Like a lot of nerds, I shaped myself with distaste as much as preference ("you suck and you like this thing therefore I will not like it, it sucks") and as hard as I work to conquer this largely unproductive worldview in therapy, critical consensus unnerves me. The other day everyone dunked on some woman who wrote a review of "There Will Be Blood" in the Guardian with the premise that she had refused to watch it for a long time because too many annoying dudes tried to force a Great Work Of Art onto her and then on finally viewing it, she found it to possess extremely Dude Energy. This shallow reading of a classic film infuriated twitterers and people who said now now this is not how we do a feminist criticism. My primary take, on many levels, is who gives a shit, but also, as human beings, who would we be if we formed our taste in isolation of our weird brains and lives and feelings and hates? Perhaps this is more suited to a blog than to the guardian dot com, but look, in my early 20s someone tried to force me to get into Bergman and I wouldn't watch any of his movies, and in the succeeding years I have seen some; a few I disliked, some number among my favorite movies, and every time I watch any I feel a twinge of memory of that damaged human relationship I had and its time and place and attendant shame and pain (apropos enough or maybe TOO apropos for the filmmaker in question). A critic, I guess, isolates artistic merit from the taste of the Luna bar they grabbed from the deli that used to be next to IFC in the intermission between 3 hour segments of the uncut "Fanny and Alexander" but luckily I am just me.
I had a similar thought (why does the urge hate something universally adored nestle resplendently in my breast) when the new Fiona Apple record came out to overwhelming acclaim. After a few listens I agree that it's excellent. But for whatever reason the response still rankles me, particularly that perfect 10 from Pfork. I looked back on past 10s and despite the site's ostensible "indie rock" background, the vast majority of perfect records came out on major labels, by established artists, which would seem to beg the question well, what about actually independent music? Then I tried to come up with a counterexample of a clearly excluded "perfect" DIY or punk record from the last 10 years and nothing immediately came to mind. But then, I thought, maybe that's fine.
The premise of DIY music kind of precludes geniuses. You, a person who has never picked up a guitar or me, a person who stopped playing guitar in her teens after being cowed by a chorus of bros at lunchtime guitar club all simultaneously (but not collaboratively) learning the the "Over the Hill and Far Away" riff, can validly make art. Tons of talented people possessed of singular visions make DIY music, but also like . . . my friends and you and me have made excellent and mind blowing and moving and emotional music, the divine in me finding the divine in you or whatever. This no-heroes-at-least-in-theory thing drew me to this kind of music in the first place. Everyone, I guess, has to decide what they ask of art and artists. People who write about music want ambition, which seems to mean a musician who made quiet music adding orchestras ("maturity") or a musician who used to make big sounding records going "back to basics." A lot of people want chill lo-fi hip hop beats to study to. In general I like music with a lot of space that finds its power in simplicity except sometimes I like Judas Priest.
What I find frustrating right now--primarily in terms of music-making--lies in the limits of ineptitude. Punk's pleasures derive from its ability to iterate. You learn the Ramones riff, you make the Ramones riff but different; you learn the d-beat, you make the d-beat but not that different. But how many repetitions can be borne after so many decades? I wish it didn't, but nothing exhausts me more than music that's inspired by the Rough Trade post-punk that first inspired me. In contrast, a lot of the music I enjoy now is made by and draws from technical and trained musicians in far less formulaic styles or genres (thinking here of something like Kali Malone's The Sacrificial Code from last year). I couldn't help but wonder: what's left for you and I to make to light our mutual fires?
*gotta give credit for some blog inspiration to my FOREVER MENTOR, the genius Layla dot com, now blogging again at whatwewantisfree.blogspot.com all praise be.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Friday, April 17, 2020
the hottest august
"People in mouring tend to use euphemisms. The most melancholy of all euphemisms: the new normal. . . We can't even say the word abnormal to each other out loud. It reminds us of how things were before, the way season followed season. What used to be is painful to remember"
--Brett Story, The Hottest August
I haven't felt like writing or blogging because I don't have anything to add. Even in therapy, I notice as I parrot phrases or sentiments I've seen on Twitter or angry Instagram stories or in personal essays in publications whose URLs start with "ny." But anyway, yesterday I watched this very powerful and beautiful and excellent documentary called The Hottest August and I would like to recommend it to you. It starts showing on PBS on Monday.*
The film depicts August, 2017--not the very hottest summer of all, but close--across the five boroughs. That month, the third season of our current administration, saw the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Hurricane Harvey, and the solar eclipse. Also, people here packed into subway cars, called 311 about pitted roads, laid out on the beach in the Rockaways, vaped at the skate park, and (obviously my personal favorite moment) brawled at an amateur baseball game. Throughout the film, Story asks a broad range of subjects how they feel about the future. Mostly, they feel worried.
