River City Rock

In early August of this year I visited Louisville for the first time in twenty years. It was a city I lived in the middle 1990s. I had worked for the transit authority for a brief time then worked as a radio personality for two different radio stations there. As with most radio stations we didn't play local music and played popular commercial music. Even though I was living in Louisville I wasn't connected to the local music scene except for maybe seeing ads for performances in the Leo or seeing a flier at the local music store ear X-tacy. I was more aware of what music was coming out of Seattle at that time than Louisville.

Before my return to Louisville I started researching bands that were from Louisville during the 1990s. I wanted to see what I had missed out on during that time and find a way to mentally connect with the feel of the city when I lived there that I couldn't recollect from my own memories and photographs of the place. That is when I discovered Slint.

I had considered myself a person with fairly eclectic and expansive musical tastes and knowledge. Somehow I had missed out on this band. This was a band that developed a cult following, a legend steeped in mystery and produced what many consider one of the most influential rock albums of the 1990s. This was a band too that had broken up in 1990 and released their last album in 1991, but had somehow become this critical darling.

I listened to their last album titled Spiderland and I understand why this band was so loved. These guys were in their late teens to around twenty years old and had made this important music in a basement in Louisville. Somehow, I had missed out an important piece of a city I had lived in. I would have been in Louisville at the time some of these guys were bouncing around in different bands post Slint and I had no idea about them.

This is hypnotic and shoegazing rock and many refer to the music of Slint as "math rock." Their music features repetitious guitar and drum rhythms that are so beautiful with complex time signatures. The lyrics often border on bad poetry written by angst filled teenagers and given their age at the time it is understandable. The music is the better part of the band and the vocals are often either whispered or screamed and were written mostly at the last minute during the recording session of the album in Chicago.

If you go to a quiet room, close the door, turn down the lights, put on your headphones and listen to Spiderland you will hear great music. It is the best way to fully appreciate this music because I imagine it is impossible to enjoy any other way. This isn't music for a bright sunny day at the beach, but more for dark rooms and focused thinking. This music brings to mind the images of Louisville in the 90s with all of the old architecture it has, the decay it had then and the isolation of the city on the banks of the Ohio River. This was before widespread internet usage so cities then had a much more distinct identity especially in terms of arts and culture.



There are only six songs on this album, but I enjoy all of them. My favorite from the album is Don, Aman. The song has whispered vocals by the drummer combined with guitar playing that ranges from contemplative to blaring. As for the rest of the album I rank them in this order: Nosferatu Man, Good Morning Captain, Washer, Breadcrumb Trail and For Dinner.

If only this band could have stayed together in the 90s they might have made more great music and reached a much wider audience besides music critics and musicians. Slint did reunite in the 2000s, but seeing these guys in their 40s playing this music is awkward and I think their music from Spiderland is best left in that time capsule shrouded in the mystique of what might have been.

There is a documentary on the band that was released in 2014 called Breadcrumb Trail. It can be hard to find, but it is excellent and reveals much about the band, their creative process, and what happened to them.

So if you are in the mood for dark, brooding, and beautiful rock music spend time in Spiderland.

All You Can Eat

Over the summer I have been revisiting the discography of k.d. lang. I had forgotten how much of her music I have enjoyed over her career.

She never fit into the country music genre in which her career was first marketed. Here was this quirky lesbian making music for a country audience that then and even still today isn't largely accepting of artists that aren't straight men or straight blonde women.

Fortunately for k.d. her incredible voice and talent defied most any label you could try to place on it and she has made some wonderful music that still is worth listening to today.

After shedding the country music label and going to a more pop/mainstream sound she broke new ground with her 1992 album Ingenue. It produced her most memorable hit, Constant Craving. Thanks to this album and that song in particular she found herself a new and more accepting audience for her music and for her life.

In looking more in depth at her music I want to skip ahead to the 1995 album, All You Can Eat. I found myself returning to this album several times over the last few months and enjoying how fresh it still sounds today.

All You Can Eat might be her most pop sounding album out of her entire discography and you see her songwriting become more playful, less restricted and definitely more open and happy about her life.

This album is all about love and sexuality. In interviews promoting the release of the album k.d. would say that the title of the album was about taking in and embracing as much of life as you could until you were full. At the time she had moved from Los Angeles back to her native Canada saying that she never fit into the whole Hollywood celebrity lifestyle and was full of that scene.

The opening song on the album is If I Were You. This song is written from the perspective of a person wishing they were someone else; someone more popular and loved and how they would live that life and how great it would be if they were that person. This song features a nice bouncy bass beat and her fine vocals gliding over the top like a smooth breeze. It is a nice medium tempo song to open the album and set the tone for a pleasant listening experience. It's the kind of song you could listen to over brunch on a sunny day.

Maybe is the next song and it delves into the thoughts of a person questioning their relationship with someone and questioning themselves. The song explores all the possibilities of many scenarios of what is and isn't possible and continues to use the word "maybe." She sings, "it could be disaster but no maybe it won't?" I envision someone relaxing at home in the evening over a glass of wine asking these questions of themselves. This could have been easily interpreted as a negative song but with her delivery k.d. actually makes this a kind of neutral to positive sounding song. This song is for me about that fear of the unknown of the beginning of stronger feelings for someone as you get to know them better.

