this is my first real attempt at blogging about a novel. i’ve begun embarking on reading the “great novels” of the 20th century and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! was one that i had been reading that i needed to finish. this was my second foray into Faulkner after perhaps the best novel i’ve ever read (the ravishingly brilliant The Sound and the Fury) and thus anything less was guaranteed to be a minor letdown. this is true of Absalom, though I can still say i’ve just finished an incredible piece of southern gothic literature of the highest form. i’ll steer clear of plot summaries and such and focus on my take of Faulkner as i’ve read…
many may take offense to Faulkner’s obscene run on sentences and mid sentence leaps from internal narratives to dialogue to stream of consciousness and back. i take another view completely: Faulkner requires of the reader the utmost attention and fidelity of thought. the reader must latch on and absord every sentence, every word, lest he/she lose the battle of comprehension. and call me a sucker for flowery language, but I don’t mind a 1,300 word run on sentence (literally, a Guinness record) if it’s peppered with the poetry of Faulkner’s pen. his manner of capturing the true mind of a character and laying it bare for the reader is a true design of mastery, though i’ll admit that through the use of language and narrative devices heap drama on situations which by today’s standards seem quite trivial. i guess my point, in layman’s terms, is: no matter where you feel Faulkner’s place in the pantheon of great American novelists lies, the guy could write his ass off…and i do suppose that’s all i need to be entertained.

Peter Watkin’s Edvard Munch is one of those rare films that prodded me to dig deeper into it’s subject matter, the great Norwegian artist. Watkins, stylistically, produced a sort of proto-dogme docudrama that has been immitated by many independent directors since his innovations in the genre. having previously seen, and been disappointed by, the anarchist/counterculture psychodrama Punishment Park, i had only mild hopes for Munch. this film, however, clocking in at 3 1/2 hours, proved a well shaped, almost delicate character study of the tormented artist, along with the social and familial politics of mid to late 19th century Norway. the stories of the sufferings of the Munch family due to tuberculosis and the social interplay of the Norwegian artist collective Kristiania Boheme (which included such luminaries as Swedish dramatist August Strindberg and Nobel Prize winner Sigrid Undset) were gracefully interwoven with the artist’s works, which were skillfully used to tell their own stories. themes of anarchy and specifically the sexual liberation of women and the subsequent reaction of men (most notably Munch himself) were explored loosely but certainly notably. the skillful transitions in the film and the cinematic “portrait of the artist as a young man” piqued my curiosity and certainly endowed me with a heightened appreciation for the Norwegian master. for the patient, this can be an ultimately rewarding exercise in character study. Rating: 87/100

dinger pictured here in 1971 with Neu! mate Michael Rother

in the how did i find out so late about this column goes the untimely passing of the great krautrock drummer Klaus Dinger, who passed away on March 21nd as a result of heart failure at age 61. founding member of one of the essential krautrock bands, Neu!, early member of Kraftwerk and later member of La Dusseldorf and the combo band La! Neu?, Dinger was (at least to me) instantly recognizable for his self-described “apache beat”, the quintessential definition of “motorik.” r.i.p. klaus

so i’m on a reading kick and want some suggestions. give me 5 or so of your favorite books of all-time and a brief idea of why i should read them. preferably fiction and pre-1975 but anything will do if it’s good enough. thanks in advance, dear reader.

since i’m at home nursing my ruptured disk, i thought i’d do a long overdue music post…here’s ten tracks for the savoring of the flavor.

The Tallest Man on Earth - Into the Stream
Possessed by Paul James - Cold and Blind
{{{SUNSET}}} - Man’s Heart’s Complaint
Woods Family Creeps - Twisted Tongue
Alastair Galbraith - Your Lilt
Brethren of the Free Spirit - In Him Is No Sin
Animal Collective - Taste
Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
The Goslings - Little Horn
HEALTH - Crimewave

ACT ONE on the deaths of Mike and Kristy:

kristy: JUST IN CASE i have an untimely death, i wanted to inform you both that i’d like “break on through to the other side” by the doors played at my funeral.

mike: Oooh…The End by the Doors would be much more creepy and awesome

kristy: good heavens.

mike: This is the end…..my only friend…the end…Better even yet, have me karaoke it.

kristy: that would be pretty awesome. would you also do black sweat? it’s not related to death, but would be fun for everyone.

mike: How about I Would Die 4 U?

kristy: PERFECT. if you feel like doing a variety show, you could do “i can’t live if living is without you”.

mike: I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight

kristy: haaaaaaaaaaaaaahaha. this shouldnt be so humerous. it’s really a shame i’ll have to miss it.

mike: I wish to not have a funeral. I would prefer to be burned at sea.

kristy: hm. we’ll have to do that on the DL. we can take you out as far as my little boat will go and light you up there.

