matthew dickman

Looking through one of my old journals, I found this poem that I'd cut and pasted from an issue of the New Yorker a couple years ago. I'd read an article about Matthew Dickman and his twin brother Michael, who is also a poet, in an earlier issue of the magazine and became somewhat infatuated with the two of them. Maybe it was because of their twinship, and that each brother's writing represents quite opposite ends of the poetic spectrum - which is something of a romantic notion in itself - but I found something about them very endearing. I was never a big poetry fan, though I had always wished to be, and reading the Dickman twins' poetry helped turn me into one. 

I think this poem of Matthew's is especially striking. It's desperately melancholic, all the more so, I think, for the digestibility of the lyricism - like it's not a poem at all but maybe a modern monologue, a confession so honest it breaks your heart to hear it. Reading this poem feels a little voyeuristic, as I think good poetry should; it makes you feel ashamed, as though you were intruding on a person's very private rituals. Though it's about the death of the poet's older brother, and intensely personal, I think it can relate things more universal. But even if you can't find those things, at the very least it'll make you feel something true.

King

I'm always the king of something. Ruined or celebrated,

newly crowned, or just beheaded. King of the shady grass

and king of the dirty sheets. I sit in the middle

of the room in December

with the window open, five pills, and a razor. My life long

secret. My killing power and my staying

power. When the erection fails, when the car almost hits

the divider, I'm king. I wave my hand over

the ants bubbling out of the sidewalk and make them all knights,

I sit at the dinner table and look into the deep

dark eyes of my television, my people. I tell them the kingdom

will be remembered in dreams of gold. I tell them

what was lost will be found. So I put on my black-white

checkered Vans, the exact pair of shoes

my older brother wore when he was still a citizen in the world,

and I go out, I go out into the street

with my map of the dead and look for him,

for the X he is,

so I can put the sceptre back in his hands, take the red

cloak from my shoulders and put it around his, lift the crown

from my head and fit it just above his eyebrows,

so I can get down on one knee, on both

knees, and lower my face and whisper my lord, my master, my king.

-Matthew Dickman

(from the November 1, 2010 issue of The New Yorker)

lost in translation

Toska (Russian): "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” - Vladimir Nabokov

(jim goldberg)

Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego): “The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are too reluctant to start.”

Tartle (Scottish): "The act of hesitating while introducing someone because you've forgotten their name."

Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese): “The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.”

(hedi slimane)

Hyggelig (Danish): “Cozy, welcoming, and enticing.”

Duende (Spanish): “The mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.”

 

Ya’aburnee (Arabic): Literally translated as "'You bury me,' a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.”

(rene magritte)

Saudade (Portuguese): “The feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.”

nu gothick

Maybe it was the gloomy weather today - or perhaps it was the fact that I never took my eyeliner off last night which, after a tumultuous four-hour sleep (thank you, construction workers across the street!), resulted in my being greeted by a pretty demonic-looking figure in the mirror this morning - but the soundtrack to my day turned out to be pretty hellish. What, you think that's a bad thing? Not for me, you guys!

I've long harbored a (not-so-secret) soft spot for the Gothic things in life, and some days, like this one, I've just gotta satisfy the little impish devil inside of me. Figuratively, of course; I haven't ventured into Satanic worship just yet, Mom.

Here are some of my most fundamental picks from the shady side of the street. It's really not so bad this side of the sun.

Hybrid - "Choke"

I rarely listen to electronic music, but the few songs I've found that I like have, for me, reached a transcendent-level of awesomeness. This song by Welsh band Hybrid (Anglophile points!) is probably the fastest and cheapest route to reaching some kind of mind-altering state. Seriously, blast it through your headphones and walk around New York on a rainy night - instant paranoia! But in a good way. 

Also, I think this should be the theme song to Willow circa Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Anyone who made it that far through the show, I salute you.

VAST - "I Am a Vampire"

The title of this song pretty much says it all. Like, screw all these Goth/industrial rock bands who feel the need to substantiate their Satanic tendencies with half-baked analogies and pseudo-mythologies. This song gets straight to the point: I'm a fucking vampire. Or, I like to dress like one, anyway.

