President vows to ‘Change Evil Ways’
MANHATTAN, Kan.(AP) 1/23/06 11:12AM

At his morning press briefing, President Bush wowed and stunned the press corps with a powerful and soaring rendition of his promise to change his “evil ways”.

Recognizing his lack of popular support at home and abroad, Bush made an impassioned and densely polyrhythmic plea for the American public to take him back, despite his public "foolin' around", declaring he understood the public's desire to "find somebody who wont' always act like a clown".

After an uncharacteristically visibly excited Scott McClellan announced President Bush’s unscripted appearance on the Air Force One morning press conference, the press secretary retreated to the back of the stage, where he set up a quiet, unhurried, funky mouth-bassline over which the President intoned with a coiling, streetwise baritone:

I've got to change my evil ways, baby, before you stop lovin' me.

I've got to change, baby, and every word that I say is true.

Both McClellan and the President swung into a bouncy syncopated vibe for the bridge and chorus, declaring:

I got troops runnin' and hidin' all over town,

I got snoops sneakin' and a-peepin' and runnin' you down.
This can't go on, Lord knows I got to change, baby.

Returning to the opening rhythm, Bush continued over the flawless mouth bass and commanding air hand drumline being laid out by McClellan:

When I come home, baby, the White House is dark and my polls are cold.

I'm hangin' round, baby, with Dick and Don and-a who knows who.

You're gettin' tired of waitin' and my foolin' around,

You'll find somebody who won't always act like a clown.

This can't go on, Lord knows I got to change, baby.

With a quick series of “Yeah yeah yeahs” President Bush, nodding at McClellan, launched into a dazzling, completely silent and pyrotechnic air guitar solo, as the press secretary moved his fingers frantically up and down an imaginary keyboard. The speech ended with the President on his knees and an ecstatic McClellan throwing his hands into the air in triumph, brandishing unseen drumsticks.

While later quietly admitting that the music was “a little heavier” than the President's favorite fair, McClellen, wiping sweat from his brow, claimed President Bush had been inspired when he came across the song on his Ipod while dirtbiking at his ranch over the holidays:"The President was immediately struck by its relevance to his own plight as the increasingly embattled ‘leader of the free world’" McClellan added, throwing his arms around the shoulders of two adoring, giggling female reporters and heading off-stage.

did anyone watch these two?

After watching 360 minutes of these boys lives, what to say? If you missed the show, its available online (but right now Frontline's site is down, and this show is clearly (gotta be) why), and here's a blurb:

Filmed over three years (1999-2002), "Country Boys" tracks the dramatic stories of Chris and Cody from ages 15 to 18. With the same intimate cinematic technique and sound design that distinguished "The Farmer's Wife," David Sutherland's new film bears witness to the two boys' struggles to overcome the poverty and family dysfunction of their childhoods in a quest for a brighter future. This film also offers unexpected insights into a forgotten corner of rural America {Floyd County in eastern Kentucky] that is at once isolated and connected, a landscape dotted with roughshod trailer homes and wired with DSL.

I am mostly interested if you have watched it, or part. I have a lot of thoughts around it, and not simply testifying to its power, but also the more problematic side of Sutherland's "portraiture" and the social impact and cost of such a stance. It was a very complex project, and yet I feel that the documentary, as-aired, entirely erased that complexity in favor of an eventually wearying/naive insistence on letting its subjects speak/be seen as if there was no camera. And I was enamored of these two, deeply, I just became troubled after awhile by the fly-on-the-wall angle, and wondered, as I often do with, say, war photography, how we, as artists and audiences, repsond to and consider the alleged "neutrality" (i.e. naturalization, invisibility) and "observer status" of the artist.

Like, simply, did Sutherland talk to these kids? Get at all involved? AND did he think-through the effect his presence would have on them, their lives, the footage he culled? I am sure he did, but none of that was shown. There were fascinating moments when I could discern the bit players conscious of themselves as actors for a far larger stage, and of course, the voice-overs, and I wonder about this shift... the very creepiness of voyeurism...

Plus, this film is a fascinating and utterly ripe expose of its other subjects: small-town America, Appalachia, boyhood, the role of parents: esp. the role of (absent or inadequent) fathers, the welfare system, popular Christian culture, NASCAR America, what the hell high school education means, class consciousness, conservative ideology of the free will/liberal focus on social conditions - played out up close and personal.

start the day by answering email

crissy, i must have known this email was coming, as i looked up the hill this morning and thought of going over for lunch. i certainly will. best lunch around, no?

i am still here, and there are stretches where that is okay and others where it is not. it takes the same focus and dedication and courage you talk about to do a job search - i have been holding back. but this is still the wrong fit job, and there is a ceiling on what i can learn and do here. urgh... must marshall forces...

glad to hear whats up with you - did i give you my "real" email? - sarahandkyle@earthlink.net, lets move this conversation over there. and follow your passions! follow your passions!, right? its my wish too, although the wish to "play it safe, stay low, take it easy" mostly dominates. we can do that too, it just doesnt make for a tasty life - a sort of suburbia of the mind. and curse that dumb eagles song.

i am in one of those "lots of ideas, little actual work" phases right now. but i am very happy to report that i have no pronounced seasonal/post-holiday depression hole. which makes for a lovely change, thanks to all the work i've been doing, and to the universe.

