car crashes and the black cat that jumps out of the alley. It takes a deft hand to hold back.<br />
<br />
Not that this film is without its "gotchas". The above photo of Mariclare coming out of the lake is a prime example. Other shocks are to be had but almost none are on the order of your typical horror film. Many of them are psychological and don't have accompanying action.<br />
<br />
One of the most effective traits of this film is the constant self-talk that Jessica hears (or is it voices in her head?). Subtle whispers, shadows, looks exchanged between her and her husband, the tension presented between what Jessica knows to be happening and what she says- incredibly effective and incredibly creepy. I would even go so far as to call this film not a supernatural thriller at all, but psychological at its core. One is never sure where one ends and the other begins.<br />
<br />
It has been one of my favorite films for many years. I watched it first, as i mentioned, as a child, and when i saw it again as an adult it actually frightened me even MORE than it had, which is a first for me. The deeper dimensions of this film were more understandable to me as an adult, but as a child the creeping dread and whispery mystery hit me very clearly. I was impressed to find a real gem that was not just a sepia-toned memory as is usually the case with half-remembered films.<br />
<br />
Honestly, if any of these sorts of films appeal to you it would be a good bet to simply go buy a copy right off and watch this. Its a gamble worth taking. If you see only ONE film that is new to you this Halloween I highly recommend it be this one- unless you are ham-fisted and like torture porn and blood splattered on tits for two hours. I doubt you would even be reading this blog if you were a knuckledragger such as that, but the internet has many strange corners we find ourselves in. I highly recommend this for anyone with more refined horror sensibilities. I don't think you will be disappointed.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-52318840461044868872013-07-12T21:42:00.000-07:002013-07-12T21:48:09.449-07:00"The Machinist".....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://horrorfanzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/machinist1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="139" src="http://horrorfanzine.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/machinist1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
....desperately needs to get remade.<br />
<br />
If cinema today endlessly mines the past, it stands to reason that eventually all the nearly-were films, the almost great films, will start to be remade. I can see that happening in the future.<br />
<br />
Bowie always said that he never really finished anything- he just stopped at a certain point in the process. He always wanted to go back and tinker with it some more.<br />
<br />
I wish someone would have tinkered with this film some more.<br />
Just an opinion.<br />
<br />
It has stayed with me, despite having only watched it once. The Flyway Cafe especially has a kind of archetypal hold on me. Having a thing for planes, it seems to live in a familiar yet foreboding kind of place- like a place i had dreamt in my childhood. I remember going to a restaurant when i was very young, the Skyliner. i always loved that name. it rang a bell in me. it called to mind this sort of pure landscape. Many of my dreams over the years kind of happen in places like this- just glimpses. Like Brasilia, or empty freeways, or business districts at night.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://imgs.abduzeedo.com/files/archi/50-anos-brasilia/brasilia_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://imgs.abduzeedo.com/files/archi/50-anos-brasilia/brasilia_01.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/5091843f28ba0d49f80001e8_the-construction-of-brasilia-photos-by-marcel-gautherot_brasilia-construction-marcel-gautherot-13-979x1000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/5091843f28ba0d49f80001e8_the-construction-of-brasilia-photos-by-marcel-gautherot_brasilia-construction-marcel-gautherot-13-979x1000.jpg" width="313" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/klotz/klotz0905/klotz090500026/4855579-empty-bridge-towers-and-street-lights-at-night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/klotz/klotz0905/klotz090500026/4855579-empty-bridge-towers-and-street-lights-at-night.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I think "the machinist" would have done itself a classic turn by underlining that atmosphere. the MUSIC, for one thing, would be the first thing I would scrap.<br />
<br />
Watching it tonight for the first time since i saw it years ago, i kept imagining Delia Derbyshire crawling behind everything. Spare, eerie electronic sounds would have made this film a million times more unsettling, and subtle, and surreal. i am not a fan in general of orchestral soundtracks, but sometimes they are appropriate. in this case, an eno-esque route would have been the edgier choice, while still maintaining some kind of mainstream appeal. personally tho, i would have gone with delia. but "music for airports" would have done nicely. as it is the swooping-then-stabbing violin action going on here is as ubiquitous as dirt, and adds no real tension, atmosphere or interest whatsoever. and its true alot of people wouldn't care about these things, but i do, and it makes the difference sometimes with me. imagine "2001" without the music. its TERRIBLY important.<br />
<br />
i would have liked to see less hooker-with-a-heart and needless tit-flashing going on.<br />
<br />
SUBTLETY. one of the things i love about "rosemary's baby" is the freaking subtlety. the creepy teensy little details. the way a doorbell ringing in distance can mean so many dark things. the way ordinary things suddenly get turned on their head.<br />
<br />
there is some of that here, but amping that up would have amped up the WTF factor a millionfold. there is so much room there to do that. but you can tell that there is too much compromising going on, really. there is an attempt to reach the audience at times. TOO many times. it seems to pull back at the decisive moment.<br />
