Houdini Mansions

I'm a hip guy. Can you smell the hipness? I say things, in my best hick voice, like, "Awww yeah, I like that experimental music. You know...Merzbow...Sonic Youth." But truth be told, I've always had a soft spot for melody. Blame my mom for playing all that Neil Diamond/Carpenters/ABBA 70's schlock. Blame my dad for having a soft spot for Paul Simon. Blame the radio, my truest and deepest friend from ages 10-17. Anyway, there's great experimental stuff all over the cyber-diaspora of the Houdini Mansions label. They're based out of Easley, South Carolina (Easley is easily the closest decent-sized town to Greenville, which is home to the closest minor league baseball affiliate of my beloved Boston Red Sox, G'ville being a 1 1/2 hour drive from my driveway).

House of Cake is as much a collage as a compilation. It bleeps and bloops and drones in all the right places, and in all the wrong places which also happen to be right--don't you know how the universe is chaos and yummy in your (quan)tummy?

But the emotional high point for me is the sweet simple three-note descending bass-tone on track four, which I'm 99.4% sure is titled "Sugar Boys." The vocal melody goes up as the bass melody goes down, and the result is one of those weightless free-floating moments that isn't a million miles away from Dancing Queen. Because the universe also knows how to repeat, and coalesce, and spin slowly enough for you to observe its beauty with wonder and awe.

Artist Of The Decade

Nobody asked me, and I didn't ask anybody, but here's my favorite song from this just-about-over decade. Or maybe my favorite video. Or maybe the video that best embodies the decade, our simultaneous numbness and desperation, horror and entertainment, laughter and death. I'd say Danny Brown is the Artist Of The Decade if I had any confidence in those kinds of proclamations (and Kanye is probably more emblematic, straight-down to his mental illness and lack of critical thinking).

I don't have the authority to give out awards, nor do I have the ability to believe in them. But Danny Brown, in this and other songs throughout the decade (he just put out an album in October! it's got a metacritic score of 83!), embodied the thrill of chasing one's contradictions all over the room. The attempt to confront your traumas and to avoid confronting your traumas, and how it's more fun to believe in nothing, except believing in nothing is a big part of why you can't stop bleeding. The fact that his music makes you want to move your body is just an added bonus. The numbed-out cool in other people feels like a pose; Danny Brown's freaked-out screaming is real*, and sounds like a natural response from anyone who's paying attention to anything.

* - Real as in it-feels-real-to-me, as in it connects on a visceral level that causes me to feel actual feelings that are felt in the places still able to feel. And I can't believe that the debate around "authenticity" (more of a top-down hectoring than a debate, a way to shut up any criticisms of the spoiled-brat private-schooled child-star artistes that are positioned as vital, necessary music makers) has devolved to the point where "realness" that invites scorn. If it doesn't matter whether an artist has anything to say, or makes music that moves you emotionally, then an artist who comes along with those qualities has no reason to be valued. What is valued?, you might ask. I hoped you would. Let's just assume that you did. An artist with something to sell. Which isn't always bad, but just, uh, note who gets excluded. And remember that when sellers (or art, or anything) try to imagine what the public wants to buy, they always envision more-of-the-same, easy-to-digest, and unlikely-to-offend. That goes for prose vendors as well.

An Update For The Dozens

...Of people who follow this blog. Turned in the manuscript a month ago, and it looks like a book will appear in 2020 on an academic press with my name on it. A well-researched, co-written bio of a well-known band. The writing filled every non-working, non-parental moment since July, and after my Domestic Partner lost her job in August, meant that I had to both up my hours at work and write a (rough draft) chapter a week. Then edit, etc.

Thankfully, my DP started a new job in November that will pay enough for us to get out from under the debt we accumulated Aug-Oct. We are lucky beyond belief.

Anyway, I may go back to doing this blog again as a place to anonymously experiment with some stuff, though less anonymously, it turns out, than I had initially hoped.

Never tell anyone a secret if you want it to remain a secret. Lalalala.

A poem for today

The Future

The future is a joke

My idea of a joke

That is to say, dark and filthy

Riddled with corruption

And corrupted by riddles

The future is murder

Same as the past

Only now more indirect

Less culpable

Easier than ever to follow

Someone else’s order

The future is hope

Felt for fleeting moments

Surely the potential exists

Even by the fluke of random occurrence

For something humane

A collective ascent

But no

But know

The future is distraction

Words and identity

Disappearing into a void

Plummeting through a bottomless well

A shared dream

We experience separately