#dancing to architecture

[drmonkeysetroscans]

Buildings.

[dancing-to-architecture]

I'M BACK? I'M BACK!

40 - Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced?

So happy to have an album that isn't going to be torture to get through. Almost every track on this album is on *at least* one playlist of mine.

Purple Haze-

An absolute monster opening riff leading into one of the better songs of all time.

So, i know i have Unusual Opinions regarding music and musicians, and one of my stronger ones that I have is that Jimi Hendrix was very likely bi.

"Hold on now!" come the cries of the boomers. "prove it! Prove that the always flamboyant, immaculate, WAY ahead of his time, extremely fashion-forward and highly passionate rock star who tragically died young might be bi!".

To which i say: "did you even hear a word of what you just said?" He straight-up says "excuse me while i kiss this guy" and the entire English-speaking world collectively went "no, no, that's not what he said, he said... Kiss... umm... the sky! Yeah, that totally makes sense!".

Except i used to have a live recording of this song where he very clearly said "while i kiss. that. guy." Keeping in mind that this was before Freddie Mercury or David Bowie could sit down for an interview and say something like "I'm openly bisexual, i fancy both men and women, to roughly the same degree." and the interviewer would then immediately say some dumb shit like :"yes, but why are you gay?"

In short: Jimi was bi, most music magazine interviewers are crap, they have been crap for a long time, bisexual erasure happens TODAY, so of course it would have happened 50 years ago, deal with it.

Manic Depression-

I absolutely love this song. Also, and more distressingly, I also absolutely relate to this song.

The solo is insane, the riff work is phenomenal, and the bass and drums are perfectly in the pocket. (Also, for what seems like a fairly simple drum beat, it's MUCH harder to keep that constantly-shifting time signature in your head than one would think.)

Hey Joe-

Is this the best song about "murdering your cheating spouse and then fleeing the country" ever written? I think so.

I mean, I'd put the Dixie Chicks' "Goodbye, Earl" up there, but I don't think she left her hometown after the murder.

At any rate, a psychotic psychedelic R&B classic.

Love or Confusion-

An anthem for all the autistic folks out there like myself who genuinely can't tell if a person is actively flirting with them or just being polite.

May This Be Love-

I will always be in favor of daydreaming like a lazy-minded fool.

Much more mellow than the earlier songs on the album have been, but Jimi still works in some outstanding guitar noodling.

I would bet money this song was an influence on Incubus's "Aqueous Transmission".

I Don't Live Today-

The biggest goddamn mood on the album, and how I feel almost every time I'm made aware of The News.

The Wind Cries Mary-

Another absolute classic song. Sad but beautiful.

Kurt Vonnegut's lament: "So it goes..." in song form.

When I was young, (for some reason) I thought he was referencing the Virgin Mary. Now, I think she might have just been more of "the one who got away".

Fire-

People of a certain generation and a specific level of culture will likely associate this song with Tia Carrera.

Either way, this song melts faces. The drummer is a goddamn maniac on this one.

Third Stone From The Sun-

I've never listened to this album on acid, but this song seems perfect for that exact mindset with the trippy, heavily-distorted vocals.

It kicks ass, though, don't get me wrong.

Foxey Lady-

People of a certain generation and a specific level of culture will likely associate this song with Dana Carvey wearing a flannel shirt tied around his waist.

(Look, if you haven't seen Wayne's World, you owe it to yourself to do so.)

Are You Experienced?-

The last line of this one (not necessarily stoned but beautiful) always made me figure that "being experienced" is a shibboleth for anything from "you smoke trees?" to "DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE MACHINE ELVES?!"

and damn do I love the backwards drumming.

Stone Free-

Okay, Jimi, I'm pretty sure they DID realize they "were the ones who's square". That's why they would stare at your bizarre marching band leader outfits. (I'm absolutely Not knocking his bizarre marching band leader outfits, I honestly wish I had the panache to pull that kinda shit off.)

