2016
begin:
jan: sickness
feb: loveless
mar: deathless
apr: comicss
Summer: Tryp. Long hours with motorik beat riding thru the night riding thru the citay various flora and scapes ripple together and suddenly in PA emerge as oscillated grain and corn, rows of it overhills and not so far away hey I'll try Mystrial of arrival from gps finally we converge our karass as one circled firepit
of family and mockery, mac B and double knucks and smores. Flying whistling falling nerfous but caught, one thousand fireflies in chilly elements despite hardships and burgers and thighs bleeding mustard and giggles and more mockery and more not letting mine escape nc. downtime-bad movies big windows and N Rockwell kinda watch over us before b-More
where more gravel waves which are stuck bring us to various shops and jams, nice spacey jams with open G and that new devotional sylphic tuning, back to druidhill with bubbles, I drove the whole way, too. Archer's 'it's a rental' not enough of a prayer to ease mom's heart I drove the whole way, too. Parking garage brownie-have I been here before-before hitting the pavement. Glorious books and comics
and an old school and that shop girl kinda flirted with me across the VANC line she was from, and before this celebrated summer I found trash market-back in suburbian quietude with old and young asleep we hotboxed the 9/11 truther vehicle and seanced with both K Buzzo and G Funk; the king stay the king not the pawns and the queen ain't no bitch she has all the moves unseen or no. don't fuck with the tags mate, pawns stay pawns, players stay players even on espn sometimes
and the myth of sisyphus is just that, enough. In suburbian antiquarians and clotheslines go together, everything is collected not valued Saloon has excellent grub and long legs seats us and Triumph and Maverick alike were One on the knoll; DMC the magnetic sibling drag, the food there was grissly rubbish to go back to the beginning for a min. More jamming, basement acid jamming,
JB Ulmer jamming with acrid ore, anything but NORMAL. Wednesday post-atomic books on spirits, 66.6% of the holy triumvirate,
the great ur-riff appreciated by Clerk and fought over in bidding war just for my advantage; my champion behind the wood and that aged olfactory sensation; slamming my hand in the door, painful memories are still memories and maybe useful?
More More am jamming with strings and skins being the instrument/metre and tinnitus being the goal, especially the last night, the evil Twin, the cock-pumped gain and overdrive and I drove the whole way, too. Timbre being not unlike the bathroom pipe's pressure, moaning for release, humming the major 4th for a good minute, past times had that interval as “minor” ya know. Poor sleep and poorer eating lonely helped
no one reads shit unless its a list so heres some listings
top 5 nardwuar interviews:
(but there are rules to this, you should know. a good nardwuar interview is like putting a puzzle together, and there are ways to do it and there are ways to throw the puzzle on the ground. reciprocation. acceptance. call and response. thick skin. love. some react and some overreact and some feel the love completely.)
#5) Nardwuar vs NERD- this is so close to becoming one of those rap interviews that goes south, but nard wins another one over with pharrell in this first interview from the old days of much music (remember that shitty channel?) by bringing out rumpshaker and mork and mindy. You cant see Pharrel's eyes in this whole interview but it doesn't stop his face from showing his surprise. He'd get nard back years later in another (longer) interview but this quick one and his genuine appreciation for the research are memorable. “You have something...like remote viewing.” “Remote viewing, I'm a fan.”
#4) Nardwuar vs Psychic TV - one of the better recent episodes, this reads like a bucket list of cool accomplishments for Gen, everything from Brian Jones to Brion Gysin, and William Burroughs and Anton LaVey were acquaintances. Several things being previously unknown to me-I mean just how fucking nutzo is it that the Queen was friends with Sleazy's mom? And that UFO cover art...I would've never guessed. Gen is kinda rude in some of this but shes also kinda sweet and when caught off guard, default, she usually smiles and acquiesces to nard's question, if also kind of dodging them. Its just so Gen and so I've seen this one several times.
#3)Nardwuar vs J Cole- this has a lot hitting close to home for me, including a shout-out to my hometown and alma mater as well as the then prolific No Limit label, of which I was a fan (cole was a year ahead of me at fts), so you know it has to be listed here. J follows all the nard rules really well, shows mad love. They should do an updated version of this like they’ve done with other rappers.
