update New muxtape version of this playlist can be listened to here
Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums is a grinning fool of a book, partially autobiographical, spewing forth like a wine-induced poetry reading, all mirth and chaos, and yet, fighting through the adolescence and restless spontaneity of the piece is the aspiration for a mature spiritual enlightenment of a Buddhist nature, a clamor in pursuit of calm. Throughout the loosely strung events of the book, a gaggle of beatniks (Zen Lunatics) traverse America, climb mountains, sleep in boxcars, quibble over dogma, screw and meditate. As escpaist literature goes this entry really hits the spot, calling out to that teenager in me who still longs for the satori Suzuki talked about. One feels the joy of at least Kerouac’s kind of buddhism through his tumbling diction, that cascade of words which become descriptive/poetic/paintstrokes creating a fiery mosaic of what is in reality a fairly non-eventful series of events. He of course wrote this novel in a flow without editing as a disciplined act of spontaneity hoping to capture some of the instilled truth of his experiences through it. The effect is awesome and awe-inspiring.
In the same spirit I have cobbled together a playlist which shares the same pleasure of creation and spiritual themes of the novel. Finally I get to give some love to Cat Stevens.
“We weren’t lovers like that but even then it would still be okay” – Sisters of Mercy
Strange how I have been writing for so long about my acute aesthetic experiences and yet only now have I set aside a post to one of my true heroes of the verse, the palatable Mr. Leonard Cohen. Here I stand in awe and reverence worthy of a Montreal poet, a Zen Buddhist monk, a rock star and crooner, and grocer of despair. I knew him first from his poems and then got around to his songs and then in documentary form in the wonderful bit of cinema verite that was ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen’. There is a wonderful moment in that film where the youthful Leonard is shown the documentary and we watch him watching himself onscreen, and its like watching revelation, a poet that has swept every corner finding all of a sudden a new dimension to his identity to work with.
In June I will finally have the rare opportunity to see brother Cohen perform, something he has not done publically in some fifteen years of boredom. Elated is hardly the word for what I feel, but I guess it’ll do. In celebration of this reprise of genius I thought I would cobble together a playlist in his honour. While not entirely surrendering to the best-of impulse of lesser lists, I have included the tried tested and true works, Suzanne and First We Take Manhattan, but tried to offset these with peculiar yet earnest songs that show the underappreciated range Cohen has musically and lyrically. Regarding the arrangement, Last Year’s Man is one of my all-time favorite songs but it took at least a decade for it to seep in. Not the most accessible of his songs, for sure, but walk with a bit and see where it takes you. One of the rare tracks Cohen used a children chorus, and this playlist ends with yet another. Forgive the exclusion of Hallelujah, and Sisters of Mercy, I choose not to include them simply because I am so fond of the covers of them that I wanted to limit to those songs that I felt Cohen had full possession of.
The following mixtape is all about the art of repurposing, taking songs which although to my knowledge have been overlooked in popular soundtracks nonetheless possess an allure of the cinematic about them waiting to be explored. These are the same familiar songs we hear playing in the background of a party or a department store, but all of sudden, situated within an overt cinematic context, something clicks and the songs bear new resonance. This playlist is my love letter to the soundtracks of pop cinema, the stand-alone masterpieces of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and Sophia Copolla, just to name a few. It takes a musical savant like a Quentin Tarantino or a Wes Anderson to provide that special fusion of old familiar sounds in new exciting contexts, side by side with symphonic vista-creating set-pieces of music which come to define the cinematic experiences they are a part of. It also takes a particular kind of music to play cinematically, and even more so, for it to be iconic. I admit there is a geek factor to this display of arcane knowledge in that a part of the joy of this sort of soundtrack comes from the clever deployment of the familiar (one of my favorite examples is ‘He Loves Me’, the Olive Oil croon song from Altman’s Popeye, that hit just the right note in the montage of Punch Drunk Love). Perhaps nobody is better at this then Tarantino whose films are all about repurposing popular culture, and his musical cues are no different. Think of ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ from the ear-slicing scene of Reservoir Dogs, or more recently, the rip-roaring riff that is played during one of the bloodiest scenes in Death Proof, ‘Hold Tight’ by The Who side project, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.
Some of my other favorites include: ‘Jessie’s Girl’ in Boogie Nights, ‘Mad World’ in Donnie Darko, The Kills track in Children of Men, Kath Bloom’s ‘Come Here’ in Before Sunrise, Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’ in Trainspotting, Cowboy Junkies’ ‘Sweet Jane’ in Natural Born Killers, Dinosaur Jr.’s ‘Just Like Honey’ in Lost in Translation… and so many more.
