nevermind the bricolage

Moving

I have launched a new website and will be blogging there from now on, so join here where I will be posting regularly

Benjamin Clementine

 

Benjamin Clementine is London born, but Paris is where he honed his musical craft. I don't really know how you would begin to categorize his music and am not sure that it is necessary anyway (for him or anyone else)--some call him Nina-Simone-like, and there are definite hints of an influence it would seem (he gives interview shout-outs to his influences-Tom Waits, Simone and Nick Cave)--and he definitely doesn't fit into the musical molds that would seem likely to get people on the charts, instead he creates a unique, profound and deeply emotional music in a style all of its own, laying rhythmic lyrical patterns over particular piano lines, with strings and drums that seem to give the music something of a vintage feel sonically. The lyrics are what his work seems to really want to call attention to-again something not necessarily driving a lot of stuff on the charts today.

His debut album, At Least For Now, is sublime. It doesn't all work, but that's the deal with creativity I think. 

The Great Stink+Pure Filth

I came across a remarkable essay by Stassa Edwards in Cabinet magazine about the 'Great Stink of 1858. It concerned the overflowing of the river Thames into the streets of London and the unleashing of a putrid stench stemming from the long-term practice of dumping waste of all kinds-animal, industrial and human, in the summer of 1858.

The essay explores the modern city and its relation to human waste, to dirt, to shit--there's a great line, "The Great Stink was, perhaps, an unwelcome metaphor for London's paradoxical modernity: it was the epicenter of a world power, its citizens could fundamentally change human knowledge, but all of this could be ended by a plumbing problem. and that is exactly what the great stink was: an epic plumbing catastrophe nearly two thousand years in the making."

Without stretching a metaphor too far, I am fairly convinced that after a couple of thousand years Christianity has a plumbing problem as well--it is over-flowing with shit--the detritus of centuries of dumping crap into the river of faith. Dogma, doctrines, ideas and metaphors that undermine the perception of what religion is, what it's functions are, how it works etc. Towards the end of the essay Edwards writes,

"Perhaps the Great Stink is an urban madeleine of sorts--not the sweet-smelling spongy cake that Proust envisioned, but a foul-smelling, deformed inversion of it. It invades the senses, creating memories of sensory revulsion. It reminds us of how quickly our smart city existences can devolve into primitive conditions."

One could argue that the rise of fundamentalisms in the early 21st century are indicative of the devolution of religion into a primitive, barbaric state.

Anyway, the essay prompted me to begin to address some ideas that I've been kicking around in my head for at least a couple of decades, just some niggling thoughts that I have wrestled with over the years related to what it means to have faith, to live a life impacted by religion, and a notion that the sterile, sanitized version of Christianity that most of us have experienced is an elaborate veneer masking a smell that needs to be addressed.

So I'm giving a series of talks called, Pure Filth, which will explore things like vulgarity, disgust, the unclean, the profane, the dirty and everything we tend to avoid but which are in fact, everyday realities and experiences for all of us in life--and maybe this will tease out another way of thinking about religion, or maybe it will just be a load of crap.

The very provocative image at the top is by Odd Nerdrum, entitled, Ecce Homo.

(Village Church 343 S. Church Lane, LA 90049 at 11:45am Sundays)

Blackstar

 

One of the great things about 2016 is the release of a new David Bowie album. I have been a lifelong Bowie fan and he seldom fails to deliver musically as far as I am concerned. The new album is a departure from the last and travels with a new band into 'jazz' territory, an area Bowie has not mined much. 

I like Bowie's sense of adventure, in age of calculation, heritage acts and overblown pop, it's refreshing to find a musician who has been around as long as he has who is still pushing into new territory. He is not the only one--there is so much good music out there-the digital age has brought so much stuff to the surface if we are willing to look, but there is something about Bowie--I still remember walking down a hallway at a party in London and hearing Changes for the first time and being immediately hooked-crazy but that's the way music works for me.