The themes of uncertainty and love continue with the next song and introduces sex, You're Okay. This song is the foreplay part of sex leading up to the next song, Sexuality. You're Okay opens with the line, "I am rocked with paranoia for I have brought myself  before you nakedly awaiting your okay." The song continues on with the person wondering if they are coming on too strong to their object of affection. The person then decides well if you are okay with this situation then I am okay with it too so let's get it on. To me this the strongest song on this album and I could hear it being released even today and being a hit song. Lyrically and musically this song is her best on this album.

Sexuality is the next song on the album and it is the crescendo that the first three songs were building up to. k.d. said in an interview I watched of her on The Tonight Show that she liked to make music that you could listen to while driving, dancing, eat and having sex. This would be the song that you get undressed to and have your sex to with it playing in the background. At the time I remember this being a radio hit and the video too was in regular rotation on VH-1 and MTV. This was intended to be the biggest hit song on this album. She opens the song with a seductive tone inviting the listener to "come on, come on, come on," and you know where this song is going. There are a few lines in this song that could be perceived as political in the ongoing struggle for same-sex equality and shedding rigid ideas about sex such as, "kiss away the ones who say the lust you feel is wrong, not how bad could it be if you amuse yourself with me, now how bad could it be...sexuality," and "release yourself upon me and free the lines of chastity." These lines aren't as direct as a Madonna song about sex but a more subtle and nuanced song about it.

The next song that follows is Get Some. This song is about going out and getting that love you crave. It encourages the listener to take a more active role in finding their happiness. This song is more upbeat and uptempo than the previous songs on the album. It marches along to a brisk beat and a confident vocal. It isn't the most interesting song lyrically but is something you could listen to while needing some motivation as it at times feels like an anthem.

Acquiesce is next and it ponders the morality of love and sex as if someone is testing the boundaries of a relationship. This is the song for a complicated relationship that a person might find themselves involved in. After we are heavily involved with someone and thinking about the faithfulness of your partner or a self-examination of your own morals and faithfulness this is the territory this song lives in. The song title could be thought of as knowing something isn't morally acceptable but going with the flow and allowing whatever it is to happen anyway and how we live with our decision. Stylistically this dark song is beautifully arranged and her vocals are smooth like velvet.

You are on the sofa leaned back with your feet up and comes This. It has that lazy sound about it that isn't going to challenge you to get up and dance but maybe instead take a long sip of your coffee. This song comes and goes and you might not even notice it as it plays. You could be leaning back on your seat on the train with your eyes closed as you zone out and This relaxes you. It is a soothing song about answering your partner's question about your love and reassuring them that this is love and you are going to give them all of you. As k.d. sings, "believe in this," you feel that sense of security and peace of stability. The overall feeling I get from this song is satisfaction.

World Of Love is a spring day with flowers exploding and vibrant colors popping across the landscape. This isn't one of my favorite songs on this album but it isn't necessarily a bad song either. It borders on romping and prancing and comes across as too happy like an over caffeinated bunny rabbit. This song for me is filler and the one I am most likely to skip.

On the song Infinite And Unforeseen she gives her best vocal performance on the album. This is k.d. lang singing from her heart. This song strikes a melancholy and reflective tone with the strings at the beginning. With the somber sound of this song I can't decide whether the surprises she sings about are happy ones of finding unexpected love or rather the bad surprise of finding your love coming to end. I suppose you could interpret it either way.

A funky bass groove and drums opens up the last song on the album, I Want It All. This song makes a nice end to the journey that this album takes you on through uncertainty, love and sex. The conclusion here is that she wants it all whether it is good or bad that she isn't afraid to take her chances on love and what all comes with it. The album ends with a positive and optimistic outlook.

Ranking the songs from how I enjoy them from most to least I would settle on this order: You're Okay, If I Were You, Maybe, Sexuality, Acquiesce, Infinite And Unforeseen, This, Get Some, I Want It All and World Of Love.

This is a remarkable album with plenty of pop and sophistication from the sultry voice of  k.d. lang. It is an easy album to get into and still enjoy twenty-two years later because it has a timeless sound that you couldn't tell came out all the way back in 1995. Just as she wanted you can do pretty much any activity while listening to this music and still feel relaxed. It is good music for lounging in your pajamas on a Sunday morning or commuting on the train at the end of long day at the office.

Dispatch: The Ugly Landscape

Photo by me, January 2017.

"I just want to scream hello," sings Eddie Vedder in the the Pearl Jam song Elderly Woman Behind A Counter In A Small Town. I thought of screaming hello as I stood atop Turkey Mountain in the Cohutta Wilderness of the North Georgia mountains yesterday. The light was fading, the clouds were dropping and it was so quiet that it had a creepy feeling. I have been in the middle of nowhere plenty of times in my life, but something was off.

Earlier, out chasing down a waterfall in a remote location miles down a dirt road in the shadow of Rich Mountain I had gotten the creepy feeling then too. I had arrived at the trailhead or what I thought was the trailhead as I had limited information and was out of cell service range to verify my information. I turned around and left. It takes a lot for me to bail out of a situation in the wilderness or in the city for that matter, but sometimes you just get that feeling that something is wrong and you trust your intuition.

