I’ll start with a painting by Magritte. A man looks at an egg and paints a bird. Anyone working on a problem or project, anyone in the design profession, should be able to look at something and imagine what it could be.
The project I chose is sustainability. There is no way to map how I arrived at and held on to the values that caused me to choose this project. Images, songs, and quotes constantly influence me in ways I can’t predict. So I’ll list a few . . . try to move in the direction of values related to sustainability . . . and try to explain how they affected me. I may be wrong but this kind of thing is very confusing anyway.
And so we had a prodigiously psychedelic experience, which was transcendental, intense, brilliant, insightful, profound, a passage beyond death where deceased family members, departed statesmen, deities, talking fish, animated weather fronts would carry on lively conversations with us and each other.
-Joe Frank
This is a quote from a radio piece called “Mountain Rain� done by Joe Frank. A confusing and fresh perception of the world. I think it is important from time to time to let yourself experience life like this . . . with complete wonder and awe.
I’ll quote pieces of the following songs and try to explain the various types of awe they represent.
The band Godspeed You! Black Emperor is mostly instrumental. Their affect on me has been significant largely because so much is left open to interpretation. Spliced within their music are monologues, rants, and even small songs. You’ll be confronted with anything from this folksy tune:
(from Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven - Antennas To Heaven):
what do we do with the baby
what do we do with the baby-o
wrap him up in a tablecloth
throw him up in the old hay loft
that's what you do with the baby
that's what you do with the baby-o
every time the baby grins
give my baby a bottle of gin
that's what you do with the baby
that's what you do with the baby-o
every time the baby cries
stick my finger in the baby's eye
to the nostalgic story of an old man:
(from Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven – Sleep):
It was Coney Island, they called Coney Island the playground of the world. There was no place like it, in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster. No place in the world like it, and it was so fabulous. Now it's shrunk down to almost nothing...you see. And, uh, I still remember in my mind how things used to be, and...uh, you know, I feel very bad. But people from all over the world came here...from all over the world...it was the playground they called it the playground of the world...over here. Anyways, you see, I...uh...you know...I even got, when I was very small, I even got lost at Coney Island, but they found me...on the...on the beach. And we used to sleep on the beach here, sleep overnight…they don't do that anymore. Things changed...you see. They don't sleep anymore on the beach.
Their first track on what I think was their debut album stuck with me. It starts with a poem spoken by what sounds like an old Native American man:
(from Godspeed You! Black Emperor - F# A# (Infinity) – The Dead Flag Blues):
the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
the government is corrupt
and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn
we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death
the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles
it went like this:
the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair
the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze
I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
these are truly the last days"
you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever
we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
for sure it's the valley of death
I open up my wallet
and it's full of blood
They create dark and obscure social commentaries through haunting soundscapes that I can’t get enough of. Using a similar technique of integrating seemingly random voices into a narrative The Books create some obscure commentary of their own:
(from The Books – Lost and Safe – Be Good to Them Always):
I can hear a collective rumbling in America.
I've lost my house, you've lost your house.
I don't suppose it matters which way we go.
This great society is going smash.
Oh, he's in the middle of putting things together and organizing himself.
You do not need to stand on one foot.
The modern town hardly knows silence.
You are doing something the whole world is doing.
You know I simply cannot understand people.
Oh, how sadly we mortals are deceived by our own imagination.
This is not real life; this is, for us aleatoric television, a mixed consort of soft instruments.
A culture is no better than its woods: a feeling of being connected with the past.
Look at it this way: you may fall and break your leg, and so one leg is shorter than the other. Can nothing more be done?
I particularly like the line about culture and woods.
(from Akron Family – Angels of Light & Akron Family – Future Myth):
Many years ago we found that
Light and sound were ample food.
We forgot about ourselves and
Reconnected me to you. . .
The future myth
Stories of the present when
they're past.
The future myth
Writing isn't reading till it's done.
The future myth
Global views of things we've
missed uh huh.
Like finding scissors,
Right in front of us.
We have an intense and mysterious world around us. Some songs capture it:
(from Neutral Milk Hotel – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – In the Aeroplane Over the Sea):
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly
From the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see. . .
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all.
The last line above, the last line in the song, sums up this idea of a world full of wonder and awe. Our environment is incredible in its complexity and connectivity. We should work with it, not against it. It has a lot to teach us:
(from Devendra Banhart – Niño Rojo – Little Yellow Spider):
Little yellow spider, laughing at the snow
Ah, maybe that spider knows something that I don't know
'Cause I'm goddamn cold
Little white monkey, staring at the sand
Well, maybe that monkey figured out something I couldn't understand
Who knows? . . .
And hey there, Mr. happy squid, you move so psychedelically
You hypnotize with your magic dance all the animals in the sea
For sure
A few songs have an uncanny way of showing our environment and our relationship to it:
(from Joanna Newsom – Ys – Emily):
There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Down into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below. . .
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror
Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I‘d set them to verse so I'd always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
And what's close to us is easy to enjoy:
(from Modest Mouse – Everywhere and his nasty Parlor Tricks – So Much Beauty in Dirt):
Roll down the windows and open our mouths
Taste where we are and play the music loud
Stop the car, lay on the grass
The planets spin and we watch space pass . . .
There’s so much beauty it could make you cry
A pulse:
(from Smog – Dongs of Sevotion – Bloodflow):
In this wonderful world
Hold on
In this beautiful world
Hold on
Bloodflow!
Do we care about the environment that spawned us? In the next song David Thomas Broughton explains what he wouldn’t do to someone he cares about. Good call David:
(from David Thomas Broughton - The Complete Guide to Insufficiency – Execution):
I wouldn't take her to an execution
I wouldn't take her to a live sex show
I wouldn't piss or shit on her would I?
Because I love her so.
Some pictures I took while in Alaska . . . self explanatory:
