Contextual Music

Funny how certain songs, once heard in a certain context, can never be listened to independently of that context again.  Elliot Smith’s “Needle in the Hay” just came up on a co-worker’s Pandora, and I realized I’ll never be able to hear that song without thinking about the scene from “The Royal Tenenbaums” when Luke Wilson tries to kill himself.  Some songs are more personally linked to times in my life; Outkast’s “Hey Ya” will always and forever bring back freshman year of college for me, and my time in Florence has a soundtrack all to itself.  Scientists say that our sense of smell has a direct link to our memory…apparently music does for me as well.

 

Sound & Fury, Signifying Nothing

We’ve been seeing even more nature than normal this past week–in addition to our old friend the raccoon, a few antelopes and a skunk have wandered into our backyard on a few occasions.  Liz and I also found a dead bobcat further out on the property, and I’ve seen larger spiders than I feel comfortable thinking about.  No snakes or scorpions yet, thank goodness.  The full moon is insanely bright here and Liz and I have taken to strolling about at night until we find a good place to sit and stargaze and just generally hang out.  I’m relishing the mosquito-free summer nights!  A couple of nights ago, we almost got run over by an antelope that we’d startled in the adobe courtyard next to the Arena.  Who knows what he was doing–there’s nothing to eat in there except for a rosemary bush.  After careening past us, he proceeded to stand out in the field and huff loudly at us periodically for the next hour.  We’d never seen or heard anything like it.

The usual mixed bag of museum-goers continue to pass through; last week, I gave a special tour to a large group of people who seemed more interested in talking to each other than looking at the art.  They didn’t seem to feel comfortable confronting the work on its own terms, and so they badgered Takako and me with quantifiable questions: how much did it cost? How much does it weigh?  How old is the artist?  As if by accumulating enough facts and figures about the work, they could put it into a box that they could understand or dismiss at will.  A few seemed almost offended by the Kabokov schoolhouse installation: “Why is this important?” “Why should I care about this?” “Why is this art?” “What does this do for you?”  It was also rainy, so they didn’t want to hear anything about the installations, they just wanted to get in out of the wet.  People make me tired.

One of the more interesting groups, though, was a pair of Czech musicians, the Havels.  Giving my spiel was a little more challenging than usual, as they had a woman simultaneously translating everything I said.  I’d stop talking to listen to her, and then she would stop because I had stopped, and then I’d forget where I was, and…well, you get the idea.  I got to go to their concert on Sunday at the Crowley Theater.  The best way to describe their music is maybe minimalist/avant-garde/experimental cello music.  They use viola de gambas, violoncellos, piano, and a host of little chimes and bells.  The stage was aglow with little tea lights and scattered with percussiony things that they would pick up and ding periodically.  The music completely screwed with my sense of time–Liz told me that the first piece lasted almost an hour, but I had no concept of the length while it was going on.  It was very cool, though, and completely unlike anything I’d heard before, except for maybe Godspeed You! Black Emperor in places.  I love that not only am I experiencing the unique craziness that is Marfa/West Texas, but I’m also getting the chance to take in all this culture at the same time.

Lots of office work on Monday–I’m doing some image-archive inventory for Nick and trying to gently move away from the hundreds-of-sticky-notes system and more towards a computerized-spreadsheet-database one.  A photographer and writer came in, doing a travel piece for (I think) Elle Decor magazine.  At first they just planned on taking pictures in the sheds, but I suggested the Oldenburg horseshoe, and eventually they ended up photographing almost every exhibit.  Both they and Nick were super-grateful for me taking the time to show them around, and didn’t seem to believe me when I said I’d rather be showing them around the grounds than sitting in the office for another two hours!  I guess I must come off as decently knowledgeable by now (finally), because neither of them believed I’d been here for just three weeks.  That’s a Good Thing, right?

Day off yesterday and today–yesterday I did all my productive stuff, like cleaning and going to the library, and today I pretty much just bummed around and read (partly while sunning in the old army hospital, which is actually pretty cool).  This gig still feels like a combination of summer camp, college, and actual work; I’m enjoying it while it lasts.  Liz’s brother is coming in tonight, so we’ll probably do something fun, plus we’re doing drinks out in the backyard with a couple of newish employees and the newly-arrived artist-in-residence, Jason Tomme.

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A random observation/thought:

Marfa is changing the way I think.  People who know me know that I’ve always loved words, but now they seem like such a limitation.  I’m experiencing so much here that can’t be expressed verbally, and I can’t mentally move beyond the boundaries of language.  Even as I’m experiencing something new here, I find myself automatically searching for the right words to describe it, as if at any moment I might be called upon to quantify the experience for someone else.  I’ve scoffed at the people who come to Chinati and only want to know numbers (How old? How many? How expensive? How big?), but I’m just as guilty as they are of trying to put the art into a framework I can understand instead of just letting it be what it is.  I’m reading a biography of Robert Irwin, Seeing is the Art of Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, which I feel is very relevant to my time here in terms of this frustration.  Of course, once you spend enough time here, it’s hard not to look at everything through Minimalist-colored glasses, if you will.  This is the thing: I want to be able to come to a new experience without preconceptions or expectations, without foreknowledge or prejudice, without all of the baggage we bring to each interaction with the unknown.  At the same time, though, isn’t that what makes us human?  If I look at something with no sense of ego or self-consciousness, how is it different than if it’s an animal looking at it, or leaving it unobserved?  Isn’t the connection between my mind and the artist’s part of the whole point of making art in the first place?

