Spending my morning with Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, aka Fitzcarraldo. This is one of the most impressive motion pictures ever made. Period. I'm planning on following up the film with a viewing of Les Blank/Michael Goodwin's The Burden of Dreams, the documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo. If you've never seen these films, what's so amazing is this: in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, the titular character, as played by the always brilliant Klaus Kinski, is a would-be entrepreneur in the early 20th Century Amazon with one great dream in life: to build an Opera house in Iquitos, a small city in the jungle. To fund this, Fitz's plan is to become a Rubber Baron by exploiting the one region of rubber trees still unclaimed in the area - unclaimed because the rapids in the Ucayali River that leads from the Amazon directly to the region are unnavigable. But Fitz has a plan.
The Plan: To sail upstream on the neighboring Pachitea River, then pull the boat over the narrow strip of land that separates it from the Ucayali. From there, Fitz reasons they can sail down the Ucayali into the region of rubber trees, gather his workers' yield, and haul it back up to the crossover point, it's just a matter of short trips for his steamer up the Ucayali, and the work of transporting his crop back across to the Pachitea.
But, you know, first they have to actually pull a streamliner over a mountain.
So how do you film that? Well, you have to actually do all of it. As in, Herzog had to actually pull the steamer over the land, which required blasting. The Burden of Dreams chronicles the reality of a filmmaker willing to do the same fantastic feat he requires of his fictional character. It is massive, awe-inspiring, and the very best kind of creative insanity, to say the very least.
Playlist from 2/14:
Pink Floyd - Animals
Corrosion of Conformity - No Cross No Crown
Black Sabbath - Eponymous
The Pack A.D. - Unpersons
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Mike Patton - Mondo Cane
Card of the day:
Seems to line up with my viewing this afternoon. Something this inspirational will usually help charge the batteries right before a new endeavor.
My health is much better today, which means I'm back to work. It's been raining here in LaLaLand off and on for days; today the heaven water is planted firmly in the 'On' position, which is cool with me. I always get a kick out of what heaven LA rain does to the city - green sprouts up everywhere instantaneously, as if all this plant life you didn't even know is there has just been waiting for a few drops to come back to life and flourish. And the LA river? Right about now you could probably take a canoe to it.
NCBD this week; I haven't been in to pick up my books in weeks, so despite tracking what came out each of the last few Wednesdays in these pages, I haven't picked up a single one. This week was a big one though, so I'll probably head in today for this, along with everything else:
Second Arc conclusion is bound to be a doozy; firmly the book I look forward to the most each month. No offense, TWD, you're still up there, too:
Soooo good! The idea that we are living in a world with a monthly Criminal book is invigorating beyond description:
And forgot that this hit last week:
Playlist from 02/13:
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Pink Floyd - Animals
Jimi Hendrix - Axis Bold As Love
Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland
Card of the day:
Ah, the extra card. Most people take these out, I leave them in. That said, I've never drawn this before so I've never had the occasion to research it. If you do a little quick reading, this is the Unicursal Hexagram Crowley used in Ritual situations. It is a symbol of Crowley's 'religion,' Thelema. Not sure what this is saying; perhaps I should take a few moments today and peruse some of my Crowley texts, just to see if anything relevant bites.
Well, it's been a few days. In fact, the interim between today's post and my previous one on Sunday is the longest I've gone without posting since I began the new format of this page shortly into 2018. This plague I have is no joke, and to top it off we're short at work, so I've had to go in the last few mornings. It's been half-sick days all week, which isn't bad, but half measures apparently are not going to give me the rest I need to beat this, so today I am just off, period.
I'm starting the day re-watching the above Emma Ruth Rundle documentary that Sargent Housedropped last week; makes me want to move back to the Midwest, if I'm being truthful. Although, if I'm being honest, many fleeting glances into other people's lives inspire that reaction in me; from visits home, to contemplation of friends who have beautiful homes and pay less in monthly mortgage payments by half than I pay to rent a small two-bedroom, to the idea of thunderstorms owning an entire season. The early scenes in this doc, those with everyone in the bar, even just the shot of the street outside the bar for that matter because there aren't bars in LA like that, these scenes make me homesick. Then again, I remind myself, it's only one aspect of myself that pines for these things, and as green as the faraway grass of Chicago, or Dayton, or Louisville looks from here in Los Angeles, I'm well aware I have a pretty awesome life set up here. Cost of living is a big check in the CON column, but there's a lot of PROs as well. This is the mental and emotional cost of daily life: the balancing act between all the wants and needs inside us. And I do a pretty good job, for the most part.
This doc also made me remember how much I like Young Widows. Been a while; you'll notice they begin to populate my daily listening again below.