The Cure - "Disintegration"

Because no gloomy playlist would be complete without a contribution from the Kings of Sturm und Drang. But this song also happens to be utterly beautiful, the best kind of melancholy, and the lyrics are genuinely profound and rather masterfully poetic as far as lyrics can go. And NO ONE (certainly no dudes) can rock a smoky eye quite like Robert Smith can.

Joy Division - "Disorder"

There's not much I can say that could adequately articulate how much I love this song. But I can tell you that I want to live inside of it. 

Placebo - "Pure Morning"

A completely hypnotic song, almost anodynic. The video would be ignorable, as most music videos are, but for the fact of how spellbindingly vampiric Brian Molko looks, at his absolute androgynous best, standing on the ledge of a skyscraper. It doesn't get much moodier than that. 

louche

louche (adj.): disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way.

(patti smith by judy linn)

(cole mohr)

(paul simonon)

(patti smith and robert mapplethorpe)

(dree hemingway)

(johnny's bird)

(james dean)

(buster keaton)

(jean paul belmondo)

(debbie harry and chris stein)

(morrissey)

idol worship: brody dalle

The Reigning Queen of Badassery. Frontwoman for the Distillers (a band who managed to remain pretty true to the punk spirit and sound even after the genre's inception into the mainstream/death in the early '90s) from 1998-2004; frontwoman for Spinnerette 2004-present; ex-wife of Tim Armstrong (Operation Ivy; Rancid; Transplants; also seriously badass, despite his relative success in mainstream venues); current wife of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age; Eagles of Death Metal; producer of the Arctic Monkeys' latest album Humbug; ginger reincarnation of Elvis Presley (seriously, look him up - it's kind of uncanny)). 

Brody has long been a personal hero of mine. In a genre overrun by high-testosterone dudes, Brody injects an unapologetic (and desperately needed) dose of feminism, but she manages to do so not by flaunting her sexuality, or by undermining her male peers - which, it seems, many female artists feel the need to do in order to exert their womanhood - but by being only and defiantly herself. For lack of a less nauseating term, Brody just does her. She proves that chicks can not only keep up with the boys but can - shocker! - do it harder, faster, and better than them, too, all without having to bare their tits. 

This is a woman who honestly makes me feel proud to be a female and - dare I say it! - empowered. I know I'm not saying anything new when I say that there is a desperate need for more women like Brody in music and culture, but I'm gonna say it anyway. Girls need their heroes, and too few are worthy of filling that role.

Also, in my next life I would like to be reincarnated as Brody's daughter with Josh Homme (*which is not at all a creepy thing to say*), but I'll shut my fangirl mouth and let Brody speak (/howl) for herself.

"The Young Crazed Peeling" - kind of the Distillers' equivalent of a thesis statement. Note the Transplants shirt, which is kind of a cute tribute to her then-husband Tim Armstrong. Also note how goddamn punk she is.

To prove that Brody's voice is truly that awesome without the help of massive studio tweaking, here's the Distillers performing "Drain the Blood" and "Die on a Rope" live on Jools Holland.

The video to Spinnerette's first single "Ghetto Love" which is also one of my favorite songs ever. I can only describe it as slinky. Right? Also note the awesome hat which manages to look genuinely cool on Brody rather than cartoonish and/or desperate. Not many women could pull off a Lord Grantham-style top hat (Downton Abbey nerds -- you know what I'm talking about).

An acoustic version of my favorite Distillers song "Dismantle Me." Listen to that howl at the 2:05 mark -- that's pretty damn serious.

for a friend

So I'd always felt a little guilty calling myself a true punk fan, because I could never - despite the encouragement from a certain very enthusiastic friend, as well as many attempts at forced conditioning/auditory self-flagellation - get into Bad Brains. Because not listening to Bad Brains, as a punk fan, is kinda like visiting Paris and not going to the Louvre: it's just something you have to do.

So when I stumbled across Frank Turner's cover of "Pay to Cum" - probably Bad Brains' most well-known song, and definitely one of the most important songs to come out of the hardcore DC scene - I felt I could ease up on the metaphorical whip, because I felt that I had finally gotten it.

