Archives : all posts by Dan

Heavy Cream - "John Johnny"

With Edmund, there is a cat. It is not his cat, but it is often in his house, he often leaves food out for it, in warm months they make eye contact while it walks on top the fence, they are connected. Technically, legally, it is his neighbour John Johnny's cat, but in reality, the kind of reality that doesn't exist in courtrooms, but rather face-to-face-this-is-it-no-one's-watching, it is no one's cat. It is orange, short-haired, confident, and dusty. It does not hesitate the way some cats do, it does not consider its actions, it simply performs. John Johnny's cat, let us call him John Johnny since it has no other name (there is no room for diminutives with JJ's personality) has seen fights, and eaten garbage, and dodged train cars on the tracks. John Johnny is a great and straight-faced cat, a fearless and autonomous cat.

With Edmund, there is also an ant problem. Now that April is here, the cloudy warmth has given way to little moving lines in the kitchen cracks. Little lines that point to old spills or a piece of food that fell between the oven and the counter. Edmund laid the corners with ant poison and left the house as usual. But still left, forgetting what he'd done, the screen door open just a crack for John Johnny to get in. And as JJ did most days, he came by around 1:30 and there was still old food left in the bowl, and a bit of stale water left to drink. But as he drank he too saw the lines, and followed them a little. He saw what they were taking, the bait, and tried some himself. John Johnny was not prepared for this. He hopped up on the fence and walked its length, his feet slipping off a time or two, his travel slow and woozy. He saw the grass like stretching caves, he saw crickets making the sounds of jet planes and the trains were always right inside his brain. His feet now mud, his lower jaw a senseless drool, the cloudy sun seemed to be chasing him, burning him, singeing him like a hot element. He ran, scoop-footed, drool-mouthed, wide-eyed, panting through the drainage ditch, and made it scrambling to the junkyard, where he curled up in a trailer's tailpipe, the tunnel vision calming him, focusing him, protecting him. John Johnny could not connect this experience with visiting Edmund's house, for he was not even, and you cannot blame him, self-aware. [Out May 8th on Infinity Cat]

Au - "Solid Gold"

"Their entwined personalities made a fascinating knot. A knot hypnotic to look at, they would stare happily at the wound strands, guessing giggling where one finished and the other began. And that would last many months, some people stayed that way a lifetime, but for them eventually the time came to try untangling it, the way one decides to finally put together a puzzle. There seemed nothing else to do. And when they untangled it they found that their strands, their individual and respective strands, were quite normal, nothing but string, and not a knot at all." Ugh, barf. Edmund held the vegetarian pizza like a waiter and carried it quickly into the house. "Buon Giorno!" he yelled, catching himself in the foyer mirror, saggy-chinned. In the living room, Tate was putting together a puzzle, and Jen was closing a window of Minesweeper.

Broken into a million little pieces, Edmund was something to behold. His pixels were whole pictures. An entire sky! A blueberry pie! Exiting a non-exit! Crossed fingers, fake promise! Tinted paper, looks old! Hand hold! Gold tooth! Lemon cream! Book of Numbers! Tryst list! Sped-up footage! Tragedy Trunk! Bad underwear! Theatre comps! Sewer secrets! The 3rd Beer!

Au - "The Veil"

Edmund and May felt tenuous these days. Short texts, breaking plans, an inexplicable and unseasonable lack of enthusiasm. How many million things need to go right for something to even have a chance, Edmund would think, plugging in his phone at night, getting into bed with the usual ten ghosts.

[Buy]

Au have made something like a masterpiece. Both Lights is marvelous. (Pitchfork have it wrong, wrong, wrong.)

(image by jake rajs)

Parlovr - "You Only Want it Cause You're Lonely"

Alison smokes to the history of the Suffragettes. Women, wizened into endless meaning. Recently Alison has been living staccato, sleepless, sexless nights. Frank, 9, in bed by 9, sleeps easily, breathes long, exudes peace, that she absorbs but daren't disturb, from her perch at the door. So, to the dining room where she can second-hand the curtains safely, Frank is rarely in the dining room, except for holidays and the occasional chore.

