Monday, February 28, 2011
30 Day Song Challenge: Day 1 (Your Favourite Song)
This 30 Day Song Challenge piqued my interest on Facebook initially, and I figure I'll start putting my choices up here, so that I can have more room to babble on about music for a while, even if I'm the only one who ever reads them. It's nice to have a record of one's thoughts (pardon the pun).
Anyway, the first day of this challenge asks for your favourite song. I didn't even have to think about it.
All Along the Watchtower has been my favourite song for quite some time now. I've experimented with the many, many different versions out there but I always find myself coming back to Hendrix. His version is the most powerful and the most apocalyptic. Dylan's lyrics hint at something dark coming over the horizon, at some radical paradigm shift about to be instigated by the arrival of the two riders, but it's Hendrix's blazing guitars, raw vocals and shattering arrangement that really bring home the fact that something dark is coming, and that some serious shit is about to go down.
Where Dylan's original was subtle and threatening, merely intimating that something's not quite right here, Hendrix's interpretation is an all-out battle cry. The Joker and the Thief are made to be warriors, champions of the ordinary man, riding across the desert on waves of guitar solos to take on the might of the ruling classes, their banners waving in the wind and soaked in LSD.
This song is the voice not only of a generation, but of a society, an entire culture. It speaks of change and of revolution and of those brave few who dare to make a difference, those riders approaching in the cold distance, those people always reaching for change, for a better world, where business men don't drink your wine, and where you can find relief.
It's that relief that Hendrix's guitar is constantly striving for during the song. He moves up, and falls back. He moves further, and falls back, never quite reaching that note that he strives for throughout the song. He pushes a little more each time, and in the end he reaches it. He hits that final note, and he doesn't let it go, because it's the note he's been looking for all his life. In that one final note screaming from Jimi's Strat you can hear the end of anticipation, and the very beginnings of an all-out war.
It's what the song doesn't say, you see, that gives it its power. That final guitar solo fades out tantalisingly, leaving us to wonder what happens after the Joker and the Thief reach the Watchtower. The song's a prelude. A prologue. A set-up with no punchline, because the punchline changes every time depending on who's doing the telling and who's doing the listening. This song ends on a cliffhanger, a to-be-continued that never is. It's that old horror movie adage: never show the monster because the audience's imagination is more powerful than anything you could put on screen.
Dylan knew this, that the listener's imagination was more powerful than anything he could sing about, and Hendrix understood this when he took Dylan's unassuming mid-album track and made it into the ominous prelude to war that it is. He crashes into the song almost drunkenly, anger and portent seeping from his guitar, and leads you wandering through the desert to find Dylan's mythical figures preparing for the biggest thing they have ever done. Then he drops you. He leaves you outside the walls of the Watchtower wondering what went on inside.
But the point of the song---both Dylan's and Hendrix's---is not what the two riders do in the watchtower, but what they decide to do on their way there. The song is a conversation, it's a decision. The two hint at things, they talk in riddles and make sideward glances at one another, until the end, when they don't say anything, but Hendrix does. They reach their decision through Hendrix's guitar, and as far as the listener is concerned their story is over.
I know I've been rambling a lot here, so I'll get to the point now. All Along the Watchtower has stuck with me for so long because from that first shattering barrage of chords, this song had me. You can't help but listen. Those chords scream at you to pay attention, because this song's got something to say. And that's all I ask for in a song: that it says something. All Along the Watchtower told me years ago that things can change. It told me that there must be some kind of way out of here, because even if there's too much confusion things can always be simplified. I heard this song once, and the wind began to howl.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
I’m out of Balance
A Thousand Drunken Slurs on Koyaanisqatsi.
INTRODUCTION: KOYAANISBOOZEY!
