1973: Al Green - Call Me
Between a dozen articles due, editing responsibilities, and classwork, I think I may have actually burnt myself out on writing this week. Every word I write, I feel like I've seen and written that word before. Recently. That can't be good. None of it seems fresh. I need some new verbs, some new nouns. I need a new bloody set of pronouns to work with. I'm certain that I've used every word in this paragraph at once before this week. My vocabulary is reaching its limits. Language is dying. I'm beginning to understand Beckett. Or maybe not. Ack.
Luckily, Green doesn't demand a lot from me. His music is seductive on so many different levels. It's sexually seductive, obviously. But it's also emotionally seductive and intellectually seductive. He doesn't require that you fight to listen to him. He's like the womb, you could just float on his silky smooth voice - suspended in the warm liquid of his velvety music. "Womb." Now there's a word I haven't used yet this week. Thank god. Al Green gives me language!
Tomorrows album is Heart of the Congos, and as of yet, I don't know how much of a challenge it'll be. If it's not too bad, I'll do a post tomorrow night. But if it's a bit overwhelming - I may have to beg out early this week. But I promise, loads of music writing next week. So let me do a tid-bits section tonight of various comments, reviews, notes, etc from the last week. Beginning with the greatest performance thus far on American Idol: Jordan Sparks singing "I Who Have Nothing": http://youtube.com/watch?v=OzkNMiKjrGU
Top Ten Singles Thus Far in 2007 (ILX, Teenpop Thread)
1. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
2. R Kelly - Flirt
3. Taylor Swift - Tim McGraw
4. Natasha Bedingfield - Babies
5. Fallout Boy - This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race
6. The Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone
7. Lloyd ft. Lil Wayne - You
8. D.B.’z featuring E-40 - Stewy
9. Bright Eyes - Four Winds
10. The Stooges - Free and Freaky / The Stooges - My Idea of Fun
The normal all-over assortment of singles. No particular order, though some are more heavily weighted than others. I can't imagine Bright Eyes, Bedingfield, Lloyd, or Klaxons making it to the end. Also, if Spring Awakening OST had a single, it would certainly be on the list. Also, I like both Stooge's singles equally, though my preference is for "My Idea of Fun" slightly over "Free and Freaky" but not enough to not list both - also, I don't like either well enough to give them their own slot. Together they earn slot 10. Any other caveats... oh, yeah. Swift is the cheater listing, because it was a single in 2006 - but it didn't hit charts until 2007. So I'm counting it. Na-na-na-boo-boo.
Frank and Adorno, Alternatively DMX and Kafka (Koganbot Livejournal)
Frank, I quoted you last week in my course on Kafka. We were talking about Adorno - and about how he uses Kafka instead of discussing Kafka. He basically takes a Kafka quote and then launches into his own creative expression - which is disguised as criticism. I quoted your answer to the question: Are there more great songs than writing about songs? And you said yes, but not for an essential reason. Then you explained that there aren't more great songs than conversations around songs, or dances to songs, or jokes about songs. And essentially, Adorno is using that with Kafka. He's dancing to Kafka - or joking about Kafka. For my last Kafka essay, I included a couple paragraphs about why I wanted to really write about DMX's use of dogs (instead of Kafka) and how my decision not to use DMX speaks to our prejudices around Kafka. (Ie: That DMX isn't on par with Kafka. Or that Kafka is a genius and DMX is a 'rapper' as though they are mutually exclusive. or that Kafka was writing intentionally using dogs and DMX's use of dogs are accidental. All premises I feel you'd reject.) Anyway, I felt that talking about why I wanted to do DMX on Kafka is a lot like making a joke about a song. It isn't inferior just because it isn't recognized in academia (and I remember your quote in the book about Meltzer - whether rock can save philosophy or not and the question of whether philosophy is worth saving).
Review of "Army @ Love," the New Vertigo Comic (#comic-scans mIRC chatroom)
It's about an attempt to raise morale in the army by hosting explosively sexual retreats and throwing expansive orgies for all the military personal. That's the plot, but it's actually about showing naked soldiers killing people. Throw in anymore hot triggers and the comic might as well be a Mountain Dew commercial (Eugene Mirman reference: "Do the Dew before the Dew does You!")
Excerpt from Short Fiction Piece (Submitted to YU Writing Contest)
We took the 3 train into the city, and for the duration of the trip my brother kicked his legs back and forth and rambled on about wrestling. “The Undertaker, he destroyed Vince. He was gonna - gonna facebuster him - but then, he hit him with the gutwrench superplex.”
While he talked, I read the advertisements on the subway walls. When he went silent, catching his breath or running out of things to say, I asked him another question to keep him going. “So what is your wrestling name going to be?”
“Facebust Feinstein. Or Michal the Murderer. Or the Hopping Hebrew.” He jumped up on the subway seats and hopped around to show himself off. “My signature move is gonna be...” and he threw his fists out and kicked into the aisle. When he kicked, the fringes attached to his undershirt came loose and I grabbed one to pull him back down.
