Hildur Guðnadóttir – Elevation – (complete)

Begin a new live/SOC blog.
Break, save and set permissions.

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Step one would be to find the Hildur Guðnadóttir piece called Elevation from her album Without Sinking, probably on YouTube, and to listen to it. I’m not going to find it for you, this kind of thing is exceptionally easy to do for yourself. Do it, you will be rewarded.

The second step is for me, to inform readers of the nature of the live-blog/stream of consciousness nature of the piece. In the grand on tradition of hitting F5.

So, save.

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So I write and then I stop writing. I’ve moved house, albeit not far from where I lived before, but under new arrangements. The arrangements have for the most part been rewarding. No more shall be said about the arrangements until I’m confident in at least their semi-permanence. You may read between the lines as to the condition of those arrangements, and that they have not always been good. That much alone for now shall be public record.

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All the things that were alive very much still are. Nothing dies. Once upon a time I tried to kill them, perhaps unknowingly but I don’t like to use that excuse. It’s very simple, take certain medications, kill certain things. The good thing is they’re much hardier than that, and I’m glad they’re not dead, in-fact hardly scathed. That was some time ago nevertheless, and such things are long past.
So they live and nothing kills them. Not living arrangements, not interruptions, not changes in circumstance, they hardly make a dent. Unfortunately what happens for me, what is interrupted, is the translation process. I’ve since blinked and resumed translation, and thank the gods of whateverthefuck that I have. If there is one purpose I have in life it is to translate the Strangeness into what amounts to be more strangeness. That probably makes as much sense to you as the translations themselves and there’s a sense of rightness about that. I never said you’d understand it, I just believe that you need to read it.

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The next piece of music you need to find is Destined Route from the Texhnolyze soundtrack. It may be billed under Keishi Urata, or any of the other two or three composers who worked on Texhnolyze. In any case, it’s from the second commercial soundtrack release from the project subtitled: Man of Men. Go and find it now.

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It’s a wild conceit that a writer commands the audience to carry out an action and the audience actually carries it out. The analyst within us naturally breaks down percentages of people who will ignore the command, people who will search for the articles and fail, those who will succeed and the tiny percentage who will be familiar with it, some of which may choose to ignore the command given that they already know the nature of the articles. I don’t mind analysis, much of the time I rather enjoy it. There’s something to some of the things we analyse though, in that the findings are completely meaningless. Nevertheless, analysing itself is always great fun and should be engaged often.
I remind myself of my lifelong campaign to educate people that analysis does not destroy metaphysical artistic enjoyment, but rather amplifies it, however this is not the forum, or today is not the day.
Bill Frisell – Under A Golden Sky, which I found like a pedestrian on the soundtrack for Finding Forrester, but that you are likely to have because you have a decent collection of Frisell’s work, more’s the pity that I don’t.
Peter Broderick – Pause, on SMM Context.
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I keep suggesting people watch Texhnolyze. In the horrible fantasy universe where I set the curriculum for everything, Texhnolyze is shown to high-school students, probably first in year seven to mess them up right and proper, then in year 12 after they’ve been scarred a bit by life. No assignments, no analysis, no discussion, just watching. But then I think teens are too young, too distracted by empty and meaningless things, only half of which will gain some meaning by their twenties. I think about the frame of mind I was in when I watched Texhnolyze the first time, then the frame of mind I was in when I watched it the third time. I’m thinking around twenty-three is a good age to get fucked-up the way Texhnolyze marks you. Of-course if you’re of the right particular tilt, no up-fuckerage will be done, indeed quite the opposite, like me, you will be inspired.
I’m reminded of my inclination towards denying the audience what they have come to assume as vital information, or rather, a vital sense of linearity and sense. I’m tired of things that make sense. I don’t have to do any work for them and I feel bored and binging. I’m consuming food that has little flavour and little nutritional value, just empty, senseless sugars and dull textures. Texhnolyze is magnificent in the way it almost begins to make sense, and then utterly destroys what semblance of sense there was. That of-course is all some kind of oxymoronic illustration, because once again, it makes plenty of sense to me. The key then, is in having two parallel understandings – one that follows the meaning of the work, and one that follows the general audiences’ absolute lack of comprehension. If you can appreciate both, you’re a long way to understanding the work in the right fashion. That goes for Lynch too, which shouldn’t surprise you, and yes, Inland Empire is a masterpiece. Watch it again. If you still don’t get it, watch it again. You are almost certainly missing something, but it is not narrative information, it’s an attitude and a sensitivity to mood and atmosphere as a priority over straight narrative storytelling. He’s telling you a story, just not with the literal events that every other director does (naturally, not every other director, but you take my meaning).

