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p.s. Hey. ** Chris (British), Labels are tricky. As someone who's been known to put a rock critics' hat upon my writing skills on occasion, I find them useful because they give bands and solo artists a determined context to explore and/or debunk, room to move, as it were, and while they often just dumb down or overly filter what the bands/ artists are actually doing, as a music aficionado, I find the excitement those tags create kind of fun, and the maps they provide kind of helpful too. Take the label Hypnagogic that I did a post about here recently. It's artificial, yeah, but if not for the term and the promise of its suggestion that something new and unusual was going on in the music of the tagged bands, I might not have had an easy way to find a handful of artists and albums that I'm currently really into. So, yeah, genre labels are tricky. ** Oscar B, Hey. We had a hottish couple of days, but it's settled down in an 18 to 20 degree thing, much rain expected as well. Oh, I got your email, and your idea for the performance is great, yeah. Kiddiepunk and I are hoping to meet with Chrystel today to figure out the technical stuff -- how to hang the art, how the video works, the time of the opening, and etc., and he'll make a flyer. When are you back here exactly? There's a big, fun sounding opening at Palais de Tokyo and the Musee de Art Moderne on Thursday night, if you'll be here in time. ** David Ehrenstein, No, no, no, thank you! The post had a very nice effect, result, etc. the second time around. Yeah, thank you much, D. ** Tony O'Neill, Hey, Tony. Glad the weekend post hit your sweet spot. Oh, yeah, the Lilys, sure. I liked them too. I guess not immensely, but enough to buy their stuff and see them. I should have put them in the post, actually. I'm well, you? Do you have book promo/tour stuff on the immediate horizon, I'd guess? Can't wait to read the novel. Michael was supposed to send me a copy, but it never got here, so I'll hit him up again. ** Casey McKinney, Oh, right, it was Mudhoney not Melvins. I'd forgotten all about that little Cobain solo set, weirdly. Yikes. It was MBV/ Lush/ Yo La Tengo? My memory is messed up. Yeah, the Melvins show at the Paladium was insane. That I remember. Those thugs wailing on you, Dave Ehrlich, me, maybe someone else (?), ripped clothes, thrown out, getting allowed back inside, kind of trying to hide from the thugs, etc. Neil Young solo, yep. The GbV gig circa 'The Freed Weed' ... was that the Jabberjaw show? I've seen GbV so often I forget which gig came where. Yeah, it so sucks that your basement room got painted over, definitely. Glad to know your mom is up and around, though. ** Alan, Oh, sure, yeah, on the appeal of The Munsters as that utopia. For some reason, I liked the sincerity, etc., of The Munsters' tone and family unit revision more than the arch, winky, derealized Addams Family. The new Godard: Well, I watched it without subtitles because Godard wants it to be viewed that way, so a lot was lost since most of it is in French, but, yeah, it's amazing, singular, 'him' to the max, crazy with his particular energy, smart and obscure and ham-fisted all at once. I loved it. It's online, if you want to stream it. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Yeah, I always try to go for a time release effect in my advice giving, ha ha. No, actually, although since I'm all about that effect in my fiction, who knows? Point is, yeah, Nick, exactly. Thinking in that new way is healthier, more logical, and just all around a lot more useful for you, I think. Cool. ** Kiddiepunk, Quick, hide the tanning salon receipt! ** Jose, Hey, Jose. Damn, I wish I could convince myself that playing video games right now would be a semi-selfless act on behalf of my novel. I have this 'no video games while writing novel' rule in effect, which means I haven't played a game in well, well over a year, which is murder. Yeah, you're definitely on a survival horror kick there. Completely understandable. Resident Evil 4 is incredible. ** Ken Baumann, A month, cool, I can wait. A late summer blockbuster. Love them. Man, the movie blockbusters this summer just aren't getting me hot and bothered much at all, and I'm a summer blockbuster regular. So far, I might try 'Prince of Persia' just because it's supposed to be a fair amount of empty sort of fun. But that's it. Oh, that drummer at the end of your link, yeah, insane, amazing. I happened on him at Huffington Post yesterday. Thanks, Ken! ** Hedi, Hey, Hedi! ** Sypha, The abandoned