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M

* Rachel Papers, I paraphrase: In Shakespeare's time the boy and the girl fell in love, and lived happily ever after; that's where the story ends. In modern times we all have to live with the aftermath. [I like this book, although not him, or his later work (same thing, no?)]
** Fight Club: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. [Like the film, not the author, strange that I'm quoting these people.]
*** He's probably not an asshole in real life; I just wrote that ;)

Recommended:

Happy Endings. Pulp.

A Lover's Discource. Roland Barthes. 

Looking Awry. Slavoj Zizek.

She won’t see this as she doesn’t do blogs or myspace (like I say, cool kid), but those of you who know her will agree with her general awesomeness (those who don’t know her, well, thanks for reading along). Thanks to years of in-jokes accumulated over childhood and adolescence and the couple of weeks we see each other every year, she’s the sole creature who can get me laughing by uttering a single word. Or better, shooting a single look. So: a) I start laughing like a hyena b) she points out I’m laughing like a hyena c) I point out she’s laughing at me like a hyena too d) we laugh like hyenas pointing fingers at each other until we stop e) then we start laughing about two idiots laughing like hyenas.

Happy birthday my favorite sister,**
M, the way wiser, far superior one

*original: “Ama bu ufacik, kucucuk, minnacik!” Don’t know what my parents had been telling me, seriously.
** in-joke. I have one sister, and that’s it.

I would say rent it, see it, whatever, but I don't think watching it at home will do it justice. I know- I say it for almost all films I see, and I know I watched this one from the very first row so I may have been more immersed than I had intended, but hey. Move to Hollywood, find yourself a friend in the movie biz, and I don't know, go watch it at their home theater or something...

I would post the theme song but can't seem to find it online. I will, if I ever.

So, yeah. Good stuff.

Still digitizing cds. After the essentials, the random gems. Two nights ago it was Gary Wilson, last night it was Sandy Bull's Valentine's Day Concert, 1969. I was struck by its beauty today as I listened to it on the way to work and during my lunch hour. Recommended, you really should buy yourself a copy.

Here's the track that I imagined should be the soundtrack to a Wong Kar-Wai film set in Istanbul depicting two doomed lovers (but of course), with supersaturated shots of the sea, the night skies and everything in between. This track will play at that moment that happens in all WKW films, the moment in which you are so supersaturated yourself that simply looking at an inanimate object will conjure those gut reactions which threaten to overwhelm –be it the waterfall in Happy Together or the grass-plugged hole of whispered secrets in In the Mood for Love– so anyway in our case I'm thinking closeups of the enormous tankers dragging algae along, moving ever so slowly (and slower still in the WKW universe, possibly slo-mo on top of the slowness itself, pure panes of color speckled with rust, glacial majesty) then cut to one of our 'heroes' sitting at a seaside café stirring a glass of tea, watching the sugar cubes melt into the red liquid...

In other news, I googled out that the track (not this version) had already been the soundtrack to Orfeu Negro; moved it to the top of my Netflix queue, I should've seen it already, anyway. Enjoy the beauty that is Manha de Carnival as performed by Sandy Bull.

The other two tracks: One classical piece from the turn of the century Ottoman Empire. Another from Germany, relatively recent, about two who pass each other in dreams, like in that Longfellow quote, you know, ships that pass in the night and all that. Better that than the collision of tankers, surely? Enjoy.

Manha de Carnival by Sandy Bull.

Stella Maris by Einstürzende Neubauten.

Zeybek Havasi by Tanburi Cemil Bey. 

Would it be blasphemy to mix Sebastien Tellier into Coldplay?

Let me explain. I like epic. I like swirling soaring orchestras, unbound to the underlying rythms that keep them secure enough to flap around in the wind like windsocks and scale heights like kites of all colors or silk ribbons or whatever, that surround you with thoughts and feelings you didn’t know you had the capacity for. I like string sections, especially when they are grand, bursting with emotion that can no longer be contained, running circles around each other and colliding and stumbling and faltering and coming back. But- Not a display of emotion-ness pretending that it can be no longer contained. Nor a display of scattered bits and pieces to add ‘depth’ to a piece without enhancing its emotional resonance.

