Widnoon

On Thursday the body of Andrew Koenig was found hanging from a tree in a secluded Vancouver park. Koenig was best know for playing Richard "Boner" Stabone on popular sitcom Growing Pains. Some might be surprised to learn of a media-mediated personal connection. Being one those kids that banged his head off things, and I mean a lot-- double fucking kicks-- people in my family called me Boneyhead. Perhaps Sloppedbrain would have been a better moniker. In one episode of Growing Pains, Boner comes inside from shoveling snow, drinks cocoa through his ski mask and proclaims "This tastes fuzzy!". In unison my family points at me and says "that's something you would say." "Boneyhead" morphed into "Boner." Some school kids learned of this but thank god "Boner" never stuck outside of my family circle. To this day some of my close family will still call me "Bone" (boner abbreviated) on holidays. Hanging oneself in a Vancouver forest is not an unromantic suicide. My suicide fantasy involves blowing the top of my head off with a shotgun. I've obsessed over this for years. I hear the shot over and over in my head. I hear all the time, anytime when I am alone. Perchtwl. Perchtwl. Perchtwl. The one time I actually had the gun in my mouth I was on my parents' bed. That's where the family gun cabinet was. I mean have some fucking class. Gay dogs attack!

Rest in peace Mr. Koenig. To me the world is fuzzy all the time.

The death of Alexander McQueen, also by hanging, punctures a hole in the fabric of reality. Oh dear pagan gods that was terrible pun. Excuse me while I sound myself. If anyone had ever bothered to ask I would have told them McQueen was favorite designer. Not that I made it permissible for anyone to ask. Of course saying McQueen was your favorite designer was like saying Kubrick was favorite filmmaker. His contribution was like sunlight: it permeated everything and we just took it for granted. The "art" of Lady Gaga is actually a dilution of the Art of McQueen. I remember when he first emerged on the international scene. He was like gasoline: utterly punk and unrelentingly Scottish. His success was something of a fluke. In an "industry" that revolves around who you know it is imperative that at least one genuine weirdo and/or mediocrette rise to the top, ala capitalism wherein some shlub and/or distilled piggery become a billionaire, as an example of success. Opposite of mediocre, McQueen's association with fashion was just a curse. A master tailor who earned his blisters long before his stint in London's ultra conservative Savile Row, his strictly cut mens lines were the things that really thrilled me. Fashion is all about codes. McQueen's mens' lines always referenced easily recognizable historical codes, tweaking them just enough put a crack in your brain. Restraint is the touch of the truly great. I want to be restricted. Don't you? Given the laziness that typically creeps in the mens fashion, McQueen accomplishment is all the more significant. I once spent a year languishes in a rural gas station / sandwich shop to focus the blur. I would always reference McQueen to my female coworkers and they never had any idea what I was talking about let alone who despite the fact he was most famous fashion designer in the world. Like all transcendent "artists" he wasn't a human being. He was an angel from another place to remind us that our world can be different. There are no clothes in Hell.

Hot, or should I say cold, off my viewing of Severed Ways, I was hyped to view Until the Light Takes Us, the "definitive" documentary about the Norwegian black metal scene that lead to a series of church burnings and at least two known murders. Directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell had extended personal access to key members of Mayhem, Darkthrone, and Burzum, in particular Gylve Nagell (of Darkthrone) and Varg Vikernes (aka Burzum). Though having prolonged direct access to the key members of the movement, the film fails on the dramatic level. This is a shame considering the pathos of the story and complex moral arguments that black metal puts before the listener.

Usually I don't like films in which things are given easily the viewer. I want to be lured into a film and be made to put the pieces of the puzzle together myself. To do this right is a hard thing. If it is done wrong a film can become a trudging morass. I wouldn't quite go so far as to pin that negative distinction on Until the Light Takes Us, the film definitively lacks emotional umph when dealing with subject matter that is dramatically intense and morally weighty. The pacing was way off. The structure of the film just sort of floats and this might work well for Robert Altman, but not a doc about a heavy metal subgenre. The directors assume a lot foreknowledge on the part of the viewer. Knowledge most viewers probably don't have. They could have done a far more concise job presenting biographical and historical time lines of bands and band members: who influenced who, what their formal inspiration was, and how certain bands formed, etc. Some of this information was given but only in passing. Considering ideological differences (perhaps) lead to Vikernes murdering Mayhem guitarist Euronymous, maybe such information should have been more explicitly explored.

Ideology is perhaps the most important element in black metal scene and films murky presentation doesn't help. Gylve and Vikernes on the surface seem to have very different intentions. Vikernes clearly intended to spark an anti-capitalist neopagan revolution. The white supremacist and homophobic aspects of his philosophy (not to mention its conservatism in general) are overlooked by the filmmakers. I would have stuck it to him. I'm sure Aites and Ewell would argue that they are just presenting the facts, letting viewers judge for themselves. It seems like hero worship to me. Two things come through: 1) Vikernes is handsome, intelligent, and charismatic: all the makings of a cult leader. If anyone could convince someone else to burn a church down he could. (I'm the kind of person that doesn't need any convincing.) 2) Vikernes account of the events surrounding the murder of Euronymous are bullshit, and one canhardly be surprised he was found guilty of murder in the first degree. The ego of a sociopathic teenager was hurt and it lashed out. Sixteen years on, he doesn't strike me as remorseful.

