I don't know if LeBron is coming to New York but I do know that I'm disgusted.
Translation: take that shit.
Having premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, director Duncan Jones' "Moon" is an interesting type of SciFi/Thriller. The exotic moonscape setting and futuristic technology at the base play second fiddle to the intense introspective drama of the lead character, Sam Bell as played by Sam Rockwell of "Frost/Nixon" and "Choke."
As the only human staff present on a moon base which harvests 75% of the world's clean energy, Sam Bell is dependent upon Gertie, his robot companion, to fulfill most of his duties and for a source of companionship. Using Kevin Spacey as the voice of Gertie clearly invokes "2001, A Space Odyssey's" HAL, which allows for quite a deft misdirection. I felt myself waiting for this creepy-voiced robot named Gertie to turn out to be evil and ruin things for Sam. But in a twist I certainly wasn't expecting, Gertie became a willing and faithful accomplice in Sam's effort to escape the base.
There is much to say about the film's portrayal of the personal isolation Sam feels due to being alone on the moon. It's more than just the distance, time, or solitude: in fact, the technology which surrounds Sam and makes his life on the moon possible is, I would argue, the main source of his isolation--especially his isolation from himself.
As Sam lives out his three year contract at the lunar base, he communicates with Earth regularly. But because of technical difficulties with the satellite in lunar orbit, he is forced to record his messages before sending, and all replies from Earth must be recorded as well. This lack of live, real-time communication provides one layer of isolation, but Sam seems to find just enough human interaction in the recorded messages from his wife to get by.
It is not until the accident about two weeks before his scheduled return to Earth that Sam recognizes the full extent of his solitude. Having been saved from exposure to the vacuum of space by his own clone, Sam turns to Gertie (a piece of technology) asking for answers, but is instead met with deflection and refusal. At first, his own clone won't even talk to him either.
In desperation, he takes a lunar rover outside of the base's radius of interference and, turning to another piece of technology, tries to contact his wife and young daughter. Instead of reaching his wife, Sam reaches his daughter, who is now 15 years old and who also explains that her mother has since passed. Rather than lessening his apparent isolation, the phone call only serves to make clear to Sam just how isolated he's been all along.
There are clear parallels between this technological isolation and the pitfalls of using a machine as an intermediary for human emotional connection.
With "Moon," the technology is used deliberately to keep Sam in isolation, and to keep him blissfully ignorant of it all. The company which owns the lunar base has clearly gone to a great deal of trouble to construct a three-year life for each successive Sam Clone, implanting false memories of a family on Earth, jamming the lunar satellite to prohibit live transmissions, and having Gertie knowingly watch over it all.
With things like online social networking however, the goal is always to lessen someones isolation from society by providing a means for instant communication and exchange of information over any distance. Again, it is clear that things like Facebook and MySpace are quite useful for keeping in touch over long distances, but when these services are allowed to stand in for actual face-to-face human interaction, the kind of technological isolation Sam Bell experiences begins to creep into our lives.
On the subject of music in "Moon," I can say that I was very excited to hear more of Clint Mansell's film scoring work after becoming such a fan of his soundtrack to "Requiem for a Dream." Mansell's score for "Moon" did an impressive job of combining traditional, organically melodic piano lines with the classic dystopic futuristic screeching sound effects that seem to represent the film's struggle between the organic human and the technological machine.
However, other parts of Mansell's score deliver exactly the sort of pseudo-angelic tone clusters and minimalism we have all come to associate with film and film music depictions of space and space travel (think the very beginning of the intro to "Star Trek: The Next Generation"). I think Mansell could certainly have thought a bit more outside of the music box. Perhaps he could have used the same kind of post modern self-referential irony that Gertie's creepy voice and clear reference to "2001, A Space Odyssey's" evil HAL enriches the revelation that Gertie is in fact most interested in being helpful to Sam rather than a hindrance.
I also have this problem with the film's premise: it seems to me that no organization would ever create a base of operations, especially on the moon, which is staffed by only one person--clone or not. This point is crucial to the drama of the film, however, and it causes the word "contrived" to come to my mind.
