Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Little Known Wonders of the Musical World

Tonight a certain piece has been playing on my mind. Although secrecy and the ensuing sense of security are surely a part of the warm feeling it brings, I would like to share.

What is it? The song is Vale Deah by Trocadero.

Where is it? I first heard it during the end credits for the DVD release of the first season of hit machinema series Red vs. Blue, but it can also be found on the group's album, containing many songs used in and written for the series. The album is the one I'd recommend: it holds many a treasure, including the indie-rock/pop killer No One, another of my secret securities. Vale Deah is available on youtube also.

What's so good about it? Vale Deah is not a flashy show tune, nor a soaring epic, nor a crunching rock outburst. In fact it doesn't rip and tear at the seams with barely suppressed emotion of any kind. It is the aftermath of emotion - the denouement of pain. It's soft, slow, simple, unobtrusive even its closing moments, where it builds to a full room of sound but can't find any passion inside. It wants there to be passion; it's frustrated that there's not.

There is a certain point in a time of crises where the feeling so exquisitely created by Trocadero with this song becomes the be all and end all of existence, and its so transient that ne'er a songwriter has had time to catch it - too busy were they walking contemplatively on a beach, or (in Vale Deah's case) hanging plaintively in a bar somewhere. But here it is, for my money, never bettered: the universal Moment's Silence for heartache, head bowed, sadly numb.

Na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na na

I somehow knew you were there
Looking like you didn't care
I reached for the change in my pocket
I counted the change in my pocket


I wanted to buy you a beer
I knew that you were somewhere near
The bartender said it's ok
The bartender said it's ok...

Na na na na na na na
Na na na na na na na

Saturday, January 26, 2008

I don't like life tonight

Because I don't feel a part of it, not one bit, not at all.
In fact I'll go ahead and state it: I am not a part of life, I am not a part of the world, I am not a part of people. There's something missing in me and I am not connected.

And no amount of words will ever fix it.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Art of Buckley (remastered)

The following blog was stolen direct from my Myspace blog of the same name. I think it's much more at home here, though.


Sometimes you experience moments in life that are remarkable in their own context, and should only ever be remembered that way. You are about to fall asleep, cozy in your bed, and it begins to rain. The rain on your rooftop keeps you awake just long enough to let you consciously realize just how perfectly content you are right that second... then it lulls you to sleep. This is one example of the kind of moment I hope we've all had - if it's just me, then I finally have cause to feel sorry for all you suckers.

The late, great Mr. Jeff Buckley (God bless his soul) and his music exist wholly in these moments, as I discovered on the tram this morning. My magic music machine chanced upon the devastatingly sexy Everybody Here Wants You, a take from the tragically unfinished Sketches for "My Sweetheart The Drunk" with which Jeff was for some reason unhappy, and although I had heard the song dozens of times before, something about this time was very different. The second that beat kicked off, it was obvious. I was just now, in this moment, hearing what Jeff never felt he could create - the imperfectly perfect rendering of the passion of his soul.

In light of this, it becomes obvious what is magical about Buckley. What from most people comes from training and practice, thoughts and feelings and impulses and putting pen to paper and fingers to frets comes from somewhere else in this particular man. Those things all help him along the way, but what he makes, his art, is spilling from a place untouched by anything human or conscious or tangible. I think this is probably why he suffered from mental illness, alcoholism and died so heartbreakingly young - because something about his construct as a being didn't care for his welfare or life, only for his art. Buckley didn't make music; music made him.

I focus on him because he most recently and fervently took my breath and faith away, but he has not been the only of his kind. Beethoven, Coltrane, Hendrix have all shared very similar traits, ones which I might call spiritual if I believed in such things. Even Mayer, whose brilliance I couldn't overemphasize short of committing suicide out of an inability to coexist alongside it, simply doesn't have what Buckley had. He's built his brilliance, where Buckley had to build himself to express it.

Has anyone ever wondered why Buckley's lover never came over? I often do, when being around such a man must surely have been remarkable, if only on an appreciative level. I'm selfishly glad she didn't; without her absence, the world wouldn't have Buckley's masterpiece to bathe in. But she couldn't have known this, so what's more likely is she knew she was dealing with something that was more than a person, or even a genius, or even a messenger... and she was just too afraid within herself to brave the eternal and touch the face of God.

11.27 PM, May 15. 2007

Monday, January 14, 2008

Friday, January 11, 2008

Anthem of the Woe Begotten

Something I wrote which I believe will be accompanied by music of a spiffy sort.

I've known the beast of the first day of Autumn
I've seen the sea of opportunities missed
I've heard the anthem of the woe begotten,
it goes, "Nobody knows pain like this."

