Winter in Alaska

First set of photos is from my trip back home last winter for Christmas. Wasilla, Alaska. Matanuska-Susitna Valley. About 1 hour north of Anchorage.

The Mat-Su Valley

Let’s start out with the best. This is from last winter. This is the lake next to the house I grew up in.

The above is the same lake scenery, but I moved about 20 feet to the right, closer to the shore. This was probably 8 a.m. in the morning in December.

View of the mountains in the Mat-Su Valley from Wasilla on the way to the Anchorage airport. Notice how blessedly free of traffic the highway is at 7 a.m.

This photo of the moose outside our front door makes me think of Monte the Wonder Dog getting kicked by a moose. A brief diversion here. Monte was a Min-Pin. I did not see this event I am about to share, but I heard about it.

Mom and Dad left for Texas, as they do for about 4-5 months out of every year. The dude who watches the house while they are away told my parents this tale about Monte and The Moose.

Monte went outside to do his business and saw a moose in the driveway. Monte began barking incessantly at the moose. The housesitter watched out the window, unable to do anything. Monte wasn’t responding to calls to come inside, and you don’t go outside when there is a moose around.

The moose stood there, the dog kept barking. The moose became annoyed and layed its ears back flat. Never a good sign.

The moose walked toward the little dog, and the dog continued to bark. The moose came right up to the dog, within a foot….and the moose then kicked that little dog!

According to the house sitter, the dog immediately passed out upon being kicked. The moose, satisfied with his work and apparently happy with the fact that the barking ceased, walked away into the woods.

The dog was knocked out cold by the violent kick, and the housesitter feared, as anyone would, that the dog was dead. The house sitter chilled inside, hoping for the best, but fearing the worst as he watched TV.

About an hour later, he heard the little dog barking loudly and scratching at the door. He let the little dog inside.

Monte ran inside with a passionate fury, headed toward the kitchen and began slurping up water and eating chow like the dog had not received water or food in 3 days.

Afterword, now satisfied, the little dog ran over to his bed and slept for 10 hours straight. The next day he popped up like nothing… and he was absolutely fine. The housesitter reported that Monte was barking loudly and begging for food in the morning hours as usual… just like his usual overbearing self.

Monte was a survivor and a free spirit. He had deep talon scars on his butt where an eagle, or some other very large bird, had obviously tried to take off with him, and he somehow wriggled free and ran away to reclaim his liberty. We noticed these scars upon adopting him.

In fact, his previous owners gave him away because he was too much of a pain in the ass for them to deal with. He would constantly escape and run off. They were very forthcoming about that fact. Apparently my parents decided to take Monty on as a challenge.

At another point in time, we watched Monte nearly succumb to an opening in the ice covered lake. He wandered out in spring when the lake was melting and there were many soft spots.

Monte hit a soft spot and fell in. We were alerted by the barking of our other dog, a large Mastiff/Rotty mix, standing on the shore, looking out at the lake and barking frantically. We looked outside and saw Monte bobbing up and down, gripping the ice on the sides and trying to get out.

We couldn’t do anything except hope for the best. We shared in this terrible experience of thinking we were about to watch little Monte succumb to the water. But… somehow… little wonder dog… Monte got a firm grip on the surrounding ice, and finally, he pulled himself out.

He got up onto the ice, ran back onto solid land, and then he bolted his little ass straight up the hill and went bursting toward the sliding glass door of the kitchen at lightning speed, barking like a little insane devil.

We covered him in blankets, fed him all the food he wanted for the rest of the night and cooed at him.

And again, the next day it was like nothing had happened. Back to same old Monte. Being obnoxious. Getting his big brother in trouble. Acting the fool. Eating like a pig. Barking. Business as usual.

And after all these dangerous adventures… he simply died of old age. 17 or 18 years. Just passed away in his sleep like any other senior dog. But Monte lived a full life. He lived it better than most canines, and arguably better than a lot of humans.

Juneau

I spent 7 years living in Juneau, and yet I have very few personal photographs to show for it. How is it I lived somewhere for so long, and don’t have any pictures? I probably do have some on my thumb drive… but I’m too lazy to go find them right now. So, I am going to steal some from the internet.

I talked to a few people raised in Juneau who believe that the Mat-Su valley is “ugly” in comparison. This is understandable. I don’t agree, necessarily, but I do see their point. Juneau is much further south, and the land surrounding Juneau is a combination of the beauty of Washington State, mixed with the beauty of the Wasilla/Anchorage area. Juneau, and Southeast Alaska as a whole – it’s a unique area.

All the rugged mountains are there, except they are much closer to you, and you get these wild-ass temperature fluctuations and rain in the winter. The foilage looks a little more like Washington.

Juneau is where I learned the word “Snain” – Snow mixed with rain. It’s a frequent occurrence in winter time Juneau, and yet before moving there I had never heard the term. Look at these summer shots of Juneau that I found.

Juneau in the summer. No matter here you are at, you are at the base of a mountain.

-Z

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Autumn in Alaska

This is from a couple years ago, and these are my photographs. These are from Lake Hood, Kincaid Park/Cook Inlet, and the home where I grew up in Wasilla. I’m noticing now that there isn’t a whole lot of mountain pictures. This is becuase in the Anchorage area, the mountains are kind of far-off…unlike Juneau where you can walk right up to the base of them and start climbing.

Juneau is also pretty magical, although it’s completely different than what you see below.

In the fifth photo down, you can see the mountains through the trees, if you look closely. I’m missing Alaska, so today was a great day to repost this. I might follow up with the winter version.

The photo above, if memory serves, is not even edited at all.

Edited photo.

The photo directly above is not even edited. That’s the original in late September, Alaska at a hotel on Lake Hood and it’s just really that gorgeous.

Hiking path at Kincaid Park.

I want to live in Kincaid Park. Beyond the trees you see here is the wide open and beautiful Cook Inlet.

Sucker hole.

Paved path at Kincaid Park.

This one is also not edited and perfectly great natural.

A scene from my father’s man cave.

heh heh heh heh.

Actual photograph of ducks taking off at the lake I grew up on. I edited a few to make them look like paintings. Sometimes you just get lucky. Try scaring shit out of some ducks by running at them. Then take a photo. That is what I did.

Eating corn I threw in the water. They eat out of my Dad’s hand.

My Dad’s plane. Natural / not edited.

Kincaid, again. Never gets old.

-ZeroSpace

Under the Moon

Day jobs are a problem for night owls. The problem with working is the way it cuts into your passion when you finally rediscover your groove.

There’s the need to sleep for work the next day on those moonlit nights; the need to be functional the next day when you’d love to stay up all night.

There’s a giant park 15 minutes away from where I live, featuring 2 miles of paved walking trails that circle around soccer and baseball fields.

Lots of greenspace, expansive rolling hills, trees line the perimeter and giant lamps cast florescent light down over the sports fields at night. Smaller streetlamps hover above the paved walking path.

It’s glorious in the setting sun and even better at night under the electric lights in the evening.

Tonight I rushed along this path, feet hitting the ground – pat pat pat – staring down at the glittering pavement while listening to my circus of music.

It’s autumn and the yellow moon emerged, framed by wispy clouds right as the sun sank below the horizon.  I listened and wrote in my head, trying to catch those thoughts and cement them for later usage, but of course it’s a lost cause.

Smart people keep notebooks in their car.

I rushed along for three miles and what a glorious night for a concert. The delicious cocktail of exercise endorphins and good music. Here comes the madness of divine inspiration.

First, we wade through the swamp lands and tidal waves of Tool, the dark spiritual psychedelia of Reflection, perfect under the streetlamp shadows that pass my feet as I rush along.

Now here’s late period Hendrix.  I adore his late-period purple funk, and I could stay inside those songs forever.

