There’s a great essay over at Stereogum by Chris Deville about the collaboration between Elvis Costello and The Roots, Wise Up Ghost.
“The first thing to understand about Wise Up Ghost is that it isn’t a vanity project,” Deville writes. “Yes, the new LP, released yesterday on Blue Note, is a full-length collaboration between Elvis Costello and the Roots. And yes, full-length collaborations between well-known artists sometimes end up as mere historical curiosities (Jay-Z and R. Kelly’sBest Of Both Worlds comes to mind) rather than blockbuster team-ups (Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch The Throne comes to mind). But Questo, Costello, and company seem to have put their all into this album, and the results are favorable. It might be a lark, but it’s an exceedingly pleasant lark.
For the rest of the piece, head over to Stereogum.
Yesterday’s review of Thomas Pynchon’s “Bleeding Edge,” in the New York Times by Jonathan Lethem is a good read, and makes me want to read the book. It’s worth your time and you’ll find it here.
I’ve been sitting in on an art history class recently, specifically it’s a history of Modern Art, which, I was surprised to learn, began in the 18th century and ended in 1945. I hope that’s not something everyone else in the world but me has known for years, but like they say, whatever makes you humble…
Another big piece of Art knowledge that got laid on me from the guy teaching the class is the idea that everything has already been done. Nothing is new. All an artist can do is variations on what’s come before. So you don’t have to sweat it to come up with something ‘new.’ You can just get to work writing or painting or conceptualizing or shooting videos or making music, and not worry about being original. I mean did Robert Johnson worry about whether the songs he sang were ‘new’? Muddy Waters? Junior Wells? T-Model Ford? I don’t think so. They just made the best music they could. The force of their personalities gives the music they made a unique quality, even if the words and 12 bar structure are the same old same old.
Recently I read a terrific novel by Paula Fox, “The God of Nightmares,” that was published in 1990, and in the intro I came across this quote:
It is a fact that, very broadly speaking and with some exceptions, there are only two structured models for novels: The status quo is established; someone arrives or something happens to shatter it. Thus Anna Karenina; thus Sula. Or – it’s converse – a character impelled by any number of forces from boredom to a crisis in a distant place, goes forth into the world and discovers complexities undreamed of at home; thus Tom Jones; thus Moby Dick. – Roselyn Brown, writer, poet, auther of Tender Mercies.
As a writer working on a second novel, it’s reassuring to know there are, big picture, only two plots. And every writer you can think of, from Homer to Elena Ferrante, are spinning out variations on those two plots. What a relief.
J. D. Salinger wrote one ‘first sentence’ printed below.
Not all my posts are about music. This one is about writing. Actually, it’s about how writers begin novels and short stories. I’ve collected a selection of ‘first sentence,’ although in some cases it’s the first paragraph. Enjoy.
The First Sentence
1 Today was my first Biddy League game and my first day in any organized basketball league. I’m enthused about life due to this exciting event. The Biddy League is a league for anyone 12 yrs. old or under. I’m actually 13 but my coach Lefty gave me a fake birth certificate. Lefty is a great guy; he picks us up for games in his station wagon and always buys us tons of food. I’m too young to understand about homosexuals but I think he is one.
2 She was on her knees and rubbing her back against parts of the house and backing into corners and sliding out from under curtains, rump polishing the floor, and she was saying, “Sit with me, Alice.” She was saying, “Talk to me. Be a daughter. Tell me what you’ve been doing.” She spoke uninflectedly, as if thinking of something else – the dishes to do, drawers to line, clotted screens to clean out with a toothpick. Handles missing, silver gone, and a Walter in the next room unwilling to leave!
3 “A huge wave nearly swept me away,” said the seventh man, almost whispering. “It happened one September afternoon when I was ten years old.”
The man was the last one to tell his story that night. The hands of the clock had moved past ten. The small group that huddled in a circle could hear the wind tearing through the darkness outside heading west. It shook the trees, set the windows to rattling, and moved past the house with one final whistle.
4 If it made any real sense – and it doesn’t even begin to – I think I might be inclined to dedicate this account, for whatever it’s worth, especially if it’s the least bit ribald in parts, to the memory of my late, ribald stepfather, Robert Agadganian, Jr.
5 Three Indians were standing out in front of the post office that hot summer morning when the motorcycle blazed down Walnut Street and caused Mel Weatherwax to back his pickup truck over the cowboy who was loading sacks of lime.
6 You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.
7 One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.
8 I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.
9 In an ideal world, we would have been orphans. We felt like orphans and we felt deserving of the pity that orphans get, but embarrassingly enough, we had parents. I even had two. They would never let me go, so I didn’t say goodbye; I packed a tiny bag and left a note.
10 When you pass the runover deer in the car, crows start squawking. The deer lies up high on a snowbank, all four legs sticking up in the air at the edge of the road, right at the spot where I come out of the woods on my snowshoes. A doe. I trudge up to her and turn her over. One side is already torn up, an eye is missing. Tracks of coyote and fox lead up to and away from the animal in all directions.
In the woods I’m illiterate.
11 When I am run down and flocked around by the world, I go down to Farte Cove off the Yazoo River and take my beer to the end of the pier where the old liars are still snapping and wheezing at one another.
12 A screaming comes across the sky. It happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.
It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall – soon – it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace.
13 The first time I saw him he couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, a little ferret of a kid, sharp and quick. Sammy Glick. Used to run copy for me. Always ran. Always looked thirsty.
14 When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm was not less capable than the next fellow.
And here are the writer’s and the books or stories where I found those first sentences.
Although I expect that much of what I post here will deal with music, I’ll also write about writing, especially related to the novel I completed earlier this year, “Days of the Crazy-Wild,” and a new one I’m currently at work on. I’ll also, on occasion, talk about books I’m reading, films I’ve seen, art and whatever else makes some kind of serious impression.
My first post, which went up yesterday and is about Bob Dylan’s Another Self Portrait, is the second music column I’ve written for the new Australian version of Addicted To Noise. I’m writing a monthly column for the new ATN.
I’ve also posted the first chapter of “Days of the Crazy-Wild,” and there’s a link to it next to the “About me” link near the top of this page. I hope you’ll read the chapter and let me know what you think. My hope is that it’ll pull you into the narrative dream, and as you read it you’ll feel like you’re experiencing what it was like on the West Coast back in the early ’70s when the counterculture and it’s ideas and ideals still seemed to be alive.
I’ll also sometimes post lists of what I’m currently into, and they’ll look like this:
1. Coming Apart, Body/Head (Matador).
2. “The Butler” (in theaters now).
3. “The God of Nightmares,” Paula Fox (W. W. Norton & Company).
4. The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, Neko Case (Anti-).
5. The Isle of Wight recordings, Bob Dylan (Sony Legacy). Available as Mp3 downloads if you don’t want to buy the $100 Another Self-Portrait box set.
6. “Oh Come On, The Julie Ruin (TJR). Song and video.
