With that said, you may have already experienced this album, since it came out in 2003 – but I just discovered it this week.

Hail to the Thief strikes a chord for me. It’s pretty much like every other Radiohead album, with the same ambiguity, its inability to fit into any specific genre, and strange melancholic feel. Radiohead has always been great background noise for me – just entertaining sounds – but I find myself continually drawn into the lyrics of these songs.

There’s not much else to say about this album. It’s Radiohead. And it’s good. Listen to it.

- Chris

- I suppose I should introduce myself
- Hi, I’m Chris

01. the tree of life – malick

02. promises written in water – gallo

03. cold weather – katz

04. meek’s cutoff – reichardt

05. somewhere – s. coppola

06. it’s kind of a funny story – fleck/boden

07. the american – corbijn

This is a compilation of the solo work that Chris Bell was able to do between leaving Big Star and getting on to the great Heath train in the sky.

Q: What does it sound like?

A: Alt-Country before the term existed.  Lovely pop songs with a twang.  Heaven.

Q: Are you really going to start posting again, or are you just trying to trick me?

A: Time will tell.

It started with “late night” listens to Thriller that were meant to lull me as I went to bed.  Instead I found myself getting up from my bunk bed and heading over to the karaoke machine I used as a stereo in my room to flip the tape and get more of my fix.  Bad was the first CD I ever personally owned, given to me by the Easter bunny.  Soon enough I had what could best be described as a shrine devoted to him on a plastic shelving unit on wheels.  I had VHS tapes with each new video or TV appearance tacked on.  I even remember bossing my friend Neeman around as I dictated my proposed choreography for a video I wanted to enter into a MTV contest to create a video for Who Is It?, the first aspirations of being a director I can remember

But ultimately Michael Jackson, the public persona and not the person, gave me much more than a childhood obsession.  He also changed the way I looked at the world.  Suddenly, at the age of 7, my hero was dethroned, and the world was made a much more complicated place.  Not only was the adult world so certain that he was a bad person, but his supposed crime, which I understood for the most part, was a direct violation of the trust I and countless other children had for him.  This is the man that had turned into a car to protect those kids from Joe Pesci.  How was it possible?

My initial reaction was to go on the defense.  I would become very upset when I heard people talking poorly of him.  I even made the doomed decision to portray Michael in a talent show the local T.V. station was putting on.  Imagine a fat white kid in Iowa in a black hat with wig, unbuttoned silk shirt, and white sequenced glove dancing and lip-syncing to The Way You Make Me Feel less than a year after the scandal.

Still deep down I always knew there was a chance he actually was guilty.  I was just afraid to admit it because it was simply too much for my 8 year old world view.  Not that I had some delusion that the world was perfect, but Michael was supposed to be different.  I had seen the VH1 movie.  I knew he had a tough child hood too, and had even sang to rats, but was still able to become Michal Jackson.  He was a pillar of hope.  He was like Batman, who donned my bed spread, but real.

So when I heard he died today I had very mixed emotions.  I was upset, but not sad.  I was bothered though by the fact that I wasn’t sad.  I wished that I could be that naive 6 year old again who could really believe in someone without any kind of qualifiers.  Perhaps in the true spirit of Michael, I wanted nothing more than to be able to slip back under Batman into that bunk bed and enjoy the pure bliss of The Girl Is My Mine.  But I can’t and so my memories of Michael will always be biter sweet.  Everyone has to grow up sometimes, but who would have thought it’d be Michael Jackson to push me, and I’m sure countless others, into the confusing abyss of adulthood.

I’m tired of things being pretty and I’m guilty of this too.  Towards the end of Wend and Lucy, a movie I liked over all, there was a shot that really annoyed me.  It was right after she had left the dog and it was just this wonderful tracking shot of Wendy in the train yard and it felt so false, because while the character was at the lowest point of the film the audience was given the treat of some eye candy that the character was not entitled to.  I’m not judging Reichardt’s compassion, which I feel she has a surplus of, but this desire to make pretty images is a hard one to overcome.  I’m not advocating intentionally ugly images.  I’m not sure what I’m advocating.

But really I was just going to post a Tindersticks album.  Maybe more on the movie thing when I have thought it out better.

This is their second album and it includes what is becoming one of my all time favorite songs, Travelling Light.

I recently finally finished my long in the works pinhole lens.  I didn’t have my camera with me though so we popped it on Marla’s Digital SLR and played around with it.  Didn’t have a tripod either, but still got some interesting results.  This was my favorite.

For the moment though I thought I’d start putting up some of what I’ve been listening to during the blog-drought.  The Strange Boys embody all that is sloppy,raucous, and free wheeling about young white males playing rock music.  The music seems to be a stew of all that has come before it in this particular arena and yet it doesn’t feel as forced as some “retro” acts can, not that I don’t have a soft spot for them in the first place.  Still maybe it is this blending, the fact that they don’t seem to have an allegiance to any specific previous output, that allows them carve out their own niche.  Also the music is just really fun to listen to.

So as I went about the rest of my day after posting my thoughts on Synecdoche a little voice was yelling at me in the back of my head.  I guess it was only fitting that my write-up on a movie about copies  would feel very much like the movie itself.  Much like the experience I had when watching the film my thoughts feel like a scatterbrained excretion of the many strands that have been running through my head lately.  Sorry.

I would like to go back and look at something I almost tacked onto the end though, that being the reason I feel I watch films or really engage with art in the general sense.  Most people agree that what they are looking for when they enter a cinema.  They want to be entertained.  They want to forget about their disappointing lives.  they want to escape.