Break, save.

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I need a drink, no F5s for a while.

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You really need to track down the SMM Context compilation on Ghostly Records. Regardless of whatever strange, interior meaning SMM is supposed to have, the entire genre seems to be akin to a tribute to David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. That there is an entire genre for this pleases me. Whatever other horrible perversions of music, genre and interpretive art there may be, that it has brought us to a place where such a thing can exist justifies all the bullshit that precedes it. There are very few more effective ways to bring the strange than to listen to SMM Context.

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There is something of a social delinquent in me, with all of this ‘bringing the strange’ business. As per comments regarding film and linear narrative, I feel as though life is far too safe a place as far as the psyche and perception goes. No I don’t think safety is the correct framing. I recall my late teens when Ghost In The Shell finally began to make philosophical sense to me and I went for a walk in the city listening to Kenji Kawaii’s soundtrack, the way it transformed everything, the way I allowed myself to see things in certain ways under its influence, or lending power to its influence etc. It’s not exactly that I want to see the world as a place where say, mystical spirits reside in every object or semi-hidden space,not ghosts/spirits as such but… hmmm. No, it’s going to sound like pretentious wank anyway – ideas? Philosophies? We may perceive the city as a simple environment of rampant progress, or perhaps we can read into it a whole bunch of cool symbolism and representation, an impression of our group psyche perhaps, some other half-crazy but really nicely far-reaching idea. Very Japanese, this sense of having an impression of something rather than a definition of it.
That’s the next thing you should do, though not immediately. Acquire Kenji Kawaii’s soundtracks to Ghost In The Shell and Innocence: Ghost In The Shell 2 and go for a walk in the metropolis of your choice. It may also go a fair way to explaining just how it is that I have never seen cities as busy or rushing places, that calm, pace and slowness are easy things to see/establish/acknowledge etc.

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Updates are becoming more spaced as I become more and more entangled into SMM Context. This of-course on the first night I’ve had insomnia in a good five months. Oh by the way, the insomnia was gone for a while. Now it’s back. At least for tonight. I’ve no idea how long it will last.
One of the phrasings of this kind of music, Lynch, Texhnolyze et al is that place where everything is connected and detached at the same time. When one feels slightly adrift, out of sync, separated from the general flow of life in which we tend to inhabit for the most part. It’s important that it’s a separation, and that it has context with the general flow of life, that we appreciate and exist in both in order to understand one or the other. This cannot be all of life, if it were, it wouldn’t feel as wonderfully different as it does. Good thing too, otherwise our interactions would be horribly abstract and probably quite confusing. One of the benefits of part-time strangeness is indeed when you actually do communicate in only the subtlest of gestures and looks. As much as we romanticise such things in literature, it’s quite difficult and certainly rare. When it happens, it feels almost supernatural and so it should. To connect in languages outside of the spoken is a powerful thing indeed. Blah blah blah refer to prior writings on languages (which you may or may not have access to here in this space), non-verbal languages and my absolute delight in them.
This bit of Jacaszek’s Elegia is reminding me a bit of Clint Mansell and The Fountain.

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I get to the bit where I’m thinking of what to say and it no longer is a stream of consciousness piece, so in that case, I end. Go for a walk. Listen to some music that doesn’t bounce or slap you in the face with words or consist of every tired classical rule known to music history. There’s nothing wrong with all of that, but give it a rest for a bit. Go out and make some strange for yourself. You may find it thoroughly uncomfortable and if so, I think you still will have gained something.
I don’t know – be different for once. Just do it. Don’t think about why, just do it.
That’s all.