Glen Hirshberg's Blog, page 12
June 24, 2014
Dean Wareham at the Roxy
TRUE, week of 6/24. Post #5:
Caught Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips at the Roxy, and realized that while they do indeed radiate glamour, it’s not the kind I expected or that they have aspired to. Sure, Dean hardly looks like he’s trying as he leans into his surprisingly lyrical melodies or soars through a guitar solo, but his is the not-having-to-try of someone who never puts down a guitar, can’t stop humming, rather than smug insouciance. And they both smile a lot: at us, the music, each other. By the end, their brand of effortless seemed a product of hard practice—at interplay, at songwriting, at staying in love with staying in love. A lot less Serge Gainsbourg or even Lou Reed, in other words, than Bryan Ferry. And their cover of Joy Division’s “Ceremony” is so buoyant, by the end, that it restores the joy to the riff, sounds remarkably like the racket Ian Curtis might be kicking up, still, if he’d somehow put himself back together after love (or epilepsy, or depression, or whatever it finally was) tore him apart.
Caught Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips at the Roxy, and realized that while they do indeed radiate glamour, it’s not the kind I expected or that they have aspired to. Sure, Dean hardly looks like he’s trying as he leans into his surprisingly lyrical melodies or soars through a guitar solo, but his is the not-having-to-try of someone who never puts down a guitar, can’t stop humming, rather than smug insouciance. And they both smile a lot: at us, the music, each other. By the end, their brand of effortless seemed a product of hard practice—at interplay, at songwriting, at staying in love with staying in love. A lot less Serge Gainsbourg or even Lou Reed, in other words, than Bryan Ferry. And their cover of Joy Division’s “Ceremony” is so buoyant, by the end, that it restores the joy to the riff, sounds remarkably like the racket Ian Curtis might be kicking up, still, if he’d somehow put himself back together after love (or epilepsy, or depression, or whatever it finally was) tore him apart.
"A Game of Clue" by Steven Millhauser
TRUE, week of 6/24, Post #4:
At his dazzling best—as he is in so many of his short and longer stories—Steven Millhauser makes an entirely of-this-time, of-this-country mythology out of the most unlikely materials: the clockmakers and magicians and mad moonlight of fairy tales; a positively Updikean clarity and depth of insight into characters and their foibles, married to a decidedly not-Updikean charity and warmth; the sensualized fever-dreams of adolescents (and not only adolescents), rendered with their perversity but also their sense of wonder and radiance and possibility intact (as in “Clair de Lune,” when a teen who can’t sleep slips out into the suburban summer, works up the nerve to walk past the house of his crush, half-sleepwalks into her backyard…and discovers her playing whiffle ball with two girlfriends in the middle of the night); and a sense of high concept that has much more to do—again—with ghost stories or fairy tales than post-modern meta-gameplaying.
At his least successful—as he generally is, for me, in in his novels—the concepts win.
That, in the end, is the case with “A Game of Clue”, which I read this week. Half the story is a pretty fine depiction of a gently troubled family playing the title game all night on a porch to celebrate a 15 year-old’s birthday. The other, less compelling half details the wanderings and emotional musings of Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and the other suspects wandering the dark hallways and billiard rooms of the gameboard. The connections between game pieces and people, in the end, are tenuous, the humor in the concept itself light and repetitive, the meanderings in the mansion clever but aimless.
But even here, there are glimpses of Millhauser's magic. Oh yes. As in this heartbreaking, gorgeous moment when Colonel Mustard slips into the ballroom to continue his brutish seduction of Miss Scarlet: “The Colonel is patient; he appears to be waiting confidently for a sign from her. She asks herself suddenly: have I given him a sign? His eyes hold abysmal promises: come, I will teach you the disillusionment of the body, come, I will teach you the death of roses, the emptiness of orgasms in sun-flooded, loveless rooms.”
At his dazzling best—as he is in so many of his short and longer stories—Steven Millhauser makes an entirely of-this-time, of-this-country mythology out of the most unlikely materials: the clockmakers and magicians and mad moonlight of fairy tales; a positively Updikean clarity and depth of insight into characters and their foibles, married to a decidedly not-Updikean charity and warmth; the sensualized fever-dreams of adolescents (and not only adolescents), rendered with their perversity but also their sense of wonder and radiance and possibility intact (as in “Clair de Lune,” when a teen who can’t sleep slips out into the suburban summer, works up the nerve to walk past the house of his crush, half-sleepwalks into her backyard…and discovers her playing whiffle ball with two girlfriends in the middle of the night); and a sense of high concept that has much more to do—again—with ghost stories or fairy tales than post-modern meta-gameplaying.
