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Thomas Moronic
JOY DIVISION
I won’t put it in order because stuff doesn’t happen like that. They remade A Nightmare on Elm Street. They didn’t need to. I saw the trailer online a few months before it came out. It seemed like there was more of a direct reference to Freddy Krueger being a paedophile, whereas in the original he was a child killer, and I guess the idea that he molested kids was a conclusion that the viewer may come to themselves as opposed to something made clear by the film makers. I thought a Michael Bay connected remake was a bad idea but I liked the idea of going to the cinema and watching A Nightmare on Elm Street; the idea of it being this product that could be consumed appealed somehow, although I can’t explain why because I don’t know why. It fitted into another idea of something. I wrote a poem that referenced the original set of films once, and made out that Freddy Krueger was a metaphor for neglect, specifically the neglect of teenagers, or rather the neglect the parents can show to their teenagers. I think I stole the idea from Wikipedia. I watched the remake one evening with friends. We went to watch it at the cinema, which again I liked the idea of. Earlier in the day I had been at a funeral where I stared at the floor so hard my eyes blurred and I spaced out purposely so I didn’t get upset or frustrated by what the reverend was saying and so I didn’t have to think about the people standing behind me who were probably glancing at me occasionally and thinking about my reaction to things maybe they were worrying or concerned or caring but whatever it was it was too much and I needed to not think about it or anything else or anything at all. I keep seeing beautiful things on the internet. Last night I finally realised how you might have felt when you were pushing me off when I was trying to kiss you. In the trailer for the new version – the “reimagining” – of A Nightmare on Elm Street there was a scene from a girl’s dream where she’s standing in her bedroom and it’s snowing inside. The two seconds of that made me think that the dream sequences that new technology may allow could really be something. There was a lot of scope it seemed. When I watched the film I was pissed off when they remade the scene where the outline of Freddy’s face pushes through the wall above Nancy’s bed: in the new film he reaches over her and it doesn’t look as good. You’re dressed casual with your cardigan hanging off your shoulder like this is a message about something else. At the funeral I was thinking about nothing so hard that I almost forgot who I was and afterwards I pretended that some people there were more help than they were because I needed something to feel special or real or like it mattered because I’d spent way too long feeling like everything in my whole fucking life had reached a nowhereness limbo or such epic proportions that the whole idea of where the nothingness had started or where it might end was more abstracted than any notion of death that I might eventually start trying to get my head around. One of my favourite scenes from the original Nightmare series is in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors when Patricia Arquette’s character makes a replica of a house on Elm Street. In the remake there’s a character called Quentin Smith who wears a Joy Division t-shirt and is afraid of going to sleep. The fact that he’s wearing a Joy Division t-shirt is supposed to tell you something, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it might actually tell you a lot of other things by accident, quite different to what you might at first thing it means. I’m going to stop having sex with strangers. I’m going to remove my profile from the sex sites that I’m a member of. There’s a website called lookbook, a lot of people posing in Joy Division t shirts on there. I try and imagine a teenager – like a character from A Nightmare on Elm Street – trying to escape sleep and spending hours recreating a replica of the Unknown Pleasures album cover in their room; buzzed eyes and hands manipulating wire and straightened out coat hangers (like the one that Michael Myers got stabbed in the eye with in one of the Halloween movies), twisting the metal into peaks and dips, a desperate middle of the night reimagining of Peter Saville’s one hundred pulses from a collapsing star. I woke up with your hands on me. You said you couldn’t sleep. I’ve locked every door twice and I keep thinking of how I hurt you. I started a fake facebook page to see if you were still alive. I won’t put it in order because stuff doesn’t happen like that. You said to give this more time but I promised you I’d made up my mind.
