Archives : all posts by Dan

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - "Betrayal Takes Two"

Tate ate pancakes and berries and Edmund thought about the moment he was conceived. He and Jen were housesitting, at their friends' Ben and Susan's place. Ben was an ex-Olympic swimmer, Susan was a physiotherapist. Their home was large, larger than Jen and Edmund's, and carpeted in pink. They self-described their home decor as "mostly accolades and exercise equipment". And it was true, the basement looked like a Hall of Fame that was built around a workout gym. Jen and Edmund, however, had no complaints. They'd watch the huge tv and walk the three dogs (Stanley, Pudge, and Michael Phelps) and make dinner on the giant marble island with the pots that hung from ceiling racks. And they'd make love, in the California King, all memory foam and super-high thread counts. It was like dressing their love in formal wear, like painting the face of their pairing. And another face did emerge from that time together, Tate came from the time they were pretending to be rich and successful and happy. And here he was, eating berries with his hands from a small bowl, unable to know if he should be thankful or not.

[Buy]

(image by Eduard Imhof)

Heartless Bastards - "Parted Ways"

Alison sat at her desk and cut an apple core with a pair of scissors. Out the window, she could see three roofers on the apartment building across the street. They looked like action figures from where she sat, they would've fit on the shelf next to her printer, next to her picture of Frank. It was 11:05, and it refused to be 11:06. Over the little wall of her cubicle, her neighbour Marsha had a dozen roses, baby's breath, poking their blossoms over top, peeking over top. Marsha was married to Reid, he worked down the hall and through the security door that her fob didn't let her access. Level 3. Where the big secrets lived. But it's not like Reid really knew any big secrets, Alison knew more secrets about him than he probably knew about government security. She knew he laughed when he orgasmed, like it tickled. She knew he liked having sex in hot tubs, so said Marsha. She knew he was concerned about his body hair, and rarely wore short sleeves, and never wore short pants in the summer, and sweated profusely for it. His secrets, just like those of Level 3, probably, weren't very interesting.

Alison pulled home at 3:41, and sat listening to the end of the news in the driveway. She didn't really hear the words, she just wanted to let the person finish their reading. It was impolite to cut them off. She looked at her tupperware lunch, stained with sauce, and she looked at the vent settings on the dash. Fan hits face, fan hits face and feet, fan hits feet and defrost, or just defrost. Air comes from outside, or it just keeps going around inside. Always better to let the fresh air in. When the newsperson finished and the music started, she turned off the car and went inside. Frank's empty hi-tops, his bag, his coat in a heap, like he left a trail. She heard the TV in the other room. Japanese cartoons, must be, all that shouting. She slowly ran her hand up the doorway to the empty kitchen and looked in at the way the light came in at this time of day. So bright, so warm, like winter never even stood a chance. On the table, a little card. A valentine. A drawing of Zorro. "Happy Valentine's" and Zorro carved the shape of a heart with his sword. She turned it over. "mom". And her stomach turned to glass.

Frank was staring with his mouth slightly open and an empty jar of olive brine next to him, looking up at the TV. Alison came up behind him and hugged him and closed her eyes. She hugged him like she had a secret. Like she couldn't tell him how much he meant to her, because he would just disappear. You can't tell your son that they're your secret sexless husband, that they're the period at the end of every sentence, that they're your best friend. But you can hug them, and that's what she did. She hadn't even taken off her coat.

[Arrow is out today on Partisan Records]

David Shire - "Theme from The Conversation"

"You hated me most in the mornings." Edmund and Alison, the second marriage. Edmund would often write little three-or-four-line scenes never-had between him and his partners. Today as he walked by old churches and women's shelters, barely able to look above people's knees, let alone in their eyes, he was ravenously replaying memories that never took place. "I'm trying to play team ball and you're just interested in impressing the scouts," he said, in his mind, to Carolyn, the first. And sometimes they would be things never-said to him, "You wear your coolness like a pair of rollerskates. That is to say, you look ridiculous in most everyday places," said Jen, the third, while smoking. Edmund ate lunch and saw the clouds outside, and that was all. All the shops and people, and trams and taxis and intolerable noise and traffic, was gone. He only saw the shreds of the gray clouds, out the window, and thought about the birds. "What are you thinking?" was something he was often asked, after times of elaborate quietude. "What am I thinking?" he would ask the air, hoping that hearing the question, posed from himself, would be easier to answer. And he wanted to answer, anything. Anything you want.

[do you trust something called BuySoundtrax.com?]

Willis Earl Beal - "White Noise"

Evelyn has trouble sleeping. She's been on the phone until one or two in the morning, every night, with her ex. He will cry and beg for her to come back to him, for things to be "like they were". And she doesn't know what to do except let this stuff wash over her. She's 17. She cries with him, and says "I know," the way her mother says "I know" when Evelyn cries in front of her. And eventually he gives up, having gained an inch or lost two, and his tear ducts scrape like sandpaper, and he feels utterly spent, his heart racing and his lungs empty, he says goodnight. And she has to get up for school in the morning, so she takes walks in her mind to help her fall asleep. In her mind she imagines getting up out of her bed, putting on her boots and closing softly the front door. She walks down past the tall hedges and around the corner through the kids park. Through the parking lot to the Becker's, and in her mind she buys a scratch ticket that wins 4$. She can vault over whole blocks or zoom out to see the whole city. She deposits herself in a seedy part of town. Dangerous and poor. She walks around feeling happy and scared, finally surrounded by people with real problems. She wonders what 'dirty' really means and imagines being with a drug addict. She imagines the pulling, the heaviness, the gravity of it all. In her mind she gets hit by a car, it goes right through her, and the license plate says "thug". Evelyn can't wait to finish high school and move out on her own. [Buy Acousmatic Sorcery]

[Willis Earl Beal's website. Write him and he will draw you a picture. Call him and he will sing you a song.]