project is the one you mentioned earlier and said you didn't want to talk about yet? Ah, well. Salvage what you can, man. Always the saving grace. ** Pisycaca, Hey, Montse. There've been difficulties with our pieces before, but this one has had difficulties on a whole new plane. Maybe, just maybe, we've sorted them out. I'll give you a more realistic report once we're back in Brest and our hands are dirtied again. In any case, by the time you see it in Paris, which will be in April now, it'll be better than it is in Avignon no matter what. Well, less summery weather in Mallorca will mean less of a crowd, right? That's no small plus. Love to you. ** Pascal, Sure, not writing does a big number on my emotional life too, totally. But, like you said, there is the rush when you break out again, and that first flush of writing when you've been dormant for a while ... nothing like it. 'Try' is my most emotional book, I'm pretty sure. I was as much of an emotional mess as I've ever been when I was writing it. Maybe it's the least intellectual of my books, I'm not sure, although it's just as structurally complicated as the others deep inside. But, as I've said, maybe even too often, the novels in the Cycle had all kinds of individual concentrations, and one was the body area/source of its fuel, Frisk's being the libido, Try's the heart, and Guide's the brain, for example. I just happened to get really 'lucky' in getting really emotionally fucked up when it was time to do the 'heart' book. 'MLT' is more about extreme stress and its repression of emotion than emotion itself, I guess. Mmmm, that cake. One last sigh on its account. ** Schlix, Hey. Well, I don't speak a word of German, so the site, which I looked at this morning, looks just fine and interesting to me, and every really good site of that kind starts out as something tentative. Anyway, it looks like something people read and follow, and having what you write and think read is all that matters. So my congrats on that account of yesterday are totally undiminished. ** Dorna, Yury cut my hair last night at long last, and, ah, I do feel renewed, restored. Not seeing my face framed by mad, unruly professor hair when I look in the mirror helps too. I'll go strut around Paris today and see if anyone notices. Breeze in the palm trees, sigh. I'm missing LA right now. Always, but moreso these past days for some reason. ** Koes, Cool, cool, cool. Except for the technical problems. As long as there weren't any technical problems in your hug, all is right with the world. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Thanks about my Shoegazer post's organization. Oh, I thoroughly enjoyed your MBV post. While I include myself in the big gang that considers them holy, it's a lot more interesting in the long term to have reasons to think about how one might puncture one's adoration than it is to merely reengage with a familiar swooniness, and your post on them incited some fine roiling. Someone else mentioned Bark Psychosis yesterday. Yeah, I know and like them a lot, and I've been angling since yesterday to get their stuff into an accessible place again since I think they're stuck on vinyl in my LA pad. ** JW Veldhoen, Very nice, beautiful Coney Island updated report, John. Thank you. Whew, about the dark ride. I can only hope it's the respectfully repolished old shitty/great one. Last time I was there, the freaks were a little offsite in a storefront near the entrance and pretty near Nathans. The subway really does take forever, Jesus. Especially the return trip. ** Kier, Hey. 'Period' was the hardest novel to write of all my novels, absolutely. First, I was in a very devastated, shocked state because I had just found out George Miles was dead, and I was obsessively trying to find out what exactly had happened, why he would have killed himself, where or if he was buried, and I was spending all my non-writing time driving around to cemeteries looking for his grave, trying to find news articles and people who could tell me more, revisiting places we used to go, trying to feel him, and all that, and then finally tracking down his mother, hearing the details, sharing the experience with her, and, in effect, reaching the end of my journey to learn the truth, and finding the ending so inadequate and without resolution, and, you know. And then I was trying to represent his death and loss in the novel, and that was incredibly confusing, and then the novel itself was so complexly designed that it was extremely difficult to get into proper working order, impossible ultimately, which