| Albums of the 2000s, #29 |
[Nov. 1st, 2009|07:20 pm] |
Mournful Congregation - The Monad of Creation
We tend to speak of things that are melodramatic as though they must thereby be insincere, overwrought, or cheap. However, I am careful in condemning something that is perhaps merely upfront about the emotions to which it hopes to appeal. I don't think it's a crime, especially in music, for an artist to have an objective regarding moods, visions, or even actions (i.e. dancing and/or headbanging) they might hope to evoke in the audience. If it sounds like I'm opening this entry with an apology for my appreciation of the band of the hour, Mournful Congregation, this is because they exist aesthetically (at least at first listen) within a realm of metal often referred to as Funereal Doom. You might guess from the name of this sub-sub-genre that there is often little attention paid to subtlety or artistic songcraft within, and generally you'd be right. Funereal Doom bands tend to earn their namesake via repetitive bludgeoning with downtuned, predictably minor-key chord progressions at a crawling pace ad nauseam.
Mournful Congregation's music, however, sounds to my ears to be thoughtful and keenly constructed enough to leave itself more open to subjective interpretations. Major-key movements and single-note runs are explored in a massive symphony of guitar, at a pace and of a vision that allows things to linger and dissipate rather than merely crush. My friend Craig Vogel exposed me to Mournful Congregation at a time in my life when I could, and needed to, hear the light in sound. Mournful Congregation, for all of their potential melodrama and affectations toward the morose, helped me explore hope.
Also, "monad."
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| Albums of the 2000s, #30 |
[Oct. 3rd, 2009|06:05 am] |
Neurosis - The Eye of Every Storm
While the title track from A Sun that Never Sets is probably my favorite Neurosis song of the decade, The Eye of Every Storm has an astounding flow as an overall album, rather than just a collection of songs. Although, here's "A Sun that Never Sets" just for good measure:
Neurosis were the 2nd band I ever discovered that really had nothing to do with MTV or my mom's stoner/biker friends. While their dark attitude may seem overwrought to some, the band entered my life when I was only about 16, and I really needed them. They are one of a handful of bands that I might credit with saving my life. The Eye of Every Storm is Neurosis at their most focused, although my attachment to this album over their others from the decade may have something to do with the fact that I was listening to it the first time I rode in a Greyhound bus down Hwy. 90 in Mississippi in late 2005, a few months after Hurricane Katrina.
 
Neurosis was the perfect soundtrack for this. I cried hot tears the whole way.
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| 4:15pm |
[Sep. 21st, 2009|04:45 pm] |
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At 4:15pm today, it happened but no one noticed. Outside there was only black and white. Trees and buildings were rorschach-blobbed in two dimensions against the sky. The color prism was eradicated; there was nothing in the middle. All the reds and blues and greens inside seemed hyperreal, high-definition and vulgar. The lights turned off on the world outside and no one so much as looked out the window. I wrote down the time so that I wouldn't forget when it happened. This isn't a story, this is just the way it was. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 13th, 2009|02:59 am] |
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Do you think that getting a tattoo on your penis requires having a biggest boner the whole time? |
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| Weezer Today, Gone Tomorrow |
[Sep. 10th, 2009|01:51 am] |
Have you ever really been into that band Weezer? They used to be such a rad band. My favorite Weezer song is called "Mykel & Carli." It is a tribute they wrote to their two biggest early fans, like from before they got famous. Mykel & Carli started the Weezer fan club. On their way to a Weezer concert in Oregon in 1997, Mykel & Carli died in a car crash. The song takes on a crazy-huge significance in the aftermath of this event.
"Back at Wilson High,
I had these two best friends.
Until the school bus came
and took my friends away.
Now I sit at home alone,
sit and think all day.
Hear You Me,
Mykel
Hear You Me,
Carli"
I cried listening to this song today. Not drunk, not depressed, just listening. The sun shined outside and everything was perfect and beautiful and rock and roll is the most important thing on earth in these moments.
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| Yeeah |
[Sep. 9th, 2009|04:42 pm] |
Happy birthday, Sega Dreamcast!
Fuck an LJ Cut:
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| L8R, Facebook! |
[Sep. 7th, 2009|02:24 am] |
Just These Dudes reminded me of how much more invested I felt in Livejournal than I ever have in Facebook. When someone added me as a Livejournal friend in 2004, that really seemed to mean something solid. Perhaps this is all sentimental malarky. I appreciate that my web browser accepted this spelling of "malarky."
I want to talk about dreams and Twin Peaks. I want to talk about bike riding and guitar strings. I want to talk about Sega Genesis and drunk parents. I want to push myself even further. I have already been so bold so often this year. I am the three-headed unicorn rising from the blubber of the beached whale. I am the cloud cannibal. This is not a poem, but a list of facts. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 7th, 2009|02:34 am] |
Of those of you who regularly get where you're going by bicycle, how frequently have you experienced:
A) Being cursed/yelled at by a passing driver.
B) Being honked at.
C) A & B simultaneously
D) Nearly colliding with another cyclist who is riding against traffic.
E) Nearly colliding with another cyclist who runs a stop sign without looking either way.
F) Being yelled at by pedestrians on the sidewalk.
G) Being yelled at by pedestrians who walk out in front of you without looking.
Does anyone know of a place where 2 or more of these things don't happen almost every time you ride your bike anywhere? Because I'd like to live in a place like that. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|02:30 am] |
Chocolate ice cream cures zombies.
