Art Thou Mementing Mori? Truly?

This article isn’t meant for those of you who are indisputably close to the grave, more for those whose number can only come unexpectedly.  Please do skip this one, if you eat mori for breakfast every day.  Much love.

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I wanna make artistic things happen.  It gets difficult sometimes, u kno, all the usual reasons.  For some those reasons outweigh the desire, but that is not true of me.  I usually have something on my mind, trying to get free.  Ambitions, frustrated but not wholly defeated.  You can see my attempts from time to time.

I see writers non-writing and think these people don’t have my ambition, and maybe that means they also don’t have my fear.  Again, I’ve expressed this before, but death haunts my steps.  As much as my naturally upbeat brain juice makes me feel like a future in which I continue to exist will get much better in time, something else cuts through the optimism to say that nobody is guaranteed any amount of time.  I could die or lose critical faculties at any given moment for any given reason, lose forever the chance to have accomplished something cool.

On my most recent somewhat related post, I got a lengthy comment that could be construed as hectoring me on my elitism.  I’ve gotten comments like that before, whenever I looked down my nose at the mendicants.  But let’s just assume for the moment that I am truly better than the lowly masses in this.  That I have some sparkling potential that unspent will constitute an egregious loss to the whole of humanity.  Don’t I owe it to the people to win?  To live long enough to succeed?

Comedy paragraph aside, back to business.  The business of lamenting mortality, or lamenting the creative energy wasted in service to Tha Man.  We’re all (anybody lowly enough to read this because they are not on secret rich people internet with uncle jeffrey’s ghost) getting drained in this way, it’s true.  But if you want it hard enough, you can make some things happen.  Like I have, here and there, as able.  Just think about what you’d like to have done before you die, because who knows when that’s going to happen?

Get crackin’.

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We Lost Gost

Seven years ago this day I went to a concert, some cool newish bands my husband was into.  They impressed.  The opening act was a lady-fronted local death rock outfit who put on a fun show.  The headliner was a famous international playboy of darksynth, some kind of miniature frenchman.  Somewhere in between was his fellow genre titan, James Lollar, known professionally as Gost.  About one month ago, he died young from undisclosed causes.  His family’s fundraiser is still up and hasn’t reached its goal, if you’re interested in paying respects.

I don’t know if David Lynch’s passing a year ago softened my man’s resolve but he’s been feeling the sadness for this one even more overtly.  I wasn’t as close to Lollar’s art and so am less affected, but as ever, this kind of thing sucks tremendous.  Causes undisclosed, but what’s hosing down musicians by the score these days?  Don’t do drugs, kids.  They’ve gotten demonstrably worse.  Maybe that wasn’t it, I won’t pry, but still.  Fucking knock it off!

There was something about this guy that was special.  There are a lot of musicians these days that are nothing but a face.  James Gost wore a skull mask or corpse paint at every concert and in publicity material.  Not a clown about it like other masked musicians, it felt like humbleness here.  At the show he was tucked in stage right, looking smol and serious, his presence overpowered by fog machines and a searing light display. Even the light display had humility of a kind; Perturbator turned the club into Close Encounters after that.

Gost belonged to a genre where most of the bands are one or two people, often just one.  This feels significant.  Yes, it’s easier to make a full sound sans bandmates when you’re in electronic music, but it also feels apiece with this moment in time where everyone is apathetic and retiring, too stressed and fragile and deadened to accomplish anything above and beyond.  People who have the gumption to make something happen have trouble finding anyone willing or able to help.  And making art of any kind – especially more ambitious things like albums – does require you to go farther, to put in extra work.  I usually say this of people who put in the work to make the world a better place through activism, but here I’ll say it of artists – long live the fighters.

