 |
| MAIN | SEARCH / ARCHIVES / NOTES | RSS |
« April 2006 |
Main
| June 2006 »
Saw SUNN O))), the minimal metal band, last night. Last Sunday there was a huge article about them in The New York Times which I suspect might dash my hopes for them joining the lineup for one of the nights at Carnegie Hall I’m curating next February. But who knows? I expected a sell out last night as a result of that article, but I guess the Times demographic and the audience for extremely loud minimal metal has a small overlap. I can see the Venn diagram in my mind.
The opening act, Boris, was similar to SUNN O))), though much less rigorous in their minimalism and visual presentation. Some prefer their less extreme approach.
Well, it’s not the sort of music you go home humming to yourself. It’s a sensory assault — intense and strangely pleasurable (I wore earplugs). Most of all, it’s theater, well conceived and beautifully executed — and in perfect context (this club venue was a former church). It is also deeply ritualistic.
The stage is cleared before the band enters. There is no drum set or anything else on stage, just a semicircular wall of massive amps across the entire stage, with one amp swiveled slightly to allow the players to enter — this “door” would later be shut behind them. (Here’s a phone picture)
A bit of dry ice smoke wafted across the bare stage and what looked like 6 Sith Lords entered carrying guitars (one guy went to a little Moog set up on the side). Without an introduction the “show” began: a deep throb and rumble that grew in volume and, at given signals, there were added tones and changes in the harmonics around the central deep tone.
As there were no drums the rhythm was present, but more a felt slow pulse than a groove. Heavy is putting it mildly. It could easily tip over into camp or parody, but it never does. Like standing next to a jet engine, it’s no joke.
I thought of Tony Conrad, La Monte Young and other extreme minimal modernist composers from decades ago. Young attempted to insert a bit of theater into his presentations, but never came close to the power of this. I thought of global warming (again), the melting icecaps, the earthquake in Java, the Mayan ruins in Yucatan, computer viruses, government surveillance eating itself from the inside out, Donald Rumsfeld’s mind, ant colonies, big science, Jesus’ dick, Mary’s cunt, and the McDonald's meal a suicide bomber ate, minutes before detonation.
This is contemporary theater.
Here is a photo from a NY Times article on a Northern California company that specializes in games and content for mobile phones. The CEO and founder of the company, Trip Hawkins (is that a movie name or what?), stands center. Looks like he spends time at the gym — and at personal grooming.
The guys slouched around him — overweight, balding slobs — are the guys who, I presume, do the grunt work in the company. If ever there was an image of animal social hierarchy this is it.
Leaving the social implications of the image aside, Mr. Hawkins is quoted in the article as saying “Content is just a means to an end, so there’s something to talk about”.
I presume this means that the stuff they are selling to have on your phone, for example, will function as a means of social interchange, interaction and conversation. Yes, certainly a software & site called The Hook Up sounds like it is a means to an end and that includes some sort of interchange — of fluids, I suspect. And one can imagine water cooler conversations about the latest episode of Lost, soon to be available to view on your phone. So yes, sometimes it’s very clear that content facilitates linking with others. Ummm. Do people really talk about their Super Mario scores with each other?
Does that mean everything we create — every book, painting, song — is simply (or complexly) an excuse for a chat up, some networking, or for establishing and sorting out a social hierarchy?
Hmmm. That’s a helluva lot of work to get laid, but it’s not that farfetched, I guess. I’m reading Miller’s (mentioned above) book “The Mating Mind” now and he proposes something similar — that much of our evolved brainpower and creativity is a refined part of the mating dance — though my nutshell version here might be kinda oversimplifying things…as might Mr. Hawkins.
