Out of the Dung.... Charles Bukowski and some Beer Farts

Bukowski is a pigheaded drunk. A motherfucking stenographer of the low life. But, his whiskey drenched novels are a giddy and bubbly wonder that often end in explosive farts or flaccid existential dread. Its silly to go over his biography for it is so well known. He had written thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels. He was a German - American beaten by his father into a beerguzing bum who wanted to be the next Dostoevsky, but faced with his potential fell head first into a bottle of Southern Comfort and never left.

My first interaction with Bukowski was when I didn't have a friend in the world beyond Bryan and a book. I was living in the CSUN Freshman dorms miserable and bored. My roommate was a fast talking nervous kind of cat that was often out with his friends while I sat alone at my desk. My real education started there. Instead of reading Sense and Sensibility for my British Lit class I read The Trial. Instead of pushing through Heart of Darkness I read Naked Lunch. I racked up quite a bill from Amazon, buying books to fill the void of unwanted conversations. It was enriching; a good way to go mad. I never recovered. It was about this time I began checking out books from the Oviatt Library. I started with poetry after reading the great fascist poet Ezra Pound's ABC of Reading. A book I credit for my snobbishness and my anxiety attack at approaching a blank page. So I was first exposed to Bukowski's poetry, which read more like laconic short stories. Some of them amused me in particular the ones that resulted in imagistic jewels like

.

His poems were amusing enough to read his short story collection: Hot Water Music. Boy was that a waste. At the time I was a sober idiot craving for the bliss of wild inspiration, the holy terror of what I was and what I'd become, all retarding my development. The idea was that if I mastered my internal world, the external world would become all the more clear. Solipsism was not just a word in a dictionary, it was a pit whose walls bludgeoned open my psyche. But that is another story for another time... When I read Bukowski's short stories featuring  pissing drunks, banal personifications of death and misery, I had enough. It demonstrated everything wrong with the easy escape. The submission to the slow suicidal death seemed meaningless to me, a young man who never had a job in his life. Only seen prostitutes in movies with clean white teeth. My only touches with death came in graveyards, watching people I've only seen at family reunions from a far, make their slow return to the Earth. Ash Wednesday and all that.   

It wasn't until I moved out of the dorms and started living in an apartment with my brother and his then girlfriend did I start really understanding Bukowski.

I've read all 6 of his novels save for a third of Women. Post Office, Factotum, Ham on Rye, Women, Hollywood, and Pulp. They all have a place in my juvenile development as a writer and a  working class American ,rubbing shoulders with the ultimately disregarded portions of society. The first novel I read of his was Post Office. It's depiction of ennui at a dead-end job spoke to my own frustrations working at Chipotle as a cashier: Minimum wage drudgery was often smoothed by the easy release of getting “fucked up”. In the company of my Coworkers I came to understand what the frog faced French philosopher meant:"Hell is other people." The problem is how to survive this hell in which your every hour of breath is weighed, each bowel movement rushed,  each muscle movement negotiated by a state wide mandate of 10 dollars an hour. Rent, bills, food, water, books, intoxicants. How can one live? Recessions, depressions, inflation, booms and busts. The working class stays beaten, arrested, maligned.

Bukowski offered the fulfilling release of cursing your landlord, giving the finger to your boss, and his wife. The power of beating down the dogfaced jerk off at your job.  He offered a squinted eye'd  view through a periscope above the sea of bills, before getting shipwrecked with the crazed locals. Bukowski was to me a grown man's Holden Claufield, but instead of taking a whore to a motel room to ruminate on his potential, he accepted his place between the lady's legs, submitting to the void of the next morning, when his wallet is missing, the lady of the night gone with the rise of the sun, and a chorus of crows awakening him to the self same pit. 

 I know I am not the only one who has a love-hate relationship with Hank. Most writers I knew had mixed feelings about Bukowski. He took the simple sentence of Hemingway and emptied out the stuffy arty stoicism and added in the blue collar witticisms, scatological humor and reinforced the macho man posturing. He took the poem and sharpened it to a razors edge while others ventured off looking for some immaterial form. Although these may seem like compliments they are also my biggest criticisms.

Bukowski was a beer soaked tic infected louse and he wrote like one. And although he seemed to think he was one of the locust of the coming plague he often reads like a languid slur in the system. Out of a hundred poems he wrote probably 10 good ones. Out of all the books I've read by him Pulp is perhaps the worst drivel I forced myself through. I used to say that Perks of Being a Wallflower was the worst thing I forced myself through but, no.

