Werner Herzog Will Eat Your Brains

I've been blogging for three years now! I started this thing, as many of you know, under the name Hold on to Young Ideas to mainly talk about music. But, things changed and now I yap about art, film, writing and books. So, happy birthday to me.

Let's hope year four is as nice in documenting life in New York and beyond.

Mmmm, beyond.

Jon Brion is the one and only reason I would ever move to Los Angeles. The one, damn reason. His weekly gig at Largo draws a packed house and even put me in a position to brush shoulders with Fiona Apple and make Danny Devito laugh in a bathroom line. That was the summer of 2005. If you live in LA, go now! The MP3 below is from a crazy set in 1999.


Jon Brion- Star Wars Theme

Conceptual engineer and all-around sweetheart, DJ /Rupture, drops more gems on his site with a song from the album above. A wonderful meshwork of jagged rhythms and post-colonial-then-colonial-again pop, this song is just great. I imagine in another historical setting, if history wasn't human and non-anthropomorphic, these sounds would be the natural noise of the world.

You can listen to it here.

Spanish novelist and critic, Javier Marias, likes to talk. If you've ever read his books, you know each sentence is like a slow, undulating Morton Feldman composition. Each syllable sentenced to years and years of meaning before periods pop up. But, he's also the closest thing to a European novelist that is like a European novelist that are dead and studied in American universities. That's why to hear him speak in an interview with The Paris Review in this month's issue is both refreshing and irritating. He makes silly comments about subjectivity and characterization (he won't write a novel from the perspective of a woman) but makes witty verbiage about being remembered.



INTERVIEWER

How do you avoid taking yourself too seriously?

MARÍAS

It’s not a matter of avoiding it. Either you have a feeling that you are important and that you are going to be remembered, or you do not. . . . There is a poem by Stevenson that I translated many years ago in which he calls writing “this childish task.” In the poem he addresses his ancestors, all of whom built lighthouses. He apologizes for not having followed the tradition and for staying at home and playing with paper like a child.

To think of posterity nowadays is ludicrous because things do not last. Books seem to last more than films or records but even they do not last very long. Now more than ever, we depend on the mercy of the living. When writers and filmmakers die there are three or five days during which, with any luck, the newspapers and the TV devote pages and programs.

There is a big fuss, but then you have to wait ten years until there is a commemoration. The moment you are not here to defend your work in interviews, you literally do not exist. There is a penalty.

Of course, some people are lucky with posterity, or they deserve it. Elvis Presley has been lucky. He is on the minds of many people, including my own, very often. I think Elvis Presley deserves to be remembered very often. But for most, it is not like that. On Faulkner’s centenary, I made a small volume, an homage, to him with a few texts I had written, the poems I had translated, and a text by someone else. The booklet made people from the press take an interest in Faulkner. When they called and asked me about him, I had the feeling that a mediocre writer like myself was doing Faulkner the favor of talking about him. I am not trying to be falsely modest—you always have your heroes and you never will surpass them, never. So, from my point of view, thanks to a mediocre Spanish writer—me—and because of the accidental fact that I was alive and well known, people in Spain read Faulkner. But Faulkner should not need favors from anyone.

Read the rest in this month's issue, which you can buy here.

I wanted to buy Greil Marcus' book on "Like a Rolling Stone" being the greatest song in pop history but I couldn't dish out hardcover price. Something always made me feel guilty and shameful. Would Dylan* be okay with this?

Tonight, I found it at St. Marks for 8 dollars. Oh, these freelancer billionaires know what I'm talking about.

I Heart NY!


*Zimmerman

I'm watching Return of the Jedi while trying not to watch it. Background films are better sometimes. I was recently asked by the very nice David Horvitz of Xiu Xiu fame (and Pitchfork fame) to write a piece on boredom for an art show he's having in LA. It will involve Schopenhauer, Manuel De Landa and the Boredoms. Probably more of the Boredoms. How is boredom shaped? Irony and boredom are cousins. Like that, I'm also foolishly considering proposing a short 33 1/3 book on Outkast's ATLiens album. They weren't feeling my Cafe Tacuba idea (and who would want to sell books to Amerikkka's growing minority?), so why not try it's second-largest minority? MINORITEAM!