Or maybe his isolation was the result of having more vision than others would allow to him.  He was in bands before, but stuck in the rhythm section, propping up somebody else’s ideas.  His innovation was only possible as a solo act.  Darksynth emerged from synthwave, which is more video game inspired, to fold in influences of John Carpenter soundtracks, glitch, and industrial.  The result is the heaviest music I’ve ever heard.  I remember when Ministry’s ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ sounded heavy to me.  Might as well be the Tetris soundtrack these days.  It has a chilling spooky vibe, but more human somehow than related genres.  You can feel the haunted guy inside the glitched beat.

And maybe that heaviness why I haven’t gone in for darkwave as much as I could have.  I’m going soft, with my ’80s nostalgia bullshit.  But I recognize greatness.  At the concert I was too wimpy and unambitious to stand with my husband down on the floor, sitting my ass on the balcony.  I had been crushing my feet at malwart during the days back then, so excuse.  When Gost came on, when the show went from death rock to darksynth, the young people stood up and danced.  In Seattle that’s as amazing as the dead rising.  I remember a fat guy who had seemingly come alone – someone who could be disregarded in life, perhaps socially maladroit – and he was willing to brave the disapproval of others to rock out to his favorite music.  I salute you, hombre.

Salute as well to the artist that moved him.  James Lollar, the Gost.  Condolences to his wife and children, to other family, and to fans – including the one next to me in bed.  It just ain’t right.

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I’m Surrounded by Some Pizzaheads

I once mentioned that Nirvana replaced Pearl Jam in my esteem, way back in teen years, quite completely.  I can still listen to Nirvana, I can barely tolerate Pearl Jam.  They had a song on the Singles soundtrack called “State of Love and Trust” that is pretty coo, “Evenflow” is kinda … alright well those are uptempo rockity jams and the meaningless yarling vocals just blend with the instrumentation.  Anything where the idea of the song is coming across, where some grain of meaning is breaching the surface of sound, well, that’s a fuckin’ mistake with those guys.

I found myself remembering their song “Black.”  There are some words to be understood in it, and others which are not.  Bad ratio.  Failure.  Here is my best recollection of the song.  I can’t actually remember how it began, which is usually my in for remembering the rest, so it’s a bit scattershot…

…Something something something something…
Oh all five horizons.  I’m surrounded by some pizzaheads.
Her legs spread out before me.  Has taken a turn.

And twisted thoughts that spin
Round my head, I’m spinnin’, I’m spinnin’,
Oh and all I wanted was.  Everthang.
Oohoohoohoohooh Ohh and all she gave me was, uh, all she was.
Whoooa

Now there’s somethin’ bad. Sayed on broken glass
Of what was everthang.
And the pictures there. Of men washed in black
Tattooed everthang.
Oh good love gone bad. Turned my world to black.
Tattooed all I had.  All I have.  All I’ll ever beeyeeyeeyeeyeeyee Wah-OGH!

Doodle doot doot doodle doo  (Eddie Vedder actually sings that shit)
I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life, I know you’ll be a star
In somebody else’s sky, why o why, why o why, Whyyyyyyyy can’t it beeyeeyeeyeeyee
Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiine Wah-OGH!
Doodle doot doot doodle doo
Whooooa-OH!

Anyway, feel nostalgic for the spooge band?  Don’t.

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World of Main Characters

RPGs get funny the more people you have involved, reaching a kind of critical level of foolery with MMORPGs.  The basic old skool unit of RPG is a few bozos and a GM, or in video games, a few bozos you control vs. designed world/story.  In the original Final Fantasy you control the prophesied ‘warriors of light’ who have come to save the world, because crystals.  A small number of important bozos can be main characters without pushing believability too much, but what happens when you have thousands, running around doing dances?  When everybody has one black wing and one white wing and an eyeball that leaks golden sparkles and the death scythe of wunkred +20?

Perhaps in response to that vibe, I wanted to make a character that looked like an NPC in the one MMO I ever played, The Secret World.  Unfortunately the name I wanted was out, so I gave up.  Just as well, it’s all wasted time.  Fine Paper Gifts the NPC-turned-PC was not meant to be.