So this is my very own Tarantinoesque mixtape. The challenge was to keep the ethos of obscure but solid ditties which possess the cinematic in their repurposing. It became necessary not to covet from pre-existing soundtracks and avoid the more obvious choices, to get to some sort of pure vision of sound as it manifests onscreen. Sometimes I was thinking about the opening music, other times, envisioned set-pieces; I would be interested to know what sort of films this soundtrack brings to mind. Quite by accident my playlist has taken on a two-part structure which evokes Kill Bill, and superficially the soundtrack as well, except in my version the first part remains loyal to a Western vision, the second part succumbing to a teenage delight in pop music.
I should add in closing that I am aware that two of the songs on this compilation were originally used on soundtracks, but I think those sources are so incredibly obscure that I can get away with this, and if you can tell me which ones and from where then you are truly a star.
Fade to black.
Side A
01 Destination – Nick Lavranos
02 God Bless the Ottoman Empire – A Hawk and a Handsaw
03 Don’t Even Sing About It – The Books
04 In the Human World – Jason Molina
05 One More Cup of Coffee – Bob Dylan
06 Goodbye, My Friend – Guido & Maurizio De Angelis
Side B
07 Mbube – Miriam Makeba
08 Dink’s Song – Bob Dylan
09 By Your Side – Cocorosie
10 Staring at the Sun (remix) – Tv On The Radio Vs Afrika Bambaataa
Having spent last year watching most of the spine titles 1-101 (‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ and ‘Carnival of Souls’ still pending), I am now ready to start with the next batch. First a few remarks on discoveries from the first 100:
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s ‘Diabolique’: I enjoyed the hell out of this film, and how much so was a bit of a surprise for me. Perhaps I am ageist but I just didn’t think a film this old would have this much of a punch in the suspense and horror departments. Clouzot’s ‘Diabolique’ is well-crafted murder mystery (so mysterious it is not about who did it but how) that is as admirable from a technical standpoint as it is rewarding as suspense/horror fare. The dvd case mentions that this was influential in Hitchcock making ‘Psycho’ and one can instantly see the same loving appreciation for pure cinema and archtechtonic control of mis-en-scene. The bulk of the story is situated in and around a boarding school in France and I love the way the environment is used to give the impression of a dimensional plane where the drama unfolds… windows overlook other key scene sites, and you feel properly situated in the space. This seems like a minor thing to bring up but I have a real fondness for this sort of … well archtechtonic control of mis-en-scene (I don’t know how else to say it). Kurosawa is a master of creating space, and Clouzot is working nearly on this level. I know Hitchcock gets a lot of praise for his pure cinema but I find something lacking more often then not in his films… the big exception being Psycho… which does have the spectre of Diabolique. Paul Meurisse as the bastard husband is stellar, he is the french Bogart and every scene is elevated by his presence. The film is true showmanship, the placard at the end of the movie demonstrating just how much of a showman Clouzot was, and like I said, I am surprised how well this film aged, because there are very few Hitchcock films working in the same genre that I feel carry the same punch in present day.
Ingmar Bergamn’s ‘Autumn Sonata’: It is cumbersome, lumbering, clunky, naive, contrived, exhaustive, but it is also ‘Russian’ in the way all good Dostoevsky stories are. It has that feverish pitch of expression, the hyper-catharsis, like everyone has taken a truth serum and can now emote free of all inhibition… Somehow I can tolerate this now in a way I never could before, I have bought into the conceit and let it carry me part way into the drama. I still see the caricature in the style, the Woody Allen ‘Love and Death’ flavour, but at least in this Bergman film I didn’t care. The mother daughter relationship was harrowing despite the contrivances… due in large part to performances of Liv Ullman and Ingrid Bergman which are revelatory. The first half of the film was Ingrid, the second all Liv… with a kind of bravado that left me mesmerized. I couldn’t shake the performance aspect, but still what performances! I admire this film more then I love it, certainly one of the best Bergman films I have seen, second only to Seventh Seal.
