8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Strange Days Indeed

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A tale of many protests: Steve McQueen, a filmmaker not shy of raising thorny topics, has curated a photography exhibition titled “Resistance.” Ths show, on display at the Turner Contemporary in Southeast England, showcases 100 years of protest in the UK stating with 1903’s suffrage protests to those in 2003 reacting against the Iraq War. Photography remains important in creating awareness and inspiring others to join in as they empathize with the activists depicted. Clarrie Wallis, the director of Turner Contemporary and McQueen’s co-curator: “Many grassroots photographers and community activists were using photography not just to document protest but also to shape their own narratives and build solidarity networks.”

The problem now is how the power of photography to incite gets sapped by a proliferation of digitally created or altered imagery. I’m not just talking about AI fakes that denigrate protesters. Well-meaning images created to further activism and causes but merely mimicking scenes of real life inadvertently lessen the emotional call-to-action of actual protest photography. This is where the questioning of reality results in the complacency of confusion, something we’re already seeing in our everyday discourse.

Another barrier is the criminalization of peaceful protest. But if peaceful protest is now a crime, then why not do actual crimes? That’s where we’ve ended up, a place that no one—and by that, I mean everyone—saw coming. Here’s The Guardian speaking with an anonymous source from the activist group Shut the System (STS):

“We vow to wage a campaign of sabotage targeting the tools, property and machinery of those most responsible for global warming, escalating until they accept our demands for an end to all support for fossil fuel expansion.”
[…]
He said new laws further criminalising disruptive protests had made traditional, accountable methods of activism increasingly unsustainable, and a clandestine approach increasingly attractive.

The article describes recent actions, including covert protesters in France filling the holes of golf courses with cement. We here at the blog absolutely do not condone illegal activities, but, if we ever did, I think we may have found a winner.

Anyway, the article, titled ‘‘A new phase’: why climate activists are turning to sabotage instead of protest,’ reads like one of the short chapters in the first half of Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent The Ministry for the Future.

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1992 was an odd time for cult bands like Television. What marketing execs called alternative rock somehow hit paydirt, and bands were getting signed to corporate labels like these bands were going out of style. Kurt Cobain wears a Daniel Johnston shirt? Well, shit, let’s give Johnston a deal with Atlantic Records based on that. Strange days, indeed.

This also meant that bands of huge influence and small sales figures were repeatedly name-checked in Rolling Stone interviews by these newly minted major label bands. Television was certainly one of those name-checked groups—I mean, R.E.M. might be more responsible for their reformation than anyone if we’re honest. There were all sorts of hell-freezing-over reformations happening during this period. Even the Velvet Underground got back together! Television’s reformation album, despite the too-crisp production and uneven though mostly good material, is still one of the highlights of this ‘return of the cult bands’ era.

On Television’s self-titled 1992 reunion album, it’s “1880 or So” that excites most. The song opens the album and gives the impression that we might stay put in Marquee Moon territory for the original lineup’s first venture in 14 years. The following track, “Shane, She Wrote This,” puts that hope to rest, easing comfortably into the mode of Verlaine’s reasonable solo work. Should we feel guilty for wanting Television to step back and sound like four guys making music in 1977?

Oh, it doesn’t matter. “1880 or So” is a brilliant song, one of this quartet’s best, and I’m thankful for it. The remainder of Television, though mostly not as receptive to CBGB’s era nostalgia, is also made up of fine songs. Look—there’s Richard Lloyd, here with Tom for the first time in a while, responding with spidery guitar riffs and textural string work like nothing on the vintage albums. You can’t ask for a better guitar pairing than this. I’m not exactly a supporter of guitar heroics, but I could listen to these two bouncing off each other for hours. Worth revisiting, no doubt about it.

suspicions of provenance

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Hakobune‘s guitar is processed like one hundred Guthries, ringing with reverb abandon as chords stretch into warm, elongated vibrations. The 2019 album Rain Studies is a full-spectrum affair; it alternately plays and washes away intruding sounds. Its CTwins-spirit is best transmitted on “Tenkyuu,” which sounds like muting everything but a single guitar track on Victorialand‘s mixing desk.

I suppose these comparisons are a little unfair. I feel I’m projecting my influences onto Hakobune, the Tokyo-based sound artist who also goes by Takahiro Yorifuji. But, in a way, the guitar is baggage, and a limited sound palette is never free of suspicions of provenance.

