Sunday, February 27, 2011

The King of Limbs: A Dance Album

The new Radiohead album is a dance album.

I must respectfully disagree with all those who classify The King of Limbs as some sort "headphones" album, one that requires careful listening and avid attention to deconstruct and appreciate. The King of Limbs is not some Post-Modern experiment (though it is that, too)--no, it's a dance album.

When I downloaded it just a week ago, instead of sitting their dumbfounded by this strange new track-listing that was bizarre even by Radiohead standards, I found myself actually dancing in my room, almost without thinking to.

I was dancing on the first listen, even. For all the on-line chatter about whether or not this is a band that has become "so obsessed with sound that they forgot to write a song," or if these are just warm-overs from Thom Yorke's solo album, or discussions about accessibility and willful difficulty, I think what most on-line reviews have missed is the fact that this is an album you can dance to.

One would think this fact self-evident, based if nothing else on the fact that the album's first music video features singer Thom Yorke dancing to his own song! He willfully looks like a dork dancing, because we all look like dorks dancing--but then, when we dance, we don't care how we look, we just dance. He likewise wishes you, the listener, to cut loose and not be afraid how you look doing so. One does not need to wait for Radiohead to provide some mysterious skeleton key to grant access to their strange new album--one need only watch their video, and understand immediately the framing device, the context that The King of Limbs is to be experienced in.

It is a dance album. You dance to it. Far from intellectually deciphering its many layers, you are to let go your mind (the fact that the lead single is called "Lotus Flower" should call to mind the Buddhist predilection for clearing your head) and move to the rhythm.

Now, is this their best album? No, not even close. The fact that it took them 4 years to produce a mere 37-minute album that they release off-handedly on the internet one weekend with only 4 days' notice, should probably indicate that their prolific days are well behind them. Sadly, they most likely will never produce another masterpiece like OK Computer or Kid A.

But then, I already own OK Computer and Kid A--I can re-listen to those whenever I want. Last thing the world needs is another band cashing in on a marketable sound, diluting the power of their own original through endless soul-less repetitions. I already own OK Computer; I neither need nor want Radiohead to produce another.

But say I want to dance sometime, cut loose some energy, let myself go, but I'm not in the mood for hip-hop, or Top 40 or whatever; rest assured, in that case, I will put on The King of Limbs.

It's dance music for people who hate dance music. It's dance music for people who love Radiohead.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Mormon's Wife

As many feminists have pointed out, The Book of Mormon only identifies 6 women by name: Sariah, Sarah, Abish, Mary, Isabel, and Eve. Significantly, Mormon, the very man compiling the Book of Mormon, never once mentions his wife. We have letters between Mormon and his son Moroni, and with them many examples of the close relationship between father and son, but never any between husband and wife, or mother and son. Mormon's wife's absence is conspicuous.

Mormon feminists cite this as an example of the heavy-handed patriarchy implicit in the Book of Mormon; and, frankly, they're probably right. Hugh Nibley built his career positing the Nephites and Lamanites as displanted Semitic Bedouins, and as TE Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" (which I'm currently reading) demonstrates, there's probably few groups under the sun more gender-exclusive than the Bedouins.

But I will also add this--I am currently working on two writing projects, one about a girl I'm trying to get over, and one concerning my Mother's death. For the first, to my great relief, I find that the more I write about her, the less I remember her; the page now remembers her, not me. Writing about her has actually been therapeutic.

As for the second, I've actually become disconcerted by how much less I reflect on my Mother's death since I've been writing on it; for the page now remembers her, not me. In fact, I fear sometimes that I've almost lost her to the page.

My point is, I wonder how much the writing of the Book of Mormon was therapeutic for Mormon and Moroni, how much of recording the downfall and destruction of their people was now remembered by the pages of the plates, and not by them. For all of how soul-rendering tragic was the destruction of their nation, their families, their friends, I wonder if actually recording down "Oh ye fair ones, how is it ye could have fallen!" somehow made it easier to deal with. For now the plates lamented, not them, and they could forget these searing memories at last.

And thus I wonder if Moroni recording epistles from his own father allowed him to finally work through his grief about losing his beloved father.

Which again, makes it all the more significant that neither include a word about Mormon's wife.

Here's my thought: I can testify from writing about my Mother, that there are certain memories, no matter how painful, that you just don't want to forget. They are precious to you; they are part of you. They define you. You don't want the page to take them from you, no matter how much it may hurt sometimes.

I wonder if Mormon and Moroni understood this.