I have been spending a fair amount of time in the mountains since October of last year. I have been out on the trails, looking at the sweeping vistas, hunting down waterfalls and traveling the rough roads. Some of the attraction has been the peace and some of it has been finding new places that I had not seen before. However lately I have been more on guard and alert up there thanks to the uptick in violent incidents around the country since the election. You can sense that the people up there do not like people like me and there has been the occasional odd and accusing look.

I have not felt like this since the early 1990s. I feel like a target.

You can figure it out after you have up there long enough what areas are safer and what areas are a little more dangerous. Some places give me bad feelings like how I feel whenever I cross into Alabama and step back in time. You know the percentages of encountering rednecks are higher in some areas than in others and some of those rednecks are on the lookout to fuck with an outsider.

Driving down one dirt road through beautiful bottom land that had probably once been a corn field, but was now grazing land for horses, I spotted a sad relic, an ugly scar. A flagpole in the middle of that field flew the Confederate battle flag. You do not see that flag as much now as you did when I was kid, but when I do see it, I know I am around people that not only disagree with me but hate me. The Confederate battle flag is not a welcome sign saying hello but is a warning sign.

Photo by me, January 2017.

Photo by me, January 2017.

Photo by me, January 2017.

Photo by me, January 2017.

There was another warning sign browsing the shops of downtown Blue Ridge. I went into one shop that was selling Reagan/Bush tee shirts. They were not tacky in their design but were actually nice shirts and seem to be well made. This was not some grungy place that sells live bait and beer but was a tastefully done shop with dim lighting like one might find in Banana Republic. The Reagan/Bush shirts were folded nicely on a display front and center as you walked into the door. They were not to be missed and were meant to make a not so subtle gesture to customers. I looked around and could not find any shirts for Clinton or Carter or Obama or Kennedy. I got the hint that my kind was unwelcome. It is absurd that anyone would want to willing go back to the Reagan/Bush years of the 1980s, much less want to wear a shirt proclaiming such nonsense.
 

Looking at the county maps from the 2016 election will tell you who these people voted for and what their beliefs have proven to be. Like that rolling dark cloud in the sky they want to sweep in a period of darkness into the hearts of America and spread their fear like the wind.

Rural America went from a live and let live mindset from when I was a child to an ugly, mean-spirited, conservative, regressive and scared landscape. They may not always bash your head in or vandalize your property but are more subtle in their dislike of you and your kind. Whether it is the odd look, being purposefully seated at the isolated table, away from other patrons, downstairs and in the far back corner of a restaurant in Blue Ridge or the whispers - they make sure to remind you that you are not welcome.

I am strong enough to say fuck them and I will fight until I am dead. In this new era of conservative politics I will need to keep looking over my shoulder a bit more often. It won't keep me from enjoying the mountains, but I am damn sure more careful about it than I have been in a long time.

The Carousel On The National Mall

Walking along the National Mall in Washington there is so much to see from museums to massive monuments it would be easy to overlook a carousel tucked into a shady area on the periphery.

Photo by me, July 2015.

I was walking back towards the Smithsonian subway station after a long, hot July day on the mall when I noticed the carousel. I didn't have much time or energy left so I took a quick photo because I have a fondness for carousels. I wish I could have taken a spin on it or gotten a closer look but it was closed for day when I passed.

I am fond of carousels because they are beautiful with bold colors, can have intricate carvings and designs, display a level of craftsmanship that is rare to find these days and they are a simple thrill ride that doesn't require you to be jostled by a roller coaster or thrown into the air at some insane speed.

This particular coaster is unique in that it features four horses per row on which to ride. No other carousel of this type has been built since that features four horses abreast that jump.

The carousel has been located on the mall since 1981 but it was originally built for an amusement park in Maryland. The Allen Herschell Company were the builders and they constructed this carousel in 1947.

Atlas Obscura has more photos of this carousel and a bit more on the history of it too.

The Auchumpkee Creek Covered Bridge

Photo by me, April 2015.

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raveling the back roads is the way to see what a place is really about. You slow down and often stop on the back roads which isn't something you do whizzing down an interstate highway where all you might see are advertisements, gas stations and hotels. Whatever hidden secrets a place might have, be it natural or man-made will remain hidden from you on the highway. Unless we slow down and pay attention in everything we do we often miss the truth of a place and the same applies to people too. In the modern world, we sacrifice truth and understanding for speed and convenience.


You Ain't From Around These Parts
On a trip from Atlanta to a town in South Georgia, I decided to take the back roads and not take Interstate 75. One place that I passed through was Upson County. Upson has no interstate highways just the regular roads with lower speed limits, stop signs and traffic lights. Upson is one of those places you wouldn't normally pass through or go to visit unless you had some specific reason to be there, much like Paulding County was when I was a child.

The county hasn't changed much for decades and it has had the same amount of people living there since 1940. In 1940 the population was 25,000 people and in the latest census from 2010 the population was 27,000. 