Hakobune strikes me as a guitarist falling under the spell of electronic drone music but opting for the novocaine instead of the noise. Rain Studies could refer to the mix knob on a reverb unit pushed all the way to ‘wet,’ but it’s also chilling (both interpretations accepted), like rainfall. “Tenkyuu” is the difference—the other tracks simply blend as one liquid sheet supplants another. No doubt these ‘studies’ were recorded as the rain fell outside, watched through a drizzled window as the guitar reflected and chimed its accompanying song.

On the periphery, John Coulthart wrote about echo guitars, an initial attempt at a ‘Young Person’s Guide.’ He mentions the Watkins Copicat, developed in the late ’50s and arguably the first independent tape-loop-based echo unit. A chance encounter inspired UK music gear innovator Charlie Watkins to explore the possibilities of tape echo:

… a pair of customers, returning from a visit to Italy, [regaled] Watkins with talk of a performance they’d seen there. The singer Marino Marini, who was enjoying a worldwide hit with his cover of Dominico Modugno’s hit “Volare,” had run his microphone through a pair of reel-to-reel recorders with one continuous tape loop rolling between them to recreate his distinctive vocal echo. The sound had knocked their socks off. *

The Copicat followed, as did an influence on musical styles like surf rock and the kosmische exploits of Manuel Göttsching and many others. The popular Echoplex emerged alongside other tape delay machines, leading further outward to dub and studio-as-instrument forms.

In my Spotlight On interview with David J, I remarked that my favorite sound might be a tape echo filtering away into infinity. David signaled his agreement.

Pierced With Lasers

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Eyesore! That’s the chant around these parts. My right eye (previously) was pierced with lasers the other day in preparation for next week’s big surgical procedure. Tiny little holes. Visually, I don’t quite notice—my eyesight in that eye was rotten to begin with—but there is a dull throb around the eyeball that’s making things a tad difficult. It’s not terrible or even painful. It’s persistent.

“Do you want to be awake for the procedure?” the surgeon asked. How many patients choose sleep? “It’s like half-and-half. Usually the ones with anxiety.” Surprisingly, I don’t get anxious about things like this, so I decided I’ll stay awake. I want to retain the experience of this unimaginable thing taking place. Does that sound crazy to you? Just over a year ago I had the first procedure which—spoiler alert—eventually turned into a failure. But I was awake—heavily drugged, but awake—and I enjoyed it! I felt like Dave Bowman getting swept into the Jovian Monolith. The colored lights were awesome.

In the meantime, here I am maintaining this blog with a throbbing right orb, but blog I must. There’s a lot going on besides the sight-related. I’m in the middle of editing an extensive interview with one of the two folks behind what’s probably my favorite album of 2023. That will appear here, signaling more features to come on digable artists (sound and otherwise). I’m playing around with the new MEMORA8ILIA blog, though I’m having trouble with its dark mode. I’m thinking a lot about what’s next for the record label and leaning toward that ‘next’ looking very different. And this week’s Spotlight On podcast is out, and it features Nic Dembling who was in a late ’70s outfit called Comateens. They orbited the CBGBs bands everyone talks about when discussing that scene, but Comateens were there, too, and Nic has fun insight on all of that.

In other anticipations, this movie looks fantastic.

via The New York Times:

Los Angeles and its sounds are pivotal to “The Tuba Thieves.” All kinds of noises, welcome or not, make it into the movie: the crackling of fires, the roar of traffic and, above all, the repeated sound of overhead airplanes, a constant background pollution for residents near the airport. In contrast, there’s silence, represented by a re-creation of the 1952 Woodstock, N.Y., premiere of John Cage’s infamous “4’33,” in which a pianist simply sits in front of the piano silently turning pages for four minutes and 33 seconds, opening and closing the keyboard lid to signal the beginning and ending of the piece’s three movements. Apparently irritated by the spectacle, a man leaves and stomps out into the woods, only to be captured by the sounds of nature around him.

I spun the musical wheel and happened upon Night Places, a three-song EP1It’s still longer than the first Van Halen album, though from Rose. There’s no information about this artist anywhere, dammit, though ‘they’—there are two figures on the cover art, so I’m assuming here—have released music for at least a decade. Oakland’s exceptional Constellation Tatsu imprint is a key collaborator.