Fantastic songs for Autumn somehow; those elusive guitar tones, the general feel of having one foot standing in the Christian church and one nostril snorting up cocaine in a lavish whore house.

But, couldn’t that describe much of the blues?  Perhaps, but there’s something extra here, that holy ingredient dropping down from those beautiful long fingers.

Nothing compares to the pink ocean swirl of “Drifting” – Jimi’s angel woman he was always singing about.  Waiting in the sky, waiting on the other side of the ocean, always there in his music and in the secret heart of many.

Next we have my beloved Pumpkins, here’s “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” and how could I fucking forget how perfect this song is in darkness under a full moon?  Holy shit, it’s a surprise all over again, I had completely forgotten.

Oh, here comes the Bending Mirrors of Perception!  The bending mirrors in the intro.  That first BLAST of indescribable tone and guitar pedal glory still gets me on nights like this.  Like it’s the first time I’m hearing it.

The swirling mirrors in the clouds, the gothic vampire sound, the epic movements, the layers and layers building, the drums crashing as the tension builds, the controlled screaming refrain, the laser guitars shooting everywhere, now they crash down into the ground.

Finally, the storm clouds part at the end and here comes that yellow moon over water just like the album art.  That acoustic moon rises as the electric storm falls away and that shit never gets old.

Here comes Jefferson Airplane.  This is a live, screaming electric version of “You, Me, and Pooneil” featuring Jack Cassidy’s wild bass solo.

You can see young Grace Slick on stage in your mind dancing around near the bass amp. The most beautiful woman, in her youth, who ever walked planet earth. Jet black hair, crazy blue eyes cast down in concentration, staring at the floor near Jack’s bass amp, her wicked stage presence and dark beauty.

Now the drums pick up speed, the bass solo crests and BOOM – here’s Jorma Kaukonen’s lead guitar taking over like a lightning bolt.

That mean-ass guitar drops down and says, “I’m the fucking boss now”.  The singers harmonize in a groove, then suddenly they all soar up and bellow out a high note together and the lead guitar comes back and twists around, that evil fucking snake twisting around on the stage!  Oh my god!  It goes on forever and all the instruments go in different directions and I’m walking.

My mind tries to follow all the musical ideas, but I can’t decide which way to go.  Colors flash; fireworks, an intellectual orgasm in my mind and it always conjures wooden floorboards in my imagination, a little blues shack in the woods, jazz and blues central, walls vibrating, organic things mixed with neon flowers.

Finally, we have my other beloved, Radiohead, and here is “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, crazy mashup of “Everything in it’s right Place”.  This particular version of this song is a perfect reflection of what happens in the brain of someone messed up on anxiety or other mental illness; reverse kaleidoscopes melting into each other, refracted light, two colors in your head, I see grey and yellow. Now we’re in the netherworlds with the gremlins and the strobe light sound machines.

*

I don’t allow myself to listen to this kind of music in my living room at night, because if I catch the inspiration, I’ll stay up all night, speakers blasting, walking around in circles when I get excited about guitar solos and various things.

I listen to ambient electronica instead.

*

So, I walked and wrote in my head, knowing I wouldn’t get it all down. Glittering pavement, ideas flying around.  I had an idea to write a post every night featuring one song.  500-700 words max.  I had an idea to type up a passage from my favorite books and other writings every weekend.  I opened up my skull beneath the harvest moon and the universe flew inside. When passion is underway for me, it’s all consuming.

Master the energies.

Smart people would designate a half hour to get it all out every day, then move on to something else in their routine.  But for some of us, it’s not that simple.  If it’s there, it wants to flow.

You can’t put a harness on that wild horse.

So, if I want to sleep I can’t ride that horse the way I want.  As it is, I should have gone to bed and read some George Eliot tonight.  But, here I am.

Arthur Lee

During early spring in the Pacific Northwest, residents ride a whirlpool between hope and confusion. We have more daylight and the temperature rises, but the rain persists. We’re perched on the edge of the next phase, hovering between the soul’s potential and winter’s shadow. That’s exactly how it feels within the music of Arthur Lee’s 1960’s band, Love. These songs are the perfect companion to early spring.

Last spring I rolled down the freeway, car windows down, fresh air blasting in, rain streaking the windshield as the acoustic strains of “The Castle” danced from my speakers. It was a satisfying moment – the music matched both mood and weather.

The rhythm of “The Castle” recalls a moving train, while the harpsichord and guitar chatter with traveler excitement; the thrill that makes a passenger secretly want to jump out of the window and run among green hills.

Love were The Smashing Pumpkins of the 1960’s – their music is idiosyncratic and at times bizarre, but always melodic and captivating. The shifting musical movements arrest a listener’s attention, pulling the mind into an ever-evolving tapestry of sound.

Love’s best two albums, Da Capo and Forever Changes, are often described as Baroque Pop, tinged with a Classical Spanish flavor. Arthur Lee’s background was in R&B, but he decided to tread new waters into his unique brand of folk-rock after seeing a live performance of The Byrds.

I discovered Love a few years after my first wave of 1960’s music discovery. I thought I had already unearthed all the best 60’s music at that point. One day, someone brought me a coffee table book about the 60’s. I was inspired to investigate Love’s music after I saw this picture:

That picture of Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean playing guitar hooked me. Their faces reflect the essence of musical concentration. Arthur Lee’s face is at once poetic and beautiful. The band are in action, and it’s clear that whatever they happen to be playing, they are playing the hell out of it. I had no idea what they sounded like, but I wanted to hear this band.

I was surprised the first time I popped Da Capo into the player. I was expecting the typical Big Brother and The Holding Company blues arrangement. I heard something else instead.

I heard “Stephanie Knows Who” with its skipping carnival clowns and choppiness. I was delighted. A jazz breakdown drops in out of nowhere halfway through the song, and it sounds just like midnight dropping into the bright sun of high noon.

After this madness, the album slides into the summery “Orange Skies”. This song is a lovely portrayal of how infatuation paints the world into shades of desire. She’s a delicate nightingale to his eyes, and the flute makes butterflies flit around her head. You can see her long eyelashes, and you can picture Lee smiling on a grassy hill, dizzy and silly, drunk on her.

After I heard Da Capo, I started listening to the album constantly. I remember picking up a friend to give him a ride while “Que Vida!” was playing. He hesitated and listened. A moment passed, and finally he said, “Dude, this is some weird shit you’re listening to.” I smiled broadly and let out a cackle. His reaction validated my belief that I’d stumbled onto a work of genius.

“Que Vida!” is an odd song.  I still have no idea what this song is about. It’s too weird to pay attention to the lyrics, which are illogical and scattered in the first place. The listener is drawn into Lee’s bizarre vocal phrasing to the point where it’s impossible to focus on anything else. In the meantime, the music swirls around his voice. Lee sounds exactly like the cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat. I cannot hear this song without picturing the pink Cheshire cat singing it. Listen to “Que Vida!” right now and tell me you don’t hear the Cheshire cat singing.

Around the same time, another friend was riding in my car while I listened to “The Castle”. Amused, she remarked wryly that it sounded like Tori Amos.  I was floored because she was right. “The Castle” does sound a hell of a lot like a Tori Amos song.

There’s a similarity between the two artists – much like Tori Amos, Lee occasionally sings lyrics that are non-sensical to the audience.  You get a flash of ice cream cones, hypnotized dogs and eyeless boys.

“But you can throw me if you wanna because I’m a bone and I go oop-ip-ip, oop-ip-ip Yeah!”

Forever Changes is Love’s magnum opus. Throughout the album, Lee’s Spanish guitar quietly accompanies lush string arrangements; complex orchestration lends a dramatic edge to the songs.