<br />
the profession he works at, that sense of foreboding industry. the way everything seems to happen in a storm or at night.... the apartment building and cafe...... these things could have been drawn in even starker, Expressionist tones. a whole other world could have functioned as a character, even more than it already does.<br />
<br />
It would be fantastic if say, someone recast this and filmed it in Norway, during endless night. THAT would live there quite elegantly. this story should have snow in it, perhaps. fjords that are only hinted at, lying just on the edge of everything.<br />
<br />
In fact, yes, the Norwegians. get them on this. run it through that kind of sensibility, that kind of noir.<br />
<br />
With Delia Derbyshire behind it you would really have a startling, spooky mother of a movie right there.<br />
just an opinion.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-34442529065079264082013-07-12T01:16:00.003-07:002013-07-12T01:19:49.180-07:00the 0 and the 1i realized tonight that hauntology is a near-total inverse of the whole idea of retrofuturism.<br />
<br />
some things are hard to explain. some things you just feel. you arrive at a point by feeling your way, and then the thinking and linking up sets in. you weave a tapestry of your own as you go, and <i>when </i>you discover there is a word for the way these threads are composed it can be very important and quite inspiring. Beyond the idea of insipid genres, isms, and false parsing, hauntology is more akin to an art movement than a genre. boil it down even more and its a way of <i>seeing. </i><br />
<br />
having said that, it is of course, something of a genre, inasmuch as alot of these bands are drawing on the same set of influences and touching upon the same themes in their music. considering it from that perspective, it is really fascinating to link retrofuturism and hauntology as being very gracefully opposite. in fact hauntology seems like a natural moodier outgrowth from the retrofuturism of the nineties.<br />
<br />
retrofuturism embraces the past as it was imagining the future. hauntology, on the other hand, is firmly planted in the present, imagining the past. in fact its BEING in the present that creates that tension, that sepia-memory experience. that cannot be experienced in a retrofuturistic or even revisionist way. that distance creates that <i>essential surreal tension </i>that to me is the very basis of hauntology. the same distance in retrofuturism seems to create a sort of whimsical, debonair dressing-up, a wholesale worship of the goofily optimistic spirit of the Space Age. Hauntology is an almost queasy reexamination. Its remembering the spookiness of childhood, painting in a kind of Romantic spirit, but Romance painted with electricity and film dissolves and 70's television and bad dreams.<br />
<br />
I have always loved the novel "The Virgin Suicides" and it quite cleanly expresses this idea of memory- the way it haunts you and how <i>the way</i> you examine it says something about who you are. there is a fetishistic nature to it- we invest in life by remembering it in a certain light. we invest places and things and people with our memories and we imprint importance on to stray objects, photographs, people. distance in time makes the heart grow fonder, and weirder.<br />
<br />
its a reimagining, without revisionist trappings. revisionism makes me quite tired, really- i can't think of anything more horrible than trying to push it out garage '66 style anymore. there is so much lost in the translation, almost always- and a hamhanded grab for "what it was like" leaves so many colors out of the picture. and i probably wouldn't mind it so much if they didn't get it WRONG so much of the time. but that's just my secret snooty mod bitchery kicking into effect- too many nights at soul clubs watching the girls all dressed in what are really early 70's "New california" style frocks passed off as Quantism.<br />
<br />
i don't want to pretend i am in the past anymore.<br />
<br />
it looks better from HERE.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-80453618941220579652013-06-13T21:18:00.000-07:002013-06-13T21:18:56.888-07:00Brutalist.i have spoken before on here about my love for a certain kind of office or public building- and i realized today that i was, all along, talking about Brutalist architecture.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CTqXQuX9b34/UbqNuYy_FvI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/s_LcllFQm-Q/s1600/150D28CB-A4B7-F731-A7C5C6BA42C55F62.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CTqXQuX9b34/UbqNuYy_FvI/AAAAAAAAAMQ/s_LcllFQm-Q/s320/150D28CB-A4B7-F731-A7C5C6BA42C55F62.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wi15viOuHw8/UbqNtKtQiFI/AAAAAAAAAMA/cRoc43Xeh-Y/s1600/Bruterin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wi15viOuHw8/UbqNtKtQiFI/AAAAAAAAAMA/cRoc43Xeh-Y/s320/Bruterin.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GZgFENeIgaQ/UbqNtrcOMWI/AAAAAAAAAMI/I0425RAT1uA/s1600/brutalist-architecture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GZgFENeIgaQ/UbqNtrcOMWI/AAAAAAAAAMI/I0425RAT1uA/s320/brutalist-architecture.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qn6WU3Iv_OE/UbqNxIxFrVI/AAAAAAAAAMY/3TwOB25Gg8Q/s1600/Car_park_brutalist_architecture_Hanover_Germany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qn6WU3Iv_OE/UbqNxIxFrVI/AAAAAAAAAMY/3TwOB25Gg8Q/s320/Car_park_brutalist_architecture_Hanover_Germany.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M5XY9GrWjuw/UbqNx8QW_EI/AAAAAAAAAMo/hZmHUEBkdSU/s1600/neo-architecture-motart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M5XY9GrWjuw/UbqNx8QW_EI/AAAAAAAAAMo/hZmHUEBkdSU/s320/neo-architecture-motart.jpg" width="225" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
its good to name things, so that one can have a shorthand.<br />
<br />
Obviously the term "brutalist" implies a coldness, which is the one word that can sum up what many people dislike about buildings like these. There is a hyper-utilitarianism about them, a sense of facelessness. I understand that, but i don't feel the same way.<br />
