Hectic

Collings's's Dairy

2005-10-17T21:00:00.000+02:00

(Blogger bugged out when I tried to add links. So this is incomplete & some things won't make sense. Other things won't make sense even after I add the links, but hey.)

I was reading Matthew Collings’s Diary (or ‘Mathew Collings’ Diary’ as the editors of Modern Painter put it) (one of my more morbid fancies, prompted by a misreading of my sister’s homework assignment: a graphic novel chronicling the workings of Anne Frank’s Dairy) which was, as art journalists might say, something of a revelation (but without the qualifier. Emma Dexter in Modern Painter on Marlene Dumas: “… it is a testament to her subtlety as a painter that by intermingling these themes she achieves nothing short of a revelation.” Nothing short?). Collings is my current favourite disgruntled person of middle age. From the June issue of Modern Painter: “… like articles about art written by people who usually are novelists or poets – these too are always great marvels of sympathy for something that doesn’t exist … It’s extraordinary how a kind of unmistakable jobbing Time magazine style kicks in very quickly, as the structure upon which flowery enthusiasm rides…”

That issue obligingly carries pieces by Jeanette Winterson and Toby Litt. Litt, ‘one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists 2003’, describes Phil Hale honing his painterly technique as a means of liberating his choice of subject. “Phil Hale doesn’t want to be an artist who doesn’t because he can’t, and who, as a result, does merely because he can.” It’s a neat enough idea, but carries less weight as observation. What is so exemplary about these paintings, by this painter, that teaches us about the qualities of craft and mastery of technique? Litt’s sympathy is not so much for something that doesn’t exist, as for something that doesn’t exist here - or rather its specific instantiation is nullified by its generalness. The novelist’s preoccupation with a theory, or more agreeably -what could be more disagreeable than a theory? - an idea, of art distracts him from the difficulty of looking at the work itself. This preoccupation with generic polish often betrays the writer’s shallowness as a reader. (The irony of my having randomly picked this article to illustrate this point has not passed unnoticed.) (Borges in the preface to A Universal History of Infamy: “Reading, obviously, is an activity which comes after that of writing; it is more modest, more unobtrusive, more intellectual.” I have not read the rest of the book.)

My faith in novelists, and in good writing, and the conviction that the latter is dependent on good reading, was restored by the Modern Painters Fall 2003 edition. Firstly, because there is an article by Philip Roth on Philip Guston. I have not yet read it, but it’s pleasing to know its there. Secondly, because of Julian Barnes’s beautiful account of Vuillard, and the effects of looking towards the artist rather than his work (Though to judge by the enormous photograph, and raffish pose, in every book, Barnes is one artist who doesn’t mind being looked at.) In a few lines, he affirms, by argument and – more illuminatingly – by example, the power of good writing, and the joy of good reading. Against the ‘astute’ renaming, as one catalogue called it, of paintings to reflect the circumstances in which they were painted, Barnes insists:

Such rechristening is ‘astute’ only in the sense of commercial branding – Hey, don’t be scared, you can call him Edouard. Artistically, it is far from astute. It’s saying: oh, by the way, this is what he was really painting, it’s just that he didn’t like to tell us at the time. It’s reductive, and while it couldn’t make the pictures banal, it makes them seem more ordinary. It treats them as narrative, as conversation piece, as domestic autobiography. It invites us to look for theme rather than composition and aesthetic. It is a small but significant betrayal of the artist.

A similar malady exists in the academia of the humanities, with its obsessive explication of it’s own methods, of fitting the real world to methodology, or using the world as a springboard to some discussion of scholarly technique. This is what the history of the pygmies is really about. I recently read a paper in which every second paragraph was about how complicated the facts were, and how subtle was the author’s interpretation. Neither of these was true, but even if they were, the impact was slight compared to, say, a compelling New Yorker story.

But I’m not here to convince the hip young citizens of blogland to eschew the academy. That would hardly be responsible. Indeed, the theme of this post, to arrive at it obliquely, but with some measure of continuity, and contrary to even (especially) my expectation, is a tentative endorsement of the serious.

The internet, as any fifty-year-old will tell you, is an unprecedented means of saying nothing. More surprising is that now so many say nothing so well. The agitated pursuit of form, the relentless common shaping of styles and modes (see how quickly the surface of cool crit shifts and morphs with the restless adding on and refining – and subtraction through disremembrance - by every geek with an ipod and a gifted lexis) lends credibility to the reading of hypertext as shorthand for hyperactive. For all the buzz and excitement, let’s not forget that hyperactivity is attended by a deficit of attention.

The consummate stylist of the broadband generation must be Sasha Frere-Jones. (Has anyone carried the credibility of such various streets?) But every so often I read his New Yorker pieces with just too comfortable an outsider’s repose. Partly because of the reassuring intimations of the arcane, the beguiling geekishness of pop scrutinised with meticulous, and proportionless, zeal. But there is also a feeling, sometimes, of detachedness, of an insufficient relation between critical style and critical object. When I don’t know what sf/j is talking about, I don’t really care. But it’s not like some of the other New Yorker authors, whose writing carries me over with its power and subtlety – but also its sense of conviction and urgency (or truth). When the glossy Frere-Jones metaphor machine is on autopilot (to mangle mine) it feels like a fantastic review of a restaurant I can’t afford in a city I can’t visit. Who cares how the food tastes as long as the author gets to say fish candy! It reminds me of Sonny Rollins’s (Coltrane’s?) remark about Stan Getz - we’d all play that smooth if we could – it’s true, but it artfully conceals the point.

Barnes again:

Misia Sert tells in her memoirs … of walking through a beetroot field with him as the light was closing in, of her tripping on a root and nearly falling, of him helping her regain balance, of their eyes meeting… whereupon Vuillard burst into sobs. Sert gives a separate paragraph to the next line: ‘It was the most beautiful declaration of love ever made to me.’ Beautiful, but also characteristic – of the man, and of the painting too, John Russell … drew an astute comparison between Mallarme’s precepts about poetry and the young Vuillard’s practice as a painter. Mallarme’s instruction was ‘to paint not the thing itself, but the effect which it produces’; he also wrote, ‘Somewhere in the creative act is the attempt to evoke an object by placing it deliberately in shadow and referring to it allusively and never by name.’ Vuillard’s painting is always less ethereal and less excluding than Mallarme’s poetry; but the incident in the beetfield is the Mallarmean aesthetic applied directly back to life. Vuillard’s sobs are not a statement of love, but a display of the effect which it produces.

There’s so much to admire in this passage, its sweep and balance and rhythm, the recondite charm, the novelist’s human feeling. The salvaging of sentimentality, even portentousness, towards education is especially gratifying. It’s like discovering your favourite chocolate triggers weight loss. But it is the underlying purpose, the end towards which Barnes’s style is the means, and the completion of this end, that marks this out as a permanent and serious piece of criticism. It leads us back to the work with an expanded view, and, we hope, an expanded appreciation. And that is the point of criticism.

This feels a bit like the Lucky Jim’s nice things are nicer than nasty ones. Deep things are deeper than shallow ones, innit? Well, sort of.

Distance and objectivity are frequently considered fixed virtues of criticism. (At least by those who believe in values.) But some of the very best, and certainly the most endearing, commentary shares cultural space with its object. When Comp. Lit. Professors discover terza rima in gangsta rap it embarrasses not for lack of erudition, but, pace irony, the failure to inhabit some essential sensibility, and driving energy, that makes the work mean something. (Oh, to have Chekov review the next Streets album!) This has its limits – how do you inhabit Dylan? – but a (pop)culturally informed lucidity can initiate terrific work. Even enthusiasm is not enough: Jonathan Lethem sensitively observed of Christopher Ricks that “The critic has, seemingly, merely wished to test the songs he loves against his own pre-existing context, which happens to be Philip Larkin and Matthew Arnold, not Blind Willie McTell.” Nothing wrong with that – and I look forward to reading Ricks’s book – but if I want a guide to take me further into the work, I want someone who has lived that artistic terrain completely enough to have local knowledge.

Now look at this. There are bits where it’s as if a Norah Jones song has been transformed into prose, losing its soothing good taste along the way; but the rhythm and the voice remains intact, and, like an unusually candid artist’s commentary, it explains both the reasons and the limitations of its being. A moment like this and Frere-Jones comes across as that rare aficionado who, to paraphrase James Wood, seems to hear music from the inside.

When it works so well, you get the sense that the stylisation emerges naturally, rather than being piled on; that it is not a source but a vital symptom, of a particular cultural mode. It’s because he speaks the language of pop that the author gets such a clear reading, rather than speaking like that to affect the artist’s lingo. This is when mass media thrills. (And here, conflict of interest notwithstanding, I could say nice things about Jermaine’s text…)
Now I’m not exactly a great reader, I’m too hasty and slapdash – one reason I respond more naturally to film may be related to how much the director determines the pace – however, when the ennui lifts, I do attempt to take the author seriously. But I wonder how much empty flash I can consume before I stop caring.

War and Piss

2005-09-30T18:20:00.000+02:00

Browsed through the newish bookshop in Norwood yesterday. Nice selection. Picked up Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night for fifteen bucks. Against the author’s splenetic revulsion at “the frustrated bile, piss, pus, and poison he had felt at the progressive contamination of all American life in the abscess of Vietnam” our blogger notes – with gratitude and lancing irony – how things have changed.

Crude Awakening

2005-09-26T16:35:00.000+02:00

Accept for one moment that the petroleum industry is a force for good. Not an unalloyed good, of course, but what is? For the world to progress, for society to advance and for industry to develop, it is necessary to provide a steady and constant source of fuel. This powers technology and innovation, driving new vision, expanding the horizons of possibility, transforming the fantastical into the everyday. Challenges of capacity, of ability, challenges which appeared insurmountable are one by one obliterated. With new technologies come new fields of industry and commerce, new opportunities to broaden and to diversify the channels of trade, to augment, to accumulate and to broaden personal, national and global capital. New types of expertise, new areas and opportunities of education, new candidates for education. Advances in medicine and communication, farming and entertainment, all underpinned fundamentally by the fuel of industry. Books become more accessible, whiskey more plentiful, cars in each driveway, a chicken on every wok.

Drilling, refining and transporting petroleum products directly affect the environment in many places and communities around the world. It indirectly affects everyone, to some or other extent. The consumption of these products too affects all the world. But the executives tell us they are sensitive to this, that they are working in the most environment and person friendly way possible. They assure us that there is no alternative and that this is the small price we pay for progress. Let’s accept this. Why not? Some of the oil companies even have started their own campaigns to promote the cleaner and more efficient use of fossil fuels. Some think that this is nothing but slick marketing, a smog screen against rising popular resentment, and hard scientific evidence of the deleterious effects of these industries. But accept that this view is glib and unfair. Suppose rather that the oil industry, while long the source of progress, is now the guardian of a new, more just and moral progress. That the light of industry had become the authentic bearer of the torch of honourable development. And accepting all this, let us marvel as the captains of progress descend on Johannesburg for the 18th World Petroleum Congress.

But how on earth do we accept Halliburton as a sponsor?

Street Sweeper

2005-09-05T15:57:00.000+02:00

Infinitely repeatable lope of a sax loop makes the pavement lighter, bulletproof flows change t-shirts into kevlar, reverberating crunch turns rap kids nostalgic at age 23, it's Bucktown.

Ein Love

2005-08-11T17:25:00.000+02:00

Okay, so it would have taken a lot to fuck up the original, but Einmusik interrupt Coburn's "We Interrupt This Program" in just the right ways: the microedited vocals, nano-engineered tension and release and MASSIF sawtooth chorus mean I'm kept more than satisfied until the next Rex the Dog record. (Discovered while 'researching' this post: plenty of mpfrees at Einmusik's site - if they're anywhere near as good as "Jittery Heritage", "Shaw" and this: oh boy.)

94Disko

2005-08-08T17:07:00.000+02:00

Somebody pointed (or yousendit'ed, to be honest) me in the direction of a compilation called "We Are Icerink", and it turns out that my favourite track from it playlists very neatly next to all the other detached futurist femme-fronted electro-pop I've been listening to (Broadcast and Ladytron, namely), with two, not unconnected, exceptions: it's from 1994, and it loves you.

I haven't wanted to do any background checks on "Icerink", in fear that I'll be proved historically incorrect, but here's how it sounds to me: in a 1994 filled with 2nd degree grunge and artfully oblique english-lit major dropouts, british indie kids with a populist spirit and/or excited enough about fun noises had a dance music culture to turn to for fun and innovation, though few made the jump with as few reservations as Oval(no, not THAT Oval)'s "Love Hour". If the phrase "Indie Dance" still inspires shrugs (I never could bring myself to care enough about "Screamadelica" to hear it), it's only cause it was weedy, flat, thin and stingy, unlike this, which is muddy, round, thick and fullhearted - it's that chorus piano that gives it away, so very big, so very House. The palpable exuberance is matched by the very un-indie lyrics: "this is what you want" is delivered with a sweetness and confidence that rings truer every time I listen. And in a 2005 still shaking off the remnants of electroclash frost, it proves there are yet lessons, and hugs, to impart.

Getting Out the Hud

2005-07-26T14:46:00.000+02:00

Indie, for all its problems with mainstream 'product', has but two ways to play a pop song, and both fall under the category of "the radio wouldn't stand for it": turn things acoustic and underplayed (this is called "sparse", and is frequently praised for "getting to the essence of the song") and sing it with a mumble or a whine (this is called "ironic sincerity") OR make it noisy as fuck, using loud guitars (this is called "making it rock", and is frequently praised for its use of real instruments). Now I'd sooner listen to a compilation of Cheiron Production's most rote album tracks than have to sit through Travis smirking their painful, unplugged way through "Baby One More Time", and the original "Toxic" rocks several times harder than Local H have ever done (Britney's still the uber-pop whipping girl, it seems).

When indie gets to covering pop-rap, that's when it really gets ugly and lost. So does !!!'s cover of Nate Dogg's "Get Up", but that's only in the last 3 minutes or so - before that, we get some great, non-reactionary ideas about using guitars (yes, guitars), excessive reverb, gating and the !!! guy's-normally-grating-but-here-very-suitably-low-and-swaggery vocals to make things bigger, brighter and hotter. Just before we lose control in an almost formless jampunk session (ie. "noisy as fuck"), we get about the most thrilling use of space in a punk-funk thing since the "Stupid Mix" of LCD's "Yeah", and what Jon Spencer Blues Explosion sounded like in my head before I actually heard them.

Baby It's Cold Outside

2005-07-17T15:09:00.000+02:00

Can't quite bring myself to post the post I wanted to, so here's something to prove I'm still alive and blogging - icy electro (well, icier than most, anyway) from (the unfortunately named, as seems required to point out) Tomas Barfod. The fragile chimes carelessly twinkling above the undercurrent of sub-bass menace reminds me of a recurring apocalyptic nightmare I'd have as a child, where the most mundane and barely perceptible of occurances (a twig snapping under a shoe heel) would accrue unbearable emotional weight with the knowledge of impending doom.

2005-07-10T19:52:00.000+02:00

Truth in advertising. Edgars, Eastgate.

Gullybye

2005-06-27T15:48:00.000+02:00

Lord, sometimes I wish life could just, well, get screwed - right now I barely have the time to roll my eyes back in reverie when I listen to this, which is maybe my second favourite S&C track ever (the first is so goshdarn sublime I'm being all rockist about it and waiting til some landmark event occurs before I post it - like, say, my being alive by the end of the week). This floats by like a warm breeze on a grey day - those electric piano keyboard notes hanging in the air, near-weightless, are somehow more deeply placid than most officially sanctioned wordless gauzy ambient woosh. And I love 'day in the life' verses - "I woke up early" always brings to mind fond memories of "Life's a Bitch" (btw, Govt. Names, whose verse is that one?). I can't much afford to have lost the 24 minutes of my life that's elapsed since this starting playing (on its fifth repeat now), but I feel oddly refreshed.

Mirror Ballin'

2005-06-11T18:14:00.000+02:00

Christina Milian ft. Twista - For Real

Disco with just a teasing hint of hop, this is the kind of the purity that I'm thinking of when people invoke "pure pop" (as opposed to, say, Death Cab for Cutie) - manufactured, sure, whatever, but also manicured, sleek, graceful, and largely perfect. Y'know, the songs that soundtrack prom nights: the ones with an undeniable, near-universal functionality. There's that same unmistakable core ache that's at the heart of all great dance music - we had our problems but still, that chirpy chipmunk diva vocal punctuating the thump-chikka-thump propulsion (is it Kanye? if so, his name goes off "Chilled" instantly)(and "Diamonds" is hot too btw). Twista isn't extraneous for a moment here, so perfectly locked into the groove, just dropping syllables into the swirl.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Make Movies Anyway

2005-06-08T13:49:00.000+02:00

How to do a lousy job of attempting to make meaningful your largely shallow film by dressing it up in the 'knowing' techniques of postmodern pastiche and meta-commentary: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Wow, since when did having a bunch of (awkwardly) shifting surfaces give anyone license to throw symbolic devices at the audience like a teenage delinquent hurling rocks at passing automobiles? So you're trying to tell us that Mssr. Sellers feels that he's lacking a real self underneath the Clouseaus and the birdy num nums? How about a mirror with... no reflection! Better yet, how about putting us in a movie soundstage within a movie soundstage and having Geoffrey Rush just tell us that his character is an "empty vessel"! Is Sellers enamoured with the girl-attracting powers of glistening automobiles? Just replace the shiny cars with shiny girls! Is there an incestuous undercurrent in Peter's relationship with his mother? Make it an overcurrent! Put them in the same bed with the lights off! And since you're taking these enormous, potentially audience-alienating liberties, throw in some other ideas and see if they work (they don't): use 'authentic' 35mm pathe footage, throw in some needlessly herky-jerky 'real life' handicam shots, cast Stanley Tucci as Stanley Kubrick!