Winter is here, finally. It hasn't been this "warm" in New York in over a hundred years. What luck I have. But, snow is on its way and I'm scared. Frightened!

I finished The Great Gatsby last week. That, along with M.T. Anderson's fun and darkly comical Thirsty, are the two novels I plan on finishing for January. Next up is Nabakov's Lolita and finish Watchmen and some other stuff. I feel so anxious about the future sometimes. Like time is elastic and will stretch no further. Like tomorrow won't come.


But, maybe it's just Harrison Ford being unfrozen by a Princess. I'm going to go hear Vendela Vida read at the KGB Bar this weekend. She's married to Dave Eggers and is supposed to be a better writer (or so they tell me).


And a welcome home to those ex-pats who have come home from Argentina. We want your soul.


:)

I first saw Amy Hill's paintings in the Brooklyn gallery, Jack the Pelican Presents. I melted. But, after slowly getting off the ground and asking the nice people who run the gallery whose work I was staring at, they told me it was one "Amy Hill". She also paints guys who are into heavy metal. Wow. Anachronistic painting styles with urban contemporary subject mattter. Dutch Renaissance + Williamsburg hipsters, heavy metal dudes and bikers. Humanizing the poor people. She's like Kehinde Wiley's white girlfriend or something. Brilliant.

And she says this about herself:

"I have worked as a freelance illustrator for years and have developed a way of painting that is literal, detailed and labor intensive, like the Dutch Renaissance painters, using many layers of oil glazes. To create relevant and fresh images I’ve been choosing new and unexpected subject matter. My latest series of portraits are of bikers, heavy metal musicians and skateboarders. They are not meant to be anyone in particular. Their posturing, clothing, hair and jewelry are reminiscent of the fanciful dress of men of the past."

Unless they're from war-torn countries and had Shakespeare-quoting literature teachers who became murderers and dictators during an ethnic cleansing terrorizing event. Like, I said, not all of them.

Aleksander Hemon learned English about ten years ago when he came here from Serbia on a trip and watched his people die on TV. He stayed here and learned the language like Malcolm X or Vladimir Nabakov and continued his work in journalism. He then wrote some stories that people gushed about. Here is a short article.

Witches lived inside her computer at work. They scared her. With the green screen popping out at her, she would type up letters to advertisers, a fake boyfriend, Michael Jackson and her dead mom. She never really got much work done. Her mother was a stubborn photographer who, before she died, could never have afforded a computer. Growing up she paid the bills by taking pictures for their local newspaper, El Diario, and never could spend money on her.
Olivia put the yellow pen back in her pocket, left the store and walked up a hilly street. Her shoes rubbed against her thin socks, making her feet sweat. Cars lined the tilted street, dimmed by a fading sun. Dogs barked and barked.

Two knocks and the white door opened. Meme, his poofy, black hair leaning to the left, tried to keep his eyes closed.
“Who is it?” he said.
“Me, idiot” Olivia answered, rolling her eyes.
Meme walked back into his apartment and turned down his boombox.
“You sound like a girl I used to know”
“Don’t be a dumb ass. I need my bus cash. The two dollars and fifty cents you owe me from last week.”
Crust stuck to the ends of his eyes as he opened them.
“Shit. Hey.”

Meme had on a dark orange T-shirt and thick, wide dark-brown glasses. Teachers, back in 8th grade, used to even laugh at his Coke-bottle frames. He was also dark brown, like a wizard’s staff. Jeans were way too tight and he stuttered when he thought of something fast.

“Y-y-y-ou need to listen to this record I bought! It’s by this death metal band from LA.” He knew Olivia since their days sleeping through biology.
“I need my money, Meme. Lemon almost called the cops on me. She busted me drawing on the windows.”
“Damn. That’s your third time this week!” he shouted.
“Stop fucking lying.” she said. “I can’t help it.”

