#Tempo Magazine

[voguefashion]

Anita Strindberg photographed by Bruno Oliviero for Tempo Magazine, January 1972.

[emmieexplores2]

1956

[emmieswildside]

1955

[tina-aumont]

Tina Aumont pictured by Chiara Samugheo circa May 1968 while she was filming L'Urlo.

These photos were published in 7th December 1968 Tempo magazine.

1st picture from e-bay, the others are my scans. (Article will come soon).

[dbstaches]

KNOCKING BACK A WEE DRAMA (OR TWO) DAVID BALL: treading softly Pic by Joe Shutter

Record Mirror magazine, 23 July 1983, Simon Tebbutt — full article text bellow

If you thought David Ball, the normally quieter side of the Soft Cell, had been so silent lately he must be off digging the potatoes in his allotment — forget it.

While Cell mate Marc Almond has been busy handling his Mambas over the past months, young Dave has been beavering away on the soundtrack for a play and a film and putting the finishing touches to his soon to be released solo LP.

“This year I've spent most of my time in the studio,” he says. “I've got a lot better at building up sounds and arranging.”

The play, Tennessee Williams' ‘Suddenly Last Summer’, a steamy tale of heat-oppressed passion set in New Orleans and now running at the New End Theatre in Hampstead, came about by chance.

“I was sitting in a hotel bar and started chatting to this bloke who turned out to be an actor,” says Dave. “I said if he could think of anything that would be good to put music to but keep as a play, not a musical, then I'd be interested.

“He phoned me up about two months later and said he wanted to do ‘Suddenly Last Summer’. Tennessee Williams is perfect, he's just so dramatic.”

The music, like the play, which Dave has financed himself, is heavily atmospheric and doom laden. And it has opened doors for the musician in the wonderful world of movie soundtracks.

“I'm doing a German film called ‘Decoder’ — it stars the real Christiane F and William Burroughs makes a cameo appearance. I really like the idea of the music emphasising and sometimes overstating what is going on in the action.”

All these themes have come together in Dave's solo work, provisionally titled ‘In Strict Tempo’.

“That's because of a track on the album called Strict Tempo,” he explains. “It started off as a military rhythm and then I got David Claridge to do a voice-over talking about his club Skin II. So you've got the military side of it, the discipline, and the rubber.

“I've got Psychic TV's Genesis P. Orridge singing on a couple of tracks, one of which, ‘The Troubled Sleeper’ or ‘Sincerity’, will be a single.

“The whole album is about musical cliches all put together in the wrong order. Like taking a country and western guitar solo and putting in the middle of a funk track. But it all works. If it didn't work, I wouldn't use it.”

But don't worry, gentle reader, this flurry of individual activity doesn't spell the end for Soft Cell.

“For me doing this solo stuff has been a break,” says Dave. “Marc and I play each other what we've done all the time. We're working on ideas that we'd only dabbled in with Soft Cell. Everything is more powerful. And now we're collecting bits for a new Soft Cell album at the end of the summer.”

[dustedmagazine]

Christian Carey's year in review

2023 was pretty much an awful year for our world —climate disaster moves ever more quickly, violence abounds and US politics are a disaster. I would not write a thank you card to the universe for many of my own experiences during the year either. However, I am grateful for the extraordinary music I participated in, heard and wrote about: it was a great solace. A few highlights are below:

I composed three new pieces: Solemn Tollings, for microtonal trumpet and trombone, Just Like You for singing violist, and Cracking Linear Elamite for solo guitar. The latter premiered in December at Loft 393 in Tribeca, played by Dan Lippel.

In addition to editing Sequenza 21 and contributing to Dusted, I authored several reviews and a research article for the British journal Tempo. The article was on my research in narratology as a feature of Elliott Carter’s music, which I have been exploring and publishing on since writing my Ph.D. dissertation. It was great for this particular research, of character-types and interactions in the Fifth String Quartet, to finally see the light of day.

After a half-century of banged up and often unreliable used pianos, my wife Kay got me a new Baldwin grand piano for my 50th birthday. Since it has arrived, I have practically lived in it.

Post-pandemic and post-cancer, I began to dip my toe into attending live events. I went to the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, which was a mixed bag. As compensation, the Boston Symphony performances that weekend were excellent. I attended a great concert at the New York Philharmonic in November and another in December. For many years, Kay and I have made a holiday tradition of seeing the Tallis Scholars at St. Mary the Virgin Church in midtown. It was wonderful to return there. The Tallis Scholars’ performance was splendid, featuring a mass by Clemens non Papa.

After the Tallis concert, Kay was in Nashville, where her parents live, for two weeks, spending time with her brother Tom and sister-in-law Aymara, who were visiting from Qatar (Tom teaches at the Carnegie Mellon University campus there and Aymara is a yoga instructor), and celebrating Christmas with her parents. Here in New Jersey, it was just me and the felines, who were (mostly) well-behaved. To keep the holiday blues at bay, I went all out, decorating a natural tree and the house. I played every carol in the hymnal, and enjoyed old holiday standbys: Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Mel Torme’s Christmas albums.