And how are we to believe that there's no real Sellers anyway? The Peter we're presented is an insecure, needy, selfish, womanizing fuckup (who's comedic gift seems both secondary and slippery) - real enough to do real damage to real lives (so we don't buy it when Rush assumes the role of every important castmember in some ultimate display of Sellers solipsism). And when he consults celebrity psychic Nathan Lane, the ease and obviousness of his manipulation just makes him looks uncharacteristically stupid, and even the most caustic movie viewer fails to identify. They could've made light of many of these problems by not insisting on some kernel of tortured-self Meaning - a play of differences isn't much fun when nobody's laughing.

Bought It, Used It, Broke It, Fixed It.

2005-06-02T18:24:00.000+02:00

Yeah, I know, you think you've got us pegged: all abuzz with finger-on-pulse exclusives, reckless copyright disdain and newfound blogland recognition for a couple of enthusiastic weeks, and then the inevitable, exhausted decline. Well, yeah. But life's been a little nuts in Nobleland lately (enough to preclude filesharing), and Kaiser can't be expected to deliver piercing cultural analysis every other day! So hold tight, and we'll get through this together.

But for now you hypothetical doubters can quieten down, here's a scorcher: dance maximalists Basement Jaxx meet dance lazyists Daft Punk, and Technologic gets harder, better, faster, stronger. Less open to the accusations of needless excess that some insisted weighed down Kish Kash, there's a single-mindedness (Kontrol?) to this that we perhaps haven't heard in a non-club-mix Jaxx track since "Yo-Yo". And they've still got trixx enough to make our ears prick up: a boxing bell barely saves a Nintendo busy being beaten within an inch of its life, and we get thrown a wake-up "Hey!" when we're in danger of being phasered out of our interest. Now bring on the VEE TAH LICK treatment, and I'll stop spreading the "Human After All" contract-breaking conspiracy theories.

Here Comes the Indie

2005-05-26T17:03:00.000+02:00

You know we don't normally fuck with (years-old) electro-acoustic, quasi-improv, avant-indie hip-ster dod-dle, but if more of it sounded like a street party in Marrakesh broadcast over a malfunctioning PA system, we might. Genuinely hectic.

Van Guard

2005-05-24T16:53:00.000+02:00

It was inevitable. I saw Star Wars. 'Break me a fucking give.'

For some reason Elephant was just released here. But following Rupture - 'blogland overvalues newness' - here goes:

Elephant, like Lars von Trier’s Dogville, characterises a pared-down approach to filmmaking. Customary devices or objects are stripped away, or rather withheld, leaving us with a ‘purer’ and often more effective film surface. The films share a concern with the terms of civility and the politics of morality, but differ in their resolution of these concerns. They differ too in the forms of their presentation, in aims and function of this filmic leanness. Dogville is shot entirely on a soundstage. There are no sets, only chalk outlines indicating building and objects. The action is located in a small town, not so much resembling as representing some American backwater. The movie has, if not the feel, then the look of a (extremely well-) filmed play. von Trier offers up unadorned cinema - the exposed movement of actors on stage captured on film. He eschews embellishment - the extraneous layers of decoration, the phoney agitation – that stands between film and viewer, between meaning and reception of that meaning. Elephant bears a different sort of simplicity. There is little dialogue, no contrivance of fortune or timing, none of the recognisable set pieces or allusions we might expect in a contemporary film. But this makes it less, not more, like a movie. (Or like movies happen to be.) Gus Van Sant presents a picture of life as life, not that genre of film ‘about real life’.

Both techniques achieve a state of detachment, a conscious distance from the events in the movie. In Elephant this has a lot to do with the absence of traditional narrative forms and the pacing, the monotony and sustained uneventfulness of many of the shots (the mechanical, step-by-step process of developing a photograph; the measured stacking of books). We don’t participate in the story, anticipating the standard moves, measuring our expectations against what does transpire. (‘He didn’t get the girl. And it was a romantic comedy!’) The day unfolds like a day unfolds, and we observe. Of course we’re waiting for that inevitable horrific climax. But it’s not something that is resolved through plot – there is no build-up, no explanation or imagined rationale, no internal coherence. We don’t calculate the steps towards that point. The eruption of violence is an intrusion in the film like it is an intrusion into the ordinary day that the film presents. (Not that it is unexciting or unambiguously unpleasant to watch. Rather, there is no movement in the storyline towards the event. It is something that disrupts, or alters, the space which the film inhabits.)

The plot of Dogville in contrast is highly wrought and dramatic (what would be melodramatic, but for the film’s deliberate theatricality). Yet distance is preserved through the emphasis on the film as fiction, as a produced object: the stage, the chalk outlines and corresponding absence of realistic sets. The flow of action is broken up into chapters, and there is a narrator commenting on what transpires on stage. This distance is underscored by (and conversely, this distancing effect lends force to) the film’s allegorical character. We are outsiders looking in, but this allows us a dispassionate perspective to review, to critique, to damn.

Van Sant’s is a different notion of what it means to be an outsider. He takes this as the means and motivation not to judge, to refrain from suggestion. His film is of life, but he does not pretend that this is not life through film. Elephant follows a kind of realism, but is carefully aestheticised – those beautiful tracking shots, the wide autumnal landscapes. And he uses the workings of cinema to get closer to the subject, always aware that this is a mediated familiarity. We walk with the kids, move into their space, observe and re-observe from the angles and points of their own view. But observation is the limit of our participation. There are no standard moves in life either, this film seems to be telling us, no easy conventions of judgement and damnation. Nor do our efforts to empathise, to align ourselves in thought and experience, do very much to diminish our incomprehension. Elephant refuses to stand back and watch, and exclaim shock and indignation and righteous fury. We are observers, yes, but of life, of people; not of systems and states. And when the comforting detachments of allegory, of moral distance, the detachment from life, from real people are removed - when instead we are reminded of the unavoidable failures of empathy, that distance between ourselves - then easy, sweeping judgements start to feel a little hollow. What a masterful and apt approach this film takes to something so defiant of reason, yet so demanding of reflection, as the murder of school kids by school kids.

Bruck Heimer

2005-05-20T17:32:00.000+02:00

I'd thought I'd become numb to all those riddims trying to appropriate 'cinematic' action thrillz, so it was with with some surprise that I found myself 1) downloading a version of the "Killer Instinct" riddim (foolishly worrying about some vague correlation between riddim name and sound, shoulda learned by now huh?) and 2) enjoying "No Tampering" riddim. "Instinct", or rather, Mitch feat. Lexxus's "When We Roll", turns out to be just the opposite of intimidating widescreen thuggery (I guess the presence of crooner Mitch should've tipped me off but still) - it's some charmingly naff hotel elevator muzak. It's the kind of summery fluff that I'm probably more tolerant of in wintertime - like the ugly shag carpet you should've gotten rid of long ago but are happy to have warming your feet right now.

Bling Dawg's "Stop Dem Talking", on the other hand (and on "No Tampering"), is a lot closer to what I'd feared - menacing atmospherics complete with synth string swoops and OTT threats (if the drama get hectic, we pull more grenade), but is saved by that fingersnappingly catchy chorus.

Trife Aquatic

2005-05-17T14:20:00.000+02:00

Mad Cobra - Switch

So the best thing on Ragga Ragga Ragga 05 is a midtempo sea-shanty? Yup. Quiet majesty doesn't tear up the floor, but that's alright - think of it as the congenial, harpsichord-flecked alternative to the violent electro spazzness of Bionic Ras (BTW, if all you've heard of that one is "Spring Break", you should head to Breaking Ranks and cop Gabriel's "Lock Off Anthem", worth it for the choir intro alone).

The Unbearable Whiteness of Cleaning

2005-05-13T17:14:00.000+02:00

Hectic makes you smart! Before you get too excited, read Dale ‘Rick Moody is the worst writer of his generation’ Peck’s excellent slash-up of Star Wars.

Anyway, while the management discuss our electrifying new format, there’s still room for us lowly hacks to spin out a bit of incendiary politix.

A few months ago, I was walking down the Durban waterfront with two similarly complexioned companions (I’m guessing my white-maleness is less than entirely concealed in these posts). A blonde surfer dude stopped us and, with conspiratorial nod and no attempt to his hide his distaste, asked if the beaches we had past were ‘all black’. Now I’m not sure how much this says about the guy’s character as a person – growing up in this country does some funny things to you. But I resented the easy assumption that we were on the same side, that we were in this thing together (whatever thing he had constructed in his head. The Durban beachfront has evolved – depending who you talk to - into a vibrant family paradise, a black wasteland, or something in between). The political manipulation of identity has a rich and varied history in South Africa. So perhaps I was offended by the sheer prosaicness of the comments, the numbingly suburban alliance of white people getting together to share their panic and indignation at the black folk. (No, I was offended because the guy was a stupid fuck.)

But things are changing. Not too long ago I noticed in one of those multi-page glossy ads those big stores use to clog up our print media (this one was for, I think, Makro or Game) models wearing the latest in that quintessential South African fashion piece, the maid’s uniform. (Is there any other outfit that so explicitly designates the wearer’s social position? But I’m getting ahead of myself). Something was different though: one of the models was a white woman (a white man may have transgressed people’s sensibilities just a little too much). Never mind that this was a glib gesture of social responsibility by cynical ad people (I’m just bitter because they won’t give me money), this profound little moment in SA cultural history should not have passed unnoticed.

But why should this image be so arresting? A lot has changed over the last ten years. The distribution of wealth is shifting (markedly, if painfully slowly). The trappings of upward mobility attach themselves to all sections of the population. The demotion of the formerly privileged (the perceived flipside of promoting the ‘previously disadvantaged’) is similarly an unremarkable, if not a necessary, phenomenon.

Look closer at the composition of the outfit. Two features stand out. First – at least in the caricature of the popular imagination (a la Madam & Eve), complete with oversized apron, full-length domestic overall and headscarf –is the effect of exaggerated utility. What the hell are domestic workers made to do? (Vacuuming at nine, dusting with active uranium at ten…) The point is that the outfits are clearly and specifically for work. There is no risk that the wearer be mistaken for an ordinary member of the household. (You have to be careful when you take these people into your home, you know.) The wearer is marked out as employee, there to serve. She may spend her time in your home, probably she lives there (sort of), but she at least bears the insignia of service. Maybe that will halt her assimilation into the home. And the uniform is not neutral. The wearer is not broadly placed as some provider of service, a commissioned broker of goods. She is not your doctor or your lawyer. See the apron, the prominent feather duster: she carries the ignoble gear of manual labour; she cleans my oven and dusts my shelves. Strilli Oppenheimer is teaching her gardeners tai chi, but she might do better to give them pin-stripe suits.

The uniform is loaded with another significance. The white lady seemed out of place because we are unused to seeing white people in marginal employment. But let’s not exaggerate this claim. As noted, the economy is changing, and it is a dubious facility to be alarmed or especially surprised at the sight of a white beggar or a black person driving a Mercedes. (With reference, of course, to race. Perhaps you are alarmed at the sight of anyone performing either of these activities.) And there never was anything specifically unusual about the sight of anyone brandishing items of genuine utility. Looking at images of a white guy wearing hardhat/welding goggles/surgical gloves is unlikely to produce any great astonishment. Neither is a more affected uniform certain to be notable. An image of a white woman in a French Maid’s outfit may be provocative, but not for reasons considered here. Rather, the South African maids outfit denotes, or is that is too strong a quality, is closely associated with, ‘Africanicity’ or simply with Africans. For the sake of this post, I had hoped for an easy correlation – long overall denotes Venda blanket, doek in imitation of Xhosa headdress – but this seems unlikely. In fact, I’m unconvinced that there is any obvious connection. But there does seem something intentionally agricultural, perhaps ‘primitive’, in the get up. As if the maid has been plucked from a tribal village, her dress pleasantly civilized, and given respectable employment in a respectable home. Perhaps this is a little excessive. But it is undeniable that to most people (of all races) the maid’s uniform is something naturally associated with Africans (read: with black people). In fact, my notion that there might be some hidden link between ethnic and domestic dress might derive from little more than this deeply ingrained association. Perhaps the outfit is not modelled on the traditional but, like in the eighties burning tyre was to flaming spear, has been acculturated into the indigenous. (Traditional African artefacts: beads, Moropa, Omo.)

One of Apartheid’s more despicable achievements was the distortion of identity. Note that the effect of the maid’s outfit was not merely to mark out the black person as submissive, but also to mark out the submissive person as black. It’s unlikely there was a conscious effort to create the image of African woman fulfilling her traditional duty through cleaning Madam’s house. But this is what inevitably emerged from a culture in which the link between servitude and race was constantly emphasised. Or rather, poverty and servitude were artfully pushed out of the picture. Your role, your social function, was not simply affected by your race – it was overwhelmed by racial considerations to the point where other considerations of self were clouded over. If you were black and exploited, you fought for the liberation of black people. A white drudge with an abusive boss lobbied for more unity within the volk. Apartheid’s supreme accomplishment was to blur the natural divisions of class, replacing them the fault lines of race.

It is a shame to see the present government exploiting these false alliances. Because of our history, the vocabulary of race is legitimate and indispensable. Reforming distortions of the kind that exist here requires clear reference to the racial composition of society, and remedial action based on these terms of reference. And it is necessary to identify and categorise individuals in terms of race if the previous travesties of category are to be corrected (i.e. racial distinction is, in terms of the corrective action we must take, at least as real as it was previously made to be). Affirmative action is not only defensible, it is vital. At the face of it then, ‘Black Empowerment’ seems like a noble and legitimate gesture. But it is a sham. Government’s much-vaunted ‘sound macroeconomic principles’ are well and good if you happen to be a sound microeconomic individual. If, like the majority of the population, you live in poverty and squalor, these principles are small comfort. Why should a person in these circumstances support the government? Because he is black, and the government is empowering black people. The BEE debate is often distorted by jealousy or bitterness (not to mention those relics incredulous at the thought of a financially astute African). As individuals, are the new billionaires deserving of their cash? It’s not a bad question. Certainly no reasonable observer would argue that Sexwale, Ramaphosa or Macozoma are – by the standards of liberal economic orthodoxy – unworthy of their achievements. These are some of the sharpest, most capable, most charismatic leaders, who have used their acumen and connections to stunning effect. That is what the finest business people do. But of course we must be constantly vigilant, with the multitude of new entrepreneurs and various openings for corruption and incompetence. My purpose in this statement of the obvious is to demonstrate how easily details can bog us down, and distract us from questions of principle. If there are white billionaires, then there damn well better be black billionaires. But do we want any billionaires?

That last question is one we ought to be asking more often. But I will leave it open. My central point is related to, but not about, economics. In emphasising its economic actions in terms of ‘blackness’, the government is obfuscating natural class divisions. ‘Black Economic Empowerment’ is a sham not because its actions are illegitimate or that it empowers the wrong people. Within a certain theoretical frame of reference it does all these things – in principle – very well. But it distorts this reference. Government wants you to think that if you are jobless and starving and without access to lifesaving drugs you are being taken care of. There is an aggressive policy of black empowerment, thus, states the equation in its most basic form, you are being empowered because you are black. This is a lie. Because principally – in terms of civic action, in terms of real life relevance, in terms of life and death – you are no longer black, you are poor. And the poor are being screwed. It’s time for the working and unemployed classes to assert their identity. It’s time to refuse to be spoken for under the mantle of ‘blackness’. It’s time to demand the empowerment of the poor.

The revolution is coming. We’re here to give it a hot soundtrack.

Signal Processing

2005-05-13T17:06:00.000+02:00

D Double E - D Double Signal

Best speech impediment rapper... ever? Who else is even in the running? I mean AZ's slight slur is hardly his selling point, but that lisp is the crucial bit of noise in the D Double sig-uh-nal. D EE doesn't do much here lyrically but boast about originality, and since he doesn't have to try any harder for it to sound terrific, it makes the point rather clearly. If you insist on close-listening, it does turn out that there are "Newham" rhyme possibilites yet unexplored (through 'im/knew 'em/re-do 'em), but really if there's a lyrical conceit here I like it's the treatment of flow as miraculous, society-improving discovery, with all the surrounding comic book-backpage acme wonderwords - the new creation across the nation. Putting aside the lyricals, the track's built on all kind of churning, growling, industrial (like, as in the sounds heavy machines make and stuff) fx, with and the occasional thing going backwards and tick-tock hi-hats keeping time, but it's those hard, hard drums that lift it above a Def Jux-esque muddle.

