This past weekend I got in a small dispute with a stranger over some of Hip Hop’s most influential characters. I attempted to explain how, in my opinion, The Roots are more musically talented than the Wu Tang Clan. This gentlemen, my adversary, was steadfast in his devotion to the Wu Tang Clan. Allow me to explain myself, I pleaded.

I understand how influential and pivotal the Wu Tang Clan were to the genre of Hip Hop music. They transformed it more significantly than possibly anyone other artists, and, in many people’s opinion, are considered to be the best rappers ever. I agree with this on some fronts. They were undoubtedly pioneers; but they primarily impacted the lyrical component of rap music. Their music is lyrically impeccable, it is true. It is sophisticated, meaningful and entertaining. Its use of wordplay and literary techniques are equal to those of playwrights and novelists. In fact, the “Hip Hop Shakespeare Company” conducts an exercise where they read lines from classic Shakespearian plays and sonnets or lines from Wu Tang Clan songs, and ask the audience to guess which one they come from. It is almost always impossible to tell, unless you have memorized both every word of Will’s and every word of Rae’s. From a lyrical standpoint, I understand why listeners have compared the Wu Tang Clan to the greatest playwright of all time. But I still like the Roots more.

The Roots, in my opinion, are much better musicians than the members of the Wu Tang Clan. They are much better artists. They have similar styles of rapping, and similar content, but it is the production that they diverge. The Roots, unlike many, many Hip Hop artists, create their own instrumentals. With actual instruments. Questlove, the drummer in the Roots, is one of the most talented drummers in the world. Fact. They are creating music from a much more organic approach; they are building everything themselves. What they lack in mind-blowing statements and enticing, politically charged comments they make up for in overall, aesthetic sound. They simply sound better. The music is more enjoyable to listen to. Wu Tang’s music, while important to hear and understand, is not as appealing. Notice the difference in these two songs. Listen to the way the beat completely changes and electrifies at the end of “Don’t Feel Right.” Appreciate Maimouna Youseff’s incredible voice and perfect hook. Then compare that to the static, minimalist sound underneath the just as perfect hook and brilliant lyricism of “M.E.T.H.O.D. Man.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0ihRbPtfmA

Radiohead is one of those bands, man.

Radiohead is one of those bands that has a huge following of people who analyze everything they do and try to make a huge sweeping idea out of it all. And, from my experience, Radiohead is also one of those bands that is seen as “legit” in the concert music community. That’s interesting in itself, but it’s true that the music they produce is really quite great. I’m always impressed at how much I can discover when listening back through OK Computer or Kid A. And their latest record, The King of Limbs, has been a recent favorite of mine. Dear listener, if you aren’t a hip college student like I am, check out them Radioheads. It’s great stuff, from Oddslot Creep, to House of Cards.

But this is all beating around the bush to what I really want to talk about. I want to talk about Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood is the lead guitarist/keyboardist/everything player for Radiohead. He is one of the big creative forces in the band, and as wikipedia informs me, was named #48 in Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.” That’s pretty high praise, there. He also does a variety of work alone. Notably, he was the composer for the soundtrack of There Will Be Blood.

So this guy is mad talented. But his latest solo record makes my heart explode with pride, as a “classical” composer, myself. He just released a solo record in collaboration with (wait for it…) Krzysztof Penderecki.

This is a big deal guys. Penderecki is a Polish composer, widely known for his piece, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. The piece pushes the limit of what music is, what sounds a string orchestra can make, and also haunts my nightmares to this very day. But don’t take it from me, listen to it below, and be afraid.

(Composer nerd note: This piece is a great instance of what goes into a title. This piece was originally titled after the length of the piece itself-8’37”. Later, Penderecki changed the title to the very programmatic and evocative, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Is the piece less valid because Penderecki changed the name later? Is it still a lament for the victims of that horrible attack? How much does a title mean?!)

So that is a scary piece of music. An absolutely incredible piece of music, but by no means tame. And Jonny Greenwood released an album with this piece on it! The rest of the CD is another piece by Penderecki (called Polymorphia) and two original compositions (in a similar vein to the Penderecki!) by Greenwood, called Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia. And Greenwood’s pieces actually stand pretty well up to the Penderecki! That’s a pretty big deal, considering that Threnody is considered a staple of 20th Century Avant Garde Repertoire (too many qualifiers, there).

Take a listen to Popcorn Superhet Receiver….