My mind just seems too loud recently, my ever-present interior monologue too intrusive.  Part of this is because for one of the first times in my life, I’m around a lot of quiet people.  They (unintentionally, I’m sure) make me feel like I talk a LOT, which is a strange feeling for me.  It makes me wonder if I’ve gradually become more talkative over the years, but didn’t realize it until I had something to compare it to.  I’m beginning to feel like if I break the silence to say something, the thing I say needs to be more valuable than the silence it displaces.

Yes, I can appreciate the irony of writing about this.

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All Chinati Posts

All Chinati Pictures

 

New Friends and Art and Concerts, Oh My

Things have been pretty mellow here this week.  A few tours here and there, which I’m finally feeling comfortable with.  Still sketchy enough on the dates to need a cheat-sheet, but I’m hoping to be off that by the end of the week.  Miguel’s last day was Friday, and we ended the day with coffee and brownies from the Austin St. Cafe in the courtyard.  I made a new friend, a baby praying mantis:

I played with him for a minute and then set him back on the picnic table.  A half-hour or so later, at the dollar store, Liz told me to hold still and plucked him out of my hair.  Apparently, he’d decided to hitch a ride.  She put him at a jaunty angle on her cowboy hat and we continued shopping.  When we got home, he was still there.

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Saturday evening was full of culture.  Rob (assistant director) had promised a couple of interns to help with a piano concert that night, so Liz and I volunteered.  Volunteering consisted of pouring wine for music lovers and discovering vinho verde, a yummy sparkling white.  We got to listen to Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, which I really enjoyed.  I haven’t sought out much classical music since I was young, but I’m glad that serendipity conspired to bring me to that concert.  The last movement of the last sonata, the pianist explained, is what had brought her to Marfa to play these pieces.  “I’m not saying that Beethoven was inspired by the West Texas landscape,” she said, “but I think you really get the same sense of infinity from this music.  It plays with your sense of time.”

After the concert, we wandered over to the Yard Dog, a gallery that was having an opening complete with live music.  A lot of other people had drifted over from the piano recital as well, and we mingled between the art and enthusiastic dancers, PBRs in hand.  Still later in the evening, we checked out a band that was playing on a lot on someone’s ranch and closed down the Thunderbird Lounge (with a bottle of vinho verde, of course).  I’m just proud of myself for staying up that late–my body’s still somewhat on the in-bed-by-eleven clock.

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Yesterday Liz and I ate at the delicious Austin St. Cafe, which is only open Saturdays and Sundays.  We both had curried green eggs and tomato-basil soup and could barely walk away from the table.  The proprietor is the nicest woman I’ve ever met, not least because she offered to give me the recipes for both dishes.  They operate out of their house, so sitting on their porch feels like you’ve stopped by a friend’s house–a friend who loves cooking and gardening, so you sit at little white tables, looking at her beautiful garden, while she brings you endless dishes of culinary delight.  No, you can’t have my life, but thanks for asking.

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Liz and I both have the day off tomorrow, and so tonight we’re going to try to see the mysterious Marfa Lights.  Expect a full report here, Dear Readers!

 

Colin Meloy! The Exhaustive Report.

EDIT: now with links to all the songs for your musical enjoyment.

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Okay, so it was amazing.  I mean, it’s not like I’ve ever seen him or the Decemberists put on a bad show, but still.  Wow.  The opening act, singer-songwriter Laura Gibson, was also lovely.  She looks a little like Marketa Inglova, and her voice evokes Inglova, Sally Ellyson of Hem, Deb Talan of the Weepies, and Joanna Newsom.  She was disarmingly, charmingly nervous and shared various animal facts with us that she’d found in a book she’d bought at local used bookstore The Dusty Bookshelf.  She also told us about this “amazing new website” she’d just discovered (Wikipedia) that listed the state dances of each state.  “Do you know what Kansas’s state dance is?” she asked.  Silence.  “Neither do I. I bet it’s the square dance, though, because 90% of them have the square dance.  Including Oregon.” (She’s from Portland.)

Colin was his usual verbose self, sipping a glass of red wine between songs and regaling the crowd with the banter and background stories for which he has a well-earned reputation. We heard the story behind “Apology Song” (originally sung on a friend’s answering machine after his bike was stolen), witnessed the christening of a half-eaten bag of M&Ms someone had left on stage (“Blaine”), and learned of the tragic birth defect that forces him to stand on tiptoe when tuning his guitar.