made the novel end up being about its failure, my failure with George, George's failure, and, yeah. It was incredibly hard, ha ha. I'll try to find some images of the work Vince Fecteau was doing at the time of 'Period', and, if I can, I'll give you a link or links later. I never even heard of 'Smiley Face'. Maybe it wasn't released over here. ** Chris, Hey. Sure, I think that sounds totally reasonable, i.e. cutting my trip for the PS122 part out. Look, I'll just try to find a way to be there for the shows on my own, on my way to LA or something or other. So, yes, I think that sounds fine. I want the piece to happen, that's all, really. And if I can be there for a bit of the building up phase, that would be fantastic. I'm totally cool with that. ** Justin, Yeah, I wouldn't call that stalking at all. An enthusiastic, hopeful attachment maybe. I've done that. I don't precisely remember that 'male' voice from 'Liquid Sky'. I'll try to find a clip. I bet if people think your voice is cute, it is. I bet. Cool about the curtains. I bet there was at least gay grade schooler in attendance who thought they were the highlight of the puppet show. ** Brendan, Nice and funny about Melt Banana at the Sydney Opera House. I can't even quite imagine them on such a presumably giant stage. Oh, yeah, the DC's Book Club book. Don't over-think it, man. Anything interesting and accessible sans too much effort or cost to the gang will do just fine, and there are a ton of interesting books. On the Shoegazer influence thing, I'll do a quickie answer 'cos I'd probably need to blather a lot to explain it. As I've mentioned here before, I think, 'Psychocandy' was a massive influence on 'Closer'. So, I was already engaged in a study of the rudiments of the Shoegazer sound and aesthetic. My entrance into a study of Shoegazer was via the immediate differences between early JAMC's sound and the more evolved version delivered by MBV, et. al. I was interested in the new denseness, atmospheric qualities, and more careful modulation of noise vis a vis song structure that the later bands employed. And I was very interested in the emotional shift from JAMC's angst and sexual frustration and boredom/ ennui to the more reticent, self-consciously shy, rangier emotional tones that Shoegazer bands explored and represented in their lyrics and vocal styles. And the wordage and the noise/score were more blended together, fused in the Shoegazer aesthetic, and that interested me greatly. So, those were some of the main aspects I was studying, and I used the effect of that study in areas of 'Guide's' prose, particularly in the 'acid' sections, and less obviously but probably more completely in 'Period', although I mostly used the blueprint of the Shoegazer sound there more than its texture. That's a skim of an answer, but does that make sense? ** Steevee, Yeah, I have the new Oneohtrix Point Never album. At first, I wasn't grabbed, but I find I'm listening to it a lot, and it unfolds very interestingly. Yeah, I recommend it. Maybe the mood swings are a side effect, yeah. I think you mentioned mood side effects were a distinct possibility, didn't you? ** Nb, I like 'Motorman' best of the Ohle I've read too, for pretty much the same reason, although I haven't read a ton of him. Really happy to hear your writing is going and how it's going. From what you say, I suspect the attempts and experiments you're doing to find the right combo of form and a central idea are optimal. When I was sorting out the cannibal novel, I spent, Christ, years even -- I'm slow -- trying out little things to see if they would transmit enough to build a full novel from and around them. A bunch of the 'Ugly Man' pieces were non-starters that ended up working as squibs. I doubt you need this advice, but, just in case, don't try to be linear from the outset. Let yourself make something that could end up being just an internal organ or limb of the novella. You might get an idea that, on the surface, wouldn't seem to sustain a novella, but which might make for a great substrata or aside or particle of a larger idea that might accumulate in your head as the fragments accumulate, if that makes sense. The main thing always is to do whatever it takes not to be intimidated by the idea of writing a long work. That, plus the insecurity intimidation brings, are almost always the only true enemy. Re: my novel, I had the cannibal premise for a long time, and it was finding the voice that took so much effort. That's always how it is for me. I just use whatever I'm fascinated or haunted or confused or scared or whatever by at the time, trust it, and then try to find the voice and style that will let me explore my disrupted self as fully as possible, if that makes sense. Hey, a long comment from you is nothing but a boon, man. More, please, ha ha. