Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The May 2010 Pod(cast)

May 2010: untitled
http://www.sendspace.com/file/93bsnf (for now)


I made this mixtape project to fill my time between sleeplessness and being an unemployed parent, while under the influence of some serious life introspection. And it sucks compared to my previous stuff, but not in that way that sometimes people can be all self-depreciating, saying “Ah this isn’t that great,” while all the time screaming, “Look at me! My work has merit!”

A really good friend of mine died almost six years ago – today, give or take, whenever you may be reading this. May on the whole is a month that's a motherfucker for me nowadays, and while usually I do anniversary events pretty well, this year is a bit different. Dunno why, and I’m sure if my psychological therapeutic skills didn’t have almost five months of dust on them I’d probably be able to tell you why. But fuck it. What’s "art" for anyway, if not catharsis? I’m making a Plankton [from Spongebob] stuffed toy for my daughter right now, at the same time that I’m also trying to figure out how to make a comp DVD to watch when I’m trying to stave off chronic insomnia, while I'm trying to finish up this research paper for the Journal of Popular Culture AND getting little craft wood cubes so I can do an art project focusing on an old 8-bit video game. Freud or one of his ilk would probably have a field day. In fact, I have this grand plan that, upon my life’s cessation, I entertain the notion that I’ll have at the funeral a modest display of things that I’ve made, written, finished, accomplished, while a set of CDs plays my stupid little mixtapes over the visitation. If I don't hurry, it'll be a very lacking display indeed.

Ah, but I’m deliriously missing the point. I made this mixtape using practically none of my CDs (all that shit’s in storage, about to be auctioned off for nonpayment), nothing really that recent (certainly nothing that really bangs or even gels together), and, in my viewpoint not one of these tracks hangs together. Listen real hard to the transitions between the songs ... nothing more than fade outs over fade ins, and even those don’t mask that I just didn’t care to “DJ right.”

Separately, all this shit has something to say. It’s all schizophrenic … kinda personal in all its unshined glory. The songs, out of context, have their place in the world, and in life (mine). “Anyone,” I sing as a lullaby, leaving out the cussing; it’s funny to hear this now, because it has a lot of words in it that probably should have been said to someone important at a time that was a lot more crucial than now. The anti-life equation is exactly what it is: the equation that proves that life can ultimately become meaningless … but it’s got a nice beat. The Ric Flair thing – I found it online on Youtube or something – and I do like how I got the Kanye West track blended in … there, that’s my big artistic flourish that I’m proud of. Fittingly, the Richie Rich skit from an ep of Robot Chicken follows, over the Alchemist’s “Worst Comes to Worst” instrumental. “I Started a Joke,” the Faith No More version, is next. “Death of Kratos” from the God of War II soundtrack documents the fall, and all of it caps off with an awesome track by SGM superstar Jake Palumbo et al., with the Spacelab posse cut, “The Title.”

The global theme is life, death, and redemption. Success, abject failure, rebirth and reward and regrowth … it’s all subjective. The “lullaby” overlaps the lament of an old man who’s lost it all, but still has big goddamn plans. But all are born into a life where the odds, the numbers, the equation is already stacked against you. So you get success, maybe, for what? A moment? A minute? The jet-flying, the kiss-stealin’, stylin’ profilin’? It provides a façade of independence and integrity … it’s all a joke, a parody. Ric, Kanye … all just showing off their inheritance: Ric’s, that aura that was bestowed in Florida, by the NWA, and by the privilege of retrospection; Kanye’s, the status he elevated himself to, rapping ghost-written lines over factory beats. All just Richie Rich’s, wishing they really could shit gold bricks (despite the apparent discomfort), instead of being unable to retire due to multiple divorces & poor investing and being reduced to stealing a microphone and a moment for ego. For every child born, there’s a dream of being the next big thing; there’s your joke. Death is a relative term, be it existential, temporal, mortal, or just the death of a dream ... we all want to write the Next Great American Novel, but then, we’re born into this “everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die” mindset. Go go go, don’t stop, that’s what we came to fuckin’ do. And sure, we end up the champion in the end; well, sometimes. But really, it doesn’t matter. He who dies with the most toys, still dies; isn’t that what the t-shirt says?

See why the shit’s untitled? Well, except at the end ... there’s "The Title." Haw.

This might be the last one of these I do. If not, bully. And if so, at least I left the bastards something to talk about.

1 comment:

Rev. Joshua said...

Good stuff all around. The podcast is now embedded in the sidebar to the right.