There was much excellent recorded music released this year, and I will not attempt to document it all. Here are twelve records, in no particular order, that I expect will stay with me and be played often in coming years.

2023 Favorite Recordings

Yo La Tengo —  This Stupid World (Matador)

Hilary Hahn —  Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, op. 27 (DG)

Morton Feldman —  Violin and String Quartet (Another Timbre)

Natural Information Society —  Since Time is Gravity (Eremite)

Leah Bertucci —  Of Shadow and Substance (Self— released)

Juliet Fraser —  What of Words and What of Song (Neos)

Laura Strickling and Daniel Schlosberg —  40@40 (Bright Shiny Things)

Emily Hindricks, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, and Cristian Macelaru perform Liza Lim —  Annunciation Triptych (Kairos)

Bozzini Quartet and Konus Quartett play Jürg Frey​ —  Continuit​é, fragilit​é​, r​é​sonance (elsewhere)

Matana Roberts —  Coin Coin Chapter Five (Constellation)

Chris Forsyth — Solar Motel (self— released)

John Luther Adams —  Darkness and Scattered Light (Cold Blue)

Christian Carey

[fotofinishamilcareponchielli]

Da Sette, Corriere della Sera n. 43, 1995

Aligi Sassu e la modella, Tempo, luglio 1954 - Federico Patellani

[globalvariables]

I don't have anything to sell, but I bought a double blue checkmark from tumblr because it made me laugh. Here's a post about advertising that you might enjoy.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Linkrot

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Here's an underrated cognitive virtue: "object permanence" – that is, remembering how you perceived something previously. As Riley Quinn often reminds us, the left is the ideology of object permanence – to be a leftist is to hate and mistrust the CIA even when they're tormenting Trump for a brief instant, or to remember that it was once possible for a working person to support their family with their wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The thing is, object permanence is hard. Life comes at you quickly. It's very hard to remember facts, and the order in which those facts arrived – it's even harder to remember how you felt about those facts in the moment.

This is where blogging comes in – for me, at least. Back in 1997, Scott Edelman – editor of Science Fiction Age – asked me to take over the back page of the magazine by writing up ten links of interest for the nascent web. I wrote that column until the spring of 2000, then, in early 2001, Mark Frauenfelder asked me to guest-edit Boing Boing, whereupon the tempo of my web-logging went daily. I kept that up on Boing Boing for more than 19 years, writing about 54,000 posts. In February, 2020, I started Pluralistic.net, my solo project, a kind of blog/newsletter, and in the four-plus years since, I've written about 1,200 editions containing between one and twelve posts each.

This gigantic corpus of everything I ever considered to be noteworthy is immensely valuable to me. The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.

Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.

Then, the fact that all these fragments are also database entries – contained in the back-end of a WordPress installation that I can run complex queries on – comes into play, letting me swiftly and reliably confirm my memories of these long-gone phenomena. Inevitably, these queries turn up material that I've totally forgotten, and these make the result even richer, like adding homemade stock to a stew to bring out a rich and complicated flavor. Better still, many of these posts have been annotated by readers with supplemental materials or vigorous objections.

I call this all "The Memex Method" and it lets me write a lot (I wrote nine books during lockdown, as I used work to distract me from anxiety – something I stumbled into through a lifetime of chronic pain management):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Back in 2013, I started a new daily Boing Boing feature: "This Day In Blogging History," wherein I would look at the archive of posts for that day one, five and ten years previously:

https://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/this-day-in-blogging-history.html

With Pluralistic, I turned this into a daily newsletter feature, now stretching back to twenty, fifteen, ten, five and one year ago. Here's today's:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#retro

This is a tremendous adjunct to the Memex Method. It's a structured way to review everything I've ever thought about, in five-year increments, every single day. I liken this to working dough, where there's stuff at the edges getting dried out and crumbly, and so your fold it all back into the middle. All these old fragments naturally slip out of your thoughts and understanding, but you can revive their centrality by briefly paying attention to them for a few minutes every day.

This structured daily review is a wonderful way to maintain object permanence, reviewing your attitudes and beliefs over time. It's also a way to understand the long-forgotten origins of issues that are central to you today. Yesterday, I was reminded that I started thinking about automotive Right to Repair 15 years ago:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

Given that we're still fighting over this, that's some important perspective, a reminder of the likely timescales involved in more recent issues where I feel like little progress is being made.

Remember when we all got pissed off because the mustache-twirling evil CEO of Warners, David Zaslav, was shredding highly anticipated TV shows and movies prior to their release to get a tax-credit? Turns out that we started getting angry about this stuff twenty years ago, when Michael Eisner did it to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911":

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/us/disney-is-blocking-distribution-of-film-that-criticizes-bush.html

It's not just object permanence: this daily spelunk through my old records is also a way to continuously and methodically sound the web for linkrot: when old links go bad. Over the past five years, I've noticed a very sharp increase in linkrot, and even worse, in the odious practice of spammers taking over my dead friends' former blogs and turning them into AI spam-farms:

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/

The good people at the Pew Research Center have just released a careful, quantitative study of linkrot that confirms – and exceeds – my worst suspicions about the decay of the web:

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/

The headline finding from "When Online Content Disappears" is that 38% of the web of 2013 is gone today. Wikipedia references are especially hard-hit, with 23% of news links missing and 21% of government websites gone. The majority of Wikipedia entries have at least one broken link in their reference sections. Twitter is another industrial-scale oubliette: a fifth of English tweets disappear within a matter of months; for Turkish and Arabic tweets, it's 40%.