 

A Storm Is Coming
In the third week of June 1994, a tropical wave would form off the coast of Africa and by the end of June, it would form a tropical depression off the southern coast of Cuba. Two days before the United States would celebrate independence day Tropical Storm Alberto was gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico.

On July 3rd, 1994 it would start raining in Upson County and it would rain every day except one until July 15th. When the rainfall was finished it would rain a total of nearly seventeen inches (16.86 inches officially) and over twelve of those seventeen inches would come in only two days.

You can imagine what that amount of rain would do to the ground and to the creeks and rivers.

The nearest river gauge on the Flint River indicates flooding when the water level reaches 18 feet. Alberto shattered all the records and that gauge hit 45.73 feet.

On the nearby Auchumpkee Creek which is normally a lazy creek only a few inches deep swelled under the unrelenting rain became a river and carrying debris such as trees decided to dismantle the wooden covered bridge that had stood there since 1892.

Tropical Storm Alberto which made landfall in the Panhandle of Florida moved straight up into Georgia and right through Upson County then stopped and then proceeded to do a loop and cross the county again before finally sauntering off into Alabama and dying there.

Alberto would kill thirty-one people in Georgia alone.

By Chance A Bridge

Photo by me, April 2015.

I came across the Auchumpkee Creek covered bridge by chance. I was driving down U.S. Highway 19 through the rolling hills covered in pine trees and the sporadic fields south of Thomaston in southern Upson County when I saw a sign for the bridge.

These are the surprises you find on the back roads. A sign with an arrow pointing a direction to something interesting that you didn't know existed and you find yourself changing your plan to see that thing. I wouldn't normally go out of my way to see a covered bridge but if I happen on one I will stop, take a few photos and admire the craftsmanship and beauty of the bridge.

Covered bridges fall into the same category as lighthouses for me. They are objects that have been highly and unnecessarily romanticized in popular culture for no good reason. They represent the past and some mythical idea that life was better then. When I see covered bridges and lighthouses I think of terrible prints hanging on bathroom walls in some country themed restaurant or some elderly relative's kitchen wall. The Bridges Of Madison County is a perfect example of this romanticizing of covered bridges.

Photo by me, April 2015.

Photo by me, April 2015.

When the original covered bridge was built in this spot in 1892 cotton and peaches were the main ways to make a living in Upson County. The American Civil War was only twenty-seven years in the past and plenty of people that had been alive during it were still around so it had not much faded into history yet. The bridge would last one hundred and two years before Alberto born in a distant sea would flood the creek it was built over and take it down.

After the flood of 1994 when federal relief funds were funneled into Upson County they decided to rebuild the bridge. It took $200,000 and to bring in a bridge builder by the name of Arnold Graton from New Hampshire but the new covered bridge was finished in 1997.

Photo by me, April 2015.

Photo by me, April 2015.

The area around the bridge is a park now. It is a pretty spot on a side road off a federal highway in a county in the middle of nowhere. It is far from the interstate, a modern reconstruction of the past in a place that has turned its back on the modern world. It is worth seeing if you pass it traveling the back roads of time.



*Rainfall statistics used were from the National Weather Service reporting station in the county seat of Thomaston.

A Kaleidoscope Of Colors

Photo by me, April 2014.

Located on Fraser Street in the Summerhill neighborhood of Atlanta is this mural of wonderful color. I like murals that are this colorful and make you take notice of them. You cannot pass by this mural and not take notice of it. It is busy piece of art that has so many interesting aspects to it.

Photo by me, April 2014.

Dissecting this mural takes some work and I'd be the first to admit I am probably interpreting it wrong. In the center is a tree and maybe it is the tree of life. To the right of the tree emerges a woman and to the left of the tree emerges a man with a hairy chest. Both the man and woman are facing robots or some type of technology. The woman is facing one with treads like a machine and arms like that of a back hoe. The man is facing a robot or creature with a television head on a spring like a jack in the box and it has eight legs. There are also other large humanoid figures painted into this mural and animals too. I see birds, lions, maybe a fox and a snake. They appear to be doing battle against one another in some sort of colorful jungle.

Photo by me, April 2014.

The artist of this mural goes by the name 3πMan. Despite some searching around I couldn't locate an artist by that name. This mural was completed on August 16, 2013.

It is one of my favorite murals because it provides so much color to an area of Summerhill that is full of empty and dead parking lots. In a sea of asphalt is this vibrant beauty.

Six Years I Waited

Pardon me, but it is Fleet Foxes day! Nothing will exist for me today but the new album, Crack-Up.

My favorite band from this century released their first new album in six years. My life has seen a great many changes since the last new Fleet Foxes album, I nearly died and everything else but my love of this band never subsided.

Those harmonies! My ears.

This band and their music reside deep in the tissues of my heart. Their music carries such a significance with me that I would never publicly discuss some of the reasons why on a blog but damn that 'magic.' My mind listening to their music instantly goes to mountains, deep forests, fresh air and the rest is too privately tragic to share while sober. It is the old story of heartbreak.

Was the wait of six years between albums worth it for me now that the new album has landed full and wide?

