2013/08/17

Systems of Ecstasy Baked into Bricks





Colin Moulding is 58 today. XTC is in the innermost  circle of bands/musicians that rotate in and out of the two open spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, have been for thirty-five years, and if I prefer on the whole and by more than a smidgen Andy Partridge songs to Colin Moulding songs (and recognize that XTC is a Partridge project, which is technically the entity that rotates in and our of the spots) that doesn't mean I don't love Colin Moulding songs.











  • I got two emails re: my comment yesterday in TNP conversation about blogs that limit readership to an invitation only format. I called it "lame and cowardly." My apologies, I meant to imply that it would be lame and cowardly for me to go to that format after almost ten years of not. I understand completely why someone would choose, in posting personal items among friends - or in posting whatever the fuck you want, it's your blog - to limit the readership to only the people one wants reading.
  • Yes, there was an overnight post for my daughter - hope you saw it - it's saved, will be back whenever I need it.
  • Breaking kayfabe.
  • Authentic ruins.
  • Posted solely for the few of you who know why I'd post it. As for the movie itself, I've no idea.
  • Mansionalization.
  • Ten forgotten classics. Hey, D, your favorite Defoe is one of them.
  • The infinity of poetry lists
  • The Snowmass Cycle.
  • Charles Olson in Mexico
  • Another riff on Against the Day.
  • New Pynchon reviewed. It's a peculiarity of musical notation that major works are, more often than not, set in a minor key, and vice versa. Bleeding Edge is mellow, plummy, minor-key Pynchon, his second such in a row since Against the Day (2006)--that still-smoking asteroid, whose otherworldly inner music readers are just beginning to tap back at. But in its world-historical savvy, its supple feel for the joys and stings of love--both married and parental--this new book is anything but minor. On the contrary, Bleeding Edge is a chamber symphony in P major, so generous of invention it sometimes sprawls, yet so sharp it ultimately pierces. All this, plus a stripjoint called Joie de Beavre and a West Indian proctologist named Pokemon. Who else does that? 
  • HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! (h/t Mr Alarum) Yes, I posted that last night too.






FIXED IDEAS

Kenneth Slessor

Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,   
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,   
Death’s candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,
Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.
Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets,
Or grammarians freeze it into spar,
Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal   
Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out
In alabaster, with horny cartilage
And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy
Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture,   
Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers;   
But the quarries are of more use than this,
Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice,
Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church,   
Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control . . .

Frail tinkling rush
Water-hair streaming
Prickles and glitters
Cloudy with bristles
River of thought
Swimming the pebbles—
Undo, loosen your bubbles!