Making Up for Missed Days with a Big One
2002-10-24 � 2:17 p.m.

(This is long and meandering, so stop reading now.)

"Cartoons instead of rape, that's my motto."

Such was my pronouncement to my cluster of friends when, upon turning on the television set last night we were greeted with a simply horrific (if there's any other kind) scene of rape from Oliver Stone's Salvador. Thank god (whichever one you choose) for The Powerpuff Girls. Sanity returns in the form of little girl super-heroes. The world isn't broken after all.

Hi there. My name's Temek -- this is my place. I've been sort of absent, I realize. Many factors are contributing to this, some of which I have addressed here. This spotty attendance is likely to continue for some time, for reasons that I haven't discussed here, but may. Or not. I'm capricious that way.

I will now quote Pope. Not that old fogy over in the Vatican -- he's boring. No, I will now quote my Pope -- the only Pope I've ever known. She r0X0rz, as the kids say.

"Sometimes I wish I could say some things to certain people. But, you know how it is. Its not even fear of rejection or embarrassment or social ostracism. Mostly, it isn't, anyway. I just don't like to disturb the way things exist. Its the same with inanimate objects. I often don't want to touch them unless I can destroy them. Moving/changing things creates confusion. It churns your stomach with butterflies. Wah, wah, wah. Social relationships = trouble.

"My secret crushes will likely never be revealed, if and when such crushes exist. I am not brave like qkellie. Things are always more perfect from afar. Secret little hidden crushes are like firewood. You can gather wood all winter and keep your little fire going. But, once the secret is out, people trounce through the forest and take all the good firewood bits and pollute and THEN YOU HAVE LUMBERJACKS MAKING SO MUCH NOISE YOU CAN NOT APPRECIATE YOUR LITTLE FIRE AND YOUR HEAD POUNDS AND YOU HAVE TO LEAVE THE FOREST AND WHAT GOOD IS THAT?

"Besides, in my mind, my secret crushes are perfection. And what is in my mind, I have found, is 99% likely to be better than any reality I could ever hope to pursue. I can worship them from afar without ever having to notice their flaws. And most importantly, there is no way I can hurt them! Its probably better for me, someone with so much social ineptitude, to behave thusly. I'd just get in the way of people who know what they are doing, anyway.

"So I am pathetic. So what? Its not like you are being hurt by the way I live my life. So piss off! :)"

Pope is wise. Bow down in obeisance to Pope!

With that out of the way, we can get on to the important things, like music.

I have a message for The Psychological Thrillers, the band of which my friend Dimitri is the bass player. I'm putting it here because I'm too chicken-shit and unconfident about whether or not my opinions are worthwhile when it comes to the execution of art to which I can claim no practical knowledge at all, at all. But the message is this: kick Brandon off the goddamn microphone please. You're crippling yourselves with him trying to vocalize!

Okay, yeah. He's the primary songwriter, I get that. And he's good -- your music is exciting and different. The meandering melodies and the minor repeating themes kick my ass. But Brandon "singing" kills my enjoyment of the entire thing. He writes lyrics that are the same as his songs -- long and wandering. Maybe that fits. I don't think so, but I'm not going to argue with content -- I'm arguing about presentation, which is the only aspect I feel even remotely able to comment on, as I am an audience member with expectations.

The problems with Brandon sings are that one, you can't ever understand a single word he says. Okay, maybe a few -- but a few words out of a forty-five minute set aren't good enough. Two, he "sings" the same on every tune! That kind of half-shouted, breathless talking thing he's doing...but he never changes it up that I can tell. Any of the lyrics could be for any of the songs; there is no distinction at all.

If Brandon is unable or unwilling to hand over the singing duties to Dimitri (or maybe Glenn -- I've never heard him sing), the only other option as I see it is to axe the idea of vocals altogether. You guys are strong enough musically to carry yourselves without the vocal content. Right now it's hurting you more than it's helping you.

In my opinion.

Shew! Just had to get that off of my chest. It bugs me, but I can't say anything to them...I mean, who the fuck am I? They're the ones making it happen. If they're happy with it then that's the most important thing.

I can't say anything to anyone else, either. When I mentioned this concern of mine (more than a concern -- it keeps me from enjoying their music to a huge degree) to my roommate, he became disgusted with me. He doesn't see a problem with it, because he can only see that this is the way they choose to do things. To Skot, the artistic fulfillment of the originator is all-important. Everything else is secondary. If people can find a way to enjoy it, then good. If not, fuck them.

That's a nice place to be if you can get there, but I think most people would like to feel appreciated for what they produce, to a greater or lesser extent. If you don't care about entertaining people, why get up on stage? You can stay in the basement and dick around amongst yourselves all you want.

And of course, for Skot, that is all he wants, which is why he spends so much time all by himself in his room doing little projects -- he seeks only to amuse and please himself. Most of the time, the things he makes and the projects he undertakes are very pleasing to others (if they ever get to see them), but I am frankly of the opinion that those things are inherently of less value than similar things that have been made with the explicit idea of sharing them with the world, even if those things are not as well-executed. Perhaps it is a personal mental hurdle that I need to overcome...but insularity has never been attractive to me (except emotionally, of course). Even back when I was writing for real, I wanted to know what other people thought about what I was making. Scared shitless, yeah -- but still interested in sharing.

I wonder if that's a contributing factor in Skot's decision to not create things for public consumption? Fear of rejection? Or even fear of criticism? Maybe that's why he bit my head off when I tried to talk to him about the vocal thing. He doesn't shy from criticizing though, quite the opposite.

Bah.

That's what I say when I don't want to talk about things anymore. You may have noticed that. It could be because I think I'm talking around something, or feel like I'm not able to articulate what I want to say very well, or even if I'm becoming uncomfortable with the subject matter.