Al Reinhart’s ‘For All Mankind‘: This is an utter joy to watch on every level: the surprisingly crisp footage taken from the Apollo missions to the moon, interspersed with the astronauts own words about the events, underscored by their selection of music which they took on the voyages makes for a complete firsthand glimpse into what truly is the event of the 20th century. It is also a well-crafted documentary, a piece of art which went beyond my expectations. Those who watched the first steps of Neil Armstrong on the moon in real-time must have felt something akin to the awe I felt in Reinhart’s assemblage, probably less so seeing as this is an artistic enhancement by the manipulation of music and dialogue, but then I will never know. There was a commercial on last month about the new Windows Vista which collects a series of events which make you stop and go ‘wow’... and they use the Armstrong footage as an example… so it has become a cliche… but seeing it in the context of this documentary/historical document I cannot but utter the same kind of ‘wow’ ... it does make everything else look insignificant in comparison… it does unify all mankind in a way, it transcends all petty differences in its profundity. Very cool: Kubrick’s 2001 preceded the first misson to the moon, and the theme music was taken on the first mission where the astronauts got to watch the panorama of space with that soundtrack climaxing in the background… how cool is that.
Hyperlinked full reviews to other gems of this batch: David Lean’s ‘Summertime’ and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s ‘Wages of Fear’
Others I thoroughly enjoyed but did not get around to writing about: ‘The Third Man’, ‘The Lady Vanishes‘, ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock‘, ‘Grand Illusion‘, and ‘All That Heaven Allows’
Tonight I had the opportunity to catch a first glimpse of Fernando Meirelles’ rough cut of ‘Blindness’, a film adapted from the best-selling novel of Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago, and starring such heavies as Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal and Danny Glover. It is a film whose pedigree clearly precedes it, a perfect storm of talent that bodes perilously high expectations. Having not read the book, my interest was quelled by the high-concept premise: imagine a dystopic scenario where all of a sudden and quite inexplicably the people around you start going blind and, like a virus, this blindness spreads in every direction leaving a society crippled and in frantic want of quarantine; yet you alone retain your vision and must bear witness to that theatre of the absurd which occurs in the absence of that so vital sense in others.
The premise is rich in philosophical implications: how much of our identity, moral code, and civil decency is dependent upon the reaffirmed belief that there is a visible world in which we all inhabit? When the familiar fabric of that world is denied the characters which populate ‘Blindness’, a reorientation takes place both individually and socially whereby the vestiges of the old world are undone and, as is poignantly noted in voice-over, people assume a kind of invisibility in their blindness, regressing to a supreme egoism and undaunted exhibitionism they would not have participated in otherwise. Julianne Moore plays a doctor’s wife, a stowaway to the quarantine where her husband has been sent, and the only person untouched by the disease. Through her eyes we watch the escalation of violence that manifests as the quarantined victims come to terms with what entirely is lost along with their sight. (Continued)
My best of list for 2007, taking into consideration that it was within this calendar year that I saw these films (some may have opened outside of this time frame) and that I select according to the degree with which I was personally affected by the work, factoring in secondarily the particular ‘cinematic’ significance of the film. Those films I reviewed are hyperlinked below.
Behold I give unto you a playlist two millennia in the making…
In this latest bout of the literary playlist challenge, Perc and I employ our mad skills towards an inevitable act of hubris: the mixtaping of the Holy Bible. Here you shall find no hymns, nor celestial choirs, but rather the artful repurposing of the popular towards some relevant theme therein writ. Perc has so graciously offered to mix the Old Testament leaving myself the sole arbiter of the New. With no lack of irony the Pagan evokes his Christ. My original intent was to make a playlist so devastatingly profound that it would make non-believers convert, but I soon reconciled the fact that this was not to be. The final product is a mixed bag of tones and musical styles which lean somewhat precariously towards the whimsical. Go figure. Despite the shifts, there is, I think, a coherent narrative running through the lyrics… Jesus came down, fought the injustice of the world, made an impact, died and was reborn. The apocalypse is captured in the final song, and everything past, present and future comes to a close.
2007 is quickly becoming the year when filmmakers got musician narratives right. My list of top ten films for the year is punctuated by three solid testaments to this fact: Once, I’m Not There, and now Control. The hype surrounding Anton Corbijn’s ‘Control’, a biopic on the life and all-too-early death of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, has steadily rose since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where it was one of the great word-of-mouth recommendations circulating the line-ups. It has since made a believer out of me with its brooding trailer in stark black and white depicting a very convincing Ian Curtis slowly imploding on himself. Despite my recent biopic fatigue with the formulaic Ray Charles and Johnny Cash varieties, a film like ‘Control’ has the power to enchant me with its promises of real human insight. (Continued)
Welcome to my annual send-off wherein I spot a tenner of songs, those which captured my imagination during this ever-deficiting state of academiotosis. Despite some laxity in my cultivation of aural accompaniment this year, I have at least took the dignified route this time, no longer scouring the net and vulturing about end-of-the-year best-of lists to pad my own. No sir. These are my genuine finds, a year in the making. As per my whimsy, the following ten songs are ontologically bound to the year 2007 in that they came into being in my mind between january and decembre of this year – if objectivity exists (which I am still skeptical about), then perhaps a case could be made that some of these songs originate outside this time frame. Being the center of the universe, I don’t find a problem with this liberty, and neither should you.