These cuts exhibit that swirly head trip stuff anchored by out-of-focus rhythms that feed sustenance to my 8-sided veins. Admittedly, the first track, “Phosphorene,” doesn’t do much for me, and I can’t put my finger on why. Perhaps it aims hopefully at a dancefloor with too much intention.2The most effective dance music is the least intentionally so. That’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. But the latter two-thirds of this EP excel in a Dave Bowman flying into the Jovian Monolith kind of way. “The Searing” opens with a distant foghorn over bouncy thuds. The wash of sound builds pleasantly like a tide gently rolling in, and soon, we’re gliding. Then, the last few minutes are a rhapsodic freefall. And I’d like to imagine the title track’s name is a play on Tones On Tails’ Night Music—they mined similar territories of mixing the light and dark—but I’m content to visit these dream fields throughout the day. Though, yes, this tune, in particular, is a more fitting venture when broadcast outside of sunlight.

Rose’s music is crafted. That’s the word that popped into my head as I listened. It’s deliberate—not the same as intentional—and patient. Music like this connects so much for me: shoegaze, (deeper than) deep house, ambient, and aspirations of inner calmness. I feel it’s experimental in ways that a lot of experimental music isn’t, in that disparate threads tie together without exposing the knots. Night Places tickles my brain in ways that only music like this does. If you understand what I’m talking about, then please send more in my direction.

Side note: I just noticed the entire Constellation Tatsu discography is $20 on Bandcamp at the moment. That’s the kind of crazy talk you should immediately converse with.

Creature Feature

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I have some curatorial notes today. Memora8ilia, the “filing cabinet for 8sided.blog,” is presently hosted on Tumblr. I’m in the process of moving it to a self-hosted site, at which point I’ll get more active with it. I’m not necessarily moving it off Tumblr due to recent controversies. However, that does serve as a reminder that when we rely on other platforms to present our creative work, problematic associations can (and probably will) happen.

Memora8ilia is meant to be a place where I store cool things I find on the web in case I want to find them again. It’s inspired, in part, by Warren Ellis’s LTD blog, which is his “writer’s notebook” and daily log that we, his readers, are allowed to access. Warren logs what he’s reading, watching, and hearing, as well as updates on how his garden is faring (a source of both his joy and frustration). He often checks in with his morning status and what his workload looks like for the day. Warren claims the people he works with can use that status to gauge how slammed and accessible he is at any time. I won’t go as far as posting my status, though. For one thing, the people who I work with should always consider me slammed and pretty much inaccessible lol.

Memora8ilia’s just fun stuff, and you’re welcome to follow along. Sometimes, things I briefly add to the Memora8ilia filing cabinet stick in my brain, and they work their way over to this site. That process is interesting, and I like having a record of it happening. So, look for that to pop over to its new home soon. I don’t think I can transfer the Tumblr site posts over to the new one (which will be a WordPress thing). It’ll be a fresh start. I’ll keep the Tumblr archive up and create a post at the top with a redirect once the change occurs.

More curation? This Beginner’s Guide to Chinese Shoegaze, courtesy of Concrete Avalanche, is so uplifting it makes my entire body tingle. And Simon Reynolds dropped a blog post about the “two kinds of early electronic composition and musique concrete that I really really love, and can’t get enough of” and helpfully supplied embedded YouTube examples. Your Discogs want list just got a lot bigger. On the niche (my kind of niche!) side of things, check out Harvard’s Davis Center Library Poster Collection, solely featuring digitized “Soviet posters dating from 1919 to the 1990s.” Be still my heart.

There’s also the music I am posting in these blog entries, whose curation, from the outside, appears a bit higgledy-piggledy. Well, posting only the latest music isn’t something I’m that concerned about. That’s a good thing because, as this blog goes through its long pauses, the music piles up. This particular pile consists of music I’ve purchased on Bandcamp with the intention of mentioning on the blog and releases sent to my inbox by kind and understanding labels and artists. I’ve thrown all this music in a folder, and when it’s time to concoct a post here, I use my handy-dandy randomizer and see what it pulls out. Surprise!

Today, I rolled a 244, and that points me to Andrew Edward Brown’s “Her Rescue.” Andrew is a Los Angeles-based via Philadelphia producer who also records under the alias Champion Soul and in the collaborative project Andy & Sasa. “Her Rescue” is one of the tracks found on Mr.Brown’s Studio Sessions Volume 3, an EP released by Strange But Soulful (could be a little stranger, tbh). The other cuts on the EP aren’t my thing, but “Her Rescue” has a hazy simplicity that harks to that time when techno producers were loudly proclaiming jazz bona fides. “Her Rescue” has all those elements: a gently percolating synth sequence, four-fingered chords on analog gear, and spacey treble strings, all riding on a kick drum shaker cycle. There’s saxophone, too, but I don’t mind as it’s reverbed and restrained and works a lot better than the Blade Runner love theme. This stuff is real fuckin’ sexy, just like you asked.