I don't mind misery altogether that much. What I don't care for is when it rocks up uninvited, without calling ahead and with no valid reason for its visit. Just because you're the evil underlord of all the emotions doesn't mean you don't have to fill out a form and wait in line like everybody else. Happiness I'll slip through the Employers Only entrance, but that's only because I like the kid so much.

Yes, this was a vague and impenetrable whine blog.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Kurenai no buta (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Embrace My Life as a Pig-Faced Sea-pilot)

Things to thank the Heavens for:

  • That SBS decided to show each and every Hayao Miyazaki film, one a week, in chronological order
That is all.

Tonight's offering was the oft and criminally neglected Kurenai no buta, also known as Porco Rosso. I've yet to see a few of his earlier movies, but from what I have seen, this is one of the big ones - it masterfully incorporates the beautiful scenic escapism of Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke), the charming innocent fantasticality (I'm patenting that word the second I finish writing) of Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Totoro) and a lovely silliness to its premise that it can call all its own.

Also, I might add, one of the greatest dub tracks this blogger's ever heard: Michael Keaton as the cursed, lone-wolf bounty hunter has a low key subdued resignation to his performance that really becomes quite outstanding in its lack of condescending exaggeration and camp-ness (Jim Cummings, I love you, but you couldn't ask the time without blowing a gasket). Susan Egan, whom I know only as the voice of the little girl's bathhouse roommate in Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away), hits the right note with her character also: the lonely widow of an old friend of Porco's. The history between the two is never brought fully into light, and this is for the best. It's the feeling of the thing that matters, after all. And who doesn't love Carey Elwes as the hapless southern American antagonist, certain that the next step after being cast as the lead in the production of his own screenplay is none other than President of the United States?

It's performances like these that get you putting off your plans to bomb the embassy for Dubbing American Voices over Asian Animation for No Real Good Reason.

Mostly, though, I think what we all love about Japanese animation in general, Studio Ghibli in less general and Miyazaki in downright particular, is what I mentioned before: it's the feeling of it that matters. We don't really find out from Kurenai no buta what we think we want to know... and because of this, by the end, we realize we didn't really care to know it at all. There's a really amazing, beautiful scene in this film, one of the most amazing and beautiful I've ever seen, and it comes at you right out of nowhere, where you least expect it, smack bang in the middle of a a story about a renegade sea-pilot in 1950's Europe with the physical characteristics of a pig. It's what you watch Miyazaki for: his films are, in and of themselves, beautiful scenes in amongst the "film" that is world animation. We think we're just getting some pretty colours to look at, and then we get something like this. Good lord.

Stay tuned on SBS on Thursday nights for the next few weeks. Assuming they omit Miyazaki's seven minute masterpiece of a music video On Your Mark, next up will be Princess Mononoke herself.




Sunday, January 6, 2008

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Popular Masterpieces

Not many people know this, but Michael Jackson's Thriller is every bit as good as Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons or Dizzy Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia. There seems to be a distinct stigma attached to any kind of culture or art that falls under the umbrella of Popular. It seems that the general consensus is that People are animals of the lowest possible taste, that anything liked by an overwhelming number of People must be Bad. But statistics have shown that if an object of creation is popular, its usually for a reason.

Thus, I propose a list of five candidates for Popular Masterpieces - singular works of popular music that achieve the heights and wonder of human experience and emotion. They appear in no particular order, and without justification. I consider them all self explanatory.



Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Hazard Perception

In preparation for driving a car, you are required to complete and pass a Hazard Perception test. This proves that you can spot potential dangerous situations and react accordingly, preventing damage that may be done unto you and those around you.

Had I failed, which I expected to, it surely would have been symbolic.

Explosions in the Sky

At least I assume there were - I was pretty well passed out by the time out-dated, unhip, good-for-nothing last year passed the baton to this brand spanking new shiny one full of promise. In a related note, I don't recommend centurions. They are good experience but not the kind worth revisiting. So for the first time in my life, I missed NYE; the classic romantic celebration of The Beginning, but also, of The End. You might say we are marrying 2008 - New Years Eve is our wedding, and as much celebrates the death of our vapid bachelorhood (2007) as it does the birth of our future. Anyway, I've never much cared for the said explosions in the sky, and so am happy to simply listen to the Texan guitarchitect quartet of the same name instead.

I don't care for sentimentality either, so I'll make this quick and painless: last year was the best of my life. People, places, experiences, all new and amazing. I finally feel like I am in motion, and am closer to happiness than I feel is really appropriate or comfortable.

There. Glad to be rid of that. Also, I am plagued with doubt and indecision and fear and rage and self-loathing and all such things, but they've had more than their fare share of screen time since 1989, so I'll be damned if I'm going to, at least for the time being, give them a minute more.

I hope that others I know and enjoy feel similarly about affairs at this, the turn of the New Year. If not, well we'd all better get crackin', because according to the Mayans, it's all over in four years. Big existential piss up in the park!

Hope to see you all there.