In all, however, "Moon" is an exceptionally acted, beautifully shot and edited, and thoughtfully conceived film. Sam Rockwell's mostly solo performance is very compelling, the director's skill shows through, and Mansell's score is powerful as expected.
Stay tuned for my comments on WHayes' review and his on mine this time Monday.
Fire Clean by Pflames
Please Play my Demo by Pflames
I Won't Stop Rocking by Pflames
AS: Whats the story behind the stage name: Pflames?
AS: Could you recap this past year; Where you've performed, who you've met, rhymes you wrote and any effects that the journey has had on your music?
Let's be sure we have the basic math worked out:
Mofo + Afro = Mofro
Front man JJ Grey writes about his childhood home in Florida, a lake called Lochloosa, while on tour in England. Or so he tells us as he politely taps out the intro melody/harmony on the electric piano. The title song from Mofro's 2004 album Lochloosa is one of their more popular pieces, and my favorite of all.
Lochloosa by JJ Grey and Mofro
The second time I saw Mofro live at the Neighborhood Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was just finishing up in the little boys' room when they started playing it. I finished rapidly and elbowed my way into the standing room crowd back to two great friends and our PBR Tallboys.
The song's text is JJ's clear desire to return to his homeland of northern Florida, back to the huge old trees, the swamplands, the heat, and retreating away from commercial development.
I love the studio version of this song, and I listen to it frequently. Standing alone as a musical recording, it is excellent: dynamic, heart-felt, and full of soul. But because a simple audio recording can only appeal to one of our five human senses, I'm always left hanging and trying to recall my two experiences with the band in concert.
Hearing the studio recording of "Lochloosa" allows, I think, for easy and very effective understanding of the song's subject matter. Through my sense of hearing, I can construct my impression of JJ and his longing for home. The soul comes through the recording equipment, through the iTunes Store, through the mp3 data, and through my stereo loud and clear.
But as I was saying last week, art is about the creation of a connection between two people through a common emotional identification. When you take as many of the machines and computers out of the equation as possible seeing Mofro live, you also add four more sensory experiences to the blend that will become your connection.
Rather than simply hearing and understanding JJ's words and feeling a bit of his soul, the live experience allows you to hear the band and the crowd, see the stage and the people around you, smell and taste the beer, sweat, and joy, and feel the woofers resonating your skeleton.
While the studio recording of "Lochloosa" is carefully through-composed, their rendition of the song live is relaxed and spontaneous: the intro allowing for JJ to verbally connect with the crowd and tell the story of how the song came to be, the latter portions allowing for ripping trumpet, guitar, and tenor sax solos which are certainly missed on the album version. Mofro's live sound simply seems fuller, richer, and more complete than their album sound, especially with the addition of horns on stage.
The enormous ceiling fan forces fresher air down into a crowd of people who have long since ceased to be an audience to JJ Grey and Mofro. The band's connection with itself, its connection with the crowd, and the crowd's connection with itself in common identifcation with the text are all so complete that all are now a part of the whole art taking place.
Everyone has their own personal version of Lochloosa, the home of their childhood, their roots, and everyone knows the feeling of being separated from their Lochloosa. JJ Grey's brilliance as a musician is his ability to cause his guitar, harmonica, electric piano, etc to get out of the way of the art and allow a whole room of personal human connections to occur in the live setting. Because the "audience" is as invested in the emotion of the song as the band, the live experience of "Lochloosa" is an event of complete art. It ceases to be a song about JJ and his roots and becomes a song about all of our commonality in the human experience of having roots.
JJ Grey and Mofro are certainly worth hearing, but they're even more worth hearing live.
I don’t think most of us wake up in the morning thinking about the miserable shit we’d like to befall our former neighbors, friends, or lovers. I'll go even further and suggest that no one plans on hating what we know another person loves -- but sometimes it turns out that way. Thus, I can’t shake the idea that sometimes we just aren’t supposed to like a motherfucker. Sometimes you just look down at 14 months of bouncing baby boy and think, “I wouldn’t mind if you fell down some stairs.”