I also want to take some time to pour one out for Creature, AKA Creature Feature Double Feature, pictured at the top in a senselessly abstracted portrait. This exceptional cat, who enjoyed giving me determined head butts at three in the morning as I was fast asleep, was a part of our household for 17 years. Impressive! And a couple of days ago, he decided to wander off into the good night, likely not to be seen again. That fellow never had an awful day in his life — especially that day when he caught a squirrel (bad Creature!) — so our sadness is tempered by the appreciation that anyone could be so lucky to have 17 wonderful consecutive years. Off you go, sir, and farewell.

Time Travel, Expressed

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I should talk about my podcast work. It’s going well! My main gig is the Spotlight On podcast, hosted by music industry vet and erudite interviewer Lawrence Peryer (LP). Several months ago, I was promoted (I suppose that’s the word—it’s a two-man operation) from editor to full-on producer/manager of the show. That means I’m handling nearly everything outside of hosting.

I’m having a blast and am thankful that I’m working on such a terrific podcast. I’m always learning, a state I strive for in any project I take on. In addition to production and marketing duties, I suggest and book some of the musician guests, but LP tracks down the majority, who are mostly new to me. Fortunately, LP’s musical taste converges nicely with mine, so I’m discovering loads of new artists through the podcast.

This week’s guest is the German jazz drummer Mareike Wiening. This is my first encounter with her, and I am digging her jazz tidings. Check this out:

Mareike Wiening on drums, abstract photo

You can listen to her episode and all the others from the Spotlight On webpage. Or, if you want to be a superstar in my book, subscribe via wherever you get your podcasts.

Pro tip: Be sure to peruse the show notes. Compiling show notes is one of my favorite chores, and I give them a lot more attention than I probably should. I always slide in links to one or two fantastic articles or things tangentially related to the show.

A few months ago, there was a last-minute guest cancellation, so I became the guest. LP and I freeformed for a bit and released our gab session as an episode. I’ll embed it below as it’s found nowhere else on this blog, and I think it’s a fun chat. Some hot takes (well, ok—more like lukewarm) get dropped, too.

Another thing I’ll embed today is Opening Space, an album from Open Spaces on the Oakland-based ambient label Constellation Tatsu. Its Bandcamp release date of March 3, 2020, may seem prescient—mere days before the initial pandemic lockdowns—as producer and audio engineer Chris Hancock explores placing his music in imaginary environments. It wouldn’t be long before contemplating environments outside of our four walls was a hot new trend.

Open Spaces, the project name, designates Chris’s experiments in 360 audio, including heady-sounding technologies like, as noted on his blog, “binaural recording and ambisonic spatialisation software.” The opening track—”Opening Spaces,” natch—is a salvo of an example, flitting bird songs right out of Herzog’s jungle accompany a warm, harmonium-like drone before nature gets reversed. Time travel, expressed best as sonic art form.

The album continues to mine and develop these notions with gently pulsing drone work and elegantly located sound markers. “Compassion” adds distant percussion booms and a seemingly improvised but effective dream vocal from Michelle McCosker for a piece that made me think of Dead Can Dance warming up at soundcheck. And then “Some days are easier than others” (caps absconded) opens things up with a string-plucked motif driving a polite but shady crawl. In the last third, additional melodies and bass lines subtly appear and wash the clouds away with peeks of sunlight. It’s a generous production on its own merit, but it must have sounded downright ebullient in its time within the confines of closed-in spaces.

Brightly Transmitted Influences

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Today, I’m listening to Im Fünfminutentakt, an album by the enigmatic act Fred und Luna released last April. In playful press releases, Fred und Luna are purported to be moon-based explorers observing and commenting on Earthly activities through the language of music. This set-up, along with a synthesized and intentional retro sound that those same press releases refer to as “elektrokraut,” signals the kind of thing I’d often shy away from. But Im Fünfminutentakt is a terrific album.

Fred und Luna owe much to Kraftwerk and the electronic German music of the Kosimche ’70s. But where the album excels is when those brightly transmitted influences are stylistically fiddled with. Im Fünfminutentakt‘s first three tracks are what I’m talking about: there’s “Aurum C,” a bubbling, motorik album intro, and “Nur ein Viertelstündchen,” which brings to mind a becalmed take on New Order’s “Your Silent Face”—itself a Kraftwerk tribute. But the standout is the song sandwiched in between those two. “Es ist so schön”—”It is so beautiful”—is a fancy female/male duet that’s one part new wave dancefloor in restraint, one part affected Weimar torch song, and one part Cluster foolin’ around. It vibes for days and sounds like what hopeful young American couples imagine Europe to be like.

