Today I received my first piece of mail for the Month of Letters challenge from the originator of the idea, Mary Robinette Kowal. Pretty sweet. She sent me quite a pretty postcard on fancy paper with shiny highlights surrounding the flowers. In case you can’t read the lovely (shit) photo my laptop took, let me transcribe for you.
February 1, 2012
Dear Joe,
I saw your blog post and thought I would drop you a line. I has been very exciting to see how enthusiastic people are about the challenge. I hope you get lots of mail.
Yours,
Mary Robinette Kowal
How nice of her! This postcard is, in fact, my very first piece of mail and it came all the way from Portland, OR. I am pretty excited about it. I do hope I get more (hint hint) and will be sharing anything I receive here barring sensitive or personal information. Want to get Black Lasered? Write me a letter or postcard.
December was a decent month for me creatively. I managed to bring back good old Torgeir in a significant way. I really enjoy the hell out of writing that guy because it gives me a venue to be a complete dick. I often don’t believe the advice I am giving as Torgeir, but there are other times I kind of think that he’s totally right on. And then I get to slip into some recollection of his past in Norway and I am allowed to go totally nuts. And get dark. Really dark. And then I get to close the whole thing off by completely contradicting myself and recommending some of my favorite black metal to you guys. I get all sorts of positive feedback about the Torgeir columns that I haven’t gotten from anything else, so that is super great and inspirational to keep doing it.
As far as slowing my roll, that was more of a mixed result.
For the first half of the month I was very good about hitting the gym 3 times a week and eating super well keeping to my 80% paleo guidelines. And no doubt, I felt really good about it. I hit 190 pounds for the first time in I can’t even remember. I stepped on the scale expecting my usual 195~200 and the little red line stopped at 190. I actually yelled, “Holy shit!” in my apartment. Aloud. By myself. I proceeded to tell a bunch of people, of course. What would The Black Laser be without me broadcasting every stupid little thing I think or care about into the wild voids of the internet?
I had noticed that my body was changing, that I was acquiring better definition on my torso, but I just chalked it up to vanity. Then when I saw the 190, I realized that all the fucking push-ups and pull-ups and squats and all the other nightmarish things they were having me do actually made a difference. Holy shit, right? I was psyched.
But then Christmas party season rolled around and, as one does every single year, I spent the next three weeks drunk the entire time. It’s hard to motivate to get to the gym at 8am when you’ve only been asleep for three hours at that point. Oops. And then I went to California and sure as hell wasn’t going to the gym while I was there. Also drunk the whole time. And then I came back the 27th and have had no real excuses not to go except that I am a lazy fuck. And I ate badly. Stupid holidays.
So that’s no good. But what are you going to do? I am all paid up through May so it’s just a matter of getting my ass there. I can do it!
Look out for a wrap up of the entire Year of 12 Creative Projects and Slowing My Roll soon. Should be interesting to go back through the whole year.
My boyfriend and I play backgammon every chance we get. We’re both competitive and hate to lose. Although we’re equally skilled, I win substantially more than half our games. It’s become an issue. Other than giving up the game entirely, do you have any suggestions?
-Backgammon Is Truly Causing Hurt
Losing is part of this crushing existence we all must endure. If you cannot stand to lose to your vile lifemate at some pitiful, insignificant game, then you must wear the laurels of the victor and stand proudly over him in his humiliation. Why would you feel worse for him because he cannot beat you in a simple game of backgammon? He is clearly inferior. Reject him and cast him away from you like the piece of rotting flesh he is.
But to humor you (I know not why I do this), what would happen if you threw some games now and then in order to create a false pride in your boyfriend? So that he might “feel” as if he is superior to you? Because, in the end, that is what this is about. He wants to own you. He wants to be in power. He wants to ride his charger over the battlefield, crushing in the skulls of his myriad enemies to eventually be called by the valkyrie to sit at Odin’s side in Valhalla and drink mead in the longhouse with his fellow warriors until Ragnarok. Is that not what all men want?
However, if you nearly vomited as I did at the idea of willingly allowing someone to defeat you to as to spare their “feelings”, then perhaps you are better off avoiding this trivial pursuit of backgammon. It is an imbecile’s game. And you and your boyfriend are imbeciles for allowing yourselves to get so worked in such a foolish endeavor.
