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Seems like a waste of a good rant not to mention this on my own blog. Francisco López, Untitled #104 Spencer Owen doesn't like this record. I can see why. Some silence, some noise gradually added, some completely ear-shredding fuck-off noise for about a half-hour, noise ebbs a little, and then a lot more silence. To some, it sounds like the worst kind of boho put-on imaginable. Me, I find it interesting. Not interesting enough to buy the damn thing, mind. But I like quite a lot of music which forces the listener to listen, listen closely, listen very very closely and to become hyper-aware to each minute change and to what the listener is doing when he listens to this music. Such music can be beautiful like Charlemagne Palestine or hellish like Merzbow, I can listen to it every night when I fall asleep for months or only just once or twice, but in any case I'm glad it's there and I'm glad there are folks out there who are tossing out more and more versions of the musically possible into the world. Except Francisco López doesn't seem to see things the way I do, at least if the opening blurb on his website (not written by him) is any indication. He is not interested in the musically contigent, in such things as variety and style. He is reaching toward "an extreme musical purism," a "naked music," and a "musical essence." Lopez's essence is whatever in music produces some kind of super-dooper-deep concentration in the musical moment for the listener, and everything in music that causes the listener to stray from this ideal, such as musical representation, is bad, the unspoken assumption being that not giving your full attention to a piece of music, or listening to something passively or ambiently, is plebian and phillistine and reeks of false consciousness or what-ev-er. So in spite of all appeareances, this hidden snobbery and insistence on the pure makes him a musical reactionary, in the league with your anti-breakbeat Detriot techno purists or your bequiffed rockabilly purists, hopelessly under the illusion that music has some bejeweled "essence" worth preserving at the sake of everything else. Alas, one cannot be purist and revolutionary at the same time. Disco Biscuits As I've said before, I'm currently downloading fuckloads of MP3s. I'm preparing for the worst. Of course, as everyone knows, even if the Supreme Court were to judge that Napster as it currently stands as BAD EVIL AND WRONG in big bold letters, MP3 culture will live and thrive regardless. An MP3 underground would resemble something like contemporary drug culture -- it would exist as an open secret in our society, an illegal activity performed by Americans with more of a giggle than quivering fear. Even with the most efficient crackdown possible, yes, suits will be filed, people will go to jail, lives will be ruined, and yet all of these will serve as merely symbolic rather than tactical victories. After all our government, with all its resources, has not been able to do anything better than turn the war on drugs into a manageable disaster as opposed to a clear-cut victory, so just imagine how useless it would be to a foe that is not only much more widespread, but also more benign-seeming. The command “don’t download MP3s from Napster” does not have - and never will have -- the moral authority of something like “don’t take drugs.” We know that drugs can harm the body; they lead innocents to a life of addicted degradation; they are a narcissistic escape from reality; drug use supports a murderous subterranean economy. In contrast, while MP3 mooching may clearly fly in the face the categorical imperative (in other words, it would be bad if everyone did it, all the time), it’s hard to gauge just how mooching just one or even many MP3s would hurt an artist, much the same way it’s difficult to gauge what kind of deleterious effect I’m making on the environment if I choose to throw out my bottle of Snuggles fabric softener rather than recycle it. The recording industry's problem is that it has no Leah Betts to call its own. (Unless you count Kid Rock.) Michael Landry When Michael Landry methodically pulverizes every last one of his possessions, or Janine Antoni forces herself to eat large quantities of chocolate, they're ridiculous. They submit themselves to a sterile form of sacrifice. When Cat Stevens sold all of his possessions, he at least was doing it for God; Landry and Antoni perform their obssesive little rituals for the sake of The Void. Landry does this piece from a position of privilege. When he destroys his very last possession, he will still have artwork hanging in museums and homes, a career, a reputation, and a girlfriend at whose place he will presumably live. He is left on much firmer ground than an Iowa couple whose home is destroyed in an tornado, leaving a mere 50% of all their possessions, or just any number of people whose lives are shattered by accidents and natural occurrences. Landry will be living a very cush form of destitution. However. The self not only consists of all that ethereal inside stuff, but our possessions as well: "In its widest possible sense," William James once wrote, "a man's Me is the sum total of all that he CAN call his." If, as Freud says, the collector is a sublimated Don Juan, where possession stands a substitute for sexual conquest, then the person who destroys all of his possessions is a sublimated eunuch. And only the scariest perverts want to be a eunuch, and they're scary because their wish is a pretty naked expression of the death drive, the wish to annihilate the self and what it constitutes. So even if what Landry is doing is absurd, another precious commentary on consumerism ready for the New Puritans of Adbusters, it is also frighteningly deviant. Link courtesy of David. Media Whore Goal For 2001: Get various members of the Freaky Trigger crew on next year's Pazz and Jop ballot. (Not me, though -- I don't review regularly.) Who won? Outkast, and deservedly so. If There Was No Angst, It Wouldn't Be A Blog. "Hey, whattsa matter? It's not so cold out." I'm walking down the Bay Shore train station platform past this guy - big doofy grin on his face, someone used to keeping his emotions on the surface at almost all times -- just long enough to gve him an incredulous stare through the lime-green scarf hiding most of my face. Embarrassed (but not embarrassed enough to apologize), he can only offer me a lame "have a nice day." He's right, though. While it is the beginning of February, it is not cold. It's about, oh, thirty degrees or so, cold but not bitterly so, and there's no wind, either. But I wear my scarf over my face regardless. Doctor's orders, you see. I have rosacea, a nasty condition which keeps my cheeks and nose a bright, flaming red at all times. It is aggrevated by some of the best things in life: sunlight, alcohol, spicy foods, tomatoes, peppermint. It is also aggravated by cold weather, stress and exercise, three things this body is oft visited by no matter how fast I flee from them. It is not going away. It never does. There is no cure. It is treatable, however, even though my skin does not seem to be responding very well to the medications I've been taking for the last three months. Actually, my dermotologist just last week switched my medications, and after just three treatments of hydrocortisone, my face became clearer than it's been in...years. The joke is that it's completely temporary -- one can't take cortisone for very long without developing a dependency. (The other joke is that the improvement might be attributable to my stoppage of the use of a certain medicine that was probably irritating my face...) The other thing I'm taking is an antibiotic which, curiously, is also used to treat several of the more notorious opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. Everywhere I go, I see men without a scaly, flaky rash on their face. Aside from the obligatory adolescent acne, they have never known an uncomplicated complexion, something I've had ever since my mom wondered why my nose, with all its blackheads, resembled a strawberry. The only people I've seen with really obvious cases of rosacea are drunks. This has not worked wonders for my self-confidence. I also haven't had a man in my life for (lessee...November, December, January) months. I am fielding proposals, however. If you, dear reader, are a man around my age, live in the NYC area, handle yourself with supernatural intelligence and sanity, and possess a doughy body shape and a receding hairline, then I will be quite willing to consider dry-humping every last one of your orifices...God, I've always wanted to say that. Sorry. A little busy right now. Downloading the history of dance music from Napster. Catch you later. |
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