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Yes, I google myself sometimes, not very often, but I'll do it if I'm feeling a bit low, or other times if I need a reality check. The result is about the same either way, it makes me feel better or worse depending on what my mood already was. Kind of like looking in the mirror.
But the other day I just hit the Map button, and it's totally interesting to see how Google can chart my movement across the United States. I wish it worked for the whole world.
-Marc Weidenbaum has a fresh examination of the evolution of electronic music up at New Music Box, Serial Port: A Brief History of Laptop Music.
-Heather Heise defines her musical space on her blog.
-Momus enjoys a little peace and quiet.
Every Friday Heather and I work on making sounds. Our collective efforts are now known as 2&. Here are a few snaps from today's work session, today we were focused on getting a good recording of duct tape and sandpaper.
Heather and I worked up a sketch for a new piece, it's posted on Fundamentally SoundCast. The text is from a short piece from the early 20th century by Benjamin Péret called New Superstitions. I'm speaking and doing computer manipulations and Heather is playing percussion.
With his combined love of formal gesture and gelatinous/semi-gelatinous textures, it's no wonder that Matthew Barney was drawn to Japan, home of cuisine like kaiseki in which the physical texture and visual aesthetic is equally if not more important than the flavor, which is of course perfection as well.
I have to say though, after seeing Drawing Restraint 9 last night, I find actually visiting Japan to be a far more rich, enlightening, and utterly disorienting visual feast than any of Barney's forced constructions. And Björk just rehashed her attempts at "labor-becomes-music" music as she did in Dancer In The Dark, with the clangs and crashes of people working becoming the rhythm for yet another song. Clever! Jonathan Bepler's haunting scores fit Barney's vision much more naturally, as in Cremaster 3.
I was disappointed, I wanted another mental massage a la Cremaster, but all I got was a lot of lukewarm Björk and tons of whale imagery with a huge cast of Japanese extras just being themselves, sort of hanging out on the set of a Barney film. As for me, I'd much rather just go hang out with Japanese people themselves, in Japan, watching summer festival dancers in strange hats wind their way through huge industrial cities, while enjoying some slimy slithery raw eel.
I'm back in San Francisco, recovering from the drama of having visited the Deep South. It may seem ridiculous to those who aren't from there, but going to see people down south is about the most exhausting thing I do. Some of the, for me, big things I've done in my life, like immersing myself in Tokyo for two years, or making my sounds in front of live audiences, that's all a piece of cake compared with facing head-on the culture of northeastern Mississippi.
But enough about that place! I'm away now, back in my comfort zone, safely ensconced in my music pod thinking about sound and life and what I want to make and be, listening to the first track of F.S. Blumm's Bettvanille Weiter album. And hey, it's summer if you haven't noticed! Flip-flops, cold beer outdoors, long afternoons in the park, I'm ready for ya'!
Pastoral scene of the gentle south. Scent of magnolia clean and fresh. Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. - Nina Simone, Strange Fruit
I'm writing this now, flying somewhere over Alabama from Mississippi, going to change planes in Atlanta. I've been trying to think of words that point to the feeling of this place, that give some sort of reference to the frailty, slowness, and fatigue of the American deep south. I think the key word is fatigue: this is an area that only 150 years ago was completely ravaged in the bloodiest war America ever fought, the Civil War, one of the first wars fought on the grounds of human rights. 150 years, that's two (nearly three maybe?) generations, really not that long ago. The losers of that war are still tired I guess.
I'm thinking of James Purdy and his stories of the south, his renderings of the kinds of strange lives people live down here, full of pathos, tragedy, and absurdity. These people are living lives that aren't quiet, they screech, crash, and bump and require choirs of amens, yelps of salvation, and hallelujahs. It's due to the weather, maybe, the insanely hot summers that are a struggle to live through. How anyone is able to make it until fall is a mystery to me.
Bea Lenoir, the physical embodiment of all that is love, acceptance, mercy, and goodness in this world, gave me a piece of lemon cake today on my way to catch the plane. Her grandparents were slaves, according to local legend. Her parents lived through the aftermath, I can't imagine the stories she would tell. But instead of telling stories, she just looks at me and laughs when she answers her door, and the first words out of her mouth are, "Ain't he still 'purty! He was such a sweet boy an' he still 'purty. I'm gonna send up a 'lil prayer up for you tonight baby, you so 'purty you got things you need to look out for." I hear this and I can't believe that I really do come from this place, these people. I cry a little on this flight.
Last night I got to catch up with my old friend Shannon, who just got a job bartending at a new spot. He's gay and so are the owners, and it seemed most of the clientele were too. How typically southern, even in the 21st century, all the cute gay boys hanging out in a place that looks to be just a typical restaurant.
That being said, I had more fun there than I've had in a San Francisco bar in a long time. The crowd was wittier, the banter funnier, and the men just sweeter, and southern boys do have a kind of faux-innocence you don't see anywhere else. The owner's boyfriend, born and bred in Mississippi, kept pouring me Scarlett O'Hara's in celebration of my return to the south. Now who would do that in San Francisco? The owner himself was born near Heidelberg, moved to America, spent thirty years working for movie studios in LA and then "retired" with his partner to Mississippi. I was asking what the move was like, and he said, "Well, the way I see it is I've lived all over the world and I'm not about to hide who I am if a few people in this little town don't like it." He had a refreshing air of militancy that you don't see in many gay men from the south, obviously he's not from here. This place just needs more like him.
I don't know if I can explain what the deep south is like for those who aren't from here. I should say that I don't think people are more homophobic here than they are other places, I've had more anti-gay slurs shouted at me on the street in San Francisco than I have in Mississippi (I'm not kidding). I just think the south has such a rigid culture that doesn't take well to anything that upsets its balance. It's a place where people will like you just fine, gay or straight, as long as you keep your lifestyle in your bedroom and your attitude under the surface. I absolutely hate that about this place, life is too short to and those requirements make things far too boring for me. But at the same time, there are just as many gay people here as there anywhere else, and they all fuck, talk, work, breathe, dream like everybody else, they just don't tell anyone. Don't Ask Don't Tell is alive and well in Mississippi.
I started thinking about Malcolm Ingram's little documentary Small Town Gay Bar. And also about my friend Mason who does some of the best drag New York City has seen (I'm not kidding about that either). He is from Mississippi, and he loves to come back and visit. This picture is him doing a show in New York.
In the past I would have thought anyone who enjoyed visiting Mississippi was a little crazy, but it's starting to make sense to me. I'm rediscovering its charm and its eccentricity. It's a place where people still talk, where sex requires at least a drink and a conversation beforehand, where the rest of the world still looks a little strange and interesting, and people have something to fight for.
And for the first time ever, I started thinking not why would anybody stay here, but rather, why leave? The answer for me is a long list of reasons. But I'm starting to figure out why a few stay.
Who is Selfish Cunt (via Dennis Cooper's blog) and why don't I already know about them?
I made a one minute video that is part of Ryan Junell's SloMo video project. They're screening it at Lobot Gallery in Oakland, May 20th. There's going to be a slow dance as well.
I'm leaving tomorrow to spend about five days in my hometown in Mississippi. Every year I embark on this strange ritual, the shock of setting foot in the Tupelo airport is always nearly more than I can handle. Then I slowly settle into my routine of iced tea and laziness.
Can you ever really understand the place you come from? There is just too much history, I can't see it with clear eyes, I can only sink into its clutches and surrender. I hope it's gentle with me this time.