Thankfully, someone has plugged the web's memory-hole. Since 2001, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has allowed web users to see captures of web-pages, tracking their changes over time. I was at the Wayback Machine's launch party, and right away, I could see its value. Today, I make extensive use of Wayback Machine captures for my "This Day In History" posts, and when I find dead links on the web.

The Wayback Machine went public in 2001, but Archive founder Brewster Kahle started scraping the web in 1996. Today's post graphic – a modified Yahoo homepage from October 17, 1996 – is the oldest Yahoo capture on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19960501000000*/yahoo.com

Remember that the next time someone tells you that we must stamp out web-scraping for one reason or another. There are plenty of ugly ways to use scraping (looking at you, Clearview AI) that we should ban, but scraping itself is very good:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And so is the Internet Archive, which makes the legal threats it faces today all the more frightening. Lawsuits brought by the Big Five publishers and Big Three labels will, if successful, snuff out the Internet Archive altogether, and with it, the Wayback Machine – the only record we have of our ephemeral internet:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/

Libraries burn. The Internet Archive may seem like a sturdy and eternal repository for our collective object permanence about the internet, but it is very fragile, and could disappear like that.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#pew-pew-pew

[elierlick]

I wish we treated gender-affirming surgery with the excitement periodicals gave it in the 1950s. This November '58 article is so thrilled that doctors had finally invented effective genital surgeries that the editors dedicated several pages to the breakthrough. Read the full Tempo Magazine article here.

[emmieexplores2]

[mitsuyaya]

[ you can call me monster ] bachira meguru x fem! reader

♡ contains: 600+ words. MDNI, characters are all aged up, smut, vaginal sex, kinda mean! bachira, orgasm denial, slight dacryphilia, pet names (baby), unedited, lowercase intended.

♡ summary: you've always known bachira is a monster in the field but there's one more thing he's a monster at – in bed, that is.

♡ end note: hehe no excuse for this one <3

bachira is a monster in the field.

you're a witness every time he transforms from a funny, docile boyfriend, into a cunning, starving beast waiting to score a goal. roaming the vast field in hopes to create a goal that could label him as the world's greatest striker.

everytime you see his figure shrouded with fiery silhouettes, eyes shifting into that of a terrifying predator, you could feel your chest swell with pride, proud that your boyfriend is doing what he loves.

and even if the magazines label him as a monster striker, you know that when it comes to you he isn't like that, he's nowhere near monster-like.

but that thought quickly dissipates the moment you both entered the bedroom. because just as bachira is a monster in the field, he's also a monster in bed.

“my girl’s really a whore for my dick huh?” he has you folded in half, legs hiked over his shoulders as he pulls out again, not giving you the satisfaction of cumming. he's always been like this.

“fuck, fuck bachi please lemme cum, i've been good.” there's tears cascading in your cheeks, dripping over the pillow beneath you.

bachira coos, as if consoling a little child, lowering himself as he licks the tears that falls in your pretty face and whispers “nah, don't wanna.”

he rises, sneering at your reaction before he pushes his fat cock inside you again, thrusting in out of you with sheer strength and speed that you couldn't keep up, making your eyes roll that you could almost feel that it's gonna pop out in your eye sockets any moment now.

“scream f’me baby, maybe I'll reconsider” you obeyed, a chorus of ‘bachi’ ‘meguru’ ‘fuck’ and ‘more’ bouncing in the walls of the room.

it spurs him even more, pistoning into your wet cunt even faster, lewd sounds of your essence squelching ringing in yours and his ears.

“bachira, please I'm gonna cum. please let me cum” you plead again, hoping that this time he'll give in, batting your eyelashes while clawing his arms that's gripping your hips.

he kept his rhythm while pondering, there's a glint in his eyes that made you think he's about to give in until he snorts, a mocking one, “why should I let you?”

bachira pulled out after the words left his lips, it made you whine from the loss of his cock inside you. but he was quick to shut you up when he pressed his lips into yours, biting your bottom lip as he devoured your mouth.

it was messy, just like it always does, sucking your tongue, leaving you wanting for more.

he keeps rubbing his cock into your folds, while he kisses you, the tip bumping into your clit makes you moan into his mouth. you could feel him smile through the kiss, pulling away with a saliva connecting both your lips.

bachira aligns his dick into your cunt, smiling at your awaiting gaze as he pushes forward with no warning.

he kept thrusting, in, out, in, out, his tempo doesn't waver, fucking you rapidly that it steals the air in your lungs, making you claw the sheets beneath you, screaming his name in pure ecstacy.

it doesn't take too long before your orgasm washes over you again, you're close, too close. “you wanna cum right? then cum f’me” just as he said those words, your vision turned white, toes curling as you released all over his cock, muttering a breathy ‘thank you.’

but even still, bachira didn't stop, even as you catch your breath from your orgasm, still keeping his pace.

you tried to push him away because you're too sensitive but it's futile, he's much stronger, bigger – it's no use.

bachira lowers himself, foreheads touching, there's a gleam in his eyes that struck something inside you, you recognize that look, it's bad, really really bad.

bachira grins sadistically, just like he always does whenever he thinks of a perfect goal in the field, you could only tremble in fear as he says, “we’re still not done yet, baby.”

