ONEDREAMRUSH & Harmony Korine
This is rad [via Harmony-Korine.com]
Harmony Korine is one of 42 contributors to the project ONEDREAMRUSH, a creation of the New Zealand vodka company 42Below that invites various individuals to create 42-second videos exploring dreams. Other contributors to ONEDREAMRUSH include Kenneth Anger, David Lynch, Leos Carax, Larry Clark, Jonas Mekas, and Gaspar Noe. In time all of the films are to feature on the project’s website here. Korine’s part, titled Crutchnap, has already been made public and can now be found here (.mov/56MB).
Also notable is the information that: The Toronto International Film Festival will host the world premiere of Trash Humpers, a new feature film by Harmony Korine. Trash Humpers has been described as a “handheld video of a loser-gang cult-freak collective who do antisocial things in a non-narrative way, except for the song-and-dance numbers.”
YES.
Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock
I often forget that The Believer publishes some original content online, mostly because pieces don’t appear there very often, or on any particular schedule (at least, not one that’s apparent to me). But today is a glad day, for I have been to Believermag.com and I have found there Judy Berman’s online exclusive “Concerning the Spiritual in Indie Rock.” It’s a great, smart article, and does double duty as the blueprint for a pretty kickass playlist. Berman starts with Kandinsky’s essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” (published in 1911, which was the year after, according to Virginia Woolf, “human character changed”) and then takes a hard jump forward to Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Onward then to Arcade Fire, Gowns, Dan Deacon, the new Animal Collective single “My Girls,” the idea of worship and praise as unfixed experiences, and the idea of drone music as a successor/re-incarnation of certain kinds of meditation. But my favorite part of the piece is about the band Ponytail (pictured above), because I saw these guys open for Mission of Burma right before I went out of the country in July, and let me tell you, everything Berman says about them is right-on.
The title of Ponytail’s most recent album, Ice Cream Spiritual (2008), perfectly captures the band’s sugar-high, wonder-stricken noise-punk. Singer Molly Siegel’s high-pitched shrieks and her bandmates’ wild, experimental take on the classic guitar-bass-drum combination recall nothing more than childhood playtime. For Siegel, childhood and spirituality are about both exploding boundaries between ourselves and the universe and the “ecstasy in losing yourself” that creates.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Believer online exclusives, which includes Stephen Elliott interviewing Matt Bai, two music pieces by Matt Derby, and Chloe Veltman’s classic “The Passion of the Morrissey.”
PS- I’ll be in Tokyo till Tuesday so I won’t be around. Don’t have too much fun without me.
APOCALYPSE WEEK AT SLATE: How is America Going to End?
#140, "Rods from God"
Slate offers up their top 144 US-centric Armageddon scenarios. (I assume that’s one scenario for every thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses admitted to Heaven.) I am especially fond of #69, “Vermont Independence,” because I’ve actually read Thomas H. Naylor‘s bat-shit crazy book, Secession. I also dig #87, “Opt-in Government,” a scenario wherein “government becomes divorced from geography. People who live in the United States can choose to be governed by the laws of Sweden and vice-versa.” And honorable mention to #107, “Climate Wars,” wherein certain countries conduct experiments to try and stop global warming, some of which trigger (or we suspect they trigger) bizarre and possibly disastrous weather, which causes all the nations of the earth to start attacking each other because everyone thinks everyone else made the weather. Please vote for your favorite or suggest your own in the comments section. Also, a big hat tip to my friend Alice Townes, who by the time she sees this post will have forgotten she ever sent me the link.
More Slate-pocalypse:
Josh Levin introduces Apocalypse Week at Slate
The world’s leading futurologists have four main theories about the demise of the US.
“Choose Your Own Apocalypse” interactive feature
PS- some of you might recall that I edited a little book about the apocalypse. Just throwin’ that out there.
Front & Center on the NYT main page right now: a big profile about WTV on the occasion of his new book Imperial, a 1300 page study of California’s Imperial Valley.
Mr. Vollmann’s editors urged him to cut, he said, and he resisted: “We always go round and round. They want me to cut, and I argue, so they cut my royalties, and I agree never to write a long book again.” He acknowledged that the length of “Imperial” might cost him readers but said: “I don’t care. It seems like the important thing in life is pleasing ourselves. The world doesn’t owe me a living, and if the world doesn’t want to buy my books, that’s my problem.”
