love for the cocteau twins
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Pitchfork has a write-up today about a new set of Cocteau Twins EP collections. It's not often you get to read a new review of music you've been listening to for 15 years-- especially one that's so glowing. The Cocteau Twins have always held a pretty special place. They were so completely unique; the only things that ever came close to their sound tended to have Liz Fraser as a guest artist anyway (Future Sound of London's Lifeforms EP, a few Massive Attack tracks, This Mortal Coil...)."The Cocteaus' best songs seem to be creating whole new sorts of beauty and energy, from scratch, and something about that gets to the root of what a lot of us want music to do in the first place."
It's not like the Cocteau Twins are all Liz Fraser. What always really got me about them is how many different aspects of sound they seem to be able to cover at once. It's often dark, but it's uplifting. The rhythms are dense and rigid and strong, but the guitars and keyboards are lilting and entrancing. They float. They define ethereal. And then there's Liz Fraser's vocals... She's not singing words; it's not another language. We all know this by now, right? And I think that they were all the better for it, not only because it leaves you with this sense of awe trying to figure out how she does it, but also because you never get sick of the lyrics becoming inane. You don't have philosophical conflicts. You never get bogged down in the baseness of her outlook or realize that her observations are not all that insightful. It's not about any of that, it's just about the sound of her voice-- usually several tracks of it. What would trip me out was not just the range of things that she could accomplish with her voice, but the contrast in the different vocal tracks, as if she had completely different styles, inflections, even different ranges in her different "voices." It was sometimes hard to believe that the different vocal tracks were the same person.
Something I never really got was why Milk and Kisses never got more critical praise than it did. That thought just lead me to look up Pitchfork's review of Milk and Kisses and I can honestly say that that is the worst review I've ever read. Granted, their writing has gotten better over the years as they've become relevant, but c'mon. Anyway, I was always glad that this was their last album because I thought that they went out on a high note. I had this album in rotation for years. Most albums last a month or two. It sounded like Cocteau Twins with the lights on.
"They began to sound like someone had sent a punk band on a time-traveling tour of European cathedrals-- and the punk band had somehow managed to live up to it, standing there and forcing out something fittingly gorgeous, something that actually kind of sounded like Caravaggio."
I actually bought the 10 CD box set of EPs from a used music shop here in Milwaukee that was run by a friend. I had wanted the set for years and probably paid 1/3 of what it was worth. The only one I see on ebay right now is going for $100. My motivation for getting a 4 CD box set at this point is pretty low, but it was refreshing to be reminded (and maybe a little vindicated) of what a great sound they had.
I don't think this is the first Cocteau Twins song I've posted (if it's not I should remove the other link soon!). This is Amelia, track 6 from Treasure, released in 1984 when I was in 4th grade! Sometimes it still trips me out, the things that were going on without my knowledge when I was a kid.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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Flow
Friday, March 24, 2006
Flow is a game by Jenova Chen, developed as part of his masters thesis. "Flow" refers to a state of immersion in an activity that requires focus and skill and results in satisfaction and fulfillment, as outlined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (That's a pretty narrow paraphrasing, but it's the gist of it.)
I found this game the other day while looking at flash game sites and tutorials, and specifically researching the use of physics in flash. I'm pretty amazed by the game, especially in the context of it being done in flash. It's a fairly simple game, but it is definitely engaging. Ironically, it seems pretty similar, at least in a surface sense, to the first stages of Spore.
I started reading a bit about the Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, as well as an interview with him, and I'm pretty interested in reading his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The idea of flow ties together a bunch of things that have been circulating in my head for a while now, particularly this idea that I refer to as "depth of experience." I realized a few years back that most experiences don't seem to carry much meaning and therefore fail to really register in our minds. I've also considered the fact that I don't often tend to be moved emotionally, thinking perhaps that perhaps I have less depth of experience. This extends to matters of spirituality, ideas of "belonging," as well as everyday experiences. I suppose it's kind of the "Unbearable Lightness of Being" thing, where we lead ourselves to believe that every experience is meant to be infused with meaning and significance, and it's difficult for us to accept that most of being isn't very heavy with significance at all.
