Borderlines & the Dialectic.

“Everybody looks so ill at ease
So distrustful, so displeased
Running down the table
I see a borderline
Like a barbed wire fence
Strung tight, strung tense
Prickling with pretense
A borderline”

So sang Joni Mitchell in one of her finest and most incisive songs—”Borderline,” from her early ’90s (quasi-)masterpiece, Turbulent Indigo. In a subsequent verse, the artist paints a vivid portrait of those who “praise barbarity / in this illusory place / this scared, hard-edged rat-race.” In closing, she gracefully dismisses the futility of every ideology mapped throughout the song, stating casually and assuredly that: “All you deface, all you defend / Is just a borderline.”

 

While there are many songs in the Joni canon that can repeatedly bring me to my knees or force me to eat crow, “Borderline” presents a rather singular fait accompli. Because the entirety of human ideology crumbles under the weight of this simple yet elegant text; including every indulgence in such borderline surveillance, which Yours Truly has ever been myopic enough to commit to writing.

I can no longer number on the fingers of my two hands, the number of times in recent history that I’ve repeated a particular platitude: “we are living in strange times.” Every time I repeat the phrase, I seem to betray a quasi-mystical hope—hope that some rational explanation for our circumstances might be drawn from the ether of such banal truisms. Perhaps the time has come for us to throw in the towel, in searching for any explanation to any of this madness. Or perhaps, it is necessary for us to re-engage the power of the mind, and step outside the now-driven-into-the-ground parameters defining our socio-cultural dialogue. To examine this battleground from a different perspective altogether; to question the very validity of our failed parameters, and try—for a change—to actually understand where we are (vs. insisting on getting to where we want to be, as quickly as possible).

David Bowie, standing by the Wall in Berlin; circa 1987, Glass Spider Tour. On the day after his passing, the German Foreign Office responded to the news by thanking him for helping to bring the wall down.

In my most recent post, I reflected upon the on-going relevance of David Bowie’s penultimate studio album, The Next Day. The post was titled after the album’s surprising lead single, “Where Are We Now”—in which the artist reflects upon his days spent living in West Berlin, during the late 1970s, recording a trilogy of monumentally influential albums with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti (as well as producing and co-writing a pair of equally significant Iggy Pop solo albums). The visually startling music video produced to accompany this single, directed by installation artist Tony Oursler, presents a static portrait of the artist’s studio life during this time: “sitting in the Dschungel;” “walking the dead,” waiting for a train. Though I’ll admit to being mildly perplexed by the song (and its choice for lead single) at the time of its original release, I can hardly think of a more timely artistic expression of what it feels like to live in 45’s America. The feeling of being frozen in time—unable to move forward or back; waiting at a terminal for a train that may never arrive, but unwilling to step outside the station for fear of the horrors that surround you on all sides (not unlike the oppressive weight of the Berlin Wall—yet another futile borderline).

In such a climate, reflecting on the past will continue to prove a necessary task for planting the seeds to a better future. For there remain clues scattered throughout our history, which may well provide us with the guidance needed to prevent this uncertain future from becoming an endless, Nietzschean reiteration of our pre-apocalyptic present.

* * *

I was struck with the inspiration to pen this entry, after reading a noteworthy academic journal by Ringo Ossewaarde (a professor of sociology at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands). I stumbled upon the piece while searching for writings on dialectical reasoning in the 21st century, and I advise the reader to set aside the time needed to digest in its entirety. If you only have time to read one long think piece today, please close out of this post and give Mr. Ossewaarde precedence; for while I may not personally deem some of the ideological fears he ruminates on quite as severe as he deems them to be (and while others, like the resurgence of fascism, seem more pertinent to our present-day situation), I’ve rarely read a piece of philosophical inquisitiveness as pointed, engaging, and nuanced as this one.

In struggling to make sense of the messy political conditions we presently find ourselves in, it dawned on me that a lot of the conversations taking place among us on the national front seem to suffer from an abuse of classical debate models. Rather than originating from a place of reason, observation, and friendly dispute, most of our conversations on contemporary subjects seem to originate from a position of deliberate antagonism. An eristic position, as opposed to a truth-seeking position. With antagonism as the norm, it ought to come as no surprise, when individuals who have adopted a truth-seeking outlook are misunderstood by their detractors, and (unsurprisingly) taken down a notch for daring to seek the most truthful common thread—as opposed to indulging in the more lucrative activity of professional hair-splitting. Ossewaarde captures this emergent dichotomy with great aptitude and precision:

“In Plato’s The Sophist (226a), Socrates identifies the Sophists with ‘the money making species’, thereby asserting that they do not dispute for the sake of the search for truth but instead engage in the dispute as professionals, to articulate their own truth claims for a reward or as a job. In other words, the dialectic turns eristic when friends come to depend (for their rewards) on their own truth claims, so that they become unwilling to negate their initial views (negation would make them lose their rewards). Since victory and not truth is the ultimate goal of the eristic discussion, the Sophists rarely change direction and hence are incapable of progressing towards truth.”

And with one paragraph, Ossewaarde successfully outlines the disease that prevents us, as a society, from making any progress towards alleviating the animosity of our conversation. And while specific changes in policy (such as the Reagan administration’s overturning of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine; which effectively opened the doors for our ratings-and-sensationalism-driven news networks, and their rosters of theatrically impassioned talking heads who make a fortune by not bending to reason) have no doubt exacerbated our situation, it seems our culture—as well as the cultures of many European ancestors—have been drifting further away from truth-driven dialectical reasoning for decades prior to such official policy changes.

Raphael’s painting of the School of Athens, located in the Vatican, it portrays the commingling of sophists and philosophers in a polis setting.

And while Ossewaarde’s journal singles out the dominant ideology of popular liberalism as one of the most toxic and limiting ideologies currently in vogue, one could double down on the same charges as they relate to neo-conservatism (beginning with the Nixonian era of American politics). Thus, the greater significance of this journal seems, to me, a broader awareness that “ideology is a disease of the mind.” A statement which, bold as it may seem, I find myself hesitant to counter. For have we not seen the rise and downfall of nearly every ideology known to man? And have we not witnessed the devastating effects such trends seem to have on the development of the human consciousness? From cults to religions; from feudalism to colonialism; from communism to fascism. Arguably, socialism provides the only notable exception to this rather overarching rule. And one could argue that this is due to socialism itself being rooted in liberalism—still an overriding force in global culture, precisely because it is the most rational of all the “ism”s currently on the table.

To clarify: Ossewaarde’s critique of popular liberalism (which incorporates multiple insights from thinkers like Mannheim and Mills) is not, explicitly, a critique of the founding principles upon which liberalism has been built. Rather, his critique aims to clarify how popular liberalism has managed to take noble concepts and distort them in such a way that has actually proven detrimental to their advancement. Take, for instance, three ideas central to the liberal ethos: civil rights, gun control, and public services (health, education, and unemployment benefits, for instance). On all three issues, liberals generally hold a more rational stance than their conservative counterparts—though fortunately, some conservatives seem to be shifting towards the light. But if one were to accept Ossewaarde’s critique of liberalism (as a positivist ideology), one would have to acknowledge that we might’ve found a better way to convey the truthfulness of the liberal position; at least, something above the blowhard tactics of a Chris Matthews or a Bernie Sanders.

Similarly, this critique holds up when one considers the splintering of liberals into increasingly small subsections: the pitting of one puritanical ideologue against another, perceived-to-be-less-than; resulting in a climate wherein a liberal feminist (HRC) who had engaged in some misguided commentary (much of it having been prepared by male advisors surrounding her) and used an insecure email server, could be deemed—by some—a greater threat to progressive talking points than a populist demagogue with a mafioso predisposition, actively espousing anti-progressive rhetoric, and willingly adding fuel to a raging fire of xenophobic sentiment. Whereas one individual may see the forest for the trees, another may only see the branches that don’t align with their personal vision of the forest. And it is this very failure to reconcile reality as-is, with one’s personal interpretation of how reality ought to be, that results in the “mind that can no longer think well” (Ossewaarde, p. 408). (Just as this writer still finds himself struggling, on occasion, with the reality that 45 is still the President of this country, despite every indicator that he oughtn’t be at this time; and despite every bone in my body recoiling at every idiotic gesture of his idiotic and actively oppressive regime. There have been times, no doubt, that this mind has not been able to think well about all this; which, to some conspiracy theorists, could be deemed another objective of this administration’s strategy to divide, conquer, and deflect attention away from the puppet-masters.)

In turn, Ossewaarde succeeds in dismantling the most popular utopian “distortion” of reality perpetuated throughout the annals of sociological philosophy. Marxism is therefore seen as: “an eristic (read: an argument that aims to successfully dispute another’s argument, rather than searching for truth) pathology to dialectical sociology… Not only does Marxism make an illegitimate use of the dialectical method, but, in that use, it theorizes the historically determined transcendence of the contradiction in an historically fixated end state – the classless society.” It is, like all other utopias, a fantasy that cannot and will never be achieved; because the dialectic it seeks to suppress is, in this writer’s humble opinion at least, inherent to human nature itself.

Oprah Winfrey hosts a roundtable reunion of panelists who were first interviewed eight months into 45’s term as president. © 2018, CBS News.

For evidence of the dialectical urge in human nature, one need look no further than the number of U.S. voters who have lent their full support to the most mentally unstable president we may have ever entertained (or been shamefully entertained by). In televised interviews with some of the voters in question—including a recent Oprah panel reunion on 60 Minutes—one finds that these individuals are not, as is often portrayed by voices on the left, explicitly bigoted lunatics who wouldn’t know a book if it hit them in the face (though, to be certain, they exist also). Rather, they seem to be predominantly marked by a quality of anti-liberalism; which is different than anti-intellectualism (though occasionally commingled), because its antagonism lies most heavily within the notion of a truth being thrust upon them with no identifiable choice—versus being engaged in a rational dialogue that might enable independent acknowledgement of evidence supporting the correctness of liberal views (which, admittedly, some people will refuse to acknowledge even after a Socratic tutorial). Sometimes, this desire for active engagement manifests itself intentionally (i.e. “I can’t get past the way liberals talk”), other times, with little to no awareness of this desire even existing. In viewing the above-mentioned 60 Minutes piece, one may well note that the liberal-leaning panelists in this segment rarely succeed in effectively conveying the objective facts supporting their views. Rather, their attempts to relay the righteousness of their perspective is more commonly rooted in an observable emotion, which (to someone who might not share in the emotion, having not yet grasped the information which provoked it) generally serves to cloud the objective merit of the information being conveyed.

At the close of Ossewaarde’s thought-provoking commentary, the writer asserts that the greatest hope for a more radical sociology lies in the pursuit of a modern-day Socratic polis (publics)—sans slavery, of course—”in which the paideia – high culture – is continued through radical sociology.” This requires a separation from the elitist (and racist) mindset that underwrote the Greek polis, and an active process of adaptation to the circumstances of 21st century life within society. Most essentially, such an ideal can only be met if, and when, radical sociology succeeds in implanting itself within the machine of global capitalism. As explained by Michael Burawoy (a public sociologist who is currently attempting to reconcile an interdisciplinary range of sciences with capitalist enterprise): “globalization is wreaking havoc with sociology’s basic unit of analyses – the nation-state – while compelling deparochialization of our discipline.”

In other words, having altered the basic unit upon which the study of sociology was established, the pursuit of a globalized industrial complex (and its residual, globalized culture effect) has enabled powers on both the left and the right to call into question the very usefulness of a dialectical sociology (while, curiously, they still refuse to join forces in a single party of globalized fascism; for this is what modern life would resembled, if stripped entirely of  dialectical thought. The debate perseveres; which means that some thought remains, however distorted it may have become). An inverse dilemma is raised from this rejection of the dialectic: for if sociology has provided the backbone to social progress over the past millennia, can social progress stand a chance, when sociology is removed from its original role in the conversation? (And where might the arts, as we know and love them, find a more relevant place in this conversation?)

Burawoy and, to a lesser extent, Ossewaarde both seem cautiously optimistic about our chances for transcending the “ism”s of our time. Ossewaarde writes: “Since the positivist sociologies no longer serve the victorious, radical sociologists should no longer aim at negating positivism (Burawoy 2005a: 261, 266). Liberalism is no longer the foe of radical sociology. In the current crises of global capitalism, the very possibility of Burawoy’s public sociology and its resistance to global capitalism depends on a co-operative partnership with the positivist sociologies. This partnership is not a dialogue or friendly dispute between sociologists or scientists in general. Instead, it is a new deal in which positivism provides sociology with the legitimacy of a scientific discipline, while public sociology makes sociological knowledge accessible to democratic citizens, enabling them to make public issues out of their private troubles [emph. added].”

This may not seem like utopia to the reader, but it may well be the most comparable experience we can realistically hope for.

* * *

Where is hope?
While you’re wondering what went wrong?
Why give me light and then this dark without a dawn?
Show your face!
Help me understand!
What is the reason for your heavy hand?
Was it the sins of my youth?
What have I done to you?
That you make everything I dread and everything I fear
Come true?

Following the heavy blow of “Borderline” and the softer darkness of “Yvette in English,” Joni’s Turbulent Indigo closes with her magisterial “The Sire of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song)”—in which the singer boldly re-appropriates the narrative of Job from the perspective of a woman (which, one supposes, is no more bold a gesture than that time she re-appropriated Yeats’s “Second Coming,” for her marvelous and profoundly underrated Night Ride Home album). It is a song—and a record—for our times; with its aching plea for an end to the never-ending reaches of trauma, and its desperate yearning for some hopeful resolve. Juxtaposed against the radical sociology of Ossewaarde and Burawoy, Joni’s music provides the inevitable counterweight to pure objectivity: pains for which no cold, objectively delivered explanation will suffice; horrors which no reasoned debate can rescind. The pure subjectivity of human trauma and lived experience, seeking resiliency through artistic acumen.

 

As I write this entry, I find myself simultaneously reading about the role that Facebook has played in the escalation of an ethnic cleansing underway in Rohingya, Myanmar. A report on the findings of a recent UN study, exploring the factors that have contributed to this genocide, indicates that: ” [Facebook] has … substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly, of course, a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media.” I recall the immediate aftershocks of 45’s election and subsequent inauguration; aftershocks which included a spike in U.S. hate crime, as well as the broadening revelation that Russian-funded social media propaganda had played a significant role in furthering homegrown acrimony. I think of how all these factors might’ve played out differently, had our culture not drifted so far afield from dialectical reasoning. Had radical sociologists played a more significant role in the evolution of social media technology, or had Ted Nelson been successful in launching his alternative proposal to the World Wide Web model (Project Xanadu). It is alarming, saddening, and somewhat humbling to see how a single century of human history can yield so many shortsighted turns; giving way to a chain reaction of negative consequences—some predicted, many unforeseen—and leading us to our present circumstances.

Ted Nelson, interviewed in the 2016 Werner Herzog documentary on the history of the internet, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. © 2016, Magnolia Pictures.

I cannot seem to erase this longing, at the very core of my being, to (in New Testament fashion) turn over the tables in the marketplace of our status quo, and insist upon a return to some form of reasonable containment for dialectical contradictions. And while I am reluctant to overestimate the possibilities for art bringing about such a revolutionary change, I continue to be inspired by the surrealist ethos: to create such a shock to the nervous system of the established order, that it cannot help but question the sustainability of its own terms. As art continues being co-opted by the contemporary positivist movement, which seems intent on reforming the arts in an a priori manner (so as to make them redundant), perhaps that counter-reaction to the institutionalization of bourgeois sensibility—once referred to as the nouvelle vague—may have its day in court, once more.

For it is not a question of whether the dialectic will be recovered, or whether humankind will awaken to the benefits of its implementation in society. The dialectic is. If we do not take the necessary steps to accommodate its existence within the fabric of our reality, it will simply continue rearing its stubborn head in ways that further destabilize and undo the best laid plans of mice and men. Might we make room for it, instead?

Proof of Cinema

in the Home of the Brave.

“There’s no such thing as love, only proof of love.”
– Jean Cocteau

 

Is there such a thing as cinema? Do the images that flicker for us on that big screen—paired with foley effects, synced dialogue, and original scoring—compose something tangible and identifiable? Or is it all an illusion; a reproduction of a dream (that most intangible and abstract concoction of all)? More pressingly: is there still a place for cinema, in the age of social media (with its foremost byproducts: outrage and attention deficits), online dating, and reality TV presidents?

It’s a question that has been swirling around the toilet bowl of movie nerd-dom for several years now—fielded primarily by a circuit of twenty-something film school brats (I use the term endearingly; they all appear to be gainfully employed at IndieWire now, so it would seem they’ve landed on their feet), adjusting their glasses as they alternately defend the politics of streamable distribution formats, or decry the disappearance of that communal experience once known as going to the movies. As far as this writer is concerned, the debate can be rendered irrelevant with a simple understanding that where there is a will, there is a way; and regardless of the production/distribution methodology, we have a century-old addiction to recreating our dreams for projection on the big screen. This is unlikely to disappear outright—particularly if one considers that dreams are in greater demand than ever.

Last year saw the demise of many socio-cultural norms and institutions. It also bore witness to some awe-inspiring new works by our country’s foremost dream-makers, and the emergence of some powerful new voices in American cinema. In the former category, no achievement can match the awesome feat of Mr. David Lynch—whose 18-hour-long masterclass in film-making (Twin Peaks: The Return) has left viewers throughout the world kneeling in the dust of its tailspin; bowing to the shape of its receding genius. In addition to Lynch’s crowning achievement, there were strong showings from other established auteurs, including Paul Thomas Anderson, Noah Baumbach, and Todd Haynes. We were served a generous helping of the profoundly twisted, Hitchcockian meticulousness practiced by David Fincher (whose original miniseries, Mindhunter, gives long-form life to the investigative-cum-philosophical theorism of Se7en and Zodiac); we were also granted a fresh dose from the perceptive, loving, and quintessentially American gaze of Richard Linklater. In the newcomer category, there was a powerful entry from Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi (Chavela); a directorial debut by the fabulously deadpan Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird); and a wobbly but noteworthy second feature by Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats). There was also an imperative documentary on the late civil rights activist and prolific writer, James Baldwin (I Am Not Your Negro, directed by Raoul Peck; worth the price of admission, but regrettable for its failure to tackle the full scope of Baldwin’s contradictory existence), and the surrealistic late-night comedy flair of Jordan Peele—successfully channeled into big screen, feature-length form in the topical blockbuster Get Out.

Photographer JR paces a beach in Normandy, where he and Agnès Varda have just pasted one of many portraits taken throughout Faces Places on the base of a WWII bunker—which was pushed off the precipice of a nearby cliff. © 2017, Cohen Media Group.

On the international stage, we were blessed with offerings from the subtle genius of Ms. Agnès Varda (whose latest documentary, Faces Places, is a fountain of joys), the sensuous intellectualism of Luca Guadagnino (in the James Ivory-penned audience favorite, Call Me By Your Name), and the slick auteurism of Denis Villeneuve (whose eagerly anticipated sequel to Ridley Scott’s seminal masterwork—Blade Runner 2049—left me breathless and teary-eyed). We encountered the quietly mysterious spiritualism of Olivier Assayas (who brilliantly melded the mystical horror of Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now with the existential melodrama of Krzysztof Kieślowski, in his original film Personal Shopper), the stark realism of Francis Lee (God’s Own Country), and the smarter-than-average populism of Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water). And while I could easily use this essay to sing praises to each of these international works, it seems to me—with all the tumult and unrest engulfing us on the national (and international) stage(s)—that a more pressing need may be met by attempting to highlight the fruits of my homeland: a country that has, since its very inception, provoked justifiable skepticism around its merits.

Much has already been written about on-going struggles, pertaining to inequality and sexual harassment within the American film industry (along with every other facet of our socioeconomic structure). The movement to systemically advance opportunities for marginalized individuals—and the parallel movement, to raise awareness for the plight of those experiencing institutionalized harassment and discrimination—is long overdue. Perhaps because of this delayed reform, it seems there may be an unfortunate residual effect emerging from this discourse (and more specifically, from the online social media factor; for while this technology has proven well-suited to a number of ends, social progress has scarcely been one of them). That is, the tendency to cynically lament the shortcomings of a given system—in 2016, the “swamp” of Washington, D.C.; in 2017, Hollywood—all the while forgetting that not every individual involved in said system represents said shortcomings.

For instance, if we are to examine the strengths and deficits of the United States, circa 2018, it would be easy—too easy—to highlight the deficit column, and disregard altogether the finer qualities we’ve represented more capably in the past. But would such emphasis prove these qualities to be nonexistent in the present? Or would it merely bring to light the fact that these merits are an integral part of the American fabric—that they have fallen on hard times, and may need some attention to flourish once more? I am hopeful that this new wave of social activism will contribute to the reignition of our country’s innovation and resiliency; qualities which have fallen by the wayside for some time now (at least as far back as our cultural shift in definition—from innovation: discovery and development, to innovation: app development). I am fearful that—within our climate of antagonistic communication patterns, totalitarian politics, and a general predisposition toward reactionary patterns of behavior—this form of activism may all-too-easily be thwarted by neo-conservative powers, intent on branding minority-status citizens as victims for life, and thereby curtailing their power to advance the causes of restorative justice. Regardless of my hopes and fears, I have always found the presentation of a viable alternative to be the most effective strategy for social change (as opposed to the incessant hounding of those already well-known for fostering inequality; lest we forget that all publicity is good publicity, for those with no dignity left to jeopardize).

In a similar vein, I don’t see much merit in hounding on the immense miscarriage of finance that underlies the majority of Hollywood’s output (beyond pointing out that such a miscarriage exists). I’m a firm believer that, in a consumer society, we empower the type of work we want to see more of, whenever we make our selection at the box office ticket counter. Although the aggressive powers of marketing have escalated exponentially these past few decades—culminating in our present-day, tail-wagging-the-dog marketplace mentality—we are the ones who ultimately empower (or discourage) the makers of plastic cinema, when we hand them our attention and our money. Which is why most of us adopt a selective approach in our movie-going habits (let alone the absurd escalation in ticket and concession prices): just as in the world-at-large, one can have a positive impact on the future of cinema, by supporting the proofs of cinema which advance its more worthwhile attributes. And while each viewer has their preferences, I find it remarkable that so many of these attributes have long been shown to be universal. Consider the phenomenon—that a single film can be understood and lauded (or derided) by different nations of people, throughout every corner of the world. That we can each learn from the perceptions and experiences of perfect strangers, and in so doing develop a greater capacity for love and understanding. May this phenomenon never be taken for granted.

For the purpose of this entry (and for the cause of restoring some honor and dignity to a country that has little to champion in either department, as of this writing), I have chosen five of my favorite American films released in 2017: to hold them up as shining examples of our more worthy attributes; and to remind the reader (if one is in need of reminding) that there is still much worth championing in the American landscape. In times such as these, we may all need reminding.

 

Lady Bird
written & directed by Greta Gerwig; starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, and Timothée Chalamet
released by A24 and Universal Pictures 

Greta Gerwig directs Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in a scene from her beloved directorial debut, Lady Bird. © 2017, A24 and Universal Pictures.

I was first made aware of Greta Gerwig when I saw the first of several Noah Baumbach vehicles in which she appeared—the under-valued (in this writer’s opinion) and surprisingly buoyant dark comedy, Greenberg. I immediately took note of the name. There was something in the way she brought her character—and, consequently, the film—to life; something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and didn’t particularly care to. I hate to use the term “star quality,” seeing as how what passes for a star these days would make the likes of Bogey and Bacall roll in their graves. Suffice it to say, Gerwig has the sort of innate brilliance and affability that could inspire one to ask her out for a cocktail, and debate whether Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire was the better dancer (for no other reason than to hear the sound of her voice as it struggles to keep pace with the winding movements of her wit).

Gerwig has already had a terrific run (and she’s only just begin), appearing in a pair of films she has since co-written with Baumbach—her erstwhile paramour—as well as giving memorable turns in works by Todd Solondz (Wiener Dog) and Rebecca Miller (Maggie’s Plan). Watching her take the lead and walk away with every scene in Frances Ha fostered in this writer the sort of unabashed, film-loving glee that only comes around once in a blue moon; the film’s nouvelle vague aesthetic, rather than making it appear dated, actually served to highlight the confidence and strength of its content and delivery. A year before that, I was positively enchanted by her incarnation of Whit Stillman’s alter-ego, Violet, in his politely subversive and drier-than-a-communion-wafer gem of a film, Damsels in Distress: finding myself only one of two people in the theater (the other being my companion) to laugh hysterically at its tenderly acerbic take on the follies and neuroses of bourgeois young adults, I wondered if Gerwig’s particular (some may say peculiar) sensibility could ever connect with a broader audience. Half a decade later, as I sat in the packed house of that same theater for a screening of her Oscar-nominated directorial debut, I grinned and laughed uncontrollably; I thanked all of our lucky stars this moment had finally arrived.

While one is never in doubt as to the film’s author (one can practically visualize Gerwig acting out every part in the movie during script readings), the ensemble cast of Lady Bird deserves a standing ovation for their dedicated and cohesive effort to bring Gerwig’s writing to life. I was especially taken with Laurie Metcalf (who, in addition to Saoirse Ronan—the film’s protagonist—is now up for an Oscar) and Stephen Henderson, whose subtle performance as a theater instructor in the Catholic high school frequented by Lady Bird has lingered in my memory. Lady Bird’s rotation of friends and acquaintances is equally memorable: from the “shitty Pavement fan” (Gerwig’s verbatim direction) boyfriend played by Timothée Chalamet, to the helplessly perky ex- played by Lucas Hedges (most immediately recognized as the kid in Manchester By the Sea), to her best friend and confidante, Julie (a beaming Beanie Feldstein).

Given time, Lady Bird is likely to be lumped in a basket with every other coming-of-age comedy to ever achieve critical acclaim (The Graduate, Clueless, Rushmore, The Breakfast Club, etc…). And while there would certainly be some fine company in this basket, it would be a disservice to the extraordinary nuance of Gerwig’s film—which unlike The Graduate, with its stylish cynicism (or Rushmore, with its stylish stylism) happens to be an unexpectedly intricate and layered portrait of adolescence; above and beyond what most are accustomed to getting out of a Wednesday matinee. That such an unabashedly smart, disarmingly confident slice of American film-making could emerge from our current cultural climate—and in the process, achieve international acclaim—is a testament to the finer qualities of the American sensibility. It is also a testament to the (possibly boundless) potential of a strong, idiosyncratic voice in the latest chapter of our nation’s cinema.

 

Last Flag Flying
directed by Richard Linklater; written by Richard Linklater & Darryl Ponicsan; starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishbourne, J. Quinton Johnson, and Cicely Tyson
released by Amazon Studios and Lionsgate

Left to right: Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishbourne, and Steve Carrell play three Vietnam war veterans in Last Flag Flying, Richard Linklater & Darryl Ponicsan’s “spiritual sequel” to The Last Detail. © 2017, Amazon Studios & Lionsgate

It is probably no great secret, among my friends and fellow movie fanatics, that I have a strong affinity for the work of Richard Linklater. Ever since my first viewing of Waking Life, in the form of a DVD borrowed from my local library, I have followed every step of Linklater’s career—with a mixture of fascination and mild apathy (something tells me he would approve of this response; it’s mostly fascination, anyhow).