No scientists appear in the movie with doomsday numbers about glacial ice. One interviewee mentions her fear of having children because of climate change; another uses climate change as a for-instance of something she doesn't even worry about because it's too remote, unlike her financial future. At the same time, the film's interviews with an economist/investor type who clearly thinks of himself as a good guy rich guy and the mellifluous narration that draws occasionally from Capital bubble up to remind the viewer that behind all of these intimate hopes, dreams, and fears--a desire to start a small business or buy an apartment--lurks the superstructure of rapacious global capitalism and with it, the destruction of our planet and our island city.
The narration explicitly looks back at 2017 from an unspecified future, although whether it takes the perspective of the sci-fi future (represented in the film by an artist who walks around in an Afrofuturist astronaut costume) or just from 2018 remains nebulous. You have the feeling of watching the beginning and end of some certain era. In the film's logic, the past of 2017 represents a time when climate change seems remote and reaches less into our individual destinies than it inevitably will. Watching Story's Rockaway beach loungers on April 16, 2020, the day after the mayor announced that city beaches will be closed all summer, though, the film looks like the end of something very different than intended.
For the first time, I felt real grief for my city, seeing these everyday images of how it used to be just regularly, the Nostrand A train stop and Chinatown after it's closed and you can see people cleaning up inside restaurants. At the same time, seeing these little moments of every day life and these goofy New Yorkers trying to figure out how to make lives for themselves served as a reminder of the alone-togetherness of our current moment: all these people right now boxed up in their apartments, still harboring hopes, still under this same bright sky with a distant view of the skyline. In one of the last interviews in the film, a naturalist describes all the animals, the ospreys and coyotes and skunks, that have begun making their way back to the city. Nothing will be the same and everything will be hard, but those of us lucky to make it through will still find ways to go on.
*note: I have heard that the PBS version is a shorter cut than the original? I definitely recommend the longer version if possible to find!
** note 2: you can rent the full version from BAM
--Brett Story, The Hottest August
I haven't felt like writing or blogging because I don't have anything to add. Even in therapy, I notice as I parrot phrases or sentiments I've seen on Twitter or angry Instagram stories or in personal essays in publications whose URLs start with "ny." But anyway, yesterday I watched this very powerful and beautiful and excellent documentary called The Hottest August and I would like to recommend it to you. It starts showing on PBS on Monday.*
The film depicts August, 2017--not the very hottest summer of all, but close--across the five boroughs. That month, the third season of our current administration, saw the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Hurricane Harvey, and the solar eclipse. Also, people here packed into subway cars, called 311 about pitted roads, laid out on the beach in the Rockaways, vaped at the skate park, and (obviously my personal favorite moment) brawled at an amateur baseball game. Throughout the film, Story asks a broad range of subjects how they feel about the future. Mostly, they feel worried.
No scientists appear in the movie with doomsday numbers about glacial ice. One interviewee mentions her fear of having children because of climate change; another uses climate change as a for-instance of something she doesn't even worry about because it's too remote, unlike her financial future. At the same time, the film's interviews with an economist/investor type who clearly thinks of himself as a good guy rich guy and the mellifluous narration that draws occasionally from Capital bubble up to remind the viewer that behind all of these intimate hopes, dreams, and fears--a desire to start a small business or buy an apartment--lurks the superstructure of rapacious global capitalism and with it, the destruction of our planet and our island city.
The narration explicitly looks back at 2017 from an unspecified future, although whether it takes the perspective of the sci-fi future (represented in the film by an artist who walks around in an Afrofuturist astronaut costume) or just from 2018 remains nebulous. You have the feeling of watching the beginning and end of some certain era. In the film's logic, the past of 2017 represents a time when climate change seems remote and reaches less into our individual destinies than it inevitably will. Watching Story's Rockaway beach loungers on April 16, 2020, the day after the mayor announced that city beaches will be closed all summer, though, the film looks like the end of something very different than intended.
For the first time, I felt real grief for my city, seeing these everyday images of how it used to be just regularly, the Nostrand A train stop and Chinatown after it's closed and you can see people cleaning up inside restaurants. At the same time, seeing these little moments of every day life and these goofy New Yorkers trying to figure out how to make lives for themselves served as a reminder of the alone-togetherness of our current moment: all these people right now boxed up in their apartments, still harboring hopes, still under this same bright sky with a distant view of the skyline. In one of the last interviews in the film, a naturalist describes all the animals, the ospreys and coyotes and skunks, that have begun making their way back to the city. Nothing will be the same and everything will be hard, but those of us lucky to make it through will still find ways to go on.
*note: I have heard that the PBS version is a shorter cut than the original? I definitely recommend the longer version if possible to find!
** note 2: you can rent the full version from BAM
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