Marvin, Stevie & Jimi
Sure What Goes On was on Stevie’s mind during Inner Visions, what with all the social commentary and the like, but look at the differences in the musicality: the casual introduction of moog lines, freshly conceived in Talking Book I believe; but also in the way the music recorded: intimate and clean, funky and immediate, as opposed to WGO’s wide open strings and sublime atmospherics and even more sublime bass grooves, with the drums way down in the back of the mix: which on top of the gospel layerings draw a listener to ask Is the rhythm in Marvin’s voice or in the sheer spirituality of the music? (-— the Gospel Artifice). WGO is a unified social album— concerned and affected: all its notions of love are a communal outreach, a love of people. IV views the world through a lover’s eyes, through a single aware soul (conscious, reincarnate), moving toward a personal higher ground. Marvin’s album statement is a group dynamic. In the two and occasionally three backing vocal overdubs that Marvin layers behind his own lead, there is the same love and relation as between Marvin and the bass of James Jamerson, between the motive and soul of his lyrics and the flying idea of the strings. It’s a unification of word intent and cadence: the biblical primality of the gospel choir, the sharing of suffering and bearing your brother; everyone’s going to make it this time. But between these two albums...
As in Hendrix, the electric organic: to return from the absolute frontier of feedback and noise or pure energy, return again to melody and rhythm, mimics the primality of becoming: something from nothing, art from an inchoate chaos. A precise pinpoint of what I mean: from about 6:40 on track six of the Woodstock performance there is a conditional space/noise leading to a return of figure at exactly 7:29 — that is wonder, that is the spirituality of music. I really don’t think there has been as radical a musician since. His layering of the riff, now in one register, then another, is a very jazz trick: yer not playing chords composed of notes, but doubled chords of melody/riffs, Coltrane.
Sunday
David Foster Wallace
If I had to bookend the 20th Century from a literary point of view I'd be inclined to put Ulysses on one end and Infinite Jest at the other. The former opened up the way for writerly experimentation and media integration, and the latter seems to close these off. At least in the sense that DFW is attempting to resuscitate the shuddering PostModernist hulk of contemporary writing that Ulysses triggered in the first place. Which is not to say there's some weird narrative closure between the two like a horse and cart across history, or that each are typical products of their respective age — which are both somewhat true — or even that complementary readings can be made. I mean DFW is reanimating the vibrancy of prose with intelligence and verve, making the novel seem a worthy investment again, a medium that rewards patient effort and involvement. And doing so in a way that is strikingly contemporary and ironic and critical without all the wet-newspaperisms of PoMo flogging and sass-less reference. Here come the cliches: refreshing, young, invigorating, smart, impish, delightful, satirical, dry & sophisticated, witty, urbane and media-savvy cool. All true in their own blazon but commentless in the face of his acute powers of novelisation, of interpreting the novel for hyper- or post-mediated times...
If I had to bookend the 20th Century from a literary point of view I'd be inclined to put Ulysses on one end and Infinite Jest at the other. The former opened up the way for writerly experimentation and media integration, and the latter seems to close these off. At least in the sense that DFW is attempting to resuscitate the shuddering PostModernist hulk of contemporary writing that Ulysses triggered in the first place. Which is not to say there's some weird narrative closure between the two like a horse and cart across history, or that each are typical products of their respective age — which are both somewhat true — or even that complementary readings can be made. I mean DFW is reanimating the vibrancy of prose with intelligence and verve, making the novel seem a worthy investment again, a medium that rewards patient effort and involvement. And doing so in a way that is strikingly contemporary and ironic and critical without all the wet-newspaperisms of PoMo flogging and sass-less reference. Here come the cliches: refreshing, young, invigorating, smart, impish, delightful, satirical, dry & sophisticated, witty, urbane and media-savvy cool. All true in their own blazon but commentless in the face of his acute powers of novelisation, of interpreting the novel for hyper- or post-mediated times...
DH Lawrence
Funny, but only in reading do i not get the impatient feeling that film, bands, and often cds give me, the feeling of yeah, fine, that's great, I'm sick of merely participating, i wanna be doing, making it. It's an immersion.