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Well, at least the TV's little screen helps prevent me from rushing out to buy every video game I find enticing, 'cos that screen isn't exactly a video game nirvana. On your question about anyone having been eaten in my novel yet, well, it's hard to answer that 'cos it's a weird book. In terms of the story itself, not yet. But in terms of, say, what has happened by this point in the narrative, yes, quite a number. 'Interville' is this dumb, crazy show where the populations of small French towns compete with each other by having to do ridiculous, often embarrassing feats and tricks, often wearing goofy, humiliating costumes, etc. Each episode is one town vs. another, and at the end of the summer, the two highest scoring towns have a final show-off to name the winner. As for your Monday, ouch, or rather poor guy, and, well, poor you too. Still, it does sound like you had a bit of fun doing a kind of softcore 'Misery' number on him. Not a sucky day at all, really, or not speaking as your audience member. My yesterday: I didn't quite get my novel's third section as far along as I'd dreamt, but it was far enough to say fuck it, and I'll worry about the remaining problems in my next round of edits, and today I start on the fourth section, which has the first sex scene and murder in it. I also had a coffee with Kiddiepunk wherein we schemed about our art show and performance event that opens in the Recollets' gallery on Thursday of next week. Today we'll get the specifics nailed down, and then he'll make a flyer that we'll post around the Recollets and use in a Facebook event alert and so on. What else ... read a bit, talked to some friends via the phone, ... I found out that Pierre Guyotat, one of the greatest living French writers by far, is doing a rare reading next week, so I'm very excited about that. Yury cut my hair back to its usual short length and look. I felt like going out to see a movie, but there was nothing I wanted to see even slightly. Ate the usual, smoked the usual amount, blah blah. The End. Your turn again. ** David, Ha ha ha, what? 'I'm Eighteen', Cooper Union ... ? Am I just being gullible? ** Postitbreakup, Thanks about the DFW- related book. I had heard of it. I'll find it. Oh, those links you posted lead to heaven, man, and I didn't know of a few of those dead theme parks. You know the way to my imagination, my friend. I probably will have a good day thanks to you. I'd say I hope my gloomy porn stars help you have a good day as well, but I'm not sure they're all that great at producing a day's worth of goodness. ** Misanthrope, Dude, you don't look fifty. I'm fiftysomething. Do you look as hagged out as me or, oh, David Hasselhof or whoever? No. You look like a wise owl of a teenager. Case closed. Sad about Justin splitting, yeah. Sorry, big guy. ** Bollo, European sailors, oh, I've seen those. Some of them. They make it to Paris sometimes. Sailors always seem like the shyest, nicest military types, I don't know why. You're confirming my general feeling that Parrino's stuff doesn't have enough that is entirely its own to fully engage my interest other than as being in a line of a certain kind of work. ** Syreearmwellion, Hey, good to see you! I really like that new 'more proof ...' piece of writing on your blog, kudos. You're really good, man. Presumably you know that. I'm going to take an educated guess and say that I think the character you're asking about might be 'Chris' in my novel 'Guide', but I'm not positive about that. I remember the character, but the context is vague this morning. Oh, yeah, I like what I've heard of the Ghost Box stuff quite a bit. And I love their thing, their premise/fantasy concept and all that. I just got that new/revised Advisory Circle album, but I've barely creased it yet. Sounds real good so far. I don't think I've heard Belbury Poly yet. I'll get something by them. I really like the Mount Vernon Arts Lab album from a while back. Have you heard that? Thanks, man. ** I guess that's the lot of you. You've seen my respectful totem poles of emotionally troubled Russian sex stars before, and there's another one for you. If you share any shred of my interest, cool. In any case, see you right away aka tomorrow.
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