But, hey!  today is his born day. The man had a long and troublesome life that seems useless. Yes seems. His life was a practice in getting used to the slime. Feeling he deserved the slime, what he asked for he doubly received. What he wanted from this tilted illusion came up when he was doubled over a typewriter with a fifth. And as much as I hate the man and like his work, he has proven that there is more to life than Oprah Super Soul Sunday and the Secret. In the hieroglyphics of the pimpled faced dregs remain a beautiful mystery.

* Some sentences were edited since the initial publication. sober editing

New Release: Bryan Santizo and Dakota Metzger - Headache

So Chief Tizo Records has its first release of the year out in the world, the lead single of the collaboration between myself and songwriter Dakota Metzger. This track is one that he presented to me, and I tried my best to fulfill my duty as accompanying musician and songwriting editor. Despite its gloomy sound, I think the ending adds a sense of defiance and triumph against the daily malaise (at least that's what I think it is about).

Check it out below if you are so inclined. The full length album will be coming out in the near future. 

P.S.: Posts will resume shortly, as recording and mixing a variety of projects have taken a big chunk of time out of writing. I do know Starlon has three huge pieces on literature in the works, so stay tuned. 

Precious Tempo: A Sheet to the Wind

Preface:

Precious Tempo is the title of a series of entries that will cover what I am working on in regards to music or art. I hope for it to be part-reflection and part-informative. This year I have tried to remain more focused and motivated when it came to music-making, so I feel cataloging and writing about it could serve as a somewhat interesting narrative. It might not, so fair warning.

I - Ending Revisited

Near the end of 2018, I felt a familiar sense of ennui that comes with the lowering temperature and farcical sense of survival people have for "making it" to the "end". Having been unexpectedly laid-off since September, I dedicated much of my free time to sleeping, feeling sorry for myself, and listening to music. I told myself that taking some time off would be good in order to finally finish some music, but the lukewarm response to "Footpath Republic" made me doubt my direction and desire to really get anything done. Band rehearsals weren't exactly great either, with what little shows played going decently but feeling a sense of drudgery. By late November I was seeking other outlets of inspiration, having been invited to record and perform on a cover of Pavement's "Texas Never Whispers" with Static Hands' Steve Keen and Marc Crossland. It was a great bonding experience in playing with talented people, re-arranging a classic song in a new styled, and recording what was essentially a live session, but it only helped to exacerbate the feeling of stagnation back at home base.

This feeling came to a head during my last show of the year, a strange affair where all live members of HS were present on a Thursday night (!) but were either playing in different bands or simply part of the audience. As I looked on to the scenery, a half empty room mixed with acquaintances and drunken strangers, I felt my tolerance for any false holiday cheer reduce to zero. Instead, a bewilderment at why I was even there to expose itself, and a deep dissatisfaction at this ill glorified and unattended end of the year party. I tried to muster up some camaraderie but instead I spoke of how it felt like the years repeating the process of playing to the room with the drunks of disposition were weighing down. To say the least, I was feeling down. I did not blame anyone but myself really. So once the post-show wallowing ended, I decided to be proactive: I cancelled a New Year's Eve show and began to figure out what I should do.

 In Burbank with friends: HS show flyer in Glendale Community College (Nov. 2018)

Contrary to this dire straits situation, and how magnified it felt in the final month of the year, I knew deep down that it was pretty successful, all things considered. The band had played the most it ever had in out-of-town locations, from Downtown Los Angeles and Echo Park to Ventura and West Covina, and usually we would be mild innovators in playing these places before our local peers. Not that it meant anything, since it was impossible to play in a frequency that capitalized on these plantings of the flag. Recognizing this problem and having free time, I knew I had to try something new.

II - Here to Go

Previously in 2017, I reached out to my friend Nicky (better known as songwriter Nicola Rivere) in hopes of performing semi-acoustically as a duo, in which we would perform songs from each other's back catalog and attempt to write some songs together. For about a month or two, we had rehearsed and re-arranged a handful of our songs (many of mine being from the early era of How Scandinavian, never played live before) with hopes of going on a mini-tour in cities we'd never played before. Unfortunately, and admittedly through fault of my own, we didn't play a single note of these arrangements we had developed together and the project fell through. Understandably, I suspect Nicky had grown sore at my indecision and we would not speak again for many months. It would take until the summer of 2018 for us to get back in touch.

In my current dilemma of not being able to perform out of town with enough consistency, I sought to make good on my previous promise and asked Nicky if he were willing to join me on a three month trek of open mics. Feeling similarly discontent in how stagnated the local scene was becoming, and needing a new challenge to seek outside audiences, he accepted. The plan was to do the discovery ourselves, going through pages of Craigslist, Facebook, and Instagram in hopes of finding open mics that were held in locations as far as 60 miles away; the point being that we would "go for it" and try to stretch ourselves as far as possible from our home. I would drive the majority of the time and split the gas bill, but Nicky was willing to share the burden of driving in his car for certain shows, or if I were already in the vicinity, he would meet me at the location. With this all in mind, we both set out in researching locations during the last two weeks of December and settled on making our first move the farthest and biggest: the open mic at Back to the Grind in Riverside, CA.