[l4long-winded]

Idk if you still have anything to say ab the reading playboys w lip thing BUTTT

I was thinking like they had moved onto a fwb type of situation and now there looking at playboys together like it’s not as innocent as it used to be.

not at all.

as you flip through the pages of the playboy magazine, you release a shaky puff of a breath. the naked girls in front of you look different now in this context.

lip, who's currently behind you, his chest to your back, trails kiss after kiss on your shoulders, slowly making his way to your neck. naturally, you tilt your head to one side to create more room for him.

"really lookin' at that shit right now, sunshine?" he asks, against your skin, unwilling to depart from it for a second.

"you're the one that had it under your pillow," you reply back, a half grumble sitting on your vocal chords.

things have changed between you and lip. you're still good friends. only now, there's an added element. frequent sex, a no kissing rule (because obviously that would make it weird), and the option to break it off once you both find someone. lip, however, is hoping to get over his commitment issues before that happens. the idea of you being with anyone but him aggravates something in his system.

he had you on your hands and knees the second you two had privacy. just minutes ago, he was railing himself into you, his hands on your waist, eyes stuck on the beautiful sight of slipping in and out of you. while in the throes of passion, you grabbed a pillow in order to help silence some of your noises. some of his siblings were home. they had their suspicions, but they still didn't know what the two of you were doing. after grabbing it, a playboy was unveiled. lip usually hid them behind his drawers, so it was confusing to see it appear in the middle of backshots.

"needed something to hold me over when you didn't come over last night," he murmurs casually, tongue lapping at your pulse point, resting the appendage to taste your lifeline.

"did you have fun with miss october?" you ask, a small annoyance hidden away. you didn't mean to be jealous, but for some reason, it bothered you that lip was still using this magazine for something you could help with. it was impractical. you know he, as a grown man, jerked off to the sight even before you two started this up. it's different now.

"plenty of fun," he says, nipping at your flesh, tingles floating up your spine.

"plenty of fun picturin' you in those skimpy outfits."

it's not fair. lip's never been this charming before, his comments are usually so cheesy and easy to dismiss, but you have trouble thinking of anything to reply with. you're an orgasm in, lip's licking and biting your neck, and his cock is hardening again where it's still buried inside of you, hips mindlessly rolling into you again.

"would you prefer pictures of me in some of those outfits?" you ask with your eyes shutting, soft noises slipping past you as lip increases the tempo steadily.

"fuck, yes. i wanna fuck you in em, too," he mutters eagerly, speeding up in that instance. the familiar clapping noise begins to fill the room.

"won't even need this anymore." lip plucks the magazine out of your hand, tossing it across the room. his arm slips under your jaw, hand squeezing your shoulder as he grunts. he's fully planning on making you his personal playboy bunny.

[yomersapiens]

Pensavo fosse amore invece era un altro esame alla prostata

Tutto sta andando esattamente come deve andare ovvero molto storto. Niente segue i piani. Ci sono costanti ritardi e io non sono una persona puntuale, mi vanto sempre di avere un'enorme pazienza. Lo dico a ogni ragazza "Non hai idea delle dimensioni della mia pazienza" e poi si sorprendono e confermano "Accidenti, ma è gigantesca, non ne ho mai vista una così grande!" e io sorrido soddisfatto ma oramai mi sono rotto le palle di essere paziente. Lo penso mentre entro in ospedale, un controsenso. Entro perché sono un paziente ma vuoi sia il caldo, vuoi siano i ritardi e i rimandi: sono diventato impaziente.

Mentre ero in bici stamattina faceva fresco, quel bel fresco che di sicuro finisce che mi ammalo. Mi hanno fatto entrare in una sala piena di studenti della mia malattia o affezionati del settore. C'era un dottore giovane al centro, penso stesse cercando di fare colpo sulla classe perché era eccessivamente preciso nel descrivermi gli effetti collaterali della prossima terapia che dovrei iniziare. Questa volta sperimentale, quindi ci sono pochissimi studi al riguardo e io mi sento come un porcellino d'India, uno di quelli spelacchiati però. Aspetto mi riempiano il pancino glabro con pastiglie dai risultati imprevedibili ma sorrido, perché almeno, forse, finalmente, qualcosa si muove. Ho bisogno di una novità o di qualcosa che funzioni. O forse solo di qualcosa che mi distragga? Ecco, penso che sia più che altro questo. Io me lo sarei fatto quel dottore oggi, così, davanti a tutta la sua classe, per insegnare agli studenti che cosa è la disperazione. Che faccia ha. Ma non se ne è fatto nulla, mi hanno mandato via dicendo che è ancora troppo presto e che devo essere ulteriormente paziente. Sicuro se lo limonavo mi infilava il nuovo farmaco nella scollatura.

