02.27.06

Rest in Peace, Octavia Butler

Posted in Literature, Personal at 6:51 am by Moody

I couldn’t believe the news last night, though I feared it was true. One of my favorite authors — one of my favorite people — has died. I and my love met her only a short time back at a book signing. Intelligent, witty and the savviest of persons…. It’s just too much to want to think about right now.

Though she was a giant in the science-fiction world, Ms. Butler was such a private person that even her closest friends said they knew little about her. Ellison said Ms. Butler had a number of obstacles to overcome in the writing business, among them being female and being black. But Ms. Butler persevered to become one of the few well-known African-American science-fiction writers. In 1995, she won a $295,000 MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius grant.” In 2000, she received the Nebula Award for her novel “Parable of the Talents.” The Nebula award is science fiction’s highest prize. (Seattle Times)

The writings of Octavia E. Butler will always be insightful, beautiful, ahead of the curve. She will be very sorely missed by many.

02.26.06

Divergent Thinking

Posted in Personal at 1:26 pm by Moody

Diversity: from diverse: 1. Differing one from another. 2. Made up of distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements: “Prague … offers visitors a series of excursions into a rich and diverse past” (Olivier Bernier). Source: American Heritage Dictionary (online).

Recently, I went to “Orientation Day” at my job. As a new employee, I was required to go to the event in order to learn about the company who hired me; the company’s goals, philosophy, requirements and offerings were the focus of the several-hours-long event. Of course we watched a video about harassment in the workplace, and this led on to our participating in a game about diversity in the workplace — which, in turn, got me to thinking.

I don’t know about you, but my experience has taught me that, far from being valued in the hearts of fellow employees, regardless of company policy, diversity is seen as inherently problematic for most folks. What is seen as “acceptance” is, more often than not, actually evidence of how well people are able to overlook or sublimate perceived differences. This is why, I reason, one week I can tell someone a fact about myself that makes him or her uncomfortable, and he or she will have “forgotten” it or painstakingly re-interpreted it or otherwise blocked it from his or her consciousness by the next week. This is also, by the way, why white people proudly talk about being “color blind”, as if by their having taught themselves to ignore shades of brown they have magically leveled the playing field for everyone and made everyone equal.

A word or two about corporations:

Corporations want their employees to be all right with the diversity of others. If Adam has a Steve, or is as brown as the ace of spades is black, or feels remarkably passionate about the rights of nervous chickens and large-eyed cows, etc., well, the corporation wants its straight, white, meat-eating employees to be okay with that (especially as they, the S/W/M-Ers, are the vast majority of the company’s employees). This is because all corporations want their operations to run smoothly, without any of that useless friction caused by the building up of social sticking points. They want all their employees to be able to function correctly. It will not do to have a cog refuse to mesh its teeth with another cog simply because that other cog has a rainbow painted on it or happens to be one Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X usually addressed or happens to eschew eating McAnything or donning leather. The corporation needs to have “tolerant” cogs. It also needs its cogs to understand that if they fail to be “tolerant” then they will be removed from the machine. What the corporation doesn’t care about is found in the answer to this question: “Does it have to do with the successful functioning, the profitability, of the corporation?” Who has the “how” is careless of the “why”.

But let’s not kid ourselves. My fellow co-workers still crack wise about how so-and-so is a such-and-such and “I don’t go that way… I’m sorry — but that’s gross” and their audience snickers or chuckles or remains quiet. Including me. I stay quiet because I have seen how “tolerance” works in the workplace and my co-workers wonder enough about me already, thank you very much. It may not be naked as it was when I was in grade school, but the attitudes are still there just beneath the surface, sometimes poking up out of the ground like the bones of a violent past. It may be sublimated more or less, but the world keeps throwing up the evidence to the contrary: we, as a species, do not view diversity as a good thing.

We value that which protects the sanctity, the functioning, the coherence of our herd, whatever herd that might be. And when I say herd I mean clique, class, “race”, religion/cult, generation, tribe, grade, club, gang or species. “Diversity” means, to the average herd member, “that which diverts from” the aforementioned sanctity, functioning and coherence. That is why the message is one of “tolerance” and not “get over your damn fool self”.

