Bill Callahan’s newest album, Apocalypse, has come out.
Finally given it the time and, I must say, it is ravishing. The first song, “Drover,” is one of his finest & most piercing:
Bill Callahan – “Drover”
Apocalypse is much more stripped and ragged than Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, which seems necessary. To go bigger, more into the strings and orchestration, would have been too much. The purely stripped had been perfected in A River Ain’t Too Much to Love (his last album under the Smog moniker). There needed to be some pick-scrapes and distortion. And flute.
“America!” is a track that has been tricky for me. Earnestness in someone so usually coy and reserved…thoughts still swarming.
Album – all-together – wonderful. It’s great to see that his lyrics & ability hasn’t failed. When one is such a brilliant lyricist, there usually comes a point when they depart greatly (Aaron Weiss) or dribble miserably (Leonard Cohen). Bill Callahan continues surely & strongly.
The New York Times had a great interview with Bill. He’s difficult in an interview, so it’s great when you find one worthwhile. Bought tickets to see him in Boston in July. He did a reading for Letters to Emma Bowlcut a couple months back at a bookshop in Brooklyn. Weird interaction. That book, by the way, is worth checking out. It takes away the need of a dozen others. And that it is to belittle it.
Anyways.
I hope you are well. I just thought I should give you a heads-up.
Brass Eye was a BBC faux-news series that satirized topics including drugs, animals, sex, and crime. The series ran for only six episodes (in true BBC fashion) in 1997, but was returned to for one episode in 2001 (for a grand total of seven) titled “Paedogeddon”. You’ll need a Youtube username for this:
Though the episodes on pedophilia and drugs are my favorites, the series is filled with gems. Unfortunately, the only available Brass Eye DVDs are Region 2; guess we’ll have to stick to YouTube for the time being. I can’t really find an American equivalent – the Daily Show is far less biting and the difference between reality and fiction more distinct. It’s easy as an American to gloss-over the fact that some of the people speaking against topics in Brass Eye (the PSAs for a fictitious drug in “Drugs” is a great example) are well-known political and media figures in Britain. This is more in the Sacha Baron Cohen realm than Jon Stewart (Cohen is also British – go figure). Here’s a quick-click to the first part of “Drugs” for the lazy (username NOT needed for this):
I strongly recommend you check this out. Very, very funny. Simon Pegg got his start on here as well, though he’s not one of the main figures.
Hope all is well. Enjoy.
Re-watched A Scanner Darkly the other day.
Really enjoyed it. The last time I saw it was when it first came to dvd – so about 3 years ago, I’d say. Remember being impressed with the rotoscope animation and performances of Robert Downey, Jr. and Rory Cochrane but feeling like I was missing part of the story. I read the short novel after watching the film and fell in love with Philip K. Dick. Fans of Anthony Burgess, Isaac Asimov’s “Robot Series”, and J.G. Ballard should dive in. After I finish Russel Banks’ Rule of the Bone, I will be diving again.
I hope you are well. Things have been weird. Not sure what will happen, but things seem to be.
Diving, diving, diving
Cheers.
Forgot that I told you a while back that I’d write a few words about Andrew Motion’s Keats, a biography of English poet John Keats.
This was by-far the most in-depth look into Keats life but, like all the other bios, heavy on the biographer’s agenda. In this case it was to make Keats a political rebel along the lines of a literary Che Guevara. Some other biographers present Keats as someone ignorant of politics because he was too busy living a pixie life – which, I agree, is bullshit. But there is a difference between pointing at a spot on the wall and running your finger through it. At points, Motion runs his whole arm through. I’d like to say that I’d recommend you to read this, but unless you are planning to be a poet or are unnaturally obsessed with the death of diminutive 26 year-olds – this book is unnecessarily hefty. Whenever Keats meets someone, instead of a name and a tiny blurb we are given a life story – adding page upon page before we realize that, yes, there was a biography at the heart of these tangents. And Keats met a lot of people.
I guess I don’t have another Keats biography to recommend. I prefer W. Jackson Bate’s prose and interpretations, but his book is even longer and runs just as hard into the wall. Maybe I should stop searching. Keats would tell me that some things just can’t be resolved. I used to think that that was just a coping mechanism. Maybe it is. Maybe “coping mechanism” doesn’t need to be a pejorative in my vocabulary. I don’t know. I’m starting to shift, though.
If you’re new to Keats, you can find virtually all of his poems online. This is my favorite poem by Keats, titled “Ode to a Nightingale.” I hope it helps you the way is has me. I’d be curious to your thoughts. I hear you can post comments on these things. I have a fairly bleak interpretation of this poem, but all my interpretations seem to be bleak and/or cynical. I need to be careful of that.