Recording for a cover of "Texas Never Whispers". Pictured: Steve Keen. (Dec. 2018)

Having the plans laid out and travel itinerary set in stone, I felt a sense of excitement that I had not felt in playing solo acoustically pretty much ever. It was admittedly not my greatest strength and did not really showcase what I felt was the "full" experience of How Scandinavian songs, but having this challenge made me practice much harder. As a result, I felt my voice control improved being solely backed by acoustic guitar; this really pronounced the importance of restraint and when to let loose. Now with boosted confidence and new reasons to move forward, I personally felt better at having a purpose and the physical nature of moving to other locations did wonders for a grounded laid-off person like me.

Unsurprisingly during this extensive planing, the live band's stagnation in rehearsal felt more pronounced, so I decided to cancel all practices until the New Year proper and see how it would feel with some time off. It felt like a good idea, as I anticipated a very important show in late January, planned many months in advance, at a record store that was the last of the all ages venues. I felt optimistic time off would reinvigorate everyone for the show, let them have a deserved break, and that a sense of unity for incoming new year for the band would prosper. What could go wrong?

From the Ash Heap.... Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger

From the ash heap of literary history there are some distinct whispers, a few cracklings unheard or ultimately forgotten. The great unknowns of modernist literature has found a new audience due to the diligent efforts of publishers like New York Review of Books and New Directions. American's can now experience the works of great (and relatively) unknown books  like Last Words from Montmartre by  Qiu Miaojin or the selected works of Pierre Reverdy with flowing and loving translations. However the entire African continent seems to be a blindspot in the development of  international literature. While European novelist and poets are slowly becoming discovered and critics are singing their praises, my literary hero Dambudzo Marechera remains a solitary scream without chorus.

Americans are amply supplied with institutional instruction on  Achebe's Things Fall Apart. I suppose, with the intention of informing the unformed adolescent minds in high school that there is more to Africa than savages and warlords.  Yet those high school graduates can hardly even point to Africa on a map let alone Nigeria in which the novel takes place.All those students that hardly paid attention in class go on and graduate, go on and live lives working and going to grocery stores, and all they can remember from all 209 pages from Things Fall Apart is the prized yam, and nothing else. Africa is a giant yam for one dollar a pound.

Despite the size and diversity of Africa, Americans have a tendency to reduce all the complexity of the entire continent into a single idea. I don't know how many times I seen the shrunken shape of Africa on a map in high school. In fact I didn't really care to understand Africa like most Americans (black or white). And for good reason in an effort to minimize the continent's wealth (mineral, cultural etc.) Americans reduce the entire 11,668,599 square miles to poverty, hunger, religious extremism and strong man leaders. And while most of those things are true (in some areas and regions)  it masks the diverse experiences "Africans" live. The scarequotes are necessary. When it comes down to it, the idea of "Africaness" is a recent phenomenon (a reaction) to show solidarity for the decolonization efforts of the 60s and 70s. But if one was to go to say Nigeria, a common Nigerian would not consider themselves  "African". No, they will be Yoruba, Igbo, Ibo --- they would identify as their tribe. Or, to deepen the complexity, even within those tribes there are specific caste systems which are an effect of the slave trade, which had only been outlawed (BY THE BRITISH) in the 1940s.

Our misunderstanding of Africa is demonstrated in the ways we consume their literature. The novels that are quickly printed by publishing houses are written by the gentry classes of their respective countries (Adiche.) And if it isn't that we have Achebe and his modernist view of Igbo culture demonstrating the fall of a warrior class gone in the head with corruption. Through the novels of Achebe it is very easy for the average Western reader to justify the fall of the Igbo hierarchy by the Christians primarily because we don't teach the sequel No Longer at Ease. American's exposure to Africa has always been conditioned by how white people want to see it. We get a conservative understanding of the so called "land of savages". We are sold Amos Tutola's novels with a gleeful laugh at the pidgeon inglish.  This willful blindness functions like cataracts. There are cures, but because the American refuse to see they are suffocated in a heap of broken images, reunited by unchallenged metanarratives.  This is where Dambudzo Marechera comes in.

Dambudzo Marechera grew up in an open air prison in what was then called Rhodesia. He received his literary education from an Anglican school and the few books he managed to find from a garbage dump. Despite his poverty his high marks in school secured a scholarship to the University of Rhodesia during a time of great political upheaval and later was exiled to Oxford University to continue his education.

