The Gits, a documentary on Mia Zapata’s former band is streaming free on Pitchfork today (via.) The documentary was made before her murder was solved. Florida fisherman Jesus Mezquia was convicted in 2004. A few years ago I watched “Who Murdered The Rock Star?” a CBS evening news take that took more time than needed explaining the early-90s Seattle music scene to CBS-watching old timers. There was though, a poignant moment as they interviewed her totally normal-seeming father proudly displaying the weird painting she used to made. Zapata was 27 when she was raped and strangled to death.

Greensleeves on a Theramin (via.)

In 1999, Sonic Boom (of Spacemen 3, now Spectrum) interviewed Delia Derbyshire for Surface magazine and it gets good and geeky near the middle. “There’s been, since the ancient Greeks, a very close link between music and mathematics… People think that composers sit there with their pen over the manuscript paper, and God sends his inspiration down the top of the pen onto the paper. Well, in some cases it seems perhaps they did; perhaps Mozart. But in other cases one has to impose a discipline, and the discipline of number is an excellent discipline. The Fibonacci sequence people have been using for centuries…Nature’s numbers; the number of leaves on a fern, the number of seeds on a sunflower head, and how they are arranged… this is the Fibonacci sequence, used in art and architecture and music. Although when you hear it in music, it is not recognised. Even George Gershwin used it in Porgy and Bess. Now who knows that?”

Crazy Artists, Crazy Authors, and Blog Comments as a Slush Pile Unfiltered

uz2nd.jpg“Experimental fiction is the art of telling a story in which certain aspects of reality have been exaggerated or distorted in such a way as to put the reader off the story and make him go watch a television show.” - George Saunders (via.)

The other night, I attended “No More Bush Tour” at PA’s Lounge, a bunch of bands celebrating the last days of the shrub, including Bobb Trimble, whose obscure early-80s psychedelic records were rereleased on Secretly Canadian last year, the hypnotic Fahey-like guitar sounds of Jack Rose and several others. Between the acts there were literary readings, most memorably Damon Krukowski, (of Damon and Naomi, the best two-thirds of Galaxie 500.)

Krukowski and Yang run Exact Change, publishing experimental classics like Denton Welch’s In Youth is Pleasure, Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Comte de Lautréamont’s Maldoror, Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, and Unica Zürn’s Dark Spring. It’s an impressive catalogue of books (beautifully designed by Yang.)

uz4.jpg

They focus on Surrealism, Dada, and Pataphysics, and all of the books are at least 50 years old. Nevertheless, Yang and Krukowski receive a fair share of requests to publish new work over the years. Many of the queries are strange. Very strange. One writer says he will “expose Marquis de Sade as the rank amateur he is” with his forthcoming novel including such horrors as “AIDS in preschools,” and other gruesome situations. Another was an extremely bizarre and lengthly erotic work — with numbered paragraphs — about a “brand new spiritual organ.”

un45.jpgI was reminded of the room in the Museum of Jurassic Technology with letters to Mount Wilson Observatory from amateur astronomers. (”Hydrogen, was created by Electricity between Nitrogen and Oxygen and the three forms the Trinity of Life Even as Electricity, Nitrogen and Etholeum form the trinity of all planetary existance. Electricity the (passtime p) thru Nitrogen the passtime Entrance ( ) Hydrogen between Nitrogen and Oxygen and these ( ) forms the air and the water with the surface of the earth.and that of the water between which is the trinity of the worlds existance. By the gathering of the water below and above to form the firmament which in the beginning God called Heaven, and wherein we live.”) And of the colorful stories of friends of mine who looked over the slush piles at their respective publications

Once I was a judge for a film script competition and it was a frustrating experience because, while everything I read was silly, I felt morally obligated to read closely in case I should glaze over the one line that might reveal a seemingly horrible script as a Hal Hartley-style farce.

A letter to Krukowski pronounces “we’re all insane unless something’s going wrong.” A crazy person zen koan that is kind of endearing, and an example of how the Diane Arbus question never went away.

One might look at the variations of “outsider art” and the mixed emotions of exploitation, sympathy, and curiosity of its spectators. And outsider musicians like Daniel Johnston, Roky Erickson, and the documentaries about them that never quite articulated whether their (in Erickson’s case, new-found) success was based on talent or novelty.

Very often, I turn to Paul West’s “Mem, Mem, Mem,” published in The American Scholar (and Harper’s) last autumn, as an example of sifting a golden kernel out of what might otherwise seem like nonsense. In it, West, once a first rate literature scholar, describes his condition of both Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia the only way he can now: in aphasiac language.