**
Here's a shocker I just found out yesterday because I don't pay any attention to music award shows: High on Fire won a Grammy on Sunday. Holy shit; hell hath frozen over. And as much as I hate to solicit for a paradigm I detest, here's their acceptance footage, because even after watching it twice, I still can't believe it. That said, I feel like this is an Oscars-like, making-up-for-lost-time awarding, because although I dig Electric Messiah, I feel as though the band's truly groundbreaking and undeniable work is well behind them. Still, who'd have thought, eh? Better late than never...
Having now crested the half-way point in Ramsey Campbell's Alone with the Horrors, I've returned it to the shelf and decided to re-read a few of the stories in Thomas Ligotti's debut collections Songs of a Dead Dreamer/Grimscribe. There's a definite pedigree here; Ligotti is clearly influenced by Campbell, although not in an overly direct way. But there are some aesthetic through-lines I am interested in exploring here, and I'm enjoying this strange little path I've discovered for myself through some of the foundations of short-form modern Weird/Horror. It's definitely helping me understand tone and craft better.
I've watched quite a bit during my sick time. First up, Anthony from The Horror Vision recently gifted me a copy of Scream Factory's Scream Queens Double Feature: John Carpenter's The Fog, and Joe Dante's The Howling. It'd been a couple years since I'd seen The Howling, and I was curious to see the difference the transfer would make, so before watching it I did a quick A/B with my old DVD copy.
Wow. Folks, this is dangerous. Having only recently been converted to the merit of upgrading to Blu Ray - because I refuse to rebuy my collection on another format - I have to say, the difference is huge. So I watched The Howling and was enraptured by the clarity. I also did some reading about transfer technology and what not (Blu-Ray.com is a near limitless source for that), and I have to say, I won't be replacing everything, but some films for sure. Army of Darkness for instance, or at least the DVD copy I have of the Director's Cut, is a laughable transfer; seriously, this was one of the first films I noticed issues on, two years ago when I excitedly sat down to show K the original Evil Dead trilogy. We made it to the third installment and I realized the picture was so bad it looked like we were watching the film on a crappy old tv in 1978 during an electrical storm. I mean, it's garbage.
Army of Darkness isn't a film I can't live without; it's easily my least favorite of all Ash Williams vehicles, but it's an iconic gem and one I want in my collection. But not this terrible transfer. Because, the idea isn't about constantly upgrading and rebuying, it's about Film Preservation. And while I'm not sure if I have to nitpick over the differences between the $10 AOD Blu Ray that Scream Factory released and the $30 one, having all three versions of the film is important to me, so it's going to have to be the $30. But that purchase is down the road, perhaps when one of SF's sales comes up. I'm still trying like hell to save money, and doing a fairly good job doing it, which is precisely why all the information available about transfers and clarity is, as I said at the outset, dangerous.
After The Howling, I changed pace and watched Jim Jarmusch's Paterson. Wow. One of the best films I've seen in a while, and one of my favorite of Jarmusch's to date; he has such a sense of forgiveness, community, and humanity that comes through in his work, that I feel like this film actually helped heal some black, sticky stuff that was left inside me after a falling out I had back in August last year. So good. I'm not posting a trailer, because there's no way a trailer could tell you anything about this film. Just watch it; Paterson is an Amazon-funded film, and thus available on Prime for free.
Next, I finally got around to Werner Herzog's Nosferatu: The Vampyre. I don't always understand or gel with Herzog's style, but he has such a knack for balancing pragmatism with artistic flourish that I always enjoy his films, even if only after they've ended and I'm re-thinking them. That might be the case here. Let's stick with the poster thing, I'm starting to hate trailers:
Finally, with all these long stretches of time on my hands, I thought I'd get around to one of the longer flicks that has been on my list forever, namely, Derek Cianfrance's 2012 MASTERPIECE, The Place Beyond the Pines. This film was enormous to me; a familial crime epic that blew me away and capped my cinema for the day yesterday because, how the hell do you follow something that BIG? And hell, Mike Patton does the score, and I can say this not just as a fan of his but as a fan of cinema scores: fantastically done, Mr. Patton.
Playlists have been tiny, so instead of doing a day-by-day, I'm summate thusly:
Playlist from Sunday, 2/10-Tuesday, 2/12:
SQÜRL - Paterson OST
David Zinman, Dawn Upshaw & London Sinfonietta - Gorecki: Symphony #3, Op 36 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs": I. Lento - Sostenuto tranquillo ma cantabile
Young Widows - Settle Down City
Young Widows - Old Wounds
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Windhand - Eternal Return
Morphine - The Night
Secret Chiefs 3 Traditionalists - Le Mani Destre Recise Degli Ultimi Uomini
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - An Attempt to Draw Aside the Veil
John Carpenter - Lost Themes
Card of the day:
I'm hoping this is a reminder of the past few days, and not a harbinger of more oppressive illness to come.