The act of creating--painting, writing, working on music, etc--are such very engaging experiences, we are able to lose ourselves inside of our minds and the concentration on what we are doing. For other people that depth comes from other things: sports/athletics, meditation and prayer, reading... Personally, nothing ever quite held my attention the way that drawing is able to, where you forget about time, you forget about your appetite; you just want to continue working because you feel challenged and engaged. But then I start to contrast that with the time that I spend doing everything else, and I realize that I've been taking the negative view, trying to figure out why things aren't always... compelling, and I'm left trying to figure out why. But it's like I've had things in reverse. It's not that there is this normal level of deep engagement and when it's not there something is lacking. It's more like, the things that we do that are truly engaging are more occasional, but we hold those things in higher regard in our minds.
It's a struggle to try to get these thoughts out coherently. I think we all tend to have these bouts of unexplainable melancholy. When you contrast those feelings of melancholy and detachment with this idea of fulfilling engagement, it's hard not to point to the lower moments and think "what was wrong with me then?" But what I'm saying is that it's not what was wrong then, it's what was right at the high points. This is how "flow" ties things together. It's figuring out what the things are that captivate us and learning how to use those things to lift us up.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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Taking the trash out
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I can't believe how much trash comes installed on a new computer. I'm sure it's even worse, being that it came with Win XP "Media Edition." When i first booted the new laptop there were 16 icons for running processes in the right side of the task bar. Five or six is acceptable, 16 is just ludicrous. I spent 3 hours uninstalling programs last night, the worst of which was McAfee, which just refused to go away. I finally had to go into the control panel and kill off all of McAfee's processes before it would let me uninstall it.I actually made pretty good use of the Google Pack, installing 8 programs from it. Pretty convenient, i have to say!
The irony is that a few days after i placed my order... well, like 6 days after... Dell changed their promotion, making the "core duo" version of the Inspiron e1505 the same price that i payed for this "core solo" machine, PLUS it had a free upgrade to a DVD burner. So it goes, it's still a nice new toy, 27% slower or not.
So here it is, my first post on Lappy '06, written while sitting on the couch watching a bad Bucks game. I wish i had taken a screenshot of the taskbar last night.
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Spore
Saturday, March 18, 2006
I heard this week about this new game being developed by Maxis and EA called Spore. There's a video of the creator of the game (and Sim City, The Sims, etc.), Will Wright, giving a presentation of Spore's gameplay, "which looks like it could possibly be the best video game ever."
This is the gist: you start the game in a petri dish with a micro-organism of your own creation. You control it, move it around, make it eat, avoid predatory organisms, and reproduce. Everytime you reproduce, you can go into an editor and add features to your organism to help it move better, eat different types of food (add a probiscus!), add defenses like pinchers or a stinger... This goes on and on until eventually you're not in a petri dish anymore, you're in the ocean. Your organism has a skeletal structure that you build on and alter, adding flippers, fins, and eventually feet to take your creature onto land.
The creature you're making seems to be somewhat contrained structurally to mammalian types of animals, but beyond that it's pretty open ended. You can make a 12 legged, 4 mouthed monkey dog if that's what you're into. So you're basically just continually evolving your creature and interacting with the world around you--which is populated by other player's creations. The game maintains a balanced eco-system in your world by downloading content--animals and whatnot--created by other players. It's "ansynchronous," meaning that you don't get to play with/against other live players, but i still think that it's a phenominal element to the game that your planet is populated by other peoples' creations.
The levels of evolution in the game continually expand. After some time developing your creature (I wonder what the official name for your creation is) for some time, it can become sentient and is able to begin doing things like using tools, building huts, villages, cities, civilizations, vehicles... The different civilizations in your world can interact with each other, fighting, trading, or sharing cultures. After what i imagine must be quite some time playing the game, you are able to get a UFO and move around your planet and out into your local solar system where you can alter the other planets to make them habitable. As if that's not enough, you can continue to move further out in the galaxy where you can listen for radio signals coming from other people's planets. It's insane. Just as your planet is populated with other people's content, your universe becomes populated by other peoples' planets and solar systems. You can go to their planets and interact with the civilizations they have built and even pick up their creatures and other creations to bring them back to your planet(s).
The depth and level of complexity in this game is staggering. It goes from the micro to the macro level, letting you control the development every step of the way, from single-celled organisms to extra-planetary space travel.