So here they be, a strange lot. The abundance of cover songs are purely coincidental and should not reflect poorly on the originality of the moderator of this list.
1) Intervention (Acoustic) – Arcade Fire
fond memories of listening to this song over and over while peering out the van window at the monument valleys of Arizona.
2) Goin to Acapulco – Jim James and Calexico
A cover of a Bob Dylan song displayed prominently in the biopic ‘I’m Not There’. At the time I did not know this was by Dylan, and when the ghostly hillbilly starts singing this at the midpoint of the movie I thought it was a bizarre departure.
3) Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
The signature song of the superb indie film ‘Once’. Immediately bought the album and listened to it over and over and over again… competing with Radiohead’s Reckoner as the most airplay on my ipod.
4) Will is my Friend – Devendra Banhart
Thanks to Ryan’s Smashing Life for this great find. Never fully warmed to the work of Devendra but the acoustic set I picked off of Ryan’s site blew me away. I used this song prominently in my Dharma Bums playlist (which fits like a mutha by the way) and it is pure summer to me.
5) Reckoner – Radiohead
‘In Rainbows’ was/is/forever the best album of this and many years. I cannot express the big love I got for the album as a whole, and had I not restrained myself I would have flooded this list just with these tracks. This is my favorite from the album.
6) I’m Not There – Sonic Youth
Yet another Dylan cover song, a damn fine one at that!
7) Rain (Demo) – Bishop Allen
Listen to this and you will have the melody in your head for the rest of the day.
8) Goodbye, My Friend – Guido & Maurizio De Angelis
This song is definately not from 2007 but I happened across on a music blog and boy is it a find, this kicks all sorts of ass.
9) Sisters of Mercy – Beth Orton
A cover of the Leonard Cohen song. I never gave the original much of a listen until I came across this performance from the ‘Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man’ documentary. So so so lovely.
My dreams are nightmares, and the waking moments are filtered through these experiences. I forget how to dissociate, and it makes me wonder at what point and in what way does a child learn the important lesson: sanity is preserved through the periodic dissociation of reality. I do not want to say definitively that the world is brutal and ugly but these qualities tend to reveal themselves if you focus on something long enough. I wish I could cry and that would be the end of it, a mutual adjustment, a certain output to befit a certain input. Alas the world does not conform to my clever syntax.
Long ago I knew what depression was, and then I forgot it, and now I remember it. There is a huge difference between the nominal and actual understanding of something like an emotion, it really is absurd to talk of them in any sterilized sense, as components of a clock. Perhaps there is something like emotional intelligence, if so, I feel properly versed having taken the emotions to the brink in the past and returned with some key piece of knowledge still intact in me. I can ‘understand’ this existential pang as just that, rather than causally link it to some outward plausible source. A doctor will probe your body and ask what hurts and perhaps there will be a localized pain that you can point to; doing the same introspectively, I localize this pain around the faintest of things: a person eating alone in a restaurant, the false-start uncertainty of a person struggling to communicate, a drunk watching 300 in a Future Shop. I try my best to let the feeling pass, to dissociate, and I realize the fault in others when they rush to worship the sadness, to make a drama of one’s life until the drama envelops them. Who am I kidding, that was me. But I am wiser now, and I know the stakes this time, and so what I want more than anything when I feel the sadness overwhelm me is to find a way out.
A healthy mind can do this effortlessly, it anticipates the problems and changes gear, thus keeping perspective to thwart all fanatical impressions. When healthy, I take a certain pride in my ability to adjust to the circumstances and resist the autocracy of emotion. When that capacity is suddenly gone, and the well fills up and overflows, and the pang sets in, I feel vulnerable to whatever the world wants to present to me. I am Alex from A Clockwork Orange with my glazzies held open. I feel very afraid of what is coming next. This is me before real tragedy strikes.
For anyone who is undergoing some form of depression during this holiday season, I feel for you. It is almost unfathomable what human beings are capable of living with, and of the variety of ways they cope. I think we all live multiple lives, each traumatic event shifting us to some new perspective. Perhaps your depression is a means to an end that without which you would never achieve. Not consoling in the least, I know.
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