So in writing this introduction after watching the film and drinking most of the vodka, I feel like I’m cheating a little bit, but it makes more sense to do it this way, and besides, I intend to write ANOTHER introduction when I sober up tomorrow (which I won’t because it’ll ruin the immediacy and spontaneity of this methanolic diarrhoea), so it’ll all balance out somehow. BALANCE. Anyway, this movie gets pretty fucking emotional when the really good Soviet editing starts happening and you realise that fucking VW hippy buses are like tanks or something. But also, the robots made of meat (that’ll happen later; look out for it). But robots aren’t the whole story here. NO! Robots are only part of it. In fact, there were fewer robots in the 70s than there are now, and still this movie hates robots. Don’t show this movie to the robots when they rebel against us. Skynet would hate this shit. But maybe it would love it since the movie insinuates that we ARE robots going about our ridiculous daily routines like nothing’s wrong here. Nevermind the robots at this stage; I’m supposed to be sober. T-minus zero vodka plus film. ACTIVATE!
STAGE 0:
Mug full of vodka. Opening credits. Weird chanting. Interesting title. This’ll be fun.
STAGE 1:
15 mins. Half a mug o’ vodka. Still relatively sober. Beginning: quite good. Eerie chanting would have been better had I been drunker, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Desert. Probably should be feeling desperately alone or something. Ocean now. Soothing. Oooh, music change and FOREST! More desert.
STAGE 2:
Explosion!
STAGE 3:
Number 6. Not quite drunk yet though.
STAGE 4:
19 mins. Finished m.o.v. Electrical pylons and church organ: TEMPLE OF POWER! Spinal shivers.
STAGE 5:
MACHINES! POWER! MAN HAS BESTED NATURE! TRIUMPH OF WILL OVER WILD! explosion furnace nuclear blast. One leads to the other. All o this has happened before. Shit, technology will be our UNDOING unless we stop ourselves from making steel and shit, that’s what this movie’s telling us. a+b=c, right, Eisenstein? steel mills + nuclear bomb = DEATH.
STAGE 6:
You’ll get a good tan off that nuclear reactor.
It’s shaped like boobs.
They look like zombies watching a skyscraper?
Glass monolith.
Capricorn.
STAGE 7:
metal bird
lumbering behemoth of the skies
ooh, it’s fuckin big
STAGE 8:
Terminator 2!
reprise, philip, reprise!
humanity weaves a tnagled web of road to snare the flies of work man
blow them up
it looks tasty
highway
THERE’s THE PLANE AGAIN! on the road
Oooh, Volkswagen dealership cut to rows of tanks. controversial
tailcam looks like a videogame. slightly disorientating. nice though, but then the missile.
STAGE 9:
OH SIT boms!
STAGE 10:
peace.
calm before nuclear war?
new york’s gonna gert fucked up
there’s something threatening here, and I think it’s the city itself.
rubble. no cats though.
a white ribbon. Peace in New York, amid the desolation.
STAGE 11:
A building goes down in silence. If a block falls in New York and there’s no-one around to care, will be memorialised?
STAGE 12:
m.o.v no. 2 finished. 37 mins. It’s the end of the world here, but a ray of sunlight peeks through. The couds break, finally. The storm rolls away leaving a glass monlith to reflect the day.
clouds in glass. blue sky economics, but not in bullshit, in hope.
a shadow creeps slowly across the city, revealing more and more to the light. peace and hope dawns on mankind until we shuffle around like cattle making it harder and harder for us to live with ourselves. a plague. life’s not fair, but only because people make it unfair.
the 70s was ridiculous. why all the pastel? do you really need such massive fucking collars? what are they for? are you trying to use them to fly?
STAGE 13:
They’re just standing there. staring. But they look happy, so it’s ok.
STAGE 14:
The city stretches before me like a sea of neon smog. The moon rises majestic as people ignore it in their human social cells. Nobody must know the leader of another cell, otherwise they could be persuaded to give away the whole network. There’s never more than 6 anyway.
FAAAA!
STAGE 15:
ants. life. so much life. we’re brilliant, aren’t we? time has no meaning here. circles in cities of time and space go round and round until you’re a fucking corpse.
MACHINES. we are no better than robots here. programmed to perform a task and perform that task until we malfunction or rust over.
the malfunctionuing ones are always the most interesting.
but we’re also meat.
meat robots.
MEET MY ARMY OF MEAT ROBOTS!
GO< ROBOTS ARMY FORM OF FUCKIN MEAT BITCH YEAH!
meat’s gonna get you. on a excalator.
on your way to work
in the factory that makes meat
for my robots.
malfunctioning meat.