In Last Flag Flying, Linklater tenderly pays tribute to another great film love of mine—the late Hal Ashby; whose 1973 adaptation of the earlier Darryl Ponicsan novel, The Last Detail, provides much of the spirit for Linklater’s quasi-sequel. It’s an honest, considered, personalized reproduction of the story Ponicsan wrote three decades later (at the height of the second Gulf War): in many regards, the narratives run parallel to each other; but this later entry is more firmly rooted in the trenches of death, and the sorrow of survival. Their events seem to overlap: in both stories, for instance, the three protagonists share a night on the town in New York—and subsequently miss their train. The fact that in one they’re looking to get laid, while in the other they’re looking to buy some mobile phones, is entirely beside the point; the echo effect is palpable, and it is bound to resonate with fans of Ashby’s cult classic. A large part of what renders Last Flag Flying such a noteworthy feat (or proof) of American cinema, is this sense of connected-ness: with the histories of its characters; the histories of its authors; and with the most radically inspired, promising film era in our nation’s cinema (spanning ’68 to ’79, or thereabouts; also the timeline for Ashby’s career). Some may deride this sort of praise as high-handed, but as our connectivity to history becomes increasingly scarce—with sound bytes and YouTube clips superceding context and formal analysis—I think it’s warranted.

Left to right: Otis Young, Randy Quaid, and Jack Nicholson play three Navy corpsmen in Hal Ashby’s 1973 adaptation of The Last Detail. © 1973, Columbia Pictures.

What is most notable about this picture, perhaps, are the thoughtful ways in which Linklater asserts his own personality and characterization throughout. For whereas both Ashby and Linklater linger on the spiritual questing of troubled characters, Linklater advances the quest through a far more directly pointed approach. In The Last Detail, Jack Nicholson’s “Badass” Buddusky rolls his eyes during a unitarian gathering of chanting practitioners; in Last Flag Flying, Bryan Cranston’s Sal embarks upon an incessant, often irritating (intentionally, at that; and effectively, kudos to Cranston) tirade against the perceived-as-indoctrinated rationale of his former buddy—now-Reverend—Richard Mueller (Laurence Fishbourne). Which isn’t to say this confrontational perspective belongs to the director himself (though the viewer may pick up subtle shades of Ethan Hawke’s Jesse in Cranston’s Sal); Linklater merely had the wisdom and good faith to reveal, whenever possible, the changes that time has inflicted upon his characters—along with the changes time has withheld. That there is no direct connection between the three characters portrayed by the actors in each film is especially effective—and affecting: for by pointing to separate instances of similar life patterns, Linklater and Ponicsan achieve a far broader sense of connectivity with the human condition. It’s the sort of artistic gesture that reveals how, even though our behaviors are developed through a complex mixture of environmental and biological triggers, they frequently perpetuate themselves through stubborn repetition, and through subjugation to damaging social constructs (in this case, the construct of war). And if the complexities of human behavior can be perpetuated, it follows they must also be capable of change.

In keeping with this insight (which doesn’t emerge until farther along in the characters’ journey), Last Flag Flying closes on a dark but optimistic note. The resolution belongs to Steve Carrell’s character—an ex-Navy corpsman known as “Doc” Shepherd; the heart of the film, in more ways than one (Carrell’s performance being a quiet and inexorable force throughout). The film fades out as “Doc” achieves a sort of closure with the premature death of his only son; the song that fades in during the end credits is “Not Dark Yet,” from Bob Dylan’s beautiful late ’90s offering, Time Out of Mind. It provides the perfect post-script for the trajectory of these characters—a trio of Vietnam war veterans struggling to connect the dots of their scattered lives (“I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from“). It also manages to connect their struggle to the more imminent struggles faced by our country, at this specific juncture in history; for as we sit around, waiting for someone to step up and dethrone the lunatic who’s been given free reign to distort our country for private gain, many of us search for signs of hope—struggling to find some comfort in the paradox betrayed by Dylan’s song: it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

 

Chavela
directed by Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi; starring Chavela Vargas, Pedro Almodóvar, Elena Benarroch,  Miguel Bosé, and Liliana Felipe
released by Aubin Pictures

Pedro Almodóvar and Chavela Vargas: two rebellious spirits, captured in Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi’s exceptional documentary, Chavela. © 2017 Aubin Pictures.

I am so grateful that my local art house cinema (Neon Movies) picked up this very special and memorable documentary; it was particularly rewarding to have one of the film’s co-authors, Daresha Kyi, in attendance for a live Q&A post-screening. Her pensive and often comical commentary validated all of the finer presumptions this writer had gathered from the screening, but it also served to open up many of the complexities and contradictions scattered throughout the surface (and subtext) of Chavela.

According to Kyi, the process of making a documentary about the famed (and infamous) Mexican chanteuse, Chavela Vargas, began under different circumstances than what one sees in the finished product. The project actually originated with an in-person interview, conducted by Catherine Gund with Chavela at the start of the singer’s first major comeback in the early ’90s. Having gone through her personal archives and digitized all the decomposing film lying in canisters around her studio, Gund rediscovered the power of this twenty-some year old footage, and felt compelled to share it with Kyi. Upon viewing the footage together, and catching up on the later years of Chavela’s life story, the initial concept developed by Gund and Kyi involved having another Latina chanteuse narrate Chavela’s story through her own personal lens. Gund and Kyi assembled a rough promo edit of this approach, then screened the material for a group of potential investors. The consensus was clear: forget about the other singer (whom Kyi did not refer to by name during the Q&A); the story is Chavela’s, and she should be the star of her film.

Upon approval of an expanded budget, Gund and Kyi were able to license footage from different televised interviews and performances, conducted at various times throughout Chavela’s complicated (and at times, difficult to trace) career. They proceeded to film present-day interviews with persons of interest, spanning the course of Chavela’s professional and personal development: a former lover (and life-long private attorney); the Spanish filmmaker, Pedro Almodóvar (who was partly responsible for Chavela’s European comeback tour, along with Laura García-Lorca); and accomplished film composer/long-time admirer, Miguel Bosé. Weaving together the present-day interviews with archival materials, Gund and Kyi have achieved a seemingly well-rounded, often contradictory portrait of their subject—a character whose most prominent qualities arose from her own contradictions. Chavela’s story is alternately inspirational and tragic; outrageous and miraculous. It’s a story (and a voice) that resonates with the most profound notes on the human scale, triggering pulses and emotions that strike the viewer/listener on a multitude of levels. The film’s emotional power serves to eulogize the life of the film’s subject, but it also reminds us of the forest we sometimes fail to perceive—among the tangled trees of this modern existence.

It seems we have reached a point in our history, where tensions have risen about as high as they could possibly rise: we see many of our fellow Americans running for cover from their perceived opponents, from one uncertain day to the next. In times such as these, there is greater pressure than ever to conform to some kind of an agenda; to restore some modicum of stability, or at least the illusion thereof. In the midst of all this pressure, Gund and Kyi gently remind us that many great figures in world history happen to be individuals who refused to conform: women like Chavela, who first made waves by refusing to wear a dress—and later, by rejecting the more limiting definitions of the contemporary LGBTQ vernacular; men like Pedro Almodóvar, who refused to make boring, run-of-the-mill, politically “sensitive” comedies—eventually finding his own niche audience through a celebration of the most outlandish and perverse attributes of outlandish and perverse characters (and narratives). Theirs are the sort of rebellious gestures that will retain their power and intrigue, long after the sediment of history has settled above them.

Gund and Kyi are smart enough to not impose an expected emotional response to the story of their film’s protagonist (unlike the makers of Amy, a film which Kyi admitted to being inspired by, but which she has visibly surpassed): the audience I was a part of responded to Chavela’s story in a variety of ways, and I found this reassuring. For it gives one hope that one day, our dominant culture may catch up with this time-earned awareness: that new possibilities can only arise when we allow our agendas to be challenged, and maybe even discarded (and conversely, possibilities will wither and fade away, whenever we permit an agenda to override a truth).

 

Phantom Thread
directed by Paul Thomas Anderson; starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lesley Manville, and Vicky Krieps
released by Focus Features

The stunning power couple of Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps share a New Year’s dance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s exquisite melodrama, Phantom Thread. © 2017, Focus Features.

Phantom Thread, the eighth film by American maverick Paul Thomas Anderson, is one of the finest pictures of 2017—and a powerful reminder of every quality that is unique to the tapestry of American cinema. Like Linklater, Anderson is an artist in touch with his film ancestry, unafraid to wear his influences on his sleeve; and much like Linklater, he refuses to cave in to the traps of plagiarism and self-aggrandizement. That his work often carries reverberations of Altman and Scorsese never implies an attempt to elevate his efforts beyond their given potential: rather, these reverberations serve to point the audience in the direction of a cinematic context—highlighting differences as much as similarities, and revealing the greatest common thread to be a stubborn adherence to one’s own dream logic.

Much like his previous Daniel Day-Lewis vehicle, the now-cult-worthy There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread has the quality of a runaway fever dream. But whereas in the previous outing, this sensibility was carried to the extremes of emotional abstraction and narrative inscrutability, their most recent effort takes a more carefully deliberated and thoughtfully contained approach. When one revisits the bulk of Anderson’s output, one often finds an artist struggling to incorporate as many of his (often brilliant, sometimes baffling) ideas into manageable feature-length form. In Phantom Thread, we find the same filmmaker who was responsible for the more quietly austere debut feature, Hard Eight (a.k.a. Sydney): an artist intent on chipping away at the excess—to sculpt a shape defined as much by its omissions as by its features. The resulting effort is ambiguous but precise; perversely comical (in a manner that would’ve made Buñuel blush) and intensely, convincingly melodramatic. It’s nothing short of a cinephile’s dream.

Although it is likely true that all great movies begin with a solid script, Anderon’s films often seem heavily predicated upon their casting (something that could just as easily be applied to Robert Altman, of whom Anderson was an avowed admirer). A substantial part of the joy provided by witnessing Phantom Thread as it unfolds, stems from the organic spark between the film’s three stars—each of them delivering Oscar-worthy turns—and the characters they’ve so adroitly given life. Lesley Manville, in particular, provides a sort of cornerstone for the elaboration of the film’s more subtle character constructions: in her own words (as quoted in a BFI interview), she embodies “this person who is quite rod-like, and can do so much with just one flicker of the eyes.” Around this immovable fixture, the heightened emotional volatility of Daniel Day-Lewis (as Reynolds Woodcock) and Vicky Krieps (as Alma Woodcock) swirls in varying degrees of pathological complexity: at times revealing itself to be an extension of the characters’ personal traumas—such as the chillingly gorgeous sequence, in which Reynolds evokes the ghost of his mother—and at others, boiling out of the alchemy between their respective pathologies. Ultimately, all three characters emerge with the sort of understated depth and intricacy that has, up to this point in film history, only been afforded the likes of Norma Shearer and Anton Walbrook (in the great British films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger). Like all great American auteurs, Anderson knows to steal only from the best.

On the other side of the vaingloriously chauvinstic posturing of Day-Lewis, Krieps shines as a sly sort of antidote to the suffocating dogmatism of over-zealous social (media) activism. Quoted in the same BFI piece mentioned above, Krieps observes that: “I respect Alma so much because she doesn’t really need the recognition or the approval, and this makes us strong… If a woman is not seeking this approval, this is a strength that’s stronger than anything, and you don’t then have to fight your ground, you just take your ground. What I like about the movie is that it’s about a dance between a man and a woman. It’s not about who’s stronger and it’s not about who will win. Once we get past this idea of ‘are the men stronger or the women?’ and just accept that men and women are ultimately completely different and completely opposite and will never be the same—until we understand and accept that—we can then have the conversation, the real conversation we really need. That’s when it will be interesting.”

Perhaps no writing on Phantom Thread captures my feelings about the film more capably than the review penned by A.O. Scott for the New York Times: “There are movies that satisfy the hunger for relevance, the need to see the urgent issues of the day reflected on screen. Paul Thomas Anderson’s eighth feature—which may also be Daniel Day-Lewis’s last movie—is emphatically and sublimely not one of them. It awakens other appetites, longings that are too often neglected: for beauty, for strangeness, for the delirious, heedless pursuit of perfection. I’ve only seen this film once […] and I’m sure it has its flaws. I will happily watch it another dozen times until I find them all.”

 

Wonderstruck

directed by Todd Haynes; starring Oakes Fegley, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, Millicent Simmonds, Jaden Michaels, and Tom Noonan

released by Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions

Todd Haynes looks down on the immersive New York City panorama—showcased unforgettably at the conclusion of his latest offering, Wonderstruck. © 2017, Amazon Studios & Roadside Attractions.

Todd Haynes is one of the finest American artists working today, and I hope the relative poor performance of this latest offering (which left critics and audiences scratching their heads in unison) does nothing to dissuade him from following his gut—and venturing far into the wilderness of his boundless and brilliant imagination in the projects yet to come. (And dear god almighty: may the financing keep flowing.) If one reviews Haynes’s filmography to date, one may well identify a knack for engaging in meta-historical conversations with the history of art itself: from the inter-textual experimentalism of Poison (where Jean Genet, AIDS hysteria, the ’50s family melodrama, and the American B-movie collide in exquisitely strange unison), to the daring innovation of his pop music biopics, I’m Not There and Velvet Goldmine (both of which draw from a near-exhausting wealth of inspirations), to the so-far-ahead-of-its-time-it’s-frightening masterpiece, Safe (driven by the finest performance in Julianne Moore’s career-to-date, and an anti-aesthetical conviction that could have given Kubrick a run for his money—in its brutal, unrelenting aim to reveal the power of environment-over-character). And let us not forget the deceptively straightforward melodrama of Far From Heaven, a film so profoundly entangled in the yarn of its own history—which includes the melodramas of Douglas Sirk, the mythology of Rock Hudson (the reluctant Hollywood queer archetype), and the New German cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder—that most viewers barely begin scratching the surface of its possible interpretations.

I suppose any commentary on Haynes’s work is bound to solicit accusations of cinephilic elitism and hyper-cerebral analysis. And while such accusations may be warranted, I will readily revert to the same defense offered Last Flag Flying: that with so many contemporary film-makers disengaging from the quilt of film history, is it not acceptable for a handful of our remaining innovators to champion their roots and—more importantly—explore the remaining possibilities for cinematic evolution? For if the reader is open to such a notion, Wonderstruck will likely prove a rewarding and thought-provoking experience. It’s the sort of children’s movie we used to excel at producing in this country, but have seemingly forgotten how to tackle in more recent years. Haynes taps into the unstated wisdom of childhood: namely, a child’s natural ability to withstand the unfathomable sadness of their own existence; a sadness which many of us, as adults, find ourselves less equipped to withstand. Beyond this insight, Haynes revels in the mystified, tangent-prone mindset of his characters. He is the proverbial “kid in a candy store,” and it shows with every frame: just as the children are inclined to impulsive flights of fancy, Haynes is prone to indulge in the occasional bit of cinematic homage (in this instance, a couple of clever, well-played nods to Being There) and self-referentiality (as in the use of stop-motion dolls to reconstruct his characters’ fading memories, calling to mind his now-iconic use of Mattel dolls in Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story; or the use of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” calling to mind his thinly-veiled reconstruction of the Ziggy Stardust story in Velvet Goldmine).

What sets Haynes’s work apart from the mass of self-made auteurs (many of whom bask in the onanism of referencing their own work) is his commitment to conversing with the work of other filmmakers, as much as with his own. And to this end, Haynes betrays a rather singular proclivity for establishing context around his art. Not unlike David Lynch (perhaps his closest relative, in postmodern terms), Haynes provides all the necessary clues for the audience to engage in their own private dialogue with his work. As artists, they share in a recognition that their audience will bring their own plate to the table; and they both know better than to dictate which ingredients their audience should eat. From this perspective, all that matters is that the audience be granted sufficient information to trace the lineage of the food on the table, if they so desire. (Or, if they’re inclined towards a more immersive experience, they can ignore the trail of clues altogether and just savor the feast.)

As for the story of Wonderstruck, suffice it to say that it is every bit as simple and convoluted as a children’s book ought to be (it is adapted from a hefty novel by Brian Selznick, which I have not read). All of the actors deliver strong, convincing performances—particularly newcomer Millicent Simmonds, who has the capacity to break your heart before forcing a smile in the course of an instant—and Carter Burwell’s scoring is sublime throughout. Without a doubt, the best write-up the movie could ask for was provided by the amiable John Waters, who coyly suggested in his year-end top 10 list: “Want an IQ test for your cinephile children? Just take them to see this beautifully made, feel-good kids’ movie about the hearing-impaired, starring a little girl who looks exactly like Simone Signoret. If your small-fry like the film, they’re smart. If they don’t, they’re stupid.”

* * *

So there you have it. Five proofs of American cinema; five signs of hope—that there are still those among us with adequate wisdom, perseverance, and vision to point a way out of the darkness. May these bright lights among us continue to shine through the falling night, and may they inspire others to do the same.

Jaden Michael, Oakes Fegley, and Julianne Moore look up with wonder at a sky full of possibilities. Wonderstruck © 2017, Amazon Studios & Roadside Attractions.

The Author is Called Upon to Explain:

Identifying the muses of Dirty/Clean’s ulter nation album and video project.

“Women of the world, take over
‘Cause if you don’t
The world
Will come
To an end
And it won’t take long.”
– Jim O’Rourke (from “Women of the World,” off the LP Eureka)

In the following interview, Josh Egeland questions Josh England on the subject of the latest Dirty/Clean album (ulter nation), and the music videos that have been produced in support of it. The interview took place Saturday, August 12th, over coffee and muffins. Questions asked and answers given were transcribed as closely as possible, with punctuation and parenthetical notations added for editorial purposes.

* * *

Josh Egeland (je) interviews Josh England (JE) on the topic of Dirty/Clean’s ulter nation project.

je: So I guess we can start by reviewing the videos.

JE: Okay.

je: How would you respond to allegations of plagiarism, pillaging, or creative appropriation?

JE: That’s your leading question?

je: I think it’s a fair one.

JE: Well, when you put it that way, I guess the videos are kind of plagiaristic. They do pillage from films far greater than the music on the record, and therefore represent a form of creative appropriation. So I guess I would respond by pleading guilty.

je: So you don’t personally perceive a problem?

JE: I can understand why it might be perceived as ethically problematic by some… but no, I don’t have a problem with it. Have you been to the movies much lately?

je: Can’t say that I have…

JE: …It doesn’t appear that we’re missing much. I’ve seen a lot of contemporary film-makers not struggling hard enough to discover the possibilities their predecessors had explored decades prior. Which wouldn’t be an issue, if they’d only discover possibilities of their own. But there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of possibility to take in at the box office… it’s all so pre-determined now, especially the CGI stuff. The way I see it, the movies I’m “quoting” in these videos—possibly the more well-known ones, even–they’re not as widely recognized or embraced by the upcoming generation as they were by my generation, and the generations before mine. I suppose, in a way, there’s a relief to be had in the notion that younger generations can discard the cultural baggage of their ancestors; in another way, it seems to reflect a broader trend of major attention deficits. I’m not delusional enough to convince myself that, by featuring these clips in my obscure little music videos, I’ll bring about some big revival of cinephilia. But I guess I see this less as pillaging, and more as showcasing: highlighting the possibilities of a craft, which currently appears addicted to its own degradation.

je: But there are still good movies being made, no?

JE: Absolutely! But as with any number of pursuits in our advanced technological age, the butter seems to be spread out rather thinly. It’s like this remark of Brian Eno’s, from an interview with some British magazine earlier this year: the problem isn’t that there aren’t good records being made anymore, but rather, there’s too much good music out there, and no honest distribution system in place to facilitate a genuine zeitgeist (as opposed to a strategized one). But with movies, I think we’re far worse off. It’s like we went from a generation of film brats, all scrambling to fill the director’s seat, to a generation that doesn’t appear to have any real perspective on the historical weight of the craft itself.

je: And you think you’re in some kind of position to address this perceived oversight?

JE: I don’t pretend to be an expert on the matter, no. But I’ve spent more hours digesting movies than most people spend digesting food in their lifetime. Maybe that’s what seems to be missing… true love of the craft, as opposed to love of one’s own style; there’s a lot of that going around now. Did you see La La Land?

je: Yes.

JE: Case in point.

je: It wasn’t a great movie, I’ll give you that. But the intention behind it seemed noble.

JE: And that’s the problem. There’s nothing more detrimental to a good movie than a self-imposed aura of nobility.

je: But how is what you’re doing here any different? I detect a hint of self-righteous nobility in your complaint…

JE: I’m not trying to reproduce the feel of a bygone era by running off a photocopy and filling it in with new faces.

je: But you did cover a rather early OMD song on this latest Dirty/Clean record, didn’t you?

JE: That was a very personal… a very important song to me. Not just as a musician, but as a person. If you listen, there’s nothing really stylized in what we did. Our cover is straightforward and fairly removed: I made a very deliberate, very mindful decision to not come across like I was cashing in on a classic. I hope I succeeded; I mean, if it had been successful, I would’ve been embarrassed… Which is in part why it’s tacked on at the tail end of the record. At one time, it wasn’t even going to be on the record.

Official music video for “Souvenir”—a cover of the 1981 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark single—directed by Jennifer Taylor.

je: So if you don’t view your project in line with stylistic homage, what category would you place it in? Or is there a category you feel comfortable with?

JE: I personally view our video experiment more in line with DJ culture, and other sorts of post-modern music and video production. When you think back on it, and despite its detractors, the early days of MTV saw the rise of several different approaches: straight-faced, lip-synced performance clips; “literal” music videos; and those experimental, sometimes disengaged montages of found footage. Have you seen Devo’s music video for their early song, “Mongoloid”?

je: I think so. It’s kind of literal, isn’t it?

JE: It is—but it’s also made of found footage, so it’s pretty abstract. And that’s what makes it work, as a video. It’s the surrealism behind it: the message beneath the surface. If something “found” can coincide so directly with the message in the song, then the message can’t be all that original in the first place, can it? It’s a concession of redundancy. It’s about not pretending that what you have to say is entirely original, but accepting that it’s been said before; and its strength lies in its repetition.

je: Let’s move on and talk about your selection process, in putting these videos together. How do you decide what clips are going to accompany each song?

JE: Mostly by intuition, which is how most of the songs were written. In fact, a lot of the films quoted throughout these videos provided fairly specific inspiration for the songs.

je: I imagine you’re referring to “Red Desert,” “Eclipse,” and “I.D. d’une Femme”?

JE: All of them, really. But yes—those all carry film titles in their name, so the influence of those movies could have been more prominent.

je: I can’t help but notice that the women in these films are showcased more prominently than the male protagonists, in looking at your videos. Was that deliberate?

JE: Yes and no.

je: [expectant pause]

JE: Well, to the filmmakers’ credit—all of whom, in reference to the clips selected, were men—women were showcased rather prominently in their movies. I mean, god: Monica Vitti and Antonioni… can you think of a more visually co-dependent relationship in the history of movies, between muse and director?

je: [pensive pause] Robert Altman and Shelley Duvall; Fassbinder and Schygulla; Godard and Anna Karina—and later, Anne Wiazemsky; John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands; Lynch and Laura Dern…

David Lynch and his long-time muse, Laura Dern, appearing side-by-side in Twin Peaks: The Return. 2017 © Showtime Networks.

JE: Godard and Cassavetes both cast their wives, which is a different dynamic altogether. Altman utilized Duvall in supporting roles, often—strong ones, no doubt. And Fassbinder used an entire theater troupe’s worth of women actors, more or less as frequently as he used Hanna Schygulla; she just got paid more. Lynch has a fairly fetishistic, late-era Buñuel thing going on these days… Have you seen how he’s cast Chrysta Bell in the new Twin Peaks?

je: There is a bit of the proverbial dirty old man in him…

JE: But at least he’s upfront and transparent about it: like the Mael brothers. I’ll take that over these broad gestures of pseudo-feminist empowerment vis-a-vis male writers looking to get laid, which is what we appear to be seeing a lot of these days.

je: Let’s get back to Antonioni.

JE: Certainly. What was the question again?

je: Was it a deliberate choice, for you to showcase Monica Vitti more prominently than, say, Marcello Mastroianni or Gabriele Ferzetti?

JE: It was a deliberate choice insofar as my eye instinctively gravitated towards the scenes with Vitti, Moreau, Maria Schneider, and Daniela Silverio dominating the frame. When you watch those films—the alienation trilogy, The Passenger, and Identification of a Woman—you’re basically just waiting for the women to come back into the picture, whenever they’re not in the scene. It’s actually the entire premise in Identification of a Woman, just as it is in L’Avventura. Only Mastroianni and Jack Nicholson come anywhere close to competing with the women for our attention, as viewers. And they still fall short some of the time, in my opinion.

je: But Jack Nicholson is the protagonist in The Passenger, and Mastroianni and Moreau play the leads in La Notte. I mean, isn’t Monica Vitti only in that one party scene?

JE: Yes—the one that Pauline Kael lambasted, in multiple reviews. Have you read her take?

je: I think so…

JE: If I’m recalling correctly, she referred to Vitti’s performance as a failed parody of a Hollywood glamour girl.

je: Ouch. I take it you disagree?

JE: I don’t know that I disagree, so much as I never gave it much thought from that angle. I mean, Monica Vitti is so captivating as a performer… maybe what Kael responded to so negatively in her performances was the way that she routinely sabotages, or at least calls into question, Antonioni’s over-reaching authorship of those movies. I’ve never quite been able to determine whether she just wasn’t a very good actor, and couldn’t execute her character the way it was written, or if she was a really amazing actor, trafficking in deliberate obtuseness. I think that’s part of what makes those movies so intriguing to this day; because there are other ways in which they have not aged well.

je: I take it you’re referring to that one scene in L’Eclisse…

JE: That’s certainly a prime example! And in a perverse sort of way, it’s a testament to the unstated brilliance of Vitti’s performance: you can’t quite tell whether she is personally oblivious to the culturally abhorrent implications of donning blackface, or if she’s doing a really spot-on parody of an oblivious, bougie white woman. Either way, the scene itself is lamentable, and it probably spoils an otherwise great movie for many viewers.

je: While we’re on the subject of racial representation, how would you respond if someone criticized your project as Euro-centric?

JE: I suppose I’d have to say that it is. But isn’t it sort of obvious? I mean, the CD packaging has more Italian text on the cover than it has English. But like I’ve already written and spoken about in previous interviews, that component of the project pertains very specifically to my experiences growing up in Europe, and not experiencing my homeland until many years later. I’m fairly certain that if I had reached out farther than what I’m familiar with, geographically speaking, it would’ve seemed about as forced and incoherent as one of Monica Vitti’s malapropisms.

Official music video for “Red Desert,” showcasing more of the muses who provided inspiration for the songs on ulter nation. (More muses featured in the videos for “Eclipse” and “Into the Night (Pt. I)”).

je: Let’s talk about the most recent music video, for “Red Desert.”

JE: Sure thing. What do you want to know?

je: For starters, I notice that your credits in the video description highlight all the women in the video, but you neglect to make mention of the men. And it does seem to me that Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy [in Tarkovsky’s Stalker] and Richard Harris [in Antonioni’s Red Desert] share quite a bit of screen time with the women in your video.

JE: True, but that’s beside the point. “Red Desert” is one video for which I would definitively answer “yes” to your previous question—about how deliberate my “casting” of these women might have been.

je: What are you trying to convey through this gesture?