Allow me to provide you with an example of a moment when losing actually mattered and how I dealt with it, since you wrote to me for my advice and I am your master. Three winters ago, a brutal winter with 3 meter tall snowdrifts and hungry packs of wolves picking off the infirm and elderly from the streets of Trondheim, my band, Argasthur, the finest black metal band in all of Norway, competed in the most underground, brutal battle of the bands ever to cast its darkened shadow on this sickening Christian country. We had released a tape demo called “Blood On Thor’s Hammer” which we had only made 25 copies of and handed out to no one. We knew well enough that no one could possibly understand the true brutality of the music we had committed to cassette. No one ever will.
And though we were the best band in the competition by a significant margin, we missed our set time and were disqualified because our lead singer had disemboweled and hung himself from a tree. We felt it was so true to the real meaning of black metal that we should have been awarded the top prize. Instead we were kicked out of the competition and subjected to numerous police investigations because they would not believe that he was able to disembowel himself while strangling with his hands tied behind his back. But I know.
Strength of will.
And that is what you, BITCH, lack. You lack the strength of will to do what our lead singer did and claim victory for yourself.
I heard Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads the first time maybe a year and a half ago. I was in a telecine session with Ben over at Smoke & Mirrors and he put it on. One of the advantages of a telecine session is that you don’t need to hear audio from the cut, so you can listen to whatever the hell you want. I’ve discovered a load of new music that way over the years, and this record is a prime example of that.
When he put it on, I immediately perked up and was all, “What the hell is this?!” and he told me that it was Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads. “Murder Ballads?!” I said. “Murder Ballads,” he said. “I LOVE murder ballads,” I said.
“Where The Wild Roses Grow”
[flv]https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/video/wildroses.flv[/flv]
And, really, what good, red-blooded son of a bitch doesn’t enjoy a murder ballad? I can only take so many love songs before I want to get sick. But dish me up a plate of songs about murder and you’ve got my attention the whole time. And we’re not talking your typical heavy metal, horror movie murder stories. No, we’re talking about salt-of-the-earth, regular folk kind of murders. The best kind.
Murder ballads are a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form, the lyrics of which form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath. Traditional ballads are independent from broadsheet ballads insofar as the typical broadsheet form does not use the same formulas or structures and is rooted in a literate society: traditional ballads flourished within non-literate groups within society.
Pretty dry for something so juicy.
“Stagger Lee”
Armed with a direction and something to look for, I left my telecine and sought out the album. This was, perhaps, March of last year, and I was, even then, still buying a lot of music on compact disc. Remember those? Unfortunately the album was long out of print and not readily available. So I did what any conscientious consumer of music would do; I pirated Nick Cave’s entire discography.
I am glad I did it too, because the album is amazing. Originally released in 1996, I completely missed it the first time around. I was 14 years old and did not have ears for anything that wasn’t metal. I remember I had a CD alarm clock then and was woken to Napalm Death’s Fear. Emptiness. Despair. every day for a year or so. Murder Ballads would have been lost on me at this point in my life even if I had heard it. Besides, who wants to listen to some crap record that has not only PJ Harvey but also Kylie Minogue on it?? (Read: I do.)
I added this album to my “For the Phone” playlist on Spotify recently and it has provided a perfect companion for nighttime walks through the suddenly-below-freezing New York City streets. I wander around, looking at people, singing “I’m a bad motherfucker, don’t you know/And I’ll crawl over fifty good pussies just to get one fat boy’s asshole” from “Stagger Lee” to myself, and wonder what they would think to hear the music I am using to hide from them in plain sight.
Yesterday I was complaining about how the “singer” from The Man-Eating Tree can’t sing. And the truth is that Nick Cave does not have a good voice at all, but he’s in that same realm as Lou Reed or Tom Waits. That is, it doesn’t matter if he can’t sing, because that’s part of his schtick. His vocals would actually be worse if he had some dulcet singing voice. His coarseness complements his lyrical content, and that is what is important.
“The Curse of Millhaven”
Give the album a listen. And then listen again. It’s that good. Then listen again with headphones and pay attention the lyrics. If you generally like the recommendations I make here on The Black Laser, I promise you will like this.
After bitching about being sad last week, let me start this week with a music video because it means I don’t actually have to provide you with any meaningful content. You might get a letter later, not sure. We’ll see.