Come to Daddy Yankee

2005-05-12T13:10:00.000+02:00

Tofu Hut's epic blogroll has us sorted under "hip-hop and reggae-ton" (though I'd like to think we're a little more eclHectic), which is rather prescient considering I've been wanting to post our first reggaeton entry for a while now:

Daddy Yankee - Machette

I promise I didn't reverse-engineer this from the post heading pun, (I'm already worried enough that what we've got here is just thinly-veiled "Timbaland sounds like Mouse on Mars!" lameness) , but Machette's hyperactive toms and vaguely melancholy pitched synths sounds something to me like a thrilling improvement on Aphex Twin's merely uncomfortably twitchy "Analord" acieeed death-spams. The sadness in my headphones might just be a testament to how lazily accustomed I've become to 'electronica' emotionalism (one-finger minor keys over drum beat, check) but if you're the type who forces poignancy onto vocal gunshot emulations (evidently I am), then this is your shit (otherwise you're probably better off with DJ Buddha's "Gasolina" remix).

2005-05-09T19:00:00.000+02:00

johannesburg, enlightened city

Fix Up, Look Sharper

2005-05-09T17:49:00.000+02:00

Okay, so some people (like that nice Mr. Rupture) have noticed that Hectic's mix of pointed (occasionally weighty!) local social commentary and zippy (occasionally glib!) international-pop blurbs is perhaps a little uneasy. We at Hectic have heard your cries, and we're working towards some kind of integrated format. For today though, you'll have to make do with the latter.

The Mitchell Brothers - Harvey Nicks (Feat. Mike Skinner and Sway)

Well, okay, I'll give this unified material thing a go anyway - at a stretch, "Harvey Nicks" is sort of about racial profiling and the invasiveness of security culture. But what it's more about is remembering (in the age of the gangsta monodrawl) how funny rap can be, sometimes in the knowing lousiness of its execution - a phrase turned around in just the right way, an awkwardly stressed syllable, an adopted accent - the attention to detail that a "Grand Don't Come for Free" mostly used instead to portray a kind of wearied exhaustion and mild paranoia. So yeah, Tony and Teddy Mitchell are the first signees to Mike Skinner's label, "The Beats" (the name of which makes this obvious pun fan very happy), and what we've heard from them thus far sounds a lot like... The Streets. At their (his?) noveltiest. I didn't much go for "Routine Check", maybe it's the prickliness of this that gets my attention: trapped-wasp buzz, EVIL SYNTH (my fave) (in fact, look out for a Hectic Special dedicated to the topic sometime in the future) and airy handclaps. But what goes on top of that is what has me rewinding (and re-smiling) again and again: that whole extended overall riff ("Overall, All over, overalls don't work"), Sway (who I didn't think much of at all until this, which turns out to be a really good vehicle for his corniness - "Even when I'm just tryin' it on, they think I'm tryin' it on"), and even Skinner's mini-rant at the end - "I'm all about Selfridges man, Selfridges".

FUCK THE POLICE

2005-05-07T19:54:00.000+02:00

[Don’t panic because you see words. More music to follow. Just ignore this post and look for those nice little links to the tunes.]

… is still not something that any reasonable South African could say. To be a cop in SA is still among the most thankless, difficult and dangerous jobs there are. Just today, the Saturday Star - in a new low even for that dirty rag – printed on its front page a photograph of the hysterically distressed 23-year-old widow of Constable Johan Slabbert – the latest of the many police murdered in the line of duty – standing by her dead husband’s coffin. To the editors and management of the Saturday Star: Fuck you. That picture is not for public consumption – when did private grief become a public commodity? Have the public grown weary of national crises, of the suffering masses? Would you have put a story about yet another murdered policeman on your front page if not for the striking, chilling, sensational photograph with which to accompany it? Aids orphans not pulling in readers anymore? And what business does a junk tabloid – for long will you pretend still to be a real newspaper? – have in dealing with real human issues. Fuck you. Print all the shallow, lurid, sensational trash you want - but realise you have lost the privilege of declaring any moral position, of possessing any moral role or status. If Independent Newspapers feels it good for business to run a tabloid, they’re probably right. (A reality the daily Star is every day less abashedly embracing.) But to peddle shock, moral indignation (of the most reactive, unthinking kind), and sordid speculation as serious news and analysis is unforgivable.

After that diatribe, what I was going to say next – the reason I began this post in the first place – feels at some level petty and improper. But I do think it is important and valid, so I’ll go ahead. But I will try to constrain my tone.

Not long ago the Hectic Kru were pulled over by Jozi’s finest. Cars and bodies were searched. Admittedly, we were acting a little shifty, and it was not unreasonable to think we might be up to some form of no good. The cops were extremely professional and courteous. But when I asked whether I could refuse the search, I was told that this is not a right that I have. Apparently section something or other of some act (how is it that we know nothing about these things? Is it just our ignorance? Do the authorities have some obligation to keep us informed? Is this information easy to get hold of?) gives the police the right to search civilians without consent, even if there is no reasonable evidence of a crime committed or intended. If this is correct, that is disturbing. If it is not, it is disturbing that the police feel confident to make the assertion. The fact is, in the majority of cases you are powerless to prevent a police search of your personal property.

Most local readers will be familiar with the spate of police raids over the last few months of clubs and bars. Again, the cops file in and search through your stuff. I always assumed that you were entitled to refuse a personal search. When I asked (yeah, I should probably learn to keep my mouth shut) I was told by a senior-looking officer that as they had a warrant for the premises, the police were allowed to forcibly search through my pockets and personal effects. Could this possibly be true? I doubt it – perhaps some vintage statutes make these kinds of allowances, but surely it’s unconstitutional and shit. (dang, why didn’t I study law?) But if it is, the implications are outrageous: by entering a public venue, you are incriminated, or become an object of legally mandated suspicion. Privately choosing to enter a public space is sufficient provision of probable cause to make permissible a violation of your individual privacy. If this is not in fact the case – and I pray that it isn’t – then the police are consistently and flagrantly abusing their power and misinforming the public.

On the one hand we have Metro Cops straightforwardly asking for bribes. No more hinting, no euphemisms about ‘spot fines’ – just plain, shameless demands for money. On the other hand, we have the national police with their tough new professional take-no-prisoners attitude. (I tried to buy a couple of quarts the other night from my local Louis Botha tavern. The doorman wouldn’t let me take them out because of the new crackdown on these kinds of bylaws. In the end, I was forced to bribe him with Black Labels.) On the genuinely – traumatically - mean streets of Jozi, we were at least assured of the absence of petty-minded authority and harassment (in the privileged environs of the suburbs, anyway. more on that next post). Given the genuine mandate to get serious on crime, and the assurance of overwhelming public support for just about any venture in that direction, the government has exercised remarkable, and commendable, restraint in the deployment of it’s security apparatus. The government has chosen not to impose upon civil liberties excessively – despite how this would bolster authority and control, and despite the fact that there is enormous scope to spew all manner of apparent validation. The government is frequently criticised for being defensive about crime figures. What is overlooked is how they are refusing to incite panic, to play up to our fears, and use this to legitimise an entrenchment of centralised authority and reduced personal liberties.

Now I’ve got to admit that a bit of ‘broken windows’ style policing isn’t the worst thing that could happen to Joburg. Not only is crime no joke, it’s starkly, deathly serious. And this is why there is the suspicion of pettiness, the apparent taint of selfish privilege (‘why can’t I just smoke my joint in peace? Go find some real criminals. I pay your salaries’), when we start to query the methods of criminal prevention. (And if they get serious about enforcing intellectual property legislation, well we’re pretty fucked then, aren’t we…). But we really ought to ask some hard questions before we dumbly accept the Giulianification of our city. Firstly, is this effective? Will lives be saved, will society be improved, by the restriction of our personal and public freedoms. If so, is it worth the price? Perhaps. But let us be very clear what is at stake. For example, they’ve now toughened up on enforcing drug legislation. If they catch you with a bag of weed, or a gram of coke, you spend the night in jail. If this happens at night, you’re pretty fucked. You have to see a magistrate or go through some kind of official process (Ah blogs! No editor, no research, no rigour) before they let you out. Is this really the kind of society we wish to live in? Is it going to reduce violence (in this country more about social dislocation than poverty) to criminalise stupid kids? Do we want and deserve a society of overreaching authority, reduced personal expression, institutionalised fear, official panic and sanctioned state suspicion? Are we going to accept this silently?

And thank you, sincerely, to the thousands of underpaid, overworked policemen and women who daily risk their lives (non-SA readers may not appreciate the terrible truthfulness of that seemingly overworked phrase. Local cops routinely find themselves under fire in the line of duty. It is a horrific, unspeakably hazardous, unbearably demanding vocation) on our behalf.

Milk, Shake

2005-05-06T13:57:00.000+02:00

Ghostface feat. Trife - Milk 'Em

I didn't expect the next in the Grindin heritage to come from Ghostface - after hearing about that planned MF Doom collab, I thought he'd committed himself to those full, rich soul beats that he always sounded best on anyway. Not that this is anywhere as lean or sharp as a Trackmasters joint, and it's still weird enough to bear the faint mark of the Wu - the interpolation of "You Are My Sunshine" is kinda inexplicable (and thank goodness Ghost didn't sing it himself) - but when Pretty Toney's lone club track (Tush) didn't get synths, this is at least a mild shock.

And since it's been a lean week, here's some post-Kanye chipmunk vocal booty bounce from Fannypack - one of my favourite singles of the year, and if you're too real to fuck with this, it's your loss.

Fannypack - You Gotta Know

Murk Ethic

2005-05-03T23:18:00.000+02:00

Lady Fury - Shystie Diss

Shystie (ft. Lady Fury's Mum) - Murderation

I had on the original version of "One Wish" the other day, listening to the verse that apologizes to the victims of gun violence and the chorus that claims that you can't possibly understand it if you don't live it, and pondering the complicated relationship between empathy and excuse, alienation and atonement. Then I heard this "Murderation" diss record, which is so grossly, uncompromisingly, devastatingly (and, yeah, satisfyingly) mean that I forgot about all that. It's the first time in a loooong time that a song has made me feel dirty and uncomfortable (the already-infamous Ying Yang "Whisper" song is just kind of bluntly ugly in comparison, sub-human females wallowing in sub-bass, as ultimately outrageous as The Man Show ). The Fury first-strike is almost playground mean, while Shystie's is straight abject (in that theory-ish Lacan/Kristeva/look-I'm-smart sense) - stained knickers, discharge, used tampons: REAL unmentionables. The gut-churningness is in the details: besides the specificity of the family slander (and the authenticity of the phone message), it's the hallucinogenic realism of the Sidewinder flashback that perhaps cuts deepest. On a completely tangential note, it's a pity we've lost Shystie to the UKHH contingent, though we'll always have the remixes (anyone have the Davinche'd-up "Make it Easy" btw?). And anyway, as far as this one goes, I don't think we've a grime tune as straight purposeful as "Lean Back".

Here Come the Grimey Limeys

2005-04-29T18:32:00.000+02:00

Flirta D (Ft. other people) - This is Grimey

You can generally tell that a genre's established when the comedy records start coming in, but in some ways grime had its pisstakes before it got screwface serious - no-one's very interested in claiming Pitman as an innovator (I'm not even interested enough to listen to anything he's done), but sideline The Streets in your garage rap history and I think it's harder to tell how Flirta D can spit straight gibberish and get props (call me on my underthinking here in comments).

Anyway this is still quite far from being parody, essentially because Flirta manages to flow crazy while keeping his tongue in his cheek - he's as technically impressive and utterly compulsive here as Slim Shady on those early effortless laugh-a-second tracks (think "As the World Turns")(don't think of the can't-be-bothered unfunniness of "My First Single"). For my money, Flirta D's having more fun with flow now than just about anyone in any rap game (who else? Devin the Dude?). As a marijuana anthem (sort of), Grimey's inevitably slower (please pretend you don't know about Sticky's "More Weed") than your average grime track, and it's got that typically clean, thick, uncluttered rap production treatment (plus cartoon chorus - Please rewind me!) that every jokey track gets. So maybe not very grimey at all, minus the flows, but whatever - if you figure out how I can live life without wanting to hear this every 4 minutes then keep it to yourself.

Statik - All Star Producers

Don't know your Davinche from your Skepta? Simply consult Statik's "All Star Producers", a who's who audio sampler of all the big names in garage rap production. Readers: if that Youngstar bit that sounds like the "Where's Your Head At" breakdown actually exists as a full-length instrumental (or, even better, has a vocal!), run (don't walk) to the comments box.

I Still Mean What I Mean

2005-04-27T21:16:00.000+02:00

The Streets - Streets Score (Vocal Mix)

If you're looking for self-deprecation in your rap you're either on some fringe-y Sage Francis or Atmosphere tip, listening to Kanye figure out if he can assume the figure of progressive community-leading role model with Gucci flip-flops on or waiting for those 30 seconds in "You're Not Me" when the Clipse realize they're as morally toxic as the shit they push. The comfort music soundtrack to your insecurity complex is likelier located in some Death Cab for Cutie album.

Now Mike Skinner never made any excessive claims to realness, but that doesn't make "I'm a fake" any less of a striking way to begin a verse. I don't think it's excessive to cast this pretty, musically understated self-diss (a Pirate Material-era b-side btw) as brave from a guy whose marketing gimmick consists of characterizing himself as the everylad (Maxim doesn't like losers either, remember). Over a spare drum pattern and strings that move slower and gentler than the ones in "Turn the Page", Mike assures us that he's "not the genuine article", just the lead in the Logic Audio-generated movie in his head. The detail-obsessed confessional mode is the default Streets schtick, but this is the sound of the inbetween to the inbetween - a touchingly honest (or honest-sounding, and if there's a difference then that's what this song's about) surrender of hype.

Torn to Make You Happy

2005-04-26T17:25:00.000+02:00

Britney Spears - Breathe on Me (James Holden Vocal Mix)

Really this is the sexiest that Brit's ever sounded, and she's totally unrecognizable: that froggy voice atomized into a bazillion glistening breathy pixel-shards, all swept above and beyond by a propulsive jetstream of backwards-run riffs and ecstatic bleeps and the rest of those 'nanotrance' (I hear that's what we're calling stuff like this now) devices that make 'ethereal' the Border Community house-style.

Skeptics Say the Flow's Too Hectic

2005-04-25T17:32:00.000+02:00

Lethal B - Ugly Riddim (feat. Dream)

Tabla 'n Sitar's last 'urban music' stand ('sides Med's "Get Back" and... er.. Rich Boy's "Get Down"... hmmm what was my point again)? Forgetting orientalism for a moment, as a dance-music latecomer I'm in favour of more gated vocals and beat-stutter everywhere (NORE's "Nothin" still kicks, btw). This being a Lethal Bizzle production I could stand things a little less finessed and more y'know UGLY but oh well. Remembering the orientalism again, it lets lines like "got rap after rap goin' around my head/feels like I'm wearin' a turban" crossover from dodgy to pretty hot. (Sorry (?) for the pun-less post title, but I'm in the midst of compiling a list of rap etc. songs wherein the word 'hectic' appears.)

Stepping Out

2005-04-22T17:14:00.000+02:00

As a bunch of you'll know, Blogger's been behaving in a less-than-great manner recently, so no content yesterday. It was gonna be a 'Why Am I an MP3 Blogger" soul-searcher of post (one that I've decided to postpone), so consider yourself spared.

Sweet Female Attitude - Flowers

Before Three of a Kind's "Babycakes" (which the blogosphere's oldskool garage-hedz [Spizz's Rob Dem excepted, I believe] puzzlingly didn't find all that terrific), "Flowers" was the Hallmark of sickeningly sweet 2step. It's guaranteed to either put a spring in your step or make you regret every action that has led to your current condition of crippling loneliness.

MJ Cole feat. Elephant Man - Zoom Zoom

Too impossibly bouncy to frame as the yang to Flowers yin, but the cool reverso synth-harpsicord and spooky synth washes (think I stole that description straight off Harvell) make this a slightly darker, slinkier affair. My question to you: was this the lone raggarage crossover track? (Another question: since this doesn't really count as raggarage, was there *ever* a raggarage track?) (Yet more: How annoying is it that I'm this proud of having coined "raggarage"?)

Lovers' Spatula

2005-04-20T16:50:00.000+02:00

Joakim - Come into my Kitchen (Basement Dub mix)

Joakim tracks have this way of sounding as ashamed as they are assured - the vocals quiveringly confessing some dirty secret (being into food sex, for instance) while the beat makes sure you're still willing. I always thought there was something quietly obscene about Teenage Kiss's awkward electro-flailings, and this is similarly ickily irresistible.

