wheat? chaff? eva hesse.

there's a weird thing going on when someone is said to have "the best taste in (x)." most people can tell that its a statement loaded with ramifications. but it's something that is said with enough frequency that it certainly is an attitude that is shared by a lot of people. so many that the statement can be seen as culturally mainstream. established and whatnot.

the statement says a few things:

1. there is an ideal taste, taste can be ranked. taste is no longer subjective. there are some standards that apply to taste.
2. somehow taste is not completely self-determined - if not, we would all assume the taste we deem 'best.' forces outside of simple preference are at work, things beyond control, on a scale too large to dissect. taste seems to choose you. and you know the ideal taste has not chosen you.
3. as (x), be it music/art/books, is not a static body of work but instead is consistently augmented, taste must be adaptive. taste must deal with change. people's tastes change with everything they encounter. this ideal taste, too, must change.

a hierarchy of taste reigns. what we read and see is dictated by necessity. we can't read or here everything. and yes, this has positives. you can imagine how anxious we would all be if we really thought that the best books written were not being read, and the best films of our time were not being made at all. but we are reassured - people with 'taste' advocate for us all along the chain. we need not grind our teeth over what we may be missing. in fact, when people gripe about money ruling hollywood, they are really griping over taste's relegation to second place.

but what happens when the dictates of this hierarchy of 'taste' aren't obvious, where taste perhaps has no foundation on which to build? where the objective goodness we are convinced exists is nowhere to be seen? where you couldn't even tell if someone has the best taste or average taste or bad taste? where am i?

that's why, i think, contemporary art confuses people and angers people, and maybe deservedly. there are no clear parameters, and a small group of largely arbitrary people are busy making arbitrary decisions about what has substance and what doesn't. as someone who knows very little about it, this is exactly how i feel about 50% of the time: dear lord, who is in charge here?

however, in the remainder there are things i look at and say "something, somewhere in there, is functioning as it should be." the hierarchy i recognize as 'proper' is embedded in there.

it took that long semantic exercise to justify this post on eva hesse.

it took that to preface why i think of her as a sculptor - a very very very good one. her work is what could be called "untraditional." i can barely describe what i like about it.

i think form is so powerful because it communicates feeling completely outside of language. it finds a route into our brain outside words. so there is really no way to use words to describe how i connect with it, but i can look at even a picture and say hey i like that. here are some more.

ingeminate, 1965.

hang up, 1966

right after, 1969

my favorite animal.

this diary is about things i like or think about a lot. so with further ado.....


i could do a little fancy bit on how the life of the koala could serve as some sort of model for a human's in this oh-so-modern world. wouldn't that be oh-so-david foster wallace of me?

but i am going to let the speak for itself. it says, "look at this guy."

teenage symphonies to god.

i apologize for walking out on this journal and forgetting to shut the door behind me. i suppose that with my return to this and the radio, i am reclaiming my 2006 life. much of my time has been occupied by this and that, but regardless 'no nino rota' has reinstated me as 'only guy here.'

and with that, hello to all. this is going to be long and somewhat autobiographical.

paul mccartney believed that the title 'greatest song ever written' belonged to brian wilson's 'god only knows.' While you read this, try to remember that i am in the wild, passionate throes of a white album renaissance (since the summer it has dominated my music listening). Paul's comment incited within me a hectic sorting out of my attitudes, when you realize the way you think about one thing should be in the context of many more things.

unfortunately, and perhaps tragically, my generation is one of the first for which it will be impossible to construct enough of the context around the beatles and the beach boys that will be required to appreciate them in totality. it's overwhelming to even to put them in the context of each other, to think that at one time they were doing something similar to answering one another with music. Wilson fired off Pet Sounds, the Beatles answered with Sgt. Pepper's, and Wilson in turn wrote Good Vibrations, Surf's Up, and went to bed for a long time.

and here i am, listening to both albums with some degree of regularity, never really putting them together.