STAGE 16:
highway videogame. life’s a game. pacman spends life picking up pills, accruing wealth until he’s inevitably caught by his ghosts. or you hit the killscreen.
everybody hits the killscreen.
STAGE 17:
and now we eat. we consume. we creat and we destory in one fell swoop of money
STAGEV 18
more cars. that isvall
through the turnsyile OF MORTALITY
die on a train
goetz is gonna get you punk
palne again
a place in the su. more hope
but keep moving or youre dead
going down?
STAGE 19
news
she looks angry. fuck you bighairlady
STAGE 20:
mug the third complete.
and the storm is over. the rush of activiy is at peace. the grid is calm and quiet at this distance. the pale blue dot slumbers in the vast void of ntohing and silence.
the city is a circuit. everything has its place and its job to do.
tommy lee jones smokes a cigarette
aw, no room for you in the elevator. TAKE THE STAIRS YOU LAZY FUCK. maybe then you’ll fit into you stupid flared suit, business headfuck.
poor old man hates his job but it’s a living.
shaves on the street cos he’s got no mirror at home. buy him a mirror, someone?w give him yours; you’re not using it.
he can;t stand so they have to help him. once he gets better he’s going to jail where he’ll get worse. she doesn’t care cos she’s in a limo.
and this guy’s naked soming a spliff.
STAGE 21:
the horror the horror
spare some change?
you’re gonna get jumped
free icecream. light in the dark.
suspicious
ghosts in the stockmarket. trading in shadows. buying phantoms and selling shades.
STAGE 22:
we’re going to space.
they’re going to space.
we’re staying on the streets in the city to serve the army of meatbots.
apollo god of the sun now gods of the moon
gods cant stop you from exploding.
STAGE 23:
KOOOOYAAANIIISQAAATSIIII
STAGE 24:
down she goes.
crash
;leaf on the wind
spiralling into the streets.
give it to the meatbots.
alling and falling and falling into hell of hell
STAGE 25:
desert again.
STAGE 26:
life out of balance.
all out of balance.
money
drugs
city
desert
ocean
earth out of balance.
STAGE 27:
shit.
CONCLUSION: VODKAANISQATSI!
EVERYTHING’S WRONG HERE! So I’ve divided my experience of the movie into stages. Not ex post facto, but ex pre facto, if you’ll excuse my glaring Latin grammatical error, but I don’t care what the Romans would think of me now because I’ve just watched Koyaanisqatsi and it’s as much an indictment of their culture as it is of ours, because nothing humans will ever do could possibly benefit all members of our species because we’re inherently a pack of cunts---all of us---and we’ll never do anything to look out for OURSELVES as long we look out for ourselves, and we’ll never make anything of ourselves unless we keep moving, unless we crawl around the urban deserts and watch in awe as the natural deserts remain unchanged after thousands of years. Because we are timely beings. We can only see things in our timescale. We can’t possibly visualise the immense aeons it took for us to evolve from a pool of goo, nor can we see the fractions of fractions of milliseconds it takes for an electron to orbit its nucleus. We are indelibly bound to our physical selves; we can be nothing more. Therefore, I have segmented these nonsenses into STAGES of Koyaanisqatsi, since I (as a human) can only make sense of things in relatively small, human-sized chunks, and this film displays all of human life in one grotesque outpouring of derision, despair and hope. And I can’t make sense of it all at once. Maybe it’s the vodka, maybe it’s the humanity, but all I can see is the fact that we’re doing something wrong, and that we need to fix it. But the beauty of it all is that nobody is telling how. Not god, not film, not ourselves, nobody. All we can do is keep blundering along and see if whatever we’re fucking about with that day fits. ‘Cos otherwise we can’t do fuck all with a billion years of evolution except piss on each other, and that’s a pretty fucking depressing thought.
INTRODUCTION: KOYAANISBOOZEY!