Elsewhere...

2005-04-19T20:08:00.000+02:00

Just because we don't have broadband access today doesn't mean we're gonna leave you empty handed. Well, we kinda are, but we'll at least point you in the direction of some things we hope you'll like. Go to The Rub and cop Mark Ronson's "Bombs Over Scotland" bootleg - probably my favourite mashup of the last 2 years. It sounds like a bad idea, sure, but riding a straightup guitar riff hasn't sounded this good since, well, "Stroke of Genius" (much like new-rawk hasn't sounded as catchy as "Take Me Out" since "Hard to Explain"?) and, minus 2 seconds of semi-ugly timestretching, the "Roses" switchup is seamless-as-fuck. In the last 5 seconds Ronson even squeezes in that other indie-disco surefire, the Kidz Bop cover of "Float On"! Oh, just for the record: once I've played this at a party I don't really want to hear "Take Me Out" ever again.

The 2step garridge sunshine and butterflies post is probably still on the way, but Duncan Powell makes it somewhat irrelevant with his downloadable March mix. The opening track in particular, "Something Wrong", is essential, and out-Edwards's anything I've heard from Todd's recent output (that is, if you still associate Edwards's name with immaculately layered vocal cutup joy and not rhythmic unchangeability).

(P.S. The first set of MP3s expired today - but before I put lines across their names I thought that, in this introductory 2 week Hectic changeover period, I'd let you request any or all of 'em to be re-upped. If this is the case, lemme know in comments.)

Take a Little Journey

2005-04-18T17:11:00.000+02:00

Isolee - Schrapnell

Pedal-steeled, southern-fried... microtech? Not only does it 'work', it's the most magically transporting sound I've heard this year - driving music for the warm summer night of the soul. I was gonna do a Perpetua-esque spec 'video treatment', but it got more than a little corny - let's just say there were milkshakes, open roads and girls. Burton/Lynch/Solonz take note: If I ever get a biopic, I want this as my 'perfect day' theme.

Grime after Time

2005-04-15T18:41:00.000+02:00

I was gonna have a fluffy 2step weekend-christening post, but I didn't get a chance to bring the mp3s I hoped to post. And I'm still practically monosyllabic. Enough excuses, more garage-rap:

Kano - Boys Love Girls

It occurred to me that 1) some recent Kano converts might actually not have heard this and 2) it's still his best flow thus far. I liked it better when he had to tell us that had feelings, instead of showing 'em (ie. "Brown Eyes").

Durrty Goodz - Hold Me Down

After the undeniable (feel free to deny it in comments) hotness that is "Reload" (which was quite cleverly junglistic I thought, managing the trick of sounding like 150bpm when it wasn't anything near!) I'm really looking forward to hearing the beat Diplo's apparently done for Durrty Goodz, who can't really be made to sound bad over anything, but needs to be hooked up with some fake-dancehall ala "Diplo Riddim". Heres some stuff from when he was still Doogz, you need it. Plus "shenanigans" really needs to be reincarnated as rap slang. And look out for 1:52 to 2:00.

(fuck, I can't believe I wasted my one allotted grime pun on that shitty post title)

Tired of Being Tired

2005-04-14T14:14:00.000+02:00

I've had 4 hours sleep in 2 days so commentary's at a new minimum, but here's a thing or two (old and new) to bang anyway:

Ruff Sqwad - Pied Piper (Tinchy Stryder Vocal)

You made it through screaming 6yr olds when you were blasting Favela, you can deal with an extended Tinchy verse. It's the beat you're listening for anyway - when it hits, it's like a subterranean explosion, dynamite in a mineshaft.

Lady Sovereign - Broom/Last Saturday

More irresponsible kidsplay on another overtly silly new Sov track - if not the best grimey-ish-esque (I'm playing it safe 'cause I really don't feel like having that argument) cautionary drinking tale since "Too Much Brandy", then it's certainly the other one.

Hanging onto Emptiness

2005-04-13T18:16:00.000+02:00

It's a busy day, but I don't wanna lose the momentum, so we'll see how far I get with this. As committed to the new as we are at Hectic, we don't want you getting avant-complacent, so today I'm taking it back all the way to 2003 with two possibly overlooked joints I rediscovered while harddrive reorganizing (remember when it seemed music couldn't get any less romantic than CD filing?)

Redman - I See Dead People

"Dead People" is a slightly weird variation on the typical Eminem goth beat - no emo chord progressions, just constant drum shuffle accented by pizzicato strings on every beat. But what I really love here, 'sides Redman - who, on medium form, is still pretty great - is just how disembodied the samples sound - curt, clipped broadcasts snatched from the ether. And I can never quite anticipate the jolt I get when Big L answers Reggie's I don't die with I was born dead: the ultimate tragic punchline from the worlds best lost punchline MC.

Scarface feat. Nas - In Between Us

This is, well, perfect. Those out-of-phase mournful sighs, the descending guitar figure, the delayed strings, the tinkly minor keys, thick handclap beat, so faultlessly arranged the lot of them, one of the best Nas guest verses ever - I mean, I was thirteen, I was nursing/ a knot in my face/ but chose another time and a place, that wearied, exhausted lament of a chorus, 'Face's voice... just.. yeah.

Okay, okay, some fresh stuff, but only cause it fits with today's emo-rap them and it's killing me right now -

Beanie Sigel - Feel it in the Air (feat. Melissa)

An empty, airy gray wash, the moment of calm when you're forced to accept the things you can't change, that silvery lite-jazz sax too genuinely affecting to be a parody of comfort music.

Three to the Floor

2005-04-12T19:01:00.000+02:00

Okay, before we get the proceedings proceeding, an open letter to my (recently silent) partner Kaiser (and all like-minded individuals), who for the most part doesn't 'get' Jaques Lu Cont, and actively dislikes his "Mr. Brightside" remix: go read this, and adjust your opinions accordingly.

2004 was a house year to remember - micro went macro, electro went pop, and we got a couple of tracks that I've no reservations (grammar notwithstanding) about calling my two favouritest dance things ever: the fucking epic distorto-riff dreamhouse Superpitcher remix of the MFA's "The Difference it Makes", and Rex the Dog's microedited, synth-spangled reworking of The Knife's "Heartbeats".

2005's shaping up to be even better. Some recent faves:

Kiki - So Easy To Forget (Ada Remix)

The dependably gorgeous queen of sparkle-house (geddit?) once again delivers with this remix. "Forget" reminds me of what was probably the best track on Triple R's 2003 mix "Friends", Oxtongue's "Delight" - similar reverby, vocodered-vocal, similar ambient swells, similarly swoonsome. It's the details that do it: that one errant blip amongst the bleeps, that ornate little (semi-orientalist?) melody... well, okay, it's everything else that does it too: when the handclaps and keyboard wash come back in after the dropout, it's like woah.

Einmusick - Jittery Heritage (Short Mix)

"Jittery Heritage" is a great title, and boy oh boy, it is not wasted on this one: the shivery thrills come in the form of lightning-flash string(?) streaks, but otherwise there's nary a nervous waver - when that riff arrives, consider your dancing-ass owned. I don't how how or why the heck there's a "short" edit of this, and though I kind of have to appreciate all my house jollies being compressed into pop song length, I really want the tension-and-release build up to begin as this fades out. If you find the "Doesn't Fucking End" mix, please let me know.

The Mogs - Kelly Blame (Ph 606 Version)

The tag tells me this is from 2004, but whatever - it's part of *my* 05, and it should be part of yours. The french femme vocals don't disappoint, but the secret star of this intoxicating story is that filtered-as-fuck wah wah guitar - if I had no problems with the simile, I'd compare it to some unfortunate duck's last semi-submerged quack. Oh, and you might like the synths too, they're Rex-worthy.

..and some antiseptic, this could get HECTIC!

2005-04-11T19:14:00.000+02:00

The Hectic Kru have been roused from our month-long slumber by the passing of a bandwagon that just begged to be jumped on - yes, Hectic is now an Motion Picture Entertainment Group Audio Layer 3 (MP3) blog, bringing you just the kind of incredibly hot musical freshness you haven't come to associate with the Hectic name!

To begin: we're in the process of organizing S.A's first (to my knowledge) Grime party ting, so I thought I'd share some of the best of the recent selection of sublow, eski, 8bar, whatchoocallit:

Low Deep - Str8 Flush (Vocal Mix)

Pitched-up vocal snippets as indebted to ye olde UK ardkore continuum as they are to Kanye's chipmunk soul over synthbaroque piano and violin figures, "Str8 Flush" is a great addition to the growing crop of manicured-yet-heavy filigrime, the likes of which you probably first heard in Imp Batch's "Gype" riddim - and that goes double for the almost impossibly delicate b-side "Catz".

Dream - Get it Done

Like Roll Deep's "Let it Out", clean sharp, piano-hooked grime tempered with razor-tipped synths, but this time with an actually hummable chorus! Pretty great MCing too, could stand to be a little less polite perhaps, but the best hungry doubletime entrance I've heard in a while. And how could confectionary fans such as ourselves (you've clicked on Just Glaze, right?) not love the cookie verse: Don't get it twisted/You missed it when man was living off biscuits/ Jacob's Cream Crackers and.. RITZ.

Jammer - Murcul Man Outburst

Man, grime has got this 'fun words to say' stuff on lock - have you tried saying "MURCKLE!!" or "NEKKLE!! out loud"? Tried transcribing the Flirta D verse from FWD 2? Anyway, "outburst" says it all really - Jammer busts "Fire Hydrant" wide open, showering us in the spray of stray syllables.

BONUS track: now this is the kind of bastard pop I can get with: ~~Pitbull over Dizzee's "Trapped"~~

Schöne Katzetöne

2005-03-06T17:39:00.000+02:00

Garfield by way of Cologne: it's the Kompakt Kittens! aka. The Best Thing on the Internet So Far. Instructions: Get C and B grooving against each other, throw in an N, press 8, and leave it on until you die.

FREEDOM COOKIES

2005-02-21T17:32:00.000+02:00

"People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.”
-Milan Kundera

In anticipation of the forthcoming Zoo Biscuit series, we present a brief overview of some of the ideas connected to the Zoo Biscuit:

“Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach?” So Socrates – after a characteristically concise and nimble bit of reasoning – demands of Glaucon.

In book 10 of the Republic, Plato disparages the artist for producing work that is mere imitation of the real, and thus removed from truth. Artistic representation, moreover, is of objects ‘in nature’ – themselves copies of the real – and is thus even further removed from truth [read book 10 if only for a great argument never to make your bed].

Plato doesn’t pull any punches. “Here is another point”, Socrates continues, “The imitator or maker of the image knows nothing of true existence; he knows appearances only. Am I not right?”

Surely he is not right. The artist, we have come to understand, does more than simply reflect - his serves up more than an unthinking, unfeeling mimesis – the artist creates, he expresses, he interprets, he critiques, he reveals, he uncovers.

Art is useful. It fulfils a need, it guides us forward, it helps us understand the world and ourselves. It can make us better, can improve the world.

So what compelled Auden to write “that all the verse I wrote, all the positions I took in the thirties, did not save a single Jew. Those attitudes, those writings, only help oneself”? Arthur Danto looks at this, and other such empirical claims – “Did the Beatles cause or only prefigure the political perturbations of the sixties” – pointing out that “even works intended to prick the consciousness to political concern have tended by and large to provoke at best an admiration for themselves and a moral self-admiration for those who admired them.” [Read ‘The Disenfranchisement of Art’ for the bits on ‘Guernica’. Seriously, do this. In fact, do yourself a favour and read the whole of The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art.]

This is a historical point, and open to historical critique. But what is the peculiar historical direction that has framed the question as such? What are the cultural markers that have so positioned our critical terms of reference?

I’m not sure how many buy the classical argument against art, who see it as essentially contrary to – or at least a downward transmutation of – truth, but we certainly hear an echo of it in the manifold queries as to the value, the use, that art offers. Art, if not removed from truth, reality or whatever, at least need take a back seat to the ‘real world’. The more socially or politically sensitive producers of art must feel some of the weight of these challenges, insisting anxiously on the function, the meaning, the relevance of art – how it uplifts persons, communities, countries, the whole world. The more imperturbable are perhaps emboldened by the challenge – positioning their work against accepted normative models, challenging the institutional status quo, revelling in avant-gardeness. This requires, of course, a careful (if the work is any good, anyway) reading of the current social environment, an appreciation and insight into the mechanisms of cultural utilities, and an as careful reordering, deconstruction, or whatever, of these norms. The artist remains no less bound to the currents of social practice than if he were a faithful servant of the establishment. I am reminded of the existentialists’ insistence that a detailed knowledge of your society’s intellectual history was imperative – if only successfully to subvert the chain of received thought, to cut away at the ideologies of value, thus carving out for oneself a life of authenticity. When did an engagement with a given philosophical model become a necessary condition of ontological legitimacy? When did the marker of progress become entrenched at the point just beyond yesterday’s avant-garde?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Social discourse, at its best, transforms and improves. It reveals and clarifies, it motivates action, it sharpens our judgement. But aren’t we talking about art? If, as Arthur Danto suggests, art has outrun itself by transforming into philosophy, it is not without the schizophrenic compulsion – while eschewing the aesthetic for meaning – to be relevant (albeit sometimes by means of standing in direct opposition to the standard terms of relevance) while repudiating any reduction to mere utility. The artist presents himself as a kind of investigative journalist whom one needs a masters degree to understand, whose function may well be not to have any function at all.

Compare this with the Romantic vision. Coleridge in ‘To William Wordsworth’:

O great Bard !
Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,With stedfast eye I viewed thee in the choirOf ever-enduring men. The truly greatHave all one age, and from one visible spaceShed influence ! They, both in power and act,Are permanent, and Time is not with them,Save as it worketh for them, they in it.Nor less a sacred Roll, than those of old,And to be placed, as they, with gradual fameAmong the archives of mankind, thy workMakes audible a linked lay of Truth,Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes !

Beyond time but not outside of it (‘timeless’ and ‘eternal’: something is revealed in the exterior paradox of these synonyms [is there another word for synonym?]: “Time is not with them, Save as it worketh for them, they in it.”) How different this is from the meta-historical imperative to effect a movement. [Not that what these guys were doing wasn’t bold and progressive. Sontag: “The Romantics thought of great art as a species of heroism, a breaking through or going beyond.”]

The image of artist as mystic is notably removed from rarefied musings of the concept-mongers of today. So has art finally evolved into concurrence with Platonic demands?

“Among the archives of mankind, thy work/ Makes audible a linked lay of Truth” The poet is that rare portal to wisdom, a window to immaculate reality. But this aint no book learnin’: “Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay, / Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes!”

Would Plato have made the distinction between mystic as so understood and philosopher? To discern the pure Forms of truth – that is the ultimate purpose of philosophy. Not appearances, not illusion, “but native, her own natural notes!” Plato insisted only pure detached reason could serve up Truth unmediated; the poet gazes in his own being, serves up his soul – but each one wants only to gaze upon truth profound.

One might wonder what Plato would make of contemporary philosophy, what with its system building, professionalism, and specialisation. It’s not difficult to think of the mystic-logician as more closely connected to the mystic-poet than to the theoretician-model maker of the modern philosophy department. And it is an odd feature of our advanced market society that the higher arts should have come to emulate the practices of academic vocationalism.

However, this same market structure acts as the vital substrate - neatly symmetrical with the state above – for the outstanding social artefact of our era. The Iced Zoo Biscuit has emerged as a product of production, mirroring (becoming?) the pre-functional (though hardly non-functional) aesthetic enterprise. Its positioning as consumable as art (as opposed to art as consumable) is not especially subtle, but it is a charming enough opening gambit.

To understand some of the import of the IZB, we need technical clarity. Francis Fukuyama rues the priority of material over intellectual analysis in post-Hegelian thought. “Marx revered the priority of the real and the ideal completely, relegating the entire realm of consciousness … to a ‘superstructure’ that was determined entirely by the prevailing material mode of production. Yet another unfortunate legacy of Marxism is our tendency to retreat into materialists or utilitarian explanations of political or historical phenomena, and our disinclination to believe in the autonomous power of ideas.”

[And who could fail to be haunted by Hegel’s famous question: “Die Wahrheit über Gebäck ist abdecken und sichtlich. Aber Zuckerguß verdrießt mich. Tut Geist erkennen selbst in Zuckerguß , innerhalb Zuckerguß , oder auch hinter? Oder auch ausführen wir benötigen ein phenomenology über Bonbon?”]

The Iced Zoo Biscuit takes both approaches. And neither.

The IZB - akin to Adorno’s “dialectical double reconstruction” (to use Lambert Zuidervaart’s term) – is, on the one hand, a self-conscious (teasingly auto-parodic?) component of the superstructure [and substructure] – a (brazenly) self-proclaiming commodity – it exists for consumption, is marketed to be consumed, exists to be consumed, and enters popular culture as a consumable (and, importantly, is so viewed from within that culture). In one sense, the IZB reads itself as one determined by, and also determining, the material stimulus. On the other hand, there is strictly ideal awareness [and I should be surprised if the similarities to the dialectical tensions in Schneur Zalman’s cosmology are merely coincidental] in which material and utility is subordinate, or of secondary metaphysical priority, to concept. On this reading, the physical ‘placement’ of the IZB is derived from, or at least understood in relation to, the conceptualisation of both the object and the referential markers in which the object’s ‘meaning’ is entered.

Simone Weil writes that “Marxism is the highest spiritual expression of bourgeois society. Through it this society attained to a consciousness of itself, in it to a negation of itself. But this negation in its turn could only be expressed in a form determined by the existing order, in a bourgeois form of thought. So it is that that each formula of Marxist doctrine lays bare the characteristics of bourgeois society, but at the same time justifies them.”

It should be clear that the Iced Zoo Biscuit evades such ensnarement. The IZB is not tied in with any particular identity expression, but it is safe also to claim it as contemporaneous with each and all politically and materially determined class structures. But while reflective consciousness derived from the Iced Zoo Biscuit is – as was carefully stated – from a component embedded in the particular market structure of given material (or at least practical) social division – the IZB as a unit, and as a series, both beyond and vitally tied up with each and none (no one particular) material structure. [I may be straying into dangerous ground, but it seems that the material IZB is necessarily dependent – as I suggested earlier - on at least some minimum conditions of a certain material type.]

Does this consciousness attain to self-negation? The easy answer first: Yes. Ideally situated beyond the material conditions of material-anthropological matrices [with easy access to nearby shops and good local schools…] the conceptual form of the IZB is negatory in both its non-engagement and its transcendental testimony (whose details have yet to be expounded. [But note from the structure that the essential metaphysical aloofness is does not (logically) contain the possibility of separate existence. It is essentially negatory]) on the conditions and operative conventions of the social structures from which it is perceived.

Alternatively, the physical structure of the IZB seems at once complicit with the existing order, and “in a form determined” by it. But this is directly at odds with the content of that structure [as opposed only to the content supervenient upon the structure of the medium]. On even the most superficial semiotic interpretation (though some have tried to deny it) the biscuit as perceived (physically) is breathtakingly subversive. Putting aside for a moment the (self-aware) declamatory meaning of subversion as mode of being for one moment, the semantic claims of the Biscuit (and here we can differentiate between individual instantiations and also the unit categories) contradict its apparent material location. Moreover, the divergences between form qua form and form as understood as positioned in the normative matrices are, crucially, themselves – through the unusual range of modal expression - a corroboration of the IZB’s non-formal semantic assertions. Note how this differentiates it from media generally – even (especially) dissident media - which is inescapably located from inside the superstructure on which it comments.

But is the IZB linguistically rich enough to carry this through? In Of Grammatology, Derrida queries the value of a science of writing “if it is granted…” among other things “that historicity itself is tied to the possibility of writing; to the possibility of writing in general, beyond those particular forms of writing in the name of which we have long spoken of peoples without writing and without history. Before being the object of a history — of an historical science — writing opens the field of history — of historical becoming.” ‘Historie presupposing Geschichte’.

Granting for a moment Mr Derrida’s dubious association between historical notation and historicity, what determines the necessary mode of historiographical registration? The denotative facility of the optical and olfactory indicants are sufficient for an at least rudimentarily systematic chrono-taxonomy. But more than that, the trans-verbal intentionality of the individual IZB as member of its series presents a representative interface beyond what less fluid normalised textual and linguistic principles are able. Notably, the conventions of grammatology virtually are without application in determining the interrelation between instances within the IZB series.

Writing and reading history through the IZB series is – unsurprisingly, given the descriptive range and power, and nuances of modal recognition, as well as its relative unfamiliarity as a mode of discourse – an extremely subtle exercise. Misinterpretation is perilously easy. There is also the danger of deliberate distortion. It may seem absurd with the clarity of hindsight that Verwoerd’s disingenuous analysis of the colour delineation, especially with relation to foreground motif to background icing hue, was ever taken seriously. (Prompting Biko, only half in jest, to comment, “I eat what I like.”) But that some eminent theorists were even partially taken in illustrates how complex the decipherment can be. The less said about Lenin’s ‘Red Cookie’ project, the better.

But what about our physical interaction with the physical Biscuit object? How should we approach the object materially, what should we do with it? Kierkegaard argued that, in abstract, despair is an important merit, and that the possibility for despair is man’s great spiritual advantage. But actually to be in a state of despair is ruinous. This is unusual: “Generally the relation between possibility and actuality is not like this; if the ability to be such is meritorious, then it is an even greater merit to be it. That is to say, in relation to being able to be, being is an ascent.” Might this case be analogously exceptional? The Iced Zoo Biscuit is certainly estimable in terms of its existence being such as to make possible its being eaten; and we are in turn privileged by the establishment of the possibility of so eating. G.E Moore was convinced that “as the Zoo Biscuit is delicious, it must be good that we eat it.” But some latter-day Kierkergaardians insist that actually to eat the IZB is, if not in any way ruinous, a descent in the relation of ability to reality. This is a minority view, but scholars generally insist on some boundaries in the proper actualisation the potential consumption. One should probably not eat too many Biscuits, and certainly not in one sitting (though debate rages as to whether there is a fixed universal quantity, or whether the appropriate number is relative to the individual eater. Does this increase at weddings?). Kant believed that while we could never taste the Biscuit-in-itself, this was amply compensated for by the creamy texture, and clean sweetness of the icing. This was an advancement on Hume, who thought we never tasted the ‘Biscuit’ as such, but only a bundle of sugar, wheatflour, invert syrup, and so on, at a given point in time.

This, of course, presupposes possession or access to a Biscuit object. But Kierkegaard’s point may be more deeply appreciated when we consider the poignancy of the absent Biscuit. “Existence”, says R.D. Laing (in The Politics of Experience), “is a flame which constantly melts and recasts our theories. Existential thinking offers no security, no home for the homeless. It addresses no one except you and me. It finds validation when, across the gulf of our idioms and styles, our mistakes, errings, and perversities, we find in the other’s communication and experience of relationship established, lost, destroyed, or regained. We hope to share the experience of a relationship, but the only honest beginning, or even end, may be to share the experience of its absence.” If philosophy is the ‘anxious anticipation of death’ (Derrida), there is something starkly beautiful about our rare strength to put aside our theories –our formalised intellectual neuroses, those desperate, touching, pathetic grasps at the appalling fathomless of being – and simply exist; accepting our awesome fate (tomorrow we will work on a way out, we will redefine the real. Right now I’m just looking), in wonder, in veneration of the incomprehensible eternity in which, somehow, somehow I don’t know why, we are able to share a cup of tea, a mug of beer. But where are the Zoo Biscuits? There are none. It is only because of the existence of the Biscuit that its absence is felt so touchingly, with such excruciating pathos. I could attempt to explain the absence (Of course there are many plausible theories: perhaps Pick ‘n Pay were out of stock, though this is hardly likely; more probably someone – I’m not mentioning any names – left the shopping list at home), but I will not – I will choose to not. The Biscuit void is the more closely intelligible, gently mournful, almost bearable microcosm of the primal existential void; a void which is created through reciprocal human socialisation, that is accepted collectively, and which, ultimately, through our muted analysis of acceptance, is transformed into a victory of humaneness, a triumph of existence, an infinitesimal existential assertion of endless significance. We are existential refugees, momentarily forsaking transience for liberation. And of course this is an absence that depends on fate – one cannot engineer the event, not with authenticity (and certainly not without great churlishness). This is another of the rare instances where the failed actualisation of the possible, where that possibility is greatly estimable and meritorious, is an ascent in being. Note though, that the actualisation itself is also a great ascent in being. This pattern of being is most unusual – metaphysically unique, in fact.

How does one detect an absence? “Naive falsificationism takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifest and not hidden beneath disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense experience is a better mirror of the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still, one should occasionally put them to a test.” Even if we do not agree with the overall thrust of Against Method, this last point seems exceedingly reasonable. Feyerabend’s challenge – at minimum that we critically appraise our truth-gathering conceptual gadgetry – is one that the thoughtful scientist should embrace enthusiastically. [“Most scientists”, lamented Stephen Jay Gould, “have never read a technical work in the history or philosophy of science; most of my colleagues could not identify a single leader in the field … Tell most scientists about the ‘science wars’ ... and they will stare back at you in utter disbelief.”] [To be fair, try asking your English professor to name the second law of thermodynamics.] [To be really fair, try asking me to do long division.] The absent Zoo Biscuit is a positive vacuum of information, to use a far from adequate term. It has no existence, but is not something that does not exist. From the empirical tabulation methodology of Hans Metterling we can detect, perhaps, the failed realisation its non-actualisation, but this of course presupposes the phenomenon we are seeking. And how satisfactory is a system that can detect a thing only when it fails to transpire. It could never be verified, it could never be falsified. Does this mean the actualised absence (or positive non-actualised potential) of the kind described above cannot rationally be taken to exist? Or do we disregard scientific method – and if so, for what: rhetoric, emotion, intuition? [Note how I have resisted mentioning ‘Lakatos intolerance’.] Feyerabend insists, “If we want to understand nature, if we want to master our physical surroundings, then we must use all ideas, all methods, and not 'just a small selection of them. The assertion, however, that there is no knowledge outside science - extra scientiam nulla salus - is nothing but another and most convenient fairy-tale.” But the Absent Zoo Biscuit Object confers no information, proffers no practical utility – it is simply unadorned knowledge where no system is admitted.

But the ‘breaking away’, the stepping beyond, of the IZB is not a straightforward one. Compare Fanon’s ideas of separation and renewal as he concludes The Wretched of the Earth. “If we want to turn Africa into a new Europe, and America into a new Europe, then let us leave the destiny of our countries to Europeans. They will know how to do it better than the most gifted among us.” If we wish for emulation, let us instead approach the source. Return to the object of our imitation, and extend it to ourselves, extend ourselves to it. “But if we want humanity to advance a step farther, if we want to bring it up to a different level than that which Europe has shown it, then we must invent and we must make discoveries. … it is no good sending them back a reflection, even an ideal reflection, of their society and their thought with which from time to time they feel immeasurably sickened. For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man.”

In a sense, each IZB presents a straightforward instance of replication. But this reveals perhaps the essence of its genius. What does the biscuit depict? Each portrays the image, in white, of a zoo animal against one of three standard colour backgrounds. This is bordered by a serrated tan biscuit pastry. (The more literal minded [especially Joburg] critics refer to this as the ‘barbed wire fence’ around the ‘animal self’.) The white image denotes the particular animals with the barest of representative gimmickry, but is plainly representative nonetheless. Barthes points out also that certain Biscuits present “the additional signified ‘Africanicity’”. (More interesting is when they do not. Why the polar bear? Is this vanilla social realism – an echo of the Johannesburg and Pretoria Zoos? Is it simply ironic? A veiled or private reference?) [Note that this standard description favours a ‘view from the front’ approach. Viewing the Biscuit from the ‘back’ (the term is of course problematic. ‘And I suppose North is on top?’ demand the scholars) is inspiring exciting new research. Some insist that visual analysis of the IZB should never be isolated from the other sensory Biscuit phenomena.]

Why the plainness of the animal representation? One should of course be aware of wilful restraint, and a conscious secession from visual ‘movements’ or stylistic rationale. [Pepe Karmel: “…LeWitt decided to use only white for his new gridded constructions, because black (let alone other colors) seemed too ‘expressionistic.’”] But while the image is only what it is (it signifies beyond itself, but itself contains no meaning or expressive content) it is not so causally inert as might be expected. [Freud: “art is almost always harmless and beneficent, it does not seek to be anything else but an illusion. Save in the case of a few people who are, one might say, obsessed by art, it never dares to make any attacks on the realm of reality.”] Paul Klee held that “the creation of a work of art … must of necessity, as a result of entering into the specific dimensions of pictorial art, be accompanied by distortions of the natural form. For, therein is nature reborn.” But the IZB is representative, but does not distort the form that is represented. Its representation is a representation of suggestion (and not suggestion removed or separate from depiction). Suggestion entails subjective comprehension, but not (necessarily) differently from the unmediated (as far as this goes) apprehension of phenomena. The transformation is external to the image.

Glenn Gould thought the purpose of art “the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” The Iced Zoo Biscuit is an object of cool meditation in itself, and alone of itself. It is only what it is; of one age, not of any age. And what a difference that makes.

Coldplayer of the Year

2005-02-20T16:33:00.000+02:00

There's a (probably lousy, going by the recent spate of Killers and Keanes) new brit indie band called Kaiser Chiefs. So, uh... huh? A little googling reveals:

Someone suggested the Kaiser Chiefs while we were looking for a band name. We had so many ideas ourselves, at least one of us had said no to every idea except Kaiser Chiefs.

Then we found out about the fact that they were a South African football team and Lucas Radebe used to play for them. He moved to Leeds United and is one of their most famous players and we're from Leeds so we put it all together and thought, 'Let's do it' and now we're here..

1) "Were"?
2) Lame.

I'm a believer

2005-02-18T14:51:00.000+02:00

Them folks sure is smart.

The Alchemical Brothers Sublimate Rock into Ether

2005-02-14T21:28:00.000+02:00

With "Push the Button", those Chemical Brothers seem to have finally figured out this electronic rock ballad thing: ixnay on the boozy britpop banger 'n mash turgidity, no more fey wide-eyed indiepopper crooners awkwardly prodded into warbling over bloated stadium-house epics - just a steady rhythmic pulse plus layer after layer of lush, woozy, floaty, ghostly, shoegazey haze and backwards-masked vocals. It's almost worth having had to endure mid-90s alt. rock as the soundtrack of my teenagehood when I get to hear its ashes scattered so lovingly over "Hold Tight London". Wait, can I take that metaphor again? "Hold Tight" takes some slight, cod-African funk, dresses it up in a translucent veil sown from the fabric of so many forgotten album-closers, and things take a turn for the gorgeous. It's as if they took Phoenix's words to heart - there's much more dignity in defeat than in the grandest victory. Or better yet, it's as if the Avalanches remixed the Jaxx's "If I Ever Recover" (and if you know what I like then you know that praise doesn't come much higher around here). Best of all? No Richard Ashcroft! (BTW, If irony's death throes has Shatner covering "Common People", can we get a rousing Richie version of his lastnamesake's "Let the Eagle Soar"?)(Okay, that was cheap).

"Close Your Eyes" is real pretty too - as songs with glockenspiels dependably are - even if it treads a little too close to David Gray-esque dadrock-lite for (non-)comfort. And I don't have to inform you of the block-rocking hotness that is "Galvanize", do I? No, didn't think so.

Player Haters

2005-02-13T13:45:00.000+02:00

Many years ago, when I was young and enthusiastic, I bumped into Benni McCarthy at a Cape Town restaurant. This was shortly after McCarthy's stunning African Cup of Nations performance (in 199?), when he had single-handedly saved SA from an embarrassing early knock-out, taking us as far as the tournament final. I went up to him, pen and paper in hand, and asked for an autograph. He gave me one.

Not a very compelling story, I know. But it's all I've got. The point is, CAF's snubbing of Africa's classiest (and most effective) footballer of 2004 for the African Player of the Year Award - for reasons of dubious politics - is a travesty.

It is with special pride, then, that I announce Benni McCarthy as Hectic Footballer of the Year for 2004.

All you player haters better watch out.
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Crèche and Burn

2005-02-01T09:02:00.000+02:00

SAfm news reports that the council is to close a number of inner-city Crèches because they fail to meet fire safety regulations. Significantly, this makes possible the title of this post.

Ainmosni

2005-02-01T07:15:00.000+02:00

I woke up at 6.30 this morning. I don't know why.

Frankly Random Googler, I Don't Give a Damn...

2005-01-14T01:33:00.000+02:00

In a continuing effort to rid this blog of any remaining traces of content and readership, I'm leaving for a week to get some sun on my pale, pale skin and a little sand between my... toes. Oh, and Kaiser's modem has been destroyed by powerful bolts of electricity from the sky. So don't be looking forward to anything, you people pressing the 'next random blog' button (plus the one guy googling 'mimetic desire' - dude, you gotta get out more).

WHEN HECTIC BLOG RETURNS:

* the long-awaited ZOO BISCUIT series (icing for the eyes!!)
* 3 times the half-assedness! (is that one eighth assedness or one and a half asses?)
* possible new mystery member!!
* mpeg of piss-drinking monkey!!!
* AND MORE INCREDIBLE FRESHNESS FOR THE OH FIVE!!

