I am a young, young person who is trying very hard

ON RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:02:05 -0400

I’m not about to go into a full-blown review of Daft Punk’s latest album because I don’t have the time to and I also don’t want to be stoned to death like Soraya M., but I will say this one little infant-sized bit about why this album lowkey blows a little bit.

What made (and still makes) Daft Punk such an incredible band is that they identified and isolated one of the central tenants of dance music (namely, the idea of repetition) and made it into the nucleus of their entire catalogue. Every song circled back on itself within the first twenty-seconds, with minimal lyrics and it’s simultaneously minimal and maximal instrumentals. In this way, their robotic aesthetic became a tangible extrapolation of the very sound they were pioneering, and gave the whole Daft Punk construct a fully-rounded and fully-formed identity. There was a visual and sonic cohesion between having dance songs that looped in on themselves again and again and again, and having the songs be lead literally by two robots.

Random Access Memories should be lauded for its immaculate production quality, its insane attention to detail, and for fully embodying a retro-concept album but never once getting boggled down in nostalgia over whatever is left to even get nostalgic about. But while having live instrumentals, and a calmer, more quiet approach to dance music at the height of EDM (?) is respectable, it’s not worthy of implementing that same attention to repetition. The two don’t jive in the same way. RAM becomes boring to listen to and disappointing post-hype because by building buzz over the return of Daft Punk, the event becomes Daft Punk, and Daft Punk’s DNA in an album like this is the problem. Okay that’s it, bb luv u.

"Later people would say the murder at the Altamont Stones concert in December marked the end of the..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:30:25 -0400

“Later people would say the murder at the Altamont Stones concert in December marked the end of the idealism of the sixties. For me it punctuated the duality of the summer of 1969, Woodstock and the Manson cult, our masked ball of confusion.”

- Patti Smith

"ONE DAY I’M GONNA BE A VETERAN IN PARADISE. ONE DAY I’LL BE THE MAN WHO CAN’T..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:09:16 -0400

“ONE DAY I’M GONNA BE A VETERAN IN PARADISE. ONE DAY I’LL BE THE MAN WHO CAN’T SLEEP AND TALKS TO STRANGERS.”

nevver: You have come to the end of the world. Keep walking.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:52:00 -0400

Alex Honnold at Yosemite.

Image by Desre Tate/Barcroft Media /Landov

nevver:

You have come to the end of the world. Keep walking.

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Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:34:05 -0400

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Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:31:38 -0400

Unseen Andy

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:49:13 -0400

Unseen Andy

the most perfect meeting in history

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:00:50 -0400

the most perfect meeting in history

"Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:41:08 -0400

“Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one’s history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as if it was slurred over.”

- D. H. Lawrence

"Can you ever really be sure of what you’re interested in? Of what parts of the zeitgeist or the..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:24:00 -0400

“

Can you ever really be sure of what you’re interested in? Of what parts of the zeitgeist or the cultural conversation actually trigger you? In that framework, does Tyler, The Creator really represent anything other than the extent to which self-promotion can lift lift lift you up like a house tied to a thousand balloons with a portly asian boy scout hidden, and make you into something bigger than yourself?

I wonder this out loud because Tyler is that sort of self-styled, self-created and self-inflicted cultural totem that tends to arrive every few years and make a ruckus, represent something on the level of cultural symbolics and then, like, maybe fade away so that we can’t see them unless we squint?

”

- My review of Tyler, The Creator’s newest, “Wolf”, for Rappers & Models

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Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:07:31 -0400

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Mon, 01 Apr 2013 02:40:17 -0400

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Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:37:10 -0400

Tilda Swinton's moving speech in honor of David Bowie at V&A Museum opening night

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:24:07 -0400

Dear Dave

When I asked you if you wanted me to say anything here tonight

You said ‘Only three words, one of them testicular’

So I’ll pass that on

Here I am at surely the most eclectic of all the London branches of Bowie Anonymous
All the nicest possible freaks are here

We’re in the Victoria and Albert Museum preparing to rifle through your drawers
It’s truly an amazing thing