Alison looks through the photos and extends each one like a string stretching behind the image. Women of manly features, surveilled maybe for this very fact, women of delicate grit, women of purpose, of struggle. No 2 is a fighter, no 5 has untapped power, no 8 is a dinner party delight, no 9 is boundlessly caring, no 11 rides a penny farthing, no 12 is an Alison lookalike, no 18 is a brilliant mind. But no 10. No 10 is disturbing. It's a doctored photo. The original has a guard, physically restraining her while they take her photo, and then when the photos were sent to officers, the guard's arm was removed. Something in this, this ghostly unpersoned shackle, this unseen leash, moves her to tears. Remove the man, show the woman how she is, ruined forever by the very man. Alison checks her email 'drafts' folder. Still ten unsent letters to Edmund. She chooses one at random and hits 'send'. It has the subject line "Soulmate vs. Sole Mate" [Out May 15th, until then, older stuff]

(via Gemma James Smith and Retronaut)

Anna Calvi - "I'll Be Your Man"

May has a single mastectomy. She lies naked on her bed, as she often does, reading the news on her laptop. The single breast hangs casually over the rest of her chest, like a single band, instead of two loose roustabouts. She reads a story about a transgendered beauty queen who was ejected from a pageant, her own country's pageant, for being born a male. And she's beautiful. May lies on her back and fogs the ceiling with her body's breath. We all operate from some kind of deficit. May does not know how to keep loving someone indefinitely, and so she wonders about the day things will vapourize with Edmund. Some people are born with illnesses or financial troubles or born addicted to drugs. We all operate from a deficit of some sort, it's just that some have a bigger deficit than others. May's deficit is so small it looks like an advantage, as she scoops her breast off the rest of her chest, supporting it. She thinks about smoking but says aloud that she will not. [Buy]

[story]

Azealia Banks - "Fuck Up The Fun"

"Hoo ha the shoo fla, you doo da da!" Tate screams out the window of a streetcar. Jen no longer has the energy to stop him. And of course not, he has 85, probably 90 or more years of life packed into his 3-year-old soul, life is coming out the seams. For Jen, she's almost 40, she has to preserve as much as she can, she can't afford to just spend energy wherever she wants. Fuck politeness, fuck the social contract, for this moment letting Tate scream is just the way it's going to be.

"Watch this, bitches..." says Tate. This is too far. "Tate, don't say--" But he's floating, he's flipping, he's flying, he's in the air. He's holding spray cans, they're his accelerators, he's walking on the streetcar wires like city bridges. He's unstoppable. DING-- Tate loves to ring the bell and it brings Jen back from her revery. Burridge. Burridge is the main stop and most people get off. Jen turns to get her purse, turns back, Tate is gone. For gasping, blinking real, gone.

Jen is squirming through the crowd. Out the narrow doors, she's halfway through like a factory doll, she comes out scared and half caught on someone's overcoat. She's worming through a group of jokey goth teens, past a mustached man so mustached it's probably his only love, and through other moms, fat moms, who have as little patience as her, and their tight ponytails (easy, no muss) and loose shirts (fussless) are starting to tie-dye her vision, she's going crazy not seeing the one thing she wants to: the little blue jacket and the mistaken military haircut, his shoes light up for Christ's fucking sake.

And then she hears a cry. Either pain or fear or a mixture, she stops cold, her eyes narrow. Watch this, bitches... Jen pushes against the crowd, hard. Laptop satchels jamming straight into backs, headphones being pulled clean off of heads, comfort zones razed, obliterated, balances lost everywhere. In her mind they fly gusting like blown seeds, and reveal in their absence, Tate. And they do. He turns around, caught, and laughs "Ha haaaa!" and farts his tongue at her, and the two of them go straight home. The rules of the social contract bent like stretching lines on a looseleaf, to fit in more words. They'll go back, probably.

[available for streaming only after 7K downloads, I guess]

Danny Brown - "Grown Up"

     Edmund sits in Jen's backyard, watching the sun set warmly with Tate. With a sweating summery drink in his hand, he is craving marijuana. Strange how it's fine to drink in front of children, but lighting a smoke is suddenly a bad example. He looks up at the jet streams cutting lines across the sky and they look like thin pinner joints or coke. He takes another sip of the bitters. Tate is playing with an iPad, and his intuition with it is staggering. He can't read or write, his vocabulary is above average, but his skill with a touchscreen is off the charts. Or if there were charts for this, they would need to be re-imagined, or Tate could zoom to their apex or organize the line of best fit. Tate cooks a digital meal, puts puzzle pieces together, lifts fake people into a balloon and splashes fake water at a fake paper until the ink runs all streaks. Edmund half expects him to point it at one of the criss-crossing planes, hit some buttons, and watch it explode. It seems like he understands this technology far more than he understands an interaction with Edmund. Edmund is the iPad's friend, he is sponsored by the iPad, he is offered, censored and friendly, unsmoking and buzzed, as a temporary stream, accessible with a hideable ad for the clothes he's wearing, and the drink he's holding. A branded thing of father, brought to you by mother, car, front door, hallway, kitchen, and back door. The sky is busy, the grass is busy, his blood is busy, but Tate's father is still. His mouth open to speak, but huffs closed in a tight-lipped shrug. [free at Scion A/V]