“A House is Not a Motel” and “The Red Telephone” are widely recognized as classics. The two songs strike a balance between Love’s arcane weirdness and their talent for straightforward electric folk-rock.

The album themes reflect the concerns of the era mingled with Lee’s personal reflections. Lee’s intimate delivery is the secret sauce here.

Throughout the album, Lee’s voice sounds like a movie voiceover that only you can hear. He’s minding his own business, having private thoughts, and you’re a secret party to those thoughts. It’s a mirror of your own private concerns and fears. It’s the clouds battling sunshine in the spring, and the sound of struggle quietly straining toward rebirth.

“The Daily Planet” is another personal favorite. The intro starts over again several times to support the idea of routine. The intro comes on strong like morning freshness, energized motivation, the will to try again, but it quickly slides out into the street and confronts an onslaught of daily stress.

Forever Changes has the feel of a concept album. It portrays a character going through a journey, if only a journey of different moods and reflections. Isolation is present throughout.  Our protagonist looks around at society and makes observations about struggle, war, society, and impermanence. There’s an atmosphere of calm melancholy punctuated at times by a distinct will to action. The rhythm guitar and percussion rush around underneath, the constant heartbeat, a spirit trying to break through and rise above it all. This is the floral soundtrack to depression, as experienced by a creative aesthete who requires nature and beauty to get by.

My other favorite is “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark And Hilldale.” Lee’s singing bursts in with a windswept symbol crash; the song is set outdoors with festive horns. This song conjures up summer music festivals in Alaska in my memory.  People mill around in crowds having a good time.  It’s the one overtly joyous song on the album.

“You Set The Scene” is a fitting last song for the album.  The character comes to terms with his many observations. We find him deciding to persevere despite everything.  This is the best song in Love’s catalog, poignant and full of grace.

Love’s various members struggled with the typical drug problems that plague rock bands. Lee’s refusal to tour compounded matters further. He apparently didn’t like going on the road and had no interest in performing outside of LA.

In some ways, that vision of Lee is endearing and fitting to the atmosphere of Forever Changes – the aloof folk icon, grassroots to the core, hanging out in his own world. There’s no indication that Lee was upset that his albums didn’t chart and sell widely at the time. He wasn’t greedy enough to put up with life on the road for the sake of chasing the diamond. It didn’t make a difference to him. All he needed was a room and an acoustic guitar.

Forever Changes was also buried under a tidal wave of heavier albums released in 1967 by popular artists; Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, Cream, The Doors, the list goes on.

Due to the super-charged psychedelic atmosphere in music that year, the album was quaint and quiet by comparison. Years later, Forever Changes has been recognized by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest albums of all time.

Arthur Lee and Love ultimately joined a small club of underground cult heroes who have a passionate following, along with Tim Buckley and The 13th Floor Elevators. Love endured through the years by word-of-mouth, purely on the strength of the music.

And Arthur Lee was all right with that.

“Everything I’ve seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it’s strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for anyone who thinks that life is just a game – do you like the part you’re playing?”

-Love, “You Set The Scene”

Waking Life

“I see this as a realistic film about an unreality. The gestures, the sound, the human expressions all seem real, but reality is re-interpreted artistically. It becomes a kind of moving painting.” -Richard Linklater, Wired magazine

We sat in a dark room. The kitchen light flickered as everyone waited in silence to watch some movie Jake and his girlfriend were raving about.

Jake stood before us; a young crowd of punks, miscreants and arty types seated on couches and the floor. He bent down and carefully placed the disc in the player, stood back up, reached for his lighter… and inhaled a huge bong hit. Jake exhaled a long plume of smoke as he spoke to us:

“Ahem. {cough} I just want to warn you guys that this shit is heavy. The content is kind of hard to follow the first time you watch it. But it’s awesome.”

Jake pressed play and the film began.

We watched in rapt silence, awestruck from beginning to end. We all wondered what the hell just happened. Jake sent us on the craziest trip of our lives, but none of us had eaten LSD.

Inside the mindscape

Waking Life is about a dream experience that weaves science, history, and philosophy into a mesmerizing parade of sensory input. The film combines existentialism and other themes with visually stunning animation.

Director Richard Linklater shot the entire movie using a handheld camera. After completing the live-action footage, he hired a team of artists to paint over each frame using a technique called rotoscoping.  The result is realistic animation – an effect Linklater describes as a “mindscape”.

The main character (Wiley Wiggins) doesn’t know his own name or identity, but viewers watch him float through various scenes where he encounters dream characters. The characters eventually begin to talk about lucid dreams and he realizes what’s happening. He discovers he’s trapped in a dream and fears he’ll never wake up.

Linklater’s handheld camera magic enhances the surrealism; the camera often pans into scenes at weird angles – zooming into rooms, zipping across an orchestra scene, floating over rooftops. Linklater and his crew shot footage from a hot air balloon to capture scenes where the main character floats through the sky over suburban neighborhoods.

As a viewer, you become absorbed in the wild visual flow while attempting to follow complex verbal insight with your ears. Classical music and tango heighten the beauty during scene transitions.

The major theme is awareness; accepting the moment and making the best of a situation within our limited toolbox.  The film showcases activists, teachers, and thinkers of all ages. People in different phases of life may take different lessons away from this film.

You are the main character

Waking Life boasts many achievements, but the most impressive is the way Linklater pulls you into the film. The main character doesn’t remember his own name or identity; he could be anyone. He could be you.

One character tells our young protagonist that the image of himself that he views inside the dream is only a “mental model”.

The dream characters directly address your thoughts and feelings about the movie as you watch. It’s part of the film’s spooky genius. In one scene, a blonde lady (Kim Krizan) speaks about the history of communication and the difficulty of expressing abstract emotion:

“So much of our experience is intangible, so much of what we perceive cannot be expressed – it’s unspeakable. And yet when we communicate with each other and we feel that we have connected, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion… and that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.”

As you watch and listen, you experience what she’s talking about. The visual and thematic elements coming at you in this film are unspeakable.

She relates directly to your experience as a viewer, and she simultaneously provides insight into something important in your life. She addresses all those clusters of emotion in the past; times of trauma or perhaps elation when your personal experience escalated beyond what you could express in words.

She also delivers you into the “spiritual communion” aspect of her speech.  You feel an uplift because she’s communicating a new insight into your mind. Here’s a human being expressing something either forgotten or never known by me… but now I know… or… maybe I remember. Collective conscsiousness.

Your brain lights up, electrical impulses dancing around as this stream of information enters the “conduit” she discusses. The animator illustrates your experience on-screen by drawing a crude visual conduit.

This is your dream.

This is also the brilliance inside the mind of Richard Linklater.

I read the script (found here) and realized the script is amazing on its own. Watching the film, however, is an additional layer of experiences and emotions that words on a page cannot replicate. Again, this exact issue is addressed in a scene called the “Holy Moment”.

Later on, the main character discusses his dream experiences with a new dream character. He describes feeling engaged in an active process. This confuses him because he’s been silent and passive during the dream. She responds that listening is not necessarily a passive act. Once again, this is also about your viewing experience.

Moving paintings – the dream comes to life

“This film uses dreams as a kind of operating system for the narrative, the hitch for most of the ideas. The realism of live-action film would have canceled out the ideas… This style of animation allows you to see a different state of reality.” –Rick Linklater, Wired Magazine

“It’s different from traditional animation; it’s on the computer, but it still involves a lot of hand drawing…it’s pleasing for people to recognize real motion and real expression but have this added layer of an artist’s sensibility. I wanted a very painterly look. With rotoscoping, you’re not required to come up with any original motions. You have to draw people’s facial expressions, have a good sense of color balance and design; all the skills that painters have.” – Bob Sabiston, Rotoshop creator and Waking Life Art Director

Animators have used rotoscoping since 1915,  but Waking Life’s animators used proprietary rotoscoping software created by Linklater’s friend and collaborator, Bob Sabiston. While working on a different project, Sabiston demonstrated his Rotoshop software to Linklater and “something clicked”.