Meme had dropped 182 hits of acid in one day. Once, he wore a bunny suit and walked around Haight-Ashbury asking homeless people for change. On job applications he would often say he was born in Paris. Last year, at 18, he shaved his head and wore a Star Trek mask to work at the library. He even sold weed to high school English teachers in the Mission district. Olivia met him when he was telling two girls that he had written Metallica’s first album from a few years ago.

“I don’t get paid until next week. Sorry.”
Olivia stared at Meme, his T-shirt starting to show a chunky stomach, wanting to punch him. But instead she dug her face into her palms, almost crying. The forty dollars in a shoebox in her filthy Oakland apartment was not enough for rent.

Buried in the sidewalk across from his apartment, Meme saw four purple trees. Dark leaves, violet branches. He looked confused and even Coke-bottle glasses couldn’t help Meme understand. He walked past Olivia, who looked up, an echoey ache in her stomach. Meme thought they might be making a movie in his neighborhood, but didn’t say anything because he was afraid Olivia would laugh at him.

“What are you looking at?” she jabbed, still standing at his doorstep, looking into his apartment.
He paused, then said, “The trees are, um, purple.”
“Oh. Well, of course they are.”
He would later remember the way her eyes squinted when she said that.
“What?” he mumbled. “Why?”
She said with a sigh, “I really need that money, Meme.”

Martin Cendreda is the reason why little kids get up in the morning and tell their mothers to put down that grocery bag full of bunny rabbits and hand me that 10 foot pencil with the golden tip to scribble new clouds on Iranian skies.


(DJ Screw always trumps lazy capitalism)

One of my favorite short films in a while is Sophie Barthes' Happiness. The New York director has only made a couple shorts and they've all won ridiculous amounts of awards--with good reason. Blank Screen (which is in the last stages of construction, please be patient, France) is interviewing her. Watch her shit.

I'm trying to read three novels a month. Pairing "classic" works with contemporary novels, short-story collections and comic books (along with the myriad of non-fiction stuff, too), I'm essentially following Samuel R. Delany's excellent challenge. And, since I was too busy rebelling against White Literature Professors during my undergrad days, I perhaps was too insouciant to appreciate particular works. I bought Cory Doctorow's new story collection, Overclocked as well as China Mieville's Looking for Jake and Chris Ware's beloved graphic novel, Jimmy Corrigan. I'm seriously considering making the second novel-length book idea I have into a graphic novel. I'm intending to call it 3666 after the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño's 1000-page magnum opus that he wrote before he died. But, first is the novel I'm currently working on called Aurora. That should hit e-shelves sometime in 2025.

I'm a little late on this, but that doesn't mean she still doesn't deserve it. James Brown, Alice Coltrane--history is all around you.

Six Organs of Admittance-Words for Two

I found my love in a jazz bar on the first day I moved to Austin. I have never found anyone who is so beautiful, caring, smart and good-hearted. Plus, she plays a mean piano. Today is our two-year anniversary and we are celebrating it by getting lost in New York--yet another dream of ours that has come true. One of the most important lessons I've learned and one of the few I could give is that when it happens, it is natural. Computer love.

The first was finding hearts that beat like Coltrane's drummer. The next is finding futures.


Lauren, J'taime!!!!!!!
Lauren, Te Amo!!!!!

Yes, it's true. I'm writing an animated TV show called Yellow Asteroids for the web which isn't TV. Mom used to really like me, when I was funny. So, I'm trying to win her love back again with cartoons.

Fzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.


This show is fucking brilliant. It's a British comedy called Look Around You and was passed on to me by Vernon of Wonder Showzen. A spoof of 70's educational programs, each episode is about a different concept.

Woof.

Ronald Reagan was on the screen. Meme’s tiny apartment filled with the smell of old tacos and strawberry milk. Hunger clouded his stomach as he was cooking for only the second time this month as rent sucked up his little paychecks he got from the library--150 dollars a week.