There's more to be read about Spore at IGN (where i read that there's a tentative release date of the 4th quarter of 06), but if you have 35 minutes, watch the video via google. It's worth it just to hear the crowd's reactions as Will Wright shows them the many astounding, and often funny, aspects of the game.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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nola pics
Sunday, March 12, 2006
This was taken by my friend Chet at the lakefront, standing in one of the picnic shelters. That's South Shore Harbor in the background, falling over into the water. That's where the marina was where we saw all of the boats tossed around in the street. I'll have pics of that soon, i think.
That house reads "This is the Twilight Zone." Seeing the city 6 months after the storm really made me wish i had seen it 6 weeks after instead.
This is the backyard at NOCCA.
This is the house i lived in as a teenager in Gentilly near the corner of Gentilly Blvd. and Franklin Ave. I was honestly surprised at how bad Gentilly looked overall. I mean, i knew a lot of it would be bad, but i thought this part of the neighborhood, called "Gentilly Terrace" for the higher ground it's on, would look better than it did. This picture doesn't do the dilapidation justice. It just looked awful.
Uptown, of course, was as beautiful as ever. This picture was taken from my friend Ryan's porch on State St. He's a 2nd year resident at LSU Medical school, having a lot of difficulty with his program which he says is in near collapse. He's trying to get out of NOLA, but i hope that he's able to stay and prosper and continue to move up State St.
This is Kim's old house off of the corner of Bundy and Lake Forest. The FEMA trailer means they're rebuilding, but the water line on the garage means it couldn't have been good inside.
The house on the left is the house i grew up in from ~7-13 years old, at which point we moved with my Mom to Gentilly and my Dad bought this house, in New Orleans East, back from my mom. There is an alley between these houses, we called it the catwalk, that we used to set up our skateboard ramps in. It's completely congested with branches and debris.
This was my friend Steve's house around the corner. You can see in this picture how the lawns had all died only to be overcome by weeds.
I was driving in Lakeview with my sister-in-law on Lundi Gras and my friend Ryan called on the cell, trying to make plans on when to meet up downtown. Driving through the devastated areas of the city tended to be a pretty heavy experience; i turned this street corner and the entire road was blocked by a house that had been swept off of its foundation. It was not the time or the place to be planning the evenings' festivities while i'm trying to make a u-turn 'cause there's a house blocking the road.
Lakeview was in a total disarray.
These last few pics are all from Rex on Mardi Gras morning. We didn't stay for the truck parades and unfortunately i didn't get any pics of Endymion/Bacchus because i left the camera in the car, but here is a small taste of Mardi Gras 2006:
I'll link all of these pics to their larger versions soon, but for the time being remember that i uploaded all of my mardi gras 06 pics at http://www.j-ink.com/mardiGras2006/
posted by j. Permanent Link
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toys!
I've complained about my old laptop countless times before. Over the last few months i've managed to maim it pretty badly, so it's been in this state of limbo where it's not quite dead, but it's not really being used. I killed the last keyboard, then ordered a new one only to realize that the problem lies more with the motherboard than the keyboard. Then one of the hinges gave out so now the display is rather loose. I took the screen off to see if the broken hinge happened to be the same one that i had an extra for (it wasn't) and i inadvertantly broke off the tiny piece of plastic that locks the battery in place! It's a 400Mhz dell that's been on it's last leg since i bought it. But i've loved having it! So much so that...
I just bought myself a new laptop. It was a bit more laptop than i really wanted, but the cheapest model dell didn't have an S-Video out port on it. Being able to play videos on the tv through the computer was one of the main reasons i wanted it, so it was kind of a necessity. Besides, the whole beauty of laptops is being able to work untethered... on the couch, outside, at the coffee shop, on trips... whatever. I am a geek and need my geek toys. Tools. Equipment. At least this one will finally be capable of handling programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash so i can use it as more than an internet machine.
Speaking of toys, i was messing with Chet's roommate's computer friday night and he had this Wacom Graphire Tablet...
Using it was very strange, but completely addictive. I'm thinking of asking for one at work. It was hard not to come home and buy one immediately, but there was the whole laptop debate going on in my head. One idiot purchase at a time.
Ok, i'm supposed to be writing blurbs for the nola pics i uploaded and picking out family photos to send to a Target in Texas for my grandma to pick up. Poor grandma, stuck in Texas.
