Driving with the kids for about two hours today, we listened to Lady Gaga and Adele. Putting them on means the kids keep the headphones off. We shifted to ‘West Side Story’ in the last 20 minutes.
“Paparazzi” came on, and I visualized (while still driving safely) the three moments in the video I like the most.
1.) Malady-afflicted celebrity bravely and stylishly taking to the red (okay, lavender) carpet on crutches (2:54 mark):
2.) The Mickey Mouse ensemble with plastic/wax lips she has when poisoning her attempted murderer (5:45 mark):
3.) Dishevelled sass when getting her mugshots at the police station (7:16 mark):
The full video for your convenience (all about saving you the keystrokes in a search engine):
“The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.” — Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pornography. The new movie Magic Mike, about male strippers according the advertising campaign, made me think about this theory of art expounded by fictional college student Stephen Dedalus. And about desire. Dirty, dirty desire. And art.
QUICK! A photo of a chick, before the attention drops!
Dedalus’ theory is infused with the Catholic shame that evoking desire is something base and bad, exclusive of a more noble high-mindedness. Life isn’t quite that way, neither is art, but it does reflect my experiences in strip clubs.
The photo is one I took of a performer in Mary’s Club in downtown Portland as she says “Thank you!” to marchers on the inaugural day of Occupy Portland on October 6, 2011. A scantily-clad dude stands behind her, amused (easier to see if you zoom in).
It’s been more than a decade since I’ve been in a strip club. I hardly go out. I often go months without going into a bar. When I have gone to strip clubs, some of the time is spent desiring/coveting the performers on the stage. I don’t get aroused significantly, enticed is nearer the mark. Some of the time is also passed people watching, though watching people watch the same person you can has limited charm.
Mostly I wonder what the performer is thinking, and seeing through her eyes.
And I don’t feel pity, at least if the place is decent. The assumption many make that strippers and porno actresses have troubled family lives (doesn’t everyone?) and daddy issues (again, doesn’t everyone?) is condescending. Similar jabs aren’t laid at porno dudes or male dancers. It’s slut-shaming masquerading as gender sensitivity. Feh! FEH!
I have no statistics, but as this is the internet, amn’t gonna care. Stories abound of women who danced to help pay for college, knowing it was a waystation to another, better life. Or people who made a good living for a while. Who cares? Why judge?
It’s expression, it’s a mating display in controlled circumstances. An extension of the same mating/style displays we ponder when we decide what to wear because of how it looks/fits/conveys us for the day.
In strip clubs, if the vibe is good, I wonder what it’s like to be so desired. Thoughts fill of the power wielded, to have a physique that inspires want and awe from people who don’t know you. To know that and to use that to get what you need, to make a living, to hold people in thrall. To externalize that power with a smirk slays me when dancers do it.
Yes, it is possible to dwell in these thoughts while listening to lousy butt-rock music as women swirl around a pole. It is possible to have esthetic arrest and epiphanies to Motley Crüe or REO Speedwagon.
One of my favorite artists, singer/songwriter Sam Phillips, performs “The Fan Dance” in 2008.
Sting is an example of an artist with a strong personality needing other strong personalities for balance/combat to create better art. The Police was a better act than Sting as a solo artist because the band had two people who could tell Sting to shut up.
Yet I poured over his first two solo albums, so great was the devotion to The Police. Grant me wisdom! Musical genre dabbling! Dribblings of wisdom! Then realized he was a dork. A slow period of acceptance.
I laughed when he appeared in diapers extolling the virtues of yoga in the early 90s (I later took on yoga). His tantric sex boast about maintaining a state of orgasmic arousal for four hours caused tittering across our Puritan nation (including me). Now? Dude, if you can manage it, bully for you. When I made that boast in Oregon shopping malls instead of MTV, it failed to pay dividends.
Sting claps during the Nothing Like the Sun tourWhen the song “Straight to My Heart” off his second late-1987 solo album Nothing Like the Sun came up as a topic, my girlfriend at the time and I mocked Sting (not around to defend himself) about being so showy over writing a pop song with a 7/8 time signature. In the Nothing Like the Sun tour, he had a little drill for the audience to teach us all to clap in 7/8 time. Nailed it! I can also clap on the 2/4 and 4/4 (noted on my résumé) but for genetic reasons cannot clap on country music’s 1/4 and 3/4 (not noted on résumé).