It is intricately beautiful music that at times veers over the cliff into self-indulgence only to save itself from crashing onto the jagged boulders below. Some of the abrupt changes during some of the songs are like watching an action movie with jump cuts that are so quick and disorienting that you become dizzy and you don't know what the hell just happened.

A look at the song titles and I sense that this album is taking itself too seriously and the names are borderline preposterous. I feel like I have downloaded one of those chill/lounge/downbeat albums where I don't really know any of the artists but they sure have cool sounding names.

I Am All That I Need/Arroyo Seco/Thumbprint Scar opens the album with mumbling vocals that are lulling you asleep before it jerks you awake at the one minute mark. Oh yeah, now I'm excited because there is a new album from Fleet Foxes. This song sets what for me is the theme of this album and that is a series of unfinished sketches from a person suffering from multiple personality disorder. At times, I don't know what the band is playing, where it is going with these songs and the whole thing is incongruous.

Cassius begins and ends with the most unnerving sounds and I am reminded of Portishead's The Rip (especially at the 2:12 of the Portishead song). I didn't think I would ever have Fleet Foxes remind me of a Portishead song which by the way is one of my other favorite bands of all time.

Naiads, Cassadies opens like a Doors song. I was hearing strains of The End for a moment there. The song then drifts off into this peaceful song that floats into the territory of Sunday morning background music.

Third Of May/Odaigahara is easily the most accessible song on an album that is a more mature and dark version of Fleet Foxes of years gone by. Third Of May comes launching at you like a horse bolting out of the gate at the Kentucky Derby. This is definitely the Fleet Foxes I remember and it almost feels like it could have fit on a previous album.

Kept Woman is another song that one can easily like. It has the luscious harmonies you expect from the band and overall takes on a somber tone. But..the awkward lyric of, "you rose to be ossified." I know what ossified means and most people probably do too but using it in a song sounded so forced and unnatural. I listened to that lyric several times and I had to suppress my laughter. This was one of those moments where the band was teetering on the precipice of the cliff and almost plunged down toward the sharp rocks below.

If You Need To, Keep Time On Me feels like a pretty piece of filler music like a puff pastry or flowery wallpaper. The song title keeps repeating over and over and isn't going anywhere.

Mearcstapa features the prettiest guitar lines of music on the entire album in the middle of this song. I have listened to this song several times and I keep going back to that guitar solo and can't shake my feeling that it sounds like something from Radiohead's Kid A album. Maybe it is Everything In Its Right Place that I am hearing?

On Another Ocean (January / June) is an okay enough song that begins well enough but never goes much of anywhere. Then it gets cute and adds a saxophone at the end of the song as it fades out. This an example of where a producer should have stepped in and said this is beyond trite.

Fool's Errand is where this album gets back on the tracks after some bewildering turns down some blind alleys. We get some straight-forward music and some serious singing again. The piano at the end centers this album and gives you hope that the band does care whether you like their music and this just isn't some kind of inside joke they are playing on their audience.

I Should See Memphis begins and I feel like I am watching fuzzy old home movies on a film projector. Then comes the American Civil War references and I'm thinking oh dear god this is getting silly. Did he really just sing Manassas and Appomattox? Oh yes, he did and damn it guys this is stupid.

Crack-Up gives us one last chance to soar on the harmonies like eagles over the mountains and to remember what we enjoyed about this band on previous albums.

This is still Fleet Foxes, but this album feels like it was half written using random words out of Encyclopedia Britannica and the other half was one unsatisfying masturbation session in front a mirror for the band. I know bands evolve over time and that's to be expected - I still love Goldfrapp after all these years and they've never made anything close to resembling Felt Mountain ever again. Yet Crack-Up is more of a mashup of songs with pretentious titles. What I missed most from this album was what made me fall in love with them years ago and that was honest and beautiful music.

I'm all for artists taking risks, but it would seem Fleet Foxes didn't think taking six years between albums was a big enough risk for them. Instead, they decided that musical risks were needed too and I would agree, if I felt like they were remaining somewhat true to their earlier sound. This album is so schizophrenic that it feels both simultaneously unfinished and somehow overthought. Crack-Up tries too hard to impress.

Dispatch: Dinners, Berlin, Cats, Bunnies And The Hiding Stranger

Atlanta Monday evening. Taken from a webcam.

The evening was unfolding and I was relaxing by listening to shortwave radio. I had found a station out of the U.K. and they were playing The Devil Inside by INXS. Their music sounded better today than it did back when it was new in the late 80s. I liked the band then but compared to today's rock it holds up well. That song is a playful jaunt and devious too, I like it.

My quiet and contemplative mood that has taken hold in me since last fall is still lingering in me. I went to a couple of dinners in the past week and noticed I wasn't all that engaged in the conversation. I was spending too much time listening and not enough time taking an active role but I guess it doesn't much bother me. This was the most socially active I have been since October last year.

One dinner was a friend's birthday dinner and another was a going away dinner for yet another friend that is moving to New York. I think I know more people in New York now than I do in Atlanta.

I saw this Berlin poster a couple of weeks ago on a blog that I read from time to time and I fell in love with it. I would love to have a large wall poster version of this. My fascination with Berlin remains strong.