Im Fünfminutentakt and Fred und Luna first grabbed my attention when this album was released, but the reason I’m commenting on it now is less felicitous. Fred und Luna was one person, a creative hustle and bustle by the name of Rainer Buchmüller. In addition to creating the music of Fred Und Luna and performing/DJ’ing under that name, Rainer is also listed as a poet and record store owner—two identities perhaps even more financially challenging than professional musician. The sad news over the wire this week is that Rainer succumbed to cancer and is no longer with us.

Rainer was obviously harboring expertise and indebtedness to the strain of German music lovingly referred to as Krautrock. Not only do the recordings of Fred und Luna wear this proud lineage on their sonic sleeves, but Rainer was involved in Future Sounds of Kraut, a compilation series released via Compost Records. The aim is to highlight the latest crop of German artists (though not exclusively so) that are carrying the Krautrock torch into our modern age. Volume 1, embedded below, is well worth a listen. Volume 2, already completed, is due on March 1. Rainer Buchmüller did not live to see its release, but I am thankful he was able to complete the project.

Time’s running out, my friends. Stay focused on the things and people you love.

Elongated Installations

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This morning, I took a photo of the sunrise over my backyard lake. I used to do this almost every day—my sunrise diary. But I also used to get up a lot earlier. These days, I’m in bed until 7:30-ish, which is seriously sleeping in compared to my routine a few months back. These aches and pains, combined with the cold weather, are making it tougher to catch the sunrise, but these photos remain an aspiration. How many sunrises can one see in a life? It’s worth seeing as many as you can.

I’m amused by another barometer of time due to the recent attention given to the performance of John Cage’s “As Slow As Possible” (or, originally, “Organ2/ASLSP”) at the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt, Germany. The performance began in 2001, nine years after Cage’s death, and the church’s organ is scheduled to stop playing in 2640. This length is based on the age of the oldest keyboard instrument — 639 years — at the time of the project’s conception. Temporal reflection is the goal, as is the draw of a special kind of nerdy tourist to the town of Halberstadt.

There are other elongated installations that comment on humankind’s mere blip on the great timeline. Pogues member Jem Finer’s “Longplayer” beats out “As Slow As Possible,” beginning a year earlier and performing its computer-generated synthesis of sound well into 2999. There’s also Danny Hillis’s The Clock of the Long Now, associated with The Long Now Foundation, as well as the unexpected alliance of Bezos and Eno. Presently under construction, it’s assumed to sit within its mountainous Texas dirt hole and periodically chime over 10,000 years.

The idea is to encourage long-term thinking. Very long-term thinking. One can hope contemplation on the organ’s final note fading into the middle of the 27th century might inspire more people to consider future generations for the sake of our resources, our efforts at sustainability, and planning out our lives within a community of species. But, watching the video of the changing of the note at St. Burchardi church, you’ll see folks staring with anticipation and applauding enthusiastically as the next organ pipe finally bellows its tone. They are completely in the ‘now,’ not the ‘long.’ “As Slow As Possible,” probably to Cage’s discomfort if he knew, has become a series of sudden spectacles.

All this long-term contemplation makes me crave something speedy. So, I’m dipping into the catalog of the eclectic Icelandic label Móatún 7 for a split single from Futuregrapher and Self Oscillate. It’s what we kids called drum n’ bass when we probably should have just said ‘jungle.’ I know nothing about either of these artists, but they’ve made an enjoyable attempt at frenetically percussive riddim music. Futuregrapher’s “Dominika” has a nostalgic appeal with a fairly traditional use of that ‘Amen’ business over synthy whisps, moans, and sighs. Midway into the track, an acid riff appears out of nowhere, like someone accidentally hit the wrong patch on the softsynth. But it’s brief, and it works—and I don’t like acid riffs, so hey. As interesting as that is, Self Oscillate does one better with the slinky “Gatekeeper,” sounding a little like if Photek were obsessed with film noir instead of Wuxia movies. The tune is spare, mostly chunky hi-tension drums, frequent sub-frequency dives, and a repeating half-measure bass line. I’m not sure how these cuts stand up to the rampant innovation of jungle’s heyday, but for this split single’s year of release (2019), I think they did just fine.

