rusty-halo.com

Men Who Are Or Once Were CUTE

rusty-halo — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:42:17 +0000

I have just managed to amuse myself greatly, and I feel compelled to share the entertainment with others who will understand.

I found a chart I made of “Men Who Are Or Once Were CUTE” as of January 1994, when I was eleven years old. This is like the prototypical document of the obsessive fangirl.

It’s an attempt to compile a list of every attractive male actor, ever. In alphabetical order, with a color-coded key to identify the traits of each one.

( Notice anything odd about the list of traits? )

Current Mood: weird

Permalink | 12 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: fandom, personal

Sherlock Holmes Fic Recs?

rusty-halo — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:02:20 +0000

I can’t bring myself to click “Play” on the Doctor Who download.

Instead I am reading Sherlock Holmes wank. This write-up is a thing of beauty.

I’ve already seen the movie twice. It’s not very good, but Robert Downey, Jr and Jude Law are so fantastic together that it doesn’t need to be. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and the sequel will have a decent plot to go along with the gorgeous actors and their delightful chemistry. In the meantime, anyone have Holmes/Watson 2009-movie fic recs?

It’s funny, I was reading through my old posts about Robert Downey, Jr, and in 2006, I complained that “Robert Downey, Jr. films generally suffer from a dearth of explosions.” My, how times have changed!

Oh, and happy new year, everyone. :)

Permalink | Leave a comment | Tags: doctor who, robert downey jr, sherlock holmes

Why I Love Lymond

rusty-halo — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:43:50 +0000

I got drujan to read the Lymond books. She likes them, but hates Lymond, and accused me of “only liking him because he’s hot.” I honestly cannot fathom how anyone could hate Lymond, but anyway, she got me thinking about the myriad reasons that I love him.

Here’s a list of things that I either like or relate to in Lymond. (They’re kind of mixed up because he has a lot of traits that I don’t exactly consider “likable,” but that I connect with and that make the character more meaningful to me.)

( Why Lymond Is Wonderful )

Permalink | 6 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: lymond

random linkspam

rusty-halo — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:12:59 +0000

This letter written by 20-year-old David Bowie to his first American fan is pretty much the cutest thing ever.

(Well, I guess the surprised kitten is cuter.)

I’ve been having a hard time with Farscape fanfic (first step to making a story readable: Find: “half-breed”; Replace: “Scorpius”) but I’ve been enjoying vids. Particularly comedy vids, like this Scorpius/Braca one, or Scorpius as the Grinch. Man, I wish I’d been in the fandom when the show aired… I love it very much but there’s not really any kind of outlet for my enthusiasm. Active fandoms are a lot more fun.

Current Mood: dorky

Permalink | 6 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: david bowie, farscape

Fannish Stuff on eBay

rusty-halo — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:08:45 +0000

I’m selling some fannish stuff on eBay:

* Buffy the Vampire Slayer Initiative Xander Action Figure (New York Comic Con 2007 Exclusive)

* Pirates of the Caribbean 2 Scruffy Norrington Action Figure

The Norrington one is really cute. Um, for an action figure. (Look at the close up of his face!)

I’m also selling a new, unopened 120GB Playstation 3 (with all accessories) if, uh, anyone wants one. (Long story–I decided to buy an HDTV on Black Friday but to make it worth the cost I had to buy it in combo with a Playstation and then sell the Playstation.)

I’m also selling some books and DVDs. Everything’s listed here. I’ll give free shipping to any of my fandom friends who buy any of these. (If your eBay name doesn’t match your fandom name, let me know who you are so I know to take the shipping cost off.)

Current Mood: weird

Permalink | 1 comment | Leave a comment | Tags: fandom

The little kids who grew up listening to Davie Bowie are old enough to write TV shows now

rusty-halo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:45:00 +0000

♥♥♥Doctor Who♥♥♥

( spoilers )

Current Mood: impressed & drunk

Permalink | 8 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: doctor who

Top 10 Bowie Songs

rusty-halo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:01:40 +0000

Top 10 Bowie Songs:

These are my personal favorites, not which songs I think are “objectively best.” Sort of in order, but some are too close to call.

1. Station to Station
This song is dark, beautiful, complex, innovative, and disturbing. Its enveloping atmosphere and progression of emotions captures a sense of the search for life’s meaning, the fear of emptiness and hope for transcendence.