At his least successful—as he generally is, for me, in in his novels—the concepts win.
That, in the end, is the case with “A Game of Clue”, which I read this week. Half the story is a pretty fine depiction of a gently troubled family playing the title game all night on a porch to celebrate a 15 year-old’s birthday. The other, less compelling half details the wanderings and emotional musings of Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and the other suspects wandering the dark hallways and billiard rooms of the gameboard. The connections between game pieces and people, in the end, are tenuous, the humor in the concept itself light and repetitive, the meanderings in the mansion clever but aimless.
But even here, there are glimpses of Millhauser's magic. Oh yes. As in this heartbreaking, gorgeous moment when Colonel Mustard slips into the ballroom to continue his brutish seduction of Miss Scarlet: “The Colonel is patient; he appears to be waiting confidently for a sign from her. She asks herself suddenly: have I given him a sign? His eyes hold abysmal promises: come, I will teach you the disillusionment of the body, come, I will teach you the death of roses, the emptiness of orgasms in sun-flooded, loveless rooms.”
Night Moves (the new movie, not the old song)
T.R.U.E., week of 6/24, Post #3:
In his review of the new indie-thriller Night Moves, A.O. Scott enthuses about how director Kelly Reichardt’s movies avoid falling into any established genre. That is often NEW YORK TIMES critic-code (although A.O. often knows better) for movie-that-doesn’t-actually-bother-telling-its-story. That, unfortunately, is the case here.
Three characters we don't understand, care about, or believe plot to blow up a dam. They’re commune dwellers, supposedly passionate about ecological concerns, though Reichardt takes great pains to make sure no one actually acts passionate about anything. Scott also praises the way “there is never a lot of talking in a Kelly Reichardt movie.” And it’s true, Reichardt has clearly seized on the idea that good drama is often driven by characters who won't or can't say what they’re thinking.
But in this movie, anyway, I’m less than convinced that she has any idea what her characters ARE thinking. And I certainly don’t.
In his review of the new indie-thriller Night Moves, A.O. Scott enthuses about how director Kelly Reichardt’s movies avoid falling into any established genre. That is often NEW YORK TIMES critic-code (although A.O. often knows better) for movie-that-doesn’t-actually-bother-telling-its-story. That, unfortunately, is the case here.
Three characters we don't understand, care about, or believe plot to blow up a dam. They’re commune dwellers, supposedly passionate about ecological concerns, though Reichardt takes great pains to make sure no one actually acts passionate about anything. Scott also praises the way “there is never a lot of talking in a Kelly Reichardt movie.” And it’s true, Reichardt has clearly seized on the idea that good drama is often driven by characters who won't or can't say what they’re thinking.
But in this movie, anyway, I’m less than convinced that she has any idea what her characters ARE thinking. And I certainly don’t.
THE PIERCES--"TEAM" (Lorde cover)
TRUE, week of 6/24, Post #2:
Hear "Team."
With the singular exception of the 2007 song “Boring,” which capitalized on exactly the sense of unacknowledged disenchantment I’ve always suspected lurked behind the shimmering bead-curtain of their harmonies, I’ve always found the Pierces skilled but...well, they said it, I didn't.
But THIS. It’s a terrific song anyway, and at 12 or whatever she is now, Lorde can already write circles around them (not that there's any shame in that—she writes circles around lots of people). And certainly Lorde’s glitch-and-jitter fits her intentions better, marries healthy suspicion of the adult world with a surprisingly hard-bitten and hard-earned optimism, even sweetness.
The Pierces’ version is certainly more adult. I could argue that it's successful because it lays bare the nostalgia--already embedded in Lorde’s music--for a time when she completely believed there were such things as alternate ways forward, totally bought her own grounded optimism not just for herself but for everyone. I could argue that the Pierces add fresh, autumnal hues.
Mostly, though, this is just so flat gorgeous, I stop caring what it’s saying.
Hear "Team."
With the singular exception of the 2007 song “Boring,” which capitalized on exactly the sense of unacknowledged disenchantment I’ve always suspected lurked behind the shimmering bead-curtain of their harmonies, I’ve always found the Pierces skilled but...well, they said it, I didn't.
But THIS. It’s a terrific song anyway, and at 12 or whatever she is now, Lorde can already write circles around them (not that there's any shame in that—she writes circles around lots of people). And certainly Lorde’s glitch-and-jitter fits her intentions better, marries healthy suspicion of the adult world with a surprisingly hard-bitten and hard-earned optimism, even sweetness.
The Pierces’ version is certainly more adult. I could argue that it's successful because it lays bare the nostalgia--already embedded in Lorde’s music--for a time when she completely believed there were such things as alternate ways forward, totally bought her own grounded optimism not just for herself but for everyone. I could argue that the Pierces add fresh, autumnal hues.