my associations with Sgt. Pepper's mostly revolve around my junior year of high school. i guess we did, perhaps unknowingly, make an effort to experience it on its closest terms: most of the time on vinyl, much of the time on drugs (except for me because pot can't touch my brain?). this is where 'lovely rita' lives in my head, next to things that fell by the wayside a long time ago (I can say with confidence I will never see Requiem for a Dream again). this was the first beatles album that i considered very carefully.

pet sounds was a bit more circuitous. my brother sang 'sloop john b' in chorus sometime when i was in middle school. pet sounds in its entirety comes with my living on my own out here by the great lakes. i thought about buying it on vinyl somewhere in toronto but i settled on just downloading it.

now paul mccartney's comment would, in a perfect world, shift my perspective on these two bands. it's clear these two were writing songs back and forth. this dialogue should enrich my listening. it's clear that 'god only knows' and the white album's 'i will' are companions and they are all the more beautiful side by side. they tell a similar story sung similarly soft and sweet. it's really wonderful. figuring that 'i will' is both lovingly original and a very, very deft response to something else lovingly original is a big big thought.

and i guess what i am getting at is, even with that in mind, 'sloop john b' is my favorite song on pet sounds. not because i can find it in a grander scheme of things, but because my brother used to sing it all the time in our basement. and even though i think the songs on the white album are maybe better than those on lonely hearts club band, the latter is still what i would call my favorite beatles album. these are judgments based on my own arbitrary set of associations, my own frame.

mccartney et al had their own frame to apply to their music. And to appreciate anything they produced in its totality, that is, and to precisely know this frame's dimensions. which i would hold to be impossible for many, many reasons but the most obvious being the separation of time, that john lennon was dead before i was born. this makes my frame quite a bit different. but then, now that i know our frames will never fit, i learn 'sloop john b' may as well be my favorite song from Pet Sounds.

i think there's nothing wrong with this whole situation. it's just weird is all.


{Jonathan Coulton covers 'I Will.' He is friends with John Hodgman and quite talented.}
{Brian Wilson sings 'God Only Knows.' accompanied by photo montage.}

for those of us who are dismayed at the fact that you will never appreciate art entirely if you are out of its time, i sympathize with you. i read chaucer. a lot. i want to believe in the timelessness of things too.

for revolver apologists: as you can see i am not one of your number. it's middle of the pack on my beatles album depth chart.

he drew the map of america way too big.

After a semester of Asian American literature, I could tell you a lot of things about Orientalism and assimilation vs. acculturation and Charlie Chan. But I am going to cut to the chase, and post this link of Andrew Lam's excellent short story "Show and Tell," as it is a highlight and doesn't require much context. Other than that, if you're looking for good AA lit, I would suggest Chang-rae Lee and anyone from the Phillipines or their descendants (Carlos Bulosan, Jessica Hagedorn, etc etc). That country, man, they can write.

And also I saw UR's Dan Price play the Drama House coffee house deal the other day and if you STILL don't believe me that he is really, really good and you can tear yourself away from BitTorrent for one hour to see him play, for the love of God visit his myspace. Tuesday November 2 is my personal favorite. Ju-jajuba was set to play but Cory was sick. And you ain't goin' nowhere without Cory, Ju-j.

"we're not playing anymore until we get six soy lattes on the stage."

The first thing you'll notice is the video quality - surprisingly high 'res.'

Then you get this post's title - kind of obnoxious. You can be honest. Just cause you're in a great band doesn't mean you can just ironically make knowingly-hip-sorta-serious-half-threats on stage. I'm pretty sure it's in the Talmud, somewhere in theres. I think I read it in The Chosen.

Third thing, how tight is Ladybug Transister live? Sure, there's not too much going on around them, but this one's a keeper.