Outer Space is too high for kitties. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 13th, 2009|12:47 am] |
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I can say with some certainty that when I learned, at the age of 4, what dying was, I realized what it meant to care about something. I think that might have been the most significant day in my life thus far in shaping who I am. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 7th, 2009|02:20 am] |
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Do you remember the first thing you ever really cared about? |
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| GEORGIA RESIDENTS - VOTE FOR JIM MARTIN TOMORROW, DEC. 2 |
[Dec. 1st, 2008|05:07 pm] |
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This is no normal runoff election. This one really matters. If you are a registered voter in Georgia, please take the time tomorrow to visit your polling place and make sure that George W. Bush's pal and overall shithead Saxby Chambliss does not represent Georgia in the Senate. Palin is in GA today rooting for Chambliss. If you are a resident of Georgia, voting on Dec. 2nd should be as important to you as voting on Nov. 4th was. Saxby Chambliss is everything that blows chunks about neo-con America. Honestly, the oft-discussed Max Cleland ad is generally blown out of proportion, but that's not what you should be focusing on. This guy has a gun for a dick. Vote for Jim Martin. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|12:17 am] |
Now is the time to take stock of ourselves as individuals and who we are. Now we have to do the work that remains to be done in our daily thoughts and conversations. Every atrocity is an extension of isolated, interpersonal aggressions. We still have to decide what it really means to have a better world, and what it would really take to implement that.
Can we?
I am excited about what we can accomplish, collectively and individually. For now, let us bask. We are experiencing the anti-9/11. |
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| Lunar Jive Lo |
[Oct. 24th, 2008|03:05 pm] |
Last post, I wrote this: "I may return to substantive contributions to your face soon, probably after the election." This edict remains upheld.
( FUN WITH ANAGRAMS )
There are lots more. I'm sure there are others who might read this and feel left out: hark! Go here and report back with your finds in a comment! The results aren't always in supreme order (for example, "Sir Zippy Tarmac" actually appeared as "Tarmac Zippy Sir," I just flipped it, so have fun with that kind of thing). |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 17th, 2008|03:18 am] |
I may return to substantive contributions to your face soon, probably after the election. For now, the current political and social climate has got me feeling out-of-body, like I am hardly even alive.
"My greatest strength would be my humility. My greatest weakness is that it's possible I am too awesome." - Barack "Barry" Obama
nyhOIVEN-GLAVEN!
VS.
It's a tight race, folks.
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| Presidential Debate #1 |
[Sep. 26th, 2008|11:00 pm] |
I'd like to sum up tonight's Presidential Debate by referring to the compact version of the Oxford English Dictionary:
"strategy
/strattiji/
• noun (pl. strategies) 1 a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim. 2 the art of planning and directing military activity in a war or battle.
tactic
• noun 1 an action or strategy planned to achieve a specific end. 2 (tactics) the art of disposing armed forces in order of battle and of organizing operations."
Thanks for clearing that up for us, Johnny McCain!
Check this if you really care. |
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| The Howling Fantods |
[Sep. 15th, 2008|05:12 pm] |
For two days in a row, I have spent nearly an hour crying over the death of someone whom I have never met.
The convulsive, face-smearing brand of crying. David Foster Wallace is dead and it is no coincidence that suddenly the overall abundance of unicorns, flying killer whales, and rainbow water slides in the world is greatly diminished. When Kurt Cobain died, I was 11; too young to understand the surreality of his presence in pop culture, the magnitude of the cultural shift that Nirvana signified, or the gravity of the fact that this shift was almost instantly co-opted and commodified. David Foster Wallace's presence in society-at-large was nothing like Cobain's, but I think I understand the 7,000 people who gathered in Seattle to mourn him after his suicide.
Wallace seemed, more than any other writer I've ever encountered, to understand that life is a means and end unto itself. From his commencement speech in 2005 at Kenyon College in Ohio:
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life before death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water!"
With this he encapsulated what I think it means to be alive, and this made him a dear friend in my heart. His writing was often derided for being "show-offy," pretentious, self-indulgent, and all other manner of things that more often reflected a lack of discipline, empathy, and adventure in the critic. I won't purport to know what he was thinking as he approached the noose. I also won't succumb to the temptation to grievously assume that he never really believed what he was writing deep down; that he was a betrayer. His words have a life of their own. I will continue to read them and continue to abide by the light of the stars in which they shine. |
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| Prizmatic Spray |
[Mar. 6th, 2008|02:28 am] |
It just occurred to me that I haven't told a lot of you this, but I have begun making music solely on my computer. I am releasing the songs under the moniker Prizmatic Spray, for fucking obvious reasons.
http://www.myspace.com/prizmaticspray
So far I have completed two songs, each one taking me about a week and a half to sequence. Both of them were ideas for 'Powers songs that got scrapped either because I couldn't figure out where to take it ("Gateway of Mirrors/The Defender") or because I wasn't in the band anymore ("Final Powers").
I have given a couple of metal-inclined people a 300 Cobras demo and my phone number in hopes that someone might want to play analogue music with me, but no one has called. Perhaps it's for the best? "Gateway of Mirrors/The Defender" is probably my favorite piece of music I've ever conceived, and it wouldn't really be possible on guitar unless Paul Gilbert was in the band. |
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