Mostly, though, this is just so flat gorgeous, I stop caring what it’s saying.
THE ESCAPE ARTIST
TRUE (that's Tuesday Round-up of Everything), week of 6/24, Post #1:
(in case you missed it and are interested, this is intended as a weekly assemblage of the books and music and whatever else I found in the past week that I found myself talking and thinking about. Comments/dissents/elaborations strongly encouraged. And if you start a T.R.U.E. on your own page or blog, please tag me so I can see what you're on about.)
The Escape Artist, which ran over the past two Sundays on PBS in the States, isn’t Sherlock, or Endeavor, or Lewis, but it’s light-years better than the execrable Broadchurch, in no small part because we’re allowed actually to like—or feel sympathy for, anyway—at least a few of the people in peril. Cartoon villain out of a Batman comic, ludicrous plot. But some snappy dialogue, a bit of atmosphere. And David Tennant actually smiles a couple times, which means my wife is back in love with him, which means she’s happy. And, you know, as long as she’s happy…
(in case you missed it and are interested, this is intended as a weekly assemblage of the books and music and whatever else I found in the past week that I found myself talking and thinking about. Comments/dissents/elaborations strongly encouraged. And if you start a T.R.U.E. on your own page or blog, please tag me so I can see what you're on about.)
The Escape Artist, which ran over the past two Sundays on PBS in the States, isn’t Sherlock, or Endeavor, or Lewis, but it’s light-years better than the execrable Broadchurch, in no small part because we’re allowed actually to like—or feel sympathy for, anyway—at least a few of the people in peril. Cartoon villain out of a Batman comic, ludicrous plot. But some snappy dialogue, a bit of atmosphere. And David Tennant actually smiles a couple times, which means my wife is back in love with him, which means she’s happy. And, you know, as long as she’s happy…
June 19, 2014
Nonfiction
Haven't really written much nonfiction since THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN came out in 2002 and the ghost stories appeared and then my second child was born and my creative writing program took off and I decided something had to go and stopped writing for L.A. WEEKLY. But it turns out I've missed it. Or else I'm starting to get the hang of this blog-tour promotional thing. Had an afternoon-long, DJ'd (by me) party at my desk writing about the music threaded through MOTHERLESS CHILD for the Booknotes column on one of favorite internet sites, Largehearted Boy (that will run July 11th; I'll post a link). Then lit out for more dangerous waters and went right at vampires and sex. That one may have scared the site I originally wrote it for. We'll see. Don't care. Queuing up GOOD GIRLS for the morning. Pump up the volume...
June 17, 2014
Recycle or Die
TRUE (Tuesday Round-up of Everything), Week of 6/17, Post 6:
Way back in the early days of the first wave of the new ambient, a little German label called Recycle or Die surfaced in Berlin, put out maybe 10 exquisite CDs of bubbling, winking, transportive electronica, and vanished. This was their first release, and it has recently found its way back into my writing mornings and my reading evenings. With a lot of new-electronica, I kinda think that the stuff people claim to love most is the stuff they heard first, because passionate subculture arguments notwithstanding, a lot of it's kinda interchangeable, even the stuff that doesn't wag its tail (or big bassy butt) too hard in its desire to be loved. And yeah, I heard ROD stuff pretty early. But it all stands up amazingly well. The ingredients are familiar: spiraling sequencers, textures that tumble and blink and burble, long, hazy nebulae that cohere into dense-packed, ice-cored spacedust. But even with ambient techno, it turns out, it's the programmer, not the program. Don't believe me? Let this one swirl around and seep into you all the way to the nine minute mark or so, when that piano wanders through, shoulders the whole, spectral thing on its back...and then launches...
Way back in the early days of the first wave of the new ambient, a little German label called Recycle or Die surfaced in Berlin, put out maybe 10 exquisite CDs of bubbling, winking, transportive electronica, and vanished. This was their first release, and it has recently found its way back into my writing mornings and my reading evenings. With a lot of new-electronica, I kinda think that the stuff people claim to love most is the stuff they heard first, because passionate subculture arguments notwithstanding, a lot of it's kinda interchangeable, even the stuff that doesn't wag its tail (or big bassy butt) too hard in its desire to be loved. And yeah, I heard ROD stuff pretty early. But it all stands up amazingly well. The ingredients are familiar: spiraling sequencers, textures that tumble and blink and burble, long, hazy nebulae that cohere into dense-packed, ice-cored spacedust. But even with ambient techno, it turns out, it's the programmer, not the program. Don't believe me? Let this one swirl around and seep into you all the way to the nine minute mark or so, when that piano wanders through, shoulders the whole, spectral thing on its back...and then launches...
