Shorthand for Nothing

For Nigel.

I.
You were the king of dingy bathroom tile,
unafraid of
discarded towels
clustered hair
or sudden lights
and stomping feet.
You stood there, just watching,
as the world moved by
your bathroom tiles.

Your reign was silent
and brief,
your explorations
infinitely vast,
infinitely small,
infinite. The world was
yours, and you took your time.

II.
When I was a child,
I was frightened of dark places.

III.
Some things are always left unsaid,
little quiet ideas that no one
dares express,
or just no one thinks to.

And these are the things lives are made of:
quiet thoughts and inner moments,
secrets that die out
before they are born, completely unnoticed
by any who might remember them.

IV.
“You are the only person
who has ever seen this part of me.”
We all make mistakes. Not every choice
is obvious.

V.
I have trapped myself in a prison of ivory and metal,
vast beyond my comprehension. I should worry,
but everything seems at peace. I will know no escape,
but I need no escape.
I, alone among men, have known everything I desired.
The waters are rising. I will not resist.

VI.
You were the king of dingy bathroom tiles.
Your reign was silent
and brief.

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There was a trailer for some movie involving hell demons featuring Nick Cage at Sherlock Holmes. I have no interest in seeing it! But I would be interested in seeing this:

DIABLO: THE MOVIE

Teaser trailer.

A dark set–a dark sky, a faint horizon, wilderness. Moody music. A fire is lit, casting red lighting over:

Two figures, a MAN and a WOMAN, seated around a small campfire; around them the signs of battle, or at least skirmish, are barely visible.

MAN: I don’t understand it. It’s like they were–

WOMAN: Possessed?

Shot of mountainous country with a desolate and slightly ominous feel. The music swells in intensity. WOMAN speaks over this.

WOMAN: This is an evil neither of us can hope to comprehend. We need to find someone who knows. We need to find Cain.

Cut to many scenes of the MAN and WOMAN battling demons, zombies, et cetera. Music is appropriately fighty. The montage concludes with an image of a massive, terrifying demon. The MAN and WOMAN pause, glance at each other, and simultaneously raise their weapons to charge. Cut to black, silence. The lights slowly raise on DECKARD CAIN.

CAIN: Stay a while, and listen…

The title DIABLO flashes on the screen. Fin.

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Harvey Danger are my favorite, favorite band, and I have written about them a few times. They sadly broke up in 2009, but that is no reason not to listen to them! Let’s move onward.

Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone?
This is their first album, and it is the one you may have heard. The single is called Flagpole Sitta. I have always thought the title is pretty appropriate for the tone of the album, at least partly because lyricist and vocalist Sean Nelson is the sort of person who would be concerned with that sort of thing. It is less polished than the other albums, but in a very appropriate way. This is an album about departures and reflection. I am not entirely convinced lo-fi is the term I want here, but it’s got a simple sound with pretty memories, beautiful vocals, and lyrics which are hopeful and nostalgic and sad. It is simple and straightforward and makes me happy. If you like your indie rock simple and nostalgic, you could do no better than this album.

King James Version
In contrast, the King James Version is a complex and sarcastic exploration of faith and skepticism and alienation. Polished, self-aware, and snarky, this album has a lot of energy and a lot of really great moments. Mostly it is a restless album, from Carjack Fever suggesting that we “empty all the minibars and leave this town in flames” to Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo’s tale of its titular heroine and her life of corporate drudgery. There is a lot of dissatisfaction and restlessness expressed here in a lot of different ways, because Sean Nelson is excellent at capturing those subtle nuances of things. It closes with The Same As Being In Love, which is one of my favorite Harvey Danger songs and certainly my favorite closing track. If you like guitars and energetic well-constructed rock albums, you probably want this one first.

Little By Little…
This album came five years later and represents quite the departure stylistically, from the guitar rock of KJV to a more mellow, piano-driven sound. (It is also available for free as a download at their website, so you have no excuse for not listening. At all. This is free music, completely free, and it is a really good album. That is free.) The pianos give it a more mature sound, and lends itself nicely to an album which is darker and, if not exactly brooding, at least a little bleaker. (It also makes one of the happiest songs on the planet, Happiness Writes White, even prettier.) There are songs about record collections, stalkers, shattered relationships, and dying by what you live by. Despite this it ends on an optimistic note in Diminishing Returns, about finding something tangible in a world of -isms. It seems to say: This will all make sense one day, so just hang on. The perfect album for people who like introspective albums, and especially for people who like to fall in love with songs about someone who has fallen in love with their music collection.

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Hello! I have been spending the holidays up in New Hampshire, and I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie with my brother-in-law. I don’t think I ever read any of the of the books, but I may have read one or two. I was, of course, familiar with the premise. I went into this having known only that it featured Robert Downey Junior, and some explosions.

This was not a mystery movie. This was a Victorian adventure story filled with some fun explosions. It was humorous, it was macabre, it was clever. The pacing was good and the action was exciting, without being excessive. I really enjoyed myself.