JE: I’m not sure that I’m really trying to convey anything in particular. The video is less a statement than a summoning.

je: Not sure I follow you…

JE: It’s most obvious in the Marianne Faithfull clips from that odd little Kenneth Anger movie, Lucifer Rising. And the scenes with Monkey, Stalker’s daughter in the Tarkovsky film.

je: You’re referring to the supernatural, then?

JE: Not just the supernatural in general, but the supernatural power of women in particular, throughout the annals of history. While working on the songs for ulter nation, I was reading a lot—which I find to be very helpful, creatively—and I was struck by this chapter Marianne Faithfull has published about her experiences with Kenneth Anger. It was for her second autobiography, called Dreaming My Dreams. Have you read it?

je: I believe so.

JE: It’s a great read. I think I like it even better than the first one. There’s this chapter where she recounts the full story of how she was living on this wall in Soho, strung out on heroin, and Kenneth Anger showed up and invited her to fly with him to Egypt to play [mythical figure] Lilith in one of his experimental movies. She did the part, but then realized, as she was crawling through a Muslim graveyard with Max Factor blood dripping off of her, that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea. She paints a more broadly desecrating picture of Kenneth in that first biography, but enough time seems to have passed by the time she revisits the story in her second book… she seems a little less one-sided on the matter. But she still seems affected by the fact that he placed some lame little curse on her, after she published that first tell-all.

je: She has had an awfully challenging few decades since then…

JE: Yeah, but she’s survived, hasn’t she? I mean, tomorrow isn’t a given thing, and the reaper will eventually pay us all a visit. But getting back to my initial point, I think Marianne Faithfull is a testament to the resiliency of humankind—and of women, specifically. I wanted to highlight that in the video for “Red Desert.” It’s a song that takes, as inspiration, my perception of women as having been trapped, all throughout history, in a man-made machine fueled by this primal fear of what might happen if they were unleashed. Like in Red Desert, where this incredibly engaging woman lives out a perfectly unnecessary, meaningless existence—in a landscape that’s been depleted of natural resources and coated in smog. Looking back, I think a lot of really great critics, like Pauline Kael, voiced their anger and disdain for this movie out of an incredulity that such a premise could ever come to fruition. It may be one of the first truly convincing, fully-realized dystopian films… a sort of antidote to Buñuel’s utopian vision of Robinson Crusoe.

Monica Vitti rules the screen in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964). © renewed 2010, Criterion Collection.

je: [pause] Yeah, I can’t think of anything made prior to it that is comparable, at least in that regard. There’s a lot of dystopian motifs at play in the works of German Expressionists, but few are convincing from the standpoint of realism. And in looking at the clips you used in the music video, it does seem as though Antonioni’s film carries a pretty startling visual resonance—considering our current cultural and ecological circumstances.

JE: It totally resonates today. Because here we are thinking, “how much worse will things get, if, or when the effects of climate change become irreversible and totally relentless?” The movie itself came out around the same time the worldwide ecological movement started gaining momentum. You know, those years following the ravages of World War II, when the costs of environmental disregard started showing. But it seems to me there was a lot of complacency at the time—even within the movement. Which isn’t to say people didn’t really care about the environment, only that folks couldn’t easily appreciate the full ramifications of what all was at stake. Not as easily as we can now.

je: But aren’t ecological issues universal? I mean, they affect men just as eminently as…

JE: …women, and children; and cats, dogs; bees and plants. Of course they do. But we seem to be perched at a point in history where progressive politics—if they actually are going to persevere, and don’t just crumble in on themselves—will face a self-imposed choice between identity politics and environmental politics. And I sense an inherent danger at this intersection: that by quarantining social issues in order to focus on the “bigger picture,” we may still lose the war, and our social problems will only have gotten worse.

je: …Having lost the battle and the war simultaneously.

JE: Exactly. I mean, if we can’t all even brings ourselves peaceably live together on this planet, why try to save it?

je: And conversely, if we can’t bring ourselves to save the planet, why bother living peaceably together?

JE: They’re mutually dependent clauses. I think that’s something Antonioni implied, intentionally or inadvertently, in the text of Red Desert. The implications of the dilemma are totally discomfiting, and I can appreciate why someone like Pauline Kael would be miffed by a premise this bleak. When you consider the potential for nurturing and painting the environment you want to live in through artistic expression, it’s as if Antonioni did the exact opposite, while at the same time displaying a sort of willingness to put up with this uninhabitable world he created. Like Monica Vitti, he leaves us wondering about the degree of intended irony in his performance, as director. But deep down, I believe he was rooting for humanity. I think if he had been a total cynic, he would have just filmed buildings and left the people out altogether.

je: I believe Fassbinder made the same argument, in response to those allegations of misogyny: that a true misogynist wouldn’t even feature women in their movie.

JE: Yeah… looking back on that one, it’s an over-simplified retort, but it still rings true. I mean, I think the most popular form of misogyny these days is of the “I want women to exist, but only as pregnancy vessels” variety; you know, the whole Handmaid’s Tale, Mike Pence sort of thing.

je: There’s also a troubled history within the gay community…

JE: Yes. Men seem to be a recurring problem in this picture, don’t they? I mean, there have been truly militant, men-hating women throughout history…

je: You mean Valerie Solanas?

JE: Yeah, that whole SCUM Manifesto clique. But historically, most of the world’s sexist rancor seems to come from the other side of the gender spectrum—the side with the most inherited economic power.

je: An interesting point, but I fear we’re getting side-tracked. Let’s get back to that bit about summoning…

JE: Okay, shoot.

je: What do you see as the relationship between Monkey, Marianne, Julianne Moore, Monica Vitti, and Jane Bowles (as played by Debra Winger)?

JE: Apart from the fact that they all acted as my muses during this project, I think they are all women whose presence on-screen seems to summon an other-ness, an untapped energy—something beyond everyday, superficial gestures of power.

je: Please explain.

JE: Take Marianne, for instance. I mean, she was at (or near) her very lowest in that Kenneth Anger film. But she steals the movie, when you look at it today. All the other expressions of mystical occultism in the picture seem pretty hokey now, but she was an outsider from the start, and she carries that with her throughout her scenes. Even as a homeless woman strung out on heroin, she was able to project something way more powerful than all the other kitschy, ponderous gestures of magic in Anger’s movies. When she sobered up and started putting out these wonderful records, I think it became apparent just how under-estimated she had been, creatively speaking, in her formative years. Back when Kenneth Anger could be held up as this great, subversive film-maker, but Marianne could only be seen as a rich, spoiled junkie. I mean, that was hardly ever the public’s perception of Mick, and he had far more auspicious beginnings…

Mick and Marianne, cotton candy in hand; photographed in the late 1960s by Jonathan Stone (date and location unknown).

je: And then there was the whole “Sister Morphine” debacle…

JE: Yeah. But they worked that one out eventually: I think there were some pretty pragmatic implications at play in her exclusion from the original songwriting credit—something to do with the Stones’ publishing arrangement. But the outcome didn’t reflect the nuances at play. She wasn’t really perceived to be a creative contributor to the Stones by most people, at the time.

je: So by featuring only her scenes from Lucifer Rising in the “Red Desert” video, are you attempting to restore some kind of artistic merit to her legacy?

JE: I don’t know that I would go that far… I mean, hasn’t she already done that for herself, several times over? She’s that rare sort of artist, whose records just seem to get better as years go by.

je: Good one.

JE: The pun wasn’t intentional. Horses and High Heels and Give My Love to London are truly amazing records.

je: And Before the Poison. And Kissin’ Time…

JE: And Vagabond Ways: her reading of “Tower of Song”…

je: We’re getting side-tracked again.

JE: Rightly so.

je: Let’s talk about the other women in the video—Jane Bowles and Julianne Moore, for instance.

JE: Sure. Jane Bowles was this amazingly ahead-of-her-time fiction writer, whose work was largely eclipsed at the time by the popularity of her husband’s writing.

je: Paul Bowles.

JE: Yes. He hit it pretty big with The Sheltering Sky, but Jane had published her novel, Two Serious Ladies, some years prior. And Two Serious Ladies is arguably a much smarter novel, and maybe more prescient, in terms of literary evolution. It’s this wonderful, counter-hedonistic tale of two women vacationing together in Panama: they basically go searching for squalor, and then wind up in all these unnecessarily dangerous situations.

Jane Bowles, photographed for Vogue magazine in 1946.

je: I’ve read it. It’s a very different sort of book, I’ll give you that.

JE: I think it’s one of John Waters’ favorites.

je: That would make sense.

JE: As for Julianne Moore, the scenes featured in our video are from a movie she did with Todd Haynes in the ’90s, called Safe.

je: A deeply unsettling movie-going experience, if ever there was one.

JE: It’s a challenging movie, to be sure. But it’s brilliantly subversive.

je: As I recall, you never really find out what caused her character’s illness, or whether it was psycho-somatically induced.

JE: Exactly. Like Picnic at Hanging Rock; or those really abstract noirs, like Laura. But it’s also subversive in its portrayal gender dynamics, and its dismantling of character stereotypes. For instance, there’s this therapist at the desert resort she goes to, played by Peter Friedman. When you first discover that he has HIV/AIDS, you’re naturally compelled to sympathize with him, as a character. I mean, Safe came out just two years after Jonathan Demme taught movie-goers that individuals living with AIDS are still people: at the time, that was a pretty radical idea to be conveyed through mainstream channels.

je: Through Tom Hanks, no less!

JE: Exactly! Even though he’d done Bosom Buddies and Bachelor Party, he’d earned a pretty straight-laced, non-delinquent reputation by the time of Philadelphia. And that performance set in motion a shift in public perception, in viewing people who live with HIV/AIDS. Hanks’s performance provoked viewers to sympathize, but in a really pitiful way; which I guess is the first step towards developing empathy for the plight of others, but it barely scratches the surface.

je: I think the proximity in time, between Demme’s film and the epidemic that wiped out the gay community in so many American cities, played a pretty significant role in the movie’s sentimentalized codes.

JE: I can only imagine how fresh those wounds must have been… But I also think there were some apparent detriments in the selection of Hanks, and in his subsequent characterization of Andrew Beckett. It wound up a little stilted in the direction of talking down to your audience. It also seems, in some ways, to echo that terrible phrase, “the deserving poor:” Hanks was seen by many at the time as “the deserving homo.” But this openly queer filmmaker [Todd Haynes] came along just two years later, subverting a fairly recently developed audience expectation with the character of Peter, who has the same illness but isn’t entirely sympathetic. Suddenly, the audience has to confront this culturally normalized, cognitive fallacy: the ridiculous idea that people living with illnesses—and specifically, individuals living with HIV/AIDS—are by default pitiful and apologetic.

Julianne Moore as Carol White, the confined protagonist of Todd Haynes’s early masterwork, Safe (1995). © Sony Pictures Classics.

je: Wouldn’t you say that Moore’s character comes across as pitiful at times?

JE: For sure! But it’s what you read into it; what you project, as a viewer. If you study her performance, which is a tour de force, you’ll notice she doesn’t really do a whole lot, in terms of positive character reinforcement. She’s just this slow-moving negative space, incapable of finding fulfillment within the shitty environment she’s entrapped by. And Peter winds up being this sort of oppressive male figure—flying in the face of what we’ve been conditioned to expect; especially when you consider that the author is a gay man.

je: What about Monkey, the daughter in Stalker?

JE: Like Marianne Faithfull in Lucifer Rising, she’s the real star of that movie, if you ask me.

je: Not a convincing assessment, if one were to judge by screen time. She appears in just a fraction of the movie’s three-hour running length.

JE: Screen time isn’t entirely relevant when considering who’s the star of a picture. Who do you see as the star in Blade Runner?

je: Harrison Ford[?]

JE: See, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s Rutger Hauer’s movie: Harrison Ford’s detective is only there—and I mean this narratively as well as interpretively—to lead you to Roy Batty. Who is, like Julianne and Monica’s characters, an entrapped outsider.

Official music video for “Into the Night (Pt. II),” featuring the entrapped outsider of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982): Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).

je: As far as I can recall, however, Monkey isn’t much of an “entrapped” figure in Stalker.

JE: It is implied that she’s living with a physical disability. In this way, she’s entrapped by the limitations of her movement. Which she later succeeds in compensating for—or overcompensating for—through telepathy. I mean, if you really break it down, the girl who plays Monkey in Stalker makes the entire movie: visuals aside, I find the journey with the three men kind of tedious at times—which I’m sure was intentional on Tarkovsky’s part. But as far as entertainment goes, the movie succeeds because it saves the payoff for that very last scene. And Monkey is the payoff.

je: You certainly get a lot of mileage out of that scene in your video.

JE: It’s just an incredible piece of finished film, and I couldn’t pull myself away from it in the editing stage. And Natasha Abramova totally sells it: the magic of the scene; the mystery.

je: She looks kind of bored.

JE: Well, as with your reading of Julianne Moore, that’s just a projection. She doesn’t have to project a specific thought or idea in the scene, because all the scene seems to require is her presence—her aura. Like Marina Abramović, or Joan Crawford, Abramova’s presence is so far greater than the limitations of the medium. I think a lot of men who are filmmakers scramble to bottle this essence within the vessel of their movie—not always malevolently, mind you—but so often we’re left wanting more than what they were able, or willing to capture.

Marina Abramović, being present (from her 2010 installation, The Artist Is Present).

je: So it sounds like this focus on women may have been more intentional than you led me to believe at first.

JE: Could be, I don’t know. Does it really matter?

je: In a sense, I think it does. I mean, don’t you think that restoring women’s perspectives within the arts is a job best done…

JE: By women? If we’re going to state the obvious, this entire project amounts to nothing more than a fledgling attempt at expressing my view of the world we live in.

je: Glad to hear you’re not posing as a provocateur. That would’ve been embarrassing for us both.

JE: If I’m trying to prove a point through this project, it’s how the history of women in film–which is chronically troubled by cases of women being sexualized and abused; having to adopt men’s names, just to get the writing credit they’d earned as a woman; not getting to express their creative vision with the same sort of unrestricted leeway granted their male counterparts—is frequently a history of confinement. Which echoes the history of womankind. There’ve been all these great performances, and films made by women throughout history; but we’re left wondering just how [emph. added] much more illuminating these works could’ve been if the power deferential in our society weren’t so unevenly distributed along gender lines.

je: Isn’t that a fairly broad statement, artistically speaking?

JE: It’s broad, because there’s a broader truth in it. But there is another, more specific truth that I’m trying to comprehend in all this: and that’s the growing absence of subversiveness in the arts. That seems, to me, a bona fide cultural problem right now.

je: How so?

JE: Well, for starters, it’s made for a pretty lame and increasingly confined reality, as of late. Nobody seems to be making any real waves, unless they engage in acts of brutal violence, or sacrifice themselves at the reality television altar.

je: Have you considered that may just be the cost of contemporary comfort? I mean, with all the wealth and the luxury we’ve acquired in our society, there seems to be less and less of a call for subversiveness.

JE: That is a factor, no doubt about it. But it doesn’t seem to entirely account for the bigger problem, either. After all, income inequality is at an all-time high; increasingly consolidated corporations continue to own and buy up everything in sight. There’s plenty for people to be upset about in the socio-political arena, yet all of it—the instigators, the responders, the counter-attacks—seems trapped in this disorienting veneer of reality television. And all of our movies seem to be paraphrasing some kind of past, whether actual or non-existent: they’re either nostalgia pieces or superhero remakes, a lot of them taking place during the time of the “greatest generation.” And I’m not saying it’s all bad by default, but it’s getting kinda old; and the redundancy only serves to draw one’s attention to how much money they always feel compelled to spend, the second and third time around…

je: But doesn’t social unrest often breed nostalgia and escapism, as an alternative to dealing head-on with the real issues?

JE: For sure! And comfort is the antithesis of anarchy. But I think the level of complacency we’re seeing is basically a direct extension of our technological comfort, as opposed to reflecting our essential creature comforts. Which is fairly new, in evolutionary terms. I mean, I imagine there must be a lot of people out there who, if they were forced to choose between clothing or shelter, and having a smartphone—they’d take the phone.

je: That might provide the basis for an interesting study…

JE: It would, but I don’t think people really want to know the answer. We’re all afraid to admit how much we’ve been afflicted by technological addiction; and it’s been rapidly changing the way we all think, feel, and communicate with each other. It’s also changed the way we view one another—either strengthening or challenging our perceptions of each other. For instance, there was that moment of shock, when the breakdown of voters in the 2016 election came out, and we learned that a majority of white women voted for this disgusting, misogynistic caricature that we now have to live with for four years.

je: That was rather alarming.

JE: It was… But then I was equally alarmed by how quickly people turned around and criticized women for a tragedy that’s been playing itself out for centuries now: the tragedy of people being told not to be themselves, over and over, to the point where they start following the negative instruction. And it’s all kinds of people: women, gay people, trans-gendered people, people of color… In a way, I think mainstream progressivism is frequently culpable of a similar offense—only from the more informed end of the spectrum, and in a more constructive fashion: they often tell people how to speak, how to act. Which isn’t the best approach, either.

je: A rose by another name?

JE: Not really. I mean, there’s no comparing the fascistic, idiotic, and reactionary rhetoric of the present-day right wing, to the Lean Cuisine progressivism of the present-day left. But taking into account the advanced technology we’ve been armed and mobilized with, it’s become that much easier to convince millions of people to fall in line: to stop thinking for themselves and to silence their own subversive thoughts—which is even less arduous, for the powers that be, than forcing them into silence. It’s like that thing Pasolini said in one of those late interviews, around the time he made Salò: that bit about politicians displaying a tolerance as vast as it is false.

je: Like that picture—the one with 45 waving the rainbow flag…

JE: Exactly! And look how many gay men fell for it. I mean, it’s sad and disappointing, but it’s also a reminder of the overarching human problem at play here. I mean, identity politics are so prominent and so profoundly important right now, and there’s no reason to downplay them. But there’s also the broader consideration that human minds are being bought and sold every day by algorithms and advertisements: and most of the time, we’re totally oblivious to it.

je: Like all the people whose votes were bought by savvy researchers at Cambridge Analytica.

JE: …Or the consumers who only want to see movies or buy records—that is, if they still spend money on music—when they have a certain rating on Rotten Tomatoes, or have earned a certain baseline of shares and likes from their friends on social media. Which is so weird to me, because there’s this unprecedented access to the widest array of media on the internet, and yet the majority of consumers appear to be stuck inside the same handful of pre-determined pathways; whether it’s the Huffington Post, Breitbart, Vice, Marc Maron, or the guy with the big glasses who reviews music on YouTube. Not that I have a problem with Marc Maron; he seems like a really nice guy.

Still from Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi. © renewed 2012, Criterion Collection.

je: But wouldn’t you say there’s a more eclectic range of content and feedback on the internet, than there used to be in print?

JE: In quantifiable terms, yes. But you wouldn’t guess it by glancing through the first dozen or so search results. We’ve gone from one extreme to the other—from not having enough options to having too many options. And as a society, we’ve failed to establish any kind of real balance in our information hierarchy. It’s the prophecy of Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy, fulfilled: a “life out of balance.” We can all see how it’s resulted in a lot of lowest common denominator communication—along with millions of people rehashing the same ideas over and over, not recognizing how they’ve been outmoded or disproven on any number of prior occasions. It all seems so tedious. I can only hope the previously foreseen possibilities of a one-way internet model appear less enticing to those who developed it, now that the worst of these possibilities are being actualized on a minute-by-minute basis.

je: What would you say are the positive possibilities that aren’t being actualized, artistically speaking?

JE: Honestly, I think the best we can hope for within the Berners-Lee system—as opposed to the Ted Nelson system, which would’ve been two-way, and would’ve preserved context—is post-modernist pastiche. It’s the only school of contemporary art that’s ironic enough to match the confused, constrictive implications of the World Wide Web. I mean, post-modernists used to get criticized in a lot of art circles—maybe they still do—for closing themselves off to more “genuine” modes of communication, and behaving as though irony were the only viable tone of creative communication. Then there were filmmakers, like Lynch and Almodóvar, who started pushing the limits of post-modernism in their movies—channeling this fairly surreal, but not-totally-insincere sort of melodrama that nearly took the medium to a new level, artistically speaking. I mean, we still have yet to live up to the possibilities revealed by Godard and Kieslowski; even Ophuls. But considering the state of the arts in 2017—not to mention the state of arts criticism—I’d settle for a revival of post-modernist irony at this point. Hell: I’d settle for just about any clearly stated artistic theory in the popular arts, at this point!

je: Let’s remember: Moonlight did win the Best Picture Academy Award this year.

JE: Yeah, that really was a beautiful thing… even though it probably wouldn’t have happened had 45 not been elected, which is a confoundingly sad thought. But you’re right: we must find hope somewhere.

je: Indeed. And besides, there’s nothing left to post-modernize.

JE: Touché.

* * *

Natasha Abramova plays Monkey, Stalker’s daughter in Tarkovsky’s acclaimed 1979 masterpiece. © renewed 2017, Criterion Collection.

ulter nation by Dirty/Clean is available to stream and purchase on BandCamp.

Goin’ down, down…

“Well I been workin’ in a coal mine
Goin’ down, down
Working in a coal mine
Whew! About to slip down…”

There’s a memorable bridge in Allen Toussaint’s hit song, “Working in a Coal Mine” (first recorded by Lee Dorsey in 1966, but cleverly reiterated by the avant-punk Devo during their New Traditionalists phase): “how long can this go on?” Setting aside the uncanny relevance of the song’s labor-specific subject matter, this bridge—which operates as a segue into an endless loop of the song’s other two lyrics—may well be the defining phrase of 2017.

I’ve been publishing a series of essays (written while all of this insanity unfolds in real time) with the intent of trying to make sense of the insensible, and of enhancing my perspective with the insights—some timeless; some timely—provided by our shared experience of the arts. It’s become abundantly clear to me, and to many others with whom I’ve discussed the matter, that engaging in dialogue with others on current events frequently leaves us stranded and frustrated amid a disparate range of willfully self-directed interpretations. On the left, center-left, and center-right, we find a fairly willful adherence to some form of factual certainty and coherence (though even this can vary quite a bit, depending on the topic); on the right and far-right, and in certain fringes of the far-left, there remains a recurring, willful defiance of factual certainty, and an open embrace of the incoherent (who knew that flat-Earthers, Holocaust deniers, Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists, vaccination skeptics, and 9/11 truthers would become so… normalized? Or perhaps, stealing their line of attack, we are meant to believe they are the hoax: mere figments of Alex Jones’s disturbingly profitable imagination–or a series of engineered holograms posing as panelists on Fox News*). The doom-laden phrase, “triumph of the will,” has rarely seemed so relevant.

And as our respective news feeds continue to proliferate themselves—with our curated diets of information sources acting as an imperfect filter—we find the same streams of angry, embittered comments, flowing like a river of wasted time and effort beneath the bridge of each newly disturbing headline. An archetypal troll from the opposing side of the political fence will invariably pop up on any given news news site to rectify the perceived injustice committed by rival commentators; a clone of social consciousness will swiftly rise to the occasion on the other side, basking in the private glow of self-righteous fact-and-privilege-checking, and occasionally sharing their moment of triumph with their entourage of fellow liberal Facebook friends (“look at me! I was right… again!”) Undoubtedly, there is some social benefit to be attained by taking down trolls on social media. But as someone with no real taste for the sport—and a lack of adequate patience to keep up with the furious, sleepless pace of said trolls—I question whether this perceived benefit can ever outweigh the inherent shortcoming to this game: namely, the failure to affect any notable change in the offending party’s stance or conviction of their own rightness. More often than not, such exchanges leave both parties confident in their own private victory. To steal a lyric from Errol Morris: Every 1’s a winner, baby—that’s the truth!

Short of re-calibrating my own parameters for social media interaction (not to mention, reallocating valuable time in each given day, which could be used to research the issues most pressing to my community and call a Senator or Representative, in a more organized effort to bring about a concrete change for the better), I’ve settled upon my existing blog format as the ideal venue to explore these issues from a different angle. Since writing about films, books, music, and other media has always come more naturally to me, perhaps it’s best I operate within this scope—using arts as a lens through which these disorienting issues, events, and catastrophes might achieve a newfound clarity; after all, isn’t that what the arts were intended for?

* * *

Robert M. Pirsig’s best-selling “Inquiry into Values,” first published in 1974. Pirsig passed away in April of this year.

A literary hero of mine, the late Robert Pirsig, wrote in his well-loved manual (Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) about the surgical knife that all of us—meaning, all thinking human beings—wield to divide and conquer various fields of knowledge. At great length, he expounds upon the assorted hazards and perks associated with slicing apart issues into identifiable components—with some incisions leading to a heightened or improved sense of awareness and understanding, and others leading to greater misinterpretation and chaos. One faulty incision I’ve found myself culpable of (on occasion) entails the somewhat naive division of “good” from “bad,” cut along the same lines used to objectively divide “fact followers” from “fact deniers” (or, worse yet: “alternative fact followers”). It’s the same mistake I see many commenters perpetrating in their counter-attacks to those pesky right-wing trolls: in less time than it takes for someone to even decipher the nuances of another’s perspective, the gauntlet of character aspersions has been thrown down, and ignorance has quietly been conflated with an innate “badness.”

It’s a tricky incision to navigate, to be sure. After all, ignorance is “bad”—insofar as it frequently provides a foundation for malicious, combative, even assaultive behaviors (not to mention bad life choices). But if one returns to the definition of the word itself, one will be reminded that ignorance is a mere “lack of knowledge or education,” and does not invariably imply malice. Because contrary to the view held by some (if not many), simply presenting factual information does not constitute a fully-formed act of education (though it’s certainly a starting point): explanation, moderation, and clarification are essential follow-up steps—steps, I might add, for which comment threads, memes, and sardonic commentary have consistently proven themselves structurally prohibitive. After all, how many times have we found ourselves questioning facts that contradict our pre-existing cognitive bias, or pointing to isolated incidents as vindication of our own fears? Perhaps Randy Newman said it best in a recent interview for BBC Radio 2, in which he observed of the many folks who voted for 45: “there are people who are older, looking for something to blame for hurting when they get up.” And whereas willful ignorance remains a perceived offense (in my private opinion), it is, nevertheless, a testament to the strength of the human will; and therefore our duty—as humans—to recall how all of us fall prey to misguided impulses on occasion.

But while I’ve brought myself to the stage where I can accept the fundamental error in this analytical incision, the foremost question on the tip of my tongue remains: “how long can this go on?” For it is clear we are at a tipping point, as a species, and the cliff we’ve perched ourselves on presents a longer fall than many of us are prepared to embrace (the fall of unmanageable climate change factors, a brewing civil war, and an all-too-near nuclear holocaust). A situation this urgent and precarious is unlikely to be resolved by memes, Twitter wars, and desktop social justice warriors. Quite simply, something’s got to give or go—and for the majority of the country (thankfully), that something is our current administration. If/Once 45 is gone, however, what next? To paraphrase a classic Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac song, will we know how to pick up the pieces and go home? And where is home? For thousands of Americans who became victims of hate crimes following the election of 45, millions of minorities whose basic civil rights have been stripped and/or called into question, and the thousands of immigrants arrested and/or deported (many forced to leave with their naturalized, U.S.-born children), it is unclear whether the United States really is a home. If all it took was an ex-wrestling con man with a bad haircut and “billions of billions“ in foreign debts to scratch away the surface of social politesse we’ve so steadily clung to over the past five-plus decades, perhaps we were doomed from the start.