Gemma Files and Marjorie Bowen
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 6/17, Post 5:
Had heard terrific things about Gemma Files, and she'll be joining me to talk the teaching of writing ghost stories at Readercon, which seemed a perfect excuse to check out her work. Her story, "Nanny Grey," which I found in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR VOLUME 5, maybe holds the last emotional chord a bit too long for me, spends too much time explaining more than it needs to. But the build-up is a flat-out blast, a gritty, too-real riff on the picking-up-the-wrong-girl, heading-home-to-meet-the-(in this case, extended)-family trope. Seedy, unnerving, playful, wicked.
At the more classical end, I also caught up with Marjorie Bowen's "Dark Ann," and as I usually do when I read Marjorie Bowen, wound up feeling she's an under-acknowledged titan. At an academic conference, a writer of ghostly tales attends a lecture by a brilliant, stiff, arrogant scientist. To the writer's surprise, the scientist then seeks her out at the after-party, expressly to tell her a tale about a ghost he met (but won't describe as a ghost), which triggered longings in him he can't accept as love. And vanished. That's it. Just established, credible reality, the wispy touch of wonder, the intoxicating mixture of emotional states, one of which is dread. If I didn't already have one (or ten) already prepared, the story would be a template for the way I teach the kinds of stories I write.
Had heard terrific things about Gemma Files, and she'll be joining me to talk the teaching of writing ghost stories at Readercon, which seemed a perfect excuse to check out her work. Her story, "Nanny Grey," which I found in Ellen Datlow's BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR VOLUME 5, maybe holds the last emotional chord a bit too long for me, spends too much time explaining more than it needs to. But the build-up is a flat-out blast, a gritty, too-real riff on the picking-up-the-wrong-girl, heading-home-to-meet-the-(in this case, extended)-family trope. Seedy, unnerving, playful, wicked.
At the more classical end, I also caught up with Marjorie Bowen's "Dark Ann," and as I usually do when I read Marjorie Bowen, wound up feeling she's an under-acknowledged titan. At an academic conference, a writer of ghostly tales attends a lecture by a brilliant, stiff, arrogant scientist. To the writer's surprise, the scientist then seeks her out at the after-party, expressly to tell her a tale about a ghost he met (but won't describe as a ghost), which triggered longings in him he can't accept as love. And vanished. That's it. Just established, credible reality, the wispy touch of wonder, the intoxicating mixture of emotional states, one of which is dread. If I didn't already have one (or ten) already prepared, the story would be a template for the way I teach the kinds of stories I write.
Boursier-Mougenot Installation
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 6/17, Post 4:
Wandered into the downtown branch of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and stopped dead, in the lobby, for at least fifteen minutes, mesmerized and laughing at the sound and sight of Celeste Boursier-Mougenot's installation of three inflatable backyard swimming pools gently circulating porcelain bowls and saucers, tuned and filled just so, their chimes as they bump randomly together as rich and atmospheric in that place as the bells of Riverside Cathedral on a Westside Sunday morning. Only funnier. Summer officially started for me right there.
This link doesn't begin to give you the sense of it, or the scope. But at least you can get an idea.
Wandered into the downtown branch of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and stopped dead, in the lobby, for at least fifteen minutes, mesmerized and laughing at the sound and sight of Celeste Boursier-Mougenot's installation of three inflatable backyard swimming pools gently circulating porcelain bowls and saucers, tuned and filled just so, their chimes as they bump randomly together as rich and atmospheric in that place as the bells of Riverside Cathedral on a Westside Sunday morning. Only funnier. Summer officially started for me right there.
This link doesn't begin to give you the sense of it, or the scope. But at least you can get an idea.
More Marias
Tuesday Round-up of Everything, Week of 6/17, Post 3 1/2:
Javier Marías, again. Stunningly pithy for a Platonic Once ler. And I recognize this flavor of ghosts-and-loss pondering. Yes I do:
"The narratives we invent...will render us fictions. Even our gestures will continue to be made by someone who inherited them or saw them and was unknowingly mimetic or repeated them on purpose to invoke us and create a strange, momentary and vicarious illusion of our life...We lose everything because everything remains except us."
Javier Marías, again. Stunningly pithy for a Platonic Once ler. And I recognize this flavor of ghosts-and-loss pondering. Yes I do:
"The narratives we invent...will render us fictions. Even our gestures will continue to be made by someone who inherited them or saw them and was unknowingly mimetic or repeated them on purpose to invoke us and create a strange, momentary and vicarious illusion of our life...We lose everything because everything remains except us."