Saw Al Gore on a Wired Magazine-sponsored panel discussion at Town Hall last week. He was good, though not as thought-provoking as James Hansen, a scientist on the same panel. Gore timed this appearance to coincide with the film on global warming made around his slide talk called An Inconvenient Truth. I saw the film last night and it is devastating — and incontrovertible. At Town Hall Gore mainly speechified — his comments were like live excerpts from the filmed slide presentation — but although some spontaneity was lost what he has to say was real, important, and he’s justifiably passionate about it. In the movie, for some reason, there was more emotion in his voice. Maybe it was the editing and the juxtaposition of the background images. Sometimes what you see changes what your hear, and vice versa. But regardless of who was saying this, or how, it needs to be heard.
The movie theater (Sunshine) was packed, there was applause at the end of the movie and Paramount asked those leaving to fill out a card — which to me implies a possible wider release. It is something everyone in this country should see. Gore mostly avoids political harping, so even Republicans might give a listen, although I overheard the man behind me as I was exiting say to his companion “propaganda”.
Propaganda it may be, but it’s reality based propaganda at least. I think Gore presents the facts in an orderly and understandable way, interspersed with moments of pure and personal emotion — well, if you can extrapolate from scientific facts to obvious personal and social consequences then it is indeed deeply emotional. And the images — even the graphs and diagrams — tap some potent buttons, as they should.
It was not all doom and gloom — the ending presents a ray of hope, but hope only if there is the political will to implement change. (Which scientist Hansen pointed out was indeed the case with fluorocarbons — the ozone hole problem is being turned around! So it can be done) I won’t go into details on all of it, it’s all on their website — but all the usual criticisms — “green policies will wreck the economy” (gee, Bush has been doing pretty good at wrecking the economy without being green at all!) — “it’s just a “theory” — “it’s a normal cyclical event”…are all dealt with.
Props to my friends at Wired for supporting this — Chris Anderson proposed a branding — “neo-green” — which, even if the wording changes, seems viable — it leaves behind the images of spaced out hippies, kooks and freaks and replaces them with possible remedies that are economically sound and technically hip. Re-branding green makes everyone who denies that global warming is human induced and is going to be devastating seem like a bunch of losers headed for the human landfill.
Example: Here is Florida (green part) after a 6 meter rise in water level (Greenland ice sheet slips off, as it seems to be doing frighteningly quickly). Maybe that Miami real estate wasn’t such a good idea?
Of course, by the time this happens all kinds of other shit will be going down, so the refugees from South Beach will be a minor issue. This could happen within our lifetime.
I hope this movie triggers some serious thought and action on this issue, otherwise…I have just finished the Jared Diamond book, Collapse, and, yes, it could happen here.
Eve, below, might still be around after a global collapse, though her batteries would have run down. Nice eye contact, Eve.
May 15, 2006—She can hold a conversation, make eye contact [uh huh], and express joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness. These school-age tots seem to be making friends with EveR-1, a female android that made her debut this month in South Korea. The robot was built by Baeg Moon-hong, a senior researcher with the Division for Applied Robot Technology at the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH). Fifteen motors underneath her silicon skin allow her to express a limited range of emotions, and a 400-word vocabulary enables her to hold a simple conversation.
The android weighs 110 pounds (50 kilograms) and would stand 5 feet, 3 inches (160 centimeters) tall—if she could stand. EveR-1 can move her arms and hands, but her lower half is immobile.
KITECH scientists are now working on EveR-2, which they say will have improved vision, a wider range of facial expressions, and the ability to stand and move all four limbs.
The recent leak from inside AT&T says that the Bush “secret security” arm known as the NSA have access to all AT&T customers’ phone connections — not just logs of who called whom, but they can tap anyone, anytime. The other large service providers no doubt caved in to NSA pressure as well, so pretty much no one is safe from the prying ears of the Bush Crewe. (Being illegal, will the phone companies at some point be indicted? It’s illegal to open personal mail, isn’t it?) Will be interesting if the “small government” Republicans roll over for this one in the name of national security. One also wonders how many more illegal taps and activities these folks can get away with by pressing the buttons “terrorists are coming to get you” “homeland security” and “it’s for your own good”.