* * *

Just the other night, I revisited Billy Wilder’s classic Hollywood satire, Sunset Boulevard (1950). It’s a film I’ve known and loved since I was a teenager, but it has been years since I last screened it, and I found myself reading the movie in a very different light. Having just finished Kenneth Anger’s infamous tell-all Hollywood Babylon, I carried with me an increased appreciation for the proliferation of in-jokes and allusions to old Hollywood lore; I also carried an aftertaste of Anger’s cynicism. For as brilliant and frequently hilarious as Wilder’s film remains, there is a bleakness permeating the picture that corresponds both to Anger’s witchcraft-laced brand of queer mysticism, and our own country’s present-day aura of despair.

It would be difficult to watch the fateful narrative unfold and not draw parallels to our current administration: and if that lamenting, narcissistic ingenue of days gone by (Norma Desmond, unforgettably personified by Gloria Swanson) reads as a stand-in for 45, then Max—her chauffeur, doorman, and former director (played by the legendary silent filmmaker Erich Von Stroheim)—fittingly represents the monster who created him (Steve Bannon—who, ironically, got his start in the movies). And Joe? Well, he’s the aspiring go-getter who become inextricably entangled in the White House web: the young staffer who stumbled upon a seemingly golden job opportunity, had his doubts from the start, but was ensnared by the allure of climbing the ladder and joining the ranks of those who are winning so much they’re “sick of winning.” But there are several key differences between the scenario of Wilder’s film and our present-day circumstances—foremost of which is the simple fact that Norma Desmond actually worked for her position. Though propped up by the pampering adulation and decadent luxuries of Hollywood in the “roaring twenties,” Norma represents a beacon of hard-earned popular appeal: having starred in an untold number of pictures and climbed her way up through the sycophantic studio system, Ms. Desmond reflects the corruption of the social and economic structures that made such a life appealing in the first place. On the flip-side, our 45th president remains—and will forever be seen as—a reflection of his own over-inflated ego, and the unearned/un-achieved laurels he must rest upon in perpetuity to stoke its dying embers.

A camera-starved Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) descends the staircase at the end of Wilder’s 1950 Hollywood masterpiece—the only means by which the police can lure her out of her dressing room to face criminal charges. (Foreshadowing for the Mueller trial?)

If Norma Desmond is a first generation diva, having sweated her way to the top of the pop culture food chain (only to fall hard and fast upon entering her “golden years”), 45 is a third-generation wannabe—who is unlikely to fall very far, having the advantage of nothing to live up to (along with the simple socio-economic advantage of having a penis). Some Americans seemed to question how, at the apex of his candidacy, 45’s supporters found themselves willing and ready to overlook the appallingly direct and vulgar vernacular of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that was dredged up; maybe they failed to recognize that 45 demonstrated no base-line of decency to hold himself accountable against in the first place. [How low can you go?/How loose is your goose?] Whereas Norma Desmond’s maniacal striving for renewed relevance and appreciation is perceived by the viewer as a testament to the ageist and misogynistic structure of the “star system,” 45’s perpetual striving for “big boy” status can only be read as fall-out from his failure to accomplish anything of note in his lifetime—which, in turn, is a testament to his unwillingness/inability to put forth even a modicum of effort. High-rises, casinos, cheap wines, steaks, and for-profit universities have abounded—his family name proudly emblazoned upon them; but something tells me, deep down, 45 is acutely aware of how vacuous and unremarkable they all are. Having failed to turn a real profit in any of these pursuits (apart from his campaign fundraising, for which he need only stand behind a podium and soak up the adulation of all his misinformed minions), 45 cannot fail to recognize what a miscarriage of potential his existence represents.

Having inherited large sums of cash and real estate from his more soundly ambitious (albeit no less unethical) father, independent analysis has shown time and again how 45 would have achieved greater success by not playing his shaky hand in the real estate market at all, and simply investing his inheritance in the stock market (setting aside the exaggerated “Occupy Democrats” claim, which fails to take into account the 8 years of mediocre business management between accepting his inheritance and embarking on his own, frequently miscalculated real estate ventures. Leave it to the left to manufacture superfluous critiques, when there’s already a plethora of legitimate terrain to pick apart). Which further highlights the mediocrity (at best) of his business abilities, and the incompetence (at worst) of his combined life’s effort. And whereas many ardent critics are quick to write him off as an oblivious idiot, my own interpretation rests upon the assumption that 45 carries a hyper-awareness of his own inadequacy. Hence the insistence on responding to every criticism with a roll call of his token accomplishments; a forced proclamation of “you see? I’m a big boy after all! I can do things… Big things!” In essence, it’s a “lady doth protest too much” condition—crossed with the propulsion for higher ratings and a natural inclination to feed the reality show of his own being. And this is where the similarities to Norma Desmond might be seen in greatest relief: for when all is said and done, both of these unlikely villains are stuck in a show of someone else’s design. Both dedicated their lives to living out a vainglorious dream, with the belief that it was of their own making; both now find themselves in their latter days, looking back on their lives and realizing that all they had to offer was a dramatic gesture—and the dream wasn’t even their own. And if Norma was a stunted screenwriter, and Hitler a frustrated visual artist, perhaps 45 is actually a big rig driver who missed his life’s calling(?)

Whatever the case may be, the Maxes of 45’s administration continue to fan the flames of this socio-political dumpster fire they’ve created, and the Joe Gillises of the White House remain trapped in a corrupted system that will leave no honest effort unpunished. But the show must go on; and here comes 45 again—gliding down a golden escalator, demanding his close-up. [How long can this go on?] In revisiting Wilder’s masterpiece, it dawned on me that the most relatable character (from a general audience perspective, at least) is Betty Schaeffer (played by Nancy Olsen)—the Paramount script reader who calls Joe’s learned sycophantic behavior into question. “Don’t you hate yourself sometimes?” she pointedly asks. “Constantly,” he replies. And just as Joe’s self-loathing echoes the self-loathing of Norma/45 and Max/Bannon, their collective self-hatred is paralleled by the general public’s disdain for a country that is sacrificing its remaining points of pride with every passing news cycle.

It is worth noting, in examining the similarities between Wilder’s scenario and ours, that Sunset Boulevard ends in bloodshed—and the movie itself is an ouroboros-shaped ghost story, eventually collapsing into its own murky waters. In his best-selling book, A Generation of Sociopaths (which I have yet to read), Bruce Cannon Gibney tackles the 21st century American crisis by placing the blame squarely on the mismanagement of the post-WWII “economic miracle” by spoiled-cum-sociopathic Baby Boomers. I’ll give Gibney the benefit of the doubt that his finished text isn’t as reductionary as his chosen title, but I can’t help but cringe at the finger-pointing inherent to such an analysis. Undoubtedly, 45 represents the very worst of the Boomer generation: stubborn, self-aggrandized, misinformed, and hyper-critical of everyone around him—since he cannot face up to the criticisms leveled against him by others. But to attribute the sins of some bad apples to the orchard of an entire generation seems to me yet another part of our current problem.

There will be blood… Joe Gillis (William Holden) floats in a swimming pool at the start/end of Sunset Boulevard; a victim of his own complicity in Norma’s self-centered delusion.

From where I stand on the matter, every time an individual derives some entertainment from witnessing the unfolding disaster of 45’s administration, the shit show lives to die another day. Every time a bigoted troll or a self-righteous justice warrior engages in a Twitter feud or a comment thread argument, the flames of the dumpster fire rise higher. Every time a snarky analyst finds an easy linchpin for the crisis at-hand (whether by blaming a ratings-driven news network, or an entire generation), the intrinsic complexity of the variables at play is either muddied or diluted. And unless one looks the full catastrophe straight in the eyes, without flinching or cracking a smile, the reality TV apparatus will continue unabated—and it is quite possible that 45 will eventually achieve the career vindication he has sought for so many years: not through any sort of constructive accomplishment, but through the total disintegration of the fabric that once united this country—a nation that can no longer see past the fear of its own neighbor, or the disdain for those poor fools who fell foul of an increasingly irrelevant educational system (to the extent they no longer perceive it to have any real merit).

The Germanic notion of schadenfreude has historically enabled those with a wicked sense of humor to derive a perverse sort of satisfaction from the demise of others. In our current situation, such a concept cannot be deferred to for intellectual respite. For the demise at hand is our own.

“No one ever leaves a star. That’s what makes one a star.”
– Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950)

*I do hope the satirical nature of this observation comes across clearly for the reader. Anymore, it’s difficult to ascertain how anything will be interpreted—no matter how clearly spelled out it may be.

Everything is happening, all at once.

“It’s affected me in a way that I don’t understand, so that my reactions to things aren’t, um… the same as they used to…”
– Nick Cave in One More Time With Feeling

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds performing “Girl in Amber” on June 3rd, 2017, at the Masonic Temple in Detroit.

Trauma changes people.

Some of the changes it brings are seemingly minor: maybe we become a little more aware of our surroundings, or we no longer crave the food we were eating around the time of the traumatic event. Many changes tend to be life-altering—as captured by John Cale and Lou Reed in their final collaborative tribute to Andy Warhol, following the pop artist’s tragic death at the age of 58. Their achingly composed musical eulogy (Songs For Drella) culminates with the unforgettable impression of a train—never mentioned in the words of the song, but depicted vividly in the rhythmic chord modulations hammered out by Cale on piano. As assorted memories of the Factory (its characters and its products) flow together in an increasingly persistent stream of consciousness (also recalling the image of a train), Cale intones: “The whole thing quickly receding/My life disappearing/disappearing from view/Forever changed, forever changed/I left my old life behind and was forever changed.”

In the most memorable couplet of the song, he insists that: “Only art can see me through/Only heart can see me through.”

And I defy the world to challenge his conclusion.

* * *

“I’m transforming
I’m vibrating
Look at me now”
– “Jubilee Street,” by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

On July 14th, 2015, Arthur Cave—son of the prolific and revered singer/songwriter Nick Cave—fell to his death from a cliff at Ovingdean, near the family’s home town of Brighton. The following year, a documentary film (One More Time With Feeling) was released in conjunction with the 16th studio album by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, titled Skeleton Tree. On the night of the film’s worldwide release (initially indicated to be the only opportunity the general public might have to see it), I attended a screening at a peculiar little “independent film multiplex” in Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by my life partner and a pair of of dear friends—one of whom had turned me on to the annihilating merits of Cave and his extraordinary band, some years back. The screening took place Thursday, September 8th. The infamous U.S. presidential election of 2016 was nearing its anxiety-ridden apex, and I recall sitting there in a perplexed and tired state of in-between-ness. Before the film had started to roll, I found myself thinking of the river Styx, and of an earlier Nick Cave album, The Boatman’s Call—titled after that Mythical figure that is said to accompany departing souls, as they venture from this life into the underworld.

I remember the lights going dim in the theater, and the usual procession of “if you like this, you might also enjoy…” advertisements, which (unfortunately) seems to accompany every human experience these days. I then recall hearing the voice of Warren Ellis, before his face had even appeared on the screen—big and dear as life itself. At the film’s start, he is doing his part in an interview with the film’s director, Andrew Dominik. He describes the opening track of the as-of-yet-unheard album, and recalls a sense of eeriness while listening to the completed album with the band; for this first track is said to begin with someone falling out of the sky, and crash-landing to the ground. The filmmaker presses Warren slightly, inquiring whether he would be interested in describing the incident in greater detail: there’s a hint of tabloid journalism in Dominik’s request, but his inclusion of the question (along with Warren’s respectful refusal) seems to indicate a latent understanding of his own faux pas. Warren proceeds to explain: “I can’t imagine how you navigate such a thing… um, and, you know, I just can’t even fathom it… and watching this thing happen, just, to people that you love is… um, it doesn’t even… I don’t think it even makes you any… gives you any insight, really, into it. Because there’s a step with it you can’t… you can’t go.”

Shortly after making this hesitant—yet perfectly lucid—statement, Dominik encounters some technical difficulties with the 3-D technology of the film’s format (a recurring motif, as we soon realize); both he and Warren step out of the vehicle in which the interview is being conducted, leaving the focus puller to work his magic on the 3-D camera. The screen goes dark again, and we hear the sound of irritability merging with conscientiousness, as Warren explains (in a somewhat terse tone) that he is struggling to find the right approach when fielding some of the deeply personal questions being posed by Dominik. As the remainder of the film unfolds, the perfection of this introduction reveals itself to the viewer, seeing as how no one who is interviewed herein—much less Cave himself; or Susie, his wife—seems to be in any position to offer expert insight into the trauma lying at the core of the film (which, appropriately enough, remains unspoken throughout the majority of its running length).

Warren Ellis, working on songs for the Skeleton Tree album in Andrew Dominik’s film One More Time With Feeling. © 2016, Picturehouse Entertainment.

What we are left with, in lieu of analytic comprehension, is a crystal clear perception of the change this tragedy has brought about in the lives of all those involved. Perhaps the most telling observation of all is disclosed about an hour into the documentary, when we hear Cave expound briefly on the link between Arthur’s passing and the Skeleton Tree album: “great trauma isn’t actually, uh… a very good thing. Sometimes, you know, we all wish we had something to write about… Trauma, I think, in the way that this happened, and the events that happened, um… it was extremely damaging to the creative process.” (He later expands upon this observation, explaining how the trauma came to occupy such a vast space, there was scarcely any room left for the creative process to unfold.) And indeed, looking back on the performances showcased throughout the film, the viewer can trace the troubled evolution of the eight tracks on the album—notably, perhaps, the shortest and least verbose of all the Bad Seeds’ studio albums to date. We see a fledgling attempt by Cave and Ellis to find their way into the title track, which is here performed as a pensive (if confused) dirge—Cave sticking to a downward progression of minor chords; Ellis fidgeting with different patches on the effects pedal for his violin, sounding jarringly electric in counterpoint. As we discover at the illuminating close of the film, this is a startling contrast to the finished result: a vast, pastoral, gorgeous fusion of words and music—made of the simplest (and by extension, the truest) chord progressions, now placed in the hopeful harbor of a major key.

As Cave repeats meditatively, in a recitation from an earlier scene in the picture: “There is more paradise in hell than we’ve been told.”

* * *

It’s nearing midnight on a Monday in June, and I just finished watching Richard Linklater’s second entry in the Before film trilogy, Before Sunset. I first saw the film at my local art theater, at the time of its initial theatrical run (during the Summer of 2004); I had seen it one or two additional times on home video, but seeing it tonight felt like seeing it for the first time. Perhaps it was the companionship of my life partner—absent from that initial viewing, as we had not yet met—that made this screening so different. Maybe it was the fact that we had, in fact, seen the final entry (Before Midnight) together in 2013, in the very same theater that I had seen the second entry with a friend some years back. Or maybe it was the simple fact that I have grown older; that my relationship to the film—which is, ultimately, about time’s passage—is evolving. Like those oscillating paperweights (the ones with metal rings, ranging in size, that sway concentrically around each other), swinging incessantly within themselves. Finally, I am struck by a recognition of how I, myself, have been altered by trauma; and how this change, in addition to the changes of time (and the change of one’s relationship status) inevitably alters our perception of life itself.

I find it significant to note that trauma comes in different shapes and sizes. For instance, there is the immediate trauma of being assaulted; there is also the profound trauma inherent to the premature death of a loved one. There is the equally profound, but frequently more scattered trauma of a natural disaster—or an act of terrorism. Then there is the experience of vicarious trauma, whereby individuals are exposed to a series of traumatic incidents (or, conversely, bear witness to a singular and majorly traumatic event). In all instances, the individual is affected irrevocably—on the psychological, the emotional, and even the physical level. Of course, this isn’t to say that recovery from trauma is implausible; for if this were the case, the trauma of leaving the womb would be an experience we humans could not recover from (then again, some will argue this as the injury at the core of the human condition). Nonetheless, trauma changes us; and like the oscillating rings of a paperweight, we must re-calibrate—in order to swing back towards that initial point of divergence. Unlike the paperweight, though, we never return to the exact point of origin in recovering from a traumatic experience: we cannot, for it is no longer there to be recovered. In such instances, and as the late David Bowie memorably sang at the start of his 2002 studio album, Heathen: “Nothing has changed/Everything has changed.”

I was struck by a variety of moments throughout the course of Linklater’s film, my mind and soul renewed as I reacquainted myself with its beauty at this later age. One moment that struck me as particularly memorable occurred towards the film’s start, as Jesse (Ethan Hawke)—one of the film’s two protagonists—fields questions at a book signing in Paris. Asked about the possible subject of his next book, Jesse explains how he is intrigued by the notion of writing a novel that takes place within the length of a pop song: one single song that could encompass “the sum of all the moments of our lives” (a quotation of Thomas Wolfe’s). It reminded me of something Nick Cave talks about near the start of One More Time With Feeling—something about the elasticity of time, and an email exchange on the subject between himself and a friend: Cave recounts how this friend was fascinated by the idea “that all things were happening, all the time;” that neanderthals are copulating at the same time that scientists are planning to colonize Mars; or if one were to connect this idea with Jesse’s reading of Thomas Wolfe (or Borges’s reading of Zeno’s paradox; or Joyce’s Ulysses), that a pop song might contain the entirety of human experience. Cave jokingly scraps the idea in his voice-over: “That is encouraging, right? And I think he meant well, but… it’s not true, because… if everything was happening now, I wouldn’t be sitting here waiting for the film crew to work out how to work this ridiculous 3-D black and white camera.” He completes his counter-argument by asserting drolly: “Right now, nothing is happening.”

 

It’s an argument one could easily level against Linklater’s trilogy of films—a trilogy about the miracle of human connection, the melancholy of separation, and the inscrutable phenomenon of time itself: for apart from the walking, the talking, and the arguing, very little actually happens. But as I lay there on the couch, enraptured by the pure poetry of film—seen through the eyes of Linklater, Hawke, and Julie Delpy (our other protagonist)—I could not bring myself to accept Cave’s simplified negation of such a beautiful idea. As though to reinforce the idea’s validity, the film ends with Jesse putting on a Nina Simone CD in Celine/Delpy’s Parisian apartment: the song is “Just In Time,” recorded live in 1961 at Village Gate in New York City. It transports both of our protagonists back to the time of their initial meeting, which was depicted in the first part of the trilogy (on a train, nonetheless—that most symbolic of all transportation modes); it simultaneously transports them to the more recent memory of Simone’s passing in 2003, at the premature age of 70. Jesse bemoans the fact that he never had a chance to see her in concert; Celine recalls having seen her twice in Paris, and then proceeds to expound upon the brilliance of these shows—re-enacting her memory of Simone’s performance while listening to a recording from decades prior (even re-creating Simone’s slow dance away from the piano, confronting the audience in one of her renowned acts of self-interruption). Celine then brings us back to the present, as she teasingly observes that her old flame is about to miss a scheduled flight back to the U.S. Jesse shrugs; the camera’s eye turns back to Celine dancing, eventually fading out into the end credits.

I’m reminded of another anecdote about Nina Simone, recounted by Warren Ellis in that other recent Nick Cave documentary, 20,000 Days on Earth. During a casual conversation with Cave around his kitchen table, Warren Ellis recounts a performance of “Dr. Simone”’s that they had both attended some time prior: Cave recalls the legendary artist taking a wad of chewing gum out of her mouth at the start of the show, sticking it on the piano; Warren one-ups his friend’s recollection by explaining that he retrieved this same wad of gum, and has preserved it in the cloth that Simone used to wipe her brow during that night’s performance. Cave asserts his jealousy, and Warren proceeds to recall how Simone had been brewing in her dressing room before the performance, “looking really pissed off and not wanting to be there:” when asked by a stage hand if there was anything she needed, she memorably responded, “I’d like some champagne, some cocaine, and some sausages.” He prefaces the anecdote by explaining that her performance was “one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.”

Everything happening all at once, during Cave’s live rendition of “Skeleton Tree.”

Having never seen Nina Simone perform live (or David Bowie, for that matter) during the artist’s time on this planet, I am comforted by the notion that everything is happening at once. That while the world is being assaulted by a vast array of traumatic events on an hourly basis, I am simultaneously in the audience of Simone’s powerful Carnegie Hall performances, recorded in the Spring of 1964 for her In Concert album. And I am also in the crowd of David Bowie’s concert performances from the Spring of 1978, each time I dust off my copy of Stage. On the more mournful side of this incalculable equation, I find myself recalling Nick Cave’s performance of songs from the Skeleton Tree album (and beyond) during a recent concert I attended at the Masonic Temple in Detroit. I close my eyes, recalling how I had lost myself during the performance of “I Need You,” tears streaming forcefully down my cheeks—collecting in the palms of my hands. As Cave intoned each perfect word in the song—which includes such unfathomably gorgeous phrases as “I saw you standing there in the supermarket/with your red dress falling;” and “a long black car is waiting ’round/I will miss you when you’re gone/I’ll miss you when you’re gone away forever”—I inevitably thought of Arthur. And of David, and of Nina; and of a world in disarray, spinning away from its axis. I thought of my loved ones—my partner sitting next to me; my hand moving to his side, bracing for support. And I fall apart in the beauty and the sadness of it all: the entirety of life’s sorrow, contained within the length of a pop song.

Several hours before the show’s start, we were alarmed to read the headlines of a developing news story: another terrorist attack in England, this time directed at unsuspecting pedestrians on London bridge. As we sat in the balcony, waiting for the show to begin, there was a strangely oppressive tension in the air (exacerbated by the disorganization of the venue, which was clearly under-staffed—swarmed by confused attendees, searching in vain for their assigned seats): a few minutes before the band took the stage, one attendee (who we assumed to be struggling with some form of mental illness) started screaming irrational profanities at the top of her lungs. She kept at it throughout the concert, and we wound up migrating to a different set of seats by the fourth song. But driving back from the event, a friend who had joined us for the pilgrimage remarked upon how “surprisingly calm” he felt by the show’s end (the reader should here bear in mind that the penultimate track of the night was the exuberantly vulgar and intense “Stagger Lee”). Indeed, it was a shared sentiment. For there was something in the way Cave had wandered out into the crowd for the closing number (“Push the Sky Away,” an anthem of resiliency in the face of conformity and complacency). Even with his forceful request—directed at his band—to “start the fucking song,” the performance comprised a lasting moment of utmost serenity. “I was riding, I was riding home/The sun, the sun, the sun was rising from the field…”

Here was a longed-for point of convergence—a union between life’s sorrow and joy: the oscillating rings of human experience in a place of rest, at last. And now the tables have turned, and it is we who are pushing away at the horizons that attempted to shake us from ourselves.

A panoramic view from above, as Nick performs the set’s closing number (“Push the Sky Away”) within the embrace of the crowd.

Upon returning to our hotel room, and endeavoring to put our perceptions of this earth-shattering performance into some kind of perspective, we found ourselves inescapably remarking upon the change we both recognized (between this and the previous two occasions on which we had the joy of seeing this band perform live). I commented on the palpable distance during the first two numbers of the night—“Anthrocene” and “Jesus Alone,” both off Skeleton Tree. Whereas in past concerts, Cave made clear from the outset the current of electricity between himself and his audience, this introduction felt more contained; more internalized. Much of “Jesus Alone” (the song that begins with the description of a figure who “fell from the sky/crash landed in a field/near the river Adur”) was performed with eyes closed—a ghostly projection of Cave’s face spread against the backdrop of the enormous Temple stage. “With my voice/I am calling you,” he mourned.

I cannot, with any degree of certainty, pinpoint the exact moment when the dam broke—when the artist gave way to the starved energy of his fans. All I can say is that it felt less like an act of possession than an act of submission; as if, for the first time in my experience of his live performances, Cave actually needed us as much as we needed him. He went on to assert, at several intervals throughout the performance: “I love you all… and I mean it.” He even commented playfully on how “beautiful” Warren Ellis was, as a person, pausing to remark upon the loveliness of his violin solo during “The Weeping Song.” And when he merged with the crowd at night’s end, it bore little resemblance to the time he advanced menacingly upon us, during an especially cacophonous performance of “From Her to Eternity” in Louisville. Instead, he seemed to be offering us what we had craved the most: a sense of unity. Unity of mind and spirit; unity of the individual self with the collective of humankind. We both remarked upon how Cave had provided a more explicit level of band-leading throughout the evening, directing Thomas to play more softly during “Tupelo”—or asking George to “take it easy” when re-booting “The Mercy Seat” (after an initial misfire): Craig observed it was as though he was “herding the rest of his flock, after having lost one of the herd.”

And as I lay my head down to sleep for the night, I thought of the final moment in One More Time With Feeling—when the credits roll over an otherworldly recording of Arthur, singing Marianne Faithfull’s beautifully maudlin “Deep Water:” “I’m walking through deep water/It’s all that I can do/I’m walking through deep water/Trying to get to you.” I thought of the river Styx and The Boatman’s Call—songs of mourning that Cave had released some twenty years prior. And as I sit here in the midst of this moment (and the eternal moment that contains all moments—present, future, and past; the latter two having been postulated by Borges [see pp. 123-139] to be entirely conjectural, and therefore irrelevant), I return to the beautiful words sung by Nina Simone in 1961:

“Just in time
you found me just in time
Before you came/my time was running low
I was lost/them losing dice were tossed
My bridges all were crossed/nowhere to go
Now you’re here
Now I know just where I’m going”

* * *

Towards the end of Dominik’s film, Nick confides (with a tone of cautious optimism) that he and Susie have “decided to be happy… like an act of revenge, of defiance; to care for each other and the ones around us.” Earlier on, he recites a movingly humorous piece of ad-libbing (titled “Steve McQueen”), wherein he observes that “everyone out here does mean, and everyone out here does pain/But someone’s got to sing the stars, and someone’s got to sing the rain… And someone’s got to sing the blood, and someone’s got to sing the pain.”

I still recall the drive back from that first screening of the film, this last September: the four of us were frozen in a state of contemplation, imagining aloud what the album might sound like on its own terms. The following morning, we rushed out to our local record store the minute it opened. Upon returning home from work, Craig and I put the needle on and absorbed the songs, basking in their simple openness—still haunted by the memory of the telling interviews laced throughout the documentary, and those final images of the cliffs at Ovingdean. And as I look back on the film, the record, the concert, and Simone’s song, time folds in on itself. Inexorably, I find myself returning to the labyrinthine writing of Borges, as he contemplates eternity in the all-encompassing moment:

“When we can feel this oneness, time is a delusion which the indifference and inseparability of a moment from its apparent yesterday and from its apparent today suffice to disintegrate.”

And yet again, everything is happening, all at once.

Nick Cave at the piano in One More Time With Feeling. © 2016, Picturehouse Entertainment.

