Down The Line (Quenouille): September 2008

Recursion

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 | Posted by P at 7:24 PM |

I climbed a chain into the sky and saw the world from every angle I'd missed in my time. I put them all together, an infinite series of imperfect views, and formed a portrait within which I lived my life. I made all the choices that needed being made; from the bridge I watched a million versions of myself raining from the sky; a million million self-same bodies tumbling over one another. Painting the seas and filling the bays.

Wikipedia: Recursion, [is] a method of defining functions in which the function being defined is applied within its own definition. The term is also used more generally to describe a process of repeating objects in a self-similar way. For instance, when the surfaces of two mirrors are almost parallel with each other the nested images that occur are a form of recursion.

El Aleph-Jorge Luis Borges

The Library of Babel-Jorge Luis Borges

Charlie Kaufman

| Posted by P at 1:52 PM | Labels: Adaptation, Being John malkovich, Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine Spotless Mind, Synecdoche

Fascinating two and a half hour interview with Charlie Kaufman

Wired was gracious enough to post the gross audio from the interview, many thanks to them for providing this content.

Dan Deacon

| Posted by P at 7:07 AM | Labels: Alamo Drafthouse, Crystal Cat, Dan Deacon, music, TSOYA

Some late hour finds me poured into a dark cushioned seat waiting for the lights to dim and whoknowswhat to flicker across my synapses. Middle of the middle. Primo location. I order a Royale with cheese and an Arrogant Bastard Ale. It's Texas and all the quaking bodies pulse in ryhthm to the pre show music, their able pieces drinking in the stark cold of the theater while it can.

A montage of coming events leaps onto the screen with the dissonant buzz of electricity and a throbbing kickyouinthelungs bass line. My senses are attacked again and again with the progression of images, the salted amalgam of cleverly named diner fare, and most insistently the mountainous crecendo of a song unlike any song I'd heard before. Filling the soft spaces behind my eyes and under my tongue. I am closed off and the sounds creep across my muscles and sloose through my pores.

All Dan Deacon's Early Albums Free

Dan is surprisingly eloquent:

The Sound of Young America: Dan Deacon

Fear and Loathing at ACL

Monday, September 29, 2008 | Posted by P at 1:31 PM | Labels: ACL, Austin City Limits, Fear, Loathing

Thousands and thousand of greased and ambling souls descended into my dusted America. For three days they stomped and twirled and spun up the ground into a storm. Dust and dead grass and the sound of people sweating out their junk sweat searching the edges of their hearing for the next radio hit to gallop towards and waggle their tongues in the air like mad hot mongrel dogs. In a ditch, on the side of the road.

Austin City Limits, year three. Laziness and a general sense of ennui sets over me. Its Friday and I've taken the day off work to trundle off to the festival early. I spend the day sleeping and playing the same tune on a piano heaped overflowing with dirty laundry. My face is rough with the stubble of a man at the very bottom of wave pattern he's been riding through the last few years of his life. Some geometric hell brought on by a childhood full of idiot suburbia and too many home cooked meals. Low, I'm low I think. It's four on the clock and I didn't need to take the day off work at all.

I'm in my car and on my way to the Park where a wooded trail most notable for the smell of bog water creeping ashore grows ever more dense with the herky jerky masses of men in overlarge sunglasses and girls with skin so dark they disappear into the shadows beneath the trees, all marching in unison towards the dust bowl. Towards the gateway and the promise of Music.

I can't help but sneer from behind my own tremendous shades as I keep tally of fedoras and tribal sun tattoos. I'm swallowed whole, I'm turned and folded into the group mind. The rabid beast hurdles forward, sloshing around bends in the path and leaping across Barton Creek in one swift motion.

Its hot and thick and the sun invades the very core of my being like the devil leaping down my throat to have me dance off a cliff. I'm at the edge of a precipice. On one side is the freedom of a comfortable bed and a loving woman, on the other is the junky allure of the mob and all the fixes they can supply me. Drugsexmusicalcohol.

I plunge in and wake up three days later.

I'm shaven and work-shirted and congincent of the hole I'm climbing out of. Knowing it's the trick. Keeping it's the challenge. The thing is to be whole. The thing is not to be dead.

Gigs eyeballed:

Jenny Lewis
David Byrne
Fleet Foxes
The Mars Volta
Erika Badu
Spiritualized
Bright Eyes
Beck
Band of Horses
The Raconteurs
Tegan and Sara
The Foo Fighters

Muxtape Lives On

| Posted by P at 8:50 AM |

Back in March of this year, Muxtape brought the nearly dead concept of mix tapes back to life via the internet. Users could upload MP3s and create their own list of up to 12 songs to be accessed by anyone. Links to the Amazon music store were also discretely listed alongside the song's title. Needless to say this tool was astronomically useful and a personal favorite of mine, as I provided a well received weekly mix of tunes over at Tall As Trees. However, nothing this amazing can last for long with those "are eye ay ay" folks around. Muxtape was shut down in August and went though quite the legal ordeal, and now plans to rebuild the site, tailored specifically to unsigned bands. Read more here. Glad to see someone still has their head on straight.

P.S. Photo cred.
I stumbled upon this photo looking for tapes in Flickr. I owned this as a child. Built like a tank and tons of fun. Nuts.

SpaceX

| Posted by P at 7:26 AM | Labels: space, spacex, video

The first privately funded rocket has made it to space. Quite impressive. Read: SpaceX Did It.

David Byrne-Man or God?

Sunday, September 28, 2008 | Posted by P at 11:45 AM | Labels: ACL, Austin City Limits, David Byrne, Talking Heads

David Byrne, founder of the talking heads, legendary solo artist, and member of the rock and roll hall of fame, was denied a headlining spot at this year's Austin City Limits music festival. I don't know how these schedules get put together, so there may be a totally logical explanation why he was placed early in the evening in a one-hour time slot, but it just seemed wrong to me. His show was amazing, complete with interpretive dancers all wearing uniform white and Byrne doing his classic "wobbly" dances. The guy sounds like he's 30 years old and hasn't stopped enjoying the music. He played a ton of his latin funk inspired work, but also threw in old classics like "once in a lifetime".

I'm not sure why Manu Chao and The Mars Volta headlined that night rather than David Byrne, but he made the best of it regardless, and the fans showed up en masse.