I have a lot of little tools like that, tricks I do to myself to derail me from thoughts or actions.

Like, I am really good at not thinking about things. Good enough that I scare myself. Mostly it's an unconscious process -- I don't want to think about something, so I just won't. It won't even occur to me, except fleetingly, way behind the surface noise of my thoughts, and a little process that's monitoring all the time just quashes it immediately, before it can even come all the way to my attention.

Sometimes that doesn't work though. Sometimes if I feel strongly about something (usually a "bad" feeling like worry or guilt or fear), it leaps out at me before it can be quashed. (I think it's supposed to work that way.) If that happens, and I start thinking about something that I don't want to, I imagine doing violence to myself, like some sort of negative conditioning. I'll imagine my face going through a window, or smashing into a wall, or jumping in front of a car, or (and this is a recent favorite) a hot iron burning into my skin. I'll just think about the pain it would cause, and it will short-circuit the whole unpleasantness that I was thinking about before with a new and greater unpleasantness.

How fucked up is that?

(I've never knowingly caused myself physical damage, if anyone was wondering. This is all mental. Heh -- take that how you will.)

It works though -- there a host of things in my life that are completely unresolved and are likely to remain so because they are unpleasant enough that I don't want to consider them even long enough to bring them to a conclusion. I just don't think about them because that's easier.

I'm such a twisted little monkey.

Now let's talk about Rasputina.

Firstly let me say: live show? Rocked. So, so, so good. If you get the chance, do yourself the favor and go see these ladies perform -- you will not be disappointed. They made more rock and more sound and more layered musical texture with two cellos and a drum kit than some rock bands with five or six people that I have seen. Go now and see if they are playing near you.

Now secondly, less importantly, and really only tangentially related -- Julianne Shepherd can kiss my ass. Who is this person who has been blessed enough to be invited to kiss my pale white butt, you ask? Why, she is none other than the music "critic" for the local toilet paper known as The Portland Mercury.

And what has me incensed with Ms. Shepherd? Well, besides the fact that she is the victim of the same disease that every other rock critic on the face of the planet seems to have contracted -- a gigantic, overweening ego and the presumption to pass judgment on shit about which she knows nothing -- she had the nerve to post the following write-up of the aforementioned Rasputina show:

RASPUTINA, SPOOKY DANCE BAND, AMOREE LOVELL(Blackbird) Comparing new Rasputina to old Rasputina is like discerning the difference between Hot Topic goths and true blood, Victorian-obsessed, Dame Darcy goths. One is imbued with delicacy, a subtle sense of melancholy, and a touch of the macabre. The other has the consistency of lite soy cheese. Old Rasputina consisted of three cellists in period costumes (pantaloons, corsets) singing the tragic tunes of history with the voices of beautiful yet ill-meaning sirens. New Rasputina has been bastardized by some creep from Nine Inch Nails. On their latest, the remixed My Fever Broke, the NIN creep has apparently decided that cellos do not appropriately convey anger or alienation, and that to do so, they must be amplified, distorted, tossed into a quagmire of bad pseudo-house beats, and essentially turned into a shitty NIN song but with chix on vox. The only saving grace is that live, they will invoke all the spare, haunting beauty of three cellos and drums, and NOT the spare haunting beauty of one cello and 75 effects processors from the late '80s. Please, see them live. JS

I am fucking incensed.

I don't even know where to begin. How about with the fact that Ms. Shepherd is pretending to compliment Rasputina, but really insulting their intelligence as musicians in charge of their own vision? No -- Julianne didn't like the new album, but she did like the old ones, so the fault must lie with the producer of the new one, right? No allowances for a shift in artistic vision, Julianne? How shallow. A close examination of the credits for My Fever Broke will reveal that Melora Creager has all of the drum machine and programming credits under her name. Yeah, Chris Vrenna gets "remix" credits, but then so do others.

We also get to see the re-surfacing of Ms. Shepherd's complete disregard of any music that has mass appeal (her devotion to "indie cred" is sickening) or that has had any processing done whatsoever. Or better to say any processing that she can detect as such, because anything that comes out of a studio nowadays has gone through some kind of processing, guaranteed -- be it simple EQ-ing or having the entire album laid down on a Pro Tools rig. Where then do we draw the line? No more effects pedals on stage? Because you know what? That Rasputina show was chock full of effects and techno-wizardry -- there was none of this "spare, haunting beauty of three cellos and drums." There was rasping, undulating and grinding of a sort that I'm sure would make your average chamber orchestra player blush. I still found it to be beautiful, and it makes me feel even more strongly that the album Julianne seems to feel is a boil on Rasputina's catalog is a product that they were proud of, and something they worked to achieve on purpose (as I would hope most albums that get released by most artists are, even though I know that isn't always the case).

Not only that, but Chris Vrenna deserves a little more credit than just being labeled an "NIN creep." Yeah, he used to play drums for Trent, and got some production credit on some NIN work. He also used to play drums for Die Warzau -- does that pass the indie rock credibility test, Julianne? Or how about the fact that he hasn't actually been with Nine Inch Nails for several years, but instead has been racking up a pretty impressive list of producing credits all on his own? Not to mention composing the gorgeously freaky score for American McGee's Alice.

Besides, I like Nine Inch Nails.

Bah.

I'm going to do work now. Be good, kiddies.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Kikuko Inoue, N-Paka March(Crayon Kingdom Theme)
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: a bunch of stuff in Japanese

[ last ] [ next ]

�	Int4rw3b Personals

�	Gene Wolfe

�

Image Fix

�	Again, I Return. (Gonna have to knock this off...)

�	A Return of Sorts