Simon Critchley, the philosopher, and also lifelong Bowie fan, has a great book about Bowie's music called simply, Bowie--worth a read if you haven't got to it yet.

 

New Year

 

"New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights." Hamilton Wright Maibe

Like many of my friends I stayed home the New Years Eve, mainly because I was pretty jet-lagged from my trip home to England, but also because NYE never really gets me wanting to be out and about. It often feels like there is so much expectancy for 'something' to happen or be different--you can almost feel the wanting in the air. I have no axe to grind, I welcome the sentiments--letting go of the past, leaning into a new uncharted future, hoping that things will be better in our lives, but I can seldom bring myself to make it out into the streets. Time is a funny thing--we mark moments, grant them a significance, and underneath it all time marches on, oblivious to our posturings, unaware that we find in a particular moment, pause for thought and reflection.

My mum is losing her mind to dementia and I am acutely aware that a certain time is gone for her, and for me with regard to her--the clock still ticks--but with every movement of time she drifts further and further away from her sons, from herself, from the world--it's a sobering thing. And a part of me wishes to hurry up time, to bring things to their inevitable and ugly conclusion as quickly as possible--is that pity for her, or selfishness on my part? I don't know, probably a bit of both. 

What I realize, and believe me it is no great revelation, is that time pays no attention to us--it just keeps moving, reminding us, if we pay attention, of what a precious commodity it is.

I think that to honour the sentiment in Bing Crosby's song, we must give thanks for the time we've had, and the time yet to come, and live like we care.