45, Medea’s rage, & the sinking ship of American culture

“It’s getting dark/too dark to see.”
– Bob Dylan

It pains me to admit, but I continue finding myself caught in the whirlwind of current cultural affairs: forever flabbergasted by the institutionalized American virtue of ignorance; never willing to shake off my disappointment at how it’s all gone so wrong. As someone who has consistently relied upon (and benefited from) the once common cultural values of intellect, empathy, innovation, and reflection, I am growing increasingly disturbed by the environment I am existing in. I am mortified by the recent revelation that gay men are, as I live and breathe, being systemically rounded up in Chechnya: electrocuted, beaten, outed to their families, and—on several reported occasions—made the victims of horrific “honor” killings. My mortification is multiplied by the apparent refusal of our country’s leaders (that perspiring Senator from Florida notwithstanding) to even acknowledge these crimes against humanity—though I find it unlikely that any significant action will be taken in the immediate future, considering the convoluted relationship between this administration and the Russian government. Though not a pessimist by trade, finding shreds of optimism is difficult in a climate where the very notion of a shared human experience—one in which the assaults leveled against our fellow men and women are recognized, on some fundamental level, to be assaults against ourselves, as a people—is no longer certain. I think of those photos, proudly released during the campaign trail, of our current president’s sons posing with the bloodied carcasses of endangered animals. These images read to me as a microcosm of this diseased mindset, one in which living creatures are of no essential value outside their commodification as a trophy, a social hindrance, or an economic obligation.

There is nothing natural in nature.

While completing my undergrad degree in the field of social work, I invested much of my inquiry in the specialized field of research studies, and the hybridization of qualitative and quantitative analyses for (what I believed to be) under-reported contemporary social issues. When handed the assignment of developing an original research study proposal, I decided to focus on the representation of hate crimes by major media outlets—with an emphasis on internet and television sources. I recall my teacher raising her eyebrows when I initially informed her of my topic; it dawned on me, after our conversation, that she had feared I was speculating that such crimes were being exaggerated (in truth, my predictions were invested in the opposite direction). At the time, we were nearing the end of the first term in Obama’s two-term presidency, and a wave of social awareness was gradually washing over the nation: the idea of legalizing gay marriage was being discussed in concrete, achievable terms; the shootings of unarmed young black men were stirring a hushed but discernible dialogue about institutionalized racism; mass shootings in schools (among other public places) forced a superficial examination of the American obsession with guns, and shone a light on our society’s failure to incorporate mental health awareness in that elusive social construct known as the “American mindset.”

As I examined my personal bias, in an attempt to minimize its impact on my written proposal, I realized that I found this mindset to be most clearly defined by three basic criteria: an established focus on action (as opposed to underlying motive); the stubborn retention of hardened beliefs (as opposed to the recognition of fluctuating predispositions and disparate value systems); and an emphasis on the triumph of the individual (as opposed to the potential of the collective). I privately hypothesized at the time that this apparent wave of heightened—or, at least, heightening—social consciousness would eventually prove to be a mirage; that it would dissipate just as quickly as it seemed to arise, and that the bottom line of free-market capitalism, unbound by universal ethics or common-sense restrictions (e.g. keeping certain areas off-bounds: healthcare, the military-industrial complex, and the school/prison systems—seemingly intertwined), would triumph above this trend of recreational interest in the improvement of our society as a whole.

The 2016 U.S. election at once validated and provided a challenge to my hypothesis. Validated, insofar as the outcome of the election appeared (to me, at least) a testament to this country’s internalized indifference to issues of social justice and civil rights; challenged, insofar as the backlash to the election result—the rallies, the protests, the donations pouring into the coffers of civil rights organizations—hinted that the horse being flogged wasn’t quite dead yet. But three months into this new administration (which more closely resembles a New World Order with every passing news cycle), I find myself pondering a far more fundamental dilemma than the mapping of social progress. I find myself wondering: at what point is this ship—the ship known as American culture—going to become so dilapidated, so diseased, so leaky, that it will have no choice but to sink beneath the waters of its own fallacy? Put another way: is it possible we may, eventually, reach a point where there is little left on this ship that could be deemed worthy of salvaging?

* * *

To avoid having this read like a cynic’s exaggerated assessment of a totally workable problem (a consistent pet peeve of mine), I want to make clear the underlying concern in this line of questioning. First off, I am not particularly concerned about the ability of this country to swing its pendulum of political rhetoric back in the direction of popular liberalism—a direction that I find myself indisputably drawn towards, when forced to choose between the two extremes (and bearing in mind the unfortunate reality that, as a nation of people, we appear to be incapable of functioning outside of extremes). I also don’t doubt the ability of individuals to stoke the embers of “liberal” issues in their respective communities, preparing them to be brought to the forefront again once the pendulum makes its inevitable swing in the other political direction. What I am starting to question, though, is the efficacy—the integrity of this nation of people, which once (upon a time) provided a beacon of decency, altruism, and innovation to folks at home and abroad. And while I have yet to throw in the towel, I find myself grasping for a credible answer to this rather large and cumbersome question.

Much has been written about the (seemingly hypocritical, but arguably predictable) commitment of evangelical Christians to this totally secular, greed-driven, and unprincipled administration they helped to elect. Even more continues being written about the concerning involvement of the Russian government in our election, forcing one to question how the fabric of our democratic process can remain intact amid the shifting atmospheres of our digital age (taking into account the role that social media played in the distribution of propaganda and intolerance throughout the months leading up to voting season). Many of us have found ourselves posing the never-ending “why?” to this insane state of affairs, and the more information is disclosed to support an answer, the more insane it all seems. Personally, I find myself perpetually befuddled by the con job aspect of this global, political, and socio-cultural catastrophe. It goes without saying that, depending on one’s political leanings and selected information sources, the disclosed involvement of Russian trolls in the distribution of social media propaganda may (or may not) have been cause for concern in the voting booth. But one would be remiss in considering the possibility that any voters were not privy to the documented truth that our current president is both an incompetent businessman and a terrible person (or, to paraphrase an observation shared by David Sedaris at a book talk last night: “regardless of how someone voted, I assumed the fact that he was a deplorable human being to be a given”). Though white-washed by the vacuous talking heads at Fox News, the con jobs committed by our now-president were well-documented and well-publicized by most every other major news outlet. The disregard that was openly displayed towards these offenses by his ardent supporters surely transcended their hatred of Mrs. Clinton. It pointed to the underlying and unfortunate truth, which no one seemed comfortable admitting at the time: the appalling disconnect between his most zealous supporters, and any form of objective reality.

And this is where the road forks to the right of any historical precedent. Whereas every U.S. President elected (at least, in my lifetime) was voted into office under a quasi-Mythical pretense—using Merriam-Webster’s primary definition of Myth: a “story … that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people”—we are forced to accept that, at best, 45 was elected under the pretense of Webster’s secondary definition: “an unfounded or false notion.” Looking back, one finds that Barack Obama was elected under the pretense of his voters’ belief in the Myth that minorities will restore balance, integrity, and rejuvenation to a nation desecrated—time and again—by stupid white men. Or that W. Bush was elected under the Mythical pretense of restoring traditional family values to an office desecrated by the lustiness of his predecessor. Or that his predecessor embodied the Myth of the underdog, in the undeniably thrilling election of 1992 (documented memorably in the Pennebaker documentary, The War Room). One could also carry the underdog Myth over into the campaign of Mrs. Clinton, who represented (and to some, still represents) the Myth of the feminine as a source of social healing. (For all the naysayers’ protestations to her perceived arrogance and cronyism, those of us who had been around long enough to chart her career trajectory could appreciate her perseverance and her commitment to humane issues in the dirty field of politics, seemingly—and finally—against all odds). But no comparable Myth holds up to scrutiny in the campaign of 45, as his electorate fail to represent a coherent world view, or any coherent set of values. We have no recourse but to view the myth (def. #2) of white male supremacy as the most logical explanation for their choice of this otherwise totally unremarkable person to lead the country. And even this explanation remains tenuous, in my eyes—seeing as how much of their enthusiasm appears to be little more than a convictionless response to the perceived provocation of a diversified mainstream culture.

George Stephanopoulos and James Carville remain living scions (for some, at least) to the Myth of the underdog in politics. Still taken from the D.A. Pennebaker documentary film, The War Room © 1993, October Films

The other possible explanation, which chills me to the bone and leaves me at a loss for words: a substantial portion of his voting base have renounced their commitment to any coherent system of values, and they are now collectively steering this country with a worldview that can be defined as maniacal—verging on sociopathic. The statistical fact that over 80% of self-professed Christians voted for—and most of them continue to support—this election outcome, indicates that things have taken a turn for the different (in contradiction to the voices who insist this administration is just “business as usual”). Whereas all the available evidence in the religious right’s nomination of Reagan and Bush (Sr. and Jr.) served to validate their conviction that these men might capably represent a “traditional” system of values, the plethora of evidence available for evaluating their selected candidate in the 2016 election indicates an almost by-the-book contradiction of every purported principle this voting block once represented. Interviews with these voters, and journalistic pieces published by a wide range of sources (from NPR, to USA Today, to the Washington Post), serve to corroborate the general understanding that many Christians are seeking to reclaim a cultural narrative, and their aim is not above supporting someone who practically embodies the Myth of the antichrist. Whether by hastening the apocalypse they so anxiously await, or by securing a super-conservative judge for the Supreme Court, or by simply not having elected Hillary Clinton, these voters—by and large—report that their decision has yielded a satisfactory outcome.

Some of these voters, as well as many a libertarian, will go so far as to insist that the contradictions are comparable among both parties; that Democrats overlooking the Clintons’ established history with Saudi oligarchs (a carry-over from the Bush and Reagan administrations) is equatable to Republicans overlooking the ludicrous overabundance of red flags surrounding their selected candidate. The term “false equivalency” was bandied about frequently by independent analysts during (and following) the 2016 election: while I have no intention of abusing its usage in this essay, I find this a fitting spot to plug it in. Because, as stated previously, the heinous disregard for any recognizable value system—unless we are to consider the love of ratings a value—which was reinforced at every twist and turn in our president’s campaign… well, that is a spectacle all its own, without any worthy synonym in the lexicon of our country’s history. Not only is this administration proving to be a bottomless mockery of its clearly outlined responsibilities (a fate which could have been predicted by anyone with a learned response system): it is proving to be the apotheosis of a culture in the process of collapsing—about to give way completely under the force of this maximal assault on sense and sensibility.

* * *

To recap: The Apprentice. The Kardashians. The Jenners. The televangelists. The morning talk show hosts. The prime-time reality television spectacles. The millions of self-made YouTube sensations, driven exclusively by the sycophancy of their viewers. All this incessant talking—and not a word of it meaningful. The emerging notion that value lies not within our hearts and minds, or within our capacity for relating to others in a decent and functional fashion (or in our skill level, and our capacity to achieve greatness); but rather, within a person’s conviction that such things are not worthy of one’s time—and ultimately, in the acceptance that this is the only conviction that counts.

Everything is sacred.

Seen in broader context, I should hope that everyone can recognize 45 as the pinnacle of a cultural malaise that has been brewing loudly and swiftly for well over a decade. It is this broader malaise—emboldening both the extremes of racist, sexist, capitalist fascism, and full-blown social anarchy—that provided the platform for this lunatic president to enter our vision’s periphery in the first place. It is ratings and recognition that our president has sought all along. While he presents a tragic miniaturization of the potential for one’s existence on this planet, his is an outlook shared by millions of other Westerners—all leading millions of separated, socio-culturally disintegrated lives. When viewing the internet as a vehicle for narcissism and cultural schizophrenia, a less deterministic individual might argue against throwing the baby out with the bathwater; personally, I find the entire social construct to be perched on a precarious edge, and the direction it’s sliding isn’t sky-bound. I suppose you could say, I still need convincing as to whether—years from now—any of our current cultural phenomena will even be worthy of human recall.

I can attest to this, from my 30 years on the planet: being ignorant was not always a point of pride in dominant American culture. Although the troubled relationship with our own country’s history (specifically when it comes to issues such as slavery and genocide) has always been a point of contention for patriotic historians, the simple fact that history was deemed worthy of review pointed to a general recognition that within knowledge lay truth, and within truth lay value. Alas, as indicated by the recent protests in support of science (typing these words feels utterly surreal), knowledge is now culturally frowned upon—and by a growing contingent. The response by our current president to these protests provided a backhanded critique of knowledge, in and of itself:

“We should remember that rigorous science depends not on ideology, but on a spirit of honest inquiry and robust debate. This April 22nd, as we observe Earth Day, I hope that our nation can come together to give thanks for the land we all love and call home.”

Though I give points for this being one of the more superficially erudite statements made by the man in his brief political career, I shiver at the sheer volume of inherent hypocrisy—the incongruity; the unearthly detachment of his delivery (for after all, these are not his words: they are a teleprompter’s, which is to be expected from POTUS on occasion. I reckon 45 deserves a boost in ratings for this commendable step up from his previous, more amateurish m.o.). One must view this statement within the context of his first week in office, during which 45: reversed Obama-era protections preventing coal from being dumped in our rivers; wiped all climate change data from the White House website (only to have it restored, on the heels of voluminous protestations); denied (again) the statistically proven reality of climate change; alleged that millions of invisible admirers showed up for his inauguration—whereas the millions of photographically evident protesters did not, in fact, exist. And even before his inauguration, let us remember that 45 proudly proposed drilling for oil in our national parks (not to mention his silence on the newly implemented House rules which would allow the sale of national parks). It’s only fitting that a couple of days after this statement, in an Associated Press interview, the same president should proceed to dwell obsessively upon the significance of his viewership out-numbering the viewership of news coverage during the horrors of September 11th. Just as with the man himself (if one were generous enough to refer to him with the fully developed biological noun), it is a comparison at once repellent, mocking, and atrocious; ultimately, devoid of any value whatsoever. Unlike his invariably more dignified predecessors—who hid their private lives, their hardships, and their neuroses behind closed doors—45 has succeeded in making his neurosis, corruption, and reprehensible character a cause for celebration and worship.

I think, once again, of this sinking ship—once an enviable (and dare-I-say, admirable) nation of people. While there remain millions of decent American citizens, frantically endeavoring to keep the admirable embers of this society (along with its core sense of sanity) aglow, there is also an evident, emerging population of humans who have observably devolved from what once was expected to be our potential for greatness. And while this strain of devolution—which also extends itself to include the pre-emptively intolerant culture of many so-called “liberal” colleges—is taking no prisoners, it does seem to be taking sides. Because statistics (specifically, independent analysis of partisan opinion polls from before and after the inauguration of 45) indicate that it is predominantly Republican voters who have detached themselves from objective reality. Whereas many Democratic voters—when questioned about commonplace issues, such as taxes and foreign policy—have voiced their opinion in terms of observable similarities between Obama’s policies and those of 45, a much larger portion of Republican voters indicated a personal bias that extends the limits of available facts (seemingly to assail or praise the competency of the president in office at each given time). For instance, although U.S. tax rates did not vary between the tax years 2015 and 2016 (with the country still operating under the budget of the Obama administration’s final fiscal year), a recent Pew poll reveals that the public approval of tax rates among Republicans voters rose by 17% this year. On the flip-side, Democratic voters who were polled revealed consistent ratings of approval from year to year, in accordance with the stasis of our current tax policy. Likewise, whereas only 22% of polled Republican voters approved of Barack Obama’s proposal to strike Syria, a startling 88% now find themselves in agreement with our current president’s proposal to do the very same.

Ultimately, it is not our country’s ability to swing back towards popular liberalism that I call into question: it is our country’s apparent inability to swing back towards popular wisdom that I am deeply disturbed by. Because popular wisdom previously would have determined that a country ought not to place a proven con man in its highest office, much less expect a sudden change in character—or, more foolishly, expect this character to offer any viable solution to long-standing problems. And once-popular wisdom certainly would not have ennobled this culture of “famous-for-being-famous,” which somehow—although steadily eating itself—never appears to run out of itself. This is the diseased water seeping through the leaks in our ship: engulfing everything it can reach in a swamp of ignorance and intolerance, and drowning the lot of it in insignificance. Sure, this vessel could remain afloat for an indeterminate period of time; but unless it is patched and properly repaired, it will eventually—inevitably—prove itself unsustainable.

“It is useless. Nothing is possible now.”

The reader may be wondering about the block quotes I’ve sporadically inserted throughout this essay. They are from Pasolini’s film of the Myth of Medea—another of the director’s works that I’ve found illuminating in these times of widespread disorientation. These quotes provide a sort of mantra for the concerns I’m attempting to outline in this disoriented piece, and it seemed fitting to me that they should come from a comparably enraged film. The picture opens with the centaur recounting the Mythical history of the Golden Fleece to the infant Jason: the centaur observes that “there is nothing natural in nature”—referring to the paradoxical notion that we do harm to our own natural environment, whenever we take it for granted; and that the Mythical exists all around us, if we are only open to perceiving it. The centaur further recognizes that “everything is sacred”—an intentionally broad statement, which Pasolini manipulates to reflect his own fears of modern man having lost touch with sacredness in any form (religious or otherwise). The director went on to personally observe, in one of his final interviews, that people were appearing less and less to him as human beings, and more frequently as mere “machines bumping into one another.” Unfortunately, present circumstances offer much in the way of validation for Pasolini’s projected concerns. Because when even the most devout religious zealots are willing to renounce their own stated values, in order to hijack a cultural narrative (perhaps not realizing how their hypocrisy reinforces the disinterest and disdain of those atheist folks whose souls they claim to be concerned about)—and when even the most devout liberal activist is cornered by the hashtag- and selfie-contained activism of millenial “culture”—then truly, “we are all in danger” (the title of Pasolini’s final interview).

Maria Callas takes on the role of Medea in Pasolini’s film of Euripides’s Myth. The narrative culminates with Medea’s decision to kill her own children, in lieu of having them suffer banishment by their father. © 1969, SNC

To be sure, one hopes that the core qualities of humanity (empathy, cognition, innovation, and reflection) will somehow survive in this hazardous environment; that they will eventually redeem this unsettling fall from grace, and restore some sense of balance to a reality that is—rather swiftly—rendering these very qualities vestigial. One certainly hopes we won’t reach the state of mind Maria Callas’s Medea assumes at the end of Pasolini’s film, when she slaughters her children and burns the castle down, screaming insanely into the camera: “It is useless. Nothing is possible now.” Yet the provocation underlying this film, and the provocation of these outlined concerns, remain of pertinence to the subject at hand—and they beg the question: Who among us is willing  and determined to prove these concerns unfounded? And how are we going to prove it?

This is how the world will end.

PJ Harvey’s pre-apocalyptic North American tour

View from above: taking in the stage set-up for PJ Harvey’s Massey Hall performance from the upper balcony.

“Water
Walking
Walking on water
Walking
Walking on for years, and years, and years
Taking it into my head
Living by the right lines
Reading what the very man said…”
– “Water” (from the studio album Dry, 1992)

It’s a Thursday night in Toronto, Ontario. I’m seated in the third row of the uppermost balcony in the legendary and historic Massey Hall theater, waiting anxiously for the show to unfold before me. While I await, I engage in some shameless people-watching—taking in the surprisingly diverse demographic range of fellow admirers. I find that I am compulsively adjusting my legs in the cramped space between my seat and the subsequent row; I remind myself that humans were of a somewhat smaller build at the time of this venue’s construction, but I am fairly confident this won’t prove detrimental to my enjoyment of the spectacle I’ve awaited eagerly for the past 13 years. I take in each component of the widespread set on stage (three separate drum kits; two keyboard rigs; a row of five vocal microphones; an array of guitars), and I tell myself one last time: you’re about to see PJ Harvey perform live in concert.

Pinch yourself.

* * *

It’s a trying task—writing about an artist whose craftsmanship and soul essence you’ve admired, studied, and (even, admittedly) obsessed over for a period of over a decade; objectivity is rather firmly out of the question (to put it mildly). Then again, one starts to wonder: is objectivity ever truly within one’s reach as an audience participant? Aren’t we all at the mercy of our individual whims, preferences, and fetishes when it comes to consuming a live performance—let alone being at the mercy of other attendees in one’s immediate vicinity? Subjectivity in such matters seems to me an inevitable and foregone conclusion.

I’m again reminded of Naomi Greene’s writings on the “free indirect subjectivity” permeating the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini: her excellent book, Cinema of Heresy, happened to be my primary reading material during this Canadian road trip. In hindsight, the correlations between these two seemingly disparate sources (Greene’s theoretical writings on one of world cinema’s most controversial and ill-fated legends, and the live performance of a living music legend) seem to me overwhelmingly prevalent. Walking back to our hotel after show’s end—in stunned silence; for what can one say, after achieving transcendence, that might add anything of possible merit?—the images of Pasolini’s final films (having just finished Greene’s chronological text earlier that day) converged aqueously in my mind with the overpowering imagery of the evening’s events. And I found myself replaying the borrowed chorus from the penultimate number repeatedly in my head: “Wade in the water/God’s gonna trouble the water…”

I suppose some context may help to frame the following thoughts in a clearer light for the unfortunate reader of this (doubtlessly meandering) essay. For starters, a temporal framework: it is Thursday, April 13th, 2017. PJ Harvey is embarking upon an expansive (comparative to her 2016 outing) North American tour, starting in Toronto. In Canada, the Prime Minister is a doe-eyed populist liberal, beloved by citizens at home and abroad. The United States, meanwhile, has as its Commander-in-Chief a mentally unhinged populist autocrat, who may all-too-conceivably be accelerating the end of the world via any number of available means (nuclear holocaust; opportunistic climate change denial; a general inability to refrain from performing rash acts, with the apparent intent of continuously domineering the attention of profit-driven media outlets).

I’ve spent much of this year having pained conversations with friends, associates, and acquaintances from across the political spectrum—trying in vain to make sense of what is happening in the world; hoping against all hope that a deus ex machina will present itself and save the human species from the destructive urges of this latest assortment of clinically unstable world leaders. Earlier this week, news emerged of gay men in Chechnya being rounded up—some reported to have been murdered—for imprisonment in concentration camps. On the same day that Ms. Harvey’s tour is slated to begin, the Pentagon authorizes the deployment of the largest non-nuclear bomb at the disposal of the grandiose U.S. Military-industrial complex; it is reported that a total of 36 Afghan militants were killed as a result of the bombing. A week prior, the current U.S. president authorized the launch of Tomahawk missiles against Assad’s regime in Syria. And in the midst of all this chaos, American citizens anxiously await confirmation of well-founded suspicions that this very president colluded with Vladimir Putin and his legion of government cronies to influence the 2016 election—which would frame all of these happenings within the disorienting precedent of a traitor being placed in the highest office of the American government, and subsequently authorizing attacks upon foreign countries under the galling auspices of delivering democracy. One may find oneself drawn to the lines from one of Harvey’s songs on her newest album:

“Those are the children’s cries from the dark
these are the words written under the arch
scratched in the wall in biro pen
this is how the world will end.”

PJ Harvey and her nine-piece band take the stage in Toronto to kick off their 2017 North American tour in support of The Hope Six Demolition Project.

I find myself propelled back into that uncomfortable seat, way up in the balcony of Massey Hall. Polly Jean Harvey is on-stage, decked out like an exotic bird, perched in heeled leather boots that—from a distance, at least—give the marked impression of a heron’s legs. As the second song of the night (and possibly my favorite track from her latest offering) begins to take flight, a curtain behind the stage unveils a new addition to the set. Rising from behind the vaulted proscenium, a massive, dimpled wall starts to loom increasingly (and rather forebodingly) large above the ten-piece band. I’m paralyzed by the intensity of the moment: the stunning silences between the guitar notes; the forced breathing of the keyboardist, adding sonic texture and punctuation throughout the number. Polly’s voice soars at the start of each verse—and this is but a warm-up for the night’s vocal acrobatics: “This is the ministry/Of defence/The stairs and walls are/All that’s left.”

Two drummers, Jean-Marc Butty (a resident of PJ’s band since her 2009 tour in support of A Woman A Man Walked By) and Alain Johannes (a newer addition), are pounding out what I presume the opening of the seventh seal, as described in the Book of Revelations, might very well sound like. I’m both riveted by the sights and sounds that are overwhelming my senses, and forcibly reminded of the global events surrounding this occasion. After all, it was Polly’s visits to Afghanistan and Kosovo between 2011 and 2014 that initially spawned the “project” of this album’s namesake; it was her conscious decision to go “to the front line of the issue rather than picking it out of the newspapers” (as quoted by Billy Bragg in the May 2016 issue of Uncut) which resulted in this alarming approach to songwriting, as well as the brave selection of subject matter. Drawing a slight but noteworthy contrast between Ms. Harvey’s approach and that of Bob Dylan, Bragg explains: “Dylan wasn’t beaten up during the Civil Rights in America, but he read about Medgar Evers and he wrote about it. Whereas Polly seems to be much more like a war artist in the fact that she’s actually gone there to experience it and bring it back. It’s like frontline reporting.”

While the ostensible intent of this project appears to faithfully have been grounded in this attitude of “[wanting] to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with,” it’s worth noting that the finished outcomes of this pursuit (the book of poetry and photographs, The Hollow of the Hand; the album; the world tour) all carry a flavor that is noticeably removed from a purely journalistic outlook. A worthy anecdote to highlight this distance between the intent and the outcome of Harvey’s latest project (a distance which, I might add, is inherent to the realization of any creative project—though breadth varies from case to case) is the backlash the singer/songwriter received from Vincent Gray—the former mayor of Washington, D.C.—after releasing the album’s second single, “The Community of Hope.” Inspired by Harvey’s latest visit to the nation’s capital, which centered upon lower-income areas within Ward 7, the song contains lyrics alluding to a school that “looks like a shit hole;” a neighborhood resembling a “drug town” (“just zombies, but that’s just life”); and the renovation of an old mental institution into the Homeland Security base. Gray’s exact words on the subject, as quoted in an online article by DCist: “I will not dignify this inane composition with a response.” His Campaign Treasurer, on the other hand, chose to dignify the song with the following assessment, “PJ Harvey is to music what Piers Morgan is to cable news”—which leaves one in doubt as to whether this fellow would be able to pick Ms. Harvey out of a line-up, let alone being in any position to capably interpret her peculiar style of writing.

Points of reference (clockwise from left): The Hollow of the Hand poem and photo book; the May 2016 issue of Uncut Magazine; Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to PJ Harvey; the studio album.

Although I personally beg to differ with the criticisms launched against this (and other songs) on the album, I find them of significance insofar as they point to the aforementioned distance between Harvey’s stated goal for this project, and the devastating result of her efforts. It’s a distance that Naomi Greene (or Gilles Deleuze, for that matter) might argue to have been marked by that same “free indirect subjectivity,” which forms the cornerstone of not only Pasolini’s work, but Godard’s, Antonioni’s, and Fassbinder’s as well. As explained by Pasolini, this form of subjectivity in writing can be identified as “the presence of the author who, through an abnormal freedom, transcends his film and continually threatens to abandon it, detoured by sudden inspiration—an inspiration of latent love for the poetic world of his own vital experiences… In short, beneath the technique produced by the protagonist’s state of mind—which is disoriented, uncoordinated, beset by details, given to compelling anxieties—the world constantly surfaces as it is seen by the equally neurotic author: dominated by an elegant, elegiac, and never classicist, spirit” (Greene, p. 119).

