That Measured Melbournian Poetry of Jordie Lane

I knew Jordie Lane tangentially in high school as the senior king of guitar, and indeed he was in those days something of a technical and musical wizard. What the young performer has grown into, however, is an artist of astounding tastefulness, one whose poetry is fused into treasure somewhere between the beauty of music and the bare honesty of lyric. The more that I listen to his reflective ballad I Could Die Looking At You, the more I become disturbed by the certainty that it is, however obscure, one of the great Australian songs of our time.

Have a listen for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bMBquVKnYo

Robin Wood on "Taxi Driver"

While rushing to finish a belated essay on famed film critic Robin Wood, I came across what I considered to be a rather interesting factoid. Wood contends that Martin Scorcese's Taxi Driver (1976) is an exemplary work of what he calls 'The Incoherent Text' of the seventies. Basically he argues that the movie avoids success and never finds equilibrium on its own terms because it is fundamentally 'incoherent'. I don't want to go on qualifying the words of someone else, but I have to: he doesn't mean that the film doesn't makes sense, merely that "it doesn't know what it's trying to say."

Now, I must thank Mr. Wood for discovering and illustrating for me probably the main reason I think Taxi Driver is such a great film. He didn't mean to, I don't think. He doesn't think it's great, only interesting, and he chalks up its ultimate incoherence to the auteurial collision of Martin Scorcese and Paul Schrader. But in doing so I think he's hit the nail on the head for us yea-sayers.

Taxi Driuer is absolutely an incoherent film; such an amazing, stylish and masterfully created incoherent film that it couldn't help but tap into the innate incoherence of the human condition and become the artistic champion for our disillusionment, open-nerve-anger and fucked-upness. In fact, I would probably describe the film as schizophrenic; it's a Hellish, urban confusion in which every scene has nearly opposite but equal motives running through it; a dash of light shed on the inner most turmoil of every young man's soul; film noir on acid. It's not just Travis (Robert DeNiro) that lends the film these psychotic qualities: they are tied to and revolve around him but sink deep into every facet of the film, from direction to music to editing to the reactionary performances of Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel. I'm sure the film struck a chord with a certain nation still shaking from the rude awakening that was the Vietnam war, but I think its significance does deeper and further than that. I think this is a film whose incoherence only sweetens it, whose confusion over "what it wants to say" results in a overarching message that can only be felt and that only confusion can bring: I hurt and I want it to end.

To hell with what Wood thought Taxi Driver's incoherence meant: I say it was fucking integral to what makes the film an immaculate cinematic prayer and goodnight to everyone who ever felt like "God's lonely man."

"Getaway Car" by Audioslave

Is a supremely sexy, suave and sad song.

For my money, it was the group's finest hour.