the first super-8 footage i ever did shoot.
May 27, 2008
May 21, 2008
May 20, 2008
meet me after the world with the shivers
can i talk about music?
this past weekend i was at ATP. the whole place smelled of chlorine sometimes and the food i ate isn’t worth mentioning except that one of the harvest bars came with the fact that “women blink around twice as often as men.” the television told me more than once to open all the windows and doors and we’d sing the note A in unison. i watched the closing scene of City Lights with around four people in a cinema only slightly above makeshift, and all of us really saw Chaplin for the first time again. i talked about age not making a difference. i talked about how there really was a future. i talked. concealed drinks. cigarettes. mandy. dark hair. limpets and seaweed and recording waves. 3 photographs. the money ran out. on the water flume i sped over the second hump, and got dunked in 2m of water that went up my nose and into my eyes. it was a thrill. the music was incredible.
music has been missing for a while now. either nothing’s grabbed me or i haven’t made the effort to grab anything too hard which sounds like something my dad said to me once. he stopped caring in 1982 and never got back into music. that sounds a terrible fate to me.
so being assaulted by the synths and light show put on by animal collective, and suddenly their music that i’d half liked falling into place, or hearing a liars song on the p.a. and both of us recognising it at the same time, or the first chorus of a silver jews song, or saul williams being something new that surprised, or jumping around to trail of dead and thinking that i love this much as i ever did, and that new songs and soundtracks are still joining and replacing the old…
i saw times new viking at bardens last week, and the week before saw health at the luminaire. it was like a warm-up. it was exciting like years ago.
i think i understand how music works. i get lost in songs too. i’ve never really been much of a musician. i can play a little guitar, a little keyboard, but i can’t put on a show. once i stood in for the bass player of a friend’s punk band. we played at a pub in Blyth to an antagonistic crowd, and i wore a mask made to look like the real bass player the whole time i was on stage. i fudged the notes.
i mean to say that i really want to make music, but i’m a different animal to you guys in bands or dj’s. i need screens to work on not stages.
i’ve been working on making two films lately. the first is called Ecstasy, and it was played in rough cut on bad screen at What They Could Do, They Did Escape a week ago last thursday. it needs the monologue re-recording, and the editing needs to be a little tighter and more precise. i think i know how to do that now. look out for it in a week or so. the other one is Karaoke. it’s going to be long, and the image is going to be filmed silent, but we’re going to record a soundtrack as a 20-odd minute musical piece and lay it over the top. so far it’s progressed slowly, but i think now it’s going to pick up. i can see how to do it. you compose layers of images the same way you do a song.
the final scene of city lights, when the formerly blind girl touches the tramp’s hands and realises that he was her kind benefactor, and he smiles, and she cries – it’s silent, put to a whole range of different accompaniments over the decades. but every time it plays, audiences still dab their eyes, hearts still swell. at the start of the weekend, i told her i had no idea how to stir someone that way, but maybe i do. there’s music in the close up of their hands, and in the way he breaks a smile. it’s about rhythm and nuances, it’s like the crashing end of a song by explosions in the sky.
i made this compilation cd today. it’s the time of year to be thinking about summer soundtracks, so these are some songs that remind me of the past few weeks and places i’ve been and that will hopefully stay with me for the summer. if anyone wants the CD (with a better cover), get in touch. whoever says so first, it’s yours.
1.broadcast – colour me in
2.future of the left – fingers become thumbs
3.fuck buttons – okay let’s talk about magic
4.william s burroughs – just like the collapse of any currency
5.mogwai – glasgow mega snake
6.times new viking – drop-out
7.crispin hellion glover – the daring young man on the flying trapeze
8.no age – loosen this job
9.liars – the other side of mt. heart attack
10.werner herzog – father umbrillo’s broken nation
11.animal collective – fireworks/essplode (live)
12.health – glitter pills
13.battles – atlas (bbc electric proms)
14.crystal castles – good time
15.silver jews – suffering jukebox
16.the kills – goodnight bad morning
