Archives : all posts by Dan

David Bowie - "Suffragette City"

hillbilly Hillary Williams
I'm headed over to X's house. It's so cold! I just want to Apparate over there.
6:45 pm

Hillary walked past closing stores and sparse restaurants, January's shoulders slumped in slush. She went from streets like Mack Ave and Cotton Rd, messy pavement and craggy trees, to finely cobbled windy roads like Silver Birch and Kingswood Drive, huge thick trees, and houses that jut out from hillsides like proud dogs, stoic and still and old. When she reached the Metzger house, she could see Jordan's father's office, a large windowed cube that sat on display over the garage. Mr. Metzger ran a costuming business from home, so lining the walls and piled on racks were dresses, cloaks and get-ups of all kinds. There was a band leader, and a US Marshal, and orderly scrubs, a bunch of what looked like faeries, and a pre-worn leather jacket. Hillary stood on the driveway looking up, but Mr. Metzger didn't notice her, he stared fervently at his computer monitor.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
everyone on this street still has christmas lights up! I should start a business where I take holiday stuff down. I'd be rich.
7:05 pm

Hillary rang the doorbell and Jordan answered. Stocking feet, old Raptors shirt, bit pudgy, he smiled and they went down to the basement. Peperettes and ginger ale, the basement fridge was always stocked. Jordan had two older brothers who both had cars. Jordan and Hillary could hear Ghostface coming from behind one of the bedroom doors. Jordan turned on the giant television, "We've got on-demand everything, what do you want to watch?" "I don't know, what's good?" "I'm paused in the middle of Hot Tub Time Machine, wanna watch that?" "Sure."

hillbilly Hillary Williams
We're watching Hot Tub Time Machine. how romantic.
7:21 pm

Hillary looked at the bottoms of her socks, filthy. From walking on her dirty kitchen floor, probably. She dug her feet into the cushions. The basement was part rec room, part storage space. A dartboard, under which was a stack of books, Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, Dean Koontz, all with no shelf to live on, lying sideways. A large painting of a beach, with an empty boat on the shore, abandoned. On the huge sofa, Hillary and Jordan were sitting an entire cushion apart.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
It's so bright in here. I think every light is on in this house.
7:33 pm

Hillary got up and dimmed the lights. "Is this okay?" Jordan pulled his gaze away from the movie, "Sure." Hillary came back to the sofa, taking her chance to get a little bit closer, making sure to tuck her feet far away.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
That's better :) #settingthemood
7:34 pm

She awkwardly picked one of Jordan's hands from his lap, and clasped it in hers. But less like an interwoven marriage of hands, and more like a never-ending handshake. Rob Cordry bellowed, John Cusack spoke sharply, his face etched with HD wrinkles.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
why does holding hands make them sweaty? my hands don't sweat when they touch normally.
7:49

"What are you doing?" "Oh." Hillary looked at her purse, the orange box of condoms not-quite-hidden in the fold. "Just texting Kira about school. She's all stressy about exams." "Oh."

hillbilly Hillary Williams
X just asked what I'm doing on my phone! said I was texting Kira about school! got that, @goodbyekitty?
7:51 pm

From the bedroom, one of Jordan's brothers came out, hurriedly. He wore a thick fleece track coat with a flat-brimmed hat with a gold sticker on it. Carved facial hair. "I'm going out," he said and bounded up the stairs, leaving the light on in his room.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
the movie's almost over. i think I'm gonna try and type WHILE IT'S HAPPENING. stay tuned.
8:08 pm

As the movie ended, Jordan was looking blanched. Hillary smiled warmly, "So, I brought some things." "Oh yeah..." like he'd forgotten. He could hold eye contact only in short bursts, "It's just that I'm not allowed to close the door to my bedroom when people are over." Hillary's hand went for her phone but she thought better of it than to type that verbatim. "Well, there's no rule about closing someone else's bedroom door, is there?" She looked at his brother's room, the Ghostface poster and fur sheets. They went inside.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
X is in the bathroom getting ready. omg im kinda nervous
8:27 pm