Tactless TV

2004-12-30T19:28:00.000+02:00

We interrupt our train of thought to bring you two examples of astounding televisual insensitivity that have even my stone-cold relativist heart pumping with indignation:

That bit in the "all you ever wanted... and more!" M-net promo where they sandwich 9/11 footage between "Tomb Raider" and "The Matrix Reloaded", as if we were watching just another spectacular special effect (oh, but see how it tastefully coincides with the "true reality" lyrics in the theme song!). Quote me all the Baudrillard you want (and feel free to mention the '04 Republic convention), it still feels terribly wrong to see those images deployed in the context of blockbuster summer entertainment.

Perhaps more morally defensible, though no less brainsplittingly indelicate, did robots produce that 'jazz concert for peace' ad or what? It start off with some wellspoken lady enthusiastically informing us, over some sunny afrojazz backing, that "over twenty thousand people were murdered in our country last year!", as if the staggering number were something to go and have a gin fizz about. Everytime it airs, I get a little jolt of WTF.

Keepers of the Real: FITE!

2004-12-28T19:44:00.000+02:00

With finger still searching for pulse, I anticipated "Kwaito vs. Hip Hop", a TV special that Channel O advertised as a close examination of the 'war' for South African 'youth music' dominance, comprised of interviews with various musicians. The program that I saw was just a bunch of videos stuck end-to-end, alternating between kwaito and hip-hop. Assuming this was just a one-off, as it seems to be, then I gotta call out Channel O for being incredibly lazy.

Without the talking heads, I tried to figure out if the critique was implicit in the choice of videos, but either the part of my brain that deals with subtlety has melted in the summer heat, or they really just weren't trying very hard at all. One coupling that really begged commentary: A mournful Zola track ("Don''t Cry"), complete with weepy orchestral synth-string washes 'versus' an equally maudlin hip-hop track that interpolated "What a Wonderful World" (sorry, don't remember the song's name... or performer. I could be trying harder too, I know). Besides the similarity in content and tone, both tracks were at hip hop tempo, with hip hop drums! "Cry" bore little resemblance to kwaito qua (kwa?) kwaito - it was closer to "Cadillacs on 22s" than, I dunno, anything by Arthur. Don't these guys know that there's a war on?

I still learned a thing or two from the show. Namely, uh, local rap kinda sucks. It's still missing a certain vitality - the best tracks, however painstakingly arranged, sound like recreations of accepted US rap styles (often leaning towards 1999-y rawkus-style sample-based consciousness, as opposed to latter day timbo/neptunes 'typewriter funk')(so I expect we'll be getting crunk in, what, 2011? ). It's the same kinda shopworn exhaustion that plagued so much brit-rap before grime came along and blew it out the water (or at least made the accompanying noises, but that's another story). Not to say that there aren't those trying to bang - Skwatta Kamp are still skirting actual hotness, their "Clap Song" falling just short of anthemism (they seem to have used their studio time well, the track is tighter than it was when they performed it while opening for Basement Jaxx). Still, calling your song "The Clap Song" feels a little like camp counselor-esque enforced F! U! N! (I have no beef with "Nolia Clap" though, so maybe I should ease up).

Another track was on some queasy El P post-apocalyptic stumblebum ugliness shit, pretty professionally done but no less derivative than all the soulful stuff, just with less obvious reference points. I'm being exceptionally unfair, I know, but shuddery blockiness is just so not what I need from rap now, it not being winter anymore and all. What about the MCs, huh? I think the language barrier actually makes things somewhat difficult here - as Josh once said (of lyrics in rap), "it's hard to explain how they too can be part of the enjoyment of the immanence of the music without being called out for not properly following the rules of the boring non-immanent domain of 'lyrics' ". Sometimes though, English or no, you can just hear when things are going right. MC Selwyn (yes, apparently there's an mc called "Selwyn"! I mean I know Lyor Cohen's pretty cool but...) seemed pretty hot, but the track he was riding had a chopped classical sample that was just a little too cleanly lifted (and without the muscularity of, oh, Big Pun's "Capital Punishment", maybe if I was more of an MF Doom kinda rap fan I'd have been satisfied). The kwaito stuff (minus the socially-conscious bits, which actually seems to be on the rise, maybe as a response to hiphop's claim to ghetto realist reportage) is based more around shouts, chants, and vocal riffs, so maybe needs to be measured in it's own terms (it's closest cousin, in these terms, is surely crunk, if not just straight up vocal house).

There's more to say... later.

Get Low, Take Me Higher

2004-12-23T15:51:00.000+02:00

I always feel a tinge of music-nerd 'finger on the pulse' panic (coupled with 'I am engaged in our vibrant local culture' guilt) that I'm missing some incredible strange new wonderful thing when I listen to CDs in the car instead of the radio. Every now and then I actually encounter something that justifies all those jabs at the FM button. A couple days ago I heard (what I can only assume is) a local track with a recognizably afro-house feel (I'm gonna struggle here articulating just what it is that I recognize here - slower than regular house, maybe syncopated handclaps sometimes? My utter ignorance when it comes to music theory really makes this writing thing difficult sometimes), but with trance chords and undeniably trance emotionalism! It made me think of what Jess said about 2004's Electro whitewash, re: the exorcisism of recognizably 'black' (funk, soul) influence from house (the default characteristics of.. at least most afro-house)(not to be confused with kwaito btw). That's not a reading that can be neatly mapped onto the local scene - electro, as far as I can tell, has never had much of an impact here (deep house is largely our dance music of choice, right?), but it makes for interesting thinking.

So why then us uplifting saw-wavey candy-ravey stuff suddenly getting let into the club? (even if what I heard on the radio was but one lone trespass, it seems significant). Dunno. One not very plausible theory: Lil Jon's euro-synth production tics having agitated a new definition of 'urban' music that's open enough to include one note riff hands-in-the-air (and once antiseptically white) euphoric cheeze?

Win Friends, Influence People

2004-12-10T22:44:00.000+02:00

If a Coldplay album were a film, it would be Garden State.

Holiday project: compile official Hectic list of glaring mediocrity which people assume you are being wilfully perverse in not liking.

The Counting Crows are perhaps the paradigmatic example (harmlessly idiosyncratic(ish), with a certain cloying charm), The Life of Pi is a less obvious case.

Best contribution wins a subscription to Time magazine.

"Not Getting It", Macrocosm Edition

2004-11-27T17:11:00.000+02:00

Disregarding the now sadly expected refusal of SA to engage in loud diplomacy in Zimbabwe, anybody out there willing or able to explain to me how our thinking here isn't totally misguided, especially considering the (2 years-in-the-running) urgency of what's happening in Darfur? Good fucking grief.

2004-11-16T22:11:00.000+02:00

2004-11-16T22:09:00.000+02:00

Instances of red. (I'm just waiting for someone to tell me to stop.)

Ersatz Jordans

2004-11-12T17:45:00.000+02:00

Why the sudden influx of 'guerilla marketing' round these parts? Sprite has those pretend-defaced billboards (since history denied us suburban lemonade stands, maybe fake-grassroots is the best we can hope for), Yfm's trying out a new poster campaign that makes stark, capital-letter promises NOT TO RUIN YOUR SUMMER WITH AGGRESSIVE BRANDING, and now there's this leaflet littering campus grounds masquerading as a fake security warning (but really advertising some Playstation thing, what with the slyly embedded PS2 logo). Did "No Logo" just get its own "Dummiess" primer (as unecessary as that might seem ), or what?

Where Do We Go From Here

2004-11-06T13:18:00.000+02:00

The state of the world still has me feeling kinda sick. Well, it's either the state of the world or waking up every day at 1pm, eating a bag of chutney potato chips for "breakfast", working in a cold, flourescent-lit, white-walled computer lab the rest of the day, and going to bed just before sunrise.

What we have now though, if you look to your right, are LINKS! With more to come, hopefully.

The Vote: Get Out!

2004-11-02T23:53:00.000+02:00

This is the post where I drop my cynical armour and risk some uncharacteristic optimism:

He's gonna lose.

P.S. Happy birthday (yesterday) to Kaiser, whose essay-fuelled rise to graduation is responsible for his Hectic haitus. The lack has not gone unfelt, even amongst our "less than five second" readership. I just hope he does a better job filling the void here than my sorry ass did, after a post-Thursday exam schedule consumes my spare time and the little bit that remains of my human soul. Help is on the way!

Fade to Blechh

2004-11-01T19:59:00.000+02:00

*WARNING: at least 2 spoilers ahead*

What is it with South African films and conclusions? Remember "Promised Land"? Had a nice visual style: plenty bleak, stingy with the saturation, evocative landscapes. Acting wasn't awful. There were hints that this was going to be a nuanced exploration of local cultural tensions. Slow? Nah, it was carefully pacing itself to allow the intricacied observations their necessary time to unfold. Then, right at the end, things needed wrapping up: the bad guys and their bad wives and bad children (Afrikaaners desperately clinging onto their 'traditional values' of hatred and abuse and inbreeding and other frowned-upon activities) are gunned down by the cops in slow motion. With every polarizing shot, we watched a good hour and a half of character development turn into a Bruckheimeresque, bullet-casing-hitting-the-floor-in-5-channel-surround morality tale. With less morality than plain ol' bloodthirst. The dinner table showdown is reminiscent of nothing so much as the Matrix's infamous lobby scene. So, yeah, kinda puts a damper on the whole affair.

Then last week I watched "Gums and Noses", the story of a mediocre adman's cocaine-fuelled rise to award-winning glory (and then slow fall down into... something else). It too had flashes of potential: the visual storyboarding of the ads, the very occasionally amusing script. Plus, if SA film sometimes seems overly eager to proudly ape internationally-tested stylistic 'edginess', a movie about the creative process behind advertisement generation was possibly an opportunity to match form with function and deliver some sharp, funny satire. Until...

To be 'fair', a lot goes wrong before the end, but that's when things really turn ugly. The movie had a decision to make about what was actually going to follow the protracted narrative of decline that it had been pursuing for the last hour (Did things turn bad with the nosebleeds? Or was it when he started taking the coke rectally? Maybe it was the car accident... after watching the protagonist walk away unscathed again and again, we start to wonder if we're being taught ANY kind of lesson here). So what's the call? As if suddenly realizing its acute lack of finality, the film makes a bizarre and uneasy shift into bloodstained realism, where the flickers of comedy are so pathetic and poorly timed that we don't know if things are just darkly unfunny or if the film has half-bloomed into self-parody. And the awfulness of Gums's punch line is such that the arguments about intentionality are rendered somewhat moot.

Any examples to the contrary here? To be fair, I've seen only a fraction of the local cinematic output.

2004-10-28T14:41:00.000+02:00

Ha ha ha.

Martial Matters

2004-10-27T18:48:00.000+02:00

Though we're only a week away from knowing whose team of lawyers will decide the future course of global affairs, we've so far avoided explicit politics here on Hectic (bar the sidebar and our liberal arts university educations) - frankly because the blogosphere has its goddamn fill of the stuff. And if we ever needed a reason to disallow ourselves a political voice re: the US, not only are we just some rambling furriners, but Kaiser is a wanted man in at least one American state.

Pop culture, however, belongs to everybody. So if you've read between the lines and suspect that you're on our side (and are confident that your internet connection can handle streaming quicktime), go here, watch the video for Eminem's strategically-released latest single "Mosh", and be moved.

The song itself, which I heard before the video - is not especially good. Even given Eminem's "simplify the rhyme: amplify the noise" conceit, it's kind of a plodder. It makes sense that Em would wanna evoke a heaving mass, marching towards polling stations to make born a new American era, but (as Government Names's Al points out) would it have killed him to amp it up with some hi-hats or something? I mean look at Lil Jon's job on Pitbull's "Anthem" if you're not convinced that you can make epic goth-rap that still moves. Plus the actual verses are intentionally monotone, monotime - sounds Biblical, sure and there's some undeniably venomous invective - it kinda feels like we're mired in the mosh pit, though.

But if you're looking at the video, forget the music nerd quibbles (I'd hand over all production on future music to Just Blaze and force every song to feature a manditory Mystikal verse if you want to know my default position on these matters)- the thing REALLY coheres when you're watching it. I could further nitpick - the offputting Flash-iness of the animation, for one - but it's just an immensely powerful, angry, hopeful, overtly antiBush 3 minutes (especially coupled with the knowledge that it made it's TRL premiere today, and is therefore on the verge of complete MTV saturation).

The pitch: ordinary Americans, having had their fill of racial profiling (okay this is not ALL Bush's fault but if he appoints another Scalia to the bench, he certainly isn't helping), billionaire-friendly tax cuts, paranoia in the name of patriotism (look at the cutout Bin Laden!) and "blood for oil" (Marshall's words!), don black hoodies and take to the streets to... vote! I suppose I should've seen it coming, but when the video ends not with Eminem having usurped the seat of Commander in Chief or with an AK47-strapped Bush (yes, we see that here) being beheaded (which would've been pretty strirring too!) but with Em's coalition of the ill (in both senses of the word) standing in line to register to vote, I.. I got kinda choked up. Which felt strangely affirming, after having surrounded myself with polls and URLs and students protests and family disputes and partisan hackery.

I listened to the track as a fairly disappointing confirmation that Eminem was quite rapidly falling off (it takes more than some hot guest verses to make up for "Just Lose It"), but I saw the video as (what might prove to be) a genuinely significant pop cultural event, and the first time we've been allowed to see actual seething rage (made cleverly [and paradoxically?] universally human through the use of animation) at the current American administration and its policies. Fuck Bush.

2004-10-20T22:43:00.000+02:00

Jozi scenes: Rosebank

theory of mimetic desire

2004-10-17T20:39:00.000+02:00

is a line from a Dean Young poem. See here, here, here and definitely here.

In a fine overview of some recent criticism, Robert Macfarlane (‘Honeymoon Realism’, TLS, 23 July 2004) quotes a passage from James Wood’s essay ‘Hysterical Realism’ (and here I am quoting Macfarlane quoting Wood, hoping you’ll mention this post to your friends. This is unnervingly symptomatic of part of what Wood is complaining about. Um. Go read ‘The Portrait of a Lady’, and come back when you’re done.):

“Recent novel have featured … a talking dog, a mechanical duck, a giant octagonal cheese, and two clocks having a conversation (Pynchon); a nun called Sister Edgar who is obsessed with germs and who may be a reincarnation of J. Edgar Hoover, and a conceptual artist painting retired B-52 bombers in the New Mexico desert (DeLillo), [and a couple of inanities from Foster Wallace.] This is not magical realism. It is hysterical realism. Storytelling has become a kind of grammar in these novels; it is how they structure and drive themselves on. The conventions of realism are not being abolished but, on the contrary, exhausted and overworked.”

Says Mac: “For Wood, these writers have all been misled by a mimetic heresy: the heresy which states that only the novel which tries to reproduce a culture might be in a position to criticize that culture. In their attempts formally to recognise the hybridity, rapidity and triviality of contemporary society, these novels… have themselves ended up lush, rapid and trivial.”

This reminded me of B. R. Myers’s observation a while ago (‘A Reader’s Manifesto’, Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2001) that a survey of his style evidenced “DeLillo’s belief – apparently shared by Mark Leyner, Brett Easton Ellis, and others – that writing trite and diffuse prose is a brilliant way to capture the trite and diffuse nature of modern life.”

I found this persuasive - until I bothered (I prefer not to have my private convictions disrupted by such prosaic concerns as ‘the facts’) to read DeLillo, and was captivated. ‘The Names’ (all I’ve read so far) is extraordinary.

Macfarlane informs us that Wood holds, in the “secular tradition of novelist-moralists”, “a conviction that the novel’s special mandate is to investigate and to remedy human behaviour in ways which other forms – journalism, criticism, poetry [blog posts?] – cannot.”

Now it’s debatable whether there is any one thing that a novel must do, or even whether a novel must do anything (or that there in anything that a novel must do [sorry. but think about it.]). But even against the limited measurement above, ‘The Names’ does a formidable job. There is throughout a meandering thoughtfulness (‘diffuse prose’?), and DeLillo’s wondering and intelligence and inventiveness make this alone worth the price of admission. But it is also a very precise novel, in its tightly structured narrative and thematic deftness (which I would love explained, by the way. Comments please…) [Is it just me or is there something perverse about this self-gratifying communion with people who don’t exist (or am I just looking for an excuse to say XXXistentialism)?], and in the relation of the characters to the themes and structure. This is hardly a breathtaking insight, and you could say this about any half-decent novel with literary aspirations (is this what being ‘literary’ consists in?) – and you couldn’t about some fully decent ones with no such aspirations (Elmore Leonard comes to mind) – but I think in this type of writing especially, loaded with, to use Wood’s term, ‘information’, the connection of content to form is especially important. ‘The Names’ works in part because of the elegant correspondence of detail to theme, of matter to ideas. And it is meticulously crafted detail - significances sculpted from specifics. The reader is presented with richness, not a burden, of detail. [Maybe sometime I’ll actually substantiate this with reference to text. Probably not, though. Perhaps you can contribute, dear imaginary audience.]