If you read the notes available in the description panel for this on youtube (or just go HERE and read it in full), the ideology, methodology, and execution the band describes for conceptualizing and producing Life Metal is staggering. Add to that the fact that this is an entirely analog project - I love the line in the description about the "air coming off the speakers in front of the microphones" - with the analog Master Steve Albini doing the recording duties at Chicago's Electrical Audio, and I haven't been this excited for a Sunn O))) record since Monoliths and Dimensions. I need a pre-order link NOW!
I've been sick as all hell the last few days; Saturday I didn't even leave my bed. During that time Had ample time to pick at the video cue. Here's what I watched, all of it excellent:
And a Sabbath Documentary named Black Sabbath: In Their Own Words, that is streaming for free on Amazon Prime. I couldn't find the trailer on youtube, but you can view it on Amazon HERE.
I also watched There Will Be Blood again for the first time in a long time. Totally holds up (not that I expected anything else):
Oh! And I can't forget this video Mr. Brown linked me to. A fantastic exploration/interpretation of Twin Peaks Season Three that shed a lot of new light and convinced me the premise of the video's title is 100% correct. Well, as 100 % correct as you can be interpreting David Lynch's work:
Playlist from 2/09 was non-existent.
Playlist from 2/08:
Flying Lotus - You're Dead
Bob Mould - Sunshine Rock
HEALTH - Vol. 4 :: Slaves of Fear
The Blueflowers - Circus on Fire
Brian Eno - Here Come the Warm Jets
Deafheaven - New Bermuda
Grinderman - Grinderman II
Ghost Bath - Moonlover
Card of the day:
Always good to see Netzach! I'm interpreting this card, it's six pristine wands overlaid by one roughly hewn but bursting with power one, as the insight I'll have from writing in my current diminished health capacity. We'll see.
Wow. My good friend Jacob messaged me a few weeks ago about the then-just released split EP Minsk and Zatokrev released at the end of 2018. Minsk is pretty much always a sure thing, but I'd never heard Zatokrev before. And now I am a fan.
You'll notice a binaural beats album on the playlist from yesterday. I have a weird suspicion about these; that they're a pop psychology/new age product made from something valuable. Way back in 2001/2002, when I was in The Yellow House, I had a pretty good makeshift studio setup in the basement of the house where we practiced, Joup's Joe Grez's original Palos Hills, two-story home. He lived there with two other guys he rented to as roommates, and we had the basement as our rehearsal/studio space. It was the early days of Pro Tools being available for laymen, and I was fresh out of Colombia College with a minor in sound recording. We had a pretty sweet monitor situation in the basement, but also had some big ass stereo speakers, located at opposite ends of the room. I was deep diving into Magick, the Occult, and all things related, and had stumbled across the waveform science that eventually begat Binaural Beats. I was fascinated and began conducting experiments, first on myself with headphones, then Grez became intrigued and asked to take part, then I began expanding my horizons, broadening my experiments to unknowingly include guests to the house. We'd often finish practices and end up with friends hanging out, and for a while they became involved. Nothing malevolent at all, but interesting...
Here's the deal: Theta Waves occur from 3 to 8 Hz, and are the frequencies of dreams, memory, and intuition. And the brain does a funny thing; if you apply a frequency to the brain using, let's say headphones, the brain will match it. Now, speaker responses are normally from 40 to 4k Hz, so speakers - which are transducers, that is they take one form of energy and turn it into another form, in this case sound waves to electricity - cannot at this point in time be made to physically handle sound waves outside of that range. So how do you apply 4 Hz to the brain and induce Theta state? Well, the brain does another funny thing; if you put 48 Hz in one ear, panned hard right, and 44 Hz in the other panned hard left, the brain splits the difference and matches 4 Hz. Crazy, right? So back in The Yellow House studio, I'd do this to myself and try and induce unease, nausea, joy, trance, etc. And I started doing it to visitors when they'd hang, put Hi-Beta waves (15-22 Hz) through the room by using a tone generator to pan 60 Hz through hard right and 72 Hz through left and watch too see if people began to feel irritated or high strung.
They did.
Anyway, it's been a while since I've utilized this. I have a meditation tone I constructed in Pro Tools a few years back, but other than that it's usually difficult for me to do that kind of thing with my now antiquated set-up. I've been wanting to get back to dreaming and dream journaling, and Lucid Dreaming has long been elusive to me - I've done it exactly once that I'm aware of. So when a co-worker who has a kind of pop 'metaphysical bent' to his interests told me he'd started using binaural beats to induce Lucidity in dreaming and it worked, I figured why not. I listened to this yesterday during the day, no where near the hour I went to bed, but I did have a pretty insanely vivid dream right before I awoke this morning, so maybe it will work.