songs of innocence-experience and joyful mortality

I've seen two major concerts in the past couple of weeks. I saw U2 at the Forum last week and last night, Sufjan Stevens at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. I don't like to compare things, I much prefer to take things as they are. Each of the experiences had its highs and lows, its challenges and profundity, but there are some things that I wanted to say about why it is that one of these concerts sat so much better with me than the other. Let me begin by saying that I really like U2 and have seen them a number of times over the years-I have friends who work for them and their music has been a part of my musical canon over the years. That said, I must admit to being largely underwhelmed since Pop--I loved that experimental decade where all bets seemed to be off and exploration was the order of the day. They would probably argue that they are still that band, still experimenting, still pushing, but for me, that post Joshua Tree period was where I liked them the most. I think since then they lost an edge, perhaps an edge that is not possible to possess when you are aiing for maximum exposure and embrace, when stadium rock is your metier. All that aside, they put on a great show and you can count on it being a visceral, mutli-sensory experience. FRom Zoo TV until this last show, they have tweaked and played with the way live performance happens, how visuals and ideas are incorporated into a show, and they do it brilliantly, there is nothing like a U2 show in that regard. But my favourite moments at this last show were when there was little but them on the stage with no bells and whistles, just playing their guts out and drawing the crowd in with nothing but sheer musical potency. Perhaps I dream of a show where they just play their songs. I doubt that would happen and I admit that I often felt that without the visual additives much of this past show would reveal the lack in some of these songs. That sounds mean, I don't intend it to be--I like them an awful lot, how can you not really? I'm not a Bono-hater or a music curmudgeon, there is just always a little something that I miss when I see them. I'm being picky, but to some degree they asked for it. The desire to be the biggest band in the world has never been far from the surface, and why not go for broke? But, that doesn't happen without losing nuance and subtley, and U2 are as subtle as a brick. It actually felt a little desparate at times, particulalry in the sense you get that in they are trying to connect with a younger audience (missing from the show I went to, except for the young teens with their parents in the VIP section). But let none of that detract from their mastery of a medium, I would just actually question whether or not that is ultimately the medium the should have devoted such attention to mastering--but that's for them to decide and let's face it, the concert-going public seems to disagree with me. Conversely, I know little about Sufjan Stevens, I have a couple of albums and one or two extra songs and I went to the show because a friend invited me and had they not, his appearance in LA would have gone completely unnoticed by me. The show was very different to U2--it was the venue--arena versus concert hall, but it was also performance and content and focus and delivery. I felt as though I was invited into a meditative, contemplative environemt, the highs and lows, tension and release of the music delivered with as much emptiness and silence as volume and reverie. There were simple songs delivered in such sparse form, lasting less than a couple of minutes, accompanied by beautiful, subtle lighting, largely via a backdrop with geometric spaces that hinted at stained-glass. I had no expectations, no idea what to expect, which can be a really good thing when engaging cultural artifacts, especially when expectations are exceeded, and in this case I was floored-it was beautiful, hanting, melancholy, joyful and even a little boring at times (songs ended so abruptly every once in a while, there seemed to be no desire to tease out a song and see what else was there). The audience--mostly young hipsters (the very people U2 might be trying to connect with) sat with reverence and respect throughout the eveing, erupting in applause at the end of a song and then patiently wating for the next offering, as the band moved around the stage exchanging places and instruments. Not a single word from Stevens until at least an hour into the show and when he did speak the topic surpisingly was death and mortality-delievered with a wry sense of humour undoubtedly, but every single thing he said was a meditation on death. In fact, the only real 'rock and roll' balls out musical moment came late in the set at the end of a song,, where all the band members sang the refrain "we're all gonna die" over and over like a church choir as the music rose to a fever pitch that had not happened in the course of the entire show--it was breath-taking in its potency and when the song ended it hung in the air, like the unfinished business of living. And it was here that it struck me that there was something special going on--music focused on mortality and death yet hopefully inviting a joyful, almost playful approach to life in spite of that, in fact, because of that reality. It reminded me of the difference between a mega church and a small community of people comitted not to the large, the global, the grandiose, but to small aims, small aims that give shape to existence. It's no great secret that I prefer things smaller scale, I can appreciate the big spectacle, I just don't need much of it, and the themes I hunger for and am interested in don't fit well in the world of big things. I could no more imagine an audience of U2 fans chanting "we're all gonna die" and chanting it joyfully and meaningfully than I could imagine Steven's audinece doing a 'whoop-whoop call and responce.' Part of that is the difference in musical style and focus, so no judgmenent, just an observation, that perhaps in the music of Sufjan Stevens lies a gift not often mined with such delicate, almost surgical simplicity--that the key to life is not found in celebration and specatcle, in discovering a big life or even your 'best life,' as much as in quiet reflection on the frailty and fragility of finitude, on the contingency of existence, on the hopes and dreams, fears and desires that give life meaning. I left that show last night feeling as though I had been in the presence of the gods-much like a Nick Cave concert-the lyre of Orpheus, the god of music, who bridges the worlds and draws us into new spaces, seemed to have been weaving his magical mastery-moving us, guiding our imagination, evoking memories and dreams and creating spaces where meaning, awareness, enlightenment even, might occur--the gift of music telling us more about ourselves and our lives than perhaps any other art form.

stay around a little longer...buddy guy and bb king

 

It was never going to be long enough--RIP B.B. King

Recens

What were you doing when you were 15 or 8 or 12 years-old for that matter? Well I wasn't doing much to be honest, unlike Norway's Elise, who started blogging at 8, launched a blog network called Archetype with a group of friends when 12 and then launched Recens Paper, a youth magazine when she was 15!!

The magazine is directed toward 'generation z,' a generation that, according to the magazine's website is, 

"...fed up with all the commercials that are dumped on us, the beauty standards which ruin our self-confidence, and the gender stereotypes that put us in a box. We know how the beauty standards and gender stereotypes more or less affect every teenager."

Elsewhere, the young editor declares that the magazine, 

"gives a voice to the youth and is what they want to see, instead of perfectionism, gender stereotypes, beauty standards and commercialism."