Noise Annoys

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You may be familiar with a derisive term said in film circles: homework movies. This phrase refers to influential achievements in cinema that one doesn’t necessarily enjoy but are requirements for students of film history. Your mileage may vary here; some consider Citizen Kane the most obvious example of a ‘homework movie,’ but I find it quite enjoyable.

We don’t need to debate how most of Jean-Luc Godard‘s films feel like homework. Since the mid-60s, his movies have increasingly pummeled audiences with literary references, philosophical quotations, and fiery polemics. Even the most seasoned fans and expert critics of the French New Wave openly admit Godard often vaults far above their heads. I’m no exception.

This begs the question: why keep watching something you aren’t sure you like, much less understand? Watching and admiring while shrugging for explanations opens us to accusations of pretension or bandwagoning. Somehow partaking in inscrutable films like Godard’s is taken as its own performance.

And that’s cool. To insist that everyone, or even anyone, should sit and watch Godard, especially his later films, is a ridiculous proposition. Besides the earlier touchstones, Godard’s movies are of a taste one can’t acquire. You either savor the exercise of watching his difficult cinema or you don’t. No harm, no foul. 

But it’s not like we claim these films are difficult for everyone but us. I mean, I don’t feel superior or enlightened watching Godard’s Film Socialisme. Quite the opposite! However, it does make my brain feel like a muddy automobile subjected to an intense car wash before driving back out into the mud. And the parts connected to my eyes and ears got extra squeegeed. 

As you may have guessed, Godard’s death and a Criterion Channel subscription inspired me to dive into the filmmaker’s infamous later work over the past few weeks. It’s been a trip. I wasn’t sure how to approach this ‘homework,’ but then I read Roger Ebert’s suggestion that the key to later Godard is to succumb to his world: 

One single Godard film seems accidental. But if you see half a dozen, you begin to get a sense of his universe. You see themes introduced, developed, worked out, discarded and then later satirized.

You can’t watch these alongside other movies (or compare them, god forbid) because he aims to rip cinema apart at the seams. I’ve been watching the later films in a row, and I feel like I’m ‘getting’ them by seeing them together, though that doesn’t mean I’m also not frustrated and exasperated. It’s all part of viewing Godard as he lets ‘er rip.

I also think it’s vital to understand all of his films are ‘meta’ — from Breathless on — in that they reflect what he’s wondering about at the time. They’re not autobiographical; they’re the act of someone trying to figure things out and not settling on a worldview. I don’t think Godard is sure about anything in his films, even the bold pronouncements. It’s telling that one can read multiple reviews and essays on, say, The Image Book, and they’ll each tell you the movie is about something completely different. These movies show Godard loudly wondering, trying on ideas to see how they fit, and letting the public continue the discourse. What a fascinating thing. Richard Hell elaborates: 

Godard is willing to do something in a movie just to see what happens if he tries it. He can be boring in the exercise of his full freedom, but you can’t have one without the other, and I want them like nothing else.

As problematic as Godard was, I came away from these last films seeing him as an inspirational figure. He persisted and remained uncompromised until his demise at 91. His work is so hated and hatable, mostly because he didn’t give a fuck right to the end. I mean, Godard inflicted Cannes juries with films so dense and furious and, yes, incomparable that they had no choice but to create a prize for him. 

I talk a lot about punk rock on this blog, mainly in the context of autonomy and a strict DIY ethos. Godard was all that, but he also spit out punk rock in its more identifiable ‘two fingers in the air’ flavor. I’m trying hard to think of any accepted figures of the punk world who walk the talk into senior citizen status. I guess some of the Crass folks are still communally living in the woods, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with any others off the top of my head.

I can’t say I love love love Godard (very few do). And he’s not one of my favorite filmmakers. But I’ve become inspired by my journey through his most iconoclastic work. Just as the punk rockers inspired others to pick up guitars and bash away, Godard’s 21st-century films, made up of barely connected visual and audio collages, have me thinking about making weird little movies. Godard shot footage on a camera phone in Goodbye To Language, so why can’t I? That these films provide an imaginative impulse is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give. 

Note: This post was inspired by and contains parts of a recent exchange on Mastodon.

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The spirit of Godard’s uncompromising nose-thumbing/rules are made to be broken/commercial appeal be damned attitude has thrived in the noisier, improvised edges of the DIY musical arts since the accessibility of home recording. And Drone Bone recalls the early excitement of a time when PortaStudios ignited the garages of suburban noisemakers. Their self-titled exercise pairs Adrian Orange (of Thanksgiving and Adrian Orange and Her Band) and Ashby Mary Collinson for a seat-of-the-pants session recorded in 2007, now reissued by Brooklyn’s Perpetual Doom outfit. Ashby Mary is knocking riffs on the Wurlitzer in a fashion that recalls Suicide‘s repetitions, and Adrian is credited with drums and guitar. This all sounds live and on the spot, but I’m assuming the guitar was overdubbed unless Adrian plays drums and guitar simultaneously (I’m not entirely discounting that possibility).