È vero, ultimamente latito molto da queste parti, sono colpevole. È che sto scrivendo per una specie di magazine online e allora quando voglio spremere la prostata della mia creatività lo faccio laggiù ma mica perché io mi sia scordato di questo luogo, accidenti no. Io vi guardo. Vi spio. Vi ammiro e nel privato, vi desidero. Però laggiù in teoria mi pagano, in pratica mi fanno promesse e io sono un giovane pieno di speranze e sogni che ha imparato a portare pazienza e pazientemente aspetto.

Ieri ho festeggiato due anni di Ernesto, il mio gatto. In pratica un giorno mio fratello suona alla mia porta con un gatto rosso in mano e mi dice "Da oggi tu hai un gatto, io devo partire per le ferie" e da allora quel rosso pezzo di merda controlla la mia vita. Sta male con il pancino, mangia poco, fa la pupù brutta e l'ho portato dalla veterinaria e ho speso più soldi per lui che per la mia salute fisica e mentale. Quanto cazzo costa mantenere un felino? Un altro essere vivente in generale. Cioè, poi mi chiedono perché non ho figli. Ma io ho passioni, ho una carriera da morto di fame da mantere, mica posso permettermi il lusso di far crescere una mia copia in miniatura. Sicuro mi uscirebbe ancora più stronzo del sottoscritto e magari che vuole studiare pure. Ma col cazzo. Una cosa buona di Ernesto è che è stupido come la merda ma bello come il sole. Proprio come suo padre (me).

Ho lavorato per quasi un mese e mezzo in una cucina. Ho fatto l'aiuto cuoco. Ricordo che undici anni fa, quando mi trasferii a Vienna, ero pieno di sogni e speranze ma al tempo stesso ero consapevole dei limiti umani di cui soffrivo (essere stupido come la merda, che è una condizione più grave delle mie malattie croniche) e allora me l'ero già messa via e ricordo che andavo in giro per ristoranti di finti italiani (una cosa che ho imparato vivendo all'estero: più grande è il tricolore, più ossessivamente il locale è decorato con la bandiera italiana, meno i proprietari saranno della penisola, una volta bazzicavo in questa pizzeria chiamata "Pizzeria il Vesuvio da Mario" che era un'accozzaglia di stereotipi e il proprietario era un mistro tra un panda, Lino Banfi e un libanese e c'erano poster delle Marche ovunque, cioè chi cazzo appende poster delle Marche pensando sia una buona idea? Solo questa chimera più occhiaie che talento nel fare la pizza) (dove ero rimasto?) (ah sì) andavo in giro per ristoranti a pretendere di venire assunto solo per via delle mie origini. Non portavo manco un curriculum, dicevo: "Sono italiano, sicuro sono più bravo di voi a cucinare". Undici anni fa credevo davvero un sacco nelle mie scarse potenzialità nonostante l'essere stupido come la merda. Beh, all'epoca nessuno mi assunse e invece oggi, pensate un po'? No, nemmeno oggi mi hanno assunto. Mi hanno usato per sostituire uno che se ne doveva andare e invece alla fine non se n'è più andato. Però ragazzi, quante cose ho imparato lavorando in cucina. Tipo a tagliare i datteri! Oppure che altro, ah sì, a farmi le foto sembrando uno che ci sa fare con i coltelli. Il tutto perché sto guardando la terza stagione di The Bear e se prima ho detto che mi sarei limonato il dottore che c'era oggi in ospedale beh, non avete idea di cosa farei a quel cuoco modello di Calvin Klein.

Insomma, ho migliorato le mie capacità culinarie. A resistere allo stress. A tagliare. Oramai taglio che è un piacere e perché, con quale fine, se non fare da mangiare al mio gatto del cazzo che ha la diarrea da una settimana e se non gli preparato il tacchino magro con le verdurine poverino non mangia? Ecco cosa sono diventato, il cuoco personale del mio felino. Tornerei anche domani a lavorare in cucina perché, per una volta, il mio cervello era in pausa. Non avevo tempo per dargli ascolto, c'erano troppe cose da fare contemporaneamente. Ora capisco perché tutti ci infiliamo in lavori del cazzo: perché dobbiamo stare lontani dai discorsi che il nostro cervello si mette a fare.

Io al mio cervello gli voglio bene. Ma non siamo fatti l'uno per l'altro.

