Not a Curse

There is no slight exhaled breath out in the vault of space.
White needlepoint stars never prick through a midnight blue sky.
Naked long-tressed goddesses can never be seen on the beach.
We do not lie surrounded by green grass to fall asleep.
No faint noise birthed from children's games can ever hold us up.
No quiet wind will ever pull us softly into darkness.
There is no city through which we can make dreams manifest.
There is no cave through which birds fly forever to the river.
There is no river through which water meanders to the sea.
There is no mountain through which earth stretches out towards the sun.
No matches ever light our hearts with thunder-fetching fire.
We do not swing, forever and ever,
Higher and higher.
We climb no ladders.
The milkmaid does not call.
No one picks up the phone.
Human voices do not wake us.
We do not drown.
Problems are salt.
Nothing is an ocean.

Amusing Thought of the Morning

Wait, which song is that part in, again? You know, the part that goes, "I'm searching for the context, not finding it."

List of References to Publications and Photography on Skeletal Lamping

Publications:

1. "I'm the motherfucking headliner." - "Wicked Wisdom"

2. "All I care to hear: elitist's commentary about some faded press limited edition" - "Wicked Wisdom"

3. "Then I was wrapped in discourse with a magazine reader." - "For Our Elegant Caste"

4. "I wanna write you books." - "Gallery Piece"

5. "I read his journal. It was very revealing." - "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants"

6. "I know from past experience he never takes it easy on his readers." - "Mingusings"

Photography:

1. "Now I'm viewing my memory reel in reverse, scrolling back to come to feel your whether-then." - "An Eluardian Instance"

2. "I check my shutter speed, my aperture, my domino, can't focus, can't stop staring at the face I used to know." - "Women's Studies Victims"

3. "I only photograph my fascinations till the stress of the flash makes them fade." - "St. Exquisite's Confessions" [Note: A really good line, by the way, and generally applicable.]

Both?:

1. "I'm the kind of mannequin that cheats and opens its eyes to the ladies of the spread." - "Women's Studies Victims" [Note: "Ladies of the spread" must mean centerfold models, yes?]

2. "I read it with my head open or only slightly cracked. Somebody else will have to close it when I'm done, make the most out of the visuals." - "Women's Studies Victims"

3. "It's time to get to know the article that you'll be stripping. Ladies of the spread, you better keep my secrets in that perfume poodle head." - "St. Exquisite's Confessions"

There isn't really a point to this list; it's a motif I've noticed without really having much of an idea as to what the point of the motif is.

The Greek Chorus of My Skull

The most recent Of Montreal radio appearance confirms something I'd heard already - "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" was named after something having to do with ancient Greek theater. Consequently, anything that follows is pretty clearly more about my reaction to the song lyrics than authorial intent, but, hey.

As far as I can tell, "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" is the only song on Skeletal Lamping that includes any end punctuation. And it's an exclamation point. Is an exclamation point phallic punctuation? Well, it's more phallic than a period or question mark. As an adolescent, I dreamt yearningly of a visit from one of my favorite imaginary characters. I frequently wrote (in car windows, on pieces of scrap paper) "[Her name] wuzn't here!!! (yet. . .)." The three exclamation points after "here" were a vital part of the phrase; in fact, I'm still in the habit of carefully making sure, whenever I use multiple exclamation points in any other context, that I'm not using three. And so I can't help but think that a triphallus that punctuates is three exclamation points, signaling the arrival of my own personal Messiah -

And right there we fall into my Lacan obsession. Wikipedia says, "The Name-of-the-Father is the fundamental signifier which permits signification to proceed normally." This makes it kind of synonymous with the phallus; a Lacanian Wiki explains that the phallus "is a particularly privileged signifier because it inaugurates the process of signification itself." The Lacanian Wiki points out that "the rexpression [sic] is. . . a semi-humorous religious allusion." Which seems obvious - "the fundamental signifier which permits signification to proceed normally" is your father the father in Freudianism, God the Father in religion. So a Triphallus is the Trinity.