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trees
It's funny that my more recent encounters with Joy Division have been through artworks by others, and I'm not speaking about Control. Dana Ward's Typing "Wild Speech" is a chapbook put out by Summer BF Press that deals peripherally with Ian Curtis, but mostly deals with the issues of authorship, suicide, grief, and capital. Perhaps wishing that there was a way to forge through the micro- and macro-tragedies of life with one's imagination. It's currently sold out, but Ward's book was probably one of the best I read in 2010. Here's the cover:
The second encounter with Joy Division comes from the band Jah Division, who I'm sure most of you know— they do dub versions of Joy Division songs. It's a bit ridiculous, but I somehow still find "Dub Will Tear Us Apart" to be strangely gorgeous.
I can't really listen to Joy Division much— the music reminds me of horrible times of my life. Maybe, though, today's posts will erase those memories, and I can dance around to Closer in my room again, like I used to.
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daniel
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James Greer
My twenty-minutes-in-the-making JD hommage.
She's Lost Control by user3643108
(If the imbed isn't working for you, please click on the words 'She's Lost Control')
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leather sub
A car, a dark farmyard, the north-east of England, November 1986. Just turned 18, I'm about to sort-of say goodbye to my virginity with the owner of the car, a car (a blue stocky Ford, the type beloved of middle-management types in mid-Eighties England) I slipped into half an hour ago, nine miles away, in the ashtray-end of the dying industrial town where I've been raised. Headlights glaring like eyes through a ski-mask, the car crept into the notorious back lane where wounded young men of indeterminate sexuality waited for jaded hawks to pick them off.
I was frozen. So cold had I been standing there that night, trying to look nonchalant as I leant against the wall, the wind rushing at me with North Sea meathooks. The thin High Street polyester jacket I bought with my birthday money gave minimal protection. I'm too pale and thin and pathetic for this weather but, in this part of the world, only poofs wear proper coats, you see, and my parents think I'm on a pub crawl with my mates (imaginary mates - I'm far too pale and thin and pathetic to have real friends).
The man gets out of the car, silhoutted against the streetlamp, and heads for the stinking public toilet that is the epicentre of queer culture in this town. A tall-ish, solid figure, fortysomething. Like a father; the father you secretly long to shag. I cannot see his face.
A couple of minutes later, he returns to his car, gets back in and flashes those ski-mask headlights.
Starts the car, pulls up beside me. Leans over to unlock the passenger door. He is wearing a shirt and tie (odd for a Sunday night) and handsome.
I get in. He looks awkward.
'I thought you were somebody I know - someone older,' he says, looking ahead.
'Oh - shall I go then?' I ask, opening the door again.
'No - no!'
A silence.
'It's cold, isn't it?' I can't think of anything else to say.
'Fucking freezing.'
********************
He said, as he pulled away, that he knew somewhere dark and quiet in the countryside, just past the southern edge of town. Let's go there, he said. To a farmyard, owned by a friend of his.
********************
On the motorway, he briefly removes his hand from my crotch to rake around the glove box for a cassette. Anything to fill the silence, probably. I'm hopeless at small talk. Something by Queen fills the silence. It could have been 'We Are the Champions' or 'I Want to Break Free', I don't want to remember which. I hate Queen and feel embarrassed for him. I presume he's trying to prove that, at fortysomething, he's still down with the kids, but he's not - Queen are evil 'cos they played Sun City last year. The music is shit too. I'm too polite to say anything, though.
Off the motorway, he wends his way through narrow country lanes, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on my cock, which is bursting through my rubbish underpants. He slows down, turns a right and pulls up to a metal farm gate. He stops the car. Here we are, he says. This is the farmyard owned by a friend of mine. He gets out, opens the gate. Queen suddenly sound curdled (an immense improvement, it must be said) - as if the tape is warping.
********************
As he attempts to penetrate me (my hands bound behind me by his tie - my request), I'm trying in my head to play 'This Charming Man' by The Smiths. Trying to swoon with lonely glamour. But physically the experience is all too painful, and the song playing on the radio - 'Isolation' by Joy Division - seems more fitting. But, he says, what on earth is this rubbish? He turns around to turn the radio off.
'Stop! It hurts,' I cry, pushing him out of my arse and wriggling round onto my back.