Qualche giorno fa mi è stato chiesto qual è la parte del mio corpo che mi piace di più e io non ho saputo rispondere. Non c'è una singola parte di me che mi piace. Ok, mi ritengo una divinità scesa sulla terra per via di una punizione ma al tempo stesso, questo corpo terreno, mi disgusta. Una volta avrei detto "il mio cervello" ma oramai neanche quello. Ha troppi problemi. È un vecchio motore a scoppio che cerca di restare al passo con i tempi ma viene lasciato indietro da tutto. C'è stato un periodo in cui siamo andati d'accordo ma ora non fa altro che sabotare ogni cosa bella che mi accade e amplificare le cose brutte e distrarmi dalle cose importanti e soprattutto non mi fa smettere di cercare carte Pokémon. Dai, io già non ho soldi, perché mi fai questo? Avessi un figlio e non un gatto sono sicuro che prenderebbe la mia collezione di carte e ci vomiterebbe sopra. Almeno Ernesto mi vomita solo su i pavimenti. O nelle scarpe. O nello zaino. Per questo motivo sono andato a lavorare in cucina, per migliorare e farlo smettere di vomitare ovunque. Ha funzionato? Aspettate un attimo che pulisco il vomito dal tappetino della cucina e ve lo dico.

Il bello del passato, quando è veramente passato e smette di fare male, è che puoi ricordare selettivamente solo le parti che ti fanno comodo e pensare che poi, alla fine, non sia stato così una merda. Che gli anni di psicanalisi siano quasi stati divertenti perché ehi, sono passati! Per questo torna il fascismo e l'ignoranza e la demenza e persino io che sono stupido come la merda me ne rendo conto che qualcosa non torna. Il passato è passato e così deve restare ma se siete come me, una persona che è costretta a portare pazienza da tutta la vita, allora il passato sembra un luogo fantastico. È il momento in cui le cose non andavano così male. Il presente mi fa paura. Mi fa ancora più paura pensare al domani, con una terapia nuova che magari non funziona e un gatto che vomita e caga ovunque e io senza un lavoro decente ma una una collezione di carte Pokémon da fare invidia a qualche bambino alle soglie della pubertà. Poi anche lui andrà incontro al mio stesso destino, scoprirà la figa e Pikachu andrà a farsi fottere fino al momento in cui pure la figa perderà il suo potere e penserà "Oddio sono finalmente libero!!!" e invece no, torna Pikachu e 'sto giro costa il triplo.

Ho bisogno di certezze se voglio dare certezze ma al momento l'unica cosa che riesco a dare è la certezza di non starci con la testa. Da fuori sembro anche capace di controllare tutto ma se entrate un secondo dentro il cranio ci sono le matasse di pelo di Ernesto e la polvere. Io pensavo che dopo il libro tutto sarebbe stato in discesa e invece manco per il cazzo. Dopo che realizzi il tuo sogno ti rendi conto che la bestia di insicurezze che hai dentro non si placa. Il mio mostro vuole di più, non si accontenta e io come posso spiegargli che per me è già abbastanza così, vivere con la consapevolezza delle mie copie vendute sentendomi in colpa per non essere stato migliore delle mie aspettative. La mia bestia interiore è più vorace di Ernesto davanti a una scatoletta Gourmet Gold (mica cazzi per lui spendo) e poi divora e smembra e aspetta io mi volti soddisfatto per rigurgitare ogni brandello sul pavimento, fissarmi con i suoi occhi a feritoia per sfidarmi dicendomi "Voglio di più, ancora, meglio, questo non era abbastanza".

Ci ho riflettuto e io sono un figlio degli anni 80. Sono nato in un'epoca in cui ci hanno inculcato, come verme distruttivo, il pensiero che se non riesci a ottenere una cosa è solo perché non stai lavorando abbastanza. Devi lavorare di più e la otterrai. Fottuto verme del cazzo, io vorrei solo dormire la notte e avere una terapia che funzioni. A me, dei tuoi desideri non importa una sega. Però sai com'è, nella mia testa ci sei tu e io non sono un pozzo di intelligenza, sono stato cresciuto così dalla televisione e da quarant'anni di Berlusconi e dai fottuti americani e i loro film del cazzo e mi sono sempre identificato nell'eroe inaspettato, colui sul quale nessuno avrebbe mai scommesso e alla fine porta a casa il risultato e la partita e vince tutto e io cosa ho vinto? Ho più paranoie che parole e se siete arrivati a leggere fino a questo punto vi state rendendo conto dell'abisso. Il successo, la realizzazione del noi è un'utopia. La calma, la pace, il silenzio del verme nel cervello è l'obiettivo. Anche il proprio gatto che smette di avere diarrea e vomitare è un altro obiettivo ok.

Sono stato bene per un periodo e ora aspetto solo di avere nuovi sogni che accuratamente cercherò di non realizzare per tornare a stare bene.

Quando mi guardo intorno cerco di capire se sono il più vecchio nella stanza. Sono a quel punto dell'età dove non è facile capirlo. La maggior parte dei miei coetani appare vecchia come un 56k e io li guardo e penso "Cristo ma faccio schifo come loro?" e magari loro hanno una copia di se stessi che sta crescendo e che costa un sacco più del Giratina V che tanto desidero mentre io invecchio e basta e i miei tatuaggi sono stupendi perché ho una pelle magnifica ma il verme in testa mi ripete quanto dovrei fare (invece di bere solo alcolici che saranno controproducenti per la prossima terapia) è solo l'ennesimo prodotto del capitalismo che è servito ai nostri genitori per comprare casa quando avevano vent'anni mentre a noi cosa resta? Portare pazienza. Ecco cosa ci resta.