I wonder sometimes about my draw to Keats. Initially, I think I was drawn (as many people are, I assume) to the idea that Keats is the embodiment of a Poet, even Poetry. The pale youth who lives only for poetry and believes whole-heartedly that poetry can heal. The deeper I dig, the more biographers try to tear this idea away, deeming it naive and ignorant. I clung to that cynicism for a while, too. But, sometimes, when I am lonely and in need, I want to believe. I think we need these symbols. I think we need to know that they are symbols, but also be able to lose ourselves in them every once and a while. What else have we to strive for otherwise? What else have we to strive for?
I am losing interest in facts, which tend to dismiss and crush the excitement and connectivity of what we hold in our minds. To believe something happily, only to find that it is not factual. I consider this akin to finding out the secret behind a magic trick: before the revelation of mechanism there is wide-eyed wonder and excitement – after, there is only disappointment in the attainment. There is no spark; only the pain of loss. I’m reminded of Fred in David Lynch’s Lost Highway saying, “I like to remember things my own way…not necessarily the way they happened.” Maybe I am just trying to cope, as he was. I’d like to think I’m more like Keats though, sick of the “irritable reaching after fact and reason.”
I hope, I hope, I hope.
I guess it’s like believing the fiction of nostalgia. But, I guess, more like nostalgia of the present. To live in maudlin. I guess my longings might be another one’s pejorative. You might be still freaked out that I find empathy with Fred. I guess we all have our own vocabularies. I have no interest in which is “correct”.
Back to maudlin: nobody does it better than Tom Waits. I’ll leave you with something that pains me terribly every time I hear it.
I hope you are well, and that we can make it through. Cheers.
I’ve been cut off from my free wireless. My number of posts have obviously suffered and will continue to do so. I will try to post as much as I can – when I have internet access.
Watched Momma’s Man, a film by Azazel Jacobs this afternoon. It dealt with issues of nostalgia and the womb-like warmth and draw of one’s parents / your childhood home.
I have never felt such a connection and question / am intrigued about its possibility (especially when questions steer into Is that the best thing for you? territory). The film was inferior to its predecessor, The GoodTimesKid,
but the idea behind it is worth the rent. The parents in Momma’s Man are the writer/directors own and the house used in the movie is their house. Jacob’s parents, Florence Jacobs and the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, had to have known what Azazel was worried about / talking about in his film. They chose to support and become part of his question. To me, that is insane. Half of me rages at the thought of how wonderful Azazel’s life must be – how is he discontent? The other half is just jealous and lonely, wishing for the support that Jacobs has had his whole life.
That is the struggle I suppose: if we can all reach the same thoughts and conclusions through either love&warmth or pain&hate, why must some us go through pain&hate? It seems this knowledge takes away the ability to rationalize (which it so integral to survival for those in the latter category).
I’ll try to leave on another note. Been listening to the Cure a lot. You should too. You’ve heard this one before, but whatever. It’s a great song.
I hope this finds you well. I’ll talk to you again whenever I get a chance. Cheers.
Just finished Barney Hoskyns’ unauthorized biography of Tom Waits:
Led to a lot of thinking about truth vs. conjecture when one’s life revolves around creation. There is a quote somewhere in the world from Prince asking a biographer, “What gives you the right to write a book of conjecture on my life?” I don’t know, Prince. I don’t know.
Hoskyns goes as far as to include a list of “Waits’ Greatest Tracks: A Top 40 Countdown”. When he describes of the recording process of each record, he also tells us which tracks could have been left off, which are the best, etc. I faced a similar situation while reading Kim Cooper’s otherwise amazing chronicle of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea for the 33 1/3 series.
All the biographical material was full and informative – an obvious work of love; when it came to discussing songs, however, the author gave very personal and idiosyncratic views of the meaning and worth of each song.
My immediate reaction is, “Hey! It’s up to each listener to interpret his/her own meaning!” Now I realize I need to apply that mentality to each book. Every grain of information that we take from a second-hand source is pure conjecture. The problem is, when the subject at hand is an artist, even the subject can be a second-hand source. Take Dylan, Neil Young, Lou Reed, earlier David Bowie, Tom Waits – these are all people whose on-stage persona and private identity become muddled, confused, and conflated. When the act and the reality become too confused, how can you tell who is telling you what? What is the truth? What is conjecture? Self-conjecture? Sounds fucked up, but we all do it. Every single day.