Effective structure imparts weight and direction; events are extended beyond the trivial (part of something, connected, meaningfully related, representative), developments aren’t gratuitous [is it, in itself, a problem if they are?]. But an impressive architecture is not, of course, sufficient to “investigate and remedy human behaviour”. I’m not sure what is, but DeLillo seems to be getting there. DeLillo is a compelling storyteller; there is an emotional resonance to the movement of character within plot. We become attuned (I related strongly to James Axton) to his circumstances, while retaining a multiplicity of perspectives. Again, standard stuff. But what sets DeLillo apart is the landscape of those circumstances. Characters moving within, against and beyond social and political currents. The times (in the zeitgeist sense) are the backdrop. DeLillo crafts a cultural landscape out of flight schedules and bank transfers.

But, and this is essential, our appreciation and understanding these artefacts of our time is deepened, or readjusted, only to the point that DeLillo can reinvent them, or redisplay them, and (no less) only to the point that we are convinced. It requires a quality of thought, an unusual cultural sensitivity, and the imaginative resources, to pull off properly.

Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections’, for example, is certainly technically assured and structurally sophisticated - but it’s horrible. The prose is annoying, stylised rather than stylish, and intolerably self-important. Franzen is too pompous for the kind of operation he undertakes (which is subtly different from pretension. DeLillo is hardly unpretentious. I mean, who isn’t pretentious?) How can you assume cultural literacy if you’ve don’t know Oprah, for God’s sake! And while ‘The Names’ is such a beautiful book - beautifully constructed, beautifully written, beautiful ideas - ‘The Corrections’ is more readily described as clever. Cleverly written, cleverly constructed. It’s jam-packed with cleverness, and with stuff, but without the feel, the (to return to an old theme) ‘getting it’, the respect for that stuff. It’s clever because Franzen understands the structures and the conventions of the novel, he knows how to control his material – he’s seen DeLillo do it, he understands how it works. He’s one smart dude, he knows how the game is played. (DeLillo, for one, was impressed.) But the novel is unconvincing.

This reveals the real mimetic heresy (no, confusion): The confusion that the only way to write an important novel is to sound like DeLillo and Pynchon. These writers are not hyper real, they’re one step removed from reality. Take Zadie Smith. (Please.) She can write wonderfully. ‘White Teeth’ was my book of the year in 200(1?). But ‘The Autograph’ man (I’m never reading anything starting with a ‘The’ again) was dismal; little more than media-studies theorising slickly connected in a wishy-washy plot. The story is weak, the characters are flimsy, and the insights are not very insightful. But then it never stood a chance – it isn’t representative of reality at all, so how likely is it to shed new light on that reality? Instead, it is representative of a hundred other books that have been written in the last fifty years. When Smith refers to “the popular actress Julia Roberts” (urg!) she is not referring at all to the popular actress Julia Roberts. She is referring to that bit in the po-mo/media textbook about signifying and the celebrity.

That’s how she talks about culture. When she tries to speak through popular culture: oy. To say that her Lenny Bruce Jewish/Goyish routine is bad misses the point. It’s not that it’s poorly rendered (though it is) - carelessly timed, unselectively chosen, badly phrased, or whatever – but that it misses completely. Smith is speaking in an idiom that she doesn’t understand. Or if she does understand, it is as a tourist speaking from a phrasebook. Her words approximate the meaning of her original thought, rather than express the sentiments that the language was constructed around. She never gets into the heart of the thing. Rather, she goes through the motions, assumes the lingo, imitates the delivery – but she never delivers. She admires, but doesn’t really get, what Bruce is up to. ‘The Autograph Man’ is, in Wood’s own perfect summation, fundamentally goyish. (Check out Wood’s own mimetic routine. It’s great!) [Incidentally, Wood is himself pretty darn goyish. DeLillo is very goyish. This must be understood not to be a value term.]

I’m not suggesting that an artist should speak only in a voice that is culturally familiar (a dangerous idea) or should restrict her modes and perspectives of expression. I am suggesting only that critical modishness is a very inadequate guide to choosing a style.

* * *

William Kentridge went to mime school.

On Thursday there was a screening of Kentridge films (Yes, again. Why don’t they just start a dstv channel or something? I’d watch) in Newtown.

In his introduction, the producer mentioned, to much rolling of eyes, ‘the smudge of memory’. Kentridge’s technique of erasing part of the image and adding movement leaves behind, in each alteration, a trace of the previous state.

Maybe I’m getting soft (or am I just trying to mask the triteness of the observation?) but I thought there was something to this.

One moment stood out. In the last film there is a cut to a shot of Soho Eckstein standing on a rock, on the beach. We don’t observe him getting there (at least not in this shot) he is just there, looking out at the ocean. But we do see a series of smudge marks, a record of each movement towards that point.

Soho looks innocent, vulnerable even, facing the ocean, alone. An engagement of self with the vast and impersonal plane of raw existence. Being, with no reference what one has become.

But the residue of history is always present. The preceding films testify to what Soho has become, and, in painfully many ways, one is what he becomes. Is the present ever anything more than the temporary culmination of moments past?

As we cannot escape the past, no more can we hold onto the present.

Derrida in the interview Jermaine posted (read the comments, people!):

“At the moment I allow "my" book to be published (no one makes me do it), I begin to appear-and-disappear, like some unteachable ghost who never earned how to live. The trace that I leave signifies to me both my death, either to come or already past, and the hope that it will survive me. It's not an ambition of immortality, it's structural. I leave behind a piece of paper, I leave, I die: it's impossible to escape from this structure; it is the constant form of my life. Every time I allow something to go forth, I see my death in the writing.” [Is this why I haven’t written my essays?]

Is this something like the condition of living, of being in time? Each movement forward, each moment experienced, is the assignment of that moment into history. Living is, in a sense, the realisation of presents into the past. The structure of being is such that all potential rests not in the future, but in future pasts: that which will have been.

Kierkegaard famously observed that “The irony of life is that it is lived forward but understood backward”. Is the deeper paradox that this movement forward is but the entrenchment of our being in history; and that the point of understanding – when we can recognise what is (what was), rather than the transitory momentum of being – is, structurally, beyond our attainment. (Yikes!)

* * *

Sampling is a type of mimesis.

How amazing was the Basement Jaxx concert? Wow!!

There’s a story in today’s Sunday Times Metro (I don’t know why I was reading it, either) about a Jaxx vocalist, Nomvula Malinga. She lives in London, but is from Joburg.

Anyone who was at the show last night will agree that she was fantastic.

Nice one!

2004-10-13T17:01:00.000+02:00

Every time I see this, I like it a little more.

Emo Porn

2004-10-12T23:24:00.000+02:00

is the kind of post heading that's gonna get us lots of hits.

I watched Dead Man Walking again last week. It was probably the first time I've seen it in about four years, when it was the lone film studied in my high school English 'film studies' module (it's a wonder I can think at all). Anway, what we weren't taught to notice was how, when the movie reaches its emotional climax as Matthew (*warning, spoilers ahead*)(*though this movie is what, nine years old now? Really, if you haven't seen it by now you obviously have no intention of doing so, so quit whining*) admits to killing Walter Delacroix, the already intentionally obvious sexual tension stops being something you can pretend that you're smart for noticing and there's just this simultaneous orgasm of grief. C'mon people, look at Sarandon pressed against those prison bars, eyes closing in ecstatic tragic rapture, "oh Matthew how could you" etc etc and tell me that ain't hardcore. Oh, it's not just me. It's not. IT'S NOT, OKAY!

Interesting how the tablas and the sitars and the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khans are presumably meant to evoke a kind of pseudo-religious mysticism sans the oppressive Christian dogma that the film positions as the enemy of life - I imagine the resonances of cod-Middle Easternisms soundtracking a movie about death row would be somewhat different in the post Abu Graib era (but maybe that's a pretty facile observation. I told you not to expect all depth, all the time!)

Shooting A Deer

2004-10-11T18:40:00.000+02:00

Someone remarked that Derrida is busy deconstructing. But that wasn't very nice.

The Space Between Us

2004-10-10T23:38:00.000+02:00

Paul Churchland writes about how each of the two hemispheres of the brain – ‘two distinct cognitive systems’ – interprets and makes use of the information supplied by the other. Interestingly, it seems that the hemisphere develops, it learn how to read this information. What makes this even more remarkable is just how massive the volume of information is (very – see P.M. Churchland, ‘Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes’ for the details).

“Now, if the two distinct hemispheres can learn to communicate on so impressive a scale,” Churchland wonders, “why shouldn’t two distinct human brains learn to do it also?”

And how will we understand and conceive each other? “In Roughly the same fashion that your right hemisphere ‘understands’ and ‘conceives of’ your left hemisphere – intimately and efficiently, but not propositionally!”
[The is all on page 611 of some book, if that helps.]

Let’s stretch the idea. Imagine a future in which, by means of new super-science, every individual mind is threaded together. The connection is intimate, immediate, and unmediated. Our perception of the external world is unaffected (this isn’t The Matrix) while we are able to share inner space – literally a meeting of minds.

Because of the enormous practical advantages – instant transmission of complex ideas, the efficiency of an integrated perspective, and so on – and ensuing new-age thoughts about untainted emotional encounters and the spiritual union of mankind, we gradually dispose of the clunky old methods of communication (like words) and move towards permanent universal mental connection.

We start to see each other and ourselves differently. Barriers to understanding dissolve. Miscommunications are eliminated. The experience of the other, of another, is no longer something foreign, something abstract. The boundaries between our experiences become increasingly fuzzy. One’s own experience eventually loses its distinctness and priority.

Ultimately, we fulfil our utopian vision of a single united experience, a collective human consciousness. Every person is essentially tied into the collective subjective. The experience of the other can no longer be casually set aside. Indeed, it makes ever less sense even to talk of an other. Our vision, our will, our egos move into alignment.

We create and invent with breathtaking rapidity. We imagine with a new depth and range of insight. Most of our interpersonal difficulties are eradicated: The immoderate assertion of ego, and the associated arrogance and insecurities. The intolerance. The isolation. The failures of understanding. Failures of perspective. And while the communal consciousness could never be seamless, in our utopia it is at least a little sounder than that complex, fractured, whole that is our own mind. Our petty subjectivities are reduced to neuroses in the universal psyche.

Today’s struggles become no more than quaint memories: The valiant but ultimately vain attempt to express one’s deepest self. Or how we jealously guard this self; and how - after tentatively building channels of trust, constructing shared points of meaning, of significance – we commit the rare and hopeful act of lowering that guard – never completely, because our trust and hope is never complete; yet somehow meaningfully, despite the doubt and uncertainty.

The receiving of another is no less significant. I must clear the interior space to accommodate your vision. I respect what you are saying, and am able to appreciate it, to the extent that I allow my thoughts to resemble yours. To the extent that this does not happen, I am merely reflecting my own self off of the surface of your ideas. Empathy is always, to some degree, an act of transformation. We can only make this choice from a position of difference.

So rather than despair our isolation, perhaps we should reflect on the terrifying beauty of the spaces between us.

(I'm a little wary of the romantic streak developing in the blog. Too much with the Before Sunset? My next post is going to be about shooting a deer or something.)

So Near...

2004-10-06T19:28:00.000+02:00

While reading Kaiser's post, my MP3 player randomly selected Lali Puna's "Together in Electric Dreams" as the soundtrack. It's a (rather loose) cover of an old Human League song, and, as per IDM/'bedroom electronica' rules, it's thoroughly mope-ified. And very, very pretty. I'm still something of sucker for chopped-up, glitchy vocals - when deployed 'correctly', I find them immensely moving, in a way that emphasises that impossibility of direct linguistic connection that Kaiser was talking about. Little blubs and burbles, word-fragments, half-syllables, all trying (and failing, tragically,) to communicate, to make meaning (it's just occured to me that maybe this has something to do with why I like that Bedingfield song so much, actually).

The song brings to mind someone's attempt at a definition of 'abstract' music I once read and quite liked - that the sounds you're hearing are actually abstracts of a piece that conceptually 'exists' somewhere else, in its entirety! Which is kinda analogous to what I think Kaiser was discussing: we can't relay our thoughts, our selves to another person (not with kind of satisfying fullness we might wish anyway), so we choose the bits (the "tokens") we think will do the best possible job in the world.

I didn't really want to talk about the song at all in the post, though. What "Electric Dreams" reminds me of (suggested as much, or more perhaps, by the title as the sounds) is something I read about when I was doing some private research into lucid dreaming, midway through last year (in retrospect, I think I might've been going subtly crazy then, but that's another story). One account of a "semi-lucid" experience really stayed with me. There's apparently a dream state you can reach wherein you realize you're dreaming, but think that the other person (or persons? I've always imagined it in the singular, but maybe that's just a romanticization) that appears in your dream is in fact real and dreaming too, and you're having a shared dream encounter. I always felt there was something so heartbreaking about it, such a beautiful illusion: the possibility of (unmediated) connection on a (pre/sub) verbal level. And then the profound sadness of the waking realisation - that we're deeply alone.

(Wow, what a downer).

Why I Never Returned Your Call

2004-10-06T17:25:00.000+02:00

I’m compelled by Jermaine’s disarming candidness (couldn’t we just be all dark and ironic and stuff) to drop the pretend pompous/juvenile philosopher-critic shtick (waddya mean you didn’t notice?) and try some honest musing.

I was in a store (YDE Rosebank. No Luck. See two posts ago) that was playing a track from Janet Jackson’s new album. While I’m trying on shirts, Janet’s moaning through the Wharfdales. Real raunchy, holding nothing back. Telling us in intimate detail what she’s doing to some fortunate guy.

But what struck me about the song was how intensely unsexy it was. Why though? Super hot Janet singing ultra graphic sex ditty - what’s not to like? I think it had to do less with what was made explicit and more to do with what wasn’t kept unexposed (I’m not sure how sound this sentence is, but I hope you know what I’m getting at. This might make more sense at the end of the post). It gave too much away.

It wasn’t that the song was too graphic, but that it was too detailed, and detailed in the wrong way. Almost biological. I think there was even mention of ‘delivering man juice’ (I hope I’m making this up). It was the Kinsey Report with a beat.

Why expose the mechanics of the thing? Doesn’t the allure lie in the concealment?
(Maybe it was just the contrivance of it all that got to me. Primal Moan of Pleasure, Take 15.)

[Christina’s Dirty video is outrageously hot though. But, while the very opposite of restrained, is this anything but surface?]

This got me thinking about (sorry) language. Words like ‘like’, ‘cool’, ‘nice’ are sometimes criticised for being lazy. Kids are lazy these days - all they do is watch tv and listen to dirty pop songs. (As for the internet…) Their language has no subtlety of meaning, it’s vague, vacuous. In the neat division between Chilled and Hectic, we lose the subtle gradation in between.

I can think of two possible problems. Firstly, these words are too imprecise; they fail to pin down an exact description. One ought to be more accurate.

Fair enough (‘What time should I meet you?’ ‘Later.’). But I suspect the guardians of speech have a deeper concern in mind.

These words are too definite. Rather than pursue nuance we divide the world into big easy categories. A taxonomy of surfaces, where things are cool or uncool, chilled or hectic. We paint our world in broad strokes of black and white. And if something doesn’t fit, you keep your expressive distance (the word ‘like’ is handy).

But the world is too complex, too immense for these facile categories. Even the shallowest human emotions resist our attempts to pin them down. We struggle to capture even a sliver of self in our most sensitively balanced descriptions. So calibrate our descriptive apparatus ever finer, telling and retelling, hoping to close in on what we really mean.

Sometimes a grey area isn’t murky enough.

In his In Praise Of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki enthuses over the traditional Japanese aesthetic [how things have changed] of shadow and concealment. Ceramics, gaudy under harsh modern lighting, take on a subdued beauty in the reticent illumination of a candle in a dark tearoom. The theatre assumes a special charm layered in shadow.

But this is not an aesthetic of obfuscation. The shadow conceals while it tantalises (Tanizaki delights (um) in the dark contents of his soup bowl), it encourages thoughtful pause – what am I seeing, what am I missing, what could I be seeing. Concealment opens the space of possibility: imagination operates best amid the shadows. Strong illumination too sharply defines the contours of what is and might be.

The language of shadow is a language of vagueness, restrained exposition (there must be some light or there is no shadow). A hint. A suggestion. A push in the right direction. A shadow is empty but for what is submerged.

This is a deeply, touchingly, human language. How much can be reasonably said stands in awful contradistinction to how much there is to say. To how much must be said. And even what we can say we are unsure of. How can I tell you what I mean? What I really mean. And what the hell do I mean? I will have to show you, I will have to take you there. That feeling, that moment, that instance of silent realisation. I can confer it only via a recognition of our mutual humanness, some common realisation; With reference to the shared tokens that signify nothing precisely because they mean so much. I must hope that we are in empathetic alignment and trust that you will value the suggestion. Trust that you will know what I am saying simply in virtue of my saying it.