2. Ziggy Stardust
The perfect archetypal rock song for the perfect archetypal rock star.

3. Subterraneans
So beautiful, longing, and sad. Bowie’s a master at capturing this particular emotion; “Subterraneans” is the best example, although…

4. The Bewlay Brothers
Even the Bowie encyclopedia doesn’t seem to quite know what to make of this song’s enigmatic lyrics. Whatever it’s about, the vivid imagery and haunting music are eerie and sad, steeped in a nostalgia for something deeply precious and irrevocably lost. (Plus, Bowie deserves major props for turning that chipmunk vocal effect last seen in “The Laughing Gnome” into something effectively ominous here.)

5. “Heroes”
Specific and universal, ironic and yet deeply moving–”Heroes” is an epic contradiction of a song. (I already raved about it here.)

6. Always Crashing in the Same Car
So much emotion brews beneath the cool surface of this song. It is a mood, a musical landscape of numb disconnection.

7. Alternative Candidate
I can’t believe this jaunty and twisted outtake wasn’t even on the album!

8. Cygnet Committee
Perhaps a bit over the top, but I love the sincerity of this folk epic. Bowie’s impassioned criticism of the corruption of 1960s ideals is a reminder of the substance beneath his style.

9. My Death (July 3, 1973 live version)
This isn’t even a Bowie song, but it ranks in my top ten for the quality of the performance alone.

10. The Man Who Sold the World
Thanks to Nirvana, I grew up with this song; I still adore Kurt Cobain’s raw vocal performance. Bowie’s original is equally sad, with a detached performance that gives its emotion a more distant quality. The lyrics are among his early best.

(Runners up: Life on Mars?, Five Years, Moonage Daydream, Rock N Roll Suicide, Aladdin Sane, Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing, Big Brother, Young Americans, Who Can I Be Now, Stay, Wild is the Wind, A New Career in a New Town, Neukoln, Ashes to Ashes, Ricochet, Loving the Alien, Jump They Say, Outside, I’m Afraid of Americans)

I know my descriptions tend to linger on the angsty aspects of the songs, but a lot what makes them so effective is Bowie’s irony, self-awareness, and sense of the absurd.

Permalink | 6 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: david bowie

Farscape Series Reaction… and, Fic Recs, Please?

rusty-halo — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:51:28 +0000

Where do I go for Farscape fic? Anyone have recs? Ideally centered on John, Aeryn, and/or Scorpius (or Harvey).

Good: Hurt/comfort, long epics, alternate seasons, humor, darkfic, slash.

Bad: Schmoop, babyfic, agendafic, anything OOC or too AU.

Please?

Yes, everyone who tried for years to talk me into watching Farscape was right. I loved it.

I just finished the series. I began to really like it in seasons two and three, but didn’t find myself totally in love until season four. It took a while for the show to actually gel into the quality they were attempting all along, but once it did it became absolutely brilliant. I had no idea how dark, odd, twisted, and kinky the show would get! And yes, I did fall totally in love with John Crichton. He’s an insane, hilarious, fucked-up mess of a character. He ended up hitting all my fictional kinks and probably creating a few new ones. Aeryn Sun just got better and better, passionate and vulnerable without compromising her strength and competence. John and Aeryn might be the best portrayal of a relationship of equals that I’ve ever seen on television.

You were all right. I should have watched it sooner. And I would really like to smack in the face whatever moron at the Sci Fi Channel decided to cancel this amazing show!

( a couple of complaints and a bunch more things I loved )

I am so totally going to watch it again. And again.

And… fic recs? Please? Must… have… fanfiction…

Current Mood: pleased

Permalink | 26 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: fanfic, farscape

Hi…

rusty-halo — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:24:01 +0000

I haven’t been on LJ or DreamWidth for about two months. Um, did I miss anything?

I’m not sure if I’m coming back. I was basically forced off because my computer broke, but my computer has been working for a month now and… yeah. I’m really enjoying the free time that comes with not spending hours on journaling sites every day. I also think that removing myself from the obsessive lunacy of fandom has done wonders for my own sanity. :P

I miss you guys, though. I’m thinking of maybe trimming my reading list to just real people and checking in a couple times per week.

Part of it was post-Writercon burnout. Part is that I’m just kind of… done… with mainstream television. Canceling my cable TV was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. I’m not even angry about the myriad ways TV sucks; I’m just not interested in spending time on it anymore.

I’ve been cooking every day, working on freelance projects, getting my finances in order, organizing my apartment, taking long walks around NYC, going to museums (the Neue Galerie is amazing), reading proper books (currently on The Power Broker about Robert Moses), and downloading lots of 1970s David Bowie goodies.

(Proof that I’ve drunk the Bowie Kool-Aid: the other day I found myself listening to the Young Americans album with unreserved adoration. I’ve also been watching a lot of interviews and was surprised to find that I really like David Bowie. When I got into his music, I really was not expecting to find him likable as a person. I respect his intelligence, hard work, self-awareness, and courage to take wild creative leaps.)

But part of the reason it’s foolish to post here is that you guys are not the appropriate audience for my thoughts on David Bowie. It is really starting to hit me that in my heart, I’m not a TV fan; I’m a music fan who happens to get into TV fandoms in the off periods when I can’t find music that engages me. I’m not sure what the appropriate venue is, though; music fandoms tend to center around message boards full of pedantic fanboys with whom I wouldn’t fit either. I think the best answer is probably just to go back to being a solitary fan.

( The main reason I’m posting is to tell Cindergal that I am still watching Farscape as promised )

So… what have you all been up to?

Permalink | 17 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: david bowie, farscape, nyc, personal

I Have Internet!

rusty-halo — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:50:42 +0000

I’m posting from my own computer for the first time in three weeks. Woohoo!!!

Permalink | 4 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: computer

I Really, Really, REALLY Miss My Computer

rusty-halo — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:43:31 +0000

I got a ton of vegetables from my CSA on Wednesday. Three eggplants, four green peppers, lots of regular and cherry tomatoes, a head of lettuce, broccoli, arugula, and a massive amount of basil. This is good in the sense that it’s cheap, fresh, locally grown, organic food. It’s bad in the sense that I have to figure out what the hell to do with it, quickly, before it goes bad.

Wednesday I made an eggplant and tomato dish flavored with garam masala, cayenne, and cinnamon over brown rice (from The Vegan Family Cookbook) and a salad of bulgur wheat with cremini mushrooms, arugula, and cannellini beans (from Veganomicon). Yesterday I made basil-cilantro pesto (also from Veganomicon) and a green pepper and tomato salad (from Rachael Ray, of all people). The pesto is so good (the basil was unbelievably fresh and strong) that I could probably eat it plain, but I’m going to use it this weekend to make basil-cilantro pesto linguine with artichokes (Veganomicon again) and I’m also planning to make Simply Heavenly’s eggplant with tomatoes recipe.

I enjoy cooking, but unfortunately this has coincided with the arrival of my new computer parts, so I’ve had to rush through it to get on the phone with my dad to try to get my computer up and running.

( LOL I tried to put a computer together; what a shock that it didn’t end well )

Long story short: god only knows when I’ll have a working computer again.

At least I am able to hook up my MP3 player to my speakers and keep the David Bowie flowing. Without Low I don’t think I’d even be functional right now. (Yes, it took long enough, but between “Always Crashing in the Same Car” and “Subterraneans,” I am finally in love with the album.)

Current Mood: drained

Permalink | 3 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: computer, cooking, family

Writercon, Farscape, True Blood, and Real Life $!%#@

rusty-halo — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:42:54 +0000

* I came home from Writercon to find my computer dead. The motherboard is fried. I just spent $350 on replacement parts. (There goes my half-fantasized Labor Day beach vacation.) My brother is going to help me put it back together via phone, which… well, cross your fingers for me. I’m a software person, not a hardware person. He thinks there’s an 80% chance I’ll be able to get my old system working with the new hardware–otherwise I’ll have to buy a new hard drive, install a new operating system, reinstall all my programs, and copy over all my old files. Here’s hoping for that 80% chance.

( and the next day the fuse that powers my entire apartment blew and it was insanely stressful )

* And actual Writercon. Gah, I don’t even know what to say. It was wonderful and stressful and my feelings are so mixed and complicated. I will say that it was good to reconnect with people (especially the other concom members who I adore but haven’t seen in years) and to meet so many awesome new people.

I want to write more but I’m really still working out my feelings (mostly about how/whether I fit into the Writercon community and how/whether Writercon fits into my life). So I’ll save that post for some future moment when I’m capable of being coherent about it.

( I finished the first season of True Blood and really didn’t like it )

( I’m watching Farscape and enjoying it so far )

* I feel kind of bad about dissing John Hughes in a post the other day. Despite my reservations about a lot of his work, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is one of my all-time favorite movies. I give Hughes major props for that if nothing else. (And, okay, The Breakfast Club is a total guilty pleasure, even though I want to scream and break things every time Ally Sheedy gets that horrible “makeover”).

Current Mood: stressed

Permalink | 25 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: apartment, farscape, movies, nyc, true blood, writercon

Rethinking Low, and More Bowie Books

rusty-halo — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:51:53 +0000

After Writercon, it feels like a total non-sequitur to launch right back into another long babble about David Bowie. I apologize to everyone who’s just friended me. But you know how it is when you’re in the grip of an obsession, right…?

So on to the Bowie talk.

Despite all my frustration about not being able to connect with Low, I have fallen head over heels for the song “Subterraneans.” I’ve been listening to it nonstop for a week. It captures this sense of time and place and distance and sadness and, just, the way Bowie’s lonely saxophone comes in at the end, wandering through the mist, reaching out and then fading away. It’s so beautiful and moving. I can’t explain it in words–you can listen to the song here.

I’m still reading Bowie books. I finished David Bowie’s Low (33 1/3) by Hugo Wilcken, which is absolutely fantastic. It’s exactly what I was wanting and not quite getting from Bowie in Berlin–an analysis of Low in relation to art and culture. Wilcken’s analysis is spot-on and interesting–he talks about Low as minimalism, its connections with German Expressionism, and about Bowie’s effort to remove narrative entirely. One of his best insights is that Low deliberately strips away the two things that were considered Bowie’s strengths: his words and his voice. His psychological analysis is less compelling, but I like how he talks about the album’s progression from the retreat into physical space (the first side’s references to hiding away in a room/bedroom) and then mental space (the second side’s nonverbal mindscapes).

He also talks a lot about how Bowie himself was already moving in an abstract direction–it’s not like Brian Eno swooped in and blessed Bowie with his ambient fairy dust or whatever. There’s a clear progression in Bowie’s work, starting from the linear narratives of his early folk songs (which probably culminates in the epic of Ziggy Stardust, although even by the Ziggy time the actual narrative was becoming ambiguous). Then the still very word-oriented “cut-ups” of the Diamond Dogs era (an idea taken from William Burroughs, in which Bowie would literally cut up his writings and paste words and phrases together in different combinations). It’s like he first tried to escape narrative convention with more and more layers of words and then with Low realized he could do it with many fewer words. The more I think about it, the more apparent it is that Low and Station to Station are two sides of the same coin. They have this same empty, disconnected, lonely core about the search for meaning and connection, but Station to Station’s surface is frantic and overwrought whereas Low’s is withdrawn and blank. And also, isn’t it a good thing that Bowie spent so long writing interminably epic narrative folk songs in relative obscurity, so that he was ready to explore more interesting experiments by the time he was famous?

I like that the book zeroes in on the work itself from an analytical point of view. It avoids long digressions about Bowie’s personal life and about which musicians played on what and which songs were released where. My only complaint is that the editing sucked. Wilcken uses the word “autistic” about forty times in a small 138 page book–yes, we got the point already. He’s also got a few factual errors and a couple of repeated phrases, but the overall work is so interesting that these flaws are easy to overlook. I’m really glad I read this–it’s helped me to understand and appreciate Low more than anything else so far.

I’m also reading Bowie: Loving The Alien by Christopher Sandford, which is absolute crap, on par with Alias David Bowie. It has Bowie “bursting into tears” in every other paragraph and alternates between describing him as an emotionally unstable lunatic and a scheming emotionless fascist. Its musical analysis is facile, it’s full of blatant factual errors, it treats all rumors as fact, it disregards everything Bowie says as agenda-driven but accepts as gospel the claims of bitter former acquaintances, and it’s just really offensive and gross. It’s clear that several of the better Bowie books are full of clarifications that are responses to this. (Thus the sense, when reading Strange Fascination, that I was missing half the story. I was, because it’s intentionally a sane reaction to the sensationalism of Loving the Alien and Alias David Bowie and probably a lot of other rumor-mongering crap.)

Current Mood: weird

Permalink | 1 comment | Leave a comment | Tags: david bowie

Take the Writercon 2009 Survey!

rusty-halo — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:26:47 +0000

We strive to make Writercon the best convention it can be, and a huge part of that is knowing what did and didn’t work for our attendees. We’ve created a survey to help us understand your thoughts on Writercon.

You may take this survey anonymously or under your own name. We strongly encourage ANYONE who is at all interested in Writercon to take this survey, regardless of whether you attended in 2009. If you didn’t attend, we want to know why, and if you’re thinking about attending in the future, we want to know what you’re looking for.

Click here to take the Writercon 2009 survey.

Please spread the word to anyone you know who is at all interested in Writercon.

Thank you!!

(I guess I should stop using this icon now that Writercon 2009 is over. *sniffle*)

Permalink | Leave a comment | Tags: writercon

GAH

rusty-halo — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 02:49:21 +0000

There is nothing like combining the sadness of post-con letdown with the discovery, upon arriving home, that your computer is BROKEN. Like, dead. And trying to figure out how you’re going to afford a new one while attempting to type really important stuff ON YOUR PHONE which continually does the opposite of what you want it to do.

!!!!

Okay, I’m going to take a breath, hug my cats, and go to sleep.

Writercon was WONDERFUL and I’m so glad that we pulled it off, and that I got to meet so many amazing new people and to spend quality time with those of you I already adore. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who was there. Writercon is a unique and incredibly special community, and I’m so glad that it’s part of my life.

Permalink | 2 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: writercon

Off to Writercon!

rusty-halo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:37:43 +0000

Hope to see a lot of you there.

I’ll probably be tweeting: twitter.com/drinkthepoison

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“‘Heroes’”

rusty-halo — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:53:57 +0000

I am obsessing over the song “‘Heroes’” today. (Probably because I just read about it in Bowie in Berlin, and because it’s the best song from Bowie’s late 70s period.)

I am normally bored out of my mind when people talk about production techniques, but this one actually has a fascinating story behind it. It was recorded in this huge ballroom in West Berlin near the Wall that was built in the early 1900s and had been used for events during the Weimar Republic and later by the Nazis before being turned into a recording studio. It was much bigger than a normal studio and had a natural cavernous echoing effect, so Tony Visconti, the producer, figured out a way to put microphones around the room to capture Bowie’s voice as it reflected through the space. He also came up with this production innovation that I don’t entirely understand that means that some of the microphones didn’t start recording until Bowie’s voice reached a certain level, which meant that it could record correctly in one take as Bowie’s voice started out very low and calm and eventually rose to an epic wail. So when you’re hearing Bowie’s vocal, you’re not just hearing his voice but the sound of the room he’s in. I love this–I always realized he sounded unique on that song, but I didn’t know why. It’s not just some Pro Tools effect, it’s the sound of that place and all its history.

I’ve read so many interesting stories about this song. Like that Bowie waited until the very end to give it vocals and may have been planning to leave it as an instrumental (!). And that he apparently thought about it in advance but wrote the lyrics on the spot, recording as he went. And that the guitar virtuoso, Robert Fripp, basically got off a plane, walked into the studio travel-tired, played along to the songs without even hearing them first (having been instructed by Bowie to play the kind of messy improvisations that he’d never put on his own albums), and… that’s what they used on the album. And it sounds amazing!

The other thing that’s really fascinating about this song is that everyone seems to have a different opinion about how ironic it is. Some say that it’s a dark story about a couple deluding themselves about their doomed relationship, while others say it’s a straightforward anthem about individuals overcoming an oppressive society. I guess I’d fall in the middle and say that it starts out ironic but becomes powerfully sincere by the end. I think it’s about living in the moment–that the world is a mess and that we as individuals are a mess, that everything is transient and endings are inevitable, but that the great moments of connection and meaning in our lives somehow transcend that and achieve their own form of immortality because they are so meaningful to us.

But that’s the nifty thing about art; it means different things to different people. I mean, I almost think that the song was meant to be entirely ironic, but that it became inspirational because so many people saw it that way–the audience interpretation gave it another layer of meaning.