But at least corporations do manage to enforce the goals of “tolerance” with some degree of success. Those who founded my nation, the United States of America, did their best (take your grain of salt here) to ensure that the country would at least protect diversity. It is to the honor of the SCOTUS that we’ve come as far as we have in broadening the understanding and implementation of that fact (though recent changes in the lineup have me worried). The Bill of Rights and the Consitution were written in a way that would give room to harbor a broad understanding of diveristy. Which of course the majority of citizens have ever since been attempting to limit and restrictively redefine, despite the overtures of those founders who saw the danger of allowing herd mentality (a.k.a. “mob rule”) to rule the day to the nation’s rueing.

Perhaps that is the single best hope we have in the corporate takeover of America. Perhaps we’ll see some enforcement of “tolerance”. And although our nation’s founders would be sickened by what happened to the nation, we’ll all have a little more room to breathe freely even as we carefully navigate between the Scylla of covert ostracization and the Charybdis of losing our diverse identities altogether to the corporate herd.

02.19.06

(Possibly) The Best Power Pop Ever

Posted in Bands, Music at 10:55 pm by Moody

[image]For much of my life I could not tolerate pop music. Although I grew up in the ’70s listening to the likes of Van Morrison, Marvin Gaye, Jefferson Airplane, Al Stewart, and all that era’s most popular stars, I developed in my adolescence a disdain for anything that looked even remotely pop. I turned my attention to so-called underground bands and/or “darker” music: Sisters of Mercy, :zoviet*france:, Christian Death, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Pink Floyd, Soft Cell and the like (bands I still have fondness for). While others were extolling the virutes of Tom Petty, OMD and The Thompson Twins, I was wallowing in heady reverb, Grand Guignol theatrics, industrial noise pollution and distortion box vocals.

I mention all this because it still matters to me. Perhaps it’s because I am nearing forty years of age now, but my musical tastes have broadened vastly. I’m proud of that. A look at 7000+ songs on my iPod will tell you that my tastes are eclectic and yet nearly all-inclusive. What you still won’t find a lot of, though, is pop. I may begrudgingly nod my head to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” or Britney Spears’ “Toxic” now and then, but — and make no mistake here — it is begrudgingly, and I usually have to listen to Carcass or A Life Once Lost for an hour afterward. Some things never change — or don’t change much. If it’s pop, for me to like it requires that it somehow transcends the genre. More often than not, it’s only one song that makes it through the filter, and often then it’s simply a matter of the artist having had a particularly great producer behind the song (e.g., such is the case for the two previously mentioned songs). Rarely, rarely, rarely do I wholeheartedly embrace a pop band’s entire oeuvre.

But there is one group who manages to grab all the stars for me, and they are the Canadian power pop supergroup The New Pornographers, made up of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar (who does not consider himself an official member), the highly talented Neko Case, Thee Evaporators’ John Collins, Limblifter/Age of Electric drummer/vocalist Kurt Dahle, Fancey’s Todd Fancey, A.C. Newman and Blaine Thurier. Never before have I heard a band pull together all those elements that make music so fun, so compelling, so danceable, and so compulsively, repeatably listenable both musically and lyrically.

Lyrically, Mass Romantic’s “Letter from an Occupant” gives a solid example of the band’s pop prowess, making emotional sense even as it skirts the hem of the poetically enigmatic:

I'm told the eventual downfall
is just a bill from the restaurant.
You told me I could order the moon, babe,
just as long as I shoot what I want.

What the last ten minutes have taught me:
bet the hand that your money's on.
Where the hell have the '70s brought me?
You trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

The time that your enemy gives you,
good times are not the ones you want.
I cried five rivers on the way here,
which one will you skate away on?

The tune you'll be humming forever,
all the words are replaced and wrong,
with a shower of yeahs and whatevers,
you trade me away long gone.

For the love of a god, you say,
not a letter from an occupant.

Where have all the sensations gone?
It's the song, the song, the song that's shaking me.