Playlist from 2/06:
Ghost - Infestissumam
Bob Mould - Lost Faith (Pre-release single)
Bob Mould - Patch the Sky
Binaural Beats - Lucid Dreaming
Mastodon - Once More 'Round the Sun
Bigod - Minsk & Zatokrev
Card of the day:
Interesting. I have a meeting this morning this could be relevant to. The dissolution of old paradigms to make way for something new...
Sing it brother! Talk about hitting the f*&kin' nail on the head. Bob Mould has always had a knack for hooky, endearing, emotionally charged melodies, especially on his choruses. This is no different, but Lost Faith is also bleaker than anything he's done in a while. Love the accordion on the end of the track, and as far as videos go, I'm not usually a fan of videos with the artist standing in the camera, aping playing their instrument, but here the aping is intentional, and, what's more, powerful. Because Bob wears his age on his sleeve and it helps. It helps someone like me, who lost his aging reference just over three years ago and is looking for someone to help him navigate the onset of the back-end of his system's course.
Mr. Mould's new record, Sunshine Rock, is out on Friday from Merge Records. Order it HERE.
The name of the game today is one step back, anticipation for two steps forward. Let's see if that pans out in today's card when I get to it below.
I've been on a bit of a Ghost kick lately, and I was surprised to find I've come back around to Prequelle with a considerably kinder regard. In fact, it's actually working its way up to ranking in with the rest of the Ghost records. Still my least favorite, but I'd imagine I'm finally looking at it as an album in its own right. Also, all the Ozzy solo stuff is probably curbing my expectations mixing them with reality.
My current favorite track.
Watched Velvet Buzzsaw two nights ago. Really dug it. Dan Gilroy pairs with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo again, adding Toni Collette, Natalia Dryer, Zawe Ashton, John Malkovich, and a bunch of other great talent to turn in a funny little romp through the world of high class/high cost Art and turn it into... a slasher flick. I mean, it took a while for that to happen, but there's a point where I became lucid in the midst of a classic slasher trope and realized, "Holy cow, this is a slasher flick with Art as the killer!"
That idea alone should be enough to get you to watch it. For me, there's also the fact that I adore the way Gilroy shoots nighttime Los Angeles. He has an eye for catching its beauty, as previously seen in the fantastic Nightcrawler. The trick, I believe, is to shoot LA at night, because at night it is beautiful. During the day LA is, for the most part, gross.
Playlist from 2/04:
Joy Divison - Closer
Skid Row - Slave to the Grind
The Devil and the Almighty Blues - II
Ritual Howls - Turkish Leather
Playlist from 2/05:
Ghost - Infestissumam
Ghost - Prequelle
Boy Harsher - Careful
King Buffalo - Longing to be the Mountain
Battle Tapes - Form EP
Ghost - Opus Eponymous
Card of the day:
While there was nothing lazy about my night last night - I spent it hardcore cleaning/rearranging stuff in the apartment that had gotten out of hand - I did not write. This is a reference to that. Also, in reading around online to expand my interpretation, I'm reminding this is an 8 so it corresponds to Hod, which is all about structure and logic, which had a lot to do with my impromptu organizing jag yesterday. Today? Write!
New music from Chasms, whose new album The Mirage comes out February 22nd on the always amazing Felte Records. Pre-order it HERE, and see them live if you can, as they are wonderful.
Subterranean Press has a very limited number of copies of Warren Ellis' novella Dead Pig Collector, something I have been wanting to read for years but forgot about some time back while waiting for a physical copy to emerge. Said copy has emerged, but the door is closing quickly. Order it HERE.
February is Women in Horror month, and to kick things off, K and I hosted 3/4ths of The Horror Vision crew this past Saturday for a viewing of Jen and Sylvia Soska's American Mary. Damn, I love this film. The empowerment that comes through the story and performances is intoxicating, and seeing it again has me even more excited for the Soska's upcoming remake of David Cronenberg's Rabid, about which there is a pair of marvelous articles in the latest issue of Fangoria Vol. 2.
You can listen to the newest episode of The Horror Vision on Apple, (although I think there's a lag in the episode uploading to Apple at the moment) Spotify, Google Play, or our website.
Playlist from 2/03:
Jozef Van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch - Concerning the White Horse (on repeat for like an hour while I finished the new story)
Boy Harsher - Careful
Card of the day (despite the fact that the day's almost over; I'm curious):
Perfect and funny for so very many reasons at the moment.