The next update will probably be posted while i sit on my couch. Yay!
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mardi gras '06
Sunday, March 05, 2006
I'm in the passenger seat, riding back to Milwaukee, somewhere near Natchez, Mississippi. We got off to a pretty late start driving back, though I knew we would. We were shooting for noon, but there were traffic complications and I forgot a pair of shoes at my friend Ryan's house, so it's now 5pm and we're probably 2 hours outside of NOLA.NOLA.
Generally I despise the tourist shops with the crappy souvenirs and raunchy t-shirts, but now the shops are filled with post-katrina t-shirts: "I made it through Katrina and all I have left is this lousy t-shirt," "Willy Nagin and the Chocolate City," and one that I liked that just had a fluer de lis with a banner across it that just said "Rebuild." I have a feeling I'm going to regret not getting one, but I can always just make something similar and print it up with Café Press.
Mardi Gras day was yesterday. I had a pretty good sunburn going by the end of Rex, at which point my sister-in-law and I went and got some food at the Please U Restaurant, in which the quality of the food far surpassed the quality of the name they chose for their establishment. There were some really nice floats in Rex. There was a literary theme for the floats, one of which was based on Confederacy of Dunces with a big Ignatius J. Reilly prop. I'll have pics soon. By the time Elks started we were all pretty ready to leave the parade route, which is a bit uncommon for me. We went downtown to Frenchman St. where there was a pretty sizable crowd outside of Café Brazil dancing in the streets in costume. Being there was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. My mom and her husband met up with us out there which was funny. My mom is anything but a normal, conservative 50s-something woman, but the crowd had a definite liberal slant so it was kinda funny seeing her there.
We walked the quarter for a long time yesterday, popping around between Molly's, Frenchman St. and just general wandering. We wrapped up fairly early, around 9:30pm, after eating dinner at Maespero's. It took us a while to round up all of our cars from around downtown and uptown; by the time I got back to the house in Pearl River it was about 1:30 and my sister-in-law was falling asleep sitting up, trying to help me figure out where the turn for my mom's house is.
Lundi Gras, the day/night before Mardi Gras, was kind of a let down for me. There's a lot more traffic around the functioning parts of the city now, so everything takes longer to do. I had lunch with my dad, which took a phenominal amount of time considering the simplicity of going to get a po-boy and bringing it back to the house to eat. Afterward we went to see my step-brother, stopped back at the house to grab some stuff, then headed toward downtown to try to catch Rebirth Brass Band at the Zulu Lundi Gras festival. I wanted to do some driving around N.O. East on the way there, and managed to hit a few spots--kim's old house on Bundy and Lake Forest, my old house on Coventry near Kenilworth Park, Haynes Blvd... We took the Seabrook Bridge and went out to Lakeview so my sister-in-law could see the break in the 17th St. Canal and some of the surrounding neighborhoods. We took a turn on one street and had to turn around because there was a house in the middle of the road. We wound up making it to the Riverfront for the festival just in time to catch Rebirth, though it wasn't quite what I expected. Rather than play up on the stage, they started marching along the Riverfront, out of the park, and out into the streets of the quarter as the entire crowd followed along. There was a bit less crowd following them through the streets than you might expect, but then this wasn't a normal Mardi Gras. Either way, it was pretty funny that we inadvertantly ended up in a Second Line with Rebirth Brass Band.
After hanging out in the quarter for a few hours, trying to get a group of 6 people to agree on something to do, it was discovered that Peaches was playing the Shim Sham Club that night. If you've never heard of Peaches... neither had I. She was described to me as a raunchy white girl who rapped over electronic music. "It'll be good. You'll be the envy of everyone you know in milwaukee." In my conversations with my sister-in-law, moderation and self-control had become a running philosophical point and here was a chance for me to exercise that. I feel like every so often I am put in these situations where I am forced to choose between a social situation and what I think is right--like the night chet asked me if I'd really stay home if he got the Family Guy movie. Honestly, I think the "Evil is Cool" thing is immature; I don't find that vulgarity or offensiveness are good replacements for true wit or creativity. I knew if I went to the Peaches show I was going to feel like I had compromised myself, so the five of them went to the show and I went home at 10pm the night before Mardi Gras. I honestly felt like I had made the right choice, but I was pretty aggravated with having had to make the decision in the first place. I wasn't going to try to convince anyone else not to go. All I have to offer is my example. But it still sucked to go home early, sitting around in New Orleans on Lundi Gras Night playing Katamari Damacy.