Elegant and elegiac. Two words that would befit PJ Harvey’s personae of the past decade most suitably. Ever since turning (yet) a(nother) page with the stark chamber pieces of 2007’s White Chalk, Harvey’s listeners and admirers have been privy to a somewhat different character angle than the one we identified throughout her ’90s output. Then again, when taken as a collected oeuvre, a dedicated student of her work may well reach the conclusion that her entire career has been predicated upon this same form of indirect subjectivity all along. One could feasibly take this observation further and argue that what her harshest critics have possibly reacted against is not her perceived “misanthropy,” or the seemingly perpetual darkness of her subject matter; their disapproval may instead stem from an (arguably justifiable) aversion to an artist who has chosen to specialize in the territory between her subject matter and her own creative self. For even in her most dedicated and visceral performances—the “Joan Crawford on acid” persona of the To Bring You My Love tour, or the lovelorn sensualist of Uh Huh Her—there exists an undeniable tension between the committed (forgive the pun) words and attitudes of her characters, and the mannered control of her own artist’s instinct. Not unlike Bowie, and yet the distance is even more pronounced—more arch (closer to Scott Walker territory, as far as comparisons go). With every new incarnation of her 25-year career span, it’s as though Polly Jean has been repeatedly pronouncing: “Here is a woman. She is not me, and yet she is.” (And with Let England Shake, this pronouncement stretched more broadly to incorporate the additional layer: “Here are the men who died in these wars. They are not me, and yet their blood courses through me.”)

This very same message emerged palpably and overwhelmingly at the start of her Massey Hall performance—as she emerged with her cohorts in the line formation of a marching band, and proceeded to chant the opening lines of the first number, “Chain of Keys” (which communicates on a far more imminently powerful level than in the studio recording): “Fifteen keys/Fifteen keys hang on a chain/The chain is joint/The chain is joint and forms a ring/The ring is in/The ring is in a woman’s hand/She’s walking on/She’s walking on the dusty ground.” The song makes reference to a woman whom she encountered on her travels in Kosovo—the keeper of the keys to fifteen houses owned by fifteen men she’s unsure if she will ever see again (the poem version of this song, as published in The Hollow of the Hand, includes the additional lines: “Numbers painted on the doors/posters on the locked-up church/in black and white, the recent dead./Now all I do is wait, she says.”) It is a shameless cliché, but I can think of no better way to describe the show’s introduction than to say it was electrifying.

Whereas in earlier outings, Polly Jean tended to slide rather directly into the skins of the characters sprinkled throughout her songs’ narratives, post-White Chalk PJ appears to have developed a keener dedication to maintaining (and even celebrating) the distance between herself as the artist, and the characters in her songs as autonomous beings. Which is part of what renders The Hope Six Demolition Project so rewarding upon repeat listening: the palpable, positive existence of the human beings who populate these eleven stories. Her perspective is with the subjects, but never totally within. And even this tenuous connection between herself and her characters is called into question repeatedly—most pointedly in the lyrics of “Dollar, Dollar,” where she finds herself “trapped” in the backseat of a car in Afghanistan, struggling to come to terms with the sight of an ill and impoverished child begging at her car window: “All my words get swallowed/In the rear view glass/A face pock-marked and hollow/He’s saying dollar, dollar.”

These moments (alongside the militaristic psychodrama of “The Ministry of Defence,” with its cast of children who “do the same thing everywhere/They’ve sprayed graffiti in Arabic/And balanced sticks in human shit”) appear to me to parallel the observations of Gilles Deleuze, in reference to Pasolini and the notion of free indirect subjectivity on-film: “What characterizes Pasolini’s cinema is a poetic awareness which… is mystical or ‘sacred’… Here is the permutation of the trivial and the noble, the connection between the excremental and the beautiful, and the projection into myth that Pasolini diagnosed in free indirect discourse [seen] as the essential form of literature. And he succeeds in making it into a cinematographic form capable of grace as much as of horror.”

“…Lying on eleven years
Taking it into my head
Mary, Mary drop me softly
Been reading what your very man said
Lying on eleven years
Taking it into my head
Leave my clothes on the beach
I’m walking down into the sea…”

As with her earliest albums for Elektra, PJ Harvey’s music work continues to carry with it a cinematographic strain. This was rendered explicit with the release of the Let England Shake album, the unveiling of which culminated in a collaboration with filmmaker/photographer Seamus Murphy—who produced a short film for each one of the tracks on the record. Seamus has since contributed three original music videos to her latest project (as well as providing the accompanying photographs for her poems in The Hollow of the Hand), and one can only hope there will be more forthcoming. But beyond the produced visuals in support of the album, one is immediately drawn to the subjectively conjured visuals of Harvey’s indirect lyrics: the characters throughout these songs, nameless though they may be, remain with us for the album’s duration—and they don’t readily abandon us (or let us abandon them) after the end credits roll. There is such a truthful, mythical quality to the depictions of the people in these songs; it’s the type of truth that encompasses all the contradictions of reality, including the likelihood that her harsh description of certain locations (such as D.C.’s Ward 7) are both every bit as exaggerated as the former D.C. mayor would have us believe, and every bit as bad as she succeeds in making them sound.

But beyond these notions of indirect subjectivity and writer’s POV, there appears to be a more profound understanding at play within the subtext of The Hope Six Demolition Project and its supporting tour. Namely, the perceived wisdom of having fully accepted the limitations of what art can accomplish, while simultaneously reaching for the outer limits of what is capable. In short, by carving into the terrain of myth, which reveals itself to be sacred (while offering up equal measures of the profane) Harvey has set herself—and this work—apart from the more traditional forms of front-line reportage. In Cinema of Heresy, Greene also cites a previous text by Lino Micciche, in which he draws a comparison between the German philosopher Theodor Adorno, and the role assumed by Pasolini as a revolutionary film-maker: “Adorno is seen as the man who best described contemporary society as one in which the order of the Enlightenment turned into barbarianism, where thought ceased to think itself, where the destruction of the Myth… created the new myth of Reason (and its order of the ‘rational’). For Adorno, in fact, and in general for all ‘negative thought,’ the mandate of intellectuals and artists… [to] merely oppose what exists… winds up by reflecting… the barbarity of what exists” (p. 170). The rationalism of her critics is thus drawn into stark contrast with the unstated intent of her latest work (further outlined by her refusal to give any interviews on the subject—the interview being that most rational and, all-too-often, belittling of vehicles for the artist’s message): to bring us in direct contact with the unseen and unspoken terrain that lies beyond the imploding confines of twentieth century rationalism.

So not unlike Pasolini, with his mythic film quartet, PJ Harvey has ventured into that territory housing the origins of man-made myth itself: the lands of the Middle East. (Lines from “The Orange Monkey” serve to corroborate her intent: “…to understand/You must travel back in time/I took a plane to a foreign land/And said, ‘I’ll write down what I find.’”) Also not unlike Pasolini (who once remarked: “I do not place much faith in action, unless it is truly action”), Harvey is establishing a space for herself—as an artist—in which she can maintain an indirectly subjective rapport with her characters, all the while avoiding the self-righteous sermonizing of most social consciousness-driven songwriting. But what separates Harvey from Pasolini, as both a human being and an artist (among many of the latter’s character traits, not worth numbering), is the apparent, genuine empathy she reveals for the people she depicted in these songs. Unlike the Italian filmmaker, whose career ended on a note of the most profound and dour pessimism, Harvey appears to be at least containing—and quite possibly contemplating—the possibility of a happy ending. Whereas many critics, upon release, commented disparagingly that Ms. Harvey ought not venture into the world’s biggest problems without offering any solutions, I personally find their admonishment laughable and unwarranted—on at least two levels. First, since when has it become the artist’s responsibility to provide tactile solutions for the world’s most enormous social problems? (Morality aside, are competent artists generally equipped to become efficient policy-makers?) And second, couldn’t we all admit that one of the more substantial problems at-hand these days is the proliferation of individuals offering their self-proclaimed expertise on possible solutions, while never actually participating in the implementation of their propositions (or never having been an expert in the first place)? It appears to me, these days, that solutions to social issues are worked out and proposed without even considering the source problem from a multitude of angles. The irony of this faux pas, of course, is that the cultural notion of intentional, “solution-focused thinking”—featured in many an inspirational TED talk—has, in fact, failed to offer many tangible and long-lasting solutions to society’s broader issues. In part, this has been for a failure to comprehend, clearly and unanimously, the source(s) of the problems at-hand.

And so Polly Jean invites us to look. To really look, and to withhold from offering expert advice on something we’re not really an expert in. Her songs seem to be saying: “I’ve actually been there, and I know little more than I did before having gone. But here are the fragmented facts I can attest to; someone else has the rest of the picture.” It’s not just honest: it’s—dare I say it?—revolutionary, in proportion to the present-day worldviews of many writers. There is a genuine empathy inherent to these songs, and to their live performances, but it is all smartly packaged within the mythical/theatrical tradition of storytelling. It is both huge and small; conveyed with a Brechtian influence, and marked by occasions of unexpected warmth and humor (such as the ridiculous sax solos in “The Ministry of Social Affairs,” or the unexpected, highly rewarding inclusion of “50 Ft. Queenie” towards the live set’s culmination). Her current songwriting approach never quite enables us to get comfortable within the sketchy parameters of the scenes she is depicting: the work is clearly conscious of her—and of her likely audience’s—somewhat bourgeois milieu, and it refuses middle-class consumers the somewhat sadistic and classicist comfort of admiring the horrors of humanity from a safe distance. This approach reminds us perpetually that it “does not simply give a vision of the character and his world; it imposes another vision in which the first vision is transformed and reflected” (Deleuze, in reference to Pasolini’s use of the camera). And this is where Harvey most explicitly transcends the defined confines of the various mediums she is operating within (live performance; poetry; songwriting; recording), drawing our attention instead to analyze the intended purpose of the mediums themselves—and to recognize the endless sea of inherent subjectivity that envelops them. It is also significant to recognize here that, for the first time in her catalogue of album artwork designs, we are not delivered a crisply conceived, fine-tuned aesthetic. Announcing an immediate departure with the designer’s choice of the “Impact” font (which so many of us are likely to associate with the pedantic phenomenon of the “meme”), this newest album cover somewhat daringly mixes the personal—the crest being of family origin to John Parish, Harvey’s long-time collaborator—with the culturally vulgar. It is a product for creative consumption, and at the same time, it seems to be calling into question the integrity of its own conception.

In a highly reflexive, quasi-Godardian move, Harvey maintains a steady commitment throughout The Hope Six Demolition Project to not employing any emotional clichés, instead quoting from genre (the gospel blues of “River Anacostia;” the jazz-inflected plastic soul of “The Ministry of Social Affairs;” the barroom chant at the close of “Community of Hope;” the layered, live instrumentation of the tracks, loosely recalling ABCKO-era Stones) and inserting documentary-influenced observations throughout to achieve an almost endlessly repeatable cycle of sonic paintings. Appropriately enough, one of the stand-out pieces from the album (and a high point of her Massey Hall performance, garnering a standing ovation) is entitled “The Wheel:” it takes as its subject matter the thousands of children who go missing every year in the Middle East, leaving empty playground carousels spinning in the wind. Harvey never lets us forget that most of the characters in these songs are now—or have always been—ghosts, and she deploys language as a masterful weapon to conjure simple, timeless images in the listener’s mind of the chaotic, life-drenched, and death-soaked landscapes she has visited.

“…Now the water to my ankles
Now the water to my knees
Think of him, all waxy wings
Melted down into the sea
Mary, Mary, what your man said
Washing it all over my head
Mary, Mary, hold on tightly
Over water, under the sea…”

The back catalogue selections in her live set also reveal an astute awareness of the disparities and the similarities between her former selves, and her current outlook: by blocking the set with an initial chunk of songs from the new project, followed by a series of selections from the comparably poetic and politic-inflected Let England Shake, she then segues from the inebriated woman in a wheelchair at the end of Hope Six‘s “Medicinals,” to the woman undergoing an abortion in White Chalk‘s “When Under Ether” (with both songs also calling to mind the powerful presence of the woman holding the chain of keys to those fifteen abandoned houses—not to mention real-life issues of women’s rights, making global headlines on a daily basis). She then proceeds to weave, in a totally seamless and fluid fashion, numbers from To Bring You My Love and Rid of Me with the remaining pieces of her three most recent albums—alternating between the desperate child at her car window in “Dollar, Dollar” and the woman inviting “The Devil” to enter her soul “on a night with no moon;” between the blues of the beggars soliciting outside “The Ministry of Social Affairs,” and the self-confident swagger of the “king of the world” in “50 Ft. Queenie.” For an artist renowned for being (at times, overly) curatorial and selective in her live set sequencing, it’s an absolute joy to see her make full use of her biggest touring band to date, giving new life to older songs which fully warrant the panoramic treatment (did I mention that this band is phenomenally good?) In fact, two numbers from her most blatantly cinematic album to-date (and one of my personal favorites), To Bring You My Love, serve as a highly dramatic lead-up to the anticlimactic warning sign of “River Anacostia”—which closes out the set proper. Traveling from the woman who commits infanticide in “Down By the Water,” to the one who has “climbed over mountains” and “forsaken heaven/To bring you my love,” the set ends with a subtle return to the more prophetic overtones of the woman whose chain of keys first opened the floodgates. But something has changed between then and now: over the course of her transformative and bristling performance, she has come that much closer to fusing herself with the song’s narrator. She now beckons, with both a genuine urgency and the heightened drama of a Greek chorus: “What will become of us?/What will become of us?” As the band repeats the chorus of a 19th century African-American spiritual (another link in the chain, emphasizing the mythical proportion of the entire project), the wall that was erected behind the band at the start of the night sinks quietly to the ground—swallowed by the poisonous waters of the river in question.

A towering wall looms large above Polly Jean and her band, as they provide both a warning sign of things to come.

As I left the theater and replayed that hair-raising performance of “River Anacostia” over again and again in my mind, I couldn’t help being reminded of the apocalyptic tone which overtook Pasolini in his final years—ultimately revealing its bleakest colors in the magisterial despair of Salò. I then thought of Harvey’s encore song selections: the broad, mythical canvas of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited,” and the borderline-romantic (yet invariably gritty) depiction of her homeland, “The Last Living Rose.” I thought of this final moment of transcendent beauty, occurring at the end of this crowning number as she intones: “Let me watch the night fall on the river/The moon rise up and turn to silver/The sky move, the ocean shimmer/The hedge shake, the last living rose/Quiver.” With this final word, she goes through the motions of a mannered circle dance, calling to my preoccupied mind the ritualistic dance at the close Salò, which I’d found myself reading about that same morning. It was both a fitting finale, and a lingering reminder of the fragility inherent to this performance and its contents—let alone the fragility of the world’s survival in the troubling times we find ourselves living in. Once again, in contrast to Pasolini, Harvey doesn’t flatly deny us a happy ending: she seems instead to be denying the viability of any self-imposed ending to the vast and mythical narrative she has embarked upon.

Throughout the towering and unforgettable show Ms. Harvey has put together, she consistently makes us (her long-time listeners and admirers) fully, viscerally aware of the continuity stretching from the opening notes of Dry‘s “Oh My Lover,” to the cinéma vérité -inflected poeticism of her more recent projects—and she leaves us breathlessly wondering what might come next. Her magisterial performance serves as a humbling reminder that she remains in a league of her own, artistically speaking. One could reach for any number of comparisons with other poets/songwriters/performance artists (Patti Smith; Marina Abramović; Kate Bush), but when all is said and done, Polly Jean Harvey has cultivated a soil fully her own—which she is both modestly maintaining and ambitiously expanding from year to year. Her subject matter may have evolved over the course of the past two and a half decades, but it has retained the air of the mountain breeze blowing through the clothes of the protagonist in “Fountain.” The mythical body of “Water” that she walks on at the end of Dry emerges as the same water in which a child is drowned in To Bring You My Love—which is, in turn, the same sea her characters float in during the finale of Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. The water from this sea now carries with it the poisons of “River Anacostia,” warning us (in a morally neutral tone) of the two most prominent threats looming over our present-day civilization: the devastating effects of climate change, and the contamination of our water supply.

As with Pasolini (widely regarded now as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century), Harvey ultimately calls to mind the “eternal return” of the Romanian philosopher, Mircea Eliade, who determined in his writings that: “Every sacrifice repeats the initial sacrifice and coincides with it… And the same holds true for all repetitions, i.e., all imitations of archetypes; through such imitations, man is projected into the mythical epoch in which the archetypes were first revealed. Thus we perceive… there is an implicit abolition of profane time, of duration, of ‘history’; and he who reproduces the exemplary gesture thus finds himself transported into the mythical epoch in which its revelation took place.” Likewise, Harvey has eschewed the self-righteous proselytizing of her pop music contemporaries, in favor of rooting herself firmly in mythical landscapes that—put in proper perspective—serve to dwarf the short-sighted and ineffectual efforts of modern man and woman.

The audience dissipates into a crowd outside the venue.

And so we return to our hotel after this life-altering event, and we find ourselves at a loss for words. Because during the course of the past couple hours, we have transcended the boundaries of time and place, and we have experienced an authentic, humbling encounter with the likely origins of the world’s most widely debated (and frequently misrepresented) problems. We have been made hyper-aware of the vulgarity underlying the words of so many politicians, experts, and self-proclaimed artists—all vainly claiming to have found the solutions to these problems. But we can still see that revolving wheel, from which all those thousands of children have disappeared; we see “a tableau of the missing”—“a faded face/the trace of an ear.” And we “watch them fade out/and watch them fade out/and watch them fade out…”

We need to talk about Us.

“We are the United States of Amnesia: we learn nothing because we remember nothing.”

With these words, Gore Vidal summarized (albeit somewhat cynically) what seems to be a recurring motif of our country’s ancestry. And it does stand to test that we, as a nation of people, have persistently struggled to effectively process our past. Like a patient who keeps returning to his therapist for analysis, but then disregards the insight provided about himself during every session, we seem to carry on in a state of oblivion—forever wondering what on earth might be the matter with this dysfunctional country we live in, when the answers have been presented to us time and time again…

The great Tilda Swinton, playing a mother who fears her child might be developing sociopathic tendencies in Lynne Ramsay’s adaptation of We Need To Talk About Kevin © 2011, Oscilloscope Pictures

In Lionel Shriver’s acclaimed novel, We Need To Talk About Kevin (later developed into a chilling film by Lynne Ramsay), the author explores the psychology of a family whose parents struggle to come to terms with their child’s emerging sociopathic tendencies. Ignoring the author’s advice, Kevin’s parents fail to adequately explore what might be the matter with their increasingly disturbed son, and (spoiler) unnecessary bloodshed ensues. The text functions as an apt dramatization of a real-life struggle within many American families—namely, the disregard of clinically established mental health issues, which all-too-frequently debilitate (and sometimes destroy) otherwise functional family units when ignored and left untreated. But it also functions as a pointed criticism of our country itself: a country that has the highest death rate by gun violence among all the developed countries in the world (as cited in a 2010 report published by The American Journal of Medicine), yet refuses to acknowledge the benefits of common sense gun control; a country that was founded upon, arguably, the most egregious of all documented acts of genocide in world history (as summarized in great detail by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in her text, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States—among many others), and yet continues to minimize the egregiousness of these crimes against humanity (read this thoughtful yet infuriating piece by Guenter Lewy, who appears to be gunning for title of “hair-splitter extraordinaire” in his justification of these crimes); a country that—after having wiped out the native peoples of said country—proceeded to import slaves from other countries around the world to do our dirty work, while our ancestors feigned religious superiority; a country that, once forced to grudgingly acknowledge the heinous and un-Christian acts of slavery it perpetuated and legislated, slowly proceeded to modify the institutionalized oppression of people of color into forms of segregation—and later, into the Machiavellian mass incarceration of minorities, whose byproduct (or intention, depending on how one dissects the situation) has been gross profiteering at the expense of an unpaid labor force in for-profit prisons (“a rose by any other name…”).

And the list goes on; and the denial goes on; and the oppression goes on. This isn’t to say that our history isn’t being properly re-evaluated by present-day historians, documentarians, and artists; but it does much to substantiate Mr. Vidal’s argument. Consumed by the notion of progress, but ignorant to the painstaking effort and integrity required to truly achieve progress, we’ve by and large mastered the art of the dog and pony routine: instead of subsidizing adequate efforts to alleviate gross income inequality, house the millions who are homeless, and ensure basic healthcare and education for our tax-paying citizens, we’ve committed ourselves to “liberating” the denizens of countries abroad. And bear in mind, this is not an attempt to oversimplify the accepted complexity of diplomatic relations with foreign nations: we do (at least, for the time being) retain a Constitutional freedom of speech that many men and women across the oceans from us are bereft of. But since we are entering an era where “telling it like it is” is valued over respecting nuance and the ever-resented gray areas of our running history, I suppose it’s only proper that I should follow suit(?)

Then again, is that not the root of our problem? For how can we tell anything like it is, if we refuse to properly investigate what “it” actually is, or has been? If we persist in filtering the failures of our nation’s forefathers through a lens of “Manifest Destiny,” via which just about any crime (including ethnic cleansing) can be rationalized under this pathetically childish euphemism for “finders keepers”? As prone as we are to distilling the gray into black and white, I have an unshakable conviction of the urgent task at hand: to accept and to paint the gray areas we are so often inclined to ignore, and to talk—to actually talk, and listen when spoken to—about our past in terms that are frank, clear, and evidence-based. It’s not an easy task, by any means, but I can provide examples for reference as to how one might proceed.

* * *

In April of 1945, British forces liberated the last of the still-living prisoners discovered in Bergen-Belsen and Neuengamme—the last of the Nazi concentration camps to fall to the victory of the Allied Forces. During the years that ensued, the people of Germany faced a unique conundrum: while their economy rebounded at an extraordinary rate (so extraordinary that it was referred to at the time as an “economic miracle”), the citizens of this troubled nation struggled to incorporate the reality of their recent past into the greater scheme of their national history. Many accounts I’ve read by then-living German citizens argue that the years following the war were marked by quiet denial; by an unspoken refusal to address the proverbial elephant in the room, and later, by several political regimes of dubious merit (let us recall that, a mere 16 years later, a great wall was erected between the two halves of this troubled country).

A snapshot of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, located in what is now Lower Saxony. Courtesy of the Holocaust Education & Research Team website.

And yet, if we fast-forward to the fall of the Berlin wall and the period of reunification that ensued, we will find a change has taken place. In 1991, an art competition is held in West Berlin to commemorate the Holocaust in the form of a national monument; the winning artist rejects the most popular idea—a central monument in the Bavarian Quarter—and chooses something far more affecting. From the hundreds of rules imposed by the Nazi regime upon the Jewish population in West Berlin, the artist selects 80, to be reprinted one by one on street signs throughout the Bavarian Quarter; so that, while waiting to cross the street, a passerby might stumble upon a phrase like “Jews aren’t allowed to leave home after 8PM,” or “Jews must forfeit all electrical devices”—reminders of an unforgettable atrocity, to ensure this atrocity will not be forgotten (and, with any hope, not be repeated). Mind you, this change did not happen overnight: this change happened gradually, over the course of half a century, and through the concerted efforts of artists and historians to come to terms (without justification or rationalization) with the full extent of their country’s history of genocide and oppression.

Fassbinder challenges his (real-life and screen) mother’s interpretation of German history, in his episode for the collaborative 1978 film project, Germany in Autumn, renewed © 2010, FACETS distribution.

It is because of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff; Alfred Döblin, Otto Dix, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk; Karlheinz Stockhausen, Conny Plank, Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Dieter Moebius (among many others—too many to name in one essay) that this change took place. Because of Alfred Döblin and Otto Dix, the oppression brewing beneath the decadent veneer of the Weimar era was painted in broad relief—through the jarringly prescient words of the former, and the harrowing brushstrokes of the latter. Because of Fritz Lang, Douglas Sirk, and Billy Wilder, the hatred and genocidal racism prevailing in Nazi Germany was documented, satirized, and captured in real time through the medium of popular film (they did their jobs so well, they were all three forced to flee the oppression of the Nazi regime, so they could continue documenting and satirizing from a distance). Because of Fassbinder, the prejudice and amnesia that had become ingrained within his parents’ generation was dragged into broad daylight and brought to the attention of those who previously refused to pay attention. Because of Conny Plank, Rother, Roedelius, Moebius, and all the pioneers of the neue German musik, the foundations of a better future were laid within the cultural narrative—wiping the slate clean of all the MOR “schlager” detritus, and offering an alternative to the sins of their fathers through entirely new art forms. And to this day, Wim Wenders continues carrying the torch for the country of his namesake, painting some of the most beautiful moving pictures man has ever known—reminding viewers around the world of just how precious and significant these little lives of ours are, and giving us cause to carry on loving and learning more about each other.

Which brings us back to the U.S. of A.—a country that, as Meryl Streep so pointedly remarked during her headline-making acceptance speech at the Golden Globes this past Sunday, has become so eager to reject immigrants that it might soon have “nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts” (and I suspect that, despite the slightly sarcastic undertone of that little caveat, there are many who would beg to differ with her chagrin at this notion). Without meaning to come across as pessimistic or overly self-deprecating, I can and will readily admit the painful truth: that we are a nation drowning in our own ignorance. We have forgotten how to love one another, because we have forgotten how to foster a loving society. We have invested so much in our institutions of religion and our splintered ideologies, and in doing so, we have forgotten the simple gestures that reveal love in its truest forms.

Roger Ebert famously referred to the cinema as a “a machine that generates empathy,” and yet a substantial chunk of the top 100 grossing films of 2016 (and 2015, and 2014, and 2013…) consists of obscenely violent action blockbusters which do nothing to generate empathy, and actually function through a reversing of this very formula: they are the products of a machine that aims to belittle and eradicate empathy. To be perfectly fair—and with respect to those gray areas I’m endeavoring to highlight—there were many films in this year’s top 100 that stand up to the litmus test of Ebert’s definition; in fact, the #1 box office success of the year, Finding Dory, is a populist but shining example of empathically-geared family filmmaking. And yet, the age demographic that seems most in need of empathic development—namely, the voting age demographic—doesn’t seem to be picking up on the message. We have to scroll down to the 70^th percentile of the top box office grossers before we find a film (Fences) that addresses the ever-growing racial divide in our country; we have to scroll to the 80^th percentile before we find Manchester By the Sea, one of the most remarkably skilled and affecting pieces of American film realism this past year (at least when it comes to fostering empathy for characters on-screen, and for the struggles they contend with). And we won’t even find the most powerful machine for empathy to tour the film circuit in 2016 (Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight) among the top 100 box office grossers this year; I can only hypothesize that the appeals of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and The Legend of Tarzan were too irresistible to sacrifice in favor of something that might serve to edify and enlighten. (For comparison: Ken Loach’s latest documentary, I, Daniel Blake—a study in the failure of the British welfare system to adequately provide for the needs of an ailing carpenter and his family—can be found in the top 100 grossing films of both the British and French box offices. Can you imagine?)

Ken Loach’s latest documentary film, one of the highest-grossing pictures of the year in England and France © 2016, Sixteen Films.

But the task at hand involves more than just empathy-building (which ought to be a given in any civilized society): we need to pair our empathic skills with our critical thinking skills, and difficult as it might be, we need to wean ourselves off of this addiction to sanitizing history—of our passion for distilling all those varying shades of gray into crisply delineated shapes of black and white. I can already see (and am myself contending with) the struggle ahead, as we prepare to wave so long and farewell to our current commander-in-chief: a man who rather gracefully served as leader of this country for the past 8 years—all the while speaking in complete sentences, refraining from extramarital affairs in the Oval Office, and polishing that veneer of social progressivism that we liberals cling to so readily. Difficult though it might be, I believe it is crucial that we not forget the unfulfilled promises of this seemingly squeaky clean administration. The failure to close Guantanamo Bay, as promised; the implementation of drone-bombings in the never-ending war for oil in the Middle East; the growing socio-economic divide among the citizens of this country; the endless flow of the almighty dollar between lobbyists, Congressmen, and the Executive branch—influencing nearly every decision that is made at every level of Federal government.