The second edition of Recens is out now. You don't need to be 15 years-old to appreciate both the quality and content of the publication. The content focus is helpful to anyone who has come of age in the midst of  consumer-culture where we are bombarded by so much over-hyped information, where the focus on body insecurities seems to get more and more intense as days go by, and where rampant commercialism is still thrust forward as the 'go-to' mode of being, even though we all know it is completely empty and devoid of meaning.

This particular magazine could also be seen as part of what is clearly a re-vitalization of niche-magazines that are popping up everywhere. If you get the chance go find a really good magazine stand and spend a little time checking out all the new and interesting magazines that are out there today.

leon bridges: river

Couldn't be more excited for an album to be released than Leon Bridge's, Coming Home. Every song that has been released so far has been a gem, including the latest, River.

 

La Blogotheque: And Also The Trees

And Also The Trees bringing their goth-sound to the streets of France, captured by the fabulous La Blogotheque.

 

Prince protests: Baltimore

Prince released a protest song this week, Baltimore, a song dedicated to the memory of Freddie Gray. As with most things prince, the song is melodic and danceable, so much so that I have read and heard some criticism of the legitimacy of a protest song being something that one can dance to?! haters always gonna hate!! I think this song actually is a bit of a departure for Prince. He has done protest before, but usually under the umbrella of wicked funk and spaced out guitars, creating this space where all can come--a funky party where everyone can dance and hear protest with a wink. Not so with Baltimore. This song names the location and the victim(s) Michael Brown and Freddie Gray up front and finds The Purple One being much more direct and even leading a chant in the mid-section, not the "we shall overcome" of the Civil Rights era protests but "no justice, no peace" a much more contemporary and vulnerable comment which emerged in the 1980s. The song gets more intense as it comes to an end, rock and roll joined by gospel-voices, the sunny sound gives way to something a little more fierce--there is statement here, a protest song for 2015.

 

ex machina

Hollywood usually goes dystopian when it comes to technology, and particularly there is nothing treated as alarmingly as AI, artificial intelligence, which, more often than not, is presented as a threat to humanity. Just cast your mind back through movie history--be it the cold and clinical Hal of Kubrick's 2001 for instance or the machines in The Matrix-there is usually some cautionary tale being told about the threat of AI--it fits into the larger schema of dystopian apocalypticism which seems to haunt the American pop cultural landscape in myriad ways.

In terms of that trope, Ex Machina comes as a subversion and that is welcome relief. This isn't a film about the perils of AI as much as a meditation on what it means to be human. It accepts that AI has become not only mainstream, but that it has also moved beyond the realm of fiction. But as I have already noted, the film eschews traditional notions about artificial intelligence, including the notion of singularity--the eclipsing of human consciousness by machines that will render humanity extinct essentially--in favor of a more nuanced and simple idea--consciousness is what makes us human--and if a machine has consciousness then it is for all intents and purposes human and you will find yourself, as I did watching this film, desiring that it achieves the freedom it seeks. 

Essentially this is a story about a machine trapped by its maker, who yearns to be free-the most compelling parts of the film are when Ava (the AI robot) reveals her inner life, her longings and desires to her conversation partner.

I don't want to give too much of the story away as I feel this is one of those films that is best viewed with the least amount of foreknowledge, and I have already said a lot.

It was written and directed by Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Her Go), who according to an article in The Atlantic, consulted with Murray Shanahan, a cognitive roboticist who has pioneered thinking about AI in some new directions, including neuroscience. Garland was driven to write the story because he was concerned about the growing concern around technology that he saw everywhere,

"We have laptops and cellphones and tablets, and most of us don’t understand how they work. But the devices seem to understand how we work. They anticipate what we want to say in text messages and search-engine inputs, and know what we want to buy, see and read. This one-way understanding makes us anxious. We locate the anxiety in the machines, which translates as anxiety about A.I." (New York Times, APRIL 22, 2015)

So he wrote a counter argument in favor of the machines. It offers us an opportunity to think differently about technology, to explore it without pre-conceived notions of doom, and it grants us an opportunity to consider the beauty and the wonder of what it means to be human.