Upstairs in his office, Mr. Metzger sent email after email. Some cold solicitations, others old contacts, others collection follow-ups for unpaid contracts. He listened to Rush and The Guess Who and Montrose. He got an email from his warehouse staff: "We got the Nearly Ned contracts today! You're gonna be designing costumes for Eugene Levy!" Mr. Metzger clapped his hands and gave a hoot.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
Iran
8:34 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
autocorrect
8:41 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
k that was whatever
8:41 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
huh
8:44 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
i'm in the bathroom and i don't really wanna come out
8:53 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
i'm glad i did this, i'm proud of myself for going through with it, but i think it might have been a dumb idea
8:56 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
i'm sorry jordan
9:00 pm

hillbilly Hillary Williams
pretty funny thing: he took my socks off and they landed by our faces. "what's that smell?" gross! anyway, im rethinking this, bye for now
9:11 pm

[Buy The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars]

[photo source]

Long Long Long - "Mandarin Collars With Women"

"It's all a matter of perspective," neither Kira nor Hillary were listening as Mr. Hennesy, that perv, prattled on and on. They were whispering in the dark as he read aloud off the overhead. "It's all how you look at it. If you want to livetweet having sex with Jordan for the first time, then who is he to say no?" Kira had her entitled whispering voice on. Mr. Hennesy, in his old gross plaid shirt with chest hair coming out the top, was moaning about the moral landscape under which it's permissible to have an abortion, fuckin' perv. "Even so," said Hillary, "I don't think I'm gonna tell him."

Hillary and Jordan had been going out for a month. He asked her out at the secret santa, as she opened her Kristen Stewart poster from him, budget limit exceeded. She rolled her eyes at the poster, but he was cute and nobody else was asking, so she said sure. They were "dating" over the holidays, but didn't see too much of each other, they texted family thing more than ever in their lives before, until New Year's. They met up, excited, at Kyle F's parents' house, and on the banks of the not-so-frozen lake, under fireworks and weed smoke, they kissed and she liked it.

Hillary had, like most girls her age, been raised on the internet. But unlike most girls, she had quite a following. Her blog "I Used To Hate Myself" was featured on Salon.com in 2008, as part of a series on weight loss. Hillary, only 13 at the time, was undergoing a transformation from "fat kid" to "regular teen", and was chronicling her journey. Beyond having an interesting and sellable idea for a blog, she had a natural talent for letting her wit through in her writing, and she gained a small readership. Girls her age (plus a bunch of girls younger than her) and also women of a wide age range started emailing her, and showing up as "followers". Mothers interested in the minds of their own daughters, seeking a kind of 'pulse' of their child, younger girls looking for guidance from someone they could actually trust, and writers of all kinds impressed with her talents.

Now 15, and with 40,000+ followers on twitter, Hillary was a well-read figure, and she wanted to give the readers something great. She wanted to livetweet (do I need to define it? tweet live) the loss of a late-bloomers virginity. Her "de-flowerstation". Obviously, this was going to be a tough secret to keep from Jordan, since many people from their school read her writing, including some teachers ("eww, @RHennesy is now following you on twitter, barf!") but she thought easier to apologize than ask permission, and she had been writing for her fans for a lot longer than she and Jordan had been dating, so there.

The night was planned very carefully. Her idea. "I think a lot of people are doing it." It would be next Tuesday evening, way better at his house than hers, he lived in a rich part of town in a huge house, she lived a 20-minute walk away, in a small house with dirty plastic siding, 6 people and 3 generations. "But my dad works from home, he never leaves," said Jordan, into the phone that Sunday. "Yeah, but he's always working, he won't even know." Hillary had had the talk with her mother, frank and almost fun, while her father stood in the doorway scowling, arms crossed, glasses sagging on his nose. She even bought the condoms herself.

hillbilly Hillary Williams
do you need ID to buy condoms? "Okay, Miss Hillary Williams, what's your sign?"
5:19 pm

[continued Friday]

[Long Long Long]

[photo source]

The Granny Smiths - "Boom Boom"

I went gay when you left. Well, I tried, it didn't stick. I sold my pants and my clothes. I shaved "ex-greatest" into my head. I got a tattoo, temporary, of a whirlpool. I was stoned and staring at it in the mirror and just saying "Portal in, or way out?" over and over. Being apart feels like everything. When we get together, you and i, we can still remember what it's like to be apart and that's perfect. When we met it was so easy to remember what it was like before we met. It's when we forget what being apart feels like that we really lose it. I'm not talking in hypotheticals, in theory, I'm talking about this, your wrist and your ankle and my pointy hips. About your letters, all addressed to "P", and your socks, all dirty and white, and my kitchen, with only one chair.