51st Anniversary-

Man, between Stone Free and this one right after, I'm guessing Jimi didn't think much of marriage, huh?

Idk, as a happily married man, this one just doesn't click with me.

Highway Chile-

This very easily could have been me after the army, if I had had a car that actually worked.

Can You See Me-

This one rings a bit hollow after all the earlier "yeah, baby, I'm out of here, see ya never, no strings on me" songs, just saying.

It rocks, nonetheless. Also maybe the only time "aww, shucks" had been uttered in a song that still goes this hard.

Remember-

See directly above, except the aww shucks part.

Red House-

And this one, right at the end, proves the hollowness of the last two broken hearted songs in my eyes.

"Girl left while I was gone? Welp. Fuck it, her sister was cute."

A monster of a blues track, regardless. One of my favorites, and that solo is INSANE.

Favorite Track: This is a tough one. A close race, but it's Purple Haze by a nose.

Least Favorite Track: Remember. It's barely about the girl in question! It's about the bird that won't sing and the dumped dude who won't eat because he has the sads.

Sorry about the long time since last time, full disclosure I got thoroughly addicted to a podcast called Kill James Bond, wherein three trans people discuss (and frequently skewer) the poster boy for toxic masculinity. It's fantastic.

[monsata]

2- 1001

Today's album: Alanis Morrisette - Jagged Little Pill (1996)

Another album where i know all the singles by heart, but had never heard the whole album all the way through, and I'm actually kinda mad at myself for that fact, to be honest.

This album brought me right back to junior high/high school, for good and ill. A weirdly large amount off memories seen to have one of the songs on this album as a part of the background, but then again it was pretty ubiquitous (33 MILLION copies sold worldwide, the singles were fucking EVERYWHERE).

Also, i don't think I've heard Head Over Feet since the late 90s and damn if that isn't one of the prettiest "i didn't think i wanted to be in love" songs out there.

I'm pretty sure I could have gotten a solid jump start on healing from some personal trauma had i heard "Perfect" ~28 years ago (which almost had me ugly-crying at work with how close to home it hit). Also holy shit, this album is almost 30 years old. Time ever marches onward, huh.

But yeah, every song on this album kicks ass to some degree, from the anxiously triumphant Right Through You to the beaten-down and traumatized yet still hopeful Forgiven, every track shines in its own way. There's no "polished singles mixed in with dull refuse" here, everything is solid and tight.

Favorite Track: There are a serious number of contenders here, but i think it's gonna be a tie between You Learn (the lyrics are every bit as true now as they were in '95, and goddamn that bass line is so smooth yet still funky as all hell) and Hand In My Pocket (the contradictory lyrics mixed with the overall sense of "things CAN still get better, god damn it, even if we have to drag them kicking and screaming" is basically "every day existence in the 2020's").

Least Favorite Track: ...i don't really have one?

Nothing on this album stands out as noticeably worse than anything else, which is honestly amazing. Every song could have been a single just as much as any other. This is a perfect album.

But, if i have to have a least favorite, I'll just say Ironic, and that's not a fault of the song as much as it is a condemnation of the radio industry in the 90s for playing it incessantly for like 5 years straight.

[zegalba]

Anzas Studio by Yoshimasa Tsutsumi (2011) Location: Beijing, China

[brguzercen]

Kebbiru Allahu Ekber helikopter takla anı

[f0restpunk]

[sacredleylinestar]

Yağmur Altında Dans Dancing İn The Rain 🕺

[ed13d1]

I will dance in every room

Seven Gothic Tales  •  Kate Baylay

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The art of Daniel Danger

[Image ID: Daniel Danger's art print, 'To all who home to this happy place,' depicting a ruined Disneyland castle in a post-apocalyptic landscape with a statue of Walt and Mickey in the rubble.]