Gylve's ideology seemed far more personal and formalistic. Disillusioned with the metal scene, he hoped to create an anti-metal, an onanistic (rock) noise ritual celebration of death and cold. He claims he never wanted it to be a "trend" or be commercially successful. I take any such claims by a musician, especially a rock musician, with a grain of salt. Regardless of his commercial intentions, I believe his formal ones. They are very similar to the approaches of (non-rock) noise musicians: the anti-commercial posturing, sonic repetitiveness / extremity, and antisocial themes. Black metal is intentionally lo-fi anti-art to satisfy a purist's decadent masochism. [Why black metal is not noise proper would be a fun essay.) The scenes in which Gylve expounds these intentions would have been better served if he choose to speak in Norwegian. The aesthetic ideas he toys with are almost outside of his grasp of English.

Of course both Gylve and Vikernes intentions fail. The neopagan revolution didn't come and black metal becomes a low & high culture phenomenon. How could it not have? Even if the music of the members of the original "black circle" lacks formal value (which I don't think it does), when you add the sensationalistic glee of church arsons and murder the youth are sure to follow. As Vikernes says "the young instinctually know something is wrong." That same instinctual malaise is what causes youth to join gangs, become Islamic terrorists, slip into drug addiction, or (worse yet) become an A. Rand thumping neocon.

Because of the fascinating nature of the subject matter, I can't say Until the Light Takes Us is a total failure, but its poor construction prevents it from being the definitive treatment of said subject matter. At least I hope it is not the definitive treatment. As time passes things will only be further distorted.

I'm sad to say I've never read Michael Moynihan's Lords of Chaos, a nonfiction report of same events which was met minor critical acclaim upon its release in 1998. I've heard Vikernes disapproves.

Varg Vikernes was released from prison in May of 2009. The Burzum album will be release next month.

Gylve Nagall still records with Darkthrone. Their latest album Circle the Wagons will also be released in March 2010.

For months now I've found myself unable to turn way from David Lynch's Interview Project. I'm not sure what Mr. Lynch's involvement is with this project, whether he is funding it, or it was initially his idea, but the skinny is a small camera crew zigzags across the USA short interviews with a cross section of everyday people. A new interview gets posted every three days.

The crew always ask the same set the questions: tell us about your life, what are you most proud of, what are your plans for the future, etc. It is interesting to get to know what things make life worth living for others; what motivates them to keep going. I would say the people are "normal" but no one is normal so that is a meaningless designation. Besides, people only tell us what they think we want to hear. To the crew's credit most the interviews are of working class and middle class people. Most of the interviewees can be roughly grouped into two psychological categories: those that are content (or choose to portray themselves as such) and those that are not content and are yearning for something else. Some of the middle and upper-middle interviewees are so boring they are painful to watch. Their lives', or at the least the way they choose to portray them, are so perfect you it makes you remember why punk rock exists. Of course these "perfect people" are clearly the inspiration of the suburbia gone bad we find in Lynch's films. Obviously, they cannot be so perfect or so boring. If they are, what's the point of their living? A minority third category that clearly emerges with its own morphology are those who are sad-n-fucked. For these folks it doesn't matter if they are content or yearning because they are, well, sad-n-fucked. Then there are the weirdos. The sad-n-fucked and the weirdos are not synonymous, but naturally there is some overlap. These types also populate Lynch's oeuvre. Not that the crew went out looking for weirdos but they don't have an aversion to speaking to people whose appearance or income level are outside the bounds of acceptable corporate discourse.

I forget about the site for a week or two and then go back and watch many episodes at once. The trouble is that everyday people for the most part really don't have interesting lives and have difficulty framing their experiences in anything other than the stock phrases of the metanarrative of their choice. Many people are recovering from substance abuse. Celebrities or cultural notables often have documentaries made about them because they are interesting or have made some or contribution to society. If you don't fall into those categories maybe a film shouldn't be made about you. A good number of the subjects are "local characters," talented, intelligent, and creative people that stayed or got stranded in their small towns. These episodes quickly devolve into minisode versions of CBS Sunday morning. Within this category of interviewee are those that obviously feel they are interesting and important when, in fact, they are not.

More interesting for me is to closely examine Lynch's introduction to each individual interview and try to decide if he approves of their life or not. Of course the "busy," canonized, hero worshiped Lynch might just have a hemorrhoid on any given day. That I could read anything into Lynch's five second intro is purely a projection on my part, but where would I be without my games. Another fun game I play is to look at the the thumbnail of the up coming interviewee and try to guess what they are going to be like. I am almost always wrong. You can't judge a person by their thumbnail is a new maxim for our social networked time.