#2) Nardwuar vs. Waka Flocka Flame - Nard has some of the best music history interviews around (see Questlove) but for everyone that goes right, 2 more go sour. People like Ghostface and (early) Rollins are just dicks, and people like Nas are quick to anger. But Waka takes it in stride and even dubs Nard with the 'squad banner by interviews end. Almost every moment in between is golden; just TRY to not smile during some parts of this. Being immediately humbled, Wooh and Waka carefully start to question and play with Nardwuar, even turning his signature question around on him and ask Yo, who are you?? Nard def brought his A(for atlanta) game out and it touches everything from Kilo Ali to mustard based BBQs and female group 80s boom bappers. The impression seems immediate and the guys are in no way offended by the close to home ?s and embrace nard (“you know what we tell motherfuckers like you you my nigga”) while talking about Common in Paris and pitbulls on tour. Waka gets on an emotional kinda ride here and goes from smiling bemusement to 1000-yrd stare-stasis in turn after each lp or Kool G Rap puzzle (?) is revealed. And of course, this boasts one of the best Nardwuar endings in history, the droning 'SQUAAAAAD' matching his face perfectly. Very respectful interview.
#1) Nardwuar vs ICP - Follows all the rules, shows all the love. This is almost an unfair advantage, being that they have some of the best Howard Stern interviews of all time, including that time a guy came to the studio to attack them and also the time they stood up to a racist bigot live on air. Yeah, their music still sucks, but from the moment they bring up Detroit, this is all gold. And their love for their craft is obvs., and know alotta shit themselves, taking the Nard tactic and using it for their own clowny machinations, beginnings of rap in the D, all that. “You're pushing my wig back further and further” says J, going on to talk about Andrew WK at the Gathering of the Juggalos, no doubt a festival probably (at least partially) attended by the folks in Buffalo Juggalos. I love J's reaction to the Faygo question, musing on the fact that there is no way the owner of the company hates them because “we've put too much money in his pocket”. A clown cola would so fit the Faygo market, come on, do it. (Not to mention they've essentially hawked this product for free with it being woven into the culture/songs.) A mention of Abdullah the Butcher and his restaurant precede positive comments on Michael Jackson. And then J sums up the outsider ethos perfectly when asked why people should care: “They shouldn't give a fuck less....It's hidden. It's only there for those who want it. You don't have to hear it.” I disagree with their politics and, like I said, their songs but they perfectly exemplify the Nardwuar interview: His questions leave them wide open and you can see the person inside, and when, rarely, His method is taken in thru osmosis like this its like watching kids open presents on Xmas, a conversation between the band and themselves.
Honorable Mentions: Nardwuar vs.... The Roots, Henry Rollins (2011), Questlove (2013), GWAR, Rob Halford, T-Pain, Janelle Monae, Snoop Dogg (really any, but 2010 is great), Lil Yachty, Fat Mike (any)
2016 top video:
Click to view2016 top finished comic:
2016 top show†:
↑▲CLICK TO LISTEN FOOLS▲↑
†honorable mentions†: pere ubu, the residents, saint vitus2016 best movie*
2016 best album***
↑▲CLICK TO LISTEN сукаs▲↑
***haven't heard RTJ3 yet, though
2916 best book:
))))))))))))))))))))))))))))(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( a review of jerusalem
“this will be very hard for you”
I think Alan Moore first found English as a visionary language through Walt Kelly. Holding a (probably scrying) mirror up to him, he came upon the rubberband staccato MFDOOM style prose that he put in POG, one of the best Swamp Thing comics (and one of the saddest, rip). Well, that's at least when I found out about it, through him.
“you fold up into Us, we fold up into Him”
And with this tome the swamp that is Northampton has been fully unfolded with a book that had me in turn both joyously addicted and throwing the book at the wall screaming “FINNEGANS WAKE IS FOR PUSSIES” (more on that later) while I paced around, annoyed. The book itself is a triptych (and I shelled out extra $ for the paperback, which splits it up), the first part being introductions to our families, the Warrens and the Vernalls, in various places throughout the 19th 20th and 9th centuries. Yes, this book time travels. The whole novel is a exercise in form; shaping that form through magic and words, which Moore tells us at great length are intertwined with math, angels, consciousness and the afterlife. The accordion compression of the forms frame, and its slow dissolution are the meta, and also the cover of the book [listen to Moore explain it]; microscopically he swamps us with some of the wordiest prose ever encountered and also some of the saddest characters he's put to page. I had to stop the book a few times because theres just so much a person can take, a people can take before the whole thing burns (mental illness and the Great Fire of 1675 are staples herein). We're introduced to Henry George, the first black American in the Boroughs and his chapter is almost Lovecraftian in the way it withholds knowledge (and destroys with it), this being a history of "Amazing Grace". The American influence in the Boroughs is small, though Lawrence Washington (George's brother) was a resident.
“it is all connected and interrelated”
part II takes a linear route in telling its story, and sort of fits a poor mans fantasy serial while a boy chokes to death for 400 pages. His soul visits Mansoul, Bunyans paracosm of the past, turning Mick Warren into a pilgrim in a play that involves Asmodeus the demon, who delivers some of the best dialogue in the book.
