Review: The Hazards of Love

This release has sort of slid beneath my radar the past couple of weeks. I can remember looking forward to it for quite some time and enjoying it when the first track was released on NPR a while back (“The Rake’s Song”), and yet it’s only been in the past couple of days that I’ve finally realized the album’s been out since March 17. Oh me… Didn’t take long for it to make an impression though. Pushing their reputation as “literary” musicians yet another step further, The Decembrists’ new release The Hazards of Love boasts an album-length narrative about a young changeling named William and his soul mate, Margaret; the love of whom helps to transform him in the album’s inaugural songs from fawn to man. As their story progresses, it is accompanied by a variety of different voices and perspectives, including William’s mother, a jealous and evil queen (who is sung by My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden), and her dark and deeply demented henchman, the Rake.

It is true that storytelling is nothing new for songwriting, and that is why past references to The Decembrists as a ‘literary’ band, I feel, have been a bit misguided, and at the very best unhelpful, but the way the band has structured their newest release around a single narrative has given me cause to reconsider. It’s not so much that there’s anything original about the story itself- in fact, the plot progresses much like your typical generic fairytale- but the way it is structured is of particular interest to those who, like me, listen to most of their music between trips to the library. As the story unfolds, the album is scattered with shifts in voice and perspective, with recurring bits of dialogue and melodies that, in their refrain, give the impression of one character calling to another across the album. And then there are the multiple reprisals of the album’s title track, “The Hazards of Love”, which each attend to a different character’s unique difficulties in Love. Even from an exclusively literary standpoint, I feel there something deeply gratifying about this album, and that’s not even to mention the music, which entails some of the band’s crunchiest riffs and darkest melodies- effects that are considerably augmented by Shara Worden’s menacing yet beautiful vocals.

Though the storyline is nothing new, the songs’ composition and orchestration often invest it with a nearly forgotten pathos, and create for the listener startling moments of amorous, I-don’t-care-if-it’s-cliché-style beauty. If you’re like me and have neglected to pick up the album until now, I suggest that you wait no longer, and when you do, be sure to have a printed copy of the lyrics nearby.

Here’s the first site I found to have the entire album’s lyrics posted.


Enjoy!

Poem: Artificial Sweeteners

People always warn me
about putting Splenda in my coffee,
mostly in hangover diners
with blinds drawn against the sun.
They’ll cock their shades usually
revealing a haggard set of eyes
that look as though they are still swimming
and say something like: “Shit’s bad for you man.”
And Splenda’s not the only one.
Deodorant too, I’m told, is a new-age no no
because it causes cancer. “Oh
go on and laugh now, but later you’ll cry.”
I sniff myself for malignant spores and respond:
“I thought that’s why Death was invented;
so that I wouldn’t have to make a fuss
about getting there. And anyway
do you really think life so fragile it would resist
our few granular attempts to make it sweeter?
Those to make it stink not quite so bad?
We're made of sturdier stuff than that, I think."
But a sudden lurch prevents his response-
the breakfast tacos are not sitting well-
and for just a moment I wonder
if I've maybe been proven wrong.

The Grad School Blues

I’ve just recently found out that my applications to the creative writing programs at Brown University and UT Austin have been rejected. Disappointing news, no less so because it means I may be leaving Austin if either of the other two schools- Brooklyn College or UNC Wilmington- decides to accept me. It strikes me now as incredibly arrogant even to have applied to the nation’s absolute best writing programs, simply because I was a notable student at a private college few people outside Georgia have even heard of. And then I’m going to take their rejection personally? I guess, like many people, I have grown used to the idea of myself as exceptional; young talent with no limitations to speak of.

But such, I am convinced, is the path life inevitably takes: our smaller stories opening into larger ones, our relative sense of ourselves dismantling as the field of reference opens always wider and wider. I’m sure this procedure takes different courses with different people, but I suspect we all at some point must at least exchange our childish prides for adult ones; trade our obsession with being the Best, for being simply the best that we can be. For even if I were never challenged, even if I graduated high school the best wrestler in the state, left college the most promising writer of my generation and so was never forced to waver in my self-estimation, would I not be subjecting myself to a willful ignorance? Would I not, in effect, be allowing that smaller world to close around me, to constrict my movements, permitting what is but a small part of my Self to stand in place of the whole?