I have watched a couple of interesting movies: If Cats Disappeared From The World and How To Draw A Bunny. The movie with cats in the title was a sentimental Japanese movie that I often enjoy. It was a sad emotional story about a young man coming to terms with his mother's death and his own impending death. I didn't cry but I was close to tears near the end.

How To Draw A Bunny is a documentary about the artist Ray Johnson. I must admit I was only slightly aware of him and his oddly composed signature bunnies. His collages were interesting though  and very intricate like a complex puzzle. The documentary explores his life from stories about his friends and how he was on the New York art scene and his curious personality until his death in 1995. His death received speculation that it was maybe his final piece of performance art or just an ordinary suicide by an elderly man. I lean towards thinking his death being an intentional mystery in which he wanted it to be another piece of art.

There is one mystery that I am trying to understand in my life and that involves some odd guy that I have caught twice hiding outside my fence watching me. The first time I pretended not notice him hiding and I went inside. I then watched out the window as he got up from his hiding spot at the fence and then quickly walked down the sidewalk once he thought I didn't see him. The second time I caught him hiding at the fence watching me I decided to make it obvious that I saw him and stood outside my door and stared at him. Finally he realized that I was watching him watching me and he ran away down the street.  It worries me some because I don't know what this is about. I don't think he is going to attack me but is he trying to watch my place and break in? If I see him again I might confront him or maybe not. I am sort of enjoying this cat and mouse game with this strange guy that sometimes hides at my fence. I don't know enough about the situation yet to involve the police.

Wormsloe On The Isle of Hope

An April morning at the front gate of Wormsloe on the Isle of Hope. Photo by me, April 2016.

The Isle Of Hope on the Georgia coast has been claimed by various Native American tribes from the Yuchi to the Creeks to the Yamacraw and it was then the territory of Spain before colonists from England arrived in the early 1700s. The English established the nearby city of Savannah in 1733.

The Isle of Hope is just outside the city limits of Savannah and is surrounded by muddy salt marshes on all sides that are fed from the Atlantic Ocean. The island is a small one only four miles long and two miles wide.

The first English settler on the Isle of Hope was Noble Jones in 1736 who built his home there beginning in 1739 through 1745. He built a fortified house on the tip of the island overlooking the Skidaway Narrows to defend against any Spanish attacks.

Warhol And His Pop Polaroids

A Warhol exhibit at the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Photo by me, October 2008.

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early twenty years ago, in 1998, I went to see the Pop Art: Selections Of The Modern Museum of Art exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta. I remember it being a big event in the city, going right after it opened and I remember how popular it was. It was a well attended exhibition as much hype as it garnered and how thick the crowds were. I was eager to see all the works of Andy Warhol that were on loan and to see how much color and glamour there would be on display in this exhibition. 

 

Warhol was a huge art star and personality in the 1990s, even though he died in 1987. I knew who he was, had always heard of him, seen some of his work in books, magazines and television. Warhol even had a 1980s television show on MTV when I was a kid, he was as known for his image as he was known for his art. It was cool to like Warhol and I had not even seen any of his work in person. In my excitement I purchased a High Museum hat that day from the museum store and I am not much of a baseball cap person.

After the exhibit, I remember not being impressed by the art of Andy Warhol. It was colorful, there was a glamorous veneer to it, but that was it - it was a veneer and offered no depth or meaning. 

 

Since 1998 I have seen plenty of his work in person at various museums around the country and I still cannot find it in me to like his work. It has always seemed like it was the cool thing to like Warhol and that is not enough for me to praise his work if I do not like it. People seem to overlook or might not realize that Warhol was not a painter, but was a screen printer of photographs and that diminishes his work. Further, he did not even do the screen printing himself as that was delegated to his staff. That is why his studio was called The Factory after all. Warhol was only the idea man.

In 2008 I was at the Michael C. Carlos Museum on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta and had finished browsing their permanent collection on my way to see a large exhibition of Egyptian artifacts when off to the side I saw a small gallery with a Warhol exhibition. Warhol always seems to attract a buzzy crowd so I waited a little for people to empty out.

Photo by me, October 2008.

This exhibition was called Big Shots, Andy Warhol's Polaroid Portraits. There was an initial curiousity and excitement in me as Polaroids hold a special place in my heart as my first camera as a boy was a Polaroid OneStep.

For Warhol, the genesis of his screen prints came from photography. He either photographed his subject or used a photo from a newspaper or magazine as the image for the screen print. In 1970 he bought a Polaroid Big Shot camera for taking instant photos of people. This exhibition was a sample of some of those those shots of various people from celebrities, which he often screen printed to more obscure people he thought interesting.

Photo by me, October 2008.

Photo by me, October 2008.

The largest item on display was a screen print of President Jimmy Carter's mother, Lillian. This of course was a nod by the museum to the fact that President Carter was born and still lives in Georgia. A Polaroid that was the basis for the screen print was also on display from 1977. You can see the smiling Mrs. Carter proudly wearing her son's campaign button.

Photo by me, October 2008.

Warhol would typically take a couple hundred snapshots of his subject in various poses before being satisfied that he had want he wanted.

Photo by me, October 2008.

Photo by me, October 2008.

Photo by me, October 2008.