“Each day and every deed’s eternal, little boy. Live them in such a way that you can bear to live with them eternally.”
The philosophy from our hermetic storyteller used here is Eternalism, and in the Attics of the Breath (the overworld) we see that every room in every home and every street is set in an eternally static non-motion picture; a painting composed of colored, jeweled silicon, easily viewed by those Upstairs as some Pollock painting in various crystalline dimensions. The attic itself is as long as time; literally, the further you go in one direction the further away from the “present” you really are (this is returned to in part III in gloriously Kubrickian abstract). Mick Warren (little Michael) is our Frodo for part II, and the Ring is himself, and the Dead Dead Gang are his companions through time, trying to figure out why he's there and why he isn't supposed to be. Each member of the DDG gets their own chapter, details are slowly revealed. None of them, as you'd expect from people who died at age 9 or so, are happy-go-lucky. The hardest for me was the story of Drowned Marjorie. You know how she died from the moment you meet her, but its her description of life as “[only ever] a surface struggle” that hits so close to home.
“god saved me from drowning then kicked me to death on the beach”
In a book with a character who loses his mind after speaking with angels, whose hair turns white as he jumps across roof tops and eats flowers, this tore me up the most (not including the Joyce chapter, more on that in a moment).
He’d been wrong to tell the freaked-out teenager that it would all get better, because actually it didn’t. It just faded to a deep held chord, a pedal-organ drone behind the normal noise of life, a thing that you forgot about and thought you’d put away forever, but it was still there.
I think I dog-earred the page to come back to it later for this review, but now I don't want to look at it. Marjorie died in the River, her soul nearly clutched by the Nene Hag (an allegory of repressed anger and femininity, possibly a critical assessment of antifeminists-more on that later). Snowy, though-mentioned above, loses his wits when painting the angelic frescoes in St. Peter's- is delightfully spry and even happy at times. My one gripe about this work is its insistence in jumping around, I really wish more time could've been spent with Snowy (where in one chapter-help me find it I cant-he even makes me appreciate maths and multiples). For every moment of illumination that comes from mental illness come at least 3 of absolutely crushing oppression and defeat (and this happens repeatedly in the book: fair warning). Aunt Thursa is the most visible (and most musical, I loved her), her story involving events that are almost too much to type (even more so that Alan Moore has now said were true-the books colophon says this is based on a true story, and a crazy amount of it is accurate (you have to google yr own footnotes, but trust me you'll want to)). So much of this feels like basic Nihilism but I stake my (dirtied, gray) reputation that it rises above it by The End.
Rises above it literally with the first chapter of part III, where the head Builder is given a first person perspective. This chapter and “Clouds Burst” along with the 2001 chapter “Eating Flowers” utilize Moore's skill in playing with form-think the ending of From Hell but on the largest scale there is. The former projects that scale along the y axis and latter along its x. Snowy Vernall and the astral toddler on his back follow the aforementioned time-travelling attics to their furthest reaches, going past the end of humanity, beyond infinite, Jupiter, all that.
“Give me a platform of ideas and harmonies on which to gesture and unfurl my wings. Give me a place to stand.”
I think Moore goes beyond himself in this work a bit, too. There has been some talk in the past about his work's misogyny and this literary escapade as somehow being reclamatory of his more feminine side. This is mostly crap, but when it works for feminism it works really well, and its hard to tell if this is intended or not; are prayers ever answered? It works in Alma Warren, who is undoubtedly Moore's visage in the book and her experiences are without a doubt his own. She has her own quite large chapter in part III, that follows her for one day in a Joycean manner, trivial Boroughs minutiae amounting to memories and joints, and in the end it all stops with a glorification of the G.O.A.T, calling The Wire “beautifully written” and paralleling that work with this one, showing once again how everything is connected, how this tome for those “without a pot to piss in” perfectly mirrors that show, in its depth and execution. Joyce's Ullysses and Eternalism in a matrimony of philosophy and reality, slowed slowed slowed.