<br />
When I lived in the east with my sister, I fell in love with one particular building in the small downtown area of the city where we lived. I just had a fascination for that building. one time i went inside of it, and to the top in the elevator. it felt like an adventure to me.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ukSrnE5_8UI/UbqSGJFopVI/AAAAAAAAANQ/SjZMc6CaaHo/s1600/IMG_5907.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ukSrnE5_8UI/UbqSGJFopVI/AAAAAAAAANQ/SjZMc6CaaHo/s320/IMG_5907.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-08bB_q5yg74/UbqSHfDtUfI/AAAAAAAAANk/4G8Bg0xMneg/s1600/IMG_5909.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-08bB_q5yg74/UbqSHfDtUfI/AAAAAAAAANk/4G8Bg0xMneg/s320/IMG_5909.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3n7cw_OeQ3Q/UbqSHJNhWbI/AAAAAAAAANc/L203aYz74hY/s1600/IMG_5910.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3n7cw_OeQ3Q/UbqSHJNhWbI/AAAAAAAAANc/L203aYz74hY/s320/IMG_5910.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
it isn't necessarily the modernist aspect of the buildings that get me. i would definitely say i have a deep love of clean lines, and in that respect, i am a modernist. but i also have a bend in my mentality that gravitates towards things that are EERIE. things that for others, would be disturbing, blot out the light.<br />
<br />
some of my first and best memories are of hearing ghost stories. my parents were great fans of telling stories about dead relatives calling their name, of the house down the road where a lady could be seen going to the well except she wasn't <i>really there</i>, the sound of a black panther screaming and how it sounded like a woman....and all the while you are with your family and you feel perfectly safe.<br />
<br />
just as a sexual fetishist gets a kink in his brain about penny loafers because something sexual melded at just the right time with two seemingly disparate things, so did i become always comforted by being spooked. as i child i used to WISH i could see a ghost, have prophetic dreams, have a UFO land in front of me on the railroad tracks. i remember being completely shocked in second grade when a fellow student who had been sitting listening to my ghost stories approached a teacher to ask her about ghosts, and she said, "there is no such thing". i was just dumbfounded. i really <i>believed</i> that everyone believed.<br />
<br />
with a head like that so many of the things i have loved over the years have had this flavor. its why broadcast and the focus group's ep "witch cults" is one of my all time favorite records. anything that takes me there, to that mysterious head of my childhood, where i was also an anglophile and imagined every rainy day I was in England- a place i know i wanted to go to from a very young age because of its claim to be the most haunted place on earth- those are the things i love the best. its why everything in the hauntological aesthetic seems like something taken out of my own private file. i think i have looked at things hauntologically in a very acute way my entire life.<br />
<br />
and that's why i love these buildings. there is a sense of woebegoneness, a sense of post-prosperity. and the sense of some of them having been public, meant for public use and empty at night, that just sets off all kinds of switches in my mind. the idea that something can be so BUSY during the day, and so literally forsaken at night.... what is that? Like the fashion district in downtown Los Angeles, a place that, upon discovering it, literally had me panting with excitement. it was like a made some sort of scientific discovery. to find streets that were COMPLETELY DARK in the middle of a huge city- no streetlights, no traffic lights, just row after row of buildings with the shutters pulled down- it just always hits me like a romance.<br />
<br />
someone should name that feeling.<br />
<br />
<br />The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-82625160532535570052013-05-18T03:00:00.000-07:002013-05-18T03:00:32.584-07:00the purity of mathematics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LBavpiZkojs/UZdJfB72BBI/AAAAAAAAALo/BYYgE7pH2ok/s1600/riddles-in-mathematics-detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LBavpiZkojs/UZdJfB72BBI/AAAAAAAAALo/BYYgE7pH2ok/s320/riddles-in-mathematics-detail.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
i never thought i would say it, but i have fallen in love with mathematics.<br />
<br />
the elegant little formulas for determining the slope of a line and graphing linear equations really began to drive it home for me. for a week i had been frightened of attempting my graphs homework and i sat there with the graph paper and my ruler for a couple of evenings trying to hammer into my mind why the hell anyone would want to graph an equation to solve it, or what the use would be.<br />
<br />
staring at it, and getting another take on if from a couple of other textbooks, i understood. and the beauty and wonder and sense of it all really made it on par with a great work of art. realizing its something like extrapolation- determining what is going to happen up the line- equated it in my mind with some kind of telepathy, with numbers.<br />
<br />
of course it isn't so mysterious- or is it? i find it amazing that anyone discovered these things at all. beyond that, realizing that we can determine so much about what can happen and what has happened simply using mathematics (not disregarding the Great Unknowable which is of course, immeasurable, probably) is just one of those things that is hitting me like poetry. it IS poetry.<br />
<br />
my greatest wish is that i could somehow light a spark in other artists, especially those who believed they could never learn math, on what makes it such a wonderful system that has made so much possible. its much like when i find a new band, or hear a great song that i want to share- i want to sit everyone down and graph out an equation and plot those points and then draw the line through it all to show the great symmetry of the system. matrixes are next on the list to learn, and visually they are so stunning that i have no doubt they will romance me in much the same way that graphing has.<br />