Given the track record of the Bush bunch they will most likely be very unsuccessful at what they have branded homeland security and will use this access as a way of intimidating and destroying political and ideological opponents. It’s too easy to resist. It’s like handing someone a gun and saying don’t use it. George, it will be remembered, failed at every business he was handed — including an oil company! Why almost half the country thought a failure as a businessman could magically learn to run a nation is beyond me. Thinking from the gut, I guess, as Steve Colbert put it.
Alternatively, I would suggest that if our leaders are allowed to pry into our lives we should have the same access to theirs. There is nothing, except sheer power, that says they are more trustworthy than we are. If anything we know that closeness to power makes them candidates for untrustworthiness. If the FBI is allowed to indiscriminately read a Senator's mail and correspondence then that Senator should be allowed to access the intimate and personal Whitehouse and FBI correspondence.
Sexy Evolution
“Are we still evolving?” asks a recent article in New Scientist. A touchy question, for a positive answer implies that some of us are more “evolved” than others. Uh oh. We’d like to believe in the myth that we were all created equal, but if there isn’t enough evidence to prove that we are not now there soon will be. The intent of that inspirational adage, I believe, was that we are equal in the eyes of the law. Our opportunities and rights are equal. Not that we all have the same hair color or are equally blessed with skills or abilities.
Now those who may be more “evolved” than others — carrying genes that make them better suited for the geography and society in which they live — but they may only be “better” in the sense of being more suited to a particular place and situation. In this sense evolution is relative, up to a point. In an odd environment something altogether freaky is more suited, more evolved, but clearly that creature may not be of much use anywhere else. A fish out of water is a dead fish.
It is still considered evolution if the species as a whole becomes stupider. Evolved does not mean “better”, there are no value judgments attached, we add and presume those ourselves.
Among recent evidence for continuing evolution are the Ashkenazi Jews. It seems that possibly as a result of being banned from many labor and work opportunities over the last 1000 years, this mainly Eastern European gene pool has evolved a higher than average intelligence (12-15 points higher than average). The blowback from repression is the creation of a super race. Poetic justice of a twisted sort.
Other evidence:
Gene CCR5-Δ32 a gene found in certain parts of Africa affords some protection against HIV.
Gene DRD4 is the dopamine receptor gene. It has become more common in the last few thousand years. It is positively selected for, so it will probably become even more common as time goes by. It is also associated with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity. Why humans should evolve FAVORING those conditions is still a mystery. My guess is that those conditions are the flip side of a genetic coin whose face side offers a more obvious suitability and advantage and, being linked on the same gene, you unfortunately get the bad along with the good. Aren’t the dopamine receptors also somehow related to the pleasure centers of the brain?
This could also be like the schizophrenia/creativity link mentioned in an earlier posting, or the genius-geek/autism link. A taste of Fugue gives a nice buzz, but too much and it’s your last meal.
Speaking of pleasure, some (Geoffrey Miller) propose that sexual rather than natural selection is the new driving force in evolution, in humans at least. Natural selection is about simple survival — the mere possibility of being physically able to pass on your genes. Now, Miller suggests, we are much pickier about whom we mate with. All creatures are somewhat picky — doing their best when making a choice to determine the odds of siring successful offspring. Courtship displays are often viewed as elaborate demonstrations of health, commitment and suitability. “Choose me!”
But now, Miller suggests, we have evolved to a whole new plateau. The social and even online connections and interactions among people and populations mean that a person can choose from a shop with a wider and deeper selection. People tend to connect with others who are like them, physically, mentally, financially — and the global and local mixing and interconnecting of recent centuries facilitates (and encourages?) extreme pickiness. People now CHOOSE how they will evolve — if the mating dance can be called a choice. It shifts human evolution into turbo drive rather than stopping it, as had been suggested would happen when it seemed we and our children would all more or less have an equal chance of “surviving”.
Washington DC.