(Also of note: Greenwood borrowed a bit from this piece in his score to There Will Be Blood. Interesting. Also might have cost him an Academy Award. )

I love this, though. The rock music industry and polish avant garde are not as far apart as one would think. In fact, the raw unpolished sound that Greenwood can get from his guitar in Radiohead isn’t too far away from the glissandos and rawness of this collection of strings. Music is music, regardless of what makes it up. And Greenwood is a shining example of that.

I encourage you all to buy the album. Because it’s really quite incredible and I doubt you have anything like it in your iTunes right now.

Bear Parade round two.

A poetry collection by Ellen Kennedy titled:

yesterday i was talking to myself and i told myself that i was going to write a book and give it to you so i put paper in my bag and put a pen in my bag and rode my bike to the river bank and then sat on the ground and thought ‘i will never write a book’ and watched ducks swim away from me

The title of her poetry collection is very long but it only takes ~5 min. to read the whole collection itself.

Everything on bearparade seems to have a sort of minimalist style.

Ellen Kennedy’s particular brand of bearparadian minimalism is something like ‘lots of declarative sentences and parallelism and some repetition.’ Or: ‘Anaphora‘ + a little ‘polysyndeton,’ + a lot of understatement + deadpan tone.

I think everything on bearparade employs a kind of minimalism because being online shortens your attention span automatically. Minimalist stuff ‘works’ online. Dense stuff doesn’t–you click away from it. Literary stuff is notoriously dense and boring, so bears who parade seem to try to not be dense and boring by using minimalism.

(I think I’m going to start trying to write shorter / more minimalist blog posts. Lots of people’s blog posts here on arts, ink seem ‘hella dense,’ and I’m skeptical people actually, like, read them, beginning to end.)

(For some reason I feel like writing < 600 words is not ‘legit,’ though, for an obliquely academic blog.)

Supposedly Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.”

But so Ellen Kennedy. Her internet poetry collection is good. It’s relateable and relevant if you’re ~20 and are an internet user, which you most likely are. Like, you’ve probably felt ambitionless and bored like this poem:

i have no ambitions

i don’t want to hate the president i don’t want to go to harvard i don’t want to win the pulitzer prize i just want to sit in my bathtub and think about relationships i will never have with people i will never meet and then go lay in my bed with a magnifying glass and count all the stiches in my sheets until i fall asleep and wake up to repeat again.

There’s something about spending a lot of time online that makes me feel ‘i have no ambitions’-y. There’s something about reading a poem online that’s about having no ambitions and which takes very little ambition to read because it’s minimalist and short that makes me feel very…something.

In another poem titled ‘i want to sleep,’ there’s this:

(…)i used schutzhund methods of training to teach the duck to attack on command. we went on a killing rampage that lasted three days. we killed many small children and received the nobel prize for our achievements.

the other day, as i was eating the leg of a small child like a popsicle, the duck turned to me with tears in its eyes and asked, ‘why do you make me kill things?’

Teaching ducks  to go on killing rampages via “schutzhund methods” seems very unserious and stupid. But then you’re hit with the teary eyed duck’s ‘why do you make me kill things?’ and you’re like, “wait…” And then your hit with i felt ashamed. i stared down at the ground and stood very still and very quietly.

Bears’ parading seems to have a sort of tears-of-a-clown quality to it. Like, ‘I’m full of funny non sequiturs and absurdisms, but I’m crying inside.’

And I thought these beautiful lines in the penultimate poem made the whole collection ‘worth it’:

‘i want to rub my face in my blueberries’

‘so do it’

‘okay’

i rubbed my face in my blueberries

i batted my eyelashes against your cheek and left blue streaks on your cheek

i thought about all the times i’ve almost been hit by a car for listening to loud music while walking and laughed.

I feel like if I could read this poetry collection on a computer in the fishbowl after a stressful exam or stressful text message from a girl, and it would make me feel calmer.

—
@barkmuckner

This year I have seen three one-man shows through UMS– The Infernal Comedy starring John Malkovich, Watt by the Gate Theatre of Dublin, and The Andersen Project this past weekend starring Yves Jacques.

When I saw my first one-man show, years ago, I was first amazed by the amount of work that one performer would have to do by themselves and the number of lines they would learn.  Invariably, at any of these shows, there is a group of people astounded by the number of lines they heard the performer speak.  That is just the surface level though.  When you begin to think of the way conventional theatre operates and the way a one-person show works, there are noticeable differences.