That said, some caveats. I am in love with Victorian adventure stories. I was not a fan before, so it couldn’t possibly have ruined anything for me. I don’t know to what extent it would have. And it was clever, which is not the same as intelligent. I’m not saying it was a stupid movie, but it is more likely to dazzle you with charm than with brilliance.

The acting was excellent and the characters strong. I had fun and was glad I’d seen it, and wouldn’t mind going again. It has been a while since I’ve seen something clever and fun and I’m glad this was both.

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I finally got around to reading Joey Comeau’s Lockpick Pornography yesterday. It is a pretty quick read, and the whole thing is online as a PDF at the link there.

He describes it as a “genderqueer adventure story,” and that is probably the best description I can think of for it. You wouldn’t expect a book about LGBT (as people or as a movement) to be light-hearted and fun, and I think that’s a lot of its charm. It’s fun without being mindless. It asks good questions and makes you think, and while it has some parts which are kind of bleak, it’s not too serious and it doesn’t moralize. It made me think about “the movement” and about gender and sexuality, both generally and specifically. It has some refreshing perspective.

It’s a pretty fun read overall. In places it definitely feels like a first draft or a first novel or something: not quite finished, a little sloppy. But it was a nice way to spend the evening and I feel like I’ve gained something from reading, which doesn’t happen often enough anymore.

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Hello! It is time for another edition of Rob Mason Tells You What To Listen To! In this edition we will explore The Long Winters’ discography. They are making a new album so now is the time to catch up on all their stuff and pretend you know all about the Seattle music scene!

The Long Winters are pretty appropriately named. There are songs about the first sign of winter and songs about waiting all winter and songs about springtime. It always feels like there is a long winter involved, is what I’m saying. Fronted by endearingly crazed mountain man John Roderick, the lyrics are frequently clever, often whimsical, and always pretty. There are five tracks to be downloaded and loved right here.

The Worst You Can Do Is Harm
Their first album is called The Worst You Can Do Is Harm. If you click the clicky you will see it is described it as being “full of ghosts and shipwrecked relationships.” It is an album about being well-meaning, about having a place to call home, about running away, and about making mistakes. It is not very optimistic: it’s a record full of disasters, and sometimes you can’t pick up the pieces.

There are some gems on this album. I really enjoy “Carparts,” “Unsalted Butter,” and “Scent of Lime”–the last of which features some beautiful harmony vocals from Sean Nelson. There is not a track I don’t enjoy, though the opener, “Give Me A Moment,” can drag some. Yet this is probably the weakest Long Winters album. It feels uncertain. There is a definite sound but it’s not quite sure where it’s going. It’s like the first few weeks of winter, when it’s warm one day and snowing the next and you’re just not sure what to make of it.

I remember reading an interview with John Roderick (I do not remember where, but it was really good) about the meaning of the title. It’s kind of an answer to the question “Well, what’s the worst that could happen?”–the worst that could happen is you could seriously ruin something forever. The title appears in the song “Scent of Lime:” “The worst you can do is harm / Waiting for the other shoe to fall / And shouting from your car at an empty road.”

There’s lots of little moments like that on the album, but mostly it’s rough. It’s worth having, but check out the others first, unless you really like listening in chronological order. This is definitely a debut album.

When I Pretend To Fall
When I Pretend To Fall is definitely the most upbeat of the three albums, and undeniably fun. This is an album which has at its emotional core the idea of spring coming at the end of a long winter, and an album which has probably the best description of anything that I have read, anywhere. No, seriously:

This is our new record. It’s made of downtown right as the sun comes out after it’s been raining and a little bit of three a.m. city bus in from the airport. There are several big fights between people who love each other that end with both people breaking into song and someone in a tee-shirt with rolled-up sleeves playing a sax solo. Also, there are friends coming to the rescue and there are other friends who don’t want to be rescued and there are a few friends that do want to be rescued but don’t want to have to ask.

I can’t do better than that.

The heart of this album is “Cinnamon,” which is a really beautiful and happy song. It’s just so hopeful, and it is made all the more poignant by being followed by “Bride and Bridle,” a song that is about how sometimes time isn’t long enough to put the past behind you. And then later on there’s “It’ll Be A Breeze” which is about absence. Then there’s an important moment in the song “Stupid,” where the title is sung: “She laughs when I pretend to fall.” It’s about doing stupid things for love, but in a hopeful way, which certainly captures the soul of this album pretty nicely.

It closes on a slightly darker note with “Nora,” which tells a story of different expectations coming into conflict. It’s a perfect note for closing the album, to make it all seem a little uneasy in retrospect, the way a conclusion ought to do.

This album is really good. If you like your music upbeat and irrepressibly cheerful without being credulous, this is a perfect album. If you like albums that feel like seeing green grass finally growing through the snow, you should probably order it as soon as possible.