I didn’t go into this blind. I play dumb sometimes -- better safe than sorry I figure -- but this time I knew full well what the stakes were. I knew what he meant to his mother: she adores him. We fast became friends, and she told me in a moment of heartbreaking vulnerability that he literally saved her from suicide. She didn’t know her purpose before him. Because of that knowledge, I never smile at him. I don’t want him feeling comfortable around me. The one time we made a connection, he giggled and wanted me to pick him up. A few minutes later he came back and hugged my leg. “He’s never done that to my guy friends before.” That would have been a good omen to a more honorable man, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it so positively. I only saw a liability: if the kid likes you, then she’ll like you, and then you’ll have to get “serious.” Never that. Serious men are miserable, and I didn’t want to be a long-term serious man. Not this soon.
I don't know exactly when it started, but I think it was inevitable for my mood toward him to change from indifference to enmity. The straw could have been the day he paused from spinning around the living room to audibly shit his pants: something he found hilarious. Maybe it was the 7am Baby Einstein wake up calls (we both hated being alone, so I slept over sometimes); maybe their lie reflected my own. We were both faking it: those tapes wouldn’t make him any smarter, not even marginally, and no matter how tight I held her at night, I couldn’t convince myself that I was not, in fact, making a dangerous mistake. “Friend, my ass. This is how women get hurt,” I thought. “This is how bad relationships start.” Maybe I was jealous that he could be with the woman who loved him; the one who loves me is half a country away.
So here I am (or was, as it’s finally over), it’s morning again; I'm waiting for the bathroom. I’m looking at her drooling, slack-jawed, $10,000 paperweight, and can’t help but picture gently placing an index finger between his big, vacant eyes and pushing backward. I wonder if he’ll topple like a stack of alphabet bricks. He waddles over, carrying a little green cylinder. He was tired of sucking on it and wanted to roll it across the room. He looks up at me, and holds it out for me to play with, but his grip isn’t strong enough and it falls to the floor. He tries to pick it up, but my foot beats him to it: a little kick sends the thing clattering across the den. He looks hurt. I feel very satisfied.
We live in a society that has rejected the idea of "black"and "white", right and wrong, good and evil. Most people don't even agree that such old-fashioned notions like "the truth" even exists. Perception is what rules our world, and not just any perception, but your perception. However, even though we believe we live in a world of technicolored gray - very rarely do we actually explore those real life experiences from which we draw these conclusions. In these series of stories we will explore what it is that makes our world grey, what inspires our moral relativism. Often we encounter moments in our lives that do not make sense - where our actions clash with our values - where what we thought we believed starts to crumble. Many times these moments are traumatic, sometimes they are funny, often they are surprising, but they are always moments where we are at our most human. Many of these stories will contain anti-heroes, will have no clear morals, and may very well be disturbing. Good.
The purpose of the Boundary series is to cause the reader to question, to empathize with another persons experience, and perhaps even be comforted by how deeply flawed we can be - how even really good people can do bad things - how we sometimes give in to our animal urges - how we are most often fully alive right at that point where we are in the greatest danger of losing our humanity.
We encourage all of our readers to dig deep within themselves and write down their own boundary experience(s) - at the very least comment on the experiences of others. If you do write a story you can send it to artstarblog@gmail.com.
Thanks for supporting Art Star and always remember "you can't fake real".
-smartblackboy
Anyone following my posts for awhile know that I went to Pennsylvania this summer for a few weeks to do night photos in locations from my past. Since I returned to NC, where I now live, something shifted in my consciousness, sort of curtailing my obsessive shooting style, leaving me with more time on my hands, fewer images in my computer....not that I don't agree with the need to cut back the time behind a camera lens and get a life, but I found it kinda strange that about a month ago, I seemed called from within to San Francisco...another location that I lived for 6 years, back awhile ago.
My reason for making the trip was actually for another reason: to do a particular initiation with a spiritual master from India, on the weekend, up on a mountain top in Laytonville, 3+ miles north of SF. Figuring I was already all the way out there, I planned to stay with friends in the city for the following week.