<br />
math textbooks have been a fetish of mine for quite a while- especially the old editions with their fantastic fonts and op-art illustrations that spark a moog soundtrack in your mind when you look at them. to actually be beginning to understand on a deep level the "why" and the "how" is just an added bonus i never thought i would get. its just so RESTFUL, when you know what you are doing, to sit down with a problem, especially the graphs or figuring a series circuit in parallel, and work them out. when you cross check and discover you have it right, i always want to do a little dance. and i have been, in that sense, dancing alot lately.<br />
<br />
perhaps one day i can teach this, demonstrate the poetry of it. because most math teachers didn't start out as artists, they started out with a natural affinity for the complexities of it and were able to get it quite easily. when you have had to literally claw your way to the barest understanding, it feels much sweeter, and its so much more exciting.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-61764723582254454952013-04-03T22:42:00.000-07:002013-11-11T00:48:16.685-08:00April 2013, Broadcast on the cover of "Shindig"!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k89yMdKLDfE/UV0Lb9MdczI/AAAAAAAAAK8/RqQRPmROxVk/s1600/SD32-200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k89yMdKLDfE/UV0Lb9MdczI/AAAAAAAAAK8/RqQRPmROxVk/s1600/SD32-200.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
I cradle a hope in my heart that Broadcast will one day go down as Legends.<br />
<br />
Its funny, because they gave me such hope in modern music that I actually seek out new bands now, something i had never done before (tho i have always been a deep digger of older obscurities). What's so funny about that is that the more new bands that i hear the better Broadcast becomes. I get a better understanding of the context and content of modern (and by modern i mean, 90's and up) music and i understand that my 20+ years of bitching about how modern music sucks was not terribly off the mark, actually. It just makes Broadcast a billion times more special.<br />
<br />
They are satisfying on so many levels. If you want spooky pastoral, they can take you there. If you want to move your ass, they can take you there as well. If you want freakout movie music, psychedelic dream pop, or avant garde experiments, they got it all.<br />
<br />
It is a bit frustrating for me that their biggest hit was "Come On Let's Go", which i have to count as probably my least favorite song of theirs. Not only does it not represent the guts they had, but it sounds like a compromise, something i am confident they never partook in.<br />
<br />
but that's what makes them great. here is a band who could make a pop hit, then go off and do something like "Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age", an album i would rather be mauled to death slowly by a pack of rabid wolves than consider living without. Of course, there were quite a few years between "Come On" and "Witch Cults", and its almost like juxtaposing "I wanna hold your hand" with "Sargeant Pepper". It simply didn't give you any clue as to where this band was gonna go.<br />
If i could force anyone to spend some time with one record, i would choose that one. There have been a few times with friends, late at night out in my outdoor psychedelic living room with the colored lights going and some good weed, and this record will be on and in one of the spooky moments someone will say, with a shiver, "Wow, this is really psychedelic". The way they say it always has a twinge of the fear in it, like how you feel when you are standing on the verge of a good hallucinogen. and the fact that Broadcast do this without relying on any of the trappings of the neo-psychedelisists like sitars or moany long-winded "The End" send-ups is quite amazing. For all their worship of The United States of America, french pop (Trish called Clothilde's sole LP her favorite album of all time and yes, it is bloody fantastic) and the sixties in general, no band in my mind has made those influences their own so deeply as they did while sidestepping the Antiques-Roadshow syndrome of so many sixties revisionists. Even in their early, Stereolab-worshipping days, they always came off as completely their own thing. The territory they traversed is completely their own.<br />
<br />
i recently heard a radio show from 2011 available on the archive.org, called "Goodbye Girl", which was a tribute to Trish after her death and also a look at the whole West Midlands hauntology "scene", if you want to call it that. Apart from the songs by Plone, Pram, and the older stuff (Basil Kirchen, the aforementioned USA etc), all the new bands they played absolutely blew. Then they would play a song by Broadcast and you were just blown away by how more fully realized their sound was. And not once did they mention the Ghost Box label, which just goes to show you how little they knew. The Focus Group is by far the best band on that label, but Belbury Poly are pretty good, and Hong Kong in the Sixties have a number or two that are decent. But Focus Group's "Sketches and Spells" is just gobsmacking, an essential companion to "Witch Cults", which Julian House (EXCELLENT graphic designer and cofounder of Ghost Box and sole man behind Focus Group") collaborated with them on.<br />
<br />
Of course, then she had to go off and fucking DIE, leaving a legacy unsung and so much work yet to be done. Yes, there was the soundtrack (fucking BRILLIANT) to "Berberian Sound Studio" and James Cargill (whom yes, i will admit to having a bit of a crush on, he IS a handsome lad) is putting together one last Broadcast LP from the tapes Trish left behind, which has to be a heartbreaker. Your woman and your band mate is dead and you get to stay behind curating. It takes alot of brawn to heft a load like that. I will buy twenty copies when it comes out, even if it is the worst record ever made.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, go and have a read at this. And if you are reading this, go and buy pretty much every damn thing this band ever did, and start with "Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age' and don't say I never did you any kindnesses. That is all.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-79289343489858923832013-02-23T20:28:00.001-08:002013-02-23T20:33:43.488-08:00the charm of the earnesti have a new addiction. musical websites belonging to extraordinarily ordinary people.<br />