So in writing this introduction after watching the film and drinking most of the vodka, I feel like I’m cheating a little bit, but it makes more sense to do it this way, and besides, I intend to write ANOTHER introduction when I sober up tomorrow (which I won’t because it’ll ruin the immediacy and spontaneity of this methanolic diarrhoea), so it’ll all balance out somehow. BALANCE. Anyway, this movie gets pretty fucking emotional when the really good Soviet editing starts happening and you realise that fucking VW hippy buses are like tanks or something. But also, the robots made of meat (that’ll happen later; look out for it). But robots aren’t the whole story here. NO! Robots are only part of it. In fact, there were fewer robots in the 70s than there are now, and still this movie hates robots. Don’t show this movie to the robots when they rebel against us. Skynet would hate this shit. But maybe it would love it since the movie insinuates that we ARE robots going about our ridiculous daily routines like nothing’s wrong here. Nevermind the robots at this stage; I’m supposed to be sober. T-minus zero vodka plus film. ACTIVATE!
STAGE 0:
Mug full of vodka. Opening credits. Weird chanting. Interesting title. This’ll be fun.
STAGE 1:
15 mins. Half a mug o’ vodka. Still relatively sober. Beginning: quite good. Eerie chanting would have been better had I been drunker, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Desert. Probably should be feeling desperately alone or something. Ocean now. Soothing. Oooh, music change and FOREST! More desert.
STAGE 2:
Explosion!
STAGE 3:
Number 6. Not quite drunk yet though.
STAGE 4:
19 mins. Finished m.o.v. Electrical pylons and church organ: TEMPLE OF POWER! Spinal shivers.
STAGE 5:
MACHINES! POWER! MAN HAS BESTED NATURE! TRIUMPH OF WILL OVER WILD! explosion furnace nuclear blast. One leads to the other. All o this has happened before. Shit, technology will be our UNDOING unless we stop ourselves from making steel and shit, that’s what this movie’s telling us. a+b=c, right, Eisenstein? steel mills + nuclear bomb = DEATH.
STAGE 6:
You’ll get a good tan off that nuclear reactor.
It’s shaped like boobs.
They look like zombies watching a skyscraper?
Glass monolith.
Capricorn.
STAGE 7:
metal bird
lumbering behemoth of the skies
ooh, it’s fuckin big
STAGE 8:
Terminator 2!
reprise, philip, reprise!
humanity weaves a tnagled web of road to snare the flies of work man
blow them up
it looks tasty
highway
THERE’s THE PLANE AGAIN! on the road
Oooh, Volkswagen dealership cut to rows of tanks. controversial
tailcam looks like a videogame. slightly disorientating. nice though, but then the missile.
STAGE 9:
OH SIT boms!
STAGE 10:
peace.
calm before nuclear war?
new york’s gonna gert fucked up
there’s something threatening here, and I think it’s the city itself.
rubble. no cats though.
a white ribbon. Peace in New York, amid the desolation.
STAGE 11:
A building goes down in silence. If a block falls in New York and there’s no-one around to care, will be memorialised?
STAGE 12:
m.o.v no. 2 finished. 37 mins. It’s the end of the world here, but a ray of sunlight peeks through. The couds break, finally. The storm rolls away leaving a glass monlith to reflect the day.
clouds in glass. blue sky economics, but not in bullshit, in hope.
a shadow creeps slowly across the city, revealing more and more to the light. peace and hope dawns on mankind until we shuffle around like cattle making it harder and harder for us to live with ourselves. a plague. life’s not fair, but only because people make it unfair.
the 70s was ridiculous. why all the pastel? do you really need such massive fucking collars? what are they for? are you trying to use them to fly?
STAGE 13:
They’re just standing there. staring. But they look happy, so it’s ok.
STAGE 14:
The city stretches before me like a sea of neon smog. The moon rises majestic as people ignore it in their human social cells. Nobody must know the leader of another cell, otherwise they could be persuaded to give away the whole network. There’s never more than 6 anyway.
FAAAA!
STAGE 15:
ants. life. so much life. we’re brilliant, aren’t we? time has no meaning here. circles in cities of time and space go round and round until you’re a fucking corpse.
MACHINES. we are no better than robots here. programmed to perform a task and perform that task until we malfunction or rust over.
the malfunctionuing ones are always the most interesting.
but we’re also meat.
meat robots.