“Drone Bone was born out of sheer restlessness,” writes Ashby Mary. It sounds like it! Some songs begin with the duo’s conversations as they quickly decide how to begin before barreling right into the racket. The music (and some of you may doubt that designation) is ramshackle and rambling, but the point is the joy of creative collaboration without expectation or preconception. I’m not even sure there was a plan. But there’s a great sense of release in these tracks, and you might find it exhilarating, sort of like how I felt when I first heard Jandek records or Daniel Johnston cassettes in the ’80s. Those fractured vibrations inspired teenage me to rattle a suburban garage of my own, and hearing Drone Bone makes me hopeful that its listeners’ next-door neighbors will not be pleased.

And the Heart Grows Fonder

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My eyes are a mess. You probably already know this. Funny thing: I’ve only been admitted to a hospital once — at the age of 12, I stabbed my leg with a knife while building a tree fort on Christmas Eve — and still have all my organs. That includes my tonsils, my appendix, and even my wisdom teeth. I often joke that I’ll probably get hit with everything all at once, as if my maladies have been biding their time. I couldn’t have predicted that it would all go to my eyes.

I’ve always had an outrageous astigmatism, but in my late 30s, the condition graduated to outright keratoconus. Then there’s this double vision, requiring expensive prism lenses on the glasses I wear in addition to the keratoconus correcting contacts. And now I’m dealing with fucking Fuchs’ Dystrophy. I’ve noticed a haze in my right eye that I first chalked up to foggy contacts. But, of course, I live in the armpit of humid central Florida, where fogged-out lenses are a way of life. But then the haze — now resembling a light gauze — became noticeable without my contacts. This state of affairs also made driving impossible at night, as oncoming cars’ headlights made the gauze in my eye burst into an unattractive light show. 

Thanks to a superb new optometrist, the Fuchs’ was identified. She referred me to a specialist who explained the condition would get much worse in no time at all. The two options were a cornea transplant — sorry, nope, for reasons I won’t go into — or a new procedure that involved scraping the Fuchs’ out of my eyeball. Yikes, but okay, sure.

I had this procedure about a month ago. It went smoothly. Supposedly the surgery is just like a cataract removal (if that’s a helpful frame of reference) — I was awake, somewhat sedated, and didn’t feel a thing. It looked like I was watching a stationary version of the light tunnel at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey as the doctor performed the surgery. 

For the first couple of weeks, my eye felt like an eyelash got trapped on the surface. An awful feeling, especially as this was an eyelash that wouldn’t budge. And half those days, the feeling was accompanied by a faucet of tears. I went through multiple boxes of tissue. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t watch movies, and I could barely look at anything for long.

Now all that is thankfully over, though looking through my right eye is like peering through the bottom of a drinking glass. This fuzziness should fade to normal eyesight in several weeks. And I have to drip exotic eye drops ordered from Japan into my socket four times a day. The drops have something to do with stem cell growth. Unfortunately, they’re expensive and only available in Japan as the procedure performed on me is so new. So I had to order a pack of these eye drop bottles months in advance.

It’s a slow process, and it’s slowing me down. I’m constantly fighting off frustration as I fall behind on projects and work. These past months have felt like a deep pit, from hurricanes creating a wake of chaos to my bout with COVID that turned into weeks and weeks of godawful exhaustion, and then this eye biz. There’s so much I want to do (like post all the time on this blog!), but I feel captured in the sticky web of inconvenience. 

I’m finally prying myself loose. I’m still way behind on my work stuff (and please accept my heartfelt apologies if you’re someone I work with), but for the first time in ages, I’m experiencing motivation. More than anything, I want to write and ramp up my creative output. It’s as if the period of incapacitation has made the heart grow fonder. So I’ve devised plans and goals for this blog that are inspiring. I’ll detail them in an upcoming Ballad of the Blog post.