Putting the Days to Bed
Putting the Days to Bed is the newest album and it is also the sleepiest. Appropriately so! This is an album which is about trying to come to terms with regret. Some things weren’t meant to last; some things were meant to last but don’t; some things weren’t meant to last no matter how much you think they were. It’s not entirely depressing but it is certainly resigned, but wistful. Perhaps nostalgic is the best word.

So to keep with this wintry theme, this is an album that takes place in the dead of winter–as the song “Fire Island, AK” says, “the ice has come”–and you know it’s going to be months before spring. This doesn’t mean you can’t warm yourself by the fire and think of the happier times or wish really hard for warmer times and poetic autumns. There are two songs I consider the emotional core of this album: “Hindsight,” which is a song about the end of something beautiful, and “Ultimatum,” which is a song about wishing that it didn’t have to end this way and doing what you have to do. And it closes on a strong note with “Seven,” which seems to accept the departure, though not without a strong sense of regret.

The title is a line from “Hindsight:” “Did you say what you wanted said / Or are you just putting the days to bed?” and captures the feel of the album nicely: it is an album about leaving things unsaid, about just putting it all behind you without getting the chance to actually do anything about it. (Of course, since when does saying everything you wanted to say actually make anything better?)

This is my personal favorite album, because nostalgia and regret are emotions I find particularly powerful, but it is a quiet album with a lot of acoustic guitar, perfect for putting the days to bed, and for those nights when you wish things had ended differently. Or if you just want to listen to an album with the line “If you’re my anchor, then I’m throwing you over the side.” It has that line in it. But you probably shouldn’t expect something upbeat.

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I’ve been reading through House of Leaves again recently. It benefits from being the type of book you can read through several times, at least in part due to the fact that it is fragmented and convoluted, to say nothing of being nightmarish. It’s the sort of book with encoded messages and obscure references, some of which are pointed out in the footnotes. It has footnotes. The footnotes have footnotes.

I’ve just reached the labyrinth chapter. For the first part of the book the typesetting, at the very least, is relatively normal. There’s nothing too weird going on typographically; sure, the story is a bit strange, but it’s simple. It’s straightforward. Then there’s the SOS chapter, where the paragraphs get broken up into Morse code. At the point of the Labyrinth, it starts coming unhinged. It’s difficult to describe, but there is an image online of one of the pages here. It is these pages I show people when explaining the book.

From there on the book fades in and out of lucidity. Some parts seem almost normal, others are still bizarre. There’s a chapter which concludes with a page which contains nothing but a single, enormous full stop. And I haven’t really even gotten into the contents of the book yet. The house is the sort of thing it is best to explore for oneself. (Highly recommended. Go read.)

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I never feel like I’m very good at reviews. I feel like I don’t do it right. What I want is to capture the feel of something. I want you to read what I write and say “that sounds fun, I’m going to pick that up.” And I want you to pick up Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, so I hope this review is okay.

Maybe nobody else does this, but sometimes, when I’m writing papers, when I’m frustrated, I’ll finish one of the sentences with something that is generally inappropriate. I delete it, of course, but sometimes I’m not interested in finishing a sentence which begins “Realist theory holds that” with a description of realist theory. Sometimes I want to say “Realist theory holds that the world is fucked, and they’re right. We’re lying to ourselves every day.”

Overqualified is like that–but instead of deleting it, of ignoring that impulse, Joey Comeau decides to run with it. It is a story told in cover letters where something has cracked. They are cover letters which end with things like, “Live for today, you retarded little shit, the end is near.” It sounds like it could be really gimmicky, too formulaic, when you describe it like that. It sounds like with each cover letter you’ll be thinking, “Man, how is Joey going to make this one wacky?” and it’s really not. It works, and it’s funny and poignant and shocking and sad, usually all at the same time. They’re about how amazing and frustrating and stupid it is to be human, and how amazing and frustrating and stupid humans can be. They’re about regret and longing and loss.

And there’s a story, which is kind of like putting together your favorite mug after someone knocked it off the counter. There are pieces missing. Some of the pieces just don’t fit. And maybe you’re not a sentimental person but that was yours, and you had some fun times with it, and you never realized how much you appreciated it, and now it’s gone forever. Except it’s better than that. I’d normally say it’s a cohesive narrative, but part of the fun is that it’s all fragmented.

I guess what I am saying is you should read it.

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This isn’t a sentiment I normally experience. I think maybe I’d just watched a foreign language film or something.

You surround me with foreign words,
an endless stream of fluid syllables,
occasionally forming shapes I recognize,
but mostly changing, moving on,
before I can understand.
Sometimes my attention fades,
and I am aware but not aware,
and the song is lost on me.
At other times,
I sit,
enchanted by your lilting tongue,
but never quite understanding.

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Look, it is a Google Doc with the finished rough draft of Let My Sting Be Fatal. Click the clicky.

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