This was my favourite playground as a child Medieval armour : my fantasy space wear

And, alongside, when I was 12 — and a square sort of kid in a Round Pond sort of childhood, not far from here — I carried a copy of Aladdin Sane around with me — a full 2 years before i had the wherewithal to play it

The image of that gingery boney pinky whitey person on the cover with the liquid mercury collar bone was — for one particular young moon-age daydreamer — the image of planetary kin, of a close imaginary cousin and companion of choice

It’s taken me a long time to admit, even to myself, let alone you, that it was the vision and not yet the sound that hooked me up — but if i can’t confess that here and now, then when and where?

We all have our own roots
And routes
To this room

Some of us — the enviable — found the fellowship early in the funfests of Billy’s Bowie Nights or equivalent lodges from San Francisco to Aukland to Heidelberg and all points in between

For others, it was a more lonesome affair, paced out in a sort of private Morse Code like following bread crumbs through a forest

I’m not saying that if you hadn’t pitched up I would have worn a pie crust collar and pearls like some of those I went to school with
I’m not saying that if you hadn’t weighed in, Princess Julia would have been less inventive with the pink blusher
Simply that, you provided the sideways like us with such rare and out-there company
Such fellowship
You pulled us in and left your arm dangling over our necks
And kept us warm — as you have for — isn’t it ? — centuries now
You were
You are
One of us

And you have remained the reliable mortal in amongst all the immortal shapes you have thrown

Nothing more certain than changes

Always with a weather eye out
Always awake and clocking the fallout

Those Mayans must have known something when they set their calendar down before
January 2013

Because, of course, now all bets are off

I know, because you told me, how tickled you were to knock Elvis — for once! — out of the headlines on your shared birthday this year

There’s so much for all of us to be happy about since then

Yet, I think the thing I’m loving the most about the last few weeks is how clear it now is — how undeniable — that the freak becomes the great unifier
The alien is the best company after all
For so many more than the few

They wanted a Bowie fan to speak tonight. They could have thrown a paper napkin and hit a hundred.
I’m the lucky one, standing up to speak for all my fellow freaks anxious to win the pub quiz and claim their number one most super-fan T-shirt

I want to give thanks to the Victoria and Albert Museum for indulging us so
For laying on our dream show

For showing us — look at their advance ticket sales — that, as is
written along the bottom of this month’s Q magazine,
‘Why we all live in David’s world now’

To Gucci and Sennheiser for putting up the cash, laying on the sound and vision
To Geoffrey and Victoria for curating an entire universe so beautifully, on behalf of us all

When I think of what it used to feel like once
To be a freak who liked you
To feel like a freak like you
— a freak who even looked a little like you

And then I think of the countless people of every size and feather who are going to walk through this trace of your journey here and pick up the bread crumbs
in the great hub of this mothership over these spring and summer months

And how familiar and stamped you are into ALL of our our collective DNA

I’m just plain proud

Where are we now?

Well
I know you aren’t here tonight, but
Somehow, no matter

We are -
And you brought us out of the wainscotting like so many
Freaky old bastards
Like so many fan boys and girls
Like so many loners and pretty things and dandies and dudes and dukes and duckies and testicular types
And pulled us together

Together
By you
Dave Jones
Our not so absent, not so invisible, friend

Every alien’s favourite cousin
Certainly mine

We have a nice life

Yours aye

Tilly

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Sat, 23 Mar 2013 18:22:13 -0400

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Sun, 17 Mar 2013 20:52:04 -0400

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Sat, 16 Mar 2013 21:34:35 -0400

nevver: Life during Wartime

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 15:20:53 -0500

nevver:

Life during Wartime

theparisreview: Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:01:53 -0500

theparisreview:

Gay Talese’s outline for “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” 1966, written on a shirt board.

LITERALLY THE HOLY GRAIL FOR LONGFORM JUNKIES HOW IS THIS EVEN REAL

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Wed, 20 Feb 2013 01:43:03 -0500