And that for all that these two forlorn men needed to work through their grief, for as much as The Book of Mormon was about them as it is about us, I wonder if the memory of Mormon's wife, of Moroni's mother, was something too precious to risk to the page. That, while they were willing to silence all their other painful memories, if this precious woman was one memory that they wanted to keep for themselves, no matter how much it hurt to remember her lost, no matter how long or far they wandered alone.

Malcolm X and "Human Rights Day"

It irritated me the first time I realized "MLK Day" was now being changed in many states to "Human Rights Day." MLK was more than a man, he was a symbol of the civil rights movement, I argued; whiting-out his name (I use the term white-out deliberately) neutralizes and sanitizes the day, moving attention away from our nation's racist past and burying our continued racial strife beneath vague, abstract wording. Even "Civil Rights Day" has more teeth than the anemic "Human Rights" label. The fact that a mostly-white state like Idaho, home of the Aryan nations, was changing it to "Human Rights Day" also didn't increase my opinion of it.

I still feel that way. But after teaching Malcolm X's "The Ballot or the Bullet" to my students this week, I derive much more pleasure from "Human Rights Day;" for Malcolm X didn't like the term "Civil Rights," preferring instead the term "Human Rights." For as a human rights issue, he could bring the United States before the Human Rights Tribunal of the United Nations, recruiting new allies in Africa, Asia, Latin-America, China, etc. Malcolm didn't want non-violent demonstrations like MLK, he didn't want to "turn the other cheek"--no, he wanted black people to get mad, to get "reciprocal," to get violent; he wanted other countries to get involved, he wanted the third world to rise up against the U.S., and he wanted to do that by calling it a "human rights" movement.

So, now when I hear Idahoans and Utahans defend the sanitized "Human Rights Day" that ignores MLK as much as possible, I want to say back, "Preach it brother! Malcolm X all the way! Let's go beat us some crackers!" All these white "Human Rights Day" defenders would probably prefer MLK a million times over to the radicalism of Malcolm X. But it's too late for that now, suckas! Don't like MLK ? We got some much angrier black people if you'd prefer! Let's fix us some Molotov Cocktails, and go throw us a Human Rights Day!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Prepare to have your last tenuous connection to reality obliterated

http://www.optical-illusions.info/illusions/where_is_the_white_knight_solution.htm

Stare as long as you want; no matter how many ways the website demonstrate that both knights and both squares are the exact same shade of gray, once they are placed back in context of the chess board itself, they will appear to be different colors. Knowing the trick, knowing that it is an illusion, does not cause you to see it any differently.

Sales

The need for a salesperson is in direct inverse proportion to the necessity of the item being sold. The grocery store doesn't have sales-reps; clothing stores only have cashiers.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Arcade Fire The Suburbs

Arcade Fire's The Suburbs has been out for a little while now; and I got it for Christmas so I've had a chance to listen to it more than once. With this little distance and a little familiarity, I've been able to make the following evaluation of the album:

It is thoroughly listenable.

I bet "Empty Room," "Rococo," and "Sprawl II" sound awesome live.

The actual song "The Suburbs" is charming enough on its own; it's probably a shame they had to waste an album title on it.

Then there's a bunch of other tracks that are, well...Not bad. At least not wincingly, cringe-worthy bad. Just listenable. Thoroughly listenable, even.

But not quite the religious experiences of Funeral and Neon Bible.

Frankly, it sounds like an album produced by a band starting to buy too much into its own pretentiousness.

Before I go farther, let me here state that pretentiousness is not necessarily a bad thing:

It takes a certain level of pretentiousness (that is, a certain over-inflated belief in one's own talent and/or importance), to go to all the trouble of forming a 7-piece indie-rock band, complete with violinists, multi-instrumentalists on organ, glockenspiel, hurdy-gurdy, etc.

It takes a certain amount of pretentiousness to sincerely write, believe in, and pull off an anthem like "Wake Up."

It takes more than a dash of pretentiousness to rent out an old Church and record Neon Bible.

For that matter, it takes more than a little pretentiousness to record Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Joshua Tree, or Dark Side of the Moon.

Pink Floyd might in fact be my easiest point of reference for Arcade Fire--for Pink Floyd's The Wall, like The Suburbs, is a thematically-unified, sprawling album reaching for grander themes. Both albums contain a number of legitimately enjoyable songs, sadly couched in much more forgettable fair. Also, both works are much-hyped later period works, produced long after the better work both bands will primarily be remembered for.

For that's the two-edged sword of pretentiousness: When a band believes a little too highly of itself, pretentiousness can still be a positive force for driving the band to try and meet its own self-imposed expectations.