He spontaneously ejaculates over my stomach and chest. I come too, but not as vigorously.
Through the windscreen, out here in the country darkness, the cold night sky is sick with starlight.
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L@rstonovich
This, oddly enough, was my gateway drug to Joy Division. I heard it on a little hometown "alternative" radio station in NJ circa '88. Not as holy as the original but a damn good rendering nonetheless.
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Mark
http://mwp.jaycloidt.com/MPPHOTO2006/JDSLC1000FR100RF25.mp3
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Mark Gluth
A while ago a friend and I were talking about Joy Division and I said that Joy Division were a perfect band. I don’t know that he totally agreed with me, but he didn’t really disagree. I don't remember explaining myself that well . It's probably because Joy Division embody the visceral thrill that only rock music, at it's best, can provide. A thrill that for me is more ecstatic truth than easily argued fact. But let me try anyway: Musically Joy Division strained against the primitive chops from which their aspirations were born. If what they say is to believed, they constantly practiced and honed their skills when they first came together. But as opposed to becoming virtuosic musicians in any individual sense, they nailed their collective output as a band, capturing in their songs, the essence of what made them weird and compelling. What I mean is if you study the individual parts, what you see is this brutal pointillism, but all the dots come together in this glorious smear that washes over you in a way that nothing had previous. You marry this smear to (On their 2 studio albums) Martin Hannett’s visionary production and the deal's only sweetened. Sometimes I think his role is over stated, but while Joy Division deserve all the credit for their work, Hannett did provide the perfect frame for it. While I was writing this I put on Unknown Pleasures. Right now New Dawn Fades is playing. It's as good an example of what I'm talking about as any....the snare both punches and shimmers, the guitar is de-tuned and manages to sound both gutted and strident, the bass is a death march. Put together, it sounds like the end of the world. Aside from their released output (including bootleg quality live recordings) being totally excellent, there is the Ian Curtis factor. His life is easily cliff noted as doomed, self destructive visionary. Of course he was that, but he was also so much more, and as extension so was Joy Division. He was the right front man for them. His voice captured, probably because it embodied, all these nerves, all this yearning, all this need, this want. His delivery is that of a man who stared down infinity and just saw a blank wall. He sound like he was gathering himself against a storm, stealing himself against some inevitable horror. You can romanticize him all you want but in the end his voice is just compelling as shit. His lyrics, always literary in intention and aim drew this line between the grandiose and the personal, the archetypical and the typical. But he was not the only thing that made Joy Division perfect. New Order is a great band in their own right, but of course that’s another story.
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Michael Karo
we secretly love it when they die young. because we can control them in a way. we don't have to put up with the move to L.A., the crappy solo albums, watching a once wonderful band slowly turn boring. some bands break up at the perfect time (the birthday party). some bands go through a major change and SHOULD break up (HELLO, rem!)
of course it's sad he's dead. it's sad he couldn't get the help he needed. it's sad he told his wife he wouldn't live past his twenties. it's sad his daughter never knew him.
if he had lived, what would we be saying about him today? "oh, the early stuff was great."? i hate what-if's when it comes to rock star deaths.
speculation is all we have. can YOU picture a 65-year-old janis joplin on letterman dragging out "me and bobbie mcgee" one more time? i can and i can't.
he had no idea we would still be talking about him today when he kicked that chair out of the way. that's the difference between him and cobain. kurt KNEW the impact his death would have. he wanted to go out on top. ian just wanted to go.
ugh, i hate suicide. it's so mean. and i hate "dying for your art".
about once a year i go through a brief JD phase. i pull out the cd's, play 'em in the car. and i enjoy them. i only have the two. i know some of the earlier stuff. i really like that live version of "sister ray". someday i'll probably get more JD stuff, but i like having a limited amount of songs.
i wonder what they would have sounded like without hannett producing them. i love the sound of the albums. so icy, cold. but from what i've read a lot of those sessions were not much fun. hannett was kind of a strange guy. working for days to get the perfect snare sound is not my idea of a good time.