Saturday wound up being rainy, so Endymion was cancelled and rescheduled to follow Bacchus, which made for one very fun night. My sister-in-law and I parked between Jefferson and Napoleon, figuring we'd meet up with everyone on Napolean and go from there. Well, that didn't happen--at least not as planned. We walked to Louisiana through scores and scores of college kids looking for our crew, walked all the way back to Napoleon, then back again past Louisiana all the way to Jackson Ave. where we finally caught up with everyone else. A weird thing happened, though. It was like everyone along Napolean and St. Charles up to Louisiana were college kids. I was getting scared that Mardi Gras was going to become Spring Break 2006: New Orleans. But at Louisiana all of a sudden there was a solid wall of black people. It must have been pretty intimidating to the Tulane students from Oklahoma and Rhode Island because the frat parties stopped there. Once you got on the downtown side of Louisiana, though, it was like all of a sudden you were in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. You could just tell that everyone there was local, everyone belonged. The crowds were mixed, racially speaking, and everyone was just hanging out catching beads. And let me tell you, beads ain't what they were when we were kids. All beads are "pearls" and the special ones have beads that are at least 1/2 " wide and hang down to your knees. There were cups a'plenty, though, and that's what I was interested in. I got lots of Bacchus and Endymion cups. The Endymion ones are awesome, with big colorful fluer de lis on them. With Bacchus and Endymion rolling back to back, the parade didn't end where we were standing until 11:30.
As far as crowds were concerned, the parade route along St. Charles was as crowded as ever. There were a LOT of people out, though we didn't have much trouble pushing our way to the front. It was the crowds in the quarter where the difference was obvious. We wound up on Bourbon Street for a block or two one night, I can't remember which, and things were quite calm. There were people scattered on balconies, but the crowd was far from body to body and there was none of the typical boob-debauchery.
I do have one regret from this trip: I didn't get to drive around and see the city nearly as much as I would have liked. Granted, there was a LOT going on, it being Mardi Gras and all, on top of the fact that there were quite a few of us in town and my parents to visit with. I saw quite a bit of Lakeview and a little of Gentilly, but I never made it to the 9th Ward at all. It was weird the way things were in the city. There was this dichotomy between what areas were functional (Uptown, Metairie, Slidell, the WB), which were bustling with activity and traffic, and the areas in the city that were damaged, which were completely dead. Gentilly looked worse than I expected it to. It looked awful. Lakeview was a complete disaster. I didn't get to see much of New Orleans East, only my old house there and Kim's old house, but the whole area was just a big desolate mess. It was like you could see inside of every window and everything was just dark and inert. It's strange to see such a lively, spirited place so lifeless and in such disarray.
We're just past Jackson, Mississippi now and the sun is setting beautifully to the West. Looks like we're not going to get home till about 7am or so. Ugh. There is usually a really heavy melancholy that comes with leaving Louisiana, though I think it's worse when you fly. I think airports themselves engender melancholy. Driving out is much easier at least in that you get to start the drive in Mississippi. Miss. may be a backwoods state, but it's green and lush and beautiful. It's hilly and there are trees and blue sky all around. Even so, I feel a bit more detached on leaving today, perhaps because the trip wasn't exactly what I had expected. It's strange; it's like it's sometimes hard to feel present--not just on the trip, I mean, but in general. At times I get so far inside my own mind that I don't seem to feel what's going on around me--it's like I get into pure observation mode, or self-analysis mode, whichever the case may be. I don't know, maybe in a day or so I'll hit my melancholy stride. I can say, though, that I was extremely happy to be there for this Mardi Gras. I would have been going insane sitting at home, not there to celebrate the city and the survival of our culture.
One thing I can say for sure, though, is that I sure ate well. If there's no other way to be in the moment, eating in NOLA will do it for you. I ate a lot, I ate well, and I walked it all off in the end.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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coming soon....
Saturday, March 04, 2006
just wait, i've got a long summation of Mardi Gras week in progress.for the time being feel free to check out some pics from the trip. I'll give some details on some of the pics after the writing is all done.
posted by j. Permanent Link
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