Bots starve connections between systems and promises. Time burials on sidewalks under
oceans. A sun-star sound skyward goes to extraordinary measures to control. Mind separates from brain, free mind brain damage.
At the creek behind the park four
sightless girls bled themselves into the stream, bleeding blind we saw them
arranged there unsatisfied and timing. Find
the girls again.
That night we awake with ant feet,
spiders for hands, we wake with these and midnight mouth, then swept into the
arms of grandfather running to the emergency room through a yellow-eyed doorway.
A guy sets up a mic and sings for money out
here Saturday mornings. I heard him every weekend for a while. He's a bad singer,
clips all the words so he doesn't have to hold a note. He thinks his best song
is "My Girl" by The Temptations. But because he's chopping off all
the notes, that song only highlights his inadequacy. The original's strength is it has such strong phrasing.
Mass of Amara's Earth-puncturing rhythm section contrasts sequences of clean, note-holding singing. That contrast, along with synths and glitches for atmosphere, is what melodic progressive metal is made of.
Most of this music isn't for me, but I appreciate parts of the young San Antonio band's second EP, "Through the Ether." Those parts include "Ascended." The verse riff is the album's coolest. Then the savage parts come one after another.
The rhythm section, with the low-end guitars and bass punctuating the drums, brings the highlights.
Melodic, progressive metal like this sounds highly produced, with silence-stripping and all. And the clean singer is not a character telling a story; they close their eyes and try like hell to hold the notes and make the rest more marketable.
Taste: there’s no accounting for it.
The band says this: "The inspiration behind the EP title, 'Through the Ether,' is derived from the infinite unconscious that we can tap into in a time when we are ready to heal a part of ourselves, as well as to acquire information about what we are capable of."
"Through the Ether" was self-released on June 14, 2024.
In
the last scene with both Lancaster Dodd (Philip
Seymour Hoffman) and Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix),
Dodd tells Freddie to leave him forever, saying, "Go to that landless
latitude, and good luck—for if you figure a way to live without serving a
master, any master, then let the rest of us know, will you? For you'd be the
first person in the history of the world."
Lancaster
and Freddie are drawn to each other. Lancaster suggests a few times that he and
Freddie are cosmically connected, that they knew each other in a previous life. Both Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd improvise in life.
But Lancaster feels the pressure of his followers'
expectations, their fragile devotion, and his determined spouse, Peggy (Amy Adams).
Freddie represents something like freedom. He is
wild. He gets out of control and does not try to control others. He seems to
have no views. And he claims to do what he wants.
His
relationship with Dodd is Freddie's only meaningful one since before the war
when he courted a young girl. The relationship with Dodd gave Freddie a taste
of intimacy.
But
Dodd cannot pursue life with Freddie. Freddie is too damaged, too unstable, too
uncontrollable, and Lancaster has too many commitments. Moreover, Peggy will
not allow it. So Lancaster will carry on without him, and Freddie will drift
away alone.
Notes:
Peggy
is an ominous, constant source of pressure. She immediately puts a stop to
nudity at meetings of The Cause, and she pushes him away from Freddie.
Freddie
experiences intimacy when Doris (Madisen Beaty) sings to him. And he experiences
intimacy again during the Lancaster-Freddie processing scene, among others. And early in the movie, we see Freddie pretending to have sex on the
beach with a woman shaped from sand; the movie ends with a shot of Freddie
lying still, almost sweetly, next to the sand woman on the beach.
Montreal rolled in the 2000s, producing bands like Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, and Warren Spicer's band Plants and Animals.
"Unessential Oils," Spicer's first solo effort, represents a vibe more than a vision. Spicer said, "The process was the therapy of working through. The result is more a document than construction. It's what happened, not what I made happen."
It absolutely sounds like an album of therapeutic chilling. You put it on and soak.
See Spicer shaving in the tub? The album includes the downbeat song, "Suds." He sings, "And every day I'm trying to get back to that / I'm like a monk in deep meditation / Oh, I’m safe inside—oh, inside my suds, left alone with a cold beer in a hot bathtub / Send me back to sleep, and when I get on my feet, I'll be a new man."
Spicer and his collaborators coax tracks. The quiet performances emphasize delicate, shimmering percussion.
The vocal textures the sedated music with hints of strain. Spicer sings about release and holds on to his intensity.
My favorite song is the opener, "Distrust the Magician." This sounds brutally chill.
Chords ripple under slippery drums and cymbals that sound like sun through crystal windchimes. "I'm above you now," Spicer sings, sounding painfully removed. And I love how the drums syncopate in the outro. So good.
Album single "Chameleon" features a Latin jazz rhythm and numbed chords that lift the refrain's vocal melody: "Oh babe, I love you a lot / Oh babe, I need you now / And we could have a lot of fun just putting trouble on the run / I know we've got a lot to do, and you and me are trouble at the best of times / But living is a lot of fun—hiding like chameleon."