The animation conveys a coffee shop style of art; shades of brown and red mixed with yellow and blue. Sabiston limited the color range available to the artists to keep the appearance of the film consistent. Each artist showcases a different art style throughout the film, but the colors stay within an earthy palette.

Sabiston’s Rotoshop software is notable because the program features important advantages over traditional rotoscope. The first upgrade is interpolation.

Interpolation is a difficult concept to understand until you watch an animator demonstrate the technique. In a featurette, Sabiston demonstrates interpolation; he traces a line in one frame that will show up off to the side in the following frame. Doing so allows him to approximate the exact line or shape again on the following frame for consistency.  The result is consistent lines in important places – such as chins and necks – and the animation flows more smoothly.

Another advantage this software has over traditional rotoscoping is “layering”.  Sometimes a specific house or nature scene is required across many frames. The animator colors over the house once and places it inside one layer within the program, and that same layer can be used across multiple frames.

The result, like interpolation, saves animators time so they don’t have to redraw the entire scene in each frame. Despite these upgrades, rotoscoping still requires a tremendous effort. According to Wired Magazine, each minute of Waking Life’s footage took up to 250 hours to animate.

The featurette also provides an eye-opening glimpse into some of the film’s mysterious non-animation effects. The crew achieved a scene in which the main character floats above a car by suspending actor Wiley Wiggins with cables attached to his body.

Traverse the light and shadows

“I didn’t start out with such a set idea about what it was going to be like. The film is so much about its own process. It unfolds, and you kind of accept it the way your own life unfolds. Things come at you, and you either incorporate them or you don’t”. -Linklater, AV Club

The film’s content is optimistic at times, neutral and questioning at other times, and occasionally the subject matter is dark and pessimistic. It’s a mirror of our thought cycles as we pass through our days.

The optimistic characters shine with luminescence; light pours through their eyes and they emit an aura. They speak with their hands, palms up, gesturing with openness and freedom. The animators absorbed Linklater’s vision and did a phenomenal job using their talents to breathe life into this film.

I enjoy the film’s ambiguous spirituality. At one point the main character questions where all this new information is coming from. Is it being transmitted to him from an outside force? Christian viewers might see the information as sourced from God and the other dream characters as angels and demons, or perhaps ghosts.

Alternately, a science fiction enthusiast might interpret this dream as alien abduction. Maybe he’s been abducted by aliens and they’re tinkering with his brain while he’s asleep, using tools to activate specific memories from his readings of D.H. Lawrence, Sartre, science class, and the bible.

Maybe when he floats up to the sky he’s about to wake up, or maybe he’s about to die. Maybe the aliens are bringing him out of the dream.

By working with a team of artists and animators to manifest his vision, Linklater created a film that is also a learning tool. The themes would be fascinating enough as a collection of quotes or classroom talking points, but Waking Life stretches beyond the man-made, elitist borders of the literary and academic worlds. 

Like an actual dream, it bursts through the confines of academia to reach a universal audience. The vehicle is art, but the driving forces are curiosity and fear of the unknown. The film entertains, but it also delivers viewers into introspection.

According to a commonly accepted plot interpretation, the dreamer is either dead or he’s about to die. A cruel irony unfolds as dream characters deliver useful insights; it’s too late for the main character to apply this insight to his life. This is frustrating to watch, until you realize it’s not about him.

It’s about you, and you’re awake and alive.

Or… are you?

***

The Trip

“I think one of the reasons the audience came in such large numbers was out of curiosity. They didn’t want to take LSD, but the reviews said the film came close to an LSD experience.” -Roger Corman, Director

In 1967, American International Pictures released The Trip starring Peter Fonda to the curious masses. Crowds flocked to cinemas during the Summer of Love to experience a new motion picture featuring the hot topic of the year.

Written by actor Jack Nicholson and directed by horror film veteran Roger Corman, the film broke new ground in the world of independent cinema and paved the way for 1969’s Easy Rider.

Viewed today, The Trip is campy and hilarious, featuring a simple plot – a protagonist who takes LSD for the first time. The highlight of the film is dazzling set design and special effects produced using analog methods that are primitive today, but were ahead of their time in 1967.

Peter Fonda Visits Wonderland

In the first scene, we are introduced to Fonda’s character, Paul Groves, a fashionable TV director filming a commercial on the beach. His estranged wife (Susan Strasberg) shows up to tell Paul he missed a divorce meeting.

It’s clear that Paul is having a crisis, but it’s unclear exactly which one of the two initiated the divorce. The conversation is civil and bursting with the innocence and bad acting of 60’s era films.

In the next scene, Paul descends stairs into a club called “Bead Game” to meet his trip guide, John (Bruce Dern). Paul and John meet up with mutual acquaintance Max (Dennis Hopper) to pick up the goods. Paul retreats with John to swallow the acid capsules.

Like most first-timers, Paul is giddy and nervous. John tells him to relax and gives him an eye mask.  Paul lays back on a futon, places the mask over his eyes, and the circus begins.

Music kicks in and the screen fades from blue into pink.  Kaleidoscope shapes parade before our eyes. Some look like moving paper snowflakes, others look like cave paintings shifting around.

Behind the Scenes – Special Effects

“Right after [taking LSD at] Big Sur, I knew I could never reproduce this on film. The images, the feelings, the emotion were so overwhelming that there was no way to translate that from your mind to the screen. You could get some of it, which I think I did, but you could never get it all.” -Roger Corman, featurette documentary  

Attempting to recreate the effects of LSD was an ambitious undertaking, so Roger Corman turned to Peter Gardiner of Charlatan Productions, a professional who produced psychedelic effects for TV.

Gardiner referred Bob Beck, known for creating rock band light shows, and award-winning cinematographer Allen Daviau, who later directed cinematography for E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.  The three teamed up with Gardiner overseeing the operation, and they began creating effects for the film.

A post-film documentary film, and a 1968 edition of American Cinematographer provide fascinating insight into the amount of work behind creating special effects for The Trip.

The effects team used mixed media in the truest sense of the phrase; they used multiple analog sources combined to create one overall show.

They used different camera lenses, light sources, and they copied symbols and designs on film strips. Next, they re-photographed the film strips through color gels to create a “master strip” which they used with colored lighting.  During the featurette, Corman discussed how the success of the film involved a combination of set design and special effects:

“I worked with Bob and Allen in one way, primarily post-production, but some of the other work was done during production… body paint on people and at the same time I was using very strange lenses; a couple of lenses broke up the image into sections. A lot of it was done on the set, in the camera, and then a great deal was done by Bob Beck and Allen post-production in which they took our images and treated them with multiple layers of images they created, which sometimes weren’t even images, just light and liquid flowing across the frame.”

The budget for special effects was limited to a flat $10,000, so the effects crew had to utilize various resources and hone a creative approach to honor Jack Nicholson’s script. They were also limited by a three-week time constraint, so they had to move fast.

“For the love scene we had liquid projectors, we had carousel projectors at odd angles, strobe lights… waves of color and various types of symbols and psychedelic visuals that Bob came up with… we were there to show up and bring whatever we had. By throwing (symbols) out of focus and overlapping, you’ll see one source panning on and another source panning off as the cameras move. We were able to get an interesting texture over the scene. It was very abstract… we were doing everything we could to keep it happening.” -Allen Daviau

Combining the analog effects was a complex process.  In the article Beck wrote for American Cinematographer, he discusses the equipment problems he overcame and the many resources involved, including the design and construction of equipment from scratch.