The New Pornographers liberally spice their songs with lyrics that get stuck in your head and flawlessly implement the kind of catchy hooks that you inevitably catch yourself humming throughout day. In other words, they are in good company with the too often overlooked Big Star, as well as Super Furry Animals, The Sunshine Fix and Imperial Teen. They are clever like Arrested Development was a clever sitcom that should never have been cancelled.

And they are maturing. Twin Cinema, their third effort, proves that they are a superband with real staying power. They have expanded and simultaneously tightened their sound. If their first album was a little unfocused (though not detrimentally so) and their second album an affair of finding their groove, then their third release is a solid expression of the band’s collective sound. You can read more about the album at the band’s official Website, and I recommend checking out the review over at Pitchfork.

02.16.06

And Iran… Iran so far away?

Posted in Politics at 8:29 am by Moody

A recent Gallup poll finds “the American public worried about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and viewing the country as a threat to the United States”. How about that?

Let’s see: we (re-) elect a guy who relishes calling himself a “War President” — a “Skull and Bones” pledge with the intelligence and oratory power of Elmer Fudd, and who is also an AWOL would-be soldier with no military sense, and who (acts of folly following a state of foolishness) takes us to war with Iraq on demonstrably false premises and then botches the job, and who is also inextricably tied up in the oil business and any amount of other shady business, and who also sides with the religious right as easily as he sides with cartels and special interests groups (even when the sides clash), and who also has (at best) the moral compass of Dogville’s Tom Edison Jr. though far less small town charm. Ahem.

Do you think the American public should be worried? I mean, Dubya is spending more time, money and effort on shoring up the booty “American interests” in the Middle-East than on, say, helping fix the mess that Katrina, FEMA and various others made. And Iran is of course in the Middle East — right next door to Iraq, as you may know (it depends on how much you are a product of the American system of education), and relatively close to both Syria and Saudi Arabia, models of stability and great allies both (that being a sarcastic statement). But with all that paper money being piled on the oily fire, I mean to say, surely there’s no reason to worry about what Iran is up to. It’s not like we’re bothering them, right? Yeah, so nobody says Persians are any more sensible than Arabs when it comes to the West’s interests. We’re all stiil members of the good-ol’-boy Abrahamic club, aren’t we? That should count for something, for G-d’s sake. Oh… right; never mind.

But, doubtless, Russia and/or India will find a way to sort things out before things get utterly apocalyptic and, even if they don’t, Our Fearless Leaderâ„¢, our “War President”, is sure to come up with… well, some excuse for why we have to attack them and hasten the “Second Coming”. It will all be over relatively quickly… if looked at on a geological timescale. And, you know, maybe Dubya Dubya Two will really be the war to end all wars.

02.05.06

Movie: Grizzly Man

Posted in Movies at 1:23 pm by Moody

[image]Documentary; 2003; Rated “R” for language; 1h 43m. Recommended.

On Wednesday, October 8, 2003, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported the deaths of Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenard. They were savaged and eaten alive by a grizzly bear in Katmai National Park and Preserve. According to the AP,

A self-styled bear expert who once called Alaska’s brown bears harmless party animals was one of two people fatally mauled in a bear attack in Katmai National Park and Preserve — the first known bear killings in the 4.7 million-acre park.

This is, in the end, a truly unfair characterization of Timothy Treadwell and, by extension, Amie Huguenard.

Treadwell was an exceptional man in a number of ways. Although he embodied the Malibu, California stereotype in his demeanor - thinning blonde hair, bright blue eyes with laugh lines etched beside them, fond of body-boarding, and often new-agey in speech and attitude - he was also capable of living for years in the vast, unforgiving wilderness of Alaska, where he sought both to protect the grizzly bears he lived among and to escape human civilization. As becomes apparent through the video footage he shot, he was attempting to protect the bears because he could not stomach human civilization. He projected onto the bears his own need to be free of it, his own need to be wild, his own need to be protected from it. But it is also not so simple as that.

Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog’s film - comprising video shot over the years by Treadwell (with few exceptions), narration by Herzog and his interviews with Treadwell’s friends and family - succeeds, in a most unsettling way, in giving the audience a clear look into human pathos and determination. Herzog’s approach is a gently unsparing one, a document of heartfelt admiration enhanced by very real criticism of its protagonist. Those who have seen 1999’s Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (eng.: My Best Fiend) will likely smile at Herzog’s passing comparison of Treadwell to Kinski.