But as I’ve been turning over a story idea in my head, this feeling was coming back to me.  When you have adventures, romances, thrillers filling the libraries and virtual storefronts of the world to the brim, you’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of specialest people in the whole world.  Even when they try to cut against that grain, the circumstances surrounding them make it clear that isn’t true.  Just because you have brown hair doesn’t mean you’re not special, when all the sexiest dudes in the world want to make you their faerie queene, or when you have a certain set of skills that lets you save tha white house from nucular terrorizzin’.

This is a variation on “why write when there are already so many stories?  why does mine matter?”  Probably just the feels of any artist during some grey time between here and there, nothing deep.  But I’m kinda like this.  If I make another special bozo to launch like a solitary molecule into the specialbozosphere, they better not cloy.  They better not annoy.

Best way to avoid making people feel the teeming masses behind your characters, I think, is to have a better story.  You’re not going to out-batman Batman.  That problem solved, well, we just have to figure out how to tell a better story.  That shouldn’t be difficult, right?

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Errol Flynn the Butcher

Content Warnings: Gore, Horror.

In my post-wokenment action movies have become a skosh more sour in my mind, contemplating how they could fuel the kind of national pysche that thinks war is good, that police need to be less restrained. But I’m usually thinking about that in terms of guns. What about rapiers and longbows?

American cinema and TV through most of the 20th century, when boomer opinions were being formed, violence was largely bloodless and consequence free.  Cowboys shoot people, they fall down, and afterwards we are not treated to the scene of bodies dangling from every surface around town square.  But likewise, Robin Hood or Ivanhoe pushes his sword at a guy and he just falls over the railing, body magically disappearing from consideration after the fact.

Obviously painting guns as harmless fun is the more problematic notion, as evidenced by the libertarian fantasia Adam is reviewing, and as those weapons can cause more damage more quickly.  But still, medieval weapons are nasty things.  Particularly longswords like you’d see wielded in Arthurian legend.  And medieval people didn’t have the same illusions about that.  Maybe it’s easy to forget the longer you go without a war, without print media, but I’ve seen medieval illustrations where guys are split in half, insides looking like salmon filets, blood flowing out in ribbons or sprays of droplets.  Not realistic style, but realistic damage.

I mentioned Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves recently.  That movie was more able to put a bloody slash on a sword victim than in Errol Flynn’s day, but still wasn’t quite there.  To be realistic, head should be flopping, blood shooting like a fire hose, limbs falling left and right, guts strewn across the battlements.  A few edgier movies have pushed in those directions.  Is that a good thing?  Hong Kong blood opera never really got me to “say no to guns” before, because it still showed one side as being a bunch of disposable nobodies, showed heroes as having the most hit points, by merit of their towering will and virtue.

But that’s not my point today.  Mostly, I’m just feeling darkly amused by imagining suave old time swashbucklers steeped in gore and still stepping lightly, being quippy.  Freddy Krueger liked quips too.  Let’s see Robin Hood ending entire human lives in brutal agony, slaying mother’s sons, fathers, and men of honor, just trying to defend the king.  Robin Hood laughing while you hold your guts in and fall onto a pile of your writhing and mutilated friends.  Let’s see Robin Hood and the Ocean of Blood.

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Hulking Out and Kenning Gee

last night i had a dream the hulk was on a rampage and the only way to get him to stop was for some other super-guy with super duper strengths to cut open his chest and inject a sedative straight into his heart.  a bunch of super randos were making attempt after gory attempt.

at some point within the last forty-eight hours it has crept over me that i remember not one but two kenny g tunes.  there was that one, i think his first big hit?, that’s all like “badoodledoo, badoodledoo, badoody-doo.  badoodledoo, badoodledoo, badoody-doot-doot-doo!”  then there was this other one with a vocal sample in it, some ambiguous crowd of people saying “slip of the tongue” over and over again.  “slip of the tongue, badadoo badadoo doodoot Slip! moodledoodle.”

that shit sucked boy.