Beck used existing equipment, such as liquid projectors, but he also had to design and build several machines to achieve the film’s effects.

Beck constructed 6 modified strobe lights for the nightclub scene because nothing powerful enough existed on the market to use in film production. He also constructed huge lamps to project psychedelic images on nude bodies in the dark.

Perhaps most fascinating of all, the effects team used a “color organ”.  His description of the color organ is, in and of itself, psychedelic. A color organ is a piano-like device used to “play” colors:

“The tunes, frequencies, and intensities of musical notes served to modulate lamps that were mounted behind red, green, and blue filters which were then reflected from broken mirror segments onto a screen… and produced a weaving, ever-changing cloud-like effect of color and shifting forms floating across the screen”.

“Optical Bench” constructed by Beck to create effects for The Trip

Synchronizing the strobes with the cameras was also an intricate task. Among other considerations, Beck had to determine the right amount of flashes per second to reach the desired effect while filming the dance scene.

The effects team received help from the film crew for the dancing sequence. Showing true teamwork and dedication to craft, the assistant director gave the dancers amyl nitrate “poppers” to heighten the atmosphere of frenzy:

“The Bead Game sequence was shot in an actual L.A. club, with minor modification by the film crew. Assistant director Paul Rapp remembered shooting the Bead Game sequence, ‘I bought hundreds of boxes of amyl nitrate, which was then sold over the counter. I was working with dozens of extras in the scene and I needed to get their energy up to a pitch…when I was ready to shoot, I got everybody higher and higher and brought out the poppers.’ ” (Bret Wood, Turner Classic Movies)

Roger Corman’s Trip

Corman researched LSD before production, and he decided to take LSD to accurately reflect the experience he wanted to portray on film.

Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson helped influence this decision; both men were experienced psychonauts and they encouraged Corman to ingest acid before filming. Corman corralled a group of friends and headed to Big Sur, California for his trip.  In the documentary featurette, Corman shares his experience:

“I was floating in the sky and the atmosphere seemed to be a golden orange, like a sunset, but the whole sky was a sunset. A ship started to sail through the sky toward me. The sails turned to jewels as it came closer, and I noticed it was a ship, but it was also a woman and her body was made from jewels… the sails of the jewels were moving in the wind. I remember seeing all the way to the center of the earth and thinking that I had just invented a new art form. The creator would lay spread eagled on the earth, looking face down. His creation, whether it was music or a painting or a motion picture, would transmit through the earth and anybody else who was lying face down on the earth would receive the piece of art uninterrupted.”

In 60’s parlance, Bruce Dern was “straight”.  Dern had no interest in trying LSD, so he asked Nicholson and Corman for guidance about LSD in order to perfect his own role as a trip guide.

“[Roger] said to me that he took a trip, laid on the ground face down and looked into the earth and studied what was under the grass for about 7 hours.  I said, ‘well, there’s nothing under the grass’ and he said, ‘oh yeahhh… oh yeahhh, I saw alllll the way to the center of the earth.’” -Bruce Dern

Roger Corman

American International transforms The Trip into Reefer Madness II

American International Pictures viewed the final product and determined that The Trip was cheerleading for LSD.

Since the film was already laced with plenty of “bad trip” sequences (inspired by Corman’s desire to be neutral) it’s evident that paranoia over industry reputation drove American International to take the bad trip imagery one step further.

After production (and without the knowledge or approval of Corman) American International overlaid a cracked image on Paul’s face in the final scene, an apparent sign of a victim cracked permanently. They also inserted a “Reefer Madness” style cautionary scroll at the beginning of the film.

Interestingly, an important member of the effects team was also concerned about associating too closely with psychedelia.  In his article for American Cinematographer, Bob Beck arrives a peculiar conclusion for a man who wrote a feature article about building machines from scratch to create psych effects:

“Despite the fact that many of the unique lighting effects that have developed in recent years were first used in connection with the psychedelic scene, and in spite of the fact that I was involved in the production of several films about the experience, I feel very strongly that all of these “light show” techniques and optical effects should remain separated from the psychedelic label.  I would greatly regret having such techniques saddled with the label and stigmatized”.

According to Wikipedia, the film grossed 6 million dollars. It’s clear that people were curious about the psychedelic phenomenon. Business moguls in the music and film industries were divided between a desire to capitalize on the craze, versus fear of rocking the boat to the point of derailing their careers.

Despite American International’s cheesy efforts and the film’s own campiness, The Trip is a masterpiece of its time. The crew and team embarked on an ambitious project together within a limited budget and timeframe, and the result was a stunning exercise in creativity and efficient use of resources.

The film deserves a place in history as a breakthrough feature, right next to A Trip to the Moon by Georges Melies.

Reach Down

“I want to reach down
and pick the crowd up
Carry them in my hand
to the promised land…
To the promised land”
–Reach Down

Republished; 2018: The death of legendary singer and grunge pioneer Chris Cornell stunned the music world last week.

Chris was a rare talent. He was the greatest voice in rock music; a versatile singer who could wail on high notes and slide effortlessly into a bluesy moan charged with soul and emotion.

It’s been a few days since his untimely death, and many fans remain in a state of disbelief.  The best we can do is honor the man by celebrating his music and appreciating what a profound gift he gave us during his life.

It’s impossible to discuss Chris Cornell and Soundgarden without acknowledging the tremendous influence grunge had for me during my youth. Grunge music was my entry into rock. Before I was a fan of classic rock, I was a hardcore fan of grunge. The big four – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden – formed the nucleus of my obsession.

Grunge was a visceral introduction to the rock universe. It was unbelievable. Together, all the albums released by each band created a unified alternate world. This world mirrored the dark emotions we lived inside, but the music made it beautiful.  It was empowered alienation. As Rolling Stone once said, it was the music of “violence and retreat”.

Grunge delivered raw emotion behind soaring voices, screams, otherworldly guitar phrases and lyrics that touched our souls. A handful of bands defined our experience, and those bands were larger than life. Chris Cornell was larger than life.

The first song I heard by Soundgarden was the iconic “Black Hole Sun”. The dark psychedelia was strange, but I loved it. From that moment, I was hooked.

I listened to early-era Soundgarden every morning on the drive to school. The sound was perfect for Alaska mornings. I remember gliding down the icy road listening to “Nothing to Say”, “Flower”, and “Hands All Over”.

The red sun peeked over the horizon, blazing a thin line over mountains beneath a dark sky. The guitars echoed to the mountains; mean, cold, and brittle. The drums vacillated between a steady battle march and unhinged madness. The whole thing sounded like a glacier splitting in slow motion.

Soundgarden’s early music is hypnotic and full of stark imagery; dark pines, eerie lakes, power lines, and grey skies marbled in clouds. I listened and flew across the sky. I gazed down on a vast portrait of nature in still life. Cornell’s soaring voice pulled you into a vision.  You didn’t jump or head bang along with this music – you brooded to Soundgarden. It was menacing and the intensity pulled you in. Your soul moved into the songs.

“Room A Thousand Years Wide” is a great example, it churns through desert surrealism, blinding sun, and strobe lights.  Soundgarden’s music was a vehicle into imagery or a feeling you couldn’t place. You broke through the mirror and emerged into a realm halfway between artist and audience. Waves of saturated guitar washed over and you were reborn in an instant.

Locked into a serious grunge obsession, you went hours without eating because you were too busy experiencing a surge of emotion.  It was like a drug.

I never left this music completely behind, but I remember when it was all new.

I had a sad moment today during one of my favorite songs, “Loud Love”.  The song is so high octane and immediate that I forgot Chris passed away. I was rocking out, then suddenly I remembered that the source behind this powerful vocal delivery is gone.