Wavering Lines (youtube rip, if you, like me, wanna keep this song)

Theo Wangemann - "Otto von Bismarck (October 7, 1889)"

The past didn't speak to Edmund, it barked at him. His great grandfather, Georg, was a lunatic, which isn't a nice word, but a nicer word would be an apology. Georg had three kids and then, according to his great grandmother's letters, "left forever in a flurry of violence." , in the late 1800's, he moved to New York City and lived on the streets, getting arrested for drinking and fighting and public blasphemy. Edmund's grandfather, Martin, had set himself on a journey to find his father when he was 19, and when he wrote home, the only mention of him was "a man who claimed to be Georg, joyless with a sunburnt face, but he looked so unfamiliar I thought him a liar." Martin himself went a little mad near the end of his life, writing a long, racist manifesto about how the government could fix all its problems. And Edmund's father Peter, now leaving a message on Edmund's voicemail, sounded doddering but still seemingly in control. "I just want to have email, that's all I really care about, a way to make email work, call me back." Edmund listened, hand cupped over one ear, in a bar and wondered if it were possible to inhale mental illness. Or to exhale it.

[more about a cylinder recording, the only known voice recording of a person born in the 18th Century, via the wonderful Gemma James]

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Lykke Li - "Time Flies"

"A good song to find out you've got AIDS to." Howie. Howie was a jerk with a crooked smile. But, if there were some situation (imagine a tattoo of God pointing a gun to your head) where Edmund were forced to list his "best" friends, however unlikely or incomprehensible, Howie would have to hold the top position. He was Edmund's single buddy, he'd been single throughout all of Edmund's marriages, and the two reconnect most often right after one relationship or another falls apart. Tonight they were listening to music and smoking weed in Howie's basement. Howie had spent these last 15 years collecting, cataloguing, mythologizing his life. He had stories of debauchery ("Ed, what do you think FMFF stands for? When you see it written on a napkin?") and humiliation ("he came at me like that metal spider in Wild Wild West") and horror ("first my mouth, then my nose, then my eye!") and triumph ("a Coke never tasted so good, let me tell you") And although Howie was two tiny notches away from intolerable, Edmund often sat listening in admiration, because unlike Howie, he'd spent the last 15 years searching and finding, and cherishing and spit-shining and taking for granted and squandering and losing and trying desperately to forget.

[Buy]

Xiu Xiu - "Born to Suffer"

Edmund alone. Reads an article about a teenager, looks like Evelyn, hospitalized for eating only chicken nuggets for 17 years. She had chronic fatigue and shortness of breath. Possible that eating healthy doesn't get you much farther. Checks the weather, with no plans of going outside. Checks facebook pages in this order:

Jen (3rd wife)
accused him of being mentally unstable, he replied "I've never even burnt toast in my life". Someone (Jean Guipta, unfortunate, hateable name) has posted a picture of Bruce Dern with a quote from Mohammed Ali, it's essentially meaningless. "Jen is now friends with Allan Hough." Allan doesn't seem to live here.

Evelyn (eldest daughter)
the most exciting page. Her three closest friends, Amy, Carla, and Devon mostly populate this wall. With cryptic posts like "puppy supper" (3 likes) and a video of Kurt Browning skating to Casablanca (comment: "I want that suit")

Alison (2nd wife)
if Edmund's mentally unstable, Alison's gotta be off the charts. Not a lot of action here, mostly motivational realizations as status updates. "I can do exactly what I can."

May (new girlfriend)
Why she comes so low on the list is a mystery, but Edmund takes comfort in that. It could be worse. Not much here, just lovely pictures.

Carolyn (1st wife)
actually enjoys a visit here. She's cross-country skiing. She's taking pictures of breakfast. Her father Kevin will post strange things ("Got it!") and mostly she spends her time liking things related to Evelyn.

Watches porn (anything with emotion is too depressing, anything too mechanical is a nightmare, it's usually an unsuccessful venture). Takes shower (sitting more often than not). Eats food (chocolate first, followed by anything else). Gets dressed (same as yesterday will do).

Edmund walks and sees dogs and children and snow. And thinks about sunlight and whether it's really as powerful as all that.

[Always Pre-Order, always]

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ALSO: see Xiu Xiu's rabid political action request. Sometimes it feels like Xiu Xiu lives in a world 3 years ahead of ours, in which things have gotten much worse, and he's fighting at that level.

SATURDAY: RatTail is finally releasing their LP with a show and party at Double-Double Land in Toronto.

Edmund has written three suicide notes in his life. No one has seen them but him, and he never got so close that he even attempted any of their promise, but still he wrote them, actually on paper. And he thinks about them sometimes.

Carolyn,

I'm sorry for all the trouble. I don't like putting up with me either. Hopefully Evelyn only has my eyes.

- Edmund

He thought of leaving it under the windshield wiper and remembered wondering if she would throw out his CDs or not.

Ali, this should do the trick. -E

Written on the back of a bank statement, indicating a zero balance, because he had transferred all his money into her account. He ate a burger while he looked at it and thought about how people of other generations than his spent their lives fighting wars.

"There was obviously something else going on. It's not your fault." "No, I didn't, and yes, it was."

He remembered feeling their weight in his hand. It was like building a weapon. It could take any shape, it could be any strength. The only dissatisfying thing was having to shoot the weapon into the air without getting to see if it hit the target. There was a hand on top of his.

"Ed?" It was May. "Hm?" "What are you thinking about?" He smiled. "You. Always you."

Digital Leather - "Sweet Cheeks"

[Buy Too Beautiful to Work]
[Buy Modern Problems]