“Don’t stand up.”
“Can we stop in the WWE superstore in Manhattan?”
“Sure. But we can’t get anything.”
Luckily, Green doesn't demand a lot from me. His music is seductive on so many different levels. It's sexually seductive, obviously. But it's also emotionally seductive and intellectually seductive. He doesn't require that you fight to listen to him. He's like the womb, you could just float on his silky smooth voice - suspended in the warm liquid of his velvety music. "Womb." Now there's a word I haven't used yet this week. Thank god. Al Green gives me language!
Tomorrows album is Heart of the Congos, and as of yet, I don't know how much of a challenge it'll be. If it's not too bad, I'll do a post tomorrow night. But if it's a bit overwhelming - I may have to beg out early this week. But I promise, loads of music writing next week. So let me do a tid-bits section tonight of various comments, reviews, notes, etc from the last week. Beginning with the greatest performance thus far on American Idol: Jordan Sparks singing "I Who Have Nothing": http://youtube.com/watch?v=OzkNMiKjrGU
Top Ten Singles Thus Far in 2007 (ILX, Teenpop Thread)
1. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend
2. R Kelly - Flirt
3. Taylor Swift - Tim McGraw
4. Natasha Bedingfield - Babies
5. Fallout Boy - This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race
6. The Klaxons - Atlantis to Interzone
7. Lloyd ft. Lil Wayne - You
8. D.B.’z featuring E-40 - Stewy
9. Bright Eyes - Four Winds
10. The Stooges - Free and Freaky / The Stooges - My Idea of Fun
The normal all-over assortment of singles. No particular order, though some are more heavily weighted than others. I can't imagine Bright Eyes, Bedingfield, Lloyd, or Klaxons making it to the end. Also, if Spring Awakening OST had a single, it would certainly be on the list. Also, I like both Stooge's singles equally, though my preference is for "My Idea of Fun" slightly over "Free and Freaky" but not enough to not list both - also, I don't like either well enough to give them their own slot. Together they earn slot 10. Any other caveats... oh, yeah. Swift is the cheater listing, because it was a single in 2006 - but it didn't hit charts until 2007. So I'm counting it. Na-na-na-boo-boo.
Frank and Adorno, Alternatively DMX and Kafka (Koganbot Livejournal)
Frank, I quoted you last week in my course on Kafka. We were talking about Adorno - and about how he uses Kafka instead of discussing Kafka. He basically takes a Kafka quote and then launches into his own creative expression - which is disguised as criticism. I quoted your answer to the question: Are there more great songs than writing about songs? And you said yes, but not for an essential reason. Then you explained that there aren't more great songs than conversations around songs, or dances to songs, or jokes about songs. And essentially, Adorno is using that with Kafka. He's dancing to Kafka - or joking about Kafka. For my last Kafka essay, I included a couple paragraphs about why I wanted to really write about DMX's use of dogs (instead of Kafka) and how my decision not to use DMX speaks to our prejudices around Kafka. (Ie: That DMX isn't on par with Kafka. Or that Kafka is a genius and DMX is a 'rapper' as though they are mutually exclusive. or that Kafka was writing intentionally using dogs and DMX's use of dogs are accidental. All premises I feel you'd reject.) Anyway, I felt that talking about why I wanted to do DMX on Kafka is a lot like making a joke about a song. It isn't inferior just because it isn't recognized in academia (and I remember your quote in the book about Meltzer - whether rock can save philosophy or not and the question of whether philosophy is worth saving).
Review of "Army @ Love," the New Vertigo Comic (#comic-scans mIRC chatroom)
It's about an attempt to raise morale in the army by hosting explosively sexual retreats and throwing expansive orgies for all the military personal. That's the plot, but it's actually about showing naked soldiers killing people. Throw in anymore hot triggers and the comic might as well be a Mountain Dew commercial (Eugene Mirman reference: "Do the Dew before the Dew does You!")
Excerpt from Short Fiction Piece (Submitted to YU Writing Contest)
We took the 3 train into the city, and for the duration of the trip my brother kicked his legs back and forth and rambled on about wrestling. “The Undertaker, he destroyed Vince. He was gonna - gonna facebuster him - but then, he hit him with the gutwrench superplex.”
While he talked, I read the advertisements on the subway walls. When he went silent, catching his breath or running out of things to say, I asked him another question to keep him going. “So what is your wrestling name going to be?”
“Facebust Feinstein. Or Michal the Murderer. Or the Hopping Hebrew.” He jumped up on the subway seats and hopped around to show himself off. “My signature move is gonna be...” and he threw his fists out and kicked into the aisle. When he kicked, the fringes attached to his undershirt came loose and I grabbed one to pull him back down.
“Don’t stand up.”
“Can we stop in the WWE superstore in Manhattan?”
“Sure. But we can’t get anything.”