Realising that there is no artistry as such, let alone genius or romantic myths of voices and inspirations, or airs, but purely the cultivation of a sensibility, of an ear, an eye, of a knowledge of what works well and how affects are constructed realistically, of acquiring a perception that isn't the same but somehow akin to a perspective of art, a divine in-between, generative, neither wholly pragmatic nor purely accidental, ideal, coincidental. A sensibility that approaches a current of greatness on one hand and faux-religion on the other. Lawrence is canny and dated by all standards, but his conception, his yearning for a vital and importantly organic structure to literature, failed though it may be in the attempt (such obvious equation with spring buds and colliery black death, and the endless battle of the sexes), yet always radiated by opposition, conflict and flux... is immense. As opposed to Miller's constant concern for what writing is and how begun, with the fluid itself, Lawrence never mentions it, but is always insistent upon the pure creation, the merge and rebirth with the darkness... with the reach for organic relation. And he capped it all off with an ironic, smarmy and yet tender book about fucking... The mystery of it is large, and hence the criticism is doubly gorged with wild speculation, and diverse ranges, claimed privilege of perspectives, Freudian hacks and feminists, yet never complete, total, because DHL is in many ways the modern enigma, unexplainable: we can only do him justice by deepening the mystery. The conflict in him is never either/or, he is always above it in some way, proof of an abstract spirituality, somehow greater than what he presents, and yet cloying in his snarling, and picking at the 'dirty little secret' with insistent give em what they want insistency. Enlarging the drives, explicating them, attempting to do justice to them for a new way of life, aligned with nature yet not regressive, a whole new architecture; not filling them with theory, analysis; opening them to rot, if need be, out in the open... the terms of revival are desperate of course, of the need for a rebirth, of a new aristocracy which noone would want to follow. An yet steering clear of the whole Messiah bag... That he could alternate between feminine and masculine with such... alacrity, penetrative insight... immense (is there not in JC an immense effeminate aspect?). The meaning of Lawrence is greater than any single idea, theory, or set of theories. Only a greater enigma. Or rather, greater relation.
Funny, but only in reading do i not get the impatient feeling that film, bands, and often cds give me, the feeling of yeah, fine, that's great, I'm sick of merely participating, i wanna be doing, making it. It's an immersion.
Realising that there is no artistry as such, let alone genius or romantic myths of voices and inspirations, or airs, but purely the cultivation of a sensibility, of an ear, an eye, of a knowledge of what works well and how affects are constructed realistically, of acquiring a perception that isn't the same but somehow akin to a perspective of art, a divine in-between, generative, neither wholly pragmatic nor purely accidental, ideal, coincidental. A sensibility that approaches a current of greatness on one hand and faux-religion on the other. Lawrence is canny and dated by all standards, but his conception, his yearning for a vital and importantly organic structure to literature, failed though it may be in the attempt (such obvious equation with spring buds and colliery black death, and the endless battle of the sexes), yet always radiated by opposition, conflict and flux... is immense. As opposed to Miller's constant concern for what writing is and how begun, with the fluid itself, Lawrence never mentions it, but is always insistent upon the pure creation, the merge and rebirth with the darkness... with the reach for organic relation. And he capped it all off with an ironic, smarmy and yet tender book about fucking... The mystery of it is large, and hence the criticism is doubly gorged with wild speculation, and diverse ranges, claimed privilege of perspectives, Freudian hacks and feminists, yet never complete, total, because DHL is in many ways the modern enigma, unexplainable: we can only do him justice by deepening the mystery. The conflict in him is never either/or, he is always above it in some way, proof of an abstract spirituality, somehow greater than what he presents, and yet cloying in his snarling, and picking at the 'dirty little secret' with insistent give em what they want insistency. Enlarging the drives, explicating them, attempting to do justice to them for a new way of life, aligned with nature yet not regressive, a whole new architecture; not filling them with theory, analysis; opening them to rot, if need be, out in the open... the terms of revival are desperate of course, of the need for a rebirth, of a new aristocracy which noone would want to follow. An yet steering clear of the whole Messiah bag... That he could alternate between feminine and masculine with such... alacrity, penetrative insight... immense (is there not in JC an immense effeminate aspect?). The meaning of Lawrence is greater than any single idea, theory, or set of theories. Only a greater enigma. Or rather, greater relation.
Tuesday
Competitiveness
I got a beef with competitive people, just like I got a beef with drivers who do the Sydney Shuffle: you know, overtaking you meters before a red light.