Video below is from a “Symphonicity” tour he did a few years ago. Sting/Police songs played backed by a symphony. I refused to attend, for religious/aesthetic reasons over the title. Haven’t gone to a Sting show for over 20 years. Yet on top of that “Synchronicity” = “Symphony” = “Symphonicity”? Yeesh.
YET, years later, I find myself charmed by the song. (1988 Me and Then-Girlfriend laugh at Present Me. I nod obeisantly, then turn with a grin and think: “Oh, brother, what you’ve got coming…”) The song is a defiance of the knowledge that romance is a state caused by biochemistry, not metaphysics.
A sub atomic chain Will maybe galvanize the brain A biochemic trance Will eliminate romance
But why ever should we care When there are arrows in the air Formed by lovers’ ancient art That go straight to my heart
Here are lyrics that would make a great Valentine’s Day card:
But what will make me yours Are a millions deadly spores Formed by lovers’ ancient art That go straight to my heart
In an interview Henry Rollins did with Howard Stern years ago, he shared many insights. Two that have stuck: 1.) U2 may have the worst rhythm section of any major rock act 2.) Sting is a wickedly talented person, but if you buy a Sting CD then you have pretty much given up on music.
As “Straight to My Heart” has earwormed me the last couple of days, I have to allow for my own aesthetic/mental entropy. It’s possible to draw a straight line to a day when I will be in an old folks home (as an old folk) standing on a chair and singing Sting’s song “Russians” at the top of my lungs until the orderlies are summoned. Present Me mourns Future Me’s diminished mental state, but nods at what a kind of small bad ass moment that would be.
New song from Rufus Wainwright’s “Out of the Game” album. His daughter having to navigate between her two dads. Daughter whose blood grandfathers include Leonard Cohen and Loudon Wainwright III. Worry that is daughter will not stay. Thoughts of his mother whose ashes are scattered in the nearby ocean. Cyclical structure. What’s not to like?
This is terrific. Whatever is the opposite of AutoTune (AntiTune?) this uses it.
While not astonishingly attractive, there is something to admire about the confidence she has. Make me a hot teacher! Give me a class full of white-shirted cowboys preoccupied with dancing and looking away from me, the one woman around! That edginess gives her a bonus +2 points on the hottie scale.
She has difficulty standing upright, or walking in a straight line. Am left to guess that she has recovered from some trauma that gave her the gumption to fulfill a 20, 30 year-long dream to star in a music video. Bully for her! Don’t dream it, BE it!
-3 points for controlling behavior, allowing for three seconds of a wandering eye and then, snap to attention, buster! Contemplate me and my odd fashion choices!
Actually, three seconds is more generous than some who would allow NO visual meandering. Maybe a sense of ovary competition gets her going. “Three seconds of looking at another woman, then I’m taking you HOME and will order you to do what I want.” Maybe her album features tracks detailing what she demands in recompense for the three seconds her man’s gaze strayed. Each second he stared leads to ten minutes complying with her demands. I’d listen to those songs, would probably stay away from those videos.
Sorry to disappoint everybody, but the “hologram” of Tupac that appeared in Coachella was me in body paint. Anybody notice how undead Tupac was almost as tall as Snoop Dogg? ‘Cause I’m 6’ 2″.
I kept stepping around thinking, they’re gonna know this was a put-on, right? But people didn’t seem to laugh. They seemed happy. Looked to Snoop over and over to tell the crowd I was just playing at being Tupac, and Snoop gave me a look like: “Nope.”
There’s talk about taking this on the road, but it’s not possible. Daytime and family obligations make touring impractical. Also, the body paint gave me a rash. At least someone got it on video, though!
Daisy dukes, bikinis on top. Sun-kissed skin, so hot We’ll melt your popsicle.
Uh-whoah-oah. Uh-whoah-oah.
For AGES I took these lyrics to be a flat, scientific statement. Of COURSE human skin, exposed, presumably at normothermia let alone warmed by the sun, would carry sufficient heat to melt a popsicle that will turn liquid well before reaching 98.6 degrees Farenheit (37 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world).
Nearly two years after this poem was released in 2010, it finally occurred to me this was a metaphor. See, a man’s popsicle (i.e. penis), normally rigid in a state of arousal, would find itself liquified due to the allure and heat generated by the narrator’s Daisy Duked clan. Fine enough considered blithely. To give longer thought to an organ melting, though, seems horrible. Like what happens to that Nazi’s face when the Ark of the Covenant is opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Thanks but no thanks, Ms. Perry. Has anyone checked that Snoop Dogg is okay?