mike: of course you would push me out on a wooden raft with a crown of olive branches and my sword on my chest. Then you would fire a flaming arrow at me from 100 paces, while Erica and Jeanie played my paean in combination on pan flute and bagpipes.

kristy: yeah we’re just gonna set you on fire and dump you in. i guess the sharks will eat you.

mike: Actually I’ve changed my mind…I want you guys to do a mock up of ghostbusters with my corpse. You be egon spangler. Jeanie and Erica can be dan akroyd and bill murray, respectively. I want you guys to attach my body to a pulley system, and in the middle of the funeral, have me fly out of the casket, then you guys bust in in your ghostbusters garb and blast away at me with tasers attached to the end of bug sprayers. Of course, ray parker jr. will need to be on hand to do the theme song.

kristy: omg. i want to shoot you with a real taser.

kristy (to jeanie and erica): he said he wanted to be burned at sea but i’m thinking the sea would douse out the flames. i can only go so far in the ocean in my little plastic boat so it might not be all that “at sea”. and it’s not a very big boat so we’ll have to sit you up in one of the chairs.

mike: Strap me to a dolphin

kristy: it’s kinda mean to strap a burning body to a dolphin, dude

mike: Yeah but it would look…AMAZING

ACT TWO on the death of Erica

erica: Man. I want to die cool.

kristy: you need to come up with a plan and let us know then.

erica: I just want to be fed to Ms. Skittle so I can live through her.

kristy: eeeeeeeeeew. that’s probably more illegal than the burning at sea.

mike: Plus miss skittle only likes turkey and cheese or salmon and chicken flavors. She would probably not eat you and then I would have to let the other neighborhood cats fight over your remains like last night. Or else raccoon or possum could come and eat you.

erica: that’s cool. then I could live in multiple animals.

kristy: skank-ho neighbor cats and rodents. nice.
i’ll cook you up with some turmeric and garam masala.

mike: erikka masala

with the completion of the three books in the previous post, i began Lewis Mumford’s “The Urban Prospect.” i’m only about 50 pages in, but the gears are already turning. my thoughts for this post are a basis for discussion about the ideal “urban” environment.

much of what i’m gleaning from Mumford is that his ideal revolves primarily around the community based on the early New England settlements, but with a modern slant (well, modern for the 60s, which is when the essays in this book were written.) in what i’ve read so far he’s primarily discussed the prospects of planning a city based around the needs of the various phases of life, from infancy to old age. while i find this portion of his ideas admirable, the whole thing comes off as one man’s utopia, and a utopia that I have trouble reconciling to the world of global capitalism in which it purports to implement this architecture. i also find much of the basis old fashioned and patriarchal. so i thought, why not discuss, since we’re speaking strictly in abstract terms, my own idea of a utopian community or township…one that definitely could (and in some instances, does) work on a minor level within the current social constructs, if not entirely on a large scale.

for starters, i would base my township model not only on principles from early settlements, but also those of tribal and communal societies, as well as the ideas of eco-villages and municipalities, and maybe even a few (very few) ideas on temporary autonomous zones. in this community (let’s call it miketopia) we would begin by doing away with the social constructs of patriarchy and matriarchy and foster a basis of non-hierarchical social relationships. hey, why not, it’s miketopia. miketopia would incorporate the principles of permaculture, of cohousing, and much of the principles of intelligent urbanism. ideally this would be a multicultural, pan-philosophical community with no immediate dogmatic basis (i.e. that of the Mennonites or Amish) where diversity of thought and belief could be fostered. imagine a community library where each time a person buys and reads a book, they then pass it along to the library to share with others in the community…seems like an easy way for miketopia to sponsor thoughtful discussion and the mixing of philosophical ideas. think of education in the essential sense of teaching children self sufficiency and an intrinsic and extrinsic understanding and appreciation for their environment and for their fellow humans. think of continuing education with the principles of free schools and university of the third age and some principles of andragogy and pedagogy in the education of adults and children. think of communities and cities and townships built on the human and ecological scale as opposed to the industrial and conurbational scale. think of fostering community and relational growth through global village internetworking fostering the exchange of ideas, cultures and goods on a fair trade basis. think of using the technologies already in place such as the internet and communication based medias to not only make this info exchange possible, but to also spread culture and the arts. as the cliche goes, it takes a village to raise a child…i would take that further and say it takes a village to raise a human being, and that village includes the elders, peers and ecology that human is exposed to and nurtured by. this idea, and the ideal methods of putting it into action, would be the principle foundation of miketopia. i’m very interested to read/hear what everyone’s else’s idea of what a community should be…please share.

i’ve just finished 3 books with 3 distinctly different takes on social criticism and activism and i thought it would be interesting to discuss the attributes of each that i responded positively or negatively to.