And you can relate to the words in "Solutions to My Gloom," where Spicer meditates on the sense of doom felt even in everyday, low-pressure situations. "In fact, I like it here in the waiting room / A sensе of impending doom / scroll and creep through the punctured skin / Solutions to my gloom." This, sung to the song's breathy, layered arrangement.
"Don't Go to Bed When You're Mad" wakes from sedation and expands time. The instrumentation gently pulls at Spicer's wavering, detached vocal. The music is a helium-filled balloon, and his voice is the little string you hold on to. A guitar picks out meandering trails of freed melodic thoughts.
"Unessential Oils" is an exhale—or an attempt at one. Take a deep breath.
Secret City Records released "Unessential Oils" on May 31, 2024.
He wears bright orange and a slick smile. His big, blue eyes closed all
the doors in the building. You look out the window and see the sky
making faces like feeling the rain coming.
Some of what we do, we do to make things happen, the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc, the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do trying to keep something from doing something, the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting, the truth from getting out.
With yes and no like the poles of a battery powering our passage through the days, we move, as we call it, forward, wanting to be wanted, wanting not to lose the rain forest, wanting the water to boil, wanting not to have cancer, wanting to be home by dark, wanting not to run out of gas,
as each of us wants the other watching at the end, as both want not to leave the other alone, as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone, we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
The host, made by a robot and cloned a
thousand times, asked me: "Do you want to see a woman without a head?" I am living in hell's dead body. She did not die here
old with us; the body stopped moving, but that is in this world only.
The younger model could not be saved
emotionally and was not even physically or mentally salvageable. The girl and her fetus were
in the photos, and some of the photos are still for sale.
The machine sky fell, and blood and sex were currency. We slept and cried and took drugs to get through the few
remaining days after that.
The 12
Triangles cannot change shape, but the silver seller's creation is 40 to 3 for
new life, and to 4 without ego.
A Special Providence folds the
rite-of-passage experiences of young infantry solder Robert Prentice between scenes from his anxiety-sprained youth.
Alice Prentice drags her son, Bobby, through her unstable life. They survive mostly on alimony as she chases artistic
success she can never have.
After high school, Robert enlists and finds himself overseas during the last days of World War II. He makes a
pitiful soldier, getting sick on the line and overwhelmed with confusion when fighting starts.
The novel's end made an impression on me. Spoiler: Alice starts drinking a lot and pins all hope on Robert returning and working so she can start sculpting again. But Robert decides not to return to America. He sends her a little
money and wishes her luck.
The novel is no comedy, but I laughed at Yates's telling of some of Robert's struggles in the war. I related to his attempts, all vain and hopeless, not to look foolish. I laughed on a
crowded train when I read this part—Robert struggles to follow his platoon and
make sense of the action around him:
They were in a plowed field: the
ridged, uneven earth gave like sponge beneath their feet. Prentice followed the
sounds of voices into the darkness, running again, while the shells rushed
overhead to explode well behind him, back on the other side of the canal. And
it was there in the field, slightly behind him and to the right, that he heard
Sam Rand’s voice:
“Prentice? That you?”
“Sam! Jesus, where’ve you—”
“Where the hell you been?”
“Where’ve I been? My God, I’ve
been looking all over hell for you!”
It was still bad, but Robert had felt a little less confused in this firefight. So when his platoon leader inevitably reprimands him, Robert fires
back. But doing so only makes matters worse.
This book has so many golden moments. The prose—every humiliation, whether in the chaos of the battlefield
or during a childhood encounter with neighborhood kids—swells with
sensitivity.
Several years ago I read a Yates short story collection and The Easter Parade. I knew he was special, but I guess I waited a few years before reading everything else he wrote. I knew he was my favorite author probably after reading this or Revolutionary Road.
Notes: A Special Providence, published
in 1969, is Yates' third book. The cover image chosen for this Vintage Books/Random House edition does not fit the books contents or themes.
Jim
suddenly sees himself—an old man in a leather vest sitting alone on a turquoise-colored couch in
a Southwestern-style living room: stucco walls,
wrought iron and reclaimed wood furniture set on terracotta tile. Even a
cactus by the window and an old steer skull over the TV. Hell, Jim is from
Gladwin, Michigan—what is he doing here?
He
met Katie at Central Michigan University, where he ended up majoring in Finance
and she dropped out to have Jason her junior year. Jim's modest career in
accounting and Katie’s desire for warmer weather took them to northern Arizona
a few years after Jason moved out. They were both 47 then.
Katie
went all in on Arizona, got way into the Southwest stuff, filling the house with turquoise and dream-catchers and all
that. She even started getting Jim to wear loose bolo ties on white blouses open at
the neck and this leather vest. She spent $900 on this vest.
They
grew old this way and Jim retired. She brought home a
little white dog.
But she died three years ago, he misses her, and this is still who
he is.
He wears the vest
almost every day, walks the little dog, and turquoise
is his favorite color.
He
still hates the wrought iron and reclaimed wood
furniture. One piece of furniture she got
right was this couch. He sleeps on it nightly. Hasn't needed to open the
bedroom door in years.