<br />
I work as an assistant for a pro-audio reseller, and while looking up info one day about Omnichords (you gotta love you some Omnichords) i found a charming, and yes, <a href="http://www.popsmusic.com/" target="_blank">archaic website belonging to an older fellow who repairs and teaches classes</a> on these weird little machines.<br />
<br />
If you aren't familiar with an Omnichord, its sort of a user friendly electronic harpsichord with Casio underpinnings. You know what i mean- its got the built-in synth "waltz" beats, horrible yet wonderful electronic equivalents of things like flutes and trumpets- and its "FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!"<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y2fC78ORHPE/USmXhrGZugI/AAAAAAAAAKs/CPwbeY6lnns/s1600/51kCIgkMm+L._SL500_SS500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y2fC78ORHPE/USmXhrGZugI/AAAAAAAAAKs/CPwbeY6lnns/s400/51kCIgkMm+L._SL500_SS500_.jpg" width="296" /></a></div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Yes, really. </div>
<div class="" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The above is just one example of this family-friendly ethos that spawned quite a little library of horribly inappropriate (at least on my own snooty rarified esthetic grounds) songbooks aimed at middle America (and Canada too, probably). Its pretty bizarre considering this is the same instrument that can be heard in songs by people like (the beloved) Broadcast, Antenna, and Stereolab, to name a few... the same instrument that might just now, be accompanying a little old church choir in say, Florida. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
But I digress. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The websites. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Its an entirely new world for me. But I find people really the most fascinating thing of all. I have always been interested in true crime and the MOST fascinating thing for me has always been the victims, the little details of their lives, the things that perhaps led them to wind up on that street corner or at that bar on just That Night. In fact, if ordinary people wrote more books about their lives, that is probably all I would ever read. Nothing is too boring for me. I like hearing all the mundane details, where they grew up, their perspective on things like, say, UFOs, or physics, or Divine Judgement. Ordinary people are actually not at all ordinary. I discovered that after years of working at gas stations in the south- every one, but everyone, is interesting, <i>but they just don't know it. </i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
So, when you have someone who thinks of themselves as ordinary, who writes songs that you and I know (in our infinite and questionable wisdom) will never make the top 40, and then they make a website, what you have is a weird little corner of the Internet Multiverse. Its like the worldwide web equivalent of song poems- those "for a fee" songs that are being collected now by more obviously weird people like myself. Listen to 20 or 30 of those in an evening and regular music will start to sound patently ridiculous and even uninspired. Songs like "Moon Men" or "Jimmy Carter Says Yes" or "Octopus Woman Let Me Go"....songs written by people who work 9-5 for 30 years and raise families and tap out tunes on their Omnichords or Casios and write weird little poems that rhyme in clumsy ways... but somehow the end result is a weird kind of genius, completely and utterly devoid of guile, irony, or conventional talent. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
So I have been spending a good chunk of my free time just wandering around, looking for the right websites to turn that crank. A dead giveaway is really bad, Windows-95-era graphics. You know, the Angelfire-free-website-era graphics. Comic Sans font, some adverts placed at the bottom for cheaper insurance, choppily-scrolling pages, and of course, heaps of grammatical errors. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
It must be said, if it is not obvious, that I am not looking for comedy here. I am not laughing heartily at the stupidity or lack of sophistication of Joe Six Pack. I actually find it alot more interesting than the self-absorbed, esoteric hepster ramblings of someone who is a bit more "tuned in". I WANT to hear the thoughts and see the creativity of people who have, honest to god, probably have never even heard of the Velvet Underground. I already KNOW what people like ME think, pretty much- i have inhabited that landscape my whole life. And I live in Los Angeles, at an artist's collective and underground venue. I get vast boatloads of Hep and Irony on my plate every day. Something in me cries out sometimes for the ordinary, the naive, the guileless, for those that don't know any better. I find it supremely restful. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
A wonderful example of this is ...<a href="http://originalsongsite.com/songwriters07.html" target="_blank">THIS....</a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
and <a href="http://punkn.webs.com/garyforney.htm" target="_blank">this...</a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
and <a href="http://www.popsmusic.com/lennyzazick/index.html" target="_blank">this.</a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
The great thing about websites like the above is that they sometimes venture into some off-key territory. Check this out....<a href="http://originalsongsite.com/jesusinmind07.html#jesuspicture" target="_blank">see jesus in a rorshach</a>.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://punkn.webs.com/bonnieforney.htm" target="_blank">Or a woman suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder</a>.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