Rhodesia, or what would later be called Zimbabwe was going through a political revolution from the black Africans against the white establishment headed by Ian Smith. Like South Africa, Rhodesia was an apartheid state replete with all the markings of a policed state: Curfews enforced by roaming paramilitary death squads, separate and unequal places of employment, education and living. The Black working class worked under the boot of the white ruling elite to extract as much mineral wealth from the nation as possible. In Ian Smith's Rhodesia an 18 year old White primary school student could smack a 30 year old Black man and call him boy and the only response the student would receive is a meek whimper.Black women were seen only as sex objects and often didn't receive an education because it was believed they would only get pregnant before they finished. Men measured their love for their women with public beatings, for if they didn't others would question their passion. . This is the society described through the prismatic prose of Marechera in "The House of Hunger".

The book House of Hunger is made up of the self-titled novella and collection of short stories. The novella (which I am mainly concerned with) was written during his time at Oxford University , alienated from both the Black and White working class and his wealthy lazsaie faire classmates. When he arrived at Oxford he was surprised to find that the segregation of society wasn't based on race but on class. And perhaps his biggest surprise was that because he was a student that attended Oxford, he himself was a part of the ruling class.For the majority of working class were hired by students in Oxford to do all the menial task they couldn't be bothered to do.  Marechera got hip to this only after getting a beating in a working class pub for crossing the invisible line.

 In the end, the absurdity of living in Oxford affected his studies and his sanity. Although his professors were struck by his brilliance, his free interpretation of syllabi (i.e reading whatever the hell he wanted) and general anarchic attitude towards the school left him isolated and often punished.  In an attempt to emancipate himself from the oppressive structure of the school, he unsuccessfully tried to set the university on fire. This resulted in an ultimatum presented by the Dean :either he submit himself to a psychiatric facility (which would be fully paid for by the University) or be expelled. He chose the latter, later claiming that Oxford was mind raping him. Thus the rest of  the time he spent in Britain he was homeless and dodging the police in fear of being deported back to his native country at war. To stay off the streets he slept on fellow artists coaches until he met a poet that gave him a room in is small flat.  It was there where he finished "The House of Hunger."

Now what separates Dambudzo Marechera from other writers at the time in Africa (and even today) was his search for truth. Rather than enforcing a nationalistic project of upliftment, Marechera chose to depict the revolution and the life of those trapped under apartheid in brutally realistic detail. The naturalist dread that drives the life of the basest of society is mixed with the semi-surreal utterances of the subconscious. Some moments of the novella reads like prose poetry like:

“Life stretched out like a series of hunger-scoured hovels stretching endlessly towards the horizon. One's mind became the grimy rooms, the dusty cobwebs in which the minute skeletons of one's childhood were forever in the spidery grip that stretched out to include not only the very stones upon which one walked but also the stars which glittered vaguely upon the stench of our lives. Gut-rot, that was what one steadily became. And whatever insects of thought buzzed about inside the tin can of one's head as one squatted astride the pit-latrine of it, the sun still climbed as swiftly as ever and darkness fell upon the land as quickly as in the years that had gone.

     The lives of small men are like spiders' webs; they are studded with minute skeletons of greatness. And the House of Hunger cling firmly to its own; after all, the skeletons in its web still had sparks of life in their minute bones.” (4)

Just as the title implies "The House of Hunger" is both a place and a state of consciousness in which the main character and the entirety of revolutionary Rhodeisa was trapped in. The phrase itself acts as a refrain in the discordant novella. There is seemingly no structure to plot. No form to rigidly keep the narration stilled. It reads like panicked breathing. A whimper that ends in a scream. What could be said of the plot is quite reductive.  Sex, trauma, grenades, beatings, secret police,torture. What could be said? This book demonstrates an avant-garde reflective thought that cannot be compared to anything on the contienet and if anything only demonstrates the lack innovation that has followed him. Marechera depicts a cyncism and a skeptical thought that not even the most agonizing agitprop literature could muster:

        "But the best lesson we had in hardihood were not from the example of the males. There were more male than female lunatics; more male than female beggars; more male than female alcoholics...And they seemed to know that the upraised black fist of power would fill up more lunatic asylums than it would swell the numbers of our political martyrs. And when the Pill fell like manna from god's bounty----
        But the young woman's life not at all an easy one; the black young woman's. She is bombarded daily by a TV network that assumes that the black women are not only ugly but also they do not exist unless they take in laundry, scrub lavatories, polish staircases, and drudge around in a nanny's uniform. She is mugged every day by magazines that pressure her into buying European beauty; and the advice columns have such nuggets like ' Understanding is the best thing in the world, therefore be more cheerful when he comes home looking like thunder.; And the only time the Herald mentions her is when she has--as in 1896/7---led an uprising against the State and been safely cheered by the firing squad or when she is caught for the umpteenth time soliciting in Vice Mile."  (50)

