Track of the Week: "Trouble Weighs a Ton" by Dan Auerbach

The first track from the Black Keys's frontman Dan Auerbach. This guy can do no wrong, in my opinion.

"Trouble Weighs a Ton"

Enjoy!

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

In December, I posted my "Thirteen Theses for the Writer," which were, in part, a response to Walter Benjamin's "Post No Bills" (Selected Writings, Volume I). In "Post No Bills," Benjamin includes "The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses" along with "The Critic's Technique in Thirteen Theses." Consider this Part One:

The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses:

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude of a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea – but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea – style – writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

I often get stuck at number 1. Good thing this isn't a 12-step program.

Chiming in on Best Actor. Also, Aging.

First, my apologies for the hiatus. Between the last post and this one, I've scrambled to put together a paper for presentation at The Louisville Conference [truncated version of the cumbersomely long conference title], and I've had little time and energy left over for the blog. The paper - "Autopoietic Meta-Et-Cetera" or "Too Much Information is Never Enough: How to Create and Erase Yourself Using Common Household Tools" - went over very well, thank you.

Second, I wasn't going to throw in my two cents on the Mickey Rourke debate, but I've been thinking about using the film as the focus of a future conference presentation, and so I thought I'd throw this out there and see what comes back.

What I found interesting was that the Best Actor category also pitted against each other two films that portrayed anxieties regarding aging: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Wrestler. Where the former, a film based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, presented a hopeful protagonist aging in reverse; the latter, written by The Onion's Robert D. Siegel, gave us a pathetic protagonist facing age, death, nostalgia, and loss. And where Benjamin Button offered a fantastical portrayal whose cinematic effects were matched in superficial beauty only by the good looks of lead man Brad Pitt, The Wrestler offered the stark realism of a washed-up wrestler whose life dovetails both wonderfully and tragically with lead actor Mickey Rourke’s. Ask a movie buff who should have won lead actor, and chances are they will concede that Sean Penn was very good in Milk and that the film deserves all the attention it can get for its sympathetic portrayal of the film's namesake, Harvey Milk; but between Pitt (who, in my opinion, is really a superb supporting actor trapped in a lead actor’s body) and Rourke, I think most of us will agree that Rourke’s “comeback” deserved the Oscar.

Rourke’s acting was certainly deserving of the award, and I think there are many who suspect that he deserves it as much for the way he allegorically acts out the narrative arc of his life prior to The Wrestler as he does for his acting; but I think this reaction also speaks to the poignancy of the film/Rourke’s life as a cautionary tale. In short, the moral of both: Don’t fuck up, and if you start fucking up, stop. We find Randy "The Ram" Robinson and Rourke both looking back over a life of fucking up and the ensuing loss that goes along with it. Robinson’s rampant path of self-destruction takes only the briefest pause in the face of a life-threatening heart attack, shortly after which, having failed to patch things up with his daughter (wonderfully played by Evan Rachel Wood), he recklessly abandons himself to complete self-annihilation.

So what is it about his recklessness and self-destruction that resonates so well with aging and failure (not that aging and failure are intrinsically linked)? Is the real moral of the film that, if you're a man, and you're alone (i.e. sans family), you're pretty much screwed? I'd like to think director Aronofsky is a little deeper than that. And I think he's deeper than to just be overtly setting Robinson up as the "sacrificial ram" and making our protagonist into someone who suffers so we don't have to. But, still, what IS going on here?

Track of the Week: "Legal Tender" by Handsome Furs

This one comes from the duo comprised of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner and his wife Alexei Perry: Handsome Furs.

The other bands involved in the collective that gives us Wolf Parade and Handsome Furs - Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, et. al. - seem to get more attention than the Handsome Furs, but, in my opinion, the Furs are the best of the bunch.

Here's a new one from their forthcoming album Face Control.

Legal Tender.

Enjoy!

Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

From Priya Ganapati's recent Wired Blog Network post:

In what could be one of the most ambitious computing projects ever, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists are coming together in a bid to create an entirely new computing architecture that can simulate the brain's abilities for perception, interaction and cognition. All that, while being small enough to fit into a lunch box and consuming extremely small amounts of power.

As you might have guessed from the title, the team of neuroscientists et. al are going to come up with this architecture by "reverse-engineering" the brain.

Whoa. Like, remember when I was ranting about The Singularity?

I think it's time to start thinking about what kind of robot body you'd like.

I'm going for the Adrienne Barbeau-bot.

Mojito Weekend

Mozilla.

Happy Weekend!

Track of the Week: "Let's Talk About It" by White Denim

This one comes from White Denim's recent Exposion, available here in multiple formats ranging from FLAC files to a "one-year subscription" that comes with the album on both wax and in a million digital bits as well as a 7" single of this week's track.

"Let's Talk About It"

Enjoy!

One Art

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

~ ~ ~

Bishop rewrote this superb villanelle seventeen times before getting it right.

For more on the revisions, see Brett Candlish Millier's "The Drafts of 'One Art'."

GeekDad, the SuperBowl, and the new Dylan?

Even just thinking about Wired's blogging collective of sci-fi loving, mustachioed, game-playing, tech-freaky fathers puts a smile on my face. I love those guys at GeekDad so much. From reviewing Star Wars themed lego creations to raving about the "10 Science Fiction TV Series [They] Can't Wait to Watch with Their Kids," these guys make it clear that they unapologetically love being good fathers while completely embracing their geekdom.

God Bless 'Em.

Most recently, one of them - Ken Denmead - commented on his picks for the worst Super Bowl ads. Unsurprisingly, the GoDaddy.com ads were blasted. I'm not a parent (I'm certainly a geek), but even I was a bit put off by the excessive and entirely unnecessary sex appeal of the ads. Moreover, my intelligence was a bit insulted: rather than tell anything about the GoDaddy service, the ads just flashed some flesh under the assumption that sex sells, even when the product may have been a bit ambigiously pitched.

Don't get me wrong: I don't need my ads to be blatent endorsements of their represented goods and services. Often, the crew working on an advertisement consists of talented filmmakers, writers, directors, etc. who are trying to break into the film industry, and so they build a resume and forge an artistic identity through branding themselves while helping to endorse brands.

Such must be the case for the Dylan/Will.I.Am Pepsi ad (embedded below).

I don't typically comment on Dylan's endorsements. They haven't bothered me much, and my sense is that it's far easier to criticize (and to make the obligatory, sarcastic "I guess the times are a-changin'" comment) than to understand or accept. In the 60s, Dylan reportedly said that he'd let his music be used for the endorsement of ladies underwear: at the time, it was almost preposterous to imagine an underwear ad. But, sure enough, in the early aughts, there was Dylan, strumming and singing in a Victoria's Secret ad. Didn't bother me. With the release of his most recent album (Modern Times), Dylan did an iTunes promo in which he sang one of my favorite tracks from the album ("Someday Baby"). I like the song, the commercial is well done, I dig Apple, I have an iPod...so...whatever.

But one thing bothers me about the SuperBowl ad. Wait for it. Let me describe.

The commercial - visually beautiful, artfully done, thematically significant - essentially compares popular cultures of previous generations with the pop culture of today's youth, reminding us that "every generation refreshes the world." Overtly, it suggests that Shrek is the new Gumby, that Jack Black is the new John Belushi, that the cell phone slowjam tribute is the new Bic lighter...And that Will.I.Am...I say again, Will . I . Am ... is the new Dylan. Look, I even like the mash-up. It's a decent mix, and Dylan notoriously approves of interpretations of his songs (see the Dylan-approved soundtracks for Masked and Anonymous as well as I'm Not There).

But, really? The new Dylan?