I suppose it's got to do with urgency and the gradual reduction of time allocated to people (especially business people) to do all the things not related to making money. Too much to do in too small a timeframe — and so I'm gonna edge in before anyone else and enjoy the fruits of my pole position.
But the real beef is with the mentality behind it, the unspoken social agenda which changes people's genuine human interactions. People complain of the supposed communications boom as facilitating greater communication-convenience whilst killing off genuine communication, whatever that may be. It's a kind of gadget mentality — the technological means has replaced the content it was meant to facilitate — like a generation of mobile phone users ringing up or messaging all their friends on their mobiles to reassure them they are now 'mobile'. The promise of "instant" communication has whitewashed our idea of communicating at all. The technology has taken over, it may well be true, it may well just be an innocent notion. These cheap technologies make us think differently about how we engage socially and build relationships — we now build them on convenience and accessability — and for the business world, on exploitability. Venture capitalism and mobile communications go hand in hand of course. And this has trickled down to the little capitalists making deals right down at the traffic lights, all the time.
But really, when you've sped to a red light and made that deal on the phone, have you achieved anything? You've beaten someone else. Woo hoo. Or, like those older women who push in the bread cue with their mean, pinched and bitter faces, they have the lasting satisfaction of ordering before anyone else, and looking triumphant, and still pawing the taste-samples with their discretionary, bloated fingers. I think it's plain old meanness blended with our triumphalist culture. I am the greatest. I have the power.
Consequently, you judge all other people on the competitive scale: are they on my level, do they pose a threat, do they have similar resources, are they better connected (technically and contact-ly) and so likely to get there sooner? Think back to the business card scene in American Psycho. The print is embossed! A habit of sizing up and gauging the potential relationship — the with or against. Again, blaming this all on capitalism is like calling the kettle black. In some ways these are basic human tendencies which flower under encouraging conditions — which could have us chicken and egging all night long. But what was that thing about genuine communication…
I suppose it's all about working together. But the question of basis is all-important here. Do you enter into a relationship because of shared goals and shared work, because working in groups saves nine, or because you really like meeting people; or do you work simply to stay on call, to keep people's numbers for future use and locatability? Sheer sociability in the guise of future management? The exact spice of my beef is those people whose criteria for interpersonality has become purely professional, for whom the meeting of people has become a technologised, compartmentalised event. The people in bank queues who've long forgotten the initial embarrassment at carrying out loud, detailed conversations in public places on their mobile. Let's face it: the majority of people who rely on cellphones use them as people-locaters ('I'm waving my arms now!') or as filofax extenders. I like people who make a-gadgetary, genuine efforts to communicate. I like the effort and/or inconvenience to show through.
Exit the Luddite.
There's more at http://rino.rummage.net.au
I got a beef with competitive people, just like I got a beef with drivers who do the Sydney Shuffle: you know, overtaking you meters before a red light.
I suppose it's got to do with urgency and the gradual reduction of time allocated to people (especially business people) to do all the things not related to making money. Too much to do in too small a timeframe — and so I'm gonna edge in before anyone else and enjoy the fruits of my pole position.
But the real beef is with the mentality behind it, the unspoken social agenda which changes people's genuine human interactions. People complain of the supposed communications boom as facilitating greater communication-convenience whilst killing off genuine communication, whatever that may be. It's a kind of gadget mentality — the technological means has replaced the content it was meant to facilitate — like a generation of mobile phone users ringing up or messaging all their friends on their mobiles to reassure them they are now 'mobile'. The promise of "instant" communication has whitewashed our idea of communicating at all. The technology has taken over, it may well be true, it may well just be an innocent notion. These cheap technologies make us think differently about how we engage socially and build relationships — we now build them on convenience and accessability — and for the business world, on exploitability. Venture capitalism and mobile communications go hand in hand of course. And this has trickled down to the little capitalists making deals right down at the traffic lights, all the time.
But really, when you've sped to a red light and made that deal on the phone, have you achieved anything? You've beaten someone else. Woo hoo. Or, like those older women who push in the bread cue with their mean, pinched and bitter faces, they have the lasting satisfaction of ordering before anyone else, and looking triumphant, and still pawing the taste-samples with their discretionary, bloated fingers. I think it's plain old meanness blended with our triumphalist culture. I am the greatest. I have the power.
