Scribblings with Green Chalk

First of all, I ask for forgiveness.

Some hundred years ago I got a lovely email from Rebecca Mosley from the band Cogwheel Dogs. At the time, I was too absorbed in term papers and research for my thesis to sit down and type up a proper post. There is actually no good excuse for not doing that, so I apologize.

I do like to bitch about how the world is going to the dogs. But if those dogs were made of cogwheels, the expression would be decidedly optimistic. It’s great to hear that there are still young band who care enough to write to people about what they do and who they are. And who record in an attic. It’s obviously not the most convenient and luxurious way to work but for someone like me it flips the imagination switch. Attic, garage, and cellar are where the great musical stories begin and, really, there could not be too many songs eulogizing those places. At some point I stopped going to concerts because it seemed like no one snuck out to their attics, garages, and cellars to do music anymore. Part of the problem was my own skepticism, part of it was that truly the numbers of idealistic and hard-working beginner bands decreased sharply. That’s the wrong kind of dogs. It takes some openness and, I think, some atti(c)tude that is largely missing today to do these personal mud-stained things. That’s the right kind of dogs.

I tend to like music that is somewhat ascetic but based on a concept that unfolds in time. There must be a story behind it that can’t be written down so that music indeed is the one medium through which it can come. Hence perhaps my inability to do justice in writing to sounds.

I most definitely lack talent to give you a verbal taste of what to expect when you click over here. I’m impressed by Rebecca’s blog, the band’s website–I’m a sucker for visual wit, I’m afraid. As for the sounds: I like where these songs are going. They are going places and can take you there, which is what songs, essentially, should do. That’s a great beginning and I’d love to see where the songs go from here. I hope there’s a song about the attic somewhere along the way…

As you know, this is a blog about celebrities. OK, it isn’t, even if Jacques Derrida and his cat were here. I don’t think I have what it takes to write about celebrities–nor have any real desire to possess those qualities.

I don’t know if it was a childhood accident I cannot remember which might have impaired my image-storing, but I’m stuck with this vague idea of the artist as a person who hangs out in decadent cafes, sneers at consumer society, and makes art (making art is this haze blurring the picture). In this idealistic image I find little place for secrets dug up in the dumpster or amateur psychoanalysis. I like pretty dresses from movie premieres, in small doses. Mystic fraternizing with famous people in their various kinds of pain or knowing what they think without knowing them are beyond me.

Lazily browsing for some information about Alanis Morissette’s new album, I mostly found pictures of her from the Today show followed by “deep and insightful” remarks about how her thighs looked in gray pants and possible causes of weight gain. I wish people were more creative in inventing problems for themselves and just let go.

It’s probably the fault of my unremembered childhood accident, but I cannot comprehend certain trends in popular culture (so that you don’t say I blame everything on growing up in communism). One of them is the glorification of packaging femininity (don’t I sound smart?): ‘lady lumps for bling,’ or something equally awkward-sounding. With this video, Morrissette becomes another exemplary artist in my gratuitous series of posts and comments about ‘the idea of the artist.’ Down on planet Earth, she makes my day.
 
 

 
 
I decided to spare the reader my ruminations on what this parody does. The music and Morissette’s interpretation of the lyrics suffice. And I just love how uncomfortable everyone looks in this video.

(Image from Temporary Residence Limited)

I saw Explosions in the Sky last night. I felt incredibly rusty before that concert, eons since I’d been to one. Karlstorbahnhof is quite small, as is the town itself, so it was already very exciting that the band decided to readjust their sense of space by coming here. In spite of the place being slightly reminiscent of a community center stage, there weren’t any glitches. It was very beautiful. Both EITS and the support act, Eluvium, fulfilled the promise of the evening for me. I had almost forgotten how emotionally engaging I’d always found live music.

Not to play amateur ethnology, but my ideas about crowd behavior and response to music got a bit challenged by what I saw last night. I hope it’s just cultural difference and not a sign that I’m losing grip of reality. But I swear, in Poland, the room would have been afloat with dancing bodies. I don’t doubt that people were enjoying themselves, yet I found their enjoyment incredibly static. I don’t know: maybe times are changing and my crazily spiritual attitude towards live music, with an immediate bodily response and occasional tears is just demodé?…

Explosions in the Sky NPR Concert

Not the gentlemen in power, not the notoriously underfunded universities, not the rise of fundamentalism, not the intolerance that it brings, not the starve-yourself-salaries and fully European prices, not the despondency of tower-block estates, not the metaphysics of hardship, not the ugliness of unlit city nooks and crannies.

But, god, do I miss the music that speaks about it. And the concerts.

Sitting in my CD player for several weeks now is Hey’s MTV Unplugged. Part of my brain lives in a time-warp, in mid-nineties’ Poland, reading Nosowska’s columns in women’s magazines while heading for another gig. A friend from Szczecin told me that after their debut, just before the band moved to Warsaw, fans would seek out the shop where Nosowska worked and ask her for advice on life and love. It was a shoe shop, or a butcher shop, or something equally evocative.

Musical biography romanticism aside, Nosowska never really accepted the guru role. Fifteen years later (between tracks one and two), she explains that she won’t try emceeing because it would be out of character for her and hence unconvincing. Yet you can’t be disappointed, it’s all there: the melancholy lyrics and the melancholy music.

I have a history of missing Hey shows: at home with a temperature, misinformed, finishing my BA thesis. That last time, when they were playing at the juwenalia, I actually heard them. I was living by the river and the water carried the sound. It was much like pressing your face to the display window of a patisserie, but still a comfort that dreary evening.