With his 40th birthday, Moore claimed magick for his muse and since then has been working with various tools to create sigils and literary reclamations of words. Moore puts a spell on you while you read, tugging at the seams of his story by never foregrounding the narrative in any one style. This also affects the pacing of the plot/story (which I haven't even mentioned yet!) that probably lead to a lot of those sore-loser reviews from people who couldn't finish it and said it was “99% adjectives and 1% story” (← Robert's quick capsule review of 2016, btw). It is one of the wordiest books ever. But your wrist told you that when you picked it up so don't front now. If you're not willing to let time change around you this will not be your type of book but hey, he already warned that
this will be very hard for you
and the difficulty and time-travel and sadness and crying and fucking all seem to collude in “Round the Bend,” which is 50 pages (and for me in Sept. 2016, 2.5 weeks) of those crystalline moments you witness in the Attics slowed to a halt, reality and mental illness in equipoise for Lucia Joyce, one-time Boroughs resident and
dotter of her fathers i's. It should be apparent to any literary fan or even reader of this review that this whole book is styled in a manner similar to Ulysses, but this chapter is a specific homage. A resident of St. Andrew's Hospital in Northampton, she dances upon the lawn and recalls (and lives through, again) the horrible trauma of her early life and begins to travel thru Northampton's past, as we have the previous 900 pages. She has metaphysical sex with brother, Dusty Springfield, and others before repulsing J.K. Stephen, calling him on his sexist shit and banishing him. This is the first time I thought of any of these characters within the pool of feminism, and much of this chapter and the following has to do with sexism, ableism, erasure and the defiance and healing afterward. John Clare appears here (it is seriously amazing how many famous, brilliant Northamptoners there really were) and has a wonderful moment with Lucia, musing on love and time
“If theres a poetry to all this, it seems as though hurt women are a central matter.”
and all of this is couched in the most difficult prose I've ever read. In a world where “reaction” videos on youtube are commonplace, I'd love to have been able to see my face when I realized the whole chapter would be like this. When its this thick with phonetic coloring and dancing glossolalia, when it takes you 30 min. to finish one page, that is Moore slowing you with Lucia's treacle, creating a work in a magic state
that brings insight and empathy, and literally slows you down. This is thematically relevant in how it reflects the Vernall's first meeting with the Angles. This also makes you appreciate the care and just plain ol' craziness this chapter needed to be to be the literary monument it really is. My highest warnings come with my highest praise. This'll be in uni classrooms in 50 yrs. I cannot even get to all the praise it deserves.
Oh, right, the title. It's a reference to Blake's poem that posits Christ could've walked in England during his lost years. Blake is from Lambeth, so I was wondering how he'd connect it to Northampton, but yep, he mostly succeeds. He's reaching, no doubt, but the chapter he uses for this, “The Rood in the Wall”, has an actor playing a noir-type detective in his mind, researching the crucifix that was brought from Jerusalem to England, and Blake's satanic mills and any possible connection to the industrial revolution and its affect on the Boroughs. For a chapter that I know was tacked on last minute, it's pretty fucking great, and of the dozen or so styles Moore runs through in his million word apotheosis, this is top 5 no doubt.
I haven't even touched on the 21st century plotline were given. I just can't, it's too much to cover. But throughout this epic I had to prepare myself for a letdown, I didn't think we'd get an ending proper, and we don't because everything is in a loop forever, but Alma/Alan's anecdote about art is enough to bring me an end, and maybe a beginning, to whatever it is I'm working toward:
art is how you save your loved ones from time.
With all the posturing Moore does about quitting comics (he did it again recently), I am no longer worried; he can quit writing after this, he's given what Absurdism asks, quality & quantity, spinning a yarn a la Enid Blyton, never ducking the responsibility of the past, drawing lines from John Wycliffe to Jhonn Balance, looking as far forward as anything can see, solidifying English as a visionary language. This is his life's work.
*And the rapist dies at the end.
Side notes:
Of all the setup and consequent non-delivery this book gives, the one with the local poet, Ben Perritt, was the hardest to move past. That it ends up being resolved and fixed by book's end is made all the better by being able to read the full poem he writes to Alma. It's....really great.
This is so much THE novel on “nothing” that I was a little let down that no Flaubert reference was made. If there was one, I missed it. Seinfeld? Not there. This is something that will no doubt reward re-reads, however painful that might seem.
A chapter in pII sees the dead dead gang exploring Mansoul, and a suicide-bomber-in-perpetuity is centerpiece. Explored and explained beautifully by Moore it comes off as both dismissive and transcendent of islamic-judeo-xtian eschatology while being both a beautiful portrait, literally and thematically, and penitence for these New Dark ages we're living in. There are few moments when Moore's vision meets his skill, his direction meeting his erudition, his philosophy meeting his reality so viscerally, so focused. This is one of those.
There are so many styles here I couldn't mention them all. There is a chapter of poetry and one written as a Beckett play. Both Samuel and Thomas A and our story's antiheroes are players. As Moore has now said, it also tells a true story, and it's not pretty (of course).
More on Moore magick: like fellow comic writer Grant Morrison, he's practicing some divination here and there, and its at the very least interesting. He predicts a woman of color in England, around 2025, creates an app that more or less saves the third world. As far as who she is he only gives four letters: K A P H
The story about the kid that wrote to Alan is just heart-warming, especially among all this horrible shit in the book/2016. And yes, kid's quote is on the back of part III (: (:
oct: got candy
nov: got first specks
dec: got blessed
ok clear out shows over
2016 the END 2016