 Here is another good one:

"Actually, class-conciousness and the conservative snobbery that goes with it are deeply rooted in the African elite, who are in the same breath able to shout LIBERATION, POLYGAMY without feeling that something is unhinged" (44)

For most, African literature is all about the pride of the past, a tool in the liberation of the people Thus the literature always favors tradition which continues to enslave women and maintain the social order.  Marechera subverts the reader's expectations with each page. At times he is scatological and childish (Somewhere a toilet flushed; and drowned the whole room (39)), at another he describes the brutal beating of his sister-in-law with whom he had an affair with (which he regrets terribly). The shifting state of the narration is a demonstration of trauma at work in the consciousness of the main character.

Marechera has described his work as an electroshock therapy to dormant empathetic and imaginative portions of the brain. For it is through reading his work he hopes that through the quick and successive shocks to the system of one's perception would result in a disorientation of all ideas. The rigid structures melded and steeled through years of instruction and indoctrination would be flipped. Up is down, bad is good and the morals and ethics of the past will become questioned; therefore, Marchera's work is revolutionary by all definitions.

To give a clearer picture of the trauma, in this quote the narrator (Marechera) explains the dilemma of language:

"English is my second language, Shona my first. When I talked it was in the form of an interminable argument, one side of which was always expressed in English and the other side always in Shona. At the same time I would be aware of myself as something indistinct but separate from both cultures."

Here lies the major dilemma in Marechera's life and in his work. He is completely locked out of Anglophonic culture that was forced upon him because he is a Black African. And he is also alienated from his culture due to his colonized anglophonic mind (perhaps the greatest trauma of all). So he is a person locked between two cultures, one that sees him as a traitor and another that he has embraced through his schooling and passionate love for English literature.

I share this very feeling. The major difference being that whatever tribal or so called "African" culture had been carved and raped out of my family generations ago. So, now, here I am, a 25 year old black man, a descendant of American chattel slavery, reading Percy Byshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Totally in love with the decadence of Arthur Rimbaud and Edgar Allan Poe. I've been completely locked out of whatever tribal heritage I  (may have) had. I have some incomplete knowledge of my lineage (beyond my grandfather being a sharecropper things are quite hazy) and yet I can't fully claim this essence of blackness which often permeates our culture. I mean I can claim it in the sense that is skin deep literally and figuratively, but when it comes down to it even my father says, I am not really down with it (despite the fact that he has less melanin than me). For going to college breeds a certain misunderstanding from others and within the self. I went to college to learn about the great white American and British authors. I hung a literary pantheon above my desk thinking that it would spark my writing. I felt for Franz Kafka. I harmonized with the Lake Poets' poesys. I did this with love and admiration even though I was locked out from much of the talks because of my skin color.

After Mike Brown was shot dead by police and left in the streets for hours; things changed. A reactive push to recognize race became too impossible to ignore. The state sanctioned violence kept happening. Death became my body, my color. I turned towards Franz Fanon and Richard Wright for answers. They spoke in words of violence and revolution. I looked back at my Bachelors degree and wondered where were all the people with melanin. I read Toni Morrison. A great conservative writer(who was friends with Oprah). I also read a smattering of the Harlem Renaissance with all the bloody raw red agitprop stuff that made them more palatable. Hell I even read the red poems of Langston Hughes, but there was never any bite to any of it. It was all just chalked up to the incoming Communist influences in New York. There was no mention of the police raids. The extrajudicial killings that featured prominently in Harlem. Some how I learned more about the poser Jack Kerouac than I did about James Baldwin. In fact the only time I came in contact with Baldwin was from my own private research into Native Son, which we also read primarily as piece of agitprop literature (something that James Baldwin intelligently called out in his thoughtfully reasoned the essay "Everybody's Protest Novel".)

Thus I inaugurated a search for Black writing (in its widest kind of definition) which led me to find Marechera.
 Although I searched long and hard for Black literature that spoke to me I only found out about Marchera after hearing Billy Woods mention his name in a song. The fact that I had to find the so called "African Joyce" through an underground rap song demonstrates the meat of the problem. I was starved for knowledge of self and all I got was the same reheated conservative writers. I had fell into Pan-Africanism and looked for whatever unity I could find, but the more I read I only seen the incongruent nature of Africa and all the different cultures of people with darker hues.  Perhaps this was part of Marechera's thinking as well.