[Buy the Mongrel Zine comp]

(source)

Insect Posse - "Satori (At Last)"

I can't understand you. I can't understand what the hell it is you're trying to say to me. I can't even hear you, you're talking in outer space, I can't understand you. Understanding you is impossible, the way you speak. You speak in some backwards code that nobody could ever decipher. You're speaking another language, God sakes. Here's the way you're speaking, here's how hard it is to understand you, here's the kind of noise that's coming out of your mouth: imagine a naked lady. Okay, you got it? A naked lady. Imagine there was only one picture of a naked lady ever in history. Like, I don't know, God made some decree, made it impossible to ever have more than one picture of a naked lady. So they took a movie of her in the silent film days. And now the negative is lost. In fact, all copies in the world are gone except for one shitty VHS transfer in a University library. I DON'T KNOW what University! Washington, let's say, it doesn't matter, you're missing the point. There's one copy, it's on VHS, and it's a shitty transfer, it's hard to make out. And this VHS is disintegrating, it's wearing out on the playheads, it's starting to get all sorts of blue lines on it, you know like when you used to tape over a commercial when you're watching X-Files. So you need to get it off there, but the only thing you can find is a polaroid camera. So you take your polaroid camera and you go frame by shitty frame through this VHS transfer and you take a polaroid of each frame. So you've got, say, 50 polaroids now, all with shitty frames of a shitty VHS transfer of the only picture of a naked lady. This is you, you know? You're sittin' there with these polaroids and you're like, "how do I get this message out to people?" and so you decide you'll go down to the copy center and photocopy the polaroids. Sometimes you even photocopy the photocopies when you want to make more, 'cause the originals have mustard on 'em from your sandwich. And you hand out these photocopies to everyone. You just stand out on the street corner, in front of the copy center, it's snowing, it's slushy, it's cold, and you're all excited and you're handing these photocopies out to everyone. How in the world is anyone supposed to understand what that is? You're trying to say "naked lady" and what everyone's getting is a photocopy of a polaroid of a shitty VHS frame of a picture of a naked lady. You know? You're fuckin' hard to understand.

The Dø - "The Calendar"

What an elegant statue. My, yes, how elegant. Is that soap stone? A lovely deep purple with white etchings. Life-size, my yes. What...I hope you don't take offense to this. What...I ask this only to prove my own ignorance, it has nothing to do with... What..hm... What is it... what is it supposed to be? Sorry, pardon me, what was that? I couldn't quite hear you. Oh, you didn't hear me? Oh, I'm sorry, I asked..what is it supposed...to be? Ah, I see, of course! A woman, of course! I am so sorry I had to ask, as that is obviously what it is supposed to be. I mean, it is obviously what it is! My goodness! How elegant! My yes, live-size, absolutely. Ahem. Hm. My. Yes. Elegant. So... Ahem. Elegant, yes. Ahem. So... is that....hm....is that....goodness...is that....the head?

(image source: Maryland)

--

Carey Mercer has a twitter account. As of right now, he does not follow anyone. Which is typical of the way I interpret his creative expression. Huge, uncontainable thoughts, taking forms unexpected, totally right for the time, without discernible reference. Sean pointed me to it, with this RT: "Am I basically arguing that guitars are our real-world emoticons?"

Wombs - "Protein Shake"

Kidnapped! Dragged by the hair and folded like an old suit into the back of a trunk! Driven in hot desert dust and chinks of light! Left to die of thirst in a dark cell with a spider buddy and more chinks of light! Hallucinating angels and six-foot cool glasses of beer! Piercing hunger! Madness! Preening despite the conditions! Slicking back greased hair and rubbing dirt into skin! Sex a secret luxury! Stoic torture! What day is it!? Why, sir, it's New Year's Day! A flick of the tongue! Across tips of the teeth! A smile, a flash, a burst, and freedom! The end of old suffering! The end of old skins! The end of all scrimping and wringing and churn! The start of flight! The start of barely, of healthy, of true.