Consequently, you judge all other people on the competitive scale: are they on my level, do they pose a threat, do they have similar resources, are they better connected (technically and contact-ly) and so likely to get there sooner? Think back to the business card scene in American Psycho. The print is embossed! A habit of sizing up and gauging the potential relationship — the with or against. Again, blaming this all on capitalism is like calling the kettle black. In some ways these are basic human tendencies which flower under encouraging conditions — which could have us chicken and egging all night long. But what was that thing about genuine communication…
I suppose it's all about working together. But the question of basis is all-important here. Do you enter into a relationship because of shared goals and shared work, because working in groups saves nine, or because you really like meeting people; or do you work simply to stay on call, to keep people's numbers for future use and locatability? Sheer sociability in the guise of future management? The exact spice of my beef is those people whose criteria for interpersonality has become purely professional, for whom the meeting of people has become a technologised, compartmentalised event. The people in bank queues who've long forgotten the initial embarrassment at carrying out loud, detailed conversations in public places on their mobile. Let's face it: the majority of people who rely on cellphones use them as people-locaters ('I'm waving my arms now!') or as filofax extenders. I like people who make a-gadgetary, genuine efforts to communicate. I like the effort and/or inconvenience to show through.
Exit the Luddite.
There's more at http://rino.rummage.net.au
The Elite
I've had a gutful. There are no elites in Australia — there is only the decided absence of public intellectuals.
Argument: That it's pointless to look for or blame an 'elite' class for the mess and malaise that Australia is in.
True.
I don't think there is anything so distinct and distinguished as an elite strata of society. There is and always has been an affluent class who get things done in their own way: that is, by not working for it; and there has always been an innate or default ruling class consisting of both evil and farsighted peoples who act on principles that often mirror society as a whole. But any reference to an Elite is usually a misguided or wishful substitution of one of these.
Many commentators and columnists paint vivid portraits of 'Elite' social groups they've shouldered with at one time or other (or want to shoulder) — for example the class previously called Yuppies: those with means beyond the average working bod, people identified by their accoutrements, choice of school, car, and cashflow. And with the continuing expansion of the affluent divide or wage gap (the rich get richer…) these people will continue to buy their way to the forefront of styles, trends and property booms. But it's deeply fallacious to go and imply they're a great class of Elites who've brazenly turned the economic tide their way over the last few decades. Because yuppies exist on a relatively acute perch of the demographic pyramid, one cannot automatically deduce that high spending power actually translates into legitimate political force on the wider scale. They're merely a more active rung, demographically speaking. Society is hardly affected culturally by an increase in sales of gourmet food (even if it is for their dogs).
Sure, the yuppies may all have voted collectively for Howard; they may even be the symptoms of something greater or more sinister which also happens to lie at the root of market forces and the feeling of consumer disempowerment at the lower end (esp. in the face of banks).
Or the situation that on one hand cultivates yuppie spending and manifold general malaise on the other could also reflect the boredom of relative affluence and the general rat-racing of middle-class hunger, the lack of moral systems and models courtesy of Church or nuclear families, the news 'n sports value media, the lack of politically aware celebrities who are also not morons, or the Howard government alltogether, the GST… It's a bloody rich tapestry.
Only an ass would imply there's a single, consistent force or class at work here. There isn't even a center or essential principle of dirty planning and greedy grinning — if anything, the Australian condition today is a default effect brought about by multiple, indistinct elements — each pretty mediocre on their own when contrasted with the mass of society, but all working inanely together in unpredictable synergy. A state of affairs somewhere between mild chaos and getting the government we deserve.
In their hearts, people certainly feel that something is wrong: that we have a lousy, embarrassing PM with a heartless administration (esp. in the eyes of the rest of the world), and that those who gain most from the condition, like some nouveau riche, should get the blame. Like all those Thatcherites drunkenly calling for four more years in the late 80s.
But to point and growl at the yuppies (them that know not what they do) is to become a preacher for the Culture of Complaint, as any elite art critic-historian will tell you. Beyond the basic whinge or poppy-cutting, the whole idea and quality of elite bashing is dilute and misguided. Especially since the real blame should in all probability lie with Canberra — where intelligent debate is an 'interesting notion' and where Howard's style of 'need to know' governance directly helps people make informed decisions for themselves. Not. This need-to-know governance only listens and looks for exploitable crises, for election avenues to ride in full despite their lowest-common paranoia or anti-humanitarianism, when people generally know better. What Guy Rundle in a serious piece on the elite refers to as "trying to manage a vision-free politics of lowered expectations." And of course there's the rhetorical possibility that the whole concept of elite bashing is a deliberate construct of the Howard camp, an encouraged practice of isolation and blame — without rhyme or reality.