You disentangle the least bit of wiry fluff that has been haunting your tongue for half an hour, and assign it to the unwilling project of the human mess. These rank as contributions in some way or other, but the assorted confectioneries are too massive to eat, and the strand of henpecked fluff is too narrow, which makes them both second-rate substitutes and sees them out. What I’m trying to say, in language ever more oblique, is that the human psyche can sometimes see evidence of what is not present to the senses.

The book, The Shadow Factory, was released last April.

uz3.jpgThe other question this raises is whether we accept “crazy” experimental things from people so long as they appear upstanding. A recent Washington Post article on Jeff Koons says the most surprising thing about Koons is how polite and sane he appears. I find that least surprising. As Mikita Brottman said, “I have art students who grasp pretty complex ideas but can’t put them into words. If someone is a great video-game designer or great artist or a great musician, when if comes to speaking about it, if they aren’t articulate, they’re seen as freaks.” Naturally, the normal articulate ones are those most likely to receive grants and succeed in other ways.

Then there’s JG Ballard, whose novel Crash famously received the verdict “This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!” from a publisher. That it was ever published must have something to do with Ballard’s record of several conventional(-ish) novels prior and that’s he’s Cambridge educated, undeniably intelligent, and presentable.

unica-zurnsm.jpgWere JG Ballard completely inarticulate about his ideas, and were that his only work, would Crash have the same power? Do we look at the man behind the curtain because we are too timid to align our sympathies with the work of a person who might genuinely be mad?

When it comes to experimental literature (or film, art, etc,) I find myself less capable of explaining what it is I like or dislike about it. And I am reluctant to suggest many of these titles to others simply because I can’t determine whether it’s the work that’s so moving or the result of projecting my own values and ideas on vague atmospheric paragraphs.

This is all a very long way to go about mentioning Mattathias Schwartz’s riveting New York Times magazine piece, The Trolls Among Us.

There’s not much I can build on what was already written (so very well!) by Schwartz, and commented on just about everywhere else. But it’s applicable here, because you find the strangest comments on the most MSM websites: CNN, New York Times. Conviction that their words are worthy of being printed in the grey lady. Finally the crazies have a platform. And so long as it’s left unmoderated, if there is a Cassandra among them, we might find her.

Automatic drawings by Unica Zurn

Previously:

Why Read at All?
Unica Zurn and Rachel Feinstein Currin: Fantasies Embodied

Related links:

Posted by Joanne on Aug 5, 2008 | Link

The sound of sand. The “phenomenon, known as singing or musical sand, has been found in about 30 sets of dunes in the world, and each has its own accent.” Also, the sound of ice.

Pandrogeny is when two people literally become like each other: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Genesis P-Orridge and his partner Jacqueline Breyer took it to a new level with plastic surgery, “The Valentine’s Day operation gave them matching breast implants, size C. Later, Jaye had her eyes and nose done, and got a chin implant, to resemble Gen. Gen received cheek enhancements and a lip job. At one point, they looked into the idea of smoothing over their belly buttons, like angels.”

“He sent the message there is a way to do an art-commerce collaboration with a brand that makes it tangible for the masses without reducing the meaning,” wrote a blogger in 2005 about Kaws collaborating with Nike, Diesel, Levis, and a bunch others. But really… John Mayer?

“In praise of Delia Derbyshire” from The Guardian. The musician best known for her theme to Doctor Who, created a number of legendary and pioneering electronic sounds with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She was adorably geeky about it, studying math in college and keeping a “book of logarithms in her back pocket.” Last week, lost tapes of hers were discovered. Paul Hartnoll, interviewed by the BBC says the track “could be coming out next week on [left-field dance label] Warp Records.” Ziwzih Ziwzih oo-oo-oo!

The Feelies. Yaz. Polvo. Six Finger Satellite. My Bloody Valentine. Who didn’t get back together this year? A: Slowdive. Wired interviews Neil Halstead, who says “No, there are no plans to get Slowdive back together. We had a lot of pedals, a lot of love and some good grass. When the love ran out, we sold the grass and smoked the pedals.” Well, there’s always next year. (Also, why hasn’t Pitchfork, Stereogum, or someone else made a chart of all this years reunited bands. Each time I read the music blogs I find myself thinking, “Really? Them?”)

When I first read this headline I thought Twin Peaks was getting a musical theater treatment (it isn’t, but The Fly is.) The article instead mentions the enormous impact Angelo Badalamenti’s score for the TV series had on shoegaze musicians like Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Massive Attack, and many others. But Lynch was a Cocteau Twins fan long before he started the series. The article also mentions Mysterious Skin, one of my favorite movies (and books!) as another example of successful use of atmospheric shoegaze music