And anyway, it is probably wrong to think of writing, as I do, as solely a question of talent. Am I really so arrogant as to believe that some individual truths are more valuable than others? That after bludgeoning the barriers that keep one from expressing his/her deepest Self, only a few have something original, complex, and challenging to say? No, it’s not a question of talent, I don’t think, but of practice. Any individual that is willing to persevere—that is willing to challenge himself in the destruction of his inhibitions, the confrontation of his demons, the dissemination of his intellectual prejudices—I believe is capable of masterworks. Craft is a matter of practice. Style, a matter of wide reading and experimentation. So what is it to me if these schools caught me a little earlier on in the process? Talent, I’m now convinced, is an illusion upheld by our childish, egotistical selves, and so my recent disappointments are indications only that I’ve got some growing up to do.

Don't Bring Me Down

Ok. So for those of you who don't know, in the beginning of February I was in this photo shoot organized by some friends of mine. The head orchestrators were Christina Shaffell and Rachel Feilds, who, between the two of them, hatched the idea of a promotional shoot for a fictional band. As it was presented to me originally, the idea was a wild one, possessing a wide range of inspirations from 18th-century haute couture, to '60s Jazz, to French poetry... and to be frank, at that point much was left to my imagination. But over the course of a few months these girls combined their considerable talents with those of some other cool kids, and eventually succeeded in making this fantastic art shoot happen.

Here's a brief rundown of the various contributions that were made, and also the people who made them: Christina Shaffell took some gorgeous pictures, Rachel Fields designed and put together some kick-ass threads, my cuz Cory Kimbro and her friend Willie Dickey handled the hair, Rose Archuleta painted faces, Erin Berkenkamp took care of the production stills and set design, while the artiste Travis Tarbox painted a lovely sea-scape backdrop. In addition to all that, Tim Thielen and Jacob Villanueva joined forces to produce a couple of films documenting the whole thing. Furthermore, those lending their beautiful bodies as models were (ah hem) myself, Willie Dickey, Travis Tarbox, Aaron Calhoun, and the lovely Alaina Chambers.

But that's not the end of it. On February 27, the girls managed to organize a huge opening event at the US Art Authority, in which both the pictures and video were displayed to the sound of live music by the Finn Brothers and the Crooks.

If you're curious, check out the shoot website to see the pictures and videos, and also pay homage to Christina at her blog. As soon as the pics are available in a form I can steal for my own commercial purposes I'll post a few here, but until then, check out the site. It is ALL really cool.

The Slippery Art of Adaptation

Salman Rushdie on 'Slumdog Millainaire':

"Boyle, when asked why he had chosen a project so different from his usual material, answered that he had never been to India and knew nothing about it, so he thought this project was a great opportunity. Listening to him, I imagined an Indian film director making a movie about New York low-life and saying that he had done so because he knew nothing about New York and had indeed never been there. He would have been torn limb from limb by critical opinion. But for a first world director to say that about the third world is considered praiseworthy, an indication of his artistic daring. The double standards of post-colonial attitudes have not yet wholly faded away."

This is just an excerpt from a rather long article in which Rushdie not only bashes the Slumdog phenomenon, but takes the opportunity to comment at length on the slippery subject of adapting language-based art forms to film, and also the way in which movies like Slumdog undermine the genre of magical realism with plots that, even considering their claim to 'the magical', nevertheless remain utterly implausible. Here's the whole article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/salman-rushdie-novels-film-adaptations

And on a related note, it seems that Stephen King is also on record trashing Stephanie Meyer's vege-vampire romance, 'Twilight'; comparing her books to those of JK Rowling, the primary difference being that "JK Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."

Apparently, Meyer's fans were quick to rally behind her work, claiming King to be "just a bloody guy who is jealous of Edward's good looks." Of that much, I would say there is little doubt. Full article here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/05/stephenking-fiction

Poem: High School Contraception

They say she lacks school spirit
because she will not trade her low cut blouses
for ones with their Trojan mascot on them.
It’s not a matter of spirit, she insists, or decency,
but of principle: that stubborn 3 percent error
couched in each of the word Trojans’ connotations:
soldiers crouching till nightfall,
the translucent stain of spilled semen;
the promise that no protection is complete
and that the vehicle bearing us toward the future
though it may miss a few stops
will undoubtedly get there in the end,
though in the meantime it reminds us
with bright yellow letters
that every end is also a beginning
and that 3 percent is just large enough a margin
to spend one’s life crawling through.
It assures us for liability’s sake
that a child is not a catastrophe
and nor is a civilization burning,
for progress is as unfailing as demise, and yes
demise is unfailing. And what are our lives anyway
if not a Hydra of paths we haven’t chosen
but which spring up, two for every one we ignore?
But none of that matters to her
because it’s a t-shirt she won’t wear.
Ready to change the subject, she shrugs dismissively
and says she takes the pill
because 2 percent is better than 3,
and that might well have been the margin
that left Troy standing.