This could easily be just a joke - like my Christian/history of critical theory joke - Q. What is the definition of the sublime? A. Jesus necrophilia! But it's a little more infuriating than that, because of the religious allusions that do make it into the body of "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" (the lyrics here aren't, IMHO, entirely right, but they'll do, and I like that website). "The senseless killings gifts God gives us have no one to love them?" What are these "senseless killings gifts?" What do they have to do with God? "Damascus blade" is obviously NOT a religious reference - only coming so soon after the mention of God, it really makes me wish that it had something to do with Paul. I can't think why it would - Damascus blades are, like, a thing, having nothing whatsoever to do with Paul - but I wish I were wrong. And then "heaven's patience glaring down at us, filling your womb with black butterflies?" It's like a creepy birth of Jesus story. Jesus is black butterflies, and God isn't very happy with Mary? And then maybe the black butterfly Jesus is the senseless killings gifts God gives us? And then what? Is there a way you can fit the chorus into this story? Maybe it's Joseph singing to creepy alternate Mary? After all, Joseph supported Mary back before she ever became famous, right? He waved her flag when no one else did, didn't he?

Anyway, I guess there probably isn't a coherent way to interpret the lyrics to this song as having to do with Christianity. But I can't help but try. I blame Xenogears. If it weren't for XG, I wouldn't immediately think Christianity whenever I hear "phallus." Surely?

Always Stuck Repeating

The of Montreal blog posts links to two new interviews today. Both focus on mention Kevin's ambition to write songs on Skeletal Lamping that differ from the standard pop template, "something that was constantly shifting, constantly changing, with no rules and no limitations, no structure really...." The interview with The Toronto Star even features Kevin saying, "I know people don't want this record, really – I can tell by most of the reviews. Everyone seems so befuddled. Some people are actually pissed off. `How dare he make this record? Obviously, he can write pop songs. Why is he doing this?' It's absurd, the reaction, when people are given something that is complicated and unconventional and exceptional. They don't even know what to think of it." A statement which is totally true - I've seen reviews along those lines.

So maybe now is the time to mention that I just don't think Skeletal Lamping is all that weird. I don't know. I mean, yes, some of the songs really differ from traditional song structures, like the opener, "Nonpareil of Favor." That song basically follows the structure ABCD and is legitimately unusual. But there are also several songs that seem to mostly follow a standard verse-chorus structure, maybe deviating from this slightly at a couple of points, but not to any genuinely unusual extent. "An Eluardian Instance," "Triphallus, to Punctuate!," and "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" all strike me as fitting to at least some extent to the standard pop song verse-chorus template, and are three of the most immediately catchy songs on the album, presumably because of this; first single "Id Engager" fits into this category as well, which is, again, presumably why it was chosen as the first single. Even the lengthy "Plastis Wafers," which certainly doesn't fit the standard template, actually starts out with an ABCABC structure, enough to make the song's catchy "chorus" get stuck in my head, at least, even if it moves on to different places from there.

Furthermore, even when it comes to the album's more unusual songs, intellectually, I certainly notice the disorienting effects that Kevin and his interviewers are talking about, but, viscerally, I don't feel like what I'm listening to is particularly bizarre. I don't know. Is there something unusual about the way that I listen to music? I don't feel disoriented at all, and I'm not sure I feel like listening to Skeletal Lamping is different from listening to any other reasonably good album. Does anyone else in the world feel this way? Or is there really something I'm missing?

I Was Going to Write About Iceland Last Week, but I Didn't Have Enough Time, so This Is Still a Purely Of Montreal Blog

I listened to this BBC interview/performance with of Montreal. It was interesting, because I felt a little embarrassed while listening to it. The interviewer obviously knew nothing about the band, and I suppose I just felt a kind of sympathetic awkwardness - I would feel so embarrassed if I were supposed to be somewhat well-known and got interviewed by people who knew nothing about me.

I have, of course, been reading and listening to a bunch of of Montreal interviews lately, some of which have been heavily criticized by fans of the band. In general, though, the interviews I've read and heard seem to involve interviewers who know quite a lot about the band's history and background (example of a radio interview here). I feel like it's not so awkward for the band members to answer a question about a potentially touchy issue like Kevin's creative domination of the band when everyone's starting from the awareness that that's true. Even if the question is hostile, the interviewer and the interviewees all know what the situation is, and the interviewees can just casually deflect and say something along the lines of: "We know you think this is bad for us, but, just like we've said a million times before, no, we don't mind it." But I feel like the situation is different when the interviewer really genuinely believes that maybe everyone in the band takes a creative role. I feel like the answer to this question in the BBC interview was more awkward for Kevin to give, because the person asking the question isn't starting from the premise of knowing anything about the band. Even in bands that tend to have one dominant creative force, they usually aren't as dominant as Kevin, who basically makes the entire album himself and only gets the band to play on the live shows. So I feel like Kevin would have to really shock the interviewer if he was to give the whole truth - which is why he kind of hedges in this interview, at least in my reading of it.