“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”
555 KUBIK | facade projection | from urbanscreen on Vimeo.
via engadget.
Hey, want to be in a book? … Get in the chair.
Dear Whoever this is a picture of, Call me?
THE WORD MADE FLESH:
Literary Tattoos from Bookworms Worldwide
Edited by Eva Talmadge and Justin Taylor
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! We are seeking high quality photographs of your literary tattoos for an upcoming book. Send us your ink! Submissions are open to all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree, if it’s a literary tattoo and its on your body, we want to see it.
All images must include the name (or pseudonym) of the tattoo bearer, city and state or country, and a transcription of the text itself, along with its source. For portraits or illustrations, please include the name of the author or book on which it’s based. And of course, you are heartily encouraged to credit the artist who did your work.
We’d also like to read a few words about the tattoo’s meaning to you — why you chose it, when you first read that poem or book, or how its meaning has evolved over time. How much (or how little) you choose to say about your tattoo is up to you, but a paragraph or two should do the trick.
Please send clear digital images of the highest print quality possible to tattoolit@gmail.com. Pixel resolutions should be at least 1500 x 1200, or a minimum 300 dpi at 5 inches wide. Text should be included in the body of the email, not as an attached document. Also be sure to include one or more pieces of contact information, so we can let you know if you’re going to be in the book.
Matt Bell, Matthew Derby & the Best of the Web
Did everyone else already know that Matt Bell is going to be the series editor for Dzanc’s Best of the Web series, beginning with the 2010 book? I didn’t, but aren’t I glad to know it now? Yes. Anyway, I learned this information in a note Matt posted to facebook about also-Matt Matthew Derby, whose story “January in December” from Guernica will be anthologized in BotW2009, edited by Lee K. Abbott. (Disclosure/chest-beating: I am a proud alum of the BotW series; my story “The Jealousy of Angels” appeared in the 2008 edition, which was edited by Steve Almond.) After the jump, MB’s full facebook post: his explanation of what BotW is, his introduction of Derby, and then a long guest-post by Derby himself about the writing of “January in December.”
Little Roundup
(via Rumpus) At The Millions, Sonya Chung writes about the bizarre process of picking out a cover image for her first novel. (I just went through a similar process, and though I can’t share the image yet, suffice to say it pleases me greatly and I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I can.)
Coldfront has a new Poets Off Poetry, this time authored by the vicious and delightful Erin Belieu.
And a new issue of Trickhouse (#5) is up, featuring an experiment conducted by Brandon Shimoda and Lisa Schumaier. They need you to participate, so you better get over there.
Oh and Slate’s got Katha Pollitt on Edna O’Brien on Lord Byron.
Solar Anus reading series ISO new blood
Hello from Hong Kong, everyone. Among the various goings-on I’ve missed blogging during the past few days, this one’s especially close to my heart, seeing as how the Solar Anus reading series is jointly run by Our Own Herr Butler, my dear friend Amy McDaniel, and all-purpose badass Jamie Iridell. Amy posted the following to facebook yesterday-
Hi writers!
I co-run a poetry and fiction reading series in Atlanta called Solar Anus. Past readers include Justin Taylor, Johannes Goransson, Rauan Klassnik, and Bruce Covey. In the interest of future readings that are every bit as fabulous, I thought I’d reach out to all of you in two ways:
First, please let me know if you will be in the Atlanta area…ever. I’d love to discuss the possibility of hosting you to read to us.
Second, pass this along to other writers whom you respect who either live in or near Atlanta or who might be passing through. Encourage them to query me at amymcdaniel@gmail.com with a brief bio and a link to something they’ve written. We especially love promoting writers who have books or chapbooks to sell.
Very many thanks.
Amy
Oh wait, how about an interview with Blake Butler
As if you didn’t know, Blake Butler is on the road with the Dollar Store tour that Featherproof put together. The following interview was conducted over TXT Msg, and I dunno, it might not be worth your time, but I liked hearing about the road hijinx a lot. READ MORE >