(Source: retrogasm, via ihatekylehoenerwhenheisdrunk)
This box is filled with home recordings I made throughout the 1990’s. I liberated it from the rain ridden garage and was shocked at how much stuff I recorded. It’s weird how back then one’s output was matched by physical artifacts and now it’s all invisible on a hard drive. Having less stuff is very cool.
ZA BAKDAZ»»»
I became an obsessed and devoted fan of Klaus Nomi the first time I saw and heard him in the motion picture Urgh A Music War! When I was a child, the Laurel Theater in San Carlos had that title on its marquee for what seemed like ages. We drove by it all the time. I rented the Urgh videocassette as a high school freshman and Nomi’s bit was haunting, shocking, hilarious, and just way cool. I couldn’t believe his look and sound. The combination made all sorts of time and space and setting and sound ripple, twist, and vibrate. It was beautiful.
Back in 2007 an unfinished Nomi rock opera was released. I knew about it, but by that time I wasn’t buying CD’s anymore and hadn’t gotten into dowloading music. Recently I backtracked and listened to the posthumous release and really fell in love all over again. I get the feeling there were only some rough, hastily recorded vocal sketches to work with, but his frequent collaborators George Elliot and Page Wood went back and, with the aid today’s more advanced recording capabilities, fleshed and tricked out the sounds with all sorts of electronic angular landscape blip tomfoolery. It’s a pretty great piece. And it’s so good to hear Nomi’s voice again, an ether piercing toll from the great beyond. It’s a collection of moods and vibes, very different from the shape shifting pop experiments from the albums released while Nomi was still of this earth.
Spencer Tricker puts it very nicely in a PopMatters review: “Listening to Za Bakdaz…feels as if you were creeping through a haunted house littered with the remnants of shattered mirrors. Nomi’s ghost seems to appear and then disappear in the broken shards, showing up in one place only to reappear suddenly behind you. It’s the sound of being followed—of feeling something without being able to see it—and at times it’s pretty disconcerting, but you remain mysteriously compelled.”
TVEgo Override
The self is the spring of the human psyche - the place from which all the nourishing juices bubble and rise. Self-actualization means the self is calling the shots, not the ego. Great unhappiness and strife rush the floodgates of human consciousness when the ego is steering the ship because the ego desperately craves validation from external sources, namely other people, to function. That can be a lot of unnecessary work, always seeking and gathering validation. It’s a steady and exhausting hustle leading to stress and depression. Other people are bound to let one down. Or sometimes one places undue expectations on others. This creates a feeling of somehow always missing the mark. How much validation does the ego need? It’s never enough. It’s an addiction. An addiction is an imbalance - a deep down message, a sign that the system is out of whack.
Once the self is actualized, the psyche stops drawing validation from others because it is finally capable of finding it within itself and the stress resulting from an overworked ego is relieved. If the ego is at the helm and a person perceives an insult, then the insult will sting. This is because the ego driven psyche needs people to validate it. An insult does not validate the ego. It tears it down. A self actualized person won’t be stung by a perceived insult because the self knows itself. It knows its strengths, weaknesses, flaws, and skills. It needs no validation from external sources, so the “insult” slips by like lint dancing in the air.
The ego is important. It is good to know how we are perceived by others. However, the ego can become not unlike a prison cell if overworked.
When the television came onto the scene, there were people who were exuberant about the new invention’s educational possibilities. Sadly, those possibilities were waylaid. Instead of serving as a tool for enlightenment (self-actualization), television, and now the internet, has become something of a cattle prod, keeping the human race in a very strict and narrow confine of ego aggrandizement. The self is neglected - put out to pasture. Humans are kept guessing, stuck in a feedback loop of shame and consistent expectation leading to the polarized immediacy of punishment and reward. This is the result when the ego rules.
The ego needs others to validate itself. The self is satisfied, but not smugly, in its own knowledge and understanding. The ego wishes to lose weight and wants a six pack of abs because it thinks it will attract mates. The self understands these are mere accoutrements of vanity. When the self rules, there is peace, while the ego is only capable of desperate lurchings and tumultuous flailings. These flailings are encouraged and fortified by what is presented to us through commercial entertainment. It’s what greases the wheels of industry. The neglected self keeps the population in the loop of shame and self defeat. This is how an economy was built - on wasted lives and empty expectations. The world culture trains us to administer the cattle prod to ourselves. However, that is a behavior which can be modified and escaped. But it takes work. And it isn’t easy. But it’s worth the effort.
That’s why I am an underground filmmaker. I have no commercial aspirations or dreams of institutionalization. I am happy where I am, doing what I am doing. The policies of the world have no bearing on the art I create. The art I create beckons the actualization of the self. I’d rather be doing this on the margins than towing the status quo at the center of it all. I like it out here in the sticks. There are others like me and you.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is an amazing movie. Many people say it’s bad but I’m not on board with that. The film’s means are certainly limited. It doesn’t match up with the style, structure, and esthetic quality of the traditional made in Hollywood entertainments with which we are all very familiar. I think that’s a juicy case for why some people think Brain is bad. I guess I’m just not a fan of the word bad. Or good. Neither give an accurate picture of the sum of a thing.
To me, Brain is just plain fun. A good time. A cheap thrill like a rickety funhouse or a homemade haunted house on Halloween. I love that stuff. It always activates the six year old me in me, and I think that’s a fine, fine thing. As we age all sorts of sediment (mortgages, deaths, divorces) piles up and that crazy wide-eyed kiddo can get buried beneath all the junk. Movies like The Brain That Wouldn’t Die keep that kid well-nourished and healthy and therefore I see it as a precious gift for the human race. It’s very important to keep that kid alive and well. Movies like Brain get the job done. They should receive accolades, not derision. What they accomplish is no small feat.
On a side note, Eddie Carmel, “the Jewish giant” immortalized in the famous Diane Arbus photo, plays the monster in the basement. How cool is that!
(Source: walk-with-evil, via raculfright13)
Infantile Regression?
My friend in Spain, Naxo Fiol, alerted me to this video camera for a five year old kid. It was pretty cheap and I had some extra money laying around, so I got one. It’s supposed to take abuse very well. It only holds about fifteen minutes of video, but I can slip a SD card in and get way more. When I do some tests, I’ll put them up.
The Naked Preacher Lady doc is driving me crazy. Chasing a ghost is the most apt cliche I can think of. As soon as I think I have it, it’s gone! The first twenty minutes of the doc are beautiful, and then things just sort of slip off the track, almost invisibly. I want to be done with this documentary. I want it to be over. But I need to relax and let it tell me what it wants to tell me. I can’t put it down. No way I can shoot a horse with a broken leg. This thing has legs to walk on. I just need to find the right way to highlight them. Presently sitting on it and listening.
3D
I goof around on set as an actor with a painted on mustache and Ian’s wild and wonky 3D video camera.
Ian, the writer, director, and cameraman, plans his next shot.
I am in love with this dog, Molly. She’s not in the movie, but she likes saying hi and getting petted on.
