odd spaces, dreamy faces
more adventures in live music consumption this week.
a show in a house:
too close quarters for two drums sets and some loud guitars. mostly interesting sounds to sway and bob to, or perhaps just stand in reverie to, as a cap to a somewhat stressful long weekend. kids in tight pants and stylish coats.
a show in a campus cafeteria:
harsh lighting, low ceilings and speckle-tiled floors. a mix of curious and apathetic undergrads, parents with their adolescent kids, indie poppers, indie pop americana enthusiasts. sitting on the tops of booth seats for a better view, but getting nothing. unfortunately placed columns, which, in combination with the ceilings, gave one the feeling of being gradually squished from all sides. the headliner more satisfying than i expected once i acclimated to the difference in vocals from the recording. an impressive, dream-like combination of drums and piano.
—
it was menomona, the cafeteria band with the pretty piano and drum combination, which lent me my second impression of portland (the first delivered via an article i came across that praised portland’s liveability. the accompanying photo was an evening shot of a bridge and what i think i recognize to be the willlamette river. and for the next few years in college i dreamt of moving to a city i thought was a small, condensed town with maybe a bridge or two, housing overlooking a riverfront, and a giant independent bookstore. i imagined a lot of pavement, which, in retrospect, i’m not sure why it would appeal to me.). this second impression i gleaned specifically from menomena’s video for “cough coughing.” when i watched it three or four years ago, it filled in my vision of portland with lush greenery the article had neglected to mention, single-family homes among evergreens, and a sense of frolicsome motion on sunny summer days.
method woman
three years into grad school and i’m finally tackling questions of method. on the table:
- what do i, can i hope to, prove through a close examination or reading of my archive?
- what is close reading anyway? what kind of work do i do, to (re)construct the text, and through what lens?
- and, as i sit in on and skim readings for a history seminar: how do other disciplines use their archives? what are their assumptions about texts and what can they tell us about the underpinnings of their investigations?
- what of this process of carving out an archive, setting out dates and periods to frame it?
texts are not reflections of culture and/or history. they do not reveal symptoms of a particular political unconscious, as tempting as it might be to take jameson’s side. it is part of the modern condition, i think, to accept them as the source of some kind of truth, though i don’t know what yet. with that said, one should probably be cautious about investments in texts and in their various truths to be found or revealed under layers, knowing that it is our modern condition that implants these investments in the first place.
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valentine’s day, 2008: an empty cafe; flower inundations at two supermarkets; a bottle of wine; fake meat; a chinese film about love and futility (maybe. i’m a bad reader.); mojitos and tostones; serenades in spanish; an odd sense of not being in seattle; a final glass of wine.
to know is to enjoy
this quarter’s go-around with barthes has not been an enjoyable one. reading him has been making knots in my stomach; discussing him, swirls and mush in my brain.
the “note” to s/z, written by richard howard, has helped in retaining the joy/awe/whatever i had in encountering barthes’ structuralism the first time in college:
“Only when we know — and it is a knowledge gained by taking pains, by renouncing what freud calls instinctual gratification — what we are doing when we read, are we free to enjoy what we read. As long as our enjoyment is — or is said to be — instinctive it is not enjoyment, it is terrorism. … We require an education in literature as in the sentiments in order to discover that what we assumed … was nature is in fact culture…”
[at the end of this paragraph, howard starts using the metaphors of exchange and economy that the idealist in me wants to reject.]
isn’t there something to be said about “instinctual gratification”? it seems to power every attempt at articulating what i enjoy about a piece of music. how is that terrorism?
dull aches, contractions
20+ awkward conversations at the start of the week drained me of any desire to talk or listen to most people. thus started a week of contractions and impulses to forcibly shut people’s unnecessarily overextended mouths.
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the most awkward conversation i witnessed was not my own.
a couple chose for their first date a nouveau, contemporary teahouse, a place with 100 varieties of tea and hip-hop and electronica playing in the background. she arrived 15 minutes late, which he pointed out with a semi-serious tone that really said, ‘don’t be late again.’
they talked about the difficulties of the artist lifestyle. ‘they should really make you double major in something like business if you choose art,’ he suggested, again semi-seriously, but still with a hint of pride at being able to survive the artist lifestyle while keeping his ‘integrity’ intact. in his voice there was disdain for workers with practical function, who are presumably unthinking and fond of shopping at the gap. she played the asian card to accent her choice to become an artist: ‘i appeased my parents by making them think i would study engineering or the sciences’ or some variation of this tired cultural predilection.
she flattered him with her impressed gasp at the thought of him walking a mile plus from his home to the teahouse. ‘i just enjoy walking.’ that line might have worked on me if it didn’t come from such a smug douchebag.
—
i left, disgusted at the conversation, eyes fatigued from attempting to read barthes in a half-lit room.
to know is to feel is to
a minor obsession with “the agony of laffitte,” spoon’s ode to the guy at elektra that screwed them over.
i’m attached to the chorus (”you’re no better than sylvia..”) and that harmony at the end of the chorus (”ohhhh … no no no no no…”). i imagine forlorn wandering across a dark, isolating los angeles.
i, with my usual projecting without listening to lyrics, thought it was a melancholy break-up song. but i’ve since been persuaded by LA A’s reading: “I don’t think of the song as a breakup song. I hear resignation but not necessarily romantic heartbreak, just that dull ache of disappointment of not having lived up to the best image of yourself. Like: in the end, he’s as flawed a human being as Sylvia, and shit, Sylvia has done some fucked up things.”
—
it would probably make more sense to train this spirit of sonic morselizing on new music. my sad stab:
vampire weekend. they sound like a club med vacation. i’m not sure if that’s a good thing, since to me that entails being served little-umbrella-adorned cocktails by dark natives [which might be me in another time and place].