He mostly focused on very early and fairly recent pieces, from the first Decemberists EP (“Shiny“, “Apology Song“, “Oceanside“) to a “brand-new, hot-off-the-presses” double-song about a magical forest rendezvous and an infanticidal villain.  Songs from Picaresque and The Crane WIfe made up most of the rest of the set.   He played the original, slower version of “The Perfect Crime No. 2” and had the audience sing the missing band parts.  I wouldn’t have thought the song would even be feasible without its signature percussion, but he pulled it off with aplomb.  Next was “O Valencia!” with a sly insertion of his “worst song ever” (“Dracula’s Daughter”), half-way through. “Let’s get back to our story,” he said after this digression, returning to the original song.  “Envision an early morning in San Francisco, the sun rising over the bay…wait, no…the hills.  The mist is curling in.  The intersection is 26th Street and South Van Ness.  Two El Dorados slowly pull up.  They turn off their engines.  Two figures exit the cars and approach each other.” Creative writing major, anyone?

One of the gems of the evening for me was “Tristan and Iseult“, a song from his college band, Tarkio.  Another was when Laura Gibson returned to the stage and they performed a Sam Cooke song, “Cupid“.

But I think anyone who was there would agree that the true highlight of the evening was the encore. First, Colin faked us out with the beginning of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “King of Carrot Flowers“. Cheers from the audience.  “Oh, c’mon, guys,I’m not going to play that.” He then performed, in full, the celebrated 8-minute-long “Mariner’s Revenge Song.”  If I’d had my doubts about an acoustic rendition of “The Perfect Crime”, I wouldn’t have even tried to imagine what this song would sound like without its usual backup of tuba, accordian, and percussiony sound effects.  It pretty much demands a full band.  Guess what?  IT WAS AWESOME.  The audience, who had been warmly receptive but subdued in that indie-concert-goer way (arms-folded or hands-in-pockets stance, shifting weight or nodding in rhythm to convey appreciation), got completely into the song: lustily singing along, clapping and swaying in time. It was as though we had all, for that magical moment, been transformed into the salty seadogs of Colin’s imagination.

 

Free Things for Culturalizing Yourself!

• You can listen to the entirety of the new Weepies album, Hideaway, here.
• You can (and should) read/download Kelly Link’s book of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, here.  (Scroll down to “Free Download”.)  She’s one of my new favorite authors.  I’ve been describing her writing as “postmodern fantasy” to other people.  A quote from her newer collection, Magic for Beginners: “Modern art is a waste of time.  When the zombies show up, you can’t worry about art.  Art is for people who aren’t worried about zombies.”

 

Odds and Ends

Last day at B&N was on Friday.  I’ll really miss working there–more than I expected.  Although constantly being around books, movies and music was a little hard on my paycheck…not really a problem I had when I was an office clerk.

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Full speed ahead on Chinati preparations!  Some sick part of me really likes figuring out the mechanics of packing for two months with one suitcase.  I get to try minimalist living (ha! ha! art history pun INTENDED) without having to get rid of all my stuff.

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Colin Meloy concert this week!  I’m very excited.  He is on the short list of famous people I’d really, really like to be friends with.  His live album came out a couple of weeks ago.  I’m not usually a big fan of live albums, but listening to this one was like having him in your living room, playing music for you and a couple of friends.  Other new releases I’m excited about:  the Weepies‘ Hideaway comes out this Tuesday!  I’m really trying to cut back on my spending, so it might be awhile before I get ahold of this one.  If you don’t know the Weepies, you should probably go find a copy of Say I Am You immediately.

 

Bits & Pieces

Chinati Posts

A short list of things that have made me happy recently:

• New music! A friend recently pointed me towards Tarkio, which was Colin Meloy’s band before he started the Decemberists. So really, it’s technically old music which is new to me. I’m enjoying their CDs very very much. I recently acquired a few other new albums, and the one I’ve found myself listening to on repeat is the self-titled Vampire Weekend debut. The cd is happy fun Paul-Simon-type indie college rock, and features the kind of lyrics that people tend to think are either sophisticated/quirky or precious/pretentious. Kind of like Wes Anderson movies.
• I got to meet Norton Juster and Jules Pfeiffer a couple of weeks ago when I went to get my copy of The Phantom Tollbooth signed. I mumbled something about how my childhood wouldn’t have been the same without their book, and they mumbled, “Thanks” and signed it. I was hoping for a little more interaction, but they both looked like ordinarily-cheerful old men who’d had a very long day and just wanted it to be over. I also got to meet Jane Yolen, who was perfectly lovely and told us that Kansas was the only state where she’d had a book burned(!).
• At long last, I managed to track down a reasonably (actually: dirt-cheap) -priced Adobe Creative Suite CS3. It comes this week! While Elements does a fair amount of what I need, I’ve been missing my Photoshop lovin’.
• HAMMERPRESS Letter Press & Design Studio. They operate in the Crossroads gallery district in KC. One of my stops this past First Friday, and one of my favorite galleries. I own this print, and it makes me happy.

I also lust after several of their concert posters.

 

Listen to Some Good Music!

I’m trying out a new online music storage system I found through StumbleUpon, anywhere.fm. I’m currently in the process of uploading some of my favorite stuff, so if you’re looking for something new to listen to, or are curious as to what I listen to, check out http://anywhere.fm/witfulklutz. Enjoy!  (The site is still beta-testing, so I apologize if it doesn’t work for you right away.)