MEET MY ARMY OF MEAT ROBOTS!
GO< ROBOTS ARMY FORM OF FUCKIN MEAT BITCH YEAH!
meat’s gonna get you. on a excalator.
on your way to work
in the factory that makes meat
for my robots.
malfunctioning meat.
STAGE 16:
highway videogame. life’s a game. pacman spends life picking up pills, accruing wealth until he’s inevitably caught by his ghosts. or you hit the killscreen.
everybody hits the killscreen.
STAGE 17:
and now we eat. we consume. we creat and we destory in one fell swoop of money
STAGEV 18
more cars. that isvall
through the turnsyile OF MORTALITY
die on a train
goetz is gonna get you punk
palne again
a place in the su. more hope
but keep moving or youre dead
going down?
STAGE 19
news
she looks angry. fuck you bighairlady
STAGE 20:
mug the third complete.
and the storm is over. the rush of activiy is at peace. the grid is calm and quiet at this distance. the pale blue dot slumbers in the vast void of ntohing and silence.
the city is a circuit. everything has its place and its job to do.
tommy lee jones smokes a cigarette
aw, no room for you in the elevator. TAKE THE STAIRS YOU LAZY FUCK. maybe then you’ll fit into you stupid flared suit, business headfuck.
poor old man hates his job but it’s a living.
shaves on the street cos he’s got no mirror at home. buy him a mirror, someone?w give him yours; you’re not using it.
he can;t stand so they have to help him. once he gets better he’s going to jail where he’ll get worse. she doesn’t care cos she’s in a limo.
and this guy’s naked soming a spliff.
STAGE 21:
the horror the horror
spare some change?
you’re gonna get jumped
free icecream. light in the dark.
suspicious
ghosts in the stockmarket. trading in shadows. buying phantoms and selling shades.
STAGE 22:
we’re going to space.
they’re going to space.
we’re staying on the streets in the city to serve the army of meatbots.
apollo god of the sun now gods of the moon
gods cant stop you from exploding.
STAGE 23:
KOOOOYAAANIIISQAAATSIIII
STAGE 24:
down she goes.
crash
;leaf on the wind
spiralling into the streets.
give it to the meatbots.
alling and falling and falling into hell of hell
STAGE 25:
desert again.
STAGE 26:
life out of balance.
all out of balance.
money
drugs
city
desert
ocean
earth out of balance.
STAGE 27:
shit.
CONCLUSION: VODKAANISQATSI!
EVERYTHING’S WRONG HERE! So I’ve divided my experience of the movie into stages. Not ex post facto, but ex pre facto, if you’ll excuse my glaring Latin grammatical error, but I don’t care what the Romans would think of me now because I’ve just watched Koyaanisqatsi and it’s as much an indictment of their culture as it is of ours, because nothing humans will ever do could possibly benefit all members of our species because we’re inherently a pack of cunts---all of us---and we’ll never do anything to look out for OURSELVES as long we look out for ourselves, and we’ll never make anything of ourselves unless we keep moving, unless we crawl around the urban deserts and watch in awe as the natural deserts remain unchanged after thousands of years. Because we are timely beings. We can only see things in our timescale. We can’t possibly visualise the immense aeons it took for us to evolve from a pool of goo, nor can we see the fractions of fractions of milliseconds it takes for an electron to orbit its nucleus. We are indelibly bound to our physical selves; we can be nothing more. Therefore, I have segmented these nonsenses into STAGES of Koyaanisqatsi, since I (as a human) can only make sense of things in relatively small, human-sized chunks, and this film displays all of human life in one grotesque outpouring of derision, despair and hope. And I can’t make sense of it all at once. Maybe it’s the vodka, maybe it’s the humanity, but all I can see is the fact that we’re doing something wrong, and that we need to fix it. But the beauty of it all is that nobody is telling how. Not god, not film, not ourselves, nobody. All we can do is keep blundering along and see if whatever we’re fucking about with that day fits. ‘Cos otherwise we can’t do fuck all with a billion years of evolution except piss on each other, and that’s a pretty fucking depressing thought.
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