Olivia’s shiny black hair caught the silver reflection of the TV, creating a muted glare. She was sitting next to him on a couch that smelled like shampoo. Meme was resting his glasses on his bulbous belly. Olivia’s dirty Nike sneakers were on the ratty coffee table.
“I just washed the couch, so don’t get it all smelly, mocosa”
“You’re the booger-eater. Definitely not the pussy eater, though. I’m fucking hungry. Are those tacos gonna be done soon or what? You cook super slow, man.”
“You want your money? Then just shut up and watch,” he paused as his bad eyes shot to the screen. “What is that, Reagan?”
“Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Don’t act like you don’t love him. Hell, you sell $100 pants to snobs from the other side.”
“I just wrote the slogans, man. Never even touched a dress there. But, so what? We all die poor, Meme.”
“Like a bad Chinese Fortune Cookie. Seriously.”
“Seriously?” she said.
“Seriously”, he answered.
“You’re an idiot. It’s 1986. I mean you bummed around San Francisco for a year after we graduated. You should know that I don’t have to censor myself. Stanford could teach you that, if you got in.”
“Fuck Stanford. School looks like a damn church.”
Olivia had been trying to get in to a good university, but had gotten way too many D’s in high school.
“I need some bank fast, though. Maybe I’ll sell my--“
“Don’t finish that sentence while the Pope is on TV. He’ll send a black car to get you.”
Bad static wiggled out Reagan’s wrinkled face.
“Pssh. I can say whatever the fuck I want.” she said.
He smacked his lips, making a popping sound.
“Like any woman,” she finished.
“But you’re not a woman. You’re still trying.” Meme replied.

New York photographer Ryan McGinley has an excellent show up at Team Gallery in SoHo. I hope to have an interview with McGinley up at Blank Screen in the next coming months. We're still under construction over there, so please be patient. Long time coming.

*Earlier tonight, I just finished reading M.T. Anderson's excellent little novel for Young Adults, Thirsty. In it, a teenager named Chris is battling the same shit we were: lusting after a girl, horrible friends, high school and vampirism. In a simple narrative without much sparks, Anderson's characters do their jobs (I had an affinity for Jerk, who was the loser of the bunch, and his dog Bongo) and help the grander ideas of morality and drinking blood. Easily one of the more original vampire novels around (Anne Rice, I have never read any of your books and probably will die doing so, hi!), Thirsty takes the hero model and makes it both fun and somewhat thrilling. Maybe it was the size 18 text but though this was a page-turner in the Wal-Mart book buyer's sense, it lacked the speed required of its cute and sometimes creepy story. Anderson does a masterful building a Mom vs. Son relationship, as Chris' mum thinks he's doing heroin or something and yells at him out of desperation. What would you do if your son was turning into vampire?

A trickster god named "Chet" sorta helps him to save his Massachusetts town from bad dialogue (and this novel is riddled with it) and bloody (probably black) people.

I'm giving to my niece to read. Maybe she can understand some of the archaic high school vernacular. A nice and fun read over all. Like a beach book, if you're Satan.

__________


* = In order to remember everything I read because I have the memory of.......lamb. Um, I'll start writing tiny book reviews. Micro books. Microhouse. What?

Panda Bear- Carrots

Here is one quarter of Animal Collective who follows up a sleepy-eyed record with a frenetic song. Like something out of a B-Sides album that hasn't been recorded yet, Panda Bear's shy voice resonates well behind lustful percussion. I hope you all enjoy it and go buy the record when it comes out.


Or just drink Absinthe and stare at the wall. We're free. The Democrats are back!

I was almost there last night, but instead partied like it was 1899 in Brooklyn. Beef Wellington and some microhouse, anyone?

Hope all is safe and let's make this one a better one. Like Raekwon once said, "Everything is everything, man". Yup, I have no idea either.

A week in time:

Mary Poppins the musical (almost as psychedelic as a Timothy Leary massage)

Dinner at Peter Luger (steak never tasted so yummy and is there anything holier than their spinach?)

El Greco to Picasso exhibit at the Guggenheim (I'll have to devote an entire post to this later)

Getting beaten down by walking traffic on 5th Avenue (???)

New York smells funny.