Pulling into Baltimore. The backs of factories. Kudzu. Honeysuckle. Sumac with its fuzzy branches. Billboards for televangelists. Chain link fences. Garbage. Old tires and rusty truck parts. Identical streets of identical row houses — workers housing, I realize. Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical Research Center looms out of a landscape of boarded up row houses. Warehouses. An “I Love You Baby Doll” billboard. Parking lots and truck yards.
Then, suddenly, we’re out of town. Herons skim wetlands and brackish water. East coast second growth forest — skinny little trees, densely packed.
On the train I can heart the faint cacophony of many distant cell phone rings. Snippets of Mozart and hip-hop, old school rings and pop song fragments — all emanating out of miniscule phone speakers. All tinkling away, here and there. All are incredibly poor reproductions of other music — these are “signs” for other music. Music not meant to be actually listened to as music, but to remind you of and refer to other, more real, music. They are audio road signs that proclaim “I am a Mozart person” or “I can’t even be bothered to select a ring tone”. A modern symphony of music that is not music but asks that you remember music.
Went to a screening of Cameron Jaime’s videos accompanied by live bands last night. The bands were The Melvins and Keijii Haino so it was excruciatingly loud. Noise metal minimalism. The videos are of odd rituals from here and there — backyard wrestling in Michigan, a hot dog eating contest at Coney Island, a Joan of Arc procession in France and Kranky Klaus Christmas “festivities” in either Germany or Austria. All were accompanied by the live musicians who produce loud portentous rumbles, roars and pounding, signifying momentous epic events. It was well attended by the Chelsea art crowd, as Jamie’s videos are included in the Whitney Biennial.
A great idea to present the videos this way. The editing, and they are edited, unlike some art films, is far from tight — everything goes on a bit too long for my taste — but with the live music it all becomes more about the general atmosphere and presenting a thesis than it is about didactic understanding. The videos presented together are a thesis that all these cultural phenomena are tied together in lurching towards a slightly silly chthonic apocalypse. Viewed solely as filmmaking they might seem a bit weak, but presented as an experience they are a much better visual accompaniment to this music than the usual smoke and colored lights. And vice versa. In addition, the combination of sound and image has that (simple) point to make, though I would argue that the bringer of the apocalypse will actually be all smiles and charm, good intentions and noble deeds, and the snarling whirlwind will only be unleashed when it is too late. The devil will look like Jerry Falwell, Martha Stewart or Tony Roberts and not like a metal band — who only sometimes hurt themselves.
Other videos and films with live music I’ve seen recently are Bill Morrison’s Descasia and the old Panleve poetic nature docs accompanied by Yo La Tengo. All and all, it’s often a mutually beneficial joining of forces.
There are those who mourn the vanishing of the nice big cardboard packages that vinyl came in. The format allowed fairly large images, credits, and photos. The usual assumption is that much of this imagery, like music videos, is a reflection of, and extension of, the music creator’s sensibility. As if the packaging and the videos were usually under the direct control of the author. This is absurd. Though pop artists attempted to wrestle control of the way they were presented from the distributors beginning in the 60s, most LPs design, and music videos as well, are directed and designed under the control of the record companies. Here are some obvious examples:
We tend to remember the exceptions to this rule.
We also tend to link things that aren’t really connected. It’s a neural tendency that probably has some very useful and practical applications, but these assumptions also lead us to make connections that are imaginary and unjustified. We connect the typefaces and designs of some fairly arbitrarily designed LP covers to the music inside that we know and love, as if the images actually embody some part of the music. Well, OK, if you want to be picky about it you probably can tell something about James Brown by his choice of footwear as seen on that LP sleeve. But you learn nothing about the Kinks from their sleeve. Our sense of the author and the music being represented and embodied graphically is imaginary. We see the music and its package as all of a piece. This of course is what good packaging does. Salty snacks and washing detergents are sold mostly based on their brightly colored packaging. Most people don’t make this assumption about books — we don’t assume that the cover of a book is a visual representation of the writing, as imagined by the author, but with music we sometimes do make this leap. Hence the love of LP sleeves… and even CD booklets.