A young Sylvester Stallone in 1980.

Figure Skater Dorothy Hamill in 1977. Photo by me, October 2008.

Celebrities of all walks were of course his bread and butter for his screen prints like the ones he did of Marilyn Monroe.

Photo by me, October 2008.

Photo by me, October 2008.

The 1981 Mother Goose Polaroid was from a project that never was completed. He had planned to do a series on fictional characters called Myths.

Looking at the Polaroids you get a sense of how Warhol operated and some of his work process. When taking Polaroids of his subjects he was always very close and personal with the camera getting in the space of the person. There is nothing technically special about the photos and there is only so much that can be done with a Polaroid camera anyway.

Warhol famously said, "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." His prophetic statement related as much to his own art, which was created with such minimal effort by him, as it relates to how easily someone can achieve world-fame today in any manner of ways. In era such as today when narcissism is king and people are famous for whom they are and not what they do or create, Warhol would fit in perfectly. Imagine all the selfies people probably take in front his art. Warhol would be proud.

I am open minded enough that if someone could give me valid reasons for liking his work I might change my mind about his art. Until then, I will continue to see his work in the future and not like it very much.

I still have that High Museum baseball cap from 1998 by the way.

Zoo Station, An East West Mess

 

Zoo Station is a well-known train station in Berlin. It was known as a place to find prostitutes and heroin in the 1970s and 80s and was glamorized in books and film such as Christiane F. So when you title a book Zoo Station you might expect that this train station would figure prominently in the book but in the case of Zoo Station: Adventures in East And West Berlin by Ian Walker you find that this train station is mentioned one time in brief passing. When this book was published in 1987 I can only surmise that the title was chosen to cash in on the notoriety of the name Zoo Station.

What follows in the book written by a journalist in Berlin is an account of his time in the city in 1984. The stories aren't so much adventures but more tales of smuggling a poetry book into East Berlin (so devious and wild this author was), rants against the United States, character sketches of people he encounters, and anecdotes about life in both West and East Berlin.

There are many problems with this book and I am not certain if it is entirely nonfiction.

As the book slowly moves along I began to question whether this was nonfiction or fiction or a blending of the two. I suspect that there's more fiction here than truth in this tangled mess. I also began to question the sanity of the author. By the time I reached the middle of the book I felt as though I was reading the ramblings of someone suffering a mental illness. Walker did indeed have problems which he likes to remind you several times and only three years after this book was published he committed suicide in 1990. He jumped from the window of a building in London while shouting that Jesus was coming. A tragic end for sure but in reading this book you could see that he needed help.

About halfway through the book you begin realize that this isn't much a book but more the rambling journal of a mentally ill man. Some of the stories have a certain lack of authenticity about them. I suspect some of the stories are fictitious and either didn't happen as described or never happened at all.

The author repeatedly mentions that he is in financial trouble and keeps referring to unpaid debts back home in London. He mentions them so often you begin to think that he has skipped out and left the country to avoid paying these debts which must have been rather large.

The way he wrote about his love for his much younger girlfriend  Laura was creepy, obsessive and paranoid. He would go on and on about how beautiful she was and how when they would go anywhere together all the men would be staring at her beauty. He would imagine all these men wanting to sleep with her like he did and then he'd go on some insecure and paranoid rant about it. He didn't even like taking her out in public because he was so jealous and paranoid. This was a man in his early 30s but the way he would write about her made it seem like he was a love struck teenager. It was creepy.

Throughout the book Walker is always describing himself as a journalist and he likes to use this title to impress the people he meets in the book. But near the end of the book you find out that isn't even in Berlin on assignment and is there on unpaid leave from the Observer. He claims the unpaid leave was so he could write a book but, cough..cough..I call bullshit. He showed up at a military public relations tour so late, disheveled, hungover and acted so unprofessional that a member of the British military decided to check out his credentials with the Observer because he was suspicious of him. This is when we find out about the unpaid leave and that the Observer didn't even know what he was doing in Berlin and stated that he wasn't on any assignment for them.

To further make me suspect the author's credibility I never believed the authenticity of the character he calls Wolfgang without a last name. He seemed desperate to paint this Wolfgang character as a spy for the Stasi. I wonder if Wolfgang ever existed or was the creation of his imagination. He might of met a person once that people joked was a spy and so he expounded on the idea and developed a character but I really suspect this wasn't a true story. It was if he thought if he could create a story about knowing a Cold War spy he could make the book and himself more interesting. Some of the characters have last names but this Wolfgang's last name was never given which leads me to believe he was fiction. As often as he writes about this Wolfgang and as much as he wants this character to be important you would have thought he could have provided a last name for him. His conversations with this character were often long and detailed like a novel. Knowing that the author was only jotting down notes and not using a recorder I don't believe his memory was good enough to recall such great detail as body language and entire conversations by memory.

Even more curious about Walker's memory he somehow manages to have the exact same conversation with different people in different situations about the arms race and the 'war economy' between the east and west in the Cold War. He isn't the one both times saying these things. He puts the words into the mouths of the supposedly real characters. It happens early in the book at an East Berlin party and then magically near the very end of the book different characters at the British Officer's Club say the near exact same thing. It isn't even plausible that this would happen that these very different people would say the same words in two very different settings.