What I’m trying to say is, this La Ritournelle track with its polite string section sounds to me like the electronic (and sonic) equivalent of Coldplay, you know that infamous song that builds up ‘oo oo OOOO oo oo ooo - AAAAH!’ i.e. seemingly communicating the sublime that cannot be translated into words, but actually carefully constructed to elicit a certain reaction (I have nothing against craft in all its minute possibilities, whirrs and clicks, but this to me feels more like quartz machinery). Not having heard the rest of his stuff, I’m far from being the authority on this, and perhaps I just don't get it - who knows.

P.S. I was recently listening to Suede’s Still Life; that would be an example of the kind of orchestral arrangement I like. I’ll try to upload.

(As an aside, this site’s name is an homage to the music that strikes the perfect balance between overwhelming emotion and chaotic sound delivered stop-and-start style or just seeps through bit-by-bit, precisely contained, performed and transmitted: such satisfaction. I was inspired after seeing Einsturzende Neubauten in concert a few years back. NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH EMO. See distinction above.)

P.P.S. I don’t solely like epic, of course. Sometimes less is more: Slower, quieter, smaller. Fewer notes, lots and l o t s of s p a c e... A connection to the infinite, via a different route.

And sometimes, I just like to dance.

Examplage:

Still Life by Suede. Dramatic, even melodramatic. But quelle orchestration! Check out the last minute-and-a-half.

Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack. OK, let's play fair and compare Tellier to something more in the same vein (but imho, far mor superior). Notice how the strings are more like whales rising slowly out of the ocean and sinking back again, rather than awkward buoys bobbing up and down.

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough by do you need to ask. Wiry, sinewy strings as punctuation, sharp as f*ck.

A Little Lost by Arthur Russell. Can you fall in love with a song? Oh, yes. There was a time when I first heard this, I walked around on constant repeat. A thing of utter beauty, and not the only one in his quiver, either.

Oh yeah, the song itself that inspired all this. La Ritournelle by Sebastien Tellier.

[OK, I'm done here! Brevity, brevity - next time. Love, M]

(see all this online at the Tate's online slideshow or the MoMA site here)

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) 1999-2000 in which pages fly out from a businessman's folder by the banks of a river, fashioned after an old Japanese print by Hokusai.
After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the prologue 1993 in which the protagonist sits in his cramped room, lit by hundreds of lightbulbs at varying degrees of luminescence, surrounded by dishes in the sink, a record player, an old armchair...
Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona 1999 is what it says. Venus seems to be taking her morning bath, as seen through the soapy windows. The Barcelona chairs in white leather are in disarray. The carpet is lifted from the marble floor for cleaning. A dirty rag haphazardly hangs off the back of one of the (white leather) chairs... Mies's nightmare, probably. (I like how his work has a sense of playfulness, but nothing too obvious, too overt, neither too 'ha-ha' nor too clever.)
Diagonal Composition (multiple pieces). (My favorite is the one with blue paint around the sink.)
The Flooded Grave 1998-2000. Not terribly interesting at first look, until you realize the starfish and other marine creatures covering the grave, making it somewhat magical (and maybe eerie, too?)

There's also a well-timed article (show opens today) in today's New York Times magazine here. If you wonder why some photos have dates ranging over three years, you might have a better idea after reading it.
Go see it this week. You know the more you say you'll get to it, the likelier you'll see it on the last day amongst the crowds (or not at all).

Errors have been fixed, so hopefully there shouldn't be any more linking problems between the handful of pages that are up on preciseabandon dot com which be my site (as I retype what I remember of what I wrote five minutes ago before I lost the whole thing.) I did add a new page, Error404, which I kinda dig, really. (Considering 80-85% of what should be up isn't yet, I figured it'd be kinda cool to amuse the few who wandered in. Yes, it was totally worth the hours I could've spent sleeping.) 

In other news, podcast numero 5 is up. Yep, you guessed it: I kinda dig that, too. (You can subscribe through iTunes> Advanced> Subscribe> http://www.preciseabandon.com/preciseabandon.xml or you can just click this and listen.)

 So ends my newest speech as it drifts into the ether. Good night, and all that...

The below vehicles (more after the link) are simply glorious. 

Thanks to J for the link.