Saw the opening night of Portland Opera’s Galileo Galilei yesterday. At 90 minutes, it was more thought exercise than cathartic. Performers were fine, artistic design was really interesting (especially the seraphim costume for the opera-in-an-opera Eos – could have admired that for half an hour) but ephiphanies and the sublime never arrived.
The story felt based on about 1-2 paragraph biography of Galileo. Not much effort went into showing personality. A film I saw in high school did a better job of explaining the concepts of Galileo’s accomplishments and the sense of the person himself.
90 minutes without intermission. That was a good choice. Had it been longer, the opera might not hold onto people’s attention. That is the fault of the music and the words.
The music was not memorable. It was a 90 minute libretto. The plot and concepts all felt like blocks getting passed around. I did not feel within any of the characters. I mostly waited for the next visual (and there were many interesting ones).
Galileo’s life is presented in 10 chapters, in reverse chronology. To start he is feeble and expressing self-doubt about not having stuck to his earth-is-not-the-center-of-the-universe Copernican proof, or not being devout enough to the Catholic Church in renouncing science completely in his heart. Then we see him with gradually increasing vigor, the role handed off to a better vocalist (or maybe the music improved with more narrative once it moved from tiresome “the earth moves!” “no, the sun moves!” lyrics between Galileo and clerics). The final chapter is a boy Galileo taking in the spectacle of a really interesting opera about Orion. Then at the end the old Galileo is united with the boy Galileo rapt with wonder and they walk into a great brightness together.
But it’s the CONCEPT of old Galileo and the CONCEPT of boy Galileo walking together. I never thought: “Oh, how nice for Galileo to get this closure”. They were blocks at the end nudged into a bright white screen.
I proclaim from the second balcony “Je suis arriviste!” about opera matters. Portland Opera did an interesting job given the material, but the material was meh.
Summer 2002 at a mutual friend’s wedding, saw an ex-girlfriend I hadn’t spoken with in ten years. My main response? Shame. See, I had come to realize I had been a major drip, clingy, and utterly failed to see that a cross-continental relationship between two young people who could not afford to travel cross-continent (and my drippy behavior had already begun in-person) was a not-so-good idea. She saw that early on, I didn’t and kept on dripping long afterward.
BUT a Peter Gabriel concert tour was taking place that winter. After 17 years of Gabriel fandom, I had never seen him in concert. It had been 10 years since his last album. And it was coming to Seattle where my friend lived. I took two buddies along. She hosted and toured the three of us through fun corners of the city. It was fun. She was stalwart about being a tour guide to three goons. My mind kept going whoosh between past and present and I somehow managed to insert sentences in between urges to apologize for drippiness.
All that made me VERY ready for the Peter Gabriel concert. He’s one of the few artists I tuck in deep. My favorite song on his album up was Growing Up (which had the deepest groove) and I was delighted how over the course of the show the staging by Robert Lepage (who also works with Cirque du Soleil) had a huge overhanging egg. Then the egg covering fell away to reveal a round moon image projected from within. Then the moon’s covering fell away to reveal a giant transparent egg cell that lowered slowly onto Peter Gabriel as he inserted himself within it as the opening bars of “Growing Up” began. And then he moved around the stage in the zygote, and bopped up and down to the song.
The birth of my second child was pending in about four months. The song is about birth and engaging the world (like how we first learn to identify one point in space, then two, then three… I kept thinking about how my daughter would be coming into the world, ready to bop about (which came true). The female vocalist on the stage is Melanie Gabriel, Peter’s daughter, and her making way for her daddy’s strolling zygote was even more amusing.
It was a hazardous drive back, heavy rain and wind, VERY tired, the laughs back in the car exhausted after the first hour or so. But we made it alive, and after our early morning return a few hours later I joined one of my friends to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on opening day. A memorable, intense 24 hours.
Not quite ten years after THAT day, was listening to this album and this memory/anecdote came back. Most everything everyone says about Time is true, escpecially the word “funny”.
Below is a screen grab of a Google ad that came up while viewing the video above. Funny indeed, though I’d flip the genders in this case. Glad Google is pandering to the me from 20 years ago.
So, are there people on the planet for whom a Hootie and the Blowfish song triggers a reminiscent sadness? The song comes on and the person’s instinct is to retreat and walk (or sit) and think big thoughts and piece the important things together? Gotta be “Yes”, right?