Let’s not do what the Republicans did with Reagan in the ’80s, and the Democrats did with the Kennedys in the 60’s: let’s not turn the work of a flawed man into a gilded legacy act, impermeable to the critique and reasoned analysis of future generations. Let’s celebrate the fact that we finally elected a person of color to the highest office in the country, but let’s also acknowledge and respect the limitations of his work—just as we must acknowledge the institutionalized racism that continues to prevail throughout so many structures of our haphazard economy. Let’s bear in mind that, should we live to tell the tale of our 45^th president, there are likely to be individuals who persist in championing the infallibility of his being; and who are we to cast stones, if we cannot refrain from making the same mistake in lionizing our current president’s time in office? It is only by cutting our losses now that we will be able to adequately number the (possibly innumerable, I fear) losses we’re preparing to sustain throughout the next four years.

So at long last: can we begin to talk about Us? Can we drag ourselves, as a nation of people, to the analyst’s chair that is the study of history, and can we truly examine the ghosts lurking within? It’s an unpleasant task, and I understand the general reluctance to undertake it, but I trust we have the means and the resources to do so. It will require self-awareness and discipline, to be sure; it will require taking the time and effort to engage in open dialogue with individuals who cling to a conviction that differs from ours. Instead of shaking our heads at the seemingly uninformed statements of younger people—so often coated in a language that seems to betray an over-developed sensitivity—we must seize upon each and every opportunity to inform and educate: we must respect (and strive to learn from) their views of this confusing world they’re growing up in—and whenever appropriate, we should offer an expansion to their perspective (which might also serve to alleviate that heightened urge to mind every single “p” and “q” spoken in public).

Lastly, we must rediscover the significance of the arts in our daily lives. Although I don’t foresee the United States maturing enough to rein in its fanaticism for gladiatorial sports, I believe we have the capacity to meet halfway by restoring the arts to a place of heightened importance in our schools; I believe we have the capacity to invest in our country’s fledgling artists way more than we currently do—not just by subsidizing the works of up-and-coming artists through government sponsorship (let us bear in mind: nearly all of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 30-odd films were publicly funded by the German government), but by making a deliberate effort to seek out works that endeavor to comment on and elucidate our present and our past. We simply cannot continue referring to ourselves as the Greatest Nation on Earth, when our state of cultural affairs remains in such vacuous disarray.

Mr. Vidal was easily one of the greatest satirists ever to emerge from our country, and his passing has left a notable void in the satirical department. We need intellectuals to continue seeking out new, innovative ways to engage the minds of our nation’s youth—as well as stimulating the dormant thought processes of so many a working adult. It was because of Vidal’s incisive commentary that so many of us took the extra time to investigate the folly of our country’s forefathers, and it will be because of similarly capable analysts that we might manage to do the same moving forward. Because I still retain a (quite possibly foolish) belief in the far-off possibility of guiding the dilapidated, runaway train that is the United States onto a track of reason, reflection, and true progress—and I believe I am not alone.

Still taken for the forthcoming Raoul Peck documentary, inspired by the words of James Baldwin © 2017, Velvet Film.

But first, we must take the time to recall—and to challenge our recollections, when we fear they may have faltered. In our efforts to restore reason and empathy to this fallen land, we must invest as much energy as the artists of the German new wave invested in studying and repairing their own history. Documentaries such as OJ: Made in America, 13^th, and the forthcoming James Baldwin film, I Am Not Your Negro, are an important step in this direction—but I’m convinced we can do so much more (especially when it comes to supporting these efforts with actual numbers). Whenever we watch a movie, read a book, or look at any piece of art, we should be asking ourselves and each other: what is this telling me about myself and my fellow man? Does this message ring true?

And what have I learned?

“If no one asks, then no one answers
That’s how every empire falls.”
– John Prine

“I am the passenger…”

on the road to ulter nation

Quote featured on the back cover of Scott 4 by Scott Walker.

The journey detailed in this essay is a journey I’ve endeavored to capture sonically on an album called ulter nation (now available on CD and digital download). It is a journey that sometimes flows from track to track—and other times, jolts from one idea to another. Like a gesture that hesitates to decide its own course, for want of constantly considering the alternatives. It’s sometimes polished, and sometimes messy; sometimes big (verging on claustrophobic), and sometimes small and questioning. Over the past months, I’ve often doubted whether it’s worth releasing it at all (who’s going to listen, anyway?): the decision I’ve made to do so is grounded in a belief that every journey deserves to be documented—however meandering or insignificant it might seem to the individual who traversed it. Write what you know, as the old saying goes.

Official music video for album opener, “Eclipse”—featuring footage from the films of Michelangelo Antonioni.

Part I: Travels abroad

“…and I ride and I ride…”

As far back as I can recall, film has been a part of my life. I grew up in a three-story apartment building in Northern Italy: my parents were stationed there as missionaries, and the entire structure had been designated a “hospitality house” for the soldiers of a nearby Army base. The edifice was a square, stuccoed ordeal, and there was a large magnolia tree out front that would yield big white blossoms during the Mediterranean summer. I remember very little about the Army base itself—which we were only allowed to visit on civilian permit—other than the American movie theater at the heart of it, and the Italian cinema/video store combo across the street from its gates. These would be the sources of my earliest obsession.

I can vividly remember roaming the tall, stately rows of VHS tapes, lined up throughout the Italian video store—which was, in fact, functioning as an outlet for American soldiers who wanted something beyond the range of the smaller rental store on-base. This meant most of the videos were in the NTSC format; which, in turn, meant we could watch them on our American-made VCR. I can almost (but not quite) smell the nicotine-stained, styrofoam-packed video sleeves lining the shelves: the faded corners around the cover artwork of each title; the wall of artlessly catalogued cassettes behind the register. The stern but warm face of the middle-aged matron who ruled over the place with a disinterested (yet well-versed) sense of practicality; the printed ledger, which contained an alphabetized—and somehow always up-to-date—account of every title in-stock, in case a customer had a specific request. Oddly enough, I remember much less about its on-base counterpart: this could have been due to our being civilian visitors, and only being allowed to visit the American store at limited times. It could also have been that the Italian store was far more compelling, with its combination of cult and mainstream English-speaking fare, and the more exotic-(shall we say)-looking Italian films on a wall close to the register.

The two movie theaters in town held my intrigue in equal measure—and for similar reasons: whereas the movie theater on base could be relied upon to always have the latest American blockbuster, the Italian theater across the street primarily exhibited movies my parents wouldn’t be overheard talking about in public. But this became an amusing little routine for me: about once a year, mom and dad would find an Italian film showing that seemed to be child-appropriate; the four of us—my parents, myself, and my older brother—would venture out and, inevitably, one of them wound up scrambling to cover our eyes during a scene of spontaneous nudity (usually occurring in the second act, when the attention starts to lag due to the notoriously bad post-syncing). I can’t say we visited the military-operated theater with any degree of regularity; our finances were understandably limited. Perhaps it was my unfulfilled longing to know more about every mysterious movie poster that provoked this cinematic fascination which overtook me in later years.

Outside of these consumption outlets, film played a role in our family image development: my parents always seemed to have a camera on-hand, and they’ve kept a fairly comprehensive record of the 11 years we spent overseas. When our family was gifted a direct-to-VHS video camera, we started recording significant (and sometimes insignificant) events as little home movies. I recall one of these movies perfectly capturing my anxiety as a 7-year old on Christmas morning: my parents, good Christians that they are, made certain myself and my brother both sat through a retelling of the Nativity prior to any worldly gift exchanging. Part of me grew irritated by the monotony of the story (it always ended with the virgin having a baby—which likely triggered my later interest in surrealism); another part of me learned to appreciate the value of tradition—the accrued significance an event can obtain by virtue of its repetition. Both parts of me must have been fully functioning on this particular Christmas morning, as I hyper-actively jumped from the couch to the floor, to the stockings on the mantel, back to the couch, and back around in a (sort of) circle. While watching the video of this event some time later—and fast-forwarding through the Nativity section—we stumbled upon a happy accident: as the tape ran through the VCR in fast-motion, the action of my hyperactive body leaping around the living room revealed a rhythm. What at regular speed just seemed to be restless wandering became a sort of dance, when played at a different rate: like one continuous gesture, weaving throughout a designated space.

“…I ride through the city’s backsides…”

There’s this scene in Antonioni’s 1975 feature film, The Passenger, in which our protagonist (played by Jack Nicholson) lies dying in a hotel bed—fulfilling a predestination, set in motion by the death of the man whose identity he adopted at the movie’s beginning. The camera gaze drifts slowly outside the room, through the bars of a window overlooking the courtyard of some desert hotel. A man sits still in a chair against a wall. Maria Schneider wanders restlessly around the courtyard. A car drives slowly through the scenery. It’s one of the longest continuous shots I can think of, and when examined as a microcosm within the film’s narrative, it represents a sort of gestural solution to a fairly Quixotic, meandering plot.

Still from Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger © 1975, Sony Picture Classics

A series of shots at the end of his earlier film, L’Eclisse, betrays a similar strategy: delivering on the promise of its title, the gesture inherent to this series of still lifes rather passively brings to a close the film’s narrative (which, to be fair, has no real need for closure). The same could be said for a number of his other films, including my personal favorite—Identification of a Woman—which concludes with the lead actor opening a window to project his imagined sci-fi screenplay idea (which, in turn, projects a story narrated by Monica Vitti in Red Desert) into an open sky of improbable colors. I suppose another viewer might interpret these as cop-out endings, but they don’t come across to me as such. The gesture of each ending seems to catapault the viewer back to his own reality—which represents just one out of a number of possible gestures.

“…I see the stars come out in the sky…”

In 1999, my family packed up the few belongings in our expansive Italian house and moved back to the United States. As the Y2k scare swelled to its inevitable (and underwhelming) conclusion, we were settling into a rented home in the middle of an identikit suburban neighborhood. I remember the television coverage on New Year’s Eve—sitting on the carpeted floor of the living room, wondering if this move to a different country could also become a move to the end of the world. Some people must have been disappointed by the outcome, since the scenario was reprised (somewhat less effectively) the following New Year’s, with a scare surrounding the ’00 turning to a ’01. Who knew basic algebra could be this frightening?

Still taken from Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation © 2003, Focus Features

Official music video for “Into the Night (pt. I),” celebrating a range of films which left a lasting mark on your humble narrator.

The neighborhood we moved into was made up of block after block of indistinguishable one-stories; you could (and I did) ride a bike through this maze for hours, racking your brain to find your way back to the street you lived on. Directly across a heavily trafficked 4-lane road on the edge of our neighborhood, there was an expansive strip mall—which housed a used music and movies store, but more impressively (and all the way towards the back of the labyrinthine lot) a proper multiplex. While the distance was a little demanding on foot, it turned out to be the perfect range for a bicycle. This enabled your humble narrator to pick up his consumption of new movie releases at a significant rate—within budgetary restrictions, of course. I remember seeing features as diverse as Signs; Lost in Translation; Kill Bill; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. All in rapid succession. It must have been this exposure to another side of American cinema that opened an alternate dimension for me—one to rival the microcosm of that Italian video store.

It was this exposure to a “rebirth” of independent American cinema that inspired me to return to my roots: to find out about those movies I never get to see while I was growing up. My mother had found work as a public librarian, and this enabled me to dig into a variety of books on the history of cinema, as well as digging into older films (on VHS and the new DVD format) from all around the world. The Italian film selection intrigued, but also confused me, since it seemed to represent an entirely different side of Italian cinema than the side I saw while growing up overseas. Not only were the films mostly older titles—films by DeSica, Visconti, Rosselini—but they seemed to represent a somewhat artisinal curation of a culture I found to be far more eclectic. For instance, none of the titles I checked out from the library synced with memories of dumb comedies starring Fantozzi and Roberto Benigni; none of these “classic” Italian films—though they were all pretty good—really matched the indigenous cinema I had once known and loved.¹

Still taken from Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits © 1965, Studio Canal Films

So I started to branch out, and I found the works of Bertolucci and Pasolini; films by Antonioni, Fellini, Leone, and Tornatore. I found films that were as far removed from the tripe I saw on Italian television as possible, yet just within range of the concerns I faced as a gay teenager. In Bertolucci, I found desperate, sensual beauty; in Pasolini, desparate anarchy. In Antonioni, it was the so-called “alienating” gaze that grabbed my attention (and subsequently found its way into many of the songs on this new album). In the films of Fellini, those wonderful outrages of the imagination—soaring on self-reflexive wings through fragments of deconstructed memory. Leone, on the other hand, was more of a magic realist: his majestic pipe dream, Once Upon a Time in America, may well be the quintessential cinematic rumination on memory and loss. And Giuseppe Tornatore brought me full circle, with his desperate love of life saturated in every film cell for The Legend of 1900 (a film I spent years searching for, having nothing to go on but my vague recollection of the teaser trailer shown on Italian television). I do believe a love of life is the defining characteristic of all the finest movies; it’s this act of love that inspires the viewer to become a better version of himself, thereby fulfilling the definition put forth by Roger Ebert—“a machine that generates empathy.” Just as the writers of Cahiers du Cinéma had incited a revolution (of sorts) through the act of championing the very lifeblood of cinema, my discovery of passionate Italian film-making incited an unquenchable thirst for more of the same.

One of the first stops along the tracks of this bullet train through world cinema was the land of surrealism.

René Magritte’s portrait of Edward James (1937)

“…yeah, the bright and hollow sky…”

Surrealism seems to get a bad rap from most art historians. I think this is largely to do with a perceived constriction of art that serves solely to attack bourgeois values; for the record, I’ve never bought this open/shut interpretation. Having admired the strange and enchanting films of Luis Buñuel for many years now, I’ve recognized a more consistent thread coursing this art movement to be a study in gestures. If we rewind all the way back to Magritte’s painting of a man (Edward James) reflecting the back of his head in a mirror (while facing the other way), we’ll find that the artist has taken a common subject and rendered it fascinating with a hidden gesture. At the most basic level, the image functions as an optical illusion; upon further scrutiny, it captivates with the perpetual (and unfulfilled) suggestion of some inscrutable movement.

Fast-forward to the improvisatory, episodic trajectories of Buñuel’s The Milky Way and The Phantom of Liberty, and you have this play of movement and gestures taken to the remotest extremes of unpredictability. More-so than satirizing a social class, these works seem (at least to me) to be studying the chance element inherent to the formation of social norms. When seen as a series of incomprehensible—yet, somehow, logical—gestures, we are granted the realization that alternate possibilities will always lie in waiting, just beyond the confines of our actualized movements. We are granted the realization of life as one long series of gestures: one long movement, which could have been any number of ulterior movements.

Still taken from Luis Buñuel’s The Milky Way © 1969, Studio Canal Films

These works by “formal” surrealists² segued neatly into my exploration of the dream-drenched boudoirs in the films of David Lynch (it wasn’t until many years later that I learned of the association his films held to the surrealist art movement). There was also the wide and varied work of Robert Altman, which—while not “surrealist” in any proper sense of the word—was energized by improvisation and obliqueness. 3 Women, in particular, seemed to share just as much with the works of surrealists as it did with the works of Ingmar Bergman. It’s one of (if not the) best-captured dreams on film, as far as I’m aware.

Panoramic still taken from Robert Altman’s 3 Women © 1977, Lion’s Gate Films

It seems to be dreams that most accurately capture the disorientation I’ve sometimes felt, straddling two cultures of origin. It was in dreams that I revisited the hallways and courtyards of the Italian schools I once attended; in dreams that I sometimes still catch glimpses of the life we left behind. Dreams have kept my fading memories of childhood alive, but they also tend to mutate these memories into increasingly fragmented images. The geography of my youth was one I traversed with little sense of orientation as a child: it’s now somewhat difficult for me to map these memories in any concrete order or sequence.

Maybe it’s this disorientation of recollection that fed my love of American road movies: Kubrick’s Lolita; Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider; Five Easy Pieces, Deadhead Miles, and Two-Lane Blacktop; Kalifornia, Thelma & Louise, Wild at Heart, and True Romance. Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho… They all channeled—in one way or another—this restless wandering of the soul, often through unknown towns and their roadside motels. The road movie may in fact be the perfect metaphor for the restless soul: it offers a literal depiction of the soul’s endless wandering; it establishes a tangible geography for an intangible journey. Just recently I saw Wim Wenders’ Kings of the Road for the first time, and it struck me as a flawless melding of the existential and the functional elements inherent to the genre (that infamous scene on the beach just about sums it up). It deserves to be crowned the king of all road movies.

Still taken from Wim Wender’s Kings of the Road © 1976, Axiom Films; renewed © 2016, Criterion Collection

“…you know it looks so good tonight…”

The latest stop on my journey through cinema has been the spellbinding land of melodrama. This includes everything from the expatriate works of Douglas Sirk, to the no-less-brightly-colored—and equally perverse—domestic dramas of Almodóvar; the filmed plays of Tennessee Williams, and the brutal genre/chamber pieces of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The lavish love letters of Wong Kar-Wai, and the cream of the day/night-time soap opera crop: Peyton Place, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Twin Peaks… The overly deliberated, deliciously exaggerated gestures of all those existentially bothered characters.

There’s this wonderful string of episodes in the second season of Mary Hartman‘s nightly run, during which Louise Lasser finds herself corresponding with Gore Vidal from the confines of a mental health facility—providing the world-renowned satirist with insight into the trials and tribulations of a sexually repressed housewife. What at first appears as a borderline-ludicrous juxtaposition of personalities, winds up a mirror image of sorts: two people sharing this tremendous amount of perception regarding (their respective) sources of societal misery, but only one of them capable of tapping into repressed desire. The irony of this dynamic, of course, is that the hetero-normative individual in this scenario is the one most incapable of finding happiness within the confines of social structures (thereby affirming Yoko Ono’s eyebrow-raising claim³).

Still taken from an episode of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman © 1976, Sony Pictures and Shout! Home Entertainment

I could not have prepared myself for the outcome of the recent United States Presidential election, regardless of how hard I might have tried. As this country veers off into an uncertain future, I believe it will be noted by historians that the final straw before the breaking of the camel’s proverbial back was the threat of a woman achieving power. It is a given that sexism will not allow itself to be resolved any time soon, and it is this oppression that makes melodrama a study of such on-going relevance: it’s a genre centered around the awareness that society sides with one “type,” often at the sacrifice of another. Emerging forces of opposition are allowed to be studied with complexity and nuance in melodrama, and when done successfully, this creates the ultimate machine for empathy. This fosters the ability to recognize one’s “other” for who he/she/they really are, and we can then begin to comprehend where the scales are tipped. This heightened awareness is the first step towards developing an altered and improved model of the status quo.

“…I stay under glass…”

There is a dynamic that occurs when an organism responds to its surroundings: I refer to it as the “politics of space,” though I’m certain there’s a more scientific term in use elsewhere. The Canada goose, as we know, flies south in the winter to escape the frost; the lizard seeks sunlight to absorb the heat its body fails to generate adequately. Similarly, people respond to space in terms of opposition and assimilation. Living in Italy, I developed a curious obsession with the grandiosity of American culture—it being in such direct opposition to the scale of Italian geography—but for reasons beyond mere opposition: in this grandiosity of physical space (the Rocky Mountains; the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico; the vast tundras of Alaska and Canada) there can be found a reflection of the spiritual grandiosity Italians are well-known for.

The narrow geography of Italy has forced many citizens to establish tight-knit communities. Combined with the (once-stringent) policy put forth by the Vatican on birth control, this proximity of space in more industrialized cities made it so that—at the time I was there—families of 10 or more resided communally in two-bedroom flats. It was not unusual for us to visit our neighbors and find the husband sitting on their living room couch, wearing only his underwear and a tattered shirt: the living room often doubled as a bedroom/changing area, and some of the boundaries many “westerners” are accustomed to were frequently blurred.

As a general rule, upon entering an Italian household, life will light itself up. The Italians I met from Southern Italy, in particular, tended to move with grand, welcoming gestures; they were good-humored, hospitable, and down-to-earth. But all Italians (that I recall meeting, at least) seemed to share this grandness of spirit, which endeared you to people upon your very first meeting them. Genuineness among people felt instinctual: whereas North America (as we know it) was initially colonized in the vein of forming a new identity, Italians have retained a fairly confident sense of national identity for a while now. This sense was so confident, of course, that it once swung to the extreme of fascism—but this part of Italian history was seldom brought to my attention (and when it was, it rarely resonated within my youthful, ahistorical thought process).

Another thing about Italians (culturally speaking): very little seems to be done in a spirit of irony. Humor often inclines itself towards the wicked variety, but it rarely sinks to a level of actual cruelty (some lightweight debasement, perhaps), and it always feels close to home. Perhaps taking a path whereby few subjects ever require skating around, Europeans have side-stepped some of the common traps we Americans appear to fall into; specifically, traps involving the formation of social taboos that, when confronted by youth, frequently turn into vindictive norms. These traps can provoke a susceptible individual’s instinctive rejection of their environment, in lieu of confrontation or assimilation. Europeans, on the other hand, have been forced to confront their environment time and again; their consistency and solidarity (despite numerous wars and territorial squabbles) is viewed as remarkable by Americans, who’ve experienced something akin to schizophrenia between the disparate and far-removed parts of our country. Perhaps it’s this increased sense of national identity that enables Europeans to maintain the cultural upper hand.

Nonetheless, despite a heritage of great art and historic architecture—the Vatican; the Coliseum; the museums of Venice—the cultural components I connected with most immediately during my residency overseas were of a much more lighthearted nature. The Smurfs (translated as I Puffi) were a daily feature in our household after school, along with this great Japanimé series dubbed in Italian, Lupin III. There was also a sort of Disney knock-off cartoon serial (paper) that we used to pick up from the train station depot, whenever we went on a trip through the countryside.

Still taken from the Mark Romanek-directed music video for “Bedtime Stories” (1995), one of many memorable Madonna moments from her MTV heyday

(Italian) MTV introduced me to a number of significant cultural icons, including Björk, Madonna, and David Bowie. There were also several Italian pop stars in heavy rotation—namely, Eros Ramazzotti and Jovanotti—and of course, the wonders of Ricky Martin’s hot candlewax threshold. Euro-pop is a real thing, make no mistake: the regrettable Swedish export, Ace of Base, made for ubiquitous listening in Italian supermarkets. There was also a strong affinity for UK-exported boy/girl bands, like Boyzone and The Spice Girls. But the CDs I found myself drawn to whenever we shopped at a retailer that carried music (which was a surprisingly large percentage of retailers, honestly) tended to be of a somewhat different nature: I vividly recall the covers of those early Massive Attack records (the name sounded so dangerous and alluring), as well as the Fat of the Land album by Prodigy. Then there was the first album by Tori Amos, with that startlingly graphic painting on the back cover—and, at the other end of the spectrum, the sinister-looking passenger on the front of Ill Communication. These were to be my forbidden fruit: if I found myself in any position to sneak a bite, it was a treasured moment.

Album artwork for Ill Communication by the Beastie Boys © 1994, EMI

Looking back, I never really questioned the appeal of the “girl power” supernova, or Euro-trash one-hit wonders like Aqua: it made perfect sense to me that young people should find freedom in sounds that seemed bigger-than-life. Bold gestures of generic convention offered an oasis for young girls (and boys) trapped in shared bedrooms with multiple siblings. Much like Titanic when it was unleashed upon an unsuspecting box office, “Wannabe” and “Barbie Girl” swept my schoolmates away from the humdrum routines of family living. This self-generating machine of feminist chic was essentially a hybrid of the same sensibilities that once before produced the Electric Company and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (the polymorphously perverse sex ed. component of all this teenybopper fluff was especially confounding and alluring for boys, as I recall; they were often more likely to have memorized lyrics and choreography, now that I think back on it…)

Big music is significant, when living in a relatively small land. Big music implies big space, which implies big gestures. One of the defining features of Euro-pop, from this writer’s point of view, is the broadness of its gestures: lyrics tend to be generic and universal, and production values lean towards the indulgent and the simplistic. Building upon the tradition of disco, and the more vacuous end of the New Wave spectrum, ’90s Euro-pop/club music and feather-weight, caucasian-appropriated R&B represented a dead end to cultural hedonism. These beyond-MOR incarnations of pop brought those past undertones of fascism and segregation (undertones which had only lain slightly more dormant in the melting pots of disco and ’80s cross-culturation) into full relief. As soon as the ’90s sealed the 20^th century in a veneer of artifice, there was little one could do to escape the capitalization of cultural integration (and on-going cultural appropriation). Once the recording executives realized there was a fortune to be made in petri-dish-curated line-ups, many execs appeared to (almost overnight) master the craft of mixing and matching specific personality “types” with the intent of achieving a broad, cross-sectional audience demographic. Through sheer chance or calculated precision, the “boy/girl band gurus” managed to instigate one superficially diverse overnight sensation after another.

Backstreet Boys. *Nsync. The Spice Girls. All Saints. Boys II Men. While young people latched onto the loud, compressed dance sounds of these automatonic groups, most adults recognized this as the end of the line for major recording studios (not to mention, the end of the line for proper A&R). Much like the “high concept” feature films, which appeared to drain the box office of all ingenuity and subversiveness during the ’80s, the efforts of different major labels to create self-prophesied hits drove the independent music scene further and further out of the woods and (eventually) into its own collective. The consumer who once gave unknown artists a chance by virtue of their being on a major (and therefore trustworthy) label, had now evolved into a consumer who sought out boutique labels, typically harboring counter-cultural connotations. The majors would have to settle for the likes of Adele and Taylor Swift, from here on out.

“…I look through my window so bright…”

Upon arriving in the United States, I was confronted with my nation of origin for the first time. I was barely one year young when my family flew to Italy for their 11-year term of civil service, and I had no notion of what to expect upon our return to the homeland (which, to me, was a totally foreign country). My parents had raised me speaking English; my schoolteachers had raised me speaking Italian. Torn between two tongues, I started to reflect upon the chance nature of cultural development: the notion that there are countless histories being written around the globe every day, but only a handful of these histories actually make it to the textbooks handed out in schools. The notion that every story involves a process of selection and omission—and that, oftentimes, it’s the omissions that define a story’s arc. I started to realize the significance of perspective; the importance of having a point of view, as well as the time and discipline needed to develop a well-rounded viewpoint.

Still taken from the music video for “Eclipse” © 2016, DirtyCleanMusik

I went to three different schools (one Middle, two Highs) before graduating, and wherever I went, I seemed to be flummoxed by the possibility of an alternative. I struggled to relate to others in my class—not because I didn’t like them or didn’t enjoy their company, but because my curiosity to find out how the other half lived kept me in a state of intellectual restlessness. I received fairly good marks up through my Junior year, at which time I surrendered my will to try harder than absolutely necessary and wound up graduating by the skin of my teeth (thanks, mom).

Post-graduation, I tended to wander from one social circle to another. This rarely rose to the level of more-than-superficial friendship, though I’m fortunate to still have some friends from this time—and less fortunate to have missed out on lasting friendships with others. I initially went to college upon my parents’ convincing, which led to my (still current) involvement with the social work profession. In a way, it’s the perfect field for a person with my particular intellectual inclinations: I meet a new mind every day—or thereabouts—but the treatment process is structured in a way that protects these meetings from the nagging threat of interminability.