I have another special memory connected to Soundgarden.  The band accompanied me into the stupidest decision of my life.

Many years ago, I decided to visit my favorite park in Anchorage armed with two sugar cubes of LSD.  This seemed like a great idea until the bathroom walls started breathing. An orange hue creeped over everything and at that point I decided it was probably foolish to hang out in the woods at a public park on acid.

So, I decided to drive home.

During the drive home, I played “Searching with My Good Eye Closed”.  I turned the volume up to full blast. When that first wall of guitar hit, it vibrated through my body with an intensity I’d never experienced. I felt like I was entering heaven. Chris sang about the sky and I was ready.  I was ready to go up into that sky. I had this total spiritual experience, like a monk on top of a mountain. It was amazing.

I could talk about Soundgarden songs and my memories connected to them all day. Nothing I say can touch the experience of listening to the music.

I was never impressed by Audioslave’s radio singles. However, I picked up the album Songbook a couple of years ago and was blown away by the acoustic version of “Like a Stone”. I decided I should explore Audioslave’s albums. I never ended up doing that, but I will soon.

The one Chris Cornell project that I’ve always loved is Temple of The Dog.

Temple has been a tear-inducing experience over the last couple of days. Every other song makes me cry. Beyond just mourning Chris Cornell, I might also be mourning the grunge era and human experience in general.

Temple of The Dog inspires that level of grief. Since the album’s songwriter is now gone, the music has adopted an additional level of meaning. Many of the songs are about grieving. “Say Hello to Heaven” is especially poignant. This is the album where Chris  began to show the world his genius beyond the limits of Soundgarden.

Chris Cornell’s passing has taken me back into memories of the first days when I fell in love with music – days at home staring into the fireplace, occasionally glancing out the window at the autumn moon while listening to Kurt, Layne, Eddie, and Chris.

The music has been there all along, but somehow the shock of Chris Cornell’s passing has taken me deeper into old songs.  I realize I’ve been sleeping through life lately.

Chris is gone, but we have his legacy and a huge amount of recorded music to remember him by. All the moments of sweltering power and glory are still there, and nothing can take that away.

~~~~~~~

“Please, mother mercy
Take me from this place
And the long-winded curses
I keep hearing in my head

Words never listen
And teachers never learn
Now I’m warm from the candle
Though I feel too cold to burn

He came from an island
And then he died from the street
And he hurt so bad like a soul breaking
But he never said nothing to me

Say Hello to Heaven

New like a baby
And lost like a prayer
The sky was your playground
And the cold earth was your bed

Poor stargazer
She’s got no tears in her eyes
Smooth like a whisper
She knows love heals all wounds with time

Now it seems like too much love
is never enough
You better seek out another road
Cause this one has ended abrupt

I never wanted
To write these words down for you
With the pages of phrases
of things we’ll never do

So I blow out the candle
And I put you to bed
Since you can’t say to me now
How the dogs broke your bone
There’s just one thing left to be said:

Say Hello to Heaven”

-Chris Cornell, Temple of The Dog; Say Hello To Heaven.

Wolfe

One of my favorite moments in recorded history is a scene from the movie Monterey Pop, a documentary of the legendary 1967 music festival. The camera zooms in on Cass Elliot as she watches Janis Joplin perform on stage. Cass’s mouth hangs open, her face completely serene in a portrait of awe, eyes partially obscured by stylish sunglasses.

Cass’s face in that documentary conveys the way I felt when I read author Thomas Wolfe’s work for the first time.

I watched the movie Genius, a film about the relationship between Thomas Wolfe and his editor Max Perkins, starring Jude Law and Colin Firth. I enjoy period pieces, especially movies set in the early 20^th century, so I picked up the movie because it looked like it was from the 30’s or 40’s.  I knew nothing about the subject of the film.

I didn’t know it yet, but I was perched on the edge of a life changing discovery.

Jude Law’s portrayal of Wolfe is obnoxious, and I can’t relate his portrayal to the character within the novels. There are certainly flashes of excess and overload in Wolfe’s writing, however, these flashes are tempered by a deeper force of calm; a steady, mature reflection and focus behind his observation of characters. It seems to me that Law granted himself a hefty dose of creative license in his portrayal of Wolfe. Law’s characterization seems more like Dean Moriarty from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  

Whatever the case may be, the film succeeded in its goal – to portray a compelling story that would hook people (like me) to want to discover more about the author. The scene that caught my attention shows Firth’s character, Maxwell Perkins, reading one of Wolfe’s book passages out loud. My ears perked up when I heard the passage. I sat up straight in my chair and hit rewind so I could watch the scene and listen again.

The passage was arresting, completely startling in its uniqueness. I knew I had to check this writer out.

I began reading Of Time and The River that night. Wolfe’s three major books form a biography of his life in various stages.  River is his coming-of-age tale, set from his late teens into his early 20’s.  Look Homeward, Angel traverses scenes of Wolfe’s childhood, and You Can’t Go Home Again tells the story of Wolfe’s becoming a man and establishing his career.  He tells his story through the eyes of two protagonists, Eugene Gant and George Webber. Once you learn a bit about Wolfe’s biography, it becomes obvious that both characters are really Wolfe himself.

Wolfe had many talents as a writer, but among the most interesting are his powers of description, and his detailed characterizations of people.  He delivers every angle inside of a scene or feeling with a detailed gusto that I have never witnessed in a writer.  His descriptions flow across the page, driven by a life-or-death urgency, as though someone held a gun to his head and commanded him to write every inch of life from every corner, and from the perspective of everyone involved.

Here’s the first passage from Of Time and The River that arrested my attention:

“The moon blazed down upon the wilderness, it fell on sleeping woods, it dripped through moving leaves, it swarmed in weaving patterns on the earth, and it filled the cat’s still eye with blazing yellow. The moon slept over mountains and lay like silence in the desert, and it carved the shadows of great rocks like time. The moon was mixed with flowing rivers, and it was buried in the heart of lakes, and it trembled on the water like bright fish. The moon steeped all the earth in its living and unearthly substance, it had a thousand visages, it painted continental space with ghostly light; and its light was proper to the nature of all the things it touched: it came in with the sea, it flowed with the rivers, and it was still and living on clear spaces in the forest where no men watched.”

When I read that passage, I sat straight up from a laying position in bed and stirred.  The entirety of Wolfe’s work flows with that much beauty and detail – whether he’s describing nature, observations of life, the urgency of youth, or a specific character, he will absolutely harness his muse with the same degree of detail contained in that paragraph. His novels are built upon a standard narrative structure, but they are frequently punctuated by transitional passages like the one above.

When I first began reading Jack Kerouac’s work, I remember reading a foreword which mentioned that Kerouac read Wolfe’s work while he was in college, layed up from a sports injury.  The foreword made it clear that Kerouac was a fan; that the event influenced the direction of Kerouac’s life, however, it failed to mention that Wolfe was the greatest writer of the 20^th century, or the true extent to which Wolfe influenced Kerouac. Wolfe’s Wikipedia page claims that Kerouac “idolized” Wolfe – and with good reason, I would argue.

Wolfe is a writer worth idolizing.

I have long been a fan of Kerouac, and up until this point I thought he was the greatest writer that ever lived, at least for me.  Now I see that although he was a different writer and supremely talented in his own right, he drew much of his influence (and the courage to be himself) from Thomas Wolfe.

Wolfe was also gifted at portraying other people as a mirror into his own insecurities, describing vividly how his perception of other people informed how he believed they viewed him, and how that ultimately made him feel.  Behold:

“He had read in their pale faces, and in their rootless and unwholesome lives, which had come to have for him the wilted yellow pallor of nameless and unuseful plants such as flourish under barrels, a kind of cold malicious triumph, a momentary gleam in pale fox-eyes, which said that they looked upon his desperate life and knew the cause of his despair, and felt a bitter triumph over it.”  -Wolfe

Another interesting aspect of Wolfe’s work is the role of train rides as a vehicle representing major life transitions.  Wolfe spent a lot of time on trains traveling between the north and the south.  His descriptions of these train rides appear to be a metaphor for the passage of time itself, and the cultural sea change between the north and south in America, especially at that point in time.

Here’s a beautiful train passage from Look Homeward, Angel which appears to hint at the role of a train in representing time and memory:

“And it was this that awed him – the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seemed frozen in time.”   

He’s expert at communicating on two levels.  A good writer can do that.  Unless they are writing about something in a literal and quite straightforward manner, they are likely to communicate on two levels at once. A good writer can construct a passage that deals with a theme such as “urban versus nature”, but will avoid explicitly using either term.  They can write about electricity without using the word “electricity”.  They can construct a scene with a theme behind it that you will understand as a reader, consciously or unconsciously.   He’s very good at this.

The characters in Wolfe’s books are instantly recognizable.  Among the more interesting lessons of his literature (and of classic literature in general) is the lesson about how little people have changed.

Wolfe demonstrates that while technology has changed the way we live, class struggle and certain other dark things within our culture have not changed.  The psychology of people remains the same as it was in 1920. Every character is familiar, from the townspeople to his own family members.  If you’ve been alive long enough to have gathered various life experiences, you will recognize nearly all these characters in someone you have known or been acquainted with.

One of the most interesting descriptions focuses on one of Wolfe’s peers at a school he attended, from The Web and The Root:

“He was a creature who, first and foremost, above all other things, hated trouble and abhorred pain – as what decent man does not? – except that here, in this great belly of a man, his hatred and abhorrence were so great that he would never face the things he hated. Thus, from an early age, he had learned to wear rose-colored blinders against life, and it was only natural that his own stubborn and unyielding hostility should be turned against anything- any person, any conflict, any situation, any evidence, or any idea, that would tend to take those blinders off… gradually, he began to rationalize in a phrase that he called the “morbid and distorted view of life” in contradistinction to the works of those writers of whom he approved, and who, correspondingly of course, represented, ‘the more wholesome and well-rounded point of view.’”

Who among us has not encountered the unrelenting people who wear “rose colored blinders”?   More importantly, Wolfe brings up a relevant point: these people are rarely one-dimensional in their optimism; they tend to have a thorny underside of denial wrapped in quiet rebellion.  They will expose their thorny underside, without hesitation, to those who threaten their willfully naive viewpoint.

All the characters in his books are as true to life as this character.

Thomas Wolfe’s life was short, and he seemed to be another tragic figure who somehow sensed his life would end before his time.  Like singer Jeff Buckley, Wolfe didn’t spare any of his talent or energy.  He strove to write to a level beyond himself, did so consistently, and reached for the stars to milk the light they possessed out of them, so that he could convey their energy in the written word.

Like all good artists, Wolfe was perfectly aware that he was a dynamo.  A certain passage from You Can’t Go Home Again delights and amuses me endlessly.  In this passage, Wolfe accuses Shakespeare of being a lazy sellout:

“Rather, as if Shakespeare himself had recognized the hopelessness of ever putting down the millionth part of what he had seen and known about this earth, or of ever giving wholly and magnificently the full content of one moment in man’s life, it now seemed that his will had finally surrendered to a genius which he knew was so soaring, so far beyond the range of any other man, that it could overwhelm men with its power and magic even when its owner knew he had shirked the desperate labor of mining from his entrails the huge substance of all life he really had within him.”   

Who would be brazen enough to accuse Shakespeare of taking the easy way out, but Thomas Wolfe?   Shakespeare is widely considered to be the greatest writer of all time, but Wolfe thought Shakespeare could have mined a great deal more from “his entrails”.

*

At some point during my reading of River, I picked up a notepad and started doing some writing of my own.  The discovery of Wolfe is a personal miracle for me, because although I had made a few attempts to write and polish some old stuff last summer, his discovery has prompted my own floodgates of creativity to swing open. Staying motivated in any area of life can be challenging at times, but I feel fortunate that various art forms interweave with each other to find their ideal audience.  If some director and scriptwriter hadn’t paired up to create a movie about Wolfe, I may not have ever discovered him.

My connection to this fantastic force of literary history – this unbelievable talent – is strong enough that I almost feel that I was meant to discover his work, if only to keep me charging forward within the world of art. It certainly feels like fate; I feel “saved” artistically, so to speak, because of Thomas Wolfe.

His work is something to believe in when you’re standing at life’s crossroads, wondering how the hell you’re going to get through all this dreaded monotony, straining to find a better way of life.