[site]

Troupe Majidi - "Rsami" "Take this note to your father, do not show it to anyone, do not read it yourself, it is meant only for him." Heji's mother was cold and her hands were cold, clasping the note closed in his palm.

Heji went out into the wet air and headed over the ridge. Down the dirt road under the catavan trees and past jum bushes, down into the twinkle lights of Manaja, its sweaty streets and pulsing life. He passed street women and honking taxi cabs, big large men guarding light-up bars, a man in an alley eating something out of a paper bag. When he got to the corner with the gas station and the burnt-down papery, he went up the stairs above the grocer and saw a skinny old man on a stool in front of a door. "I must see my father," said Heji to the skinny old man. The man did not answer, but slouched back on his stool, his cigarette nearly falling out of his mouth, and opened the door to loud music inside. Heji had never been inside Bar Panther, and he was surprised how dark it was. The light behind the bar was all there was, and he tried to remain calm while he searched in the darkness for his father. He got very close to a few patrons, only to find they were not his father, their faces drowsy and confused as he approached, the smell nauseating. He was hit by the swinging bathroom door, and he stumbled toward the bar. He climbed on a stool and asked the bartender, his voice shaking, "Have you seen my father? Is he here?" The bartender smirked down at Heji, "Who is your father?" "Luni Tesit, he's a worker at Rejar Factories." The bartender lost his smirk. "He's busy, what do you want?" "I am supposed to give him a note from my mother." "Give it to me, I will give it to your father." "No, I was told to give it to only him." Heji made the mistake of holding the note near his face, as if to say, "this, here, is my job," and the bartender snatched it from his hand. Heji bit his tongue and tried not to wail as the bartender read the paper. He crumpled it, "Wait here."

A few endless minutes went by as Heji waited for the bartender to return. He looked around, sleepy sad faces everywhere and the music so terribly loud. He put his head near the bar, craned it sideways to try to read the note without touching it. It appeared to be blank. It appeared to be a ripped piece of the calendar, a ripped square showing today's date. Suddenly the doors to the back room burst open and Heji's father came out, smiling. "Hej! What are you doing here?" he asked in their language, "Come on, let's go home." He did not seem drunk, he was not upset, he said he was just very busy but that business went very well. They talked on the way home about what they would bake the next day in celebration; crushed mangos and lime juice and sugar.

[Buy from Sublime Frequencies]

It's Christmas Eve, and as my gift to you readers, I am extremely proud to send you to the music section of Issue 2 of The Incongruous Quarterly, edited by myself, the inimitable Emma Healey, and Mike Chaulk. The Incongruous Quarterly, if you haven't already heard, is an online quarterly publication focusing on 'publishing the unpublishable'. So Emma asked me to help curate a music section for the new issue, a collection of 'unpublishable' music from artists we love. And the result is really really great. The range of finished-ness and unpublish-ability is wide and makes for a unique listening experience, it's almost like looking at a craft fair; some of it is insanely lush antiques and some are just scrawls on a postcard, but each have their beauty, their own particular existence. It's a kind of mixtape unlike any I've compiled before, it's rough edges mixed with gilded curves, it's poetry and sound experiments and kick-you-in-the-face demo recordings.
Tracks from Jumbling Towers, Jasmyn Burke of RatTail, Amy Klein of Titus Andronicus, Grand Trine, Holy Fuck, Mean Wind, Little Scream, and others.
Go listen, enjoy.
(NB: it's not holiday-ish or christmas-y, but it is a gift)

Mean Wind - "Kingdom Come"

This story takes place in a sacred house. A treasure house hidden by trees and down a rocky lane. The air thick with humid history, a fortifying stillness, a rousing energy of glad, of birth in the face of death. The story is simple: a family grows up. But the house, glory be, the house is what makes it. Like gilded velvet curtains around the same old play.

Mean Wind are continually impressive, clever, sparkling. They have a new EP