There’s this behavioral economics study that completely changed the way i thought about art, teaching, and critique: it’s a 1993 study called “Introspecting about Reasons can Reduce Post-Choice Satisfaction” by Timothy D Wilson, Douglas J Lisle, Jonathan Schooler, Sara Hodges, Kristen Klaaren and Suzanne LaFleur:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240281868_Introspecting_about_Reasons_can_Reduce_Post-Choice_Satisfaction

The experimenters asked subjects to preference-rank some art posters; half the posters were cute cartoony posters, and the other half were fine art posters. One group of subjects assigned a simple numeric rank to the posters, and the other had to rank them and explain their ranking. Once they were done, they got to keep their posters.

There was a stark difference in the two groups’ preferences: the group that had to explain their choices picked the cartoony images, while the group that basically got to point at their favorite and say, “Ooh, I like that!” chose the fine art posters.

Then, months later, the experimenters followed up and asked the subjects what they’d done with the poster they got to take home. The ones who’d had to explain their choices and had brought home cartoony images had thrown those posters away. The ones who didn’t have to explain what they liked about their choice, who’d chosen fine art, had hung them up at home and kept them there.

The implication is that it’s hard to explain what makes art good, and the better art is, the harder it is to put your finger on what makes it so good. More: the obvious, easy-to-articulate virtues of art are the less important virtues. Art’s virtues are easy to spot and hard to explain.

The reason this stuck with me is that I learned to be a writer through writing workshops where we would go around in a circle and explain what we liked and didn’t like about someone’s story, and suggest ways to make it better. I started as a teenager in workshops organized by Judith Merril in Toronto, then through my high-school workshop (which Judy had actually founded a decade-plus earlier through a writer in the schools grant), and then at the Clarion workshop in 1992. I went on to teach many of these workshops: Clarion, Clarion West and Viable Paradise.

So I’ve spent a lot of time trying to explain what was and wasn’t good about other peoples’ art (and my own!), and how to make it better. There’s a kind of checklist to help with this: when a story is falling short in some way, writers roll out these “rules” for what makes for good and bad prose. There are a bunch of these rulesets (think of Strunk & White’s Elements of Style), including some genre-specific ones like the Turkey City Lexicon:

https://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/18/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/

A few years ago, I was teaching on the Writing Excuses cruise and a student said something like, “Hey, I know all these rules for writing good stories, but I keep reading these stories I really like and they break the rules. When can I break the rules?”

There’s a stock answer a writing teacher is supposed to give here: “Well, first you have to master the rules, then you can break them. You can’t improvise a jazz solo without first learning your scales.”

But in that moment, I thought back to the study with the posters and I had a revelation. These weren’t “rules” at all — they were just things that are hard and therefore easy to screw up. No one really knows why a story isn’t working, but they absolutely know when it doesn’t, and so, like the experimental subject called upon to explain their preferences, they reach for simple answers: “there’s too much exposition,” or “you don’t foreshadow the ending enough.”

There are lots of amazing stories that are full of exposition (readers of mine will not be shocked to learn I hold this view). There are lots of twist endings that are incredible — and not despite coming out of left field, but because of it.

The thing is, if you can’t say what’s wrong, but you know something is wrong, it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “Well, why don’t you try to replace or polish the things that are hardest to do right. Whatever it is that isn’t working here, chances are it’s the thing that’s hardest to make work”:

https://locusmag.com/2020/05/cory-doctorow-rules-for-writers/

But if I could change one thing about how we talk about writing and its “rules,” it would be to draw this distinction, characterizing certain literary feats as easier to screw up than others, having the humility to admit that we just don’t know what’s wrong with a story, and then helping the writer create probabilistically ranked lists of the things they could tinker with to try and improve their execution.

Which is all a very, very long-winded way to explain why I bought a giant, gorgeous art-print at Comic-Con this weekend, even though I have nowhere to hang it and had sworn I would absolutely not buy any art at the con.