loves:
the whole way the band presented itself visually. the album art. the promo photos. everything fit. JD in color is just wrong, somehow. the ironic cover of closer, selected before he died.
the uniqueness of their sound. many copied them, no one got it right.
hates:
i hate that after 30 years i STILL don't know the title of many of the songs when i hear them. do you know what i mean? unless i hear the title of the song in the lyrics, i'm lost most of the time. how funny. it's all those one-word titles.
i HATE that goofy spazzy chicken-dork dance he did! the first time i saw that i was shocked. he should have just been leaning forward on his mic stand.
all that jumping around couldn't have been good for his epilepsy.
read the books. watch the film. enjoy the music.
i have this fantasy. i would like to hear fred schneider do a cover of "she's lost control". close your eyes and imagine THAT for a moment. what a hoot! ian would have to smile at that.
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_Black_Acrylic
A tribute from one Mancunian legend to another, both sadly missed.
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Math
________________
Zack
----To this day I can't think of Joy Division without thinking of conversations I had with my best friend in college. Over coffee and cigarettes, I almost became convinced of that cliché you often hear in movies: “There are two kinds of people in this world...” In this case, you either preferred Joy Division or you preferred New Order, the band that Joy Division eventually became. A music fan could like them both, of course, but you clearly had to side with one over the other. My friend chose Joy Division – in fact, he didn't think much of New Order – while I sided with the sunnier, synth-ier incarnation of Bernard Sumner and company.
----I started to see our personalities in that light: he was the caustic art student, forgoing romantic relationships for a world of drug experimentation; this was Joy Division's bleak, fractured sound relayed through headphones at two in the morning, cigarette dangling from his lip, working on an abstract painting in the corner of a suburban bedroom.
----On the other side of town: I was dumb as a puppy, throwing myself headlong into any love affair that came into view. Each romance ended before it even began, but New Order provided the (crucially) danceable soundtrack to every one of my spectacular failures. Peter Hook's melodic basslines; the beyond-catchy synth hooks; Bernard Sumner's lyrics, with their spacey-headed sadness that seemed translated into English from some other language.
----New Order had what Joy Division didn't: an entire discography to fumble and grow as musicians, and for me to explore. In my eyes, they peaked with 1989's Technique, inspired by the dance scene in Ibiza. I fondly remember leaving a voice message on an ex's phone that was literally just me singing “Answer me/Why won't you answer me?” from their song “Run.” It's not so creepy if you've heard the song – I promise. Conversely, Joy Division represented a world that was cryptic and unknowable, as I sometimes saw my friend. The band came to an abrupt end just as they hit their stride.
----For a little while, that was my idea of getting to know someone: if the conversation turned to music, and if it turned to Eighties music, Joy Division invariably came up. I had to be the one to ask – Joy Division or New Order? I found it was one of those geek debates with a forgone conclusion: just like the Smiths' output is superior to Morrissey's solo career and Depeche Mode was never the same after Alan Wilder left, Joy Division will always tower above New Order. Of course, there's really no need to put such disparate bands in opposition – but it's one of those things music fans like to do, same as “best of” lists.
----If New Order eventually faltered and lost their way creatively – the release of their last record, Waiting for the Siren's Call, was met with little fanfare in 2005 – well, that's the fate of most bands that have been around as long as they have. I think for a lot of people, New Order's music is synonymous with certain Eighties production techniques that come across as dated now, while Ian Curtis's voice seems to originate from another century entirely, imbuing Joy Division with a timeless quality. Eighties production or no, I find it hard to top the manic euphoria of “Temptation,” the enormous beat of “True Faith,” or the compulsion to dance that hits whenever I hear “Bizarre Love Triangle,” no matter how many times I've heard a DJ play it.
