Tuesday, December 21, 2004
(nations of pink turntables)
Mexican art students with masks on in a non-criminal context is why I get up in the morning. seriously. I get all juiced up like Biggie at a buffet circa '94 when I hear about nonconformist post-Pixies Rothko rock: the kind that uses fake plastic animal masks. yes, yes its like late 60's (timespaceGAP), mid-80's art school D- stuff but still I get all paralyzed from the toes down when I do. I remember listening to NWA in Mexico and finding a new feeling on the ground (in between the bad pornographic comics and Gansito wrappers). it was a pretty buffed orange like it's trainer was hanging out with Sammy Sosa last night. it talked to me with its Jersey accent and glassy eyes: "You are not from here. Things are sometimes connected. Please stop staring at me." So, I did. then, Woody Allen swooped down from a Mexican cloud and reminded me that thick black frames were the Future. then, I went back in to the room with no pictures, walls wet with whiteness. things tried to fall apart like a Roots album in the studio with the strip pole (i'm not kidding). bass guitars are growing in my bathroom.
we all need help sometime.
like this guy.
(thumpthump...thump)
I looked at the rap section at a local record store today and I felt more alienated than I have in years.
and I'm only---
Thursday, December 16, 2004
red dreams.
so we here at Hold On to Young Ideas (by that I mean me) have been feeling like this lately. tomorrow is the last day I will step into a classroom in a university for a while (maybe, ever). my American education is over. and I'm all red with joy.
theres a twofold impulse here: I am afraid that the fantasy I have been living for the past four years is going to turn into one of those bad end-of-the-world bible novels that has everyone at Wal-Mart going nutso for reading (only if Faulkner or Anti-Pop Consortium could do that to people). then again, its all about ideas. and I gots me a couple.
amongst them:
two books (a novel and a history/theory book on Latin-Amuurrrica and electronic music)
find a listenable copy of James Brown: Live at the Apollo
teach English in Argentina (and subsequently ransack the city for this)
go to Wrigley Field and boo at something
live in Manchester, England for a while and watch the British for hours in silence
walk all the way to Los Angeles just to shake my head in disappointment at the passersby
move to Mexico City and try not to breathe
and rub elbows with those ugly kids in Brooklyn
then again, theres always that neat plastics factory down the street.
oh, man.
but, theres always inspiration. and more inspiration.
and the line of the week brought to you by the incurable Sasha Frere-Jones:
Holy pepper flakes on a pleather jock strap—it is hella assedly cold.
, then you might not never.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
don't look.
A being that only thinks, and thinks abstractly, has no conception at all of being, of existence, or of reality. Being is the boundary of thought; being as being is not an object of philosophy, at least not of abstract and absolute philosophy.
- Lil' Jon, "Bitches are the new Metaphysics" (2004)*
I just finished some short fiction for a contest thrown by The Austin Chronicle.
2000 wds. of hot literary rock, italicized booty-shaking and ethnic theorizing. the only reason I entered it was for some historical reconstruction: when I was in fifth grade I entered a short story contest and got booted out because I wrote too much (think pre-Word Count days, people). years later, losing the uphill battle against deadlines and word counts is what made me write this song.
let's move to France and write novels about Pookey Blow.
*by Lil' Jon, I mean Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843)
Monday, December 13, 2004
she said she said
poppoppop: things are pretty. like you. no, man. the other you. first, put down the crayons, the New Yorker magazine from 1983 and those two wine glasses full of Zora Neale Hurston's memories and look up the word "ineffable". i'll be here when you get back.
the black ink of time sketches the solitude of history on ineffable tomorrows.
weekends were discovered by the French in 1735. and they were made like this: full of old James Brown records, dressed up friends, electric-pink scarfs, wine bars with Art History scholars, great Prom nights that came five years too late, empty rooms, honest talk about the Packers with math professors, not sleeping, friends from India, historicizing Wal-Mart's demise, Graduation events that resemble Beatlemania, sweeping the floor with two shiny shoes to Michael Jackson, green-eyed bandits with too much irrationality on their tongues, indiekids dancing to EPMD and the quiet beauty of change.
we can only go up from here.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
(it never lasts)
the future is sorta now. by future, I mean Asian cinema. China, Thailand, Japan--these folks are killin' it like Lebron in the fourth. it doesn't end.
RJD2 is like milk: only good with cocoa puffs. last night, a hun'ded heads--most halfway crooks and Frat Folk--watched the little guy run circles around four turntables and some purple-haired women on a screen behind him. before him, Lyrics Born dragged an hour's worth of heartbeats through the mud and threw electricity at white kids with black-framed glasses: it was that hot. RJ, although his work is indeed derivative (you know who I'm talking about) kept it bouncy and well-crafted. and in the 9th, he went all Nolan Ryan: dunny picked up an acoustic and strummed six strings over a Not-So-Bad heartfelt song about how a phonecall can change your day. talk about a curveball.
and then I smiled and wondered.