Many of the interviews have associated discussion boards where you pretend other persons' lives are your business. Mostly pointless, the boards are always fun to cringe over when a non-working class person tries to provide insight to working class person's life. It's like a presenter at an awards show trying to reads a cue card about someone's life they obviously know nothing about.

There have been many interviews that I have enjoyed; i.e., the guy he arranged a cave to die in but then became too ill to get back to the cave to actually die there, but my favorite remains this gentleman whose alcoholic, racist, antisocial rambles where only answers that seemed to genuinely disconcert the crew:

Reading back over this this, I have to ask myself why I keep watching. What I realized is, or have deluded myself into thinking, is that Interview Project was created for persons other than me. Persons who don't know what everyday people are like. Perhaps the warped black hole of my selfishness no longer permits information about other humans. More likely Interview Project raises questions about those not interviewed? Why were they ignored / censored? What is the motivation of Interview Project? Does it have a political agenda?

someone tell me how I'm going to pay for this:

Take care of your heart Leanne. It is a very special one. Don't let people hurt it.

I've seen a slew of good films lately (The Last Bolshevik, The Tempest, Gran Torino, Bad Lieutenant v.2) but the one closest to home was Severed Ways. The film tells the (un)story of two Vikings abandoned on the coast of North America circa 1000CE. The two become intimately acquainted with the landscape, stumble on two similarly stranded Christian monks, and have furtive transmuting encounters with indigenous persons.

Most admirable is the presentation of Christianity as progressive revolutionary force. The fact Christianity once was such a force is something often overlooked by contemporary pagans. Though a tone poem more than a narrative, Fiore Tedesco's performance as Volnard, the Vikings who convert to Christianity, is the one true piece of acting in the film. With minimal dialogue, it is a physical transformation. Of course, heathenishly enough, director Tony Stone can't resist putting a little exploitive manipulative streak in David Perry, the proselytizing monk. Orn (again Mr. Stone) remains as Viking as we ever could wish him to be yet is fleshed (psyched?) out with a devastating anxiety dream featuring his earthy wife. As to the Norsemen and the indigenous, it is a foregone conclusion that the interlopers are doomed so why even bother.

This isn't a narrative film though. The landscape is the story. The story is its beauty, its randomness, its Fyre, and its cold. Its completeness and confusion. The Vikings are on a cosmic trip. They're dead already. Stone's brilliant ace in the hole was choosing to shoot solely in DV and emphasizing the formal qualities of the medium. Think Brian Eno's video paintings. The landscapes are always viewed through a digital filter. Transposing this layer of technology over majestic images reveals the romantic ideals we associate with these images to be exactly what they are = conscious constructions on the creators part. As Stone has posited in interviews, the film operates on multiple levels. The images themselves are still beautiful, heartrendingly so. The Fyre and the cold.

The soundtrack operates much the same. Equal parts ambient, krautrock and metal falling within the death-black spectrum, the nondiagetic is music sometimes transcendent, sometimes corny, sometimes hilarious. The tracks not only underscore the romantic construction of nature and Native Americans but the absurd romantic construction of Norse culture within the heavy metal genre. Could anything be more arbitrary and artificial? As if any crust-tachioed pale white trash with a leather jacket would last 30 minutes on a Viking ship? As if Norse society was a society that any heavy metal fan would prefer as opposed to our (voided)culture of Xtreme DSL and strip(club) mall burritos. Severed Ways is equal parts transcendence, equal parts critique.

For all these thoughts, what it really comes down to is: I spent a lot of time during my childhood in forests very similar to those central to Severed Ways. Childhood forests always seal the deal.

Steve thought it was kinda blah.

In my youth when I had a muse, I would write. Now I just ride them out like I'm peaking on LSD. Like an angel is fucking me and ejaculating silver magma in my chest. Like I'm saving up all my astral chi. My mother was a witch and there is snake in my heart. It spins and spins.

Do you really?

When Steve leaves I stop sleeping, have fits of anxiety mania, fever, my poo turns into Tan Dragons, and strange red blotches appear on my face.

That's what love is.

We've cycled through, assholes.

Two things I wanted to accomplish specifically to this space were insert a Twitter widget in the sidebar of this blog and write up a critique of "David Lynch's" Interview Project. Now that I have mentioned them I suppose they will never be done. I'm a very conceptual person. After I think it, it's like it has been done. Done.

Like years ago when I planned on writing a blog about coal mine accidents on a blog space provided by an unnamed social network. After I thought of it, it was done. What I needed to do was do it, then when it was done, it would have been finished.

Every year is deer antlers. What the fuck is your problem?

AA works because we choose for it to work. It should be called Arbitrary Anonymous.  I'm not saying it doesn't work. I'm just talking about it, and the antlers.

current listening: George Harrison All Things Must Pass