FROM THE BIG CHURCH TO THE BIG RIVER AND OUT TO THE SHINING SEA

Background - Billy Bragg used to be 'totally righteous' and his leftist anger was looked on as somehow appropriate. Now he's regarded by many (re: the English) as a suburban socialist, yelling slogans for labor causes from his gated community. I will allow him a degree of bourgeois comfort as he runs roughshod over pretentions you didn't even know you had in his lyrics.

Take "Help Save the Youth of America."

In one sense, he allows us to retain our self-important he-was-a-young-American attitudes - that we're in some sort of privileged position, one not only of pound-for-pound future power but of knowledge and freedom and even taste (rock music and Disney movies have marched around the world). We've still got that world-running swagger, the lingering aftertaste of the american century. Our American history courses end with perestroika and glasnost and one superpower left standing. We learn a few Russian words so that we can know their slow surrender in their native tongue. We rescued Western Europe from fascism, Eastern Europe from communism, and then we made movies about it.

I know it's been said before - that we Americans sit on our thrones and watch the rest of the world so on so forth - but Bragg sees the legs coming out from under us, a la Europe 1914, and how this will affect surfers. The idea of the world saving the youth of America doesn't jive with our own ingrained attitudes - our parents messed up, its up to us to make it right, and we either can or can't. It's us to the rescue or no. But being rescued? Bwah? Not in the programming of isolation versus intervention. We are the deciders!

So realize this isn't about guitars and things. But look at the last few generations. The first dimension they're defined on is music. Elvis, the Beatles, the Bee Gees, the Ramones, Duran Duran, Nirvana. Music sheds quite a bit of light on being young at a specific time. It's the most convincing argument I can come up with for that really obnoxious "music is life/music is so important to me!/i'd die without my music" belief that I just so happen to ascribe to.

"we'll sing a crooked path back to our home"

Well it's getting to the point where I can sort of remember the smells of changing seasons in Massachusetts. You get a lot of time to absorb that fall smell there and as a result it has always been my favorite season (we just skip the season here in rochester, I wasn't around when that decision was made). It's also close to the point where I maniacally check concert venues in Boston (rather, Allston and Cambridge really) to see what I can see! I usually can't see anything. And there's usually one show that I am really aggravated to miss.

This year it is definitely Hallelujah the Hills, for a variety of reasons.
1) Check out their show schedule. They are nearly constantly playing a show there. I think they have 82 shows in November. Of course, they are taking Thanksgiving and the weekend off. Take it on, guys, take it on! You're young!

2) They actually sing about Massachusetts. I sympathize with this and willingly admit I give to much credit for it. Local bands from back in the day would do it all the time, just inserting our ungainly moniker into the chorus as a line unto itself. let me try to mimic it:

"toyota corolla's busted, in the shop

i shot the tv for the sox game on fox

massachusetts

i'll never get bored with you"

Makes "Boston you're my home" look like Wallace Stevens, the way we used to fawn over our state (although it is the best one in the Union [runner-up Oregon, last place Florida]). Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers could pull it off well. The Cars didn't really try. The Pixies' "UMass" gets honorable mention.

3) This band is really good? I know, weird. My sporadic posting has been due to the fact that little has demanded the time out of my quasi-masochistic schedule. A merry band of Guided By Voices fans for sure, that carve their own little world of love for homeland with the four minutes of static they are given. Sure, their lo-fi resources pin them to at least a somewhat GBV sound, but the lyrics are even more reminiscent of Guided By Voices - "there is no context for this progress/ a village epidemic reaches Congress" - and a song title like "My Scientist Colleagues I Bid You Farewell" only reinforces it. But man. You can root this in Guided By Voices but I feel like this isn't throwback indie rock - it's undoubtedly a step forward. I love when great indie rock songs come 'round to remind me of how daring and creative and simply wonderful the Wrens, Sebadoh, Built To Spill, that 90-early 00s school truly was. They couldn't have done a better job of it even if they straight up covered GBV (ie, the sorta-cool Trail of Dead Cover of "Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory."

Over this break I am at least going to try to get my hands on a t-shirt.