I imagine that record companies in the 60s realized that selling to a new market — one that saw itself as hip beyond the generic record sleeves then prevalent, a new demographic who saw itself as outside and distinct from the mainstream — would require some new approaches to design. They, the record companies, realized that to make a credible product for this reluctant market the inclusion of the bizarre and funky imagery made by their graphic pals was probably essential. In addition, the music artists themselves began to demand control over their own sleeves, when they realized that they could.
Not all of this newly seized artistic control was a good thing. There were a lot of atrocious sleeves done by boyfriends, girlfriends and arty schoolmates. We prefer to remember Pedro Bell, represented on the amazing Funkadelic sleeves, Cal Schenkel’s Mothers of Invention sleeves (but his cover for Burnt Weeny Sandwich was originally done for an Eric Dolphy LP! — So much for identifying the cover art with the music) slightly more recently Factory records sleeves done by Peter Saville, the 4AD sleeves by Vaughn Oliver (all of which were pretty interchangeable from one musical group to another) and many blingarific hip hop covers in the last decade.
In the case of Factory, 4AD and many others — the covers were not even done for specific artists and recordings — so our sense that the art was connected and embodied to the music is imaginary. With the Snoop cover above it is easy to see how the vibe of the music is expanded and sold via the artwork. The whole self parody (I assume) and appropriation of symbols of wealth along with the don’t fuck with me doggies tells you how to approach the music, sort of. Though another artist could also be substituted here and it would work just as well. (What is Snoop’s arm resting on? Is that a microwave oven?)
We presume these connections — author to package — with cultural products in ways we don’t with other stuff. No one stares enraptured at a Downy bottle while doing the laundry or at a Progresso can while opening a can of soup — there is no “author” behind these packages. We are alienated from the creator in most industrial age mass-produced products. Imagine a pre industrial economy — it might be reasonable to presume that the craftsman who made it, whatever it is, can be sensed in the product. Maybe this is what we sense to some tiny extent in recorded music. A longed for human connection. Sensing this connection, this link, un-alienates us. The (sometimes) imaginary connection between the author and the packaging of his or her product is not in fact a direct link. It is a marketing button that the sales people have learned to press, over and over.
They have sensed the brains tendency to link a package with author and have exploited that neurological hiccup, that need to feel less alienated.
Now, all this is going away. It will be a thing of the past as most music is purchased or listened to online and stored on an iPod or a computer. There is sometimes thumbnail sized artwork to accompany downloads, but let’s be serious, that’s not what attracted you to the recording and you don’t ID this artwork with the music. It’s not what attracted your eye as covers did while flipping through LPs or CDs in a store. These thumbnail images are not the through line between the video, the print ad, the billboard and the CD cover. There are residual versions, but for how long?
Lots of people will miss these olde objects of veneration — even CDs will be missed. The photos and the lyrics, the liner notes, the credits, shout outs and thanks can be perused in a comfy chair while the music plays — you don’t have to be at your computer screen to savor the graphics and text.
But downloads could offer so much more. They could be an opportunity to expand the experience rather than a whittling away of the music/image connection. For less than the price of printing those sleeves and CD booklets you could get slideshows, photos, videos, bios, credits, lyrics, merch…. some of this stuff could play on your MP3 player along with the music, the rest could be on your computer to view or print out. You could get way more than could ever fit on a dinky little CD booklet. The LP sleeve was a package, a square billboard advertising the record. Now it is possible to connect this material to the music, but it is no longer packaging in the physical sense. It is liberated, in a way.
Music didn’t always come in packages that presumed to represent the contents. Originally what you as a music consumer could buy was sheet music — which sometimes had the picture of the singer on the cover. Later, recordings — cylinders and 78s — usually came in generic sleeves. Only in the 50s with the advent of the Long Player did packaging that included large breasted women and snazzy typography become commonplace. The era of graphically packaged music may have had about a 50-year run.