The song has a fascinating and sometimes contradictory mythology that adds even more layers. Bowie’s own marriage was crumbling–was it about him and Angela? (There are bits that seem to refer to him in 1977, drinking all the time and not knowing how to swim.) He’s also referenced stories and paintings it was supposedly inspired by (see Bowie in Berlin). And there’s the story of him seeing a pair of lovers meeting beneath the Berlin Wall from his position in the studio, either once or many times, who may have been Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maass having an affair, and who may not have existed at all since it’s debatable whether you can even see the Wall from inside the studio. And then there’s the sense that it’s not really about anyone specific but is about the human impact of the Berlin Wall, of the aftereffects of WWII, of the Cold War. It simultaneously has a very specific feel of Berlin in 1977 and a very general sense of human beings caught up in the movement of history.

Anyway, if you have only heard the shortened single version, listen to the full version here. I’m sad that it took me so long to hear it.

Permalink | 5 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: david bowie

Linkspam and Low

rusty-halo — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:38:19 +0000

* David Bowie interviewed by a 17-year-old Cameron Crowe for Playboy in 1976

The thin line between madness and genius… or, holy shit, David Bowie was really fucking crazy.

* ThreadBared on why The Legend of Billie Jean was the best teen movie of the 80s

It’s so sad that this film has been mostly forgotten; it’s the perfect antidote to the conservatism of the John Hughes oeuvre. Plus, Helen Slater is awesome in it.

* I’m reading Bowie in Berlin by Thomas Jerome Seabrook. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this book. It relies almost entirely on recycled information from other sources, but it is quite useful for its intensive focus. It zeros in on Bowie’s Berlin years with an analysis of Bowie’s music and how it was impacted by his personal life and (to a lesser extent) by the location(s) and era. I think I’d enjoy more about the music’s position in relation to the mid/late 70s zeitgeist to balance the focus on the personal life of the creator–something more in the cultural studies realm.

The book spends a lot of time on the innovative production methods and how they went on to influence popular music (I remain amazed at what a huge influence Bowie’s had). The author is a bit of an arty snob, though–I keep imagining how annoying he would be to get into an argument with at a party–but he knows his stuff, and I’m enjoying reading his opinions even if I don’t always agree with him. (His quick dismissal of Ziggy Stardust and his pages of reveries about distorted drum sounds reveal that he’s a completely different type of music fan than I am!)

I don’t think I’ll ever love Low the way I love Station to Station. I respect it immensely as an artistic achievement and I enjoy listening to it, but it doesn’t move me as deeply–maybe my psyche is more attuned to the frantic turmoil of Station to Station than the reflective contemplation of Low. Low is more intellectual, more about atmosphere and mood, more detached. It’s Bowie coming down from the cocaine-fueled insanity of his previous few years, processing it, starting to heal. It’s like a snapshot of a pause, of the period where Bowie took a breath and dealt with himself. It’s fragmented and meandering and often very sad, but with a thread of hope running underneath, an indication that he’s already hit rock bottom and is slowly on his way back up.

It doesn’t help that I’m just so much of a verbal person–the lyrics on Low are incredibly sparse (only half the songs even have English words). I believe people when they tell me that the sound of Low is brilliant, but I don’t fully understand why. I try to listen to the instrumentals and appreciate the textures, the effects, the interactions of the various instruments, but my brain is just not built that way. I can’t focus on an instrumental–no matter how hard I try to force myself to concentrate, I catch myself making a shopping list or worrying about my cat within 30 seconds. To keep the thread, I need words.

And I love the words that are on Low–I love how fragmentary they are and how oddly yet perfectly they interweave with the music. I wouldn’t change anything about this album–I recognize that it’s brilliant–it’s just not brilliant in the way that best draws me personally in.

Permalink | 3 comments | Leave a comment | Tags: books, david bowie, the legend of billie jean

Not-an-essay on Station to Station

rusty-halo — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:14:34 +0000

I’ve been completely obsessed with Station to Station for the past few days. I adore it. I think I love it even more than Ziggy Stardust; I think it’s my favorite Bowie record.

I want to write a big long essay to explain why it moves me so powerfully, but I don’t have time (I’m trying to get a huge work project done before Writercon and, oh yeah, preparing for Writercon), so here’s a bunch of snippets I would have turned into an essay.

Notes scrawled on the back of a scrap paper while riding the subway:

Station to Station = search for transcendence
by articulating it so well it becomes itself transcendent

The search for transcendence (through love, religion, art…) is a recurring theme in Bowie’s work, explored through another lens in Ziggy Stardust (see this essay I did have time to write), but Station to Station is more impressionistic, less explicitly narrative.