----People change. Bands get older and frequently less interesting. My friend was the one to find love, not me, and he moved away. I'm still stuck in a rut, as the saying goes. I like the way that New Order's music can provide the backdrop for various moments and moods in my life, whereas Joy Division only tend to occur to me at the cusp of despair. That's probably unfair to Joy Division but, while Ian Curtis's otherworldly wail conjures up many emotions, I find most of them chill-inducing. Listening to that band makes me feel like an entire club is dancing on my grave. Though I suppose there are those, like my friend, who would say “Therein lies the appeal.”
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nb
My two favorite covers:
Ola Podrida - Atmosphere
Honeyroot - Love will tear us apart
First heard this during the closing credits of Red Road, which is a beautiful film. (From the director of Fish Tank.)
And my all time favorite Joy Division song:
Passover
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Scunnard
On May 18, 1980 Joy Division singer Ian Curtis killed himself and Mt. St. Helens blew itself apart.
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jax
Okay, it's not the Top of the Pops footage (IF they ever did play TOTP) but this is my all time fav JD track, the one that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Like all true classics, it's just wonderfully simple. That opening drum bit that continues throughout - that insidiously catchy tune which dovetails so beautifully with the guitar riff. It;s like a fugue, you know? By Bach or someone. And then, of course, Curtis's deep, mournful voice over the top of the whole thing. Not to mention his legendary dance.
But She's Lost Control works without the visuals. I have a feeling it;d work even if I'd never heard it before and had no idea who JD were. It stands alone, not needing any context. Like all great works of art..
I wanna write a novel that functions the way She's Lost Control does. Or a script. I keep trying. Maybe one day I'll manage it.
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Creative Massacre
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steevee
Here's an amateur video for Joy Division's "Ceremony" I found on YouTube:
It's a bit literal-minded but still evocative in places.
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dandysweets
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popzeus
My Wikipedia
Ian Curtis was a puppet, raucous, a genius. His band’s name, Joy Division, was controversial, but maybe he wasn’t, or isn’t. He was married. Maybe had a kid, though most people first hear him while kidless, and probably have trouble imagining him taking care of a baby. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did drugs? He wrote a song about someone retarded, or someone with a learning disability, or someone he, or to be more accurate the narrator of the song, couldn’t reach with words (I think). He had a shit job and quit, which I think is, in all seriousness, an accomplishment. He wrote songs in spurts. Love comes in spurts. Love will tear us apart. Ian Curtis felt too much. His voice seems very dry, like there’s not any liquid on his vocal chords. You might say something similar about his anger. He couldn’t do drugs, not many. He had epilepsy. His bandmembers went on to write one of the only songs I can dance to: “Ceremony.” It’s so great and so dumb. It has all this energy but it also seems like it can’t quite get out of bed. I mean that in a good way. Ian Curtis could get out of bed, but he had seizures, sometimes onstage. He hanged himself. Someone once told me that he did it slowly, by putting a noose around his neck and then standing on a block of ice. In a warm room, of course.