(Does it still make me feel guilty that that process of acceptance took a lot of prettying up, a near-thorough stripping away of the song's essential rawness and rage, and a complete replacement of HR's crooked reggae-punk utterances for a King's English pronunciation by an Eton-educated folk singer? Well, yes.)

The cover version made me realize that, when it comes down to it, this is a beautiful song, and a profound statement against both the excesses and the dishonesties of a hypocritical, restrictive society: not at all as crude as the title may suggest.

By the way, here's the original version, which is seriously hardcore and a total classic in its own right (a sentiment which I finally feel I can fully endorse. Yay!)

As for that certain very enthusiastic friend, I'm not sure whether he'd like this cover or totally hate it. But I think he'd be happy to know that (with the help of his encouragement, as well as this very pretty cover) I've jumped on the Bad Brains bandwagon and have come closer to accepting HR as a personal god.

revenant

revenant (n.): a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost.

(gerhard richter)

(justin quinnell)

(hedi slimane - amy)

head + wall, 2 ways

Sometimes listening to music makes me feel like a schizo.

I fell in love with Black Flag (and Henry Rollins) when I heard this song. What it had anything to do with a fifteen-year-old suburban white girl is absolutely nothing, which meant absolutely everything as to why I fell so hard for it. None of the punk I had heard - not even the Sex Pistols, who were too entrenched in their theatricality and their Dadaistic nihilism, or the Ramones, who were really playing straight-up bubblegum pop with some of the edges torn off - had come close to this kind of rage, this auditory equivalent of ripping out your own stitches, of pouring vinegar into an open wound. This music freaked me out, and I didn't know what to do with it, so I kept listening.

But at the same time I discovered Elliott Smith, the posthumous hero of the melancholy, and listening to him just made me cry and want to write poetry or something, but I knew that nothing I would write could ever come close to the near-holy fragility of this song. Elliott Smith, to me, was the embodiment of everything beautiful, and everything sad, and everything that needed to be fixed but probably never would be.

And then, four years later, I discovered that Heatmiser, Elliott Smith's band before he went solo, had a song called "Rest My Head Against the Wall," which made me seriously excited, because guess what? Black Flag has this crazy song called "Beat My Head Against the Wall"! It was like the angry youth and the depressive, which had both somehow weaseled their way inside of me, had found common ground through the shared activity of doing things to walls with your head.

I can't find a video of "Beat My Head Against the Wall," but assuming you watched the "Rise Above" video, it should be easy for you to imagine Henry Rollins not only singing/yelling about beating his head against a wall, but actually doing it, probably quite frequently.

But here's the Heatmiser video. This song, to me, is absolutely perfect. Nothing better embodies that apathetic '90s languidness that just makes you wanna rock a crushed velvet slip dress and a leather choker and some pleather platform boots.

So actually, it's kind of a revealing psychological assessment. Are you a Head Beater or a Head Rester?  Leather or plaid? Straight edge or Vicodin? Take your pick.

hello

Hello, readers! (Actually: Hello members of my immediate family and/or person I went to high school with to whom I haven't spoken in a solid five years - I salute your Facebook-roving capabilities).

So I kind of missed the memo about having a blog (I blame my lazy secretary), mostly because I'm resistant to any form of self-promotion, etc. But in the wise words of Built to Spill, "Who doesn't think they're at the center of the universe?" So, yeah. I'm jumping on the ME train.

Here I'll post about things I find beautiful and strange and cool - music, images, books and poetry, etc. Hopefully you'll think they're interesting, too. Actually I think I kind of live inside this juvenile bubble of infallibility in which I could not possibly imagine someone NOT thinking that the things I like are cool, too. So if you think something sucks, TELL ME!

Sidenote: I took the title of this blog from the Germs' song of the same name. Quick rundown on the Germs: LA hardcore punk, '77-'80, singer Darby Crash died of a deliberate heroin overdose at 22 and became a hardcore icon, mostly due to his untimely death and his obnoxious lack of any vocal talent.