But the era of music bundled with multimedia may have just begun.
I don’t shop at iTunes because they limit what I can do with the stuff I pay for. I buy loads of CDs still. But I rarely go into record shops. I read about them, hear word of mouth, an artist is recommended or linked to on a website and rarely but sometimes there is an image — usually online these days — that draws me in. So the function of the image as an attention getter on the actual package is pretty much obsolete. I would argue that even the recessive minimal design of much alt pop packaging is attention getting as well. Reverse psychology they used to call it.
These covers don’t try to shout above the visual din, they whisper quietly, vaguely passive aggressively, and hope to attract and seduce us that way. Partly because their function as billboards is lessened they are freer to be arty and moody.
Now, with cable TV and the Internet, the marketing of mainstream music takes place in a whirlwind of media bits. Gossip, paparazzi pix, photo opportunities and appearances and even some actual music is the content. In a way this bundle that constitutes mainstream music begins to establish a model that could be the future of recorded music — that the recordings are the “loss leaders” for everything else. Loss leaders are the taste of a product you give away free in order to lead someone into your world. PDF software could be viewed that way, flash players, etc. And now maybe free recorded music will be the thing that hooks you into the universe of Britney, Ashley or the Ying Yang Twins. The music will be your introduction into a universe of merch, relationships, video clips, links, on and on.
The role of graphic designers will change. Rather than being called upon to create one or two iconic images that are emblematic of an artist and a new product their job will be to imagine sets of links, connections and relationships…. and to make those visually enticing, fun and rewarding. I can’t imagine what exactly that might be, but it will be whole lot more than LP sleeves.
Recent research and discoveries connecting chemistry and love:
• Yes, Always. Prairie voles are monogamous and meadow voles are not. However, by injecting meadow voles with a virus that “carries” the prairie vole gene to the meadow vole’s brain, the meadow vole becomes monogamous. Ladies, take note.
But vice versa — if prairie voles are given drugs that block their vasopressin receptors they become as promiscuous as their meadow cousins. Dudes!
• Trust Me. Oxytocin is a chemical intimately related to emotions and sex. Its levels rise after orgasm in women, during arousal in men (note the timing difference) and the levels rise even from touching and massage (Kevin Costner, read on.) Oxytocin also boosts trust. Given a whiff of oxytocin spray, hypothetical “investors” would hand over all their money to anonymous “trustees” with no guarantee of return. Kenneth Lay, please hand over your aerosol can.
• Bad Judgment. Left on our own we tend to select partners who have a set of genes known as the MHC complex that are dissimilar to our own. Pairing these different gene sets produces healthier offspring. It is thought we do this by scent. (Here’s to sensory abilities we didn’t know we had.) However, women on the pill tend to select men whose MHC is the same as their own. Something gets blocked or short-circuited. They make what is not necessarily the best choice…but, they won’t have a child anyway, so it all evens out.
• It’s Dope. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter whose levels rise when we fall in love. The levels also rise when we snort coke or pop amphetamines…or exercise. (That’s why the long bike ride I took the other day was such fun! And that’s why jocks are, well, jocks.) This does not answer the question “does dopamine ‘cause’ love?...or is it just a by-product?”
• Chocolate. The neurotransmitter phenylethylamine (PEA) is also known as the “love” molecule. It induces “excitement and apprehension” according to the magazine New Scientist. Sounds like a roller coaster ride if you ask me, and maybe that’s not a coincidence. PEA is also found in chocolate and its levels also rise when you exercise. So, when I jog am I getting a little bit of that loved up feeling and is that good or bad for my personal life? The ancient Maya valued chocolate (cocoa pods) possibly more than gold.