After the publication of "The House of Hunger", Marechera was on the streets again. By the time he started writing his novel, Black Sunlight, he was living in a squatters commune with dissidents of all kind: from witches, to anarchist and bohemian artist.Living in Britain, in a commune, Marechera seen  how segregation was based upon class and not just race, which lead him to a more international sense of politics and literature For Marchera any organization of people by a single person or group was too much for him to stomach. Boy, do I feel the same way now. (Now that all we have to root for is a Democratic Socialist with a profound misunderstanding of race and series of his clones, some with different sexual organs and higher melanin content) 

Marechera ended up returning to Zimbabwe unwillingly with a camera crew to film a movie based upon "The House of Hunger". were filming the movie based upon "the House of Hunger". This launched a series of controversies in both Zimbabwe and Britain due to the unethical practices of director ,which often resulted in fights. For Marechera the film was produced and directed from the point of view of the white gaze and because there was no professional actors on set, Marechera believed that the director was intentionally playing the actors off as stupid savages by switching lenses and such. The film features a series of interviews with Marechera on his return back to the now reformed Zimbabwe under the control of ZANU PF, the guerilla army that succeed against Ian Smith's Rhodesian government. In these interviews it is quite clear Marechera is drunk as a skunk and reliving the trauma he so desperately tried to exorcise through the composition of the novella.

Marechera ended up staying in Zimbabwe until his death from AIDs in August 18th 1987. He was never accepted by the government. In fact he was often arrested just for his outspoken view that art shouldn't be a political arm of the state.  Marchera was a revolutionary through and through. At heart he was an anarchist influenced by the writings of Bakunin and Kropotkin, a political position he even concedes that can never really obtain its stated goals.  Its a shame that there is still so much unpublished material out there in the ether. My hope that soon he would cherished and studied for the genius beyond the continent of Africa.

"Knowledge with the brilliance and hardness of a diamond, that's what I seek in my cauldron of life." (Mindblast 66)

Song of the Day: Zelienople - Ship That Goes Down

It is a simultaneously odd and uplifting thing when one hears a piece of music that not only transports the listener to a certain place in their mind, but transports them to an imagined reality of where and how the music came to be. When I first heard Zelienople, an experimental band who borrow their name from a borough in Pennsylvania but reside in Chicago, Illinois, it was during my most fertile and hungry era of listening to music. The desire to consume and understand music, partially as a need to avoid my responsibilities and realities of being a college student, was an at all time high. The romanticism of unknown sounds from places I'll never visit, coupled with a desire to create my own music, was a recipe for continual search and imagined realities.

I wish to think that I had a kindred spirit with listeners of the past during these times. Hearing countless stories of how one could afford only one or two records, and then would listen to them endlessly and explore every aspect of album art and sound, it seemed similar to buying CDs as a 7th grader from Best Buy (I once saw a copy of Mark Kozelek's Lost Verses Live at my locale, a kind of future specter). This extended even in later years of online sharing, then in the last years before streaming, it seemed that there was still a sense of possession and value in the effort of finding something worthwhile.

So upon hearing Zelinople's 2004 album Sleeper Coach in the middle of this period, it seemed all too perfect a candidate to lose my imagination in. Filled with distant sounds and murky production that shrouds the music in a icy veneer, every second of this record reflects its album art of out-of-focus gray scale nature. But this isn't a depressing record by any means, it's more of a meditative and trance-like one that lets its atmospheric drones and sonic moods sink a listener in until it is near claustrophobic, but paradoxically calming.

The frequencies that shift in the main organ (or is a guitar?) drone in opener "Sea Bastards" sets a wandering mood, one that recalls 70's free jazz in layers of metallic saxophone playing. This directly transitions to the track most indebted to early post-punk in the form of the driving, spaced-out bass in"Softkiller", which then slows to a glacial crawl when it fades in during "Dr. Brilliant", an entirely well-crafted one-two punch of ambient meets slowcore. From there the songs only increase in meditative power and sonic exploration as Zelienople further eschews traditional song structure.

Songs like "Corner Lot" and "Curtains" seemed derived from similar spaces of transcendental searches as those found in Talk Talk's Laughingstock (they would go on to record a version of "The Rainbow" for Spirit of Talk Talk in 2014) and are performed effectively with a sense of emotional urgency. While it may seem easy to overindulge in building opaque after opaque layer, Zelienople never seem capable of doing such a thing; allowing for their travelling soundscapes to be hypnotically alluring.

But the irony is that despite all this powerful and genuine talent in the creation and search of transcendental music, Zeleinople's defining moment on Sleeper Coach is one the simplest and most indebted to pop structure, "Ship That Goes Down". Beginning with some start-up noise/whispers and the warming up of a keyboard, the song immediately has a presence of warmth and cinematic quality that has not been encountered until this moment on the record. Slowly, the bass line enters playing a gentle riff that could be derived from a centuries old lullaby. Then, mournfully, the vocals begin with a survey of the some forgotten moment, a trace memory that isn't fully retrievable:

A dinosaur

After all they did

Over my dead tomb

I will take these shots

All I can’t see and they won’t show me.