I was walking the floor, peeking into booths, when I happened on Daniel Danger’s booth (#5034, if you’re at the con today), and I was just fuckin’ poleaxed by his work.

http://www.tinymediaempire.com/

[Image ID: Daniel Danger’s ‘It stopped being about the panic,’ depicting a ruined mansion interwoven with the skeletal branches of a tree, with a weeping statue and two human figures]

Now, see above. I can’t tell you why I loved this work so much (and that’s OK!), but boy oh boy did it speak to me. I just kind of stood there with my mouth open, slowly moving from print to print, admiring works like “It stopped being about the panic.”

https://tinymediaempire.myshopify.com/products/2022-sdcc-it-stopped-being-about-the-panic-v4

[Image ID: Daniel Danger’s ‘headlight in the path of,’ depicting a ruined mall with a pair of stags standing at the top of the escalator.]

On the surface, this is moody, post-apocalyptic stuff, heavily influenced by classic monster/haunter tropes, but it’s shot through with hope and renewal and the sense of something beautiful growing out of the ashes of something that has toppled. There’s real “(Nothing But) Flowers” energy in “Headlight in the path of”:

https://tinymediaempire.myshopify.com/products/sdcc2023-headlight-in-the-path-of-v2

[Image ID: Daniel Danger’s ‘We are no longer able to protect you,’ depicting a ruined factory with a coming-apart sign reading ‘We can no longer protect you forever,’ and a statue of a sword-bearing angel.]

Danger isn’t just a

very

talented artist, he’s also an

extremely

talented craftsman. As a recovering pre-press geek, I was (nearly) as impressed by the wild use of spot color and foils as I was by the art, like in “We are no longer able to protect you”:

https://tinymediaempire.myshopify.com/products/sdcc-2022-we-can-no-longer-protect-you-forever-v3

[Image  ID: Daniel Danger’s ‘made of smoke and chains,’ depicting a ruined landscape with a pair of derelict subway trains at the foot of a hill on whose peak is a rotting mansion. A pair of human figures, holding hands, are approaching the mansion.]

Danger himself calls this work “weird sad hyper-detailed artwork of dreamy buildings of ghosts and trees,” which is a very apt description of this work, as you can see in “Made of smoke and chains”:

https://tinymediaempire.myshopify.com/products/made-of-smoke-and-chains-mist-preorder

So I looked at this stuff and sternly reminded myself that there was no way I was going to buy any art at the con. Then I walked away. I got about two aisles over when I realized I had to go back and ask permission to take some pictures so I could put a little link to Danger in my blog’s linkdump, which he graciously permitted:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?sort=interestingness-desc&safe_search=1&tags=danieldanger&min_taken_date=1687478400&max_taken_date=1690156799&view_all=1

[Image ID: Daniel Danger’s art print, ‘To all who home to this happy place,’ depicting a ruined Disneyland castle in a post-apocalyptic landscape with a statue of Walt and Mickey in the rubble.]

But then I got all the way ass over to the other ass end of the convention center and I realized I had to go back and buy one of these prints. Which I did, “To all who come to this happy place,” because fuckin’ wow:

https://tinymediaempire.myshopify.com/products/sdcc2023-this-happy-place-v6-foil

This was unequivocally the best thing I saw at this year’s SDCC, but I also got some very good news while there, namely, that Emil Ferris’s long, long-awaited My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Vol 2 is finally on the schedule from Fantagraphics:

https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/emil-ferris/products/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-book-two

It’s coming out in April, which gives you plenty of time to read volume one, which I called, “a haunting diary of a young girl as a dazzling graphic novel”:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/06/20/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-a-haunting-diary-of-a-young-girl-as-a-dazzling-graphic-novel/

If you are or were a monster kid or a haunter, this is your goddamned must-read of the summer. It’s a fully queered, stunning memoir for anyone whose erotic imagination intersected with Famous Monsters of Filmland.