However when it comes to films whose goals are not that of escapism things get a little trickier.  Often those who don’t understand how I can like the kinds of movies that I do say that I like to go to them because “they make you think.”  This seems silly for a number of reasons.  First off, what constitutes thinking?  I know that far more “thoughts” were running through my head when I sat through Slumdog Millionaire than when I became almost sedated while watching Silent Light.  Also, this kind of reaction is completely indicative of the anti-”art” attitude in America which is directly tied to the anti-intellectualism that breeds here as well.  The bottom line though is that I do not go to the movies exclusively to think.  I go for a reason that in some ways is the exact opposite of escapism and in some ways is quite similar.

But why do people want to escape in the first place?  Well, because life is hard.  People work meaningless jobs for meager pay.  They come home to people they feel don’t love them like they’d wish.  They are constantly told by the media of people in even worse situations in other parts of the world.  Given all of this it seems only natural that what few good things, or easy things, or exciting things there are in the world would be magnified and blown up to create a utopia where those other things don’t exist, or at the very least, don’t matter.

I however can’t run away from the world.  I already feel so removed from it as it is.  Not that I don’t experience the same downfalls that the escapists feel, it’s just that our coping methods differ greatly.  I can’t shut off.  I can’t ignore things.  I can only hope to come to some kind of terms with things.  I watch movies, or read books, or listen to music that reminds me that I am not alone in this.  This does not mean realism in the Neo-realist sense.  I love watching Astaire and Rogers in Swing Time.  Even though it is silly and was very much made as a tool for escape, there is something in it that hits a chord with me.  Under all the deco gloss, there is a very real heart in that movie.

I don’t know if my coping method is better than most.  I like to tell myself it is.  I like to say that by dealing with some form of reality or truth we can help change the problems, or at the very least acknowledge they are there.  Acknowledgment may not lead to the change that many had hoped would be possible through cinema, but maybe it can at least foster understanding, which might makes things easier to take, if not better.  Or maybe that’s just the peace of mind that I try and sell myself.  I don’t know.

I would like to leave you with a quote from author James Baldwin:

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition.  The first idea was acceptance, totally without rancour, of life as it is, and men as they are: in light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is commonplace.  But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength.  the fight begins, however, in the heart and now it had been laid to my charge to keep my own hear free of hatred and despair.

-From Notes of a Native Son

So I do realize that I am very behind the curve in writing about this movie now, but seeing as it just came out on DVD and it has cult written all over it I still think it may have some value.

I know it would seem like the proper hipster backlash move to denounce Charlie Kaufman now that I’ve found “greater” cinema, but I simply can’t.  Underneath all the fan boy hype, the talk of mind-fucks and quirkiness, underneath the could be gimmick plot devices I still think he is one of the most interesting voices we have in cinema right now.  So why have I just now seen his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York?  I would like to say I was busy or that when I wasn’t busy I just didn’t have the money.  After all, this was what I often told myself last fall during its run in Milwaukee.  The truth though is I was scared.  I had read the responses and seen the trailer and was placed in the strange position of really wanting to see the movie but being worried that it would never be as good as I imagined it would be.  That the real movie would ruin the potential of the movie in my head.

Alas, now that it is on video and the excuses have pretty much run out I decided to finally sit down and see it.  That was Saturday and I’ve now watched it three times.  That is not to say that I am head over hills in love with it.  After the first viewing I was not sure how to feel but over the next few days I kept running things over in my head and it was clear that something in this movie had a hold on me.  The second time I watched it I felt like I appreciated it much more and the third time I had tears in my eyes as it came to an end.  The label “depressing” has been used to both praise and criticize this movie but in both instances I think they are focusing on certain parts too much.  Kaufman expresses the futility and selfishness of artistic pursuit and life in general, but not without at the same time looking at it as so endearingly human.

The movie, even though not the first screenplay he has written, feels very much like a first film, with an aray of ideas and feelings seemingly vomited onto the screen.  There is so much going on in this movie that I could never hope to discuss everything very iffeicently.  Instead I will focus on the aspect that hit me the most: why Caden creates.  Of all the questions that art students and teachers alike love to ponder, the reason as to why they are doing this in the first place seems oft ignored.  I don’t mean their agenda for indiviual work, that is discussed ad-nauseum, what I’m talking about is what makes the so-called artist different from the rest or are they even really that different.  I think the very fact that this question is placed on the back burner while we continuously run through the possible theorys of what may or may not constitue art is incredibly telling.  Art is an act of power.  When we talk about what art is we get the same rushing sensation as politicians do when they denounce their opponent.  We make up the rules and know that by following them we are better than everyone else.

I am part of this too.  I obsesively work on things and come up with justifications for it all.  Caden’s hopes of creating a work of great truth echoes almost every conversation I’ve ever had with anyone serious about their art.  But is this really all we’re after or is it merely all we can hope will be there after we get done working our problems out.  The reason that this movie is so moving to me is that it doesn’t just say that artist’s are self obsessed people looking to control things and make people like them.  Like I said earlier, what really sets this apart for me is the wondeful humanist touch that Kaufman has brought to it.  Yes all those things about artists are true, but they are also true of everyone, and that’s okay.  Of course we all want to be loved and even though we might do seemingly pathetic things to do it, it’s understandable.  We’re all in this together.

In the end it is this perspective, one shared by Kurt Vonnegutt, that will bring back to Synecdoche.  Yes it has twist and turns that are still playing out in my mind.  But it also reminds us of what it is to be human, which is nice in a world that seems to be trying to minimize it, or at the very least ignore it.  Some people go to films to disconnect from the world, I go to connect.

This movie gives me more hope than a googolplex of Obama ads.  That is all.