Drums and percussion slowly murmur in the background as the vocals continue to recall fading details, details that perhaps need to be remembered in order to prevent some sort of disaster, or a disaster that has already passed but could occur again.

And you called it too

And you starved the woods

By the ship go down

And the lakes are rays
All I can’t see and they won’t show me.

Keyboards and organs now ascend to fever pitch, as if going back in time to witness what was once there, or what may happen if things do not change. Or is it a representation of the ship (the past itself, or the singer himself?) going down, slowly descending into a whirlpool of sound and doomed to being forgotten? As the tones shift and turn, one imagines that this is how such difficult sounds can be so very human and emotive when utilized so expertly.

Finally, the singer reveals (at least in my interpretation) that they were the "dinosaur" returning to some long lost land (in this case, Tennessee) that has changed beyond recognition. It's been so long that these surroundings might as well be a tomb, one where those who stayed behind have walked all over and claimed it as their own. But no one truly owns the surroundings they are a part of, that they grow to be a part of. At the end of the song, the singer realizes the folly and sorrow that for all his past investment, there is no entitlement to be given by the next generation, "All I can't see and they won't show me." Once you leave, you start again just like everyone else.

But there is relief at the end as the song begins to dissolve and erode like the narrator's own memories. A solace generates that even if these experiences cannot be fully translated to the world at large, or even the small world that they inhabited, they will at least live on for the narrator's own comfort and appreciation. All the remains is a sustained drone, the initial spark of remembrance, and then it goes away as quickly as it came to be.

It's a memory

You can count on me.

Afterword:

Despite the fate of many bands that I discovered during my college years, Zelienople not only continues to exist as a unit (their latest full-length released in 2015), but have band members that frequently release albums and musical projects in rapid succession (a favorite being the Greenworks EP). Though as of now, it seems much of the group have grown into their adult lives and will probably never do a tour again. My initial romanticized mystery of this talented group is faded, but the reality of existing in real-time is much more potent and inspiring. A good trade off, I think, and the memories will always be there when needed.

Back at it...

Hey would you look at that: Chief Tizo is back on the rails with some new state of the art clean coal. Fresh for an empty station, hardly an empty show: Bryan and I are back with our dispatches from our desert bunkers. The juvenilea of yesterday still thrives, here. Look through the archives to see my past blunders.

This revival comes with new technologies developed from the doldrums of my twenties. A graduation to a life of what ifs and potentials with a wrecked will for today. Well, at least that is what unemployment has partially done along with the other follies of an early life for me.

Perhaps it would be presumptuous to announce anything for the coming future. But I will mention what I am up to now. I am once again reinvested in the literary and filmic arts. I might drop a song of the day but I feel like I am up to another task entirely. Look for some book reviews in the future, this time I am abandoning all the techniques I was indoctrinated into using and believing. These will all be from a personal place.

The thing about leaving the academy and entering the uncaring wasteland again is that the embrace of the dust reminds me of what Artaud had already came to conclusion of. “All writing is pigshit”. All of it. And all of culture and all its pretensions are just the fecal matter in which we see the sweetness of our beloved compost piles.

A new discipline is needed for me in this moment of revival. This is the nascence of a new record for a different time. A time stretched yawn. And because everything is based on could be's it is only prudent to accept it as a gift, a call to the present. Enough of the pretentious ramblings, the mindless typing.

Until next time.

Song of the Day: Ute Lemper - Split

There are times when the level of seriousness in a musical arrangement can almost seem ridiculously melodramatic, and when coupled with intelligent, emotional lyrics, the effect can lead to overt self-awareness, or at worst, camp. But the songs where this fine line is just on the precipice of being passed, there exists a sense of equally exciting and affecting power. "Split", a song from Ute Lemper's 2000 album, Punishing Kiss, is one of such songs in this category.

Born in early 1960's Germany and brought up with a lifetime of participation in stage musicals, film, and behind the microphone, Lemper seems the sort of classically trained superstar that is largely absent in modern times. Gaining early fame for her performance in the original Viennese version of Cats in 1984 and later recording Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill in 1987, she would create a successful career of interpreting classically influenced work that was either derived from or sent to the dramatic stage. Even at the age of 16, she seemed to have sophisticated ambitions beyond those of the usual teenager and would join the Panama Drive Band, a jazz rock band influenced by "Joan Armatrading, Chick Corea, the Brecker Brothers and all that." 