There is also the weird subset of websites that are "faith-based". Some of these are even better examples of what I am talking about, <a href="http://www.peggiesplace.com/" target="_blank">drenched in earnest appeals and canned piano gospel</a>, with the occasional <a href="http://www.peggiesplace.com/dessert6.htm" target="_blank">political diatribe</a> thrown in for good measure. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Again, this is not a clever mock, more like a sociological study. Do such people ever peer over the fence at US, the artsy, techy, above-it-all-types who salivate over Suicide boxsets and Can rereleases and blog about it on our Macs? Are they disturbed, or interested, or consider us godless? Have we all gotten too sophisticated, a little too steeped in our genre-fication and false depths? </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Then again, some of it is pretty funny. And we probably are godless, compared to Peggy. </div>
The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-62329341213041505812013-01-17T12:13:00.001-08:002013-01-17T12:13:22.145-08:00Summer, Missing <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cLQ4iBodlDo/UPhaeumzbPI/AAAAAAAAAJs/Fm1LOLpZgus/s1600/IMG_8052.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cLQ4iBodlDo/UPhaeumzbPI/AAAAAAAAAJs/Fm1LOLpZgus/s320/IMG_8052.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxOeH5qb8QE/UPhaidrxhPI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/32h86Fyni08/s1600/IMG_8058.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fxOeH5qb8QE/UPhaidrxhPI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/32h86Fyni08/s320/IMG_8058.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-piwLtt6uJAY/UPhay69HafI/AAAAAAAAAKE/m2T1Jhppo7E/s1600/IMG_8268.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-piwLtt6uJAY/UPhay69HafI/AAAAAAAAAKE/m2T1Jhppo7E/s320/IMG_8268.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kf3yAIt9-KI/UPha2MJsoOI/AAAAAAAAAKM/u6Y5kQJMO6M/s1600/IMG_8066.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kf3yAIt9-KI/UPha2MJsoOI/AAAAAAAAAKM/u6Y5kQJMO6M/s320/IMG_8066.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
photos from the california backcountry, near yosemite, 2012- lost with family in a golden valley. i miss them.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-37482125453131374842013-01-09T11:40:00.001-08:002013-01-09T11:42:34.837-08:00Berberian Sound StudioI have never waited with such anticipation on a film in my entire life. The concept, the soundtrack (beloved Broadcast), the whole giallo/library overtone-all of it was like porn, appealing to me on an almost animal level. Naturally, with such a buildup, there is bound to be disappointment, but I am happy to say that it is not nearly of the nature I expected.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-khO79H_hGf4/UO3IAhRtbMI/AAAAAAAAAJU/EWr7imHvFps/s1600/th.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-khO79H_hGf4/UO3IAhRtbMI/AAAAAAAAAJU/EWr7imHvFps/s1600/th.jpeg" /></a></div>
<br />
First off, you should know, THE ENDING SUCKS. There are a few things in history I would change, and this is one of them. Its almost unimaginable that such brilliance would end so unexpectedly, as if a reel were missing, but it did, and one is left with the rest of the film, which is no small consolation.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-emG6G833VXE/UO3IH0Pm2aI/AAAAAAAAAJc/55_E5Q-LhUE/s1600/review_BerberianSoundStudio.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-emG6G833VXE/UO3IH0Pm2aI/AAAAAAAAAJc/55_E5Q-LhUE/s320/review_BerberianSoundStudio.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
But up until that time, I have to say, I was utterly in thrall. Completely. I must use the word "porn" again as nothing else quite captures the salivating glory of seeing all those old sound machines, echoplexes, tape machines, VU meters, all the up-close-electronic ephemera interspersed with Broadcast's brilliant (HEAVILY brilliant) music. I mean, kill me, I die happy. My pulse would race when the frame would go black and all you could see was a red flash- "SILENZIO". Never in my life has a film been as delicious, as made-to-order for my own fascinations as this one. I was so enthralled that when the film ended it was like being upended out of a warm bed in the middle of the night with a flashlight in your face. Ergo, i was a bit pissed.<br />
<br />
But no matter. It satisfied even MORE than i thought it would, all the actors were brilliant, Toby Jones is fantastic, every frame is fantastic, except the end, and if it were food, I would have three courses of it and sneak to the fridge in the middle of the night in secret. Probably the only other film i can think of that I felt the same way for was "Performance", with its spooky overtones and nervous breakdowns and black legacy. It has definitely inflamed my desires, and i want nothing more out of life than to work with sound and vintage machines and see tape spool and spin on spindles in the middle of the night in a basement in a dodgy sound studio. that night world of vintage technology, the smell of solid state electronics, the hiss of the tape heads.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-61884962396291203242012-11-13T11:43:00.000-08:002012-11-13T11:43:09.127-08:00Radio Show-Night Fall's "The All Nighter"A more recent radio show, i think from the late seventies.<br />
"Night Fall" is a Canadian radio show that lasted for about a 100 episodes and is probably my second favorite series of all time. The shows tended to be a little weirder and stayed pretty clear of crime-drama territory, instead focusing on "Twilight-Zone"-esque scenarios. There are many favorites from this series but I find this one one of the most unsettling.<br />
<br />