the first that i finished was Sandor Ellix Katz’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved”

because of my all-too-obvious passion for food, yet also due to it’s sheer resourcefulness, this one held my interest the most. Katz’s work laid out many of the problems of our food culture as it exists today and explained how and why the problems came about. The distinct difference in this book and many social criticism works i’ve read is that Katz included a wealth of information on possible personal solutions that individuals and groups can take in order to avoid the pratfalls of the mass consumer food market. he covers everything from CSAs, small farming struggles and community gardening to fermentation and the raw/slow food movements, and much more. he even includes recipes and a resource list at the end of each chapter. i highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the best ways to distance themselves from the mass consumer food culture, or who just wants to know how to support local food movement (or start it for themselves.) i really can’t give it enough praise as a positive provider of real, tangible solutions for those conflicted on these subjects.

the second book, which i just finished yesterday, and which I confess I should have read by now, is Henry David Thoreau’s famous “Walden.”

I read “Civil Disobedience” when I was very young (16-ish) and though I don’t entirely agree with Thoreau’s philosophies, I must say that he has been an influence on my thinking ever since. Somehow I never got around to reading “Walden” until recently. I found Thoreau’s immersion in nature quite inspiring and fascinating, if unrealistic in the modern world. His descriptives painted a picture of a land that will likely never be again in the realm of the civilized world. I couldn’t help thinking what the consequences (even Thoreau dealt with governmental issues back in the mid 19th century) of attempting such an experiment in today’s society, and those thoughts lead to dire conclusions. Thoreau was a man truly in awe and in relation with his environment, and if i garnered nothing else from his work, i at least took away an even deeper reverence for nature in all it’s forms and several questions of my own way of thinking about materialistic desires and what we value as “important.”

the final work definitely evoked the most struggle for me. I agreed with virtually every premise and every sentence of Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame Vol 1: The Problem of Civilization”…

but the end result of my reading was a feeling of being unreconciled to the philosophy as a whole. the main philosophical difference that i have with what i read from Jensen is this: in my opinion, the only thing that can or will bring down civilization is civilization itself. much like any other mechanism or machine, when the resources that cause it to run are depleted, it will die. much like the statistics oft-quoted regarding the negligible percentage of environmental destruction caused by individuals (most often used to combat the ideas of the “going green to save the environment” movement on the personal level - which i’ll admit it DID open my eyes to many aspects of), those same statistics (or even far more negligble) could and likely would be applied to any damage done to civilization by individual resistance. the point being, which Mr. Jensen also makes, there will always be more people, especially those in power, on the side of keeping the status quo (or passing on more power to the powerful.) thus, the money, resources and quite simply willing and able bodies are and likely will be well into the future far too remote to make any even close to significant contribution to the idea of bringing down civilization. Mr. Jensen states multiple times that “all writers are propagandists,” and ultimately, at least in my opinion, he goes miles towards proving that theory in his own words, even if unabashedly. don’t get me wrong, i think it is a very important work of social commentary and every person who needs a reason for activism will undoubtedly find one here, but my only suggestion would be to read this, read alternative views, and then read some more - and ultimately, develop your OWN philosophy and your OWN path to take. i don’t find it the least bit strange that Mr. Jensen’s book is the one that evoked the most reaction in me, both positive and negative. I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

so these are just my knee jerk reactions to what i’ve read recently. i’m open and welcome different and opposing viewpoints or further discussion on the material. if you’ve read any of these, or have any opinions on what i’ve stated here, please share. i’m just cracking the surface of sociological study and readings, and i welcome discussion as a tool for advancing my own understanding.

of note to the picklebilly:

SHELLAC!!! EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY!!! THE SONICS!!! DEVO!!! TIMES NEW VIKING!!!

the ATP stage will be receiving the majority of my attention with the likes of Polvo, Fuck Buttons, Deerhunter, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Boris, Om, Dr. Octagon, MV & EE, Six Organs of Admittance, Silver Jews, Times New Viking, Shellac and Explosions in the Sky. still there’s so much to see i’m bound to miss some good stuff. there’s supposedly still a handful of names to be announced. i’m crossing my fingers for Broken Social Scene for Erica, and for any of the following for myself: Eluvium, Mono, Liars, Stars of the Lid, Nick Cave, Marissa Nadler, Battles, Mountain Goats

“First Thursday Series” Event : Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 7pm
St. Elmo at Night - Sea, Swells, and Light

To prevent interruption of light and sound conditions, performers request
no entry or exit during the performance.

I will be playing this instrument which i just played for the first time this very week. it’s a lovely instrument though, and i’m looking forward to the performance. come out and take a look see if you like…and give big props to Amy Moore and Brian McKinnon as the is the brainchild fruit of their imaginative loins.