I’ve been listening to this Monarchy record a bit recently and I am a little mixed on it. I like the music, but the dude’s lyrics are kind of bullshit sometimes and kind of good other times. And when they’re kind of bullshit I get pulled right out of the music. Too bad. But I really like this song and I dig the astronaut video all in close up that they probably shot in a dark room. Simple, nice effects, cool song. A smidge emo, but who isn’t a smidge emo right now?
If there’s anything that fans of electronic music and metal like more than the extreme subgenrefication of their beloved music types I don’t know what it is. Take heavy metal for example: we’ve got death metal, black metal, thrash metal, speed metal, doom metal, sludge metal, prog metal, power metal, new wave of British heavy metal, new old school death metal, new wave of American black metal, tech death metal, blackened thrash metal, blackened death metal, nü-metal, metalcore, slamcore, mallcore, deathcore, thrashcore, crabcore, who knows what the fuck else. That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I’m missing something.
The same is true of electronic music. House, acid house, tech house, trance, psy-trance, progressive trance, electro house, disco house, minimal tech house, electroclash, gabber, horrorcore, progressive house, Detroit house, Chicago house, Miami house, booty bass, drum & bass, dubstep, brostep, EBM, synthpop, futurepop, ambient house, italodisco, ghettotech, goa, witch house, grave wave. Christ, I could keep going and going and going.
For me this extreme diversification has always seemed totally unnecessary, especially as the differences between genres become smaller and smaller to the point that they are basically indistinguishable. Is this band futurepop or EBM? Or is it EBM with synthpoppy overtones and some dubstep inspiration??? Did this band release a deathcore record and are they straying away from their traditional NOSDM roots by incorporating some slamcore elements?! DID MACHINE HEAD REALLY RELEASE A NÜ-METAL RECORD?!? (They did and it broke my heart.)
See how stupid that all sounds? Not just stupid, but utterly pointless and fruitless?
Then what the hell am I doing proposing yet another subgenre? I have my reasons!
First, for me, House music breaks down into two categories: serious and not serious. I tend not to think of it as it sounds—it’s four on the floor for dancing and was inspired by Disco? it’s house—but whether it is taking itself super seriously or not. No one seems to take that into account, and I think it’s the most important factor defining house producers. Are you going to take this shit seriously (Euro House, I’m looking at you) or are you going to have fun with it and fill it with silly lyrics and idiocy?? I much prefer the latter.
For those of you who grew up on the Moon and have never heard of house music or have some sort of poor understanding of the music, house is a genre of electronic music that came out of Chicago in the early 80s. Specifically, the name comes a club called The Warehouse where the music first really became popular. Or from the fact that DJs made it in their homes. Or from the fact that these records were the DJ’s “house” records, in the way that a restaurant has a “house” wine. Whatever. It is characterized by a four on the floor beat, off-beat hi-hats, drum machines, driving basslines, and a strong Disco influence.
Here are some examples of what I am talking about, all of which have been on the site before.
Le Le’s “Breakfast”
Duck Sauce’s “Big Bad Wolf”
The 2 Bears’ “Bear Hug”
Detroit Grand Pubahs’ “Sandwiches” (CLASSIC!)
See what I mean? These guys are making dancey as hell beats but without a serious face in the mix. I love it.
But then what do I call it? It seems unfair to lump it in with all the other subgenres of house music. The difference between these guys and some coiffed dick head is like the difference between a Gwar show and a 6 year old’s piano recital.
The subgenre needs a name. I originally thought I would call it “Goon House” since to me “Goon” is sort of a good name for that and the words sound nice together. Goon House. Goooooon Houssssse. But Michael said that it reminded him of Jersey Shore douchebags and Charles said he thought of MSTRKRFT, which is, I guess, kind of close, but not exactly right. I went to talk to Steve about it and bounced around Clown, Silly, Goofy, Nonsense, whatever this, whatever that, but nothing was clicking. Panty House? No. Bouncey House? Nope. Light House? That’s actually kind of good and funny, but I am not sure. Fun House? White House? Jack House? Takk House?
What the hell do I call it? What do you all think?