It’s my modestly arrogant observation that it’s a great loss not to know this music. I don’t quite understand ‘language barrier’ arguments since the night I caught a cold standing barefoot on a wet lawn, listening to Lithuanian folk chants, transfixed. For the unbelievers, Nosowska and Chylińska singing PJ Harvey’s “Angelene.” (A post in Polish about this video would be limited to the two names followed by ‘wow.’)
 
 

 
 
With this video I’m hoping to deal with the “my idea of the artist” theme by means of an old (I’m told, Chinese) method: an image worth a thousand words. Since the post about the artist with a feline pseudonym still attracts crowds, I hope some visitors think to look here for the dot over the i. This is what I want: brilliant voices and dark coats.

Thanks to the Original Fedora Kid, who is being lazy about starting a blog of his own.

(more…)

Thanks for the blueberry muffin on a lingering bad morning. Not as small a gift as it may appear–in a time when everything goes wrong in a domino fashion.

I found this video with my one good eye. There’s nothing as romantic as folk stories about murder. Please watch it for me while I curl up and fall asleep.

Cały czas pada i myśli mi zmokły.

(For the curious: Translation available either via various internet gadgets or by request. Bowing humbly.)

So apparently Karl Lagerfeld is amazed by Chan Marshall and wants to make her the next fashion icon. I not only despise Karl *** Pretentious Lagerfeld but hate all those attempts at Madonna’ing every possible female musician. I remember seeing pictures of Tori Amos playing background piano at a Viktor and Rolf show, thinking, oh my god, not only did they dress her in an old lampshade but they put her in piano bar hell and made her smile at it! And while American Doll Posse was not a bad album, the rawness of the first records died in silk and fumes of Chanel No.5. So now they’re after poor Cat Power. Death by fashion. This is how the world ends.

(Image found here)

I blame it on Denise (on whom I essentially blame the existence of Scribblings). If it hadn’t been for this post, my forever overactive curiosity would not have been piqued, I would not have written to a musically-literate Canadian friend about the possible bonds between curling, Canadian serenity, and good music. Moreover, I would not be stuck wondering–as always–about my personal level of musical literacy and my taste.

Far from being a musical explorer, I tend to rely on friends’ recommendations and good poetry. I tend to think I’m easily bought by well-written lyrics, persuasive praise, and perhaps a good concert atmosphere. In high school I went to dozens of garage band gigs: I can’t remember any names, only that I had fun. I can’t play any instruments, I’m convinced that on some level I’m incurably deaf (maybe the garage bands are partly responsible?).

So in the case of the Weakerthans, I’m recruited via Denise’s enthusiasm, obscure hints at curling’s zen-like qualities, their indirectly experienced concert skills (browse!), great lyrics, and the cat named Virtute.

Samson’s not a dead poet, so I won’t paste the lyrics to “Plea from a Cat Named Virtute,” but go into an unlikely linking frenzy: the lyrics and the NPR interview.

I honestly don’t know how he does it, but he manages to be optimistic and disillusioned at the same time. Virtute’s a tenderly-written cat. And while my mother’s cat would gladly taste my tinny blood, I’m sure it wouldn’t cure my melancholia. (Maybe curling would help?)

Walcząc z zatruciem kawą (niestety) i porządkując ostatnie sprawy przed świąteczną wycieczką do domu, słucham Kultu. Za moimi plecami stoi otwarta walizka, jeszcze pusta. Bez zmian: nadal nienawidzę pakowania; jutro będę spontanicznie wrzucać ubrania i prezenty. Kazik powinien napisać piosenkę o torturach pakowania. W wielu innych sprawach trafił idealnie w moje odczucia. Słucham Polski i przypomina mi się, jacy w liceum byliśmy wspaniale zblazowani, ale jak mimo wszystko pragnęliśmy zmian. Te pociągi i ponure perony… przypomina mi się noc, którą z Jakubem spędziliśmy na dworcu w Zielonej Górze; jego spontaniczny krwotok z szyi bez żadnych śladów, groźni bezdomni, jak czytaliśmy Autostopem przez galaktykę, żeby nie zasnąć. Trudno uwierzyć, że to było prawie pięć lat temu. Podejrzewam, iż jest to tak naprawdę do powtórzenia, z krwotokiem włącznie. Tylko że znaleźliśmy się w tak odległych miejscach, nie tylko geograficznie, że osób, które mogłyby to powtórzyc już nie ma.
 
 

 
 

Te pociągi! Te dworce!

is the line with which my favorite moment in Tori Amos’s “Father Lucifer” begins. Sometimes, on nasty rainy mornings, like the ones we’ve been having here recently, I am reminded of that line. No matter how ugly the day, it’s my wedding day. In the evolving relationship with myself (or yourself), vows have to be renewed often, every morning needs a promise. If you’ve ever experienced self-hatred, you know what I mean.

Today, I could actually put on a tiara or a veil and have a tiny wedding reception. As I was leaving the apartment this morning, Mr. Technician arrived to install internet. Getting an internet connection in this town seems as involved as arranging a wedding ceremony. Only you can’t get 20 magazines about it… After over two months of waiting, through desire and thirst, we got to the moment where most popular romances end. We’re all enamoured of our router tonight. And, you know, Sebastian and I might try some homemade Glühwein later. José’s in bed with a cold, but we might talk him into a toast with Heisse Zitrone, if he’s not asleep…

Since I’m in a celebratory mood, I thought I could send you to “Father Lucifer”… Enjoy.