The plot concerns an actress who also works nights in a 24-hour laundry. She notices a very strange man enter one night, and then disappear- and then discovers human flesh in the washing machine. Its one of those "WTF" plots that "NightFall" seems so fond of, and its actually unsettling besides. Download it <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?5au0w8a3yc5phzl" target="_blank">here.</a>The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-15982196581194324482012-11-12T13:44:00.001-08:002012-11-12T13:50:17.884-08:00Radio Show - Inner Sanctum's "The Lonely Sleep"Going to cultivate the habit of uploading my favorite creepy radio shows. Its a great sport for me to dig up forgotten series and listen to all of them and find the very best ones. I tend to get excited at new discoveries anyway, so I want to make a point of sharing and reviewing these.<br />
<br />
It should be said that I never listen to anything other than suspense/horror OTRs, and maybe sometimes a bit of sci-fi (tho i find it dull). The holy Grail is always to find something actually frightening, but ghoulish/noir will do as well.<br />
<br />
For the former I have no better example than the episode of Vanishing Point that I have posted on here, "Snow Shadow Area". If i could rent radio time, and play that 12 hours straight so that everyone gets scared out of their mind, i would. i'd like to see that one become a classic- its so incongruous, to find something like that and it be so unknown. its like seeing Larry Olivier in dinner theatre in Florida. Its still on here, if you are into it, go download it.<br />
<br />
This one falls into the "ghoulish/noir" category. "The Lonely Sleep" is an unusual entry for "Inner Sanctum", a show that excelled at promising more than it delivered. Experts in hyperbole, the show has become a bit of a classic, and i think its just because of sheer numbers. Thousands of episodes were produced while superior shows like Night Fall only did about a hundred. They simply outweigh most other series and i have found the vast majority of them to be simply overbaked crime dramas. But this time, it actually gets really weird, unbelievably weird actually, at least for the time. Hell, for any time.<br />
<br />
The story concerns a lonely young bachelor who can't stand to be laughed it. He eases his pain by spending time with his mannequins, and by mannequins, we mean, hmmm. Weird parallels between this character and Dennis Nielsen, the English serial killer whose motive could be summed up as "Killing for Company". Again, this one really gets a bit ghoulish and i bet the switchboards lit up after this one was aired, and the kiddies had a few nightmares.<br />
<br />
Something about this show is so clammy, so dark, its like finding one of those lurid "Hollywood Confidential" mags from the late 1940's about the Black Dahlia-all grainy and ghoulish and darker than you would think- and the pages are all crumbling and you feel like you need to wash your hands afterward. Naturally it strains credibility and the acting is over the top and all that, but still, its good spooky fun and you can get it <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?sa8mxodfltdsxdg" target="_blank">HERE.</a><br />
<br />
<br />The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-38120552948593896222012-11-09T21:58:00.000-08:002012-11-09T21:58:28.772-08:00When an artist becomes a scientist, and then, a wizardit is with great satisfaction that i report the near-finish of my first semester of college with straight A's and an entirely more fulsome (and fascinating) aspiration- to become an electrical engineer.<br />
<br />
its a very interesting experience, to be the person that i am, walking into this sort of world. electronics have fascinated me my whole life, but i was always frightened of it. and a scientific pursuit never occurred to me, in a million years. i had studied surveying for a brief time at a tech school, but the only other serious aspiration i ever pursued (that one would need a degree for) was french translation. art and the sheer act of creating always had a higher pull on me and always made it easy for me to just throw the conventional path aside and frankly i PREFERRED learning on my own. i always figured that i would just be an idiot savant for the rest of my life, an autodidact who learned in her own way, who pursued many paths but never strayed too far into the scientific realm.<br />
<br />
so it is with great interest that i find out how INTERESTING and BIZARRE the world of technology and especially electronics is. i am delighted to learn that no one really KNOWS what current is, or why a transistor works. all engineers and scientists know is how current behaves. they know that a transistor can amplify. but they don't know why. they can only hypothesize and direct it.<br />
<br />
and the fact that current is present everywhere, even within our bodies, can be somewhat tamed and observed reliably, does not diminish the weirdness of harnessing a mysterious force. and of course, the SOUNDS- the sounds are of prime importance. i could very well see focusing on sound exclusively, and the building of both sound and visual instruments has been on my mind for some time now. it is what pushed me into this field.<br />
<br />
when i look at the trajectory, i realize that the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and to an even greater degree, Broadcast, had everything to do with this bend in my aesthetics. combining the pastoral, the spooky and the electronic into one really upended much of where i was before then. there was this since of wanting to live in the past that i have completely abandoned. there is this realization that the new does not have to leave behind the past, and can combine with a wholly psychedelic future. that really led to me embracing technology in a way that is almost childlike. the fact that i became married to my laptop since i started making films didn't hurt either. i realized that things were possible that my archaic aesthetics had never considered before. that, while i may have wanted to live in 1966, i couldn't have done nearly what i had accomplished artistically in those days that i could now. all of that led into discovering a treasure trove of electronic (NOT HOUSE, or TECHNO) music, and that led into wanting to build instruments, learning about circuit bending, and then signing up for an electronics certificate, and then really finding out what it means to be an engineer and work with truly mysterious, yet concrete forces.<br />