It is that time of year again! Time to announce the coming year’s theme! And I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for me to have an excuse to ramble on wildly about my musings about creativity and my own personal journey with it. I know you all love it. Or at least the three of you who read these don’t completely hate it. So, that’s good.
In previous years, the themes have been The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories (2009), The Year of 3 Music Videos and 12 Short Stories (2010), and, this year, The Year of 12 Projects (and Slowing My Roll) (2011). Of course, in previous years I had other themes—The Year of Trying New Things, The Year of Writing, The Year of Focus, The Year of Finishing Things, and The Year of Self-Care—but those have not been documented here on The Black Laser, so we’ll mostly ignore them for the purposes of this one-sided discussion. If you’d like to read more on my thoughts on previous years’ themes, go right ahead.
This year, The Year of 12 Projects, has been remarkably successful so far with 13 of my 12 projects completed at this point. I won’t go too much into my thoughts about the year as a whole yet—I’m saving that for its own year-end write up—but let’s just agree that it’s been great. And let’s also acknowledge that it’s the first time ever that I’ve met the goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year.
Wait, that bears repeating. It is the first time in eight years of giving myself themes instead of resolutions that I’ve actually accomplished what I set out to do.
Holy shit.
Amazing!
I think a lot of what made this year such a success was that I allowed my brain to sort of go anywhere in terms of being creative. I wasn’t limited to one specific type of thing. I could do whatever caught my fancy, and, in turn, I got a lot done. That is great. In fact, a posting I recently read at NPR’s blog about Leonardo da Vinci’s to-do list seems to reinforce that allowing your brain to wander, to be unfocused, is beneficial for getting things done. Not that I am da Vinci, but I seem to have stumbled upon the same results. It goes against years of myself trying to focus on one thing, one goal, one idea. No wonder I was never able to do a damned thing; I worried so much about being focused, driven, single-minded about my creativity that I limited what I could be accomplishing otherwise. Knowing that I do better when I let myself be free is rather refreshing, actually.
While thinking about what I wanted to accomplish for 2012, I recognized that part of my creative palette that I have been really missing this last year and a half or so is my writing. I haven’t written any fiction at all in ages. Do you, avid reader of The Black Laser, recall the last time I posted fiction here? No you don’t. Do you know why? Because it was January 28, 2010. That is terrible. A couple (few?) weeks ago I tweeted, “Do you remember when I used to write stories??? Whatever happened to that, huh??” I wrote it as sort of a joke, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it is actually kind of sad. For something that was so important to me that I was going to give up a decent career twice for it, how could it have fallen so far out of my life that the last time I wrote anything of consequence was in January of last year? It’s like having a really awesome girlfriend and then suddenly you stop talking to her at all and then 20 months later you’re all, “Hey, where did she go?? How did she get away from me????” And then after you recognize that you’re all, “Damn, I’d better do something about this because I really miss her.”
And that is what writing feels like to me: an amazing supportive relationship with its ups and downs and pitfalls and triumphs. It has always felt so much more real to me than my ventures into filmmaking or photography or drawing or animation any of the other things I’ve dabbled in. Writing is challenging and because it is challenging it is rewarding like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. It feels good and it hurts and it is scary and I love it. I mean, duh, obviously, look at how I get going on things like this when I give a damn about them. I’m just blah blah blahing all up and down the East River like a crazy man with a garbage bag for a hat.
A question remains: how do I reconcile the success I had when I let my brain wander with the desire to focus on one specific kind of output? I thought of this, too. I think the key lies in not forcing “writing” to be any one thing, but allowing it to take whatever form I think I want to mess around with at that moment.
The astute reader will notice that this is in fact my second Year of Writing, the previous one being an abortive effort before I had any sense of how to structure these things for maximum efficacy. But I know how to do that now and that means giving myself limits that allow me to be flexible. Funny, right? Limits that allow me to be flexible. But it’s true and it works. Full open-endedness is daunting, but limit the creative sandbox a little and you’ll be surprised what you can come up with. Creativity is problem solving. Give yourself problems to solve.
So what are my limits/goals for this year?
100,000 words – While chit-chatting with Lindsey on the IMs about what my goals should be for this year I recalled that at my peak output, I was writing at least 500 words a day. If I could maintain that every day of the year, my output would be 182,500 words. A massive amount. But I am not going to be so unrealistic and believe that I am actually going to write every single day of the year. Let’s don’t be ridiculous. There are going to be nights where I’ll have my face buried in the computer doing nothing but fucking off on the internet and nights where I am stuck at work late and nights where I just won’t want to write. And 100,000 is a nice, round number.