(Also, if you’re that kind of person and you’re in the region, you should know about Midsummer Scream, a giant haunter show in Long Beach; I’ll be there on Sunday, July 30, for a panel about the Ghost Post, the legendary Haunted Mansion puzzle-boxes I helped make:

https://midsummerscream.org/

Now Favorite Thing book two was the best news, but the best experience was watching Felicia Day get her Inkpot Award and give a moving speech:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkpot_Award

And then learning that Raina Telgemeier also got an Inkpot; I love Raina’s work so much:

https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/04/ghosts-raina-telgemeiers-upbeat-tale-of-death-assimilation-and-cystic-fibrosis/

[Image ID: A photo of me with Chuck Tingle, who wears a pink bag over his head on which he has written ‘Love is Real.’]

To cap yesterday off, I also ran into @ChuckTingle, which is as fine a capstone to a successful con as anyone could ask for:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53065500076/in/dateposted/

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/2023/07/23/but-i-know-what-i-like/#daniel-danger

[galleryofart]

The Ionian Dance

Artist: Edward Poynter (British, 1836–1919)

Date: 1895

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private collection

Description

The intimate scene brings to life lines from an ancient Roman poem by Horace. The central figure in the translucent gown is a young girl who has been exiled from Greece and the Ionian islands. She performs a native dance for her bejewelled Roman mistress, seen in the emerald dress reclining on the sofa. The richly painted background and tessellated marble floor, reflecting the dancing girl's feet, demonstrate Poynter's exceptional skill as a painter. The subject matter is painted in the classical style which was highly fashionable at this time.

1863 had seen the re-discovery of the buried city of Pompeii and for the first time excavations exposed magnificent murals, artworks and the preserved remains of the city's inhabitants. The city had been discovered once before in 1599 by an architect who stumbled across frescoes of such frequent sexual content that they were hastily covered over again and no more of the city was touched. After the 19th century re-discovery, artists were heavily influenced by the ancient Roman culture that had been tragically wiped from history.

The painting was purchased by the notable collector Robert English direct from the artist. Robert English was the son of a brick maker who made his fortune in the South African diamond business, later merging his interests with De Beers. The painting remained in his collection until his death in 1914. It was subsequently sold in his estate sale in 1915 and has remained in private hands since then.

[my-name-is-siduri]

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"

[dancing-to-architecture]

18 of 1001

Today's album: Einstürzende Neubauten - Kollaps (1981)

Initial thoughts: okay, so i have seen this album in like, every record store I've ever been in and have never actually listened to this band. I just know i recognize that album cover.

Wikipedia says they're an avant-garde aggressive German industrial band known for using power tools as percussion and causing property damage during their sets, so, i mean, at least this should be interesting.

(Okay, it's all in German. I'm not dedicated enough to this project to run every single lyric through a translator, so we're going on vibes today, lyrics-wise.)

Tanz Debil-

Well, it's certainly early 80s industrial. Noisy and rough. I think the singer is just screaming and I'm kinda here for it.

Steh auf Berlin-

CHAINSAW INTRO?!

Percussion: literally banging on a trashcan (Doug Funnie approved).

Very aggressive noise.

This is Difficult Music To Listen To.

Negativ Nein-

I cannot imagine the scarring on this guy's throat from all this screaming.

Sounds like a very bad mental breakdown. Plunky strings and mechanized screeches.

(At this point i offered to listen on headphones, this is pretty much the exact opposite of what my wife listens to, which is "good music, played with instruments".)

U-Haft-Muzak-

Clanky, weird instrumental.

Death march drumming with "extremely drunk man falling onto every part of a foley artist's table" and the occasional sounds of a man strangling a guitar.

I like industrial and punk and eclectic noise, but this might be a bit too much.

Draussen ist Feindlich-

Weird and short.

Schmerzen hören-

Aaaaaaaand i am officially getting a headache from this album.

Gonna call it on this album. I can see what's here, and it's not for me, not today anyway.

80s Germany, you're WAY more hardcore than me, and I'm not afraid to admit it. This is definitely for someone.