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MANCY
----
*
p.s. Hey. So, there's the conclusion. Thanks everybody for your extraordinary work, help, generosity, etc., and please spend the weekend reaping your benefits please. ** Dennis Cooper, Well, hey there, Dennis! What a rare treat to see you! Thank you for gracing us with your presence. How are you doing? Like everyone else, I'm chomping at the bit for 'The Marbled Swarm'. I wouldn't mind a catch up on your goings on if you have the time and inclination. Anyway, mainly, wow, so great to see you! ** Allesfliesst, Oh, hell, I got so close. Damn my punk attitude. Seriously, it sounds to have been kind of really great. The deleted rain scene: well, it's far from finished/ polished, but maybe I'll get restless enough to work on it. I do have this idea if people really get into the novel and its complicated mystery and stuff, I might finish and release some of the deleted parts in some context or other as further clues to solving the thing's thing. ** David Ehrenstein, Well, yeah, definitely. ** Jesse Hudson, Hey, Jesse! Very, very cool to see you here. You've been much missed. Pull up a desk chair and sit a spell please. I'm really glad you've liked the post, and what an interesting question to Alan. Well, yeah, it would great if you feel like rejoining the fold more regularly, and, in any case, thank you! Talk to you soon. ** Renaud Cerqueux, Oh, hey! We should meet up for a coffee or whatever when I'm in Brest. Or I mean if you're game. I'm there for a week starting on Wednesday, staying across the street from the Quartz. I don't think I have your email address, but if you want to send it to me at dcooperweb @gmail.com, I can send you my cell phone number, etc. It would be really nice to see you. ** Nick, Hey, man! Thanks a lot on behalf of everyone. Take care. ** FreeFox, Hi. Man, obviously, I'm sorry to hear about your losses and collapsing world. Been through a bit of that myself lately but soldiering on as best I can. No sweat about lurking if that feels right to you, but you can also chew up your words and thoughts, etc. here too, if you like. I'm really interested in whatever regarding you. ** Changeling, Oh, yes, the dolphin anathema was yours. Now I remember. You are not alone, it seems. I used to know someone who was deathly afraid of dolphins. She would have a mini-nervous breakdown if she even saw a poster on a wall that had even a drawing of a dolphin on it. How did 'Trash Humpers' sit with you? I'm very interested to hear the latest on your novel, if you feel like it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. How are you doing? Have you found new living quarters yet? Are you feeling better, I hope? ** Alan, It's true: I think I'd take the family disinterest over your mom's over-interest in the long run, but the querying still feels sweet. ** Trees, Hello, sir. There isn't enough RV porn in the world. I usually don't like outdoors porn -- something about the light, I think -- but with RV porn you get the best of both worlds. Oh, well, you'll have to link me up to that scene then if that boy is so novelly. Interesting about the class with Camille Roy. She's an interesting writer, obviously. I'd be curious how she teaches and how that goes. You're probably going to make that move East? Sounds good to me. ** JW Veldhoen, Yeah, I liked the Guibert thing a lot. Hence, imbedding it. But memory is nice. Love polaroids. Miss my camera badly. Hang in there, buddy. Keep your greatness in mind. ** Sypha, You're no more Joe Mainstream than me, man. Your interest in things is always very interesting. That stuff with the guy sounds really nice. Try to relax and let it happen, and try not to think your way out of it via self-criticism, if you can, okay? Positive energy has its own really curious effect on writing. Suffering is only one shade of inspiration, and it's cool, but it's also kind of overrated. ** Pisycaca, Hi, Montse. Yeah, I thought you would probably understand about the dad thing. You can only keep things hidden from yourself for so long. The Italy trip will be a nice break, for sure. Especially for Yury, who hasn't had a real work vacation in about two years. Yeah, we'll be in Rome for five nights and then four nights in Florence. I've never been to Florence. Well, those are certainly two very colorful rock stars with drug histories there, ha ha. Weiland, wow, he was about an inch from death there for a couple of years. Lots of love, my friend. ** Wolf, Dude, did your golden idea not work out great? I'm a lurker this weekend. I was going to do an entry, but I couldn't think of the right thing, and then what came in was so rich that I thought I'd sit back like Dylan during one of his crappy periods and just watch the river flow. Yeah, it's weird to be in the comments arena, but I try to avert my eyes. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, All thanks to Wolf. I was just the assembly line worker. Thanks for reposting the list. I couldn't get my eyes adjusted enough to actually read the words. Nice fingers. Yeah, maybe I'll try the handwriting analysis thing again, but the problem is there is a lot more people here now, and while I like sitting in my desk chair, I'm not in love with the pose. You make me want to try to rethink Bread. Being the age I am, I still think of them as we did back in the day as mainstreamed hippie blah CSN rip-off music. America (the band) without the unintentional camp. Seals & Crofts without the ick. But I'm curious now. I haven't heard anyone talk about Fanny since, hm, I guess back when The Runaways were new and critics were looking for precedents. ** Chris (British), Hey. People always want to beat me up when I say this, but when people get all delusional about their pets and think the pets understand them and love them according to our definition of love, etc., it just weirds me out. I always saw 'Flipper' and 'Lassie', etc., as like sci-fi without the spaceships. But what do I know? Nothing, seriously. And I hope that wards off the pet lovers' pet defenses. ** Toniok, Hi, man. Well, it's good that you can go with #5 if you need to. Deadlines are weird, right? I guess you just have to get into the rhythm because the way the art world works these days, you're always needing to make work for some art fair or other, it seems like. Oh, that's cool about Jean-Luc Verna. Do you know his drawings? They're pretty terrific. Your English is actually pretty damned good, man. ** Steevee, Great pieces yesterday. I mean the two I linked to. Really enjoyed them. I love the way you see, think, write about film. Mm, I'm not sure if Guibert's work is totally up Dalkey Archive's alley. It may not be experimental or avant enough, I'm not sure. I think Guibert's time will come around again. It's a curious in-between time for gay-identified work from that period. ** Little foal, Hi, Darren! Making assignments for writing is always weird even when they make total sense beforehand. That almost never works for me. It's better when you write something and then afterwards you realize that your heart or whatever had just given you an assignment. I love Codeine. Their song 'jr' is one of my favorite songs. I just spent 10 minutes trying to find a streamable version to link to with no luck, grr. Anyway, your responses yesterday were wonderful and generous. I didn't see your thing about me being clever about my commenting self until it was too late. Today I just seem to have filled myself with pure joy. Do your best not to worry too much about your HIV test. The odds are greatly in favor of your testing negative. If you do test positive, you need to think of it as an adjustment. But, yeah, scary stuff. When I was tested for the first time in the mid-80s, testing poz was still considered pretty much a death sentence, and I was so incredibly terrified when I went to get my results that I couldn't walk, and I literally crawled on my hands and knees from my car to the doctor's office. Well, you know, you have your voice. It's radiating out of your comment. You don't lose your voice, you just scare yourself at the idea of it disappearing. It doesn't disappear. It's just enslaved to your emotional state. That's all. I love your Bieber haircut observations. I've only seen his new haircut in thumbnail pix. I guess I'll click on one of them and see the difference more clearly. Anyway, lots of love to you, D., and thank you for being so generous with your words and with your self here yesterday. It/you mean a lot. ** Andrew, My very favorite newsstand gay porn magazine from back in the day is In Touch. Especially in the late 80s, early 90s. The guys in it looked good, and it was also a smart, savvy magazine that covered cool music, books, films, etc. It's my favorite of that genre ever. I also kind of liked this sleazier one called Starz. ** Statictick, Hi, N. Lovely responses, and, yes, whenever the time is right, I definitely want to help alert the world to your book in whatever manner seems fit to you. ** Bill, Hey. I'll try to find 'Blindsight'. It's probably out of print. I think all of his books are oop now. The Serpents Tail ones are at least. In fact, it wasn't until I was making that post and searching around that I discovered Serpents Tail has let all of my books go of print now too. That was kind of very depressing. Kandinsky's Sounds, awesome! ** G., Hi, welcome, and thank you so much for commenting and for being here. Please do come back any time and often as you wish, if you wish. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hi. I think using your life as the basis for a novel is very worth a try. You're a really wonderful writer, and you write so beautifully about your life here, and I get the feeling what stops you from writing fiction is the feeling that you don't know if what you're writing about is interesting enough, and I think you've got everything you need right there in your life. You have real gifts as a writer, and having a distinct and developed voice is the key and hardest part of all for most writers, and you really don't need to worry about that. And you can always go back and change, cut, fantasize new things later and improve the novel if you need to. I don't want to pressure you, I just think you so totally have the gift, and it's only a matter of you gaining the confidence to fulfill it. The weekend, and my editor leaving the office, came before the blurbs thing got too far, so I guess we'll deal with that next week. That paragraph about visiting your friend and the laundry and the dog and the sleeping and the ride home is a perfect example of what I was talking about above. As was the phone call interruption and aftermath. 