Il mio amico Matteo (che non sono io, è un altro Matteo, Matteo è un nome molto comune) mi ha detto che da quando ha divorziato ha perso interesse nell'uscire e conoscere nuove persone e mettersi in gioco perché ritiene di aver scopato abbastanza per questa vita. Lo invidio molto. A me scopare piace ma io, se c'è una cosa che metterei da parte per questa vita, è continuare ad avere sogni e desideri. Ne ho avuti abbastanza. Tutti figli del capitalismo e di una realizzazione di sè che non ha senso.

Finisco il mio ultimo vino, rileggo quello che ho scritto e maledico questo posto dove riesco, mio malgrado, a essere la versione di me stesso che vorrei essere sempre.

[dbstaches]

THIS CHARMING MAN

Dave Ball in Zigzag magazine, March 1984 issue - full article text bellow

Following our interview with Marc Almond in ZZ 3 we complete the set with Dave Ball. Paul Barney asked the questions, Linda Rowell* took the photographs.

Okay, you made me do it. I’ve turned it off. I’m talking about the new Soft Cell 12″ ‘Down In The Subway’. I want to flip it over but instead I shall leave the beefy brilliance of their version of Johnny Thunder’s ‘Born To Lose’ (hear it, buy it, you owe it to yourselves!) and tell you about an afternoon I spent in the company of Dave Ball in the living room of his London flat. Ushering me inside Dave smiles and proffers tea. It’s a small room, Dave’s keyboards standing majestically in the intimacy. My heart passes on secret information to my bladder and I have to make the first of my visits to the bathroom [DAMMIT] just when I wanted to be cool and collected.

Dave plays me the new and final Soft Cell album ‘Last Night In Sodom’ and it’s a breathtaking affair. Lots of drums, Marc’s voice reaching and winding its way down my back. ‘Meet Murder My Angel’ featuring Dave’s wife Gini Hewes on the most gorgeous backing vocals. ‘L'esqualita’ is seductive, inspired by New York club for transvestites where they mime to Spanish songs dressed obviously to suit such activity and another standout track is ‘The Best Way To Kill’. A relentless beat. (The title comes from a Sun headline where they asked their readers which method of capital punishment they preferred!) A lot faster than most of the previous album. It was recorded and mixed in five weeks at Britannia Row.

I love it madly but how do you feel? DAVE: “Of all the three Soft Cell albums, it's the one we're most satisfied with because we've been totally involved with it and had total control from start to finish. Rather than working with outside producer ... the ideas come purer.”

Weren't you happy with Mike Thorne's production then? DAVE: “I think we were at the time but he was more into making a name as a star producer. That's fair enough but not if you're a band and depending on someone else to help you get the sound you want. He was more into commercial safety if you like.”

How did you get that sound on ‘Numbers’? (To convey this I am forced to make a noise like a sick penguin, embarrassing!) DAVE: “I used a bass guitar going through an envelope generator. It's like a filter off a synthesiser. It's jus an effect pedal. I'll show you one. (Showing me the device.) Quite simple really. It's just a different context to hearing those sort of things.”

To digest these technical facts calls for a cigarette. Dave suggests a can of beer and whilst he is in the kitchen I'm off to the toilet again. The interview resumes.

Are you a shy person? DAVE: “I'm not shy like now but I am when in front of a lot of people. Marc's got something that really holds people's attention. He's more of a showman. I'm not interested in being a performer. I've never concentrated on it. I never needed to. I always relied on Marc.”

Were you unhappy with ‘In Strict Tempo’? DAVE: “I probably said something like I wasn't totally satisfied with it. It's not really meant to be thought as an album in that sense of being a collection of songs ... It wasn't released with intention of being a chart album. The ideas for new Soft Cell album were initially ideas I got from doing ‘In Strict Tempo’. It was testing ground. People try to read too much ... Like the track ‘Rednecks’. People actually thought I was being serious. The funnest thing is that people from America see the joke but English people don't seem to see it's a total pisstake of that area of America and the country music and the bigotry.”

A lot of tongue in cheek, isn't it? DAVE: “Of course ... Yeah, like on that tribal number, the voices on that are speak and spell.”

I thought it was you (why did I have to say that?) DAVE: “I think maybe I disguised the fact that it was a synthesiser and electronic too well. I just thought the idea of using one of them for a tribal chant was quite amusing!”

Did you get emotional doing the last Soft Cell gig at the Palais? DAVE: “No, I was more emotional doing the video for ‘Soul Inside’. Y'know tearing up the posters. That was the first point when it sunk in, ‘this is coming to an end’, but I don't feel upset about it because we're happy with what we're leaving behind.”