Treadwell was an intense character with an undoubted love of the grizzlies he filmed and photographed. It is safe to say that Treadwell did not look at being killed and eaten by a grizzly as a horrible fate, per se, but it was not just him who died that day. Amie Huguenard, a good deal younger than Treadwell, was frightened of the bears and was on the verge of leaving him. The events leading up to the fatal attack seem, in hindsight, ominous. In the video footage - some shot by Huguenard - we see an odd tension develop. Something seems off about the day the final footage was shot. In part, this is so because Treadwell and Huguenard were in the park at a time they normally would not have been. The season is different, and so are some of the bears. The final footage, shot mere hours before their deaths, is weighted with feelings of discomfort and the kind of vague uncertainty that disturbs the stomach.

“My transformation complete - a fully accepted wild animal - brother to these bears. I run free among them - with absolute love and respect for all the animals. I am kind and viciously tough.” (Last letter from Timothy Treadwell, dated Sunday, September 14, 2003.)

In one of the most difficult scenes of the movie, Herzog attempts to listen to the final record of Treadwell’s and Huguenard’s lives. Treadwell did not have time to remove the lens cap of his camera, but for six minutes it recorded the audio of the attack. Wearing headphones and sitting across from one of Treadwell’s dearest friends, we hear Herzog begin to choke up. It is too awful. He cannot listen to it all, and he suggests that out of respect the tape ought to be destroyed. The documentary does not contain any portion of those final minutes.

What I keep going back to, though, are the scenes of Treadwell with the foxes who came to accept his presence. Where the bears seem disinterested or curious in a trepidatious way, the foxes play with Treadwell, follow him around, sleep beside him in the noonday sun. These moments illustrate very clearly the depth of Treadwell’s character, as well as its shortcomings. He loved the bears and the foxes, but in the end it was his desire to be more like the former than the latter that probably lead him - and Huguenard - to be lost forever in “the Grizzly Maze”.

02.04.06

Jo Malone’s Pomegranate Noir

Posted in Style Substance at 7:41 pm by Moody

There is a mysterious heart beneath the pomegranate’s earthy redness, more of music’s nature than of muscle. Opened up, a cache of abundant seeds is revealed. They look like the seeds of Indian rubies, like spessartites bearing secret fire, like tourmalines from the crepuscular arteries of the underworld. They are mouth-wateringly fragrant, sweet and staining to the tongue, and good at helping purify the body.

The pomegranate is also, completely unapologetically, a potent symbol of sexuality, both male and female… and hermaphroditic. It is associated with life and death, love and war.

In Jo Malone’s Pomegranate Noir, the heady but subtle aroma of the pomegranate is touched by raspberry and plum and dusted, lightly, with frankincense and patchouli. This may or may not give you some idea of what it “smells like”, but in the end you are bound to miss what it’s like to wear Pomegranate Noir, and not only because the drydown is different for everyone.

[image]So let me try it this way….

Seen in broad spectrum, Pomegranate Noir is the first moment you enter the candlelit bath chamber where your lover is waiting. It is that moment when the warm, humid air envelopes you with its rich caress, not merely inviting you in - but seducing you with its promises. In its application, Pomegranate Noir comes on strongly, a kiss on the mouth by lips that have bruised wine. It is an embrace as soft as the lover’s bed but equally as potent as a symbol for the love to be laid in it. In its drydown it takes on, in fact, the chemistry of the wearer, thus affirming the adaptive and personal nature of the cologne’s base.

In my experience, the drydown comes with a mellifluous (if I may call it that) release of highlights reminiscent of handmade candles, the presence of oft’ read books, and an exotic fruit parfait served in crystal on a mahogany tray. As the day (or the night) goes on, the scent becomes more woody, more den-like, more the gentle, warming weight of the 380 thread count duvet than the still slightly damp sheets, more the soft smile and fathomless eyes than the moans and kisses. Pomegranate Noir is a rich night contained only so long as it remains in its bottle.

Don’t you want to release it?