To be honest, the prospect of oxytocin sprays and chocolate flavored PEA drops is frightening (and tempting). It’s hard enough out there without chemicals clouding the issue even more. And what happens when some scam artists and white-collar crooks get a hold of this stuff — if they haven’t already? I see a counter-development of substances that can tell if your “friend” is using, spraying, or not. Sort of a Breathalyzer test for love potions.
The head of the CIA has stepped down and a new guy has been nominated. The press goes on and on about “the beleaguered agency” and their faulty intelligence. But I seem to remember the CIA warning the Bush administration NOT to use the intelligence and information that the Bush Krew planned and did use to support their WoMD justification for the invasion. It was a case of data mining — the Bush Bunch used whatever data, however faulty, they could find to support their made-in-advance-plans — the “facts” were selected to fit the policy, as the Downing Street memo made clear. Then, when caught with their pants down, they made the CIA the fall guy and the U.S. press curiously fails to remind us that it was the administration who promoted the erroneous intelligence, not the CIA. Is the press STILL afraid to call Bush and Co. on their lies? Far be it for me to hold up the CIA — toppler of numerous democratic governments — as a paragon of truth and virtue — but in this case I think they are being treated unfairly.
Saw "The Road To Guantanamo" last night — it was a screening — it will be out in June, I think. Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross directed. It’s the story of the Tipton 3, and it’s great, absolutely amazing.
I vaguely remember this story being in the news. The Tipton 3 are three Pakistani Brits who happened to be in Afghanistan when the U.S. began bombing and were stupid or unlucky enough to be picked up by the Northern Alliance (enemies of the Taliban and therefore allied with the U.S.) and were then turned over as bounty to the U.S. ground troops.
These poor lads barely survive their capture by the Northern countrymen — many others around them die like cattle. Before long they are passed on to the Americans and they think their troubles are over. Think again. They are likewise beaten and abused by the U.S. “intelligence” dudes. Soon enough they are spirited away to Gitmo for further torture and further questioning.
I don’t have to go into the details of what was done to them — it’s all on the record (though the U.S. military and Republicans say they are lying.) Theirs was maybe the first unimpeachable unofficial testimony of what was going on in there. Not as bad as Abu Ghraib, but still illegal, stupid, counterproductive (these lads were politicized by what was done to them) and, maybe saddest of all — completely incompetent and useless. Almost none of the hundreds of “informants” know anything and most are innocent — just like these lads — the abuse and rendition of prisoners like these is a recruiting poster for terrorist groups worldwide. It actually creates the enemies it is trying to eliminate.
The film intercuts the real guys and docudrama recreations of their story — creatively a risky move. But as the decision was to recreate everything in scrupulous detail as described by the boys it comes across as one gripping super bad trip rather than as a dogmatic anti-Bush diatribe.
Here is one lad:
I thought the film mainly concentrated on their tragic and stupid story rather than insisting on political points — the lads on lark are as dumb as Beavis and Butthead, and their journey through Hell has almost no rhyme of reason. They could be ordinary American lads who one night get a little too palsy with Tony Soprano’s daughter and find themselves in a nightmare they could never imagine. The Americans are just lads too, as dumb as dirt and full of righteous bluster. Looking at the film still below I am reminded of the adage that when one turns one’s enemies into non-human things, then anything is possible. The head shaving and the bags over the heads are essential if one seeks emotional and physical revenge for a wrong.
City of Little Factories
Did the 5 Boro Bike Tour this morning. 42 miles! I thought I’d be more tired at the end than I am. It’s loads of fun. People in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island put signs in their yards and cheer the crowds of bikers on. The organizers close the FDR drive, the BQE, the Belt Parkway and the Verrazano-Narrows bridge on one side — so we get the thrill of riding in the middle of the street, not having to stop at red lights and no worries of the ubiquitous jaywalking peds on suicide missions.
Occasionally there are rest areas where they give out free bananas and water (and candy bars and peanut butter crackers sometimes.) One rest stop was mandatory — so things don’t get too spread out, I guess. There was lots of spandex, way way too much spandex.