Which is what makes business jargon and political spin so egregious. It is a perversion of these realisations. This is vagueness to perplex and distort; covering up for the sake of keeping things covered. Behind the lustrous surface of statistics and double speak are the dark and embarrassing (and dangerous) truths. This is a failure of respect, to use Jermaine’s term, for language and culture, and, worse, empathy and trust. Perhaps the ugliness of those phrases reflects this in some way.

Jermaine also mentioned attention to craft. I think that this is a way in which we harness vagueness – we frame it, we order it, we let it meander. We time that moment – yeah, now you feel it – set it up just right. Detail. Structure. Absence. Direction. Misdirection. Respect for the boundaries of understanding and sometimes an attempt to redefine them.

Which is why I don’t think the language of shadow entails a kind of minimalism. It not that we leave our canvas open, but that we create spaces (or give the viewer some space). Coltrane’s ‘sheet of sound’ (who’s phrase is that?) comes to mind. It’s not that the notes don’t count. And it’s not just what’s between them or anything. But there’s something that is beyond what is being stated that is very much nothing but that statement, because he is saying exactly what he means. Or something. Argh! You know what I mean…

Those Words of Hers

2004-10-05T20:28:00.000+02:00

How suprisingly good is Natasha Bedingfield's These Words? Okay, I've only heard it twice now and I don't preclude that its charm will wear off much sooner than I'd like (by the fourth listen, say), but damn if I don't just fall for that "I know the Pop Love Song is probably the most mediated message ever but I just don't know how to say what I feel so here it comes gushing out, tripping over itself, falling all around in as vulnerable a way as I can possibly express". It's also getting hip-hop radio play, as songs that boast of having hip-hop beats tend to do. Best Meta-pop since Kylie Dean's "Write Me a Song" (which wasn't very good anyway so no big deal really)? Best pop sister since...?

Find Out What It Means To Me

2004-10-05T17:13:00.000+02:00

I'm currently, sporadically, rereading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, and trying to figure out why I'm largely convinced that he (as per Kaiser's first post here) "gets it".

I don't know much about the reigning discourse around Pynchon and/or the novel and, at the moment, I want it to stay that way. Why I'm so pleased to remain ignorant has to do, maybe unfortunately, with the after-effects of 3 years of University English and Art Studies. It's not that higher education's turned me into a "just feel it, man!"-type that insists that receiving (a deceptively passive way of putting it, I think) an artwork automatically trumps any critical thinking/writing that happens during or after the fact, or that attempting to figure out how the art does what it does inevitably muddies the sublimity of the thing itself (but, having a blog, I wouldn't think that, would I ?). It's just that it's taken me two years of studying Postmodernism in two disciplines to realize that I know little (maybe less than that even) about it. What I do feel that I've covered pretty thoroughly, are po-mo's sales pitches and talking points. I know it's about shifting surfaces, and I've barely scratched any of them.

What this has to do with Lot 49 and 'getting it', well, I'm trying to untangle that as I type. Turns out my appreciation of what Pynchon does well (I'm gonna get to that soon, too, I promise) is actually very dependant on a 'surrounding critical framework' (or even worse, a mere suspicion of one!). It seems I've, probably wrongly, tied my (sometimes) superficial education to a bunch of texts that seem proudly postmodern in a similarly glib and shallow way. For the purposes of this post, let's pretend I was right in doing this. You see, it's not that I demand depth all the time, but I don't appreciate folks misunderstanding my favourite cultural artifacts. It might be that I fear that there's a secret Modernism at work behind a lot of these texts (Which texts exactly? I want to say, I dunno, Coupland but I haven't read him. Martin Amis? But I haven't read him either. It's turning out that my enemies are all straw-writers ...). A Secret Modernism? Y'know, taking postmodernism's assumed modus operandi of affording everything an equivalent worth(lessness), you can safely invoke and then dismiss large chunks of pop culture at a whim while covertly affirming the same uninterrogated assumptions that those big, bad ol' Grand Narratives made about high and low and worthiness and trash.

So how does Pynchon avoid these problems? I think he genuinely respects the integrity of the pop/mass (I know I'm asking that forward slash to do more work there than it probably should, but it's a device I like and it's getting late and I want to go home) culture he references (Stockhausen, B-Movies, radio DJs). I get the sense he's awake to the possibilities of interaction and relation offered by newness and novelty (with condemning his characters or readers to decentered Baudrillardian doom or simply, smugly, disparaging the apparent tacky plastickness of postwar America). This 'respect' comes maybe less from textual evidence of Pynchon's 'attitudes', and more from his comic timing, the attention paid to his craft (the perfection of child-actor Metzger/Baby Igor's "My Daddy, My Doggy and Me" doesn't happen by accident, y'know). I think the same might be said about Tarantino - at his best anyway. Is this partially what "getting it", is, in part, about? respect? Theres more to say, but unfortunately I respect getting home and eating dinner more than I do forming tight conclusions or writing balanced posts.

[ ]

2004-10-03T01:58:00.000+02:00

I spent this morning gazing into the infinite void. Then I closed my cupboard door. Where can I get decent clothes in Jozi (without having to pawn a kidney to afford it)?

Let's at least be well-dressed music geeks.

The Little Noises That Move Me

2004-10-02T20:00:00.001+02:00

If Kaiser's gonna risk alienating our audience ("audience") by turning this into a philosophy blog, I'm going to risk alienating our audience by turning this into a music geek blog.

So here I am, Saturday night, alone - and at university no less. In a large, white, mostly empty, room. Attempting to finish a stop-motion animation ( this 'incremental movement - take a picture - incremental movement' stuff requires a patience so vast anyone that would choose to do it twice [regrets, I have a few] must have some kind of reverse ADD [DDA?] ). I want something other than the buzz of the flourescent lights to allievate the solitude. The only music-playing device around is the iMac at the back of the room. The iMac speakers are like some kind of bass black hole, so you wouldn't imagine they'd be good for any music falling under the broad spectrum of 'dance' (they make beats sound so tinny it's like the amplified sound of a cockroach jumping up and down on a bottlecap. Or something). And yet why is Triple R's 2003 mix "Friends" sounding so pretty and intimate and involving for the first time?

They call the stuff "microhouse" ("they" being music journalist people - Philip Sherburne to be exact) and argue endlessly about what constitutes the term (though they seem to be just about the only ones listening, outside of Cologne, Germany). For our purposes,we might call it headphone house with bent for intricate programming (though it does the stuff a disservice to just imply that it's smallified house - you might even say the tracks take a certain aspect of house and intensely focus their sound around it (microscope:scope::microhouse:house. see?). But before we get too dry and technical, let's go back to "Friends". Though I've have had a copy since about midway through last year, and had tried to listen real close at the right times, it hadn't connected. Now, with the pitchshifted wails of (Robag Whrume's remix of) Metaboman's "Easy Woman" trying so desperately to reach me from across the yawning emptiness (the same emptiness I now feel in my stomach, hunger must make me emotionally vulnerable), I'm feeling it for the first time. I think it's the simultaneity of my loneliness and the tininess (and, yeah, tinniness) of the sounds, made resonant by the bigness and openness of Room 4 (as I affectionately call it). Everything in this environment is so clinical and functional and bland and clean (except for the mess of pastel chalk I've made on the ground around my work area), even micro-emotion sounds deeply felt.

(If it's macrohouse you're after - and you're in or around South Africa - you could do worse than to immediately book tickets for the Basement Jaxx show that's happening around the middle of this month, it promises to be headburstingly, synapse-firingly great.) (No, they're not paying me)(Though I'd take the money in a second if they were).

(And before house leaves the house, I'm making a public plea for someone in the know to help me [re]connect with the latest in kwaito. I listen to Y and MetroFM on a pretty regular basis, but too often I've heard them cut from a killer local track to an ad, and then not tell me what I was listening to when they return. Is that some scheme to get people to SMS those services that tell you what's currently playing on the station? Bah, capitalism).

2004-10-02T19:19:00.000+02:00

The Hectic webmaster at work.

No Pants

2004-10-02T15:01:00.000+02:00

Did anyone catch the Spongebob Squarepants karate episode?

Spongebob and the squirrel (what’s her name again?) were practicing their karate on one another. The sexual analogy was very obvious (One time, Spongebob was about to fight, then remembered ‘Safety first’, and rushed off to put a large round helmet on his head).

It was all very entertaining, but near the end of the show something unexpected happened. The analogy broke down. There was no continuity in the subtext. Abruptly it was impossible to sustain a coherent thematic reading. The surface narrative thread was unbroken, but there was no thematic conclusion. (At least I hope – the show ended with Spongebob and squirrel karate chopping crabby patties for a crowd of customers.)

My first instinct was that this was simply a narrative flaw, or worse - a cop out. But I now realise that the writers were aiming for something more nuanced and, I think, quite daring. This was not a failure of resolution, but a refusal.

The language of metaphor is suggestive, and thus subjective. We interpret, make comparisons, impose meanings, invent consistencies. What does the failure of my imagination – too fallow to balance the incongruence, overactive enough to get me in this mess – have to say about the show’s creators? A simple tale about two people having fun with karate – what did you think it was about?

This is why the break had to be sudden, unexpected – I had built up certain expectations, subliminally, only to have them obliterated in a single moment. This was an eloquent demonstration of the vagaries of knowledge, an exploration of the connectedness of subjectivity and uncertainty. If we construct our own realities, does this make us masters of our world, or is the relationship between truth and subjectivity a tenuous one, inevitably to come apart: disillusion in the deepest and most frightful sense of the term.

More powerful yet was how this commented on my psyche. Fine, we create our own meanings, truth is elusive, but why was my truth so misleading? Is my failure to create a story that works a personal failure, is it a moral one? Why did I choose that reading? Was does it say about me?

But of once I recovered from the initial shock, I realised that the creators were not merely playing psychological mind-games. It is good to be shaken out of one’s private complacency, but it is unfair to place culpability on the individual for the ills of the community. The symbols and codes that I use to read my world have been internalised to the point where they are, arguably, a part of who I am. But my experience and my reaction to this experience follow the language of my community. This does not absolve me – just as an addict is not absolved of crimes he could not resist – from my personal responsibility, but at least the burden is one that we share. Our guilt (not guilt – our failing) is collective. Perhaps this points the way toward redemption. Only by a thorough diagnosis of the condition of the collective experience can begin to grasp the self.

There is another layer of suggestion, a more ambiguous set of ideas. The interpretation is ours, we impose our own meaning; but where did the thrust to so imagine come from? If we were acting passively (and no less irresponsibly for it) wherefrom came the directive with which we failed not to comply? The answer is obvious, the meaning uncertain. It was the creators of the show themselves who implanted the kernels of suggestion. It is they who toy with the archetypes, who play with our psyche. But why?

Introduced is the notion of complicity. Our guilt is their guilt, we were only following order (or failing not to). Is this honesty? Who are we, they might say, to put ourselves outside the collective, to presume to stand beyond a very social failure. Perhaps it is merely a structural requirement – they did what was needed to create this type of work.

I suspect something else, and I’m not sure what to make of it. I detect a hint of assent. ‘Yes we are guilty – so are you. But the power of the subjective is the power to out-imagine our guilt. There is only subjectivity – let ours be the strongest and the most successful. Our real failure was the failure to imagine in our favour. Don’t you see that compliance with the accepted semiotic structures is keeping us down?’ I worry about unfettered relativism - is theirs restricted to the metaphysical or also the moral (can they be separated)?

Who is immune from the politics of power? How dangerous might this be?

I suggest we analyse carefully how future episodes play out, and mobilise for any possible action.

How Could I Not..

2004-10-01T21:28:00.000+02:00

post this picture of young and unusually hairy Bubba C and tinted specs Hil above the line "The Metaphysics of Cool"? (Future posts from me may contain actual debate-level-raising content)(Perhaps)

The Metaphysics of Cool

2004-10-01T16:49:00.000+02:00

The TLS sent me a letter the other day.

Well, I received some junk mail asking me to subscribe to the TLS. I wish it were possible for me to reproduce the entire letter here, but I really don’t feel like it. So here are some salient bits:

“Dear Reader

For over 100 years, the Times Literary Supplement has set the tone for the intellectual debates shaping our times.

…

A TLS subscription, perhaps more than any other, denotes a certain intellectual feistiness. A confidence in one’s own opinions tempered with a willingness to entertain the views of one’s peers.

On the subject of ideas, much has been written (some of it even in grammatically correct English) about the supremacy of the Internet and the corresponding demise of the printed word. But you and I know something the pundits appear to have forgotten.

Books are still the primary source of new thinking. To keep you abreast of the intellectual currents flowing through our culture, the TLS reviews the most important books published each week… These closely argued essays are just one of the reasons why I feel so strongly that you will enjoy receiving the TLS each week. For you are someone to whom books mean much more than just light reading. You are [I am?] engaged with the world of ideas, and nowhere will you find a more stimulating, enthralling and critically acclaimed guide to that world than the TLS.”

Clearly these people are not to be trusted. But why?

I think there is an important but undervalued epistemic principle that can help clarify what may be wrong with the above passage: hipness as a truth-satisfying condition. There is much work to be done regarding hipness generally – not least a satisfactory working definition – but it is in terms of knowledge that I think the most valuable contributions can be made, and where, ironically, there is a so little work done.

These comments are suggestive rather than proposing any systematic account. My aim is to invite and encourage debate. But I think it is important to mention what I think will be constraints on where this discussion can take us, and outline some basic ideas.

The term ‘truth-satisfying condition’ is misleading here. But this is the historical usage and I think it presumptuous at this point to modify it. It seems to imply that hipness is a necessary condition for truth, which I am sceptical about. Certainly hipness is not sufficient for truth (just look at Naomi Klein et al[i]). My assertion is more modest: hipness (in the relevant sense and appropriate quantity – whatever these may be) will make something (epistemically) more probably true. A lack of hipness will make something more probably untrue (or less true)[ii].

Another constraint is on when it is appropriate to employ the principle. Not, loosely speaking, with regard to ‘matters of fact’. Empirical facts and logical statements are the most obvious cases[iii]. The principle is appropriate where truth-values are ambiguous and murkier (forgive my imprecision, again this is suggestive). Arguments of rhetoric, aesthetic values and so on. Not arguments where a statement is either true or false but (really) ‘more true’ or ‘less true’[iv].

It may also be useful briefly to sketch the most useful sense of hipness and see some reasons why it may be so important. This is the area in which I expect the most exciting research will be done. I look forward to readers’ submissions.

First (firstly?), hipness seems to accompany (/be extensionally equivalent with/is entailed by?) the elusive quality of ‘getting it’. Some people get it, many don’t. They just don’t get it.

Listing those who do get it is a useful exercise, and this is a project we should probably undertake. But the primary aim should be to try and define and understand what getting it really is, and what it involves.

Second, hipness seems to indicate a degree of sensitivity to the times. This can sometimes actually be reason for wariness. An argument may have a very transitory appeal, its force derived merely from a brief cultural whim. Or a text may be very much ‘of its time’, piggybacking on the social mood rather than meaningfully commenting or reflecting on the social order. To do this successfully is itself not an insignificant feat (think of all those embarrassing adverts trying to emulate youth culture) but is liable to be superficial at best (those slick teen ad campaigns that do work). What is relevant here is keenness of observation, a feel (I like this word, I think it is key) for what is going on.

The third is that hipness indicates creativity, inventiveness, originality and (at best) a groundbreaking sensibility, a genuine avant-gardeness.

Of these, I think the first is both the most difficult to pin down, and the most important. One may fulfil conditions two and three, and still just not get it. This happens not infrequently with ‘public intellectuals’. There are many smart, sensitive, original intellectuals who just don’t get it. Here, perhaps more than anywhere, the hipness principle is more important than ever. In some such cases, it may even be our only reliable discriminating tool.

There are thus two basic categories of enquiry: what are the logical relationships between truth and hipness (and knowledge); and how are these manifested, how do we recognise and understand these values, how are these values instantiated, who possesses them, and so on.

Over to you. Its time to reset the tone for debates.

[i] I have never actually read Naomi Klein. This would never happen in a rigorous and careful publication like, say, the TLS, where reviewers are required at least to have read the reviewed book. But I think this supports my point. Some may dispute the counter-example by denying these works actually do posses hipness, or hipness in the relevant sense. I think this is plausible, but am convinced other suitable examples exist. This may make for interesting debate.
[ii] I have slight qualms about using the term ‘probably’. I may modify this at some later time. Note that this does not refer to any strict technical account of probability.
[iii] The author assumes there are some objective values.
[iv] Perhaps I am being overcautious. Science has precise truth criteria. But how are scientists to choose amongst competing theories that are likely to be true, or may turn out to be successful. Often they do so by reference to elegance and simplicity, or even beauty (in a sense related to the other terms). But there are various ways to go about doing this. Suffice, for now, to say that Richard Feynman was way cooler than Murray Gell-Mann.

Let the erudition begin..

2004-07-26T23:16:00.000+02:00

Jus' testing the waters...