These months have also been a learning experience and a lesson in not beating oneself up. I’ve had lots of practice with self-blame during these challenges, and I’ve come out the other side more accepting and less debilitated. Anne Helen Petersen had a similar epiphany in today’s Culture Study newsletter, which I highly recommend you read. Ann imagines what her weekend would be like if she had completed all of her work tasks: 

The work would’ve been done. But I’ve already tried that whittled-down version of a life, and it’s not a life at all. It’s a burnout trap, a suffocation, a flattening of self. Sure, I’d have completed all the work, done all the tasks, finished all the laundry. But to what end? And to what future? The next weekend would come, and I’d feel some semblance of control, which I may or may not have been able to carry over into the week. But achieving control is not the same as achieving happiness.

As I advised someone on Mastodon going through a post-COVID struggle similar to mine: “Don’t mentally punish yourself for not being able to get everything done that you think you need to while feeling [exhausted]. I was doing that constantly, and I’m sure it made things worse.” If I gain extra wisdom and a new spark to create that I continue to cultivate, the turmoil of the last several months will have been worthwhile. As a wise person said, “When life hands you Godzilla, build Mechagodzilla.”

This Must Be the Place

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Somehow we’ve made it to 2023, a special moment for those who believe in the 23 enigma. I’m a 3/23 baby, so I probably should believe it more than I do, especially as someone who once dove hard into the lore of William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson. Now I’m pretty sure it’s all confirmation bias. But there are other reasons to look forward to 2023, as well as reasons to dread a new year with caution. To help hedge my bets, I’m focusing on three personal highlights of 2022 as I hope they’ll set the pace for the year ahead:

Cooking. Way back in 2021, the hot peppers growing in Caroline’s vegetable garden inspired me. I learned how to make hot sauces, starting simple but then graduating to exotica. For example, the ghost pepper pineapple-pear hot sauce was the biggest hit, like nothing I’ve ever tasted. After months of assorted hot sauce concoctions — including some I came up with on my own — I realized that I was now essentially cooking. I’ve always wanted to confidently learn my way around a kitchen but never thought I could. It turns out hot sauces are a gateway drug to cooking! So, last year I embraced my inner chef, learning to cook all sorts of tasty vegan dishes. I’m getting good at it, too. Now I’m at the strange point where I’ve filled my YouTube history with cooking tutorials, the only gifts I’ll take are things like fancy olive oils, and Paprika has become my most used app. Needless to say, Caroline is thrilled with this development. My biggest triumph of 2022, across all categories, is probably the time I made a vegan version of palak paneer from scratch.

Interviewing. I edit podcasts, and one of those is the exceptional Spotlight On interview show. Over time as the editor, I’ve noticed how much the host, Lawrence (LP), has progressed as an interviewer. He listens, shows genuine interest in his subjects, and is empathetic enough to understand where to pull back or move forward in the rapport of the conversation. This observation inspired me to try my hand at interviewing following LP’s technique (which I know he’ll argue is not an intentional technique) as a guide. So I started a blog series of conversations with music-makers and artistic types, focusing on process, inspiration, and the creative path. It’s gone great. I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed doing this series, and, listening back, I feel like I ended up doing okay as the interviewer. Thanks, LP! Please have a listen to 2022’s conversations with More Ghost Than Man, Elijah Knutsen, San Mateo, Jogging House, Innerwoud, Greg Davis, and Ströme. This series will continue into 2023 with more exciting people and insights into what it means to create art.

Social Media. Regular visitors to this 8sided lair know of my “complicated relationship with social media.” As someone who once used ‘zines to “find the others,” interacting with niche pockets of like-minded weirdos on the internet always had an appeal. At one time, these folks were on Friendster, then on MySpace, and eventually ended up on Facebook and Twitter. I gave up on anything owned by the recently rechristened Meta a while back but persevered on Twitter with ebbing and flowing frequency. Now, I don’t want to revisit the changes at Twitter (you know), but near the end of October, I finally decided to give that platform the heave-ho. I still desired an outlet — posting on Twitter was actually a good way to test out thoughts that may end up as blog posts — and a place to meet those others. So, with hesitation, I signed up for Mastodon. I say ‘hesitation’ because we’ve all heard how difficult it is to sign up, how it’s so complicated, and that there are a bunch of freaks on there who yell at you when you don’t put a content warning on your lunch photo. It took me about an hour on Mastodon to learn that none of that is true — quite the opposite, really. And it then took about 24 hours to find plenty of cool ‘others,’ lots of like-minded weirdos, and a community of friendly people who engage with enthusiasm. I’m also experiencing true decentralization for the first time (this ain’t no Web3 snake oil), and I now realize I was missing out on a major component of the Punk Rock Dream. For the first time in maybe a decade, I’m excited about being on social media. As Mr. Byrne once crooned, “I guess that this must be the place.”