9:30AM — The view to Randall’s Island under a RR bridge:
12 Noon — Riding over the Varrazano:
Of course, some guys (and gals) are little behind on their bike courtesy — or maybe they are trying to prove how manly they are — to both themselves and everyone else. So there was some high speed zooming and jockeying for meaningless leads — but mostly there was a great feeling of civic togetherness — which sounds corny and clichéd, and it is, but that’s what it was.
Maybe it was the route — the longest parts of the route go through waterfront neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens — but it gave one the impression that the old nutty industrial city that NY once was still exists. These neighborhoods are an endless series of little factories that make plastic wrapping, cardboard boxes, Ex-Lax, coat hangers, hairbrushes and, of course, wooden water tanks. Sure, some neighborhoods like Williamsburg are filling up with art galleries and bookshops, others are all Hasidic or Italian, but mostly the waterfront is still funky factories — a million miles from the industrial parks, high tech campuses and corporate headquarters that we see out west. These are factories on a small scale, sometimes family run. These are the places that make those widgets that you look at and think, “who thought of that?” “who designed that?”
Mama Weer All Crazee Now
The Whitechapel Gallery in London currently has a show featuring “outsider” art paired with art by somewhat obsessive and slightly loony “insiders”. An insider usually means “accepted by museums, galleries and art critics” while outsider means “we are not sure this belongs here, but have a look.” It also sometimes means self-taught and probably insane. The pairing is, I imagine, meant to give the outsiders some validation by virtue of the visual similarity of their work to that of accepted professionals. The assumption being that it needs this validation, that it can’t stand on its own. Oddly enough, the pairing sometimes has the opposite effect — it makes the professionals look like fake lunatics.
Of course these comparisons beg the question, what is sanity and does being functional make you a better artist? Full disclosure: I don’t think so — but then, I think a stain on the sidewalk or a blob of construction insulation has the equal value of some Picassos.
Functional to me is the key word. Not sanity. Many “sophisticated” and successful gallery artists are quite mad, lost in their own worlds and emotional wrecks — but they do know how to navigate the shoals and reefs of the art world. Well, a bit. They can compose and posture themselves sufficiently to get by, to talk the talk and walk the walk… though they also might be drooling drug addicts and conversational incompetents. Some of these observations come from personal experience — art dinners and openings.
I’m not sure I know anyone, anyone at all, who is completely sane. Sure, I know plenty of people who play the sanity game with skill and daring. Their masks of having it together are well secured and they don’t spit out profanities or stare goggle-eyed into space. But they are mad, too, though maybe, I’ll admit, to a lesser degree than the poor souls who can’t help but constantly express themselves visually.
The poor “outsiders” never learned or mastered these social skills. Even a would-be self-marketer like Howard Finster never quite got that part right — either the preaching got in the way or he didn’t realize that in the art world one can’t be seen as simply hawking one’s wares — there’s an elaborate song and dance involved that veils the sales pitch, and that must be mastered. But one can be mad, self-obsessed, believe in other worlds and the influence of supernatural forces.
Sophisticated artists who can draw better often intentionally draw in a primitive manner — Paul Klee, Basquiat, Twombly, Dubuffet — and they are seen as deep and profound. Yet the poor “outsiders” are left outside the clubhouse doing the very best they can. They are often viewed as lesser artists because their lack of exhibited drafting skill was not their choice. This, to me, seems perverse. I enjoy much of the work of the 4 very successful artists mentioned above, but probably what moves me is when any of them touch something deep that we all have in common — and the “outsiders” sometimes resonate those same deep dark parts of ourselves. The difference is they can’t remove themselves from the experience and step back and away from it. To distance oneself, to feign objectivity — this, then, is the mark of a civilized artist. A useful, possibly essential social skill to have — but not, in my opinion, a criterion by which to judge the work.
|