Sleeping in the Aviary - "Things Look Good"

     Evelyn, Edmund's daughter, 17, is in a ride-along with Officer Getty. She's doing her community service hours for Students in Society (Ms. Clave) and getting her journalism assignment (Mr. Beaudreau) done at the same time.
      "Well, I moved here from Winnipeg three years ago, my wife and I and our son. But man, I'm regretting that move now..."
     "Why's that?" Evelyn is underdressed for the occasion, her usual tights and slipper shoes make her suddenly feel vulnerable, like she was never safe all this time.
      "The Jets are back." Getty drives at the limit, always, his on-board laptop at the ready. The radio crackles.
      "The jets?"
      "Yeah. The hockey team. I can't believe I'm missing those games."
      Evelyn scratches out the heading "jets" with two lines, "Oh, I see."
      "They sold out the whole season in like 2 hours. When I heard that, I mean, I'm a pretty tough guy, but I teared up a little bit."
      Evelyn looks at her list of questions, "What do you think of police brutality?"
      They pass night sprinklers and the flashing eyes of walked dogs.
      "I don't participate in it."
      "But do you think it's a problem?"
      "I think that police have a tougher time nowadays, yeah." silence. "With the internet."
      "So you don't think brutality is a problem? What do you think about Trayvon Martin?"
      His speed gets faster. Evelyn gets a little rush of excitement, these cars are powerful. "You're making yourself sound like an idiot."
      To hear an adult say idiot in this way, meant to hurt and nothing else, Evelyn felt all of life stretch and pull like a slingshot. This could be anybody sitting next to her. "Why do you say that?"
     "That wasn't a police officer! He was a neighbourhood w--hat the f--"
      Getty made an arrest that night. Edmund, drunk, was caught spraypainting a doobie hanging out of the mouth of Bob Tunn, a local real estate agent featured on a prominent billboard ("Sold Another Tunn!") on the turn into the Center Square mall. Edmund said nothing, and could only picture himself and his daughter, years later, possibly able to chuckle about this. Evelyn wrote in her report that it was "a man, early forties, not-too-tall, brown hair with few grey saltings. Unharmed during the arrest." [Buy]

FOR MY OWN BENEFIT

Jordan Himelfarb, whose posts you read monthly, is one-half of a comedy duo called The New Humourists. They are performing live for the first time in Toronto as part of a fundraiser show called FOR MY OWN BENEFIT, raising money for pancreatic cancer research at the Princess Margaret Hospital. This is a show very dear to us at Said the Gramophone, and its first edition will be next TUES MAR 27th at PARTS & LABOUR, 1566 Queen West at Sorauren. There will be delightful guests from Mark Little (Dad Drives!) to Anders Yates (Uncalled For!) to Tony Ho. Please come, we would love to see you, meet you, laugh with you. [Facebook event]

If you cannot attend in person, but would still like to make a donation, please visit the website formyownbenefit.com and you can donate online. Charitable tax receipts (it's a Canadian hospital) can be provided.

Maica Mia - "Funny Way of Laughing"

Sunrise. Edmund wasn't sleeping well, back pains, 41 with a bullet. He lay swung in the sofa, posture terrible, watching the sunrise eating a granola bar. He checked the nutritional information and thought that he truly just eats numbers now. Being married to Jen, his most recent marriage, was like checking the nutritional information every day. They tried so hard to make sure everything was right. Communication, affection, sharing, sex, fairness, laughter. Percentages like a scattered skyline instead of a totaled whole. Marriage to Alison, the one before Jen, was more like being trapped together in the trunk of a car. It was dark, often terrifying, but they had each other to hold on to, no idea of where they were headed. The sex was maddening, the fights were catastrophic, the forgiveness was heavenly. The hills and valleys made it seem like they journeyed far, but it was mostly up and down and rarely straight ahead. And to Carolyn, his first wife, marriage was like an open field. They could see in all directions; there was the sky, there was the ground and on it the grass. And it was lovely and bright and open and free, but it didn't seem to make any sense. Where were the buildings? What were their jobs? When other people would visit, Edmund would hear Carolyn ask, "What is my name? Is it Carla? Is it Edmund?"

[Buy]