I'm sure a lot of the industrial artists i like were inspired by bands like this, just unlistenable stuff that pushed the boundary of what could even conceivably be called "music".

I thought i was ready for something aggressive, i just wasn't expecting it to actively try to cut my skull open.

Favorite Track: well, I've never heard a chainsaw used as percussion before, so I'm giving this one to Steh auf Berlin.

Least Favorite Track: Schmerzen hören, only because my brain hurts now and it was the last song playing.

[monsata]

9 of 1001

Today's album: Lou Reed - Transformer (1972)

Finally, after a few days of post-breakup depression, some wannabeatles figuring out their sound, and experimental noisepop, finally back to something I'm at least tangentially familiar with again.

And boy, am i familiar with the songs I'm familiar with, and the ones I'm not familiar with are a total mystery. It's kinda sad how often that's been happening, but radio has been steadily declining in quality since well before i was born, so i anticipate it to be a common occurrence here on Dancing to Architecture, the blog within a blog.

Perfect Day always makes me think of Trainspotting, one of those songs that gets forever changed by the addition of an excellent visual accompaniment. (Tarantino especially is really good at doing this.)

Hangin' 'Round is an anthem for every shitty person who graduated high school and then never changed a single facet of their lives.

Walk On The Wild Side - trans rights are human rights and if you disagree with me, I've got a curb you can bite.

So, satellite of love hit me in a few ways back to back to back to back:

One: oh, i get the MST3K reference now.

Two: "satellite's gone way up to Mars, soon it'll be filled with parking cars" just makes me think of Elon musk's stupid space car and obvious desire to be the bad guy in total recall.

Three: "satellite of love is what Elon would call the Death Star lol"

Four: "no it isn't, he doesn't have anywhere near that much cultural awareness. He'd call it "Lazerball" because he's literally the shitty, intellectually bankrupt, over-the-top villain from a mid 90s kids cartoon. (Read as "a 90s cartoon of middling quality", not "a cartoon from 1994-1997", btw.)

I'm So Free: The name must be accurate, because right off the bat Lou busts out the rare 4th chord in a song. Wasn't honestly expecting that. (And i gotta say it: The Who did the exact same concept better 3 years earlier on Tommy.)

Throughout the album (but especially on Goodnight Ladies), i love the occasional farts and poomps of the tuba. A truly underrated instrument that absolutely has a place in rock. Apparently that place was here, because it's the only non-polka tuba I'm currently aware of.

Favorite Track: we have a tie!

Perfect Day. (More like perfect song. Show me a better one.)

And

Walk on the Wild Side: So... *deep inhale* FIFTY MOTHERFUCKING YEARS AGO, LOU REED KNEW BETTER THAN TO DEADNAME TRANS PEOPLE, YET THESE REPUBLICAN GHOULS (WHO WERE ALL ALIVE WHEN THIS ALBUM CAME OUT) WANT TO ACT LIKE BEING TRANS IS SOME BRAND NEW THING, AND THAT CONCEPTS LIKE DECENCY AND RESPECT FOR OTHER PEOPLE DON'T EXIST AND AREN'T NECESSARY. Simply put: Lou says Trans Rights.

Least Favorite Track: probably wagon wheel? Not terrible, just didn't grab me, especially with how interesting the rest of the album is.

[zegalba]

Anzas Studio by Yoshimasa Tsutsumi (2011) Location: Beijing, China

[brguzercen]

007 James Bond

[love1kimono]

Okinawa 1893

Banner reads 琉球国演劇 (Ryukyu Koku Engeki), roughly translated as "The Ryukyu Province Theatrical Troupe".

Although there are many photos of Dotombori Street during the late 1800s, as fate would have it, a famous Japanese photographer named Kimbei Kusakabe just happened to be in town, and took the photo posted, showing their temporary banner on display under a blue sky. His studio back in Yokohama printed it out under the sun on paper coated with egg white, then hand colored the resulting photograph.