Maybe this is actually perfectly comfortable and non-awkward for Kevin, since he's presumably at least somewhat secure in his decisions, as, one would hope, are the rest of the band. But I'm not. If I were to start a band, I'd feel really, really weird about saying, "Okay, I am going to define the sounds of these songs precisely, and your only job is to recreate them when we do a tour." Our perceptions of bands are shaped by groups where often there's a dominant creative force but all of the other members at least get to play their own instruments and affect the sound that way. I'm hardly trying to say that I think Kevin is wrong in what he does. Actually, I think he's a brilliant genius and that if this is the best way for him to make music than, Jesus, he should go for it, and I'm glad he's found a bunch of people who are happy to support him. But I think it makes me feel slightly insecure, because it's out of the ordinary, and thus I feel embarrassed for his deviation, even if he doesn't, and even if I support him.

Just Wanna Play with You

I don't know why I love listening to pop music so much, but I guess one reason why I love to go to pop music concerts it's because it's an accepted space where grown adult people act completely ridiculous and over-the-top. And I don't mean me - I mean the performers. I love the way they behave completely differently from what we would expect of ordinary people - they way they are putting on a performance that has only a fairly tenuous link with reality.

One aspect of pop music as performance that does seem to carry over, every so often, into the music itself is the idea of singer as playing a role. For whatever reason, first-person confessional is by far the most common mode for pop music lyrics. I think that listeners and songwriters definitely realize that this can easily be fictional; although many of the songs I listen to apparently refer actual events in the writer's biography, many of them don't, and the same is true for people who listen to very different music than I. Nonetheless, even when writing about fictional events or emotions, the writer still tends to use "you" and "I." But some writer/performers take this a bit further and end up constructing an entirely fictional character whom they explicitly play on the stage, and who has at least something to do with the lyrics they write. The most famous example of this is, of course, David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.

I find this fascinating - but then, I always like to think about people who are pretending to be other people; it's one of my favorite topics. For over a decade now, I guess, I've been creeped out by the actual song "Ziggy Stardust." Bowie, singing this song onstage, was performing in the role of Ziggy Stardust but somehow simultaneously singing a song from the first-person point-of-view of another character ("we were Ziggy's band" clearly indicates that the singer is a member of Ziggy's band, not Ziggy himself). The lyrics of the song, to at least some extent, involve the narrator expressing his somewhat ambivalent feelings towards Ziggy - but the person singing the song is in the role of Ziggy himself - Ziggy is ventroloquizing his own band members' somewhat negative attitudes towards him! I just find that soooooo creepy!

Right now, Kevin Barnes is taking on the role of "black she-male" Georgie Fruit. And yet we know this is just a role - I don't think he's constantly playing Georgie Fruit the way Bowie probably was always playing Ziggy in that stage of his career, and certainly not all of the lyrics on Skeletal Lamping could possibly be Georgie's. I continue to find this role-playing fascinating. In particular, at the beginning of "Death Is Not a Parallel Move," Kevin sings? raps?, "All of my thoughts come from a foreign host. I feel just like a ghost." The rest of the song would seemingly be sung from Kevin's own point of view - Kevin must be addressing his family when he sings "lille venn" - it apparently means "little friend," a term he commonly uses when singing about his family, in Norwegian, his wife's native language. But surely "all of my thoughts come from a foreign host" must be Georgie talking? After all, it's Kevin's body and brain that are the foreign host for Georgie, and it's Kevin who's actually the creator of the Georgie persona. A casual listener might think that the line involves Kevin expressing his anxiety about his thoughts coming from Georgie, but this seems highly implausible to me, as Georgie has no actual body of his own. And so we come across something as creepy in its own way as what David Bowie sung in "Ziggy" - Kevin is ventroloquizing the fictional Georgie Fruit's discomfort with their* own fictionality, their own forced binding to the body and mind of Kevin Barnes. And yet it's Kevin who's creating that very dissatisfaction! Fascinating!

First Actual Post

This post is about politics!

Well, maybe it's actually about of Montreal.

So, today, John McCain said this:


I think he is ignoring the wisdom so well-expressed by Kevin Barnes:
"This life is not a prison. We are always free to go, any time."