Although the photographs I've chosen to show don't all have specific connections to the past experiences of living there, the trip did take me back into my past again. Specifically, the apple orchard...I stopped in Sebastopol to visit friends on the way back down to the city, and got lost....pulled into that orchard to call for directions again and spent time shooting photos. The next day, as I was leaving he said, "By the way, that orchard you went into was the same one we all picked apples in for the apple juice we bottled and sold at the farmers market"....being location and directionally challanged, plus many years later on top of that, it was quite a shock to have been deposited squarely into my past, with camera in tow. A few days later, standing infront of an apartment I lived in on Potrero hill, on a whim I knocked on the door, only to have the tenant open the door and invite me in to look around when I told her about visiting previous homes I've lived in. I shot a few frames inside, however it was daytime, and it doesn't count for my night series.
So, another part of my past came forward for scrutiny and enjoyment. I'm not sure what any of this means, if anything, but it was fun hanging out there, exploring places photographically I knew from before and others that were new.
Many of our first experiences with the infamous and ever-popular "Auto Tune" came from hearing things like Daft Punk's "One More Time." In other words, many of us came to associate Auto Tune fringe electronica with purposefully non-human voices singing very simple, but very vague lyrics.
The thing about this song when it came out in early 2001 is that it fit neatly into a genre of music which is based entirely on its total dependence on the computers and machines necessary to create it. Sure, some of the music you hear in "One More Time" came from samples of people playing real instruments (probably), but the song itself is in no way a primary source of human-created art. All of the primary source material (the raw human voice vocals, the original samples, etc) are filtered through an electronic medium, and we therefore experience the materials as secondary sources.
I wrote a facebook status that read “someone died tonight…I was there…and we were all dancing.” Ten hours later someone wanted to know whether I meant it literally. Around 3 a.m. at a party that probably violated many city laws, a girl either jumped or fell from a roof. Whether she died or was just severely injured – I have no idea. However, I know that no one in my group of 10 really cared. And that today I am struck by how inured we can be to human suffering, in fact, the very sad reality of human tragedy. When the girl fell, we had only been at the party maybe 2 or 3 minutes, but had each just paid $10. Our greatest concern as people were fleeing to their cars, afraid of the police and being found at the scene of the blood, was getting our money back.
We raced around the parking lot, looking from face to face, trying to find the person who took our money. He was inside of the house, visibly shaking, and when we confronted him – he literally almost threw our money back. His said,”a girl just fell from the roof, how can you worry about something petty.” He was right, but I felt a certain satisfaction and in fact a small triumph as I slipped my twenty back into my pocket. This night had become a metaphor for the sweet life. Earlier I had a moment of intense depression. I had journeyed to my old school, visited old friends, witnessed the death of one of my favorite galleries, and now here I was with a chance to win my night back, and even if a drunken girl fell from a roof at a party – I wasn’t ready to call it quits.
Walking quickly, still a bit intoxicated, perhaps slightly in shock and overwhelmed by it all, we fled to our cars as the ambulance came. We drove to a friend’s apartment with a great view of downtown, and we danced. Afrobeat, salsa, meringue, Harvey milk projected on the blinds, white Christmas lights, cans of millerlite, beautiful girls in garters, guys excited to meet the satorialist, in the early morning, hidden in Dallas, strangers one and all, we danced. We basked in the hormones that watching death gives off, and our hearts beat, and we felt part of something, breathless, full of wonder, we danced and it was exactly the type of moments that young artists hope for.
Yet, the weird feeling, the thing that kept bothering me, was that a girl did die. And her death was inexplicably tied to my night being redeemed. That without her presence, this mysterious extra member, this night would not have crossed the edge into sublimity. Without her, our dancing would not have had meaning. I would not be here struggling to make sense of youthful exuberance interrupted by mortality. I would not be trying to understand my own selfish attempts to shake jadedness in order to feel alive. But perhaps the most important thing is that the night was beautiful and the moment did have weight and that it was joyous, and pure, and mysterious.
And that someone did die tonight, and that I was there, and we were, indeed, all dancing.