What is this film you've done the soundtrack for? DAVE: “It's called Decoder, a German film. I think they've completed it now. It's going to be shown at the German film festival and I think they'll dub it over in English so it will probably be shown at a few cinemas over here. Maybe just the ICA or bigger cinemas. It's also going to be released on video.” “The film is about muzac, the sort that's used in supermarkets and hamburger joints. Some of the music is by Neubauten, in fact Mufti is the star of the film and William Bouroughs and Christiane F are in it as well. Gen (Genesis P) makes a cameo appearance as an underground preacher. It's quite interesting. Mufti discovers a way of making anti-muzac so instead of pacifying people like muzac does, ot antogonises them and causes riots. I suppose it's very heavy and bleak, very German.”

Future plans? DAVE: “I'm writing a couple of things for Psychic TV to return the compliment for Gen appearing on my album and I'm supposed to be writing some material for Cristina (of Ze records). Do you know her?”

Sort of. DAVE: “I had a meeting with her and Michael Zikha in America late last year. Anybody who asks me if I'm interested in writing or contributing, if it sounds interesting, I do it. “I still want to have a main thing you could call it a group, but ot might end up as a just a couple of people and myself, but again it'll be different from Soft Cell.”

Are you still going to work with Alan Vega? DAVE: “I don't know about that anymore. We talked about it a year and a half ago and nothing happened. His attitude that came over in Zigzag ... I didn't like the way he made me feel guilty as if I owed him a favour. The only similarities between Soft Cell and Suicide was the fact that there were two people, one of them singing and the other playing a keyboard and they used a drum machine. But because we said in an early interview we really liked Suicide, people think they were a direct influence and we were trying to copy them but there's nothing similar at all. I wouldn't want to work with him because he feels I owe him something.”

Is there much unreleased stuff that might see the light in the wake of Soft Cell? DAVE: “There are loads of songs we did when we first started, but we'd never release those, they were just backroom demos. “I think everything we've recorded after this album comes out and the single will have been released. That's one reason why the album is a bit longer than normal. It's because we wanted to make sure everything came out. I hate the idea of leaving stuff unreleased because you never know a year later you might be doing something else and somebody decides to release something you didn't want out then ...”

... and you don't want out now. DAVE: “It's like what they're doing with John Lennon. He's an amazing bloke, still doing albums and he's dead. Pretty good that! “I find it sick. It would be alright if it was just released to make it available to the fans but they're not ... it's tasteless.”

We are both chainsmoking. I catch a glimpse of Sooty flickering away in silence on a small black and white telly in the corner. Dave plays me a really jazzy instrumental continuation of Soul Inside. It's wonderfully chaotic but since you're unlikely to ever hear it on with the interview.

Will you do anymore singing? DAVE: “You call that singing?”

Yeah. DAVE: “Possibly doing backing vocals.”

Don't you have any confidence in yourself as a singer? DAVE: “No, it's bad enough if I'm in the studio. I get embarrassed and nervous if it's just me and the microphone with an audience it would just be a joke.”

These questions must be really boring, maybe I should ask your favourite color. DAVE: (laughs) “It's blue.”

Have you got a strange sense of humour? DAVE: “I like black comedy ... Friday the 13th and stuff. I sit back and laugh at them, always the same plot. They know there's an axe murderer wandering around and the first thing they do is split up and go searching around the woods.”

Have you seen ‘The Thing’? DAVE: “I didn't find that funny. That made me feel quite sick.”

What time do you get up? DAVE: “Sometimes I get really lazy and don't get up 'till two in the afternoon and then I have phases of getting up early. I suppose on average between ten and twelve.”

Do you believe in witches? DAVE: “Yes, I believe in witchcraft, I'm quite interested in that. I've read books. I'm not a practising magician or anything ... Music is a form of magic.”

Are there any causes you feel sympathetic towards like CND? DAVE: “I'm sympathetic to the idea of nuclear disarmament and everything but I wouldn't go out and campaign. If everyone in the country said we don't want nuclear weapons it wouldn't make a scrap of difference because the government doesn't represent the people and big business are behind them. Money is more important to them than people.”

Do you have any phobias? DAVE: “Sometimes walking down Oxford Street if there are lots of people I get paranoid ... I don't like flying ...”

Do you mind if I use the bathroom again? DAVE: “No.”

— * Linda Rowell is actually Mick Mercer, main editor of the magazine at the time as well

[cartermagazine]

Today We Honor Gregory Hines

Gregory Hines began dancing as a child and went on to launch a successful Broadway, television and film career.

His notable movies include The Cotton Club, White Nights, Running Scared and his appearance in Waiting To Exhale.

He studied dance with master tap dancer Henry Le Tang and spent much of his early career dancing at the Apollo Theater, gleaning knowledge from such fellow performers as the Nicholas Brothers and Sandman Sims.

Hines was an avid improviser of tap steps, tap sounds, and tap rhythms alike. His improvisation was like that of a drummer, doing a solo and coming up with rhythms. He also improvised the phrasing of a number of tap steps, mainly based on sound produced.

“He purposely obliterated the tempos,” wrote tap historian Sally Sommer, “throwing down a cascade of taps like pebbles tossed across the floor. In that moment, he aligned tap with the latest free form experiments in jazz and new music and postmodern dance.”

CARTER™️ Magazine