But perhaps singing standards left Lemper with a sense of stagnation during the late 1990's (including a minor role in a panned 1996 film, Bogus, with Whoppi Goldberg), a new collaboration would commence with Northern Irish singer-songwriter Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. Requesting songs to be written for her by serious heavy-hitters such as Scott Walker, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, and Phillip Glass, along with her usual Weill-penned classics, the record is a showcase for Lemper's lifetime of prowess as a singer and performer.

Costello-penned numbers "Passionate Fight" and title track merge his cynical lyrics and shifting musical arrangements with Lemper's tender and emotive vocals, while "Streets of Berlin" have her match Glass' chanson inspired "rock" song in period-correct 60's voicing. Even Scott Walker's "Scope J", a behemoth of a finale with dissonant textures and tension, seems to be no problem as she moves from quiet intimacy to siren of despair for the song's continual build and collapse for 10+ minutes.

But then there is "Split", by far the most electrifying and driving track of the whole lot. Written by main collaborator Neil Hannon and his mainstay arranger, Joby Talbot, Ute Lemper goes toe to toe with Hannon handling the duet vocals of an estranged lover.

Like a rude awakening (hear the organ going up the scale chromatically in the first seconds), the song begins with a crash and tom-tom led drumbeats, driven by a persistent staccato piano chord progression, and call and response guitar/organ riffs that are treated with Leslie speakers.

Suddenly, Hannon begins singing in his near-lowest and most serious register (long-gone is
the soft-spoken bookworm of "The Booklovers"): "I was made for you, you were made for me... I thought." And Lemper responds in kind, "But maybe not after all!" Continuing this call and response, Hannon reminds her that "We had so much love..." and Lemper sets the dagger, "Love enough for three, I guess... Oh god."

Clearly, subtlety isn't in the cards for this song, but where the song could plod along as melodramatic moodiness forever, the song takes a relate-able, human shift as Lemper suggest that "Maybe there's hope...". And so the chords change, the pleading for forgiveness begins; "I never meant to hate you." And three, two, one...!

Suddenly the song is in full orchestral melancholic glory as both harmonize in a truly majestic (and effectively catchy) chorus of "ALL the times that we TOED the LINE, look what we've GOT! ALL the times that I FORGAVE YOU!". For a brief moment (and in each subsequent repeat of this chorus), the song has its melodrama validated, both characters here being fully justified in their vindication and pleading. Hannon's character for being so foolish to "let go of the signs" and Lemper's character for taking advantage of this foolishness. It's the pathos of a dramatic stage brought to audio form.

As it continues, the ugly details continue to pour out;"You were there for me... and HIM, and half of the western world it seems!/Oh baby that's not fair, there were two or three at most, but I don't like to boast!" And once the second, angrier variation of the chorus ends, what seems to be the actual physical aspect of confrontation and separation (the split, so to speak) is played by a fierce organ solo on the path of retribution.

Finally, after the orchestra uplifts for the third and final time for a glorious final chorus, the reality of the doomed situation comes crashing down with a repeated progression of descending strings, horns and piano chords. Now fully aware of the gravity of the situation, Lemper's character pleads for a final chance to be heard, "Baby please listen! Oh why won't you LISTEN?!", as Hannon sings with equal remorse, "GIVE ME ONE REASON WHY! I JUST want a REASON, WHY!" . Finally the madness of regret turns into vain bargaining, revelations of abuse and full-blown anger from Lemper, "I'm GONNA MAKE YOU LISTEN! So OPEN your EYES! You don't REALIZE the nights that I've CRIED the SALTIEST tears! The lovers who LIED and stepped on my PRIDE! I WANTED to STOP! I wanted to DIIIIIIIEEEE!". All the while, the desperation in Hannon's repetition of demanding to understand just "WHY" this has happened increases, the plea for a logical and rational reason for a devastating betrayal denied.

As the song fades into an eternally descending march into oblivion, Lemper simply whispers to herself, her character's betrayed partner no longer listening, "Want only you, need only you..." So ends the story with two people entirely separated and unable to communicate. And yet, for all the downtrodden nature of the subject matter, it is hard to not root for both characters in this story, for their downfalls are convincing, emotional, and gradually turn more complicated as the song reaches its climax.

When asked about her first band's falsely reported genre as punk, Lemper would respond, "I was never a punk person. The music of punk is not interesting to me, it’s horrible." With her discography and musical upbringing, it isn't hard to dismiss such a claim since punk was the nihilistic "answer" to sophisticated music, where complexity must die. It was an opposite world to what she was raised and thrived in; where performance and skill undeniably mattered the most.

But in the confines of "Split", the ferocity and simplicity of punk is matched and replaced by cutting musical arrangements, equally cutting lyrics, and dramatic vocal performances. Punk music simply lacks the vocabulary to reach the upmost heights of stage drama while demanding a quasi-universal emotional response. All in all, the knife is best impaled with precise skill and a confident, wry smile.