Then there's the issue of the timeline for this book.

The timeline is very blurry and the author never fully explains just how long he was in Berlin. I suspect he wasn't there for a long time. It seems that he once visited Berlin in 1979, came back to do an assignment in East Berlin with his girlfriend for the Observer and then came back to West Berlin in 1984. Most of the book seems to occur in 1984 which was probably the only time he lived there and that may have only been just a few months. We know at the end of the book he leaves West Berlin but we don't know when that takes place but it seems to be all in the same year. So it is difficult to understand just how well the author even knew Berlin.

At some point after Berlin he runs off to Nicaragua to meet up with a former roommate who was there saving the world. Was the author there just to avoid those debts? Was he there because his young girlfriend that he was obsessed with had left him?

The only thing certain about his stay in Nicaragua was that it was brief too because the book is published in 1987. His time in Nicaragua is also when he writes this book which he mentions was all done from his notes.

Credibility aside the book is tediously boring by the second half. Two unnecessary chapters are more filler in which Walker spends time touring the military installations of the U.S. and British armed forces stationed in West Berlin. Mostly these chapters are recitations of useless facts about the military which no one would find interesting and my eyes glossed over. He offered no context or insight to these numbers and it seemed like these chapters which weren't for the newspaper were just half-assed attempts at research.

Then the final blow of mediocrity is the chapter that Walker doesn't even write himself called Here's Johnny. The chapter is written by one of the friends of Walker that he mentions throughout the book. This Johnny is in no way interesting and is no one important and he never says anything important. Even he begins the chapter by saying, "I am trying to imagine what a western audience would see as the highlights of my life." This Johnny has no last name just like the Wolfgang character and I seriously think he was pure fiction too.

The positives about the book are the descriptions of the city, the people, the contrasts between East and West Berlin, his stories about border crossing procedures, his observations about immigrants in West Berlin and his descriptions of the people and places in the neighborhood of Kreuzberg.

At one point he is riding a bike along the wall in West Berlin and comes to an abandoned Catholic hospital adjacent to the wall. The hospital since becoming vacant had become home to squatters from various nations. The people being squatters were living in precarious conditions and some even had children. Their lives and stories would have made for interesting reading and I kept thinking there's a story worth telling but instead he only mentions it in passing and decides to go climb an observation tower yet again and smoke. What kind of journalist or writer passes up opportunities like this?

Eventually these same descriptions of the train system, meeting the same characters and hanging out in Metropol and Djungel wears thin. For a book to have the word 'adventures' in the title I want some fantastic stories to back up that claim. There never was any adventure. This guy was basically an average guy doing much of nothing in a uniquely interesting city during a period that was once in a lifetime but he was only a hanger on.There's not much of a story here and there is no greater understanding of people, politics or anything really. The book could have been about his own personal journey and struggles or it could have been about life in Berlin but it wasn't a success at either.

Fashion For The Free Mind

Early February of 2016 I went to the SCADFASH Museum of Fashion and Film in Midtown to see the latest exhibition, Daniel Lismore - Be Yourself; Everyone Else Is Taken. I was not familiar with the designs of Lismore and I was not sure what to expect. The exhibition turned out to be a great and worthwhile suprise.

The exhibition was a spectacle of the outrageous and a marvel of exuberant style. Initially I thought of Boy George and Leigh Bowery while walking among the mannequins all done up in these marvelous outfits. While there might be some influence, Lismore has his own unique style; the work was original and meticulous down to the tiniest details. After the initial viewing of an outfit I would have to go back and study it again to see what was missed, as there were plenty of surprises to be found in these elaborate garments.

Here are a few highlights from the exhibition:

Visually there is so much for the eye take in. You have think about what is on display and admire the creativity and craftsmanship. The Coke logo adjacent to the skull is a nice touch of humor.

This might have been my favorite. I loved the magazine cover around the mannequin's head and the painting over the eyelids. This might be speaking to the commodification of the self with the barcode and the marketing slogan.

A brilliant piece of art. I cannot imagine how much it weighs.

Nods to Andy Warhol with the large Marilyn Monroe print and the Campbell's Tomato Soup can atop the head.

I thought this design was quite beautiful. It reminded me of a more extravagant vision of a bridal outfit that Madonna might have worn in the 1980s.

Another one of my favorites.

I spy Boy George. The textures on these fabrics are incredible.

"I'm not trying to seduce you. Would you like me to seduce you?" That entered my mind as I stood before this. The line is from the film The Graduate and was sampled in the 1992 George Michael song Too Funky. My answer was, "yes."

Daniel Lismore is creative director for Sorapol, a London-based atelier. He was raised in England and studied photography and fashion design. His clothes have been worn by numerous celebrities and he's had his work featured by H&M.

During the Atlanta show, Vogue Magazine reviewed the exhibit which consisted of over three thousand pieces. After it left Atlanta it appeared in Miami in late 2016 as part of a SCAD event there.

Out of all the exhibitions I went to see in 2016 this was my favorite. I left there eyes wide open and couldn't stop thinking and talking about it.


*All photos taken by me in February 2016.