As much as I love REM, they were never going to produce The Joshua Tree; Pink Floyd alone, not some folk-singer or punk-band, had the chutzpa to make Dark Side of the Moon sync with the first 40 minutes of Wizard of Oz; and honestly, only the Beatles--not the Monkees--had the self-confidence to execute Sgt. Pepper.

But if that pretentiousness starts to get out of control--that is, when the pretentiousness becomes an end unto itself, and not a means to an end--that's when problems begin:

The Beatles start filming the atrocious TV special "Magical Mystery Tour," then let their egos get too big for the band;

U2 follows up Joshua Tree with the wincingly self-aggrandizing Rattle and Hum--and keep releasing music a solid decade after their last decent album;

and Pink Floyd releases, well, The Wall.

Not that it's a bad double-album. Just that it could've easily been a solid single album. All I'm saying.

And I'm convinced that the same 10-11 song restriction that kept Funeral and Neon Bible tight could have been of equal benefit to The Suburbs.

And I don't know, maybe the members of Arcade Fire are fully aware of the pretentiousness that drives their band; after all, the opening line to the album's big finale, "Sprawl II," is "They heard me singing and they told me to stop/Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock."

That same refusal to be afraid of being pretentious, that fearlessness, that willingness to look a little silly sometimes, is probably what has kept them going all this time.

Maybe we'd all (maybe I) would get more impressive things done, if we were all willing to look a little ridiculously pretentious now and again, if we tried to live up to our own overly-high expectations in an over-blown manner.

For as much as I love these genres, no folk-singer or punk-band is ever going to record something like "Wake Up."

But nor are they ever going to record The Wall.

Or The Suburbs.

The price we pay, I suppose.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Gender-neutral Pronouns

"It" is impersonal.

"He" is sexist.

"She" calls attention to and thereby reifies the sexism.

"S/he" is unpronounceable.

"Xe" is nonsensical.

"One" is awkward.

Why not just do what we do in regular speech and say "they?" Sure, "they" signifies plural, but so does "were," and we have no problem saying "if I were."

Besides, with the construction of "were" for the singular, we seem to implicitly acknowledge that the individual subject is not one but many, an irresolvable composite of countless contradictory and multiple identities, discourses, cultures, and personalities. We don't just form multitudes, we are multitudes, as Walt Whitman would say.

Hence, far from being contradictory, I believe nothing could be more consistent, honest, and true to real life, than to use "they" in the singular for gender-neutral pronoun situations.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The White Stripes Are Dead; Long Live The White Stripes

But...but...a seven-nation army couldn't hold 'em back! He said so!

I just learned yesterday that the White Stripes have broken up. It's broken me up a bit to hear that. And not just because they were one of my favorite bands of the past decade.

It's cause, well, they've been around for a decade!

I remember first seeing their video for "Hotel Yorba" on MTV2 (yes kiddies, there was a time when MTV2 played videos. All the time. It was a different era. Pre-9/11). I found it charming. Didn't think anything would come of them though. I'd just graduated High School.

Then I remember seeing their novelty-legos-themed video for "Fell In Love With a Girl," and being surprised to hear it on the radio. (Back when I listened to the radio).

I remember hiding from a hurricane at a member's house, playing Caribbean dominoes, and "Seven-Nation Army" was playing on the TV; and I wondered, "What on earth are the White Stripes doing on satellite TV...in Puerto Rico?!"

I remember speculating with bandmates as to whether or not they were brother/sister, married, divorced, hermaphrodites, etc. (Turns out they were amicably divorced).

I remember hearing "My Doorbell" while working construction in Rexburg; and driving around lost in Idaho Falls with a friend, listening to "White Blood Cells," discussing the philosophic merits of "Little Room."

I remember getting back from Mexico, with my now-shifted views on immigration, just in time to hear Jack White belt out "White-Americans, what, nothing better to do/Why don't you kick yourself out, you're an immigrant too" on "Icky Thump." I'd just graduated college.

Just a few months ago, now with a Masters, I was catching up with that old friend from Idaho (for enough time had passed for us to be old friends in need of catching up--), watching the documentary It Might Get Loud, wherein Jack White jams with Jimmy Page and The Edge.

I somehow came to own most their albums, even pre-popular stuff like "De Stijl." Without me realizing, they'd become the background soundtrack of my entire college career.

I'd just come to assume that Jack White would make music til the day he died.

And he will, in all probability.

Just not with Meg.

Cause now they've broken up. Officially. Huh.

See, here's the thing: when I read that break-up announcement, my first thought was, "Already?! But, but--they can't break up, they're not even that old! They've only been popular since, like...2001....oh, my...ten years ago....this year...wow."

It has in fact been a solid decade since I first heard the White Stripes. The Beatles lasted shorter.

Is this what growing old feels like?