~~~~~~~

“It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity. This is the reason that the artist lives and works and has his being: that from life’s clay and his own nature, and from his father’s common earth of toil and sweat and violence and error and bitter anguish, he may distill the beauty of an everlasting form, enslave and conquer man by his enchantment, cast his spell across the generations, beat death down upon his knees, and fix eternity with the grappling hooks of his own art.” 

– Thomas Wolfe

***

Buckley

Introduction: I intend to republish every single thing on my blog over about the next month or so. Nobody gives a fuck, but that’s okay. I’m doing it to entertain myself, remind myself that I kinda sorta used to know how to actually write, and because it’s a good exercise in discipline. I’m doing this in reverse chronological order.

How does this equate to discipline? Because I have the kind of personality that would like to just republish everything in one night or over two days. I can now teach myself to show up once a night, once every few days, or once a week to do a republish. This is an exercise in managing compulsion. Life isn’t something you achieve in one day, right?

Buckley is on the very bottom of my stack, apparently the oldest post, so we’ll start with that one.

This is cute – back in the days when I fancied myself a little music journalist. This blog started out nothing but music, before I knew what blogging on wordpress is actually about.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t get many followers under the “music” tag, and I’d be surprised if even one person out there is randomly scrolling under the music tag and sees this… much less tolerates this long-ass introduction before getting to the actual content. Besides, I was reading Thomas Wolfe and all this shit at the time, it’s probably overwrought writing. And since I am going reverse chrono, the first few will be like that. I’m not editing.

Ah, yes. I was in for a big lesson about how WP works. Music people don’t give a fuck about my blog. It wasn’t until I started journaling about my personal feelings and dramas that I began to get followers. So, I’m just republishing these things for my current small audience and for me.

BUCKLEY

“I want to be ripped apart by music. I want it to be something that feeds and replenishes, or that totally sucks the life out of you. I want to be dashed against the rocks.” – Jeff Buckley

He stands beneath a street lamp on the cracked pavement of life, electric guitar in hand, singing as the light fades into dusk. He watches birds fly across the pink sky above city power lines, his voice straining out broken cries of reality under immense skyscraper gloom. His voice glides up and down in ethereal passion; his eyes follow summer birds into dreams of rapture as they glide away into visions of spring’s promise and reunited love.

To enter the world of Jeff Buckley’s music is to step into a vortex where emotional pain collides with spiritual transcendence. Listening to his catalog is an exhausting and cathartic journey.  An intense and emotional singer, he was serious about the experience his music provided to both himself and his fans – in one interview he claimed that the act of singing changed the shape of the bones in his face.

Actor Brad Pitt attempted to make a movie about him. Popular musicians of the time revered him; they stood completely still, mouths open, envious of his otherworldly talent. I’ve followed many musicians, but Jeff Buckley is the only singer who I can honestly describe as holy or beatific.

“Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over”

Jeff Buckley drowned in a Tennessee river in 1997. His tragic death is impossible to separate from his legacy; his death fuels his legend in part because his songs are peppered with potent images of water and drowning.  A singer who naturally harnessed mystery in his songs ultimately added to his own mystique by way of his death. Images of the ocean, falling rain, and references to drowning emerge within many of his songs.

His death wasn’t a suicide. The official story is that he and a roadie were heading to the studio to begin sessions on a new record when Buckley, spontaneously inspired, decided to go for a swim before the session. He instructed the driver to pull off to the side of the river, and the rest is history. He waded too far out into the river, against cautious pleadings from his companion, and disappeared. He was taken by the undertow of a passing tugboat.

Jeff Buckley’s debut album, Grace, is full of metaphysical imagery; waiting inside the fire of passion, rain, wind and storms, and the ocean. The sonic elements of the album, including Buckley’s magnificent voice, drive the lyrics forward with a force that adds emphasis to the stormy emotional themes.  It’s difficult to avoid connecting the album’s weather-associated themes and physical elements to the way in which Buckley passed away. In an interview, he reported that he experienced vivid dreams and suffered from occasional nightmares. One can’t help wondering if he predicted his own death in a dream.

“Mojo Pin” from Grace is the height of Buckley’s sweeping passion, one of the most powerful songs in his catalog. Listeners are pulled into the vision of a shimmering beach; a brilliant sun at high noon shining on water between flashes of cloud breaks, oysters in the sand, surf crashing, and sea creatures bowing and praying to the power of love.  An image of a beautiful woman with black hair is traced in the passing clouds.  The palpable, yearning heartbreak of this song will induce immediate chills in any listener.  The long and languid notes that Buckley sings in the introduction glide you through the sky, above the earth, and back down through snow drifts on a pond.

On the surface, Buckley was a Torch singer.  He viewed himself as a “male chanteuse”. It was a role he played well, as demonstrated on his excellent live album, Live at Sin-e.  But the power of Grace and his posthumous album, Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, illustrate that Buckley was far more than just a male chanteuse.

The music on Grace and Sweetheart contain elements of pop, torch, soul, and touches of grunge rock. On Grace, these genres are blended seamlessly to create a sensual realm; a world that shifts between darkness and light. The album leans toward danger, but strains to find a balance in redemption.

Apart from being a technically proficient singer with a 4 octave range, Buckley was a highly skilled guitar player. Live at Sin-e is one of the most intimate albums that I have experienced, demonstrating his raw guitar and vocal skills. Buckley performed alone in a small coffee house in New York City. The album is so sonically rich, covers such a diverse range of material, and is so layered with emotional content that it’s easy to forget that this is just one man with a guitar.

Buckley’s cover of Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” from Live at Sin-e is a perfect example of his ability to take well-established classic songs and drive them into a completely new sonic world.

Van Morrison’s original song is a quaint portrait of jazz whimsy; cool hipster kids hanging out in the city’s dark night, rapping poetry. Buckley’s version takes you directly into the misty garden scene, right out to the dock, gazing at the ferries and the blue sky beyond.  You can feel the nostalgia as though his memory were yours. Buckley does that – he makes the song his life, and his life becomes your own.

A Jeff Buckley bio would not be complete without an honorable mention of his father, 1960’s folk singer Tim Buckley. Tim was equally talented in a different way. The two men have vastly different musical styles, yet what they share in common is an intimate approach to music, and a wild, god-like level of talent.

Tim Buckley

Tim’s background in folk music naturally meant that his style was earthier, less sweeping and physical than Jeff’s. Tim was more than just a simple folk singer, however. Like Jeff, his music spanned several genres and he never fit comfortably into one musical category. As with his son, hearing Tim’s music is a journey into the heart of the man, unhindered by any wall or defense.

Tim Buckley also died young, when Jeff was just a little boy. Tim was absent during most of Jeff’s childhood, a fact which Jeff often dismissed as irrelevant in interviews.  However, he references the pain of rejection related to his father’s absence in a few songs, most notably the song “What Will You Say?”

In the song, Jeff references his own future death and asks Tim, “Father, do you hear me?  Do you know me?  Do you even care?  What will you say when you see my face?” In one of Tim’s songs, he also conveys regret about his absence as a father.  It’s unspeakably sad to think that father and son talked to each other in songs, but never had the chance to speak face to face.

In a way, that unspeakable sadness – that loss that we all experience eventually in some way – is the key to the power in Jeff Buckley’s music. The music is a celebration of existence; an embrace of all the forces behind and within life, including the inevitability of lost love and the loss of life itself. The power of Buckley’s music can perhaps be summarized best by lyrics in the most popular and well-known song that he covered:

“And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah
It’s not a cry that you hear at night
It’s not somebody who’s seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah”

-Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah

My Viking Fantasy (Ruined…)

Have you ever listened to a song for years only to realize one day that you’re wrong about the meaning behind the lyrics?

For me, it can totally ruin the song.

“Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin was my battle song.

I thought it was about Vikings sailing into battle.

I would really get into it.

I was a warrior woman on that Viking boat. I stood near the bow with a sword in my hand and copper cuffs on each wrist. My eyes narrowed, the ocean sprayed my face, the boat bobbed up and down over waves… and I experienced the greatest endorphin rush of my life.

Sexy bearded men stood all around me, and they all had great legs.

We were Vikings, and we were going to win.

I also looked this good and had that same french manicure.

Everything about this song screams battle song – the pulsating bass, the drums, even the title. The last stand.

At some point, I read an article which revealed the song’s true origin. The title of the song was inspired by a car wreck. Robert Plant busted his foot in a car wreck, and the title is a clever play on that incident.  Awww, how cute.

The actual content of the song is about vacationing in Morocco.

Or something.

Whatever the case may be, I can no longer hear this song without thinking about Plant’s damned foot.

All I can see is Plant’s foot wrapped in bandages while a bunch of long-hairs with sunglasses relax around an outdoor pool.  This is decidedly less glamorous than my fantasy.  But I can’t go back!  The damage is done.

Bastards.

This also happened when I read the lyrics to “Rhinoceros” by The Smashing Pumpkins. There’s a lyric which I always thought was “Open your eyes to these monster lies”.

OPEN YOUR EYES TO THESE MONSTER LIES.

Just look at that lyric!  The power!  As it turns out, the “monster” part is wrong.  For me, that was the most important part.

Monster is defined as “huge” in this context.  There are HUGE lies all around us.

Open your friggin’ eyes, people!  These lies surrounding us are monstrous! This “monster” element made the lyric incredibly powerful.  It added to the depth of the overall sound.

The actual lyric is, “Open your eyes to these must I lie”.

What?! What the hell does that even mean? Some lyric websites say “mustard lies”, which is far worse. It’s almost offensive. “Monster Lies” is much better.  It improves the whole character of the lyric.

It’s amazing how people can interpret song meanings and lyrics.  I recently looked up the lyrics to “Soot and Stars”, another Pumpkin song.  To me, this song is about loss and transition. It’s poetic and sorrowful.

What do other people think this song means?

This is the first comment about “Soot and Stars” at songmeanings.com:

“This song is obviously about Star Wars. It describes the feelings of Darth Vader after all has happened and is said and done”.

I laughed out loud for about 10 seconds when I read that.  I would have choked if I was eating.  I am fairly certain that the guy was being satirical.  But, it proves the point – people can interpret songs and other works in surprisingly diverse ways.

It actually wouldn’t surprise me if someone really believed, with all his heart, that these lyrics are about Star Wars.  Yes, that man contemplating his career and life choices is Darth Vader.

“Pssssh. Duhhh, how can you not tell?  That’s what makes it so poetic and sorrowful.”

Because I can totally judge Star Wars fans about their fantasy life.

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