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Brainjackin: Sad Endings

This one’s a little bit of a journey so bear with me.  There was a window in my twenties when I lived with my dad and his girlfriend and her two kids.  I don’t remember if this was before my brother went into the army and left the state, or after he got back to finish his last tour here, but he was around.  Hang on, was I twenty yet?  Whatever.  Throw in Bad-Moustache-Having Guy and My Tech Support Guy to round out the picture.  That lady -the girlfriend aforementioned- had a species of BPD that allowed her to run a very clean household – the kind of clean that facilitated parties.

So we arranged a movie night with big snacks and a lot of DVDs in the queue.  Or were they VHS?  Shit, I think they were VHS tapes.  Way back.  In the most memorable moment of the evening, some guy was being burned alive in Braveheart and two of the attendees said in unison, “and it stays crunchy, even in milk!”  How did they think of the same rude application of pop culture reference for that image?  We partook of all the same media, so not impossible, but it was unlikely enough to amuse.

The most consequential moment of the night came later.  I had the most staying power and after everyone else had left or gone to sleep, I feel like it was after two AM?, I popped in Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.  I felt big feelings, beginning to end.  I’m mostly incapable of crying, but I cried a little.  I recognize now that you should not trust how you felt about a movie if you were watching it before dawn, but the damage was done.  I got a tattoo of the movie’s logo on my wrist.  At least it wasn’t Sister Act 2.

I still have that tattoo, but it’s gone through a few changes over the years.  First up, it was originally laid down in red ink, over the warnings of the tattoo artist.  Red is very prone to fading and fade it did.  Probably didn’t help that the heavy-handed ex-con put a lot of scar tissue into the cut, and some pigment came off with scabs.  But the symbol, where it appeared in the movie, was usually spattered and smeary.  Illegibility suited it, but years of fading later, an art school acquaintance of my husband was apprenticed to be a tattoo artist and needed victims for practice, so it seemed like time to get it touched up.

This was the friend who valiantly defended my husband and others from an art school clown attack, and she used to wear a t-shirt with JESUS IS A CUNT in giant lettering, so genial to us.  However, I cannot trust her taste in music since that occasion, because her mix at the tattoo parlor included post-Danzig Misfits – that is to say, christian Misfits, and they genuinely did sound christian.  I might be nearly tone deaf, but I can tell the difference between Creed and Nickelback.  They both suck, but the christianity of the former has a certain quality to it, better identifiable to musicians, but detectable to a discerning lay person, and I detected the shit out of it.

Anyway, the work was a little dubious and the tattoo is still a mess.  But the important thing, to my husband’s reckoning, is that it doesn’t look like a stamp from the club that I’d neglected to wash off the next day.

The important thing about all that is to say that 12 Monkeys had a sad ending and may have been the first sad ending I was ever able to appreciate.  I don’t think that speaks well to Terry Gilliam’s talents, because I was the kind of basic bitch that was not at all ready for genuinely sad endings.  He communicated this sense that Cole’s life in a time loop was a kind of immortality.  He had struggles and died young, but in the course of that life, he experienced love – and that somehow vindicated -or at least mitigated- the tragedy.  Basically, it was a fake sad ending.

Flash forward to the earliest days of going out with my husband, when he introduced me to the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa – particularly the movies Cure and Sakebi.  Those movies show horrible events ending horribly, but still work as art, because they’re the sad mask in that ancient symbol of drama.  Tragedy is a legitimate art form that I never appreciated.  Even when first introduced to Kurosawa, I wasn’t ready for it.  I told him as much – “I recognize the artistic power of this work, but it feels like it isn’t for me.”  I wanted to see stories about heroes overcoming hardship, lovers getting to love.  Happy Endings, basically.  One of those drama masks was The Grim and Grimy One, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

But the movies stayed with me, in my mind.  I couldn’t forget them because they had that power, and from the memories of them alone, I came to appreciate tragedy in a way that I never had before.  The culmination of this came a few years ago, the first time that I ever wrote a tragic ending.  Did it work?  Was it as good as the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa?