The first thing I think of is the interaction between characters is a central part of conventional theatre.  When there is a solitary figure onstage, they are either playing all the characters by themselves or interacting with people unseen by the audience.  Each of these three performances handled this construct differently: in The Infernal Comedy, Malkovich was actually onstage with two other women, opera singers, who acted as his victims.  Outside of his interaction with the women, the concept was that he was writing a novel and was addressing the audience as an author.  In Watt, Barry McGovern was telling the audience a story the whole time and when, in his story, he spoke to other characters, the characters were spots onstage.  In The Andersen Project, most interestingly, had Yves playing three different characters throughout the show, with a few cameo appearances as other characters.  When he spoke, he usually spoke toward the audience or to someone offstage, although he did have interactions with an invisible dog, represented by a leash and bell onstage.

The second thing I think about is how one actor will fill a space usually filled by many actors and intricate sets.  It is easy for an actor to be swallowed up by the space, but again these three shows took three vastly different approaches to fixing this problem.  The Infernal Comedy was performed at Hill Auditorium, so there was less space to occupy, and the performers shared the stage with the orchestra, who acted as their own sort of set.  In Watt, The Gate took a minimalist approach, and Mr. McGovern was just sort of framed by the set and called upon all of his power as an actor to fill the space.  The lighting highlighted some key moments and took us through his journey, but it was mostly a traditional one actor, one audience set up.  The Andersen Project, by contrast, used projections to suggest settings and fill out the space.  In seeing this piece, I realized I had never seen projections done extremely well.  That production changed my mind on projections entirely.  It made the one-man show a fully realized production.  I never felt like I was missing out because it was only one man, there was so much happening and it all contributed to the story in the way that more actors or a more elaborate set would usually.

Each show had a very different story, but I think The Andersen Project most successfully emobied the spirit of a one-man show.  There was something inherently lonely within each of Jacques’ characters.  And through his solitude onstage, the audience was both reminded of the loneliness of the 21st century world and distancing effect technology has had but also aware of themselves and their own experiences.  By doing such, I think Jacques showed us that we are not all one-man shows.

Some things are best viewed exactly as we see them, if only altered or in different contexts. Some things are presented to their advantage when viewed from very close up, revealing details invisible to the human eye. Other things are perfectly visible at an ordinary scale, but do not reveal comprehensive shapes and forms until they are looked upon from afar. As such, aerial photography is an excellent means with which to discover things hidden in plain sight. A portion of archaeological surveying, for instance, is done this way. Pull back far enough, and entire patterns begin to emerge. Lines and curves and networks, etched onto the landscape. It’s urban as well as rural, too: How are cities planned? How were the roads placed?

It does a funny thing, perspective. On one hand, the great distance between the viewer and the viewed pushes very thoroughly three-dimensional things flat, simplifying them into shapes and textures where not even shadows offer any hint of their height. On the other hand, there is an added dimension in the form of mountains and crevices and significant elevation differences, marked by light and shadow. The cloudscape, perhaps more significantly, overlays land and water below, thoroughly three-dimensional, projecting shadows of their own. And these things, reflectivity, luminosity, color— these depend on the nature of the material below, be it water or snow, forest or manmade sprawl, grassland or bare sand.

This photographer’s set of aerials demonstrates a familiarity with the subject in that his photographs are not just the bony spines of a mountain range in an otherwise flat brown desert, not just a strip of river cutting through a greenish patchwork of agricultural fields. River systems fan their delicate latticework over indeterminate washes of soccer bets of the day color, spines of textured cloud emerge from a hazy floor, and the earth itself is aged, weathered, puckered and scarred. Elephant-hide. If minerals stain the soil in only a particular swath, how would you know, but to view it from above? If the tops of mountains emerge from a smooth blanket of cloud, cut off from their bases, who would see?

This one is a particular favorite of mine. The patchwork squares of development stretch away into the background, hazy bluish squares of green and yellow and rust, but they come to an abrupt halt at a ragged border partway down the frame, dark and irregular before it falls away to nondescript brown desert. The juxtaposition is stark and arresting, the scale of the geography expansive.

I, for one, am always delighted when I’m able to secure a window seat (on any sort of public transportation, but mainly on flights).  If you have a choice of seating, consider:

1. the flight route, the direction you’re travelling, and how you’ll be approaching interesting landforms or cities
2. the time of day- where’s the sun? (how strong is the light? will there be strong glare?)

Even a drab sea of uniform clouds can be transformed with the correct application of light. Turn off the film for a moment, lay off the solitaire, and opt for the window instead.