What counts toward my 100,000 word count? Anything: letters to my brain, long articles on The Black Laser about whatever, anything for Vox Critica, any fiction, screenplays (who knows???). Basically anything where I give a damn about the quality of the writing. This encompasses quite a lot of what I do and should make hitting 100K for the year not such a daunting challenge. The only things that won’t count are when I’m bullshitting about music videos (unless I actually have something to say, my prerogative) and things like Twitter/Facebook/whatever. I mean, this thing is already 1200 words long. I’d only need to do 84 posts like this and I’d be done.
Dance EP – I’ve been talking about making a dance record for a long time. I love dance music. It’s so stupid and fun but can also be really beautiful in the right hands. Those hands are not mine, but that doesn’t stop from wanting to put my own music out there. And it fits under the header of “writing” quite nicely and is so different than writing words that it allows me to play around in a different medium but still be working toward my theme for the year. It will allow my brain to wander when I don’t have anything particularly meaningful to say otherwise.
What constitutes a Dance EP? Well, as we all know an EP is longer than a single but shorter than an album, so like 3 to 5 songs. I think that is about right. I just want it to be a fun project that makes people want to move and shake their asses and do all that stupid shit that people do that makes them look really funny in photos.
There you have it. 2012, The Year of Writing. 100,000 words or whatever and a dance EP.
And if you think that I think about this stuff too much, I’ll just leave this little snippet of yesterday’s conversation here for you to enjoy.
The Space Pope
4:39 PM The year I did 50 short stories, I kept a word/story count by each date I finished one so I could graph the work.
4:39 PM Jeez, I think about this too much maybe. But whatever.
4:40 PM I could keep a spreadsheet of writing by wordcount/type/date
lfkaufman
4:40 PM You think about most things too much. :)
Now I’ve blown my little secret that I intend to graph my progress. Here’s to 2012!
I’ve never seen this video before, though I have listened to 2007’s Oblivion With Bells like a thousand times. Unfortunately this video is for the radio edit of the track and about 3 minutes shorter than the album cut, but that doesn’t really matter since it’s still an absolutely fantastic piece of dreamy dance music.
The concept is simple; shoot them performing twice: once where they don’t move too much and they’re lit hard to one side, and again with a strobe where they’re moving. Sync, overlay, and intercut. I particularly like Darren Price’s sombrero. Rick Smith looks like he’s having a particularly good time. And, well, Karl Hyde, Karl Hyde is Karl Hyde, the singular voice of electronic music for me.
I was chatting with Charles on the IMs this morning about the M83 show he went to last night (he offered his extra ticket to me but I couldn’t go. Lame). This morning he said that it was a little weird for him because in his brain M83 has always been this perfect, inhuman thing, sounds that could not possibly come from a real person. He called it a “faceless future made from city lights, smoke, and slow motion.” While I don’t have the same relationship with M83 he does, I do feel the exact same way about Underworld. In 2007 they toured for Oblivion With Bells and again last year for Barking, but I never went to see them. Why not? I guess I was a little afraid that, like Charles with M83, that I would “hear the seams,” that they would be knocked from this exalted place in my brain to just a bunch of dudes who make really awesome music that I enjoy immensely.
It is funny though, that this really only applies to electro-oriented bands. The exact opposite is true of more traditional type bands. For example, the first time I saw The Magnetic Fields perform, I feel like I gained a much better perspective on their music, like somehow it made a lot more sense than it had hours previously. That is partly why I am so excited to see Jeff Magnum in January. You see it performed live, you hear the intonations, you hear the singer’s voice, you see their faces as they play, and it adds to an experience I already enjoy.
I don’t know why seeing Underworld wouldn’t be like that also, but it just feels different. Listening to Stephin Merritt play “Papa Was a Rodeo” live is different than hearing Underworld perform “Push Upstairs” live. One is a song I can digest, chords and layers and movement, whereas the other—in my brain, at least—is a sonic landscape perfectly tended and built.
I don’t know. Maybe I should just go see Underworld the next time they roll around and see how I feel.