<br />
in our lab one day in school, we made a two tone oscillator. it just brought it all home for me like a ton of bricks. hearing those tones emanating out of all those breadboards delighted me. i heard the silver apples and broadcast and stereolab in those tones. even watching the humble LED's light up when you wire something right makes me reel with delight. HERE is something that you can sink your teeth into. this isn't like parapsychology or the occult or literature or art. it isn't speculative. it isn't abstract. it is a mound of immutable laws wrapped in riddles. it is a toy that you can play with, a color you can paint with. it makes sound and it can make things light up. it can detect and spin and do what you tell it, when you speak its language. and its language is in resistors and ohm's law and potentiometers and schematics. its a SCIENCE, and science can be an art- but art cannot be a science. it can only be informed and shaped by science. art is all variables, all possibilities. if a circuit were purely art, it could not transmit its information. there is an exactitude, a sense of having to work on the Force's terms, which i find intoxicating. i have to be BENT into that shape. i can't just flow around it and "intuit" it. it demands study and everything done correctly. but when you do that, you can create something completely unique, and truly artistic.<br />
<br />The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-8834688670184573112012-08-21T11:04:00.003-07:002012-08-21T11:04:32.803-07:00"Tears in the Typing Pool"- NEW BROADCAST VIDEOthe guilt i have been feeling regarding my 6 months of broadcast-video-drought has been rather painful for me. it hasn't been as if i have laid about and done sweet F.A., for i have been extremely busy working and moving and doing many shows. but still it nagged at me. i hate setting out to do something - especially something in tribute- and then failing. I have resolved to get back on the horse and ALWAYS have one that I am working on, even if i only work on it for a half hour a week. so that is why i not only finished this one, i also am nearly finished with a video for "Lights Out", which should be posted at the end of the week.<br />
<br />
Really proud of this one, as I vowed to use NO fx, no fancy transitions, and keep it simple, as befits the song. its one of my favorites and its quite melancholy and reminds me of very sad times in my life. I think it was easy to do this time because my life is NOT sad, thereby making it easier for me to connect with the source footage ("The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner", great film).<br />
<br />
I am just happy to be doing what i say i will do, at last, again. Watch it <a href="http://youtu.be/s4PLr80DJVc" target="_blank">here. </a>The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-40158774389118249562012-07-25T11:54:00.000-07:002012-07-25T11:54:32.471-07:00ApologiesI am really quite sad that the blog and my video channel have completely gotten out from under me. It isn't for lack of creativity, as I am busier than ever, but the solitary pursuits like the Broadcast project and the studies have been totally neglected. I have only made one new mix in 6 months. That's what happens when you have shows almost every weekend and are trying to create content to keep up with it all.<br />
<br />
I fondly think back to the 8 months I had where all I seemed to do was take long walks, spend all evening working on whatever I chose, and had a normal job. Normality is quite derided. But I value it more and more as only someone who has spent so much of their life living the uncertain artists' life. Regular hours can be good for the soul. Too much of anything- be it wacky artsy unpredictability or stultifying regularity- is too much.<br />
<br />
I think I have gotten myself to a point where I can begin the personal projects again. I will be starting school in late August, and that shall be a special priority. But before then I really want to get back in that groove. My own personal creative stuff makes me just as happy as the public, and I miss it. SO before the end of the week there shall be some new stuff on this blog, the channel, or both. I don't humor myself into thinking too many care, but at least if I write it down this way then there is the shame factor of the public statement. One must follow through. And no shows this weekend. It will practically be a vacation.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694984176684756907.post-1359192455566918652012-05-07T01:44:00.002-07:002012-05-07T01:45:35.334-07:00Study Number 5- Dark Office<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1J1kYT5-yIQ/T6eCXQ2ttcI/AAAAAAAAAIs/nJs9QMUfHL0/s1600/the+dark+office+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1J1kYT5-yIQ/T6eCXQ2ttcI/AAAAAAAAAIs/nJs9QMUfHL0/s320/the+dark+office+cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
A long time coming, but I have a good excuse, moving cross the country and whatnot.<br />
<br />
This is the 5th study and a labor of love that started months ago. I wanted to somehow visually and sonically elucidate my love of nighttime office architecture, old archaic mainframe machines, and electronic soundscapes. That led me to making dozens and dozens of new clips and create an entirely new sort of working esthetic that somehow left the actual creation of the study as secondary. I have been swimming in old electronics advertisements, abandoned office footage, and various other vintage admin ephemera for months. This is the result. Download the study in its entirety (with cd artwork, track listings, and five minute visual loop and instructions) <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/n7r3wh8dd9885pr/Dark_Office_.zip" target="_blank">here.</a> Comments are welcome.The Mystery Machinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420875304642798840noreply@blogger.com8