I don't know about all this Berkeley positivity in rap. it makes me feel all weird and guilty. like its a church sermon wrapped up in 16 bars. and I made enough noise last night for three Ukranian recounts. are hip-hop shows out of ideas? I've seen the Blastmaster do it better, Wu-Tang organize hype and De La Soul (back in the day) need none of that stuff and still rock it. can we stop putting our hands in the air and come up with some original ideas for performance? tradition is one thing, cliche is another. I remember talking to Okto from dalek about this. he made it a racial thing: Radiohead or whomever can go up and not hype up the crowd and it's okay, but a black band or group is inherently expected to get shit nutso (TV on the Radio and dalek being the exceptions that first cross my mind). of course this is conjecture, but theres a spoonful of truth to this. where's Jeru the Damaja when you need him?
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
liquid swords.
so, my conjecture piece/column/BS theory for the Houston Music Review is entitled "Race and the Indie-Rock Nation". dont know where its going, but I've been wanting to write about brown and black folk breaking guitars (the Mars Volta, TV on the Radio, Cafe Tacuba, etc) and how the idea and reality of race rubs elbows with American indie rock. I'm hoping it won't get too out of hand like Barry's arms in the offseason. maybe I'll just write about Chilean minimal techno or this guy.
and look out for them in Ohio. remember what Scarface lectured you on years ago: real gangstas think deep.
and they wear pink. word to Cam'Ron.
don't look so blue.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
she's made out of wood.
remember toying with the idea of being an astronaut? a Russian general? the teeth of Os Mutantes? Kool Moe Dee?
living on clouds.
(tv's buzzing inside wal-marts--kids screaming--German ladies looking for soap)
sometimes, progress can be so nice.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
england is not a video game.
walking around on a Sunday listening to a friend from Manchester drop honest talk about the death of UK Garage (which when said sounds like "gayraj"), a performance space literally underground called The Music Box and how English literature teachers there just yelp for an hour on obscure, "stiff upper lip" theory and Sense and Sensibility, is nice. we talked about The Smiths as a national philosophy, the too-muchness of American eating habits, the boredom of football and bulbous joys of Dizzee Rascal.
I always wanted to have a British friend.
sometimes walking around in the daylight and having a good conversation is the most avant-garde thing one can do in Texas. it makes you feel all glassy-eyed and tingly.
and I realized something while eating a shrimp taco:
the things you thought could never be real usually are.
Thursday, December 02, 2004
all eyez on thee
see, as a yungwun I still think big. over a year ago, when Fiddy was blowuptuating I remember discussing his style with my friend, Hua. I expressed concern when putting his picture next to Pac and BIG's because usually one of something is enough. but, Hua pointed out that it was 50's lack of pathos--something that 'Pac and BIG were on top of like Biz Markie in a french bakery--that differentiated him and made his stuff less notable. something else that shocked the synapses tonight as a I sat in my Shakespeare class and thought over Macbeth: these two characters are similar. dig: McBeth's (word to globalization) tragedy is that he couldn't balance his swollen ambitions and malignant thoughts of wanting to be king with what was really real. like MC Ren real. Macbeth, through trying to affirm his manliness (as it was defined by the small-minded folk in 17th Century England) lost his humanness: he became devoid of feeling. violence--something Macbeth was glorified for as a soldier for Scotland--expressed through the killing of the present king (Duncan), the wife and kid of some other dude who was all up in his grill (Macduffe) is the central point where 50 Cent comes in like Michael Jackson on roller skates. needless to say, 50 Cent earned his change through the roughlife in Queens and those nine bullets that tickled his chin. and he makes up for it on his old-ish debut record and subsequent cuts he's been on since. like Kool G Rap, NWA, Schooly D, Macbeth and this--Fiddy kills at will and shows little remorse. yet, unlike Pac and BIG you rarely understand why he feels or thinks the way he does. you don't even get a song about Moms or the intimacy of Biggie's childish humor. both Macbeth and 50 want to be Kings: one of Scotland and the other of New York City. I just think they both do gully things to get there--and the lesson is that Macbeth is only on top until folks have had enough. not that 50 Cent or his G-G-G-brethren are bound to fall, but without pathos it seems like 'ardcore rap and renaissance British drama grows thin. moreover, the idea of masculinity, both in Macbeth and Fiddy contains these elements: courage, persistence, dying for something and gold chains: and thats ch-ch-changed little since Shakespeare's day. I find that strange and somewhat interesting. *
someone open a window, please. the turntables are on fire.
*this conjecture also applies to Young Buck and 92% of Southern rappers