Surely not, but it made more sense for the piece than a happy ending would have.  I served the story at the expense of the happiness of my little babies.  That’s artistic growth, and I owe it to my husband, which makes this another instance of Brainjackin’™.  Thanks man!

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Everything I do, I do it 4 U

Hey Americans.  Yeah, you.  Remember how much you loved Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring the Kevin of Costner and the Mary Elizabeth of Master and Tonio?  You know it’s true.  Everything I do, I do it for you…  Bryan Adams at the top of his game.  Christian Slater doing a cockney accent.  Kevin inspiring Eddie Izzard’s bit about American Robin Hoods and Mel Brooks’s Men in Tights.  Morgan Freeman rocketing to fame.  Kevin Costner’s entire booty ass.  “I’ve never seen a noblewoman’s breasts before.”

I’m remembering this because I’ve been saying “huzzah” to low-key good news for long enough that my husband and mother-in-law have noticed, without me noticing I was doing this weird thing.  And I wondered if I got it from the episode of China, IL where Baby Cakes started thinking he was Kevin Hood, which consisted of medieval violence and saying “huzzah” whenever he appeared.  Then I just remembered that moment.

My family watching the shit out of that movie on VHS.  The soundtrack dominating the airwaves.  Not a negative word in sight.  Everybody was hyped for that goofy shit, and then it was gone, leaving a hole in our little hearts.  Dredge up your VHS player and watch it again.  You know you wanna.  Huzzah!

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Just Doesn’t Hit the Same

There was some debate as to the validity of my notion that Dobald Upchuck Scump is an atheist, but you know, shitler and I at least have this much in common – we are blasphemies in motion.  But with his hand on the bible and mine on the atheist bloge network, it just doesn’t hit the same when I make like him.  I’ll hafta try harder next time.

**EDIT, important note below the image**

** i know some people would feel weird about saying anything positive to ai art, so in case it wasn’t clear from how fast this very detailed and rendered image was produced, i did the same thing tvfnk did, and had ai assist my iconoclasm.

midjourney did a terrible job of it, chatgpt’s thing was crashing.  google gemini was the winner, producing almost exactly this image in one try.  i’d fed it two photos of me.

anyway i am in favor of ai art being a thing, so ideally do not be trying to wage that war in my particular comments.  mano has a topical post to do that with.

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Trump is Clearly an Atheist

Atheism is not an intellectual achievement.  Maybe for some people it can be, people who grew up in an environment completely drenched in god sauce, atheism and doubt never being allowed a voice.  And in that void, they had to rebuild atheism from scratch, using the power of reason to give voice to and justification for rejecting everything they’d ever been told to believe about the universe.

But my cat is nigh-thoughtless and he’s an atheist, no need for any of that.  He never had the power to understand the lie of religion in the first place.

President for Short-ass Rest of His Life Donlad Pumpkinhead Shitler IV possesses the atheism of a cat.  He will never fear death because he is incapable of grasping the reality of it on an emotional level.  It means nothing to him.  Should we really expect that he has anything like a conception of life beyond his own, enough to imagine a creator that came before him, a creator that would have any opinion that matters regarding his worldly conduct?

The people who trust that he is christian are the same as the people who believe he is honest.  On at least this one issue, we gotta admit, he’s one of ours.  Likewise most of us in the atheist community are “culturally christian,” carrying with us the patriarchal and zealously conformist baggage that entails.  Unsurprising in hindsight to see our “thought leaders” in the same sordid company as hair fuhrer.

When I say these things, on some level you know it’s just to court controversy in my scene.  But also I feel a need to distinguish myself from the shitbird hypocrites of the right wing by not playing the no true scotsman game.  If that sack of shit wants to say he’s an atheist – which he won’t – he has as much right to the word as DickDawk, Spam Hairish, and the rest.

…and the rest, here on Epstein’s Iiiiiisle!

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