2019: May 11th Lovett - Demons of the Prairie

Yesterday I gushed for Emma Tammi's The Wind, today I'll gush for the score. I didn't know anything about Lovett, AKA Ben Lovett, but he's done quite a few scores, especially of late. You might know his music from The Ritual, The Wind, or I Trapped the Devil (which is one of the next movies on my to-watch list). The cool thing with this score though, is I've been working on this Ciazarn book with Jonathan Grimm, and I have a ton of research hours put in, an outline for the first issue/chapter, but I've been unable to find the voice for the actual prose. And a large part of the reason for that is I didn't have the right musical soundtrack to write it to. Music is essential to my writing process, and most of what I listen to evokes my usual tone, where let's say the stuff in A Collection of Desires is a nine on the darkness meter and Shadow Play is a four, and all of it is modern. Ciazarn is a completely different animal. It's 1930s Dustbowl, and it's dark, but it's told through the eyes of a ten-year-old, so that makes it less dark at times than most of my characters, and more dark other times, the hard part being able to tell where each is appropriate for the sake of the story. Anyway, with Lovett's OST for The Wind, I knocked out and polished a pretty fantastic opening paragraph yesterday, so I am excited!

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Playlist from 5/10:

Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
The Black Queen - Infinite Games
Lovett - The Wind OST
Thought Gang - Eponymous
Vanessa Williams - Dreaming' (Single)

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Card of the day:

Feels good, the sturdy symmetry of the Threes. Feels like where I'm standing right now. Of course, from Three you inevitably have to move to Four, which is a little less stable, but I'll enjoy the feeling of having both feet firmly on the ground for the moment.

2019: May 10th - IT Chapter 2

Despite the holes in my memory that surround my viewing of Andy Muschietti's first chapter of IT,  I'm excited as hell for the sequel. This trailer was an interesting choice, and I think I much prefer seeing what appears to be an almost full scene from the film instead of a three-minute montage that really just ends up showing us too much.

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I'm working all weekend, so today is my day off. I've learned to look forward to these weekday mornings - I can wake up, read for a bit while I brew some coffee, then settle in with a movie. Two weeks ago my Friday morning movie was David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake, and I'm still humming from that one. For today, I'd previously set my sights on Emma Tammi's The Wind. Really good. I feel like my open air viewing on the tv in our bedroom - which is not hooked to a proper sound system, as the one in our living room is - cheated me of a more enriching sonic experience then I first realized. But the logistics of watching the flick in the better room were a toss-up since I'm not the only one home, so I opted for the more isolated room despite its subpar audio set-up. I can see where a theatrical viewing, or headphones perhaps even more so, could make this film an even more intense experience. That then, is what my eventual second viewing will be focused around (so sorry I missed this at Beyondfest last year).



And being that this is my day off, last night I stayed up and watched Pledge, a film that has already gained the reputation of being 'too much.' I loved the set-up, loved the camerawork, set design, everything. And although Pledge definitely dips a few toes into the 'torture porn' aesthetic, I ended up really enjoying it. As for the movie being, 'too much,' I know the exact scene that elicits this response from people. I'm pretty squeamish, however, if you've read and learned to love Bret Ellis' American Psycho like I have, you'll do fine. Incidentally, Ellis' work feels like it a very large influence on Pledge, which also added to my enjoyment of the viewing. Pledge is currently on HULU, which really kind of shocked me



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These isolated mornings are when I normally get a hankering for some Black Sabbath. For being one of my favorite bands, Sabbath's music is an extremely personal experience for me, and thus usually best when experienced alone. So I don't clock nearly as many hours with the group that I used to. At this point however, their music is in my blood, and when I do get a few moments to give one of those first eight records my undivided attention, it always supercharges the music for me. After the movie this morning, I settled in with Master of Reality on my headphones, and today Sweet Leaf really did it for me.



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Playlist from 5/09:

Mastodon - Emperor of Sand

The Atlas Moth - An Ache for the Distance
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta II: Dialogue With the Stars
Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta III (Saturnian Poetry)
Blut Aus Nord - What Once Was... Liber III EP
Hall & Oats - Apple Music Essentials
Melvins - Houdini
Soundgarden - Louder Than Love
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Earth - Cats on Briar (pre-release single)
Earth - The Color of Poison (pre-release single)
Blut Aus Nord - Deus Salutes Meae
Thought Gang - Eponymous

No card today.