In a proper essay, here would be bunch of quotes from Station to Station explaining how the songs tie in, although it’s fairly obvious anyway if you listen. The opening train sound, the title (stations as in traveling, but also stations of the cross), “searching and searching” and “what will I be believing and who will connect me with love?” and the (failed) attempt to connect of “Stay” and the entirety of “Word on a Wing” (idealization of religion as the answer) and “Wild is the Wind” (idealization of romantic love as the answer). The sense of desperate longing and underlying emptiness that pervades throughout, particularly in the vocals of “Word on a Wing” and “Wild is the Wind,” in direct contradiction to the lyrics.

Even the cover–Bowie as Newton from The Man Who Fell To Earth, entering the space ship to return home to his family, who function in the film as the perfect representation of home, love, happiness, purpose, meaning (and who are idealized, impossible to reach, and probably already dead).

Note scrawled slightly later:

there are realms of human experience that are inaccessible to language

Which 1) I think is a summary of something Bowie said in one of the DVDs I just watched, 2) explains why writing this essay is actually futile and makes me wonder why I feel compelled to explain everything that I find meaningful with inevitably inadequate words, and 3) is why Station to Station and music and art in general are important, because they express and communicate aspects of human experience that language can’t. (Here, have a link to a vaguely related NY Times article about how language shapes–and limits–perception.)

I also think that Station to Station affects me so much because the process of getting into the album required me to get past some of my prejudices and widen my own musical vistas.

This album connects and communicates on a level than words can’t convey. It has its own language; you can only understand by listening to it.

The two things that recently spurred me into obsessing even more about Station to Station are:

Bowie’s philosophy of love as explained in 1976, which you can see reflected in Station to Station, and which freaks me out because I totally agree with him:

This comes after a nifty performance of “Stay,” btw.

(I find this particularly surreal not only due to the random spaced-out Henry Winkler and the fact that it’s followed by a karate lesson but because Dinah Shore in mannerism and commentary is a dead ringer for my mother–it’s like my mom hopped into a TARDIS and went to 1976 to interview David Bowie.)

Bowie in 1999 explaining that the Station to Station era was the darkest period of his life and then performing “Word on a Wing”:

And on a completely shallow note … I’m sorry that his life sucked at the time, but the Thin White Duke was the hottest of Bowie’s personas. I could look at photos of him all day. I adore the minimalist/German Expressionist/film noir imagery… oh how I wish I could go back in time to one of those concerts!

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More Bowie DVDs and WTF SEAN BEAN AS NED STARK, REALLY?

rusty-halo — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 20:30:09 +0000

I watched two more Bowie DVDs: Black Tie White Noise (1993) and VH1 Storytellers (1999).

The thing is, Bowie as an older man is wise, funny, cultured, entertaining, charismatic, and… just not 1/10 as interesting as crazy fucked up genius 70s Bowie. You get the sense that he uses his charm and sense of humor to deflect his interviewers and avoid revealing anything particularly personal, whereas in the early years of his fame he was often quite passionate and sincere about whatever disturbing, odd, interesting things happened to be going on in his head.

(Or maybe he just grew up and mellowed out. *shrug*)

( Black Tie White Noise )

( VH1 Storytellers )

And in other news, Sean Bean has been cast as Ned Stark in HBO’s adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire.

I’m… confused.

On the one hand, I love A Song of Ice and Fire and I love Sean Bean, so… yay!

But… but… Ned Stark? Does he have to be Ned Stark? Can he shave his head and be Tywin Lannister instead? Can we get him a TARDIS and have 30-year-old Sean Bean play Jaime Lannister? Ned Stark is a boring goody-two-shoes loser! Sean Bean is better than Ned Stark. Bean’s whole schtick is being able to play dark, disturbing, complicated characters, the opposite of humorless honor-bound Ned. Does this mean they’re going to change Ned? Because I don’t want to have to like Ned Stark!

( spoilers for ASOIAF )

And then there’s the fact that I’ve always pictured Jaime Lannister as very similar to young Sean Bean (thanks to queenofthorns who helped get me into the series in the first place). Ned and Jaime are opposites and enemies, but if Sean Bean is Ned, then am I going to side with him or with Jaime? And how can I picture Jaime like Sean Bean if Ned is Sean Bean? And that’s not even getting into the fact that Sean Bean is way too old to play Ned Stark!

And… and…

*does not compute*

*brain explodes*

Current Mood: confused

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