Today, I feel very fortunate to have had the experience of living in a different country: it’s something I wish every person on this planet could do at some point (though I understand the logistics of this happening are tricky, to say the least). I can only speak from personal experience, but I believe that acculturation has strengthened my stability of perspective. My former experiences have instigated an on-going (and, at times, hyper-active) drive to develop and implement empathy, whenever possible. And throughout my 30 years of existence, it is empathy that I’ve found to be the greatest equalizer. It is empathy that truly binds individuals to one another, above and beyond the forced constraints of social norms—and it’s empathy that protects us from the hazards of carelessness.

Still taken from Fassbinder’s World on a Wire © 1973, Criterion Collection

There is a somewhat discernible decrease in understanding among individuals living through the digital age. As information becomes more and more readily available (quite literally, always at our fingertips), the value placed on comprehension and empathy seems to border on irrelevance now. It can be difficult for those who develop an appetite for sincerely empathic interaction to find a niche in internet chat rooms, but equally challenging to stumble upon opportunities for natural mingling in-person. As explored in the themes of Fassbinder’s Welt Am Draht, we’re often confronted by the awareness that we experience a level of dissonance between our perception and our reality, whenever we engage in digital communication; we’re having to identify our reality through filters and second-hand sources. It is safe to say, we are often reading the commentary before the text.

We are constantly responding to the stimuli of our environment—and everyone confronts the threat of overwhelming external stimulus. Everyone longs for an alternative to the negative situations in their lives, and everyone seeks the stability of home and familiarity. These are the things we share: the things that keep us together (“while the war’s going on”⁴).

Official music video for “Into the Night (pt. II)”—a continuation of the cinematic themes explored in its counterpart.

Pt. II: Homeland

“…over the city’s a rip in the sky…”

Storefront of Gem City Records, located in Dayton, Ohio (1987-2008). The space is currently under new management, operating as a storefront for Omega Music.

American culture in the late ’90s and early ’00s seemed to reject the grandiosity that came so naturally to it in years prior. Following the death of Kurt Cobain, and that burst of one too many punk-pop and alt. rock bands, the White Stripes took hold of many listeners who were thirsty for a return to something simpler. I recall visiting an independent American record store for the first time in the early aughts: it was nothing like the corporate-owned music stores in Italian malls, or the quasi-corporate used media store in the strip mall across from our suburban neighborhood. Dayton’s Gem City Records was something different and confounding to me: most of the new releases on display represented “smaller” artists, but the overall impact was just as expansive as that of a Virgin Records. I wandered those aisles for hours—much as I had wandered the aisles of that Italian video store—and tried to learn about as many of these artists as I could. I eventually hooked up with the clerk at this record store (we’re together to this day), but that’s a story all its own.

The year was 2003. With big music on the skids, a new folk revival was on the rise. I remember walking into the above-mentioned record store, asking for the latest studio album by Placebo on its release date: the knowledgeable clerk was aware of the release, but indicated they hadn’t ordered any copies for the store (they could place a special order, if I was interested). I was taken aback for a moment, because Placebo were bigger than Jesus in the Italian cool kids scene. They were just big enough to achieve “household” status, but small enough to retain some street cred—to not risk ready commodification at the hands of aggressive advertisers.

Another band of comparable cool in Europe, Garbage, seemed to be readily dismissed by most hip American music consumers, as well. I began to ponder what it was about these bands—bands that received steady radio-play and widespread appreciation in Italy—that didn’t resonate as easily with the average midwestern listener (after all, Garbage were based out of Wisconsin, with only their lead singer being of European origin). It came as a surprise to me that these bands were being read within the narrow parameters of “goth” music, and then subsequently dismissed under the guise of this lamentable term. It seemed, to me, a little lazy (not unlike those limiting interpretations imposed upon surrealism and disco).

In retrospect—and with both the aforementioned bands going strong in their respective endeavors⁵—the disconnect in question appears to stem, in part, from a politics of space. I realize that a component of the appeal these bands (and others: INXS; Eurythmics; New Order) held for European ears was the projection of a bigger-than-life quality. While the singers of these bands might have been shy (ahem, Bernard Sumner), their output rarely belied shyness (please see “Touched By the Hand of God”). Their output reflected a sort of longing for grandiosity: more specifically, a longing for a grandness that exceeded the confines of their origins. In Manchester, there was a need for the open/closed spaces created by the songs of Joy Division—and, later, for the dancefloor anthems of New Order. In the wake of Conny Plank and that great rebirth of German music, there was a place for the more grounded theatrics of Annie Lennox and Eurythmics. In the open landscape of the Australian outback, there was a longing to be packed shoulder-to-shoulder in an arena for the power-pop of INXS (or, on the flip-side of the pop music spectrum, the noisy barroom brawls of The Birthday Party—another export that never quite caught on among U.S. listeners).

Of course, thanks to the advance of globalism, one is now bound to find music of all sorts, in all corners of the world. But one is still bound to find trends and listening habits; genres that command critical and popular appeal in some pockets, but fail to connect with a larger audience in others. In my hometown of Dayton, for instance, there is an active local music scene: a new band or solo act seems to be popping up on Facebook and BandCamp just about every day. As in most small-city scenes, however, the range of genre and songwriting style tends to fall within a given section on the spectrum of possible musics. The spirit of Bob Pollard’s Guided by Voices—as well as the incredibly talented Deal sisters—seems to hover over the landscape of this music scene, and many interesting things have come (and continue coming) out of this influence.

The Breeders, achieving international recognition with The Last Splash

It’s interesting to note, however, that the Deals’ 4AD signing of The Breeders fell apart once they achieved bigger-than-life status: an epic achievement of grandeur, their second LP (The Last Splash) carried with it big venues, big expectations, and big parties; they ultimately retreated back to the smaller comfort of their hometown (though two more Breeders records emerged in later years). Pollard also struck it fairly big, signing with TVT Records and working with Ric Ocasek in 1999; he quickly determined the record industry would not be able to keep up with his output, and subsequently returned to the boutique circuit. It is fairly safe to assume he was correct in this assessment—and he’s had the last laugh by proving himself to be one of the most prolific songwriters in the midwest, if not the world.

I admire the loyalty so many of these individuals hold to the proxemics of their hometown: I find it inspiring, meeting people so dedicated to an established tradition of music-making. I must admit, I’ve still retained an unapologetic affinity for the over-the-top power chords of Placebo and Garbage (and INXS, and New Order, and Queen)—which must seem laughable to so many musicians who find this approach indulgent and “show-off-y.” When you live in the land of Big Macs and Cadillacs, but your local economy is sludging along at a snail’s pace, there’s often this urge to retaliate against the popular and the mainstream—to carve out an idiosyncratic niche for oneself, and to find solace in the smallness of one’s existence. The question I’ve asked myself (and the question I continue to ponder) is: can’t I have both?⁶

The ulter nation album teaser, featuring album track “Stairs.”

“…and everything looks good tonight…”

I’ve taken music lessons from two very different instructors over the years. My first experience with piano lessons began around age 6, after my parents took note of a habit I’d developed of drifting towards the instrument whenever we visited friends or family who had one on display in their living room. My first piano instructor taught lessons out of his apartment, which occupied an entire floor in a hauntingly beautiful pre-war building farther uptown from us. I recall the wide, well-worn stone staircase my mother and I climbed on a weekly basis to get to this apartment: whenever I re-watch Identification of a Woman—specifically, the opening credits sequence with Tomas Milian returning to his apartment, and that scene near the end where he locates the woman in question from the top of a spiral staircase—I think of those stairs.

Still taken from Identification of a Woman (1982) © 1982, Criterion Collection

My instructor, Alberto, was a traditionalist through and through. An impeccable player of the highest musical pedigree, Alberto held all his students to a comparably high standard: if he recognized that I had slacked in my practicing, he brought out a little switch and (gently) snapped it against my fingers whenever I hit the wrong note. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t develop a somewhat masochistic appreciation for the switch: why was it that playing the wrong notes felt so right to me; why was it that the punishment only seemed to validate my inclination towards coloring outside the lines?

When we moved back to the U.S., my mom started searching for piano teachers of a comparable caliber. When she stumbled upon a bearded beatnik fellow named Jeff, who walked with slow, graceful movements and played the piano with seemingly effortless virtuosity, she made the wise decision to sign me up for a weekly Thursday session in his studio. Lessons with Jeff could not possibly have been any more different from those traditional Italian lessons: for starters, the first 10 minutes rarely entailed any playing or music-reading at all. As soon as Jeff realized I was a fledgling movie buff, he quickly opened up about his own cinematic obsessions; before long, he had successfully turned me on to a number of memorably affecting American films: King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun; Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man; Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks; Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller. I started discovering a side of the American western that I never imagined could have existed; some books referred to it as the “anti-western,” but we recognized it as the “honest western.” Whereas most of the films starring John Wayne as “the Duke” tended to glamorize acts of genocide and homicide—while minimizing the horrors of ethnic cleansing, and the struggles inherent to frontier living—these westerns captured the American dream in all its strange, violent, disorganized power. Jeff broadened my geography of classic American film, and from here on out, talk revolving around recently-discovered movies became a staple of our weekly session time (on occasion, this would actually consume the majority of our time).

Jeff was (and remains) a firm believer in recognizing the individual intent of a given student. If I had come to his sessions saying I wanted to play Carnegie Hall, I’ve no doubt he would have played drill sergeant and enforced a strict rehearsal regimen in order to achieve marked progress towards that end; if I had come asking to be trained in different jazz stylings, he would have asked “where do you want to start?” But I asked for something more elemental. I asked to learn simply about chord structure, song structure, and arrangement—subjects of seeming irrelevance with my former instructor, a passionate and dedicated classicist whose teaching centered around reading and replication. I now wanted to understand what makes a song work, beyond the dots and dashes printed on sheet music (which, truth be told, I’ve never been even remotely proficient at deciphering).

The contrapuntal mastery of Glenn Gould’s Bach renditions left a marked impression on this writer as a 17-year-old student of composition.

At the start of our lessons, I was offered a refresher course in melody and counter-point (the two most important components in any song). Bach’s fugues and preludes were a perfect subject of study for me at this time, and Jeff introduced me to Glenn Gould’s masterful renditions of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier—which completely revolutionized my understanding of a song’s potential. He then encouraged me to bring in whatever songs I happened to be listening to at the time (mostly early Jackson Browne and pre-Yellow Brick Road Elton John), and we would break these down into individual moving parts. It was then that the dots began connecting for me, and my desire to create compositions of my own took a firm hold. My earliest compositions were nothing more than experiments in counter-point: without abiding by any pre-determined time signature, I would improvise one melody against a simple counter-melody, and then challenge myself to map it out on a grid. (Several years later, I stumbled upon David Byrne’s writings on music and composition, which taught me non-traditional ways to map out songs on paper—without having to stick within the parameters of those dreaded lines on sheet music. These have most definitely been a useful reference point throughout my songwriting experiments.)

Even though my scheduled sessions with Jeff ended well over a decade ago, I consider myself a student for life. As I continue composing, producing, and engineering recordings with Dirty/Clean, I find myself learning from other individuals involved in this process every step of the way. The mixing process can be an especially challenging and overwhelming part of recording, and I’m fortunate to have had the invaluable assistance of Derl Robbins (The Keynote Speaker, Motel Beds, The Company Man) on both of the Dirty/Clean records. Some other great teachers I’ve found over the years are those masters of composition and record-making: George Martin; Bob Johnston; Tony Visconti; Brian Eno; David Bowie; John Cale; Neil Young; Mark Mothersbaugh; Giorgio Moroder; Quincy Jones; Nile Rodgers; Conny Plank… There is so much to be gleaned from the works of past masters, and record collecting/listening is one of the most effective ways (as far as I’m aware) of cutting to the chase. And thanks to the advents of YouTube and Wikipedia, it’s now easier than ever for fledgling musicians to study our history of recorded music—not just through the songs themselves, but through the countless documentaries and tutorials archived in these video streaming libraries.

“…get into the car…”

Seven years ago (or so), I chanced upon an ’80s tribute show at a venue called Canal Street Tavern, which used to be located at the corner of First and Patterson in downtown Dayton. I commended some of the performers after the show, and spoke with a drummer, Jay, who seemed to be filling in for every band on the bill that night. We spoke about some of our mutual musical interests, and I mentioned that I was a keyboard player. After several further meetings, a mutual decision was made to endeavor playing music as a duo, and thus began our quest for a sound we could both agree upon. We joked about how ideal it was to have only two band members (“it’s the least number of additional people you need to be called a band”), but we eventually made our live debut as a 6-piece—in a Duran Duran tribute show, nonetheless.

Following this experimental outing, the 4 friends who joined us on-stage that night moved on to their respective projects. We shifted the focus back to making something work as a duo, and ventured out on several DJing forays. The most thoughtful of these efforts was a weekly exercise in combining live performance with music cues, which served to help prepare us for some of the challenges inherent to having only two players. It was around this time I discovered the films of Fassbinder, and this opened a concentrated portal into several subjects of on-going interest for me (namely: self-oppression, gender politics, family formation, and systems of control). I was especially taken at the time with Fassbinder’s made-for-television mini-series, Welt am Draht (World on a Wire). As I was struggling to come to grips with the ways in which social media was changing interactions with peers, friends, and acquaintances, the subject matter of the film seemed to speak directly to my struggles. The concept of trying to reconcile multiple virtual realities at once, frame upon frame, was no strange concept to me: it’s the way I felt every time I corresponded with acquaintances over the internet, then met a completely different side of the individual in-person. Beyond inter-personal anxieties, there was my somewhat more profound fear of human cognition being altered (perhaps permanently?) by the luxury of immediately accessible information.

Official music video for “Fall Things”—a tribute to the film work of Godfrey Reggio and Stan Brakhage.

Around this same time (2012, or so), the discovery of Scott Walker completely re-shaped my outlook on the frontier of popular music. I discerned some abstract connection between the divergent soundscapes of Walker’s varied incarnations, and the movement known to many westerners as “krautrock”—which had followed on the heels of a markedly bad gulch of German MOR (then referred to as “schlager musik”). Just as bands ranging from Can to Neu!, to Kraftwerk and Cluster had reshaped the future of all music (and seemingly from scratch), Scott’s peerless venturing into unknown musical territory presented a similar hope in the promise of mystery and mastery. The connection between Scott and “neue musik” was further established in my mind upon the discovery of Fassbinder’s Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, in which an LP record of Walker Brothers recordings plays a vital (if minor) role in the unraveling of its characters.

Margit Carstensen puts on a Walker Brothers record in Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant © 1972, Criterion Collection

As a duo, Dirty/Clean continues to function as an exchange of (frequently disparate) influences between myself and Jay: some of these influences overlap in our respective libraries; others remain permanent outliers. One source of mutual inspiration has always been disco (which, in turn, links back to my obsession with neue musik). While Jay’s knowledge of disco far exceeds my more dabbling interest, we share a profound appreciation for the functional quality of the genre. It is the ultimate music to move to, really: the pace tends towards the pace of one’s heart (if doing some kind of aerobic activity), and the fixed nature of the rhythm once lent itself to several years of seemingly endless—and surprisingly unique—variations. Of course, disco has had a fair share of harsh criticism heaped upon it throughout the years (not unlike surrealism): it’s been called repetitive, boring, MOR slop; it’s even been referred to as fascistic. But we’ve both recognized a different angle to this music. We’ve recognized music that has the power to unite; music with a pulse. Music that can range in content from utmost sincerity to utmost banality, and yield a successful result at either end of the spectrum.

I like to think of myself as a fairly eclectic listener, but like most people, I tend to fall in line with a particular strand of influence—and then spend a substantial amount of time lost in that strand. We’ve just recorded a follow-up album to Welt am Draht, and the motorik beat seems to continue propelling us along. I sometimes doubt the songwriting ethics of retaining a given beat so consistently, but I usually come around to my pre-existing mantra: “if it works, it works.” I cannot say with any degree of certainty where we will be heading next in this musical co-operative. I only hope to continue exploring unknown territories (at least, unknown to us).

“…we’ll be the passenger…”

For me, the journey of making ulter nation ends with Jean Genet. “Saint” Genet’s writings have been a fixed reference point in my creative efforts over the past few years: it is his understanding of the power of gestures that continues to empower my modest efforts. Edmund White’s comprehensive biography of Genet, more-so than any other source on the subject, seems to capture the sweeping gesture that was Genet’s life—whose very origins were colored by his own attempts to mislead biographers, historians, and the reading public in general. Genet is the most rewarding read of my life thus far, and I recommend it to anyone with the stamina for 700 pages of fine print (it flies by: honest).

The Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet, first published by Gallimard in 1949

It could be argued that every age is an age of gestures. I would argue that the digital age is the most dangerous of all—in that it allows individuals the illusion of performing an action, when that action is often nothing but a digital fingerprint. As surveillance and fear of government intrusion colors our everyday activities, it is significant to note the steady dilution of our gestures; the gradual and perilous reduction of truly fearless gesturing—which used to be the defining feature of a life lived to its fullest.

Our nation is entering a confusing new chapter; a chapter wherein many long-standing forces of oppression remain unchanged, and yet the strategies once used to counter them have seemingly become obsolete. Absolute corruption has won out at the highest level of government, and it is important for all caring individuals to recognize that simple gestures of empathy may now be the most subversive gestures of all. Just as Genet realized in writing The Thief’s Journal, “traditional” acts of subversion and violation are part and parcel of a society that has been eroded from the top down:

“I’d wanted to steal. A strange force held me back. Germany inspired all Europe with terror, it had become, especially in my eyes, the symbol of cruelty. It was already outside the law. Even on the Under den Linden I felt I was strolling through a camp organized by bandits. I believed that the brain of even the most scrupulous Berliner harboured treasures of duplicity, hate, nastiness, cruelty, greed. I was struck by being free amidst an entire people listed on the index. Surely I would have stolen there, but I felt disturbed, since what triggered this activity and what resulted from it—the special moral attitude erected as a civic virtue—a whole nation understood and used against others.

‘It’s a nation of thieves,’ I felt within myself. ‘If I steal here I will not be performing a singular action that can better realize my nature: I’ll be obeying the normal order of things. I won’t be destroying it. I’ll commit no evil, I’ll disturb nothing. Scandal is impossible. I’ll steal in a void.’”

We are left having to reconsider our options for effectively confronting and dismantling a system that insists on imposing oppression, while acting out crimes far worse than the perceived transgressions of the oppressed. We are left having to identify alternatives for this state of institutionalized corruption (which can be equated to that old Caligari-esque saying, “the inmates are running the asylum”). We must dream of an ulterior nation to the one we are entrapped by, and we must preserve the strength to carry this dream to fruition. We must resist the urge to steal in a void, and instead, turn away from the void altogether—towards the spaces that surround it; those unknown buildings that await our occupancy.

And so, I continue riding through the city’s back-sides, searching for an open door into this ulter nation. I continue accruing cultural interest—expanding my potential for empathy, and striving to balance these creative pursuits with the personal responsibilities of work and home life. And I ride, and I ride…

“…singing la, la, la, la, la-la-la-la…”

* * *

ulter nation is available for digital download and CD mail order on the official Dirty/Clean BandCamp page.

Album artwork by Roger Owsley © 2016

Some footnotes:

¹Ironically, the closest a film has come to capturing my memory of the Italian films shown on television while I was growing up is Down By Law—an American-made independent film by Jim Jarmusch, starring Roberto Benigni and real-life spouse, Nicoletta Braschi, in a pair of roles that intentionally echo the roles they’ve played in numerous Italian comedies.

²Beyond Buñuel, there are the lovely films of Jean Cocteau and the experiments of Man Ray. Also, the spectacular films of Jean Vigo and Jean Painlevé, which are only slightly removed from the surrealist movement.

³https://youtu.be/CtY5bv-oxLE

⁴https://youtu.be/5KP995r2NOc

⁵It is interesting for this writer to note that, while Placebo are celebrating their 20th anniversary with a worldwide tour, they are selling out arenas in Russia and Germany; they have not booked any dates in the United States.

⁶https://youtu.be/146LeLopVkY

Things, people, and places that made me love life in 2014.

New offerings by Marianne Faithfull and Scott Walker.
Enough said.

The return of Brian Eno’s voice.
Following a 24-year hiatus (the last recorded utterance, to my knowledge, dating back to 1990’s Nerve Net), music lovers around the globe can finally celebrate the triumphant return of Brian Eno’s voice. Alongside Underworld frontman Karl Hyde, the musical pioneer responsible for narrative gems like “By This River” and “Dead Finks Don’t Talk” has lent his sublime vocal gifts to the text of two all-new, complimentary albums: Someday World and High Life. Furthermore, his voice can be heard prominently in the background of Marianne Faithfull’s recent take on Leonard Cohen’s “Coming Home,” which is (consequently) one of the highlights of her new album. Aptly, the opening track of High Life is titled “The Return.”

The return of Tori Amos’s hair (and voice).
In the years following Scarlet’s Walk, times were hard for admirers of Miss Amos: though I have always been eager to champion her many merits, I confess to finding myself at a loss trying to defend The Beekeeper. With the subsequent records, the music seemed to improve, but it appeared as though the Tori we once knew and loved had vanished amidst an uninspired, wigged-out and heavily photo-shopped fashion shoot. Just when we were prepared to give up (and long after many had already surrendered), she surprised us by signing to Deutsche Gramophone and putting out a cohesive song cycle entirely—and delightfully—unlike anything she had done before. This year, she continues down the path of self-renewal with an earnest album of new material. Barring the throwaway cover art, it appears as though her original nature has reemerged from under the posse of wigs.

Unrepentant Geraldines may not be the best work Tori has produced to date, but it has something more important going for it: authenticitiy. As evidenced by (what seems to be) the reappearance of her natural hair in the album’s photographs, it looks like the Tori who went missing over the past decade has finally returned; moreover, she has clearly come to terms with herself as an adult artist, and the renewed comfort she displays in her own skin is refreshing. Accordingly, the live performance I caught in her hometown (Washington, D.C.) this summer contained moments of inspiring reflection: in particular, an unexpected pairing of the Cure’s “Pictures of You” with a relic from her not-so-nostalgic past, “The Big Picture”—dating back to the days of her spectacularly bad pop group, Y Kant Tori Read. The result? A good-humoured moment of total acceptance, which found her sounding as great as she ever has.

The power of great American movie-making.
Though I will readily concede my growing lack of interest in a large chunk of the films being distributed on the American market, there were two gems making the rounds of U.S. cinemas this year—both of which should inspire faith in film as an art form for anyone in doubt. Jim Jarmusch and Richard Linklater, two well-established pioneers of independent American film, have both outdone themselves with their latest offerings (respectively, Only Lovers Left Alive and Boyhood). Movies like these make one truly proud to call this country home.

The power of great American song-writing.
It’s easy to forget sometimes—amidst the waves of auto-tuned pop singles, coming and going in a never-ending stream of un-noteworthiness. Though there are great songwriters to be found in every corner of the world, this country has had a remarkable track record when it comes to exceptional songs: songs that have trickled their influence down through the years, growing stronger and more pervasive with each glance over the shoulder. Current examples might not be as easy to spot as in the past, but there was at least one master class in American song-writing committed to record this year: I am speaking of the latest offering from Mark Kozelek—Sun Kil Moon’s Benji. The magnitude of this record’s power simply cannot be overstated. From the opening line of “Carissa” through the closing bars of “Ben’s My Friend,” Benji captures everything of note in the landscape of American song, preserving each moment like a Polaroid taken from the window of a moving car. Kozelek almost gratuitously offers up his most mundane thoughts and feelings for the listener’s scrutiny or disregard; throughout the process, he somehow helps us rediscover the very nature of emotional connectedness. One emerges from the experience almost unreasonably uplifted.

Lewis.
With new boutique reissue labels popping up every day, it seems a miracle there’s anything left to be discovered in the dustbins of recorded music. To the benefit of us all, every now and again an artist like Lewis will surface and force us to reconsider the status quo. While the back-story is far too strange and mystifying for a short summary to do it justice, a small taste of these ethereal recordings (recently given new life by Light In the Attic Records) is more than enough to make one want to find out more.

Jean Genet.
In between semesters at State university, I spent the summer devouring as many books as I could lay my hands and eyes upon. There were many fine discoveries, mostly quite old (and odd), but the most significant (by a long shot) was Edmund White’s astonishing biography of the late poet maudit, Jean Genet. Vast in scope, finely detailed, and—like any biography worth its salt—full of life.

Nick Cave.
The world continues (d)evolving into a creative landfill (in which every individual effort is essentially disposable), yet a handful of artists never cease to reassert their integrity—that ability to transfix beyond short-term surface appeal, and the drive to transform the most ordinary elements of everyday reality into olympian extrapolations of human essence. Among this latter group of characters, Nick Cave has been an especially prodigious and inspiring organism: the latest offering from his thirty-plus-year-old band sounded (amazingly) like an entirely new beginning, and the process of its making was captured with remarkable aplomb by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard in their documentary film, 20,000 Days on Earth. In addition to the film (which is a gift all its own), The Bad Seeds performed another series of rousing shows in support of Push the Sky Away—one of which I had the pleasure of witnessing firsthand at the Palace Theater in Louisville. If one were ever in need of a life-affirming experience, one need look no further than a stage lit up by this band’s (and this man’s) electric presence.

John Cale.
The Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, is one of the most eclectic and impressive annual rosters of live music performances to be found anywhere in the country—and quite easily, anywhere in the world. This year, that roster included figures as diverse as Steve Reich, Tim Hecker, Dean Wareham (formerly the frontman of Galaxie 500), Television, Low, and Jonny Greenwood. Topping this list, the godfather of punk and art-rock made one of his first live appearances on a stage in the United States in many years. Witty, engaging, and charming as ever, Cale’s headlining performance at Big Ears was a dream come true for me—and for every fellow fan I encountered in the crowd. Running through a set-list which blended the songs of more recent efforts (Black Acetate and Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood) with songs that defined entire chapters of music history (from seminal albums like Fear, Helen of Troy, and Music for a New Society), Cale’s band was in top form; the man himself appeared to be grinning from cheek-to-cheek most of the time. Though nothing was spoken directly about the late Lou Reed (whom Cale had eloquently eulogized immediately after his passing in 2013), tribute was paid through a mind-boggling and profoundly moving arrangement of “Waiting For the Man.” Sometimes, actions speak louder.

London.
In September, amidst a flurry of activity in my personal life, I made the potentially rash decision to join my partner on a three-day trip to London, England. The outcome was revelatory, encompassing Kate Bush’s triumphant return to stage performance, a retrospective of Jarmusch’s film career at the British Film Institute, and an exhibit of Dennis Hopper’s photography by the Royal Academy.

Creative fulfillment.
In addition to the many inspiring creations shared by the above-mentioned masters-of-their-craft, I had the opportunity this year to offer up my own modest creative contribution in the form of a song cycle inspired by the work of New German Cinema filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The album, Welt Am Draht, was recently released on vinyl through the support of an IndieGoGo campaign launched back in the Spring of 2014; the innate satisfaction of having one’s creation out and about in this big, wide world simply cannot be conveyed in words. All in all, a pretty good year.