we went snowshoeing last wknd, but i cant say i envy your winter (whenever it gets there)- snow looks best in hills and mtns (though snowing looks wonderful anywhere). and maybe snow looks best when you drive away at the end too (although in Boulder, i loved how it would dump - and then melt completely the next day). in SF, the cherries have started to bloom (!). so freaking soon? i give you that with the complete overhaul of the ecology/flora out here, the seasons can make perilously little sense within city limits.

tasos just emailed me to inspect and possibly file some drawings, making that my sole work task for the day. and yet i wanted to complain! oh, little child, we may be getting a tad spoiled.

i think in the right setting, any of the plants you talk of would be powerful experiences for you. but i have no personal experience with any of them. ayahuasca can be life-altering, from those around me who have taken it - but the homeopathic route, thats intriguing, a slow, gentle course instead of a 1 day cram-for-finals cosmic blitz. i could see that as a good fit for you.

san pedro is generally described as a close but milder relative of mescaline. its rumored to taste horrible. you eat the flesh. which makes it easy to control dose, once you know how strong your plant is. lets say you do "see someone's illness" - vividly, say - what do you do with the knowledge? these are warrior plants.

i wonder about someone in new england taking tropic plants though - there are many indigineous mushrooms in NE that could be hunted, picked fresh and wild, and brewed as tea which might have more to say to someone of your clime (and more holistic of an adventure too). i fit in this city as rosemary is cultivated all over the place, perfect for me and my headaches.
(how could ayahuasca be made into a homeopath pill though - the drug is a brew, from many sources, not just one plant?)

anyway, i support you in whatever path involving plants you step out on. if you do take the one-day intensive route, a little structure (like a question and a friend/guide) will help ground it.
the leaf i had smoked/drank as tea is called Calea Zacatechichi, "the dream herb" (practically a registered head-shop trademark). do a search for it online and a thousand sites selling it will pop up.

its basically an i ching type event, where you spend some time beforehand formulating and considering some question/active edge in your life, drink and smoke the herb (which, unlike the plants you mentioned, is very mild, somewhere between sleepytime tea and a wee puff of weed) and then go to bed, question in mind. then (perchance) the dream.

the herb smokes well, but the tea is exceptionally bitter, like drinking aspirin. but i never felt sick. i just looked online at "experiences" people posted about it, and its sad, they're almost all from druggies who stumble through it as spectators, passive, without intention, ritual, thought, questions - just brew it up and kick back and wait for the psychic tv. no wonder most of them are disappointed. the dream you mention was one of the best dreams of my life. a teaching that still applies.

okay, love to you, so good to hear from you, i have had fun writing back, more soon, no? i miss our lunches. its grown quiet here, somewhat cobwebby. perhaps i'll go inspect those drawings, and then read from the book of poems (Charles Olson, an MA native - wrote obessively of Gloucester, born but in Worcester) and start a review I promised to a friend/editor. I just added these last lines because it was too horrible to end with the tombstone of "go inspect those drawings". i am not going to peacably inabit these death-realms.

love,

k

the sonic liberations of plunderophonics

"If creativity is a field, copyright is the fence" – John Oswald (or, for the brave, John Oswald).

And the wonderful word plexure.

plexure: n. 1 The act or process of weaving
together -[Webster's 3rd]

I first read plexure as a diabolical portmanteau of pleasure + flex. And if anyone can help me understand why I read vinyl into flex (not cuz its bendy), beside maybe the old Dischord comp Flex Your Head, I’m thankful.

If you don’t know John Oswald’s early plunderphonic work (c1989), trek here. A full CD’s worth of assault and tweakery is downloadable in 2 large files (in gray, near the top). Bear in mind that this is his music 16 years ago, when the digital revolution was still years away from the type of sound-shaping and shifting advances that let a laptop become a complete soundstudio. The work appears to have been done through the painstaking manipulation of magnetic tape on a mixer. And probably requires a couple listenings to sink in (to destroy also being a creative act).

sound as property
sound as brand
sound as (re)source
sound as material
sound as food
“pop will eat itself”
cut its avant head off and get: the Gray Album.

Creativity as a matter of channel-surfing. Respecting that there is a wave (the surfer rides out waves – chooses among them for the One (finding many). Our culture provides a mindscape, through which we move. The question is to how?

Samples from Plexure (1993).
A synopsis of that project: an "megaplundermorphonemiclonic" “encyclopaedic popologue” covering 10 years (83-93) in pop music history that “plunders over a thousand pop stars” “It starts with rapmillisylables and progresses through the material according to tempo.” Thus becoming also a study of the relation of tempo to genre (there’s a moment when the metal is briefly cut by bluegrass – two very distinct mythologies of speed).

When I heard this as a teenager, it blew that same mid out the bedroom window. If it sounds more familiar, if I now have a sense as to the how of this work, and a better understanding of the where it works in and from, it does in one way become less of a visceral mindfuck. But knowing what goes into it, and what this type of work entails (incl. reams of Michael Jackson lawyers ordering you to “destroy all copies” and your family and neighbors shaking their heads year after year) it becomes more radical, more courageous, more plain old eccentric cum visionary. It tears the fence off the field – free-range as any organic label or cowboy legend can be.

Welcome to our new year. So lets hear it for electromegamadmonics. And what does it look like in words?