 

 

The Magic Whip

One word. Blur. Back after a 16-year hiatus and back with a fantastic album of new songs. The album is named after a Chinese brand of firecracker and this album is a bit of a firecracker in that it reminds the listener of the ways in which they captured the essence of the 90s ennui behind Britpop's swagger and became explorers rather than simply affirmers of the surface stuff and continue in that spirit even after such a long break. More than worth a listen whether you liked them in the 90s or not--there's good stuff here.

Girl in a Band

I did a fair amount of train travel the past week or so and consequently had an hour or two each day to kill while I travelled from London to my mum's house. So I did a lot of reading.

I picked up Kim Gordon's autobiography on a whim. I haven't been the biggest fan of Sonic Youth over the years, but I was aware and interested enough to pick it up and was glad I did. To be honest, I wasn't ready for the honesty, insight and depth that I uncovered. Silly of me really, a girl in a band with her husband for three decades, why wouldn't there be depth and insight, but somehow I didn't figure it that way. Of course, the fact that her marriage ended and the band broke up only added dimension to an already interesting story of one woman's encounter with art, music, New York and being in a band. 

For instance, this is what she had to say about California, where she moved with her family when she was five years old,

"I've always felt that there was something genetically instilled and inbred in Californians--that California is a place of death, a place people are drawn to because they don't realize deep down they're actually afraid of what they want. It's new, and they're escaping their histories while at the same time moving headlong toward their own extinctions. Death and desire are all mixed up with the thrill and the risk of the unknown. It's a variation of what freud called the 'death instinct.'"

Not your usual rock biography fodder. The book is filled with nuggets like that. It's also filled with pain and heartbreak over betrayal, adultery, divorce and the loss of so many things. Whether you know Kim Gordon or Sonic Youth is not necessary to enjoy this book--it's a book that is more than the sum of it's expected parts.

 

Kenji Ekuan

What links Kikkoman soy sauce and the Komachi Bullet train? Designer Kenji Ekuan, who died recently. His life was brutally altered by the atomic bombs which fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing family members. This catastrophic event led him to want to make tangible things.

"Faced with brutal nothingness, I felt a great nostalgia for something to touch, something to look at. The existence of tangible things is important. It's evidence that we're here as human beings." He spent time as a monk in a Buddhist monastery, but eventually left and became a designer of pretty much everything, from corporate logos to motorcycles, bullet trains to perhaps his most famous design, the leak-proof Kikkoman soy sauce bottle, which has become ubiquitous world-wide and at the time of its creation, in the post-war era, a calling card for Japan, and a symbol of its culture.

He designed the iconic bullet train and much of his work has been collected for design museums around the world. Design is invisible at its best, it's aim to make things work optimally and give the user a seamless experience with whatever the product might be, and the soy sauce bottle did that amazingly well. It will remain a testament to how one man re-defined his life in the midst of terrible loss and found a way to remind us all that we are human and we are here.

 

 

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The Lost Lectures: Art+Shit

There seems to be a bit of an explosion in learning for fun environments, where the desire for knowledge about life, about the world, is driving both entrepreneurial spirit and culture hunger in really interesting ways. A case in point would be a venture in London called The Lost Lectures. Their tagline: enchanting talks/secret locations, tells you a lot about what they are up to. They find really interesting venues for world class speakers, thinkers, writers, artists etc., to give provocative talks. 

Here's one featuring Jake Chapman, half of the Chapman Brothers, provocateurs of the art world.

 

The site is worth a long exploration and the talks combined with the locations are fantastic.  The blurb about themselves says,

It’s an underground series that’s re-imagining the lecture concept, pushing it’s boundaries to their creative edges by creating immersive worlds and unforgettable experiences with World-class speakers across an eclectic host of fields. Each evening we bring together a mix of scientists, artists, techies, designers, entrepreneurs and entertainers and many more in incredible, inaccessible and secret locations.