'Machete' isn't so good? I missed it, and I had this feeling it wouldn't be so hot even though it seems like it should have been. Oh, well. I get that mystery pot smoke smell/cloud thing over here all the time. Right near where I live even. In spots where no one is smoking anything. It's kind of mystical or something. A pot smoking ghost? My days: I really hate spending money, and it always makes me procrastinate, and I did, but I finally bought plane tickets to Italy and made hotel reservations and all that, and I guess ultimately it feels like a relief. Stephen (O'Malley) sent me the mock-up of the first 'Last Spring' fanzine to look over, but my internet connection is so bad that it said it would 48 hours to download, so I didn't. The Recollets is having a garage sale this weekend, and at first I was into selling stuff there, but then I realized I don't have much of anything that anyone would want to buy. I guess I could make cupcakes or something and try to get the cupcake fad started over here. I made some writing notes, nothing substantial. I'm feeling this real jones to start a new novel, but I'm not at all ready yet because I still need to get 'TMS' out of my head and out of my voice, so it's frustrating. It was easier when I was writing the George Miles books because they were sort of pre-planned, and I could just slide from one right into the next, but now I want my novels to be really different from each other, and that takes time, ugh. Arte showed Sophia Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette', and I'd never seen it, so I watched it, and at first I thought it was bad and nothing, but then I got this idea that she was trying to do her own version of 'Barry Lyndon', and after that I thought it was kind of interesting, but, in the end, I didn't think it was very much. I had coffee with Kiddiepunk and Oscar. We talked about seeing 'True Grit' last night, but then we ended up watching 'Days of Heaven' on K's cool video/TV projector thing instead, and, fuck, what a great, great film that is. So great. I hadn't watched it in years. Malick's movies always really inspire me, and 'DoH' gave me ideas about a new fiction voice I might try to work with, so we'll see. I watched TV documentaries on Karl Lagerfeld, which was meh/ ass kissing, and on Vivienne Westwood, and that was one okay because she's still so punk rock and charming even though she's really past her prime as a designer. I ran a bunch of errands, nothing noteworthy. I'm stretching now, so I'll leave it there and try to have a fascinating weekend, ha ha. You have a fine, fine weekend, my friend, and pray tell me all about it. ** Hedi, Hi, Hedi! Thanks a lot for taking such wonderful part in the JDD. The Guibert photo retrospective is nice, quite large and comprehensive. I think there's a catalog, but it didn't look as noteworthy as the show did. The show I wish you were here to see is the General Idea retrospective at the MdAM. It's really, really good. Good for you for bailing on family Christmas. I'm doing that more and more. Yeah, really nice to see you, Hedi! Much love to you. ** Jeff, I'm like that about LA when I watch Laurel & Hardy movies. ** Bollo, Good about the paper sorting out. Rules, man, weird. Your day sounds plenty productive. Mine wasn't so much. I was listening to that new Tim Hecker 'Ravedeath' album yesterday. It's doing the trick right now for some reason. ** Stephen, Hey, man! Wow, great to see you! You're in Paris? Holy shit. I'll write to you, yeah. There's always something to see. I'll think of stuff. Are you here re: fashion week stuff? I'm here until Wednesday when I go to Brest for theater stuff. Anyway, hopefully I'll see you fairly pronto. ** Misanthrope, It was a good Day. This one's pretty good too. I almost went back and told Alan that Communists were responsible for the NYC Herpes outbreak and then pretended to react with amazement as the astuteness of your dream and then pretended I had consequently seen the error of my ways and accepted Christ as my personal saviour. Would you have believed me? Oh, there's plenty of subtle homophobia in my family, yeah. I'll skip giving you examples just in case one of them looks at my blog, which would take a miracle. A Day from you would be awesome, G., if you have the time. I've run out of guest-posts, and I'm in need. Bon(er) weekend. ** J., Hello there. What an excellent entrance you've made. Thanks, kudos, and hang out, why don't you? ** Right. Spend from here until Monday wringing Joy Division Day dry, and I will see you on, well, Monday.
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