And that is part of the problem: citizen-consumers feel disenchanted with their hero-leaders (cf the continuing extreme cult of leadership surrounding Keating) — with the lack of intelligent leadership — and with how little actually separates our choices. Rundle in the above quote attributes this low-grade politics to both parties.
There's more at http://rino.rummage.net.au
I've had a gutful. There are no elites in Australia — there is only the decided absence of public intellectuals.
Argument: That it's pointless to look for or blame an 'elite' class for the mess and malaise that Australia is in.
True.
I don't think there is anything so distinct and distinguished as an elite strata of society. There is and always has been an affluent class who get things done in their own way: that is, by not working for it; and there has always been an innate or default ruling class consisting of both evil and farsighted peoples who act on principles that often mirror society as a whole. But any reference to an Elite is usually a misguided or wishful substitution of one of these.
Many commentators and columnists paint vivid portraits of 'Elite' social groups they've shouldered with at one time or other (or want to shoulder) — for example the class previously called Yuppies: those with means beyond the average working bod, people identified by their accoutrements, choice of school, car, and cashflow. And with the continuing expansion of the affluent divide or wage gap (the rich get richer…) these people will continue to buy their way to the forefront of styles, trends and property booms. But it's deeply fallacious to go and imply they're a great class of Elites who've brazenly turned the economic tide their way over the last few decades. Because yuppies exist on a relatively acute perch of the demographic pyramid, one cannot automatically deduce that high spending power actually translates into legitimate political force on the wider scale. They're merely a more active rung, demographically speaking. Society is hardly affected culturally by an increase in sales of gourmet food (even if it is for their dogs).
Sure, the yuppies may all have voted collectively for Howard; they may even be the symptoms of something greater or more sinister which also happens to lie at the root of market forces and the feeling of consumer disempowerment at the lower end (esp. in the face of banks).
Or the situation that on one hand cultivates yuppie spending and manifold general malaise on the other could also reflect the boredom of relative affluence and the general rat-racing of middle-class hunger, the lack of moral systems and models courtesy of Church or nuclear families, the news 'n sports value media, the lack of politically aware celebrities who are also not morons, or the Howard government alltogether, the GST… It's a bloody rich tapestry.
Only an ass would imply there's a single, consistent force or class at work here. There isn't even a center or essential principle of dirty planning and greedy grinning — if anything, the Australian condition today is a default effect brought about by multiple, indistinct elements — each pretty mediocre on their own when contrasted with the mass of society, but all working inanely together in unpredictable synergy. A state of affairs somewhere between mild chaos and getting the government we deserve.
In their hearts, people certainly feel that something is wrong: that we have a lousy, embarrassing PM with a heartless administration (esp. in the eyes of the rest of the world), and that those who gain most from the condition, like some nouveau riche, should get the blame. Like all those Thatcherites drunkenly calling for four more years in the late 80s.
But to point and growl at the yuppies (them that know not what they do) is to become a preacher for the Culture of Complaint, as any elite art critic-historian will tell you. Beyond the basic whinge or poppy-cutting, the whole idea and quality of elite bashing is dilute and misguided. Especially since the real blame should in all probability lie with Canberra — where intelligent debate is an 'interesting notion' and where Howard's style of 'need to know' governance directly helps people make informed decisions for themselves. Not. This need-to-know governance only listens and looks for exploitable crises, for election avenues to ride in full despite their lowest-common paranoia or anti-humanitarianism, when people generally know better. What Guy Rundle in a serious piece on the elite refers to as "trying to manage a vision-free politics of lowered expectations." And of course there's the rhetorical possibility that the whole concept of elite bashing is a deliberate construct of the Howard camp, an encouraged practice of isolation and blame — without rhyme or reality.
And that is part of the problem: citizen-consumers feel disenchanted with their hero-leaders (cf the continuing extreme cult of leadership surrounding Keating) — with the lack of intelligent leadership — and with how little actually separates our choices. Rundle in the above quote attributes this low-grade politics to both parties.
There's more at http://rino.rummage.net.au
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